O'BYRN reeled to and fro, in fierce combat with Shaughnessy. Again and again, while his breath came in gasps and his temples throbbed with his efforts, he had nearly gained the advantage, but the boss as often slipped from his hold with an ugly sneer, eluding him. And now occurred a grisly thing, for before his horrified eyes his enemy's body suddenly lengthened and changed into a monstrous, writhing serpent, wriggling sinuously toward him. He strove to scream, but could not, and the creature coiled itself in triumph near him. Upreared above its horrid neck was the swaying head, the ghastly face of Shaughnessy, who leered with his black serpent's eyes and darted a forked tongue. Now the creature crawled sluggishly toward him—coiled its horrid folds about him—and he could not move. The last coil tightened above his neck, while he gazed upward, strangling, into dead, unwinking, awful eyes, the eyes of Shaughnessy. Now he was borne backward; the creature was shattering his head upon the floor. Thud!—thud!—thud!
O'Byrn fairly shot out of bed, groaning as the impact of his feet upon the floor sent a diabolical thrust of pain through his aching head. He pressed his temples convulsively and closed his eyes, blinded by the glare ofsunlight through the window. Why, what was that? Somebody was pounding insistently at his door. It was this which had awakened him.
"What is it?" he called.
His landlady answered him. "There's a telegram for you, Mr. O'Byrn. A young fellow just brought it in from the Courier office. He said they'd sent him right over here with it."
"Thanks," he mumbled indifferently. "Just shove it under the door, will you?"
A small yellow envelope was thrust beneath the portal, the woman's footsteps receded down the stairs. Inside his room stood O'Byrn with his splitting head between shaking hands, his bloodshot eyes closing in sheer physical misery. The meagre form in the flamboyant pajamas winced perceptibly as stabs of cruel pain continued to pierce Micky's temples. The freckled face went gray as the overwrought stomach writhed in sickening nausea.
It was with a long, shuddering sigh that he turned at last to his ablutions. He dressed mechanically, his memory groping through the mists of the preceding night, mists that reeked with misery, with shameful groveling, with manhood profaned.
Ah, God! he had fallen again, again! Numbly he glanced at the mirror. The glass reflected heavy, unnatural eyes in which despair brooded like a cloud, a haggard face from which the freckles stared strangely forth from unaccustomed pallor. Slowly, painfully, his mind wrestled with the problem of the night before, a night unreal, peopled with phantoms that gibbered and peered from enshrouding blackness.
Dominated by another's master will, had he indeed emerged through shadows to victory, or was the episode in the Courier office merely a grateful, fleeting dream to accentuate the misery of waking? O'Byrn looked at his watch, it marked the hour of two. He had slept long, it seemed. How had he reached home, had he been in the Courier office at all the previous night?
However, what mattered it? What mattered anything in the shadow of this appalling thing which mastered him, which dogged him in times of fancied security, only to spring upon him unaware and rend him, leaving him sorely wounded again to painfully traverse for a season the path of duty? What mattered anything to one whose stumbling steps laid hold on hell?
Seizing hat and coat O'Byrn started for the door. His downcast gaze fell upon the yellow envelope. Absently he stooped and dropped the message, unopened, into his coat pocket. The landlady met him at the foot of the stairs and inquired kindly if he would eat something. He replied only with a gesture of utter repugnance. She looked after him as he went out, shaking her head sadly.
O'Byrn stumbled blindly out upon the street, blurred eyes blinking in dazzling sunshine of an ideal Indian summer afternoon. The warm, fragrant air was incense to the nostrils, the sky was of a heavenly blue. Micky closed miserable eyes to the glories of the day. The villainous old feelings, so well remembered, racked him cruelly. The odd depression which always followed his indulgence was bad enough, but now—
A dumb terror seized him. He hurried up the quiet street toward a busier thoroughfare, his ears strainedfor the cries of newsboys, even as the spirit within him grew sick for fear of disappointment.
In another moment his shoulders squared, his red head lifted with assurance in part renewed. For he could now see a thronged street; from afar he could fairly snuff the air of unwonted excitement. Now he beheld newsboys running here and there with early editions of the evening papers, their wares disappearing fast as April snows. The burden of their shrill cries was the exposure of the gang, with "follow-up" details upon the Courier's story. O'Byrn drew a long breath of relief.
