Chapter XXXI

Until she died, Clancy would hold vividly, in memory, the recollection of this scene. Just beyond the threshold Carey stopped. His wife, wild-eyed, leaned against the door which she had closed, her hand still on the knob.

For a full minute, there was silence. Clancy forgot her own danger. She was looking upon the most dramatic thing in life, the casting-off by a woman of a man whom she had loved, because she has found him unworthy.

Not that Sophie Carey, just now--or later on, for that matter--stooped to any melodramatic utterance. But her eyes were as expressive as spoken sentences. Into them first crept fear--a fear that was different from the alarm that she had shown when Clancy had mentioned her husband. But the fear vanished, was banished by the fulness of her contempt. Her eyes, that had been wide, now narrowed, hardened, seemed to emit sparks of ice.

Contemptuous anger heightened her beauty. Rather, it restored it. For, when Clancy had staggered into the house, the beauty of Sophie Carey, always a matter of coloring and spirits rather than of feature, had been a memory. She had been haggard, wan, sunken of cheek, so pale that her rouge had made her ghastly by contrast.

But now a normal color crept into her face. Not really normal, but, induced by the emotions that swayed her, it was the color that should always have been hers. It took years from her age. Her figure had seemed heavy, matronly, a moment ago. But now, as her muscles stiffened, it took on again that litheness which, despite her plumpness, made her seem more youthful than she was.

But it was the face of her husband that fascinated Clancy. Below his left eye, a bruise stood out, crimson. Clancy knew that it was from the blow that she had struck with the butt of the whip. She felt a certain vindictive pleasure at the sight of it. Carey's mouth twitched. His blond mustache looked more like straw than anything else. Ordinarily, it was carefully combed, but now the hairs that should have been trained to the right stuck over toward the left, rendering him almost grotesque. Below it, his mouth was twisted in a sort of sneer that made its weakness more apparent than ever.

His hat was missing; snow was on his shoulders, as though, in his pursuit, he had stumbled headlong into the drifts. And his tie was undone, his collar opened, as though he had found difficulty in breathing. The hand that held the revolver shook.

Before the gaze of the two women, his air of menace vanished. The intoxication that, combined with fear, had made him almost insane, left him.

"Why--why--musta scared you," he stammered.

Sophie Carey stepped close to him. Her fingers touched the revolver in his hand. Her husband jerked it away. Its muzzle, for a wavering moment, pointed at Clancy. She did not move. She was not frightened; she was fascinated. She marveled at Sophie's cool courage. For Mrs. Carey reached again for the weapon. This time, Carey did not resist; he surrendered it to her. Then Clancy understood how tremendous had been the strain, not merely for her but for Sophie. The older woman would have fallen but for the wall against which her shoulders struck. But her voice was steady when she spoke.

"I suppose that there's some explanation, Don?"

Clancy wondered if she would ever achieve Sophie's perfect poise. She wondered if it could be acquired, or if people were born with it. It was not pretense in Sophie Carey's case, at any rate. The casualness of her tone was not assumed. Somehow, she made Clancy think of those _grandes dames_ of the French Revolution who played cards as the summons to the tumbrils came, and who left the game as jauntily as though they went to the play.

For Clancy knew that Sophie Carey had forgiven her husband the other day for the last time; that hope, so far as he was concerned, was now ashes in her bosom forever. To a woman of Mrs. Carey's type, this present humiliation must make her suffer as nothing else in the world could do. Yet, because she was herself, her voice held no trace of pain.

"'Explanation?'" Carey was mastered by her self-control. "Why--course there is! Why----" He took the refuge of the weak. He burst into temper. "'Course there is!" he cried again. "Dirty little spy! Trying to get me in bad. Stopped her--wanted to scare her----"

"Don!" His wife's voice stopped his shrill utterance.

She straightened up, no longer leaning against the wall for support. "You stopped her? Why?" She raised her hand, quelling his reply. "No lies, Don; I want the truth."

Carey's mouth opened; it shut again. He looked hastily about him, as though seeking some road for flight. He glanced toward the revolver that his wife held. For a moment Clancy thought that he would spring for it. But if he held such thought, he let it go, conquered by his wife's spirit.

"'The truth?'" He tried to laugh. "Why--why, Miss Deane's got some fool idea that I killed Morris Beiner, and I wanted to--I wanted to----"

"'Beiner?' 'Morris Beiner?'" Sophie was bewildered.

