A LAST MESSAGE.
Dolly never came to work the next morning, but there arrived a little
letter from her to Mr. Ripley, giving notice, that was all, with no
address or clew to her whereabouts, and an intimation that it was
understood she sacrificed her position--pitiful heaven, for what?
My employer tossed the note to me indifferently, asking me to see
about the engagement of a fresh hand, if necessary. He little guessed
what those few simple words meant to two of his staff, or foresaw the
tragedy to which they were the prelude.
When the dinner hour came I followed Duke out and put the scrap of
paper into his hand without a word. He was not unprepared for it, for
he already knew, of course, that his worst apprehensions were realized
by the non-appearance of the girl at her usual place in the office.
He read it in silence, and in silence handed it back to me. His face
in twenty-four hours seemed to have grown to be the face of an old
man. All its once half-sad, half-humorous thoughtfulness was set into
a single hard expression of some dark resolve.
“Well,” he said, suddenly, stopping in his walk and facing me, for I
still kept pace with him.
“What do you intend doing, Duke?”
“I have one mission in life, Mr. Trender. Good-afternoon to you.”
I fell back and watched him go from me. Maimed as I was myself, how
could I in any way help him to cure his crueler hurt?
But now began a curious somber struggle of cross purposes. To find out
where Jason had sunk his burrow and hidden the spoils of his ugly
false sport--there we worked in harness. It was only when the quarry
should be run down that we must necessarily disagree as to the terms
of its disposition.
For myself: A new despairing trouble had been woven into my life by
the hand that had already wrought me such evil. Its very touch had,
however, made wreck of an impression that had been in a certain sense
an embarrassment, and my movements became in consequence less
trammeled. Let me explain more definitely, if indeed I can do so and
not appear heartless.
Dolly, innocent, bewitching and desirable, had so confused my moral
ideas as to imbue them with a certain sweet sophistry of love that
half-deceived me into a belief in its fundamental soundness. That was
done with. Dolly dethroned, earthly, enamored of a brazen idol could
be no rival to Zyp. My heart might yearn to her with pity and a deep
remorse that it was I who had been the weak, responsible minister of
her perversion, but the old feeling was dead, never to be revived. I
longed to find her; to rescue her from the black gulf into which I
feared she had leaped; to face the villain who had bruised her heart
and wrench atonement from him by the throat, as it were. Not less it
was my duty to warn him; stand between him, worthless as he was, and
the deadly pursuit alert for his destruction.
For Duke: I must judge him as he revealed himself to me, and baffle,
if possible, the terrible spirit of what I dared not name to myself.
Think only that at one wicked blow he was deprived of that whole
structure of gentle romance that had saved his moral life from
starvation!
Therefore it was that during the after hours of work I became for long
a restless, flitting ghost haunted by a ghost. By street and rail and
river, aimless apparently, but with one object through all, we went
wandering through the dark mazes of the night and of the city, always
hoping to light upon that we sought and always baffled. Theaters,
restaurants, music halls, night shows and exhibitions of every
description--any place that was calculated to attract in the least a
nature responsive to the foppery of glitter or an appeal to the
senses--we visited and explored, without result. Gambling dens--such
as we could obtain the entree to--were a persistent lodestone to our
restlessness; and here, especially, was I often conscious of that
shadow of a shade--that dark ghost of my own phantom
footsteps--standing silent at my elbow and watching--watching for him
who never came.
Whithersoever we went the spur of the moment’s qualm goaded us. Any
little experience, any chance allusion, was sufficient to suggest a
possibility in the matter of the tendency of a lost and degenerate
soul. Now we foregathered on the skirt of some fulsome and braying
street preacher’s band; now suffered in a music hall under the
skittish vapidity of a “lion comique”; now, perhaps, humbled our hot
and weary pride in the luminous twilight of some old walled-in church,
where evening service brought a few worshipers together.
I say “we,” yet in all this we acted independently. Only, whether in
company or apart, the spirit of one common motive linked us together,
and that so that I, at least, never felt alone.
So the weeks drew into months and Dolly herself was a phantom to my
memory. By day the mechanism of our lives moved in the accustomed
grooves; by night we were wandering birds of passage flitting dismally
over waste places. More than once on a Sunday had I taken train to
Epping, driven by the thought that some half-forgotten sentiment might
by chance move other than me to the scene of old pleasant experiences.
But she never came. Her “seasick weary bark” was nearing the rocks,
and the breakers of eternity were already sounding in her ears.