Well, he should now be communicating with the office. He looked longingly toward a saloon. Throat and mouth were parched dry as desert sands. Resolutely turning away, he entered a drug store instead, purchased a bromide and then stepped into a telephone booth.
Securing Harkins' ear at the Courier office, he told the city editor that he felt pretty "shaky," and inquired if he were needed there. Harkins replied that it was expected he would rest for a couple of days and added some warm congratulatory words. O'Byrn thanked him, and with a bitter smile, hung up the receiver.
Stepping into a tobacco store he purchased some cigars, and as he handed the salesman a coin he remembered that he had not drawn his salary, due the day before. Walking to the Courier's business office he secured his money, accepting, with an odd indifference, the congratulations of some fellow employes there upon his brilliant coup.
Next, although at the moment he could not have told just why, he stopped at the bank where, through the influenceof a warm dream near his heart, he had been of late depositing a portion of his wages each week, and called for his money. Placing the little bundle of bills carefully in his pocket book, he left the building and sauntered slowly down the crowded street.
Everything told of a triumph which it seemed should have had the little Irishman walking upon air. Everything pointed to as impressive a climax as he could have wished. Everywhere were knots of excited men, with strident voices and brandished fists. The clubs and hotels were teeming with the story, the curbs proclaimed it. Newsboys were reaping harvests and the news stands could hardly supply the hungry demand.
Public opinion, at first stunned by the sensational exposure of a system of wholesale corruption well nigh unbelievable, was gathering force like a mighty, overwhelming wave, which was to sweep down in vengeance upon the trembling, illicit crew, now leaderless. This, however, was not yet known, nor was it destined to become so until the evening. There would be another rich morsel for the Courier in the early morning, though none knew it now.
Shaughnessy had been wont to live in seclusion that was undisturbed save when he was minded to summon one or another of his crew. His lodgings occupied the upper floor of a small, two-story building, with unpretentious stores below, and few ascended the stairs that had not business with Shaughnessy and been called thither. Also, the boss had invariably taken his meals outside and so managed in all respects that once in his retreat, when he so willed, he was in unbroken seclusion.
So it transpired that Shaughnessy, limp in the chairbefore the desk in his den, sat in grisly silence through the long night till the dawn which heralded his exposure; sat through the long day, with the sun's rays beating through the window upon his glazed, unwinking eyes; sat quietly, while men throughout the city cursed him for the masterly knave he had been, conferring together in plans of futile reprisal. So he sat, deaf, unheeding, beyond it all; while some men watched others whom they thought harbored him and others thought him gone.
And so he was—to a far country, where they could not follow him. Even now, as he sat waiting for them, there was a sardonic look about his grim, relaxed jaws which might tell them, when they were finally come—summoned through the veriest accident to get him—that they were welcome to what was left.
As O'Byrn walked along the crowded street, he passed some members of the gang, hurrying by with white faces and furtive eyes, cringing in the glare of publicity as if a lash bit deep into quivering flesh. Others he met who affected an exaggerated boldness which failed to hide their uneasiness. Some who knew O'Byrn shot glances at him that were white-hot with hate, one breathed a livid curse as they touched elbows.
To all the tumult, the strident clamor of indignation, the scurrying hither and yon of scared, branded rats of men, O'Byrn remained curiously indifferent. As during his dictation of the previous night, he proceeded as if in a maze, with the air of a sleep walker, gaze dead ahead; no triumph in the eyes, only infinite weariness.
For O'Byrn was confronted by the merciless logic of his fate, feeling the strangling grip of the enemy upon his soul. At times like these there was given him cruelrealization at its full, the grim, prophetic knowledge that he must fight a losing battle to the end. Without knowing the source, he recognized the deadly taint of heredity in his blood. A hard road was his to travel, and—supremest sacrifice!—now he knew that in simple justice he must pursue it—alone. And the winds are bleak that howl about a solitary way.
So, on this beautiful autumn afternoon, walking in the midst of a public upheaval which he had produced, the cup of success held only bitter lees. Face to face with inevitable renunciation of his dearest hope, the present moment held no thrill. There was no rose, only the pallid gray; wan, cold ashes of endeavor. Through this damning thing he was doomed to walk alone in arid places, a soul cut off from Israel.
