CHAPTER XII
Danilo did not come home that night, but Claire was not disturbed. Morning brought the usual sanity. She was convinced now that Danilo's manner of the night before was more a matter of her own mood and interpretation than anything else. But she was determined on one thing: she would ask Mrs. Condor quite frankly to say nothing to Danilo about Stillman. Claire was still undecided about the whole question. She had seen that Stillman was against the fine-spun theories back of her silence, but she had not yet acquired the masculine directness of conduct that made it easy for her to be either ruthless or perfectly just.
Mrs. Condor came in shortly after two o'clock. She was dressed with extraordinary lack of spirit for her, in a black street dress that just escaped being dowdy, and her face was incased in a thick, ugly veil.
"Well, my dear Claire," she said, as she threw back her veil with something of her old spirit, "but this is good of you!"
The warmth of tone repaid Claire's effort to be generous.
"There is no use in us wasting time talking about the program," she went on. "You play everything I'm going to sing. I don't know anything new. I'm getting too old to learn other tricks. You know, of course, what I've come for? To see all your pretty clothes. I'm still soft about such things."
Claire took her into the front room.
"You see," she said, "there isn't anything very grand."
"Oh, but Claire! What does it matter? You are in love.... If I were a woman in love I wouldn't change places with the Empress of India. I was jealous of you, Claire, once ... jealous because I thought you were in love ... because I thought you could be.... Ah! You didn't think that I cared for Ned Stillman?... Oh, I liked his attentions, perhaps—every woman likes attention. And I was envious of your youth, and nasty because my nerves were frayed.... But deep down I was jealous of your ability to fall in love with somebody.... Believe me, Claire, the bitterest moment of any woman's life is when she wakes up and finds that she loves no one. At least that was the bitterest moment of my life.... I've tried to bring that feeling back again! But trying doesn't do any good. It either comes or it stays away, and that's all there is to it.... Oh, I've been loved, Claire, but that isn't the same."
Claire, who had been folding her wedding-dress, stopped and looked up in surprise.
"I don't wonder you look at me that way!" Lily Condor resumed. "I've played a rotten game, but I've never acknowledged it to myself, much less to any one else.... Don't misunderstand me—I'm not crawling around on my hands and knees sniffling like a repentant sinner.... I hate repentant sinners! But I've been cheap and small and nasty. Petty—that's the word! You may not believe it, but pettiness isn't a part of my original make-up. I've acquired it ... like a false complexion.... I started in life with three things—a clear skin, quantities of very red hair, and a decent feeling for others. Well, I lost them all—so I powdered my cheeks and touched up my hair and filled in the chinks in my disposition with a hard glaze. Oh, I'm not excusing myself! Some people are willing to sit back and let time and misfortune do their worst, but I wasn't one of them. I kept on fighting.... I didn't win, but it hardened me. Fighting always does!"
Claire dropped her wedding-gown upon the couch and she said, very gently:
"Yes ... I know.... I've tasted something of that myself."
"I know you have.... I realized it that night at the café when you had the courage of your bitterness and insulted me. I was furious, of course! I wanted to strike back, to kick and scream and claw the air. And as a matter of fact, I did ... after we ... Flint and I ... got home. He let me rave without saying a word. Oh, he's a clever brute in his way, that man! And when I'd had it all out he got up and he said: 'Take a look at yourself in the glass. If that doesn't cure you, nothing will.' And he walked deliberately out.... I went over to the mirror after he had gone, and I took a look, a long, hard look.... Next night he came and pounded on my door—he was drunk. 'I did what you told me last night,' I called to him. 'Go away! I'm cured!' But of course I wasn't!... I've looked in the glass every day since.... I don't know just what possessed me to go and offer my services to Doctor Danilo. A flash of the old distemper, I fancy. I wanted to create a stir. I smiled when he disposed of you with so much confidence. I thought: 'Wait until my lady hears; then there will be some fun!... This will be the first difference, the first quarrel,' I was mean enough to imagine.... Then, your note came.... My dear Claire, for once in my life I was without a weapon.... Why didn't you strike back and give me a chance to fight?"
"Well, to be frank, I wanted to ... at first. But I was afraid."
"Of what ... of me?"
"Oh, not that! But Danilo ... he.... You see, he is a foreigner. He has other ideas about women and their place in the scheme of things. It isn't exactly a feeling that he's superior, but marriage to him is a partnership ... a partnership with a senior member. And senior members—well, they don't relish having their authority questioned. I'm explaining it very clumsily. But you understand I...."
"Afraid, Claire?... So soon? You must be very much in love to ... to...."
Claire drew a deep breath. "And I've a favor to ask of you.... I hope you won't say anything to Danilo about.... The truth of the matter is, I have never mentioned Ned Stillman's name to him."
Well, she had said it and she stood staring, wondering at the look of dismay that seemed to have fastened itself in an arrested flight upon Mrs. Condor's face.
"You mean that ... that Danilo knows nothing—absolutely nothing? I thought he was a friend of Ned's? Why, it isn't possible that...."
"He knows nothing," Claire repeated, desperately. "I mean to tell him, of course, but just now...."
Lily Condor tapped her lips with an uneasy finger. "You should have warned me sooner, Claire.... I said something yesterday. It was a trifle, but I remember now how he stared."
