THE LASH
In the breadth and the depth of evil in the man whom the world had long
known as John Shaughnessy there was one wicked act whose memory was
torment. Unprincipled, ruthless, cruel as he was, this thing, perhaps in
inevitable reprisal for outraged higher laws, had long haunted him;
disturbing his sleep, embittering his waking hours. For it was only just
that a man base enough to leave, in far worse case than the widow and
the orphan, those he was morally and legally bound to protect, should be
disturbed by ghosts. It was remorse, it had long been remorse, from
which this calloused devil was suffering. His evil, white face was a
mask to hide much that the masquerader would have given all at times to
have forgotten.
For a long time Shaughnessy bent over the silent figure on the floor;
crouching, motionless as if cut in stone. His eyes, unnaturally
brilliant, repellent in their fixed glare, rested long on the reporter's
unconscious face. That face--how freckled, how grotesquely homely! Why,
he had been a handsome baby! Still, the same mop of red, curly hair;
and, after all, did he but open his eyes Shaughnessy thought there would
be a definite resemblance to another. Shaughnessy recollected having
been vaguely troubled once or twice before by this half-sensed
similitude of the young fellow to someone he had known. He knew now.
Why, the boy looked like his mother, of course; though there was only a
pathetic hint of it, for his mother had been very pretty. This
Shaughnessy could vouch for. Poor unfortunate, had she not been his
wife?
And his son, lying on the floor; the son Shaughnessy had thought dead;
was it not a joyful reunion? Shaughnessy groaned aloud, for he had long
writhed under the lash of conscience for this one thing. The rest of his
ill-doing did not trouble him; it was for the blackest crime of all,
alone, that he paid the penalty. And a bitter penalty he paid, for,
whatever the seeming, outraged nature generally exacts her due. This man
had heartlessly deserted a wife who had been devoted to him, despite his
deviltry, and his helpless baby; deserted them more indifferently than
most men would leave a dog. It was slow in coming, the time of
reckoning, but the day came when the black heart and soul of Shaughnessy
quivered under the lash. And the lash bit the deeper because of the need
for repression, for the man writhed in secret. It was Shaughnessy who
lived; the other man was dead; yet his foul ghost, with the memory of
the foul deed he wrought, would not be laid.
Shaughnessy, with a haggard glance at the motionless form on the floor,
rose and walked uncertainly to an easy chair. He sat limply, a thin,
white hand shading his eyes. He was oblivious to his surroundings, for
the tumult of the past pounded in his brain.
The tumult of the past! What a record had been his, this white-faced man
with hunted eyes that now stared with a weird, fixed horror back into
the past. They saw again another man than the Shaughnessy of vile
political power; a younger man, in whom was no repression; the slave of
wayward passions which marred lives other than his own. But what were
wife and child? Merely incumbrances then, and, toward the last, hardly
to be borne.
And at the beginning? Why, the young man had once been respectable, and
of the type to be pointed out as one destined to make his mark. Starting
at the lowest round of a big business house, in a far-off city, it had
not taken him long to prove his rare mettle, and at twenty-five he had
reached a point further than most men attain in a lifetime. He had
married a girl who believed in him as she believed in God--and she had
been his dupe almost from the first.
Supremely selfish, treacherous by nature and with a stealthy leaning
toward the fleshpots, he began early to betray her trust in cold blood.
She did not know of this; she knew only of his indulgence in liquor,
increasing alarmingly, and his growing taste for cards. He had drammed
moderately from a very early age; now he had a fiend's appetite, while
his passion for the gaming table grew accordingly. She used to plead
pitifully with him to eschew the practices. At first he laughed; later
he sneered. Meanwhile his dissipation had not affected his business
prospects as yet. Often rioting through a sleepless night, he was
invariably at his desk in the morning, and his house was glad to command
his services, for he was a veritable business genius.
His wife, poor soul, hoped that the baby's coming would influence him to
better things. It grew worse. His appetite for liquor, which was
evidently inherited from some bibulous ancestor, grew tyrannous, and he
was a willing slave. Lucky at cards, ordinary gambling became too tame
for him. He fell to speculating, cannily at first, but with success and
increasing indulgence in liquor came recklessness. The man's naturally
cool business judgment was clouded, for he was never wholly sober now.
Yet his business prospects were still of the best, for he succeeded
marvellously in retaining his strong hold on affairs. The dawn was more
than likely to find him reeling, but the opening of the day's business
invariably found him at his desk, alert, coldly inscrutable, his wits
more than a match for the sharpest ones that might oppose him.
Dissipated as he was in those days, he engineered some brilliant
_coups_ which benefited his concern and increased his own prestige,
to his material advantage. He was already pointed out as a man of
power. He could have figured as a Napoleon of honorable business,
as he later figured as a Napoleon of graft. Of splendid intellectual
endowment, he chose to mar himself.
Their home-life, because of his course, had grown unspeakably wretched.
