They Are Not Far

Front matter

They Are Not Far

By Henry C. Rowland

Author of “The Shaming of Andy McGill,” “Utopia,” Etc.

II

In the year which followed Jim found himself so busily engaged in contingents of the enemy with which he was in touch from the material to the astral plane that he found little time to contemplate his responsibilities to a friend who might still be sojourning there. He had, however, read that part of Donald's letter to three of their mutual friends and fellow officers and, considerably to his surprise after considering the matter rather thoughtfully, one of them affirmed that there might be something in it as he had once read in a treatise on theosophy that entities of the astral plane were still to some extent material and able to absorb certain physical emanations. He advised, therefore, that Jim be cautious with the atomizer lest it interfere with Donald's promotion.

Then, in the early spring of 1918, Jim got his disabling wound, and the D.S.C. Three months of blighty followed, but it did not matter much as the heel of his right foot and the elbow of his left arm had been shorn away and his fighting days were over.

In due time Jim was honorably discharged and resumed civilian habits and apparel. Proceeding then to New York to attend to some matters of business, he found himself presently back in his old haunts but with a curious sense of detachment and nervous restlessness. It seemed impossible that he could ever resume his former purposeless existence. For one thing it belonged to conditions which no longer appeared to exist, and, even if they had, he would not have wanted them. Most of his old associates were scattered, the great majority of them in some form of war service, several dead, and all extremely busy. Jim cursed the bad luck which had almost put him hors de combat and wondered what he was going to do with himself.

The war appeared to be tottering on its last legs. It was still painful for him to walk, and his left arm was ankylosed at a right angle, useful enough for the ordinary things, as he could flex though not extend it. Otherwise he was in splendid physical shape, but mentally in a most unaccustomed State of nervous depression and irritability. There seemed to be absolutely nothing in sight which was in the slightest degree worth while.

It was then that, for the first time, he began to think seriously of his agreement with Donald and to see in it instead of a farcical and perfunctory duty a possibly interesting adventure. He had not the slightest fear in the world that Mary Wishart, if still unmarried, would take seriously his formal offer of matrimony, but he decided to make it if only to satisfy his conscience, which was exacting about some things. And then, picking up the morning paper, he was startled to read that Miss Mary Wishart, of the Canadian Red Cross, had just arrived from France on four months' sick leave to recover from wounds and shell shock received in the bombing of a base hospital where she was serving as a nurse. “Miss Wishart,” read the paragraph, “expects to spend a part of the summer at the country home of Mr. and Mrs. Doremus Gibbons, at Roslyn, L.I.”

Acting on the impulse of the moment, Jim went to the telephone and called up Mrs. Gibbons, a lifelong friend, and asked if he might run out in his car for luncheon. He received in reply a summary command to run out for the week's end and as much longer as he might be free to manage. It seemed to Jim, as he told the club valet to pack his things, that the shades of Donald must still be active on the astral plane. He had long since discontinued the atomized libations, but now, seized by the whim of the moment, he took his flask, poured some brandy into an atomizer, and sprayed it vigorously in front of the electric fan which was doing its best to whip the humid heat into some activity. The only appreciable reaction from this kind thought was on the valet who, entering at this moment with some clothes, showed symptoms of being gassed as he struck the tainted gale.

Jim had his car brought around from the garage, then dismissed the chauffeur and drove out alone. He had formed the habit of doing everything for himself which he could decently accomplish, and, although a bit awkward for him to drive a car, which he had bought shortly before the war and had scarcely made acquaintance with, he managed fairly well. Immediately on starting he found that his brakes were working badly, the hand brake gripping and that of the foot too loose, making its control particularly difficult and even painful owing to his damaged heel. The big car was by no means under perfect control, and ordinarily Jim would have driven directly to the garage and had the brakes adjusted, but he had been late in starting, and the low barometer and sweltering heat threatened some sort of violent eruption, so he held on his way without stopping and with the exercise of greater care than made driving a pleasure.

It was an intensely disagreeable day, not only because of the high temperature and humidity, but owing to the low pressure which seemed to leave one's nerves unsustained; one of those days when lovers squabble and good dogs snap and it is necessary to double the guard in the insane asylums. Jim, whose nerves had been irritable enough recently, felt the low tension even in the strong, artificial draft which he created, and his wounds were tender, especially the remnant of heel on the foot controlling the brake.