"Yes, yes. What was it?"
"I said: 'You're a lucky man, Doctor Danilo. If Ned Stillman hadn't been married you wouldn't have carried off your prize so easily.' It was stupid of me, one of those indelicate things we say for want of sense enough to hold our tongues. I felt for a moment that I had displeased him, but I had no idea.... But, really, it's just possible that he didn't get my meaning, that...."
Claire shook her head. "I must tell him now—everything."
She did not see Danilo for two days. He came in finally at five o'clock one afternoon to look up some surgical instruments that he was in need of. She was busy in the kitchen when she heard him come up the stairs. She went quickly to his door and tapped upon it.
"Mother has not been so well," she began, without waiting for his greeting. "I have been longing to see you."
He followed her into Mrs. Robson's room. The patient hardly stirred. Her usual interest in Danilo seemed to be eclipsed. Danilo looked grave.... When Claire and he were in the hall again he turned to her and said:
"I suppose you are prepared?... Everything will soon be over."
His tone was dry, professional. He seemed to be making a deliberate effort to wound. Had he been sympathetic Claire would have been overcome, but there was something about the scene which chilled her emotions. She felt that the time to speak had come.
"You have guessed, also," she began, "that I have wanted to see you about other things, too. There are some things which I should like to explain ... to...."
He shrugged contemptuously. "Explanations are dull affairs. At least I find them so. And they usually never explain."
She was stunned. She had thought always of Danilo in terms of warmth, even of passion. She had never imagined him capable of such steely malevolence.
"I have made a mistake," she went on, desperately. "I am willing to admit that, but...."
"No, not a mistake, Claire. Mistakes are never deliberate."
She could almost feel herself grow pale. "Have you come to any decision?" she asked.
"Decision?"
"Well, I suppose that you will wish to be released ... that our ... that everything between us is finished."
His eyes flashed. "Finished! It isn't as simple as all that. Oh no! A bargain with me is a bargain. When I make a deal it either goes through or else there is a reckoning.... But I don't act as hastily as one might imagine. I believe in sifting things. When I play a game I know every card I hold." He looked at her steadily. "I am still looking over my hand!"
She leaned against the wall, overcome by a sudden faintness. He passed her deliberately and went into his room. When he came out she had recovered herself.
"About mother?" she said, with a display of calmness. "What am I to expect?"
"There is no immediate danger. But in two weeks' time at the most.... However, I shall look in again this afternoon. And every morning. You may count on that."
"Then you have decided to lodge somewhere else?"
"Yes ... for the present."
She let him go without further questions.
The week passed in an atmosphere of arrested events. It seemed to Claire as if the currents of life had become ominously frozen, that they were storing up a sinister flood in the icy chains of apprehension. Danilo came twice a day to see Mrs. Robson. He was excessively polite, unbending, professional. Claire was powerless before such premeditated cruelty. The night of the concert drew near. Danilo never so much as mentioned it. Finally Claire gathered the courage to telephone Mrs. Condor.
"I suppose," she said, "that everything is going according to schedule. Really, I haven't had a chance to talk to Danilo about it. He has been so busy."
The upshot of this telephone message was that Mrs. Condor called in the afternoon.
"Confess!" she said to Claire. "Things have gone wrong."
"He won't allow me to explain.... It is horrible! I don't know what to do! And my mother is dying!... How much do you fancy he knows?"
"Everything or nothing! It is hard to say. But you must keep a stiff upper lip now. No faltering!... Be as dignified as you can. Men like that are dangerous! It may be that he is merely suffering, that he can't speak out yet! When he does...." She gave a significant shrug.
Claire folded and unfolded her handkerchief, crumpled it into a ball, tore at it with her firm finger-nails.
"Words ... insults ... anything would be better than this silence. I have never been so frightened."
Mrs. Condor's visit relieved the strain somewhat, but Claire was still strung with a tense emotion that found expression in a restless physical activity. She even helped Miss Proll with the sewing, although there were moments when the absurdity of all this preparation struck her with a force which almost brought the laughter to her lips. But this wedding-trousseau had become a passion with Miss Proll. Claire could not conceive of halting its preparation.
Once it struck her that there was a decided impropriety about appearing in a concert, with her mother so near the gate of life's solution. Impropriety? She pondered the word. And at once a revulsion swayed her. She was sick of all these pallid phrases of expediency. One could act indifferently or harshly or irreverently at such a crisis, but it was too dreadful and austere a circumstance for so smug an indiscretion as impropriety. She knew what her mother would have advised on a like occasion.
"I wouldn't, if I were you, Claire. People might think it strange."
This formula, then, was all that was left of the pomp and circumstance of death—of even the glowing pageantry of life; love and hate and desire reduced to colorless shadows blown monotonously about the lantern of existence by the steady heat waves of public opinion!
It would have been so easy to excuse herself, to say to Danilo:
"You see it is impossible for me to play next Friday night. Please make other arrangements."
In reality, she was waiting for him to release her, and, since he seemed determined to make her cry for quarter, all her pride rose to meet the issue courageously. It was pride that lifted her head above the choking dust of misfortune—arrogant, blind, magnificent human pride.
" ...keep a stiff upper lip."
Claire Robson did not need this admonition from Mrs. Condor.
