NIVERSITY.OF CA RIVERSIDE. LIBRARY
3 1210018385078
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
The Celestial Omnibus and
other Stories. By E. M.
Forster. With End-papers and
Cover-design by Roger Fry.
1911. Second Impression.
The Temple on the Hill :
a Tale of Transylvania. By
Elsa de Szasz. 1912.
The Third Miss Symons.
By F. M. Mayor. With a Pre
face by John Masefield. 1913.
Vain Oblations
Stories: by Katharine(F. Gerould
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.
Adam Street, Adelphi, W.C. 1914
TO
J. M. F. AND B. M. F.
CONTENTS
PACK
VAIN OBLATIONS i
THE MANGO-SEED 39
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE 76
ON THE STAIRCASE 116
THE TORTOISE 161
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 212
THE CASE OF PARAMORE 249
VAIN OBLATIONS
AS I was with Saxe during the four most
desperate weeks of his life, I think I
may say that I knew him better than any one
else. Those were also the four most articulate
weeks, for they were a period of terrible in
action, spent on the decks of ocean steamships.
Saxe was not much given to talking, but there
was nothing else to do. No book that has
ever been written could have held his attention
for two minutes. I was with him, for that
matter, off and on, until the end. What I
have to tell I got partly from my own observ
ations, partly from a good little woman at
the Mission, partly from Saxe's letters, largely
from his own lips, and partly from natives.
But if I recorded it as it came, unassimilated,
unchronologized one fact often limping into
camp six months after its own result the
story would be as unintelligible as the quipus
of the Incas. It has taken me three years of
steady staring to see the thing whole. I
VAIN OBLATIONS
know more about it now including Saxe
than Saxe ever knew. In point of fact, one
of the most significant pieces of evidence did
not come in until after his death. (I wish it
clearly understood, by the way, that Saxe did
not commit suicide.) But, more than that, I
have been thinking for three years about
Mary Bradford. I could tell you as much
about what she suffered the subtlety and the
brutality of her ordeal as if she were one of
my own heroines. God forbid that I should
ever think of Mary Bradford as " material " :
that I should analyze her, or dramatize her,
or look at her with the artist's squint. If I
tell her story, it is because I think it right
that we should know what things can be.
For the most part, we keep to our own conti
nents : the cruel nations are the insensitive
nations, and the squeamish races are kind.
But Mary Bradford was the finest flower of
New England ; ten home-keeping generations
only lay between her and the Quest of 1620.
It is chronic hyperassthesia simply to be New
English ; and the pure-bred New Englander
had best stick to the euphemisms, the ap
proximations, the reticences, of his own
extraordinary village. But Mary Bradford
VAIN OBLATIONS
encountered all the physical realities of life
in their crudest form, alone, in the obscene
heart of Africa, with black faces thrust always
between her and the sky. Some cynic may
put in his belittling word to the effect that
the New Englander has always counted
physical suffering less than spiritual dis
comfort. The mental torture was not lacking
in Mary Bradford's case. For over a year,
the temptation to suicide must have been like
a terrible thirst, death any death luring her
like a rippling spring. I told Saxe one night
in mid-Atlantic, to comfort him, that she
would of course have killed herself if she saw
no chance of escape.
Saxe laughed dryly. " That's the most
damnable thing about it," he said. " Mary
would think it mortal sin to kill herself.
She would stick on as long as God chose to
keep the breath in her body."
" Sin ? " I queried rather stupidly.
" Yes, sin," he answered. " You don't
know anything about it : you were brought
up in Europe."
" But, Saxe," I cried, " rather than" I did
not finish.
" You don't know anything about New
3
VAIN OBLATIONS
England," he said. " Damn your books !
Missionaries face everything, and there's more
than one kind of martyrdom. I hope she's
dead. I rather think she is."
His voice was uneven, but with a meaning
less unevenness like a boy's that is changing.
There was no emotion in it. A week more
of monotonous ploughing of the waves would
just have broken him, I think ; but he pulled
himself together when he touched the soil of
Africa. Something in him went out to meet
the curse that hung low over the land in the
tropic afternoon ; and encountering the An
tagonist, his eyes grew sane again. But with
sanity came the reticence of battle. All that
I know of Saxe's and Mary Bradford's early
lives, I learned in those four weeks. I have
made out some things about her, since then,
that probably Saxe never knew. As I said, I
have been thinking about Mary Bradford for
three years, and it is no secret that to contem
plate is, in the end, to know. The stigmata
received by certain saints are, I take it, irrefu
table proof of this. I do not pretend to carry
upon me Mary Bradford's wounds ; I do not
even canonize her in my heart. But I
seriously believe that she had, on the whole,
4
VAIN OBLATIONS
the most bitter single experience ever under
gone by woman ; and much of the extra
ordinary horror of the adventure came from
the very exquisiteness of the victim. I have
often wondered if the Greek and Italian
literatures that she knew so well offered her
any mitigating memory of a woman more
luckless than she. Except Jocasta, I positively
cannot think of one ; and Jocasta never lived.
All of us have dreams of a market where we
could sell our old lamps for new. How must
not Mary Bradford have longed to change her
humanities against mere foothold on the soil of
America or Europe ! But my preface is too long.
Now and then there is a story where all
things work together for evil to the people
involved ; and these stories have, even for
their protagonists, a horrible fascination.
The story of Saxe and Mary Bradford is of
this nature : a case, as it were, of double
chicane. Everything happened precisely
wrong. Almost anything happening differ
ently would have given them a chance. If
Mary Bradford had been born in Virginia,
if her eyes had been blue instead of brown, if
Ngawa had come back three hours sooner
5
VAIN OBLATIONS
Maupassant would have told it all from that
point of view. But I am not trying to make
literature out of it : it is as history that this
story is important to me. Saxe had been
engaged to Mary Bradford since her last year
in college. Her mother had died when Mary
was born, and the Reverend James Bradford
had sailed, after his wife's death, for this little
West African Mission, leaving his child with
a sister. Mary was brought up in America.
When she was ten, her father came home for
a year, and took her back with him ; but at
twelve she was sent definitely home to be
educated. James Bradford could not have
conceived of depriving his child of Greek and
trigonometry, and from school Mary went to
college. She never, at any time, had any
inclination to enter upon missionary work,
though her religious faith was never at any
moment in the smallest degree shaken. From
her thirteenth year she had been an active and
enthusiastic member of her father's denomina
tion. She was a bit of a blue-stocking and
occasionally somewhat ironic in speech.
When I asked Saxe " if she had no faults,"
these were all he could think of. When she
became engaged to Saxe, she stipulated that
6
VAIN OBLATIONS
she should spend two winters with her father
before marrying. The separation had never
really parted Mary and her father ; they had
never lost the habit of each other. You see
those sympathies sometimes between father
and daughter : inarticulate, usually, like the
speech of rock to rock, but absolutely inde
structible. There was no question I wish
to emphasize this about her love for Saxe.
I had, for a time, her letters. It was a grande
passion to use the unhallowed historic
phrase ; twenty love stories of old Louisiana
could have been melted up into it. Saxe, of
course, consented to her going. During the
second spring he was to go out, her father
was to marry them at the Mission, and they
were to return to America after a honeymoon
in Italy. There is not one detail that does
not, in the end, deepen the irony of it, if you
look at it all long enough. Italy ! All that
romantic shimmer and tinkle against the
savage fact that was. She went, and for six
months seems to have busied herself happily
enough with good little Mrs. Price at the
Mission. She picked up a few dialects she
was always remarkably clever at languages.
The Mission hangs above a tiny seaport if
7
VAIN OBLATIONS
you can call it a seaport, for there is a great
reef a few miles out, and the infrequent steam
ships stop outside that and send passengers
and letters in by boat. It is not one of the
regular ports of call, and its chief significance
lies in its position at the mouth of a largish
river that winds inland for a few hundred
miles, finishing no one knows exactly where.
The natives for a hundred miles up-stream
are fairly friendly and come down sometimes
in big boats to trade ; beyond that, the
country runs into jungle and forest, and grows
nastier and nastier. No one knows precisely
about that region, and it lies just outside every
one's sphere of influence ; but there seems to
be a network of unhealthy trails, a constant
intertribal warfare, and an occasional raid by
the precocious pupil of an Arab slave-trader.
It is too far south for the big caravans, of
course, but there is undoubtedly slave-stealing
though it is extremely difficult to learn
anything definite about the country, as there
are a dozen different tribes speaking entirely
different languages, and each lying tortuously
about all the rest. This is all that Saxe could
tell me about that hinterland which he had
never expected to be interested in.
8
VAIN OBLATIONS
In March, after Mary reached the Mission
(she sailed in July, immediately after gradua
tion), the chief of a small tribe some hundred
miles up-stream descended in pomp to barter
ivory for such treasure as oozes from European
ships. Having seldom condescended to trade,
he was disappointed at receiving so little for
his ivory a scanty lot of female tusks and
sought distraction and consolation within ear
shot of the Mission piano. He took especially
kindly to the Reverend James Bradford,
gravely inspected the school, and issued an
invitation for Mr. Bradford to come up
stream and Christianize his tribe. The
Mission had worked up and down the coast,
as it could, but had never worked inland
more rumours than boats came down the
waterway, which was not really a highroad
and certainly led to nothing good. They
lacked money for such an enterprise, and
workers ; but, being missionaries, never forgot
that the river, and all who dwelt on its banks,
belonged to God. It did not occur to James
Bradford to refuse the call, which he took
quite simply, as from brother to brother; it
did not occur to Mary Bradford to let him go
alone, or to her father to protest against her
9
VAIN OBLATIONS
accompanying him. The patriarchal tinge is
still perceptible in the New English conception
of the family. Let me say, here, that there is
no evidence that Ngawa himself ever broke
faith with his white proteges. He was, like
them, a victim of circumstances.
They were to go for six months. That
would bring them to September. In Septem
ber, three new workers were to come out to
the Mission, and James Bradford hoped that
two could then be permanently spared for the
new Mission up-stream, which he already
foresaw and yearned over. In September, he
and Mary would return to the port ; in late
April, Saxe was coming out to marry Mary.
They departed under the escort of Ngawa
himself. Mr. Price promised to get a boat
up to them in May, or at least a runner with
letters.
Such details of the final catastrophe as Saxe
was acquainted with were brought to the
Mission by a native boy in September, just
before the boat was to start up-stream (taking
Adams and Jenks, the new recruits) to bring
the Bradfords down. All reports had hitherto
been favourable, if not astonishingly so. Ngawa
had listened, and his heart seemed to incline
10
VAIN OBLATIONS
to Mr. Bradford's teachings. Mary had
started a little school for the babies. But
Ngawa had no intention of compelling his
people to embrace Christianity : he simply
courteously permitted it to exist in his
dominion. As talk of war came on, he was
pre-occupied with the affairs of his thatched
state. The populace they seem to have
been a gentle crowd enough grew apathetic
to their apostles and deposited the commanded
tribute somewhat listlessly before their huts.
The medicine-men, of course, were hostile
from the first, and, as the war drums beat in
the forest and the men of the village gathered
to sharpen their tufted spears, wild talk had
undoubtedly not been wanting. The end had
really been a bitter accident. Ngawa ab
sented himself for three days to do some last
exhorting and recruiting in his other villages.
The attack that had not been expected for a
week, at least, was made a few hours before
his return. It became a raid rather than a
battle ; the village resisted the siege only a
short time, and the invaders did what they
would in the monstrous tropic dusk. Many
of the native women were stabbed quickly ;
but the youngest ones, and Mary Bradford,
ii
were dragged off as captives. Mr. Bradford
was killed in the beginning not by the
enemy, who were busy despatching Ngawa's
subjects, but by Ngawa's chief medicine-man,
who stole out of the shadows, slit his throat
twice across, caught the blood in a cup, and
then slid back into the darkness. The boy
who brought them the story averred that he
had seen it all, having been present, though
somehow left out of the melee. The enemy,
afraid of Ngawa's return, did not stop for the
half-grown children. The white girl tore
away, the boy said, and started back to her
father, but the warrior who held her hit her
on the head, so that she dropped, and then
carried her off. Oh yes, he had seen it all
quite well : he had climbed into a tree. The
huts were all burning, and it was lighter than
day. Ngawa came back that night, and, later,
they destroyed utterly the villages of the other
tribe, but they got back no captives. These
had been killed at once, probably, or sold.
Ngawa had gone back to the medicine-men.
Ngawa's people must have been gentler
than most of their colour, for the boy answered
all the questions of the stricken missionaries
before he asked to hear the piano.
12
VAIN OBLATIONS
This was absolutely all that Saxe knew,
when he stumbled into my rooms and asked
me to go out to Africa with him. The first
cablegrams had simply announced the mas
sacre, and it was only on receipt of letters from
the Prices that Saxe learned about Mary and
her horrible, shadowy chance of life. The
Prices promised to cable any news, but it was
unlikely that they would have any more.
The boy who had brought them this story
drifted down the coast, and for some months
few boats came down the stream. Ngawa,
they heard vaguely, had died, and his son
reigned in his stead, a bitter disciple of un
clean rites. Young Adams, in the pity of his
heart, had gone the hundred miles to the
village, but the people had evidently nothing
to tell. The white priest was dead, and the
white girl was gone. Their own captives
were gone, too, and if they had been able to
recover them would they not have done it ?
Undoubtedly they were killed, but their
enemies had been punished. No : they were
faithful to their own gods. What had the
white god done for his priest, or for Ngawa,
who had listened and died ? Doubtless
Adams would have been killed, if they had
VAIN OBLATIONS
been defeated in the war, but he profited by
the magnanimity of triumph. It was astonish
ing how little impression, except on Ngawa
and one old medicine-man, James Bradford
had made. Save that he had achieved
martyrdom for himself, he might as well have
stayed peacefully at the Mission. It is all,
from first to last, a story of vain oblations.
The people were inclined to forget that he
had ever been there, but they registered their
opinion that his white brother had better go
back at once. Saxe's face, as Adams gave
him his last news, was tense. He gripped
the hand of the one white man who had
visited that bitter scene, as if he would never
let it go.
If Saxe had been delayed in America, it was
only in order to arrange his affairs so that he
could stay away indefinitely. He intended to
follow Mary Bradford down those dim and
bloody trails until at least he should have seen
some witness of her death. Saxe was not
rich, and his arrangements took him a certain
length of time. We sailed from New York
in March, and caught the African liner at
Plymouth.
I will not enter upon the details of Saxe's
14
VAIN OBLATIONS
activity during the next months, nor of the
results he gained. It was a case where govern
ments were of no use : the jungle that had
swallowed up Mary Bradford acknowledged
no suzerain across the seas. Saxe visited
Ngawa's village, of course " I am steel
proof," he said, and I think he believed it.
The story of those months is a senseless story
of perishing lights and clues of twisted sand.
We spent three months in rescuing the yellow
widow of a Portuguese pearl-fisher, who had
been captured by coast pirates and sold inland.
When Saxe stood face to face with the " white
woman " he had worked blindly to deliver, he
reeled before her. " Tell him that I will
marry him," said the woman with a noble
gesture. She was forty, fat, and hideous. I
mention the incident which turned me quite
sick, and in which, to this day, I can see
nothing more humorous simply to show the
maddening nature of our task. Even I had
believed that this mysterious white woman
was Mary Bradford. In that land of rumour
and superstition and ignorance and cunning
above all, of savage indifference anything
might be true, and anything might be false.
Three days after we had started off to find the
15
VAIN OBLATIONS
Portuguese hag, a real clue came into the
Mission. Our three months had been quite
lost, for the Prices could get no word to us on
our knight-errant task. Poor Saxe !
In September, Saxe, following this clue,
which seemed to bear some real relation to the
events of the year before, travelled solemnly,
accompanied by a few natives only, into the
heart of that hinterland which stood, to all
the coast above and below the Mission, for
treachery, mystery, and death. In October,
he reached the village of the chief in question
a sun-smitten kraal, caught between high
blue mountains and the nasty bit of jungle
that separated them from one of the big
waterways of Africa. Politics are largely a
matter of geography, and his position was one
of enviable independence, though he was to
neighbouring kings on the scale of Andorra to
France and Spain. He was a greedy old man,
and the sight of several pounds of beads made
him very communicative. Half of his in
formation was bound, by African code, to be
false, and Saxe had no means of knowing
which half ; but he owned to having
purchased, a few months before, from a
wandering trader, a slave woman of white
16
VAIN OBLATIONS
blood. She had come high, he affirmed,
cocking his eye at Saxe. But she was not
Saxe's slave Saxe had put it in that way in
order to be remotely intelligible to the savage
mind. Oh, no ! she was the daughter of a
Mandingo woman and an Arab. The trader
had told him that : he had known the mother.
Oh, no ! it could not be Saxe's slave. How
ever, he was willing, for a really good price,
to consider selling her. Saxe refused to be
discouraged. The clue had seemed to him
trustworthy ; and the story about the Man-
dingo woman might be pure invention-
bravado, to raise the price.
He asked to see her. Oh, certainly; before
purchasing he should see her. But meanwhile
there was the official cheer to taste kava,
above all, inimitably mixed and she should
be fetched. Where was she ? A young slave
girl suggested sardonically that she was prob
ably at her toilet. Since she had heard of the
white man's coming Saxe had tactfully sent a
runner ahead of him- she had been smearing
herself meticulously with ochre and other
precious pigments. This was said with a side
long glance at the chief : obviously, he
distributed those precious pigments only to his
c 17
VAIN OBLATIONS
favourites. Saxe said that from that moment
his heart misgave him. He had been somehow
sure that this woman was Mary. Why his
heart should have misgiven him, I do not
know ; or what devil of stupidity put it into his
head that this was the trick of a half-breed slave
to make herself irresistible to a white man. It
sounded to him, he said, like the inspiration
that would naturally occur to the daughter of
an Arab by a Mandingo woman. It has
never sounded to me in the least like that.
He said that he still believed it was Mary ;
but I fancy he believed it after the fashion of
the doubter who shouts his creed a little
louder. Of course there was something pre
posterous in the idea of Mary Bradford's
making herself barbarically chic with ochre to
greet the lover who might be coming to rescue
her. But was not the whole thing pre
posterous to the point of incredibility ? And
Mary Bradford was not an ordinary woman
not the yellow widow of a Portuguese pearl-
fisher. It has always seemed to me that poor
Saxe ought to have realized that.
Saxe consumed kava until he could consume
no more. Then the slave girl announced that
the woman had been found. Saxe rose to his
18
VAIN OBLATIONS
feet. He was stifling in the great hut, where
all the chief councillors had joined them at
their feast, where the reek from greased bodies
seemed to mount visibly into the twilight of
the great conical roof. His head was reeling,
and his heart was beating weakly, crazily,
against his ribs " as if it wanted to come
out," he said. His hands were ice-cold. He
had just presence of mind enough to drag the
black interpreter out with him, and to leave
one of his own men inside to watch the stuff
with which he proposed to pay. The chief
and most of his councillors remained within.
Outside the hut, her back to the setting
sun, stood the woman. Saxe had of course
known that Mary would be dressed like a
native ; but this figure staggered him. She
was half naked, after the fashion of the tribe,
a long petticoat being her only garment.
Undoubtedly her skin had been originally fair,
Saxe said ; but it was tanned to a deep brown
virtually bronzed. For that matter, there was
hardly an inch of her that was not tattooed or
painted. Some great design, crudely smeared
in with thick strokes of ochre, covered her
throat, shoulders, and breast. Over it were
hung rows and rows of shells, the longest rows
19
VAIN OBLATIONS
reaching to the top of the petticoat. Her face
was oddly marred uncivilized, you might
say by a large nose-ring, and a metal disc
that was set in the lower lip, distending it.
Forehead and cheeks were streaked with paint,
and her straight black hair was dressed after
the tribal fashion : stiffened with grease,
braided with shells, puffed out with wooden
rolls to enormous size. Her eyelids were
painted red. That was not a habit of the
tribe, and might point to an Arab tradition.
The painted eyelids and the streaks that seemed
to elongate the eyes themselves were Saxe's
despair he had counted on meeting the eyes
of Mary Bradford. To his consternation, the
woman stood absolutely silent, her eyes bent
on the ground, her face in shadow. Even
Saxe, who had no psychology, seems to have
seen that Mary Bradford would, in that plight
if it was she wait for him to speak first.
But I think he had expected her at least to
faint. Saxe looked at her long without speak
ing. He was trying, he said, to penetrate her
detestable disguise, to find some vulnerable
point where he could strike at her very heart,
and know. In the midst of his bewilderment,
he grew cool cold, even. He gave himself
20
VAIN OBLATIONS
orders (he told me afterward) as a general
might send them from the rear. His tongue,
his hands, his feet were very far off, but they
obeyed punctiliously. My own opinion is that
Saxe never, from the moment when he saw
the woman, believed it to be Mary.
Her back, as I have said, was against the
light. As the purchaser of a slave he might
well wish to see her more fully revealed. He
gave the order through the interpreter :
" Turn to the light." As she turned obedi
ently and stood in profile against the scarlet
west, he saw that her form was unshapely.
On her back were a few scars, long since
healed.
That moment was undoubtedly Hell for
Saxe, in spite of the doubt upon him. But
what must it have been for the impassible
creature before him ? Saxe saw that he must
play the game alone. " Mary," he said quietly
in English, " I have come to take you home."
In the circumstances it was the stupidest thing
he could have said ; but the only thing he
thought of was speaking in English. If it
was Mary, these words, he thought, would
reach her, would dispel her shame, or, if she
were mad, pierce her madness.
21
VAIN OBLATIONS
She seemed not to have heard. " Bid her
look me in the face," he said brutally to the
interpreter. The order was repeated. She
turned, raised her painted eyelids, and looked
him straight in the eyes, with the apathetic
look of the slave, the world over. " But were
they Mary Bradford's eyes ? " I cried to him,
when he told me. " I don't know, damn
you ! " he said. " Mary had never looked at
me like that as if she didn't see me, and
painted like a devil."
He seems to have felt as far as I can
define his feeling that she was not Mary, but
that perhaps he could bully her into being
Mary. I do not know how else to explain
his unconvinced but perfectly dogged insistence
on her identity. He had, of course, been
greatly shaken by the extraordinary appearance
of the woman. Perhaps he was simply afraid
it was she because it would be so terrible if it
were, and was resolved not to shirk. Saxe,
too, was a New Englander. At all events, he
shouted his creed a little louder still. " You
are treating me very badly, Mary. I am
going in to buy you from the chief; and then
you will listen to me."
The woman heard Saxe's voice and looked
22
VAIN OBLATIONS
at the interpreter. Saxe, stupefied, repeated
his speech to the negro, and the latter trans
lated. At this, she threw up her arms and
broke into guttural ejaculations. That
painted form swayed grotesquely from side to
side, Saxe said, and she tore the shells out of
her hair, tearing the hair with them. Giving
him one glance of devilish hatred, she ran to
the chief's hut. Saxe followed. There was
nothing else to do.
Then began, Saxe said, what for him was
a horrible pantomime. He heard nothing of
what was said, until afterward, for the inter
preter could not keep up with the prestissimo
of that scene ; but one understood it without
knowing. The woman grovelled at the chief's
feet ; she pointed to Saxe and wrung her
hands. She was not Saxe's slave, and evi
dently did not wish to be. The other women
drew near to listen, being, clearly, personally
interested in the outcome. The chief was, as
I have said, avaricious. He looked longingly
at the shining heaps of beads, the bolts of
scarlet cloth, above all, the Remington rifles.
Yet it was clear that he had not wholly out
grown his sluggish penchant for the woman
who clung to him. It does not often happen,
VAIN OBLATIONS
for that matter, that a petty chief in the
remote interior can count a white woman
even a half-breed among his slaves ; and the
male savage has an instinct for mating above
him. The woman saw whither the avaricious
eye wandered. She rose from the ground, she
stood between him and the treasures, she bent
over him and murmured to him, she pointed
to her own distorted form. . . . The little
slave girl scowled, and the chief's eye gleamed.
What at first had seemed a possible detriment,
now showed as an advantage. " That was
true," he exclaimed. " Before long she would
bring him a warrior son or a girl he could sell
for many cows. Let the white man wait."
Saxe stamped his foot. Not one day would
he wait : the bargain should be completed
then. He told me afterward that, after seeing
her with the chief, he was absolutely con
vinced that the woman they were cheapening
was the half-breed Arab they said she was ;
and the general in the rear of the battle
wondered dully what he should do with her.
But the woman had thrust herself cunningly
beneath the chiefs very feet, had twined her
arms about his ankles, had welded herself to
him like a footstool that he could not shake
24
VAIN OBLATIONS
off. Over the chief's thick features, in the
torch light (for night was falling outside), into
his avaricious eyes, crept a swinish gleam.
Let the white man wait until to-morrow.
Night was falling ; it was time to sleep. By
the sunlight they could deal better. The
woman panted heavily beneath his feet, never
loosing her hold. The young slave girl looked
down at her with unconcealed malignity.
Saxe found himself forced to retire from the
royal hut sleeping-chamber, banqueting-hall,
audience-room in one. He said that all he
thought of, as he stumbled out, was the idiotic
figure he should make at the Mission as the
owner of an Arab-Mandingo woman. It was
worse than the yellow Portuguese.
He was conducted to his tent. The inter
preter confirmed there all that Saxe had
divined. Let it be said now that Saxe had
one clear inspiration. Before leaving the hut
he had turned and spoken to the woman who
was fawning on the wretched negro. " Mary,"
he said, " if you ask me to, I will shoot you
straight through the heart/' The woman had
snarled unintelligibly at the sound of his voice,
and had redoubled her caresses. Can you
blame Saxe for having doubted ? Remember
25
VAIN OBLATIONS
that she had not for one moment given any
sign of being Mary Bradford ; -remember that
he had no proof that it was Mary Bradford.
" Had you no intuition of her ? " asked young
Adams, later, at the Mission. " Intuition ! "
cried Saxe. " There wasn't a feature of Mary
Bradford there : she was a loathsome horror."
Let those who cannot believe in Saxe's failure
to recognize her, reflect for an instant on all
that is contained in that literal statement.
Have you never failed, after a few years of
separation, to recognize some one : some one
whose face had not been subjected to barbaric
decoration and disfigurement, not even to
three years of the African sun ; who, living all
the while in the same quiet street, had merely
passed for a time under the skilful transforming
hands of sorrow ? I have seen Mary Brad
ford's photograph, and was told at the same
time that the not very striking face depended
for its individuality on the expression of eyes
and mouth. But painted eyes . . . and a lip-
ring ? She was undoubtedly, as Saxe said, " a
loathsome horror " ; and a loathsome horror
who gave no sign. I firmly believe that she
was not recognizable to the eye. Saxe's only
chance would have lain in divination ; in
26
VAIN OBLATIONS
being able to say unerringly of the woman he
loved : " Thus, or thus, in given circum
stances, would she behave." Such knowledge
of Mary Bradford could never have been easy
to any man. In my opinion, no one can
blame him for doubting. The magnificence
of the performance was almost outside the
realm of possibility. I asked Saxe once if
Mary Bradford had been good at acting. He
had never seen her do but one part : she had
done that extremely well. And the part ?
Beatrice, in Much Ado. Beatrice !
The strain of it had told on Saxe, and he
slept that night. But it is only fair to say
that, before he slept, he had quite made up
his mind that he was as far away from Mary
Bradford as he had ever been. It is not to be
wondered at. Only a man who had grasped
Mary Bradford's idea it has taken me three
years to do that, entirely could have believed
that she would let Saxe go out baffled from
the hut in which she deliberately chose to
stay with her half-drunk, wholly vile captor.
Women who could have done all the rest,
would have turned at Saxe's offer of a kindly
shot through the heart. But Mary Bradford
was great. She was also infinitely wronged by
27
VAIN OBLATIONS
Fate. It is all wanton, wanton to the very
last : all, that is, except her own part, which
was sublimely reasoned.
Saxe slept, I say ; and at dawn woke to his
problem. The intelligence that works for us
while we sleep waked him into the conviction
that he must, at any cost, buy the woman.
He said that, as he strode over to the chief's
hut, he was thinking only of what price he
ought to put on the child that would be such
a fantastic mixture of breeds. He did not
want the woman, but he felt that the purchase
was inevitable. This, I am convinced, was
only the New English leaven working him up
to martyrdom. It would be unmitigatedly
dreadful to have the woman on his hands, and
therefore he ought probably to buy her.
The chief greeted him with temper, and
soon Saxe learned why. The woman had left
the hut before dawn, taking with her her
master's largest knife. She was found later in
her own little hovel, dead, with a clean stab
to her heart. Suicide is virtually unknown
among savages, and the village was astir.
Saxe asked to see the body at once, but that,
it seems, was not etiquette : he had to wait
until it was prepared for burial. For an in-
28
VAIN OBLATIONS
stant, he said, he thought of bargaining for
the body, but forebore. He had a difficult
return journey to make, and the point was,
after all, to see it. When they permitted him
to enter the hut, the face had been piously
disfigured beyond recognition. He told me
that he lifted the tattooed hand and kissed it :
he did not know why. It was clear that if
the woman had preposterously been Mary,
she would not have wished it ; and if she
were the other, it was almost indecent. But
he could not help it. This impulse of his
seems to have been his only recognition of
Mary Bradford. In life and in death, she
suppressed every sign of herself with consum
mate art.
We were a fevered group that waited for
Saxe day after day at the Mission ; and he
seemed to have been gone an intolerably long
time. The broken leg that had kept me from
going with him was almost well when he
returned. Yet he had taken the shortest
way back. It was also the unhealthiest. He
said that he had heard war rumours that made
him avoid the more frequented trail, but I
fancy he rather hoped that the swamps he
clung to would give him fever. In that
29
VAIN OBLATIONS
sense and in that sense only Saxe could
perhaps be said to have committed suicide.
He stumbled into the Mission dining-room at
noon one day. " And Mary ? " we all cried,
rising. " Oh, did you expect to see Mary ? "
he asked politely, but with evident astonish
ment.
We got him to bed at once. After the
days of delirium were over, he told his story
quite simply. It was pitifully short. The
concrete facts seemed to be perfectly clear in
his mind, and he gave them spontaneously ;
but what he himself had felt during that
dramatic hour, I learned only by close
questioning. He died suddenly, when he was
apparently convalescent. The year he had
been through had simply killed resiliency in
him and he went down at the last as stupidly
as a ninepin. I cannot imagine the source of
the rumour that he had killed himself, unless
it was some person who thought he ought to
have done so. He started, at the end, to
speak to me : " If Mary ever " He never
got beyond the three words ; they showed
sufficiently, however, that he was considering
the possibility of Mary Bradford's being dis
covered after his death. He may have been
30
VAIN OBLATIONS
wandering a little at the last ; but, in my
opinion, Saxe had never believed, even after
the suicide, that the woman he had seen had
been his betrothed.
Some weeks after Saxe's death, we received
incontrovertible proof if testimony is ever
incontrovertible that it had indeed been she.
We had been surrounded for a year by a hideous
jungle blind, hostile, impenetrable. Now
out of that jungle stalked a simple fact. One
of the native girls who had been taken captive
with Mary Bradford returned at length to her
own tribe. She had shared Mary's fortunes,
as it happened, almost to the last ; then the
chief who had bought them both sold her, and
by the successful chances of purchase, raid,
and battle she had reached her own people.
It was hardly more than crawling home to
die ; but she managed to send word by one of
her kinsmen to the white people down the
river. Apparently she and Mary had promised
each other to report if either should ever reach
friends again. Her message was pitifully
meagre : Mary had talked little in those wild
months ; and after she had seen that they
were too well watched to escape, she had
talked not at all. But the two had evidently
VAIN OBLATIONS
clung together an extraordinary tie, which
was the last Mary Bradford was to know of
friendship. The burden of the native's report
was that the white girl was the favourite of a
chief who gave her much finery. The dying
woman seems to have thought it would set
Mary Bradford's friends at rest her kins
man, I remember, said that he had good news
for us. The news was no news to me I had
been thinking ; but I was glad that Saxe had
died before he could hear it. Even the
comfort of knowing that Mary was surely
dead would never have made up to him for the
ironic memory of the last hour he had spent
with her. Besides, Saxe would never have
understood.
I should probably never have touched this
chapter of history with a public pen, if I had
not heard a woman say, a few months since,
that she thought Mary Bradford's conduct
indelicate. Had the woman not said it to me
directly, I should not have believed, even at
my cynical age, that such a thing could be
said. I greatly regret, myself, that the facts
were ever told : they should have been buried
in Africa with Saxe. But the Prices returned
to America not long after it all happened, and
32
VAIN OBLATIONS
apparently could not refrain from talking.
Even so, I should have let Mary Bradford's
legend alone, for ever, had I not learned that
she could be misjudged.
Consider dispassionately the elements of
her situation ; and tell me who has ever been
so tortured. Physically unable to escape by
flight, morally incapable, as you might say, of
escaping by death for there can be no doubt
that, difficult as suicide would have been to a
guarded captive, she could have found some
poisonous root, courted the bite of some serpent,
snatched for one instant some pointed weapon ;
and that she was deterred, as Saxe said, by the
simple belief that to take one's life was the
unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost,
the Comforter she could but take what
came. As a high-priced chattel, she was
probably not, for the most part, ill-treated
save for the tattooing, which was not cruelly
intended. The few scars that Saxe noted
doubtless bore witness to her protest against
the utmost bitterness of slavery, some sudden
saint-like frenzy with which she opposed pro
fanation. She may have wondered why God
chose so to degrade her : her conduct with
Saxe shows beyond a doubt how she rated her
D 33
VAIN OBLATIONS
degradation. She made not one attempt to
dignify or to defend her afflicted body. Her
soul despised it : trampled it under foot.
What Mary Bradford suffered before Saxe
came we cannot know, but the measure of it
lies, I think, in the resolution she took (if we
believe the jealous slave girl) when she heard
of the white man's approach. She must have
divined Saxe, leagues away, as he was unable
to divine her, face to her. Her one intent
was to deceive him, to steep herself in un
recognizable savagery. If Mary Bradford
had conceived of any role possible for herself
in her own world, she would not have created
her great part. If she had felt herself fit even
to care for lepers at Molokai, she would have
washed away her paint and fallen at his feet.
It is perfectly evident that she considered herself
fit for nothing in life hardly for death. Her
hope was clearly that Saxe should not know
her. I do not believe that it was pride. If
there had been any pride left in Mary Brad
ford's heart, she could not have stood quietly
(" apathetically," was his word !) before Saxe
in the flare of the dying sun. It was not to
save anything of hers that she went through
her comedy, but only to save a little merciful
34
VAIN OBLATIONS
blindness for Saxe himself. He undoubtedly
made it as hard as possible for her. I am
inclined to think that if he had gone away at
once, she would be living still mothering her
half-breed child, teaching it secretly the fear
of God. When she saw that all Saxe's be
wilderment still left him with the firm
determination to buy her to take her away
and study her at his leisure she conceived
her magnificent chute de rideau. When she
went into the hut, she had decided, for Saxe's
sake, to die. Mary Bradford grovelling at
the feet of the drunken chief will always seem
to me one of the most remarkable figures in
history : I should never have mentioned
Jocasta in the same breath with her. Only
Christianity can give us tragedy like that.
How must she not have longed, at Saxe's
offer of a kindly shot through the heart, to
turn, to fling herself at his feet, to cry out his
name, once. She " redoubled her caresses,"
Saxe said ! Has any man ever been so loved,
do you think ? For the sake of bestowing
upon him that healing doubt, she let him go,
she put ofF death, she spent her last night on
earth not fifty yards from him, in the hut of a
savage, that she might have, before dawn, the
35
VAIN OBLATIONS
means of committing the unpardonable sin.
Note that she did not commit suicide until
she had made it perfectly plausible from the
point of view of the Arab-Mandingo woman.
She proved to him that it was not she. She
gauged Saxe perfectly. Nothing but some
such evidence as later we received perhaps
not even that would ever have made Saxe
believe that Mary Bradford, with him by her
side, had clung to that vile savage. Even
Mary Bradford whose soul must have been,
by that time, far away from her body, a mere
voice in her own ears, a remote counsellor to
hands and feet could not have done that,
had she not intended to die. But remember
that up to that day she had lived rather than
rank herself with the " violenti contro se
stessi." 'We can simply say that Mary Brad
ford chose the chance of Hell for the sake of
sparing Saxe pain. The fact that you or I
I pass over the lady who thinks her in
delicate ; does she think, I wonder, that it
would have been delicate for Mary Bradford
to accompany Saxe back to civilization ?
may believe her to be one of the saints, has
nothing to do with what she thought. Mary
Bradford came of a race that for many
36
VAIN OBLATIONS
generations believed in predestination ; but
she herself believed in free will. Dreadful as
it is to be foredamned, it is worse to have
damned yourself. She had not even the cold
comfort of Calvinism. I said that I under
stood Mary Bradford. I am not sure that it
would not have taken a Spanish saint of the
sixteenth century really to understand her.
