SINE DIE
The message ran:
"My sister badly hurt in an accident; concussion, intermittent
consciousness. We fear spinal and internal injury. What train
can you catch?
SCOTT SEAGRAVE."
Which telegram to Josiah Bailey, M.D., started that eminent general
practitioner toward Roya-Neh in company with young Dr. Goss, a surgeon
whose brilliancy and skill did not interfere with his self-restraint
when there were two ways of doing things.
They were to meet in an hour at the 5.07 train; but before Dr. Bailey
set out for the rendezvous, and while his man was still packing his
suit-case, the physician returned to his office, where a patient waited,
head hanging, picking nervously at his fingers, his prominent, watery
eyes fixed on vacancy.
The young man neither looked up nor stirred when the doctor entered and
reseated himself, picking up a pencil and pad. He thought a moment,
squinted through his glasses, and continued writing the prescription
which the receipt of the telegram from Roya-Neh had interrupted.
When he had finished he glanced over the slip of paper, removed his
gold-rimmed reading spectacles, folded them, balanced them thoughtfully
in the palm of his large and healthy hand, considering the young fellow
before him with grave, far-sighted eyes:
"Stuyvesant," he said, "this prescription is not going to cure you. No
medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless
you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely
to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient
pitches in and helps himself. Is that plain talk?"
Quest nodded and reached shakily for the prescription; but the doctor
withheld it.
"You asked for plain talk; are you listening to what I'm saying?"
"Oh, hell, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together.
Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't
I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you
that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands
that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope
out; I'll do any turn you call for----"
"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go _now_!"
"All right, doctor. Only they're too damn rough with a man. All right;
I'll go. I _did_ go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled
suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?"
"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the
doctor, coldly using the vernacular.
"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if
I cut it out and went up there and let that iron-fisted Irishman slam me
around, that I'd come out all right. And the first little baby-drink I
hit began the whole thing again!"
"Why did you take it? You didn't have to."
"I wanted it," retorted Quest angrily.
"Not badly enough to make self-control impossible. That's what you went
up there for, to get back self-control. You got it but didn't use it. Do
you think there is any sort of magic serum Mulqueen or I or anybody
under Heaven can pump into you that will render you immune from the
consequences of making an alcohol sewer of yourself?"
"I certainly supposed I could come out and drink like a gentleman," said
the young man sullenly.
"Drink like a--_what_? A gentleman? What's that? What's drinking like a
gentleman? I don't know what it is. You either drink alcohol or you
don't; you either swill it or you don't. Anybody can do either. I'm not
aware that either is peculiar to a gentleman. But I know that both are
peculiar to fools."
Quest muttered, picking his fingers, and cast an ugly side look at the
physician.
"I don't know what you just said," snapped Dr. Bailey, "but I'll tell
you this: alcohol is poison and it has not--and never had--in any guise
whatever, the slightest compensating value for internal use. It isn't a
food; it's a poison; it isn't a beneficial stimulant; it's a poison; it
isn't an aid to digestion; it's a poison; it isn't a life saver; it's a
life taker. It's a parasite, forger, thief, pander, liar, brutalizer,
murderer!
"Those are the plain facts. There isn't, and there never has been, one
word to say for it or any excuse, except morbid predisposition or
self-inculcated inclination, to offer for swallowing it. Now go to your
brewers, your wine merchants, your champagne touts, your fool
undergraduates, your clubmen, your guzzling viveurs--and they'll all
tell you the contrary. So will some physicians. And you can take your
choice. Any ass can. That is all, my boy."
The young man glowered sulkily at the prescription.
"Do I understand that this will stop the jumps?"
"If you really believe that, you have never heard me say so," snapped
Dr. Bailey.
"Well, what the devil will it do?"
"The directions are there. You have my memorandum of the régime you are
to follow. It will quiet you till you get to Mulqueen's. Those two bits
of paper, however, are useless unless you help yourself. If you want to
become convalescent you can--even yet. It won't be easy; it will hurt;
but you can do it, as I say, even yet. But it is _you_ who must do it,
not I or that bit of paper or Mulqueen!
"Just now you happen to want to get well because the effect of alcohol
poison disturbs you. Things crawl, as you say, on the back of your hand.
Naturally, you don't care for such phenomena.
"Well, I've given you the key to mental and physical regeneration. Yours
is not an inherited appetite; yours is not one of those almost
foredoomed and pitiable cases. It's a stupid case; and a case of gross
self-indulgence in stupidity that began in idleness. And that, my son,
is the truth."
"Is that so?" sneered Quest, rising and pocketing the prescription.
"Yes, it is so. I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I
knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and
wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You
deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse,
one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done to yourself.
