Kitabı oku: «The Destroying Angel», sayfa 15
XX
TEMPERAMENTAL
Seldom, perhaps, has an habitation been so unceremoniously vacated as was the solitary farm-house on that isolated island. Whitaker delayed only long enough to place a bill, borrowed from Ember, on the kitchen table, in payment for what provisions they had consumed, and to extinguish the lamps and shut the door.
Ten minutes later he occupied a chair beneath an awning on the after deck of the yacht, and, with an empty glass waiting to be refilled between his fingers and a blessed cigar fuming in the grip of his teeth, stared back to where their rock of refuge rested, brooding over its desolation, losing bulk and conformation and swiftly blending into a small dark blur upon the face of the waters.
"Ember," he demanded querulously, "what the devil is that place?"
"You didn't know?" Ember asked, amused.
"Not the smell of a suspicion. This is the first pleasure, in a manner of speaking, cruise I've taken up along this coast. I'm a bit weak on its hydrography."
"Well, if that's the case, I don't mind admitting that it is No Man's Land."
"I'm strong for its sponsors in baptism. They were equipped with a strong sense of the everlasting fitness of things. And the other – ?"
"Martha's Vineyard. That's Gay Head – the headland with the lighthouse. Off to the north of it, the Elizabeth Islands. Beyond them, Buzzards Bay. This neat little vessel is now standing about west-no'th-west to pick up Point Judith light – if you'll stand for the nautical patois. After that, barring a mutiny on the part of the passengers, she'll swing on to Long Island Sound. If we're lucky, we'll be at anchor off East Twenty-fourth Street by nine o'clock to-morrow morning. Any kick coming?"
"Not from me. You might better consult – my wife," said Whitaker with an embarrassed laugh.
"Thanks, no: if it's all the same to you. Besides, I've turned her over to the stewardess, and I daresay she won't care to be interrupted. She's had a pretty tough time of it: I judge from your rather disreputable appearance. Really, you're cutting a most romantical, shocking figger."
"Glad of that," Whitaker remarked serenely. "Give me another drink… I like to be consistent – wouldn't care to emerge from a personally conducted tour of all hell looking like a George Cohan chorus-boy… Lord! how good tobacco does taste after you've gone without it a few days!.. Look here: I've told you how things were with us, in brief; but I'm hanged if you've disgorged a single word of explanation as to how you came to let Drummond slip through your fingers, to say nothing of how you managed to find us."
"He didn't slip through my fingers," Ember retorted. "He launched a young earthquake at my devoted head and disappeared before the dust settled. More explicitly: I had got him to the edge of the woods, that night, when something hit me from behind and my light went out in a blaze of red fire. I came to some time later with a tasty little gag in my mouth and the latest thing in handcuffs on my wrists, behind my back – the same handcuffs that I'd decorated Drummond with – and several fathoms of rope wound round my legs. I lay there – it was a sort of open work barn – until nearly midnight the following night. Then the owner happened along, looking for something he'd missed – another ass, I believe – and let me loose. By the time I'd pulled myself together, from what you tell me, you were piling up on the rocks back there."
"Just before dawn, yesterday."
"Precisely. Finding you'd vacated the bungalow, I interviewed Sum Fat and Elise, and pieced together a working hypothesis. It was easy enough to surmise Drummond had some pal or other working with him: I was slung-shotted from behind, while Drummond was walking ahead. And two men had worked in the kidnapping of Mrs. Whitaker. So I went sleuthing; traced you through the canal to Peconic; found eye-witnesses of your race as far as Sag Harbor. There I lost you – and there I borrowed this outfit from a friend, an old-time client of mine. Meanwhile I'd had a general alarm sent out to the police authorities all along the coast – clear to Boston. No one had seen anything of you anywhere. It was heavy odds-on, that you'd gone to the bottom in that blow, all of you; but I couldn't give up. We kept cruising, looking up unlikely places. And, at that, we were on the point of throwing up the sponge when I picked up a schooner that reported signal fires on No Man's Land… I think that clears everything up."
"Yes," said Whitaker, sleepily. "And now, without ingratitude, may I ask you to lead me to a bath and my bunk. I have just about fifteen minutes of semi-consciousness to go on."
