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THE BEQUEST OF
WINWARD PRESCOTT
CLASS OF 1909


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Silent,
White and
Beautiful


BOOKS BY
TOD ROBBINS
THE UNHOLY THREE
RED OF SURLEY


Silent,
White and
Beautiful
AND OTHER STORIES
TOD
ROBBINS
B O N I A N D L I V E R T G H T
P U B L IS H E R S NEW YORK


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y
HARWARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
BEQUEST OF
WINWARD PRESCOTT
JANUARY 27, 1933
- CoPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
• BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
Printed in the United States of America


- - - - - -


PREFACE
*
Boston!
I find myself on a hot August afternoon under the
shade of a friendly elm beneath which Sumner and
Webster and Holmes and Lowell and other great New
Englanders had, in the past, I hope, taken the unpro-
hibited refreshment of the Common.
Commerce has conquered culture; the patriots have
passed to make way for the profiteers; there is a jangle
of traffic in the air, an echo of money making . . .
business is business. H
- Ponzi, the Cagliostro of Pi Alley, filtering the cash.'
of his investors through their own socks, was by a new
process of chemical calculus returning it more or less
doubled . . . business was business.
* * * * * * * *
An elderly man, mopping his brow with a voluminous
silk handkerchief, detached himself from the throng
and sat down beside me. He carried on his arm one
of those green cloth bags the which, anywhere north
of Springfield, is the croix de guerre for bravery in bat-
tle with literature. Occasionally a lawyer can be seen
with one, but it is no guarantee that he is bookish be-
yond Blackstone.
Returning to the green bag; what did it contain?
One may not ask impudent questions in Boston. I
Will


viii PREFACE
gazed toward Bunker Hill monument hoping for cour-
age from that direction. How could I open the con-
versation, what could I . . .
He began talking to me, not as stranger speaks to
stranger, but with a fine air of cordiality and obvious
desire to converse. He revealed himself a dealer in
rare volumes.
“I’ve ransacked every second-hand book store in Bos-
ton. That's my hobby,” he said, opening the green
bag and diving into its mysterious depths.
“First editions?” I inquired.
“By all means; commencing as far back as Cotton
Mather. A first Fanshawe by Hawthorne passed
through my hands; also a New England Primer—
slightly mutilated—ever so priceless now.”
“What became of those books?”
A spasm flowed across his face.
“I sold them—at the wrong time. That's the only
trouble about this business; one never knows how long
to hang on.”
“Then you collect onl -
“To sell; that's it,” said he, concluding my sentence.
“Just to make a living. I’ve had first editions of most
all the American authors: Cooper, Irving, Thoreau,
Longfellow ” The hand was withdrawn from the
green bag.
“Here, look at these: A copy of Ekkoes from Ken-
tucky by Petroleum V. Nasby; Artemus, Ward and a
copy of the Overland Monthly containing Bret Harte's
25
*
- **-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- * ****** -


PREFACE - ix
i
*
Luck of Roaring Camp. All in good condition.”
“You have read the works of these writers?” I in-
terrogated, gratified to be in the presence of one so well
informed.
“Never!” was the astonishing admission. “I buy
and sell; nothing more. My preference, when I do
read, is for supernatural, weird and fantastic tales.
When I get hold of a good book along these lines I keep
it. Poe, Bulwer-Lytton, Fitz James O’Brien, Dante,
the Poems of Baudelaire, tales of haunted houses, amaz-
ing prophecies, spiritualism, the world’s unsolved mys-
teries, and material of that sort. I want to be enter-
tained, thrilled, mystified. I am reading Stevenson's
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the tenth time. I first
read Bulwer's Zanoni when I was fifteen years of age;
repeatedly since. Splendid.”
He returned Nasby, Ward and Harte to the green'
bag, pulled the puckering string as one tightens low-
ingly a money bag, and prepared to take his leave.
“Have you read Tod Robbins?” I hastened to in-
quire before he escaped me.
“No. What has he written? Who is he most like?”
“Himself | The chief charm about Robbins is that
he has developed an entirely new method of treatment
for the fashioning of tales which stand upon the pedes-
tal of improbability. While taking the most incompre-
hensible liberties with reality—he proceeds with such
boldness and imaginative courage that the reader ac-
cepts the result as logical and conclusive.”


Ex PREFACE
“Does he believe in ghosts, and banshees and fairies
and”— the green bagger gripped my hand tightly—
“grimness?”
“Yes,” I assured him, “and writes about them with
such conviction that others agree with him. I would
suggest that you read the tale, Silent, White and Beauti-
ful, from which his latest book takes its title. That
story surely is grim enough for any man. Do you play
billiards?” .
“I did when I was young. A waste of time,” he re-
plied with his mind searching the past.
“Then I refer you to Wild Wullie the Waster. A
capital ghost story full of shadows and dust and hatreds
that cannot die, to say nothing of remarkable billiards.
One may hear the balls click and carom, shot from
cues held in the fingers of the shades.” I had made
up my mind to Paul Revere his hobby, and so I rode
with resounding hoofs.
“Or better still, Who Wants a Green. Bottle?” I con-
tinued, lifting a hand to invoke silence. “Have you
an uncle?”
“One,” he answered, “very well to do—and aged.”
“Exactly! The green bottle story will give you
much to reflect upon. There is a real'banshee—Scotch
extraction—in its pages; and philosophy and humor
and reasoning, to say nothing of hints to prospective
heirs—especially nephews.”
“You entertain me greatly,” he said with real Boston
warmth. - e


PREFACE xi
*
I permitted that observation to pass without com-
ment, knowing that he would be the more indebted after
the book had come into his hands.
“Sir, you have stimulated my appetite. Where can
a copy of Silent, White and Beautiful be had 2 If your
estimate is correct I shall not only read it, but I may
perhaps lay in a few copies and . . . why not be mod-
ern ? Algernon Blackwood is being collected.”
He made a significant gesture—the palms of his
hands floating outward and upward.
I informed him that the volume was to be issued in
September, that I had read all of the stories in manu-
script and in my capacity as an editor accepted and
published most of Tod Robbins' fiction in magazines.
Also, that I approved of him mightily and found
much pleasure in recommending his works to those who
select their reading with discrimination, and seek origi-
nality in thought and expression. Originality, united
with a graceful style and power of delineation, endows
a book with immortality.
+ + + + * + +
This volume I do commend to the public with the
same fervor that I sang its praises to the old Boston
book-buyer, who, occupied only with profits, seldom
stopped to examine the contents of the treasures he
sold. To collectors, however, I beg to point out the
fact that Silent, White and Beautiful is valuable two-
fold: First, because it is at once worth reading, and
second, in the to-morrow of Americana it will be much


xii PREFACE
sought after as a source of historical light, serving to
illuminate the life of a writer who is destined to take
his place among the uncommons of Grubb Street.
Thus comes to an end these observations which are
destined to be, as is not infrequently the case with
utterances made in the environs of New England, more
or less prognostications.
This attempt at prefacy has become prophecy. Let it
stand!
ROBERT H. DAVIS.
Boston Common, *
August 7th, 1920.


*
PREFACE BY R. H. DAVIs
SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL .
WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE”
WILD, WULLIE, THE WASTER .
Fort ART's SAKE
CONTENTS
PAGE
vii
30
71
109


- * -， → … --★ → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → →


Silent,
White and
- Beautiful





/
SILENT, WHITE AND
BEAUTIFUL
I
OMORROW at this time I shall be dead! I
have repeated this phrase over and over since
breakfast with the utmost calmness, with the ut-
most resignation. In no way have I attempted to blind
myself to the truth. He who does that is lost. The
philosopher alone is wise. Before the clear calm eyes
of reason, the imaginary terrors of dissolution become
infinitesimal specks of dust. I breathe upon them and
they are gone. º
And yet I cannot visualize my death. I have tried
to many times, but have failed. Sitting down on the
left hand corner of my cot, I attempt to picture the exe-
cution. My imagination has always been supernatural-
ly acute. I can see the room and the chair—the chair
dreaded by so many. And the witnesses? Yes, I
can see them—all those sensation-mongers. There is
one fat old gentleman in a striped flannel waistcoat—
an old gentleman who keeps on smiling and smiling.
One would think he were at a wedding, his smile is so
* 1.


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 3
sentinel in my cell, I have become a stranger to my-
self—an uncouth awkward stranger. The egoist has
fled, the artist who crushed conventionality beneath his
heel; and in his place stands an unknown, terrible fel-
low—a fellow who needs watching. I could have
pleaded insanity at my trial and escaped the chair. It
is so easy for me to act. But now— Why could not
the judge and jury see me now?
But I must not peer too long into my soul. Intro-
spection looks down the shaft, and soon sees the grin-
ning face of Madness floating on the black water. The
austere countenance of the philosopher casts back a re-
flection which he recognizes with a shudder. The moon
may be—. But I must not wander.
One source of solace has been with me constantly
during my days of imprisonment. To a man such as
I—a man condemned to death—the daily newspapers
are of great value. It is comforting to realize that
there are thousands, nay millions, of human beings
who are cognizant of my existence, perhaps intimately
interested in the outcome of my career. During these
last few weeks, as never before, I have felt myself to be
an important link in the human chain—a link which
daily holds the attention of a multitude of minds. I,
the unknown sculptor, the young man of limited means
and limited reputation, am now something of a celeb-
rity. What an enduring hold has egotism I caught
myself smiling a self-satisfied smile when I wrote,
“something of a celebrity.” Avaunt, False Pride!
You are in the presence of the shadow. Back, back


4 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
to the highway of life, where the multitude sit in the
sunlight. I have no need of you here.
I realize perfectly what a storm of curiosity my
actions have aroused and it is not my purpose to leave
this planet without a satisfying answer to the question
which I myself have raised. You, who have so often
studied my striking portrait in the papers, you, who
have so puzzled over my whimsical acts during the ill-
fated month of March, you, my friends and admirers,
shall learn of everything which prompted me to a ser-
ies of crimes destined to set the world of sensation agog.
And you, my fair readers, you, whose soft cheeks so
quickly change from rose to lily, you, who shudder
and turn away, look again into the face which you have
covertly abstracted from the newspaper—the face of
René Galien, your humble servant; René Galien who
created that group “The Happy Family.” Respect is
akin to fear, is it not? You shall respect me.
II
I come of an old French family. There is the blood
of kings in my veins. You smile; but it is a fact, I
assure you. Have you not noted in my many portraits,
the finely chiseled features, the aristocratic curl to the
lips, the small shell-like ears? But my hands! They
are what tell the story. The long tapering fingers, the
delicacy of wrist and palm—yes, these are the hands
of one refined by the gradual process of centuries. Why
*


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 5
do my eyes hold your attention then, when I have such
hands as these?
After the Revolution, my great grandfather emi-
grated to America. Since then the Galiens have been
bobbing up and down like corks. You know how it is
—one year a mansion, servants, horses, dogs; another
year a boarding house, genteel respectability, a single
suit shiny at the elbows and knees. That comes from
an excess of aristocratic blood in a plebeian age. The
male members of my family have never been saving
with their money. My father cried out on his death-
bed:
“It is glorious to die in debt. One has succeeded in
cheating one's enemy, the world.”
A strange man was he, with a laugh like the cackling
of a frightened hen and dry, shriveled hands which
rustled in the empty pockets of his frock-coat like bank-
notes.
My mother died before I can remember. At an early
age I was sent to a school in Paris. Once a year I was
allowed to cross the sea and visit my father in New
York. He would meet me each time at the pier, look-
ing very somber in his frock-coat. I remember that
towards the last his face seemed as yellow as the pale
bloodless oranges one buys.
He resided at a small boarding-house in Thirty-third
street—a French boarding-house where one encountered
all manner of odd characters. Madame Fabien, the
landlady, was a woman well on in middle life. At the
time of which I speak, she attempted to maintain a


6 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
semblance of youth by a plentiful use of cosmetics.
Her face, as haggard as a death's head, had a vivid
splash of color beneath each prominent cheek-bone; and
above it, her hair, yellow and fuzzy, reminded me of
sundried weeds. Her eyes were a bitter blue, but they
softened when they looked upon my father.
In some way—perhaps by his glib tongue and pol-
ished manners—he had wormed himself into the land-
lady's good grace. The pitcher of cream always stood
beside his place at the breakfast table; and, when he
came to die, for many nights she went about the house
mewing like a sick cat. No doubt with him was bur-
ied the last romance of her checkered career. Perhaps
the realization of this added to the poignancy of her
grief.
Madame Fabien had a daughter of about my own
age who did much to make my visits to New York
agreeable. She was a pretty vivacious child, with a
mind far too precocious for her years. Looking,
through keyholes had given one of her eyelids an un-
conscious droop. She had made herself the bane of
the boarders' existence. It is needless to say that what
youthful innocence a French boarding school had left
me, vanished after a month’s sojourn at Madame
Tabien’s.
After my father’s death, I returned to Paris with a
letter of introduction to an old friend of the landlady's
—a certain Paul Montaigne. He was a successful
sculptor of the period—a man, who, if he had not been
addicted to drugs, might have reached high places.


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 7
*-
From the first I loved him. There was something
restful in his companionship—something which re-
minded me of a calm autumn day. He gave me the
key which opened the door to a new resplendent world.
Art was his mistress. She soon became mine. Before
long I, too, could see the beauty in ugliness, the joy
in tears. If he had lived, what might I not have done?
Paul Montaigne adopted me. I posed for him; I
swept up the studio; I enlivened him when he was
plunged into one of those fits of melancholy which fol-
lowed his excesses. In return for this, he taught me
his art. I was an apt pupil. Soon I conceived several
small pieces of my own, which I sold on the Paris
streets. Once a week I took my stand on the Rue Mont-
martre and peddled my wares to any passerby.
One afternoon I returned to the studio and found
my benefactor dead. He was lying at the feet of a
statue upon which he had been working—a statue rep-
resenting Justice. His body seemed to be in an atti-
tude of supplication. A thin ribbon of blood crawled
towards the door like a miniature river of red. He had
cut his throat. It seemed unbelievable at first. When
I saw him lying thus, I felt that I had lost everything
in the world. Dropping the bag which contained sev-
eral tiny statues I had not sold, I sank to my knees
and began to blubber like a baby. There the concierge
found me an hour later, sobbing as though my heart
would break.
After Paul Montaigne's death, I returned to Amer-
ica. It seemed to me that I could make my fortune


'8 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
there much more readily. Surely in the United States
competition was not so great. My four years with
the sculptor had given me a foundation few could boast
of. Montaigne had often told me that I possessed a
talent which was in no way inferior to his own. It was
with high hopes that I set sail from France.
On arriving in New York, I took a cab to the fam-
iliar boarding-house. Madame Fabien opened the door
for me. I scarcely recognized her. In the four years
which had elapsed she had become an old hag and
looked every day of sixty. After my father's death
she had evidently buried her cosmetics. Her face,
wrinkled and yellow, was so thin that the sharp pro-
truding cheekbones seemed at any moment about to
penetrate the skin; her scanty hair was now a splotched
grey; and she leaned heavily on her cane in the door-
way, reminding me of the witches in Macbeth. But her
eyes had not changed. No, they were that same bitter
blue. Now they looked at me suspiciously from be-
neath a ragged boudoir cap.
“Well?” said she.
“Is this Madame Fabien?” I asked, suspecting that
my memory had played me tricks.
“Yes, this is Madame Fabien. What is it you wish
of me, young man?”
“I am René Galien,” I answered, stepping forward.
“Do you not remember me?”
“Mon Dieu!” The old woman's expression changed
from suspicion to joy. She tapped me playfully on the
shoulder with her cane. “Come in, come in Of


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 9
course it is René. Why, you are your father over
again! The same carriage of the head, the same air
distingué. Only the eyes are different. But come to
these old arms. I have heard such things of you from
Paull You are the great sculptor now, is it not so?”
In spite of an inner qualm, I submitted myself to
the old hag's embraces. She pinched my cheeks with
fingers as yellow as sticks of cinnamon; she rose on
tiptoe to press her lips to my forehead; she smoothed
my silky hair with the palm of her hand—a palm which
was as rough as a nutmeg grater. She was like the
cracked dusty vase in which lies buried the trampled
rose-leaves of the preceding spring. Once a vessel of de-
sire, she had been quaffed to the very dregs.
“Louise will be delighted to see you, René,” she
said, leering up at me. “Ah, you blush, eh? You re-
member her—the little cat that she was. But now!
How she has changed I Like you, she has grown tall
and beautiful. And such a figure! The art students
draw her twice during the week. How the pencils
shake in their hands, how their eyes stare and starel
They are like men in a trance—so beautiful is shel”
“Is she a model?” I asked. - *
“Yes; but there is none other like her in New York.
When my last boarder left, it was necessary that she do
something. We must live, is it not so? But I will tell
her that you are here. She will be overjoyed.”
Madame Fabien hobbled down the passageway, leav-
ing me standing in the hot stuffy hall. As I watched
her figure receding in the shadows, I made up my mind
––––--------------


10 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
to remain in her good graces. I had been barely able
to scrape up enough money in Paris to pay for my pas-
sage; I was now in a wellnigh penniless condition. Of
course I would soon be successful, but in the meantime
I must not neglect any slight smile of fortune. Before
the old woman returned with her daughter, I had made
up my mind to be enthusiastic.
Louise did not make my rôle difficult to play. She
had, indeed, matured into a kind of rare if sulky beau-
ty. Her full lips, although pouting and discontented,
were still inviting; and, although her figure was rather
buxom according to my standard, still there were men
who would have thought it perfect. My raised hands
and upturned eyes therefore, while delighting both
mother and daughter, even to myself had no savor of
the ludicrous.
“Is she not changed?” asked Madame Fabien.
“Changed!” I cried. “Ma Foil she is transfig-
ured l’”
Louise blushed and smiled. Evidently I had pleased
her.
“You, yourself, have altered for the better,” she said,
looking at me quaintly, “You are no longer the ugly
duckling.”
I murmured a graceful acknowledgement, then, turn-
ing to her mother, immediately reverted to the point in
hand.
“Do you still take boarders?” I asked. “If so, I
would consider myself fortunate in securing—”
“Most certainly you may board here,” the old woman


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 11
answered. “At present there is no one, and we can give
you the better attention. My fees are moderate to the
son of an old friend.”
Again Louise smiled, disclosing two rows of large
white teeth. .
“Follow me,” she said, picking up my valise in spite
of my protests. “I will show you to your room.”
Madame Fabien leered at me as I passed her. She
again reached up and pinched my cheek. It nauseated
me. Without the slightest compunction, I could have
put my hands on her weed-like throat and choked the
life out of her. Even then I felt that she and I could
not live under the same roof without disastrous results.
I hesitated for a moment on the landing before I fol-
lowed Louise up the creaking staircase.
III
I must break off for the time. Father Flynn has
been shown into my cell. Why does he insist on
offering ghostly consolation to me? Can he not
realize that I am a man of adamant will, of unshakable
determination?
This priest in the sunshine dares to come to me in
the shadow—dares to come to me and cry:
“See, there is everlasting life!”
Everlasting life? Bah! Rather everlasting death—
everlasting death with its calm immobility—everlasting
death with its enigmatic smile. Yes, there I will be


• 12 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
reigning like a mountain peak, cold, still and thought-
ful.
But now Father Flynn is approaching. His long
black robe brushes over the floor of my cell with a swish-
ing sound. His solemn eyes are fixed upon my face. ,
About his neck a crucifix is suspended. Christ hangs
on this crucifix, tiny, weak, and helpless—Christ
made into a doll. When he speaks of life everlasting
I shall point at his toy Christ and laugh. -
IV.
Father Flynn has left me. His brain, heavy and
ponderous as a mediaeval battle-ax, was no match for
the lightning thrusts of mine. I have hurt him in a
sensitive spot beneath his armor of religion; I have
penetrated his self-esteem. He now doubts himself,
which is far worse than doubting God. Like an
old woman who suddenly encounters a mouse in her
bedroom, like an old woman with dragging skirts and
downcast eyes, he has hurried from the cell. In his
opinion, I am eternally damned—a man for whom the
jaws of Hell are yawning. I have refused to reverence
the doll dangling from his neck, therefore I am as one
lost.
Poor old man! I pity him for his childish credulity,
while I envy him his simple trust. But if I had had a
Christ, if I had had a sacred symbol of something
greater than myself, I would not hang it about my neck


14 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
not long before I started working in dead earnest. Ere
a month went by, I had created several miniatures
which I thought I could dispose of for a fair sum.
My moments of leisure were spent with Louise and
her mother. I felt it necessary to keep in the good
graces of both women. But what a bore it was l My
flesh fairly crawled when Madame Fabien touched me.
It was as much as I could do to submit to her caresses.
And then the atmosphere of the house began to get on
my nerves. It was so hot and stuffy downstairs, and a
sweet sickening odor hovered about everything. In the
parlor there were a multitude of photographs, repre-
senting Madame Fabien in her youth. She had evi-
dently been a vaudeville performer of versatile reper-
toire. There were pictures of her walking a tightrope,
a parasol above her head, smiling sentimentally at
space; pictures of her in knickerbockers, riding an old-
fashioned bicycle; pictures of her in tights, toe-dancing
on a horse's back. And in all these photographs she
resembled Louise. Yes, there was the same haggard
face with high cheek-bones and petulant lips, the same
full-bosomed, broad-hipped figure, the same sensual
drooping eyelids. Thirty years ago my landlady had
been another Louise. And, when I realized this, what
little affection I had for the girl faded. Although I
continued to ply her assiduously with compliments, my
words no longer had the slightest ring of truth.
And as the weeks went by, I came to realize that it
would be difficult to escape my environment. Daily a
web of attachment took shape. Both these women re-


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 15
garded me now with an air of ownership. To Madame
Fabien, I was a living embodiment of one to whom she
had given the last dying sparks of passion; to Louise I
was a companion of childhood suddenly transformed
into a fairy prince who had crossed the seas to win her.
And I? Why, struggle as I might to free myself, my
feet were sinking in the quicksand. A month passed,
and I had not sold a single piece of work. Where else
could I go? I was penniless and in debt. Contrary to
my expectations, my miniatures went begging. These
imaginative figures which I had sold so easily in Paris
—these weird gargoyles, nymphs and satyrs, were
shuddered at, but never bought.
I found myself battering my head against an obstin-
ate senseless wall of optimism. The beauty which lurks
in ugliness, the transcending horror depicted in my
work, the morbid terror which enwrapped those tiny
figures—all was quite lost on the stupid smiling people
who passed me by. They hurried on, these people;
hurried on through the tunnel of life unheedingly, look-
ing neither up nor down, quite immersed in their own
bright dreams and unwilling to contemplate the stern
austere countenance of Art. I might have gone on for
centuries in my garret, striving, creating, and quite un-
noticed, were it not for that group “The Happy Fam-
ily.”
At last my affairs reached a climax. I could no
longer avoid Fate. I married Louise. Yes, loathing
her with all my soul, seeing in her a future Madame
Fabien, I married her. It came about like this:
-


16 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
One afternoon, while I was at work, a knock sounded
on my door. It was Louise. The night before she had
heard me express a wish for a female model. She had
come to offer her services. Yes, she was quite willing"
to pose for me. It was no trouble at all. She would
be ready in a moment now.
With brazenness, even for a professional model, she
began to disrobe. I attempted to detain her. I put my
hand on her arm, but she only kissed me and called me
a foolish boy.
“Are we not already as good as married?” said she.
I did not realize how truly she spoke until I looked
over her shoulder and saw Madame Fabien standing
in the doorway. I was positive that something was
about to happen. My landlady, among her other accom-
plishments, had at one time been a melodramatic tra-
gedienne. On her face was mirrored the rôle which she
was about to play.
“Sol” she cried in a voice which squeaked like a
violin out of tune. “So! I find you thus! Is this
how you repay me, René? Has it not been enough to
live here week after week, to take board and lodging
from me gratis, to receive from my hands all the at-
tention of a mother, without attacking the virtue of my
daughter? No, don’t attempt to explain away your
guilt. Thank God my eyes can still be trusted! Louise,
go to your room! I will talk to this young man alone.”
Fifteen minutes later, all was over. I had agreed
to marry Louise on the following day. That old virago
had so battered me with words that my brain was reel-


18 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
priest's wrinkled face, I became unpleasantly conscious
of Madame Fabien's proximity. I felt her breath fan-
ning the back of my neck. Involuntarily I shuddered
and yet beads of perspiration dotted my forehead. At
last the ceremony was over, and we returned home.
Home! What a blasphemous title to apply to such a
place! And yet the roof sheltered my head, the walls
shut out the darkness and the cold. Where else could
I find as much, I asked myself. Think of the irony of
it! I, a young man of talent, an individualist, an art-
ist, and yet forced to acknowledge such a defeat. It
was then I came to the realization that there was some-
thing wrong with the world. Surely it had been rolling
downhill for ages—a wicked ball bent on destruction.
In vain we Supermen seek to push it up, to place it on
the heights—it evades our eager hands and descends
into the black depths. To this day, I cannot contem-
plate its final degradation without a feeling of regret,
even of horror.
It is not my purpose to dwell too long on my married
life. Suffice it to say, that it soon became unendurable
to me. Living with one woman constantly is prone to
wear on the nerves of the sensitive man; but, when this
woman is lacking in both mentality and feeling, artistic
appreciation and higher aspirations, she becomes a
burning coal of agony which one is forced to hold to
one's bare breast. Before a week had passed, I hated
Louise as I had never thought to hate any human
being.
What made it worse, the girl positively adored me.


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 19
| She gave me no peace. She would break into my studio
while I was at work, and shower me with loathsome
caresses. I had no solitude of the soul so necessary to
an artist. She sought to occupy every cranny of my
life. If I reprimanded her, if, driven to desperation, I
struck her, waves of hysterics would follow—hysterics,
that abomination of woman—and to avoid this shriek-
ing inferno it was necessary for me to calm her with
kisses and protestations of affection.
Then there was Madame Fabien—Madame Fabien
with her fishy eyes! How her tongue clattered I
have often thought that she must have assassinated my
father with it. And life was still strong in this bag of
old bones! It shown evilly out of her bitter blue eyes;
it spoke volubly through her dry, shriveled lips. She
might live twenty years more—live and persecute me.
One night inspiration touched me—the inspiration
of “The Happy Family.” True perception springs
from contrast. It has always been my experience that
in the city one can visualize the country with an acute
clarity. So it is with all things. The musician com-
poses a dirge on a bright spring day; the starving poet
writes an ode to sparkling wine and luscious fruit.
Thus it was in my case. From a confirmed unbe-
liever in marriage, I could now see the joys of wed-
lock. My own unfortunate affair had conjured up in
my mind an ideal picture of wedded bliss—a happy
family, united in thought and deed; a silent, happy
family who found mere speech unnecessary to a com-
plete mental understanding. -
*


20 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
And as I sat at dinner, listening to the shrill voices
of the women, watching their distorted mouths and
glistening eyes, in an instant it became apparent what
made them so hideous, so revolting. It was life that
marred them; hot, noisy life which twisted them into
repellent shapes; life which made them detestable and
unforgivable. As statues—deprived of breath, motion,
speech—they would no longer cause me any pain. On
the contrary, I might be proud of them. Madame Fa-
bien could very well have been Rodin’s “Courtesan,”
alive, clothed and speaking. Such ugliness was beau-
tiful in art. It was only when it stepped down from its
pedestal that it became loathsome and degraded. And
Louise? If she would not speak in that whining tone,
if her face could always remain calm and placid, if
she could be placed in an artistic posture with her chin
resting on her hand—why, she would be beautiful!
And then in my imagination I saw them as statues;
saw them sitting there, silent, white and beautiful; saw
them sitting on a pedestal, united and peaceful,
cleansed of life's impurities, quietly waiting for the
children yet unborn—I saw “The Happy Family”!
Why was it not possible to make them so? A few
drops of poison in their coffee, and life would quickly
fade away. And then? Why, then I would carry them
up to my studio where I had so often worked before.
But this time I would not work in vain. No, I would
make statues of them—enclose them in a special prepar-
ation of clay which might last through all the centur-
ies. Their bodies would not decompose in such a cov-


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 21
ering. It would be easy—easy! Perhaps I could sell
them to an art dealer. At this thought, I laughed
aloud.
“Why are you laughing, René?” asked Madame Fa-
bien with one of her quick, suspicious looks.
“I was thinking of what an excellent statue you
would make, mama. May I use you for a model?”
She shook her bony head at me like an old vulture.
“Careful, René, careful,” she mumbled. “Don’t bite
the hand that feeds you. Youth should respect age.”
“But I was in earnest, mama,” I assured her.
“Bah!” She rose and hobbled off on her cane, leav-
ing Louise to wash up the dinner things.
For the moment I was free.
Telling my wife that I had to post a letter, I put on
my hat and left the house.
When I returned I had a small vial of poison in my
waistcoat pocket. /
As I lay beside Louise that night, I dreamed peace-
fully of “The Happy Family.”
VII
Have you ever considered what a childishly simple
thing it is to take a human life? We are all so
trusting with our fellows, so guileless and trusting,
that, when the murderous hand reaches out to cut
the cord of existence, we stand blinking our eyes
stupidly, quite unable to realize the danger. If it


22 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
were not for the bodies of his victims—bodies which,
although silent, bear unfaltering testimony to the truth
—the assassin might stalk unmolested through the
world. Our immortality seems so assured to us, that
we seldom question the eyes of those who may have it in
their keeping.
Louise and her mother suspected nothing. On the
following evening, when I suggested that I prepare
their coffee in a manner new to them—a method which
I had picked up in Paris—they assented readily. It
was only when I placed the two steaming cups upon the
table that any difficulty arose.
“I should not drink any coffee,” said Madame Fa-
bien, shaking her head sorrowfully.
I felt a sudden flicker of fear.
“Why not, mama?” I murmured, bending over her
solicitously.
“It keeps me awake at night. I cannot sleep when I
drink coffee.”
I could not refrain from smiling.
“Never fear, mama,” I answered reassuringly.
“This coffee is so prepared that you will not be trou-
bled by insomnia. I guarantee that you will sleep
soundly to-night—very soundly.”
And then, without hesitation, without fear, almost
without taking breath, these two women drank their
poisoned coffee. I watched them with a calm, imper-
sonal curiosity. And yet the next few moments were
the most embarrassing moments of my life. I felt,
that I was conversing with spectres. Everything I said


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL, 28
rang out of tune. I attempted to joke, and my witti-
cisms fell far below humor. I attempted to laugh, and
my own familiar laugh sounded as hoarse and guttural
as the cawing of a crow. And these two women seemed
like stiff formal strangers who could not in any way be
amused.
Madame Fabien was the first to go. One side of her
shriveled face drew up into knots, as though a cord in
her cheek had been suddenly pulled. She clapped her
hand to her stomach.
“Oh!” she cried. “I sufferl I—I-. Get the doc-
tor. Get the ”
She rolled to the floor, and lay there kicking and
clawing like a wounded wildcat.
Louise rose and bent over her.
“René, run out and get Dr. Milburn,” she called
over her shoulder in an agitated voice.
I had no desire to see them die. A wanton taste for
cruelty has never been one of my characteristics. I
quitted the room, and, mounting the stairs to my studio,
spent a few peaceful moments over a cigar. When I
returned to the dining room, I found both women dead.
Louise's body lay across her mother's. Her upturned
face wore an expression of amazement. It was as
though I had given her a sudden surprise.
Then the real work began. That night I toiled like
a galley-slave. I carried the bodies up to my studio; I
disrobed them; I burned the clothing piecemeal; and
then I commenced my famous group, “The Happy
Family.”


