Kitabı oku: «The Destroying Angel», sayfa 2
The room was of fair size, lighted by two windows overlooking the tin roof of the front veranda. It was furnished with a large double bed in the corner nearest the door a wash-stand, two or three chairs, a bandy-legged table with a marble top; and it was tenanted by a woman in street dress.
She stood by the wash-stand, with her back to the light, her attitude one of tense expectancy: hardly more than a silhouette of a figure moderately tall and very slight, almost angular in its slenderness. She had been holding a tumbler in one hand, but as Whitaker appeared this slipped from her fingers; there followed a thud and a sound of spilt liquid at her feet. Simultaneously she cried out inarticulately in a voice at once harsh and tremulous; the cry might have been "You!" or "Hugh!" Whitaker took it for the latter, and momentarily imagined that he had stumbled into the presence of an acquaintance. He was pulling off his hat and peering at her shadowed face in an effort to distinguish features possibly familiar to him, when she moved forward a pace or two, her hands fluttering out toward him, then stopped as though halted by a force implacable and overpowering.
"I thought," she quavered in a stricken voice – "I thought … you … my husband … Mr. Morton … the boy said…"
Then her knees buckled under her, and she plunged forward and fell with a thump that shook the walls.
"I'm sorry – I beg pardon," Whitaker stammered stupidly to ears that couldn't hear. He swore softly with exasperation, threw his hat to a chair and dropped to his knees beside the woman. It seemed as if the high gods were hardly playing fair, to throw a fainting woman on his hands just then, at a time when he was all preoccupied with his own absorbing tragedy.
She lay with her head naturally pillowed on the arm she had instinctively thrown out to protect her face. He could see now that her slenderness was that of youth, of a figure undeveloped and immature. Her profile, too, was young, though it stood out against the dark background of the carpet as set and white as a death-mask. Indeed, her pallor was so intense that a fear touched his heart, of an accident more serious than a simple fainting spell. Her respiration seemed entirely suspended, and it might have been merely his fancy that detected the least conceivable syncopated pulsation in the icy wrist beneath his fingers.
He weighed quickly half a dozen suggestions. His fundamental impulse, to call in feminine aid from the staff of the hotel, was promptly relegated to the status of a last resort, as involving explanations which might not seem adequate to the singular circumstances; besides, he entertained a dim, searching, intuitive suspicion that possibly the girl herself would more cheerfully dispense with explanations – though he hardly knew why… He remembered that people burned feathers in such emergencies, or else loosened the lady's stays (corsets plus a fainting fit equal stays, invariably, it seems). But there weren't any feathers handy, and – well, anyway, neither expedient made any real appeal to his intelligence. Besides, there were sensible things he could do to make her more comfortable – chafe her hands and administer stimulants: things like that.
Even while these thoughts were running through his mind, he was gathering the slight young body into his arms; and he found it really astonishingly easy to rise and bear her to the bed, where he put her down flat on her back, without a pillow. Then turning to his hand-bag, he opened it and produced a small, leather-bound flask of brandy; a little of which would go far toward shattering her syncope, he fancied.
It did, in fact; a few drops between her half-parted lips, and she came to with disconcerting rapidity, opening dazed eyes in the middle of a spasm of coughing. He stepped back, stoppering the flask.
"That's better," he said pleasantly. "Now lie still while I fetch you a drink of water."
As he turned to the wash-stand his foot struck the tumbler she had dropped. He stopped short, frowning down at the great, staring, wet, yellow stain on the dingy and threadbare carpet. Together with this discovery he got a whiff of an acrid-sweet effluvium that spelled "Oxalic Acid – Poison" as unmistakably as did the druggist's label on the empty packet on the wash-stand…
In another moment he was back at the bedside with a clean glass of water, which he offered to the girl's lips, passing his arm beneath her shoulders and lifting her head so that she might drink.
She emptied the glass thirstily.
"Look here," he said almost roughly under the lash of this new fear – "you didn't really drink any of that stuff, did you?"
Her eyes met his with a look of negation clouded by fear and bewilderment. Then she turned her head away. Dragging a pillow beneath it, he let her down again.
"Good," he said in accents meant to be enheartening; "you'll be all right in a moment or two."
Her colourless lips moved in a whisper he had to bend close to distinguish.
