She had not posed for Drene during the last two weeks, and he had begun to miss her, after his own fashion—that is, he thought of her when not preoccupied and sometimes desired her companionship when unoccupied.
And one evening he went to his desk, rummaged among note-books, and scribbled sheets of paper, until he found her address, which he could never remember, wrote it down on another slip of paper, pocketed it, and went out to his dinner.
But as he dined, other matters reoccupied his mind, matters professional, schemes little and great, broad and in detail, which gradually, though not excluding her entirely, quenched his desire to see her at that particular time.
Sometimes it was sheer disinclination to make an effort to communicate with her, sometimes, and usually, the self-centering concentration which included himself and his career, as well as his work, seemed to obliterate even any memory of her existence.
Now and then, when alone in his shabby bedroom, reading a dull book, or duly preparing to retire, far in the dim recesses of heart and brain a faint pain became apparent—if it could still be called pain, this vague ghost of anger stirring in the ashes of dead years—and at such moments he thought of Graylock, and of another; and the partly paralyzed emotion, which memory of these two evoked, stirred him finally to think of Cecile.
It was at such times that he always determined to seek her the next day and continue with her what had been begun—an intimacy which depended upon his own will; a destiny for her which instinct whispered was within his own control. But the next day found him at work; models of various types, ages, and degrees of stupidity came, posed, were paid, and departed; his studies for the groups in collaboration with Guilder and Quair were approaching the intensely interesting period—that stage of completion where composition has been determined upon and the excitement of developing the construction and the technical charm of modeling begins.
And evening always found him physically tired and mentally satisfied—or perturbed—to the exclusion of such minor interests as life is made of—dress, amusement, food, women. Between a man and a beloved profession in full shock of embrace there is no real room for these or thought of these.
He ate irregularly and worked with the lack of wisdom characteristic of creative ability, and he grew thinner and grayer at the temples, and grayer of flesh, too, so that within a month, between the torrid New York summer and his own unwisdom, he became again the gaunt, silent, darkly absorbed recluse, never even stirring abroad for air until some half-deadened pang of hunger, or the heavy warning of a headache, set him in reluctant motion.
He heard of Cecile now and then; Cosby had used her for a figure on a fountain destined to embellish the estate of a wealthy young man somewhere or other; Greer employed her for the central figure of Innocence in his lovely and springlike decoration for some Western public edifice. Quair had met her several times at Manhattan Beach with various and assorted wealthy young men.
And one evening Guilder came alone to his studio and found him lying on the lounge, his lank, muscular hands, still clay-stained, hanging inert to the floor above an evening paper fallen there.
“Hello, Guilder,” he said, without rising, as the big architect shambled loosely through the open doorway.
“How are you, Drene?”
“All right. It’s hot.”
“There’s not a breath of air. It looks like a thunder-storm in the west.”
He pulled up a chair and sprawled on it, wiping his grave features with a damp handkerchief.
“Drene,” he said, “a philanthropic guy of sorts wants to add a chapel to the church at Shallow Brook, Long Island. We’ve pinched the job. Can you do an altar piece?”
“What sort?”
“They want a Virgin. It’s to be called the Chapel of the Annunciation. It’s for women to repair to—under certain and natural circumstances.”
“I’ve so much on hand—”
“It’s only a single figure-barring the dove. Why don’t you do it?”
“There are plenty of other men—”
“They want you. There’ll be no difficulty about terms.”
Drene said with a shrug:
“Terms are coming to mean less and less to me, Guilder. It costs very little for me to live.” He turned his gray, tired face. “Look at this barn of a place; and go in there and look at my bedroom. I have no use for what are known as necessities.”
“Still, terms are terms—”
“Oh, yes. A truck may run over me. Even at that, I’ve enough to live life out as I am living it here—between these empty walls—and that expanse of glass overhead. That’s about all life holds for me—a sheet of glass and four empty walls—and a fistfull of wet clay.”
“Are you a trifle morbid, Drene?”