24 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
With the firm, sure hand of an artist, I enclosed
them in clinging garments of clay; I gave them immor-
tal skins which might last through all eternity. And
now that the life had gone out of them, these women
were no longer repulsive to me. No, on the contrary,
I felt a sensation of ennobling pride as I busied myself
about them, placing them on the pedestal, making of
them enduring works of art. When the sun finally
peered in at me through the blind, two statues con-
fronted me—two statues so lifelike, so virile, that the
hand of Rodin himself could not have done better.
My work enraptured me. At last I had created
something which might live. What a contrast was
this!—Madame Fabien so thin and withered, cowering
in the early light; and beside her, Louise, so strong
and buxom, her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.
This was art! For the first time in my life I loved
them. I was so proud of them that it was all I could
do to refrain from running out into the street and bring-
ing back with me the first passerby to see what I had
done. For the moment I was living on the sunlit
heights of great achievement.
VIII
Unfortunately the artist is never satisfied with his
first creation. He must go on and on, enlarging his
original conception, until sometimes it winds itself
about him like a many-membered octopus and sucks
the life out of him.


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 25
So it was with me. For a week I busied myself in
the studio, constructing a large pedestal for my statues;
but at the end of that time, I found myself longing to
add to the group. What was a happy family without
children, I asked myself. A mother-in-law and a wife
were all very well; but surely, without tender human
plants sprouting up about them, they were meaningless
and thrown away. Yes, both were lonely and must
have childish companionship. The longing look on
Louise's face touched my heart.
It was shortly after this that I began to visit the
park. With bags of candy in my pocket, I soon made
friends with a multitude of children. Finally I se-
lected two rosy-cheeked little dears—a boy and a girl
of four and five, who seemed worthy to join “The
JHappy Family.” By promises of sweets beyond their
wildest dreams, I enticed them to my house one after-
noon. The rest was easy. Two sticks of peppermint,
the vial—and that night, cleansed and beautiful, white
and spotless, turned into tiny statues, they knelt at
Louise's feet. -
Another week of blissful contemplation went by; and
then the loneliness on Louise's face again caused
me an acute pain. Madame Fabien, of course, was
perfectly content to sit silent in the sunlight with her
grandchildren about her; but Louise was still young,
still imbued with thoughts of love, still desirous of male
companionship. She must have a husband. It was
necessary that I procure her one. Then indeed “The
Happy Family” would be complete.


26 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
One afternoon, as I sat pondering in my studio, the
door-bell rang. When I answered it, I found a tall
good-looking young man on the stoop. Evidently fate
was again playing into my hand. This young man
would make an ideal husband for Louise. I could not
refrain from smiling, as I stood aside and bade him
enter.
“Is this Madame Fabien's house?” he asked, stepping
into the hallway.
“Yes.”
“Is she at home? May I see her?”
“No, she has gone to the country for a month,” I
murmured. “She may be away even longer.” I
shrugged my shoulders.
“Well,” said the young man, eyeing me suspiciously,
“I have a warrant to search the house. I am a police of
ficer. See this.” He threw back his coat, disclosing a
metal badge.
In spite of myself, my voice was a trifle unsteady
when I spoke. -
“But why do you wish to search the house?”
“For evidence,” the young man answered. “Several
children have been kidnapped lately. Two of them
were seen entering this house.”
He pushed past me and began mounting the stairs.
I followed him. My heart was beating wildly; but my
face, I feel convinced, was as expressionless as a bare
wall. As he searched the different rooms on the second
floor, it became quite clear to me that I was perfectly
safe. How could he suspect my statues of concealing


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 27
what he sought? Soon I would lead him to my studio
and thus divert all suspicion from “The Happy Fam-
ily.” And afterwards, when he had found nothing, I
would offer him a cooling drink of my own concoction
—a drink which would contain an everlasting sleeping
potion. Already I could see him on the pedestal beside
Louise—a silent, loving husband.
“If you are ready,” I said to the young man, “I will
show you my studio. I am a sculptor. You will find
children there, but they are only statues.”
He ignored my pleasantry and merely nodded. He
was a very brusque young man.
“Show me your studio,” he said.
I conducted him to it in silence. Opening the door,
I stood aside and motioned him to enter. My heart
was now beating calmly and evenly. No fear lurked in
my soul. I would show this young man my statues, and
perhaps he would appreciate what art could do. I was
introducing him to his future family. Soon he would
be sitting there, white, motionless, and smiling.
He looked about the room carelessly, and finally his
eyes became fixed on the statues.
“They’re good,” he muttered, “–damnably good!”
And then turning to me with a new respect, he said:
“I had an ambition to become a sculptor myself. I
studied at the school, but couldn’t make a go of it. I
know enough about the game though, to realize how
good these are. Rodin himself wouldn’t be ashamed of
that old woman. What do you call this group?”
“‘The Happy Family,’” I answered.


28 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
_-_-_*
“‘The Happy Family’?” he repeated thoughtfully.
“They don't look very happy—any of them. They look
as if they had just been surprised by something—un-
pleasantly surprised. Take that old woman, for in-
stance. She looks 25
“Nonsense!” I broke in angrily. “They are happy
—happy.” This young man's stupidity began to ag-
gravate me. “In life they would have been loathsome
and repulsive. But here? Look at this old woman!”
I approached and put my hand proudly on her shriv-
eled shoulder. “She is a masterpiece. She-’”
“Look out!” cried the detective suddenly. “Look
out! She's falling!”
I uttered a cry of horror and clutched at Madame Fa-
bien. But it was too late! Unconsciously I had leaned
my full weight for an instant on her shoulder; and
now, swaying once or twice, she was falling forward.
In vain I sought to clasp her in my arms, to shield her
body with mine, she bore me over backwards and we
both came toppling to the floor. The plaster, covering
her face, was broken into a thousand bits; and then the
head of Madame Fabien—the head with its ghastly
grin and glassy eyes—like some evil Jack-in-the-box,
popped out into the sunlight.
I remembered nothing more. The room, the detec-
tive, the statues, were swallowed up in blackness. I
fainted. When I regained consciousness, it was to find
myself jolting through the streets on my way to prison.
*-


SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL 29
-
IX
It is morning. Already the grey light of dawn
is sifting through the window. My task is over. I
have told you faithfully the story of “The Happy
Family.” And now that the tale is told, now that the
time grows short, I want to impress upon you, the
reading public, you who have become so interested in
my fate, that I, René Galien, am not afraid of death.
To-morrow they may lie about me in the papers;
they may say I had to be carried to the chair, that I
wept, that I pleaded, that I even prayed. But you, my
admirers, my friends, my brothers, shall not believe
them. No, I only fear something which lurks on the
invisible frontier; something which is approaching
steadily and relentlessly. What is this something? I
do not know. But it is not death. . . . No, it is not
death.


i
WEIO wANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2
I
UDDENLY there came a flash of lightning, so
brilliant, so dazzling, that all the wild country-
side was lit up for an instant as though by an
immense conflagration. Then, far off, from the other
side of those threatening, hump-backed mountains, I
heard a low, rumbling sound as night once more closed
and barred her ebony doors.
But in that brief moment I had caught a glimpse of
what I sought. There, not a hundred yards away, on
a rise of ground overlooking the road and the valley,
was the long, low building which a second before the
lightning had traced on a madly galloping background
of clouds. Now, although my eyes were still straining
in that direction, I saw nothing. Not a light beckoned.
The house, the hill, the sky, had been blotted out.
Nevertheless I had the general direction. Backing
the car into a nest of bushes beside the road, I took out
my small electric flashlight and began to ascend the
slope. -
It was a stiff climb for a corpulent man well over
fifty; soon I was breathing like one of my asthmatic
patients. What little breath I had left was swept away
30


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE2 31
by a gust of wind which struck me full in the face, just
as I breasted the slope. It took me quite by surprise—
for down below I could have held a lighted match till it
burned my fingers—and snatched off my soft hat, spin-
ning it away somewhere into space. My legs were not
too steady under me when I reached the house. For a
space I leaned against one of the large, white pillars on
the veranda to regain my breath and my dignity.
As I waited, another gust, straight from the lake,
went howling by, stirring the tall pine-trees about the
house into a muttering, mutinous revolt and causing a
loose shutter somewhere in the upper blackness to beat
out a devil's tattoo against the ivy-covered wall. Then
suddenly all became silence again—a brilliant silence
lit up by a flash of lightning which showed me the
rounded bowl of the valley and the white stretch of
road. And on its heels there followed such a crash of
thunder that the whole landscape seemed to turn sick
and dizzy.
“This is no night to be out,” I thought, and, wasting
no more time, rapped sharply on the door.
Scarcely had the echo of my knocking died away
when the windows on the lower floor winked out at me;
and, before I could so much as brush the wind-tossed
hair out of my eyes, the door swung open and I came
face to face with the Laird of Lockleaven.
After the blackness which had followed the flash of
lightning, that hallway seemed blazing. And there he
stood, as long and lean as a fishing-pole, looking out at
me with the great terror-stricken eyes of a startled deer.


32 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
He wore some kind of fuzzy bathrobe which made him
seem even taller; and he had a mad tuft of grey hair
on his chin which twitched oddly—or maybe it was the
wind stroking it. That was all I caught at a glance.
“Come in, Dr. O’Brien,” he said with a bow like a
dancing-master. “You’re late.”
Now what from the battering of the wind, the loss of
my best hat, and perhaps a glass too many at the Clay-
more, I was too fuddled already to marvel much at his
words. Not a thought did I give to how he knew my
name or why he expected me at all, till after the door
had closed on the night.
“You’ll pardon my intrusion, sir,” I said as soon as
I got my breath. “The fact is that I was motoring
home, and a half mile up the road my headlights flick-
ered out. Now, if there had been a moon, or 32
But he cut me short with a wave of his hand. “Non-
sense, Dr. O'Brien!” he said as sharp as the crack of a
whip. “I was expecting you; and this lady and gen-
tieman—they were expecting you, too.” He jerked his
thumb toward the wall.
Wheeling about in some confusion at that, I came
face to face with a hard-featured old chap in a periwig
glaring down at me from a mildewed picture-frame.
To his right was the portrait of a very determined old
lady with a pointed chin that curled up like the toe of
an old slipper. She had a fan in her hand, but she held
it as I have seen boys grip their shillalahs on the way to
the county-fair.
“Ancestors?” I asked with a half-hearted chuckle, for


WEIO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 33
the stony eyes of the painted lady had somehow or other
gotten under my skin.
“My great grandfather and grandmother, Sir Robert
Lockleaven and his lady,” he says rather proud. “Now
step this way, Dr. O'Brien. There's a fire in the lib-
rary and a bottle of good old port uncorked. And I’m
thinking you’ll be needing both before the dawn
breaks.”
With that he ushered me into as cheery a room as
I ever want to see. In the days when this house had
been built, they knew the meaning of fireplaces. It did
my heart good to see the great log flaring up on the
hearth, a log the size of a well-grown tree-trunk; in
front of it, a semicircle of easy-chairs that tired men
could sleep in; and, last of all, the mahogany table with
two glasses and a decanter of wine which glowed ruby-
red where the light touched it. And even the glimpse
I caught of other sour-faced portraits on the wall failed
to overshadow my good spirits. \
He motioned me into one of the easy-chairs and,
pouring out two glasses of port, handed me one and
raised the other aloft. “Here's success to you, Dr.
O'Brien!” he cried, while his frightened eyes flashed
and once again the mad wisp of hair on his chin
twitched oddly.
“And here's success to you,” said I, draining my
glass at a swallow, for the dust of the road had got
into my throat.
“That goes without saying,” said he. “If you win, I
:
**


34 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
win. Do you happen to have a green glass bottle in
your pocket, Dr. O'Brien?”
“A green glass bottle?” I said dumfounded. “What-
ever would I be doing with a green glass bottle,
Mr. 25
“Lockleaven’s the name,” he muttered, seating him-
self and adjusting the folds of his bathrobe as I have
seen old ladies do with their skirts after getting into
a bus. “I was christened Robert Lockleaven after my
great grandfather.” He bent his head and began to
pick nervously at a loose strand of worsted. “I’m
pretty well known in the village,” he finished with a
haughty tilt to his chin.
At that I started so that I nearly dropped the glass.
I was new to that country, but already the name was
familiar enough. Indeed it had more than once figured
in Scottish history. But gradually that fiery stream had
slackened; and now, if report could be believed, the
last of the line was a man weakened in both body
and mind. In the village he was known as “The daft
Laird of Lockleaven;” and scandalous stories were still
told of his escapades before old age had taken the
marrow out of his bones.
Now, as he refilled my glass, I studied the man. He
had the high, broad forehead of a thinker, the deep-set,
fiery eyes of a dreamer, the firmly arched nose and
expanding nostrils of a warrior. But the lower half
of his face was deplorable. Here all the weaknesses
of his soul were laid bare. The pitiable indecision of
that twitching chin, the animal pout of the thickish
-


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE2 35
red lips, the long, yellow tooth poking out at each side
of his mouth—all these were enough to give a Christian
the shivers.
“How did you know that I was coming to-night, Mr.
Tockleaven?” I asked.
“Know it!” he cried with an unpleasant snicker.
“Why, I know everything.” He paused, and a look
of caution creased his jowls. “Besides, didn’t I send
Meg for you?” he finished.
“I’ve been away for the week, and 22
But again he cut me short with a quick motion of
his hand. “Never puzzle your head over that, man,”
he cried peevishly. “There's more pressing matters
afoot. What's crystal-gazing and such bairns' play
when it comes to the saving of a live, human soul?”
“Is there some one sick here?” I asked.
“So there is,” he said soberly; “so there is—unco
sick. But sh! What's that ?”
Usually I am as steady as the next man. But there
was something in the Laird of Lockleaven's eyes, some-
thing in the Laird of Lockleaven’s voice, which grated
on my nervous system like sand-paper. I felt goose-
flesh rippling up my back.
Tor several moments we both sat silent, listening to
the reverberating thunder which still echoed faintly
far off in the hills, to the crackling of the fire, to the
scampering of the mice behind the wainscoting in the
wall.
“Do you hear them?” he asked.
“I hear nothing,” I answered sharply enough;
*
a
:
*


36 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“nothing but the thunder and the fire and the mice in
the wall.”
“The mice!” cried the Laird of Lockleaven with a
quick, low laugh. “Did you ever hear tell of mice that
could sing and talk and cry? Put your ear to the
wall and listen.”
To humor him I did as he told me. At first I could
hear nothing; but soon a low, suppressed note, very
much like a muffled sob, made my eardrum tingle.
“Poor Aunt Mary!” said the Laird of Lockleaven
solemnly. “She wouldn't stop mourning in life and
now she cannot. Night and day I hear her, night and
day.”
With a mighty effort I shook off the strange, numbing
fear which was creeping over me like a coverlet of
snow. “Mr. Lockleaven,” I cried with a forced laugh,
“you are to be congratulated—you have singing mice
in your wall! They’re not too common, but there are
such things. Look, there goes one now!” I pointed to
a little, brown speck which scurried across the room
and vanished somewhere in the shadows.
The Laird of Lockleaven raised his head. “My
grandfather has just let his cattle out to graze,” he
murmured.
“What did you say?” I asked, making no sense out
of his words.
For a moment he was silent, and then he cried out
in a loud, authoritative voice: “Will you listen to me,
Dr. O'Brien, or will I just have to be trusting my soul


38 ‘SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
till at last there was only Meg and me to minister to
him. What a spider of a man he was—going about
the house, soft-footed, in his list slippers and cocking his
eye at us if we so much as blinked at his iron-bound
chest. I can see him now with his sidelong gait, his
long thin fingers stroking his beard like bent twigs in
a hedge, and his silly, solitary smile wrinkling the
loose skin of his jowls. -
“When he came to die there was little mourning in
Lockleaven Hall. I was a lean lad of eighteen on the
night when the great sickness gripped him. Meg set
me to watch at his bedside, while she scuttled off to
the village for Dr. McLean. Before she left she lighted
the old-fashioned tapers above his bed; and I sat all
hunched up in one corner, watching the light flickering
over the sick man's face and the heaving of the bed-
clothes at each long breath.
“How long I sat there, to this day I don't know—
it might have been an hour or more—but after a time
I grew drowsy and closed my eyes for a bit. When
I opened them again, there had come a change. The
laird had been lying flat on his back, his eyes on the
ceiling; but now he lay on one side, his face to the
wall. The frayed fringe of his whiskers trembled
slightly, but his loud breathing had ceased.
“I rose and approached my uncle with a feeling of
awe that death should have hovered so near while I
slept; and then, as I put my hand on the footboard
of his bed and looked down, horror gripped me by the
hair. Horror did I say? It was more than that. It


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 39
*
was just as though my brain had been turned into
soft, quivering jelly.
“My eyes had wandered to my uncle's grey beard.
There, through the tangled meshes on the pillow, I saw
a tiny crouching form and a pair of flaming pinpoint
eyes. For an instant it glared up at me like a cornered
rat under a wisp of hay; and then, with a shrill squeak,
away it swished under the rumpled bedclothes and was
gone.”
The Laird of Lockleaven paused to wipe gleaming
drops of perspiration from his forehead. Through the
silence which followed his words, I heard a great com-
motion behind the wainscoting—a galloping as of a
troop of horse, a shrill piteous squeaking, and then a
sound which might have been a distant bugle-call.
“You hear them?” he said with a haggard smile.
“That's Mad Anthony and his hounds. They’ve sighted
a buck, or I’m much mistaken.”
“There's an army of rats and mice in your walls,”
I broke in with an involuntary shudder, for the
knowing, listening tilt of his head was an unhealthy
thing to see.
“Rats and mice there are for those who hunt and
ride,” he said. “But it’s not these I have in mind, nor
one of them I saw that night through the tangle of my
dead uncle’s beard.”
“What was it then?” I asked, taking another long
drink of port to steady me. -
“I’m coming to that,” said he. “After my uncle's
death, the chest of money was mine. You can readily


40 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
surmise that I lost no time in opening it. Having no
taste of pleasure up to this—for the most part going
about in rags with a belly as empty as a toy balloon
—it was no wonder that I played pitch and toss with
the ten commandments.
“I can give you my word that I lived the devil of
a life for a round dozen years, with never a breathing
spell on the Sabbath, till my uncle's old chest sounded
as hollow as a drum when I gave it a tap with the
toe of my boot. And Meg grew soft and yellow as a
tub of butter from good living and gin; and tales were
told in the village of how she was seen taking a glass
with the devil on Black Friar's Heath.
“Well, time went on with a jig-step till one All-
Soul's Eve—twenty years ago to-night. I had had a
few gentlemen playing cards with me up at the Hall,
but they had ridden off before midnight in a black rage
with some cock-and-bull story of how I had slipped
a card up my sleeve. -
“I was sitting in this very chair, nodding a bit, an
empty glass in my hand, when what should I see but
a gold piece lying on the carpet at my feet. I was
about to reach down for it—for I was always a careful
man even in drink—when out of the corner of my eye
I spied something which made the hair on my head
ruffle up.
“You can believe it or not—but there, creeping out
from the wall, was a wee man no bigger than my
thumb; a wee man in a yellow gown and nightcap,
with a few threads of beard hanging from his chin. On


WEIO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 41
all fours he was creeping toward me, wagging his head
as he came.
“‘A fairy !” I said to myself, remembering what
Meg had told me of the tiny folk who dance in the
moonlight. ‘If I can catch him, he'll give me a wish.’
So I waited as patient as Job with my eye-lashes
lowered, snoring a bit just to put heart in him, till
up he came and laid hold of the gold piece. Then you
should have seen the sweating time he had over it!
First he'd bend his crooked old back and hoist and
hoist till he had lifted it up a pin's breadth on one
side; and then, just as he thought he had it fairly
started, down it would come on his knuckle-bones and
he'd let out a shrill squeak like a mouse. It was all
I could do to watch him and not roar with laughter.
“‘So!' I thought to myself. “After all the good
things I’ve heard tell of you from Meg, you’re nothing
but a pack of thieves when it comes to that l Break
into my house and steal my gold, will you’? As quick
as a flash, I leaned down and clapped my glass over
him—and he with his back still bent over the coin.
“But he wasn’t quiet long. No sooner did he have
the bottom of the tumbler as a roof for his head, than
up he jumped as spry as you please. And what a com-
motion there was First he leaped straight up like a
startled buck, and the top of his head clinked against
the glass; next he whirled about with outstretched arms,
making a noise all the time like a beetle caught between
two window-panes; and then, when there came no hope
from Heaven or Hell, down he flopped on his knees and


42 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
whimpered and whined till all the tumbler was tinkling
with it.
“By this time, as you may guess, I was near dead
from laughing so. But soon I remembered that it was
All-Soul's Eve and that, if Meg did not lie, a wish
might be had for the asking. So I got down on all
fours and squinted through the tumbler. Then, of a
sudden, I knew the wee man and I clapped my hand
to my mouth to keep back a yell.”
III
The Laird of Lockleaven paused. All his face was
twitching till it seemed to me that he hadn’t one face
but a dozen. But his eyes were still; they looked like
two frozen lakes in the moonlight.
“And who was the little man?” I asked.
“There was only one mortal man could cock his
eye like a Kelpie,” he answered solemnly. “’Twas none
other than my dead and buried uncle.
- “Yes, there he sat in his old yellow robe and slippers,
his nightcap clapped on his head all awry, his bitter
blue eyes eating holes in my self-esteem. It was a sight
to make your blood run cold. And he was champing his
lean old jaws at me like one who has the taste of bitter
words on his tongue. -
“‘Well, Uncle Peter,’ said I, ‘though my teeth were
, clicking together from fright, ‘it’s a pleasure to welcome
you home to the Hall. And to see you so spry for a


WEIO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 43
man of your years,” I added, for he had made a spring
against the glass like a spider at a fly.
“‘Robbie Lockleaven,” my uncle cried, “I’ll have the
hide off you for this!'
“‘You will not, Uncle Peter,’ said I. ‘You’ll stay
right where you are as a disgusting example of an old
man in his cups!”
“At that his eyes glowed like two fireflies and his
beard curled up, till I would have taken to my heels
had it not been for the good liquor in me. As small as
he was, I couldn’t forget the fear I had of him. .
“‘Robbie Lockleaven,” he cried again in a voice like
a pin scratching against the window-pane, ‘you’re a
spendthrift and worse! You're building up a mountain
of trouble in the life to come. But just, lift up the
tumbler, laddie, and I’ll let bygones be bygones. Ye'll
no be adding disrespect to your ither sins? You'll no
be sic a fule, Robbie?’
“Now as his speech began to soften into the dialect
of the countryside, I saw plain enough that I had the
upper hand. Besides, when it came to that, how could
a mite of a man do me bodily harm” Thinking in this
wise, I spoke up bravely enough. -
“‘I’ll lift up the glass under one condition, Uncle
Peter,” I said. “It’s All Soul's Eve; it's only fair that
a body should wish a wish. Grant me a wish, and
I’ll let you go free.”
“Well, he grinned a bit in an uncommonly nasty way,
he stroked his beard a bit, and then he lifted his
voice in a whine. ‘Hae ye no had my bonny treasure-


44 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
box?” he squalled. ‘Hae ye no scattered my siller to
the four winds like chaff º Hae ye no made me come
oot o' the wall to lift precious guineas till my back is
no more than a broken reed?'
“Now I knew that I had won the victory, and I
laughed aloud. ‘You old foxy-eyed thief PI cried. ‘I’ve
caught you fair; and a wish I will have. You can't
go prowling about Lockleaven Hall when you should
be six feet deep in the kirk-yard, stealing my money
and playing pranks altogether unseemly for a man of
your years, without just paying the piper. A wish I
will have.”
“‘Weel then, have your wish and be damned” Uncle
Peter cried in a rage. “Wish quick now, for the fumes
of vile liquor in this glass are making my auld head
spin around like a whirligig.” -
“Well, I thought for a while before I spoke. Finally
I said: “There's only one thing worth knowing to a
worldly wise man like me. I’m going to ask you for
that which has no weight in the hand, but is more
precious than jewels. I’m just seeking knowledge of
Heaven and Hell. What's the human soul like, Uncle
Peter; and what follows life for the good and the bad?
“Now the old man again cocked his eye at me and
stroked his beard like I’d often seen him do while
driving home a good bargain. “So that's your wish,
Robbie?’ he says, smooth as syrup.
“By the tone of his voice, the manner he had of
stroking his beard, and most of all by the glint in his
eye, I knew well enough that trouble was brewing.


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 45
But I couldn't retract, having once stated my wish in
the Kings' English. So I answered, “Just that,’ and
held my breath like a man under water.
“‘Weel then, to begin,’ said Uncle Peter with a
twitch of a smile, ‘the human soul is just a wee mite
o' a man like me. I am the human soul of Peter Lock-
leaven, deceased.’
“‘Did you take shape after death? I asked.
“‘Na, na,’ says he. “I was always in the man like
the core in an apple. You have one as weel, Robbie
Lockleaven—a canny wee man, hidin’ within, as like
to yoursel’ as two peas. Hae ye no felt him tinkerin’
awa at your brain?’
“‘Nonsense!” said I. ‘Such a theory is contrary to
science.”
“‘Is it so?” he cried. “To modern science, ye mean.
There were wise men of old who knew well enough
that the human soul had a body to it. Did they no
debate lang syne on the matter—growin’ red in the face
ower the question of how many souls could be dancin'
a Hieland fling on the point of a needle? Robbie, will
ye be denyin' that the human body weighs a wee mite
less when the soul has sped ?
“‘So I have heard,” I answered with a flicker of fear.
‘Yet surely it can be accounted for b 2
“But Uncle Peter brushed my words aside as though
they had been so many dead leaves. ‘Na, na,’ he piped.
‘It canna be accounted for—except ye believe lees.
There's nae doot aboot it—a human soul there is, with
a body to it and all.”


WHO WANTs A GREEN BOTTLE: 47
Robbie. Dinna ye hear 'em scramblin’ aboot in the
wainscotin', chatterin’ and whimperin', blowin' on
horns and pipin’ on bagpipes? Rats and mice? Na, na.
Though some of 'em we hae for Mad Anthony, who is
never content till he's thrown his leg ower the back of
a nag and is awa to the huntin’. Twascore Lockleavens
hae died in this house—twascore souls are in yonder
wall. You’ll be joinin’ us soon, Robbie, I’m thinkin’.”
“But still I wasn’t convinced that Uncle Peter was
telling the truth. ‘If I let you out of the tumbler, I
said, ‘you’ll just have to show me Heaven and Hell.’
“‘I canna do that, Robbie,’ he whined. “Heaven is
no for me. They wouldna hae us prowlin’ aboot
through that blessed wall. Now will a visit to Hell
content ye?”
“Well, I thought so hard for a minute that my
head ached; and then, all of a sudden, I made up my
mind like a man jumping off a high cliff. “I’ll just have
to be contented with Hell, Uncle Peter,” I said, ‘seeing
that you’re not over-anxious to take me to Heaven.”
“‘Dinna think that!” he cried with a shake of his
head. “The will is there, but the godliness is missin'.
Now just lift up the tumbler, Robbie, and we'll be
startin’ in twa shakes.”
“‘And you will not take to your heels? I asked.
“‘Na, na,’ he muttered. “I couldna do that on All
Souls’ Eve.”
“‘And you’ll bring me back safe out of Hell, Uncle
Peter?' I said, not liking the grin that twitched his
flea-bitten beard.


48 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“‘That I will, laddie,” he says very solemn.
“Well, Dr. O'Brien, I took a long drink out of a bot.
tle of Scotch which stood on the table and then I bent
down and lifted the tumbler. And my dead uncle sat
still as a toad the while, and never so much as blinked
an eye. -
“‘Now sit ye doun beside me, Robbie,’ he said. And
when I had done as he wished, he began to sing a
snatch of a song which ran something like this:
“‘Dinna ye hear the pipes of Locklear
Aweepin’ and whimperin' oot there in the night?
Dinna ye greet for souls that maun keep
A watchin’ and waitin’ for threads o' the light?
Come oot o' the body
Wee souls while ye can, *
There's buckets o' toddy
For ilka wee man.”
“Hardly had his voice died away, when everything
seemed to vanish into space. I felt that I was enclosed
in some kind of shadowy dungeon—or rather at the
bottom of some pit down which a faint light sifted.
And with this feeling, there came a wild desire to
escape. I climbed up and up and soon came to the
mouth of the tunnel. Squeezing between two jagged
lines of ivory pillars which blocked my path, I leaped
out into the open.
“At the next moment, I was rolling down a steep
declivity with the speed of lightning. Soon I collided
violently with Uncle Peter at the bottom—an Uncle


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE: 49
Peter who had suddenly regained his full stature and
who was regarding me sourly.
“‘Ye daft fule!” he cried, rubbing his back. ‘Is that
ony way to be runnin’ against a man? Ye should look
afore ye leap oot o' sic a tall hame.’
IV.
“Well, Dr. O’Brien, I looked up and saw that I was
standing in the shadow of a gigantic statue—a statue
which I thought must be at least two hundred feet tall.
It sat cross-legged with bowed head and its huge tunnel-
like mouth was open.
“‘What's that, Uncle Peter? I asked.
“‘That's naething more nor less than your ain body,
Robbie Lockleaven,” he said very solemn. “I’ve charmed
your soul oot o' it.”
“‘I see you’ve grown to full size!” I cried.
“‘Na, na,” said he. ‘It’s you that's grown small
as a match. But we’d best be on our way, Robbie, for
it's a lang walk to the wall of Hell and I’m no so
spry as I was.”
“Well, as you may guess, my head was spinning
around from all I’d heard; so I thought it best to say
no more, but to follow his lead. When he started
ambling off with a jerk of his head at me, I put my
best foot forward and was at his heels in no time.
“First we skirted a small tower of glass, which
Uncle Peter said was the tumbler—not that I believed


50 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
him or could—and off we started across a level space
where long red grass sprouted up above my slippers.
“‘Ye should tear up this carpet, Robbie,” Uncle
Peter called back over his shoulder. ‘It’s most unco
wearisome when a body’s leg-weary.”
“But I made him no answer, for I was looking
about and wondering at all I saw. I seemed to be on
a kind of desert. As far as the eye could reach, the
landscape was level, except for the statue and several
weird wooden structures which rose up on each side
of it. The sky was a threatening grey. Not a star
glimmered. But somewhere in the remote distance, I
saw a gigantic sun which lighted the whole landscape
with blazing effrontery.
“‘So this is Hell!? I murmured.
“‘Na, na,” said Uncle Peter, uneasily. ‘We hae no
reached it yet. This is naething more than the library
of Lockleaven Hall.”
“‘What's Hell like, Uncle Peter'? I asked, coming
up alongside of him.
“‘Hell?” he cried with a start. “Why, Hell is just
Hell! Ye can be takin’ notes soon enow, Robbie. It’s
an unco wearisome place.”
“‘Then why were you so anxious to go back to it?’
I couldn’t help asking, for the drink and curiosity were
still strong in me.
“‘Anxious to gang back!' cried Uncle Peter. ‘Are
ye daft, Robbie? If ye had a wee mite of sense, ye’d
have just kept me in that bonnie glass till Judgment-
day. And I’d have thanked ye for it on my bended
*


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 51
º
knees, Robbie; though I’m a temperate man with a
distaste for the smell o' strong drink.”
“‘You were clammering loud enough to get out of
it,” said I.
“‘Nae doot,” he muttered. “But ye shouldna hae
given me heed. 'Twas not me that was clamorin',
Robbie, but the spirit of Hell which gives me no rest.
After we leave our mortal bodies behind us, we can no
longer do just as we please. We've just got to scuttle
awa on the devil's errands, and pay with sweat for our
sins.”
“‘And how do you pay, Uncle Peter? I asked.
“‘Why, just by livin' under the same roof with a
fule like you,” he says very sharp. “Do ye no think I
sweat tears o' blood when I see ye throwin’ my gude
siller awa like it was chaff 2 Twascore times hae I seen
my bright gold pieces lyin' on the carpet; twascore
times hae I-bent my auld back to 'em—just to find
them ower heavy to lift. Me, who they say was a wee
bit too canny, to see sic wastefulness in Lockleaven .
BIall !”
“Uncle Peter had worked himself up into such a
fury that I thought it best to say no more for the
present; so once again I glanced about me.
“We had been walking at a brisk pace for upward
of a half-hour, yet, on looking over my shoulder, I
could still see that gigantic seated colossus which my
uncle assured me was my own body. Indeed, from this
distance, I noted a certain resemblance to myself. Of
course, when I had been standing directly under it,


52 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
it had seemed all out of human proportion; but now,
from a mile or so away, I noted with an odd sensation
of fear that it had something strangely familiar about
it. Perhaps it was the incongruity of a statue wearing
dressing-gown and slippers which caused great beads
of perspiration to spring out on my brow.
“As I continued to stare back, I suddenly heard a
threatening roar above my head and, looking up, saw
a flock of strange birds flying swiftly past. Larger than
eagles and inky black, they emitted a thundering sound
like a thousand steam-engines going at once. Soon they
became black specks in the distance, specks which
hovered over the statue. Finally I saw one of them
descend on its nose.
“‘Never fash your head ower them, Robbie,” said
Uncle Peter. “They're naething more nor less than
house-flies taking a wee flight. Come awa, laddie.’
“I turned about. As I did so, I saw, very dim and
hazy in the distance, a black, towering cliff which
seemed to rise straight up into the somber sky.
“‘’Tis the wall of Hell,” said Uncle Peter sadly and
started off at a brisk pace. -
“Now, as I followed him, pushing through the tangle
of red grass, I fell to wondering what the old gentleman
meant when he said that he'd have been happy to live
out his days in my whisky glass. Perhaps, if I found
Hell to be such an unpleasant place as he hinted, I
could cheat it in time, had I once the secret.
“‘Were you safe from Hell in that glass, Uncle
Peter?' I asked.


