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diff --git a/295-0.txt b/295-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3403e3a --- /dev/null +++ b/295-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5330 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, +Part 1 (of 10), by Edith Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #295] +Release Date: July, 1995 +[Last Updated: August 22, 2017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY SHORT FICTION *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss + + + + + + + + + +THE EARLY SHORT FICTION OF EDITH WHARTON + +By Edith Wharton + +A Ten-Volume Collection + +Volume One + + + +Contents of Volume One + + Stories + KERFOL.........................March 1916 + MRS. MANSTEY’S VIEW............July 1891 + THE BOLTED DOOR................March 1909 + THE DILETTANTE.................December 1903 + THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND.....August 1904 + + +The following works not included in the present eBook: + + Verse + THE PARTING DAY................February 1880 + AEROPAGUS......................March 1880 + A FAILURE......................April 1880 + PATIENCE.......................April 1880 + WANTS..........................May 1880 + THE LAST GIUSTIANINI...........October 1889 + EURYALUS.......................December 1889 + HAPPINESS......................December 1889 + + + Bibliography + + EDITH WHARTON BIBLIOGRAPHY: + SHORT STORIES AND POEMS........Judy Boss + + + + + +KERFOL + +As first published in Scribner’s Magazine, March 1916 + + + + +I + + +“You ought to buy it,” said my host; “it’s just the place for a +solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to +own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead +broke, and it’s going for a song--you ought to buy it.” + +It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend +Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociable +exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took +his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was motoring +over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road +on a heath, and said: “First turn to the right and second to the left. +Then straight ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants, +don’t ask your way. They don’t understand French, and they would pretend +they did and mix you up. I’ll be back for you here by sunset--and don’t +forget the tombs in the chapel.” + +I followed Lanrivain’s directions with the hesitation occasioned by the +usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the first turn +to the right and second to the left, or the contrary. If I had met a +peasant I should certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray; +but I had the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on the right +turn and walked on across the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so +unlike any other avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must +be THE avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great +height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel +through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most trees by name, +but I haven’t to this day been able to decide what those trees were. +They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashen +colour of olives under a rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for +half a mile or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an +avenue that unmistakably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. +My heart beat a little as I began to walk down it. + +Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long wall. +Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other grey +avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed +with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with +wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been +replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood +for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and +letting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: “If I wait +long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs--” and I +rather hoped he wouldn’t turn up too soon. + +I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it +struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind +house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. It +may have been the depth of the silence that made me so conscious of my +gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a +brake, and I almost fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it onto +the grass. But there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, +of littleness, of childish bravado, in sitting there puffing my +cigarette-smoke into the face of such a past. + +I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol--I was new to Brittany, and +Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day before--but +one couldn’t as much as glance at that pile without feeling in it a +long accumulation of history. What kind of history I was not prepared to +guess: perhaps only the sheer weight of many associated lives and deaths +which gives a kind of majesty to all old houses. But the aspect of +Kerfol suggested something more--a perspective of stern and cruel +memories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of +darkness. + +Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with the +present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to the +sky, it might have been its own funeral monument. “Tombs in the chapel? +The whole place is a tomb!” I reflected. I hoped more and more that the +guardian would not come. The details of the place, however striking, +would seem trivial compared with its collective impressiveness; and I +wanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence. + +“It’s the very place for you!” Lanrivain had said; and I was overcome by +the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being that +Kerfol was the place for him. “Is it possible that any one could NOT +see--?” I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was +undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning +to want to know more; not to SEE more--I was by now so sure it was not +a question of seeing--but to feel more: feel all the place had to +communicate. “But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper,” I +thought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge and +tried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the tunnel formed +by the thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther end, a wooden +barricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it I saw a court +enclosed in noble architecture. The main building faced me; and I now +discovered that one half was a mere ruined front, with gaping windows +through which the wild growths of the moat and the trees of the park +were visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. One +end abutted on the round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, +and in an angle of the building stood a graceful well-head adorned +with mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper +window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias. + +My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my +architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a desire +to explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court, wondering in +which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrier +and went in. As I did so, a little dog barred my way. He was such a +remarkably beautiful little dog that for a moment he made me forget +the splendid place he was defending. I was not sure of his breed at the +time, but have since learned that it was Chinese, and that he was of +a rare variety called the “Sleeve-dog.” He was very small and golden +brown, with large brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked rather +like a large tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: “These little beasts +always snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute.” + +The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing: there +was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came no +nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed +that another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up. “There’ll +be a hubbub now,” I thought; for at the same moment a third dog, a +long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the +others. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound +came from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled +paws, still watching me. “At a given point, they’ll all charge at my +ankles: it’s one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up on +one,” I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither large +nor formidable. But they let me wander about the court as I pleased, +following me at a little distance--always the same distance--and always +keeping their eyes on me. Presently I looked across at the ruined +facade, and saw that in one of its window-frames another dog stood: a +large white pointer with one brown ear. He was an old grave dog, much +more experienced than the others; and he seemed to be observing me with +a deeper intentness. + +“I’ll hear from HIM,” I said to myself; but he stood in the empty +window-frame, against the trees of the park, and continued to watch me +without moving. I looked back at him for a time, to see if the sense +that he was being watched would not rouse him. Half the width of the +court lay between us, and we stared at each other silently across it. +But he did not stir, and at last I turned away. Behind me I found the +rest of the pack, with a newcomer added: a small black greyhound with +pale agate-coloured eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expression +was more timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a little +behind them. And still there was not a sound. + +I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me--waiting, as +they seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the little golden-brown +dog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I heard myself laugh. The +little dog did not start, or growl, or take his eyes from me--he simply +slipped back about a yard, and then paused and continued to look at me. +“Oh, hang it!” I exclaimed aloud, and walked across the court toward the +well. + +As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into different corners +of the court. I examined the urns on the well, tried a locked door or +two, and up and down the dumb facade; then I faced about toward the +chapel. When I turned I perceived that all the dogs had disappeared +except the old pointer, who still watched me from the empty +window-frame. It was rather a relief to be rid of that cloud of +witnesses; and I began to look about me for a way to the back of the +house. “Perhaps there’ll be somebody in the garden,” I thought. I found +a way across the moat, scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, and +got into the garden. A few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the +flower-beds, and the ancient house looked down on them indifferently. +Its garden side was plainer and severer than the other: the long +granite front, with its few windows and steep roof, looked like +a fortress-prison. I walked around the farther wing, went up some +disjointed steps, and entered the deep twilight of a narrow and +incredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide enough for one person to +slip through, and its branches met overhead. It was like the ghost of a +box-walk, its lustrous green all turning to the shadowy greyness of the +avenues. I walked on and on, the branches hitting me in the face and +springing back with a dry rattle; and at length I came out on the grassy +top of the chemin de ronde. I walked along it to the gate-tower, looking +down into the court, which was just below me. Not a human being was +in sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of steps in the +thickness of the wall and went down them; and when I emerged again into +the court, there stood the circle of dogs, the golden-brown one a little +ahead of the others, the black greyhound shivering in the rear. + +“Oh, hang it--you uncomfortable beasts, you!” I exclaimed, my voice +startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless, watching me. +I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my approaching +the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I had a +feeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yet +they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and +they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if +they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked +at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their +busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human +lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten +animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them +into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed and +weary eyes the more preposterous the idea became. With the windows of +that house looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing? +The dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house would tolerate and what +it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was passing through +my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probably +reached them through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that +their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. In the +last analysis, the impression they produced was that of having in common +one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was +worth either a growl or a wag. + +“I say,” I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, “do +you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if you’d +seen a ghost--that’s how you look! I wonder if there IS a ghost here, +and nobody but you left for it to appear to?” The dogs continued to gaze +at me without moving... + + +It was dark when I saw Lanrivain’s motor lamps at the cross-roads--and I +wasn’t exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having escaped from +the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking loneliness--to +that degree--as much as I had imagined I should. My friend had brought +his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fat +and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol... + +But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in the +study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room. + +“Well--are you going to buy Kerfol?” she asked, tilting up her gay chin +from her embroidery. + +“I haven’t decided yet. The fact is, I couldn’t get into the house,” I +said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back for +another look. + +“You couldn’t get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell the +place, and the old guardian has orders--” + +“Very likely. But the old guardian wasn’t there.” + +“What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter--?” + +“There was nobody about. At least I saw no one.” + +“How extraordinary! Literally nobody?” + +“Nobody but a lot of dogs--a whole pack of them--who seemed to have the +place to themselves.” + +Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded her +hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully. + +“A pack of dogs--you SAW them?” + +“Saw them? I saw nothing else!” + +“How many?” She dropped her voice a little. “I’ve always wondered--” + +I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be familiar +to her. “Have you never been to Kerfol?” I asked. + +“Oh, yes: often. But never on that day.” + +“What day?” + +“I’d quite forgotten--and so had Herve, I’m sure. If we’d remembered, we +never should have sent you today--but then, after all, one doesn’t half +believe that sort of thing, does one?” + +“What sort of thing?” I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to the +level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: “I KNEW there was something...” + +Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile. +“Didn’t Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed +up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some of +them are rather unpleasant.” + +“Yes--but those dogs?” I insisted. + +“Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say +there’s one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that +day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The +women in Brittany drink dreadfully.” She stooped to match a silk; then +she lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: “Did you REALLY see a +lot of dogs? There isn’t one at Kerfol,” she said. + + + + +II + + +Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the back +of an upper shelf of his library. + +“Yes--here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the Assizes +of the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was written about a +hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the account +is transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it’s +queer reading. And there’s a Herve de Lanrivain mixed up in it--not +exactly MY style, as you’ll see. But then he’s only a collateral. Here, +take the book up to bed with you. I don’t exactly remember the details; +but after you’ve read it I’ll bet anything you’ll leave your light +burning all night!” + +I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was +chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The +account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, +was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an +almost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room; +and the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was +detestable... + +At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But it +is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are +forever straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle +it, and give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have +reverted to the text because no other words could have conveyed so +exactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added +anything of my own. + + + + +III + + +It was in the year 16-- that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain of +Kerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to perform his religious duties. +He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year, but +hale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all +his neighbours attested. In appearance he seems to have been short +and broad, with a swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a +hanging nose and broad hands with black hairs on them. He had married +young and lost his wife and son soon after, and since then had lived +alone at Kerfol. Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a +handsome house by the river, and spent a week or ten days there; and +occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were found to +declare that during these absences he led a life different from the one +he was known to lead at Kerfol, where he busied himself with his estate, +attended mass daily, and found his only amusement in hunting the wild +boar and water-fowl. But these rumours are not particularly +relevant, and it is certain that among people of his own class in the +neighbourhood he passed for a stern and even austere man, observant of +his religious obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There was +no talk of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at that +time the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some people said +he had never looked at a woman since his wife’s death; but such things +are hard to prove, and the evidence on this point was not worth much. + +Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the pardon at +Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden over +pillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was Anne +de Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much less +great and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father had +squandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in his +little granite manor on the moors... I have said I would add nothing of +my own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt +myself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate +of Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also +dismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare thing: a +faded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough to be by a late +pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain’s study, and is said to +be a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is unsigned and has no mark of +identity but the initials A. B., and the date 16--, the year after her +marriage. It represents a young woman with a small oval face, almost +pointed, yet wide enough for a full mouth with a tender depression at +the corners. The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, +far apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese +painting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which one +feels to be fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying close like +a cap. The eyes are neither large nor small, hazel probably, with a look +at once shy and steady. A pair of beautiful long hands are crossed below +the lady’s breast... + +The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when the Baron +came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse, ordered another to be +instantly saddled, called to a young page come with him, and rode away +that same evening to the south. His steward followed the next morning +with coffers laden on a pair of pack mules. The following week Yves de +Cornault rode back to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants, and +told them he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan of +Douarnenez. And on All Saints’ Day the marriage took place. + +As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides seems to show that +they passed happily for the couple. No one was found to say that Yves +de Cornault had been unkind to his wife, and it was plain to all that +he was content with his bargain. Indeed, it was admitted by the chaplain +and other witnesses for the prosecution that the young lady had a +softening influence on her husband, and that he became less exacting +with his tenants, less harsh to peasants and dependents, and less +subject to the fits of gloomy silence which had darkened his widow-hood. +As to his wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in her +behalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her husband was +away on business at Rennes or Morlaix--whither she was never taken--she +was not allowed so much as to walk in the park unaccompanied. But no +one asserted that she was unhappy, though one servant-woman said she +had surprised her crying, and had heard her say that she was a woman +accursed to have no child, and nothing in life to call her own. But +that was a natural enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; and +certainly it must have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault that +she gave him no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as a +reproach--she herself admits this in her evidence--but seemed to try to +make her forget it by showering gifts and favours on her. Rich though +he was, he had never been open-handed; but nothing was too fine for +his wife, in the way of silks or gems or linen, or whatever else she +fancied. Every wandering merchant was welcome at Kerfol, and when the +master was called away he never came back without bringing his wife +a handsome present--something curious and particular--from Morlaix or +Rennes or Quimper. One of the waiting-women gave, in cross-examination, +an interesting list of one year’s gifts, which I copy. From Morlaix, a +carved ivory junk, with Chinamen at the oars, that a strange sailor had +brought back as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarte, above +Ploumanac’h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, worked by the nuns of +the Assumption; from Rennes, a silver rose that opened and showed an +amber Virgin with a crown of garnets; from Morlaix, again, a length +of Damascus velvet shot with gold, bought of a Jew from Syria; and for +Michaelmas that same year, from Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of round +stones--emeralds and pearls and rubies--strung like beads on a gold +wire. This was the present that pleased the lady best, the woman said. +Later on, as it happened, it was produced at the trial, and appears to +have struck the Judges and the public as a curious and valuable jewel. + +The very same winter, the Baron absented himself again, this time as far +as Bordeaux, and on his return he brought his wife something even odder +and prettier than the bracelet. It was a winter evening when he rode up +to Kerfol and, walking into the hall, found her sitting listlessly by +the fire, her chin on her hand, looking into the fire. He carried a +velvet box in his hand and, setting it down on the hearth, lifted the +lid and let out a little golden-brown dog. + +Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little creature bounded +toward her. “Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!” she cried as she +picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at +her with eyes “like a Christian’s.” After that she would never have +it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a +child--as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know. +Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been +brought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the +sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen +it from a nobleman’s wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do, +since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed to +hellfire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, for they +were beginning to be in demand at the French court, and the sailor knew +he had got hold of a good thing; but Anne’s pleasure was so great that, +to see her laugh and play with the little animal, her husband would +doubtless have given twice the sum. + + +So far, all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain sailing; +but now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to keep as nearly as +possible to Anne’s own statements; though toward the end, poor thing... + +Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was brought +to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found dead at the +head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his wife’s rooms to +a door opening on the court. It was his wife who found him and gave the +alarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear and horror--for his blood +was all over her--that at first the roused household could not make out +what she was saying, and thought she had gone suddenly mad. But there, +sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone dead, and +head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the steps +below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face +and throat, as if with a dull weapon; and one of his legs had a deep +tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death. But +how did he come there, and who had murdered him? + +His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing +his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was +immediately questioned. In the first place, it was proved that from her +room she could not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to the +thickness of the walls and the length of the intervening passage; then +it was evident that she had not been in bed and asleep, since she was +dressed when she roused the house, and her bed had not been slept in. +Moreover, the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and the key in +the lock; and it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the +dress she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that there +were traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the staircase +walls, so that it was conjectured that she had really been at the +postern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her way up to him in the +darkness on her hands and knees, had been stained by his blood dripping +down on her. Of course it was argued on the other side that the +blood-marks on her dress might have been caused by her kneeling down by +her husband when she rushed out of her room; but there was the open door +below, and the fact that the fingermarks in the staircase all pointed +upward. + +The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in spite of +its improbability; but on the third day word was brought to her that +Herve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the neighbourhood, had been +arrested for complicity in the crime. Two or three witnesses thereupon +came forward to say that it was known throughout the country that +Lanrivain had formerly been on good terms with the lady of Cornault; but +that he had been absent from Brittany for over a year, and people had +ceased to associate their names. The witnesses who made this statement +were not of a very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherer +suspected of witch-craft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouring +parish, the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to say +anything; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satisfied +with its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of +Lanrivain’s complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, who +swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of +the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was +to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. +It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the +third day, when she was brought into court, she “appeared weak and +wandering,” and after being encouraged to collect herself and speak +the truth, on her honour and the wounds of her Blessed Redeemer, she +confessed that she had in fact gone down the stairs to speak with Herve +de