“I’m not by any means; I merely prefer to live this way. I have sufficient means to live otherwise if I wish. But this is enough of the world to suit me, Guilder—and I can go to a noisy restaurant to eat in when I’m so inclined—” He laughed a rather mirthless laugh and glanced up, catching a peculiar expression in Guilder’s eyes.
“You’re thinking,” said Drene coolly, “what a god I once set up on the altar of domesticity. I used to talk a lot once, didn’t I?—a hell of a clamor I made in eulogy of the domestic virtues. Well, only idiots retain the same opinions longer than twenty-four hours. Fixity is imbecility; the inconstant alone progress; dissatisfaction is only a synonym for intelligence; contentment translated means stagnation..... I have changed my opinion concerning the virtues of domesticity.”
Guilder said, in his even, moderate voice:
“Your logic is weird, Drene: in one breath you say you have changed your opinion; in another that you are content; in another that contentment is the fixedness of imbecility—”
Drene, reddening slightly, half rose on one elbow from his couch:
“What I meant was that I change in my convictions from day to day, without reproaching myself with inconstancy. What I believed with all my heart to be sacred yesterday I find a barrier to-day; and push it aside and go on.”
“Toward what?”
“I go on, that’s all I know—toward sanctuary.”
“You mean professionally.”
“In every way—ethically—spiritually. The gods of yesterday, too, were very real—yesterday.”
“Drene, a man may change and progress on his way toward what never changes. But standards remained fixed. They were there in the beginning; they are immutable. If they shifted, humanity could have no goal.”
“Is there a goal?”
“Where are you going, then?”
“Just on.”
“In your profession there is a goal toward which you sculptors all journey.”
“Perfection?”
Guilder nodded.
“But,” smiled Drene, “no two sculptors ever see it alike.”
“It is still Perfection. It is still the goal to the color-blind and normal alike, whatever they call it, however, they visualize it. That is its only importance; it is The Goal..... In things spiritual the same obtains—whether one’s vision embraces Nirvana, or the Algonquin Ocean of Light, or a pallid Christ half hidden in floating clouds—Drene, it is all one, all one. It is not the Goal that changes; only our intelligence concerning its existence and its immortality.”
Drene lay looking at him:
“You never knew pain—real pain, did you? The world never ended for you, did it?”
“In one manner or another we all must be reborn before we can progress.”
“That is a cant phrase.”
“No; there’s truth under the cant. Under all the sleek, smooth, canty phrases of ecclesiastic proverb, precept, axiom, and lore, there is truth worth the sifting out.”
“You are welcome to think so, Guilder.”
“You also could come to no other conclusion if you took the trouble to investigate.”
Drene smiled:
“Morals are no more than folk-ways—merely mental condition consequent upon custom. Spiritual beliefs are radically dependant upon folkways and the resultant physical and mental condition of the human brain which creates everything that has been and that is to be.”
“Physiology has proven that no idea, no thought, ever originated within the concrete and physical brain.”
“I’ve read of those experiments.”
“Then you can’t ignore a conclusion.”
“I haven’t reached a conclusion. Meanwhile, I have my own beliefs.”
“That’s all that’s necessary,” said Guilder, gravely, “—to entertain some belief, temporary or final.” He smiled slightly down at Drene’s drawn, gray visage.
“You and I have been friends of many years, Drene, but we have never before talked this way. I did not feel at liberty to assume any intimacy with you, even when I wanted to, even when—when you were in trouble—” He hesitated.
“Go on,” grunted the other. “I’m out of trouble now.”
“I just—it’s a whimsical notion—no, it’s a belief;—I just wanted to tell you one or two things concerning my own beliefs—”
“Temporary?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter; they are beliefs. And this is one: all physical and mental ills are created only by our own minds—”
“Christian Science?” sneered Drene.
“Call it what you like,” said Guilder serenely. “And call this what you like: All who believe worthily will find that particular belief true in every detail after death.”
“What do you call that?” demanded Drene, amused.
“God knows. It seems to be my interpretation of the Goal. I seem to be journeying toward it without more obstacles and more embarrassments to encounter than confront the wayfarer who professes any other creed.”
