ROBERT KATER'S SUCCESS
"Halloo! So it's here!" Robert Kater stood by a much-littered table
and looked down on a few papers and envelopes which some one had laid
there during his absence. All day long he had been wandering about the
streets of Paris, waiting--passing the time as he could in his
impatience--hoping for the communication contained in one of these
very envelopes. Now that it had come he felt himself struck with a
singular weakness, and did not seize it and tear it open. Instead, he
stood before the table, his hands in his pockets, and whistled
softly.
He made the tour of the studio several times, pausing now and then to
turn a canvas about, apparently as if he would criticize it, looking
at it but not regarding it, only absently turning one and another as
if it were a habit with him to do so; then returning to the table he
stirred the envelopes apart with one finger and finally separated one
from the rest, bearing an official seal, and with it a small package
carefully secured and bearing the same seal, but he did not open
either. "Yes, it's here, and that's the one," he said, but he spoke to
himself, for there was no one else in the room.
He moved wearily away, keeping the packet in his hand, but leaving the
envelope on the table, and hung his hat upon a point of an easel and
wiped his damp brow. As he did so, he lifted the dark brown hair from
his temple, showing a jagged scar. Quickly, as if with an habitual
touch, he rearranged the thick, soft lock so that the scar was
covered, and mounting a dais, seated himself on a great thronelike
chair covered with a royal tiger skin. The head of the tiger, mounted
high, with glittering eyes and fangs showing, rested on the floor
between his feet, and there, holding the small packet in his hand,
with elbows resting on the arms of the throne, he sat with head
dropped forward and shoulders lifted and eyes fixed on the tiger's
head.
For a long time he sat thus in the darkening room. At last it grew
quite dark. Only the great skylight over his head showed a defined
outline. The young man had had no dinner and no supper, for his
pockets were empty and his last sou gone. If he had opened the
envelopes, he would have found money, and more than money, for he
would have learned that the doors of the Salon had opened to him and
the highest medal awarded him, and that for which he had toiled and
waited and hoped,--for which he had staked his last effort and
sacrificed everything, was won. He was recognized, and all Paris would
quickly know it, and not Paris only, but all the world. But when he
would open the envelope, his hands fell slack, and there it still lay
on the table concealed by the darkness.
Down three flights of stairs in the court a strange and motley group
were collecting, some bearing candles, all masked, some fantastically
dressed and others only concealed by dominoes. The stairs went up on
the outer wall of this inner court, past the windows of the basement
occupied by the concierge and his wife and pretty daughter, and
entered the building on the first floor above. By this arrangement the
concierge could always see from his window who mounted them.
"Look, mamma." The pretty daughter stood peering out, her face framed
in the white muslin curtains. "Look. See the students. Ah, but they
are droll!"
"Come away, ma fille."
"But the owl and the ape, there, they seem on very good terms. I
wonder if they go to the room of Monsieur Kater! I think so; for
one--the ghost in white, he is a little lame like the Englishman who
goes always to the room of Monsieur.--Ah, bah! Imbecile! Away with
you! Pig!"
The ape had suddenly approached his ugly face close to the face framed
in the white muslin curtains on the other side of the window, and made
exaggerated motions of an embrace. The wife of the concierge snatched
her daughter away and drew the curtains close.
"Foolish child! Why do you stand and watch the rude fellows? This is
what you get by it. I have told you to keep your eyes within."
"But I love to see them, so droll they are."
Stealthily the fantastic creatures began to climb the stairs, one,
two, three flights, traversing a long hall at the end of each flight
and turning to climb again. The expense of keeping a light on each
floor for the corridors was not allowed in this building, and they
moved along in the darkness, but for the flickering light of the few
candles carried among them. As they neared the top they grew more
stealthy and kept close together on the landing outside the studio
door. One stooped and listened at the keyhole, then tried to look
through it. "Not there?" whispered another.
