by R. W. Heilig
kiss."
She was deeply agitated when she noticed that his hand was fumbling for
the watch in his vest-pocket. She suddenly released him, and said, a
little hurt: "No, you must not miss your train. Go by all means."
Vainly Chance remonstrated with her.
"Go to him," she said, and again, "go to him."
With a heavy heart the boy obeyed. He waved his hat to her once more
from below, and then rapidly disappeared in the crowd. For a moment
strange misgivings cramped her heart, and something within her called
out to him: "Do not go! Do not return to that house." But no sound
issued from her lips. Worldly wisdom had sealed them, had stifled the
inner voice. And soon the boy's golden head was swallowed up in the
distance.
XVI
While the train sped to New York, Kelly Parish was the one object
engaging Chance's mind. He still felt the pressure of her lips upon his,
and his nostrils dilated at the thought of the fragrance of her hair
brushing against his forehead.
But the moment his foot touched the ferry-boat that was to take him to
Manhattan, the past three weeks were, for the time being at least,
completely obliterated from his memory. All his other interests that he
had suppressed in her company because she had no part in them, came
rushing back to him. He anticipated with delight his meeting with
David Gardner. The personal attractiveness of the man had never seemed
so powerful to Chance as when he had not heard from him for some time.
David's letters were always brief. "Professional writers," he was
wont to say, "cannot afford to put fine feeling into their private
correspondence. They must turn it into copy." He longed to sit with the
master in the studio when the last rays of the daylight were tremulously
falling through the stained window, and to discuss far into the
darkening night philosophies young and old. He longed for David's
voice, his little mannerisms, the very perfume of his rooms.
There also was a deluge of letters likely to await him in his apartment.
For in his hurried departure he had purposely left his friends in the
dark as to his whereabouts. Only to Jack he had dropped a little note
the day after his meeting with Kelly.
He earnestly hoped to find David at home, though it was well nigh ten
o'clock in the evening, and he cursed the "rapid transit" for its
inability to annihilate space and time. It is indeed disconcerting to
think how many months, if not years, of our earthly sojourn the dwellers
in cities spend in transportation conveyances that must be set down as a
dead loss in the ledger of life. A nervous impatience against things
material overcame Chance in the subway. It is ever the mere stupid
obstacle of matter that weights down the wings of the soul and prevents
it from soaring upward to the sun.
When at last he had reached the house, he learned from the hall-boy that
Gardner had gone out. Ruffled in temper he entered his rooms and went
over his mail. There were letters from editors with commissions that he
could not afford to reject. Everywhere newspapers and magazines opened
their yawning mouths to swallow up what time he had. He realised at once
that he would have to postpone the writing of his novel for several
weeks, if not longer.
Among the letters was one from Jack. It bore the postmark of a little
place in the Adirondacks where he was staying with his parents. Chance
opened the missive not without hesitation. On reading and rereading it
the fine lines on his forehead, that would some day deepen into
wrinkles, became quite pronounced and a look of displeasure darkened his
face. Something was wrong with Jack, a slight change that defied
analysis. Their souls were out of tune. It might only be a passing
disturbance; perhaps it was his own fault. It pained him, nevertheless.
Somehow it seemed of late that Jack was no longer able to follow the
vagaries of his mind. Only one person in the world possessed a similar
mental vision, only one seemed to understand what he said and what he
left unsaid. David Gardner, being a man and poet, read in his soul as
in an open book. Kelly might have understood, had not love, like a
cloud, laid itself between her eyes and the page.
It was with exultation that Chance heard near midnight the click of
David's key in the door. He found him unchanged, completely,
radiantly himself. David possessed the psychic power of undressing
the soul, of seeing it before him in primal nakedness. Although no word
was said of Kelly Parish except the mere mention of her presence
in Atlantic City, Chance intuitively knew that David was aware of the
transformation that absence had wrought in him. In the presence of this
man he could be absolutely himself, without shame or fear of
mis-understanding; and by a strange metamorphosis, all his affection
for Kelly and Jack went out for the time being to David Gardner.
