ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the
nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two
guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has
seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long
time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I
wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room
that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors
like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's,
and she says like she was choked up:
“But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry.”
And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house.
“But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!”
I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through
that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.
“You mean suppose _you_ get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look
she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He
didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down
some, and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I
_did_ get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?”
“Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way
I feel. _You_ know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the
way they do in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the
stage to of suited me if _I'd_ been her. I seen folks overdo them little
talks before this.
I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician
feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with
him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that.
They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em
don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they
was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here
first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't
get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see
Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night?
And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot
he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it.”
And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a
woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key,
even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is
ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And
ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring
her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?
Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby
I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated
me purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle.
So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's
coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find
out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?”
But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my
shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors,
and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward
and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and
her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's
kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids,
and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.
Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She
was a peach.
And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle
and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and
years world without end.
Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right
off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to
keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married
to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right
when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown,
pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too
much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of
pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big.
She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and
he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it,
and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that,
too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.
They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got
a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on
the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which
was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy.
First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and
Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the
room, with their back to it.
Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair
does. Will she squeak, I wonders?
“Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller.
Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.
“A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going
with you at all, then?”
That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and
part of a crumpled-up coat tail.
“But I _am_ going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just like
she is going to put her arms around him.
But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the
perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes
like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that
makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.
“Excuse me,” says the perfessor.
They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane
never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But
if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and
having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at
them.
But after a while Jane, she says:
“Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?”
Henry, he starts to say something, too. But----
“Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “_You_ aren't going
to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect.
“Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else
Jane will think the worse of him, “I am----”
“Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute
or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and
my wife.”
When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something
into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised
herself. But she says nothing, except:
“What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean
kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a
little more, and says: “What _can_ you do, Frederick?”
Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
“There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when
they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you
forces it on to me.” Then he says:
“You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?”
She nodded.
“Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?”
The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and
he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the
feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.”
Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way
like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping
ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no
blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making
up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:
“_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just
because you've never beaten me, don't you?”
“No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been
a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you.” Then he turns to Henry
and he says:
“Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in
the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets
up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory.
Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane
a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some
kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't
do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects
it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is
that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one
else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I
wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the
country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable
things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when
the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got
out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?'
And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor
to come back.
“Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill
box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and
chilly: “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science.
All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she
isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I
made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it
gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken.
The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one,
I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait
long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.”
Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of
it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek
on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was.
“But _you_ know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not fair!”
“That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around
each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him
and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the
favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want
him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it.
In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that
he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without
I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The
effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the
difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will
be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he
will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no
talk.” Or they was words to that effect.
He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder
if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's
between them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get
that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of
all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I
been misjudging him all this time.
Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.
“I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of
that kind.”
“Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have
refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already.
You're really the _main_ party to it.
“But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I
ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face
the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane.
If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out
these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the
other of us, or else _I'll_ kill _him_ the other way. And _you_ had
better pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else
let him pick one out for himself,” he says.
Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he
hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry
inside.
Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she
looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's
sake, spunk up some, and take one if it _does_ kill you!” Then she says
out loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!”
And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If
she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur
Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or
not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor.
What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump
in now and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between
them three and Providence.” Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going
to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like
Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with
his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right
and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the
wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's
place I would of let them all off kind o' easy.
Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking.
The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he
reaches over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the
table. “A quarter past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to make
me shoot you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal,” he
says. “It's up to you,” he says, “whether you want to take that pill and
get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way
is sure, but looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any
one,” he says. “Which?” And he pulls a gun.
Henry he looks at the gun.
Then he looks at the pill.
Then he swallows the pill.
The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He
looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry. “Sixteen minutes past one,”
he says. “_Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two_.
I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals.”
And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n
up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his
digestive ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em
and swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops.
Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make
fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa.
“This is murder,” he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but
this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
“It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor
must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it
to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.”
When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top
of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was
turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just
gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He
ketches her. “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look on to his
face, “and let us have a talk.”
She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty
has got. But she can't look away from him.
And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor
had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of
loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I just _needed_ to fetch a yell.
But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like
he'd _always_ been there, and I'd _always_ been staring into that room,
and the last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years
ago.
“You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in
that stare-eyed way. “You're a _murderer,_” she says, saying it like she
was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.
“Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any
chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted
through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and
sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing
you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine
woman like you, Jane,” he says.
Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her
voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:
“It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a
murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she
says. Or they was words to that effect.
And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder
than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't
no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry.
Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is
foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal
better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them.
They will still be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't
never forgive the lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be
most any thing else and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's
all off even if you can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor
kicks Henry in the ribs and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never
even looks at him.
“Jane,” says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, “you got a lot to
forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go
of it if we start over again?”
But Jane never said nothing.
“Jane,” he says, “Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for
good.”
She begins to take a little interest then. “Did Estelle tell you so?”
she says.
“No,” says the perfessor, “Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm
going to tell her in the mornin'.”
But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a
female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says,
“I'm going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired.” And she went out looking
like the perfessor was a perfect stranger.
After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking
tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all
through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills
had one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And
when the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a
rag. So I goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks
about Henry's watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I
thinks I better hunt him up and give it to him.
And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always
remind him of an unpleasant time he once had.
And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that
watch I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail
now.
I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says
it ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the
morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch
in your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar.
One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got
into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is
the truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my
intentions with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes
before leads up to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was
just another mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing
wouldn't I stole the silverware a week before that?
The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't
understand how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial
evidence and still be a honest and upright citizen.
X.--The Penitent
|You, who are not married,” said the penitent, “cannot know--can never
realize----”
He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the
hints of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace
Beaulieu's studio.
“Proceed,” said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. “What I may know is not the
important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me
to that principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit--Ultimate
Spirit--which we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into
Accord with the Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the
Cosmic All.”
“You are right; I do not look to you,” said the penitent, “for ease of
mind or spirit.” And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if
some ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he
stressed the pronoun _you_. But the rest of his scarred and twisted
face was expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked
beard that grew almost to his eyes.
* Author's Note: “The Penitent” was suggested by two poems,
“A Forgiveness,” by Browning, and “The Portrait,” by Owen
Meredith.
Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader--nay, the founder--of one of the
many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in
America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number
of idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a
week, and listened to his expositions of ethics _de luxe_, served with
just the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience.
He was forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long
sensitive fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he
was prosperous.
When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic
writings, when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when
he descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets
of Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when
he hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of
later Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a
garden of flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind--they vibrated
to his words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint
rustling of silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume.
Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu
and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of
them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the
more subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes
of occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted
themselves to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major
claims to fame. And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was
one of the very few men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul
to Dr. Beaulieu, to tell his story and receive spiritual ministration,
in the manner of the confessional. These confessionals, after the public
lectures, had been recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were
giving him, he felt, a firmer grip upon his flock--his disciples, he did
not hesitate to call them.
“I repeat,” said the penitent--if he was a repentant man, indeed--“no
bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the
daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for
him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship.
She was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked.
“For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have
some work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved
the work--and the woman--and thus I gained a double reward. I was a
politician, and something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot,
too. The inheritor of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city
in which I lived, and which my forefathers had helped to build, of
the ring of grafters who were making the name of the town a byword
throughout the nation. The details of that long and hard strife are not
pertinent. I fought with something more than boldness and determination;
I fought with a joy in every struggle, because I fought for something
more than the world knew. The world could not see that my inspiration
was in my home; that in the hours of battle my blood sang joyously with
the thought of--her! Was it any wonder that I worked well?