Dyckman was at least half mad, and half inspired. Charity had been his
lifelong religion. He had thought of her with ardor, but also with a
kind of awe. He had wanted to be her husband. Failing to win her, he
had been horrified to see that Cheever, possessing her, was still not
satisfied.
He had never dreamed what this neglect might mean to her. He had
not thought of her as mere woman, after all, with more than pride
to satisfy, with more than a mind to suffer. When the realization
overwhelmed him her nobility was not diminished in his eyes, but to
all her former qualities was added the human element. She was flesh and
blood, and a martyr in the flames. And the ingrate who had the godlike
privilege of her embrace abandoned her for a public creature.
Dyckman felt himself summoned to avenge her.
It happened that he found the Cheever limousine waiting outside. He said
to the chauffeur:
“Where does Miss Zada L'Etoile live?”
The chauffeur was startled. He answered, with a touch of raillery:
“Search me, sir. How should I know?”
“I want none of your back talk,” said Dyckman, ready to maul the
chauffeur or anybody for practice. He took out his pocket-book and
lifted the first bill he came to. It was a yellow boy. He repeated,
“Where does Zada L'Etoile live?”
The chauffeur told him and got the bill. It was better than the poke in
the eye he could have had instead.
Dyckman had sent his own car home. He had difficulty in finding a
taxicab on Fifth Avenue along there. At length he stopped one and named
the apartment-house where Zada lived.
The hall-boy was startled by his manner, amazed to hear the famous
Dyckman ask for Miss L'Etoile. He telephoned the name while Dyckman
fumed. After some delay he was told to come up.
Zada was alone--at least Cheever was not there. She had been astounded
when Dyckman's name came through the telephone. Her first thought had
been that Cheever had met with an accident and that Dyckman was bringing
the news. She had given up the hope of involving Dyckman with Mrs.
Cheever, after wasting Cheever's money on vain detectives.
When Dyckman was ushered in she greeted him from her divan.
“Pardon my negligee,” she said. “I'm not very well.”
He saw at a glance that the dictagraph had told the truth. She was
entirely too well. He felt his wrath at Zada vanishing. But this also
he transferred to Cheever's account. He spoke as quietly as he could,
though his face revealed his excitement.
“Sorry to trouble you, but I had hoped to find Mr. Cheever here.”
“Mr. Cheever?! Here?!” Zada exclaimed, with that mixture of the
interrogation and exclamation points for which we have no symbol. She
tried to look surprised at the unimaginable suggestion of Cheever's
being in her environs. She succeeded as well as Dyckman did in
pretending that his errand was trivial.
“Er--yes, I imagined you might happen to know where I could find him. I
have a little business with him.”
Zada thought to crush him with a condescension--a manicurial sarcasm:
“Have you been to the gentleman's home?”
Dyckman laughed: “Yes, but he wasn't there. He isn't there much
nowadays--they say.”
“Oh, do they?” Zada sneered. “Well, did They tell you he would be here?”
“No, but I thought--”
“Better try his office in the morning.”
“Thanks. I can't wait. What club does he affect most now?”
“Ask They,” said Zada, ending the interview with a labored yawn.
But when Dyckman bowed and turned to go, her curiosity bested her
indignation. “In case I should by any chance see him, could I give him
your message?”
Dyckman laughed a sort of pugilistic laugh, and his self-conscious fist
asserted itself.
“No, thanks, I'm afraid you couldn't. Good-by.”
Zada saw his big fingers gathering--convening, as it were, into a fist
like a mace, and she was terrified for her man. She scrambled to her
feet and caught Dyckman in the hall.
“What are you going to do to Mr. Cheever?”
Dyckman answered in the ironic slang, “I'm not going to do a thing to
him.”
Zada's terror increased. “What harm has he ever done to you?”
“I didn't say he had done me any harm.”
“Is it because of his wife?”
“Leave her out of it.”
