It was not yet ten o’clock when Eris arrived at Jane Street. Gutters
stank; the heated darkness reeked with the stench of stables, slops,
and unwashed human bodies.
Sidewalks still swarmed; tenements had muted and disgorged; every
alley spewed women and men in every stage of undress. Fat females with
babies at breasts squatted beside dirty doorsteps; dishevelled hags
hung out of open windows, frowsy men sprawled on chairs, or nude to the
trousers, looked down from rusting fire-escapes at a screaming tumult
of half-naked children shouting and dancing in the cataract of spray
from a hose which two firemen had opened on them from a hydrant.
Flares burning redly on push-carts threw smoky glares here and there as
far as Greenwich Avenue, where the light-smeared darkness was turbulent
with human herd.
Into this dissonance and clamour, clothed in silk, came Eris, daughter
of Discord. As in a walking dream she descended from her taxi; fumbled
in her silken reticule to find the fare; paid, scarcely knowing what
she was paying.
As she turned and ascended the low steps of her house, still searching
about in the reticule for her latch-key, she became aware that a man
was standing in the vestibule.
When she found her latch-key she glanced up at the shadowy shape.
Then the man uttered her name.
Instantly his voice awoke in her ears that alarming echo which
sometimes haunted her dreams. And though the man’s features were only a
grey blur in the obscurity, she knew him absolutely.
For an instant all her strength seemed to leave her body, and she
sagged a little, sideways, resting against the vestibule wall.
The shock lasted but a second; blood rushed to her face; without a word
she straightened up, stepped forward, refitted her latch-key.
“Eris,” he whimpered, “won’t you speak to me?”
As she wrenched open the front door, light from the hall gas-jet fell
across the man’s pale visage, revealing his collarless shirt and shabby
clothes.
Already she had set foot inside. Perhaps the ghastly pallor of the man
halted her--perhaps some occult thing within the law held her fettered
in chains invisible. She stood with head averted, dumb, motionless,
grasping her key convulsively.
“My God,” he whispered, “won’t you even look at me?”
“What do you want?” she asked in the ghost of a voice. Then, slowly,
she turned and looked at her husband.
“I’m sick----” He leaned weakly against the vestibule door, and she saw
his closing eyes and the breath labouring and heaving his bony chest.
What was this miserable creature to her, who had cheated her girlhood
and struck her a blow that never could entirely heal?
What had she to do with any sickness of this man and his poverty and
misery?
“Why should you--come--to me?” she asked. Suddenly she felt her body
quivering all over. “What do I owe to you?” she cried, revolted.
He muttered something;--“In sickness and in health--till--till death do
us--part----”
A dry sob checked his mumbling. He shook his head, slightly. His heavy
eyes closed.
She stood staring at him and holding the door partly open. Twice she
clutched the knob in nervous fingers as though to slam the door in his
face and bolt out this pallid spectre of the past. She could not stir.
“What is the matter with you?” she finally forced herself to ask.
He opened his sick eyes: “Hunger--I guess----”
“You may have money if you need it. Is that what you want?”
He seemed to summon strength to stand upright and pass his bloodless
fingers over his face.
“It’s all right,” he muttered thickly; “I didn’t mean to bother you----”
He turned as though to go, steadying himself with one shaky hand on the
stoop railing. At the door-step he stumbled, swayed, but recovered.
“Stuart!” she burst out, “come back!”
He pulled himself together; turned toward her: “I don’t want money....
I’m too sick----”
“Wait! You can’t go into the street that way!...”
He seemed so shaky and confused that she took hold of his ragged arm.
Very slowly, and supported by her, he entered the doorway. They climbed
the stairs together, wearily, in silence.
Hattie usually went home at night and arrived, by key, early in the
morning. Eris unlocked her door, lighted the corridor, went on to the
living-room and lighted that. Then she returned to her husband and led
the way to the kitchen and pantry and lighted them both.
“There is a chair,” she said. “I’ll make you some hot coffee.”
She flung a cloth over the kitchen table, laid a cover, brought what
there was in the ice-box,--cold lamb, sardines, butter, fruit. She went
again to the pantry and sliced bread for him. Then she started the gas
range in the kitchen.
“I’m putting you to a great deal of trouble,” he mumbled.
She paid him no attention but went on with her preparations. When
finally she returned with the steaming coffee she found he had eaten
nothing.
However, he drank some of the coffee. After that he slumped on his
chair, dazed, inert, his lack-lustre gaze on the floor. But his
bony, bloodless fingers--those long, clever, nimble fingers she
remembered--picked aimlessly at everything--at his face, at his
clothing, at the sliced bread.
“Have you been ill long?” she forced herself to ask.
He mumbled something. She bent nearer to understand, but he fell
silent, continuing to pick and fumble and stare at space.
“Do you feel very ill, Stuart? I want you to tell me.”
“If I could have--a little whiskey--or something--to buck up----”
She rose, got the gift bottle that she had been saving; brought it to
him with a tumbler; left him there with it.
As she turned her back and walked nervously toward the front of the
house, he peeped after her out of shadowy eyes, not lifting his head.
