CHAPTER XXVIII
Martin went slowly to Roberts’ apartment house, his head lowered. His right arm was in a sling, the lower part of his mouth was bruised and split. His nose was swollen. He went up in the elevator to Roberts’ rooms and rang once. A doctor came out into the hall. For a moment the two men regarded each other speculatively. Martin saw the blue, introspective eyes, the strong turn of the chin and the gray hairline, receding deeply at the temples. The physician saw a young man with a broken, illusive face.
“I’m Martin Devaud, Doctor. I’m Roberts’ friend. I heard he asked for me.”
“I can see you, Martin,” said the physician kindly, “for I’m Roberts’ friend, too.”
Martin rubbed his cut arm and turned his eyes away.
“You can see? How far?”
The physician shook his head, but did not answer.
“This stroke,” Martin continued. “Is it serious? Is there any time to help?”
All this while, the doctor had been watching him,noticing his bruised face and strained expression, his bandaged arm.
“You seem to have been in something of a mix-up, yourself,” the physician smiled faintly. Then, of a sudden, his face became divisible with the old, tired pains and the new, sharp ones as balance. “Do you know Roberts’ condition?” he asked seriously.
“No,” said Martin. “Roberts and I quarreled, and I haven’t seen him lately.” He ran his hand over his tender chin.
The doctor looked off down the hall, and in his eyes there was now restraint born of his intimacy with pain.
“He mentions your name continually, Martin,” observed the physician. “The thought of you seems to make him desperate in the moments of lucidity which unfortunately attend his madness. And from the strange way he talks at times, one might think you had had a part in the cause of this grave illness. But such is not the case. His illness took root years ago.”
One word cried out to Martin.
“‘Madness’?—you say?”
“Yes,” said the physician. “It’s like the putrefaction of albumen. Almost like the expansion of gasses within a closed chamber. This disintegration must go on. It’s what we have here.”
Martin felt himself turning sick.
“‘Putrefaction’? Doctor?”
“Yes. Putrefaction of the cerebral mass, that most delicate and most amazing structure—a powerful gift to man.” The doctor was grave.
“What can I do?” asked Martin, horrified.
In answer, the physician shook his head and Martin knew that all was futile.
“May I see him?”
Again the doctor regarded Martin thoughtfully. It was as though he wondered whether this man’s agitated mind could view the spectacle which was soon to be presented. And Martin, waiting quietly, understood and respected this professional skepticism. At last, the physician spoke.
“Before you go in, Martin, remember that you are looking at the demanding, expansive form of paresis. Be careful!”
As Martin entered the bedroom he saw a disorientated face—a deflective rapport of Roberts with his environment—a clouding of consciousness. And as he went closer he knew that Roberts had no comprehension of detail or of situation. Martin felt completely helpless. It seemed to him that the translucent, attenuated skeleton of the adviser had wrapped its arms around him, instead of the disease. The sick man’s lips, dry and split, opened and closed in an effort to speak. The guttural tones reached Martin’s ears as though from a great distance—the words moving gently, like a broad leaf without wind.
“Martin! Martin!” Roberts’ expression became clear and defined. The immobile muscles of his face relaxed. “Martin!” he repeated. “Are you there?”
In the room was a terrible pressure.
Again he called—“Martin! Martin! Are you there?”
“Yes, Roberts, I’m here.”
The pitiful, decayed mask upon the pillow broke like a free tide. It spilled in diluted, semi-conscious tears against the linen. Roberts tried to shake the covers; but his hands stood out perpendicularly from the sides of his waist. They remained there, insensitive, incoherent, until Martin took them gently and laid them on the sheet.
Again, momentary consciousness lighted Roberts’ face. Its brightness and shrewd study shocked Martin more than any act of tension could have done.
“Do you want a confession, dear boy?” called out the sick man. “Do you want my signature?... Ha, ha!—Ho, ho!—Hee, hee, hee!...” The ghastly cry reflected from the ceiling. It wasn’t laughter, or hysteria. It was a lachrymose and untidily folded cry of remorse, torn from the swiftly hollowing brain cell.
With his left hand Martin raised his own wounded arm to his forehead. When at last he brought it down, the gauze was wet. In the interim, bright eyes shone through the window. They were mirthful, smoldering and amused—the cancerous eyes of birds. Infuriated, Martin crossed the room and pulled down the blinds. When he turned in the direction of the bed once more,Roberts’ luminous eyes were parallel with his hand which was now hanging over the edge of the covers. The constriction of the pupils was so intense—so minute that the eyes seemed blind. But the expression was one of gravest interest.
“Come, Martin! Come, Infidelity! You’re my only one. If I don’t look grotesque enough for a death scene, give me a nightcap. One with white flaps over the ears and a blue peak—laugh for me, Martin!”
“For God’s sake, Roberts—not now. I’m dying with you.”
There was a sprawling, unintelligible sound from the adviser’s lips, and then silence. Martin waited, amazed at the clarity of Roberts’ words, amazed at this strange and powerful mind, still formidable. Again the adviser looked at him.
“Die?” he asked peevishly. Then more firmly, “No you won’t, darling. Unhappy men don’t die.... Could you give me your strong, brown arm without shuddering? It would mean a great deal to me.... I can see your strong, brown arm where there’s heat and dark, flashing clouds. It’s peeling a tangerine—cutting a fruit for lips as soft as the flesh in my spine—oh, wicked!... A dark girl’s belly—the cup for your mouth. Oh, God, Martin! Your mouth—the stomach—the stench of normalcy. Before that happens, give me your arm—your clean, brown arm....”