"Theatrical man. You read about it in the papers." Again Carey tried to laugh, to seem nonchalantly amused. "Because I had an office in the same building, she got the idea that I killed him. I just wanted her to quit telling people about me. Just a friendly little talk--that's all I wanted with her."

"'Friendly?' With this?" Mrs. Carey glanced down at the weapon in her hand.

"Well, I just thought maybe that she'd scare easy, and----"

"Don!" The name burst explosively from his wife's lips. Her breath sucked in audibly through her parted lips.

Carey stepped back, away from her.

"Why--why----"

"A murderer," cried Mrs. Carey.

"It's a lie!" said Carey. "We had a li'l fight, but----"

Mrs. Carey glanced at Clancy.

"How did you know?" she whispered.

Clancy shook her head. She made no reply. Sophie Carey didn't want one. She spoke only as one who has seen the universe shattered might utter some question.

"Why?" demanded Mrs. Carey.

"He butted in on some business of----"

"I don't mean that," she interrupted. "I mean--isn't there anything of a man left in you, Donald? I don't care why you killed this man Beiner. But why, having done something for which a price must be paid, you attack a woman----"

She slumped against the wall again. The hand holding the revolver dangled limply at her side. So it was that it was easily snatched from her hand.

Clancy had been too absorbed in the scene to remember Garland. Sophie Carey, apparently, knew nothing of the man. The snow had been swept from the veranda only in front of the door. It muffled the elevator-man's approach to one of the French windows in the living-room, off the hall, in which the three stood. Garland crept to the door, sized up the situation, and, with a bound, was at Sophie's side. He leaped away from her, flourishing the weapon.

"'S all right, Carey! We got 'em!" he shouted.

Clancy had become used to the unexpected. Yet Carey's action surprised her. In a moment when danger menaced as never before, danger passed away. Carey had been born a gentleman. He had spent his life trying to forget the fact. But instinct is stronger than our will. He could lie, could murder even, could kill a woman. But a gutter-rat like Garland could not lay a hand on his wife.

The elevator-man, never having known the spark of breeding, could not have anticipated Carey's move. The revolver was wrested from him, and he was on hands and knees, hurled there by Carey's punch, without quite knowing what had happened, or why.

Carey handed the revolver to his wife. She accepted it silently. The husband turned to Garland.

"Get out," he said.

His voice was quiet. All the hysteria, all the madness had disappeared from it. It had the ring of command that might always have been there had the man run true to his creed. He was a weakling, but weakness might have been conquered.

Garland scrambled to his feet. Sidewise, fearful lest Carey strike him again, his opened mouth expressing more bewilderment than anger, he sidled past Carey to the door, which the latter opened. He bounded swiftly through, and Carey closed the door. The patter of the man's feet was heard for a moment on the veranda. Then he was gone.

"Thank you, Don," said Sophie quietly.

It was, Clancy felt, like a scene from some play. It was unreal, unbelievable, only--it was also dreadfully real.

"Don't suppose the details interest you, Sophie?" said Carey.

She shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Don."

He shrugged. "That's more than I have any right to expect from you, Sophie."

His enunciation was no longer thick; it was extremely clear. His wife's lower lip trembled slightly.

"There--there isn't any way----"

He shook his head.

"I've been drinking like a fish, and thought there was. I--I'm not a murderer, Sophie. I almost was--a few minutes ago. But Beiner--just a rat who interfered with me. I--I--you deserved something decent, Sophie. You got me. I deserved something rotten, and--I got you. And didn't appreciate-- Oh, well, you aren't interested. And it's too late, anyway."

He smiled debonairly. His lips, Clancy noticed, did not tremble in the least. Though she only vaguely comprehended what was going on, less she realized that, in some incomprehensible fashion, Don Carey was coming into his own, that whatever indecencies, wickednesses, had been in the man, they were leaving him now. Later on, when she analyzed the scene, she would understand that Carey had spiritually groveled before his wife, and that, though she could not love him, could not respect him, despite all the shame he had inflicted upon her, she had forgiven him. But of this there was no verbal hint. Carey turned to her.

"Insanity covers many things, Miss Deane. It would be kind of you, if you are able, to think of me as insane."

He stepped toward his wife. She shrank away from him.

"I'm not going to be banal, Sophie," he told her. "Just let me have this." From her unresisting fingers he took the revolver. He put it in his coat pocket. He shrugged his shoulders. "I've had lucid moments, even in the past week," he said, "and in one of them I knew what lay ahead. It's all written down--in the steel box up-stairs, Sophie. It--it will save any one else--from being suspected." He turned and his hand was on the door-knob.

