BUT there was no trace of gayety in the excited and subdued tones in which, later, she called him into the hothouse. He found her bending tense with emotion over the row of plants upon whose flowering such incalculable things depended. “Look!” she cried, taking his hand and drawing him down over the green shoots, where his cheek brushed her hair, where he felt the warm stir of her breathing. “Look! they are in full bud, to-morrow they will burst open.” She straightened up, his hand still held in hers, and a shadow fell upon her vivid countenance. “If his reasoning is wrong, this experiment... like all the others, it will kill him. Theymustbe white, it would be too cruel, too senseless not. I am afraid,” she said simply; “nature is so terrible, a Juggernaut, crushing everything to dust beneath its wheeling centuries. I am glad that you are here, Anthony.” She drew closer to him; her breast swelled in a sharp, tempestuous breath.
“I have been lonelier than I—I realized. I am dreadfully worried about father. They have lied to me; things are worse, I can see that. You have to dress him like a child; I know how considerate you are; you are bright, new gold with the clearest ring in the world.
“We must get a real chauffeur; you have never been that... in my thoughts. You know,” she laughed happily, “I said in the beginning that you were a miserable affair in details of that kind.”
A feeling of guilt rose swiftly within him, which, unwilling to acknowledge, he strove to beat down from his thoughts. But, above his endeavor, grew the clear conviction that he should immediately tell Annot his purpose in driving Rufus Hardinge's car. He must not victimize her generosity, nor take profit from the friendship she offered him so unreservedly. He was dimly conscious that the revelation of his design would end the pleasant intimacy growing up between them; the mere mention of Eliza must destroy their happy relations; girls, even Annot, were like that.
He wondered, suddenly cold, if this spelled disloyalty to Eliza! but he angrily refuted that whispered insinuation. His love for Eliza was as un-assailably above all other considerations as she herself shone starlike over a petty, stumbling humanity. White and withdrawn and fine she inhabited the skies of his aspirations. He endeavored now to capture her in his imagination, his memory; and she smiled at him palely, as from a very great distance. He realized that in the past few days he had not had that subtle sense of her nearness, he had not been conscious of that drifting odor of lilacs; and suddenly he felt impoverished, alone.
Annot smiled, warm and near.
“You are awfully kind,” he temporized; “but hadn't we better let the thing stand as it is? You see—I want money.”
“But you may have that now; whatever you want.”
“No. You are so good, it's hard to explain—I want money that I earn; real money; I couldn't think of taking any other from you.”
“Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that sort of tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's father's to use as he likes.”
“But I must give him something for it—”
“Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?” she interrupted him warmly; “you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he did that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness—” she shook her head mournfully. “I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know the value of your innocent charms.” Anthony stood with a lowered head, floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished.
HE slept uneasily, and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, and an unaccountable sense of something gone wrong. He dressed hurriedly, and had opened his door, when he heard his name called from below. It was Annot, he knew, but her voice was strange, terrified—a helpless cry new to her accustomed poise. “Anthony! Anthony!” she called from the conservatory.
Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in bed, was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering they had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw that they had blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals—some pale lavender, others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow wrap was thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and her hair hung in a tangle about her blanched face.
When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun streamed over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue tickets tied to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world of leaves without. “It's all wrong,” she sobbed.
“So!” the biologist finally said with a wry smile; “you see that I have not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced.”
With a sudden and violent movement for which they were entirely unprepared he swept the row of plants crashing upon the floor; where, in a scattered heap of brown loam, broken pottery, smeared bloom, their tenuous, pallid roots quivered in air. “Games with plants and animals and bones for elderly children; riddles without answer... blind ways.” His expression grew furtive, cunning. “I have been trifled with,” he declared, “I have been deliberately misled; but I desire to say that I see through—through Him: I comprehend His little joke. It's in bad taste... to leave a soul in the dark, blundering about in the cellar with the table spread above. But in the end I was not completely bamboozled. He was not quick enough... the hem of His garment.