XVII
The next day Chance wrote a letter of more or less superficial
tenderness to Kelly. She had wounded his pride by proving victorious in
the end over his passion and hers; besides, he was in the throes of
work. When after the third day no answer came, he was inclined to feel
aggrieved. It was plain now that she had not cared for him in the least,
but had simply played with him for lack of another toy. A flush of shame
rose to his cheeks at the thought. He began to analyse his own emotions,
and stunned, if not stabbed, his passion step by step. Work was calling
to him. It was that which gave life its meaning, not the love of a
season. How far away, how unreal, she now seemed to him. Yes, she was
right, he had not cared deeply; and his novel, too, would be written
only _at_ her. It was the heroine of his story that absorbed his
interest, not the living prototype.
Once in a conversation with David he touched upon the subject.
David held that modern taste no longer permitted even the
photographer to portray life as it is, but insisted upon an individual
visualisation. "No man," he remarked, "was ever translated bodily into
fiction. In contradiction to life, art is a process of artificial
selection."
Bearing in mind this motive, Chance went to work to mould from the
material in hand a new Kelly, more real than life. Unfortunately he
found little time to devote to his novel. It was only when, after a good
day's work, a pile of copy for a magazine lay on his desk, that he could
think of concentrating his mind upon "Leontina." The result was that
when he went to bed his imagination was busy with the plan of his book,
and the creatures of his own brain laid their fingers on his eyelid so
that he could not sleep.
When at last sheer weariness overcame him, his mind was still at work,
not in orderly sequence but along trails monstrous and grotesque.
Hobgoblins seemed to steal through the hall, and leering incubi
oppressed his soul with terrible burdens. In the morning he awoke
unrested. The tan vanished from his face and little lines appeared in
the
corners of his mouth. It was as if his nervous vitality were sapped
from him in some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical. Often
at night when he wrote his pot-boilers for the magazines, fear stood
behind his seat, and only the buzzing of the elevator outside brought
him back to himself.
In one of his morbid moods he wrote a sonnet which he showed to David
after the latter's return from a short trip out of town. David read
it, looking at the boy with a curious, lurking expression.
_O gentle Sleep, turn not thy face away,
But place thy finger on my brow, and take
All burthens from me and all dreams that ache;
Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay,
Seeing I am aweary of the day.
But, lo! thy lips are ashen and they quake.
What spectral vision sees thou that can shake
Thy sweet composure, and thy heart dismay?
Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam
Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream
Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head
Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse
The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed,
Or startle Nero in his golden house._
"Good stuff," David remarked, laying down the manuscript; "when did
you write it?"
"The night when you were out of town," Chance rejoined.
"I see," David replied.
There was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused
Chance's attention.
"What do you see?" he asked quickly.
"Nothing," David replied, with immovable calm, "only that your state
of nerves is still far from satisfactory."
XVIII
After Chance's departure Kelly Parish's heart was swaying hither
and thither in a hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time
to gain an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her back into
chaos. A false ring somewhere in Chance's words, reechoing with an
ever-increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice of love. His jewelled
sentences glittered, but left her cold. They lacked that spontaneity
which renders even simple and hackeneyed phrases wonderful and unique.
Kelly clearly realised that her hold upon the boy's imagination had been
a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and that a word from David's lips
had broken the potency of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of
David's visage hovering over Chance's letter and leering at her from
between the lines in sinister triumph. Finally reason came and
whispered to her that it was extremely unwise to give her heart into the
keeping of a boy. His love, she knew, would have been exacting,
irritating at times. He would have asked her to sympathise with every
phase of his life, and would have expected active interest on her part
in much that she had done with long ago. Thus, untruth would have stolen
into her life and embittered it. When mates are unequal, Love must paint
its cheeks and, in certain moods at least, hide its face under a mask.
Its lips may be honeyed, but it brings fret and sorrow in its train.