After a while Drene sat up on his couch:
“How did all this conversation start?” he asked uneasily.
“It was about the Virgin for that chapel we are going to do..... That’s part of my belief: those who pray for her intercession will find her after death, interceding—” he smiled, “—if any intercession be necessary between us and Him who made us.”
“And those unlisted millions who importune Mohammed and Buddha?”
“They shall find Mohammed and Buddha, who importune them worthily.”
“And—Christ?”
“He bears that name also—He!”
“Oh! And so, spiritually as well as artistically, you believe in the Virgin?”
“You also can make a better Virgin if you believe in her otherwise than esthetically.”
Drene gazed at him incredulously, then, with a shrug:
“When do you want this thing started?”
“Now.”
“I can’t take it on now.”
“I want a sketch pretty soon—the composition. You can have a model of the chapel to—morrow. We went on with it as a speculation. Now we’ve clinched the thing. When shall I send it up from the office?”
“I’ll look it over, but—”
“And,” interrupted Guilder, “you had better get that Miss White for the Virgin—before she goes off somewhere out of reach.”
Drene looked up somberly:
“I haven’t kept in touch with her. I don’t know what her engagements may be.”
“One of her engagements just now seems to be to go about with Graylock,” said Guilder.
Drene flushed, but said nothing.
“If he marries her,” added Guilder, “as it’s generally understood he is trying to, the best sculptor’s model in town is out of the question. Better secure her now.”
“He wants to marry her?” repeated Drene, in a curiously still voice.
“He’s mad about her. He’s abject. It’s no secret among his friends. Men like that—and of that age—sometimes arrive at such a terminal—men with Graylock’s record sometimes get theirs. She has given him a run, believe me, and he’s brought up with a crash against a stone wall. He is lying there all doubled up at her feet like a rabbit with a broken back. There was nothing left for him to do but lie there. He’s lying there still, with one of her little feet on his bull neck. All the town knows it.”
“He wants to marry her,” repeated Drene, as though to himself.
“She may not take him at that. They’re queer—some women. I suppose she’d jump at it if she were not straight. But there’s another thing—” Guilder looked curiously at Drene. “Some people think she’s rather crazy about you.”
Drene gazed into space.
“But that wouldn’t hurt her,” added Guilder, in his calm, pleasant voice. “She’s a straight little thing—white and straight. She could come to no harm through a man like you.”
Drene continued to stare at space.
“So,” continued the other, confident, “when she recovers from a natural and childlike infatuation for you she’ll marry somebody... Possibly even such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can’t ever tell about such men at the eleventh hour.”
Drene turned his eyes on him. There was no trace of color in his face.
“Aren’t you pretty damned charitable?”
“Charitable? Well, I—I’m so inclined, I fancy.”
“You’d be content to see that girl marry a dog like that?”
“I did not say so. I am no judge of men. No man knows enough to condemn souls.”
Drene looked at him:
“Well, I’ll tell you something. I know enough to do it. I had rather damn my soul—and hers, too—than see her marry the man you have named. It would be worth it to me.”
After a strained silence, Guilder said:
“There is a mode of dealing with those who have injured you, which is radically different—”
“I deal with such people in my own fashion!”
“But, after all, the infamy is Graylock’s. Why oblige him by sharing it with him?”
“Do you know what he did to me and mine?”
“A few of us know,” said Guilder, gently, “—your old friends.”
There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene’s eyes:
“I’ll take your commission for that altar piece,” he said.
“What is it? An Annunciation?”
Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by the middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine until five; every evening they had dined together at the seashore or other suburban and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer entertainment in town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings together in his studio, chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes discussing he work in hand or other subjects of he moment, even topics covering a wider and more varied range than he had ever before discussed with any woman.
He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had been absent from his face—the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to have become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times, smoothed out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.
If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety had been not entirely spontaneous, his smile shadowed with something duller, his laughter a trifle forced, she had not perceived it in her surprised and shyly troubled preoccupation with this amazing and delightful transfiguration.