"No light," was the whispered reply. They spoke now in French, now in
English.
"He has heard us and hid himself. He is a strange man, this Scotchman.
He did not attend the 'Vernissage,' nor the presentation of prizes,
yet he wins the highest." The owl stretched out an arm, bare and
muscular, from under his wing and tried the door very gently. It was
not locked, and he thrust his head within, then reached back and took
a candle from the ghost. "This will give light enough. Put out the
rest of yours and make no noise."
Thus in the darkness they crept into the studio and gathered around
the table. There they saw the unopened envelopes.
"He is not here. He does not know," said one and another.
"Where then can he be?"
"He has taken a panic and fled. I told you so," said the ghost.
"Ah, here he is! Behold! The Hamlet of our ghost! Wake, Hamlet; your
father's spirit has arrived," cried one in English with a very French
accent.
They now gathered before the dais, shouting and cheering in both
English and French. One brought the envelopes on a palette and
presented them. The young man gazed at them, stupidly at first, then
with a feverish gleam in his eyes, but did not take them.
"Yes, I found them when I came in--but they are--not for me."
"They are addressed to you, Robert Kater, and the news is published
and you leave them here unopened."
"He does not know--I told you so."
"You have the packet in your hand. Open it. Take it from him and
decorate him. He is in a dream. It is the great medal. We will wake
him."
They began to cheer and cheer again, each after the manner of the
character he had assumed. The ass brayed, the owl hooted, the ghost
groaned. The ape leaped on the back of the throne whereon the young
man still sat, and seized him by the hair, chattering idiotically
after the manner of apes, and began to wag his head back and forth. In
the midst of the uproar Demosthenes stepped forward and took the
envelopes from the palette, and, tearing them open, began reading them
aloud by the light of a candle held for him by Lady Macbeth, who now
and then interrupted with the remark that "her little hand was stained
with blood," stretching forth an enormous, hairy hand for their
inspection. But as Demosthenes read on the uproar ceased, and all
listened with courteous attention. The ape leaped down from the back
of the throne, the owl ceased hooting, and all were silent until the
second envelope had been opened and the contents made known--that his
exhibit had been purchased by the Salon.
"Robert Kater, you are at the top. We congratulate you. To be
recognized by the 'Salon des Artistes Francaises' is to be recognized
and honored by all the world."
They all came forward with kindly and sincere words, and the young man
stood to receive them, but reeling and swaying, weary with emotion,
and faint with hunger.
"Were you not going to the mask?"
"I was weary; I had not thought."
"Then wake up and go. We come for you."
"I have no costume."
"Ah, that is nothing. Make one; it is easy."
"He sits there like his own Saul, enveloped in gloom. Come, I will be
your David," cried one, and snatched a guitar and began strumming it
wildly.
While the company scattered and searched the studio for materials with
which to create for him a costume for the mask, the ghost came limping
up to the young man who had seated himself again wearily on the
throne, and spoke to him quietly.
"The tide's turned, Kater; wake up to it. You're clear of the
breakers. The two pictures you were going to destroy are sold. I
brought those Americans here while you were away and showed them. I
told you they'd take something as soon as you were admitted. Here's
the money."
Robert Kater raised himself, looking in the eyes of his friend, and
took the bank notes as if he were not aware what they really might
be.
"I say! You've enough to keep you for a year if you don't throw it
away. Count it. I doubled your price and they took them at the price I
made. Look at these."
Then Robert Kater looked at them with glittering eyes, and his shaking
hand shut upon them, crushing the bank notes in a tight grip. "We'll
halve it, share and share alike," he whispered, staring at the ghost
without counting it. "As for this," his finger touched the decoration
on his breast--"it is given to a--You won't take half? Then I'll throw
them away."
"I'll take them all until you're sane enough to know what you're
doing. Give them to me." He took them back and crept quietly,
ghostlike, about the room until he found a receptacle in which he
knew they would be safe; then, removing one hundred francs from the
amount, he brought it back and thrust it in his friend's pocket.
