THE LABORS OF THE FOUR
Despite the storm, Sir Walter slept through the night, and did not waken until his man drew the blinds upon a dawn sky so clear that it seemed washed of its blue.He had directed to be wakened at six o'clock.
"What of Mr.May?" he asked.
"Masters wants to know if we shall call him, Sir Walter.""Not if he has returned to his room, but immediately if still in the Grey Room.""He's not in his own room., sir." "Then seek him at once."The valet hesitated.
"Please, Sir Walter, there's none much cares to open the door." He heard his daughter's voice outside at the same moment."Mr.May has not left the Grey Room, father.""I'll be with you in a moment," he answered.
Then he rose, dressed partially, and joined her.She was full of active fear.
"All went well at two o'clock," she said, "for I crept out to listen.So did Masters.Mr.May's voice sounded clear and steady."They found the butler at the door of the Grey Room.He was pale and mopping his forehead.
"I've called to him, but it's as silent as the grave in there," he said."It's all up with the gentleman; I know it!""He may not be there; he may have gone out," answered Sir Walter.
Then he opened the door widely and entered.The electric light still shone and killed the pallid white stare of the morning.Upon a little table under it they observed Septimus May's Bible, open at an epistle of St.Paul, but the priest himself was on the floor some little distance away.He lay in a huddled heap of his vestments.He had fallen upon his right side apparently, and, though the surplice and cassock which he had worn were disarranged, he appeared peaceful enough, with his cheek on a foot stool, as though disposed deliberately upon the ground to sleep.His biretta wasstill upon his head; his eyes were open, and the fret and passion manifested by his face in life had entirely left it.He looked many years younger, and no emotion of any kind marked his placid countenance.But he was dead; his heart had ceased to beat and his extremities were already cold.The room appeared unchanged in every particular.As in the previous cases, death had come by stealth, yet robbed, as far as the living could judge, of all terror for its victim.
Masters called Caunter and Sir Walter's valet, who stood at the door.The latter declined to enter or touch the dead, but Caunter obeyed, and together the two men lifted Mr.May and carried him to his own room.In a moment it seemed that the house knew what had happened.
A scene of panic and hysteria followed below stairs, and, without Jane Bond's description of it, Mary knew the people were running out of the house as from a plague.She left her father with Masters, and strove to calm the frightened domestics.She spoke well, and explained that the event, horrible though it was, yet proved that no cause for their alarm any longer existed.
"If it had been a wicked spirit we do not understand, it would have had no power over Mr.May, who was a saint of God," she said."Be at peace, restrain yourselves, and fear nothing now.There is no ghost here.Had it been a demon or any such thing, it must have been conscious, and therefore powerless against Mr.May.This proves that there is some fearful natural danger which we have not yet discovered hidden in the room, but no harm can happen to anybody if they do not go into the room.The police are coming from Scotland Yard in an hour or two, and you may feel as sure, as I do, and Sir Walter does, that they will find out the truth, whatever it is.You must none of yon think of leaving before they come.If you do, they will only send for you again.Please prepare your breakfast and be reasonable.Sir Walter is terribly upset, and it would be a base thing if any of you were to desert him at a moment like this."They grew steadier before her, and Mrs.Forbes, the housekeeper, who believed what Mary had said, added her voice.
Then Sir Walter's daughter returned to her father, who was with Masters in the study.A man had already started for a doctor, but withMannering away there was none nearer than Neon Abbot.
Mary called on Masters to assert his authority, and reassure the household as she had done.She told him her argument, and he accepted it as a revelation.
"Thank God you could keep your senses and see that, ma'am! Tell the master the same, and make him drink a drop of spirits and get into his clothes.He's shook cruel!"He had already brought the brandy, which was his panacea for all ills, and now left Mary and her father together.She found him collapsed, and forgot the cause for a few moments in her present concern for him.Indeed, she always thought, and often said afterwards, that but for the minor needs for action that intervened in this series of terrible moments she must herself have gone out of her mind.But something always happened, as in this case, to demand her full attention, and so arrest and deflect the strain almost at the moment of its impact.
She found that the ideas she had just employed to pacify the servants' hall were also in her father's thoughts.From them, however, he won no consolation, though he stood convinced.But the fact that Septimus May should have failed, and paid for his failure with his life, now assumed its true significance for Sir Walter.He was self-absorbed, prostrate, and desperate.In such a condition one is not master of oneself, and may say and do anything.The old man's armor was off, and in the course of his next few speeches, by a selfish forgetfulness that he would have been the first to condemn in another, he revealed a thing that was destined to cause the young widow bitter and needless pain.First, however, he pointed out what she already grasped and made clear to others.
"This upsets all May's theories and gives the lie to me as well.Why did I believe him! Why did I let him convince me against my better judgment?""Do not fret about that now."
