somethin' doin' now!"
--XIX--
THE SANCTUARY OF DARKNESS
There was a grim, merciless smile on Madison's lips; and a whiteness in
his face windowed the passion that seethed within him. He stood
motionless, listening, in Helena's room. He heard the automobile going
away again; then he heard Helena's light step in the hallway
without--and the smile died as his lips thinned.
But she did not come in--instead, he heard her go into the Patriarch's
room, heard her talking to the Patriarch, and bid the Flopper go to the
kitchen and make her some tea. Then the Flopper's step sounded, passing
down to the rear, of the cottage.
The minutes passed--then that light footfall again. The door of the room
swung suddenly wide--and closed--there was a cry--and Helena, wide-eyed,
the red of her cheeks fading away, leaned heavily back against the door.
Neither spoke. Madison, in the center of the room, did not move. The
smile came back to his lips.
Helena's great brown eyes met the gray ones, read the ugly glint,
dropped, raised again--and held the gray ones steadily.
Madison gave a short laugh--that was like a curse. His hands at his
sides knotted into lumps.
Then Madison spoke.
"Why don't you say, 'you!--_you_!'--and scream it out and clutch at your
bosom the way they do in story books!" he flung out raucously. "Why
don't you do your little stunt--go on, you're on for the turn--you can
put anything over me, I'm only a complacent, blind-eyed fool! Anything
goes! Why don't you start your act?"
"You don't know what you are saying," she said in a low voice. "If
there's anything you want to talk about, we'd better wait until you're
cooler."
"Oh, hell!" he roared, his passion full to the surface now. "Cut out the
bunk--cut it out! _Anything_! No, it isn't much of anything--for
you--out all night with Thornton. Do you think I'm going to stand for
it! Do you think I'm going to sit and suck my thumb and _share_ you,
and--"
"You lie!" She was away from the door now, close before him, her breath
coming fast, white to the lips, and in a frenzy her little fists
pummelled upon him. "It's a lie--a lie--a lie! It's a lie--and you know
it!"
He pushed her roughly from him.
"It is, eh?"--his words came in a sort of wild laugh. "And I know it--do
I? Why should I know it? What do you think you are? Say, you'd think you
were trying to kid yourself into believing you're the real thing--the
real, sweet, shy, modest Miss Vail. Cut it out! You're name's
Smith--maybe! And it's my money that's keeping you, and you belong to
me--do you understand?"
She stood swaying a little, her hands still tightly clenched, breathing
through half parted lips in short, quick, jerky inhalations like dry
sobs.
"It's true," she faltered suddenly--and suddenly buried her face in her
hands. And then she looked up again, and the brown eyes in their depths
held an anger and a shame. "It's true--I was--was--what you say. But
now"--her voice hurried on, an eagerness, a strange earnestness in
it--"you must believe me--you must. I'll make you--I must make you."
"Oh, don't hurt yourself trying to do it!" jeered Madison. "We're
talking plain now. I'm not taking into account how you feel about it
--don't you fool yourself for a minute. The sanctity of my home hasn't
been ruined--because it couldn't be! Get that? Thornton don't get
you--not for _keeps_! But you and he don't make a monkey of me again. Do
you understand--say, do you get that? You're _mine_--whether you like
it or not--whether you'd rather have Thornton or not. But I'll fix you
both for this--I'm no angel with a cherub's smile! I'll take it out of
Thornton till the laugh he's got now fades to a fare-thee-well; and I'll
put you where there aren't any strings tying me up the way there are
here. Do you understand!" His voice rose suddenly, and for a moment he
seemed to lose all control of himself as he reached for her and caught
her shoulder. "I love you," he flashed out between his teeth. "I love
you--that's what's the matter with me! And you know that--you know
you've got me there--and you'd play the fool with me, would you!" He
dropped his hands--and laughed a short, savage bark--and stepped back
and stared at her.
"Will you listen?"--she was twisting her hands, her head was drooped,
the long lashes veiled her eyes, her lips were quivering. "Will you
listen?" she said again, fighting to steady her voice. "It was an
accident."
"I saw the machine when you drove up--it was a wreck!" snapped Madison
sarcastically.
"We ran out of gasoline," she said quietly.
And then Madison laughed--fiercely--in his derision.
