The return journey was unmarked by incident or adventure. Nothing less
than a smash-up on the railway or the wrecking of the ship would have
had the power to distract his thoughts. It may even be that his mind was
unoccupied, empty as is a vacant bier, and yet haunted by an
overmastering obsession. The ordinary functions of the traveller he
performed mechanically, with the air and manner of a subject acting
under hypnotic suggestion. One who crossed the ocean with him has since
said that the better part of the time the expression of his face was
that of utter vacuity. He would remain crouched for hours, in the same
position, a finger just separating the lips, and then he would start
with the tremor of one awakening from a debauch.
Mrs. Manhattan, who was returning with spoils from the Rue de la Paix,
asked him one afternoon, as he happened to descend the cabin-stair in
her company, where he had passed the winter.
"Yes, indeed," Tristrem answered, and went his way unconcernedly.
Mrs. Manhattan complained of this conduct to Nicholas, her husband,
alleging that the young man was fatuous in his impertinence.
"My dear," returned that wise habitué of the Athenæum, "when a man gives
away seven million, it is because he has forgotten how to be
conventional."
It was on a Sunday that the ship reached New York, and it was late in
the afternoon before the passengers were able to disembark. Tristrem had
his luggage passed, and expressed to his grandfather's house, and then,
despite the aggressive solicitations of a crew of bandits, started
up-town on foot. In the breast-pocket of his coat he carried a purchase
which he had made in Naples, a fantastic article which he had bought,
not because he wanted it, but because the peddler who pestered him with
wares and offers happened to be the best-looking and most unrebuffably
good-natured scoundrel that he had ever encountered. And now, at
intervals, as he walked along, he put his hand to the pocket to assure
himself that it was still in place. Presently he reached Broadway. That
thoroughfare, which on earlier Sundays was wont to be one of the
sedatest avenues of the city, was starred with globes of azure light,
and its quiet was broken by the passing of orange-colored cars. On the
corner he stopped and looked at his watch. It was after seven. Then,
instead of continuing his way up-town, he turned down in the direction
of the Battery. His head was slightly bent, and as he walked he had the
appearance of one perplexed. It was a delightful evening. The sky was as
blue as the eyes of a girl beloved. The air was warm, and had the street
been less noisy, less garish, and a trifle cleaner it might have been an
agreeable promenade. But to Tristrem the noise, the dirt, the glare, the
sky itself were part and parcel of the non-existent. He neither saw nor
heeded, and, though the air was warm, now and then he shivered.
It seemed to him impossible that he should do this thing. And yet, since
that night at Riva, his mind had been as a stage in which it was in
uninterrupted rehearsal. If it were unsuccessful, then come what sorrow
could. But even though its success were assured, might not the success
be worse than failure, and viler to him than the most ignoble defeat?
Meditatively he looked at his hand; it was slight as a girl's.
"I cannot," he said, and even as he said it he knew that he would. Had
he not said it ten thousand times of times before? It was not what he
willed, it was what he must. He was in the lap of a necessity from
which, struggle as he might, he could not set himself free. He might
make what resolutions he chose, but the force which acted on him and in
him snuffed them out like candles. And yet, what had he done to fate
that it should impel him to this? Why had he been used as he had? What
wrong had he committed? For the past twelvemonth his life had been a
continuous torture. Truly, he could have said, "no one save myself, in
all the world, has learned the acuity of pain. I alone am its
depository."
"And yet," he mused, "perhaps it is right. Long ago, when I was
comparing my nothingness to her beauty, did I not know that to win her I
must show myself worthy of the prize? She will think that I am when I
tell her. Yes, she must think so when it is done. But will it be done? O
God, I cannot."
For the instant he felt as though he must turn to the passers and claim
their protection from himself. He had stopped again, and was standing
under a great pole that supported an electric light. In the globe was a
dim, round ball of red, and suddenly it flared up into a flame of the
palest lemon, edged with blue. "It is my courage," he said, "I have done
with hesitation now." He hailed and boarded a passing car. "Hesitation,
indeed!" he repeated. "As if I had not known all through that when the
time came there would be none!" He put his hand again to his
breast-pocket; it was there.
He had taken the seat nearest to the door, absently, as he would have
taken any other, and the conductor found it necessary to touch him on
the shoulder before he could extract the fare. He had no American money,
he discovered, and would have left the car had not the conductor finally
agreed to take his chances with a small piece of foreign gold, though
not, however, until he had bit it tentatively with his teeth. It was
evident that he viewed Tristrem with suspicion.
