Heloise hesitated once, and it seemed to me that she meant to draw back.
But after a moment she went on, and together they slowly mounted the
incline.
I turned away. I tried to tell myself that there was no significance in
this walk of theirs. Whatever it was he wished to say--up there on
the broad summit of the Wall where they could walk and talk in quiet,
removed from the turmoil of the city--certainly she had a right to
listen if she chose. He had been annoying her persistently. She was not
the sort to run away from anything. She was unafraid. Perhaps by facing
him and hearing him out she would dispose of him once and for all.
But I did not succeed in imposing this attitude of mind on myself. And I
am going to tell what followed. It marks the lowest point to which this
strange new self of mine has sunk--as yet. It must be told.
I walked like mad the whole length of Legation Street--a mile. Perhaps I
ran. I don't know. I rushed by the Wagon-lits Hotel with no more than a
glance. I did not seem to care that Crocker was in there and might soon
emerge. I did not seem to care about anything. I was all empty--life
was laughing at me for all the years I had taken it so seriously and so
hard. Yet, empty and purposeless as I felt, the forces that keep at me
so, these days, were overwhelming me.
I went out through the German Gate saying--aloud--“What do I know about
this woman? What is she to me? Who is she, that I should permit her to
devastate my life!”
Some German soldiers heard me, and laughed.
There I stood, a thin little man, doubtless flushed and wild of eye,
laying bare my poor tom heart to the world; and the soldiers were
laughing at me.
I hurried away. An empty rickshaw was passing. I hailed it and leaped
in. I rode straight to my little hotel. I ran up the stairs. I let
myself into my room, and slammed the door shut behind me. I tore
open the drawer of the bureau where I had carefully put away the
ten cylinders on which Heloise and I had painstakingly recorded the
close-interval scales.
I got them out, the ten boxes that I had labeled so carefully. I threw
them on the bed in a heap. I stood over them. As nearly as I can recall
it now, I laughed at them. For they were hers. She had made them. She
had made them for me; and I had held her within my arms. The picture of
her there on my balcony, came to me with poignant vividness. And another
picture--Heloise, in her chair with her sewing in her lap, singing that
difficult scale successfully for the first time, and trilling softly and
triumphantly on the last note, while her eyes sought mine. It was all
utterly bewildering. Suddenly, from laughing, I had to tight back the
sobs that came.
It was then that I tore open the boxes, one by one, and threw the
cylinders to the floor and stamped on them. They were merely a waxy
composition, not hard to destroy. I did not stop until my floor was
strewn with the pieces. And now no longer in there, anywhere in the
world, a finely perfect close-interval scale as a standard basis of
comparison for the tone-intervals of so-called primitive music. Von
Stumbostel will never know of my triumph now. Nor Boag, nor Ramel, nor
Fourmont, nor de Musseau, nor Sir Frederick Rhodes. That beastly little
von Westfall, of Bonn, can snarl to his heart's content, unrefuted. And
the British Museum will never see this great result that might well have
crowned my work and my life.
All about the room were scattered the bits of broken cylinders. I stood
among them, trying to think ahead. But I could n't think ahead. All I
seemed to know was that I could stay no longer in this shabby little
hostelry where my life had soared so high and sunk so low.
I cleared a space in the middle of the room with my foot, kicking the
pieces of my once precious cylinders aside as if they were pebbles.
I drew out my steamer trunk, and opened it; got my clothes from the
wardrobe and threw them in heaps on the bed; jerked out bureau drawers
and set them on chairs and on the floor where I could reach them.
I was still working furiously at my packing when she came in, alone.
I heard her light, quick step in the hall, I heard her unlock her door,
and enter her room. Then she locked it again, on the inside.
I stood there, coatless and collarless. I wanted to tap once more at her
door. I hesitated over this thought. I resisted it. I fought with it.
Finally I put on my collar and coat, picked up my hat, and rushed out.
I could finish the packing later. Certainly, I could n't finish it now,
with every nerve tip quiveringly conscious of her nearness, there behind
the thin partition and the shrunken door.
If I should find it too hard to come back later, I decided then, I would
send a Chinese valet from the other hotel to finish the job for me.
Among the qualities that go to make up the unrest that we call love,
it appears that self-absorption plays no small part. Perhaps this
selfishness, lying at the root of desire, is the element of positive
force in love. I wonder! Certainly, without it, love would be much more
nearly a negative thing than it actually is.
It was very primitive, very confused, very petty, this outbreak of mine.
But then, life is that.
And I have destroyed my scales!