At first she scarcely knew what to look for, what to expect from him, from herself, when she came into the studio after many weeks of absence; and she always halted in the doorway, trembling a little, as always, when in contact with him.
But he was very delightful, smiling, easy, and deferential enough to reassure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and released it.
From the moment of their reunion he had never touched her, save for a quick, firm, smiling hand-clasp in the morning and another at the night’s parting.
Now, little by little, she was finding herself delightfully at ease with him, emerging by degrees from her charming bewilderment out of isolation to a happy companionship never before shared with any man.
Nor even vaguely had she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and sympathy.
And never, now, was her troubled consciousness aware of anything disquieting in his attitude, of anything to perturb her.
He seemed to enjoy himself like a boy, with her companionship, wholly, heartily, without any motive other than the pleasure of the moment; and so, little by little, she gave herself up to it too, in the same fashion, unguardedly, frankly, innocently revealing herself to him by degrees as their comradeship became deliciously unembarrassed.
He was making a full length study in clay now. All day long she sat there enthroned, her eyes partly closed, the head lifted a trifle and fallen back, and her lovely hands resting on her heart—and sometimes she strove to imagine something of the divine moment which she was embodying; pondering, dreaming, wondering; and sometimes, in the stillness, through her trance crept a thrill, subtle, exquisite, as though in faint perception of the heavenly moment. And once, into her half-dreaming senses came the soft stirring of wings, and she opened her eyes and looked up, startled and thrilled.
But it was only a pigeon which had come through the great window from the cote on the adjacent roof and which circled above her on whimpering wings for a moment and then sheered out into the sunlight.
They dined together at a roof garden that evening, the music was particularly and surprisingly good, and what surprised him even more was that she knew it and spoke of it. And continued speaking of music, he not interrupting.
Reticent hitherto concerning her antecedents he learned now something of them—and inferred more; nothing unusual—a musical career determined upon, death intervening dragging over her isolation the steel meshes of destitution—the necessity for self-support, a friend who knew a painter who employed models—not anything unusual, not even dramatic.
He nodded as she ended:
“Have you saved anything?”
“A hundred dollars.”
“That’s fine.”
She smiled, then sighed unconsciously.
“You are thinking,” he said, “that youth is flying.”
She smiled wistfully.
“Youth is the time to study. You were thinking that, too.”
She nodded.
“You could have married.”
“Why?” she asked, troubled.
“To obtain the means for a musical education.”
She gazed at him in amazement, then: “I could go out on the street, too, as far as that is concerned. It would be no more disgraceful.”
“Folk-ways sanction self-sale, when guaranteed by the clergy,” he said. She turned her head and he saw the pure, cold profile against the golden table-lamp, and he saw something else under the palms beyond—Graylock’s light eyes riveted upon them both.
“You know,” he said, under his breath, “that I shall not marry you. But—would you care to begin your studies again?”
There was a long silence: She remained with face partly averted until the orchestra ceased. Then she turned and looked at him, and he saw her lip tremble.
“I had not thought you meant to ask me—that. I do not quite understand what you mean.”
“I care enough for you to wish to help you. May I?”
“I was not sure you cared—enough—”
“Do you—for me?”
“Before I say that I do—care for you—” she began, tremulously—“tell me that I have nothing to fear—”
Neither spoke. Over her shoulder Drene stared at the distant man who stared back at him.
Presently his eyes reverted to hers, absently studying the childlike beauty of her.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “Love is no more wonderful than hate, no more perfect, no more eternal. And it is less fierce, and not as strong.”
“What!” she whispered, bewildered at the sinister change in him.
“And I want to tell you another thing. I am alone in the world. What I have, I have devised to you—in case I step out—suddenly—”
He paused, hesitated, then:
“Also I desire you to hear something else,” he went on. “This is the proper time for you to hear it, I think—now—to-night—”
He lifted his blazing eyes and looked at the other man.
