"Suppress all newspapers to-day. Convention meets at eleven. If we succeed
a delegation will come to Rouen this afternoon. They will come.
"HELEN."
Tom rubbed his sticky eyelids, and shook his head violently in a Spartan
effort to rouse himself; but what more effectively performed the task for
him were certain sounds issuing from Harkless's room, across the hall. For
some minutes, Meredith had been dully conscious of a rustle and stir in
the invalid's chamber, and he began to realize that no mere tossing about
a bed would account for a noise that reached him across a wide hall and
through two closed doors of thick walnut. Suddenly he heard a quick, heavy
tread, shod, in Harkless's room, and a resounding bang, as some heavy
object struck the floor. The doctor was not to come till evening; Jim had
gone down-stairs. Who wore shoes in the sick man's room? He rushed across
the hall in his pyjamas and threw open the unlocked door.
The bed was disarranged and vacant. Harkless, fully dressed, was standing
in the middle of the floor, hurling garments at a big travelling bag.
The horrified Meredith stood for a second, bleached and speechless, then
he rushed upon his friend and seized him with both hands.
"Mad, by heaven! Mad!"
"Let go of me, Tom!"
"Lunatic! Lunatic!"
"Don't stop me one instant!"
Meredith tried to force him toward the bed. "For mercy's sake, get back to
bed. You're delirious, boy!"
"Delirious nothing. I'm a well man."
"Go to bed--go to bed."
Harkless set him out of the way with one arm. "Bed be hanged!" he cried.
"I'm going to Plattville!"
Meredith wrung his hands. "The doctor----"!
"Doctor be damned!"
"Will you tell me what has happened, John?"
His companion slung a light overcoat, unfolded, on the overflowing,
misshapen bundle of clothes that lay in the bag; then he jumped on the lid
with both feet and kicked the hasp into the lock; a very elegantly
laundered cuff and white sleeve dangling out from between the fastened
lids. "I haven't one second to talk, Tom; I have seventeen minutes to
catch the express, and it's a mile and a half to the station; the train
leaves here at eight fifty, I get to Plattville at ten forty-seven.
Telephone for a cab for me, please, or tell me the number; I don't want to
stop to hunt it up."
Meredith looked him in the eyes. In the pupils of Harkless flared a fierce
light. His cheeks were reddened with an angry, healthy glow, and his teeth
were clenched till the line of his jaw stood out like that of an embattled
athlete in sculpture; his brow was dark; his chest was thrown out, and he
took deep, quick breaths; his shoulders were squared, and in spite of his
thinness they looked massy. Lethargy, or malaria, or both, whatever were
his ailments, they were gone. He was six feet of hot wrath and cold
resolution.