“Your mother saw Him clear. She was considered beautiful, but beauty's a vague term. Perhaps if I saw her now it would be clearer to me. But I'll tell you His little joke,” he lowered his voice confidentially—“it's all true—that apocalyptical heaven; there's a big book, trumpets, angels all complete singing Gregorian chants. What a sell!” He laughed, a gritty, mirthless performance.
“Come up to your room, father,” Annot urged; “his arm, Anthony.” Anthony placed his hand gently upon the biologist's shoulder, but the latter wrenched himself free. Suddenly with a choked cry and arms swinging like flails he launched himself upon the orderly plants. Before he could be stopped row upon row splintered on the floor; he fought, struggled with them as though they were animate opponents, cursed them in a high, raving voice. Anthony quickly lifted him, pinning his arms to his sides. Annot had turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Rufus Hardinge's struggling unexpectedly ceased, his countenance regained completely its habitual quietude. “I shall begin once more, at the beginning,” he whispered infinitely wistful. “The little ray of light... germ of understanding. The scientific problem of the future,” his speech became labored, thick, “scientific... future. Other avenue of progress:
“Gentlemen, the Royal Society, a paper on, on—Tears, gentlemen... not only automatic,” his voice sank to a mere incomprehensible babble. Anthony carried him to his bed, while Annot telephoned for the neurologist.
After the specialist had gone Annot came in to where Anthony waited in the study. Her feet were thrust in the Turkish slippers, her hair twisted into a hasty knot, but otherwise she had not changed. She came swiftly, with pale lips and eyes brilliantly shining from dark hollows, to his side. “His wonderful brain is dead,” she told him. “Professor Jamison thinks there will be only a few empty years to the end. But actually it's all over.” In a manner utterly incomprehensible to him she was crying softly in his arms.
He must lead her to a chair, he told himself, release her at once. Yet she remained with her warm, young body pressed against him, the circle of her arms about his neck, her tears wet upon his cheek. He stepped back, but she would have fallen if he had not continued to support her. His brain whirled under the assault, the surrender, of her dynamic youth. Their mouths met; were bruised in kissing.
HE stood with bowed shoulders, twisting lips; and, after a momentary pause, she fled from the room. Cold waves of self-hatred flowed over him—he had taken a despicable advantage of her grief. The pleasant fabric of the past, unthinking days, the new materialism with its comfortable freedom from restraint, crumbled from an old, old skeleton whose moldering lines spelled the death of all—his heart knew—that was high, desirable, immaculate. He wondered if, like Rufus Hardinge, his understanding had come too late. But, in the re-surge of his adoration for Eliza, infinitely more beautiful and serene from the pit out of which he sped his vision, he was possessed by the conviction that nothing created nor void should extinguish the bright flame of his passion, hold them separate.
In the midst of his turmoil he recalled Eliza with relief, with delight, with tumultuous longing. He soared on the wings of his ecstasy; but descended abruptly to the practical necessities which confronted him. He must leave the Hardinges immediately; with a swift touch of the humorous spirit native to him, he realized that again he would be without money. Then more seriously he considered his coming interview with Annot.
The house was charged with the vague unrest, the strange aspect of familiar things, wrought by serious illness. Luncheon was disorganized, Annot was late. She was pale, but, under an obvious concern, she radiated a suppressed content. She laid a letter before Anthony. “Registered,” she told him. “I signed.” It was, he saw, from his father, and he slipped it into his pocket, intent upon the explanation which lay before him. It would be more difficult even than he had anticipated: Annot spoke of the near prospect of a Mediterranean trip, if Rufus Hardinge rallied sufficiently. “He is as contented and gentle as a nice old lady,” she reported; then, with a subtle expansion of manner, “it will be such fun—I shall take you by the hand, 'This, my good infant, is one of Virgil's final resting places....'”
“That would be splendid,” he acknowledged, “but I'm afraid that I sha'n't be able to go. The fact is that—that I had better leave you. I can't take your money for... for....”