“There was a woman,” he said—“She happened to be my wife. Also there was my closest friend: and myself. The comedy was cast. Afterward she died—abroad. I believe he was there at the time—Kept up a semblance—But he never married her.... And I do not intend to marry—you.”
After a moment: “And that,” she whispered, “is why you once said to me that I should have let you alone.”
“Did I say that to you?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him, straight into his eyes: “But if you care for me—I do not regret that I did not let you alone.”
“I shall not marry you.”
Her lip trembled but she smiled.
“That is nothing new to me,” she said. “Only one man has offered that.”
“Why didn’t you take him?” he asked, with an ugly laugh.
“I couldn’t. I cared for you.”
“And now,” he said, “are you afraid of me?”
“Yes—a little.”
He leaned forward suddenly, “You’d better steer clear of me!” Her startled eyes beheld in him a change as swift as his words.
“Fair warning!” he added: “look out for yourself.” Everything that was brutal in him; everything ruthless and violent had marred his features so that all in a moment the mouth had grown ugly and a hard, bruised look stamped the pallid muscles of his features and twitched at them.
“You’re taking chances from now on,” he said. “I told you once to let me alone. You’d better do it now. And—” he stared at the distant man—“I told you that hate is more vital than love. It is. I’ve waited a long time to strike. Even now it isn’t in me to do it as I have meant to do it. And so I tell you to keep away from me; and I’ll strike in the old-fashioned way, and end it—to-night.”
Stunned by his sudden and dreadful metamorphosis, her ears ringing with his disjointed incoherencies, she rose, scarcely knowing what she was doing, scarcely conscious that he was beside her, moving lightly and in silence out into the brilliant darkness of the streets.
It was only at her own door that he spoke again: standing there on the shabby steps of her boarding-house, the light from the transom yellowing his ghastly face.
“Something snapped”—he passed an unsteady hand across his eyes;—“I care very deeply for you. I—they’ll make over to you—what I have. You can study on it—live on it, modestly—”
“W-what is the matter? Are you ill?” she stammered, white and frightened.
But he only muttered that she had her warning and that she should keep away from him, and that it would not be long before she should have an opportunity in life. And he went his way not looking back.
When he reached his studio the hall was dark. As he turned the key he thought he heard something stirring in the shadows, but went in—leaving the door into the hallway open—and straight on across the room to his desk.
He was putting something into his coat pocket, and his back was still turned to the open door when Graylock stepped quietly across the threshold; and Drene heard him, but closed his desk, leisurely, and then, as leisurely, turned, knowing who had entered.
And so they stood alone together after many years.
Graylock looked at Drene’s heavily sagging pocket and knew what was in it. A sudden sweat chilled his temples, but he said steadily enough:
“I’d like to say a word or two—if you’ll give me time.” And, as Drene made no reply;—“You’re quite right: This business of ours should be finished one way or another. I can’t stand it any longer.”
“In that case,” remarked Drene with an evil stare at him, “I may postpone it—to find out how much you can stand.” He dropped his right hand into the sagging pocket, looking intently at Graylock all the while:
“What do you want here anyway?”
“I fancy that you have already guessed.”
“Maybe. All the same, what do you want?”—fumbling with his bulging pocket for a moment and then remaining motionless.
Graylock’s worn eyes rested on the outline of the shrouded weapon: he stood eyeing it absently for a moment, then seated himself on the sofa, his heavy eyes shifting from one object to another.
But there were few objects to be seen in that silent place;—a star overhead glimmering through the high expanse of glass above;—otherwise gray monotony of wall, a clay shape or two swathed in wet clothes, a narrow ring of lamp light, and formless shadow.
“It’s a long time, Drene.”
Drene mused in silence, now and then watching the other obliquely.
Presently he withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket, pulled an armchair toward him and seated himself.
“It’s many years,” repeated Graylock. “I expected you to do something before this.”
“Were you uneasy?” sneered Drene. Then he shrugged, knowing that Graylock was no coward, sorry he had intimated as much, like a man who deals a premature and useless blow.
He sat brooding for a while, his lean dangerous head lowered sideways as though listening; his oblique glance always covering Graylock.