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE * 53
“‘Not altogether,’ he said kind of careless over his
shoulder. “They couldna hae got me out, but they would
hae tormented me sore. Had it been a green glass
bottle, Robbie—as green as the sea—why, I’d hae been
as safe as a bug in a rug.”
“At that I burst out into a laugh. “Thank you
kindly, Uncle Peter!' I cried. ‘So a green glass bottle
is the refuge from Hell? I’ll be minding that when my
time comes to die.’
“And then, as I saw plainly, the old gentleman could
have snapped his own nose off in rage. But all he said
was: ‘Ah weel, Robbie, there's mony a slip twixt the
cup and the lip. Ye canna hide awa in green glass
bottles when Hell is beckonin’.”
“But now we were in the shadow of the cliff. And
well might Uncle Peter call it a wall, for it shot straight
up with no foothold for man or beast. And away to
the left, a great cave had been scooped out of it; and
in this cave, roaring and thundering, was a many-
headed sheet of flame fully a hundred feet high.
“‘Is that Hell? I asked.
“‘Na, na,” said Uncle Peter with a snort of contempt.
‘That's naething but your ain fireplace and a wee birch
log sputterin’ a bit. Come this way, Robbie, if ye are
seekin’ Hell.”
“At that, Uncle Peter took my hand as though I were
a bairn and led me right up to the face of the cliff.
Then I saw that it was no cliff at all, rightly speaking;
but just a great wall of dark-colored wood which ran
up and up till it lost itself in the sky. And down at


54 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
my feet was a round hole in this wall, just large enough
for a man to put his head and shoulders through.
“‘I’ll gang first,’ whispered Uncle Peter. And he
got down on his knees and popped into that hole as
smooth as a rat.
“Before I followed, I turned and took a last look at
the world I was leaving.
“There, that strange desert stretched away as flat as
the palm of your hand; and there, like a giant brooding
over the universe, sat that great statue of me in its
gown and slippers, its jaw dropped low on its chest.
How I pitied it then, Dr. O'Brien—yet, for the life
of me, I couldn’t tell why. There it sat, staring out
over that crimson grass with its sightless eyes. “You
are leaving me forever,’ it seemed to be saying, ‘me
who has carried you in sickness and health, in joy
and in sorrow! Shame on your soul, Robbie Lock-
leaven!’
“‘Now that ye are at Hell's gate, do ye fear to
enter?' said Uncle Peter, popping his head out of the
hole and sneering at me. ‘I misdoot ye have heart for
the venture.”
“For answer, I flopped down on my hands and knees
and, after a tight squeeze of it, crawled after him
through the gates of Hell.”
*
V
Tagain the Laird of Lockleaven paused to wipe
glistening drops of moisture from his forehead;


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE7 85
while I took advantage of his silence to stir the
fire a bit. Indeed, I was needing the warmth and
cheer of it. What from my host's wild words, the
distant rumble of thunder and all, I was never before
so much in want of creature comforts. I have seen
mad men enough in my day, but never one with such
a plausible way of telling a tale as this same old chap
in his gown and felt slippers.
And to make matters worse, as the saying is, the
rats and mice in the wall were never still for a minute.
I could hear them tripping and trapesing about as
though they were dancing; and, every now and then,
a thin, quavering squeak which sounded uncommonly
like a poorly played fiddle.
“It's the Highland fling they're dancing,” said the
Laird of Lockleaven with a ghastly grin. “Do you
get the lilt of it, Dr. O’Brien?” And he began to
sway his head from side to side and tap out the tune
with the toe of his slipper.
“You were about to tell me of Hell,” I said, thinking
the man was better talking. - -
“To be sure,” said he with a start. “I had just
entered the jaws of Hell, had I not?”
“You had,” I answered, wishing with all my heart
that he had stayed there.
“Well, Dr. O'Brien, it was a tight squeeze at first;
and so black that you couldn’t see hand before face.
But after a few minutes of crawling, we got through
the neck and into the belly of Hell, so to speak. The
tunnel grew bigger and bigger till a man could stand


86 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
t
on his feet. And then a strange, green, quivering light
came creeping along the black roof like a snake.
“‘Where does this unwholesome light come from ?
I asked in a voice which I intended to make low, but
which echoed through the vault like the boom of a
Cannon.
“Uncle Peter chuckled at that, and it made a most
horrid din. ‘’Tis naething more nor less,” said he, ‘than
the sulfur ta'en from matches. Hae ye no heard Meg
complainin’ about findin’ wee broken bits of 'em lyin'
on the carpet? Weel, for all her witchcraft, she had
no suspicion 'twas her auld master had a hand in it.”
“He turned and started on again, still cackling to
himself over his thieving, while I followed uneasily
beneath the band of quivering light. At first the passage
was so straight that you might have shot an arrow
down it, but soon it began to twist a bit from side
to side like the trail of a man coming home from the
alehouse. And then, on a sudden, a wind arose, hot
as the breath of a furnace—a strange wind made up of
a multitude of voices, indistinct, muffled, vaguely
reproachful and filled with a great longing to be heard.
But there were so many of them and so intermingled
that they were like drops of water in a swiftly moving
Stream.
“‘Where does this wind come from, Uncle Peter?
I asked.
“‘Death-bed repentences, Robbie,” he answered.
‘Breath wasted lang syne by puir fules who knew no
better. They thought nae doot that God would be


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 57
lendin’ an ear to their skirlin'. Dead men's lees, laddie,
choaked in dust.”
“For some time we plodded on in silence, while
that melancholy wind swept past us like a perpetual
lament. A cold sweat broke out on me from the heat
of it, and all the time I was shaken by fear. And
then, on a sudden, Uncle Peter spun around on his heel
and pushed me up against the wall.
“‘Hush, laddie!” he whispered hot in my ear. ‘The
hunt's on, or I’m much mistaken. Mad Anthony is
ridin’ hard to-night; he's no the man to turn aside for
anither soul. Flatten yoursel to the wall, Robbie!
Dinna ye hear the thunderin’ and screechin’? All
Hell’s let loose when Mad Anthony rides!”
“And now, Dr. O'Brien, I heard a great hubbub.
First, there came to my ears the clear note of a hunting-
horn; next, a shrill scream and a thundering as of
horses’ hoofs; and then, as I peered fearfully into the
gloom, I saw the huge figure of a man astride some
strange round-eared beast." Down this wild rider swept
on me like the wind, with never a look to right or left,
leaning low on the neck of his steed like a man winning
a race. And not four jumps behind, were a dozen grey
monsters with long dragging tails.
“But before I had time to draw breath, before I
could so much as let out a groan, they were past me
and vanishing in the shadows. And now I heard Uncle
Peter’s unpleasant snicker.
“‘Ha, ha, Robbie,” he says, nudging me with the
point of his elbow, “ye're no owerpleased with Hell, I’m


58 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
*
thinkin’. But never ye fash yoursel aboot Mad
Anthony. He, who was for always huntin’ the puir
beasties, must now be hunted by 'em. There's a kind
o' justice in Hell, Robbie. 'Tis only with me they’ve
been owersevere.”
“‘What's he being hunted by ? I asked with a
shudder.
“‘Just a half dozen o' rats, Robbie,” said Uncle
Peter. “And Mad Anthony’s ridin’ a wee gray mousie.
But step along, laddie; we hae muckle to see ere the
dawn breaks.’
“Uncle Peter started off again at a kind of ambling
trot. Although I was trembling in every limb, I fol-
lowed close at his heels. We went on down the passage
for a hundred yards or so and then took a sudden turn
to the right which brought us up sharp in a large
chamber which had no less than four phosphorescent
ribbons of light on the ceiling. There were a score of
dark figures in the center of this chamber; and a
monotonous stream of talk rose from them, as though
the floodgates of reason had been swept away.
“‘What manner of place is this? I asked.
“‘’Tis just the council-room of those puir souls that
went aboot the world tryin’ to make ithers understand
them,” said Uncle Peter very solemnly. - “Step up,
Robbie, and lend an ear to their talk.”
“I strode up to the group. Aſthough I was nearly
deafened by their uproar, I managed to overhear a few
words of a man and a woman who stood on the out-
skirts. Looking up into his face piteously, she was


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 59
saying, ‘Hector Lockleaven, canna ye no understand
me? My soul is—' And he was saying at the same
time, giving no heed to her, “Anna, my dear, canna
ye no understand me? When I do this it is not
because—” And then both his words and hers were
swept away in a furious torrent of words from the
others—words which battered against the ceiling and
fell back again, hollow and dead. . I heard a loud
buzzing about me of ‘Won't you listen?’ ‘Can't you
understand?’ ‘I’ve got something to tell you,' till I
couldn’t bear it any longer and, showing my thumbs
in my ears, hurried back to my uncle.
“‘Not one of them hears what the other is saying!”
I cried. “They’re all talking at once, Uncle Peter!
What's the "meaning of it?”
“He grinned at me in his queer way and turned to
go. “All those souls,’ he mumbled over his shoulder,
‘hae pestered the lives oot o' ithers by bein’ ower-
communicative. Tak warnin', Robbie. If ye want to
be understood in the world, say naething aboot your-
sel.”
“Uncle Peter led the way out of that chamber and
into another, several hundred yards further down the
passage. This was larger than the first, and even more
noisy. Before we reached it, my ears were deafened by
a thundering sound as though a thousand hammers
were beating on iron, intermingled with loud shouts and
deep groans.
“‘Here ye will find the chieftains of Lockleaven who
were owerfond of blood and rapine,” said Uncle Peter


60 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
when we reached the threshold. “These gentry wer
quick to draw steel.”
“I saw a dozen figures in armor, slashing at each
other as though their blood were up. The clashing o
their claymores, the clanking of their shields, their
shouts and groans, made the hollow chamber echo like
a drum.
“I watched them for several moments with a beating
heart. “No one falls, Uncle Peter!” I cried at last.
“‘Quite right,” said he with a bitter smile. ‘We hag
no victors and no vanquished here—and no rest. They
must just keep at it, with aching backs and wheezing
lungs, till the end of time. This is Hell, Robbie.”
“‘I think I'll be stepping back into the library,
Uncle Peter,” I said. “You’ve shown me more than I
wanted to see.” "
“‘Ye'll no be ganging hame till ye’ve had a peep
at your ain chamber? murmured Uncle Peter in his
most persuasive tone. “I’ll no rest content till I’ve given
ye a glimpse at Pleasure Hall.”
“‘Pleasure Hall?” said I.
“‘Pleasure Hall,” said he. “Tis the room we hae
gi'en to those jolly souls who hae frisked aboot. Ye'll
find gude company there, Robbie.”
“Now by this time I had had a belly-full of Hell.
But I could not offend Uncle Peter on his own hearth-
stone, so to speak; so I just followed where he led.
Well, we may have walked for a dozen score yards or
more, when suddenly I heard such a howling and
screaming and sobbing that it was enough to make


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 61
your blood run cold. I can hear that hubbub yet in
my dreams. And pretty soon we came to a bright
light, and then 22
The Laird of Lockleaven broke down and clasped his
hands over his eyes. And then he began to tremble in
his armchair like a leaf in a gale.
For my part, I finished the wine in my glass and
stirred the fire and wished for the dawn to break.
If the rats and mice had only kept still, I could have
stood the shadows in Lockleaven Hall. How they did
creep out at me from the corners! And the portraits
seemed to be nodding and winking on the walls.
At last my host dropped his hands from his face.
“I cannot tell you of Pleasure Hall,” he said very
solemn, “What I saw there is locked in my breast for
all time. But this I will say: No man could have
seen what I saw and gone about thereafter like other
men. It left a red mark on my brain like the touch
of a bloody hand.”
“There's no doubt about that,” I thought to myself.
But aloud I said: “Did your uncle guide you safely
back out of Hell, Mr. Lockleaven?”
“Yes, he did that. But he kept chuckling all the
way like a man who is well pleased with a stroke of
business. I didn't pay him much heed, for my mind
was on other matters. We got out of Hell, some way
or other, and waded back across the miles of red grass
till we came to the big statue of me which sat with its
chin on its breast. Now he chanted some devil's
rhyme and up I popped into the statue’s mouth and


62 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
squeezed through the ivory pillars. Then, before a man
could call for hot Scotch, I blinked my eyes open and
saw Uncle Peter scuttling away, turned into a wee
man not as big as a pencil.”
“And you let him go back to Hell?” I asked.
“I did so,” said the Laird of Lockleaven with a
weary, gesture. “After the unpleasant time he'd given
me, I wouldn’t have saved Uncle Peter had I been able.
Besides, there was no green-glass bottle handy.”
WI
After the Laird of Lockleaven had told his tale,
he closed his eyes like a man who is tired. The lamp
on the table was going out in a fretful, flickering way;
and had it not been for the lusty log in the fireplace,
the room would have been as black as a cellar.
“I’m afraid I’m keeping you out of bed, Mr. Lock-
leaven,” I said at last. “There's the dampness of
morning in the air. Why not turn in and leave me
here? I'll be off when the light is strong enough to
see the road by.”
But he wouldn't listen to that. “No, no,” he said,
sitting up with a start. “There are many matters we’ve
got to face ere daybreak.”
“Matters to face, Mr. Lockleaven? What do you
mean by that?”
“Just what I’m saying!” he cried, wiggling his beard
at me in an excited way. “First we’ll drink a toast to


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 63
the confusion of Hell; then we’ll prepare our plans.”
He rose to his feet and poured out two glasses of
wine. Then he handed me one with a courtly bow, but
he hid the other for an instant in the folds of his
gown ere he lifted it on high.
“Here's confusion to Hell!” he shouted, and drained
the glass without once taking his lips from the brim.
“With all my heart, Mr. Lockleaven,” said I, fol-
lowing suit. “From what you’ve told me this night, 'tis
not a country I’d like to be traveling in.”
“Then get yourself a greenglass bottle when your
time comes to die,” he muttered. “That's what I’m
doing this night.”
“But, Mr. Lockleaven,” I put in, persuasive enough,
“your time's not come yet. There's a round score of
years to run before you’ll be tipping your hat to the
devil.”
At that, he laughed as wild as a loon on the lake.
“So you think so, Dr. O'Brien?” he cried. “And do
you suppose that I’d be willing to live those years
with the devils of doubt gnawing away inside, not
knowing at what moment my soul might pop out and
be off to the wall of Hell? No, no, I’ve had enough of
this life; now I’m just longing to rest in a green glass
bottle.”
“Don’t tell me,” said I, “that you’ve-”
“Just that,” said he, very calm. “I’ve taken a wee
nip of poison. It was in that glass of port. No, don’t
trouble me, man”—for I had leaped to my feet—“just
give heed to my words.”


64 SILENT, white AND BEAUTIFUL
“If you’ve taken poison, I’ll have it out of you!”
I cried.
“You’ll not,” said he, “for it's ” And he
mentioned the name of the deadliest drug known to
man. “But there are matters of more importance on
hand. Come close, for already I'm feeling its grip
on me.”
As I bent over the dying Laird of Lockleaven, he
raised his voice to a shrill halloo. “Meg!” he cried,
“Meg! You bag of old bones, where are you?”
Now hardly had the echo of his voice died away,
when I saw the library door swing open. And there,
on the threshold, curtsying and grinning, was a scrawny
old woman with the long white whiskers of a cat. In
one hand she held something which flashed green where
the light touched it.
“Have you got the bottle, Meg?” cried the Laird of
Lockleaven.
“Aye, that I have, Robbie,” she cackled, stepping
up to him like a walking broomstick. “'Tis the bonnie
one oot o' the cellar with the wee angels stamped all
ower it. Ye can rest quiet betimes, Robbie.” -
The Laird of Lockleaven heaved a deep sigh of relief
and the twitching of his beard ceased as though by
magic. “Well done, tried and trusted servant,” he
muttered, and his chin sank down on his breast.
But soon he bethought himself of something and
raised his great eyes to my face. “'Tis your duty as a
medical-man, Dr. O'Brien,” he said with a catch in his
breath which I knew meant the beginning of the end,


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 65
“to tell Meg the exact moment when the spark of life
flickers out; and then to help her find my soul and pop
it into the bottle.”
“Whar think ye it'll be hidin' when it's weel oot o'
your body?” piped Meg, champing her nutcracker
jaws. “I dinna ken rightly whar to be searchin'.”
“Just search my body from top to toe!” cried the
Laird of Lockleaven in a breaking voice. “And Dr.
O’Brien, here, will be lending you a helping hand. Oh,
but the pain grips me!” And his face seemed to writhe
up into ridges and knots, while the knuckles of his
hands stood out white from the grip he had on the
arms of the chair.
Now, being a doctor of long experience, I had seen
many men die in my time—some with a smile and a
sigh like tired children going off to sleep, some fighting
hard for their breath with the black dread of Hell deep
down in their eyes, some making a great hubbub for
fear St. Peter was taking a nap and wouldn’t open the
gate to their rapping—but never one of them all had
played such a tune on the strings of my heart as this
long, lean Laird of Lockleaven.
We carried him over to the couch by the window
where the light from the fire could scarce reach us.
And we propped a pillow under his head, then sat
ourselves down and waited for death and the morning.
But how long the man took to die! A dozen times
I thought his soul had sped; but when I’d bent down,
I’d see the mournful gleam of his eyes and the twitch
of his beard which meant that life was still in him.


66 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
-
Once he murmured low: “Have you the greenglass
bottle handy?”
And Meg, who held it tight to her breast, piped up:
“I hae it, Robbie.” -
Well, the gray of morning was sifting through the
blind like the mildewed shreds of a rotting pall, when
the Laird of Lockleaven sat up on a sudden as quick
as the blade of a jack-knife. “I’m a dead man!” he
cried in a voice which seemed to come from far down
underground. “I’m a dead man! Take heed, for my
soul is ganging awa!” And at that he fell back with a
gasp and a sigh.
But before I could so much as reach out to feel for
his heart beats, Meg, that withered old witch, had
sprung on him like a cat on a mouse. “I’ll find your
bonnie soul, Robbie!” she mumbled. And she began to
paw him in a manner I thought unseemly.
“Away with you, old she-cat!” I cried, for it made
my blood run cold to see her antics. “Have you no
respect for the dead?”
But she paid me no heed—just began to cackle away
like a dozen hens disturbed in the night.
“Get out of this!” I shouted. “Get down from that
perch, or I’ll give you the back of my hand!”
Now she let out a squeal like a Banshee; and I saw
both her withered old hands slip under his robe and
grip hold of something. Then she turned her head over
her shoulder; and, though the light was still dim
enough, I could see that her eyes were as bright as a


WEIO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE 2 67
toad's and that the long grey hairs on her chin were
trembling.
“I hae it fast!” she cried. “The soul of Robbie
Lockleaven will no sup in Hell this day! Will ye
just hand me the bottle, Dr. O'Brien?”
“I will not, Meg,” I said, for the light of dawn was
giving me commonsense. “All night I’ve been lending
an ear to the most scandalous lies that ever were told.
You're mad, like your master before you; and I’m
through with dancing attendance on goblins and
fairies.”
“Mon, mon,” cried Meg in a voice shrill with alarm,
“don’t be standin’ there blasphemin'! If ye winna
bring me the bottle, just grip Robbie's wee soul tight
—it's owerstrong for these auld fingers!”
Well, as you've found out by this for yourselves, I
am an accommodating, easy-going man. In an instant
I realized that the only way to get Meg off her master's
chest was by humoring her a bit. Madness is kindlier
disposed when you pat it on the back. So I nodded my
head, without any more to say on the matter, and
leaned down and put my hands where she showed me.
“Do ye feel the wee body o' it?” she mumbled,
cocking her eye at me.
“Yes,” said I–for at the moment I had felt some-
thing through his robe which might have been a
chamois-bag where he kept a charm against evil.
“Weel, hold tight to it,” she said, “while I’m gettin'
the bottle. A human soul is an unco canny beastie
when it's fairly oot o' the body.”


68 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“Never you fear for that,” said I. “I’ll never let
go of it this side of Hell,”
I’ve often noticed that when a man throws big brave
words up into the air they’re as like as not to come
down on his head. So it happened to me. No sooner
had I said my say, thinking that I had a bag of beads
in my fist and nothing more, no sooner had Meg come
down from her perch and hobbled off for the bottle,
than I let out a yell and loosened my grip. And well
might I stagger back from the fright of it, for the bag
had come alive in my hand.
Alive did I say? Yes, and more than that. It had
kicked out like a beast caught in a net; it had wriggled
and turned; and, last of all, it had set its teeth in my
thumb. And I have the scar to this day to prove that
my story is true.
“Mother of God! What's that?” I cried as soon as
I could speak at all.
Then Meg spun around on her heel. “Ye fule!” she
cried. “Ye have let Robbie's soul slip frae your
fingers!” And then, as I stood silent with a great fear
at my heart, she scuttled back to the Laird of Lock-
leaven. “Quick!” she cried. “Dinna be gapin’ and
gabblin’ there! On your knees, mon, and be searchin?
the floor; while I give a look to the couch.”
Well, I did as she told me—for, somehow or other,
I believed all she said. But it was a black business
crawling over the carpet, with not light enough yet to
make out what lurked in the corners. Once I caught
sight of something near the fireplace which scampered


WHO WANTS A GREEN BOTTLE & 69
away into the wall when I reached out a hand. What-
ever it was, it was too quick to be caught by a portly
old chap on all fours. At last, winded and dusty, I
climbed to my feet.
Meg, too, had given up the search. She now sat
beside her dead master, rocking back and forth, her
face in her hands. Never will I forget that scene if
I live to be a hundred—the pallid light of dawn resting
on both the quick and the dead; the Laird of Lock-
leaven rumpled and shaken like a pillow in the search
for his soul; and that old hag, crouched down beside
him, swinging back and forth like a gate in the wind.
“The Laird of Lockleaven is ganging awa!” she
moaned. -
“Nonsense, woman!” I cried sharply enough.
“'Twas nothing more nor less than a mouse in his
gown. —Now I’m off to the village for help. He's in no
fit state to go into his grave.”
But Meg never so much as lifted her face from
her hands. Bending backward and forward, giving no
heed to my words, she mournfully chanted that dismal
refrain: “The Laird of Lockleaven is ganging awa!
the Laird of Lockleaven is ganging awa!” And to my
overstrained nerves it seemed, that behind the wains-
coting in the wall, I heard an echo of her lament rising
and falling with the melancholy cadence of the wind:
“The Laird of Lockleaven is ganging awa!—The Laird
of Lockleaven is ganging awa!”
* 3% + * º $ $


70 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
You have heard my story. Now, what do you think?
Was it a mouse I held in the fold of his gown, or was
it— But why should I put such thoughts in your
head? They’ve worried me now for ten long years—
worried me so that each night I put my ear to the wall,
listening and wondering, till I seem to hear voices and
music and the treading of feet.
Perhaps it was a mouse after all. Don’t let such
thoughts work into your mind. If they once get in,
they’ll rattle about like dice in a cup. And they'll make
you do very strange things—things which you wouldn't
confide to your neighbors.
What sort of things? Why, soon you'll be collecting
bottles of every shape and size known to man—little
ones and big ones, thin ones and fat ones, round ones
and square ones.
And here's a queer thing! They may be all shapes,
and they may be all sizes; but there's only one color
you’ll want. And that color will be green—pale green
like the sea. Isn’t that strange, now?


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER
I
MUST bridge the River Styx and retrace my
steps to the other shore. It is difficult for me to
once again inhabit the worn-out shell which for
so many years I called myself; to mentally conjure up
the petty human emotions which spurred me to rash
words and still rasher deeds; to describe to you, my
gentle ghostly readers, the lamentable and inexcusable
quarrel which ended so disastrously for Roderick Ding-
wall and myself. However, I must not dodge the issue.
I have taken up the pen, and I will not turn back.
Unfortunately for my natural egotism, this chronicle
opens at a period when I was still alive.
As I sit beside the library window in a pale shaft
of moonlight, what a pitiful atom of dust my former
mortal self appears! Blown hither and thither by every
earthly passion, it yet had the colossal conceit to con-
sider itself a reasonable being living according to a
reasonable plan. Roderick is sitting near me, his chin
resting on his hand. The white linen about his throat
glimmers faintly. Poor Roderick! He was another such
71


72 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
as I–both blind atoms whirling in the wind. And now
he must wear that stock always or else— But I
must begin at the beginning or there can be no end.
When my brother, the twelfth Laird of Brangler,
died I was living a shabby, out-of-elbows existence in
a small boarding-house in London. Since my father’s
death, forty years before, Alexander and I had scarcely
laid eyes on one another. Perhaps I was to blame for
this; for, although I had run through a considerable
part of the family fortune, I had never squandered a
grain of the family pride—but I rather think it was
my memory of him which held me back like a ball and
chain.
He was a mean man even when young—mean and
cunning with a white film over one eye like a patch of
frost on a window-pane. They say he had a bag of gold
pieces still clutched in his fist when they fished him
out of the lake back of the house; and that, if he
could have made up his mind to let go of it, he might
have weathered it through to the other bank. How-
ever, that’s beside the question.
When I received word that Alexander was dead, my
first thought was of Roderick. He and I had grown
old together. Starting out as wild lads, we had had
vices enough to fill a stable. But a vice is a poor nag
to ride when a man has no gold spurs strapped to his
heels. Then old age and old wine had taken the marrow
out of our bones. Two doddering fossils now, all we
cared for was our Saturday-night game of billiards.
a


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 73
Once a week we met in a rowdy basement just off the
Strand and played with cues like shillalahs and
billiard-balls like the eggs of some unsystematic mother
goose.
Now, of course, all this could be changed. Roderick
and I would pack up and leave London for good. We
would settle at Brangler Hall and there regale ourselves
in a manner becoming elderly gentlemen of means. I
remembered with a kindling of the blood the well-
appointed billiard-room my father had installed shortly
before his death.' Surely the rats and spiders had not
been able to completely destroy this sanctum during
my brother's unsympathetic reign. And then there
was the old gentleman's wine cellar. Surely between
those hallowed walls the mellow port and burgundy had
gained the subtle tang which only longevity bestows.
Although, as I have already said, my friend and I had
pawned most of our vices, still a glass of rare old wine
could enhance the moments we spent téte-à-tête. Say
what you will, it is only the old who can appreciate
the old.
Roderick entered into my plans for the future with
enthusiasm. The prospect of a happy old age spent in
the seclusion of Brangler Hall, with unlimited leisure
to bestow on his favorite pastime, brought a glint to
his eye and a flush to his cheek. He even trod a few
steps of the Highland fling, his old knee-bones clatter-
ing together like castanets. *
Well, to cut a long story short, we sailed for Scotland


74 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
that very week with never a thought of the 'black
trouble in store for us. Indeed, as we drove up the
broad driveway, we were more like two schoolboys out
on a jaunt than two gray-bearded old sinners with
not many more years of life in our bones at the most.
Every tree and bush, every thicket and hedge, seemed
to hold out a hand in greeting. And the old house itself,
with the red ivy clinging to it like the rusted armor
of my forebears, had all the look of a proud mother.
“Welcome home!” the wind seemed to be singing
through the fir-trees. “Welcome home to Brangler
Hall !”
As soon as Roderick and I had removed the stains
of travel, we hurried down to the banquet hall. Here
it was, in this great wainscoted room—a room where
the gentry for miles around had so often wined and
feasted till the break of dawn—that we met with our
first mischance. Two steaming bowls were waiting for
us, one at either end of the board, and they contained
nothing but a meager mess of porridge. I give you my
word, the very portraits on the walls curled their lips
at the sight of it.
“Like master, like man,” I thought to myself and
clapped my hand down on the bell. And then old Tam
—serving man in the family for fifty-odd years—
hobbled in, soft-footed in his list slippers.
“What's the meaning of this?” said I, cocking my
eye at the bowl of porridge. “Is such hogs' swill fit
for the Laird of Brangler Hall and his guest?”
At that, Tam grinned at me in a most disrespectful


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 75
fashion. “Aye,” he mumbled. “It’s been gude enow
for the Laird of Brangler Hall and his guests for mony
years. 'Tis better for the saul when the belly's no ower
full o' flesh and fowl and ither puir murdered beasties
—so at least my dead master was thinkin’.”
“He and his thoughts are buried together,” I broke
in sternly. “There's a new master in Brangler Hall,
and you’d best be minding it. Now be off to the kitchen
and tell the cook to serve us something fit for a gentle-
man's stomach. And you can be bringing back with you
a bottle of wine from the cellar.”
“But I dinna ken rightly whar to be lookin’ for the
wine, Master Wullie.”
“You need not be looking,” Roderick broke in very
sharp. “By the shade of your nose, it should lead you
aright.” -
Tam left the room with a grieved air.
“Daft fules both !” I heard him mutter under his
breath. “A puir body’s no safe wi' 'em.” But for
all his dolorous shakes of the head, his prolonged sighs,
when next he appeared he carried with him cheer
for two hungry and thirsty men—a nice cut of venison
and a bottle of wine gray with cobwebs.
You may be sure that Roderick and I did the
provender ample justice. Between mouthfuls, I cross-
questioned Tam about my dead brother. As yet the
mystery attached to his sudden and ungentlemanly
demise had not been cleared up.
“What induced the laird to go out of the house at
that time of the night?” I asked."