Nor was this exaggeration; it was hard upon midnight, and he had been awake since before dawn of a day whose course had been marked by a succession of increasingly exhaustive emotional crises, following a night of interrupted and abbreviated rest; add to this the inevitable reaction from high nervous tension. His reserve vitality seemed barely sufficient to enable him to keep his eyes open through the rite of the hot salt-water bath. After that he gave himself blindly into Ember's guidance, and with a mumbled, vague good night, tumbled into the berth assigned him. And so strong was his need of sleep that it was not until ten o'clock the following morning, when the yacht lay at her mooring in the East River, that Ember succeeded in rousing him by main strength and good-will.
This having been accomplished, he was left to dress and digest the fact that his wife had gone ashore an hour ago, after refusing to listen to a suggestion that Whitaker be disturbed. The note Ember handed him purported to explain what at first blush seemed a singularly ungrateful and ungracious freak. It was brief, but in Whitaker's sight eminently adequate and compensating.
"Dearest Boy: I won't let them wake you, but I must run away. It's early and I must do some shopping before people are about. My house here is closed; Mrs. Secretan is in Maine with the only keys aside from those at Great West Bay; and I'm a positive fright in a coat and skirt borrowed from the stewardess. I don't want even you to see me until I'm decently dressed. I shall put up at the Waldorf; come there to-night, and we will dine together. Every fibre of my being loves you.
"Mary."
Obviously not a note to be cavilled at. Whitaker took a serene and shining face to breakfast in the saloon, under the eyes of Ember.
Veins of optimism and of gratulation like threads of gold ran through the texture of their talk. There seemed to exist a tacit understanding that, with the death of Drummond, the cloud that had shadowed the career of Sara Law had lifted, while her renunciation of her public career had left her with a future of glorified serenity and assured happiness. By common consent, with an almost superstitious awe, they begged the question of the shadowed and inexplicable past – left the dead past to bury itself, bestowing all their fatuous concern with the to-day of rejoicing and the to-morrow of splendid promise.
Toward noon they parted ashore, each taking a taxicab to his lodgings. The understanding was that they were to dine together – all three, Whitaker promising for his wife – upon the morrow.
At six that evening, returning to his rooms to dress, Whitaker found another note awaiting him, in a handwriting that his heart recognized with a sensation of wretched apprehension.
He dared not trust himself to read it in the public hall. It was agony to wait through the maddeningly deliberate upward flight of the elevator. When he at length attained to the privacy of his own apartment, he was sweating like a panic-stricken horse. He could hardly control his fingers to open the envelope. He comprehended its contents with difficulty, half blinded by a swimming mist of foreboding.
"My Dear: I find my strength unequal to the strain of seeing you to-night. Indeed, I am so worn out and nerve-racked that I have had to consult my physician. He orders me immediately to a sanatorium, to rest for a week or two. Don't worry about me. I shan't fail to let you know as soon as I feel strong enough to see you. Forgive me. I love you dearly.
"Mary."
The paper slipped from Whitaker's trembling hand and fluttered unheeded to the floor. He sprang to the telephone and presently had the Waldorf on the wire; it was true, he learned: Mrs. Whitaker had registered at the hotel in the morning, and had left at four in the afternoon. He was refused information as to whether she had left a forwarding address for her mail.
He wrote her immediately, and perhaps not altogether wisely, under stress of distraction, sending the letter by special delivery in care of the hotel. It was returned him in due course of time, embellished with a pencilled memorandum to the effect that Mrs. Whitaker had left no address.
He communicated at once with Ember, promptly enlisting his willing services. But after several days of earnest investigation the detective confessed himself baffled.
"If you ask me," he commented at the conclusion of his report, "the answer is: she means to be let alone until she's quite ready to see you again. I don't pin any medals on myself for this demonstration of extraordinary penetration; I merely point out the obvious for your own good. Contain yourself, my dear man – and stop gnawing your knuckles like the heavy man in a Third Avenue melodrama. It won't do any good; your wife promised to communicate with you as soon as her health was restored. And not only is she a woman who keeps her promise, but it is quite comprehensible that she should have been shaken up by her extraordinary experience to an extent we can hardly appreciate who haven't the highly sensitive organization of a woman to contend with. Give her time."
