The talkers

The firm of Sutton & Son, while solvent, had been hard hit. All honest business was in the same pickle or in a worse one.

Through a murk of business despair the miserable year approached its end. The national administrative body, too, like a dying rat, was now nearing dissolution—with kicks and jerks and spasms from the intellectual tatterdemalions who composed the vital parts of it.

Distant, still, loomed the incoming administration. It was too early to expect—perhaps even too early to hope—that the scandalous inequality of taxation might be remedied—that economical decency might prevail, founded upon a budget system—that universal service, military and civil, might unify the nation and make it secure and self-respecting—that an international tribunal, reserving national self-determination, and backed by proper means to enforce its verdicts, might be erected upon the ruins of the ridiculous league which the nation had repudiated.

Perhaps such a programme was too much to hope for, judging from the congressional scum still stagnating in what had become the national disposal plant.

And New York was depressed with the approach of a blue Christmas, a bluer New Year, and prospects of the very bluest blue.

And, among others, Sutton & Son paid the fourth quarter of its income tax and found that it had nothing left to lay aside.

So the Year of Graft was closing amid a mess of scandals—municipal, industrial—all the old symptoms of corruption, and a few new ones.

A good man is a good thing; and the American people, who love good things, gorge themselves, over-eat, spew it up, and blame the good thing.

So went the greatest modern American; so went the best modern mayor of Gotham; and the American people turned gratefully to their swill again.

Stuart had come uptown early, aghast at the future taxes to be faced, terribly depressed by a long consultation with his bankers and the utter impossibility of obtaining sufficient financial aid.

But he had no intention of carrying such a face home. He continued on uptown, trying to walk himself into a glow of cheerfulness.

But the crowds on Fifth Avenue lent him no countenance; it was a noticeably subdued throng, in spite of the late sunshine—not the bustling, cheery, complacent crowd that, in former years, stimulated already by the distant prospect of Christmas, surged gaily north and south along acres of gilded grilles and plate glass.

He thought he would go as far as The Province Club—that dull oasis of social respectability usually avoided by its members—but the sight of it annoyed him and he kept on.

Sunset still reddened the western wastes of Jersey as he entered the Park.

But there the sheer dreariness of everything halted him.

A first and sure symptom of hidden corruption is municipal neglect of the Park.

Dead trees stood everywhere. The long row of elms stretching up Fifth Avenue, decimated, had been replaced by wretched little elms, instead of the only tree suitable—the sycamore.

Untidy scraps of paper fluttered over path and grass; untidy employees slouched and dawdled and puttered among eroded hillocks and crippled vegetation.

High in the sunset sky sea-gulls passed over toward the reservoirs and North River; and across dead grass starlings walked and chilly sparrows hopped and quarrelled.

Stuart turned back again into the shabbiest metropolis in the world—but a good enough city for its fool inhabitants—and, not knowing where to take such a solemn face as he wore, walked on at hazard, infinitely depressed by the dinginess of life.

With the crowd he waited while the glare in the traffic-towers died out and a crimson lens and a green one signalled cross-street vehicles to move. Then, as the white flare played out once more over the Avenue, he walked on mechanically, a prey to sinister reflections, noticing no passing face, no lighted window, nothing specific in the moving swarm or in the glass corridors through which it poured.

At Forty-second Street, traffic having halted, he turned to cross to the west side of the Avenue. Somebody, crossing eastward, nodded, passing him. As he took off his hat and turned to identify her, she also looked back.

“Gilda!” he exclaimed, retracing his steps to join her.

She was in black and white and wore silver-fox and violets—a slender, elegant figure of Gotham type indigenous nowhere else on earth.

“Are you shopping?” he asked, “or are you homeward bound—or elsewhere?”

“I’m homeward bound, Mr. Sutton. Will you walk with me?”

“If I may.”

“Of course.... It’s two weeks since I have heard a single word from you.”

“Two weeks ago tonight I telephoned you,” he retorted bluntly.

She frowned, considering, trying to recollect. “Two weeks ago today?” Suddenly she remembered, with a rush of vivid colour to her cheeks.

“I called you at eight-thirty, and again at ten,” he went on; “but your house did not answer.”

“I’m sorry.... My maid sleeps out....”

“You also must have been out.”

“Yes.” She offered no further information. Her affairs were, obviously, none of his business; yet once more he felt that slight resentment, as though some explanation were due him.

At the corner of Thirty-fifth Street she stopped in the glare of the show windows.

After a moment’s hesitation, she offered her white-gloved hand.

“Are you dismissing me?” he asked good-humouredly.

