THE MESSAGE.
A long weary fortnight had passed since the day when Ezra came home to
find his wife gone. Life went on at Perfection City much the same as
before, although to him it seemed as if the Universe was out of gear. He
took no part or interest in the daily affairs of the Community, never
coming to the Assembly or consulting with the brethren upon any matters.
He withdrew himself from the companionship of his fellows, and only that
Madame continued to come to his house every day in order to cook his
dinner and sit with him while he ate it, he would have been absolutely
alone. Ezra acquiesced in her devotion, and dared not ask himself how
the debt was to be repaid that she was piling up against him. The
Pioneers, who during the past fortnight had revelled in a perfect
carnival of gossip, felt themselves at liberty to express an opinion
upon this new development of the drama that was being acted in their
midst. Sister Carpenter said to Sister Winkle that she thought there
ought to be a period of mourning allowed, however brief, between first
and second marriage, and that Brother Ezra hadn’t ought to go a-courting
so soon. She did not know that it was Madame who did the courting in
that strange, forward, imperial way that we must suppose the Empress
Katharine affected. Uncle David, whom love for Olive had rendered
extremely keen-sighted as to what was going on, evinced very great
displeasure. Madame had no right to try and make Ezra’s home happy, and
he told her so in language of unmistakable import. She was angry to a
degree that terrified him, and he shrank back alarmed beyond measure at
the wrath which he had provoked.
“Yes, I know, you want Ezra’s life to be wrecked by that vain, selfish
little hussy who never cared for him, and who went off with the first
gallant that beckoned to her. Ezra’s life shall not be wrecked, mine
shall be expended in drawing it into a haven of rest. Olive is not
worthy of tying the latchet of his shoe. I hope she will be cast off by
her lover, and left to sink amid the mud and mire of such as she. I hate
her!”
Uncle David was frightened and crept away to Brother Green, where he sat
hour after hour mournfully watching the fire. It was on one of these
days when he was in the forge that a young negro on a raw-boned Indian
pony rode up to Madame, who was on the point of starting for her daily
expedition to Ezra’s, and inquired “whar ole man Weston lived,” as he
had a message for him. Instead of answering directly, Madame endeavoured
to find out what the boy wanted of Ezra. The little darkie thereupon
produced a scrap of crumpled paper from the recesses of his ragged shirt
and informed Madame he wanted to give him “dat ar’.” Madame took the
paper, opened it, and gave a gasp. Then in a moment she recovered
herself with an effort, and assured the negro it was all right, and that
she would see to it. She made most particular inquiries as to where he
lived, and then sent him off, happy with a piece of corn-bread and a
dollar for himself.
Having thus got rid of the negro lad, Madame proceeded on her way to
Ezra’s house in order to perform her daily task there. She seemed
strangely excited, and her blue eyes glittered like sapphires. Her whole
bearing was that of a person labouring under intense excitement, all
traces of which she was endeavouring to conceal. Her very voice had a
new ring in it as she talked with Ezra, and her breath came quick and
fast. Had his senses been less dulled by suffering, he could not have
failed to notice the change in her, notwithstanding her efforts at
concealment. He was sitting, looking with unseeing eyes across the
vacant cornfield, when suddenly she spoke.
“Ezra, let us go away from this place. Let us leave all the
recollections of Perfection City behind us, and begin life afresh.”
He turned his eyes upon her with a slow questioning look, showing how
far away had been his thoughts at the moment.
“How can we leave this place? There is too much money and too much
labour sunk in it for us all to leave and go to some other spot.”
“Not all, dear friend, only you and I,” said Madame, in her caressing
voice.
Ezra started. “That is even more impossible,” he said, in great
agitation.
“Why impossible? I have money. It will more than suffice for all our
needs, nay, it will give us all the luxuries we can sigh for.”
“It is not that, but you forget——”
“No, Ezra, I don’t forget, but I want you to forget. I want you to draw
a wet sponge over the recollection of the past and begin anew. It is not
too late.”
“You don’t know what you are saying, Madame. You cannot mean it.”
“I do mean it, and I know what it means. You have no tie——”
Ezra shivered.
“Neither have I. We are both free to make our lives what we list.”
“You mistake, we are both tied by all our past lives, and with bonds
that may not be lightly broken. We are tied by our own feelings as well
as by the good opinion of the world at large.”
Madame snapped her fingers with scorn.