Lanrivain (who denied everything), and had been surprised there by +the sound of her husband’s fall. That was better; and the prosecution +rubbed its hands with satisfaction. The satisfaction increased when +various dependents living at Kerfol were induced to say--with apparent +sincerity--that during the year or two preceding his death their master +had once more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fits +of brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before his +second marriage. This seemed to show that things had not been going well +at Kerfol; though no one could be found to say that there had been any +signs of open disagreement between husband and wife. + +Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason for going down at +night to open the door to Herve de Lanrivain, made an answer which must +have sent a smile around the court. She said it was because she was +lonely and wanted to talk with the young man. Was this the only reason? +she was asked; and replied: “Yes, by the Cross over your Lordships’ +heads.” “But why at midnight?” the court asked. “Because I could see him +in no other way.” I can see the exchange of glances across the ermine +collars under the Crucifix. + +Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her married life had +been extremely lonely: “desolate” was the word she used. It was true +that her husband seldom spoke harshly to her; but there were days +when he did not speak at all. It was true that he had never struck or +threatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner at Kerfol, and when he +rode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes he set so close a watch on +her that she could not pick a flower in the garden without having a +waiting-woman at her heels. “I am no Queen, to need such honours,” she +once said to him; and he had answered that a man who has a treasure does +not leave the key in the lock when he goes out. “Then take me with you,” + she urged; but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and +young wives better off at their own firesides. + +“But what did you want to say to Herve de Lanrivain?” the court asked; +and she answered: “To ask him to take me away.” + +“Ah--you confess that you went down to him with adulterous thoughts?” + +“No.” + +“Then why did you want him to take you away?” + +“Because I was afraid for my life.” + +“Of whom were you afraid?” + +“Of my husband.” + +“Why were you afraid of your husband?” + +“Because he had strangled my little dog.” + +Another smile must have passed around the court-room: in days when any +nobleman had a right to hang his peasants--and most of them exercised +it--pinching a pet animal’s wind-pipe was nothing to make a fuss about. + +At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have had a certain +sympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be allowed to +explain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made the following +statement. + +The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband had +not been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not have been +unhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too much. + +It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her, +brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not make up +for the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he brought her the little +brown dog from the East: after that she was much less unhappy. Her +husband seemed pleased that she was so fond of the dog; he gave her +leave to put her jewelled bracelet around its neck, and to keep it +always with her. + +One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her feet, as +his habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his back. Suddenly she +was waked by her husband: he stood beside her, smiling not unkindly. + +“You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in the +chapel with her feet on a little dog,” he said. + +The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered: +“Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with +my dog at my feet.” + +“Oho--we’ll wait and see,” he said, laughing also, but with his black +brows close together. “The dog is the emblem of fidelity.” + +“And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?” + +“When I’m in doubt I find out,” he answered. “I am an old man,” he +added, “and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear you +shall have your monument if you earn it.” + +“And I swear to be faithful,” she returned, “if only for the sake of +having my little dog at my feet.” + +Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and while +he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, came +to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe. She +was a woman of great piety and consequence, and much respected by Yves +de Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe +no one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of +the pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the first +time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once or twice to +Kerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a dozen words +with him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it was under +the chestnuts, as the procession was coming out of the chapel. He said: +“I pity you,” and she was surprised, for she had not supposed that any +one thought her an object of pity. He added: “Call for me when you need +me,” and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward, and thought often +of the meeting. + +She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more. How +or where she would not say--one had the impression that she feared to +implicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at the +last he had told her that he was starting the next day for a foreign +country, on a mission which was not without peril and might keep him for +many months absent. He asked her for a remembrance, and she had none +to give him but the collar about the little dog’s neck. She was sorry +afterward that she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that she +had not had the courage to refuse. + +Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days later +he picked up the little dog to pet it, and noticed that its collar was +missing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it in the undergrowth +of the park, and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it. +It was true, she explained to the court, that she had made the maids +search for the necklet--they all believed the dog had lost it in the +park... + +Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in his +usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which. He talked +a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but now +and then he stopped and looked hard at her; and when she went to bed she +found her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing was +dead, but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to +horror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twice +round its throat the necklet she had given to Lanrivain. + +The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and hid the +necklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband, then or later, +and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged for +stealing a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to death +a young horse he was breaking. + +Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights, one by +one; and she heard nothing of Herve de Lanrivain. It might be that +her husband had killed him; or merely that he had been robbed of the +necklet. Day after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, night +after night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. Sometimes at +table her husband looked across at her and smiled; and then she felt +sure that Lanrivain was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, for +she was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea +that he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted +seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to the +castle for a night’s shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held +back. The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, in Yves +de Cornault’s absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol with a troop of +performing dogs. Anne bought the smallest and cleverest, a white dog +with a feathery coat and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to have +been ill-treated by the gypsies, and clung to her plaintively when she +took it from them. That evening her husband came back, and when she went +to bed she found the dog strangled on her pillow. + +After that she said to herself that she would never have another dog; +but one bitter cold evening a poor lean greyhound was found whining at +the castle-gate, and she took him in and forbade the maids to speak of +him to her husband. She hid him in a room that no one went to, smuggled +food to him from her own plate, made him a warm bed to lie on and petted +him like a child. + +Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she found the greyhound +strangled on her pillow. She wept in secret, but said nothing, and +resolved that even if she met a dog dying of hunger she would never +bring him into the castle; but one day she found a young sheep-dog, a +brindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying with a broken leg in the snow +of the park. Yves de Cornault was at Rennes, and she brought the dog +in, warmed and fed it, tied up its leg and hid it in the castle till +her husband’s return. The day before, she gave it to a peasant woman +who lived a long way off, and paid her handsomely to care for it and say +nothing; but that night she heard a whining and scratching at her door, +and when she opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped up +on her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her bed, and the next +morning was about to have him taken back to the peasant woman when she +heard her husband ride into the court. She shut the dog in a chest and +went down to receive him. An hour or two later, when she returned to her +room, the puppy lay strangled on her pillow... + +After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; and her loneliness +became almost unendurable. Sometimes, when she crossed the court of +the castle, and thought no one was looking, she stopped to pat the old +pointer at the gate. But one day as she was caressing him her husband +came out of the chapel; and the next day the old dog was gone... + +This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of the court, or +received without impatience and incredulous comment. It was plain that +the Judges were surprised by its puerility, and that it did not help the +accused in the eyes of the public. It was an odd tale, certainly; but +what did it prove? That Yves de Cornault disliked dogs, and that his +wife, to gratify her own fancy, persistently ignored this dislike. +As for pleading this trivial disagreement as an excuse for her +relations--whatever their nature--with her supposed accomplice, the +argument was so absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted having +let her make use of it, and tried several times to cut short her story. +But she went on to the end, with a kind of hypnotized insistence, as +though the scenes she evoked were so real to her that she had forgotten +where she was and imagined herself to be re-living them. + +At length the Judge who had previously shown a certain kindness to her +said (leaning forward a little, one may suppose, from his row of dozing +colleagues): “Then you would have us believe that you murdered your +husband because he would not let you keep a pet dog?” + +“I did not murder my husband.” + +“Who did, then? Herve de Lanrivain?” + +“No.” + +“Who then? Can you tell us?” + +“Yes, I can tell you. The dogs--” At that point she was carried out of +the court in a swoon. + + . . . . . . . . + +It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to abandon this line +of defense. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had seemed +convincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of their first +private colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight of +judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thoroughly ashamed +of it, and would have sacrificed her without a scruple to save his +professional reputation. But the obstinate Judge--who perhaps, after +all, was more inquisitive than kindly--evidently wanted to hear +the story out, and she was ordered, the next day, to continue her +deposition. + +She said that after the disappearance of the old watch-dog nothing +particular happened for a month or two. Her husband was much as usual: +she did not remember any special incident. But one evening a pedlar +woman came to the castle and was selling trinkets to the maids. She had +no heart for trinkets, but she stood looking on while the women made +their choice. And then, she did not know how, but the pedlar coaxed her +into buying for herself an odd pear-shaped pomander with a strong scent +in it--she had once seen something of the kind on a gypsy woman. She had +no desire for the pomander, and did not know why she had bought it. The +pedlar said that whoever wore it had the power to read the future; +but she did not really believe that, or care much either. However, she +bought the thing and took it up to her room, where she sat turning it +about in her hand. Then the strange scent attracted her and she began to +wonder what kind of spice was in the box. She opened it and found a grey +bean rolled in a strip of paper; and on the paper she saw a sign she +knew, and a message from Herve de Lanrivain, saying that he was at home +again and would be at the door in the court that night after the moon +had set... + +She burned the paper and then sat down to think. It was nightfall, and +her husband was at home... She had no way of warning Lanrivain, and +there was nothing to do but to wait... + +At this point I fancy the drowsy courtroom beginning to wake up. Even +to the oldest hand on the bench there must have been a certain aesthetic +relish in picturing the feelings of a woman on receiving such a message +at night-fall from a man living twenty miles away, to whom she had no +means of sending a warning... + +She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of her +cogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being, that evening, +too kind to her husband. She could not ply him with wine, according to +the traditional expedient, for though he drank heavily at times he had +a strong head; and when he drank beyond its strength it was because +he chose to, and not because a woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at any +rate--she was an old story by now. As I read the case, I fancy there was +no feeling for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by his supposed +dishonour. + +At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early in the +evening he complained of pains and fever, and left the hall to go up to +his room. His servant carried him a cup of hot wine, and brought back +word that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later, +when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard his +loud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a +long time barefooted in the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but the +breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a +man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in +the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky +was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was pitch +black. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her +husband’s door--where she stopped again to listen to his breathing--to +the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and assured herself +that no one was following her; then she began to go down the stairs in +the darkness. They were so steep and winding that she had to go very +slowly, for fear of stumbling. Her one thought was to get the door +unbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape, and hasten back to her +room. She had tried the bolt earlier in the evening, and managed to put +a little grease on it; but nevertheless, when she drew it, it gave a +squeak... not loud, but it made her heart stop; and the next minute, +overhead, she heard a noise... + +“What noise?” the prosecution interposed. + +“My husband’s voice calling out my name and cursing me.” + +“What did you hear after that?” + +“A terrible scream and a fall.” + +“Where was Herve de Lanrivain at this time?” + +“He was standing outside in the court. I just made him out in the +darkness. I told him for God’s sake to go, and then I pushed the door +shut.” + +“What did you do next?” + +“I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened.” + +“What did you hear?” + +“I heard dogs snarling and panting.” (Visible discouragement of the +bench, boredom of the public, and exasperation of the lawyer for the +defense. Dogs again--! But the inquisitive Judge insisted.) + +“What dogs?” + +She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be told to repeat her +answer: “I don’t know.” + +“How do you mean--you don’t know?” + +“I don’t know what dogs...” + +The Judge again intervened: “Try to tell us exactly what happened. How +long did you remain at the foot of the stairs?” + +“Only a few minutes.” + +“And what was going on meanwhile overhead?” + +“The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or twice he cried out. I +think he moaned once. Then he was quiet.” + +“Then what happened?” + +“Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrown +to them--gulping and lapping.” + +(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through the court, and +another attempted intervention by the distracted lawyer. But the +inquisitive Judge was still inquisitive.) + +“And all the while you did not go up?” + +“Yes--I went up then--to drive them off.” + +“The dogs?” + +“Yes.” + +“Well--?” + +“When I got there it was quite dark. I found my husband’s flint and +steel and struck a spark. I saw him lying there. He was dead.” + +“And the dogs?” + +“The dogs were gone.” + +“Gone--where to?” + +“I don’t know. There was no way out--and there were no dogs at Kerfol.” + +She straightened herself to her full height, threw her arms above her +head, and fell down on the stone floor with a long scream. There was a +moment of confusion in the court-room. Some one on the bench was heard +to say: “This is clearly a case for the ecclesiastical authorities”--and +the prisoner’s lawyer doubtless jumped at the suggestion. + +After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross-questioning and +squabbling. Every witness who was called corroborated Anne de Cornault’s +statement that there were no dogs at Kerfol: had been none for several +months. The master of the house had taken a dislike to dogs, there was +no denying it. But, on the other hand, at the inquest, there had been +long and bitter discussion as to the nature of the dead man’s wounds. +One of the surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked like +bites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposing +lawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each other. + +At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court--at the instance of +the same Judge--and asked if she knew where the dogs she spoke of could +have come from. On the body of her Redeemer she swore that she did not. +Then the Judge put his final question: “If the dogs you think you heard +had been known to you, do you think you would have recognized them by +their barking?” + +“Yes.” + +“Did you recognize them?” + +“Yes.” + +“What dogs do you take them to have been?” + +“My dead dogs,” she said in a whisper... She was taken out of court, +not to reappear there again. There was some kind of ecclesiastical +investigation, and the end of the business was that the Judges disagreed +with each other, and with the ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne de +Cornault was finally handed over to the keeping of her husband’s family, +who shut her up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is said to have died +many years later, a harmless madwoman. + +So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, I had only to +apply to his collateral descendant for its subsequent details. The +evidence against the young man being insufficient, and his family +influence in the duchy considerable, he was set free, and left soon +afterward for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a worldly life, and +he appears to have come almost immediately under the influence of the +famous M. Arnauld d’Andilly and the gentlemen of Port Royal. A year or +two later he was received into their Order, and without achieving any +particular distinction he followed its good and evil fortunes till his +death some twenty years later. Lanrivain showed me a portrait of him by +a pupil of Philippe de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive mouth and a +narrow brow. Poor Herve de Lanrivain: it was a grey ending. Yet as +I looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in the dark dress of the +Jansenists, I almost found myself envying his fate. After all, in the +course of his life two great things had happened to him: he had loved +romantically, and he must have talked with Pascal... + +The End + + + + + +MRS. MANSTEY’S VIEW + +As first published in Scribner’s Magazine, July, 1891 + + + +The view from Mrs. Manstey’s window was not a striking one, but to her +at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey occupied the +back room on the third floor of a New York boarding-house, in a street +where the ash-barrels lingered late on the sidewalk and the gaps in the +pavement would have staggered a Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a +clerk in a large wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, for +her only daughter had married in California, and could not afford the +long journey to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps, might +have joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been so many +years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each other’s +society, and their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange of +a few perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, +and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing +stiff with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter’s +companionship, Mrs. Manstey’s increasing infirmity, which caused her to +dread the three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would +have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey; and +without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since accepted +as a matter of course her solitary life in New York. + +She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled up now +and then to her room; but their visits grew rare as the years went by. +Mrs. Manstey had never been a sociable woman, and during her husband’s +lifetime his companionship had been all-sufficient to her. For many +years she had cherished a desire to live in the country, to have a +hen-house and a garden; but this longing had faded with age, leaving +only in the breast of the uncommunicative old woman a vague tenderness +for plants and animals. It was, perhaps, this tenderness which made her +cling so fervently to her view from her window, a view in which the +most optimistic eye would at first have failed to discover anything +admirable. + +Mrs. Manstey, from her coign of vantage (a slightly projecting +bow-window where she nursed an ivy and a succession of unwholesome-looking +bulbs), looked out first upon the yard of her own dwelling, of which, +however, she could get but a restricted glimpse. Still, her gaze took in +the topmost boughs of the ailanthus below her window, and she knew how +early each year the clump of dicentra strung its bending stalk with +hearts of pink. + +But of greater interest were the yards beyond. Being for the most part +attached to boarding-houses they were in a state of chronic untidiness +and fluttering, on certain days of the week, with miscellaneous garments +and frayed table-cloths. In spite of this Mrs. Manstey found much to +admire in the long vista which she commanded. Some of the yards were, +indeed, but stony wastes, with grass in the cracks of the pavement and +no shade in spring save that afforded by the intermittent leafage of the +clothes-lines. These yards Mrs. Manstey disapproved of, but the others, +the green ones, she loved. She had grown used to their disorder; the +broken barrels, the empty bottles and paths unswept no longer annoyed +her; hers was the happy faculty of dwelling on the pleasanter side of +the prospect before her. + +In the very next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard white +flowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a little +way down the line, a fence foamed over every May be lilac waves of +wistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its candelabra of buff +and pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage; while in the opposite +yard June was sweet with the breath of a neglected syringa, which +persisted in growing in spite of the countless obstacles opposed to its +welfare. + +But if nature occupied the front rank in Mrs. Manstey’s view, there was +much of a more personal character to interest her in the aspect of the +houses and their inmates. She deeply disapproved of the mustard-colored +curtains which had lately been hung in the doctor’s window opposite; but +she glowed with pleasure when the house farther down had its old bricks +washed with a coat of paint. The occupants of the houses did not often +show themselves at the back windows, but the servants were always in +sight. Noisy slatterns, Mrs. Manstey pronounced the greater number; +she knew their ways and hated them. But to the quiet cook in the newly +painted house, whose mistress bullied her, and who secretly fed the +stray cats at nightfall, Mrs. Manstey’s warmest sympathies were given. +On one occasion her feelings were racked by the neglect of a housemaid, +who for two days forgot to feed the parrot committed to her care. On the +third day, Mrs. Manstey, in spite of her gouty hand, had just penned a +letter, beginning: “Madam, it is now three days since your parrot has +been fed,” when the forgetful maid appeared at the window with a cup of +seed in her hand. + +But in Mrs. Manstey’s more meditative moods it was the narrowing +perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved, at +twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in the +fluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a trip +to Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind’s eye to a pale +phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and dreamy skies. Perhaps at +heart Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at all events she was sensible of many +changes of color unnoticed by the average eye, and dear to her as the +green of early spring was the black lattice of branches against a cold +sulphur sky at the close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny +thaws of March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like +ink-spots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better +still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced the +clear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain interest +the trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and missed a detail +in the landscape when the factory was closed and the smoke disappeared. + +Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window, was not +idle. She read a little, and knitted numberless stockings; but the view +surrounded and shaped her life as the sea does a lonely island. When her +rare callers came it was difficult for her to detach herself from the +contemplation of the opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny of certain +green points in a neighboring flower-bed which might, or might not, turn +into hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her visitor’s anecdotes +about some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey’s real friends were the +denizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the magnolia, the green parrot, +the maid who fed the cats, the doctor who studied late behind his +mustard-colored curtains; and the confidant of her tenderer musings was +the church-spire floating in the sunset. + +One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast aside +and eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a knock at the +door announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs. Manstey did not +care for her landlady, but she submitted to her visits with ladylike +resignation. To-day, however, it seemed harder than usual to turn from +the blue sky and the blossoming magnolia to Mrs. Sampson’s unsuggestive +face, and Mrs. Manstey was conscious of a distinct effort as she did so. + +“The magnolia is out earlier than usual this year, Mrs. Sampson,” she +remarked, yielding to a rare impulse, for she seldom alluded to the +absorbing interest of her life. In the first place it was a topic not +likely to appeal to her visitors and, besides, she lacked the power of +expression and could not have given utterance to her feelings had she +wished to. + +“The what, Mrs. Manstey?” inquired the landlady, glancing about the room +as if to find there the explanation of Mrs. Manstey’s statement. + +“The magnolia in the next yard--in Mrs. Black’s yard,” Mrs. Manstey +repeated. + +“Is it, indeed? I didn’t know there was a magnolia there,” said Mrs. +Sampson, carelessly. Mrs. Manstey looked at her; she did not know that +there was a magnolia in the next yard! + +“By the way,” Mrs. Sampson continued, “speaking of Mrs. Black reminds me +that the work on the extension is to begin next week.” + +“The what?” it was Mrs. Manstey’s turn to ask. + +“The extension,” said Mrs. Sampson, nodding her head in the direction of +the ignored magnolia. “You knew, of course, that Mrs. Black was going to +build an extension to her house? Yes, ma’am. I hear it is to run right +back to the end of the yard. How she can afford to build an extension