Kitabı oku: «Anthony The Absolute», sayfa 11

I had not thought of it.

“Well,” she went on, “I feel a little faint myself. I couldn’t think what on earth was the matter until it came over me all at once that I’ve eaten nothing to-day but one very small breakfast.”

I let her ring for the waiter and order food. During this space of time I lay still, trying to think how I should tell her. Every moment it grew harder. But at last I caught her hand, when she was passing the bed, and drew her down beside me. She knew well enough what was on my mind, but she only stroked my forehead with her soft, cool fingers.

In this time, so pregnant for her, and so painful, she was thinking how she might spare me!

I told her exactly what had taken place; clumsily enough but, at least, clearly.

She had been there in her room all the time, and had not heard a single unusual sound.

She did not say much, beyond a thoughtful question or two. The tray came, and she arranged the little meal as attractively as she could, there on the edge of the bed. But we both grew more and more sober as the moments went by. The thought of poor Crocker in acute physical pain, that once splendid body of his crippled and useless, disturbed us both. I was glad to see that there were tears in Heloise’s eyes.

After the belated luncheon I felt distinctly better. At four o’clock I got up. Heloise, who was doing her best to keep busy about her own room, came to the door and suggested a walk.

“It won’t hurt either of us,” she added, with a wan smile.

So we went out and strolled over to that great thoroughfare, the Hata High Street, where the yellow people swarm, and the uniformed police direct the traffic with an almost Occidental sense of order, and the long brown camel trains from Mongolia and Kansu pad softly over the very modern pavement and under the electric street lights.

We stayed out until nearly six. But our spirits did not rise as we had hoped. For whatever way our thoughts turned, they found no light. We did not have to talk about this; now and then our eyes met, and that was enough. Heloise was strangely, almost completely passive. Even in such trivial matters as picking our way through the traffic – where, I know, it would be natural for her to look out for herself in that brisk, self-reliant way that young American women have – she would turn to me for guidance, and press against my arm. She watched me a good deal, too, to make sure that I was not becoming tired.

At last we came back to the hotel. As we ascended the stairs I slipped my arm through hers. She looked up at my touch, and tried to smile; and her eyes seemed to cling to mine for a moment. In the dim light I could feel them as well as I could see them.

I opened my door, and stepped aside to let her pass in. Then we both stopped and looked down at a white envelope that lay on the sill. I picked it up, then entered and closed the door while she switched on the light.

I turned the envelope over and over in my hand. She watched me for a fleeting second, almost timidly, then went into her own room to take off her hat.

The envelope bore the imprint of the hotel. I opened it, and read the following:

“It is with regret that the management begs to inform you of a previous engagement of rooms 16 and 18 for the 15th instant, necessitating that the rooms be vacated by that date.”

Heloise came to the door, and stood there observing me. She was tucking back a rebellious strand of hair; and she looked very slim and girlish, standing that way with both arms raised.

I went over to the casement window, and threw it open. Then I sat down by it, on one of the chairs of bent iron.

She came toward me, disturbed but hesitant.

I handed her the paper. She read it, standing very st ill. Then she looked up. Her face twisted a little.

“Why, Anthony,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “we ‘re put out of the hotel!”

The sentence ended in an odd, explosive little laugh. Then, abruptly, she slipped to the floor beside me, threw her arms across my knees, hid her face on them, and sobbed.

There was nothing I could say, of course. The matter was absurdly unimportant compared with the grimmer uncertainties before us. Yet it had hit me with almost the same force.

I laid my hand on her shoulder. I stroked her head. After a little she groped for my hand with one of hers and, when she found it, clung tightly to it.

And all the time I was thinking how like a child she seemed. I believe that is the supreme quality of the artist – childlikeness. It is a quality that carries the adult worker through hells of suffering and heavens of unearthly joy; and it is a quality for which small allowance is made in this particular world.

It will soon be dawn. I have written almost all night. Probably now I had better try to get some sleep.

She came to the door – hours ago. There was on her face that new passive quality; I can not define it exactly, even in my own thinking.

“Anthony,” she said, with choirs of suppressed music in her low voice, “would it be better, tomorrow you know, for us to…” She had to begin again. “Do you wish me to go away from you? You must tell me – not what you want, but what you believe is best.”

I could only look at her for a moment. I could n’t think at all.