“That for the world at large and its opinions. Do you remember what I
told you about my father and my birth? Thank God, I have no name to
lose.”
“I cannot do less than tell you the truth,” said Ezra in great distress.
“Wherever I went my heart would remain here, where I have known true
happiness, and it will always be looking for my lost one to come back to
me.”
“She won’t come back till Cotterell is tired of her,” said Madame
brutally. “Will you be grateful for his cast-off mistress?”
“Stop,” said Ezra, putting his hand quickly before her lips, “you must
not speak so of her to me.”
“Fool that I am!” muttered Madame under her breath. She turned from him
with a gesture of anger.
“Oh, forgive me,” exclaimed Ezra, seeing and feeling what the expression
meant. “Never was man so miserable, never was one so unhappily placed. I
owe you more than words can say, I owe you my best thoughts, I owe you
my very life itself. I would willingly give you my life——”
“Then why not give it and come with me?” burst out Madame. “Leave all
this misery behind you, I will make your path as smooth as heart could
wish. Come.”
“My heart can never follow any other path, it will dwell amid the ruins
of its former happiness. Do not speak again of this. Let us remain
friends as before.”
“It can never be again as it was before,” said Madame with heaving
bosom.
“Why not?” asked Ezra. “I have not much else left in life.”
“Why not,” repeated Madame in scorn. “You ask me why not! Would you care
for Olive’s friendship when all her love was given to Cotterell?”
“Stop,” cried Ezra, and this time there was a ring of anger in his
voice. “Even you may presume too far. Do not again speak that name to
me.”
There is something untamed and untameable in the Russian nature which
now and then comes to the surface and drives an excited Muscovite into
acts seemingly at variance with the highly cultivated standard to which
he aspires. The phenomenon may by the learned be attributed to a sudden
reversion to the ancestral Asiatic savage. Madame was at this moment
rapidly going back to the state of furious anger, when all sense of
dignity would be lost. She was reverting to the Asiatic. And under the
influence of her passion her physical appearance changed, her eyes
became narrow slanting openings emitting sparks of steel-blue flame, her
full red lips were drawn tightly over her teeth. She hissed out her
words.
“Does her image still come between us?”
“It does come between us,” said Ezra looking almost as white as she did.
“Her image will always come between me and every other woman on the
whole earth, blotting out every other image and making me only hers. Oh,
Olive! Oh, my wife!”
He gave a great sob of agony.
“Besotted fool!” burst from Madame’s colourless lips, “do you hold this
language to me? You scorn me and my love! Then on your own head be the
consequences. Ah, now nothing shall stop me. An angel from heaven, no,
nor God Himself shall stand between me and my revenge. Ezra Weston,
farewell!”
She left the room, shutting the door upon him and his misery. Unhappy
man! His world seemed crumbling beneath his feet. He had lost his wife,
and now his friend, the one whom he most revered, had cast him out from
her regard. What could he do? His heart answered, nothing but dumbly
suffer in the deserted home where he was left alone. What a black and
barren waste was his life! And how fair and smiling it had looked a few
short weeks ago! It was as if a devastating fire had passed over him
leaving his heart like the desolated prairie, black and hopeless.
Madame went away alone for one day, no one knew whither, and came back
with a look on her face that struck terror into all who saw her. Her
smooth white face looked cruel and pitiless, and the gleam from her eyes
reminded one of cold steel. Her soft hands sometimes closed on their own
pink palms with a spasmodic clutch, as if she had the throat of an enemy
between their cruel grasp and was crushing the life out of him. A cold
dreadful face, a cruel sickening look that made Napoleon Pompey and
Uncle David shiver within their souls, and caused the brethren to draw
away affrighted from their once beloved leader. Perfection City was the
abode of wretchedness. The Academy never opened its doors to the
assembled Pioneers, who were afraid to come near Madame’s house. Each
lived by himself, looking askance at his neighbour, for over all had
fallen a spirit of suspicion. Only Brother Huntley, the deaf brother,
and his mute wife were happy, working on contentedly, shielded by their
misfortune from the full knowledge of the disasters that had come upon
the Community.