“Why, no,” she said with a quick blush, “—if you care to—remain with me——”

“Shall we dine somewhere and go to a show, Gilda?”

“I’d love to; only, you see ... my maid already is preparing dinner.” There was a pause: she looked away from him, hesitated, added shyly: “Would you care to dine with me?”

“Do you really want me again?” he laughed.

She looked up, smiling: “I’m dying to have you,” she said. “You know it.”

The winning candour of the girl enchanted him, quickening the dull mind and heart he had carried about with him all day long.

“You’re charmingly generous,” he said, walking on beside her; “it hasn’t been a very gay day down town and I’m not in extravagantly high spirits.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll try—try to——”

“——To put me in boisterous humour?” he inquired.

They both laughed as they climbed the dusky stairway to her apartment.

“I’ll try to be cheerful anyway,” she said, unlocking her door.

They went in.

She left him to look after himself and continued on toward the kitchen. Her maid presently appeared, turned up the lights, smiled at Sutton, and offered conveniences to enable him to rid himself of the accumulated grime of Gotham.

Later, when he was seated on the sofa with the evening paper, the maid reappeared and closed Gilda’s bedroom door.

He glanced at the financial columns; and gloom returned. There was more unpleasantness on the front page, with its scare-heads recording graft, violence, greed, at home and abroad.

Gilda took the usual three evening papers—the one popularly supposed to make vice attractive, the one notorious for making virtue odious, and the third unpopularly known as “pink and punk.”

There was nothing of merit in any of them. The same clowns conducted special sections as vehicles for a sort of mother-wit; the same critics devoted the same space to exploitation of their own idiosyncrasies, offering the reader nothing of value concerning the books and plays which they pretended to discuss.

An incredible meanness seemed to characterise these modern papers; there was in them nothing generous, nothing just, nothing honest—nothing, in fact, except the dreary evidence of uneducated contributors and of vulgar intelligences furtively directing them.

Stuart’s depression had now returned with a vengeance. He got up and began to walk about, nervously inspecting Gilda’s household gods—the few inexpensive mezzotints, the orange-tinted curtains and upholstery; the silvery-green carpet, the desk of sycamore and tulip wood painted with tiny flowers, where lay writing materials, wax, seal, and a silver-gilt candlestick bearing a yellow taper.

Except for the Adam desk, the English mirror, and a couple of old Sceaux figures on the mantel, there was nothing either antique or valuable in the room. Yet taste and colour charm were everywhere evident—in the yellow Japanese bowl where flowers were growing, in the lamp shades, draperies, pictures.

He went to the shelf of books and looked at their titles. All were standard works in French or English—dramatists, essayists, poets, historians, haphazard memoirs—Saint-Simon, Fanny Burney, Lady Russell, Cardinal Retz, Evelyn, Pepys—a sprinkling of dictionaries and reference books—all of Tennyson, all of Shakespeare, volumes of Coleridge, Keats, Robert Browning, the Laus Veneris—all of Molière, some of Racine, Musset, Hugo—but nothing modern save Rostand and Maeterlinck.

And among all there was not one unused volume, nor one doubtful or unhealthy or degenerate book—no fiction later than Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Hugo and Dumas, except the Belgian mystic and the great French poet.

The whole place, in fact, gave Stuart an odd sensation of having seen such a room somewhere else.

He said so when Gilda’s door opened and she came forward in a black dinner gown, smiling inquiringly as though to ask him how he had spent the time awaiting her.

“It’s so comfortable—all this——” he indicated the ensemble.

“It’s cheerful, isn’t it?” she assented, pivoting to review the familiar place.... “There was a room in my father’s house in London—— ... I tried to make this look a little like it.”

“That’s probably what I feel,” he nodded; “——it’s like a room in an English home.... And as for you, Gilda, you are very beautiful in black; do you know it?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “I don’t.”

All men like feminine youthfulness in black, but feminine youthfulness usually avoids black until it becomes inadvisable to wear it.

“You’re lovely,” he repeated. “I once thought you very fetching in green, but you’re adorable in black.”

She gave him a demure glance to see if he were in earnest, and, seeing that he was, turned happily to nod to Freda, then took his offered arm lightly, with exaggerated ceremony.

“We’re to dine on last night’s turkey, my poor friend; do you mind?” she explained gaily, as Freda set the better part of a fine roasted bird in front of Stuart.

“The wonder to me is that anybody can afford turkey,” he remarked, preparing to carve.

“Oh, this bird was a present. It’s a wild turkey. I have some mallard ducks, too, in the ice chest, and several quail.”