76 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Tam’s wizen face drew up into knots of cunning.
“”Tis no so difficult to understand,” he mumbled.
“’Twas just the fear of his ain brother spurred
him on.”
“The fear of me?”
“Just that. Dr. MacPherson told him a month back
that his days were numbered. He got thinkin’ o' the
ill use ye’d be puttin' to all the gude siller he'd saved
betimes. The thought o' that was like fire in the puir
body's brain. “Wild Wullie, the Waster,’ was his name
for ye in his best moods. Soon he got wanderin’ awa’
from the Hall, searchin’ naedoot for a hidin'-place for
his treasure. Midnight was his favorite hour for
prowlin’ aboot the grounds. One dark night he slipped
into the lake by mischance. Alec was a gude lad, but
one who wadna let a bag o' siller slip frae his fingers
once he gripped it. I misdoot this wee vice led him to
his watery grave—him, who should hae died like a
Christian between white sheets, with God lookin' on
and smilin’ or maybe droppin’ a tear from His een.
It’s great and wonderful what the power of prayer
“Roderick,” I broke in, rising, “let’s you and me
seek the seclusion of the billiard-room. Religion is
the one subject which Tam and I agree upon.”
The old man gave me a disbelieving stare as I turned
to the door.
“‘Wild Wullie, the Waster” a Christian!” he
mumbled. “Na, na! I'll no believe that till the puir
sauls in the kirk-yard rise up and confirm the glad
news. ‘Wild Wullie, the Waster’ is kin to the prodigal
*
*


, WILD WILLIE, THE WASTER 77
son. First he maun lie dowh with hogs and eat husks.
So 'tis written in the gude Book.”
II
Soon Roderick and I settled comfortably into the
groove of our new existence. Fortunately the
billiard-room, although in disuse for so many years,
had been kept scrupulously clean. Tam did not
number laziness among his faults. Each morning, with
a gray duster wound tight about his bald pate,
resembling a decrepit old pirate retired from the high
seas, he superintended the maids at their work. And
what a taskmaster he was with the lasses!—his sharp,
old tongue snapping behind their bent backs like the
lash of a dog-whip, his bitter blue eyes roving here
and there for a speck of dust overlooked. Like many
another old bachelor, he considered that the opposite
sex owed him a lasting debt, and was not slow in taking
his payment in threats and gibes.
But Roderick and I gave Tam little heed, except to
see that he provided us with the wine and food due
our station. All our time was spent at billiards. Winter
set in before we had been a week in Brangler Hall—
great falls of snow which made the driveway impass-
able and a steady wind from the northeast which cut
the face like sharp, snapping twigs. So we had no
mind to go out, but just stayed in the house as snug
as two fleas on a sheep-dog, and played billiards from
morn till night.


78 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Now, say what you will, it's a difficult thing to see
but one face day after day and not in time grow to
hate it. And it's aggravating for two men to sit by
the fireside with nothing to say to each other but
just the threadbare topics of speech grown thin from
overhandling. There's madness in solitary confine-
ment, yes; but there's madness and there's murder
when two are locked up in the same cage.
It was not long before Roderick began to get on my
nerves. He had a slow, hesitating way of speech which
set my eardrums tingling as though a handful of nettles
had been thrown into them, a wart just beneath his
right cheek-bone which seemed to grow larger as the
days went by; but what aggravated me most in the
man was his Adam's apple. It was a gymnastic Adam's
apple, popping up and down like a Jack-in-the-box;
and it was as large and round as a billiard-ball, making
the wrinkled skin of his neck all tight and shining
where it bulged out like an orange through a paper
bag. Toward the last, the sight of it would unnerve me
so that I would often miss a simple shot.
Now, do not judge by this that my nerves alone were
chafed raw. Roderick has since confided in me that
there were little mannerisms of my own which touched
him on sensitive spots like a lash. The way I had of
clicking my tongue when I had made a difficult shot,
the leisurely fashion with which I took aim, the
jubilant air in which I called out the points I had
scored—all these trifles at the time made him see red.
Well, matters went on from bad to worse between us.
*


80 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
a great gust of wind dropped down the chimney and
blew a handful of ashes into my face. I sneezed—
God bless me, how could I help it?—Roderick's bent
elbow twitched and the cue-ball slipped to one side,
missing both the others as neat as a whistle.
“I see you’ve missed your shot,” said I, speaking
pleasant enough. *
“Missed!” says he, looking up with a fiery red
face. “By God, Mr. Campbell, your ancestors should
be proud of you this night!” w
“How's that, Mr. Dingwall?” I asked, cold as ice.
The jerking Adam’s apple of the man made my gorge
rise.
“By that, Mr. Campbell, I’m meaning that 'tis
not a gentlemanly way to resort to such tricks and
contrivances while engaged in sport. In short, Mr.
Campbell, to sneeze at such a critical moment is proof
enough for me of what I’ve long suspected.”
“And what may that be, Mr. Dingwall?”
“That there's very little of the gentleman about you
but the name, Mr. Campbell,” he says very short, turn-
ing his back on me. “A clip-eared, bob-tailed kind of
gentleman were you always, although I was fool
enough not to heed it.”
Now, there's a strain of the wild MacGregor blood
in me—blood which makes me see red at an insult.
Roderick’s words and his lifted lip stirred up a raging
Rob Roy. Without a thought to our lifelong friend-
ship, I strode up to the man and struck him with my
open hand which brought the crimson to his cheek.


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 83
Surely there was nothing lovable in this fat old man
lying dead on the carpet—in this waxen puppet with
the lack-luster eyes and protruding paunch. For the
first time I caught a true vision of myself, and it was
far from flattering.
“Gude save us! Ye’ve slain Master Wullie!”
It was Tam who thus broke the silence. He was on
his knees beside the corpse with his hand on its breast.
His withered old face was ashen, and his head shook
from side to side as though he had the palsy.
My eyes sought Roderick. He was standing in
identically the same spot as when I had seen him at
my last gasp-his feet wide apart, his right hand
grasping the billiard cue. But the expression of his
face had changed. On it now was written a great horror
and self-loathing.
“I’ll just be gangin' awa’ to Dr. MacPherson,”
said Tam, rising unsteadily to his feet and stepping
through me as though I had been so much air. “Not
that there's ony hope at all,” he added sourly. “Master
Wullie's puir saul hae sped.” At the door he paused,
and I knew that he was whispering to the scared lasses:
“Mary, just slip awa’ to Squire Templeton's ower the
hill and tell him murder's been done at the Hall. Peg,
bide here a bit and keep your een on that Dingwall
man. Justice will no owerlook this, I’m thinkin’.”
When Roderick and I were left alone together, he
went down on his knees by the corpse. He was shaking
all over like a tree in a gale, and his Adam’s apple
was leaping about as though demented.


84 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“God help me!” he muttered. “God help me!”
Well, I put my hand on his shoulder then, so great
a pity I had for the man, and I spoke kind words in
his ear—but neither my touch nor my voice was con-
soling at all. You see, he could neither feel my hand
nor yet hear my voice; and I knew it well enough at
the time, but habit was too strong for me.
And also I knew what was going on in his brain.
Self-destruction was plotting there. And how was he
to know that it is only the blow which a man strikes
himself that leaves a telltale mark in his second life?
But I knew, and I feared for my friend.
After a time he stood up again with a wild light in
his eye. “They’ll never take me alive,” he says very
solemn, and tramps out of the room without so much
as a look behind. -
Down the great hall he went, while I flitted at his
heels—down the great hall and out into the moonlight
and cold. Then away through the snow he plodded,
taking long steps like a man walking a race; and I still
at his heels, like a spaniel.
Well, there was a full moon that night—a calm moon
with a patient, sorrowful face. Across the glistening
snow she beckoned us on to the lake which shone like
a black diamond through the trees. Roderick never
paused or faltered. He was a firm man, once he had
made up his mind; and I knew there was no stopping
him. Soon we were standing on the bank, all glistening
now as though encrusted with tiny sapphires. And it
was here I met my brother.


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 85
Yes, there he sat as lonely as a scare-crow, his
blind eye squinting up at the moon and all frosted with
cold, a bag of gold pieces gripped tight in his fist. All
in all, he was a deplorable sight to see.
“So this is what comes of taking your own life!”
I thought as I seated myself beside him. “Will
Roderick be such another ?”
After a moment Alexander spit a piece of ice out of
his mouth and spoke. “Wullie,” he says very pleasant,
while the icicles in his beard tinkled faintly like tiny
bells, “Wullie, are ye bringin' me company?” And
he jerked his thumb toward Roderick, who stood very
tall and straight on the bank.
“God forbid, Alec l’” said I, slipping into the
familiar speech of our boyhood. “It’s no the sort
'o' death I’d be wishin' a friend of mine. Nor the sort
o' life after,” I added, with a look at his frosty eye.
“Ye'll no be haunting him then to his end?” he says
with a kind of sigh. “Weel, that's a pity. It's lonely
here on winter nights—unco lonelyl But in the sum-
mer it's no so wearisome. We hae the music o' frogs
and whippoorwills and wee hoot-owls. Ye should see
the bats frisk aboot to it. It's a merry spot in the
summer.”
“He’ll no join ye wi' my consent,” I broke in
sharply.
“But, mon, I tell ye he'd like it in the summer,”
Alexander says as smooth as oil. “There's life here
then—weasels and ferrets and snakes ye can wear aboot
your neck like a chain.” He bent forward, and I felt


86 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
his breath like a cold draft in my ear. “And there's
money, Wullie—muckle gold pieces to spend.”
At that I laughed aloud. “I misdoot ye’d be only
too glad, Alec, to have him share your load. But
he'll no do that, for I’m thinkin' this lake has a good
foot of ice above water. He canna very weel drown
himsel’ to-night.”
“But he can try,” says Alexander, still hopeful. “He
can try, Wullie. Now, should he dive from that bank
yonder, he'd crack his skull like a hickory-nut. Canna
he no try, Wullie?”
“Na, na!” I cried in anger. “Ye hae no changed
muckle since lang syne. Ye are ever thinkin’ o' yersel',
Alec. But ye canna hae Roderick—even now he's awa’
to the house.”
Indeed, Roderick had turned away with a doleful
shake of his head, and was plodding back wearily over
the snow. His black shadow lay at our feet.
“”Tis a pity,” says Alexander then with a shake
of his head and a hypocritical smile. “I’m thinkin’
he'll be findin’ a worse way to shake off his skin—
some coarse, bluddy way, nae doot. Weel, 'tis yer ain
business, Wullie.”
With that, my brother turned his back on me and
closed his eyes. But I could see by the way he munched
his jaws that he was out of sorts with the world. He
never even wished me good night as I flitted away.
Well, as I followed Roderick back to the house,
Alexander's unpleasant prophecy haunted me. What
could I do to keep my friend from some rash act which


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 87
would leave a lasting mark in his life to come? Then,
for the first time, I realized the pitiful impotence of
a ghost to shape the affairs of the living. I wrung
my hands in despair as I flitted over the snow.
But soon a ray of hope came to me. Surely there
was one thing I could do—I could appear before
Roderick in my old bodily shape at twelve o’clock.
It was the unwritten law of the spirit world. At twelve
o'clock, then, if he lived till that hour, I would appear
before him and make him understand by gestures the
severe punishment which attended the crime of suicide.
By now we had reached the house. Roderick, with-
out a glance to right or left, mounted the stairs to his
own room. In gloomy silence he approached his
dresser, pulled out one of the drawers, and took a
razor from it. As he opened it, the blade shone blue
in the moonlight.
You can imagine my feelings, then, my gentle
ghostly readers. Horror overmastered me. I called to
him, but he did not hear me; I seized his arm, but
it passed through my fingers. And now my only hope
rested in the grandfather clock which stood in the
hall. Would it strike twelve before this crime was
perpetrated?
One fact gave me hope. Roderick did not seem to
be in any hurry about cutting his throat. On the
contrary, he went about his preparations with marked
deliberation. Several times he felt the edge of the
razor with his thumb, and once he stropped it carefully
to a fine edge. Finally he raised it to his throat, but
*


88 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
even then he hesitated. Evidently he wished to taste
the unlawful sweets of suicide to the dregs.
Lowering the razor, he was plunged into a profound
'reverie. I heard him murmur: “If I don't get it over
with, they’ll swing me up as high as a church steeple.
Think of the disgrace in a Dingwall dangling from the
gallow's-tree. I maun do it.”
Again he lifted the razor till it hovered just beneath
his Adam's apple. But at that very instant, to my joy,
the clock below stairs began to strike twelve. “I’ll wait
till it's done,” he muttered peevishly. “It’s—”
But I gave him no time to finish his sentence. With
a glad cry, I leaped out of the shadows and confronted
him in my bodily form. Pointing at his throat, I shook
my head angrily.
Alas, poor Roderick! He thought that I’d come out
of my grave to see that he went into his. At my sudden
appearance, his hand shot backward and the blue steel
blade sheared his throat from ear to ear.
And as I bent over him, as I tried to quench the
flow of his blood, he cowered away with fear and
loathing in his eyes. “Gang awa, ye warlock!” he
gasped through foam-flecked lips. “Gang awa—the
deil and ye hae done for me!” Then his head slithered
back on the floor, and he died with the black curse of
suicide on him.
IV
Now it wasn’t longer than the space of a deep
breath before Roderick lived again. But it was


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 89
as I had thought—the poor man bore the mark
of his last earthly misdeed. His throat, where the
razor had bitten home, was not a pretty thing to see.
Red it was, and gaping like a toothless laugh. But
poor Roderick did not heed it at first. He was all for
shaking my hand and thanking me for what I had
tried to do.
“To think,” said he, with a tear in his eye, “that
you should have bothered so over a man who had just
taken your life! That bespeaks a kind heart, Willie
Campbell. A misdirected good action is none the less
a good action.”
“Misdirected?” I cried. “What may you be meaning
by that?”
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face, man,” says
he, giving his corpse on the floor a scornful look. “Am
I not better out of that ugly carcass when all’s said
and done?”
“Perhaps,” said I, realizing that the man had not
as yet grasped the truth. “But will you be saying that,
Roderick, when you know the worst’ Step up to the
mirror on the wall and just be taking a look at your-
self.”
At that his face fell, and I could see that there was
fear in him. He wheeled about on his heel and stepped
up to the mirror, which shone gray in the moonlight.
For a long moment he stood there without a word—
then I heard a click in his throat like a clock running
down.
*


90 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“Good God!” he cried, putting his hands over his
eyes. “Good God!” |
And that was all I could get out of him for a long
time. Poor Roderick! A neat man he had been in
life, a man who had ever kept an eye on his personal
appearance; and now in death he was a neat ghost by
temperament and training, supersensitive to anything
which might mar his good looks. No wonder the sight
of that red, smiling throat was enough to turn the joy
of resurrection sour in his mouth.
Well, I did my best to console him. But it was hard
going at the best. Finally I hit on a scheme which
made him brighten up a bit.
“You’d best wear a white stock from now onwards,
Roderick,” I suggested. “It’s becoming enough to a
ghost with your cast of feature. And it's neat as a pin,
Roderick.”
“Neat it may be,” he says with a sour smile, “but it’s
an article of dress I never much fancied. It's sugges-
tive of boils. However, when the deil drives—” He
shook his fist at the mirror. “Well, Willie man, I’ll be
doing just as you say.”
The stock worked miracles with my friend's peace of
mind. It wasn’t long before Roderick was his old
merry self again. And also it had a quieting effect
on my own nerves. To say nothing of his cut throat,
he had always had a gymnastic Adam's apple which, in
my opinion, was better hid. With the stock nicely tied,
his long, curly locks all silvery in the moonlight, he


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 91
was as handsome a ghost as a man could find in a
night's walk.
We soon settled back into our midnight game of bil-
liards—only now there was no bitterness at all, but just
pride in our skill and mutual understanding. And we
discarded the cues altogether, just guiding the balls by
the strength of our minds. A calm, thoughtful game
it was, with the moon as a marker—the balls clicking
gently together, and now and then the sad sigh of the
wind in the fireplace.
And we were careful not to let Tarn and the waiting
lasses get sight or sound of us. We knew well enough
that if they once caught a glimpse of us standing
about in the corners, they’d be out of the house in no
time. Then who could we get to tidy the billiard-room
and brush the dust from the table? It's been my ex-
perience that only a silly, childish ghost goes about try-
ing to impress humans by maybe a groan or two or by
the glimpse of his face in the moonlight. What's to be
gained by it?—just silence and dust and loneliness. A
leserted house with the cobwebs dangling from the ceil-
ing, and the rats playing hide-and-go-seek in the walls,
is no proper home, as I have found by bitter expe-
rience.
Well, as I have already said, Roderick and I were
silent and wary. But we hadn’t taken into considera-
tion Tam’s prying, thieving ways—his old ears relig-
iously pricked for the devil’s gossip, his old eyes squint-
ing through keyholes and around corners. One night
he caught us red-handed.


92 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
It was well past twelve o’clock. Roderick and I
had been playing billiards for upwards of an hour.
Absorbed in our game, and thinking the servants safe
in bed and snoring, we were little prepared for the
sudden opening of the door and the flashing on of the
lights. In fact, Roderick had just made a shot, and
the ball was still rolling.
“What hae I told ye?” cried Tam, hopping about
like a Punch and Judy. “The deil's playin' billiards
in Brangler Hall!”
He spoke to a solemn man who had come in with
him, a man wearing glasses whom I recognized as Law-
yer McTavish, of Edinborough. The two of them
were staring at the billiard balls with their eyes nearly
popping out of their heads.
“A very pretty shot,” said McTavish at last with a
kind of sick smile. “Three cushions and never a hitch
to it! A well-planned shot. What's the trick to it,
Tam 22°
“There's no trick at all!” cried Tam in anger.
“'Tis naething more nor less than Master Wullie and
his friend playin' at billiards. Mony's the night I’ve
stood out in the hall in my night-cap and slippers,
drawn frae my bed by the click o’ the balls. -I canna
rightly dance attendance on ghaists. It’s no seemly for
a mon o' my years.”
While Tam thus expressed himself, McTavish exam-
ined the billiard-table carefully. First he picked up
the balls and held them to his short-sighted eyes; next
he rolled them across the green cloth; and finally he


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 93
bent down and looked under the table. Roderick and
I, swathed in our garments of invisibility, interchanged
smiles. All he could get would be a crick in the neck
for his pains.
“Ye'll find naething o' interest,” Tam continued.
“Weel enow I grasp that ye lawyer bodies hae little
or no respect for the ways o' the deil. Ye think ye've
improved on 'em, nae doot. Howsomever, here's real
witchcraft afoot, and ye may as weel confess it.”
At that, McTavish looked up and straightened his
back. “I can’t understand it, and that's true enough,”
said he. “Now, if the window had been up, I’d say
the wind might have done it. Or if we had not
switched the lights on, I’d say a rat had started the
ball rolling with the swish of his tail. But as it is,
perhaps—”
“Hoot, mon!” cried Tam peevishly. “Gie the deil
credit and hae done! 'Tis no muckle matter when all's
said—just a wee three-cushion shot like I’ve seen Mas-
ter Wullie contrive mony's the time.”
McTavish ran his hand through his hair. “I think
the least said about this the better,” he muttered.
“Keep a quiet tongue in your head when the new
owner of Brangler Hall arrives in the morning.”
“I’ll no be aboot the premises,” said Tam. “”Tis
time I was restin’ my auld bones. I’m awa wi' the
sunrise.”
“Well, I wouldn't talk about it to the neighbors,”
McTavish continued. “Silence is golden.” He put
his hand in his pocket and drew out a guinea. “Here's


96 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
here for the vacation together. Well, we'll give them
a warm welcome to Brangler Hall.”
“Welcome?” says Roderick, with a sad smile. “Alas,
but we cannot! If they see hide or hair of us, they'll
be off like startled bucks. We'd just better be hiding
ourselves as much as possible. 'Tis the only way for
two ghosts to keep their guests satisfied.”
“But we can hover about unbeknownst to them,” said
I. “And maybe we can get joy from their company—
listening to their young voices and perhaps directing
their tastes in wine, or entering into their sport with-
out so much as by-your-leave.”
“Be careful, Willie,” says Roderick very solemn.
“You must not forget for a moment that a ghost is a
ghost and a laddie a laddie. They’re not altogether
companionable.”
Well, neither Roderick nor I could sleep that day for
thinking of the two lads beneath stairs. Although we
had been contented enough up to this, now the great
ache of loneliness was in our bones. The sight of these
two young kinsfolk of ours brought up a thousand
recollections of our own youth—not nice tales for a
Sunday-school perhaps; but still diverting enough to
keep our sides shaking till dusk.
No sooner had night fairly settled in than we flitted
out of the attic and down the great stairs to the ban-
quet-hall. The young men by now were seated at table,
doing justice to every dish put before them. And
what merry lads they were, laughing and joking, with
never a care; drinking their wine as gentlemen should


98 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
s
figure in his tale. I have no aversion for them, be they
of this world or the next.”
“Nor I,” says Jamie. “But we'll just have to be con-
tenting ourselves with what's here. What do you say
if we play billiards ourselves to-night and cheat the
ghosts of their game?” *
“I’m your man!” cried Hector, jumping to his feet.
“It’s a long time since we’ve crossed cues, Jamie.”
Well, without any more words on the matter, the two
lads strode into the billiard-room, Roderick and I close
at their heels. As luck would have it, Hector Camp-
bell picked up my old cue, while Jamie chose his dead
uncle's. Then the game started—if you could call it
a game, which I much misdoubt.
I give you my word, those two made us blush for
them. The way they handled their cues was enough to
sicken a man. They had no skill in their fingers and
less in their heads. The simplest shot was too much
for them. It was all Roderick and I could do to hold
our tongues and our tempers in check.
Well, time went drearily on till the stroke of twelve,
with never a flash of excitement. They'd shoot and
they’d miss, and they’d shoot again till my back teeth
were all of an edge. Here they were, the young fools,
keeping Roderick and me from our game—and they
with no more right to be playing than two scarecrows
in a wheat-field. My old fingers were fair itching for
the cue. -
At last Roderick could stand it no longer. “Willie,”


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 99
he whispered, “this fool game is near driving me daft.
Let's you and me take a hand.”
“And how may we be doing that?” I murmured.
“The way it looks now, these lads will be playing till
morning.”
“Never worry your head over that, man,” says Rod-
erick in my ear. “They shouldn't count. It's only by
sheer luck that they ever score a point. Eliminate
them from the game altogether. Or better yet, you
play your kinsman's shots for him by the strength of
your mind, and I'll just be helping Jamie.”
“But will it work, Roderick?”
“At least there's no harm in trying,” says he. “Now,
concentrate, Willie. It's your shot, for Hector Camp-
bell’s juggling the cue between his fingers.”
Well, I did as he told me. With the full force of my
mind, I planned a very neat shot with a reverse Eng.
lish to it. Around the table the cue ball went and
clicked against the others, like a mother kissing her
children.
“Well played ſ” cried Jamie, with a laugh. “I sup-
pose you planned that shot, Hector?”
Young Campbell looked up with a startled face. “I’ll
not say so much as that,” says he. “However, here
goes for another try.” Once more he bent over the
table.
Instantly I focused my mind on a draw shot which
might gather the balls together like sheep in a hurdle.
It worked to the queen’s taste, and this time Jamie
let out an oath of astonishment. But Hector was too


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 101
come here to lend us both a hand with our game. Shoot
again, Jamie.” * -
So Jamie shot again and again with never a miss at
all till the day was breaking—shot with a white face
of fear and a glance from time to time over his shoul-
der. Roderick was in fine form. Never had I seen
him take such care with each play. Something of the
old sweating pride in his skill was written on his fur-
rowed forehead; and there was a twitch of a smile to
his lips which I didn’t quite fancy. -
When the dawn finally broke like a bubble of blood,
we flitted up to the attic after seeing the lads to their
beds. Roderick was still grinning like a sick cat
—a nasty grin which set all my nerves on edge.
“I’m thinking Jamie had the better of your kins-
man,” says he, just before we closed our eyes for the
day.
“You’ll not say that to-morrow at this time, Roder-
ick Dingwall!” I cried hotly. “I’ll see to it that Hec-
tor holds his own l’”
“You mean you'll try,” he says with a grin. “But
if I were you, Willie, I would not set my heart on it.”
VI
Now, the life of a ghost is hard sometimes, and
none knows it better than I. Just as long as a
body keeps to his own and doesn’t go mixing himself
up into human affairs, he's as safe and happy as a
bug in a rug. But just let him once start being


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 103
ing his tally—the four of us would have been at each
other's throats if the dawn had not intervened.
When Roderick and I climbed up to our attic that
morning, I had a glimmer of reason. What was all
this leading to but just murder and suicide again?
Here were these two handsome laddies being haunted
into their graves by two selfish old ghosts who wouldn't
leave them alone at their game! What right had we
to interfere?—we who were supposed to have given
up the sinful joys of the flesh.
“Roderick,” said I, addressing him for the first time
in ten days—“Roderick, all this must stop.”
“If you are referring to your kinsman's inability
to count correctly,” he says very stiffly, “why, I'm
agreeing with you in the matter, Mr. Campbell.”
“Man, man!” I cried, grasping him by the arm in my
excitement. “Cannot you see where this game is lead-
ing? And the bonnie laddies below stairs! Are you
wanting their blood on your head, Roderick Dingwall?
Was not mine enough?”
“When a gentleman is owed a debt by another gen-
tleman, he should not be the first to speak of it,” says
Roderick, still very stately. But for all that, I could
see that he had given heed to my words.
“This is no time to stand on your dignity, man!” I
cried, pressing my point. “Another night and it may
be too late! There was murder in Jamie's eyes but a
few moments back!”
“And Hector was showing his teeth like a wildcat,”
.


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 105.
“That's a pity,” said Hector with a polite sneer.
“It’s a game that requires thought.” He ostentatiously
chalked his cue and bent over the table to shoot.
Now, in my turn, I concentrated on a miss, but with
more delicacy than Roderick. This time the cue ball
ran in the right direction, but I saw to it that it missed
the others by a hair.
Hector looked amazed. “I missed!” he muttered.
“That's strange! It was an easy shot enough!”
Now it was Jamie's turn to sneer. “I’ve seen you
miss easier shots than that. I guess your streak of
luck's about through. Science will tell in the end,”
says he, and misses a carom which a blindfolded child
could have made.
Well, they bungled shot after shot. But they kept
at it just the same. And the longer they played the
worse their tempers grew. They were not so much dis-
gusted with the game as they were just disgusted with
one another. Roderick and I were at our wits' end.
At any moment we expected to see murder done.
“Shall we give them back some of our skill?” Roder-
ick whispered.
“It wouldn’t do any good now,” I murmured sadly.
“I’m afraid we’ve been consorting too much with the
lads.”
Hardly had I spoken before the climax came. Hec-
tor was taking aim, when Jamie, intent on chalking
his cue, accidentally lrushed against his arm. At that,
my kinsman straightened his back and his eyes flashed
sparks.


106 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“I’ll trouble you to play like a gentleman, Mr. Ding-
wall,” says he cold as ice. “While you’re in the house
of a Campbell, you'd best remember that it's not a
Campbell's way to stoop to stable-boy's tricks to win a
game.”
At that, Jamie puffed up like a pouter-pigeon. “By
God, Mr. Campbell,” cried he, “I’ll have you know
that a Dingwall can learn nothing from a Campbell
but just how to lead cattle away in the moonlight!”
Now, at this direct blow at the MacGregor blood in
his veins, Hector struck Jamie with his open hand
across the cheek-bone. And Jamie, being a lad of some
spirit himself, was at him like a wild man with his cue
gripped by the small end.
“My God!” I cried to Roderick, wringing my hands.
“Stop them before it's too late. We've driven them to
this, just you and Il Man, man, stop them before
murder's done!”
“What can I do, Willie?” he wailed, with his face
in his hands. “What can I do?”
Just at this moment the clock in the hallway struck
bravely above the din of the rattling cues. It was
twelve—that hour when ghosts can assume their old
bodily form.
Hardly had the last stroke died away before Roder-
ick raised his face. On it was a look of brave purpose.
A sensitive man he had always been, sensitive to a
fault about his personal appearance, but now I read
in his eyes a great renunciation.


WILD WULLIE, THE WASTER 107
“What are you about to do, Roderick?” I whispered.
For answer, his hand went up to his stock and be-
gan to fumble with the safety pin which held it in
place. Unwinding the band of white linen, he leaped
to his feet and bounded between the combatants. Then,
assuming his old bodily form, he pointed at the gaping
wound in his throat. “Desist!” he cried in an agonized
voice. “Look on me, Jamie! I am the spirit of your
Uncle Roderick, the suicide. Behold in me, Hector
Campbell, the ghost of him who murdered ‘Wild Wul-
lie, the Waster’l”
It was a magnificent act. When one considers the
supersensitiveness of his nature, one must give Roder-
ick due credit. He had sacrificed his personal vanity
to make his appearance effective. At the best, that
slit throat of his was an unsightly thing to see.
And if the act were magnificent, so were the results
of the act. The combatants dropped their cues in hor-
ror. For an instant they stared open-mouthed at this
terrible apparition, then they turned and fled, bare-
headed, out into the starlit night.
“Roderick,” I cried, grasping his hand, “I congratu-
late you!”
But with averted eyes and trembling fingers he was
hurriedly replacing his stock, and so gave me no heed.
. At last he murmured: “Whatever will Jamie be think-
ing of his own uncle this night?”
It was the one complaint I ever heard out of the
Iſlall.


108 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
All this happened a long time ago. Since that night
Roderick and I have had Brangler Hall quite to our-
selves. Hector and Jamie have never ventured back.
In fact, we’ve seen no mortal face in thirty long years.
No doubt, it is better so.
But the rats and spiders give us no peace. Long ago
they ended our billiards, tearing the cloth on the table
to shreds and weaving their webs from corner to cor-
wner. Then there is the dust which half covers the balls,
and which only mortal hand may remove. Often, sit-
ting idle in a corner, we have wished that thieving old
Tam were still with us.
Roderick is smiling at me as I write. He thinks
my literary aspirations are a pose. Like many another
kindly ghost, he is perfectly content to sit in the moon-
light and twiddle his thumbs. Because he has lived
on such intimate terms with me, he cannot understand
why I should have an artistic bent. Perhaps these
pages will open his eyes. Indeed, Wild Wullie, the
Waster, is Wild Wullie, the Waster, no more.


110 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
* - -
- w
were, and quite malign. Handbooks of assassins,
they But I must begin at the beginning.
My younger brother, Paul, was responsible for
bringing Martin and me together. He had picked him
up in some Bohemian restaurant which he frequented
and from that time forward was so loud in his praises
that natural curiosity prompted me to see this paragon
for myself.
“You must meet Burgess Martin, Charley,” Paul
said one evening. “He’s just the sort of chap you'd
want to room with in Paris. He's an artist to the
core.”
But I was not inclined to take my brother's state-
ments without a pinch of salt. My four years exper-
ience in college ways—I was then a senior at Columbia
University—had made me slightly intolerant of fresh-
man enthusiasm. Besides Paul had already shown a
marked tendency toward strong drink and the false
friendships that went with it. On more than one oc-
casion he had brought back to our apartment “a good
fellow” who needed considerable moral persuasion to
depart in the morning without a few valuables. T
have even known Paul’s bibulous friends to pocket salt-
cellers and spoons, so it is no wonder that his laudatory
statements about Martin at first did not move me.
“But I tell you he's an artist,” Paul repeated belli-
gerently.
“What kind of an artist? Does he mix drinks artis-
tically?”


