"You mustn't feel that way," said Bruce, looking tenderly into her face with his nice brown eyes. "This is our trouble, not yours alone. We want to bear it with you. And Dana at least has a right to. She is his mother, no matter if she did not stay with him. He has a right to look out for her as much as possible, and to look out for you. And I, because he is my beloved friend, and because you are--well, because you are a child of my Father God, I claim the right to look out for you, too, and to help in bearing all that this means to you." He suddenly took both of her little cold hands into his own and held them warmly, his eyes upon her face with a great lovely gentleness in them such as she had never seen in any face before.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh!" And she suddenly laid her face down upon his hands that held hers, her warm lips softly upon them like a caress, her tears splashing hotly over them.
Bruce bowed his head and looked down at her bright head there before him, and suddenly wanted to take her into his arms and hold her fast, but instead he stood perfectly still, looking down, and said very softly: "Dear!" And then after an instant, "Dear little girl!"
There were steps coming down the long hall, and the beauty of the moment was held in abeyance as they both realized that someone was coming. Bruce's clasp was quick and sudden as he released her hands, and Coralie, dashing the tears away from her eyes, turned toward the door in time to see it was the doctor going toward Lisa's room, with a specialist following him.
When the door had closed again Coralie was standing a step or two away from Bruce, but she turned to him with a look that answered him in a way she could not have brought herself to speak in words, and the brightness, the wonder of that look was like sunshine as it touched the bright drops on her lashes. Bruce answered it with a smile that was almost blinding, and thrilled her for days afterward whenever she dared let herself think about it.
The words they spoke after that were very commonplace, about everyday matters.
"Dana will be here as soon as possible. He found a few letters he felt he must dictate before he left, but he'll be coming. He wanted to be here and talk with the doctor when he came. He ought to be here any minute now," said Bruce.
And then presently came Dana, looking tired and responsible, and Coralie had a sudden realization of how much dignity her brother and his friend added to the terrible situation.
The detective and chief of police came while Dana was there, and they had a long session with them. It seemed there was nothing much for the police to do. Ivor was dead, and Dinsmore was probably dying. He had not rallied sufficiently to talk with them. Coralie felt that it would be just as well if he were not able to talk, for his tongue could twist a glib story and leave an impression that would live behind him, even if he died afterward. And it was altogether thinkable that even if Dinsmore was dying he would want revenge on Lisa for failing him financially before he went away.
The detective asked questions of Coralie. Did she know the man who shot her mother? Yes, he was her stepfather who went away quite awhile ago, and they thought he was dead. A few days ago she had received a letter from him asking her to send him money.
Coralie brought the letters and let him read them, and from them the officers took the address of the hotel where he had been staying.
"Was he drunk, do you know?" one of them asked as they got up to leave.
"I don't know," said Coralie. "I was in my room asleep. I did not know he was here till I heard Lisa scream, and then when I got to the door I saw him, but just then he shot, and I saw Lisa fall. I did not think any more about him till I heard the other shots and saw him fall."
"Who made that other shot?" asked the detective.
"There were two shots, almost simultaneous. Ivor Kavanaugh shot Dinsmore, and Dinsmore shot Ivor."
"And you don't know whether this Dinsmore was drunk or not? You don't know whether either of them was drunk?"
"I think very likely they both were," said Coralie sorrowfully. "When he lived here Dinsmore was always more or less drunk in the evening, and I'm sure Ivor was drunk. He got drunk every time he came here."
Dana's face was very white when this interview closed at last. He had never realized before just what his sister's life had been.
"Will this thing come to trial?" asked the girl fearfully.
"If both men are dead, who would there be to try?" asked the officer sharply. "I understand there's no question of the lady having shot anybody?" He looked sharply at Coralie. "How about it? Has she got a gun?"
"Oh, no!" said Coralie. "She was fearfully afraid of guns. It was about the only thing she did fear."
"Have you got a gun?"
"Oh, no!" she said. "Lisa would never have allowed me to have one even if I had wanted it, and I never did."
"Mind if we search?"
"Of course not," she said.
"How about your servants? Do they have guns?"
"I wouldn't know. But not likely."
"Well, we'll look around, and then we'll run over to this fellow's hotel and see what else we find. It seems a pretty clear case."
The other officer nodded, and they took their leave.
Then Dana turned compassionate eyes to his sister.
"You poor child!" he said gently. "What a life you've been through. If our father had known it he would have felt that he should save you from all this at any cost. I think he wanted me to come out here to find out that he was justified in letting our mother go. He must have wanted me to see that it wasn't just that she was hard to live with. But now I see he didn't dream what he had left you to face."
"But it was Lisa's fault," said the girl sorrowfully. "She took me with her. I wonder why."
"I think my father thought it was to hurt him that she did it, though he never said so. But he could have got you back if he had known all. The law would have given you to him."
"Oh," said Coralie, like a little terrible groan, "how I wish he had. I would have loved him, I know."
Dana went over and put his arm around his sister.
