“That is nothing new to me,” she said. “Only one man has offered that.”
“Why didn’t you take him?” he asked, with an ugly laugh.
“I couldn’t. I cared for you.”
“And now,” he said, “are you afraid of me?”
“Yes — a little.”
He leaned forward suddenly, “You’d better steer clear of me!” Her startled eyes beheld in him a change as swift as his words.
“Fair warning!” he added: “look out for yourself.” Everything that was brutal in him; everything ruthless and violent had marred his features so that all in a moment the mouth had grown ugly and a hard, bruised look stamped the pallid muscles of his features and twitched at them.
“You’re taking chances from now on,” he said. “I told you once to let me alone. You’d better do it now. And—” he stared at the distant man— “I told you that hate is more vital than love. It is. I’ve waited a long time to strike. Even now it isn’t in me to do it as I have meant to do it. And so I tell you to keep away from me; and I’ll strike in the old-fashioned way, and end it — to-night.”
Stunned by his sudden and dreadful metamorphosis, her ears ringing with his disjointed incoherencies, she rose, scarcely knowing what she was doing, scarcely conscious that he was beside her, moving lightly and in silence out into the brilliant darkness of the streets.
It was only at her own door that he spoke again: standing there on the shabby steps of her boarding-house, the light from the transom yellowing his ghastly face.
“Something snapped” — he passed an unsteady hand across his eyes;— “I care very deeply for you. I — they’ll make over to you — what I have. You can study on it — live on it, modestly—”
“W-what is the matter? Are you ill?” she stammered, white and frightened.
But he only muttered that she had her warning and that she should keep away from him, and that it would not be long before she should have an opportunity in life. And he went his way not looking back.
When he reached his studio the hall was dark. As he turned the key he thought he heard something stirring in the shadows, but went in — leaving the door into the hallway open — and straight on across the room to his desk.
He was putting something into his coat pocket, and his back was still turned to the open door when Graylock stepped quietly across the threshold; and Drene heard him, but closed his desk, leisurely, and then, as leisurely, turned, knowing who had entered.
And so they stood alone together after many years.
V
Graylock looked at Drene’s heavily sagging pocket and knew what was in it. A sudden sweat chilled his temples, but he said steadily enough:
“I’d like to say a word or two — if you’ll give me time.” And, as Drene made no reply;— “You’re quite right: This business of ours should be finished one way or another. I can’t stand it any longer.”
“In that case,” remarked Drene with an evil stare at him, “I may postpone it — to find out how much you can stand.” He dropped his right hand into the sagging pocket, looking intently at Graylock all the while:
“What do you want here anyway?”
“I fancy that you have already guessed.”
“Maybe. All the same, what do you want?” — fumbling with his bulging pocket for a moment and then remaining motionless.
Graylock’s worn eyes rested on the outline of the shrouded weapon: he stood eyeing it absently for a moment, then seated himself on the sofa, his heavy eyes shifting from one object to another.
But there were few objects to be seen in that silent place; — a star overhead glimmering through the high expanse of glass above; — otherwise gray monotony of wall, a clay shape or two swathed in wet clothes, a narrow ring of lamp light, and formless shadow.
“It’s a long time, Drene.”
Drene mused in silence, now and then watching the other obliquely.
Presently he withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket, pulled an armchair toward him and seated himself.
“It’s many years,” repeated Graylock. “I expected you to do something before this.”
“Were you uneasy?” sneered Drene. Then he shrugged, knowing that Graylock was no coward, sorry he had intimated as much, like a man who deals a premature and useless blow.
He sat brooding for a while, his lean dangerous head lowered sideways as though listening; his oblique glance always covering Graylock.
“I suppose you’ll be surprised when I tell you one reason that I came here,” said Graylock.
“Do you suppose you can still surprise me by anything you may say or do?”
The man remained silent, sitting with his hands tightly clasped on his knees.
“Drene,” he said, in a low voice, “don’t strike at me through this young girl.”
Drene began to laugh, unpleasantly.
“Are you in love with her?”
“Yes.... You know it.”
Drene said, still laughing: “It’s the common rumor. You may imagine it amuses your friends — if you have any left.”
Graylock spoke in a voice that had a ghostly sound in the great room:
“Don’t harm her, Drene. It is not necessary. I shall never see her again — if that will content you.”
Drene laughed: “I never saw my wife again. Did that help me? I never saw her again, but as long as she lived I knew what she was ... My wife. And when she died, still my wife. There was no relief — no relief.”
Graylock, deathly white, framed his haggard face between his hands and stared at nothing:
“I know,” he said. “I understand now. I am here to-night to pay the reckoning.”
“You can’t pay it.”
“No, not the whole score. There’s another bill, I suppose, waiting for me — somewhere. But I can settle my indebtedness to you—”
“How?”
“That’s up to you, Drene.”
“How?” repeated Drene, violently.
