The heat, which had been severe in June, driving the last fashionable
loiterer into the country, continued fiercely throughout July. August
was stifling; the chestnut leaves in the parks curled up and grew
brittle; the elms were blotched; brown stretches scarred the lawns; the
blazing colour of the geranium beds seemed to intensify the heat, like a
bed of living coals.
Nobody who was anybody remained in town--except some wealthy business
men and their million odd employés; but the million, being nobodies,
didn't count.
Nobody came into town; that is to say that a million odd strangers came
as usual, swelling the sweltering, resident population sufficiently to
animate the main commercial thoroughfares morning and evening, but they
didn't count; the money they spent was, however, very carefully counted.
The fashionable columns of the newspapers informed the fashionable
ex-urbanated that the city was empty--though the East Side reeked like
a cattle-pen, and another million or two gasped on the hot, tin roofs
under the stars, or buried their dirty faces in the parched park grass.
What the press meant to say was that the wealthy section of the city
within the shadow of St. Patrick's twin white spires and north of
Fifty-ninth Street was as empty and silent as an abandoned gold-mine.
Which was true. Miles of elaborate, untenanted dwellings glimmered blank
under the moon and stood tomb-like in barren magnificence against the
blazing blue of noon. Miles of plate-glass windows, boarded, or bearing
between lowered shade and dusty pane the significant parti-coloured
placard warning the honest thief, stared out at the heated park or, in
the cross streets, confronted each other with inert hauteur, awaiting
the pleasure of their absent owners.
The humidity increased; the horses' heads hung heavily under their
ridiculously pitiful straw bonnets. When the sun was vertical nobody
stirred; when the bluish shadows began to creep out over baked
sidewalks, broadening to a strip of superheated shade, a few stirred
abroad in the deserted streets; here a policeman, thin blue summer tunic
open, helmet in hand, swabbing the sweat from forehead and neck; there
a white uniformed street sweeper dragging his rubber-edged mop or a
section of wet hose; perhaps a haggard peddler of lemonade making for
the Park wall around the Metropolitan Museum where, a little later, the
East Side would venture out to sit on the benches, or the great electric
tourists' busses would halt to dump out a living cargo--perhaps only
the bent figure of a woman, very shabby, very old, dragging her ancient
bones along the silent splendour of Fifth Avenue, and peering about the
gutters for something she never finds--always peering, always mumbling
the endless, wordless, soundless miserere of the poor.
Quarrier's huge limestone mansion, looming golden in the sun, was
tenantless; its owner, closing even The Sedges, his Long Island house,
and driven northward for a breath of air, was expected at Shotover.
The house of Mrs. Mortimer was closed and boarded up; the Caithness
mansion was closed; the Ferralls', the Bonnesdels', the Pages',
the Shannons', Mrs. Vendenning's, all were sealed up like vaults. A
caretaker apparently guarded Major Belwether's house, peeping out at
intervals from behind the basement windows. As for Plank's great pile of
masonry, edging the outer Hundreds in the north, several lighted windows
were to be seen in it at night, and a big yellow and black touring-car
whizzed down town from its bronze gateway every morning with perfect
regularity.
For there was a fight on that had steadily grown hotter with the
weather, and Plank had little time to concern himself with the
temperature or to mop his red features over the weather bureau report.
Harrington and Quarrier were after him, horse, foot, and dragoons;
Harrington had even taken a house at Seabright in order to be near in
person; and Quarrier's move from Long Island to Shotover House was not
as flippant as it might appear, for he had his private car there and a
locomotive at Black Fells Crossing station, and he was within striking
distance of Rochester, Utica, Syracuse, and Albany. Which was what
Harrington thought necessary.
The vast unseen machinery set in motion by Harrington and Quarrier had
begun to grind in May; and, at the first audible rumble, the aspect
of things financial in the country changed. A few industrials began to
rocket, nobody knew why; but the market's first tremor left it baggy and
spineless, and the reaction, already overdue, became a sodden and soggy
slump. Nobody knew why.
The noise of the fray in the papers, which had first excited then
stunned the outside public, continued in a delirium of rumour, report,
forecast, and summing up at the week's end.
Scare heads, involving everybody and everything, from the
District-Attorney to Plank's office boy, succeeded one another. Plank's
name headed column after column. Already becoming familiar in the
society and financial sections, it began to appear in neighbouring
paragraphs. Who was Plank? And the papers told people with more or less
inaccuracy, humour, or sarcasm. What was he trying to do? The papers
tried to tell that, too, making a pretty close guess, with comments
good-natured or ill-natured according to circumstances over which
somebody ought to have some control. What was Harrington trying to do to
Plank--if he was trying to do anything? They told that pretty clearly.
What was Quarrier going to do to Plank? That, also, they explained in
lively detail. A few clergymen who stuck to their churches began
to volunteer pulpit opinions concerning the ethics of the battle. A
minister who was generally supposed to make an unmitigated nuisance of
himself in politics dealt Plank an unexpected blow by saying that he was
a “hero.” Some papers called him “Hero” Plank for awhile, but soon tired
of it or forgot it under the stress of the increasing heat.
Besides Plank scarcely noticed what the press said of him. He was
too busy; his days were full days, brimming over deep into the night.
Brokers, lawyers, sycophants, tipsters, treacherous ex-employés of
Quarrier, detectives, up-State petty officials, lobbyists from Albany,
newspaper men, men from Wall Street, Broad Street, Mulberry
Street, Forty-second Street--all these he saw in units, relays,
regiments--either at his offices or after dinner--and sometimes after
midnight in his own house. And these were only a few, picked from the
interested or disinterested thousands who besieged him with advice,
importunity, threats, and attempted blackmail. And he handled them all
in turn, stolidly but with decision. His obstinate under lip protruded
further and further with rare recessions; his heavy head was like the
lowered head of a bull. Undaunted, inexorable, slow to the verge of
stupidity at times, at times swift as a startled tiger, this new,
amazing personality steadily developing, looming higher, heavier,
athwart the financial horizon--in stature holding his own among giants,
then growing, gradually, inch by inch, dominated his surrounding level
sky line.
