“I think I’ll go for a walk,” Sara said.
IT WAS fifteen minutes past three o’clock the next afternoon when a cab drove up to Eighth and South Streets. A young woman, chic in a silver-fox jacket that reached just short of her hips, stepped out. She handed the driver a bill and walked away with long, swaying strides.
She walked west on South Street, knowing full well how the ragtag and bobtail of that ragtag street were staring at her.
At Ninth Street she turned. A moment later she rang a bell. Almost instantly the door opened.
A man with a lean, handsome face and a small mustache appeared.
“I thought you would return,” he said.
He guided her along the passage to the rear of the house and into a small chamber which, she found, had need of only the most meager furnishings. His personality filled every crack and crevice and corner.
He seated her, and then seemed to forget.
He started working over some papers. Sara had no idea what they were. But his preoccupation was total.
She studied his face. She noted again the chiseled lines that somehow had an eternal look: the length in the thick black brows; thick hair that might have been touseled by all the winds of the world. She started as she remembered a portrait in a book Pierre had at home—Francis Barrett’s engraving of the demon Ashtaroth.
She was extremely conscious, though they were lowered, of his eyes. She was glad that they did not look at her.
She could not tell how long she sat there, nor when it was that she began to feel a change within herself. The pull and tug of self-questioning still went on. But now a new growth seemed to manifest itself. It was as if a tentacle reached out toward her from somewhere in the room—a tentacle that was as immaterial and yet as actual as a current of electricity. Watching the man at the desk, she became positive that the current flowed from him.
The current was switched off.
Perhaps fifteen minutes passed, in which she sat relaxed—and receptive. And then again the flow of that force began, sweeping into her with even greater strength. But this time it brought with it something else: a fragment of knowledge, as if the current were lighting a small incandescent lamp from the ray of which she could search (but only a little way) into herself. The weak beam turned first in one psychical direction and then another, hesitating and then moving on; revealing to Sara parts of herself that, formerly, she vaguely had perceived but never understood.
The light swept the shadows from the old longings and exposed those longings in clearer outlines; yet the outlines, while giving promise of greater limning, were still so incomplete as to create tantalizing interest. And the promise, too, was of such delights, such ecstasies as Sara had never dared to imagine.
The thought occurred to her that, for these, the price must be great. Then, just as the light seemed burning brighter, the man at the table stood up. He said:
“I think that will be all—today.”
Sara stood up. She stood uncertainly.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He answered, “You would not believe me if I told you.”
A moment later she was walking in the street, on her way home.
That night Pierre noticed that she was more nervous than ever. She toyed with the silver at dinner, stared at her plate, ate little. He said gently:
“You don’t seem to have much appetite, dear.”
“Well enough,” Sara said curtly.
He remained silent, then, for a little. But at length his concern overcame his natural tolerance.
“I think,” he said, “a tonic would do - wonders for you. How’s a trip to Europe sound? Portugal? Spain? Take the Clipper to Lisbon? Better yet, South America.”
She said nothing. He began to expand,
“I’ve some business I could do in Buenos Aires.”
Sara said shortly, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
And she got up and left the table. But when she reached her room, she collapsed on her bed. She did want to go somewhere: she did want to get away. What contrariness forced her to answer Pierre as she did?
Emotion shook her. But she did not cry. Never in her life had she wept. She sat upon the edge of the bed; she could see her reflection in the long mirror on the wall. She would go down and tell Pierre she wanted the trip—and she would add that it was awfully thoughtful of him. But she didn’t.
Pierre, sitting below, stirred his coffee thoughtfully.
“Damn the girl!”
Anybody could see she needed a change.
But Pierre, who thrived on debating questions that didn’t mean a thing, shrank from argument with Sara about anything that mattered. He realized later that it might have been the one time in his life when he should have forced his will on hers.
Another day; again Sara sat stiffly in the room where the gaunt gray cat preened herself and the lean-faced man busied himself with the innumerable papers at his table.
Again, as before, there was a period of absorption. Sara relaxed, and she received. Under the brightening ray those clouded hungers focused into sharper relief. From vague values they took on some semblance of positive appetite. But it was still only a semblance, still unrecognized. She knew only that she was stumbling down some spiritual or psychical lane, serving a novitiate for an order the purpose of which escaped her.
Again, during a moment when the current withdrew, Sara questioned, “Who are you?”
And again the man gave the same answer.
“I think I would believe you,” Sara said.
The man smiled thinly.
