Part 8 (1/2)
”But how is it possible to be so blind? Can you not see that your cousin has prejudiced him against me? I said, impartial hearer. But let the matter drop. I tell you the charge is false; believe it or not, as you prefer. There is, however, just this in the matter: if the charge is made again, I will have your cousin under arrest. You forget that there is such a thing as libel still.”
Again he paused, and strove to collect himself; there was a design in the carpet which appeared to interest him very much, but presently he looked up again.
”Now tell me,” he said, ”what did your father say?”
”Nothing, save what he said before.”
”Nothing?”
”Nothing that you would care to hear.” Her eyes roamed from the neighbourly ceiling over to him and back again. ”He said,” she added, ”that if I persisted in living with you his money would go to my child, if I had one; if I had none, then to Guy.”
”Were you alone with him when he said this, or was Guy, as you call him, there?”
”No, I was alone with him; Guy came later.”
”And is he aware of this provision?”
For all response Justine shrugged her shoulders.
”Does he know it, I ask you?”
”He does not,” she answered. ”Father told me that he never would, until the will was read.”
”H'm.” And for a moment Mistrial mused. Then presently he smiled--yet was it a smile?--a look that an hallucinated monk in a medieval abbey might have seen on that imaginary demon who, flitting by him, the forefinger outstretched, whispered as he vanished through the wall, ”Thou art d.a.m.ned, dear friend! thou art d.a.m.ned!” ”H'm,” he repeated; ”and in view of the provisions of your father's will, will you tell me why is it that you are without a child?”
As he spoke he had arisen, and, smiling still, though now as were he questioning her in regard to the state of the weather, he looked into her eyes. She had drawn yet further back into the chair in which she sat; a deadly sickness overcame her; to her head there mounted the nausea of each one of his many misdeeds. The memory of the blow of the week before, one which, despite her seeming forbearance, had not ceased to rankle, returned to her; and with it, one after another in swift succession, she rememorated the offences of the past. But soon she too was on her feet and fronted him. ”Why is it I am without a child?” she repeated. Her voice was low and clear, and between each word she permitted a little pause to intervene. ”Why is it?”
The subtlety of his reproach battening on nerves already overwrought was exciting her as nothing had done before. ”It is you,” she cried, ”who are to blame. What have you done with your youth? What have you done with your manhood? Look at me, Roland Mistrial! If I have borne you no child it is because monsters never engender.” As she spoke, with one gesture she tore her bodice down. Her breast, palpitant with health and anger too, heaving at the sheer injustice of his reproach, confronted and confuted him. ”It is there that women have their strength; tell me, if you can, what have you done with yours?”
And thereat, with a look a princess might give to a lackey who had dared to question her, she turned and left him where he stood.
The next day he tried to make his peace with her. In this he succeeded, or flattered himself he had, for subsequently she consented to accompany him to the play. And as she sat in the stalls it was of these things that she thought.
II.
The information which Mistrial gleaned concerning the provisions of his father-in-law's will was bitter in his mouth. On the morrow he gave some time to thought--he read too a little. The taunt which Justine had flung at him, bit; and with the idea of dulling the hurt and of ministering also to his own refreshment, he consulted a book which treated of certain conditions of the nervous system, and a work on medical jurisprudence as well. But literature of that kind is notoriously unsatisfactory. It may suggest, yet the questions which it prompts remain unanswered. Roland put the volumes down: they were productions of genius, no doubt, but to him they were nothing more. From the pursuit of exact knowledge he turned and looked out into the street.
The hour then was midway in one of those green afternoons which we are apt to fancy the adjunct of lands we never see, and as he looked he saw astride a bay hunter a man ambling cautiously over the stones. From the roofs opposite a breath of lilacs came, and a breeze that was neither cool nor warm loitered on its way from the river beyond. Mistrial let the breeze, the fragrance, the fulfilment of spring, pa.s.s unnoticed. The bay hunter had caught his eye: it seemed to him that an argument with an imperative horse was just the thing he needed most, and a little later he secured a cob from a stable on the street above.
