The firm of Sutton & Son, while solvent, had been hard hit. All honest
business was in the same pickle or in a worse one.
Through a murk of business despair the miserable year approached its
end. The national administrative body, too, like a dying rat, was
now nearing dissolution--with kicks and jerks and spasms from the
intellectual tatterdemalions who composed the vital parts of it.
Distant, still, loomed the incoming administration. It was too early
to expect--perhaps even too early to hope--that the scandalous
inequality of taxation might be remedied--that economical decency
might prevail, founded upon a budget system--that universal service,
military and civil, might unify the nation and make it secure and
self-respecting--that an international tribunal, reserving national
self-determination, and backed by proper means to enforce its verdicts,
might be erected upon the ruins of the ridiculous league which the
nation had repudiated.
Perhaps such a programme was too much to hope for, judging from the
congressional scum still stagnating in what had become the national
disposal plant.
And New York was depressed with the approach of a blue Christmas, a
bluer New Year, and prospects of the very bluest blue.
And, among others, Sutton & Son paid the fourth quarter of its income
tax and found that it had nothing left to lay aside.
* * * * *
So the Year of Graft was closing amid a mess of scandals--municipal,
industrial--all the old symptoms of corruption, and a few new ones.
A good man is a good thing; and the American people, who love good
things, gorge themselves, over-eat, spew it up, and blame the good
thing.
So went the greatest modern American; so went the best modern mayor of
Gotham; and the American people turned gratefully to their swill again.
* * * * *
Stuart had come uptown early, aghast at the future taxes to be faced,
terribly depressed by a long consultation with his bankers and the
utter impossibility of obtaining sufficient financial aid.
But he had no intention of carrying such a face home. He continued on
uptown, trying to walk himself into a glow of cheerfulness.
But the crowds on Fifth Avenue lent him no countenance; it was a
noticeably subdued throng, in spite of the late sunshine--not the
bustling, cheery, complacent crowd that, in former years, stimulated
already by the distant prospect of Christmas, surged gaily north and
south along acres of gilded grilles and plate glass.
He thought he would go as far as The Province Club--that dull oasis of
social respectability usually avoided by its members--but the sight of
it annoyed him and he kept on.
Sunset still reddened the western wastes of Jersey as he entered the
Park.
But there the sheer dreariness of everything halted him.
A first and sure symptom of hidden corruption is municipal neglect of
the Park.
Dead trees stood everywhere. The long row of elms stretching up Fifth
Avenue, decimated, had been replaced by wretched little elms, instead
of the only tree suitable--the sycamore.
Untidy scraps of paper fluttered over path and grass; untidy employees
slouched and dawdled and puttered among eroded hillocks and crippled
vegetation.
High in the sunset sky sea-gulls passed over toward the reservoirs and
North River; and across dead grass starlings walked and chilly sparrows
hopped and quarrelled.
Stuart turned back again into the shabbiest metropolis in the
world--but a good enough city for its fool inhabitants--and, not
knowing where to take such a solemn face as he wore, walked on at
hazard, infinitely depressed by the dinginess of life.
With the crowd he waited while the glare in the traffic-towers died out
and a crimson lens and a green one signalled cross-street vehicles to
move. Then, as the white flare played out once more over the Avenue,
he walked on mechanically, a prey to sinister reflections, noticing no
passing face, no lighted window, nothing specific in the moving swarm
or in the glass corridors through which it poured.
At Forty-second Street, traffic having halted, he turned to cross to
the west side of the Avenue. Somebody, crossing eastward, nodded,
passing him. As he took off his hat and turned to identify her, she
also looked back.
“Gilda!” he exclaimed, retracing his steps to join her.
She was in black and white and wore silver-fox and violets--a slender,
elegant figure of Gotham type indigenous nowhere else on earth.
“Are you shopping?” he asked, “or are you homeward bound--or elsewhere?”
“I’m homeward bound, Mr. Sutton. Will you walk with me?”
“If I may.”
“Of course.... It’s two weeks since I have heard a single word from
you.”
“Two weeks ago tonight I telephoned you,” he retorted bluntly.
She frowned, considering, trying to recollect. “Two weeks ago
_today_?” Suddenly she remembered, with a rush of vivid colour to her
cheeks.
“I called you at eight-thirty, and again at ten,” he went on; “but your
house did not answer.”
“I’m sorry.... My maid sleeps out....”
“You also must have been out.”
“Yes.” She offered no further information. Her affairs were, obviously,
none of his business; yet once more he felt that slight resentment, as
though some explanation were due him.
At the corner of Thirty-fifth Street she stopped in the glare of the
show windows.
After a moment’s hesitation, she offered her white-gloved hand.
“Are you dismissing me?” he asked good-humouredly.
“Why, no,” she said with a quick blush, “--if you care to--remain with
me----”
“Shall we dine somewhere and go to a show, Gilda?”