Sixteenth-century Spain is the only thing I
know of that is in the least like New England.
I am not trying to make out a " case " for
Mary Bradford ; and I sincerely hope that
the lady who thinks her indelicate will never
read these pages. For most people, the facts
will suffice, and I have no desire to interpret
them for the others. You have only to
meditate for a little on the ironic and tragic
reflections of a hundred kinds that must have
surged through Mary Bradford's brain, to be
swept away, yourself, on the horrid current.
Do I need, for example, to point out the
difficulty to use a word that I think the
lady I have cited would approve of merely
meeting the man she adored, face to face ?
For never doubt that those souls who live
least by the flesh feel themselves most defiled
by its defilement. No, you have only to
37
VAIN OBLATIONS
explore Mary Bradford's tragedy for yourself.
It will take you three years, perhaps, as it has
taken me, to penetrate the last recesses. And
if you are tempted for a moment to think of
her as mad, or exaltee, reflect on how com
pletely she understood Saxe. I am only half
a New Englander ; and I confess that, though
I reverence her heroism, I am even more
humble before her intelligence. It is no
blame to Saxe that he stumbled out of the
chiefs hut, completely her dupe. Poor Saxe !
But the vivid vision of that scene leaves Phedre
tasteless to me. As I say, I am only half a
New Englander. . . .
THE MANGO-SEED
THE two young men looked at each other
rather helplessly. Then "Marty" Martin
drew a few ragged words over his helplessness.
" I'm sorry, Peter really, awfully. I'll be
back in an hour. And do buck up. But you
have bucked up, you really have. You look
ever so much better than you did when
we went to lunch. And I'll be back. Oh,
you can depend on me." He drifted off
through the door. His muscles were tense
with haste, but he fingered chairs and tables
as he went as if trying to put clogs of
decency on feet indecorously winged. Even
so, he was soon out of sight, and Peter Wayne
was alone.
" There's no point in saying it isn't rum,
because it is," he murmured to himself.
" And here" he added, looking about. There
was no moral support in those crimson walls,
those great pier-glasses, those insignificant
writing-tables with red-shaded electric lights,
39
THE MANGO-SEED
those uncomfortable tapestried armchairs. It
wasn't the setting to help you through a crisis.
He was in the quietest corner of the most
essentially respectable hotel in New York.
There were plenty of them scores that were
incidentally respectable ; but at the St. Justin
respectability had been cherished through years
for its own sake, as more important than the
register, the cuisine, or the unimpeachable
location that no metropolitan progress could
render inconvenient. As a very young
bachelor with virtually no family ties, he was
not familiar with the St. Justin. It wasn't a
place where you would expect to get the kind
of thing his kind of human being wanted.
He couldn't, for example, have induced Marty
to lunch there. They had lunched at Plon's.
It was an hotel where you might be perfectly
sure your grandparents had stopped. It was
natural that his mother should have selected
it for their meeting, as she hadn't been in
America for well over twenty years. But
there was less backing than he had expected,
somehow.
Sitting uncomfortably in one of the corners
by a writing-table (his back to the window so
that the familiar streets shouldn't lure him too
40
THE MANGO-SEED
much to flight), he took the privilege of the
consciously crucial moment. He reviewed
his life. It was so very short, after all, that
it was easily reviewed. He was only a few
months out of the university, and he was just
twenty-two. The insoluble was there to the
point of being either romantic or absurd, he
didn't know which. He had what so many
young people long for in vain, a mystery.
He had amused himself occasionally with
monstrous hypotheses. But what real account
could he give of himself ? What account,
that is, of the sort that Marty Martin and his
like had by heart before they could spell ?
The most that he knew about his parents
except that they were alive and in the
tropics was that they banked in Honolulu
and had some natural hold or other on
Marty Martin's uncle. Marty Martin's uncle
had picked out Peter's school and his college
for him, and was telegraphed for when Peter
had appendicitis. That was as near the
parental relation as anything he had known
from experience. Lonely ? Well, any fellow
was lonely when the other fellows all went
trooping home for holidays ; but loneliness he
had always frankly diagnosed as three-quarters
THE MANGO-SEED
pride. The fellows were always glad to get
back to school or college, he noticed. In any
case, he had stopped thinking about it much
his plight. That saved his dignity. What
he sat now vaguely dreading was the immense,
the cataclysmic downfall of his dignity. He
tried to put the facts to himself so simply that
they should be as reassuring as a primer.
Ollendorf, he had once complained to a
teacher, would take the zest out of a murder,
the sense out of a scandal. Tragedy was a
verbal matter. Put a crime into any foreign
language, and it sounded like a laundry list.
He would try, as it were, to find the French
for his situation.
" Oh, rot ! " he began, taking his own ad
vice quite seriously. " It isn't so Sudermannish
as all that. My father and my mother chose to
go to the tropics to live, a year after I was
born. They did not take me with them.
They have never sent for me ; but they have
supported me ; they have written to me
occasionally ; they have got Marty Martin's
uncle to keep me out of the hands of the
S.P.C.C., and trained me generally to do
without them. I've never been invited to go
to Tahiti. And Tahiti isn't like London if
42
THE MANGO-SEED
you know any one there, you can't go without
an invitation. They can't have turned against
me, when I was eleven months old, on account
of my vices. I've kept pretty jolly and
managed to regularize the situation with my
friends. Now my mother has written that
she's coming to America to see me. Indeed,
she has actually come. I wasn't allowed to
meet her at a steamer, decently. I have to
meet her here here." (He looked gloomily
around at the conventional walls.) " Yet she
doesn't seem to be staying here. I don't know
whether she will want tea, or where to take
her to dinner. I don't know her when I see
her. I don't know oh, hang it, I don't know
anything ! And if I could funk it, like
Marty, I would. But what can you do when
a lady takes the trouble to bring you into the
world ? If it had been my father, now, I
wouldn't I positively wouldn't have con
sented to meet him. It's it's no way to
treat a fellow."
His vain attempt at Ollendorfian flatness
broke down : the mere facts seemed so very
much against him. He had often complained
to Marty Martin that it was dashed awkward,
this being the only original changeling; but,
43
THE MANGO-SEED
in point of fact, he had never been so uncom
fortable in his life as now, at the prospect of
playing the authentic filial role. " I'll make
her dine here," he muttered. He could think
of nothing worse without being actually dis
respectful. An old lady in a gray shawl
walked slowly down the hall past the door,
and it suddenly struck him that his mother
would perhaps like to dine at the St. Justin.
" I ought to have cabled to ask what colour
her shawl would be," he began, in a flippant
whisper, to himself. The flippant whisper
stopped. He was much too genuinely nervous
to be flippant any longer without an audience.
At the same time, he found himself wonder
ing oh, insincerely, theatrically, rhetorically
wondering why he had not bought an
etiquette book. There was something well,
to be honest, something like an extra gland in
his throat, something like a knot in his healthy
young nerves that kept him from putting the
question to himself audibly. " If she cries "
he reflected, with anticipatory vindictiveness.
What he really meant was : " If she makes
me so much as sniff." For your mother was
really the one person in the world who had
you necessarily at a disadvantage. Even if
44
THE MANGO-SEED
you hadn't the habit of her, you couldn't
count on yourself for reticence. You might
be as bored as possible, but that wouldn't save
you. There might be treacheries of the flesh,
disloyalties of the cuticle all manner of
reversions to embryonic helplessness. She
somehow had your nerves, your physical equi
librium, at her mercy. Old Stein, prodding
at you with instruments in the psychological
laboratory, was a mere joke in comparison.
Even the most deceived, the most docile and
voluble student ended respectably in a card
catalogue. Peter felt suddenly an immense
tenderness for the decencies, the unrealities of
" science." But to meet your mother in con
ditions like these was the real thing : the
naked horror of revelation. " It's literature,"
thought Peter to himself, " and what is litera
ture but just the very worst life can do?"
He came back to his familiar conclusive
summary. It was rum.
The next quarter of an hour passed more
mercifully. The mere empty lapse of time
helped him, half duped him into thinking
that the scene might not come off at all. It
was foolish to be there ahead of time, but
what could a man in his predicament do, or
45
THE MANGO-SEED
pretend to do, between luncheon and an inter
view like that ? They had had, he and
Marty, a civilized meal at Plon's ; but he had
not been hungry, and to smoke among the
stunted box-trees afterward had been well,
impossible. They had got to the St. Justin
ridiculously early, and then Marty had bolted.
Peter didn't bear him any grudge for that ; of
course it was perfectly proper for Marty to
bolt. It would have been worse, he began to
think, to face her first before a witness.
By this time he had accepted the smallest
writing-room of the St. Justin as the pre
destined scene of the great encounter ; accepted
it as, perhaps divinely, perhaps diabolically,
but at all events supernaturally, appointed.
These walls had been decorated by dead people
to be unsympathetic and grossly unfit witnesses
of Peter Wayne's embarrassment. To that
extent they belonged to him. The sudden
superstition was genuine ; so genuine that he
found himself resenting a bit of chatter that
sprang up outside the door and, even more,
the immediate quick entrance into the writing-
room of one of the chatterers. Why hadn't
his mother given him an appointment in her
own sitting-room, at her own hotel whatever
46
THE MANGO-SEED
that might be? He didn't know; he knew
nothing of her since the wireless message that
had made the appointment ; and of course
since she was managing the thing that way
he hadn't even tried to meet her at her steamer,
though it had actually docked at some un
earthly hour that morning. But she was
likely to pay, too, for her perversity, since the
lady who had just come in and had sat down
rather aimlessly at one of the tables would
probably annoy her as much as she did him.
He had owned or pretended ? to Marty
Martin a furtive curiosity as to this mother
of his, whom he had virtually never seen, of
whom he hadn't so much as a photograph.
Now something quite different stirred within
him : the instinct to protect her against any
thing she would not like. He suddenly saw
her frail and weary and overwrought and quite
old pathetically, not ironically, like the little
old lady who had hobbled past the door and
lie resented any detail that might crown her
long effort at reunion with an extra thorn.
He was sure she would hate this other woman's
being there the younger woman who had just
come in, and sat down so nonchalantly.
This lady obviously intended to stop long
47
THE MANGO-SEED
enough for their discomfiture, since just here
he got up and looked at his watch as he did
so it lacked scarce two minutes of the ap
pointed hour. He looked at the intruder a
little impatiently. She wasn't writing. Per
haps he could suggest, by some flicker of
expression, some implication of gesture, that
he wasn't there in that ridiculous galley for
nothing, and still less there for casual company.
She was slim and smartly veiled and outrageously
made up. That was all he saw out of the
corner of his eye, but it was enough to make
him feel that she had no such rights at the
St. Justin as a reunited mother and child. She
wasn't waiting for a parent, he knew ; only
for some frivolous friend or other. He was so
nervous as to wonder if there were any conceiv
able way in which one could ask her to go into
one of the other rooms. A depopulated chain
of them stretched down the corridor. He
threw another glance at her. She was well
dressed. Peter, though he might know as
little as a poodle about the nature of the cur
rent fashion, could, like most men, pounce
unerringly on the unfashionable. Her exub
erance wasn't a matter of gewgaws ; it was all
in the meretricious harmonies of her features
48
THE MANGO-SEED
and complexion. And yet Peter caught
himself away from staring, as he passed her,
but one glance was enough to show him that
it was a perfectly honest mask ; her paint
and powder were as respectable as blue glasses.
Again he knew it unerringly. He was glad
to recognize it. For at that moment he
became so nervous that he did, without a
qualm, the most preposterous thing he had
ever done, even at two-and-twenty.
His mother was imminent ; he knew it
in a hundred ways. The atmosphere was
charged with more than the mere prospect,
was charged with the actual certainty of her.
He found that he was going to put it to the
lady who sat there. He stood in the door of
the writing-room and looked down the dark
hall. It was empty, save for a woman who
sat humbly near, bonneted, veiled, faithfully
clasping some kind of bag obviously a
servant. Remembering the bit of chatter, he
fancied it the maid of the intruding lady. No
one else was in sight. Yet somehow he knew
that his mother would be on time : the crisp-
ness of her earlier cablegrams promised it.
The lady really must go elsewhere, and the
maid old and " coloured " and manifestly
E 49
THE MANGO-SEED
respectable must move down the hall and sit
outside another door. He went back, and
this time walked straight across to the
stranger.
" Will you pardon me, madam " (" madam "
was a deplorable word, but the powder some
how demanded an extravagant formality), "if
I speak to you, to ask you something very
odd ? "
She stared at him through her fantastically
patterned veil.
" I have been put in the position of having
to meet an elderly lady a near relative here
for a more or less intimate conversation. I
don't think she realized, in making the ap
pointment, how little privacy you have a
right to in an hotel. It is very long since she
has been in a great city. Will you pardon
the the really unpardonable liberty of my
asking if you are likely to be here much
longer ? I mean ought I to arrange to take
her elsewhere in the hotel when she comes ?
She will be here in a moment."
It was a dreadful thing to have had to do,
and, if he judged by what the veil showed of
the lady's face, it couldn't have been worse
done. She looked dismayed. Peter was
50
THE MANGO-SEED
angry : so angry that he managed to stop just
where he had stationed himself before her ;
so angry that he didn't deprecate, that he
simply set his teeth and waited. There was
nothing he could do now, he felt, to convince
her that she hadn't been insulted.
She lifted her veil ever so little, just freeing
her lips, slightly constricted by its tight-
drawn mesh. And she did so, she both rose
and spoke.
" Aren't you Peter Wayne ? "
He bowed, relieved. If they had a ground
of acquaintance, he could perhaps cover it all
up, make it plausible, get rid of her on some
dishonest, hilarious pretext. " I am." He
waited ; there was no use in pretending that
he remembered her.
The veil was lifted farther, then a hand
was laid on his shoulder and a voice sounded
in his astonished ears. " Turn to the light,
my son, and let me look at you. I've not had
a photograph, you remember, since you were
a child."
Even as he faced the light, he was saying
to himself that it was rummer than ever ; but
it was rummest when he turned for his legiti
mate look at her. She was older than he had
5*
THE MANGO-SEED
assumed the strange lady to be ; but she was a
long way from the little old lady in the gray
shawl. This was his mother, and it was over
he felt it as those sinking for the third
time may feel. In another instant he saw
his mistake. He had been pulled up out of
the surge into the terrible air this was his
mother, and it had just begun ! He mastered
his breath his breath that under the water
had been playing tricks with him. He looked
her over, searching stare for searching stare.
Her fair hair had lost what must once have
been a golden lustre, but it was carefully,
elaborately arranged, waved, curled, braided.
It was as fashionable as her clothes. The
white mask of powder left clear the contour
of the fine, thin nose but cloaked the subtler
modellings of the face. The blue eyes, idle
yet content, looked at him from behind it ;
below them it was rent, once, by the scarlet
stab of the mouth. Peter remembered vaguely
having heard that the tropical sun necessitated
such protection. It was the northern dimness
and drizzle that turned make-up into a moral
question. Even for the grands boulevards^ to
be sure, Mrs. Wayne's make-up would have
been overdone. This was the chief result of
52
THE MANGO-SEED
his searching stare. She wasn't like one's
mother at all, confound it ! not like any
one's mother. He would have been glad of a
little more sophistication than even at wise
two-and-twenty he was conscious of possess
ing.
" Your maid ? " he asked, remembering the
figure outside the door.
" Oh, yes ; my old Frances. She recalls
you as a baby. She'll want to see you. You
must speak to her before we go."
" But you're not going "
"I find I'd better get off to-night. I've
learned since landing, that if I do, I can just
get a boat at Vancouver. It's not as if I had
any business to do. You'll take me to dinner
somewhere some restaurant. I don't like
hotels."
" But you don't mean you've come for
only twenty-four hours across all that ? "
The straight red mouth elongated itself into
a smile. " If there weren't so much of it to
cross, I could, perhaps, stay longer. I came
only to say one or two things."
She spoke as if she had run up from her
country place for the day. Peter suddenly
revolted against this careless treatment of his
53
THE MANGO-SEED
plight. He was glad if his prayers had suc
ceeded in averting tragedy. At the same
time, he didn't intend to be turned into farce.
He hadn't let himself in for all this only to be
shirked as he had been shirked for more than
twenty years. He meant to know things,
hang it ! He had been afraid of a scene ;
afraid of twenty years' emotion expressed in
an hour ; of a creation of human ties as
violent and sudden as the growth of the tree
from the mango-seed in the fakir's hands.
" In ten minutes you eat the ripe mango," a
globe-trotting friend had told him. If he
hadn't the fakir's miracle to fear, well and
good ; but neither was he going to suffer the
other extreme, the complete dehumanizing
of the experience. After all, she was his
mother, hang it ! If she wasn't going to
make him pay well, he would make her
pay. Somebody had to get something out
of so preposterous a situation. He leaned
forward.
" Things you couldn't write ? Or have
you just funked it, on the way ? "
" Funked it ? " Her vocabulary apparently
did not hold the word.
" I mean oh, I mean, let us talk straight.
54
THE MANGO-SEED
You've let it all go for more than twenty years.
Now you take it all up again. I'm a gentle
man, I hope. I didn't bolt, though you can
bet I wanted to. It would have been easier
never to have seen you at all."
" You've never wanted to see your mother ? "
Peter looked out of the window into the
familiar street. If it hadn't been for the utter
detachment of her tone, he would have felt
that she was hitting below the belt.
" What do you take me for ? I've nearly
died of well, call it interest, more times than
I can count up. No little boy likes to have
no mother ; likes to have his mother care
nothing for him. But I've grown perfectly
used to it. And I know I know now, mind
you that you don't care. Well, it may not
be what I should have chosen, but at least it
lets me out. It's too late, now, to make me
care."
It was by no means the whole truth. But
it was what he had been trying, and in vain,
to say to himself an hour since about it all.
There was some triumph in being able to say
it now to her.
Her blue eyes turned on him a stranger's
sudden kindness. " Where those years bad,
55
THE MANGO-SEED
Peter ? I thought they'd be less bad if you
began them very young. You see, they had to
begin some time."
" Oh, they began and they lasted. Now,
they're not bad at all. So why rake it all up
now ? "
If she had been little and old and shaking,
he couldn't have pressed the question, he
knew. The powdered cheeks, the elaborate
hair, the vermilion lips gave him a kind of
sanction. There was a pitiful way of wearing
rouge, no doubt ; this wasn't pitiful in the
least. He didn't know what she looked like
underneath the mask, but he could almost have
sworn she didn't need it.
" I'm not trying to do that. If I've come
too late, it's because I feel quite sure that it's
too late to undo any of it. I am not trying "
her brilliant, dyed smile was extraordinarily
little in the maternal tradition "to get a single
claw into you. I've come to pay damages,
Peter, not to claim them. But you must be
very, very, very polite to me. I'm not used to
anything else. And America rather frightens
me."
" I don't want to be anything but polite,"
murmured Peter, abashed. " And the freer
56
THE MANGO-SEED
you really are, the more it's up to you to play
the game, don't you think ? "
She smiled vaguely, and he saw at once that
she belonged to the generation that preceded
slangy paradox. She might also have worn a
fluffy gray shawl.
" I'm sure you don't wish to be anything
but polite," she brought out, still vaguely.
" But I've odd things to say, and I've come a
long way to say them ; and you, my son, must
listen."
" It's what I'm here for."
" Evidemment. How much has Spencer
Martin told you ? "
" Old Martin ? Nothing at all, ever ex
cept the figure of my allowance."
" Not why we first went to Hawaii ? "
" Good Lord, no ! I might have been a
foundling."
" You didn't ask ? " She had taken off her
gray glove ; and pushed her veil up farther on
her forehead, with beautiful white fingers.
" No," answered Peter curtly. " A fellow
wouldn't ask. You can see that."
She seemed to muse. " He would have told
you that, I think, if you had. There was no
reason why you shouldn't know."
57
THE MANGO-SEED
" I naturally supposed, if there was no
reason why I shouldn't know, you'd have seen
to it that I was told."
" So you thought there was something dis
graceful something that drove us out of
America?"
" It has occurred to me. But I never let
myself worry about it. And old Martin him
self was a kind of proof that there wasn't."
" There wasn't." She echoed his words in
a disdainful, emphatically affirmative tone.
" No, Peter, not that." She paused for a
moment, staring out into the gray street.
" These women are very ugly, aren't they ? "
she asked irrelevantly. " On the boat, they
were horrors. And they jerked about so did
so many things. Do the men like them that
way ? " Her tone was desultory.
" I suppose so." He felt a mischievous de
sire to tell her how little the men he knew
would probably like them her way ; but, in
fact, the slow conviction was encroaching on
his mind not so much penetrating it as
fluidically enwrapping it that she was com
pounded of many graces. Her gestures, for
example : they were all slow, and each showed
off something, if only, for an instant, some
58
THE MANGO-SEED
lesser, some negligible contour. She had the
air of not having stirred a limb or a feature
for years, except to please, and of being now
in the practice infallible. She was very femi
nine no, hang it ! that dairymaid word
wouldn't do. (Peter had been, in college, the
proudest product of his several " theme-
courses," and the quest of the epithet was not
unknown to him.) She was very simple and
very sophisticated. He had to leave it at that.
" I'll tell you about our leaving America.
You ought to have known long since. And
yet perhaps it was better your sympathies
shouldn't have been touched. If you thought
we were brutes, that would leave you free,
wouldn't it ? "
" It did."
" Ah, yes exactly ! " She seemed to
triumph for an instant. Then she looked out
of the window again, and again spoke irrele
vantly. " Are you in love ? "
Peter frowned. " No." He was too young
not to be stiff about it.
" That's rather a pity. I could have ex
plained better."
" Oh, I know what it stands for."
She corrected him gently. " It ' stands for '
59
THE MANGO-SEED
nothing whatever. Either you've loved or you
haven't. It might have helped me that's
all." Then she seemed to brace herself for
difficult exposition.
" Listen, Peter. You must know this first.
In the months just following your birth, every
thing changed. Your father developed tuber
culosis alarmingly, it was then supposed.
That meant another climate. He owned
property in Honolulu. It occurred to him to
go there. In not taking you we acted on
physicians' advice. There was no telling what
sort of life we might have to live. You were
best off here. You were under expert care,
and in those days we had news of you con
stantly. I am quite well aware " her voice
grew surer as she went on ; she seemed less
fantastically feminine, more simply human
" that many women would have chosen dif
ferently. For me there could be no question.
You had been brought into the world in the
belief that there would be no choice to make.
We never dreamed, when you were born, of
anything but the normal American life. I
insist on your realizing that."
Peter bowed. It already began to change
his vision of himself a little, though he wasn't
60
THE MANGO-SEED
sure he liked his mystery to be merely tu
bercular. Though if that was all, why in the
world but he saw that he could only listen
and wait.
" Then Honolulu didn't serve very long.
We had to go farther away from life. Now
we're in Tahiti. It's it's a very wonderful
climate."
Mrs. Wayne rose, drew the crimson curtain
to one side, and looked out. It was a moment
before she spoke, and as she spoke she sat
down again with helpless grace.
" I find it very hard to tell. I don't think
I can tell you it all."
" I don't see why you should have come at
all, unless you are going to tell me everything
there is to tell. But if you've really funked
it, I don't care, you know." Thus Peter,
maintaining his bravado.
" You don't help me out." The blue eyes
rested on him critically. " But I suppose it's
not your fault. Since you don't know any
thing about anything "
" I can't give you a leg up. No."
She frowned a little, as if troubled by his
phrasing, but resigned herself to it. " No ;
you can't give me a leg up/'
61
THE MANGO-SEED
" I say " He leaned forward with a sudden
impulse. " Why don't I go back with you ?
Or come out later ? Lots of people going to
Tahiti now, you know, since they've exhausted
the Spanish Main. Plenty of attractions :
drives round the island, perfect scenery, native
customs on tap ordeal by fire and hot stones.
It's in the advertisements along with the rates
and sailings. No reason why I shouldn't
come."
She had drawn back while he spoke with
a perfectly obvious terror. With parted lips,
and coiled hair, and her very blood (it seemed)
turned white, she looked like Greek tragic
masks that he had seen in museums. These
he had always thought grinning prevari
cations ; now, he acknowledged their
authenticity. His jauntiness faded into a stare.
Then she pulled herself together, as Peter
would have said, by slow, difficult degrees, like
a kaleidoscope turned too slowly pitiful to
see.
" No, Peter, you must never come to
Tahiti. He he couldn't bear it."
" He ? "
" Your father/'
" Oh my father." His imagination had
62
THE MANGO-SEED
not yet evoked his father. " I had forgotten
him, for the moment."
" Forgotten him ! What extraordinary
things you say ! "
" Well, why shouldn't I forget him ? He
hasn't even taken the trouble to spend
twenty-four hours in America to make my
acquaintance." Something acrid had risen in
the cup, and Peter's lips were bitter.
Her white fingers moved again to the folds
of her veil, as if the frail mesh weighed
intolerably upon her brows.
" If you forget him, of course I can never
explain. He is all there is." She indulged
then in an appraising glance. " You look
kind and good. I didn't think you would be
undutiful."
Undutiful ! It was her turn to introduce an
unfamiliar vocabulary. " Undutiful ! " Peter
repeated. " What do you mean ? That I'm
expected to be grateful to him for being my
father ? "
She smiled. She lifted her hands. She all
but applauded him. " Yes, just that ! "
Peter stared. He had two favourite words
with which to describe the legitimately sur
prising. One of them was " rum." But such
63
THE MANGO-SEED
an idea as this called for the other. It was
positively " rococo."
She went on then. Apparently his ironic
question had smitten the rock, for the fluent
tale gushed forth, watering all the arid past.
But to Peter it was as if a man blinded and
drenched with spray should try to drink of it.
The first sentences came too quickly. In all
his two-and-twenty years they found no
context. He had still to learn the way of
them. He supposed it was because he was
finding out at last what it was to have a real
mother.
" It wasn't always Tahiti," he heard her
saying after a little. " We've tried everything
south of the equator, I've sometimes thought.
Valparaiso, for a long time. Perhaps you
knew ? Spencer Martin "
" Never even told me when you changed
your continent." He was blindly bitter.
Somehow it did hurt, as she went on.
" The climate," Mrs. Wayne murmured
again. And then she named other stages of
their progress all places, Peter reflected, that
were in the geographies and in Kipling, and
nowhere else. It made his parents sound like
vagabonds of fiction. Her trailing narrative
64
THE MANGO-SEED
did not add to their reality. The details she
mentioned were wildly exotic, and those she
took for granted he could not supply. Her
careful English was interlarded with strange
scraps of Spanish and native names for things
which left the objects, for him, unrecognizable.
He made nothing out of it except that it
wasn't what he should call a life at all. He
didn't even see whether it was whim or
necessity that controlled them. As soon as
anything in her story became coherent or com
prehensible, she doubled on her tracks. At
first he threw in occasional questions, but the
answers didn't explain ; and soon he stopped
asking them. A foreignness like that left his
very curiosities unphraseable. He came to the
point where he didn't even know what it was
that he wanted to know. There was, to be sure,
the irregularly recurrent stress on the hope of
health, an obsession, apparently, under which
they had faintly struggled and madly rambled ;
but he didn't make much more sense than what
he had learned in childhood about Ponce de
Leon. You might as well ask a firefly to show
you your way. Clearly, she hadn't the gift of
biography. He sat very still and intent, trying
to make a pattern out of it ; but she merely
F 65
THE MANGO-SEED
succeeded in dazing him. Then suddenly,
when he was most bewildered, it came to an
end, ran out in a mere confession of failure.
" And nowhere, at any time, has the miracle
happened. He has never been well enough
to come back. We have always had to stay
away."
" It must have been a strange life," Peter
mused.
" Strange ? It may be. Strange for him,
no doubt : so fitted for civilization for your
world."
<c You speak as if it weren't yours."
" Oh, mine," she said simply ; " he was
mine. I don't ask for more civilization than
that than my husband."
It was the most sentimental speech that
Peter had ever heard from human lips, and he
stared incredulously. But incredulity faded.
Her tone of voice worked on him even after
she fell silent. He still felt its vibration in
the air while the mask shifted subtly before
his eyes. Somehow, as she sat there, breathing
such simple passion from her intricate adorn
ments, she became at once more astounding
and more intelligible. One saw it all even
Peter, in his young and untutored heart, knew
66
THE MANGO-SEED
infallibly. She had loved her husband
supremely, and she had chucked everything
for him. She had chucked so much, in fact,
that she had even lost all sense of the worth of
what she had cast away. She had nothing
left to measure it by. Peter felt that America
itself was a good deal to have chucked. It
soothed his pride a little, to be sure, to have
her treat New York so cavalierly. She hadn't
so much as looked at it ; and she had circum
navigated the globe for him. It was clear,
too, that every moment of the journey was a
kind of torture to her. Her very look round
the room divulged an agony of strangeness and
suspense. She was just longing to be back on
her island. Peter thrilled a little foolishly to
it. He fancied it was a grande passion. The
only grande passion Peter had hitherto known
had been that of a sophomore friend for his
landlady's daughter. That, though it had
been enhanced by proper detail of elopement,
disinheritance, and threats of suicide, had
disappointed them all in the end. The bride
was rather silly and tried to borrow money ;
and when Peter and Marty, in their senior
year, had reread Lawrence's sonnet-sequence,
they had found that it didn't scan. But this
67
THE MANGO-SEED
this was different. Whatever his mother had
undertaken, she had obviously put it through.
After all those years of marriage, to have your
voice vibrate like that ! It had never occurred
to Peter that a fellow's mother could still be
in love with his father. Even in novels
mothers weren't. As for life : he recalled
the parents that he knew. He had never seen
another woman with just that look, the look
of a dedicated being, of some one whose bloom
had been, first and last, both jealously hoarded
and lavishly spent. She was like a woman
out of a harem : a million graces for one man,
but a mere veiled bundle to all the rest. That
was the secret of her uniqueness. She was a
charming woman to whom the notion of
charming the world at large would be blas
phemous. Her mood had been slowly orien
talized to match her exterior, which had
gradually grown exotic. She would die in
suttee. Peter felt her quality no less poig
nantly because his words for it were unsure.
Of course she didn't want to stay in America !
Of course she was off to Vancouver at mid
night ! And yet why, why had she come ?
Would she never explain ?
She had been looking out of the window
68
THE MANGO-SEED
while he soliloquized it was part of the whole
sub-tropical spectacle of her that she should
limit herself to so few hours, and then be as
languid as if she had leased a suite at the St.
Justin for life. She turned just as Peter had
made up his mind to speak.
" There was one summer when you wanted
to do the Caucasus, I remember a rather
queer trip that was going to cost a great deal.
We were sorry I was dreadfully sorry that
you couldn't go."
Peter frowned. There you were ! She
crammed the supreme interview of a lifetime
into an hour, and then had the audacity to be
irrelevant.
" We couldn't afford it just then. It it
was a very expensive year. I had to tell
Spencer we couldn't. I hope you didn't hate
us for it."
Peter laughed. " I didn't even know you
had anything to do with it. Old Martin
didn't tell me it was funds. He just wet-
blanketed the whole thing said it wasn't safe
and he couldn't hear of it. I didn't mind
much. I went to Murray Bay to visit another
chap. But, I say do you mean old Martin
asked you ? "
69
THE MANGO-SEED
" He cabled."
" And you? "
" I cabled back."
" Has he been consulting you about me all
these years ? In cases like that, when I didn't
dream of it ? "
" Oh, only occasionally," she hastened to
say. " We haven't been spying on you."
" No, I should hope not." Then he called
himself a queer duck, aggrieved for twenty
years because he hadn't been spied on, and
now aggrieved at the thought that he might
be.
" Was it you, by the way," he asked, " who
were interested in my affairs, or my father ? "
Her pronouns had been a little confusing.
" Your father has had, more and more, to
leave all correspondence to me." For the first
time, her words came glibly. She had evi
dently packed that sentence in her trunk before
starting.
" Is he so very ill ? " Peter had veered at
last to an interest in his other parent ; it was
clear that his other parent was the real clue to
the mystery.
" Oh, horribly horribly ! " It was almost
a cry. She bent forward. " So ill, Peter, so
70
THE MANGO-SEED
ill that you mustn't come now, ever. He
loathes it so being so ill. And he is so very
proud as why shouldn't he be ? Can't you see
how he would mind ? Do you think I'd have
come if it had been possible to send for you ?
Do you think I'd have left him if there had
been any other way ? I'm not sure, as it is,
that I ought to have come. It has been
terrible, to be getting farther away every day ;
to know that I'm as far away from him as it is
possible to be on this earth. And think what
it must be for him, alone and there ! "
Well, she was as pathetic now as any little
old lady in a gray shawl could be ; only she
was, somehow, tragic too. Her face was like
the white grave of beauty. Peter was
stupefied.
" There ? " he repeated.
She flung out her hands. " On a savage
island. Think of him on a savage island ! "
" I can't, very well," murmured Peter in-
audibly. Then : " But has he always been so
ill ? For twenty years ? Or " he fixed her
a little more directly " is there something
besides illness ? "
She did not answer. She rose and looked
out of the window, and as Peter rose and stood
THE MANGO-SEED
beside her, she lifted one hand to his shoulder.
There was something ineffably gracious in the
gesture. She seemed to be making it all up to
him. " Such a patched life, Peter," she mur
mured. " You can't blame him for not having
wanted me to come."
" Oh, he didn't want you to come ? "
She hesitated for an instant. " No. And
now I must go."
" Now ? " he asked stupidly.
" Oh, yes, at once. I shan't have time to
dine with you." She looked helplessly about
for a scarf that she had thrown down.
" But no ! " Peter broke out. " It's pre
posterous. To come like this and go like this !
Your train doesn't go for hours if you will
go to-night."
" But I haven't arranged for it. I haven't
packed."
" Why, you haven't unpacked ! " he cried.
" Oh, I think Frances may have. And I
mustn't fail to get off. There are the tickets to
get, too. Peter, I must go." She spoke as if
to delay were unspeakable treason ; and, as she
spoke, she turned to cross the room to the
door.
" I say," said Peter, standing squarely in her
72
THE MANGO-SEED
way, " why did you come ? You shan't go
without telling me that." It wasn't the way
to speak to one's mother, but she had chosen
to discard the maternal code.
She broke off in the act of withdrawal and
turned to him. Her blue eyes were tearless
but very sad. " I loved you dearly when you
were very little," she said simply. " I've never
quite forgotten that. I suddenly realized that,
if I waited any longer, I could never come. I
think it was a cruel and foolish thing for me
to do, and I'm a little ashamed of it ; but
kiss me, Peter."
Before he obeyed, he clutched at one more
straw. " You won't see old Martin ? "
" I said good-bye to him a great many years
ago." She smiled. " I had no one to see in
America except you. No there's a cab
waiting. Good-bye."
He kissed her then. It was clear to him
that he might only watch her go. He saw
her stop to rouse the old servant who waited in
the hall. Then she passed, with strange grace,
out of his life.
There was only one tone to take with
Marty, who arrived, as always, late and breath-
73
THE MANGO-SEED
less. " She's the most charming woman I've
ever met, and it's the devil's own luck that she
had to go straight on to Vancouver to get a
steamer back. My father who is apparently
a charmer, by the way is very ill. She's
wonderful. It's the biggest thing that has ever
happened to me. She's made everything as
right as right. But I can't tell you about it.
After twenty years you understand, old
man "
It was less the loyal friend than the loyal
son ; but he was still, dining that night at
Plon's (he wondered where the deuce she was
dining), very much under her dominion.
She had brought with her a rare illumination.
He would never forget her voice and her
veiled eyes. He hadn't dreamed a woman
could suggest her love in so many silent ways.
She just 'was adoration, implicit and incarnate.
It was tremendous to have seen it. The white
light it threw on Lawrence's bride ! The
-white light it threw, for that matter, on all the
women he knew ! He felt himself bursting
with knowledge.
