The blue wall
by Richard Washburn Child · English · Gutenberg #24451 · 464,854 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The blue wall
A story of strangeness and struggle
Author: Richard Washburn Child
Illustrator: Harold James Cue
Release date: January 29, 2008 [eBook #24451]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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THE BLUE WALL
A Story of Strangeness and Struggle
by
RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD
[Illustration: A PICTURE THERE AMONG THE LAW BOOKS]
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1912, by Richard Washburn Child
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
BOOK I--THE PROBLEM OF MACMECHEM
I. The House Next Door 3
II. A Moving Figure 22
BOOK II--THE AUTOMATIC SHEIK
I. A Woman at Twenty-two 39
II. A Pledge to the Judge 65
III. The Torn Scrap 80
IV. The Face 101
V. At Dawn 126
VI. The Moving Figure again 137
BOOK III--THE DOCTOR'S LIMOUSINE
I. A Shadow on the Curtain 157
II. Margaret 170
BOOK IV--A PUPIL OF THE GREAT WELSTOKE
I. Les Trois Folies 181
II. The House on the River 196
III. A Visitor at Night 219
IV. A Suppression of the Truth 240
V. Again the Moving Figure 261
BOOK V--THE MAN WITH THE WHITE TEETH
I. Blades of Grass 283
II. In the Painted Garden 292
BOOK VI--A PUPPET OF THE PASSIONS
I. The Vanished Dream 301
II. Mary Vance 312
III. The Ghost 323
BOOK VII--THE PANELED DOOR
I. The Scratching Sound 337
BOOK VIII--FROM THE WOMAN'S HAND
I. The Voice of the Blood 351
II. This New Thing 362
BOOK IX--BEHIND THE WALL
I. An Answer to MacMechem 371
II. "Why Care?" 378
ILLUSTRATIONS
A picture there among the law-books Frontispiece
"Listen to me, Estabrook" 120
"It must be Julianna!" 238
She did not speak. She seemed in doubt 372
From drawings by Harold J. Cue.
BOOK I
THE PROBLEM OF MACMECHEM
THE BLUE WALL
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR
What's behind this wall?
As I write, here in my surgeon's study, I ask myself that question.
What's behind it? My neighbors? Then what do I know--really know--of
them? After all, this wall which rises beyond my desk, the wall against
which my glass case of instruments rests, symbolizes the boundary of
knowledge--seemingly an opaque barrier. I am called a man of science, a
man with a passion for accuracies. I seek to define a part of the
limitless and undefined mysteries of the body. But what is behind the
wall? Are we sensitive to it? You smile. Give your attention then to a
narrative of facts.
How little we know what influence the other side has upon us or we upon
the human beings beyond this boundary. We think it is opaque,
impassable. I am writing of the other wall. _There_ was a puzzle! The
wall of the Marburys!...
Here I risk my reputation as a scientific observer. But that is all; I
offer no conclusions. I set down in cold blood the bare facts. They are
fresh enough in my memory. All seasons are swift when a man slips into
age and it was only four short years ago that this happened--so
marvelous, so suggestive of the things that we may do without
knowing--mark me! the things we may accomplish--_beyond the wall!_
You will see what I mean when I make a record of those strange events.
They began when poor MacMechem--an able practitioner he was, too--was
thrown from his saddle horse in the park and died in the ambulance
before they could get him to the Matthews Hospital. I inherited some of
his cases, and Marbury was one of those who begged me to come in at the
emergency. It was meningitis and it is out of my line. Perhaps the
Marbury wealth influenced me; perhaps it was because the banker--of
course I am not using the real names--went down on his knees on this
very rug which is under my feet as I write. There is such a thing as a
financial face. You see it often enough among those who deal with loans,
percents, examiners, and the market. It's the face of terror peering
through a heavy mask of smugness, and it was dreadful to see it looking
up at me.... I yielded.
The Marburys' house faces the group of trees which shade the very spot
where MacMechem's horse went insane. It is one of a block where each
residence represents a different architect--a sort of display of
individuality and affluence squeezed together like fancy crackers packed
in a box. My machine used to wait for me by the hour in front of the
pretentious show of flowers, tub-evergreens, glass and bronze
vestibules, and the other conventional paraphernalia of our rich city
successes.
It was their little girl. She was eight, I think, and her beauty was not
of the ordinary kind. Sometimes there rises out of the coarse,
undeveloped blood of peasants, or the thin and chilly tissue of families
going to seed, some extraordinary example like my little friend
Virginia. The spirit that looks out of eyes of profound depth, the
length of the black lashes lying upon a cheek of marvelous whiteness,
the delicate lines of the little body which delight the true artist, the
curve of the sensitive lips, the patient calm of personality suggesting
a familiarity with other worlds and with eternity, makes a strong
impression upon a medical man or surgeon who deals with the thousands of
human bodies, all wearing somewhere the repulsive distortions of
civilization. The ordinary personality stripped of the pretense which
cannot fool the doctor, appears so hysterical, so distorted by the
heats of self-interest, so monkey-like!
Oh, well,--she was extraordinary! I was impressed from the moment when,
having reread MacMechem's notes on the case under the lamp, and then
having crossed the blue-and-gold room to the other wall, I drew aside
the corners of an ice pack and gazed for the first time upon little
Virginia.
When I raised my glance I noticed the mother for the first time. I might
have stopped then to wonder that this child was her daughter, for the
woman was one of those who with a fairly refined skill endeavor to
retain the appearance of youth. I knew her history. I knew how her feet
had moved--it always seems to me so futilely--through miles and miles
and miles of dance on polished floors and her mouth in millions of false
smiles. She had been débutante, belle, coquette, old maid. Marbury had
married her when wrinkles already were at her chin and her hands had
taken on the dried look which no fight against age can truly conceal;
then after six years of longing for new hopes in life she had had a
single child.
Just as she turned to go out, I saw her eyes upon me, dry, unwinking.
But I know the look that means that death is unthinkable, that a woman
has concentrated all her love on one being. It is not the appeal of a
man or woman--that look. Her eyes were not human. I tell you, they were
the praying eyes of a thoroughbred dog!
I knew I must fight with that case--put strength into it--call upon my
own vitality....
The bed on which Virginia lay was placed sideways along the wall--as I
have said--the Marburys' wall. I drew a chair close to it, and before I
looked again at the child I glanced up at the nurse to be sure of her
character. Perhaps I should say that I found her to be a thin-lipped
person not over thirty, with long, square-tipped fingers, eyes as cold
as metal, and colorless skin of that peculiar texture which always
denotes to me an unbreakable vitality and endurance, and perhaps a mind
of hard sense. Her name was Peters.
MacMechem's notes on the case, which I still held in my hand, set forth
the usual symptoms--headache, inequality of the eye pupils, vertigo,
convulsions. He had determined that the variety was not the
cerebro-spinal or epidemic form. He had tapped the spinal canal with
moderate results. According to his observations and those of the nurse
there was an intermittent coma. For hours little Virginia would lie
unconscious, and restless, suffering failing strength and a slow
retraction of the head and neck, or on other occasions she would rest
in absolute peace, so that the disease, which depends so much upon
strength, would later show improvement. The cause of this case, he
believed, was either an abscess of the ear which had not received
sufficient treatment--probably owing to the fact that the child, though
abnormally sensitive, had always masked her sufferings under her quiet
and patience, or a blow on her head not thought of consequence at the
time it had happened.
Well, I happened to turn the notes over and, by George!--there was the
first signal to me. It was scrawled hastily in the characteristic
nervous hand,--a communication from poor Mac, a question but also a sort
of command,--like a message from the grave!
These were the words,--"What keeps her alive? What is behind the
Marburys' wall?"
They startled me. "Behind the wall?" I said to myself. "Behind the wall?
What wall?"
There were the scientific notes he had made! Then at the end a sane and
eminent doctor had written shocking gibberish. "What's behind the wall?"
"Come here," I called to that grim machine, the nurse.
She came, looked over my shoulder at my finger pointing at the words,
and her face filled with a dreadful expression of apprehension, all the
more uncouth because it sat upon a countenance habitually blank. She did
not answer. She pointed. I looked up. And then I knew that the wall in
question was that blank expanse of pale blue, that noncommittal wall
that rose beside the bed, at one moment flat, hard, and impenetrable, at
another with the limitless depths and color of a summer sky.
"Turn up that light a little," said I uneasily. "What has this wall to
do with us?"
"Nothing," said Miss Peters. "Nothing. I refuse to recognize such a
thing."
"Then, what did Dr. MacMechem see?" I asked.
"He saw nothing," she answered. "It is the child who knows that
something is beyond that wall. It is her delirium. There is no sense in
it. She believes some one is there. She has tried to explain. She puts
her hands upon that surface and smiles, or sometimes her face, as she
looks, will all screw up in pain. It has a strange effect upon her."
"How?" said I. "You are impressed, too, eh? Well, how does it show?
MacMechem was no fool. Speak."
The raw-boned woman shivered a little, I thought. "That's what causes me
to wonder, Doctor," she said. "There _is_ an effect upon her. She can
foretell the condition of her disease. She seems conscious that her
life depends on the welfare of something else or the misfortune and
suffering of something else--beyond--that--wall."
"Poppycock!" I growled at her. "It's a pretty pass when sane medical men
in their practice begin to fancy--"
"Sh--sh!" she said, interrupting me sharply. "See! Now the child is
conscious! Watch!"
I drew back a little from the bedside as Virginia stirred, but I could
see the milk-white lids of her eyes--eyes, as I have said, deep and blue
and intense like the wall behind her, with their long black lashes. Her
slender body shook as if she was undergoing the first rippling torsions
of a convulsion. Her face was drawn into such an expression as one might
imagine would appear on the face of an angel in agony, and then,
gradually, as some renewed circulation relaxed the nerve centres, her
breath was expelled with a long patient sigh. And this I noticed,--she
did not turn toward us, but with an almost imperceptible twist of her
body and the reaching of her little hands she sought the wall.
I confess I half believed that she would float off into the infinite
blue of the plaster and be lost in its depths. I found my own eyes
following hers. I felt, I think, that I too was conscious of some
dreadful or marvelous, horrible or inspiring something behind the
partition; but in light of subsequent discoveries my memory may have
been distorted. Besides, I have promised none but the cold-blooded facts
and I need only assert that the little girl looked, moved her lips,
stretched her arms, and then suddenly, as if she had sensed some agony,
some fearful turbulence, she cried out softly, her face grew white, her
upper lip trembled, she fell back, if one may so speak of an inch of
movement, and lay panting on her pillow. The nurse, I think, seized the
moment to renew the cold applications. Yet I, who had scoffed, who had
sneered at poor MacMechem's perplexity, stood looking at that blank blue
wall, expecting to see it become transparent, to see it open and some
uncanny thing emerge, holding out to little Virginia a promise of life
or a sentence of death.
My first instinct would have endeavored to shake off the question of the
other side of that wall. I would, perhaps, if younger, have rejected the
whole impression, declared the girl delirious, and would not now be
reciting a story, the conclusion of which never fails to catch my
breath. But mine is an empirical science. We deal not so much with
weights and measures as with illusive inaccuracies. To be exact is to be
a failure. To reject the unknown is to remain a poor doctor, indeed. The
issue in this case was defined. Either the congestion of the membranes
in the spinal cord was producing a persistent hallucination or else
there was, in fact, something going on behind that wall. Either an
influence was affecting the child from within or an influence was
affecting her from without. I was mad to save her. Even a doctor who
habitually views patients and data cards with the same impersonal regard
may sometimes feel a call to work for love. And I loved that little
child. I meant to exhaust the possibilities. As poor MacMechem had asked
the question, I asked it.
I touched Virginia's hands with the tips of my fingers. Her eyes turned
toward me, and again I was sure that no madness was in them. You, too,
would have said that, awakened from the intermittent coma, the little
thing, though mute and helpless, was none the less still the mistress of
her thoughts.
"You have not asked her?" I inquired of Miss Peters.
The woman, folding her arms, at the same time shook her head solemnly.
"No," she said as if she disapproved.
But I bent over Virginia. "I am the new doctor," I said. "Do you
understand?"
She smiled, and, I tell you, no monster could have resisted that
tenderness.
"What is there?" I whispered, pointing with my free hand.
Her eyes opened as children's eyes will do in the distress of
innocence; her feeble hand moved in mine as a little weak animal might
move. Her face refilled with pain.
"Something is there," she whispered.
"What?"
She shook her head weakly.
The nurse touched my elbow. I thanked her for reminding me of the
chances I was taking with the little girl's quiet. I left instructions;
then, perhaps not wholly at peace with myself, I crept softly down the
stairs. I did not wish an interview with Mrs. Marbury. I did not wish to
see that begging look on her face. I would have been glad to have
escaped Marbury himself.
He was waiting for me. He waited at the bottom of the steps with that
smug financial face of his--a mask through which, in that moment, the
warmth of suffering and love seemed struggling to escape. He was
plucking, from his thin crop, gray hairs that he could ill afford to
lose.
I anticipated his questions.
"It is a matter of conservation of strength," I told him; "a question of
mental state, a question of the nervous system. No man can answer
now--beforehand."
He drew out his watch and looked at it without knowing what he did or
why or observing the hour.
"By the way," said I, "who lives next door--in there?"
"Who?" he answered. "Why, the Estabrooks."
"A large family?"
"Two. Jermyn Estabrook and his wife. They were married six years ago and
have lived there ever since. We know them very little. His father has
never forgiven my objection to his membership on a certain directorate
in 1890. The wife was the daughter of Colfax, the probate judge. They
have no children. But perhaps you know as well as I."
"No," said I, studying his face. "I know nothing of them. Are they
happy? Is there anything to lead you to believe that some tragedy hangs
over them?"
For a moment he looked at me as if he believed me insane; then he
laughed nervously.
"Bless me, no," he said. "Imagine a couple very happy together,
surrounded by influences the most refined, leading a conservative life
well intrenched as to money, the husband a partner and heir-apparent to
an important law practice, the wife an attractive young woman who rides
well and cares little for excitement. You will have imagined the
Estabrooks."
"They and their servants are in the house?"
"Yes. Possibly Jermyn is away just now. I think I heard so. But I do
not know."
His words seemed to clear away the chance of any extraordinary abnormal
situation beyond the wall.
"What is the mystery?" he asked nervously.
I can hear the querulous tone of his voice now; I can see the tapestry
that hangs above the table in their hall.
"Thank you," I said, without answering. And so I left him.
Outside, I stopped a moment to look up at that house next door.
It was October tenth. I remember the date well. The good moon was
shining, for it has the decency to bathe with its light these cities we
make as well as God's fields. It lit up the front of the residence so
that I could see that, perhaps of all in the block, the Estabrooks' was
the plainest, the most modest, with its sobriety of architecture and
simplicity, and on the whole the most respectable of all. It seemed to
insure tranquillity, refinement, and peace to its owner. I tell you that
at that moment, with my chauffeur coughing his hints behind me, I felt
almost ashamed for the fancies that had led me to find a mystery behind
its stones and mortar.
And then, as suddenly as I speak, I realized that a window on the second
floor was being opened gently. I saw two hands rest for a moment on the
sill, some small object was dropped into the grass below, and my ears
were shocked by a low cry of suffering with which few of the millions
which I have heard could be compared!
It is always so, I find. We are ever forced by pure reason away from
those delicate subconscious whisperings. I had sensed something beyond
the wall, and as science, after all, is not so much truth as a search
for truth, I would perhaps have done well to have retained an open mind.
Instead, I had sneered at the whole idea. And to rebuke me the house, as
if it were itself a personality, had for a fleeting second disclosed the
presence of some hidden secret. The window was closed, and then I stood
upon the deserted thoroughfare, the hum of my fretting limousine behind
me, staring up at the moonlit front of the Estabrooks' home. You may be
sure that it was with a mind full of speculations that I left the spot,
asking myself as MacMechem had asked himself, what was behind the wall,
what was the thing which was determining the question of the life or
death of so lovable a child as little Virginia Marbury....
It is already raining. As I write again, the slap of it on the window
makes one feel the possibilities of loneliness in city life....
It is hard for me to describe what a fascination there is in
campaigning against death in those special extraordinary cases where the
doctor becomes something more than a man of science and is also a man of
affections. It is impossible to describe the irritation of being unable
to act in cases like Virginia's--cases where the fight is made between
strength of body and mind, on the one hand, and some deep-seated
infection, like meningitis, on the other. I was more than anxious for
the late afternoon hour when I could again go to the child. Her blue
eyes, as deep and mysterious as the sea, called to me, if I may use that
word. And there was something else that called to me as well--the blue
wall--blank blue wall beyond the bed.
I found Miss Peters there, sitting in the patient's room and the
gathering gloom of dusk, her muscular hands flattened upon her knees in
the position of a red granite Rameses from the Nile, looking out the
window at the waving treetops of the park and the clouds of falling
leaves which were being driven by the dismal October wind across the
white radiance of the arc lamps. I thought that I detected upon her
metallic face a faint gleam of pleasure.
"It has been a good day," she said, without rising and with her
characteristic brusqueness. "Mrs. Marbury is glad that you have not
suggested a hospital, and desired me to say so." Indicating the bed
with its inert little human body she added, "Peaceful."
"The wall?" said I.
She smiled insultingly.
"You are interested?" she asked.
I scowled, I think.
"Oh, well," she said, moving her shoulders, "she has been talking to
it,--whatever is behind there,--and, do you know, I believe it has been
talking to her!"
With those deliberate movements which characterized, I suppose, the
movements of her mind itself, she lit the light; under its yellow rays
lay the girl Virginia, her long lashes fringing her translucent eyelids,
her delicately turned mouth with lips parted, and an expression of peace
about the whole of her body.
"At twelve to-day," said the nurse with her finger on the chart, "she
went through apparent distress. Something seemed to give her the
greatest anxiety. She even spoke to me twice. She pointed. She said, 'It
is bad! It is bad!' with great vehemence. It was like that for more than
an hour. Then suddenly she became peaceful. She went to sleep. I have
not wakened her since."
Maybe I shuddered. I remember I merely said in answer, "Yes, yes, that's
all right!" and bent over the sleeping child. In the next moment I was
lost in wonder at the improvement which had taken place in twenty-four
hours. The tension and retraction of the neck and head had relaxed,
respiration had diminished, the lips were pink and moist, the spasmodic
nerve reaction and muscular twitching had almost ceased. I felt that
exultation which comes when instinct as much as specific observation
assures me that the tide has turned, that the arrow of fate has swung
about, and the odds have changed. Strange as it may seem to many
persons, these turns are felt by the doctor at times when the patient is
wholly unconscious of them, and often enough I have wondered if, after
all, this does not show that the crises of life are not determined
within ourselves, but by some watching eye and mind and hand outside of
us. As I bent over the little Virginia some such reflection was in my
mind.
Then you can imagine, perhaps, how startling, how much an answer to my
unspoken question, was the sound which at that very moment came from the
blue wall beyond the bed!
How can we analyze our sense of hearing? Do you know the sound of your
wife's footsteps? When you were young, could you pick out the approach
of your father by the sound of his walk? Yes. But can you tell how? Are
you able to say what it is that distinguishes it from the sounds a
hundred other men would make going by your closed door? No. And neither
can I tell you why I recognized this sound.
All that I can say is this,--the wall was opaque, the sound so faint as
to be hardly heard, and yet I knew, as well as if the partition had been
of plate glass, that the impact was that of a human body!...
There was something in this sound on the wall which drew an involuntary
exclamation from me as the jar of forceps draws a tooth. And the sound
of my voice, sharp and explosive, woke the child.
She stared up at me with that strange look of infinity--I must so
describe it--infinity; then, as if she too had heard, she turned toward
the wall.
"What do you see?" I asked near her ear.
She gave me one of her tender smiles and made a little gesture as if to
say that she felt her inability to express something.
"It is there?" I asked, indicating the blank wall at last.
Her eyes sought that space of mysterious blue. Then she whispered,
"Yes."
I must say that, though I knew no more than I had at first, I derived
some satisfaction from the mere fact that for the second time Virginia
had confirmed the extraordinary belief or fancy which had possessed
prosaic MacMechem, the unimaginative Miss Peters, and, finally, myself.
