THE LIGHTNING STROKE
More days have gone by. This morning I happened to meet Jamieson, who is
always exceedingly kind and urbane to his flock of authors.
"My dear fellow," he told me, "you must not be discouraged if the 'Land
o' Love' does not sell quite so well as some of the others, for I have
not the slightest doubt that your next book will more than make up for
it. A man is not a machine and he cannot always maintain the same level
of accomplishment. We are only printing a couple of thousand copies to
start with, but, of course, your advance payment, on the day of
publication, will be the same as usual."
He said all this so pleasantly that I almost forgot that this payment
was called for on my contract and felt personally obliged to him.
"We will send you a few advance copies by the end of the week," he said.
"It might pay you to look one of them over, carefully. You have not
read the thing for a good many months, now, and you will get a better
perspective on it. I have no doubt that you will agree with me that a
return to your former manner is rather advisable. I am ever so glad to
have seen you. Now, don't worry over this because you have not yet
written half the good stuff that's in you, and I certainly look forward
to a big seller from you, some day."
I shook hands with him, feeling greatly indebted, and walked slowly
home. There can be few better judges than Jamieson, and his estimate of
the "Land o' Love" leaves me rather blue. I have been so anxious to make
money in order to be able to help in the improvement of those repaired
vocal chords of Frances and start her on the way towards the success I
believe is in store for her, that I feel as if the impending failure of
my novel were a vicious blow of fate directed against her. Why was I
ever impelled to leave aside some of the conventions of my trade, to
abandon the path I have hitherto trodden in safety? One or two
multimillionaires may have been able to condemn the public to perdition,
but a struggling author might as safely, in broad daylight, throw
snowballs at a chief of police. Before I go any further I must carefully
read over the seven or eight score pages I have already done for the
successor of "Land o' Love," and find out whether I am not drifting into
too iconoclastic a way of writing.
With my head full of such disquieting thoughts I walked home. As I
turned the corner of my street, I saw Frances, a good way ahead of me.
She was doubtless returning from Gordon's studio. Her darling little
bundle was in her arms and she hurried along, very fast.
"Baby Paul must be hungry," I decided, "and she will run up the stairs.
No use hastening after her, for her door will be closed. Frieda will
soon come in, and we shall all go over to Camus, as we arranged last
evening."
Once in my room I took up my manuscript and began to study it, trying to
disguise myself under the skin of the severest critic. I started, with a
frown, to read the lines, in a manner that was an excellent imitation of
a grumpy teacher I remembered, who used to read our poor little essays
as if they had been documents convicting us of manslaughter, to say the
very least. And yet, so hopelessly vacillating is my nature that I had
read but half a chapter before I was figuratively patting myself on the
back, in egotistic approval of my own work. I continued, changing a word
here and there and dreamily repeating some sentences, the better to
judge of their effectiveness, until there was a knock at my door and
Frieda came in, looking scared.
"See here, Dave, I've just been in to see Frances. She's come back with
a dreadful headache and can't go out to dinner with us. I asked if I
could make her a cup of tea and she wouldn't hear of it. The room is all
dark and she's lying on the bed."
"I'll go out at once and get Dr. Porter!" I exclaimed.
"No, I proposed it, but she won't see any one. She assures me that it
will be all right by to-morrow and insists that it is not worth while
bothering about. She wants us to go without her."
"Well, at least I can go in and find out whether there is anything I can
do," I persisted.
"No, Dave, she told me that she wanted to be left alone. Please don't go
in. Her head aches so dreadfully that she must have absolute quiet, for
a time."
I looked at Frieda, helplessly, and she returned the glance. This was
not a bit like Frances; she is always so glad of our company, so
thankful for my stout friend's petting and so evidently relieved by such
sympathy as we can extend that we could make no head nor tail of the
change so suddenly come upon her. The two of us felt like children
open-eyed at some undeserved scolding.
"Well, come along, Frieda," I said, much disgruntled. "I suppose we
might as well have something to eat."
"I don't care whether I have anything or not," she answered, dubiously.
"Neither do I, my dear," I assented.
"Then put on your hat and coat and come to the flat. I have half a cold
chicken in the icebox and a bottle of beer. I don't want to go to
Camus."
So we departed, dully, passing before the door that had been denied us
for the first time in lo, these many months. The loose stair creaked
dismally under Frieda's weight, and the dim hall lights reminded me of
Eulalie's churchly tapers. On the way to the flat I stopped at a bakery
and purchased four chocolate eclairs wherewith to help console Frieda.
