Presently he reached the Champs-Elysées. It was Sunday. A stream of carriages flooded the avenue, and the sidewalks were thronged with ill-dressed people. The crowd increased his annoyance. The possibility of being jostled irritated him, the spectacle of dawdling shop-keepers filled him with disgust. He hailed a cab in which to escape; the driver paid no attention; he hailed another; the result was the same, and then in the increasing exasperation of the moment he felt that he hated Paris. A fat man with pursed lips and an air of imbecile self-satisfaction brushed against him. He could have turned and slapped him in the face.
Without, however, committing any overt act of violence, he succeeded in reaching his hotel. There he sought the reading-room, but he found it fully occupied by one middle-aged Englishwoman, and leaving her in undisturbed possession of the Times, he went to his own apartment. A day or two before he had purchased a copy of a much applauded novel, and from it he endeavored to extract a sedative. Mechanically he turned the pages. His eyes glanced over and down them, resting at times through fractions of an hour on a single line, but the words conveyed no message to his mind, his thoughts were elsewhere, they surged through vague perplexities and hovered over shadowy enigmas, until at last he discovered that he was trying to read in the dark.
He struck a light and found that it was nearly seven. “I will dress,” he told himself, “and dine at the club.” In half an hour he was on his way to the Capucines. The streets were still crowded and the Avenue de l’Opéra in which his hotel was situated, vibrated as were it the main artery of the capital. As he approached the boulevard he thought that it would perhaps be wiser to dine at a restaurant; he was discomfited and he was not sure but that the myriad tongue of gossip might not be already busy with the cause of his discomfiture. He did not feel talkative, and were he taciturn at the club he knew that it would be remarked. Bignon’s was close at hand. Why not dine there? In his indecision he halted before an adjacent shop and stood for a moment looking in the window, apparently engrossed by an assortment of strass and imitation pearls. The proprietress was lounging in the doorway. “Si Monsieur veut entrer” – she began seductively, but he turned from her; as he did so, a brougham drew up before the curb and Mirette stepped from it.
Lenox, in his surprise at the unexpected, did not at first notice that a man had also alighted. He moved forward and would have spoken, but Mirette looked him straight in the eyes, as who should say Allez vous faire lanlaire, mon cher, and passed on into the restaurant.
Her companion had hurried a little in advance to open the door, and as he swung it aside and Mirette entered Lenox caught a glimpse of his face. It was meaningless enough, and yet not entirely unfamiliar. “Who is the cad,” he wondered. Yet, after all, what difference did it make? He could not blame the man. As for jealousy, the word was meaningless to him. It was his amour propre that suffered. He smiled a trifle grimly to himself and continued his way.
At the corner was a large picture shop. An old man wrapped in a loose fur coat stood at the window looking at the painting of a little girl. The child was alone in a coppice and seemingly much frightened at the approach of a flock of does. Unconsciously Lenox stopped also. He had been so bewildered by the suddenness of the cut that he did not notice whether he was walking or standing still.
And so it was for this, he mused, that admittance had been denied him. But why could she not have had the decency to tell him not to come instead of letting him run there like a tradesman with a small bill? Certainly he had deserved better things of her than that. It was so easy for a woman to break gracefully. A note, a word, and if the man insists a second note, a second word; after that the man, if he is decently bred, can do nothing but raise his hat and speed the parting guest. Beside, why would she want to break with him and take up with a fellow who looked like a barber from the Grand Hôtel? Who was he any way?
His eyes rested on the picture of the little girl. The representation of her childish fright almost diverted his thoughts, but all the while there was an undercurrent which in some dim way kept telling him that he had seen the man’s face before. And as he groped in his memory the picture of the child faded as might a picture in a magic lantern, and in its place, vaguely at first and gradually better defined, he saw, standing in the moonlight, on a white road, a coach and four. To the rear was the terrace of a hôtel, and beyond was a shimmering bay like to that which he had seen at San Sebastian.
“My God,” he cried aloud, “it’s Incoul’s courier!”
The old man in the fur coat looked at him nervously, and shrank away.
CHAPTER XV.
