TURNED TEMPTER
"All men have their price."
--Walpole.
The plan which David had chosen to compel Pepeeta to abandon her husband
was not a new one. For its execution he had already made a partial
preparation in an engagement to meet the justice of the peace who had
performed her marriage ceremony. The engagement was conditioned upon his
failure to persuade the gypsy to accompany him of her own free will.
Immediately after supper he took his way to the place appointed for the
meeting. This civil officer had been a companion of the quack's for many
years. His natural capacity, which was of the highest order, had secured
him one place of honor after another; but he had lost them through the
practice of many vices, and had at last sunk to that depth of
degradation in which he was willing to barter his honor for almost any
price.
The place at which he had agreed to meet David was a low saloon in one
of the most disreputable parts of the city, and to this spot the
infatuated youth made his way. Now that he was alone with his thoughts,
he could not contemplate his purpose without a feeling of dread, and yet
he did not pause nor seriously consider its abandonment. His movements,
as he elbowed his way among the outcasts who infested this degraded
region, were those of a man totally oblivious to his surroundings.
"Curse him," he muttered in an undertone, and did not know that he had
spoken.
To talk to one's self is so often a premonitory symptom of either
insanity or crime, that a policeman standing on the corner eyed him
closely and followed him down the street.
Having reached the door of the saloon, David cast a glance about him, as
if ashamed of being observed, and entered. It was a fitting place to
hatch an evil deed. The floor was covered with filthy sawdust; the air
was rank with the fumes of sour beer and adulterated whisky; the lamps
were not yet lighted, and his eyes blinked as he entered the dirty dusk
of the interior. Against the wall were rude shelves strewn with bottles,
decanters, jugs and glasses. The landlord was leaning against the inside
of the bar glaring about him like an octopus. The habitues of the place,
looking more like scarecrows than men, stood opposite him with their
blear eyes uplifted in ecstasy, draining into their insatiable throats
the last precious drops from their upturned glasses.
At a table four human shapes which seemed to be operated by some kind of
clumsy mechanical motors rather than animated by sentient spirits were
playing a game of chance and slapping the greasy cards down upon the
table to the accompaniment of coarse laughter and hideous profanity.
The Quaker, who was not yet thoroughly enough corrupted to witness this
spectacle without horror, hurried through the room like a man who has
suddenly found himself in a pest-house. The door which he pushed open
admitted him to a parlor scarcely less dirty and disgusting that the
saloon itself, at the opposite end of which, wreathed in a cloud of
tobacco smoke, he beheld the object of his search.
"Well, I see you are here," he said, drawing a chair to the table.
"And waiting," a deep and rich but melancholy voice replied.
"Can't we have a couple of candles? These shadows seem to crawl up my
legs and take me by the throat. I feel as if some one were blindfolding
and gagging me," said David, looking uneasily about.
The judge ordered the candles, and while they were waiting observed:
"You had better accustom yourself to shadows, young man, for you will
find plenty of them on the road you are traveling. They deepen with the
passing years, along every pathway; but the one on which you are about
to set your feet leads into the hopeless dark."
These unexpected words agitated the soul of the young plotter, but while
he was still shuddering the barkeeper entered with the candles and set
them down on the table between the two men, who found themselves
vis-a-vis in the flickering gleams.
They leaned on their elbows and looked into each other's faces. The
contrast was remarkable. The countenance of the judge had unquestionably
once been noble, and perhaps also beautiful; but the massive features
were now coarsened by dissipation. A permanent curl of scorn had
wreathed itself around the mouth. A look of ennui brooded over his
features. One would as soon expect to see a flower in the crater of a
volcano as a smile on the lips of this extinct man.
David's face was young and beautiful. The features were still those of a
saint, even if the aureole had for a time been eclipsed by a cloud.
These two human beings gazed incredulously at each other for a moment.
"I was once like this youth," the judge was saying to himself with a
sigh.
"I shall never be like this beast," thought David with a shudder of
repulsion and disgust.
The "Justice" (grotesque parody) broke the silence.
"Did you succeed?" he asked.
"No," said David, sullenly.
"She would not yield, then?"
"No more than adamant or steel."
"You should have pressed her harder."
"I used my utmost skill."
"You are a novitiate, perhaps. An adept would have succeeded."
"Not with her."
"Ah! who ever caught a trout at the first cast? What you need is
experience."
"What I want is help."
"And so you have appealed to me? You wish me to go to this woman and
tell her that her marriage was a fraud?"
"I do."
"There have been pleasanter tasks."
"Will you do it, or will you not?"
"Suppose she will not believe me?"
"You must compel her."
"Young man, have you no compunctions about this business?" said the
judge, leaning forward and looking earnestly into the blue eyes.
"Compunctions?" said David, in a dry echo of the question.
