misunderstanding to cut off frankness. In the darkness I heard Alice Carston tween us was the lamp with the crimson shade, and now, in order to reach him, I had to step a little to one side. I had expected him to remain where he was; I had fixed in my mind by now the idea that his wound prevented him from rising; but there must have been a temporary forgetfulness on his part, an accession of cordiality that for the time being obliterated caution, for he sprang to his feet without the slightest trace of infirmity and, the "So cross to the electric switch, and instantly the room was again illuminated. When I looked around Carston was back once more in his chair, but not as he you know!" she whispered. "Yes," I answered. next moment, did an unbelievable thingput out his hand, that is, and put it straight through the lamp that separated us. The gesture was direct; there was no fumbling, no weakness to account for it. The lamp tottered and fell. I reached over and caught it. The light went out. had been before, for his chin was sunk forward on his breast andfor now I could see it plainly -on his face was the look of a man who has just been struck a blow he cannot return. Only for a moment, however, did. he sit this way, for the next he raised his head and shook it with an odd, defiant gesture. He laughed. "Rotten!" he said. "Can't be done, can it? I'm still too weak. Come and see us soon again, Wally." Perhaps if he hadn't laughed I would not have known what was wrong, but when people laugh their eyes-Carston, you understand, was blind. During the few minutes that followed I acted automatically. I heard my voice, calm, controlled, but as if belonging to another person, bidding the Carstons good-by, and suggesting that I come to see them soon again, and I heard Carston answering: "Yes, come at night. That's better. I'm not painting as yet, y' see, but I've a lot of letters to attend to, and this packing up takes my days. Yes, come at night." And then I found my self out on the landing, the studio door closed behind me, and Alice Carston facing me, one hand on her breast. "So you know!" she whispered. "Yes," I answered. "I know." After that we looked at each other for a while without speaking, then her arm dropped wearily to her side, where her fingers began to twist between them a fold of her skirt. "I suppose you understand," she asked. "If you don't—" "Not quite. Perhaps in a way. It isn't altogether clear." She raised her head and came closer to me, and her voice had in it the curious, dry, strained note that voices have when they have choked too much over tears. "It's so simple," she said, "if you remember what he is-how proud and unbeatable. He's always looked on life as some fine, laughing adventure; something to be surmounted-and now!" She drew herself up and her eyes widened and grew starry. "He's still fighting, you see, but he's fighting so horribly in the dark. And for a while, at least, he must not know that any one is helping himno, not even I." She searched my face. "He's never met fate before," she continued, "when it was implacable, and he doesn't know how, you understand doesn't know how to meet it. He has been so used to bending life entirely to his own design. If it was anything else but his eyes-but his eyes are what made the whole world for him. You don't wonder, do you, that as yet he won't admit it; won't admit defeat? Some day, of course, but now- It was as if she was pleading with me to understand Carston. "No," I said. "I don't wonder." I left her standing where she was, her eyes thoughtful and fixed on the shadows in front of her. The little garden, as I passed through it again, seemed even more sibilant than before, filled with a score of whispering, confused voices. Then I went back to my club; my holiday was over. Friendship is one of the liabilities with which we complicate an already overcomplicated existence. The man who is busy with his affections is very busy indeed. Selfish burdens are comparatively easy to bear; it is only when we see a friend encompassed and cannot render him aid that we reach that folly of despair where life seems to us a stupid matter of an unfair giant striking little people into the dust. I reached that point several times during the next two weeks. I walked constantly with dissatisfaction as a companion. The thought of Carston followed me wherever I went, obtruding itself into whatever I did, and always I saw him as I had seen him that moment after the lamp had been upset, sitting wearily back in his chair, a look on his face as if he had been struck a blow he could not return. Sometimes the apparent idiocy of the thing changed dull dissatisfaction into rage. Why, with a hundred million eyes to be put out, should two eyes filled with beauty be blinded? I continued to go to the Carstons' studio frequently, although I made my visits short, for I was torn between a desire to be of help and the knowledge that, just at the moment anyhow, my presence was not altogether a source of pleasure. Now that I knew Carston's secret, however, it was not difficult to pretend that I didn't. Our talk limped along like a gay and desperate cripple. And then, quite suddenly, I realized, what I should have realized long before, realized, that is, that my discovery on the fateful night in question, far from being a climax, was merely an incident in the drama I was witnessing. Underneath Alice Carston's quiet, underneath Mansfield Carston's somewhat feverish cheerfulness, were hidden matters the presence of which I was just beginning to perceive. I began to perceive a grim, unrelenting struggle of wills; I began to perceive a vigilance; I began to perceive -how does one describe the intangible, the indescribable without making it too definite; without making it appear as if one had seen it clearly and not, as is always the case, dimly?