strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly
early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an
old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of
the city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed,
almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for
nearly a hundred years.
“I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare
relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and
through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left
the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods
on my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear
and came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked
from town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival,
although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already
gathering in.
“As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed
pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared
the orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once
among the boles of the trees.
“He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded
it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his
disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I
was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for
the moment. For the moment, I say.
“There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked
after him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had
had an affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and
met--my wife!
“She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of
excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help
but admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a
much more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face
I read a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth.
“I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And
I recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of
deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of
the blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a
word.
“I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward
the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me
inside. She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle;
but I passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room.
“And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode
came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters
were ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and
thrust into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than
before. We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before
our guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when
the occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with
dumb faces, and go each our severed ways.
“For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked
to forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always
as of some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again,
until I believed it.
“One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I
was to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and
I played our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been
received, and the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and
we were alone with each other once more, she turned to me with a look
something like the one she had met me with on that summer evening a year
before.
“'I want to speak with you,' she said.
“'Yes?'
“They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not
compelled by the necessities.
“'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her.
“'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use
trying to deny it.
“'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said.
“I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without
going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached
the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking
at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that
year, I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful.
“'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought
that you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that
time has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any
messages for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my
place to hunt among the tombs.'
“'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may
ever have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves.
I was not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not.
You asked me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised
me so--and it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your
scorn through this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not
the real reason?'
“'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' “'Listen,' she
said, 'it would surprise you--would it not--to learn that I still love
you--that I have loved you all along--that you are the only man I have
ever really loved--that I love you now? All that is incredible to you,
is it not?'
“'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but--it is incredible to
me.'
“'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you
why it is true, and why--why--the--the other was true, too. You--you
do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if you were a
smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better. Sometimes
I think that you are too--too big, somehow--ever to make a woman happy.
Not too self-centered; you are not consciously selfish; you never mean
to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your nature to people--to
the world at large--instead of to those who should share them.
“'Oh, I know--the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman--the right
kind for you--the kind you thought I was--would not have asked for all
that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to have done
without it; would have lost herself in your love for all humanity. That
is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. But I wasn't.
I wasn't that big.
“'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to
hear you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told
me about it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was
enough for your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to
call me your inspiration; oh, you treated me well--you were faithful
to me--you were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not
understand; that some men will never understand. While you were giving
your days and your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to
what you called the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you
had a wife. Again and again and again I tried to win you back to
what you were when I married you--to the time when your cause was not
all--but you wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel.
“'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as
to overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted
me too much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you.
I loved you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated
you. Can you understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at
the same time? Well, they can.
“'At last--for I was a fool--I took a lover!”
“'What was his name?' I broke in.
“'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was
one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!--the name is nothing--they
were nothing--nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred
for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all--always.'
“'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the
dark--is that it?' I said.
“'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she
spoke with a humility foreign to her nature.
“'And what now?' I asked.
“'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you
everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more
and more and more--now--I am going to die.'
“'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said.
“'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what
that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened,
is it not?--to make things the same as they were before! But it does not
do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know it.'
“'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I
feel that you are worthy of my anger now.'
“Her face cleared almost into something like joy.
“'I have told the truth, and I raise myself from the depths of your
scorn to the place where you can feel a hot rage against me?' she asked.
“'Yes,' I said. And the light on her face was like that of which some
women are capable when they are told that they are beloved.
“'And if I die?' she asked.
“'Who knows but that you might climb by it?' I said. 'Who knows but what
your death might turn my anger to love again?' And with that I turned
and left her there.
“That night I sat all night in my study, and in the morning they brought
me the news that she was dead. She must have used some poison. What, I
do not know; and the physicians called it heart-failure. But what is the
matter, Doctor?”
“Nothing, nothing!” said Dr. Beaulieu. And he motioned for the narrator
to proceed. But there were beads of perspiration upon the healer's
forehead, and a pallor overspread his face.
“I had condemned her to death,” the penitent went on, “and she had been
her own executioner. She had loved me; she had sinned against me;
but she had always loved me; she had hated the flesh that sinned, and
scorned it as much as I; her life was intolerable and she had been her
own executioner.