Graylock made a slight gesture with his head toward Drene’s sagging pocket: “That way if you like. Or,” he added, “There is a harder punishment.”
“What is it?”
“To give her up.”
“Yes,” said Drene, “that is harder. But I can make it even harder than that. I can make it as hard for you as you made it for me. I can let you live through it.”
He laughed, fisted in his pocket, drew out the lumpy automatic and leisurely pushed the lever to “safe.”
He said: “To kill you would be like opening the cell door for a lifer. You know what you are while you’re alive; maybe you’d forget if you were dead. I—”
He ceased, fiddling absently with the dull-colored weapon on his knee; and for a while they remained silent, not looking at each other. And when Drene spoke again he was still intent upon the automatic.
“If I knew what happens after a man dies I could act intelligently.” He shot an ugly look at Graylock: “I don’t know about you, either. You’re a rat. But you might fool me at that. You might be repentant. And in that case you’d get away — if it’s true that the eleventh hour is not too late.... If it’s true that Christ is merciful.... So I’ll take no chances of a getaway. You might fool me — one way or another — if you were dead.”
Graylock lifted his head from his hands: “I don’t know how much of the other debt I’ve already paid, Drene. But I’ve paid heavily since I knew her — if that is any satisfaction to you. And since I knew she cared for you, and when I realized that you meant to strike me through her — I have paid, heavily.... Yet, if you were honestly in love with her—”
“Is that any of your damned business?”
“She’s only a child—”
“You rat! That’s what’s coming to you!”
“If you say so. But what is coming to her, Drene?”
“Continue to guess. But I know you. It’s yourself you’re sorry for and what you’ll have to endure — live through. That’s what you can’t stand, and remain the sle
ek, self-satisfied rat you are. No, it will make earth a living hell for you; never a second, day or night, will you be able to forget — if you really do love her.... And I believe you do — I don’t understand how a thing like you can love — but it seems it can.”
After a silence Graylock said: “You don’t care if you damn yourself?”
“It’s worth it to me.”
“Are you willing that I should know you are as great a blackguard as I am?” Drene’s gaunt features reddened and he set his jaws in silence.
“Don’t you care what you do to her?” asked Graylock, unsteadily. “It’s a viler business than that for which you are punishing me.”
For a long time Drene sat there looking down at the weapon on his knees. And after a while, the other man spoke huskily: “It’s bad enough either way for me, Drene. I’ll do what you wish in the matter. I’ll leave the country; I’ll stay; whichever you say. Or,” he said with a ghastly smile, “I’ll clean out that automatic for you to-night — if you’ll marry her.”
Drene looked up, slowly:
“What did you say?”
“I said that I’d clean out your automatic for you — to-night — if you wish.... It can be an accident or not, just as you say.”
“Where?”
“In my own rooms — if it is to be an accident.”
“Do you offer—”
“Yes; if you’ll marry her afterwards. If you say you will I’ll take your word.”
“And then you’ll be out of your misery, you damned coward!”
“God knows.... But I think not,” said Graylock, under his breath.
Drene twisted the automatic, rose and continued to twirl it, considering. Presently he began to pace the floor, no longer noticing the other man. Once his promenade brought him up facing the wall where a calendar hung.
He stood for a while looking at it absently. After a few moments he stepped nearer, detached the sheet for the present month, then one by one tore off the remaining sheets until he came to the month marked December, Graylock watching him all the while.
“I think it happened on Christmas,” remarked Drene turning toward the other and laying a finger on the number 25 printed in red.
Graylock’s head bent slightly.
“Very well. Suppose about eleven o’clock on Christmas night you give your automatic a thorough cleaning.
“If you say so.”
“You have one?”
“I shall buy one.”
“Didn’t you come here armed?”
“No.”
Drene looked at him very intently. But Graylock had never been a liar. After a few moments he went over to his desk, replaced the weapon under the papers, and, still busy, said over his shoulder:
“All right. You can go.”
VI
He wrote to Cecile once:
Hereafter keep clear of men like Graylock and like me. We’re both of a stripe — the same sort under our skins. I’ve known him all my life. It all depends upon the opportunity, the circumstances, and the woman. And, what is a woman between friends — between such friends as Graylock and I once were — or between the sort of friends we have now become? Keep clear of such men as we are. We were boys together.
For a week or two he kept his door locked and lived on what the janitor provided for him, never going out of the studio at all.
He did no work, although there were several unexecuted commissions awaiting his attention and a number of sketches, clay studies, and one marble standing around the studio in various stages of progress. The marble was the Annunciation. The head and throat and slender hands were completed, and one slim naked foot.
Sometimes he wandered from one study to the next, vague-eyed, standing for a long time before each, staring, lost in thought. Sometimes, in the evening he read, choosing a book at random among the motley collection in a corner case — a dusty, soiled assortment of books, ephemeral novels of the moment, ponderous volumes which are in everybody’s library but which nobody reads, sets of histories, memoirs, essays, beautifully bound and once cared for, but now dirty from neglect — jetsam from a wrecked home.