Always it seemed to surprise him to discover that Gilda had other friends than himself. He wondered who had sent her the game—a man, of course, and, of course, a wealthy one. Always, too, the slightest sense of uneasiness accompanied such discovery—perhaps with the memory of Derring’s party in mind—the memory of Sadoul, too, and of Pockman, and all that irresponsible, over-accented crew of irregulars from which, sooner or later, are recruited the frail battalions of Cytherea.

Yet why he should make it a personal matter at all was not clear to him: it was none of his concern what friends this young girl had—this girl whose status had seemed more or less obvious when he first met her, and afterward anything but obvious.

For since then he had come to realise that he knew absolutely nothing about her—that he never had encountered any prototype with which to compare her.

Only one thing seemed evident; she didn’t belong to Sadoul; she didn’t belong in the Cytherean element where he had found her. He simply couldn’t determine what might be her proper habitat, or to what genus to assign her.

Gilda was gaily animated during dinner—having discovered that shooting interested her somewhat subdued guest.

And presently Stuart warmed up, stimulated by her tactful questions; and he began to tell her all about the game club in Virginia of which he and his father were members, and about the upland and water shooting to be had there—the live decoys and how they were cared for, handled, and bred; the kennels, and how promising pups were trained—all the gossip and lore of masculine haunts whither man repairs to shoot and drink and gamble and sprawl and gossip with his brother man.

After dinner she was still the interested hostess whose light, swift response to the voluble mood she had evoked in him gave him no interval for gloomy reaction.

But reaction was inevitable; it was coming now. Aware of it, she went to the piano and started midway in one of those vivid, impetuous Hungarian fragments, wild as a Tzigane’s frolic where the flashing skirts reveal a knife in every garter.

He leaned moodily on the piano, passing his fingers through his crisp, blond hair, his gaze absently following her flying hands hovering like white moths above the keys.

Stopping capriciously, she rose and reached over for a pile of tattered music; but his hand checked hers; held it.

“I want to talk to you, Gilda.”

She nodded, came from behind the piano: “Please don’t look so worried, Mr. Sutton. Can’t I make you forget for a while?”

They had seated themselves on the lounge where her prim cushions stood in a tidy row.

“Anyway,” she said, “your troubles can not be really vital.”

He looked at her with sudden curiosity:

“No, they are not vital. Are yours?”

“Mine?... I have no troubles.”

After a silence she said lightly, but with an effort: “Anyway, we are not going to compare troubles this evening, I hope. Otherwise, I’m a miserable failure at amusing you.”

“I’m not thinking of my own troubles, Gilda.”

“I have not asked you to concern yourself with mine,” she said coolly.

“Is that a snub?”

She flushed: “Do you think I could afford to snub my only friend in New York?”

“You have other friends, haven’t you?”

She shrugged her shoulders and her head remained lowered.

“You never speak of your friends to me, Gilda,” he added.

“Do you speak of yours to me, Mr. Sutton?”

Naturally he had not. There had been no reason to—no point of contact or of interest, of course, between the people he knew and a girl he had picked up at Derring’s.

She lifted her head and looked at him gravely:

“I am not interested in your friends. As for the people I know, I do not believe they would interest you. They scarcely even interest me,” she added with a ghost of a smile.

“Do I interest you, Gilda?”

“Do I interest you, Mr. Sutton?”

“More than—than I can find words to tell you,” he blurted.

“Oh.... There’s a dictionary in my bookcase—if you require words——”

He turned very red.

“To aid your limited vocabulary,” she explained, already uneasy at her own badinage. But the next second he was laughing, and she seemed much relieved.

Her unexpected and delicate impertinence, and now her confused smile, enchanted him.

“I don’t need your dictionary,” he said, “to say you’re the most charming girl I ever knew—and that’s how much you interest me!”

He took one of her hands. She suffered it to remain in his possession but gave him a sweet, confused look, utterly irresistible to sentimental youth.

Like the majority of young men under similar circumstances, he had no particular intentions when he drew her forward into his arms and kissed her. She shook her head, averted her face; but he tipped her head back against him; and she remained so, restless, unresponsive, silent.

A little flame flickered in the boy’s heart and stole through his veins, hurrying the rhythm of every pulse. The faint, warm scent of her restless head—the softness of her body—were thrilling him; but he tried to speak lightly:

“——There was once a little Queen in Green who returned a kiss I gave her——”

“I can’t—any more.”

“Why?”

She was silent.

“Why?” he urged.

“Because there is somebody else to consider!”

Chilled, he released her. She drew away slowly.

“You didn’t understand me,” she said, not looking at him.

“You meant that there is another man to consider, didn’t you?”

“I meant that I must consider myself.... Indiscretion is a temptation when I’m with you.”