The youth in him was the tragedy to the old; the sudden silence of the
man the danger to the secretive. Harrington was already an old man;
Quarrier's own weapon had always been secrecy; but the silence of Plank
confused him, for he had never learned to parry well another's use of
his own weapon. The left-handed swordsman dreads to cross with a man
who fights with the left hand. And Harrington, hoary, seamed, scarred,
maimed in onslaughts of long forgotten battles, looked long and hard
upon this weird of his own dead youth which now rose towering to
confront him, menacing him with the armed point of the same shield
behind which he himself had so long found shelter--the Law!
The closing of the courts enforced armed truces along certain lines of
Plank's battle front; the adjournment of the legislature emptied Albany.
Once it was rumoured that Plank had passed an entire morning with the
Governor of the greatest State in the Union and that the conference was
to be repeated. A swarm of newspaper men settled about the Governor's
summer cottage at Saratoga, but they learned nothing, nor could they
find a trace of Plank's tracks in the trodden trails of the great Spa.
Besides, the racing had begun; Desmond, Burbank, Sneed, and others of
the gilded guild had opened new club-houses; the wretched, half-starved
natives in the surrounding hills were violating the game-laws to distend
the paunches of the overfed with five-inch troutlings and grouse and
woodcock slaughtered out of season; so there was plenty of copy for
newspaper men without the daily speculative paragraph devoted to the
doings of Beverly Plank. Some scandal, too--but newspapers never touch
that; and after all it was nobody's affair that Leroy Mortimer drove a
large yellow and black Serin-Chanteur touring-car, new model, all over
Saratoga county. Perhaps the similarity of machines gave rise to the
rumour of Plank's presence; perhaps not, because the car was often
driven by a tall, slender girl with dark eyes and hair; and nobody ever
saw that sort of pretty woman in Plank's Serin, or saw Leroy Mortimer
for many days without a companion of that species.
Mortimer's health was excellent. The races had not proved remunerative
however, and his new motor-car was horribly expensive. So was Lydia. And
he began to be seriously afraid that by the end of August he would be
obliged to apply to Quarrier once more for some slight temporary token
of that gentleman's goodwill. He told Lydia this, and she seemed to
agree with him. This pleased him. She had not pleased him very much
recently. For one thing she was becoming too friendly with some of his
friends--Desmond in particular.
Plank, it was known, had opened his great house at Black Fells. His
servants, gamekeepers, were there; his stables, kennels, greenhouses,
model stock-farm--all had been put in immaculate condition pending the
advent of the master. But Plank had not appeared; his new sea-going
steam yacht still lay in the East River, and, at rare intervals, a
significant glimmer of bunting disclosed the owner's presence aboard
for an hour or two. That was all, however; and the cliff-watchers at
Shotover House and the Fells looked seaward in vain for the big Siwanoa,
as yacht after yacht, heralded by the smudge on the horizon, turned from
a gray speck to a white one, and crept in from the sea to anchor.
The Ferralls were at Shotover with their first instalment of guests.
Sylvia was there, Quarrier expected--because Kemp Ferrall's break with
him was not a social one, and Grace's real affection for Sylvia blinded
neither her nor her husband to the material and social importance of the
intimacy. Siward was not invited; neither had an invitation to him been
even discussed in view of what Grace was aware of, and what everybody
knew concerning the implacable relations existing between him,
personally, and Howard Quarrier.
Bridge, yachting, and motoring were the August sports; the shooting set
had not yet arrived, of course; in fact there was still another relay
expected before the season opened and brought the shooting coterie for
the first two weeks. But Sylvia was expected to last through and hold
over with a brief interlude for a week's end at Lenox. So was Quarrier;
and Grace, always animated by a lively but harmless malice, hoped to
Heaven that Plank might arrive before Quarrier left, because she adored
the tension of situations and was delightedly persuaded that Plank was
more than able to hold his own with her irritating cousin.
“Oh, to see them together in a small room,” she sighed ecstatically in
Sylvia's ear; “I'd certainly poke them up if they only turned around
sulkily in the corners of the cage and evinced a desire to lie down.”
“What a mischief-maker you are,” said Sylvia listlessly; and though
Grace became very vivacious in describing her plans to extract amusement
out of Plank's hoped-for presence Sylvia remained uninterested.
There seemed, in fact, little to interest her that summer at Shotover
House; and, though she never refused any plans made for her, and her
attitude was one of quiet acquiescence always--she never expressed a
preference for anything, a desire to do anything; and, if let alone, was
prone to pace the cliffs or stretch her slim, rounded body on the sand
of some little, sheltered, crescent beach, apparently content with the
thunderous calm of sea and sky.
Her interest, too, in people had seemingly been extinguished. Once or
twice she did inquire as to Marion's whereabouts, and learned that Miss
Page was fishing in Minnesota somewhere but would return to Shotover
when the shooting opened. Somebody, Captain Voucher, perhaps, mentioned
to somebody in her hearing that Siward was still in New York. If she
heard she made no sign, no inquiry. The next morning she remained abed
with a headache, and Grace motored to Wendover without her; but Sylvia
spent the balance of the day on the cliffs, and played Bridge with
the devil's own luck till dawn, piling up a score that staggered Mr.
Fleetwood, who had been instructing her in adversary play a day or two
before.
The hot month dragged on; Quarrier came; Agatha Caithness arrived a few
days later--scheme of the Ferralls involving Alderdene!--but the Siwanoa
did not come, and Plank remained invisible. Leila Mortimer arrived from
Swan's Harbour toward the middle of the month, offering no information
as to the whereabouts of what Major Belwether delicately designated as
her “legitimate.” But everybody knew he was at last to be crossed
off and struck clean out, and the ugly history of the winter, now so
impudently corroborated at Saratoga, gave many a hostess the opportunity
long desired. Mortimer, as far as his own particular circle was
concerned, was down and out; Leila, accepted as a matter of course
without him, remained quietly uncommunicative. If the outward physical
change in her was due to her marital rupture people thought it was well
that it had come in time, for she bloomed like a lovely exotic; and her
silences and enthusiasms, and the fragrant freshness of her developing
attitude toward the world first disconcerted, then amused, then touched
those who had supposed themselves to be so long a buckler for her
foibles and a shield for her caprice.
“Gad,” said Alderdene, “she's well rid of him if he's been choking her
this long--the rank, rotten weed that he is, sapping the life from her
so when she hung over toward another fellow's bush we thought she
was frail in the stem--God bless us all for a simpering lot of
blatherskites!”