in +these hard times I don’t see; but she always was crazy about building. +She used to keep a boarding-house in Seventeenth Street, and she nearly +ruined herself then by sticking out bow-windows and what not; I should +have thought that would have cured her of building, but I guess it’s a +disease, like drink. Anyhow, the work is to begin on Monday.” + +Mrs. Manstey had grown pale. She always spoke slowly, so the landlady +did not heed the long pause which followed. At last Mrs. Manstey said: +“Do you know how high the extension will be?” + +“That’s the most absurd part of it. The extension is to be built right +up to the roof of the main building; now, did you ever?” + +Mrs. Manstey paused again. “Won’t it be a great annoyance to you, Mrs. +Sampson?” she asked. + +“I should say it would. But there’s no help for it; if people have got +a mind to build extensions there’s no law to prevent ’em, that I’m aware +of.” Mrs. Manstey, knowing this, was silent. “There is no help for it,” + Mrs. Sampson repeated, “but if I AM a church member, I wouldn’t be so +sorry if it ruined Eliza Black. Well, good-day, Mrs. Manstey; I’m glad +to find you so comfortable.” + +So comfortable--so comfortable! Left to herself the old woman turned +once more to the window. How lovely the view was that day! The blue sky +with its round clouds shed a brightness over everything; the ailanthus +had put on a tinge of yellow-green, the hyacinths were budding, +the magnolia flowers looked more than ever like rosettes carved in +alabaster. Soon the wistaria would bloom, then the horse-chestnut; but +not for her. Between her eyes and them a barrier of brick and mortar +would swiftly rise; presently even the spire would disappear, and all +her radiant world be blotted out. Mrs. Manstey sent away untouched the +dinner-tray brought to her that evening. She lingered in the window +until the windy sunset died in bat-colored dusk; then, going to bed, she +lay sleepless all night. + +Early the next day she was up and at the window. It was raining, but +even through the slanting gray gauze the scene had its charm--and then +the rain was so good for the trees. She had noticed the day before that +the ailanthus was growing dusty. + +“Of course I might move,” said Mrs. Manstey aloud, and turning from the +window she looked about her room. She might move, of course; so might +she be flayed alive; but she was not likely to survive either operation. +The room, though far less important to her happiness than the view, was +as much a part of her existence. She had lived in it seventeen years. +She knew every stain on the wall-paper, every rent in the carpet; the +light fell in a certain way on her engravings, her books had grown +shabby on their shelves, her bulbs and ivy were used to their window +and knew which way to lean to the sun. “We are all too old to move,” she +said. + +That afternoon it cleared. Wet and radiant the blue reappeared +through torn rags of cloud; the ailanthus sparkled; the earth in the +flower-borders looked rich and warm. It was Thursday, and on Monday the +building of the extension was to begin. + +On Sunday afternoon a card was brought to Mrs. Black, as she was engaged +in gathering up the fragments of the boarders’ dinner in the basement. +The card, black-edged, bore Mrs. Manstey’s name. + +“One of Mrs. Sampson’s boarders; wants to move, I suppose. Well, I can +give her a room next year in the extension. Dinah,” said Mrs. Black, +“tell the lady I’ll be upstairs in a minute.” + +Mrs. Black found Mrs. Manstey standing in the long parlor garnished with +statuettes and antimacassars; in that house she could not sit down. + +Stooping hurriedly to open the register, which let out a cloud of dust, +Mrs. Black advanced on her visitor. + +“I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Manstey; take a seat, please,” the landlady +remarked in her prosperous voice, the voice of a woman who can afford to +build extensions. There was no help for it; Mrs. Manstey sat down. + +“Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?” Mrs. Black continued. “My +house is full at present, but I am going to build an extension, and--” + +“It is about the extension that I wish to speak,” said Mrs. Manstey, +suddenly. “I am a poor woman, Mrs. Black, and I have never been a +happy one. I shall have to talk about myself first to--to make you +understand.” + +Mrs. Black, astonished but imperturbable, bowed at this parenthesis. + +“I never had what I wanted,” Mrs. Manstey continued. “It was always one +disappointment after another. For years I wanted to live in the country. +I dreamed and dreamed about it; but we never could manage it. There was +no sunny window in our house, and so all my plants died. My daughter +married years ago and went away--besides, she never cared for the same +things. Then my husband died and I was left alone. That was seventeen +years ago. I went to live at Mrs. Sampson’s, and I have been there ever +since. I have grown a little infirm, as you see, and I don’t get +out often; only on fine days, if I am feeling very well. So you can +understand my sitting a great deal in my window--the back window on the +third floor--” + +“Well, Mrs. Manstey,” said Mrs. Black, liberally, “I could give you a +back room, I dare say; one of the new rooms in the ex--” + +“But I don’t want to move; I can’t move,” said Mrs. Manstey, almost with +a scream. “And I came to tell you that if you build that extension I +shall have no view from my window--no view! Do you understand?” + +Mrs. Black thought herself face to face with a lunatic, and she had +always heard that lunatics must be humored. + +“Dear me, dear me,” she remarked, pushing her chair back a little way, +“that is too bad, isn’t it? Why, I never thought of that. To be sure, +the extension WILL interfere with your view, Mrs. Manstey.” + +“You do understand?” Mrs. Manstey gasped. + +“Of course I do. And I’m real sorry about it, too. But there, don’t you +worry, Mrs. Manstey. I guess we can fix that all right.” + +Mrs. Manstey rose from her seat, and Mrs. Black slipped toward the door. + +“What do you mean by fixing it? Do you mean that I can induce you to +change your mind about the extension? Oh, Mrs. Black, listen to me. I +have two thousand dollars in the bank and I could manage, I know I could +manage, to give you a thousand if--” Mrs. Manstey paused; the tears were +rolling down her cheeks. + +“There, there, Mrs. Manstey, don’t you worry,” repeated Mrs. Black, +soothingly. “I am sure we can settle it. I am sorry that I can’t stay +and talk about it any longer, but this is such a busy time of day, with +supper to get--” + +Her hand was on the door-knob, but with sudden vigor Mrs. Manstey seized +her wrist. + +“You are not giving me a definite answer. Do you mean to say that you +accept my proposition?” + +“Why, I’ll think it over, Mrs. Manstey, certainly I will. I wouldn’t +annoy you for the world--” + +“But the work is to begin to-morrow, I am told,” Mrs. Manstey persisted. + +Mrs. Black hesitated. “It shan’t begin, I promise you that; I’ll send +word to the builder this very night.” Mrs. Manstey tightened her hold. + +“You are not deceiving me, are you?” she said. + +“No--no,” stammered Mrs. Black. “How can you think such a thing of me, +Mrs. Manstey?” + +Slowly Mrs. Manstey’s clutch relaxed, and she passed through the open +door. “One thousand dollars,” she repeated, pausing in the hall; then +she let herself out of the house and hobbled down the steps, supporting +herself on the cast-iron railing. + +“My goodness,” exclaimed Mrs. Black, shutting and bolting the hall-door, +“I never knew the old woman was crazy! And she looks so quiet and +ladylike, too.” + +Mrs. Manstey slept well that night, but early the next morning she was +awakened by a sound of hammering. She got to her window with what +haste she might and, looking out saw that Mrs. Black’s yard was full of +workmen. Some were carrying loads of brick from the kitchen to the yard, +others beginning to demolish the old-fashioned wooden balcony which +adorned each story of Mrs. Black’s house. Mrs. Manstey saw that she had +been deceived. At first she thought of confiding her trouble to Mrs. +Sampson, but a settled discouragement soon took possession of her and +she went back to bed, not caring to see what was going on. + +Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst, she +rose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her hands were +stiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed to evade her. + +When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmen +had removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks had +multiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow with a bloated +face, picked a magnolia blossom and, after smelling it, threw it to the +ground; the next man, carrying a load of bricks, trod on the flower in +passing. + +“Look out, Jim,” called one of the men to another who was smoking a +pipe, “if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you’ll +have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it.” And Mrs. +Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels of +paper and rubbish under the wooden balcony. + +At length the work ceased and twilight fell. The sunset was perfect and +a roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire, lingered late in the +west. When it grew dark Mrs. Manstey drew down the shades and proceeded, +in her usual methodical manner, to light her lamp. She always filled +and lit it with her own hands, keeping a kettle of kerosene on a +zinc-covered shelf in a closet. As the lamp-light filled the room it +assumed its usual peaceful aspect. The books and pictures and plants +seemed, like their mistress, to settle themselves down for another quiet +evening, and Mrs. Manstey, as was her wont, drew up her armchair to the +table and began to knit. + +That night she could not sleep. The weather had changed and a wild wind +was abroad, blotting the stars with close-driven clouds. Mrs. Manstey +rose once or twice and looked out of the window; but of the view nothing +was discernible save a tardy light or two in the opposite windows. These +lights at last went out, and Mrs. Manstey, who had watched for their +extinction, began to dress herself. She was in evident haste, for she +merely flung a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress and wrapped her +head in a scarf; then she opened her closet and cautiously took out the +kettle of kerosene. Having slipped a bundle of wooden matches into her +pocket she proceeded, with increasing precautions, to unlock her door, +and a few moments later she was feeling her way down the dark staircase, +led by a glimmer of gas from the lower hall. At length she reached the +bottom of the stairs and began the more difficult descent into the utter +darkness of the basement. Here, however, she could move more freely, +as there was less danger of being overheard; and without much delay she +contrived to unlock the iron door leading into the yard. A gust of +cold wind smote her as she stepped out and groped shiveringly under the +clothes-lines. + +That morning at three o’clock an alarm of fire brought the engines to +Mrs. Black’s door, and also brought Mrs. Sampson’s startled boarders to +their windows. The wooden balcony at the back of Mrs. Black’s house was +ablaze, and among those who watched the progress of the flames was Mrs. +Manstey, leaning in her thin dressing-gown from the open window. + +The fire, however, was soon put out, and the frightened occupants of the +house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find that +little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes and +smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was Mrs. +Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a not +unnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an +open window at her age in a dressing-gown. It was easy to see that she +was very ill, but no one had guessed how grave the doctor’s verdict +would be, and the faces gathered that evening about Mrs. Sampson’s table +were awestruck and disturbed. Not that any of the boarders knew Mrs. +Manstey well; she “kept to herself,” as they said, and seemed to fancy +herself too good for them; but then it is always disagreeable to have +anyone dying in the house and, as one lady observed to another: “It +might just as well have been you or me, my dear.” + +But it was only Mrs. Manstey; and she was dying, as she had lived, +lonely if not alone. The doctor had sent a trained nurse, and Mrs. +Sampson, with muffled step, came in from time to time; but both, to Mrs. +Manstey, seemed remote and unsubstantial as the figures in a dream. All +day she said nothing; but when she was asked for her daughter’s address +she shook her head. At times the nurse noticed that she seemed to be +listening attentively for some sound which did not come; then again she +dozed. + +The next morning at daylight she was very low. The nurse called Mrs. +Sampson and as the two bent over the old woman they saw her lips move. + +“Lift me up--out of bed,” she whispered. + +They raised her in their arms, and with her stiff hand she pointed to +the window. + +“Oh, the window--she wants to sit in the window. She used to sit there +all day,” Mrs. Sampson explained. “It can do her no harm, I suppose?” + +“Nothing matters now,” said the nurse. + +They carried Mrs. Manstey to the window and placed her in her chair. The +dawn was abroad, a jubilant spring dawn; the spire had already caught +a golden ray, though the magnolia and horse-chestnut still slumbered in +shadow. In Mrs. Black’s yard all was quiet. The charred timbers of the +balcony lay where they had fallen. It was evident that since the fire +the builders had not returned to their work. The magnolia had unfolded a +few more sculptural flowers; the view was undisturbed. + +It was hard for Mrs. Manstey to breathe; each moment it grew more +difficult. She tried to make them open the window, but they would not +understand. If she could have tasted the air, sweet with the penetrating +ailanthus savor, it would have eased her; but the view at least was +there--the spire was golden now, the heavens had warmed from pearl to +blue, day was alight from east to west, even the magnolia had caught the +sun. + +Mrs. Manstey’s head fell back and smiling she died. + +That day the building of the extension was resumed. + +The End + + + + + +THE BOLTED DOOR + +As first published in Scribner’s Magazine, March 1909 + + + + +I + + +Hubert Granice, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit library, +paused to compare his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece. + +Three minutes to eight. + +In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal firm of +Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the door-bell of +the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham was so punctual--the +suspense was beginning to make his host nervous. And the sound of the +door-bell would be the beginning of the end--after that there’d be no +going back, by God--no going back! + +Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the room +opposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine mirror +above the fine old walnut credence he had picked up at Dijon--saw +himself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and dressed, but +furrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which he corrected by +a spasmodic straightening of the shoulders whenever a glass confronted +him: a tired middle-aged man, baffled, beaten, worn out. + +As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the door +opened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his guest. But it +was only the man-servant who entered, advancing silently over the mossy +surface of the old Turkey rug. + +“Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he’s unexpectedly detained and can’t +be here till eight-thirty.” + +Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder and +harder for him to control these reflexes. He turned on his heel, tossing +to the servant over his shoulder: “Very good. Put off dinner.” + +Down his spine he felt the man’s injured stare. Mr. Granice had always +been so mild-spoken to his people--no doubt the odd change in his manner +had already been noticed and discussed below stairs. And very likely +they suspected the cause. He stood drumming on the writing-table till he +heard the servant go out; then he threw himself into a chair, propping +his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his locked hands. + +Another half hour alone with it! + +He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Some +professional matter, no doubt--the punctilious lawyer would have allowed +nothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more especially +since Granice, in his note, had said: “I shall want a little business +chat afterward.” + +But what professional matter could have come up at that unprofessional +hour? Perhaps some other soul in misery had called on the lawyer; and, +after all, Granice’s note had given no hint of his own need! No doubt +Ascham thought he merely wanted to make another change in his will. +Since he had come into his little property, ten years earlier, Granice +had been perpetually tinkering with his will. + +Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his sallow +temples. He remembered a word he had tossed to the lawyer some six weeks +earlier, at the Century Club. “Yes--my play’s as good as taken. I shall +be calling on you soon to go over the contract. Those theatrical chaps +are so slippery--I won’t trust anybody but you to tie the knot for me!” + That, of course, was what Ascham would think he was wanted for. Granice, +at the idea, broke into an audible laugh--a queer stage-laugh, like +the cackle of a baffled villain in a melodrama. The absurdity, the +unnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed his lips +angrily. Would he take to soliloquy next? + +He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of the +writing-table. In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript, bound +in paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a letter had been +slipped. Next to the manuscript was a small revolver. Granice stared a +moment at these oddly associated objects; then he took the letter from +under the string and slowly began to open it. He had known he should do +so from the moment his hand touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell on +that letter some relentless force compelled him to re-read it. + +It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of “The +Diversity Theatre.” + + +“MY DEAR MR. GRANICE: + +“I have given the matter my best consideration for the last month, +and it’s no use--the play won’t do. I have talked it over with Miss +Melrose--and you know there isn’t a gamer artist on our stage--and I +regret to tell you she feels just as I do about it. It isn’t the poetry +that scares her--or me either. We both want to do all we can to help +along the poetic drama--we believe the public’s ready for it, and we’re +willing to take a big financial risk in order to be the first to give +them what they want. BUT WE DON’T BELIEVE THEY COULD BE MADE TO +WANT THIS. The fact is, there isn’t enough drama in your play to the +allowance of poetry--the thing drags all through. You’ve got a big idea, +but it’s not out of swaddling clothes. + +“If this was your first play I’d say: TRY AGAIN. But it has been just +the same with all the others you’ve shown me. And you remember the +result of ‘The Lee Shore,’ where you carried all the expenses of +production yourself, and we couldn’t fill the theatre for a week. Yet +‘The Lee Shore’ was a modern problem play--much easier to swing than +blank verse. It isn’t as if you hadn’t tried all kinds--” + +Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the envelope. +Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every phrase in it by +heart, when for a month past he had seen it, night after night, stand +out in letters of flame against the darkness of his sleepless lids? + +“IT HAS BEEN JUST THE SAME WITH ALL THE OTHERS YOU’VE SHOWN ME.” + +That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate unremitting +work! + +“YOU REMEMBER THE RESULT OF ‘THE LEE SHORE.’” + +Good God--as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all now in a +drowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play, his sudden resolve +to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten thousand dollars of his +inheritance on testing his chance of success--the fever of preparation, +the dry-mouthed agony of the “first night,” the flat fall, the stupid +press, his secret rush to Europe to escape the condolence of his +friends! + +“IT ISN’T AS IF YOU HADN’T TRIED ALL KINDS.” + +No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the light +curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeois-realistic and the +lyrical-romantic--finally deciding that he would no longer “prostitute +his talent” to win popularity, but would impose on the public his own +theory of art in the form of five acts of blank verse. Yes, he had +offered them everything--and always with the same result. + +Ten years of it--ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure. The +ten years from forty to fifty--the best ten years of his life! And if +one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams, assimilation, +preparation--then call it half a man’s life-time: half a man’s life-time +thrown away! + +And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had settled +that, thank God! He turned and glanced anxiously at the clock. Ten +minutes past eight--only ten minutes had been consumed in that stormy +rush through his whole past! And he must wait another twenty minutes for +Ascham. It was one of the worst symptoms of his case that, in proportion +as he had grown to shrink from human company, he dreaded more and more +to be alone.... But why the devil was he waiting for Ascham? Why didn’t +he cut the knot himself? Since he was so unutterably sick of the whole +business, why did he have to call in an outsider to rid him of this +nightmare of living? + +He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It was a +small slim ivory toy--just the instrument for a tired sufferer to give +himself a “hypodermic” with. Granice raised it slowly in one hand, while +with the other he felt under the thin hair at the back of his head, +between the ear and the nape. He knew just where to place the muzzle: he +had once got a young surgeon to show him. And as he found the spot, and +lifted the revolver to it, the inevitable phenomenon occurred. The hand +that held the weapon began to shake, the tremor communicated itself +to his arm, his heart gave a wild leap which sent up a wave of deadly +nausea to his throat, he smelt the powder, he sickened at the crash of +the bullet through his skull, and a sweat of fear broke out over his +forehead and ran down his quivering face... + +He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out a +cologne-scented handkerchief, passed it tremulously over his brow and +temples. It was no use--he knew he could never do it in that way. His +attempts at self-destruction were as futile as his snatches at fame! He +couldn’t make himself a real life, and he couldn’t get rid of the life +he had. And that was why he had sent for Ascham to help him... + +The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse himself for +his delay. + +“I didn’t like to say anything while your man was about--but the fact +is, I was sent for on a rather unusual matter--” + +“Oh, it’s all right,” said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning to +feel the usual reaction that food and company produced. It was not any +recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a deeper withdrawal +into himself. It was easier to go on automatically with the social +gestures than to uncover to any human eye the abyss within him. + +“My dear fellow, it’s sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting--especially +the production of an artist like yours.” Mr. Ascham sipped his Burgundy +luxuriously. “But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove sent for me.” + +Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a moment +he was shaken out of his self-absorption. + +“MRS. ASHGROVE?” + +Ascham smiled. “I thought you’d be interested; I know your passion for +causes celebres. And this promises to be one. Of course it’s out of our +line entirely--we never touch criminal cases. But she wanted to consult +me as a friend. Ashgrove was a distant connection of my wife’s. And, by +Jove, it IS a queer case!” The servant re-entered, and Ascham snapped +his lips shut. + +Would the gentlemen have their coffee in the dining-room? + +“No--serve it in the library,” said Granice, rising. He led the way back +to the curtained confidential room. He was really curious to hear what +Ascham had to tell him. + +While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about the +library, glancing at his letters--the usual meaningless notes and +bills--and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a headline +caught his eye. + + + “ROSE MELROSE WANTS TO + PLAY POETRY. + “THINKS SHE HAS FOUND HER + POET.” + + +He read on with a thumping heart--found the name of a young author he +had barely heard of, saw the title of a play, a “poetic drama,” dance +before his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick, disgusted. It was +true, then--she WAS “game”--it was not the manner but the matter she +mistrusted! + +Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely lingering. “I +shan’t need you this evening, Flint. I’ll lock up myself.” + +He fancied the man’s acquiescence implied surprise. What was going on, +Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr. Granice should want him out of the +way? Probably he would find a pretext for coming back to see. Granice +suddenly felt himself enveloped in a network of espionage. + +As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned forward +to take a light from Ascham’s cigar. + +“Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove,” he said, seeming to himself to speak +stiffly, as if his lips were cracked. + +“Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there’s not much to TELL.” + +“And you couldn’t if there were?” Granice smiled. + +“Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about her +choice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential in our +talk.” + +“And what’s your impression, now you’ve seen her?” + +“My impression is, very distinctly, THAT NOTHING WILL EVER BE KNOWN.” + +“Ah--?” Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar. + +“I’m more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew his +business, and will consequently never be found out. That’s a capital +cigar you’ve given me.” + +“You like it? I get them over from Cuba.” Granice examined his own +reflectively. “Then you believe in the theory that the clever criminals +never ARE caught?” + +“Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozen +years--none of the big murder problems are ever solved.” The lawyer +ruminated behind his blue cloud. “Why, take the instance in your own +family: I’d forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old Joseph +Lenman’s murder--do you suppose that will ever be explained?” + +As the words dropped from Ascham’s lips his host looked slowly about +the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a stale +unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was +as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throat +slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: “I could explain +the Lenman murder myself.” + +Ascham’s eye kindled: he shared Granice’s interest in criminal cases. + +“By Jove! You’ve had a theory all this time? It’s odd you never +mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features in the +Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea may be a +help.” + +Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table drawer in +which the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side. What if he were +to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he looked at the notes +and bills on the table, and the horror of taking up again the lifeless +routine of life--of performing the same automatic gestures another +day--displaced his fleeting vision. + +“I haven’t a theory. I KNOW who murdered Joseph Lenman.” + +Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for enjoyment. + +“You KNOW? Well, who did?” he laughed. + +“I did,” said Granice, rising. + +He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at him. Then +he broke into another laugh. + +“Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit his money, +I suppose? Better and better! Go on, my boy! Unbosom yourself! Tell me +all about it! Confession is good for the soul.” + +Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of laughter from +his throat; then he repeated doggedly: “I murdered him.” + +The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time Ascham +did not laugh. + +“Granice!” + +“I murdered him--to get his money, as you say.” + +There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying sense of +amusement, saw his guest’s look change from pleasantry to apprehension. + +“What’s the joke, my dear fellow? I fail to see.” + +“It’s not a joke. It’s the truth. I murdered him.” He had spoken +painfully at first, as if there were a knot in his throat; but each time +he repeated the words he found they were easier to say. + +Ascham laid down his extinct cigar. + +“What’s the matter? Aren’t you well? What on earth are you driving at?” + +“I’m perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman, and I want +it known that I murdered him.” + +“YOU WANT IT KNOWN?” + +“Yes. That’s why I sent for you. I’m sick of living, and when I try to +kill myself I funk it.” He spoke quite naturally now, as if the knot in +his throat had been untied. + +“Good Lord--good Lord,” the lawyer gasped. + +“But I suppose,” Granice continued, “there’s no doubt this would be +murder in the first degree? I’m sure of the chair if I own up?” + +Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: “Sit down, Granice. +Let’s talk.” + + + + +II + + +Granice told his story simply, connectedly. + +He began by a quick survey of his early years--the years of drudgery and +privation. His father, a charming man who could never say “no,” had so +signally failed to say it on certain essential occasions that when he +died he left an illegitimate family and a mortgaged estate. His lawful +kin found themselves hanging over a gulf of debt, and young Granice, to +support his mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury himself at +eighteen in a broker’s office. He loathed his work, and he was always +poor, always worried and in ill-health. A few years later his mother +died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his +hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six months, +and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for +business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of +commerce. He wanted to travel and write--those were his inmost longings. +And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making +any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed +him. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tired +that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not reach his +dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only “brush up” for dinner, +and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe, while his sister droned +through the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an evening at the theatre; +or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed off with an acquaintance or +two in quest of what is known as “pleasure.” And in summer, when he +and Kate went to the sea-side for a month, he dozed through the days in +utter weariness. Once he fell in love with a charming girl--but what had +he to offer her, in God’s name? She seemed to like him, and in common +decency he had to drop out of the running. Apparently no one +replaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish, grayish, +philanthropic--yet how sweet she had been when he had first kissed her! +One more wasted life, he reflected... + +But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have sold his +soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN HIM--he could +not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated instinct. As the +years passed it became a morbid, a relentless obsession--yet with every +year the material conditions were more and more against it. He felt +himself growing middle-aged, and he watched the reflection of the +process in his sister’s wasted face. At eighteen she had been +pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial, +insignificant--she had missed her chance of life. And she had no +resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive +functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated him +to think of it--and to reflect that even now a little travel, a +little health, a little money, might transform her, make her young and +desirable... The chief fruit of his experience was that there is no such +fixed state as age or youth--there is only health as against sickness, +wealth as against poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of the lot +one draws. + +At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean +against the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not moved from +his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated attention. + +“Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old +Lenman--my mother’s cousin, as you know. Some of the family always +mounted guard over him--generally a niece or so. But that year they were +all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to lend us her cottage if +we’d relieve her of duty for two months. It was a nuisance for me, of +course, for Wrenfield is two hours from town; but my mother, who was a +slave to family observances, had always been good to the old man, so it +was natural we should be called on--and there was the saving of rent and +the good air for Kate. So we went. + +“You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba or +some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan’s microscope. He was +large, undifferentiated, inert--since I could remember him he had +done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, +and cultivate melons--that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door +melons--his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield--his +big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking battalions of +green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were grown--early melons +and late, French, English, domestic--dwarf melons and monsters: every +shape, colour and variety. They were petted and nursed like children--a +staff of trained attendants waited on them. I’m not sure they didn’t +have a doctor to take their temperature--at any rate the place was full +of thermometers. And they didn’t sprawl on the ground like ordinary +melons; they were trained against the glass like nectarines, and each +melon hung in a net which sustained its weight and left it free on all +sides to the sun and air... + +“It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one of +his own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life, apathetic +and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm ventilated +atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries. The cardinal rule of +his existence was not to let himself be ‘worried.’... I remember his +advising me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about Kate’s +bad health, and her need of a change. ‘I never let myself worry,’ he +said complacently. ‘It’s the worst thing for the liver--and you look to +me as if you had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You’ll make +yourself happier and others too.’ And all he had to do was to write a +cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday! + +“The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us already. +The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others. +But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate’s--and one could +picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting. +I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him. + +“Well, I tried to see if I couldn’t reach him through his vanity. I +flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he was +taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was +driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them, +prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio. +When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of +a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the +resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn’t eat as much as +a mouthful of his melons--had lived for years on buttermilk and toast. +‘But, after all, it’s my only hobby--why shouldn’t I indulge it?’ he +said sentimentally. As if I’d ever been able to indulge any of mine! On +the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like gods... + +“One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to drag +herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the afternoon +with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September afternoon--a day to +lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one’s eyes on the sky, and let the +cosmic harmonies rush through one. Perhaps the vision was suggested +by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph’s hideous black walnut +library, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a handsome full-throated +Italian, who dashed out in such a hurry that he nearly knocked me down. +I remember thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seen +about the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem to see me. + +“Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, his +fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of the +Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon--the +fattest melon I’d ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasy +of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and congratulated +myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask +him a favour. Then I noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm +as an egg-shell, was distorted and whimpering--and without stopping to +greet me he pointed passionately to the melon. + +“‘Look at it, look at it--did you ever see such a beauty? Such +firmness--roundness--such delicious smoothness to the touch?’ It was +as if he had said ‘she’ instead of ‘it,’ and when he put out his senile +hand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other way. + +“Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener, who had +been specially recommended for the melon-houses--though it was against +my cousin’s principles to employ a Papist--had been assigned to the care +of the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its existence, as +destined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest, pulpiest +sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be photographed and +celebrated in every gardening paper in the land. The Italian had done +well--seemed to have a sense of responsibility. And that very morning +he had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day at +the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blonde +virginity. But in picking it, what had the damned scoundrelly Jesuit +done but drop it--drop it crash on the sharp spout of a watering-pot, +so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale rotundity, and was +henceforth but a bruised, ruined, fallen melon? + +“The old man’s rage was fearful in its impotence--he shook, spluttered +and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up and had sacked +him on the spot, without wages or character--had threatened to have him +arrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield. ‘By God, and +I’ll do it--I’ll write to Washington--I’ll have the pauper scoundrel +deported! I’ll show him what money can do!’ As likely as not there was +some murderous Black-hand business under it--it would be found that the +fellow was a member of a ‘gang.’ Those Italians would murder you for a +quarter. He meant to have the police look into it... And then he grew +frightened at his own excitement. ‘But I must calm myself,’ he said. He +took his temperature, rang for his drops, and turned to the Churchman. +He had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon was +brought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for an +hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about the +fallen melon. + +“All the while one phrase of the old man’s buzzed in my brain like the +fly about the melon. ‘I’LL SHOW HIM WHAT MONEY CAN DO!’ Good heaven! +If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of +giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried +to tell him something about my situation and Kate’s--spoke of my +ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make +myself a name--I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. ‘I can guarantee +to repay you, sir--I’ve a half-written play as security...’ + +“I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth as +an egg-shell again--his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like sentinels +over a slippery rampart. + +“‘A half-written play--a play of YOURS as security?’ He looked at me +almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity. ‘Do +you understand anything of business?’ he enquired mildly. I laughed and +answered: ‘No, not much.’ + +“He leaned back with closed lids. ‘All this excitement has been too much +for me,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll prepare for my nap.’ And I +stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian.” + +Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the tray +set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall glass of +soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham’s dead cigar. + +“Better light another,” he suggested. + +The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He told +of his mounting obsession--how the murderous impulse had waked in him on +the instant of his cousin’s refusal, and he had muttered to himself: +“By God, if you won’t, I’ll make you.” He spoke more tranquilly as the +narrative proceeded, as though his rage had died down once the resolve +to act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the question of how +the old man was to be “disposed of.” Suddenly he remembered the outcry: +“Those Italians will murder you for a quarter!” But no definite project +presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration. + +Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident of +the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them informed of +the old man’s condition. One day, about three weeks later, Granice, +on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from Wrenfield. The +Italian had been there again--had somehow slipped into the house, +made his way up to the library, and “used threatening language.” The +house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing +“something awful.” The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off; +and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood. + +But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had “nerves,” and lost his +taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague, and +the consultation amused and excited the old man--he became once more +an important figure. The medical men reassured the family--too +completely!--and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet: +advised him to take whatever “tempted him.” And so one day, tremulously, +prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up +with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a +hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead... + +“But you remember the circumstances,” Granice went on; “how suspicion +turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police had given +him he had been seen hanging about the house since ‘the scene.’ It was +said that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid, and the rest +seemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask him for the +explanation he was gone--gone clean out of sight. He had been ‘warned’ +to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one +ever laid eyes on him again.” + +Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer’s, and +he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the familiar +room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each strange +insistent object seemed craning forward from its place to hear him. + +“It was I who put the stuff in the melon,” he said. “And I don’t want +you to think I’m sorry for it. This isn’t ‘remorse,’ understand. I’m +glad the old skin-flint is dead--I’m glad the others have their money. +But mine’s no use to me any more. My sister married miserably, and died. +And I’ve never had what I wanted.” + +Ascham continued to stare; then he said: “What on earth was your object, +then?” + +“Why, to GET what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I wanted +change, rest, LIFE, for both of us--wanted, above all, for myself, the +chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home to +tie myself up to my work. And I’ve slaved at it steadily for ten years +without reward--without the most distant hope of success! Nobody will +look at my stuff. And now I’m fifty, and I’m beaten, and I know it.” + His chin dropped forward on his breast. “I want to chuck the whole +business,” he ended. + + + + +III + + +It was after midnight when Ascham left. + +His hand on Granice’s shoulder, as he turned to go--“District Attorney +be hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!” he had cried; and so, with an +exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and departed. + +Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to him that +Ascham would not believe his story. For three hours he had explained, +elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over every detail--but without +once breaking down the iron incredulity of the lawyer’s eye. + +At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced--but that, as Granice now +perceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap him into +contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when Granice triumphantly +met and refuted each disconcerting question, the lawyer dropped the mask +suddenly, and said with a good-humoured laugh: “By Jove, Granice you’ll +write a successful play yet. The way you’ve worked this all out is a +marvel.” + +Granice swung about furiously--that last sneer about the play inflamed +him. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his failure? + +“I did it, I did it,” he muttered sullenly, his rage spending itself +against the impenetrable surface of the other’s mockery; and Ascham +answered with a smile: “Ever read any of those books on hallucination? +I’ve got a fairly good medico-legal library. I could send you one or two +if you like...” + + +Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his writing-table. +He understood that Ascham thought him off his head. + +“Good God--what if they all think me crazy?” + +The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat--he sat there and +shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as he began +to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again how +incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any criminal lawyer would +believe him. + +“That’s the trouble--Ascham’s not a criminal lawyer. And then he’s a +friend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if he did believe +me, he’d never let me see it--his instinct would be to cover the whole +thing up... But in that case--if he DID believe me--he might think it +a kindness to get me shut up in an asylum...” Granice began to tremble +again. “Good heaven! If he should bring in an expert--one of those +damned alienists! Ascham and Pettilow can do anything--their word always +goes. If Ascham drops a hint that I’d better be shut up, I’ll be in a +strait-jacket by to-morrow! And he’d do it from the kindest motives--be +quite right to do it if he thinks I’m a murderer!” + +The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his bursting +temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped that Ascham had +not believed his story. + +“But he did--he did! I can see it now--I noticed what a queer eye he +cocked at me. Good God, what shall I do--what shall I do?” + +He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if Ascham +should think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and come back with +him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden gesture brushed the +morning paper from the table. Mechanically he stooped to pick it up, and +the movement started a new train of association. + +He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack by his +chair. + +“Give me three-o-ten... yes.” + +The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He would +act--act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead, committing himself +to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he could pull himself through +the meaningless days. Each time he reached a fresh decision it was like +coming out of a foggy weltering sea into a calm harbour with lights. One +of the queerest phases of his long agony was the intense relief produced +by these momentary lulls. + +“That the office of the Investigator? Yes? Give me Mr. Denver, please... +Hallo, Denver... Yes, Hubert Granice.... Just caught you? Going straight +home? Can I come and see you... yes, now... have a talk? It’s rather +urgent... yes, might give you some first-rate ‘copy.’... All right!” He +hung up the receiver with a laugh. It had been a happy thought to call +up the editor of the Investigator--Robert Denver was the very man he +needed... + +Granice put out the lights in the library--it was odd how the automatic +gestures persisted!--went into the hall, put on his hat and overcoat, +and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a sleepy elevator boy +blinked at him and then dropped his head on his folded arms. Granice +passed out into the street. At the corner of Fifth Avenue he hailed a +crawling cab, and called out an up-town address. The long thoroughfare +stretched before him, dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. +But from Denver’s house a friendly beam fell on the pavement; and as +Granice sprang from his cab the editor’s electric turned the corner. + +The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key, +ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall. + +“Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow morning... but +this is my liveliest hour... you know my habits of old.” + +Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years--watched his rise +through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of the +Investigator’s editorial office. In the thick-set man with grizzling +hair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young reporter who, +on his way home in the small hours, used to “bob in” on Granice, while +the latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice’s flat +on the way to his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the +window, and Granice’s shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe, +and discuss the universe. + +“Well--this is like old times--a good old habit reversed.” The editor +smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. “Reminds me of the nights +when I used to rout you out... How’s the play, by the way? There IS a +play, I suppose? It’s as safe to ask you that as to say to some men: +‘How’s the baby?’” + +Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and heavy +he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice’s tortured nerves, that +the words had not been uttered in malice--and the fact gave him a new +measure of his insignificance. Denver did not even know that he had been +a failure! The fact hurt more than Ascham’s irony. + +“Come in--come in.” The editor led the way into a small cheerful room, +where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an arm-chair toward his +visitor, and dropped into another with a comfortable groan. + +“Now, then--help yourself. And let’s hear all about it.” + +He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting his +cigar, said to himself: “Success makes men comfortable, but it makes +them stupid.” + +Then he turned, and began: “Denver, I want to tell you--” + +The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The little room was +gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and through them +the editor’s face came and went like the moon through a moving sky. Once +the hour struck--then the rhythmical ticking began again. The atmosphere +grew denser and heavier, and beads of perspiration began to roll from +Granice’s forehead. + +“Do you mind if I open the window?” + +“No. It IS stuffy in here. Wait--I’ll do it myself.” Denver pushed +down the upper sash, and returned to his chair. “Well--go on,” he said, +filling another pipe. His composure exasperated Granice. + +“There’s no use in my going on if you don’t believe me.” + +The editor remained unmoved. “Who says I don’t believe you? And how can +I tell till you’ve finished?” + +Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. “It was simple enough, as +you’ll see. From the day the old man said to me, ‘Those Italians would +murder you for a quarter,’ I dropped everything and just worked at +my scheme. It struck me at once that I must find a way of getting to +Wrenfield and back in a night--and that led to the idea of a motor. A +motor--that never occurred to you? You wonder where I got the money, I +suppose. Well, I had a thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till I +found what I wanted--a second-hand racer. I knew how to drive a car, +and I tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and I +bought it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in one of those +no-questions-asked garages where they keep motors that are not for +family use. I had a lively cousin who had put me up to that dodge, and I +looked about till I found a queer hole where they took in my car like a +baby in a foundling asylum... Then I practiced running to Wrenfield and +back in a night. I knew the way pretty well, for I’d done it often with +the same lively cousin--and in the small hours, too. The distance is +over ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours. But +my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next morning... + +“Well, then came the report about the Italian’s threats, and I saw I +must act at once... I meant to break into the old man’s room, shoot him, +and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I could manage it. +Then we heard that he was ill--that there’d been a consultation. Perhaps +the fates were going to do it for me! Good Lord, if that could only +be!...” + +Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem to +have cooled the room. + +“Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came up +from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was to try +a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her--all Wrenfield +was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the melon, one of +the little French ones that are hardly bigger than a large tomato--and +the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the next morning. + +“In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I knew +the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be brought in over +night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one melon in the +ice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted. Melons +didn’t lie around loose in that house--every one was known, numbered, +catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the servants would +eat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, +I felt pretty sure of my melon... and poisoning was much safer than +shooting. It would have been the devil and all to get into the old man’s +bedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to break +into the pantry without much trouble. + +“It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined quietly, and +sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual headaches, and went to +bed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got together a +sort of disguise--red beard and queer-looking ulster. I shoved them +into a bag, and went round to the garage. There was no one there but a +half-drunken machinist whom I’d never seen before. That served me, too. +They were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn’t even +bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-going +place... + +“Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as I was +out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to strike a sharp +pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into the beard +and ulster. Then away again--it was just eleven-thirty when I got to +Wrenfield. + +“I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and slipped +through the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at me through the +dark--I remember thinking that they knew what I wanted to know.... By +the stable a dog came out growling--but he nosed me out, jumped on me, +and went back... The house was as dark as the grave. I knew everybody +went to bed by ten. But there might be a prowling servant--the +kitchen-maid might have come down to let in her Italian. I had to +risk that, of course. I crept around by the back door and hid in the +shrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed +over to the house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a +little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap I +groped my way to the ice-box, opened it--and there was the little French +melon... only one. + +“I stopped to listen--I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my bottle of +stuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the melon a hypodermic. +It was all done inside of three minutes--at ten minutes to twelve I was +back in the car. I got out of the lane as quietly as I could, struck a +back road that skirted the village, and let the car out as soon as I was +beyond the last houses. I only stopped once on the way in, to drop the +beard and ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to weight them +with and they went down plump, like a dead body--and at two o’clock I +was back at my desk.” + +Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his +listener; but Denver’s face remained inscrutable. + +At length he said: “Why did you want to tell me this?” + +The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had +explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motive +had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight +with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understand +the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for another reason. + +“Why, I--the thing haunts me... remorse, I suppose you’d call it...” + +Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe. + +“Remorse? Bosh!” he said energetically. + +Granice’s heart sank. “You don’t believe in--REMORSE?” + +“Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking of +remorse proves to me that you’re not the man to have planned and put +through such a job.” + +Granice groaned. “Well--I lied to you about remorse. I’ve never felt +any.” + +Denver’s lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled pipe. “What +was your motive, then? You must have had one.” + +“I’ll tell you--” And Granice began again to rehearse the story of his +failure, of his loathing for life. “Don’t say you don’t believe me this +time... that this isn’t a real reason!” he stammered out piteously as he +ended. + +Denver meditated. “No, I won’t say that. I’ve seen too many queer +things. There’s always a reason for wanting to get out of life--the +wonder is that we find so many for staying in!” Granice’s heart grew +light. “Then you DO believe me?” he faltered. + +“Believe that you’re sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven’t the +nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes--that’s easy enough, too. But all +that doesn’t make you a murderer--though I don’t say it proves you could +never have been one.” + +“I HAVE been one, Denver--I swear to you.” + +“Perhaps.” He meditated. “Just tell me one or two things.” + +“Oh, go ahead. You won’t stump me!” Granice heard himself say with a +laugh. + +“Well--how did you make all those trial trips without exciting your +sister’s curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at that time, +remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn’t the change in your ways +surprise her?” + +“No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several visits in +the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and was only in town +for a night or two before--before I did the job.” + +“And that night she went to bed early with a headache?” + +“Yes--blinding. She didn’t know anything when she had that kind. And her +room was at the back of the flat.” + +Denver again meditated. “And when you got back--she didn’t hear you? You +got in without her knowing it?” + +“Yes. I went straight to my work--took it up at the word where I’d left +off--WHY, DENVER, DON’T YOU REMEMBER?” Granice suddenly, passionately +interjected. + +“Remember--?” + +“Yes; how you found me--when you looked in that morning, between two and +three... your usual hour...?” + +“Yes,” the editor nodded. + +Granice gave a short laugh. “In my old coat--with my pipe: looked as if +I’d been working all night, didn’t I? Well, I hadn’t been in my chair +ten minutes!” + +Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. “I didn’t know +whether YOU remembered that.” + +“What?” + +“My coming in that particular night--or morning.” + +Granice swung round in his chair. “Why, man alive! That’s why I’m here +now. Because it was you who spoke for me at the inquest, when they +looked round to see what all the old man’s heirs had been doing that +night--you who testified to having dropped in and found me at my desk +as usual.... I thought THAT would appeal to your journalistic sense if +nothing else would!” + +Denver smiled. “Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible +enough--and the idea’s picturesque, I grant you: asking the man who +proved your alibi to establish your guilt.” + +“That’s it--that’s it!” Granice’s laugh had a ring of triumph. + +“Well, but how about the other chap’s testimony--I mean that young +doctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don’t you remember my testifying +that I’d met him at the elevated station, and told him I was on my way +to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying: ‘All right; you’ll find him +in. I passed the house two hours ago, and saw his shadow against the +blind, as usual.’ And the lady with the toothache in the flat across the +way: she corroborated his statement, you remember.” + +“Yes; I remember.” + +“Well, then?” + +“Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin with old +coats and a cushion--something to cast a shadow on the blind. All +you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours--I +counted on that, and knew you’d take any vague outline as mine.” + +“Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw the +shadow move--you remember she said she saw you sink forward, as if you’d +fallen asleep.” + +“Yes; and she was right. It DID move. I suppose some extra-heavy dray +must have jolted by the flimsy building--at any rate, something gave my +mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had sunk forward, half over the +table.” + +There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a throbbing +heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any rate, did not +sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper insight than +the law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared one better to +allow for the incalculableness of human impulses. + +“Well?” Granice faltered out. + +Denver stood up with a shrug. “Look here, man--what’s wrong with you? +Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I’d like to take you +to see a chap I know--an ex-prize-fighter--who’s a wonder at pulling +fellows in your state out of their hole--” + +“Oh, oh--” Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men eyed each +other. “You don’t believe me, then?” + +“This yarn--how can I? There wasn’t a flaw in your alibi.” + +“But haven’t I filled it full of them now?” + +Denver shook his head. “I might think so if I hadn’t happened to know +that you WANTED to. There’s the hitch, don’t you see?” + +Granice groaned. “No, I didn’t. You mean my wanting to be found +guilty--?” + +“Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might have been +worth looking into. As it is, a child could have invented it. It doesn’t +do much credit to your ingenuity.” + +Granice turned sullenly toward the door. What was the use of arguing? +But on the threshold a sudden impulse drew him back. “Look here, +Denver--I daresay you’re right. But will you do just one thing to prove +it? Put my statement in the Investigator, just as I’ve made it. Ridicule +it as much as you like. Only give the other fellows a chance at it--men +who don’t know anything about me. Set them talking and looking about. I +don’t care a damn whether YOU believe me--what I want is to convince the +Grand Jury! I oughtn’t to have come to a man who knows me--your cursed +incredulity is infectious. I don’t put my case well, because I know in +advance it’s discredited, and I almost end by not believing it myself. +That’s why I can’t convince YOU. It’s a vicious circle.” He laid a +hand on Denver’s arm. “Send a stenographer, and put my statement in the +paper.” + +But Denver did not warm to the idea. “My dear fellow, you seem to forget +that all the evidence was pretty thoroughly sifted at the time, every +possible clue followed up. The public would have been ready enough then +to believe that you murdered old Lenman--you or anybody else. All they +wanted was a murderer--the most improbable would have served. But your +alibi was too confoundedly complete. And nothing you’ve told me has +shaken it.” Denver laid his cool hand over the other’s burning fingers. +“Look here, old fellow, go home and work up a better case--then come in +and submit it to the Investigator.” + + + + +IV + + +The perspiration was rolling off Granice’s forehead. Every few minutes +he had to draw out his handkerchief and wipe the moisture from his +haggard face. + +For an hour and a half he had been talking steadily, putting his case +to the District Attorney. Luckily he had a speaking acquaintance with +Allonby, and had obtained, without much difficulty, a private audience +on the very day after his talk with Robert Denver. In the interval +between he had hurried home, got out of his evening clothes, and gone +forth again at once into the dreary dawn. His fear of Ascham and the +alienist made it impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And it +seemed to him that the only way of averting that hideous peril was by +establishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his guilt. Even +if he had not been so incurably sick of life, the electric chair seemed +now the only alternative to the strait-jacket. + +As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney glance at +his watch. The gesture was significant, and Granice lifted an appealing +hand. “I don’t expect you to believe me now--but can’t you put me under +arrest, and have the thing looked into?” + +Allonby smiled faintly under his heavy grayish moustache. He had a ruddy +face, full and jovial, in which his keen professional eyes seemed to +keep watch over impulses not strictly professional. + +“Well, I don’t know that we need lock you up just yet. But of course I’m +bound to look into your statement--” + +Granice rose with an exquisite sense of relief. Surely Allonby wouldn’t +have said that if he hadn’t believed him! + +“That’s all right. Then I needn’t detain you. I can be found at any time +at my apartment.” He gave the address. + +The District Attorney smiled again, more openly. “What do you say to +leaving it for an hour or two this evening? I’m giving a little supper +at Rector’s--quiet, little affair, you understand: just Miss Melrose--I +think you know her--and a friend or two; and if you’ll join us...” + +Granice stumbled out of the office without knowing what reply he had +made. + + +He waited for four days--four days of concentrated horror. During the +first twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham’s alienist dogged him; and as +that subsided, it was replaced by the exasperating sense that his avowal +had made no impression on the District Attorney. Evidently, if he had +been going to look into the case, Allonby would have been heard from +before now.... And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearly +enough how little the story had impressed him! + +Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to inculpate +himself. He was chained to life--a “prisoner of consciousness.” Where +was it he had read the phrase? Well, he was learning what it meant. In +the glaring night-hours, when his brain seemed ablaze, he was visited +by a sense of his fixed identity, of his irreducible, inexpugnable +SELFNESS, keener, more insidious, more unescapable, than any sensation +he had ever known. He had not guessed that the mind was capable of such +intricacies of self-realization, of penetrating so deep into its own +dark windings. Often he woke from his brief snatches of sleep with the +feeling that something material was clinging to him, was on his hands +and face, and in his throat--and as his brain cleared he understood that +it was the sense of his own loathed personality that stuck to him like +some thick viscous substance. + +Then, in the first morning hours, he would rise and look out of +his window at the awakening activities of the street--at the +street-cleaners, the ash-cart drivers, and the other dingy workers +flitting hurriedly by through the sallow winter light. Oh, to be one of +them--any of them--to take his chance in any of their skins! They were +the toilers--the men whose lot was pitied--the victims wept over and +ranted about by altruists and economists; and how gladly he would have +taken up the load of any one of them, if only he might have shaken off +his own! But, no--the iron circle of consciousness held them too: each +one was hand-cuffed to his own hideous ego. Why wish to be any one man +rather than another? The only absolute good was not to be... And Flint, +coming in to draw his bath, would ask if he preferred his eggs scrambled +or poached that morning? + + +On the fifth day he wrote a long urgent letter to Allonby; and for the +succeeding two days he had the occupation of waiting for an answer. He +hardly stirred from his rooms, in his fear of missing the letter by a +moment; but would the District Attorney write, or send a representative: +a policeman, a “secret agent,” or some other mysterious emissary of the +law? + +On the third morning Flint, stepping softly--as if, confound it! his +master were ill--entered the library where Granice sat behind an unread +newspaper, and proferred a card on a tray. + +Granice read the name--J. B. Hewson--and underneath, in pencil, “From +the District Attorney’s office.” He started up with a thumping heart, +and signed an assent to the servant. + +Mr. Hewson was a slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty--the kind +of man of whom one is sure to see a specimen in any crowd. “Just the +type of the successful detective,” Granice reflected as he shook hands +with his visitor. + +And it was in that character that Mr. Hewson briefly introduced himself. +He had been sent by the District Attorney to have “a quiet talk” with +Mr. Granice--to ask him to repeat the statement he had made about the +Lenman murder. + +His manner was so quiet, so reasonable and receptive, that Granice’s +self-confidence returned. Here was a sensible man--a man who knew +his business--it would be easy enough to make HIM see through that +ridiculous alibi! Granice offered Mr. Hewson a cigar, and lighting one +himself--to prove his coolness--began again to tell his story. + +He was conscious, as he proceeded, of telling it better than ever +before. Practice helped, no doubt; and his listener’s detached, +impartial attitude helped still more. He could see that Hewson, at +least, had not decided in advance to disbelieve him, and the sense of +being trusted made him more lucid and more consecutive. Yes, this time +his words would certainly carry conviction... + + + + +V + + +Despairingly, Granice gazed up and down the shabby street. Beside him +stood a young man with bright prominent eyes, a smooth but not too +smoothly-shaven face, and an Irish smile. The young man’s nimble glance +followed Granice’s. + +“Sure of the number, are you?” he asked briskly. + +“Oh, yes--it was 104.” + +“Well, then, the new building has swallowed it up--that’s certain.” + +He tilted his head back and surveyed the half-finished front of a brick +and limestone flat-house that reared its flimsy elegance above a row of +tottering tenements and stables. + +“Dead sure?” he repeated. + +“Yes,” said Granice, discouraged. “And even if I hadn’t been, I know the +garage was just opposite Leffler’s over there.” He pointed across the +street to a tumble-down stable with a blotched sign on which the words +“Livery and Boarding” were still faintly discernible. + +The young man dashed across to the opposite pavement. “Well, that’s +something--may get a clue there. Leffler’s--same name there, anyhow. You +remember that name?” + +“Yes--distinctly.” + +Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted the +interest of the Explorer’s “smartest” reporter. If there were moments +when he hardly believed his own story, there were others when it +seemed impossible that every one should not believe it; and young Peter +McCarren, peering, listening, questioning, jotting down notes, inspired +him with an exquisite sense of security. McCarren had fastened on the +case at once, “like a leech,” as he phrased it--jumped at it, thrilled +to it, and settled down to “draw the last drop of fact from it, and +had not let go till he had.” No one else had treated Granice in that +way--even Allonby’s detective had not taken a single note. And though +a week had elapsed since the visit of that authorized official, +nothing had been heard from the District Attorney’s office: Allonby had +apparently dropped the matter again. But McCarren wasn’t going to drop +it--not he! He positively hung on Granice’s footsteps. They had spent +the greater part of the previous day together, and now they were off +again, running down clues. + +But at Leffler’s they got none, after all. Leffler’s was no longer +a stable. It was condemned to demolition, and in the respite between +sentence and execution it had become a vague place of storage, a +hospital for broken-down carriages and carts, presided over by a +blear-eyed old woman who knew nothing of Flood’s garage across +the way--did not even remember what had stood there before the new +flat-house began to rise. + +“Well--we may run Leffler down somewhere; I’ve seen harder jobs done,” + said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name. + +As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less sanguine +tone: “I’d undertake now to put the thing through if you could only put +me on the track of that cyanide.” + +Granice’s heart sank. Yes--there was the weak spot; he had felt it from +the first! But he still hoped to convince McCarren that his case was +strong enough without it; and he urged the reporter to come back to his +rooms and sum up the facts with him again. + +“Sorry, Mr. Granice, but I’m due at the office now. Besides, it’d be +no use till I get some fresh stuff to work on. Suppose I call you up +tomorrow or next day?” + +He plunged into a trolley and left Granice gazing desolately after him. + +Two days later he reappeared at the apartment, a shade less jaunty in +demeanor. + +“Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you, as the +bard says. Can’t get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler either. And you say +you bought the motor through Flood, and sold it through him, too?” + +“Yes,” said Granice wearily. + +“Who bought it, do you know?” + +Granice wrinkled his brows. “Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I sold it +back to him three months later.” + +“Flood? The devil! And I’ve ransacked the town for Flood. That kind of +business disappears as if the earth had swallowed it.” + +Granice, discouraged, kept silence. + +“That brings us back to the poison,” McCarren continued, his note-book +out. “Just go over that again, will you?” + +And Granice went over it again. It had all been so simple at the +time--and he had been so clever in covering up his traces! As soon as he +decided on poison he looked about for an acquaintance who manufactured +chemicals; and there was Jim Dawes, a Harvard classmate, in the dyeing +business--just the man. But at the last moment it occurred to him that +suspicion might turn toward so obvious an opportunity, and he decided +on a more tortuous course. Another friend, Carrick Venn, a student of +medicine whom irremediable ill-health had kept from the practice of +his profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for the +exercise of which he had set up a simple laboratory. Granice had the +habit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him on Sunday afternoons, and +the friends generally sat in Venn’s work-shop, at the back of the old +family house in Stuyvesant Square. Off this work-shop was the cupboard +of supplies, with its row of deadly bottles. Carrick Venn was an +original, a man of restless curious tastes, and his place, on a Sunday, +was often full of visitors: a cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers, +painters, experimenters in divers forms of expression. Coming and going +among so many, it was easy enough to pass unperceived; and one afternoon +Granice, arriving before Venn had returned home, found himself alone in +the work-shop, and quickly slipping into the cupboard, transferred the +drug to his pocket. + +But that had happened ten years ago; and Venn, poor fellow, was long +since dead of his dragging ailment. His old father was dead, too, the +house in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a boarding-house, and +the shifting life of New York had passed its rapid sponge over every +trace of their obscure little history. Even the optimistic McCarren +seemed to acknowledge the hopelessness of seeking for proof in that +direction. + +“And there’s the third door slammed in our faces.” He shut his +note-book, and throwing back his head, rested his bright inquisitive +eyes on Granice’s furrowed face. + +“Look here, Mr. Granice--you see the weak spot, don’t you?” + +The other made a despairing motion. “I see so many!” + +“Yes: but the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do you want +this thing known? Why do you want to put your head into the noose?” + +Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of his +quick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful animal life +would believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive; and +Granice racked his brain for one more convincing. But suddenly he saw +the reporter’s face soften, and melt to a naive sentimentalism. + +“Mr. Granice--has the memory of it always haunted you?” + +Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. “That’s it--the +memory of it... always...” + +McCarren nodded vehemently. “Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn’t let you +sleep? The time came when you HAD to make a clean breast of it?” + +“I had to. Can’t you understand?” + +The reporter struck his fist on the table. “God, sir! I don’t suppose +there’s a human being with a drop of warm blood in him that can’t +picture the deadly horrors of remorse--” + +The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him for +the word. What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a conceivable +motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most adequate; and, as he +said, once one could find a convincing motive, the difficulties of the +case became so many incentives to effort. + +“Remorse--REMORSE,” he repeated, rolling the word under his tongue with +an accent that was a clue to the psychology of the popular drama; and +Granice, perversely, said to himself: “If I could only have struck that +note I should have been running in six theatres at once.” + +He saw that from that moment McCarren’s professional zeal would be +fanned by emotional curiosity; and he profited by the fact to propose +that they should dine together, and go on afterward to some music-hall +or theatre. It was becoming necessary to Granice to feel himself an +object of pre-occupation, to find himself in another mind. He took a +kind of gray penumbral pleasure in riveting McCarren’s attention on his +case; and to feign the grimaces of moral anguish became a passionately +engrossing game. He had not entered a theatre for months; but he sat out +the meaningless performance in rigid tolerance, sustained by the sense +of the reporter’s observation. + +Between the acts, McCarren amused him with anecdotes about the audience: +he knew every one by sight, and could lift the curtain from every +physiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had lost all interest in +his kind, but he knew that he was himself the real centre of McCarren’s +attention, and that every word the latter spoke had an indirect bearing +on his own problem. + +“See that fellow over there--the little dried-up man in the third row, +pulling his moustache? HIS memoirs would be worth publishing,” McCarren +said suddenly in the last entr’acte. + +Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from Allonby’s +office. For a moment he had the thrilling sense that he was being +shadowed. + +“Caesar, if HE could talk--!” McCarren continued. “Know who he is, of +course? Dr. John B. Stell, the biggest alienist in the country--” + +Granice, with a start, bent again between the heads in front of him. +“THAT man--the fourth from the aisle? You’re mistaken. That’s not Dr. +Stell.” + +McCarren laughed. “Well, I guess I’ve been in court enough to know Stell +when I see him. He testifies in nearly all the big cases where they +plead insanity.” + +A cold shiver ran down Granice’s spine, but he repeated obstinately: +“That’s not Dr. Stell.” + +“Not Stell? Why, man, I KNOW him. Look--here he comes. If it isn’t +Stell, he won’t speak to me.” + +The little dried-up man was moving slowly up the aisle. As he neared +McCarren he made a slight gesture of recognition. + +“How’do, Doctor Stell? Pretty slim show, ain’t it?” the reporter +cheerfully flung out at him. And Mr. J. B. Hewson, with a nod of +amicable assent, passed on. + +Granice sat benumbed. He knew he had not been mistaken--the man who +had just passed was the same man whom Allonby had sent to see him: +a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had thought him +insane, like the others--had regarded his confession as the maundering +of a maniac. The discovery froze Granice with horror--he seemed to see +the mad-house gaping for him. + +“Isn’t there a man a good deal like him--a detective named J. B. +Hewson?” + +But he knew in advance what McCarren’s answer would be. “Hewson? J. +B. Hewson? Never heard of him. But that was J. B. Stell fast enough--I +guess he can be trusted to know himself, and you saw he answered to his +name.” + + + + +VI + + +Some days passed before Granice could obtain a word with the District +Attorney: he began to think that Allonby avoided him. + +But when they were face to face Allonby’s jovial countenance showed +no sign of embarrassment. He waved his visitor to a chair, and leaned +across his desk with the encouraging smile of a consulting physician. + +Granice broke out at once: “That detective you sent me the other day--” + +Allonby raised a deprecating hand. + +“--I know: it was Stell the alienist. Why did you do that, Allonby?” + +The other’s face did not lose its composure. “Because I looked up your +story first--and there’s nothing in it.” + +“Nothing in it?” Granice furiously interposed. + +“Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don’t you bring me +proofs? I know you’ve been talking to Peter Ascham, and to Denver, and +to that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have any of them been +able to make out a case for you? No. Well, what am I to do?” + +Granice’s lips began to tremble. “Why did you play me that trick?” + +“About Stell? I had to, my dear fellow: it’s part of my business. Stell +IS a detective, if you come to that--every doctor is.” + +The trembling of Granice’s lips increased, communicating itself in a +long quiver to his facial muscles. He forced a laugh through his dry +throat. “Well--and what did he detect?” + +“In you? Oh, he thinks it’s overwork--overwork and too much smoking. If +you look in on him some day at his office he’ll show you the record of +hundreds of cases like yours, and advise you what treatment to follow. +It’s one of the commonest forms of hallucination. Have a cigar, all the +same.” + +“But, Allonby, I killed that man!” + +The District Attorney’s large hand, outstretched on his desk, had an +almost imperceptible gesture, and a moment later, as if an answer to the +call of an electric bell, a clerk looked in from the outer office. + +“Sorry, my dear fellow--lot of people waiting. Drop in on Stell some +morning,” Allonby said, shaking hands. + + +McCarren had to own himself beaten: there was absolutely no flaw in the +alibi. And since his duty to his journal obviously forbade his wasting +time on insoluble mysteries, he ceased to frequent Granice, who dropped +back into a deeper isolation. For a day or two after his visit to +Allonby he continued to live in dread of Dr. Stell. Why might not +Allonby have deceived him as to the alienist’s diagnosis? What if he +were really being shadowed, not by a police agent but by a mad-doctor? +To have the truth out, he suddenly determined to call on Dr. Stell. + +The physician received him kindly, and reverted without embarrassment +to the conditions of their previous meeting. “We have to do that +occasionally, Mr. Granice; it’s one of our methods. And you had given +Allonby a fright.” + +Granice was silent. He would have liked to reaffirm his guilt, to +produce the fresh arguments which had occurred to him since his last +talk with the physician; but he feared his eagerness might be taken +for a symptom of derangement, and he affected to smile away Dr. Stell’s +allusion. + +“You think, then, it’s a case of brain-fag--nothing more?” + +“Nothing more. And I should advise you to knock off tobacco. You smoke a +good deal, don’t you?” + +He developed his treatment, recommending massage, gymnastics, travel, or +any form of diversion that did not--that in short-- + +Granice interrupted him impatiently. “Oh, I loathe all that--and I’m +sick of travelling.” + +“H’m. Then some larger interest--politics, reform, philanthropy? +Something to take you out of yourself.” + +“Yes. I understand,” said Granice wearily. + +“Above all, don’t lose heart. I see hundreds of cases like yours,” the +doctor added cheerfully from the threshold. + +On the doorstep Granice stood still and laughed. Hundreds of cases like +his--the case of a man who had committed a murder, who confessed his +guilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there had never been a case +like it in the world. What a good figure Stell would have made in a +play: the great alienist who couldn’t read a man’s mind any better than +that! + +Granice saw huge comic opportunities in the type. + +But as he walked away, his fears dispelled, the sense of listlessness +returned on him. For the first time since his avowal to Peter Ascham +he found himself without an occupation, and understood that he had been +carried through the past weeks only by the necessity of constant action. +Now his life had once more become a stagnant backwater, and as he stood +on the street corner watching the tides of traffic sweep by, he asked +himself despairingly how much longer he could endure to float about in +the sluggish circle of his consciousness. + +The thought of self-destruction recurred to him; but again his flesh +recoiled. He yearned for death from other hands, but he could never take +it from his own. And, aside from his insuperable physical reluctance, +another motive restrained him. He was possessed by the dogged desire +to establish the truth of his story. He refused to be swept aside as +an irresponsible dreamer--even if he had to kill himself in the end, +he would not do so before proving to society that he had deserved death +from it. + +He began to write long letters to the papers; but after the first had +been published and commented on, public curiosity was quelled by a +brief statement from the District Attorney’s office, and the rest of his +communications remained unprinted. Ascham came to see him, and begged +him to travel. Robert Denver dropped in, and tried to joke him out of +his delusion; till Granice, mistrustful of their motives, began to dread +the reappearance of Dr. Stell, and set a guard on his lips. But the +words he kept back engendered others and still others in his brain. +His inner self became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent long +hours reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime, +which he constantly retouched and developed. Then gradually his activity +languished under the lack of an audience, the sense of being buried +beneath deepening drifts of indifference. In a passion of resentment he +swore that he would prove himself a murderer, even if he had to commit +another crime to do it; and for a sleepless night or two the thought +flamed red on his darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determining +impulse was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to choose his +victim... So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to impose +the truth of his story. As fast as one channel closed on him he tried to +pierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity. But every issue +seemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued together to cheat one +man of the right to die. + +Thus viewed, the situation became so monstrous that he lost his last +shred of self-restraint in contemplating it. What if he were really +the victim of some mocking experiment, the centre of a ring of +holiday-makers jeering at