There were also moments of hectic retrospection. Incidents old but vital came surging over Claire in a flood-tide. Looking back, it seemed as if no circumstance was too trivial but that it yielded up some fragment which fitted into the intricate pattern of her life. She had thought of this life of hers always in terms of uneventfulness, mistaking mere incident for emotional experience. But she was surprised to discover what depths she had sounded, what heights she had scaled in the solitary excursions that her spirit had chanced.
People came and went like noonday ghosts—Mrs. Finnegan, Nellie Holmes, Mrs. Towne, Doctor Stoddard. Claire felt their personalities moving about her, but the wings of Death cast too heavy a shadow for her to do more than sense their presence.
Only Danilo's passionately sneering face had the faculty of bringing Claire up with a round turn to a sudden realization that she had escaped only temporarily into a world of unrealities. It was as if the payment on a note had been suspended with refined cruelty—the day of reckoning futilely postponed.
When she thought of him it was with a quickening of the heart, a swooning fear, a feeling of dreadful nausea. Afraid! She knew the meaning of this word now.
Lily Condor ran in again the day before the concert.
"I called at Danilo's office to-day," she said, "just out of sheer curiosity.... I don't know ... perhaps it would be just as well if we didn't go through with this farce of doing a turn to-morrow night.... What do you think? I could pretend that I was ill?"
"Why?... What is it? Do you think...."
"I don't like his look. He was most polite.... I think he could have killed me."
"Nonsense!" Claire returned, boldly. "You're drawing on your imagination. I want to do it.... I have a reason."
She realized the absurdity of such a statement as soon as Mrs. Condor had departed. A reason! And her mother was dying—dying! What would people think? Unconsciously the old question framed itself.
Danilo came in as usual, close upon the heels of Mrs. Condor.
"Your mother is slightly better," he said to Claire. "She may last another month."
Claire tried to ignore the insolence of his brevity.
"I wish you would do me a favor," she ventured, boldly. "I've been trying to get Nellie Holmes on the telephone all day.... Would you mind asking her if she could come and stay with mother to-morrow night from eight o'clock to about ten? I hate to leave Miss Proll all the responsibility."
He merely bowed his acquiescence. She felt her cheeks burning. He had done none of the things she had expected him to do—asked none of the questions. At least she had expected him to say:
"Oh, then you have decided to appear to-morrow?"
No, he had insulted her with his silence, pretending to be neither surprised nor shocked. But his attitude confirmed her in the determination to carry out her part of the program.
On Friday morning the society columns of the newspapers were twittering with the fact of Claire Robson's appearance upon the concert stage in aid of her fiancé's native land. This was the last time the public would have a chance to view her as Miss Robson. In fact, it might be the last time that San Francisco would have a chance to view her publicly at all! These statements carried an air of civic calamity that must have appalled every shop-girl who thrilled to their romantic suggestion. Previously Claire had been able to smile over the transparent fiction of the daily press concerning her obscure self, but now she caught a suggestion of irony, of bitter cruelty, of withering scorn running through all this silly chatter. She felt that it had been inspired by Danilo; between the lines she could almost shape his sneering lips, thin and pallid where they had once been full and scarlet.
That morning when he came to see his patient his eyes were burning like livid coals, his cheeks were sunken, his hand shook as he drew back the covers to look at Mrs. Robson's gray face. And as Claire watched him she saw a tear roll down the full length of his cheek and drop unashamed upon the rumpled linen. She felt a great longing then, a yearning to go up and put her hands upon his cheeks and draw his face to hers and to sit while he knelt beside her and poured out his full grief in a cleansing flood. But, instead, she stood proudly aloof and the golden moment of opportunity was swallowed up.
"I will not come this afternoon," he said, at parting. "You may expect a taxi at eight-thirty."
She felt an impulse to put out her hand to him. But again she could not rise to such humility.
She watched him go slowly down the steps with the weak tread of one consumed by a fever. He had changed completely overnight. He gave one look back before he closed the door—the look of a wounded beast staggering through a welter of heart's blood.
Claire Robson brought her hands quickly up to her eyes.
CHAPTER XIII
"What would I wear if I were you?"
Miss Proll, echoing Claire's question, swept the array of finery upon the bed with a critical eye and finally drew forth the iridescent peacock-blue dress with which Claire had startled even the patrons of the Café Ithaca.
Claire shook her head. "It's cut rather too low," she said.
But Miss Proll would not listen to any such argument. "I've a black-lace shawl ... my mother's. If you put that about your shoulders...."
Claire allowed herself to be persuaded. She had very little heart in the adventure, anyway, and Miss Proll seemed to be taking such a tremulous joy in being daring by proxy. In the end the results justified the choice. The black-lace shawl tempered the gown's wanton splendor, and, lacking any exaggeration of hair or complexion, Claire's personality glowed warmly but without flare. She emerged neither the Claire of church-social evenings nor Café Ithaca midnights, but a Claire tempered into the crucible of both these divergent experiences.
Nellie Holmes, answering the message sent through Danilo, arrived in time to put one or two deft touches to the general effect, a twist here and a soft pat there, that added a chic note to Miss Proll's rather prim efforts.
