Kitabı oku: «Anthony The Absolute», sayfa 7

April 14th

ALL the rest of that night of the 12th-13th I sat in my dark room, or softly walked the floor, or gazed out at the sleeping city fit un my one window. And all night I was conscious of unusual and increasingly violent nervous reactions. Turning the pages back, I note that I attempted the other day to write a definition of love. This was absurd. I do not know what love is. Nobody knows. It is a capricious and wild thing. It flashes like the lightning, and rushes like the wind. It grows by feeding on itself. It exalts. It devastates. It contains within itself all the latent possibilities of nobility and service, of lust and jealousy, of tenderness, of sacrifice, of murder. It is a blind, insistent force; yet it shines before the mind’s eye like dewdrops on the gossamer wings of fairies.

When morning finally came, I stood there at my window and watched the sun climb slowly over the Legation walls. It was a flat red sun, hung behind a film of dusty air.

I wondered how long it would be before I should tap on Heloise’s door. Not long. I feared. All night I had been waiting; all night I had been withholding my hand.

I heard her get up, and stir about her room. I wondered if she had slept. Perhaps, for she still did not know what I knew.

For a long, long time I waited.

Finally, at seven o’clock. I tiptoed across the creaking floor. I stood there by the door. I raised my hand, then dropped it. My throat became suddenly dry.

At length I tapped.

She had been stirring there, on the other side of the door. Now, at the sound, she was still.

I tapped again. And again.

She did not answer me.

I whispered her name. I spoke it louder.

This would not do. Sir Robert had tapped at her door. He too had whispered. She had not answered him. She would not now answer me. I turned away – hurt, bewildered.

I do not know how long I stood there, motionless, a little way from the door. I could not think clearly. And all the time it seemed to me that I must force myself to think.

After a time I deliberately went downstairs and ordered a light breakfast. But when it came I could not eat it. I could only nibble at a crust of toast and sip a little of the café au lait.

I went out into the air and walked about. It was absolutely necessary that I should steady myself. The day was big with evil possibilities. Crocker, if I could judge from my one previous experience with him, might be up and about by mid-afternoon. I must control myself. I must be calm. Crocker had a set purpose and a strong body. I, presumably, though weak in body, had a mind. I was the only obstacle between Crocker and his purpose.

It was just a quarter past nine when I turned back into the street that led to the Hôtel de Chine. The shops, with their highly colored displays and their quaint smells, were all buzzing with the rush of the morning trade. Coolies, merchants, purchasers and idlers of all ages jostled to and fro. Underfoot the children swarmed.

I was picking my way through this busy little thoroughfare, when, looking up, I saw Heloise step out of the hotel. She wore a veil that hid her face, from me. And then she was a hundred feet or so away. She turned in my direction. The street crowd closed in between us, and for a moment I lost sight of her.

I remember plunging crazily forward to meet her. Then I saw her again, and my heart stood still. For Sir Robert had followed her out of the hotel and caught up with her. She had stopped, and was listening to him.

He took her arm.

She withdrew her arm from his touch. But she made no effort to leave him. She was standing irresolute, I thought, listening to him. I plunged toward them again.

Then suddenly I stopped. For they were walking together now – right toward me. He was bending down over her. I could see that he was talking to her, very earnestly. And she was listening!

He reached out with his stick, as I watched, and brushed a group of coolies aside. He was protecting her.

I just stood there. I could not think out what I ought to do. I had meant to rescue her from him. But I could not do this against her wish. A moment more and they would be upon me.

Still I hesitated. Finally, really without any plan of action, I stepped up and into a Chinese shop and watched them as they walked slowly by.

He was talking – still talking – in a low, insistent voice. I could not hear what he was saying. And I could not quite make out her expression behind her veil.

When they were well past, I stepped out. I followed. For I had come to this.

At the glacis, they turned to the right, walking, oh, so slowly. And I, a miserable thing with nothing but ungovernable turbulence in my heart, dodged in and out among the street traffic, and shadowed them. I shadowed the woman I love.

They went – without thought or aim, apparently – around outside the wall of the Imperial City and toward the Chien Gate. At the western end of Legation Street they paused, and for a few minutes stood on the corner. He was talking, talking, talking. I saw him making eager, nervous gestures with his monocle between his fingers.