There was the old phrase again. Cheever kept hurling it at her whenever
she referred to the third corner of the triangle.
Zada remembered when Cheever had threatened to kill Dyckman if he found
him. Now he would be unarmed. He was not so big a man as Dyckman. She
could see him being throttled slowly to death, leaving her and her
child-to-be unprotected in their shameful folly.
“For God's sake, don't!” she implored him. “I'm not well. I mustn't have
any excitement, I beg you--for my sake--”
“For your sake,” said Dyckman, with a scorn that changed to pity as she
clung to him--“for your sake I'll give him a couple of extra jolts.”
That was rather dazzling, the compliment of having Jim Dyckman as her
champion! Her old habit of taking everybody's flattery made her forget
for the moment that she was now a one-man woman. Her clutch relaxed
under the compliment just long enough for Dyckman to escape without
violence. He darted through the door and closed it behind him.
She tugged at the inside knob, but he was so long that he could hold the
outside knob with one hand and reach the elevator-bell with the other.
When the car came up he released the knob and lifted his hat with a
pleasant “Good-night.” She dared not pursue him in the garb she wore.
She returned terrified to her room. Then she ran to the telephone to
pursue Cheever and warn him. They had quarreled at the dinner-table. He
had left her on the ground that it was dangerous for her to be excited
as he evidently excited her. It is one of the most craven shifts of a
man for ending an endless wrangle with a woman.
Zada tried three clubs before she found Cheever. When she heard his
voice at last she was enraptured. She tried to entice him into her own
shelter.
“I'm sorry I was so mean. Come on home and make peace with me.”
“All right, dear, I will.”
“Right away?”
“After a while, darling. I'm sitting in a little game of poker.”
“You'd better not keep me waiting!” she warned. The note was an
unfortunate reminder of his bondage. It rattled his shackles. He could
not even have a few hours with old cronies at the club. She was worse
than Charity had ever dreamed of being. She heard the resentment in his
answer and felt that he would stay away from her for discipline. She
threw aside diplomacy and tried to frighten him home.
“Jim Dyckman is looking for you.”
“Dyckman? Me! Why?”
“He wants to beat you up.”
Cheever laughed outright at this. “You're crazy, darling. What has
Dyckman got against me?”
“I don't know, but I know he's hunting you.”
“I haven't laid eyes on him for weeks. We've had no quarrel.”
Zada was frantic. She howled across the wire: “Come home, I beg and
implore you. He'll hurt you--he may kill you.”
Again Cheever laughed: “You're having hallucinations, my love. You'll
feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such a foolish
notion, anyway?”
“From Jim Dyckman,” she stormed. “He was here looking for you. If
anybody's going crazy, he's the one. I had a struggle with him. He broke
away. I begged him not to harm you, but he said he'd give you a few
extra jolts for my sake. Please, please, don't let him find you there.”
Cheever was half convinced and quite puzzled. He knew that Dyckman had
never forgiven him for marrying Charity. The feud had smoldered. He
could not conceive what should have revived it, unless Charity had been
talking. He had not thought of any one's punishing him for neglecting
her. But if Dyckman had enlisted in her cause--well, Cheever was afraid
of hardly anything in the world except boredom and the appearance of
fear. He answered Zada with a gruff:
“Let him find me if he wants to. Or since you know him so well, tell me
where he'll be, and I'll go find him.”
He could hear Zada's strangled moan. How many times, since male
and female began, have women made wild, vain protests against the
battle-habit, the duel-tribunal? Mothers, daughters, wives, mistresses,
they have been seldom heard and have been forced to wait remote in
anguish till their man has come back or been brought back, victorious or
baffled or defeated, maimed, wounded, or dead.
It meant everything to Zada that her mate should not suffer either death
or publicity. But chiefly her love of him made outcry now. She could not
endure the vision of her beloved receiving the hammering of the giant
Dyckman.