"Don!" Sophie's voice rose in a scream. The aplomb that had been hers deserted her. Strangely, Carey seemed the dominating figure of the two, and this despite the fact that he was beaten--beaten by his wife's own sheer stark courage.

He turned back. The smile that he gave to his wife was reminiscent of charm. Clancy could understand how, some years ago, the brilliant and charming Sophie Carey had succumbed to that smile. Slowly he shook his head.

"Sophie, you've been the bravest thing in the world. You aren't going to be a coward now."

He was through the door, and it slammed behind him before his wife moved. Then she started for the door. She made only one stride, and then she slumped, to lie, a huddled heap, upon the hallway floor.

How long Clancy stood there she couldn't have told. Probably not more than a few seconds, yet, in her numbed state, it seemed hours before she moved toward the unconscious woman. For she thought that Sophie Carey was dead. It was a ridiculous thought, nevertheless it was with dread that she finally bent over the prostrate figure. Then, seeing the bosom move she screamed.

From up-stairs Ragan, the chauffeur, Jack-of-all-trades whom she had seen at the Carey house in New York the other day, came running. His wife followed. Together they lifted Mrs. Carey and bore her to a couch in the living-room. But no restoratives were needed. Her eyes opened almost immediately. They cleared swiftly and she sat up.

"Ragan!"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Mr. Don!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"He--he--has a revolver. He's--outside--somewhere----"

"I'll find him, ma'am."

There seemed to be no need for explanation. Ragan's white face showed that he understood. And now Clancy, amazed that she had not comprehended before, also understood. Her hands went swiftly up over her eyes as though to shut out some horrible sight. The fact that Don Carey had pursued her half an hour ago with murderous intent was of no importance now.

She heard Ragan's heavy feet racing across the room and out of the house. She heard the piteous wail from Mrs. Ragan's mouth. Then, amazed, as she removed her hands from her eyes, she saw Sophie Carey, mistress of herself again, leap from the couch and race to a window, throwing it open.

"Ragan," she called. "Ragan!"

"Ma'am?" faintly, from the darkness, Ragan answered.

"Come here." Firm, commanding, Sophie Carey's voice brooked no refusal.

"Coming, ma'am," called Ragan.

A moment later he was in the living-room again.

"Ragan, go up-stairs," commanded his mistress.

The man looked his surprise.

"But, ma'am, Mr. Donald----"

"Must be given his chance, Ragan," she interrupted.

"'His chance,' ma'am? Him carryin' a revolver?"

"There are worse things than revolvers, Ragan," said his mistress.

"Oh, my darlin' Miss Sophie," cried his wife.

She turned on them both.

"They'll capture him. They'll put him in jail. They'll sentence him-- It's his way out. It mustn't--it _mustn't_ be taken from him!" Her voice rose to a scream. She held out her arms to Clancy. "Don't let them--don't let them--" She could not finish; once again she tumbled to the floor.

Uncertainly, the servants looked at Clancy. It was the first time in her life that Clancy had come face to face with a great problem. Her own problem of the past week seemed a minor thing compared with this.

She knew that what Don Carey purposed doing was wrong, hideously wrong. It was the act of a coward. Yet, in this particular case, was there not something of heroism in it? To save his wife from the long-drawn-out humiliation of a trial-- Sophie Carey had appealed to her. Yet Sophie Carey had not appealed because of cowardice, because she feared humiliation; Sophie appealed to her because she wished to spare her husband a felon's fate.

Exquisitely she suffered during the few seconds that she faced the servants. Right or wrong? Yet what was right and what was wrong? Are there times when the end justifies the means? Does right sometimes masquerade in the guise of wrong? Does wrong sometimes impersonate right? Nice problems in ethics are not solved when one is at high emotional pitch. It takes the philosopher, secluded in his study, to classify those abstractions which are solved, in real life, on impulse.

And then decision was taken from her. In later life, when faced with problems difficult of solution, she would remember this moment, not merely because of its tragic associations, but because she had not been forced to decide a question involving right and wrong. Life would not always be so easy for her.

But now-- Somewhere out in the darkness sounded a revolver shot. Whether or not it was right to take one's life to save another added shame no longer mattered. Whether or not it was right to stand by and permit the taking of that life no longer mattered. The problem had been solved, for right or wrong, by Carey himself.

For the second time in a week, for the second time in her life, Clancy Deane fainted.