Then, slowly, they moved on toward the old stone ramp that leads up to the top of the Tartar Wall, just outside the compound of the American Legation.

I could not follow them here, for I should certainly be seen.

Heloise hesitated once, and it seemed to me that she meant to draw back. But after a moment she went on, and together they slowly mounted the incline.

I turned away. I tried to tell myself that there was no significance in this walk of theirs. Whatever it was he wished to say – up there on the broad summit of the Wall where they could walk and talk in quiet, removed from the turmoil of the city – certainly she had a right to listen if she chose. He had been annoying her persistently. She was not the sort to run away from anything. She was unafraid. Perhaps by facing him and hearing him out she would dispose of him once and for all.

But I did not succeed in imposing this attitude of mind on myself. And I am going to tell what followed. It marks the lowest point to which this strange new self of mine has sunk – as yet. It must be told.

I walked like mad the whole length of Legation Street – a mile. Perhaps I ran. I don’t know. I rushed by the Wagon-lits Hotel with no more than a glance. I did not seem to care that Crocker was in there and might soon emerge. I did not seem to care about anything. I was all empty – life was laughing at me for all the years I had taken it so seriously and so hard. Yet, empty and purposeless as I felt, the forces that keep at me so, these days, were overwhelming me.

I went out through the German Gate saying – aloud – “What do I know about this woman? What is she to me? Who is she, that I should permit her to devastate my life!”

Some German soldiers heard me, and laughed.

There I stood, a thin little man, doubtless flushed and wild of eye, laying bare my poor tom heart to the world; and the soldiers were laughing at me.

I hurried away. An empty rickshaw was passing. I hailed it and leaped in. I rode straight to my little hotel. I ran up the stairs. I let myself into my room, and slammed the door shut behind me. I tore open the drawer of the bureau where I had carefully put away the ten cylinders on which Heloise and I had painstakingly recorded the close-interval scales.

I got them out, the ten boxes that I had labeled so carefully. I threw them on the bed in a heap. I stood over them. As nearly as I can recall it now, I laughed at them. For they were hers. She had made them. She had made them for me; and I had held her within my arms. The picture of her there on my balcony, came to me with poignant vividness. And another picture – Heloise, in her chair with her sewing in her lap, singing that difficult scale successfully for the first time, and trilling softly and triumphantly on the last note, while her eyes sought mine. It was all utterly bewildering. Suddenly, from laughing, I had to tight back the sobs that came.

It was then that I tore open the boxes, one by one, and threw the cylinders to the floor and stamped on them. They were merely a waxy composition, not hard to destroy. I did not stop until my floor was strewn with the pieces. And now no longer in there, anywhere in the world, a finely perfect close-interval scale as a standard basis of comparison for the tone-intervals of so-called primitive music. Von Stumbostel will never know of my triumph now. Nor Boag, nor Ramel, nor Fourmont, nor de Musseau, nor Sir Frederick Rhodes. That beastly little von Westfall, of Bonn, can snarl to his heart’s content, unrefuted. And the British Museum will never see this great result that might well have crowned my work and my life.

All about the room were scattered the bits of broken cylinders. I stood among them, trying to think ahead. But I could n’t think ahead. All I seemed to know was that I could stay no longer in this shabby little hostelry where my life had soared so high and sunk so low.

I cleared a space in the middle of the room with my foot, kicking the pieces of my once precious cylinders aside as if they were pebbles. I drew out my steamer trunk, and opened it; got my clothes from the wardrobe and threw them in heaps on the bed; jerked out bureau drawers and set them on chairs and on the floor where I could reach them.

I was still working furiously at my packing when she crime in, alone. I heard her light, quick step in the hall, I heard her unlock her door, and enter her room. Then she locked it again, on the inside.

I stood there, coatless and collarless. I wanted to tap once more at her door. I hesitated over this thought. I resisted it. I fought with it.

Finally I put on my collar and coat, picked up my hat, and rushed out. I could finish the packing later. Certainly, I could n’t finish it now, with every nerve tip quiveringly conscious of her nearness, there behind the thin partition and the shrunken door.

If I should find it too hard to come back later, I decided then, I would send a Chinese valet from the other hotel to finish the job for me.

