“Pardon. Should I have telephoned? I half thought you wouldn’t be in.”
Eastman laughed. “Come in, Cavenaugh. You weren’t sure whether you wanted company or not, eh, and you were trying to let chance decide it? That was exactly my state of mind. Let’s accept the verdict.” When they emerged from the narrow hall into his sitting-room, he pointed out a seat by the fire to his guest. He brought a tray of decanters and soda bottles and placed it on his writing table.
Cavenaugh hesitated, standing by the fire. “Sure you weren’t starting for somewhere?”
“Do I look it? No, I was just making up my mind to stick it out alone when you rang. Have one?” He picked up a tall tumbler.
“Yes, thank you. I always do.”
Eastman chuckled. “Lucky boy! So will I. I had a very early dinner. New York is the most arid place on holidays,” he continued as he rattled the ice in the glasses. “When one gets too old to hit the rapids down there, and tired of gobbling food to heathenish dance music, there is absolutely no place where you can get a chop and some milk toast in peace, unless you have strong ties of blood brotherhood on upper Fifth Avenue. But you, why aren’t you starting for somewhere?”
The young man sipped his soda and shook his head as he replied:
“Oh, I couldn’t get a chop, either. I know only flashy people, of course.” He looked up at his host with such a grave and candid expression that Eastman decided there couldn’t be anything very crooked about the fellow. His smooth cheecks were positively cherubic.
“Well, what’s the matter with them? Aren’t they flashing tonight?”
“Only the very new ones seem to flash on New Year’s eve. The older ones fade away. Maybe they are hunting a chop, too.”
“Well” – Eastman sat down – “holidays do dash one. I was just about to write a letter to a pair of maiden aunts in my old home town, up-state; old coasting hill, snow-covered pines, lights in the church windows. That’s what you’ve saved me from.”
Cavenaugh shook himself. “Oh, I’m sure that wouldn’t have been good for you. Pardon me,” he rose and took a photograph from the bookcase, a handsome man in shooting clothes. “Dudley, isn’t it? Did you know him well?”
“Yes. An old friend. Terrible thing, wasn’t it? I haven’t got over the jolt yet.”
“His suicide? Yes, terrible! Did you know his wife?”
“Slightly. Well enough to admire her very much. She must be terribly broken up. I wonder Dudley didn’t think of that.”
Cavenaugh replaced the photograph carefully, lit a cigarette, and standing before the fire began to smoke. “Would you mind telling me about him? I never met him, but of course I’d read a lot about him, and I can’t help feeling interested. It was a queer thing.”
Eastman took out his cigar case and leaned back in his deep chair. “In the days when I knew him best he hadn’t any story, like the happy nations. Everything was properly arranged for him before he was born. He came into the world happy, healthy, clever, straight, with the right sort of connections and the right kind of fortune, neither too large nor too small. He helped to make the world an agreeable place to live in until he was twenty-six. Then he married as he should have married. His wife was a Californian, educated abroad. Beautiful. You have seen her picture?”
Cavenaugh nodded. “Oh, many of them.”
“She was interesting, too. Though she was distinctly a person of the world, she had retained something, just enough of the large Western manner. She had the habit of authority, of calling out a special train if she needed it, of using all our ingenious mechanical contrivances lightly and easily, without over-rating them. She and Dudley knew how to live better than most people. Their house was the most charming one I have ever known in New York. You felt freedom there, and a zest of life, and safety – absolute sanctuary – from everything sordid or petty. A whole society like that would justify the creation of man and would make our planet shine with a soft, peculiar radiance among the constellations. You think I’m putting it on thick?”
The young man sighed gently. “Oh, no! One has always felt there must be people like that. I’ve never known any.”
“They had two children, beautiful ones. After they had been married for eight years, Rosina met this Spaniard. He must have amounted to something. She wasn’t a flighty woman. She came home and told Dudley how matters stood. He persuaded her to stay at home for six months and try to pull up. They were both fair-minded people, and I’m as sure as if I were the Almighty, that she did try. But at the end of the time, Rosina went quietly off to Spain, and Dudley went to hunt in the Canadian Rockies. I met his party out there. I didn’t know his wife had left him and talked about her a good deal. I noticed that he never drank anything, and his light used to shine through the log chinks of his room until all hours, even after a hard day’s hunting. When I got back to New York, rumors were creeping about. Dudley did not come back. He bought a ranch in Wyoming, built a big log house and kept splendid dogs and horses. One of his sisters went out to keep house for him, and the children were there when they were not in school. He had a great many visitors, and everyone who came back talked about how well Dudley kept things going.
“He put in two years out there. Then, last month, he had to come back on business. A trust fund had to be settled up, and he was administrator. I saw him at the club; same light, quick step, same gracious handshake. He was getting gray, and there was something softer in his manner; but he had a fine red tan on his face and said he found it delightful to be here in the season when everything is going hard. The Madison Avenue house had been closed since Rosina left it. He went there to get some things his sister wanted. That, of course, was the mistake. He went alone, in the afternoon, and didn’t go out for dinner – found some sherry and tins of biscuit in the sideboard. He shot himself sometime that night. There were pistols in his smoking-room. They found burnt-out candles beside him in the morning. The gas and electricity were shut off. I suppose there, in his own house, among his own things, it was too much for him. He left no letters.”
