The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton

The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton
A Ten-Volume Collection
Volume One
Contents of Volume One
Stories
KERFOL.........................March 1916
MRS. MANSTEY'S VIEW............July 1891
THE BOLTED DOOR................March 1909
THE DILETTANTE.................December 1903
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND.....August 1904
Verse
THE PARTING DAY................February 1880
AEROPAGUS......................March 1880
A FAILURE......................April 1880
PATIENCE.......................April 1880
WANTS..........................May 1880
THE LAST GIUSTIANINI...........October 1889
EURYALUS.......................December 1889
HAPPINESS......................December 1889
Bibliography
EDITH WHARTON BIBLIOGRAPHY:
SHORT STORIES AND POEMS........Judy Boss
KERFOL
as first published in
Scribner's Magazine, March 1916
I
"You ought to buy it," said my host; "it's just the place for a
solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth
while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present
people are dead broke, and it's going for a song--you ought to
buy it."
It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my
friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my
unsociable exterior I have always had secret yearnings for
domesticity) that I took his hint one autumn afternoon and went
to Kerfol. My friend was motoring over to Quimper on business:
he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road on a heath, and said:
"First turn to the right and second to the left. Then straight
ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants, don't
ask your way. They don't understand French, and they would
pretend they did and mix you up. I'll be back for you here by
sunset--and don't forget the tombs in the chapel."
I followed Lanrivain's directions with the hesitation occasioned
by the usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the
first turn to the right and second to the left, or the contrary.
If I had met a peasant I should certainly have asked, and
probably been sent astray; but I had the desert landscape to
myself, and so stumbled on the right turn and walked on across
the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so unlike any other
avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must be THE
avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great
height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long
tunnel through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most
trees by name, but I haven't to this day been able to decide what
those trees were. They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity
of poplars, the ashen colour of olives under a rainy sky; and
they stretched ahead of me for half a mile or more without a
break in their arch. If ever I saw an avenue that unmistakeably
led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. My heart beat a
little as I began to walk down it.
Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a
long wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass,
with other grey avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were
tall slate roofs mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of
a keep. A moat filled with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded
the place; the drawbridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and
the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the
hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the
influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I wait
long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs--"
and I rather hoped he wouldn't turn up too soon.
I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done
it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with
that great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty
avenues converging on me. It may have been the depth of the
silence that made me so conscious of my gesture. The squeak of
my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a brake, and I almost
fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it onto the grass. But
there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of littleness,
of childish bravado, in sitting there puffing my cigarette-smoke
into the face of such a past.
I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol--I was new to Brittany,
and Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day
before--but one couldn't as much as glance at that pile without
feeling in it a long accumulation of history. What kind of
history I was not prepared to guess: perhaps only the sheer
weight of many associated lives and deaths which gives a kind of
majesty to all old houses. But the aspect of Kerfol suggested
something more--a perspective of stern and cruel memories
stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of
darkness.
Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken
with the present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and
gables to the sky, it might have been its own funeral monument.
"Tombs in the chapel? The whole place is a tomb!" I reflected.
I hoped more and more that the guardian would not come. The
details of the place, however striking, would seem trivial
compared with its collective impressiveness; and I wanted only to
sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence.
"It's the very place for you!" Lanrivain had said; and I was
overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any
living being that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible
that any one could NOT see--?" I wondered. I did not finish the
thought: what I meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered
toward the gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to
SEE more--I was by now so sure it was not a question of seeing--
but to feel more: feel all the place had to communicate. "But to
get in one will have to rout out the keeper," I thought
reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge and
tried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the tunnel
formed by the thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther
end, a wooden barricade had been laid across the entrance, and
beyond it I saw a court enclosed in noble architecture. The main
building faced me; and I now discovered that one half was a mere
ruined front, with gaping windows through which the wild growths
of the moat and the trees of the park were visible. The rest of
the house was still in its robust beauty. One end abutted on the
round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, and in an
angle of the building stood a graceful well-head adorned with
mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper
window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias.
My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my
architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a
desire to explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court,
wondering in which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed
open the barrier and went in. As I did so, a little dog barred
my way. He was such a remarkably beautiful little dog that for a
moment he made me forget the splendid place he was defending. I
was not sure of his breed at the time, but have since learned
that it was Chinese, and that he was of a rare variety called the
"Sleeve-dog." He was very small and golden brown, with large
brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked rather like a large
tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: "These little beasts
always snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute."
The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing:
there was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound,
he came no nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell
back, and I noticed that another dog, a vague rough brindled
thing, had limped up. "There'll be a hubbub now," I thought; for
at the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white mongrel,
slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. All three stood
looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound came from them.
As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled paws, still
watching me. "At a given point, they'll all charge at my ankles:
it's one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up on
one," I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither
large nor formidable. But they let me wander about the court as
I pleased, following me at a little distance--always the same
distance--and always keeping their eyes on me. Presently I
looked across at the ruined facade, and saw that in one of its
window-frames another dog stood: a large white pointer with one
brown ear. He was an old grave dog, much more experienced than
the others; and he seemed to be observing me with a deeper
intentness.
"I'll hear from HIM," I said to myself; but he stood in the empty
window-frame, against the trees of the park, and continued to
watch me without moving. I looked back at him for a time, to see
if the sense that he was being watched would not rouse him. Half
the width of the court lay between us, and we stared at each
other silently across it. But he did not stir, and at last I
turned away. Behind me I found the rest of the pack, with a
newcomer added: a small black greyhound with pale agate-coloured
eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expression was more
timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a little
behind them. And still there was not a sound.
I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me--
waiting, as they seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the
little golden-brown dog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I
heard myself laugh. The little dog did not start, or growl, or
take his eyes from me--he simply slipped back about a yard, and
then paused and continued to look at me. "Oh, hang it!" I
exclaimed aloud, and walked across the court toward the well.
As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into different
corners of the court. I examined the urns on the well, tried a
locked door or two, and up and down the dumb facade; then I faced
about toward the chapel. When I turned I perceived that all the
dogs had disappeared except the old pointer, who still watched me
from the empty window-frame. It was rather a relief to be rid of
that cloud of witnesses; and I began to look about me for a way
to the back of the house. "Perhaps there'll be somebody in the
garden," I thought. I found a way across the moat, scrambled
over a wall smothered in brambles, and got into the garden. A
few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the flower-beds, and
the ancient house looked down on them indifferently. Its garden
side was plainer and severer than the other: the long granite
front, with its few windows and steep roof, looked like a
fortress-prison. I walked around the farther wing, went up some
disjointed steps, and entered the deep twilight of a narrow and
incredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide enough for one
person to slip through, and its branches met overhead. It was
like the ghost of a box-walk, its lustrous green all turning to
the shadowy greyness of the avenues. I walked on and on, the
branches hitting me in the face and springing back with a dry
rattle; and at length I came out on the grassy top of the chemin
de ronde. I walked along it to the gate-tower, looking down into
the court, which was just below me. Not a human being was in
sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of steps in
the thickness of the wall and went down them; and when I emerged
again into the court, there stood the circle of dogs, the goldenbrown
one a little ahead of the others, the black greyhound
shivering in the rear.
"Oh, hang it--you uncomfortable beasts, you!" I exclaimed, my
voice startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood
motionless, watching me. I knew by this time that they would not
try to prevent my approaching the house, and the knowledge left
me free to examine them. I had a feeling that they must be
horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yet they did not look
hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and they were not
thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if they had
lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked
at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually
benumbed their busy inquisitive natures. And this strange
passivity, this almost human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than
the misery of starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to
rouse them for a minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper;
but the longer I looked into their fixed and weary eyes the more
preposterous the idea became. With the windows of that house
looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing? The
dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house would tolerate and
what it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was
passing through my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But
even that feeling probably reached them through a thick fog of
listlessness. I had an idea that their distance from me was as
nothing to my remoteness from them. In the last analysis, the
impression they produced was that of having in common one memory
so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth
either a growl or a wag.
"I say," I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb
circle, "do you know what you look like, the whole lot of you?
You look as if you'd seen a ghost--that's how you look! I wonder
if there IS a ghost here, and nobody but you left for it to
appear to?" The dogs continued to gaze at me without moving. . .
It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the crossroads--
and I wasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense
of having escaped from the loneliest place in the whole world,
and of not liking loneliness--to that degree--as much as I had
imagined I should. My friend had brought his solicitor back from
Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fat and affable
stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol. . .
But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted
in the study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the
drawing-room.
"Well--are you going to buy Kerfol?" she asked, tilting up her
gay chin from her embroidery.
"I haven't decided yet. The fact is, I couldn't get into the
house," I said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and
meant to go back for another look.
"You couldn't get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to
sell the place, and the old guardian has orders--"
"Very likely. But the old guardian wasn't there."
"What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter--?"
"There was nobody about. At least I saw no one."
"How extraordinary! Literally nobody?"
"Nobody but a lot of dogs--a whole pack of them--who seemed to
have the place to themselves."
Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and
folded her hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me
thoughtfully.
"A pack of dogs--you SAW them?"
"Saw them? I saw nothing else!"
"How many?" She dropped her voice a little. "I've always
wondered--"
I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be
familiar to her. "Have you never been to Kerfol?" I asked.
"Oh, yes: often. But never on that day."
"What day?"
"I'd quite forgotten--and so had Herve, I'm sure. If we'd
remembered, we never should have sent you today--but then, after
all, one doesn't half believe that sort of thing, does one?"
"What sort of thing?" I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to
the level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: "I KNEW there was
something. . ."
Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring
smile. "Didn't Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor
of his was mixed up in it. You know every Breton house has its
ghost-story; and some of them are rather unpleasant."
"Yes--but those dogs?" I insisted.
"Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the
peasants say there's one day in the year when a lot of dogs
appear there; and that day the keeper and his daughter go off to
Morlaix and get drunk. The women in Brittany drink dreadfully."
She stooped to match a silk; then she lifted her charming
inquisitive Parisian face: "Did you REALLY see a lot of dogs?
There isn't one at Kerfol," she said.
II
Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the
back of an upper shelf of his library.
"Yes--here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the
Assizes of the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was
written about a hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I
believe the account is transcribed pretty literally from the
judicial records. Anyhow, it's queer reading. And there's a
Herve de Lanrivain mixed up in it--not exactly MY style, as
you'll see. But then he's only a collateral. Here, take the
book up to bed with you. I don't exactly remember the details;
but after you've read it I'll bet anything you'll leave your
light burning all night!"
I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it
was chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my
reading. The account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of
the lord of Kerfol, was long and closely printed. It was, as my
friend had said, probably an almost literal transcription of what
took place in the court-room; and the trial lasted nearly a
month. Besides, the type of the book was detestable. . .
At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But
it is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the
story are forever straying off into side issues. So I have tried
to disentangle it, and give it here in a simpler form. At times,
however, I have reverted to the text because no other words could
have conveyed so exactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and
nowhere have I added anything of my own.
III
It was in the year 16-- that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain
of Kerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to perform his
religious duties. He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his
sixty-second year, but hale and sturdy, a great horseman and
hunter and a pious man. So all his neighbours attested. In
appearance he seems to have been short and broad, with a swarthy
face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a hanging nose and
broad hands with black hairs on them. He had married young and
lost his wife and son soon after, and since then had lived alone
at Kerfol. Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a
handsome house by the river, and spent a week or ten days there;
and occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were
found to declare that during these absences he led a life
different from the one he was known to lead at Kerfol, where he
busied himself with his estate, attended mass daily, and found
his only amusement in hunting the wild boar and water-fowl. But
these rumours are not particularly relevant, and it is certain
that among people of his own class in the neighbourhood he passed
for a stern and even austere man, observant of his religious
obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There was no talk
of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at that
time the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some
people said he had never looked at a woman since his wife's
death; but such things are hard to prove, and the evidence on
this point was not worth much.
Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the
pardon at Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who
had ridden over pillion behind her father to do her duty to the
saint. Her name was Anne de Barrigan, and she came of good old
Breton stock, but much less great and powerful than that of Yves
de Cornault; and her father had squandered his fortune at cards,
and lived almost like a peasant in his little granite manor on
the moors. . . I have said I would add nothing of my own to this
bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt myself
here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate of
Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also
dismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare
thing: a faded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough
to be by a late pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain's
study, and is said to be a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is
unsigned and has no mark of identity but the initials A. B., and
the date 16--, the year after her marriage. It represents a
young woman with a small oval face, almost pointed, yet wide
enough for a full mouth with a tender depression at the corners.
The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, far
apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese
painting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which
one feels to be fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying
close like a cap. The eyes are neither large nor small, hazel
probably, with a look at once shy and steady. A pair of
beautiful long hands are crossed below the lady's breast. . .
The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when
the Baron came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse,
ordered another to be instantly saddled, called to a young page
come with him, and rode away that same evening to the south. His
steward followed the next morning with coffers laden on a pair of
pack mules. The following week Yves de Cornault rode back to
Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants, and told them he was to
be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan of Douarnenez. And
on All Saints' Day the marriage took place.
As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides seems to
show that they passed happily for the couple. No one was found
to say that Yves de Cornault had been unkind to his wife, and it
was plain to all that he was content with his bargain. Indeed,
it was admitted by the chaplain and other witnesses for the
prosecution that the young lady had a softening influence on her
husband, and that he became less exacting with his tenants, less
harsh to peasants and dependents, and less subject to the fits of
gloomy silence which had darkened his widow-hood. As to his
wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in her
behalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her
husband was away on business at Rennes or Morlaix--whither she
was never taken--she was not allowed so much as to walk in the
park unaccompanied. But no one asserted that she was unhappy,
though one servant-woman said she had surprised her crying, and
had heard her say that she was a woman accursed to have no child,
and nothing in life to call her own. But that was a natural
enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; and certainly
it must have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault that she gave
him no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as a
reproach--she herself admits this in her evidence--but seemed to
try to make her forget it by showering gifts and favours on her.
Rich though he was, he had never been open-handed; but nothing
was too fine for his wife, in the way of silks or gems or linen,
or whatever else she fancied. Every wandering merchant was
welcome at Kerfol, and when the master was called away he never
came back without bringing his wife a handsome present--something
curious and particular--from Morlaix or Rennes or Quimper. One
of the waiting-women gave, in cross-examination, an interesting
list of one year's gifts, which I copy. From Morlaix, a carved
ivory junk, with Chinamen at the oars, that a strange sailor had
brought back as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarte,
above Ploumanac'h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, worked by
the nuns of the Assumption; from Rennes, a silver rose that
opened and showed an amber Virgin with a crown of garnets; from
Morlaix, again, a length of Damascus velvet shot with gold,
bought of a Jew from Syria; and for Michaelmas that same year,
from Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of round stones--emeralds and
pearls and rubies--strung like beads on a gold wire. This was
the present that pleased the lady best, the woman said. Later
on, as it happened, it was produced at the trial, and appears to
have struck the Judges and the public as a curious and valuable
jewel.
The very same winter, the Baron absented himself again, this time
as far as Bordeaux, and on his return he brought his wife
something even odder and prettier than the bracelet. It was a
winter evening when he rode up to Kerfol and, walking into the
hall, found her sitting listlessly by the fire, her chin on her
hand, looking into the fire. He carried a velvet box in his hand
and, setting it down on the hearth, lifted the lid and let out a
little golden-brown dog.
Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little creature
bounded toward her. "Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!"
she cried as she picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her
shoulders and looked at her with eyes "like a Christian's."
After that she would never have it out of her sight, and petted
and talked to it as if it had been a child--as indeed it was the
nearest thing to a child she was to know. Yves de Cornault was
much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been brought to him
by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the sailor had
bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen it
from a nobleman's wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to
do, since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen
doomed to hellfire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for
the dog, for they were beginning to be in demand at the French
court, and the sailor knew he had got hold of a good thing; but
Anne's pleasure was so great that, to see her laugh and play with
the little animal, her husband would doubtless have given twice
the sum.
So far, all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain
sailing; but now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to
keep as nearly as possible to Anne's own statements; though
toward the end, poor thing . . .
Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was
brought to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found
dead at the head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from
his wife's rooms to a door opening on the court. It was his wife
who found him and gave the alarm, so distracted, poor wretch,
with fear and horror--for his blood was all over her--that at
first the roused household could not make out what she was
saying, and thought she had gone suddenly mad. But there, sure
enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone dead, and
head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the
steps below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed
about the face and throat, as if with a dull weapon; and one of
his legs had a deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and
probably caused his death. But how did he come there, and who
had murdered him?
His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and
hearing his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs;
but this was immediately questioned. In the first place, it was
proved that from her room she could not have heard the struggle
on the stairs, owing to the thickness of the walls and the length
of the intervening passage; then it was evident that she had not
been in bed and asleep, since she was dressed when she roused the
house, and her bed had not been slept in. Moreover, the door at
the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and the key in the lock; and
it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the dress
she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that there
were traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the
staircase walls, so that it was conjectured that she had really
been at the postern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her
way up to him in the darkness on her hands and knees, had been
stained by his blood dripping down on her. Of course it was
argued on the other side that the blood-marks on her dress might
have been caused by her kneeling down by her husband when she
rushed out of her room; but there was the open door below, and
the fact that the fingermarks in the staircase all pointed
upward.
The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in
spite of its improbability; but on the third day word was brought
to her that Herve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the
neighbourhood, had been arrested for complicity in the crime.
Two or three witnesses thereupon came forward to say that it was
known throughout the country that Lanrivain had formerly been on
good terms with the lady of Cornault; but that he had been absent
from Brittany for over a year, and people had ceased to associate
their names. The witnesses who made this statement were not of a
very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherer suspected of
witch-craft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouring parish,
the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to say
anything; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satisfied
with its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof
of Lanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herbgatherer,
who swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the
park on the night of the murder. One way of patching out
incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort of pressure,
moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what
pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when
she was brought into court, she "appeared weak and wandering,"
and after being encouraged to collect herself and speak the
truth, on her honour and the wounds of her Blessed Redeemer, she
confessed that she had in fact gone down the stairs to speak with
Herve de Lanrivain (who denied everything), and had been
surprised there by the sound of her husband's fall. That was
better; and the prosecution rubbed its hands with satisfaction.
The satisfaction increased when various dependents living at
Kerfol were induced to say--with apparent sincerity--that during
the year or two preceding his death their master had once more
grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fits of
brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before
his second marriage. This seemed to show that things had not
been going well at Kerfol; though no one could be found to say
that there had been any signs of open disagreement between
husband and wife.
Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason for going down
at night to open the door to Herve de Lanrivain, made an answer
which must have sent a smile around the court. She said it was
because she was lonely and wanted to talk with the young man.
Was this the only reason? she was asked; and replied: "Yes, by
the Cross over your Lordships' heads." "But why at midnight?"
the court asked. "Because I could see him in no other way." I
can see the exchange of glances across the ermine collars under
the Crucifix.
Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her married life
had been extremely lonely: "desolate" was the word she used. It
was true that her husband seldom spoke harshly to her; but there
were days when he did not speak at all. It was true that he had
never struck or threatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner
at Kerfol, and when he rode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes
he set so close a watch on her that she could not pick a flower
in the garden without having a waiting-woman at her heels. "I am
no Queen, to need such honours," she once said to him; and he had
answered that a man who has a treasure does not leave the key in
the lock when he goes out. "Then take me with you," she urged;
but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and young
wives better off at their own firesides.
"But what did you want to say to Herve de Lanrivain?" the court
asked; and she answered: "To ask him to take me away."
"Ah--you confess that you went down to him with adulterous
thoughts?"
"No."
"Then why did you want him to take you away?"
"Because I was afraid for my life."
"Of whom were you afraid?"
"Of my husband."
"Why were you afraid of your husband?"
"Because he had strangled my little dog."
Another smile must have passed around the court-room: in days
when any nobleman had a right to hang his peasants--and most of
them exercised it--pinching a pet animal's wind-pipe was nothing
to make a fuss about.
At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have had a
certain sympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be
allowed to explain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made
the following statement.
The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband
had not been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not
have been unhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too
much.
It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her,
brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not
make up for the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he
brought her the little brown dog from the East: after that she
was much less unhappy. Her husband seemed pleased that she was
so fond of the dog; he gave her leave to put her jewelled
bracelet around its neck, and to keep it always with her.
One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her
feet, as his habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his
back. Suddenly she was waked by her husband: he stood beside
her, smiling not unkindly.
"You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying
in the chapel with her feet on a little dog," he said.
The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and
answered: "Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her,
carved in marble, with my dog at my feet."
"Oho--we'll wait and see," he said, laughing also, but with his
black brows close together. "The dog is the emblem of fidelity."
"And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?"
"When I'm in doubt I find out," he answered. "I am an old man,"
he added, "and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I
swear you shall have your monument if you earn it."
"And I swear to be faithful," she returned, "if only for the sake
of having my little dog at my feet."
Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes;
and while he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of
the duchy, came to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the
pardon of Ste. Barbe. She was a woman of great piety and
consequence, and much respected by Yves de Cornault, and when she
proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe no one could
object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of the
pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the
first time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once
or twice to Kerfol with his father, but she had never before
exchanged a dozen words with him. They did not talk for more
than five minutes now: it was under the chestnuts, as the
procession was coming out of the chapel. He said: "I pity you,"
and she was surprised, for she had not supposed that any one
thought her an object of pity. He added: "Call for me when you
need me," and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward, and
thought often of the meeting.
She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more.
How or where she would not say--one had the impression that she
feared to implicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and
brief; and at the last he had told her that he was starting the
next day for a foreign country, on a mission which was not
without peril and might keep him for many months absent. He
asked her for a remembrance, and she had none to give him but the
collar about the little dog's neck. She was sorry afterward that
she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that she had not
had the courage to refuse.
Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days
later he picked up the little dog to pet it, and noticed that its
collar was missing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it
in the undergrowth of the park, and that she and her maids had
hunted a whole day for it. It was true, she explained to the
court, that she had made the maids search for the necklet--they
all believed the dog had lost it in the park. . .
Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in
his usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which.
He talked a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at
Rennes; but now and then he stopped and looked hard at her; and
when she went to bed she found her little dog strangled on her
pillow. The little thing was dead, but still warm; she stooped
to lift it, and her distress turned to horror when she discovered
that it had been strangled by twisting twice round its throat the
necklet she had given to Lanrivain.
The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and
hid the necklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband,
then or later, and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a
peasant hanged for stealing a faggot in the park, and the next
day he nearly beat to death a young horse he was breaking.
Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights,
one by one; and she heard nothing of Herve de Lanrivain. It
might be that her husband had killed him; or merely that he had
been robbed of the necklet. Day after day by the hearth among
the spinning maids, night after night alone on her bed, she
wondered and trembled. Sometimes at table her husband looked
across at her and smiled; and then she felt sure that Lanrivain
was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, for she was sure
her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea that he
could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted
seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to
the castle for a night's shelter, and the maids flocked to her,
Anne held back. The winter was long and black and rainy. One
day, in Yves de Cornault's absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol
with a troop of performing dogs. Anne bought the smallest and
cleverest, a white dog with a feathery coat and one blue and one
brown eye. It seemed to have been ill-treated by the gypsies,
and clung to her plaintively when she took it from them. That
evening her husband came back, and when she went to bed she found
the dog strangled on her pillow.
After that she said to herself that she would never have another
dog; but one bitter cold evening a poor lean greyhound was found
whining at the castle-gate, and she took him in and forbade the
maids to speak of him to her husband. She hid him in a room that
no one went to, smuggled food to him from her own plate, made him
a warm bed to lie on and petted him like a child.
Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she found the
greyhound strangled on her pillow. She wept in secret, but said
nothing, and resolved that even if she met a dog dying of hunger
she would never bring him into the castle; but one day she found
a young sheep-dog, a brindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying
with a broken leg in the snow of the park. Yves de Cornault was
at Rennes, and she brought the dog in, warmed and fed it, tied up
its leg and hid it in the castle till her husband's return. The
day before, she gave it to a peasant woman who lived a long way
off, and paid her handsomely to care for it and say nothing; but
that night she heard a whining and scratching at her door, and
when she opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped
up on her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her bed, and
the next morning was about to have him taken back to the peasant
woman when she heard her husband ride into the court. She shut
the dog in a chest and went down to receive him. An hour or two
later, when she returned to her room, the puppy lay strangled on
her pillow. . .
After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; and her
loneliness became almost unendurable. Sometimes, when she
crossed the court of the castle, and thought no one was looking,
she stopped to pat the old pointer at the gate. But one day as
she was caressing him her husband came out of the chapel; and the
next day the old dog was gone. . .
This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of the court,
or received without impatience and incredulous comment. It was
plain that the Judges were surprised by its puerility, and that
it did not help the accused in the eyes of the public. It was an
odd tale, certainly; but what did it prove? That Yves de
Cornault disliked dogs, and that his wife, to gratify her own
fancy, persistently ignored this dislike. As for pleading this
trivial disagreement as an excuse for her relations--whatever
their nature--with her supposed accomplice, the argument was so
absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted having let her
make use of it, and tried several times to cut short her story.
But she went on to the end, with a kind of hypnotized insistence,
as though the scenes she evoked were so real to her that she had
forgotten where she was and imagined herself to be re-living
them.
At length the Judge who had previously shown a certain kindness
to her said (leaning forward a little, one may suppose, from his
row of dozing colleagues): "Then you would have us believe that
you murdered your husband because he would not let you keep a pet
dog?"
"I did not murder my husband."
"Who did, then? Herve de Lanrivain?"
"No."
"Who then? Can you tell us?"
"Yes, I can tell you. The dogs--" At that point she was carried
out of the court in a swoon.
. . . . . . . .
It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to abandon this
line of defense. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had
seemed convincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of
their first private colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the
cold daylight of judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town,
he was thoroughly ashamed of it, and would have sacrificed her
without a scruple to save his professional reputation. But the
obstinate Judge--who perhaps, after all, was more inquisitive
than kindly--evidently wanted to hear the story out, and she was
ordered, the next day, to continue her deposition.
She said that after the disappearance of the old watch-dog
nothing particular happened for a month or two. Her husband was
much as usual: she did not remember any special incident. But
one evening a pedlar woman came to the castle and was selling
trinkets to the maids. She had no heart for trinkets, but she
stood looking on while the women made their choice. And then,
she did not know how, but the pedlar coaxed her into buying for
herself an odd pear-shaped pomander with a strong scent in it--
she had once seen something of the kind on a gypsy woman. She
had no desire for the pomander, and did not know why she had
bought it. The pedlar said that whoever wore it had the power to
read the future; but she did not really believe that, or care
much either. However, she bought the thing and took it up to her
room, where she sat turning it about in her hand. Then the
strange scent attracted her and she began to wonder what kind of
spice was in the box. She opened it and found a grey bean rolled
in a strip of paper; and on the paper she saw a sign she knew,
and a message from Herve de Lanrivain, saying that he was at home
again and would be at the door in the court that night after the
moon had set. . .
She burned the paper and then sat down to think. It was
nightfall, and her husband was at home. . . She had no way of
warning Lanrivain, and there was nothing to do but to wait. . .
At this point I fancy the drowsy courtroom beginning to wake up.
Even to the oldest hand on the bench there must have been a
certain aesthetic relish in picturing the feelings of a woman on
receiving such a message at night-fall from a man living twenty
miles away, to whom she had no means of sending a warning. . .
She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of
her cogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being,
that evening, too kind to her husband. She could not ply him
with wine, according to the traditional expedient, for though he
drank heavily at times he had a strong head; and when he drank
beyond its strength it was because he chose to, and not because a
woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at any rate--she was an old
story by now. As I read the case, I fancy there was no feeling
for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by his supposed
dishonour.
At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early in
the evening he complained of pains and fever, and left the hall
to go up to his room. His servant carried him a cup of hot wine,
and brought back word that he was sleeping and not to be
disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and
listened at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. She
thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in
the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on
too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a
sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in
the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park.
The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the
night was pitch black. She knew the time had come, and stole
along the passage, past her husband's door--where she stopped
again to listen to his breathing--to the top of the stairs.
There she paused a moment, and assured herself that no one was
following her; then she began to go down the stairs in the
darkness. They were so steep and winding that she had to go very
slowly, for fear of stumbling. Her one thought was to get the
door unbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape, and hasten back
to her room. She had tried the bolt earlier in the evening, and
managed to put a little grease on it; but nevertheless, when she
drew it, it gave a squeak . . . not loud, but it made her heart
stop; and the next minute, overhead, she heard a noise. . .
"What noise?" the prosecution interposed.
"My husband's voice calling out my name and cursing me."
"What did you hear after that?"
"A terrible scream and a fall."
"Where was Herve de Lanrivain at this time?"
"He was standing outside in the court. I just made him out in
the darkness. I told him for God's sake to go, and then I pushed
the door shut."
"What did you do next?"
"I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened."
"What did you hear?"
"I heard dogs snarling and panting." (Visible discouragement of
the bench, boredom of the public, and exasperation of the lawyer
for the defense. Dogs again--! But the inquisitive Judge
insisted.)
"What dogs?"
She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be told to
repeat her answer: "I don't know."
"How do you mean--you don't know?"
"I don't know what dogs. . ."
The Judge again intervened: "Try to tell us exactly what
happened. How long did you remain at the foot of the stairs?"
"Only a few minutes."
"And what was going on meanwhile overhead?"
"The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or twice he cried
out. I think he moaned once. Then he was quiet."
"Then what happened?"
"Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is
thrown to them--gulping and lapping."
(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through the court,
and another attempted intervention by the distracted lawyer. But
the inquisitive Judge was still inquisitive.)
"And all the while you did not go up?"
"Yes--I went up then--to drive them off."
"The dogs?"
"Yes."
"Well--?"
"When I got there it was quite dark. I found my husband's flint
and steel and struck a spark. I saw him lying there. He was
dead."
"And the dogs?"
"The dogs were gone."
"Gone--where to?"
"I don't know. There was no way out--and there were no dogs at
Kerfol."
She straightened herself to her full height, threw her arms above
her head, and fell down on the stone floor with a long scream.
There was a moment of confusion in the court-room. Some one on
the bench was heard to say: "This is clearly a case for the
ecclesiastical authorities"--and the prisoner's lawyer doubtless
jumped at the suggestion.
After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross-questioning
and squabbling. Every witness who was called corroborated Anne
de Cornault's statement that there were no dogs at Kerfol: had
been none for several months. The master of the house had taken
a dislike to dogs, there was no denying it. But, on the other
hand, at the inquest, there had been long and bitter discussion
as to the nature of the dead man's wounds. One of the surgeons
called in had spoken of marks that looked like bites. The
suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposing lawyers
hurled tomes of necromancy at each other.
At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court--at the
instance of the same Judge--and asked if she knew where the dogs
she spoke of could have come from. On the body of her Redeemer
she swore that she did not. Then the Judge put his final
question: "If the dogs you think you heard had been known to you,
do you think you would have recognized them by their barking?"
"Yes."
"Did you recognize them?"
"Yes."
"What dogs do you take them to have been?"
"My dead dogs," she said in a whisper. . . She was taken out of
court, not to reappear there again. There was some kind of
ecclesiastical investigation, and the end of the business was
that the Judges disagreed with each other, and with the
ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne de Cornault was finally
handed over to the keeping of her husband's family, who shut her
up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is said to have died many
years later, a harmless madwoman.
So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, I had only
to apply to his collateral descendant for its subsequent details.
The evidence against the young man being insufficient, and his
family influence in the duchy considerable, he was set free, and
left soon afterward for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a
worldly life, and he appears to have come almost immediately
under the influence of the famous M. Arnauld d'Andilly and the
gentlemen of Port Royal. A year or two later he was received
into their Order, and without achieving any particular
distinction he followed its good and evil fortunes till his death
some twenty years later. Lanrivain showed me a portrait of him
by a pupil of Philippe de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive
mouth and a narrow brow. Poor Herve de Lanrivain: it was a grey
ending. Yet as I looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in the
dark dress of the Jansenists, I almost found myself envying his
fate. After all, in the course of his life two great things had
happened to him: he had loved romantically, and he must have
talked with Pascal. . .
The End
MRS. MANSTEY'S VIEW
as first published in
Scribner's Magazine, July, 1891
The view from Mrs. Manstey's window was not a striking one, but
to her at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey
occupied the back room on the third floor of a New York boardinghouse,
in a street where the ash-barrels lingered late on the
sidewalk and the gaps in the pavement would have staggered a
Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a clerk in a large
wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, for her only
daughter had married in California, and could not afford the long
journey to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps,
might have joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been
so many years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each
other's society, and their intercourse had long been limited to
the exchange of a few perfunctory letters, written with
indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs.
Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had
she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs.
Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused her to dread the
three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would
have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey;
and without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since
accepted as a matter of course her solitary life in New York.
She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled
up now and then to her room; but their visits grew rare as the
years went by. Mrs. Manstey had never been a sociable woman, and
during her husband's lifetime his companionship had been allsufficient
to her. For many years she had cherished a desire to
live in the country, to have a hen-house and a garden; but this
longing had faded with age, leaving only in the breast of the
uncommunicative old woman a vague tenderness for plants and
animals. It was, perhaps, this tenderness which made her cling
so fervently to her view from her window, a view in which the
most optimistic eye would at first have failed to discover
anything admirable.
Mrs. Manstey, from her coign of vantage (a slightly projecting
bow-window where she nursed an ivy and a succession of
unwholesome-looking bulbs), looked out first upon the yard of her
own dwelling, of which, however, she could get but a restricted
glimpse. Still, her gaze took in the topmost boughs of the
ailanthus below her window, and she knew how early each year the
clump of dicentra strung its bending stalk with hearts of pink.
But of greater interest were the yards beyond. Being for the
most part attached to boarding-houses they were in a state of
chronic untidiness and fluttering, on certain days of the week,
with miscellaneous garments and frayed table-cloths. In spite of
this Mrs. Manstey found much to admire in the long vista which
she commanded. Some of the yards were, indeed, but stony wastes,
with grass in the cracks of the pavement and no shade in spring
save that afforded by the intermittent leafage of the clotheslines.
These yards Mrs. Manstey disapproved of, but the others,
the green ones, she loved. She had grown used to their disorder;
the broken barrels, the empty bottles and paths unswept no longer
annoyed her; hers was the happy faculty of dwelling on the
pleasanter side of the prospect before her.
In the very next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard white
flowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a
little way down the line, a fence foamed over every May be lilac
waves of wistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its
candelabra of buff and pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage;
while in the opposite yard June was sweet with the breath of a
neglected syringa, which persisted in growing in spite of the
countless obstacles opposed to its welfare.
But if nature occupied the front rank in Mrs. Manstey's view,
there was much of a more personal character to interest her in
the aspect of the houses and their inmates. She deeply
disapproved of the mustard-colored curtains which had lately been
hung in the doctor's window opposite; but she glowed with
pleasure when the house farther down had its old bricks washed
with a coat of paint. The occupants of the houses did not often
show themselves at the back windows, but the servants were always
in sight. Noisy slatterns, Mrs. Manstey pronounced the greater
number; she knew their ways and hated them. But to the quiet
cook in the newly painted house, whose mistress bullied her, and
who secretly fed the stray cats at nightfall, Mrs. Manstey's
warmest sympathies were given. On one occasion her feelings were
racked by the neglect of a housemaid, who for two days forgot to
feed the parrot committed to her care. On the third day, Mrs.
Manstey, in spite of her gouty hand, had just penned a letter,
beginning: "Madam, it is now three days since your parrot has
been fed," when the forgetful maid appeared at the window with a
cup of seed in her hand.
But in Mrs. Manstey's more meditative moods it was the narrowing
perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved,
at twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in
the fluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories
of a trip to Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her
mind's eye to a pale phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and
dreamy skies. Perhaps at heart Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at
all events she was sensible of many changes of color unnoticed by
the average eye, and dear to her as the green of early spring was
the black lattice of branches against a cold sulphur sky at the
close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny thaws of
March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like inkspots
spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better
still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced
the clear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain
interest the trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and
missed a detail in the landscape when the factory was closed and
the smoke disappeared.
Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window,
was not idle. She read a little, and knitted numberless
stockings; but the view surrounded and shaped her life as the sea
does a lonely island. When her rare callers came it was
difficult for her to detach herself from the contemplation of the
opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny of certain green points
in a neighboring flower-bed which might, or might not, turn into
hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her visitor's
anecdotes about some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey's real
friends were the denizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the
magnolia, the green parrot, the maid who fed the cats, the doctor
who studied late behind his mustard-colored curtains; and the
confidant of her tenderer musings was the church-spire floating
in the sunset.
One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast
aside and eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a
knock at the door announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs.
Manstey did not care for her landlady, but she submitted to her
visits with ladylike resignation. To-day, however, it seemed
harder than usual to turn from the blue sky and the blossoming
magnolia to Mrs. Sampson's unsuggestive face, and Mrs. Manstey
was conscious of a distinct effort as she did so.
"The magnolia is out earlier than usual this year, Mrs. Sampson,"
she remarked, yielding to a rare impulse, for she seldom alluded
to the absorbing interest of her life. In the first place it was
a topic not likely to appeal to her visitors and, besides, she
lacked the power of expression and could not have given utterance
to her feelings had she wished to.
"The what, Mrs. Manstey?" inquired the landlady, glancing about
the room as if to find there the explanation of Mrs. Manstey's
statement.
"The magnolia in the next yard--in Mrs. Black's yard," Mrs.
Manstey repeated.
"Is it, indeed? I didn't know there was a magnolia there," said
Mrs. Sampson, carelessly. Mrs. Manstey looked at her; she did
not know that there was a magnolia in the next yard!
"By the way," Mrs. Sampson continued, "speaking of Mrs. Black
reminds me that the work on the extension is to begin next week."
"The what?" it was Mrs. Manstey's turn to ask.
"The extension," said Mrs. Sampson, nodding her head in the
direction of the ignored magnolia. "You knew, of course, that
Mrs. Black was going to build an extension to her house? Yes,
ma'am. I hear it is to run right back to the end of the yard.
How she can afford to build an extension in these hard times I
don't see; but she always was crazy about building. She used to
keep a boarding-house in Seventeenth Street, and she nearly
ruined herself then by sticking out bow-windows and what not; I
should have thought that would have cured her of building, but I
guess it's a disease, like drink. Anyhow, the work is to begin
on Monday."
Mrs. Manstey had grown pale. She always spoke slowly, so the
landlady did not heed the long pause which followed. At last
Mrs. Manstey said: "Do you know how high the extension will be?"
"That's the most absurd part of it. The extension is to be built
right up to the roof of the main building; now, did you ever?"
"Mrs. Manstey paused again. "Won't it be a great annoyance to
you, Mrs. Sampson?" she asked.
"I should say it would. But there's no help for it; if people
have got a mind to build extensions there's no law to prevent
'em, that I'm aware of." Mrs. Manstey, knowing this, was silent.
"There is no help for it," Mrs. Sampson repeated, "but if I AM a
church member, I wouldn't be so sorry if it ruined Eliza Black.
Well, good-day, Mrs. Manstey; I'm glad to find you so
comfortable."
So comfortable--so comfortable! Left to herself the old woman
turned once more to the window. How lovely the view was that
day! The blue sky with its round clouds shed a brightness over
everything; the ailanthus had put on a tinge of yellow-green, the
hyacinths were budding, the magnolia flowers looked more than
ever like rosettes carved in alabaster. Soon the wistaria would
bloom, then the horse-chestnut; but not for her. Between her
eyes and them a barrier of brick and mortar would swiftly rise;
presently even the spire would disappear, and all her radiant
world be blotted out. Mrs. Manstey sent away untouched the
dinner-tray brought to her that evening. She lingered in the
window until the windy sunset died in bat-colored dusk; then,
going to bed, she lay sleepless all night.
Early the next day she was up and at the window. It was raining,
but even through the slanting gray gauze the scene had its charm--
and then the rain was so good for the trees. She had noticed
the day before that the ailanthus was growing dusty.
"Of course I might move," said Mrs. Manstey aloud, and turning
from the window she looked about her room. She might move, of
course; so might she be flayed alive; but she was not likely to
survive either operation. The room, though far less important to
her happiness than the view, was as much a part of her existence.
She had lived in it seventeen years. She knew every stain on the
wall-paper, every rent in the carpet; the light fell in a certain
way on her engravings, her books had grown shabby on their
shelves, her bulbs and ivy were used to their window and knew
which way to lean to the sun. "We are all too old to move," she
said.
That afternoon it cleared. Wet and radiant the blue reappeared
through torn rags of cloud; the ailanthus sparkled; the earth in
the flower-borders looked rich and warm. It was Thursday, and on
Monday the building of the extension was to begin.
On Sunday afternoon a card was brought to Mrs. Black, as she was
engaged in gathering up the fragments of the boarders' dinner in
the basement. The card, black-edged, bore Mrs. Manstey's name.
"One of Mrs. Sampson's boarders; wants to move, I suppose. Well,
I can give her a room next year in the extension. Dinah," said
Mrs. Black, "tell the lady I'll be upstairs in a minute."
Mrs. Black found Mrs. Manstey standing in the long parlor
garnished with statuettes and antimacassars; in that house she
could not sit down.
Stooping hurriedly to open the register, which let out a cloud of
dust, Mrs. Black advanced on her visitor.
"I'm happy to meet you, Mrs. Manstey; take a seat, please," the
landlady remarked in her prosperous voice, the voice of a woman
who can afford to build extensions. There was no help for it;
Mrs. Manstey sat down.
"Is there anything I can do for you, ma'am?" Mrs. Black
continued. "My house is full at present, but I am going to build
an extension, and--"
"It is about the extension that I wish to speak," said Mrs.
Manstey, suddenly. "I am a poor woman, Mrs. Black, and I have
never been a happy one. I shall have to talk about myself first
to--to make you understand."
Mrs. Black, astonished but imperturbable, bowed at this
parenthesis.
