Part 43 (1/2)

And with that inner challenge came the supreme ordeal of his life.

As rivers, held imprisoned by winter, will burst their confines in the spring and overrun the land, all the pa.s.sions which had been cooled and tempered by his intellectual discipline swarmed through his arteries in revolt. No longer was the brain dominating the body; instead, he was on fire with a hundred mad flames of desire, springing from sources he knew nothing of. They clung to him by day and haunted him at night.

They sang to him that vice had its own heaven, as well as h.e.l.l--that licentiousness held forgetfulness. He heard whispers in the air that there were drugs which opened perfumed caves of delight, and secret places where sin was made beautiful with mystic music and incense of flowers.

When conscience--or whatever it is in us that combats desire--urged him to close his ears to the voices, he cursed it for a meddlesome thing.

Since Life had thrown down the gauntlet, he would take it up! If he had to travel the chambers of disgrace and discouragement, he would go on to the halls of sensual abandonment. Life had torn aside the curtain--it was for him to search the recesses of experience.

IV.

One night towards the end of January Selwyn had tried to sleep, but the furies of desire called to him in the dark. He got up and dressed. He did not know where he was going, but he knew that his steps would be guided to adventure, to oblivion.

There was a drizzling rain falling, and, with his coat b.u.t.toned close about his throat, he walked from street to street, his breath quickening with the ecstasy of sensual surrender which had at last come to him. Men spoke to him from dark corners; women called at him as he pa.s.sed; he caught faint glimmers down murky alleys, where opium was opening the gates to bliss and perdition; but, with a step that was agile and graceful, he went on, his arteries tingling in antic.i.p.ation of the senses' gratification. Once a mongrel slunk out of a lane, and he called to it. It crawled up to him, and he stooped down to stroke its head, when, with a yelp of terror, it leaped out of his reach and ran back into the lane. As if it was the best of jests, he laughed aloud, and picking up a stone, sent it hurtling after the cur. Then he was suddenly afraid. The loneliness of the spot--the horrors lurking in the dark--the dog's howl and his own meaningless laughter. He felt a fear of night--of himself. He hurried on, but it was not until he reached a lighted street of shops that his courage returned, and with the courage his fever of desire, greater than before.

An extra burst of rain warned him to seek shelter, and hurrying down the street, he paused under the canopy of a shabby theatre. There was one other person there--a woman. She came over to speak to him; but when she saw the mad gleam of his eyes she drew back, and, with a frightened exclamation, pressed her hand against her breast.

He made an ironic bow, then, with a smile, looked up at her, and she heard him utter an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of amazement.

For a moment he had fancied that it might be true. The likeness was uncanny! The burnished-copper hair, the silk-fringed eyes, the poise of her head, the tapering fingers--even in the scarlet of her rouged cheeks, there was a similarity to the high colouring of the English girl. What a jest of the Fates--that they should cast this poor creature of New York's streets in the same mould with her who was the very spirit of chast.i.ty!

'What a mockery!' he muttered aloud. 'What a hideous mockery!'

He was touched with sudden pity. Perhaps this woman had been born with the same spirit of rebellion as Elise. Perhaps her poor mind had never been developed, and so she had succ.u.mbed to the current of circ.u.mstance. She might have been the plaything of environment. The wound in his head was hurting again, and he covered the scar with his moist hand. Horrible as it seemed, this creature had brought Elise to him once more--Elise, and everything she meant. He wanted to cry out her name. His hands were stretched forward as if they could bridge the sea between them.

Like a man emerging from a trance, he looked dreamily about him--at the street running with streams of water--at the silent theatre--at the woman. A weakness came over him, and his pulses were fluttering and unsteady.

A peddler of umbrellas pa.s.sed, and Selwyn purchased one for a dollar.

'Won't you take this?' he asked, stepping over to the woman, who cringed nervously. 'It is raining hard, and you will need it.'

She took the thing, and looked up at him wonderingly, like a child that has received a caress where it expected a blow.

'Say,' she said, in a queer nasal whine, 'I thought you was a devil when I seen you a minute ago. Honest--you frightened me.'

He said nothing.

'Why'--there was a weak quaver in her whine, and she caught his wrist with her hand--'why, you're kind--and I thought you was a devil. Gee!

ain't it funny?'

With a shrill laugh that set his teeth on edge, she put up the umbrella and walked out into the rain. And only a pa.s.sing policeman saw, by the light of a lamp, that her eyes were glistening.

Selwyn remained where he was, blinking stupidly into the rain-soaked night, as one who has been walking in his sleep and has waked at the edge of an abyss.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE CHALLENGE.

I.