AT a solitary breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed
fantastic, unreal; he retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene,
the thrill of vague words, that lingers disturbingly into the waking
world from a dream. And, when he saw Annot later, there was no trace of
a consequent informality in her manner; she was distant, hedged about by
an evident concern for her father. “I have sent for Professor Jamison.”
She addressed Anthony with blank eyes. “Please be within call in case--”
He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the
entrance of the house--a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, thinlipped
like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in the lower
hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When the
specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold as
glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the garden.
“Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house,” he said
when they were outside; “on the chance that she might need you for
her father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution.” An
involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which
the other pronounced these hopeless words. “Nothing may be done; that
is--it is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so
that you can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a
consultation at Geneva, which he approved.
“He is,” he continued with a warmer, more personal note, “a very
distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been
invaluable.” He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his
wrist, and continued more quickly. “Ten years ago he should have stopped
all work, vegetated--he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced amount
of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. And
we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have
justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he
insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity.
“Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible;
every note is priceless. The end will come--now, at any time.” He had
reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and
stepped into it with a sharp nod. “You may expect violence,” he added,
as the car gathered momentum.
But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed
to have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant
vein of the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of
the arts, in politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer,
searching relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. “I
told him,” he chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, “that he had been
peeping too long at Venus.”
Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence.
For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had
a broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back;
her eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly
candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose
tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a
boy, he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of
the fact--the allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung
overwhelmingly about her the challenge of sex.
Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision
of _the nice_ girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind,
all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering
graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining,
desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but
she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was
a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life,
he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one,
he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness
offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the
conscious modesty of the others.
When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to
her companion. “He hasn't seemed so well--not for years; his little,
gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to
celebrate--something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh,
dreadfully.” The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals
in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich
fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,”
Annot declared. “I think, yes--I'm sure, I should like to go out in the
car.” She rose. “Will you bring it around, please?”
He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her,
enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front
gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby
filament of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps
I'll drive.” He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions.
“Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A
distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the
flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating
unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling
radiance of the arc lights at the crossings.
The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the
obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens,
flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible
greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a
long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more
open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface
below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing
incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds.
They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping
village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking
of a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against
the flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered
ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about
her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly,
regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle
was wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel,
lunged bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but
Anthony, clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then,
decisively, he shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them,
the smooth clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone.
“You did that wonderfully,” she told him with glowing cheeks, shining
eyes; “it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time
on foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable,
moral... a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and
unaccountable to God or society.”
The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes
past one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. “How stupid of you,”
she protested; “silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional
measure of the commonplace. For punishment--on and on. Like Columbus'
men you are afraid of falling over the edge of--propriety.” She turned
to him with solemn eyes. “I assure you there is no edge, no bump or
brimstone, no place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all
continuous--”
He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her,
his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. “Heavens! but
you are good-looking,” she acknowledged, her countenance studiously
critical, impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them;
the machine sang through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down
declines.
Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite
depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of
settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly
to have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly
depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence.
Annoys hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his
unthinking idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic.