III

At noon next day when I called, I found Boris walking restlessly about

his studio.

“Geneviève is asleep just now,” he told me, “the sprain is nothing, but

why should she have such a high fever? The doctor can’t account for it;

or else he will not,” he muttered.

“Geneviève has a fever?” I asked.

“I should say so, and has actually been a little light-headed at

intervals all night. The idea!—gay little Geneviève, without a care in

the world,—and she keeps saying her heart’s broken, and she wants to

die!”

My own heart stood still.

Boris leaned against the door of his studio, looking down, his hands

in his pockets, his kind, keen eyes clouded, a new line of trouble

drawn “over the mouth’s good mark, that made the smile.” The maid had

orders to summon him the instant Geneviève opened her eyes. We waited

and waited, and Boris, growing restless, wandered about, fussing with

modelling wax and red clay. Suddenly he started for the next room.

“Come and see my rose-coloured bath full of death!” he cried.

“Is it death?” I asked, to humour his mood.

“You are not prepared to call it life, I suppose,” he answered. As

he spoke he plucked a solitary gold-fish squirming and twisting out

of its globe. “We’ll send this one after the other—wherever that

is,” he said. There was feverish excitement in his voice. A dull

weight of fever lay on my limbs and on my brain as I followed him to

the fair crystal pool with its pink-tinted sides; and he dropped the

creature in. Falling, its scales flashed with a hot orange gleam in

its angry twistings and contortions; the moment it struck the liquid

it became rigid and sank heavily to the bottom. Then came the milky

foam, the splendid hues radiating on the surface and then the shaft

of pure serene light broke through from seemingly infinite depths.

Boris plunged in his hand and drew out an exquisite marble thing,

blue-veined, rose-tinted, and glistening with opalescent drops.

“Child’s play,” he muttered, and looked wearily, longingly at me,—as

if I could answer such questions! But Jack Scott came in and entered

into the “game,” as he called it, with ardour. Nothing would do but to

try the experiment on the white rabbit then and there. I was willing

that Boris should find distraction from his cares, but I hated to

see the life go out of a warm, living creature and I declined to be

present. Picking up a book at random, I sat down in the studio to read.

Alas! I had found _The King in Yellow_. After a few moments, which

seemed ages, I was putting it away with a nervous shudder, when Boris

and Jack came in bringing their marble rabbit. At the same time the

bell rang above, and a cry came from the sick-room. Boris was gone like

a flash, and the next moment he called, “Jack, run for the doctor;

bring him back with you. Alec, come here.”

I went and stood at her door. A frightened maid came out in haste and

ran away to fetch some remedy. Geneviève, sitting bolt upright, with

crimson cheeks and glittering eyes, babbled incessantly and resisted

Boris’ gentle restraint. He called me to help. At my first touch she

sighed and sank back, closing her eyes, and then—then—as we still

bent above her, she opened them again, looked straight into Boris’

face—poor fever-crazed girl!—and told her secret. At the same instant

our three lives turned into new channels; the bond that held us so

long together snapped for ever and a new bond was forged in its place,

for she had spoken my name, and as the fever tortured her, her heart

poured out its load of hidden sorrow. Amazed and dumb I bowed my head,

while my face burned like a live coal, and the blood surged in my

ears, stupefying me with its clamour. Incapable of movement, incapable

of speech, I listened to her feverish words in an agony of shame and

sorrow. I could not silence her, I could not look at Boris. Then I felt

an arm upon my shoulder, and Boris turned a bloodless face to mine.

“It is not your fault, Alec; don’t grieve so if she loves you—” but

he could not finish; and as the doctor stepped swiftly into the room,

saying—“Ah, the fever!” I seized Jack Scott and hurried him to the

street, saying, “Boris would rather be alone.” We crossed the street

to our own apartments, and that night, seeing I was going to be ill

too, he went for the doctor again. The last thing I recollect with any

distinctness was hearing Jack say, “For Heaven’s sake, doctor, what

ails him, to wear a face like that?” and I thought of _The King in

Yellow_ and the Pallid Mask.

I was very ill, for the strain of two years which I had endured since

that fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, “I love you, but I

think I love Boris best,” told on me at last. I had never imagined that

it could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had

deceived myself. Although the inward battle raged night after night,

and I, lying alone in my room, cursed myself for rebellious thoughts

unloyal to Boris and unworthy of Geneviève, the morning always brought

relief, and I returned to Geneviève and to my dear Boris with a heart

washed clean by the tempests of the night.

Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my

sorrow even to myself.

The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part

of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there

was no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell

back again of its own accord. These thoughts passed through my troubled

mind as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly entangled with visions of

white creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about in Boris’ basin,—of

the wolf’s head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève, who

lay smiling beside it. I thought, too, of the King in Yellow wrapped

in the fantastic colours of his tattered mantle, and that bitter

cry of Cassilda, “Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!” Feverishly I

struggled to put it from me, but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and

blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of

Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided

through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed

like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow. Among all these,

one sane thought persisted. It never wavered, no matter what else was

going on in my disordered mind, that my chief reason for existing was

to meet some requirement of Boris and Geneviève. What this obligation

was, its nature, was never clear; sometimes it seemed to be protection,

sometimes support, through a great crisis. Whatever it seemed to be

for the time, its weight rested only on me, and I was never so ill or

so weak that I did not respond with my whole soul. There were always

crowds of faces about me, mostly strange, but a few I recognized, Boris

among them. Afterward they told me that this could not have been, but I

know that once at least he bent over me. It was only a touch, a faint

echo of his voice, then the clouds settled back on my senses, and I

lost him, but he _did_ stand there and bend over me _once_ at least.

