“I could n't,” she replied, in that maddeningly unsatisfactory way of answering serious questions that women appear to have. “There is n't any more.”
I think I compressed my lips over this. But I went right downstairs.
The manager was in his little den behind the hotel office. I beckoned him out, and asked about physicians.
His eyes sought my face. But I told him nothing.
With his assistance—for the telephone service of Peking is not that of New York or Chicago—
I called up an English medical mission that was not far from the hotel.
The head physician had gone to bed. At first they refused to disturb him. But I insisted.
It was half an hour before he arrived. I drew a chair to Heloise's bedside, talking with her and rubbing her head and her forearms while we waited.
She gave every evidence of rather rapid improvement. She was weak, of course; and so nervous that her body would twitch for no reason, and the slightest unexpected sound would give her a start. But the pupils of her eyes, that had been very small, were widening out to something like their normal size. And behind the gaze that she kept turning to me and the occasional faint suggestion about her mouth of a gentle but sad and enigmatic smile, I felt, even then, that she was doing some sober thinking.
After a time she said:
“I have clung to one thought to-day. My life has been all a blunder. But it has helped a little to know that you have your scales, Anthony—and that you would n't have them except for me.”
I went limp at this. For it had made me feel sound and strong to be caring for her, and now her words plunged me back into the depths of that dreadful day. I dropped my chin on my hands.
“Anthony!” said she. “What is it?”
I could only shake my head.
“But you have the scales, Anthony?”
I shook my head again.
She came up on her elbow—all weak and shaking. She had on that gray silk kimono that I love—the one with the wistaria blossoms embroidered on it. I felt her eyes searching my thoughts, and I could only look at the soft gray blossoms on her sleeve and study out the pattern.
“Anthony,” she was saying, with something of that musical “edge” in her voice—“Anthony, what have you done?”
I told her. I even moved my chair aside and let her gaze past me and through the open doorway into my room, where she could see bits of the broken cylinders scattered about the floor.
Was I pleading the cause of my love for her, of my—yes—of my desire for her, in thus giving way to the unexpected impulse to have her see those broken cylinders with her own eyes? God pity me, I do not know! All I am sure of is that I suddenly wanted her to know all about those miserable, weak hours of mine. And a strange, tremulous hope was fluttering to life in my heart. It was possible that we should again work together, she and I!
This hope fluttered and grew. I felt my heart beat more quickly, and a touch of that odd dryness in the throat that comes to me when Heloise and I are close, when I touch her hand or her sleeve and know at the same moment that she is thinking of me and that her feelings are in some mysterious way interwoven with mine.
I recall that I moved forward on my chair I moved still farther, and sat on the edge of the bed. I slipped my arm behind her head. I drew her lovely, dark head against my breast. I bent over and kissed her fragrant hair and rubbed my cheek against it.
I was stroking her hair and her soft cheek. I bent lower and kissed her forehead. Then I kissed her cheek.
I could not help it. I did not know I was going to do it. I know now that she had stopped resisting before this. She let me kiss her.
Slowly this fact made itself felt in my mind and in my heart. She had let me kiss her, but she had been unable to respond. And I remembered what she had said, hours or years ago, and the poignant sadness of it—
“Something has died in me. I don't believe I can ever love a man again.”
I lowered her head against the pile of pillows. I held the thick braid of her hair for a moment, then let it fall over her shoulder. I looked into her eyes, hoping against hope that I might find a responsive light there.
Then I sank back on my chair, and covered my face with my hands.
She reached out and laid her hand on my arm.
For a little time we sat that way. I could not look at her. I could not say anything. I was glad of the gentle touch of her hand.
It was she who broke the silence.
“Oh, Anthony,” she breathed. “If I only could!”
Then we were still again.
But this would not do. I was all egotism—I, who had so wished to help her.
Finally I looked up, and took her hand in mine and stroked it. I even smiled at her. At least, it seemed to me that I smiled.
It was one of those moments that come, in our times of greatest bewilderment, when for a space we see clearly. I suddenly felt that I could think again.
“I don't know what is to become of us, Heloise dear,” I said. “You have been close to the end of your life. But I think that you will have to let me help you. For I know now that I shall not want to live unless I can help you. And I shall not leave you alone in Peking. I think you will have to bear with me, at least until I can know that you have got back into the current of your life and work.”
She compressed her lips, and her dear eyes glistened. Then I felt her fingers tighten around mine.
“Anthony,” she said, low and uncertain, “I would do anything. I would love you if I could. I would go to you without love if I thought I could make you happy, or even help you. You gave me hope by helping me to work. Now, in spite of the dreadful facts of my life that I know so well to be true, you are stirring me to hope again. But all the time I know that the dreadful facts are there, that they will be there when this hope is faded.”
“I think,” said I, “that we can triumph over those dreadful facts.”
“Oh, Anthony,” she murmured, “if you only knew how dreadful they are. I wondered before whether I ought to tell you. I lay awake here night after night, trying to think it out—whether I ought to tell you. And then even worse news came. It was too much for me. I gave up, Anthony. It seemed to me, only a few hours ago, that the kindest thing I could do—the kindest thing I could do to you, dear—would be to leave this world. I brought only trouble into it. I thought it would be best to leave it.”
She paused. She looked past me, toward the window. Her brows were knit. She was very sober. And her reticence, that I had always felt, was gone. She continued:
“And now I've made a failure even of that. And here I am again, disturbing your life, a burden—”
I leaned forward and took her other hand and looked at her. She faltered. She stopped. I held her two hands firmly. For a moment I considered telling her that I knew her story. Then I knew that I could n't tell her. To-morrow, perhaps; but not now. This hour was hers and mine. Crocker had no place in it. I would not so much as have his name spoken. Further than this, my mind, that had failed me so miserably of late, was working again; and a plan was forming there.