A voice hailed him, recalling him to pulsing actualities. It was that of Mead, his fellow-worker upon the staff of the Courier.
"Hello!" remarked Mead, shaking O'Byrn's hand. "Great story! You've won that bet, all right."
"What bet?" returned Micky, listlessly.
"Why, that Santa Claus bet about Shaughnessy," rejoined the other, producing a ten dollar bill. "You know, in the lunch room that time; that he'd get his. Well, you're a wizard and here you are. It's a little early, but Boynton's grave is waitin'. Don't be bashful. I've made twice the stuff already with outside specials on your story. Thought I'd pay you right up, maybe you could use it."
"Thanks, Mead," replied Micky, wearily. "Why, yes, I can use it."
"They're holdin' a pow-wow at the office," pursuedMead. "Harkins, he's walkin' on air. Everyone's speculatin' on how much they'll boost your pay. Wish I'd get half of it. But I'm a dub. Say, Glenwood's out of town. They sent him off on something growin' out of your yarn."
"Sorry he's gone," replied Micky, moving on. "Give him my regards. So long, Mead."
"Ain't he the foolish frost?" wondered Mead, staring curiously after the Irishman. "Doesn't seem to give a damn. Worryin' over his bat, likely. Why, bat or no bat, if I'd turned out that story, I'd—but I couldn't. Switch off!" He shook his head mournfully as he hurried up the street.
O'Byrn proceeded to the writing room of a hotel where he penned three notes, sealed and stamped the envelopes, and slipped them into his pocket. Returning to the street he walked to the corner, stared absently about for a moment and then boarded a street car, harbor bound.
A little later he sat upon the edge of the wharves, his feet dangling above the restless surface of the waters. The workaday bustle and confusion, the shrill cries of roustabouts mingling with the thumping din of manhandled freight, the clatter of trucks, the tramp of countless feet, the shrieks of whistles and hoarse growl of gongs; all these were as if they had not been to a mind capable of such absorption that it could, did occasion demand, work undisturbed in the thunderous roar of a rolling mill.
So the lonely, meagre figure rested motionless in the midst of unrealized tumult, the sombre eyes gazed past the vessels thronging the waterway to some dim goal far beyond the humming ken of commerce, straight intothe realm of dreams. The ears drank in only the murmur of lazy waters whispering about the piers in the wash of a falling tide, bearing the message of the sea.
The message of the sea! Softly low, like the love note of a mother, it whispered to the alien brooding spirit, whispered of spindrift whipped to showers of briny spray in the sweep of unleashed winds, whispered of illimitable, splendid unrest. Out beyond the land-locked haven of the ships the great waves rolled league on league, in unfettered freedom, to annoint the feet of a far world.
Low in the west, the sun crimsoned the distant sky line and tinged with rose the gray of wan, far-flung billows. The balm of a soft breeze, instinct with the latent fragrance of the passing year, breathed over the tossing waters of the harbor, lately rent by a strong wind, and lulled them to cradled peace. High overhead a flock of gulls wheeled with harsh cries, winging straight out to the sky line of gray and rose that hemmed the sweep of the restless sea.
Mechanically the man on the wharf rose to his feet, standing with hands in his coat pockets, watching the soaring gulls. Like the wind they flew, straight out to the rose and gray and beyond, white specks swallowed in the mists of distance. Even yet the eyes of the man's mind followed them, atoms that swooped triumphantly into the teeth of stinging winds; atoms fiercely clamorous, mad with the mere ecstasy of life, with wild, aimless wandering, the zest of battle with wind and wave.
O'Byrn drew a long, shuddering breath. It had gripped him again, this compelling ghost that could neverbe laid for long. In his eyes blazed the old, restless light, the wild will-o'-the-wisp which lures the born wanderer the wide world over in erratic flight till set o' sun. His tired brain, his sick heart, alike craved the old nepenthe of unrest.
Reborn of the whispered message of wide-flung tides, the sight of the screaming gulls, the old longing of his nature sought vent in a strident inward cry. Once more, bringing the sharp, exquisite pain he feared, yet loved, the lash came hurtling out of the unknown, driving him on to new scenes that all too soon were old, to dream houses built on crumbling sands. The strange light of his eyes grew brighter, the wine of quickened wanderlust mounted in deepening glow upward to heart and brain.