"Please…"
"Yes?"
"Please don't … call anybody…"
"I won't. Don't worry."
The lids quivered down over her eyes, and her mouth was wrung with anguish. He stared, perplexed. He wanted to go away quickly, but couldn't gain his own consent to do so. She was in no condition to be left alone, this delicate and fragile child, defenceless and beset. It wasn't hard to conjecture the hell of suffering she must have endured before coming to a pass of such desperation. There were dull blue shadows beneath eyes red with weeping, a forlorn twist to her thin, bloodless lips, a pinched look of wretchedness like a glaze over her unhappy face, that told too plain a story. A strange girl, to find in a plight like hers, he thought: not pretty, but quite unusual: delicate, sensitive, high-strung, bred to the finer things of life – this last was self-evident in the fine simplicity of her severely plain attire. Over her hair, drawn tight down round her head, she wore one of those knitted motor caps which were the fashion of that day. Her shoes were still wet and a trifle muddy, her coat and skirt more than a trifle damp, indicating that she had returned from a dash to the drug store not long before Whitaker arrived.
A variety of impressions, these with others less significant, crowded upon his perceptions in little more than a glance. For suddenly Nature took her in hand; she twisted upon her side, as if to escape his regard, and covered her face, her palms muffling deep tearing sobs while waves of pent-up misery racked her slender little body.
Whitaker moved softly away…
Difficult, he found it, to guess what to do; more difficult still to do nothing. His nerves were badly jangled; light-footed, he wandered restlessly to and fro, half distracted between the storm of weeping that beat gustily within the room and the deadly blind drum of the downpour on the tin roof beyond the windows. Since that twilight hour in that tawdry hotel chamber, no one has ever been able to counterfeit sorrow and remorse to Whitaker; he listened then to the very voice of utter Woe.
Once, pausing by the centre-table, he happened to look down. He saw a little heap of the hotel writing-paper, together with envelopes, a pen, a bottle of ink. Three of the envelopes were sealed and superscribed, and two were stamped. The unstamped letter was addressed to the Proprietor of the Commercial House.
Of the others, one was directed to a Mr. C. W. Morton in care of another person at a number on lower Sixth Avenue, New York; and from this Whitaker began to understand the singular manner of his introduction to the wrong room; there's no great difference between Morton and Morten, especially when written carelessly.
But the third letter caused his eyes to widen considerably. It bore the name of Thurlow Ladislas, Esq., and a Wall Street address.
Whitaker's mouth shaped a still-born whistle. He was recalling with surprising distinctness the fragment of dialogue he had overheard at his club the previous afternoon.
IV
MRS. WHITAKER
He lived through a long, bad quarter hour, his own tensed nerves twanging in sympathy with the girl's sobbing – like telegraph wires singing in a gale – his mind busy with many thoughts, thoughts strangely new and compelling, wearing a fresh complexion that lacked altogether the colouring of self-interest.
He mixed a weak draught of brandy and water and returned to the bedside. The storm was passing in convulsive gasps ever more widely spaced, but still the girl lay with her back to him.
"If you'll sit up and try to drink this," he suggested quietly, "I think you'll feel a good deal better."
Her shoulders moved spasmodically; otherwise he saw no sign that she heard.
"Come – please," he begged gently.
She made an effort to rise, sat up on the bed, dabbed at her eyes with a sodden wisp of handkerchief, and groped blindly for the glass. He offered it to her lips.
"What is it?" she whispered hoarsely.
He spoke of the mixture in disparaging terms as to its potency, until at length she consented to swallow it – teeth chattering on the rim of the tumbler. The effect was quickly apparent in the colour that came into her cheeks, faint but warm. He avoided looking directly at her, however, and cast round for the bell-push, which he presently found near the head of the bed.
She moved quickly with alarm.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded in a stronger voice.
"Order you something to eat," he said. "No – please don't object. You need food, and I mean to see you get it before I leave."
If she thought of protesting, the measured determination in his manner deterred her. After a moment she asked:
"Please – who are you?"
"My name is Whitaker," he said – "Hugh Morten Whitaker."
She repeated the name aloud. "Haven't I heard of you? Aren't you engaged to Alice Carstairs?"
"I'm the man you mean," he said quietly; "but I'm not engaged to Alice Carstairs."