Both brakes had been steadily getting worse and likewise Jim's nerves, what with the strain of constant watchfulness and the increasing soreness of his heel. He had been driving fast, for the pervading murk was growing blacker in the west and promised some sort of atmospheric explosion before very long. He could not tell how soon it might burst, and was in a hurry to arrive and have the disagreeable run over with. All of the traffic seemed imbued with the same idea, and it had been unpleasant going through towns. Even his gas engine seemed to have a grouch, and was firing fitfully owing to poor carburetion.

The Gibbons estate was a large one and, after skirting Roslyn, Jim, who had been out there several times before, happened to remember a short cut which would cut out a hill and take him in the back way. This was scarcely more than a lane winding between a thick growth of scrub pines and, coming to it presently, Jim turned in regardless of a small sign which said, “Private Way. Motor Cars Forbidden.” He considered himself a privileged character and that the peculiar circumstances warranted an infraction of proprietary rules. But when one disobeys one should exercise a certain caution, and Jim did not, so that, as he coasted down a steep little dip with a curve at the bottom, he pitched suddenly on a pair of equestrians walking their horses in the same direction.

Jim horned and did his best to brake without taking a skid, observing, as he did so, that the pair, a man and a girl, were riding very close together and that the man, a broad-shouldered chap in shirtwaist and loud checked riding breeches, was about to venture some sort of amorous tentative. His arm was, in fact, half raised as Jim burst in upon them.

And then came trouble. The girl, who was smartly costumed and riding astride, reined her horse off the lane, which was at this point very narrow. The man on the contrary pulled up short, squarely in the middle and looked back over his shoulder with a scowl. His face was long and rather narrow and struck Jim as being familiar. There was no room to pass, the foot brake was slipping, and Jim, in desperation, threw in the hand one which promptly gripped, locking both wheels. The track was sandy, and the heavy car slid along a few feet and came to a stop but not quite soon enough, as the radiator, which was hot, touched the fretting horse's rump.

None but a masterly horseman could have kept his seat as the startled, high-strung hunter bounded into the air. Even then it was touch and go for a moment, and Jim rather expected to see the rider in a treetop before he got his mount in hand. The girl, a little ahead, drew rein and turned when Jim saw, to his surprise, that she wore a tulle veil which, though the day was stifling, entirely hid her face. She was a straight, full-bosomed girl with dark, wavy hair, but Jim was for the moment more interested in her escort, who had got control of his horse and turned on Jim white to the ears with fury.

“Ye damned idiot2” he rasped, in a harsh, strident voice. “Can ye not read? What right have ye bucketin' through a forbidden way in your filthy gas wagon?”

“I'm sorry,” Jim answered. “My brakes have gone bad. all the same, I would not have touched you if you hadn't reined back into me.”

“Y're a dirty liar. Ye thought to get me off, ye blighter,” he spurred to the side off the car. “This will teach ye to mind your step,” and before Jim could realize the vicious intention the bamboo riding crop whistled through the air and came down with a savage cut which glanced from the side of his head and struck him on the shoulder.

“Colin!” cried a muffled voice, and the girl spurred forward. The man might have struck again, but his horse flung up its head and backed away.

Jim snapped off the current and slid out from under the wheel. The gathering murk seemed suddenly to change its hue from venous blue to a lurid, throbbing red. His cap had been knocked-off by the blow and his lean, square face was white to the roots of his curly, chestnut hair. Standing in the road beside the car he tried twice before able to speak, and then his voice was like the croak of a raven.

“Get down, you mucker, and take your licking,” he managed to say.

The gleam in the pale eyes was almost exultant. “Now I will just oblige ye, me lad.” Colin' slipped from his horse and handed the rein to the girl. “'Tis not often one has the pleasure of thrashin' a road hog.” He pushed back his cuffs and advanced on Jim, and he was a formidable figure of a man with his broad shoulders, deep chest, and long, powerful arms. They were not so badly matched to the casual eye; about of a height and weight and approximately the same age, which was thirty-one or two. Both had the look of hard, out-of-door men in the full flush of their strength. Their faces were widely different in feature and expression, that of the horseman being rather long and narrow though with a heavy-angled jaw and pointed chin while Jim's was more square, with straight nose, widely spaced eyes, prominent cheek bones, and a more generous mouth. Colin's expression was one of exultant ferocity. He looked like some wild Pict from the hills about to fall upon an hereditary foe with claymore and skene dhu.

But for all his savagery the man's face was vacant as compared to the peculiar deathly, expressionless mask which confronted him and the significance of which he failed to understand. It was that face which comes only to men who for a lapse have laid aside their soul to slay until slain in a vortex of horrors. It is the cosmic war face, and the intelligence behind it is for the time devoid of all emotion, perhaps even that of hate or blood lust. It is the trained killer's face, and it does not react to any consciousness of ruth or fear or mercy or even glut, merely because these qualities are in abeyance. This terrible war face would not be recognized by most; its fearsome abstraction would escape or deceive even an enemy until he gazed upon it for a brief instant with the bayonet through his breast.

