Chapter V (2)

But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever brand of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just having come across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my religion and intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure the perfessor, too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says.

Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth before. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. They's been a lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some musician fellow around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if it was so who could blame her?

Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there, which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come.

But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things.

You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes and chemical profusions, not _all_ the time. And maybe when she'd ask the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her did she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it was a mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when they are scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a coal mine ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor had just picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could a-got used to any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this week the perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing sparrows all over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology and he'd be trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get worried about the nigger problem in the south, and settle it all up scientific and explain how ethnology done the whole damn thing, lynchings and all, and it never could be straightened out till it was done scientific. Every new gag that come out the perfessor took up with it, Biddy says; one time he'd be fussing around with gastronomy through a telescope and the next he'd be putting astrology into William's breakfast food.

They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own selves if they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say what went into William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him brought up scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes on William, which was how William come to take so little interest in life after a while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he didn't have no sense about his money, which had been left to him when he was a sure enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts and everything begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss Estelle she took to running his money herself; but she seen likewise that when it come to writing articles about William's insides and intellectuals the perfessor he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but Biddy wouldn't let him try none of them laboratory gags on her though she just as soon be hypnotized and telepathed as not just to humor him. Miss Estelle, she eat what the perfessor give her, and after a while she says she'll take charge of the children's education herself, their mother being a frivolous young thing, and it was too bad, she says, a genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a noble woman who would a-understood his great work for humanity and sympathized with it. So while the perfessor filled William and Miss Margery up on new discovered food and weighed 'em and probed 'em and sterilized 'em and did everything else but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss Estelle she laid out courses of reading matter for them and tended to their religion and intellectuals and things like that. I reckon they never was two kids more completely educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked much on Miss Margery yet, her being younger than William. But William took it hard and serious, being more like his father's family, and it made bumps all over his head. I reckon by the time William was ten years old he knew more than a whole high school, and every time that boy cut his finger he just naturally bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and whenever the perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change treatment. But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to his aunt, I says:

“Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too much bringin' up to the square inch.”

She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I seen she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of scientific sort of a way, and she says in a minute:

“What do you suggest?”

“Why,” says I, “what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in the dirt now and then, and yell and holler.”

She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss Estelle was there.

“We have decided that there is something in what you say,” says the perfessor. “Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now and then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take a suggestion,” he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole lot more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more human.

But what do you think--I never was so jarred in my life as I was the next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and then the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt on to it. And then she sent for William.

“William Dear,” she says, “we have decided that what you need is more recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth of your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like a child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic.” Or it was words to that effect.

But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just looked at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen William come; and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen William come. And then he says very serious:

“Aunt Estelle,” he says, “I shall _not_ frolic. I have come to that place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that refuses to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology lesson and the Euclid lesson with sand.” Those was not William's exact words, which he always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he meant. William was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had no idea of. And he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean dirt had to be throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt again.

That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't blame her none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own children, too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and they hardly daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room because of germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all right, he's just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, but Miss Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself the boss of that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been boss and never let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so bad. Which shows that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't so much difference if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation.

The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks.

So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: “Where is my dinky clothes to eat dinner in?” I says.

James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all right, I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he goes and asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, but looking, too, like I done something to please her.

“Is it true,” she says, “that already the effects of a refined environment has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune in ancestral hereditary?” she says. Or they was words to that effect.

“It is true,” I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel kind of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect of them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of them open-face vests over it.

So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, and most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got hold of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest book! It was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in real talk down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what it was about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's never been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been going against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there ain't nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli stories I read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart movie or a Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man of that story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross circling around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It wasn't for nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on everybody gets as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands when another savings bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. And the snakes wiggles all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one time when they cleaned out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns gets its drinking water from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die and can't make it; and their ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and they go by him in the moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a frosty morning out of an engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to that story, too. I bet the fellow that doped that out had been on an awful bat. I like to of talked with that nut. They was a fellow named Looney Hogan use to have them phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what he saw after he had 'em. Looney was awful good company and I use to like to hear him tell what he seen and what he thinks he seen, but he walked off of a grain barge up to Duluth when he was asleep one night and he never did wake up.

Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, and she says like she was choked up:

“But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry.”

And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house.

“But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!”

I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.

“You mean suppose _you_ get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I _did_ get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?”

“Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way I feel. _You_ know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the way they do in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the stage to of suited me if _I'd_ been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks before this.

I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it.”

And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?

Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated me purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?”

But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.

Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She was a peach.

And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and years world without end.

Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.

They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the room, with their back to it.

Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair does. Will she squeak, I wonders?

“Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller.

Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.

“A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going with you at all, then?”

That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and part of a crumpled-up coat tail.

“But I _am_ going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just like she is going to put her arms around him.

But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.

“Excuse me,” says the perfessor.

They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at them.

But after a while Jane, she says:

“Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?”

Henry, he starts to say something, too. But----

“Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “_You_ aren't going to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect.

“Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else Jane will think the worse of him, “I am----”

“Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and my wife.”

When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised herself. But she says nothing, except:

“What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a little more, and says: “What _can_ you do, Frederick?”

Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:

“There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you forces it on to me.” Then he says:

“You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?”

She nodded.

“Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?”

The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.”

Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:

“_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?”

“No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you.” Then he turns to Henry and he says:

“Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory.

Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back.

“Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly: “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.”

Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was.

“But _you_ know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not fair!”

“That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no talk.” Or they was words to that effect.

He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's between them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I been misjudging him all this time.

Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.

“I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of that kind.”

“Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. You're really the _main_ party to it.

“But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the other of us, or else _I'll_ kill _him_ the other way. And _you_ had better pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else let him pick one out for himself,” he says.

Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry inside.

Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's sake, spunk up some, and take one if it _does_ kill you!” Then she says out loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!”

And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump in now and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between them three and Providence.” Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's place I would of let them all off kind o' easy.

Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking.

The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he reaches over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the table. “A quarter past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to make me shoot you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal,” he says. “It's up to you,” he says, “whether you want to take that pill and get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way is sure, but looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any one,” he says. “Which?” And he pulls a gun.

Henry he looks at the gun.

Then he looks at the pill.

Then he swallows the pill.

The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry. “Sixteen minutes past one,” he says. “_Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two_. I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals.”

And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his digestive ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em and swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops.

Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa.

“This is murder,” he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.

“It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.”

When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He ketches her. “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look on to his face, “and let us have a talk.”

She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty has got. But she can't look away from him.

And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I just _needed_ to fetch a yell. But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like he'd _always_ been there, and I'd _always_ been staring into that room, and the last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

“You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in that stare-eyed way. “You're a _murderer,_” she says, saying it like she was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.

“Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine woman like you, Jane,” he says.

Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:

“It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she says. Or they was words to that effect.

And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry. Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. They will still be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't never forgive the lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be most any thing else and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's all off even if you can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never even looks at him.

“Jane,” says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, “you got a lot to forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go of it if we start over again?”

But Jane never said nothing.

“Jane,” he says, “Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for good.”

She begins to take a little interest then. “Did Estelle tell you so?” she says.

“No,” says the perfessor, “Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm going to tell her in the mornin'.”

But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says, “I'm going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired.” And she went out looking like the perfessor was a perfect stranger.

After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills had one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And when the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a rag. So I goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks about Henry's watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I thinks I better hunt him up and give it to him.

And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always remind him of an unpleasant time he once had.

And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that watch I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail now.

I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says it ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch in your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar.

One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is the truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my intentions with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes before leads up to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was just another mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing wouldn't I stole the silverware a week before that?

The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't understand how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial evidence and still be a honest and upright citizen.

X.--The Penitent

|You, who are not married,” said the penitent, “cannot know--can never realize----”

He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the hints of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace Beaulieu's studio.

“Proceed,” said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. “What I may know is not the important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me to that principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit--Ultimate Spirit--which we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into Accord with the Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the Cosmic All.”

“You are right; I do not look to you,” said the penitent, “for ease of mind or spirit.” And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if some ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he stressed the pronoun _you_. But the rest of his scarred and twisted face was expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked beard that grew almost to his eyes.