Among the qualities that go to make up the unrest that we call love, it appears that self-absorption plays no small part. Perhaps this selfishness, lying at the root of desire, is the element of positive force in love. I wonder! Certainly, without it, love would be much more nearly a negative thing than it actually is.

It was very primitive, very confused, very petty, this outbreak of mine.

But then, life is that.

And I have destroyed my scales!

It was after eleven – in the morning – when I went away from the Hôtel de Chine.

I was angry, bitter. Nothing in the world seemed important except my own feelings.

I knew well enough what I was going to do. There were two or three other shabby little hotels outside the Quarter. But I was going straight to the Wagon-lits. It was twelve o’clock now. I decided to have my tiffin there. Then perhaps I would send a man around to finish my packing and fetch my luggage.

As I walked deliberately into the great, gay hotel, I was in spirit not unlike a man who has awakened from a turbulent dream. For here were the familiar folk of the West. On the preceding evening, when I had first entered this building, the same groups of tourists, business and military men, and diplomats, with their ladies, had been here; but then I had seen them with different eyes. Now they looked natural, as we say. And their voices fell on my ears with a pleasant reminder of home.

I found a chair in the lounge, and sat hack to watch the bright, chattering, shifting crowd. I glanced about for Crocker, of course, but saw no sign of him. A little later, just before tiffin, I looked up his box, at the desk. I wanted to ask about him, but feared that the clerk would think I wished to see him. God knows I did n’t wish that! It was at this time, I think, that I began to realize the shadowy nature of the curious revulsion of feeling that I had been passing through, on this day. I did not feel so great relief as I had just been telling myself I was feeling. Those vivid mental pictures of Heloise, as I had seen her so often in her room or mine, kept flashing before me… No, I didn’t want to see Crocker. I did want to know where he was, and what he was doing. His box told me nothing. There were no letters in it; and his key was not there. But I had no doubt he was still in bed.

I ate my tiffin alone in the big dining-room, seated where I could watch the door. I fortified myself with the latest papers, and tried to believe that it would be pleasant to pass a leisurely hour or two there.

But I was restless. I did n’t seem to want to read, now that I had my comfortable chair, and unusually good food. When the coffee came, I drank it at a gulp, and went out.

I stepped over to the desk to pay for my tiffin. I reached into my pocket for my purse. My fingers touched something filmy – Heloise’s handkerchief! I could not resist bringing it out, there with the Belgian clerk looking coldly at me, and staring at it – that rumpled little ball o f linen and lace. This for a moment: then I paid my bill and walked away.

I went right out to the street. I had to stare again at the little handkerchief. I had to press it to my lips. The rickshaw coolies could see me; but I cared nothing for them, though the tears were crowding into my eyes.

I did not come to my senses all at once. I must have walked about until three o’clock or thereabouts. At least, it was twenty minutes past three when I found myself again in the street that leads from the Italian glacis to our little Hôtel de Chine. I was humble now, and very sad.

For I had gone to pieces this day. I had failed the woman I love. In bitter, jealous anger I had failed her.

I had discovered in myself the meanest of qualities – suspicion. And utter selfishness.

A dozen times in those hours of my revulsion Crocker might have come to kill her – and I not at hand.

It was not until I entered the hotel and observed the sleepy quiet of the office and lounge that I was reassured. I could not bring myself to go upstairs, for she had made it so heartbreakingly plain that she would not see me. But surely all was well, as yet. Had there been trouble, there would be signs of it here.

I wondered if she had gone out for her customary afternoon walk. This thought bothered me. For then she would be coming back. I could not escape seeing her. Now, I wanted to see her, and I did not want to see her. I seemed to have reached a point, at last, where I knew that I would not go to pieces again. But this was only while I was reasonably sure that I could avoid her. If I were to meet her face to face, to look again into her great blue eyes with the long, long lashes, perhaps to clasp her hand, I knew that I could not be sure of anything. Once that magic were to surge again in my heart, my reason would fly.

Such were the facts of that strange revulsion which pointed out to me for the first time a pitiful flaw in my character. I failed Heloise when her need of me was most desperate. And nothing but luck (as we term it) saved her from the worst possible consequences of my weakness.