It was not until after dinner, indeed, that he
realized just how wonderful in another way
she had been, and with how little knowledge
74
THE MANGO-SEED
of another sort she had left him. She had
told him absolutely nothing. So far as he was
concerned, her narrative had only concealed
events. He couldn't remember whether New
Zealand had followed or preceded Chile ; and
his sincere impression was that it didn't matter,
even to them. Anything that in all those
years had mattered, had been dropped away
out of sight between her sentences. If he had
been by his hour both racked and inebriated
(for that was what his state of tension amounted
to), it was not because of any facts she had
given him. She had not even answered his
plain questions. She had left him in dismay
as soon as he had begun to ask them. He saw
that now, though in his simplicity he hadn't
seen it before. He had been sacrificed again,
as he had always been sacrificed. His mystery
was still his mystery, and he was still left alone
with his monstrous hypotheses. He wouldn't
have missed it for anything not even for
good old Marty. But he turned to Marty at
last with compunction.
" Marty, old man," he said, " it 'was rum."
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
I AM an old man now, and, like many other
old men, I feel like making confession.
Not of my own sins. I have always been
called, I am well aware, a dilettante, and I
could hardly have sinned in the ways of the
particular sinners of whom I am about to
speak. But I have the dilettante's liking for
all realities that do not brush him too close.
Throughout the case of Filippo and Rachel
Upcher, I was always on the safe side of the
footlights. I have no excuse for not being
honest, and I have at last an excuse for speak
ing. It is wonderful how the death of
acquaintances frees one ; and I am discovering,
at the end of life, the strange, lonely luxury of
being able to tell the truth about nearly every
one I used to know. All the prolonged con
ventional disloyalties are passed away. It is
extraordinary how often one is prevented from
telling the blessed truth about the familiar dead
because of some irrelevant survivor.
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
I do not know that there was much to
choose between Filippo and Rachel Upcher
though the world would not agree with me.
Both of them, in Solomon's words, " drank the
wine of violence." I never really liked either
of them, and I have never been caught by the
sentimental adage that to understand is to
forgive. If we are damned, it is God who
damns us, and no one ventures to accuse Him
of misunderstanding. It is a little late for a
mere acquaintance to hark back to the Upchers,
but by accident I, and I only, know the main
facts that the world has so long been mistaken
about. They were a lurid pair ; they were not
of my clan. But I cannot resist the wholly
pious temptation to set my clan right about
them. I should have done it long ago, in
years when it would have made " scare-heads "
in the same papers that of old had had so many
" scare-heads " about the Upchers, but for my
dear wife. She simply could not have borne
it. To tell the story is part of the melancholy
freedom her death has bestowed on me.
By the time you have read my apology, you
will have remembered, probably with some
disgust, the Upcher " horror." I am used to
it, but I can still wince at it. I have always
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
been pleased to recognize that life, as my friends
lived it, was not in the least like the news
papers. Not to be like the newspapers was as
good a test of caste as another. Perhaps it is
well for a man to realize, once in his time,
that at all events the newspapers are a good
deal like life. In any case, when you have
known fairly well a man sentenced and executed
for murder and on such evidence ! you never
feel again like saying that " one doesn't know "
people who sue for breach of promise. After
all, every one of us knows people who accept
alimony. But I've enough grudge against our
newspapers to be glad that my true tale comes
too late for even the Orb to get an " extra " out
of it. The Orb made enough, in its time, out
of the Upchers. On the day when the char
woman gave her evidence against Filippo
Upcher, the last copies of the evening edition
sold in the New York streets for five dollars
each. I have said enough to recall the case to
you, and enough, I hope, to explain that it's
the kind of thing I am very little used to
dealing with. " Oblige me by referring to
the files," if you want the charwoman's
evidence. Now I may as well get to my
story. I want it, frankly, off my hands. It
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
has been pushing for a year into my Italian
Interludes; thrusts itself in, asking if it isn't,
forsooth, as good, for emotion, as anything in
the Cinquecento. And so, God knows, it
is ... but the Cinquecento charwomen have
luckily been obliterated from history.
I knew Filippo Upcher years ago ; knew
him rather well in a world where the word
" friend " is seldom correctly used. We were
" pals," rather, I should think : ate and drank
together at Upcher's extraordinary hours, and
didn't often see each other's wives. It was
Upcher's big period. London and New York
went, docile enough, to see him act Othello.
He used to make every one weep over Desde-
mona, I know, and that is more than Shake
speare unassisted has always managed. Perhaps
if he hadn't done Othello so damnably well,
with such a show of barbaric passion It was
my "little" period, if I may say it ; when I
was having the inevitable try at writing plays.
I soon found that I could not write them, but
meanwhile I lived for a little in the odd flare
of the theatric world. Filippo Upcher he
always stuck, even in playbills, you remember,
to the absurd name I had met in my Harvard
days, and I found him again at the very heart
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
of that flare. The fact that his mother was an
Italian whose maiden name had been brushed
across with a title got him into certain drawing-
rooms that his waistcoats would have kept out
of. She helped him out, for example, in
Boston where " baton sinister " is considered,
I feel sure, merely an ancient heraldic term.
Rachel Upcher, his wife, I used to see oc
casionally. She had left the stage before she
married Upcher, and I fancy her tense renditions
of Ibsen were the last thing that ever attracted
him. My first recollection of her is in a pose
plastique of passionate regret that she had never,
in her brief career, had an opportunity to do
Ghosts. Rosmersholm, I believe, was as far as
she ever went. She had beauty of the incon
gruous kind that makesyou wonder when, where,
and how the woman stole the mask. She is
absolutely the only person I ever met who
gave you the original of the much-imitated
" mysterious " type. She was eternally mys
terious and, every day, quite impossible. It
wasn't to be expected that poor Evie should
care to see much of her, and I never put the
question that Mrs. Upcher seemed to be always
wanting to refuse to answer. The fact is that
the only time I ever took poor Evie there,
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
Filippo and his wife quarrelled so vulgarly and
violently that we came away immediately after
dinner. It would have been indecent to stay.
You were sure that he would beat her as soon
as you left, but also that before he had hurt
her much, she would have cut his head open
with a plate. Very much, you see, in the
style of the newspapers. I saw Filippo at the
club we both had the habit of, and, on his
Anglo-Saxon days, liked him fairly well.
When his Italian blood rose beneath his clear
skin, I would have piled up any number of
fictitious engagements to avoid him. He was
unspeakable then : unappeasable, vitriolic,
scarce human. You felt, on such days, that
he wanted his entree smeared with blood, and
you lunched at another table so that at least
the blood shouldn't be yours. I used to fancy
whimsically that some ancestress of his had
been a housemaid to the Borgias, and had got
into rather distinguished " trouble." But she
must have been a housemaid. I did not, how
ever, say this to any one during the trial ; for
I was sure that his passion was perfectly un
practical, and that he took action only in his
mild moments.
I found, as I say, that I could not write
G 81
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
plays. My wife and I went abroad for some
years. We saw Upcher act once in London,
but I didn't even look him up. That gives
you the measure of our detachment. I had
quite forgotten him in the succeeding years
of desultory, delightful roaming over southern
Europe. There are alike so much to remem
ber and so much to forget, between Pirene
and Lourdes ! But the first head-lines of the
first newspaper that I bought on the dock,
when we disembarked reluctantly in New
York, presented him to me again. It was all
there : the " horror," the " case," the vulgar,
garish tragedy. We had landed in the thick
of it. It took me some time to grasp the fact
that a man whom I had occasionally called by
his first name was being accused of that kind
of thing. I don't need to dot my i's. You
had all seen Filippo Upcher act, and you all,
during his trial, bought the Orb. I read it
myself every sickening column that had been,
with laborious speed, jotted down in the court
room. The evidence made one feel that, if
this was murder, a man who merely shoots his
wife through the heart need not be considered
a criminal at all. It was the very scum of
crime. Rachel Upcher had disappeared after
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
a violent quarrel with her husband, in which
threats overheard had been freely uttered.
He could give no plausible account of her.
Then the whole rotten mass of evidence fit
only for a rag-picker to handle began to
come in. The mutilated body disinterred ; the
fragments of marked clothing ; the unused
railway ticket but I really cannot go into it.
I am not an Orb reporter. The evidence was
only circumstantial, but it was, alack! almost
better than direct testimony. Filippo was
perfectly incoherent in defence, though he, of
course, pleaded " not guilty." He had, for
that significant scene he, Filippo Upcher !
no stage presence.
The country re-echoed the sentence, as it
had re-echoed every shriek of the evidence,
from Atlantic to Pacific. The jury was out
five hours would have been out only as many
minutes if it had not been for one Campbell,
an undertaker, who had some doubts as to the
sufficiency of the " remains " disinterred to
make evidence. But the marked undercloth
ing alone made their fragmentariness negligible.
Campbell was soon convinced of that. It was
confused enough, in all conscience he told
Upcher's and my friend, Ted Sloan, later but
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
he guessed the things the charwoman over
heard were enough to convict any man ; he'd
stick to that. Of course, the prosecuting
attorney hadn't rested his case on the imperfect
state of the body, anyhow had just brought
it in to show how nasty it had been all round.
It didn't even look very well for him to chal
lenge medical experts, though a body that had
been buried was a little more in his line than
it was in theirs, perhaps. And any gentleman
in his profession had had, he might say, more
practical experience than people who lectured
in colleges. He hadn't himself, though, any
call from superior technical knowledge to put
spokes in the wheel of justice. He guessed
that was what you'd call a quibble. And he
was crazy to get home Mrs. C. was expect
ing her first, any time along. Sloan said the
man seemed honest enough ; and he was quite
right the chain of circumstance was, alas !
complete. Upcher was convicted of murder
in the first degree, and sentenced to death.
He didn't appeal wouldn't, in spite of his
counsel, and Sloan's impassioned advice :
" Give 'em a run for their money, Filippo.
Be a sport, anyhow ! "
" Lord, man, all juries are alike," was the
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
response. " They've no brains. I wouldn't
have the ghost of a show, and I'm not going
through that racket again, and make a worse
fool of myself on the stand another time."
" But if you don't, they'll take it you've
owned up."
" Not necessarily, after they've read my
will. I've left Rachel the ' second best bed.'
There wasn't much else. She's got more than
I ever had. No, Sloan, a man must be guilty
to want to appeal. No innocent man would
go through that hell twice. I want to get
out and be quiet."
The only appeal he did make was not such
as to give Mr. Campbell any retrospective
qualms of conscience. The request was never
meant to get out, but, like so many other
things marked " private," it did. His petition
was for being allowed to act a certain number
of nights before his execution. He owed
frightful sums, but, as he said, no sums, how
ever frightful, could fail to be raised by such
a device.
" It would kill your chances of a reprieve,
Filippo," Sloan said he told him.
" Reprieve ? " Filippo had laughed. " Why,
it would prove me guilty. It would turn all
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
the evidence pale. But think of the box-office
receipts. There would have to be a platoon
of police deadheading in the front rows, of
course. But even at that ! "
Sloan came away a little firmer for circum
stantial evidence than he had been before. He
wouldn't see Filippo again ; wouldn't admit
that it was a good epigram ; wouldn't even
admit that it was rather fine of Filippo to be
making epigrams at all. Most people agreed
with him : thought Upcher shockingly cynical.
But of course people never take into account
the difference there is between being convicted
and pleading guilty. Is it not de rigueur that,
in those circumstances, a man's manner should
be that of innocence ? Filippo's flight has
always seemed to me a really fine one. But
I do not know of any man one could count on
to distil from it the pure attar of honesty.
We had gone straight to my wife's family
in New England, on arriving. Until I saw
Sloan, I had got my sole information about
Upcher from the newspapers. Sloan's account
of Filippo's way of taking it roused my con
science. If a man, after all that, could show
any decency, one owed him something. I
decided, without consulting my wife about it,
86
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
to go over to New York and see Filippo my
self. Evie was so done up by the thought of
having once dined with the Upchers that I
could hardly have broken my intention to her.
I told her, of course, after I returned, but to
know beforehand might have meant a real
illness for her. I should have spared her all
of it, had it not seemed to me, at the moment,
my duty to go. The interview was not easy
to manage, but I used Evie's connections
shamelessly, and in the end the arrangement
was made. I have always been glad that I
went, but I don't know anything more nerve-
racking than to visit a condemned criminal
whose guilt you cannot manage to doubt.
Only Filippo's proposal (of which Sloan had
told me) to act long enough to pay his debts,
made me do it. I still persist in thinking it
magnificent of Filippo, though I don't pretend
there wasn't in his desire some lingering lust
of good report. The best he could hope for
was to be forgotten ; but he would naturally
rather be forgotten as Hamlet than as Filippo
Upcher.
Upcher was not particularly glad to see me,
but he made the situation as little strained as
possible. He did no violent protesting, no
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
arraigning of law and justice. If he had,
perhaps, acted according to the dictates of his
hypothetical ancestress, he at least spoke
calmly enough. He seemed to regard himself
less as unjustly accused than as unjustly
executed, if I may say so : he looked on
himself as a dead man ; his calamity was
irretrievable. The dead may judge, but I
fancy they don't shriek. At all events,
Upcher didn't. A proof of his having cast
hope carelessly over his shoulder was his way
of speaking of his wife. He didn't even take
the trouble to use the present tense ; to stress,
as it were, her flesh-and-blood reality. It was
" Rachel was," never " Rachel is " as we
sometimes use the past tense to indicate that
people have gone out of our lives by their
own fault. The way in which he spoke of
her was not tactful. A franker note of hatred
I've never except perhaps once heard
struck. Occasionally he would pull himself
up, as if he remembered that the dead are our
natural creditors for kindly speech.
<; She was a devil, and only a devil could
live with her. But there's no point in going
into it now."
I rather wanted him to go into it : not
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
might Heaven forbid ! to confess, but to
justify himself, to gild his stained image. I
tried frankness.
" I think I'll tell you, Upcher, that I never
liked her."
He nodded. " She was poison ; and I am
poisoned. That's the whole thing."
I was silent for a moment. How much
might it mean ?
" You read the evidence ? " he broke out.
" Well, it was bad damned bad and dirty.
I'd rather be hanged straight than hear it all
again. But it's the kind of thing you get
dragged into sooner or later if you link your
self to a creature like that. I suppose I'm
essentially vulgar, but I'm a better lot than
she was for all her looks."
" She had looks," I admitted.
" No one could touch her at her best. But
she was an unspeakable cat."
It had been, all of it, about as much as I
could stand, and I prepared to go. My time,
in any case, was about up. I found it in
spite of the evidence shockingly hard to say
good-bye to Upcher. You know what fare
wells by a peaceful death-bed are ; and you
can imagine this.
89
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
There was nothing to do but grip his hand.
" Good-bye, Filippo."
" Good-bye, old man. I'll see you " The
familiar phrase was extinguished on his lips.
We stared at each other helplessly for an
instant. Then the warder led me out.
The Upcher trial since Filippo refused to
appeal had blown over a bit by the time I
went West. My widowed sister was ill, and
I left Evie and every one, to take her to
southern California. We followed the con
ventional route of flight from tuberculosis, and
lingered a little in Arizona, looking down
into the unspeakable depths of the Grand
Canon. I rather hoped Letitia would stay
there, for I've never seen anything else so
good ; but the unspeakable depths spoke to
her words of terror. She wanted southern
California : roses, and palms, and more people.
It was before the Santa Fe ran its line up to
Bright Angel, and of course El Tovar wasn't
built. It was rather rough living. Besides,
there were Navajos and Hopis all about, and
Letitia came of good Abolitionist stock and
couldn't stand anything that wasn't white.
So we went on to Santa Barbara.
There we took a house with a garden ;
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
rode daily down to the Pacific, and watched
the great blue horizon waves roll ever west
ward to the immemorial East. " China's just
across, and that is why it looks so different
from the Atlantic," I used to explain to
Letitia ; but she was never disloyal to the
North Shore of Massachusetts. She liked the
rose-pink mountains, and even the romantic
Mission of the Scarlet Woman ; but she liked
best her whist with gentle, white-shawled
ladies, and the really intellectual conversa
tions she had with certain college professors
from the East. I could not get her to
take ship for Hawaii or Samoa. She dis
trusted the Pacific. After all, China 'was
just across.
I grew rather bored, myself, by Santa
Barbara, before the winter was out. Some
thing more exotic, too, would have been good
for Letitia. There was a little colony from
my sister's Holy Land, and in the evenings
you could fancy yourself on Brattle Street.
She had managed, even there, to befog herself
in a New England atmosphere. I was sure
it was bad for her throat. I won't deny,
either, that there was more than anxiety at
the heart of my impatience. I could not get
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
Filippo Upcher out of my head. After all, I
had once seen much of him ; and, even more
than that, I had seen him act a hundred times.
Any one who had seen him do Macbeth would
know that Filippo Upcher could not commit
a murder without afterthoughts, however little
forethought there might have been in it. It
was all very well for van Vreck to speculate
on Filippo's ancestry and suggest that the
murder was a pretty case of atavism holding
the notion up to the light with his claret and
smiling aesthetically. Upcher had had a father
of sorts, and he wasn't all Borgia or house
maid. Evie never smirched her charming
pages with the name of Upcher, and I was
cut off from the Orb ; but I felt sure that the
San Francisco papers would announce the date
of his execution in good time. I scanned
them with positive fever. Nothing could rid
me of the fantastic notion that there would be
a terrible scene for Upcher on the other side
of the grave ; that death would but release
him to Rachel Upcher's Stygian fury. It
seemed odd that he should not have preferred
a disgusted jury to such a ghost before its ire
was spent. The thought haunted me ; and
there was no one in Letitia's so satisfactory
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
circle to whom I could speak. I began to
want the open ; for the first time in my life,
to desire the sound of unmodulated voices.
Besides, Letitia's regime was silly. I took
drastic measures.
It was before the blessed days of limousines,
and one had to arrange a driving trip with
care. Letitia behaved very well. She was
really worried about her throat, and absurdly
grateful to me for giving up my winter to it.
I planned as comfortably as I could for her
even suggested that we should ask an ac
quaintance or two to join us. She preferred
going alone with me, however, and I was glad.
Just before we started, while I was still wrang
ling with would-be guides and drivers and
sellers of horses, the news of Upcher's execu
tion came. If I could have suppressed that
day's newspapers in Santa Barbara, I should
have done so, for, little as I had liked Filippo,
I liked less hearing the comments of Letitia's
friends. They discussed the case, crimino-
logically, through an interesting evening. It
was quite scientific and intolerably silly. I
hurried negotiations for the trip, and bought a
horse or two rather recklessly. Anything, I
felt, to get off. We drove away from the
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
hotel, waving our hands to a trim group (just
photographed) on the porch.
The days that followed soothed me : wild
and golden and increasingly lonely. We had
a sort of cooking kit with us, which freed us
from too detailed a schedule, and could have
camped, after a fashion ; but usually by sun
down we made some rough tavern or other.
Letitia looked askance at these, and I did not
blame her. As we struck deeper in toward
the mountains, the taverns disappeared, and we
found in their stead lost ranches self-sufficing,
you would say, until, in the parched faces
of the womenfolk, all pretence of sufficiency
broke down. Letitia picked up geological
specimens and was in every way admirable,
but I did not wish to give her an overdose.
After a little less than a fortnight, I decided
to start back to Santa Barbara. We were to
avoid travelling the same country twice, and
our route, mapped, would eventually be a kind
of rough ellipse. We had just swung round
the narrow end, you might say, when our first
real accident occurred. The heat had been
very great, and our driver had, I suspect,
drunk too much. At all events, he had not
watched his horses as he should have done,
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
and one of the poor beasts, in the mid-after
noon, fell into a desperate state with colic.
We did what we could he nearly as stupid as
I over it but it was clear that we could not
go on that night whither we had intended. It
was a question of finding shelter, and help for
the suffering animal. The sky looked threaten
ing. I despatched the inadequate driver in
search of a refuge, and set myself to impart
hope to Letitia. The man returned in a
surprisingly short time, having seen the out
buildings of a ranch-house. I need not dwell
on details. We made shift to get there
eventually, poor collapsed beast and all. A
ranchman of sorts met us and conducted
Letitia to the house. The ranch belonged, he
said, to a Mrs. Wace, and to Mrs. Wace,
presumably, he gave her in charge. I did
not, at the moment, wish to leave our horse
until I saw into what hands I was resigning
him. The hands seemed competent enough,
and the men assured me that the animal could
travel the next day. When the young man
returned from the ranch-house, I was quite
ready to follow him back thither, and get news
of Letitia. He left me inside a big living-
room. A Chinese servant appeared presently
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
and contrived to make me understand that
Mrs. Wace would come down when she had
looked after my sister. I was still thinking
about the horse when I heard the rustle of
skirts. Our hostess had evidently established
Letitia. I turned, with I know not what
beginnings of apologetic or humorous explana
tion on my lips. The beginning was the end,
for I stood face to face with Rachel Upcher.
I have never known just how the next
moments went. She recognized me instantly,
and evidently to her dismay. I know that
before I could shape my lips to any words
that should be spoken, she had had time to sit
down and to suggest, by some motion of her
hand, that I should do the same. I did not
sit ; I stood before her. It was only when she
began some phrase of conventional surprise at
seeing me in that place of all places that I
found speech. I made nothing of it ; I had no
solution ; yet my message seemed too urgent
for delay. All that I had suffered in my so
faint connection with Filippo Upcher's tragedy
returned to me in one envenomed pang. I
fear that I wanted most, at the moment, to
pass that pang on to the woman before me.
My old impatience of her type, her cheap
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
mysteriousness, her purposeless inscrutability
possessed me. I do not defend my mood ; I
only give it to you as it was. I have often
noticed that crucial moments are appallingly
simple to live through. The brain constructs
the labyrinth afterwards. All perplexities
were merged for me just then in that one
desire to speak, to wound her. But my task
was not easy, and I have never been proud of
the fashion of its performance.
" Mrs. Wace " (even the subtle van Vreck
could not have explained why I did not give
her her own name), "is it possible but I
pray Heaven it is that you don't know ? "
" Know ? " It was the voice of a stone
sphinx.
" How can I tell you how can I tell
you?"
" What ? "
" About Filippo."
" Filippo ? "
" Yes, Filippo ! That he is dead/'
" Dead ? The carved monosyllables were
maddening.
" Yes killed. Tried, sentenced, executed"
Her left hand dropped limply from the lace
at her throat to a ruffle of her dress. " For
H 97
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
what ? " Her voice vibrated for the first
time.
" For murdering you."
" Me ?" She seemed unable to take it in.
" You must have seen the papers."
" I have seen no papers. Does one leave
the world as utterly as I have left it, to read
newspapers ? On a lonely ranch like this "
she broke off. " I haven't so much as seen
one for five months. I I Then she
pulled herself together. " Tell me. This is
some horrid farce. What do you mean ?
For God's sake, man, tell me ! "
She sat back to hear.
I cannot remember the words in which I
told her. I sketched the thing for her the
original mystery, breaking out at last into open
scandal when the dismembered body was found;
the evidence (such of it as I could bring
myself to utter in the presence of that so
implicated figure) ; the course of the trial ;
Filippo's wretched defence ; the verdict ; the
horrid, inevitable result. My bitterness grew
with the story, but I held myself resolutely to
a tone of pity. After all it shot across my
mind Filippo Upcher had perhaps in the
grave found peace.
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
It must have taken me, for my broken, diffi
cult account, half-an-hour. Not once in that
time was I interrupted. She seemed hardly
to breathe. I told her to the very date and
hour of his execution. I could give her no
comfort ; only, at best, bald facts. For what
exhibition of self-loathing or self-pity I had
been prepared I do not know ; but surely for
some. I had been bracing myself throughout
for any kind of scene. No scene of any kind
occurred. She was hard and mute as stone.
I could have dealt better, when at last I
stopped, with hysterics than with that figure
before me tense, exhausted, terrible. I found
myself praying for her tears. But none came.
At last I rose hoping by the sudden gesture
to break her trance. Her eyes followed me.
" Terrible terrible beyond anything I ever
dreamed." I caught the whispered words. I
took the chance for pity ; found myself
though I detested the woman as never be
fore wanting to comfort her.
" He never appealed," I reminded.
" Perhaps he was glad to die." It sounded
weak and strange : but who could tell what
words would reach that weak, strange heart ?
I stood before her, more perplexed than at
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any other moment of my life. At last she
opened her eyes and spoke. " Leave me.
And do not tell your sister who I am. I shall
pull myself together by dinner-time. Go ! "
She just lifted her hand, then closed her eyes
again.
I went out, and, stumbling across a Chinese
servant, got him to show me my room.
Of what use would it be to recall, after all
the years, what I felt and thought during the
next hours ? I did not try to send Letitia to
Mrs. Upcher. Letitia would have been of 'no
use, even if she had consented to go. It was
sheerest wisdom to obey Rachel Upcher, and
not to tell. But I had a spasm of real terror
when I thought of her " pulling herself to
gether " in her lonely chamber. I listened for
a scream, a pistol-shot. It did not seem to me
that a woman could hear news like that which
it had been my tragic luck to give, without
some according show of emotion. Yet a little
later I asked myself in good faith what show
could ever fit that situation. What speech,
what gesture, in that hour, would have been
adequate ? The dangerous days, in point of
fact, would probably come later. I thought
more of her, in those two hours, than of
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Filippo. Though she might well, from all the
evidence, have hated him quite honestly, hers
was the ironic destiny that is harder to bear
than mere martyrdom. No death had ever
been more accidental, more irrelevant, more
preventable than Filippo's. One fortnight
sooner, she could have turned back the wheel
that had now come full circle. That was to be
her Hell, and well, having descended into it
in those two hours, I was glad enough to
mount once more into the free air.
Mrs. Upcher kept her promise. She pulled
herself together and came to dinner, in a high
black dress without so much as a white ruche
to relieve it. The manager of the ranch, a
young Englishman named Floyd, dined with
us. He was handsome in a bloodshot way, and
a detrimental, if ever there has been one. In
love with Mrs. Upcher he looked to be ; that,
too, in the same bloodshot way. But she
clearly had him in perfect order. The mask,
I suppose, had worked. Letitia did her social
best, but her informing talk failed to produce
any pleasant effect. It was too neat and flat.
Floyd watched Mrs. Upcher, and she watched
the opposite wall. I did my best to watch no
one. We were rather like a fortuitous group
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
at a provincial table d'hote : dissatisfied with
conditions and determined not to make ac
quaintance. We were all thankful, I should
think, when the meal was over. Mrs. Upcher
made no attempt to amuse us or make us
comfortable. The young manager left for his
own quarters immediately after dinner, and
Letitia soon went to her room. I lingered
for a moment, out of decency, thinking
Rachel Upcher might want to speak to me, to
ask me something, to cry out to me, to clutch
me for some desperate end. She sat absolutely
silent for five minutes ; and, seeing that the
spell, whatever it was, was not yet broken, I
left her.
I did not go to bed at once. How should
I have done that ? I was still listening for
that scream, that pistol-shot. Nothing came.
I remember that, after an hour, I found it
all receding from me the Upchers' crossed
emotions and perverted fates. It was like
stepping out of a miasmic mist. Filippo Up
cher was dead ; and on the other side of the
grave there had been no such encounter for him
as I had imagined. And I had positively seen
a demoniac Rachel Upcher waiting for him
on that pale verge ! I searched the room for
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
books. There was some Ibsen, which at that
moment I did not want. I rejected, one after
one, nearly all the volumes that the shelves
held. It was a stupid collection. I had
about made up my mind to the " Idylls of the
King " (they were different enough, in all
conscience, from the Upcher case) when I saw
a pile of magazines on a table in a distant
corner. " Something sentimental," I proposed
to myself, as I went over to ravage them.
Underneath the magazines a scattered lot,
for the most part, of London Graphics and
English Illustrateds I found a serried pack of
newspapers : San Francisco and Denver sheets,
running a few months back. I had never seen
a Denver newspaper, and I picked one up to
read the editorials, out of a desultory curiosity
rare with me. On the first page, black head
lines took a familiar contour. I had stumbled
on the charwoman's evidence against Filippo
Upcher. Rien que $a !
My first feeling, I remember, was one of
impotent anger the child's raving at the
rain that I must spend the night in that
house. It was preposterous that life should
ask it of me. Talk of white nights ! What,
pray, would be the colour of mine ? Then I,
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in my turn, " pulled myself together." I
went back to the newspapers and examined
them all. The little file was arranged in
chronological order and was co-extensive with
the Upcher case, from arrest to announcement
of the execution. The Orb might have been
a little fuller, but not much. The West had
not been fickle to Filippo.
I sat staring at the neatly folded papers for
a time. They seemed to me monstrous, not
fit to touch, as if they were by no means
innocent of Filippo Upcher's fate. By a trick
of nerves and weak lamplight, there seemed to
be nothing else in the room. I was alone in
the world with them. How long I sat there,
fixing them with eyes that must have shown
clear loathing, I have never known. There
are moments like that, which contrive cun
ningly to exist outside of Time and Space, of
which you remember only the quality. But I
know that when I heard steps in the corridor,
I was sure for an instant that it was Filippo
Upcher returning. I was too overwrought to
reflect that, whatever the perils of Rachel
Upcher's house might be, the intrusion of the
dead Filippo was not one of them : that he
would profit resolutely by the last league of
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
those fortunate distances if so it chanced, by
the immunity of very Hell. It could not be
Filippo's hand that knocked so nervously on
the door. Nor was it. I opened to Rachel
Upcher. The first glance at her face, her
eyes, her aimless, feverish, clutching hands,
showed that the spell had at last been broken.
She had taken off her black dress and was
wrapped in loose, floating, waving pink. Have
you ever imagined the Erinyes in pink ? No
other conceivable vision suggests the figure
that stood before me. I remember wondering
foolishly and irrelevantly why, if she could
look like that, she had not done Ibsen better.
But she brought me back to fact as she
beckoned me out of the room.
" I am sorry very sorry but I was busy
with your sister when you came in, and they
have given you the wrong room. I will send
some one to move your things I will show
you your room. Please come I am sorry."
I cannot describe her voice. The words
came out with difficult, unnatural haste, like
blood from a wound. Between them she
clutched at this or that shred of lace. But I
could deal better even with frenzy than with
the mask that earlier I had so little contrived
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to disturb. I felt relieved, disburdened. And
Filippo was safe safe. I was free to deal as
I would.
I stepped back into the room. The pile of
papers no longer controlled my nerves. After
all, they had been but the distant reek of the
monster. I went over and lifted them, then
faced her.
" Is this what you mean by the wrong
room ? "
She must have seen at once that I had ex
amined them ; that I had sounded the whole
significance of their presence there. The one
on top I had not disturbed their order gave
in clear print the date fixed for Filippo
Upcher's execution : that date now a fortnight
back. And she had played to me, as if I were
a gallery god, with her black dress !
" I have looked them through," I went on ;
" and though I didn't need to read those
columns, I know just what they contain. You
knew it all." I paused. It would have taken,
it seemed to me, the vocabulary of a major
prophet to denounce her fitly. I could only
leave it at that bald hint of her baseness.
She made no attempt at denial or defence.
Something happened in her face something
1 06
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
more like dissolution than like change as if
the elements of her old mask would never re
assemble. She stepped forward, still gathering
the floating ribands, the loose laces, in her
nervous hands. Once she turned as if listening
for a sound. Then she sat down beside my
fire, her head bent forward toward me ; ready,
it seemed, to speak. Her fingers moved con
stantly, pulling, knotting, smoothing the
trailing streamers of her gown. The rest of
her body was as still as Filippo Upcher's own.
I endured her eyes for a moment. Then I
repeated my accusation. "You knew it all."
" Yes, I knew it all."
I had not dreamed, in spite of the papers
that I clutched in full view of her, that she
would confess so simply. But they apparently
brought speech to her lips. She did not go
on at once, and when she did, she sounded
curiously as Filippo Upcher in prison had
sounded. Her voice touched him only with
disgust. Yet she stinted no detail, and I had
to hear of Filippo's vices : his vanities, his
indiscretions, his infidelities, all the seven
deadly sins against her pride committed by
him daily. He may have been only a bounder,
but his punishment had been fit for one heroic
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
in sin. I did my best to keep that discrepancy
in mind as she went on vulgarizing him. I
am no cross-questioner, and I let her account
move, without interruption, to the strange,
fluttering tempo of her hands. Occasionally
her voice found a vibrant note, but for the
most part it was flat, impersonal as a phono
graph : the voice of the actress who is not at
home in the unstudied role. I do not think
she gauged her effect ; I am sure that she was
given wholly to the task of describing her
hideous attitude veraciously. There was no
hint of appeal in her tone, as to some dim
tribunal which I might represent ; but she
seemed, once started, to like to tell her story.
It was not really a story the patched portrait
of a hatred, rather. Once or twice I opened
my lips to cry out : " Why not, in Heaven's
name, a divorce rather than this ? ' ; I always
shut them without asking, and before the end
I understood. The two had simply hated
each other too much. They could never be
adequately divorced while both beheld the
sun. To walk the same earth was too op
pressive, too intimate a tie. It sounds incred
ible even to me, now ; but I believed it
without difficulty at that moment. I remem-
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
bered the firmness with which Filippo had
declared that, herself poison, she had poisoned
him. Well, there were fangs beneath her
tongue.
Heaven knows it's the one thing I don't
know about it, to this day if there was
any deliberate attempt on Rachel Upcher's
part to give her flight a suspicious look. There
were so many ways, when once you knew for
a fact that Filippo had not killed her, in which
you could account for the details that earlier
had seemed to point to foul play. My own
notion is that she fled blindly, with no light
in her eyes no ghastly glimmer of catastrophe
to come. She had covered her tracks com
pletely because she had wished to be completely
lost. She didn't wish Filippo to have even
the satisfaction of knowing whether she was
alive or dead. Some of her dust-throwing
the unused ticket, for example resulted in
damning evidence against Filippo. After that,
coincidence laboured faithfully at his undoing.
No one knows, even now, whose body it was
that passed for Rachel Upcher's. All other
clues were abandoned at the time for the
convincing one that led to her. I have some
times wondered why I didn't ask her more
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
questions : to whom she had originally given
the marked underclothing, for example. It
might have gone far toward identifying what
the Country Club grounds had so unluckily
given up. But to lead those tortured fragments
of bone and flesh into another masquerade
would have been too grotesque. And at that
moment, in the wavering, unholy lamplight
of the half-bare, half-tawdry room the whole
not unlike one of Goya's foregrounds justice
and the public were to me equally unreal.
What I realized absolutely was that so long as
Rachel Upcher lived, I might not speak.
Horror that she was, she had somehow con
trived to be the person who must be saved. I
would have dragged her by the hair to the
prison gates, had there been any chance of
saving Filippo at least, I hope I should.
But Filippo seemed to me at the moment so
entirely lucky that to avenge him didn't
matter. I think I felt, sitting opposite that
Fury in pink, something of their own emotion.
Filippo was happier, tout bonnement, in another
world from her ; and to do anything to bring
them together to hound her into suicide, for
example would be to play him a low trick.
I could have drunk to her long life as she sat
1 10
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
there before me. It matters little to most of
us what the just ghosts think ; how much less
must our opinion matter to them ! No ;
Rachel Upcher, even as I counted her spots and
circles, was safe from me. I didn't want to
know anything definitely incriminating about
her flight, anything that would bring her
within the law, or impose on me a citizen's
duties. Citizens had already bungled the
situation enough. If she had prepared the
trap for Filippo, might that fact be forever
unknown ! But I really do not believe that
she had. What she had done was to profit
shamelessly (a weak word !) by coincidence.
I have often wondered if Rachel Upcher never
wavered, never shuddered, during those
months of her wicked silence. That question
I even put to her then, after a fashion. " It
was long," she answered ; " but I should do
it all again. He was horrible." What can
you do with hatred like that ? He had been
to her, as she to him, actual infection.
" Poison . . . and I am poisoned." Filippo's
words to me would have served his wife's turn
perfectly. There was, in the conventional
sense, for all her specific complaints, no
" cause." She hated him, not for what he did
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
but for what he was. She would have done
it all again. The mere irony of her action
would have been too much for some women ;
but Rachel Upcher had no ironic sense only
a natural and Ibsen-enhanced power of living
and breathing among unspeakable emotions.
And she plucked at those ribands, those
laces, with the delicate, hovering fingers of
a ghoul.