And if, in the corner of the gun-room, there was a man among them who
had ever ventured to hold Leila's smooth little hand, unrebuked, in days
gone by, none the less he knew that Alderdene spoke truth; and none the
less he knew that what witness he might be called to bear at the end of
the end of all must only incriminate himself and not that young matron
who now, before their very eyes, was budding again, reverting to the
esoteric charm of youth reincarnated.
“A suit before a referee would settle him,” mused Voucher; “he hasn't a
leg to stand on. Lord! The same cat that tripped up Stephen Siward!”
Fleetwood's quick eyes glimmered for an instant in Quarrier's direction.
Quarrier was in the billiard-room, out of earshot, practising balk-line
problems with Major Belwether; and Fleetwood said: “The same cat that
tripped up Stephen Siward. Yes. But who let her loose?”
“It was your dinner; you ought to know,” said Voucher bluntly.
“I do know. He brought her”--nodding toward the billiard-room.
“Belwether?”
“No,” yawned Fleetwood.
Somebody said presently: “Isn't he one of the Governors? Oh, I say, that
was rather rough on Siward though.”
“Yes, rough. The law of trespass ought to have operated; a man's liable
for the damage done by his own live-stock.”
“That's a brutal way of talking,” said somebody. And the subject was
closed with the entrance of Agatha in white flannels on her way to the
squash court where she had an appointment with Quarrier.
“A strange girl,” said somebody after she had disappeared with Quarrier.
“That pallor is stunning,” said a big, ruddy youth, with sunburn on his
neck and forehead.
“It isn't healthy,” said Fleetwood.
“It attracts me,” persisted the ruddy young man, voicing naively that
curious truth concerning the attraction that disease so often exerts on
health--the strange curiosity the normal has for the sub-normal--that
fascination of the wholesome for the unhealthy. It is, perhaps, more
curiosity than anything, unless, deep hidden under the normal, there lie
one single, perverted nerve.
Sylvia, passing the hall, glanced in through the gun-room door with an
absentminded smile at the men and their laughing greeting, as they rose
with uplifted glasses to salute her.
“The sweetest of all,” observed a man, disconsolately emptying his
glass. “Oh irony! What a marriage!”
“Do you know any girl who would not change places with her?” asked
another.
Every man there insisted that he knew one girl at least who would not
exchange Sylvia's future for her own. That was very nice of them; it is
to be hoped they believed it. Some of them did--for the moment, anyhow.
Then Alderdene, blinking furiously, emitted one of his ear-racking
laughs; and everybody, as usual, laughed too.
“You damned cynic,” observed Voucher affectionately.
“Somebody,” said Fleetwood, “insists that she doubled up poor Siward.”
“She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard,” remarked
Voucher.
“Well?”
“Oh, don't you consider that enough to squelch the story?”
“Engaged girls,” mused Alderdene, “never double up except at Bridge.”
“Everybody has been or is in love with Sylvia Landis,” said Voucher,
“and it's a man's own fault if he's hit. Once she did it, innocently
enough, and enjoyed it, never realising that it hurt a man to be doubled
up.”
Fleetwood yawned again and said: “She can have me to-morrow. But she
won't. She's tired of the sport. Any girl would get enough with the
pack at her heels day in and day out. Besides she's done for--unless she
looses Quarrier and starts on a duke-hunt over in Blinky's country! …
Is anybody on for a sail? Is anybody on for anything? No? Oh, very well.
Shove that decanter north by west, Billy.”
This was characteristic of the dog-days at Shotover. The dog-days in
town were very different; the city threw open the parks to the poor at
night; horses fell dead in the streets; pallid urchins, stripped naked,
splashed and rolled and screeched in the basin of the City Hall fountain
under the indifferent eyes of the police.
As for Plank he was too busy to know what the thermometer was about; he
had no time for anything outside of his own particular business except
to go every day to the big, darkened house in lower Fifth Avenue where
the days had been hard on Siward and the nights harder.
Siward, however, could walk now, using his crutches still, but often
stopping to gently test his left foot and see how much weight he was
able to bear on it--even taking a tentative step or two without crutch
support. He drove when he thought it prudent to use the horses in the
heat, usually very early in the morning, though sometimes at night with
Plank when the latter had time to run his touring-car through the park
and out into the Bronx or Westchester for a breath of air.
But Plank wanted him to go away, get out of the city for his
convalescence, and Siward flatly declined, demanding that Plank permit
him to do his share in the fight against the Inter-County people.
And Plank, utterly unable to persuade him, and the more hampered because
of his anxiety about Siward--though that young man did not know it--wore
himself out providing Siward with such employment in the matter as would
lightly occupy him without doing any good to the enemy.
So Siward, stripped to his pajamas, pored over reams of typewritten
matter and took his brief walking exercise in the comparative cool of
the evening and drove when he dared use his horses; or, sitting beside
Plank, whizzed northward through the starry darkness of the suburbs.
When it was that he first began to like Plank very much he could not
exactly remember. He was not, perhaps, aware of how much he liked him.
Plank's unexpected fits of shyness, of formality, often and often amused
him. But there was a subtler feeling under the unexpressed amusement,
and, beneath all, a constantly increasing sub-stratum of respect. Too,
he found himself curiously at ease with Plank, as with one born to his
own caste. And this feeling, unconscious, but more and more apparent,
meant more to Plank than anything that had ever happened to him. It
was a tonic in hours of doubt, a pleasure in his brief leisure, a pride
never to be hinted at, never to be guessed, never to be dreamed of by
any living soul save Plank alone.
Then, one sultry day toward the last week in August, a certain judge of
a certain court, known among some as “Harrington's judge,” sent
secretly for Plank. And Plank knew that the crisis was over. But neither
Harrington nor Quarrier dreamed of such a thing.
Fear sat heavy on that judge's soul--the godless, selfish fear that
sends the first coward slinking from the councils of conspiracy to seek
immunity from those slowly grinding millstones that grind exceeding
fine.
Quarrier at Shotover, with his private car and his locomotive within an
hour's drive, strolled with Sylvia on the eve of her departure for Lenox
with Leila Mortimer; then, when their conference was ended, he returned
to Agatha, calmly unconscious of impending events.
Harrington, at Seabright, paced his veranda, awaiting this same judge,
annoyed as two boats came in without the expected guest. And never for
one instant did he dream that his creature sat closeted with Plank,
tremulous, sallow, nearing the edge of cringing avowal--only held back
from utter collapse by the agonising necessity of completing a bargain
that might save himself from the degradation of the punishment that had
seemed inevitable. All day long he sat with Plank. Nobody except those
two knew he was there. And after a very long time Plank consented that
nobody else except Siward and Harrington and Quarrier should ever know.