It was the first time in my life that I had been put to a rough, hard test. And – the flaw.

I deduce from this fact the conclusion that the sheltered life, with its corollary of so-called right living, permits no true demonstration of character. That fine quality is found in the open, where men (and women) breast the rough tide of life, and blunder, and struggle, and suffer.

I paced our little street, from the hotel entrance to the glacis, until twenty minutes of six. Heloise did not appear; so doubtless she was safe in her room. Crocker did not appear; so doubtless he was still drunk, over at the Wagon-lits.

I wondered a good deal about Sir Robert.

Finally he entered our street in a rickshaw. I stood squarely in the doorway of the hotel as he stepped down and paid off his coolie. He looked about him with quick, furtive glances as he crossed the walk. His eyes were tired, but heady and bright. There were spots of color on his cheeks.

He had to pass so near to me that he could have touched me. I was staring right at him, expectantly. I wanted to meet his eye, to make him meet mine.

But he cut me. It was the direct cut, such as only an Englishman can administer.

He went on into the building. I hesitated but a second, then turned abruptly and followed him.

He was at the desk, getting his mail.

I came to a stop behind him, and fingered a magazine that was on a table there. It was my intention to make him speak.

The manager came forward from an inner office, brushing his clerk aside. He said something – several sentences – in a low voice and with a hesitating, apologetic manner; then he handed Sir Robert a paper.

The old man adjusted his monocle, lifted the paper, and read it. Then, slowly, he crumpled it in his unsteady fingers and dropped it on the counter.

“You contemptible scoundrel!” he said, with one sharp glance at the manager.

“But it is that I do not want to turn out the lady – to the street,” the manager struggled to explain.

But Sir Robert walked away – into the lounge, where he beckoned a waiter and deliberately ordered his tea.

I stood there for a few moments, I think, quite motionless. Was it possible that —

It was Heloise’s bill for two weeks.

I stepped up to the desk, and asked for the manager. He came out to me.

“I heard you speak of turning out a lady,” I said, looking straight at him. “What did you mean by that?”

He hesitated, then reached into his pocket and produced that identical crumpled ball of paper that Sir Robert had let fall on the counter. He spread it out, and smoothed down the wrinkles. “Perhaps,” he murmured, “I have make the mistake. It is too bad to think that the lady she can not – ”

I snatched up the paper. It was Heloise’s bill, for two weeks.

I paid him right then and there – in gold.

He muttered a jumble of apologies.

I cut him short. “You have made a mistake,” I said. “Now have the kindness to keep your head shut, will you!”

He bowed himself back into his little den. I turned and found Sir Robert looking straight at me, from his chair. I must admit that his eyes never wavered. And there, for a long, tense moment we stared at each other like the enemies we were. Then I walked out to the doorway to resume my watch.

What a fox he was! Even in his desperate, terror-stricken pursuit of Heloise, he had deftly avoided entangling himself before an outsider. And he had extricated himself, as if by instinct, from the slightest financial risk in the matter. I knew then that this old man would give nothing save as a quid pro quo.

In a moment more I quite forgot him. I stood there in the little street, looking at the shopkeepers in their doorways sipping their bowls of tea after the rush and turmoil of the day. But I don’t think I saw anything clearly; I remember some such scene, and know that I must have observed it at this time.

For the thought of Heloise, penniless in this sorry, shabby place, was almost more than I could endure. Though I had wondered, and even worried, about her finances, somehow I had not thought of her condition as utterly desperate.

I don’t know what she would say – or think; for she would say little – if she knew that I had paid the account for her. Even yet, I have not told her. I have got to tell her, but I see that it is going to be difficult, I must think out some way of broaching the subject. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done it. Or perhaps a more tactful man would have found some less crude way of managing it. I can’t say as to this.

Standing there, I suddenly remembered that odd little scene of the preceding evening that I had witnessed from the stairway – the manager in her room talking to her, and Sir Robert outside, at his own door, listening.

He had known of this trouble. His knowledge of it had held him here to annoy her with skilfully aimed persistence. She had been unwilling to come to me. She had not known what to do. She had been helpless.

