It is a mercy one cannot see the future. In that New York misery,
present and to follow, had I known that some fifteen years later I
should be my own master, living more or less “like a gentleman,”
earning my livelihood, though a very bare one, by writing, I could
never have faced what I did face. Any value that may have lain in the
experiences would certainly have been missed, at any rate. If one
knew that the future promised better things, there is no patience in
human beings that could hold and wait for it; if, on the other hand,
it promised worse, I have met no courage that could bear the present.
Those who preach “live in the present only” have common sense on their
side.
With the memory of the past, similarly, such folk show wisdom.
Reincarnation is an interesting theory to many; yet to recall past
lives could have but one effect--to render one ineffective now. To
recall the failures of a mere forty years is bad enough; to look back
over a hundred lives would be disastrous: one could only sit down and
cry.
December had come with its cold and bitter winds, and the doctor, ever
faithful, had let me up. I went for my first little walk, leaning
on Boyde’s arm. Round Gramercy Park we crawled slowly, and that
first taste of fresh air, the sound of wind in the leafless trees,
a faint hint of the sea that reaches even the city streets, gave me
an unforgettable happiness and yearning. The plan to settle in the
backwoods again obsessed me. A little later I had almost persuaded
the doctor, and Kay in my letters, to take up a claim north of the
Muskoka Lakes where we had spent such a happy summer. Boyde was to come
too--“as a sort of excitement, I suppose!” was the doctor’s bitter
comment.
I grew gradually stronger. Reporting was still impossible, but,
introduced by Boyde, I earned something by posing in the studios. A
“sitting” was three hours. Some artists paid by the hour, but Charles
Dana Gibson, then drawing his weekly cartoons in _Life_, always paid
for a full sitting, though he might use his model for an hour only.
He was a rapid worker, and a good fellow; he never forgot to ask
if one was tired of any particular attitude; my first pose to him
was for a broken-down actor leaning against a hoarding covered with
advertisements, the joke being something about a bill-board and a
board-bill. I was thrilled when it appeared in _Life_. There was always
a great rush among the models for Gibson’s studio. The only other poses
I remember are swinging a golf club and sitting for a bishop’s arms and
hands. I wore big sleeves. These, however, were not in Gibson’s studio.
My memory of this work is dim; it was not unpleasant; only its
uncertainty against it, though a good week might bring in as much as
fifteen dollars. Smedley, who illustrated for _Harper’s Magazine_, was
the painter we all disliked most; Cox, son of Bishop Cox, Cleveland
Cox being his full name, I think, was a favourite: he was a gentleman.
There was Zogbaum too, another illustrator, and there was Lynwood
Palmer, the horse-painter, and leading artist on _The Rider and
Driver_, a first-class weekly of that day. “Artist Palmer,” as the
papers called him later, was a character. His kindness to me stands
out. He had very great talent--for getting the likeness of a horse.
We called him “The Horse.” He made a success at his work, painted
the “King’s Horses and Men” in subsequent years, and settled down
eventually--he was an Englishman--I believe, at Heston, Hounslow. His
New York studio was in Fifth Avenue. Many a time he gave me food there.
“Artist Palmer” was self-taught. I forget the whole story, but he
had known his hard times. Looking at my dirty boots the first time I
called, he said: “When I drove a cab here, my boots were better cleaned
than any man’s on the rank.” I was not partial to Dr. Smiles’ “Self
Help.” A “shine” moreover, cost 5 cents, and 5 cents meant a glass of
beer and a meal at a free lunch counter--our invariable lunch at that
time.
Artist Palmer knew Boyde as a bad lot, and told me that Boyde was lying
about me behind my back everywhere, saying that he was supporting me,
paying for my illness, and while borrowing money in my name, explaining
that I spent all he gave me in dissipation! His method was to present a
forged cheque to some good-natured friend after banking hours, obtain
the money, and spend it on himself. A tale of woe, with crocodile
tears, saved him from subsequent arrest. No one ever prosecuted him.