“If I said the name, all this”—and the gesture of a graceful hand embraced the room— “would melt away. You, too, will find that out some day. We explain nothing. We admit nothing. That is confession.” Slyly, he added, “And if confession is good for the soul, it also closes the world we wish to enter.”
“You,” Sara asked, “have entered?”
The man threw back his head and laughed.
“One enters his own home,” he said. “You would enter through surrender.”
She thought about that. Then:
“If I surrender?”
“You would not know this world.”
“But the other. What would it be like?”
“That,” he replied, “is what you are learning.”
There were other visitors that afternoon. When the first—a fat greasy-handed Polish woman—entered the room, the period of receptivity ended.
The woman squatted down in a chair beside Sara. The fastidious girl, at any other time, would have found discreet reason to remove herself. That she did not was evidence, even to herself, of a profound change of character. She sat quietly until she was dismissed.
As she made her way down the corridor, she met still another woman even fatter than the Pole, even more unkempt. The woman leered at her as she passed.
Outdoors, Sara paused in the dirty sunlight that filtered through the city’s smoke. Her head throbbed. She drew a cool hand across her hot temple.
This was insanity, she felt.
“This must stop,” she said.
The effluvium of decaying foods, emanating from an uncovered garbage pail at the curb, assailed her nostrils. The sudden realization that the odor was not unpleasant gave additional vehemence to her declaration.
“No,” she said. “No, no!”
The negative sounded false.
She felt that from the windows behind her the man’s scorching eyes were staring at her.
She moved on. aimlessly, the fashionably dressed object of all the truck drivers and loungers and drunks with which the neighborhood abounded.
But even as she moved away, she felt the magnetism of the house behind her. She was empowered to swim against the stream for the moment only, she knew, because it was the will of that man with the ice-cold hands and the mincing walk.
She moved heavily, unmindful of her direction. And what did direction matter when, with a velocity she was unable
to brake, she was being propelled toward some target she had not chosen for herself; indeed, when horrifying outlines were but dimly suggested by those lightning flashes of knowledge.
A red neon sign attracted her. She walked through the door. She sat down at a little table in a dirty barroom. The oilcloth on the table was crumbly with broken pretzels glued to the cloth with sticky beer. Near her chair on the floor stood a china cuspidor, tobacco juice dripping down its sides.
Sara ordered a drink. . . .
WHEN you walked into the Salon de W Camp-d’Avesnes, in the smart shopping district of Chestnut Street, you found yourself not in one of those modernistically mirrored, chromiumed and ebony-enameled palaces of trade, but rather in a museum. You were not buttonholed by one of those chic wenches with the' trick French accent who, while catering, looks down her pretty nose at you. You were left to roam at perfect ease.
If, by chance, you had a mind to perfume, there was a glass case discreetly out of the way at the rear and discreetly attended by a serene, well turned-out woman in middle life. It was Pierre's way of explaining to the world that not only was he proud of his museum but that he could get along quite well without trade.
The room itself was elegant in the gold and white and satin of royal and eighteenth- century France. But you appreciated at once that the chamber was only a setting for the many exquisite objects.
Here, on this slender Louis XV stand, stood an Egyptian jar, disinterred from the tomb of a Pharoah when it still held the fragrance of the perfume it had once contained.
Here, in a case, were samples of the first vials brought to France from the Holy Land by crusading knights.
There were sachets from the court of Queen Elizabeth. There were matching necklaces and rings, whose centers held perforated boxes for perfume.
There were gold and silver and ivory castlettes and printaniers which appeared in the courts of England and France a century after Elizabeth. There were perfume lamps and perfume pans and perfume bellows, forerunners of the atomizer.
There were thirteenth-century finger bowls, which once held rose water.
There were papier-mache rouge boxes hoary with age. There was a mother-of-pearl coffret in which Catherine the Great stowed her perfume flagons, her pomade jars and ivory manicure tools. And from all ages and all countries there were rare and costly vases.
Yet, it was not this room Pierre called his “crossroads of the world.”
This was the large vault at the rear in which he stood this Saturday morning, staring vacantly at a row of glass jars.
There were products here worth more than their weight in gold. There was soft fatty civet from Abyssinia. There was castor from Russia. There was Tonquin musk from Tibet, benzoin from Siam, storax from Asia Minor. The oils of ylang-ylang and jasmin, of rose and palmerosa were here—oils measured by the precious drop. There were balsams and gums. And there were also synthetics and isolates, for chemistry had brought the Salon de Camp-d Avesnes a very long way since Gervase had set up his little shop off Front Street.
A shadow crossed the steel door to the big vault. Pierre glanced up.
“Oh, hello, David.”
“Busy?”