O'Byrn became conscious of a small, square object in his pocket. Absently he drew forth a yellow envelope. Tearing it open he read the message. With eyes darkened with concentration he read it again. A little later he walked into a telegraph office.
NIGHT had fallen, the lights of the city flared under a calm clear sky that was studded with stars. A soft wind from the south had worked its will, the night was warmer than had been the day. The air was fragrant with the mystic scent of Indian summer, of green things in fields and forests, the land over, that were changing to rose and gold ere the pitiful withering to shriveled gray.
Through a quiet street leading toward Mulberry Avenue walked a man, haggard of face, misty of eye. He was a small man, almost a youth, of meagre frame and rather pronounced garb. He carried a rusty satchel, grimy and battered, like the scarred veteran of a long and strenuous campaign.
Now he was passing a dusky corner; one he had good cause to remember, but his thoughts were far away. So he failed to associate the low, two-story building with the significant words of the scared woman, frowsy and unkempt, who clattered down the stairs and across the walk, halting and startling him.
"Mercy o' God, sir, what'll I do?" she cried. "He's dead, sir, a-sittin' in his chair. Sure, I do his work for him an' I went over to see when he'd want me agin an' the door was open—I lit a light to see what was the matter—Ah! the dead, white, grinnin' face of him!—an' what'll I do?" She wrung her hands.
He had listened impatiently—what concern was it of his? "Policeman on the corner," he told her, with a backward jerk of his thumb. The charwoman ran toward the approaching officer. O'Byrn passed on, dismissing the incident instantly from his pre-occupied mind. He was done forever with the affairs of his unknown father.
A little later he paused at a corner intersecting Mulberry Avenue and set his satchel upon the curb. He gazed down the street toward the dim outlines of an humble frame house, a solitary light shining from a lower window. Long he stood silently regarding the little dwelling.
Then slowly from his pocket he drew three letters which he had written at a hotel hours before. In the wavering radiance of an adjacent electric light he scanned the addresses upon the envelopes. He stepped to a nearby letter box and consigned to it the notes prepared for Harkins and Glenwood. The third he held hesitantly for a moment, regarding it through a briny mist. So this was the end—the miserable, heart-breaking end. It was now for him the long road—alone.
"Micky!"
Swiftly he wheeled, his face alight with a trembling incredulity of joy. His startled eyes looked straight into hers that were mystically dark in the night shadows intruding upon the shimmering arc from the street lamp nearby. Dressed simply in coat and gown of the brown hue he liked so well, with a hat of the same shade, she made a picture to rest his wearied eyes.
"It's good to see you, girlie," he exclaimed, a break inhis voice. "But it isn't wise, is it, when you're just over being so ill? Where have you been?"
"Only walking about, Micky. You know I grew stronger real fast. Don't you know, you were surprised to find me so much better? I've been about the house for a week, even helped mother a little the last two or three days. And tonight I couldn't rest indoors, somehow, I had to be out in this glorious air. You needn't scowl that way, I had the doctor's permission this afternoon to go out if I wanted to. Today I've heard of nothing but your story. It was grand work, Micky."
"Don't, girlie!" His tone was as if she had struck him.
One little white hand touched his arm. With quick divination her searching look read the tale told in his drawn face, in the sight of the satchel upon the curb, the letter in his hand. She gently took it from him.
"For me?"
He nodded, he could not have spoken just then. He swallowed hard while his eyes hungrily devoured the rare, fair sight of her, the slightly sharpened outlines of her lovely face, the pallor that was the heritage of illness, the sweetness of her eyes.
His letter in her hand, she moved a little away from him, then turned and walked to the curb. She rent the envelope straight across, and tearing the residue into tiny fragments, tossed the pieces like snowflakes upon the pavement. Retracing her steps, she confronted O'Byrn.
"Tell me all about it," she suggested, very gently.
With a low, bitter cry he clasped her little hand in both his own, stammering that he was unfit, that there wasanother blot, a repetition of the old, wretched story. She understood, and there was only a low exclamation of sympathy as she looked into his tortured face with eyes that were wonderful with forgiveness and love. For she had known instinctively long since that it must always be so, and with her woman's devotion, had resolved to help him, notwithstanding, to the end.