“The revulsion of feeling came. I loved her again; now that I had lost
her. All that day I shut myself up, seeing no one; refusing to look
at the dozens of telegrams that came pouring in from friends and
acquaintances, thinking--thinking--thinking----
“Night came again; and with it the word that the best friend I had was
in the house; a friend of my college days, who had stood shoulder to
shoulder with me in many a fight, then and since. He had come to be
under the same roof with me in the hour of my bitterest bereavement,
was the word he sent--how bitter now, he did not know. But
he did not intrude upon the privacy of my grief. And I sat
thinking--thinking--thinking--
“Suddenly the idea came to me that I would go upstairs to the chamber
where she was, and look at her once more. Quietly I stole up the stairs,
and through the hushed, dim house, on into the gloomy room, lighted only
by the candles at the head and foot of the curtained couch on which she
lay.
“In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor
so as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room
with the body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the
curtain----
“Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had
formerly worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days
of our married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or
sleeping. And I wondered----
“I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to
tell me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been
able to make her feel anything like _real_ love, after all! I wondered
if she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as
she had at first hugged the thought of our real love--hers and mine. I
wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder
of her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband--and how
long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after
all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made
me love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had
ever fooled a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and
contradictions and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women
do not know, far less men--I wondered whose picture was in that locket!
“I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped
back.
“I had felt something warm there.
“Did she live, after all?
“At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I
went around.
“My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other
side, and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt.
“We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the
others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear.
“'I came for that,' I said.
“'The locket? So did I,” he said. And then added quite simply, 'My
picture is in it.'
“'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that
perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps
that was the cause of my fury.
“His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To
look at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the
world for him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless
of everything else.
“'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.'
“'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you--but
she never loved any one but me--in her heart she never did!'
“'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to
gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her,
you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand
her--love? You who could never give her the things a woman needs and
must have--the warmth--the color--the romance--the poetry of life!
You!--with your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved
_me!_ Why should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest
thing on earth to me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me
because----'
“'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last
night--from her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!'
“He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with
his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow.
“I picked the toy up and looked at it.
“The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face
of--of the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard
wall into the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had
not, for the moment, recognized.
“We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the
locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down----”
The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an
intent gaze:
“Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics,
who set yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a
spiritual director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed
him?”
Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller,
physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to
articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining
something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit
husky:
“No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred
and strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing
the soul out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe.”
It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears,
as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man
that spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked
his lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration
stood out upon his brow.
“You were right,” said Dr. Beaulieu, “in not striking him down. You were
right in sparing him.”
The bearded man laughed. “I did not say that I spared him,” he said.
Dr. Beaulieu looked a question; a question that, perhaps, he dared
not utter; or at least that he did not care to utter. He had dropped
completely his rôle of spiritual counselor; he regarded his visitor with
an emotion that might have been horror and might have been terror,
or might have been a mixture of the two. The visitor replied to the
unspoken interrogation in the healer's manner.
“I did not strike him down. Neither did I spare him. I waited and I--I
used him. I know how to wait; I am of the nature that can wait. It was
years before fate drew all things together for my purpose, and gave him
into my hands--fate, assisted by myself.
“I waited, and I used him. The details are not pertinent for it is not
his story that I am telling. I piloted him to the brink of destruction,
and then--then, I saved him.”
“You saved him?” Dr. Beaulieu was puzzled; but his fear, if fear it was,
had not abated. There was a frank menace, now, in his visitor's air. And
the healer seemed to be struggling, as he listened to the tale, to force
some reluctant brain-cell to unlock and give its stored memories to his
conscious mind.
“I saved him. I saved him to be my creature. I broke him, and I saved
him. I made him my slave, my dog, my--my anything I choose to have him.
I have work for him to do.”
Again the man paused, looking about the rich profusion of Dr. Beaulieu's
studio. There was a table in the room which contained a number of curios
from Eastern lands. The visitor suddenly rose from his chair and picked
from among them a thin, keen-bladed dagger. It was a beautiful weapon,
of some Oriental make; beautiful in its lines; beautiful with the sullen
fire of many jewels blazing in its hilt--an evil levin that got into the
mind and led the thoughts astray even as the dainty deadliness of
the whole tool seduced the hand to grasp and strike. As his visitor,
strangely breaking the flow of his narrative, examined and handled the
thing, Dr. Beaulieu shuddered.
