again, opening his eyes after a moment of blankness, he found himself
kneeling on the sanded floor of the cafe, holding the dead Negro in
his arms. He glanced down at the face, astounded by the look of placid
satisfaction in those wide-open eyes, the smile of recognition, of
gratification, of some nameless and magnificent content....
The woman Marie touched his shoulder. "The fellow's dead, _m'sieur_.
We had better go."
Grimshaw followed her into the street. He noticed that there were no
stars. A bitter wind, forerunner of the implacable _mistral_, had come
up. The door of the café slammed behind them, muffling a sudden uproar
of voices that had burst out with his going....
Grimshaw had a room somewhere in the Old Town; he went there, followed
by the woman. He thought: "I am mad! Mad!" He was frightened, not by
what had happened to him, but because he could not understand. Nor can
I make it clear to you, since no explanation is final when we are
dealing with the inexplicable....
When they reached his room, Marie lighted the kerosene lamp and,
smoothing down her black hair with both hands, said simply: "I stay
with you."
"You must not," Grimshaw answered.
"I love you," she said. "You are a great man. _C'est ça_. That is
that! Besides, I must love someone--I mean, do for someone. You think
that I like pleasure. Ah! Perhaps. I am young. But my heart follows
you. I stay here."
Grimshaw stared at her without hearing. "I opened the door. I went
beyond.... I am perhaps mad. Perhaps privileged. Perhaps what they
have always called me--an incorrigible poet." Suddenly he jumped to
his feet and shouted: "I went a little way with his soul! Victory!
Eternity!"
The woman Marie put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back
into his chair again. She thought, of course, that he was drunk. So
she attempted a simple seduction, striving to call attention to
herself by the coquetries of her kind. Grimshaw pushed her aside and
lay down on the bed with his arms crossed over his eyes. Had he
witnessed a soul's first uncertain steps into a new state? One thing
he knew--he had himself suffered the confusion of death, and had
shared the desperate struggle to penetrate the barrier between the
mortal and the immortal, the known and the unknown, the real and the
incomprehensible. With that realization, he stepped finally out of his
personality into that of the mystic philosopher, Pierre Pilleux. He
heard the woman Marie saying: "Let me stay. I am unhappy." And without
opening his eyes, simply making a brief gesture, he said: "_Eh bien_."
And she stayed.
She never left him again. In the years that followed, wherever
Grimshaw was, there also was Marie--little, swarthy, broad of cheek
and hip, unimaginative, faithful. She had a passion for service. She
cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended
his clothes, watched out for his health--often, I am convinced, she
stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed,
beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material
existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure
of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But
he never loved me." And I believe her.
That night of the Negro's death Grimshaw stood in a wilderness of his
own. He emerged from it a believer in life after death. He preached
this belief in the slums of Marseilles. It began to be said of him
that his presence made death easy, that the touch of his hand steadied
those who were about to die. Feverish, terrified, reluctant, they
became suddenly calm, wistful, and passed quietly as one falls asleep.
"Send for Pierre Pilleux" became a familiar phrase in the Old Town.
I do not believe that he could have touched these simple people had he
not looked the part of prophet and saint. The old Grimshaw was gone.
In his place an emaciated fanatic, unconscious of appetite, unaware of
self, with burning eyes and tangled beard! That finished ugliness
turned spiritual--a self-flagellated aesthete. He claimed that he
could enter the shadowy confines of the "next world." Not heaven. Not
hell. A neutral ground between the familiar earth and an inexplicable
territory of the spirit. Here, he said, the dead suffered
bewilderment; they remembered, desired, and regretted the life they
had just left, without understanding what lay ahead. So far he could
go with them. So far and no farther....
Personal immortality is the most alluring hope ever dangled before
humanity. All of us secretly desire it. None of us really believe in
it. As you say, all of us are afraid and some of us laugh to hide our
fear. Grimshaw wasn't afraid. Nor did he laugh. He _knew_. And you
remember his eloquence--seductive words, poignant, delicious,
memorable words! In his Chelsea days, he had made you sultry with
hate. Now, as Pierre Pilleux, he made you believe in the shining
beauty of the indestructible, the unconquerable dead. You saw them, a
host of familiar figures, walking fearlessly away from you toward the
brightness of a distant horizon. You heard them, murmuring together,
as they passed out of sight, going forward to share the common and
ineffable experience.