It seemed to justify positive steps in an investigation; after a further
examination of the little body on the bed which offered still better
evidence of an improvement in the course of the malady, I left the
Marburys' door, determined to settle the question once and for all.
CHAPTER II
A MOVING FIGURE
It may strike you as absurd that I did not accept the possibility that
Virginia was suffering from delirium. I confess that, after I had closed
the house door behind me, I was for the moment convinced of the
connection between congestion at the base of the brain and the abnormal
fancy of the child. I had come to the house on foot, no vehicle was
waiting for me, and I remember that when I started off I turned in the
direction leading away from the Estabrooks' door.
The day had promised a much-needed rain; now the coming night threatened
one of those angry tempests of the autumn. It was already dark and the
street was deserted as if every one had hurried to find cover. The
lighted windows suggested warmth and protection; but outside the dust
and flying, rustling leaves, the dancing shadows on the pavements, the
wail of the wind, the tossing treetops in the park, the musty odor of
the death of the year all bore down upon the spirit and awoke that
superstitious uneasiness which we inherit, I suppose, from ancestors who
fled the storm to find shelter for their naked bodies in caves and
hollow trees.
This wild and funereal scene and the proximity to the spot where poor
MacMechem met his end brought him back into my memory, and again I found
myself wondering, as he had wondered, and then I remembered the low cry
I had heard issue from the window.
One feels at times that determination comes from without. You can almost
imagine, then, that some part of your own self which exists outside your
body has tapped you on the shoulder, spoken a command, and directed your
action. Certainly I cannot remember why I turned around, nor can I
recall why I went back toward the Estabrooks'. I do remember that it
occurred to me that, if I should see the young lawyer or his wife, all
that I asked of them about the other side of the blue wall would
probably incline them to the belief that I was as mad as any hare of
March. But even that thought did not retard my steps.
If I hesitated at the point where I again reached the Marburys', it was
for good cause, for what I saw gave me no little uneasiness. Out of the
shadow of the Estabrooks' entrance, where a high iron grilled fence
curves toward the steps, there came, as if it were some wild and furtive
animal startled from its shelter, a moving figure!...
I endeavor to speak with accuracy.... It was dark. Everything seemed to
sway in the galloping wind--the trees, the shrubs, the magnetic arc
lights and even the luxurious iron and stone inclosures before the line
of houses. Furthermore the dust was blinding. In spite of all this, in
spite of the fact that the vision was fleeting, I received the definite
impression that this figure sought to escape unseen. It hurried away
into the darkness, hugged the shadows, and took up a position in a place
that would have been chosen by one who wished to observe secretly what I
was about to do.
"Bah!" said I to myself. "Some loiterer. He cannot be connected with the
Estabrooks' affairs."
Yet, for some reason, feeling that I was watched, I determined to walk
away again, and as I went I looked along the ground in the manner of one
who has lost something. The cross-street was near and I turned it. I
thought after a moment or two of waiting under the wall of the corner
residence that I heard receding footbeats on the pavement; therefore,
having allowed a minute or two to pass, I retraced my steps. The figure
was no longer anywhere in sight. Holding my hat so that the ugly gusts
of cold wind would not blow it away, I walked up the white steps of the
Estabrook home and pressed the electric button which projected from a
bronze disk. This disk, so the sense of touch indicated, had at one time
been one of those Chinese carved metal mirrors and was now set into the
stone. I remember how it spoke to me of the extents to which the
metropolitan architects and decorators will go to appeal to the whims
and pretensions of the rich, who, after all, are out of the same mould
as other men so obscure and wretched that the money spent for such a
capricious ornament would support a family of them for six months.
Perhaps the irony of it is that, no matter how much wealth may protect
one from the others, it can never protect one from himself. And then--I
pressed the button again.
There were silk curtains within the long heavy glass panels on either
side of the door, but had a light been lit within I could have seen it.
The whole house, however, was dark, and only by chance did I catch the
sly movement of one of the curtains and the glint of an eye, peeping out
at me. Whoever its owner might be, he or she had crept across the tiled
vestibule silently and was now behind the outer door conducting a covert
investigation.
"An odd procedure for a house of a respectable, conservative family,"
said I to myself, and without hesitating I rang again.
A light in the ceiling of the vestibule glowed forth immediately and I
heard the movement of heavy metal locks and latches; the door swung back
and I found myself standing before a middle-aged woman dressed in the
black-and-white garb of well-trained servants.
This woman had a face that one may find sometimes among veteran nuns--a
strong and kindly face, patient and self-subjugated--the face of the
convent. But, of course, old family serving-women may have this same
expression, for they too are nuns in a sense; in household rites they
renounce the world, and if the spirit does not sour, little by little,
they take wordless vows and obliterate themselves in service. This woman
who stood before me, with skirts and apron blown about her substantial
figure by the chill wind that poured into the vestibule, seemed at first
to be one of them. It was only when I perceived that her eyes were
filled with some guilty fear, and that her hands were half raised as if
to ward off some impending danger, that I began to suspect that hers was
one of those masks which hypocrisy and deceit grow upon the countenance
of evil souls.
"I wish to see Mr. Estabrook," said I.
"He is not at home. He is away."
"Mrs. Estabrook."
"She is not well, sir. She cannot see anybody."
These conventional answers seemed to put an end to the interview: if
she had not spoken again, with that strange look of apprehension and
terror rising to her eyes, I would have bowed and turned away. But her
voice trembled as she moved toward me timidly and said, "Will you leave
a message? Will you call again? Will you say--will you say--"
Her sentence failed like that. As it did, words sprang to my mouth. I
looked at her accusingly.
"Yes," I snapped. "On the second story of the Marburys' house there is,
of course, a partition. I called to ask Mrs. Estabrook what was on _her_
side of that wall."
This information acted like dynamite. You would have said that it had
blown to pieces some vital organ of the old servant. The color ran out
of her face as if her head had lost its connection with her body.
"This is terrible," she choked. "Oh, 'tis awful! Who are you? Who can
you be? Somebody has sent you."
She caught the edge of the door and pushed it toward me.
"I know who you are," she exclaimed. "You are somebody that is sent by
_him_!"
With a final shove, then, she closed the crack which had remained, the
locks moved again, the light in the vestibule went out, and I was alone
on the step.
Such was the success of my first attempt to find an answer to
MacMechem's question--to solve the riddle of the blue wall. But I
realized, as I stood there, looking up into the gray sky of night with
its wind-driven clouds, that the presence of some peculiar form of good
or evil was no longer in doubt; that little Virginia, with the sensitive
receptiveness of childhood, of suffering, and of her own endearing,
unworldly personality, had not been wrong; that MacMechem, like a true
physician, had not excluded the unknown and now was vindicated, and that
there are sometimes strange affairs that baffle our feeble diagnosis of
mankind....
This is merely a recital of the facts. I am not attempting to prove
anything. I merely state that, as I descended the Estabrook steps and
struck off into the park, the detective instinct which lies in every one
of us had wakened in me. It may have been the reason for my turning
around, after I had crossed the street, between the whirr and lights of
two automobiles, and stood at the opening of one of the paths of the
park.
The house I had just left met my scrutiny with a cold, impassive stare
of its own--its look might have been the stare of the sphinx or of a
good poker player. It gave no sign. My eyes traveled up to the roof,
then back again to the ground, and only when my glance dropped did I
see for the second time the lurking figure of the man.
"He was watching me from first to last," said I to myself. "He probably
saw my little strategy of waiting around the corner."
Indeed, my first impulse was to walk rapidly over the way, head him off,
and ask him his business; but I considered it unwise, and plunging into
the shadows of the wailing trees, I walked briskly toward the distant
lights that marked my district of the city.
You know, perhaps, the feeling that you are being followed. Without
recognition of any definite sight or sound, you become more and more
conscious of some one skulking in the shadows behind. Finally, you hear,
in one of those moments when the wind catches its breath, the breaking
of a twig, the disturbance among the dry leaves that have blown in
drifts over the path, and you know that some one is there.
I admit freely that I felt I had involved myself in such a manner that
some one wished to do me harm. If, on the other hand, he who followed
sought to rob me, the situation was as bad. The park was deserted. One
does not like to call for help unless certain of danger. And therefore,
though I am no longer moulded for speed, I broke into a run.
I had gone but a few paces before the other discovered that I was in
flight. I heard the rapid patter of his shoes behind me. In another
twenty feet I heard his voice. It was not loud and it was cautious, but
it reached my ears with a suggestion of extraordinary savageness.
"Stop!" it called with an oath. "I've got you. Stop!"
It was not a reassuring message, of course. I tried to run faster. A
moment of this endeavor only showed me that my pursuer was gaining. I
therefore stopped short, stepped into the heavy shadow of an evergreen,
and waited for my new friend. Though it was dark I could see him as he
came, and I assure you that it surprised me when I noted that the man
was well-dressed and bore the appearance of respectability.
Just as he reached the spot in front of me, I saw him hesitate as if he
had discovered that I was no longer running along in front of him. I
knew that an encounter could not be avoided. Accordingly I sprang
forward and drove my fist into his neck. Instantly I found myself
grappling with him. I felt the watch in his waistcoat pocket as I
pressed my knee into his stomach, and with my face near his I could see
by the look in his eyes that my blow had staggered him and put him at a
disadvantage. Some years ago I could deliver a heavy punch and the knack
had stayed with me. I threw my weight against him once more, bore him
down onto the leaves and gravel, and found myself on top.
Both of us were panting; we were breathing into each other's faces when
suddenly I saw his eyes open wide as if he had seen a vision.
"I know you now. You are the doctor!" cried he. "Stop! Tell me, for
God's sake, what's wrong with my wife!"
"Your wife?" I cried, dumbfounded. "Who are you?"
He struggled to his feet and leered at me. His face twitched with
emotion.
"I am Jermyn Estabrook," he gasped.
You may imagine my astonishment when, after struggling with a man who
had pursued me through the dark paths of the park like one who sought my
life, he whom I had never seen before should now appeal to me as if I
could lift him from the depths of some profound despair. He had cried
out that I must tell him what was wrong with his wife. I had never so
much as set eyes upon her. He had said he was Jermyn Estabrook. And
though, with my face close to his, I could see that he was covered with
bits of dead leaves and mud and the sweat of his desperate struggle, I
felt that he told the truth.
"I have never been to your home but once in my life," I said. "You were
watching me on that occasion--to-night. That is plain. I did not go
in."
"I have made a mistake," he gasped. "I'm sorry. I have been through
torments beyond telling. Something is going on--some ghastly, horrible
tragedy within my own walls."
The word caught my ear; I gripped his shoulder.
"Listen, Estabrook," I cried. "It is no time for us to mince matters. I
am attending Marbury's little child. It is an odd form of meningitis. I
am fighting to save her. Do you understand?"
He shook his head stupidly as if worn dull by mental agony. "What of
her?" he asked.
"What of her, eh?" I cried. "I'll tell you! I'll tell you! She is
affected--perhaps her life or death depends upon--something--or
somebody--that is behind the wall--the blue wall--something in your
house next door. Come! Let us go back there. Let us force this thing. It
is your home! Enter it!"
"I can't!" he cried, thrusting his fingers upward.
"Can't!" I roared at him.
"No," he said. "Not yet. I have promised her. She has my word."
"But think, man, what may be going on there!" I said.
"I have sworn not to pass the door," he said obstinately. "Heaven knows
I am nearly crazy for light upon all this. But I must keep my word!"
As if to lend emphasis to his exclamation, a gust of wind roaring
through the trees of the park brought the first deluge of rain--a cold,
stinging downpour of the wild autumn night. Estabrook shivered. I could
see that he was a man, badly tired, unnerved, and still dizzy from the
blow I had given him.
"Follow me," said I roughly. "You need warmth--stimulant. And I want
your story, Estabrook."
He looked at me with an empty stare, but at last nodded his assent, and
without another word between us, we came to this house and into this
very room.
He sat there before the fire--burning then as it is now--and as the
warmth penetrated his trembling body, he seemed to regain his
self-composure.
I saw then that this young man, well under forty, did not lack
distinction of appearance. His head was carried upon his strong neck in
the masterful manner of those who have true poise and strength of
personality. His hair had turned gray above his ears, and his
well-shaven face carried those lines that the grim struggles of our
modern civilization gouge into the fullness of youth and health.
"I must tell somebody," he said, while I was observing his features upon
which the firelight danced. "I have never dreamed that I would come to
such a pass. But you shall hear my love story. You may be able to throw
some light upon it. Contrary to the notion of my friends, who consider
me incapable of adventure, my experience in the affections is one that
offers opportunity for speculation--it would appeal to a great
detective!"
I leaned forward quickly. Such a statement from any man might awaken
interest, but Estabrook was not any man. He represented the essence of
conventional society. He belonged to a family of well-preserved
traditions, a family whose reputation for conservative conduct and
manners of cold self-restraint was well known in a dozen cities. They
were that particular family, of a common enough name, which was known as
the Estabrookses Arbutus. Jermyn had had a dozen grandfathers who, from
one to another, had handed down the practice of law to him, as if for
the Estabrooks it was an heirloom.
"Perhaps I had better tell you from the beginning," said he, drawing the
back of his fine hand across his forehead. "For it is strange--strange!
And who can say what the ending will be?"
I counseled him to calm himself and asked that he eliminate as much as
possible all unnecessary details of his story. I shall repeat, then, as
accurately as possible, the story he told me. I will attempt to write it
in his own words....
BOOK II
THE AUTOMATIC SHEIK
CHAPTER I
A WOMAN AT TWENTY-TWO
Some men do not fall in love. I had supposed from the beginning of my
interest in such things that I was one of these men. I did not doubt
that all of us have an inherent tendency, perhaps based upon our coarser
natures, to love this or that woman thrown in our way by a fortunate or
unfortunate chance. But the traditions of our family were strong; I had
been educated by all those who were near to me in earlier life to look
upon marriage, not as a result of natural instinct so much as the result
of a careful and diplomatic choice of an alliance. I had been
taught--not in so many words, but by the accumulation of impressions
received in my home and in my youthful training--that one first
scrutinized a woman's inheritance of character, wealth, and position,
and as a second step fell in love with her.
This cannot be called snobbishness. It is prudence. And I followed this
course until I was nearly thirty years old. If the test of its success
lies in the fact that I had never had more than a temporary affection,
sometimes stimulated by the curve of a bare shoulder and sometimes by
the angle of a bright mind, then it had successfully kept me from the
altar.
And yet you shall see that at last I reversed the order of our
traditions; you shall see, too, that it resulted in one of the strangest
of courtships and a tangle of mystery of which the rest of the world
knows nothing, but which you have adequate proof threatens my happiness
and the ghastly end of which may now be skulking within the walls of my
house.
The wild weather of this night, with the howl of the wind and the rattle
of dead leaves driven against the blinds, is in extraordinary contrast
to the day of beautiful spring sunlight when I first set eyes upon her
who was Julianna Colfax.
It is not necessary to tell you who her father was, because you have
probably many times toasted your feet before the grate in the club with
him.
He was a master of human interest, as grizzled as that old Scotch hound
which became his constant companion after Mrs. Colfax died, and his
contact with all those hosts of men and women, for whom he administered
justice so faithfully for more than twenty years, had stamped on his
shaven face sad but warm and sympathetic lines. All men liked him and
those who knew him best loved him heartily. Under his gruffness there
was a lot of sentiment and tenderness. After his reserved moments, when
he was silent and cold, he would burst forth into indulgences of fine,
dry humor, like an effervescent fluid which gains in sparkling vigor by
remaining corked awhile. It was commonly said--and often said by Judge
Graver, of the Supreme Court--that old Colfax remained in the
comparative obscurity of a probate judgeship simply from an innate
modesty and a belief that he had found his work in life in which he
might best serve humanity without hope of personal power and glory.
Gaunt, tall, stoop-shouldered, gray, walking the same path each
day,--home, court-house, club, neighbors, home,--with a grapevine stick
as thick as a fence-post in his hand--such was her father.
Exactly seven years ago the first of last June, on a spring day when I
believe every bird that dared came into the city to make his song heard,
I came up from downtown and dropped off a surface car before the
gleaming white pillars of the new probate court building. My pocket was
stuffed with a lot of documents in that Welson _vs._ Welson litigation,
which I had just succeeded in closing.
Behind those swinging green doors which flank the big bench is the
judge's retiring-room; pushing the crack there wider, I was able to peek
in, and saw at once that the old atmosphere of Judge Colfax's study had
not remained in the old dingy court-house, where the dismantlers' picks
were already breaking up the ancient mortar, but had followed the
personality of the man into these new pretentious quarters. The
retiring-room already gave forth an alluring odor of law books and
document files, the floor already had been forced into use to bear up
little piles of transcripts of evidence, tin document boxes and piles of
books, open at reference pages, occupying obscure corners. The Judge's
black silk hat was in its familiar place, resting with the opening
upward, on the old black walnut desk which its owner had affectionately
brought with him, and which made a strange and cynical contrast with the
mahogany woodwork and new rug.
"Come in," he said, and with one of his long-fingered hands he made a
gesture toward the opposite side of the room and spoke my name and that
of another.
She was there! I had never seen her before. She was there. I had no
thought of her ancestry, her wealth, or her position. She was there, and
into my throat came something I had never felt before, into my face a
suffusion of hot blood, into my lungs a long-held inhalation of breath.
Sometime you may see her. She has changed a little. But then she was
twenty-two, and the simplicity of her attire seemed to be at once the
propriety of nature and the infinite skill of art. She wore a black
gown, without ornamentation, and a black hat of graceful form. Not a
harsh or stiff fol-de-rol was about her anywhere. You will pardon me for
this detail. But, oh, she was so different from the others. She was a
picture there among the law books.
The most attractive thing there can be in a woman is that combination of
youth, innocence, glowing health, modesty. The perfect skin, with its
grapelike, dusty bloom which shows where the collar droops at the front
of the neck, the even lashes, from under which the deep eyes gaze out at
you half timidly, the brave, honest uplifting of a rounded chin, the
undulations of fine lungs, the almost imperceptible movement of
restrained vigor in a poised, delicate, graceful figure, the gentleness
and tenderness of a voice which at the same time suggests refinement and
decision and strength, the absence of any effort to make an impression,
either in manner or dress,--these are rare and beautiful attributes in
an age when female children hatch out as artful women without the
intervening period of girlhood. After all, the best men of us will not
choose one of these modern maidens who imitate the boldness of the
character and dress of the adventuress or the stage and opera favorite.
It has become a tiresome feature of our modern life with the insidious
faculty of corrupting the manners even of families who know better. She
was so different! And in that moment I knew her superiority as a woman.
I could not speak.
We exchanged no words. Yet as we looked at each other in the manner of
children, the Judge, I thought, sensed a significance. When my eye
sought his, I found a cloud upon his stern face, but immediately, as if
he had tossed a haunting thought aside, he laughed.
"Julianna," said he, "this is the Mr. Estabrook who is as insane as I.
That is, he devotes no end of time and energy and seriousness to the
game of chess. We have never yet met each other on the field of battle.
Some afternoon, here in this room, however--"
She did not allow him to finish; she said hastily that she must witness
the contest.
"Then at my home," he said, beaming at me. "To-morrow will you come to
dinner?"
I remember that Julianna had raised her eyes, that they were smiling,
and that I received the definite, convincing impression that I was
looking at a girl who never had given her love away. I tell you that one
feels a truth like that by instinct, and that a woman wears not only her
spotlessness, but also her purity of thought, like a faint halo. Yet at
that moment I knew she was glad that I had accepted the invitation:
there was a blushing eagerness in her eyes, upon her lips, in the
movement of her graceful hands. For the rest of the morning I was half
dizzy with the mad sense of triumph, of conquest--that strange onslaught
of the emotions which gives no quarter to the disordered phalanx of
reason.
I must admit that when I met Judge Colfax on the court-house steps the
next afternoon to walk home with him, I had not given a thought to his
daughter's forebears or security of place in the social structure. In
fact, the social structure had vanished; an individual had, at least for
the time, filled its place.
I even jumped when the first sentence the Judge addressed to me began
with her name.
"My daughter plays an excellent game herself," he said, as if in
explanation of her interest. "In fact, I may say, with an old man's
modesty, that there are only two persons in this city who can win from
me consistently. She is one."
"And the other, sir?" I asked as we turned our faces toward the hot
stare of the late afternoon sun.
"The other," he said, "is an automaton. I have named it the Sheik of
Baalbec. But I believe he calls himself the Player of the Rolling Eye."
It is impossible for me to say why the mere mention of the fanciful name
of an automatic chessplayer should have caused me to feel a peculiar
uneasiness--the sensation of apprehension. I am not susceptible
ordinarily to the so-called warnings of voices from within. And yet I
suppose the Judge saw a look of inquiry on my face, for he drew out his
large, old-fashioned gold watch, which he carried in his trousers
pocket, with his keys.
"We will stop there," said he. "There is time. The automaton has a
corner of the lower hallway in the old Natural History Museum. It's not
far out of our way, and if you will start with a problem I will give you
and play with him, it will afford me an opportunity to measure you
before our game this evening."
Such were the circumstances which brought me into a mystery not yet
solved, the ending of which I fear to guess. In a modern era, when it is
commonly supposed that skeletons no longer hang in closets, that day
after day brings commonplace occurrences or, at the best, trivial
abnormalities to be explained to-morrow, that romance is dead, it is
strange that Fate should have picked me, when, by custom and my own
desire, I am aloof from all things turbulent, morbid, and uncanny, to
play an unwilling part in so extraordinary a drama, or, possibly, a
tragedy.
At any rate, that day found me face to face with the half-human
personality which the Judge had named the Sheik of Baalbec, and whose
eye has cast an evil cloud upon my life.
Of course I do not know whether you are familiar with the old Natural
History Society and its musty exhibit. A controversy about a curator in
1873 had caused the formation of the new American Institution of
Biology. A few old men continued thereafter to support the ancient
Society by annual subscription, and when they died, one or two of them,
acting from stubborn partizanship, left the museum tied up with trusts
and legacies, preventing the sale of a valuable city property and yet
not furnishing enough to keep the building in repair or dust the case
containing "Beavers at Work." Finally the old museum, once the pride of
the municipality, had come down to the disgraceful necessity of letting
its lower floor to a ten-cent exhibition of respectable waxworks, the
principal attraction of which was the automatic chessplayer, which a
year before my visit had gained suddenly a reputation for playing at
times with the skill of a fiend. I faced the mechanism that afternoon
for the first time, little realizing the intimacy, if I may use the
word, which was to spring up between it and me.
The representation of a squatting Arab, robed in red Oriental swathes
and with a chessboard fastened to its knees, sat cross-legged on a
box-like structure. Upon dropping a coin into a slot in the flat top,
two folding-doors in front of this box would open for a few moments,
showing a glass-covered interior, which, as far as the back of the box,
was filled with a tangle of wheels and pulleys, seeming to preclude the
possibility that a human being could hide therein. As soon as these
doors closed, a flat space in the chest of the Sheik opened, with a
faint purr of machinery to expose internal organs of metal levers and
gears.
The effect of this last exposure was extraordinary, and in all the time
I knew the Sheik, I never got over it. The moment this cavity in his
chest opened, he was an impersonal piece of mechanism; the moment it
closed, however, the soul, the personality of a living being returned,
and it seemed to me that the brown, wax skin of his nodding head, the
black hair of his pointed beard, the red of his curved, malicious lips,
the whites of his eyes, which showed when he moved with a squeak of
unoiled bearings in his neck, and even the jointed fingers of his hand,
with which he moved the pawns in short, mechanical jerks about the
board, all belonged to a human body, containing an individual
intelligence.
This was my feeling as the Judge arranged the chess problem on the board
above the gilt-and-red Turkish slippers on the feet of the thing's
shapeless cotton-stuffed legs, and briefly described the point to be
gained by the Sheik in the series of moves which he was to begin and the
success of which I was to combat. The creature made its first move in
its deliberate manner and then I stepped forward.
I ask you to believe me that, as I did so, the whirring of wheels within
the contrivance stopped, and at that moment I heard a human throat
inhale a long breath with a frightened gasp! It was as if the balanced
glass eyes of the figure had recognized me or seen in my coming an event
long expected.
For a moment I hesitated, then made my move. The figure hesitated, made
another. I studied the situation before my second attempt, and then was
surprised at the absurd mistakes made by the automaton, who, in his next
moves, was playing in slipshod fashion, as if preoccupied. I now had the
advantage, and believed that I should win. My triumph was short-lived,
however; my opponent awakened to his danger, and yet perhaps my first
warning of the final move came when the Judge laughed heartily, clapped
me on the shoulder, and pointed toward the board. Another turn made it
plain to me. I had lost.
And at the same moment the infernal Sheik lifted his head with the
clicking of gears, stared at me, drew down one papier-maché eyelid in a
hideous wink and rolled the other glassy eyeball in a complete orbit of
the socket, and as soon as this evil, mechanical grimace had been
accomplished, the head fell forward, the door in the being's chest
opened once more, showing the moving wheels, and again the creature
seemed to become soulless.
"He always rolls his eye at you when he wins," explained Judge Colfax as
we went out into the sunlit street again, and he patted me on the
shoulder in gentle banter.
"I believe I do not like your Sheik machine," said I, laughing
nervously. "I felt all the time as if a hidden pair of human eyes were
on me--as if there was a personality behind it all."
The Judge chuckled.
"But you forget," said he. "Of course there is a person--some man--or
woman. I have often wished to have a look at that person, Estabrook."
As you will see, I have had cause to feel as he did on that memorable
night--memorable because I first sat at table with Julianna--with
Julianna, whose magnificence was not boldness, whose spirit was not
immodesty, and whose gentleness did not rob her of either her beauty or
vivacity.
Though it seems to me that to-night, in the depths of anxiety, I find
myself in love with a new and deeper feeling, there can be no doubt
that, as I looked at her across the table, I thrilled with the thought
that she might one day be my wife, and felt that delicious and painful
ecstasy when her deep eyes met mine and her lips smiled back at me the
encouragement of a modest woman who does not guard too closely her own
first interest in an exchange of ardent glances. I had then forgotten
most fully the theories of my training.
I remember now that she wore a gown of soft and ample drapery and of a
dark green, suggestive of the colors in the shady recesses of a forest.
I was charmed by the shape and subtle motions of her white hands, the
quality of the affectionate attitude she maintained toward her father,
the refinement of her voice when she answered my comments or addressed
the old serving-maid.
About this serving-maid I must speak. On that occasion her ample form
moved about in the shifting shadows outside the brilliant glow of the
flickering candles, like a noiseless ghost, hovering about a feast of
the living. But I liked her, because, when she looked toward Julianna,
she wore that expression of loyal affection which perhaps one never sees
except upon the faces of mothers or old servants. She had been in the
Judge's family even at the time of the death of his wife years before,
and she had looked as old then as she does when I see her in my own home
now. The old woman's name is Margaret Murchie. You will see that she,
too, is involved in this affair.
How I noticed her at all that evening, or how I kept up an intelligent
conversation with Judge Colfax, I cannot explain. I only know that I
finally found myself sitting with my knees under the table with the long
thin legs of the Judge, and a set of chessmen, carved exquisitely from
amber and ivory, on the board before me, and that when the old man was
called to the telephone and announced on his return that he must go out
to the bedside of a friend, I was overjoyed that I might have some rare
moments in conversation with Julianna.
I observed, however, that this prospect did not please Judge Colfax as
much as it did me; there was an awkward moment in which he looked from
one to the other of us with the same expression as he had worn when he
had observed my interest in his daughter in our first meeting. Then, as
on the former occasion, his optimistic good-nature seemed to rise again
above whatever apprehensions he may have had. He smiled until all the
multitude of wrinkles about his eyes were showing.
"Estabrook," said he, "we have bad luck, eh? But I can offer a worthy
substitute. Unless you find that you must go, you may discover my
daughter to be as worthy an opponent as the Sheik of Baalbec."
Of course I recognized the significance of the words, "unless you find
that you must go," and my first instinct was to offer some lame excuse
and take my departure. Immediately I turned toward Julianna, but she,
instead of coming forward in the manner of one ready to say good-night,
idly turned the pages of a book on the old table, and then, walking
across the room, stood near the chessboard with the pink glow of the
droplight upon her face, and looked up at me, saying as plainly as
words, "Stay."
From the ordinary woman this would not have affected my intentions; it
would have been nothing. From her it was a piece of daring. From her it
seemed a sacrifice of dignity for my sake. I met her glance, and then
turned politely toward the Judge, who stood in the wide door, his tall
hat resting under his arm and his searching eyes looking out from under
the bushy brows.
"Thank you for the suggestion," I said.
"I will be out late," he answered, his deep rumbling voice directed at
me. "Good-night."
"Good-night, sir," I said cheerfully.
Then for the first time I was alone with Julianna, and she was directing
at me, as I stood before her, one of those perplexed little
smiles--those rare perplexed smiles which indicate, perhaps, that for
the first time in a woman's life she does not understand her inner self,
and yet is sure that some joyful thing hangs where she can reach it if
she will. It is the last smile drawn from childhood.
"Shall we play?" she said.
"No," said I.
"I am glad."
"Then you do not like the game?"
"Yes, when I play it with father, because it interests him. And he
prefers to play with me because he says that I am youth."
"His youth, too," I suggested.
She nodded seriously. "Yes, I think so," she said. "We see so many old
people, and balls attract me very little. Our companionship is very
close even for father and daughter. I surprise myself by talking so to
you, but that is it--and we have established a little kingdom of our
own--a walled kingdom which no one else can enter or destroy."
Upon hearing these words, pronounced with that soft ring of
determination which gave her the one touch of imperiousness she
possessed, my heart fell. It was as if she had warned me that she had
dedicated herself to him.
And then suddenly the fact that she had so spoken to me, who had known
her so short a time and said nothing but commonplaces to her, seemed to
take on new significance. I thought it plain that she was erecting a
defense against her own self and was admitting, by her denial, that her
fortresses were for the first time in danger. She had had her choice in
conversation and she had chosen to speak not of general matters, but of
herself. She had done so with charming awkwardness, and I felt as if the
world of all my happiness were resting on the bare chessboard between
the round and healthy forearms that leaned there, and between her
graceful hands, whose intrinsic beauty was not marred by any ring.
"One might well envy the Judge," said I.
She looked up at me quickly.
"Will you close those long windows for me?" she asked, after a moment,
pointing toward the back of the room. "At the front of the house we are
level with the street; at the rear, however, the old walled garden is
almost another story below us. It is damp, I think, even after a spring
day as tender and sunny as this has been."
I hastened to do her bidding.
"There is a tangle of old-fashioned flowers in our little city
inclosure," she called after me. "The Judge likes it that way--as mother
used to like it. There is a balcony with an old wistaria vine just
outside the window."
"And the moon," said I under my breath.
The pranks that fate plays--or whatever one chooses to call the strange
domination of our chance happenings--are wonderful and at times seem
malicious. I am certain that it brought me onto the iron-railed balcony
just beyond the French windows at the beat of that second.
The old garden, though small and flanked by the ugly backs of city
houses, seemed to hold within its brick inclosure a world full of white
liquid moonlight. Shrubs, however, which had grown in disorder under the
walls, threw dark and steady shadows across the patches of lesser
vegetation. The tops of early blossoms and nodding grasses showed beyond
these spaces of blackness. Suddenly, as I looked down, I heard a click
like that of a gate-latch, and a second later I saw, projecting from one
of the fantastic patterns of shade, a round disk of shining surface.
There are moments when the sight is puzzled to determine the character
of such an object. I could not make out the nature of this bobbing,
moving circle that followed along the irregular line of wall shrubbery.
Then, when it was nearer, I saw in a flash that it was the top of a silk
hat. I could see, too, the stooping shoulders of the man who wore it, I
could see that he was proceeding cautiously as if he feared to attract
attention, and at last, when he paused beneath the balcony, I could see
a face with an anxious expression that turned upward toward me. I drew
back behind the thick-leaved vine; for the man was Judge Colfax.
Of all persons he was the last to act as if he sought concealment in
what he did, the last to be guilty or wear the appearance of guilt. Had
he been a stranger, I might have assumed that he had come to make a call
below stairs, but the fact that it was my host, a judge of probate, with
a reputation for lifelong honor and refinement, filled me with the
keenest curiosity. I gripped the old iron railing with my hands and
leaned over.
The Judge waited for a moment before a door opened slowly somewhere
beneath the balcony and a stream of artificial light escaped through the
crack and for a brief second lay like a piece of yellow ribbon across
the grass. Then he was joined by some one whose voice I recognized as
that of Margaret Murchie.
"I came back," I heard him whisper, "because I saw that you had
something to say to me. Julie is observant. I couldn't speak to you in
the hall, Margaret. What is the matter? What did you indicate by the
signs?"
"It's him, sir," she answered. "This thing we have feared has come."
"You cannot mean it!" he exclaimed.
"How could we expect different, sir? The heart of her is like that of
other healthy young girls. I could tell by the look on her face, sir.
The like of it has never been there before. 'T is given to some one to
have his way with her, Judge. I think it's him."
They were talking of me!
"He would have to be told," said the old man. I could see the top of the
silk hat shaking. "And she would have to be told!"
"It is awful, sir!" she answered, wringing her hands. "But I'd never
spoil it that way for anything."
"You forget the other!" he said sternly.
"Lost," she argued. "The time has gone by. It was not a human, sir. I
could never mention her name--beautiful thing she is!--with that other."
"I know--I know," whispered the old man distractedly.
"Well, then, let things run their course. God will not let harm come of
it."
"Blood," said he.
For a moment there was no sound. The one word seemed to have decided all
questions and to have called for silence.
"In case of my death--" the Judge began after a while.
Margaret Murchie uttered a little cry.
"I have left a paper where she will find it," he finished. "I can do
nothing more now. Perhaps--perhaps it will not be a crisis, after all.
I think if I had the chance again, I would send him to his doom."
With these words he raised his clenched fist and walked rapidly across
the grass to the arched exit leading to the alley. The click of the
latch told me that he had gone.
You may imagine my state of mind. As I endeavored in those seconds to
wrest some meaning from the tangle of words I had overheard, my thoughts
were tumbling over each other so fast that I had forgotten the doubtful
part I had played as an eavesdropper. I had heard a reference made to me
as one who had brought some new complication into the affairs of that
household which heretofore I had regarded as the most spotless and quiet
in the city, but which now I found had some dark and mysterious menace
hanging over its peace. Was I the one, after all, to whom they had
referred? They had spoken of some one else and whispered strange
phrases. It was all a blank puzzle to me.
Perhaps under different circumstances my caution and dislike of all that
is unusual or doubtful would have led me away from the house, planning
never to return. But there is in me a certain loyalty. I do not quickly
cast my lot or my reputation with that of another; when, however, I have
done so, I do not quickly withdraw. Extraordinary as it may seem, I
felt myself already bound to Julianna. Perhaps I already loved her
desperately.
Whatever may have been the case, when I turned back into the room I
looked into her gaze with an expression of solemnity which my emotions
intended as an outward sign of my continued devotion.
I must have presented then a ridiculous, sentimental appearance. She
laughed the moment she saw me.
"You like our balcony," she said. And then, as if she had discovered the
cause of my seriousness, she added, "also our spring moonlight."
I nodded.
"It is an unusual spot for the middle of a metropolis," she went on. "It
is filled with a tangle from which years ago I used to imagine fairies
and gnomes and Arabian marauders might step at any moment."
"Tell me more," said I.
"There was a little basin and fountain there when I was a child. But
when it did not flow, yellow slime collected at the bottom, and when the
water was turned on and trickled from one basin to another, it gave
forth a mournful sound that made one think of deserted villages, and
moss growing on gravestones, and courtyards where there were moonlight
murders."
"You have a keen imagination."
"The keenest!" she exclaimed. "Why not? It has grown up with me. And the
only trouble is that it causes me the greatest restlessness. My fate is
like all others. I am exactly what I would not be. Sometimes I long to
enjoy all the wildest of respectable adventures."
"I should think you would keep that a secret from the Judge. He, above
all, is a man of settled habits. His greatest genius has been to make
romance out of the commonplace sequences of life."
She sprang up and walked to the mantel.
"That is true," she said. "I never show that side of me to him. He would
not know what strange spirit moved me. I inherited none of it from him
or my mother. I never show that side to anybody."
"Except to me," I said mischievously.
"Except to you," she affirmed without a smile. "But sometimes I feel
like a wolf in lamb skin."
"At those times I take a brisk walk," I said.
"I do, too. I walk around the Monument nearly every afternoon at five,
with father's dog. Usually at that hour he is at the club."
"Shall I recognize you then by a shaggy, Scotch hound?" I asked.
"By all means," she said, laughing wholesomely. "I suppose in the novels
they would call that a secret meeting."
In spite of the light manner in which she had spoken, she had lowered
her voice a little when she heard a step in the hall. Margaret entered,
as I have seen her so many, many times since, to collect the little
coffee-cups.
The old servant, I felt without seeing, did not take her eyes away from
me while she was in the room; so conscious was I of being the subject of
her observation that I could find but few words to carry on the
conversation. The very effect--that of an intimate dialogue
interrupted--was produced in spite of my desire to avoid it, and when
she left, Julianna had changed her mood. Finding, perhaps, that I was
content to listen, she employed a delicate piece of strategy to place me
in her father's lounging-chair where I could watch her as she leaned
back among the pillows, and in a voice, more soothing than any I had
ever heard, described to me in quaint phrases the character of six
imaginary persons who might among themselves make up a world, with all
the traits of personality which we find in our own. From this piquant
attempt, she emerged to plunge into a light discussion of heredity.
"I can see a trace of the Judge in your belief," said I.
She admitted that he had been her teacher, that they often discussed
such things. It needed no denial from Julianna, however, to know that
her convictions about the power of inherited tendencies had come from
her own thought. Her mind, unlike her manner, had little submissiveness,
and, furthermore, she recited several cases from her own shrewd
observation.
Can I attribute my entranced interest on that occasion to her
brilliance? To this day I do not know. I would have been content to sit
there without my pipe, without a cigarette, listening merely to the
brook-like flow of her voice and looking at the play of expression upon
her beautiful, sensitive face.
I could feel, I thought, the warmth of her hand still lingering in my
own after I had gone down the steps, and I turned my face into the night
breeze on the avenue, glad to be alive, conscious of my health, my
strength, my youth and my courage, oblivious to the traditions of the
Estabrooks and intoxicated with a longing for her personality the moment
I had left it.
Not before the next morning did the haunting thought of something queer
and strange lurking behind the Colfax home rise to cause me doubt.
"It is nonsense," I thought. "Chance events, chance words, and my own
suspicious mind have united to produce an unreality. The Judge,
naturally enough, is jealous of such a daughter. Who would not be under
the same circumstances? An old man would be beastly lonely in that
comfortable but ancient house, even if they had removed the garden
fountain with its mournful trickle. The world has no such picturesque
and abnormal situations as those which have come into my mind. And
Julianna has all that any one could ask. Above all the vital fact is
that she is no other than she!"
Perhaps for the sake of good taste I waited two days in painful
restraint before I left my office to walk around the Monument at five;
certainly my delay was not because I could pretend to foresee that a
ghastly mystery was waiting to seize me and drag me in with its unseen
tentacles.
CHAPTER II
A PLEDGE TO THE JUDGE
There is a peculiar honesty about true affection for woman. It is for
the flirtations, the light and frivolous intimacies that a man smooths
his hair, picks out his scarf, and purchases a new stick. Somehow it
seems to me that a gentleman of natural high honor will always present
his average self to the one woman. That he should be attentive is
natural, that he should be affected is repellent to my notions. Perhaps
it was for this reason that without preparation I closed my desk and
walked up to meet Julianna, as I would have walked home to my own
bachelor quarters.
She was waiting for me!
"I have been expecting you," said she, with her hand upon the dog's
grizzled head, and in that frank and simple statement there was more
charm than in all the false feminine reserve in the universe.
"I did not come before," I told her, "because I felt that you might
believe me presuming too much."
"Why?" said she in the manner of a child.
I could not answer. I merely gazed at her. She was half leaning, half
sitting on the retaining wall of the park, and her skin, which was
flecked with the shadows of new maple leaves above her, was lighted not
only by the yellow rays of the afternoon sun, but also with the bright
colors which her brisk walk had brought to the soft surface. I assure
you, she made a pretty picture.
