In the morning he walked over to Stephen Jannan's office on Fourth
Street. The day was unexpectedly warm, and a mist rose about the wet
bricks of the city. He proceeded directly into Stephen's private
enclosure. "I was about to write you," the latter stated. "It's well
enough for you to direct Mrs. Scofield to confine her pleas to me, and
comparatively simple to picture her drawing a quarterly sum in an
orderly manner; but how you are going to realize that happy conception
is increasingly beyond me. I have to point out to her daily--a great
nuisance it is--that she cannot have her income before it is due. Heaven
knows what she has done with the other money in so short a while. She
hasn't moved, apparently increased her establishment; at your direction
the bills were settled, and heaven knows she had no reluctance in
presenting all that were permissible and a number doubtful. There is, of
course, one probability."
Jasper Penny's thoughts returned to the stony, handsome youth he had
seen in the company of Essie's friends, to the insinuations of the woman
who had been removed protesting her superiority and warning him against
a "tailor's dummy." Well, it was no longer his affair what Essie did
with her money, what in her affections remained unimpaired. Rather it
was reassuring that she had so promptly found solace; it enlarged his
own feeling of freedom. "It got worse, yesterday," Stephen Jannan
continued; "she came to the office, insisted on seeing me. Luckily I was
busy with a mastership that kept me over three hours. But she left, I
was told, with the air of one soon to return. She was brandied with
purpose. There is no end, Jasper, to what I am prepared to do for you;
but, my dear fellow, neither of us can have this. She wept. My young
gentlemen were pierced with sympathetic curiosity. You must realize,
Jasper, that you are not a sparrow, to float unnoticed from ledge to
ledge."
An angry impotence seized Jasper Penny. He was tempted to have Stephen
Jannan turn over to Essie, at once, a conclusive sum of money. That
would put an end to any communication between them, provide her with the
power of self-gratification which for Essie Scofield spelled
forgetfulness.... For a little, he was obliged, wearily, to add.
Together with such a young man as he had seen in her house her capacity
for expenditure would be limitless. She would come back to him with
fresh demands, perhaps at an inconceivably awkward time, in a calculated
hysteria--he had cause to know--surprisingly loud and convincing. Susan
must be absolutely secured against that possibility. He could not help
but think of the latter as yielding in the end, married to him.
He gazed at Stephen Jannan in a sombre perplexity. "A nuisance," the
other nodded. "Only time, I suppose, and the most rigid adherence to
your statements will convince the lady of what she may expect. In the
meanwhile, frankly, we had better put it in some other hands; not so
much on my account as your own--the sympathetic young gentlemen, you
see. That can be easily arranged."
Jasper Penny was not thinking of the material Essie, the present,
concrete problem; but he was once more absorbed in the manner in which
her influence followed, apparently shaped, his existence. He was again
appalled by the vitality of the past; the phrase itself was an error,
there was no past. All that had gone, that was to come, met ceaselessly
in the present, a confusion of hope and regret. It was evident that he
would have to see Essie again, and explain that what she had from him
depended entirely on her reciprocal attitude. This could only be
satisfactory in person. He would go to her at once, to-day. An enormous
reluctance to enter her house again possessed him. The mere act had the
aspect of an acknowledgment of her continued potency, her influence over
him. He put it off as long as possible, and it was past five when he
finally walked slowly toward her door.
She was in; and he saw, on the hall stand, a silk hat and overcoat cut
in an extreme of current fashion. The servant preceded him above, toward
the room usual for casual gatherings; and he heard a sudden low murmur,
expostulation, follow the announcement of his name. Essie Scofield
appeared at the top of the stairs. "Come up," she said in a hesitating,
sullen voice. He mounted without reply. As he had expected Daniel Culser
was present, and rose to greet him negligently, from a lounging attitude
on the sofa. His coat, cut back to the knees, was relentlessly tapered,
the collar enormously rolled and revered, and a white Marseilles
waistcoat bore black spots as large as a Bolivian half dollar; while a
black scarf, it was called the Du Casses, fell in an avalanche of
ruffles. He moved toward the door, fitting his coat carefully about his
slim waist, "I'm away, Essie," he proclaimed.
"When will you come again, Daniel?" she asked with an oppressive
humility. She gazed at Jasper Penny with a momentary delay; then, with
an utter disregard of his presence, laid her hands on the younger man's
shoulders. "Soon," she begged. Obviously ill at ease he abruptly
released himself. "I don't care," she cried defiantly; "I'll tell the
whole world you are the sweetest man in it. Jasper's nothing to me nor I
to him. And I'm not afraid of him, of what he might threaten, either.
Stay, Daniel, and you'll see. I will look out for us, Dan."
Her unexpected frankness was inevitably followed by an awkward silence.
