BON CHIEN
The chronology of that last dark and bitter week in November might have
been written "necrology."
On Monday Colonel Mallett died about sundown; on Wednesday the Hon. John
D. Ellis, while examining an automatic revolver in his bath-room, met
with one of those unfortunate and fatal accidents which sometimes happen
in times of great financial depression.
Thursday Amos Flack carelessly disappeared, leaving no address; and on
the last day of the week Emanuel Klawber politely excused himself to a
group of very solemn gentlemen who had been assisting him in the
well-known and popular game of "Hunt the Books"; and, stepping outside
the door of the director's office, carefully destroyed what little life
had not already been scared out of his three-hundred-pound person.
It had been raining all day; Dysart had not felt very well, and
Klawber's unpleasant performance made him ill. He stood in the rain
watching the ambulance arriving at a gallop, then, sickened, turned away
through the dark and dripping crowds, crossed the street, and, lowering
his head against the storm, drove both gloved hands deep into the
pockets of his fashionably cut rain-coat, and started for home.
It mattered nothing to him that several hard-working newspaper men might
desire to secure his version of Mr. Klawber's taking off, or of his
explanation for it or his sensations concerning it. It mattered nothing
to him that the afternoon papers reported the arrest of James Skelton,
or that Max Moebus had inadvertently, and no doubt in a moment of
intense abstraction, taken a steamer for Europe and the books of the
Shoshone Bank.
These matters, now seemed a great way off--too unreal to be of personal
moment. He was feeling sick; that occupied his mind. Also the slush on
the sidewalk had wet through his shoes, which probably was not good for
his cough.
It was scarcely two in the afternoon, yet there remained so little
daylight that the electricity burned in the shops along Fifth Avenue.
Through a smutty, grayish gloom, rain drove densely; his hat and
waterproof coat were heavy with it, the bottoms of his trousers soaked.
Passing the Patroons Club it occurred to him that hot whiskey might
extinguish his cough. The liveried servants at the door, in the
cloak-room--the page who took his order, the white-headed butler who had
always personally served him, and who served him now, all hesitated and
gazed curiously at him. He paid no attention at the time but remembered
it afterward.
For an hour he sat alone in the vast empty room before a fire of English
cannel coal, taking his hot whiskey and lemon in slow, absent-minded
gulps. Patches of deep colour lay flat under his cheek-bones, his sunken
abstracted eyes never left the coals.
The painted gaze of dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him
from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken
wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose
leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering
in their evil immobility.
He had presented the trophy to the club after a trip somewhere, leaving
the impression that he had shot it. He seldom looked at it, never at the
silver-engraved inscription on the walnut shield.
Strangely enough, now as he sat there, he thought of the trophy and
looked up at it; and for the first time in his life read the
inscription.
It made no visible impression upon him except that for a brief moment
the small and vivid patches of colour in his wasted cheeks faintly
tinted the general pallor. But this died out as soon as it appeared; he
drank deliberately, set the hot glass on a table at his elbow, long,
bony fingers still retaining a grip upon it.
And into his unconcentrated thoughts, strangely enough, came the
memories of little meannesses which he had committed--trivial things
that he supposed he had forgotten long ago; and at first, annoyed, he
let memory drift.
But, imperceptibly, from the shallows of these little long-forgotten
meannesses, memory drifted uncontrolled into deeper currents; and,
disdainful, he made no effort to control it; and later, could not. And
for the first time in his life he took the trouble to understand the
reason of his unpopularity among men. He had cared nothing for them.
He cared nothing for them now, unless that half tolerant, half
disdainful companionship of years with Delancy Grandcourt could be
called caring for a man. If their relations ever had been anything more
than a habit he did not know; on what their friendship had ever been
founded he could not tell. It had been his habit to take from Delancy,
accept, or help himself. He had helped himself to Rosalie Dene; and not
long ago he had accepted all that Delancy offered, almost convinced at
the time that it would disappear in the debacle when the Algonquin
crumbled into a rubbish heap of rotten securities.