So he called up Harrington on the telephone, saying that there was, in
the office, somebody who desired to speak to him. And when Harrington
caught the judge's first faint, stammered word he reeled where he stood,
ashen, unbelieving, speechless. The shaking but remorseless voice went
on, dinning horribly in his ear, then ceased, and Plank's heavy voice
sounded the curt coup de grâce.
Harrington was an old man, a very old man, mortally hurt; but he
steadied himself along the wall of his study to the desk and sank into
the chair.
There he sat, feeling the scars of old wounds throbbing, feeling his age
and the tragedy of it, and the new sensation of fear--fear of the wraith
of his own youth, wearing the mask of Plank, and menacing him with the
menace he had used on others so long ago--so very long ago.
After a little while he passed a thin hand over his eyes, over his gray
head, over the mouth that all men watched with fear, over the shaven
jaw now grimly set, but trembling. His hand, too, shook with palsy as
he wrote, painfully picking out the words and figures of the cipher from
his code-book; but he closed his thin lips and squared his unsteady jaw
and wrote his message to Quarrier:
“It is all up. Plank will take over Inter-County. Come at once.”
And that was all there was to be done until he could come into Plank's
camp with arms and banners, a conquered man, cynical of the mercy he
dared not expect and which, in all his life, he had never, never shown
to man, to woman, or to child.
Plank slept the sleep of utter exhaustion that night; the morning found
him haggard but strong, cool in his triumph, serious, stern faced,
almost sad that his work was done, the battle won.
From his own house he telegraphed a curt summons to Harrington and to
Quarrier for a conference in his own office; then, finishing whatever
business his morning mail required, put on his hat and went to see the
one man in the world he was most glad for.
He found him at breakfast, sipping coffee and wrinkling his brows over
the eternal typewritten pages. And Plank's face cleared at the sight and
he sat down, laughing aloud.
“It's all over, Siward,” he said. “Harrington knows it; Quarrier knows
it by this time. Their judge crawled in yesterday and threw himself
on our mercy; and the men whose whip he obeyed will be on their way to
surrender by this time. … Well! Haven't you a word?”
“Many,” said Siward slowly; “too many to utter, but not enough to
express what I feel. If you will take two on account, here they are in
one phrase: thank you.”
“Debt's cancelled,” said Plank, laughing. “Do you want to hear the
details?”
They talked for an hour, and, in the telling, even Plank's stolidity
gave way sufficient to make his heavy voice ring at moments, and the
glimmer of excitement edge his eyes. Yet, in the telling, he scarcely
mentioned himself, never hinted of the personal part--the inspiration
which was his alone; the brunt of the battle which centred in him; the
tireless vigilance; the loneliness of the nights when he lay awake,
perplexed with doubt and nobody to counsel him--because men who wage
such wars are lonely men and must work out their own salvation. No,
nobody but his peers could advise him; and he had thought that his enemy
was his peer, until that enemy surrendered.
The narrative exchanged by Plank in return for Siward's intensely
interested questions was a simple, limpid review of a short but terrific
campaign that only yesterday had threatened to rage through court
after court, year after year. In the sudden shock of the cessation from
battle, Plank himself was a little dazed. Yet he himself had expected
the treason that ended all; he himself had foreseen it. He had counted
on it as a good general counts on such things, confidently, but with
a dozen plans as substitutes in case that plan failed--each plan as
elaborately worked out to the last detail as though it alone existed as
the only hope of victory. But if Siward suspected something of this it
was not from Plank that he learned it.
“Plank,” he said at last, “there is nothing in the world that men admire
more than a man. It is a good deal of a privilege for me to tell you
so.”
Plank turned red with surprise and embarrassment, stammering out
something incoherent.
That was all that was said about the victory. Siward, unusually gay for
awhile, presently turned sombre; and it was Plank's turn to lift him out
of it by careless remarks about his rapid convalescence, and the chance
for vacation he so much needed.
Once Siward looked up vacantly: “Where am I to go?” he asked. “I'd as
soon stay here.”
“But I'm going,” insisted Plank. “The Fells is all ready for us.”
“The Fells! I can't go there!”
“W-what?” faltered Plank, looking at Siward with hurt eyes.
“Can't you--don't you understand?” said Siward in a low voice.
“No. You once promised--”
“Plank, I'll go anywhere except there with you. I'd rather be with you
than with anybody. Can I say more than that?”
“I think you ought to, Siward. A--a fellow feels the refusal of his
offered roof-tree.”
“Man! man! it isn't your roof I am refusing. I want to go; I'd give
anything to go. If it were anywhere except where it is, I'd go fast
enough. Now do you understand? If--if Shotover House and Shotover people
were not next door to the Fells, I'd go. Now do you understand?”
Plank said: “I don't know whether I understand. If you mean Quarrier,
he's on his way here, and he'll have business to keep him here for the
next few months, I assure you. But”--he looked very gravely across at
Siward--“if you don't mean Quarrier--” He hesitated, ill at ease under
the expressionless scrutiny of the other.
“Do you know what's the matter with me, Plank?” he asked at length.
“I think so.”
“I have wondered. I wonder now how much you know.”
“Very little, Siward.”
“How much?”
Plank looked up, hesitated, and shook his head: “One infers from what
one hears.”
“Infers what?”
“The truth, I suppose,” replied Plank simply.
“And what,” insisted Siward, “have you inferred that you believe to
be the truth? Don't parry, Plank; it isn't easy for me, and I--I never
before spoke this way to any man. … It is likely I should have spoken
to my mother about it. … I had expected to. It may be weakness--I don't
know; but I'd like to talk a little about it to somebody. And there's
nobody fit to listen, except you.”
“If you feel that way,” said Plank slowly, “I will be very glad to
listen.”
“I feel that way. I've been through--some things; I've been pretty sick,
Plank. It tires a man out; a man's head and shoulders get tired. Oh, I
don't mean the usual reaction from self-contempt, disgust--the dreadful,
aching sadness of it all which lasts even while desire, stunned for the
moment, wakens into craving. I don't mean that. It is something else--a
deathly, mental solitude that terrifies. I tell you, no man except a man
smitten by my malady knows what solitude can be! … There! I didn't mean
to be theatrical; I had no intention of--”
“Go on,” cut in Plank heavily.