"You stood high in school and in college; you were Phi Beta Kappa, a
convincing debater, a plausible speaker, an excellent writer of good
English--by instinct a good newspaper man. Also you were a man adapted
by nature to live regularly and beyond the coarser temptations. But you
were lazy!"
Dr. Bailey struck his desk in emphasis.
"The germ of your self-indulgence lay in gross selfishness. You did what
pleased you; and it suited you to do nothing. I'm telling you how you've
betrayed yourself--how far you'll have to climb to win back. Some men
need a jab with a knife to start their pride; some require a friend's
strong helping arm around them. You need the jab. I'm trying to
administer it without anæsthetics, by telling you what some men think of
you--that it is your monstrous selfishness that has distorted your
normal common sense and landed you where you are.
"Selfishness alone has resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of
your sister--your only living relative--in a deliberate relapse into
slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which
was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your
sister's income after gambling away your own fortune.
"I know you; I carried you through teething and measles, my son: and
I've carried you through the horrors of alcoholic delirium. And I say to
you now that, with the mental degeneration already apparent, and your
naturally quick temper, if you break down a few more cells in that
martyred brain of yours, you'll end in an asylum--possibly one reserved
for the _criminal_ insane."
A dull colour stained the pasty whiteness of Quest's face. For several
minutes he stood there, his fingers working and picking at each other,
his pale, prominent eyes glaring.
"That's a big indictment, doctor," he said at last.
"Thank God you think it so," returned the doctor. "If you will stand by
your better self for one week--for only one week--after leaving
Mulqueen's, I'll stand by you for life, my boy. Come! You were a good
sport once. And that little sister of yours is worth it. Come,
Stuyvesant; is it a bargain?"
He stepped forward and held out his large, firm, reassuring hand. The
young fellow took it limply.
"Done with you, doctor," he said without conviction; "it's hell for
mine, I suppose, if I don't make my face behave. You're right; I'm the
goat; and if I don't quit butting I'll sure end by slapping some sissy
citizen with an axe."
He gave the doctor's hand a perfunctory shake with his thin, damp
fingers; dropped it, turned to go, halted, retraced his steps.
"Will it give me the willies if I kiss a cocktail good-bye before I
start for that fresh guy, Mulqueen?"
"Start _now_, I tell you! Haven't I your word?"
"Yes--but on the way to buy transportation can't I offer myself one
last----"
"_Can't_ you be a good sport, Stuyve?"
The youth hesitated, scowled.
"Oh, very well," he said carelessly, turned and went out.
As he walked along in the slush he said to himself: "I guess it's up
the river for mine.... By God, it's a shame, for I'm feeling pretty
good, too, and that's no idle quip!... Old Squills handed out a line of
talk all right-o!... He landed it, too.... I ought to find something to
do."
As he walked, a faint glow stimulated his enervated intelligence; ideas,
projects long abandoned, desires forgotten, even a far echo from the old
ambition stirring in its slumber, quickened his slow pulses. The ghost
of what he might have been, nay, what he _could_ have made himself, rose
wavering in his path. Other ghosts, long laid, floated beside him,
accompanying him--the ghosts of dead opportunities, dead ideals, lofty
inspirations long, long strangled.
"A job," he muttered; "that's the wholesome dope for Willy. There isn't
a newspaper or magazine in town where I can't get next if I speak easy.
I can deliver the goods, too; it's like wiping swipes off a bar----"
In his abstraction he had walked into the Holland House, and he suddenly
became conscious that he was confronting a familiarly respectful
bartender.
"Oh, hell," he said, greatly disconcerted, "I want some French vichy,
Gus!" He made a wry face, and added: "Put a dash of tabasco in it, and
salt it."
A thick-lipped, ruddy-cheeked young fellow, celebrated for his knowledge
of horses, also notorious for other and less desirable characteristics,
stood leaning against the bar, watching him.
They nodded civilly to one another. Quest swallowed his peppered vichy,
pulled a long face and said:
"We're a pair of 'em, all right."
"Pair of what?" inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming
rosier and looking more than ever like somebody's groom.
"Pair of bum whips. We've laid on the lash too hard. I'm going to stable
my five nags--my five wits!"--he explained with a sneer as the other
regarded him with all the bovine intelligence of one of his own
stable-boys--"because they're foundered; and that's the why, young
four-in-hand!"
He left the bar, adding as he passed:
"I'm a rotting citizen, but you"--he laughed insolently--"you have
become phosphorescent!"
The street outside was all fog and melting snow; the cold vichy he had
gulped made him internally uncomfortable.
"A gay day to go to Mulqueen's," he muttered sourly, gazing about for a
taxicab.