A curious friendship--and the only friend he ever had had among
men--stupid, inertly at hand, as inevitably to be counted on as some
battered toy of childhood which escaped the dust heap so long that
custom tolerates its occupation of any closet space convenient: and
habit, at intervals, picks it up to see what's left of it.
* * * * *
He had finished his whiskey; the fire seemed to have grown too hot, and
he shoved back his chair. But the room, too, was becoming close, even
stifling. Perspiration glistened on his forehead; he rose and began to
wander from room to room, followed always by the stealthy glances of
servants.
The sweat on his face had become unpleasantly cold; he came back to the
fire, endured it for a few moments, then, burning and shivering at the
same time, and preferring the latter sensation, he went out to his
letter-box and unlocked it. There was only one envelope there, a letter
from the governing board of the club requesting his resignation.
The possibility of such an event had never occurred to him; he read the
letter again, folded and placed it in his pocket, went back to the fire
with the idea of burning it, took it out, read it again, folded it
absently, and replaced it in his pocket.
At that time, except for the dull surprise, the episode did not seem to
affect him particularly. So many things had been accumulating, so many
matters had been menacing him, that one cloud more among the dark,
ominous masses gathering made no deeper impression than slight surprise.
For a while he stood motionless, hands in his trousers' pockets, head
lowered; then, as somebody entered the farther door, he turned
instinctively and stepped into a private card room, closing the polished
mahogany door. The door opened a moment later and Delancy Grandcourt
walked in.
"Hello," he said briefly. Dysart, by the window, looked around at him
without any expression whatever.
"Have you heard about Klawber?" asked Delancy. "They're calling the
extra."
Dysart looked out of the window. "That's fast work," he said.
Grandcourt stood for a while in silence, then seated himself, saying:
"He ought to have lived and tried to make good."
"He couldn't."
"He ought to have tried. What's the good of lying down that way?"
"I don't know. I guess he was tired."
"That doesn't relieve his creditors."
"No, but it relieves Klawber."
Grandcourt said: "You always view things from that side, don't you?"
"What side?"
"That of personal convenience."
"Yes. Why not?"
"I don't know. Where is it landing you?"
"I haven't gone into that very thoroughly." There was a trace of
irritation in Dysart's voice; he passed one hand over his forehead; it
was icy, and the hair on it damp. "What the devil do you want of me,
anyway?" he asked.
"Nothing.... I have never wanted anything of you, have I?"
Dysart walked the width of the room, then the length of it, then came
and stood by the table, resting on it with one thin hand, in which his
damp handkerchief was crushed to a wad.
"_What_ is it you've got to say, Delancy? Is it about that loan?"
"No. Have you heard a word out of me about it?"
"You've been devilish glum. Good God, I don't blame you; I ought not to
have touched it; I must have been crazy to let you try to help me----"
"It was my affair. What I choose to do concerns myself," said
Grandcourt, his heavy, troubled face turning redder. "And, Jack, I
understand that my father is making things disagreeable for you. I've
told him not to; and you mustn't let it worry you, because what I had
was my own and what I did with it my own business."
"Anyway," observed Dysart, after a moment's reflection, "your family is
wealthy."
A darker flush stained Grandcourt's face; and Dysart's misinterpretation
of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy
lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he
sat silent, his personal feelings merged in an evergrowing anxiety.
"Why do you cough like that, Jack?" he demanded after a paroxysm had
shaken the other into an armchair, where he lay sweating and panting:
"It's a cold," Dysart managed to say; "been hanging on for a month."
"Three months," said Grandcourt tersely. "Why don't you take care of
it?"
There was a silence; nothing more was said about the cold; and presently
Grandcourt drew a letter from his pocket and handed it silently to
Dysart. It was in Rosalie's handwriting, dated two months before, and
directed to Dysart at Baltimore. The post-office authorities had marked
it, "No address," and had returned it a few days since to the sender.