Well.... The pagan had disappeared in the psychic! Cecil Grimshaw's
melancholy and pessimism, his love of power, his delight in cruelty,
in beauty, in the erotic, the violent, the strange, had vanished!
Pierre Pilleux was a humanitarian. Cecil Grimshaw never had been.
Grimshaw had revolted against ugliness as a dilettante objects to the
mediocre in art. Pierre Pilleux was conscious of social ugliness.
Having become aware of it, he was a potent rebel. He began to write in
French, spreading his revolutionary doctrine of facile spiritual
reward. He splintered purgatory into fragments; what he offered was an
earthly paradise--humanity given eternal absolution, freed of fear,
prejudice, hatred--above all, of fear--and certain of endless life.
Now that we have entered the cosmic era, we look back at him with
understanding. Then, he was a radical and an atheist.
Of course he had followers--seekers after eternity who drank his
promises like thirsty wanderers come upon a spring in the desert. To
some of them he was a god. To some, a mystic. To some, a healer. To
some--and they were the ones who finally controlled his destiny--he
was simply a dangerous lunatic.
Two women in Marseilles committed suicide--they were followers,
disciples, whatever you choose to call them. At any rate, they
believed that where it was so simple a matter to die, it was foolish
to stay on in a world that had treated them badly. One had lost a son,
the other a lover. One shot herself; the other drowned herself in the
canal. And both of them left letters addressed to Pilleux--enough to
damn him in the eyes of authority. He was told that he might leave
France, or take the consequences--a mild enough warning, but it
worked. He dared not provoke an inquiry into his past. So he shipped
on board a small Mediterranean steamer as fireman, and disappeared, no
one knew where.
Two years later he reappeared in Africa. Marie was with him. They were
living in a small town on the rim of the desert near Biskra. Grimshaw
occupied a native house--a mere hovel, flat-roofed, sun-baked, bare as
a hermit's cell. Marie had hired herself out as _femme de chambre_ in
the only hotel in the place. "I watched over him," she told me. "And
believe me, _monsieur_, he needed care! He was thin as a ghost. He had
starved more than once during those two years. He told me to go back
to France, to seek happiness for myself. But for me happiness was with
him. I laughed and stayed. I loved him--magnificently, _monsieur_."
Grimshaw was writing again--in French--and his work began to appear in
the Parisian journals, a strange poetic prose impregnated with
mysticism. It was Grimshaw, sublimated. I saw it myself, although at
that time I had not heard Waram's story. The French critics saw it.
"This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw. The
style is identical." Waram saw it. He read everything that Pilleux
wrote--with eagerness, with terror. Finally, driven by curiosity, he
went to Paris, got Pilleux's address from the editor of _Gil Blas_,
and started for Africa.
Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last. You see him faintly--an exile,
racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face
wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning. Marie says that he
prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head
thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars. He wrote in the cool
hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes
and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris.
One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently: "Why
don't you get a lover? Take life while you can."
"You say there is eternal life," she protested.
"_N'en doutez-pas_! But you must be rich in knowledge. Put flowers in
your hair. And place your palms against a lover's palms and kiss him
with generosity, _ma petite_. I am not a man; I am a shadow."
Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her
lips against his. "_Je t'aime_," she said simply.
His eyes deepened. There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the
old vitality, the old passion for beauty. The look faded, leaving his
eyes "like flames that are quenched." Marie shivered, covered her face
with her hands, and ran out. "There was no blood in him," she told me.
"He was like a spirit--a ghost. So meagre! So wan! Waxen hands. Yellow
flesh. And those eyes, in which, _monsieur_, the flame was quenched!"
And this is the end of the curious story.... Waram went to Biskra and
from there to the village where Grimshaw lived. Grimshaw saw him in
the street one evening and followed him to the hotel. He lingered
outside until Waram had registered at the _bureau_ and had gone to his
room. Then he went in and sent word that "Pierre Pilleux was below and
ready to see Doctor Waram."