Then he poured out half a glass of neat whiskey, steadily enough,
swallowed it, looked around.
In the living-room Eris flung scarf and reticule on the sofa, stood for
a moment twisting her fingers in helpless revolt; then, fighting off
nervous reaction, she paced the room striving to think what to do, what
was right to do in this miserable emergency.
Did she owe this man anything more than she owed to any sick, hungry,
ragged man? If so, _what_? How much? How far did the law run that
fettered her? What were the statutes which exacted service? And the
ethics of the case--what were they? Anything except the bare morals
involved? Anything except the ordinary humanity operating generally
in such cases and involving her in obvious obligation? Were they the
obligations which once involved those who looked upon Lazarus and
“passed by on the other side”? Were they really more vital?
She went slowly back to the kitchen. Hearing her approach, her husband
had crossed both arms on the table and dropped his marred face in them.
“Are you really very ill, Stuart?” she asked calmly.
“No. I’ll go----” He tried, apparently, to get to his feet; fell back
on the chair, whimpering.
There was a small room off the pantry where, in emergency, Hattie
sometimes slept on a box-couch.
“You can lie down there for a while if you wish,” she said. She helped
him get up; he stumbled toward the pantry, guided by her, to the couch
in the little room beyond. Here he sank down and dropped his head
between his hands. She had turned to leave but halted and looked back
at him from the pantry doorway.
“I had better call a physician,” she said, frightened by his deathly
colour.
He might have explained that his pasty skin was partly due to prison
pallor, partly to drugs. Instead he asked for a little more whiskey.
“I don’t want a doctor,” he muttered; “I’ll be all right after a nap.
This whiskey will pull me together.... You go to bed.”
After a while he looked up at her, rested so, his shadowy eyes fixed on
her with a sort of stealthy intentness.
“You’d better sleep if you can,” she said. “I’ll have to wake you soon.
It is growing very late.”
“Oh God!” he burst out suddenly, “what a wreck I’ve made of our lives!”
“Not of mine,” she retorted coolly; and turned to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he whined. “I didn’t mean to get you in wrong.... I meant
to go straight after we were married.... But they got me wrong, Eris,
they got me wrong!... It was the very last job I ever meant to do....
I gave up the plates. That’s how they let me off with a light one....
I’m out over a month, now----”
“Were you in--in _prison_!” she demanded with an overwhelming surge of
disgust.
He began to snivel: “You couldn’t get over _that_, could you, Eris?...
And what I did to you--getting you in wrong--disgracing you that
way----”
She made no answer but her grey eyes grew cold.
“You couldn’t ever forgive me, could you, Eris?” he whimpered, watching
her intently.
“I can forget you, in time, if you keep away from me.... But--it is
terrible to see you--_terrible_!”
He licked his dry lips, furtively, always watching her.
“If ever you would let me try to make amends--if you’d just let me work
for you,--slave for you----”
For an instant she stared at him, incredulous that she had heard
correctly. Then wrath set her cheeks ablaze: but her voice remained
controlled, and she chose and measured her words:
“Listen to me, Stuart: I wouldn’t let you lift a finger for me; I
wouldn’t let you touch me,--I don’t expect ever to see you again,--I
don’t want even to hear of you. And that’s _that_!”
“Do you hate me so bitterly, Eris?” he whimpered, cringing but always
watching her face.
“It isn’t hate. For what you did to an ignorant girl--for your
deception, your meanness, your lying, I have no _hatred_. I don’t hate:
I merely rid myself of what offends me.”
He began to snivel again, seated on the edge of the box-couch, swaying
from side to side:
“I know I shouldn’t have married you. But I wanted to go straight. I
was madly in love with you, Eris--and I haven’t changed. Haven’t you a
word for me----”
She gazed at him with a loathing in which no saving spark of anger
mitigated the cold disgust. She said, slowly:
“All I need ever say to you can be said through a lawyer. That is all
that concerns you. If you wish to lie down, do so. I don’t want you
here; but I wouldn’t turn a sick snake out of doors.”
She left him and went back to her bed-room. For an hour she sat there,
unstirring, waiting, listening at moments. The flush remained on her
cheeks; and into her eyes there came a glint at times, as where storms
brood behind grey horizons.
The day, indeed, had bred storms for Eris--for Eris, daughter of
Discord--sitting here in her dim chamber all alone.
Twice after midnight she had gone to the little room off the pantry,
only to find her husband heavily asleep. He seemed so wretched a thing,
so broken, so haggard, that she had yet not found courage to awake him
and send him into the street.
So now, once more, she returned to her bed-room and her sombre vigil;
sat there brooding, waiting, listening at intervals, wondering what to
do, and how, and when.
The fatigue of that unhappy day had strained her nerves, not her
courage. But for the advent of this miserable man she would have had
leisure to think about what was to be done for the future and face the
fact that she was out of work.
Now she felt too weary to think--too tired to examine the situation
which so suddenly confronted her when Albert Smull flung his last
insult in her shrinking face.
Troubles thickened about her; trouble was invading her very door; but
she was too sleepy to consider the misfortunes that involved her--the
menacing situation at the studio--the sordid problem in the next room.