These details Dysart noticed on the envelope and the heading of the
first page; he glanced over a line or two, lowered the letter, and
looked questioningly over it at Grandcourt:
"What's it about?--if you know," he asked wearily. "I'm not inclined
just now to read anything that may be unpleasant."
Grandcourt said quietly:
"I have not read the letter, but your wife has told me something of what
it contains. She wrote and mailed it to you weeks ago--before the
crash--saying, I believe, that adversity was not the time for the
settlement of domestic differences, and that if her private fortune
could avert disaster, you were to write immediately to her attorneys."
Dysart gazed at him as though stunned; then his dull gaze fell once more
on the envelope. He examined it, went all over it with lack-lustre eyes,
laid it aside, and finally began to read his wife's letter--the letter
that had never reached him because he had used another name on the hotel
register in Baltimore.
Grandcourt watched him with painful interest as he sat, hunched up,
coughing at intervals, and poring over his wife's long, angular
chirography. There was much between the lines to read, but Dysart could
never read it; much to understand, but he could never understand it.
"Delancy tells me," she wrote, "that you are threatened with very
serious difficulties. Once or twice you yourself have said as much
to me; and my answer was that they no longer concerned me.
"The situation is this: I have, as you know, consulted counsel with
a view to begin proceedings for a separation. This has been
discontinued--temporarily, at any rate--because I have been led to
believe by your friend, Delancy Grandcourt, that the present is no
time to add to your perplexities.
"He has, I may add, induced me to believe other things which my
better sense rejects; but no woman's logic--which is always half
sentiment--could remain unshaken by the simple loyalty to you and to
me of this friend of yours and of mine. And this letter would never
have been written except, practically, at his dictation. Kindly
refrain from showing it to him as my acknowledgment here of his
influence in the matter would grieve him very deeply.
"Because he believes that it is still possible for you and me to
return to civilised relations; he believes that I care for you,
that, in your own leisurely and superficial fashion, you still
really honour the vows that bound you--still in your heart care for
me. Let him believe it; and if you will, for his sake, let us resume
the surface semblance of a common life which, until he persuaded me,
I was determined to abandon.
"It is an effort to write this; I do it for his sake, and, in that
way, for yours. I don't think you care about me; I don't think you
ever did or ever will. Yet you must know how it was with me until I
could endure my isolation no longer. And I say to you perfectly
frankly that now I care more for this friend of yours, Delancy
Grandcourt, than I care for anybody in the world. Which is why I
write you to offer what I have offered, and to say that if my
private fortune can carry you through the disaster which is so
plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at once as they have
all power in the matter."
The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart's own house:
"Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away
from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the
liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass
of nine days' old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at
the hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen
you several times with a Mr. Skelton."
As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face
at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages. And at last
he finished his wife's letter, sat very silent, save when the cough
shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand.
It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something
beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against
him--had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now;
something occult, sinister, inexorable.
He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he
lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had
accounted to nobody, and never would account--on earth. And into his
memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the
letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of
the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had
missed.
Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost
doglike:
"Have you read it?" he asked.
Dysart glanced up abstractedly: "Yes."
"Is it what I told you?"
"Yes--substantially." He dried his damp face; "it comes rather late, you
know."
"Not _too_ late," said the other, mistaking him; "your wife is still
ready to meet you half-way, Jack."
"Oh--that? I meant the Algonquin matter--" He checked himself, seeing
for the first time in his life contempt distorting Grandcourt's heavy
face.
"Man! Man!" he said thickly, "is there nothing in that letter for you
except money offered?"
"What do you mean?"
"I say, is there nothing in that message to you that touches the manhood
in you?"
"You don't know what is in it," said Dysart listlessly. Even
Grandcourt's contempt no longer produced any sensation; he looked at the
letter, tore it into long strips, crumpled them and stood up with a
physical effort:
"I'm going to burn this. Have you anything else to say?"