Once in the apartment, my friend seemed to regain some of her flagging
spirits. She exhumed the fowl from her icebox and cut slices from a loaf
of bread, while I opened a can of small French peas, which she set in a
saucepan placed on her gas-stove. Also, I laid the eclairs symmetrically
on a blue plate I took from the dresser, after which Frieda signalled to
me to open the bottle of beer and our feast began in silence.
"I wonder how Trappists enjoy their meals," I finally remarked.
"They don't!" snapped out Frieda.
Yet a moment later she was talking as fast as usual, giving me many
interesting details in regard to the effects of sick-headache on
womankind and gradually abandoning the subject to revert to painting.
"I have sold Orion," she said. "He is going to Chicago. I have been
thinking of a Leda with a swan, but I'm afraid it's too hackneyed. Why
don't you suggest something to me? That beer is getting flat in your
glass; you haven't touched it. Hand me an eclair."
I held the plate out to her, the while I sought to remember something
mythological, and she helped herself. With profound disdain she treated
the few suggestions I timidly made.
"You had better go home, David," she told me at last. "We are as
cheerful as the two remaining tails of the Kilkenny cats. Good night, I
am going to darn stockings."
So I took my departure and returned to Mrs. Milliken's where I found a
message waiting for me:
"Why the devil don't you have a telephone? Come right up to the
studio.
"GORDON."
I knocked very softly at the door of the room opposite mine and was
bidden to come in. Frances was lying on her sofa, and the light was not
turned on. I saw her only vaguely and thought that she put a hand up to
her forehead with a weary motion rather foreign to her.
"I hope you will pardon me," I said. "I have just come back from dinner
and find that I must go out again. Before leaving, I wanted to make sure
that you were not very ill and to ascertain whether there is anything I
can do for you."
"No, David. Thank you ever so much," she answered. "As always you are
ever so kind. By to-morrow this will have passed away and I shall be as
well as ever. It--it is one of those things that never last very long
and I am already better. Mrs. Milliken sent me up something, and I need
nothing more. Good night, David."
She had spoken very softly and gently, in the new voice that was very
clear. The change in it was most remarkable. I had been so used to the
husky little tone that I could hardly realize that it was the same
Frances. And yet its present purity of timbre was like a normal and
natural part of her, like her heavy tresses and glorious eyes or the
brave strong soul of her.
"Well, good night, Frances," I bade her. "I do hope your poor head will
let you have some sleep to-night, and perhaps dreams of pleasant things
to come."
So I hastened down to the street and to the station of the Elevated, on
my way to Gordon's, wondering why he was thus summoning me and
inventing a score of explanations, all of which I rejected as soon as I
had formulated them.
When I pressed the button at his door, my friend opened it himself, his
features looking very set and grave. I followed him into the studio,
that was only half-lighted with a few shaded bulbs, and sat down on the
divan by the window while he took a cigar and cut off the end, with
unusual deliberation.
"Hang it all!" he finally grumbled, "why don't you speak? Have you
seen--Mrs. Dupont?"
"Yes, I have," I answered, rather surprised, because to me he generally
called her Frances now, as we all did.
"And she has told you all about it, of course!"
"She only told me that she had a severe headache, and would see no one,
not even Frieda."
He looked at me, sharply, after which he lit a match for his cigar, with
a hand that was decidedly shaky. Then he paced up and down the big room,
nervously, while I stared at him in anxious surprise.
"Oh! You can look at me!" he exclaimed, after a moment. "I'm the clever
chap who warned you against that woman, am I not? Marked _explosive_, I
told you she ought to be. And now you can have your laugh, if you want
to. Go ahead and don't mind me!"
For a moment I felt my chest constricted as with a band of iron. I felt
that I could hardly breathe, and the hand I put up to my forehead met a
cold and clammy surface.
"For God's sake, Gordon!" I cried, "what--what have you----?"
He pitched the cigar in the fireplace and stood before me, his hands
deep in his trousers pockets, his voice coming cold and hard, the words
forced and sounding artificial and metallic.
"What have I done? You want to know, eh? Oh! It's soon enough told.
First I did a 'Mother and Child,' a devil of a good piece of work, too.
And, while I was painting it, I saturated every fiber of me with the
essence of that wonderful face. Man alive! Her husky little voice, when
I permitted her to speak, held an appeal that slowly began to madden me.