“The man is as much my tool,” said the visitor slowly, “as this dagger
would be your tool, Dr. Beaulieu, if you chose to thrust it into my
breast--or into your own.”
He laid the dagger down on the table, and resumed his seat. Dr. Beaulieu
said nothing, but he found it difficult to withdraw his eyes from his
visitor's steady stare. Slumped and sagged within his chair, he said
nothing. Presently the visitor went on.
“I had a fancy, Dr. Beaulieu; I had a fancy! It suited me to make my
revenge a less obvious thing than striking down the old friend who had
betrayed my love and confidence, a less obvious thing than striking down
the other man--the man whose face was in the locket.”
As he spoke he took from his pocket a locket. He opened it, and gazed
upon the face. The healer half rose from his chair, and then sank back,
with a hoarse, inarticulate murmur. His face had turned livid, and he
trembled in every limb. It was evident that the missing scene which he
had sought before had suddenly been flashed upon the cinema screen of
his recollection. He remembered, now----
“It was my fancy, Dr. Beaulieu, to make one of them take revenge upon
the other, that I might thus be revenged upon them both.”
He suddenly rose, and forced the locket into the healer's nerveless
grasp.
“That face--look at it!” he cried, towering over the collapsed figure
before him.
Compelled by a will stronger than his own, Dr. Beaulieu looked. It
was the counterfeit presentment of himself within. It fell from his
trembling fingers and rolled upon the floor. The cultist buried his face
in his hands.
The other man stepped back and regarded him sardonically for a moment or
two.
“I should not wonder,” he said, “if the man who used to be my best
friend would pay you a visit before long--perhaps in an hour, perhaps in
a week, perhaps in a month.”
He picked up the dagger again, and toyed with it.
“This thing,” he said, impersonally, trying the point upon his finger,
“is sharp. It would give a quick death, a sure death, an almost painless
death, if one used it against another man--or against one's self.”
And without another word he turned and left the room.
Dr. Beaulieu sat and listened to his retreating footsteps. And, long
after they had ceased to sound, Dr. Beaulieu still sat and listened.
Perhaps he was listening for some one to come, now that the bearded
man had left. He sat and listened, and presently he reached over to the
table and picked up the dagger that the visitor had laid down with its
handle toward him. He pressed its point against his finger, as the other
man had done. It was sharp. It would give, as the fellow had said, “a
quick death, a sure death, an almost painless death.”
And as he whispered these words he was still
listening--listening--waiting for some one to come----
XI.--The Locked Box
I
|It was a small, oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep,
by twice that much in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound
and with brass lock and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman
might choose to keep about her room for any one of a half dozen possible
uses.
Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his
unexpectedly early return from a western trip of a month's duration.
He thought he would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not
telephone the news of his arrival to the house, but went home and
entered her room unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped
something into the box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers
of her desk. Then she came to meet him, and he would not have thought
of the matter at all had it not been for just the slightest trace of
confusion in her manner.
She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it
seemed to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never
been a demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer
that description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before.
They had a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner
that the picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed
Clarke's consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because
they were talked out of more important topics rather than because of any
very sharp curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it.
“Oh, nothing!--nothing of any importance--nothing at all,” she said;
and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And he
forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make
Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly
came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come
to mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden
question as she had at his previous sudden entrance.
Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a
rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that
box which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but
wonder. Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal
candor on her part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in
something more than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him,
at the same time clearing up her former hesitation. But no!--why should
he ask her? That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a
trifle, and not worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about
it, nevertheless....
Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His
birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to
surprise him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted
for the whole thing.
With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but
waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together,
on the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it,
expecting every moment that the next she would present him with the
token. But as the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he
finally broke an interval of silence with the remark:
“Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!”
“Guessing? Bring you--what?” And he could see that she was genuinely
puzzled.
“Why, my birthday present.”