So now it deceived Colin, who was wont to battle with normal-looking folk and mistook this for a sort of apathy of shock. But the mounted girl saw it differently.

“Don't, Colin—don't!” she cried sharply. “Can't you see? He means to kill you!”

“Does he, now?” cried Colin mockingly. “Then the white-jowled blighter had best get right about it,” and he sprang in with a quick, jabbing feint. A withering straight punch of the left was behind it. Jim blocked this with the heavy bony callous of his ankylosed elbow and Colin gasped with pain. It numbed his fist for a moment, and Jim, pivoting, drove his right into the mouth, gashing his knuckles and rocking the man's strong, even teeth. He might have followed it with the left in a swing at the jaw which, if it had landed, would have finished the fight then and there, but the reach was lacking in his bent arm.

Then for a moment the fighting was close and vicious, both men scorning to spar and satisfied with give and take. Neither attempted to clinch. Jim was trying with a cold and unemotional doggedness to maneuver an uppercut to the chin which might let in all the force of his big subscapular muscles, and presently he achieved it, though with too short a hook to more than jar his adversary. Both were cut and bleeding, both breathing in labored gasps, but both were men of heavy bony frame able to support the cruel battering.

Jim's lack of heel was no appreciable handicap. It may, perhaps, have been even an advantage, its absence having given greater strength and spring to the muscular calf. Colin's rage was beginning to abate under the punishment and the growing knowledge that he had got to use his head. He was an experienced boxer, and Jim's persistent refusal to use a straight jab of the left began to bother him. Two or three times he had ducked in expectation of it, and now began to think that there was some deep guile behind it; something which was being saved up for him. He grew a little wary, and Jim taunted him in cold, contemptuous tones.

“Better get your crop, slacker,” he croaked through his gashed lips. “Try the loaded end.”

The girl spurred forward, but her horse refused to thrust itself against the striking figures. Perhaps it was frightened by the scent of fresh blood. “Stop it!” she cried “That's enough—stop it!”

Suddenly she brought her own crop down on the horse's quivering flank and it sprang forward, striking Jim with its shoulder. The girl's intention was not unfair. She wanted only to separate these two stubborn battlers. But the shove spoiled Jim's balance, and Colin was quick to profit by it in a full swing at the right jaw. Jim dropped his head and caught it on the side of the forehead which Colin's seal ring gashed to the bone. Jim was sent reeling by the sheer weight of the blow and, as he recovered himself, dazed and nearly stunned, he seemed to see the broad back of a man in khaki who stepped between Colin and himself. Colin must have seen it, too, for he stooped and stood for a brief instant, staring wildly.

“Wha—what2” he cried, then drew his bleeding knuckles across his eyes. Jim did the same. His own eyes were nearly closed, but when he looked again he saw only Colin facing him with a bewildered look. The girl's horse snorted, sprang violently backward, and stood shivering and sweating. There came a sudden heavy crash of thunder and a cold draft of air swept through the pines.

“Seein' things, are you?” Jim taunted. “Come to it, swine. I'll show you something with flesh and bone.”

“You saw—saw2”

“I see something yellow. Here's where you get it2”

He clenched his teeth which were loosened in their sockets, and lurched forward. Colin snarled in his throat and struck a heavy blow which reached Jim's cheek. Another struck him on the mouth, but glanced downward. And then, seeing that he rocked unsteadily with no effort to strike back, Colin sprang in to finish it, and gave Jim the chance for which he had been waiting. He dropped his left shoulder, the stiffened elbow far back, the left fist almost to his knee. Then up it came in a terrific swinging jab, the rotation from the waist and all the power of loin and back to drive it. With the precision of a calculation in gunnery it landed squarely under Colin's jaw between its angle and the point of the chin, and that was the end of the world for Colin. It is extremely doubtful if he ever felt the blow at all.

III

Jim sat on the step of his car and peered at the girl through the slits in his billowing eyelids. She had slipped from the saddle, and, throwing the reins of the two bridles over a branch, was now examining the pulpy mass of what had so few minutes before been her haughty cavalier.

Jim knew, of course, that she was Mary Wishart. He had guessed that even before he had brought his car to a stop. Watching her now, he was also able to guess why she wore the tulle veil, and it sent a little shiver through him. Something had happened her face in the bombing by the Hun of that hospital. Perhaps it had been blown away.