The telephone crackled under the load of her prayers, but Cheever had
only one answer:
“If you want me to run away from him or anybody, you don't get your
wish, my darling.”
Finally she shrieked, “If you don't come home I'll come there and get
you.”
“Ladies are not allowed in the main part of this club, dearest,” said
Cheever. “Thank God there are a few places where two men can settle
their affairs without the help of womanly intuition.”
“He wants to pound you to death,” she screamed. “If you don't promise
me, I'll come there and break in if I have to scratch the eyes out of
the doorkeeper.”
He knew that she was capable of doing this very thing; so he made
answer, “All right, my dear. I surrender.”
“You'll come home?”
“Yes, indeed. Right away.”
“Oh, thank God! You do love me, then. How soon will you be here?”
“Very shortly, unless the taxi breaks down.”
“Hurry!”
“Surely. Good-by!”
He hung up the reverberant receiver and said to the telephone-boy: “If
anybody calls me, I've gone out. No matter who calls me, I'm out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then he went to the card-room, found that the game had gone on without
him, cashed in his chips, and excused himself. He was neither winning
nor losing, so that he could not be accused of “cold feet.” That was one
of the most intolerable accusations to him. He could violate any of the
Commandments, but in the sportsman's decalogue “Thou shalt not have cold
feet” was one that he honored in the observance, not the breach.
He went down to the reading-room, a palatial hall fifty yards long with
a table nearly as big as a railroad platform, on a tremendous rug as
wide and deep as a lawn. About it were chairs and divans that would have
satisfied a lotus-eater.
Cheever avoided proffers of conversation and pretended to read the
magazines and newspapers. He kept his eyes on the doors. He did not want
to take any one into his confidence, as he felt that, after all,
Zada might have been out of her head. He did not want any seconds
or bottle-holders. He was not afraid. Still, he did not care to be
surprised by a mad bull. He felt that he could play toreador with
neatness and despatch provided he could foresee the charge.
Among the magazines Cheever glanced at was one with an article on
various modes of self-defense, jiu-jitsu, and other devices by which
any clever child could apparently remove or disable a mad elephant. But
Cheever's traditions did not incline to such methods. He had the fisting
habit. He did not feel called toward clinching or choking, twisting,
tripping, knifing, swording, or sandbagging. His wrath expressed itself,
and gaily, in the play of the triceps muscle. For mobility he used
footwork and headwork. For shield he had his forearms or his open
hands--for weapons, the ten knuckles at the other end of the exquisite
driving-shafts beginning in his shoulder-blades.
He had been a clever fighter from childhood. He had been a successful
boxer and had followed the art in its professional and amateur
developments. He knew more of prize-ring history and politics than of
any other. He often regretted that his inherited money had robbed him
of a career as a heavy-weight. He was not so big as Dyckman, but he had
made fools of bigger men. He felt that the odds were a trifle in his
favor, especially if Dyckman were angry, as he must be to go roaring
about town frightening one silly woman for another's sake.
He would have preferred not to fight in the club. It was the best of all
possible clubs, and he supposed that he would be expelled for profaning
its sacrosanctity with a vulgar brawl. But anything was better than cold
feet.
Finally his hundredth glance at the door revealed Jim Dyckman. He was a
long way off, but he looked bigger than Cheever remembered him. Also he
was calmer than Cheever had hoped him to be, and not drunk, as he half
expected.
Dyckman caught sight of Cheever, glared a moment, tossed his head as if
it had antlers on it, and came forward grimly and swiftly.
A few members of the club spoke to him. An attendant or two, carrying
cocktails or high-balls in or empty glasses out, stepped aside.
Dyckman advanced down the room, and his manner was challenge enough. But
he paused honorably to say, “Cheever, I'm looking for you.”
“So I hear.”
“You had fair warning, then, from your--woman?”
“Which one?” said Cheever, with his irresistible impudence.