It was after eleven--in the morning--when I went away from the _Hôtel de
Chine_.
I was angry, bitter. Nothing in the world seemed important except my own
feelings.
I knew well enough what I was going to do. There were two or three other
shabby little hotels outside the Quarter. But I was going straight to
the Wagon-lits. It was twelve o'clock now. I decided to have my tiffin
there. Then perhaps I would send a man around to finish my packing and
fetch my luggage.
As I walked deliberately into the great, gay hotel, I was in spirit not
unlike a man who has awakened from a turbulent dream. For here were the
familiar folk of the West. On the preceding evening, when I had first
entered this building, the same groups of tourists, business and
military men, and diplomats, with their ladies, had been here; but then
I had seen them with different eyes. Now they looked natural, as we say.
And their voices fell on my ears with a pleasant reminder of home.
I found a chair in the lounge, and sat hack to watch the bright,
chattering, shifting crowd. I glanced about for Crocker, of course, but
saw no sign of him. A little later, just before tiffin, I looked up his
box, at the desk. I wanted to ask about him, but feared that the clerk
would think I wished to see him. God knows I did n't wish that! It was
at this time, I think, that I began to realize the shadowy nature of the
curious revulsion of feeling that I had been passing through, on this
day. I did not feel so great relief as I had just been telling myself I
was feeling. Those vivid mental pictures of Heloise, as I had seen her
so often in her room or mine, kept flashing before me.... No, I didn't
want to see Crocker. I did want to know where he was, and what he was
doing. His box told me nothing. There were no letters in it; and his key
was not there. But I had no doubt he was still in bed.
I ate my tiffin alone in the big dining-room, seated where I could
watch the door. I fortified myself with the latest papers, and tried to
believe that it would be pleasant to pass a leisurely hour or two there.
But I was restless. I did n't seem to want to read, now that I had my
comfortable chair, and unusually good food. When the coffee came, I
drank it at a gulp, and went out.
I stepped over to the desk to pay for my tiffin. I reached into my
pocket for my purse. My fingers touched something filmy--Heloise's
handkerchief! I could not resist bringing it out, there with the Belgian
clerk looking coldly at me, and staring at it--that rumpled little ball
o f linen and lace. This for a moment: then I paid my bill and walked
away.
I went right out to the street. I had to stare again at the little
handkerchief. I had to press it to my lips. The rickshaw coolies could
see me; but I cared nothing for them, though the tears were crowding
into my eyes.
I did not come to my senses all at once. I must have walked about until
three o'clock or thereabouts. At least, it was twenty minutes past three
when I found myself again in the street that leads from the Italian
_glacis_ to our little _Hôtel de Chine_. I was humble now, and very sad.
For I had gone to pieces this day. I had failed the woman I love. In
bitter, jealous anger I had failed her.
I had discovered in myself the meanest of qualities--suspicion. And
utter selfishness.
A dozen times in those hours of my revulsion Crocker might have come to
kill her--and I not at hand.
It was not until I entered the hotel and observed the sleepy quiet of
the office and lounge that I was reassured. I could not bring myself to
go upstairs, for she had made it so heartbreakingly plain that she would
not see me. But surely all was well, as yet. Had there been trouble,
there would be signs of it here.
I wondered if she had gone out for her customary afternoon walk. This
thought bothered me. For then she would be coming back. I could not
escape seeing her. Now, I wanted to see her, and I did not want to see
her. I seemed to have reached a point, at last, where I knew that I
would not go to pieces again. But this was only while I was reasonably
sure that I could avoid her. If I were to meet her face to face, to look
again into her great blue eyes with the long, long lashes, perhaps to
clasp her hand, I knew that I could not be sure of anything. Once that
magic were to surge again in my heart, my reason would fly.
Such were the facts of that strange revulsion which pointed out to me
for the first time a pitiful flaw in my character. I failed Heloise when
her need of me was most desperate. And nothing but luck (as we term it)
saved her from the worst possible consequences of my weakness.
It was the first time in my life that I had been put to a rough, hard
test. And--the flaw.
I deduce from this fact the conclusion that the sheltered life, with its
corollary of so-called right living, permits no true demonstration of
character. That fine quality is found in the open, where men (and women)
breast the rough tide of life, and blunder, and struggle, and suffer.
I paced our little street, from the hotel entrance to the _glacis_,
until twenty minutes of six. Heloise did not appear; so doubtless she
was safe in her room. Crocker did not appear; so doubtless he was still
drunk, over at the Wagon-lits.