All this I kept to myself, though I watched Boyde more and more
closely. I knew his studio appointments and made him hand over what
he earned. I did also an idiotic thing: I went down and warned the
pastor’s daughter about him. Palmer’s words and my own feeling
persuaded me to this fatal action. She was a beautiful girl. I received
from her the same kind of treatment that I had shown to the man who
first warned me. Boyde, of course, soon knew about it. We had a scene.
I saw for the first time anger in his face, black hatred too. He never
forgave me my stupid indiscretion.... The way he explained my action to
the girl herself was characteristic of him, but I only learned later
how he managed it. In a voluntary confession he wrote a few weeks
afterwards, a confession he judged might convince me he was genuinely
repentant, and at the same time save him from a grave impending fate,
he described it--honestly: “I told her,” he said, “she was to pay no
attention to your warnings, because you wanted me to marry one of your
sisters.”
The way I lost Boyde temporarily comes a little later in his story,
but may be told here because it marked the close of a definite little
chapter in his career with me.
It was the first week in December. I came home--from the doctor’s
house--at two in the morning. The gas was burning, but the room was not
too well lit by the single burner. Boyde lay asleep on the floor as
usual. I moved softly so as not to wake him. I glanced down. What I saw
startled me; more, it gave me a horrid turn. The figure on the mattress
was another man. It was not Boyde. Then, as I cautiously looked closer,
I discovered my mistake. It _was_ Boyde after all, but without his
moustache.
I stared for some minutes in amazement, for the face was completely
altered. The drooping, rather heavy moustache had always hidden his
lips and mouth. I now saw that mouth. And it was a cruel, brutal mouth,
hard, sensual, with ugly thickish lips, contradicting the kindly
blue eyes completely. A sentence of detective-sergeant Heidelberg, a
headquarters man, came back to me, himself a brutal, heartless type, if
ever there was one, but with years of criminal experience behind him:
“Watch the mouth and hands and feet,” he told me once in court. “They
can fake the eyes dead easy, but they can’t fake the mouth hell give
’em. They forgit their hands and feet. Watch their mouth and hands and
feet--the way these fidgit. That give ’em away every time.”
Why had Boyde done this thing? He was a handsome man, the light
graceful moustache was a distinct asset in his appearance. Why had he
shaved suddenly? I stared at the new horrid face for a long time. He
lay sleeping like a child.
I turned to examine the room, as changes might be there too. All seemed
as usual, I saw no difference anywhere. Then my eyes fell on the
cupboard with its half-opened door. Boyde’s coat, that was my own coat,
the only thick one we had between us, hung down from the hook. And, for
the first time, the sight of that coat stirred a dim, painful memory
of the place where I had first worn it. Naturally it was old, but it
was also English. The house in Kent rose up--the lime trees on the
lawn, the tennis courts, my father’s study, his face, my mother’s face,
their voices even, the very smell and atmosphere and feelings of happy
days that now seemed for ever lost. The whole machinery of association
worked suddenly at full pressure. It was like a blow. I realized
vividly the awful gap between those days and these, between myself as I
had been and as I was. A whiff of perfume, a smell, produces this kind
of evocation in most cases; with me, just then, it was my old English
coat.
I remember the strong emotion in me, and that, while still held and
gripped by it, my eye caught sight of an envelope sticking out of
the inside breast pocket. The coat hung by chance in a way that made
it visible. It might easily fall out altogether. I moved over and
stretched out a hand to put it safely back and then saw that the
writing on the envelope was my own. It was a letter. I took it out. The
address was the house in Kent, whose atmosphere still hung about my
thoughts. The name was my mother’s name. There were other letters, all
my own; one to my father; two to my brother, the one being in the world
I really loved, the only one of the family to whom I had given vague
hints of the real state of affairs.
Some of the letters were two weeks, three weeks old. In each case the
five-cent stamp had been torn off. Five cents meant a glass of lager
and a meal at a free lunch counter.
There was no reflection. Holding the letters in my hand, I moved
across to the mattress. There was an anger in me that made me afraid,
afraid of myself. I wanted to kill, I thought I was going to kill, I
understood easily how a man _can_ kill. In my mind was a vivid picture
of my brother’s face--it was he, not my parents, who moved with me.
