Short Stories for English Courses

V >> Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) >> Short Stories for English Courses

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"Will you excuse me? The telephone. Peters, go on with the
dinner." With small precise steps he walked out of the door which
one of the footmen had hastened to throw open.

A momentary silence fell on the group; then Mr. Grisben once more
addressed himself to Rainer. "You ought to have gone, my boy; you
ought to have gone."

The anxious look returned to the youth's eyes. "My uncle doesn't
think so, really."

"You're not a baby, to be always governed on your uncle's opinion.
You came of age to-day, didn't you? Your uncle spoils you ...
that's what's the matter...."

The thrust evidently went home, for Rainer laughed and looked down
with a slight accession of color.

"But the doctor----"

"Use your common sense, Frank! You had to try twenty doctors to
find one to tell you what you wanted to be told."

A look of apprehension overshadowed Rainer's gaiety. "Oh, come--I
say! ... What would YOU do?" he stammered.

"Pack up and jump on the first train." Mr. Grisben leaned forward
and laid a firm hand on the young man's arm "Look here: my nephew
Jim Grisben is out there ranching on a big scale. He'll take you
in and be glad to have you. You say your new doctor thinks it
won't do you any good; but he doesn't pretend to say it will do
you harm, does he? Well, then--give it a trial. It'll take you out
of hot theatres and night restaurants, anyhow.... And all the rest
of it.... Eh, Balch?"

"Go!" said Mr. Balch hollowly. "Go AT ONCE," he added, as if a
closer look at the youth's face had impressed on him the need of
backing up his friend.

Young Rainer had turned ashy-pale. He tried to stiffen his mouth,
into a smile. "Do I look as bad as all that?"

Mr. Grisben was helping himself to terrapin. "You look like the
day after an earthquake," he said concisely.

The terrapin had encircled the table, and been deliberately
enjoyed by Mr. Lavington's three visitors (Rainer, Faxon noticed,
left his plate untouched) before the door was thrown open to re-
admit their host.

Mr. Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure. He
seated himself, picked up his napkin, and consulted the gold-
monogrammed menu. "No, don't bring back the filet.... Some
terrapin; yes...." He looked affably about the table. "Sorry to
have deserted you, but the storm has played the deuce with the
wires, and I had to wait a long time before I could get a good
connection. It must be blowing up for a blizzard."

"Uncle Jack," young Rainer broke out, "Mr. Grisben's been
lecturing me."

Mr. Lavington was helping himself to terrapin. "Ah--what about?"

"He thinks I ought to have given New Mexico a show."

"I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa Paz and stay
there till his next birthday." Mr. Lavington signed to the butler
to hand the terrapin to Mr. Grisben, who, as he took a second
helping, addressed himself again to Rainer. "Jim's in New York
now, and going back the day after to-morrow in Olyphant's private
car. I'll ask Olyphant to squeeze you in if you'll go. And when
you've been out there a week or two, in the saddle all day and
sleeping nine hours a night, I suspect you won't think much of the
doctor who prescribed New York."

Faxon spoke up, he knew not why. "I was out there once: it's a
splendid life. I saw a fellow--oh, a really BAD case--who'd been
simply made over by it."

"It DOES sound jolly," Rainer laughed, a sudden eagerness of
anticipation in his tone.

His uncle looked at him gently. "Perhaps Grisben's right. It's an
opportunity----"

Faxon looked up with a start: the figure dimly perceived in the
study was now more visibly and tangibly planted behind Mr.
Lavington's chair.

"That's right, Frank: you see your uncle approves. And the trip
out there with Olyphant isn't a thing to be missed. So drop a few
dozen dinners and be at the Grand Central the day after to-morrow
at five."

Mr. Grisben's pleasant gray eye sought corroboration of his host,
and Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him
as he turned his glance on Mr. Lavington. One could not look at
Lavington without seeing the presence at his back, and it was
clear that, the next minute, some change in Mr. Grisben's
expression must give his watcher a clue.

