Chambers Robert William
The Danger Mark
Artists, newspaper men, critics, and writers predominated. There was also a "journalist" doing "brilliant" space work on the Sun. He had been doing it nearly a month and he was only twenty-one. It was his first job. Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him. His name was Bunn.
There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons. His function was to torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it.
A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town.
"Kismet," observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the Post, "no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody else—or," he added, looking at Bunn, "even a journalist."
"Is that supposed to be funny?" asked Bunn complacently. "I intend to do art criticism for the Herald."
"What's the objection to my getting a job on it, too?" inquired Quest, setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order. He expected surprise and congratulation.
Somebody said, "You take a job!" so impudently that Quest reddened and turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth.
"It's my choice that I haven't taken one," he snarled. "Did you think otherwise?"
"Don't get huffy, Stuyve," said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite among his brothers.
A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their Vandyck beards all wagging in unison.
"I want you to understand," said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively on Dill's table, "that the job I ask for I expect to get."
"You might have expected that once," said the cool young man who had spoken before.
"And I do now!" retorted Quest, raising his voice. "Why not?"
Somebody said: "You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it every day that you're not working."
Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready—nothing at hand except another glass of whiskey and soda.
Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing, nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve it.
Who the devil were these rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who presumed to snub him—these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to accord him by virtue of a social position hopeless of attainment by any of them?
Who were they to turn on him like this when he had every reason to suppose they were not only aware of the great talent he had carelessly neglected to cultivate through all these years, but must, in the secret recesses of their grubby souls, reluctantly admire his disdain of the only distinctions they scrambled for and could ever hope for?
His black looks seemed to disturb nobody; Bunn, self-centred, cropped his salad complacently; the Vandyck beards wagged; another critic or two left, stern slaves to duty and paid ads.
The lights bothered him; tremors crawled over and over his skin; within him a dull rage was burning—a rage directed at no one thing, but which could at any moment be focussed.
Men rose and left the table singly, by twos, in groups. He sat, glowering, head partly averted, scowlingly aware of their going, aware of their human interest in one another but not in him, aware at last that he counted for nothing whatever among them.
Some spoke to him as they passed out; he made them no answer. And at last he was alone.
Reaching for his empty glass, he miscalculated the distance between it and his quivering fingers; it fell and broke to pieces. When the waiter came he cursed him, flung a bill at him, got up, demanded his coat and hat, swore at the pallid, little, button-covered page who brought it, and lurched out into the street.
A cab stood there; he entered it, fell heavily into a corner of the seat, bade the driver, "Keep going, damn you!" and sat swaying, muttering, brooding on the wrongs that the world had done him.
Wrongs! Yes, by God! Every hand was against him, every tongue slandered him. Who was he that he should endure it any longer in patience! Had he not been patient? Had he not submitted to the insults of a fool of a doctor?—had he not stayed his hand from punishing Dumont's red and distended face?—had he not silently accepted the insolent retorts of these Grub Street literati who turned on him and flouted the talent that lay dormant in him—dead, perhaps—but dead or dormant, it still matched theirs! And they knew it, damn them!
Had he not stood enough from the rotten world?—from his own sister, who had flung his honour into his face with impunity!—from Dysart, whose maddening and continual ignoring of his letters demanding an explanation–
There seemed to come a sudden flash in his brain; he leaned from the window and shouted an address to the cabman. His hat had fallen beside him, but he did not notice its absence on his fevered head.
"I'll begin with him!" he repeated with a thick laugh; "I'll settle with him first. Now we're going to see! Now we'll find out about several matters—or I'll break his neck off!—or I'll twist it off—wring it off!"
And he beat on his knees with his fists, railing, raging, talking incoherently, laughing sometimes, sometimes listening, as though, suddenly, near him, a voice was mocking him.
He had a pocket full of bills, crushed up; some he gave to the cabman, some he dropped as he stuffed the others into his pockets, stumbled toward a bronze-and-glass grille, and rang. The cabman brought him his hat, put it on him, gathered up the dropped money, and drove off with his tongue in his cheek.
Quest rang again; the door opened; he gave his card to the servant, and stealthily followed him upstairs over the velvet carpet.
Dysart, in a velvet dressing-gown knotted in close about his waist, looked over the servant's shoulders and saw Quest standing there in the hall, leering at him.
For a moment nobody spoke; Dysart took the offered card mechanically, glanced at it, looked at Quest, and nodded dismissal to the servant.
When he and the other man stood alone, he said in a low, uncertain voice:
"Get out of here!"
But Quest pushed past him into the lighted room beyond, and Dysart followed, very pale.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"I've asked you questions, too," retorted Quest. "Answer mine first."
"Will you get out of here?"
"Not until I take my answer with me."
"You're drunk!"
"I know it. Look out!"
Dysart moistened his bloodless lips.