At last, one morning I awoke to find the sunlight falling across my

bed, and Jack Scott reading beside me. I had not strength enough to

speak aloud, neither could I think, much less remember, but I could

smile feebly, as Jack’s eye met mine, and when he jumped up and asked

eagerly if I wanted anything, I could whisper, “Yes—Boris.” Jack moved

to the head of my bed, and leaned down to arrange my pillow: I did not

see his face, but he answered heartily, “You must wait, Alec; you are

too weak to see even Boris.”

I waited and I grew strong; in a few days I was able to see whom I

would, but meanwhile I had thought and remembered. From the moment

when all the past grew clear again in my mind, I never doubted what I

should do when the time came, and I felt sure that Boris would have

resolved upon the same course so far as he was concerned; as for what

pertained to me alone, I knew he would see that also as I did. I no

longer asked for any one. I never inquired why no message came from

them; why during the week I lay there, waiting and growing stronger, I

never heard their name spoken. Preoccupied with my own searchings for

the right way, and with my feeble but determined fight against despair,

I simply acquiesced in Jack’s reticence, taking for granted that he was

afraid to speak of them, lest I should turn unruly and insist on seeing

them. Meanwhile I said over and over to myself, how would it be when

life began again for us all? We would take up our relations exactly

as they were before Geneviève fell ill. Boris and I would look into

each other’s eyes, and there would be neither rancour nor cowardice

nor mistrust in that glance. I would be with them again for a little

while in the dear intimacy of their home, and then, without pretext or

explanation, I would disappear from their lives for ever. Boris would

know; Geneviève—the only comfort was that she would never know. It

seemed, as I thought it over, that I had found the meaning of that

sense of obligation which had persisted all through my delirium, and

the only possible answer to it. So, when I was quite ready, I beckoned

Jack to me one day, and said—

“Jack, I want Boris at once; and take my dearest greeting to

Geneviève....”

When at last he made me understand that they were both dead, I fell

into a wild rage that tore all my little convalescent strength to

atoms. I raved and cursed myself into a relapse, from which I crawled

forth some weeks afterward a boy of twenty-one who believed that his

youth was gone for ever. I seemed to be past the capability of further

suffering, and one day when Jack handed me a letter and the keys to

Boris’ house, I took them without a tremor and asked him to tell me

all. It was cruel of me to ask him, but there was no help for it, and

he leaned wearily on his thin hands, to reopen the wound which could

never entirely heal. He began very quietly—

“Alec, unless you have a clue that I know nothing about, you will not

be able to explain any more than I what has happened. I suspect that

you would rather not hear these details, but you must learn them, else

I would spare you the relation. God knows I wish I could be spared the

telling. I shall use few words.

“That day when I left you in the doctor’s care and came back to Boris,

I found him working on the ‘Fates.’ Geneviève, he said, was sleeping

under the influence of drugs. She had been quite out of her mind, he

said. He kept on working, not talking any more, and I watched him.

Before long, I saw that the third figure of the group—the one looking

straight ahead, out over the world—bore his face; not as you ever saw

it, but as it looked then and to the end. This is one thing for which I

should like to find an explanation, but I never shall.

“Well, he worked and I watched him in silence, and we went on that way

until nearly midnight. Then we heard the door open and shut sharply,

and a swift rush in the next room. Boris sprang through the doorway

and I followed; but we were too late. She lay at the bottom of the

pool, her hands across her breast. Then Boris shot himself through the

heart.” Jack stopped speaking, drops of sweat stood under his eyes, and

his thin cheeks twitched. “I carried Boris to his room. Then I went

back and let that hellish fluid out of the pool, and turning on all the

water, washed the marble clean of every drop. When at length I dared

descend the steps, I found her lying there as white as snow. At last,

when I had decided what was best to do, I went into the laboratory,

and first emptied the solution in the basin into the waste-pipe; then

I poured the contents of every jar and bottle after it. There was

wood in the fireplace, so I built a fire, and breaking the locks of

Boris’ cabinet I burnt every paper, notebook and letter that I found

there. With a mallet from the studio I smashed to pieces all the empty

bottles, then loading them into a coal-scuttle, I carried them to the

cellar and threw them over the red-hot bed of the furnace. Six times

I made the journey, and at last, not a vestige remained of anything

which might again aid in seeking for the formula which Boris had found.

Then at last I dared call the doctor. He is a good man, and together we

struggled to keep it from the public. Without him I never could have

succeeded. At last we got the servants paid and sent away into the

country, where old Rosier keeps them quiet with stories of Boris’ and

Geneviève’s travels in distant lands, from whence they will not return

for years. We buried Boris in the little cemetery of Sèvres. The doctor

is a good creature, and knows when to pity a man who can bear no more.

He gave his certificate of heart disease and asked no questions of me.”

Then, lifting his head from his hands, he said, “Open the letter, Alec;

it is for us both.”

I tore it open. It was Boris’ will dated a year before. He left

everything to Geneviève, and in case of her dying childless, I was to

take control of the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile, and Jack Scott the

management at Ept. On our deaths the property reverted to his mother’s

family in Russia, with the exception of the sculptured marbles executed

by himself. These he left to me.

The page blurred under our eyes, and Jack got up and walked to the

window. Presently he returned and sat down again. I dreaded to hear

what he was going to say, but he spoke with the same simplicity and

gentleness.

“Geneviève lies before the Madonna in the marble room. The Madonna

bends tenderly above her, and Geneviève smiles back into that calm face

that never would have been except for her.”

His voice broke, but he grasped my hand, saying, “Courage, Alec.” Next

morning he left for Ept to fulfil his trust.