"There--that's enough for you to throw away on us to-night. Why are
you taking off your decoration? Leave it where it is. It's yours."
"Yes, I suppose it is." Robert Kater brushed his hand across his eyes
and stepped down from the throne. Then lifting his head and shoulders
as if he threw off a burden, he leaped from the dais, and with one
long howl, began an Indian war dance. He was the center and life of
the hilarious crowd from that moment. The selection of materials had
been made. A curtain of royal purple hung behind the throne, and this
they threw around him as a toga, then crowned him as Mark Antony. They
found for him also a tunic of soft wool, and with a strip of gold
braid they converted a pair of sheepskin bedroom slippers into
sandals, bound on his feet over his short socks.
"I say! Mark Antony never wore things like these," he shouted. "Give
me a mask. I'll not wear these things without a mask." He snatched at
the head of the owl, who ducked under his arm and escaped. "Go then.
This is better. Mark, the illustrious, was an ass." He made a dive for
the head of his braying friend and barely missed him.
"Come. We waste time. Cleopatra awaits him at 'la Fourchette d'or';
all our Cleopatras await us there."
"Surely?"
"Surely. Madame la Charne is there and the sisters Lucie and
Bertha,--all are there,--and with them one very beautiful blonde whom
you have never seen."
"She is for you--you cold Scotchman! That stone within you, which you
call heart, to-night it will melt."
"You have everything planned then?"
"Everything is made ready."
"Look here! Wait, my friends! I haven't expressed myself yet." They
were preparing to lift him above their heads. "I wish to say that you
are all to share my good fortune and allow--"
"Wait for the champagne. You can say it then with more force."
"I say! Hold on! I ask you to--"
"So we do. We hold on. Now, up--so." He was borne in triumph down the
stairs and out on the street and away to the sign of the Golden Fork,
and seated at the head of the table in a small banquet room opening
off from the balcony at one side where the feast which had been
ordered and prepared was awaiting them.
A group of masked young women, gathered on the balcony, pelted them
with flowers as they passed beneath it, and when the men were all
seated, they trooped out, and each slid into her appointed place,
still masked.
Then came a confusion of tongues, badinage, repartee, wit undiluted by
discretion--and rippling laughter as one mask after another was torn
off.
"Ah, how glad I am to be rid of it! I was suffocating," said a soft
voice at Robert Kater's side.
He looked down quickly into a pair of clear, red-brown eyes--eyes into
which he had never looked before.
"Then we are both content that it is off." He smiled as he spoke. She
glanced up at him, then down and away. When she lifted her eyes an
instant later again to his face, he was no longer regarding her. She
was piqued, and quickly began conversing with the man on her left, the
one who had removed her mask.
"It is no use, your smile, mademoiselle. He is impervious, that man.
He has no sense or he could not turn his eyes away."
"I like best the impervious ones." With a light ripple of laughter she
turned again to her right. "Monsieur has forgotten?"
"Forgotten?" Robert was mystified until he realized in the instant
that she was pretending to a former acquaintance. "Could I forget,
mademoiselle? Permit me." He lifted his glass. "To your eyes--and to
your--memory," he said, and drank it off.
After that he became the gayest of them all, and the merriment never
flagged. He ate heartily, for he was very hungry, but he drank
sparingly. His brain seemed supplied with intellectual missiles which
he hurled right and left, but when they struck, it was only to send
out a rain of sparks like the balls of holiday fireworks that explode
in a fountain of brilliance and hurt no one.
"Monsieur is so gay!" said the soft voice of the blonde at his side.
"Are we not here for that, to enjoy ourselves?"
"Ah, if I could but believe that you remember me!"
"Is it possible mademoiselle thinks herself one to be so easily
forgotten?"
"Monsieur, tell me the truth." She glanced up archly. "I have one very
good reason for asking."