They lived simply; the bulk of the man's income was expended away from
home. The wife did not reproach him and she had ceased to plead, but she
was pale and silent and sad-eyed. She knew all now, and she lived only
for her baby.
Like many an infinitely better man, the husband's worst side was
reserved for his family. The inevitable reaction of tippling, in a
nature like his, rendered him fairly diabolic at times in his home; and
the cruel spirit was the fiercer by reason of the need for its
repression elsewhere. He remembered one morning when he stood shaving
before his mirror, shaking from the effect of a debauch. It was several
months after his son was born. His wife, in pitiful appeal to his better
side, of whose existence she still dreamed, had softly entered the room,
carrying the baby. She thoughtlessly approached from the side, and he
neither heard nor saw her. A soft little hand, the baby's, crept into
his neck. Shaken as he was, it startled him; his razor slipped and the
blood spurted from a gash in his cheek. Blind with swift, unreasoning
rage, he whirled with a curse and a murderous, involuntary swoop of his
razor. She had sprung back with a sharp cry, but just too late. He heard
again the sudden, shrill cry of the baby; saw the swift blood rimming an
ugly gash above its little wrist; saw himself shriveling, before the
horror in his wife's eyes, into a loathsome thing.
"My God!" he had stammered, "I--I didn't mean--"
She had recoiled, the flame in her eyes repelling him. Ever afterward
her burning eyes, accusing him in memory, had caused his own to close
spasmodically in swift desire to escape her gaze; had caused him to dig
his nails into his palms in temporary agonized abasement. The grim mills
of the gods, indeed!
The poor woman annoyed him no more after that, but she grew like a
voiceless, accusing ghost. She was thin and pale now and her beauty was
fading pathetically. As for him, his course grew madder, he plunged into
dissipation as it had been an enveloping sea. By and by things began to
go wrong with him; wild speculations turned out poorly, his resources
began seriously to dwindle. With his old, clear head he could have
repaired his fortunes, but now he saw things through a red haze, and in
endeavoring to right himself with one reckless stroke, he lost
everything.
Well, it was time to leave. But he would not go alone, he sullenly
decided. There was a siren to whom he had long been devoted, a creature
of sensuous mould designed to hold enmeshed such evil souls as his. Nor,
he fiercely told himself, would they go empty-handed. And he fortified
his nerve with more whisky.
The newspapers accordingly had a sensation. One of the city's most
brilliant and most trusted young business men was a defaulter to the
extent of thousands of dollars, and he was gone. This startling fact,
coupled with the simultaneous departure of the siren and the revelations
of the defaulter's double life, made an attractive tit-bit. The wife and
child, being of minor importance in this sensational tale, were quickly
forgotten. The memory of the defaulter remained, and men confidently
believed at first that one day they would welcome his return, shackled
to an officer of the law. But it was not to be, though once the man,
driven by the lash of belated remorse, had ventured to cross a continent
and steal furtively into the scene of his early crime, on a bootless
quest.
It seemed to him later that, following his flight with his siren, he had
been drunk for years. The furtive sting was at work; he drank to deaden
it. At times he would shiver and the cold perspiration would bead his
forehead, for he saw again the horror in her eyes as she sought to
stanch the blood that flowed from her baby's arm. More, he saw himself
again, with hideous humor, repeatedly when he was in his cups, tearing
her baby from her arms and plying it with toddy. The boy would take it
like milk, he remembered; and the father was wont to laugh, with all the
sardonic mirth of a hyena, at the anguish in the mother's eyes, and
finally to hand back the infant with ironical courtesy and the
observation "that he was a chip off the old block."
Yes, pleasant memories had the fugitive, while drifting from place to
place with his paramour. The money was soon gone and he had recourse to
the gaming table, with fluctuating luck. Quarrels were frequent now, and
finally, after an exceptionally fierce one, in which two calloused,
coarsened natures revealed themselves in all their hideousness, the
precious pair parted. That particular weakness disturbed the current of
the man's life no more, for Shaughnessy was done with sirens and their
influence. With a revival of his old calculation, shrewd and cold, he
decided that it didn't pay.
At the same time, too, he decided that whisky didn't pay. He had a will
like iron, whether toward evil or against it. Returning reason bade him
to be against anything that marred his self-interest, so
Shaughnessy--which name he adopted after his flight of years
before--said one day, "I'm done," and suffered ensuing torments of
thirst like an imperturbable Indian. It was years before he again tasted
liquor, though he never lost the craving for it; and even then, he
severely confined himself to its use as a medicine, necessitated by his
failing health.
After the siren had gone her way, and Shaughnessy took occasion to
survey the situation with something of his old-time critical analysis,
he resolved upon his future campaign. His honest name he had forfeited;
it could not be resumed. Moreover, his natural cynicism had deepened
with the years. It was the dishonest who prospered most, thought he. He
had the brains, so let him scheme to prosper. Politics attracted him. He
studied it for the science that it is, and he also studied men. He
chose an excellent field in which to operate; he established his small
liquor store, which was destined to grow larger; he made his modest
entry into the political arena which he was to dominate. With infinite
subtlety, by the power of a remarkable brain, he had grown into the
sinister force he was today; nor did his evil success trouble him. It
was the memory of his wife and child that haunted him; a memory that bit
deep as a sword.
