by Max Brand
“It’s all right,” she said to him.” We all have to get along somehow.”
“Thanks. I believe you’re on the square, but I’ll fix this first.” He pulled the telephone wire from the wall socket. Then he lifted a finger at her. “You won’t budge out of here for ten minutes?”
“I won’t budge.”
“Ten whole minutes? Honor bright?”
“Honor bright,” said Adrienne, and crossed herself automatically.
“Well, I guess that’s all right then. Good night to you.”
He went out of the cottage.
There was a little clock above the fireplace. She noted the hands at five past eleven and resolved to wait for the ten whole minutes, honor bright; but all at once, said Adrienne, she thought of what a scene there would be when she rushed into the big house and told them, how everyone would be roused, and there would be calls for the police, and Gilbert Ware looking frightfully mortified and, for once, thoroughly alert. She thought of these things and ran from the cottage, but before she had taken three steps, the man moved out from behind the corner of the little building. He came straight toward her, slowly, with his hands in his coat pockets, and his black shadow slid silently over the ground beside him, like a man and his ghost or a man and the black devil, said Adrienne. I wonder why she did not use those quick feet of hers to fly away to the big house, but all she could do was to creep away from him through the open door of the cottage. She backed up until the wall stopped her. Her knees gave way. My Adrienne crouched with her eyes closed, because she dared not look for another instant at the long, white, deadly face of the hitchhiker. But she could feel his shadow falling over her, cold on her face and breast, she said.
“Well, so there isn’t any honor bright,” he said. “I thought maybe you were one of the things for the country to be proud of. But you ain’t. You ain’t all right at all. You’re dirt. You’re just dirt.”
It seemed to Adrienne that the chill of his shadow still was falling on her, but when she looked up, after a long time — after a long time when the breath seemed to be stopping in her body — she saw that he was gone, and she was able to get to the chair by the fire and drop into it.
Only a moment later Gilbert Ware came in. He looked at the black, wet footprints on the floor, and then dropped on one knee beside her chair. She was reminded dimly of other young men who had taken the same position — my Adrienne always is reminded of someone else, no matter what a man does.
“I’ve been a fool — I’ve been a goddamned fool!” said Ware, in just as trembling a passion of regret as any other man. “What happened? What has he done?”
My Adrienne said nothing, not because she was incapable of speech, nor because she was remembering the theft and her fear, but because she was thinking of a loss far more vital, for which she could not find a name. So she kept on thinking until her thoughts went jogging all the way back to childhood, which was the last time “honor bright” had troubled her soul. She was holding out her hands to the fire which, against all nature, gave her no comfort.
Gilbert Ware took those hands and turned her suddenly toward him so that she had to see his face, all savage with resolution. There was no trace now of that astute and critical spirit which had looked so carefully through her.
“When did he go? Has he hurt you? Tell me. Do you hear me, dear Adrienne? What has he done?”
There was one word in this speech which could not help partially reviving such a practical girl as my Adrienne, and yet she still was half lost in that unhappy dream as she answered,
“He took the bracelet and pendant. I don’t know when he left. The hitchhiker...”
“Was it that fellow? And I thought it was only a story!” cried Ware.
He jumped for the phone, found it was disconnected, sprang back to her.
“Let him go!” she said. “I don’t want ever to see him again. Don’t make me see him again, Gilbert.”
Gilbert Ware threw a blanket around her and lifted her to her feet. He helped her along the path to the main house.
“You won’t have to see him. Of course you won’t have to see him. Don’t talk, my sweet girl, my Adrienne. You’ve had a frightful shock. Will you be able to forgive me?”
Miserable as she was, she could not help thinking how easy it might be to forgive fifty million and Gilbert Ware.
The party at the house had not broken up, and everyone hurried to be of help. Faces leaned over Adrienne as she lay on the couch wrapped in the blanket. Someone chafed her feet. Her fingers were around a mug of hot toddy that warmed her hands and her lips and her throat but could not melt the ice around her heart.
She was conscious of much telephoning back and forth, but she was not prepared for the return of her philosophical hitchhiker, flanked by a pair of proud policemen. In that frame he was a wretchedly starved picture of a man. He had left the muddy country lanes for a highway, and the police had picked him up at once. Ware, bending close beside Adrienne, was saying, “There’s only one word for you to speak, and then it’s all over. Simply identify the jewels and the man. The law takes on after that. Don’t move, Adrienne. Don’t sit up.”
She did sit up, however, because it was mortally necessary for her to face again those eyes which had looked into her so shamefully far. But the inquiring mind was gone from the thief. All that had been free and dangerous and of the night now was faded into a dim creature who had suffered before and was prepared once more to endure.
“I guess this is the stuff, Miss?” said one of the policemen, holding out the jewels in the palm of his hand. “You just identify it, and he’ll take a trip.”