“Heloise dear,” I said finally, “I don’t know what is best. But I know I can’t let you go. Not yet. Not with everything uncertain, like this. We ’.l look up another hotel in the morning.”

She pursed her lips. Then, with a look of sober relief that she could not altogether control she slipped back into her own room. And I closed the shrunken door behind her, and hung my raincoat over the narrow opening that was left.

April 15th, 11 A. M

WE are in another dingy little hotel – off to the eastward of the Legation Quarter, opposite the German wall. We packed our trunks last night. It is forlorn business, of course. But Heloise has not seemed greatly depressed. I suppose that any activity is a relief to her spirits after the strain.

She is out now; and I am a little worried. The situation has switched about rather oddly, it appears, within the hours, and it is I who must play the passive rôle.

Directly after breakfast we rode over with our band luggage and engaged these rooms. I left Heloise here, and myself went back for the trunks. It took me some little time.

When I returned, I found a note in my room. Heloise had suspended it by a string from my chandelier, where I could not miss it.

There were only a few sentences, penciled in haste. She feels that she must see Crocker herself. And now that he, poor fellow, has lost the advantage of his greater physical strength, they can meet as equals, in a sense.

This is natural, I think – and right. There would have to be a meeting; I can see that now. But it is not so easy to sit quietly here. I can do nothing, except to go on writing until she…

They are calling in the hall. I think they want me at the telephone.

It was Heloise.

I am still to wait. She asks it; and I will. And she is right. It is the only thing to do. This is her task, not mine.

But what a task for her slender hands – alone there in the great hotel where men drink and bargain, where tourists swarm, where women parade!

I wish I could know something of the details, and of what is to be done. If I could only help!

“Anthony,” she said. “He is gone.”

“Gone!” I repeated stupidly.

“He died this morning, Anthony. He was not alive when the automobile arrived here.”

“But,” I blundered on, “I don’t understand – it was a bad fall, but – ”

“It was not the fall,” she said. Then, “Wait there, I shall need you.”

I heard the click that cut me off, but for a moment I just stood there with the receiver still pressed to my ear.

It was I myself who had let him have the knife.

April 15th. Night

HELOISE called me over to the big hotel this noon, and we had a little talk. I was glad to find her completely mistress of herself. She was very grave, but she had a direct, practical way about her that, I could see, had instantly commanded respect among these strangers. One thought that had worried me not a little during the hours of her absence was that she might have difficulty in identifying herself as Crocker’s widow. But it was evident that no such question had arisen.

She told me that there was some uncertainty as to whether the American Minister or the Consul-General at Tientsin should be brought into the matter, and asked me to speak with the manager.

I was down in the main corridor, near the office, waiting for an opportunity to do this, when I encountered the Cincinnati man. He rose from a table, in the lounge, and crooked his finger at me. I joined him.

He glanced about to make sure that no one was within earshot, then said, talking around his cigar: “I saw them bring him in. Is he dead?”

I nodded.

“Looked like it. Too bad.” He lowered his cigar and pursed his lips.

“Do the job himself?”

I nodded again.

“Thought so. The idiots brought him right through here, with the knife lying on top of the robe. Pure luck that it happened to be morning, and nobody much around. I’ve been looking him up. It’s awkward – awkward as hell. I saw his wife. You want to keep her out of the publicity, I take it.”

The man was not unkind. He was studying me with shrewd eyes, – I knew that, – but he was so physically big and solid, and so plainly a man of affairs in that rough, practical world that Crocker himself had inhabited, that I found myself leaning on him. He could help. And, as I returned his quiet gaze, I knew that I could trust him. I realized, all at once, that the code has its good side as well as its bad.

“Has there got to be publicity?” I asked.

He squinted his eyes, took a thoughtful pull at his cigar, and nodded. “Rather,” he replied. “Everybody knows the Crocker family. And this fellow himself has been on the front page now and then. Publicity? Good God, man, stop and think a minute! He’s dead. And death is one thing you can’t hush up so easily. I know our newspaper boys – and I know that… Look here, suppose I take hold with you. Glad to do what I can.”

I nodded at this, and said – “I wish you would.”

“All right. But tell me first, is Mrs. Crocker all right? The correspondents are sure to get at her, you know. Can she meet them, and keep cool?”

“Yes,” said I, “she can do that.”

His gaze lingered a moment on my face.

“I thought so,” he replied. “She looks like the right kind.”