It is all so long ago that I could not, if I
would, give you the exact words in which, at
length, she made all this clear. Neither my
mind nor my pen took any stenographic report
of that conversation. I have given such
phrases as I remember. The impression is
there for life, however. Besides, there is no
man who could not build up for himself any
amount of literature out of that one naked
fact : that Rachel Upcher knew her husband's
plight, and that she lay, mute, breathless, con
cealed, in her lair, lest she should, by word or
gesture, save him. She took the whole trial,
from accusation to sentence, for a piece of
sublime, unmitigated luck a beautiful blunder
of Heaven's in her behalf. That she thought
of herself as guilty, I do not believe ; only as
at last ! extremely fortunate. At least, as
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
her tale went on, I heard less and less any
accent of hesitation. She knew oh, perfectly
how little any one else would agree with
her. She was willing to beg my silence in
any attitude of humility I chose to demand.
But Rachel Upcher would never accuse herself.
I asked no posturing of her. She got my
promise easily enough. Can you imagine my
going hotfoot to wake Letitia with the story ?
No more than that could I go to wake New
York with it. Rachel Upcher, calmed by my
solemn promise (though, if you'll believe it,
her own recital had already greatly calmed her),
left me to seek repose. I watched her flutter
ing, sinister figure down the corridor, then
came back to my infected room. She had
not touched the pile of newspapers. I spent
the night reading Ibsen ; and in the morning
managed so that we got off early. Mrs. Wace
did not come down to breakfast, and I did not
see her again. Young Floyd was in the devil
of a temper, but his temper served admirably
to facilitate our departure. He abandoned
ranch affairs entirely to get us safely on our
way. Our sick horse was in perfectly good
condition, and would have given us no possible
excuse for lingering. Letitia, out of sight of
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
the ranch, delivered herself of a hesitating
comment.
" Do you know, Richard, I have an idea
that Mrs. Wace is not really a nice woman ? "
I, too, had broken Mrs. Wace's bread, but
I did not hesitate. " I think you are un
doubtedly right, Letitia."
It was the only thing I have ever, until
now, been able to do to avenge Filippo
Upcher. Even when I learned (I always had
an arrangement by which I should learn, if
it occurred) of Mrs. Floyd's death, I could
still do nothing. There was poor Evie, who
never knew, and who, as I say, could not have
borne it.
I shall be much blamed by many people, no
doubt, for having promised Rachel Upcher
what she asked. I can only say that any one
else, in my place, would have done the same.
They were best kept apart : I don't know how
else to put it. I shall be blamed, too, for not
seizing my late, my twelfth-hour opportunity
to eulogize Filippo Upcher for not, at least,
trying to explain him. There would be no
point in trying to account for what happened
by characterizing Filippo. Nothing could
account for such hatred : it was simply a great
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THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
natural fact. They combined, like chemical
agents, to that monstrous result. Each was,
to the other, poison. I tell the truth now
because no one has ever doubted Upcher's
guilt, and it is only common fairness that he
should be cleared. Why should I, for that
reason, weave flatteries about him ? He did
not murder his wife ; but that fact has not
made it any easier to call him " Filippo,"
which I have faithfully done since I encoun
tered Rachel Upcher in southern California.
If truth is the order of the day, let me say the
other thing that for years I have not been at
liberty to say : he was a frightful bounder.
ON THE STAIRCASE
PROBABLY the least wise way to begin
a ghost-story is to say that one does not
believe in ghosts. It suggests that one has
never seen the real article. Perhaps, in one
sense, I never have ; yet I am tempted to set
down a few facts that I have never turned
over to the Society for Psychical Research or
discussed at my club. The fact is that I had
ingeniously forgotten them until I saw Harry
Medway, the specialist my old classmate
a few years ago. I say " forgotten "; of
course, I had not forgotten them, but, in order
to carry on the business of life, I had managed
to record them, as it were, in sympathetic ink.
After I heard what Harry Medway had to
say, I took out the loose sheets and turned
them to the fire. Then the writing came out
strong and clear again letter by letter, line
by line, as fatefully as Belshazzar's " immortal
postscript." Did I say that I do not believe
in ghosts ? Well I am getting toward the
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ON THE STAIRCASE
end, and a few inconsistencies may be forgiven
to one who is not far from discoveries that will
certainly be inconsistent with much that we
have learned by heart in this interesting world.
Perhaps it will be pardoned me as a last flicker
of moribund pride if I say that in my younger
days I was a crack shot, and to the best of my
belief never refused a bet or a drink or an
adventure. I do not remember ever having
been afraid of a human being ; and yet I have
known fear. There are weeks, still, when I
live in a bath of it. I think I will amend my
first statement, and say instead that I do not
believe in any ghosts except my own oh, and
in Wender's and Lithway's, of course.
Some people still remember Lithway for the
sake of his charm. He never achieved any
thing, so far as I know, except his own de
lightful personality. He was a classmate of
mine, and we saw a great deal of each other
both in and after college until he married,
indeed. His marriage coincided with my own
appointment to a small diplomatic post in the
East ; and by the time that I had served my
apprenticeship, come into my property, re
signed from the service, and returned to
America, Lithway's wife had suddenly and
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ON THE STAIRCASE
tragically died. I had never seen her but
once on her wedding-day but I had reason
to believe that Lithway had every right to be
as inconsolable as he was. If he had ever had
any ambition in his own profession, which was
law, he lost it all when he lost her. He re
tired to the suburban country, where he bought
a new house that had just been put up. He
was its first tenant, I remember. That fact,
later, grew to seem important. There he re
lapsed into a semi-populated solitude, with a
few visitors, a great many books, and an in
ordinate amount of tobacco. These details I
gathered from Wender in town, while I was
adjusting my affairs.
Never had an inheritance come so pat as
mine. There were all sorts of places I wanted
to go to, and now I had money enough to do
it. The wanderlust had nearly eaten my heart
out during the years when I had kicked my
heels in that third-rate legation. I wanted to
see Lithway, but a dozen minor catastrophes
prevented us from meeting during those breath
less weeks, and as soon as I could I positively
had to be off. Youth is like that. So that,
although Lithway 's bereavement had been very
recent, at the time when I was in America
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ON THE STAIRCASE
settling my affairs and drawing the first instal
ment of my beautiful income there is no
beauty like that of unearned increment I did
not see him until he had been a widower for
more than two years.
The first times I visited Lithway were near
together. I had begun what was to be my
almost lifelong holiday by spending two months
alone save for servants on a house-boat in
the Vale of Cashmere ; and my next flights
were very short. When I came back from
those, I rested on level wing at Braythe.
Lithway was a little bothered, on one of these
occasions, about the will of a cousin who had
died in Germany, leaving an orphan daughter,
a child of six or seven. His conscience
troubled him sometimes, and occasionally he
said he ought to go over and see that the
child's inheritance was properly administered.
But there was an aunt a mother's sister to
look after the child, and her letters indicated
that there was plenty of money and a good
lawyer to look after the investments. Since
his wife's death, Lithway had sunk into lethargy.
He had enough to live on, and he drew out of
business entirely, putting everything he had
into government bonds. When he hadn't
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ON THE STAIRCASE
energy enough left to cut off coupons, he
said, he should know that it was time for him
to commit suicide. He really spoke as if he
thought that final indolence might arrive any
day. I read the aunt's letters. She seemed
to be a good sort, and the pages reeked of
luxury and the maternal instinct. I rather
thought it would be a good excuse to get Lith-
way out of his rut, and advised him to go ;
but, when he seemed so unwilling, I couldn't
conscientiously say I thought the duty im
perative. I had long ago exhausted Germany
I had no instinct to accompany him.
Lithway, then, was perfectly idle. His
complete lack of the executive gift made him
an incomparable host. He had been in the
house three years, and I was visiting him there
for perhaps the third time, when he told me
that it was haunted. He didn't seem inclined
to give details, and, above all, didn't seem
inclined to be worried. He sat up very late
always, and preferably alone, a fact that in
itself proved that he was not nervous. As I
said, I had never been interested in ghosts, and
the newness of the house robbed fear of all
seriousness. Ghosts batten on legend and
decay. There wasn't any legend, and the house
1 20
ON THE STAIRCASE
was almost shockingly clean. When he told
me of the ghost, then, I forebore to ask for any
more information than he, of his own vo
lition, gave me. If he had wanted advice or
assistance, he would, of course, have said so.
The servants seemed utterly unaware of any
thing queer, and servants leave a haunted
house as rats a sinking ship. It really did not
seem worth inquiring into. I referred
occasionally to Lithway's ghost as I might have
done to a Syracusan coin which I should know
him proud to possess but loath to show.
On my return from Yucatan, one early spring,
Lithway welcomed me as usual. He seemed
lazier than ever, and I noticed that he had
moved his books down from a second storey
to a ground-floor room. He slept outdoors
summer and winter, and he had an outside
stairway built to lead from his library up to the
sleeping-porch. A door from the sleeping-
porch led straight into his dressing-room. I
laughed at his arrangements a little.
" You live on this side of the house entirely
now cut off, actually, from the other side.
What is the matter with the east ? "
He pointed out to me that the dining-room
and the billiard-room were on the eastern side
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ON THE STAIRCASE
and that he never shunned them. " It's just a
notion/' he said. " Mrs. Jayne " (the house
keeper) " sleeps on the second floor, and I don't
like to wake her when I go up at three in the
morning. She is a light sleeper."
I laughed outright. " Lithway, you're
getting to be an old maid."
It was natural that I should dispose my
effects in the rooms least likely to be used by
Lithway. I took over his discarded up-stairs
study, and, with a bedroom next door, was
very comfortable. He assured me that he had
no reason to suppose I should ever be disturbed
in either room. Moving his own things,
he said, had been purely a precautionary
measure in behalf of Mrs. Jayne. Curiously
enough, I was perfectly sure that his first
statement was absolutely true and his second
absolutely false. Only the first one, however,
seemed to be really my affair. I could hardly
complain.
Lithway did seem changed ; but I have
such an involuntary trick of comparing my
rediscovered friends with the human beings I
have most recently been seeing that I did not
take the change too seriously. He was per
fectly unlike the Yucatan Indians ; but, on
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ON THE STAIRCASE
reflection, why shouldn't he be, I asked myself.
Probably he had always been just like that. I
couldn't prove that he hadn't. Yet I did
think there was something back of his list-
lessness other than mere prolonged grief for
his wife. Occasionally, I confess, I thought
about the ghost in this connection.
One morning I was leaving my sitting-room
to go down to Lithway's library. The door of
the room faced the staircase to the third storey,
and as I came out I could always see, directly
opposite and above me, a line of white
banisters that ran along the narrow third-storey
hall. Mechanically, this time, I looked up and
saw I need not say, to my surprise a burly
negro leaning over the rail looking down at
me. The servants were all white, and the man
had, besides, a very definite look of not
belonging there. He didn't, in any way, fit
into his background. I ran up the stairs to
investigate. When I got just beneath him,
he bent over towards me with a malicious
gesture. All I saw, for an instant, was a naked
brown arm holding up a curious jagged knife.
The edge caught the little light there was in
the dim hall as he struck at me. I hit back,
but he had gone before I reached him simply
123
ON THE STAIRCASE
ceased to be. There was no Cheshire-cat
vanishing process. I was staring again into
the dim hall, over the white banisters. There
were no rooms on that side of the hall, and
consequently no doors.
A light broke in on me. I went down
stairs to Lithway. " I've seen your ghost," I
said bluntly.
What seemed to be a great relief relaxed his
features. " You have ! And isn't she extra
ordinary ? "
" She ? "
" You say you've seen her," he went on
hurriedly.
" Her ? Him, man black as Tartarus.
And he cut me over the head."
" There ? " Lithway drew his finger down
the place.
" Yes. How did you know ? I don't feel
it now."
" Look at yourself."
He handed me a mirror. The slash was
indicated clearly by a white line, but there was
no abrasion.
" That is very interesting," I managed to
say ; but I really did not half like it.
Lithway looked at me incredulously. " She
124
ON THE STAIRCASE
has never had a weapon before," he mur
mured.
" She ? This was a man."
" Oh, no ! " he contradicted. " That's im
possible."
" He was a hairy brute and full-bearded
besides," I calmly insisted.
Lithway jumped up. " My God ! there's
some one in the house." He caught up a
revolver. " Let us go and look. He'll have
made off with the silver."
" Look here, Lithway," I protested. " I tell
you this man wasn't real. He vanished into
thin air like any other ghost."
" But the ghost is a woman/' He was as
stupid as a child about it.
" Then there are two." I didn't really be
lieve it, but it seemed clear that we could
never settle the dispute. Each at least would
have to pretend to believe the other for the sake
of peace.
" Suppose you tell me about your ghost,"
I suggested soothingly. But Lithway was
dogged, and we had to spend an hour exploring
the house and counting up Lithway's value-
ables. Needless to say, there was no sign of
invasion anywhere. At the end of the hour I
125
ON THE STAIRCASE
repeated my demand. The scar was beginning
to fade, I noted in the mirror, though still
clearly visible.
" Suppose you tell me about your ghost.
Your never have, you know."
" I've only seen her a few times."
" Where ? "
" Leaning over the banisters in the third-
floor hall."
" What is she like ? "
" A slip of a girl. Rather fair and droop
ing, but a strange look in her eyes. Dressed
in white, with a blue sash. That's all."
" Does she speak ? "
" No ; but she waves a folded paper at me."
" What time of day have you seen her ? "
" About eleven in the morning."
The clocks were then striking twelve.
" Well," I ventured, " that's clearly the
ghost's hour. But the two of them couldn't
be more different."
He made me describe the savage again.
The extraordinary part of it was that, in spite
of his baffling blackness, I could do so per
fectly. He was as individual to me as a
white man more than that, as a friend. He
had personality, that ghost.
126
ON THE STAIRCASE
" What race should you say he was ? "
I thought. " Some race I don't know ;
Zulu, perhaps. A well-built beggar."
" And you're perfectly sure he was real I
mean, wasn't human ? "
The distinction made me smile, though the
question irritated me. " You can see that if
his object was murder he made a poor job.
You found all your silver, didn't you ? "
Then I played my trump-card. " And do
you suppose that a burglar would wander
round this countryside in a nose-ring and a
loin-cloth ? Nice disguise ! "
Lithway looked disturbed. " But the other
one," he murmured. " I don't understand
the other."
" She seems much easier to understand than
mine," I protested.
"Oh, I don't mean her!" he said. "I
mean it"
For the first time I began to be afraid that
Lithway had left the straight track of common
sense. It was silly enough to have two ghosts
in a new house but three !
" It ? " I asked.
" The one Wender saw."
tc Oh ! Wender has seen one ? "
127
ON THE STAIRCASE
" Six months ago. I've never been able to
get him here since. It was rather nasty, and
Wender well, Wender's sensitive. And he's
a little dotty on the occult, in any case."
" Did he see it at eleven in the morning ? "
Lithway seemed irritated. " Of course ! "
he snapped out. He spoke as if the idiosyn
crasy of his damned house had a dignity that
he was bound to defend.
"And what was it ? "
" A big rattlesnake, coiled to strike."
Even then I could not take it seriously.
" That's not a ghost ; it's a symptom."
" It did strike," Lithway went on.
" Did he have a scar ? "
" No. He couldn't even swear that it quite
touched him."
" Then why did it worry him ? "
Lithway hesitated. " I suppose the uncer
tainty "
" Uncertainty ! If there's anything less
dreadful than an imaginary snake that has
struck, it is an imaginary snake that hasn't
struck. What has got into Wender ? "
" Fear, apparently," said Lithway shortly.
" He won't come back. Says a real rattle
snake probably wouldn't get into a house in
12,8
ON THE STAIRCASE
Braythe more than once, but an unreal rattle
snake might get in any day. I don't blame
him."
" May I ask," I said blandly, " if you are
so far gone that you think rattlesnakes have
ghosts ? "
Lithway lost his temper. " If you want to
jeer at the thing, for God's sake have the
manners not to do it in this house ! I tell you
we have all three seen ghosts."
" The ghost of a rattlesnake," I murmured
to myself. " It beats everything ! " And I
looked once more into the mirror. The scar
that the knife had made was still perceptible,
but very faint. " Did you hunt the house
over for the snake ? "
" Of course we did."
" Did you find it ? "
" Of course we didn't any more than we
found your Zulu ? "
" Then why did you insist so on hunting
the Zulu ? "
Lithway coloured a little. " Well, to tell
the truth, I never wholly believed in that
snake. If you or Wender had only seen her^
now ! "
" I don't see why Wender was so worried,"
K 129
ON THE STAIRCASE
I said. " After all, a snake might have got in
and got out."
" He saw it twice," explained Lithway.
" Symptoms," I murmured. " Has he ever
had an adventure with a rattlesnake ? "
" No."
" Then why should it make him nervous ? "
" I suppose " Lithway looked at me a little
cautiously, I thought "just because he
never had seen one. He said, I remember,
that that rattlesnake hadn't been born yet."
I laughed. " Wender is sensitive. The
ghost of a rattlesnake that has never lived
well, you can't be more fantastic than
that ! "
" Wender has a theory," Lithway said.
But he seemed actually to want to change
the subject. Accordingly, I did change it
a little. I didn't really care for Wender's
theories. I had heard some of them. They
included elementals.
" Tell me some more about yours. She's
the most convincing of the three. Do you
recognize her ? "
" Never saw any one that looked remotely
like her."
" And you are the first occupant of this
130
ON THE STAIRCASE
house," I mused. " Was she dressed in an
old-fashioned way ? "
Lithway actually blushed. " She is dressed
rather oddly her hair is done queerly. Fve
hunted the fashion-books through, and I can't
find such a fashion anywhere in the last
century. I'm not in the least afraid, but I
am curious about her, I admit."
" Was Wender's rattlesnake old-fashioned ? "
Lithway got up. " See here," he said,
" I'm not going to stand jollying. That's the
one thing I am afraid of. Should you like to
hear Wender's theory ? "
" Not I," I said firmly. " He believes in
two kinds of magic white and black and
has eaten the fruit of the mango-tree that a
fakir has just induced to grow out of the seed
before his eyes. He told me once that devils
were square. I'm not in the least interested
in Wender's rattlesnake. The wonder is, with
his peculiar twist of mind, that he doesn't
insist on living in this house."
" He particularly hates snakes," answered
Lithway. " He was hoping to see her, but he
never could. Nor you, apparently."
" How often do you see her ? "
" About once in six months."
ON THE STAIRCASE
" And you're not afraid ? "
" Well she doesn't do anything to me, you
know." He was very serious.
" Probably couldn't hurt you if she did a
young thing like that. But why don't you
move out ? "
Lithway frankly crimsoned. " I like
her/'
" In spite of her eyes ? "
" In spite of her eyes. And I've thought
that look in them might be the cross light on
the staircase."
I burst out laughing. " Lithway, come
away with me. Solitude is getting on your
nerves. We'll go to Germany and look after
your little cousin and the aunt who writes
such wonderful letters."
" No." Lithway was firm. " It's too
much like work."
I was serious, for he really seemed to me,
at the time of this visit, in rather a bad way.
I urged him with every argument I could
think of. He had no counter-arguments, but
finally he broke out : " Well, if you will have
it, I feel safer here/'
" You've never seen her anywhere else, have
?
j
132
ON THE STAIRCASE
" No."
" Then this seems to be the one point of
danger."
" Wender's theory is that " he began.
But I persisted in not hearing Wender's
theory. Even when, a week later, my own
experience was exactly duplicated and I had
spent another day in watching a white line
fade off my forehead, I still persisted. But,
as Lithway wouldn't leave the house, I did.
I began even to have a sneaking sympathy for
Wender. But I didn't want to hear his
theory. Indeed, to this day I never have
heard it. Oddly enough, though, I should be
willing to wager a good sum that it was
accurate.
I was arranging for a considerable flight-
something faddier and more dangerous than I
had hitherto attempted and to a friend as
indolent as Lithway I could only prepare to
bid a long farewell. He positively refused to
accompany me even on the earlier and less
difficult stages of my journey. " I'll stick to
my home," he declared. It was a queer home
to want to stick to, I thought privately,
especially as the ghost was obviously local.
He had never seen an apparition except at
133
ON THE STAIRCASE
Braythe nor had I, nor had Wender. I
worried about leaving him there, for the one
danger I apprehended was the danger of over
wrought nerves ; but Lithway refused to
budge, and you can't coerce a sane and able-
bodied man with a private fortune. I did
carry my own precautions to the point of
looking up the history of the house. The
man from whom Lithway had bought it,
while it was still unfinished, had intended it
for his own occupancy ; but a lucrative post
in a foreign country had determined him to
leave America. The very architect was a
churchwarden, the husband of one wife and
the father of eight children. I even hunted
up the contractor : not one accident had oc
curred while the house was building, and he
had employed throughout, most amicably,
union labour on its own terms. It was silly of
me, if you like, but I had really been shaken
by the unpleasant powers of the place. After
my researches it seemed clear that in objecting
to it any further I shouldn't have a leg to
stand on. In any case, Lithway would prob
ably rather live in a charnel-house than move.
I had to wash my hands of it all.
The last weeks of my visit were perfectly
ON THE STAIRCASE
uneventful, both for Lithway and me as if
the house, too, were on its guard. I came to
believe that there was nothing in it, and if
either of us had been given to drinking, I
should have called the eleven-o'clock visitation
a new form of hang-over. I was a little in
clined, in defiance of medical authorities, to
consider it an original and interesting form
of indigestion. By degrees I imposed upon
myself to that extent. I did not impose on
myself, however, to the extent of wanting to
hear Wender talk about it ; and I still blush
to think how shallow were the excuses that I
mustered for not meeting him at any of the
times that he proposed.
This is a bad narrative, for the reason that
it must be so fragmentary. It is riddled with
lapses of time. Ghosts may get in their fine
work in an hour, but they have always been
preparing their coup for years. Every ghost,
compared with us, is Methuselah. We have
to fight in a vulnerable and dissolving body ;
but they aren't pressed for time. They've
only to lie low until the psychologic moment.
Oh, I'd undertake to accomplish almost any
thing if you'd give me the ghost's chance.
If he can't get what he wants out of this
135
ON THE STAIRCASE
generation, he can get it out of the next.
Grand thing, to be a ghost !
It was some years before I went back to
Braythe. Wender, I happen to know, never
went back. Lithway used to write me now
and then, but seldom referred to my adven
ture. He couldn't very well, since the chief
burden of his letters was always " When are
you coming to visit me ? " Once, when I had
pressed him to join me for a season in Japan,
he virtually consented, but at the last moment I
got a telegram, saying : " I can't leave her.
Bon voyage ! " That didn't make me want to
go back to Braythe. I was worried about
him, but his persistent refusal to act on any
one's advice made it impossible to do anything
for him. I thought once of hiring some one
to burn the house down ; but Lithway
wouldn't leave it, and I didn't want to do
anything clumsy that would imperil him. I
was much too far away to arrange it neatly.
I suggested it once to Wender, when we
happened to meet in London, and he was
exceedingly taken with the idea. I half hoped,
for a moment, that he would do it himself.
But the next afternoon he came back with a
lot of reasons why it wouldn't do he had
been grubbing in the British Museum all day.
136
ON THE STAIRCASE
I very nearly heard Wender's theory that time,
but I pleaded a dinner engagement and got off.
You can imagine that I was delighted when
I heard from Lithway, some years after my
own encounter with the savage on the stair
case, that he had decided to pull out and go to
Europe. He had the most fantastic reasons
for doing it this time he wrote me fully.
It seems he had become convinced that his
apparition was displeased with him didn't like
the look in her eyes, found it critical. As he
wasn't doing anything in particular except live
like a hermit at Braythe, the only thing he
could think of to propitiate her was to leave.
Perhaps there was a sort of withered coquetry
in it, too ; he may have thought the lady would
miss him if he departed and shut up the house.
You see, by this time she was about the most
real thing in his life. I don't defend Lith
way ; but I thought then that, whatever the
impelling motive, it would be an excellent
thing for him to leave Braythe for a time.
Perhaps, once free of it, he would develop a
normal and effectual repugnance to going back,
and then we should all have our dear, delight
ful Lithway again. I wrote triumphantly to
Wender, and he replied hopefully, but on a
more subdued note.
137
ON THE STAIRCASE
Lithway came over to Europe. He wrote
to me, making tentative suggestions that I
should join him ; but, as he refused to join me
and I didn't care at all about the sort of thing
he was planning, we didn't meet. I was all
for the Peloponnesus, and he was for a
wretched tourist's itinerary that I couldn't
stomach. I hoped to get him in the end to
wander about in more interesting places, but
as he had announced that he was going first to
Berlin to look up the little cousin and her
maternal aunt, I thought I would wait until he
had satisfied his clannish conscience. Then,
one fine day, his old curiosity would waken,
and we should perhaps start out together to
get new impressions. That fine day never
dawned, however. He lingered on in Ger
many, following his relatives to Marienbad
when they left Berlin for the summer. I
hoped, with each mail, that he would an
nounce his arrival in some spot where I could
conceivably meet him ; but the particular letter
announcing that never came. He was quite
taken up with the cousins. He said nothing
about going home, and I was thoroughly glad
of that, at least.
I was not wholly glad, just at the moment,
when a letter bounced out at me one morning,
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ON THE STAIRCASE
announcing that he was to marry the little
cousin by this time, as I had understood
from earlier correspondence, a lovely girl of
eighteen. I had looked forward to much
companionship with the Lithway I had known
of old, when he should be free of his obsession.
I had thought him on the way to freedom ;
and here he was, caught by a flesh-and-blood
damsel who thrust me out quite as decisively
as the phantasmal lady on the staircase. I
had decency enough to be glad for Lithway,
if not for myself ; glad that he could strike
the old idyllic note and live again delight
fully in the moment. I didn't go to Berlin to
see them married, but I sent them my blessing
and a very curious and beautiful eighteenth-
century clock. I also promised to visit them
in America. I felt that, if necessary, I could
face Braythe, now that the ghost was so sure
to be laid. No woman would stay in a house
where her husband was carrying on, however
unwillingly, an affair with an apparition ; and,
as their address remained the same, I believed
that the ghost had given up the fight.
This story has almost the gait of history.
I have to sum up decades in a phrase. It is
really the span of one man's whole life that I
am covering, you see. But have patience with
139
ON THE STAIRCASE
me while I skim the intervening voids, and
hover meticulously over the vivid patches of
detail. ... It was some two years before I
reached Braythe. I don't remember particu
larly what went on during those two years ; I
only know that I was a happy wanderer. I
was always a happy wanderer, it seems to me
as I look back on life, except for the times
when I sank by Lithway's side into his
lethargy a lucid lethargy, in which unac
countable things happened very quietly, with
an utter stillness of context. I do know that
I was planning a hunting-trip in British
Central Africa, and wrote Lithway that I had
better postpone my visit until that was over.
He seemed so hurt to think that I could pre
fer any place to him that I did put it off until
the next year and made a point of going to
the Lithways.
I had no forebodings when I got out of
Lithway's car at his gate and faced the second
Mrs. Lithway, who had framed her beauty in
the clustering wistaria of the porch. I was
immensely glad for Lithway that he had a
creature like that to companion him. Youth
and beauty are wonderful things to keep by
one's fireside. There was more than a touch
of vicarious gratitude in my open admiration
140
ON THE STAIRCASE
of Mrs. Lithway. He was a person one
couldn't help wanting good things for ; and
one felt it a delicate personal attention to one
self when they came to him.
Nothing changes a man, however, after he
has once achieved his type : that was what I
felt most keenly, at the end of the evening, as
I sat with Lithway in his library. Mrs. Lith
way had trailed her light skirts up the stair
case with incomparable grace, smiling back at
us over her shoulder ; and I had gone with
Lithway to the library, wondering how long I
could hold him with talk of anything but her.
I soon saw that he didn't wish to talk of her.
That, after all, was comprehensible you
could take it in so many ways ; but it was
with real surprise that I saw him sink almost
immediately into gloom. Gloom had never
been a gift of Lithway 's ; his indolence had
always been shot through with mirth. Even
his absorption in the ghost had been whim
sical almost as if he had deliberately let him
self go, had chosen to be obsessed. I didn't
know what to make of the gloom, the un-
resilient heaviness with which he met my con
gratulations and my sallies. They had been
perfect together at dinner and through the
early evening. Now he fell slack in every
141
ON THE STAIRCASE
muscle and feature, as if the preceding hours
had been a diabolic strain. I wondered a
little if he could be worried about money. I
supposed Lithway had enough and his bride
too, if it came to that though I didn't know
how much. But one could not be long in the
house without noticing luxuries that had
nothing to do with its original unpretending
comfort. You were met at every turn by
some aesthetic refinement as costly as the lace
and jewels in which Mrs. Lithway's own love
liness was wrapped. It was evident from all
her talk that her standard of civilization was
very high ; that she had a natural attachment
to shining non-essentials. I was at a loss ; I
didn't know what to say to him, he looked so
tired. Such silence, even between Lithway
and me, was awkward.
Finally he spoke : " Do you remember my
ghost ? "
" I remember your deafening me with talk
of her. I never saw her."
" No, of course you wouldn't have seen her."
" I saw one of my own, you remember."
" Oh, yes ! A black man who struck at
you. You never have had a black man strike
at you in real life, have you ? " He turned to
me with a faint flicker of interest.
142
" Never. We threshed all that out before,
you know. I never even saw that particular
nigger except at Braythe."
" You will see him, perhaps if you are fool
enough to go to British Central Africa," he
jerked out.
" Perhaps," I answered. But I was more
interested in Lithway's adventure. " Do you
see your ghost now ? " I had been itching to
ask and it seemed to me that he had given me
a fair opening.
Lithway passed his hand across his brows.
" I don't know. I'm not quite sure. Some
times I think so. But I couldn't swear to it."
" Has she grown dimmer, then more
hazy ? You used to speak of her as if she
were a real woman coming to a tryst : flesh
and blood, at the least."
He looked at me a little oddly. " I'm
not awfully well. My eyes play me tricks
sometimes. . . . When you got off the train
to-night, I could have sworn you had a white
scar on your forehead. As soon as we got out
here and I had a good look at you, I saw you
hadn't, of course." Then he went back. " I
don't believe I really do see her now. I think
it may be an hallucination when occasionally I
think I do. Yes, I'm pretty sure that, when I
H3
ON THE STAIRCASE
think I do, it's pure hallucination. I don't
like it ; I wish she'd either go or stay."
" My dear fellow, you speak as if she had
ever, in her palmiest days, been anything but
an hallucination. Did you get to the point of
believing that the girl you say used to hang
over the staircase was real ? "
" She was more real than the one that
sometimes I see there now. Oh, yes, she was
real ! What I see now when I see it at all
is just the ghost of her."
" The ghost of a ghost ! " I ejaculated.
" It's as bad as Wender's rattlesnake."
Lithway turned to me suddenly. " Where
is Wender ? "
" Why, don't you know ? Working on
American archaeology at some university I
don't know which. He hadn't decided on the
place, when he last wrote. I was going to
get his address from you."
" He won't come here, you know. And
Margaret's feelings are a little hurt he has
often been quite near. So there's a kind of
official coolness. She doesn't know about the
ghosts, and therefore I can't quite explain
Wender's refusals to her. Of course, I know
it's on that account ; he's as superstitious as a
woman. But poor Margaret, I suppose, be-
144
ON THE STAIRCASE
lieves he doesn't approve of my having taken
a wife. She's as sweet as possible about it,
but I can see she's hurt. And yet I'd rather
she would be hurt than to know about the
house."
" Why, in Heaven's name, don't you sell it
and move, Lithway ? " I cried.
He coloured faintly. " Margaret is very
fond of the place. I couldn't, considering its
idiosyncrasy, sell with a good conscience, and
if I didn't sell, it would mean losing a pretty
penny more, certainly, than Margaret and I
can afford to. She lost most of her own
money, you know, a few years ago."
" The aunt ? "
" Oh, dear, no ! " He said it rather hastily.
" But you were quite right at the time. I
ought to have gone out there ten years ago.
Women never know how to manage money."
I looked him in the eyes. " Lithway, any
thing in the world is better than staying in
this house. You're in a bad way. You admit,
yourself, you're not well. And Mrs. Lithway
would rather cut out the motor and live any
where than have you go to pieces."
He laughed. "Tell Margaret that I'm
going to pieces if you dare ! "
" I'm not afraid of you, even if I should/'
L 145
ON THE STAIRCASE
" No ; but wouldn't you be afraid of
her ? "
I thought of the utter youth of Mrs.
Lithway ; the little white teeth that showed
so childishly when she laughed ; her small
white hands that had seemed so weighed down
with a heavy piece of embroidery ; her tiny
feet that slipped along the polished floors a
girl that you could pick up and throw out of
the window.
" Certainly not. Would you ? "
" I should think so ! " He smiled. " We've
been very happy here. I don't think she
would like to move. I shan't suggest it to her.
And mind " he turned to me rather
sharply " don't you hint to her that the
house is the uncanny thing you and that fool
Wender seem to think it is."
I saw that there was no going ahead on that
tack. Beyond a certain point, you can't
interfere with mature human beings. But
certainly Lithway looked ill ; and if he
admitted ill health, there must be something
in it. It was extraordinary that Mrs. Lithway
saw nothing. I was almost sorry in spite of
the remembered radiance of the vision on the
porch that Lithway had chosen to fall in
love with a young fool. I rose.
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ON THE STAIRCASE
" Love must be blind, if your wife doesn't
see you're pulled down."
" Oh, love it's the blindest thing going,
thank God ! " He was silent for a moment.
" There are a great many things I can't
explain," he said. " But you can be sure that
everything's all right."
I was quite sure, though I couldn't wholly
have told why, that everything was at least
moderately wrong. But I decided to say
nothing more that night. I went to bed*
Lithway was ill ; only so could I account
for his nervousness, which sometimes, in the
next days, mounted to irritability. He was
never irritable with his wife ; when the
tenser moods were on, he simply ceased to
address her, and turned his attention to me.
We motored a good deal ; that seemed to
agree with him. But one morning he failed
to appear at breakfast, and Mrs. Lithway
seemed surprised that I had heard nothing
during the night. He had had an attack of
acuter pain the doctor had been sent for.
There had been telephoning, running to and
fro, and talk in the corridors that no one had
thought of keying down on my account. I
was a little ashamed of not having waked, and
more than a little cross at not having been
ON THE STAIRCASE
called. She assured me that I could have
done nothing, and apologized as prettily as
possible for having to leave me to myself
during the day. Lithway was suffering less,
but, of course, she would be at his bedside.
Naturally, I made no objections to her wifely
solicitude. I was allowed to see Lithway for
a few minutes ; but the pain was severe, and
I cut my conversation short. The doctor
suspected the necessity for an operation, and
they sent to New York for a ^consulting
specialist. I determined to wait until they
should have reached their gruesome decision,
on the off chance that I might, in the event
of his being moved, be of service to Mrs.
Lithway. In spite of her calm and sweetness,
and the perfect working of the household
mechanism no flurry, no fright, no delays or
hitches I thought her, still, a young fool.
Any woman, of any age, was a fool if she had
not seen Lithway withering under her very
eyes.
It was a dreary day during which we waited
for the New York physician ; one of those
days when sunlight seems drearier than mist
a monotonous and hostile glare. I tried
reading Lithway's books, but the mere fact
that they were his got on my nerves. I
148
ON THE STAIRCASE
decided to go to my room and throw myself
on the resources of my own luggage. There
would be something there to read, I knew. I
closed the library door quietly and went up
stairs. Outside my own door I stopped and
looked involuntarily, with no conscious
curiosity up to the third-storey hall. There,
in the dim corridor, leaning over the balustrade
in a thin shaft of sunlight that struck up from
the big window on the landing, stood Mrs.
Lithway, with a folded paper in her hand,
looking down at me. I did not wish to raise
my voice Lithway, I thought, might be
sleeping so did not speak to her. I don't
think, in any case, I should have wanted to
speak to her. The look in her eyes was
distinctly unpleasant the kind of look people
don't usually face you with. I remember
wondering, as our surprised glances met, why
the deuce she should hate me like that how
the deuce a nice young thing could hate any
one like that. It must be personal to me, I
thought no nice young thing would envisage
the world at large with such venom. I turned
away; and as I turned, I saw her, out of the tail
of my eye, walk, with her peculiar lightness
of step, along the upper corridor to the trunk-
loft. She had the air of being caught, of not
149
ON THE STAIRCASE
having wished to be seen. I opened my bed
room door immediately, but as I opened it I
heard a sound behind me. Margaret Lithway
stood on the threshold of her husband's room,
with an empty bottle.