"Oh…" Perplexity clouded the eyes that followed closely his every movement. "How did you happen to – to find me here?"
"Quite by accident," he replied. "I didn't want to be known, so registered as Hugh Morten. They mistook me for your husband. Do you mind telling me how long it is since you've had anything to eat?"
She told him: "Last night."
He suffered a sense of shame only second to her own, to see the dull flush that accompanied her reply. His fingers itched for the throat of Mr. C. W. Morton, chauffeur. Happily a knock at the door distracted him. Opening it no wider than necessary to communicate with the bell-boy, he gave him an order for the kitchen, together with an incentive to speed the service.
Closing the door, he swung round to find that the girl had got to her feet.
"He won't be long – " Whitaker began vaguely.
"I want to tell you something." She faced him bravely, though he refused the challenge of her tormented eyes. "I … I have no husband."
He bowed gravely.
"You're so good to me – " she faltered.
"O – nothing! Let's not talk about that now."
"I must talk – you must let me. You're so kind, I've got to tell you. Won't you listen?"
He had crossed to a window, where he stood staring out. "I'd rather not," he said softly, "but if you prefer – "
"I do prefer," said the voice behind him. "I – I'm Mary Ladislas."
"Yes," said Whitaker.
"I … I ran away from home last week – five days ago – to get married to our chauffeur, Charles Morton…"
She stammered.
"Please don't go on, if it hurts," he begged without looking round.
"I've got to – I've got to get it over with… We were at Southampton, at my father's summer home – I mean, that's where I ran away from. He – Charley – drove me over to Greenport and I took the ferry there and came here to wait for him. He went back to New York in the car, promising to join me here as soon as possible…"
"And he didn't come," Whitaker wound up for her, when she faltered.
"No."
"And you wrote and telegraphed, and he didn't answer."
"Yes – "
"How much money of yours did he take with him?" Whitaker pursued.
There was a brief pause of astonishment. "What do you know about that?" she demanded.
"I know a good deal about that type of man," he said grimly.
"I didn't have any money to speak of, but I had some jewellery – my mother's – and he was to take that and pawn it for money to get married with."
"I see."
To his infinite relief the waiter interrupted them. The girl in her turn went to one of the windows, standing with her back to the room, while Whitaker admitted the man with his tray. When they were alone once more, he fixed the place and drew a chair for her.
"Everything's ready," he said – and had the sense not to try to make his tone too cheerful.
"I hadn't finished what I wanted to tell you," said the girl, coming back to him.
"Will you do me the favour to wait," he pleaded. "I think things will seem – well, otherwise – when you've had some food."
"But I – "
"Oh, please!" he begged with his odd, twisted smile.
She submitted, head drooping and eyes downcast. He returned to his window, rather wishing that he had thought to order for himself as well as for the girl; for it was suddenly borne strongly in upon him that he himself had had little enough to eat since dinner with Peter Stark. He lighted a cigarette, by way of dulling his appetite, and then let it smoulder to ashes between his fingers, while he lost himself in profound speculations, in painstaking analysis of the girl's position.
Subconsciously he grew aware that the storm was moderating perceptibly, the sky breaking…
"I've finished," the girl announced at length.
"You're feeling better?"
"Stronger, I think."
"Is there anything more – ?"
"If you wouldn't mind sitting down – "
She had twisted her arm-chair away from the table. Whitaker took a seat a little distance from her, with a keen glance appraising the change in her condition and finding it not so marked as he had hoped. Still, she seemed measurably more composed and mistress of her emotions, though he had to judge mostly by her voice and manner, so dark was the room. Through the shadows he could see little more than masses of light and shade blocking in the slender figure huddled in a big, dilapidated chair – the pallid oval of her face, and the darkness of her wide, intent, young eyes.
"Don't!" she cried sharply. "Please don't look at me so – "
"I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to – "
"It's only – only that you make me think of what you must be thinking about me – "
"I think you're rather fortunate," he said slowly.
"Fortunate!"
He shivered a little with the chill bitterness of that cry.
"You've had a narrow but a wonderfully lucky escape."
"Oh! … But I'm not glad … I was desperate – "
"I mean," he interrupted coolly, "from Mr. Morton. The silver lining is, you're not married to a blackguard."
"Oh, yes, yes!" she agreed passionately.