"Oh, keep on!" he rasped. "I told you I was only a blind fool that you
could put anything over on! That accounts for it, of course--a breakdown
isn't so easy to get away with. Gasoline!"
"We were miles from anywhere," she went on. "We had taken what we
thought was a short cut. Mr. Thornton built a shelter for me in the
woods, and went to--to--"
He caught up her hesitation like a flash.
"Fake the lines, Helena, if you haven't had enough rehearsals," he
suggested ironically. "Anything goes--with me."
And now a tinge of color came to Helena's cheeks, and the brown eyes
raised, and flashed, and dropped.
"He went to try and find help," she said. "He was out all night in the
storm. I do not know how far he must have walked. I know the nearest
house was five or six miles away--and there was no horse there--the man
had driven to some town that morning. It was almost daylight before Mr.
Thornton at last came back with a team. We were forty miles from
here--we sent the team to the nearest town for gasoline and then motored
back." She stopped--and then, with a catch in her voice: "He--he was
very good to me."
"Good to me"--the words seemed to stab at Madison, seemed to ring in his
ears and goad him with a fiercer jealousy--and her story of the night,
what she had been saying, save those words, was as nothing, meant
nothing, was swept from his consciousness--and only she, standing there
before him, glorious, maddening in her beauty, remained. Soul, mind and
body leaped into fiery passion--she was his, and his she always would
be--those eyes, those lips, the white throat, those perfect arms to
cling about his neck--and all of heaven and hell and earth were naught
beside her.
"I love you!"--his face was white, his words fierce-breathed, almost
incoherent--and he leaned toward her with a sudden, uncontrollable
movement, his arms sweeping out to clasp her. "I love you, Helena--I
love you. Do you understand--it's _you_! You--I love you!"
"You _love_ me!"--she retreated from him, but her head was raised now,
and her voice rang with a bitterness cold as the touch of death. "Love!
What do you know of _love_! We talk plain, you say. Love--love for me!
Passion, vice, lust, sin--and, oh, my God, degradation and misery and
shame--love! Love! That is _your_ love!"
He stood for a moment and stared at her again--and her face was as
pallid ivory. And something seemed to daze him, and he brushed his hand
across his eyes--the logic was faulty, torn and pitiful, and he groped
after the flaw.
"It's--it's your love as well as mine," he said in a stumbling way--then
his brain flashed quick into action. "My love--what other love have
_you_ known but that?" he cried. "It's _our_ love--the love we have
known together--and we're going back to it--see? I've had enough of
this. You pack your trunks--and pack them quick! We're going to beat it
out of here! We're going back to our--love. We're going back where I
don't have to sit around like a puling fool and watch Thornton chuck you
under the chin--we're going where he'll want a tombstone if he ever
shows his face there. You thought the game would hold me to the last
jackpot--did you? Well, I've got enough--and there's no game big enough
to make me stand for this. That looks like love--doesn't it?" He burst
again into a sudden, mirthless laugh--and once again swept his
hand across his eyes. "We're going to beat it out of here
now--to-night--to-morrow morning."
But now she had drawn further away from him--and there was a frightened
look in her eyes, and her lips quivered pitifully.
"No--I can't--I can't," she cried out. "No, no--I can't--I can't go back
to _that_."
"That! That--is love," he said wildly. "The only love you know. What
more do you want? There's loot enough now, and--ha, ha!--that little
contribution of Thornton's, to give you all the money you want. Love,
Helena--you and I--the old love--you and I together again, Helena. I
tell you I love you--do you hear? I love you--and I'll have you--I love
you! What do you know, what do you care about any other kind of love!"
She looked at him, misery and fear still in her eyes, and her slight
figure seemed to droop, and her hands hung heavy, listless, at her
sides.
"I care"--the words came in a strange mechanical way from her lips. "Oh,
I care. I can't--I won't go back to that. And I know--I know now. I have
learned what love is."
Quick over Madison's face surged the red in an unstemmed tide--volcanic
within him his love that he knew now possessed his very soul, jealousy
that, blinding, robbed him of his senses, roused him to frenzy.
"Oh, you've learned what love is, have you--_with him_!" he cried--and
sprang for her and snatched her into his arms. "And you won't come, eh?