*
>
*
FOR ART'S SAFCE 111
“Don’t be a damn fool, Charley. Burgess Martin is
the most intelligent chap I ever met. He's in my class
in English literature and he knows more about the sub-
ject than Professor Brent himself.”
“So you have discovered a genius in the freshman
class,” I said with all the weary tolerance of a senior.
“What a strange anomaly | This year I thought they
seemed especially unripened.”
“Martin isn’t. He makes what he says alive, some-
how. You must really meet him, Charley. I’m going
over to his rooms to-night. Why don’t you come
along?”
“You say he's going to Paris next fall to take up
painting?”
“Yes, he'll study under Verone. If you two fellows
hit it off, you might room together. Get your hat,
Charley.”
I could see that Paul had set his heart on my meet.
ing his new friend and so I could no longer resist.
“Now I’m in for a boring evening,” I thought as I fol-
lowed my brother out of the apartment.
Burgess Martin at that time lived in one of those
delapidated old boarding houses still to be found in the
down-town section of New York City. This particu-
lar building seemed to be tottering on its foundation.
It had a sodden, dissipated air about it—the air, in
fact, of a femme de monde who realizes that she is
aging. Here was the tomb of dead intrigue, of soiled
romance.
We were admitted by a slatternly landlady and
~


112 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
mounted two flights of rickety stairs. On the second
landing Paul came to a halt and thundered on a door
which was peeling like the face of a florid man who
has sat too long in the sun. Almost immediately it
swung open and I confronted that strange individual
whose personality was one day to overshadow both our
lives. *
Burgess Martin was a tall man, well over six feet.
BHe had one of those faces which seem to challenge time
—a face that when young, looks old; and when old,
seems young. It was long, lean, ascetic—the lips, col-
orless and thin; the nose, hooked and warlike; the eyes,
small and grey with the piercing quality of gimlets;
the forehead, a threatening protuberance which over-
shadowed the rest and hinted at phenomenal intellect-
ual powers. His body was thin, almost to the point of
emaciation; yet, for all that, one sensed a great virility
stirring in that skeleton frame. -
I was immediately conscious of this virility and of
something which perhaps sprang from it. The man
exuded an unpleasant atmosphere, an atmosphere very
difficult to resist. His personality, like an octopus,
wound its many cold arms of reason about one. To
struggle against it was useless and yet one struggled
automatically. Genius is one of the most irritating
traits in others. To acknowledge it, one must bend the
stiff neck of self-pride.
Perhaps my nerves were a trifle out of tune at the
time. It is the only way I have of accounting for that
strange sensation which ran through me as Martin's


FOR ART'S SARE 113
thin, cool hand slipped into mine. I felt as though I
had a precious secret which must be guarded at all
costs and which even now was threatened. The man's
unfeeling grey eyes were fixed intently on me; those
eyes which, like magnets, seemed drawing my ego out
of my body.
“Have a seat, gentlemen. And help yourselves to
those cigarettes.”
Martin turned to Paul and I felt instant relief.
Seating myself in one of the rickety chairs the room
afforded, I lit a cigarette and passed the box to my
host.
“No, thank you,” he said a trifle bruskly. “I don't
smoke. It wastes too much time.”
“Are you so busy as all that?” I asked. “I had no
idea the freshman requirements were especially stiff.
In my time, one could squeeze through without much
work.”
Martin's thin lips drew up at the corners like a
cat's. It was his nearest approach to a smile. “My
dear fellow,” said he, “I hadn’t my college work in
mind. Of course, that's childishly simple. I am try-
ing to perfect myself in one or two of the arts and that
requires time when one hasn’t the proper guidance.”
“The proper guidance!” I murmured. “Surely Pro-
fessor Brent is a competent teacher of English litera-
ture. He's had several books of essays published.”
Again Martin’s lips drew up at the corners. “A
small man,” said he “–a small man with a small mind.
His work fairly bristles with penny-whistle platitudes.


114 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
All his sunny little essays are woven out of the worsted
mottoes our grandmothers used to frame and hang on
the wall: ‘Be good and you’ll be happy’, ‘Virtue is its
own reward’, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, why try, try
again’. What sickening, sentimental slop! Teach me
literature? Why, he can’t even teach himself!”
Martin's words and the sneering contempt with
which they were uttered, made me boil inwardly. My
college career had formed me into the usual type of
undergraduate to whom the institutions of the univer-
sity were sacred matters not lightly to be tampered
with. Professor Brent had grown grey in service and
had even made his voice heard in the outer world; yet
here was a green freshman attempting to overthrow
him! What consummate conceit! But I would put
this young ass in his place.
“Perhaps you can tell me how Professor Brent’s
essay on man could be improved upon,” I said coldly.
“I happen to have the book with me.”
“Oh, I say, Charley,” Paul broke in, running his
hand through his hair, “that’s his very best essay ! Of
course, there's nothing much wrong with it.”
But Martin’s grey-eyes brightened as he took the
small leather volume I offered him. “Without doubt
the ideas expressed in it are puerile,” said he, opening
the book to the essay in question. “Let us examine the
style. Ah, just as I thought—stiff, laborious—a very
poor flow of words.”
“Could you do as well?” I asked ironically. The


FOR ART'S SAKE 115
man's insufferable egotism grated on my nerves like
sandpaper. t
“Much better,” he answered simply. “Come, I’ll
prove it. You are familiar with this essay, I pre-
sume?”
“I know it by heart.”
“So much the better. Now I’ll read it as it should
have been written, transposing as I go along.”
Martin bent his brows over the essay while my
brother and I interchanged glances. Although I
tapped my forehead with a meaning forefinger, Paul
smiled triumphantly. Evidently he had perfect con-
fidence in his new-found acquaintance.
Now our host's voice broke the silence—a voice, rich,
vibrant, which carried one along with it as on a swiftly
moving stream. And, strange to say, although the
meaning of the essay was in no manner changed, the
style was entirely altered. New life seemed to have
been infused into every line. The sentences glowed
with poetic fire. My artistic sense was stirred by such
a perfect phraseology. It seemed well nigh impossible
that any man could read on without hesitation and
transpose so remarkably.
“Splendid!” I cried when he had done. “But surely
you worked that out before?”
“I never even read it until just now,” he answered,
smiling at Paul. “Really, I wouldn't waste my time
over such material. Well, did I improve upon it?”
“That's a matter of opinion,” I muttered, overcom-


118 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“And you mean to say, Burgess, that you made a
sketch of her while she lay bleeding there!” Paul cried.
“Don’t tell me that you’re such a hard-hearted brute
as all that! I don’t believe a word of it.”
Martin regarded him for a moment with a kind of
cold curiosity in his grey eyes. “I see that you read
me like an open book, Paul,” he murmured.
“Not at all. But no one could sit down calmly
beside a murdered friend and make a sketch of her.
The thing is impossible.”
“Perhaps. But that is exactly how she looked when
I found her.”
“What was the motive for the crime?” I asked.
“Apparently no motive,” Martin answered with a
shrug of his shoulders. “Or, at least, none that could
be discovered But let's say no more about it. It's a
nasty story and brings back unpleasant recollections.”
Soon the talk drifted into other channels. Martin
gave us a glimpse into his childhood which must have
been far from a happy one. At an early age he had
lost both parents and had been adopted by an eccentric
aunt who had taken him to live with her in a lonely
house far out in the country. This aunt had had many
peculiarities. A firm believer in spiritualism, consid-
ering herself a medium, she had often taken her small
nephew into a dark room at the top of the house where
she carried on ghostly conversations with the dead.
“I was only six years old at the time,” Martin fin-
ished, “and you can readily understand what effect
such treatment had on my forming mind.”


120 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Paul had been going down hill steadily ever since
entering college the previous fall. He was one of those
unfortunate men over whom alcohol in any form has
a deadly influence. High spirited, generous to a fault,
full of the joy of life, my younger brother was a de-
lightful companion and one of the most popular fresh-
men in the university. But let him have a few drinks
and soon a startling transformation would take place.
He would become morose, intolerant, prone to fly into
a rage at the slightest provocation. Then would follow
a period of deep depression which bordered on melan-
cholia—a dangerous mental state when I have known
him to contemplate suicide.
But Martin, in some miraculous fashion, succeeded
in curing him. Paul no longer returned at night the
worse for liquor. He gave up café life altogether and
took up reading seriously. I often saw him in the col-
lege library browsing over some book which Martin
had recommended. In those last few weeks of the
spring term, he succeeded in passing his examinations.
The following autumn found Martin and me snugly
ensconced in a comfortable apartment in Paris. My
father provided me with an ample income to pursue
my artistic studies and I was not slow in spending it
and making acquaintances in the Latin quarter.
Those were happy days. Our studio soon became
the meeting-place of congenial spirits. Martin struck
the one jarring note in an otherwise perfect harmony.
Wmong those gay chattering magpies of art, he seemed
as somber and solitary as a crow. He avoided my


FOR ART’S SAKE 121
guests as much as possible; behind his back, they called
him “Monsieur la Nuit.” He had an especial detes-
tation of women, alluding to them very much as a man
might speak of some deadly and prevalent disease.
When he heard the swish of their skirts on our landing,
he would lock himself in his bed-room and not come
out again until they had gone. “A true artist can have
but one mistress—his art,” he was wont to say. “The
rest are leeches.”
Although I failed to share my roommate's views, I
never allowed friends to interfere with my work. I
improved rapidly. Often our instructor, the famous
Verone, stood before my easel longer than was his
wont with the other students. Martin's drawings alone
overshadowed mine; yet I felt vaguely that they were
disappointing to the master.
One bright sunshiny afternoon in May, Emile Ver-
one rested his hand for a moment on my shoulder. “Ah,
monsieur,” he murmured, “you have talent and your
heart is in it. There is life in that figure. You have
caught it in a web of youth. Bravo!”
Leaving me jubilant, he passed on to Martin’s easel.
Here he remained motionless for several moments, a
frown of perplexity creasing his forehead, gazing at
my roommate's canvas in the manner of a man attemp-
ting to read a riddle.
“It is good—very good,” I heard him mutter. “And
yet there is something lacking. It is not technique, it
is feeling. It-. Ah, I have guessed your little secret.


122 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Your heart is not in your task. Am I not right, Mon-
sieur Martin’”
“Perfectly,” Martin answered, glancing up. “The
model is not to my taste. That big, fat peasant with
a face like a pumpkin does not inspire me.”
I knew of Verone's hasty temper and was prepared
for some manifestation of it. My roommate's answer
had been rather unceremonious. But the little
Prenchman did not appear to be the least bit ruffled.
His voice suddenly sank into a soothing murmur.
“Quite so,” he said mildly. “Every artist has his
likes and his dislikes. But I have a plan. Absent
yourself from the class for a month and choose a model
for yourself. I will be anxiously awaiting the result.
Does that satisfy you, monsieur”
“Yes, indeed,” Martin answered with a strange glint
in his grey eyes. “Nothing could suit me better.”
During the days that followed I saw very little of
my roommate. He would leave the studio each morn-
ing, his portfolio under his arm, and not return again
till the shadows of nightfall. And the few hours which
he did spend in the apartment were spent in the priv-
acy of his bedroom behind a locked door.
To tell the truth, I was relieved by his absence.
The man was like a wet blanket thrown on the bonfire
of goodfellowship which I was attempting to kindle in
the studio. My guests were ill at ease in his com-
pany; and I, myself, felt a strange irritation at his
every word and gesture. Now, as I look back on it, I
think it was his atmosphere—that ever-present atmos-


FOR ART'S SARE 123
phere of personal power—which we could not forgive
him and which was as gall and wormwood to our own
growing personalities.
One night, while champagne corks were popping
merrily and laughter echoed through the studio, Mar-
tin’s bedroom door swung open and he stepped into our
midst. His face was a deathly white and there were
great, black hollows under his eyes. Instantly our
laughter died away.
“Pour yourself a glass of wine,” I said with forced
heartiness. “Have you come to join the merry-
makers?”
“Just that,” Martin muttered.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” one of
my guests asked. “You’re as pale as a ghost, mon-
sieur.”
“I’ve been living with a corpse for a month,” Mar-
tin said slowly. “Would you like to see the results?”
He turned and re-entered his bedroom. A moment
later he glided out again with a canvas under his arm.
Placing it on the mantlepiece where we could all get
a good view of it, he turned toward us and said in his
deep, sonorous voice: “Allow me to introduce to you
the results, gentlemen.”
Again there was silence, broken only by the deep
breathing of those about me. All eyes were fixed on
the painting. For many moments we stared at it,
spellbound, motionless. It was the most sincere tribute
I have seen paid to a living artist. There were two or
three men present that night who afterward became


124 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
international figures; but, at the moment, we knew in
our souls that there was but one great master and that
he now stood before us.
What was there in this painting to move us so? It
is beyond my feeble pen to describe adequately the sen-
sations of horror with which it filled me, horror, over-
mastering and vaguely sinister; horror whose breath
was cold and damp as the tomb. One seemed to en-
ter that picture bodily; to enter it and lose oneself in
the shadows.
The painting represented the morgue in the dim twi-
light and more especially the body of a man lying on
one of the marble slabs. The upturned face of the
corpse was a mottled green shade; the protruding eyes
were covered with a kind of fungus. And to add to
its horror, the bristling chin had dropped, disclosing
two yellow fangs in a ghastly grin. On either side of
this grim figure, partly revealed in the semi-gloom,
were other slabs—each the bed of some new fantastic
terror. Underneath this revolting conception was writ-
ten in English these four words, “He Laughs at
Death.”
We toasted Martin with brimming glasses, we shook
him by the hand, we called him “master.” And he,
for once, shook off his cloak of aloofness. Indeed, he
put himself out to amuse us, telling us stories so in-
tensely droll that we roared with laughter till all un-
consciously our eyes returned to the painting. Then,
as the laughter died in our throats, as the smiles faded


FOR ART'S SAKE 125
from our faces, I thought I saw his lips curl in
triumph.
III
Emile Verone went into ecstacies over Martin's
painting, calling it “a masterpiece of the terrible”;
and soon it became noised abroad that my room-
mate was one of those rare freaks of nature, a
genius. Art students now began to seek Martin
out as a profitable acquaintance. But he refused
to be drawn out of his cocoon of solitude and mystery.
His personality, as always, enwrapped him like an im-
penetrable coat of mail. Would-be friends and admir-
ers flinched when they met his cold grey eyes. Soon
the first fine edge of their excitement wore off; they
gave him up as impossible with a shrug of the shoul-
ders and a muttered “Monsieur la Nuit.”
Time passed quickly. Almost before I realized it,
a year rolled by. Martin had worked diligently; now
the walls of our studio were covered with morbid mas-
terpieces. As one might imagine, a highly strung per-
son could not have entered this apartment for the first
time without an inward tremor. Indeed, when the
lights burned low, the room seemed to be a vertible
charnel-house.
One gloomy afternoon in autumn, these paintings
were too much for my self-control. I was on the brink
of a serious sickness at the time; and, as I sat alone
before the dying fire, the flickering flames would re-
veal first one stiffening horror and then another till


FOR ART's SAKE 127
I felt that I was lying naked on the scorching sands
of a desert beneath the rays of a blistering sun. It was
useless to struggle; I was held down by some invisible
weight. And over my bare, burning body an army of
tiny ants was crawling, causing me acute agony. But
just as my sufferings were at their height, Martin’s
lean face bent over me, his cold grey eyes peered cur-
iously into mine, and he said earnestly: “How do you
feel now?”
When I at last came out of the land of delirum, I
was as weak as a new-born child. The sun was stream-
ing through the window, casting its javelins of light
on every side. One of them lay across the bed like a
bar of molten gold. It occurred to me that I would
like to feel its reassuring warmth, but I had scarcely
enough strength to reach out my hand.
Suddenly Martin's voice broke the silence. “How
do you feel now?” he asked.
I started at these words which had echoed through
my dreams. I had to steady myself before I answered
feebly: “Much better, thank you.”
During the next few days I improved rapidly. Mar-
tin was a competent nurse. Sitting beside my bed, he
whiled away the tedious hours by his remarkable knack
of story-telling. It was not the stories themselves
which held me—he would often repeat those I had
already heard—but his truly remarkable wording
which made them flow as smoothly as a river of oil
and was as pleasing to the ear as music.
Sometimes I would speak of Paul, and then Martin


128 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
would be the eager listener. I received several letters
from home. One of these worried me. It was from
my father and ran as follows:
“Dear Charles: Paul is drinking again. I can do
nothing with him. The slightest reprimand drives him
into a frenzy of remorse and despondency. At such
times he is quite capable of taking his own life. I wish
you were home. Perhaps you could manage him.
Affectionately, Dad.”
This letter came while I was still very weak and I
asked Martin to read it aloud to me. I saw his face
darken as he perused it. When he had finished, he sat
in gloomy silence. At last I heard him mutter: “It’s
in his blood. I could handle him, but another might
take the wrong way. It would be fatal to-"
“You must think a great deal of Paul,” I broke in.
“A great deal?” he cried vehemently. “Why, Paul
means more to me than my art! Do you think I would
have wasted my time pulling you out of the valley of
death if you weren't his brother?”
He rose without waiting to hear my response and
hurried from the room. Although it may seem sur-
prising, I was relieved by what he had just said. I
had never liked the fellow; and to be weighed down
under a load of obligations to one heartily disliked, is
a very unpleasant experience. If he had nursed me
back to health merely on account of his friendship for
Paul, surely I did not owe him as much as if he had
been actuated solely out of regard for me.


130 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“I will have to do that in any case to follow the
career which I have planned for myself.”
“What is this precious career?”
“Literature,” he answered calmly. “I took up draw-
ing merely to illustrate my stories. No other man
could do them justice.”
“So you are one of those numerous young men who
think they can write,” I said in a tone which brought a
flush to his sallow cheeks. “What reason have you to
suppose so?”
“You must acknowledge that I can tell a story.”
“Yes, but your stories are not original. Have you
a keen imagination?”
“Not a vestige of one,” he said simply.
“Then how can you expect to become a successful
writer ? A literary man without any imagination is
doomed to failure from the start.”
“You are wrong—entirely wrong!”
“How so?” I demanded.
“Because a writer does not necessarily need a crea-
tive imagination,” he said a trifle wearily. “I, my-
self, have what is far better—a concise memory and
the ability to write in the most perfect wording exactly
what I see and feel. There is enough going on in
the world at this moment to serve as the substance for
a million stories. Of course, one has to branch away
from the beaten path to find such material. But that
is exactly what I am going to do.”
“But you haven’t mingled enough with other men,”
I hastened to add. “You know little or nothing of


FOR ART'S SAKE 131
human nature. A man to be a successful writer”—I
was quoting Professor Brent—“must be a student and
admirer of his fellow men. Without companionship,
a writer misses the human touch.”
Martin’s lips curled up at the corners in one of his
irritating smiles. “My dear Smithers,” he said in a
tone which he might have used in speaking to a tire-
some child, “you’re entirely at fault in such a surmise.
Surely an onlooker, a mere spectator with no party
feeling of any kind, can witness the battle of life with
better results than can the actual combatants. You say
that a writer should study and admire his fellowmen.
That is impossible. If we admire a man, we cannot
study him. We are prematurely blinded to all but his
virtues. By taking that attitude toward mankind at
large, we lose the larger half of faults and follies which
go into the makeup of the average mortal.”
“I don't agree with you,” I said coldly. “But even
if you were right, you’d be a fool to throw away a cer-
tainty for an obscure possibility. Have you stopped
to think that the successful writer of to-day has to
cater to the mob as you call them p.
“But I won’t have to do that,” he cried with flashing
eyes. “I intend devoting my time exclusively to hor-
ror tales. Have you ever witnessed an accident on the
street? Well, in a moment, hundreds collect where
there was but one. They are drawn thither by that
morbid streak in humanity, that overmastering desire
to feast one's eyes on gruesome details. Such a sensa-
tion will be gratified in my stories. Men and women


FOR ART'S SAKE 133
to be painted as they are, but as they think they are
Flatter them cleverly enough, and you’ll soon become
what the world considers a successful artist. What a
soul-stirring vocation! Your watchword through life
shall be: “When I touch my patron's vanity I also
touch his pocketbook.”
“I’ll never do that—not if I have to starve first l” I
cried angrily.
But Martin only smiled unpleasantly and picked up
his suitcase. With a curt nod, he turned and strode
out of the room. A moment late I heard the outer door
slam. He had gone.
º
IV
That same week Martin sailed for home. He
left behind him his gruesome paintings which
he bequeathed to me in a sarcastic note. I im-
mediately removed those grisly masterpieces and hung
up in their place some of my own work. At the time
I was living a trifle beyond my means; and so, when I
received what I then considered a handsome offer from
Emile Verone for my roommate's morbid creations, I
was glad enough to accept it. Of course I intended
paying Martin the price I received for them at some
future date—a date which, unfortunately, never mater-
ialized. These same paintings, I now understand, hang
in the Louvre and are worth their weight in gold.
After Martin had left Paris, I began to look around
for another roommate who would share my expenses.
-


134 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
One evening, as luck would have it, I happened to run
into an old acquaintance at the Follies Bergere. He
had wandered to Paris alone to amuse himself and was
delighted at the prospect of living with a former col-
lege friend who knew the ropes. *
Wilbur Huntington was a plump young man who
had made quite a reputation for himself at the univer-
sity. No one had ever caught him in the act of open-
ing a book, yet he had always glided smoothly through
the examinations. He was an anomaly to the profess-
ors who claimed that success required effort. His half-
shut, sleepy, brown eyes, his bland smile, his round,
expressionless face, quite belied the man’s intelligence.
Although he was lazy to a fault, his mind was as keen
as a knife which had just visited the grindstone. I
have never met his equal as a psychologist.
I was lucky to have fallen in with him. He came
of a very wealthy New York family, who gave him a
lavish income—an income which he was not slow in
spending. Money meant little or nothing to him. Dur-
ing the months we roomed together we lived like fight-
ing cocks.
There was nothing Huntington liked better than to
fill our studio with Emile Verone's pupils and discuss
art. He would start the ball rolling with some titbit
of knowledge which he had picked up; start it rolling,
and then sink back comfortably on the lounge, close his
narrow-lidded eyes and smile blandly at the ceiling.
He liked to hear the maniacs rave, as he expressed it.
In the Latin Quarter he was called “Le Cochon d’Inde.”


FOR ART'S SAFCE 135
They facetiously brought him offerings of lettuce leaves
which he devoured solemnly and rapaciously. The
man's appetite was amazing.
With such a companion, the months sped by merrily.
Occasionally I received a letter from home. It seemed
that Paul had reformed, and that this reformation had
been brought about through Martin. Apparently my
former roommate had sought him out immediately on
his return to America and had once more succeeded
where others had failed. The letter, which informed
me of this, was written by my mother. It ran as
follows:
“My Dear Son: You will be glad to know that Paul
has given up drinking. What a relief this has been to
your father and me! We have been so worried about
him since you left home! But now everything seems to
be all right.
We owe Paul’s reformation to your friend, Mr. Mar-
tin. He has a remarkable influence over the boy. And
yet, somehow, I can’t bring myself to like him. When
he is in the room, I always feel as though I had a prec-
ious secret which I must keep from him at all cost.
This is absurd, of course.
My dear boy, I am glad that you are getting along so
well in your studies! I hope you will come home soon.
Father has not been in good health lately. I believe he
has been worrying over business affairs. Lovingly,
- Mother.”
At the time I did not give much heed to the last few.
lines of my mother's letter. Father had always been
such a strong, robust man that I could not imagine him


136 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
sick. Death and failure seemed quite remote from
him. And so, when I received a letter from Paul two
months later, I was quite unprepared for what it had
to tell me. The news which it contained was like a bolt
from the blue. I quote it here:
“Dear Charley: Come home at once. Father died
this morning, and we need you. Only yesterday I
learned that the firm had failed. Would write more,
but mother is calling. Hurry home. Affectionately,
Paul.”
“What's the trouble?” Huntington asked. He had
come into the studio unnoticed and now stood at my
elbow. What's the trouble?” he repeated. “You’re as
white as a ghost.” -
I tried to answer him but couldn't. Something
clicked in my throat like a clock running down. I
handed him the letter in silence.
“I don’t know what to say,” he muttered a moment
later. “I’m awfully sorry, Charley. I want you to
know that.” He offered me his plump hand boyishly.
But I did not see it. There were weak, womanly
tears in my eyes. Father was dead—not only dead but
ruined l I had pictured to myself two more years in
Paris and then a luxurious studio in New York; and
now these air castles had crumbled in an instant. But
what a selfish brute I was! Father had just died, and
I was already thinking of myself. Martin had been
right in his estimate of me.


FOR ART’S SAKE 137,
“The Marseillaise sails to-morrow,” Huntington
said. “I’ll hustle down and get our staterooms re-
served.”
“But surely you’re not going to leave Paris?” I mur-
mured. “I can make it all right by myself.”
Huntington smiled sleepily. “Don’t you worry about
that,” he answered. “I’m sick of Paris. When you
go, I go. Besides, as you know, queer birds are my
hobby; and I’m rather anxious to meet this chap, Mar-
tin, of whom you have told me so much.”
On the following day we took passage for New York.
The ocean was rather rough for that time of year; to
my natural depression were added the qualms of sea-
sickness. But on that trip I learned the true worth of
the plump, sleepy man whom my associates of the Latin
Quarter called “Le Cochon d’Inde”. He was inde-
fatigable in his efforts to cheer me up.
I found affairs at home even worse than I had ima-
gined. My father had died a bankrupt. He had left
nothing except the house which was heavily mortgaged
and several debts incurred during his illness. These
bills, added to the natural grief attending his death,
had aged my mother at least ten years. I had, indeed,
come home at the right moment if I could help.
My one pleasant surprise was Paul. He had ma-
tured considerably in the last few years. I found him
looking splendidly—a handsome, capable fellow, if
there ever was one. On the first night of my home-
coming we had a long talk together after mother had
gone to bed.


138 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“They tell me you’re not drinking any more, Paul ?”
I said casually.
“No,” he answered with a grim smile. “I’m through
with that stuff for good. Martin cured me.”
“How did he go about it?” I asked.
“Oh, he showed me a few examples of what it could
do to a fellow. You see he's living in the slums these
days, and he has lots of opportunity to study drunks
in their last stages.”
“In the slums! Why does he live there?”
“He’s gathering material for a book on murder—
studying the criminal types close up. He says it pays
to get first-hand knowledge of a subject. When I begin
practicing law, he'll send me a lot of clients.”
“When do you go up for your final examinations?”
“Next month—thanks to Martin. If it weren’t for
him, I’d probably be hitting the high life yet. But
one night he collared me, dragged me over to his tene-
ment, and introduced me to a bleary-eyed old chap who
was fighting imaginary snakes. What a sight he was 1”
Paul passed his hands across his eyes as though to
shut out a picture. “He had been a gentleman, too, in
his day—a Harvard man, I believe. Any one could tell
he wasn't an ordinary drunk by his ravings He quoted
a lot of poetry to keep off the snakes. Dante's Inferno
I believe it was. Well, it cured me.”
“I’m glad of that. But you mustn't give Martin all
the credit. A great deal belongs to you.”
“Not a bit,” he answered with a rueful shake of the
head. “Martin scared me into it. But what are you


FOR ART’S SAFOE 139
going to do now, Charley? Are you going to paint por-
traits?” -
“Yes, if I can get any sitters. I’ve got to look
around a bit first. You don’t know any wealthy beauty
who wants to have her face immortalized ?”
Paul rose yawning. “No,” he answered. “But if
I did, I don’t think I'd hand her over to you until I had
discovered if there weren’t some legitimate, legal way
of separating her from her cash.”
The next day I began writing letters to former ac-
quaintances with the hope that they might know of
some one who was anxious to have a portrait painted
by a pupil of the famous Emile Verone. I soon learned
that I could hope for little from this source. Most of
my college friends were so busy or so absent-minded
that they failed to answer my note; and the few replies
which I did receive were far from encouraging. Evi-
dently the world at large was not at all interested in
furthering the future of an aspiring young genius.
The pile of bills in my mother's desk grew higher
day by day. I no longer dared to open them. My
spirits were at very low ebb on the morning when I
received a note from Wilbur Huntington which gave
me a ray of hope. It ran as follows:
“Dear Charley: The mater wants her portrait
painted. She's not much on looks, but she has a well-
lined pocketbook. I have boosted you to the skies. She
now thinks that you are a Van Dyke, a Whistler, and
a Sargent, all in one. Call on her next Monday and
make good. As ever, Wilbur.


140 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
When I finished this hope-inspiring epistle, I uttered
a whoop of joy which brought Paul out on the veranda
in no time. “I’ve struck it at last,” I cried.
“What's the matter?” he asked. “Have you found a
half-dollar or something?”
“I’ve found a good many half dollars,” I answered
gleefully. “I’ve been asked to do a portrait of Mrs.
Huntington—you know, Wilbur Huntington’s mother.
It's the chance of a lifetime. If I make good, she’ll
recommend me to her society friends and it will be
smooth sailing after that.”
“Good man!” cried Paul. “You’ve struck it all
right. But look here. I’ve got another surprise for
you.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a story by Martin,” he answered. “They’re
featuring it this month in the Footstool magazine. Just
look it over while I run downtown. I want your
opinion of it. It's the first piece of work he's had
published.”
After Paul had gone, I opened the magazine. On
the first page was an illustration by Martin himself.
I recognized it instantly. It was a miniature of that
first painting I had seen of his—that vivid conception
of the girl lying dead in the snow. It had been im-
proved by a few deft strokes of the brush so that now it
was a veritable masterpiece of mystery. For a long
moment I gazed at it while the well-remembered feeling
of intense cold passed through my frame. At last, with


FOR ART’S SAKE 141
*
an effort, I turned the page. “The Murder of Mary
Mortimer,” was the title of the story.
“Some melodramatic nonsense, no doubt,” I told my-
self and began to read. *
But from the first page I knew that I was wrong—
entirely wrong. I could not blind myself to the truth.
If the man’s illustration was gruesome and yet mas-
terful, the man's story was diabolic and yet a classic.
As I read, I felt the same sensations stirring in me
that the deformed idiot in Martin's story felt when the
voice whispered in his ear: “You are losing her l Is
it not better to have her dead?” And when he is driven
by this voice to strike her down, when she falls like a
red ruin in the snow, I saw that scene as though I were
standing where the dark shadows of nightfall were
closing in.
“I see you like my story,” said a familiar voice.
I looked up with a start and encountered Martin’s
cold grey eyes. His thin lips were curling up at the
corners in their wonted cat-like grimace. For a. In O-
ment I experienced the unpleasant nervous shock of
a somnambulist who is suddenly awakened.
“A remarkable story!” I said at length in a rather
unsteady tone. “The most startlingly vivid piece of
fiction I ever read! Surely you must have imagina-
tion to write like that?”
“On the contrary, not a grain of it. As I told you
once before, there are countless themes drifting about
and a man has only to get off the beaten path to find
*


FOR ART’S SAFOE 143
right circumstances, of course. But where is Paul this
morning?”
“He went downtown,” I said brusquely. “He prob-
ably won't be back for an hour or two.”
“Well, I’ll not wait. Tell him I called, won't you?
Good-bye, Smithers.”
For some time I sat watching his tall, lean figure re-
ceding in the distance. Finally I rose, and, moved
by a sudden fit of childish irritation, picked up the
magazine, entered the library, and deposited it care-
fully on a bed of glowing coals.
“It’s better out of the way,” I told myself. I never
knew until years later how truly I had spoken.
*
V
It was not long before Martin's prophecy about
my career came true. Spurred on by adversity and
a natural desire to please I soon became one of those
flourishing society portrait painters who fatten on the
vanity of women. Mrs. Huntington's picture did not
suit her until I had touched it up to such an extent that
her own son could not recognize any likeness. But
when I had beautified her to her heart's content, she
became enthusiastic and recommended me to all her
wealthy friends. That was the beginning. Soon I had
all I could do to fill the many orders which rained
down on me. My work became the vogue—I was no
longer a man but a fashion.


