DERELICT
In Harry Sevier's outer office his clerk glanced backward with a
startled expression, his law-book dropping from his fingers. "That's
queer," he muttered. "I never heard him laugh like that before.
Doesn't sound like a joke, somehow."
He rose and tapped lightly on the inner door, which he had closed upon
his employer a moment before. But there was no response and he went
back to his seat--and the volume he was studying. "Wonder if it was
that note I gave him," he speculated.
The tap had fallen on deaf ears. Harry was sitting in the other room,
rigidly staring at the note in question. There was on him a feeling of
actual physical sickness. He did not know that he had laughed. At
last he rose, and crumpling the written sheet into a ball, laid it in
the fire-place and struck a match. His fingers worked clumsily and he
broke several short off before a flame showed and he stooped painfully
and held the match to its edge. He remained in the crouching posture
while the paper blazed merrily up. In the charring heat it crackled
and opened, showing for a brief instant in the baleful, blackening,
light two sentences it had contained: "_Think as gently of me as you
can. I can never marry you--never._"
He stood up dazedly and groped his way to a chair. So this was the
end! She, Echo, whom he had thought so true, she had been playing with
him--and now the game was over. To her he had been only a puppet, a
card in hand to be played off, discarded for the winning of the greater
point. Poor, brainless, fool that he was! There was no longer a
yesterday--no dear eyes holding his, no Eden wind blowing the
rose-petals nor silver stars swinging the incense of the gods! He had
been living in a fairy-tale, a castle in Spain, a fool's paradise,
hugging a ridiculous dream, that had had no reality to her, had been
but a chapter of coquetry, to which she now wrote _finis_! "Think
gently!" This was the epitaph of her flirtation with Harry
Sevier--flung away, raked under, thrust from sight, a thing for the
scare-crow and the scavenger!
He got up and going slowly to the window, stood many minutes with his
forehead against the pane.
What remained for him? To sweep out of his life the shards of that
beautiful thing that lay destroyed forever? To saunter on, with
hypocritical smirk and affected nonchalance, down the empty declivity
of professional habit, to an undesirable goal? To what end? Of what
value had been his striving? A year ago he might have won her--no one
else had had more than a slight hold upon her then. It had been that
long denial that he had set himself that had undone him! What profit
to him that he had won the mastery over himself, had cut the tentacle
coils that were enwinding him? Of what had been the use?
There darted through his racked mind the sorry jingle that Chilly had
once roared in his rooms:
"Money is dross,
Loving is loss,
There's never a crown that is worth its cross.
Life is a toss,
Dying is moss,
But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!"
Why not "cut it all," as Chilly had longed to do? Plunge out along the
numb, reckless way whose well-remembered mile-stones suddenly beckoned
him--anyhow, anywhere, only to muffle the pain that plucked at him--to
sodden and sink himself in blessed oblivion, like a stone in a pool!
A thing that had lain torpid and dormant in the dregs of his being
thrust up its head. It was as though a chain snapped in his brain, and
what had been shackled there reared, savage and exultant. On the desk
sat a photograph in a silver frame. Once he had been used to turn this
face-down when that cabinet was opened a year ago! He picked this up
and with a sudden wrench of his powerful fingers bent and broke it
across again and again, crushing metal and board into a shapeless
battered twist, and flung it into the fireplace. He snatched up a
heavy paper-weight and with one blow smashed in the door of the little
wall-cabinet. The glass fell in a shower of silvery tinkles to the
floor. He seized the black bottle that sat there--with the rusty
goblet--poured the latter to the brim and drank it off--once, twice,
three times.
He went into the main office. Its occupant was on his feet in alarm at
the crash of shattered glass in the next room. "How much money is
there on the premises?"
The clerk looked in a drawer. "About sixty dollars. It's the last
payment on--"
"Give it to me," said Sevier shortly. He pocketed the wad of bills the
other handed him. "I'm going on a journey--abroad," he said. "I may
be gone some time--in fact, I know I shall. Don't forward anything,
and close up the office till I return. You will draw, as usual, of
course." In another moment he was giving directions--over the
complaisant wire--to his bank. He had always kept his leisure clear by
putting the small details of daily routine book-keeping, as he
expressed it "on the other fellow"; however long his desertion, rent
and camp-followers should be paid with regularity.
Ten minutes later his valet, in a suit of spotless white linen, let him
into his apartment.
"I'm off for a vacation, Suzuki," he said. "To-night, when Bob comes
for orders, tell him to put the car up till I want it. You can go to
night-school and rub up your 'Yingleesh.'"
The Japanese blinked. "A'right," he said. "When we see you some more?"