Cavenaugh blinked and brushed the lapel of his coat. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that every suicide is logical and reasonable, if one knew all the facts.”
Eastman roused himself. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve known too many fellows who went off like that – more than I deserve, I think – and some of them were absolutely inexplicable. I can understand Dudley; but I can’t see why healthy bachelors, with money enough, like ourselves, need such a device. It reminds me of what Dr. Johnson said, that the most discouraging thing about life is the number of fads and hobbies and fake religions it takes to put people through a few years of it.”
“Dr. Johnson? The specialist? Oh, the old fellow!” said Cavenaugh imperturbably. “Yes, that’s interesting. Still I fancy if one knew the facts – Did you know about Wyatt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You wouldn’t, probably. He was just a fellow about town who spent money. He wasn’t one of the forestieri, though. Had connections here and owned a fine old place over on Staten Island. He went in for botany, and had been all over, hunting things; rusts, I believe. He had a yacht and used to take a gay crowd down about the South Seas, botanizing. He really did botanize, I believe. I never knew such a spender – only not flashy. He helped a lot of fellows and he was awfully good to girls, the kind who come down here to get a little fun, who don’t like to work and still aren’t really tough, the kind you see talking hard for their dinner. Nobody knows what becomes of them, or what they get out of it, and there are hundreds of new ones every year. He helped dozens of ’em; it was he who got me curious about the little shop girls.
“Well, one afternoon when his tea was brought, he took prussic acid instead. He didn’t leave any letters, either; people of any taste don’t. They wouldn’t leave any material reminder if they could help it. His lawyers found that he had just $314.72 above his debts when he died. He had planned to spend all his money, and then take his tea;
he had worked it out carefully.”
Eastman reached for his pipe and pushed his chair away from the fire. “That looks like a considered case, but I don’t think philosophical suicides like that are common. I think they usually come from stress of feeling and are really, as the newspapers call them, desperate acts; done without a motive. You remember when Anna Karenina was under the wheels, she kept saying, ‘Why am I here?’”
Cavenaugh rubbed his upper lip with his pink finger and made an effort to wrinkle his brows. “May I, please?” reaching for the whiskey. “But have you,” he asked, blinking as the soda flew at him, “have you ever known, yourself, cases that were really inexplicable?”
“A few too many. I was in Washington just before Captain Jack Purden was married and I saw a good deal of him. Popular army man, fine record in the Philippines, married a charming girl with lots of money; mutual devotion. It was the gayest wedding of the winter, and they started for Japan. They stopped in San Francisco for a week and missed their boat because, as the bride wrote back to Washington, they were too happy to move. They took the next boat, were both good sailors, had exceptional weather. After they had been out for two weeks, Jack got up from his deck chair one afternoon, yawned, put down his book, and stood before his wife. ‘Stop reading for a moment and look at me.’ She laughed and asked him why. ‘Because you happen to be good to look at.’ He nodded to her, went back to the stern and was never seen again. Must have gone down to the lower deck and slipped overboard, behind the machinery. It was the luncheon hour, not many people about; steamer cutting through a soft green sea. That’s one of the most baffling cases I know. His friends raked up his past, and it was as trim as a cottage garden. If he’d so much as dropped an ink spot on his fatigue uniform, they’d have found it. He wasn’t emotional or moody; wasn’t, indeed, very interesting; simply a good soldier, fond of all the pompous little formalities that make up a military man’s life. What do you make of that, my boy?”
Cavenaugh stroked his chin. “It’s very puzzling, I admit. Still, if one knew everything—”
“But we do know everything. His friends wanted to find something to help them out, to help the girl out, to help the case of the human creature.”
“Oh, I don’t mean things that people could unearth,” said Cavenaugh uneasily. “But possibly there were things that couldn’t be found out.”
Eastman shrugged his shoulders. “It’s my experience that when there are ‘things’ as you call them, they’re very apt to be found. There is no such thing as a secret. To make any move at all one has to employ human agencies, employ at least one human agent. Even when the pirates killed the men who buried their gold for them, the bones told the story.”
Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.
“I like that idea. It’s reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means that we can’t, after all, go so far afield as we might,” he hesitated, “yes, as we might.”
Eastman looked at him sourly. “Cavenaugh, when you’ve practised law in New York for twelve years, you find that people can’t go far in any direction, except—” He thrust his forefinger sharply at the floor. “Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man’s integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only by incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call character is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and glue.”
Cavenaugh looked startled. “Come now, it’s not so bad as that, is it? I’ve always thought that a serious man, like you, must know a lot of Launcelots.” When Eastman only laughed, the younger man squirmed about in his chair. He spoke again hastily, as if he were embarrassed. “Your military friend may have had personal experiences, however, that his friends couldn’t possibly get a line on. He may accidentally have come to a place where he saw himself in too unpleasant a light. I believe people can be chilled by a draft from outside, somewhere.”
“Outside?” Eastman echoed. “Ah, you mean the far outside! Ghosts, delusions, eh?”
Cavenaugh winced. “That’s putting it strong. Why not say tips from the outside? Delusions belong to a diseased mind, don’t they? There are some of us who have no minds to speak of, who yet have had experiences. I’ve had a little something in that line myself and I don’t look it, do I?”
Eastman looked at the bland countenance turned toward him. “Not exactly. What’s your delusion?”
“It’s not a delusion. It’s a haunt.”
The lawyer chuckled. “Soul of a lost Casino girl?”
“No; an old gentleman. A most unattractive old gentleman, who follows me about.”
“Does he want money?”
Cavenaugh sat up straight. “No. I wish to God he wanted anything – but the pleasure of my society! I’d let him clean me out to be rid of him. He’s a real article. You saw him yourself that night when you came to my rooms to borrow a dictionary, and he went down the fire escape. You saw him down in the court.”
“Well, I saw somebody down in the court, but I’m too cautious to take it for granted that I saw what you saw. Why, anyhow, should I see your haunt? If it was your friend I saw, he impressed me disagreeably. How did you pick him up?”
Cavenaugh looked gloomy. “That was queer, too. Charley Burke and I had motored out to Long Beach, about a year ago, sometime in October, I think. We had supper and stayed until late. When we were coming home, my car broke down. We had a lot of girls along who had to get back for morning rehearsals and things; so I sent them all into town in Charley’s car, and he was to send a man back to tow me home. I was driving myself, and didn’t want to leave my machine. We had not taken a direct road back; so I was stuck in a lonesome, woody place, no houses about. I got chilly and made a fire, and was putting in the time comfortably enough, when this old party steps up. He was in shabby evening clothes and a top hat, and had on his usual white gloves. How he got there, at three o’clock in the morning, miles from any town or railway, I’ll leave it to you to figure out. He surely had no car. When I saw him coming up to the fire, I disliked him. He had a silly, apologetic walk. His teeth were chattering and I asked him to sit down. He got down like a clothes-horse folding up. I offered him a cigarette, and when he took off his gloves I couldn’t help noticing how knotted and spotty his hands were. He was asthmatic, and took his breath with a wheeze. ‘Haven’t you got anything – refreshing in there?’ he asked, nodding at the car. When I told him I hadn’t, he sighed. ‘Ah, you young fellows arc greedy. You drink it all up. You drink it all up, all up – up!’ he kept chewing it over.”
Cavenaugh paused and looked embarrassed again. “The thing that was most unpleasant is difficult to explain. The old man sat there by the fire and leered at me with a silly sort of admiration that was – well, more than humiliating. ‘Gay boy, gay dog!’ he would mutter, and when he grinned he showed his teeth, worn and yellow – shells. I remembered that it was better to talk casually to insane people; so I remarked carelessly that I had been out with a party and got stuck.
“‘Oh yes, I remember,’ he said, ‘Flora and Lottie and Maybelle and Marcelline, and poor Kate.’
“He had named them correctly; so I began to think I had been hitting the bright waters too hard.
“Things I drank never had seemed to make me woody; but you can never tell when trouble is going to hit you. I pulled my hat down and tried to look as uncommunicative as possible; but he kept croaking on from time to time, like this: ‘Poor Katie! Splendid arms, but dope got her. She took up with Eastern religions after she had her hair dyed. Got to going to a Swami’s joint, and smoking opium. Temple of the Lotus, it was called, and the police raided it.’
“This was nonsense, of course; the young woman was in the pink of condition. I let him rave, but I decided that if something didn’t come out for me pretty soon, I’d foot it across Long Island. There wasn’t room enough for the two of us.
I got up and took another try at my car. He hopped right after me.
“‘Good car,’ he wheezed, ‘better than the little Ford.’
“I’d had a Ford before, but so has everybody; that was a safe guess.
“‘Still,’ he went on, ‘that run in from Huntington Bay in the rain wasn’t bad. Arrested for speeding, he-he.’
“It was true I had made such a run, under rather unusual circumstances, and had been arrested. When at last I heard my life-boat snorting up the road, my visitor got up, sighed, and stepped back into the shadow of the trees. I didn’t wait to see what became of him, you may believe. That was visitation number one. What do you think of it?”
Cavenaugh looked at his host defiantly. Eastman smiled.
“I think you’d better change your mode of life, Cavenaugh. Had many returns?” he inquired.
“Too many, by far.” The young man took a turn about the room and came back to the fire. Standing by the mantel he lit another cigarette before going on with his story.
“The second visitation happened in the street, early in the evening, about eight o’clock. I was held up in a traffic block before the Plaza. My chauffeur was driving. Old Nibbs steps up out of the crowd, opens the door of my car, gets in and sits down beside me. He had on wilted evening clothes, same as before, and there was some sort of heavy scent about him. Such an unpleasant old party! A thorough-going rotter; you knew it at once. This time he wasn’t talkative, as he had been when I first saw him. He leaned back in the car as if he owned it, crossed his hands on his stick and looked out at the crowd – sort of hungrily.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 86