The days dragged miserably by, seemingly endowed with a miraculous
length of hours, for the sufferings of a life-time were compressed into
that hideous fortnight. The glaring sun blazing down upon the blackened
prairie seemed to Ezra to have become no unfitting symbol of hell. The
light was hateful, darkness, eternal darkness would have been a relief
to his brain. Could it be possible that he was going to live his life
out in a realized purgatory? He was young, only twenty-five, and if his
life was to stretch even to the average span of human existence, what an
eternity of suffering lay before him! A brokenhearted man amid the ruins
of his broken life.
It was on one of these days of utter black despair, like the days that
had gone before and the days that were still to come, that the same
ragged negro boy on the straggly Indian pony, who once before had made
his appearance at Perfection City, was seen skulking around the old land
near Weddell’s Gully. He seemed to want to see without being seen. By
and bye Napoleon Pompey chanced that way and of course pounced upon him
with the universal query of “whar he gwine?” The boy after some
hesitation made it clear that he had come on a secret mission. He wanted
to find Uncle David without being seen by anyone else, especially not by
the white-faced lady, Madame, of whom he stood in shivering dread.
Napoleon Pompey, sympathising with the dread, volunteered to take a
letter to Uncle David without fear of detection. Thereupon the darkie
delivered over to him a scrap of newspaper upon which was written a
scrawl with the burnt end of a stick, and having done so galloped off on
his straggly pony with a whoop of delight, as one who had escaped
dreadful peril. Napoleon Pompey, finding it difficult to deliver his
embassy to Uncle David undetected, gave the curious missive to Ezra with
intimations that it was to be put into Uncle David’s hands right away.
Ezra took the scrap of paper, saying there must be some letter inside,
and mechanically unfolded it, when the hoarse scream that he uttered
almost made Napoleon Pompey jump through the window.
“Where did you get this?” he panted.
“Darkie gin it ter me jes’ while back.”
“Who gave it? What was his name? Where did he live? Who sent him here?”
asked Ezra in a breath.
“Darkie he didn’t go for to say nuffin, on’y jes’ gin dat ar, an’ tole
me ter pike to ole Uncle David wid it.”
Ezra darted out of the house and ran like a mad-man to Madame’s and
burst into the room where she and Uncle David were just sitting down to
supper. He held out the scrap of paper to the old man and gasped:
“Olive is somewhere!”
“I presume that was already known, and that it can hardly be considered
news,” said Madame’s cool cutting voice, which brought Ezra somewhat to
his senses.
“She is somewhere near. She sent a negro boy with this. Read it.” He
shoved it under Uncle David’s nose.
“I can’t see to read it, read it aloud, let me hear all she says in her
letter,” said the old man with trembling eagerness.
“It isn’t a letter. It says, ’Uncle come to Olive,’ only those four
words, nothing else, and just look, scratched with a bit of burnt stick
on a piece of newspaper! Oh, think of it! Where can she be? Why didn’t
she write before if she was in trouble? What has happened?”
“Perhaps it is a hoax,” said Madame between her drawn white lips.
“There hain’t in this world a bein’ so lost to all feelin’ as would make
a joke o’ our sorrow,” said Uncle David. “No, Ezra, that’s writ by our
little gal. We must go to her. Come ’long, brother.” He put on his hat
and started cheerfully for the door.
“Where are you going?” asked Madame, in a muffled voice.
“I’m agoin’ to little Ollie.”
“Where is she, do you know?”
“Ezry, don’t you know where we’ve got to go to?”
“I know nothing, except that this scrap of paper has been brought by a
negro boy.”
Ezra kissed the paper, and Madame’s lips curled in contempt.
“Is it not rather a wild-goose chase to start you know not whither, and
at this time of the evening too?”
“We can’t wait here after little Ollie’s told us to come,” said Uncle
David simply.
“Cannot you suggest some plan?” asked Ezra, turning to Madame by force
of habit.
“Not I,” she replied contemptuously. “Shall you go east, west, north, or
south? The world lies all before you.”
“Ain’t you glad little Ollie’s found?” asked Uncle David, looking
wistfully at her.
Madame laughed harshly. They went out of the room together feeling her
presence insupportable. Just round the corner they came upon Napoleon
Pompey who was peeping around to see if he could pick up any scraps of
news. He had divined there was news from Olive, and with the
inquisitiveness of his race had followed Ezra when he had rushed so
wildly out of the house.
“D’yer know whar ter go?” he inquired.
“No,” said Ezra. “Can you tell us anything of that negro boy? Do you
know where he lives?”