“I’d love to; only, you see ... my maid already is preparing dinner.”
There was a pause: she looked away from him, hesitated, added shyly:
“Would you care to dine with me?”
“Do you really want me again?” he laughed.
She looked up, smiling: “I’m dying to have you,” she said. “You know
it.”
The winning candour of the girl enchanted him, quickening the dull mind
and heart he had carried about with him all day long.
“You’re charmingly generous,” he said, walking on beside her; “it
hasn’t been a very gay day down town and I’m not in extravagantly high
spirits.”
“I’m so sorry. I’ll try--try to----”
“----To put me in boisterous humour?” he inquired.
They both laughed as they climbed the dusky stairway to her apartment.
“I’ll try to be cheerful anyway,” she said, unlocking her door.
They went in.
She left him to look after himself and continued on toward the
kitchen. Her maid presently appeared, turned up the lights, smiled at
Sutton, and offered conveniences to enable him to rid himself of the
accumulated grime of Gotham.
Later, when he was seated on the sofa with the evening paper, the maid
reappeared and closed Gilda’s bedroom door.
He glanced at the financial columns; and gloom returned. There was more
unpleasantness on the front page, with its scare-heads recording graft,
violence, greed, at home and abroad.
Gilda took the usual three evening papers--the one popularly supposed
to make vice attractive, the one notorious for making virtue odious,
and the third unpopularly known as “pink and punk.”
There was nothing of merit in any of them. The same clowns conducted
special sections as vehicles for a sort of mother-wit; the same critics
devoted the same space to exploitation of their own idiosyncrasies,
offering the reader nothing of value concerning the books and plays
which they pretended to discuss.
An incredible meanness seemed to characterise these modern
papers; there was in them nothing generous, nothing just, nothing
honest--nothing, in fact, except the dreary evidence of uneducated
contributors and of vulgar intelligences furtively directing them.
Stuart’s depression had now returned with a vengeance. He got up and
began to walk about, nervously inspecting Gilda’s household gods--the
few inexpensive mezzotints, the orange-tinted curtains and upholstery;
the silvery-green carpet, the desk of sycamore and tulip wood painted
with tiny flowers, where lay writing materials, wax, seal, and a
silver-gilt candlestick bearing a yellow taper.
Except for the Adam desk, the English mirror, and a couple of old
Sceaux figures on the mantel, there was nothing either antique or
valuable in the room. Yet taste and colour charm were everywhere
evident--in the yellow Japanese bowl where flowers were growing, in the
lamp shades, draperies, pictures.
He went to the shelf of books and looked at their titles. All were
standard works in French or English--dramatists, essayists, poets,
historians, haphazard memoirs--Saint-Simon, Fanny Burney, Lady
Russell, Cardinal Retz, Evelyn, Pepys--a sprinkling of dictionaries
and reference books--all of Tennyson, all of Shakespeare, volumes of
Coleridge, Keats, Robert Browning, the Laus Veneris--all of Molière,
some of Racine, Musset, Hugo--but nothing modern save Rostand and
Maeterlinck.
And among all there was not one unused volume, nor one doubtful or
unhealthy or degenerate book--no fiction later than Dickens, Scott,
Thackeray, Hugo and Dumas, except the Belgian mystic and the great
French poet.
The whole place, in fact, gave Stuart an odd sensation of having seen
such a room somewhere else.
He said so when Gilda’s door opened and she came forward in a black
dinner gown, smiling inquiringly as though to ask him how he had spent
the time awaiting her.
“It’s so comfortable--all this----” he indicated the ensemble.
“It’s cheerful, isn’t it?” she assented, pivoting to review the
familiar place.... “There was a room in my father’s house in London----
... I tried to make this look a little like it.”
“That’s probably what I feel,” he nodded; “----it’s like a room in
an English home.... And as for you, Gilda, you are very beautiful in
black; do you know it?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “I don’t.”
All men like feminine youthfulness in black, but feminine youthfulness
usually avoids black until it becomes inadvisable to wear it.
“You’re lovely,” he repeated. “I once thought you very fetching in
green, but you’re adorable in black.”
She gave him a demure glance to see if he were in earnest, and, seeing
that he was, turned happily to nod to Freda, then took his offered arm
lightly, with exaggerated ceremony.
“We’re to dine on last night’s turkey, my poor friend; do you mind?”
she explained gaily, as Freda set the better part of a fine roasted
bird in front of Stuart.
“The wonder to me is that anybody can afford turkey,” he remarked,
preparing to carve.
“Oh, this bird was a present. It’s a wild turkey. I have some mallard
ducks, too, in the ice chest, and several quail.”