"Well, Robson," she said, standing off critically, "but you do give swell clothes a chance, don't you? Friend Danilo ought to throw his chest out about twelve inches when he gets his eyes on you to-night. By the way, what is the matter with him? He looks like a sick kitten that's been rained on. I never did see such a sad comedian. The face he's wearing these days ain't much of a compliment to you."
The taxicab came promptly at half past eight.
Claire went in to say good-by to her mother. But Mrs. Robson merely opened her eyes, and closed them again.
"I don't think she knows me," Claire faltered. "I wonder whether I ought to go? What do you think, Nell? The whole thing seems such a farce!"
Her passionate exclamation brought a questioning lift of the eyebrows to Nellie Holmes's face. "What do you mean, Robson? Your mother is all right.... I don't think Danilo would let you leave if.... Tell me, have you and Danilo...."
"No. I'm just tired, Nell. Let me go and have it over with."
She released herself from her friend's implied embrace and went down to the waiting taxi.
She met Lily Condor in the hallway of the St. Francis, almost at the door of the dressing-room.
"I've just taken a look in at the audience," Mrs. Condor said. "The place is packed. Even the real people have come early to-night. It's plain that you're the attraction."
Claire tried to turn this observation off with a laugh, but she knew in her heart that Lily Condor was right. The newspaper chatter had had its effect.
Mrs. Condor swept on the stage a little ahead of Claire at precisely fifteen minutes past nine. A patter of applause greeted her. But a moment later Claire came into view, and a clapping of hands, out of all proportion to her position as accompanist, rippled through the room. Claire stood for the briefest of moments facing the throng, bending slightly forward in acknowledgment of the recognition given her. But in that short time it seemed that she had taken note of every familiar face in the crowd below—Stillman, Flint without his wife, and, farther back, Miss Munch and Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Finnegan and "the old man," Doctor Stoddard, Mrs. Towne, even Lycurgus and a half-score of the Ithaca patrons, including a few of the old entertainers headed by Doris, the French Jewess. They were all applauding heartily, except Miss Munch and her cousin.
"What irony!" flashed through Claire's mind as she took her seat before the piano.
Six months ago she had been starving for just the recognition that was now her portion. To-night she found applause empty of any real meaning. And the presence of these people who had colored her life made her feel as if all the joys and hopes and fears of her existence had been suddenly made flesh and were sitting in judgment upon her. She began to play.
Presently Lily Condor's voice came to her—remote, unreal, a thin, clear stream of song like the trickling of some screened fountain.
"Mrs. Condor is singing well to-night," she thought.
At the end of three numbers the applause was still insistent, but Mrs. Condor denied the clamor with a smiling shake of the head. Flowers began to be handed up—orchids and roses and carnations and flamboyant peonies. Claire passed Mrs. Condor a share of the bloom and together they bowed their acknowledgments. They came back upon the stage for a fourth and last time. It was then that Claire caught glimpses of others whose presence had escaped her—her two aunts, Billy Holmes sitting alone, and back, far back, standing with his hands folded in a sort of dreadful resignation, Danilo, his lips still pallid and the hollows in his cheeks showing up even in the distance.
"You did beautifully," Claire said to Mrs. Condor as they gained the cloak-room.
"Yes ... I know.... Because I realized that it was for the last time.... I'm through."
She tossed Claire's flowers upon a lounge and went back to hear the next number.
Claire looked over the cards attached to the bouquets. The orchids were from Stillman, roses from Nellie Holmes, a flaming bunch of carnations from Lycurgus, and—she looked twice at the card—the peonies bore Flint's name.... Not a sign from Danilo!
She decided to go home. She looked about for the attendant in charge of the wraps, and discovered that the room was empty. The sound of a violin floated from the concert platform. She went out and glanced down the passageway. The maid was standing in a screened position by the entrance to the hall, listening. Claire went back and sat down upon the lounge beside her flowers, and as she did so Danilo stepped into the room. She rose with a quick movement of protest.
"Really—you mustn't!" she objected. "This is the ladies' dressing-room."
He ignored her with a malignant smile; he did not speak. But he walked rapidly toward the heap of flowers and began to snatch at the attached cards with sudden fury.
"Stillman!" he sneered. "Holmes—Lycurgus—Flint!" He looked at her with glittering eyes. "Then it is so!"
"What do you mean?"
"Flint!" he cried. He tore the card into bits and flung them to the ground. "So we men are all alike? Well, you ought to know! You have had experience enough. What a fool I have been! What a fool! Well, I am not like the rest of them!"
She drew away. His brow had curdled with bitter intensity. He took her arm in a firm grip and drew a pistol from his pocket.
"Do you see that?" He held the weapon up to her. "I bought that yesterday to call the man out and shoot him.... Then I heard that there was another. Well, in my country we do not waste more than one bullet."
His eyes fell upon her with a mad fury, yet she faced him calmly, almost unafraid.
"Why don't I scream?" she asked herself. "He intends to kill me ... here! And yet I am not even trying to...."
And suddenly she discovered that he had a great black smudge on his nose. She wanted to laugh.
"In my country we do not waste more than one bullet!" he was repeating.
"Yes ... I heard you. You don't have to shout! I'm not deaf!" she could hear herself saying.
He lifted the pistol higher, on a level with her mouth. She could see by the glitter in his eyes that he was in the grip of a dreadful frenzy.