It struck him now that her examination of Colin's unconscious body, or corpse, whichever it might be, was hardly of the sort which a girl would tender that of a fiancé. There was no indication of shock or shrinking, which in a nurse one naturally would not expect, but neither was there the slightest hint of personal solicitude, or even that touch of gentle sympathy which Jim had so often observed in the most experienced of war nurses when caring for the wounded. She seemed to Jim to be overhauling the prostrate Colin a good deal as a person might rake over a rubbish heap to see if there was anything worth saving.

There came a terrific crash of thunder and another sudden puff of cool wind. Jim saw that the storm might burst upon them at any moment. It did not concern him in the least for himself. He had fought with hand grenade and bayonet straight through the course of similar ones, scarcely remarking their existence. Neither did it matter about his late adversary, whether he happened to be still alive or not. Jim had seen thousands of better men than Colin, both living and dead, exposed to the fury not only of heaven, but of hell and for days on end instead of hours.

No, the storm was of purely minor importance to himself and even less to Colin, because if the brute were dead he could not feel it and if alive it might fetch him round. But his sense of chivalry dictated that Mary Wishart must be got in out of it. Such a thunderstorm as promised to burst upon them at any moment could not possibly be good for a nurse convalescing from wounds and shell shock. The Gibbon's house was only about a mile distant, and it seemed to Jim that the best thing to do under the circumstances would be to put up the hood and side curtains, take the two of them aboard and drive in, sending a groom after the horses, which were sheltered by the pines to some extent. It was awkward, though, the car being a runabout.

His head was rocking drunkenly, and he could scarcely see through the swollen pouches around his eyes while his hands were frightfully gashed and bruised, but he got up and set about rigging out the hood and curtains. Mary Wishart rose from the ground at Colin's side and stared at him for a moment from behind the ambush of her veil, then, observing his fumbling efforts, she walked slowly over to the car.

“Is he dead?” Jim asked indifferently.

“No, but he's not far from it. I don't think that he ought to be moved. Can't you move the car ahead a little so as to shelter him?”

“Yes,” Jim answered shortly. He felt a cold anger for the girl, because he thought that she had tried to ride him down. “You might help me with the top.”

A sudden violent gust of wind threatened to wrench it away as they secured it. The wind was coming before the rain. Then, just as they had got all fast, a blinding thunderbolt hissed down out of the blackness overhead and struck somewhere close by. The horses neighed and reared, then bolted off down the lane in the direction of their stable.

“That will fetch somebody from the house,” Mary said.

Jim did not answer. He secured the curtains on the weather side, then got aboard, started the motor and moved ahead a few feet, placing the car in such a manner as to shelter the unconscious man.

“Cover him with the spare curtains and get in,” said Jim. “Here comes the rain.”

Mary Wishart did as he directed. With a fury which threatened to uproot the straggling pines and tear away the hood the small, local cyclone burst upon them to the accompaniment of deafening and almost continuous thunder while the lightning blazed and crackled and seemed literally to play about the car. Conversation would have been almost impossible, even if they had desired it, which was far from the wish of either. Jim held his handkerchief between the curtains and, when it was soaked, sponged the blood from his battered face. Colin's ring had left some ugly gashes which would have been better for a stitch here and there, but the bleeding quickly ceased.

On the ground at the side and partially protected by the running board, Colin remained plunged in oblivion. Jim suffered no anxiety. For one thing he did not greatly care what might come of it, and for another he felt that whatever did was fully deserved. The man had invited accident. Jim knew also that after such a fearful knock-out blow near the base of the jaw the brain concussion might render a man unconscious for hours.

He himself, hardened by over three years of terrific campaign, was now feeling not much the worse for the encounter. Then, as his brain began to work more freely, he was suddenly struck by the bizarre element of the encounter and the curious way in which fate had worked out the fulfillment of his promise. Reflecting on this, he thought of his confused impression of a man in khaki stepping in front of him while reeling and ready to go down under the impact of Colin's blows delivered before he could regain his balance destroyed by Mary's horse. Could Donald have managed to materialize for the fraction of a second needed to save him from defeat?

Colin certainly appeared to have seen something in the nature of a prodigy. Jim wondered if Mary Wishart had seen it, too, and decided to ask. The storm was now less violent and talk was possible.

“Tell me something, Miss Wishart,” said he. “When McKinloch jumped in to finish it just after you tried to ride me down2”

“I did not try to ride you down,” she interrupted hotly. “I tried to ride between you. What do you think I am?”

“I beg your pardon.” Jim turned and tried to see her face but could not in the gloom. “I'm afraid I did you an injustice.”

