Captains and The Kings (64 page)

breath loud and raucous in the cool dusk. They could see her girl's face, still and closed and shut, the tawny lashes on her white cheeks, the blood beginning to darken her forehead and temples. Courtney fumbled for her pulse, and then he burst out into the first tears he had shed since he had been a child. "She is alive," he said. "We can't move her. Kevin, run down to the house and bring people up here to help us." His voice was so quiet in contrast with his tears and his expression, then Kevin looked quickly at him. "We'll need a carriage and a door and blankets, and send someone for a doctor so he'll be there when we bring her down." "Tell me again," said Kevin, and he looked at Courtney with such a face that the other man flinched. "What happened to my sister?" "I don't know. We always met there. We were to meet this morning. She had arrived just before you. She said nothing at all to me, though I spoke to her." Courtney caught his breath, let it out slowly. "Then the mare turned--she must have been frightened by something, skittish, she was always skittish, and she ran into the woods with Ann Marie. That is all. You came right at once." "I saw her in the stables," said Kevin, and he spoke precisely through his big white clenched teeth. "Something was wrong with her. It was as if she had seen or heard something--in the house, or had been told something. Do you know?" Courtney cursed furiously. "Damn you, go for help, for doctors! Why are you just kneeling there and staring at me? I know nothing, except that her horse bolted. Get along now, or she'll die here. I'll stay. For Christ's sake, can't you see she's badly hurt, you glowering idiot? Do you want her to die while you jabber away?" "I'll find out," said Kevin, in an ominous voice. "I don't believe that horse bolted. I believe Ann Marie deliberately spurred her into these woods, for just this very thing." He jumped to his feet and ran off the way he had gone and Courtney could hear the noisy slogging of his running feet. Now Courtney was alone with the unconscious girl, whose head was bedded in a heap of moss. She did not move. She lay as if already dead, so small, so rumpled, so silent and so still, so battered and torn and bleeding. The horse shrilled and screamed nearby and Courtney cried out in total anguish, "For God's sake, be quiet, Missy! For God's sake!" But the horse threshed and shrieked and rolled in her own agony, her burnished brown hide streaming with blood. Courtney wanted more than anything else to lift Ann Marie in his arms, to hold that bloody little head against his chest, to speak and kiss and comfort. But he was afraid to cause more damage. He could only squat and lean over the girl whom he loved so devastatingly and with such terrible longing. He lifted one of her little slack hands. It was cold and lifeless. He pressed it against his mouth, his cheek, and he murmured, "Ann, Ann Marie. O God, what is wrong, my darling? Why did you do this? Who drove you to this?" He smoothed her fingers over and over, hoping for a little warmth, for a little response, but that ivory silence did not stir nor those eyes open. Shadows filtered over her face, which was diminishing, slackening. The lips parted, but not to speak. Courtney listened for her breath, his ear close to her mouth, his hand on her wrist. The breath was short and light, the pulse like a frantic thread. The long aureate lashes lay unmoving on her cheeks. Her young breast hardly rose or fell. "Who did this to you, Ann Marie?" said Courtney. "Who could have driven you to this? For you knew, didn't you? Someone told you. Who, my love, who, my dearest love?" Then he knew. There Was no one else who could have told the girl the truth but her mother, Bernadette. Her father was not due until tonight. There was no one else but Bernadette. Ann Marie had "spoken" to her mother after all, in spite of warnings. She was like a child lying there in the woods, stricken and alone, thrown down, abandoned, mortally hurt, seeming to sink deeper, moment by moment, into the black leaves which were her bed. Courtney bent his head and touched her cheek with his own and he cried as he had never cried before, and something burned and shifted and lusted in him and he knew the deepest and most murderous hatred he would ever know. He heard his own voice, stammering, mumbling aloud, "How could anyone do such a thing to this child? How could anyone be so monstrous? Who had the hate to kill like this, ruthless, gleeful, deliberate? Didn't that woman know what you really are, my darling, a defenseless little girl, harmless, wanting only to love and be loved? O my God, Ann