-an atmosphere of expectancy. All very vague, you understand; nothing I could lay my finger on. Openly the Carstons were going forward placidly with their plans for leaving New York; but there was, for instance, the curious way Alice Carston watched her husband when she thought I was not looking, and there was, for instance, the curious feeling you had when you entered the studio, as if you had interrupted a discussion a silent discussion, a discussion between mind and mind; a discussion in which not a word was spoken. There were many other curious things as well: for one, the manner with which Alice Carston, with cleverness, with sophistry, prevented the conversation ever from taking the turn of easy cynicism, of the lively descent to a despairing reductio ad absurdum that conversation between Carston and myself had been in the habit of taking. It had always been our delight to prove buoyantly the ultimate worthlessness of life, the ultimate folly of mankind, knowing all the while, of course, that neither of us thought anything of the kind. And Alice Carston had invariably made an excellent third. Unlike most women, she appreciated the mental exercise of argument for argument's sake. But now she was quite different, oddly different; she discouraged any opening along such lines; she was immensely practical and to the point and healthily matter-of-you understand now, don't you?" fact. But perhaps all this would have gone unnoticed on my part, or at the most would have been assigned by me to the ordinary solicitude under the circumstances, had it not been for the incident of the automatic pistol. It was a disturbing incident; yet there is not much to tell about it. Carston laughed. "Yes," he said. "Ugly, isn't it?" "Very ugly," I agreed. I was not surprised when the next morning I received a note from Alice Carston. "I must thank you," she said, "for your quickness of mind last night. Indeed, I can never thank you enough for all you have done—or, rather, for all you have been kind enough and wise enough not to do; for your consideration in not asking questions; for your consideration in waiting, as I have had to do, in patience. My very dear friend, I wonder if you will ever know how you have helped me? Yes, the cartridges were blank, as you perceived. But I wonder if you also perceive why I cannot merely putsomehow I cannot bear to give it its name The pistol had lain on the centre-table of the studio ever since the night of my first visit. I had noticed it frequentlya big, blunted thing, brutal as modern war. One evening I picked it up casually and took out the chamber. The top cartridge fell into my hand. I started to replace it, when its shape attracted my attention. "Why" I began; and then I knew, in the unexplainable way in which you do know such things, that Alice Carston was staring at me. I raised my head. Her hand was extended and as I looked she brought her finger up to her lips. On her face was a look of terror. "Why," I continued, "this is something I never saw before-this gun of yours," I hurriedly added. "It's the one you used in France, isn't it?" put 'the thing' where it will be safe? I feel now that wherever possible explanations are due you. You see, I must leave it there-leave it where he knows it is. If I hid it he would realize my reason for so doing; would realize that I am afraid; and he must never realize that; never realize it for a moment. But I can't be with him every minute of the day, and so Yes, I understood, and, from now on, I, too, watched. I fell into the habit of going frequently to the Carstons' instead of for only a few minutes in the evening; I fell into the habit of staying there a long while. Alice Carston accepted this gratefully. To Carston I confessed loneliness and boredom and a desire to read. I do not see how he imagined that I suspected nothing of his pitiful, so easily detected secret; I do not know what he thought must be going on in my mind about the hours he spent by the open window, staring-apparently staringdown into the by-now gay verdure of the garden. But men fighting shadows, men with fixed ideas, overlook the obvious, imagine a world as they themselves insist upon its being. The little garden was catching up with June. The flowering bushes had shed their blossoms and were taking on the thick greenness of summer. Against the wall espaliered roses of red and white were beginning to show. There was a drowsy sunshine, in which the fountain trickled pleasantly and a few bees, deceiving them selves as to their whereabouts, hummed sleepily. At the window, all day long, sat Carston. I wondered how long