a poor creature in its blind dashes against +the solid walls of consciousness? But, no--men were not so uniformly +cruel: there were flaws in the close surface of their indifference, +cracks of weakness and pity here and there... + +Granice began to think that his mistake lay in having appealed to +persons more or less familiar with his past, and to whom the visible +conformities of his life seemed a final disproof of its one fierce +secret deviation. The general tendency was to take for the whole of life +the slit seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk down that +narrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free to +follow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would +be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained +intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea shot up +in him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of thought, and he +began to walk the streets, and to frequent out-of-the-way chop-houses +and bars in his search for the impartial stranger to whom he should +disclose himself. + +At first every face looked encouragement; but at the crucial moment he +always held back. So much was at stake, and it was so essential that +his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded stupidity, timidity, +intolerance. The imaginative eye, the furrowed brow, were what he +sought. He must reveal himself only to a heart versed in the tortuous +motions of the human will; and he began to hate the dull benevolence +of the average face. Once or twice, obscurely, allusively, he made a +beginning--once sitting down at a man’s side in a basement chop-house, +another day approaching a lounger on an east-side wharf. But in both +cases the premonition of failure checked him on the brink of avowal. His +dread of being taken for a man in the clutch of a fixed idea gave him an +unnatural keenness in reading the expression of his interlocutors, and +he had provided himself in advance with a series of verbal alternatives, +trap-doors of evasion from the first dart of ridicule or suspicion. + +He passed the greater part of the day in the streets, coming home at +irregular hours, dreading the silence and orderliness of his apartment, +and the critical scrutiny of Flint. His real life was spent in a +world so remote from this familiar setting that he sometimes had the +mysterious sense of a living metempsychosis, a furtive passage from one +identity to another--yet the other as unescapably himself! + +One humiliation he was spared: the desire to live never revived in +him. Not for a moment was he tempted to a shabby pact with existing +conditions. He wanted to die, wanted it with the fixed unwavering desire +which alone attains its end. And still the end eluded him! It would not +always, of course--he had full faith in the dark star of his destiny. +And he could prove it best by repeating his story, persistently and +indefatigably, pouring it into indifferent ears, hammering it into dull +brains, till at last it kindled a spark, and some one of the careless +millions paused, listened, believed... + +It was a mild March day, and he had been loitering on the west-side +docks, looking at faces. He was becoming an expert in physiognomies: his +eagerness no longer made rash darts and awkward recoils. He knew now the +face he needed, as clearly as if it had come to him in a vision; and +not till he found it would he speak. As he walked eastward through the +shabby reeking streets he had a premonition that he should find it that +morning. Perhaps it was the promise of spring in the air--certainly he +felt calmer than for many days... + +He turned into Washington Square, struck across it obliquely, and walked +up University Place. Its heterogeneous passers always allured him--they +were less hurried than in Broadway, less enclosed and classified than in +Fifth Avenue. He walked slowly, watching for his face. + +At Union Square he felt a sudden relapse into discouragement, like a +votary who has watched too long for a sign from the altar. Perhaps, +after all, he should never find his face... The air was languid, and +he felt tired. He walked between the bald grass-plots and the twisted +trees, making for an empty seat. Presently he passed a bench on which a +girl sat alone, and something as definite as the twitch of a cord made +him stop before her. He had never dreamed of telling his story to a +girl, had hardly looked at the women’s faces as they passed. His case +was man’s work: how could a woman help him? But this girl’s face was +extraordinary--quiet and wide as a clear evening sky. It suggested a +hundred images of space, distance, mystery, like ships he had seen, as +a boy, quietly berthed by a familiar wharf, but with the breath of far +seas and strange harbours in their shrouds... Certainly this girl would +understand. He went up to her quietly, lifting his hat, observing the +forms--wishing her to see at once that he was “a gentleman.” + +“I am a stranger to you,” he began, sitting down beside her, “but your +face is so extremely intelligent that I feel... I feel it is the face +I’ve waited for... looked for everywhere; and I want to tell you--” + +The girl’s eyes widened: she rose to her feet. She was escaping him! + +In his dismay he ran a few steps after her, and caught her roughly by +the arm. + +“Here--wait--listen! Oh, don’t scream, you fool!” he shouted out. + +He felt a hand on his own arm; turned and confronted a policeman. +Instantly he understood that he was being arrested, and something hard +within him was loosened and ran to tears. + +“Ah, you know--you KNOW I’m guilty!” + +He was conscious that a crowd was forming, and that the girl’s +frightened face had disappeared. But what did he care about her face? It +was the policeman who had really understood him. He turned and followed, +the crowd at his heels... + + + + +VII + + +In the charming place in which he found himself there were so many +sympathetic faces that he felt more than ever convinced of the certainty +of making himself heard. + +It was a bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been arrested +for murder; but Ascham, who had come to him at once, explained that he +needed rest, and the time to “review” his statements; it appeared that +reiteration had made them a little confused and contradictory. To +this end he had willingly acquiesced in his removal to a large quiet +establishment, with an open space and trees about it, where he had +found a number of intelligent companions, some, like himself, engaged +in preparing or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready to +lend an interested ear to his own recital. + +For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil current of +this existence; but although his auditors gave him for the most part +an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the length of really +brilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually felt a recurrence of his +old doubts. Either his hearers were not sincere, or else they had +less power to aid him than they boasted. His interminable conferences +resulted in nothing, and as the benefit of the long rest made itself +felt, it produced an increased mental lucidity which rendered inaction +more and more unbearable. At length he discovered that on certain days +visitors from the outer world were admitted to his retreat; and he wrote +out long and logically constructed relations of his crime, and furtively +slipped them into the hands of these messengers of hope. + +This occupation gave him a fresh lease of patience, and he now lived +only to watch for the visitors’ days, and scan the faces that swept by +him like stars seen and lost in the rifts of a hurrying sky. + +Mostly, these faces were strange and less intelligent than those of his +companions. But they represented his last means of access to the world, +a kind of subterranean channel on which he could set his “statements” + afloat, like paper boats which the mysterious current might sweep out +into the open seas of life. + +One day, however, his attention was arrested by a familiar contour, +a pair of bright prominent eyes, and a chin insufficiently shaved. He +sprang up and stood in the path of Peter McCarren. + +The journalist looked at him doubtfully, then held out his hand with a +startled deprecating, “WHY--?” + +“You didn’t know me? I’m so changed?” Granice faltered, feeling the +rebound of the other’s wonder. + +“Why, no; but you’re looking quieter--smoothed out,” McCarren smiled. + +“Yes: that’s what I’m here for--to rest. And I’ve taken the opportunity +to write out a clearer statement--” + +Granice’s hand shook so that he could hardly draw the folded paper from +his pocket. As he did so he noticed that the reporter was accompanied by +a tall man with grave compassionate eyes. It came to Granice in a wild +thrill of conviction that this was the face he had waited for... + +“Perhaps your friend--he IS your friend?--would glance over it--or I +could put the case in a few words if you have time?” Granice’s voice +shook like his hand. If this chance escaped him he felt that his last +hope was gone. McCarren and the stranger looked at each other, and the +former glanced at his watch. + +“I’m sorry we can’t stay and talk it over now, Mr. Granice; but my +friend has an engagement, and we’re rather pressed--” + +Granice continued to proffer the paper. “I’m sorry--I think I could have +explained. But you’ll take this, at any rate?” + +The stranger looked at him gently. “Certainly--I’ll take it.” He had his +hand out. “Good-bye.” + +“Good-bye,” Granice echoed. + +He stood watching the two men move away from him through the long light +hall; and as he watched them a tear ran down his face. But as soon as +they were out of sight he turned and walked hastily toward his room, +beginning to hope again, already planning a new statement. + + +Outside the building the two men stood still, and the journalist’s +companion looked up curiously at the long monotonous rows of barred +windows. + +“So that was Granice?” + +“Yes--that was Granice, poor devil,” said McCarren. + +“Strange case! I suppose there’s never been one just like it? He’s still +absolutely convinced that he committed that murder?” + +“Absolutely. Yes.” + +The stranger reflected. “And there was no conceivable ground for the +idea? No one could make out how it started? A quiet conventional sort of +fellow like that--where do you suppose he got such a delusion? Did you +ever get the least clue to it?” + +McCarren stood still, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked up in +contemplation of the barred windows. Then he turned his bright hard gaze +on his companion. + +“That was the queer part of it. I’ve never spoken of it--but I DID get a +clue.” + +“By Jove! That’s interesting. What was it?” + +McCarren formed his red lips into a whistle. “Why--that it wasn’t a +delusion.” + +He produced his effect--the other turned on him with a pallid stare. + +“He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the merest +accident, when I’d pretty nearly chucked the whole job.” + +“He murdered him--murdered his cousin?” + +“Sure as you live. Only don’t split on me. It’s about the queerest +business I ever ran into... DO ABOUT IT? Why, what was I to do? I +couldn’t hang the poor devil, could I? Lord, but I was glad when they +collared him, and had him stowed away safe in there!” + +The tall man listened with a grave face, grasping Granice’s statement in +his hand. + +“Here--take this; it makes me sick,” he said abruptly, thrusting the +paper at the reporter; and the two men turned and walked in silence to +the gates. + +The End + + + + + +THE DILETTANTE + +As first published in Harper’s Monthly, December 1903 + + +It was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found himself +advancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the club, turned +as usual into Mrs. Vervain’s street. + +The “as usual” was his own qualification of the act; a convenient way +of bridging the interval--in days and other sequences--that lay +between this visit and the last. It was characteristic of him that he +instinctively excluded his call two days earlier, with Ruth Gaynor, from +the list of his visits to Mrs. Vervain: the special conditions attending +it had made it no more like a visit to Mrs. Vervain than an engraved +dinner invitation is like a personal letter. Yet it was to talk over +his call with Miss Gaynor that he was now returning to the scene of that +episode; and it was because Mrs. Vervain could be trusted to handle the +talking over as skilfully as the interview itself that, at her corner, +he had felt the dilettante’s irresistible craving to take a last look at +a work of art that was passing out of his possession. + +On the whole, he knew no one better fitted to deal with the unexpected +than Mrs. Vervain. She excelled in the rare art of taking things for +granted, and Thursdale felt a pardonable pride in the thought that she +owed her excellence to his training. Early in his career Thursdale had +made the mistake, at the outset of his acquaintance with a lady, of +telling her that he loved her and exacting the same avowal in return. +The latter part of that episode had been like the long walk back from a +picnic, when one has to carry all the crockery one has finished using: +it was the last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumbered +with the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that the +privilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a charming woman +can accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls of sentiment he had +developed a science of evasion in which the woman of the moment became +a mere implement of the game. He owed a great deal of delicate enjoyment +to the cultivation of this art. The perils from which it had been his +refuge became naively harmless: was it possible that he who now took his +easy way along the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw heights +of emotion? Youth is a high-colored season; but he had the satisfaction +of feeling that he had entered earlier than most into that chiar’oscuro +of sensation where every half-tone has its value. + +As a promoter of this pleasure no one he had known was comparable +to Mrs. Vervain. He had taught a good many women not to betray their +feelings, but he had never before had such fine material to work in. She +had been surprisingly crude when he first knew her; capable of making +the most awkward inferences, of plunging through thin ice, of recklessly +undressing her emotions; but she had acquired, under the discipline +of his reticences and evasions, a skill almost equal to his own, and +perhaps more remarkable in that it involved keeping time with any tune +he played and reading at sight some uncommonly difficult passages. + +It had taken Thursdale seven years to form this fine talent; but the +result justified the effort. At the crucial moment she had been +perfect: her way of greeting Miss Gaynor had made him regret that he had +announced his engagement by letter. It was an evasion that confessed a +difficulty; a deviation implying an obstacle, where, by common consent, +it was agreed to see none; it betrayed, in short, a lack of confidence +in the completeness of his method. It had been his pride never to put +himself in a position which had to be quitted, as it were, by the back +door; but here, as he perceived, the main portals would have opened +for him of their own accord. All this, and much more, he read in the +finished naturalness with which Mrs. Vervain had met Miss Gaynor. He +had never seen a better piece of work: there was no over-eagerness, +no suspicious warmth, above all (and this gave her art the grace of a +natural quality) there were none of those damnable implications whereby +a woman, in welcoming her friend’s betrothed, may keep him on pins +and needles while she laps the lady in complacency. So masterly a +performance, indeed, hardly needed the offset of Miss Gaynor’s door-step +words--“To be so kind to me, how she must have liked you!”--though he +caught himself wishing it lay within the bounds of fitness to transmit +them, as a final tribute, to the one woman he knew who was unfailingly +certain to enjoy a good thing. It was perhaps the one drawback to +his new situation that it might develop good things which it would be +impossible to hand on to Margaret Vervain. + +The fact that he had made the mistake of underrating his friend’s +powers, the consciousness that his writing must have betrayed his +distrust of her efficiency, seemed an added reason for turning down her +street instead of going on to the club. He would show her that he knew +how to value her; he would ask her to achieve with him a feat infinitely +rarer and more delicate than the one he had appeared to avoid. +Incidentally, he would also dispose of the interval of time before +dinner: ever since he had seen Miss Gaynor off, an hour earlier, on her +return journey to Buffalo, he had been wondering how he should put in +the rest of the afternoon. It was absurd, how he missed the girl.... +Yes, that was it; the desire to talk about her was, after all, at the +bottom of his impulse to call on Mrs. Vervain! It was absurd, if you +like--but it was delightfully rejuvenating. He could recall the time +when he had been afraid of being obvious: now he felt that this return +to the primitive emotions might be as restorative as a holiday in +the Canadian woods. And it was precisely by the girl’s candor, her +directness, her lack of complications, that he was taken. The sense that +she might say something rash at any moment was positively exhilarating: +if she had thrown her arms about him at the station he would not have +given a thought to his crumpled dignity. It surprised Thursdale to find +what freshness of heart he brought to the adventure; and though his +sense of irony prevented his ascribing his intactness to any conscious +purpose, he could but rejoice in the fact that his sentimental economies +had left him such a large surplus to draw upon. + +Mrs. Vervain was at home--as usual. When one visits the cemetery one +expects to find the angel on the tombstone, and it struck Thursdale as +another proof of his friend’s good taste that she had been in no undue +haste to change her habits. The whole house appeared to count on his +coming; the footman took his hat and overcoat as naturally as though +there had been no lapse in his visits; and the drawing-room at once +enveloped him in that atmosphere of tacit intelligence which Mrs. +Vervain imparted to her very furniture. + +It was a surprise that, in this general harmony of circumstances, Mrs. +Vervain should herself sound the first false note. + +“You?” she exclaimed; and the book she held slipped from her hand. + +It was crude, certainly; unless it were a touch of the finest art. The +difficulty of classifying it disturbed Thursdale’s balance. + +“Why not?” he said, restoring the book. “Isn’t it my hour?” And as she +made no answer, he added gently, “Unless it’s some one else’s?” + +She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. “Mine, merely,” + she said. + +“I hope that doesn’t mean that you’re unwilling to share it?” + +“With you? By no means. You’re welcome to my last crust.” + +He looked at her reproachfully. “Do you call this the last?” + +She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. “It’s a way of +giving it more flavor!” + +He returned the smile. “A visit to you doesn’t need such condiments.” + +She took this with just the right measure of retrospective amusement. + +“Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste,” she +confessed. + +Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him into the +imprudence of saying, “Why should you want it to be different from what +was always so perfectly right?” + +She hesitated. “Doesn’t the fact that it’s the last constitute a +difference?” + +“The last--my last visit to you?” + +“Oh, metaphorically, I mean--there’s a break in the continuity.” + +Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts already! + +“I don’t recognize it,” he said. “Unless you make me--” he added, with a +note that slightly stirred her attitude of languid attention. + +She turned to him with grave eyes. “You recognize no difference +whatever?” + +“None--except an added link in the chain.” + +“An added link?” + +“In having one more thing to like you for--your letting Miss Gaynor +see why I had already so many.” He flattered himself that this turn had +taken the least hint of fatuity from the phrase. + +Mrs. Vervain sank into her former easy pose. “Was it that you came for?” + she asked, almost gaily. + +“If it is necessary to have a reason--that was one.” + +“To talk to me about Miss Gaynor?” + +“To tell you how she talks about you.” + +“That will be very interesting--especially if you have seen her since +her second visit to me.” + +“Her second visit?” Thursdale pushed his chair back with a start and +moved to another. “She came to see you again?” + +“This morning, yes--by appointment.” + +He continued to look at her blankly. “You sent for her?” + +“I didn’t have to--she wrote and asked me last night. But no doubt you +have seen her since.” + +Thursdale sat silent. He was trying to separate his words from his +thoughts, but they still clung together inextricably. “I saw her off +just now at the station.” + +“And she didn’t tell you that she had been here again?” + +“There was hardly time, I suppose--there were people about--” he +floundered. + +“Ah, she’ll write, then.” + +He regained his composure. “Of course she’ll write: very often, I hope. +You know I’m absurdly in love,” he cried audaciously. + +She tilted her head back, looking up at him as he leaned against the +chimney-piece. He had leaned there so often that the attitude touched a +pulse which set up a throbbing in her throat. “Oh, my poor Thursdale!” + she murmured. + +“I suppose it’s rather ridiculous,” he owned; and as she remained +silent, he added, with a sudden break--“Or have you another reason for +pitying me?” + +Her answer was another question. “Have you been back to your rooms since +you left her?” + +“Since I left her at the station? I came straight here.” + +“Ah, yes--you COULD: there was no reason--” Her words passed into a +silent musing. + +Thursdale moved nervously nearer. “You said you had something to tell +me?” + +“Perhaps I had better let her do so. There may be a letter at your +rooms.” + +“A letter? What do you mean? A letter from HER? What has happened?” + +His paleness shook her, and she raised a hand of reassurance. “Nothing +has happened--perhaps that is just the worst of it. You always HATED, +you know,” she added incoherently, “to have things happen: you never +would let them.” + +“And now--?” + +“Well, that was what she came here for: I supposed you had guessed. To +know if anything had happened.” + +“Had happened?” He gazed at her slowly. “Between you and me?” he said +with a rush of light. + +The words were so much cruder than any that had ever passed between them +that the color rose to her face; but she held his startled gaze. + +“You know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to be. Are +you surprised that such an idea should occur to her?” + +His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to him. + +Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: “I supposed it might have struck you +that there were times when we presented that appearance.” + +He made an impatient gesture. “A man’s past is his own!” + +“Perhaps--it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared it. But +one learns such truths only by experience; and Miss Gaynor is naturally +inexperienced.” + +“Of course--but--supposing her act a natural one--” he floundered +lamentably among his innuendoes--“I still don’t see--how there was +anything--” + +“Anything to take hold of? There wasn’t--” + +“Well, then--?” escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she did not +complete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh: “She can hardly +object to the existence of a mere friendship between us!” + +“But she does,” said Mrs. Vervain. + +Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no trace of +jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still hear the candid +ring of the girl’s praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she were such an abyss of +insincerity as to dissemble distrust under such frankness, she must at +least be more subtle than to bring her doubts to her rival for solution. +The situation seemed one through which one could no longer move in a +penumbra, and he let in a burst of light with the direct query: “Won’t +you explain what you mean?” + +Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong his +distress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had taught her, it +was difficult to find words robust enough to meet his challenge. It was +the first time he had ever asked her to explain anything; and she had +lived so long in dread of offering elucidations which were not wanted, +that she seemed unable to produce one on the spot. + +At last she said slowly: “She came to find out if you were really free.” + +Thursdale colored again. “Free?” he stammered, with a sense of physical +disgust at contact with such crassness. + +“Yes--if I had quite done with you.” She smiled in recovered security. +“It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion for definitions.” + +“Yes--well?” he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety. + +“Well--and when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she wanted +me to define MY status--to know exactly where I had stood all along.” + +Thursdale sat gazing at her intently; his hand was not yet on the clue. +“And even when you had told her that--” + +“Even when I had told her that I had HAD no status--that I had +never stood anywhere, in any sense she meant,” said Mrs. Vervain, +slowly--“even then she wasn’t satisfied, it seems.” + +He uttered an uneasy exclamation. “She didn’t believe you, you mean?” + +“I mean that she DID believe me: too thoroughly.” + +“Well, then--in God’s name, what did she want?” + +“Something more--those were the words she used.” + +“Something more? Between--between you and me? Is it a conundrum?” He +laughed awkwardly. + +“Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer forbidden to +contemplate the relation of the sexes.” + +“So it seems!” he commented. “But since, in this case, there wasn’t +any--” he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in her gaze. + +“That’s just it. The unpardonable offence has been--in our not +offending.” + +He flung himself down despairingly. “I give it up!--What did you tell +her?” he burst out with sudden crudeness. + +“The exact truth. If I had only known,” she broke off with a beseeching +tenderness, “won’t you believe that I would still have lied for you?” + +“Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of us?” + +“To save you--to hide you from her to the last! As I’ve hidden you from +myself all these years!” She stood up with a sudden tragic import in +her movement. “You believe me capable of that, don’t you? If I had only +guessed--but I have never known a girl like her; she had the truth out +of me with a spring.” + +“The truth that you and I had never--” + +“Had never--never in all these years! Oh, she knew why--she measured us +both in a flash. She didn’t suspect me of having haggled with you--her +words pelted me like hail. ‘He just took what he wanted--sifted and +sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold and left a heap of +cinders. And you let him--you let yourself be cut in bits’--she mixed +her metaphors a little--‘be cut in bits, and used or discarded, while +all the while every drop of blood in you belonged to him! But he’s +Shylock--and you have bled to death of the pound of flesh he has cut out +of you.’ But she despises me the most, you know--far the most--” Mrs. +Vervain ended. + +The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: they +seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the kind +of intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor might intrude without +perceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a grand +opera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private music-room. + +Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between them, +but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of +reticence and ambiguity had fallen. + +His first words were characteristic. “She DOES despise me, then?” he +exclaimed. + +“She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the +heart.” + +He was excessively pale. “Please tell me exactly what she said of me.” + +“She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that while +she understands love or indifference, her eyes have never been opened to +the many intermediate shades of feeling. At any rate, she expressed an +unwillingness to be taken with reservations--she thinks you would have +loved her better if you had loved some one else first. The point of view +is original--she insists on a man with a past!” + +“Oh, a past--if she’s serious--I could rake up a past!” he said with a +laugh. + +“So I suggested: but she has her eyes on this particular portion of it. +She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what you had +done to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered into telling +her.” + +Thursdale drew a difficult breath. “I never supposed--your revenge is +complete,” he said slowly. + +He heard a little gasp in her throat. “My revenge? When I sent for you +to warn you--to save you from being surprised as I was surprised?” + +“You’re very good--but it’s rather late to talk of saving me.” He held +out his hand in the mechanical gesture of leave-taking. + +“How you must care!