"And you have youth, health, years of life before you!"
He sighed inaudibly…
"You wouldn't say that, if you understood."
"There are worse things to put up with than youth and health and the right to live."
"But – how can I live? What am I to do?"
"Have you thought of going home?"
"It isn't possible."
"Have you made sure of that? Have you written to your father – explained?"
"I sent him a special delivery three days ago, and – and yesterday a telegram. I knew it wouldn't do any good, but I … I told him everything. He didn't answer. He won't, ever."
From what Whitaker knew of Thurlow Ladislas, he felt this to be too cruelly true to admit of further argument. At a loss, he fell silent, knitting his hands together as he strove to find other words wherewith to comfort and reassure the girl.
She bent forward, elbows on knees, head and shoulders cringing.
"It hurts so!" she wailed … "what people will think … the shame, the bitter, bitter shame of this! And yet I haven't any right to complain. I deserve it all; I've earned my punishment."
"Oh, I say – !"
"But I have, because – because I didn't love him. I didn't love him at all, and I knew it, even though I meant to marry him…"
"But, why – in Heaven's name?"
"Because I was so lonely and … misunderstood and unhappy at home. You don't know how desperately unhappy… No mother, never daring to see my sister (she ran away, too) … my friendships at school discouraged … nothing in life but a great, empty, lonesome house and my father to bully me and make cruel fun of me because I'm not pretty… That's why I ran away with a man I didn't love – because I wanted freedom and a little happiness."
"Good Lord!" he murmured beneath his breath, awed by the pitiful, childish simplicity of her confession and the deep damnation that had waited upon her.
"So it's over!" she cried – "over, and I've learned my lesson, and I'm disgraced forever, and friendless and – "
"Stop right there!" he checked her roughly. "You're not friendless yet, and that nullifies all the rest. Be glad you've had your romance and learned your lesson – "
"Please don't think I'm not grateful for your kindness," she interrupted. "But the disgrace – that can't be blotted out!"
"Oh, yes, it can," he insisted bluntly. "There's a way I know – "
A glimmering of that way had only that instant let a little light in upon the darkness of his solicitous distress for her. He rose and began to walk and think, hands clasped behind him, trying to make what he had in mind seem right and reasonable.
"You mean beg my father to take me back. I'll die first!"
"There mustn't be any more talk, or even any thought, of anything like that. I understand too well to ask the impossible of you. But there is one way out – a perfectly right way – if you're willing and brave enough to take a chance – a long chance."
Somehow she seemed to gain hope of his tone. She sat up, following him with eyes that sought incredulously to believe.
"Have I any choice?" she asked. "I'm desperate enough…"
"God knows," he said, "you'll have to be!"
"Try me."
He paused, standing over her.
"Desperate enough to marry a man who's bound to die within six months and leave you free? I'm that man: the doctors give me six months more of life. I'm alone in the world, with no one dependent upon me, nothing to look forward to but a death that will benefit nobody – a useless end to a useless life… Will you take my name to free yourself? Heaven my witness, you're welcome to it."
"Oh," she breathed, aghast, "what are you saying?"
"I'm proposing marriage," he said, with his quaint, one-sided smile. "Please listen: I came to this place to make a quick end to my troubles – but I've changed my mind about that, now. What's happened in this room has made me see that nobody has any right to – hasten things. But I mean to leave the country – immediately – and let death find me where it will. I shall leave behind me a name and a little money, neither of any conceivable use to me. Will you take them, employ them to make your life what it was meant to be? It's a little thing, but it will make me feel a lot more fit to go out of this world – to know I've left at least one decent act to mark my memory. There's only this far-fetched chance – I may live. It's a million-to-one shot, but you've got to bear it in mind. But really you can't lose – "
"Oh, stop, stop!" she implored him, half hysterical. "To think of marrying to benefit by the death of a man like you – !"
"You've no right to look at it that way." He had a wry, secret smile for his specious sophistry. "You're being asked to confer, not to accept, a favour. It's just an act of kindness to a hopeless man. I'd go mad if I didn't know you were safe from a recurrence of the folly of this afternoon."
"Don't!" she cried – "don't tempt me. You've no right… You don't know how frantic I am…"
"I do," he countered frankly. "I'm depending on just that to swing you to my point of view. You've got to come to it. I mean you shall marry me."