She glanced at him swiftly, under the shadow of a frown, then shook her head at him. “That tiresome money again! It's a strange thing for you to insist on; material considerations are ordinarily as far as possible from your thoughts. I forbid you absolutely to mention it again; every time you do I shall punish you—I shall present you with a humiliating gold piece in person.”
“I should be all kinds of a trimmer to take advantage of your goodness. No, I must go—” The gay warmth evaporated from her countenance as abruptly as though it had been congealed in a sudden icy breath; she sat motionless, upright, enveloping him in the bright resentment of her gaze.
“And I must ask you to forgive me for... for this morning,” he stumbled hastily on.
The resentment burned into a clear flame of angry contempt. “'For this morning!' because I kissed you?”
He made a vehement gesture of denial. “Oh, no!” But she would not allow him to finish. “But I did,” she announced in a hard, determined voice. “It isn't necessary for you to be polite; I don't care a damn for that sickening sort of thing. I did, and you are properly and modestly retreating. I believe that you think I am—'designing,' isn't that the word? that you might have to marry me. A kiss, I am to realize, is something sacred. Bah! you make me ill, like almost everything else in life.
“If you think for a minute that it was anything more than the expression of a passing impulse you are beyond words. And, if it had been more, you—you violet, I wouldn't marry you; I wouldn't marry any man, ever! ever! ever! I might have gone to Italy with you, but probably come home with some one else—will that get into your pretty prejudices?”
“If you had gone to Italy with me,” he declared sullenly, “you would never have come home with anybody else.”
“That sort of thing has been dismissed to the smaller rural towns and the cheap melodramas; it's no longer considered elevated to talk like that, but only pitiful. You will start next on 'God's noblest creation,' and purity, and the females of your family. Don't you know, haven't you been told, that the primitive religious rubbish about marriage has been laughed out of existence? Did you dream that I wanted tokeepyou? or that I would allow you to keep me after the thing had got stale? It makes me cold all over to be so frightfully misunderstood. Oh, its unthinkable! Fi, to kiss you! wasn't it loose of me?”
Her contemptuous periods stung him in a thousand minute places. “I told you,” he retorted hotly, “that I wanted to make money; I don't want it given to me; it's for my wedding.”
“Of course, how stupid of me not to have guessed—the lips sacred to her,” her own trembled ever so slightly, but her scornful attitude, her direct, bright gaze, were maintained, “A knight errant adventuring for a village queen with her handkerchief in his sleeve and tempted by the inevitable Kundry.”
He settled himself to weathering this feminine storm; he owed her all the relief to be found in words. “I wanted the money to go West,” he particularized further. “There's a position waiting for me—”
“It's all very chaste,” she told him, “but terribly commonplace. I think that I don't care to hear the details.” She addressed herself to what remained of the luncheon. “Have some more sauce,” she advised coolly, then rang. “The pudding, Jane,” she directed.
“You have been wonderfully kind—” he began. But she halted him abruptly. “We'll drop all that,” she pronounced, and deliberately lit a cigarette.
A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she was extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous a spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment, would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible that she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him.
“You will be wanting to leave,” she said, rising; “—whenever you like. I have written for a—a chauffeur. I think you should have, it's twenty-five dollars, isn't it?”
“Not twenty-five cents,” he returned.
“I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities.” She left the room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining, coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage.
IN his room he assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge had discovered him, preparatory to changing from his present more elaborate garb, but a sudden realization of the triviality of that course, born of the memory of Annot's broad disposition, halted him midway. Making a hasty bundle of his personal belongings he descended from the tower room. Through an open door he could see the still, white face of the biologist looming from a pillow, and the trim form of a nurse.
Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's coffee-colored wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title in French. He paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first view of the four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored paint, the grey, dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with yellow silk stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which divided it all from the present: its significance faded, its solidity dissolved, dropped behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He turned, obsessed by the old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the feeling that all time, all energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain that did not lead directly to——
A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with a rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: heheardher, the little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable thrill which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand hovering above his shoulder; her fingersmustdescend, rest warmly.... God! how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the low stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved perspective of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, miserable. He had never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant potency had never before so mocked his hungering nerves.