MAY EXPOSTULATES
That evening the Wainwarings and the Blydenburgs dined at the house in the Parc Monceau. The Blydenburgs had long since deserted Biarritz, but the return journey had been broken at Luchon, and in that resort the days had passed them by like chapters in a stupid fairy tale.
They were now on their way home; the pleasures of the Continent had begun to pall, and during the dinner, Mr. Blydenburg took occasion to express his opinion on the superiority of American institutions over those of all other lands, an opinion to which he lent additional weight by repeating from time to time that New York was quite good enough for him.
There were no other guests. Shortly before ten the Wainwarings left, and as Blydenburg was preparing to take his daughter back to the hotel, Mr. Incoul said that he would be on the boulevard later, and did he care to have him he would take him to the club, a proposition to which Blydenburg at once agreed.
“Harmon,” said Maida, when they were alone, “are you to be away long?”
During dinner she had said but little. Latterly she had complained of sleeplessness, and to banish the insomnia a physician had recommended the usual bromide of potassium. As she spoke, Mr. Incoul noticed that she was pale.
“Possibly not,” he answered.
She had been standing before the hearth, her bare arm resting on the velvet of the mantel, and her eyes following the flicker of the burning logs – but now she turned to him.
“Do you remember our pact?” she asked.
He looked at her but said nothing. She moved across the room to where he stood; one hand just touched his sleeve, the other she raised to his shoulder and rested it there for a second’s space. Her eyes sought his own, her head was thrown back a little, from her hair came the perfume of distant oases, her lips were moist and her neck was like a jasmine.
“Harmon,” she continued in a tone as low as were she speaking to herself, “we have come into our own.”
And then the caress passed from his sleeve, her hand fell from his shoulder, she glided from him with the motion of a swan.
“Come to me when you return,” she added. Her face had lost its pallor, it was flushed, but her voice was brave.
Yet soon, when the door closed behind him, her courage faltered. In the eyes of him whose name she bore and to whom for the first time she had made offer of her love, she had seen no answering affection – merely a look which a man might give who wins a long-contested game of chess. But presently she reassured herself. If at the avowal her husband had seemed triumphant, in very truth what was he else? She turned to a mirror that separated the windows and gazed at her own reflection. Perhaps he did think the winning a triumph. Many another would have thought so, too. She was entirely in white; her arms and neck were unjeweled. “I look like a bride,” she told herself, and then, with the helplessness of regret, she remembered that brides wear orange blossoms, but she had none.
The idler in Paris is apt to find Sunday evenings dull. There are many houses open, it is true, but not infrequently the idler is disinclined to receptions, and as to the theatres, it is bourgeois to visit them. There is, therefore, little left save the clubs, and on this particular Sunday evening, when Mr. Incoul and Blydenburg entered the Capucines, they found it tolerably filled.
A lackey in silk knee breeches and livery of pale blue came to take their coats. It was not, however, until Blydenburg had been helped off with his that he noticed that Mr. Incoul had preferred to keep his own on.
The two men then passed out of the vestibule into a room in which was a large table littered with papers, and from there into another room where a man whom Mr. Incoul recognized as De la Dèche was dozing on a lounge, and finally a room was reached in which most of the members had assembled.
“It reminds me of a hotel,” said Blydenburg.
“It is,” his friend answered shortly. He seemed preoccupied as were he looking for some one or something; and presently, as they approached a green table about which a crowd was grouped, Blydenburg pulled him by the sleeve.
“That’s young Leigh dealing,” he exclaimed.
To this Mr. Incoul made no reply. He put his hand in a lower outside pocket of his overcoat and assured himself that a little package which he had placed there had not become disarranged.
On hearing his name, Lenox looked up from his task. A Frenchman who had just entered the room nodded affably to him and asked if he were lucky that evening.
“Lucky!” cried some one who had caught the question, “I should say so. His luck is something insolent; he struck a match a moment ago and it lit.”
The whole room roared. French matches are like French cigars in this, there is nothing viler. It is just possible that the parental republic has views of its own as to the injuriousness of smoking, and seeks to discourage it as it would a vice. But this is as it may be. Every one laughed and Lenox with the others. Mr. Incoul caught his eye and bowed to him across the table. Blydenburg had already smiled and bowed in the friendliest way. He did not quite care to see Mrs. Manhattan’s brother dealing at baccarat, but after all, when one is at Rome —
“Do you care to play?” Mr. Incoul asked.