She stared up at him, spell-bound, insensibly yielding to the domination of his will. It was inevitable. He was scarcely less desperate than she – and no less overwrought and unstrung; and he was the stronger; in the natural course of things his will could not but prevail. She was little more than a child, accustomed to yield and go where others led or pointed out the path. What resistance could she offer to the domineering importunity of a man of full stature, arrogant in his strength and – hounded by devils? And he in the fatuity of his soul believed that he was right, that he was fighting for the girl's best interests, fighting – and not ungenerously – to save her from the ravening consequences of her indiscretion!
The bald truth is, he was hardly a responsible agent: distracted by the ravings of an ego mutinous in the shadow of annihilation, as well as by contemplation of the girl's wretched plight, he saw all things in distorted perspective. He had his being in a nightmare world of frightful, insane realities. He could have conceived of nothing too terrible and preposterous to seem reasonable and right…
The last trace of evening light had faded out of the world before they were agreed. Darkness wrapped them in its folds; they were but as voices warring in a black and boundless void.
Whitaker struck a match and applied it to the solitary gas-jet. A thin, blue, sputtering tongue of flame revealed them to one another. The girl still crouched in her arm-chair, weary and spent, her powers of contention all vitiated by the losing struggle. Whitaker was trembling with nervous fatigue.
"Well?" he demanded.
"Oh, have your own way," she said drearily. "If it must be…"
"It's for the best," he insisted obstinately. "You'll never regret it."
"One of us will – either you or I," she said quietly. "It's too one-sided. You want to give all and ask nothing in return. It's a fool's bargain."
He hesitated, stammering with surprise. She had a habit of saying the unexpected. "A fool's bargain" – the wisdom of the sage from the lips of a child…
"Then it's settled," he said, business-like, offering his hand. "Fool's bargain or not – it's a bargain."
She rose unassisted, then trusted her slender fingers to his palm. She said nothing. The steady gaze of her extraordinary eyes abashed him.
"Come along and let's get it over," he muttered clumsily. "It's late, and there's a train to New York at half-past ten, you might as well catch."
She withdrew her hand, but continued to regard him steadfastly with her enigmatic, strange stare. "So," she said coolly, "that's settled too, I presume."
"I'm afraid you couldn't catch an earlier one," he evaded. "Have you any baggage?"
"Only my suit-case. It won't take a minute to pack that."
"No hurry," he mumbled…
They left the hotel together. Whitaker got his change of a hundred dollars at the desk – "Mrs. Morten's" bill, of course, included with his – and bribed the bell-boy to take the suit-case to the railway station and leave it there, together with his own hand-bag. Since he had unaccountably conceived a determination to continue living for a time, he meant to seek out more pleasant accommodations for the night.
The rain had ceased, leaving a ragged sky of clouds and stars in patches. The air was warm and heavy with wetness. Sidewalks glistened like black watered silk; street lights mirrored themselves in fugitive puddles in the roadways; limbs of trees overhanging the sidewalks shivered now and again in a half-hearted breeze, pelting the wayfarers with miniature showers of lukewarm, scented drops.
Turning away from the centre of the town, they traversed slowly long streets of residences set well back behind decent lawns. Warm lamplight mocked them from a hundred homely windows. They passed few people – a pair of lovers; three bareheaded giggling girls in short, light frocks strolling with their arms round one another; a scattering of men hurrying home to belated suppers.
The girl lagged with weariness. Awakening to this fact, Whitaker slackened his impatient stride and quietly slipped her arm through his.
"Is it much farther?" she asked.
"No – not now," he assured her with a confidence he by no means felt.
He was beginning to realize the tremendous difficulties to be overcome. It bothered him to scheme a way to bring about the marriage without attracting an appalling amount of gratuitous publicity, in a community as staid and sober as this. He who would marry secretly should not select a half-grown New England city for his enterprise…
However, one rarely finds any really insuperable obstacles in the way of an especially wrong-headed project.
Whitaker, taking his heart and his fate in his hands, accosted a venerable gentleman whom they encountered as he was on the point of turning off the sidewalk to private grounds.
"I beg your pardon," he began.
The man paused and turned upon them a saintly countenance framed in hair like snow.
"There is something I can do for you?" he inquired with punctilious courtesy.