"Thank you for saying that, sister. I'm sure you would have if you had known him. But I used to have a feeling that you sided with your mother. I didn't realize that you were too young when it all happened to have a say in the matter, and of course you didn't know."
"No, I didn't know," she said sorrowfully, "and what could I have done if I had known? Lisa would never have let me go, not if she had a reason like that."
"Well, perhaps she didn't," said the son sorrowfully. "Poor little soul, she's come about to the end of her willfulness. If she only could know the Lord before she has to meet Him!"
Then he gave a startled look at his sister. Would she understand what he meant? But she nodded sadly and answered: "Oh, yes. But would He take her? Would He save her when she's lived her whole life without Him?"
"Of course," said Dana with a radiant look. "Don't you know about the thief on the cross beside the Lord Jesus, how he confessed his sin, and the Lord said: 'Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.' "
"No," said Coralie seriously, "I've heard about the thief on the cross, but I never knew what it meant. I didn't know Christ could save like that!"
"Yes, He can save like that!" said Dana in a triumphant voice. "He can save to the uttermost, them that come unto God by Him."
"Oh!" said Coralie. "Then we will pray. Will that help?"
"Yes, we will pray, little sister! Thank God that you have found our Savior and are willing to pray with us!"
Dana could not stay much longer then, but Valerie came in about an hour after he left and stayed with Coralie for a little while. The two girls got very near in heart, as Coralie told her a little about her childhood and what had been going on in her home of late.
"I wish you could see Lisa. She is beautiful, you know. In spite of all she has done she is very beautiful. Almost you forgive her everything, sometimes."
"Yes?" said Valerie. "If she looks like you I can well believe it. You are very beautiful."
Coralie gave a w
an little smile.
"That's nice of you," she said sadly. "But you wouldn't say so if you knew me inside my heart. I've been very ugly toward God, I think. Though, of course, I didn't know much about Him. I never really knew anything, only just words that didn't mean a thing, until Dana came. And now, oh, I wish Lisa could know!"
"We will all pray!" said Valerie softly. "There is great power in prayer."
That night the two young men came again and established themselves in the big room, prepared to stay all night, for the doctor had said Lisa was very weak and might go at any time.
"But I'm all right," declared Coralie. "I really don't need you. The two nurses and the servants will be enough."
"You are to have somebody of your own," smiled Dana gently. "Besides, I have a right to stay. She is my mother, too."
"Well, then you shall have a guest room," said Coralie and gave orders to have a room made ready.
What Lisa would have said if she could have known that her abandoned son was sleeping in her house, keeping watch over her, praying for her half the night, it is hard to think. But Lisa was lying on her bed moaning feebly and did not know. Lisa was very near the borderland that night.
But morning came and Lisa was still there.
Two days went by and still she was living, but the doctor shook his head and said it was only a question of time, a few hours at most. He had been afraid from the start. She had used up her vitality. She had lived on her nerves. There was fever. There might be infection, although he had done his best. The shock--! He said a great many words, but they did not explain. The brother and sister who stood near and listened felt that he knew nothing. The beautiful woman who was their mother was in God's hands, and even death could not conquer Him. Death had been conquered. Not until God decreed it would she stop breathing and go from them. For they had prayed, and their friends had prayed, and even yet the "seventh hour" might come when the fever would leave her.
That night Dinsmore Collette died. Word was brought to them the next morning. But still Lisa was breathing.
The doctor stood over her, touched her pulse lightly, shook his head. The temperature? Yes, there was still fever. Strange! It worried the doctor who had his reputation to sustain.
The detectives had gone to Dinsmore Collette's hotel and searched his room. They had found in the wastebasket fragments of another letter to Coralie, never finished. They had found other things that corroborated her story. But now he was dead. And Ivor Kavanaugh was dead. There was no point to working up a case. Likely the woman they had both brought low would be dead in another day. The two men had gone into the other world and taken their evidence with them. They could not be brought to punishment here anymore, not even to answer each his charge of murder. They would have to answer to a Higher Court.
They ferreted out the place where Ivor Kavanaugh and Errol Hunt had had an abode together, a miserable little forgotten hole, whose meagre rent had been unpaid for some time. But Errol Hunt had not been seen in those parts since the night of the shooting. So there was no one to question but a poor complaining landlady who knew nothing of the men at all except that they were always out of funds. She was keeping their effects in place of rent, and she complained bitterly that the police forced her to show them all there was.
But though they searched through everything, for Errol had not paused to go back and gather up anything, they found no evidence of where the two belonged in the scheme of this world. There were only a few bits of paper that hinted possible criminal complications in their past.
They buried Ivor Kavanaugh in an obscure corner of a country potter's field because they had no other place; and not far away in another burying ground belonging to the state they laid Dinsmore Collette, unmourned and unattended save by officers of the law.
But still the woman who had caused the strife and the crime and in the end their death, lay tossing on a bed of fever, her heart keeping determinedly on as if she clung to life in spite of it all.
