第80章 BOOK III:THE HEART OF MAN(33)

"I cannot,"said he -"not even the left one.May God forgive me!"Orlando,struck silent for a moment,dropped his hand and slowly turned away.Mr.Challoner felt Oswald stiffen in his arms,and break suddenly away,only to stop short before he had taken one of the half dozen steps between himself and his departing brother.

"Where are you going?"he demanded in tones which made Orlando turn.

"I might say,To the devil,"was the sarcastic reply."But I doubt if he would receive me.No,"he added,in more ordinary tones as the other shivered and again started forward,"you will have no trouble in finding me in my own room to-night.I have letters to write and -other things.A man like me cannot drop out without a ripple.You may go to bed and sleep.I will keep awake for two.""Orlando!"Visions were passing before Oswald's eyes,soul-crushing visions such as in his blame less life he never thought could enter into his consciousness or blast his tranquil outlook upon life.

"Orlando!"he again appealed,covering his eyes in a frenzied attempt to shut out these horrors,"I cannot let you go like this.

To-morrow -"

"To-morrow,in every niche and corner of this world,wherever Edith Challoner's name has gone,wherever my name has gone,it will be known that the discoverer of a practical air-ship,is a man whom they can no longer honour.Do you think that is not hell enough for me;or that I do not realise the hell it will be for you?I've never wearied you or any man with my affection;but I'm not all demon.I would gladly have spared you this additional anguish;but that was impossible.You are my brother and must suffer from the connection whether we would have it so of not.If it promises too much misery -and I know no misery like that of shame -come with me where I go to-morrow.There will be room for two."Oswald,swaying with weakness,but maddened by the sight of an overthrow which carried with it the stifled affections and the admiration of his whole life,gave a bound forward,opened his arms and -fell.

Orlando stopped short.Gazing down on his prostrate brother,he stood for a moment with a gleam of something like human tenderness showing through the flare of dying passions and perishing hopes;then he swung open the door and passed quietly out,and Mr.

Challoner could hear the laughing remark with which he met and dismissed the half-dozen men and women who had been drawn to this end of the hall by what had sounded to them like a fracas between angry men.

XLI

FIVE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

The clock in the hotel office struck three.Orlando Brotherson counted the strokes;then went on writing.His transom was partly open and he had just heard a step go by his door.This was nothing new.He had already heard it several times before that night.It was Mr.Challoner's step,and every time it passed,he had rustled his papers or scratched vigorously with his pen."He is keeping watch for Oswald,"was his thought."They fear a sudden end to this.

No one,not the son of my mother knows me.Do I know myself?"Four o'clock!The light was still burning,the pile of letters he was writing increasing.

Five o'clock!A rattling shade betrays an open window.No other sound disturbs the quiet of the room.It is empty now;but Mr.

Challoner,long since satisfied that all was well,goes by no more.Silence has settled upon the hotel;-that heavy silence which precedes the dawn.

There was silence in the streets also.The few who were abroad,crept quietly along.An electric storm was in the air and the surcharged clouds hung heavy and low,biding the moment of outbreak.

A man who had left a place of many shadows for the more open road,paused and looked up at these clouds;then went calmly on.

Suddenly the shriek of an approaching train tears through the valley.Has it a call for this man?No.Yet he pauses in the midst of the street he is crossing and watches,as a child might watch,for the flash of its lights at the end of the darkened vista.

It comes -filling the empty space at which he stares with moving life -engine,baggage car and a long string of Pullmans.Then all is dark again and only the noise of its slackening wheels comes to him through the night.It has stopped at the station.A minute longer and it has started again,and the quickly lessening rumble of its departure is all that remains of this vision of man's activity and ceaseless expectancy.When it is quite gone and all is quiet,a sigh falls from the man's lips and he moves on,but this time,for some unexplainable reason,in the direction of the station.With lowered head he passes along,noting little till he arrives within sight of the depot where some freight is being handled,and a trunk or two wheeled down the platform.No sight could be more ordinary or unsuggestive,but it has its attraction for him,for he looks up as he goes by and follows the passage of that truck down the platform till it has reached the corner and disappeared.Then he sighs again and again moves on.

A cluster of houses,one of them open and lighted,was all which lay between him now and the country road.He was hurrying past,for his step had unconsciously quickened as he turned his back upon the station,when he was seized again by that mood of curiosity and stepped up to the door from which a light issued and looked in.A common eating-room lay before him,with rudely spread tables and one very sleepy waiter taking orders from a new arrival who sat with his back to the door.Why did the lonely man on the sidewalk start as his eye fell on the latter's commonplace figure,a hungry man demanding breakfast in a cheap,country restaurant?His own physique was powerful while that of the other looked slim and frail.But fear was in the air,and the brooding of a tempest affects some temperaments in a totally unexpected manner.As the man inside turns slightly and looks up,the master figure on the sidewalk vanishes,and his step,if any one had been interested enough to listen,rings with a new note as it turns into the country road it has at last reached.

But no one heeded.The new arrival munches his roll and waits impatiently for his coffee,while without,the clouds pile soundlessly in the sky,one of them taking the form of a huge hand with clutching fingers reaching down into the hollow void beneath.