"You are very beautiful."
"But that is so banal--that remark."
"You complain that I tell you the truth when you ask it? You have so
often heard it that the telling becomes banal? Shall I continue?"
"But it is of yourself that I would hear."
"So? Then it is as I feared. It is you who have forgotten."
They were interrupted at that moment, for he was called upon for a
story, and he related one of his life as a soldier,--a little
incident, but everything pleased. They called upon him for another and
another. The hour grew late, and at last the banqueters rose and began
to remask and assume their various characters.
"What are you, monsieur, with that very strange dress that you wear, a
Roman or a Greek?" asked his companion.
"I really don't know--a sort of nondescript. I did not choose my
costume; it was made up for me by my friends. They called me Mark
Antony, but that was because they did not know what else to call me.
But they promised me Cleopatra if I would come with them."
"They would have done better to call you Petrarch, for I am Laura."
"But I never could have taken that part. I could make a very decent
sort of ass of myself, but not a poet."
"What a very terrible voice your Lady Macbeth has!"
"Yes; but she was a terror, you know. Shall we follow the rest?"
They all trooped out of the café, and fiacres were called to take them
to the house where the mask was held. The women were placed in their
respective carriages, but the men walked. At the door of the house, as
they entered the ballroom, they reunited, but again were soon
scattered. Robert Kater wandered about, searching here and there for
his very elusive Laura, so slim and elegant in her white and gold
draperies, who seemed to be greatly in demand. He saw many whom he
recognized; some by their carriage, some by their voices, but Laura
baffled him. Had he ever seen her before? He could not remember. He
would not have forgotten her--never. No, she was amusing herself with
him.
"Monsieur does not dance?" It was a Spanish gypsy with her lace
mantilla and the inevitable red rose in her hair. He knew the voice.
It was that of a little model he sometimes employed.
"I dance, yes. But I will only take you out on the floor, my little
Julie,--ha--ha--I know you, never fear--I will take you out on the
floor, but on one condition."
"It is granted before I know it."
"Then tell me, who is she just passing?"
"The one whose clothing is so--so--as if she would pose for the--"
"Hush, Julie. The one in white and gold."
"I asked if it were she. Yes, I know her very well, for I saw a
gentleman unmask her on the balcony above there, to kiss her. It is
she who dances so wonderfully at the Opéra Comique. You have seen her,
Mademoiselle Fée. Ah, come. Let us dance. It is the most perfect
waltz."
At the close of the waltz the owl came and took the little gypsy away
from Robert, and a moment later he heard the mellifluous voice of his
companion of the banquet.
"I am so weary, monsieur. Take me away where we may refresh
ourselves."
The red-brown eyes looked pleadingly into his, and the slender fingers
rested on his arm, and together they wandered to a corner of palms
where he seated her and brought her cool wine jelly and other
confections. She thanked him sweetly, and, drooping, she rested her
head upon her hand and her arm on the arm of her chair.
"So dull they are, these fêtes, and the people--bah! They are dull to
the point of despair."
She was a dream of gold and white as she sat there--the red-gold hair
and the red-brown eyes, and the soft gold and white draperies, too
clinging, as the little gypsy had indicated, but beautiful as a gold
and white lily. He sat beside her and gazed on her dreamily, but in a
manner too detached. She was not pleased, and she sighed.
"Take the refreshment, mademoiselle; you will feel better. I will
bring you wine. What will you have?"
"Oh, you men, who always think that to eat and drink something alone
can refresh! Have you never a sadness?"
"Very often, mademoiselle."
"Then what do you do?"
"I eat and drink, mademoiselle. Try it."
"Oh, you strange man from the cold north! You make me shiver. Touch my
hand. See? You have made me cold."
"Cold? You are a flame from the crown of gold on your head to your
shoes of gold."