“Humph! I might go a louis or two for a flyer.”
They had both been standing behind the croupier, but Mr. Incoul then left his companion, and passing around the table stopped at a chair which was directly on Lenox’s left. In this chair a man was seated, and before him was a small pile of gold. As the cards were dealt the gold diminished, and when it dwindled utterly and at last disappeared, the man rose from his seat and Mr. Incoul dropped in it.
From the overcoat pocket, in which he had previously felt, he drew out a number of thousand-franc notes; they were all unfolded, and under them was a little package. The notes, with the package beneath them, were placed by Mr. Incoul where the pile of gold had stood. One of the notes he then threw out in the semicircle. A man seated next to him received the cards which Lenox dealt.
“I give,” Lenox called in French.
“Card,” the man answered.
It was a face card that he received.
“Six,” Lenox announced.
Mr. Incoul’s neighbor could boast of nothing. The next cards that were dealt on that end of the table went to a man beyond. Mr. Incoul knew that did that man not hold higher cards than the banker the cards in the succeeding deal would come to him.
He took a handful of notes and reached them awkwardly enough across the space from which Lenox dealt; for one second his hand rested on the talion, then he said, “À cheval.” Which, being interpreted, means half on one side and half on the other. The croupier took the notes, and placed them in the proper position. “Nine,” Lenox called; he had won at both ends of the table.
The croupier drew in the stakes with his rake. “Gentlemen,” he droned, “make your game.”
Mr. Incoul pushed out five thousand francs. The next cards on the left were dealt to him.
“Nine,” Lenox called again.
And then a very singular thing happened. The croupier leaned forward to draw in Mr. Incoul’s money, but just as the rake touched the notes, Mr. Incoul drew them away.
“Monsieur!” exclaimed the croupier.
The eyes of every one were upon him. He pushed his chair back, and stood up, holding in his hand the two cards which had been dealt him, then throwing them down on the table, he said very quietly, but in a voice that was perfectly distinct, “These cards are marked.”
A moment before the silence had indeed been great, but during the moment that followed Mr. Incoul’s announcement, it was so intensified that it could be felt. Then abruptly words leapt from the mouths of the players and bystanders. The croupier turned, protesting his innocence of any complicity. There may have been some who listened, but if there were any such, they were few; the entire room was sonorous with loud voices; the hubbub was so great that it woke De la Dèche; he came in at one door rubbing his eyes; at another a crowd of lackeys, startled at the uproar, had suddenly assembled. And by the chair which he had pushed from him and which had fallen backwards to the ground, Mr. Incoul stood, motionless, looking down at Lenox Leigh.
In the abruptness of the accusation Lenox had not immediately understood that it was directed against him, but when he looked into the inimical faces that fronted and surrounded him, when he heard the anger of the voices, when he saw hands stretched for the cards which he dealt, and impatient eyes examining their texture, and when at last, though the entire scene was compassed in the fraction of a minute, when he heard an epithet and saw that he was regarded as a Greek, he knew that the worst that could be had been done.
He turned, still sitting, and looked his accuser in the face, and in it he read a message which to all of those present was to him alone intelligible. He bowed his head. In a vision like to that which is said to visit the last moments of a drowning man, he saw it all: the reason of Maida’s unexplained departure, the coupling of Mirette with a servant, and this supreme reproach made credible by the commonest of tricks, the application of a cataplasm, a new deck of cards on those already in use. It was vengeance indeed.
He sprang from his seat. He was a handsome fellow and the pallor of his face made his dark hair seem darker and his dark eyes more brilliant. “It is a plot,” he cried. He might as well have asked alms of statues. The cards had been examined, the maquillage was evident. “Put him out!” a hundred voices were shouting; “à la porte!”
Suddenly the shouting subsided and ceased. Lenox craned his neck to discover who his possible defender might be, and caught a glimpse of De la Dèche, brushing with one finger some ashes from his coat sleeve, and looking about him with an indolent, deprecatory air.
“Gentlemen,” he heard him say, “the committee will act in the matter; meanwhile, for the honor of the club, I beg you will not increase the scandal.”