"What do you want to know?" And, as Quest shouted a question at him: "Keep quiet! Speak lower, I tell you. My father is in the next room."
"What in hell do I care for your father? Answer me or I'll choke it out of you! Answer me now, you dancing blackguard! I've got you; I want my answer, and you've got to give it to me!"
"If you don't lower your voice," said Dysart between his teeth, "I'll throw you out of that window!"
"Lower my voice? Why? Because the old fox might hear the young one yap! What do I care for you or your doddering family–"
He went down with a sharp crash; Dysart struck him again as he rose; then, beside himself, rained blows on him, drove him from corner to corner, out of the room, into the hall, striking him in the face till the young fellow reeled and fell against the bath-room door. It gave; he stumbled into darkness; and after him sprang Dysart, teeth set—sprang into the darkness which split before him with a roar into a million splinters of fire.
He stood for a second swaying, reaching out to grasp at nothing in a patient, persistent, meaningless way; then he fell backward, striking a terrified servant, who shrank away and screamed as the light fell on her apron and cuffs all streaked with blood.
She screamed again as a young man's white and battered face appeared in the dark doorway before her.
"Is he hurt?" he asked. His dilated eyes were fixed upon the thing on the floor. "What are you howling for? Is he—dead?" whispered Quest. Suddenly terror overwhelmed him.
"Get out of my way!" he yelled, hurling the shrieking maid aside, striking the frightened butler who tried to seize him on the stairs. There was another manservant at the door, who stood his ground swinging a bronze statuette. Quest darted into the drawing-room, ran through the music-room and dining-room beyond, and slammed the door of the butler's pantry.
He stood there panting, glaring, his shoulder set against the door; then he saw a bolt, and shot it, and backed away, pistol swinging in his bleeding fist.
Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a policeman ran through the basement into the yard beyond; another pushed his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick, demanding admittance.
For a second he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he hurled himself at the bolted door, and it flew wide open.
But Quest remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every earthly question answered for him as long as time shall last.
Up-stairs a very old and shrunken man sat shivering in bed, staring vacantly at some policemen and making feeble efforts to reach a wig hanging from a chair beside him—a very glossy, expensive wig, nicely curled where it was intended to fall above the ears.
"I don't know," he quavered, smirking at everybody with crackled, painted lips, "I know nothing whatever about this affair. You must ask my son Jack, gentlemen—my son Jack—te-he!—oh, yes, he knows; he can tell you a thing or two, I warrant you! Yes, gentlemen, he's like all the Dysarts—fit for a fight or a frolic!—te-he!—he's all Dysart, gentlemen—my son Jack. But he is a good son to me—yes, yes!—a good son, a good son! Tell him I said so—and—good-night."
"Nutty," whispered a policeman. "Come on out o' this boodwar and lave th' ould wan be."
And they left him smirking, smiling, twitching his faded lips, and making vague sounds, lying there asleep in his dotage.
And all night long he lay mumbling his gums and smiling, his sleep undisturbed by the stir and lights and tramp of feet around him.
And all night long in the next room lay his son, white as marble and very still.
Toward morning he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily and spoke no more.
They found it. What Dysart found as the winter sun rose over Manhattan town, his Maker only knows, for his sunken eyes opened unterrified yet infinitely sad. But there was a vague smile on his lips after he lay there dead.
Nor did his slayer lie less serenely where bars of sunlight moved behind the lowered curtains, calm as a schoolboy sleeping peacefully after the eternity of a summer day where he had played too long and fiercely with a world too rough for him.
And so, at last, the indictments were dismissed against them both and their cases adjourned sine die.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PROLOGUE ENDS
"Your sister," observed Dr. Bailey to Scott Seagrave, "must be constructed of India-rubber. There's nothing whatever the matter with her spine or with her interior. The slight trace of concussion is disappearing; there's no injury to the skull; nothing serious to apprehend. Her body will probably be black and blue for a week or two; she'll doubtless prefer to remain in bed to-morrow and next day. And that is the worst news I have to tell you."
He smiled at Kathleen and Duane, who stood together, listening.
"I told you so," said Scott, intensely relieved. "Duane got scared and made me send that telegram. I fell out of a tree once, and my sister's symptoms were exactly like mine."
Kathleen stole silently from the room; Duane passed his arm through the doctor's and walked with him to the big, double sleigh which was waiting. Scott followed with Dr. Goss.
"About this other matter," said Dr. Bailey; "I can't make it out, Duane. I saw Jack Dysart two days ago. He was very nervous, but physically sound. I can't believe it was suicide."
He unfolded the telegram which had come that morning directed to Duane.
"Mrs. Jack Dysart's husband died this morning. Am trying to communicate with her. Wire if you know her whereabouts."
It was signed with old Mr. Dysart's name, but Dr. Bailey knew he could never have written the telegram or even have comprehended it.