Why postpone the inevitable or delay longer over description of that
pointless pursuit that was to end only in catastrophe and death?
Christmas had come and gone with me--a mockery of good will and
cheer--and a bitter January set in. That month the very demon of the
east wind flew uncontrolled, and his steely sting was of a length and
shrewdness to pierce thickest cloth and coverlet, frame and lung and
heart itself.
One evening I had swallowed my supper and was preparing for my nightly
prowl. Duke had remained at the office overtime, and my tramp was like
to be unhaunted of its familiar. I had actually blown out the lamp,
when his rapid footstep--I knew it well--came up the stairs, and in a
moment the door was thrown open with a crash and I heard him breathing
in the room.
“He’s gone!” he ejaculated in a quick, panting voice.
“No; I’m here, Duke!”
“My God! Renny--do you hear? Come--come at once. No--light the lamp;
I’ve something to show you.”
I struck a match, with shaking hand, and put it to the wick. As the
dull flame sputtered and rose I turned and looked at my friend. The
expression of his face I shall never forget till I die. It was
bloodless--spectral--inhuman; the face of one to whom a great dread
had been realized--a last hope denied.
He held out to me a little soiled and crumpled sheet of paper. I took
it, with a spasm of the heart and breath that seemed to suffocate me.
My eyes turned from and were fascinated by it at once.
“You had better read,” he said. “It’s the last chapter of your own
pretty romance. Make haste--I want to get to business.”
It was from her, as I had foreseen--a few sad words to the old good
friend who had so loved and protected her:
“I must let you know before I go to die. I couldn’t meet you that
morning--what a time ago it seems! He wouldn’t let me, though I cried
and begged him to. I don’t know now what made me do it all; how he
upset my faith in Renny and turned my love to himself in a moment. I
think he has a dreadful influence that made me follow him and obey
him. It doesn’t matter now. I went to him, that’s enough; and he’s
broken my heart. Please ask Renny to forgive me. Perhaps if he had had
a little more patience with me I might have acted different--but I
can’t be certain even of that. I’m going to kill myself, Duke, dear,
and before I do it I just want to say this: I know now you loved poor
Dolly all the time. How I know it I don’t understand, but somehow it’s
quite clear. Oh, what have I thrown away, when I might have been so
happy! You were always good to me, and I thank you with my last
breath. Don’t hurt him, Duke; I don’t think he understands the
difference to me. But he always promised to be a faithful lover--and
yesterday I found that he’s married already. That’s why I’m going to
do it.”
The paper dropped from my hand. Duke picked it up with an evil laugh
and thrust it into his breast pocket.
“Married!” I muttered.
“Oh!” he cried; “it’s all one for that! That’s a family matter. The
question here goes beyond--into the heart of this--this death
warrant.”
He struck savagely where the letter lay and stood staring at me with
gloating eyes.
“Duke--are you going to murder him?”
“I’m going to find her. Let that do for the present--and you’ve got to
help me.”
“Where are we to look? Did the letter give an address?”
“No. She kept her secret to the last. It was a noble one, I swear.
There’s a postmark, though, and that’s my clew. Hurry, will you?”
I seized my hat and stick.
“Duke--for the love of heaven, why must it be too late even now?”
“Because I know it is. Doesn’t that satisfy you? I loved her--do you
understand it now for the first time? The fiend tread on your heels.
Aren’t you ever coming?”
I hurried after him into the street. A clap of wind struck and
staggered us as if it had been water. Beating through the night, its
icy fury clutched at us, stinging and buffeting our faces, until it
seemed as though we were fighting through an endless thicket of
brambles. Struggling and panting onward--silent with the silence of
the lost--we made our way by slow degrees to the low ground about
Chelsea, and presently came out into a freer air and the black vision
of the river sliding before us from night into night.
“Duke,” I whispered, awfully--“is this what you fear?”
“Follow!” he cried. “I fear nothing! It’s past that!”
By lowering factory and grimy wall; by squalid streets peeled of
uncleanliness in the teeth of the bitter blast; by low-browed taverns,
that gushed red on us a moment and were gone, he sped with crooked
paces, and I followed.
Then he stopped so suddenly that I almost stumbled against him, and we
were standing at the mouth of a shadowy court, and overhead a
hiccoughing gas jet made a gibbering terror of his white face.
“Where are we?” I said, and he answered:
“Where we naturally take up the clew--outside a police station.”