“Go on! … Yes, I want to. You know what a pillow is to a tired man's
shoulders. I want to use your sane intelligence to rest on a moment.
It's my brain that's tired, Plank.”
Although everybody had cynically used Plank, nobody had ever before
found him a necessity.
“Go on,” he said unsteadily. “If I can be of use to you, Siward, in
God's name let me be, for I have never been necessary to anybody in all
my life.”
Siward rested his head on one clinched hand: “How much chance do you
think I have?” he asked wearily.
“Chance to get well?”
“Yes.”
Plank considered for a moment, then: “You are not trying, Siward.”
“I have been trying since--since March.”
“Since March?”
“Yes.”
Plank looked at him curiously: “What happened in March?”
“Had I better tell you?”
“You know better than I.”
Siward, cheek crushed against his fist, his elbow on the desk, gazed at
him steadily:
“In March,” he said, “Miss Landis spoke to me. I've made a better fight
since.”
Plank's serious face darkened. “Is she the only anchor you have?”
“Plank, I am not even sure of her. I have made a better fight since
then; that is all I dare say. I know what men think about a man like
me; I knew they demand character, pride, self-denial. But, Plank, I am
driving faster and faster toward the breakers, and these anchors are
dragging. For it is not, in my case, the physical failure to obey the
will; it is the will itself that has been attacked from the first.
That is the horror of it. And what is there behind the will-power to
strengthen it? Only the source of will-power--the mind. It is the mind
that cannot help me. What am I to do?”
“There is a spiritual strength,” said Plank timidly.
“I have never dreamed of denying it,” said Siward. “I have tried to find
it through the accepted sources--accepted by me, too. God has not helped
me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has
not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort,” he added
hastily. “I don't for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant
of the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I
desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one
have failed to hold me.”
“You mean--Miss Landis?”
“Yes. It may be weakness; it may be to my shame that the cables of pride
and self-respect, even the spiritual respect for the Highest, cannot
hold me when this one anchor holds. All I know is that it holds--so far.
It held me at Shotover; it holds me again, now. And the rocks were close
abeam, Plank--very close--when she spoke to me over the wires, through
the rain, that dark day in March.”
He moistened his lips feverishly.
“She said that I might see her. I have waited a long time. I have taken
my fighting chance again and I've won out, so far.”
He looked up at Plank, curiously embarrassed:
“Your body is normal; your intelligence wholesome, balanced, sane; and I
want to ask you if you think that perhaps, without understanding how,
I have found in her, or through her, in some way, the spiritual source
that I think might help me to help myself?”
And, as Plank made no reply:
“Or am I talking sentimental cant? Don't answer, if you think that.
I can't trust my own mind any more, anyway; and,” with an ugly laugh,
“I'll know it all some day--the sooner the better!”
“Don't say that!” growled Plank. “You were sane a moment ago.”
Siward looked up sharply, but the other silenced him with a gesture.
“Wait! You asked me a perfectly sane question--so wholesome, so normal,
that I'm trying to frame an answer worthy of it! I intimated that after
the physical, the mental, the ethical phenomena, there remained always
the spiritual instinct. Like a wireless current, if a man can establish
communication it is well for him, whatever the method. You assented, I
think.”
“Yes.”
“And you ask me if I believe it possible that she can be the medium?”
“Yes.”
Plank said deliberately: “Yes, I do think so.”
The silence was again broken by Plank: “Siward, you have asked me what
I think. Now you must listen to the end. If you believed that through
her--her love, marrying her--you stood the best chance in the world to
win out, it would be cowardly to ask her to take the risk. As much as I
care for you I had rather see you lose the fight than accept such a risk
from her. Now you know what I think--but you don't know all. Siward, I
say to you that if you are man enough to take her, take her! And I say
that of the two risks she is running to-day, the chance she might take
with you is infinitely the lesser risk. For with you, if you continue
slowly losing your fight, the mental suffering only will be hers. But
if she closes this bargain with Quarrier, selling to him her body, the
light will go out of her soul for ever.”
He leaned heavily toward Siward, stretching out his powerful arm:
“You marry her; and keep open your spiritual communication through her,
if that is the way it has been established, and hang on to your God that
way until your body is dead! I tell you, Siward, to marry her. I don't
care how you do it; I don't care how you get her. Take her! Yours, of
the two, is the stronger character, or she would not be where she is.
Does she want what you cannot give her? Cure that desire--it is more
contemptible than the craving that shatters you! I say, let the one-eyed
lead the blind. Miracles are worked out by mathematics--if you have
faith enough.”
He rose, striding the length of the room once or twice, turned, holding
out his broad hand:
“Good-bye,” he said. “Harrington is about due at my office; Quarrier
will probably turn up to-night. I am not vindictive; I shall be just
with them--as just as I know how, which is to be as merciful as I dare
be. Good-bye, Siward. I--I believe you and she are going to get well.”
When he had gone, Siward lay back in his chair, very still, eyes closed.
A faint colour had mounted to his face and remained there.
It was late in the afternoon when he went down-stairs, using his
crutches lightly. Gumble handed him a straw hat and opened the door, and
Siward cautiously descended the stoop, stood for a few moments on the
sidewalk, looking up at the blue sky, then wheeled and slowly made his
way toward Washington Square. The avenue was deserted; his own
house appeared to be the only remaining house still open in all that
old-fashioned but respectable quarter.
He swung leisurely southward, a slim, well-built young fellow, strangely
out of place on crutches. The poor always looked at him; beggars never
importuned him, yet found him agreeable to watch. Children, who seldom
look up into the air far enough to notice grown people, always became
conscious of him when he passed; often smiled, sometimes spoke. As for
stray curs and tramp cats, they were for ever making advances. As
long as he could remember, there was scarcely a week in town but some
homeless dog attached himself to Siward's heels, sometimes trotting
several blocks, sometimes following him home--where the outcast was
always cared for, washed, fed, and ultimately shipped out to the farm,
where scores of these “fresh-air” dogs resided on his bounty and rolled
in luxury on his lawns.
Cats, too, were prone to notice him, rising as he passed to hoist an
interrogative tail and make tentative observations.
