Part 33 (1/2)
AT TREASURE ISLAND INN
The morning rode in grandly upon the sea. Bedient was early below, and overtook Miss Mallory in the gardens. She seemed particularly virile. A pair of Senora Rey's toy-spaniels were frisking about.
”These are not my favorite kind, but I like dogs,” she said.... ”How men reveal their earth-binding! A laugh is enough--or a fear, a word, a convention--and you have a complete discovery of limitations.”
Bedient fell into her mood. ”And what manner of man would he be who could keep hidden from such very old and very wise eyes his covering of clay?”
”First, he would be without vanity,” she said readily. ”Then, he would do n.o.ble things thoughtlessly and unwatched. He wouldn't be dollar-poisoned, nor could he fail to help all who are poor and whipped, whether wicked or not. And he would have enough intelligence to enfold mine, so I wouldn't be constantly banging against his walls.... In a word, he would be great without knowing it. Do you think I ask a great deal?”
”Yes, but I should like him,” Bedient answered.
”And now what is it?” she asked quickly. They had turned upon the main-drive, away from the trees. ”I can see you have something to say.”
”I shall take up lodgings for the next few days in the city below--at _Treasure Island Inn_. Senor Rey has ordered me out of _The Pleiad_.”
Her face colored instantly, and yet she said, ”I'm very glad to hear it. At least, you will be safe in _Treasure Island Inn_.”
”I had not considered that, Miss Mallory, though I've a great respect for all that you think important.... I still intend to see Jim Framtree--and before the end of 'the four days' spoken of night before last. The fact is, I have nothing else to do. Celestino Rey may mean to start his rebellion then, so there is only to-morrow and next day. It would be next to impossible for me to meet this man with hostilities begun.”
She was quite astonished at this stir of action.
”Can't you tell me anything more?” Her appeal was penetrating.
”Only that I've got to see him. It's not to do him harm,” he said. ”The story isn't altogether mine.... I can't help laughing at this move of Senor Rey's--and yet----”
”It hurts, doesn't it?” she urged.
”Not exactly that, but it makes me all the more determined to get to Framtree.”
”I'm glad if it does hurt,” she said hastily. ”You look like death, but the apathy is gone. Even red rage is better than that. I think you are better. It was about your illness--that I wanted you to tell me....
Good-by.”
”I hope,” Bedient said suddenly, ”that Rey isn't afraid of _you_--that you are clear from the impulse that made him send me downtown.”
”I've been careful.... I'll help, if I can. Good-by.... Aren't 'good-bys' hideous?... But we can't be too careful.... At _Treasure Island Inn_?”
”Yes, and where--_you_ couldn't call!”
”But I shall know where you are.”
Bedient returned to his rooms, and Miss Mallory resumed her walk.... An hour and a half later, Bedient walked out of the big gate of _The Pleiad_, and down to the city.... For the first time in several days, Celestino Rey breathed long. a.s.sa.s.sination was only one of the things he had feared....
Forty-eight unavailing hours pa.s.sed in _Treasure Island Inn_. This night would bring an end to the mysterious four days. Bedient was at bay before the remnant of what had been and hoped. To his own eyes, he was an abject failure now, even in these physical affairs--he who had dared to arraign New York workers in almost every aspect of their life!
The last beacon of his spirit was blown out in the storm; his mind had long since preyed upon itself, the pith gone from it, through drifting in dark dream-tides; and now he who had been trained from a boy to physical actions weakly succ.u.mbed before the old Spaniard's will and strategy. Yet he could not find it within him greatly to care.
_Treasure Island Inn_ had interested him at first, not so much through its exterior contrast to _The Pleiad_ (which was complete enough for any city to furnish), but because its wretchedness in the sense of money-lack was less than in its moral poverty. Its evils were so open and self-reviling; its pa.s.sages so angular, so suggestive of blood-drip and brooding horror; its rooms so peeled, meagre and creaking--depravity so sincere. Crime certainly had not been spared around the world to furnish its living actors for _Treasure Island Inn_. All the ragtag was there--not a l.u.s.t nor a mannerism missing.
And now that life had cast him into this place, Bedient found himself utterly unable to contend with the squalor of fact and mind; indeed, he was quite as ineffectual as he had been in the midst of the glittering deviltry of _The Pleiad_.... Abased before realities; lost to the meaning of every excellence of his life-training; shattered by psychic revolts; his brain reflecting the strange mirages and singing the vague nothings of starvation--but enumeration only dulls the picture! In every plane of his nature, he was close to the end, forty-eight hours after his arrival at the Inn of the lower city.
Certain things had become mature, irrevocable: That he was a superfluous type in this Western world of his birth; that Beth Truba had left the highway, where pa.s.s the women of earth, to enter his most intimate environs and possess him entirely; that pa.s.sing on, she had left but the stuff of death. The time had been when he would have depreciated in another man the utter weakness into which he had fallen.
Bedient unearthed a companion at _Treasure Island Inn_, one whom he did not doubt for an instant to be the chief of Rey's agents a.s.signed to watch his every movement. But even as a spy, old Monkhouse had helped him to sit tight, during that forty-eight hours. For Monkhouse talked alluringly, incessantly,--and asked only to be with the stranger--and many a time, all unknowing, he banished for the moment some devouring anguish with a tale of disruption told to a turn. The Island did not hold more loyal devotion than his for Dictator Jaffier, to hear Monkhouse tell it; and how Celestino Rey had reached his ripe years, with such hatred in the world, was by no means the least of Equatorian novelties.... Here was a desperado in the sere, shaking for the need of drink, when he first appeared to Bedient. On the final forenoon of the latter's stay at the Inn, he sat with Monkhouse in the big carriage doorway on the street-level. The old man was elaborating a winsome plan to capture the Spaniard at sea; and though Bedient mildly interposed that he wouldn't know what to do with Celestino if he had him,--the conspiracy was unfolded nevertheless:
”You're a good lad,” Monkhouse communed. ”I belave in you to the seeds.