For a little time he sat back in his chair, smoking and meditating. Then he said:

“I’ll get the Consul-General on the wire and ask him to come over himself. We’ll have to tell him everything, but I think we can satisfy him – I can bear witness that he was drunk and making threats. So can you. The little Frenchman from the other hotel must have seen the thing. He sputtered around like a crazy man.”

“Yes,” said I, “Crocker was alive when they started over here in the automobile.”

“I gathered that. Well, we can give a pretty complete story, among us all. I don’t know just how much you can tell, of course, but I advise you to come out with everything you know. Then, when we are all together, we can agree on what we’ll give to the press. The managers of both hotels will be glad to keep it quiet. And the Consul-General’s all right – he’ll help us out to that extent, I think. You see, there’s no public interest to consider, nothing to hide but news. It’s the lady being involved, you know.”

He smoked a moment longer, then concluded:

“I think we can swing it. You go up now and advise the lady to keep very quiet and follow instructions, while I’m getting Tientsin on the wire. Then meet me here.”

When I came down, twenty minutes later, he met me with a cheerful sort of steadiness and led the way to a corner of the lounge.

“The old boy’s coming himself,” he said, as we dropped into chairs. “I’m dam’ glad. This is no job for student interpreters.”

For a few moments we talked along in a desultory way. We had to wait for a few hours – no escaping that. I could see that the Cincinnati man had assumed the task of keeping me occupied, and I liked him for it.

He gave me his card, by the way. His name is

Hindmann. He has large interests in vaudeville theaters through the Middle West.

As we chatted, my share in this strange drama of Crocker’s life and death seemed to be clearing itself up in my mind and taking form as a narrative. Hindmann had advised me to tell everything to the Consul-General. I was wondering how I could ever do it. For one moment I even thought of handing him my journal and asking him to read it. The next moment, of course, I realized how impossible it would be to do that – for this most intimately personal of my belongings is no longer mine; it is more than a part Heloise’s. And the story I tell the Consul-General must be only my story.

Not an easy thing to do – disentangle my share in the tragic business from Heloise’s and my joint share, and tell only that much while still telling the truth! It is a little out of my line, this lawyer-like sort of thinking.

I must have appeared rather distrait to Hindmann. But if I did, he ignored it. He just sat and smoked – a comfortably fat, round-faced man with shrewd, steady eyes – and talked along in an easy manner. He told me a good deal about his vaudeville business, I remember, and the curious problems that are constantly arising out of the invasion of the entertainment field by the moving pictures. I think I expressed some interest, now and then, even asked an intelligent question or two; but all the time that story was arranging and rearranging itself in the back of my head.

Finally I found myself beginning to tell bits of it to him. After all, why not? He would hear most of it anyway, before night. Then, after a little, it all came rushing out; and I realized that I was making a confidant of this fat man. It had to be, I think. Surely every human being, at certain intense moments of his life, needs a confidant. And I suppose there is never any telling, in a given case, what sort of individual will be chosen for the trust. Crocker chose me – and Sir Robert! I chose Mr. Hindmann, of Cincinnati… sitting there in a corner of the lounge of the Hôtel Wagon-lits, talking in a low voice in order that the little groups of American and British folk and Germans might not hear the details of the love that has so very nearly’ torn my life to pieces. The usual row of Chinese merchants were over against the wall, I remember, with their glorious display of embroidered silk coats and skirts and scarves and squares hung higher than their heads. Once a great Mandarin walked by and bowed impersonally to us, attended by a dozen or more of lesser Mandarins who bowed in their turn; and they all wore stiff-fitting frock coats, and American shoes, and silk hats that came down almost to the tops of their ears!

Hindmann said very little – just listened, and smoked. Then, when I had finished, he turned away, looked rather steadily out the window, and muttered something about its being a queer world.

Later on, when it was about time for the Consul-General to arrive, he advised me to tell only of my earlier acquaintance with Crocker, of his drinking and his declared intent to do murder, of my happening to be on the stairway in the Hôtel de Chine when he came running up with a knife in his hand – and the rest in full.

“But,” I protested, “the Consul-General will suspect. There are too many coincidences in that story.”

“Of course there are,” said Hindmann. “And of course he’ll see through them. He was n’t born yesterday. But he won’t say anything about that. Neither will you. And there you are.”