"I don't believe it!" Whitaker raged. "She – she loved me there on the island. She couldn't change so quickly, bring herself to treat me so cruelly, unless some infernal influence had been brought to bear upon her."
"It's possible, but I – "
"Oh, I don't mean that foolishness about her love being a man's death-warrant. That may have something to do with it, but – but, damn it! – I conquered that once. She promised … was in my arms … I'd won her… She loved me; there wasn't any make-believe about it. If there were any foundation for that poppycock, I'd be a dead man now – instead of a man damnably ill-used!.. No: somebody has got hold of her, worked on her sympathies, maligned me…"
"Do you object to telling me whom you have in mind?"
"The man you suspect as well as I – the one man to whom her allegiance means everything: the man you named to me the night we met for the first time, as the one who'd profit the most by keeping her from leaving the stage!"
"Well, if it's Max, you'll know in time. It won't profit him to hide the light of his star under a bushel; he can only make money by displaying it."
"I'll know before long. As soon as he gets back in town – "
"So you've been after him?"
"Why not? But he's out on the Pacific coast; or so they tell me at the theatre."
"And expected back – when?"
"Soon."
"Do you know when he left?"
"About the middle of July – they say in his office."
"Then that lets him out."
"But it's a lie."
"Well – ?"
"I've just remembered: Max was at the Fiske place, urging her to return, the night before you caught Drummond at the bungalow. I saw them, walking up and down in front of the cottage, arguing earnestly: I could tell by her bearing she was refusing whatever he proposed. But I didn't know her then, and naturally I never connected Max with the fellow I saw, disguised in a motoring coat and cap. Neither of 'em had any place in my thoughts that night."
Ember uttered a thoughtful "Oh?" adding: "Did you find out at all definitely when Max is expected back?"
"Two or three weeks now, they say. He's got his winter productions to get under way. As a matter of fact, it looks to me as if he must be neglecting 'em strangely; it's my impression that the late summer is a producing manager's busiest time."
"Max runs himself by his own original code, I'm afraid. The chances are he's trying to raise money out on the Coast. No money, no productions – in other words."
"I shouldn't wonder."
"But there may be something in what you say – suspect, that is. If I agree to keep an eye on him, will you promise to give me a free hand?"
"Meaning – ?"
"Keep out of Max's way: don't risk a wrangle with him."
"Why the devil should I be afraid of Max?"
"I know of no reason – as yet. But I prefer to work unhampered by the indiscretions of my principals."
"Oh – go ahead – to blazes – as far as you like."
"Thanks," Ember dryly wound up the conference; "but these passing flirtations with your present-day temper leave me with no hankering for greater warmth…"
Days ran stolidly on into weeks, and these into a month. Nothing happened. Max did not return; the whispered rumour played wild-fire in theatrical circles that the eccentric manager had encountered financial difficulties insuperable. The billboards flanking the entrance to the Theatre Max continued to display posters announcing the reopening early in September with a musical comedy by Tynan Dodd; but the comedy was not even in rehearsal by September fifteenth.
Ember went darkly about his various businesses, taciturn – even a trace more than ever reserved in his communication with Whitaker – preoccupied, but constant in his endeavour to enhearten the desponding husband. He refused to hazard any surmises whatever until the return of Max or the reappearance of Mary Whitaker.
She made no sign. Now and then Whitaker would lose patience and write to her: desperate letters, fond and endearing, passionate and insistent, wistful and pleading, strung upon a single theme. Despatched under the address of her town house, they vanished from his ken as mysteriously and completely as she herself had vanished. He received not a line of acknowledgment.
Day by day he made up his mind finally and definitely to give it up, to make an end of waiting, to accept the harsh cruelty of her treatment of him as an absolute definition of her wishes – to sever his renewed life in New York and return once and for all to the Antipodes. And day by day he paltered, doubted, put off going to the steamship office to engage passage. The memory of that last day on the lonely island would not down. Surely she dared not deny the self she had then revealed to him! Surely she must be desperately ill and unable to write, rather than ignoring him so heartlessly and intentionally. Surely the morrow would bring word of her!
Sometimes, fretted to a frenzy, he sought out Ember and made wild and unreasonable demands upon him. These failing of any effect other than the resigned retort, "I am a detective, not a miracle-monger," he would fly into desperate, gnawing, black rages that made Ember fear for his sanity and self-control and caused him to be haunted by that gentleman for hours – once or twice for days – until he resumed his normal poise of a sober and civilized man. He was, however, not often aware of this sedulous espionage.