That was the fulminate that exploded Dyckman's wrath. “You blackguard!”
he roared, and plunged. His left hand was out and open, his great right
fist back. As he closed, it flashed past him and drove into the spot
where Cheever's face was smirking.
But the face was gone. Cheever had bent his neck just enough to escape
the fist. He met the weight of Dyckman's rush with all his own weight in
a short-arm jab that rocked Dyckman's whole frame and crumpled the white
cuirass of his shirt.
The fight was within an ace of being ended then and there, but Dyckman's
belly was covered with sinew, and he digested the bitter medicine. He
tried to turn his huge grunt into a laugh. He was at least not to be
guilty of assaulting a weakling.
Dyckman was a bit of a boxer, too. Like most rich men's sons, he was
practised in athletics. The gentleman of our day carries no sword and no
revolver; he carries his weapons in his gloves.
Dyckman acknowledged Cheever's skill and courage by deploying and
falling back. He sparred a moment. He saw that Cheever was quicker than
he at the feint and the sidestep.
He grew impatient at this dancing duet. His wrath was his worst enemy
and Cheever's ally. Cheever taunted him, and he heard the voices of the
club members who were rushing from their chairs in consternation, and
running in from the other rooms, summoned by the wireless excitement
that announces fights.
There was not going to be time for a bout, and the gallery was bigger
than Dyckman had expected. He went in hell-for-leather. He felt a
mighty satisfaction when his good left hand slashed through Cheever's
ineffectual palms, reached that perky little mustache and smeared that
amiable mouth with blood.
In the counterblow the edge of Cheever's cuff caught on Dyckman's
knuckles and ripped the skin. This saved Dyckman's eye from mourning.
And now wherever he struck he left a red mark. It helped his
target-practice.
Cheever gave up trying to mar Dyckman's face and went for his waistcoat.
All is fair in such a war, and below the belt was his favorite
territory. He hoped to put Dyckman out. Dyckman tried to withhold his
vulnerable solar plexus by crouching, but Cheever kept whizzing through
his guard like a blazing pinwheel even when it brought his jaw in reach
of an uppercut.
Dyckman clinched and tried to bear him down, but Cheever, reaching round
him, battered him with the terrific kidney-blow, and Dyckman flung him
off.
And now servants came leaping into the fray, venturing to lay hands on
the men. They could hear older members pleading: “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!
For God's sake remember where you are.” One or two went calling, “House
Committee!”
Such blows as were struck now were struck across other heads and in
spite of other arms. Both men were seized at length and dragged away,
petted and talked to like infuriated stallions. They stood panting and
bleeding, trying not to hear the voices of reason. They glared at each
other, and it became unendurable to each that the other should be able
to stand erect and mock him.
As if by a signal agreed on, they wrenched and flung aside their
captors and dashed together again, forgetting science, defense, caution,
everything but the lust of carnage. Dyckman in freeing himself left his
coat in the grasp of his retainers.
There is nothing more sickeningly thrilling than the bare-handed
ferocity of two big men, all hate and stupid power, smashing and being
smashed, trying to defend and destroy and each longing to knock the
other lifeless before his own heart is stopped. It seemed a pity to
interrupt it, and it was perilous as well.
For a long moment the two men flailed each other, bored in, and
staggered out.
It was thud and thwack, slash and gouge. Wild blows went through the air
like broadswords, making the spectators groan at what they might have
done had they landed. Blows landed and sent a head back with such a snap
that one looked for it on the floor. Flesh split, and blood spurted.
Cheever reached up and swept his nose and mouth clear of gore--then shot
his reeking fist into Dyckman's heart as if he would drive it through.