"I would have been glad to see you yesterday," she said slowly, marking
with the toe of one shoe upon the gravel. "You have been one of my
father's younger friends a long time."
"There is nothing the matter!" I cried.
"I can't tell," she said. "He is old, you know, and I can explain it in
no other way."
"He is not ill?"
"No. But if, for instance, his physician had told him he had not long to
live, and he felt something give way within him--that might cause it."
I suppressed the anxious note in my voice as I said, "Cause what? You
have not said, Miss Colfax."
She laughed. "That is true. I haven't, have I?" Serious again, she went
on. "He seems worried. Something seems to follow him about--some
thought, some apprehension, some worry."
"It is a new difficulty somewhere that has come up in the trial of a
case."
She shook her head.
"Let us walk," she said. "No, it is not that--nothing ordinary. A word
from me and he would explain. But this time when I ask, he merely smiles
and says, 'Nothing, Julie, nothing.'"
"Can it be that I am the cause?" I said before I could stop myself. "Has
he found out that we--"
"I told him," she said, "that we--"
She stopped there, too, and looked at me.
"No," she went on. "It is something else. He went out for a stroll night
before last. Usually he is gone a half-hour at least. But this time he
had hardly had time to go down the steps before I heard his key in the
door again and the feet of 'Laddie' on the hall floor. I ran out to ask
if he had forgotten anything, and it was a dreadful shock to me."
"Tell me," said I, touching her fingers with my own.
"In the first place, the dog was acting as I have never seen him act
before. I noticed that, the first thing. He was cowering and slinking
along as if he feared the most terrible punishment. But that was
nothing. It was father who made me draw back. Even in the dim light I
could see that he was white--oh, so white! I thought he had been taken
ill suddenly and was weak. And yet one hand was clutching his big cane
and the muscles and veins stood out on the back as if he were raising
the stick to defend himself."
"He was ill!" I cried.
"Yes, I think that must have been it. He was ill. And since then he has
brooded so--particularly when he does not know I am watching him.
Margaret has noticed it, too. She has spoken to him as I did and he has
laughed her fear away, I suppose."
"Perhaps, after all, it is nothing--just as he says," I suggested,
turning toward her as we walked.
"Perhaps not," she said. "I am sure you are a good and cheerful friend
to say so. Nevertheless, I have been worried and restless and this
afternoon I long for amusement. Can't we do something queer and
extraordinary--go somewhere--do something?"
I thought her requirement a difficult one to fill at five o'clock in the
afternoon, walking through the old, dull, and worn-out part of the city,
where we found we had arrived without purpose in our journey. More than
that, I am naturally of conservative tastes; the bizarre, the bohemian,
and the unconventional forms of amusement have never beckoned to me. I
am not an adventurer by choice.
"We have less than an hour before us," I said to her. "And I am at a
loss to suggest--"
There I hesitated. A thought had come to me. I saw her eyes dance with
expectancy--with that expression of eagerness that lights the faces of
those to whom the world, with all its goodness and badness, beauty and
ugliness, tranquillity and turbulence, is still unexplored.
"The Sheik of Baalbec!" I exclaimed.
"The Sheik of Baalbec!" she repeated. "I have heard so much of him, but
have never seen him. That is just the thing!"
"You shall try your skill with him," I said. "You shall meet him face to
face, look into his evil glassy eyes, watch his brown fingers move on
mechanical levers, see his lungs and heart of geared wheels and little
pulleys and--"
"And what?" she cried.
"Battle with him--wit against wit--skill against skill--and win!"
"You seem to bear the Sheik a grudge," she said, and as we went up the
steps of the old Natural History Building, where romping children of the
tenements scattered banana peels and papers, she repeated the remark.
"I've taken a dislike to the automaton," I said. "It is an uncanny
creature. It gives me the impression of an evil soul attached to a lot
of metallic gears. Personally I should be glad to have the opportunity
of tearing it to pieces and seeing it scattered on the ground--a heap of
red cotton rags, hair stuffing, and broken levers."
My earnestness, however, only caused her to tilt her rounded chin in
air and laugh as only she can laugh. Having persuaded the girl at the
ticket office that the dog with us would do no harm, we had already
entered and were passing through the exhibit of figures.
"Possibly you feel the same way toward this waxy Bismarck who looks so
much more like a brewer than a general," said she, "or toward this
Catherine of Russia who, I understand, was not a very refined queen, and
who here shows it by wearing a ruff that should have gone to the laundry
a year ago or more."
"No," I replied. "If they let me alone, it matters not to me when they
are melted down for candles. My enemy is the fellow in the corner there
with the group of country persons around him. Perhaps we shall not have
a chance to play a game with him this afternoon."
Fortunately, however, just as we came up toward the gloomy corner, there
was a shout of bantering laughter from those whom, offhand, I should
have called Aunt Lou, Cousin Becky, Brother Bob, and Milly Snagg, and we
saw that the automaton had just dispatched his opponent--the fifth
member of the party, a well-bronzed countryman, with a shaved neck and
prominent ears. The mechanical eye had drawn down its brown lid in a
hideous wink, much to the discomfiture of the champion of some rural
village.
For the second time I deposited the coin in the slot, whereupon
Julianna, with great delight, watched the opening of the front of the
box, the exposure of the internals of the figure, and the jerky motions
of the Sheik as he extended his mechanical arm over his lifeless legs to
make the first move.
"I like him," she said, and stepped forward toward the chessboard.
Thereupon a strange thing happened. Some part of the contrivance gave
forth a sound as if a wheel had been torn from its socket; a whirring
sound continued for a moment, then finally the air was filled with a
ghastly shriek.
I defy any man to say whether that shriek came from the rasp of an
unoiled metal bearing or from a human throat. That it proceeded from the
automaton there was no question.
It was followed by a stillness not only of the automaton itself, but
also of ourselves.
"Look at his head!" roared the countryman, who had, with his party,
lingered to see more of the marvelous creature. He pointed to the
figure, and when my eyes followed his gesture, I saw that the Sheik's
head had fallen backward like a thing with its throat cut. As I stared,
there came a slight noise from the box and out of the slot my coin flew
back as if it bore the message that there was no more playing that
afternoon.
"Well," said I to Julianna, "apparently the show is over."
She did not answer. I put the coin in my pocket.
"It is too bad," I said. "The Sheik has broken something important in
his cosmos."
Again she failed to reply, and I looked up. She was staring, I thought,
at the floor.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"Look at the dog!" she whispered.
He was cringing, cowering, with closed eyes, flattened to the ground,
and sniffing softly, in an agony of terror!
It was dreadful to see so noble a beast in such a state, and probably
more shocking to Julianna who had affection for him than to me.
"I cannot understand Laddie's acting that way," she said in a vexed
tone. "He has done it twice now in the last two days. What can have
happened to him?"
"He is very old, isn't he?" I inquired.
"Yes," she said, and a little coquettish smile flitted across her face.
"He is older than I am. Come, Laddie. Come here, sir. What's the matter,
old pal?"
"Age," said I. "There has never been a dog grow old in our family that
he didn't sooner or later develop a kind of second puppyhood. I have
seen them do all manner of inexplicable things, and one old, toothless,
wire-haired terrier used to snap at his shadow on the wall."
"I should hate to have him die," said Julianna when we were on the
street again. She put her arm about his shaggy neck and I wished that I
were he.
At her door I took off my glove. It was done unconsciously, but she saw
it--she took off one of hers. Then she laughed and put her hand in mine.
After that walk I became the victim of all the mental follies which
descend upon a man so thoroughly in love. My work suffered. I found
myself at one moment reading down a page of digests of cases prepared
for me by my assistants; in the next, I would be sitting again in Judge
Colfax's easy-chair, and before me I could see Julianna's smiling lips,
reflecting the lamplight upon their moist surfaces. In her name I would
drive myself to my task again, and then, without knowing when the
transition occurred, I would be standing on a gravel path dappled with
sunlight and the dancing shadows of maple leaves, and she would be
standing before me again with the breeze moving brown-and-gold strands
of hair at the edge of her firm white neck.
It is doubtful whether I thought of Judge Colfax, or chess, or the
strange meeting in the garden, or the Sheik at all. I wondered about
nothing save the question of how soon I could say to Julianna what lay
in my heart to say to her. Therefore it was necessary for me to review
in my mind many things when, upon waking a morning or two afterward, I
found, among the letters which my man had brought to the chair beside my
bed, a note from the girl herself.
I did not know at first that it was from her: I had never seen her
writing before. I remember that I said, "Who can this be?" and that I
studied the outside for several moments before I opened the envelope.
"My father," it said, "has not been very well, I think. I wish that you
could make a point of calling on him at the court-house some afternoon
this week. I want to know if the change in him rests partly in my own
imagination. You could determine this at once. I would be so grateful.
J. COLFAX.--P.S. Why not induce him to ask you to dinner. His indiscreet
daughter would be delighted. J. C."
This was the sort of note that she would write: it was not hysterical,
and yet it conveyed to me the urgency of her request; it was not
frivolous, and yet in its postscript it was boldly mischievous. It
accomplished the result she wished. She had wanted me to make up my mind
that I would see the Judge before night and to see her as soon as
possible. I determined to do both.
All day long it rained, drawing a wet shroud of gloom over the
pavements, the granite walls of the buildings, and the adamant
perspective of the streets. Standing in my office window, I could see
the flow of black umbrellas moving up and down town, like two torpid
snakes. But though I am ordinarily sensitive to the effect of a long
drizzle, it failed on that day to depress me. Life had freshened. There
was romance in it, possibilities, dreams. Instead of complaining to
myself that the sky had lowered until its opaque rotunda seemed to touch
the tops of the higher buildings, I rejoiced as I went uptown and looked
out the cab window at each open square, that the cold spring downpour
had freshened all the vegetation and brightened these city fresh-air
spaces as if by magic. When I found myself in the Judge's study, my mood
could not have been more cheerful.
I had expected to find him in the despondency which Julianna had
described to me; instead, when I had a chance to study his expression
before he knew I was there, I came to the conclusion that his thoughts,
whatever they might be, were pleasant thoughts and not the anxious
thoughts of one who is harassed by secret apprehensions.
He was a fine picture of a man, sitting there above his old desk, his
long hands spread out upon an open book, the lines in his shaven face
expressing a life of faithful service, gentleness, humor, and
self-control, his blue eyes as bright as those of a youth, looking out
at some picture which his imagination was painting on the opposite wall
of the room. I stood watching him a moment before I stirred.
"Ha!" he exclaimed as soon as I had made my presence known. "Estabrook,
you are the very man I wanted to see!"
"I had imagined it," I answered. "What more?"
He blinked his eyes. "Wait a moment, you rascal," he said, brushing the
sleeves of his black coat. "Take a cigar, sit down a moment. Let me
collect my thoughts. I must say I hesitate to launch too quickly a
subject with which I have not dealt for a good many years and one, if I
remember rightly, I treated with considerable awkwardness on the former
occasion."
"When was that, sir?" I asked.
"When I courted my wife," he said solemnly, looking for a moment at the
floor.
"Perhaps, if I am not mistaken, you would have come to me, by and by,"
he went on with the wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes.
"Perhaps it is better for me to speak with you now anyhow. I am well
along in years. My physician tells me that my cardiac valve--or whatever
the blame thing is--is weak."
"He told you recently!" I exclaimed.
"Bless you, no. More than two years ago. I haven't been near him since,
except to taste of some old madeira he keeps on his sideboard. No. I
can't quite explain why I am anxious to speak of this matter so soon, so
hastily. I only want to ask one or two impertinent questions which you
will forgive in a man who has grown, as to certain matters, as fussy as
an old maid--or a mother."
"Why, I will answer gladly enough," I said awkwardly. I thought I knew
what was on his mind; my tongue grew large in my mouth.
He was pacing up and down the room then, but finally he stopped and
laughed and grew solemn again.
"Darn it, my boy," he said. "I know you. I like you. I just wanted to
know if you had ever been engaged--in the broad sense--engaged to a
woman--with promises to fulfill. I just wanted to ask."
"No," said I.
"There!" said he. "I knew it all the time."
"Was there another question?" I asked.
"Why, yes," he said. "Why, yes. I believe I did have another. Now, what
was it? I had another question. It was awkward, too, if I remember. I
had another."
We both laughed then.
"Yet it seems so strange for me to ask these questions now, doesn't
it?" he went on, fingering the pages of a book on the desk. "It is so
early and a good deal more natural for you to speak to me than for me to
speak to you. But, good God! there is a reason if you only knew--a
reason. Let us say, for instance, that I might not be here then."
"Ask it, sir," I said.
"Why, I was only going to say that, in case you should succeed,--I doubt
if you do succeed,--but in case you should succeed in causing her to
love you, there would be no withdrawal on your part. Little Julie--my
little daughter! Neither of you has known what it means yet. And,
Estabrook, when she does, it must not go wrong. I know her well. She
will never love but one man. He must not withdraw when he has won her!"
I started to speak angrily.
"Wait!" he cried, with his hands clenched. "He must not be shaken from
her by anything--anything for which she is not to blame herself--no
matter how strange or terrible--anything. Nothing will come. I know it.
But that must be promised me--to stand by her, no matter what misfortune
might descend upon her."
"What could?" I asked in a trembling voice.
"Nothing," the Judge said. "It is not in God's character to allow such
a thing. When you love her, Estabrook, my boy, you will not ask me that
question in answer to mine."
"No," I said at once. "There need be no doubts between us, sir. It is
not necessary for either of us to answer."
His whole countenance lit up as if my words had fed his soul. I should
be sorry to have wiped from my memory the impression of that old man's
look, as, without taking his eyes from my face, he reached for his hat.
Yet, to-night, when I, for perhaps the last time, realize again the
presence of some infernal, undefined evil, I wonder that I should have
been so great a fool and so willingly have neglected even the prudence
of a lover. I wonder that I made so blind a bargain. I wonder that I did
not ask him, before it was too late, what his conversation with Margaret
Murchie in the garden had meant and what secret it was that lurked like
a clawed creature of the night, ready to eat away, bit by bit, the
happiness of an innocent man.
CHAPTER III
THE TORN SCRAP
When I left Judge Colfax that day, the only questions in my mind
concerned Julianna. To her I had said nothing in so many words of my
love, and yet I knew that if the Judge had read my growing sentiment
surely, she must have seen it even more clearly. I tried to interpret
her friendly, playful, girlish acceptance of my affection as an
indication that she, too, felt an increasing fondness for me--a fondness
which went beyond that given to a trustworthy friend. But I could not
forget that her father, when he had so strangely anticipated my request
for his consent, had described her as one whose yielding would be sudden
and complete--one to whom love would come in sweeping torrent of
emotion--one with whom love would thereafter stay eternally. If this
were true, she did not love me yet, I reflected. And with a falling of
hope, I remembered that the Judge had expressed, for what reason I did
not know, his own doubt of my ability to win her.
These were thoughts well adapted to hasten my lovemaking. I made a
point of walking to the Monument the next afternoon. I did not meet her
there, or on the way along the edge of the park, and I found myself
suddenly haunted by the hitherto unconsidered possibility that, as
summer was coming on, I might expect at any day that she would leave the
city to visit friends or go with the Judge to some resort.
It rained again the following day, and though the downpour ceased in the
late afternoon, great gray banks of clouds hung threateningly above the
city. Nevertheless, tormented with the notion that we might at any time
be separated for several weeks, I went again to the Monument to seek
her.
She was there. Nor did she seem at all surprised that I had come.
"I am full of energy to-day," she said, smiling a welcome. "Let us take
a long walk together."
"Good!" said I. "I will tell you about your father. As you know, I
called on him Thursday afternoon."
But from the Judge she quickly turned the subject to discussion that was
wholly impersonal, and it was the same on the following Monday when I
saw her again. Had it not been for the expression in her eyes with which
she greeted me, listened when I talked to her and bade me good-bye when I
left her, these would have been depressing meetings for me, because I
thought that I could clearly see that she was holding me at arm's
length with that natural art of a good, true woman,--an art which needs
no practice.
Imagine, then, my surprise, on this second occasion, when we had reached
her door, when she had asked me to have tea and I had been forced to
plead a previous engagement, when she stood there before me smiling,
rosy, the form itself of health, beauty, and vivacity, and when her
glance was raised to meet mine, I suddenly saw her smile fade and I
thought her eyes were filling with tears.
She laughed, however,--a little choking laugh,--and looking down so that
I could not see her face, she said, "I have liked these walks and chats
with you better than any I have ever had." And so she bade me
good-night.
Only when I had gone from her did I recall that she had spoken as if our
companionship was not to continue, as if, for some cause unknown to me,
there was to be an end of our intimacy. The thought made me stop
stock-still upon the pavement.
"And yet," thought I, "might it not be--that she meant only to show that
she is willing to continue our relationship--perhaps forever?"
Loving her as much as I did and wanting her--and no other on the breadth
of the green earth--for my wife, this uncertainty was a torment which I
could not stand. I remembered she had told me that the Judge walked each
evening after his dinner, and I am ashamed to confess that the next
evening dark found me waiting on their street corner, like a scullery
maid's beau, until I saw his stoop-shouldered figure come down the steps
with the lank, grizzled "Laddie" behind, and heard the beat of his
grapevine stick recede down the avenue.
Margaret Murchie let me in. Had I been a wolf she could not have glared
at me more; it was evident that her shrewd old eyes, whatever hidden
knowledge lay behind them, regarded me as a brigand, as a menace, as
some one who had come to take a precious treasure of art from the
drawing-room or the household goddess from the front hall. And as I sat
in the study once more, on the comfortable easy-chair of the Judge, with
the empty feeling in my stomach telling me that my nerves were on edge,
as they used to be when I rowed on our crew and sat listening for the
gun, I was sure that after announcing me she lingered beyond the
curtains, covertly watching me.
Julianna did not keep me waiting long, and as she came through the door
into the light, I could not help but notice the poise and grace which
comes from inherited refinement and health, and is only imitated badly
by self-consciousness and the pose of the actress.
"I'm so sorry you did not come a moment earlier," she said. "Father
would have been in. Now, you and I--"
She seated herself in her place on the old-fashioned mahogany sofa.
"Do you mind?" I asked.
"No, I'm glad!" she said, and wriggled like a pleased child, yet so
slightly that no one could have accused her of it.
"Do you like me?" said I, after a moment.
Her eyes opened very wide and looked into mine seriously--half amused,
half frightened. At last she nodded in a matter-of-fact way; it was only
because I could see her hands pressed against the arm of the couch until
they were white and little blue veins had begun to show that I knew she
was capable of the stoicism of an Indian, and that her nod was not
matter-of-fact, after all.
As I have told you, I am not of an habitually romantic temperament. I
was well aware of my unfitness to deal with a girl who, herself, had
never known the processes of lovers, but the belief that she was trying
to restrain her true feelings toward me ran through my brain like an
intoxicating liquor. I would have taken the breadth of her shoulders in
the crook of my arm, and pressed my face into the rich mass of her hair,
and kissed her upon her white forehead, had I not suddenly recalled
that never had I even phrased to her a sentence explaining my feeling
toward her.
"Of course I do," she said at that moment. I remember how cool the words
sounded.
I remember, indeed, every word of that evening, every detail of that
room, every play of expression about her mouth, and I cannot go on
without speaking of these things. They meant so much to me and have
meant so much ever since!
At last, then, I told her.
"Julianna--" said I. "I have never called you by that name before. I
have not seen you long. But I must disregard all facts of that kind.
They may be important to some men and women. They are not of consequence
to me. I have loved you from the first."
She gave a little cry, but whether it was of joy or surprise I cannot
say. I only know that when I leaned forward and took one of her hands in
my own, she left it there as if it belonged to me of right, and with my
finger tips upon her soft wrist I could feel the beating of her heart.
"I don't want to love any one else," I whispered desperately. "I want
you. I want you to love me. I want you to let me take you."
I thought when I had said this and pressed my lips to the back of her
hand and looked up at her again that her face was illuminated with
wonder, joy, and supreme gladness, and that her eyes were filled with
light reflected from some bright revelation. What, then, was my
astonishment to observe that, as I looked, the color seemed to fade from
her skin, her parted lips slowly compressed themselves, her eyelids fell
like those of one who suffered pain or shuts out some repulsive sight!