“Not at all, son; come in.”
David stooped to enter the vault. He peered at the illuminated shelves.
“Quite a place you have here.”
Pierre beamed.
“Just about anything you’ll find in the trade. Never been here before?”
David, inspecting the labels on the containers, shook his head.
“Got ambergris?”
Pierre grinned.
“I knew you’d ask that right off. Everybody does. Seems all the public knows about perfume is what they read in the papers—fishermen picking up*a chunk along the beach. Yes, I’ve a little. That’s it there. Don't need much. Use it only in one of our products. Gives diffusiveness, you know. You probably didn’t.”
David pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started to light one. Pierre held up a pudgy hand.
“Not here, please. Too big an investment and smoke’s insidious. . . . Jasmin oil there. . . . What’s on your mind?”
There was a bench in the vault and David sat down, legs wide apart, hands loosely clasped between.
“Sara,” he said with frank directness.
Pierre looked at David shrewdly. “H'm-m-m.”
Pierre's left eyelid dropped and he fingered his mole. He said:
“She’s been pretty restless lately.”
“It’s more than that,” David said. “She’s—growing pretty cold.”
Pierre said, “H’m-m.”
He said it with more force. He added, “Think there’s someone else?”
“N-no,” David said hesitantly. “No. I’m pretty sure of that. I don’t know what. I thought perhaps—you’d know.”
Pierre, too, sat down on the bench. He didn’t look at David. He stared at a bottle labeled “methyl phenyl acetate,” a puzzled look in his eyes.
“I think she’s sick,” Pierre said gruffly. “But you can’t tell her anything. She’s bull-headed like her mother. Been moody. Got circles under her eyes. Noticed last night her dress was loose. Losing weight, I wouldn’t wonder. Needs to get away, that's what. But when I said so, she flounced out of the room.”
Pierre’s eyes, usually so merry, were somber now. He became contrite.
“My fault, I suppose. Don’t bring her up right. A man can't raise a girl. Shouldn't . have tried.”
David hoisted one leg over the other, leaned back and jammed his big hands into his trouser pockets.
“I don't think,” he began slowly, “it's that so much. I think. . . . Well, there might be something wrong with . . . well, with her. . . Pierre tapped his temple with a fat finger. “You mean here?” he asked in surprise. David nodded.
“Can’t see how you figure,” Pierre said.
“I don’t. It’s only something I feel.” “H’m-m. I know. You’re sensitive to things. I am, too.”
“Maybe,” David said. “And maybe it’s something else. Do you remember Heath, the Great Dane we had that got hydrophobia? I could tell something was going wrong, but I couldn't tell what. And those Ayrshires of ours. Why, people think one cow’s just like any other. But they aren’t. Each one’s a little different. And sometimes I see where one's becoming quite a bit different, gets some crazy idea in her head and wants to raise the devil.”
David fell silent then. Along with his other troubles, he had suffered a speech defect when younger. He had learned to control his words, to force one to follow the other in slow measure—and never to say too much. He’d said too much now and he knew anything else he said would jumble up.
Pierre’s eyes remained fixed on the bottle of synthetic odor of gardenia.
“What's the answer?” he asked finally.
“W-well,” David said slowly, “I thought maybe if she saw a doctor. . . .”
“She won't.”
“I thought she wouldn't. But if there was some way of having a doctor see her, without her realizing. I mean—”
“Just a regular sawbones?” asked Pierre sharply.
“N-no. A specialist.”
‘‘A psychiatrist?”
“That was my idea. I just didn’t want to say it.”
Pierre nodded.
“Might help. Might not. Hardt’s a good man.” He added, cautiously, “So people say. But I know him pretty well. If I could get him up to dinner tonight. . . . I’d want you there, too.”
JUSTIN HARDT was a spare man with a very good opinion of himself and a booming voice. He was tall and he had long legs and he was fifty-six. His face was long and the leathery flesh hung in folds at the chin, giving him somewhat the loose look of a bloodhound.
His forehead was high and at the temples his brushy brown hair was beginning to show traces of gray. When he looked directly at you as he always did in conversation, his slate- blue eyes peered penetratingly through pince-nez glasses which were insured a
gainst breakage by a length of black silk ribbon running down to some secret recess of his vest.
The vest itself and its two dozen doublebreasted companions which hung in his handsome bachelor’s chambers at the Racquet Club were of the novel breed the world terms “fancy.” There were checks and stripes and extravagantly woven patterns in colors that ranged from cream and dull yellow to blues a tint too brilliant and greens a tint too bright.
THE WHITE WOLF Page 4