"Temporary insanity! That will be his defense!" she thought at once.
And she pictured herself lying before him in a crimson pool, saw a black, surging crowd pushing into the dressing-room from the hotel corridors, felt herself lifted up tenderly by some one. Would Ned Stillman pick her up? Or perhaps Flint?... She imagined the trial—Danilo pale and grief-worn, incapable of caring whether he lived or died, oblivious to his surroundings. Temporary insanity ... that would be his lawyer's plea.... The black smudge was still there ... it was too ridiculous! She fumbled with her free hand and, lifting the edge of Miss Proll's lace shawl deliberately, wiped the spot from the tip of Danilo's nose.
At that moment she heard a sharp report, glass came crashing to the floor.
"Well, at least his face is clean!" flashed through her mind.... She felt herself sinking backward....
"Yes, a pistol-shot!" the maid was reiterating. Claire opened her eyes. She was lying upon the lounge and the flowers had been thrown unceremoniously upon the floor and were being trampled underfoot. The orchids, crushed and abandoned, looked particularly sorry. She had an impulse to rise and rescue them.
"Nonsense!" It was Lily Condor's voice. "She merely fainted. What you heard must have been falling glass. She struck the mirror as she fell."
An enormous relief came over Claire. She closed her eyes again. "Where is Danilo?" she asked herself.... Suddenly she remembered every detail of what had gone before—the pistol, the black smudge, the sharp report, the crash of falling glass. It was the black smudge on Danilo's nose that had saved her. She realized that now. What a ridiculous thing life was, anyway! And what trivial circumstances determined its issues! The wrong seats at a church social had yielded her Stillman. A black smudge upon the nose of an emotionally shaken man had snatched her from death. What grotesque impulse had moved her to reach forward at the critical moment and flick the tip of Danilo's nose with Miss Proll's lace shawl? Miss Proll's lace shawl! Suppose she had not worn it? Would she have attempted to remove the speck with a bare finger? She doubted it. Then even Miss Proll's lace shawl had played its part! It was all very puzzling; the pattern of life became too intricate, too full of flaming colors that in the weaving seemed of dullest drab.... The muffled talking about her began again.
"Excuse me for troubling you," she heard Mrs. Condor say, "but Claire here.... I have looked all over for Danilo.... Oh, nothing serious!... Her mother.... A little old maid? It must be the dressmaker who.... Yes, bring her in, by all means."
Claire roused herself. She was sitting on the edge of the couch when Ned Stillman came through the door with Miss Proll. Claire understood at once. She rose to her feet. Lily Condor started toward her.
"Oh no—really, I am quite all right. What is the matter? Is my mother...."
"Yes," answered Miss Proll. "You had better come at once."
Stillman went to call a taxicab. Mrs. Condor helped Claire into her wrap. In less than five minutes they were all standing at the curb, ready to step into the vibrating car. Stillman lifted the ladies in. He was drawing back when Claire thrust her head out and said:
"Won't you please come, too? I am not sure about Danilo, and...."
He climbed in, slamming the door.
Claire went into her mother's room alone. Nellie Holmes was bending anxiously over the sufferer.
"You have come in time," Nellie was saying as she yielded her place to Claire.
Mrs. Robson looked up bewildered. For a moment her dull eyes roamed restlessly about as if in search of some missing thing. Finally, with a great effort the words shaped themselves. Claire listened attentively.
"Danilo ... where is Danilo?"
"Yes ... in a moment.... Presently."
Mrs. Robson closed her eyes with a smile of satisfaction. It was her last conscious moment. Slowly she fell into a stupor.... Toward midnight she died.
It was all very simple, Claire thought afterward. Much simpler than living.
CHAPTER XIV
It was not until people on the street began to stare that Danilo discovered that he had come away from the hotel without his hat. He felt no discomfort, but he was annoyed at being an object of curiosity. As a matter of fact, he was curiously devoid of any emotional excitement; instead, his wits seemed to have been sharpened by a cool cunning. All his powers of reasoning were reduced to one impulse—flight. He decided that he must walk on and on without a halt. His escape from the hotel had been extraordinarily easy. He merely had shoved his smoking pistol into his hip pocket and walked calmly out. If he had attempted to run, or looked about excitedly, or even slunk by the liveried flunky at the revolving door, all would have been lost. But he had done none of these things and he was feeling a certain arrogance at the thought of his bravado. But he realized that he must get a covering for his head. It was ridiculous to be sauntering along the street hatless. He beckoned a youth who stood near the curb, smoking a cigarette.
"I should like to buy your cap," he said, simply.
The young man stared, then broke into a laugh. "All right!" he replied, quickly, as if it were the best to humor a madman. "But it will cost you money."
"How much?"
"Two dollars."
Danilo gravely counted out the money. The youth drew back, instinctively clapping a hand upon his head.
"Come!" cried Danilo, roughly. "It will not do for you to trifle with me. You set your price. Here is the money. I want that cap!"
The youth turned pale and attempted to run. Danilo grasped him firmly by the shoulder.
"Give me that cap!" insisted Danilo.
The youth obeyed, trembling from head to foot. One or two passers-by halted, stared a moment, and passed on, shrugging their shoulders indifferently.
