AT THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE
Naudheim's disapproval was very marked and evident. He scoffed at the
great bowl of pink roses which stood upon the writing-table. He pushed
scornfully on one side the elegantly shaped inkstand, with its burden
of pens; the blotting-pad, with its silver edges; the piles of
cream-laid foolscap. Most of all he looked with scornful
disapprobation at his young host.
Saton was attired for his morning walk in the Park. During the last
few weeks--or months, perhaps--a touch of foppishness had crept into
his dress--a fondness for gray silk ties, a flower in his buttonhole,
white linen gaiters drawn carefully over his patent boots. Certainly
the contrast between this scrupulously dressed young man and Naudheim,
bordered upon the absurd. Naudheim was shabby, unbrushed, unkempt. His
collar was frayed, he wore no tie. The seams of his long black
frock-coat had been parted and inked over and parted again. He wore
carpet slippers and untidy socks. There were stains upon his
waistcoat.
From underneath his shaggy gray eyebrows he shot a contemptuous glance
at his host.
"My young friend," he said, "you are growing too fine. I cannot work
here."
"Nonsense!" Saton answered, a little uneasily. "You can sweep all
those things off the writing-table, if they seem too elaborate for
you, and pitch the flowers out of the window if you like."
"Bah!" Naudheim answered. "It is the atmosphere. I smell it
everywhere. This is not the house for thoughts. This is not the house
wherein one can build. My young friend, you have fallen away. You are
like all the others. You listen to the tin music."
"I think," Saton answered, "that the work which I have done should
be my answer to you. We are not all made alike. If I find it easier
to breathe in an atmosphere such as this, then that is the atmosphere
which I should choose. We do our best work amidst congenial
surroundings. You in your den, and I in my library, can give of our
best."
Naudheim shook his head.
"You are a fool," he said. "As for your work, it is clever, fatally
clever. When I read what you sent me last month, and saw how clever it
was, I knew that you were falling away. That is why I came. Now I have
come, I understand. Listen! The secrets of science are won only by
those who seek them, like children who in the time of trouble flee to
their mother's arms. Never a mistress in the world's history has asked
more from man than she has asked or has had more to give. She asks
your life, your thoughts, your passions--every breath of your body
must be a breath of desire for her and her alone. You think that you
can strut about the world, a talking doll, pay court to women, listen
to the voices that praise you, smirk your way through the days, and
all the time climb. My young friend, no! I tell you no! Don't
interrupt me. I am going to speak my say and go."
"Go?" Saton repeated. "Impossible! I am willing to work. I will work
now. I simply thought that as the morning was so fine we might walk
for a little time in the sunshine. But that is nothing."
Naudheim shook his head.
"Not one word do I speak of those things that are precious to me, in
this house," he declared. "I tell you that its atmosphere would choke
the life out of every thought that was ever conceived. You may blind
others, even yourself, young man," he went on, "but I know. You are a
renegade. You would serve two mistresses. I am going."
"You shall not," Saton declared. "This is absurd. Come," he added,
trying to draw his arm through his visitor's, "we will go into another
room if this one annoys you."
Naudheim stepped back. He thrust Saton away contemptuously. He was the
taller of the two by some inches, and his eyes flashed with scorn as
he turned toward the door.
"I leave this house at once," he said. "I was a fool to come, but I am
not such a fool as you, Bertrand Saton. Don't write or come near me
again until your sham house and your sham life are in ruins, and you
yourself in the wilderness. I may take you to my heart again then. I
cannot tell. But to-day I loathe you. You are a creature of no
account--a foolish, dazzled moth. Don't dare to ring your bells. I
need no flunkeys to show me the way to the door."
Naudheim strode out, as a prophet of sterner days might have cast the
dust of a pagan dancing hall from his feet. Saton for a moment was
staggered. His composure left him. He walked aimlessly up and down the
room, swinging his gloves in his hand, and muttering to himself.
Then Rachael came in. She walked with the help of two sticks. She
seemed gaunter and thinner than ever, yet her eyes had lost little of
their fire, although they seemed set deeper in the caverns of her
face.
"Naudheim has gone," she said. "What is wrong, Bertrand?"
"Naudheim is impossible," Saton answered. "He came in here to work
this morning, looked around the room, and began to storm. He objected
to the flowers, to the writing-table, to me. He has shaken the dust of
us off his feet, and gone back to his wretched cabin in Switzerland."
She leaned on her sticks and looked at him.
"On the face of the earth," she said, "there does not breathe a fool
like you."
Saton's expression hardened.
"You, too!" he exclaimed. "Well, go on."
"Can't you understand," the woman exclaimed, her voice shaking, "that
we are on the verge of a precipice? Do you read the papers? There were
questions asked last night in the House about what they called these
fortune-telling establishments. Yet everything goes on without a
change--by your orders, I am told. Oh, you fool! Huntley knows that he
is being spied upon. In Bond Street, yesterday alone, three detectives
called at different times. The thing can't go on. The money that we
should save ready to escape at the end, you spend, living like this.
And the girl Lois--you are letting her slip out of your fingers."
"My dear Rachael," he answered, "in the first place, there is not a
thread of evidence to connect you or me with any one of these places,
or with Huntley's office. In the second place, I am not letting Lois
slip out of my fingers. She will be of age in three weeks' time, and
on her birthday I am going to take her away from Rochester, whatever
means I have to use, and I am going to marry her at once. You think
that I am reckless. Well, one must live. Remember that I am young and
you are old. I have no place in the world except the place I make for
myself. I cannot live in a pig-sty amongst the snows like Naudheim. I
cannot find the whole elixir of life in thoughts and solitude as he
does. There are other things--other things for men of my age."
"You sail too near the wind. You are reckless."
"Perhaps I am," he answered. "Life in ten years' time may very well
become a stranger place to those who are alive and who have been
taught the truth. But life, even as we know it to-day, is strange
enough. Rachael, have you ever loved anyone?"
The woman seemed to become nerveless. She sank into a chair.
"Of the past I do not speak," she said--"I choose never to speak."
He took up his hat.
"No!" he remarked. "One sees easily enough that there are things in
your past, Rachael. Sometimes the memory may burn. You see, I am
living through those days now. The fire has hold of me, and not all
the knowledge I have won, not all the dim coming secrets, from before
the face of which some day I will tear aside the veil, not all the
experiences through which I and I alone have passed, can help me
to-day. So perhaps," he added, turning toward the door, "I am a little
reckless."
Rachael let him depart without uttering a word. She turned in her
chair to watch him cross the square. He was drawing on his light kid
gloves. His silk hat was a mirror of elegance. His gold-headed stick
was thrust at exactly the right angle under his arm. He swaggered a
little--a new accomplishment, and he had the air of one who is well
aware that he graces the ground he treads upon.
The woman looked away from him, and with a slow, painful movement her
head drooped a little until it reached her hands. A slight shiver
seemed to pass through her body. Then she was still, very still
indeed. It seemed to her that she could see the end!