this would last. The sense of impending catastrophe sharpened, overlaid my entire life, as gradually the portentous heat of the last few days was beginning to overlay the sparkling warmth of spring. But I needn't have wondered. The human mind is like a cup; it can hold, before it overflows, only so much. There is no other question, except whether the cup is filled drop by drop or hastily. The cup that Carston was holding was filling slowly, as the cups of all brave men do. But there came an end. It came on a hot and stifling night, a night when, if cups are almost full, there is likely to be a sudden further pouring into them of enough to make the hands that hold them tremble. I had dined in the coolness of my club a cruelly detached coolness-and after "It's the one you used in France, isn't it?"-Page 505. ward the heavy, foreboding quality of the streets impressed me. The city was stirring to its months of fever. Perhaps I exaggerate; perhaps I am using retrospection. I don't know; at all events, I do know that I was even more depressed than usual when I came to the Carstons' garden gate. The Italian man servant let me pass without question-lately I had fallen into the habit of going up to the studio unannounced-and so I came unaccompanied to the door on the thirdstory landing. It was partly open. I don't know why I did not knock; I can claim no prescience here, merely carelessness; and at first when I entered the room I was sorry I had not knocked, then I was very glad. There was hardly any light at all; the lamp had been turned so low as merely to accentuate the shadows. Across from me I made out the wide window, a square of purple darkness in the surrounding black. In front of the window were Mansfield Carston and his wife; their figures therefore were a trifle clearer to me than otherwise they would have been. They had not heard me come in; they did not even notice the shaft of light that followed me from the hall. They must have been very intent upon their own business, for this lack of observation did not come because of the sound of their own talk; they were not talking at all; they were perfectly silent. Something made me stop where I was. In the long pause that followed, the oppressiveness of the night, the oppressiveness of my thoughts seemed to concentrate in the room; the shadows seemed to be assuming the ponderosity of material objects. Then Mansfield Carston spoke. His voice, except for a touch of dryness, a touch of strain about it, was perfectly natural; there was even a hint of a deprecatory laugh in its smooth accents. Perhaps you will not agree with me, but at the time the natural voice, the hint of a deprecatory laugh, struck me as peculiarly horrible. "How extremely silly!" said the voice. "How very silly of you!" There was no answer and the voice went on in the same slightly careless way. "You might have got hurt, you know. I might have shot you and not myself; and then what would have happened? I would have had worse to add to the damn things I've got already." The voice hesitated, and for an instant the shadows once more grew heavy; then it sent them back again where they belonged. "Will you tell me," it asked-and there was a new touch of desperation in the words "why you stopped me? What do you propose that I shall do? Do you want me to go on living in the way I've been doing?" Still Alice Carston did not answer. The effect was curious, uncanny, like that of a man talking to himself in the darkness. "Tell me!" insisted Carston. "Do you?" He didn't raise his voice; he was very gentle. But the gentleness was too much fashion what can one do with him? Alice Carston had for the time being prevented the irrevocable, but what of the moments to follow? Here was no sudden impulse, no desperate instant, but a slowly achieved determination. And then-as suddenly, as swiftly, as before, At the window, all day long, sat Carston.-Page 506. for Alice Carston, as I had known it would be. I saw her make a sudden movement. "Don't!" she begged. "Don't! I can't bear it!" "I am very sorry," said her husband, "but what am I to do? If it had been anything else but my eyes- Now it's all gone, you see all the things I lived for. Why, I can't even get up in the morning and look about me. And I have triedtried to get another point of view; but it's no good. Not a bit of good." He paused again. "I'm tired," he concluded. You cannot imagine the queerness of this; of this reasonable, calm, incredible discussion. I felt a wave of hopelessness overwhelm me. When a man talks in this slowly and with stolid oppressiveness, the shadows had advanced upon me, there seemed to advance into the room a new presence a spirit, so strong, so intent, that one felt it a bodily shape-a figure keen as flame, with white wings foldedif one should have to visualize it-and with hands gripping, until the flesh bit into the hilt, the sword they held. I shrank back still farther into the shadows. had never before, you understand, seen a woman or, for that matter, a man-play, with every atom of strength possessed, for the life of some one she or he loved. I Alice Carston moved toward her husband. "Come here," she said, and her voice trembled. "Are your eyes all you have to live for?" |