I could not yet see all the way. But from moment to moment I could feel my habitual confidence in my mental processes coming back to me. I was beginning to believe, as I always used to believe, that I should prove equal to the situation, as it might develop. And the first thought of renunciation was coming to me like a clear light.
It is obvious, of course (even in this tense moment the fact became reasonably clear to me) that where personal desire is the major premise, logic is impossible.
It was time I came; in some degree to my senses.
She must have seen something of all this in my face, when I bent forward and took her two hands so firmly and looked into her eyes.
“Heloise dear,” I said, “you are not going to die. You are going to live. For the present you are going to let me help you start at rebuilding your life. You will do this because I love you, and because it is unthinkable that I should not help you. One way or the other”—I repeated this phrase with a peculiar emphasis that, I could see, puzzled her—“one way or the other I am going to help you. It may be that I can never stir you to love me. I shall do this if I can, Heloise; but it may be that I shall not succeed. I am glad that I have”—my voice broke here, so confusing is love—“have kissed you, but I shall not kiss you again. Not again, dear. We shall work this out, however. You and I, one way or the other, we shall work it out.”
“But Anthony,” said she. “You must let me tell you! It is—I am not free—there is—”
“You shall not tell me to-night,” I said to her. “You shall tell me nothing. I will not permit it. I will not listen. Free or bound, however dreadful the facts may seem—these things are nothing. Nothing!” My voice rose a little, I fear, at this point. “They can not possibly concern us now, you and me. For one way or the other—”
“But, dear, you don't understand—you don't know!”
“I know enough,” said I. “I know all that need concern me and the woman I love more than my life, more than my work, more than everything else in the world and the sky.”
She seemed almost to shudder at this.
“Anthony! Please, dear!” She was whispering these broken sentences. “This is all wrong! Please!”
Her voice trailed off. I was still bending forward, all eager and flushed with the great thoughts that were stirring within me. Her eyes seemed almost to cling to mine. She stirred a little, but did not turn away. Her hands were still in mine.
It seemed to me that I ought to surrender her hands and sit back in my chair.
Her eyes were glistening wet, the outlines of her mouth softened from the sadness that had been there. It almost seemed to me that she was drawing me forward with her hands.
Certainly something—some quality of the spirit, perhaps, was draw ing me nearer and nearer to her. I knew that my head was bending closer. I thought of resisting, but I did not resist.
My lips met hers.
Her hands slipped out of mine, and slowly—oh, so slowly!—slid up on my shoulders.
Then her arms were about me, and my arms were about her; and our hearts were beating together, very fast.
“Listen!” she whispered, all breathless, turning her head.
Some one was knocking at my door.
I stood up, irresolute. I was bewildered. She looked wan and weak, lying back there against the pillows. I was choking back the sobs that nearly came.
“Oh, Heloise,” I managed to say. “I meant not to. Forgive me, dear!”
But she was not looking at me. “See who it is,” was all she said.
So I went through to my own room, closing the connecting door behind me. I hurriedly brushed my hair, then opened the door.
It was the physician from the English mission. He was a young man, who looked at me coolly and with some curiosity.
I told him what had happened.
He weighed the morphine bottle in his hand, and pursed his lips over it.
“She must have taken between ten and twenty grains of the stuff,” said he, musingly.
“That, of course, is incredible,” said I.
He shook his head and replied in a casual tone for which I hated him.
“Oh, no. An overdose will act that way with some people. The system simply refuses to assimilate it or even retain it.”
I reported to him what I had done. He then went in and looked at Heloise and asked a few questions.
Occasionally his eyes flitted about the shabby room. Then he would dart little glances at her and at me.
He was a depressing person, this young physician. It was clear enough the impression he got of us.
Heloise felt it keenly. I saw that little droop of sadness coming about her mouth.
Then he told me that I had done about everything he could have done, that she would be all right in a day or so, and that she had had a rather lucky escape.
He left a little medicine, and went away. We both felt that he did not care to have us call him again; and we each knew that the other felt this, though we did not put it in words.
Finally I said, after I had sat by her for a time in moody silence—
“It is very late, dear. I rather think you will sleep to-night, in spite of the coffee and all.”
“Yes,” she said, “I think I will. And you, Anthony”—she caught my hand—“I don't like to see you look so tired.”
“I shall sleep,” I replied. Then I kissed her forehead, and went into my own room, leaving the door ajar in order that I might hear if she called.
We did sleep, both of us. At least, she says she did. And she looked rested this morning, when I took the breakfast tray from the waiter and carried it to her. She was up, and dressed.
I have realized since that I did not succeed at all in my efforts to hide the serious mood that took possession of me from the moment I woke. She caught it. Every now and then she flashed an odd, puzzled glance at me.
Finally, when we had finished and I had put the tray in my room, she broached the subject that was uppermost in both our minds.
“Before we go any farther, Anthony dear, I am going to tell you—”
I stopped her.
“But Anthony, you must let me speak. You are giving up everything for me, and you don't even know—”
“I know all I wish to know now, dear.”
“But this is very important. I can't forgive myself, when I realize that you don't know what I have done—”
I could n't stand this. I simply took her two shoulders in my hands and made her look squarely at me; and I spoke with a sudden uprush of feeling.
“Dear, dear girl,” I said, “I'm not interested in what you have done. I am interested in what you are.”
“But Anthony, if I am not worthy—”
It hurt me to hear her speak in this way. I was thinking swiftly, bitterly, of certain episodes in my own life. I was thinking of the men I knew, and what they had done. I thought of Crocker and his outrageous code. I thought of my own latest episode of the sort—with the little girl at “Number Nine”—and of the queer masculine twist in my own thinking that had led me to consider myself “unmanly” because I had run away from that girl when she wanted me to stay.
No, I could not bear to have her speak or even think so of herself. So I said, still holding her there before me:
“Men are accustomed to judge women, Heloise. You say that I must know what you have done. Has it occurred to you that I ought to tell you—very humbly, dear—whatIhave done?”