September waned and October dawned in grateful coolness: an exquisite month of crisp nights and enlivening days, of mellowing sunlight and early gloamings tenderly coloured. Country houses were closed and theatres reopened. Fifth Avenue after four in the afternoon became thronged with an ever thickening army – horse, foot and motor-car. Several main-travelled thoroughfares were promptly torn to pieces and set up on end by municipal authorities with a keen eye for the discomfort of the public. A fresh electric sign blazed on Broadway every evening, and from Thirty-fourth Street to Columbus Circle the first nights crackled, detonated, sputtered and fizzled like a string of cheap Chinese firecrackers. One after another the most exorbitant restaurants advanced their prices and decreased their portions to the prompt and extraordinary multiplication of their clientèle: restaurant French for a species of citizen whose birth-rate is said to be steadfast to the ratio of sixty to the hour. Wall Street wailed loudly of its poverty and hurled bitter anathemas at the President, the business interest of the country continued to suffer excruciating agonies, and the proprietors of leading hotels continued to add odd thousands of acres to their game preserves.
Then suddenly the town blossomed overnight with huge eight-sheet posters on every available hoarding, blazoning the news:
JULES MAX
begs to announce the return of
SARA LAW
in a new Comedy entitled Faith by JULES MAX
Theatre MAX – Friday October 15th
But Whitaker had the information before he saw the broad-sides in the streets. The morning paper propped up on his breakfast table contained the illuminating note under the caption, "News of Plays and Players":
"Jules Max has sprung another and perhaps his greatest surprise on the theatre-going public of this city. In the face of the rumor that he was in dire financial straits and would make no productions whatever this year, the astute manager has been out of town for two months secretly rehearsing the new comedy entitled 'Faith' of which he is the author and in which Sara Law will return finally to the stage.
"Additional interest attaches to this announcement in view of the fact that Miss Law has authorized the publication of her intention never again to retire from the stage. Miss Law is said to have expressed herself as follows: 'It is my dearest wish to die in harness. I have come to realize that a great artiste has no duty greater than her duty to her art. I dedicate my life and artistry to the American Public.'
"The opening performance of 'Faith' will take place at the Theatre Max to-morrow evening, Friday, October 15. The sale of seats opens at the box-office this morning. Despite the short notice, a bumper house is confidently expected to welcome back this justly popular and most charming American actress in the first play of which Mr. Max has confessed being the author."
Whitaker glanced up incredulously at the date-line of the sheet. Short notice, indeed: the date was Thursday, October fourteenth. Max had planned his game and had played his cards cunningly, in withholding this announcement until the last moment. So much was very clear to him whose eyes had wit to read between those lines of trite press-agent phraseology.
After a pause Whitaker rose and began to walk the length of the room, hands in his pockets, head bowed in thought. He was telling himself that he was not greatly surprised, after all; he was wondering at his coolness; and he was conning over, with a grim, sardonic kink in his twisted smile, the needless precautions taken by the dapper little manager in his fear of Whitaker's righteous wrath. For Whitaker had no intention of interfering in any way. He conceived it a possibility that his congé might have been more kindly given him, but … he had received it, and he was not slow to recognize it as absolute and without appeal. The thing was finished. The play was over, so far as concerned his part therein. He had no doubt played it poorly; but at least his exit would not lack a certain quality of dignity. Whitaker promised himself that.
He thought it really astonishing, his coolness. He analyzed his psychological processes with a growing wonder and with as much, if less definite, resentment. He would not have thought it credible of himself. Search as he would, he could discover no rankling indignation, no smouldering rage threatening to flame at the least breath of provocation, not even what he might have most confidently looked forward to – the sickening writhings of self-love mortally wounded and impotent to avenge itself: nothing but some self-contempt, that he had allowed himself to be so carried away by infatuation for an ignoble woman, and a cynic humour that made it possible for him to derive a certain satisfaction from contemplating the completeness of this final revelation of herself.
However, he had more important things to claim his attention than the spectacle of a degraded soul making public show of its dishonour.