It may have been my imagination; but I was sure I felt her hand turn
cold in mine and draw away as if to escape a menace. Her body stiffened
as if preparing for effort or defense and she arose from her seat and
stood before me.
So little did I understand the significance of her actions that I
neither moved nor spoke.
She came toward me then and placed the tips of her fingers upon my
shoulder affectionately, I can say--as she might have touched her
father, and as if she meant to cause some unsaid thing to flow through
the contact into my body.
"Please do not get up," she said softly. "Do not follow me."
There was strength in that command.
She walked toward the long windows at the back of the room, the windows
which overlooked the garden, and pulling them open, stepped out onto the
balcony. The vine there being in bloom, her figure was framed with the
soft purple of the flowers, which, lit by the light from within and
pendant against the black background of night, might well have been
blossoms embroidered on Japanese black satin. With my head swimming, I
watched the movement of her bare shoulders, from which her modest scarf
had half fallen, until she turned to enter again.
"I shall not tell you that I am sorry that you have spoken as you have,"
she said, spacing her words so evenly that it gave the impression at
first that she was repeating memorized sentences. "But I am young and no
one else has ever done so. Perhaps I should have interrupted you and
told you that my duty is toward my father, and that I am not sure of
myself now, and that I am not ready to give myself to any other life. If
this is true, it can profit neither of us to talk of love."
"Neither of us!" Again it seemed to me that she had disclosed herself. I
stood before her and in a voice that shook with eagerness, I said, "You
love me. At least you love me a little?"
She drew back.
"You do!" I cried under my breath. "I know it! You do!"
She raised her hands as if to keep me from her, and still retreated
toward the hearth.
"You love me!" I said. The sound of my own voice was raising a madness
within me. "Say it!" I cried. "Say it!"
She turned quickly away from me.
"You love me."
"No," she said. "I do not--love--you!"
I think for a second neither of us stirred; for a second, too, I could
see that her body had relaxed as mine had relaxed. Then I felt the sting
of wrecked pride--the pride from which I suppose I never shall escape. I
can remember that I drew a long breath, made a low bow, which, though
not so intended, must have been both insulting and absurd, and walked
through the curtains into the hall. I looked back once and that fleeting
glance showed me only a beautiful girl who stood very stiffly, like a
soldier saluting, but who, unlike a soldier, stood with closed eyes and
with her long lashes showing against a pale and delicate skin.
How miserable I was in the following hours, I cannot well describe.
After I had returned to my own apartments I sat in my study without
desire for sleep, staring with burning eyes at the silk curtains
fluttering in the June night wind, until they seemed to be ghosts
dancing on my window sills, and my straining ears listened to the hourly
booming of the clock on the Fidelity Tower, until it sounded like the
cruel voice of Time itself. Long after the rosy dawn I got up, drank
some water, lit a strong cigar, and prepared to dress myself for the
day's work. I can well remember my determination never again to expose
my feelings toward any living soul and my constantly repeated assertion
to myself that I had been hasty and indiscreet, that I did not in truth
any longer love Julianna and had been punished for a breach of that
reserve and caution which had been a virtuous characteristic of my
ancestors.
With my teeth shut together, with a frenzy to accomplish much work,
without a breakfast, and with sharp and perhaps ill-tempered commands to
my assistants, I spent the morning in the preparation of cases for which
trials were pending. By noon the heat of the day had become intense, the
sides of the battalions of towering buildings across the narrow street
seemed to become radiators for the viciousness of the summer sun, the
voices of newsboys, the murmur of the lunch-hour crowd twanged a man's
nerves, and I noticed for the first time the devilish song of the
electric fan on my wall. As you have foreseen, I felt suddenly the
wilting of my will. Tired, hungry, sleepless, I slipped down into my
chair, and there seemed no happiness left in a world which did not
include the girl I had left the night before.
I seized my hat and, clapping it on my head, I stopped only to sweep the
papers into the desk drawers and hurried toward the elevator.
"There's somebody on the 'phone for you, Mr. Estabrook," said the
switchboard girl. "They're very anxious to talk."
"Tell 'em I've gone home for the day," I called back to her and then
went down and out of the building to the sunbaked street.
I knew that I should put food in my stomach, so I ate a lunch somewhere.
I knew I should rest, but the thought of returning to my bachelor rooms
suggested only a violent mental review of the events through which I had
been. I was tempted to go to the Monument, but flung the idea aside as a
piece of sentimental madness. Accordingly I walked toward the river
front with its uninteresting and sordid warehouses, saloons and boxes,
bales and crates of the wholesale produce commissioners. On that long,
cobblestoned thoroughfare, with its drays and commercial riffraff, its
lounging stevedores, its refuse barrels, its gutter children and its
heat, I went forward mile after mile, without much thought of where I
went or why I chose such surroundings for my way, unless it was that the
breeze from the water was welcome to me.
The late afternoon found me on an uptown pier, watching the return of an
excursion steamer, proud with flags and alive with children, girls with
sunburned faces and young men with handkerchiefs tucked around their
collars and carrying souvenir canes. They disembarked down a narrow
gangplank, like ants crawling along a straw. I reflected that all were,
like myself, with their individual comedies and tragedies, the
representatives of the countless, forgotten, and ever reproducing
millions of human gnats that through unthinkable periods of time come
and go. I had seen none of them before. I would see none of them again.
Instead of being a depressing notion, I found this a cheerful idea; I
welcomed the evidence of my own insignificance. I laughed. I even
determined to amuse myself. If nothing better offered, I made up my mind
I would visit the Sheik of Baalbec, and, by pitting my skill against
his, prove that I could exclude, when I wished, the haunting thoughts to
which my mind had been a prey.
"The Sheik, then," said I, after a block or two. "It was he who ushered
me into this affair. It shall be he who may say an end to it."
In the light of what followed, this sentence, murmured half aloud as I
walked, has many times caused me to wonder at the prophetic voice with
which we sometimes carelessly address ourselves.
I found the museum, except for the red-nosed attendant and the pale pink
girl in the ticket window, deserted. The accursed automaton, I feared,
would be closed for business, and therefore it was with satisfaction
that I noticed that the coin slot was open, and that, having dropped in
my tribute to genius, chess, and machinery, I heard the squeak of the
moving mechanism and the brown, jointed fingers of the figure scraping
across the board.
I cannot believe that the Sheik was playing his best game. At the end of
a half-hour, when the machinery stopped to notify me that another coin
was due, I had a decided advantage in position. Before another fifteen
minutes, during which we both played rapidly, had gone, the issue was no
longer in doubt and I stopped.
"Ha!" said I, aloud. "You will not wink at me this time. Is there any
other game you can play better than you play this?"
The automaton was silent.
I cannot say what impelled me to suggest it, but I drew a piece of paper
and a pencil out of my pocket and said, "Can you write?"
The door in the chest of the Sheik flew open then for a moment as if to
expose his heart to me. Though I had put no coin into the machine, I saw
the levers and gears start to move again, the door of that pulmonary
cavity was closed and the brown fingers jerked their way forward.
"Not only can write, but is anxious to do so," I remarked, as I extended
the pencil and laid the paper on the chessboard.
For a second or two I waited, as the hand of the mechanical creature
wrote a few words: I remember that during those seconds I heard a clock
somewhere striking six. I did not make any attempt to see beforehand
what he had chosen to inscribe, for I assumed that it would be some
empty answer to my bantering remarks. At last the pencil dropped upon
the board and rolled under one of the cross-legged creature's red
Turkish slippers, the whirr of the mechanism stopped abruptly, and I
picked up the writing.
Having read the scrawl once I believed myself out of my wits. I could
not credit my eyes. I could not gather my reason. I was breathless,
transfixed!
I looked up at the face of the Sheik and found that, in place of the
malicious wink with which he proclaimed himself a victor in a game of
draughts, his glass eyes, with their whites in sharp contrast to his
swarthy wax skin, were both wide open and set in a glare of such
ferocity and malign hatred that they seemed to flash the fire of life
and lighten the gloom of the corner with rays of evil.
I laughed. I forced myself to laugh, but it was with no mirth, and then,
hesitating for a moment and seized by the temptation to tear the
automaton to shreds, to discover what was within its exterior, I turned,
crunched the paper in my closed fist, and almost ran out through the
lines of wax figures--the Garibaldis, the Jenny Linds, the Louis
Napoleons, and the Von Moltkes--into the sunlight.
No man can blame me for my excitement or even my terror, for the Sheik
had written, "You are in danger! Withdraw before it is too late, and
never see the old man or child of his again!"
Had the time been the Middle Ages, or the place a strange quarter of the
Orient, I might not have been so shocked at the knowledge which a tawdry
machine, or the mountebank behind it, seemed to have of the affairs of
persons against whom no charge of contact with the lower strata of life
could be brought. But in our civilization, where nothing but the
commonplace is to be expected, I was wholly unnerved.
"Come," said I to myself, having walked to the far side of the open
square, "sit on this bench, unfold the paper, and use your intelligence
to overcome the hysteria which last night's experience and this odd
affair of the Sheik have aroused. Be sensible. This message is a matter
to be explained, just as all things are to be explained by any one who
is not the victim of superstitious fear."
This determination immediately cleared my reason. After all, there was
nothing to solve.
"Whoever controls the mechanism has seen me with the Judge," said I,
"and doubtless has heard him mention his daughter, and perhaps has
observed the effect of her name on me. Furthermore, he, or, as the Judge
said, the man or woman behind the Sheik, has even seen me with Julianna
and might well have drawn conclusions. The message was written in ill
temper or as a piece of malicious mischief. And there's an end to it!"
Whereupon I tore the scrap across the middle and, dropping it in the
grass, I started toward my home.
The picture of that writing, however, was too clearly photographed upon
my vision; it continually wrote itself on the walls of buildings, upon
the pavement or across the sky. And as it did, little by little, it
began to dawn upon me that the handwriting with which it had been
executed I had seen before.
When at last, from the back of my mind, I recalled the occasion, I
astonished those persons who were walking near me by stopping in the
middle of the sidewalk as if stricken and uttering a sharp exclamation.
My hand sought the contents of my inside coat pocket; among the papers
there I found the note which Julianna, wishing me to see her father, had
written me, and with trembling fingers I spread the sheet before me.
One look was all that was necessary, for it sent me hurrying back the
way I had come; it was enough to cause me to kneel down on the grass in
the gathering gloom that was filling the old square. Where I had sat a
half-hour before, I now searched frantically for bits of torn paper.
I found both pieces at last, placed them side by side and compared them
with the note in my hand. I have already told you that Julianna wrote a
hand distinguished from others by subtle peculiarities. The message from
the Sheik was written as she would write!
To believe, as I found I must believe, that she, with or without the
knowledge of the Judge, would so far forget the obligations of her place
in society as to operate a vulgar puppet in public, no matter how much
it might interest or amuse her, was another shock to me. I am free to
confess that, in spite of all my former assertions to myself that I had
not loved her as much as I had supposed, this new development was the
first that began to make me believe I had been blinded by mere
infatuation.
"You have been moving in the dark," I told myself. "You have stifled
your senses from a whole set of facts which tend to show that some
unwholesome thing is sleeping on the threshold of the Colfax home.
Perhaps, after all, Julianna and the Sheik of Baalbec are right. It has
come out for the best."
And yet, hardly had I so thought than a strange sense of loneliness
came over me, the dingy buildings about the square seemed like so many
squatting personalities, depressed and brooding, and out of that gloomy
picture came the image of Julianna, so fresh, so smiling, and so fair
that for a moment I almost forgot that it was a creation of my fancy. It
brought back to me my love for her. I remembered my promise to the
Judge. I recalled her tenderness and purity, which I had felt so
strongly that I had expected to see it about her like an effulgence. I
cursed myself for doubting her. I looked upon the evidence of the scrap
of paper in my hand as a piece of testimony brought against an innocent
person. Not only with the instinct of a lover, but that of a lawyer as
well, I determined to defend her from my own accusations.
I had not been without the necessity, once or twice in my practice, of
calling upon experts in handwriting; now I remembered that one of them,
a clever fellow named Jarvis, lived in an apartment not far from mine.
It was the dinner hour. I believed I should find him and I was right.
"I have come on a peculiar errand," I explained to him as he appeared in
his library, napkin in hand, "and if you are not through dinner, I will
wait."
"No, no," said he, with easy falsehood. "I had just finished. How can I
help you, Mr. Estabrook?"
"I wish your opinion on two pieces of handwriting," I answered. "It is
unnecessary for me to tell you where I got them, you understand. The
question at issue is, did one person write both, and if not, is one of
them an imitation of the other?"
He flourished a powerful reading-glass in the professional manner those
fellows use and gave the two specimens a cursory examination.
"The problem should not be difficult," he said, "since both were written
hastily. In the case of the pencil, it is clear from the manner in which
the fine fibres of the paper are brushed forward like grass leaning in
the wind. In the case of the ink, the wet pen has gone back to cross a t
or complete an imperfectly formed letter before the earlier strokes had
time to dry."
"That would preclude imitation?" I asked.
"Why, yes. Offhand, I should say so--unless the one who made the attempt
had practiced for years, or has the skill of imitation developed beyond
that of any professional forger. But give me a moment, please."
I waited, tapping with my fingers on the chair arm.
He straightened up at last, with a sigh, then looked at me with his
eyebrows drawn and a look of perplexity on his thin, cadaverous face.
"It's very odd," said he.
"What's very odd?"
"Well, Mr. Estabrook, these pieces were not written several years
apart--at different periods of life, were they?"
"Why, no," said I.
"They are not the work of one person, then," he said, with firm
conviction. "I would stake my reputation on that."
"Then one is an attempt to imitate the other?" I said, stifling a glad
exclamation.
"That's the rub," said he. "And, to be frank, I might spend a month
without being able to say which was the imitated and which the
imitating. I would almost think you had stumbled on two specimens which,
merely by coincidence, bore a wonderful resemblance to each other. It
lies between that and the cleverest, most practiced forgery I have ever
seen."
You may be sure that his decision gave me a sense of triumph; without
speculating as to the truth, it was enough for me to know that Julianna
had not, as I had at first suspected, been a party to this vulgar and
melodramatic flourish. I berated myself for having entertained any doubt
and now felt anew, and with aggravation, my affection for her. This
outcome of my adventure with the Sheik, in fact, restored my spirit,
made me forget my pride, and, as you will see, was enough to put me in
condition to receive that which was about to befall me.
CHAPTER IV
THE FACE
My thoughts as I entered the portico of that building where I had my
apartments were not only of Julianna, but were also in those channels
where I have no doubt your own opinion of my narrative must run. I
freely admit, as I then was forced to admit, that my lovemaking had been
attended with many bizarre and abnormal happenings; yet at the time I
sneered at the questions which rose in my own mind and bravely asserted
to myself that the chances of winning Julianna were not wholly lost.
In the lower hall of the building in which I had quarters there were
stationed until six at night a telephone operator and a doorman. Perhaps
you have noticed that I tell you these matters in considerable detail,
and I will continue to do this, because my natural dread of disclosing
the intimate affairs of my life has kept me heretofore from sharing my
story with any one, and now that I have lifted the cover and drawn the
veil of my experience, I can only find justification, in so narrating
the sequence of extraordinary events, by observing the strictest
adherence to detail and accuracy in the hope that perhaps you, by the
virtue of a fresh and unprejudiced viewpoint, may be able to unravel
some of the tangle in which I am, even now, enmeshed.
As I have said, at six the telephone girl at the switchboard and the
doorman, for some reason which I could never understand, were replaced
by an old negro who served as both, and who was the most garrulous,
indiscreet individual I have ever seen.
As if to affirm these characteristics he spoke to me the moment I had
entered, in a voice which seemed to be adapted to a general address to
the three or four other bachelors who were waiting in the frescoed
vestibule for a conveyance.
"Yaas, sah, Mr. Estabrook, sah. De dohman lef' a message, sah. Der has
been a lady waitin' foh you, sah, mos' all de ahfternoon. She comin'
back, she say--dis evenin'. She sutt'nly act very queer, sah."
"All right," I snapped. "It's one of my clients."
"Um-um," he said, shaking his head. "I spec she ain't, Mr. Estabrook,
sah. She mos' likely has pussonal business, sah!"
The others--Folsom the broker, and Madison, and Ingle the architect--had
evidently dined well, preparing for a musical comedy, and they snickered
without shame.
"Let my man know when she comes," said I, and without smiling hurried
into the elevator.
I had no belief that the woman, whoever she might be, would come back
after dark to call upon me. With my conflicting thoughts about Julianna,
I forgot the incident. It was therefore with some surprise that I heard
Saito, my Jap, arouse me from my sleepy reverie, to which exhaustion had
reduced my mind, to tell me that a lady was waiting in the reception
room downstairs.
You may understand the conservative nature of my life and habits more
thoroughly when I tell you that the mere idea that a woman had dared to
ask for me at my apartment in the evening caused me the greatest
anxiety. As if to prove what dependence we can put upon our intuitions,
I felt, on my way down, most strongly, that an evil event was about to
take place.
Nothing could, I think, better illustrate the nonsense of attaching
importance to these fore-warnings than to tell you that the woman who
waited for me was Julianna herself!
My first instinct, before I had been seen by her, was to hurry her out
of the garish little reception room, where, through the door which
opened into the hallway, she might well have been seen by anybody; it
was only when she greeted me and turned her face toward the tiled floor,
and I saw that her shoulders drooped and that her hands hung down at
her side, and that she stood like a guilty, punished, and remorseful
child, that my wish to protect her was displaced by a mad desire to take
her in my arms and comfort her.
"Julianna!" I cried. "What has happened? Is it the Judge? Tell me! Why
did you come?"
She shook her head and lowered it still more, until the sweeping curve
of her bare neck, from the fine hair behind her ears to the back of the
lace collar of her waist, was visible.
I cannot say what gave me the courage, but I bent over her and kissed
her there, softly.
She looked up then without the slightest indication of either surprise
or reproach.
"I liked that," she whispered. "I didn't know how I was going to tell
you, but now I can."
"Tell me what?" said I, in a choking voice.
"I love you," she said. "I could not let you go. I thought last night
that I could carry it through. I thought my duty was to stay with
father. But it isn't!"
"And you came _here_ to tell me!" I gasped.
"Why not?" she said, with a catch in her voice. "I was afraid I would
never see you again and I love you."
When I think of all the sham there is among women, I treasure the memory
of that simple little explanation. It was delivered as a full answer to
all the conventionalities from here back to the time of the Serpent. It
was spoken in a low but confident voice, with her hands upon her breast
as if to calm the emotions within, and was directed toward me with the
first frank exposure of her eyes which were still wet with tears.
"I have been miserable!" she said. "A woman is meant for some man, after
all. And if she resists, she is resisting God! It all has been shown to
me so clearly. And I knew that you were the one. There's nothing else
that makes any difference, and it sweeps you off your feet, so it must
be nature, because it gave me the courage to telephone you and then try
to find you and come here and wait and come again, and only nature can
make any one go against all her habits and education. And I believe I'll
call you Jerry, if you still--"
"Good God! Love you?" said I. "Forever!"
"Always?"
"Forever."
She gave her burning hands to mine, and oblivious of the old negro,
whose eyes were upon us, we stood there, looking at each other in awe,
very much frightened and very much, for that moment,--and I sometimes
wonder if not in truth,--the centre of the universe.
"You belong to me, Jerry?" she said tearfully. "Now?"
"Yes," said I.
"Then I must go back quickly," she explained, after a moment. "I do not
want father to know yet. I want to prepare the way. I don't want you to
speak with him for a week. I will tell him then. Perhaps you think it is
strange. But Friday, when he knows, you may come."
She had a carriage waiting for her, and I walked with her to its door.
"I want to kiss you, Julianna," I whispered.
She looked up to see whether the driver could observe us. He could not.
And then the mischief-loving quality of womankind appeared in her. She
gave forth a glad little laugh.
"On Friday," she said.
The door slammed, and I thought, as I caught a last glance at her then,
that she was a luminous being of dreams, lighting the dark recess of a
common cab.