She kept trying to catch the glance of the thief, but he stared straight forward at the years of labor, of silence and of shame. His wet hat, now a shapeless sponge, was crushed in one hand, and it was upon this hand that Adrienne was forced, most unwillingly, to focus her attention. There was something abnormal, misshapen and oversized about it. By contrast, Gilbert Ware had such slender fingers, such a rounded but inadequate wrist, that one wondered how he could swing a polo mallet. The thumb of the hitchhiker, for instance, was broadened, thickened and fleshed on the inside to a surprising degree. Across his wrist lay two forking veins as big as her little finger, and all at once she penetrated the mystery. It was simply that the thief had been a laborer. By swinging sledge hammers, by tugging with all his might at powerful wrenches, he had deformed and desensitized his hands until they were merely gross tools, vaguely prehensile.
“. . . just a matter of identification,” a policeman was saying.
“They aren’t mine,” she said.
The smiles of the policemen persisted a moment, wavered and went out like lanterns in a sudden wind.
“But wait — but, Adrienne!” said Gilbert Ware.
She shook her head. “Not mine.”
“But this is the very fellow you were talking about!” cried Ware.
“I never saw him before.”
“My dear Adrienne,” said Ware, looking hard at her, “if you’re doing this out of charity, please remember that the law has a rightful place in this affair.”
She lost track of his voice, watching comprehension break up the calm of the plumber, but even as the hope entered him, and he saw that after all she seemed to be giving him some chance of escape, the manhood seemed to go out of him. Something of his spirit came leering, groveling at her feet.
Ware asked everyone to leave the room. Then he sat down beside Adrienne. “Now what’s it all about?” he asked, and he looked at her as a dealer might look at a picture of uncertain authentication.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you always think your way through before you do anything.”
“I try to,” she admitted, and she kept searching her mind only to discover that the deeper she went, the more unknown was this new Adrienne.
He was waiting.
“I don’t know what the whole truth about this is,” she said, “but I have a horrible, nake
d feeling that I’m going to tell it.”
After all, he had lived a bit. He showed it now by saying nothing.
“Did you see his hands?” she asked. “They were real, don’t you think?”
“Real?”
“He’s worked like an honest man, and he’s been a thief. He’s been in prison, too, and that’s real enough. He could see that I’m all make-believe. I’m not even honestly looking for a husband. I’m just as honest as a cat that wants kittens. I try to be clever, but I’m only silly and young. I’ve never even made a beginning. I hate it. Oh, you don’t know how I hate it.’
“There’s something pretty final about this,” he said. “I think you’re writing me down as one of the people who never have made a beginning.”
And now, in this interval, Adrienne found that she could not tell a pleasant lie. She knew that every second of the silence was saying good-by to fifty million dollars but, instead of speaking, she could only remember the voice of the thief saying, “You’re dirt! You’re just dirt!”
After a while Ware stood up slowly, still with something between anger and entreaty in his eyes, but when that frightful silence continued, he said, “I’ll tell them the hitchhiker isn’t the man.”
He left the room.
A fortune vanished with him, but with a very convinced longing Adrienne wanted to be out of that house. That was what she told the doctor, when he came a few minutes later.
He said, “You’ve had a shock, my girl.”
“Have I? I’m going to be better, though, now.”
“You’d better stay in bed for two or three days.”
“Oh, no; I won’t need to do that. There’s someone I have to see.
“You’d better do as I say, though,” he advised.
“But I know me so well,” said my Adrienne.
Here she finished her drink, and I knew that her story was finished also; her timing is so perfect.
I blew some smoke upward and watched it vanish. “Fifty million dollars all gone?” I said, but then I saw that there was a shadow on Adrienne, a strange dimness.
“Now tell me about everything,” she said, looking at the place where the smoke had vanished.
“Why, it’s not difficult, my dear,” I told her. “You’re unhappy about it because you don’t understand the big, quick movement of your own heart; when you saw Ware bearing down with all the dogs of the law on that poor, hunted devil—”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Adrienne. “Just as poor and hunted as a wolf. You don’t know. I mean, a wolf that’s perfectly at home in the woods, snow or shine. Don’t you see? What am I looking for? Why, I’m looking for a man, and that evening I thought I’d found him. But I hadn’t. I’d only found a sort of beautiful social legend, or something. The hitchhiker was more of a man.”
“Well, yes. Well... of course,” I said, and gave myself a twist that hurt my back. “I hadn’t thought of that. But — just to return a bit — who was it you wanted to see in the pinch? You remember you spoke to the doctor about him.”
“Oh, an old, old friend,” said Adrienne. “His voice was with me all through it. He’s the one I’m to see tonight.”
“Better be on your way, then,” I told her. “It’s ten to eight now.”
“Really? Is it as late as that? Then may I ring for Jericho?”
She was pressing the button as I said, “What the devil do you want with him?”
Jericho came in. He is made of white hair, yellow parchment, and heavenly spirit.
“Jericho dear,” said Adrienne, “is there any cold, cold champagne?”
“There is one just barely turnin’ to ice,” said Jericho.
“Then we’ll have that for an aperitif,” she told him. “And is that pheasant big enough for two?”
“Just perfect, Miss Adrienne.”
“Then serve it that way, please,” said Adrienne.
“Do you mean that I’m the appointment?” I asked, when Jericho left.