Daniel Culser finally cursed below his breath, avoiding Jasper's cold
inquiring gaze. "I'm glad I said it," Essie proceeded; "now he knows how
things are." She went up again to the younger, and laid a clinging arm
about his shoulders. "I'm mad about you, Daniel, you know it; there's
nothing I wouldn't do for you, give you if I could. Isn't he beautiful?"
she fatulously demanded of Jasper Penny.
"You are making a fool of yourself and me," the subject of her adulation
roughly declared. He removed her arm so forcibly that the scarlet print
of his fingers was visible on her soft, dead white skin. "Probably you
have gone and spoiled everything. And remember what I said. I am a man
of my word."
Jasper Penny dryly thought that the term man was singularly
inappropriate in any connection with the meticulously garbed figure
before him. Essie would have a difficult time with that stony youth. She
regarded him with eyes of idolatry, drawing her fingers over the sleeve
impatiently held aside from her touch. "I'm going," he stated once more,
impolitely; but she barred him at the door. "I want you to stay," she
cried excitedly; "hear what I am going to say, what I am going to do for
you." She advanced toward Jasper Penny. "I asked that Jannan for more
money because I had given Daniel all I had, and I wanted still more, to
give him. I'll demand things all my life for him; everything I have is
his." She gasped, at the verge of an emotional outburst. Her heart
pounded unsteadily beneath an adventitious lace covering; her face was
leaden with startling daubs of vermilion paint. "Give me a great deal
of money, now, at once ... so that I can go to Daniel with my hands
full."
"That is why I came here," Jasper Penny replied; "to tell you that you
must not use up your income at once, on the first week, almost, of its
payment; because you will be able to get no more until another
instalment is due. I haven't the slightest interest in where your money
goes, it is absolutely your own; but I cannot have you after it every
second day. The administration will be put in a different quarter,
rigidly dispensed; and any continued inopportunities will only result in
difficulties for yourself."
She cursed him in a gasping, spent breath. Essie looked ill, he thought.
Daniel Culser, listening at the door, made a movement to leave, but the
woman prevented him, hanging about his neck. "No! No!" she exclaimed.
"It will be all right, I can get it ... more. Be patient." Jasper Penny
walked stiffly to the exit, where he paused at the point of repeating
his warning. Essie Scofield was lifting a quivering, tear-drenched face
to the vexation of the fashionable youth. He was attempting to repulse
her, but she held him with a desperation of feeling. The elder descended
the stairs without further speech.
Outside, the warmth of the day had continued into dusk. The mist had
thickened, above which, in a momentary rift, he could see the stars
swimming in removed constellations. He was wrapped in an utter loathing
of the scene through which he had passed, his undeniable part in it. It
was all hideous beyond words. His late need, his sense of void and
illimitable longing, tormented him ceaselessly. He was sick with
rebellion against life, an affair of cunning traps and mud and fog.
Above the obscured and huddled odium of the city the distances were
clear, serene. Above the degradation ... Susan. A tyrannical desire to
see her possessed him, an absolute necessity for the purification of her
mere presence. Unconsciously he quickened his step, charged with
purpose; but he couldn't go to the Academy now; it was six o'clock. He
must delay an hour at least. Habit prompted him to a supper which he
left untried on its plates, the lighting of a cigar, quickly cold,
forgot. At seven he hurried resolutely over the dark streets with the
dim luminosity of occasional gas lamps floating on the unstirring white
gloom. The bricks under foot were soggy, and the curved sign above her
entrance, the bare willows, dropped a pattering moisture.
She saw him immediately, not in the familiar office, but in a hall laid
with cold matting and nearly filled by a stairway, lit with a lamp at
the further end. "I am sorry," she told him; "I have no place to take
you. The rhetoric mistress is correcting papers there," she indicated
the shut door. He made no immediate answer, content to gaze at her
sensitive, appealing countenance. "It is so warm," she said finally,
colouring at his intentness, "and I have been indoors all day. I might
get my things. We could, perhaps ... a walk," she spoke rapidly, her
head bent from him. She drew back, then hesitated. "Very well," he
replied. Susan disappeared, but she quickly returned, in a little violet
bonnet bound and tied with black, and a dark azure velvet cloak furred
at her wrists and throat. She held a muff doubtfully; but, in the end,
took it with her.
Outside, the mist and night enveloped them in a close, damp veil. They
turned silently to the right, passing the narrow mouth of Currant Alley,
and Quince Street beyond. The bricks became precarious, and gave place
to a walk of boards; the corners about a broad, muddy way were built up;
but farther on the dwellings were scattered--lighted windows showed
dimly behind bare catalpas, iron fences enclosed orderly patches between
sodden flats, gas lamps grew fewer.