Well, I've learned what love is too in the last month--and if I can't
get it one way, I'll get it another"--he was raining mad kisses upon her
face, her hair, her eyes--"I love you, I tell you--I love you!"
With a cry she tried to struggle from him--and then fought and struck at
him, beating upon his face with her fists. Fiercer, closer he held
her--around the little room, staggering this way and that, they circled.
He kissed her, laughing hoarsely like a madman, laughing at the blows,
beside himself, not knowing what he did--mad--mad--mad. He kissed her,
kissed the white throat where the dress was torn now at the neck;
imprisoned a little fist that struck at him and kissed the quivering
knuckles; kissed the wealth of glorious, burnished-copper hair that,
unloosened, fell about her, kissed it and buried his face in its rare
fragrance. And then--and then his arms were empty--and he was staring at
the calm, majestic figure of the Patriarch--and Helena was crouched upon
the floor, and, sobbing, was clinging with arms entwined around the old
man's knees.
And so for a little while Madison stood and stared--what had brought the
Patriarch there--the Patriarch who could neither see nor hear nor
speak--what had brought him from his own room across the hall! And
Madison stared, and his hands crept to his temples and pressed upon
them--weak he seemed as from some paroxysm of madness that had passed
over him. The sunlight streaming through the window sheened the
luxuriant mass of hair that falling over shoulders and to the waist
seemed alone to cloak the little figure in its crouched position--the
little figure that shook so convulsively with sobs--the little figure
that clung so desperately at the feet of this god-like, regal man, whose
beard was silver, whose hair was hoary white, upon whose face, marring
none its strength or self-possession, was a troubled, anxious,
questioning look.
Strange! Strange! Madison's hands fell to his sides. The Patriarch's
eyes were turned full upon him, wavering not so much as by the fraction
of an inch--full upon him. And then, as into some holy sanctuary,
fending her from harm and danger, the Patriarch turned a little to
interpose himself before Madison, and, raising Helena, held her in his
arms, her head against his bosom--and one hand lay upon her head and
stroked it tenderly. But upon Madison was still turned those sightless
eyes, that noble face, serene, commanding even in its perturbation, even
in its alert and searching look.
Madison stirred now--stirred uneasily--while the silence held. There was
a solemnity in the silence that seemed to creep upon and pervade the
room--a sense of a vast something that was the antithesis of turmoil,
passion, strife, that seemed to radiate from the saintly figure whose
lips were mute, whose ears heard no sound, whose eyes saw no sight. And
upon Madison it fell potent, masterful, and passion fled, and in its
place came a strange, groping response within him, a revulsion, a
penitence--and he bowed his head.
And then Helena spoke--but her head was turned away from him, hidden on
the Patriarch's breast.
"Once," she said, and her words were like broken whispers, for she was
sobbing still, "once, long, long ago, when I was a little girl, I read
the story of Mary Magdalen. I had almost forgotten it, it was so long
ago, but it has come back to me, and--and it is a glad story--at the
end."
She stopped--and Madison raised his head, and his face was strained as
with some sudden wonder as he looked at her.
"It is a glad story," she said presently. "It--it is my story."
"You mean"--Madison's voice was hoarse--"you mean that you've
turned--_straight_!"
"They love me here," she said. "They trust me and they think me good--as
they are. All think me that--the little children and this dear man
here--and for a little while, since I have been here, I have lived like
that. They made me believe that it was true--_true_. And there was shame
and agony--and hope. It seemed they could not all be wrong, and I have
asked and prayed that I might make it true always--and--and forgiveness
for what I was."
"You mean," he said again hoarsely, and he stepped toward her now, "you
mean that you are--_straight_!"
She did not answer--only now she turned her face toward him and lifted
up her head.
And for a long minute Madison gazed into the tear-splashed eyes, deep,
brave in chastened wistfulness, gazed--and like a man stunned walked
from the room, the cottage, and out across the lawn.
--XX--
TO THE VICTOR ARE THE SPOILS
Many were still about the lawn as he left the cottage--they were all
about him, those sick, half frantic creatures--and still they made
noises; still some of them cried and sobbed; still in their waning
paroxysms they moved hither and thither. They appealed to some numbed,
dormant sense in Madison, in a subconscious way, as things to be
avoided. And so, almost mechanically, he took the little path that,
striking off at right angles to the wagon track where it joined the
Patriarch's lawn, came out again upon the main road at the further end
of the village.