But Mr. Grisben's expression did not change: the gaze he fixed on
his host remained unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the
startling one of not seeming to see the other figure.

Faxon's first impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to
resort again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had
already brimmed; but some fatal attraction, at war in him with an
overwhelming physical resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they
feared.

The figure was still standing, more distinctly, and therefore more
resemblingly, at Mr. Lavington's back; and while the latter
continued to gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart,
as before, fixed young Rainer with eyes of deadly menace.

Faxon, with what felt like an actual wrench of the muscles,
dragged his own eyes from the sight to scan the other countenances
about the table; but not one revealed the least consciousness of
what he saw, and a sense of mortal isolation sank upon him.

"It's worth considering, certainly----" he heard Mr. Lavington
continue; and as Rainer's face lit up, the face behind his uncle's
chair seemed to gather into its look all the fierce weariness of
old unsatisfied hates. That was the thing that, as the minutes
labored by, Faxon was becoming most conscious of. The watcher
behind the chair was no longer merely malevolent: he had grown
suddenly, unutterably tired. His hatred seemed to well up out of
the very depths of balked effort and thwarted hopes, and the fact
made him more pitiable, and yet more dire.

Faxon's look reverted to Mr. Lavington, as if to surprise in him a
corresponding change. At first none was visible: his pinched smile
was screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a white-washed
wall. Then the fixity of the smile became ominous: Faxon saw that
its wearer was afraid to let it go. It was evident that Mr.
Lavington was unutterably tired too, and the discovery sent a
colder current through Faxon's veins. Looking down at his
untouched plate, he caught the soliciting twinkle of the champagne
glass; but the sight of the wine turned him sick.

"Well, we'll go into the details presently," he heard Mr.
Lavington say, still on the question of his nephew's future.
"Let's have a cigar first. No--not here, Peters." He turned his
smile on Faxon. "When we've had coffee I want to show you my
pictures."

"Oh, by the way, Uncle Jack--Mr. Faxon wants to know if you've got
a double?"

"A double?" Mr. Lavington, still smiling, continued to address
himself to his guest. "Not that I know of. Have you seen one, Mr.
Faxon?"

Faxon thought: "My God, if I look up now they'll BOTH be looking
at me!" To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the
glass to his lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr.
Lavington's glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening
of the strain about his heart he saw that the figure behind the
chair still kept its gaze on Rainer.

"Do you think you've seen my double, Mr. Faxon?"

Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in
his throat. "No," he answered.

"Ah? It's possible I've a dozen. I believe I'm extremely usual-
looking," Mr. Lavington went on conversationally; and still the
other face watched Rainer.

"It was ... a mistake ... a confusion of memory ..." Faxon heard
himself stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he
did so Mr. Grisben suddenly leaned forward. "Lavington! What have
we been thinking of? We haven't drunk Frank's health!"

Mr. Lavington reseated himself. "My dear boy! ... Peters, another
bottle. ..." He turned to his nephew. "After such a sin of
omission I don't presume to propose the toast myself ... but Frank
knows. ... Go ahead, Grisben!"

The boy shone on his uncle. "No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr. Grisben won't
mind. Nobody but YOU--to-day!"

The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr. Lavington's
last, and Mr. Lavington put out his small hand to raise it. ... As
he did so, Faxon looked away.

"Well, then--All the good I've wished you in all the past years. ...
I put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy
and happy and many ... and MANY, dear boy!"

Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses.
Automatically, he made the same gesture. His eyes were still on
the table, and he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence:
"I won't look up! I won't .... I won't ...."

His fingers clasped the stem of the glass, and raised it to the
level of his lips. He saw the other hands making the same motion.
He heard Mr. Grisben's genial "Hear! Hear!" and Mr. Balch's hollow
echo. He said to himself, as the rim of the glass touched his
lips: "I won't look up! I swear I won't!--" and he looked.