Then, with the cold chilling him like a breath from an icy vault, he heard her, beyond all question, beyond all doubt:
“Anthony!” she called. “Anthony!” From somewhere ahead of him her tones sounded thin and clear; they seemed to reach him dropping from a window, lingering, neither grave nor gay, but tenderly secure, upon his hearing. He broke into a clattering run over the bricks of the unremarkable street, but soon slowed awkwardly into a walk, jeering at his fancy, his laboring heart, his mad credulity. And then, drifting across his bewildered senses, came the illusive, the penetrating, the remembered odor of lilacs, like a whisper, a promise, a magic caress.
IT was with a puzzled frown that Anthony halted in the heart of the city and considered his present resources, his future, possible plans. He had three dollars and some small silver left from the Hardinges, and he regarded with skepticism the profession of chauffeur; he would rather adventure the heavier work of the garages. As the afternoon was far advanced he decided to defer his search until the following morning; and he was absorbed within the gaudy maw of a moving picture theater.
Later, he entered an elaborate maze of mirrors, where, apparently, a sheaf of Susannas unconsciously exhibited their diminishing, anatomical charms to a procession of elders advancing two by two through a perspective of sycamores.—At the bar, his glass of beer supported by two fried oysters, a sandwich and a saucer of salted almonds, he reflected upon the slough of sterility that had fastened upon his feet: something must be accomplished, decisive, immediate.
He was proceeding toward the entrance when the familiar aspect of a back brought him to a halt. The back moved, turned, and resolved into the features of Thomas Addington Meredith. The mutual, surprised recognition was followed by a greeting of friendly slaps, queries, the necessity for instant, additional beers, and they found a place at a small, polished table.
He was surprised to discover Tom Meredith the same foxy-faced boy he had left in Doctor Allhop's drugstore... it seemed to Anthony that an incalculable time had passed since the breaking of the bottles of perfume; he felt himself to be infinitely changed, older, and the other his junior by decades of experience and a vast accumulation of worldly knowledge, contact with men, women, and events. Tom's raiment did not seem so princely as it had aforetime; the ruby reputed to be the gift of a married woman, was obviously meretricious, the gold timepiece merely commonplace. But Anthony was unaffectedly glad to see him, to discuss homely, familiar topics, repeat affectionately the names of favorite localities, persons.
“I'm in a bonding house here,” Tom explained upon Anthony's query. “Nothing in Ellerton forme. What are you doing?”
“Nothing, until to-morrow, when I think I'll get something in one of the garages.” He thrust his hands negligently into his pockets, and came in contact with his father's forgotten letter. He opened it, gazing curiously at the words: “My dear Son,” when Tom, with an exclamation, bent and recovered a piece of yellow paper that had fallen from the envelope. “Is this all you think of these?” he demanded, placing a fifty dollar bill upon the table.
Anthony read the letter with growing incredulous wonder and joy. He looked up with burning cheeks at his companion. “Remember old Mrs. Bosbyshell?” he questioned in an eager voice. “I used to carry wood, do odd jobs, for her: well, she's dead, and left me—what do you think!—father says about forty-seven thousand dollars. It's there, waiting for me, in Ellerton.”
Suddenly he forgot Thomas Meredith, the glittering saloon, the diminishing perspective of Susannas—he saw Eliza smiling at him out of the dusk, with her arms full of white lilacs. With an unsteady pounding of his heart, a tightening of the throat, he realized that, miraculously, the happiness which he had imagined so far removed in the uncertain future had been brought to him now, to the immediate present. He could take a train at once and go to her. The waiting was over. The immeasurable joy that flooded him deepened to a great chord of happiness that vibrated highly through him. He folded the letter gravely, thoughtfully. It was but a few hours to Ellerton by train, he knew, but he doubted the possibility of a night connection to that sequestered town. He would go in the morning.
“Thomas,” he declared, “I am about to purchase you the best dinner that champagne can shoot into your debased middle. Oh, no, not here, but in a real place where you can catch your own fish and shoot a pheasant out of a painted tree.”