Her little mantel-clock struck two o’clock before she finally summoned
energy to rise and go to awaken her husband.
He seemed to be in a sort of coma. Only after she twitched his sleeve
repeatedly did he unclose his dangerous eyes. And then he merely
muttered fretfully that he was too weak to move and meant to sleep
where he lay until morning.
“You can’t remain here all night,” she said. “I can’t permit that. Do
you understand, Stuart?”
But he only turned over, muttering incoherencies, and buried his
dishevelled head in his ragged arms.
Not knowing what to do, she went wearily back to her bed-room. Twice,
trying to think what to do, she fell asleep in her chair. The second
waking found her on her feet, blind with sleep, but with instinct
leading her to lock and bolt her bed-room door.... That is the last she
remembered for a while.
* * * * *
She awoke, lying diagonally across her bed, fully dressed, in the
dull, rosy glow of her little night-lamp. Something was scraping and
scratching at her door. She turned her head, saw the door-knob twisting
very softly, now this way, now that.
She got up from the bed and went quickly to the door.
“If you don’t leave this house,” she said in a low voice, “I shall
telephone for a policeman.”
“Take me back, Eris,” he whined. “As God sees me, I love you! I’ll work
my fingers to the bone for you----”
“Leave this house,” she repeated.
He tried the door again, gently, then wrenched at the knob. Suddenly he
threw his full weight against the door. But they wrought well in the
days when that old house was built.
Listening, she heard him moving off, softly, and realised he had
removed his shoes.
For a long while she continued to listen, but heard no further sound
from him. There was not the slightest sense of fear in her, merely
loathing and weariness unutterable.
She went back, finally, to the bed and lay down across it.
Four o’clock struck in the living-room. After that she remembered
listening and trying to remain awake.
* * * * *
She had been sleeping heavily for two hours when Eddie Carter, alias E.
Stuart Graydon, tried the bolt with the blade of a kitchen knife. He
had contrived, also, to fashion another instrument out of a steel fork.
Neither of these worked.
As half-past five struck in the living-room, where he was seated, he
concluded that the other plan had become inevitable. He had hoped it
might be avoided. But the girl he now had to deal with was no longer
the ignorant, impressionable child he had so easily moulded to his
fancy.
There were two matters which preoccupied this man: the first, a genuine
passion for the girl-wife he had been forced to abandon. Whatever this
sentiment was,--love or a lesser impulse,--it had been born the moment
he lost her; and it had painfully persisted through those prison months.
The second matter which absorbed him was hatred for the man who had
sent him to a second term in prison. The charge was forgery; the firm
of Smull, Shill & Co. procured his arrest.
On these two matters his mind had remained fixed until the poignancy of
brooding became intolerable; and he sought relief in prison-smuggled
drugs. Which, so far, was the history of Eddie Carter, addict, and
penman par excellence.
* * * * *
Now, hunched up in an arm-chair in her living-room, he studied the
immediate problem of Eris, picking eternally at the upholstery
with scarred fingers, or at his clothing, his face, his own
finger-nails--the skin around the base of the nails raw from long habit
of self-mutilation.
His first plan of enlisting the girl’s sympathy had proven hopeless.
There remained the alternate plan.
Six o’clock sounded from the mantel-clock. He got up and went to
the pantry, where was a telephone extension for servants. With some
difficulty and delay he got the person he was calling:
“Say, Abe, it’s Eddie. I’ve done what you said for me to do----”
“I didn’t tell you to do anything!” interrupted his lawyer, angrily.
“Get next to yourself or I quit right now! D’you get that, you cheap
dumbbell?”
“Sure! But listen, Abe. I’m _here_. I’ve been here since ten o’clock
last night. We’re _both_ here, Abe----”
“Is it fixed up?”
“No, Abe; and I want you to come right now. You understand, Abe----”
“Cut out the Abe every other word,” interrupted the attorney
wrathfully. “What are you trying to do to me? Act like you got sense or
I’m through!”
“All right. Take it on the run. I’ll let you in. You better not stop to
shave; it’s six, now.”
“I’ll be around,” replied the lawyer briefly.
* * * * *
He came in a taxi-cab. Eddie Carter saw him from the front window, went
downstairs in his stocking-feet, and let him in.
Climbing the stairs again they came into the living-room without
exchanging a word; but here Carter pointed to the closed door of Eris’
bed-room.
“Asleep?” inquired the other, still breathing hard from the ascent.
“I don’t know. She’s locked in.”
The lawyer looked at him: “So she locked you out? When?”
“Last night.”
“Wouldn’t she make up?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ll have to fix it----”
There was a silence; then the short, fat attorney took hold of Carter’s
arm and spoke close to his ear:
“Get this right! When she unlocks that door to come out, _you came out
with her_!”
“You saw me,” nodded Carter.
They began to prowl around the apartment. In the kitchen the lawyer
whispered: “She must have some kind of a maid that comes by the day.”
“Yes, a nigger. Her name’s Hattie. You going to buy her, Abe?”
“We don’t have to. She’s our witness anyway,” added the little fat
attorney, with a hint of a grin.
At that moment a key rattled in the kitchen door.