There was none for hire at that moment; he walked on for a while,
feeling the freezing slush penetrate his boot-soles; and by degrees a
sullen temper rose within him, revolting--not at what he had done to
himself--but at the consequences which were becoming more unpleasant
every moment.
As he trudged along, slipping, sliding, his overcoat turned up around
his pasty face, his cheeks wet with the icy fog, he continued swearing
to himself, at himself, at the slush, the cold vichy in his belly, the
appetite already awakened which must be denied.
Denied?... Was he never to have one more decent drink? Was this to be
the absolute and final end? Certainly. Yet his imagination could not
really comprehend, compass, picture to himself life made a nuisance by
self-denial--life in any other guise except as a background for inertia
and indulgence.
He swore again, profanely asking something occult why he should be
singled out to be made miserable on a day like this? Why, among all the
men he knew, he must go skulking about, lapping up cold mineral water
and cocking one ear to the sounds of human revelry within the Tavern.
As for his work--yes, he ought to do it.... Interest in it was already
colder; the flare-up was dying down; habitual apathy chilled it to its
embers. Indifference, ill-temper, self-pity, resentment, these were the
steps he was slowly taking backward. He took them, in their natural
sequence, one by one.
Old Squills meant well, no doubt, but he had been damned impertinent....
And why had Old Squills dragged in his sister, Sylvia?... He had paid as
much attention to her as any brother does to any sister.... And how had
she repaid him?
Head lowered doggedly against the sleet which was now falling thickly,
he shouldered his way forward, brooding on his "honour," on his sister,
on Dysart.
He had not been home in weeks; he did not know of his sister's departure
with Bunny Gray. She had left a letter at home for him, because she knew
no other addresses except his clubs; and inquiry over the telephone
elicited the information that he had not been to any of them.
But he was going to one of them now. He needed something to kill that
vichy; he'd have one more honest drink in spite of all the Old Squills
and Mulqueens in North America!
At the Cataract Club there were three fashion-haunting young men
drinking hot Scotches: Dumont, his empurpled skin distended with whiskey
and late suppers, and all his former brilliancy and wit cankered and
rotten with it, and his slim figure and clean-cut face fattened and
flabby with it; Myron Kelter, thin, elegant, exaggerated, talking
eternally about women and his successes with the frailer ones--Myron
Kelter, son of a gentleman, eking out his meagre income by fetching,
carrying, pandering to the rich, who were too fastidious to do what they
paid him for doing in their behalf; and the third, Forbes Winton,
literary dilettante, large in every feature and in waistcoat and in
gesture--large, hard, smooth--very smooth, and worth too many millions
to be contradicted when misstating facts to suit the colour of his too
luxuriant imagination.
These greeted Quest in their several and fashionably wearied manners,
inviting his soul to loaf.
Later he had a slight dispute with Winton, who surveyed him coldly, and
insolently repeated his former misstatement of a notorious fact.
"What rot!" said Quest; "I leave it to you, Kelter; am I right or not?"
Kelter began a soft and soothing discourse which led nowhere at first
but ended finally in a re-order for four hot Scotches.
Then Dumont's witty French blood--or the muddied dregs which were left
of it--began to be perversely amusing at Quest's expense. Epigrams
slightly frayed, a jest or two a trifle stale, humorous inversions of
well-known maxims, a biting retort, the originality of which was not
entirely free from suspicion, were his contributions to the festivities.
Later Kelter's nicely modulated voice and almost affectionate manner
restrained Quest from hurling his glass at the inflamed countenance of
Mr. Dumont. But it did not prevent him from leaving the room in a
vicious temper, and, ultimately, the Cataract Club.
The early winter night had turned cold and clear; sidewalks glittered,
sheeted with ice. He inhaled a deep breath and expelled a reeking one,
hailed a cab, and drove to the railroad station.
Here he bought his tickets, choosing a midnight train; for the journey
to Mulqueen's was not a very long one; he could sleep till seven in the
car; and, besides, he had his luggage to collect from the hotel he had
been casually inhabiting. Also he had not yet dined.
Bodily he felt better, now that the vichy had been "killed"; mentally
his temper became more vicious than ever as he thought of Dumont's
blunted wit at his expense--a wit with edge enough left to make a
ragged, nasty wound.
"He'll get what's coming to him some day," snarled Quest, returning to
his cab; and he bade the driver take him to the Amphitheatre, a
restaurant resort, wonderful in terra-cotta rocks, papier-maché grottos,
and Croton waterfalls--haunted of certain semi-distinguished pushers of
polite professions, among whom he had been known for years.
