It was Life’s first hurricane for Stuart Sutton. It had arisen in fury
out of nothing; caught him unprepared. Where was it driving him? On
what unknown shore would it wreck him; in what maelstrom engulf him?
In the first hour he had ever set eyes on Gilda Greenway the tempest
began to gather. With incredible swiftness it had burst within that
hour.
Then, for the first time in his life, he had seen Death in the midst of
Life. He had known its stupefaction, its horror; had struggled against
it in anguished incredulity.
Bewildered, almost hysterical, he had demanded justice and
equity of the Unknown God. Justice had been accorded--by
somebody--something--somehow or other. The horror had dissolved
overnight; daylight ended the dream of evil. But the tempest was
still blowing, imperceptibly gathering force; storm clouds thickened,
writhing around this woman and himself.
Suddenly out of the whirling, infernal light burst love, in flames,
already full grown, fully armed, dangerous.
Beyond, a desolate vista opened through grey years, and endless,
purposeless, hopeless as ages born of hell----
* * * * *
Out of nothing had been hatched this hurricane--born of a green
disguise, a smile, a little mask half lifted--a kiss given;
passionately forgiven.
All, instantly, became part of the boy’s life. Death also entered,
lingered, lightly withdrew.
But now the boy was learning that Death had left behind that which is
stronger than Death--a lovely and defenceless tenement haunted of
shadows--a young girl’s body for a battle-ground--a sanctuary where
victim and assassin lurked, watching each other behind the temple of
the mind.
* * * * *
Where was the tempest driving him? Shallows of passion, deeps of
love--over these he had been hurried, blindly, without choice; and
suddenly, low on the horizon, leered the red smear of murder.
So far had the tempest hurled him.
* * * * *
There came an hour, late on a winter afternoon, when the last clerk had
left his office, the last letter had been signed, and he remained alone
at his desk, determined now to face the apparition of the future.
Into a life which had been so accentless, so methodical, so pre-ordered
as his own, had stepped from outer bournes a girl in pale silks and a
pale green mask.
What was he to do with her?
He was trying, now, to think what to do. Distant doors closing alerted
him of departing stenographers, clerks, heads of departments. Now and
then he could hear the muffled stir in adjoining offices, the slam of
roll-top desks, murmur of voices, a distant laugh.
Behind him the coal fire burned low. He rose, stirred the coals, stood
irresolutely looking at his overcoat, then walked to the window.
Outside the pinnacles of Manhattan glittered like cliffs and peaks of
solid jewels. There was a young moon in the southwest--a mere tracery
in the sky--then the towered masses of light, huge standing shapes
of shadow--bridges with necklaces of gems festooned above an unseen
river--and the deep, interminable roaring rumour from below--New York
aspiring to the stars, growling in its caverns--New York monstrously
breathing, pulsing, gigantically, vulgarly vital, exhaling its false
aura under the stars.
He looked up at that little immemorial virgin, the moon, thin-edged,
sly, spinster-like, malicious--like all who endure aborted.
In that glimmering magic framed by his window there seemed nothing
friendly. He turned, instinctively, to the fire.
* * * * *
What was he to do? Letters from his mother were in his pocket.
California was warm, and sunny with ripe oranges.... And his father
played golf.
There were other letters in his pocket--some stacked up on his desk--to
be acknowledged, answered somehow.
A familiar, inherited social routine had been disrupted almost without
explanation since he had met Gilda Greenway.
He had been, practically, nowhere in that limited world reserved as a
matter of course for young men of his particular genus.
Dinners, dances, theatres, country parties--the usual succession of
events in which youth of his race mechanically participated--he had
avoided since he had known Gilda.
It was not a sudden distaste, not even inertia, not indifference.
Except for the civilised routine required in avoiding them the boy had
become oblivious to any social responsibility.
To be forgotten overnight in New York is inevitable unless one employs
effort to avert personal annihilation.
Stuart made no effort. Possibly, in the back of his crisp, blond head,
he realised that it is easy for such men as he to reappear.
But for some time, now, the clubs, the society, the amusements he chose
were not those familiar to his parents or to people composing those
interlinked circles wherein the Suttons were accustomed to consider
themselves at home.
* * * * *
What should he do about it?
Here was a girl he couldn’t marry. Her world was utterly alien
to his own; her little circle peopled by garish imitations of the
real--by painted shadows on the screen of Life--Veronica, Eve,
Katharine, Frances--by monstrous mouths--The Talkers--those who think
they do life’s work with wagging jaws--and by darker phantoms--by
Sadoul, and Pockman, with his spasm-like smirk, and Lyken, handler of
lightning--blasted cadavers--Harry Stayr, sensualist, grossly feeding a
swathe through life; Julian Fairless, nimble painter in thin colours,
nimble-witted as a thimble-rigger whose public pays for the living
he claims it owes him; Derring, empty as his own falsetto voice,
fussing in the wake of noisy youth, sniffing its perfumed pleasures, a
high-pitched titter amid its noisy gossip.
* * * * *
What was he to do? What was he becoming? Where was the end? Was there
no end? By stepping out, the whole unreal pageant would pass like a
dream. All this--all these tinted marionettes would go jerkily by him,
on and on, dwindling into toy perspective--somewhere--wherever they
came from.
All would pass on along a preordained path--all this grotesque Noah’s
Ark--men, women, beasts--Nika, Eve, Pockman, Stayr--the pickled things
in jars, the crippled rats and shreds of human flesh--the Monstrous
Mouths--all Talkers--and the phantoms, too--Sadoul, Gilda----
What was happening to him? What was happening to the safe, familiar
world about him? Once, death had been death--irrevocable, definite, an
end. Now it was no longer an end. There _was_ no end to life; not even
any orthodox conclusion.
The world was peopled with deathless shapes--it swarmed with
shadows--some malignant, like the wanton thing that haunted Gilda--that
sensuous, red-lipped shape that sometimes hid within her and looked at
him out of her dear eyes----
“I don’t know what to do,” he said aloud, staring vacantly at the
coals. “I thought we were protected from such things--that such things
never had existed.... I supposed God was in absolute control over
evil----”
He became silent as though somebody had spoken. Listening, he seemed to
hear the words again: “Deliver us from Evil.”
It was his own mind answering him.
“But deliver us from evil,” he repeated. And sat thinking for a while.
Were, then, such wandering, disincarnate intelligences--such
indestructible and sinister individual survivals--a form of evil
hitherto unrecognised--or not recognised since the gross superstitions
of former days peopled the earth with malignant phantoms?
“Deliver us from evil.” Was prayer the remedy? Was it a weapon? Was it
the whine of a coward for protection to a dull, monstrous, tyrannical
God, or was it a call to arms to an ally against a common enemy?
The boy stared at the whitening ashes. He did not know what to think,
what to do, whether he loved enough, or loved rightly. There seemed to
be no outlook, no solution, no help.
* * * * *
As he got up and took his overcoat from the peg, his desk telephone
rang.
“Is it you, Gilda?” he said, happily.
“What in the world are you thinking of, darling? It’s after eight and
poor Freda is frantic about the dinner.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but his face had cleared and his voice was
joyous, “--I’m so sorry, dear. Tell me, are you all right?”
“Of course I am. Are you?”
“Yes--now. I’ll come uptown immediately----”
“Don’t dare stop to dress, Stuart!”
“No. Are you particularly and enchantingly gowned?”
“I hope you’ll think so.”
“Had you rather I ate in the kitchen?”
“You silly thing!”
“Which are you hungriest for, dinner or me?”
“If I survive till you arrive I’ll tell you. Hurry, dear, I’m starving!”