She looked really puzzled at this.
“Why,” she said, “I don't know—I never thought. T have always heard that men were—well, different.”
“You have heard that—from men,” I replied sadly, and turned away.
She caught my arm. “But apart from all that, Anthony,” she broke out, “there is one thing that youmustlet me say. Youmust!” She hesitated, caught her breath, then plunged desperately along with it. She was not looking at me now. Her color was rising; and her voice low.
“I have—a—husband—” she said.
“Yes.” I interrupted her. “I am going to talk to him now.”
I went straight into my own room and got my hat and stick.
She followed me as far as the doorway. I saw her leaning there, all limp and white.
“You knew!” she was murmuring, as if to herself. “Youknew!”
“I don't believe I shall need my overcoat,” said I, glancing out at the sunlight on the roofs. God knows why I said just that at such a moment. I added—
“Wait here, Heloise. It will be all right. But the time has come to stop drifting. We are going to stop drifting now, you and I—and he. Good-by, dear, for now.”
I knew I must hurry. I simply could not talk this out with her now. I felt that I could not endure it. I doubted if she could. Besides it would get us nowhere so long as the question of Crocker himself should be left unsettled to menace our two lives.
I opened the door.
She came on into the room, reaching her hands out toward me. She seemed actually weak, trembling.
“Oh—Anthony!” she breathed, staring at me with something that was almost fascination in her eyes, as if she were now seeing me for the first time.
I could not trust myself at all. I hurried out, closing the door behind me. I ran down the stairs.
It was the thought of the telephone that had come to me with such force on the preceding evening. I knew now that it was not necessary to keep up this terrible waiting for him. It would be easy enough to call him up; then I could go to him and still feel that I was not leaving Heloise at the mercy of a chance visit from him while I was away.
It took a long time for them to get him to the telephone, over there at theWagon-lits—fifteen or twenty minutes, I should say.
Finally I heard his voice.
“How are you, Eckhart?” he said, in the easy, offhand way that men employ one with another. “How have you been?”
I thanked God, under my breath, that he was in condition to talk. I simply could not have endured further delay.
“I've been all right,” said I. “I want to see you, Crocker, in regard to a very important matter.”
“Surely. Any time you say.”
“Suppose I come right over there to the Wagon-lits.”
“All right. I'll wait for you in my room. Good-by.”
“Good-by, Crocker.”
Then I went out into the little Chinese street, and once again headed toward the big hotel in the Legation Quarter.
CROCKER opened his door at my knock.
He was half dressed, with a quilted gown drawn about his big frame.
He gripped my hand. I permitted this, which was perhaps an odd thing to do; but it came about so easily and swiftly that I could not think how to prevent it without appearing merely childish.
Then I went on into the room, and stood, with some sense of inner tension, while he drew an easy chair to the table and with a paper cutter pried open a box of cigars.
He has changed, even in the fortnight since our parting in the railway station at Yokohama. He is putting on weight pretty rapidly, and his face distinctly exhibits the ravages of drink. It was pale this morning. His eyeballs were crisscrossed with red veins, and there was an incipient puffiness under them. His hands were unsteady, too; I noted that fact when he opened the cigars. And afterward, when he dropped on the sofa and settled back against the cushions, he extended his right hand as I had seen him do once or twice before, back at Yokohama, and make an unsuccessful effort to hold it still. Then he let it fall across his knee, and for a moment stared gloomily at the carpet.
I observed, too, that he was more nervous. He moved with a jerky abruptness. And when he glanced up at me, it was suddenly, with a perceptible start, as if I had spoken sharply, though in reality I had not spoken at all. It made me think of the torturing confusion of moods that was racking his nervous system, and of the merciless voices of unrest that were so evidently whispering every moment at his inner ear. A few days ago I would not have observed his condition with any sympathetic understanding; but now that I, too, have been torn between the exaltation of love and the degradation of jealousy, I can only shake my head in a sad sort of wonder at the mysterious strength of these forces that drive men and women together, and apart, and that linger even after a mismating and a subsequent separation to stir and bewilder the spirit.... Yes, I can, in a way, feel with Crocker now. To live with memories of magical hours passed with a woman one has since lost—elusive, poignant memories, that come in the still hours of night to triumph over the brutal facts of the day that is gone and the day that is to come—this is the stuff of tragedy.
My feelings soared far, as I sat there—all in a moment. I was thinking of strong passions and of elemental things. It came to me, oddly, that I had never really understood certain of the great poems and the greater music dramas. I told myself that I must seize the first opportunity to hear “Tristan” again. I would understand if now. Yes, surely... there was the surging, heartbreaking climax of the “Liebestod,” for example—it was surging in my feelings now, and in my brain. I could hear the swelling of the violins. And I knew all at once that it was not the mere heartbreak of Isolde and her Tristan that surged and swelled with them, I knew that it was the universal story of man and woman everywhere. Underneath the trivial vulgarity of the daily newspaper, with its commonplace recital of petty dramas and pettier tragedies, I suddenly knew, surge and swell the hopes and dreams and casual disasters of a million Tristans and a million Isoldes. It is men like Crocker and myself, I thought, and women like Heloise, who enact, all unconsciously, tossed helplessly about on great billows of feeling, the heroic drama of life.
It was the inner man that dwelt on these stirring things. The outer me was declining a cigar, and taking the easy chair, and for a moment letting my eyes w ander about the room. It was going to be pretty difficult to broach the subject. I could see that. Yet it had somehow to be done.
There was a bottle half full of whisky on the table, and glasses. Evidently the embargo had been raised. I could not help staring at that bottle for a moment. And, though he did not raise his eyes, I felt that Crocker knew what was in my thoughts.
His suit-case, with the cover thrown back, rested on a chair by the wall. The contents were rumpled about; but among them, right on top, I saw a knife-handle of Japanese lacquer and silver projecting from a lacquered sheath with a silver tip.