Marie, how I love you! Don't die, my darling. Here I am, Courtney. Don't leave me, little love. I never wanted anything in the world but you, Ann Marie. Do you hear me? Don't die, don't leave me. If I can only see you sometimes-- it'll be enough. Enough for my whole life." His incoherent words mingled with the screaming of the dying mare, and the flutter and chatter in the trees. His voice rose, senselessly, frenzied. "Ann Marie! Where are you? Come back, come back to me! Don't leave me. His shaking hands smoothed her hair, felt her blood on his fingers. She was growing cold. He took off his jacket and covered her, tucking the collar under her chin gently like a father. He rubbed her hands, held them between his sweating palms. He did not know the precise moment when she opened her eyes and looked at him clearly, knowing him, but when he finally realized throngh the red haze of his grief that she was conscious he thought he would collapse with joy. He saw that she was even smiling a little, her white lips curving in the sweet smile he had always loved. "Courtney?" she said. He held her hands tighter. He bent over her more closely. He looked into her eyes. "Ann Marie?" he whispered. "Oh, Courtney," she said, like a child, but not like a child who knew her world had been destroyed about her. "Where am I? What are we doing here?" Her voice was feeble but steady and bewildered. She tried to look about her then winced with pain, and moaned. But she turned to Courtney again. "What happened to me, Courtney?" She did not remember. Concussion, thought Courtney, and was grateful. "Missy bolted. Don't move, love. Kevin has gone for help." Her child's forehead was gently wrinkling in a frown. "Missy? Bolted? She never did that before. I don't remember even riding her. I don't remember--" "It doesn't matter, Ann Marie. Nothing matters but that you are alive. Help will soon be here. Kevin's gone for it." "Kevin? How did he know we were here?" She sounded girlishly interested. "He--he decided to join us. Don't worry about it, dear. It isn't important. I'm here with you. You'll be all right, my love, all right." She looked at him trustfully. Her hands were a little warmer. He bent over her again and he kissed her softly on her mouth, and her chill lips moved in response, and her fingers tightened on his own. Her eyes were so clear, so unharmed, and even in that duskiness he could see himself reflected in the amber of them as he had so seen himself many times before. "Dear Courtney," she said. "I love you, Courtney." Then he saw a strange thing happen. He saw his reflection retreating, moving backwards, becoming smaller and smaller in the iris of those steady eyes. Now he was but the tiniest of faces in that iris, and that face dwindled and wavered and then became a shapeless speck, and then was gone. "Ann Mariel" he said. But she was looking at him starkly now and with full knowledge, and without a movement or a change of expression she uttered the most awful groan, and it seemed to rise not from her lips or throat but from some vital part in her body. She dosed her eyes and murmured, "Mama told me." She was silent. He called her name frantically over and over, but she did not respond and he did not know if she heard him or had fallen unconscious again. There was nothing now but the screams of the tormented horse and the frightened response from the trees and the effluvia of decay and the fungus small and a faint creaking among the trees, and a growing dimness in which all things were dissolving. Courtney lay down beside the girl and had her hand and he wished he could die there with her or that neither of them need ever again know what they had learned this day, but would awaken as if from a nightmare they had dreamed together.
The nightmare would never end. Courtney and Kevin and Elizabeth sat in a small parlor at the rear of the drawing rooms in the Armagh house, in a silence too heavy to break even by a sigh or a murmur. It was nearly midnight and the air was almost hot and had not cooled with the coming of darkness and there was a prowling sound of heated thunder in the hills but no lightning, no moon, no stars. Elizabeth was leaning back in a chair, her white face tilted towards the ceiling, her eyes closed in exhaustion, her green and brown print frock seemingly too large for her body, her pale hair disheveled. Kevin sat in ponderous black immobility, his dark curls almost on end, his olive-tinted face shut and clenched, his dark eyes staring before him. There were deep scratches on his hands and cheeks from the thorns he had encountered, and the blood was dried on them, and he had not removed his torn brown suit and