"I never had what I wanted," Mrs. Manstey continued. "It was
always one disappointment after another. For years I wanted to
live in the country. I dreamed and dreamed about it; but we
never could manage it. There was no sunny window in our house,
and so all my plants died. My daughter married years ago and
went away--besides, she never cared for the same things. Then my
husband died and I was left alone. That was seventeen years ago.
I went to live at Mrs. Sampson's, and I have been there ever
since. I have grown a little infirm, as you see, and I don't get
out often; only on fine days, if I am feeling very well. So you
can understand my sitting a great deal in my window--the back
window on the third floor--"
"Well, Mrs. Manstey," said Mrs. Black, liberally, "I could give
you a back room, I dare say; one of the new rooms in the ex--"
"But I don't want to move; I can't move," said Mrs. Manstey,
almost with a scream. "And I came to tell you that if you build
that extension I shall have no view from my window--no view! Do
you understand?"
Mrs. Black thought herself face to face with a lunatic, and she
had always heard that lunatics must be humored.
"Dear me, dear me," she remarked, pushing her chair back a little
way, "that is too bad, isn't it? Why, I never thought of that.
To be sure, the extension WILL interfere with your view, Mrs.
Manstey."
"You do understand?" Mrs. Manstey gasped.
"Of course I do. And I'm real sorry about it, too. But there,
don't you worry, Mrs. Manstey. I guess we can fix that all
right."
Mrs. Manstey rose from her seat, and Mrs. Black slipped toward
the door.
"What do you mean by fixing it? Do you mean that I can induce
you to change your mind about the extension? Oh, Mrs. Black,
listen to me. I have two thousand dollars in the bank and I
could manage, I know I could manage, to give you a thousand if--"
Mrs. Manstey paused; the tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"There, there, Mrs. Manstey, don't you worry," repeated Mrs.
Black, soothingly. "I am sure we can settle it. I am sorry that
I can't stay and talk about it any longer, but this is such a
busy time of day, with supper to get--"
Her hand was on the door-knob, but with sudden vigor Mrs. Manstey
seized her wrist.
"You are not giving me a definite answer. Do you mean to say
that you accept my proposition?"
"Why, I'll think it over, Mrs. Manstey, certainly I will. I
wouldn't annoy you for the world--"
"But the work is to begin to-morrow, I am told," Mrs. Manstey
persisted.
Mrs. Black hesitated. "It shan't begin, I promise you that; I'll
send word to the builder this very night." Mrs. Manstey
tightened her hold.
"You are not deceiving me, are you?" she said.
"No--no," stammered Mrs. Black. "How can you think such a thing
of me, Mrs. Manstey?"
Slowly Mrs. Manstey's clutch relaxed, and she passed through the
open door. "One thousand dollars," she repeated, pausing in the
hall; then she let herself out of the house and hobbled down the
steps, supporting herself on the cast-iron railing.
"My goodness," exclaimed Mrs. Black, shutting and bolting the
hall-door, "I never knew the old woman was crazy! And she looks
so quiet and ladylike, too."
Mrs. Manstey slept well that night, but early the next morning
she was awakened by a sound of hammering. She got to her window
with what haste she might and, looking out saw that Mrs. Black's
yard was full of workmen. Some were carrying loads of brick from
the kitchen to the yard, others beginning to demolish the oldfashioned
wooden balcony which adorned each story of Mrs. Black's
house. Mrs. Manstey saw that she had been deceived. At first
she thought of confiding her trouble to Mrs. Sampson, but a
settled discouragement soon took possession of her and she went
back to bed, not caring to see what was going on.
Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst,
she rose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her
hands were stiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed
to evade her.
When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmen
had removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks
had multiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow
with a bloated face, picked a magnolia blossom and, after
smelling it, threw it to the ground; the next man, carrying a
load of bricks, trod on the flower in passing.
"Look out, Jim," called one of the men to another who was smoking
a pipe, "if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper
you'll have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it."
And Mrs. Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were
several barrels of paper and rubbish under the wooden balcony.
At length the work ceased and twilight fell. The sunset was
perfect and a roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire,
lingered late in the west. When it grew dark Mrs. Manstey drew
down the shades and proceeded, in her usual methodical manner, to
light her lamp. She always filled and lit it with her own hands,
keeping a kettle of kerosene on a zinc-covered shelf in a closet.
As the lamp-light filled the room it assumed its usual peaceful
aspect. The books and pictures and plants seemed, like their
mistress, to settle themselves down for another quiet evening,
and Mrs. Manstey, as was her wont, drew up her armchair to the
table and began to knit.
That night she could not sleep. The weather had changed and a
wild wind was abroad, blotting the stars with close-driven
clouds. Mrs. Manstey rose once or twice and looked out of the
window; but of the view nothing was discernible save a tardy
light or two in the opposite windows. These lights at last went
out, and Mrs. Manstey, who had watched for their extinction,
began to dress herself. She was in evident haste, for she merely
flung a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress and wrapped her
head in a scarf; then she opened her closet and cautiously took
out the kettle of kerosene. Having slipped a bundle of wooden
matches into her pocket she proceeded, with increasing
precautions, to unlock her door, and a few moments later she was
feeling her way down the dark staircase, led by a glimmer of gas
from the lower hall. At length she reached the bottom of the
stairs and began the more difficult descent into the utter
darkness of the basement. Here, however, she could move more
freely, as there was less danger of being overheard; and without
much delay she contrived to unlock the iron door leading into the
yard. A gust of cold wind smote her as she stepped out and
groped shiveringly under the clothes-lines.
That morning at three o'clock an alarm of fire brought the
engines to Mrs. Black's door, and also brought Mrs. Sampson's
startled boarders to their windows. The wooden balcony at the
back of Mrs. Black's house was ablaze, and among those who
watched the progress of the flames was Mrs. Manstey, leaning in
her thin dressing-gown from the open window.
The fire, however, was soon put out, and the frightened occupants
of the house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn
to find that little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of
window panes and smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief
sufferer by the fire was Mrs. Manstey, who was found in the
morning gasping with pneumonia, a not unnatural result, as
everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an open window at
her age in a dressing-gown. It was easy to see that she was very
ill, but no one had guessed how grave the doctor's verdict would
be, and the faces gathered that evening about Mrs. Sampson's
table were awestruck and disturbed. Not that any of the boarders
knew Mrs. Manstey well; she "kept to herself," as they said, and
seemed to fancy herself too good for them; but then it is always
disagreeable to have anyone dying in the house and, as one lady
observed to another: "It might just as well have been you or me,
my dear."
But it was only Mrs. Manstey; and she was dying, as she had
lived, lonely if not alone. The doctor had sent a trained nurse,
and Mrs. Sampson, with muffled step, came in from time to time;
but both, to Mrs. Manstey, seemed remote and unsubstantial as the
figures in a dream. All day she said nothing; but when she was
asked for her daughter's address she shook her head. At times
the nurse noticed that she seemed to be listening attentively for
some sound which did not come; then again she dozed.
The next morning at daylight she was very low. The nurse called
Mrs. Sampson and as the two bent over the old woman they saw her
lips move.
"Lift me up--out of bed," she whispered.
They raised her in their arms, and with her stiff hand she
pointed to the window.
"Oh, the window--she wants to sit in the window. She used to sit
there all day," Mrs. Sampson explained. "It can do her no harm,
I suppose?"
"Nothing matters now," said the nurse.
They carried Mrs. Manstey to the window and placed her in her
chair. The dawn was abroad, a jubilant spring dawn; the spire
had already caught a golden ray, though the magnolia and horsechestnut
still slumbered in shadow. In Mrs. Black's yard all was
quiet. The charred timbers of the balcony lay where they had
fallen. It was evident that since the fire the builders had not
returned to their work. The magnolia had unfolded a few more
sculptural flowers; the view was undisturbed.
It was hard for Mrs. Manstey to breathe; each moment it grew more
difficult. She tried to make them open the window, but they
would not understand. If she could have tasted the air, sweet
with the penetrating ailanthus savor, it would have eased her;
but the view at least was there--the spire was golden now, the
heavens had warmed from pearl to blue, day was alight from east
to west, even the magnolia had caught the sun.
Mrs. Manstey's head fell back and smiling she died.
That day the building of the extension was resumed.
The End
THE BOLTED DOOR
as first published in
Scribner's Magazine, March 1909
I
Hubert Granice, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit
library, paused to compare his watch with the clock on the
chimney-piece.
Three minutes to eight.
In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal
firm of Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the
door-bell of the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham
was so punctual--the suspense was beginning to make his host
nervous. And the sound of the door-bell would be the beginning
of the end--after that there'd be no going back, by God--no going
back!
Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the
room opposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine
mirror above the fine old walnut credence he had picked up at
Dijon--saw himself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and
dressed, but furrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which
he corrected by a spasmodic straightening of the shoulders
whenever a glass confronted him: a tired middle-aged man,
baffled, beaten, worn out.
As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the
door opened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his
guest. But it was only the man-servant who entered, advancing
silently over the mossy surface of the old Turkey rug.
"Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he's unexpectedly detained
and can't be here till eight-thirty."
Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder
and harder for him to control these reflexes. He turned on his
heel, tossing to the servant over his shoulder: "Very good. Put
off dinner."
Down his spine he felt the man's injured stare. Mr. Granice had
always been so mild-spoken to his people--no doubt the odd change
in his manner had already been noticed and discussed below
stairs. And very likely they suspected the cause. He stood
drumming on the writing-table till he heard the servant go out;
then he threw himself into a chair, propping his elbows on the
table and resting his chin on his locked hands.
Another half hour alone with it!
He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Some
professional matter, no doubt--the punctilious lawyer would have
allowed nothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more
especially since Granice, in his note, had said: "I shall want a
little business chat afterward."
But what professional matter could have come up at that
unprofessional hour? Perhaps some other soul in misery had
called on the lawyer; and, after all, Granice's note had given no
hint of his own need! No doubt Ascham thought he merely wanted
to make another change in his will. Since he had come into his
little property, ten years earlier, Granice had been perpetually
tinkering with his will.
Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his
sallow temples. He remembered a word he had tossed to the lawyer
some six weeks earlier, at the Century Club. "Yes--my play's as
good as taken. I shall be calling on you soon to go over the
contract. Those theatrical chaps are so slippery--I won't trust
anybody but you to tie the knot for me!" That, of course, was
what Ascham would think he was wanted for. Granice, at the idea,
broke into an audible laugh--a queer stage-laugh, like the cackle
of a baffled villain in a melodrama. The absurdity, the
unnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed his
lips angrily. Would he take to soliloquy next?
He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of the
writing-table. In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript,
bound in paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a
letter had been slipped. Next to the manuscript was a small
revolver. Granice stared a moment at these oddly associated
objects; then he took the letter from under the string and slowly
began to open it. He had known he should do so from the moment
his hand touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell on that
letter some relentless force compelled him to re-read it.
It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of "The
Diversity Theatre."
"MY DEAR MR. GRANICE:
"I have given the matter my best consideration for the last
month, and it's no use--the play won't do. I have talked it over
with Miss Melrose--and you know there isn't a gamer artist on our
stage--and I regret to tell you she feels just as I do about it.
It isn't the poetry that scares her--or me either. We both want
to do all we can to help along the poetic drama--we believe the
public's ready for it, and we're willing to take a big financial
risk in order to be the first to give them what they want. BUT
WE DON'T BELIEVE THEY COULD BE MADE TO WANT THIS. The fact is,
there isn't enough drama in your play to the allowance of poetry--
the thing drags all through. You've got a big idea, but it's
not out of swaddling clothes.
"If this was your first play I'd say: TRY AGAIN. But it has been
just the same with all the others you've shown me. And you
remember the result of 'The Lee Shore,' where you carried all the
expenses of production yourself, and we couldn't fill the theatre
for a week. Yet 'The Lee Shore' was a modern problem play--much
easier to swing than blank verse. It isn't as if you hadn't
tried all kinds--"
Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the
envelope. Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every
phrase in it by heart, when for a month past he had seen it,
night after night, stand out in letters of flame against the
darkness of his sleepless lids?
"IT HAS BEEN JUST THE SAME WITH ALL THE OTHERS YOU'VE SHOWN ME."
That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate
unremitting work!
"YOU REMEMBER THE RESULT OF 'THE LEE SHORE.'"
Good God--as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all
now in a drowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play,
his sudden resolve to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten
thousand dollars of his inheritance on testing his chance of
success--the fever of preparation, the dry-mouthed agony of the
"first night," the flat fall, the stupid press, his secret rush
to Europe to escape the condolence of his friends!
"IT ISN'T AS IF YOU HADN'T TRIED ALL KINDS."
No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the
light curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeoisrealistic
and the lyrical-romantic--finally deciding that he
would no longer "prostitute his talent" to win popularity, but
would impose on the public his own theory of art in the form of
five acts of blank verse. Yes, he had offered them everything--
and always with the same result.
Ten years of it--ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure.
The ten years from forty to fifty--the best ten years of his
life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of
dreams, assimilation, preparation--then call it half a man's
life-time: half a man's life-time thrown away!
And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had
settled that, thank God! He turned and glanced anxiously at the
clock. Ten minutes past eight--only ten minutes had been
consumed in that stormy rush through his whole past! And he must
wait another twenty minutes for Ascham. It was one of the worst
symptoms of his case that, in proportion as he had grown to
shrink from human company, he dreaded more and more to be alone. . . .
But why the devil was he waiting for Ascham? Why didn't
he cut the knot himself? Since he was so unutterably sick of the
whole business, why did he have to call in an outsider to rid him
of this nightmare of living?
He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It
was a small slim ivory toy--just the instrument for a tired
sufferer to give himself a "hypodermic" with. Granice raised it
slowly in one hand, while with the other he felt under the thin
hair at the back of his head, between the ear and the nape. He
knew just where to place the muzzle: he had once got a young
surgeon to show him. And as he found the spot, and lifted the
revolver to it, the inevitable phenomenon occurred. The hand
that held the weapon began to shake, the tremor communicated
itself to his arm, his heart gave a wild leap which sent up a
wave of deadly nausea to his throat, he smelt the powder, he
sickened at the crash of the bullet through his skull, and a
sweat of fear broke out over his forehead and ran down his
quivering face. . .
He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out a
cologne-scented handkerchief, passed it tremulously over his brow
and temples. It was no use--he knew he could never do it in that
way. His attempts at self-destruction were as futile as his
snatches at fame! He couldn't make himself a real life, and he
couldn't get rid of the life he had. And that was why he had
sent for Ascham to help him. . .
The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse
himself for his delay.
"I didn't like to say anything while your man was about--but the
fact is, I was sent for on a rather unusual matter--"
"Oh, it's all right," said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning
to feel the usual reaction that food and company produced. It
was not any recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a
deeper withdrawal into himself. It was easier to go on
automatically with the social gestures than to uncover to any
human eye the abyss within him.
"My dear fellow, it's sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting--
especially the production of an artist like yours." Mr. Ascham
sipped his Burgundy luxuriously. "But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove
sent for me."
Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a
moment he was shaken out of his self-absorption.
"MRS. ASHGROVE?"
Ascham smiled. "I thought you'd be interested; I know your
passion for causes celebres. And this promises to be one. Of
course it's out of our line entirely--we never touch criminal
cases. But she wanted to consult me as a friend. Ashgrove was a
distant connection of my wife's. And, by Jove, it IS a queer
case!" The servant re-entered, and Ascham snapped his lips shut.
Would the gentlemen have their coffee in the dining-room?
"No--serve it in the library," said Granice, rising. He led the
way back to the curtained confidential room. He was really
curious to hear what Ascham had to tell him.
While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about
the library, glancing at his letters--the usual meaningless notes
and bills--and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a
headline caught his eye.
"ROSE MELROSE WANTS TO
PLAY POETRY.
"THINKS SHE HAS FOUND HER
POET."
He read on with a thumping heart--found the name of a young
author he had barely heard of, saw the title of a play, a "poetic
drama," dance before his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick,
disgusted. It was true, then--she WAS "game"--it was not the
manner but the matter she mistrusted!
Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely
lingering. "I shan't need you this evening, Flint. I'll lock up
myself."
He fancied the man's acquiescence implied surprise. What was
going on, Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr. Granice should want
him out of the way? Probably he would find a pretext for coming
back to see. Granice suddenly felt himself enveloped in a
network of espionage.
As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned
forward to take a light from Ascham's cigar.
"Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove," he said, seeming to himself to
speak stiffly, as if his lips were cracked.
"Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there's not much to TELL."
"And you couldn't if there were?" Granice smiled.
"Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about
her choice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential
in our talk."
"And what's your impression, now you've seen her?"
"My impression is, very distinctly, THAT NOTHING WILL EVER BE
KNOWN."
"Ah--?" Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar.
"I'm more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew
his business, and will consequently never be found out. That's a
capital cigar you've given me."
"You like it? I get them over from Cuba." Granice examined his
own reflectively. "Then you believe in the theory that the
clever criminals never ARE caught?"
"Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozen
years--none of the big murder problems are ever solved." The
lawyer ruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance
in your own family: I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand!
Take old Joseph Lenman's murder--do you suppose that will ever be
explained?"
As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly
about the library, and every object in it stared back at him with
a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at
that room! It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied
of. He cleared his throat slowly; then he turned his head to the
lawyer and said: "I could explain the Lenman murder myself."
Ascham's eye kindled: he shared Granice's interest in criminal
cases.
"By Jove! You've had a theory all this time? It's odd you never
mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features
in the Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea
may be a help."
Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table
drawer in which the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side.
What if he were to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he
looked at the notes and bills on the table, and the horror of
taking up again the lifeless routine of life--of performing the
same automatic gestures another day--displaced his fleeting
vision.
"I haven't a theory. I KNOW who murdered Joseph Lenman."
Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for
enjoyment.
"You KNOW? Well, who did?" he laughed.
"I did," said Granice, rising.
He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at
him. Then he broke into another laugh.
"Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit
his money, I suppose? Better and better! Go on, my boy!
Unbosom yourself! Tell me all about it! Confession is good for
the soul."
Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of
laughter from his throat; then he repeated doggedly: "I murdered
him."
The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time
Ascham did not laugh.
"Granice!"
"I murdered him--to get his money, as you say."
There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying
sense of amusement, saw his guest's look change from pleasantry
to apprehension.
"What's the joke, my dear fellow? I fail to see."
"It's not a joke. It's the truth. I murdered him." He had
spoken painfully at first, as if there were a knot in his throat;
but each time he repeated the words he found they were easier to
say.
Ascham laid down his extinct cigar.
"What's the matter? Aren't you well? What on earth are you
driving at?"
"I'm perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman,
and I want it known that I murdered him."
"YOU WANT IT KNOWN?"
"Yes. That's why I sent for you. I'm sick of living, and when I
try to kill myself I funk it." He spoke quite naturally now, as
if the knot in his throat had been untied.
"Good Lord--good Lord," the lawyer gasped.
"But I suppose," Granice continued, "there's no doubt this would
be murder in the first degree? I'm sure of the chair if I own
up?"
Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: "Sit down,
Granice. Let's talk."
II
Granice told his story simply, connectedly.
He began by a quick survey of his early years--the years of
drudgery and privation. His father, a charming man who could
never say "no," had so signally failed to say it on certain
essential occasions that when he died he left an illegitimate
family and a mortgaged estate. His lawful kin found themselves
hanging over a gulf of debt, and young Granice, to support his
mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury himself at
eighteen in a broker's office. He loathed his work, and he was
always poor, always worried and in ill-health. A few years later
his mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic,
remained on his hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go
away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back.
He had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest
insight into the mysteries of commerce. He wanted to travel and
write--those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged
on, and he neared middle-age without making any more money, or
acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed him. He
tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tired
that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not
reach his dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush
up" for dinner, and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe,
while his sister droned through the evening paper. Sometimes he
spent an evening at the theatre; or he dined out, or, more
rarely, strayed off with an acquaintance or two in quest of what
is known as "pleasure." And in summer, when he and Kate went to
the sea-side for a month, he dozed through the days in utter
weariness. Once he fell in love with a charming girl--but what
had he to offer her, in God's name? She seemed to like him, and
in common decency he had to drop out of the running. Apparently
no one replaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish,
grayish, philanthropic--yet how sweet she had been when he had
first kissed her! One more wasted life, he reflected. . .
But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have
sold his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN
HIM--he could not remember when it had not been his deepestseated
instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a
relentless obsession--yet with every year the material conditions
were more and more against it. He felt himself growing middleaged,
and he watched the reflection of the process in his
sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had been pretty, and as
full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial,
insignificant--she had missed her chance of life. And she had no
resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive
functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It
exasperated him to think of it--and to reflect that even now a
little travel, a little health, a little money, might transform
her, make her young and desirable. . . The chief fruit of his
experience was that there is no such fixed state as age or youth--
there is only health as against sickness, wealth as against
poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of the lot one draws.
At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean
against the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not
moved from his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated
attention.
"Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old
Lenman--my mother's cousin, as you know. Some of the family
always mounted guard over him--generally a niece or so. But that
year they were all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to
lend us her cottage if we'd relieve her of duty for two months.