" Would you mind taking the car into the
village and getting this filled again ? " she
asked. Her eyes had dark shadows beneath
them ; she had evidently not slept, the night
before.
I flatter myself that I did not betray to her
in any way my perturbation. Indeed, the
event had fallen on a mind so ripe for solutions
that, in the very instant of my facing her, I
realized that what I had just seen above-stairs
(and seen by mistake, I can assure you ; she
had fled from me) was Lithway 's old ghost-
no less. I took the bottle, read the label, and
assured Mrs. Lithway that I would go at once.
Mrs. Lithway was wrapped in a darkish
house-gown of some sort. The lady in the
upper hall had been in white, with a blue
sash. ... I was very glad when I saw Mrs.
Lithway go into her husband's room and shut
the door. I was having hard work to keep
my expression where it belonged. For five
minutes I stood in the hall ; five minutes of
unbroken stillness. Then I went to the
150
ON THE STAIRCASE
garage, ordered out the car, and ran into the
village, where I presented the bottle to the
apothecary. He filled it immediately. As I
re-entered the house, the great hall clock
struck ; it was half-past eleven. I sent the
stuff lime-water, I believe up to Mrs.
Lithway by a servant, went into my room,
and locked the door.
I cannot say that I solved the whole enigma
of Braythe in the hour before luncheon ; but
I faced for the first time the seriousness of a
situation that had always seemed to me, save
for Lithway's curious reactions upon it, more
than half fantastic, if not imaginary. I had
seen, actually seen, Lithway's ghost. I had
not been meant to see her ; and I was inclined
to regret the sudden impulse that had led me
to leave Lithway's library and go to my own
room. The identity of the " ghost " with
Mrs. Lithway was appalling to me the more
so, that there could have been no mistake
about the nature of the personality that had
reluctantly presented itself to my vision. I
found myself saying : " Could that look in her
eyes be the cross light on the stairs ? " and
then suddenly remembered that I was only
echoing the Lithway of years ago. It was
incredible that any man should have liked the
ON THE STAIRCASE
creature I had seen ; and I could account for
Lithway's long and sentimental relation with
the apparition only by supposing that he had
never seen her, as I had, quite off her guard.
But if, according to his hint of the night
before, he had come to confound the ghost
with the real woman what sort of marriage
was that ? I asked myself. The ghost was a
bad lot, straight through. It brought me
into the realm of pure horror. The event
explained oh, I raised my hands to wave
away the throng of things it explained !
Indeed, until I could talk once more with
Lithway, I didn't want to face them ; I didn't
want to see clear. I had a horrid sense of
being left alone with the phantoms that
infested the house : alone, with a helpless,
bedridden friend to protect. Mrs. Lithway
didn't need protection that was clearer than
anything else. Mrs. Lithway was safe.
Before night, the consultation had been
held, and it was decided that Lithway should
be rushed straight to town for an operation.
The pain was not absolutely constant; he had
tranquil moments ; but the symptoms were
alarming enough to make them afraid of even
a brief delay. We were to take him up the
next morning. To all my offers of help, Mrs.
152
ON THE STAIRCASE
Lithway gave a smiling refusal. She could
manage perfectly, she said. I am bound to
say that she did manage perfectly, thinking of
everything, never losing her head, unfailingly
adequate, though the shadows under her eyes
seemed to grow darker hour by hour. A
nurse had come down from town, but I could
hardly see what tasks Mrs. Lithway left to
the nurse. I did my best, out of loyalty to
the loyal Lithway, to subdue my aversion to
his wife. I hoped that my aversion was quite
unreasonable and that, safe in Europe, I should
feel it so. I ventured to say, after dinner, that
I hoped she would try to get some sleep,
" Oh, yes, I shall ! " She smiled. " There
will be a great deal to do to-morrow ; and the
day after, when they operate, will be a strain.
There's nothing harder than waiting outside. I
know." Her eyes filled, but she went on very
calmly. " I am so grateful to you for being
here and for going up with us. I have no
people of my own, you know, to call on. You
have been the greatest comfort." She gave
me a cool hand, said " good-night," and left me.
I do not know whether or not Mrs. Lith
way slept, but I certainly did not, save in fitful
dozes. I was troubled about Lithway : I
thought him in very bad shape for an opera-
153
ON THE STAIRCASE
tion ; and I had, besides, nameless forebodings
of every sort. It was a comfort, the next
morning, to hear him, through an open door,
giving practical suggestions to his wife and the
nurse about packing his things. I went in to
see him before we started off. The doctor
was downstairs with Mrs. Lithway.
"Sorry to let you in for this, my boy. But
you are a great help."
" Mrs. Lithway is wonderful," I said. " I
congratulate you."
His sombre eyes held me. " Ah, you will
never know how wonderful never ! " He
said it with a kind of brooding triumph, which,
at the moment, I did not wholly understand.
Now, long afterwards, I think I do.
I left him, and crossed the corridor to my
own room. A slight rustle made me turn.
Mrs. Lithway stood in the upper hall, looking
down at me the same creature, to every detail
of dress, even to the folded paper in her hand,
that I had seen the previous morning. This
time I braced myself to face the ghost, to
examine her with a passionate keenness. I
hoped to find her a less appalling creature.
But, at once, Mrs. Lithway leaned over the
rail and spoke to me a little sharply, I
remember.
154
ON THE STAIRCASE
" Would you please telephone to the garage
and say that the doctor thinks we ought to
start ten minutes earlier than we had planned ?
I shall be down directly."
The hand that held the paper was by this
time hidden in the folds of her skirt. She
turned and sped lightly along the corridor to
the trunk-loft. Save for the voice, it was a
precise repetition of what had happened the
day before.
" Certainly," I said ; but I did not turn
away until she had disappeared into the trunk-
loft. I went to the telephone and gave the
message ; it took only a few seconds. Then
I went to my own room, leaving the door
open so that I commanded the hall. In a few
minutes Mrs. Lithway came down the stairs
from the third storey. " Did you telephone ? "
she asked accusingly, as she caught my eye.
I bowed. She passed on into Lith way's room.
There was no paper in her hand. I knew that
this time there had been no ghost.
Well . . . Lithway, as every one knows,
died under the ether. His heart suddenly and
unaccountably went back on him. He left no
will ; and, as he had no relations except the
cousin whom he had married, everything went
to her. I had once, before his second marriage,
155
ON THE STAIRCASE
seen a will of Lithway's, myself ; but I didn't
care to go into court with that information,
especially as in that will he had left me his
library. I should have liked, for old sake's
sake, to have Lithway's library. His widow
sold it, and it is by now dispersed about the
land. She told me, after the funeral, that she
should go on at Braythe, that she never wanted
to leave it ; but, for whatever reason, she did,
after a few years, sell the place suddenly and
go to Europe. I have never happened to see
her since she sold it, and I did not know the
people she sold it to. The house was burned
many years ago, I believe, and an elaborate
golf-course now covers the place where it
stood. I have not been to Braythe since poor
Lithway was buried.
I took the hunting-trip that Lithway had
been so violently and inexplicably opposed to. I
think I was rather a fool to do it, for I ought to
have realized, after Lithway's death, the secret
of the house, its absolutely unique specialty. But
such is the peacock heart of man that I still,
for myself, trusted in " common sense " in my
personal immunity, at least, from every super
natural law. Indeed, it was not until I had
actually encountered my savage, and got the
wound I bear the scar of, that I gave entire
156
ON THE STAIRCASE
credence to Lithway's tragedy. I put some
time into recovering from the effect of that
midnight skirmish in the jungle, and during
my recovery I had full opportunity to pity
Lithway.
It became quite clear to me that the
presences at Braythe concerned themselves only
with major dooms. If Lithway's ghost had
been his wife, his wife must have been a bad
lot. I am as certain as I can be of anything
that he was exceedingly unhappy with her. It
was a thousand pities that, for so many years,
he had misunderstood the vision ; that he had
permitted himself for that was what it
amounted to to fall in love with her in
advance. She was, quite literally, his " fate."
Of course, by this time, I feel sure that he
couldn't have escaped her. I don't believe the
house went in for kindly warnings ; I think it
merely, with the utmost insolence, foretold
the inevitable and dared you to escape it. If
I hadn't gone out for big game in Africa, I
am quite sure that my nigger would have got
at me somewhere else even if he had to be a
cannibal out of a circus running amuck down
Broadway. That was the trick of the house :
the worst thing that was going to happen to
you leered at you authentically over that stair-
157
ON THE STAIRCASE
case. I have never understood why I saw
Lithway's apparition ; but I can bear witness
to the fact that she was furious at my having
seen her as furious as Mrs. Lithway was, the
next day, if it comes to that. It was a mis
take. My step may have sounded like Lith
way's. Who knows ? At least it should be
clear what Lithway meant when he said that
he didn't always know whether he saw her or
not. The two were pin for pin alike. The
apparition, of course, had, from the beginning,
worn the dress that Mrs. Lithway was to wear
on the day that Lithway was taken to the
hospital. I have never liked to penetrate
further into the Lithways' intimate history. I
am quite sure that the folded paper was the
old will, but I have always endeavoured, in my
own mind, not to implicate Margaret Lithway
more than that. Of course, there never could
have been any question of implicating her
before the public.
I never had a chance, after my own acci
dent, to consult Wender. I stuck to Europe
unbrokenly for many years, as he stuck to
America. Both Wender and I, I fancy, were
chary of writing what might have been written.
Some day, I thought, we would meet and
have the whole thing out; but that day never
158
ON THE STAIRCASE
came. Suddenly, one autumn, I had news of
his death. He was a member of a summer
expedition in Utah and Northern Arizona
I think I mentioned that he had gone in for
American ethnology. There are, as every one
knows, rich finds in our western States for any
one who will dig long enough ; and they were
hoping to get aboriginal skulls and mummies.
All this his sister referred to 'when she wrote
me the particulars of his death. She dwelt
with forgivable bitterness on the fact of
Wender's having been told beforehand that
the particular section he was assigned to was
free from rattlesnakes. " Perhaps you know,"
she wrote, " that my brother had had, since
childhood, a morbid horror of reptiles." I did
know it Lithway had told me. Wender's
death from the bite of a rattlesnake was
perhaps the most ironic of the three adven
tures ; for Wender was the one of us who put
most faith in the scenes produced on the stage
of Braythe. I never heard Wender's theory;
but I fancy he realized, as Lithway and I did
not, that since the " ghosts " we saw were not
of the past they must be of the future a most
logical step, which I am surprised none of us
should have taken until after the event.
Wender's catastrophe killed in me much of
159
ON THE STAIRCASE
my love of wandering. At least, it drove me
to Harry Medway ; and Harry Medway did
the rest. I am not afraid of another warrior's
cutting at me with his assegai ; but I do not
like to be too far from specialists. I have
already been warned that I may sometime go
blind ; and I know that other complications
may be expected. Pathology and surgery are
sealed books to me ; but I still hold so fast to
logic that I fully expect to die some time as
an indirect result of that wound. The scar
reminds me daily that its last word has not
been said.
I am a fairly old man the older that I no
longer wander, and that I cling so weakly
to the great capitals which hold the great
physicians. The only thing that I was ever
good at I can no longer do. Curiosity has
died in me, for the most part ; one or two such
mighty curiosities have been, you see, already
so terribly appeased. But I think I would rise
from my death-bed, and wipe away with my
own hand the mortal sweat from my face, for
the chance of learning what it was that drove
Mrs. Lithway, in mid-winter, from Braythe.
If I could once know what she saw on the
staircase, I think I should ask no more respite.
The scar might fulfil its mission.
1 60
THE TORTOISE
" ^ I ^HERE are only three things worth
I. while fighting, drinking and making
love." It was Chalmers who said it to me as
we came out of the theatre, and were idling
along towards the club. We had been seeing
a very handsome almost elegant melodrama.
Very impressionable chap, Chalmers, I thought,
for I was quite sure that he had never done any
fighting ; he was apparently a total abstainer ;
and he positively ran as whole-heartedly as a
frightened cow from a petticoat.
" What about work ? " I asked, as we turned
into the club. Chalmers is a fiend for work :
always shut up in his laboratory, dry-nursing
an experiment.
"Work is an anodyne a bloominganodyne."
He hunched his shoulders, and his brown coat
the coat of a toilsome recluse, if ever there
was one ; there's something peculiarly un
worldly about brown tweed for a man's wear
creased into lumpier curves than ever.
M 161
THE TORTOISE
" It's a mighty slow one. If I wanted a
quick effect, I think I'd take to cocaine.
Must be exciting, slewing round the corners
of Montmartre, dropping your francs into a
basket that swings down from God knows
where, with the blessed stuff all in it waiting
to be inhaled. And all over inside of a year."
Thus I to Chalmers, knowing that we were
very far from Montmartre. Chalmers, I
should say, was magnificently dependable ; you
were as safe in dropping a lurid suggestion on
him as on the shell of an ancient turtle. I
rather liked that idea, which struck me just
then ; in fact, his clothes were much the
colour of tortoise-shell.
" But I don't want it over. You see . . .
I've agreed to hang on." His keen glance at
me, more than his words, savoured of explana
tion.
" Oh ! " I made the syllable as non-committal
as possible. The lips at one moment so fluent
in confession will grow stiff with resentment
after the hour of confidence is over. For that
reason, I dislike to have people tell me things :
I always expect that they will some day hate
me, merely because they told.
We sat down at a table, and I ordered a
162
THE TORTOISE
highball. Chalmers fussed for a moment, and
then committed himself to a pate sandwich
with apollinaris. I didn't think of asking him
to join me. We had been trying for five
years to get Chalmers to take a drink. For a
year, there were always bets going on it ; but
it had been a long time now since any of us
had made or lost anything on the chance of
Chalmers's potations.
At the same time, my curiosity was aroused.
There had never been any mystery * about
Chalmers. There isn't any about a tortoise, if
it comes to that. The beast has been made
much of mythologically, I believe ; but even
in India they only accuse him of holding up the
world. No one pretends, so far as I know,
that he keeps anything under his shell except
himself. But Chalmers didn't seem to be even
bearing a burden. He was simply Chalmers.
He had come among us, an accredited student
of physics, with letters of introduction from
German professors and Colonial Dames ; he
had performed the absolutely necessary con
ventional duties : he was vaguely related to
people that every one knew ; he was so
obviously a gentleman that no one would ever
have thought of affirming it. His holidays
163
THE TORTOISE
were all accounted for in fact, he usually
spent them with one or another of our own
group. There wasn't there isn't now a
single thing about Chalmers that any one could
have the instinct to investigate. It had never
occurred to any of us that we didn't know as
much about Chalmers as we did about the
people we had been brought up with. We hap
pened not to have been brought up with him,
because he had happened to be brought up
abroad. His father had been a consul some
where.
On this occasion, anyhow, my curiosity got
the better of my fixed rule. I decided to lead
Chalmers on.
" Do you mean to say that your noble
industry is nothing but a poor substitute for a
drug ? "
He smiled quaintly. His green eyes shone
under his dark eyelashes. Very taking eyes
they were : well set in his head and pleasantly
intimate, with a near-sighted brilliancy.
" I didn't say it was a poor substitute. And,
anyhow, cocaine might charm away the
hours, but only work can charm away the
years. I've got into my stride for eternity,
it would seem. And some day, you know, 1
164
THE TORTOISE
may, quite incidentally, do something in
spectrum analysis that will be significant. I've
got all the time in the world."
" Are you so sure ? "
" Well it looks as if I were in for a long
wait."
He spoke as unconcernedly as if he had his
lease of life locked up in his safe deposit
drawer.
I drank some whiskey and waited a minute,
wondering whether to push his confidence over
the edge, send it spinning into an abyss of
revelation. Finally, I decided.
" I didn't know that anything but a contract
with the devil could make you so sure."
" Oh, it doesn't have to be with the devil."
He sipped his virtuous apollinaris. " Did you
notice the heroine's sister ? " he went on.
I hadn't noticed her much. I had been
paying my money to see Maude Lansing act,
and my frugal eyes had attached themselves to
her exclusively, from the first act to the last.
" A vague little blonde thing, wasn't she ? "
" Blonde, but not so vague as you'd think.
At least, I don't think she'd be vague if you
gave her anything to do. She had to be vague
to-night, of course. But didn't you see her
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THE TORTOISE
deliberately subduing herself to the part
holding herself in, so as not to be too pretty,
too angry, too subtle, too much in love ? She
did everything vaguely, I imagine, so as not
to hog the stage. But give her a chance, and
she'd play up. I was always expecting, you
know, that she would hog the stage. She
could have done it. ... It quite got me
going."
" Did you think her better than Maude
Lansing ? "
It was something new, at least, to have him
notice a woman so closely.
Chalmers tasted his pate and half-nodded ap
provingly at it.
" Oh, I don't know anything about that.
She is the only woman I have ever seen who
looked like the girl I married/'
I set down my glass quickly. I had drunk
most of the whiskey, and therefore none of
it was spilled. Chalmers married ! Why
why we knew all about him, from cradle to
laboratory ; or, at least, as much as men do
know of other men who have no scrapes to be
got out of. I looked narrowly at Chalmers.
Was it possible that he had been lying low
all these years, with the single intention
1 66
THE TORTOISE
of perpetrating eventually the supreme joke?
And if he was merely a humorist of parts, why
had he not assembled the crowd ? Why had
he selected only one of his intimates ? His
intimates ! That was precisely what we were.
Yet none of us knew that he had been
married. Chalmers himself might easily not
have mentioned a dead wife, but no end of
people, first and last, had turned up and con
tributed to Chalmers's biography, and it was
odd that none of them should have mentioned
his bereavement. Unless
" No one knows I am married. No one has
ever known. If I told you all about it, you'd
see why. And I think I shall. That girl
started it all up again."
He leaned across the table and laid his hand
on my arm. His eyes glinted encouragingly
at me. " Cheer up, old man ! You're not in
for anything sordid. But curious oh, very,
very curious ! Yes, I think, without vanity,
I may say very curious ! . . . I meant what
I said just now, coming out of the theatre.
There aren't but three things worth while
and I mayn't have them. I mayn't fight,
because I might get killed before I've a right
to ; I don't drink, for the sake of the paltry
167
THE TORTOISE
hours that might be subtracted from the sum
of my years if I did ; and, being married, I
naturally can't very well make love. Can I ? "
He turned on me with such a tone of
ingenuous query that I wondered if it was a
joke, after all.
I tried to be cynical. " That depends . . ."
" Oh, no, it doesn't ! " It was the old
Chalmers who smiled at me ingratiating,
youthful, adventurous, gay, I had often
wondered why Chalmers looked adventurous,
his habits being, if ever any man's were,
regular to the point of monotony. It occurred
to me now that perhaps he looked adventurous
because he had had his adventure already. In
any case, it was very satisfactory to find at last
something in his life that matched with the look
in his eyes something that would take the
curse off his even temperament and equable
ways.
" Very, very curious," he repeated. " And
all these years I've wanted to tell somebody,
just in case I should drop out suddenly. I've
left written instructions, but I should really
like some one to understand. It's all rather
preposterous."
" It's preposterous that you should suddenly
be married."
1 68
THE TORTOISE
" Yes of course. Well I've got on pretty
well, and I'd rather you didn't mention it to
any of the others. But if anything should
turn up, you can say you knew it all along."
" Fire ahead."
On the strength of the narrative about to
come, I ordered another high-ball. Some
times you want something to riddle with,
something to intervene between you and your
friend when it is hard for eyes to meet. But
he had promised me that it should be nothing
sordid, and when the drink came I set it
trustfully to one side in reserve, as it were.
" Time was, when I knocked about the
world a bit. My parents were dead, I had no
close kin, and there was money enough to do
what I wanted to, provided I wanted some
thing modest. I had a great notion, when I
came out of Gottingen, of a wander jahr. Only
I was determined it shouldn't be hackneyed.
There was a good deal of Wilhelm Meister in
it, all the same, with a strong dash of Heine.
I fancied myself, rather, at that time ; wanted
to be different like every other young pil
grim. I didn't want the common fate not
I. I hadn't any grievance against the world,
because I had a complete faith in the world's
giving me what I wanted, in the end. But I
169
THE TORTOISE
distinctly remember promising myself to be
remarkable. I shan't, of course, unless there
is something in spectrum analysis. I used to
quote Heine to myself :
' Du stolzes Herz, du hast es ja gewollt !
Du wolltest gliicklich sein, unendlich gliicklich,
Oder unendlich elend, stolzes Herz,
Und jetzo bist du elend.'
Of course, I never believed that I should be
' unendlich elend,' but I should have preferred
that to anything mediocre. At that age
you know what we're like. The man who
would look at the stars by daylight and
tumbled into the well. That's us, to the life.
" I met her in a villa above Ravello. Some
charming French people or, at least, Mon
sieur was French, though Madame and the
money were American were keeping guard
over her. The American wife had known
her somewhere, and was being good to her in
her great misfortune. I won't go into explana
tions of how I came to frequent their villa.
They were among the scores of people I had
met and known in this or that pleasant, casual
way. I used to go up and dine with them ;
I prolonged the Italian interlude in my <wander-
jahr, more or less for the sake of doing so. I
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THE TORTOISE
had notions of going on to Egypt, but there
was time enough for that. I stayed on even
more because I liked the villa an old Saracen
stronghold on the edge of the Mediterranean,
modernized into comfort than because I liked
them, though they were pleasant enough.
" At first I wished the girl were not there.
She never talked ; she was just a stiff figure,
swathed in black up to her throat, sitting day
by day almost motionless on a parapet. She
was a harsh note. Wherever you were, she
was in the middle distance, a black figure
looking out to sea. It didn't take many days
for her to get on my nerves. She was like
a portent. I fancy she got on theirs, too,
but they were helpless. I gathered that
Madame C. had a good deal of talk with
her daily, in hours when they were alone ;
and before very long she permitted me to
share her perplexities. She didn't want to
desert her young friend ; but the girl seemed
to have sunk into a kind of apathy. She
thought, perhaps, a specialist ought to see
her. A very American touch, that ! Un
luckily, the girl had no close kin ; there was
no one to turn her over to officially.
" Before long, I knew the whole story.
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The young lady's fiance was a civil engineer,
and had been employed by Portuguese inter
ests in East Africa. He had gone into the
interior more or less on a job for the
Nyassa Company : headquarters, Mozam
bique. There was supposed to be money in
it, because the Portuguese had been growing
ashamed of their colonial reputation, and had
been bucking up to some extent. Hence the
job with the Nyassa Company. She had
wanted to go out with him, but he would
not permit it. Quite right, too. Mozam
bique's no place for a woman or Louren9o
Marques, either. I know. Damn their
yellow, half-breed souls ! . . . She had been
waiting for him to finish his job in the in
terior, and come home to marry her. The
date of their marriage, I imagine, had not
been very far off.
" Suddenly, letters had ceased to come.
There had been a horrid interval of months
when there was no word out of Africa for
her. Cablegrams were unanswered. The
people at the other end must have been
very unbusinesslike not to give her some
inkling of the reason why they couldn't de
liver them. I suppose it was the uncertainty.
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There he was, up on the verge of Rhodesia
or beyond, prospecting, surveying, exploring :
it was quite on the cards that he should lose
his way, or be infinitely delayed, or fail some
how of his communications with headquarters
on the coast. Beastly months for her, any
how ! Then letters did come. I never saw
any of them, but I can imagine just the awk
ward vocabulary of them : a Portuguese head
clerk in Mozambique trying to break it to
her ornately that her man had died of fever
up-country. Can't you imagine those letters
in quaint, bad English, on thin paper, worn
to utter limpness and poverty with being
clutched and carried and cried over ? 1
never saw them, but I can.
" Well 1 don't need to go into it all. In
deed, there were many details that Madame C.
had forgotten, and that she naturally couldn't
ask the girl to refresh her memory of for my
benefit. What was troubling Madame was
the girl's condition. Apparently, she had
loved the man consumingly, and considered
herself virtually dead entirely negligible at
least, as pitiful and worthless a thing as a
child-widow in India. But you've noticed,
perhaps, that the very humble are sometimes
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positively overweening about some special
thing. The damned worms wont turn any
more than if they were elephants in the path !
And so it was with her.
" She was determined to go out and fetch his
body home. The people in Mozambique had
to confess that they didn't know where those
sacred remains were. The epidemic had run
through the little camp, and, by the time the
man himself had keeled over, the few natives
that were left hadn't nerve enough to do any
thing for him. They remembered him, raving
with fever and dropping among the corpses.
A few, who were not already stricken, got
away probably considering that there was a
lively curse on his immediate neighbourhood.
There had been complete demoralization. A
few of them had eventually strayed back, as I
said, joining any one who would take them
home. Their casual employments delayed them
a good deal, and by the time they turned in
a report to use formal language in a case
where it is a sore misfit there was nothing
to be done. I didn't get this from Madame C.;
I got it from her, later, when she told me
everything she knew about it. But I put it in
here, which is, after all, where it belongs."
174
Chalmers stopped he had been talking
steadily and lighted a cigarette. I took the
opportunity to sip a little whiskey. Through
his introduction, I had been staring at him
fixedly. My own cigarette had burned to
ashes in my fingers ; when I felt the spark
touch them, I dropped the thing, still without
looking at it, into the tray. He hunched his
shoulders in the speckled brown coat and bent
forward, his arms folded on the table. The
little movement of his head from side to side
was very like a tortoise.
" Well, you see ... of course she couldn't
go alone, and of course there was no one to
see her through a thing like that. I am sure
she hadn't money enough to pay any one for
going with her. If she had tried to go, she
wouldn't have succeeded in doing much except
get into the newspapers. She had sense enough
to realize it, or the C.'s had sense enough to
make her. But if she couldn't do that, she
wouldn't do anything else. She simply sat
and brooded, looking seaward. She apparently
intended, at least, not to let go of her idea.
She may have had some notion of mesmerizing
the universe with her obsession just by sitting
tight and never, for a moment, thinking of
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anything else. There she sat, anyhow, and
Madame C. sent out her doves in vain. They
all came back from the parapet, drenched
with Mediterranean spray. So it went on.
The girl might have been watching for some
fabulous creature to rise up from the waves
and take her to her goal. She would cheer
fully have embarked for East Africa on a
dolphin, I think. At all events, she wouldn't
leave her parapet, she wouldn't leave the villa,
she wouldn't descend to the conventional plane.
I don't mean that she didn't talk like a sane
woman ; I mean only that she sat at the heart
of her obsession, and that when you came with
in a few feet of her you knocked up against
it, almost tangibly. A queer thing to meet,
day after day. ... It ended by my being dis
tinctly impressed.
" Very like the girl in the play ! Just the
same blonde vagueness, just the same effect of
being cast inevitably for an unimportant, a
merely supplementary part. But one is never
fooled twice by that sort of thing. I tell you
Maude Lansing will find herself some day doing
chambermaid to that girl's heroine ! If I was
impressed, it was by the cul-de-sac she had got
herself into. She couldn't go forward, and
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she wouldn't go back. She sat there, waiting
for the world to change. In the end after
Madame C. had wrung her hands for your
benefit a few hundred times you began to
damn the world for not changing. It seemed
to be up to the perverse elements to stop the
regular business of the cosmos and waft her to
her goal.
" I could hardly have talked to her about
anything but her plight. It was a week or
two before I talked to her at all ; but, in the
end, I found that if I wanted to continue to
come to the villa, I should have to brave that
presence on the parapet domesticate myself
in that pervasive and most logical gloom. So
I did. She was a positive creature ; there
wasn't the faintest hint of apology or depre
cation in her manner. She would see you on
business, and only on business the business
being her tragedy. Don't misunderstand "
(Chalmers frowned a little as he looked at me.)
" She was neither lachrymose nor hard : she
was just infinitely and quite decently pre
occupied with her one desire and her helpless
ness to achieve it. She didn't magnify herself.
It isn't magnifying yourself to want a proper
funeral for the person you love, is it ? She
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THE TORTOISE
was even grateful for sympathy, though she
didn't want a stream of words poured out
over her. She she was an awfully good
sort."
Chalmers dug his cigarette-end almost
viciously into the tray, and watched the smoke
go out. We both watched the smoke go
out. . . .
" Before long, we had talked together a
good deal, especially during the hour before
dinner, when the sun and the sea were so
miraculous that any other miracle seemed
possible. Such easy waters to cross, they
looked, in the sunset light ! You forgot
the blistering leagues beyond ; you forgot that
it took money and men and courage and
endurance, and all kinds of things that are
hard to come by, to get to the goal she was
straining for. I suppose it wouldn't be honest
to say that she ever passed her personal fervour
on to me I couldn't, in the nature of things,
care so much about recovering that poor
chap's bones as she did but I did end by
wishing with all my heart that I could help.
Little by little it seemed a romantic thing to
do to go out searching for the spot where he
had died. Of course, getting the bones them-
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selves, except for extraordinary luck, was all
moonshine ; but she didn't see that, and her
blindness affected me. Finally, my wanderjahr
began to shape itself to new horizons. Why
shouldn't I have a try ? . . . I dare say I
posed a little as a paladin, though not, I hope,
to her. Anyhow, I decided to broach it.
" I don't suppose you can understand it
any of it for the simple reason that I can't
describe her. She was the kind of person who
sees very clearly the difference between the
possible and the impossible ; who never
attempts anything but the possible ; yet who
sets every one about her itching to attain the
impossible. Not 'for her sake,' in the con
ventional sense ; no, not that at all. Simply,
she set before you so clearly the reason why a
thing couldn't be done that you longed to
confute her, just as you sometimes long to
confute fate. She was as convincing and as
maddening as a natural law. Each of us,
sooner or later, has tried to get the better of
some little habit of the universe. You felt
like saying : ' Stop looking like that ; I'll do
it see if I don't.'
" That was the spirit in which I went to
her, late one afternoon, on her parapet. The
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C.'s had been away all day and were not to
return until evening. Madame C. had ex
asperated me the night before by proposing,
quite baldly and kindly, that the girl be de
coyed into a sanatorium. The C.'s couldn't
keep her much longer they were off for
Biskra and it was up to me. I had lain
awake half the night, exploring the last re
cesses of disaster into which my idea might
lead me ; I had sailed far out on the bright
waters all day, perfecting my courage. I could
have written as bitter a little allegory about it
all as Heine himself. Secretly, in a tawdry
corner of my mind, I thought Wilhelm
Meister was a poor stick compared with me.
But it was honest romance ; I was willing to
pay."
I finished my whiskey as Chalmers's voice
dropped and died down, and he busied himself
a little nervously with lighting a pipe. His
green eyes had flecks of brown in them. Once
more, in the speckled brown figure opposite
me, I saw the tortoise beyond the reach of
biology, which upholds the world, which
carries the burden of all human flesh and
spirit.
" I told her that I was ready to go ; that I
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THE TORTOISE
could scrape together enough money for the
expedition without entirely impoverishing
myself. My figures hadn't been quite so re
assuring as that when I totted them up on a
piece of hotel paper at dawn, but at least I
had left magnificent margins for everything.
" She smiled I had never seen her smile
before, and at the moment it made her thanks
seem profuse but she shook her head. She
was beautifully simple about it. I liked her
for that.
" ' It wouldn't do. Not that it isn't divinely
good of you ! But, you see, the point is
that ' She stopped.
" ' Well ? ' My heart was beating hard. I
had become enamoured of my idea. I no more
wanted to be baulked than she did.
" ' The point has always been that I should
go myself.'
" ' Then go yourself ! '
" ' Carrying off all your money ? I can't
Don Quixote.' There was nothing playful
in her tone ; and she had me all the more
because there wasn't. She was merely register
ing facts. Even the ' Don Quixote ' was, to
her mind, a fact that she was registering.
She was splendidly literal.
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" ' Come with me. I don't propose that you
should go alone.'
" She frowned a little ; and in that frown I
read all the weariness of the hours of past talk
with Madame C. Presently she looked up at
me, very kindly, a little questioningly, as if for
the first time my personality in itself interested
her.
" ' You know that even for me that is im
possible.'
" I knew what she meant : that she would
have been ready for any abnegation, being,
herself, as I have said, negligible ; but that
the world must be able to pick no flaw in the
rites paid to the shade.
" ' If you will marry me, it is not impossible.'
"That is what I said just like that. I had
determined that nothing should be an obstacle.
She didn't change her posture or her expression
by the fraction of a millimetre. She looked
silently past me at the ilexes as if she had not
heard. But she had heard. I think that at
that moment no, I don't except all that came
after I touched the highest point of my
romance. . . . She thought for a moment or
two while I waited. I suppose she was con
sidering what the world would say to that, and
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THE TORTOISE
deciding that the world would have no right
to say anything ; that it would be, and legiti
mately so, between her and me. The dead
themselves, of course, can be trusted to under
stand. It didn't take her long you see she
was a girl of one idea, and of one idea only.
" ' Very well, I will marry you.' The words
came as simply from her lips as any others.
We didn't at that time, or at any time before
our marriage, have any discussion of the ex
tremely shall I say ? individual nature of
our relation. That was the one thing we
couldn't have talked of. It would have been
you see ? quite impossible for either to
imply, by approaching the subject, that the
other perhaps didn't understand. I couldn't
even be so crass as to say : ' Look here, my
dear girl, of course I quite recognize that you
don't in any sense belong to me ' ; or she be
so crass as to say in turn : ' I know it.' No :
I suppose I have never been so near the summit
as I was that evening after she had ' accepted '
me, and we had both silently laid our freedom
on the altar of that dead man. Neither of us
realized all the inevitable practical results of
such a compact. We simply thought we had
thrown the ultimate sufficing sop to Cerberus,
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and that all our lives we should hear him con
tentedly crunching it. I am quite sure that
her mind turned as blank a face to the future
as mine. Quite."
His voice rang authoritatively across the
table. I said nothing. What could I say ?
What is the proper greeting when you cross
the threshold of such a habitation ? I offered
him a silence that was at least respectful.
" Well, I won't bore you with too many
details. She pulled herself together and said
her visit must end. We did not tell the C.'s.
We merely let them get off to Tunis. It
would not have been easy for her to explain
to Madame C. all the things that we had
never condescended to explain to each other.
She was a Catholic, by the way. We were
married by a parish priest in no, on second
thoughts, I won't even tell you where. The
place has kept the secret hitherto. It is better
so. I left her at once to make arrangements
for the quest. It took some time and a good
deal of frenzied journeying to realize on my
securities. I gave her a letter of credit, so
that she could be in all incidental ways inde
pendent of me. That was necessary, because
I was to go out to Mozambique first, and she
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was to follow only when I sent for her. Very
soon, you see, I began to realize the practical
inconveniences of travelling with a woman
who bears your name and who is a total
stranger to you. It's damned expensive, for
one thing." Chalmers's smile was nearer the
authentic gleam of irony than anything I had
seen before during the evening.
" Well, I went. I interviewed the proper
people ; I saw one of the creatures who knew
the spot where our man had died. Eventually
I arranged the expedition. Then I cabled for
her. She took the Dunvegan Castle at Naples.
By the time I met her at the steamer, she
had grown incredible to me. I could more
easily have believed her a sharer in some
half-forgotten light adventure than my duly
registered wife. She was unreal to me, a
figure recurring inexplicably in a dream, a
memory of exactly what sort I was not quite
sure. My feet lagged along the pier. . . .
She soon set all that straight. I had wondered
if the sop to Cerberus would require our
seeming to kiss. She managed it somehow
so that no stage kiss was necessary. She dissi
pated the funk into which I had fallen, by
practical questions and preoccupations ; she
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THE TORTOISE
came upon my fever like a cool breeze off the
sea. She had made her point ; she had achieved
her miracle ; and in every incidental way,
little and big, she could afford to show what
a serviceable soul she was. She was a good
thing to have about. There were times when
the situation got on my nerves, in Mozam
bique, before we started. It's such a small
hole that we seemed always to be bumping
into each other. I couldn't make out her
private attitude towards me ; I used to wonder
if she had any, or if she simply thought of
me as a courier in her own class. I was so
endlessly occupied with engaging men and
beasts and camping kit and supplies what
was I but a courier ? The paladin idea was
fading a little ; though now and then, at night,
I'd look up at the Southern Cross and let the
strangeness of the thing convince me all over
again. I don't think I wanted anything so
commonplace as gratitude from her ; but I
did want in her some sense of the strangeness
of our alliance, with all the things it left
unsaid. Perhaps I wanted her to realize that
not every man would have responded so quickly
to the call of impersonal romance. I can look
back on all that egotism of youth and despise
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it ; but there's something not wholly ignoble
in an egotism that wants only good fame with
one's self and one's secret collaborator. Any
how, there were moments when my dedication
seemed solemn ; just as there were other
moments when I seemed like an inadequate
tenor in a comic opera. I never knew just
how she hovered between those two concep
tions. We were destined to see each other
only by lightning-flashes never once in the
clear light of day.
