Chapter L: Journeying Homeward

In spite of Ferris’s objection they carried him back to camp carefully on a litter. Ralph St. Alban and a few others who had stayed behind were amazed when they bore that burden into camp. They shuddered when they learned how he had come by those terrible wounds.

“It is very unlikely that he will recover, but I shall do all that human skill can do for the poor fellow,” said Doctor Lewis.

When Talbot Strangemore had seen the wounded man made comfortable, he again renewed his request for a guide to Khartoom.

“It lacks barely a month to that terrible day,” he said, shudderingly. “I shall have to make all haste to reach home in time to save my darling.”

He was surprised and pleased when Harvey Wilson said, diffidently:

“I will go with you, myself, Strangemore, if you will have my company.”

“To Khartoom?” asked Talbot.

“Yes--and to America, too,” answered the gallant Englishman. “You will need a friend, a witness, perhaps, and if you will have me I will go with you, most willingly.”

His offer was gratefully accepted, and they made hasty preparations for leaving. Oswald Ferris watched their leave-takings with wistful eyes.

When Talbot came to bid him farewell he whispered, faintly:

“Ask her--your beautiful bride--to forgive me for all that I caused her to suffer. Tell her that in dying, I repented my sin and all the suffering it brought upon others. I wish now that I had let poor heartless Sibyl live out the brief summer of her butterfly existence. And you, Strangemore, you can forgive me for what I did to you?”

Gazing at the poor suffering face on which the grey pallor of death seemed already settling, Strangemore felt that this was no time to harbor resentment. He gave his hand to his late foe in token of his hearty forgiveness, and commending him to the care of his comrades, bade him a last adieu and passed out of his sight with Harvey Wilson, taking the road for Khartoom where they would find transportation to England.

With what burning impatience he contemplated the days and weeks that must elapse before he reached the side of his doomed Nina!

“But I shall save her at last. Oh, how glad I am that fate having first made me the cause of her unhappiness, has now selected me as the instrument to deliver her from her peril,” he said to himself, gladly, and it seemed to him that this would be something like an atonement to Nina.

“When I tell her that although I thought she was dead I followed Ferris like a bloodhound to obtain proof of his guilt in order to clear her memory from all stain, when I tell her that I have traveled night and day to bring her the news of her release, when I tell her, above all, that I love her with such a love as until now I never knew, perhaps she will find it in her tender heart to forgive my madness and to be friends with me again, and--who knows?--in time, perhaps,--even if it were years I would be patient--I may teach her to give me back the love I slighted and scorned in the days when the poison of a false woman’s love worked in my veins,” he thought.

But though he tried to teach himself to be hopeful, there was a brooding fear in his heart. What if Nina were wounded beyond all reparation? What if she refused her forgiveness to him, and withdrew herself from him forever? He could not contemplate the thought with any equanimity. It sent cold thrills of anguish running over his frame.

“For years a measureless ill,
For years, forever, to part.”

“I could not bear it, and she will not be so cruel, surely, my little, tender-hearted Nina,” he said over and over to himself, and Harvey Wilson found him but a dull companion, for he moved and spoke like one in a dream, and he had but one thought, and that was to hasten all the time. He barely gave himself time to eat, and sleep was a luxury that he seldom knew.

“Tired nature’s sweet restorer--balmy sleep,
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes
And lights in lids unsullied with a tear.”

Fortunately they had no delays in reaching England, and when they arrived in London at last Talbot Strangemore did not stop to rest an hour. They were so fortunate as to find a steamer within an hour of sailing, and they embarked with her for their tour across the broad Atlantic.

When they were fairly launched upon the blue waves Talbot counted what days of grace remained to him. If they made the trip successfully in ten days, as the captain expected to do, he would get to Baltimore in time to stay the execution of the death-warrant. They had started on the 13th of July. On the 25th Nina Strangemore was to suffer death for a crime she had never committed.

“My God, if anything should happen to delay us,” Talbot groaned to his friend in agony of spirit.

“We will hope and pray for the best,” Harvey Wilson answered, sympathizingly.

