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.�
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 out-of-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 west-side 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...
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
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 over-eagerness, 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 this 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