In Washington Square, these, and the ragged children, knew him best of
all. The children came from Minetta Lane and the purlieus south and
west of it; the cats from the Mews, which Siward always thought most
appropriate.
And now, as he passed the marble arch and entered the square, glancing
behind him he saw the inevitable cat trotting, and, at his left, a
very dirty little girl pretending to trundle a hoop, but plainly enough
keeping sociable pace with him.
“Hello!” said Siward. The cat stopped; the child tossed her clustering
curls, gave him a rapid but fearless sidelong glance, laughed, and ran
on in the wake of her hoop. When she caught it she sat down on a bench
opposite the fountain and looked around at Siward.
“It's pretty warm, isn't it?” said Siward, coming up and seating himself
on the same bench.
“Are you lame?” asked the child.
“Oh, a little.”
“Is your leg broken?”
“Oh, no, not now.”
“Is that your cat?”
Siward looked around; the cat was seated on the bench beside him. But he
was accustomed to that sort of thing, and he caressed the creature with
his gloved hand.
“Are you rich?” asked the child, shaking her blond curls from her eyes
and staring up solemnly at him.
“Not very,” he answered, smiling. “Why do you ask?”
“You look rich, somehow,” said the child shyly.
“What! With these old and very faded clothes?”
She shook her head, swinging her plump legs: “You look it, somehow. It
isn't the clothes that matter.”
“I'll tell you one thing,” said Siward, laughing “I'm rich enough to buy
all the hokey-pokey you can eat!” and he glanced meaningly at the pedlar
of that staple who had taken station between a vender of peaches and a
Greek flower-seller.
The child looked, too, but made no comment.
“How about it?” asked Siward.
“I'd rather have something to remember you by,” said the girl
innocently.
“What?” he said, perplexed.
“A rose. They are five cents, and hokey-pokey costs that much--I mean,
for as much as you can eat.”
“Do you really want a rose?” he said amused.
But the child fell shy, and he beckoned the Greek and selected a dozen
big, perfumed jacks.
Then, as the child sat silent, her ragged arms piled with roses, he
asked her jestingly what else she desired.
“Nothing. I like to look at you,” she answered simply.
“And I like to look at you. Will you tell me your name?”
“Molly.”
But that is all the information he could extract. Presently she said she
was going, hesitated, looked a very earnest good-bye, and darted away
across the park, her hoop over one arm, the crimson roses bobbing above
her shoulders. Something in her flight attracted the errant cat, for
she, too, jumped down and bounded after the little flying feet, but,
catlike, halted half-way to scratch, and then forgetting what she was
about, wandered off toward the Mews again, whence she had been lured by
instinctive fascination.
Siward, intensely amused, sat there in the late sunlight which streamed
through the park, casting long shadows from the elms and sycamores. It
was that time of the day, just before sunset, when the old square looked
to him as he remembered it as a child. Even the marble arch, pink in
the evening sun, did not disturb the harmony of his memories. He saw his
father once more, walking home from down town, tall, slim, laughingly
stopping to watch him as he played there with the other children--the
nurses, seated in a row, crocheting under the sycamores; he saw the
old-fashioned carriage pass, Mockett on the box, Wands beside him,
and his pretty mother leaning forward to wave her hand to him as
the long-tailed, long-maned horses wheeled into Fifth Avenue. Little
unimportant scenes, trivial episodes, grew in the spectral garden of
memory: the first time he ever saw Marion Page, when, aged five, she was
attempting to get into the fountain, pursued by a shrieking nurse; and a
certain flight across the grass he had indulged in with Leila Mortimer,
then Leila Egerton, aged six, in hot pursuit, because she found that it
bored him horribly to be kissed, and she was bound to do it. He had a
fight once, over by that gnarled, old, silver poplar-tree, with Kemp
Ferrall--he could not remember what about, only that they ended by
unanimously assaulting their nurses and were dragged howling homeward.
He turned, looking across to where the gray towers of the University
once stood. There had been an old stone church there, too; and, south
of that, old, old houses with hip-roofs and dormers where now the high
white cliffs of modern architecture rose, riddled with tiny windows,
every vane glittering in the sun. South, the old houses still remained,
now degraded to sordid uses. North, the square, red-brick mansions,
with their white pillars and steps, still faced the sunset--the last
practically unbroken rank of the old régime, the last of the old guard,
standing fast and still confronting, still resisting the Inevitable
looming in limestone and granite, story piled on story, aloft in the
kindling, southern sky.
A cab, driven smartly, passed through the park, the horses' feet
slapping the asphalt till the echoes rattled back from the marble arch.
He followed it idly with his eyes up Fifth Avenue; saw it suddenly halt
in the middle of the street; saw a woman spring out, stand for a moment
talking to her companion, then turn and look toward the square.
She stood so long, and she was so far away, that he presently grew
tired of watching her. A dozen ragged urchins were prowling around the
fountain, casting sidelong glances at a distant policeman. But it was
not hot enough that evening to permit the children to splash in the
water, and the policeman drove them off.
“Poor little devils!” said Siward to himself; and he rose, adjusted his
crutches, and started through the park with a vague idea of seeing what
could be done.
As he limped onward, the sun level in his eyes, he heard somebody speak
behind him, but did not catch the words or apply the hail to himself.
Then, “Mr. Siward!” came the low, breathless voice at his elbow.
His heart stopped as he did. The sun had dazzled his eyes, and when he
turned on his crutches he could not see clearly for a second. That
past, he looked at Sylvia, looked at her outstretched hand, took it
mechanically, still staring at her with only a dazed unbelief in his
eyes.
“I am in town for a day,” she said. “Leila Mortimer and I were driving
up town from the bank when we saw you; and the next thing that happened
was me, on Fifth Avenue, running after you--no, the next thing was my
flying leap from the hansom, and my standing there looking down the
street and across the square where you sat. Then Leila told me I was
probably crazy, and I immediately confirmed her diagnosis by running
after you!”
She stood laughing, flushed, sunburned, and breathless, her left hand
still in his, her right hand laid over it.
“Oh,” she said, with a sudden change to anxiety, “does it tire you to
stand?”
“No. I was going to saunter along.”
“May I saunter with you for a moment? I mean--I only mean, I am glad to
see you.”
“Do you think I am going to let you go now?” he asked, astonished.
She looked at him, then her eyes evaded his: “Let us walk a little,” she
said, withdrawing her hand, “if you think you are strong enough.”