"If you will be kind enough to direct me to a minister…"
"I am one."
"I thought so," said Whitaker. "We wish to get married."
The gentleman looked from his face to the girl's, then moved aside from the gate. "This is my home," he explained. "Will you be good enough to come in?"
Conducting them to his private study, he subjected them to a kindly catechism. The girl said little, Whitaker taking upon himself the brunt of the examination. Absolutely straightforward and intensely sincere, he came through the ordeal well, without being obliged to disclose what he preferred to keep secret. The minister, satisfied, at length called in the town clerk by telephone; who issued the license, pocketed his fee, and, in company with the minister's wife, acted as witness…
Whitaker found himself on his feet beside Mary Ladislas. They were being married. He was shaken by a profound amazement. The incredible was happening – with his assistance. He heard his voice uttering responses; it seemed something as foreign to him as the voice of the girl at his side. He wondered stupidly at her calm – and later, at his own. It was all preposterously matter-of-fact and, at the same time, stupidly romantic. He divined obscurely that this thing was happening in obedience to forces nameless and unknown to them, strange and terrific forces that worked mysteriously beyond their mortal ken. He seemed to hear the droning of the loom of the Fates…
And they were man and wife. The door had closed, the gate-latch clicked behind them. They were walking quietly side by side through the scented night, they whom God had joined together.
Man and wife! Bride and groom, already started on the strangest, shortest of wedding journeys – from the parsonage to the railroad station!
Neither found anything to say. They walked on, heels in unison pounding the wet flagstones. The night was sweet with the scent of wet grass and shrubbery. The sidewalks were boldly patterned with a stencilling of black leaves and a milky dappling of electric light. At every corner high-swung arcs shot vivid slants of silver-blue radiance through the black and green of trees.
These things all printed themselves indelibly upon the tablets of his memory…
They arrived at the station. Whitaker bought his wife a ticket to New York and secured for her solitary use a drawing-room in the sleeper. When that was accomplished, they had still a good part of an hour to wait. They found a bench on the station platform, and sat down. Whitaker possessed himself of his wife's hand-bag long enough to furnish it with a sum of money and an old envelope bearing the name and address of his law partner. He explained that he would write to Drummond, who would see to her welfare as far as she would permit – issue her an adequate monthly allowance and advise her when she should have become her own mistress once more: in a word, a widow.
She thanked him briefly, quietly, with a constraint he understood too well to resent.
People began to gather upon the platform, to loiter about and pass up and down. Further conversation would have been difficult, even if they had found much to say to one another. Curiously or not, they didn't. They sat on in thoughtful silence.
Both, perhaps, were sensible of some relief when at length the train thundered in from the East, breathing smoke and flame. Whitaker helped his wife aboard and interviewed the porter in her behalf. Then they had a moment or two alone in the drawing-room, in which to consummate what was meant to be their first and last parting.
"You'll get in about two," said Whitaker. "Better just slip across the street to the Belmont for to-night. To-morrow – or the day after – whenever you feel rested – you can find yourself more quiet quarters."
"Yes," she said…
He comprehended something of the struggle she was having with herself, and respected it. If he had consulted his own inclinations, he would have turned and marched off without another word. But for her sake he lingered. Let her have the satisfaction (he bade himself) of knowing that she had done her duty at their leave-taking.
She caught him suddenly by the shoulders with both her hands. Her eyes sought his with a wistful courage he could not but admire.
"You know I'm grateful…"
"Don't think of it that way – though I'm glad you are."
"You're a good man," she said brokenly.
He knew himself too well to be able to reply.
"You mustn't worry about me, now. You've made things easy for me. I can take care of myself, and … I shan't forget whose name I bear."
He muttered something to the effect that he was sure of that.
She released his shoulders and stood back, searching his face with tormented eyes. Abruptly she offered him her hand.
"Good-by," she said, her lips quivering – "Good-by, good friend!"
He caught the hand, wrung it clumsily and painfully and … realized that the train was in motion. He had barely time to get away…
He found himself on the station platform, stupidly watching the rear lights dwindle down the tracks and wondering whether or not hallucinations were a phase of his malady. A sick man often dreams strange dreams…
A voice behind him, cool with a trace of irony, observed:
"I'd give a good deal to know just what particular brand of damn' foolishness you've been indulging in, this time."