"Now that you are become a success, monsieur, what will you do? To you
is given the heart's desire." She toyed with the quivering jelly,
merely tasting it. It too was golden in hue, and golden lights danced
in the heart of it.
"A great success? I am dreaming. It is so new to me that I do not
believe it."
"You are very clever, monsieur. You never tell your thoughts. I asked
if you remembered me and you answered in a riddle. I knew you did
not, for you never saw me before."
"Did I never see you dance?"
"Ah, there you are again! To see me dance--in a great audience--one of
many? That does not count. You but pretended."
He leaned forward, looking steadily in her eyes. "Did I but pretend
when I said I never could forget you? Ah, mademoiselle, you are too
modest."
She was maddened that she could not pique him to a more ardent manner,
but gave no sign by so much as the quiver of an eyelid. She only
turned her profile toward him indifferently. He noticed the piquant
line of her lips and chin and throat, and the golden tones of her
delicate skin.
"Did I not also tell you the truth when you asked me? And you rewarded
me by calling me banal."
"And I was right. You, who are so clever, could think of something
better to say." She gave him a quick glance, and placed a quivering
morsel of jelly between her lips. "But you are so very strange to me.
Tell me, were you never in love?"
"That is a question I may not answer." He still smiled, but it was
merely the continuation of the smile he had worn before she shot that
last arrow. He still looked in her eyes, but she knew he was not
seeing her. Then he rallied and laughed. "Come, question for question.
Were you never in love--or out of love--let us say?"
"Oh! Me!" She lifted her shoulders delicately. "Me! I am in love
now--at this moment. You do not treat me well. You have not danced
with me once."
"No. You have been dancing always, and fully occupied. How could I?"
"Ah, you have not learned. To dance with me--you must take me, not
stand one side and wait."
"Are you engaged for the next?"
"But, yes. It is no matter. I will dance it with you. He will be
consoled." She laughed, showing her beautiful, even teeth. "I make you
a confession. I said to him, 'I will dance it with you unless the cold
monsieur asks me--then I will dance with him, for it will do him
good.'"
Robert Kater rose and stood a moment looking through the palms. The
silken folds of his toga fell gracefully around him, and he held his
head high. Then he withdrew his eyes from the distance and turned them
again on her,--the gold and white being at his feet,--and she seemed
to him no longer human, but a phantom from which he must flee, if but
he might do so courteously, for he knew her to be no phantom, and he
could not be other than courteous.
"Will you accept from me my laurel crown?" He took the chaplet from
his head and laid it at her feet. Then, lifting her hand to his lips,
he kissed the tips of her pink fingers, bowing low before her. "I go
to send you wine. Console your partner. It is better so, for I too am
in love." He smiled upon her as he had smiled at first, and was gone,
walking out through the crowd--the weird, fantastic, bizarre company,
as if he were no part of them. One and another greeted him as he
passed, but he did not seem to hear them. He called a waiter and
ordered wine to be taken to Mademoiselle Fée, and quickly was gone.
They saw him no more.
It was nearly morning. A drizzling rain was falling, and the air was
chill after the heat of the crowded ballroom. He drew it into his
lungs in deep draughts, glad to be out in the freshness, and to feel
the cool rain on his forehead. He threw off his encumbering toga and
walked in his tunic, with bare throat and bare knees, and carried the
toga over one bare arm, and swung the other bare arm free. He walked
with head held high, for he was seeing visions, and hearing a
far-distant call. Now at last he might choose his path. He had not
failed, but with that call from afar--what should he do? Should he
answer it? Was it only a call from out his own heart--a passing,
futile call, luring him back?