"What did I tell you once, dear?" she asked him low. "It's for you to always try, Micky, and what credit's for those who don't have to try? You have tried, my boy, and you must keep on trying—for my sake. Remember, dear, you can never fail while you try—and it's trying—it's trying that brings us—where dreams—where dreams—come—true."
The low voice was lost in a stifled sob. Her little hands, her poor, thin hands, sought her face. The tears trickled from between her clasped fingers.
Miserably he sought gently to draw her hands from her wet eyes. "Don't cry, Maisie," he begged, fighting with his constricted throat, winking blurred eyes. "Why do you? It—it kills me!"
A solitary pedestrian, passing upon the opposite side of the quiet street, gazed at them curiously, without pausing. Neither of them noticed him and he disappeared around a corner. Meanwhile, eyes searched eyes; presently O'Byrn's turned away. They held so much of the desolation and shame of his soul, hers only love.
"Why do I cry?" she questioned sadly. "Do you remember a night—it seems so long ago!—when you asked me that? Do you need to ask me again? Only now it is so different, so—so horrible. God help me! then it wasthe beginning, now you mean it for the end. You are going away?"
"Yes." She could scarcely hear the word.
"Why?"
He turned upon her a face she scarcely knew, in which warred fiercely the stormy elements of his strangely complex nature. Mingling oddly with a numb, gray misery, there was something else, a troubled light like a clouded dawn. Full in the radiance from the street lamp, his eyes burned with the fire lighted from the dying, crimson embers of an autumn sunset upon a hearth of gray, and behind the flame brooded the deep shadows of despair. His voice was bitterly harsh, dissonant; a challenge to tearing winds and thunderous seas of life, like the wild note of the winging gulls.
"Why? Why not? Girl, I'm down again, I'm not fit to touch you. I've just told you. This thing was born with me, it'll die with me—I hope. If I've got to carry it—beyond—I pray God will snuff out my soul—like a candle! Can't you see it's the only way? To go—alone,—to bear it—alone,—to fight—alone,—to lie down—alone,—at the end of the long road!"
"You leave tonight?"
"Yes, dear."
"Where are you going?"
"Oh, I'm not tramping, not this time," he answered wearily. "The letters I've just mailed are for Harkins and Glenwood. I've told them I'm sorry, and God knows I mean it. But the old fever is burning my brain, girl. I've stayed my stay here. I've gone down twice and it's too much. I've lost the right to inflict myself further on the town. If I stayed it would mean better things forme on the paper, but I can't stay. It's queer—you can't understand it—I can't myself,—but the time has come and I must be moving. It's the old voice calling. This afternoon I was looking out over the harbor—that old something came rushing out of nowhere and took me by the neck—sometimes I think I'm crazy. I put my hand in my pocket, there was a message I hadn't opened. I'm called to Denver—an old associate—something bigger than I've ever had. They're in a hurry. I wired them I'd leave tonight. I'll be with them for a while, then the trail once more."
He told it wholly without animation, the fruits of success as ashes upon his lips, only a dull hopelessness in his haggard face as he looked full in renunciation of her.
She moved a little nearer him, eyes holding his own in solemn questioning.
"What did it say—the letter—out there?" She waved her hand toward the pavement.
"What I have just told you—that I loved you too much to drag you through—what I will have to bear. I begged you to forgive—and forget—a cur."
"Micky,—do you want—to go—alone?"
He had to bend his head to catch the whispered words, though the beautiful eyes gazed in divine fearlessness straight into his own, searching his shadowed, storm-swept soul. A breathless moment his brain groped for her meaning, grasped it with incredulous joy. The hot blood pounded in his veins, his eyes implored while fearing her.
"Oh, girl, you don't mean—Ah, you don't know what you're saying. No! I'm a dog—a dog—I'm not fit—"
Their hands entwined, her clasp tightened upon his trembling fingers. His halting words died in his throat, he only watched her mutely, his face a queer mixture of misery and joy. Her wet eyes, twin load-stars lighting the path to Eden, smiled into his own.
"Listen!" she said. "Where you go—I'll go—whatever comes—I'm with you—clear to the white stone and the cross—and beyond—for _I love you—I love you_!"