Thus pleasantly apostrophized that individual led Anthony to the Della Robbia room of an elaborate hostelry, where they studied thecarte de jouramid pink tiling and porphyry. There was a rosy flush of shaded lights over snowy linen in the long, high chamber, the subdued passage of waiters like silhouettes, low laughter, and a throbbing strain of violins falling from a balcony above their heads. They pondered nonchalantly the strange names, elaborate sauces; but were finally launched upon suave cocktails and clams. Anthony settled back into a glow of well-being, of the tranquillity that precedes an expected, secure joy. He saluted the champagne bucket by the table; when, suddenly, the necessity to speak of Eliza overcame him, he wished to hear her name pronounced by other lips... perhaps he would tell Tom all; he was the best of fellows....
“Are the Dreens home?” he asked negligently. “Have you seen Eliza Dreen about—you know with that soft, shiny hair?”
Thomas Meredith directed at him a glance of careless surprise. “Why,” he answered, “I thought you knew; it seemed to me she died before you left. Anyhow, it was about the same time, it must have been the next week. Pneumonia. This soup's great, Anthony.”
HE joy that had sung through Anthony shrunk into an intolerable pain like an icicle thrust into his heart; he swallowed convulsively a spoonful of soup, tasteless, scalding hot, and put the spoon down with a clatter. He half rose from the chair, with his arms extended, as if by that means he could ward off the terrible misfortune that had befallen him. Thomas Meredith, unaware of Anthony's drawn face, his staring gaze, continued to eat with gusto the unspeakable liquid, and the waiter uncorked the champagne with a soft explosion. The wine flowed bubbling into their glasses, and Tom held his aloft. “To your good luck,” he proclaimed, but set it down untouched at Anthony's pallor.
“What's the matter—sick? It's the beer and cocktail, it always does it.”
“It's not that,” Anthony said very distinctly.
His voice sounded to him like that of a third person. He was laboring to adjust the tumult within him to the fact of Eliza's death; he repeated half aloud the term “dead” and its whispered syllable seemed to fill the entire world, the sky, to echo ceaselessly in space. From the stringed instruments above came the refrain of a popular song; and, subconsciously, mechanically, he repeated the words aloud; when he heard his own voice he stopped as though a palm had been clapped upon his mouth.
“What is it?” Tom persisted; “don't discompose this historical banquet.” The waiter replaced the soup with fish, over which he spread a thick, yellow sauce. “Go on,” Anthony articulated, “go on—” he emptied his champagne glass at a gulp, and then a second. “Certainly a fresh quart,” his companion directed the waiter.
Eliza was dead! pneumonia. That, he told himself, was why she had not answered his letter, why, on the steps at Hydrangea House, Mrs. Dreen—hell! how could he think of such things? Eliza... dead, cold who warm had kissed him; Eliza, for whom all had been dreamed, planned, undertaken, dead; Eliza gone from him, gone out of the sun into the damned and horrible dirt. Tom, explaining him satisfactorily, devoted himself to the succession of dishes that flowed through the waiter's skillful hands, dishes that Anthony dimly recognized having ordered—surely years before. “You're drunk,” Thomas declared.
He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him from the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange antics at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent thinly the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, into a leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a silver platter that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp pile, which, with numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have fallen as he rose from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him stumbling but safely to the street.
“Don't start an ugly drunk,” Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too late. A great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell Eliza, but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent like a mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him from under the wheels of a truck. “Wait,” he panted, “I'm no Marathon runner, it's hotter'n Egypt.”
The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes, loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, out there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but he couldn't find her, nor bring her back—she was dead. He stopped to reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. “This is where I retire,” Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at “McCanns”?
He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had dared to rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all the august, all the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again he hurried on, leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an incomprehensible sentence.