It was a nuisance for me, of course, for Wrenfield is two hours
from town; but my mother, who was a slave to family observances,
had always been good to the old man, so it was natural we should
be called on--and there was the saving of rent and the good air
for Kate. So we went.
"You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an
amoeba or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's
microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert--since I could
remember him he had done nothing but take his temperature and
read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons--that was his
hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door melons--his were grown under
glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield--his big kitchen-garden
was surrounded by blinking battalions of green-houses. And in
nearly all of them melons were grown--early melons and late,
French, English, domestic--dwarf melons and monsters: every
shape, colour and variety. They were petted and nursed like
children--a staff of trained attendants waited on them. I'm not
sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature--at any
rate the place was full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl
on the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against the
glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which
sustained its weight and left it free on all sides to the sun and
air. . .
"It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one
of his own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life,
apathetic and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable
warm ventilated atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries.
The cardinal rule of his existence was not to let himself be
'worried.' . . . I remember his advising me to try it myself, one
day when I spoke to him about Kate's bad health, and her need of
a change. 'I never let myself worry,' he said complacently.
'It's the worst thing for the liver--and you look to me as if you
had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll make
yourself happier and others too.' And all he had to do was to
write a cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!
"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us
already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for
us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than
mine or Kate's--and one could picture him taking extra care of it
for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight
of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him.
"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity.
I flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons.
And he was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour.
On fine days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair,
and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like
a fat Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense
of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging
of what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by
the fact that he couldn't eat as much as a mouthful of his
melons--had lived for years on buttermilk and toast. 'But, after
all, it's my only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?' he said
sentimentally. As if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine!
On the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like
gods. . .
"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell
to drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend
the afternoon with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September
afternoon--a day to lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one's eyes
on the sky, and let the cosmic harmonies rush through one.
Perhaps the vision was suggested by the fact that, as I entered
cousin Joseph's hideous black walnut library, I passed one of the
under-gardeners, a handsome full-throated Italian, who dashed out
in such a hurry that he nearly knocked me down. I remember
thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seen about
the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem to see me.
"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened
windows, his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the
last number of the Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge
dish, a fat melon--the fattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked
at it I pictured the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must
have roused him, and congratulated myself on finding him in such
a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask him a favour. Then I
noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm as an eggshell,
was distorted and whimpering--and without stopping to
greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.
"'Look at it, look at it--did you ever see such a beauty? Such
firmness--roundness--such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It
was as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out
his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look
the other way.
"Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener,
who had been specially recommended for the melon-houses--though
it was against my cousin's principles to employ a Papist--had
been assigned to the care of the monster: for it had revealed
itself, early in its existence, as destined to become a monster,
to surpass its plumpest, pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at
agricultural shows, and be photographed and celebrated in every
gardening paper in the land. The Italian had done well--seemed
to have a sense of responsibility. And that very morning he had
been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day at
the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its
blonde virginity. But in picking it, what had the damned
scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it--drop it crash on the sharp
spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its
firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised, ruined,
fallen melon?
"The old man's rage was fearful in its impotence--he shook,
spluttered and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up
and had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character--had
threatened to have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling
about Wrenfield. 'By God, and I'll do it--I'll write to
Washington--I'll have the pauper scoundrel deported! I'll show
him what money can do!' As likely as not there was some
murderous Black-hand business under it--it would be found that
the fellow was a member of a 'gang.' Those Italians would murder
you for a quarter. He meant to have the police look into it. . .
And then he grew frightened at his own excitement. 'But I must
calm myself,' he said. He took his temperature, rang for his
drops, and turned to the Churchman. He had been reading an
article on Nestorianism when the melon was brought in. He asked
me to go on with it, and I read to him for an hour, in the dim
close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about the fallen
melon.
"All the while one phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain
like the fly about the melon. 'I'LL SHOW HIM WHAT MONEY CAN DO!'
Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make
him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his
monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my
situation and Kate's--spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful
drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name--I stammered
out an entreaty for a loan. 'I can guarantee to repay you, sir--
I've a half-written play as security. . .'
"I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as
smooth as an egg-shell again--his eyes peered over his fat cheeks
like sentinels over a slippery rampart.
"'A half-written play--a play of YOURS as security?' He looked
at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of
insanity. 'Do you understand anything of business?' he enquired
mildly. I laughed and answered: 'No, not much.'
"He leaned back with closed lids. 'All this excitement has been
too much for me,' he said. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll prepare
for my nap.' And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the
Italian."
Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to
the tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured
himself a tall glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at
Ascham's dead cigar.
"Better light another," he suggested.
The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He
told of his mounting obsession--how the murderous impulse had
waked in him on the instant of his cousin's refusal, and he had
muttered to himself: "By God, if you won't, I'll make you." He
spoke more tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his
rage had died down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He
applied his whole mind to the question of how the old man was to
be "disposed of." Suddenly he remembered the outcry: "Those
Italians will murder you for a quarter!" But no definite project
presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration.
Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the
incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept
them informed of the old man's condition. One day, about three
weeks later, Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a
report from Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again--had
somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library,
and "used threatening language." The house-keeper found cousin
Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing "something awful."
The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off; and the
police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.
But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves," and lost
his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a
colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man--
he became once more an important figure. The medical men
reassured the family--too completely!--and to the patient they
recommended a more varied diet: advised him to take whatever
"tempted him." And so one day, tremulously, prayerfully, he
decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with ceremony,
and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a hovering
cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead. . .
"But you remember the circumstances," Granice went on; "how
suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint
the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house
since 'the scene.' It was said that he had tender relations with
the kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when
they looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone--
gone clean out of sight. He had been 'warned' to leave
Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one
ever laid eyes on him again."
Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the
lawyer's, and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking
about the familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing
and alien, and each strange insistent object seemed craning
forward from its place to hear him.
"It was I who put the stuff in the melon," he said. "And I don't
want you to think I'm sorry for it. This isn't 'remorse,'
understand. I'm glad the old skin-flint is dead--I'm glad the
others have their money. But mine's no use to me any more. My
sister married miserably, and died. And I've never had what I
wanted."
Ascham continued to stare; then he said: "What on earth was your
object, then?"
"Why, to GET what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I
wanted change, rest, LIFE, for both of us--wanted, above all, for
myself, the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health,
and came home to tie myself up to my work. And I've slaved at it
steadily for ten years without reward--without the most distant
hope of success! Nobody will look at my stuff. And now I'm
fifty, and I'm beaten, and I know it." His chin dropped forward
on his breast. "I want to chuck the whole business," he ended.
III
It was after midnight when Ascham left.
His hand on Granice's shoulder, as he turned to go--"District
Attorney be hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!" he had cried;
and so, with an exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and
departed.
Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to
him that Ascham would not believe his story. For three hours he
had explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over
every detail--but without once breaking down the iron incredulity
of the lawyer's eye.
At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced--but that, as Granice
now perceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap
him into contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when
Granice triumphantly met and refuted each disconcerting question,
the lawyer dropped the mask suddenly, and said with a goodhumoured
laugh: "By Jove, Granice you'll write a successful play
yet. The way you've worked this all out is a marvel."
Granice swung about furiously--that last sneer about the play
inflamed him. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his
failure?
"I did it, I did it," he muttered sullenly, his rage spending
itself against the impenetrable surface of the other's mockery;
and Ascham answered with a smile: "Ever read any of those books
on hallucination? I've got a fairly good medico-legal library.
I could send you one or two if you like. . ."
Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his writingtable.
He understood that Ascham thought him off his head.
"Good God--what if they all think me crazy?"
The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat--he sat there
and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as
he began to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw
again how incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any
criminal lawyer would believe him.
"That's the trouble--Ascham's not a criminal lawyer. And then
he's a friend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if
he did believe me, he'd never let me see it--his instinct would
be to cover the whole thing up. . . But in that case--if he DID
believe me--he might think it a kindness to get me shut up in an
asylum. . ." Granice began to tremble again. "Good heaven! If
he should bring in an expert--one of those damned alienists!
Ascham and Pettilow can do anything--their word always goes. If
Ascham drops a hint that I'd better be shut up, I'll be in a
strait-jacket by to-morrow! And he'd do it from the kindest
motives--be quite right to do it if he thinks I'm a murderer!"
The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his
bursting temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped
that Ascham had not believed his story.
"But he did--he did! I can see it now--I noticed what a queer
eye he cocked at me. Good God, what shall I do--what shall I
do?"
He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if
Ascham should think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and
come back with him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden
gesture brushed the morning paper from the table. Mechanically
he stooped to pick it up, and the movement started a new train of
association.
He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack
by his chair.
"Give me three-o-ten . . . yes."
The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He
would act--act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead,
committing himself to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he
could pull himself through the meaningless days. Each time he
reached a fresh decision it was like coming out of a foggy
weltering sea into a calm harbour with lights. One of the
queerest phases of his long agony was the intense relief produced
by these momentary lulls.
"That the office of the Investigator? Yes? Give me Mr. Denver,
please. . . Hallo, Denver. . . Yes, Hubert Granice. . . . Just
caught you? Going straight home? Can I come and see you . . .
yes, now . . . have a talk? It's rather urgent . . . yes, might
give you some first-rate 'copy.' . . . All right!" He hung up
the receiver with a laugh. It had been a happy thought to call
up the editor of the Investigator--Robert Denver was the very man
he needed. . .
Granice put out the lights in the library--it was odd how the
automatic gestures persisted!--went into the hall, put on his hat
and overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a
sleepy elevator boy blinked at him and then dropped his head on
his folded arms. Granice passed out into the street. At the
corner of Fifth Avenue he hailed a crawling cab, and called out
an up-town address. The long thoroughfare stretched before him,
dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. But from
Denver's house a friendly beam fell on the pavement; and as
Granice sprang from his cab the editor's electric turned the
corner.
The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key,
ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall.
"Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow
morning . . . but this is my liveliest hour . . . you know my
habits of old."
Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years--watched his
rise through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian
pinnacle of the Investigator's editorial office. In the thickset
man with grizzling hair there were few traces left of the
hungry-eyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small
hours, used to "bob in" on Granice, while the latter sat grinding
at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice's flat on the way to
his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the window,
and Granice's shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe,
and discuss the universe.
"Well--this is like old times--a good old habit reversed." The
editor smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. "Reminds me
of the nights when I used to rout you out. . . How's the play,
by the way? There IS a play, I suppose? It's as safe to ask you
that as to say to some men: 'How's the baby?'"
Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and
heavy he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice's tortured
nerves, that the words had not been uttered in malice--and the
fact gave him a new measure of his insignificance. Denver did
not even know that he had been a failure! The fact hurt more
than Ascham's irony.
"Come in--come in." The editor led the way into a small cheerful
room, where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an armchair
toward his visitor, and dropped into another with a
comfortable groan.
"Now, then--help yourself. And let's hear all about it."
He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting
his cigar, said to himself: "Success makes men comfortable, but
it makes them stupid."
Then he turned, and began: "Denver, I want to tell you--"
The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The little
room was gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and
through them the editor's face came and went like the moon
through a moving sky. Once the hour struck--then the rhythmical
ticking began again. The atmosphere grew denser and heavier, and
beads of perspiration began to roll from Granice's forehead.
"Do you mind if I open the window?"
"No. It IS stuffy in here. Wait--I'll do it myself." Denver
pushed down the upper sash, and returned to his chair. "Well--go
on," he said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated
Granice.
"There's no use in my going on if you don't believe me."
The editor remained unmoved. "Who says I don't believe you? And
how can I tell till you've finished?"
Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. "It was simple enough,
as you'll see. From the day the old man said to me, 'Those
Italians would murder you for a quarter,' I dropped everything
and just worked at my scheme. It struck me at once that I must
find a way of getting to Wrenfield and back in a night--and that
led to the idea of a motor. A motor--that never occurred to you?
You wonder where I got the money, I suppose. Well, I had a
thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till I found what I
wanted--a second-hand racer. I knew how to drive a car, and I
tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and
I bought it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in
one of those no-questions-asked garages where they keep motors
that are not for family use. I had a lively cousin who had put
me up to that dodge, and I looked about till I found a queer hole
where they took in my car like a baby in a foundling asylum. . .
Then I practiced running to Wrenfield and back in a night. I
knew the way pretty well, for I'd done it often with the same
lively cousin--and in the small hours, too. The distance is over
ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours.
But my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next
morning. . .
"Well, then came the report about the Italian's threats, and I
saw I must act at once. . . I meant to break into the old man's
room, shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I
thought I could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that
there'd been a consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do
it for me! Good Lord, if that could only be! . . ."
Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not
seem to have cooled the room.
"Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I
came up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that
he was to try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just
telephoned her--all Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor
himself had picked out the melon, one of the little French ones
that are hardly bigger than a large tomato--and the patient was
to eat it at his breakfast the next morning.
"In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But
I knew the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be
brought in over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there
were only one melon in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was
the one I wanted. Melons didn't lie around loose in that house--
every one was known, numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset
by the dread that the servants would eat them, and he took a
hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure
of my melon . . . and poisoning was much safer than shooting. It
would have been the devil and all to get into the old man's
bedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to
break into the pantry without much trouble.
"It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined
quietly, and sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual
headaches, and went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I
slipped out. I had got together a sort of disguise--red beard
and queer-looking ulster. I shoved them into a bag, and went
round to the garage. There was no one there but a half-drunken
machinist whom I'd never seen before. That served me, too. They
were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn't even
bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easygoing
place. . .
"Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon
as I was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to
strike a sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second
and got into the beard and ulster. Then away again--it was just
eleven-thirty when I got to Wrenfield.
"I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and
slipped through the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at
me through the dark--I remember thinking that they knew what I
wanted to know. . . . By the stable a dog came out growling--but
he nosed me out, jumped on me, and went back. . . The house was
as dark as the grave. I knew everybody went to bed by ten. But
there might be a prowling servant--the kitchen-maid might have
come down to let in her Italian. I had to risk that, of course.
I crept around by the back door and hid in the shrubbery. Then I
listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed over to the
house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a
little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap I
groped my way to the ice-box, opened it--and there was the little
French melon . . . only one.
"I stopped to listen--I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my
bottle of stuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the
melon a hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes--at
ten minutes to twelve I was back in the car. I got out of the
lane as quietly as I could, struck a back road that skirted the
village, and let the car out as soon as I was beyond the last
houses. I only stopped once on the way in, to drop the beard and
ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to weight them with
and they went down plump, like a dead body--and at two o'clock I
was back at my desk."
Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his
listener; but Denver's face remained inscrutable.
At length he said: "Why did you want to tell me this?"
The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he
had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if
his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry
much less weight with Denver. Both were successful men, and
success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice
cast about for another reason.
"Why, I--the thing haunts me . . . remorse, I suppose you'd call
it. . ."
Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe.
"Remorse? Bosh!" he said energetically.
Granice's heart sank. "You don't believe in--REMORSE?"
"Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your
talking of remorse proves to me that you're not the man to have
planned and put through such a job."
Granice groaned. "Well--I lied to you about remorse. I've never
felt any."
Denver's lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled
pipe. "What was your motive, then? You must have had one."
"I'll tell you--" And Granice began again to rehearse the story
of his failure, of his loathing for life. "Don't say you don't
believe me this time . . . that this isn't a real reason!" he
stammered out piteously as he ended.
Denver meditated. "No, I won't say that. I've seen too many
queer things. There's always a reason for wanting to get out of
life--the wonder is that we find so many for staying in!"
Granice's heart grew light. "Then you DO believe me?" he
faltered.
"Believe that you're sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven't
the nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes--that's easy enough, too.
But all that doesn't make you a murderer--though I don't say it
proves you could never have been one."
"I HAVE been one, Denver--I swear to you."
"Perhaps." He meditated. "Just tell me one or two things."
"Oh, go ahead. You won't stump me!" Granice heard himself say
with a laugh.
"Well--how did you make all those trial trips without exciting
your sister's curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at
that time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn't the
change in your ways surprise her?"
"No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several
visits in the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and
was only in town for a night or two before--before I did the job."
"And that night she went to bed early with a headache?"
"Yes--blinding. She didn't know anything when she had that kind.
And her room was at the back of the flat."
Denver again meditated. "And when you got back--she didn't hear
you? You got in without her knowing it?"
"Yes. I went straight to my work--took it up at the word where
I'd left off--WHY, DENVER, DON'T YOU REMEMBER?" Granice suddenly,
passionately interjected.
"Remember--?"
"Yes; how you found me--when you looked in that morning, between
two and three . . . your usual hour . . .?"
"Yes," the editor nodded.
Granice gave a short laugh. "In my old coat--with my pipe:
looked as if I'd been working all night, didn't I? Well, I
hadn't been in my chair ten minutes!"
Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. "I didn't
know whether YOU remembered that."
"What?"
"My coming in that particular night--or morning."
Granice swung round in his chair. "Why, man alive! That's why
I'm here now. Because it was you who spoke for me at the
inquest, when they looked round to see what all the old man's
heirs had been doing that night--you who testified to having
dropped in and found me at my desk as usual. . . . I thought
THAT would appeal to your journalistic sense if nothing else
would!"
Denver smiled. "Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible
enough--and the idea's picturesque, I grant you: asking the man
who proved your alibi to establish your guilt."
"That's it--that's it!" Granice's laugh had a ring of triumph.
"Well, but how about the other chap's testimony--I mean that
young doctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don't you remember
my testifying that I'd met him at the elevated station, and told
him I was on my way to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying:
'All right; you'll find him in. I passed the house two hours
ago, and saw his shadow against the blind, as usual.' And the
lady with the toothache in the flat across the way: she
corroborated his statement, you remember."
"Yes; I remember."
Well, then?"
"Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin
with old coats and a cushion--something to cast a shadow on the
blind. All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in
the small hours--I counted on that, and knew you'd take any vague
outline as mine."
"Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw
the shadow move--you remember she said she saw you sink forward,
as if you'd fallen asleep."
"Yes; and she was right. It DID move. I suppose some extraheavy
dray must have jolted by the flimsy building--at any rate,
something gave my mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had
sunk forward, half over the table."
There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a
throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at
any rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism
gave a deeper insight than the law into the fantastic
possibilities of life, prepared one better to allow for the
incalculableness of human impulses.
"Well?" Granice faltered out.
Denver stood up with a shrug. "Look here, man--what's wrong with
you? Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I'd like
to take you to see a chap I know--an ex-prize-fighter--who's a
wonder at pulling fellows in your state out of their hole--"
"Oh, oh--" Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men
eyed each other. "You don't believe me, then?"
"This yarn--how can I? There wasn't a flaw in your alibi."
"But haven't I filled it full of them now?"
Denver shook his head. "I might think so if I hadn't happened to
know that you WANTED to. There's the hitch, don't you see?"
Granice groaned. "No, I didn't. You mean my wanting to be found
guilty--?"
"Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might
have been worth looking into. As it is, a child could have
invented it. It doesn't do much credit to your ingenuity."
Granice turned sullenly toward the door. What was the use of
arguing? But on the threshold a sudden impulse drew him back.
"Look here, Denver--I daresay you're right. But will you do just
one thing to prove it? Put my statement in the Investigator,
just as I've made it. Ridicule it as much as you like. Only
give the other fellows a chance at it--men who don't know
anything about me. Set them talking and looking about. I don't
care a damn whether YOU believe me--what I want is to convince
the Grand Jury! I oughtn't to have come to a man who knows me--
your cursed incredulity is infectious. I don't put my case well,
because I know in advance it's discredited, and I almost end by
not believing it myself. That's why I can't convince YOU. It's
a vicious circle." He laid a hand on Denver's arm. "Send a
stenographer, and put my statement in the paper.
But Denver did not warm to the idea. "My dear fellow, you seem
to forget that all the evidence was pretty thoroughly sifted at
the time, every possible clue followed up. The public would have
been ready enough then to believe that you murdered old Lenman--
you or anybody else. All they wanted was a murderer--the most
improbable would have served. But your alibi was too
confoundedly complete. And nothing you've told me has shaken
it." Denver laid his cool hand over the other's burning fingers.
"Look here, old fellow, go home and work up a better case--then
come in and submit it to the Investigator."
IV
The perspiration was rolling off Granice's forehead. Every few
minutes he had to draw out his handkerchief and wipe the moisture
from his haggard face.
For an hour and a half he had been talking steadily, putting his
case to the District Attorney. Luckily he had a speaking
acquaintance with Allonby, and had obtained, without much
difficulty, a private audience on the very day after his talk
with Robert Denver. In the interval between he had hurried home,
got out of his evening clothes, and gone forth again at once into
the dreary dawn. His fear of Ascham and the alienist made it
impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And it seemed to him
that the only way of averting that hideous peril was by
establishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his
guilt. Even if he had not been so incurably sick of life, the
electric chair seemed now the only alternative to the straitjacket.
As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney
glance at his watch. The gesture was significant, and Granice
lifted an appealing hand. "I don't expect you to believe me now--
but can't you put me under arrest, and have the thing looked into?"