"Yes. Good God, Jack, _don't_ you care for your wife? _Can't_ you?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't know." His tone became querulous. "How can a man tell why he
becomes indifferent to a woman? I don't know. I never did know. I can't
explain it. But he does."
Grandcourt stared at him. And suddenly the latent fear that had been
torturing him for the last two weeks died out utterly: this man would
never need watching to prevent any attempt at self-destruction; this man
before him was not of that caste. His self-centred absorption was of a
totally different nature.
He said, very red in the face, but with a voice well modulated and even:
"I think I've made a good deal of an ass of myself. I think I may safely
be cast for that rôle in future. Most people, including yourself, think
I'm fitted for it; and most people, and yourself, are right. And I'll
admit it now by taking the liberty of asking you whom you were with in
Baltimore."
"None of your damned business!" said Dysart, wheeling short on him.
"Perhaps not. I did not believe it at the time, but I do now.... And her
brother is after you with a gun."
"What do you mean?"
"That you'd better get out of town unless you want an uglier scandal on
your hands."
Dysart stood breathing fast and with such effort that his chest moved
visibly as the lungs strained under the tension:
"Do you mean to say that drunken whelp suspects anything so--so wildly
absurd----"
"Which drunken whelp? There are several in town?"
Dysart glared at him, careless of what he might now believe.
"I take it you mean that little cur, Quest."
"Yes, I happen to mean Quest."
Dysart gave an ugly laugh and turned short on his heel:
"The whole damn lot of you make me sick," he said. "So does this club."
A servant held his rain-coat and handed him his hat; he shook his bent
shoulders, stifled a cough, and went out into the rain.
In his own home his little old father, carefully be-wigged, painted,
cleaned and dressed, came trotting into the lamp-lit living-room fresh
from the ministrations of his valet.
"There you are, Jack!--te-he! Oh, yes, there you are, you young
dog!--all a-drip with rain for the love o' the ladies, eh, Jack?
Te-he--one's been here to see you--a little white doll in chinchillas,
and scared to death at my civilities--as though she knew the
Dysarts--te-he! Oh, yes, the Dysarts, Jack. But it was monstrous
imprudent, my son--and a good thing that your wife remains at Lenox so
late this season--te-he! A lucky thing, you young dog! And what the
devil do you mean by it--eh? What d'ye mean, I say!"
Leering, peering, his painted lips pursed up, the little old man seated
himself, gazing with dim, restless eyes at the shadowy blur which
represented to him his handsome son--a Dysart all through, elegant,
debonair, resistless, and, married or single, fatal to feminine peace of
mind. Generations ago Dysarts had been shot very conventionally at ten
paces owing to this same debonair resistlessness; Dysarts had slipped
into and out of all sorts of unsavoury messes on account of this fatal
family failing; some had been neatly winged, some thrust through; some,
in a more sordid age, permitted counsel of ability to explain to a jury
how guiltless a careless gentleman could be under the most unfortunate
and extenuating appearances.
The son stood in his wet clothes, haggard, lined, ghastly in contrast to
the startling red of his lips, looking at his smirking father: then he
leaned over and touched a bell.
"Who was it who called on Mrs. Dysart?" he asked, as a servant appeared.
"Miss Quest, sir," said the man, accepting the cue with stolid
philosophy.
"Did Miss Quest leave any message?"
"Yes, sir: Miss Quest desired _Mrs._ Dysart to telephone her on _Mrs._
Dysart's return from--the country, sir--it being a matter of very great
importance."
"Thank you."
"Thank _you_, sir."
The servant withdrew; the son stood gazing into the hallway. Behind him
his father mumbled and muttered and chuckled to himself in his
easy-chair by the fire!
"Te-he! They are all alike, the Dysarts--oh, yes, all alike! And now
it's that young dog--Jack!--te-he!--yes, it's Jack, now! But he's a good
son, my boy Jack; he's a good son to me and he's all Dysart, all Dysart;
bon chien chasse de race!--te-he! Oui, ma fois!--bon chien chasse de
race."