He passed through an unsubstantial city of shadows, of sudden, clangoring sounds, of the blur of lights swaying in strings above his head, of unsteady luminous bubbles floating before him through ravines of gloom; bells rang loud and threatening, throats of brass bellowed. His head began to throb with a sudden pain, and the pain printed clearly on the bright suffering of his mind a stooping, dusty figure; leaden eyes, a grey face, peered into his own; slack lips mumbled the story of a boy dead long ago—Eliza, Eliza was dead—and of a red necktie, a Sunday suit; a fearful figure, a fearful story, from the low mutter of which he precipitantly fled. Other faces crowded his brain—Ellie with her cool, understanding look, his mother, his father frowning at him in assumed severity; he saw Mrs. Dreen, palely sweet in a starlit gloom. Then panic swept over him as he realized that he was unable, in a sudden freak of memory, to summon into that intimate gallery the countenance of Eliza. It was as though in disappearing from the corporeal world she had also vanished from the realm of his thoughts, of his longing. He paused, driving his nails into his palms, knotting his brow, in an agony of effort to visualize her. In vain. “I can't remember her,” he told an indistinct human form before him. “I can't remember her.”
A voice answered him, thin and surprisingly bitter. “When you are sober you will stop trying.”
And then he saw her once more, so vivid, so near, that he gave a sobbing exclamation of relief. “Don't,” he whispered, “not... lose again—” He forgot for the moment that she was dead, and put out a hand to touch her. Thin air. Then he recalled. He commenced his direct, aimless course, but a staggering weariness overcame him, the toylike progress grew slower, there were interruptions, convulsive starts.
AT the same time the haze lightened about him: he saw clearly his surroundings, the black, glittering windows of stores, the gleaming rails which bound the stone street. His hat was gone and he had long before lost the bundle that contained his linen. But the loss was of small moment now—he had money, a pocketful of it, and forty-seven thousand dollars waiting in Ellerton: his father was a scrupulous, truthful and exact man.
Eliza and he would have been immediately married, gone to a little green village, under a red mountain; Eliza would have worn the most beautiful dresses made by a parrot; but that, he recognized shrewdly, was an idiotic fancy—birds didn't make dresses. And now she was dead.
He entered a place of multitudinous mirrors reflecting a woman's flickering limbs, sly and bearded masculine faces, that somehow were vaguely familiar.
“Champagne!” he cried, against the bar.
“Your champagne'll come across in a schooner.”
But, impatiently, he shoved a handful of money into the zinc gutter. “Champagne!” he reiterated thickly. The barkeeper deduced four dollars and returned the balance. “Sink it,” he advised, “or you'll get it lifted on you.”
With the wine, the mist deepened once more about him; the ache—was it in his head or his heart?—grew duller. He had poured out a third glass when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and whirling suspiciously, he saw a uniform cap, a man's gaunt face and burning eyes.
“Brother,” the latter said, “brother, shall we leave this reeking sink, and go out together into God's night?”
Blinking, Anthony recognized the livery, the accents, of the Salvation Army. A sullen anger burned within him—this man was a sort of official connection of God's, who had killed Eliza. He smoothed out his face cunningly, moved obediently toward the other, and struck him viciously across the face. Pandemonium rose instantly about him, an incredible number of men appeared shouting, gesticulating, and formed in a ring of blurred, grinning faces. The jaw of the Salvation Army man was bright with blood, dark drops fell on his threadbare coat. His hand closed again on Anthony's shoulder.
“Strive, brother,” he cried. “The Mansion door is open.”
Anthony regarded him with insolent disdain. “Ought to be exposed,” he articulated, “whole thing... humbug. Isn't any such—such... Eliza's dead, ain't she?”
A ripple of merriment ran about the circle of loose, stained lips; the curious, ribald eyes glittered with cold mirth; the circle flattened with the pressure of those without, impatient for a better view. Anthony surveyed them with impotent fury, loathing, and they met his passionate anger with faces as stony, as inhuman, as cruel, carved masks. He heardhername, the name of the gracious and beautiful vision of his adoration, repeated in hoarse, in maculate, in gibing tones.
“She's dead,” he repeated sharply, as though that fact should impose silence on them; “you filthy curs!” But their approbation of the spectacle became only the more marked.