It was years before he risked detection by a visit to his old city to
ascertain regarding them, for of course he dared not write. Time was
generous and changed him much, however, in appearance, so finally he
traversed the continent and furtively, fearfully, entered his old
haunts. He did not stay long; there was no need. His wife was dead; he
found her humble grave in an old cemetery. The boy had been entirely
lost sight of; he had drifted away and might be dead for all that
anybody knew or apparently cared. We poor worldlings might perchance be
more sympathetic, more solicitous one of the other, if we had more time.
But self-interest in the grim old world demands and receives the initial
consideration of self. Shaughnessy turned back with a heart none the
lighter because of the fruitlessness of his quest; back to the old
search in dark places for pelf and power. There was nothing else left,
and, as his ideals had never been high, his course suited him and
satisfied his ambition.
The boss rose, swaying, from his chair; a strange weakness was upon him.
He made his way toward the spot where his unconscious son lay prone on
the floor, and he tottered like an old man. He stood looking down upon
the boy, and for his most monstrous sin of all there was grim reprisal
visible in his eyes. The boy was as he had made him--as he himself had
been--a drunkard. Of brilliant mental endowment, as the father knew to
his cost, the son's career was clouded by this bitter heritage; would be
clouded to the end, for he lacked his father's iron will. And the agency
through which the boss' black course had been menaced; that menaced it
still; the son against the sire, unknowing and till now unknown! What a
hell-born irony it was, matter for mirth of gibbering fiends. Truly, at
last Shaughnessy drank the bitter lees.
He stood there, swaying slightly, his gaunt face bloodless, his eyes
horrible. Mechanically he pulled out his watch, starting violently. Why,
it could be no more than five minutes since the struggle. Five
minutes--and in them Shaughnessy had lived long and bitter years! And
now--
"_For God's sake! For--God's--sake!_"
The old, old prayer of agony, of deadly fear, wrung at the last from
lips which perhaps had long ceased to frame that Awful Name except in
blasphemy; the cry of the ages; the wail of the wicked as it is the hope
of the blessed; the cry of despair which rends the throat of the pariah
when face to face with Death.
What was it? Ah! Shaughnessy knew; while his face went gray, while he
gasped for breath, while his hands sought and pressed convulsively his
breast, through which throbbed swift, keen stabs of exquisite pain. The
mists swam before his staring eyes as he reeled blindly, now with
outstretched hands, toward the door of his den. It was the ancient enemy
returned--and this time not to be denied.
Shaughnessy lurched through the door, and with groping hands, grasped
the bottle. The fiery draught of brandy seared his throat; he strangled
and the bottle fell from his nerveless fingers and broke upon the floor.
The strong smell of the spilled contents oppressed the heated air.
No use--no use! Shaughnessy collapsed in the chair before his desk, his
breast afire with suffocating pain. The gray pallor deepened; the eyes
glazed. For a moment he lay inert, his form twitching. Then a sudden
torturing thought brought him instinctively erect in his chair. It was
like a dead man rising from his grave.
The money--the property! Why, who would get it? How had _he_ gotten it?
Never mind, it was his; they could not take it away. It should be his
son's--who had tried to destroy him. Would he take it? Perhaps not, he
might be that kind of a fool. Well, if not, why he could give it to
charity. Charity! Shaughnessy laughed horribly, deep in his throat.
There might--there might yet be time. He made as if to brush away the
mists that deepened before his eyes. He groped for paper--a pen, and
drew them toward him. He plunged the pen into the ink well, overturning
it, but he did not heed. He was going blind; there was a strange,
rhythmic thudding in his ears.
"I--"
The single letter, grotesquely lonely, sprawled crazily, black and ugly,
upon the sheet. The world would remember Shaughnessy as--Shaughnessy.
* * * * *
O'Byrn stirred uneasily, for the noise of resounding blows was in his
ears. He struggled to a sitting posture, and as he did so the door
crashed in. Dick and Slade bounded into the room.
"Ah! there you are," exclaimed Glenwood, striding over to Micky and
pulling him to his feet. "There's been a rough-house. But where's
Shaughnessy?" His eyes swept the apartment vengefully.
"Must have gone out," returned Slade. Neither he nor Dick noticed the
partially open door of the den. "Better be gettin' out. He may be back,
with more like him, and we ain't got no time to lose."
Between them they guided the stupefied O'Byrn outside and to the waiting
carriage. Inside the den, crumpled horridly in his chair, with gaunt,
ghastly jaw agape and with a look of terror frozen in his staring eyes,
rested Shaughnessy; as he would sit through the night, as he would be
sitting when they should seek him on the morrow.