There had been a time when law, order and neatness formed the basis of Drene’s going forth and coming in. He had been exact, precise, fastidious; he had been sensitive to environment, a lover of beautiful things, a man who deeply appreciated any symbol that suggested home and hearth and family.
But when these three were shattered in the twinkling of an eye, something else broke, too. And he gradually emerged from chaos, indifferent to all that had formerly been a part of him, a silent emotionless, burnt out thing, callous to all that he had once cared for.
Yet something of what he had been must have remained latent within him for with unimpaired precision and logic he constructed his clay and chiseled his marble; and there must have been in him something to express, for the beauty of his work, spiritual and material, had set him high among the highest in his profession.
Sometimes sorrow changes the dross from the lamp of the spirit so that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears, rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is noble, hardening all that is ignoble; and is extinguished leaving a devil behind it — fully equipped to slay the crippled soul.
Alone in his studio at night, motionless in his chair, Drene was becoming aware of this devil. Reading by lamplight he grew conscious of it; recognized it as a companion of many years, now understanding that although pain had ended, hatred had remained, hiding, biding, and very, very quiet.
And suddenly this hatred had flamed like hell-fire, amazing even himself — that day when, lifted out of his indifference for an instant by a young girl’s gaiety — and with a smile, half-responsive, on his own unaccustomed lips, he had learned from her in the same instant, that the man he had almost ceased to remember was honestly in love with her.
And suddenly he knew that he hated and that he should strike, and that there could be no comparison in perfection between hatred and what perhaps was love.
Sometimes, at night, lying on the studio couch, he found himself still hesitating. Could Graylock be reached after death? Was it possible? If he broke his word after Graylock was dead could he still strike and reach him through the woman for whose sake he, Graylock, was going to step out of things?
That occupied his mind continually, now. Was there anybody who could tell him about such matters? Did clergymen really know whether the soul survived? And if it did, and if truly there were a hell, could a living man add anything to its torments for his enemy’s benefit?
One day the janitor, lingering, ventured to ask Drene whether he was feeling quite well.
“Yes” said Drene, “I am well.”
The janitor spoke of his not eating. And, as Drene said nothing, he mentioned the fact that Drene had not set foot outside his own quarters in many weeks.
Drene nodded: “I expect to go for a walk this evening.”
But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness, wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days.
What were the nights of a condemned man like? Did Graylock sleep? Did he suffer? Was the suspense a living death to him? Had he ever suspected him, Drene, of treachery after he, Graylock, had fulfilled his final part of the bargain.
For a long time, now, a fierce curiosity concerning what Graylock was thinking and doing had possessed Drene. What does a man, who is in good physical health, do, when he is at liberty to compute to the very second how many seconds of life remain for him?
Drene’s sick brain ached with the problem day and night.
In November the snow fell. Drene had not been out except in imagination.
Day after day, in imagination, he had followed Graylock, night after night, slyly, stealthily, shirking after him through busy avenues at midday, lurking by shadowy houses at midnight, burning to see what expression this man wore, what was
imprinted on his features; — obsessed by a desire to learn what he might be thinking — with death drawing nearer.
But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly room — a gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all day in his chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly across his couch at night staring at the stars through the dirty crust of glass above.
One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back at him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness following his enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.
For a while he lay very still, listening; but when he realized that the laughter was his own he sat up, pressing his temples between hot and trembling fingers.
It seemed to silence the laughter: terror subsided to a tremulous apprehension — as though he had been on the verge of something horrible sinking into it for a moment — but had escaped.
Again he found himself thinking of Graylock, and presently he laughed; then frightened, checked himself. But his fevered brain had been afire too long; he lay fighting with his thoughts to hold them in leash lest they slip out into the night like blood hounds on the trail of the man they had dogged so long.
Trembling, terrified, he set his teeth in his bleeding lip, and clenched his gaunt fists: He could not hold his thoughts in leash; could not control the terrifying laughter; hatred blazed like hell-fire scorching the soul in him, searing his aching brain with flames which destroy.
In the darkness he struggled blindly to his feet; and he saw the stars through the glass roof all ablaze in the midnight sky; saw the infernal flicker of pale flames in the obscurity around him, heard a voice calling for help — his own voice —
Then something stirred in the darkness; he listened, stared, striving to pierce the obscurity with fevered eyes.
Long since the cloths that swathed the clay figures in the studio had dried out unnoticed by him. He gazed from one to another, holding his breath. Then his eyes rested upon the altar piece, fell on the snowy foot, were lifted inch by inch along the marble folds upward slowly to the slim and child-like hands —
“Oh, God!” he whispered, knowing he had gone mad at last.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 748