The Salvation Army man fastened his hectic gaze upon Anthony; he was, it was evident, unaware of the blood drying upon his face, of the throng about them. “There is no death,” he proclaimed. “There is no death!”
“But sheisdead,” Anthony insisted; “pneumonia... with green eyes and foggy hands.” They began an insane argument: Eliza was gone, Anthony reiterated, the other could not deny that she was lost to life, to the sun. He recalled statements of Rufus Hardinge's, crisp iconoclasms of Annot's, and fitted them into the patchwork of his labored speech. Texts were flung aloft like flags by the other; ringing sentences in the incomparable English of King James echoed about the walls, the bottles of the saloon and beat upon the throng, the blank hearts, the beery brains, of the spectators. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he orated, “for they... for they...”
THAT word—purity, rang like a gong in Anthony's thoughts: Eliza had emphasized it, questioning him. The term became inexplicably merged with Eliza into one shining whole—Eliza, purity; purity, Eliza. A swift impression of massed, white flowers swept before him, leaving a delicate and trailing fragrance. He had a vision of purity as something concrete, something which, like a priceless and fragile vase, he guarded in his hands. It had been a charge from her, a trust that he must keep unspotted, inviolable, that she would require—but she was gone, she was dead.
“... through the valley of the shadow,” the other cried.
She had left him; he stood alone, guarding a meaningless thing, useless as the money in his pocket.
A man with bare, corded arms and an apron, broke roughly through the circle; and with a hand on Anthony's back, a hand on the back of his opponent, urged them toward the door. “You'll have to take this outside,” he pronounced, “you're blocking the bar.”
An arm linked within Anthony's, and swung him aside. “Unavoidably detained by merest 'quaintance,” Thomas Meredith explained with ponderous exactitude. Unobserved, they found a place at the table they had occupied earlier in the evening. The latter ordered a fresh bottle, but was persuaded by Anthony to surrender the check which accompanied it.
A sudden hatred for the money that had come too late possessed him: if he had had the whole forty-seven thousand dollars there he would have torn it up, trampled upon it, flung it to the noisome corners of the saloon. It seemed to have become his for the express purpose of mocking at his sorrow, his loss. His hatred spread to include that purity, that virtue, which he had conceived of as something material, an actual possession.... That, at any rate, he might trample under foot, destroy, when and as it pleased him. Eliza was gone and all that was left was valueless. It had been, all unconsciously, dedicated to her; and now he desired to cast it into the mold that held her.
He fingered with a new care the sum in his pocket, an admirably comprehensive plan had occurred to him—he would bury them both, the money and purity, beneath the same indignity. Tom Meredith, he was certain, could direct his purpose to its fulfillment. Nor was he mistaken. The conversation almost immediately swung to the subject of girls, girls gracious, prodigal of their charms. They would sally forth presently and “see the town.” Tom loudly asseverated his knowledge of all the inmates of all the complacent quarters under the gas light. Before a cab was summoned Anthony stumbled mysteriously to the bar, returning with a square, paper-wrapped parcel.
“Port wine,” he ejaculated, “must have it... for a good time.”
ASEEMINGLY interminable ride followed, they rattled over rough stones, rolled with a clacking tire over asphalt. A smell unnamable, fulsome, corrupt, hung in Anthony's nostrils; the driver objurgated his horse in a desperate whisper; Tom's head fell from side to side on his breast. The mists surged about Anthony, veiling, obscuring all but the sullen purpose compressing his heart, throbbing in his brain.
There was a halt, a rocking pavement and unctuous tones. Then a hall, a room, and the tinny racket of a piano, feminine voices that, at the same time, were hoarsely sexless, empty, like harsh echoes flung from a rocky void. A form in red silk took possession of Anthony's hand, sat by his side; a hot breath, a whisper, flattened against his ear. At times he could distinguish Tom's accents; he seemed to be arguing masterfully, but a shrill, voluble stream kept pace with him, silenced him in the end.
