A STRAINED CONVERSATION
Arnold swung around the corner of the terrace that evening with
footsteps still eager notwithstanding his long walk. The splendid
egoism of youth had already triumphed, the tragedy of the day had
become a dim thing. He himself was moving forward and onward. He
glanced up at the familiar window, feeling a slight impulse of
disappointment when he received no welcoming wave of the hand. It
was the first time for weeks that Ruth had not been there. He
climbed the five flights of stone stairs, still buoyant and
light-hearted. Glancing into his own room, he found it empty, then
crossed at once the passageway and knocked at Ruth's door. She was
lying back in her chair, with her back toward the window.
"Why, Ruth," he exclaimed, "how dare you desert your post!"
He felt at once that there was something strange in her reception of
him. She stopped him as he came across the room, holding out both
her hands. Her wan face was strained as she gazed and gazed.
Something of the beautiful softness of her features had passed for
the moment. She was so anxious, so terrified lest she should
misread what was written in his face.
"Arnold!" she murmured. "Oh, Arnold!"
He was a little startled. It was as though tragedy had been let
loose in the room.
"Why do you look at me like that, dear?" he cried. "Is there
anything so terrible to tell me? What have I done?"
"God knows!" she answered. "Don't come any nearer for a moment. I
want to look at you."
She was leaning out from her chair. It was true, indeed, that at
that moment some sort of fear had drained all the beauty from her
face, though her eyes shone still like fierce stars.
"You have gone, Arnold," she moaned. "You have slipped away. You are
lost to me."
"You foolish person!" he exclaimed, stepping towards her. "Never in
my life! Never!"
She laid her hand upon the stick which leaned against her chair.
"Not yet," she implored. "Don't come to me yet. Stay there where I
can see your face. Now tell me--tell me everything."
He laughed, not altogether easily, with a note half of resentment,
half of protest.
"Dear Ruth," he pleaded, "what have I done to deserve this? Nothing
has happened to me that I will not tell you about. You have been
sitting here alone, fancying things. And I have news--great news!
Wait till you hear it."
"Go on," she said, simply. "Tell me everything. Begin at last
night."
He drew a little breath. It was, after all, a hard task, this, that
lay before him. Last night in his mind lay far enough back now, a
tangled web of disconnected episodes, linked together by a strangely
sweet emotional thread of sentiment. And the girl was watching his
face with every sense strained to catch his words and the meaning of
them. Vaguely he felt his danger, even from the first.
"Well, I got there in plenty of time," he began. "It was a beautiful
house, beautifully furnished and arranged. The people were queer,
not at all the sort I expected. Most of them seemed half foreign.
They were all very hard to place for such a respectable household as
Mr. Weatherley's should be."
"They were not really, then, Mr. Weatherley's friends?" she asked
quietly.
"As a matter of fact, they were not," he admitted. "That may have
had something to do with it. Mrs. Weatherley was a foreigner. She
came from a little island somewhere in the Mediterranean, and is
half Portuguese. Most of the people were there apparently by her
invitation. After dinner--such a dinner, Ruth--we played bridge.
More people came then. I think there were eight tables altogether.
After I left, most of them stayed on to play baccarat."
Her eyes still held his. Her expression was unchanged.
"Tell me about Mrs. Weatherley," she murmured.
"She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is pale and
she has strange brown eyes, not really brown but lighter. I couldn't
tell you the color for I've never seen anything else like it. And
she has real red-brown hair, and she is slim, and she walks like one
of these women one reads about. They say that she is a Comtesse in
her own right but that she never uses the title."
"And was she kind?" asked Ruth.
"Very kind indeed. She talked to me quite a good deal and I played
bridge at her table. It seems the most amazing thing in the world
that she should ever have married a man like Samuel Weatherley."
"Now tell me the rest," she persisted. "Something else has
happened--I am sure of it."
He dropped his voice a little. The terror was coming into the room.
"There was a man there named Rosario--a Portuguese Jew and a very
wealthy financier. One reads about him always in the papers. I have
heard of him many times. He negotiates loans for foreign governments
and has a bank of his own. I left him there last night, playing
baccarat. This morning Mr. Weatherley called me into his office and
sent me up to the Milan Restaurant with a strange message. I was to
find Mr. Rosario and to see that he did not lunch there--to send him
away somewhere else, in fact. I didn't understand it, but of course
I went."
"And what happened?" she demanded.
He held his breath for a moment.
"I was to take a table just inside the restaurant," he explained,
"and to tell him directly he entered. I did exactly as I was told,
but it was too late. Rosario was stabbed as he was on the point of
entering the restaurant, within a few yards of where I was sitting."
She shivered a little, although her general expression was still
unchanged.
"You mean that he was murdered?"
"He was killed upon the spot," Arnold declared.
"By whom?"
He shook his head.
"No one knows. The man got away. I bought an evening paper as I came
along and I see they haven't arrested any one yet."
"Was there a quarrel?" she asked.
"Nothing of the sort," he replied. "The other man seemed simply to
have run out from somewhere and stabbed him with one thrust. I saw
it all but I was powerless to interfere."
"You saw the man who did it?" she asked.
"Only his arm," Arnold answered. "He kept his body twisted around
somehow. It was a blackguardly thing to do."
"It was horrible!" she murmured.
There was an interruption. The piece of tattered curtain which
concealed the portion of the room given over to Isaac, and which led
beyond to his sleeping chamber, was flung on one side. Isaac himself
stood there, his black eyes alight with anger.
"Liar!" he exclaimed. "Liars, both of you!"
They looked at him without speech, his interruption was so sudden,
so unexpected. The girl had forgotten his presence in the room;
Arnold had never been conscious of it.