"Thank you," said Danilo. "You have done me a great favor. Here is the two dollars. May God reward you." As he said this he made the sign of the cross in midair above the boy's head. The boy cowered and began to whimper. Danilo put on the cap and walked away.
He felt more at ease now; no one was paying the slightest attention to him. He decided to go into a saloon and buy something to drink. The bartender, stout and genial and Irish, passed him the bottle of whisky. Danilo's hand shook as he poured out his drink. The Irishman eyed him quizzically.
"I have just had an unpleasant experience," Danilo began, apologetically, as he spilled some of the whisky. "I saw a woman shot." The barkeeper seemed unimpressed. Danilo felt annoyed. "At the St. Francis Hotel ... in the dressing-room, off the Colonial Ballroom.... She had been fooling a man. I was so excited I walked out of the hotel without my hat.... This cap—I bought it from a boy on the street. Is it not droll?"
The Irishman put the cork in the whisky-bottle and set it in its place under the bar.
"The man was a fool!" he said, bluntly. "I'd like to see myself take a chance at swinging for the likes of any woman."
"Oh, you are mistaken!" Danilo returned, mildly. "The man who shot this woman will not swing."
"Oh, well, if she gets better, of course...."
Danilo leaned forward. "Better?... Oh no, my friend, she is dead, quite dead. He aimed at her mouth.... I saw her fall.... But the man will not swing. He is not that kind. He will shoot himself first."
"It is all the same," returned the barkeeper. "He was a fool!"
"You do not know what you are talking about!" Danilo cried, hotly.
"Neither do you!" said the other, with an indulgent laugh.
Danilo gulped the whisky in silence and went out with a morose air.
"A fool?... A fool?..." he kept repeating.
The issue was at once irritating and impersonal. He felt as if the barkeeper had affronted the whole masculine sex. A man was a fool for allowing himself to be taken in, he was quite ready to grant that. But no man was a fool for collecting the full toll of feminine duplicity. Now this man, in the dressing-room of the St. Francis Hotel, who had shot down a woman....
Danilo halted. Why, the man was he—himself! Somehow it had never occurred to him. He had the same feeling that comes in dreams, when one is in some mysterious way both the actor and the audience. He had been in the picture and out of it. It was all very puzzling.
He tried to review the incidents of the evening. Nothing was very clear. The sound of a pistol-shot was the most vivid memory; then somebody had fallen.... The woman was dead—it could not be otherwise! Why had he walked away so calmly? He should have stayed. After all, he was a physician and he had acted unprofessionally. It was a physician's place to remain and serve, even in the face of utter hopelessness. Well, he had come away and it was too late to turn back. He was very tired. He looked about him. He had drifted down to the water-front.
He went into a cheap lodging-house and paid for a room. The place was frowzy and ill-smelling, but he did not care. He threw himself upon the bed. The dreamlike quality of what had transpired still persisted. He had added another rôle to the drama, that of physician. He had been the murderer, the spectator, the physician. But he could not get under the skin of the victim. He seemed to be able to recall every detail but her face—the blue-green dress, the black-lace shawl, the white tapering arm upraised as she flicked the end of his nose. It was then, as the murderer, he had pulled the trigger.... In the rôle of frightened spectator he had walked out of the hotel.... As physician he had remembered his duty and chided himself.... He took a cigarette from his pocket and began to smoke. He lay there for hours, thinking, thinking. But he could not see the victim's face....
Suddenly toward morning he sat up.
"Ah, I have it! The woman was Claire.... Yes, it is Claire who is dead!..."
He fell back with the satisfaction of one who has solved an irritating puzzle.
He awoke at noon. He was neither surprised nor dazed at finding himself in a strange environment. Sleep had settled all the dust-clouds of thought. He remembered everything perfectly. He was a murderer, and he had killed a woman because he had not been wise or prudent enough to content himself with the fruits of a tempered, frugal passion. He did not rouse himself. He had no wish except to lie still and think.
Looking back, he could see that he always had felt uncertain about Claire. Somehow she was not altogether a virginal type. She was a woman who, lacking any concrete experiences, would mentally create stimulating situations. Even now he admired her, but love was mysteriously killed. Yet he had loved her last night! And never so ardently, so completely as at that moment when he had brought his pistol upon a level with her lips and done his worst.
But this morning he seemed swept clean of all feeling, love and hate and enthusiasm, every sensation killed utterly—dead! Could it be possible that Claire Robson had absorbed every hope, every expectation, making of them a living thing in her own image that died with her? Had she betrayed not only him, but all his visions? What had become of the far-flung horizons which he had always seen so clearly? One black cloud had eclipsed them all.
He remembered the serene blueness of the day on which that black cloud had sprung out of the south, a misty-white fledgling of the sky that grew with the hours until the sun was wrapped in a dull gloom. How quickly Mrs. Condor's words had expanded and drawn every drifting rumor to their confirmation! He had heard it all—everything. It amazed him to discover how easily the truth was uncovered. Uncovered? No, it had lacked even the virtue of concealment; it lay, noxious and festering and unscreened, a rich feast for the scandalmongers circling vulture-like above. But his flight toward happiness had been like the eagle's, too swift and lofty and disdainful for such unlovely sights; eagerly, blindly he had passed them by. He recalled with a shudder the morning that he had gone and bought the pistol. This he had intended for Stillman. But the very thought of it had cut him to the heart. It was only when he had reflected on that million dollars for the Serbian cause that he found himself submerged in bitterness. This was the crowning insult, the culminating deception! The wage of Claire Robson's shame offered in the guise of a free gift! No wonder that the donor withheld his name!