It was amazing to see Dyckman's answering swing batter Cheever forward
to one knee. Habit and not courtesy kept Dyckman from jumping him. He
stood off for Cheever to regain his feet. It was not necessary, for
Cheever's agility had carried him out of range, but the tolerance
maddened him more than anything yet, and he ceased to duck and dodge. He
stood in and battered at Dyckman's stomach till a gray nausea began
to weaken his enemy. Dyckman grew afraid of a sudden blotting out
of consciousness. He had known it once when the chance blow of an
instructor had stretched him flat for thirty seconds.
He could not keep Cheever off far enough to use his longer reach. He
forgot everything but the determination to make ruins of that handsome
face before he went out. He knocked loose one tooth and bleared an eye,
but it was not enough. Finally Cheever got to him with a sledge-hammer
smash in the groin. It hurled Dyckman against and along the big table,
just as he put home one magnificent, majestic, mellifluous swinge with
all his body in it. It planted an earthquake under Cheever's ear.
Dyckman saw him go backward across a chair and spinning over it and with
it and under it to the floor. Then he had only the faintness and the
vomiting to fight. He made one groping, clutching, almighty effort to
stand up long enough to crow like a victorious fighting cock, and he
did. He stood up. He held to the table; he did not drop. And he said one
triumphant, “Humph!”
And now the storm of indignation began. Dyckman was a spent and bankrupt
object, and anybody could berate him. A member of the house committee
reviled him with profanity and took the names of witnesses who could
testify that Dyckman struck the first blow.
The pitiful stillness of Cheever, where a few men knelt about him,
turned the favor to him. One little whiffet told Dyckman to his face
that it was a dastardly thing he had done. He laughed. He had his enemy
on the floor. He did not want everything.
Dyckman made no answer to the accusations. He did not say that he was
a crusader punishing an infidel for his treachery to a poor, neglected
woman. He had almost forgotten what he was fighting for. He was too weak
even to oppose the vague advice he heard that Cheever should be taken
“home.” He had a sardonic impulse to give Zada's address, but he could
not master his befuddled wits enough for speech.
The little fussy rooster who called Dyckman dastardly said that he
ought to be arrested. The reception he got for his proposal to bring a
policeman into the club or take a member out of it into the jail and the
newspapers was almost annihilating. The chairman of the house committee
said:
“I trust that it is not necessary to say that this wretched and most
unheard-of affair must be kept--unheard of. But I may say that I have
here a list of the members present, and I shall make a list of the club
servants present. If one word of this leaks out, each gentleman present
will be brought before the council, and every servant will be discharged
immediately--every servant without regard to guilt, innocence, or time
of service.”
Dyckman would have liked to spend the night at the club, but its
hospitable air had chilled. He sent for his big coat, turned up the
collar, pulled his hat low, and crept into a taxicab. His father and
mother were out, and he got to his room without explanations. His valet,
Dallam, gasped at the sight of him, but Dyckman laughed:
“You ought to see the other fellow.”
Then he crept into the tub, thence into his bed, and slept till he was
called to the telephone the next morning by Mrs. Cheever.
As he might have expected, Charity was as far as possible from
gratitude. The only good news she gave him was that Cheever had been
brought home half dead, terribly mauled, broken in pride, and weeping
like a baby with his shame. Dyckman could not help swelling a little at
that.
But when Charity told him that Cheever accused her of setting him on and
swore that he would get even with them both, Dyckman realized that fists
are poor poultices for bruises, and revenge the worst of all solutions.
Finally, Charity denounced Jim and begged him once more to keep out of
her sight and out of her life.
Dyckman was in the depths of the blues, and a note to the effect that
he had been suspended from his club, to await action looking toward his
expulsion, left him quite alone in the world.
In such a mood Kedzie Thropp called him up, with a cheery hail that
rejoiced him like the first cheep of the first robin after a miserable
winter. He said that he would call that evening, with the greatest
possible delight. She said that she was very lonely for him, and they
should have a blissful evening with just themselves together.
But it proved to be a rather crowded occasion in Kedzie's apartment.
Her father and mother reached there before Dyckman did, to Kedzie's
horror--and theirs.