He halted by the window to look out. Over the withered tree-tops of Bryant Square, set against the rich turquoise of that late autumnal sky, a gigantic sign-board heralded the news of perfidy to an unperceptive world that bustled on, heedless of Jules Max, ignorant (largely) of the existence of Hugh Whitaker, unconcerned with Sara Law save as she employed herself for its amusement.
After all, the truth was secret and like to stay so, jealously husbanded in four bosoms at most. Max would guard it as he would a system for winning at roulette; Mary Whitaker might well be trusted never to declare herself; Ember was as secret as the grave…
Returning to the breakfast table, he took up the paper, turned to the shipping news and ran his eye down the list of scheduled sailings: nothing for Friday; his pick of half a dozen boats listed to sail Saturday.
The telephone enabled him to make a hasty reservation on the biggest and fastest of them all.
He had just concluded that business and was waiting with his hand on the receiver to call up Ember and announce his departure, when the door-bell interrupted. Expecting the waiter to remove the breakfast things, he went to the door, threw it open, and turned back instantly to the telephone. As his fingers closed round the receiver a second time, he looked round and saw his wife…
His hand fell to his side. Otherwise he did not move. But his glance was that of one incuriously comprehending the existence of a stranger.
The woman met it fairly and fearlessly, with her head high and her lips touched with a trace of her shadowy, illegible smile. She was dressed for walking, very prettily and perfectly. There were roses in her cheeks: a healthful glow distinguishable even in the tempered light of the hallway. Her self-possession was faultless.
After a moment she inclined her head slightly. "The hall-boys said you were busy on the telephone. I insisted on coming directly up. I wish very much to see you for a few moments. Do you mind?"
"By no means," he said, a little stiffly but quite calmly. "If you will be good enough to come in – "
He stood against the wall to let her pass. For a breath she was too close to him: he felt his pulses quicken faintly to the delicate and indefinite perfume of her person. But it was over in an instant: she had passed into the living-room. He followed, grave, collected, aloof.
"I had to come this morning," she explained, turning. "This afternoon we have a rehearsal…"
He bowed an acknowledgment. "Won't you sit down?"
"Thank you." Seated, she subjected him to a quick, open appraisal, disarming in its naïve honesty.
"Hugh … aren't you a bit thinner?"
"I believe so." He had a match for that impertinence: "But you, I see, have come off without a blemish."
"I am very well," she admitted, unperturbed. Her glance embraced the room. "You're very comfortable here."
"I have been."
"I hope that doesn't mean I'm in the way."
"To the contrary; but I sail day after to-morrow for Australia."
"Oh? That's very sudden, isn't it? You don't seem to have done any packing. Or perhaps you mean to come back before a great while?"
"I shan't come back, ever."
"Must I believe you made up your mind this morning?"
"I have only just read the announcement of your opening to-morrow night."
"Then … I am driving you out of the country?"
Her look was impersonal and curious. He prided himself that he was managing his temper admirably – at least until he discovered that he had, inexplicably, no temper to speak of; that he, in fact, suffered mostly from what seemed to be nothing more than annoyance at being hindered in making the necessary arrangements against his departure.
His shoulders moved negligently. "Not to rant about it," he replied: "I find I am not needed here."
"Oh, dear!" Her lips formed a fugitive, petulant moue: "And it's my fault?"
"There's no use mincing matters, is there? I am not heartbroken, and if I am bitterly disappointed I don't care to – in fact, I lack the ability – to dramatize it."
"You are taking it well, Hugh," said she, critical.
Expressionless, he waited an instant before inquiring pointedly: "Well…?"
Deliberately laying aside her light muff, her scarf and hand-bag, she rose: equality of poise was impossible if he would persist in standing. She moved a little nearer, examining his face closely, shook her head, smiled almost diffidently, and gave a helpless gesture.
"Hugh," she said in a voice of sincerity, "I'm awfully sorry – truly I am!"
He made no reply; waited.
"Perhaps I'm wrong," she went on, "but I think most women would have spared themselves this meeting – "
"Themselves and the man," he interjected dryly.
"Don't be cross, Hugh… I had to come. I had to explain myself. I wanted you to understand. Hugh, I – " She was twisting her hands together with a manner denoting great mental strain. Of a sudden she checked and dropped them, limp and open by her sides. "You see," she said with the apologetic smile, "I'm trying not to act."