“I suppose you’ll be surprised when I tell you one reason that I came here,” said Graylock.
“Do you suppose you can still surprise me by anything you may say or do?”
The man remained silent, sitting with his hands tightly clasped on his knees.
“Drene,” he said, in a low voice, “don’t strike at me through this young girl.”
Drene began to laugh, unpleasantly.
“Are you in love with her?”
“Yes.... You know it.”
Drene said, still laughing: “It’s the common rumor. You may imagine it amuses your friends—if you have any left.”
Graylock spoke in a voice that had a ghostly sound in the great room:
“Don’t harm her, Drene. It is not necessary. I shall never see her again—if that will content you.”
Drene laughed: “I never saw my wife again. Did that help me? I never saw her again, but as long as she lived I knew what she was ... My wife. And when she died, still my wife. There was no relief—no relief.”
Graylock, deathly white, framed his haggard face between his hands and stared at nothing:
“I know,” he said. “I understand now. I am here to-night to pay the reckoning.”
“You can’t pay it.”
“No, not the whole score. There’s another bill, I suppose, waiting for me—somewhere. But I can settle my indebtedness to you—”
“How?”
“That’s up to you, Drene.”
“How?” repeated Drene, violently.
Graylock made a slight gesture with his head toward Drene’s sagging pocket: “That way if you like. Or,” he added, “There is a harder punishment.”
“What is it?”
“To give her up.”
“Yes,” said Drene, “that is harder. But I can make it even harder than that. I can make it as hard for you as you made it for me. I can let you live through it.”
He laughed, fisted in his pocket, drew out the lumpy automatic and leisurely pushed the lever to “safe.”
He said: “To kill you would be like opening the cell door for a lifer. You know what you are while you’re alive; maybe you’d forget if you were dead. I—”
He ceased, fiddling absently with the dull-colored weapon on his knee; and for a while they remained silent, not looking at each other. And when Drene spoke again he was still intent upon the automatic.
“If I knew what happens after a man dies I could act intelligently.” He shot an ugly look at Graylock: “I don’t know about you, either. You’re a rat. But you might fool me at that. You might be repentant. And in that case you’d get away—if it’s true that the eleventh hour is not too late.... If it’s true that Christ is merciful.... So I’ll take no chances of a getaway. You might fool me—one way or another—if you were dead.”
Graylock lifted his head from his hands: “I don’t know how much of the other debt I’ve already paid, Drene. But I’ve paid heavily since I knew her—if that is any satisfaction to you. And since I knew she cared for you, and when I realized that you meant to strike me through her—I have paid, heavily.... Yet, if you were honestly in love with her—”
“Is that any of your damned business?”
“She’s only a child—”
“You rat! That’s what’s coming to you!”
“If you say so. But what is coming to her, Drene?”
“Continue to guess. But I know you. It’s yourself you’re sorry for and what you’ll have to endure—live through. That’s what you can’t stand, and remain the sleek, self-satisfied rat you are. No, it will make earth a living hell for you; never a second, day or night, will you be able to forget—if you really do love her.... And I believe you do—I don’t understand how a thing like you can love—but it seems it can.”
After a silence Graylock said: “You don’t care if you damn yourself?”
“It’s worth it to me.”
“Are you willing that I should know you are as great a blackguard as I am?” Drene’s gaunt features reddened and he set his jaws in silence.
“Don’t you care what you do to her?” asked Graylock, unsteadily. “It’s a viler business than that for which you are punishing me.”
For a long time Drene sat there looking down at the weapon on his knees. And after a while, the other man spoke huskily: “It’s bad enough either way for me, Drene. I’ll do what you wish in the matter. I’ll leave the country; I’ll stay; whichever you say. Or,” he said with a ghastly smile, “I’ll clean out that automatic for you to-night—if you’ll marry her.”
Drene looked up, slowly:
“What did you say?”
“I said that I’d clean out your automatic for you—to-night—if you wish.... It can be an accident or not, just as you say.”
“Where?”
“In my own rooms—if it is to be an accident.”