"I tell you that Rosario was a robber of mankind," Isaac cried. "He
was one of those who feed upon the bones of the poor. His place was
in Hell and into Hell he has gone. Honor to the hand which started
him on his journey!"
"You go too far, Isaac," Arnold protested. "I never heard any
particular harm of the man except that he was immensely wealthy."
Isaac stretched out his thin hand. His bony forefinger pointed
menacingly towards Arnold.
"You fool!" he cried. "You brainless creature of brawn and muscle!
You have heard no harm of him save that he was immensely wealthy!
Listen. Bear that sentence in your mind and listen to me, listen
while I tell you a story. A party of travelers was crossing the
desert. They lost their way. One man only had water, heaps of water.
There was enough in his possession for all, enough and to spare. The
sun beat upon their heads, their throats were parched, their lips
were black, they foamed at the mouth. On their knees they begged and
prayed for water; he took not even the trouble to reply. He kept
himself cool and refreshed with his endless supply; he poured it
upon his head, he bathed his lips and drank. So he passed on, and
the people around died, cursing him. Last of all, one who had seen
his wife sob out her last breath in his arms, more terrible still
had heard his little child shriek with agony, clutch at him and pray
for water--he saw the truth, and what power there is above so guided
his arm that he struck. The man paid the just price for his colossal
greed. The vultures plucked his heart out in the desert. So died
Rosario!"
Arnold shook his head.
"The cases are not similar, Isaac," he declared.
"You lie!" Isaac shrieked. "There is not a hair's-breadth of
difference! Rosario earned his wealth in an office hung with costly
pictures; he earned it lounging in ease in a padded chair, earned it
by the monkey tricks of a dishonest brain. Never an honest day's
work did he perform in his life, never a day did he stand in the
market-place where the weaker were falling day by day. In fat
comfort he lived, and he died fittingly on the portals of a
restaurant, the cost of one meal at which would have fed a dozen
starving children. Pity Rosario! Pity his soul, if you will, but not
his dirty body!"
"The man is dead," Arnold muttered.
"Dead, and let him rot!" Isaac cried fiercely. "There may be
others!"
He caught up his cloth cap and, without another word, left the room.
Arnold looked after him curiously, more than a little impressed by
the man's passionate earnestness. Ruth, on the other hand, was
unmoved.
"Isaac is Isaac," she murmured. "He sees life like that. He would
wear the flesh off his bones preaching against wealth. It is as
though there were some fire inside which consumed him all the time.
When he comes back, he will be calmer."
But Arnold remained uneasy. Isaac's words, and his attitude of
pent-up fury, had made a singular impression upon him. For those few
moments, the Hyde Park demagogue with his frothy vaporings existed
no longer. It seemed to Arnold as though a flash of the real fire
had suddenly blazed into the room.
"If Isaac goes about the world like that, trouble will come of it,"
he said thoughtfully. "Have you ever heard him speak of Rosario
before?"
"Never," she answered. "I have heard him talk like that, though,
often. To me it sounds like the waves beating upon the shores. They
may rage as furiously, or ripple as softly as the tides can bring
them,--it makes no difference ... I want you to go on, please. I
want you to finish telling me--your news."
Arnold looked away from the closed door. He looked back again into
the girl's face. There was still that appearance of strained
attention about her mouth and eyes.
"You are right," he admitted. "These things, after all, are terrible
enough, but they are like the edge of a storm from which one has
found shelter. Isaac ought to realize it."
"Tell me what this is which has happened to you!" she begged.
He shook himself free from that cloud of memories. He gave himself
up instead to the joy of telling her his good news.
"Listen, then," he said. "Mr. Weatherley, in consideration not
altogether, I am afraid, of my clerklike abilities, but of my
shoulders and muscle, has appointed me his private secretary, with a
seat in his office and a salary of three pounds a week. Think of it,
Ruth! Three pounds a week!"
A smile lightened her face for a moment as she squeezed his fingers.
"But why?" she asked. "What do you mean about your shoulders and
your muscle?"
"It is all very mysterious," he declared, "but do you know I believe
Mr. Weatherley is afraid. He shook like a leaf when I told him of
the murder of Rosario. I believe he thinks that there was some sort
of blackmailing plot and he is afraid that something of the kind
might happen to him. My instructions are never to leave his office,
especially if he is visited by any strangers."
"It sounds absurd," she remarked. "I should have thought that of all
the commonplace, unimaginative people you have ever described to me,
Mr. Weatherley was supreme."
"And I," Arnold agreed. "And so, in a way, he is. It is his
marriage which seems to have transformed him--I feel sure of that.
He is mixing now with people whose manners and ways of thinking are
entirely strange to him. He has had the world he knew of kicked from
beneath his feet, and is hanging on instead to the fringe of
another, of which he knows very little."
Ruth was silent. All the time Arnold was conscious that she was
watching him. He turned his head. Her mouth was once more set and
strained, a delicate streak of scarlet upon the pallor of her face,
but from the fierce questioning of her eyes there was no escape.
"What is it you want to know that I have not told you, Ruth?" he
asked.
"Tell me what happened to you last night!"
He laughed boisterously, but with a flagrant note of insincerity.
"Haven't I been telling you all the time?"
"You've kept something back," she panted, gripping his fingers
frantically, "the greatest thing. Speak about it. Anything is better
than this silence. Don't you remember your promise before you
went--you would tell me everything--everything! Well?"
Her words pierced the armor of his own self-deceit. The bare room
seemed suddenly full of glowing images of Fenella. His face was
transfigured.
"I haven't told you very much about Mrs. Weatherley," he said,
simply. "She is very wonderful and very beautiful. She was very kind
to me, too."
Ruth leaned forward in her chair; her eyes read what she strove yet
hated to see. She threw herself suddenly back, covering her face
with her hands. The strain was over. She began to weep.