Martin went swiftly to the bed, his eyes flickering ashe sank to his knees. With his good left arm, and hiding the one stripped with bandages, he lifted the skull-like head until it was level with his own, which had begun to throb and ache.
“Here is my arm, Roberts. It is your protection and your faith,” he said.
Vapidly Roberts smiled at him.
“My faith—my own true faith.... No one believed, but I knew that you were mine!... Not even Deane believed.”
“Not even Deane,” repeated Martin, his wounded arm shaking against the silken counterpane.
Roberts’ eyes were becoming glazed.
“They’d all feel cheap, if they could see us now. Your arms around a corpse—a corpse that strikes to prove itself!” His thin hand pushed against Martin’s broken nose, falling again and again on Martin’s face which failed to recognize the pain. “You love me, though I’m defeated, my dear boy.” He raised his hand once more, but this time it dropped limply to the coverlet. Again the torn brain lost all contact, and he wandered, hesitantly.
“I come before the leisured policies of man. I have these tears, these positive notes of cruelty. Do you want to know?... Smash the hidden casket of Carol, and you’ll find the first. He fed himself with the intolerable dreams of your isolated sanctuary. He cried out of lips as stale as mine. Our Grail was the same, each futilein its own pride. Carol, the bucket. Filled with the residue of my hatred. Murder?—Death?—That’s nothing.... I went to him on a night gray as your eyes. He desired you. His flesh, quite frantically, cried out. Could I standthat? Could I stand the corned stupidity of his mind afteryou, most beautiful?... I went to him. Deadly and most honestly I threw the passionate, leaden stone into the vacuum of his heart.” Roberts spoke without lips—the ventriloquy of his despair so hurtful and adolescent, so pitifully gay.
“There is a tear for Rio. I’ve seen him follow you with his eyes—that rollicking, healthy sailor! That bold adventurer with the Mongoloid eyes. His bravado is covered with a native strength to hide his shame.” Roberts chuckled hoarsely. “My sinful innocent—never to have seen the colored lechery behind his muscles!... Rio—epitome of flesh—carnality in Mother Goose’s shoes—a bundle of white snow—quite terrified.... I’ve seen his bleak face, whipped by wind and wave, and so have you. But it takes death to bring me the knowledge of his simple, frightened passion. Oh!—he will never fail you, although he doesn’t know why.... Enough of him—enough of his cautious, boastful gallantry which makes one sick when one is well, and makes one laugh when one is sick.” Again the adviser hesitated. Slowly and painfully he turned that he might look at Martin.
“The next tear is for Deane—the one you think youown. You don’t possess her. You hold an empty vase—the artificial movements, smiles and anguish of the woman—all of them as brazen as I, when I first met you. I thought you were the spindle, I the thread. I thought that you were life—an intoxicating bubble in a heavily filled glass. Deeply and amusedly I drank, too late to feel the poison.”
“I’ve saved a tear for Drew. He thought that he was strong enough to escape. But it isn’t ‘escape’ to avoid the thing one loves the most. And so,Iknow I had the strengthnotto escape—and I am happier than he....
“The last tear is in a vial that I give you. A tear to use when abstract sorrow’s not enough—a potion you may pour on blistered flesh to lift the crust of tender skin that each swift-moving piston and fast-spinning wheel of man can drive and curve before your fond excitement.
“On myself, you didn’t use a tear. Your hands and mind tore my integument until the bone shows. Watch this!” Roberts, weakened, but fierce, reached for Martin’s hair. There was a brief silence as Martin, his head bowed over the bed, felt the momentary spasm of twisted fingers on his scalp. He did not speak or lift his eyes. As in a dream, he felt the fingers that had clutched his hair so frightfully, become more feeble. There was a gentle, automatic patting against his forehead and he heard deep, horrible sobs....
Roberts put his hands across his eyes.
“Martin, you are like my desperate, dead mother,she being the more selfish and adored though, of the two. It’s why I’ve loved you both, though you the less. She is the most important now. She is the greater.” The adviser raised his head in a final gesture of triumph. “Speak! Why don’t you speak, Martin? Your tongue’s been loose enough before. But now that each mad syllable could match the inarticulation in my own vast lungs, you sit dumbly—like a passive Christ. Have you reformed?—or, are you a dead man waiting for my company? For I’m a King. I have great powers. Shall I have you tortured in my dungeons, or thrown from my domain?—But no! I have no rack, no bed of agony to meet your own inventions. And my domain’s a joke. You own it all, from the boiling center of the earth unto the farthest, coldest star.”
Martin held him closer. He stared at Roberts until the sick man’s eyelids lifted, showing the brief, unfocused glance. There was recognition, but complete indifference. The vacant, polite smile was only a slight movement of the lips. Had Martin not been blinded by his own fine helplessness—his deepened affection, he would have seen another thing. He would have noticed the oddly rounded chin with its slackness—its hint of cogent lechery below the hungry bones that stretched the cheek of the adviser. He would have seen the newly tapered lines, out of silhouette, and the dense eyes, gaping; or the fibrous hair, the cocked head and gently fluttering tongue. Instead, the generalities—vague outlines were predominant. Thisswiftly perishing mask, to Martin’s eyes, could have been a sallow apple—a melon broken from the vine—or an older moon in autumn. There was no individuality or ego. There were damp breathings, sonorous emanations from the bed and the faint, orgastic music of white flowers in a tomb. Martin held his breath, held his own head lower and asked for some release.... When he looked up again this blended, spectral motion was gone forever. This mixture of sound and color, so horrible to him, now drifted from the gently closing door.