He reeled where he stood. Ah, this love of woman, this grace of the gray world that makes for the glory of God!
For wistful thought of her he sought still to put her from him, weakly tried while every fibre of his being called for her who was always to rule his warm heart, whatever the vagaries of his foolish head.
"It's a long road—a road rainy with tears—you must travel with me."
"I love you."
There grew in her low tone an odd, wondering exaltation, as if through the domination of his vagabond personality, something heretofore sleeping in her soul woke and stretched its wings, longing for freedom, for the riot of mad winds and tumbling seas.
"There's not a soul near to you that won't grieve for you—with me. Not because I want it so, but because it was meant to be, it'll be gray skies, it'll be often an aching heart; it'll be from pillar to post, now here, now yonder; sometimes it will be—in hell—with me."
"I love you."
Now her tone held in its full the divine finality of choice, for weal or woe. Gravely sweet, solemn with the sublimity of unselfish consecration, it told many thingsto the man who stood finally silenced and overwhelmed, clasping her in reverent arms close to his lonely heart. It told of gardens flowering in deserts, of splendid heights beyond that pierced the blue. It told him of the white grace of self sacrifice, of God-sent, sustaining hands. And finally it told of calm after storm, of the haven under the hill, of ultimate and abiding peace at the end of the long road, where dreams come true.
Transcriber's Note:Punctuation has been standardised. Alternatives have been retained for débris/debris near-by/nearby. Spelling and punctuation has been retained as it appears in the original publication except as follows:Page 11no bettter judgedchanged tonobetterjudgedPage 32stunt or it 'llchanged tostunt orit'llPage 63heavy-lided eyeschanged toheavy-liddedeyesPage 79you think Shaugnessy 'll getchanged toyou thinkShaughnessy'llgetPage 99CHAPTR Xchanged toCHAPTERXPage 107wearied of such an excresencechanged towearied of such anexcrescencePage 119sh'an't whine or excusechanged tosha'n'twhine or excusePage 131Judge Boynton 'll winchanged toJudgeBoynton'llwinPage 139Tain't good for youchanged to'Tain'tgood for youPage 140leisurely away O'Byrn hailedchanged toleisurelyaway.O'Byrn hailedPage 153Is is Consolidated Gaschanged toIsitConsolidated GasPage 153'T won't be safechanged to'Twon'tbe safePage 155posibilities; it remainedchanged topossibilities; it remainedPage 171whispered Slade, "and proceededchanged towhispered Slade,andproceededPage 182period of quiesencechanged toperiod ofquiescencePage 195said a gruff voice, we're therechanged tosaid a gruff voice,"we'retherePage 210he was a chip of the old blockchanged tohe was a chipoffthe old blockPage 216solution of strychininechanged tosolution ofstrychnine
Transcriber's Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Alternatives have been retained for débris/debris near-by/nearby. Spelling and punctuation has been retained as it appears in the original publication except as follows:
Page 11no bettter judgedchanged tonobetterjudged
Page 32stunt or it 'llchanged tostunt orit'll
Page 63heavy-lided eyeschanged toheavy-liddedeyes
Page 79you think Shaugnessy 'll getchanged toyou thinkShaughnessy'llget
Page 99CHAPTR Xchanged toCHAPTERX
Page 107wearied of such an excresencechanged towearied of such anexcrescence
Page 119sh'an't whine or excusechanged tosha'n'twhine or excuse
Page 131Judge Boynton 'll winchanged toJudgeBoynton'llwin
Page 139Tain't good for youchanged to'Tain'tgood for you
Page 140leisurely away O'Byrn hailedchanged toleisurelyaway.O'Byrn hailed
Page 153Is is Consolidated Gaschanged toIsitConsolidated Gas
Page 153'T won't be safechanged to'Twon'tbe safe
Page 155posibilities; it remainedchanged topossibilities; it remained
Page 171whispered Slade, "and proceededchanged towhispered Slade,andproceeded
Page 182period of quiesencechanged toperiod ofquiescence
Page 195said a gruff voice, we're therechanged tosaid a gruff voice,"we'rethere
Page 210he was a chip of the old blockchanged tohe was a chipoffthe old block
Page 216solution of strychininechanged tosolution ofstrychnine