Oh! It didn't come on the first day, or the first week, but, by the time
I was putting on the last few strokes of the brush, I realized that I
was making an arrant fool of myself, caught by the mystery of those
great dark eyes, bound hand and foot by the glorious tresses of her
hair, trapped by that amazing smile upon her face. Then, I
worked--worked as I never did before, fevered by the eagerness to finish
that picture and send her away, out of my sight. I was tempted to leave
the thing unfinished, but I couldn't! I wanted to run away and called
myself every name under the sun, and gritted my teeth. Up and down this
floor I walked till all hours. I decided that it was but a sudden fever,
a distemper that would pass off when she was no longer near me. Every
day I swore I would react against it. What had I in common with a woman
who had already given the best of her heart and soul to another man, who
still goes on weeping for his memory, who is but one amid the wreck and
flotsam of that artistic life so many start upon and so few ever succeed
in! And the picture was finished and I gave her the few dollars she had
earned and sent her away, just as calmly as if she'd been any poor drab
of a creature. My God! Dave! If she had stood there and asked me for all
I had, for my talent, for my soul to tread beneath her feet, I would
have laid them before her, thankfully, gladly. But I took her as far as
the door of the lift, forsooth, and gave her my coldest and most civil
smile. I'm a wonderful actor, Dave, and have mistaken my profession! I
hid it all from her--I--I think I did, anyway, and she never knew
anything, at that time. So, when she had gone, I told Yumasa to turn the
picture to the wall and then I went out to the club, and treated myself
pretty well, and then to the theatre and back to the club. Some of the
fellows are a pretty gay lot, sometimes, and I was good company for them
that night!"
For a moment he stopped and took up another cigar, mechanically, while I
kept on staring at him in silence.
"Oh! I was able to walk straight enough when I came home. The stuff had
little effect on me. In the taxi my head was whirling, though. But I got
back here and took up the picture again and placed it on the easel, in a
flood of light. It was wonderful! It seemed to me that she was coming
out of the frame and extending her round arms and slender fingers to me
till my heart was throbbing in my throat and choking me!"
He stopped again and took up his pacing once more, like some furred
beast in a cage.
"In the morning I looked at myself," he resumed. "A fine wreck of
manhood I appeared, bleared and haggard and with a mouth tasting of the
ash heap. But, after a Turkish bath, I was like some imitation of my
real self again, for I could hold myself in and think clearly. It meant
the abandoning of all my plans and the awakening, some day, in a period
of disillusionment, with a woman at my side carrying another man's child
and bestowing on me the remnants of her love. Ay, man! I was egotist
enough to think I should only have to ask, to put out my hand to her!
But I gripped myself again and felt proud of the control I could
exercise over my madness. The Jap packed up my things, and I went away
over there, where the other woman awaited me, with her horses and her
autos, her rackets and her golf-clubs, with other rich women about her,
laughing, simpering, chattering, but culling all the blossoms of a life
I had aimed for and was becoming a part of. I had paid for it, Dave, in
toil such as few other men have undergone, at the price of starvation in
garrets, over there in the _Quartier_. No light o' loves for me, no
hours wasted, never a penny spent but for food of a sort and the things
I needed for painting. And it took me years. Then the reward was before
me, for I had won time. Yes, man! I was the master of time! Fools say it
is money! What utter rot! Money is time, that's what it is. It can bring
time for leisure, and to enjoy luxury, to bask in smiles, to lead a life
of ease and refinement, and time also to accomplish the great work of
one's dreams!"
There was another pause.
"I didn't forget her, of course. She was before me night and day, but I
thought I was mastering my longing, beginning to lord it over an insane
passion. I could golf and swim and dance, and listen to fools prattling
of art, and smile at them civilly and agree with their silly nonsense.
They're not much more stupid than most of the highbrows, after all, and,
usually, a devilish sight more pleasant to associate with. None of
Camus's poison in their kitchens! And--and that other woman was a
beauty, and she held all that I aimed for in her hand and was stretching
it out to me. And she's a good woman too and a plucky one! Rather too
good for me, I am sure. It was at night, going forty miles an hour, I
think, that I finally made up my mind to ask her. And--and she
consented. She was driving and never slowed down a minute, for we were
late. I was half scared, and yet hoping that she might wrap that car
around a telegraph pole, before we arrived. When we finally stopped, she
declared it had been a glorious ride, and gave me her lips to kiss,
and--and I went up to my room to dress for dinner, feeling that I had
made an end of all insanity, that I had achieved all that I had fought
so hard for!