Allonby smiled faintly under his heavy grayish moustache. He had
a ruddy face, full and jovial, in which his keen professional
eyes seemed to keep watch over impulses not strictly
professional.
"Well, I don't know that we need lock you up just yet. But of
course I'm bound to look into your statement--"
Granice rose with an exquisite sense of relief. Surely Allonby
wouldn't have said that if he hadn't believed him!
"That's all right. Then I needn't detain you. I can be found at
any time at my apartment." He gave the address.
The District Attorney smiled again, more openly. "What do you
say to leaving it for an hour or two this evening? I'm giving a
little supper at Rector's--quiet, little affair, you understand:
just Miss Melrose--I think you know her--and a friend or two; and
if you'll join us. . ."
Granice stumbled out of the office without knowing what reply he
had made.
He waited for four days--four days of concentrated horror.
During the first twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham's alienist
dogged him; and as that subsided, it was replaced by the
exasperating sense that his avowal had made no impression on the
District Attorney. Evidently, if he had been going to look into
the case, Allonby would have been heard from before now. . . .
And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearly enough how
little the story had impressed him!
Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to
inculpate himself. He was chained to life--a "prisoner of
consciousness." Where was it he had read the phrase? Well, he
was learning what it meant. In the glaring night-hours, when his
brain seemed ablaze, he was visited by a sense of his fixed
identity, of his irreducible, inexpugnable SELFNESS, keener, more
insidious, more unescapable, than any sensation he had ever
known. He had not guessed that the mind was capable of such
intricacies of self-realization, of penetrating so deep into its
own dark windings. Often he woke from his brief snatches of
sleep with the feeling that something material was clinging to
him, was on his hands and face, and in his throat--and as his
brain cleared he understood that it was the sense of his own
loathed personality that stuck to him like some thick viscous
substance.
Then, in the first morning hours, he would rise and look out of
his window at the awakening activities of the street--at the
street-cleaners, the ash-cart drivers, and the other dingy
workers flitting hurriedly by through the sallow winter light.
Oh, to be one of them--any of them--to take his chance in any of
their skins! They were the toilers--the men whose lot was
pitied--the victims wept over and ranted about by altruists and
economists; and how gladly he would have taken up the load of any
one of them, if only he might have shaken off his own! But, no--
the iron circle of consciousness held them too: each one was
hand-cuffed to his own hideous ego. Why wish to be any one man
rather than another? The only absolute good was not to be . . .
And Flint, coming in to draw his bath, would ask if he preferred
his eggs scrambled or poached that morning?
On the fifth day he wrote a long urgent letter to Allonby; and
for the succeeding two days he had the occupation of waiting for
an answer. He hardly stirred from his rooms, in his fear of
missing the letter by a moment; but would the District Attorney
write, or send a representative: a policeman, a "secret agent,"
or some other mysterious emissary of the law?
On the third morning Flint, stepping softly--as if, confound it!
his master were ill--entered the library where Granice sat behind
an unread newspaper, and proferred a card on a tray.
Granice read the name--J. B. Hewson--and underneath, in pencil,
"From the District Attorney's office." He started up with a
thumping heart, and signed an assent to the servant.
Mr. Hewson was a slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty--
the kind of man of whom one is sure to see a specimen in any
crowd. "Just the type of the successful detective," Granice
reflected as he shook hands with his visitor.
And it was in that character that Mr. Hewson briefly introduced
himself. He had been sent by the District Attorney to have "a
quiet talk" with Mr. Granice--to ask him to repeat the statement
he had made about the Lenman murder.
His manner was so quiet, so reasonable and receptive, that
Granice's self-confidence returned. Here was a sensible man--a
man who knew his business--it would be easy enough to make HIM
see through that ridiculous alibi! Granice offered Mr. Hewson a
cigar, and lighting one himself--to prove his coolness--began
again to tell his story.
He was conscious, as he proceeded, of telling it better than ever
before. Practice helped, no doubt; and his listener's detached,
impartial attitude helped still more. He could see that Hewson,
at least, had not decided in advance to disbelieve him, and the
sense of being trusted made him more lucid and more consecutive.
Yes, this time his words would certainly carry conviction. . .
V
Despairingly, Granice gazed up and down the shabby street.
Beside him stood a young man with bright prominent eyes, a smooth
but not too smoothly-shaven face, and an Irish smile. The young
man's nimble glance followed Granice's.
"Sure of the number, are you?" he asked briskly.
"Oh, yes--it was 104."
"Well, then, the new building has swallowed it up--that's
certain."
He tilted his head back and surveyed the half-finished front of a
brick and limestone flat-house that reared its flimsy elegance
above a row of tottering tenements and stables.
"Dead sure?" he repeated.
"Yes," said Granice, discouraged. "And even if I hadn't been, I
know the garage was just opposite Leffler's over there." He
pointed across the street to a tumble-down stable with a blotched
sign on which the words "Livery and Boarding" were still faintly
discernible.
The young man dashed across to the opposite pavement. "Well,
that's something--may get a clue there. Leffler's--same name
there, anyhow. You remember that name?"
"Yes--distinctly."
Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted the
interest of the Explorer's "smartest" reporter. If there were
moments when he hardly believed his own story, there were others
when it seemed impossible that every one should not believe it;
and young Peter McCarren, peering, listening, questioning,
jotting down notes, inspired him with an exquisite sense of
security. McCarren had fastened on the case at once, "like a
leech," as he phrased it--jumped at it, thrilled to it, and
settled down to "draw the last drop of fact from it, and had not
let go till he had." No one else had treated Granice in that
way--even Allonby's detective had not taken a single note. And
though a week had elapsed since the visit of that authorized
official, nothing had been heard from the District Attorney's
office: Allonby had apparently dropped the matter again. But
McCarren wasn't going to drop it--not he! He positively hung on
Granice's footsteps. They had spent the greater part of the
previous day together, and now they were off again, running down
clues.
But at Leffler's they got none, after all. Leffler's was no
longer a stable. It was condemned to demolition, and in the
respite between sentence and execution it had become a vague
place of storage, a hospital for broken-down carriages and carts,
presided over by a blear-eyed old woman who knew nothing of
Flood's garage across the way--did not even remember what had
stood there before the new flat-house began to rise.
"Well--we may run Leffler down somewhere; I've seen harder jobs
done," said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name.
As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less
sanguine tone: "I'd undertake now to put the thing through if you
could only put me on the track of that cyanide."
Granice's heart sank. Yes--there was the weak spot; he had felt
it from the first! But he still hoped to convince McCarren that
his case was strong enough without it; and he urged the reporter
to come back to his rooms and sum up the facts with him again.
"Sorry, Mr. Granice, but I'm due at the office now. Besides,
it'd be no use till I get some fresh stuff to work on. Suppose I
call you up tomorrow or next day?"
He plunged into a trolley and left Granice gazing desolately
after him.
Two days later he reappeared at the apartment, a shade less
jaunty in demeanor.
"Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you,
as the bard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler
either. And you say you bought the motor through Flood, and sold
it through him, too?"
"Yes," said Granice wearily.
"Who bought it, do you know?"
Granice wrinkled his brows. "Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I
sold it back to him three months later."
"Flood? The devil! And I've ransacked the town for Flood. That
kind of business disappears as if the earth had swallowed it."
Granice, discouraged, kept silence.
"That brings us back to the poison," McCarren continued, his
note-book out. "Just go over that again, will you?"
And Granice went over it again. It had all been so simple at the
time--and he had been so clever in covering up his traces! As
soon as he decided on poison he looked about for an acquaintance
who manufactured chemicals; and there was Jim Dawes, a Harvard
classmate, in the dyeing business--just the man. But at the last
moment it occurred to him that suspicion might turn toward so
obvious an opportunity, and he decided on a more tortuous course.
Another friend, Carrick Venn, a student of medicine whom
irremediable ill-health had kept from the practice of his
profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for
the exercise of which he had set up a simple laboratory. Granice
had the habit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him on Sunday
afternoons, and the friends generally sat in Venn's work-shop, at
the back of the old family house in Stuyvesant Square. Off this
work-shop was the cupboard of supplies, with its row of deadly
bottles. Carrick Venn was an original, a man of restless curious
tastes, and his place, on a Sunday, was often full of visitors: a
cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers, painters,
experimenters in divers forms of expression. Coming and going
among so many, it was easy enough to pass unperceived; and one
afternoon Granice, arriving before Venn had returned home, found
himself alone in the work-shop, and quickly slipping into the
cupboard, transferred the drug to his pocket.
But that had happened ten years ago; and Venn, poor fellow, was
long since dead of his dragging ailment. His old father was
dead, too, the house in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a
boarding-house, and the shifting life of New York had passed its
rapid sponge over every trace of their obscure little history.
Even the optimistic McCarren seemed to acknowledge the
hopelessness of seeking for proof in that direction.
"And there's the third door slammed in our faces." He shut his
note-book, and throwing back his head, rested his bright
inquisitive eyes on Granice's furrowed face.
"Look here, Mr. Granice--you see the weak spot, don't you?"
The other made a despairing motion. "I see so many!"
"Yes: but the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do
you want this thing known? Why do you want to put your head into
the noose?"
Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of
his quick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful
animal life would believe in the craving for death as a
sufficient motive; and Granice racked his brain for one more
convincing. But suddenly he saw the reporter's face soften, and
melt to a naive sentimentalism.
"Mr. Granice--has the memory of it always haunted you?"
Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. "That's
it--the memory of it . . . always . . ."
McCarren nodded vehemently. "Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn't
let you sleep? The time came when you HAD to make a clean breast
of it?"
"I had to. Can't you understand?"
The reporter struck his fist on the table. "God, sir! I don't
suppose there's a human being with a drop of warm blood in him
that can't picture the deadly horrors of remorse--"
The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him
for the word. What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a
conceivable motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most
adequate; and, as he said, once one could find a convincing
motive, the difficulties of the case became so many incentives to
effort.
"Remorse--REMORSE," he repeated, rolling the word under his
tongue with an accent that was a clue to the psychology of the
popular drama; and Granice, perversely, said to himself: "If I
could only have struck that note I should have been running in
six theatres at once."
He saw that from that moment McCarren's professional zeal would
be fanned by emotional curiosity; and he profited by the fact to
propose that they should dine together, and go on afterward to
some music-hall or theatre. It was becoming necessary to Granice
to feel himself an object of pre-occupation, to find himself in
another mind. He took a kind of gray penumbral pleasure in
riveting McCarren's attention on his case; and to feign the
grimaces of moral anguish became a passionately engrossing game.
He had not entered a theatre for months; but he sat out the
meaningless performance in rigid tolerance, sustained by the
sense of the reporter's observation.
Between the acts, McCarren amused him with anecdotes about the
audience: he knew every one by sight, and could lift the curtain
from every physiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had
lost all interest in his kind, but he knew that he was himself
the real centre of McCarren's attention, and that every word the
latter spoke had an indirect bearing on his own problem.
"See that fellow over there--the little dried-up man in the third
row, pulling his moustache? HIS memoirs would be worth
publishing," McCarren said suddenly in the last entr'acte.
Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from
Allonby's office. For a moment he had the thrilling sense that
he was being shadowed.
"Caesar, if HE could talk--!" McCarren continued. "Know who he
is, of course? Dr. John B. Stell, the biggest alienist in the
country--"
Granice, with a start, bent again between the heads in front of
him. "THAT man--the fourth from the aisle? You're mistaken.
That's not Dr. Stell."
McCarren laughed. "Well, I guess I've been in court enough to
know Stell when I see him. He testifies in nearly all the big
cases where they plead insanity."
A cold shiver ran down Granice's spine, but he repeated
obstinately: "That's not Dr. Stell."
"Not Stell? Why, man, I KNOW him. Look--here he comes. If it
isn't Stell, he won't speak to me."
The little dried-up man was moving slowly up the aisle. As he
neared McCarren he made a slight gesture of recognition.
"How'do, Doctor Stell? Pretty slim show, ain't it?" the reporter
cheerfully flung out at him. And Mr. J. B. Hewson, with a nod of
amicable assent, passed on.
Granice sat benumbed. He knew he had not been mistaken--the man
who had just passed was the same man whom Allonby had sent to see
him: a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had
thought him insane, like the others--had regarded his confession
as the maundering of a maniac. The discovery froze Granice with
horror--he seemed to see the mad-house gaping for him.
"Isn't there a man a good deal like him--a detective named J. B.
Hewson?"
But he knew in advance what McCarren's answer would be. "Hewson?
J. B. Hewson? Never heard of him. But that was J. B. Stell fast
enough--I guess he can be trusted to know himself, and you saw he
answered to his name."
VI
Some days passed before Granice could obtain a word with the
District Attorney: he began to think that Allonby avoided him.
But when they were face to face Allonby's jovial countenance
showed no sign of embarrassment. He waved his visitor to a
chair, and leaned across his desk with the encouraging smile of a
consulting physician.
Granice broke out at once: "That detective you sent me the other
day--"
Allonby raised a deprecating hand.
"--I know: it was Stell the alienist. Why did you do that,
Allonby?"
The other's face did not lose its composure. "Because I looked
up your story first--and there's nothing in it."
"Nothing in it?" Granice furiously interposed.
"Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don't you bring
me proofs? I know you've been talking to Peter Ascham, and to
Denver, and to that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have
any of them been able to make out a case for you? No. Well,
what am I to do?"
Granice's lips began to tremble. "Why did you play me that
trick?"
"About Stell? I had to, my dear fellow: it's part of my
business. Stell IS a detective, if you come to that--every
doctor is."
The trembling of Granice's lips increased, communicating itself
in a long quiver to his facial muscles. He forced a laugh
through his dry throat. "Well--and what did he detect?"
"In you? Oh, he thinks it's overwork--overwork and too much
smoking. If you look in on him some day at his office he'll show
you the record of hundreds of cases like yours, and advise you
what treatment to follow. It's one of the commonest forms of
hallucination. Have a cigar, all the same."
"But, Allonby, I killed that man!"
The District Attorney's large hand, outstretched on his desk, had
an almost imperceptible gesture, and a moment later, as if an
answer to the call of an electric bell, a clerk looked in from
the outer office.
"Sorry, my dear fellow--lot of people waiting. Drop in on Stell
some morning," Allonby said, shaking hands.
McCarren had to own himself beaten: there was absolutely no flaw
in the alibi. And since his duty to his journal obviously
forbade his wasting time on insoluble mysteries, he ceased to
frequent Granice, who dropped back into a deeper isolation. For
a day or two after his visit to Allonby he continued to live in
dread of Dr. Stell. Why might not Allonby have deceived him as
to the alienist's diagnosis? What if he were really being
shadowed, not by a police agent but by a mad-doctor? To have the
truth out, he suddenly determined to call on Dr. Stell.
The physician received him kindly, and reverted without
embarrassment to the conditions of their previous meeting. "We
have to do that occasionally, Mr. Granice; it's one of our
methods. And you had given Allonby a fright."
Granice was silent. He would have liked to reaffirm his guilt,
to produce the fresh arguments which had occurred to him since
his last talk with the physician; but he feared his eagerness
might be taken for a symptom of derangement, and he affected to
smile away Dr. Stell's allusion.
"You think, then, it's a case of brain-fag--nothing more?"
"Nothing more. And I should advise you to knock off tobacco.
You smoke a good deal, don't you?"
He developed his treatment, recommending massage, gymnastics,
travel, or any form of diversion that did not--that in short--
Granice interrupted him impatiently. "Oh, I loathe all that--and
I'm sick of travelling."
"H'm. Then some larger interest--politics, reform, philanthropy?
Something to take you out of yourself."
"Yes. I understand," said Granice wearily.
"Above all, don't lose heart. I see hundreds of cases like
yours," the doctor added cheerfully from the threshold.
On the doorstep Granice stood still and laughed. Hundreds of
cases like his--the case of a man who had committed a murder, who
confessed his guilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there
had never been a case like it in the world. What a good figure
Stell would have made in a play: the great alienist who couldn't
read a man's mind any better than that!
Granice saw huge comic opportunities in the type.
But as he walked away, his fears dispelled, the sense of
listlessness returned on him. For the first time since his
avowal to Peter Ascham he found himself without an occupation,
and understood that he had been carried through the past weeks
only by the necessity of constant action. Now his life had once
more become a stagnant backwater, and as he stood on the street
corner watching the tides of traffic sweep by, he asked himself
despairingly how much longer he could endure to float about in
the sluggish circle of his consciousness.
The thought of self-destruction recurred to him; but again his
flesh recoiled. He yearned for death from other hands, but he
could never take it from his own. And, aside from his
insuperable physical reluctance, another motive restrained him.
He was possessed by the dogged desire to establish the truth of
his story. He refused to be swept aside as an irresponsible
dreamer--even if he had to kill himself in the end, he would not
do so before proving to society that he had deserved death from it.
He began to write long letters to the papers; but after the first
had been published and commented on, public curiosity was quelled
by a brief statement from the District Attorney's office, and the
rest of his communications remained unprinted. Ascham came to
see him, and begged him to travel. Robert Denver dropped in, and
tried to joke him out of his delusion; till Granice, mistrustful
of their motives, began to dread the reappearance of Dr. Stell,
and set a guard on his lips. But the words he kept back
engendered others and still others in his brain. His inner self
became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent long hours
reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime,
which he constantly retouched and developed. Then gradually his
activity languished under the lack of an audience, the sense of
being buried beneath deepening drifts of indifference. In a
passion of resentment he swore that he would prove himself a
murderer, even if he had to commit another crime to do it; and
for a sleepless night or two the thought flamed red on his
darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determining impulse
was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to choose his victim. . .
So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to impose
the truth of his story. As fast as one channel closed on him he
tried to pierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity.
But every issue seemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued
together to cheat one man of the right to die.
Thus viewed, the situation became so monstrous that he lost his
last shred of self-restraint in contemplating it. What if he
were really the victim of some mocking experiment, the centre of
a ring of holiday-makers jeering at a poor creature in its blind
dashes against the solid walls of consciousness? But, no--men
were not so uniformly cruel: there were flaws in the close
surface of their indifference, cracks of weakness and pity here
and there. . .
Granice began to think that his mistake lay in having appealed to
persons more or less familiar with his past, and to whom the
visible conformities of his life seemed a final disproof of its
one fierce secret deviation. The general tendency was to take
for the whole of life the slit seen between the blinders of
habit: and in his walk down that narrow vista Granice cut a
correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole
orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to
convince a chance idler in the street than the trained
intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea
shot up in him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of
thought, and he began to walk the streets, and to frequent outof-
the-way chop-houses and bars in his search for the impartial
stranger to whom he should disclose himself.
At first every face looked encouragement; but at the crucial
moment he always held back. So much was at stake, and it was so
essential that his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded
stupidity, timidity, intolerance. The imaginative eye, the
furrowed brow, were what he sought. He must reveal himself only
to a heart versed in the tortuous motions of the human will; and
he began to hate the dull benevolence of the average face. Once
or twice, obscurely, allusively, he made a beginning--once
sitting down at a man's side in a basement chop-house, another
day approaching a lounger on an east-side wharf. But in both
cases the premonition of failure checked him on the brink of
avowal. His dread of being taken for a man in the clutch of a
fixed idea gave him an unnatural keenness in reading the
expression of his interlocutors, and he had provided himself in
advance with a series of verbal alternatives, trap-doors of
evasion from the first dart of ridicule or suspicion.
He passed the greater part of the day in the streets, coming home
at irregular hours, dreading the silence and orderliness of his
apartment, and the critical scrutiny of Flint. His real life was
spent in a world so remote from this familiar setting that he
sometimes had the mysterious sense of a living metempsychosis, a
furtive passage from one identity to another--yet the other as
unescapably himself!
One humiliation he was spared: the desire to live never revived
in him. Not for a moment was he tempted to a shabby pact with
existing conditions. He wanted to die, wanted it with the fixed
unwavering desire which alone attains its end. And still the end
eluded him! It would not always, of course--he had full faith in
the dark star of his destiny. And he could prove it best by
repeating his story, persistently and indefatigably, pouring it
into indifferent ears, hammering it into dull brains, till at
last it kindled a spark, and some one of the careless millions
paused, listened, believed. . .
It was a mild March day, and he had been loitering on the westside
docks, looking at faces. He was becoming an expert in
physiognomies: his eagerness no longer made rash darts and
awkward recoils. He knew now the face he needed, as clearly as
if it had come to him in a vision; and not till he found it would
he speak. As he walked eastward through the shabby reeking
streets he had a premonition that he should find it that morning.
Perhaps it was the promise of spring in the air--certainly he
felt calmer than for many days. . .
He turned into Washington Square, struck across it obliquely, and
walked up University Place. Its heterogeneous passers always
allured him--they were less hurried than in Broadway, less
enclosed and classified than in Fifth Avenue. He walked slowly,
watching for his face.
At Union Square he felt a sudden relapse into discouragement,
like a votary who has watched too long for a sign from the altar.
Perhaps, after all, he should never find his face. . . The air
was languid, and he felt tired. He walked between the bald
grass-plots and the twisted trees, making for an empty seat.