He waited in the "garden" at the back of the hotel. No one was about.
A cat slept on the wall. Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with
orange light. Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes.
It was breathless, hot, quiet. He thought: "Waram has come because
Dagmar is dead. Or the public has found me out!"
Waram came immediately. He stood in the doorway a moment, staring at
the grotesque figure which faced him. He made a terrified gesture, as
if he would shut out what he saw. Then he came into the garden,
steadying himself by holding on to the backs of the little iron garden
chairs. The poet saw that Waram had not changed so very much--a little
gray hair in that thick, black mop, a few wrinkles, a rather stodgy
look about the waist. No more. He was still Waram, neat,
self-satisfied, essentially English.... Grimshaw strangled a feeling
of aversion and said quietly: "Well, Waram. How d'you do? I call
myself Pilleux now."
Waram ignored his hand. Leaning heavily on one of the chairs, he
stared with a passionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he said at last.
"Why, yes," Grimshaw answered. "Didn't you know?"
Waram licked his lips. In a whisper he said: "I killed you in
Switzerland six years ago. Killed you, you understand."
Grimshaw touched his breast with both hands. "You lie.
"Here I am."
"You are dead."
"Dead?"
"Before God, I swear it."
"Dead?"
Grimshaw felt once more the on-rushing flood of darkness. His thoughts
flashed back over the years. The "wall." His suffering. The dog. The
song in the field. The Negro. The door that opened. The stars. His own
flesh, fading into spirit, into shadows....
"Dead?" he demanded again.
Waram's eyes wavered. He laughed unsteadily and looked behind him.
"Strange," he said. "I thought I saw----" He turned and went quickly
across the garden into the hotel. Grimshaw called once, in a loud
voice: "Waram!" But the doctor did not even turn his head. Grimshaw
followed him, overtook him, touched his shoulder. Waram paid no
attention. Going to the _bureau_ he said to the proprietor: "You told
me that a Monsieur Pilleux wished to see me."
"_Oui, monsieur_. He was waiting for you in the garden."
"He is not there now."
"But just a moment ago----"
"I am _here_," Grimshaw interrupted.
The proprietor brushed past Waram and peered into the garden. It was
twilight out there now. The cat still slept on the wall. Dust on the
leaves. Stillness....
"I'm sorry, _monsieur_. He seems to have disappeared."
Doctor Waram straightened his shoulders. "Ah," he said. "Disappeared.
Exactly." And passing Grimshaw without a glance he went upstairs.
Grimshaw spoke to the proprietor. But the little man bent over the
desk, and began to write in an account book. His pen went on
scratching, inscribing large, flourishing numbers in a neat column....
Grimshaw shrugged and went into the street. The crowds paid no
attention to him--but then, they never had. A dog sniffed at his
heels, whined, and thrust a cold nose into his hand.
He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting
before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at
herself.... She had put a flower in her hair. Her lips were parted.
She smiled at some secret thought. Grimshaw watched her a moment; then
with a leap of his heart he touched her shoulder. And she did not
turn, did not move....
He knew! He put his fingers on her cheek, her neck, the shining braids
of her coarse black hair. Then he walked quickly out of the house, out
of the village, toward the desert.
Two men joined him. One of them said: "I have just died." They went on
together, their feet whispering in the sand, walking in a globe of
darkness until the stars came out--then they saw one another's pale
faces and eager, frightened eyes. Others joined them. And others. Men.
Women. A child. Some wept and some murmured and some laughed.
"Is this death?"
"Where now, brother?"
Grimshaw thought: "The end. What next? Beauty. Love. Illusion.
Forgetfulness."
He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his face to the stars,
walked steadily forward with that company of the dead, into the
desert, out of the story at last.
COMET [Published originally under title, "The Comet."]
By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX
From _American Magazine_
No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable conditions
than Comet. He was descended from a famous family of pointers. Both
his mother and father were champions. Before he opened his eyes, while
he was still crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as
puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked
him out.