He caught me looking at it, sprang up—with an abruptness that made me jump—and slammed down the cover of the suit-case.
Then he came back to the sofa with a short laugh that was plainly designed to cover inner embarrassment, and poured out a good three fingers of the whisky. He drank it neat.
“Have some?” he said.
I shook my head.
“It settles my stomach,” he continued, with an air of apology. “I have n't been at all well lately.”
I watched him while he poured out another, and tossed it down.
He lighted a cigar.
“Where you stopping?” he asked. “Have n't seen you around here, have I?”
I shook my head.
“There's another hotel here, then?” said he. And his eyes narrowed craftily.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “two or three.”
Then I hesitated. But after all, why evade the man? I had come to his room with precisely the opposite intent. So, with a nervous abruptness not unlike his own, I gave him the name of my hotel—and Heloise's. And at the same time I watched him closely to see if it conveyed anything to him.
Plainly it didn't. He merely blew out a long spear of smoke, followed it for a moment with his eyes, and then glanced down at the cigar that he was turning slowly round and round between his fingers.
But he could not sit quietly for any length of time. He got up again, with that same jerky abruptness, and, muttering something about the room being close, strode to the window and threw it open.
He knew that he was acting rather uncivilly, for he turned to me then and said, with a fairly good imitation of a casual manner—“Mind a little air?”
“Not at all,” I replied. It was depressing to be talking thus about nothing, knowing so well what was in his heart and what was in mine. But I only mumbled the stereotyped phrase, “Not at all.”
He took another drink—neat again. Then he drummed on the table with the fingers of one hand.
If there is one thing above another that I abominate, it is that kind of idle drumming. He made it worse by whistling softly between his teeth a crude song of the streets. I knew that I must keep myself in hand, but could not help fidgeting a little in my chair.
Nervously self-centered as he was, my discomfort quite escaped him, of course. What stopped his whistling and drumming appeared to be a sudden thought that came to him with the tune.
He looked down at me. His eyes narrowed again. He opened his mouth, then abruptly closed it on the words that were so close to utterance.
When he did speak, I felt certain that his question was not the one he had meant at first to ask.
“How's the phonograph business?” he said, and tried to smile.
“It's all right,” I replied shortly.
He sat down on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, and smoked fast.
“What sort of place is that hotel of yours?” he inquired, after a little.
“Middling. Not so good as this.”
“Near by?”
“Not far.”
“I suppose any rickshaw man would know the way,” he mused.
He fell silent again. Then, finally, he put the question that was on his mind, not looking at me, trying to speak casually; but his voice was not quite steady, and I could see the cigar shake in his hand:—
“Have you happened to see a woman over there—young, good looking, rather slender, blue eyes? Could n't say what name she'd be using.”
In a flash I knew that this was my opening. And on a great wave of relief—for we had to come to the issue—I leaned back in my chair and said, “There is such a woman there. She is using the name of Crocker.” Then I watched him.
I have never seen a man's face go so blank. His jaw dropped—literally. And his eyes were wide.
I found myself returning his gaze, and nodding rather emphatically. I kept on nodding.
Then I said, holding his eyes with mine—
“See here, Crocker, I know all about that. You told me yourself. Have you forgotten?” Slowly the recollection came to him. “Oh, yes,” he replied, “at Yokohama.”
“And you told Sir Robert at Nagasaki. Have you forgotten that?”
This seemed to sting him. “How do you know I did?” he asked sharply.
“He told me. We talked you over. I asked him about the legal possibility of placing you under some sort of restraint.”
Curiously, this didn't anger him. He merely looked puzzled. I wonder if I am doomed to remain ineffectual to the last—an odd, scientific little person, to be humored by the practical men of this rough-and-ready world, even in their least practical moments.
“I don't get you, Eckhart,” said he. “What have you to do with my affairs?”
“At this moment—everything,” I answered him, feeling suddenly very sad.
Sad, because it came to me that you can not talk intelligently with another human being without a common language. And this, I knew all at once, Crocker and I did not have. I had thought of many things that I should say to him; now I had lost confidence in all of them, for I realized that the word which means one thought to me would mean another and different thought to him. Each of us would have to interpret words and phrases in the light of his own mental images. And the mental images of each were outgrowths of his individual philosophy of life.
Yes, my arguments, that had, on the way over, seemed so potent, would not do now. In order to reach that mind of his, I must think in his terms and not in my own. And I tried, desperately, to piece together something like his code, as I sat there.... That man is a free and dominant creature, half god, half beast; that a small, sheltered section of womankind is of superior, almost divine stuff, designed to comfort and elevate man on his god side, to bear his children and, under his own general government, “keep his house,” while the other and greater section of this same womankind is mysteriously of poorer stuff, and is worthy only to do his rougher work at such a wage as can be wrung from him or (in a pitifully matter-of-fact way) to cater to the vices of his beast side—something like this was surely Crocker's sort of philosophy.
I tried to bring myself to realize what this meant. Holding so curious a faith, it was surely natural enough that he should have tried to force poor Heloise's life into his own hard mold of thought and habit. Nor is it unnatural that he should have been outraged when this lovely possession turned in despair from the atmosphere of suppression and inactivity in which he had been so determined to keep her and tried, blunderingly, all wrong, to find an outlet for the fine spirit stirring in the depths of her being.
For this was rebellion. And Crocker, I can see, hates rebellion. His sort always do. He is profoundly a conventional man, even in his vices.
I thought all this in a swift moment, as I sat there, wondering, wondering, how I could say the things that must somehow be said.
Crocker waited as long as he could for me to go on, keeping himself busy with his cigar. Once I thought I detected a furtive expression on his face, as if he dreaded what was to come.
0241
The man was conscious of his own inner weakness, of course. He must have been. Perhaps he remembered telling me of his solemn resolution to give up liquor. Even as this thought occurred to me, he reached out and again tipped that convenient bottle. It seemed to me that there was an extra set to his chin as he did this, a slightly overemphasized casualness that bordered on bravado.