"Yes, compunctions," replied the judge, repeating the word again.
"Oh! some. But for every compunction I have a thousand desperate
determinations. Were you ever in love, Judge?"
"Yes, I have been in love, such love as yours, and that is why I am what
I am now."
As he uttered these words, he lifted the glass which his hand had been
toying with, drained it to the dregs, fixed his eyes on David once more,
and after regarding him a moment with a look of pity, said slowly and
solemnly: "Young man, I am about to give you good advice. You smile? No
wonder! But I beg you to listen to me. Sometimes a shipwrecked sailor
makes the best captain, for he knows the force of the tempest. I have no
conscience for myself, but some unaccountable emotion impels me to bid
you abandon this project. Somehow, as I look at you, I cannot bear to
have you become what I am. You seem so young and innocent that I would
like to have you stay as you are. I wish to save you. How strange it is.
When I look at you, I seem to behold myself as I was at your age."
As he spoke these words the whole expression of his countenance altered,
and faint traces of an almost extinguished manhood appeared. It was as
if beauty, sunk below the horizon, had been thrown up in a mirage.
So tender an appeal would have broken a heart like David's, except for
the madness of illicit love.
"Judge!" he cried, striking the table with his fist, "I did not come
here for advice, I came for help. I am determined to have this woman.
She is mine by virtue of my desire and my capacity to acquire her! I
must have her! I will have her, by fair means or foul. And, Judge, in
this case, the foulest means are fair. What seems an act of injustice is
in reality an act of mercy. You know her husband, and you know as well
as I do that her life with him will be her ruin. You know that the
complacency with which she once regarded him has already turned to
disgust, and that it is only a single step from disgust to hate and
another from hate to murder. She will kill him some day! She cannot help
it. It is human nature and if she doesn't I will! Come now, Judge, you
will help me, won't you?"
A cynical smile wreathed itself around the mouth of the old roué. In his
debauched nature, the oil of sympathy had long ago been exhausted. This
was a last despairing flicker. A wick cannot burn alone.
"Help you?" he said languidly. "Oh, yes, I will help you. There is no
use trying to save you. You are only another moth! You want the fire,
and you will have it! You will burn your wings off as millions have done
before you and as millions will do after you. What then? Wings are made
to be burned! I burned mine. Probably if I had another pair I would burn
them also. It is as useless to moralize to a lover as to a tiger. I am a
fool to waste my breath on you. Let us get down to business. You say
that she loves you, and that she will be glad to learn that she is
free?"
"I do! her heart is on our side. She will believe you, easily!"
"Yes, she will believe me easily! She will believe me too easily! For
six thousand years desire has been a synonym for credulity. All men
believe what they want to, except myself. I believe everything that I do
not want to, and nothing that I do! But no matter. How much am I to get
for this job?"
They haggled a while over the price, struck a bargain and shook
hands--the same symbol being used among men to seal a compact of love or
hate, virtue or vice.
"Be at the Spencer House at eleven o'clock," said David, rising. "You
will find us on the balcony. The doctor is to spend the night in a revel
with the captain of the Mary Ann, and we shall be uninterrupted. Be an
actor. Be a great actor, Judge. You are to deal with a soul which
possesses unusual powers of penetration."
"Do not fear! She will be no match for me, for she is innocent--and when
was virtue ever a match for vice? She is predestined to her doom!
Farewell! Fare-ill, I mean," he muttered under his breath, as David
passed from the room.
He gazed after him with his basilisk eyes, drank another glass of whisky
and relapsed into reveries.
The mind of the lover was full of tumultuous emotions. On the thin ice
of his momentary joy, he hovered like an inexperienced skater over the
great deeps of sin which were waiting to engulf him.
There was still an hour before the time when he would have to take his
part in the business of the evening. He determined to walk off his
excitement, and chose the way along the edge of the river.
It was now quite dark. The stars were shining in the sky and lamps were
twinkling in the windows. The streets were almost deserted; the
citizens, wearied with the toils of the day, were eating their evening
meal, or resting on the balconies and porches. Here and there on the
surface of the swift-flowing river a huge steamer swept past, or little
ferry-boats shot back and forth like shuttles. His thoughts composed a
strangely blended web of good and evil. At the same moment in which he
reiterated his resolve to prosecute this deed he consecrated himself to
a life of tenderness and devotion to the woman whom he loved with all
the energy of his nature! Of such inconsistencies is the soul capable!
It seemed an easy matter to him to control the august forces which he
was letting loose! He was like a little child who wanders through a
laboratory uncorking bottles and mixing explosives.
Having regained his calmness by a long walk, he hurried back and reached
the open space along the river front where peddlers, mountebanks and
street venders plied their crafts, just in time to meet the doctor as he
drove up with his horses.