第53章 PROBLEM VI(14)

"Then another's note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! Istopped and took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink of the grave? I--, who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her happy, gracious, and good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock's voice; the others were mere chatterboxes."But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite changed its tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying it I save Helena. But what of Bella? and 0 God, what of myself?"A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there finally broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the hour. When all were still again and Violet had drawn aside the portiere, it was to see the old man on his knees, and between her and the thin streak of light entering from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to Helena's bedside.

When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded the young girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had upheld her once before, and to a life which promised to compensate her for her twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied longing.

But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before reaching the sunshine!

It lay at her step-mother's door.

In the plans made for Helena's release, Mrs. Postlethwaite's consent had not been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted with the doctor's intentions towards the child whose death she was hourly awaiting.

It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on their way downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and herself standing alone and upright on the threshold--she who had not been seen to take a step in years. In the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power, the little procession stopped,--the doctor with his hand upon the rail, the lover with his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his breast. That a little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and fury of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed.

Having but one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched it straight at the innocent breast which had never harboured against her a defiant thought.

"Ingrate!" was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its seductive music had gone forever. "Where are you going? Are they carrying you alive to your grave?"A moan from Helena's pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at that barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer for her and he spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.

"No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what Imean by that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace.

Otherwise--"

She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the echoes of that haunted hall:

"Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!"

But no Humphrey appeared.

Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:

"Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!"

But the answer was the same--silence, and only silence. As the horror of this grew, the doctor spoke:

"Mr. Humphrey Dunbar's ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died last night at the very hour he said he would--four minutes after two.""Four minutes after two!" It came from her lips in a whisper, but with a revelation of her broken heart and life. "Four minutes after two!" And defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an instant, for a mere breath of time, they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal in form, attitude, and expression;then the will which had sustained her through so much, faltered and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of the words "Four minutes after two!" she broke into a rattling laugh, and fell back into the arms of her old nurse.

And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not the big one at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with its hands pointing to the hour and minute of Frank Postlethwaite's hastened death.