Always it seemed to surprise him to discover that Gilda had other
friends than himself. He wondered who had sent her the game--a man, of
course, and, of course, a wealthy one. Always, too, the slightest sense
of uneasiness accompanied such discovery--perhaps with the memory of
Derring’s party in mind--the memory of Sadoul, too, and of Pockman, and
all that irresponsible, over-accented crew of irregulars from which,
sooner or later, are recruited the frail battalions of Cytherea.
Yet why he should make it a personal matter at all was not clear to
him: it was none of his concern what friends this young girl had--this
girl whose status had seemed more or less obvious when he first met
her, and afterward anything but obvious.
For since then he had come to realise that he knew absolutely nothing
about her--that he never had encountered any prototype with which to
compare her.
Only one thing seemed evident; she didn’t belong to Sadoul; she didn’t
belong in the Cytherean element where he had found her. He simply
couldn’t determine what might be her proper habitat, or to what genus
to assign her.
Gilda was gaily animated during dinner--having discovered that shooting
interested her somewhat subdued guest.
And presently Stuart warmed up, stimulated by her tactful questions;
and he began to tell her all about the game club in Virginia of which
he and his father were members, and about the upland and water shooting
to be had there--the live decoys and how they were cared for, handled,
and bred; the kennels, and how promising pups were trained--all the
gossip and lore of masculine haunts whither man repairs to shoot and
drink and gamble and sprawl and gossip with his brother man.
After dinner she was still the interested hostess whose light, swift
response to the voluble mood she had evoked in him gave him no interval
for gloomy reaction.
But reaction was inevitable; it was coming now. Aware of it, she went
to the piano and started midway in one of those vivid, impetuous
Hungarian fragments, wild as a Tzigane’s frolic where the flashing
skirts reveal a knife in every garter.
He leaned moodily on the piano, passing his fingers through his crisp,
blond hair, his gaze absently following her flying hands hovering like
white moths above the keys.
Stopping capriciously, she rose and reached over for a pile of tattered
music; but his hand checked hers; held it.
“I want to talk to you, Gilda.”
She nodded, came from behind the piano: “Please don’t look so worried,
Mr. Sutton. Can’t I make you forget for a while?”
They had seated themselves on the lounge where her prim cushions stood
in a tidy row.
“Anyway,” she said, “your troubles can not be really vital.”
He looked at her with sudden curiosity:
“No, they are not vital. Are _yours_?”
“Mine?... I have no troubles.”
After a silence she said lightly, but with an effort: “Anyway, we are
not going to compare troubles this evening, I hope. Otherwise, I’m a
miserable failure at amusing you.”
“I’m not thinking of my own troubles, Gilda.”
“I have not asked you to concern yourself with mine,” she said coolly.
“Is that a snub?”
She flushed: “Do you think I could afford to snub my only friend in New
York?”
“You have other friends, haven’t you?”
She shrugged her shoulders and her head remained lowered.
“You never speak of your friends to me, Gilda,” he added.
“Do you speak of yours to me, Mr. Sutton?”
Naturally he had not. There had been no reason to--no point of contact
or of interest, of course, between the people he knew and a girl he had
picked up at Derring’s.
She lifted her head and looked at him gravely:
“I am not interested in your friends. As for the people I know, I do
not believe they would interest you. They scarcely even interest _me_,”
she added with a ghost of a smile.
“Do _I_ interest you, Gilda?”
“Do _I_ interest _you_, Mr. Sutton?”
“More than--than I can find words to tell you,” he blurted.
“Oh.... There’s a dictionary in my bookcase--if you require words----”
He turned very red.
“To aid your limited vocabulary,” she explained, already uneasy at her
own badinage. But the next second he was laughing, and she seemed much
relieved.
Her unexpected and delicate impertinence, and now her confused smile,
enchanted him.
“I don’t need your dictionary,” he said, “to say you’re the most
charming girl I ever knew--and that’s how much you interest me!”
He took one of her hands. She suffered it to remain in his possession
but gave him a sweet, confused look, utterly irresistible to
sentimental youth.
Like the majority of young men under similar circumstances, he had no
particular intentions when he drew her forward into his arms and kissed
her. She shook her head, averted her face; but he tipped her head back
against him; and she remained so, restless, unresponsive, silent.
A little flame flickered in the boy’s heart and stole through his
veins, hurrying the rhythm of every pulse. The faint, warm scent of her
restless head--the softness of her body--were thrilling him; but he
tried to speak lightly:
“----There was once a little Queen in Green who returned a kiss I gave
her----”
“I can’t--any more.”
“Why?”
She was silent.
“Why?” he urged.
“Because there is somebody else to consider!”
Chilled, he released her. She drew away slowly.
“You didn’t understand me,” she said, not looking at him.
“You meant that there is another man to consider, didn’t you?”
“I meant that I must consider myself.... Indiscretion is a temptation
when I’m with you.”