* Author's Note: “The Penitent” was suggested by two poems,
“A Forgiveness,” by Browning, and “The Portrait,” by Owen
Meredith.

Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader--nay, the founder--of one of the many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number of idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a week, and listened to his expositions of ethics _de luxe_, served with just the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience. He was forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long sensitive fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he was prosperous.

When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic writings, when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when he descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets of Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when he hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of later Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a garden of flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind--they vibrated to his words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint rustling of silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume.

Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the more subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes of occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted themselves to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major claims to fame. And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was one of the very few men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul to Dr. Beaulieu, to tell his story and receive spiritual ministration, in the manner of the confessional. These confessionals, after the public lectures, had been recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were giving him, he felt, a firmer grip upon his flock--his disciples, he did not hesitate to call them.

“I repeat,” said the penitent--if he was a repentant man, indeed--“no bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship. She was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked.

“For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have some work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved the work--and the woman--and thus I gained a double reward. I was a politician, and something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot, too. The inheritor of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city in which I lived, and which my forefathers had helped to build, of the ring of grafters who were making the name of the town a byword throughout the nation. The details of that long and hard strife are not pertinent. I fought with something more than boldness and determination; I fought with a joy in every struggle, because I fought for something more than the world knew. The world could not see that my inspiration was in my home; that in the hours of battle my blood sang joyously with the thought of--her! Was it any wonder that I worked well?

“One day, as I sat in my office downtown, the thought of her drew me so strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of the city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed, almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for nearly a hundred years.

“I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods on my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear and came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked from town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival, although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already gathering in.

“As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared the orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once among the boles of the trees.

“He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for the moment. For the moment, I say.

“There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked after him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had had an affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and met--my wife!

“She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help but admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a much more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face I read a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth.

“I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And I recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of the blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a word.

“I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me inside. She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle; but I passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room.

“And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters were ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and thrust into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than before. We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before our guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when the occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with dumb faces, and go each our severed ways.

“For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked to forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always as of some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again, until I believed it.

“One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I was to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and I played our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been received, and the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and we were alone with each other once more, she turned to me with a look something like the one she had met me with on that summer evening a year before.

“'I want to speak with you,' she said.

“'Yes?'

“They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not compelled by the necessities.

“'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her.

“'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use trying to deny it.

“'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said.

“I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that year, I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful.

“'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought that you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that time has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any messages for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my place to hunt among the tombs.'

“'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may ever have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves. I was not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not. You asked me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised me so--and it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your scorn through this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not the real reason?'

“'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' “'Listen,' she said, 'it would surprise you--would it not--to learn that I still love you--that I have loved you all along--that you are the only man I have ever really loved--that I love you now? All that is incredible to you, is it not?'

“'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but--it is incredible to me.'

“'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you why it is true, and why--why--the--the other was true, too. You--you do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if you were a smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better. Sometimes I think that you are too--too big, somehow--ever to make a woman happy. Not too self-centered; you are not consciously selfish; you never mean to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your nature to people--to the world at large--instead of to those who should share them.

“'Oh, I know--the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman--the right kind for you--the kind you thought I was--would not have asked for all that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to have done without it; would have lost herself in your love for all humanity. That is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. But I wasn't. I wasn't that big.

“'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to hear you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told me about it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was enough for your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to call me your inspiration; oh, you treated me well--you were faithful to me--you were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not understand; that some men will never understand. While you were giving your days and your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to what you called the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you had a wife. Again and again and again I tried to win you back to what you were when I married you--to the time when your cause was not all--but you wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel.

“'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as to overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted me too much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. I loved you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated you. Can you understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at the same time? Well, they can.

“'At last--for I was a fool--I took a lover!”

“'What was his name?' I broke in.

“'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!--the name is nothing--they were nothing--nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all--always.'

“'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the dark--is that it?' I said.

“'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she spoke with a humility foreign to her nature.

“'And what now?' I asked.

“'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more and more and more--now--I am going to die.'

“'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said.

“'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened, is it not?--to make things the same as they were before! But it does not do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know it.'

“'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I feel that you are worthy of my anger now.'