“You certainly did, if that is what you thought. I wanted to stop the fight, because I saw that there was something wrong with your arm and I was afraid you were going to get the worst of it. Who are you? How do you happen to know my name?”

“I was coming down here principally to meet you,” Jim answered. “Lucy Gibbons is an old friend2”

Mary Wishart gripped his bruised arm so that it hurt. “You are not Jim Davies—Donald's chum!” she cried.

“I am, though.”

“But they told me that you had been badly wounded—all shot to pieces!”

“So I was. That's why I couldn't put up a better fight. all the same, I think I'd have managed to muddle through, even without Donald's help.”

“Donald's help?” Her voice was breathless.

“Yes. At least, I don't see who else it could have been. Somebody stepped between us for a second—just long enough to let me get myself together. Colin saw him, I think. Didn't you?”

“I—I don't know.” Her voice was faint. “It seemed to me that there was—something—a shadow—ah—he's coming round.”

There came a sigh from the ground, followed by a choking cough. The electric storm had thundered past with its cyclonic squall, and there was a clear, golden streak low in the western sky, but it was still raining hard. Mary and Jim looked down and saw Colin's face, if face it could be called, turned vacantly up at them.

“Well, how do you feel now?” Jim asked curtly.

Colin struggled to his feet and stood swaying. He gripped the edge of the car. His eyes were worse than Jim's and nose and lips an awful sight. He thrust forward his head and peered at Jim, then looked around.

“Y'are useful with your fists,” he mumbled, “and ye can stand the punishment. But ye had help.”

“Help from whom?” Mary asked.

He lowered his voice. “Donald. Did ye not see him?”

“I did,” said Jim, “but you lie when you say he helped—or, if he did, it was only for a second to let me get set and keep you from profiting by a foul. If you've got any doubt you can try again two weeks from now.”

Colin shook his head. “You are Davies,” he said, “Donald's chum; and you have shamed me between the two of ye. I would have been shamed if I had beat, because y'are not a sound man. I did wrong to lose my temper. It serves me right.”

From close by came the sound of a Klaxon and a big limousine pushed out between the pines. It came to a stop, and the chauffeur stared at them with wonder.

“Will you drive me to the house, Major Davies?” Mary asked.

“I was about to ask the privilege. There is something very important which I have come down here to say to you and, the sooner it is said, the better.” He started the motor and the car began to move away. Neither of them so much as looked at Colin, who was walking unsteadily toward the limousine.

“I think that I know what it is,” Mary said. “A promise to Donald. A mutual benefit pact made between you two—and Donald has won.”

“That depends upon your answer. If it is 'yes,' then I have won. If it is 'no,' then you have won. But I do not quite see how Donald can win in either case, unless it is by proxy, and that was not at all his idea.”

“Hadn't you better reflect a little?” Mary asked.

“I have already done so. Miss Wishart, this bruised, maimed, and quarrelsome ex-soldier has the honor to ask your hand in marriage.”

Mary bowed. “Major Davies,” said she, “I beg to express my sincere appreciation of the honor done me and to accept it with respect and gratitude.”

For some reason this answer was precisely what Jim had expected, though for the life of him he could not have said why. And then suddenly the solution occurred to him, and he felt a wild desire to shout with laughter. Beside him Mary's shoulders were moving slightly and Jim glanced at her with suspicion.

“Miss Wishart,” said he severely, “your acceptance of my offer fills me with the most profound emotions of joy and—and2”

“Astonishment, not unmixed with apprehension,” Mary supplied.

“Precisely. Astonishment that you should deign so to honor such a useless member of society and apprehension lest he should prove unworthy. But I should very much like to know when the dickens you made your pact with sly old Donald. God bless him and give him his promotion soon.”

"So you've guessed, major? Well, it was soon after I got up to the front. I'd let him know that I was somewhere thereabouts, and we were getting shelled all the time, and gassed and air-raided to say nothing of the danger from infection in our work, so when he suggested that we each agree to carry out three wishes of the other if that one got killed, I agreed. It seemed to me a perfect good bet. You see, major, Donald and I were awfully fond of each other and, no doubt, would have married some time after the war. But we were never actually in love with each other, as in that case neither of us would have left the other as a sort of legacy.”

“Then you did that with Donald?”

“Yes. I left him to my dearest friend; an English nurse in the hospital. He'd have married her. And almost any girl would have been glad to marry Donald.”

“Then you have been expecting me for some time?”

“Of course, major, dear—and awfully afraid you might be killed. It is splendid of you to be so loyal and true to your promise and ask in marriage a girl whose face you have never seen and may find not at all to your taste, sir.”