Then he sprang to his feet and moved about the room behind me.
As for myself, I was cool enough. And, once I could hit on the proper beginning to the talk, I felt pretty sure that I could handle the situation. It is evident to me now that the plan I arrived at last night, there in Heloise's room, had cleared the air for me. For I knew—deep, deep in my heart I knew—that I stood ready to give Heloise up. There is selfishness enough in me, God knows. There will be moments of weakness, when the touch of her hand, the blue of her eyes or the shadow of her long lashes on her skin—perhaps even the mention of her name by some common acquaintance—will stir that strange magic that has, in such different ways, torn Crocker's heart and mine. But I believe I shall never again forget that the woman I love, has a life to build, and that the finest duty I have is to help her build it.
I heard a rustling behind me. I turned. Crocker had thrown aside his lounging robe, and was getting into his street clothes. While I sat there watching him, he put on his waistcoat and coat. He put on his hat, pushing it back on his head. Then he busied himself transferring his pocketbook, a handful of small change, some papers and a key ring from the pockets of another suit that hung from a hook on the closet door.
I got right up and stood there, by the table.
“Tell you what, old man,” said he, rather apologetically. “I'm all out of sorts. Guess I need the outside air. You don't mind, do you?”
“Yes,” I replied, with a ring in my voice that was surprising even to myself. “I do mind. I've got something to say to you.”
“Don't talk about that,” said he, and walked to the open window, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
“But I will talk about it, Crocker. It is what I came here to talk about. And I propose to make you talk about it, also.”
He offered no reply; just stood there, staring out the window. I went on. I don't know now where the words were coming from that rushed so unexpectedly to my lips; but I knew, as I uttered them, that before either of us should leave that room he would be taking me seriously.
“There is a woman over yonder, in the Hôtel de Chine,” I said “From your own confession to me, you have followed her here to kill her. There is nobody but me to talk to you, but you are not going to dispose of me so easily. This thing is going to be settled. It is going to be settled to-day—and without any killing, We are not living in that sort of an age, Crocker. Not quite.”
“What do you mean—settled?” he muttered, without turning.
“Settled. Just that. And there won't be any murder. You and I are going to arrange terms of separation between Heloise and yourself. Then you are going home. You will leave this city before night. You may go either way—Tientsin or Hankow; it is the same to me. But you've got to go.... Will you please sit down here and try to discuss this thing like a rational man?”
Now he did turn.
“I suppose you think you can talk to me like this,” he said, with something of a sneer.
“I think just that,” I replied. “Sit down, please. We shall see if I can drive a little sense into that fuddled mind of yours.”
I stood there waiting. He did not move, except, it seemed to me, to square his shoulders. And there was the same set to his chin that I had noted a few moments earlier, when he was drinking.
“I'm standing a good deal from you, Eckhart,” he said. “But after all, I've got nothing against you. You can't be expected to understand these things.” This evidently struck him as a happy idea, and he repeated it: “You can't be expected to understand these things.”
Suddenly he frowned. “How'd you know her name was Heloise?” he asked.
“How did I know?” I repeated. “I will tell you how. I will tell you much that you yourself do not understand.” My voice was rising. I had to struggle to control myself. But I knew that I must, for it was not myself I was fighting for now. “We will not waste words, you and I. We are past that, Crocker—far past it, if you only knew. I have seen”—the words “your wife” had come to my tongue, but I could not say them; it was a profanation even to think of that fine woman as “his”—“I have seen Heloise. I have come to know her. I have seen how sad she is, and what a struggle she has been making to begin doing something with her life. For she has been alone, Crocker—”
“Alone?”
“Yes. She did not stay with that other man. She could not. And she has been struggling all alone.” I fought back the emotion that was breaking into my voice. “I know you both now, Crocker—pretty well. And knowing you both, I can see, oh, so clearly, that she could never, never be happy with a man like you. She has ability, she has spirit, she has what they call temperament. She is an artist. And do you not know, man, that the artist must always be struggling toward expression, that his whole life is nothing but that struggling? You can not make a domestic drudge of such a woman. Of some women—yes. But not of the artist. You tried to do just that. You chose the woman who was beautiful to your eyes, and whose spirit made her most desirable, and then you tried to crush that spirit. I have no doubt she tried to submit, that she fought her own finest qualities, for years, in the hopeless effort to make of herself what you demanded. And then she broke—all helpless, all dependent on you as she was—and risked everything to get away from you because it was worse than death to her to be with you. And now you hound her around the world like the savage beast that you are.... Good God, man, can't you see that she wasrightin leaving you! Can't you see that it was the finest, bravest thing she could have done!”
I stood, strung up, all blazing with the fire that was in me. I knew I had broken bounds. I thought that now, surely, he would turn on me and fight me; and I did not care. I even thought wildly of settling it all with him then and there, with blows, as men do. For I had the fire and the will within me; while he, with all his height and strength and native vigor, was palsied with that poison that eats away a man's will and leaves but a shell of bluster.
But instead of anger on his face, as I stared into it, I saw only bewilderment. He seemed to be groping after the ends of a new concept, with a mind that had lost something of its power to grasp new concepts.
“Good Lord,” he said then, “you're talking as if you were in love with her yourself.”
I nodded at him, breathless and deeply solemn. “I am,” I said. “I love Heloise, and I shall love her with all my heart until I die.”
Perhaps I was guilty of a tactical blunder in giving him this information. He was so evidently not himself that he should have been handled with tact and not further confused. As it stood, I had laid the train of a profounder confusion than I could possibly have foreseen. But I had to say it.
He was still groping to comprehend this amazing thought.
“I don't get you,” he said. He was not looking at me now, and seemed to be talking more to himself than to me. “You have n't known her—it's only a few days—”
“It is nearly two weeks.”