The place was one vast eruption of tiny electric lights, and the lights
of "the profession," and the demi-monde. Virtue and its antithesis
disguised alike in silk attire and pearl collars, rubbed elbows
unconcernedly among the papier-maché grottos; the cascades foamed with
municipal water, waiters sweated and scurried, lights winked and
glimmered, and the music and electric fans annoyed nobody.
In its usual grotto Quest found the usual group, was welcomed
automatically, sat down at one of the tables, and gave his order.
Artists, newspaper men, critics, and writers predominated. There was
also a "journalist" doing "brilliant" space work on the _Sun_. He had
been doing it nearly a month and he was only twenty-one. It was his
first job. Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his
shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him. His name was Bunn.
There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a
volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons. His function was to
torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it.
A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his
paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town.
"Kismet," observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the
_Post_, "no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody
else--or," he added, looking at Bunn, "even a journalist."
"Is that supposed to be funny?" asked Bunn complacently. "_I_ intend to
do art criticism for the _Herald_."
"What's the objection to my getting a job on it, too?" inquired Quest,
setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order.
He expected surprise and congratulation.
Somebody said, "_You_ take a job!" so impudently that Quest reddened and
turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth.
"It's my choice that I haven't taken one," he snarled. "Did you think
otherwise?"
"Don't get huffy, Stuyve," said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose
financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite
among his brothers.
A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their
Vandyck beards all wagging in unison.
"I want you to understand," said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively
on Dill's table, "that the job I ask for I expect to get."
"You might have expected that once," said the cool young man who had
spoken before.
"And I do now!" retorted Quest, raising his voice. "Why not?"
Somebody said: "You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it
every day that you're not working."
Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the
contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready--nothing at
hand except another glass of whiskey and soda.
Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing,
nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding
mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve
it.
Who the devil were these rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who
presumed to snub him--these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he
condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to
accord him by virtue of a social position hopeless of attainment by any
of them?
Who were they to turn on him like this when he had every reason to
suppose they were not only aware of the great talent he had carelessly
neglected to cultivate through all these years, but must, in the secret
recesses of their grubby souls, reluctantly admire his disdain of the
only distinctions they scrambled for and could ever hope for?
His black looks seemed to disturb nobody; Bunn, self-centred, cropped
his salad complacently; the Vandyck beards wagged; another critic or
two left, stern slaves to duty and paid ads.
* * * * *
The lights bothered him; tremors crawled over and over his skin; within
him a dull rage was burning--a rage directed at no one thing, but which
could at any moment be focussed.
Men rose and left the table singly, by twos, in groups. He sat,
glowering, head partly averted, scowlingly aware of their going, aware
of their human interest in one another but not in him, aware at last
that he counted for nothing whatever among them.
Some spoke to him as they passed out; he made them no answer. And at
last he was alone.
Reaching for his empty glass, he miscalculated the distance between it
and his quivering fingers; it fell and broke to pieces. When the waiter
came he cursed him, flung a bill at him, got up, demanded his coat and
hat, swore at the pallid, little, button-covered page who brought it,
and lurched out into the street.
A cab stood there; he entered it, fell heavily into a corner of the
seat, bade the driver, "Keep going, damn you!" and sat swaying,
muttering, brooding on the wrongs that the world had done him.
Wrongs! Yes, by God! Every hand was against him, every tongue slandered
him. Who was he that he should endure it any longer in patience! Had he
not been patient? Had he not submitted to the insults of a fool of a
doctor?--had he not stayed his hand from punishing Dumont's red and
distended face?--had he not silently accepted the insolent retorts of
these Grub Street literati who turned on him and flouted the talent that
lay dormant in him--dead, perhaps--but dead or dormant, it still
matched theirs! And they knew it, damn them!
Had he not stood enough from the rotten world?--from his own sister, who
had flung his honour into his face with impunity!--from Dysart, whose
maddening and continual ignoring of his letters demanding an
explanation----
There seemed to come a sudden flash in his brain; he leaned from the
window and shouted an address to the cabman. His hat had fallen beside
him, but he did not notice its absence on his fevered head.
"I'll begin with _him_!" he repeated with a thick laugh; "I'll settle
with him first. Now we're going to see! Now we'll find out about several
matters--or I'll break his neck off!--or I'll twist it off--wring it
off!"
And he beat on his knees with his fists, railing, raging, talking
incoherently, laughing sometimes, sometimes listening, as though,
suddenly, near him, a voice was mocking him.
He had a pocket full of bills, crushed up; some he gave to the cabman,
some he dropped as he stuffed the others into his pockets, stumbled
toward a bronze-and-glass grille, and rang. The cabman brought him his
hat, put it on him, gathered up the dropped money, and drove off with
his tongue in his cheek.