The cob was docile enough, affecting once only to regard a sewer-grating in the bridle-path as a strange, unhallowed thing which it was needful to avoid. But the initial shy was the last. The spur gave him such a nip that during the remainder of the ride, whatever distasteful object he may have encountered, he gave no outward evidence of abhorrence. He had an easy canter, a long and swinging trot; and now on one, now on the other, they pa.s.sed through and out of the Park, and on beyond the brand-new edifices that line Seventh Avenue, to that scantier outlying district where the Harlem begins and the city ends. And here as he was about to turn he noticed a gig such as physicians affect. In it was a negro driving, and at his side sat Justine's cousin, Guy.
”H'm!” mused Mistrial; ”judging by the locality, his patients must be the last people in the city.” At the moment the feebleness of the jest pleasured him; then simultaneously the unforgotten hatred crackled in his breast. At each one of the important epochs of his life that man had stood in his way. It was he that had forced him from college at the moment when honors were within his reach. It was he that had kept him from his father's side at the time when he might have saved his father's estate. It was he that had come between Dunellen and himself at the hour when he could have persuaded Justine's father to give him Justine's hand. It was he that had forced him to elope with her. It was because of him that he was now enjoying the small miseries of the shabby genteel.
It was he, unless Providence now intervened, who would inherit the wealth he had toiled to make his own. And it was he who the day before had again crossed and halted in his path.
These premises, however colored, were logical enough in this--the natural deduction sprang out and greeted the eye. And, as they flashed before him, Mistrial saw himself rinsing out each one in blood squeezed from Thorold's throat. In the fury which suddenly beset him he could have found the strength, the courage it may be, to have torn him from the gig in which he sat, to have trampled on him with horse's hoofs, bent over and beat him as he writhed on the ground, and exulted and jubilated in the doing of it. Then indeed, though he swung for it, the ultimate victory would be his. If he stamped Thorold out of existence, though his own went with it, he would not have suffered wholly in vain; in facing the gallows he would have the joy of knowing that even were he prevented from bathing in the Dunellen millions, so was Thorold too.
But when he looked out from himself his enemy had disappeared. A woman in an open landau pa.s.sed and bowed. Mechanically Mistrial raised his hat. To every intent and purpose he was self-possessed--occupied, if at all, but with those threads of fancy that float in and out the mind. As he raised his hat, he smiled; the woman might have thought herself the one it gave him the greatest pleasure to salute. Her carriage had not advanced the jump of a cat before he had forgotten that she lived. But no one can turn his brain into a stage, create for it, and feel a drama such as he had without some outward manifestation, be it merely a strangled oath. On the horse he rode his knees had tightened, he gave a dig with the spur, and went careering down the street. In that part of New York you are at liberty to cover a mile in two minutes. Roland covered thirty squares at breakneck speed.
Presently he drew the animal in and suffered him to walk. During the run he had had no time to think; he had been occupied only in keeping the horse he rode out of the way of vehicles, and in preventing that possible cropper which comes when we expect it least. But as the cob began to walk, the present returned to him with a rush. About the animal's neck the fretting of the reins had produced a lather; the breeze had died away. Mistrial felt overheated too, and he drew out a handkerchief and wiped his face. Even while he drew it from his pocket an idea came to him, fluttered for a second as ideas will, and before he got the handkerchief back it had gone, leaving him just a trifled dazed. But in a moment he called to it, and at his bidding it returned.
It was minute, barely fledged as yet; but as the horse jogged on, little by little it expanded, and to such an extent that before he reached the park its pinions stretched from earth to sky. Whoso is visited with inspirations knows with what diabolical swiftness they can enlarge and grow. When Mistrial put the horse back in the stable the idea which at first he had but dimly intercepted possessed him utterly. It succeeded even in detaining his step: he walked up the street instead of down; at a crossing he hesitated; night had come, and as he loitered there, suddenly the whole avenue was bright as day. The vengeance which not an hour before he could have wreaked on Thorold seemed now remote and paltry too. There need be no shedding of blood, no scandal, no newspaper notoriety, no police, no coroner to sit upon a corpse, no jury to bring a verdict in. There need be nothing of this: a revenge of that order was in bad taste, ill-judged as well. To make a man really suffer, sudden death was as a balm in comparison to some subtle torment that should gnaw at the springs of life, retreat a moment, and then returning make them ache again, and still again, forever his whole life through.