Presently he passed a bench on which a girl sat alone, and
something as definite as the twitch of a cord made him stop
before her. He had never dreamed of telling his story to a girl,
had hardly looked at the women's faces as they passed. His case
was man's work: how could a woman help him? But this girl's face
was extraordinary--quiet and wide as a clear evening sky. It
suggested a hundred images of space, distance, mystery, like
ships he had seen, as a boy, quietly berthed by a familiar wharf,
but with the breath of far seas and strange harbours in their
shrouds. . . Certainly this girl would understand. He went up
to her quietly, lifting his hat, observing the forms--wishing her
to see at once that he was "a gentleman."
"I am a stranger to you," he began, sitting down beside her, "but
your face is so extremely intelligent that I feel. . . I feel it
is the face I've waited for . . . looked for everywhere; and I
want to tell you--"
The girl's eyes widened: she rose to her feet. She was escaping
him!
In his dismay he ran a few steps after her, and caught her
roughly by the arm.
"Here--wait--listen! Oh, don't scream, you fool!" he shouted
out.
He felt a hand on his own arm; turned and confronted a policeman.
Instantly he understood that he was being arrested, and something
hard within him was loosened and ran to tears.
"Ah, you know--you KNOW I'm guilty!"
He was conscious that a crowd was forming, and that the girl's
frightened face had disappeared. But what did he care about her
face? It was the policeman who had really understood him. He
turned and followed, the crowd at his heels. . .
VII
In the charming place in which he found himself there were so
many sympathetic faces that he felt more than ever convinced of
the certainty of making himself heard.
It was a bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been
arrested for murder; but Ascham, who had come to him at once,
explained that he needed rest, and the time to "review" his
statements; it appeared that reiteration had made them a little
confused and contradictory. To this end he had willingly
acquiesced in his removal to a large quiet establishment, with an
open space and trees about it, where he had found a number of
intelligent companions, some, like himself, engaged in preparing
or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready to lend
an interested ear to his own recital.
For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil
current of this existence; but although his auditors gave him for
the most part an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the
length of really brilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually
felt a recurrence of his old doubts. Either his hearers were not
sincere, or else they had less power to aid him than they
boasted. His interminable conferences resulted in nothing, and
as the benefit of the long rest made itself felt, it produced an
increased mental lucidity which rendered inaction more and more
unbearable. At length he discovered that on certain days
visitors from the outer world were admitted to his retreat; and
he wrote out long and logically constructed relations of his
crime, and furtively slipped them into the hands of these
messengers of hope.
This occupation gave him a fresh lease of patience, and he now
lived only to watch for the visitors' days, and scan the faces
that swept by him like stars seen and lost in the rifts of a
hurrying sky.
Mostly, these faces were strange and less intelligent than those
of his companions. But they represented his last means of access
to the world, a kind of subterranean channel on which he could
set his "statements" afloat, like paper boats which the
mysterious current might sweep out into the open seas of life.
One day, however, his attention was arrested by a familiar
contour, a pair of bright prominent eyes, and a chin
insufficiently shaved. He sprang up and stood in the path of
Peter McCarren.
The journalist looked at him doubtfully, then held out his hand
with a startled deprecating, "WHY--?"
"You didn't know me? I'm so changed?" Granice faltered, feeling
the rebound of the other's wonder.
"Why, no; but you're looking quieter--smoothed out," McCarren
smiled.
"Yes: that's what I'm here for--to rest. And I've taken the
opportunity to write out a clearer statement--"
Granice's hand shook so that he could hardly draw the folded
paper from his pocket. As he did so he noticed that the reporter
was accompanied by a tall man with grave compassionate eyes. It
came to Granice in a wild thrill of conviction that this was the
face he had waited for. . .
"Perhaps your friend--he IS your friend?--would glance over it--
or I could put the case in a few words if you have time?"
Granice's voice shook like his hand. If this chance escaped him
he felt that his last hope was gone. McCarren and the stranger
looked at each other, and the former glanced at his watch.
"I'm sorry we can't stay and talk it over now, Mr. Granice; but
my friend has an engagement, and we're rather pressed--"
Granice continued to proffer the paper. "I'm sorry--I think I
could have explained. But you'll take this, at any rate?"
The stranger looked at him gently. "Certainly--I'll take it."
He had his hand out. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye," Granice echoed.
He stood watching the two men move away from him through the long
light hall; and as he watched them a tear ran down his face. But
as soon as they were out of sight he turned and walked hastily
toward his room, beginning to hope again, already planning a new
statement.
Outside the building the two men stood still, and the
journalist's companion looked up curiously at the long monotonous
rows of barred windows.
"So that was Granice?"
"Yes--that was Granice, poor devil," said McCarren.
"Strange case! I suppose there's never been one just like it?
He's still absolutely convinced that he committed that murder?"
"Absolutely. Yes."
The stranger reflected. "And there was no conceivable ground for
the idea? No one could make out how it started? A quiet
conventional sort of fellow like that--where do you suppose he
got such a delusion? Did you ever get the least clue to it?"
McCarren stood still, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked
up in contemplation of the barred windows. Then he turned his
bright hard gaze on his companion.
"That was the queer part of it. I've never spoken of it--but I
DID get a clue."
"By Jove! That's interesting. What was it?"
McCarren formed his red lips into a whistle. "Why--that it
wasn't a delusion."
He produced his effect--the other turned on him with a pallid
stare.
"He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the
merest accident, when I'd pretty nearly chucked the whole job."
"He murdered him--murdered his cousin?"
"Sure as you live. Only don't split on me. It's about the
queerest business I ever ran into. . . DO ABOUT IT? Why, what
was I to do? I couldn't hang the poor devil, could I? Lord, but
I was glad when they collared him, and had him stowed away safe
in there!"
The tall man listened with a grave face, grasping Granice's
statement in his hand.
"Here--take this; it makes me sick," he said abruptly, thrusting
the paper at the reporter; and the two men turned and walked in
silence to the gates.
The End
THE DILETTANTE
as first published in
Harper's Monthly, December 1903
It was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found
himself advancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the
club, turned as usual into Mrs. Vervain's street.
The "as usual" was his own qualification of the act; a convenient
way of bridging the interval--in days and other sequences--that
lay between this visit and the last. It was characteristic of
him that he instinctively excluded his call two days earlier,
with Ruth Gaynor, from the list of his visits to Mrs. Vervain:
the special conditions attending it had made it no more like a
visit to Mrs. Vervain than an engraved dinner invitation is like
a personal letter. Yet it was to talk over his call with Miss
Gaynor that he was now returning to the scene of that episode;
and it was because Mrs. Vervain could be trusted to handle the
talking over as skilfully as the interview itself that, at her
corner, he had felt the dilettante's irresistible craving to take
a last look at a work of art that was passing out of his
possession.
On the whole, he knew no one better fitted to deal with the
unexpected than Mrs. Vervain. She excelled in the rare art of
taking things for granted, and Thursdale felt a pardonable pride
in the thought that she owed her excellence to his training.
Early in his career Thursdale had made the mistake, at the outset
of his acquaintance with a lady, of telling her that he loved her
and exacting the same avowal in return. The latter part of that
episode had been like the long walk back from a picnic, when one
has to carry all the crockery one has finished using: it was the
last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumbered with
the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that the
privilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a
charming woman can accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls
of sentiment he had developed a science of evasion in which the
woman of the moment became a mere implement of the game. He owed
a great deal of delicate enjoyment to the cultivation of this
art. The perils from which it had been his refuge became naively
harmless: was it possible that he who now took his easy way along
the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw heights of
emotion? Youth is a high-colored season; but he had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had entered earlier than most
into that chiar'oscuro of sensation where every half-tone has its
value.
As a promoter of this pleasure no one he had known was comparable
to Mrs. Vervain. He had taught a good many women not to betray
their feelings, but he had never before had such fine material to
work in. She had been surprisingly crude when he first knew her;
capable of making the most awkward inferences, of plunging
through thin ice, of recklessly undressing her emotions; but she
had acquired, under the discipline of his reticences and
evasions, a skill almost equal to his own, and perhaps more
remarkable in that it involved keeping time with any tune he
played and reading at sight some uncommonly difficult passages.
It had taken Thursdale seven years to form this fine talent; but
the result justified the effort. At the crucial moment she had
been perfect: her way of greeting Miss Gaynor had made him regret
that he had announced his engagement by letter. It was an
evasion that confessed a difficulty; a deviation implying an
obstacle, where, by common consent, it was agreed to see none; it
betrayed, in short, a lack of confidence in the completeness of
his method. It had been his pride never to put himself in a
position which had to be quitted, as it were, by the back door;
but here, as he perceived, the main portals would have opened for
him of their own accord. All this, and much more, he read in the
finished naturalness with which Mrs. Vervain had met Miss Gaynor.
He had never seen a better piece of work: there was no overeagerness,
no suspicious warmth, above all (and this gave her art
the grace of a natural quality) there were none of those damnable
implications whereby a woman, in welcoming her friend's
betrothed, may keep him on pins and needles while she laps the
lady in complacency. So masterly a performance, indeed, hardly
needed the offset of Miss Gaynor's door-step words--"To be so
kind to me, how she must have liked you!"--though he caught
himself wishing it lay within the bounds of fitness to transmit
them, as a final tribute, to the one woman he knew who was
unfailingly certain to enjoy a good thing. It was perhaps the
one drawback to his new situation that it might develop good
things which it would be impossible to hand on to Margaret
Vervain.
The fact that he had made the mistake of underrating his friend's
powers, the consciousness that his writing must have betrayed his
distrust of her efficiency, seemed an added reason for turning
down her street instead of going on to the club. He would show
her that he knew how to value her; he would ask her to achieve
with him a feat infinitely rarer and more delicate than the one
he had appeared to avoid. Incidentally, he would also dispose of
the interval of time before dinner: ever since he had seen Miss
Gaynor off, an hour earlier, on her return journey to Buffalo, he
had been wondering how he should put in the rest of the
afternoon. It was absurd, how he missed the girl. . . . Yes,
that was it; the desire to talk about her was, after all, at the
bottom of his impulse to call on Mrs. Vervain! It was absurd, if
you like--but it was delightfully rejuvenating. He could recall
the time when he had been afraid of being obvious: now he felt
that this return to the primitive emotions might be as
restorative as a holiday in the Canadian woods. And it was
precisely by the girl's candor, her directness, her lack of
complications, that he was taken. The sense that she might say
something rash at any moment was positively exhilarating: if she
had thrown her arms about him at the station he would not have
given a thought to his crumpled dignity. It surprised Thursdale
to find what freshness of heart he brought to the adventure; and
though his sense of irony prevented his ascribing his intactness
to any conscious purpose, he could but rejoice in the fact that
his sentimental economies had left him such a large surplus to
draw upon.
Mrs. Vervain was at home--as usual. When one visits the cemetery
one expects to find the angel on the tombstone, and it struck
Thursdale as another proof of his friend's good taste that she
had been in no undue haste to change her habits. The whole house
appeared to count on his coming; the footman took his hat and
overcoat as naturally as though there had been no lapse in his
visits; and the drawing-room at once enveloped him in that
atmosphere of tacit intelligence which Mrs. Vervain imparted to
her very furniture.
It was a surprise that, in this general harmony of circumstances,
Mrs. Vervain should herself sound the first false note.
"You?" she exclaimed; and the book she held slipped from her
hand.
It was crude, certainly; unless it were a touch of the finest
art. The difficulty of classifying it disturbed Thursdale's
balance.
"Why not?" he said, restoring the book. "Isn't it my hour?" And
as she made no answer, he added gently, "Unless it's some one
else's?"
She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. "Mine,
merely," she said.
"I hope that doesn't mean that you're unwilling to share it?"
"With you? By no means. You're welcome to my last crust."
He looked at her reproachfully. "Do you call this the last?"
She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. "It's
a way of giving it more flavor!"
He returned the smile. "A visit to you doesn't need such
condiments."
She took this with just the right measure of retrospective
amusement.
"Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste," she
confessed.
Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him
into the imprudence of saying, "Why should you want it to be
different from what was always so perfectly right?"
She hesitated. "Doesn't the fact that it's the last constitute a
difference?"
"The last--my last visit to you?"
"Oh, metaphorically, I mean--there's a break in the continuity."
Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts
already!
"I don't recognize it," he said. "Unless you make me--" he
added, with a note that slightly stirred her attitude of languid
attention.
She turned to him with grave eyes. "You recognize no difference
whatever?"
"None--except an added link in the chain."
"An added link?"
"In having one more thing to like you for--your letting Miss
Gaynor see why I had already so many." He flattered himself that
this turn had taken the least hint of fatuity from the phrase.
Mrs. Vervain sank into her former easy pose. "Was it that you
came for?" she asked, almost gaily.
"If it is necessary to have a reason--that was one."
"To talk to me about Miss Gaynor?"
"To tell you how she talks about you."
"That will be very interesting--especially if you have seen her
since her second visit to me."
"Her second visit?" Thursdale pushed his chair back with a start
and moved to another. "She came to see you again?"
"This morning, yes--by appointment."
He continued to look at her blankly. "You sent for her?"
"I didn't have to--she wrote and asked me last night. But no
doubt you have seen her since."
Thursdale sat silent. He was trying to separate his words from
his thoughts, but they still clung together inextricably. "I saw
her off just now at the station."
"And she didn't tell you that she had been here again?"
"There was hardly time, I suppose--there were people about--" he
floundered.
"Ah, she'll write, then."
He regained his composure. "Of course she'll write: very often,
I hope. You know I'm absurdly in love," he cried audaciously.
She tilted her head back, looking up at him as he leaned against
the chimney-piece. He had leaned there so often that the
attitude touched a pulse which set up a throbbing in her throat.
"Oh, my poor Thursdale!" she murmured.
"I suppose it's rather ridiculous," he owned; and as she remained
silent, he added, with a sudden break--"Or have you another
reason for pitying me?"
Her answer was another question. "Have you been back to your
rooms since you left her?"
"Since I left her at the station? I came straight here."
"Ah, yes--you COULD: there was no reason--" Her words passed
into a silent musing.
Thursdale moved nervously nearer. "You said you had something to
tell me?"
"Perhaps I had better let her do so. There may be a letter at
your rooms."
"A letter? What do you mean? A letter from HER? What has
happened?"
His paleness shook her, and she raised a hand of reassurance.
"Nothing has happened--perhaps that is just the worst of it. You
always HATED, you know," she added incoherently, "to have things
happen: you never would let them."
"And now--?"
"Well, that was what she came here for: I supposed you had
guessed. To know if anything had happened."
"Had happened?" He gazed at her slowly. "Between you and me?"
he said with a rush of light.
The words were so much cruder than any that had ever passed
between them that the color rose to her face; but she held his
startled gaze.
"You know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to
be. Are you surprised that such an idea should occur to her?"
His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to
him.
Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: "I supposed it might have struck
you that there were times when we presented that appearance."
He made an impatient gesture. "A man's past is his own!"
"Perhaps--it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared
it. But one learns such truths only by experience; and Miss
Gaynor is naturally inexperienced."
"Of course--but--supposing her act a natural one--" he floundered
lamentably among his innuendoes--"I still don't see--how there
was anything--"
"Anything to take hold of? There wasn't--"
"Well, then--?" escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she
did not complete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh:
"She can hardly object to the existence of a mere friendship
between us!"
"But she does," said Mrs. Vervain.
Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no
trace of jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still
hear the candid ring of the girl's praise of Mrs. Vervain. If
she were such an abyss of insincerity as to dissemble distrust
under such frankness, she must at least be more subtle than to
bring her doubts to her rival for solution. The situation seemed
one through which one could no longer move in a penumbra, and he
let in a burst of light with the direct query: "Won't you explain
what you mean?"
Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong
his distress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had
taught her, it was difficult to find words robust enough to meet
his challenge. It was the first time he had ever asked her to
explain anything; and she had lived so long in dread of offering
elucidations which were not wanted, that she seemed unable to
produce one on the spot.
At last she said slowly: "She came to find out if you were really
free."
Thursdale colored again. "Free?" he stammered, with a sense of
physical disgust at contact with such crassness.
"Yes--if I had quite done with you." She smiled in recovered
security. "It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion
for definitions."
"Yes--well?" he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety.
"Well--and when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she
wanted me to define MY status--to know exactly where I had stood
all along."
Thursdale sat gazing at her intently; his hand was not yet on the
clue. "And even when you had told her that--"
"Even when I had told her that I had HAD no status--that I had
never stood anywhere, in any sense she meant," said Mrs. Vervain,
slowly--"even then she wasn't satisfied, it seems."
He uttered an uneasy exclamation. "She didn't believe you, you
mean?"
"I mean that she DID believe me: too thoroughly."
"Well, then--in God's name, what did she want?"
"Something more--those were the words she used."
"Something more? Between--between you and me? Is it a
conundrum?" He laughed awkwardly.
"Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer
forbidden to contemplate the relation of the sexes."
"So it seems!" he commented. "But since, in this case, there
wasn't any--" he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in
her gaze.
"That's just it. The unpardonable offence has been--in our not
offending."
He flung himself down despairingly. "I give it up!--What did you
tell her?" he burst out with sudden crudeness.
"The exact truth. If I had only known," she broke off with a
beseeching tenderness, "won't you believe that I would still have
lied for you?"
"Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of
us?"
"To save you--to hide you from her to the last! As I've hidden
you from myself all these years!" She stood up with a sudden
tragic import in her movement. "You believe me capable of that,
don't you? If I had only guessed--but I have never known a girl
like her; she had the truth out of me with a spring."
"The truth that you and I had never--"
"Had never--never in all these years! Oh, she knew why--she
measured us both in a flash. She didn't suspect me of having
haggled with you--her words pelted me like hail. 'He just took
what he wanted--sifted and sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt
out the gold and left a heap of cinders. And you let him--you
let yourself be cut in bits'--she mixed her metaphors a little--
'be cut in bits, and used or discarded, while all the while every
drop of blood in you belonged to him! But he's Shylock--and you
have bled to death of the pound of flesh he has cut out of you.'
But she despises me the most, you know--far the most--" Mrs.
Vervain ended.
The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room:
they seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon
intimacy, the kind of intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor
might intrude without perceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It
was as though a grand opera-singer had strained the acoustics of
a private music-room.
Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was
between them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now
that the veils of reticence and ambiguity had fallen.
His first words were characteristic. "She DOES despise me,
then?" he exclaimed.
"She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the
heart."
He was excessively pale. "Please tell me exactly what she said
of me."
"She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that
while she understands love or indifference, her eyes have never
been opened to the many intermediate shades of feeling. At any
rate, she expressed an unwillingness to be taken with
reservations--she thinks you would have loved her better if you
had loved some one else first. The point of view is original--
she insists on a man with a past!"
"Oh, a past--if she's serious--I could rake up a past!" he said
with a laugh.
"So I suggested: but she has her eyes on his particular portion
of it. She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know
what you had done to me; and before I could guess her drift I
blundered into telling her."
Thursdale drew a difficult breath. "I never supposed--your
revenge is complete," he said slowly.
He heard a little gasp in her throat. "My revenge? When I sent
for you to warn you--to save you from being surprised as I was
surprised?"
"You're very good--but it's rather late to talk of saving me."
He held out his hand in the mechanical gesture of leave-taking.
"How you must care!--for I never saw you so dull," was her
answer. "Don't you see that it's not too late for me to help
you?" And as he continued to stare, she brought out sublimely:
"Take the rest--in imagination! Let it at least be of that much
use to you. Tell her I lied to her--she's too ready to believe
it! And so, after all, in a sense, I sha'n't have been wasted."
His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave
the look back brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient
were too simple to need oblique approaches. It was extraordinary
how a few words had swept them from an atmosphere of the most
complex dissimulations to this contact of naked souls.
It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but
something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light.
He went up to his friend and took her hand.
"You would do it--you would do it!"
She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook.
"Good-by," he said, kissing it.
"Good-by? You are going--?"
"To get my letter."
"Your letter? The letter won't matter, if you will only do what
I ask."
He returned her gaze. "I might, I suppose, without being out of
character. Only, don't you see that if your plan helped me it
could only harm her?"
"Harm HER?"
"To sacrifice you wouldn't make me different. I shall go on
being what I have always been--sifting and sorting, as she calls
it. Do you want my punishment to fall on HER?"
She looked at him long and deeply. "Ah, if I had to choose
between you--!"
"You would let her take her chance? But I can't, you see.
I must take my punishment alone."
She drew her hand away, sighing. "Oh, there will be no
punishment for either of you."
"For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me."
She shook her head with a slight laugh. "There will be no
letter."
Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his
look. "No letter? You don't mean--"
"I mean that she's been with you since I saw her--she's seen you
and heard your voice. If there IS a letter, she has recalled it--
from the first station, by telegraph."
He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. "But
in the mean while I shall have read it," he said.
The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful
emptiness of the room.
The End
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND
as first published in
Atlantic Monthly, August 1904
I
"Above all," the letter ended, "don't leave Siena without seeing
Doctor Lombard's Leonardo. Lombard is a queer old Englishman, a
mystic or a madman (if the two are not synonymous), and a devout
student of the Italian Renaissance. He has lived for years in
Italy, exploring its remotest corners, and has lately picked up
an undoubted Leonardo, which came to light in a farmhouse near
Bergamo. It is believed to be one of the missing pictures
mentioned by Vasari, and is at any rate, according to the most
competent authorities, a genuine and almost untouched example of
the best period.