He turned to Lenox and said, with perfect courtesy, “Sir, do me the favor to step this way.”
Through the parting crowd Lenox followed the duke. In crossing the room he looked about him. On his way he passed the Frenchman who had addressed him five minutes before. The man turned aside. He passed other acquaintances. They all seemed suddenly smitten by the disease known as Noli me tangere. In the doorway was May. Of him he felt almost sure, but the brute drew back. “Really,” he said, “I must exp-postulate.”
“Expostulate and be damned,” Lenox gnashed at him. “I am as innocent as you are.”
In an outer room, where he presently found himself, De La Dèche stood lighting a cigar; that difficult operation terminated, he said, slowly, with that rise and fall of the voice which is peculiar to the Parisian when he wishes to appear impressive:
“You had better go now, and if you will permit me to offer you a bit of advice, I would recommend you to send a resignation to any clubs of which you may happen to be a member.”
He touched a bell; a lackey appeared.
“Maxime, get this gentleman’s coat and see him to the door.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BARE BODKIN
Presently Lenox found himself on the boulevard. There was a café near at hand, and he sat down at one of the tables that lined the sidewalk. He was dazed as were he in the semi-consciousness of somnambulism. He gave an order absently, and when some drink was placed before him, he took it at a gulp.
Under its influence his stupor fell from him. The necessity, the obligation of proving his innocence presented itself, but, with it, hand in hand, came the knowledge that such proof was impossible. Even his luck at play would be taken as corroboratory of the charge. Were he to say that the marked cards had been placed on the talion by Incoul, who was there outside the aisles of the insane that would listen to such a defense? To compel attention, he would be obliged to explain the act, and state its reason. And that explanation he could never give. He could not exculpate himself at the cost of a woman’s fame. Which ever way he turned, dishonor stood before him. The toils into which he had fallen had been woven with a cunning so devilish in its clairvoyance that every avenue of escape was closed. He was blockaded in his own disgrace.
He rested his head in his hand, and moaned aloud. Presently, with the instinct of a hunted beast, he felt that people were looking at him. He feared that some of his former acquaintances, on leaving the club, had passed and seen him sitting there, and among them, perhaps Incoul.
He threw some money in the saucer and hurried away. There were still many people about. To avoid them he turned into a side street and walked on with rapid step. Soon he was in the Rue de la Paix. It was practically deserted. On a corner, a young ruffian in a slouch hat was humming, “Ugène, tu m’fais languir,” and beating time to the measure with his foot. Just above the Colonne Vendôme the moon rested like a vagrant, weary of its amble across the sky. But otherwise the street was solitary. Through its entire length but one shop was open, and as Lenox approached it a man came out to arrange the shutters. From the doorway a thin stream of light still filtered on the pavement. In the window were globes filled with colored liquids, and beyond at a counter a clerk was tying a parcel.
Lenox entered. “Give me a Privas,” he said, and when the clerk had done so, he asked him to make up a certain prescription. But to this the man objected; he could not, he explained, without a physician’s order.
“Here are several,” said Lenox, and he took from his card-case a roll of azure notes.
The clerk eyed them nervously. They represented over a year’s salary. He hesitated a moment, “I don’t know,” – and he shook his head, as were he arguing with himself – “I don’t know whether I am doing right.” And at once prepared the mixture.
Ten minutes later Lenox was mounting the stair of the hotel at which he lodged. On reaching his room he put his purchases on a table, poured out a glass of absinthe, lit a cigarette, and threw himself down on a lounge. For a while his thoughts roamed among the episodes of the day, but gradually they drifted into less personal currents. He began to think of the early legends: of Chiron, the god, renouncing his immortality; of the Hyperboreans, that fabled people, famous for their felicity, who voluntarily threw themselves into the sea; of Juno bringing death to Biton and Cleobis as the highest recompense of their piety; of Agamedes and Trophonius, praying Apollo for whatever gift he deemed most advantageous, and in answer to the prayer receiving eternal sleep.