“You’re the only person who knows enough to tell me what’s wrong with me,” she said desolately. “But I don’t need the telling actually. I know already. Say something or I’m going to cry,” said Adrienne, who now was sitting on the arm of my chair.
Jericho brought in the champagne and paid no attention to Adrienne as he began opening the bottle.
“Well, I’ll tell you a fact that’s better than a story,” I said.
“I hate facts,” said Adrienne.
“When the Arab mare comes out of the tent in the morning — because the Arabs value their mares most, you know...”
“What silly people!”
“They’re not silly at all.”
“Oh, aren’t they?”
“No, they’re not. But when the mare comes out of the tent, she looks away off beyond the tribe and over the heads of the family that owns her, and across the desert to the edge of the horizon. She has her tail arched and her head raised, and there’s a tremendous expectation in her eyes that makes her master sad.”
“But why?”
“Because he knows she’s saying to herself: ‘When will the real master come!’”
“How rather lovely,” said Adrienne.
Jericho had placed in my hand a glass in which the bubbles broke with a crisping sound. “Here’s to the real master, my dear,” I said.
“Will you find him for me?”
“This is just nonsense, Adrienne,” I told her with severity.
“But I’m tired — oh, I’m tired to death!” she said. “I want my life to start.”
“Come, come! Let’s have this drink.”
“Not until you promise me.”
“But what?”
“Either find me a husband — I’ll ask no questions — or marry me yourself.”
“Adrienne!”
“Are you really so shocked?”
“But I’m old enough to be—”
“You are old enough, you see. Shall we drink to it!”
“I shall find you somebody,” said I.
“Of course you will,” said Adrienne, raising her glass slowly as though waiting for permission.
I lifted mine in turn and, looking up, saw her all shining and golden through the color of the wine.
THE END
THE KING
IT WAS A big day when Rudy Zandor consented to dine with me at Chasen’s because those were the years when he was astonishing Hollywood with a series of super productions. He was another Sampson whose strength lay not in his long hair but in his perfect self-confidence.
The country he loved, the flag followed, the God he worshiped was Rudy Zandor. So I put in the whole day working on my plot and reached the restaurant rather full of hope.
Zandor was hardly an hour later, which seemed a good sign, and then he came in with a yes-man named Gregg and Jimmy Jones, whose real name is Jonascsky, Zandor raised quite a buzz with his entrance because he always dressed for public appearances. This time he wore corduroy trousers, a riding coat buttoned high around the throat, and four days’ whiskers. His friends were in dinner jackets for contrast.
Rudy was almost at my table when another murmur started. All eyes left him, and in came Raymond Vincent Etherton in his black coat and white stock like an eighteenth century ghost. It was rather hard on Zandor to have his entrance messed up like that, for he was completely forgotten as the old man went by, looking straight ahead and failing to see the people who spoke to him. He went to his usual corner, waited for his coffee and cognac, and contemplated the dignity of space.
When Dave Chasen in person brought the brandy, Etherton became gently and kindly aware of him, for he was really abstracted, not merely high-hat. Thirty years before, when he consented to be King Arthur for D.W. Griffith, he must have been a glorious man.
Some of the glory hung about him as Henri Quatre in Ivry or as Richard the Lion-Hearted in The Talisman. He never was cast except as a king and he moved through his parts without the slightest acting, merely lending his presence, as it w
ere. The whisper had it that there was a dash of real royalty in his blood but no one even in Hollywood dared to suggest the bar-sinister to Etherton.
Even Hollywood was surprised by the appearance of such a man on the screen. He was more a rare legend than a fact. That was why Chasen’s buzzed so this evening.
Zandor, in eclipse, looked pretty sour.
“That man,” he said, pointing at Etherton. “Who is he?”
Jimmy Jones winked at me. It was the yes-man who gave the answer. A celebrity in Hollywood can’t help accumulating them as the northside of a tree gathers moss.
“That’s Raymond Vincent Etherton,” said Gregg.
“I want him. He has a hungry look. I want him to play Shylock,” said Zandor.
“The ‘Merchant of Venice’ after the big western?” I asked.
“Before,” said Zandor. “I’m not doing the western.”
My hopes went crash; and at the same moment I heard Gregg ordering caviar.
Jimmy said: “You can’t buy an Etherton, Rudy. He doesn’t need money, but he acts now and then to raise the level of the screen and show the world what royalty should be.”
Zandor waved his hand at Jones. “You bother me,” he said. “Go away.”
Jimmy Jones went away.
“Now get Etherton. Offer him seventy-five thousand,” directed Zandor.
His Number Two boy went over to Etherton and I felt a little sick about Zandor and about myself for being with him.
Etherton was sipping his brandy when the yes-man leaned over his table and started talking. The old fellow showed no sign that he heard a syllable. Presently he laid a bill on the table, stood up, and walked through the Number Two boy as though the fellow were a thin mist. He passed out of Chasen’s and Gregg came back to Zandor, astonished.
“Nothing could stop him — not even your name, Rudy,” he said.
“Why didn’t you raise the bid?” asked Zandor, furious. “I don’t care what sort of blood he has in him; nobody walks out on me. Why didn’t you offer him one hundred thousand?”