"That's the best un in the bunch."
When he was only three weeks old he pointed a butterfly that lit in
the yard in front of his nose.
"Come here, Molly," yelled Jim to his wife. "Pointed--the little
cuss!"
When Thompson started taking the growing pups out of the yard, into
the fields to the side of the Devants' great southern winter home, Oak
Knob, it was Comet who strayed farthest from the man's protecting
care. And when Jim taught them all to follow when he said "Heel," to
drop when he said "Drop," and to stand stock-still when he said "Ho,"
he learned far more quickly than the others.
At six months he set his first covey of quail, and remained perfectly
staunch. "He's goin' to make a great dog," said Thompson.
Everything--size, muscle, nose, intelligence, earnestness--pointed to
the same conclusion. Comet was one of the favoured of the gods.
One day, after the leaves had turned red and brown and the mornings
grown chilly, a crowd of people, strangers to him, arrived at Oak
Knob. Then out of the house with Thompson came a big man in tweed
clothes, and the two walked straight to the curious young dogs, who
were watching them with shining eyes and wagging tails.
"Well, Thompson," said the big man, "which is the future champion
you've been writing me about?"
"Pick him out for yourself, sir," said Thompson confidently.
After that they talked a long time planning for the future of Comet.
His yard training was now over (Thompson was only yard trainer), and
he must be sent to a man experienced in training and handling for
field trials.
"Larsen's the man to bring him out," said the big man in tweeds, who
was George Devant himself. "I saw his dogs work in the Canadian
Derby."
Thompson spoke hesitatingly, apologetically, as if he hated to bring
the matter up. "Mr. Devant, ... you remember, sir, a long time ago
Larsen sued us for old Ben."
"Yes, Thompson; I remember, now that you speak of it."
"Well, you remember the court decided against him, which was the only
thing it could do, for Larsen didn't have any more right to that dog
than the Sultan of Turkey. But, Mr. Devant, I was there, and I saw
Larsen's face when the case went against him."
Devant looked keenly at Thompson.
"Another thing, Mr. Devant," Thompson went on, still hesitatingly;
"Larsen had a chance to get hold of this breed of pointers and lost
out, because he dickered too long, and acted cheesy. Now they've
turned out to be famous. Some men never forget a thing like that.
Larsen's been talkin' these pointers down ever since, sir."
"Go on," said Devant.
"I know Larsen's a good trainer. But it'll mean a long trip for the
young dog to where he lives. Now, there's an old trainer lives near
here, Wade Swygert. There never was a straighter man than him. He used
to train dogs in England."
Devant smiled. "Thompson, I admire your loyalty to your friends; but I
don't think much of your business sense. We'll turn over some of the
others to Swygert, if he wants 'em. Comet must have the best. I'll
write Larsen to-night, Thompson. To-morrow, crate Comet and send him
off."
Just as no dog ever came into the world under more favourable
auspices, so no dog ever had a bigger "send-off" than Comet. Even the
ladies of the house came out to exclaim over him, and Marian Devant,
pretty, eighteen, and a sports-woman, stooped down, caught his head
between her hands, looked into his fine eyes, and wished him "Good
luck, old man." In the living-room the men laughingly drank toasts to
his future, and from the high-columned portico Marian Devant waved him
good-bye, as in his clean padded crate he was driven off, a bewildered
youngster, to the station.
Two days and two nights he travelled, and at noon of the third day, at
a lonely railroad station in a prairie country that rolled like a
heavy sea, he was lifted, crate and all, off the train. A lean,
pale-eyed, sanctimonious-looking man came toward him.
"Some beauty that, Mr. Larsen," said the agent as he helped Larsen's
man lift the crate onto a small truck.
"Yes," drawled Larsen in a meditative voice, "pretty enough to look
at--but he looks scared--er--timid."
"Of course he's scared," said the agent; "so would you be if they was
to put you in some kind of a whale of a balloon an' ship you in a
crate to Mars."
The station agent poked his hands through the slats and patted the
head. Comet was grateful for that, because everything was strange. He
had not whined nor complained on the trip, but his heart had pounded
fast, and he had been homesick.