Oh, the thoughts that raced through my mind as I stood there in the doorway! And the pictures that my heated fancy contrived! I wanted to rush up those stairs and make her speak to me. It was all I could do to fight this impulse. I knew that I was going to do this, sooner or later; but I knew too that I could hold out a little longer. For I must not thrust myself, an ungoverned, passion-shaken man, into her trouble.

If Sir Robert had gone up, I am sure I would have followed him. But he did not. He sipped his tea for a long time, and nibbled his toast. I could look in through the doorway and see him. Then he tried to read. Then he wandered about the lounge, like a tortured ghost of passions that had died with his prime. Once he came to the hall and stood irresolute at the foot of the stairs, twisting his monocle in his shaking fingers.

But then he saw me standing there like a sentry. And he walked hurriedly back into the lounge.

So the time dragged on. When I looked again at my watch it was five minutes of eight. It was time for Sir Robert’s dinner. Few things in life. I knew, were more Important to him. Perhaps he would go over to the Wagon-lits for it. Anyway, unless he had some definite knowledge of Crocker’s whereabouts, he would not wait about here much longer, for he was a coward; his assurance had been undermined by the consciousness of his own guilty intentions. That much I had seen twenty-four hours and more earlier, when he warned me about Crocker.

But he did not go to the Wagon-lits. He went, instead, into the dingy dining-room of our own hotel. And I kept my watch, out there at the street door. A little later it occurred to me that I had seen no tray going up the stairs.

I stepped in and ordered the manager to send up a waiter to number eighteen. There seemed to be no use in holding back now. So far as that manager was concerned, I had crossed the line – both for myself and Heloise. And he, at least, would say nothing. His poor mind was already full of such unpleasant secrets as he imagined mine to be.

The waiter went up, and in a moment returned. The manager stepped out to me.

“The lady she does not answer to the waiter’s knock,” said he, all concern and deference.

I could only bite my lip, and try to think, and then turn away from him.

Pretty soon Sir Robert came out from the dining-room, and made straight for the stairs. He was walking slowly and rather uncertainly. It seemed to me that he was a good deal bent. When he reached the hall, I observed that the spots of color had left his cheeks. His face, indeed, was pasty white.

I stepped inside and tried to make him face me. But he cut me again, magnificently. He reached for the railing, and slowly mounted the stairs.

Deliberately I followed. So we went up to the second floor – he fumbling along just ahead of me, I holding back.

I stood behind him while he unlocked his door. But weak as he was physically, he never once let down in his attitude of ignoring my existence. I am not so certain that he is a coward. I am certain only that the human creature is extremely complex, extremely difficult to classify and formulate.

He went in, and made an effort to shut the door in my face. But I caught it on my elbow, and followed him in, closing it behind me.

He sank into a chair, and looked up at me. Now, at last he had to speak.

“Well – ” he asked, “what is it? Why do you come in here?”

I kept my voice well in hand. Heloise must not hear this.

“To ask you several questions,” I replied. “Where is Crocker?”

“At the Wagon-lits – still drunk.”

“You know this?”

“I saw him, only a few hours hack. Went to his room, in fact.”

He was speaking, I have realized since, with some physical effort; but his mind was steady enough. He seemed to be simply making the best of it, since he had been unable to keep me out by force.

“He is not likely to be up and about before the morning?” said I.

“He is certain not to. But they stopped selling him liquor this afternoon. I learned that from the manager. So he will be nervous to-morrow. And probably dangerous. Undoubtedly dangerous.” His eyes flitted about the room, and then I saw that his baggage, all packed excepting one bag, was still there. “So I will leave him to you. I take the Tientsin train early to-morrow. And alone, I regret to add.”

This stung, but I held myself in control.

“I had hopes that the lady would leave with me,” he added. “I would have done very well by her. Extravagantly well. For she is, I may say, a person of unusual charm. But now, of course, that you are openly paying her bills, I leave the field to you.”

I kept my hands close at my sides, and stood straight there before him.