The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to
hold it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval
before he could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to
the table. It was this merciful preoccupation which saved him,
kept him from crying out, from losing his hold, from slipping down
into the bottomless blackness that gaped for him. As long as the
problem of the glass engaged him he felt able to keep his seat,
manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the group; but as the
glass touched the table his last link with safety snapped. He
stood up and dashed out of the room.

IV

In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to
turn back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out
something about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently;
and the boy waved an unsuspecting hand and drew back.

At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. "I should
like to telephone to Weymore," he said with dry lips.

"Sorry, sir; wires all down. We've been trying the last hour to
get New York again for Mr. Lavington."

Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The
mild lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books, in the ashes a
log still glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face.
The room was utterly silent, the whole house was still: nothing
about him gave a hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in
the horrible room he had flown from, and with the covering of his
eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to fall on him. But they fell
for a moment only; then his lids opened again to the monstrous
vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of him
forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But
why into his--just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what
he had seen? What business was it of HIS, in God's name! Any one
of the others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and
defeated it; but HE, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator,
the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he
attempted to reveal what he knew--HE alone had been singled out as
the victim of this atrocious initiation!

Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs.
Some one, no doubt, was coming to see how he was--to urge him, if
he felt better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he
opened his door; yes, it was young Rainer's step. Faxon looked
down the passage, remembered the other stairway and darted to it.
All he wanted was to get out of the house. Not another instant
would he breathe its abominable air! What business was it of HIS,
in God's name?

He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it
saw the hall by which, he had entered. It was empty, and on a long
table he recognized his coat and cap among the furs of the other
travellers. He got into his coat, unbolted the door, and plunged
into the purifying night.

The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant
it stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow
was falling, and resolutely set his face for flight. The trees
along the avenue dimly marked his way as he hastened with long
strides over the beaten snow. Gradually, while he walked, the
tumult in his brain subsided. The impulse to fly still drove him
forward, but he began to feel that he was flying from a terror of
his own creating, and that the most urgent reason for escape was
the need of hiding his state, of shunning other eyes' scrutiny
till he should regain his balance.

He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on
a discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had
turned to exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was
not awaiting him. It was absurd, of course; but, though he had
joked with Rainer over Mrs. Culme's forgetfulness, to confess it
had cost a pang. That was what his rootless life had brought him
to: for lack of a personal stake in things his sensibility was at
the mercy of such trivial accidents. ... Yes; that, and the cold
and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved
aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over
which, once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.

Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish,
should he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What
could it mean to him, how was he related to it, what bearing had
it on his case? ... Unless, indeed, it was just because he was a
stranger-a stranger everywhere--because he had no personal life,
no warm strong screen of private egotisms to shield him from
exposure, that he had developed this abnormal sensitiveness to the
vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled him up with a shudder.
No! Such a fate was too abominable; all that was strong and sound
in him rejected it. A thousand times better regard himself as ill,
disorganized, deluded, than as the predestined victim of such
warnings!

He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The
wind had risen and was sweeping the snow into his face in
lacerating streamers. The cold had him in its grasp again, and he
stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the test and go back?
He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house. A single
ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights, the
flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and
plunged out into the road.

He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had
pointed out the road to Northridge; and he began to walk in that
direction. Once in the road, he had the gale in his face, and the
wet snow on his moustache and eye-lashes instantly hardened to
metal. The same metal seemed to be driving a million blades into
his throat and lungs, but he pushed on, desperately determined,
the vision of the warm room pursuing him.

The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts
and sank into drifts, and the wind rose before him like a granite
cliff. Now and then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand
had tightened an iron band about his body; then he started again,
stiffening himself against the stealthy penetration of the cold.
The snow continued to descend out of a pall of inscrutable
darkness, and once or twice he paused, fearing he had missed the
road to Northridge; but, seeing no sign of a turn, he ploughed on
doggedly.