“Strong! Look, Sylvia!” and he stood unsupported by his crutches, then
walked a little way, slowly, but quite firmly. “I am rather a coward
about my foot, that is all. I shall not lug these things about after
to-day.”
“Did the doctor say you might?”
“Yes, after to-day. I could walk home now without them. I could do a
good many things I couldn't do a few minutes ago. Isn't that curious?”
“Very,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
He laughed. She dared not look at him. The excitement and impetus of
sheer impulse had carried her this far; now all the sadness of it was
clutching hard at her throat and for awhile she could not speak--walking
there in her dainty, summer gown beside him, the very incarnation of
youth and health, with the sea-tan on wrist and throat, and he, white,
hollow-eyed, crippled, limping, at her elbow!
Yet at that very moment his whole frame seemed to glow and his heart
clamour with the courage in it, for he was thinking of Plank's words
and he knew Plank had spoken the truth. She could not give herself to
Quarrier, if he stood firm. His was the stronger will after all; his was
the right to interfere, to stop her, to check her, to take her, draw her
back--as he had once drawn her from the fascination of destruction when
she had swayed out too far over the cliffs at Shotover.
“Do you remember that?” he asked, and spoke of the incident.
“Yes, I remember,” she replied, smiling.
“Doctors say” he continued, “that there is a weak streak in people who
are affected by great heights, or who find a dizzy fascination drawing
them toward the brink of precipices.”
“Do you mean me?” she asked, amused.
But he continued serenely: “You have seen those pigeons called 'tumbler
pigeons' suddenly turn a cart-wheel in mid-air? Scientists say it's not
for pleasure they do it; it's because they get dizzy. In other words,
they are not perfectly normal.”
She said, laughing: “Well, you never saw me turn a cart-wheel!”
“Only a moral one,” he replied airily.
“Stephen, what on earth do you mean? You're not going to be
disagreeable, are you?”
“I am going to be so agreeable,” he said, laughing, “that you will find
it very difficult to tear yourself away.”
“I have no doubt of it, but I must, and very soon.”
“I'm not going to let you.”
“It can't be helped,” she said, looking up at him. “I came in with
Leila. We're asked to Lenox for the week's end. We go to Stockbridge on
the early train to-morrow morning.
“I don't care,” he said doggedly; “I'm not going to let you go yet.”
“If I took to my heels here in the park would you chase me, Stephen?”
she asked with mock anxiety.
“Yes; and if I couldn't run fast enough I'd call that policeman. Now do
you begin to understand?”
“Oh, I've always understood that you were spoiled. I'm partly guilty of
the spoiling process, too. Listen: I'll walk with you a little way”--she
looked at him--“a little way,” she continued gently; “then I must go.
There is only a caretaker in our house and Leila will be furious if I
leave her all alone. Besides, we're going to dine there and it won't be
very gay if I don't give a few orders first.”
“But you brought your maid?”
“Naturally.”
“Then telephone her that you and Leila are dining out.”
“Where, silly? Do you want us to dine somewhere with you?”
“Want you! You've got to!”
“Stephen, it isn't best.”
“It is best.”
She turned to him impulsively: “Oh, I do want to so much! Do you think
I might? It is perfectly delicious to see you again. I--you have no
idea--”
“Yes, I have,” he said sternly.
They turned, walking past the fountain toward Fifth Avenue again.
Furtively she glanced at his hands with the city pallor on them as they
grasped the cross-bars of the crutches, then looked up at his worn face.
He was much thinner, but now in the softly fading light the shadows
under the eyes and cheek-bones seemed less sharp, his face fuller and
more boyish; the contour of head and shoulders, the short, crisp hair
were as she remembered--and the old charm held her, the old fascination
grew, tightening her throat, stealing through every vein, stirring her
pulses, awakening imperceptibly once more the best in her. The twilight
of a thousand years seemed to slip from the world as she looked out at
it through eyes opening from a long, long sleep; the marble arch burned
rosy in the evening glow; a fairy haze hung over the enchanted avenue,
stretching away, away into the blue magic of the city of dreams.
“There is no use,” she said under her breath; “I can't go back to Leila.
Stephen, the dreadful part of it is that I--I wish she were in Jericho!
I wish the whole world were in Ballyhoo, and you and I alone once more!”
Under their gay laughter quivered the undertone of excitement. Sylvia
said:
“I'd like to talk to you all alone. It won't do, of course; but I may
say what I'd like--mayn't I? What time is it? If I'm dining with you
we've got to have Leila for convention's sake, if not from motives of
sheer decency, which you and I seem to lack, Stephen.”
“We lack decency,” said Siward, “and we're proud of it. As for Leila, I
am going to arrange for her very simply but very beautifully. Plank will
take care of her. Sylvia! There's not a soul in town and we can be as
imprudent as we please.”
“No, we can't. Agatha's at the Santa Regina. She came down with us.”
“But we are not going to dine at the Santa Regina. We're going
where Agatha wouldn't intrude her colourless nose--to a thoroughly
unfashionable and selectly common resort overlooking the classic Harlem;
and we're going to whiz thither in Plank's car, and remain thither until
you yawn for mercy, whence we will return thence--”
“Stephen, you silly! I'm perfectly mad to go with you!”
“You'll be madder when you get there, if the table has not improved.”
“Table! As though tables mattered on a night like this!” Then with
sudden self-reproach and quick solicitude: “Am I making you walk too
far? Wouldn't you like to go in now?”
“No, I'm not tired; I'm millions of years younger, and I'm as strong
as the nine gods of your friend Porsena. Besides, haven't I waited for
this?” and under his breath, fiercely, “Haven't I waited!” he repeated,
turning on her.
“Do--do you mean that as a reproach?” she asked, lowering her eyes.
“No. I knew you would not come on 'the first sunny day.'”
“Why did you think I would not come? Did you know me for the coward I
am?”
“I did not think you would come,” he repeated, halting to rest on his
crutches. He stood, balanced, staring dreamily into the dim perspective;
and again her fascinated eyes ventured to rest on the worn, white face,
listless, sombre in its fixedness.
The tears were very near her eyes; the spasm in her throat checked
speech. At length she stammered: “I did not come b-because I simply
couldn't stand it!”
His face cleared as he turned quietly: “Child, you must not confuse
matters. You must not think of being sorry for me. The old order is
passing--ticking away on every clock in the world. All that inverted
order of things is being reversed. You don't know what I mean, do you?