“Do you offer—”
“Yes; if you’ll marry her afterwards. If you say you will I’ll take your word.”
“And then you’ll be out of your misery, you damned coward!”
“God knows.... But I think not,” said Graylock, under his breath.
Drene twisted the automatic, rose and continued to twirl it, considering. Presently he began to pace the floor, no longer noticing the other man. Once his promenade brought him up facing the wall where a calendar hung.
He stood for a while looking at it absently. After a few moments he stepped nearer, detached the sheet for the present month, then one by one tore off the remaining sheets until he came to the month marked December, Graylock watching him all the while.
“I think it happened on Christmas,” remarked Drene turning toward the other and laying a finger on the number 25 printed in red.
Graylock’s head bent slightly.
“Very well. Suppose about eleven o’clock on Christmas night you give your automatic a thorough cleaning.
“If you say so.”
“You have one?”
“I shall buy one.”
“Didn’t you come here armed?”
“No.”
Drene looked at him very intently. But Graylock had never been a liar. After a few moments he went over to his desk, replaced the weapon under the papers, and, still busy, said over his shoulder:
“All right. You can go.”
Hereafter keep clear of men like Graylock and like me. We’re both of a stripe—the same sort under our skins. I’ve known him all my life. It all depends upon the opportunity, the circumstances, and the woman. And, what is a woman between friends—between such friends as Graylock and I once were—or between the sort of friends we have now become? Keep clear of such men as we are. We were boys together.
For a week or two he kept his door locked and lived on what the janitor provided for him, never going out of the studio at all.
He did no work, although there were several unexecuted commissions awaiting his attention and a number of sketches, clay studies, and one marble standing around the studio in various stages of progress. The marble was the Annunciation. The head and throat and slender hands were completed, and one slim naked foot.
Sometimes he wandered from one study to the next, vague-eyed, standing for a long time before each, staring, lost in thought. Sometimes, in the evening he read, choosing a book at random among the motley collection in a corner case—a dusty, soiled assortment of books, ephemeral novels of the moment, ponderous volumes which are in everybody’s library but which nobody reads, sets of histories, memoirs, essays, beautifully bound and once cared for, but now dirty from neglect—jetsam from a wrecked home.
There had been a time when law, order and neatness formed the basis of Drene’s going forth and coming in. He had been exact, precise, fastidious; he had been sensitive to environment, a lover of beautiful things, a man who deeply appreciated any symbol that suggested home and hearth and family.
But when these three were shattered in the twinkling of an eye, something else broke, too. And he gradually emerged from chaos, indifferent to all that had formerly been a part of him, a silent emotionless, burnt out thing, callous to all that he had once cared for.
Yet something of what he had been must have remained latent within him for with unimpaired precision and logic he constructed his clay and chiseled his marble; and there must have been in him something to express, for the beauty of his work, spiritual and material, had set him high among the highest in his profession.
Sometimes sorrow changes the dross from the lamp of the spirit so that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears, rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is noble, hardening all that is ignoble; and is extinguished leaving a devil behind it—fully equipped to slay the crippled soul.
Alone in his studio at night, motionless in his chair, Drene was becoming aware of this devil. Reading by lamplight he grew conscious of it; recognized it as a companion of many years, now understanding that although pain had ended, hatred had remained, hiding, biding, and very, very quiet.
And suddenly this hatred had flamed like hell-fire, amazing even himself—that day when, lifted out of his indifference for an instant by a young girl’s gaiety—and with a smile, half-responsive, on his own unaccustomed lips, he had learned from her in the same instant, that the man he had almost ceased to remember was honestly in love with her.
And suddenly he knew that he hated and that he should strike, and that there could be no comparison in perfection between hatred and what perhaps was love.
Sometimes, at night, lying on the studio couch, he found himself still hesitating. Could Graylock be reached after death? Was it possible? If he broke his word after Graylock was dead could he still strike and reach him through the woman for whose sake he, Graylock, was going to step out of things?