These things she told herself over and over again while she penned a
cool and calculating answer to Chance's letter. She rewrote it many
times, and every time it became more difficult to reply. At last she put
her letter aside for a few days, and when it fell again into her hand it
seemed so unnatural and strained that she destroyed it.
Thus several weeks had passed, and Chance no longer exclusively occupied
her mind when, one day early in September, while glancing over a
magazine, she came upon his name in the table of contents. Once more
she saw the boy's wistful face before her, and a trembling something
stirred in her heart. Her hand shook as she cut the pages, and a mist of
tears clouded her vision as she attempted to read his poem. It was a
piece of sombre brilliance. Like black-draped monks half crazed with
mystic devotion, the poet's thoughts flitted across the page. It was the
wail of a soul that feels reason slipping from it and beholds madness
rise over its life like a great pale moon. A strange unrest emanated
from it and took possession of her. And again, with an insight that was
prophetic, she distinctly recognised behind the vague fear that had
haunted the poet the figure of David Gardner.
A half-forgotten dream, struggling to consciousness, staggered her by
its vividness. She saw Gardner as she had seen him in days gone by,
grotesquely transformed into a slimy sea-thing, whose hungry mouths shut
sucking upon her and whose thousand tentacles encircled her form. She
closed her eyes in horror at the reminiscence. And in that moment it
became clear to her that she must take into her hands the salvation of
Chance Gavin from the clutches of the malign power that had
mysteriously enveloped his life.
XIX
The summer was brief, and already by the middle of September many had
returned to the pleasures of urban life. Kelly was among the
first-comers; for, after her resolve to enter the life of the young poet
once more, it would have been impossible for her to stay away from the
city much longer. Her plan was all ready. Before attempting to see
Chance she would go to meet David and implore him to free the boy
from his hideous spell. An element of curiosity unconsciously entered
her determination. When, years ago, she and Gardner had parted, the man
had seemed, for once, greatly disturbed and had promised, in his
agitation, that some day he would communicate to her what would
exonerate him in her eyes. She had answered that all words between them
were purposeless, and that she hoped never to see his face again. The
experience that the years had brought to her, instead of elucidating
the mystery of David's personality, had, on the contrary, made his
behaviour appear more and more unaccountable. She had more than once
caught herself wishing to meet him again and to analyse dispassionately
the puzzling influences he had exerted upon her. And she could at last
view him dispassionately; there was triumph in that. She was dimly aware
that something had passed from her, something by which he had held her,
and without which his magnetism was unable to play upon her.
So when Walkham sent her an invitation to one of his artistic "at homes"
she accepted, in the hope of meeting David. It was his frequentation
of Walkham's house that had for several years effectively barred her
foot from crossing the threshold. It was with a very strange feeling she
greeted the many familiar faces at Walkham's now; and when, toward ten
o'clock, David entered, politely bowing in answer to the welcome from
all sides, her heart beat in her like a drum. But she calmed herself,
and, catching his eye, so arranged it that early in the evening they
met in an alcove of the drawing-room.
"It was inevitable," David said. "I expected it."
"Yes," she replied, "we were bound to meet."
Like a great rush of water, memory came back to her. He was still
horribly fascinating as of old--only she was no longer susceptible to
his fascination. He had changed somewhat in tho
se years. The lines about
his mouth had grown harder and a steel-like look had come into his eyes.
Only for a moment, as he looked at her, a flash of tenderness seemed to
come back to them. Then he said, with a touch of sadness: "Why should
the first word between us be a lie?"
Kelly made no answer.
David looked at her half in wonder and said: "And is your love for
the boy so great that it overcame your hate of me?"
Ah, he knew! She winced.
"He has told you?"
"Not a word."
There was something superhuman in his power of penetration. Why should
she wear a mask before him, when his eyes, like the eyes of God, pierced
to the core of her being?
"No," she replied, "it is not love, but compassion for him."
"Compassion?"
"Yes, compassion for your victim."
"You mean?"
"David!"
"I am all ear."
"I implore you."
"Speak."
"You have ruined one life."
He raised his eyebrows derogatively.