his boots were still muddy and leaf mold still clung to them. Courtney sat near his mother, as quiet as she, and his face even paler with bluish shadows under his cheekbones. The small parlor was gay with the vivid colors Bernadette loved, all intense blues and scarlets and yellows, the domed ceiling painted with dancing lambs and shepherdesses in an impossible meadow of verdigris green filled with daisies. The lamps were lighted. The room was incongruous tonight, with the three silent figures within it in varicolored chairs, their motionless feet on a Chinese rug of jade and primrose and azure. Little porcelain figures danced on little round gilt tables, and an ormolu clock chimed happily on the white marble mantel, and festive and coquettish figures frolicked in paintings on the yellow silk walls and the scent of late roses blew in through the opened french windows. Three physicians were upstairs in Ann Marie's room, and her father was with them, and Bernadette was under sedation in her gaudy bedroom, and the hours passed one by one. Occasionally a maid came in with fresh tea and cinnamon toast and to remove cups which had not been touched. Famous physicians .had been summoned from Philadelphia, Boston and New York, by telegram, and would be arriving tomorrow. In the meanwhile Ann Marie was almost moribund. Everyone in the little parlor started and trembled at any nearby sound or distant voice, terrified to receive fatal news, hoping that Ann Marie still lived, that there was a chance for her life. The climb down the hill had been part of the continuing nightmare, with Ann Marie laid on a door covered by blankets and herself wrapped in them, and with Kevin and Courtney riding behind. Courtney remembered, with a shudder, how Kevin had returned to him with a rifle in his hand and had efficiently and mercifully put an end to the suffering of Ann Marie's horse. He had done it without a glance of regret or sadness; it was a task to be done and so must be done. The shot had clamored through the surly green gloom of the woods, but Ann Marie had not heard it. Then had begun the descent down the hill to the waiting victoria with a covered door hastily removed from the house, and men ready to lay the unconscious girl upon it, the men who had carefully carried her from the stubborn forest. Courtney knew that Kevin must be told, for otherwise catastrophe would result. Courtney knew all about Joseph Armagh, and of what he was capable and he guessed what he would do when he discovered who had sent Ann Marie plunging to her very probable death. Bernadette, the mother, must be warned. Her husband must never know her part in this disaster, if only for Elizabeth's sake. What had happened to Ann Marie did indeed demand vengeance, but it must not be the sort of vengeance Joseph Armagh could inflict, for Ann Marie might live and she must not be the cause of violence between her parents and the things which Joseph would undoubtedly do. And, there would be scandal. So, Kevin had to know in order to induce his mother to keep silent. Courtney doubted that Kevin and Rory had a great love for Bernadette, but they must be protected as much as possible, for they were young and had a future, and Bernadette would not hesitate even at injuring her sons--as she had destroyed her daughter--to inflict torment on her husband and avenge herself on Elizabeth. So, as the dolorous procession wound down the hill Courtney put his hand on the neck of Kevin's horse, and Kevin turned his bleak square face to the other man and his dark eyes were cold and hostile. "Are you ready to tell me?" he asked. So Courtney told him as tersely and as emotionlessly as possible, and in very few words. "There is no doubt your mother told Ann Marie, though I had warned her to wait until I was with her. I didn't know then anything about the truth; I just wanted to be beside Ann Marie when your mother was told that we--that we--were going to be married." Kevin had listened without any expression on his broad face. When Courtney had revealed his own blood relationship to Kevin the younger man's eyes had flickered and widened and he had stared at Courtney intently, but had said nothing. If he thought anything at all about Courtney's reddened and mortified look he did not show it. They rode on slowly, when Courtney had finished, and Kevin had looked straight ahead. "We must learn our own story, that no one said anything to Ann Marie, and that her horse had been frightened by something--a rabbit, a squirrel, a distant hunter's shot--whatever--and had bolted into the woods. We both saw it. That is our story." Kevin had nodded briefly and the strong hard jaw became harder