"In my country it is all very simple—we call the man out and shoot him!"
How poignantly these words had come back to Danilo in his agony! But it had not been simple.... He wondered if he were losing the naïve directness of his forefathers. There had been moments when he was almost persuaded that it was not his affair, after all. Claire Robson did not belong to him; she never had. There was no logic in exacting a price from any one who had taken unclaimed property. But there had been insolence and trickery back of the performance.... A million dollars for the Serbian cause! Not only he, but his country, was to have been smirched by the patronage of these two moral derelicts. The purity of his passion for Claire Robson had sharpened his sense of human delinquency and given him the uncompromising judgments of virtue.... Well, he had decided upon Stillman. Some one must pay the price and the woman he loved did not yet seem foul enough for the sacrifice.... Then it was that his ferretings had hunted out the Flint story. From that moment he had been gripped by a blind fury. His thoughts had grown black, formless, devastating. He had been deliberately betrayed—the woman he loved did not exist, not even potentially. It was not a question of what might have been. One did not gather figs from thistles. And above all this angry tumult within him there rose something cool and malevolent and sinister, the fruits of wounded vanity and outraged pride.... And now it was all over. He wondered whether he would be capable of an emotion again. Would he continue to think without the respite of being able to feel, to lie and stare unmoved at the mangled form of his dead hopes? At the sound of the pistol he had closed his eyes upon the horrid sight which he knew must follow. Blood was nothing to him, but the vision of Claire's shattered loveliness was too terrible to face. How easy it was to screen the senses from ugliness! Why was it not possible to shut the inner vision as completely?
He lay for hours, thinking, thinking! He could do nothing else.
Night came on again. Danilo was still thinking. A tray of untasted food sent in by a water-front chop-house drew a half-score of buzzing flies toward the varnished bureau. He lay, still inert, but disquiet had begun to succeed the first hours of emotional exhaustion. And he felt ill, also. His throat was burning and his breathing labored and choked.
"I must have caught cold last night," he thought, "running about without a hat."
Physical discomfort was swinging him back into the paths of every-day experiences. He even had a fleeting impulse to prescribe for himself.
A fever set in. He began to dream.... It seemed to him that Claire was moving about the room, waiting on him, serving him. She had on the peacock-blue dress, but the shawl was gone and her white shoulders and tapering arms gleamed coldly in the uncertain light. "Ah," thought he, "her lips will be red!" He raised his eyes to her face, but he saw only something vague and gray and formless. "She has wrapped her face in a veil," he said, aloud. "What delicacy! She does not wish to remind me of last night.... Yes, that is it!... Last night I pointed my pistol at her mouth. But her mouth was not red last night ... not before I closed my eyes.... Her lips were red once, but she wiped them clean again, for me.... Why did she do this thing for me? I was not her love?" And suddenly the peacock-blue dress was gone and Claire became a gray figure from head to foot, a gray figure with two red lips. Nothing else was visible. She began to move toward him. He tried to turn from her, to lift his body up, to fling himself downward upon his face. But he could not move. She came nearer.... Her lips were widening with every step. She halted by the bed ... she bent over ... she kissed him. Her lips were warm and moist and horrible. He gave a deep, groan and woke up.
He fell asleep again. Now he dreamed of Serbia—his country, a beautiful woman, golden in the morning light. She lay smiling like a blossom in the dawn and her long hair was spread out on either side. Then suddenly a leprous sun beat down upon her and she tried to lift her arms to screen herself from its fury, but could not. Flies gathered, her body grew loathsome, her lips black. Then, coming down a dust-stung road, he saw a gray figure—a gray figure with two smiling red lips showing through a rent in its drab winding-sheet. And his beloved country stirred faintly and gave a deep cry. The gray figure stopped, bent over gently, and, taking two strands of the flowing hair in its wan hands, drew a covering over the festering body.... He looked again. The gray figure was holding out her hands to him! He went toward it joyfully. And at that moment the gray winding-sheet fell away and Claire stood before him, smiling. He dropped on his knees beside her.... He could feel himself being lifted up. "Claire—always Claire!" he cried.... He awoke again, sobbing.
Once he dreamed of Stillman, covered with the lizard-like scales of a million dollars, a venomous creature that darted hither and thither and finally grew confused with the personality of Flint and became a two-headed monster.... In the end the reptile sat calmly down before the cheap varnished bureau and consumed Danilo's untasted meal.
Thus they came and went, dream succeeding dream.
He was roused finally by a voice calling for him to get up. He opened his eyes. The hotel clerk stood at the side of his bed. The tray of untasted food still lay upon the bureau.
"What is the matter," the hotel clerk was saying. "Are you drunk?"
Danilo stirred. "No.... I have been ill. What time is it?"
"Do you realize that you have been here three nights? It is Monday morning. I began to think you had committed suicide."
"No.... Everything is all right. Presently I shall get up."
The man went out, whistling, carrying the tray with him. Danilo felt weak and helpless, but he drew himself to his feet and fell back into a chair.