“I gave you some advice the other day, my boy,” he continued. “Bear it in mind. The woman is helpless. I confess I don’t see what on earth she can do. For she is a highly impractical little thing She has very little idea of the value of money. I offered more than I had any business to – offered to send her back to Europe and help her along with her studies. It seemed the only way to reach her, don’t you know – the line of her ambition, and therefore her weakest point. I used all the familiar arguments. And God knows most of them are true enough – that private morality is of no consequence in an operatic career, that a woman need conform to suburban standards only if she is seeking a suburban success. I pointed out notorious episodes in the lives of great women performers whom we all admire, women of unquestioned position. But do you know, my boy, not one of these arguments appeared to reach her at all. She is to me, I must say, an extraordinary contradiction. Here she is, deserted and destitute on the China Coast, where a woman can not travel alone for a day without advertising herself as a marketable commodity; and yet, so far as I can see, she is, in a sense, a good woman. Really, it was n’t until I pointed out the wreckage she was making of your life, and the service she could do you by accepting my money and getting away from you, that she would so much as listen to me – ”

He looked up at me, and his voice trailed off into silence.

But I did nothing, except to say, in a voice that I knew to be my own because he was no longer speaking and there was certainly no other person in the room —

“So you talked of me!”

He bowed.

“You are frank, Sir Robert.”

He waved his hand. “Why not?” Then he went on. “The most puzzling point in her puzzling story is that part relating to the other man – the one that brought her out here. She makes no effort to justify her actions, as we expect a woman to do when she has gone wrong in the eyes of men.”

“Oh – so you asked her about that?”

“Yes.” He indulged in a wry, fleeting smile. “I brought up everything – used all my logic, Eckhart. I was, like you, a fool to want her at all with that crazy husband so close on her heels; but I did want her, and I worked hard for a few hours.” He sighed. “Do you know, all she has to say of the man with whom she traveled from New York clear to Peking, is – ’ That was a dreadful mistake. I was n’t the sort of woman he thought me.’ And when I spoke sympathetically of his cruelty in deserting her, she quietly informed me that he did nothing of the kind… What do you say to that, my boy? She left him!”

He was quite warmed up to his story now. He even chuckled.

“What do you say to that, young man? This exceedingly attractive young person, very nearly penniless, quite unhampered by practical experience, turns the man off, refuses his money, and starts out to face life – in Peking – alone and without so much as a plan of action! It is pitiful, of course. It is tragic. But it does stir the fancy. Now, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, “why I don’t beat you to death.”

His face, I thought, grew even whiter. But his eyes met mine.

“I know why,” he replied deliberately. “Because a gentleman does not commonly enter the room of another gentleman for any such unmannerly purpose.”

I bowed a sort of assent to this. He really had me there.

“Besides, Eckhart,” he added, “while you have a perfect right to call me a fool, you certainly can’t say that, as life runs, my attitude has been unnatural. The woman deliberately broke with life. As a result of her own acts, she is now outside the pale of decent society.”

“Outside – where we men are,” said I, very sad and bitter.

He sniffed, rather contemptuously. He thought my observation too obvious.

I added, as I turned toward the door —

“And at that, after your own tribute to the essential fineness of her character, your notion of ‘decent society’ sounds highly technical to me, Sir Robert. Good-by to you. You will forgive me for saying that I shall be very glad when you are gone.”

He did not reply. But as I laid my hand on the knob of the door, I caught a low exclamation behind me that seemed to have both pain and surprise in it.

I looked back. He had sunk down in his chair. One side of his face, the left side, had twitched upward so that there was a distinct slant to his mouth and an observably deep, curving line extending from the left lower corner of his nose.

“Are you ill?” I asked, after a moment.

He slowly shook his head. “Something snapped, I thought,” he replied, rather huskily. “But I am all here, evidently.”

“I shall be glad to call a doctor.”

“Thank you – it is quite unnecessary. If you will be so good as to have the manager send me a competent body servant, it will be sufficient.”

“But you may need medical attention.”

“Then it will not be difficult to reach McKenzie, over at the Legation. I won’t trouble you further – beyond that matter of the servant.”

I bowed and went out, closing his door behind me.

I stood there for a moment in the hall. It seemed a very long time since I had seen Heloise or heard from her. And now, thanks to that old man, I had a new set of mental pictures to touch my spirit, and stir me, and rouse feelings so subtle, so haunting, so poignant, that I could hardly bear them. Yet, I thought, these are my new mental companions, these thoughts and feelings and partly distinct, partly elusive, mind pictures, and it is with them I have got to live for the rest of my life.