This impression recurred so often in those following days that at times
there rose the uncanny suspicion that the woman who had visited me had
not been one of reality, of flesh and blood, and beating heart and
sweet, warm breath. Her smile, her voice, her personality had not seemed
a part of real life, but almost the manifestations of a spirit which,
timidly and with the hope of some reincarnation in life, had come to
claim my vows. I believed that I knew well enough why Julianna, if it
were she, had planned to avoid a sudden disclosure of our betrothal to
the Judge, but, none the less, I fretted at the sluggishness of time,
which, like a country horse, will not go faster for the wishing or the
beating.
I wished, too, that she had said she would meet me in her afternoon
walks to the Monument and wondered that, if she loved me, she was able
to forbid herself a meeting, even though she had felt that good sense
demanded a period of reflection and a readjustment of view, so that when
we did see each other again, it would be with firmer minds and steadier
hearts. I would have gladly foregone all this value of reserve and
restraint for one look at her face, one touch of her sleeve, one word
from her tender, curving lips.
And yet I was happy in those days--so painfully happy that I heard
voices telling me that such happiness does not last, that ecstasies are
tricks of fate by which man's joy is fattened for slaughter, that from
some ambush a horrible thing was peering.
Strangely enough, these fears were connected in no way with the warnings
which I had had from my eavesdropping or even from the definite threat
which had come out of my grotesque experience with the Sheik of Baalbec.
The piece of writing, which had begun, "You are in danger," I had
dropped into a file of papers, and though I suppose it is somewhere
among them now, I have never yielded to the temptation to look at it
again. I may have thought of it merely to add to the opinion of Jarvis
that the writing was not Julianna's, the apparently indisputable fact
that, at the moment the warning had been written, Julianna was, by the
word of the apartment house doorman, waiting for me in the little
reception room. Furthermore, with my success in winning her, with the
intoxication of it, I began to look upon the strange and unexplained
matters which had so perplexed me as trivial illusions beneath the
consideration of good sense. However much you may be surprised at my
willful blindness, your wonder cannot equal that which I myself feel
to-night.
And now, when I am about to tell you of that memorable Friday, I must
impress upon you that no detail of it is distorted in my memory, that so
clear and vivid were the impressions upon my senses that, were I to live
to the age of pyramids, I could recall every slight sequence with
accuracy. I say this because you are a physician and as such, no
doubt,--and it is no different in the case of us lawyers,--have learned
the absurd fallibility of ordinary human testimony, not excluding that
which proceeds from the highest and most honorable type of our
civilization.
The day, as I was about to tell you, had been saved from the heat of
the season by a breeze which blew from the water and once or twice even
reached the velocity of a storm wind. A hundred times I had looked out
my office window and a hundred times I had seen that not one speck of
cloud showed in the sky. Yet all day long, while I tried to work, only
to find myself all on edge with expectancy, I could hear the flap and
rustle of the American flag on the Custom-House roof, which was
straining at its cords and lashing itself into a frenzy like a wild
creature in chains.
I am not sure that a dry storm of this kind is not freighted with some
nerve-twanging quality. I have often noticed on such days a universal
irritability on the part of mankind, and I have been informed by those
who have traveled much that often a nervous wind of this kind, in
countries where such things happen, precedes some disaster such as
volcanic eruptions, avalanches, earthquakes, and tidal waves.
My own nervousness, however, took the form of impatience. I was absurdly
eager to go at once to Julianna, and the fact that the hour for dinner
had finally arrived, and that the remaining time was short, only served
to increase my impatience the more. I could not assign any cause for
this other than my wish to see Julianna, for now I knew in my mind and
heart, by reason and by instinct, that the Judge had been right, that
once having given her love she had given all, and, with that noble and
perhaps pathetic trait of fine women, would never change.
At last I found myself at her door, at last she herself had opened it,
and was smiling at me--as beautiful, more beautiful, than I had ever
seen her. I remember that, with an innocent and spontaneous outburst of
affection, she caught my hand in hers and tucked it under her soft round
arm in playful symbolism of capture.
"You must not say a word to me," she said. "I have never been so happy!
But he is in there. He wants to see you alone and you must hurry."
"Hurry?" I protested.
"I don't know why," she said, with a nervous little laugh. "I suppose
it's because I want you to talk to him and come to me as quickly as you
can."
Then, with a gentle pressure from behind, she pushed me through the
curtains into the familiar study and I heard her feet scampering up the
soft carpet on the broad, black-walnut stairs.
The Judge was sitting in his easy-chair beside the table. A book was
open on his knees, a long-stemmed pipe was on the chair arm, and the
gray and grizzled old dog lay, with head on paws, at his feet. Above him
a huge wreath of thin smoke hung in the air. Had I been a painter, I
should have wished to lay that picture upon canvas, because seldom
could one see expressed so completely the evening of an honest day and
of an honorable life, the tranquillity of home, the comfort of
meditation, the affection for faithful dog, old volume, and seasoned
pipe.
As he looked up at me, however, it suddenly seemed to me that he had
grown old; behind his smile of warm greeting I fancied I could observe a
haunted look, the ghostly flickering forth of some unwelcome thought
held in the subconsciousness.
"Why, Estabrook!" he cried, when he had seen me. "Bless my soul, I
didn't know you would be so prompt. I have understood that young men
approached these interviews with reluctance."
"You forget, sir," I answered, knowing that he would have a jest at my
expense, "that we made the arrangement in advance."
"We did! We did! That's a fact. But I had no idea that you would be
successful, at least so soon, and if I may say it--so--so--precipitously."
"I plead the spirit of the age," said I.
"It's a spirit common to all ages, I take it," he answered, with a quirk
of his judicial mouth. "Do I understand that you and my daughter have
first become engaged and now wish my permission to see enough of each
other to become acquainted?"
Perhaps he hit a centre ring with this thrust, for I could only stammer
forth an awkward statement about being very sure of my feelings.
"They all are sure!" he said, with a good-natured cynicism. Then he
smiled again and pointed toward the ceiling with a long forefinger.
"Perhaps you may be pleased to know that she is very sure," he
whispered.
I sat down.
"Yes," said he solemnly. "You are to be envied. I believe her love--as I
have seen it grow in these weeks--is the sweetest thing that ever flowed
from a human soul."
"You knew that she at first sent me away in the name of her duty to
you?" said I.
He looked up at me, shut his book, patted the dog, and laid the pipe on
the table.
"No," said he, with a break in his voice. "But I shall not quickly
forget that you have been fair enough to her and to me to tell me that."
"May I have her?" I asked.
"Yes," said he. "Of course you may."
I hesitated a moment. Then I laughed. "She told me when you had said
that to go to her."
I rose.
"Wait," said he. "That is not all. Before God, I wish it were."
I had not been watching his expression, but now, when I looked up at
him, I saw that the gray look which I had fancied I had seen under his
smile had now come out upon his face.
"Estabrook," he said, leaning forward toward me with his lips
compressed, "sometime, perhaps years from now, perhaps never, but, if
you choose, to-night--you may know what a problem I have had to solve,
and what it will cost me to say to you that which I am going to say."
He had lowered his voice as if he wished to be sure that no one could
overhear him, and now, when he stopped, he stood with his head turned as
if listening to be sure that no one was in the hallway. No sounds came,
however, except those of the dog, who whined softly in his dreams, and
the complaint of the dry wind, which, instead of diminishing with night,
had perhaps increased its intensity, and the rattle of the long French
windows through which I could see the gnarled old wistaria vine clinging
desperately to the iron balcony, its leaves tossing about as if in
agony.
"I have sat on the bench for many years, trying with my imperfect
intelligence to adjust the misshapen affairs of men and women," the
Judge went on. "Never have I been forced to deal with so terrible a
question as lies before me now--to-night."
For a long time, then, he was silent. Finally I spoke.
"Judge," said I, "how can I help?"
"I am afraid," he said slowly, and apparently avoiding my gaze,--"I am
afraid that I must call upon you in a manner which will severely weigh
upon you. Estabrook," he put his hand upon my shoulder. "I've done my
best. Do you hear? I've done my best."
"I will never doubt it," I assured him. "Nor do you need to doubt me."
He looked at me steadily for a second; then he went to a drawer and,
opening it, took out a packet of folded papers. It was evident that he
had placed it there so that he could reach it easily.
I suppose that the gravity of his bearing, the trembling of his hands,
in which these papers rustled, and the anxious expression with which he
gazed at me, as if I were to decide some question of life or death,
infected me with his unrest. I got up, paced back and forth, and finally
sat down again facing his empty easy-chair, with my back to the long
windows.
The Judge watched every movement I made, his eyes staring out at me from
under the brush of their brows. At last, when I had seated myself, he
came and sat in front of me, laid the papers on his knees and smoothed
them with the palm of his shaking hand.
"My boy," he said, "I wrote these papers, not for you, but for my
Julianna. Never has a man had a task so calculated to break his heart.
She was not to read my message to her unless death came and took me, for
while I lived, I felt that I might spare her. See! Her name is written
across this outside page."
I could find no words to fill the pauses which he seemed obliged to
make, for, as you may well believe, I felt the presence of a crisis in
my affairs--in the affairs of all of us.
"But, my boy," he went on, "what these pages contain is now for you, if
you so decide."
"Decide?" I managed to say. "What must I decide?"
"I will tell you if God gives me the strength to do it," he said. "It is
about Julianna. It is written here. I have sealed it as you see."
"Something about her?" I cried.
He bent his head as if I had struck him from above.
"You may break the seal if you must. I have fought many battles to bring
myself to tell you that you may read what is there."
I reached for the package.
"Wait," said he. "The contents of this document need never be given to
her if she becomes your wife. Nor is it necessary for you to read what
is there set forth if you only will choose not to do so. These are
strange words between men in these modern times, Estabrook. But I have
guarded my honor carefully all my life. And now, though the temptation
has been almost more than I could stand, as you may believe some
day,--or perhaps know in the next five minutes, which are walking toward
us out of eternity,--yet I have determined that you should know
everything if you chose."
"I do choose," I said firmly.
He shrunk back as if I had struck at him again.
"Think!" he begged. "No good can come of your knowledge. It cannot avert
harm if harm must come. And more--be cool in your judgment, or you may
ruin all of us."
"But, Judge Colfax," I cried out, "your proposal of choice is empty. One
cannot reject or accept the unknown."
"It must be so," said he. "There is an astounding fact about Julianna
which you do not know. About that fact I have written this message, so
that when I had gone she might be prepared in case the worst--in case
the worst--the improbable--the unexpected, the unthinkable--should
come."
I caught the arms of the chair in the grip of my two hands and tried to
think, but I could find no reason for my remaining, perhaps for a
lifetime, in ignorance of some unseen menace to the woman I loved. I
think that I was about to tell him that nothing could change my feelings
for Julianna, or shake my faith in her, that it was right that I should
become her defender, and that I, therefore, must know what hung so
threateningly over her. Words were on my tongue, when suddenly the Judge
bent his great frame forward and was in another second half kneeling on
the floor in front of me, his hands clutching my coat. His face then was
the color of concrete, and the dignity which he had worn so long had
slipped from him as an unloosened garment falls.
"For her sake!" he whispered. "For her sake, don't go further. Let the
thing be unspoken. My boy, don't dig up that which is all but buried
forever. Listen to me, Estabrook. You trust me. And I, tell you that if
I were in your place, knowing what I know--"
"Enough," I said, awed by his pleading. "Do you tell me that it is best
for her and for me to make her my wife in ignorance of this thing?"
"God help me," he said, falling back into his chair.
He seemed to be thinking desperately, as if some voice had told him that
only a moment was left for thought. At last he threw his long arms
outward.
"Yes," said he. "I tell you that it is better for you and for her to
know nothing."
"That is sufficient," I said. "I ask no more."
He shut his eyes as one would receive the relief of an opiate after
long agony of the body and for some moments he remained so, his hands,
from which the packet of papers had fallen, relaxed upon his knees. The
starched white shirt he wore crackled absurdly with each long inhalation
of breath.
In those moments a tumult of thoughts went tumbling through my brain,
and as the seconds passed, I almost felt that it was the wind that
howled outside which was blowing these thoughts over each other, as it
would blow dry autumn leaves.
At last the dog rose, stretched himself, and, as if restless, sought
here and there a new place to lie, and the sound of his claws upon the
polished floor recalled the Judge from his almost unconscious reverie.
He half opened his eyes and once or twice moved his thin lips. At last
he spoke and into those commonplace words he put all the meaning which
hours of ranting would have made less plain.
"I am grateful," he said.
When I looked up at him after lowering my head in acknowledgment of his
thanks, I saw again that wonderful smile of benevolence, which, given to
me once before in his office, I believe could only have been bestowed by
one who had had a lifelong practice in love of humanity. Indeed, he only
directed it at me for a moment, and then turned his face a little aside
toward the back of the room, as if he wished to send that expression
through the walls and spread over the whole world its beaming radiance.
You may, then, well imagine my surprise when, without a word or a motion
of any other part of his body, I saw that smile fade from his face. It
disappeared as if a blast of the night wind, entering the room, had
dried it, crumbled it, and blown it away. In its place I now saw the
terrible, eye-widened, and fixed stare which we recognize as the facial
sign of some abject, unreasoning terror, or of death, after the clutch
of some fatal agony.
"Judge Colfax!" I exclaimed.
I waited. I thought I saw his head move a little as if he had heard me,
but with that motion there came a click, the sound of teeth coming
together.
"You are ill," I said, half rising from my chair.
His lips moved, but the stare in his eyes remained the same.
"It has come," he said in his throat.
I jumped toward him. He did not stir.
"Judge!" I cried.
He did not answer. I waited, bending over him, not daring to guess what
had befallen him, holding my breath. Then, cautiously, I moved my
fingers before his eyes: they did not wink. I placed my hand over his
heart.... It was as still as a rundown clock. The room itself was still.
The wind had paused a moment as if for this.... The Judge was dead. And
yet because he still sat there, his gray head resting on the cushions,
and because he stared so fixedly before him, I could not grasp the fact
of death. I had never met it face to face before. I could not honor its
credentials.
For a moment I stood in front of the old man, with the single thought
that our extraordinary interview had been too much for him: it never
occurred to me to go for assistance any more than it occurred to me that
death, unlike sleep, was a permanent thing, from which the Judge would
never come back again. I simply stood there, awed by the presence of
death, yet crediting death with none of death's attributes.
And as I stood, my attention became more and more fixed upon the Judge's
stare. It did not seem to be a vacant gaze; on the contrary, it seemed
to contain something. It seemed not only fixed; it seemed fixed on some
object. It looked past me, behind me, and there, with all its terror and
all its intelligence, it rested, motionless. It seemed to refute the
notion that dead men cannot see; it seemed to affirm that dead men's
eyes are not dead. Into that terrible stare I looked, fascinated, awed,
hushed, motionless. Then, suddenly, I heard the dog.
[Illustration: LISTEN TO ME, ESTABROOK!]
The great Scotch hound had been snarling. He had growled, for I
remembered it as a fact brought out of the background of my
consciousness. And when I tore my eyes away from the Judge's stare, I
saw that the dog was staring, too,--was staring, was drawing back his
black lips, exposing his yellow teeth. Every hair on his back was erect,
his nostrils were distended as if he were relying upon his sense of
smell to determine the nature of what he saw. Could there be any doubt
that he, living, and his master, dead, still saw something--something
which, because it was behind me, I could not see?
At first I did not dare to look. I felt some dreadful presence behind
me--a presence upon which the lifeless man and the cringing, snarling
beast had set their eyes, a presence which had wiped the smile from the
Judge's face and tightened every nerve and sinew in the dog's lean body.
I could hear the wind, and, in its lapses, the rumble of the city, I
could smell the warm aroma of the Judge's pipe, I could feel my senses
grow keener as I gathered my courage to look over my shoulder.
When at last, after that dragging moment's reluctance, I did so, I
believed that I had looked for no purpose. The room behind me was empty.
My nervous eyes searched the rectangular space, swept over the chairs,
the tea-table covered with its display of rare china, the blue-and-gold
Japanese floor vase, the brasses on the cases of books, the dark walls,
the pictures, the gloomy corners filled with the mist of shadows, the
rugs, the cornice, the draperies.
Then suddenly I saw!
Outside the long French windows, framed in the uncertain outlines of the
old ornate balcony rail and the tossing leaves and branches of the vine,
there appeared, as if it had come floating out of the liquid blackness
of the night, detached from all else, a face.
No sooner had my glance fallen upon this peering countenance than I
thought I saw a startled opening of its lips; it withdrew and was gone.
I had merely caught a glance at it, yet of this I am sure--the face was
white with the pallor of things that grow in a cellar, it was weak with
the terrible drooping, hopeless weakness of endless self-indulgence; it
was a brutal face, and yet wore the expression of timid, anxious,
pathetic inquiry. It was a face that had come to ask a question. And
though, because only the pale skin had reflected the light from within,
I had not seen what might have appeared above or below, and though I may
have been wrong, I received the impression that it was the countenance
of an old woman.
Of course the moment I discovered this apparition, upon which the wild
stare of the Judge in life and in death had rested, I ran forward. I
thought as I did so that I heard the scrape of clothing on the iron
balcony rail and the thud of a heavy object dropping on the grass below.
Flinging open the glass doors, through which a torrent of wind poured
into the room, and leaning out under the twisted branches of the vine, I
tried in vain to penetrate the wall of blackness before me, and force my
sight through it and down into the old garden, from which there arose
only the rushing sound of the dry wind in the shrubbery. All the
universe seemed made of black and hissing chaos. Out of it came blasts
that combed through my disheveled hair and drove fine dust into my eyes.
But of the messenger of death, who had peered in the window for a
moment, and then withdrawn, nothing could be seen.
I turned back, feeling suddenly, for the first time, the emptiness of
body which occurs, perhaps in sympathy with the emptiness of death, and
as I turned, I found myself in the position of the thing that had looked
in at us. The stare of the Judge was still fixed upon that spot, so that
for a moment I received the impression that he was gazing at me. The dog
still whined softly, cowering close to the floor.
I went to the middle of the room: I stood there gathering my wits. I
heard a clock strike somewhere in the kitchen region below, from outside
the window came the rattle of some conveyance, louder, louder, softer,
softer. A passing boy whistled; I heard Julianna's step above me; I
heard the dog licking his paws unconcernedly; I heard the curtains flap
in the wind that filled the room; and finally its ironical little scream
as it lifted from the desk the last opinion the Judge ever wrote and
scattered the loose sheets all over the room. It brought in the dank
smell of the garden.
"I must tell her," I said aloud, and the old dog, senses dulled by age,
wagged his tail. "I must tell her," I repeated, and toiled up the soft,
carpeted stairs.
She was waiting for me in her own room, standing under the soft light
from a hanging, well-shaded, electric lamp. I see her there, clearly,
with the smile fading from her face as she read my own. Indeed, it was
not necessary for me to speak; before I had gathered courage to do so, I
saw her bosom swell with a long breath. She inhaled it jerkily, as one
who is suddenly shocked with a deluge of icy water. I saw the color fade
as the smile had faded before it, and when I had nodded to indicate that
she had guessed the truth, stepped forward, fearing that she would sway
off her feet.
"No, Jerry," she said, with her hands held tight at her sides. "I am
all right. I had expected this some day soon. It is hard to believe, but
has not come without warning. His heart--his great, loving
heart--had--worn out. I do not want you to come with me. I am going
down--alone."
I moved my dry tongue in my mouth: a word of the strange circumstance of
his death was there. But her courage--her steady body, her squared
shoulders, her firm mouth, her eyes which showed her agony, but no sign
of weakness, and her soft voice as she said, "Wait for me
here"--restrained me. I pressed her fingers to my lips and as I saw her
go out, I felt that perhaps never would the opportunity to tell the
story I have told to-night come again.
CHAPTER V
AT DAWN
I think it must have been nearly a half-hour--though the minutes were
themselves hours--before I, waiting in the upper hall beside the window,
through which the arc lights from the street threw jumping white patches
on the ceiling, heard the sound of the old dog's claws on the floor
below and her little catches of breath as she came up.
At the top she buried her face for a moment on my shoulder.
"I love you more than ever," she whispered. "I want you to stay.--Call
Margaret and do what you can. I will come to you by and by."