Monday morning! He had been there since Friday, then. His patients—what about his patients? He felt suddenly irritated at himself for this professional lapse. Suppose some of his patients had died meanwhile? The possibility brought a cold sweat to his forehead. He thought of the young mother whose bedside he had quitted to appear at the Serbian Relief concert; a child who had been run over by a street-car; the last man he had operated on; Mrs. Robson.
"I must see them all, once again," he muttered. "After that...." He shrugged.
For three nights he had slept in his clothes. He had not even removed the pistol from his hip pocket. He stood up and drew it from its place. There was something fascinating and sinister about its cold gleam. The words of the hotel clerk came to him—"I began to think you had committed suicide!"
He put the pistol back in its hiding-place—he had duties, duties. He kept repeating this as he tried to gather strength for a supreme effort. He was extraordinarily weak, and the fever still lit his eyes and burned the vivid red of his lips to a dull, dry purple. He washed himself, tried to brush his clothes, ran his trembling fingers through his hair. It was an hour before he felt able to venture on the street.
It was a dull morning. The fog had mixed itself with the city's smoke, floating like an enormous and malignant black bird whose poised body shut out the sun. Danilo shivered. He still felt very weak.
He decided to go and call on Mrs. Robson. Not until then had he thought of Claire in any concrete, personal way. Would he see her? He remembered now that she was dead. But the thought that he would see her still persisted. Death and Claire Robson were terms that he could repeat, but not really sense. It was only when he had swung off the car at Larkin Street and turned the corner at Clay Street that the horrid realization struck him with relentless force. A hearse was drawn up to the curb in front of the Robson flat and a knot of curious people were watching the pallbearers lift a flower-smothered casket down the shallow steps. He did not go any farther, but stood, motionless, watching the somber pageant.... Presently everything was settled; the hearse began to move forward, followed by three limousines. The procession came toward Danilo. The hearse passed the corner. Instinctively he removed his hat....
When it was all over he turned deliberately toward town.
"Claire is dead," he repeated. "What does the rest matter?"
Suddenly his professional consciousness, the last link that bound him to reality, had snapped.
He went back to his lodgings—the old lodgings on Third Street, where he had been staying for a week.
"Where have you been for three days?" asked the proprietor. "At least a dozen people have been looking for you."
Danilo smiled grimly and said nothing.
"The police are on my trail!" he thought.
He went up to his room and began to pack. There was really very little to assemble; most of his wardrobe still remained at the Robson fiat. After he had finished he sat down. He seemed incapable of forming any plan. What should he do? Where should he go? What did it matter? His thought moved in an irritating circle.... Once he rose to his feet and drew the pistol from his pocket. He looked at it a long time. Finally he laid it on the bureau. A beam of sunlight played upon the polished barrel. Its glint irritated Danilo. He moved the weapon out of the light.... Presently he heard the chimes from St. Patrick's Church. He knew now that it was noon.... He began to count the money in his pocket. Seven dollars and forty cents! How far would that take him? How much nearer would seven dollars and forty cents carry him to Serbia?... He began to laugh.
The telephone tinkled. Danilo hesitated, then walked calmly over and took down the receiver. The voice of the hotel clerk said:
"This is the office. Mr. Stillman is down-stairs."
"Mr. Stillman? Oh yes, of course. Tell him to come up."
This was the end! Well, what was he to do? Stand calmly and let Judas betray him into the hands of his enemies? He fancied Stillman's entrance into the room, the cool cordiality of his manner, the advance with outstretched hands. At that moment the police would dart swiftly forward! Danilo had seen it all a thousand times at the moving-picture shows. The trick was as old as Gethsemane and as young as the screen drama!
He picked up the pistol. This was to have been Stillman's portion. Well, it was not too late! The outlaw's instinct to barricade himself and defy everybody up to the last moment came over him. A knock sounded upon the door.... He flung himself about, bracing his body against the bureau. The pistol was grasped firmly in his hand; he had but to raise it to cover his visitor successfully. He moistened his lips.
"Come in!" The words snapped out with a command that was also a menace.
The door swung back. Stillman stood upon the threshold. Danilo felt his senses reeling. He tried to lift the pistol. He had grown frightfully weak.
"George!" Suddenly Stillman's voice rang out.
The word echoed through the room. It was the first time that Stillman had ever called Danilo by his Christian name. A great yearning came over Danilo, a sense of futility, the feeling that everything, even life itself, was a horrible mistake!
"George!" Stillman was crying to him again, like a brother from the depths of his heart.
Danilo roused himself with a supreme effort, crouched low, narrowed his eyes. Claire was dead! What did it matter?... No, it was too late. He lifted the pistol slowly but surely. Stillman gave one startled look and, throwing his head back, seemed to say:
"Why don't you shoot? I am waiting."
Danilo looked down at the shining weapon. It was on a level with his own heart. Claire was dead! Deliberately he turned the muzzle upon himself.... The noise of the shot sounded far away. He felt Stillman's arms enfold him.
"What have you done? What have you done?... My God! but this is a mistake!"
He heard Stillman's voice trembling with passionate protest. He opened his eyes.
"My brother!" he said, and he lifted his hand to Stillman's wet brow.... "My brother!" he felt himself murmur once more.... Suddenly he was swallowed up in a merciful oblivion.