Part 10 (1/2)

He gave an address and added, ”Just a minute, please.”

Hazlitt reentered the cab with his head. The thing was still unfinished.

Wis.h.i.+ng good health to her mother made it worse--as if he were trying to cover up something. He must be frank. Drag everything into the open and show he wasn't afraid. But she was weeping again. He paused in consternation. Her hand reached toward him. A voice, vibrant and soft with tears, whispered in the gloom of the cab. A love voice. ”Good-by, George!”

He watched the tail light dart through the traffic and then began his defense. Gentleman of the jury ... jury ... he had done nothing. It was she who had suggested the office. A low, vulgar ruse to trap him. The evidence was plain on that point. Overruled. But he had attempted only to console her. Irrelevant and immaterial to the facts at issue in the case. But she had flung her arms around him. Not he! Never he! The woman was mad. Yes, a mad woman. Dangerous. She had done the same to the interne. Overruled. Overruled. What? Frank Hamel, gentleman of the jury, glutting his beastly hungers on the finest fruit of life--the innocence and sacrifice of a maiden's first love. No, not Hamel. Hazlitt. Are such creatures men or fiends? What was he thinking about Oh, yes, the interne. Dead, buried ... we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.... But the dead interne was saying something.

For moments George Hazlitt looked out upon a new world--a miserable world--vast, blurred, upside down. People were moving in it. Dead internes. They pa.s.sed with faces intent upon their own solitudes.

Buildings were in it. They burst a skyrocket of windows into the night.

There was snow. It fell twisting itself out of the darkness. Familiar faces, buildings, snow. Theater facades making a jangle of light through the storm. Entrances, exits, cars clanging, figures hurrying, signs sputtering confusion in the snow. All familiar, all a part of the great tick-tock of the city.

Hazlitt stopped and stared at the familiar night of the streets. A gleam and a flurry were sweeping his eyes. Snow. But faces and buildings and lights were a part of it. They swarmed and danced about him, sending a shout to his heart. ”We're upside down ... we're upside down ... heels in air.... She made love to the interne as she did to you ... and the fiend is dead. Lies ... lies ... but who gives a d.a.m.n?”

The horn of a motor screeched. A woman and a man pattered by on a run, leaving a trail of laughter. From afar came the sound of voices--of street evangels singing hymns on a corner. The soul of George Hazlitt grew sick. Night hands fastened themselves about his throat. Upside down ... heels in air. The things he had said to the jury were lies. Lies and disorder. Right and wrong. G.o.d in heaven, what were they, if not right and wrong?

The thing came to Hazlitt without words, with a gleam and a flurry as of snow. He stood blind--a little snow-covered figure s.h.i.+vering and lost in a lighted, crowded street. All because a woman, warm and clinging, had kissed him on the mouth and moved her body. But once she had kissed another man thus--on the mouth, with her body moving, and therein lay a new world--a world of flying-haired Maenads and growling satyrs that lived behind the tick-tock of windows. Standing in the snowstorm an insane notion took possession of Hazlitt. It had to do with Evil. Order was an accident. Men and women were evil. The tick-tock was a pretense.

The notion pa.s.sed. Doubt needs thought to feed upon, and Hazlitt gave it none. Or he would have ended as Hazlitt and become someone else. He walked again with a silence in his head. Another block, and life had again focused itself into tableaux. The moment of doubt had shaken him as if rough hands had reached from an alley and clutched wildly at his throat. But it had gone, and the memory of it too was gone. Hands that had n.o.body behind them; emotion that came without the stabilizing outline of words. So the world stood again on its feet. Tick-tock, said the world to George Hazlitt; and his brain gave an answer, ”Tick-tock!”

For the paradox of Hazlitt was not that he was a thinker, but a dreamer.

His puritanism had put an end to his brain. Like his fellows for whose respect and admiration he worked, he had bartered his intelligence for a thing he proudly called Americanism, and thought for him had become a placid agitation of plat.i.tudes. But he could still dream. His emotions avenged his stupidity. Walking in the street--he felt a desire to walk--he shut himself in. It seemed to him now that his love had become a part of the snow and the far-away dark of the sky. Rachel ... Rachel, his thought called as if summoning something back.

It came to him slowly--the image of the virginal one--doubly sweet and beautiful now that he was unclean. How had it happened? She had been weeping; he comforting her. Two strangers, they had sat in his office.

One a murderess weeping for her sins; the other a kindly hearted, clean-minded attorney consoling her, pointing to her the way of hope.

And then like two animals they had stood sucking at each other's breath.

G.o.d, what could he do? Nothing. He was unclean. He recalled with a dread the thought that had come to him in the embrace ... was she Rachel? Yes, she had been Rachel and he had lowered his dream to her lips, as if in the l.u.s.t of a strange woman's kiss there lay the image of Rachel, the virginal mystery of Rachel. If he had been man enough not to drag the memory of Rachel into it, it would be easy now. But he would look squarely at the facts, anyway. That must be his punishment and his penance. Yes, say it ... it was with his love for Rachel he had embraced and almost possessed the body of a stranger.

Hazlitt quickened his walking. He was confronted with the intricate business of forgiving himself. He felt shame, but shame was something that could be walked off. Faster ... with an amorous mumble soothing him and the hurt. After all, was it so important? Yes ... no. Forgive himself, but not too quickly. He walked.... Words made circles in his head--abject and sorrowful circles about the dream of the virginal one.

A man with a curious smile stopped in front of him to light a pipe.

Hazlitt paused and looked at the street. He would take a car. His legs were tired. The wind and snow put out the match of the man who was lighting a pipe. Hazlitt looked at him. What was he smiling about? We're all in the snow ... all without secrets in the snow. Hail fellows of the street ... Curious, he should feel sad for a man who was smiling on a street corner. Tiredness. The man was cursing the snow good-humoredly.

Suddenly the pipe was lighted and the man seemed to have forgotten it.

His eyes gleamed for an instant across Hazlitt's face, and with an abrupt nod of recognition the man pa.s.sed on. Walking swiftly, bent forward, vanis.h.i.+ng behind a flurry of snow.

Hazlitt peered down the track for his car. He wondered how the man knew him. It pleased his vanity to be recognized by people he couldn't place.

It showed he was somebody. Yes, George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law. He recalled ... they had met once in an office. A newspaperman--editor or something. Probably looking for news. Hazlitt was glad he had been recognized. The man would think of him as he walked on in the snow--of his victory in the courtroom and his future. That was part of life, to be thought of and envied by others.

Beside him a newsboy raised a shout ... ”Extra! Pauline Pollard acquitted!...” People would read about it in their homes. His name.

Wonder who he was. A voice across the street answered, ”Extra! Germans bombard Paris!...” The d.a.m.ned Huns! Why didn't America put an end to their dirty business by rus.h.i.+ng in?

He stepped into the warm street-car and sat staring moodily out of the window. He was a part of life, but there was something beyond--a--mystery. ”Extra!...” He should have bought a paper. There was the newspaper fellow again, still walking swiftly, bent forward, staring into the snow.... Oh, yes, Erik Dorn. He had met him once.... The car pa.s.sed on.

CHAPTER IV

Erik Dorn laughed as he walked swiftly through the snow in the street.

It seemed to him he had been laughing incessantly for a week, and that he would continue to laugh forever. His thought played delightedly with his emotions ... a precocious child with new fantastic toys. He was in love. A laughable business!