The Consul-General, with his secretary, arrived at four o’clock. He took possession at once of Crocker’s effects, locked them in his room and put a seal on the door. Then he called all of us before him in the manager’s private office – the two hotel men, Hindmann and myself – and in the course of an hour’s steady questioning drew out the story.

After which I and the hotel men withdrew, leaving him with Hindmann for another hour. I don’t know what was said; Hindmann has not referred to it since. But a messenger was sent to the Legation and I know that the Consul-General himself did some telephoning.

One curious fact came out during the examination in the manager’s office. Before the automobile had got out of the little Chinese street on the way from the Hôtel de Chine, Crocker borrowed a pencil and wrote a few hasty sentences on the back of an envelope. The Consul-General asked for the paper; but no one had thought to look for it. It proved not to be in Crocker’s pockets. The automobile was called; and there, sure enough, it was, on the floor of the tonneau, just where he had dropped it.

He had written – “Don’t send me home. Bury me in China.” It was dated, and signed. The Consul-General thought this over and finally suggested a temporary interment at Tientsin, unless Mrs. Crocker should have other plans. He said that the matter of a lot could easily be arranged.

Hindmann told me at dinner that the Consul-General is perplexed over Heloise’s standing in the matter. While outwardly he is considerate to a fault, he explained privately to Hindmann that he can not recognize her in any official way. He is going to send Crocker’s effects home under seal, for the courts to dispose of as they may decide. He suggests that Heloise employ counsel to look after her interest in his property. There is, of course, no hurry about this; it will be a year, or two, or three, before the estate can be wound up.

Hindmann was right about the newspaper correspondents. It seems that several of the largest American papers have their own men here. The great news agencies are represented, of course. And all these men got at us to-day.

I find this experience perhaps the most disturbing of all. They are very insistent, these reporters. They make me curiously uncomfortable. Underlying all their questions is a morbid eagerness to uncover a sensation, to make their “stories” as thrilling as possible. Several of them, I think, firmly believe that Crocker was murdered. They have picked up something of his recent history. They know that he was pursuing Heloise, and that he was drinking. Fortunately, none of them appears to connect me with the story in any intimate way. They are all on the trail of that other man, the man with whom she came to China. I realized to-day the curious fact that I do not so much as know the name of that man I am glad I don’t.

But they will have to accept our version, I believe – the simple fact that Crocker took his own life in a fit of despondency. There are only seven persons alive who know further details, and only four who know the whole story.

Two of the reporters forced their way to Heloise this evening. It was just after eight. I was in the lounge, waiting for Hindmann. I could n’t bear to think of dinner, but was trying to drink some coffee and eat a little toast. The usual evening crowd was swarming about me, talking every language under the sun. A China boy brought a chit. It was just a line asking me if I could come upstairs, signed “H.”

I went up instantly.

The management had given her the use of a small suite on the second floor. The door to her parlor was ajar, and I heard voices. I knocked, and she called to me to come in.

There were the two reporters, hats in hand. Heloise was standing by the table. She was pale, but very erect and composed. She had put on a black tailored suit. It was this, perhaps, that emphasized the ivory whiteness of her skin, and subdued the blue in her eyes.

I think she saw on my face indications that I was about to speak indiscreetly. For I was. The sight of the reporters in that room, trying to pin Heloise down to the details of this dreadful story, angered me. But before I could utter a word she took command of the situation.

“Forgive me for calling you in this peremptory way, Mr. Eckhart,” she said, “but I cannot talk to these men. You were good enough to offer to help, and, since I am alone here, I am forced to take you at your word.” Then she turned to the reporters, adding, “Mr. Eckhart knew my husband. You will please talk with him.”

Her voice was steady; but my quick eye caught a familiar, listless gesture of her left hand as she finished.

“But, Mrs. Crocker,” persisted the older man, “it has been said that – ”

I threw the door wide, and sprang directly in front of Heloise, facing the reporter.

“Get out!” I said.

He frowned, but backed toward the door, as I advanced on him. Thus I got them out into the corridor. I was all ablaze. But at the door I turned for one brief glance at Heloise. Her lips were compressed. She gave me a swift look of warning. This steadied me. I closed the door, and walked down the corridor after the reporters.

“Come downstairs,” I said, “and ask your questions of me.”

So I myself came nearer to an outbreak than have any of the others. But I shall not lose my head again. And after one or two days, Hind-mann tells me, the news value of the episode will have flattened out, and they will let us alone.