He drew a swift breath of delight and relief: “But, Gilda dear, there is nothing to be afraid of with me!”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s nothing rotten about me——”

“How do you know there isn’t about me?”

“What!” he cried incredulously; and caught her in his arms, laughing, drawing her closer.

“Now,” he said gaily, holding her imprisoned, “are you afraid any more?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t afraid at Derring’s.”

“No.... But—that was before I—I died.”

“What do you mean, Gilda?” he demanded.

She said almost fiercely: “Because I do care for you, I’ve got to tell you everything, I suppose!... I wasn’t afraid for myself that night at Derring’s.... I was merely bashful and stupid about it. But now, I’m afraid.... Because I—I am not that same girl you kissed at Derring’s. That girl died.”

“What! Do you actually believe you died that night?”

“I know I died.... And when my soul—or whatever it is called—tried to reënter my body she found another occupant there!”

“Another—soul?”

“Yes, a stranger. My own soul drove her out! I saw that other one. She was a sly, supple, beastly thing; and she struggled to stay.... I might as well tell you, too, that she often comes back, slinking around, lurking about to get possession.... I suppose you’ll think me insane to tell you this. But—I like you—so much—that I had to tell you.... And that’s why I’m afraid—to let you—touch—me——”

“Good heavens, Gilda,” he said, “this is a sort of waking nightmare—an obsession——”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.... Ask Sadoul, then——”

“Sadoul!” And all at once he remembered the shadow-shape he saw on the lounge beside Sadoul that night at the Fireside.

A sudden, raging curiosity seized him, overwhelmed him, to learn more—if there was more to learn—if, indeed, there was anything at all real and coherent in this wild absurdity he had listened to.

He said: “Sadoul is a clever fakir—I suppose he hypnotised me—for he once showed me something that vaguely resembled you—parodied you, Gilda, in a rather dreadful way——”

“When?” she whispered.

He told her everything briefly. “If that’s the thing you’re afraid of,” he added, “make yourself easy, Gilda, for it’s not real; it’s not a spirit; it’s nothing but a rather beastly brain-figment shaped by Sadoul’s mind. By hypnotic suggestion he made me see it, too. That’s all there was to that affair.”

She sat white, drooping, silent—not resisting when he drew her to him.

“You mustn’t be afraid,” he said. “You didn’t really die, of course. Nothing threatens your soul, or mine.”

She looked up, still very white; he put one hand behind her head, but she turned her cheek to his kiss, shivering in his arms.

“I tell you,” she said in a low, hurried voice, “that the Other One is watching us. I’ve got to be on my guard——”

“You darling. You need not be——”

“Stuart!—for God’s sake—listen——”

“Are you afraid to let me kiss you, you adorable child?”

“Yes! And I’m afraid to tell you—tell you what I’ve got to tell you, now—that it was not I who called you on the telephone two weeks ago. It was the Other One! It was—it was that thing you—you saw seated beside Sadoul!”

“Are you mad?”

She said desperately: “I’m trying to tell you something terrible that has happened to me. I’m trying to tell you that my own soul had been driven out of me when I telephoned you, and that the Other was in possession!

“And—and not finding you, that Other One called Sadoul.”

“Sadoul!”

“My God, yes! But only to mock and torment him—not for the reason that I—that it called you.... I want you to listen to me, Stuart.... Sadoul came here that evening. I was waiting and ready, burning, the very devil in me. We dined at the Palais Royal—danced. Then there were other places.... And later a party at Harry Stayr’s.... I drank enough to terrify myself.... It was daylight before the dance ended. I don’t know what I said to the men there or the women. Women still call me up every day. Men send flowers and ask me to dinner. One of them sent me that game from the South.... And that’s what I did!—God knows why!... Now, do you want to kiss me? Do you want to touch me? Do you care to chance what might happen if the other caught us off our guard?”

His face had become ghastly. He got up from the sofa, took an uncertain step toward the door; looked back at her in horror; and saw her eyes blinded with welling tears.

“I had to tell you,” she said.... “You won’t care to—to see me again, will you?... Because I told you I was afraid—if you kiss me—you might find the—the Other One in your arms——”

He came back to her in a sudden passion:

“I’d better look after you, I think, if you’re likely to make another night of it!”

“Stuart—do you care?”

“Of course, damn it! You don’t belong on Broadway. You don’t belong at Derring’s or at Harry Stayr’s! I don’t know what this crazy obsession of yours amounts to.... It can’t be true. There are no such things as malign spirits watching to possess and destroy anybody.... And God knows I shan’t ever harm you—Gilda—Gilda!——”