And, as he walked, like tidal waves on-rushing, emotions, utterly at
variance one with another, hurled themselves upon him, and he was swept
from his mental balance, tossed here and there, rolled gasping,
strangling in the chaos and turmoil of the waters, as it were, and,
rising, was hurled back again.
White as death itself was Madison's face; and at times his fingers with
a twitching movement curled into clenched fists, at times his open palms
sought his temples in a queer wriggling way and pressed upon them.
Doubt, anger, fear, a rage unhallowed--in cycles--buffeted him until
his brain reeled, and he was as a man distraught.
It began at the beginning, that cycle, and dragged him along--and left
him like one swooning, tottering, upon the edge of a precipice. And then
it began over again.
And it began always with a picture of the Roost that night--the vicious,
unkempt, ragged figure of the Flopper--the sickly, thin, greedy face of
Pale Face Harry, the drug fiend, winching a little as he plunged the
needle into his flesh--the easy, unprincipled gaiety and eagerness of
Helena for the new path of crime--crime--crime--the Roost exuded
crime--filth--immorality--typified them, framed them well as they had
sat there, the four of them, while that bruised-nosed bouncer had
brought them drink on his rattling tin tray. And then his own
self-satisfied, smug, complacent egotism at his own cleverness, his
unbounded confidence in his own ability to pull off the game, and--
Well, he had pulled it off--he'd won it--won it--won it--everybody had
fallen for it--the boobs had been plentiful--the harvest rich. What was
the matter with him! He'd won--was winning every time the clock ticked.
Somebody back there was probably throwing good hard coin at him this
minute--the damned fool! Madison threw back his head to laugh in
derision, for there was mocking, contemptuous laughter in his soul--but
the laugh died still-born upon his lips.
It was fear now--fear--staggering, appalling him. He was facing
something--_something_--his brain did not seem to define it--something
that was cold and stern and immutable, that was omnipotent, that
embodied awe--a condemnation unalterable, unchangeable, before which he
shrank back with his soul afraid. Before him seemed to unfold itself the
wagon track, the road to the Patriarch's cottage; and he was there
again, and whispering lips were around him, and men and women and
children were there, and in front of them, leading them, slithered that
twisted, misshapen, formless thing--and now they were upon the lawn, and
about him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere was a sea of white faces
out of which the eyes burned like living coals. What power was this
that, loosed, had stricken them to palsied, moaning things!
Madison shivered a little--and a sweat bead oozed out and glistened upon
his forehead. Hark--what was that! Clarionlike, clear as the chimes of a
silver bell, rang now that childish voice--rang out, and rang out
again--and the crutch was gone--and the lame boy ran, ran--_ran_! And
who was that, that stood before him now--that golden-haired woman beside
an empty wheel-chair, whose face was radiant, who cried aloud that she
was _cured_! And who were these others of later days, this motley crowd
of old and young, that passed before him in procession, that cried out
the same words that golden-haired woman by the wheel-chair had
cried--and cried out: "Faith! Faith! Faith!"
Madison swept the sweat bead from his forehead with a trembling hand. It
was a lie--a lie--a lie! He had taught them to say that--but it was all
bunk--and all were fools! He could laugh at them, jeer at them, mock at
them, deride them--they were his playthings--and faith was his
plaything--and he could laugh at them all!
And again he raised his head to laugh; and again the laugh was choked in
his throat, still-born--_Helena was straight_! To his temples went his
twitching hands. Anger raged upon him--and died in fear. Anger, for the
instant maddening him, that he should lose her; rage in ungovernable
fury that the game, his plans, the hoard accumulated, was bursting like
a bubble before his eyes--died in fear. No, no; he had not meant to
laugh or mock--no, no; not that, not that! What was this loosed titanic
power that had done these things--that had brought this change in
Helena; that had brought a change in the Flopper, transforming the
miserable, pitiful, whining thief into a man reaching out for decent
things; that had wrought at least a physical metamorphosis in Pale Face
Harry--that had transfigured those three who, in their ugly, abandoned
natures then, had hung like vultures on his words in the Roost that
night! What was this power that he was trifling with, that brought him
now this cold, dead fear before which he quailed! What was this
_something_ that in his temerity he had dared invoke--that rose now
engulfing him, a puny maggot--that snatched him up and flung him
headlong, shackled, before this nebulous, terrifying tribunal, where out
of nothingness, out of a void, the calm, majestic features of the
Patriarch took form and changed, and changed, and kept changing, and
grew implacable, set with the stamp of doom. What was it--in God's name,
what was it brought these sweat beads bursting to his forehead! Was he
going mad--was he mad already!