Quest rang again; the door opened; he gave his card to the servant, and
stealthily followed him upstairs over the velvet carpet.
Dysart, in a velvet dressing-gown knotted in close about his waist,
looked over the servant's shoulders and saw Quest standing there in the
hall, leering at him.
For a moment nobody spoke; Dysart took the offered card mechanically,
glanced at it, looked at Quest, and nodded dismissal to the servant.
When he and the other man stood alone, he said in a low, uncertain
voice:
"Get out of here!"
But Quest pushed past him into the lighted room beyond, and Dysart
followed, very pale.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"I've asked you questions, too," retorted Quest. "Answer mine first."
"Will you get out of here?"
"Not until I take my answer with me."
"You're drunk!"
"I know it. Look out!"
Dysart moistened his bloodless lips.
"What do you want to know?" And, as Quest shouted a question at him:
"Keep quiet! Speak lower, I tell you. My father is in the next room."
"What in hell do I care for your father? Answer me or I'll choke it out
of you! Answer me now, you dancing blackguard! I've got you; I want my
answer, and you've got to give it to me!"
"If you don't lower your voice," said Dysart between his teeth, "I'll
throw you out of that window!"
"Lower my voice? Why? Because the old fox might hear the young one yap!
What do I care for you or your doddering family----"
He went down with a sharp crash; Dysart struck him again as he rose;
then, beside himself, rained blows on him, drove him from corner to
corner, out of the room, into the hall, striking him in the face till
the young fellow reeled and fell against the bath-room door. It gave; he
stumbled into darkness; and after him sprang Dysart, teeth set--sprang
into the darkness which split before him with a roar into a million
splinters of fire.
He stood for a second swaying, reaching out to grasp at nothing in a
patient, persistent, meaningless way; then he fell backward, striking a
terrified servant, who shrank away and screamed as the light fell on her
apron and cuffs all streaked with blood.
She screamed again as a young man's white and battered face appeared in
the dark doorway before her.
"Is he hurt?" he asked. His dilated eyes were fixed upon the thing on
the floor. "What are you howling for? Is he--dead?" whispered Quest.
Suddenly terror overwhelmed him.
"Get out of my way!" he yelled, hurling the shrieking maid aside,
striking the frightened butler who tried to seize him on the stairs.
There was another manservant at the door, who stood his ground swinging
a bronze statuette. Quest darted into the drawing-room, ran through the
music-room and dining-room beyond, and slammed the door of the butler's
pantry.
He stood there panting, glaring, his shoulder set against the door; then
he saw a bolt, and shot it, and backed away, pistol swinging in his
bleeding fist.
Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was
shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled
continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a
policeman ran through the basement into the yard beyond; another pushed
his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick,
demanding admittance.
For a second he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he
hurled himself at the bolted door, and it flew wide open.
But Quest remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there
on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every
earthly question answered for him as long as time shall last.
* * * * *
Up-stairs a very old and shrunken man sat shivering in bed, staring
vacantly at some policemen and making feeble efforts to reach a wig
hanging from a chair beside him--a very glossy, expensive wig, nicely
curled where it was intended to fall above the ears.
"I don't know," he quavered, smirking at everybody with crackled,
painted lips, "I know nothing whatever about this affair. You must ask
my son Jack, gentlemen--my son Jack--te-he!--oh, yes, he knows; he can
tell you a thing or two, I warrant you! Yes, gentlemen, he's like all
the Dysarts--fit for a fight or a frolic!--te-he!--he's all Dysart,
gentlemen--my son Jack. But he is a good son to me--yes, yes!--a good
son, a good son! Tell him I said so--and--good-night."
"Nutty," whispered a policeman. "Come on out o' this boodwar and lave
th' ould wan be."
And they left him smirking, smiling, twitching his faded lips, and
making vague sounds, lying there asleep in his dotage.
And all night long he lay mumbling his gums and smiling, his sleep
undisturbed by the stir and lights and tramp of feet around him.
And all night long in the next room lay his son, white as marble and
very still.
Toward morning he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to
probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily and spoke no more.
They found it. What Dysart found as the winter sun rose over Manhattan
town, his Maker only knows, for his sunken eyes opened unterrified yet
infinitely sad. But there was a vague smile on his lips after he lay
there dead.
Nor did his slayer lie less serenely where bars of sunlight moved behind
the lowered curtains, calm as a schoolboy sleeping peacefully after the
eternity of a summer day where he had played too long and fiercely with
a world too rough for him.
And so, at last, the indictments were dismissed against them both and
their cases adjourned _sine die_.