" I can't tell you how I came to hate the
Portuguese before we left that mean little hole.
You laughed at me once for rending Blakely
to shreds over Camoens. I've read Camoens
in my day and hated him, as if something in
me had known beforehand that I was eventu
ally to have good reason to loathe every
syllable of that damned language. My stock
is Southern, too South Carolina and you
can imagine how I enjoyed seeing, at every
turn, the nigger the better man. Portugal
ought to be wiped off the map of Africa.
" Well I got our arrangements made as
well as I could. It was lucky I had left hand
some margins for everything, because the
graft was sickening. They wouldn't let your
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THE TORTOISE
own approved consignments leave the dock
without your handing out cash to at least three
yellow dogs that called themselves officials. I
had hoped to find some sort of female servant
for her I shook at the thought of having her
go off on a trip like that without another
woman to do things for her that I, in the
circumstances, couldn't very well do. But
there wasn't a wench of either colour or any
of the intervening shades that a nice woman
could have had about her. She was very
plucky about it all. As I say, she had made
her great point, and didn't care. The morn
ing we started, she stuck a gentian in my
buttonhole and another in hers and she smiled.
A smile of hers carried very far. And so we
started.
" I needn't give you the details of our trip.
People write books about that sort of thing ;
keep diaries of their mishaps, and how Umga-
looloo or Ishbosheth or some other valuable
assistant stole a bandanna handkerchief and
had to be mulcted of a day's pay all very
interesting to somebody, no doubt. To tell
the truth, the concrete details maddened me ;
and we seemed to live wholly in concrete
terms of the smallest. I, who had planned for
my wanderjahr a colossal, an almost forbidden
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intimacy with Platonic abstractions ! I had
always rather meant to go in for biology
eventually, but I got over that in Africa ; we
were much too near the lower forms of life.
And to this day, as you well know, I can't
bear hearing Harry Dawes talk about folk-lore.
He's driven me home from the club a good
many nights."
I caught my breath. It was almost uncanny,
the way Chalmers's little idiosyncrasies were
explaining themselves, bit by bit. I felt the
cold wind of a deterministic law blowing over
my shoulder as cold as Calvinism. I had
always loved temperament and its vagaries.
Now I wasn't sure I wanted the light in
Chalmers's eyes explained, to the last gleam.
Mightn't any of us ever be inexplicable and
irresponsible and delightful ?
" Of course they had given us maps in
Mozambique not official ones, oh, no ! Those
would have come too high. The Nyassa
Company had to pretend to be amiable, but
they didn't fork out anything they didn't have
to. Small loss the official maps were, I fancy;
but those we had weren't much good. It
wasn't, however, a difficult journey to make,
from that point of view, and the cheerful
savage who had abandoned our hero swore he
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THE TORTOISE
knew where to take us. In eight weeks, we
reached the spot that he declared to be the
scene of the death from fever. I dare say he
was right ; he knew the villages along the
way ; he had described the topography, more
or less, before we started, and it tallied. We
pitched camp and spent three horrible days
there. It is needless to say that we might as
well have hunted for the poor fellow's bones
under the parapet at Ravello. I saw and if
you'll believe me, I positively hadn't seen
it before what moonshine it all was. She
ought to have been put to bed and made to
pray God to make her a good girl, before she
dragged anybody even me out on such a
wild-goose chase as that. There wasn't a relic
except certain signs of some one's having
cleared ground there before, and one or two
indescribable fragments, picked up within
a five-hundred-yard radius, that might have
been parts of tin cans. Why should there
have been ? If there had been any plunder,
natives would have found and taken it, as thev
j
would inevitably have removed and destroyed
any corporal vestiges out of sheer superstition
and hostility. I had learned their little ways,
since Ravello. The rank soil in the wet
season would have done the rest. I wondered
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THE TORTOISE
cruelly, no doubt whether she had expected
him to bury himself with a cairn atop and a
few note-books (locked up in a despatch-box)
decorously waiting for her in his grave. On
the strength of the savage's positive declaration
that at such a distance two days from the
last village, beyond such a stream, beneath
such and such a clump of trees, he had seen
the white man fall in the last delirium, she
searched the place, as you might say, with a
microscope. I thought it extremely likely
that the fellow was lying for the sake of our
pay, but I had to admit that I couldn't prove
it. Certainly, his information was the only
thing we could reasonably go on ; we couldn't
invest all Portuguese East Africa with an army
and set them to digging up every square inch
of soil in that God-forsaken country. If this
clue failed, we could only return. But there
was a moment when, in our baffled anguish, I
think she could have taken a good close-range
shot at the inscrutable nigger who had been
with him, and had left him, and could not
even bring us to his body. The girl on the
stage to-night was like that, though you don't
believe it. Vague, indeed ! Maude Lansing's
a fool if she keeps her on.
" You see " Chalmers shifted his position
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THE TORTOISE
and, ever so little, his tone of voice. It was
extraordinary how straight he went with his
story, considering that he had never told it
before. He seemed to have dragged it out
from some receptacle, intact, not a thread
frayed, in perfect order, ready to spread before
me. The pattern was as clear as if it were
just off the torturesome loom. He seemed to
know it by heart.
"You see" he went on "she had been
changing steadily, all through that march of
ours. You would have said that the tropical
sun had forced her growth. She had been a
cold, immature thing in Italy passions dor
mant and sealed. Now they had worked their
way up to the surface and were just beneath
the skin. She would have shot the nigger.
Before, I suppose, she had lived with ideas
only ; even he must have been chiefly an idea,
though a tremendous one. The daily contact
with all sorts of unsuspected facts, the hopeless
crudeness of the hinterlands most of us never
get into, had worked on her. There may be
something subtle in the tropics people talk
as if there were. I should say they were no
more subtle than the slums. The body de
mands a hundred things, and it becomes a
matter of the utmost moment whether you
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THE* TORTOISE
get them for it or not. You can't achieve
subtlety until the body is lulled. That life
has complications of its own ; but I shouldn't
call it subtle. Very far from it. And savages
make you feel that it's subtlety enough merely
to have a white skin ; there's something irrele
vant and ignoble in pushing subtlety further.
In the end the sun wears you out, I suppose,
and makes you want nothing very much ; but
at first it merely makes it intolerable not to
have everything on the very instant. ... I
merely meant to explain that she was a changed
creature a good sport always, but inclined to
impatiences, angers, delights, fervours that I
fancy she had never felt before. Her tongue
was loosed ; she was lyric about cool water,
violent about native trickeries. I don't mean
Heaven forbid ! that she was vulgar. She
had sweet distinction all her own. She was
merely real and varied and vital. And I dare
say the fundamental formality of our relation
was the only subtlety we could stand. It put
an edge on everything.
" We were very near the line of Rhodesia,
and for various reasons we decided to cross
over and come down far enough south through
British territory to strike the Zambesi and its
boats. If there was any information to be
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THE TORTOISE
picked up, we should be more likely to find it
in that direction than by going back the way
we had come, which was utterly barren of
clues. I had reason to suppose that the others
who had survived the fever had gone on to
the Rhodesian villages. We started in the
cool of dawn, and I ought to say that there
were no backward glances on her part. She
was convinced that there was nothing in that
precise spot for her ; and I think she had hope
of finding something in the miles just beyond.
I could see that she did not more than half
believe the identifications of the negro who
had been on the earlier expedition. True, his
guttural gibberish did not sound like informa
tion ; but, after all, he was the only link we
had with that supreme and sordid adventure.
We pushed on."
Chalmers threw back his head and stretched
his arms, but went on presently in a more
vibrant, a more intimately reminiscent tone.
The club was nearly empty it was getting on
for midnight. I seemed to myself to be quite
alone with the tortoise that upheld the world.
" I suppose this is the point in the narrative
to say a rather difficult thing though it ought
to be clear that I've no cause or wish to paint
myself anything but the mottled colour most of
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THE TORTOISE
us are. I spoke of what the tropics had done
to her : fulfilled her in all kinds of ways. We
had strange talks by the fire at night, moving
on, after the necessary practical discussions,
into regions of pure emotion. The emotion
was all over the incidents we encountered ; we
marshalled our facts and made our decisions,
and then leaned back and generalized with
passion. Whatever Africa had done to her
inwardly, it had at least taught her to talk. I
had never had any particular sense of her being
on guard there was, from the very first, some
thing strange and delicate in the flavour of our
understanding but now I had the sense of
her being specifically and gloriously off her
guard. We seemed to know each other
awfully well." Chalmers's face, as he looked
down at his pipe-bowl, was curiously boyish
for an instant. He might have been speak
ing of a childhood playmate.
" Put it that I fell in love with her. I
don't choose to analyze my feeling more than
that. There was everything in it to make me
the prey of a passion for her so long as we
hadn't begun, in Mozambique, by hating each
other. She was straight, she was fine, she
was thoroughly good ; she was also, in her
unfailing freshness and her astonishing health,
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infinitely desirable. By the law of every land
she was my wife. There wasn't a barrier
between us except the frail one built of things
that had never been said. Of course, I knew
that, to her, the barrier doubtless looked in
superable. She considered herself the inalien
able property of the man whose bones we
were fantastically hunting for. Well : can't
you see that that very fact was peculiarly con
structed to whet my hunger ? It was madden
ing to know that shadows could effectually
keep two strong, sinewy creatures apart. Our
utter isolation in our adventure flung us upon
each other.
' Doch es tritt ein styg'scher Schatten
Nachtlich zwischen mich und ihn.'
" One night she had a bad dream ; she
moaned and cried out in her sleep, and I had
to stand outside her tent and listen, while she
woke and wept and finally quieted down with
little sobs like a child's. I couldn't even go
in and lay my hand on her forehead to soothe
her."
He shook his head, and over his face crept
the shadow of the burdened.
" Well, that was what I was in for, and I
knew I was in for it as long as I should desire
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her. Finally, I only prayed that we might
get safely back to Mozambique, where I could
leave her for ever. I knew that before my
fever ebbed, it would rise in a horrid flood. I
wanted her desperately; I should want her
more desperately before I got through with
it ; and I had, for my honour's sake, not to let
her know. It's odd how many situations there
are in life that make it an insult to tell a
woman you love her. But I think you'll
agree with me that this is rather an extra
ordinary case of it.
" All this time, I hadn't the faintest ink
ling of what she felt ; whether she knew, or
what she would have thought of me if she had
known. There's something tremendous in the
power of ideas. Think of how easy it would
have been for me I won't say to take what I
wanted, though against that background it
wouldn't have seemed such a preposterous
thing to do to insist on her talking it out
with me, some night by the fire ; how little
she could have turned her back on me if I had
wanted to ask her a question. But I was as
tongue-tied as if we had been in a drawing-
room, surrounded with all the paraphernalia of
chaperonage. And yet sometimes it didn't
seem possible with her face and her speech
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changing like that, week by week, that there
shouldn't be some change in it for me.
" I often wondered if she ever had moments,
as I did, of thinking that the man had never
lived. But I could only go on assuming that
she gave him every thought she had. I never
knew, by the way, what she felt she never
told me. I said, a little while back, that we
never saw each other in the clear light of day
only in lightning-flashes. In spite of our
semblance of intimacy, that was true. For
when a man is obsessed with the notion of
wanting to make very definite love to a
woman, her impersonal conversation is a kind
of haze at best. I know that we talked ; but
I know that, after the fiasco, when we ate our
meals, when we rode side by side along those
unspeakable trails, when we sat by the fire in
the evening, I hardly knew or cared what we
talked of. I kept a kind of office in my brain
quite tidy for the transaction of business ; the
rest was just a sort of House of Usher where
I wandered, wanting her. By the time we
struck the first Rhodesian village, I didn't
even feel sure I could hold my tongue all the
way south and east again. I only prayed to
God to deliver me from being an utter and
unspeakable brute. That was what my
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romance had led me to that I was hang
ing on to common decency by the eyelids !
" You see, there was added to my most
inconvenient and unfitting passion for the girl
all the psychology of return from a lost battle
field if you could in name so dignify that
pitiful clearing which was our frustration.
Everything was over, and why the devil
shouldn't something else begin ? That was
the refrain my blood kept pounding out. I
dare say you don't understand you live
among the civilized, and are used to reckoning
with shadows. It's different out there on the
well-nigh uninhabited veldt. A platitude, I
know. Funny how people despise platitudes,
when they're usually the truest things going !
A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to
be a platitude at all. Humph !
" We struck into north-eastern Rhodesia
days and days over the veldt ; and after the
rains it was blooming like the rose. Gladiolus
everywhere ' white man's country, past dis
puting.' No ' baked karroo' there. Pretty
starkly uninhabited, though. Of course, we
were hundreds of miles north of the mines
and the other activities on the edge of the
Transvaal. Mashonaland, it would really be
more properly called ; and it describes it
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better, sounds wilder as it was. We were
heading west across the tail of Nyassa, and
then south to the Zambesi or the railroad, it
didn't much matter which. That man was as
lost to us, every corporal vestige of him, as if
his ashes had been scattered like Wycliffe's.
But there on the rampart above Ravello both
she and I had felt that the search was impera
tive : I no less than she. We were both
pretty young."
His head dropped on his breast for a
moment. He looked as if he felt his burden.
I suppose the tortoise sometimes wonders
why. . . .
" Then, one afternoon, we dropped into the
heart of a storm tropical thunder, tropical
lightning, skies blacker than you've ever seen,
a wind that churned the heavens into a pot of
inky broth. I had been wondering, for days,
what we should do when we struck some
thing besides the eternal huddled villages of
the natives, with their tobacco-plots and
mealie-fields, their stupid curiosities, their
impudent demands for gifts something more
like a house, people you could count people,
with a touch of white in their complexions.
Strange coincidence, that it was by the real
lightning-flash that, for the only time in my
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life, I saw her clear; strange, too, that the
revelation should have come on the heels of
our first approach to anything like civilization.
It was only the plantation of a man who had
made his little pile by trading in Kimberley,
and had trekked up to the edge of the
wilderness to live there in peace with his aged
wife, and his cattle, and the things that with
out too much trouble he could coax out of the
good-humoured soil. His establishment was
the first earnest European activities seething
somewhat to the southward ; the first re
minder of Europe that we had had since
leaving the last Portuguese outpost on the
way to the Nyassa. The trip had not been
hard, as such trips go : we had run into no
wars ; no famine or drought or disease had
visited us. We had been in luck ; for I was
a shocking amateur, and anything like a real
expedition I could not have managed, of
course. Yet, even so, I had been straining
my eyes for the sight of a white man ; for
some form of life that more nearly suited my
definition of ' colonial.'
" And so we stumbled into his compound
at eight in the evening, after endless floun
dering about in the storm. We had had to
dismount from our donkeys and lead the fright-
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ened beasts by the bridle. Eventually we
could discard them for horses or ox-carts, but
for a little while still we might need them,
and we clung to them, though the temptation
was to let them go with a kick."
Chalmers hesitated. ". Why do I find it so
confoundedly hard to come at ? I'm not
writing a diary of accidents and self-congratu
lations like the explorer fellows. The only
point in the whole thing is just what I can't
manage to bring out ! " He mused for a
moment. " The whole place white with hail
after the storm . . . thick on the thatch of
the big, rambling house . . . the verandah
eaves dripping . . . then the rain stopping,
and a miraculous silence after the tumult . . .
no light anywhere except long, low, continual
flashes on the horizon at the edge of the veldt
and then she came out, dressed in some
thing of the poor old vrouw's that hung about
her lovely, slim figure like a carnival joke. I
was wondering thickly where I should spend
the night. I had introduced her as my wife,
of course . . . and they had muttered some
thing about the other room's being in use.
The good old souls had gone off" to bed with
the ceasing of the storm, after our little
caravan was housed down in the farm niggers'
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quarters. But naturally I couldn't have ex
plained to them, anyhow. . . . The lightning
was about as regular as a guttering candle set
in a draught but about a thousand candle-
power when it did come. And, by one
apocalyptic flash, I saw her face. She didn't
say anything ; she merely laid her hand on
my shoulder. And I, who had been bursting
with the wish to talk, to tell her, to lay my
head on her knees and weep, out of pure self-
pity and desire all those cub-like emotions
didn't say anything either. I only saw in
one flash the working of her lips, the pro
phetic brilliancy of her eyes. We turned and
went into the house without a word. She
wanted me, too ; that was what it came to.
Other things being equal, the utter isolation
of a man and a woman must do one of two
things must put a burning fire or the polar
ice between them. I knew what it had done
to me ; I hadn't been able to guess what it
had done to her. I had rather been betting
on the polar ice."
Chalmers ruffled both hands through his
hair and leaned back from the table. His
mouth took on a legal twist. " It's the only
thing I blame myself for bar all the egotism
that youth has to slough, and that I think I
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sloughed for ever before I reached the damned
coast. I ought to have known that half her
impulse was the mere clinging of the fright
ened child, and the other half the strangeness
of our journey, which made us both feel that
all laws had ceased to work and that all signs
had failed. I ought to have reflected, to have
put her off, to have made sure, before I ever
took her into my arms. And yet I'm glad I
didn't though I'm ashamed of being glad.
Even then, you know, I didn't envisage the
rest of life. I still thought, as for months I
had thought, that there could be no con
ventional future for that adventure. When
my curious wander jahr was over, I expected to
die. And I wanted to have some other face
than the barren visage of Romance the
painted hussy ! press itself to mine before I
went out. I got it ; and I'm not yet over
being glad, though it has made a coil that
grows tighter rather than looser with the
years."
I made no answer. There was nothing to say.
He had not got to the end, and until the end
what was there for me to do but light another
weary cigarette, and summon all the sympathy
I could to my non-committal eyes ? On the
face of it, it was merely an extraordinary
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situation in which, if a man were once caught,
he could do little a new and singular kind
of hard-luck story. But, as he told it, with
those tones, those inflections, those stresses, he
certainly did not seem to be painting himself
en beau. I looked at the patient figure opposite
me Chalmers always seemed pre-eminently
patient and, for very perplexity, held my
tongue.
" The next morning, I got breakfast early
and went to see about my men and beasts. I
was a little afraid of finding the men drunk,
but they weren't only full-fed and lazy and
half-mutinous. The guide who had led us to
the historic spot had vanished deserted in
the night, with half his pay owing him. No
one in that black crew could explain. We had
had desertions before, and I should have con
sidered us well enough off simply with one
coast nigger the less, if he hadn't been my
interpreter as well. There were very few things
I could say to the others without him, and,
though we were out of the woods, we were by
no means done with our retinue. I strode
back to the house in a fine rage. I think I
minded the inconvenience most, since it would
be the inconvenience that would most affect
her. Frankly, you see, I couldn't suppose she
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felt, any longer, a special concern with that
particular black sample of human disloyalty.
" When I entered the house, I saw her at
once. Her back was turned to me, and she
was talking with a man I had not hitherto seen
evidently some inmate of the house whom
we had not encountered the previous evening.
The other room had been in use, I reflected,
in a flash. He was stretched on a ramshackle
sofa with some sort of animal skin thrown
over him. He but I won't describe him. I
know every feature of his face, though I saw
him, all told, not more than five minutes, and
have never seen him since. I have a notion "
Chalmers's voice grew very precise, and his
mouth looked more legal than ever " that,
when he wasn't pulled down with a long ill
ness and protracted suffering, he would be very
good-looking. As it was, he was unhealthy
white, like the wrong kind of ghost. One
arm was quite limp.
" At the instant I didn't place him
naturally ! But as soon as she turned her face
to me, I did. Only one thing could have in
duced that look of horror horror in every
strained feature, like the mask of some one
who has seen the Medusa. I started to her,
but stopped almost before I started ; for I saw
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THE TORTOISE
immediately that I was the Gorgon. It was
for me that her face had changed. God
knows what, two minutes before, her face had
been saying to that half-lifeless form. It was
about me that she felt like that. Since, with
all the years to work it out in, I've seen why;
but just at the moment I was overwhelmed.
She sat down in a chair and covered her face
with her hands. I heard the man babbling
tragic and insignificant details. I can't say I
listened, but before I could pull myself to
gether and leave, I caught mention of fever,
accident, loss of memory, broken limbs, mirac
ulous co-operation of fate for good and evil
alike the whole mad history, I suppose, from
his side, of the past year. I have sometimes
wished I had caught it more clearly, but just
then I could take in nothing except the insult
ing fact that this was the man whose grave we
had not found. That was what her face had
told me in that horrid instant. I never saw
her face again. It was ' still bowed on her
hands when I went out of the door.
" I don't know how I .got off I don't re
member. I suppose I had the maniac's speed.
If I hadn't been beside myself, I think I could
recall more of what I did. The patriarchal
creature under whose roof it had all happened
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helped me. I think I gave him a good many
directions about the negroes and the kit. Or
I may have paid them off, myself. I honestly
don't know. I know that I left nearly all of
my money with him, and started off on horse
back alone. I had a dull sense that I was
causing her some practical difficulties, but I
also had a very vivid sense that she would kill
herself if she had to encounter me again. She
had looked at me as if I were a monster from
the mud. And the night before, on the
verandah, in the lightning . . ."
Chalmers stopped and looked at me. The
brilliancy had gone out of his eyes. He said
nothing more.
" Well ? " I asked finally.
" Well ? " There came a wide shrug of
the shoulders, a loosening of the lips. " I got
back somehow. I seemed to be riding, day and
night, straight to hell. But eventually I got
to Salisbury and took a train to Beira. It was
immensely steadying to take a train. I think
any more of the veldt would have driven me
quite definitely mad." He stopped ; then, in a
moment, jerked out: " That's all."
" Do you mean that you've never heard
anything more ? "
" Never a word. But I know that, event-
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ually, she drew out every penny of her letter
of credit. She had hardly dipped into it when
we left Europe."
" Good God ! " I don't know why I
should have sat stolidly through the rest and
have been bowled over by that one detail,
but I was. It made the woman extraordinary
real.
" And of course she knows several places
where a letter would reach me, if she ever had
reason to write," he went on. " Perhaps you
see now why I have to hang on. By holding
my tongue, I've been grub-staking them
in Arcadia, you might say but, damn it, I
know so little about it! The time might
come . . ."
" Why haven't you divorced her long
since ? "
His face hardened. " Didn't I mention
that she was a Catholic ? We were married
by the most orthodox padre imaginable.
There's no divorce for her. She's the kind to
chuck Heaven, perhaps, but not her church.
And, unfortunately " he spoke very slowly
and meditatively " our marriage, you see,
just missed being the kind that can be annulled.
4 Unfortunately,' I say, but, even now, I'm
glad damned glad. It's quite on the cards,
p 209
THE TORTOISE
you know, that some day some priest may
send her back to me. I might divorce ; she
couldn't. So it seems decent for me not to."
"Well, of all the " I got no further.
The whole Laokoonesque group had now
completed itself before me.
Chalmers leaned back and whistled a bar or
two from Rigoletto. Then : " Never marry a
Catholic, old man ! " he said in his lightest
voice. But immediately he bent forward and
laid his hand on mine. " You do see why I
have to hang on, don't you ? "
I merely compressed my lips tightly, that no
word should come.
" After all," he said, turning his head away,
" I should like a chance, to get back at
Romance, some day. And the time may
come what with spectrum analysis and all."
I shook my head. " You love the woman
still, Chalmers."
" Not I." His head-shake was more ve
hement than mine. " But I want to be on
deck if anything should turn up. I want to see
it through. At least I can't quite see that
I've the right to go out."
I sighed. Chalmers had always gone his
own way ; and certainly in this greatest
matter he would be tenacious, if ever. He
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seemed for the moment to have forgotten me,
and sat once more, his arms folded on the
table, his shoulders hunched, as beneath a
burden, in the speckled brown coat, his head
moving slightly from side to side again
fantastically like the tortoise that bears up the
world. I didn't quite know what to do with
him.
Then a charitable impulse came to me.
The bar, I knew, didn't close until one. I
ordered up a bottle of brandy. When it came
I poured out enough to set the brain of any
abstemious man humming. Chalmers was still
staring in front of him at the table. I wanted
him to sleep that night at any cost. Pursuing
my impulse, I pushed the glass across to him.
" Here ; you'd better take this," I said.
He reached out his hand mechanically, and
mechanically drank. I waited. The stuff
had no visible effect on him. Five minutes
later, I repeated the dose. As before, he
obeyed me with a mechanical, an almost
mesmerized implicitness. Then I took him
home in a cab and put him to bed. I never
told, myself, but it leaked out he had such a
bad hang-over and I was much and enviously
congratulated. You see, we had all tried, for
five years, to get Chalmers to take a drink.
21 I
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
IT was like Hoyting to be lying up for repairs
in Soerabaya when the Dorriens drifted
by ; like him to be there at the psychologic
moment ; like him, above all, not to follow up
their trail for a solution, but to tack off into
the China Sea to renew his acquaintance with
belligerent Mongols. It was I, years later, at
Marseilles, who supplied Hoyting with the
last act of the play ; and I can see his gray eyes
narrowing above his glass of vermouth as, for
once, he listened. I shall have to put it to
gether as best I can, though I shall, as best I
can, put Hoyting's part of it in his own mouth.
I've learned a kind of stenography by dint
of listening to him ; and though it's unfair to
quote a man inexactly, I'm not sure it isn't less
unfair than inditing Hoyting's jerks and pauses,
his zigzag structure. Some of the story, as I
say, he got from me. That part most of it
I'll give you in the beginning. After that,
if only for the sake of one or two of his own
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
phrases, I shall make shift to let him talk as he
talked to me. If I could reproduce for you
that evening at Marseilles Hoyting, his arms
folded on the cafe table, paying out his
story unevenly, as if in response to unseen
strains and unseen relaxations at the other end
oh, as if Dorrien himself had been fitfully
pulling and letting go ; and then the sharpening
of the eyes, the shrug of the great shoulders,
when I told him the end if I could, I might
let it go at that. But you who know Hoyting
will know that I had to shape it ; and vou who
don't might loathe the imperfectly visualized
scene.
Science moves at an extraordinarily uneven
gait. We laymen follow as best we can. I
don't pretend to make a history of medical
discoveries, and poor Dorrien's theories may
have been exploded long since. The public
knows only vain gossip of the laboratory's
"expectations" until the serum is born. I
don't even know how much he contributed,
but I do know that at one moment terror-
stricken multitudes were looking to him for
help. He had been the last man, in college
days, who seemed marked out for the work of
discovery : easy-going, delighting in musical
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
comedy, to which he listened with the least
subtle laugh in the world. He married, at
about thirty, the very worldly daughter of
a public-spirited American family. There
wasn't anything for two centuries, from witch-
burning to slave-rescuing, the Hewells hadn't
their fingers in. The Hewell spinsters have
always headed intense and short-lived leagues
for the suppression of unexpected evils or the
maintenance of out-dated ideals. The Hewell
men are bred to reform as the English race
horse is bred to the turf. Their marriages are
apt to be bloodlessly tragic.
Agatha Hewell that is, Agatha Dorrien
was a special case, very worldly, as I've said.
She didn't care for money, but she cared for
fame, which meant, she had the sense to see,
marrying a clever man. She made herself
rather absurd, when she came out, by dashing
at celebrities ; but she also made herself
popular with her contemporaries by letting
the dancing men alone. When she married
Dorrien, she seemed likely to eat her cake and
have it, too ; for he was young and good-
looking, and there could be by that time no
question about his ability. She and Dorrien
both danced a good deal in the earlier years
214
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
of their marriage. The serious Hewells
approved of him none the less, for he had
interested himself pretty constantly, since
his Johns Hopkins days, in tuberculosis, which
suited their public spirit admirably. The
Hewells found campaigns rather nasty work,
but they loved legislation, and Dorrien was
always appearing passionately before boards
and commissions, and getting " machine "
mayors to lift the submerged tenth into so
many cubic feet of air. He had always a
natural leaning, though, it was interesting to
recall later, to the maladies of immigrants ;
and Ellis Island had more than once summoned
him. He chafed a little, in the end, under
the vocabularies of boards and commissions,
and I once heard him say that he'd be damned
if he'd lecture again to any woman's club, no
matter if they built a sanatorium the next
minute. He was flat against woman suffrage,
and said so, but the Hewell aunts forgave him
on account of his tuberculosis activity. They
called it a crusade. Agatha said nothing.
Mrs. Dorrien was inexhaustibly pretty in a
white and gold type, all purity and lustre ;
and she wore endless French tea-gowns, each
lovelier than the last. They doubtless ex-
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
plained Dorrien's sticking to his fat and
fashionable practice when his desire was to
this or that new disease out of Italy. Yet
IVe heard her take him lightly to task for
letting the dust grow thick in his laboratory.
She certainly didn't think she wanted money.
Nor, 1 fancy, in any bloated and dispro
portionate way did she. She was, as I say,
ambitious -- muddle-headedly, sentimentally,
but incurably ambitious ; and she seemed
always, I've been told, to be watching his
career in the hope of its suddenly flaring into
the spectacular. It was she, I've also been
told, who defended Dorien from outraged
Hewells when he broke entirely with official
tuberculosis and turned his attention publicly
to leprosy. There had been one of the peri
odic " scares " ; some respectable artisan in
Kansas City had developed it quite unac
countably. There was a good deal of the
yellow peril in the yellow journals. They
sent for Dr. Dorrien. IVe a notion that the
Misses Hewell were almost reconciled to him
in that moment. Mrs. Dorrien did not go to
Kansas City with her husband. She stayed at
home, and explained to every one that leprosy
was really becoming a public menace, that the
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
danger should be considered, that steps should
be taken, especially that research should be
subsidized.
It had been a chance current that had swept
me for a little into the Dorriens' world, and
my main stream of life soon swept me out of
it. At the moment of my departure from
America, the Kansas City scare was over, and
Dr. Dorrien had still done nothing that one
could legitimately present to one's wife as
spectacular. That was all I knew of them for
years until I knew the last. The last set us
all to wondering, and by an odd chance I once
wondered aloud before Hoyting. " Oh, the
Dorriens ? Yes, of course, the Dorriens. I
knew them."
That was all, and it sufficed. Whatever
Hoyting knew was sure to be the right answer.
It would take too long to expound Hoyting
to those of you who don't know him. Those
of you who do will understand my faith. He's
like nothing so much, I've sometimes thought,
as a badly tinkered craft plying between ob
scure and unsafe ports. Sometimes he carries
junk, and sometimes treasure; you never know
beforehand. But I always bargain for the
cargo. Hoyting has wandered so much : the
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
mere dust on the crazy little capstan may
have blown from some unpronounceable para
dise. He doesn't always know, himself ; he
" steams for steaming's sake," Hoyting does.
Somewhere inside his lurching bulk is an
inexhaustible hunger for life, which has made
of two hemispheres an insufficient meal. For
some of us he's an unfailing cache in the
desert. Provided he has had life at first hand,
the jackals are welcome to do the rest. So I
had only to wait my moment. In Marseilles,
that haven of ships, Hoyting's tongue would
be loosed. I should not have to wait long.
" Vermouth," said Hoyting ; " yes, just
vermouth. I always did like Marseilles. Full
of people who really want to get somewhere,
and know how to go, and don't talk more
than is necessary. Brindisi's disgusting. I
never touch Brindisi if I can help it."
" The Dorriens." I held him to his promise.
" Oh, the Dorriens. Yes. Funny, the kind
of thing a woman who looks like that is some
times willing to muck about in. She seemed
like a good sport, too. Ever been in Turke
stan ? I suppose not. If you go to places in
this world, you haven't time left for anything
218
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
else. So very likely you never saw a Kirghiz
nomad hunting on horseback with a golden
eagle on his wrist. Using it like a falcon,
you know. They go after wildish game-
wolves and such. Ripping. But not very
practical, after all. Mrs. Dorrien was a little
like that. She was ripping, too. But I've
always had a notion that Dorrien might have
had better hunting with almost any other
kind of woman.
" I don't understand modern medical science
scrapping with ultravisible germs that good
may come. Blood is different : when you see
that, it's your business to stop it anyhow. A
flow of blood is the devil at war with man.
You know it instinctively. I myself don't
hold much with anything that doesn't come
by instinct. And as for deciding things by
theory! There wasn't a mouldering idea any
one had held since the Christian era that Mrs.
Dorrien didn't drag out of its grave to get
help from. That was the trouble : all the
mouldering ideas were knocking about to
gether in her mind. And therefore, exit
Dorrien.
" Do you know Soerabaya ? No ? It was
there I saw them. I had known Dorrien long
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
ago somewhere. There wasn't much of any
one else in that crazy thing that called itself
an hotel kept by a Portuguese Jew named
D'Acunha. It was in the town, mind you,
not in the suburbs, and the guests ran accord
ingly. Very good drinks, and plenty of mos
quito-netting, but everything else in the place
that mosquito-netting wouldn't keep out.
Mrs. Dorrien always dressed for dinner, I
remember. Dorrien wasn't happy. She
had come to please him, though just why to
Soerabaya I never made out, and was always
reminding him of it, and he wasn't pleased.
They had left the little girl at home, and I
dare say the mother wanted to get back to
her. She kept saying she was afraid Aunt
Emma wouldn't have Virginia's teeth properly
straightened. Wonderful thing a woman is !
Lizards climbing all round over the walls, and
the eternal promise of a snake coiling up on
the tail of her dress, and she'll look past it all
with her far-sighted eyes and say she is afraid
a safe little kid at home with steam-heat and a
governess isn't having her teeth straightened.
" I didn't come in on the Dorriens' affairs at
all at first, you understand. I was there on
my own business, and I supposed they were.
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
At least I supposed he was. I never could
see what she got out of it : I'll swear she
never looked at scenery, and there wasn't any
thing in the mucky little bazaars she wanted.
Apparently they had no letters to European
residents ; or if they had, they didn't use
them. If ever a woman wasn't meant for the
tropics " His voice trailed off for a little,
then boomed out again, softly resonant, like a
ship's gong going intermittently somewhere
beyond in the offing. " I admired her more
than a little. But I saw that Dorrien had no
show. Women are apt to shout with the
majority. How is a husband going to be a
majority, if he takes a line of his own ? Oh,
Dorrien was down and out from the start.
" They must have been worrying along in
Soerabaya for two weeks. I think Dorrien
stayed on like a cross child who knows he's
got to go home. He drags at his nurse's
hand, and ask questions about every object
they pass. He wasn't interested in the place,
but at least it wasn't a P. & O. port. He
saw perfectly that the next stop would be.
If I had had him alone, I could have amused
him. Dorrien was the sort that finds an
absorbing interest in native eh customs,
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
and that sort of thing. But his wife naturally
didn't care about sociology. She wandered
around under the teaks and tamarinds, waiting
for his last shadow of an excuse to fade out
utterly. When he couldn't chuck the bluff
any more, she'd have him, and she knew it.
She'd march him home.
" I myself didn't quite know at first why
Dorrien wanted to stay out there. One would
have to have more general curiosity than the
Dorriens appeared to, in order to find Soera-
baya interesting. I knew that if his wife
weren't along, he'd drag me into every kind
of native dive ; but I knew, too, that he
hadn't come for the dives. He didn't seem
to be very much in love with the place. Who
could be ? He swore at everything, begin
ning with the monkeys and ending with the
prices. He just didn't want to go home as
if he knew he'd be put to bed in the dark and
have to go to sleep, when he got there.
Queer guy ! You remember how big he was ?
He had a trick of looking round any room as
if it were too small for him. And that voice
of his, with never a modulation, and those
red-brown eyes that seemed to take in every
thing and give back no comment ? Then,
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
one night, I thought I had struck it. He
came across to my corner of porch about mid
night.
" ' My wife's gone to bed, and I think
she's gone to sleep,' he said. ' There's no
sleep in me, and I shall swear at the lizards if
I turn in. I should wake her. You know
what these fool partitions are. Let's talk.
You never have anything to do.' It wasn't
very polite, but it was quite true. I haven't
anything to do except see what things are
like. When I've made an exhaustive study of
all the degrees of civilization, I'm going home
to vote. I don't see that, until then, I'm
equipped to.