“But you don't mean”—he fell to walking about the room, and I followed him with my eyes—“you don't mean to say—”
He stopped short, and pondered. Then he turned toward me; and it seemed to me he appeared more like his normal self than at any time since I had entered the room.
“So you 're talking for yourself,” he observed, coldly.
“No,” I replied, “I am not.”
“But you tell me you love her—”
“That does not stand in the way of my doing precisely what I insist that you shall do—give her up.”
“That's easy to say, Eckhart.”
“It is not easy to do, Crocker. But Heloise must go to Europe, and take up her study. Her gifts, her hopes, all lead her straight toward opera. Neither you nor I has the right to stop her. It is the instinct for expression, nothing else. You have followed that instinct freely in your own life and work. I have followed it freely in mine. Now let her do the same. Work—the sort of work that will give scope to his own peculiar sort of energy—is what every human being needs. It is, above all, what Heloise needs. It will be her salvation, if anything will. Can't you get that into your head? She doesn't need any application of the punitive frenzy that we men call justice. She does n't need the easy moralizing of men like you—and me. She needswork!... As regards my giving her up—she goes to Paris; I stay here in China for at least two years. If you can think of any way in which I can put more miles than that between us, tell me, and I'll promptly give up my own plans and do it.” And I snapped my finger.
Some of my phrases were over his head, I suppose. But he came back at me with a good deal of vigor, ignoring my intense mood:—
“You tell me you love her,” he said; “and you talk about giving her up. You don't mean to say that you think she is in love with you?”
This sobered me—suddenly. I felt my eyes drop, and the hot color coming back into my face.
The talk was turning on me in a way I had not precisely foreseen. But after all—it was only fair. Certainly I had shown no hesitation at exposing his hurt places. So I raised my eyes and looked squarely at him, knowing that, though it would be torture, I should tell him the truth as I had been coming to see it during these morning hours.
I shook my head.
“I should hope not!” he muttered.
I paid no heed to him. The thing now was to get the truth out and have it over with.
“There have been one or two moments when I dared think she was beginning to love me,” I went on. “But I was reasoning from my hopes. She was alone. She was destitute—desperate. There was no one she could turn to, except myself. She knew that I had come to love her. And hurt and crushed as she was—with all the gratitude that the biggest heart I have ever known could—But what is the good of this! What fault there has been, is mine. She is a buoyant, vital thing, an artist, all spirit and fire. Even in her suffering I can see that. There have been glimpses, when we were working and she could forget for a moment. I am a quiet man, a man of the study, a narrow man.”
“Yes, youarenarrow,” he put in.
“She must have variety. She must have stirring moments, strong reactions. She could not possibly be happy with me. And as for you, Crocker—well, we know about that. You are quite impossible. You thought you could possess her. Finding that you couldn't, you would kill her.”
He winced. I was glad to see it. I must make him wince. I must show him that he was not only a brute, but an absurd one.
He went over to the bureau and rummaged nervously in the top drawer. I could see, in the mirror, that his face was working, in the way it has when he is deeply stirred. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he came back to the table, and with a fair assumption of an offhand manner reached for the whisky bottle.
I snatched it away from him, sprang to the window, and threw it out, hard. I heard it break on the pavement below.
Then I turned and faced him, wondering, with a swift uprush of excitement, what he would do. I had taken him quite by surprise, which was a point for me. His great strength had not enabled him to keep that bottle.
His first expression was a sort of hurt bewilderment. He took a step toward me, but without any particular evidence of anger—more as if he meant to protest.
Next he turned, slowly and heavily, in the direction of the bell. This was over by the hall door. I ran toward it. A chair stood in the way, and I remember throwing it over in my rush. I had my back against the bell before he had got to the middle of the room.
He just stood there, trying to think. Then, abruptly, he turned back, dropped on the sofa, and buried his face in his hands.
I came across the room, as far as the table, and stood over him until he lifted his head. He was evidently fighting to keep from going to pieces. And his pride was not yet wholly gone, for he said—
“See here, Eckhart, I'm not feeling well at all. Just let me ring for a drink, and I'll talk with you. I will. I 'll talk. This thing has driven me wild. But you're right enough, I suppose. Just push the bell, will you? The thing has got to be settled. We'll settle it, you and I. If you think there's really any show for her, on her own, I'll be reasonable. It's been the thought of that fellow—of other men—Oh, God!” His face dropped again on his hands.
It was at this point that I began to feel discouraged over the prospect of arriving at any real settlement of the business. The man could not be counted on to remain in the same state of mind for two consecutive hours. I told him, in good round language, that he could not have another drop of whisky; and he exhibited self-respect enough (for the moment) to stop his whining.
Then for a little while I just sat on the edge of the table and looked at him. This was Heloise's husband. My spirit revolted at the thought. Her husband! The crude law under which we live actually gives such a man “rights” over that fine woman. It was unthinkable. And it was so.
“Come out with it,” I heard him saying. “What's your proposition?”
I had to think quickly. For this, after all, was the opportunity I had been so desperately seeking. I must talk straight.
“You are to let her have a divorce. If I know her at all, she will not accept alimony—”
“Stuff!” said he. “Did you ever see anybody that would n't take money!”
They were as far apart as that, those two. I pushed right on—“but she will have to accept something. A lump sum, say, on the ground that you have held back her training and limited her immediate earning capacity. I think, if that point is made very clear to her, she will be reasonable about accepting enough to carry her through her two or three years of study and the getting up of a repertoire. I would not ask her to agree to more than that. Not from you.”
There, that was plain talk enough, surely, even for Crocker!
He took it pretty calmly. In fact, I am not sure that it wasn't something of a relief to his hard head to get down to what he would call “brass tacks”—meaning money, and the traffic in money.
“That's your proposition?” he said.
“That's my proposition.”
“And when do you want an answer?”
I must admit that he surprised me here. “Why,” I replied, “now. On the spot.”