144 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Prosperity brought the fulfillment of my youthful
dreams. I was now able to rent and fit out one of the
most artistic studios in Washington Square. But, in
spite of this, I was far from happy. I had moments
of deep depression when my work galled me cruelly—
moments when the only spur that kept me going was
the knowledge that before long I could retire and live a
life of leisure. *
Meanwhile Paul had passed his examinations to the
bar and was actually practicing. No sooner had he
hung out his shingle than he was beseiged daily by a
ragged multitude of clients whom he shrewdly sus-
pected Martin had sent his way. A stream of villain-
ous faces passed through his office at all hours—faces
which one could imagine as being associated with every
crime in the calender. Paul had a keen mind; he soon
developed into a criminal lawyer of exceptional reputa-
tion. His clients, in spite of their poverty-stricken ap-
pearance, paid him well for his services and he soon
became affluent.
I saw a great deal of my brother at this time. We
had become much closer friends. The four years which
divided us, no longer seemed such an insurmountable
barrier. Now he would often take me into his con-
fidence. *
There was only one topic on which we could not
agree. Paul was still an ardent admirer of Martin;
while I, although I had to acknowledge the man’s gifts,
loathed the very mention of his name. I could not
forgive him his prophecy concerning my career. Yes,


146 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
writing for over two years now and has had only one
story in print. Won’t the publishers take his work?”
Now Paul, in his turn, would flush angrily and his
blue eyes would grow darker. “How should I know?
He never talks about himself. But I’ll tell you this,
Charley—when his work is published, the whole world
will know about it!”
Often, after one of these heated controversies, I
would leave my brother's apartment in a temper and
walk the streets for hours before I regained my habitual
calm. It was on one of these midnight rambles that
I met Martin, himself, under rather singular and
sinister circumstances—circumstances which left a
never-to-be-forgotten impression on my mind.
One mild March night I left Paul's apartment with
rather more than my usual irritation. I was so heated,
in fact, that I determined to walk it out of my system,
if possible, before retiring. As I knew by former
experience, a nocturnal ramble has a quieting effect on
ruffled nerves. All the poor, petty passions of man
flourish best between four walls. They are soon
smothered in the sable robe of outer night.
It was a fine evening for a stroll. The aroma of
budding spring was strong in the air—spring, that
supple, green-limbed goddess whose presence is felt
even in the cold, atrophied arteries of the city. A new
moon hung lazily in the heavens, riding the small,
silver clouds which swept past it like charging breakers.
But the stars were not so fortunate. Often they were


FOR ART’S SAKE 147
submerged beneath these foam-flecked billows of the
infinite, bobbing up again into view like floating lan-
terns.
As I walked along toward Washington Square, the
irritation, which had been so real a moment before,
vanished entirely. It was followed by an almost
philosophic calm. I began to take myself to task.
Why should I interfere with Paul in his choice of
friends? Surely he was old enough now to choose them
for himself. Just because I happened to dislike
Martin, that was no reason why I should attempt to
influence my brother against him. And when it came
to that, what had the fellow ever done to me that I
should so hate the sound of his name? He had told
me several truths hard to stomach, indeed; but no
doubt they had been intended kindly as a warning. On
the other hand, he had nursed me back to health when
my life had hung in the balance. What had I ever
done to thank him? Nothing—absolutely nothing.
Well, I would turn over a new leaf; I would apologize
to Paul for what I had said.
By this time I was within a few blocks of home.
Seeing an inviting alley which I had not yet explored
and which might prove to be a short cut, I wandered
into it and into a strange adventure as well. Winding
smoothly along for several hundred yards, it was so
narrow and tortuous that the old brick houses on either
side seemed to be twisted out of normal shape; to be
tottering toward each other like drunkards about to


148 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
embrace. And then suddenly, almost violently, the
alley ended in a precipitous, ivy-covered wall.
This wall brought me to an abrupt halt. I expe-
rienced a sensation of surprise, of chagrin. I had
followed this alley as a man follows an odd and rather
attractive philosophy, thinking that in due course it
would bring me out into familiar, homely surround-
ings; and here was this disconcerting wall looming up
like an abrupt and positive negative. I could not have
been more unpleasantly surprised if a friend, while
telling me a whimsical, fantastic tale, had suddenly
dropped dead in the middle of a sentence. Indeed
there was something brooding and brutal about this
wall, like death itself.
The little street was as dark as a subterranean
passageway. I might very easily have blundered into
the wall without seeing it, had it not been for an
antique, iron lantern which was suspended from it
and which shed its flickering beams over its rough, red
surface. The light, however, was not sufficient to make
objects at a short distance discernable. For instance
the houses on either side, and more especially their
areaways, were in tottering, unstable shadow.
I came to an enforced halt near the wall and glanced
at the house on my right. It seemed to me that the
shadowy figure of a man was sitting on the stoop in
the attitude of one who is patiently waiting; but I
could not be sure of this as the mantle of gloom
enshrouding the house was almost impenetrable. What-
ever it was, it remained absolutely motionless.


FOR ART'S SAKE 153
attitude of nonchalant unconcern. There was some-
thing in this man’s air of easy indifference which was
galling in the extreme. Weak as I was, I managed to
sit up and rub my head.
“Oh come now, Smithers,” the voice continued
unfeelingly, “you’ve been playing dead long enough.
That was the merest tap you got—nothing to make a
fuss about. They’re all gone now. It’s quite safe to
stage a resurrection.”
And now I knew the voice. Who but Martin could
show such an utter lack of human feeling? There he
stood, as indifferent as Fate, the lamp light accentuat-
ing the dark hollows under his eyes and revealing the
cruel catlike curve of his lips. Like a pleased spectator
at some farce, he leaned against the wall, smiling and
playing absently with a small silver-headed cane.
“So it's you, Martin,” I said, rising weakly to my
feet. “How did you happen to find me?”
“I didn’t,” he answered carelessly. “On the con-
trary, you found me. I was sitting on the stoop of
my house when you and your friend began quarreling.”
“You were the man on the stoop then,” I muttered.
“I remember now. But what happened to that poor
fellow in the green coat?” "
“Your friend ?” he asked.
“He was no friend of mine. I never saw him
before. But what happened to him? You must have
seen what happened to him?”
“He’s lying over there,” Martin said lightly, jerking
his pointed chin over his shoulder. “And he's not


154 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
playing dead, Smithers. You and your other friends
finished him off to the queen's taste.”
“My other friends?” I cried, putting my hand to
my throbbing head. “Who do you mean?”
“Why, all those impulsive gentlemen who came
charging down the street a few minutes ago,” he
answered, “those gentlemen armed with clubs. What a
devil's tattoo they did play on that poor fellow's ribs!
He's nothing but a bag of broken bones now, Smithers.”
“They were no friends of mine!” I cried angrily.
“No” he said, raising his eyebrows whimsically.
“You seemed rather anxious to keep that poor fellow
here till they had played their little game with him.
If you had boosted him up on the wall, as he wanted,
no doubt he'd be alive this minute.”
“Surely he's not dead, Martin?” I asked with a
heavy heart. “Don’t tell me that he's dead!”
“As dead as a doornail,” he answered laconically.
“But look for yourself.” /
He stepped to one side and I saw something which
a moment before had been hidden by his shadow. The
body of the man in the green coat seemed suddenly to
spring out of the gloom. There it lay, like a scarecrow
which has been blown over on its face—a grotesque,
inhuman figure huddled up against the wall. And from
it, dark running puddles of blood crawled away, leaving
strange, fern-like traceries on the dusty pavement. Yes,
he was undoubtedly dead. Only the green coat seemed
still alive. One of its tails stirred slightly as the strong
March breeze eddied about it.


156 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“How So?”
“Well, you carried a heavy cane. Now it is broken
in half. This man has been beaten to death. You are
found near the body with a wound on your head.”
“And you?”
“Why, I live on this street, Smithers. There is some
reason why I should be here, while there is no reason
under the sun why a society portrait painter should
be found up a miserable, blind alley at midnight. If
nothing more, it would cause considerable newspaper
notoriety which I don’t think would do you any good
with your wealthy patrons.”
“But I can’t sneak out of it like this,” I said weakly.
“I feel that I’m too much to blame. That poor fellow
might have got away if I hadn't been such a suspicious
fool.”
“Don’t take all this so much to heart, Smithers,”
Martin murmured with one of his enigmatic smiles.
“After all, what is one human life more or less? They
are like ants, such men—only not so industrious. This
fellow perished to-night in a good cause—for art's sake,
indeed, for I intend to make the description of his
murder a masterpiece.”
“You’re not human, Martin,” I said, turning away.
“However, I think I’ll accept your advice and be off
before the police come.”
“I knew you would,” he said triumphantly. “One
can always depend on you, Smithers.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Why, I have modeled myself after the moon,” he


158 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
s
I received had inflicted a severe scalp wound
which called for medical attention; while, added to
this, the unnatural excitement had brought me to the
verge of a breakdown. At night I was subjected to
horrible dreams from which I awoke bathed in a
copious sweat.
On the day after the murder I scanned the papers
eagerly. My curiosity was finally rewarded by the
following paragraph:
BEATEN TO DEATH
Early this morning the body of a man was found at
the foot of the wall which terminates Tyndall Place.
His death was caused by the heavy blows of some blunt
instrument. As yet the body has not been identified.
I laid the paper down with a sigh. So this was
all the publicity the Evening Star thought such a
ghastly business to be worth ! What had shaken me to
the depths of my soul, the Evening Star could dismiss
in a few lines. I had expected to see the affair written
up on the first page with perhaps a full-length picture
of the man in the green coat. And I had found it only
with difficulty, hidden away among the advertisements.
How different it would have been had the victim
possessed social prominence or even a moderate income!
Then he would have come into his own on the front
page in big, glaring type; a host of detectives would
by now be hot on the trail of his assassins and the
wheels of justice would soon be humming merrily,
grinding into chaff those impulsive gentlemen, as Mar-


FOR ART'S SAFOE 159
tin called them, who had broken simultaneously the
skull of the green-coated man and the Fifth Command-
ment.
Martin l Evidently he had disappeared from the
scene before the police arrived. Otherwise some
allusion to him would have appeared in that article.
No doubt he, like myself, had avoided getting himself
mixed up in the affair on account of the unpleasant
newspaper notoriety which was sure to follow. But
why could he not have said as much to me? That was
like the man—to hide his own frailties under mine;
to make it appear that he was going to face the music,
while in reality he was only waiting till my back was
turned before he beat a hasty retreat. Well, hereafter,
I would take what he said with a grain of salt. In
spite of his insufferable air of egotism, he evidently
had human weaknesses like the rest of us.
For the duration of that week I rested till I regained
my mental and physical equilibrium. I had several
callers, including Huntington, to whom I told in con-
fidence what had befallen me in the alley. Wilbur
listened with more than his customary attention, his
eyes half closed and his blunt, shapeless nose twitching
slightly. It was at times like these that one appreciated
thoroughly the aptness of his sobriquet. Never have
I seen a man who so closely resembled a guinea pig.
“Martin must be an unfeeling sort of chap,” he
muttered when I had finished. “You say he didn’t
seem to be at all disturbed by what had happened?”
“Not the least bit in the world,” I assured him.


160 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“Why, he began joking about it! You'd think he was
used to seeing murders every night.”
“Used to seeing murders every night!” Huntington
repeated thoughtfully. “What an idea!”
“That's the impression he'd give any one. There's
something not quite human about the man.”
“You must bring us together, Charley,” Wilbur said
abruptly. “I’ve taken an interest in him. Psychology
is my hobby, you know. Burgess Martin seems worth
studying. If I weren’t so infernally lazy, I’d look him
up in that slum where he lives. Why was I born so
lazy, Charley?”
“I don’t know. Possibly you’d be a menace to society
if you weren’t. Your pleasing plumpness and hibernat-
ing habits are the bars of your hutch. Within, you
nibble contentedly at your lettuce leaves; but, once
out, you might turn carnivorous.”
“A guinea pig turn carnivorous?” he said, rising.
“It isn’t done. But I imagine I could have much
more fun with my hobby if I weren’t so lazy. If
crimes were committed in my back yard, I feel that
I would be a famous detective. Why is it that I have
a kind honest man for a valet when I long for one
who has all the subtle instincts of those famous
poisoners of the Renaissance?”
“Personally I should prefer the kind, honest valet,
Wilbur. You can eat your lettuce leaves without the
fear that they may be colored with Paris green.”
“Well, at any rate, introduce me to Martin, Charley.
I’m very anxious to meet him.”


FOR ART's SAKE 161
But Huntington was not the only one of my
acquaintances who wished to meet Martin. His story,
“The Murder of Mary Mortimer,” had excited the
interest and the admiration of a young writer who
lived in the same apartment house as myself. During
the last few months we had become friends; and when
he learned that I had roomed with Martin in Paris, he
was eager to know him. -
Rupert Farrington was one of those young vision-
aries to be found in the bohemian quarter of any large
city. Tall and slender, with large melancholy blue
eyes and a girlish coloring, one had but to glance at
him to realize that here was a dreamer who was incap-
able of crystallizing his dreams into a concrete form.
There was something disconcertingly vague about his
personality; one could forget his presence in the room
as though he had no more mental or physical substance
than a shadow. And yet, in spite of his apparent weak-
ness, there were fiery depths in his nature capable of
being roused into a storm. He loved his art passion-
ately. Although he had never had anything accepted,
he still worked on grimly with a firm belief that the
editors were at fault. In fact he visualized these
magazine monarchs, as he called them, as a kind of
unscrupulous aristocracy which should be torn down.
He spent his time writing, receiving rejection slips,
and railing at the man in the editorial chair. His
voice, even when raised, impressed no one—it was like
the droning of a harmless fly. -
“The Murder of Mary Mortimer” still held this


FOR ART'S SAKE 163
Farrington glared at me for a moment in speechless
anger. In the same breath, I had committed two unpar-
donable offenses—I had criticized Martin's work
unfavorably, and I had spoken well of magazine
editors. He could not have been more thoroughly
aroused if I had slapped him in the face.
“I didn’t expect to hear anything like this from
Ayou,” he said at length in a voice which he attempted
to make calm. “You had the rare privilege of living
with him in Paris, and yet you seem to have absorbed
nothing of his Spartan philosophy. Wasn't it Oscar
Wilde who said: “There is no such thing as a moral
or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly
written. That is all.’”
“If I were an editor, I wouldn't publish any of his
stories,” I said stubbornly. “I’ll make you a little bet
right here and now—I bet you’ll never see any more of
his work in print.” w
“I’ll take that,” Farrington said, rising. “You’re
forgetting, Smithers, that there's another road to the
public besides the magazine route. Martin's next
thing may be a novel or a book of short stories.”
“Perhaps,” I answered, “but I’ll not retract. On the
contrary, I'll make another bet with you. I’ll bet you
that if he does publish anything, some day you'll wish
that you hadn’t wasted your time reading it.”
“What do you want to bet?”
“I’ll lay a hundred on both.”
“All right; I’ll take both,” he said with a con-


164 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
|
-
temptuous laugh. “Martin couldn't write anything
that wasn’t worth reading. Good night, Smithers.”
“You’re young yet,” I called after him. “Some day
you may outgrow this silly hero-worship.”
“I might live to be a thousand,” he said over his
shoulder, “but I’ll never regret reading Martin.”
Both Farrington and I were to remember those
parting words of his on a certain dramatic occasion
several years later. But at the time, they seemed of no
more importance than the crackling of dry shells
underfoot.
VIII
Although I religiously scanned the papers for the
next month or so, I found no further reference to
the murder of the man in the green coat. No doubt
the police considered the solution of such an insig-
nificant mystery scarcely worth their best efforts; and
the press, siding with them and quite indifferent as
to the fate of the victim, very obligingly let the mat-
ter drop. The old saying, “Murder will out,” like
many another old saying, has little or no foundation
of truth. It is a matter for speculation as to how
many unsolved murder mysteries, like submerged dere-
licts, are buried deep under the waters of time.
After my week's vacation I returned to work,
refreshed in body and mind. There were several por-
traits which had to be finished before I received the
generous checks that they were thought to be worth.


166 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
:
pair of pink worsted slippers adorning his flat feet,
his flannel shirt open at his bony throat—waving the
book about his head as though it were a tomahawk. No
doubt Paul would think that such an apparition was
quite a customary sight in Washington Square. I
glanced at him and saw that his lips were twitching
in their attempt to restrain a smile.
“You’re not much of a prophet, Smithers,” Far-
rington continued excitedly. “I told you there were
more ways than one of finding recognition.”
I haven’t the slightest idea what you're driving at,
Rupert,” I said reprovingly. “Your words and your
gestures convey nothing to my mind. If you will kindly
refrain from dashing my brains out with that crimson
tome, I’ll introduce you to my brother.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon” Farrington muttered,
evidently seeing Paul for the first time. “Glad to meet
you, I’m sure. This book got me so worked up that
I’m not quite myself.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Paul murmured
in the tone of a man saying: “Oh, don’t mind me! I
know this is bohemia—so be just as wild as you want.”
“Now sit down, Rupert,” I continued, “and explain
what you mean. You say that you win. What do you
win? You say that I am a poor prophet. When did
I ever prophesy to you?”
Farrington seated himself and smiled triumphantly.
“I win a hundred dollars from you,” said he, “And
I win it, because you made a false prophecy about
Burgess Martin.”


168 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
º
Smithers,” said he. “The Brainsworth Publishing
Company doesn't bring out dime novels.”
“But I presume you’ll acknowledge that even the
Brainsworth Publishing Company can make mistakes.
We'll see what the critics have to say about it.”
Farrington burst out into a laugh. “That's like you,
Smithers. You’d never acknowledge anything was
good till a band of learned asses told you so. Have
you ever heard of Sir Vivian Gerard?”
“The famous London critic? Of course! Who
hasn’t 7”
“Well, the Brainsworth Publishing Company sent
the manuscript of ‘Many Murders' to him for his
opinion. He wrote a glowing review of it which they
are now using for advertising purposes. Here's a
selection from it which they enclosed with each review
copy.”
Farrington fumbled in his pocket and drew out a
small wrinkled sheet of printed matter. Adjusting his
spectacles on his bony nose, he began to read the re-
view. It ran as follows:
z “A MASTER OF HORROR.
“It gives me great pleasure to introduce to the world
an undoubted master of the horror tale. Not since the
days of Poe has America produced such a consummate
craftsman. I do not hesitate to say that even the im-
mortal creator of “The Gold Bug' had not the power of
description which makes Burgess Martin’s work unfor-
getable.
“‘Many Murders'—Mr. Martin's first book—is a


170 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
are right on his heels, you understand—but the nar-
rator is a conventional fool who, because the victim
wears rags, thinks that he must be a crook trying to
escape from the police. He refuses to help; a crowd of
thugs dash up; and it's all over with the poor devil.
By the way, Smithers, that chap who wouldn’t help
the other reminds me of you.”
“Thanks,” I murmured with a wildly beating heart.
“Perhaps I would have acted so under the same cir-
cumstances. But I don’t see anything remarkable
about that story.”
“It isn’t the theme!” cried Farrington impatiently.
“It's the way it's treated. Why, you can see the whole
thing—the obstinate stone wall partly illumined by an
antique lantern; the poor, cowering wretch, on his
hands and knees, begging for mercy; and then the mob,
with their cudgels, approaching like a many-headed
monster. But the death of the man in the green coat!
How vivid that is! You can see him squirming beneath
a forest of clubs, you can hear the dull thudding
blows! And when it's all over, when the many-headed
monster crawls back into its lair, you have a vivid
impression of the scene—the body crumpled up against
the wall, the moon peering down with her enigmatic
smile, and the conventional fool striding off before the
police come, to avoid unpleasant notoriety.”
“And what happened to Martin?” I cried out incau-
tiously. “Didn’t he sneak away, too?”
“Martin?” said Paul. “Why, what do you mean,
Charley? This is only a story!”
,--


FOR ART'S SAKE 171
“To be sure,” I said with a forced laugh. “Rupert
told it so vividly that it made me forget. Lend me the
book, will you?”
“Certainly, Smithers,” Farrington answered, eyeing
me curiously. “I’ll be very glad to have you read it.
At last you seem to be interested in Martin. You'd
better read it to-night while you’re in the right mood.”
I acted on his suggestion. After he and Paul had
gone, I took up “Many Murders” and turned to the
last story. There it was, my adventure in the alley, so
vivid, so remorseless, that it was as though I were
living once again those terrible moments. And as I
read on, great drops of sweat gathered on my forehead
—gathered there and trickled down into my smarting
eyes. Martin had indeed succeeded in painting a
picture with words.
º IX
“Many Murders” set the whole literary world agog
for several months. Critical articles concerning it ap-
peared in all the leading newspapers and magazines.
It is to be noted that none of these referred to it as
an average work of fiction. No, this volume of sketches
was called a masterpiece or else the sensational night-
mare of a disordered brain.
Soon the public became excited and bought the book
by the thousands, thereby proving that Martin had
been right when he had said that his stories would
prove popular. Sir Vivian Gerard wrote an article
for one of the periodicals in which he claimed that



172 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
-
it was the first classic to become a best-seller imme-
diately after publication.
Farrington kept me well posted as to the success of
Martin's book. Not contented with winning his bet,
he had an irritating way of gloating over my dis-
comfiture. If “Many Murders” had been his own work,
he could not have taken a greater pride in its reception
by the world.
He would drop into the studio of an evening with a
laudatory criticism of the book. “Well, when will you
acknowledge that you have lost the other bet too,
Smithers?” he would ask.
“What other bet?”
“Why, the bet you made the other day that at some
future date I would regret having read Martin’s
work.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten about it. But I won’t have to pay
that bet for a long time. You might regret having read
Martin's work when you were on your deathbed.”
“Don’t be a piker, Smithers. Name some definite
date.”
“Oh, very well. Let's say about twenty years from
Inow.”
“You are a piker, Smithers. But have it your own
way.” -
I saw very little of Martin during the months which
followed the publication of his book. Sometimes I met
him at Paul’s apartment where, in spite of the fact
that he was now one of the shining literary lights of
the world, he was a frequent visitor. Naturally I
" … ." . " - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -----__


FOR ART'S SAKE 173
avoided him whenever I could. Beside my inherent
repulsion for the man which had grown since our
adventure in the alley, I felt instinctively that he was
laughing inwardly to see his prophecy about my career
turning out to be so true.
One bright October afternoon, Paul and Martin paid
me a visit. As chance would have it, the studio door
stood ajar and they entered without the formality of a
knock. At the moment I was retouching a portrait of
Mrs. Wanderveer, a prominent figure in the Society
world, and was so intent on my work that I did not
notice their presence till Martin spoke.
“And who is that supposed to be?” he asked in his
cold impersonal way.
At the sound of his voice I started like a guilty
schoolboy. “Mrs. Wanderveer,” I muttered. “But it
isn't finished yet.”
“Really?” said he. “I’ve known her for some time.
My sight must be failing.”
“No, it's not that!” I cried bitterly. “I know it
looks no more like her than her own daughter 1 But
a man must live!”
Martin eyed me ironically and his lips curled up at
the corners. “That's what people think down on my
street,” he murmured. “It’s a fine old saying, and
many a brave man has adorned the end of a rope
because of it.”
“Cut out the shop talk!” Paul broke in, seeing the
embarrassment and hot anger written on my face.
“Burgess and I are going on a little trip to the Maine


174 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Woods. We've both got a vacation coming to us.”
“When do you leave?” I asked, turning my back on
Martin. -
“Saturday morning. It will be corking in the woods
now. We should get some good shooting. Why don't
you join us, Charley?”
“No, I’ve a lot of work on hand. I’ve got to finish
five portraits by Christmas. Remember me, Paul, if
you get a buck and smuggle a few nice steaks back
with you. You know how I like venison.”
Although I was not looking at Martin when I
refused Paul's invitation, I felt instinctively that he
was pleased to know that I would not accompany them.
And so what was my surprise when he seconded by
brother's proposal. There was a genuine ring in his
voice which I had never heard before.
“You’d better come, Smithers,” he said. “An artist
should find delight in the woods at this time of year.
The foliage will be ablaze with color. You’ll regret it
..if you don't come, Smithers.”
I stared at him in amazement. There was a propit-
iatory air about the man, quite foreign to his usual
manner. It was almost as though he were pleading
with me to go. \
What possible reason could he have for applying
balm to my wounded sensibilities at this late date?
Well, I would give him a taste of his own medicine—
I would show him, once and for all, that I was not the
sort of man one could take liberties with and then
expect to jog along behind at a kind word like a


176 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
on the street. They were walking side by side. As
never before, the contrast between the two men caused
me a sensation of amazement. Paul was so flushed
with health, so alive, so virile; Martin, gliding beside
him with a catlike tread, his sallow face turned toward
me, was so ethereal by comparison, so ghostlike, so
unwholesome! It was as though Life and Death were
walking in the bright October sunshine.
“That man is like an evil shadow,” I muttered.
“What can Paul see in him? Surely they won’t stay
up in the woods for two months. Paul will grow tired
of it before then and come home.”
Several days after Paul and Martin had left the city,
I went out of town for a week-end with Wilbur Hunt-
ington. He had a country place on Long Island; and
we spent Saturday, Sunday, and the better part of
Monday, sauntering about a nearby golf course and
sipping cool drinks afterward in the shade of the
veranda.
On Monday afternoon Wilbur insisted on driving me
into town in his racing car. I arrived at the studio in
due course, wind-swept and dusty, with the dazed
feeling of one who has been shot through space with the
velocity of a falling star. Huntington’s laziness did
not extend to his motor. He had entered it in the
Vanderbilt Cup and I was confident that afternoon that
it had every chance of winning.
I was attempting to get some of the Long Island dust
out of my eyes, when I heard a loud knocking on the
*


FOR ART'S SAKE 177
\
studio door. “Come in,” I shouted. “I’m washing up.
I'll be there in a moment.”
My caller proved to be Rupert Farrington. He did
not wait for me to complete my ablutions, but hurried
into the bathroom and handed me a telegram.
“It came while I was at lunch,” he explained. “You
told me that you’d be home for dinner, so I signed
the book for you.” -
“I’m much obliged,” I answered, drying my hands.
“It’s probably from Mrs. Dyer. She's been pestering
me to death about having her portrait finished before
Christmas. This will be her third telegram.”
“It must be a wonderful feeling to know that one
is so necessary to society at large,” Rupert said unpleas-
antly. “You’re a lucky dog, Smithers. But I’ve got to
be going. Drop in and see me when art’s not beckon-
ing.”
I made a rather careful toilet before I opened the
yellow envelope. Telegrams were no novelty to me.
I had learned by bitter experience that a certain class
of women send them with no more urgent reason than
so many children scribbling notes behind their teacher’s
back.
At last I strode back into the studio where the red
light from the setting sun touched one of the canvases
as though with fire. Striding to the window, I tore
open the telegram and glanced at it. The next instant
it fluttered from my hand to the floor.
“Good God!” I muttered.
Unconsciously I looked down at the piece of yellow


178 SILENT, white AND BEAUTIFUL
paper which lay in a band of crimson light that seemed
to stain it as though with blood. The black letters
leaped up from it into my brain. Once more I read
their purport:
“Paul is dead. Am bringing him home on the four-
fifteen. MARTIN.”
“Paul is dead,” I repeated. But it meant nothing
to me then—nothing! It seemed as impossible as the
wildest dream. Like a tongue-tied actor attempting
to make his lines clear and convincing, I repeated those
few words over and over again: “Paul is dead—Paul
is dead.”
IBut still that thin partition standing between me and
the realization of the truth, resisted the dull pounding
of those hammerlike words. And suddenly a brain-
numbing fear stole over me, a fear that I could never
be more than a puppet which had been wound up to
repeat endlessly that meaningless phrase: “Paul is
dead.”
“Come now!” I told myself. “You must make your-
self realize what this telegram means. You must
suffer. It is right that you should suffer. Other
men would suffer in your place. Can you not under-
stand? Paul is dead!”
, But still that thin partition was standing bravely
against those hammerlike words. And wonderingly,
fearfully, like a child in the dark, I looked out over
the city.


FOR ART'S SAKE 179
The sun was slowly setting far away over those
dingy housetops which were like uneven stepping-stones
above the murmur of a brook. The sky hung over
them like a sea of blood dotted here and there with
floating islands of ice. Somewhere in the distance the
shrill voice of a siren drifted, melancholy, forlorn,
tearing its way like a projectile through a muttering
multitude of other sounds. Surely it was pain in-
carnate—pain which I sought and which evaded me.
And as I gazed wonderingly at the passionate sky,
a thought edged its way into my benumbed brain.
Surely it was after five o'clock. What was it that this
yellow, wrinkled piece of paper at my feet warned me
of Something which Martin was bringing home on
the four-fifteen. It was already an hour past that
time. But what was this inanimate thing of which
he spoke? Why, it was Paul—my brother Paul, dead,
already cold—Paul who had joked and laughed with
me, who had fought and forgiven me—Paul'
And like a weary swimmer who has dived from a
high cliff into the sea, slowly true realization fought
its way up through the dark depths. I was no longer
a mere puppet, squeaking a meaningless phrase. Pain
was born in an instant—blinding, unbearable pain.
Paul was dead! I, who had known him so intimately,
who had loved him so dearly, realized that fully now.
Striding to and fro, quite careless of the furniture


FOR ART'S SAKE 181
*
home dead and you treat the whole affair as a matter
of course! Why, common curiosity should prompt you
to ask a few questions!”
“You don’t understand me, Martin,” I said with a
brave attempt at dignity. “What do I care about such
details now? He's dead—that's all I care to know.
Later, perhaps. Poor old Paul! If I’d gone with
him. 22 -
But Martin interrupted me with a quick, author-
itative gesture. “Listen, Smithers,” he ordered. “It
happened this way: Our guide had a gallon of whisky.
Paul began drinking again heavily. You know how
it was when the stuff was in reach; he simply couldn’t
resist it. I tried to reason with him, but it wasn’t any
use. After the whisky was all gone, he had an attack
of melancholia. You remember how depressed he used
to get after a drinking bout at college?”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“Well, this time it was far worse. He refused to be
dragged out of the depths. One night the guide and
I awoke with the sound of a gunshot in our ears. We
ran out of the cabin to find Paul lying on the ground.”
“Dead?” .
“I should think so!” Martin answered brutally.
“Why, he had a hole in his side that you could stick
your arm intol” -
The coroner bore out Martin's statement in regard
to Paul’s death. There was no doubt that the poor
fellow, suffering from acute melancholia, had taken his
own life. Tying a piece of string about the trigger of


182 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL.
*
his shotgun, he had leaned his weight upon the muzzle
and discharged it by pressing his foot down hard upon
the loose, dangling cord. His death must have been
almost instantaneous. The heavy buckshot had ripped
its way through his heart.
My mother was prostrated by the news. Ever since
father's death she had been in poor health, and this was
the last straw. On the day of the funeral she was so
weak that the doctor refused to allow her to leave her
bed. I was the only member of the family to attend
the solemn ceremony. But Wilbur Huntington,
although he knew Paul only slightly, was kind enough
to accompany me.
It was one of those dismal days in late autumn, I
remember—a day when all nature is solemn, melan-
choly, as though mourning for the wasteful abandon-
ment of her youth. A gray drizzle of rain was falling
which seemed to curtain us off from the outer world.
Like strange, solemn ships, the funeral procession
drifted slowly toward its goal.
Our snail's pace through the glistening streets grated
on my overtaxed nerves. I had a wild impulse to shout
to the man on the box, to order him to whip up his
horses and drive us faster.
. Suddenly Huntington's voice broke in upon my
thoughts. “When a man takes a bitter dose of medicine,
he takes it in a hurry. He doesn't sip it for the taste,
does he?”
“No,” I answered, at a loss for his meaning.
“Then why all this?” he asked, pointing at my


FOR ART'S SAKE 183
black clothes. “And why is it that we can't rattle
along the streets at a livelier pace?”
“Custom,” I explained.
“Custom be damned! The decent, sensible thing is
to hide one's inner feelings from the world—not to
parade them through the streets, as we are doing now,
for the mob to gibber at. A funeral procession is a
relic of barbarism; and there goes another.”
We were entering the cemetery as he spoke, and the
dull tolling of a bell rang out on the still air. Like
the beating of a grief-stricken heart, solemnly, sadly,
it uttered its message of misery to the living. And on
every side, where tiny crosses held out their weary
arms, where tombstones seemed kneeling phantoms,
where long flat slabs of granite crouched like lizards,
a sad echo seemed to rise and steal away on noiseless
wings.
“All this,” Huntington continued, “your friend
Martin would very truly call toys made for the mass-
mind. They hide true feeling and, like wine, intensify
the emotions. But here we are.” -
“Poor old Paul!” I murmured. -
The carriage came to a halt and we got out. Soon
a number of my brother's friends assembled at the
open grave and the simple service was well under way.
Once, moved by an unaccountable impulse, I turned
my head and saw Martin standing directly behind me.
His face was as expressionless as though it had been
hewn out of marble; his bloodshot eyes were staring
straight at the coffin.