--for I never saw you so dull,” was her answer. +“Don’t you see that it’s not too late for me to help you?” And as +he continued to stare, she brought out sublimely: “Take the rest--in +imagination! Let it at least be of that much use to you. Tell her I lied +to her--she’s too ready to believe it! And so, after all, in a sense, I +sha’n’t have been wasted.” + +His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave the look +back brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient were too simple to +need oblique approaches. It was extraordinary how a few words had swept +them from an atmosphere of the most complex dissimulations to this +contact of naked souls. + +It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but +something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He went +up to his friend and took her hand. + +“You would do it--you would do it!” + +She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook. + +“Good-by,” he said, kissing it. + +“Good-by? You are going--?” + +“To get my letter.” + +“Your letter? The letter won’t matter, if you will only do what I ask.” + +He returned her gaze. “I might, I suppose, without being out of +character. Only, don’t you see that if your plan helped me it could only +harm her?” + +“Harm HER?” + +“To sacrifice you wouldn’t make me different. I shall go on being what +I have always been--sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do you want my +punishment to fall on HER?” + +She looked at him long and deeply. “Ah, if I had to choose between +you--!” + +“You would let her take her chance? But I can’t, you see. I must take my +punishment alone.” + +She drew her hand away, sighing. “Oh, there will be no punishment for +either of you.” + +“For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me.” + +She shook her head with a slight laugh. “There will be no letter.” + +Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his look. +“No letter? You don’t mean--” + +“I mean that she’s been with you since I saw her--she’s seen you and +heard your voice. If there IS a letter, she has recalled it--from the +first station, by telegraph.” + +He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. “But in the +mean while I shall have read it,” he said. + +The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful emptiness +of the room. + + +The End + + + + + +THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND + +As first published in Atlantic Monthly, August 1904 + + + + +I + + +“Above all,” the letter ended, “don’t leave Siena without seeing Doctor +Lombard’s Leonardo. Lombard is a queer old Englishman, a mystic or a +madman (if the two are not synonymous), and a devout student of the +Italian Renaissance. He has lived for years in Italy, exploring its +remotest corners, and has lately picked up an undoubted Leonardo, which +came to light in a farmhouse near Bergamo. It is believed to be one of +the missing pictures mentioned by Vasari, and is at any rate, according +to the most competent authorities, a genuine and almost untouched +example of the best period. + +“Lombard is a queer stick, and jealous of showing his treasures; but we +struck up a friendship when I was working on the Sodomas in Siena three +years ago, and if you will give him the enclosed line you may get a peep +at the Leonardo. Probably not more than a peep, though, for I hear he +refuses to have it reproduced. I want badly to use it in my monograph on +the Windsor drawings, so please see what you can do for me, and if you +can’t persuade him to let you take a photograph or make a sketch, at +least jot down a detailed description of the picture and get from him +all the facts you can. I hear that the French and Italian governments +have offered him a large advance on his purchase, but that he refuses +to sell at any price, though he certainly can’t afford such luxuries; in +fact, I don’t see where he got enough money to buy the picture. He lives +in the Via Papa Giulio.” + +Wyant sat at the table d’hote of his hotel, re-reading his friend’s +letter over a late luncheon. He had been five days in Siena without +having found time to call on Doctor Lombard; not from any indifference +to the opportunity presented, but because it was his first visit to +the strange red city and he was still under the spell of its more +conspicuous wonders--the brick palaces flinging out their wrought-iron +torch-holders with a gesture of arrogant suzerainty; the great +council-chamber emblazoned with civic allegories; the pageant of Pope +Julius on the Library walls; the Sodomas smiling balefully through the +dusk of mouldering chapels--and it was only when his first hunger was +appeased that he remembered that one course in the banquet was still +untasted. + +He put the letter in his pocket and turned to leave the room, with a +nod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with lustrous +eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table, perusing +the FANFULLA DI DOMENICA. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis, returned +the nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on to +the ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was just +restoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behind +him, and the lustrous-eyed young man advanced through the glass doors of +the dining-room. + +“Pardon me, sir,” he said in measured English, and with an intonation of +exquisite politeness; “you have let this letter fall.” + +Wyant, recognizing his friend’s note of introduction to Doctor Lombard, +took it with a word of thanks, and was about to turn away when he +perceived that the eyes of his fellow diner remained fixed on him with a +gaze of melancholy interrogation. + +“Again pardon me,” the young man at length ventured, “but are you by +chance the friend of the illustrious Doctor Lombard?” + +“No,” returned Wyant, with the instinctive Anglo-Saxon distrust of +foreign advances. Then, fearing to appear rude, he said with a guarded +politeness: “Perhaps, by the way, you can tell me the number of his +house. I see it is not given here.” + +The young man brightened perceptibly. “The number of the house is +thirteen; but any one can indicate it to you--it is well known in Siena. +It is called,” he continued after a moment, “the House of the Dead +Hand.” + +Wyant stared. “What a queer name!” he said. + +“The name comes from an antique hand of marble which for many hundred +years has been above the door.” + +Wyant was turning away with a gesture of thanks, when the other added: +“If you would have the kindness to ring twice.” + +“To ring twice?” + +“At the doctor’s.” The young man smiled. “It is the custom.” + +It was a dazzling March afternoon, with a shower of sun from the +mid-blue, and a marshalling of slaty clouds behind the umber-colored +hills. For nearly an hour Wyant loitered on the Lizza, watching the +shadows race across the naked landscape and the thunder blacken in the +west; then he decided to set out for the House of the Dead Hand. The +map in his guidebook showed him that the Via Papa Giulio was one of the +streets which radiate from the Piazza, and thither he bent his course, +pausing at every other step to fill his eye with some fresh image of +weather-beaten beauty. The clouds had rolled upward, obscuring the +sunshine and hanging like a funereal baldachin above the projecting +cornices of Doctor Lombard’s street, and Wyant walked for some distance +in the shade of the beetling palace fronts before his eye fell on +a doorway surmounted by a sallow marble hand. He stood for a moment +staring up at the strange emblem. The hand was a woman’s--a dead +drooping hand, which hung there convulsed and helpless, as though it had +been thrust forth in denunciation of some evil mystery within the house, +and had sunk struggling into death. + +A girl who was drawing water from the well in the court said that the +English doctor lived on the first floor, and Wyant, passing through +a glazed door, mounted the damp degrees of a vaulted stairway with a +plaster Æsculapius mouldering in a niche on the landing. Facing the +Æsculapius was another door, and as Wyant put his hand on the bell-rope +he remembered his unknown friend’s injunction, and rang twice. + +His ring was answered by a peasant woman with a low forehead and small +close-set eyes, who, after a prolonged scrutiny of himself, his card, +and his letter of introduction, left him standing in a high, cold +ante-chamber floored with brick. He heard her wooden pattens click down +an interminable corridor, and after some delay she returned and told him +to follow her. + +They passed through a long saloon, bare as the ante-chamber, but loftily +vaulted, and frescoed with a seventeenth-century Triumph of Scipio or +Alexander--martial figures following Wyant with the filmed melancholy +gaze of shades in limbo. At the end of this apartment he was admitted +to a smaller room, with the same atmosphere of mortal cold, but showing +more obvious signs of occupancy. The walls were covered with tapestry +which had faded to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation, so that +the young man felt as though he were entering a sunless autumn wood. +Against these hangings stood a few tall cabinets on heavy gilt feet, and +at a table in the window three persons were seated: an elderly lady +who was warming her hands over a brazier, a girl bent above a strip of +needle-work, and an old man. + +As the latter advanced toward Wyant, the young man was conscious of +staring with unseemly intentness at his small round-backed figure, +dressed with shabby disorder and surmounted by a wonderful head, +lean, vulpine, eagle-beaked as that of some art-loving despot of the +Renaissance: a head combining the venerable hair and large prominent +eyes of the humanist with the greedy profile of the adventurer. Wyant, +in musing on the Italian portrait-medals of the fifteenth century, had +often fancied that only in that period of fierce individualism could +types so paradoxical have been produced; yet the subtle craftsmen who +committed them to the bronze had never drawn a face more strangely +stamped with contradictory passions than that of Doctor Lombard. + +“I am glad to see you,” he said to Wyant, extending a hand which seemed +a mere framework held together by knotted veins. “We lead a quiet life +here and receive few visitors, but any friend of Professor Clyde’s is +welcome.” Then, with a gesture which included the two women, he added +dryly: “My wife and daughter often talk of Professor Clyde.” + +“Oh yes--he used to make me such nice toast; they don’t understand toast +in Italy,” said Mrs. Lombard in a high plaintive voice. + +It would have been difficult, from Doctor Lombard’s manner and +appearance to guess his nationality; but his wife was so inconsciently +and ineradicably English that even the silhouette of her cap seemed a +protest against Continental laxities. She was a stout fair woman, with +pale cheeks netted with red lines. A brooch with a miniature portrait +sustained a bogwood watch-chain upon her bosom, and at her elbow lay a +heap of knitting and an old copy of THE QUEEN. + +The young girl, who had remained standing, was a slim replica of her +mother, with an apple-cheeked face and opaque blue eyes. Her small head +was prodigally laden with braids of dull fair hair, and she might have +had a kind of transient prettiness but for the sullen droop of her round +mouth. It was hard to say whether her expression implied ill-temper or +apathy; but Wyant was struck by the contrast between the fierce vitality +of the doctor’s age and the inanimateness of his daughter’s youth. + +Seating himself in the chair which his host advanced, the young man +tried to open the conversation by addressing to Mrs. Lombard some random +remark on the beauties of Siena. The lady murmured a resigned assent, +and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: “My dear sir, my wife +considers Siena a most salubrious spot, and is favorably impressed by +the cheapness of the marketing; but she deplores the total absence of +muffins and cannel coal, and cannot resign herself to the Italian method +of dusting furniture.” + +“But they don’t, you know--they don’t dust it!” Mrs. Lombard protested, +without showing any resentment of her husband’s manner. + +“Precisely--they don’t dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we have not +once seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of the Mangia. Can +you conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has never yet dared to write +it home to her aunts at Bonchurch.” + +Mrs. Lombard accepted in silence this remarkable statement of her +views, and her husband, with a malicious smile at Wyant’s embarrassment, +planted himself suddenly before the young man. + +“And now,” said he, “do you want to see my Leonardo?” + +“DO I?” cried Wyant, on his feet in a flash. + +The doctor chuckled. “Ah,” he said, with a kind of crooning +deliberation, “that’s the way they all behave--that’s what they all come +for.” He turned to his daughter with another variation of mockery in his +smile. “Don’t fancy it’s for your BEAUX YEUX, my dear; or for the mature +charms of Mrs. Lombard,” he added, glaring suddenly at his wife, who had +taken up her knitting and was softly murmuring over the number of her +stitches. + +Neither lady appeared to notice his pleasantries, and he continued, +addressing himself to Wyant: “They all come--they all come; but many are +called and few are chosen.” His voice sank to solemnity. “While I live,” + he said, “no unworthy eye shall desecrate that picture. But I will +not do my friend Clyde the injustice to suppose that he would send an +unworthy representative. He tells me he wishes a description of the +picture for his book; and you shall describe it to him--if you can.” + +Wyant hesitated, not knowing whether it was a propitious moment to put +in his appeal for a photograph. + +“Well, sir,” he said, “you know Clyde wants me to take away all I can of +it.” + +Doctor Lombard eyed him sardonically. “You’re welcome to take away all +you can carry,” he replied; adding, as he turned to his daughter: “That +is, if he has your permission, Sybilla.” + +The girl rose without a word, and laying aside her work, took a key from +a secret drawer in one of the cabinets, while the doctor continued in +the same note of grim jocularity: “For you must know that the picture is +not mine--it is my daughter’s.” + +He followed with evident amusement the surprised glance which Wyant +turned on the young girl’s impassive figure. + +“Sybilla,” he pursued, “is a votary of the arts; she has inherited her +fond father’s passion for the unattainable. Luckily, however, she also +recently inherited a tidy legacy from her grandmother; and having seen +the Leonardo, on which its discoverer had placed a price far beyond +my reach, she took a step which deserves to go down to history: she +invested her whole inheritance in the purchase of the picture, thus +enabling me to spend my closing years in communion with one of the +world’s masterpieces. My dear sir, could Antigone do more?” + +The object of this strange eulogy had meanwhile drawn aside one of the +tapestry hangings, and fitted her key into a concealed door. + +“Come,” said Doctor Lombard, “let us go before the light fails us.” + +Wyant glanced at Mrs. Lombard, who continued to knit impassively. + +“No, no,” said his host, “my wife will not come with us. You might +not suspect it from her conversation, but my wife has no feeling for +art--Italian art, that is; for no one is fonder of our early Victorian +school.” + +“Frith’s Railway Station, you know,” said Mrs. Lombard, smiling. “I like +an animated picture.” + +Miss Lombard, who had unlocked the door, held back the tapestry to let +her father and Wyant pass out; then she followed them down a narrow +stone passage with another door at its end. This door was iron-barred, +and Wyant noticed that it had a complicated patent lock. The girl fitted +another key into the lock, and Doctor Lombard led the way into a small +room. The dark panelling of this apartment was irradiated by streams of +yellow light slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and in +the central brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of faded +velvet. + +“A little too bright, Sybilla,” said Doctor Lombard. His face had grown +solemn, and his mouth twitched nervously as his daughter drew a linen +drapery across the upper part of the window. + +“That will do--that will do.” He turned impressively to Wyant. “Do you +see the pomegranate bud in this rug? Place yourself there--keep your +left foot on it, please. And now, Sybilla, draw the cord.” + +Miss Lombard advanced and placed her hand on a cord hidden behind the +velvet curtain. + +“Ah,” said the doctor, “one moment: I should like you, while looking at +the picture, to have in mind a few lines of verse. Sybilla--” + +Without the slightest change of countenance, and with a promptness which +proved her to be prepared for the request, Miss Lombard began to recite, +in a full round voice like her mother’s, St. Bernard’s invocation to the +Virgin, in the thirty-third canto of the Paradise. + +“Thank you, my dear,” said her father, drawing a deep breath as she +ended. “That unapproachable combination of vowel sounds prepares one +better than anything I know for the contemplation of the picture.” + +As he spoke the folds of velvet slowly parted, and the Leonardo appeared +in its frame of tarnished gold: + +From the nature of Miss Lombard’s recitation Wyant had expected a sacred +subject, and his surprise was therefore great as the composition was +gradually revealed by the widening division of the curtain. + +In the background a steel-colored river wound through a pale calcareous +landscape; while to the left, on a lonely peak, a crucified Christ +hung livid against indigo clouds. The central figure of the foreground, +however, was that of a woman seated in an antique chair of marble with +bas-reliefs of dancing mænads. Her feet rested on a meadow sprinkled +with minute wild-flowers, and her attitude of smiling majesty recalled +that of Dosso Dossi’s Circe. She wore a red robe, flowing in closely +fluted lines from under a fancifully embroidered cloak. Above her high +forehead the crinkled golden hair flowed sideways beneath a veil; one +hand drooped on the arm of her chair; the other held up an inverted +human skull, into which a young Dionysus, smooth, brown and sidelong as +the St. John of the Louvre, poured a stream of wine from a high-poised +flagon. At the lady’s feet lay the symbols of art and luxury: a flute +and a roll of music, a platter heaped with grapes and roses, the torso +of a Greek statuette, and a bowl overflowing with coins and jewels; +behind her, on the chalky hilltop, hung the crucified Christ. A scroll +in a corner of the foreground bore the legend: LUX MUNDI. + +Wyant, emerging from the first plunge of wonder, turned inquiringly +toward his companions. Neither had moved. Miss Lombard stood with her +hand on the cord, her lids lowered, her mouth drooping; the doctor, his +strange Thoth-like profile turned toward his guest, was still lost in +rapt contemplation of his treasure. + +Wyant addressed the young girl. + +“You are fortunate,” he said, “to be the possessor of anything so +perfect.” + +“It is considered very beautiful,” she said coldly. + +“Beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!” the doctor burst out. “Ah, the poor, worn out, +over-worked word! There are no adjectives in the language fresh enough +to describe such pristine brilliancy; all their brightness has been worn +off by misuse. Think of the things that have been called beautiful, and +then look at THAT!” + +“It is worthy of a new vocabulary,” Wyant agreed. + +“Yes,” Doctor Lombard continued, “my daughter is indeed fortunate. +She has chosen what Catholics call the higher life--the counsel of +perfection. What other private person enjoys the same opportunity of +understanding the master? Who else lives under the same roof with an +untouched masterpiece of Leonardo’s? Think of the happiness of being +always under the influence of such a creation; of living INTO it; of +partaking of it in daily and hourly communion! This room is a chapel; +the sight of that picture is a sacrament. What an atmosphere for a young +life to unfold itself in! My daughter is singularly blessed. Sybilla, +point out some of the details to Mr. Wyant; I see that he will +appreciate them.” + +The girl turned her dense blue eyes toward Wyant; then, glancing away +from him, she pointed to the canvas. + +“Notice the modeling of the left hand,” she began in a monotonous voice; +“it recalls the hand of the Mona Lisa. The head of the naked genius will +remind you of that of the St. John of the Louvre, but it is more purely +pagan and is turned a little less to the right. The embroidery on the +cloak is symbolic: you will see that the roots of this plant have +burst through the vase. This recalls the famous definition of Hamlet’s +character in Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the flame, and +the serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we have not +yet been able to decipher.” + +Wyant watched her curiously; she seemed to be reciting a lesson. + +“And the picture itself?” he said. “How do you explain that? LUX MUNDI--what +a curious device to connect with such a subject! What can it +mean?” + +Miss Lombard dropped her eyes: the answer was evidently not included in +her lesson. + +“What, indeed?” the doctor interposed. “What does life mean? As one +may define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a hundred +different meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as many-faceted as +a well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that divine lady? Is it she +who is the true LUX MUNDI--the light reflected from jewels and young +eyes, from polished marble and clear waters and statues of bronze? Or is +that the Light of the World, extinguished on yonder stormy hill, and is +this lady the Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity, +with her back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain? +Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture; but to +me it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence: that all that +is raised in incorruption is sown in corruption; art, beauty, love, +religion; that all our wine is drunk out of skulls, and poured for us by +the mysterious genius of a remote and cruel past.” + +The doctor’s face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten itself +and become taller. + +“Ah,” he cried, growing more dithyrambic, “how lightly you ask what +it means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here am I who have +given my life to the study of the Renaissance; who have violated its +tomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the course of every muscle, +bone, and artery; who have sucked its very soul from the pages of poets +and humanists; who have wept and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiled +and doubted with Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followed +to its source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped in +neolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding tendrils +of the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell you that I +stand abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this picture. It means +nothing--it means all things. It may represent the period which saw its +creation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are volumes +of meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady’s cloak; the blossoms of +its border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don’t +ask what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness for +having seen it!” + +Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm. + +“Don’t excite yourself, father,” she said in the detached tone of a +professional nurse. + +He answered with a despairing gesture. “Ah, it’s easy for you to talk. +You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and every +moment counts!” + +“It’s bad for you,” she repeated with gentle obstinacy. + +The doctor’s sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped into +a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew the +curtain across the picture. + +Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was slipping +from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde’s wish for a photograph. He +now understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor Lombard had +given him leave to carry away all the details he could remember. The +picture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with elusive and +contradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed +suddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of +confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a work +would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of the master’s +thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy. + +The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His +daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to the +room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no longer there, +and he could think of no excuse for lingering. + +He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in the +middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders. + +“It is very good of you,” he said, “to allow one even a glimpse of such +a treasure.” + +She looked at him with her odd directness. “You will come again?” + she said quickly; and turning to her father she added: “You know what +Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give him any account of the +picture without seeing it again.” + +Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person in a +trance. + +“Eh?” he said, rousing himself with an effort. + +“I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he is to +tell Professor Clyde about it,” Miss Lombard repeated with extraordinary +precision of tone. + +Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were being +divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no way connected. + +“Well, well,” the doctor muttered, “I don’t say no--I don’t say no. I +know what Clyde wants--I don’t refuse to help him.” He turned to Wyant. +“You may come again--you may make notes,” he added with a sudden effort. +“Jot down what occurs to you. I’m willing to concede that.” + +Wyant again caught the girl’s eye, but its emphatic message perplexed +him. + +“You’re very good,” he said tentatively, “but the fact is the picture is +so mysterious--so full of complicated detail--that I’m afraid no notes I +could make would serve Clyde’s purpose as well as--as a photograph, say. +If you would allow me--” + +Miss Lombard’s brow darkened, and her father raised his head furiously. + +“A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not ten people +have been allowed to set foot in that room! A PHOTOGRAPH?” + +Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to retreat. + +“I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to having +any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped you might let +me take a photograph for his personal use--not to be reproduced in his +book, but simply to give him something to work by. I should take the +photograph myself, and the negative would of course be yours. If you +wished it, only one impression would be struck off, and that one Clyde +could return to you when he had done with it.” + +Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. “When he had done with it? +Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been re-photographed, +drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to hand, defiled by +every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the blundering praise of +every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I’d as soon give you the picture +itself: why don’t you ask for that?” + +“Well, sir,” said Wyant calmly, “if you will trust me with it, I’ll +engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no eye but +Clyde’s see it while it is out of your keeping.” + +The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he burst +into a laugh. + +“Upon my soul!” he said with sardonic good humor. + +It was Miss Lombard’s turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His last words +and her father’s unexpected reply had evidently carried her beyond her +depth. + +“Well, sir, am I to take the picture?” Wyant smilingly pursued. + +“No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either; mind +that,--nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla,” he cried with sudden +passion, “swear to me that the picture shall never be reproduced! No +photograph, no sketch--now or afterward. Do you hear me?” + +“Yes, father,” said the girl quietly. + +“The vandals,” he muttered, “the desecrators of beauty; if I thought it +would ever get into their hands I’d burn it first, by God!” He turned +to Wyant, speaking more quietly. “I said you might come back--I never +retract what I say. But you must give me your word that no one but Clyde +shall see the notes you make.” + +Wyant was growing warm. + +“If you won’t trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me not to +show my notes!” he exclaimed. + +The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile. + +“Humph!” he said; “would they be of much use to anybody?” + +Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his impatience. + +“To Clyde, I hope, at any rate,” he answered, holding out his hand. The +doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and Wyant added: “When +shall I come, sir?” + +“To-morrow--to-morrow morning,” cried Miss Lombard, speaking suddenly. + +She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders. + +“The picture is hers,” he said to Wyant. + +In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had admitted +him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the door. As +the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm. + +“You have a letter?” she said in a low tone. + +“A letter?” He stared. “What letter?” + +She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass. + + + + +II + + +As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at +its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above +the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the +passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. +But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor +Lombard’s house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her +father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not +look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and +there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture. + +The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow +light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San +Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma’s +St. Catherine. + +The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to +grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the +sunset, the saint’s figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and +the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to +glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the +accidental collaboration of light and color. + +Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the ground +at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of note-paper, +folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing the +superscription:-- + + +To the Count Ottaviano Celsi. + + +Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from? He was +distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air, close +to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then he +turned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it, +that of a man who knelt near the high altar. + +Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard’s maid-servant. +Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciously +carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count Ottaviano +Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman’s +ambulant letter-box? + +Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to explore +his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue to the +mystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put there, and +he was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some unknown hand +to have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while he stood +motionless before the picture. + +At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle, and +turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d’hote. + +The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand. + +“I do not intrude?” he inquired suavely. + +Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel, +glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller. + +“I see,” he remarked with a smile, “that you know the hour at which our +saint should be visited.” + +Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous. + +The stranger stood beamingly before the picture. + +“What grace! What poetry!” he murmured, apostrophizing the St. +Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as he +spoke. + +Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent. + +“But it is cold here--mortally cold; you do not find it so?” The +intruder put on his hat. “It is permitted at this hour--when the church +is empty. And you, my dear sir--do you not feel the dampness? You are +an artist, are you not? And to artists it is permitted to cover the head +when they are engaged in the study of the paintings.” + +He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant’s hat. + +“Permit me--cover yourself!” he said a moment later, holding out the hat +with an ingratiating gesture. + +A light flashed on Wyant. + +“Perhaps,” he said, looking straight at the young man, “you will tell me +your name. My own is Wyant.” + +The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a coroneted +card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was engraved:-- + + + Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi. + + +“I am much obliged to you,” said Wyant; “and I may as well tell you that +the letter which you apparently expected to find in the lining of my hat +is not there, but in my pocket.” + +He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very pale. + +“And now,” Wyant continued, “you will perhaps be good enough to tell me +what all this means.” + +There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by this +request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an ineffectual smile. + +“I suppose you know,” Wyant went on, his anger rising at the sight of +the other’s discomfiture, “that you have taken an unwarrantable liberty. +I don’t yet understand what part I have been made to play, but it’s +evident that you have made use of me to serve some purpose of your own, +and I propose to know the reason why.” + +Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture. + +“Sir,” he pleaded, “you permit me to speak?” + +“I expect you to,” cried Wyant. “But not here,” he added, hearing the +clank of the verger’s keys. “It is growing dark, and we shall be turned +out in a few minutes.” + +He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out into +the deserted square. + +“Now,” said Wyant, pausing on the steps. + +The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession, began to +speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of conciliatory gesture. + +“My dear sir--my dear Mr. Wyant--you find me in an abominable +position--that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have +taken advantage of you--yes! I have counted on your amiability, your +chivalry--too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was to +oblige a lady”--he laid a hand on his heart--“a lady whom I would die +to serve!” He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate English +swept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with some +difficulty, struggled to a comprehension of the case. + +Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to Siena some +months previously, on business connected with his mother’s property; the +paternal estate being near Orvieto, of which ancient city his father +was syndic. Soon after his arrival in Siena the young Count had met the +incomparable daughter of Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love with +her, had prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. Doctor +Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of settlements +arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was possessed of a small +property in her own right, had a short time before invested the +whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo Leonardo. Thereupon Count +Ottaviano’s parents had politely suggested that she should sell the +picture and thus recover her independence; and this proposal being met +by a curt refusal from Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consent +to their son’s marriage. The young lady’s attitude had hitherto been one +of passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and would +never venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known to Ottaviano +her intention of not giving him up, of waiting patiently till events +should take a more favorable turn. She seemed hardly aware, the Count +said with a sigh, that the means of escape lay in her own hands; that +she was of age, and had a right to sell the picture, and to marry +without asking her father’s consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared no +pains to keep himself before her, to remind her that he, too, was +waiting and would never give her up. + +Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade +Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or to +correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine communication, and had +several times, the Count ingenuously avowed, made use of the doctor’s +visitors as a means of exchanging letters. + +“And you told the visitors to ring twice?” Wyant interposed. + +The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could Mr. +Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was enamored! The +young lady had done him the supreme honor of avowing her attachment, of +pledging her unalterable fidelity; should he suffer his devotion to be +outdone? But his purpose in writing to her, he admitted, was not merely +to reiterate his fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to +induce her to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every +detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry out +his instructions he would answer for the result. His idea was that she +should secretly retire to a convent of which his aunt was the Mother +Superior, and from that stronghold should transact the sale of the +Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who was willing to pay a large sum; +a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered, considerably in excess of the young +lady’s original inheritance; once the picture sold, it could, if +necessary, be removed by force from Doctor Lombard’s house, and his +daughter, being safely in the convent, would be spared the painful +scenes incidental to the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were +vindictive enough to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to +make a SOMMATION RESPECTUEUSE, and at the end of the prescribed delay no +power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count Ottaviano. + +Wyant’s anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance. It was +absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his secrets to the +first stranger he met in the streets, and placed his hand on his heart +whenever he mentioned the name of his betrothed. The easiest way out of +the business was to take it as a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this +new Pyramus and Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part +he had unwittingly performed. + +He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano. + +“I won’t deprive you any longer,” he said, “of the pleasure of reading +your letter.” + +“Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa Lombard, +you will take a message from me--the letter she expected this +afternoon?” + +“The letter she expected?” Wyant paused. “No, thank you. I thought +you understood that where I come from we don’t do that kind of +thing--knowingly.” + +“But, sir, to serve a young lady!” + +“I’m sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true”--the Count’s +expressive hands resented the doubt--“but remember that if I am under +obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her father, who has +admitted me to his house and has allowed me to see his picture.” + +“HIS picture? Hers!” + +“Well, the house is his, at all events.” + +“Unhappily--since to her it is a dungeon!” + +“Why doesn’t she leave it, then?” exclaimed Wyant impatiently. + +The Count clasped his hands. “Ah, how you say that--with what force, +with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in that tone--you, +her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an idiot; +the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that he +would kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life +while she remains in that house!” + +“Oh, come,” said Wyant lightly, “they seem to understand each other well +enough. But in any case, you must see that I can’t interfere--at +least you would if you were an Englishman,” he added with an escape of +contempt. + + + + +III + + +Wyant’s affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance with +his land-lady, he was forced to apply to her for the verification of +Count Ottaviano’s story. + +The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct account +of his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was a man of +distinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of Orvieto, and +lived either in that town or on his neighboring estate of Mongirone. His +wife owned a large property near Siena, and Count Ottaviano, who was the +second son, came there from time to time to look into its management. +The eldest son was in the army, the youngest in the Church; and an aunt +of Count Ottaviano’s was Mother Superior of the Visitandine convent in +Siena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who was a most +amiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the daughter of the +strange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but difficulties having arisen as to +the adjustment of the young lady’s dower, Count Celsi-Mongirone had very +properly broken off the match. It was sad for the young man, however, +who was said to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses for +coming to Siena to inspect his mother’s estate. + +Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano’s personality the story had a +tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant mounted the stairs +of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation insensibly assumed another +aspect. It was impossible to take Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was +a suggestion of fatality in the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who +could tell amid what tragic records of domestic tyranny and fluttering +broken purposes the little drama of Miss Lombard’s fate was being played +out? Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify the +lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a suburban villa +with sanitary plumbing and a telephone? + +One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful problems; +and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant’s entrance, raised a placidly +wrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning was mild, and her chair had +been wheeled into a bar of sunshine near the window, so that she made a +cheerful spot of prose in the poetic gloom of her surroundings. + +“What a nice morning!” she said; “it must be delightful weather at +Bonchurch.” + +Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with its +threatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird with +clipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had never seen beyond +the opposite houses. + +Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was surprised +at his reappearance he said at once: “I have come back to study Miss +Lombard’s picture.” + +“Oh, the picture--” Mrs. Lombard’s face expressed a gentle +disappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of acuter +sensibilities. “It’s an original Leonardo, you know,” she said +mechanically. + +“And Miss Lombard is very proud of it, I suppose? She seems to have +inherited her father’s love for art.” + +Mrs. Lombard counted her stitches, and he went on: “It’s unusual in so +young a girl. Such tastes generally develop later.” + +Mrs. Lombard looked up eagerly. “That’s what I say! I was quite +different at her age, you know. I liked dancing, and doing a pretty bit +of fancy-work. Not that I couldn’t sketch, too; I had a master down from +London. My aunts have some of my crayons hung up in their drawing-room +now--I did a view of Kenilworth which was thought pleasing. But I liked +a picnic, too, or a pretty walk through the woods with young people of +my own age. I say it’s more natural, Mr. Wyant; one may have a feeling +for art, and do crayons that are worth framing, and yet not give up +everything else. I was taught that there were other things.” + +Wyant, half-ashamed of provoking these innocent confidences, could not +resist another question. “And Miss Lombard cares for nothing else?” + +Her mother looked troubled. + +“Sybilla is so clever--she says I don’t understand. You know how +self-confident young people are! My husband never said that of +me, now--he knows I had an excellent education. My aunts were very +particular; I was brought up to have opinions, and my husband has always +respected them. He says himself that he wouldn’t for the world miss +hearing my opinion on any subject; you may have noticed that he often +refers to my tastes. He has always respected my preference for living +in England; he likes to hear me give my reasons for it. He is so much +interested in my ideas that he often says he knows just what I am going +to say before I speak. But Sybilla does not care for what I think--” + +At this point Doctor Lombard entered. He glanced sharply at Wyant. “The +servant is a fool; she didn’t tell me you were here.” His eye turned to +his wife. “Well, my dear, what have you been telling Mr. Wyant? About +the aunts at Bonchurch, I’ll be bound!” + +Mrs. Lombard looked triumphantly at Wyant, and her husband rubbed his +hooked fingers, with a smile. + +“Mrs. Lombard’s aunts are very superior women. They subscribe to the +circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly Packet from +the curate’s wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice a +year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets’ wives. They +devoted themselves to the education of their orphan niece, and I think +I may say without boasting that Mrs. Lombard’s conversation shows marked +traces of the advantages she enjoyed.” + +Mrs. Lombard colored with pleasure. + +“I was telling Mr. Wyant that my aunts were very particular.” + +“Quite so, my dear; and did you mention that they never sleep in +anything but linen, and that Miss Sophia puts away the furs and blankets +every spring with her own hands? Both those facts are interesting to the +student of human nature.” Doctor Lombard glanced at his watch. “But we +are missing an incomparable moment; the light is perfect at this hour.” + +Wyant rose, and the doctor led him through the tapestried door and down +the passageway. + +The light was, in fact, perfect, and the picture shone with an inner +radiancy, as though a lamp burned behind the soft screen of the lady’s +flesh. Every detail of the foreground detached itself with jewel-like +precision. Wyant noticed a dozen accessories which had escaped him on +the previous day. + +He drew out his note-book, and the doctor, who had dropped his sardonic +grin for a look of devout contemplation, pushed a chair forward, and +seated himself on a carved settle against the wall. + +“Now, then,” he said, “tell Clyde what you can; but the letter killeth.” + +He sank down, his hands hanging on the arm of the settle like the claws +of a dead bird, his eyes fixed on Wyant’s notebook with the obvious +intention of detecting any attempt at a surreptitious sketch. + +Wyant, nettled at this surveillance, and disturbed by the speculations +which Doctor Lombard’s strange household excited, sat motionless for a +few minutes, staring first at the picture and then at the blank pages +of the note-book. The thought that Doctor Lombard was enjoying his +discomfiture at length roused him, and he began to write. + +He was interrupted by a knock on the iron door. Doctor Lombard rose to +unlock it, and his daughter entered. + +She bowed hurriedly to Wyant, without looking at him. + +“Father, had you forgotten that the man from Monte Amiato was to come +back this morning with an answer about the bas-relief? He is here now; +he says he can’t wait.” + +“The devil!” cried her father impatiently. “Didn’t you tell him--” + +“Yes; but he says he can’t come back. If you want to see him you must +come now.” + +“Then you think there’s a chance?--” + +She nodded. + +He turned and looked at Wyant, who was writing assiduously. + +“You will stay here, Sybilla; I shall be back in a moment.” + +He hurried out, locking the door behind him. + +Wyant had looked up, wondering if Miss Lombard would show any surprise +at being locked in with him; but it was his turn to be surprised, for +hardly had they heard the key withdrawn when she moved close to him, her +small face pale and tumultuous. + +“I arranged it--I must speak to you,” she gasped. “He’ll be back in five +minutes.” + +Her courage seemed to fail, and she looked at him helplessly. + +Wyant had a sense of stepping among explosives. He glanced about him +at the dusky vaulted room, at the haunting smile of the strange picture +overhead, and at the pink-and-white girl whispering of conspiracies in a +voice meant to exchange platitudes with a curate. + +“How can I help you?” he said with a rush of compassion. + +“Oh, if you would! I never have a chance to speak to any one; it’s so +difficult--he watches me--he’ll be back immediately.” + +“Try to tell me what I can do.” + +“I don’t dare; I feel as if he were behind me.” She turned away, fixing +her eyes on the picture. A sound startled her. “There he comes, and +I haven’t spoken! It was my only chance; but it bewilders me so to be +hurried.” + +“I don’t hear any one,” said Wyant, listening. “Try to tell me.” + +“How can I make you understand? It would take so long to explain.” She +drew a deep breath, and then with a plunge--“Will you come here again +this afternoon--at about five?” she whispered. + +“Come here again?” + +“Yes--you can ask to see the picture,--make some excuse. He will come +with you, of course; I will open the door for you--and--and lock you +both in”--she gasped. + +“Lock us in?” + +“You see? You understand? It’s the only way for me to leave the +house--if I am ever to do it”--She drew another difficult breath. +“The key will be returned--by a safe person--in half an hour,--perhaps +sooner--” + +She trembled so much that she was obliged to lean against the settle for +support. + +“Wyant looked at her steadily; he was very sorry for her. + +“I can’t, Miss Lombard,” he said at length. + +“You can’t?” + +“I’m sorry; I must seem cruel; but consider--” + +He was stopped by the futility of the word: as well ask a hunted rabbit +to pause in its dash for a hole! + +Wyant took her hand; it was cold and nerveless. + +“I will serve you in any way I can; but you must see that this way is +impossible. Can’t I talk to you again? Perhaps--” + +“Oh,” she cried, starting up, “there he comes!” + +Doctor Lombard’s step sounded in the passage. + +Wyant held her fast. “Tell me one thing: he won’t let you sell the +picture?” + +“No--hush!” + +“Make no pledges for the future, then; promise me that.” + +“The future?” + +“In case he should die: your father is an old man. You haven’t +promised?” + +She shook her head. + +“Don’t, then; remember that.” + +She made no answer, and the key turned in the lock. + +As he passed out of the house, its scowling cornice and facade of +ravaged brick looked down on him with the startlingness of a strange +face, seen momentarily in a crowd, and impressing itself on the brain as +part of an inevitable future. Above the doorway, the marble hand reached +out like the cry of an imprisoned anguish. + +Wyant turned away impatiently. + +“Rubbish!” he said to himself. “SHE isn’t walled in; she can get out if +she wants to.” + + + + +IV + + +Wyant had any number of plans for coming to Miss Lombard’s aid: he was +elaborating the twentieth when, on the same afternoon, he stepped into +the express train for Florence. By the time the train reached Certaldo +he was convinced that, in thus hastening his departure, he had followed +the only reasonable course; at Empoli, he began to reflect that the +priest and the Levite had probably justified themselves in much the same +manner. + +A month later, after his return to England, he was unexpectedly relieved +from these alternatives of extenuation and approval. A paragraph in +the morning paper announced the sudden death of Doctor Lombard, the +distinguished English dilettante who had long resided in Siena. Wyant’s +justification was complete. Our blindest impulses become evidence of +perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events. + +Wyant could now comfortably speculate on the particular complications +from which his foresight had probably saved him. The climax was +unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step which, +whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospective +compunction, had been set free before her suitor’s ardor could have had +time to cool, and was now doubtless planning a life of domestic felicity +on the proceeds of the Leonardo. One thing, however, struck Wyant as +odd--he saw no mention of the sale of the picture. He had scanned the +papers for an immediate announcement of its transfer to one of the +great museums; but presently concluding that Miss Lombard, out of +filial piety, had wished to avoid an appearance of unseemly haste in the +disposal of her treasure, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Other +affairs happened to engage him; the months slipped by, and gradually the +lady and the picture dwelt less vividly in his mind. + +It was not till five or six years later, when chance took him again to +Siena, that the recollection started from some inner fold of memory. He +found himself, as it happened, at the head of Doctor Lombard’s street, +and glancing down that grim thoroughfare, caught an oblique glimpse +of the doctor’s house front, with the Dead Hand projecting above its +threshold. The sight revived his interest, and that evening, over an +admirable frittata, he questioned his landlady about Miss Lombard’s +marriage. + +“The daughter of the English doctor? But she has never married, +signore.” + +“Never married? What, then, became of Count Ottaviano?” + +“For a long time he waited; but last year he married a noble lady of the +Maremma.” + +“But what happened--why was the marriage broken?” + +The landlady enacted a pantomime of baffled interrogation. + +“And Miss Lombard still lives in her father’s house?” + +“Yes, signore; she is still there.” + +“And the Leonardo--” + +“The Leonardo, also, is still there.” + +The next day, as Wyant entered the House of the Dead Hand, he remembered +Count Ottaviano’s injunction to ring twice, and smiled mournfully to +think that so much subtlety had been vain. But what could have prevented +the marriage? If Doctor Lombard’s death had been long delayed, time +might have acted as a dissolvent, or the young lady’s resolve have +failed; but it seemed impossible that the white heat of ardor in which +Wyant had left the lovers should have cooled in a few short weeks. + +As he ascended the vaulted stairway the atmosphere of the place seemed +a reply to his conjectures. The same numbing air fell on him, like +an emanation from some persistent will-power, a something fierce and +imminent which might reduce to impotence every impulse within its range. +Wyant could almost fancy a hand on his shoulder, guiding him upward with +the ironical intent of confronting him with the evidence of its work. + +A strange servant opened the door, and he was presently introduced to +the tapestried room, where, from their usual seats in the window, Mrs. +Lombard and her daughter advanced to welcome him with faint ejaculations +of surprise. + +Both had grown oddly old, but in a dry, smooth way, as fruits might +shrivel on a shelf instead of ripening on the tree. Mrs. Lombard was +still knitting, and pausing now and then to warm her swollen hands above +the brazier; and Miss Lombard, in rising, had laid aside a strip of +needle-work which might have been the same on which Wyant had first seen +her engaged. + +Their visitor inquired discreetly how they had fared in the interval, +and learned that they had thought of returning to England, but had +somehow never done so. + +“I am sorry not to see my aunts again,” Mrs. Lombard said resignedly; +“but Sybilla thinks it best that we should not go this year.” + +“Next year, perhaps,” murmured Miss Lombard, in a voice which seemed to +suggest that they had a great waste of time to fill. + +She had returned to her seat, and sat bending over her work. Her hair +enveloped her head in the same thick braids, but the rose color of her +cheeks had turned to blotches of dull red, like some pigment which has +darkened in drying. + +“And Professor Clyde--is he well?” Mrs. Lombard asked affably; +continuing, as her daughter raised a startled eye: “Surely, Sybilla, +Mr. Wyant was the gentleman who was sent by Professor Clyde to see the +Leonardo?” + +Miss Lombard was silent, but Wyant hastened to assure the elder lady of +his friend’s well-being. + +“Ah--perhaps, then, he will come back some day to Siena,” she said, +sighing. Wyant declared that it was more than likely; and there ensued +a pause, which he presently broke by saying to Miss Lombard: “And you +still have the picture?” + +She raised her eyes and looked at him. “Should you like to see it?” she +asked. + +On his assenting, she rose, and extracting the same key from the same +secret drawer, unlocked the door beneath the tapestry. They walked down +the passage in silence, and she stood aside with a grave gesture, making +Wyant pass before her into the room. Then she crossed over and drew the +curtain back from the picture. + +The light of the early afternoon poured full on it: its surface appeared +to ripple and heave with a fluid splendor. The colors had lost none of +their warmth, the outlines none of their pure precision; it seemed to +Wyant like some magical flower which had burst suddenly from the mould +of darkness and oblivion. + +He turned to Miss Lombard with a movement of comprehension. + +“Ah, I understand--you couldn’t part with it, after all!” he cried. + +“No--I couldn’t part with it,” she answered. + +“It’s too beautiful,--too beautiful,”--he assented. + +“Too beautiful?” She turned on him with a curious stare. “I have never +thought it beautiful, you know.” + +He gave back the stare. “You have never--” + +She shook her head. “It’s not that. I hate it; I’ve always hated it. But +he wouldn’t let me--he will never let me now.” + +Wyant was startled by her use of the present tense. Her look surprised +him, too: there was a strange fixity of resentment in her innocuous eye. +Was it possible that she was laboring under some delusion? Or did the +pronoun not refer to her father? + +“You mean that Doctor Lombard did not wish you to part with the +picture?” + +“No--he prevented me; he will always prevent me.” + +There was another pause. “You promised him, then, before his death--” + +“No; I promised nothing. He died too suddenly to make me.” Her voice +sank to a whisper. “I was free--perfectly free--or I thought I was till +I tried.” + +“Till you tried?” + +“To disobey him--to sell the picture. Then I found it was impossible. I +tried again and again; but he was always in the room with me.” + +She glanced over her shoulder as though she had heard a step; and to +Wyant, too, for a moment, the room seemed full of a third presence. + +“And you can’t”--he faltered, unconsciously dropping his voice to the +pitch of hers. + +She shook her head, gazing at him mystically. “I can’t lock him out; +I can never lock him out now. I told you I should never have another +chance.” + +Wyant felt the chill of her words like a cold breath in his hair. + +“Oh”--he groaned; but she cut him off with a grave gesture. + +“It is too late,” she said; “but you ought to have helped me that day.” + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Short Fiction of Edith +Wharton, Part 1 (of 10), by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY SHORT FICTION *** + +***** This file should be named 295-0.txt or 295-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/295/ + +Produced by Judith Boss + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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