Of one thing he was sure. There was the painting on which he had
labored and staked his all now hanging in the Salon. He could see it,
one of his visions realized,--David and Saul. The deep, rich
shadows, the throne, the tiger skin, the sandaled feet of the
remorseful king resting on the great fanged and leering head, the
eyes of the king looking hungrily out from under his forbidding brows,
the cruel lips pressed tightly together, and the lithe, thin hands
grasping the carved arms of the throne in fierce restraint,--all
this in the deep shadows between the majestic carved columns, their
bases concealed by the rich carpet covering the dais and their tops
lost in the brooding darkness above--the lowering darkness of purple
gloom that only served to reveal the sinister outlines of the somber,
sorrowful, suffering king, while he indulged the one pure passion
left him--listening--gazing from the shadows out into the light,
seeing nothing, only listening.
And before him, standing in the one ray of light, clothed only in his
tunic of white and his sandals, a human jewel of radiant color and
slender strength, a godlike conception of youth and grace, his harp
before him, the lilies crushed under his feet that he had torn from
the strings which his fingers touched caressingly, with sunlight in
his crown of golden, curling hair and the light of the stars in his
eyes--David, the strong, the simple, the trusting, the God-fearing
youth, as Robert Kater saw him, looking back through the ages.
Ah, now he could live. Now he could create--work: he had been
recognized, and rewarded--Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes! The hope of
his life realized, the goblet raised to his lips, and the draft--bitter.
The call falling upon his heart--imperative--beseeching--what did it
mean?
Slowly and heavily he mounted the stairs to his studio, and there
fumbled about in the darkness and the confusion left by his admiring
comrades until he found candles and made a light. He was cold, and his
light clothing clung to him wet and chilling as grave clothes. He tore
them off and got himself into things that were warm and dry, and
wrapping himself in an old dressing gown of flannel, sat down to
think.
He took the money his friend had brought him and counted it over. Good
old Ben Howard! Half of it must go to him, of course. And here were
finished canvases quite as good as the ones that had sold. Ben might
turn them to as good an account as the others,--yes,--here was enough
to carry him through a year and leave him leisure to paint unhampered
by the necessity of making pot boilers for a bare living.
"Tell me, were you never in love?" That soft, insinuating voice
haunted him against his will. In love? What did she know of love--the
divine passion? Love! Fame! Neither were possible to him. He bowed his
head upon the table, hiding his face, crushing the bank notes beneath
his arms. Deep in his soul the eye of his own conscience regarded
him,--an outcast hiding under an assumed name, covering the scar above
his temple with a falling lock of hair seldom lifted, and deep in his
soul a memory of a love. Oh, God! Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes!
He rose, and, taking his candle with him, opened a door leading from
the studio up a short flight of steps to a little cupboard of a
sleeping room. Here he cast himself on the bed and closed his eyes. He
must sleep: but no, he could not. After a time of restless tossing he
got up and drew an old portmanteau from the closet and threw the
contents out on the bed. From among them he picked up the thing he
sought and sat on the edge of his bed with it in his hands, turning it
over and regarding it, tieing and untieing the worn, frayed, but still
bright ribbons, which had once been the cherry-colored hair ribbons of
little Betty Ballard.
Suddenly he rose and lifted his head high, in his old, rather
imperious way, put out his candle, and looked through the small, dusty
panes of his window. It was day--early dawn. He was jaded and weary,
but he would try no longer to sleep. He must act, and shake off
sentimentalism. Yes, he must act. He bathed and dressed with care, and
then in haste, as if life depended on hurry, he packed the portmanteau
and stepped briskly into the studio, looking all about, noting
everything as if taking stock of it all, then sat down with pen and
paper to write.
The letter was a long one. It took time and thought. When he was
nearly through with it, Ben Howard lagged wearily in.
"Halloo! Why didn't you wait for me? What did you clear out for and
leave me in the lurch? Fresh as a daisy, you are, old chap, and I'm
done for, dead."
"You're not scientific in your pleasures." Robert Kater lifted his
eyes and looked at his friend. "Are you alive enough to hear me and
remember what I say? Will you do something for me? Shall I tell you
now or will you breakfast first?"
"Breakfast? Faugh!" He looked disgustedly around him.