“Ask her,” said Napoleon Pompey, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in
the direction of the door from which they had just emerged.
“Ask who?”
“Madame,” said Napoleon Pompey.
“Does she know?” asked Ezra, amazed.
“I seed dat ar pony hyar afore,” replied Napoleon Pompey.
“Great Heavens!” said Ezra as drops of sweat burst out on his forehead.
He hurried back to the house with Uncle David. Neither of them spoke a
word.
“Madame,” said Ezra, as they once more stood in the room, “I have come
to ask you a question. Do you know where my wife is?”
She looked him unflinchingly in the face and answered:
“Yes.”
“May the Lord forgive you!” said Uncle David, in a voice hardly above a
whisper, and for some seconds there was a complete silence in the room,
broken only by the sound of Ezra’s heavy breathing.
“Where is she?” he demanded sternly.
“Go and find her,” was the mocking answer.
Ezra sprang furiously forward, and almost yelled out,
“Tell me at once or——”
“Ay yes,” she said with a steady look, “you will drag the secret out,
will you?”
She tore open her dress and exposed her snow-white throat.
“See, there it is handy. Take a knife and cut my throat. See if I shall
flinch. The last gurgle of my blood bubbling up through the wound, shall
bear a sound of mocking laughter. Strike!”
Ezra turned from her in horror. “She must be mad,” he said to Uncle
David.
“Not mad now, I have been mad all these months, all these years. Mad to
love you, mad in loving such a one as you. Now I am sane. Ah, how I hate
you!”
“This is horrible,” said Ezra, putting his hand before his eyes.
“Horrible, is it? It is the waking from love’s young dream. Ha, ha!”
“Madame, dear child, think of all you have been to us,” said Uncle
David, reaching his hands out to her imploringly. “You have led us,
think of all that.”
“I do think of all that. I think of how I found this boy,” she said,
pointing in scorn to Ezra, “ignorant, unformed, with wild crude
longings. I think of how I infused light and life into the darkness of
his mind. How I rose, aye, above myself, in order to lead him up and on.
I think of all his half-formed longings put into working form and
endowed with vital power that he might see his thoughts taking shape. I
made him. He was mine. Then he left me for a few brief weeks. He saw a
pretty doll’s face with an empty head, and straightway he loves with
never a thought of me. You ask me to think. I do think of how even this
I bore, and so great was my love that for his sake I welcomed the doll
that had stolen my place, and smiled on her. Even this I did and
remained his friend. She, the doll, attracted by a handsome face, her
love aroused by the stolen kisses of a yellow moustache, left him. Then
I was free to love him once more. I laid my heart at his feet. He
spurned me. All my love was as nothing against the memory of the doll
who had deserted him. She may die and rot before word of mine shall
restore her to him.”
Neither Ezra nor Uncle David had attempted to speak while Madame was
pouring forth the torrent of her bitter words. Ezra felt too overwhelmed
to say anything, for a moment, in the downfall of so many illusions and
high hopes, he forgot even Olive. Uncle David was the first to recover
himself.
“Dear child,” he said, for the first time in his life addressing her as
one beneath him. “These are wild words you’ve been sayin’. I can’t find
it in my heart to believe they’re true. You are disappointed, an’ you
think wrong can be made right by turnin’ things upside down. Tain’t so.
You’ll have to learn that right an’ wrong can’t change places, nohow you
fix it. You have still your duty here in the City you’ve founded an’ the
principles you’ve set up.”
Madame looked at him with glittering eyes.
“Will you hear the truth about Perfection City too? Then listen. It is
not an experiment in new principles, it is an example of the oldest the
world has seen—of the folly of a fond woman. I founded Perfection City
so that he might love the founder. I staked my all on a throw of love’s
dice, and lost. Women have done it before and will do it again. Some
fools degrade their body to win a man, I degraded my mind. The
foundation-stone of Perfection City was my heart, see what will happen
when it is crushed! Ah, why can we not profit by the experience of our
elders! My mother warned me, having tried it, never to stake my
happiness on the love of man. I followed her advice for five-and-thirty
happy years. Then I saw _him_, and the curse fell.”
She threw up her arms over her head and backed towards the door of her
own apartment.
“The curse, the curse!” she exclaimed, as she passed through out of
their sight.
Ezra had a confused feeling that he had just seen someone drowning who
had reached appealing hands towards heaven as she went under.