But I was not excited; ice was in me, not fire. Something else, too,
at that moment was in my veins, a drug ... a strong dose, too! Five
minutes before my entire being had been in a state of utter bliss, of
radiant kindness, of tolerance, of charity to everybody in the world.
I would have given away my last cent, I would have forgiven anybody
anything. All this was swept away in an instant. I felt a cold, white
anger that wanted to kill.
Boyde had not heard my footstep; he lay sound asleep. I tore the
blanket off. He lay half naked before me, sleek, well-nourished,
over-fed, loathsome, horrible beyond anything I had known. He turned
with a jump and sat up. I held the letters against his face, but he was
still dazed with sleep and only stared stupidly, first at the letters,
then into my face.
I kicked him; I had my boots on.
“Get up!” I said. And, as he got up, rather heavily, trying to protect
himself, I kicked him again and again, till at last he stood upright,
but at some distance from me, over towards the window. He understood
by this time; he saw the letters in my hand. The terror in his face
sickened me even in my anger. I saw the evil almost visibly leap out.
The unfamiliarity, now that the moustache was gone, the cruelty of the
naked lips and mouth, the shrinking of the coward in him, these made an
unforgettable picture. He did not utter a syllable.
My own utterance, what words I used, I cannot remember. I did not
remember them even ten minutes afterwards, certainly not the next day,
when I told the doctor what had happened. Two sentences only remain
accurate: “Come close to me. I’m going to kill you,” and the other:
“Get ready! I’m going to beat you like an animal!”
He stood before me, wearing his short day-shirt without a collar, his
hair untidy, his face white, his half-naked body shaking. He dropped
to his knees, he got up again and tried to hide, he cringed and whined
like a terrified dog, his blue eyes were ghastly. In myself were
feelings I had never dreamed I possessed, but whose evidence Boyde
must, plainly, have read in my expression. What he could not read, nor
ever knew of course, was the fight, the fight of terror, I was having
with myself. I felt that once I touched him I should not stop till I
had gone too far.
I did not touch him once. Instead, I told him to put on his clothes,
his own clothes, and go. He had no clothes of his own. He did not
go.... I eventually let him wait till morning, when he could find
enough rags of sorts to wear in the street.... He explained that he had
shaved his moustache because the Rockaway Hunt demanded it.
He had said hardly a word during the entire scene. Half an hour after
it was over he was sleeping soundly again. I, too, thanks to the drug,
slept deeply. I woke in the morning to find the mattress on the floor
unoccupied. Boyde had gone. With him had gone, too, my one thick suit
and, in addition, every possible article of pawnable or other value
that had been in the room or in the packing-case downstairs. Only the
razor and the confession had he left behind because they were beneath
my pillow.
The next time we met was in even more painful and dramatic
circumstances. I decided it was time to act.
I went down that same morning to police headquarters in Mulberry
Street, and swore out a warrant for his arrest on two charges; forgery
and petit larceny. A theft of more than $25 was grand larceny, a
conviction, of course, carrying heavier punishment. I reduced his
theft of my $32, therefore, by seven dollars, so that, if caught and
convicted, his sentence might be as short as possible.
But for the fact that I was a reporter on a Tammany newspaper,
nothing would have happened. As it was, no bribe being available, the
police refused to take any steps in the matter. The confession, they
knew, was worthless; it was a small case; no praise in the press, no
advertisement, lay in it. “Find out where he is,” Detective Lawler
said, “and let us know. Just telephone and I’ll come up and take him.
But _you_ do the huntin’. See? _I_ don’t.”
This was Detective Lawler, who, under another name came into a story
years later--“Max Hensig,” in “The Listener.”
The determination to put Boyde where he could no longer harm himself or
others held as firm in me as, formerly, the determination to forgive
had held. The hunt, however, comes a little later in the story. There
was first the explanation of the doctor’s secret. The doctor was my
companion in the dreadful hunt.