CHAPTER XXVIII
The room which Gilda peeped into resembled a chemical laboratory in a way. There was some equipment for physical research, also, an X-ray machine, a camera, electrical apparatus, dry batteries, arc lights, incandescent lights, Hewett-tubes, other paraphernalia less familiar. There was also a bare table and several uncomfortable chairs. A dark cabinet adjoined, hung with black velvet draperies.
Sadoul was seated on one of the small chairs, his thin elbows on his knees, his shadowy face framed in both hands. He got up as though fatigued when she came forward.
“Gilda,” he said in a peculiarly agreeable voice, without any taint of the habitual sneer, “you are doing a lot of things to help Sidney Pockman. He’s building future fame on your kindness. Submitting yourself to his observations means everything in the world to him.”
“I’d be disgustingly selfish not to help him,” she said, seating herself. “Whatever I am,” she added lightly, “I’m not ungrateful.” She rested her muff on the table and looked amiably, almost wistfully, at Sadoul.
He dropped both elbows on the same table, propping his chin on inter-linked fingers—the pale, bony fingers of a sick man.
“I wondered,” he said, “whether if I asked you’d be willing to help me a step or two toward fame and fortune.” Irony in his voice was faint but it was there.
“Always,” she said, “——reasonably.”
“Would you lend yourself to an experiment or two?”
“Of what nature?”
“Psychic.”
“Am I psychic, independently of you?”
“Unusually so.”
“What do you wish me to do for you?”
“I want you to give me a chance to study your two selves at close range, with every paraphernalia, every equipment, every condition favourable to exhaustive observation.”
A slight flush mounted to her cheeks: they looked intently at each other across the table.
“I have only one self—excepting the intruder you let in,” she said curtly.
“There are always two selves, Gilda. What you call the Other One belonged to you. You say I called her in. She was already in attendance. She always has been. She’s part of you—not the stranger you think—not an intruder from outer regions.”
“She is not part of me!” cried the girl, blushing.
“She is and always has been,” he repeated calmly; “——but she always had remained aloof—outside—during your waking hours. When you slept she crept in and slept, also. All I did was to awake her before it was time. And when you died, and your other self resisted her entrance, I gave her ingress. That is all I did; I aroused her before the—the conventional hour for her awakening had arrived. And when you fought to evict her, and bar yourself against her, I merely let her in.”
He bent his cadaverous head; one hand shaded his eyes.
“I’m sorry I meddled,” he said. “She has proved no friend to me.”
Gilda fixed her eyes on her locked fingers.
She said slowly and without resentment: “It was a devilish thing to do to a girl.”
She looked up, saw in his fixed gaze regret—not for what he had done, but because it had failed.
“You were willing to carry me to hell with you,” she said.
“If there were no other way. Besides, there is no hell, except what I’m in now.”
“Sadoul?”
“Yes, Gilda.”
“How did you happen to be behind that curtain?”
He denied his presence, pleasantly.
“I was thinking,” she said, “if you could do such a devilish thing as you did to me, perhaps you killed me.”
“Tu mihi solus eras. I did not kill you, Gilda.”
“With a misericordia?”
“Why?” he asked, patiently good humoured.
She dropped her head, thinking of Stuart and their first kiss. Then, vague eyed, she regarded Sadoul.
Strange scenes in her long resistance against this man took shape and faded in her mind. It seemed odd that she hated him so little—and only one phase of him. It seemed strange how much of sorrow, of pity, of wistfulness tempered her resentment—how much attraction remained, inclination to overlook, understand, forgive, this blazing, ruthless mind which had failed to subdue hers.
She looked sadly at his features, marred and worn and sunken by the sickness of aborted passion.
Undaunted, his deep set, smouldering eyes returned her gaze. Within that great, bony frame the dull fire burned on, stealthily devouring him. In his ravaged features she marked its devastation. And it would burn on, consuming all—even his mind in the end. She could not look at him unmoved.
Impulsively she placed a slim, gloved hand on his. She saw that her own cause was hopeless, appeal useless. But she was not thinking of herself.
“I am not your enemy,” she said. “I’ll help you if I can.”
“You trust me?” he asked.
“No, Sadoul.”
“You are afraid?”
She laughed miserably: “Oh, no, I’m not afraid. I never was. I’m so sorry you never understood that.”
“I did understand. I knew it. The fear was mine alone. Fear! The most terrible thing in the world. Fear is the real Slayer; Death the gentle, grave physician who assists at the birth of souls. Death—the world’s family doctor—wise, kind, faithful, always on time. He shuts the door against Fear and locks it. He delivers the soul, patiently, skilfully. He severs the natal cord. A new birth is tenderly accomplished.”
“What have you feared, Sadoul?”
“To live without you.”
Tears flooded her eyes: “I couldn’t—under God——” she faltered. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t, Sadoul——”
She buried her face between her arms. Sadoul looked at her in silence; gazed, burned on.
After a little while she got up, found a handkerchief in her muff.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She remained busy with her handkerchief for a few moments. Then:
“You’ll have to show me what you wish me to do.... When shall I come?”
He suggested a day; asked her if she were free. She nodded. After a short silence she turned and walked toward the door.
He opened it for her. After she had gone he stood so, for a long while, peering down the empty corridor and nosing the silence like a great beast blinded, bereft, confused by its unutterable isolation.