FOR ART’S SARE 185
gaining the inner sanctuary—a poor moth doomed to
outer darkness, struggling for recognition till his wings
were singed.
Day after day he fought valiantly to compose one
stirring line; day after day, bitter disappointment was
his lot. Like many another man of his type, he could
not criticize what he had written. To him, each poem
was good—perhaps a masterpiece. The editors were
at fault. They could not recognize genius when they
saw it. Hatred of them had become an over-mastering
obsession. He would rail against them till he grew
purple in the face. -
I remember distinctly one Christmas morning, a
month before Martin's second book came out. Rupert
broke in on me while I was having breakfast, his eyes
wild and staring, his face suffused with blood. Stamp-
ing up and down the room, he gave vent to such a
blind, ungovernable fit of fury that I feared for his
reason.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked when I could make
myself heard.
“Trouble?” he fairly shouted. “Trouble? I’d like
to wring his damn neck!”
“Whose neck?”
“Why, Hubbard's neck—Hubbard of the Firefly.”
“What's he done to you?” I asked mildly.
Farrington came to an abrupt halt and fixed his
blazing eyes on my face. “I’ll tell you what he's done,”
he said in a voice which he attempted to make calm
but which trembled on a sob. “Do you remember my


186 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
last poem, ‘The Sea-Gull'? Well, it was a pretty smooth
piece of work, although you didn’t seem to appre-
ciate it.”
“What has “The Sea-Gull' got to do with Hubbard?”
I inquired.
“I sent it to him for his magazine,” he answered
bitterly. “That was a month ago. They’ve had it ever
since. I thought that I’d landed something at last.
What's to-day, Smithers?”
“To-day? Why, it's Christmas morning.”
“To be sure—Christmas morning! Well, I got it
back in the first mail, tied up with red ribbons. Now
maybe you think that’s a joke, Smithers—a damn good
joke?” *
“No, I don’t,” I hastened to assure him.
“Well, I don’t either,” said Farrington grimly. “I’ve
worked too hard for that. It seems to me a contemptible
thing to do—a low-down, contemptible thing! To keep
it so long that I had hope and then to send it back
tied up with red ribbons on Christmas day! I wish
I had him here, that’s all! I could beat him to death
without the slightest compunction. A man who would
do such a thing, should be beaten to death! Why,
Smithers, I tell you it 25
“But how do you know that Hubbard is responsible
for this?” I broke in. “It sounds more like one of his
office force to me—some silly little stenographer playing
a practical joke.”
But Farrington shook his head stubbornly. “No, it
was Hubbard—undoubtedly it was Hubbard. It's his


FOR ART’S SARE 187
kind of humor. Have you ever seen the man? Have
you ever talked to him?”
“No.”
“Well, he's a pompous jelly bag with a silly, secre-
tive smile—a sly man and a cruel man, a man who sits
in his office like a round-bellied spider waiting to
pounce on the flies. He makes game of us, Smithers—
we poor fellows who try so hard and get so little! But
he and his kind are driving me too hard! There are
things that I won’t stand, things that 22
“I think you’re mistaken, Rupert,” I broke in.
“Calm yourself. This magazine proposition is driving
you dotty. What possible reason could Hubbard have
for doing such a thing?”
“Oh, just a little recreation,” Rupert muttered.
“His humor has to be tickled ever so often. But he's
driving me too far, Smithers—a damn sight too far!”
I did not see Farrington again for several days. I
was called out of town on an important business engage-
ment; and when I returned, it was to find that he had
gone home for the week-end.
One night, ten days later, I walked past his door
and noticed that it was ajar. Glancing in, I saw Rupert
seated in his favorite rocking-chair. As usual, when
alone, he wore a faded brown smoking jacket and crim-
son worsted slippers. But to-night there was something
incongruous about the man which drew my attention.
Perhaps it was the rigid way he sat, or perhaps it was
natural curiosity to learn what had transpired since
I had seen him last, but something prompted me to


188 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
i
enter. Glancing at him again, as I did so, I noticed a
volume bound in red morocco resting on the arm of his
chair.
“Rupert,” I said, “what have you been doing with
yourself?”
But he did not answer me. Silent, immovable, he
sat, staring into space.
“What's the matter with you, Rupert?” I said in a
louder tone. “You’re not sick, are you?” I bent for-
ward and touched him on the shoulder.
At that, he started and looked up. His eyes were
bloodshot, the veins on his forehead were black and
bulging, his thick red lips were extended in an animal
pout. º
“What's the trouble?” he said thickly. “Is that
you, Smithers?”
By this time I was thoroughly alarmed. “You’re
not sick, are you?” I repeated, shaking him by the arm.
“What's the matter, Rupert?”
“Matter?” he repeated dazedly, shaking his head as
though to rid himself of an unpleasant thought.
“There's nothing the matter, Smithers. I’ve been
thinking, that’s all.” -
“You were in a kind of coma when I first came in.”
He laughed a trifle shamefacedly it seemed to me.
“Thoughts carry me away sometimes,” he said in a
more natural tone. “They drag my ego out of my body
by the hair.” He paused and ran his hand across his
forehead. “At least, Martin’s thoughts do,” he finished
with a faint smile.


FOR ART’S SAKE 189
“Martin’s thoughts? Has his new book come out
yet? Is that it?” I pointed to the red morocco volume
on the arm of his chair. º
“Yes, that’s his new book,” Rupert answered.
“This is another advance copy. I believe it is, to be
published in a few days.”
“What’s the title?”
“‘The Confessions of Constantine.
“Do you like it as well as ‘Many Murders’?”
“Like it?” he cried with a nervous start. “That’s
scarcely the word, Smithers. You can't like a book
of this kind—you can only marvel at it!”
“Own up now, Rupert,” I said quickly, thinking
that the man was quibbling to defend his idol. “Own
up, this book has fallen below your expectations. In a
word, it disappoints you.”
“Good Lord, no!” he cried almost fiercely. “If
‘Many Murders' were a masterpiece, “The Confessions
of Constantine’ is a super-masterpiece! It is so great
that one fears it; so great that it conquers one’s mind!
Can there be such a thing as hypnotic writing,
Smithers?”
“Of course not,” I answered irritably. “The trouble
with you is that you’re mentally sick. What you need
is a long vacation somewhere. Why don't you go home
for a month or so?”
“Perhaps I will,” he muttered. “Perhaps I will.”
He picked up the book and began to turn the leaves.
“I know I ought to go home,” he added a trifle
wistfully.
-
2 22


190 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“Have you forgiven Hubbard yet?” I asked, turning
toward the door. “Or have you found out that he
wasn’t responsible for that Christmas present?”
But Farrington did not answer me. Evidently he
had once more become engrossed in Martin's new book.
Oblivious to everything about him, he sat with a
strange, rigid attention, slowly turning the leaves.
And, as I glanced back at him over my shoulder, it
seemed to me that his face suddenly underwent a
change—that the whites of his eyes were suffused with
blood; that the veins in his forehead became black and
bulging; that his moist, red lips puffed out at each
long breath. And I left him thus, alone with “The
Confessions of Constantine.”
XII
Martin's new book was published the following week.
If his first volume had caused a breeze of public com-
ment, his second created a whirlwind. Those who were
unfortunate enough to have read “The Confessions of
Constantine” before it was suppressed by the govern-
ment, can still remember the terrifying sensations with
which it inspired them. Sir Vivian Gerard aptly
phrased it in a newspaper article which ended in
these words:
“I trembled when I read ‘Many Murders' as though
I were actually witnessing the terrible crimes which it
described; but when I perused ‘The Confessions of
Constantine,’ my hand was steady and my brain on


FOR ART'S SAKE 191
fire with the blood lust of the murderer as he strikes the
fatal blow. I felt no repulsion at the savagery of it;"
only the great, unholy joy of brute rage. I cannot cri-
ticize this book; I can only wonder at it.”
It was shortly after “The Confessions of Constan-
tine” made its appearance that the still well-remem-
bered crime wave swept New York from end to end.
The police fought valiantly to hold it in check, but
failed. In vain they made countless arrests; new mur-
derers sprang up on all sides. It was as though it were
some kind of contagious disease—a “murder microbe.”
as some learned fool maintained.
One afternoon, while this dangerous plague was at
its height, Wilbur Huntington dropped into the studio
on his way to the Cap and Gown Club. I was delighted
to see him and stopped work for a time to chat.
“Well, what do you think of this murder scourge
we're having?” I asked, laying my brush aside.
“It’s rather interesting, don't you think?” he said,
half closing his eyes. “I see you have a new bolt on
your door, Charley.”
“Yes,” I answered, flushing slightly. “One has to
nowadays. Bolts and locks are the fashion. They tell
me the chief of police has himself guarded like a feudal
baron.”
“Strange that every one should be murdering some
one,” Huntington continued, his nose twitching slight-
ly. “But seriously, Charley, the baffling fact about
these crimes is the manner in which they are perpe-
trated.” f


|FOR ART'S SAKE ' 193
“Rupert hasn’t been himself lately,” I hastened to
explain. “You’ve got to make allowances for the poor
fellow. All his life he's tried to become a famous poet
and he's no further advanced now than he was ten years
ago.”
“That's a shame!” Huntington muttered. “I never
knew he had worked so hard. Isn’t there anything we
could do for him—bribe some publisher to bring out
his poems, for instance?” -
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good,” I answered.
“You see, he really hasn’t got the stuff. It would be
a mistaken kindness. What he ought to do, would be
to—”
“Who's that laughing in the hallway?” Huntington
broke in suddenly. “That's a devil of a racket! Have
you got a crazy man about the premises?”
“I don’t hear anything. You must be mistaken.”
But Huntington cautioned me to silence with a lifted
finger. “Listen!” he whispered. *
Then I heard it. And what a laugh it was, starting
deep down in the throat in a kind of horrid chuckling
and rising higher and higher till it ended in a dismal
howl! Nearer and nearer it came, rising and falling,
battering on the eardrums with a savage insistency.
, Finally the studio door flew open and we caught a
glimpse of him who laughed.
Rupert Farrington stood on the threshold, swaying
back and forth as though shaken by that inhuman
merriment which tore his lips apart. His face was a
deep crimson; beneath the flushed skin, all the muscles


FOR ART'S SAKE 195
bottled up in his throat. His bloodshot eyes left the
ceiling and became fixed on Huntington's face.
“Tell him I like it,” he said thickly. “Tell him it's
true—damn true! A dull knife makes no difference—
even a paper cutter will serve. To have one beneath
you whom you hate; and then to strike—to strike not
once or twice but a hundred times!”
Farrington raised one of his long arms above his
head and I saw with horror that his coat-sleeve was
stained with blood.
“Tell Burgess Martin that I have read “The Con-
fessions of Constantine’ over and over again,” he con-
tinued in a singsong voice. “Tell him that I have often
crept into its pages. It is such a small book; yet I feel
that I can find my way into it at will. That door is
never locked. It opens readily. Sometimes before one
knows it, one is inside. This afternoon I took a walk
with “The Confessions of Constantine. We walked till
I met a man who should not live—an editor who should
not live!”
“He means Hubbard of the ‘Firefly,’” I whispered
to Huntington. “Do you think he has-"
But Farrington broke in upon me. He had lifted his
voice to a shout. “The book opened its leaves to me,
you understand. I entered a small room. He was
sitting with his back turned toward me. There was an
inviting ripple of flesh above his collar. Like a luscious
bun it bulged out anxiously to receive the knife's sharp
kiss. I hated this man and I approached. But did I
hate him after all? Ah, no. Surely I loved him with


196 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
a great if transitory love! Does the butcher hate the
sheep that is bleating in its death agonies? Does the
tiger hate the fawn which has fallen to its lot? Surely
it is not hatred which makes us kill, but love—love
for 27
Farrington broke off suddenly. The color receded
from his face; his eyes seemed to be covered with a thin
coating of glass. He swayed forward.
“Catch him!” Huntington cried sharply. “He’s
going off into a swoon!”
Hardly had he spoken before Rupert fell into my
arms. He was a light man, and I had no difficulty in
supporting him to the lounge where he promptly col-
lapsed into a senseless heap of humanity. Then I
turned to Wilbur with a dawning suspicion of the
truth. -
“What did he mean?” I cried. “Do you think he
has killed any one?”
Huntington nodded grimly. “I shouldn’t wonder,”
he muttered. “Who was the man in the room? Has
he quarreled with an editor?”
“Yes and no. He thinks he has a grudge against
Hubbard of the ‘Firefly.” But it was nothing serious
—nothing to make a man commit murder.”
Wilbur shook his head. “That doesn’t seem to matter
nowadays. Murders are committed for the merest
trifles. Yesterday an old chap killed his housekeeper
because she forgot to put sugar on his grapefruit.
Did you know that Farrington was quoting from ‘The
Confessions of Constantine’ just before he caved in 3’”


FOR ART'S SAKE 197
“No, I didn’t. I haven’t read the book.”
“Well, he was. I remember the passage distinctly.
It's the most unpleasant thing in the whole damn book.
It's a description of a murder which is supposed to be
written by the murderer himself; and while you’re
reading it, you feel that you’re sticking the knife in
with your own hand!”
“Do you think Rupert's insane?”
“I don’t know. It seems to me more like a fit—or a
hypnotic trance. The man was not responsible for what
he did, that’s certain. But I’m going to look into this
new book of Martin’s—by Heaven, I am!”
For some time longer we talked in lowered voices
with an occasional side-long look at Farrington who
had apparently sunk into a deep sleep. The young poet
lay on his back—one of his hands dangled nearly to the
floor; the other rested on his breast, protruding from
the bloodstained coat-sleeve like a white flower from an
earthen jug. His small, rather girlish face had regained
its habitual calm; now a smile hovered about the lips.
“I shouldn’t wonder if he awoke in his right mind,”
Huntington whispered.
At that moment, Rupert opened his large, melancholy
eyes. “Where am I?” he murmured.
“It’s all right,” I hastened to assure him. “You’re
in my studio. You've been sick, Rupert.”
“Sick?” he repeated. “I had a terrible dream. I
thought I had killed Hubbard and that I had actually
enjoyed doing it.” He smiled weakly. -
“Don’t talk too much,” Huntington warned him.


FOR ART'S SAFOE 199
Rupert rose and confronted them. “That's my
name,” he said quietly. “What do you want of me?”
* “You’re wanted for the murder of J. E. Hubbard,
editor of the ‘Firefly,’” the officer answered, stepping
up to Rupert and slipping a pair of handcuffs on his
slender wrists. “You’d better go quietly, sir.”
“Very well,” Farrington answered. And then turn-
ing to me with a brave smile which wrung my heart, he
said in a voice that trembled only very slightly:
“Smithers, you have won our last bet. I am sorry—
damn sorry!—that I ever read any of Martin's work!”
4. XIII
Weeks passed and still the crime wave swept the city.
One had but to glance at the papers to see how widely
this homicidal plague had spread. Other towns soon
became infected. Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago
suffered even more severely than New York; and,
strange to say, the police annals proved that these
modern murderers sprang, not from the illiterate, un-
educated classes as one might fancy, but from the
reading public and more especially from the highest
intellectual types.
It was during those ill-fated days that college pro-
fessors, school-teachers, and literary critics began to run
amuck. There was poor old Professor Brent of the
university, for instance—Professor Brent who had
written so many sugar-coated essays on the brotherhood


200 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
of man. Who would have thought it possible that this
kindly old fellow—this senile optimist whose work had
always been well sweetened before it went to press—
should attempt to do away with a whole class of college
students one bright spring morning? And yet one had
to believe it. There it was in the papers, with a host
of other incomprehensible crimes as well.
But perhaps the Southern States suffered most of all.
Of late years lynching parties had been rather few and
far between; now they happened again with almost
machinelike regularity. Scarcely a day passed in any
of those towns on the other side of the Mason and
Dixon's line when some negro did not dance out his
life at the end of a rope. And the leaders of these
lynching parties—the men who adjusted the noose about
the cowering wretch’s neck or lit the fagots which had
been piled up against his knees—were invariably men
of keen sensibilities and higher education—men who
would have shrunk from such a task a few months
before.
As this crimson wave passed over the country, leaving
horror and desolation in its track, the creative thinkers,
who had as yet remained untouched, began to ask them-
selves a multitude of questions: What would be the
final outcome of this catastrophe? If the higher type
of intelligence fell victim to this homicidal mania, what
could one expect from the illiterate, unimaginative
masses who were born to follow like so many sheep?
For the first time in human history, education had
joined hands with crime. What would be the final


FOR ART’S SAKE 201
dénouement? Possibly we were now facing the end of
the world—a bloody end of order, a return to those
primeval days when every man's hand was raised
against the other.
It was during these days of dark despair, days when
our modern civilization seemed tottering in the balance,
that a young man gained access to the chief of the New
York police force and pointed out a simple cure which
had been overlooked by all the criminal experts.
Wilbur Huntington, for it was he, had some difficulty
at first in securing an interview. The chief of police,
on account of the many attempts made on his life, was
taking no more chances with strangers. . If Hunting-
ton's family had not been so prominent in the city, so
influential in political circles, it is doubtful if Wilbur
would have been able to gain access to that official's
office. As it was, the meeting was arranged and the
following conversation took place:
“Well, what can I do for you?” asked the chief, fixing
a vigilant eye on his visitor.
“I came to see you about this crime wave.”
“Well ?”
“You want these murders stopped, don't you?” Wil-
bur asked simply.
For the first time in many days the chief burst out
into a laugh. “Of course!” he answered.
“Well, I know how to stop them—or at least, the
great majority.”
Now the chief regarded his visitor with a look of
fatherly pity, a look which seemed to say: “Too bad,


202 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
too bad! Another madman to deal with. I’d better
humor him a bit.”
“It will be all right, Mr. Huntington,” he said aloud.
“Don’t you worry your poor head about it. Just you
go home and 22
But at this point, Wilbur interrupted him by stepping
forward and placing a book bound in red morocco on
his desk. “Here's the root of the whole matter,” he
declared.
“My dear young man,” the chief said wearily, “I
can’t be bothered by this sort of thing. The State pays
competent men to—” *
But again Wilbur broke in upon him with scant
ceremony. “I know you think I’m a crank!” he cried.
“But I’m going to prove that I’m not. Will you give
me five minutes of your time?”
The chief glanced at his office clock and nodded.
“Fire away,” said he. “Five minutes and no more.”
“Students of crime know that a diseased brain often
prompts murder,” Huntington began quickly. “Yester-
day I visited the homes of the fifty murderers who were
apprehended in this city last week and in forty-five of
them I found the book which I have just placed on your
desk. Are you familiar with it? It is called ‘The Con-
fessions of Constantine.’”
“No,” the chief answered, becoming interested in
spite of himself. “But how can a book have anything
to do with crime? It was merely coincidence that you
found it in their homes.”
“Perhaps,” Huntington agreed. “But a book such


FOR ART'S SAKE 203
as this can incite crime and I’m going to prove it. You,
yourself, must have noticed that if an unusual murder
is committed, is given publicity by the press, other
murders of almost identically the same nature are sure
to follow. What causes these other crimes? The
answer seems obvious—mental suggestion; or, in other
words, a printed description of the ghastly details which
appeals to the brutal instinct in man.”
“Very well put,” the chief said approvingly, a note
of respect creeping into his voice. “I had never thought ,
of such a thing, but it sounds quite plausible. And you
think this book could possibly 25
“I know it!” Wilbur broke in. “Just think, chief.
If the description of a murder crudely written by some
inartistic cub reporter can excite crime, what could not
a book like “The Confessions of Constantine’ accom-
plish : It is a work of undoubted genius and gives one
a vivid portrayal of both the murder and the sensations
of bloodlust in the brain of the murderer. Why, this
book can overmaster the sensitive dreamer; can hypno-
tize him into crime as though by the beckoning of a
bloodstained finger! And here is another clew which
should not be overlooked: All of these assassins are
inveterate readers who live their real lives between the
covers of countless books. Such people can be ruled
by the printed words of a genius. A sensitive bookworm
is easily excited to laughter or tears by a well-written
story, so why can he not be excited to brute rage as
well ?”
“There is a great deal in what you say,” the chief


FOR ART'S SARE 205
lips. But what can we do? This murder propaganda
is scattered all over the world by now.”
“That is your problem,” Huntington said, rising.
“No doubt “The Confessions of Constantine' can be
traced through the Brainsworth Company and the
various stores. Have the book condemned by the gov-
ernment, secure every copy printed, apply some kero-
sene and a lighted match—that's my advice. You'll
soon find that, after “The Confessions of Constantine'
is done away with, this murder microbe will no longer
be a menace to society. Good afternoon.”
It is needless to say that his advice was taken and
acted upon. Before six months had passed there were
only two copies of “The Confessions of Constantine”
in existence—one in Wilbur Huntington’s possession,
the other at police headquarters—and manslaughter had
once more become a comparatively rare crime.
Indirectly Huntington's discovery saved Rupert Far-
rington's life. It led to a very thorough examination
of the prisoners on trial for murder and a suspension
of sentence when it was found that they had been
mentally unbalanced by Martin's book. Rupert was
transferred to Matteawan for several months where he
was under the personal supervision of several eminent
brain specialists. Finally he was liberated. He
returned home, thoroughly cured of his literary aspi-
rations.
The chief of police got all the glory when the crime
wave was broken, but Wilbur Huntington was allowed


FOR ART'S SAKE 209
I took “Many Murders” out of the bookcase and
handed it to him. He opened it at random and read
a portion of “In a Blind Alley” aloud. At length he
closed the book and picked up “The Confessions of
Constantine.”
“He didn’t have to have imagination to write that
story, Charley,” he said. “You shared the adventure
with him, I believe?”
“Yes, it was that murder in the alley I told you
about. He saw it all.”
Huntington nodded and opened “The Confessions of
Constantine.” For some time he read silently, moving
his lips. He seemed to be weighing each word. Finally
he spoke again.
“‘Many Murders' came out before your brother's
death, didn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And “The Confessions of Constantine’ about two
years after his death?”
“I believe so.”
“Then I have a little theory which, if it stands the
acid test of truth, will put Martin hors de combat for
good and all. Perhaps the world has little more to
fear from him.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at,
Wilbur.”
“Have patience, Charley. Listen! I think I hear
some one tapping on your door.”
When I flung the door open, I found a freckled
messenger boy in the corridor. He had a registered
:


210 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
letter for Wilbur, addressed in very small but legible
writing—writing which, for some unaccountable reason,
seemed familiar. Signing for the letter, I returned to
Huntington.
“Here's a letter for you,” I said, handing him the
note. “Whoever addressed this envelope has a con-
foundedly steady hand. It's like engraving.”
“You’re an inquisitive cuss!” Huntington murmured.
“Perhaps it's from a lady friend.”
He tore open the envelope and glanced at its contents.
The next moment, his eyebrows crawled up his forehead
in surprise. “Speaking about the devil!” he cried.
“Well, what do you know about this!”
“Nothing. But I'd like to. That handwriting
interests me. There's something familiar about it. Is
it from your mother?”
“Not exactly!” Huntington replied. “Just listen to
this.” Holding the letter on a level with his eyes, he
began to read as follows:
“My DEAR Mr. HUNTINGTON: I understand that you
have recently become a literary critic. Allow me to
congratulate you on your judgment in regard to my
book, ‘The Confessions of Constantine.” No doubt, as
you so wisely pointed out to the police, it was a work
which proved rather detrimental to the morals of the
reading public. By condemning it, the government
paid me the highest tribute which can fall to the lot of
any artist—the tribute of taking my mental creations
seriously.
I have just finished another book of short stories,
and I should like your opinion of it before it goes to


FOR ART’S SAKE 213
“Send Wilbur home?” I repeated dazedly. “Why,
he left here last week, Mrs. Huntington! He told me
then that he intended staying with you the rest of the
time he was in New York.”
There came a long-drawn silence and then a deafen-
ing volley of words. “Why, he never came! I haven’t
seen him for over two months. Do you suppose any-
thing could have happened to the poor boy? Oh, I’m
so frightened He was such a reckless driver! He
might have driven his car out into the country and had
a smash-up on some lonely road. What shall I do, Mr.
Smithers ?”
“Please be calm,” I told her. “No doubt Wilbur is
all right. Probably he's gone out to Long Island. Have
you called up his bungalow'”
“No, of course not! I thought he was with you.”
“Well, phone there and I’m pretty sure you’ll find
him. If not, call me up. I’ll find him for you.”
“Thank you so much! Probably you’re right. But
he should have let me know. Good-by, Mr. Smithers.”
“Good-by,” I answered and hung up the receiver with
a feeling of uncertainty.
For the rest of that morning I attempted to paint,
but made a miserable failure of it. Try as I would,
I could not fix my attention on the work at hand.
Huntington's incomprehensible words about Martin
kept ringing through my head. At last I tossed the
brush aside and left the studio with the intention of
inquiring for Wilbur at the Cap and Gown Club.
I was descending the stairs and had reached the first


214 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
landing when I came face to face with a small man
who was coming up. I was about to stand aside so as
to give him room to pass, when he addressed me.
“Are you Mr. Smithers?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said in surprise. “What can I do for you?”
“I want to ask you a few questions about a friend
of yours. You know Wilbur Huntington, I presume?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, I think we'd better have our talk in your
apartment, if you don't mind.”
I led the way back to the studio with the feeling
that something quite unexpected was about to happen.
In fact, my brain was in a whirl. Who could this
rather common-looking little man be? And what could
he possibly want to know about Huntington?
But my visitor gave me no time to compose myself.
No sooner had the door closed behind us than he spoke.
“I understand that Mr. Huntington was here on the
afternoon of the twenty-fifth #"
“Yes, he was.” -
“I’m Greene from police headquarters,” the littl
man continued, opening his coat and displaying a metal
badge. “As I believe you know, Mr. Huntington has
been missing now for several days. His mother has
just put the case in our hands.”
“He wasn’t at his bungalow, then?”
“No, he hasn't been there in over a month. Mrs.
Huntington thought you might be able to give us
valuable information. Where was he going when he
left your apartment, Mr. Smithers?”


FOR ART'S SAFOE 215
“He was going to the house of Mr. Burgess Martin
on Tyndall Place.”
“Burgess Martin, eh? That's interesting! Was
there anything unusual about Mr. Huntington's manner
—anything which would lead you to suspect that he
wasn’t in a normal state of mind?”
Then I did a very foolish thing—a thing which I
have regretted ever since. I revealed everything to the
detective, answering his questions with the candor of a
child. I told him of the letter Huntington had received,
of his wild words about Martin, and of his final threat.
And when I had finished, my visitor thanked me
heartily.
“If other people were as willing to give evidence as
you, Mr. Smithers,” said he, “the work of a detective
would soon dwindle down to nothing. What you say
about Burgess Martin is especially interesting. Word
has just come to us that he, too, is missing.”
“What p?
“Yes, his landlady hasn't seen him in days.” The
detective turned toward the door. “I’ve got to be off on
this new clew you’ve given me, Mr. Smithers,” he called
back over his shoulder. “It’s just possible, if we can
lay our hands on Mr. Huntington, that he'll be able to
tell us something about Burgess Martin.”
When the detective had gone, I realized fully what
I had done. I had branded my best friend as a mur-
derer. I had slipped the halter about his neck. Then,
for the first time, I saw clearly the significance of
Wilbur's threatening words when coupled with the dis-


216 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
appearance of Martin. Yes, I had made an ass of
myself. But there was no helping that now. The
damage was done. I could do nothing more—only
wait as patiently as possible for the results.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, but the
two men still remained missing. Meanwhile the news-
papers made much of the mystery and soon it became
the sensation of the year. It was remembered that it
was through Wilbur Huntington’s efforts that Martin's
last book had been condemned by the government.
From that fact, they argued that there was bad blood
between the two men, and this gave rise to all manner
of wild conjectures. Possibly they had fought a duel
to the death; or perhaps it had been a suicide pact.
The yellow journals knew how to make hay while the
sun shone. -
Nearly two months after the detective visited me, a
body was found floating in the East River. The face
had been beaten into an unrecognizable condition by
some heavy weapon and the corpse generally was so
disfigured by its long submersion in the water, that, had
it not been for a ring on the second finger of the left
hand, identification would have proved impossible. This
ring was engraved with the initials B. M.
The news spread quickly through the city. News-
paper extras appeared with startling headlines. For a
time excitement quickened the most feeble pulse. On
all sides, one heard this question—“But where is Wilbur
Huntington?”
On the following day the rumor was verified. Mar-


FOR ART'S SAKE 217
tin's tailor, a little Russian Jew who had made his
clothes for many years, visited the morgue and identi-
fied the corpse's water-soaked suit by his own initials
which he had sewed into the sleeve. After this there
could no longer be any doubt; it was indeed Burgess
Martin’s body.
But if Martin had been murdered, as the wounds on
his face and head evinced, what had become of his
companion, Wilbur Huntington, on the night when
they had both disappeared? Had Huntington killed
Martin and then fled? If he were innocent, would he
not come forward and prove it?
Questions like these appeared in all the papers. But
the missing man still remained missing; the mystery
was no nearer its solution than before. No doubt the
chief of police at this time was pestered daily by hun-
dreds of letters from cranks who had worked themselves
up into a frenzy over this insoluble riddle. At last he
wrote an article for the Gazette which ended in these
words:
“It is not possible that Wilbur Huntington, after sav-
ing the world from a thousand crimes, failed to take
his own cure and fell a victim to that brain malady
from which he had rescued so many others?”
After this opinion was published, there could be but
one verdict. The world regarded my friend as a mur-
derer and a madman.