Anthony strove against great, inimical forces to maintain his sanity of action, ensure his purpose: he sat with a grim, haggard face as rigid as wood, as tense as metal. The cloudy darkness swept over him, impenetrable, appalling; through it he seemed to drop for miles, for years, for centuries; it lightened, and he found himself clutching the sides of his chair, shuddering over the space which, he had felt, gaped beneath him.
In moments of respite he saw, gliding through the heated glare, gaily-clad forms; they danced; yet for all the dancing, for all the colors, they were more sinister than merry, they were incomparably more grievous than gay. A tray of beer glasses was held before him, but he waved it aside. “Champagne,” he muttered. The husky voices commended him; a bare arm crept around his neck, soft, stifling; the red silk form was like a blot of blood on the gloom; it spread over his arm like a tide of blood welling from his torn heart.
He thought at intervals, when the piano was silent, that he could distinguish the sound of low, continuous sobbing; and the futility of grief afforded a contemptuous amusement. “It's fierce,” a shrill voice pronounced. “They ought to have took her somewhere else; this is a decent place.” A second hotly silenced this declaration. In the jumble of talk which followed he heard the title “captain” pronounced authoritatively, conclusively imposing an abrupt lull. Men entered. With an effort which taxed his every resource of concentration he saw that there were two; he distinguished two tones—one deliberate, coldly arrogant, the other explosive, iterating noisy assertions. Peering through the film before his eyes, Anthony saw that the first, insignificant in stature, exactly and fashionably dressed, had a countenance flat and dark, like a Chinaman's; the other was a fleshy young man in an electric blue suit, his neck swelling in a crimson fold above his collar, who gesticulated with a fat, white hand.
Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard disconnected periods; “... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend out—one of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart.” A voice flowed, thick and gummy like molasses, from the redness at his side, “He's my fellow; ain't you, Raymond?”
A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and enveloped him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold lips in readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted by the sharp impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural clearness a bolt slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had disappeared. Again the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his hearing.
There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he was lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable; he stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head slowly, he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he straightened up as though he had been opened by a spring.
“Who—who called?” he demanded. “Who called me—Anthony?”
In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly clear before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight that fell upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel; he saw haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned like flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths drawn and twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably dressed youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him in the clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma of his consciousness.
Again he heard it. “Anthony!” Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. “Anthony!” Oh, God! he knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice of Eliza. But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and merciless jest, at the expense of his love, his longing.... “Anthony!” it came from above, from within.
A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at his shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his throat. He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door was bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing that had hovered continuously at the back of his perception.
He shook the door viciously; then, disregarding the hands tearing at him from the rear, burst it open with his shoulder. He staggered in, looking wildly about.... It had, after all, been only a freak of his disordered mind, an hallucination of his pain. The room was empty but for the young man in electric blue, now with his coat over the back of a chair, and a girl with a torn waist, where her thin, white shoulder showed dark, regular prints, and a tangle of hair across her immature face.
The man in shirt sleeves rose from the couch, on which he had been sitting, with a stream of sudden, surprised oaths. The girl who stood gazing with distended eyes at Anthony turned and flashed through the broken door. “Stop her!” was urgently cried; “the hall door—” Anthony heard a chair fall in the room beyond, shrill cries that sank, muffled in a further space.
The two men faced him in the silent room: the larger, with an empurpled visage, bloodshot eyes, shook with enraged concern; the other was as motionless as a piece of furniture, in his wooden countenance his gaze glittered like a snake's, glittered as icily as the diamond that sparkled in his crimson tie folded exactly beneath an immaculate collar. Only, at intervals, his fingers twitched like jointed and animated straws.
An excited voice cried from the distance: “She's gone! Alice's face is tore open... out the door like a devil, and up the street in her petticoat.”
The man with the flushed face wilted. “This is as bad as hell,” he whimpered. “It will come out, sure. You—” he particularized Anthony with a corroding epithet. “The captain is in it deep... this will do for him, we'll all go up—”
“Why?” the other demanded. He indicated Anthony with his left hand, while the other stole into his pocket. “He brought her here... you heard the girl and broke into the room; there was a fight—a fight.” He drew nearer to Anthony by a step.