" ' All right,' I said. ' I never sleep, I never
write letters, and I never criticize. Go
ahead.'
" Odd thing : that happened to be just
what he wanted to ' go ahead' indefinitely.
I learned a lot of things about Dorrien that
night. I made out from his talk that he must
have mucked around a good deal with tuber
culosis at home, but he'd dropped it. He told
me some queer things about tuberculosis germs,
but he had got tired of it. Exotic diseases
were more in his line. He asked the most
223
extraordinary number of questions about beri
beri and things like that. I never quite
understood it all, but I think the common
ness of tuberculosis bored him. The anti
podes take men's imaginations in different
ways who should know if I don't and they
had simply taken his, across all the world, by
their physical malignancies. He didn't give a
copper cash for what you folk call psychology,
but his brown eyes used to rake the meanest
little streets in Soerabaya for any sign of
disease. It might have been unpleasant if he
hadn't been such a loud-voiced businesslike
chap. If you ask me, I should say he had
come to the East just as a sportsman goes to
Africa for big game. There's good hunting
in Canada, I'm told, but some people want to
hunt hippopotami just because hippopotami
have such queer complexions. Dorrien could
get interested in what the human body is
capable of, regardless of unpleasantness. But
he could as well have stayed at home and
stuck to cancer, if he had wanted mere
unpleasantness.
'"The only thing I know anything about
is leprosy,' he said, that night, after a lot of
queer talk. I very seldom argue ; I just smoke
224
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
and wait. You've got to assume that people
know their own business best. Dorrien had
run down to Molokai while his wife stayed in
Honolulu. I've never been there myself. He
told me a lot about it that same night. He
wasn't romantic pour deux sous, Dorrien wasn't ;
but he talked about it as if his heart were in
it. I remember an old missionary chap who
went on in the same way about the Fijis.
Not that Dorrien held with the missionaries ;
but they both spoke with passion as if sin
and disease could draw men like lovers, panting
with blind desire, sheer across the planet, just
to help, and then die. Men will go out and
overturn the stew-pots, and preach vegetarian
ism to cannibals, and go into the stew-pot
themselves in the end, who couldn't stand a
week of Salvation Army slum-work. Dorrien
was something like that, only with the idealism
left out. He seemed all passionate perception,
like a child. Yet somewhere in him was that
thin little adamantine streak of pure intel-
lectualism. If it hadn't been there, he'd never
have held together at all : there must have
been something inflexible for all that clay to
mass itself upon. And so he somehow cared,
when it came to leprosy. I suppose, some
Q 225
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
time or other, the thing had baffled him
tantalized him like an unscrupulous woman.
" It's no use saying, ' Why didn't he love
elsewhere ? ' He happened not to. Mean
while his wife was taking him home to a
fashionable practice which he was sadly en
dangering by absence. And there were the
little girl's teeth, you see. There had been
some excuse of a holiday combined with study
of special conditions in the Orient, but all
excuses had expired. He was facing a P. & O.
boat, and he was just sparring for time. It
was all rather a mess, as I had learned by three
in the morning. But it distinctly wasn't a
mess that an outsider had anything to do with.
To tell the truth, if Mrs. Dorrien hadn't
seemed such a good sport, I'd have had more
faith in him ; but who can ever tell ? He
left me finally and went to bed, and the next
day Mrs. Dorrien went into the town to look
up steamer connections while he made up
sleep. At least, that was the account she
gave.
" I went off into the interior for a few days ;
pretended I was going to look up a lot of ruins
that, of course, I'd seen before tombs of Arab
priests and such. The hotel had got on my
nerves, and the suburbs, full of Europeans,
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
were even less what I was looking for. Besides,
the Dorriens weren't my affair ; yet Dorrien
was beginning to clutch me as if they were.
I wouldn't run away from any solitary creature,
either man or woman and I've been in some
strange galleys, too but when it comes to
man and wife, ' ruf me/it die Polizei, as the
Germans have it. The Dorriens looked to me
pretty near the breaking-point. I hoped they
would either leave or have it out before I got
back. When I got away, I forgot about it.
I'm foot-loose, and nobody's business is really
mine. Fancy being responsible to and for a
white-and-gold creature like Mrs. Dorrien !
The very thought of it makes you want to
take ship.
" That particular interior wasn't much good
eternal rice-fields, and little villages, one just
like another, full of little people. The vege
tation was something you couldn't dream, even
on hashish, but I'm dead used to vegetation.
I nosed around for a few days, and then decided
to quit the island entirely. I had engagements
elsewhere, if I chose to think so. Anyhow,
I wanted something doing. So I went back
to Soerabaya. You get boats from there all
over.
" They said at the hotel that the Dorriens
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
were leaving the next day. I didn't look them
up ; but when I came down to dinner, Mrs.
Dorrien was in her place, waiting for her
husband. She beckoned to me and smiled,
and I had to go over, though she looked more
like a Frenchwoman than ever, and I was
more a sweep than usual. I had to go ; but
I went thinking what a damn subtle thing
marriage is at home, and how glad I was to
be single. There are other sides to it, of
course ; but that's the permanent one. Think
of being married to a woman who would dress
like that for an undercooked, half-caste dinner
in a steaming Soerabaya hotel ! Think, that
is, of what she must be like at close range.
She made me sit down.
" ' We are leaving to-morrow, Mr. Hoy-
ting/
" ' Sorry.' I couldn't screw out more.
" ' Yes. We've had our mail. We have
to go.' She straightened her shoulders and
swept the room with a bored look, as if it
were a ballroom full of men who danced
badly. I didn't know whether she was lying
about the mail or not. I never get letters,
thank God ! I haven't any address. What
was certain was that I did not want her to tell
me what was in their mail. I sidestepped.
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
" ' I don't suppose Soerabaya will soon see
the like of that dress again, Mrs. Dorrien.'
It was the most civilized thing I'd seen in a
long time, though of course I don't frequent
table d'hotes in most places. Anyhow, you
know how colonial Dutch women get them
selves up. ' Aren't you afraid the lizards will
spoil it ? '
" ' This rag ? ' The ' rag ' was gold-coloured,
as she was, and her laugh clinked like gold.
' I shall give it to the stewardess if she is half
decent to me. We shall have to stop in Paris
on the way back. I haven't had so much as
a new sarong since we left America. My
clothes are faded, tattered, fly-blown, tarnished
with the sea.' She shrugged her shoulders.
' Is it really so long since you've seen a well-
dressed woman ? Surely in India That
was the best she could do for badinage, and
she looked uneasily towards the door as she
spoke.
" Suddenly Dorrien appeared in the door.
She was silent through our greetings, though
I thought she watched him. Whatever it was
would break before morning, if it wasn't already
at that instant giving way. They hadn't many
hours' grace, those two. Why the devil hadn't
I stayed in some undiscoverable, soaking little
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
basket-hovel in the nearest village until the
next morning ? I didn't know the people, I
didn't like them ; but both of them would
cling to me because I was white and because
they couldn't agree about anything in the
world. I've always wished I had stayed away
twenty-four hours more, that time always.
There was no reason under high heaven why
I should be in it. And they were nice people,
mind you ; and neither one of them meant to
be a cad. Why, there was nothing either one
of them wanted that wasn't perfectly decent
and desirable in itself. They only wanted
different things for each other, with the best
conscience in the world. And people go on
marrying, every day !
" ' I hear you're going, Dorrien.' There
was no use in trying to be irrelevant. They
would have turned any remark into a comment
on themselves.
" ' Did Agatha tell you so ? '
" * Yes. And D'Acunha mentioned it when
I got in.'
" c There's a P. & O. boat from Singapore
next week Thursday.' She looked straight at
him.
" ' There's a Royal Dutch Mail from Batavia
next week Saturday,' he flung back.
230
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
" She drew a scarf round her shoulders,
despite the steaming heat. c Who wants to go
to Rotterdam ? If we're going, let's go sanely.'
" ' We can't go sanely.' And Dorrien was
white beneath his sunburn as he said it.
" Some other people came in, and I didn't
scruple to talk to them. If the Dorriens were
going to break, I, out of sheer patriotism,
didn't want them to break before a public like
that. Perhaps I still had some hope of getting
away. I've forgotten about that, but it seems
reasonable. I do remember that I staved it
off until after dinner. But they didn't let me
alone. They wanted a referee, I imagine ;
some one who would keep them from scream
ing insults at each other, or decide between
them when they did.
" There's something morally disintegrating
about heat. I fancy that's been said before,
but I know how true it is. My own nerves
were on edge with it. Why didn't they go
up in the mountains somewhere and dance
with Dutch residents, instead of sticking to
ports ? But I suppose that would only have
postponed the catastrophe. Anyhow, it
couldn't hurt either of them to get out of
that rotten temperature, no matter where they
went. She was whiter than chalk, and Dorrien
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THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
was nervous as a cat. Her voice jangled, and
he twitched all over when she spoke. I didn't
see that there was a penny to choose between
them for merit, except that she was stronger
than he. They'd both break, but he'd break
half a minute sooner. Ugh ! it was bad ! "
Hoyting breathed in the wind that blew
gently against us off the Mediterranean waves.
" You don't know anything about heat. Dry
heat doesn't matter. When there's nothing
but steam to breathe everything hot and
vaporous and reeking temperate people lose
their poise. Soerabaya was like holding your
head over a teakettle. Yes, I was sorriest for
Dorrien. But why didn't they go to the
mountains and have it out, if they had to, in
paradise ? "
He was silent for some moments over his
vermouth. I didn't interrupt him. I knew
the rest would come. Uneasy reminiscence of
the kind then wrinkling his face would only
expedite his narrative. When he began again,
it was abruptly, with a change of tone ; but
his eyes had never moved from the harbour
lights.
" I was sorriest for Dorrien. I asked him
over to smoke in my porch. Your porch is
your sitting-room, you know, and you don't
232
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
go inside until you have to. I said, c Let's
throw bananas to the monkeys.' The heat had
gone to my head a little, too heat and annoy
ance. He moved off at once. ' All right,' he
said. ' Can't I come and throw bananas to the
monkeys ? ' said Mrs. Dorrien. ' Of course.'
We were all unnaturally serious, you see a bad
sign. I was in it, then, for as long as they
chose to stay. What fool invented hospitality,
I wonder ?
" Dorrien had a little sense left. He began
at once. ' I've got a case of conscience to put
to you, Hoyting.' Even then I hoped I could
stave it off.
" ' Conscience is a local matter,' I answered ;
* territoriality of law. Don't appeal to me. I'm
an outsider.'
" ' Aren't we all in Soerabaya together ? '
Her voice rasped its way in.
" ' Yes ; but I hope you don't mean to
decide anything according to Soerabaya.'
" ' Do you really think at the moment we're
capable of doing otherwise ? ' She had me
there : it was the mean truth. We weren't.
That reeking heat would decide for us. I
don't think she had meant him to appeal to
me, but I fancy she didn't mind. If he hadn't
done it, she would have. It was inevitable.
233
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
" Dorrien went on : * I had a letter when
the mails came in two days ago, offering me a
big post. Agatha and I don't agree about it.'
" ' You don't think it big enough ? ' I was
so relieved that I thought I could speak lightly
Heaven forgive my folly ! If it was just
some little feud of their ambitions, they'd be
all right as soon as they were off the land.
But her face didn't relax.
" * He has been offered the chance of exil
ing himself on Molokai with eight hundred
lepers.' She had brought the jangling tones
into a kind of ironic gamut. ' That is the king
dom he is offered. And he thinks my God !
he wants to go ! ' She broke down utterly
and wept, great sobs, like a man's, coming up
from her chest and shaking her frail body.
Women don't usually cry that way ; there's
trouble in it when they do.
" ' But he isn't going.' It was only decent
to comfort her. c You say you are sailing for
Europe.'
" Dorrien did not speak. Her sobs slowed
gradually. She was making a terrible effort
for the power to speak coherently, to get in
her pleas, her arguments, her threats. I sup
pose I was her last dim substitute for public
opinion. She was trying to bring the world
234
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
to bear on him in Soerabaya, and there was
only I to be the world.
" Now, how could I have known that I was
going to run into a thing like that, out there
on the other edge of Java ? Do I look like
Mrs. Grundy ? She hated me, mind you ;
she was terribly afraid of me ; she couldn't a
bit trust me to see the thing her way ; but there
was no one else. I was an American, and I
had had the bad luck to know Dorrien long
before. She wasn't trying any feminine wiles ;
she was just pleading for civilization, as she
understood it, against mad and monstrous ideas
that she hadn't dreamed existed, except inac
cessibly. Caste goes deeper than sex among
us, anyhow. I don't know what she thought
about Dorrien, really. Probably he merely
seemed to her, for the moment, to have ob
literated deliberately all his caste-marks. I've
always held that, if a man did the work, it
wasn't up to the woman to tell him how to do
it ; and I remembered how Dorrien had felt
about leprosy. Probably he could do good
work there. I fancy he knew what he wanted.
Some one had to be at Molokai ; why, or
why not, Dorrien ?
" I looked at him. He was sitting perfectly
straight and uncomfortable, his mad eyes fixed,
235
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
as if they were glass, on the palm-boughs out
beyond the smoky porch-lamp. Nothing to
be done there. And when I turned back to
her, I simply oh, abominably, I grant you
laughed aloud. The notion of expecting a
woman like that to live on a leper island ! It
had been bad enough to see her in Soerabaya. I
was sorry, fundamentally and genuinely sorry,
for Dorrien; but it ought to have been patent
even to him that Mrs. Dorrien couldn't go to
Molokai. Nothing but an exclusive love, the
kind we've all heard about and never experi
enced, would have made her do it. She and
Dorrien had nothing of that sort to go upon, I
was absolutely sure.
" c But you're sailing.' I clung to Dorrien's
explicit words.
" ' By Heaven, I'm not ! ' His lips just
moved. He looked like a statue conceived in
madness, carved with scorn.
" ' I grant some one has to go ' she was
trying to be extraordinarily generous ' but
why he ? It's not his place or his life. It's
not what he's fit for. It's not asked of him.
He has me ; he has Virginia. Virginia ! ' She
had turned to me, her shoulder blotting out
Dorrien. It seemed that they had to com-
236
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
municate through me ; they had ceased to
address each other. ' Has he a right,' she
went on, c to take us to a place like that ? Has
a husband, a father, no responsibilities ? Even
if I don't matter, must Virginia live and die
among those monsters ? '
" How could I say, I ask you, that
Virginia must ? I had never seen Virginia.
I had nothing to do with these people. Why
didn't they see that ? I don't believe, you
know, that they ever saw it. I might have
been Rhadamanthus in a poor disguise.
" Mrs. Dorrien stopped, and cried quietly
into her handkerchief. Her husband took up
the talk.
" ' God knows I've wasted life long enough.
It's a chance in a million, man the one
chance in the whole world. Give me ten
years there, and I'll know, I tell you. I'll find
a cure. I'll track the filthy germ. I've never
had half a show, pulling old ladies through
bronchitis. It's no work for a man. I've
been ashamed to look at myself in a glass for
two years. I've gone a little way ; I swear
I'm on the right track. It's the kind of thing
I can do. I haven't a bedside manner ;
Agatha has that. Those poor wretches don't
2 37
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
need a bedside manner. They need some one
to avenge them. She's ambitious. Well, let
her give me my head for ten years, and she
can cover herself with my medals. We'll
come back, when I've done my work, and she
can queen it all over Europe.'
" He was incoherent, overweening, incon
sequent, but terrifyingly in earnest. More
probably than not, she would have a suicide
on her hands, I thought, if she did take him
home. It didn't look as if she would get him
past Suez.
" Mrs. Dorrien sat with her hands folded in
her lap, breathing hard, but quite silent.
They were appalling, that pair. I'd have
given a good deal to hear a little repartee just
then. But the mortal insult would have been
to suggest that either one should speak to the
other. The queerest night I ever spent, and
I've been through some I didn't believe in,
myself, the next day. Well, all I wanted was
to have it over ; I didn't care how brutally I
hastened it.
" ' Why don't you go alone ? '
" He looked at me then ; he had only
spoken to me before. Dominated by that
look, I began to piece together my own scraps
238
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
of traveller's knowledge. Then I kicked
myself. I didn't need all the unphraseable
explanations that gathered silently in his eyes.
I knew, of course, what he just refrained from
replying. It was the last leash on him the
thinnest thread of control. If that snapped, if
I jerked it, we should be saying, all three of us
together, monstrous things. I held hard on
the leash.
" ' He can't go alone.' Her voice was just
a whisper. She was shocked to the core of
her, and I saw that, to that extent at least,
they had had it out. I was sorry for her then
sorry without regard to my fast-ebbing
admiration. She had been flung on the horns
of a dilemma, and they were goring her cruelly.
They couldn't, poor devils, get peace with
honour."
Hoyting ordered more vermouth, and
lighted the next of the undiminishing pro
cession of cigarettes. He wandered away
from the actual story for a little, and I let him,
knowing that in the end he would get his fox
and goose and bag of corn all safe across, like
the man in the riddle.
" Dorrien wasn't the sort of man you'd
expect to find in scientific research. He was
239
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
too human, too impressionable. A scientist
oughtn't to notice Javanese singing girls.
They ought to be to him as the female of the
flounder. I don't mean for a minute that
Dorrien was a cad, that he was anything but
complete. He was a scientist of sorts, at
least by predilection ; but he was also healthy
and immensely masculine. He couldn't per
sonify Science and then treat her as if she
were really a woman. He knew the differ
ence. I've seen men who didn't. They are
the lucky ones. Dorrien was unlucky : he
had no end of conflicting desires. He wanted
abnormal conditions plus a normal life ; and he
wanted a little fame thrown in. I dare say he
also wanted Mrs. Dorrien and the little girl
whose teeth had to be straightened. Just at
that moment, he thought he wanted more
than all the rest a chance to do his appointed
work. But he was honest, damn him ! honest.
He knew that Science could never, for him,
be a mistress, and he wasn't a man to exist on
merely Platonic relations. I've always admired
him for not blinking facts when he must have
been sorely tempted to. But what they must
have gone through, of bitter exposition, those
two, in the days of my absence ! I didn't see
240
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
any way out of it. He wanted incompatible
goods. And so, by heavens ! did she."
Hoyting dropped his chin on his chest and
closed his eyes wearily for a moment.
" If she had been a different sort, even, they
might have pulled through. But look at it.
She was ambitious and sentimental. She
wanted his success. She'd have been willing
enough to send him out alone if he had lied
to her about possibilities. He had had the
honesty to realize them, and the utter brutality
to tell her that was perfectly clear from the
state of both of them. Probably he didn't
think he had a right to withhold the informa
tion from her ; or he might have thought it
would be a clinching argument for her going
with him. If you ask me, I think she was
very near hating him for having enlightened
her as to the dangers. Women of her kind
don't like such assumptions. And it didn't
give her a beau role. There wasn't anything,
and wouldn't be, God knows, for her to be
jealous of. But there was everything pros-
pectively, if he went, to pity him for. A wife
couldn't fling him into that ; not when he
wouldn't even pose, not when he didn't scruple
to say what she was flinging him into. How-
R 241
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
ever much she may have wanted to say c Go,'
she couldn't. If he had only pretended to be
other than he was, she could have made it out
to herself that both of them were martyrs, he
to his work, she to oh, well, to the little
girl. She was the kind of woman who could
condone an infidelity, I imagine, in a cold,
superior way ; but her principles would hardly
permit her to face it beforehand. And that
wasn't all that wasn't all. Of course she had
asked him first of all she would have about
the danger of infection ; and it was evident
from every suffering line in both their faces
that he hadn't hesitated to dot his i's. She
knew what was dangerous and what was not,
as she knew that if Dorrien went alone he was
lost. I pitied her. She had hunted, during
two days, for a beau role, and she couldn't find
one. Her only hope was to get him home and
trust that he would get over it, like some kind
of fit. And he wouldn't ; that was clear.
The only suggestion I could think of was that
they should divorce, and that he should pro
ceed to find another woman who adored him,
and take her out there. That isn't the kind of
suggestion you make to people ; it doesn't
sound sympathetic. It isn't practical, either ;
242
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
it leaves too much to be done too quickly.
Moreover, it had almost certainly never oc
curred to either of them that they didn't love
each other as much as any other two people
did.
" And they expected me to say something !
They had spent forty-eight hours trying, quite
in vain, to find a way out, and then had the
appalling cheek and the pathetic confidence to
bring it to me !
" ' I can't argue this matter,' I said finally.
' You must see that.'
" They didn't see it. It was a perfectly
impersonal clutch they were strangling me
with. They hadn't any notion of their own
dismaying breach of reticence. We were all
in Soerabaya which was hell together ; and
conventions didn't exist. Also, I couldn't get
any more out of it than if we had been more
literally in Hell and they ineluctable and
imperishable shades. I had to go on.
" ' She won't go,' I said at last to Dorrien.
4 And you absolutely can't go alone ? '
" He didn't speak, but he turned his eyes on
me again. I seemed to read in them that the
question had been put to him before, and that
he would not again go through the agony of
243
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
answering. Not that the answer in those
silent eyes wasn't clear. Then, after a little,
he did speak. c Ask her if she counsels me to
go alone.'
" My very spirit revolted at the way they had
laid hands on me. Anything I said was bound
to be damnable for one or the other of them.
I swore I'd get out of the thing non-partisan
if I insulted them both.
" ' I won't ask her,' I said. ' I won't have
anything more to do with it. It's a devilish
mess, and one of you has to go under. But I
won't lift a linger to determine which one.
You may take that from me straight, both of
you.'
" We ought by rights to have been tear
ing about that porch dramatically ; but we
all sat perfectly still in sheer exhaustion,
dripping with sweat and breathing in quiet,
regular pants. I wish I wish it had never
been.
" ' You won't even tell him that he can't go
at all ? Such a simple thing as that ? ' She
flung out her hands in a queer, uncertain way.
She was very far gone.
" ' I won't tell him anything. Good-night.'
I pulled myself out of my chair and leaned
244
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
over the railing. I don't know how long I
looked down into the hot little garden. I
didn't mean to be a beast. Were you ever in
a place where you couldn't stir a muscle with
out committing murder ? No, I suppose not.
Well, that's what I felt like. It seemed
inevitable that pretty soon they'd trap me into
saying something that sounded like advice ;
and it looked to me as if any advice, once fol
lowed, would be fatal. There wasn't any right
way out, they being what they were. It was
up to whatever Power had made them. It
was absolutely not up to me. I began count
ing lizards on the railing. Every bone in my
body ached with stiffness when I finally turned
round. They had gone."
Hoyting lighted a cigarette. He had
finished it, and lighted another, before he
spoke again.
" The next morning I got off on a filthy
little tramp steamer at four o'clock. It wasn't
a steamer the Dorriens could possibly take. I
don't think they would even have known
about it. Then I made straight for China ; I
was pretty sure neither one of them would
think of China. And by that time I had got
back nerve enough to be quite sure that I had
245
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
done right in keeping my hands off. But I
never asked any one what became of them.
Now you say you know."
" Oh, yes, I know. Dorrien's dead."
" They went back ? "
" Yes, they went back. That was eight
years ago ? "
Hoyting began to count up the continents
on his fingers. " Australia last year South
America Siberia the Transvaal, before that.
Yes, it would have been eight years ago."
To my surprise, I found myself reluctant to
bring out the truth. Hoyting, as he talked,
had been so vividly aware of the Dorriens, had
made it so evident how real to him and repel-
lant was that remembered scene, that my
hesitation was not unnatural.
" He practised at home for a number of
years, doing some research when he had time.
He went back into public work to some extent
boards and commissions again. Her family
seemed to manage him entirely." Then I
stopped.
Hoyting waited. The lights in the harbour
began to lessen, great patches of shadow spac
ing them. I waited, too, to gather strength.
It had all become horrible to me now, and
246
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
permeated with the sordidness that spoils
tragedy.
" He shot himself."
" He cared so much as that ? " Hoyting's
huge finger flicked off the cigarette ash before
there was need.
" He had oh, I only heard it, Hoyting ! "
I cried. " I don't know the whole of it.
Who does ? But those damned Hewells took
it up I suppose by way of condoning the
suicide and made a martyr of him."
" Go on."
" He had somehow in the laboratory you
know the danger ; and Dorrien was a reckless
chap, those last years, not like himself, his
friends said. They all used to worry over his
riding, his shooting, his yachting everything."
I broke off. It was extremely hard to tell
the man who apparently knew most about
Dorrien, even though he had never called
Dorrien friend. " He had somehow, through
a cut, the slip of an instrument I don't know
the sickening scientific detail of it inoculated
himself with a disease he was working with.
He made nothing of it at the time, I'm told.
Everybody had forgotten it. Suddenly when
he found out what he was in for, I suppose
247
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
he shot himself. After what you've told me,
I should say it was probably from disgust.
Why blame him ? "
" What was it ? " Hoyting had not stirred,
but his voice had changed immeasurably.
" Tuberculosis."
The great shoulders shrugged once. I felt
impelled to explain a miserable little feverish
strut. And before Hoyting, of all men !.
" It gives the measure of his revolt a man
who had cured so many, and could have cured
himself mechanically, you might say ; a man
whose special business in life had been to snap
his fingers at that particular plague. That's
why, until you told me all this, I never under
stood. Now it's clear enough."
I shut my eyes, glad to put the ironic thing
away, glad to be at peace, with no further need
to speak of it. When I opened them again, I
was alone. Hoyting, the foot-loose, was gone.
248
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
FOR the sake of moral values I ought to
wish, I suppose, that Paramore had been
a more conspicuous figure. There is moral
significance in the true tale of Paramore the
tale which has been left to me in trust by
Hoyting. I cursed Hoyting when he did it ;
for Paramore 's reputation was nothing to me,
and what Paramore knew or didn't know was
in my eyes unspeakably unimportant. I wish
it clearly understood, you see, that if Paramore
deliberately confused exogamy and endogamy
in the Australian bush, it doesn't in the least
matter to me. Paramore is only a symbol.
As a symbol, I am compelled to feel him
important. That is why I wish that his name
were ringing in the ears and vibrating on the
lips of all of you. His bad anthropology
doesn't matter a dozen big people are de
lightedly setting that straight but the adven
ture of his soul immensely does. Rightly
read, it's as sound as a homily and as dramatic
as Euripides. The commonest field may be
249
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
chosen by opposing generals to be decisive ;
and in a day history is born where before only
the quiet wheat has sprung. Paramore is like
that. The hostile forces converged by chance
upon his breast.
I have implied that Paramore was never
conspicuous. That is to be more merciful
than just. The general public cares no more,
I suppose, than I do about the marriage
customs of Australian aborigines. But nowa
days the general public has in pay, as it were,
an army of scientists in every field. We all
expect to be told in our daily papers of their
most important victories, and have a com
fortable feeling that we, as the age, are sub
sidizing research. By the same token, if they
deceive us, we the age are personally in
jured and fall to " muck-raking." It is typical
that no one had been much interested in
Paramore until he was discredited, and that
then, quite without intelligible documents, we
all began to despise him. The situation, for
that matter, was not without elements of
humour. The facts, as I and the general
public knew them, were these before
Hoyting, with his damnable inside informa
tion, came into it.
Paramore sprang one day, full-armed, from
250
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
some special academic obscurity. He had
scraped together enough money to bury
himself in the Australian bush and grapple
face to face with primitive religion in its most
concrete form. Each to his taste ; and I dare
say some casual newspaper readers wished him
godspeed. There followed the proper interval
of time ; then an emaciated Paramore suddenly
emerging, laden with note-books ; then the
published volume, very striking and revolu
tionary, a treasure-house of authentic and
indecent anecdote. He could write, too,
which was part of his evil fate ; so that a
great many people read him. That, however,
was not Paramore's fault. His heart, I be
lieve, was in Great Russell Street, where the
Royal Anthropologists have power to accept
or reject. He probably wanted the alphabet
picturesquely arranged after his name. At all
events, he got it in large measure. You see,
his evidence completely upset a lot of hard-
won theories about mother-right and group-
marriage ; and he didn't hesitate to contradict
the very greatest. He actually made a few
people speak lightly of The Golden Bough. No
scientist had ever spent so long at primitive
man's very hearth as Paramore had. It was a
tremendous achievement. He had data that
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
must have been more dangerous to collect
than the official conversation of nihilists. It
was his daring that won him the momentary
admiration of the public to which exogamy is
a ludicrously unimportant noun. Very soon,
of course, every one forgot.
It was not more than two years after his
book was printed that the newspapers took
him up again. Most of them appended to
the despatch a brief biography of Paramore.
No biographies were needed in Great Russell
Street. This was the point where the comic
spirit decided to meddle. A few Germans
had always been protesting at inconsistencies
in Paramore's book, and no one had paid any
attention to them. There is always a learned
German protesting somewhere. The general
attitude among the great was : any one may
challenge or improve Paramore's conclusions
in fact, it's going to be our delightful task for
ten years to get more out of Paramore than he
can get out of himself but do get down on
your knees before the immense amount of
material he has taken the almost fatal trouble
to collect for us. No other European was in
a position to discredit Paramore. It took an
Australian planter to do that. Whitaker was
his quite accidentally notorious name. The
252
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
comic spirit pushed him on a North German
Lloyder at Melbourne, to spend a few happy
months in London. It was perfectly natural
that people who talked to him at all should
mention Paramore. The unnatural thing was
that he knew all about Paramore. He didn't
tell all he knew as I learned afterward but
he told at least enough to prove that Paramore
hadn't spent so much time in the bush as
would have been absolutely necessary to com
pile one-quarter of his note-books. Whitaker
was sufficiently reticent about what Paramore
had been doing most of the time ; but he
knew for a fact, and took a sporting interest
in proving it, that Paramore had never been
west of the Musgrave Range. That in itself
sufficed to ruin Paramore. It was perfectly
easy, then, for the little chorus from Bonn,
Heidelberg, etc., to prove in their meticulous
way that both his cribbing and lying (his
whole treatment of Spencer and Gillen was
positively artistic) had all been mere dust-
throwing. Of course, what Paramore really
had achieved ceased from that moment to
count. He had blasphemed ; and the holy
inquisition of science would do the rest. It
all took a certain amount of time, but that
was the net result.
253
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
Paramore made no defence, oddly enough.
Some kind people arranged an accidental en
counter between him and Whitaker. The
comic spirit was hostess, and the newspapers
described it. It gave the cartoonists a happy
week. Then an international complication
intervened, and the next thing the newspapers
found time to say about him was that he had
gone to the Upper Niger, still on folk-lore
bent. That fact would have been stupendous
if it hadn't been so unimportant. Two years
later, the fickle press returned to him just long
enough to say that he had died. I certainly
thought then that we had heard the last of
him. But the comic spirit had laid her
inexorable finger on Hoyting. And suddenly,
as if in retribution for my spasmodic interest
in Paramore's beautiful fraud, Hoyting sent
for me.
I went to one of the rue de Rivoli hotels
and met him by appointment. Of course, he
hadn't told me what it was about. Hoyting
never writes ; and he puts as little into a tele
gram as a frugal old maid. Any sign from
Hoyting, however, would have sufficed to
bring me to Paris ; and I stayed in my hotel,
never budging even for the Salon, so close at
254
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
hand, until Hoyting appeared in my sitting-
room.
I asked Hoyting no questions. I hadn't an
idea of what he wanted. It might, given
Hoyting, be anything. He began without
preliminaries except looking frightfully tired.
That, for Hoyting, was a rather appalling
preliminary.
" Three months ago I was in Dakar. I
don't know just why I had drifted to Senegal,
except that I've come to feel that if there
must be colonial governments they had better
be French. If there was any special thing
that pushed me, I've forgotten it.
" They were decentish people, those French
officers and their wives. A little stiff always,
never expatriated, never quite at ease in their
African inn, but not half so likely to gofantee
as the romantic Briton. And once a fortnight
the little boats from Bordeaux would come in,
bringing more of them. I rather liked them ;
but, even so, there wasn't any particular reason
for my staying so long in Dakar. I hung on
like an alarm that has been set. I couldn't go
off or on until the moment I was set for.
I don't suppose the alarm clock knows until
the vibration begins within it. Something
255
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
kept me there in that dull, glaring, little
official town, with its dry dock and torpedo
basin, which, of course, they had managed to
endow with the flavour of provincial France.
They do that everywhere you'll havenoticed?
" I used to go up sometimes in the com
parative cool of the evening to dine with the
Fathers. It isn't that I hold with them much
Rome was introduced to me in my child
hood as the Scarlet Woman but all travellers
have the same tale to tell. They are incom
parable missionaries. And it stands to reason
that they can get on better with savages than
the rest of you. You can meet magic only
with magic. It was they who introduced me
to Paramore."
" Oh, it's Paramore ! ' I exclaimed.
" Heaven forgive you, Hoyting, you are
always in at the death. How do you manage
it ? But fancy being in at Paramore's ! By
the way, I suppose you know that no one
knows anything except that he's dead."
" Umph ! Well, I do," returned Hoyting.
" That's what I was set for like the clock :
to turn up at the Mission House just when he
was brought in there with fever. I don't go
hunting for things like that, you understand.
256
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
I'd as soon have thought of staying on for
Madame Pothier's beaux ytux."
" I didn't know you knew whether eyes
were fine or not."
" I suppose I don't. But I can guess.
There are always other people to tell you.
Anyhow, her fine eyes were all for le bon Dieu
and Pothier. She was a good sort married
out of a little provincial convent-school to a
man twice her age, and taking ship within a
month for Senegal. She loved him for his
scars, probably, Desdemona-fashion. Have
you ever noticed that a woman often likes a
man better for a crooked white seam across
his face that spoils all the modelling ? Naive
notions women have about war ! They tiptoe
round the carnage, making eyes at the slayers.
Oh, in imagination, of course. And if they
once appreciate how they really feel about it,
they begin to gabble about disarmament.''
Hoyting fingered the dingy little packet
that he had taken out of his pocket and laid
on my table. He looked far away out of the
window for a moment, narrowing his eyes as
if trying to focus them on another hemi
sphere.
" So he was taken to the Pothiers'."
s 257
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
" You're leaving out a lot," I interrupted.
" Why c so/ and why to the Pothiers ? You
said to the Mission."
" Oh " his brows knitted. He didn't
like filling up his own gaps. The things
Hoyting takes it for granted one will know
about his exotic context ! " The Mission
was full of patients an epidemic had been
running through the converts, and it was up
to them to prove that the sacrament of
baptism wasn't some deadly process of inocula
tion. As I say, it's all magic, white or black.
Poor Paramore wasn't a convert he was by
way of being an agnostic, I imagine and the
Fathers weren't, in a sense, responsible for
him. Yet one must do them the justice to say
that they'd never have sent him away if they
hadn't had a better place to send him to. The
Mission was no place at the moment for a
man with fever sweating infection as it was,
and full of frightened patients who were
hiding gri-gris under their armpits and looking
more than askance at the crucifixes over the
doors. The Pothiers had known Paramore
two years before, when he had stopped in
Dakar on his way into the interior. They
took him in quite naturally and simply.
Paramore had noticed her fine eyes, I believe
258
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
oh, in all honour and loyalty. There were
lots of ways in which he wasn't a rotter. He
was merely the finest liar in the world and a
bit of a Puritan to boot.
" Is there any combination life hasn't
exhausted, I wonder ? " Hoy ting walked to
the window, his hands in his pockets, looking
down at the eternal race of the taxicabs below.
" Think of what may be going by in one of
those taxis. And Paramore was a bit of a
Puritan, for all his years of fake anthropology."
His face was heavily weary as presently he
turned it to me.
" I was involved in Paramore's case. I've
been to the bottom of this thing, I tell you.
Paramore overflowed emptied himself like a
well ; and at the end there was absolutely
nothing left in his mind ; it was void, up to the
black brim. Then he died quite vacuous.
He had simply poured out his inner life around
me. I was left alone in Dakar, swimming in
the infernal pool of Paramore's cerebrations.
You can't, on the banks of the Senegal, refer a
man to his solicitors. If Paramore had been
a Catholic, I could have turned his case over
to the Bishop. But bishops had nothing to
do with Paramore. And that's where you
come in."
259
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
c ' Oh, I come in, do I ? " I asked a little
fearfully. No one wants to come in where
Hoyting leaves off.
" Of course. Why else did I make an
appointment with you ? You'll take this
packet when you leave. You don't suppose I'm
going to London ! "
" I didn't know Paramore."