218 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
XVI
Several years passed and the mystery still remained
unsolved. It was as though Wilbur Huntington had
vanished into thin air. Although many of the leading
criminal experts had taken up the search, no clew to
his whereabouts was forthcoming. One by one these
detectives acknowledged themselves beaten and went
back to the solving of less difficult problems. Mean-
while new sensational mysteries arose to attract the
attention of the public; soon the affair was practically
forgotten.
During that time, I prospered exceedingly. Each
year brought me greater wealth, a larger circle of
acquaintances, and more material luxuries of every
kind. I had won the respect of a great many people
who envied me my position in the world—people who
little guessed what I had sacrificed in order to climb.
I soon learned that the respect of the mob was of
small value. The world, as a whole, judges an artist
as it judges a business man—not by the excellence of
his work, but by the size of his bank account. I was
a symbol to them of the golden image and they pros-
trated themselves accordingly. Little guessing the
bitter irony their words conveyed, they called me to
my face “the painter who had made good.” Sometimes
it gave me a kind of brutal satisfaction to realize how
completely I had sold the public. But now and then
another thought would steal into my brain—the thought


220 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
*
train at Fort Myers and engaged a delapidated. Ford
to take me to Naples. The driver gave me a hand with
my numerous belongings, climbed back on his seat, and
we were off. *
It was a forty mile drive from Fort Myers over a
road sadly needing repair. Two hours later I caught
sight of the wooden structure which my driver assured
me was the hotel. In spite of my natural fatigue, I
warmed to the majestic scene which had appeared with
the startling suddenness of a vision. -
There, stretching away as far as the eye could see,
was the Gulf of Mexico, now reflecting on its slightly
agitated bosom the last scattered rays of the setting sun.
Already the dark shadows of approaching night stole
out from the palm trees which lined the beach. The
melancholy call of an owl suddenly rose on the still
air and was thrown to and fro by a multitude of echoes
before it was allowed to die away.
Naples was known to only a limited number of sports-
men. There were not more than a dozen people at the
hotel when I arrived. I felt fairly certain that I could
secure the services of Bill Pete. After dinner I
inquired about him at the desk. *
“No, he's not here now,” the clerk informed me.
“But he generally paddles over for his newspaper about
eight o'clock. I'll let you know when he arrives.”
I nodded and, lighting a cigar, strolled out on the
veranda. The moon, by now, was slowly rising over the
treetops—a blood-red moon which, as it ascended, grad-
ually lost its vivid coloring and became a pale silver.
*


222 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
ºº
-
“It is though Nature had placed that death's-head in
the heavens as a warning to all mankind,” he continued
solemnly. “Oh perhaps She hung it there to kindle the
imagination, to beckon us on to unparalleled achieve-
ment, to blow into flame a glowing spark of curiosity.
What is death and what are the sensations of death?
Who can answer? And yet mankind is unwilling to
learn. They hide the truth from themselves, disguising
it under many different masks. They play with the
moon as a baby might play with the face of its dead
mother. They even write songs about her, calling her
the jolly, smiling moon! And all these years that great,
white face has looked down upon them in frozen
horror!”
I felt the mental itch of curiosity as I listened.
Where had I heard that voice before? He had been
speaking in a very low tone, but each word had a
familiar ring. *
“I think I must have met you before,” I said.
“You’re a poet, aren’t you? I used to know a good
many poets when I lived in Washington Square.”
“I am no poet,” he said curtly.
“But you write,” I insisted. “I’m sure I’ve heard
your voice before. I used to know several novelists.
There was—”
“I don’t write,” he broke in rather brusquely. “My
name's Bill Pete and I’ve lived around here nearly all
my life.”
“Not Bill Pete, the guide?” I cried in amazement.
“The very same. The clerk told me that you were
*.


FOR ART’S SAFCE 223
looking for me. If you want a guide, I think you’ll
find that I know my business... I’m familiar with every
rookery in these parts and I’ve got a snug little
cabin across the bay if you were thinking of camping
out.”
“So you’re Bill Pete,” I muttered under my breath.
“Well, you’ve got a most astonishing vocabulary for a
backwoodsman!” Aloud, I said: “You’ve worked for
Doctor Street’’
“Yes, frequently. He always engages me when he
comes to the hotel.”
“Then, you’re the man I want. You may consider
yourself engaged from now on. I think I’ll use your
cabin to-morrow night. Is it comfortable?”
“Yes, sir,” Bill Pete murmured. “I think you’ll find
it very comfortable.”
Once more I shot a quick look at that tall, shadowy
figure beside me. I had heard him speak before; each
moment I grew surer of it. When was it and where?
I would find out in the course of the next two or three
days—that was certain.
“You’ll pardon me if I ask a rather personal question,
Mr. Pete?” I said. “You didn't get your education in
the woods, did you? Your choice of words seems to
be rather fine, rather 22
I broke off suddenly. A moonbeam had touched the
side of his face. I could see that his heavily bearded
cheeks and chin were trembling as though from sup-
pressed merriment, and yet his voice was quite steady
when he answered me.
º


224 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“I’m a college man, sir,” he replied, moving his head
slightly so that his face was once more veiled in shadow.
“I’ve had my chances and I’ve thrown them away.
There are lots of us like that.” He paused for an
instant and then added: “Good night, sir. I’ll paddle
over for you in the morning.”
XVII
The following morning, Bill Pete paddled me across
the bay to his cabin with the deft, silent strokes of an
Indian. Sitting in the bow of the canoe and facing
him, I studied the man, attempting to account for the
impression I had had the night before. But, try as I
would, my memory failed me.
Certainly there was nothing familiar in that bronzed,
heavily bearded face. And yet there was something
about Bill Pete which struck a long disused, discordant
note in my breast. What was it? His eyes? They
were hidden behind dark-blue spectacles which re-
sembled the cavernous sockets in a skull. Perhaps the
answer to the riddle was concealed by these spectacles.
For one mad moment I was tempted to spring forward
and jerk them off his nose.
“Why do you wear those things?” I said at length.
“What things?” he asked blankly. Although his
face was half turned away from me, I felt instinctively
that his eyes were boring into mine.
“Why, those spectacles,” I said testily. “They make
your face look like a skull.”


FOR ART'S SAKE 225
“My eyes are very weak. These glasses protect them
from the sun.” "
“Oh, I see.”
Not another word was said till the canoe grounded
on the beach. I assisted Bill Pete in moving the pro-
visions we had brought with us into the shade; then
he showed me his cabin.
It was an ordinary woodsman's shack, built of rough-
hewn logs and containing two bunks. There was a
crudely constructed table in the center of the single
room, some pots and pans hanging on the wall, a wood
stove in one corner, and a doorway without any vestige
of a door. To a city-bred man, no building is complete
without a door. This architectural omission bothered
me till I learned that no wild animal availed itself of
it with the single exception of a razor-back hog that
each night entered after we had gone to bed and gnawed
savagely at one of the logs.
Barely a hundred yards from the cabin, which stood
on a slight rise of ground, the bay stretched out like a
luminous shawl of bright spangles. Encircling it, was
a dark somber army of tropical trees which stood like
sentinels about a treasure. On windy nights, the
lapping waves on the beach and the murmuring of the
branches overhead mingled in a soothing melody which
soon wafted one off to the land of dreams.
Bill Pete proved to be a very silent, man, speaking
very rarely and then always to the point. A smile
seldom brightened his somber face. But although he
was a poor companion, he proved to be an excellent
|
|
º


FOR ART'S SAKE 227
Bill Pete nodded and puffed silver rings of smoke
skyward. His spectacles for an instant reflected the
firelight as he turned his face toward me.
“Doctor Street will be here to-morrow,” I continued
in a desperate attempt to make the man talk. “You’d
better paddle over to the hotel in the morning.”
Again Bill Pete merely nodded his head.
“You remind me of a man I used to know a good
many years ago,” I said irritably. “Like you, he had
unpleasant theories about the moon and for days
together would scarcely say a word.”
“Who was he?” Bill Pete asked, with a sudden note
of interest in his tone.
“A man by the name of Martin—Burgess Martin.”
I heard something snap like a dry twig. Glancing
at Bill Pete, I saw the red glowing bowl of his pipe
lying on the ground at his feet. He had bitten through
the stem.
“And what became of Burgess Martin?” he asked
after a moment.
“Why, you must know!” I said in surprise. “He
was that famous writer who was murdered several years
ago. Surely you remember the case?”
“I believe I did read something about it,” he
answered in a low voice. “He was murdered by a
literary critic, wasn’t he? The murderer's name was
Huntington, I believe; and he had previously had one
of Martin's books condemned by the government.”
“That's never been proved,” I said with some heat.
“Wilbur Huntington was a personal friend of mine and
*


FOR ART'S SARE 231
up. Then, for the first time, I realized that I was tied
hand and foot with strong leather straps which a giant
could scarcely have broken.
“It is useless to struggle, Smithers,” Martin con-
tinued coldly; “not only useless but dangerous. My
patience is worn thin. When I think of what I have
suffered, when I think of what art has suffered, I can
have no more tolerance for stupidity.”
“Then you weren't murdered after all?” I muttered
through dry lips.
“Most assuredly not,” he answered with one of his
catlike grimaces. Seating himself on the side of the
bunk, he regarded me with a speculative stare. “Why
is man invariably blinded by the obvious?” he con-
tinued. “A chain of circumstantial evidence can so
easily be forged by a master mind that one should test
it thoroughly before one believes. Why should you
think that Wilbur Huntington murdered me?”
“I never thought so,” I muttered.
“Ah, but you did, Smithers,” he said lifting one of
his long, thin hands in expostulation. “You did and
the world did. And why? Simply because a body was
found floating in the East River—a decomposing, unrec-
ognizable body which wore my ring and clothes. And
because he visited me that night, because he disliked my
works, because he disappeared—you, his best friend,
branded him a murderer. What a trifling thing I
renounced when I sacrificed friendship on the altar!”
He paused as another reverberating peal of thunder
shook the cabin. For an instant his sallow face was


232 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
illumined by a sickly flash of lightning; I saw a tiny,
pendulous drop of blood on his chin where the razor had
slipped and nicked the flesh. Strange to say, the sight
of this single crimson bead of blood was reassuring; it
spurred my flagging courage. If he could bleed, surely
he was human.
“And what became of Wilbur Huntington?” I asked.
“Why, it was his body which was floating down the
river,” Martin answered coldly. “He wore my clothes
and ring, and the water had changed him somewhat—
that was all.”
Once more horror overmastered me. I caught a
glimpse of the truth. “Who murdered him?” I cried.
“Good God, Martin, did you 37
He bowed and I saw a smile crease his cheek like a
scar. “Of course, Smithers. Wasn't it the natural out-
come of his visit to me that night? This man stood in
my path—in the path of art. I had to destroy him, or
else my ambition was doomed. He had become an insur-
mountable obstacle in my path. I could go no further
until I had forcibly removed him. How simple, how
true! Why, even he had a premonition of the truth.
He came to my rooms as a hero goes to battle. He was
a brave man, Smithers.”
Once more Martin paused and stroked his chin. I
saw the pendulous drop of blood stain his finger tips.
And now this blood was no longer reassuring. It
revolted me. Those vibrating crimson finger tips were
a symbol—a symbol of the stealthy assassin who slays
by night. Soon they might be fastened about my throat


FOR ART's SAKE 233
—or, perhaps, they would grasp the hilt of the hunting
knife suspended from his belt. No matter how death
came, those finger tips would play their part in it.
I felt that life and I were soon to part. Like a fallen
tree trunk, I was at the mercy of this forester of lives.
He confided in me so readily because he judged me as
one already dead. It amused him to play on my
emotions before he cut the thin thread which held me
to existence. He was confessing to me now as a cat
might confess to the mouse between its paws.
But I would keep a stiff upper lip! I was afraid—
yes, deadly afraid—but he should never know it. He
had laughed at me many times. He had called me a
weakling. He had held me up to ridicule. But I would
show him that I could face death. Perhaps I did not
have the courage to brave life, but I had the courage to
brave death. I would show him that—I would show
him that even a weakling knew how to die.
“Why did you tie me?” I asked at length. “Are you
going to murder me?”
He started and glanced up. “Not necessarily. Per-
haps you will want to go. Man lives to learn; why
cannot he die to learn? Is it not strange that human
curiosity cannot overcome human fear? Are you
afraid of the dark, Smithers? Will you not open the
door for truth? What is the exact sensation of death,
Smithers? Tell me—has that question never worried
you?”
“Never,” I muttered. “Why should it?”
Martin shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it


234 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
shouldn’t. But to me, it—well, you wouldn’t under-
stand. Only the moon understands. But you must
listen to my story. No doubt you will think it one
long, red road of wanton cruelty and mad blood lust.
No doubt you will be unable to appreciate the supreme
sacrifice of a strong nature—the sacrifice of human
flesh, of human love, on the altar of the muse—that
sacrifice to kindle the immortal flame of genius and
create the indestructible. What I have done for art no
man has done; what I will do for art you must bear
witness to. I have chosen you as my messenger to the
world.” -
At that instant a shaft of lightning flashed between
us like a lifted sword blade. It was immediately fol-
lowed by such a deafening peal of thunder that the
tiny cabin echoed it like a hollow drum. Now the rain
came down in a silver deluge, tapping on the boards
overhead as though a multitude of hammers were at
work. Several drops trickled through a chink between
the logs and fell on my upturned face. And they kept
on falling relentlessly while I listened to Martin's
confession.
XIX
~
“As you already know, Smithers,” Martin began, “my
parents both died when I was very young and my aunt
took me to live with her. In that great, gloomy house
the books were my only companions. And what a col-
lection l I believe every great horror tale ever written
found a permanent resting place on the shelves which


236 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
can suffer. Ambition was already planted deep in my
soul and I felt that it could never flower without
imagination. Tears gushed from my eyes; I was a
plaything for grief. No doubt my literary career
would have ended there and then, had it not been
for the strange occurrence which befell on that same,
sunshiny afternoon.
“My aunt had been very sick for over a month. Now
she was dying. As I sat with weak tears running down
my face, her nurse entered the library and took me to
the sick room to say a last farewell. No doubt she
considered that my emotion was caused by natural
grief at the expectation of losing a near relative. She
wiped my eyes and attempted to console me, before she
led me to my aunt's bedside.
“The old lady was almost at her last gasp. Her
thin, yellow hands were fluttering over the coverlet,
resembling the fallen, windswept leaves of autumn;
the death rattle rasped harshly in her wizened throat
with the mechanical vibration of an engine running
down; her heavy, blue-veined eyelids were closed and
did not open as I knelt beside her. Soon her breathing
stopped. She was dead.
“On my way back to the library, the scene which
I had just witnessed was pictured in glowing colors in
my brain. Nothing could wipe it out. Wherever I
looked, I saw my aunt lying in her great four-poster
bed like a fallen branch on a snowbank.
“Once more I picked up my discarded paper and
pencil and began idly to picture in words what I had


238 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
“Now true realization of the truth was born in upon
me. I was, indeed, a writer without imagination and
therefore I must rely solely on what I saw with my
own eyes and what I heard with my own ears. I had
determined to devote myself to horror tales. Very
well. But in order to be a master of tragedy, I must
steel my heart against all weakness, all feeling; I must,
perhaps, witness the perpetration of crime so as to
impress my readers with its reality. It was necessary
for an unimaginative artist to associate with the scum
of the world in order to rise above the world. There-
fore I must tear out my heart so that my head might
rise above the stars. All this I realized, but I did not
turn back.”
There came another crash of thunder which drowned
him out. His next few words were lost, swallowed up
by the rattling of the pots and pans on the wall, the
tapping fingers of rain, and a gust of wind which went
howling about the cabin.
“For many months I trained myself for my future
career,” Martin resumed. “Fortunately, at that time,
I had no friends except a few household pets on which
I had centered my affections. Because I loved them,
I knew that they must go. I must have no human
weaknesses to hold me back—nothing which could later
interfere with art by making my will subordinate to
mercy. -
“So, coldly, methodically, but with unparalleled
mental anguish, I tortured to death each one of my
poor pets. My brain reeled, but my hand was steady;


FOR ART'S SAFCE 239
and, after each atrocious act, I felt the natural
repulsion for these cruelties growing less and less. I
slowly conquered myself.
“It was about this time that I first took up drawing
with the intention of illustrating my future work. As
in writing, it came naturally to me when death was my
model. Sitting before one of my slaughtered pets, I
would first write a vivid description of its demise and
then draw a striking, realistic picture of the scene.
I kept a child’s diary, illustrated with no little skill,
depicting the various crimes I had committed and por-
traying my various emotions with such clarity of vision
that I am sure it would have had a disastrous effect
on the minds of other children had it been published.
Like “The Confessions of Constantine,” it might have
created a wave of crime.
“Shortly after this, I entered a nearby school and
almost immediately obtained the theme for my first
short story. One afternoon, while walking home, I
saw one of my classmates—a rather pretty girl whom
I had unconsciously grown quite fond of—on the arm
of an overgrown yokel whose vacant eyes and moving
lips indicated a weak mentality. That evening I made
inquiries in town and discovered that this yokel often
carried her books home from school and that she
tolerated him only out of kindness. It was plain to
see that he adored her and that he was extremely
jealous as are most weak-minded persons.
“On the following day, I won the affections of the
poor fellow by some small kindness and ascertained


240 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
that my theory was correct. His brain was like a
clouded mirror, but he loved the girl devotedly. You
know the rest, Smithers. I wrote it up in ‘The Murder
of Mary Mortimer.”
“I was the voice which drove the poor idiot on, the
voice which turned the love in his undeveloped nature
into a seething inferno of jealous hatred. And then,
when he murdered her, when I saw her fall bleeding
on a carpet of soft white snow, I stole out of the
bushes where I had concealed myself, and made a
sketch of her. You remember the painting, I think.
It was a vivid portrayal, but rather crude in its color
scheme.”
Martin broke off and regarded me intently. Seeing
the horror written on my face, no doubt, he attempted
to explain and thereby made his crime all the more
revolting.
“To say that I felt no compassion for her would be
to lie,” he continued. “As I told you, Smithers, I was
fond of the girl—dangerously fond. Otherwise I
would not have driven the idiot to kill her. A dozen
times I was on the point of leaping forward, of
rescuing her before it was too late; and a dozen times
the voice of reason whispered: “Fool, fool, would you
refuse art your first human sacrifice? It is necessary
to tear out the heart so that the head may rise above
the stars.” That voice spoke the truth, Smithers; it
was the voice of my destiny.
“When the girl was lifeless, strange to say, all com-
passion vanished. I was once more the artist, calm and


242 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
must thrust them aside, we must crush them if need be,
to reach our goal. All tender emotions clog the stream
of inspiration. I could only create by forming myself
into a machine devoid of all the warmer instincts of
nature. Paul must go!
“But I was weak. I lacked the resolution to leave
him. I dodged the issue. Why could I not follow
my career and still keep this single affection, I asked
myself. Surely it was possible. Before now many a
man had led a double life. Art would not demand a
complete excommunication from my fellows. As long
as Paul remained, I would never be quite alone.
“Thinking that I could serve two masters at once,
I engaged lodgings on Tyndall Place and soon was on
intimate terms with the scrapings of the neighborhood
—men who would slice a throat for slight compensation
and often for the merest whim. Before many weeks
had passed, I gathered about me a band of the most
bloodthirsty rascals unhung. They nicknamed me ‘The
Boss' and were overjoyed to have a leader who could
plan their little escapades skillfully and who sought no
material gain for himself.
“Under my leadership a dozen murders were per-
petrated and the police in every case failed to appre-
hend the assassin. I witnessed all of these crimes and
they are reported faithfully in my first book. Yet each
murder was a torture to me; and the remorse I felt
when I visited Paul, was almost more than I could
bear. You scarcely realized my true emotions,
Smithers, on the night when we met on Tyndall Place.


FOR ART'S SAKE 243 ,
No doubt you thought I was calm and collected; but,
in reality, I was suffering far more than you. Every
blow which descended on that writhing body, fell on my
soul as well. As never before, Paul's influence was
about to gain the ascendancy. For one mad moment
I was tempted to throw myself beneath that shower of
clubs and perish with my victim.
“Although “Many Murders' was acclaimed a great
success by the leading critics, it was in reality a miser-
able failure. I had succeeded in writing several vivid
descriptions of violent death, but they were written
from the standpoint of the spectator. I had only suc-
ceeded in portraying the sensations of an eyewitness—
the commonplace form of narration in horror writing.
Surely there was room for great improvement in my
next book. Could I not probe far deeper into the
subject? Now, if I could describe accurately and
vividly the thoughts and sensations of the assassin as .
he struck the fatal blow, I would be accomplishing
a unique effect in literature. But, unfortunately, I
was not blessed with an imagination. In order to
write a series of such stories, I must first commit a
series of such crimes. I could no longer depend on my
band of cutthroats to create models for me; I must
shed human blood with my own hands. Who could
know the sensations of the assassin but the assassin'?
It was necessary for me to become an actual murderer.
“Several days after I had come to this decision, I
attempted to kill a man. He had been drugged and
was lying unconscious in my crime studio on Tyndall
*


244 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Place. I was alone with him. Stealing up beside the
bed where he lay, I poised a needle-pointed stiletto
above his heart. A single movement of my arm and he
would have been a corpse; yet, try as I would, this
simple act was beyond me. Thinking that I saw a
resemblance to Paul on his white, upturned face, I sank
to my knees and burst out into uncontrollable sobs.
Defeated, broken, I crouched there until my intended
victim awoke.
“That night I fought a great and final battle. All
through the dark hours the struggle raged. At one
moment my love for Paul, and all the human weak-
nesses which followed in its train, would gain the
ascendancy; at the next, the calm and radiant goddess,
Art, would hold my will in the hollow of her hand.
It was not until the gray light of dawn descended on
the city that the victory was won.
“‘I must sever the last link which holds me to
humanity,” I told myself. “Paul must be sacrificed,
as others have been sacrificed, on the funeral pyre of
genius. Brave men have starved for it, shall I turn
back? Kind men have forfeited their loved ones for
it, shall I be weak? No, Paul, my dear friend, you
must die!’”
~
XX
Martin paused and passed his hand across his fore-
head. Great drops of perspiration had formed there,
which at any moment threatened to run down into his


FOR ART'S SAKE 245
eyes. Evidently the memory of these mental sufferings
could still move him. I might have pitied the man, had
I not had such a hearty detestation and horror of him.
“Three weeks later Paul and I went to the woods
together,” he continued. “I had shipped a barrel of
whisky to the camp several days before. It was child's
play for me to overcome your brother's scruples and
start him drinking again. For five days I kept him in
a drunken stupor by passing him my flask when he
showed signs of returning reason. On the sixth day
I hid the barrel in the spring and refused to give him
any more whisky. When he came to himself, he had
an attack of violent melancholia. Sick in body, he was
sicker yet in mind.
“As you know, Paul’s fits of mental depression were
rather dangerous. Before this he had always had some
one to cheer him up, some one to drag him bodily out
of the slough of despondency. But now I did just the
opposite. Instead of trying to lighten his mind, I
burdened it with all the weary weight of remorse.
I gave him no hope to cling to. I told him that what
had happened here in the woods would happen again
and again; that there was no hope of ultimate cure for
a drunkard; that he was predestined to die with
delirium tremens. I even described his death rather
vividly. I had always had a mental ascendancy over
Paul; now I used this ascendancy as a weapon to
destroy him. When I left him by the camp fire that
night, I knew that the thought of immediate suicide
was implanted in his whisky-soaked brain.


º FOR ART'S SAKE 249
“‘You are quick to see the truth,' I said. “If you
wished to live, you should not have treated a great book
in such a manner. It may be years before I can write
another equally as good.’
“‘That's what I came to see you about—your art!"
he cried with strange enthusiasm. “You’re going to
kill me immediately, I presume?’
“‘Most certainly,” I answered. ‘I never waste time
when I am anxious to be at work.’
“‘Then hear me first,” he broke in excitedly. “I
want to speak of your work.”
“‘Well? I asked.
“‘You have described crime from the standpoint of
the onlooker and from the standpoint of the assassin,”
he said. “That is true, is it not?'
“‘Yes,’ I assented.
“‘But you have missed the great situation—the truly
artistic situation!” he continued quickly.
“‘How so?' I demanded hotly.
“‘Why, you have never written a story from the
standpoint of the victimſ’ he cried. “In other words,
what is the exact sensation of death?’
“‘What is the exact sensation of death?' I repeated
dully."
“‘To be sure!’ he shouted almost gleefully. ‘You’re
worse than a failure, Martin, for you are only a partial
success! You, whom they call the recorder of sen-
sations, have missed the only unknown sensation—that
mysterious sensation of death! There is material
beyond your reach. Till you have mastered it, you will


250 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
remain a living lie. I will know that secret, but it
will not be mirrored in my dead eyes! You will have
to go further, Martin—further!'
“And then, Smithers, the truth of his words flashed
through my brain like lightning. What was the sen-
sation of death? All my life I had been straining
toward that unknown knowledge without realizing it;
all my life I had known instinctively that dead things
guard a precious secret. Without this secret, I was a
mere scribbler forced to give shopworn offerings to the
muse. What was the sensation of death? If I knew
that, unborn millions would live to fear me; my shadow
would rest like black plumage over the world; and life,
once gay and carefree, would shudder on the brink of
the tomb!
“But now red rage flamed up in me—blind rage at
my own impotence. How I hated this man who had
pointed out the truth! My only thought was to destroy
that brain which had grappled and was grappling with
mine.
“Grasping the heavy poker which leaned against the
grate, I struck him on the head with all my might.
The iron bit into his skull and he fell senseless at my
feet. But blind fury still possessed me. I struck
again and again till his face was beaten into an
unrecognizable mass.
“And then I stopped, ashamed. I knew that he had
escaped; that my first blow had opened the door for
him; that he was now safe from me, quite safe and the
possessor of a priceless knowledge... And I dared not


FOR ART’S SAKE 251
look into his eyes for fear that I would see that relent-
less question: ‘What was the sensation of death?’
“You know the rest, Smithers. I dressed his body
in my clothes. I slipped my ring on his finger and
later that night I had him thrown into the river. Then
I left the city by stealth. Solitude has always appealed
to me. I took to the woods, grew a beard and soon
became familiar with my new life.”
He paused and regarded me solemnly for a moment.
“Tell me,” he muttered, “why did Huntington call me
a failure? Do you think that I am a failure, Smithers?
I have tried so hard and now ” He shook his head
sadly. “We, who serve, must give everything—every-
thing!”
And now a new terror was added to my others.
There remained no doubt in my mind. Looking up
into his thin, convulsed face, I realized that Burgess
Martin was mad. There he sat, his eyes fixed on mine
with a speculative stare—a madman with the red stain
of murder in his brain l How long before his slender,
crimson finger tips would be at their wonted trade?
How long had I to live?
XXI
“All that I have told you happened such a long, long
time ago,” Martin resumed in a weary voice. “Now
nothing amuses me—nothing! For ten unbearable
years that relentless question has burned my brain like
molten lava. The world, no doubt, would think me


252 SILENT, WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
mad, but the moon knows better. To-night, as I sat by
the fire, she bent down from the heavens and whispered
to me, telling me how I could find the answer and be as
wise as she and other cold things. Just think what it
must mean to be wise as the moon!
“But do not imagine that I seek to learn this truth
for myself alone. Ah, no, I do it for Art—I do it so
that she may become all-powerful, so that she may rule
over the dead as over the living. I shall leave a
message behind which will open those dark portals.
No longer shall the breath from the tomb be heavy-
laden with mystery. The time has come for my last
sacrifice!”
All this time his eyes had been fixed on me; his face
had been so close to mine that I could feel his hot
breath on my cheek. But now he rose and straightened
himself to his full height. Slowly his right hand stole
downward till it rested on the hilt of the hunting knife
suspended from his belt. A moment later I saw the
sharp blade gleam dully in the feeble lamplight.
“Tell me,” he said softly, bending forward as a
mother might stoop to caress her sleeping child. “Tell
me, would you not like to go? Paul has trod that path;
Huntington laughed as I struck him down. Surely you
will not remain behind º'
And then, for the first time in all that terrible night,
my courage deserted me. “Help!” I shouted. “Help!”
But the moaning of the wind, that everlasting mourner,
was my only answer.
“You were always a weakling,” Martin said with a


FOR ART’S SAECE 253
sneer strong in his voice. “But I will not press you.
You shall be my messenger to the world.”
Now he bent down lower still, and, with the speed of
lightning, passed the sharp blade of the hunting knife
across the arteries in his left wrist. Instantly a warm
stream of blood fell on my upturned face. At this new
horror, everything grew black before my eyes. I
fainted.
When I regained consciousness, Martin still lived,
although his blood was dry on my cheek. He sat
beside the table in the center of the room, bending over
it and writing hurriedly. His left arm hung motionless
by his side. From the wrist a dark ribbon of blood
stole downward over the hand and, separating at each
finger, dripped to the floor. The storm had died down,
the rain had ceased. I could distinctly hear the scratch-
ing sound his pencil made while traveling over the
paper, the intermittent pattering of blooddrops on the
loose boards at his feet.
For the moment I was incapable of thought. I stared
stupidly at this absorbed figure, scarcely realizing the
struggle going on between mind and body, between life
and death. And then the pencil—that swiftly moving
pencil riveted my gaze. I felt that it was being pur-
sued, that pencil; that it was a tiny terror-stricken
creature, fleeing, dodging this way and that, leaping
forward in a frenzy to escape. But what pursued it?
What implacable destiny waited for it silently at the
end of the page? Now it faltered, now it sped on
again, now it moved jerkily forward for an inch or
- --


FOR ART’S SAKE 255
was in Bill Pete's cabin, hired a canoe and paddled
across. He found me tied to my bunk and raving in a
high fever. On the floor, within a few feet of the
table, lay the stiffening remains of Burgess Martin.
Several weeks later, after I had recovered my health
and strength, Dr. Street gave me further details. It
seems that Martin's usually somber face was trans-
figured by a strange, unearthly smile and that he held
in his right hand, crumpled up into a ball, a sheet
of paper on which he had succeeded in writing several
sentences. I have that sheet of paper before me now
and, as I am convinced that his last message can do no
harm in its unfinished state, I quote from it verbatim:
“I am dying, slowly, painlessly. From me are fall-
ing, one by one, the dry husks of life. A great weak-
ness, which clarifies the senses, is stealing over me. I
am a child again—a child who stands on the tiptoe of
expectancy. Something is about to happen. What?
I do not know. And yet I feel so sure of approaching
freedom. I have lived my life behind iron bars; and
now—why, now I smell the sea!
Yes, and I see it—that sea of eternity, that sea which
holds a million, million souls' I hear it. My ears
catch up the refrain and hold it like shells on life's
shore. All my life I have sought to probe its mystery—
that beautiful, sparkling sea of death.
Why am I so weak? The pencil is falling from my
hand. I must hold it tighter—tighter! I have lived
my life for Art's sake; I must die for Art’s sake.
But hush! She is coming! My love is coming, my
cold bride! And who is that beside her? Who is that
who holds her hand in his? It is Death—proud


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