He shook his head.
“No,” said he. “You are asking me to agree to a plan that would change my whole life.”
“For the better!” I interrupted eagerly.
“Perhaps,” said he. “Do you think I have traveled from New York to Peking for the purpose of changing my mind in one minute, because you ask me to?”
He had stiffened up, as he sat there, and was talking, all of a sudden, quite like a responsible business man. Whether this change was merely a momentary outcropping of self-respect, or whether there was man enough in him to bring that drink-fuddled brain so swiftly under control, I could not imagine.
“What else can you do?” I asked, as quietly and reasonably as I could manage. “At this moment you seem more like your real self, Crocker, than at any other time since I came in here—”
“I'm myself, all right,” he broke in gruffly. “Never you mind about that. Let me hear your arguments.”
“—and you can't sit here, and look me in the eye, and tell me that you seriously consider carrying out the insane purpose that brought you here. You can't, man!”
“Cut that talk out!” he cried angrily. “Stick to your own side of it.”
“There is no other side of it, Crocker. You're not going to kill her. She'll never go back to you. Your only possible course is to give her up. And my guess is that you'll show yourself a reasonably good sport.”
This touched him. At last I had hit on a phrase that he could understand, in all this ugly talk that I was driving so desperately at him.
“Never mind that, either,” he growled.
I stood up, and looked at him. It seemed to me that I had him. Certainly, he was avoiding my eyes.
He jerked out his watch, and stared at it, turning the stem around and around between his fingers.
“It's eleven-fifteen,” he said, then slowly let the watch drop back in his pocket.
He had smoked the last of his cigar. Now he lighted a fresh one.
“I'll give you my answer at two,” he added.
For a moment I did not know what to say to this.
“What's the matter,” he said, in that rough voice.
It was such a voice, I imagined, as he would employ with business subordinates. “What's the matter? Isn't that reasonable? You've stated your proposition. I'll think it over and give you my answer after lunch. If I accept it, I'll pack up and leave Peking on the first train.”
Still I hesitated. He just sat and smoked.
“You know what's the matter,” I replied, finally. I decided to stick to my policy of talking in his own blunt way. “How do I know that you will be sober at two?”
“I'll be sober,” said he. He thought this over, and added, “After all, Eckhart, I suppose you have a right to ask that question. I'll admit that I've been making a dam' fool of myself. I've been drunk ever since I got here.”
“Yes,” said I, “I know it.”
This disturbed him a little, but he went on—“I'm glad you threw that bottle out. It was what I needed to bring me to my senses. I'm all right now. You 'll see. Tell you what I 'll do—I'll take a cold bath. That always sets me up. Then I'll order up a lot of coffee with my lunch, and only a light wine.” He got up, and stood over me. “There's my assurance that you'll find me here, O. K., at two. I'm not a common drunkard, Eckhart. You're not a man of the world, and you don't see these things quite as they are. I've been stewed, that's all. I'm through. Now for the coldest bath they've got.” He began stripping off his clothing. “Come right in at two. Don't bother to send your name up.”
For a moment I could only look up at him. I must admit that he was convincing. What he said was quite true—disordered as he had been, through passion and drink, he was not yet a common drunkard. There was yet stuff in the man Besides if, as I was beginning to hope, he really meant to accept my plan, the less than three hours he asked for was a quite reasonable concession to his pride.
I had to make the decision. I did make it.
“All right,” I said, “I'll come at two.”
He looked straight at me, and held out his hand.
“You've helped me, I think,” he said, in a very decent spirit. Then he glanced down at his big hand, and added—“Better take it, Eckhart.”
I took it. Then, stirred by doubts and hopes so extreme and so confused that I hardly knew what I was thinking, I went out. The last I saw of him, then, he was throwing aside his under-wear, and exposing a deep chest, with big muscles curving down over the shoulders, and smaller ridges of muscle in rows on either side. And on his face was that set look.
I ran up the stairs (at theHôtel de Chine) and burst into my own room. Then I stopped short, and took off my hat.
For there, by the window—in my room—stood Heloise. She wore a simple but very beautiful frock of her favorite color, blue. It made her look taller, and slimmer, and more exquisitely womanly.
The room itself was changed. She had picked it up, and given it what few cheerful touches she could. On the bureau, in the toothbrush holder from my washstand, stood a spray of white cherry or pear blossoms. I can't imagine where she got them; I did not think to ask, when we were together, for we had so much else on our minds.
On the bureau, also, in a neat little pile, were the pieces of my ten broken cylinders. She had gathered them all and put them there.
It was the first time she had ever tidied up my room like that. It touched me. I stood motionless for a moment, looking about.
“Did you see him?” she asked, very low.
“Yes,” said I, still looking about the room, “I saw him. It is going to be all right, Heloise—all right. We are to meet again at two.” Then I indicated the white blossoms. “You have made it seem almost like a home.”
“Oh—that?” she murmured. “It was hard to wait. I had to keep myself busy.” She said it very gently. And it thrilled me to realize that, whatever strange event might come to her and to me, we had at last arrived at a fine spirit of companionship.
Just to think that she could do this friendly act, feeling in her heart that I would not misinterpret it or in some crude masculine way take the advantage—I like that, even though I distinctly do not deserve it.
But she was speaking, still in that low voice, but breathlessly, I thought:—
“How will it be 'all right,' Anthony? What do you mean? What have you done?”
I felt that I must be very gentle. But with her, as with that man over yonder in the other hotel, it was the time for frank talk. For as I had insisted with Crocker, her life was her own to live; and I could not go on now without her approval.
I drew my one comfortable chair to the window for her. She took it. Then I explained to her, just as briefly as I could, that Crocker had agreed to consider setting her legally free, on condition that she go to Paris and work out her career independently of myself or any other man.
She heard me without a word, sitting there, her hands folded in her lap. I could not make out the expression of her face. It was grave, of course, but composed—with no sign of the hysteria that I had considered as a possibility. Indeed, I am not certain but what she was rather calmer than I.