With these words she pressed my forearm in the grip of her strong
fingers and, entering her own room, shut the door.
I found, when I did mechanically as she had bade me do, that Margaret,
with the instinct of an old servant, which is sometimes as keen as that
of an animal, had already sensed the presence of some crisis and prowled
about in her soft-footed way until she had discovered the truth. She was
lying at the bottom of the stairs, her face buried in her hands and her
broad back rising and falling with slow and silent tides of grief.
Julianna and her father were together the old woman's life. One half had
gone.
"Come, Margaret," said I softly.
"Very well, sir," she answered after a minute, and rising, straightened
her cap, preparing for duty like a broken-hearted soldier. And so she
went on in that next hour or two, telephoning, directing, arranging and
doing with me all those necessary things. In spite of her labors she
seemed always to be at my elbow, a ceaseless little whimpering in her
throat. Her spectacles were befogged with the mist from her old blue
eyes, which, like the color of old china, had faded with wetting and
drying in years of family use, but she did not again give up to her
grief.
Therefore, when at last we looked at each other in the hall in one of
those moments when, at the end of a task, a mental inventory is taken to
be sure that all is done, I was surprised to see her expression change
suddenly, to hear a cry of dismay escape her, and to observe her trundle
herself toward the library door in grotesque haste.
When, following her, I went into the room, I found her thick fingers
pulling open drawer after drawer of the desk, and turning over the
papers they contained.
"It was here, Mr. Estabrook. Oh, my God! Mr. Estabrook, I saw him put
it here!" she cried.
"What?" I asked, with a glimmer of memory.
"The papers. They was marked for her, but she mustn't ever have 'em! I'd
rather they should pluck me from my bones, sir! And I saw him put 'em
here!"
"He took them out again," I cried, touched by her contagious fear. "He
died with them on the floor beside him. I know what you mean. The blue
seal."
"Yes, the blue seal!" she cried in recognition, and stumbling across the
room she fell upon her knees, reaching under the old easy-chair and the
desk, patting over the rug with her hand, turning up its corners,
searching with her face bent down, like a devotee of some strange sect,
muttering to herself.
"She must never see," she exclaimed monotonously. "Poor child, she must
never see. It is worse than death--a hundred times. Oh, what has he done
with that terrible package!"
Suddenly, throwing herself upward and backward, until the upper half of
her body was erect, and with a small object held up to my astonished
eyes between her forefinger and thumb, she uttered a cry of despair and
rage. She had found a piece of the sealing wax with which the packet,
once offered to my eyes, had been fastened!
"It's too late," she wailed miserably. "Do you see that? The girl has
read it. She would not let me in her room. It's too late!"
There was no keeping back the question.
"What was in it?" I cried. "What was written there?"
I saw her old mouth shut as if she meant to show me that I need expect
no disclosure from her.
"I don't know, Mr. Estabrook," said she.
In her eyes, perhaps distorted by the strong lenses of her glasses, I
saw the challenge of stubbornness. I felt myself growing wild with a
desire to break through the unwholesome mystery which had entangled me,
and overcome by any means the silence of this woman. She had arisen. She
was within my reach. And I believe that I put my hands upon her,
catching her two round and fleshy shoulders under my curved palms,
shaking her to and fro with the excess of my excitement. In that moment
before I spoke to her, she looked up at me, surprise and terror written
on her face.
"Tell me!" I roared. "You know this horrible, hidden thing. Confound
you, tell me!"
Her expression changed. I saw surprise become craftiness and fear,
distrust. I saw in her eyes the beginning of that hate which I believe
has never, since that irresponsible moment, diminished.
"You had best leave go of me, Mr. Estabrook," she said calmly. "You
would not act so if the old Judge was alive and here. Nor his daughter,
sir!"
The rebuke, you may believe, was enough.
"I'm sorry," I said.
The old woman, however, wrung her hands and looked toward the room above
as if to indicate to me that nothing was important but the fact that
Julianna had possession of the Judge's _post-mortem_ message.
"Let her tell you if she will," she cried. Then covering her face with
her fat hands, as if to hide some terrible picture of the imagination,
she stumbled forward out of the library.
I have often wondered since, as I wonder to-night, when those spectres
have arisen again, what that old servant meant. At the time it never
occurred to me that but one thing could happen. I had the utmost
confidence in Julianna, and indeed, without thinking much of my own
troubles, I passed that long vigil in the library only with regret that
I could not wrest away from the true and noble woman who had promised to
be my wife, all the terrible grief which, alone in the chamber above,
she must have been suffering. For the first time, I think, in all my
life, which, by training and inherited instincts, had been devoted, I
might say, to the welfare of the Estabrook name and of myself, I felt my
mind--and even my body--filled with a strange and passionate desire to
be the instrument of good, not for myself, but in the name of others and
perhaps in the name of God. My eyes filled with tears, springing not so
much from grief as from belief in myself, not so much from weakness as
from strength. I called upon an unknown force that I felt to be near me
and directing me.
"Save her from misfortune," I said aloud in that silent room. "Protect
her. Comfort her."
The old dog, as if he now understood, raised his head and licked my
hand. I realized then that the wind had died down, and, looking up, I
saw that the balcony and garden were lit by the pale rays of the morning
moon, that the stars shone clearly again through the still air, and that
the odor of flowers, nodding below the window, perfumed the Judge's
study. The pipe, with ashes tumbling out upon the table, by curious
chance had not been moved from the place where he had laid it down.
It seemed to me that I had dreamed restlessly, that the old man had not
left the room, and then, when this fancy had gone, I almost believed
that he had come back as he used to do when he, in his absent-minded
way, had left something behind. With my heart full of him, I got up and
reaching for the pipe I dropped it into my own pocket.
At last the oil in the lamp had been consumed. The burner flickered,
gurgled several times, snapped, and went out; but the failure of this
light served to show that morning was near at hand. The rectangular
squares of the window panes now appeared luminous with the first gray
flow of the east. It seemed to me that the time had come when Julianna
should no longer be alone with her own thoughts; with soft steps I
climbed the stairs and softly I turned the knob of her closed door. If
it had been locked, it was so no longer; it yielded to my gentle,
cautious pressure. The crack widened. Then, for a moment, unseen and
unheard, I stood on the threshold looking in.
She was no longer dressed as I had seen her, for now she was clad in the
soft drapery of some delicate Oriental silk, which, if she had been
standing, would have fallen from the points of her shoulders in
voluminous folds to the floor. She had unloosened her hair; it had
fallen in a torrent of brown and golden light. I could not see her face.
Her back was turned toward me, for she was sitting on the floor facing
the hearth in the middle of the frame of old lavender-and-gold tiles
which marked the fireplace. Her hands were pressed to her temples as if
her head no longer could be relied upon to retain its contents, her
fingers moved this way and that through the hair above her ears, and,
in strange contrast with the glimmer of early day beyond the white
curtains, an uncanny flickering light burned on the hearth, painting the
delicate pallor of her shoulders, neck, ears, and hands with an outline
of fire. It was a picture to give the impression of a beautiful
sorceress crouching to perform some unholy rite.
"Julianna!" I exclaimed softly.
She turned about as one caught red-handed in guilt, and in doing so,
moved far enough to one side to expose the last remnants of written
sheets of paper, which flames were rapidly consuming. A moment more and
these were crisp ashes which whirled about the hearth with a soft rustle
before they fell into heaps of sooty fragments. Whatever the Judge had
written with infinite pain had now been destroyed. And as I looked into
her eyes, I saw, too, that infinite pain had attended their destruction.
Her expression had in it horror, shame, apprehension, and excruciating
grief: never had I believed that a face, naturally so innocent and so
happy, could have been so distorted with mature and terrible emotions as
hers had become in the hours that had passed.
"Julie! my Julie!" I cried.
For answer her fingers reached out toward me in mute appeal, her body
followed, and, crawling to my feet, she clutched the air as if trying to
reach my hands with her own, and then fell forward, flat upon the
floor, unconscious. If in that moment she appeared a groveling thing, it
was only for a moment. Before I could stoop to raise her, she had
regained her senses with two or three sharp inhalations and a fluttering
of her eyelids, had thrust my hands from her and struggled to her feet.
"Go!" she whispered, retreating. "It is unthinkable! Go! Never come near
me!"
"No--no--no!" I said. "Julianna, tell me! What has happened? It is not
you who speaks!"
"No," she answered. "It is not I."
"I say it is not you who say these things," I repeated. "Who, then?"
"My father. It is his voice. It is his message. And what he has been, I
am. There is no other way."
I moved toward her.
"Tell me this terrible menace behind us--this thing that threatens
us--that works its evil upon us. I will not believe that any fault of it
is yours."
"It is mine because it is his," she said, with a return of her
wonderful self-control. "But no one shall ever hear of it from
me--no--Jerry--not--even you."
"He offered to show me that message," I said. "I refused to see."
Another little cry issued from her compressed lips.
"You were willing not to know?"
"Yes."
She went into a corner; without taking her eyes away from mine, she
wrung her hands, again and again.
"Why did I ever see you?" she whispered. "Why did I ever love you? Oh,
go, while I am strong! Go, while I know that you must never ask for me
again! Go, before I bargain with my conscience."
"You cannot send me away," I said. A thousand hidden horrors would not
have daunted me then. "Will you treat my love for you so? Has your own
gone so quickly?"
She shuddered then as if cold steel had been run through her body.
"I am lost," cried she. "I am lost. I cannot do more. Promise by your
love of me,--by your love of God,--never to ask me of those things now
ashes on the hearth--never to so much as speak of them to me--till
eternity."
"What then?--I promise," I said.
"Then I will as solemnly swear to be as good and faithful, as true and
ever-loving wife as God will let me be," she said softly; "and may He
forgive me for what I do, because I love you."
She held out her arms to me, begging to be taken into mine, and when I
had touched her she fell back, with her limp body in the curve of my
elbow, and, looking up at me, offered her parted lips to the first kiss
I had ever given her.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOVING FIGURE AGAIN
Such was a betrothal, sir, so extraordinary that had my natural
repulsion for the unusual permitted me to have told it before, it would
have been with belief that others would think me a man deluded by his
own fancies. And yet these are facts I have told you--cold and bare and
sufficient to have proved to me that the adventure and romance mourned
for by some men are not dead, but, were it only known, still flourish,
concealed in the hearts and experience of such matter-of-fact persons as
myself.
Our marriage, too, was not of the conventional sort. It took place a
fortnight later without any of the celebration usual in such cases. The
death of the Judge, the fact that Julianna had no other immediate
relatives to act as her protectors, and that my own father, whose
affection for me has always been of a rather cold and undemonstrative
type, approved not only of my choice of a wife, but also of my plan for
an immediate marriage, argued against delay. Furthermore, Julianna
herself, with a sad but charming little smile, again and again assured
herself in my presence that she knew her own heart and that for her
part there was no need to prolong a period of preparation.
Often, in those days, she spoke to me of her father, with the deepest
affection, not as if he were dead, but rather as if his spirit still
remained in the old house. She had one of those rare minds that reject
the disagreeable superstitious affectations concerning death and that
overcome hysterical grief. To be sure, for hours at a time she would
suffer an extraordinary melancholy, and then, in my agony of curiosity,
I believed that the spectre which had first appeared before her, the
night of the Judge's death, was whispering to her again. True, however,
to my solemn oath, which I have always kept, I asked her nothing, and
she always emerged from these periods of meditation into moods of gayety
and affection which were more charming than I can describe.
She would romp, mind and body, in all the freshness of youth, with the
most entrancing grace of movement and with her natural brilliant play of
thought.
"I belong to you!" she would exclaim, retreating before my advance.
"Come--take me!"
Then, after I had captured her and she had looked up at me, wrinkling
her nose playfully, she would suddenly grow serious, and from her
smiling eyes tears of happiness would start, and then, for an hour
afterward, she would go singing snatches of song through the house. So
that more than once I saw Margaret Murchie stop her household task to
listen, shut her old eyes and say, "Thank God for his care of her."
It need not surprise you that I tell you of her, for, as you may
understand when I have told you all, I am now facing circumstances
which, for some reason, have caused me to fall in love with her with a
strange, new, and even deeper desire, and which raise the necessity for
me to save her from some unrevealed menace and win her a second time.
The extraordinary fact in the light of this new situation is that our
married life has been, until a year ago, as peaceful as could be.
Whatever I might have suffered at first from the fact that I had been
forbidden to know or ask of the past, these stings soon lost their power
to disturb me. I was glad to forget them because I so hated all things
which might tend to disturb the well-ordered life with which well-bred
families retain their respectable position.
We found our tastes adapted to a common enjoyment of outdoor and
intellectual pleasures, and we spent many hours each week, when alone,
in reading the books which pleased us and in playing duets, in which I,
being an indifferent player of the piano, contrasted my cold technique
with the warmth and expression of her performances upon the 'cello.
Indeed, we showed ourselves in these duets as in our companionship, for
though I loved her, I believe I may have fallen short in those
attentions, those little demonstrations and caresses, upon which some
women seem to be nourished. As for her, she remained unchanged by
marriage or time. By her humor, her tender sympathy, her refreshing,
unaffected ways, she won a large and devoted circle of acquaintance,
composed of both women and men. If any of the former, however, desired
intimacy, they always found a gentle resistance; if the latter, they
were made to see that a fortress had been erected on the borderland.
Until a year ago we were very happy, I think. To be sure, as time passed
without the coming of any child, Julianna suffered that peculiar grief
which, whatever may be its severity, is like no other. The desire for
children was not only in her heart and mind: it was also a keen,
instinctive yearning. Quietly, and without inflicting upon me any of her
distress over unfulfilled hopes of the past, she persisted in the belief
that the gift she most desired would not be withheld from her forever.
Other than this no cloud seemed to be creeping up our sky, and, indeed,
it was only little by little that I realized that some peculiar change
had taken place.
I may say to you, I think, that this strange influence came even more
than a year ago. I have tried in my own mind to establish a connection
between its beginning and an accident which happened at that time.
We had gone for a week-end visit to the Tencorts' farm in the Sweetbriar
Hills, and much against my wishes, expressed, however, sleepily,
Julianna had gone out at sunrise, chosen a rangy mare, saddled the
creature herself, for the grooms were not up, and had ridden off across
the wet fields, alone. Breakfast had already been announced when we
heard the hoofs of the animal and caught glimpses of the horse's yellow
neck and Julianna's plaid jacket, bobbing toward us under the arching
trees.
"Your lady is hardly what one might call a gentle rider," said Jack
Tencort. "As for me, I'm glad to see the mare in a foam for once, but I
would not be pleased to have my own wife--Hello, she is using her right
hand."
I, too, could see that Julianna's left arm was hanging by her side, and
as she pulled up the panting mare below the porch, I noticed that her
lips were white.
"I'm sorry to have forced your animal," she said, "but I was in a hurry
to get back. Jerry! Please hurry. Help me off."
"What's the matter?" cried our host behind me.
"To tell the truth," she said. "I have had my arm broken."
"Thrown?" cried Tencort, looking for signs of mud or dust on her
costume.
Julianna smiled gamely.
"That is a matter wholly between myself and the mare," she answered.
You know, of course, that in spite of her unconcerned answers the thing
was serious. The great trouble, I have always thought, was that no good
surgeon was within reaching distance; the country doctor who set the
bones failed to discover the presence of some splinters at the elbow,
which the injury had thrust up into and displaced some of the nerves and
sinew there.
When we had come back home and Nederlinck, the surgeon, had discovered
how the healing process had gone on, he told me that for many weeks my
wife would have to suffer great pain from the readjustment of the
irritated nerves. For two months he did what little he could and then
left the rest to time.
Julianna suffered silently. She complained little, but I could see a
marked change in her. She became restless. I have seen her pace up and
down a room for hours, like a captured animal longing for the jungle,
and remain at the dinner-table, after the time had come to go to our
library for coffee, with her great round eyes staring before her until
some one spoke to her. Her vigor disappeared. The moods which had
followed the reading of the _post-mortem_ message from the Judge
returned; her little exhibits of affection and, I think, even her
innocence of personality disappeared. The spectre, whatever it was,
seemed present once more. At times I believed I saw in her beautiful
face a look of guilt, of fear--the look of a soul in a panic. She became
suspicious of her friends and withdrew from them more and more, at times
with such awkward haste that it seemed as if she believed they were
about to observe some fact which she must, at any cost, hide. Little by
little, too, I believed that I detected signs that she was drawing away
from me.
For some reason I have always dated the beginning of this change to that
morning when Julianna went off to ride alone. Yet, if I wanted to be
sure of bringing back to her face an old trace of her mischievous smile,
it was only necessary for me to question her about the cause of her
accident.
"I have promised the horse never to tell," she would say, putting her
finger to her red lips. And I have never been able to decide whether she
was concealing, playfully, some little folly or awkwardness of her own,
or, behind her light manner, some more serious experience.
In any case, it was plain that some accursed thing had come between us.
I found after some months that I must face this as a fact. We said
little to each other from morning till night. When evening had come I
did not go home, as I always had, with a little thrill of the old
expectation which had never seemed to wear out. Instead I had a
subconscious reluctance to enter a relation in which each day sympathy
and understanding grew less and less. I began to suffer from a desire to
demand from her a complete disclosure of all that had been hidden from
me, and this temptation to break my solemn promise grew when, asking her
on several occasions as to where she had been at this or that hour, I
found that she was evading my questions.
At last it became evident enough that I had not been deceived in my
increasing suspicions that something was wrong. One evening she burst
into tears as she stood before my chair, and then falling on her knees,
caught up my hands in her own and pressed them to her neck, cheeks, and
forehead.
"Whatever happens, you will love me?" she cried out desperately. "Say
you will! Say you will!"
"You know that," I said.
Perhaps I had answered as badly as I could, for it seemed to cause her
the greatest pain.
"I wish you had not said so," she exclaimed, with a wild look in her
eyes. "It is your goodness that hurts. Don't you see what comfort it
must be to a woman to have her husband cruel to her--beat her--abuse
her!"
I drew back from my wife, astounded.
"Stop!" I said, with the first show of stern authority I had ever made
since I had known her. "It's time for you who dare to speak like
that--to tell--"
"No! No!" she cried. "For God's sake, don't forget your promise. If you
do we are lost--I am lost."
She sprang up and away from me, and with her bare arms crossed over her
face and her hands over her ears to shut out all sounds, she ran from
the room.
This, sir, was seven weeks ago, and for many days following she would
sit and look at me constantly, until, feeling her eyes, I would raise my
own to find her face drawn as by a weary period of sleeplessness. At
these moments it seemed to me that she was trying to make me understand,
just as a faithful dog tries at times to communicate his thoughts by the
expectancy, the love, or the pleading shining from his eyes. How much
would I now give had I been able to do it!
Within the space of a week she brought to me the suggestion and the
plan, which I, being driven to desperation by the impending wreck of
our happiness, was mad enough to accept without foreseeing the
punishment I would have to suffer through giving for the second time a
solemn word of honor.
I think on that morning Julianna was more like her old self than she had
been for weeks. Her apartments, though separate from my own, are entered
from mine by a narrow door. I had prepared for breakfast,--which we do
not have served in our rooms according to the degenerate modern
custom,--and then had gone to find her, with the thought in my mind
that, whatever she suffered or feared, it was my duty to help her as
best I might. I had promised myself to be cheerful, yielding, and as
entertaining as possible.
She was sitting on the side of her bed when I came in. The whiteness of
the linen and the pale blue of her morning gown served to bring out the
delicate color of her skin. I was so delighted with this indication of
renewed health that I opened my mouth to express my admiration.
She was quicker than I.
"You find me attractive this morning," she said with a sad little smile.
"I am glad. I wish that I might be attractive to you forever and
ever.--I mean my shoulders, my arms, my hands--free from wrinkles or fat
or dryness."
"I'd love you now if you were to assume the shape of a Chinese dragon,"
I said seriously, "--or the Sheik of Baalbec."
The truth was that I had almost forgotten this latter creature, the
automaton. Apparently she had, too, for at first a puzzled look came to
her eyes, then she smiled up at me with a bit of her own individual
coquetry.
"You are making love this morning?" she said in a gay voice. Yet it
seemed to me that in it was a trace of eagerness, shrewdly directed
toward a concealed purpose.