At Twentieth Street Tristrem swung himself from the moving vehicle, and
turned into Gramercy Park. He declined to think; the rehearsals were
over, he did not even try to recall the rôle. He had had a set speech,
but it was gone from him as the indecision had gone before. Now he was
to act.
He hurried up the stoop of Weldon's house and rang the bell, and as
there seemed to him some unnecessary delay, he rang again, not
violently, but with the assurance of a creditor who has come to be paid.
But when at last the door was opened, he learned that Weldon was not at
home.
As he went down the steps again there came to him a great gust and rush
of joy. He would go now, he had been fully prepared, he had tried his
best. If Weldon had been visible, he would not have hesitated. But he
had not been; that one chance had been left them both, and now, with a
certitude that had never visited his former indecisions, he felt it was
written that that deed should never be done. He gasped as one gasps who
has been nearly stifled. The obsession was gone. He was free.
In the street he raised his arms to testify to his liberty reconquered.
Yet, even as they fell again, he knew that he was tricking himself. A
tremor beset him, and to steady himself he clutched at an area-rail.
Whether he stood there one minute or one hour he could not afterward
recall. He remembered only that while he loitered Weldon had rounded the
corner, and that as he saw him approach, jauntily, in evening dress, a
light coat on his arm, his strength returned.
"Royal," he exclaimed, for the man was passing him without recognition.
"Royal," he repeated, and Weldon stopped. "I have come to have a word
with you."
The voice in which he spoke was so unlike his own, so rasping and
defiant, that Weldon, with the dread which every respectable householder
has of a scene at his own front door, motioned him up the steps. "Come
in," he said, mellifluously, "I am glad to see you."
"I will," Tristrem answered, in a tone as arrogant as before.
"I am sorry," Weldon continued, "Nanny----"
"I did not come to see your wife; you know it."
Weldon had unlatched the door, and the two men passed into the
sitting-room. There Weldon, with his hat unremoved, dropped in a chair,
and eyed his visitor with affected curiosity.
"I say, Trissy, you're drunk."
"I am come," Tristrem continued, and this time as he spoke his voice
seemed to recover something of its former gentleness, "I am come to ask
whether, in the purlieus of your heart, there is nothing to tell you how
base you are."
Weldon stretched himself languidly, took off his hat, stood up, and lit
a cigarette. "Have an Egyptian?" he asked.
"Do you remember," Tristrem went on, "the last time I saw you?"
Weldon tossed the match into an ash-receiver, and, with the cigarette
between his teeth, sprawled himself out on a sofa. "Well, what of it?"
"When I saw you, you had just contracted a debt. And now you can
liquidate that debt either by throwing yourself in the river or----"
"Charming, Triss, charming! You have made a _bon mot_. I will get that
off. Liquidate a debt with water is really good. There's the advantage
of foreign travel for you."
"Do you know what became of your victim? Do you know? She went abroad
and hid herself. Shall I give you details?"
For the first time Weldon scowled.
"Would you like the details?" Tristrem repeated.
Weldon mastered his scowl. "No," he answered, negligently. "I am not a
midwife. Obstetrics do not interest me. On the contra----"
That word he never finished. Something exploded in his brain, he saw one
fleeting flash, and he was dead. Even as he spoke, Tristrem had whipped
an instrument from his pocket, and before Weldon was aware of his
purpose, a knife, thin as a darning-needle and long as a pencil--a knife
which it had taken the splendid wickedness of mediæval Rome to
devise--had sunk into his heart, and was out again, leaving behind it a
pin's puncture through the linen, one infinitesimal bluish-gray spot on
the skin, and death.
Tristrem looked at him. The shirt was not even rumpled. If he had so
much as quivered, the quiver had been imperceptible, and on the knife
there was no trace of blood. It fell from his fingers; he stooped to
pick it up, but his hand trembled so that, on recovering it, he could
not insert the point into the narrow sheath that belonged to it, and,
throwing the bit of embroidered leather in a corner, he put the weapon
in his pocket.
"It was easier than I thought," he mused. "I suppose--h'm--I seem to be
nervous. It's odd. I feared that afterward I should collapse like an
omelette soufflée. And to think that it is done!"
He turned suspiciously, and looked at the body again. No, he could see
it was really done. "And so, this is afterward," he continued. "And to
think that it was here I first saw her. She came in that door there. I
remember I thought of a garden of lilies."
From the dining-room beyond he caught the glimmer of a lamp. He crossed
the intervening space, and on the sideboard he found some decanters. He
selected one, and pouring a little of its contents into a tumbler he
drank it off. Then he poured another portion, and when he had drunk that
too, he went out, not through the sitting-room, but through the hall,
and, picking up the hat which on entering he had thrown on the table, he
left the house.