He reflected on the meaning of these legends, and, as he reflected, he remembered that the Thracians greeted birth with lamentations and death with welcoming festivals. He thought of that sage who pitied the gods because their lives were unending, and of Menander singing the early demise of the favored. He remembered how Plato had preached to the happiest people in the world the blessedness of ceaseless sleep; how the Buddha, teaching that life was but a right to suffer, had found for the recalcitrant no greater menace than that of an existence renewed through kalpas of time. Then he bethought him of the promise of that peace which passeth all understanding, and which the grave alone fulfills, and he repeated to himself Christ’s significant threat, “In this life ye shall have tribulation.”
And, as these things came to him, so, too, did the problem of pain. He reviewed the ravages of that ulcer which has battened on humanity since the world began. History uncoiled itself before him in a shudder. In its spasms he saw the myriads that have fought and died for dogmas that they did not understand, for invented principles of patriotism and religion, for leaders that they had never seen, for gods more helpless than themselves.
He saw, too, Nature’s cruelty and her snares. The gift to man of appetites, which, in the guise of pleasure, veil immedicable pain. Poison in the richest flowers, the agony that lurks in the grape. He knew that whoso ate to his hunger, or drank to his thirst, summoned to him one or more of countless maladies – maladies which parents gave with their vices to their children, who, in turn, bring forth new generations that are smitten with all the ills to which flesh is heir. And he knew that even those who lived most temperately were defenceless from disorders that come unawares and frighten away one’s nearest friends. While for those who escaped miasmas and microbes; for those who asked pleasure, not of the flesh, but of the mind; for those whose days are passed in study, who seek to learn some rhyme for the reason of things, who try to gratify the curiosity which Nature has given them; for such as they, he remembered, there is blindness, paralysis, and the asylums of the insane.
He thought of the illusions, of love, hope and ambition, illusions which make life seem a pleasant thing worth living, and which, in cheating man into a continuance of his right to suffer, make him think pain an accident and not the rule.
“Surely,” he mused, “the idiot alone is content. He at least has no illusions; he expects nothing in this world and cares less for another. Nor is the stupidity of the ordinary run of men without its charm. It must be a singularly blessed thing not to be sensitive, not to know what life might be, and not to find its insufficiency a curse. But there’s the rub. When the reforms of the utopists are one and all accomplished, what shall man do in his Icaria? A million years hence, perhaps, physical pain will have been vanquished. Diseases of the body will no longer exist. Laws will not oppress. Justice will be inherent. Love will be too far from Nature to know of shame. The earth will be a garden of pleasure. Industry will have enriched every home. Through an equitable division of treasures acquired without toil, each one will be on the same footing as his neighbor. Even envy will have disappeared. In place of the trials, terrors and superstitions of to-day, man will enjoy perfect peace. He will no longer labor. When he journeys it will be through the air. He will be in daily communication with Mars, he will have measured the Infinite and know the bounds of Space. And in this Eden in which there will be no forbidden fruit, no ignorance, no tempter, but where there will be larger flowers, new perfumes, and a race whose idea of beauty stands to mine as mine does to that of prehistoric man, a race whose imagination has crossed the frontiers of the impossible, who have developed new senses, who see colors to which I am blind, who hear music to which I am deaf, who speak in words of tormented polish, who have turned art into a plaything and learning into a birthright, a race that has no curiosity and who accept their wonderful existence as the rich to-day accept their wealth, in this Eden, Boredom will be King. The Hyperboreans will have their imitators. The one surcease will be in death. Yet even that may not be robbed of its grotesqueness.”
A candle flickered a moment and expired in a splutter of grease. The agony of the candle aroused him from his revery. “Bah,” he muttered, “I am becoming a casuist, I argue with myself.”
He mixed himself another absinthe, holding the carafe high in the air, watching the thin stream of water coalesce with the green drug and turn with it into an opalescent milk. He toyed for a moment with the purchases that he had made in the Rue de la Paix, and presently, in answer to some query which they evoked, the soliloquy began anew.
“After what has happened there is nothing left. I might change my name. I might go to Brazil or Australia, but with what object? I could not get away from myself.
Da me stesso
Sempre fuggendo, avrò me sempre appresso.