When I had said it all, and had paused, looking anxiously at her, she asked:—
“How long have you known about him? Didhe”—she indicated the room across the hall with a slight movement of her head—“tell you?”
I explained to her that I had been with Crocker on the ship and at Yokohama, and that he himself had talked to me of his difficulties.
This surprised her, I could see, but she made no comment regarding it. Her next question was uttered with hesitation:—
“Was he—did he seem—”
I caught her drift. “To-day, you mean?”
She nodded, with compressed lips.
“He has been pretty bad, but I really think he is sobering up. When I left him, he seemed to have himself under control. And he gave me his word that he would be sober at two, when I go back.”
She seemed to be musing, in a depressed fashion. Then she glanced up, met my eye, and tried to look brighter. “The trouble with him is,” she said, “you can never be sure.”
“I know,” I replied, “but I could n't refuse to give him three hours—less than three hours. You see, dear, there is no pressure I could bring upon him. I have n't even the advantage of physical strength. And, really, you know, when you come right down to it, my whole position was the weakest possible—I had absolutely no right to talk to him like that.”
We fell silent again. Finally she turned squarely around, and leaned against the casement, and gave me her hand. I saw then that there were tears in her eyes, and deep sorrow, but about her mouth there were evidences of a strong determination that explained why the tears did not come.
We looked at each other.
“Tell me,” she said, “what becomes of you in this arrangement?”
“Oh,” I replied, “I stay here and do my work. There is just one thing I am going to ask of you, Heloise—will you help me make the scales again?”
She looked surprised, I thought: and her mouth twisted 'nto the faintest of smiles. Then she nodded. “Yes,” she said, “we will make the scales.”
“Don't you see,” she went on, “that what you are trying to do brings us closer together than years of ordinary, selfish love-making?”
“Yes,” said I, “in a way.”
“In every way,” said she. “Are you blind, Anthony? Can't you see how you are making me love you?”
I tore my hands away from her. I could not stand it. But my brain was still dear, thank God!
“Heloise—dear!” I cried, “this only makes it harder. We must play fair. We must see it through. If he goes back to America, then you must go to Paris, and I must stay here.”
“What if I should refuse to go to Paris?” said she, still looking at me.
“You will not do that,” I answered her. “For it is the condition on which he will set you free.”
“Then what is to prevent my waiting for you there—one year, two years?”
“You will be too busy to wait—you will be working, growing, changing—yes, you will change. You will not need me then. Your life must not stand still because of a man who loved you away out here in Peking,”—I said this as steadily as I could,—“it must go on, and on, and—”
“Oh,” said she, “you think I would do that. You think I would change.”
I nodded. “Life is change. And you are full of life. Sad as you have been, dear, I can see that. I am a narrow man. If you came to me, I would be weak enough to want you by me, in my home. I should want—children. I should want you to be my wife, my helpmate, my—”
“Well...” she breathed, with shining eyes.
“No, Heloise, whatever you may think now, I could never forget what I should be shutting you out from, and it would make me unhappy. Don't you see, dear? You must follow your own genius. That is what I am trying to help you do.” And I added sadly, “It is the only way out for you, anyway, because it is the only course that he will agree to—if he should agree to anything.”
“Oh, Anthony,” she said, “is all that true? Is it just the old conflict between one's own personal life and the career that one is drawn to? Don't you suppose I could give my life to helping you and be happy in it—so happy that it would make you happy too? Thinking of those days that we spent working together, it has seemed that way to me. Just to-day it has seemed so.”
I shook my head. “You have a great gift in your voice, Heloise. It must be used. It must grow greater. You are unsubmissive, a rebel; which is precisely what an artist must be. You have the spirit of a fine artist. You must cultivate and expand that spirit. There is nothing ahead of you, Heloise, but work—hard, hard work. And loneliness. That is the lot of the artist. But it will bring its compensations. And even the work itself is a great opportunity.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I know that.”
“And you must not weaken, dear. You have headed that way—you must go straight on now. And I will live in your success.”
“Does it really come down to that, Anthony?”
“It comes down to that. You've got to do it, anyway—you have no choice. I am only bringing up these reasons now because they may help you to think it out.”
“Perhaps this is my real punishment,” she observed, “losing you just when I have found you.” And then the tears came to her eyes again.
“Perhaps,” said I. “Perhaps not. If so, it is a punishment for being alive, since, one way or another, every human being must face it. Every life has to be lived, you know, dear. It is hard to live a life—straight through to its end. It is still harder if one fails to live it.... And then, this applies to me, as to you. There is no more reason that you should give up the proper direction of your life than there is that I should give up mine and follow you.”
“Oh,” she said, with a little gasp, “I never thought of that!”
“It is so, Heloise. We are both positive natures. We have each a life to live. Let us try to live them honestly and thoroughly. Perhaps, in doing that, each will one day make the other happy and proud.”
We paused. And then Heloise, being a woman, turned swiftly back to the practical aspect of the problem.
“But, Anthony,” she broke out, “you don't for a minute suppose that I would let you undertake all that expense for me? You don't really think I would accept it?”
Now it had to come; the money business, that I had shrunk from mentioning when I told her of my talk with Crocker.
I hesitated, then blurted it out—
“He must pay you a reasonable sum to cover that expense.”
“Oh—Anthony!” Her eyes flashed fire. “I won't touch a cent of his money!”
“But—but—”
“Not one cent!”
Somehow I felt very sordidly masculine as I stood there trying to explain. I gave her the reasons, as I had thought them out—that it was mere justice to recompense her for the time he had forced her to lose.
But my voice began to falter, as I ran on with the jargon; for I saw that she was not listening. She had become very white. She leaned against the casement, all limp and sad, gazing out over the roofs. Her breath was coming more quickly. And I saw her draw her under lip in a little way between her teeth.