" No ; but I did. Arid when I've told you,
you'll see. I don't take a trip like this for
nothing. I hate the very smell of the asphalt."
" Go on." It's what one always says to
Hoyting.
" I can't tell it coherently though I can tell
it, I suppose, more coherently than he did. In
the first place, what do you know about him ? "
The question sent a flood of dingy reminis
cence welling slowly and muddily up through
my consciousness. I thought for a moment.
What, after all, was there to tell about
Paramore except that he had lied, and that in
the end he had been discredited as lavishly as
for a time he had been believed ? For any one
else I might have made a sprightly little story
out of the elliptical narrative of the newspapers;
but no one that I know of has ever tried to be a
raconteur for Hoyting. He has use only for the
raw material ; art disgusts him. I gave him as
260
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
rapid a precis as I could, suppressing all instinct
to embroider it.
When I had finished : " He's completely
discredited, then ? "
I waved my hands. " My dear Hoyting, no
one would take Paramore's word about the
manners and customs of his own household."
" It's a pity," said Hoyting simply. " It
makes it harder for you."
" I've nothing to do with Paramore. If
there's one thing that interests me less than his
disaster, it's his rehabilitation." I didn't mean
to be flippant, but Hoyting's ominousness
invited it.
" Oh, rehabilitation no ; I dare say, be
tween us, we couldn't manage that. I merely
want to get the truth off my hands."
Hoyting lighted another cigarette. The
atmosphere of my room was already densely
blue, and I opened the window. His hand
shot up. " Shut that please. I can't be inter
rupted by all those savage noises. God ! for a
breath of sea air! "
I sat down and faced him. After all, the
man has never lived who could stage-manage
Hoyting.
" Did you ever meet the Australian ? " he
asked.
261
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
"Whitaker? No."
" A pretty bad lot, I gather."
" Do you mean that he lied ? "
" Oh, no. From what Paramore said, I
should think that was just the one thing he
didn't do."
Hoyting dropped his chin on his breast and
narrowed his eyes. Then he shook his head
very slowly. " At my time of life it's silly to be
always saying how strange things are, and how
clever life is, and all that literary nonsense ;
but, on my word, if ever a scene was arranged
to make a man a protagonist in spite of himself,
this was it. Every element in that Dakar
situation was contrived to bring Paramore out.
He had fever and the prescience of death
which is often mistaken, but works just as well
notwithstanding ; he had performed his extra
ordinary task ; he was in love with Madame
Pothier. The cup was spilling over, and I was
there to wipe up the overflow."
Hoyting was silent for a moment. Then he
spoke irritably.
" I don't know where to begin. There isn't
any beginning to this story. It hasn't any
climax or else it's all climax. It's just a
mess. Well, I shall have to begin, I suppose,
if Paramore didn't. Perhaps the first thing
262
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
was his sitting up in bed one morning and
peering out at me through his mosquito-
netting. It gave him a queer, caged look. His
voice went with it that cracked and throaty
voice they have, you know. c Do you know
Whitaker ? ' he asked.
" ' No, indeed,' I said. ' You'd better lie
down.'
"If you could have seen him then, you'd have
felt, as I did, that he'd better not talk ; that
he wouldn't say anything one wanted to hear.
" ' It was Whitaker that finished me.' Still
he peered out at me.
" ' You're not finished.' I remember lying
quite peevishly about it. He so obviously was
finished.
" c Yes, I am. And Whitaker did it. Oh, I
mean I really did it.'
" I give you my word that he was startling,
with that unnatural voice, that cunning look
in his eyes the sick often get, and those little
white cross-bars pressed against his face.
" ' Lie down,' I said again. ' What did
Whitaker do ? '
" He shook his head a little, and the netting
moved on his face. It was horrid.
" ' He told them I couldn't have done the
stuff I'd brought back.'
263
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
" ' Did he know ? '
" ' He didn't know anything about folk-lore,
but he did know where I'd been.'
" He spoke so impersonally that it led me
on to ask questions. After all, I had told
Madame Pothier I would stay with him
through the morning, and I had to make the
time go somehow for both of us. It was re
mittent fever without the chills, and there were
fairish mornings at first. The afternoons and
nights, when the malady rose like a wave and
broke horribly after midnight oh, those were
bad. Madame Pothier and the regimental
doctor took care of those. It looked fairly
hopeful when he arrived, but finally all the
worst symptoms came out, and before the end
it was very bad. It was one of those cases
that might, at the last, be yellow fever and just
technically isn't. Poor Paramore ! Did I say
that his face looked as old as all time under
that shock of sun-bleached hair ? It did.
"That questioning was the first of it. It
fixed the name of Whitaker in my mind. I
thought I'd find out something about him.
You never can tell what will comfort a man in
that state. But the Pothiers had never heard
of him, or the Fathers at the Mission. I only
mention those first remarks of Paramore's to
264
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
show you how I came into it. I had never
heard of Paramore himself until that time in
Dakar. I never read newspapers. All those
good people said Paramore was a ' grand
savant,' but they seemed a little vague, them
selves. The only person who wasn't vague
was a lean, old, parchment-coloured Father
who was waiting for the next boat to take
him home. He had been twenty years in the
interior, and he was worn out all except his
voice, which was startlingly deep. He said
no one could afford to study fetich but a priest.
Pere Bernard had no respect for anthropologists
thought they took a collector's interest in
preserving various primeval forms of sin, I
suppose. I didn't care for his mediaeval man
ners, and I went back to Paramore with more
sympathy. What a world ! I always won
dered if Paramore had some time, somewhere
at the back of beyond, got him on the raw.
Well, we shall never know. And yet I dare
say the reverend old gentleman is here in Paris
at this very moment. What a world ! Nothing
in it, according to Pere Bernard, that isn't
magic either white or black.
" I can't tell you by what steps Paramore
led me to his tragedy. I don't remember
those days separately at all. They went in
265
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
jagged ups and downs times when he talked,
times when he was dumb, times when he might
be said to rave. Then, too, he brought things
out in no order at all. It was as if he lay in
a world beyond perspective and expected you
to sit outside of Space and Time, too, and see
it all whole, as he did. That was rather
unpleasant he had so the manner of being
dead and seeing his life from so far off that
one thing in it was as near and as real as
another. There was absolutely no selection.
It was only by recurrence of certain things
that you got any stress. And out of it all I
managed to get the three main facts : the
Royal Anthropological Institute, Whitaker,
and the soul of Paramore. Madame Pothier
was a close fourth, but she was only an
accessory after the fact. That I swear. You
believe it ? "
I jerked my head up. " Good heavens,
Hoyting, how do I know ? You haven't told
me anything yet,"
He rubbed his hands over his brows and
frowned with closed eyes. " No ; I beg
your pardon. But, as I say, I see the whole
thing. It's hard to tell. It never was told
to me. And I didn't want you to think it
was one of those silly tales of a man's turning
266
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
hero because he's in love with a woman. If
Paramore had asked me to tell Madame
Pothier the story I'm telling you, I'd have
turned on my heel and left him, if he'd been
at the death gasp. I swear I would."
Hoyting lighted another cigarette the
world's supply must be inexhaustible ! and
seemed to brace his huge body for concentrated
effort.
" Well, here it is. Paramore had one
passion in life one double-distilled, quint-
essentially pure passion and that passion was
anthropology. There never was a stiffer,
straighter, more Puritanical devotion to an
idea than his. Get that into your head first,
if you want to understand."
I could be forgiven, it strikes me, for being
sceptical, in the light of that neat precis I had
compiled from the newspapers. " Oh, come,
Hoyting," I said, "science doesn't recruit
from liars not even when they've got
Paramore's deuced cheek. You are upset."
One look at Hoyting's gigantic lassitude
put me in the wrong. It would take more
than Paramore to upset Hoyting. He was
perfectly firm, though very much bored.
Imagine neurasthenia and Hoyting bunking
together ! One can't. Hoyting smiled.
267
" No, it's not nerves. Only you people
who want everything all of a piece you
irritate me. The point about Paramore is
that he combined contradictions. He was
magnificently human. And as I am in posses
sion of facts, I ask you to suspend your silly
judgment until I've done. If you know any
thing about me, you know that I don't go in
for theories."
I was silent.
" It was the only thing he cared about, I
tell you. Nature implants something in every
man that kills him in the end. Paramore
wanted recognition from a very small, almost
undiscernible, group of people whom neither
you nor I nor any one else gives a damn for
a few old gentlemen in frock coats and gold
eye-glasses who raise their poor, thin old
eyebrows over the sins of Paris, but feel a
tremulous pleasure in the nastiness of Mel
anesia. Why did he ? Just because he
believed they are a sacred sect. He honestly
believed that anthropology was important.
He thought it was big and real and vital
and solemn. He had supreme respect for
facts. He put every penny he had or ever
hoped to have into going out to acquire them
in the bush. The bush isn't nice. The
268
climate distressed him, the natives shocked
him, the solitudes terrified him. Why did he
go ? Because he held, quite austerely, the
scientific attitude towards data, evidence,
material. Those old gentlemen needed more
facts to feed their theories with, and Paramore
was the boy to get them. When there's
neither health nor wealth nor pleasure to be
got from doing a thing, a man doesn't do it
except for an idea."
" Fame ? " I suggested.
" Fame ? Well, even if Paramore had told
the truth, he wouldn't have had any fame that
you'd notice. It was just a pathetic belief in
the sanctity of those few old gentlemen who
potter round among unclean visions of primi
tive man. They can't, in the nature of the
case, be very numerous. If you want fame,
you go for the crowd. He could have done a
little fancy exploring if he'd wanted fame.
No ! Paramore had the superstition."
" What really happened in Australia ? "
" The only interesting thing happened inside
Paramore. He decided to lie."
" He must have been a bit of a coward. If
he wanted so desperately to collect those filthy
facts, why didn't he collect them ? "
" Bad luck nothing else. He went as far
269
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
as he could. But he was no seasoned traveller,
you know. He just came to grief, as any
man might, there in the wilderness. The
stars in their courses and so forth. He
didn't get so far west as he had meant to.
Men went back on him, maps turned out
incorrect, supplies failed awkwardly, everything
happened that can happen. Then his inter
preter died his one absolutely trustworthy
man and the whole game was up. He lost
his head ; he believed his eyes ; he believed
lying natives. They made game of him, I
dare say, in some grim, neolithic way. They
said anything and everything about marriage
customs quite different things from group to
group. He had bad luck with his own men-
half a dozen of them died of dysentery or
something and he had to recruit on the spot.
Why on earth should they tell him the truth ?
It was more fun not to. And, of course, now
and then he pushed into some corner where
the only use they had for him was to eat him.
From those places he had to withdraw
speedily. It's not an anthropologist's business
to get killed unless he can be sure of getting
his note-books home. He's more like a spy,
apparently, than a soldier.
" After eight or ten beastly months, despair
270
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
was reeking round him like a mist. I think
he said that, himself. His mind tried to peer
out through it. He got nothing but a jumble
of reports from those aborigines. Time after
time they'd promise to let him in on some rite,
and then their faces would be shamelessly
blank when he kept his appointment. They
said nothing that wasn't carefully contradicted.
Certain things he did get hold of, of course.
Paramore swore to me that a good bit of his
book was true as truth but not enough to
prove anything, to found theories on. About
three of the note-books were genuine, but
they made nothing coherent, he said. He put
everything down, always intending to check
and sift later."
I may have looked a little bored, for Hoy-
ting suddenly interrupted his narrative. " I'm
telling you all this," he said, " because it's
essential that you should know everything you
can know about it. The thing's going to be
in your hands, and the more information you
have the better. I'm not dragging you through
this biography because I think it's beautiful.
I can see you loathe it all. Well ... if only
you stay-at-home people would realize how
much luck counts ! You don't dream of the
mad dance of incalculable forces. What you
271
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
really hate Paramore for is his having luck
against him."
"No," I protested stiffly ; "for lying."
" If he had had luck, he wouldn't have lied.
He would have been prettier if he had been
incapable of lying ; but if he hadn't needed
to lie, you never would have known that he
wasn't as pretty as any one else. You're quite
right, of course. I'm not asking you to love
Paramore, but I advise you to understand him
as well as you can. You'll find the whole
business easier."
" Say what you have made up your mind
to say." I couldn't, at the moment, go further
than that.
Hoyting swung back, as if there had been
no interruption, as if I had been pleading with
him not to stop.
" One day, when the despair was thickest,
he had an idea. He may have been a little
off his head, you know. . . . He wouldn't
confess his failure at all. He would let his
imagination play over those note-books ; he
would supply from his generous brain every
thing that was needed. A good deal of it was
new country, quite aboriginal and nasty, and
his learning was sufficient to warn him off
ground that had been authentically covered.
272
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
It was also sufficient to keep him magnificently
plausible. He would take his meagre glean
ings to some secluded spot, and he would return
to England with the completed sheaf. He
would squeeze the last drop of significance out
of every detail he had learned ; and if he were
put to it, he would invent. ' No, not invent,
exactly/ he corrected himself when he told
me. * I would draw conclusions and parallels ;
I would state probabilities as facts ; and I
would put in some a very few of the things
I suspected but had no proof of. And then I
would contradict a few things.'
" Those were his words, describing that
ancient intention of his. ' My pen got away
with me,' he confessed ; ' and the lust of
making a beautiful book. There were things
that occurred to me I put them in. Any
one who knows any folk-lore can make up
customs with his eyes shut. After a little,
you get to feel that if the beastly creatures
didn't do it that way they must be awful fools.
And then you get to believe that they did.
But I marked everything on the margin of
my own manuscript as I wrote it, true or not
true, inferred or just invented. That was later
much later at Whitaker's place.'
" I give you some of his words that I
T 273
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
remember, you see. I don't remember much.
But that was the gist of his great confession.
He had the idea his one way to snap his
fingers at luck. Until he got into the work,
he didn't know how his idea would dominate
him. He first had the notion of putting just
enough alloy into his book to give it body.
In the end his idea rode him and damned
him. I'm leaving out a lot, but you can
work that out for yourself how his inspiration
would have come, and what would have
happened."
" But what about his scientific passion ?
That has nothing to do with the ' lust of
making a beautiful book ' quite the contrary."
" Wait till I've finished. Now comes Eve.
Place aux dames / . . .
" Before he had struck out into the fatal
west for himself, he had stopped with a
planter. The planter's name, of course, was
Whitaker. There was a man who had isolated
himself, and worked like a navvy, and made
good. His history, I suppose, was much like
all other local histories. His place, on one of
the rivers that flow into Lake Eyre, was a kind
of outpost. He was very glad to let Paramore
sit on his verandah and talk to him in the
evenings. Paramore must have been there six
274
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
weeks before he finally started on his expedi
tion if you can call an unsuccessful, hand
made thing that leaked at every pore an
expedition. The daughter, Joan Whitaker,
was back from school in Melbourne. There
was a fiance of sorts about the place. I don't
remember much about him, least of all his
name. He was approved by Whitaker. Para-
more seems not to have noticed the girl
rather deliberately not to have noticed her, she
being another man's property. So Whitaker
had no objection to prolonging Paramore's
stay. Paramore talked, I feel convinced, as
well as he wrote. I saw of him only dregs
and delirium, but I made that out. The love
affair went on all over the plantation, while
Whitaker and Paramore sat on the verandah
and constituted society. They got on well
enough, apparently. Paramore certainly liked
Joan Whitaker, but he kept out of the way
of the fortunate affair. Remember that ;
there's no reason to doubt his word. It all
came out, bit by bit, in troubled references
mixed up with his symptoms and medicines,
and the ebb and flow of the fever.
" But out in the bush, later, the memory of
her had grown upon him ; I suppose, simply
because, though so far away, she was the
275
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
nearest feminine thing. At the heart of all
that despair over the frustrated research, was
an irrelevant sentimental regret that he
shouldn't be able to make love to her if he ever
saw her again. In her flittings about, she had
pricked his imagination once or twice this
bright creature that flitted at another man's
behest. You can see how it might be ; and
Paramore up to that time had been heart-
whole. Moreover, his exploration was shock
ing and disgusting to him, as I've said it was
aimless nastiness without even the grace of
bolstering up a theory. He didn't love the
work for itself, remember ; only for its results
and what he believed its sacred importance.
He hated the technique of it. And Joan
Whitaker was as different as a Melbourne
schooling, and a fair complexion, and the
awkwardness of innocence, could make her.
She was all the things those unsatisfactory
aborigines weren't. I don't think it went
deeper than that. She merely served the
moment. Any other girl would have done as
well. Or, at least, that's my notion.
" Well you can see the rest from here. He
went back with his big, insane idea, leaving
despair farther behind him at every step. He
struck straight back again to Whitaker's place,
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
and after nuisances and delays and impossible
absurd misadventures, he got there. All the
time, he carried his idea carefully intact, like a
cup filled with precious liquid. He was most
anxious to get to some place where he could sit
down with pens and ink. He didn't doubt
Whitaker would take him in. Everything
was to be completed before he sailed for
England. The story would have been very
different, I'm inclined to think, and Paramore
might have been living to this day if the fiance
hadn't turned out a bad lot and been shipped
or if Paramore himself hadn't been a bit of a
Puritan.
" He found Whitaker very much surprised
to see him back so long before the date he had
set, but only too glad to have him stay; and
he also found the girl, no longer flitting about,
but brooding on the bough. The rest was
inevitable. . . .
" Paramore got to work at once making
love to Joan Whitaker in the intervals, almost
from the beginning. Then mark the nature
of the man he found that the two things he
was doing were incompatible. There's no
telling whether Joan Whitaker would have
objected to his idea, but he seems to have been
sure that she would if she knew. His idea
277
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
rode him the idea of getting the better of his
bad luck. He didn't want to cheat his fellow
scientists, who had done him no harm, but
he did want to cheat his mean destiny. He
personified it like an enemy, I fancy. It must
have been an obsession with him. Day by day,
he saw better what the book his revenge
was becoming ; and in the end there was no
mistaking it for a monstrous, magnificent lie,
out of all proportion to what he had first
intended. Some men might have managed
even so the men who keep life in water-tight
compartments. Not Paramore. He didn't
see his way to offering Joan Whitaker a liar
for a husband. It apparently never occurred to
him to put the case before her. There are
very few cases you can put to a girl of eighteen.
And, as I've said, his feeling for her was all
reverence and illusion and reversion to type.
Any niceish girl would have done the trick for
him ; and any man would have looked eligible
to her smarting conceit. But it was no
marriage of true minds -just an affair of cir
cumstance and of innocent senses, riotously
collaborating. Madame Pothier a finished
creature would have been a very different
matter. But he had never seen her then. . . .
" Oh, well ; you see how he went. He was
278
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
virtually staking everything on that book,
which was virtually writing itself, c like a
damned planchette,' he told me. But he
couldn't let her stake anything on it ; he
couldn't even ask her to. Moreover, it was
one of those inconvenient situations where no
explanation except the right one is of the
slightest use. So he packed up his manuscript
and left for some address, 'that he didn't give,
in New South Wales."
" Like that ? " I asked. The sudden turns of
the thing were beginning to interest me, in
spite of my Pharisaism.
" Oh, there were alarums and excursions,
of course. But I had to guess them myself.
Paramore's mind had other things to dwell
on. You can see it all, though : the girl,
who had thought he was drifting towards a
proposal ; the man, Whitaker, who wanted
his daughter settled and happy, and thought
Paramore would do oh, a lot of primitive
instincts that we don't recognize until they're
baffled ; Paramore behaving as well as he
knew how, granted his obsession ; and they
choosing to consider him a blackguard.
Nothing violent happened, apparently, but
you can understand the zest with which
Whitaker probably spoke in London. There
279
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
was black hate in his truth-telling. I fancy
what Paramore had done wouldn't in the least
have shocked Whitaker if it had been done by
his son-in-law. He didn't mention the girl
in that famous interview, and Paramore never
knew what had become of her. I don't think
he cared. He never saw Whitaker again."
Hoyting rose and walked to the window.
The gray eyes looked curiously down on the
rue de Rivoli, as if, for charity, he had taken
a box at a pageant that bored him.
" This isn't in my line, you know," he said
finally, turning back " any of it. Paramore
reeked of civilization Great Russell Street, if
you like. Hang civilization ! Yet he went
down with fever like a sick Kruboy. Well, I
must get on with this. I wouldn't stop in
Paris another night for anything you could
offer me."
He sat down, his big frame shaking the
little gilded armchair. But he seemed loath
to begin. His gray eyes were closed.
" How did he get to Dakar ? "
Hoyting's eyes were still closed as he
answered. " That was Paramore trying to
wash himself white again. He was dis
credited, deservedly. He had lied, deliber
ately and rather long-windedly. No loophole
280
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
anywhere for excuse. Paramore himself was
the last man to find any excuse for it. He
never carried a devil's advocate about with
him. Doubtless, at home, his own conscience
had returned to him, in place of the change
ling conscience that had dwelt with him in
the wilderness. He knew his reputation was
dead and buried with a stake through its
heart. But he set himself to atone. Some
men, feeling as he did, would have shaved
their heads and put on a hair shirt. Not Para-
more though he would have saved me a lot
of nuisance if he had. No ; he wanted to re
trieve himself in kind, as you might say. He
would spend his life and his few crumbling
bits of fortune in doing the thing he had pre
tended to do. He would go to an utterly new
field and stay till he'd amassed a treasure
priceless, authentic facts, each an unflawed
pearl. That's why he went to the Upper
Niger and here is his treasure."
Hoyting opened his eyes suddenly, bent
forward, and tossed the packet across to
me.
" There you have it all. He went, he did
the incredible thing, and then, quite properly,
he died. The rest the rest is mere drama."
He sat back.
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
I put the packet down. " Do you mean
that these are his documents, and that you
believe in them ? Have you read them ? "
" Have I read them ? Do I look as if I
would read an anthropologist's note-books ?
Of course, I can see the humour of throwing
over Christianity, lock, stock, and barrel, only
to spend your life studying totemism and on
top of that, calling it a ' career.' If you think
the absurdity of it is lost on me, you're quite
mistaken. But I would be willing to take my
oath before the Last Tribunal that there isn't a
false word in that whole pile. Paramore did
it the more honour to him. When it comes
to expecting any one else to believe it I'm
not such a fool. But I should think my word
might suffice for you."
I shrugged my shoulders.
Hoyting lighted another cigarette, folded
his arms on the table, and looked at me. " I
knew everything there was to know about
Paramore before he died," he affirmed. " I
didn't in the least want to know any of it, but
it was inevitable. He had no control over his
mental muscles complete paralysis of the
reticent nerve, you might say. I know, I
tell you. If you don't choose to believe it
you'll have doubted my word, that's all. I
282
have all the evidence there is ; and why should
I lie about it ? "
" Oh, I believe it but it's extraordinary."
" Should I be here if it weren't extra
ordinary ? It's preposterous. But there it
is."
" And the rest, you said, was drama."
Hoyting looked out. " Let's go to a cafe,"
he said ; " I want a rest."
I assented. There is something in the
transitoriness of a cafe crowd that quiets Hoy-
ting. No one can be expected to stay over
night in a cafe. He likes the restlessness, the
ridiculous suggestion that every one else may
be as foot-loose as he. Besides, Hoyting is
always restive under the strain of a story; he
chafes at the bounds and limits of any rounded
episode. He needs to draw breath and come
back to it, as it were, from very far. So we
ordered things ; sitting on the very edge of
the boulevard, we sipped and watched for an
hour. In the end I saw signs of his return to
the matter in hand.
" Beauty " he began suddenly, pushing his
glass aside, " it's something I never see. But
now and then a man or a woman delights me
curiously. Madame Pothier was like that.
She showed you what civilization of the older
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
sort can do when it likes. - And Paramore
saw it, too. He was clean gone on her. He
would have told her everything if he had had
any right to. I said it wasn't a silly tale of
woman's ennobling influence, didn't I ? No,
more it was. Yet he saw her as soon as he
reached Africa, and I am sure he carried her
image into the interior with him as he once
did Joan Whitaker's, only with an immense
difference, after all. This time he brought
back truth instead of lies. So at least it
couldn't have been a bad image to live with.
" I got all this that I've been telling you,
in bits and snatches, while I sat with him.
The fever didn't seem so bad at first the
doctor thought we could pull him through.
You absolutely never know. I never thought
he would pull through. Those very first
questions of his, when he sat peering out at
me through the mosquito-netting of his bed,
didn't seem to come from a man who had life
before him. And when I had got those early
details out of him, I somehow felt sure he'd
go. I'm no pessimist ; but I didn't see life
giving him a second chance. It was too much
to hope that life would let him make good
after all. And yet he so nearly did. Damn
fever ! . . .
284
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
" Madame Potbier did everything she could.
She was a good sort. I've always wondered,
as much as it is permitted to wonder, whether
she felt anything for Paramore. If she did, I
am sure that she never knew it. There are
women like that, you know. I don't mean
the women who gaze out of cold, sexless
depths at the fires burning above, and wonder
pruriently why the fires burn. She wasn't
that kind. I mean the women who, when
they become wives, remain women only for
their husbands. I don't believe it would ever
have occurred to her that any man save
Marcel Pothier could look upon her with
romantic interest. I don't pretend to under
stand the phenomenon, but I know that it
exists. A woman like that simply assumes
that she is no longer a wandering lure con
stantly crossing the path of the male. She
thinks all men's eyes are veiled because hers
are. A very pretty, pathetic ostrich trick.
Sometimes it doesn't work, but astonishingly
often it does. With Paramore it did. All I
mean is that she hadn't dreamed Paramore
worshipped her. She remembered him as a
friend they had made two years before, and of
course he was to come" to them out of that
pitiful Mission Hospital. No one in Dakar
285
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
knew anything about Paramore's fiasco. He
wasn't precisely famous, you see. Dakar was
perfectly provincial. And Paramore was hop
ing, I dare say, that he could stave off the tale
of his lie until he could lay before her the
news of his atonement as well. The hardest
thing he had to bear, probably, was dying and
leaving his story to the telling of chance
tongues, not knowing in what form it would
eventually come to her. That, I am con
vinced, is why he told me so much let his
parched lips articulate those memories for me.
But not once did he break down and ask me to
tell her. Oh, I've good reason for respecting
Paramore a second-rate respect it must al
ways be, I dare say, granted that extraordinary
crumpling-up in Australia. But he never
crumpled up again.
" For a day or two he hung in the balance.
Then, after one exceedingly bad night, which
left Madame Pothier blue under her fine eyes
and white round her carved lips, he had his
last coherent hours on earth. . . .
" I shall never forget that morning. Pothier
was away on duty. There were only the
doctor, Madame Pothier, and I, and one or
two frightened servants who wouldn't come
near. They thought it was yellow fever.
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
Old Seraphine, Madame Pothier's Auvergnat
maid, hovered round in the corridors with a
rosary. You could hear the click and shake of
it in the still intervals. Once a *Je vous salue,
Marie, pleine de grace,' cut across a delirious
whispered oath. The pitiful part of it was
that there was nothing to do. We just had to
lift him through the agony and weakness as
best we could until the coma should set in.
There is nothing romantic about coast fever.
It attacks you in the most sordid ways de
prives you first of dignity and then of life.
Yet poor Paramore's death-bed had a kind of
nobility ; perhaps because Madame Pothier
was there. She was dressed in white and
looked as wan and distant and compassionate
as a nun. The straight black masses of her
hair, arranged in an odd, angular way, looked
like some kind of conventual cap. Paramore's
eyes followed her about. . . .
" It was that morning he gave me the
packet told me where it was, made me get
it out and take formal possession of it before
him. Once, when the demon was leaving
him a little quiet, he lifted his right hand.
6 1 swear by by all I hold sacred ' (his eyes
were fixed on her, though he was speaking to
me) ' that I have told nothing there that is not
287
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
true. All second-hand reports are in a note
book by themselves. It is labelled. Tell
Beckwith especially about the Sabbath. Beck-
with ought to follow it up. I sat in the hut
by the sorcerer in his trance and waited for
his spirit to come back. When he waked,
he said he had delivered my message. He
had delivered it. Three days later, the man
I had sent for came running into the village.
The sorcerer had told him, as he said he
would, on the way to the Sabbath. I depose
solemnly that the man came. His village was
three days away. He had heard a voice at
his door the night of the Sabbath a voice
that gave my messsage, that said it was in
haste and could not stay. Very curious.
Beckwith ought to know. It's all there ; but
tell him. Of course, I never could get any
thing out of the sorcerer about the Sabbath.
But Beckwith might put it in a foot-note, if
they won't print me? Then the sordid agony
again. . . . Madame Pothier and the doctor
didn't understand English, by the way, and of
course didn't, in any case, understand the
situation. They hadn't listened to what I had
listened to, all those earlier days. So when
the doctor told me fussily that Paramore
oughtn't to talk and that death was only a few
288
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
hours off, I paid no attention. Why shouldn't
he talk if death was so near ? The only thing
I could do for Paramore was to let him talk
when he had strength. I sat tight and
listened."
Hoyting stopped. The lights winked out
along the boulevard. Night had fallen with
capricious suddenness. I ordered more drinks
quietly. Hoyting was breathing hard ; tired
out, and, as I thought, very weary of it all,
longing to slip the leash and be off. The air
was cool and soft, and the crowd was thinning
a little. People were dining and making
ready to " go on." I couldn't have stirred,
but that worn packet suddenly felt very heavy
in my pocket.
Hoyting began sipping vermouth again.
Finally he spoke. " He didn't say a great
deal more. The end was too near. But he
spoke very clearly when he did speak ; and
whenever his eyes were open, they were fixed
on Madame Pothier. Towards the last he
put out his hand to me. I was holding the
note-books I shouldn't have dared put them
down so long as he was conscious. ' There is
only one woman in the world,' he said, and
she belongs to Pothier. Look at her.' I
didn't look at her, and he went on : ' There
u 289
THE CASE OF PARAMORE
may be other women alive, but I can't believe
it. Do you believe it ? '
" He wasn't wandering, you know. His
mind had merely stripped his situation to its
essentials ; he was quite alone with the only
facts that counted. He had summed life up,
and didn't have to keep truce any longer with
mortal perspectives. He drew the real things
round him like a cloak. . . . Absurd to talk
of inconsequence ; there was no inconse
quence.
" I bent over him. ' I'm not blind, Para-
more.'
" ' No, but I am blessedly blind. . . .
And some day she'll hate me, you think ? '
" His lips were straining to ask me to see
to it that she didn't, but he controlled them.
That as much as anything is why I'm here
with you now. It was more than decent
of him ; it was fine. But, by the same token
that he couldn't ask, I couldn't promise
though I saw that another crise was near and
the doctor was crossing over to the bed.
" * I don't believe she ever will,' I said.
* There's so much she'll never know.'
" I was thinking of his forlorn and beautiful
passion for her, which she would have hated
him for, because she would always have been
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afraid it was somehow her fault. Not quite
fair when you work it out, but those women
are like that. I saw in a flash, though he
took his eyes off her and looked at me, just
once that he thought I meant his miserable,
discredited past. Then the doctor thrust me
aside. The matter was never explained
between us.
" There were only one or two more speeches
of Paramore's to record. The monosyllables
wrung out of his weakness didn't count
except, immensely, for pity. Very likely you
know what the fatal fever symptoms are
ugly beyond compare. I won't go into that.
We were all pretty nearly done by the time
the blessed coma settled over him. He opened
his eyes just once more and fixed them on
Madame Pothier, who stood at the foot of the
bed. All his strength was in his poor eyes :
his body was a corpse already. It was to me
he spoke, but he looked at her until the lids
fell. ' Damn Whitaker ! He's a worm ; but
not such a worm as I.'
" A strange little blur came over his eyes.
I turned my head for one instant. Madame
Pothier, weeping, was holding up a crucifix.
' I don't believe God knows,' he said. The
words came very slowly from far down in his
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
throat. We heard the voice just once more.
' Madame ! ' Then the eyes shut, and the
scheduled number of hours followed, during
which he was completely unconscious, until
he died officially."
Hoyting smoked quietly for a moment.
Then he spoke hurriedly, as if he had to com
plete a report. " We buried him out there.
The Pothiers were perfect. She was worn out
by the strain of the illness and the nursing,
but not more than any one would have been
after such an experience. To the last I searched
her face to see if she knew. It interested
me curiously. I gave her a dozen chances to
question me about Paramore. She behaved
throughout as one who had no suspicion. She
was polite about the note-books, and asked if
they were to be edited, but she evidently didn't
in the least understand what he'd been up to.
He was a ' grand savant,' she was sure, though
Pere Bernard thought, perhaps, his powers
could have been more fortunately employed.
Of course, ce pauvre monsieur was not religious,
which must be a great regret to his Catholic
friends. She believed firmly, however, that
the Divine Mercy was infinite and that there
were more ways than one of making a good
death. They were taking the liberty of having
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
some masses said for his soul. Everything was
said with the most perfect feeling, the utmost
sincerity and gravity. What more could a
blind woman have said ? I haven't a shadow
of doubt that, if ever the whole story were
forced upon Therese Pothier, she would
summon her intelligence gallantly and under
stand it all. Only, what on the face of it was
there for her to understand ? . . . I rather
wish she were dead."
" You wish " I didn't follow him.
" I'd like to be sure that, since she'll never
know the whole truth, she'll never know more
than she knew in Dakar. I was sorry for
Paramore. He was tempted, and he fell, and
he struggled up again and damned temptation
to its face. Not a hero, oh, no. But there
is something exhilarating in seeing the elements
of heroism assemble in a man who is supposed
to be a putty of cowardice."
It was late, and, though Hoyting had not
yet informed me of what he intended me to
do with the packet, I suggested dining. We
made our way to a very secluded and un
fashionable restaurant, and ate, surrounded by
French commercial types. Over our liqueurs,
I asked him why he had given me the note
books.
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
" Why did you give me this stuff? "
Hoyting looked surprised. " I can't do
anything with it. I don't know that sort of
person. Can't you look up the man Beck-
with ? I never heard of him, but he ought
to be easy to find. I could tell all this to you,
but I couldn't go over to London and tell it
to a court of inquiry. I don't hold you
responsible in any way, of course, but some
thing ought to be done. I'm taking the night
express to Genoa."
" If you imagine I'm going to drop down
from the blue on Sir James Beckwith " I
began.
Hoyting shrugged his shoulders. " You at
least know who he is, apparently. That in
itself is a sign."
" But no one will read the tragic stuff," I
cried. " And yet you place Paramore's repu
tation in my hands. You do make me
responsible."
Hoyting looked at me across the table,
smiling faintly and shaking his head.
" Didn't I tell you that I don't believe we
can rehabilitate him ? But we owe it to him
to put his papers in the right hands. Beck
with couldn't refuse to take them, at least ;
and then our duty would be done."
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
I took the " our " without flinching. The
tale of Paramore had weighed on me. " I'll
do it," I said at last " but never again,
Hoyting."
" Have I ever made such a request before ? "
he interrupted sharply.
" No, never."
" Then, in God's name, take it ! " With
his strong hand he made a gesture as if to
sweep it all away from him. The liqueur
glasses fell with a broken tinkle to the floor.
Hoyting bit his lip. " I wouldn't have the
things back in my fingers again for anything
under heaven. Good-bye."
I started to my feet, but he had reached the
door. He had the luck to step into a taxi the
next instant with an indescribable farewell
gesture.
It was part of Paramore's persistent bad
luck the devil that pursued him was not put
off by change of scene that Sir James Beck-
with died before I could make an appointment
with him. From all I have heard of him, he
certainly was the man to go to. Paramore's
note-books were coldly accepted in the quarters
to which I finally took them ; and I have
always suspected that if my mien had been less
desperate, they would have been politely
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THE CASE OF PARAMORE
handed back to me. No faintest echo of their
reception has ever come to me, though I have,
entirely on their account, subscribed to a dozen
learned journals. I do not expect anything to
happen, at this late date, in Parambre's favour.
There is little reason to believe that the
packet Hoyting cherished will be piously
guarded by the hands to which I committed
it. And, even if it were, no minor corrobora-
tions drifting in after many years could ever
reconstitute for Paramore such a fame as he
once lost. When I think of the matter at all,
it is, curiously enough, to echo Hoyting's wish
that Madame Pothier would die. The best
thing Paramore's restless ghost can hope for, it
seems to me, is that she may never know the
very little the public knows about him. Some
times that silence seems to me more desirable
for him than rehabilitation itself. But then,
I have never been interested in anthropology.
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bvngay.