Part 31 (2/2)

For the next few days he dragged out a methodical existence. In the mornings he would force himself to rise, swallow his food, and take his accustomed seat before his desk. With a failing hand he would take up his pen and endeavor to bend his fever-stricken brain to its task, but before a dozen lines were penned his strength would falter and the effort be abandoned. Then he would rise and finger the phials on the shelf, until, turning from them, he would say, ”I will fight--fight until the last gasp--and then--”

At the beginning of the week, when his lodging bill was due, he carried by the armful a number of his books and p.a.w.ned them for a nominal sum.

Then he remembered his watch, and left that also. It was a heavy hunting-case of his father's, which he had always used from the nearness of the a.s.sociation, and as he laid it down something came into his throat. He opened the watch and took out the picture of his mother which was inside--a sketch in color, showing the l.u.s.trous Creole beauty in her first youth. Then he snapped the case and saw the initials ”A. K. A.”

pa.s.s into the hands behind the counter.

Leaving the p.a.w.n-shop, he walked rapidly through the oppressive September sun until his limbs failed. Then turning with the throng of men that flowed into City Hall Square, he came to a sudden halt before the fountain. He was dazed and weakened, like a man who has recovered from a lapse into unconsciousness. The constant pa.s.sing of the crowd bewildered him, and the sound of falling water in the fountain irritated him with the suggestion of thirst. He turned away and threw himself upon a bench beneath the shade of a tree. For an instant he closed his eyes, and when he opened them he found the scene before him to have intensified. The falling water sounded more distinctly, the sky was of a glaring blueness, and the dome of the _World_ building glittered like a cloud of fire.

To his straining eyes the statue of Horace Greeley seemed to grin at him from across the traffic in the street, and as he staggered to his feet he felt an impulse to shake his fist at it and say:

”d.a.m.n you! It is a chance that I want,” but his muscles faltered, and he fell back.

Then his glance wandered to the man beside him, a filthy vagrant with the smell of grease about his clothes. Did not he want his chance as well? And a few feet away a boy with a scowl on his lips and a bruise above his eye--why not a chance for him? Then a gray haze obscured his vision and the noise of the street was dulled into a monotone.

The throbbing in his temples grew faster, and as he sat there he knew that he had fought to the final gasp and that the end had come. In his physical downfall there was room for neither alarm nor regret. He was lost to all vaguer impressions than the trembling of his frame, the icy starts through his limbs, the burning of his eyes, and the inevitable beating in his temples. Beyond these things he neither knew nor cared.

With the instinct for solitude, he started and rose to move onward, when he saw that the earth was undulating beneath his feet and that the atmosphere was filled with fog. The dome of the _World_ building reeled suddenly and clashed into the flaming sky. He heard the sound of brazen-tongued bells ringing higher and higher above the falling of the water, above the tread of pa.s.sing feet, and above the dull, insistent din of the traffic in the streets.

Then his name was called and he felt a hand upon his arm.

”Why, Anthony!”

He looked up bewildered, but straightened himself and stood erect, straining at the consciousness that was escaping him.

”How are you, Mr. Speares?” he asked. His voice was without inflection.

Father Speares spoke with impa.s.sioned pity. ”What are you doing? You are ill--a ghost--”

Algarcife steadied himself against the bench and said nothing.

”What does it mean? Your wife--where is she?”

Anthony's voice came slowly and without emotion. ”I am alone,” he answered.

A quick moisture sprang to the older man's eyes. He held out his hand.

”Come with me,” he said, fervently. ”I am alone also. Come to my house.”

Algarcife left the bench and took a step from him.

”No,” he replied. ”I--I am all right.”

Then he staggered and would have fallen but for the other's sustaining arm.

Phase Second

_”And not even here do all agree--no, not any one with himself.”_

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