"Lombard is a queer stick, and jealous of showing his treasures;
but we struck up a friendship when I was working on the Sodomas
in Siena three years ago, and if you will give him the enclosed
line you may get a peep at the Leonardo. Probably not more than
a peep, though, for I hear he refuses to have it reproduced. I
want badly to use it in my monograph on the Windsor drawings, so
please see what you can do for me, and if you can't persuade him
to let you take a photograph or make a sketch, at least jot down
a detailed description of the picture and get from him all the
facts you can. I hear that the French and Italian governments
have offered him a large advance on his purchase, but that he
refuses to sell at any price, though he certainly can't afford
such luxuries; in fact, I don't see where he got enough money to
buy the picture. He lives in the Via Papa Giulio."
Wyant sat at the table d'hote of his hotel, re-reading his
friend's letter over a late luncheon. He had been five days in
Siena without having found time to call on Doctor Lombard; not
from any indifference to the opportunity presented, but because
it was his first visit to the strange red city and he was still
under the spell of its more conspicuous wonders--the brick
palaces flinging out their wrought-iron torch-holders with a
gesture of arrogant suzerainty; the great council-chamber
emblazoned with civic allegories; the pageant of Pope Julius on
the Library walls; the Sodomas smiling balefully through the dusk
of mouldering chapels--and it was only when his first hunger was
appeased that he remembered that one course in the banquet was
still untasted.
He put the letter in his pocket and turned to leave the room,
with a nod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man
with lustrous eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of
the table, perusing the Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman,
his daily vis-a-vis, returned the nod with a Latin eloquence of
gesture, and Wyant passed on to the ante-chamber, where he paused
to light a cigarette. He was just restoring the case to his
pocket when he heard a hurried step behind him, and the lustrouseyed
young man advanced through the glass doors of the diningroom.
"Pardon me, sir," he said in measured English, and with an
intonation of exquisite politeness; "you have let this letter
fall."
Wyant, recognizing his friend's note of introduction to Doctor
Lombard, took it with a word of thanks, and was about to turn
away when he perceived that the eyes of his fellow diner remained
fixed on him with a gaze of melancholy interrogation.
"Again pardon me," the young man at length ventured, "but are you
by chance the friend of the illustrious Doctor Lombard?"
"No," returned Wyant, with the instinctive Anglo-Saxon distrust
of foreign advances. Then, fearing to appear rude, he said with
a guarded politeness: "Perhaps, by the way, you can tell me the
number of his house. I see it is not given here."
The young man brightened perceptibly. "The number of the house
is thirteen; but any one can indicate it to you--it is well known
in Siena. It is called," he continued after a moment, "the House
of the Dead Hand."
Wyant stared. "What a queer name!" he said.
"The name comes from an antique hand of marble which for many
hundred years has been above the door."
Wyant was turning away with a gesture of thanks, when the other
added: "If you would have the kindness to ring twice."
"To ring twice?"
"At the doctor's." The young man smiled. "It is the custom."
It was a dazzling March afternoon, with a shower of sun from the
mid-blue, and a marshalling of slaty clouds behind the umbercolored
hills. For nearly an hour Wyant loitered on the Lizza,
watching the shadows race across the naked landscape and the
thunder blacken in the west; then he decided to set out for the
House of the Dead Hand. The map in his guidebook showed him that
the Via Papa Giulio was one of the streets which radiate from the
Piazza, and thither he bent his course, pausing at every other
step to fill his eye with some fresh image of weather-beaten
beauty. The clouds had rolled upward, obscuring the sunshine and
hanging like a funereal baldachin above the projecting cornices
of Doctor Lombard's street, and Wyant walked for some distance in
the shade of the beetling palace fronts before his eye fell on a
doorway surmounted by a sallow marble hand. He stood for a
moment staring up at the strange emblem. The hand was a woman's--
a dead drooping hand, which hung there convulsed and helpless,
as though it had been thrust forth in denunciation of some evil
mystery within the house, and had sunk struggling into death.
A girl who was drawing water from the well in the court said that
the English doctor lived on the first floor, and Wyant, passing
through a glazed door, mounted the damp degrees of a vaulted
stairway with a plaster AEsculapius mouldering in a niche on the
landing. Facing the AEsculapius was another door, and as Wyant
put his hand on the bell-rope he remembered his unknown friend's
injunction, and rang twice.
His ring was answered by a peasant woman with a low forehead and
small close-set eyes, who, after a prolonged scrutiny of himself,
his card, and his letter of introduction, left him standing in a
high, cold ante-chamber floored with brick. He heard her wooden
pattens click down an interminable corridor, and after some delay
she returned and told him to follow her.
They passed through a long saloon, bare as the ante-chamber, but
loftily vaulted, and frescoed with a seventeenth-century Triumph
of Scipio or Alexander--martial figures following Wyant with the
filmed melancholy gaze of shades in limbo. At the end of this
apartment he was admitted to a smaller room, with the same
atmosphere of mortal cold, but showing more obvious signs of
occupancy. The walls were covered with tapestry which had faded
to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation, so that the young
man felt as though he were entering a sunless autumn wood.
Against these hangings stood a few tall cabinets on heavy gilt
feet, and at a table in the window three persons were seated: an
elderly lady who was warming her hands over a brazier, a girl
bent above a strip of needle-work, and an old man.
As the latter advanced toward Wyant, the young man was conscious
of staring with unseemly intentness at his small round-backed
figure, dressed with shabby disorder and surmounted by a
wonderful head, lean, vulpine, eagle-beaked as that of some artloving
despot of the Renaissance: a head combining the venerable
hair and large prominent eyes of the humanist with the greedy
profile of the adventurer. Wyant, in musing on the Italian
portrait-medals of the fifteenth century, had often fancied that
only in that period of fierce individualism could types so
paradoxical have been produced; yet the subtle craftsmen who
committed them to the bronze had never drawn a face more
strangely stamped with contradictory passions than that of Doctor
Lombard.
"I am glad to see you," he said to Wyant, extending a hand which
seemed a mere framework held together by knotted veins. "We lead
a quiet life here and receive few visitors, but any friend of
Professor Clyde's is welcome." Then, with a gesture which
included the two women, he added dryly: "My wife and daughter
often talk of Professor Clyde."
"Oh yes--he used to make me such nice toast; they don't
understand toast in Italy," said Mrs. Lombard in a high plaintive
voice.
It would have been difficult, from Doctor Lombard's manner and
appearance to guess his nationality; but his wife was so
inconsciently and ineradicably English that even the silhouette
of her cap seemed a protest against Continental laxities. She
was a stout fair woman, with pale cheeks netted with red lines.
A brooch with a miniature portrait sustained a bogwood watchchain
upon her bosom, and at her elbow lay a heap of knitting and
an old copy of The Queen.
The young girl, who had remained standing, was a slim replica of
her mother, with an apple-cheeked face and opaque blue eyes. Her
small head was prodigally laden with braids of dull fair hair,
and she might have had a kind of transient prettiness but for the
sullen droop of her round mouth. It was hard to say whether her
expression implied ill-temper or apathy; but Wyant was struck by
the contrast between the fierce vitality of the doctor's age and
the inanimateness of his daughter's youth.
Seating himself in the chair which his host advanced, the young
man tried to open the conversation by addressing to Mrs. Lombard
some random remark on the beauties of Siena. The lady murmured a
resigned assent, and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: "My
dear sir, my wife considers Siena a most salubrious spot, and is
favorably impressed by the cheapness of the marketing; but she
deplores the total absence of muffins and cannel coal, and cannot
resign herself to the Italian method of dusting furniture."
"But they don't, you know--they don't dust it!" Mrs. Lombard
protested, without showing any resentment of her husband's
manner.
"Precisely--they don't dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we
have not once seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of
the Mangia. Can you conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has
never yet dared to write it home to her aunts at Bonchurch."
Mrs. Lombard accepted in silence this remarkable statement of her
views, and her husband, with a malicious smile at Wyant's
embarrassment, planted himself suddenly before the young man.
"And now," said he, "do you want to see my Leonardo?"
"DO I?" cried Wyant, on his feet in a flash.
The doctor chuckled. "Ah," he said, with a kind of crooning
deliberation, "that's the way they all behave--that's what they
all come for." He turned to his daughter with another variation
of mockery in his smile. "Don't fancy it's for your beaux yeux,
my dear; or for the mature charms of Mrs. Lombard," he added,
glaring suddenly at his wife, who had taken up her knitting and
was softly murmuring over the number of her stitches.
Neither lady appeared to notice his pleasantries, and he
continued, addressing himself to Wyant: "They all come--they all
come; but many are called and few are chosen." His voice sank to
solemnity. "While I live," he said, "no unworthy eye shall
desecrate that picture. But I will not do my friend Clyde the
injustice to suppose that he would send an unworthy
representative. He tells me he wishes a description of the
picture for his book; and you shall describe it to him--if you
can."
Wyant hesitated, not knowing whether it was a propitious moment
to put in his appeal for a photograph.
"Well, sir," he said, "you know Clyde wants me to take away all I
can of it."
Doctor Lombard eyed him sardonically. "You're welcome to take
away all you can carry," he replied; adding, as he turned to his
daughter: "That is, if he has your permission, Sybilla."
The girl rose without a word, and laying aside her work, took a
key from a secret drawer in one of the cabinets, while the doctor
continued in the same note of grim jocularity: "For you must know
that the picture is not mine--it is my daughter's."
He followed with evident amusement the surprised glance which
Wyant turned on the young girl's impassive figure.
"Sybilla," he pursued, "is a votary of the arts; she has
inherited her fond father's passion for the unattainable.
Luckily, however, she also recently inherited a tidy legacy from
her grandmother; and having seen the Leonardo, on which its
discoverer had placed a price far beyond my reach, she took a
step which deserves to go down to history: she invested her whole
inheritance in the purchase of the picture, thus enabling me to
spend my closing years in communion with one of the world's
masterpieces. My dear sir, could Antigone do more?"
The object of this strange eulogy had meanwhile drawn aside one
of the tapestry hangings, and fitted her key into a concealed
door.
"Come," said Doctor Lombard, "let us go before the light fails
us."
Wyant glanced at Mrs. Lombard, who continued to knit impassively.
"No, no," said his host, "my wife will not come with us. You
might not suspect it from her conversation, but my wife has no
feeling for art--Italian art, that is; for no one is fonder of
our early Victorian school."
"Frith's Railway Station, you know," said Mrs. Lombard, smiling.
"I like an animated picture."
Miss Lombard, who had unlocked the door, held back the tapestry
to let her father and Wyant pass out; then she followed them down
a narrow stone passage with another door at its end. This door
was iron-barred, and Wyant noticed that it had a complicated
patent lock. The girl fitted another key into the lock, and
Doctor Lombard led the way into a small room. The dark panelling
of this apartment was irradiated by streams of yellow light
slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and in the central
brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of faded velvet.
"A little too bright, Sybilla," said Doctor Lombard. His face
had grown solemn, and his mouth twitched nervously as his
daughter drew a linen drapery across the upper part of the
window.
"That will do--that will do." He turned impressively to Wyant.
"Do you see the pomegranate bud in this rug? Place yourself
there--keep your left foot on it, please. And now, Sybilla, draw
the cord."
Miss Lombard advanced and placed her hand on a cord hidden behind
the velvet curtain.
"Ah," said the doctor, "one moment: I should like you, while
looking at the picture, to have in mind a few lines of verse.
Sybilla--"
Without the slightest change of countenance, and with a
promptness which proved her to be prepared for the request, Miss
Lombard began to recite, in a full round voice like her mother's,
St. Bernard's invocation to the Virgin, in the thirty-third canto
of the Paradise.
"Thank you, my dear," said her father, drawing a deep breath as
she ended. "That unapproachable combination of vowel sounds
prepares one better than anything I know for the contemplation of
the picture."
As he spoke the folds of velvet slowly parted, and the Leonardo
appeared in its frame of tarnished gold:
From the nature of Miss Lombard's recitation Wyant had expected a
sacred subject, and his surprise was therefore great as the
composition was gradually revealed by the widening division of
the curtain.
In the background a steel-colored river wound through a pale
calcareous landscape; while to the left, on a lonely peak, a
crucified Christ hung livid against indigo clouds. The central
figure of the foreground, however, was that of a woman seated in
an antique chair of marble with bas-reliefs of dancing maenads.
Her feet rested on a meadow sprinkled with minute wild-flowers,
and her attitude of smiling majesty recalled that of Dosso
Dossi's Circe. She wore a red robe, flowing in closely fluted
lines from under a fancifully embroidered cloak. Above her high
forehead the crinkled golden hair flowed sideways beneath a veil;
one hand drooped on the arm of her chair; the other held up an
inverted human skull, into which a young Dionysus, smooth, brown
and sidelong as the St. John of the Louvre, poured a stream of
wine from a high-poised flagon. At the lady's feet lay the
symbols of art and luxury: a flute and a roll of music, a platter
heaped with grapes and roses, the torso of a Greek statuette, and
a bowl overflowing with coins and jewels; behind her, on the
chalky hilltop, hung the crucified Christ. A scroll in a corner
of the foreground bore the legend: Lux Mundi.
Wyant, emerging from the first plunge of wonder, turned
inquiringly toward his companions. Neither had moved. Miss
Lombard stood with her hand on the cord, her lids lowered, her
mouth drooping; the doctor, his strange Thoth-like profile turned
toward his guest, was still lost in rapt contemplation of his
treasure.
Wyant addressed the young girl.
"You are fortunate," he said, "to be the possessor of anything so
perfect."
"It is considered very beautiful," she said coldly.
"Beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!" the doctor burst out. "Ah, the poor,
worn out, over-worked word! There are no adjectives in the
language fresh enough to describe such pristine brilliancy; all
their brightness has been worn off by misuse. Think of the
things that have been called beautiful, and then look at THAT!"
"It is worthy of a new vocabulary," Wyant agreed.
"Yes," Doctor Lombard continued, "my daughter is indeed
fortunate. She has chosen what Catholics call the higher life--
the counsel of perfection. What other private person enjoys the
same opportunity of understanding the master? Who else lives
under the same roof with an untouched masterpiece of Leonardo's?
Think of the happiness of being always under the influence of
such a creation; of living INTO it; of partaking of it in daily
and hourly communion! This room is a chapel; the sight of that
picture is a sacrament. What an atmosphere for a young life to
unfold itself in! My daughter is singularly blessed. Sybilla,
point out some of the details to Mr. Wyant; I see that he will
appreciate them."
The girl turned her dense blue eyes toward Wyant; then, glancing
away from him, she pointed to the canvas.
"Notice the modeling of the left hand," she began in a monotonous
voice; "it recalls the hand of the Mona Lisa. The head of the
naked genius will remind you of that of the St. John of the
Louvre, but it is more purely pagan and is turned a little less
to the right. The embroidery on the cloak is symbolic: you will
see that the roots of this plant have burst through the vase.
This recalls the famous definition of Hamlet's character in
Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the flame, and the
serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we have
not yet been able to decipher."
Wyant watched her curiously; she seemed to be reciting a lesson.
"And the picture itself?" he said. "How do you explain that?
Lux Mundi--what a curious device to connect with such a subject!
What can it mean?"
Miss Lombard dropped her eyes: the answer was evidently not
included in her lesson.
"What, indeed?" the doctor interposed. "What does life mean? As
one may define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a
hundred different meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as
many-faceted as a well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that
divine lady? Is it she who is the true Lux Mundi--the light
reflected from jewels and young eyes, from polished marble and
clear waters and statues of bronze? Or is that the Light of the
World, extinguished on yonder stormy hill, and is this lady the
Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity, with her
back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain?
Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture;
but to me it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence:
that all that is raised in incorruption is sown in corruption;
art, beauty, love, religion; that all our wine is drunk out of
skulls, and poured for us by the mysterious genius of a remote
and cruel past."
The doctor's face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten
itself and become taller.
"Ah," he cried, growing more dithyrambic, "how lightly you ask
what it means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here
am I who have given my life to the study of the Renaissance; who
have violated its tomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the
course of every muscle, bone, and artery; who have sucked its
very soul from the pages of poets and humanists; who have wept
and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiled and doubted with
AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followed to its
source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped in
neolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding
tendrils of the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell
you that I stand abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this
picture. It means nothing--it means all things. It may
represent the period which saw its creation; it may represent all
ages past and to come. There are volumes of meaning in the
tiniest emblem on the lady's cloak; the blossoms of its border
are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don't ask
what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness for
having seen it!"
Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.
"Don't excite yourself, father," she said in the detached tone of
a professional nurse.
He answered with a despairing gesture. "Ah, it's easy for you to
talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old
man, and every moment counts!"
"It's bad for you," she repeated with gentle obstinacy.
The doctor's sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He
dropped into a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his
daughter drew the curtain across the picture.
Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was
slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde's wish for a
photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with
which Doctor Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the
details he could remember. The picture was so dazzling, so
unexpected, so crossed with elusive and contradictory
suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed suddenly
before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of
confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a
work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of
the master's thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy.
The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His
daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to
the room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no
longer there, and he could think of no excuse for lingering.
He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in
the middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders.
"It is very good of you," he said, "to allow one even a glimpse
of such a treasure."
She looked at him with her odd directness. "You will come
again?" she said quickly; and turning to her father she added:
"You know what Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give
him any account of the picture without seeing it again."
Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person
in a trance.
"Eh?" he said, rousing himself with an effort.
"I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he
is to tell Professor Clyde about it," Miss Lombard repeated with
extraordinary precision of tone.
Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were
being divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no
way connected.
"Well, well," the doctor muttered, "I don't say no--I don't say
no. I know what Clyde wants--I don't refuse to help him." He
turned to Wyant. "You may come again--you may make notes," he
added with a sudden effort. "Jot down what occurs to you. I'm
willing to concede that."
Wyant again caught the girl's eye, but its emphatic message
perplexed him.
"You're very good," he said tentatively, "but the fact is the
picture is so mysterious--so full of complicated detail--that I'm
afraid no notes I could make would serve Clyde's purpose as well
as--as a photograph, say. If you would allow me--"
Miss Lombard's brow darkened, and her father raised his head
furiously.
"A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not
ten people have been allowed to set foot in that room! A
PHOTOGRAPH?"
Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to
retreat.
"I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to
having any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped
you might let me take a photograph for his personal use--not to
be reproduced in his book, but simply to give him something to
work by. I should take the photograph myself, and the negative
would of course be yours. If you wished it, only one impression
would be struck off, and that one Clyde could return to you when
he had done with it."
Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. "When he had done
with it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been
re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand
to hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by
the blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah!
I'd as soon give you the picture itself: why don't you ask for
that?"
"Well, sir," said Wyant calmly, "if you will trust me with it,
I'll engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no
eye but Clyde's see it while it is out of your keeping."
The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he
burst into a laugh.
"Upon my soul!" he said with sardonic good humor.
It was Miss Lombard's turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His
last words and her father's unexpected reply had evidently
carried her beyond her depth.
"Well, sir, am I to take the picture?" Wyant smilingly pursued.
"No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either;
mind that,--nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla," he cried
with sudden passion, "swear to me that the picture shall never be
reproduced! No photograph, no sketch--now or afterward. Do you
hear me?"
"Yes, father," said the girl quietly.
"The vandals," he muttered, "the desecrators of beauty; if I
thought it would ever get into their hands I'd burn it first, by
God!" He turned to Wyant, speaking more quietly. "I said you
might come back--I never retract what I say. But you must give
me your word that no one but Clyde shall see the notes you make."
Wyant was growing warm.
"If you won't trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me
not to show my notes!" he exclaimed.
The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile.
"Humph!" he said; "would they be of much use to anybody?"
Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his
impatience.
"To Clyde, I hope, at any rate," he answered, holding out his
hand. The doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and
Wyant added: "When shall I come, sir?"
"To-morrow--to-morrow morning," cried Miss Lombard, speaking
suddenly.
She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders.
"The picture is hers," he said to Wyant.
In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had
admitted him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to
unbar the door. As the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his
arm.
"You have a letter?" she said in a low tone.
"A letter?" He stared. "What letter?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.
II
As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up
at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically
above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed
into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its
hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious
thing about Doctor Lombard's house. What were the relations
between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss
Lombard and her picture? She did not look like a person capable
of a disinterested passion for the arts; and there had been
moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.
The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent
yellow light, and the young man turned his steps toward the
church of San Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering
brightness on Sodoma's St. Catherine.
The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he
had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary
evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and
swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge
to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids
to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the accidental
collaboration of light and color.
Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the
ground at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet
of note-paper, folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter,
and bearing the superscription:--
To the Count Ottaviano Celsi.
Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come
from? He was distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through
the air, close to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of
the chapel; then he turned and looked about the church. There
was only one figure in it, that of a man who knelt near the high
altar.
Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard's maidservant.
Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been
unconsciously carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who
was Count Ottaviano Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen
to act as that nobleman's ambulant letter-box?
Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to
explore his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some
clue to the mystery; but they held nothing which he had not
himself put there, and he was reduced to wondering how the
letter, supposing some unknown hand to have bestowed it on him,
had happened to fall out while he stood motionless before the
picture.
At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the
aisle, and turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the
table d'hote.
The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.
"I do not intrude?" he inquired suavely.
Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel,
glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.
"I see," he remarked with a smile, "that you know the hour at
which our saint should be visited."
Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.
The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.
"What grace! What poetry!" he murmured, apostrophizing the St.
Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel
as he spoke.
Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent.
"But it is cold here--mortally cold; you do not find it so?" The
intruder put on his hat. "It is permitted at this hour--when the
church is empty. And you, my dear sir--do you not feel the
dampness? You are an artist, are you not? And to artists it is
permitted to cover the head when they are engaged in the study of
the paintings."
He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant's hat.
"Permit me--cover yourself!" he said a moment later, holding out
the hat with an ingratiating gesture.
A light flashed on Wyant.
"Perhaps," he said, looking straight at the young man, "you will
tell me your name. My own is Wyant."
The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a
coroneted card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was
engraved:--
Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi.
"I am much obliged to you," said Wyant; "and I may as well tell
you that the letter which you apparently expected to find in the
lining of my hat is not there, but in my pocket."
He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very
pale.
"And now," Wyant continued, "you will perhaps be good enough to
tell me what all this means."
There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by
this request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an
ineffectual smile.
"I suppose you know," Wyant went on, his anger rising at the
sight of the other's discomfiture, "that you have taken an
unwarrantable liberty. I don't yet understand what part I have
been made to play, but it's evident that you have made use of me
to serve some purpose of your own, and I propose to know the
reason why."
Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture.
"Sir," he pleaded, "you permit me to speak?"
"I expect you to," cried Wyant. "But not here," he added,
hearing the clank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and
we shall be turned out in a few minutes."
He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out
into the deserted square.
"Now," said Wyant, pausing on the steps.
The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession,
began to speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of
conciliatory gesture.
"My dear sir--my dear Mr. Wyant--you find me in an abominable
position--that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have
taken advantage of you--yes! I have counted on your amiability,
your chivalry--too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I
do? It was to oblige a lady"--he laid a hand on his heart--"a
lady whom I would die to serve!" He went on with increasing
volubility, his deliberate English swept away by a torrent of
Italian, through which Wyant, with some difficulty, struggled to
a comprehension of the case.
Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to
Siena some months previously, on business connected with his
mother's property; the paternal estate being near Orvieto, of
which ancient city his father was syndic. Soon after his arrival
in Siena the young Count had met the incomparable daughter of
Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love with her, had
prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. Doctor
Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of
settlements arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was
possessed of a small property in her own right, had a short time
before invested the whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo
Leonardo. Thereupon Count Ottaviano's parents had politely
suggested that she should sell the picture and thus recover her
independence; and this proposal being met by a curt refusal from
Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consent to their son's
marriage. The young lady's attitude had hitherto been one of
passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and
would never venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known
to Ottaviano her intention of not giving him up, of waiting
patiently till events should take a more favorable turn. She
seemed hardly aware, the Count said with a sigh, that the means
of escape lay in her own hands; that she was of age, and had a
right to sell the picture, and to marry without asking her
father's consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared no pains to keep
himself before her, to remind her that he, too, was waiting and
would never give her up.
Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade
Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or
to correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine
communication, and had several times, the Count ingenuously
avowed, made use of the doctor's visitors as a means of
exchanging letters.
"And you told the visitors to ring twice?" Wyant interposed.
The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could
Mr. Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was
enamored! The young lady had done him the supreme honor of
avowing her attachment, of pledging her unalterable fidelity;
should he suffer his devotion to be outdone? But his purpose in
writing to her, he admitted, was not merely to reiterate his
fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to induce her
to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every
detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry
out his instructions he would answer for the result. His idea
was that she should secretly retire to a convent of which his
aunt was the Mother Superior, and from that stronghold should
transact the sale of the Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who
was willing to pay a large sum; a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered,
considerably in excess of the young lady's original inheritance;
once the picture sold, it could, if necessary, be removed by
force from Doctor Lombard's house, and his daughter, being safely
in the convent, would be spared the painful scenes incidental to
the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were vindictive enough
to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to make a
sommation respectueuse, and at the end of the prescribed delay no
power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count
Ottaviano.
Wyant's anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance.
It was absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his
secrets to the first stranger he met in the streets, and placed
his hand on his heart whenever he mentioned the name of his
betrothed. The easiest way out of the business was to take it as
a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this new Pyramus and
Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part he had
unwittingly performed.
He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano.
"I won't deprive you any longer," he said, "of the pleasure of
reading your letter."
"Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa
Lombard, you will take a message from me--the letter she expected
this afternoon?"
"The letter she expected?" Wyant paused. "No, thank you. I
thought you understood that where I come from we don't do that
kind of thing--knowingly."
"But, sir, to serve a young lady!"
"I'm sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true"--the
Count's expressive hands resented the doubt--"but remember that
if I am under obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her
father, who has admitted me to his house and has allowed me to
see his picture."
"HIS picture? Hers!"
"Well, the house is his, at all events."
"Unhappily--since to her it is a dungeon!"
"Why doesn't she leave it, then?" exclaimed Wyant impatiently.
The Count clasped his hands. "Ah, how you say that--with what
force, with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in
that tone--you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her;
the mother is an idiot; the father is terrible; she is in his
power; it is my belief that he would kill her if she resisted
him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life while she remains in that
house!"
"Oh, come," said Wyant lightly, "they seem to understand each
other well enough. But in any case, you must see that I can't
interfere--at least you would if you were an Englishman," he
added with an escape of contempt.
III
Wyant's affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance
with his land-lady, he was forced to apply to her for the
verification of Count Ottaviano's story.
The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct
account of his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was
a man of distinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of
Orvieto, and lived either in that town or on his neighboring
estate of Mongirone. His wife owned a large property near Siena,
and Count Ottaviano, who was the second son, came there from time
to time to look into its management. The eldest son was in the
army, the youngest in the Church; and an aunt of Count
Ottaviano's was Mother Superior of the Visitandine convent in
Siena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who
was a most amiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the
daughter of the strange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but
difficulties having arisen as to the adjustment of the young
lady's dower, Count Celsi-Mongirone had very properly broken off
the match. It was sad for the young man, however, who was said
to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses for coming to
Siena to inspect his mother's estate.
Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano's personality the story
had a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant
mounted the stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation
insensibly assumed another aspect. It was impossible to take
Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was a suggestion of fatality in
the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who could tell amid what
tragic records of domestic tyranny and fluttering broken purposes
the little drama of Miss Lombard's fate was being played out?
Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify the
lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a
suburban villa with sanitary plumbing and a telephone?
One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful
problems; and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant's entrance,
raised a placidly wrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning
was mild, and her chair had been wheeled into a bar of sunshine
near the window, so that she made a cheerful spot of prose in the
poetic gloom of her surroundings.
"What a nice morning!" she said; "it must be delightful weather
at Bonchurch."
Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with its
threatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird
with clipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had
never seen beyond the opposite houses.
Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was
surprised at his reappearance he said at once: "I have come back
to study Miss Lombard's picture."
"Oh, the picture--" Mrs. Lombard's face expressed a gentle
disappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of
acuter sensibilities. "It's an original Leonardo, you know," she
said mechanically.
"And Miss Lombard is very proud of it, I suppose? She seems to
have inherited her father's love for art."
Mrs. Lombard counted her stitches, and he went on: "It's unusual
in so young a girl. Such tastes generally develop later."
Mrs. Lombard looked up eagerly. "That's what I say! I was quite
different at her age, you know. I liked dancing, and doing a
pretty bit of fancy-work. Not that I couldn't sketch, too; I had
a master down from London. My aunts have some of my crayons hung
up in their drawing-room now--I did a view of Kenilworth which
was thought pleasing. But I liked a picnic, too, or a pretty
walk through the woods with young people of my own age. I say
it's more natural, Mr. Wyant; one may have a feeling for art, and
do crayons that are worth framing, and yet not give up everything
else. I was taught that there were other things."
Wyant, half-ashamed of provoking these innocent confidences,
could not resist another question. "And Miss Lombard cares for
nothing else?"
Her mother looked troubled.
"Sybilla is so clever--she says I don't understand. You know how
self-confident young people are! My husband never said that of
me, now--he knows I had an excellent education. My aunts were
very particular; I was brought up to have opinions, and my
husband has always respected them. He says himself that he
wouldn't for the world miss hearing my opinion on any subject;
you may have noticed that he often refers to my tastes. He has
always respected my preference for living in England; he likes to
hear me give my reasons for it. He is so much interested in my
ideas that he often says he knows just what I am going to say
before I speak. But Sybilla does not care for what I think--"
At this point Doctor Lombard entered. He glanced sharply at
Wyant. "The servant is a fool; she didn't tell me you were
here." His eye turned to his wife. "Well, my dear, what have
you been telling Mr. Wyant? About the aunts at Bonchurch, I'll
be bound!"
Mrs. Lombard looked triumphantly at Wyant, and her husband rubbed
his hooked fingers, with a smile.
"Mrs. Lombard's aunts are very superior women. They subscribe to
the circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly
Packet from the curate's wife across the way. They have the
rector to tea twice a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited
by two baronets' wives. They devoted themselves to the education
of their orphan niece, and I think I may say without boasting
that Mrs. Lombard's conversation shows marked traces of the
advantages she enjoyed."
Mrs. Lombard colored with pleasure.
"I was telling Mr. Wyant that my aunts were very particular."
"Quite so, my dear; and did you mention that they never sleep in
anything but linen, and that Miss Sophia puts away the furs and
blankets every spring with her own hands? Both those facts are
interesting to the student of human nature." Doctor Lombard
glanced at his watch. "But we are missing an incomparable
moment; the light is perfect at this hour."
Wyant rose, and the doctor led him through the tapestried door
and down the passageway.
The light was, in fact, perfect, and the picture shone with an
inner radiancy, as though a lamp burned behind the soft screen of
the lady's flesh. Every detail of the foreground detached itself
with jewel-like precision. Wyant noticed a dozen accessories
which had escaped him on the previous day.
He drew out his note-book, and the doctor, who had dropped his
sardonic grin for a look of devout contemplation, pushed a chair
forward, and seated himself on a carved settle against the wall.
"Now, then," he said, "tell Clyde what you can; but the letter
killeth."
He sank down, his hands hanging on the arm of the settle like the
claws of a dead bird, his eyes fixed on Wyant's notebook with the
obvious intention of detecting any attempt at a surreptitious
sketch.
Wyant, nettled at this surveillance, and disturbed by the
speculations which Doctor Lombard's strange household excited,
sat motionless for a few minutes, staring first at the picture
and then at the blank pages of the note-book. The thought that
Doctor Lombard was enjoying his discomfiture at length roused
him, and he began to write.
He was interrupted by a knock on the iron door. Doctor Lombard
rose to unlock it, and his daughter entered.
She bowed hurriedly to Wyant, without looking at him.
"Father, had you forgotten that the man from Monte Amiato was to
come back this morning with an answer about the bas-relief? He
is here now; he says he can't wait."
"The devil!" cried her father impatiently. "Didn't you tell him--"
"Yes; but he says he can't come back. If you want to see him you
must come now."
"Then you think there's a chance?--"
She nodded.
He turned and looked at Wyant, who was writing assiduously.
"You will stay here, Sybilla; I shall be back in a moment."
He hurried out, locking the door behind him.
Wyant had looked up, wondering if Miss Lombard would show any
surprise at being locked in with him; but it was his turn to be
surprised, for hardly had they heard the key withdrawn when she
moved close to him, her small face pale and tumultuous.
"I arranged it--I must speak to you," she gasped. "He'll be back
in five minutes."
Her courage seemed to fail, and she looked at him helplessly.
Wyant had a sense of stepping among explosives. He glanced about
him at the dusky vaulted room, at the haunting smile of the
strange picture overhead, and at the pink-and-white girl
whispering of conspiracies in a voice meant to exchange
platitudes with a curate.
"How can I help you?" he said with a rush of compassion.
"Oh, if you would! I never have a chance to speak to any one;
it's so difficult--he watches me--he'll be back immediately."
"Try to tell me what I can do."
"I don't dare; I feel as if he were behind me." She turned away,
fixing her eyes on the picture. A sound startled her. "There he
comes, and I haven't spoken! It was my only chance; but it
bewilders me so to be hurried."
"I don't hear any one," said Wyant, listening. "Try to tell me."
"How can I make you understand? It would take so long to
explain." She drew a deep breath, and then with a plunge--"Will
you come here again this afternoon--at about five?" she
whispered.
"Come here again?"
"Yes--you can ask to see the picture,--make some excuse. He will
come with you, of course; I will open the door for you--and--and
lock you both in"--she gasped.
"Lock us in?"
"You see? You understand? It's the only way for me to leave the
house--if I am ever to do it"-- She drew another difficult
breath. "The key will be returned--by a safe person--in half an
hour,--perhaps sooner--"
She trembled so much that she was obliged to lean against the
settle for support.
"Wyant looked at her steadily; he was very sorry for her.
"I can't, Miss Lombard," he said at length.
"You can't?"
"I'm sorry; I must seem cruel; but consider--"
He was stopped by the futility of the word: as well ask a hunted
rabbit to pause in its dash for a hole!
Wyant took her hand; it was cold and nerveless.
"I will serve you in any way I can; but you must see that this
way is impossible. Can't I talk to you again? Perhaps--"
"Oh," she cried, starting up, "there he comes!"
Doctor Lombard's step sounded in the passage.
Wyant held her fast. "Tell me one thing: he won't let you sell
the picture?"
"No--hush!"
"Make no pledges for the future, then; promise me that."
"The future?"
"In case he should die: your father is an old man. You haven't
promised?"
She shook her head.
"Don't, then; remember that."
She made no answer, and the key turned in the lock.
As he passed out of the house, its scowling cornice and facade of
ravaged brick looked down on him with the startlingness of a
strange face, seen momentarily in a crowd, and impressing itself
on the brain as part of an inevitable future. Above the doorway,
the marble hand reached out like the cry of an imprisoned
anguish.
Wyant turned away impatiently.
"Rubbish!" he said to himself. "SHE isn't walled in; she can get
out if she wants to."
IV
Wyant had any number of plans for coming to Miss Lombard's aid:
he was elaborating the twentieth when, on the same afternoon, he
stepped into the express train for Florence. By the time the
train reached Certaldo he was convinced that, in thus hastening
his departure, he had followed the only reasonable course; at
Empoli, he began to reflect that the priest and the Levite had
probably justified themselves in much the same manner.
A month later, after his return to England, he was unexpectedly
relieved from these alternatives of extenuation and approval. A
paragraph in the morning paper announced the sudden death of
Doctor Lombard, the distinguished English dilettante who had long
resided in Siena. Wyant's justification was complete. Our
blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall
in with the course of events.
Wyant could now comfortably speculate on the particular
complications from which his foresight had probably saved him.
The climax was unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink
of a step which, whatever its issue, would have burdened her with
retrospective compunction, had been set free before her suitor's
ardor could have had time to cool, and was now doubtless planning
a life of domestic felicity on the proceeds of the Leonardo. One
thing, however, struck Wyant as odd--he saw no mention of the
sale of the picture. He had scanned the papers for an immediate
announcement of its transfer to one of the great museums; but
presently concluding that Miss Lombard, out of filial piety, had
wished to avoid an appearance of unseemly haste in the disposal
of her treasure, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Other
affairs happened to engage him; the months slipped by, and
gradually the lady and the picture dwelt less vividly in his
mind.
It was not till five or six years later, when chance took him
again to Siena, that the recollection started from some inner
fold of memory. He found himself, as it happened, at the head of
Doctor Lombard's street, and glancing down that grim
thoroughfare, caught an oblique glimpse of the doctor's house
front, with the Dead Hand projecting above its threshold.
The sight revived his interest, and that evening, over an
admirable frittata, he questioned his landlady about Miss
Lombard's marriage.
"The daughter of the English doctor? But she has never married,
signore."
"Never married? What, then, became of Count Ottaviano?"
"For a long time he waited; but last year he married a noble lady
of the Maremma."
"But what happened--why was the marriage broken?"
The landlady enacted a pantomime of baffled interrogation.
"And Miss Lombard still lives in her father's house?"
"Yes, signore; she is still there."
"And the Leonardo--"
"The Leonardo, also, is still there."
The next day, as Wyant entered the House of the Dead Hand, he
remembered Count Ottaviano's injunction to ring twice, and smiled
mournfully to think that so much subtlety had been vain. But
what could have prevented the marriage? If Doctor Lombard's
death had been long delayed, time might have acted as a
dissolvent, or the young lady's resolve have failed; but it
seemed impossible that the white heat of ardor in which Wyant had
left the lovers should have cooled in a few short weeks.
As he ascended the vaulted stairway the atmosphere of the place
seemed a reply to his conjectures. The same numbing air fell on
him, like an emanation from some persistent will-power, a
something fierce and imminent which might reduce to impotence
every impulse within its range. Wyant could almost fancy a hand
on his shoulder, guiding him upward with the ironical intent of
confronting him with the evidence of its work.
A strange servant opened the door, and he was presently
introduced to the tapestried room, where, from their usual seats
in the window, Mrs. Lombard and her daughter advanced to welcome
him with faint ejaculations of surprise.
Both had grown oddly old, but in a dry, smooth way, as fruits
might shrivel on a shelf instead of ripening on the tree. Mrs.
Lombard was still knitting, and pausing now and then to warm her
swollen hands above the brazier; and Miss Lombard, in rising, had
laid aside a strip of needle-work which might have been the same
on which Wyant had first seen her engaged.
Their visitor inquired discreetly how they had fared in the
interval, and learned that they had thought of returning to
England, but had somehow never done so.
"I am sorry not to see my aunts again," Mrs. Lombard said
resignedly; "but Sybilla thinks it best that we should not go
this year."
"Next year, perhaps," murmured Miss Lombard, in a voice which
seemed to suggest that they had a great waste of time to fill.
She had returned to her seat, and sat bending over her work. Her
hair enveloped her head in the same thick braids, but the rose
color of her cheeks had turned to blotches of dull red, like some
pigment which has darkened in drying.
"And Professor Clyde--is he well?" Mrs. Lombard asked affably;
continuing, as her daughter raised a startled eye: "Surely,
Sybilla, Mr. Wyant was the gentleman who was sent by Professor
Clyde to see the Leonardo?"
Miss Lombard was silent, but Wyant hastened to assure the elder
lady of his friend's well-being.
"Ah--perhaps, then, he will come back some day to Siena," she
said, sighing. Wyant declared that it was more than likely; and
there ensued a pause, which he presently broke by saying to Miss
Lombard: "And you still have the picture?"
She raised her eyes and looked at him. "Should you like to see
it?" she asked.
On his assenting, she rose, and extracting the same key from the
same secret drawer, unlocked the door beneath the tapestry. They
walked down the passage in silence, and she stood aside with a
grave gesture, making Wyant pass before her into the room. Then
she crossed over and drew the curtain back from the picture.
The light of the early afternoon poured full on it: its surface
appeared to ripple and heave with a fluid splendor. The colors
had lost none of their warmth, the outlines none of their pure
precision; it seemed to Wyant like some magical flower which had
burst suddenly from the mould of darkness and oblivion.
He turned to Miss Lombard with a movement of comprehension.
"Ah, I understand--you couldn't part with it, after all!" he cried.
"No--I couldn't part with it," she answered.
"It's too beautiful,--too beautiful,"--he assented.
"Too beautiful?" She turned on him with a curious stare. "I
have never thought it beautiful, you know."
He gave back the stare. "You have never--"
She shook her head. "It's not that. I hate it; I've always
hated it. But he wouldn't let me--he will never let me now."
Wyant was startled by her use of the present tense. Her look
surprised him, too: there was a strange fixity of resentment in
her innocuous eye. Was it possible that she was laboring under
some delusion? Or did the pronoun not refer to her father?
"You mean that Doctor Lombard did not wish you to part with the
picture?"
"No--he prevented me; he will always prevent me."
There was another pause. "You promised him, then, before his
death--"
"No; I promised nothing. He died too suddenly to make me." Her
voice sank to a whisper. "I was free--perfectly free--or I
thought I was till I tried."
"Till you tried?"
"To disobey him--to sell the picture. Then I found it was
impossible. I tried again and again; but he was always in the
room with me."
She glanced over her shoulder as though she had heard a step; and
to Wyant, too, for a moment, the room seemed full of a third
presence.
"And you can't"--he faltered, unconsciously dropping his voice to
the pitch of hers.
She shook her head, gazing at him mystically. "I can't lock him
out; I can never lock him out now. I told you I should never
have another chance."
Wyant felt the chill of her words like a cold breath in his hair.
"Oh"--he groaned; but she cut him off with a grave gesture.
"It is too late," she said; "but you ought to have helped me that day."