The talkers

It was Life’s first hurricane for Stuart Sutton. It had arisen in fury out of nothing; caught him unprepared. Where was it driving him? On what unknown shore would it wreck him; in what maelstrom engulf him?

In the first hour he had ever set eyes on Gilda Greenway the tempest began to gather. With incredible swiftness it had burst within that hour.

Then, for the first time in his life, he had seen Death in the midst of Life. He had known its stupefaction, its horror; had struggled against it in anguished incredulity.

Bewildered, almost hysterical, he had demanded justice and equity of the Unknown God. Justice had been accorded—by somebody—something—somehow or other. The horror had dissolved overnight; daylight ended the dream of evil. But the tempest was still blowing, imperceptibly gathering force; storm clouds thickened, writhing around this woman and himself.

Suddenly out of the whirling, infernal light burst love, in flames, already full grown, fully armed, dangerous.

Beyond, a desolate vista opened through grey years, and endless, purposeless, hopeless as ages born of hell——

Out of nothing had been hatched this hurricane—born of a green disguise, a smile, a little mask half lifted—a kiss given; passionately forgiven.

All, instantly, became part of the boy’s life. Death also entered, lingered, lightly withdrew.

But now the boy was learning that Death had left behind that which is stronger than Death—a lovely and defenceless tenement haunted of shadows—a young girl’s body for a battle-ground—a sanctuary where victim and assassin lurked, watching each other behind the temple of the mind.

Where was the tempest driving him? Shallows of passion, deeps of love—over these he had been hurried, blindly, without choice; and suddenly, low on the horizon, leered the red smear of murder.

So far had the tempest hurled him.

There came an hour, late on a winter afternoon, when the last clerk had left his office, the last letter had been signed, and he remained alone at his desk, determined now to face the apparition of the future.

Into a life which had been so accentless, so methodical, so pre-ordered as his own, had stepped from outer bournes a girl in pale silks and a pale green mask.

What was he to do with her?

He was trying, now, to think what to do. Distant doors closing alerted him of departing stenographers, clerks, heads of departments. Now and then he could hear the muffled stir in adjoining offices, the slam of roll-top desks, murmur of voices, a distant laugh.

Behind him the coal fire burned low. He rose, stirred the coals, stood irresolutely looking at his overcoat, then walked to the window.

Outside the pinnacles of Manhattan glittered like cliffs and peaks of solid jewels. There was a young moon in the southwest—a mere tracery in the sky—then the towered masses of light, huge standing shapes of shadow—bridges with necklaces of gems festooned above an unseen river—and the deep, interminable roaring rumour from below—New York aspiring to the stars, growling in its caverns—New York monstrously breathing, pulsing, gigantically, vulgarly vital, exhaling its false aura under the stars.

He looked up at that little immemorial virgin, the moon, thin-edged, sly, spinster-like, malicious—like all who endure aborted.

In that glimmering magic framed by his window there seemed nothing friendly. He turned, instinctively, to the fire.

What was he to do? Letters from his mother were in his pocket. California was warm, and sunny with ripe oranges.... And his father played golf.

There were other letters in his pocket—some stacked up on his desk—to be acknowledged, answered somehow.

A familiar, inherited social routine had been disrupted almost without explanation since he had met Gilda Greenway.

He had been, practically, nowhere in that limited world reserved as a matter of course for young men of his particular genus.

Dinners, dances, theatres, country parties—the usual succession of events in which youth of his race mechanically participated—he had avoided since he had known Gilda.

It was not a sudden distaste, not even inertia, not indifference. Except for the civilised routine required in avoiding them the boy had become oblivious to any social responsibility.

To be forgotten overnight in New York is inevitable unless one employs effort to avert personal annihilation.

Stuart made no effort. Possibly, in the back of his crisp, blond head, he realised that it is easy for such men as he to reappear.

But for some time, now, the clubs, the society, the amusements he chose were not those familiar to his parents or to people composing those interlinked circles wherein the Suttons were accustomed to consider themselves at home.

What should he do about it?

Here was a girl he couldn’t marry. Her world was utterly alien to his own; her little circle peopled by garish imitations of the real—by painted shadows on the screen of Life—Veronica, Eve, Katharine, Frances—by monstrous mouths—The Talkers—those who think they do life’s work with wagging jaws—and by darker phantoms—by Sadoul, and Pockman, with his spasm-like smirk, and Lyken, handler of lightning—blasted cadavers—Harry Stayr, sensualist, grossly feeding a swathe through life; Julian Fairless, nimble painter in thin colours, nimble-witted as a thimble-rigger whose public pays for the living he claims it owes him; Derring, empty as his own falsetto voice, fussing in the wake of noisy youth, sniffing its perfumed pleasures, a high-pitched titter amid its noisy gossip.

What was he to do? What was he becoming? Where was the end? Was there no end? By stepping out, the whole unreal pageant would pass like a dream. All this—all these tinted marionettes would go jerkily by him, on and on, dwindling into toy perspective—somewhere—wherever they came from.

All would pass on along a preordained path—all this grotesque Noah’s Ark—men, women, beasts—Nika, Eve, Pockman, Stayr—the pickled things in jars, the crippled rats and shreds of human flesh—the Monstrous Mouths—all Talkers—and the phantoms, too—Sadoul, Gilda——

What was happening to him? What was happening to the safe, familiar world about him? Once, death had been death—irrevocable, definite, an end. Now it was no longer an end. There was no end to life; not even any orthodox conclusion.

The world was peopled with deathless shapes—it swarmed with shadows—some malignant, like the wanton thing that haunted Gilda—that sensuous, red-lipped shape that sometimes hid within her and looked at him out of her dear eyes——

“I don’t know what to do,” he said aloud, staring vacantly at the coals. “I thought we were protected from such things—that such things never had existed.... I supposed God was in absolute control over evil——”

He became silent as though somebody had spoken. Listening, he seemed to hear the words again: “Deliver us from Evil.”

It was his own mind answering him.

“But deliver us from evil,” he repeated. And sat thinking for a while.

Were, then, such wandering, disincarnate intelligences—such indestructible and sinister individual survivals—a form of evil hitherto unrecognised—or not recognised since the gross superstitions of former days peopled the earth with malignant phantoms?

“Deliver us from evil.” Was prayer the remedy? Was it a weapon? Was it the whine of a coward for protection to a dull, monstrous, tyrannical God, or was it a call to arms to an ally against a common enemy?

The boy stared at the whitening ashes. He did not know what to think, what to do, whether he loved enough, or loved rightly. There seemed to be no outlook, no solution, no help.

As he got up and took his overcoat from the peg, his desk telephone rang.

“Is it you, Gilda?” he said, happily.

“What in the world are you thinking of, darling? It’s after eight and poor Freda is frantic about the dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but his face had cleared and his voice was joyous, “—I’m so sorry, dear. Tell me, are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Are you?”

“Yes—now. I’ll come uptown immediately——”

“Don’t dare stop to dress, Stuart!”

“No. Are you particularly and enchantingly gowned?”

“I hope you’ll think so.”

“Had you rather I ate in the kitchen?”

“You silly thing!”

“Which are you hungriest for, dinner or me?”

“If I survive till you arrive I’ll tell you. Hurry, dear, I’m starving!”