And everything continued to be strange: the treeless country through
which he was driven, the bald house and huge barns where he was lifted
out, the dogs that crowded about him when he was turned into the
kennel yard. These eyed him with enmity and walked round and round
him. But he stood his ground staunchly for a youngster, returning
fierce look for fierce look, growl for growl, until the man called him
away and chained him to a kennel.
For days Comet remained chained, a stranger in a strange land. Each
time at the click of the gate announcing Larson's entrance he sprang
to his feet from force of habit, and stared hungrily at the man for
the light he was accustomed to see in human eyes. But with just a
glance at him the man would turn one or more of the other dogs loose
and ride off to train them.
But he was not without friends of his own kind. Now and then another
young dog (he alone was chained up) would stroll his way with wagging
tail, or lie down near by, in that strange bond of sympathy that is
not confined to man. Then Comet would feel better and would want to
play, for he was still half puppy. Sometimes he would pick up a stick
and shake it, and his partner would catch the other end. They would
tug and growl with mock ferocity, and then lie down and look at each
other curiously.
If any attention had been paid him by Larsen, Comet would have quickly
overcome his feeling of strangeness. He was no milksop. He was like an
overgrown boy, off at college or in some foreign city. He was
sensitive, and not sure of himself. Had Larsen gained his confidence,
it would all have been different. And as for Larsen--he knew that
perfectly well.
One fine sunny afternoon Larsen entered the yard, came straight to
him, and turned him loose. In the exuberance of his spirits he ran
round and round the yard, barking in the faces of his friends. Larsen
let him out, mounted a horse, and commanded him to heel. He obeyed
with wagging tail.
A mile or more down the road Larsen turned off into the fields. Across
his saddle was something the young pointer had had no experience
with--a gun. That part of his education Thompson had neglected, at
least put off, for he had not expected that Comet would be sent away
so soon. That was where Thompson had made a mistake.
At the command "Hi on" the young pointer ran eagerly around the horse,
and looked up into the man's face to be sure he had heard aright. At
something he saw there the tail and ears drooped momentarily, and
there came over him again a feeling of strangeness, almost of dismay.
Larsen's eyes were mere slits of blue glass, and his mouth was set in
a thin line.
At a second command, though, he galloped off swiftly, boldly. Round
and round an extensive field of straw he circled, forgetting any
feeling of strangeness now, every fibre of his being intent on the
hunt, while Larsen, sitting on his horse, watched him with appraising
eyes.
Suddenly there came to Comet's nose the smell of game birds, strong,
pungent, compelling. He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point.
Heretofore in the little training he had had Thompson had come up
behind him, flushed the birds, and made him drop. And now Larsen,
having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, came up behind him, just
as Thompson had done, except that in Larsen's hand was the gun.
The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud
explosion. It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless
powder now used by all hunters. Perhaps it was only an accident that
had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with
black powder shells.
As for Comet he only knew that the birds rose; then above his head
burst an awful roar, almost splitting his tender eardrums, shocking
every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never
felt before. Even then, in the confusion and horror of the surprise,
he turned to the man, head ringing, eyes dilated. A single reassuring
word, and he would have steadied. As for Larsen, though, he declared
afterward (to others and to himself even) that he noticed no
nervousness in the dog; that he was only intent on getting several
birds for breakfast.
Twice, three times, four times, the pump gun bellowed in its
cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves. Comet
turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant--and
then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from that
shattering noise.
Miles he ran. Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. Not once
did he look back. His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear.
Seeing a house, he made for that. It was the noon hour, and a group of
farm hands was gathered in the yard. One of them, with a cry "Mad
dog!" ran into the house after a gun. When he came out, they told him
the dog was under the porch. And so he was. Pressed against the wall,
in the darkness, the magnificent young pointer with the quivering soul
waited, panting, eyes gleaming, the horror still ringing in his ears.
Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath the
porch and dragged him out. He, who had started life favoured of the
gods, who that morning even had been full of high spirits, who had
circled a field like a champion, was now a cringing, shaking creature,
like a homeless cur.