"Oh," he said in a tone of dawning comprehension – "so that's it!"
"I'm afraid so, Hugh… I'm dreadfully sorry for you – poor boy! – but I'm afraid that's the trouble with me, and it can never be helped. I was born with a talent for acting; life has made me an actress. Hugh … I've found out something." Her eyes appealed wistfully. "I'm not genuine."
He nodded interestedly.
"I'm just an actress, an instrument for the music of emotions. I've been trained to respond, until now I respond without knowing it, when there's no true response here." She touched the bosom of her frock.
He said nothing.
With a half sigh she moved away to the window, and before she spoke again posed herself very effectively there, looking out over the park while she cleared her mind.
"Of course, you despise me. I despise myself – I mean, the self that was me before I turned from a woman into an actress. But it's the truth: I have no longer any real capacity for emotion, merely an infinite capacity for appreciation of the artistic delineation of emotion, true or feigned. That … that is why, when you showed me you had grown to love me so, I responded so quickly. You were in love – more honestly than I had ever seen love revealed. It touched me. I was proud to have inspired such a love. I wanted, for the time being, to have you with me always, that I might always study the wonderful, the beautiful manifestations of your love. Why, Hugh, you even managed to make me believe I was worth it – that my response was sufficient repayment for your adoration…"
He said nothing. She glanced furtively at him and continued:
"I meant to be sweet and faithful when I left that note for you on the yacht, Hugh; I was grateful, and I meant to be generous… But when I went to the Waldorf, the first person I met was Max. Of course I had to tell him what had happened. And then he threw himself upon my compassion. It seems that losing me had put him in the most terrible trouble about money. He was short, and he couldn't get the backing he needed without me, his call upon my services, by way of assurance to his backers. And I began to think. I knew I didn't love you honestly, Hugh, and that life with you would be a living lie. What right had I to deceive you that way, just to gratify my love of being loved? And especially if by doing that I ruined Max, the man to whom, next to you, I owed everything? I couldn't do it. But I took time to think it over – truly I did. I really did go to a sanatorium, and rested there while I turned the whole matter over carefully in my mind, and at length reached my decision to stick by Max and let you go, free to win the heart of a woman worthy of you."
She paused again, but still he was mute and immobile.
"So now you know me – what I am. No other man has ever known or ever will. But I had to tell you the truth. It seems that the only thing my career had left uncalloused was my fundamental sense of honesty. So I had to come and tell you."
And still he held silence, attentive, but with a set face that betrayed nothing of the tenor of his thoughts.
Almost timidly, with nervously fumbling fingers, she extracted from her pocket-book a small ticket envelope.
"Max was afraid you might upset the performance again, as you did on my last appearance, Hugh," she said; "but I assured him it was just the shock of recognizing you that bowled me over. So I've bought you a box for to-morrow night. I want you to use it – you and Mr. Ember."
He broke in with a curt monosyllable: "Why?"
"Why – why because – because I want you – I suppose it's simply my vanity – to see me act. Perhaps you'll feel a little less hardly toward me if you see that I am really a great actress, that I give you up for something bigger than just love – "
"What rot!" he said with an odd, short laugh. "Besides, I harbour no resentment."
She stared, losing a little colour, eyes darkening with apprehension.
"I did hope you'd come," she murmured.
"Oh, I'll come," he said with spirit. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away."
"Really, Hugh? And you don't mind? Oh, I'm glad!"
"I really don't mind," he assured her with a strange smile. "But … would you mind excusing me one moment? I've forgotten something very important."
"Why, certainly…"
He was already at the telephone in the hallway, just beyond the living-room door. It was impossible to escape overhearing his words. The woman listened perforce with, in the beginning, a little visible wonder, then with astonishment, ultimately with a consternation that shook her with violent tremblings.
"Hello," said Whitaker; "get me Rector two-two-hundred…
"Hello? Rector two-two-hundred? North German Lloyd?.. This is Mr. H. M. Whitaker. I telephoned you fifteen minutes ago about a reservation on the George Washington, sailing Saturday … Yes… Yes… Yes, I promised to call for the ticket before noon, but I now find I shan't be able to go. Will you be kind enough to cancel it, if you please… Thank you… Good-by."