A deep, all-pervading contentment surrounded Jasper Penny, an
unreasoning, happy warmth. He said nothing, his stick now striking on
the boards, now sinking into earth, and gazed down at Susan, her face
hid by the rim of her bonnet. This companionship was the best, all, that
life had to offer. He felt no need to importune her about the future,
their marriage; curiously it seemed as though they had been married, and
were walking in the security, the peace, of a valid and enduring bond.
There was no necessity for talk, laborious explanation, periods
infinitely more empty than this silence. They walked as close to each
other as her skirt would permit; and at times her muff, swinging on a
wrist, would brush softly against him. How strangely different the
actual values of existence were from the emphasized, trite moments and
emotions. In the middle of his life, at the point of his greatest
capability for experience, his most transcendent happiness came from the
present, the deliberate, unquestioning walk with Susan, the aimless
progress through an invisible city and under a masked clear heaven of
stars. No remembered thrill compared with it, reached the same height,
achieved a similar dignity of consummation.
The way became more uneven; low clustered sheds rose out of the darkness
against a deeper black beyond, and they came to the river. The bank was
marshy, but a track of pounded oyster shells, visible against the mud,
led to a wharf extending into the solid, voiceless flow of the water.
Jasper Penny stood with Susan gazing into the blanketing gloom. A wan,
disintegrated radiance shone from a riding light in the rigging of a
vessel, and a passing warm blur flattened over the wet deck as a lantern
was carried forward. No other lights, and no movement, rose from the
river; no sound was audible at their back. The city, from the evidence
of Jasper Penny's sensibilities, did not exist; it had fallen out of his
consciousness; suddenly its bricked miles, its involved life stilled or
hectic, stealthy in the dark, seemed a thing temporary, adventitious;
he had an extraordinary feeling of sharing in a permanence, a
continuity, outlasting stone, iron, human tradition. He had been swept,
he thought, into a movement where centuries were but the fretful ticking
of seconds. "Outside death," he said fantastically, unconsciously aloud.
A remarkable sentence recurred to him, the most profound, he told
himself, ever written: "Before he was I am." Its vast implications
easily evaded his finite mind, just as the essence of his present
rapture--it was no less--lay beyond his grasp. He lingered over it; gave
it up ... returned to Susan.
"Wonderful," she said gravely, with a comprehensive wave of her muff.
And her simplicity thrilled him the more with the knowledge that she
shared his feeling. She drew up the fur collar of her cloak, shivered;
and, in the wordless harmony that pervaded them, they turned and
retraced their way.
The rhetoric mistress had left the office with a low turned lamp, and
Jasper Penny stopped, taking the furred wrap from Susan's shoulders. She
slowly untied the velvet strings of her bonnet, and laid it on the
table. She extended her hands toward him, and, taking their cool
slightness, he drew her to him. She rested with the fragrance of her
cheek against his face, with her hands pressed to his breast. They stood
motionless; he closed his eyes, and she was gone. He was confused in the
dimness empty except for himself, and fumbled with, his gloves. Susan's
wrap lay limply over a chair; the damp bonnet ribbons trailed toward the
floor. He looked slowly about, noting every object--a pile of folded
yellow papers, the stove, the globe bearing a quiver of light on its
varnished surface.
The willow trees and board above the entrance were dripping ceaselessly;
the lights of the city, increasing at its centre, like the discs of
floating sunflowers. If he slept he was unaware of it, the magic joy so
equally penetrated his waking and subconscious hours, the feeling of an
elevation higher than years and mountains was so strong. The morning, he
found, was again cold, and clear. He must go out to Jaffa, where new
blast machines demanded attention; but, the day after--
His thoughts were broken by a sharp rap on the outer door. Mr. Stephen
Jannan was below, and demanded to see him immediately. Stephen's
appearance at the hotel at that early hour, he recognized, was unusual.
But a glance at his cousin's serious aspect showed him at once that the
reason was urgent. Stephen Jannan, as customary, was particularly
garbed; and yet he had an expression of haste, disturbance. He said at
once, in the bedroom where Jasper Penny was folding his scarf.
"That young waster, Culser, Daniel Culser, was shot and killed in Mrs.
Scofield's house last evening."
The ends of the scarf fell neglected over the soft, cambric frills of
his shirt. Jasper Penny swallowed dryly. "At what time?" he asked.
"He was seen in the Old White Bear Tavern at about seven, then
apparently he went back to the woman's. The servant said he found the
body at something past nine, and that there had been no other caller but
yourself."
His hearer expressed a deep, involuntary relief. "I was there late in
the afternoon," he acknowledged; "but I left around six." Stephen
Jannan, too, showed a sudden relaxation. "I have already sent a message
to the Mayor," he continued; "confident that you would clear yourself
without delay. Mrs. Scofield's history is, of course, known to the
police. You have only to establish your alibi; she, Essie Scofield,
can't be found for the moment. She may have taken an early stage out of
the city; but it is probable that she has only moved into another police
district. Just where were you, Jasper?"