Her children had been expecting all that day to be told at any moment that it was over and she was gone, but after the doctor had told them he did not see how she could live through the night, the young people gathered toward evening in a little room across the hall, where Lisa had kept her household accounts and interviewed her servants. Then they knelt and prayed.
"A friend is dying," they had told their employers, and promised to do all in their power to make up for lost time afterward. So they were all there, Dana and Bruce, and Valerie and two of her brothers. And they knelt there that last hour quietly praying. Till as dusk came down, and the room grew darker, and the hush of evening was in the place, as if God had come into the room, Dana began to pray aloud for his mother, to plead with tender words, as if he were not only pleading on his own account but on behalf of the father who was with the Lord already. Pleading that if the Lord must take her, that He would somehow save her first. Then one and another of the little group prayed, pleading the promises of God sealed by His blood. Till in turn it came to Coralie, the little newly saved daughter who had been so sinned against.
Nobody expected her to take up the petition except in her heart. She had never prayed in public. She had only just begun to pray in secret, like a babe stumbling with the first syllables of a language. But Coralie's voice, clear and shy and sweet, took up the petition:
"Please, dear God, give Lisa one more chance to be saved. She doesn't know. I don't think she understands. Give her one more chance, and save her. Amen!"
And then Bruce's voice took up the prayer with a petition that must have reached the heart of God because it was so fraught with precious promises straight from His own word.
And as he came to an end there came a tap at the door.
They rose from their knees and Dana opened the door.
There stood the nurse, a look of wonder on her conventional face.
"The doctor told me to inform you that an unexpected change has come to the patient. The fever has left her, and the heart seems to be steadier. It may be that there is still some hope."
"Perhaps it is the seventh hour," said Dana, with a sweet quick look at Valerie.
Chapter 20
Incredible as it seemed to be, the fever was gone. The patient, though exceedingly weak, was gaining a little day by day.
She hadn't come back to their world yet, to know them, or to speak. Her murmurings were feeble plaints, mere syllables of suffering, of weakness, of protest against her strait.
"You don't think, Dana, do you, that maybe she'll come back to life and be the same as she was before; unsaved, unhappy, unloving?" There was horror upon Coralie's face as she asked the question, and Bruce watched her as she spoke. She had the look of one who had passed beyond the place where mere petition for earthly life was enough. "Why, Dana, we'd be sorry we prayed if that was all," she went on. "Perhaps we had no right to insist on her living. Do you think that may be so?"
"Oh, no," said Dana quickly. "That doesn't seem like God's way. We did not pray merely that she might get well. We prayed that she might have a chance to be saved. You know it is not His desire that anyone shall perish. He has brought her back that she may have the chance to accept her Savior. I believe that He will do it!"
The days went by and Lisa slowly improved, though she seemed still to be existing apart from them, in a world of her own. She did not seem to recognize them nor try to talk.
Coralie had been in to see her, had touched her hand and called her by her name, but she only looked silently at her an instant and then turned her eyes away. Restless eyes that always seemed to be searching for something. Even Dana had been in, had sat beside her for a few minutes several times, and her eyes had lingered on him for an instant with a puzzled glint and then closed as if she was weary.
But one evening the night nurse wanted to go out, the day nurse was asleep, and Coralie seemed very tired. She was lying on a couch in the big room, with Bruce and Kirk and Valerie sitting near talking quietly to her, but she told the nur
se she would come and sit with Lisa until she returned.
"No," said Dana, "let me go."
"All right," said the nurse, "you go. Your sister is all worn out with those folks calling on her this afternoon. The patient is asleep and she won't be any trouble to you. If she should waken you can call your sister. Leave the door open and she will hear you."
So Dana went and sat beside his sleeping mother. The room was very still, with only a low night lamp burning. He could just see the halo of Lisa's beautiful gold hair, and delicate face. Strange that all her strenuous nightlife had not brought lines into her face nor spoiled her baby complexion.
Dana sat there for a few minutes watching her, trying to realize that that was his mother. Wondering about their answered prayer. Was she really going to get better? The fever was gone, but she was creeping up to life very slowly. She had not taken hold of living again. It was as if her mind were somewhere else but not noticing the things of earth.
And while he was thinking these things he was praying.
Suddenly she spoke, and looking down he saw that her big lovely eyes were open and looking full at him.
"Jerrold! That is you, isn't it? I thought I saw you once before, but I wasn't sure, because they had told me you were dead. But you're not dead, are you?"
Dana sat breathless. He put his hand out and touched her hand softly.
"Yes, that is your hand. I would know its touch anywhere, though it was thousands of years since I had felt it. So smooth and tender! I have missed your hands, Jerrold."
His heart almost stood still. Should he tell her it was not Jerrold, only Jerrold's son? Should he spoil her vision and perhaps lose the only touch he had ever had with her? Or should he humor her dream--perhaps it was only a dream----and let her go on thinking her husband was here, the husband from whom she had run away so long ago?