The men stood grouped in the snow near the sleigh, waiting; and presently Rosalie came out on the terrace with Kathleen and Delancy Grandcourt. Her colour was very bad and there were heavy circles under her eyes, but she spoke with perfect self-possession, made her adieux quietly, kissed Kathleen twice, and suffered Grandcourt to help her into the sleigh.
Then Grandcourt got in beside her, the two doctors swung aboard in front, bells jingled, and they whirled away over the snow.
Kathleen, with Scott and Duane on either side of her, walked back to the house.
"Well," said Scott, his voice betraying nervous reaction, "we'll resume life where we left off when Geraldine did. Don't tell her anything about Dysart yet. Suppose we go and cheer her up!"
Geraldine lay on the pillows, rather pallid under the dark masses of hair clustering around and framing her face. She unclosed her eyes when Kathleen opened the door for a preliminary survey, and the others filed solemnly in.
"Hello," she said faintly, and smiled at Duane.
"How goes it, Sis?" asked her brother affectionately, shouldering Duane aside.
"A little sleepy, but all right. Why on earth did you send for Dr. Bailey? It was horribly expensive."
"Duane did," said her brother briefly. "He was scared blue."
Her eyes rested on her lover, indulgent, dreamily humorous.
"Such expensive habits," she murmured, "when everybody is economising. Kathleen, dear, he needs schooling. You and Mr. Tappan ought to take him in hand and cultiwate him good and hard!"
Scott, who had been wandering around his sister's room with innate masculine curiosity concerning the mysteries of intimate femininity, came upon a sketch of Duane's—the colour not entirely dry yet.
"It's Sis!" he exclaimed in unfeigned approval. "Lord, but you've made her a good-looker, Duane. Does she really appear like that to you?"
"And then some," said Duane. "Keep your fingers off it."
Scott admired in silence for a while, then: "You certainly are a shark at it, Duane.... You've struck your gait all right.... I wish I had.... This Rose-beetle business doesn't promise very well."
"You write most interestingly about it," said Kathleen warmly.
"Yes, I can write.... I believe journalism would suit me."
"The funny column?" suggested Geraldine.
"Yes, or the birth, marriage, and death column. I could head it, 'Hatched, Matched, and Snatched'–"
"That is perfectly horrid, Scott," protested his sister; "why do you let him say such rowdy things, Kathleen?"
"I can't help it," sighed Kathleen; "I haven't the slightest influence with him. Look at him now!"—as he laughingly passed his arm around her and made her two-step around the room, protesting, rosy, deliciously helpless in the arms of this tall young fellow who held her inflexibly but with a tenderness surprising.
Duane smiled and seated himself on the edge of the bed.
"You plucky little thing," he said, "were you perfectly mad to try to block that boar in the scrub? You won't ever try such a thing again, will you, dear?"
"I was so excited, Duane; I never thought there was any danger–"
"You didn't think whether there was or not. You didn't care."
She laughed, wincing under his accusing gaze.
"You must care, dear."
"I do," she said, serious when he became so grave. "Tell me again exactly what happened."
He said: "I don't think the brute saw you; he was hard hit and was going blind, and he side-swiped you and sent you flying into the air among those icy rocks." He drew a long breath, managed to smile in response to her light touch on his hand. "And that's how it was, dear. He crashed headlong into a tree; your last shot did it. But Miller and I thought he'd got you. We carried you in–"
"You did?" she whispered.
"Yes. I never was so thoroughly scared in all my life."
"You poor boy. Are the rifles safe? And did Miller save the head?"
"He did," said Duane grimly, "and your precious rifles are intact."
"Lean down, close," she said; "closer. There's more than the rifles intact, dear."
"Not your poor bruised body!"
"My self-respect," she whispered, the pink colour stealing into her cheeks. "I've won it back. Do you understand? I've gone after my other self and got her back. I'm mistress of myself, Duane; I'm in full control, first in command. Do you know what that means?"
"Does it mean—me?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"When you will."
He leaned above her, looking down into her eyes. Their fearless sweetness set him trembling.
On the floor below Kathleen, at the piano, was playing the Menuet d'Exaudet. When she ended, Scott, cheerily busy with his infant Rose-beetles, went about his affairs whistling the air.
"Our betrothal dance; do you remember?" murmured Geraldine. "Do you love me, Duane? Tell me so; I need it."
"I love you," he said.
She lay looking at him a moment, her head cradled in her dark hair. Then, moving slowly, and smiling at the pain it gave her, she put both bare arms around his neck, and lifted her lips to his.
It was the end of the prologue; the curtain trembled on the rise; the story of Fate was beginning. But they had no eyes except for each other, paid no heed save to each other.
And, unobserved by them, the vast curtain rose in silence, beginning the strange drama which neither time nor death, perhaps, has power to end.
