Part 43 (2/2)
Mrs. Lambert looked away. ”I tried to reason with her, Anthony. I wanted her to 'sit for council,' but she's so crazy to get away she will not do it. She will hardly speak to _me_.”
”She must not go--she shall not leave me! I will not permit her to go to him!” His voice rose and his lifted hand shook.
”Hush, Tony! She will hear you. Please go away and let me deal with her.”
He lifted his face and spoke with closed eyes. ”Donald McLeod, if you are present, intercede for me. Bring her to me. Command her to remain.
You gave her to me. You led us here. Will you permit her to ruin all our plans? Stretch out your hand in power. Do you hear me?” There was no answer to his appeal, neither tap nor rustle of reply. In the silence his heart contracted with fear. ”Have you deserted me, too?”
Then his brain waxed hot with mad hate. His hand clinched in a savage vow. ”I swear I will kill her before I will let her go to that man!
Together we will enter the spirit-world.”
He sprang towards the door, but Mrs. Lambert, with eyes expanded in horror, caught him by the arm. ”Tony, Tony! What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Her hand upon his arm, her face drawn and white with fear, recalled him to himself. He laughed harshly. ”No--oh no; I'm not mad, but it's enough to make me so. I didn't mean it--of course I didn't mean it.”
”You are dreadfully wrought up, Tony. Go out and walk and clear your brain, and by-and-by we'll sit for council.”
In the end she again persuaded him to return to his chamber, but he did not leave the house--neither could he rest. Every word the girl had said of his selfishness, his egotism, burned like poison in his brain. Had his hold on her been so slight, after all? ”She despises me. She hates me!” And in his heart he despised and hated himself. He cursed his poverty, his lack of resource. ”Why am I, the evangel of this faith, dependent on others for revelation. Why must I beg and cringe for money, for power?” He was in the full surge of this flood of indignant query when Pratt shuffled into his room.
”Some reporters below want to see you. I guess you better--”
Clarke turned, the glare of madness in his eyes. ”Curse you and your reporters! Go away from me! I don't want to be bothered by you nor by them.”
Pratt stared in dull surprise, which turned slowly to anger. ”What's the matter with you _now_?” he roared. ”d.a.m.n you, anyway. You've upset my whole house with your crazy notions. Everything was moving along nicely till you got this bug of a big speech into your head, and then everything in my life turns topsy-turvy. To h.e.l.l with you and your book! You can't use me to advertise yourself. I want you to understand that right now. I see your scheme, and it don't work with me.”
He was urging himself into a frenzy--his jaws working, his eyes glittering, like those of a boar about to charge, all his concealed dislike, his jealousy of the preacher's growing fame and of his control of Viola turning rapidly into hate. ”I don't know why you're eating my bread,” he shouted, hoa.r.s.ely. ”I've put up with you as long as I am going to. You're nothing but a renegade preacher, a dead-beat, and a hypocrite. Get out before I kick you out!”
This brought the miserable evangel to a stand. ”I'll go,” he said, defiantly, ”but I'll take your psychic with me--we'll go together.”
”Go and be d.a.m.ned to the whole tribe of ye!” retorted Pratt, purple with fury. ”Go, and I'll publish you for a set o' leeches--that's what I'll do,” and with this threat he turned on his heel and went out, leaving Clarke stupefied, blinded by the force of his imprecations.
The situation had taken another turn for the worse. To leave the house of his own will was bad enough; to be kicked out by his host, and to be followed by his curse was desolating. ”And yet this I could endure if only she would speak to me--would go with me.”
He fell at last into a deep gulf of self-pity. Yesterday, now so far away, so irrevocable, was full of faith, of promise, of happiness, of grand purpose; now every path was hid by sliding sand. The world was a chaos. His book, his splendid mission, his communion with Adele, his very life, depended upon this wondrous psychic. Without her the world was a chaos, life a failure, and his faith a bitter, mocking lie. With a sobbing groan he covered his face, his heart utterly gone, his brain benumbed, his future black as night.
And yet outside the window, in reach of his hand, the spring sunlight vividly fell. The waves of the river glittered like gla.s.s and s.h.i.+ps moved to and fro like b.u.t.terflies. The sky was full of snowy clouds--harbingers of the warm winds of spring. Sparrows twittered along the eaves, and the mighty city, with joy in its prosaic heart, was pacing majestically into the new and pleasant month.
XVII
WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE
At breakfast next morning Morton took up the paper with apprehension, and though he found Clarke's name spread widely on the page, he was relieved to find only one allusion to the unknown psychic on whose mystic power the orator was depending.
”She has another day of grace,” he said to himself, thinking of Lambert.
All the way down to his laboratory he pretended to read the news, but could not succeed in interesting himself in the wars and famines of the world, so much more vital and absorbing were his own pa.s.sions and retreats, so filmy was the abstract, so concrete and vital the particular. A million children might be starving in India, a thousand virgins about to be sold to slavery in Turkestan; but such intelligence counted little to a man struggling with doubt of the woman he loves, and questioning further the right of any philosopher to marry and bring children into a life of bafflement and pain and ultimate annihilation.
This must ever be so. The particular must outweigh the general, and philosophers, even the monists, must continue to be inconsistent. The individual must of necessity consider himself first and humanity afterwards; for if all men considered the welfare of the race to the neglect of self, the race would die at the root and the individual perish of his too-widely diffused pity. To be the altruist, one must first be the egoist (say the philosophers), to give, one must first have.
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