That occupied his mind continually, now. Was there anybody who could tell him about such matters? Did clergymen really know whether the soul survived? And if it did, and if truly there were a hell, could a living man add anything to its torments for his enemy’s benefit?
One day the janitor, lingering, ventured to ask Drene whether he was feeling quite well.
“Yes” said Drene, “I am well.”
The janitor spoke of his not eating. And, as Drene said nothing, he mentioned the fact that Drene had not set foot outside his own quarters in many weeks.
Drene nodded: “I expect to go for a walk this evening.”
But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness, wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days.
What were the nights of a condemned man like? Did Graylock sleep? Did he suffer? Was the suspense a living death to him? Had he ever suspected him, Drene, of treachery after he, Graylock, had fulfilled his final part of the bargain.
For a long time, now, a fierce curiosity concerning what Graylock was thinking and doing had possessed Drene. What does a man, who is in good physical health, do, when he is at liberty to compute to the very second how many seconds of life remain for him?
Drene’s sick brain ached with the problem day and night.
In November the snow fell. Drene had not been out except in imagination.
Day after day, in imagination, he had followed Graylock, night after night, slyly, stealthily, shirking after him through busy avenues at midday, lurking by shadowy houses at midnight, burning to see what expression this man wore, what was imprinted on his features;—obsessed by a desire to learn what he might be thinking—with death drawing nearer.
But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly room—a gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all day in his chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly across his couch at night staring at the stars through the dirty crust of glass above.
One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back at him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness following his enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.
For a while he lay very still, listening; but when he realized that the laughter was his own he sat up, pressing his temples between hot and trembling fingers.
It seemed to silence the laughter: terror subsided to a tremulous apprehension—as though he had been on the verge of something horrible sinking into it for a moment—but had escaped.
Again he found himself thinking of Graylock, and presently he laughed; then frightened, checked himself. But his fevered brain had been afire too long; he lay fighting with his thoughts to hold them in leash lest they slip out into the night like blood hounds on the trail of the man they had dogged so long.
Trembling, terrified, he set his teeth in his bleeding lip, and clenched his gaunt fists: He could not hold his thoughts in leash; could not control the terrifying laughter; hatred blazed like hell-fire scorching the soul in him, searing his aching brain with flames which destroy.
In the darkness he struggled blindly to his feet; and he saw the stars through the glass roof all ablaze in the midnight sky; saw the infernal flicker of pale flames in the obscurity around him, heard a voice calling for help—his own voice—
Then something stirred in the darkness; he listened, stared, striving to pierce the obscurity with fevered eyes.
Long since the cloths that swathed the clay figures in the studio had dried out unnoticed by him. He gazed from one to another, holding his breath. Then his eyes rested upon the altar piece, fell on the snowy foot, were lifted inch by inch along the marble folds upward slowly to the slim and child-like hands—
“Oh, God!” he whispered, knowing he had gone mad at last.
For, under the carven fingers, the marble folds of the robe over the heart were faintly glowing from some inward radiance. And, as he reeled forward and dropped at the altar foot, lifting his burning eyes, he saw the child-like head bend toward him from the slender neck—saw that the eyes were faintly blue—
“Mother of God!” he screamed, “my mind is dying—my mind is dying! ... We were boys, he and I.... Let God judge him.... Let him be judged... mercifully.... I am worse than he.... There is no hell. I have striven to fashion one—I have desired to send him thither—Mother of God—Cecile—”
Under his fevered eyes he was confusing them, now, and he sank down close against the pedestal and laid his f ace against her small cold foot.
“I am sick,” he rambled on—“and very tired.... We were boys together, Cecile.... When I am in my right mind I would not harm him.... He was so handsome and daring. There was nothing he dared not do.... So young, and straight, and daring.... I would not harm him. Or you, Cecile.... Only I am sick, burning out, with only a crippled mind left—from being badly hurt—It never got well. ... And now it is dying of its hurt—Cecile!—Mother of God!—before it dies I do forgive him—and ask forgiveness—for Christ’s sake—”
Toward noon the janitor broke in the door.