Ah, well; you will know when I grow into something of what you think you
remember in me, and when I grow out of what I really was.”
“Truly I don't understand, Stephen. But then--I am out of training since
you went--went out of things. Have I changed? Do I seem more dull? I--it
has not been very gay with me. I don't see--looking back across all the
noise, all the chaos of the winter--I do not see how I stood it alone.”
“Alone?”
“N-not seeing you--sometimes.”
He looked at her with smiling, sceptical eyes. “Didn't you enjoy the
winter?”
“Do you enjoy being drugged with champagne?”
His face altered so quickly that, confused, she only stared at him, the
fixed smile stamped on her lips; then, overwhelmed in the revelation:
“Stephen, surely, surely you know what I meant! I did not mean that!
Dear, do you dream for one moment that--that I could--”
“No. You have not hurt me. Besides, I know what you mean.”
After a moment he swung forward on his crutches, biting his lip, the
frown gathering between his temples.
They were passing the big, old-fashioned hotel with its white façade and
green blinds, a lingering landmark of the older city.
“We'll telephone here,” he said.
Side by side they went up the great, broad stoop and entered the lobby.
“If you'll speak to Leila, I'll get Plank on the wire. Say that we'll
stop for you at seven.”
She gave her number; then, at the nod of the operator, entered a small
booth. Siward was given another booth in a few moments.
Plank answered from his office; his voice sounded grave and tired but it
quickened, tinged with surprise, when Siward made known his plan for the
evening.
“Is Mrs. Mortimer in town?” he demanded. “I had a wire from her that she
expected to be here and I hoped to see her at the station to-morrow on
her way to Lenox.”
“She's stopping with Miss Landis. Can't you manage to come?” asked
Siward anxiously.
“I don't know. Do you wish it particularly? I have just seen Quarrier
and Harrington. I can't quite understand Quarrier's attitude. There's
a certain hint of defiance about it. Harrington is all caved in. He is
ready to thank us for any mercies. But Quarrier--there's something I
don't fancy, don't exactly understand about his attitude. He's like a
dangerous man whom you've searched for concealed weapons, and who knows
you've overlooked the knife up his sleeve. That's why I've expected
to spend a quiet evening, studying up the matter and examining every
loophole.”
“You've got to dine somewhere,” said Siward. “If you could fix it to
dine with us--But I won't urge you.”
“All right. I don't know why I shouldn't. I don't know why I feel this
way about things. I--I rather felt--you'll laugh, Siward!--that somehow
I'd better not go out of my own house to-night; that I was safer, better
off in my own house, studying this Quarrier matter out. I'm tired, I
suppose; and this man Quarrier has come close to worrying me. But it's
all right, of course, if you wish it. You know I haven't any nerves.”
“If you are tired--” began Siward.
“No, no, I'm not. I'll go. Will you say that we'll stop for them at
seven? Really, it's all right, Siward.”
“I don't want to urge you,” repeated Siward.
“You're not. I'll go. But--wait one moment tell me, did Quarrier know
that Mrs. Mortimer was to stop with Miss Landis?”
“Wait a moment. Hold the wire.”
He opened the door of the booth and saw Sylvia waiting for him, seated
by the operator's desk. She rose at once when she saw he wished to speak
with her.
“Tell me something,” he said in a low voice; “did Mr. Quarrier know that
Leila was to stay overnight with you?”
“Yes,” she answered quietly, surprised. “Why?”
Siward nodded vaguely, closed the door again, and said to Plank:
“Yes, Quarrier knows it. Do you think he'll be there to-night? I don't
suppose Miss Landis and Mrs. Mortimer know he is in town.”
Plank's troubled voice came back over the wire: “I don't know. I don't
know what to think. I suppose I'm a little, just a trifle, overworked.
Somebody once said that I had one nerve in me somewhere, and Quarrier's
probably found it; that's all.”
“If you think it better not to come--”
“I'll come. I'll stop for you in the motor. Don't worry, old fellow!
And--take your fighting chance! Good-bye!”
Siward, absorbed in his own thoughts, rose and walked slowly out of the
booth, utterly unconscious that he had left his crutches leaning upright
in the corner. It was only the surprise dawning into tremulous delight
on Sylvia's face that at last arrested him.
“See what you have done!” he said, laughing through his own surprise.
“I've a mind to leave them there now, and trust to your new cure.”
But she was instantly concerned and anxious, and entering the booth
brought out the crutches and forced him to take them.
“No risks now!” she said decisively. “We have too much at stake this
evening. Leila is coming. Isn't it perfectly delightful?”
“Perfectly,” he said, his eyes full of the old laughing confidence
again; “and the most delightful part of it all is that you don't know
how delightful it is going to be.”
“Don't I? Very well. Only I inform you that I mean to be perfectly
happy! And that means that I'm going to do as I please! And that
means--oh, it may mean anything! What are you laughing at, Stephen? I
know I'm excited. I don't care! What girl wouldn't be? And I don't know
what's ahead of me at all; and I don't want to know--I don't care!”
Her reckless, little laugh rang sweetly in the old-fashioned, deserted
hall; her lovely, daring eyes met his undaunted.
“You won't make love to me, will you, Stephen?”
“Will you promise me the same?”
“I don't know, silly! How do I know what I might say to you, you big,
blundering boy, who can't take care of himself? I don't know at all; I
won't promise. I'm likely to do anything to-night--even before Leila
and Mr. Plank--when you are with me. Shame on you for the shameless
girl you've educated!” Her voice fell, tremulously, and for an instant
standing there she remembered her education and his part in it.
The slow colour in his face reflected the pink confusion in hers.
“O tongue! tongue!” she stammered, “I can't hold you in! I can't curb
you, and I can't make you say what you ought to be saying to that boy.
There's trouble coming for somebody; there's trouble here already! Call
me a cab, Stephen, or I'll be dragging you into that big, old-fashioned
parlour and planting you on a chair and placing myself opposite, to
moon over you until somebody puts us out! There! Now will you call me a
hansom? … And I will be all ready at seven. … And don't dare to keep me
waiting one second! … Come before seven. You don't want to frighten
me, do you? Very well then, at a quarter to seven--so I shall not be
frightened. And, Stephen, Stephen, we're doing exactly what we ought
not to do. You know it, don't you? So do I. Nothing can stop us, can it?
Good-bye!”