and his somewhat heavy lips had tightened. He had said, at last, "But what if Ann Marie becomes conscious, and tells him. "I don't think she will," said Courtney, and he bent his head. "She is too kind, too gentle, too understanding. She would not hurt either of her parents, not even if she died for it." Then Kevin said, "I'm sorry. I'm damned sorry, Courtney." He had looked then at his young uncle and with awkward commiseration. They had not spoken again. But when the house had been reached, a house in waiting noisy turmoil, Kevin had gone to his mother and had taken her forcibly upstairs while she wailed and wept, and had pushed her to her room and had shut the door. He did not come downstairs for a long time. When he did he had grown older and his look was closed and compact and he had greeted Elizabeth, when she came into the house, with mature kindness and courtesy. He had answered all her anxious questions with such steadiness and surety that Courtney, who could not speak, could only admire him for his new manhood and his manifest strength of character. Elizabeth found an occasion to whisper to her son, "Ann Marie--she never knew, you never had the opportunity to tell her?" "No," said Courtney, and looked at her directly and she believed him. "I had no chance. Her horse bolted before I could say a word." "Then we have had a reprieve," said his mother, and she had begun to cry. "The poor child, the poor little girl. How fortunate for everyone that Kevin had decided to meet you with her, to ask you something about Rory. Is anything wrong with Rory?" Courtney only shook his head, and then they had begun their long vigil. Joseph had been met at the depot by Kevin, and Joseph had entered the house and had gone immediately upstairs to Ann Marie and her doctors who were fighting for her life. Silent at last, Bernadette slept a drugged sleep. The great gilt and teakwood clock in the hall chimed half-past twelve. The thunderous prowling in the hills came no nearer, did not retreat, but the heat of the night intensified. No one in that room had eaten a dinner, and none had been offered by the housekeeper or cook. It was as if everything had withdrawn, in that house, to one room on the second floor. The huge glittering chandelier in the hall looked down on desertion. Then they all heard slow steps on the marble stairs and Courtney and Kevin stood up and the two young men clenched their hands and stared at the door, afraid to go into the corridor that led to the hall, and afraid not to. Then Joseph appeared in the doorway and they saw his face, grown old with anxiety and fear and dread, and his hair which appeared to be a ragged patch of tangled russet and whitish gray. But his eyes were more alive than any of those present had seen them before. It was as if a fire burned behind their bitter and starting blue, and his wide thin mouth curved inwards. It was at Elizabeth that he looked first, and she slowly rose and said, "Joseph? How is Ann Marie?" Her own eyes were strained and brilliantly green in the lamplight:, and her mouth shook. He said to her in a rusty voice, "She is alive, but that is all. She has not regained consciousness. They are afraid her skull is fractured and that she is bleeding internally. No bones were broken, except for her left arm. One doctor has left; the others will remain until the specialists arrive tomorrow. She will have nurses then, too. They have been sent for." He paused. "We can only hope that she will survive the first shock." Elizabeth sat down abruptly, for she was weak and worn, but the two young men faced Joseph in silence and it was at them that he now looked and the bluish fire in his eyes brightened ominously. He said to Kevin, "I should like to hear your story again." It took all Kevin's will power not to glance at Courtney. The dear darkness of his face had turned sallow during these hours. He said, "I told you, Pa, on the way home from the depot, but I will tell you again. I met Ann Marie at the stables. I had just returned from a gallop. She said that she was going to meet Courtney in their 'usual place,' and that he had arrived that morning. There was something I wanted to ask Courtney--about Rory--and I asked Ann Marie if she would mind my coming for a few minutes, and she said that of course I could come." Here Kevin decided a little improvisation might help and he made himself smile quickly. "I knew I wasn't very welcome, but I went, just the same. She rode just ahead of me up the hill. I don't think I was twenty feet behind. I--I noticed that Missy seemed a little nervous, but Ann Marie said she was always skittish the first few minutes or so. "Ann Marie raced