Part 12 (1/2)

He seemed to be thinking desperately, as if some voice had told him that only a moment was left for thought. At last he threw his long arms outward.

”Yes,” said he. ”I tell you that it is better for you and for her to know nothing.”

”That is sufficient,” I said. ”I ask no more.”

He shut his eyes as one would receive the relief of an opiate after long agony of the body and for some moments he remained so, his hands, from which the packet of papers had fallen, relaxed upon his knees. The starched white s.h.i.+rt he wore crackled absurdly with each long inhalation of breath.

In those moments a tumult of thoughts went tumbling through my brain, and as the seconds pa.s.sed, I almost felt that it was the wind that howled outside which was blowing these thoughts over each other, as it would blow dry autumn leaves.

At last the dog rose, stretched himself, and, as if restless, sought here and there a new place to lie, and the sound of his claws upon the polished floor recalled the Judge from his almost unconscious reverie.

He half opened his eyes and once or twice moved his thin lips. At last he spoke and into those commonplace words he put all the meaning which hours of ranting would have made less plain.

”I am grateful,” he said.

When I looked up at him after lowering my head in acknowledgment of his thanks, I saw again that wonderful smile of benevolence, which, given to me once before in his office, I believe could only have been bestowed by one who had had a lifelong practice in love of humanity. Indeed, he only directed it at me for a moment, and then turned his face a little aside toward the back of the room, as if he wished to send that expression through the walls and spread over the whole world its beaming radiance.

You may, then, well imagine my surprise when, without a word or a motion of any other part of his body, I saw that smile fade from his face. It disappeared as if a blast of the night wind, entering the room, had dried it, crumbled it, and blown it away. In its place I now saw the terrible, eye-widened, and fixed stare which we recognize as the facial sign of some abject, unreasoning terror, or of death, after the clutch of some fatal agony.

”Judge Colfax!” I exclaimed.

I waited. I thought I saw his head move a little as if he had heard me, but with that motion there came a click, the sound of teeth coming together.

”You are ill,” I said, half rising from my chair.

His lips moved, but the stare in his eyes remained the same.

”It has come,” he said in his throat.

I jumped toward him. He did not stir.

”Judge!” I cried.

He did not answer. I waited, bending over him, not daring to guess what had befallen him, holding my breath. Then, cautiously, I moved my fingers before his eyes: they did not wink. I placed my hand over his heart.... It was as still as a rundown clock. The room itself was still.

The wind had paused a moment as if for this.... The Judge was dead. And yet because he still sat there, his gray head resting on the cus.h.i.+ons, and because he stared so fixedly before him, I could not grasp the fact of death. I had never met it face to face before. I could not honor its credentials.

For a moment I stood in front of the old man, with the single thought that our extraordinary interview had been too much for him: it never occurred to me to go for a.s.sistance any more than it occurred to me that death, unlike sleep, was a permanent thing, from which the Judge would never come back again. I simply stood there, awed by the presence of death, yet crediting death with none of death's attributes.

And as I stood, my attention became more and more fixed upon the Judge's stare. It did not seem to be a vacant gaze; on the contrary, it seemed to contain something. It seemed not only fixed; it seemed fixed on some object. It looked past me, behind me, and there, with all its terror and all its intelligence, it rested, motionless. It seemed to refute the notion that dead men cannot see; it seemed to affirm that dead men's eyes are not dead. Into that terrible stare I looked, fascinated, awed, hushed, motionless. Then, suddenly, I heard the dog.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LISTEN TO ME, ESTABROOK!]

The great Scotch hound had been snarling. He had growled, for I remembered it as a fact brought out of the background of my consciousness. And when I tore my eyes away from the Judge's stare, I saw that the dog was staring, too,--was staring, was drawing back his black lips, exposing his yellow teeth. Every hair on his back was erect, his nostrils were distended as if he were relying upon his sense of smell to determine the nature of what he saw. Could there be any doubt that he, living, and his master, dead, still saw something--something which, because it was behind me, I could not see?

At first I did not dare to look. I felt some dreadful presence behind me--a presence upon which the lifeless man and the cringing, snarling beast had set their eyes, a presence which had wiped the smile from the Judge's face and tightened every nerve and sinew in the dog's lean body.

I could hear the wind, and, in its lapses, the rumble of the city, I could smell the warm aroma of the Judge's pipe, I could feel my senses grow keener as I gathered my courage to look over my shoulder.

When at last, after that dragging moment's reluctance, I did so, I believed that I had looked for no purpose. The room behind me was empty.

My nervous eyes searched the rectangular s.p.a.ce, swept over the chairs, the tea-table covered with its display of rare china, the blue-and-gold j.a.panese floor vase, the bra.s.ses on the cases of books, the dark walls, the pictures, the gloomy corners filled with the mist of shadows, the rugs, the cornice, the draperies.