And then the cycle again--doubt, anger, fear--until his brain,
exhausted, seemed to refuse its functions; and it was as though, heavy,
oppressing, a dense fog shut down upon his mind and enveloped it; and
now he walked as a man in great haste, hurrying, and now his pace was
slow, uncertain.
And so he went on, following the little path that bordered the woods on
one hand and the fields on the other; went on until he neared the
village--and then he stopped suddenly, and turned about. Some one had
called his name.
From the field, a man climbed over the fence and came toward him. The
man's face was tanned and rugged, his form erect, and the sleeves rolled
back above the elbows displayed browned and muscular forearms. Madison
stared at the man apathetically. This was the farm of course where Pale
Face Harry boarded, and this was Pale Face Harry--but--
"Doc," said Pale Face Harry, and he shuffled his feet and looked down,
"Doc, I got something I've been wanting to say to you for a week."
Madison still gazed at him apathetically--Pale Face Harry for the moment
was as some unwarrantable apparition suddenly appearing before him.
Pale Face Harry raised his eyes, lowered them, kicked at a clod of earth
with the toe of his boot--and raised his eyes again.
"Say," he blurted out, "I'm through, Doc. I'm--I'm going to quit."
Into Madison's stumbling brain leaped and took form but one idea--and he
jumped forward, reaching savagely for Pale Face Harry's throat.
"You'd throw me, would you! You'd throw the game--would you!" he
snarled, as his fingers locked.
Pale Face Harry, twisting, wriggled free--and retreated a step.
"No; I ain't!" he gasped--and then his sentences came tumbling out upon
each other jerkily, as though he were trying to compress what he had to
say into as few words as possible and as quickly as he could, while he
watched Madison warily. "I ain't throwing nothing. I just want to quit
myself. I keeps my mouth shut--see? I don't want none of the share
what's coming. Say, I've got more'n a hundred times that out of it. Look
at me, Doc! Say, I'm like a horse. That's the Patriarch and living
honest. Say, in all me life I never knew what it was before till we
comes here. If I took the dough what's coming I'd go back to the old
hell, and I'd go down and out again. Say, it ain't worth it, there's
nothing in it. I ain't throwing you, Doc--I just blows out of here with
me trap closed. Say, look at me, Doc--don't you get what I mean?"
And then Madison burst into a peal of wild, strange laughter; and, as
though no man stood before him, started on along the path--and Pale Face
Harry sidled out of his way and stared after him.
"For--for God's sake, Doc," he called out, stammering, "what's the
matter?"
But Madison made no answer. He heard Pale Face Harry call out behind
him; in a subconscious, mazed way, he sensed the other following him,
gropingly, hesitantly, for a few yards, then hold back--and finally
stop.
The path swerved. Madison went on--blindly, mechanically, as though,
once set in motion, he must go on. Some ghastly, unnatural thing was
clogging his brain; not only in a mental way, but clogging it until
there was physical hurt and pain, an awful tightness--something--if he
could only reach it with his fingers and claw it away! There was black
madness here, and a pain insufferable--a damnable impotence, robbing him
of even the power, the faculty to think or reason, or to make himself
understand in any logical degree the meaning or the cause of this thing
that sent his brain swirling sick.
He halted. His lips were working; the muscles of his face quivered. And
suddenly, snatching his hat from his head, he flung himself on the
ground and plunged face and head, feverishly, tigerishly, into the
little brook that ran beside the path. Again and again he buried his
face in the cold, clear, refreshing water--and then, still on hands and
knees, he raised his head to listen. Softly, full of a great peace, full
of a strange sweetness that knew no discord, no strife, the notes of the
chapel bell floated across the fields. Evening had come; the day's work
was done--it was benediction time. It was the call of the faithful--the
Angelus of those who believed.