ahead as we came near the top of the hill. I reached the top just in time to see her rein in Missy in front of Courtney's horse, and then--I don't know just what happened. Perhaps it was a rabbit, or a squirrel. I did think I heard a gun go of on the other side of the hill. But Missy reared up and whinnied--you know how unpredictable horses are--" "No, I don't," said Joseph. He was watching his son's face with an eagle's predatory concentration, watching for the slightest sign of a falsehood, embarrassment, or obvious elaboration, and Kevin felt the sweat start out between his shoulder blades, for he knew his father and his ability to fathom the minds of others. "But, go on," said Joseph. "I think Ann Marie cried out, or something, but the horse was too much for her though she's had her two years. Anyway, the horse circled around on her hind legs, dropped down, and bolted for the woods. Courtney and I ran after her. We found Ann" Marie, and Courtney stayed with her while I went for help. That's all, Pa." Joseph regarded his son in impassive silence, his eyes moving over the youth's face, studying every line, every feature, peering into his eyes, his own face darkening as that relentless probing went on moment by moment and there was only the sound of the distant thunder and the disturbed muttering of the trees outside. "And that's all?" he said finally. "You have told me everything?" It was hard for Kevin to dissemble and to lie, for he had had no occasion in his life before to do so. He did not have Rory's style and flair and color and easy ability to deceive and tease and evade with a look of artlessness. His face was visibly wet now, but he forced himself to speak, to choose every word. He wrinkled his forehead. He pretended to be examining his memory while that thin and implacable man waited in a terrible silence. Then Kevin spread out his hands and shook his head. "I can't think of another thing, Pa. I'm not good at describing things, I know, or giving them drama, but that is truly all that happened." And now he pretended at weary exasperation. "Pa, we are the ones who saw it all, Courtney and I, and spent those hours with Ann Marie before you arrived home We've had hell beaten out of us, and I don't understand why this inquisition. But Joseph slowly looked away from Kevin and turned to Elizabeth. His voice changed to the sharpened ears of the young men. He said, "Elizabeth, you had something to tell Courtney this morning, didn't you? I asked you to do it. Did you tell him?" Elizabeth's eyes were a momentary green flash at her son and then she said sadly, "Yes. I told him. At breakfast." She stopped. "We agreed that he would tell Ann Marie some story that would not be the truth, but would hurt her as little as possible." "What story?" asked Kevin, with an air of rejuvenated interest. "Is there a secret?" "Be quiet," said Joseph. Now he turned to Courtney and Courtney was horrified to see the powerful and senseless hatred in Joseph's eyes, the coldly violent force of his expression. "What were you going to tell my daughter?" he asked, and his voice was harsh and menacing. Courtney could not understand why this heightened concentration should be directed on him, this sudden deadly passion, and for the first time he could completely understand why so many potent men had cowered before this man. But after his first stunned reaction Courtney stood up tall and straight in hauteur, and he answered: "I hadn't made up my mind which story would hurt her the least. Frankly, I've never dreaded anything so much in my life. You must remember, Uncle Joseph, that this was a stunning revelation to me, that I love Ann Marie, that it had shaken my whole life, all my hopes, apart. It was like an earthquake--it was like death, itself. I know you are thinking of Ann Marie, and what it would mean to her, but she was not alone, Uncle Joseph. I'd like you to remember that." Kevin drew nearer. He put on an avid look and leaned forward like a youth dying to be informed. But when Joseph gave him a fierce glance he drew back a step. "Now," said Joseph, "tell me what happened." "I have nothing to add to Kevin's account, not a word. Ann Marie just rode up, her horse reared, made a circle on her hind legs, whinnied, and bolted into the woods. Ann Marie and I didn't exchange a single word, not one, though I think I greeted her. I can't remember. It all happened so suddenly. It was all so fast that I didn't immediately see Kevin right behind her on his own horse. There is nothing else." "So, my daughter never knew?" "No. Not to my knowledge. Who was there to tell her but me?" "There was her mother," said Joseph, and he saw the young men