"When I get back." Sevier lifted a book from the table. "Take this to
Mr. Treadwell's--his house, not his office--you understand. There's no
message; it belongs to him. Don't wait; go at once."
When he had closed the outer door on the valet, Harry drew a long
breath. He opened another door and listened. He could hear Aunt Judy
rattling crockery in the kitchen, humming as she laboured. He would be
undisturbed, the coast was clear. His veins were beating hot now with
the brandy, and the sickness was gone. In the old days the reaction
had been slow and grudging. But during the year his body had refreshed
itself. The inured crust of usage was stripped away, and the physical
side responded speedily.
He went into his dressing-room and threw open the huge walnut wardrobe
that effaced one wall. It was hung from end to end with clothing. He
selected a cheap dun-coloured suit which he had purchased abroad years
before for a walking-tour, of whose strenuous occupations it showed
some traces in wear, a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, companion of
sundry long-ago fishing excursions. He took a nail-scissors and
painstakingly cut from each article its maker's name. In the
bath-room, first with shears and then with a razor, he cut off his
crisp dark beard: never, since his college days abroad, had he seen his
own face like that.
Finally arrayed, he regarded himself in the cheval-glass. The Harry
Sevier of sumptuous apparel and perfect grooming, the familiar spirit
of the place, was gone. In his stead there stood an unfamiliar
presence, with smooth-shaven chin and knock-about clothing. And the
stranger looked from the depths of the mirror with a gaze from which
something tempered and remorseful had vanished, a gaze of avid
recklessness and strange, irresponsible daring, the look of one
standing on the sheer verge of any hazard, welcoming any throw of the
dice, fearing nothing and caring nothing.
As he stood, his hand encountered a small hard object in his pocket.
He drew it out. It was a ring, roughly made and holding an uncut
emerald almost square in shape. He remembered that once, in the woods,
he had bought it for a whim from some gipsy caravan--a luck ring. Much
luck it had brought him! Well, it was the gipsy-road now for him. He
drew off his seal ring and thrust the other on his finger in its place.
He went quickly out the front door and down to the entrance pulling his
hat brim well over his eyes on issuing to the street. As he did so he
grazed a lady leisurely passing. It was the plump and pretty Mrs.
Spottiswoode. Her glance met his fairly, but there was no sign of
recognition; she only drew her trim, modish skirt away from the contact
as she passed on.
He walked more rapidly now. He could scarce keep from running--would
have done so but for the thronging crowds. The brandy he had drunk in
the office had roused the devil of craving; it was in his throat now
like the rasp of hot sand-paper and he craved more alcohol with a
desperate craving that would not be denied. At the edge of the open
square which held the railroad station he plunged into a saloon and
pushed through its groups of loungers to the bar.
"A flask of whisky--the best you have," he said.
The bar-tender wiped his hands on his duck jacket and took down a squat
bottle. "O. and S.," he said, affably. "Just blown in to town?"
Harry stared him in the eye. "Wrap that thing up, and be quick about
it!" was his answer.
The man in the duck jacket muttered something under his breath, banged
the package on the bar and rang up the payment on the cash-register
with an angry jingle.
Harry thrust his purchase under his arm, went out, crossed the square
and climbed aboard a train that was drawing out. He went rapidly
forward to the smoker; there he--and the bottle he carried--would be
unnoticed. As he sat down in the rear seat, the conductor passed by.
Harry had no ticket. He handed him a bill.
"Where to?" asked the other briefly.
"How far do you go?"
"Birmingham."
"To Birmingham, then," said Harry.
The afternoon wore on, station after station went by. The man in the
rear seat sat with his eyes straight before him, moveless except as
from time to time he lifted a bottle to his lips and drank thirstily,
avidly. The frenzied pain was gone now, leaving only a dull ache, and
gradually, very gradually, this too slipped away into the void. He was
now once more the man who had fled in his motor from the face of a
convict in a court-room, flying through the night in a jumbled dream,
strung upon a headlong speed through vacuity.
Evening came, with the glamour of peach-blown valleys and honey-lipped
hills, lying under pale stars against the sunset. Night fell, with its
cooler breeze through the windows, its glimpses of quiet, watching
woods, of white mists wreathing across the meadows, of yellow lights.
But Harry took no heed. Only hours later, when the train rolled into a
great rotunda did he turn his head. He did not know where he was. He
did not even wonder. He rose, kicked the emptied bottle under the
seat, and left the train.
He went out of the station. It sat on a ridge above a great river and
on the lower level he had a glimpse of a sordid purlieus of rambling
streets, red-paned windows and gleaming doorways, the soiled earmarks
of the city's slums.
He crossed the street and plunged aimlessly down a narrow alley toward
the water-front.