Beside I don’t care for transplantation. If I had an ambition it would be a different matter. If I could be a pretty woman up to thirty, a cardinal up to fifty, and after that the Anti-Christ, it might be worth while. Failing that I might occupy myself with literature. If I have not written heretofore, it is because it seems more original not to do so. But it is not too late. The manufacture of trash is easy, and it must be a pleasure to the manufacturer to know that it is trash and that it sells. It must give him a high opinion of the intellect of his contemporaries. Or when, as happens now and then, a work of enduring value is produced, and it is condemned, as such works usually are, the author must take immense delight in the reflection that the disapproval of imbeciles is the surest acknowledgement of talent, as it is also its sweetest mead of praise. For me, of course, such praise is impossible. Were I to write successful failures, it must needs be under a pseudonym. In which case I would have the consciousness of being scorned as Lenox Leigh, and admired as John Smith. Beside, what is there to write about? There is nothing to prove, there is no certainty, there is not even a criterion of truth. To-morrow contradicts yesterday, next week will contradict this. On no given subject are there two people who think and see exactly alike. The book which pleases me bores my neighbor, and vice versâ. One man holds to the Episcopal Church, another to the Baptist; one man is an atheist, another a Jew; one man thinks a soprano voice a delicious gift, another says it is a disease of the larynx, and whatever the divergence of opinion may be, each one is convinced that he alone is correct. Supposing, however, that through some chance I were to descend to posterity in the garb and aspect of a great man. What is a great man? The shadow of nothing. The obscurest privat docent in Germany could to-day give points to Newton. And even though Newton’s glory may still subsist, yet such are the limitations of fame that the great majority have never heard of it or of him. The foremost conqueror of modern times, he who fell not through his defeats, but through his victories, is entombed just across the Seine. And the other day as I passed the Invalides I heard an intelligent-looking woman ask her companion who the Napoleon was that lay buried there. Her companion did not know.
“But, even were glory more substantial, what is the applause of posterity to the ears of the dead? To them honor and ignominy must be alike unmeaning. No, decidedly, ambition does not tempt me. And what is there else that tempts? Love seems to me now like hunger, an unnecessary affliction, productive far more of pain than of pleasure; the most natural, the most alluring thing of all, see in what plight it has brought me. Yet it is, I have heard, the ultimate hope of those who have none. If I relinquish it, what have I left? The satisfaction of my curiosity as to what the years may hold? But I am indifferent. To revenge myself on Incoul. Certainly, I would like to cut his heart out and force it down his throat! But how would it better me? If I could be transported to the multicolored nights of other worlds, and there taste of inexperienced pleasures, move in new refinements, lose my own identity, or pursue a chimera and catch it, it might be worth while, but, as it is – ”
The clock on the mantel rang out four times. Again Lenox started from his revery. He smiled cynically at himself. “If I continue in that strain,” he muttered, “it must be that I am drunk.”
But soon his eyes closed again in mental retrospect. “And yet,” he mused, “life is pleasant; ill spent as mine has been, many times I have found it grateful. In books, I have often lost the consciousness of my own identity; now and then music has indeed had the power to take me to other worlds, to show me fresh horizons and larger life. Maida herself came to me like a revelation. She gave me a new conception of beauty. Yes, I have known very many pleasant hours. I was younger then, I fancy. After all, it is not life that is short, it is youth. When that goes, as mine seems to have done, outside of solitude there is little charm in anything. And what is death but isolation? The most perfect and impenetrable that Nature has devised. And whether that isolation come to me to-night or decades hence, what matters it? It is odd, though, how the thought of it unnerves one, and yet, to be logical, I suppose one should be as uneasy of the chaos which precedes existence as of the unknowable that follows it. The proper course, I take it, is to imitate the infant, who faces death without a tremor, and enters it without regret.”
He stood up, and drawing the curtains aside, looked out into the night. From below came the rumble of a cart on its way to the Halles, but otherwise the street was silent. The houses opposite were livid. There was a faint flicker from the street lamps, and above were the trembling stars. The moon had gone, but there was yet no sign of coming dawn.
He left the window. The candles had burned down; he found fresh ones and lighted them. As he did so, he caught sight of himself in the glass. His eyes were haggard and rimmed with circles. It was owing to the position of the candles, he thought, and he raised them above his head and looked again. There was something on his forehead just above the temple, and he put the candles down to brush that something away. He looked again, it was still there. He peered into the glass and touched it with his hand. It was nothing, he found, merely a lock of hair that had turned from black to white.