He told his friend’s story to the captain and passengers. Their deepest sympathy was excited for the worn, haggard, anxious-looking man who leaned listlessly over the vessel’s side day by day, looking into the foam-capped waves as if into a grave, and whose only interest centered in the weather, who grew frantic almost if a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand came over the sun, and who could not rest for studying the stars by night.

Seeing how great and terrible was the anxiety of his passenger, the noble Christian commander was moved to pity and sympathy. Every morning and night he assembled the crew and passengers together and read from the prayer book the prayers for fair weather and a safe and speedy voyage. Everyone responded with full hearts and overflowing sympathy to the prayer.

Surely heaven heard and answered those appeals so full of faith and hope. Through that whole anxious voyage the elements smiled upon the flight of White Wings, as the gallant ship was called. The sun shone by day, the stars beamed by night. Only one untoward event occurred in the whole trip. By some accident a part of the ship was broken that caused her to sail just a little more slowly, and the trip to New York consumed eleven days instead of ten as they had expected.

“I have only one day now,” Talbot said to his friend, with a look of terror on his haggard, pain-drawn face. “Let us go now and ask a lawyer what I must do to effect the release of my darling.”

They went immediately from the ship to a lawyer. He told them briefly what to do.

“You must place your evidence before the governor of Maryland and get him to sign a warrant for the pardon of Mrs. Strangemore.”

And then he added:

“It is most unfortunate for you that the governor is not at home now. I read in my morning paper that he had left Saturday for Old Point where he expected to spend several weeks at the Hygeia.”

“My God,” Talbot Strangemore cried, and, dizzy with despair, he reeled backward, and would have fainted but that they hastily brought restoration for his overtasked nerves.

“What shall we do now?” asked Harvey Wilson, pale too, with the anxiety of the moment.

The learned lawyer drew his brows thoughtfully together.

“It is an unprecedented case. I must think it over a moment,” he said.

While he walked nervously up and down and pondered the case the two men looked at their watches.

It was almost noon.

Strangemore’s hollow groan of misery startled the lawyer. He looked up with an air of pity on his hard lined face.

“There is only one thing possible,” he said.

“And that?” Harvey Wilson asked, hoarsely, for the parched lips of his friend refused to utter a word.

“Telegraph to the governor of Maryland at Old Point, a brief statement of the urgency of your case and ask him to meet you in Baltimore by the earliest route to-night.”

“How soon?” Talbot articulated with feverish lips.

The lawyer hastily consulted a schedule that hung against the wall of his office. A smothered cry of dismay came from his lips.

“He will reach the city at about the same time as yourselves--between four and five o’clock in the morning,” he said.

“And to-morrow is the fatal day?” Harvey Wilson whispered very low with a pitying glance at his friend.

The lawyer hurriedly took up a paper from his desk and ran his eyes over a largely lettered column.

“To-morrow, the 25th--yes, at seven o’clock in the morning,” he answered, with professional brevity, and then here was an awful pause.

Harvey Wilson looked at his friend. He was shuddering from head to foot, and seemed about to fall. An awful pallor like the greyness of coming death covered his face.

“Strangemore, bear up, for heaven’s sake? Don’t give up now, don’t sink when every moment is worth its weight in gold to us. Think of Nina’s peril!” he implored, touching his arm, gently.

The half-closed eyes flared open widely. Talbot answered, with feverish incoherency:

“Lead on, Wilson, I shall not sink, never fear. I will go through fire and water to save her, my martyred love, my wronged darling!”

“Will you come with us to the nearest telegraph office?” Wilson asked the lawyer.

“Willingly,” he answered.

They put on their hats and went out. The day was beautiful and bright, but they paid no heed to it. The faces of the hurrying throng seemed like faces seen in dreams to Talbot Strangemore. The world seemed full of shadows, blackest and darkest of all the shadow of that awful scaffold that to-day they were building in far off Baltimore for Nina, his fair young wife whose summers had not yet reached nineteen. They went to the telegraph office and dictated their urgent message to the governor of Maryland asking him to come home that night. Then they went to a railway station and took the earliest train for Baltimore. The interested lawyer accompanied them of his own will, anxious to see the end of what might be a woeful tragedy.