He drew a swift breath of delight and relief: “But, Gilda dear, there
is nothing to be afraid of with me!”
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s nothing rotten about me----”
“How do you know there isn’t about _me_?”
“What!” he cried incredulously; and caught her in his arms, laughing,
drawing her closer.
“Now,” he said gaily, holding her imprisoned, “are you afraid any more?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t afraid at Derring’s.”
“No.... But--that was before I--I died.”
“What do you mean, Gilda?” he demanded.
She said almost fiercely: “Because I _do_ care for you, I’ve got to
tell you everything, I suppose!... I wasn’t afraid for myself that
night at Derring’s.... I was merely bashful and stupid about it. But
_now_, I’m afraid.... Because I--I am _not_ that same girl you kissed
at Derring’s. That girl died.”
“What! Do you actually believe you died that night?”
“I _know_ I died.... And when my soul--or whatever it is called--tried
to reënter my body she found another occupant there!”
“Another--soul?”
“Yes, a stranger. My own soul drove her out! I _saw_ that other one.
She was a sly, supple, beastly thing; and she struggled to stay....
I might as well tell you, too, that she often comes back, slinking
around, lurking about to get possession.... I suppose you’ll think me
insane to tell you this. But--I like you--so much--that I had to tell
you.... And that’s why I’m afraid--to let you--touch--me----”
“Good heavens, Gilda,” he said, “this is a sort of waking nightmare--an
obsession----”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand.... Ask Sadoul, then----”
“Sadoul!” And all at once he remembered the shadow-shape he saw on the
lounge beside Sadoul that night at the Fireside.
A sudden, raging curiosity seized him, overwhelmed him, to learn
more--if there was more to learn--if, indeed, there was anything at all
real and coherent in this wild absurdity he had listened to.
He said: “Sadoul is a clever fakir--I suppose he hypnotised me--for
he once showed me something that vaguely resembled you--parodied you,
Gilda, in a rather dreadful way----”
“When?” she whispered.
He told her everything briefly. “If that’s the thing you’re afraid
of,” he added, “make yourself easy, Gilda, for it’s not real; it’s not
a spirit; it’s nothing but a rather beastly brain-figment shaped by
Sadoul’s mind. By hypnotic suggestion he made me see it, too. That’s
all there was to that affair.”
She sat white, drooping, silent--not resisting when he drew her to him.
“You mustn’t be afraid,” he said. “You didn’t really die, of course.
Nothing threatens your soul, or mine.”
She looked up, still very white; he put one hand behind her head, but
she turned her cheek to his kiss, shivering in his arms.
“I tell you,” she said in a low, hurried voice, “that the _Other One_
is watching us. I’ve got to be on my guard----”
“You darling. You need not be----”
“Stuart!--for God’s sake--listen----”
“Are you afraid to let me kiss you, you adorable child?”
“Yes! And I’m afraid to tell you--tell you what I’ve got to tell you,
now--that it was not I who called you on the telephone two weeks ago.
It was the _Other One_! It was--it was _that thing you--you saw seated
beside Sadoul_!”
“Are you mad?”
She said desperately: “I’m trying to tell you something terrible that
has happened to me. I’m trying to tell you that my own soul had been
driven out of me when I telephoned you, and that the _Other_ was in
possession!
“And--and not finding you, that _Other One_ called Sadoul.”
“Sadoul!”
“My God, yes! But only to mock and torment him--not for the reason that
I--that _it_ called you.... I want you to listen to me, Stuart....
Sadoul came here that evening. I was waiting and ready, burning, the
very devil in me. We dined at the Palais Royal--danced. Then there were
other places.... And later a party at Harry Stayr’s.... I drank enough
to terrify myself.... It was daylight before the dance ended. I don’t
know what I said to the men there or the women. Women still call me up
every day. Men send flowers and ask me to dinner. One of them sent me
that game from the South.... And that’s what I did!--God knows why!...
_Now_, do you want to kiss me? Do you want to touch me? Do you care to
chance what might happen if the _other_ caught us off our guard?”
His face had become ghastly. He got up from the sofa, took an uncertain
step toward the door; looked back at her in horror; and saw her eyes
blinded with welling tears.
“I had to tell you,” she said.... “You won’t care to--to see me again,
will you?... Because I told you I was afraid--if you kiss me--you might
find the--the _Other One_ in your arms----”
He came back to her in a sudden passion:
“I’d better look after you, I think, if you’re likely to make another
night of it!”
“Stuart--do you care?”
“Of course, damn it! You don’t belong on Broadway. You don’t belong at
Derring’s or at Harry Stayr’s! I don’t know what this crazy obsession
of yours amounts to.... It can’t be true. There are no such things as
malign spirits watching to possess and destroy anybody.... And God
knows _I_ shan’t ever harm you--Gilda--Gilda!----”