"I am going to ask you to go away, Jerry," she went on timidly, but
still smiling.
"Go away? When? For what purpose?" I exclaimed.
"Just go away for me--for my sake," she answered, straightening her
body, raising her head, and looking squarely at me with some of her old
strength. "You can go to live in a hotel. You can explain that you are
forced to do so for some business reason. You can say that I have gone
away."
She must have seen the flush of my anger, for she raised her hand.
"Don't!" she pleaded. "I know very well how unreasonable I may seem. But
if I have earned any gratitude or respect or love from you, just give me
what I ask now and give it to me blindly--without question."
Her eyes held my own as she said these words and I knew she had cast
her spell over me.
"What do you propose to do for these three weeks?" I asked roughly.
"I shall stay in this house," she answered, spacing her words. "Margaret
will stay, too. The rest of the servants I shall send away. But of this
I want to be sure--you must not come to find me for three weeks. God
only knows what would happen if you did."
"You are insane!" I cried out, with my hand gripping her round wrist.
"It's that which has hung over us."
She shook her head.
"Worse," said she.
Then, as if to assure me that she had not lost her reason, she recalled
the months which had just gone and described, as I could not, the change
in our home, our life, ourselves.
"It is for you!" she broke out finally, as if she were no longer able to
be calm. "For you and for our future I am begging you to do what I ask."
"Tell me this," said I, stirred by seeing her tremble so violently. "Has
something come to you out of the past?"
"Yes," she said, reaching behind her for the wall. "Ask nothing more. It
has come out of the old, old past. For the love of all that is good,
promise to do as I say."
"And then?" said I.
"Come back to me. I shall be here--then."
I bowed my head.
"On your word of honor," she commanded.
"On my word of honor," said I, and turned away.
I had scarcely done so, however, before I felt her arms about me, the
impact and the clinging of her body. Close to me, plucking at my
fingers, my sleeves, my wrist, her body shaking with her sobs, she
covered me with caresses like those given at some parting for eternity.
"You--are not--in danger of death!" I exclaimed, holding her away from
me at arm's length.
"No, I cannot believe that," she said quietly. "Such as I am, I shall be
when you come back."
With these words she pushed me gently from the room; I found myself
looking into the broad white panel of a closed door. I stood there a
moment, dazed, then going to my chamber, I, with my own hands, packed a
large kit bag, preparing to do as she had asked. It was only after I had
reflected on my promise that I went again to speak with her. I knocked.
There was no answer. I tried the latch. The door was locked.
Without eating my breakfast and with a strange conflict between my trust
in my wife and the memory of my experiences since I had known her, I
left the house and have not passed its threshold, though it is two weeks
to-morrow morning since I left it.
Do you wonder, sir, that I have suffered all the torments which anxiety
can devise or imagination, with its swift picture-film, may unroll
before one's eyes? I have stifled as best I could these uncertain
terrors. By day, when I have plunged into my work at the office, at
times I have been able to shut my mind to the everlasting rehearsal
around and around, over and over again, of the facts which I have told
you to-night; but when night has come, I am the prey of my own thoughts.
For six days, in spite of my exaggerated fear of scandal, I have prowled
like a ghost before my own house, lurking behind trees, watching my own
door like a ten-dollar-a-day detective. Dodging the policeman who would
know me, I have kept my eyes for hours on the dim light that sometimes
burns in my wife's room, and when I have seen the shadow of some one
passing and repassing behind the drawn shade, I have felt my heart in my
throat, and have scarcely been able to restrain myself from calling out
into the night air, "Julianna! Julianna!"
Finally, I must tell you one thing more. I had believed that perhaps the
crisis which had come to her had done so independently of any
personality but mine or hers. I was wrong. To-night, unable to remain
inactive any longer, and by the accumulation of restraint made
desperate, I rung up my house on the telephone. No answer was returned.
The feeling that my wife, in danger, was calling upon me, swept over me
until, had I been open to such beliefs, I would have felt sure that
across the affection and sympathy between us, as across wires, the
message came.
I walked hastily from the hotel into the park, taking the path which I
had used in the pleasant June days when I had met her at the Monument.
You know the kind of night it has been. Therefore when I reached the
border of trees opposite my house, I hardly thought it necessary to seek
the screen of the shrubbery; the arc lights were throwing the dancing
shadows of tree limbs across the pavement, the rush of the wind drowned
the noise of footsteps, and the street was deserted, I thought, except
for the clouds of whirling dust that passed downtown like so many huge
and ghostly pedestrians. I saw that a dim light shone through her blinds
and that the house was the picture of peace, suggesting that the walls
contained comfort, happiness, and the quiet of a peaceful family. So the
fronts of houses lie to us!
At the very moment that this thought came, I saw from my position under
the shadow of a spreading oak, which has not yet dropped its leaves,
that I was not the only person who was observing the light behind the
blinds. A figure was standing not more than a hundred feet away from me,
peering out from beyond one of the light poles. It wore a vizored cap, I
thought, and its head rolled this way and that on top of its spare,
bent, and agile body. Now and then, however, it ceased this grotesque
movement to gaze up at the window. One would have said that this
creature was less a man than an ape.
I am not a coward. "Here," thought I, "is a tangible factor. My word of
honor to Julianna is not broken if I seize this customer, whatever he
may be, and make him explain the part he is acting." I stepped forward
immediately, but he saw me before I had made two steps. From my bearing
and the place where I had concealed myself, he knew at once, I suppose,
that I had been watching him, for, turning with a swift motion, he
plunged into the shrubs and evergreens behind him. That the thing was as
frightened as a rabbit, there can be no doubt; the single little cry it
gave forth was not a scream. You would have called it a squeal! In a
jiffy I was after him, tearing through the branches among which, with a
sinuous twisting of his body, he had just slid; a moment later I reached
the open lawn again. The man had vanished.
I knew well enough that he was hiding, probably flattened on the
ground, among the evergreens. At another time, on a quiet evening,
listening for his movements or even his breathing, might have told me
where he lay, but now the wind and the rattle of dead leaves made it
necessary for me to use my eyes in my search. Therefore I went back
through the bushes, kicking at dark shadows with my foot, my heart
thumping with the excitement of the hunt.
As I reached the street again, I looked up toward my house, and there,
at the front door, I saw a crack widen and a black figure of a man come
out and down the steps. It crossed the street, and when it had gone into
the park, I followed it. You know what happened; this second man was
you.
And now I ask you, Doctor, man to man--For God's sake, tell me what you
know!
BOOK III
THE DOCTOR'S LIMOUSINE
CHAPTER I
A SHADOW ON THE CURTAIN
Such was Jermyn Estabrook's story. I have tried, in repeating it, not
only to include all the details given by this desperate young man, but
to suggest also the coldness and accuracy of his speech. Why? Because
the very manner of narration is indicative of the man's character. He
belongs to the dry, dessicated, and abominably respectable class of our
society. Pah! I have no patience with them. They live apart, believing
themselves rarities; the world is content to let them do it, because
theirs is a segregation of stupidity. And Estabrook, though he had fine
qualities, belonged to them.
Nothing could have indicated this more clearly than the emphasis he put
on his fear of scandal, the smug way he spoke of his word of honor, and
the self-conscious blush that came into his handsome face when he
mentioned the name of Estabrook. Why, even the menace to his beautiful
Julianna was not quite sufficient to cause this egotist to forget his
duties toward himself! So if he had not acted with such nobility of
spirit during the remainder of our adventures begun that night, I could
not sit here now and write that I learned to be very fond of him.
At any rate, Estabrook asked me what I knew and I told him all that I
have written--about Virginia, that she seemed to feel the existence of
something the other side of her bedroom wall, about MacMechem's notes on
the case, the game of life and death I was playing, my conversation with
the old servant, and for full measure, I told him where I had learned to
place a blow behind a gentleman's ear. It is necessary to deal with men
as excited as Estabrook without showing the nervousness that one may
feel one's self.
When I had finished, he jumped up from his chair, and, clasping his
hands behind his back, in the manner of lawyers, he walked twice across
the room.
"Why, don't you see?" he cried. "All that you have told me simply adds
mystery to mystery, apprehension to apprehension, fear to fear. And it
strikes me that, though my own experience has been bizarre enough, your
observations and that of this other doctor who is dead are even more
fantastic. What do you hope to accomplish by telling me this gruesome,
unnatural state of affairs?"
"I hope to make you act," I said, putting a chair in his path. "We are
sensible men. There are, no doubt, explanations for all occurrences.
Our limited mental equipment may not find them at once. But the first
thing to recognize is the one important fact; neither of us doubts that
your wife is in some grave danger. Personally I believe that if you are
not mentally deranged, she is! In any case, it's your duty to go to your
house. Force an entrance if necessary. It cannot be done too soon!"
Estabrook clenched his hands as he heard me, but after a moment he began
to shake his head doggedly.
"Can't you see that it would mean publicity?" he asked.
"Better than losing her," I argued, feeling certain that he would yield.
He did, in fact, cry aloud, but nevertheless he shook his head.
"Impossible," he groaned. "I've given her my solemn promise!"
I suppose I've a reputation for being short of speech, often frank, and
sometimes profane. I then allowed myself in my rage to be all three. It
was to no purpose. Estabrook would not consent to tearing the cover from
his affairs in any way which would cost him the breach of his confounded
words of honor.
"You are a madman!" I exclaimed in my vexation. "The death of your wife
may be entered against you. What folly!"
"Doctor," he answered quietly, "I want your help and not abuse. Your
storming will not accomplish anything. You are the only living soul to
whom I have confessed the presence of a skeleton in my married life, and
I want you to help me. I have been told repeatedly that you are a man of
courage, steadiness of nerve, scientific eminence, and high ability."
I could not disagree with him.
"The next thing, then, is Margaret Murchie, the servant," I said.
"What of her?"
"She knows something," said I. "You have heard how she talked to me, how
she tried to conceal her excitement, how she treated me as a spy, how
guilty she seemed, and you have indicated that you, as well as I,
believe that she knows what is at the bottom of this."
"Yes, yes," cried Estabrook. "I am sure that she knows. But what
then--what then? What can we do?"
"My dear fellow," I said, "why 'we'?"
He threw up his hands and sprang out of his chair again.
"I beg your pardon," he answered with a look of chagrin. "I've been
under a strain, I suppose, and I forgot that you have nothing at stake."
"Not so fast, Estabrook," I said. "Take another nip of the brandy. I
prescribe it for you. And not so fast. I have a good deal at stake."
"What?"
"My case," I said.
He looked at me with admiration.
"Furthermore," I went on, "I feel a certain brotherhood with you, young
man. You are the first person with whom I've rolled on the sod for many
years. I have punched you in the neck. You are now my patient and my
guest. You have confided in me. You have made an unconscious appeal to
me for help. Above all, I am one of those old fogies you have mentioned,
who secretly mourn the dying-out of romance. Here!--a glass!--to
adventure!"
Estabrook smiled sourly, but he drank.
"Thank you," he said. "I appreciate your spirit and, permit me to say,
also your attempt to make me treat this terrible affair in a spirit of
sport. But old Margaret is the superlative of stubbornness. We cannot
expect to go to her to obtain information. I have lived in the house
with her for more than six years. Can I say whether she is a saint or a
crafty villainess? No. I know no more now than when I shook her in my
anger on the evening the Judge died. She has never addressed me of her
own will since. She will give up nothing to me. You have tried her
already."
"I am less conservative in my ideas," I answered. "Since we are in this
field of turbulence and mystery, let us be turbulent and mysterious. All
that you say is true. Therefore, we must force the truth from Margaret
Murchie."
"You mean to induce her--" he began.
"Stuff!" said I. "The thing I mean is assault and battery. The thing I
mean is kidnapping. You may believe in clapping your hand over her mouth
and struggling with her, while we take her out. Personally I prefer a
cone containing the fumes of a liquid called cataleptol, fortunately
well known in my profession, while still a stranger to criminals."
But the careful Estabrook shook his head.
"You are not serious?" said he doubtfully. "Do you plan for me to take
part in this?"
"There must be two," I said. "And once we have the lady in this room, I
will be willing to guarantee that she will tell all she knows. I cannot
ask my chauffeur to go with me, for I trust him about as implicitly as I
trust a rattlesnake. Which makes me think--can you run a car?"
Estabrook was weakening. He nodded. I looked at my watch and found that
it was after eleven. I drew the curtain and saw that sheets of rain were
still being blown slantwise across the foggy radiance of the arc lights.
There is a trace of the criminal in me. Perhaps all men feel it at
times. Just then, observing the wildness of the storm, I felt the joy
of a midnight misdoing, even more than my desire to find the answer to
MacMechem's question.
"I shall be glad to know how you propose to gain a second admittance,"
said Estabrook, when, after tripping over the wet cobblestones and
bending our shoulders to the drive of the cold rain, we had groped
through the black alley to the dimly lit garage. "I'll also be glad to
know why you suppose you can draw a statement from the old woman."
"My dear fellow," said I, "there is the cause of many of your troubles!
You are always wanting to see your way to the end. And the way there
often must be cut through a trackless waste of events that haven't
happened."
"In light of my experience it seems to me that your statement is
unreasonable," he muttered peevishly; "but since you are satisfied, I
will be, too. If I understand your plan, however, while you sit dry and
comfortable within this machine, I am to ride outside, wet to the
marrow."
At this remark the sleepy garage attendant rubbed his eyes, filling them
with the sting of gasoline, swore, and forgot to submit my new chauffeur
to the inspection of his first surprise. He drew back the door and we
trundled out into the water-swept thoroughfare.
The rain, which had begun with a thin drive, had now settled into one
of those sod-soaking, autumn downpours, commonly called an equinoctial
storm. Estabrook was showing the effect of his nervous strain
by driving the machine through it with a recklessness of which
I disapproved, not only because we had twice skidded like a
curling-stone from one side of the asphalt to the other, but also
because I did not wish undue attention attracted to our course. The
windows in front of me and to the right and left were covered with
streaks of water and fogged with the smoke of my cigarettes which, in
my pleasurable excitement, I smoked one after the other; therefore
everything outside--the spots of light which lengthened into streaks,
the shadows, the other vehicles, the glaring fronts of theatres in
Federal Circle--formed a ribbon of smutched panorama, the running of
which obliterated vertical lines and made all the world horizontal. At
each crossing we jumped, landing again to scoot forward to the next,
where, through the opening of side streets, came the faint sound of
whistles in the harbor; and still, Estabrook,--confound him!--to my
cautions bellowed through the speaking-tube, paid no attention.
With shocking suddenness it occurred to me, for the first time,
seriously, that I had no assurance that this man who drove me was not a
maniac!
I reviewed the meeting with him, the tale he had unfolded, his
distraught actions. I am fairly familiar with psychopathic symptoms and
my summary of all that I had observed in him indicated clearly enough
that he was as sane as any one of us. But for the first time in my life
I realized the feeling of uncertainty about a physician's diagnosis
which a patient must endure. A doctor delivers his opinion as a matter
of self-assertion; the layman receives it as a matter of
self-preservation. Riding in that flying car, I found myself in both
positions. As a physician I was wholly satisfied with my conclusion; as
a man I found myself still in doubt and picturing to myself a wild
ten-minute ride, which I had no power to prevent, ending in a chaos of
broken glass, twisted metal, clothing, blood, and flaming gasoline.
"MacMechem met violent death the moment he became curious as to the
other side of the blue wall," I thought, with a twinge of the
superstitious fear which touches prowlers as well as presidents,
professors as well as paupers.
We were whirling around a corner then, and through the glass and over
Estabrook's broad shoulders, I believed I saw again the treetops of the
park.
"At least he knows where he lives," said I to myself as we drew up to
the curb.
"Good!" I whispered to him, when I had stepped out into the swash of
the rain. "Frankly, I hardly enjoyed it. You drive like a demonstrator."
"I'm a ruin of nerves," he answered, shivering. "I'm afraid I'm a poor
assistant for you, anyway. What do you want me to do?"
"Just climb inside there where it is warmer," I said, clapping him on
the shoulder. "I'll be back in a minute."
"Back in a minute?" he repeated as if dazed.
"From the Marburys', if you don't mind," I explained.
He leaned back against the cushions, disregarding the fact that with
every nervous movement water ran from him as from a squeezed sponge.
"Oh, I forgot your patient," said he, with a twitching mouth. "But, for
God's sake, don't keep me waiting long!"
I shook my head in answer; then ran, rather than walked, up the
Marburys' steps; indeed, that night taught me how active a corpulent old
codger can be if the need comes.
Miss Peters evidently had been at the window in her night vigil,
watching the storm; she opened the door.
"Well?" said I.
"The tide has turned."
Under the hall light I looked up at her stony, expressionless face. The
Sphinx itself was never more noncommittal.
"What do you mean?"
"I supposed you knew," she whispered. "I supposed that was why you came
back to-night so late."
I exclaimed in a hoarse and savage whisper. I was furious. This time I
had fought with disease not only, as in a common struggle, with
carnivorous Death, but as a hardened sinner whose heart has suddenly
opened to a child.
"Virginia is dead!" I said, glaring at her.
She never changed the coldness of her tone.
"No," she said. "She is going to get well."
"Confound it!" I growled, under my breath. "How do you know?"
"The blue wall," she answered with a sneer.
"Bah!" said I, starting up the stairs. "We shall see."
As I pushed open the door, I observed that the nurse had procured a red
silk shade to screen the single electric lamp on the table. The yellow
rays were changed to a pink, reflected on the wall, sending their rosy
lights into the depths of that bottomless blue; the breaking of a clear
day after a spring rain has no softer mingling of colors. For a moment I
looked at the chart, then with new hope turned toward Virginia herself.
Either the new tints diffused by the lamp deceived the eye, or the
little girl's pale skin had in fact been warmed by a new response from
the springs of life. She was sleeping quietly, her innocent face turned
a little toward me and in the faint, illusive smile at her mouth, and in
the relaxation of her beautiful hands, I read the confirmation of Miss
Peters's prophecy. I, too, believed just then that Virginia would not
die, and that, as so rarely happens in this disease, her recovery would
be complete.
"It is a wild night," said the bony nurse when I had tiptoed out of the
room.
She seemed to be wishing to draw from me an opinion on the extraordinary
rally the child had made. That was her way; she always invited
discussion of a subject by comments about something wholly irrelevant.
"We shall see," I answered again. "A relapse might be fatal.
To-morrow--we shall see."
"It is raining hard," she said as she turned the latch for me.
"Yes," said I, "and the treatment till then must be the same. Who
knows--"
"Who knows?" she repeated.
A blast of wind and water and the closing of the door seemed to deny an
answer. I found myself on the steps again, looking into the staring eyes
of my car, and, with a sharp jump of my thoughts, wondering how we were
to accomplish the work we had come to do. I descended, however, and
when I had reached the door of my limousine, I saw Estabrook's drawn
face pressed close to the glass. It was the sight of him that gave me an
idea; it was his first words that, for a moment, drove it from my mind.
"Look! Look!" he said to me. "Look at her window!"
I had merely noticed that a new, bright light shone there; now, in a
quick glance over my shoulder, I saw a shadow on the curtain--the shadow
of a figure standing with its arms extended above a head, thrown back as
if in agony.
"Is it your wife?" I asked in a hoarse whisper.
He took my wrist in the grip of his cold hand. "My God, Doctor, I don't
know," he said. "It looks--its motions, its attitudes, its posture!--it
looks like the thing I saw outside the Judge's window!"
CHAPTER II
MARGARET
Well, now,--his words made me shudder! I confess it with some
reluctance. Of course a doctor comes in contact with enough real
horrors. They become ordinary. It is those undefined, doubtful things
which run fear through the veins like a drug. Nevertheless I caught
myself in time to conceal my nervousness.
"Here, here, Estabrook!" I said in a sharp, businesslike tone. "We
didn't come to watch drawn curtains. The question is, did you bring your
keys?"
Without asking me questions, he handed them over.
"Now, understand me," I said, for I could see that in truth he was in no
condition to offer much assistance. "My advice is for you to take these
keys and walk into your own house."
"I can't do that," he said irritably. "I've told you I can't do it--and
why I can't."
"Then understand me further," I said when a shriek of wind had gone off
down the avenue. "I have debated this question and decided that we must
not disturb your wife.
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