"Then, later on, after some months, you came around to ask me to use
Frances as a model again. I thought I was quite cured at that time, and
I refused. Oh, yes! I had been coming to that shack of yours. On those
Sunday afternoons the devil would get into me. A look at her would do no
harm. You and Frieda would be there too. And I would come and sit on
your rickety bed and look at her, and listen to you all, and watch you
pouring out tea. But I thought all the time that I was keeping a fine
hold on myself, just tapering off, the dope-fiends call it. Then it was
that you came to me. You're ugly and gawky enough, Dave, but no evil
angel of temptation was ever so compelling as you. I remember how you
stared when I said I didn't want her. And you hadn't been gone ten
minutes before the devil had his clutches on me and flung me in my car
and I met you at your door and told you to let her come!
"And I've been painting her again. Such beastly stuff as I've turned
out! Daubing in and rubbing out again, and staring at her till I knew
she was beginning to feel uneasy and anxious. But I always managed to
keep a hold on my tongue. God! What a fight I was waging, every minute
of the time, crazy to fling the palette to the floor, to kick the easel
over, to rush to her and tell her I was mad for the love of her! And
to-day the crisis came; I'd been shaking all over; couldn't hold a brush
to save my life. I--I don't know what I said to her; but it was nothing
to offend her, I am sure, nothing that a sweet, clean woman could not
hear and listen to, from a man who loved her. But I remember her words.
They were very halting and that poor voice of hers was very hoarse
again.
"'Oh!' she cried, 'I--I am so miserably sorry. I--I thought you were
just one of the dear kind friends who have been so good to me. I--I
never said a word or did a thing to--to bring such a thing about.
Please--please let me go away. It makes me dreadfully unhappy!'
"And so she picked up her hat and put it on, her hands shaking all over,
and took the baby to her bosom and went out, and--and I guess that's
all, Dave."
He sank down on the teakwood stool he generally uses to put his colors
on and his brushes. His jaws rested in the open palms of his hands, and
he looked as if his vision was piercing the walls and wandering off to
some other world.
"Why don't you speak?" he finally cried.
"Because I don't know what to say," I replied. "I've an immense pity for
you in my heart, old man. You--you've been playing with fire and your
burnt flesh is quivering all over."
"Let it go at that, Dave," he answered, rising. "I'm glad you're not one
of the preaching kind. I'd throw you neck and crop out of the window, if
you were."
"What of Miss Van Rossum?" I asked, gravely.
"They went off a week ago to Palm Beach. Looking for those tarpon. Come
along."
"You haven't treated her right, Gordon."
"Know that as well as you. Come on out!"
I followed him downstairs. His car was drawn up against the curb and he
jumped in.
"Want a ride?" he asked.
"No, I think I had better go home now."
"All right. Thanks for coming. I didn't want you to think I had behaved
badly to Frances, for I didn't, and I had to talk to some one. Good by!"
He let in his clutch, quickly, and the machine jerked forward. He turned
into the Park entrance and disappeared, going like a crazy man.
So I returned home, feeling ever so badly for the two of them. I
honestly think and hope that I am of a charitable disposition, but I
could not extend all sympathy and forgiveness to my friend. He had
deliberately gone to work and proposed to a woman he did not truly love,
and she had accepted him. The poor girl probably thinks the world of
him, in her own way, which is probably a true and womanly one. And now,
after he is bound hand and foot by her consent, he goes to work and
lays down his heart at the feet of another.
Honor, manliness, even common decency should have held him back! I
wondered sadly whether the best and truest friend I ever had was now
lost to me, and I could have sat down and wept, had not tears been for
many years foreign to my eyes.
And then the picture of Frances seemed to appear before me, in all its
glory of tint, in all its sweetness and loveliness, and I shook my head
as I thought of the awful weakness of man and of how natural it was
that, before such a vision, no strength of will or determination of
purpose could have prevented the culmination of this tragedy. I am sure
that he resisted until the very last moment, to be at last overwhelmed.
Poor old Gordon!
Her door was closed and there was utter silence when I returned. I tried
to write, but the noise of the machine offended me. For a long time I
stared at the pages of an open book, never turning a leaf over, and,
finally, I sought my bed, more than weary.
At two o'clock, on the next afternoon, I got a wire from Gordon.
"Am taking the _Espagne_. Lots of sport driving an ambulance at
the front. May perhaps write.
"GORDON."
I stared at the yellow sheet, stupidly. After this there was a knock at
the door and the colored servant came in, bringing me a parcel. I opened
it and found some advance copies of the "Land o' Love," which I threw
down on the floor. What did all those silly words amount to!