"I'm sorry. You drink too much. Listen, Ben. I'll tell you what I mean
to do and what I wish you to do for me--and--you remember all you can
of it, will you? I must do it now, for you'll be asleep soon, and this
will be the last I shall see of you--ever. I'm leaving in two
hours--as soon as I've breakfasted."
"What's that? Hold on!" Ben Howard sprang up, and darting behind a
screen where they washed their brushes, he dashed cold water over his
head and came back toweling himself. "I'm fit now. I did drink too
much champagne, but I'll sleep it off. Now fire away,--what's up?"
"In two hours I'll be en route for the coast, and to-morrow I'll take
passage for home on the first boat." Robert closed and sealed the long
letter he had been writing and tossed it on the table. "I want this
mailed one week from to-day. Put it in your pocket so you won't lose
it among the rubbish here. One week from to-day it must be mailed.
It's to my great aunt, Jean Craigmile, who gave me the money to set
up here the first year. I've paid that up--last week--with my last
sou--and with interest. By rights she should have whatever there is
here of any value, for, if it were not for her help, there would not
have been a thing here anyway, and I've no one else to whom to leave
it--so see that this letter is mailed without fail, will you?"
The Englishman stood, now thoroughly awake, gazing at him, unable to
make common sense out of Robert's remarks. "B--b--but--what's up? What
are you leaving things to anybody for? You're not on your deathbed."
"I'm going home, don't you see?"
"But why don't you take the letter to her yourself--if you're going
home?"
"Not there, man; not to Scotland."
"Your home's there."
"I have allowed you to think so." Robert forced himself to talk
calmly. "In truth, I have no home, but the place I call home by
courtesy is where I was brought up--in America."
"You--you--d--d--don't--"
"Yes--it's time you knew this. I've been leading a double life, and
I'm done with it. I committed a crime, and I'm living under an
assumed name. There is no such man as Robert Kater that I know of on
earth, nor ever was. My name is--no matter--. I'm going back to
the place where I killed my best friend--to give myself up--to
imprisonment--I do not know to what--maybe death--but it will end
my torture of mind. Now you know why I could not go to the Vernissage,
to be treated--well, I could not go, that's all. Nor could I accept
the honors given me under a name not my own. All the time I've lived
in Paris I've been hiding--and this thing has been following
me--although my occupation seems to have been the best cover I could
have had--yet my soul has known no peace. Always--always--night and
day--my own conscience has been watching and accusing me, an eye of
dread steadily gazing down into my soul and seeing my sin deep, deep
in my heart. I could not hide from it. And I would have given up
before only that I wished to make good in something before I stepped
down and out. I've done it." He put his hand heavily on Ben Howard's
shoulder. "I've had a revelation this night. The lesson of my life is
learned at last. It is, that there is but one road to freedom and
life for me--and that road leads to a prison. It leads to a
prison,--maybe worse,--but it leads me to freedom--from the thing
that haunts me, that watches me and drives me. I may write you from
that place which I will call home--Were you ever in love?"
The abruptness of the question set Ben Howard stammering again. He
seized Robert's hand in both his own and held to it. "I--I--I--old
chap--I--n--n--no--were you?"
"Yes; I've heard the call of her voice in my heart--and I'm gone. Now,
Ben, stop your--well, I'll not preach to you, you of all men,--but--do
something worth while. I've need of part of the money you got for
me--to get back on--and pay a bill or two--and the rest I leave to
you--there where you put it you'll find it. Will you live here and
take care of these things for me until my good aunt, Jean Craigmile,
writes you? She'll tell you what to do with them--and more than likely
she'll take you under her wing--anyway, work, man, work. The place is
yours for the present--perhaps for a good while, and you'll have a
chance to make good. If I could live on that money for a year, as you
yourself said, you can live on half of it for half a year, and in that
time you can get ahead. Work."
He seized his portmanteau and was gone before Ben Howard could gather
his scattered senses or make reply.