Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/56

34 it in a voice which must have sounded strange enough to the listener beyond the door. “Yes!” he said. “Yes!”

“Go away!” he cried of a sudden, making a wide, dim, imperious gesture in the dark.

“No, no,” the imploring whisper crept in. ‘‘You’re making yourself sick—Christopher—all over nothing—nothing in the world. It’s so foolish—so foolish—foolish! Oh, if I could only tell you, Christopher—if I could tell you”

“Tell me what?” He shuddered with the ecstasy of his own irony. “Who that man is? That ‘caretaker’? What he’s doing here? What you’re doing here?” He began to scream in a high, brittle voice: ''“Go away from that door! Go away!”''

This time she obeyed. He heard her retreating, soft-footed and frightened, along the hall. She was abandoning him—without so much as trying the door, just once again, to see if it were still bolted against her.

She did not care. She was sneaking off—down the stairs—Oh, yes, he knew where.

His lips began to twitch again and his finger nails scratched on che bedclothes. If only he had something, some weapon, an axe, a broad, keen, glittering axe! He would show them! He was strong, incredibly strong! Five men could not have turned him back from what he was going to do—if only he had something.

His hand, creeping, groping, closed on the neck of the ’cello leaning by the bed. He laughed.

Oh, yes, he would stop her from going down there; he would hold her, just where she was on the dark stair, nerveless, breathless, as long as he liked, if he liked he would bring her back, cringing, begging.

He drew the bow, and laughed higher and louder to hear the booming discord rocking in upon him from the shadows. Swaying from side to side, he lashed the hollow creature to madness. They came in the press of the gale, marching, marching, the wild, dark pageant of his fathers, nearer and nearer through the moon-struck night.