At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he
halted and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate
relief, first because it put his back to the wind, and then
because, far down the road, it showed him the advancing gleam of a
lantern. A sleigh was coming--a sleigh that might perhaps give him
a lift to the village! Fortified by the hope, he began to walk
back toward the light. It seemed to come forward very slowly, with
unaccountable zigzags and waverings; and even when he was within a
few yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh-bells. Then the
light paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though
carried by a pedestrian who had stopped, exhausted by the cold.
The thought made Faxon hasten on, and a moment later he was
stooping over a motionless figure huddled against the snow-bank.
The lantern had dropped from its bearer's hand, and Faxon,
fearfully raising it, threw its light into the face of Frank
Rainer.

"Rainer! What on earth are you doing here!"

The boy smiled back through his pallor. "What are YOU, I'd like to
know?" he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch on
Faxon's arm, he added gaily: "Well, I've run you down, anyhow!"

Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad's face was
gray.

"What madness--" he began.

"Yes, it IS. What on earth did you do it for?"

"I? Do what? ... Why, I ... I was just taking a walk. ... I often
walk at night. ..."

Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. "On such nights? Then you hadn't
bolted!"

"Bolted?"

"Because I'd done something to offend you? My uncle thought you
had."

Faxon grasped his arm. "Did your uncle send you after me?"

"Well, he gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room
with you when you said you were ill. And when we found you'd gone
we were frightened--and he was awfully upset--so I said I'd catch
you. ... You're NOT ill, are you?"

"Ill? No. Never better." Faxon picked up the lantern. "Come; let's
go back. It was awfully hot in that dining-room," he added.

"Yes; I hoped it was only that."

They trudged on in silence for a few minutes; then Faxon
questioned: "You're not too done up?"

"Oh, no. It's a lot easier with the wind behind us."

"All right. Don't talk any more."

They pushed ahead, walking, in spite of the light that guided
them, more slowly than Faxon had walked alone into the gale. The
fact of his companion's stumbling against a drift gave him a
pretext for saying: "Take hold of my arm," and Rainer, obeying,
gasped out: "I'm blown!"

"So am I. Who wouldn't be?"

"What a dance you led me! If it hadn't been for one of the
servants' happening to see you--"

"Yes: all right. And now, won't you kindly shut up?"

Rainer laughed and hung on him. "Oh, the cold doesn't hurt me. ..."

For the first few minutes after Rainer had overtaken him, anxiety
for the lad had been Faxon's only thought. But as each laboring
step carried them nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the
reasons for his flight grew more ominous and more insistent. No,
he was not ill; he was not distraught and deluded--he was the
instrument singled out to warn and save; and here he was,
irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back to his doom!

The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps. But
what could he do or say? At all costs he must get Rainer out of
the cold, into the house and into his bed. After that he would
act.

The snow-fall was thickening, and as they reached a stretch of the
road between open fields the wind took them at an angle, lashing
their faces with barbed thongs. Rainer stopped to take breath, and
Faxon felt the heavier pressure of his arm.

"When we get to the lodge, can't we telephone to the stable for a
sleigh?"

"If they're not all asleep at the lodge."

"Oh, I'll manage. Don't talk!" Faxon ordered; and they plodded on. ...

At length the lantern ray showed ruts that curved away from the
road under tree-darkness.

Faxon's spirits rose. "There's the gate! We'll be there in five
minutes."

As he spoke he caught, above the boundary hedge, the gleam of a
light at the farther end of the dark avenue. It was the same light
that had shone on the scene of which every detail was burnt into
his brain; and he felt again its overpowering reality. No--he
couldn't let the boy go back!

They were at the lodge at last, and Faxon was hammering on the
door. He said to himself: "I'll get him inside first, and make
them give him a hot drink. Then I'll see--I'll find an argument. ..."

There was no answer to his knocking, and after an interval Rainer
said: "Look here--we'd better go on."

"No!"

"I can, perfectly--"

"You sha'n't go to the house, I say!" Faxon furiously redoubled
his blows, and at length steps sounded on the stairs. Rainer was
leaning against the lintel, and as the door opened the light from
the hall flashed on his pale face and fixed eyes. Faxon caught him
by the arm and drew him in.

"It WAS cold out there," he sighed; and then, abruptly, as if
invisible shears at a single stroke had cut every muscle in his
body, he swerved, drooped on Faxon's arm, and seemed to sink into
nothing at his feet.

The lodge-keeper and Faxon bent over him, and somehow, between
them, lifted him into the kitchen and laid him on a sofa by the
stove.

The lodge-keeper, stammering: "I'll ring up the house," dashed out
of the room. But Faxon heard the words without heeding them: omens
mattered nothing now, beside this woe fulfilled. He knelt down to
undo the fur collar about Rainer's throat, and as he did so he
felt a warm moisture on his hands. He held them up, and they were
red. ...

V

The palms threaded their endless line along the yellow river. The
little steamer lay at the wharf, and George Faxon, sitting in the
veranda of the wooden hotel, idly watched the coolies carrying the
freight across the gang-plank.

He had been looking at such scenes for two months. Nearly five had
elapsed since he had descended from the train at Northridge and
strained his eyes for the sleigh that was to take him to Weymore:
Weymore, which he was never to behold! ... Part of the interval--
the first part--was still a great gray blur. Even now he could not
be quite sure how he had got back to Boston, reached the house of
a cousin, and been thence transferred to a quiet room looking out
on snow under bare trees. He looked out a long time at the same
scene, and finally one day a man he had known at Harvard came to
see him and invited him to go out on a business trip to the Malay
Peninsula.

"You've had a bad shake-up, and it'll do you no end of good to get
away from things."

When the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of
the plan and approved it. "You ought to be quiet for a year. Just
loaf and look at the landscape," he advised.

Faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity.

"What's been the matter with me, anyhow?"

"Well, over-work, I suppose. You must have been bottling up for a
bad breakdown before you started for New Hampshire last December.
And the shock of that poor boy's death did the rest."

Ah, yes--Rainer had died. He remembered. ...

He started for the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees,
life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend
was very considerate and forbearing, and they travelled slowly and
talked little. At first Faxon had felt a great shrinking from
whatever touched on familiar things. He seldom looked at a
newspaper, he never opened a letter without a moment's contraction
of the heart. It was not that he had any special cause for
apprehension, but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on
everything. He had looked too deep down into the abyss. ... But
little by little health and energy returned to him, and with them
the common promptings of curiosity. He was beginning to wonder how
the world was going, and when, presently, the hotel-keeper told
him there were no letters for him in the steamer's mail-bag, he
felt a distinct sense of disappointment. His friend had gone into
the jungle on a long excursion, and he was lonely, unoccupied, and
wholesomely bored. He got up and strolled into the stuffy reading-
room.

There he found a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle,
some copies of Zion's Herald, and a pile of New York and London
newspapers.

He began to glance through the papers, and was disappointed to
find that they were less recent than he had hoped. Evidently the
last numbers had been carried off by luckier travellers. He
continued to turn them over, picking out the American ones first.
These, as it happened, were the oldest: they dated back to
December and January. To Faxon, however, they had all the flavor
of novelty, since they covered the precise period during which he
had virtually ceased to exist. It had never before occurred to him
to wonder what had happened in the world during that interval of
obliteration; but now he felt a sudden desire to know.

To prolong the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers
chronologically, and as he found and spread out the earliest
number, the date at the top of the page entered into his
consciousness like a key slipping into a lock. It was the
seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his arrival at
Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing
characters: "Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington's
Name Involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall Street
to Its Foundations."

He read on, and when he had finished the first paper he turned to
the next. There was a gap of three days, but the Opal Cement
"Investigation" still held the centre of the stage. From its
complex revelations of greed and ruin his eye wandered to the
death notices, and he read: "Rainer. Suddenly, at Northridge, New
Hampshire, Francis John, only son of the late. ..."

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