Chapter V: Mr. Slade Resigns

The third incident has to do with Mr. William Slade. With the cold days of January, there came over him a noticeable change; quite suddenly--in a day--he seemed to have aged, to have shrunk and become doddering. It was an effort for him to climb the one flight of stairs to Room 6, and when once there, a still greater effort to go about his business. He began to be late of mornings and to commit trifling irregularities which, it was obvious, were due to a failing memory; the beady eyes--though with a waning brightness--regarded impartially and with open suspicion and hostility all who approached him--eyes unmistakably like a mouse's when that diminutive animal debates the chances of getting safely from one cover to another under the supervision of an alert cat.

The change was observed and commented upon in the main office across the hall. After much idle speculation one morning on the part of a clerk and the book-keeper as to the extent of Slade's wealth and its probable disposition in the event of his death, the book-keeper said:

"And there's another thing. Have you ever noticed him--" he cast a hasty, covert glance toward the entry door, and leaning suddenly forward, lowered his voice to a whisper,--"have you ever noticed him when he comes in or goes out of the abstract room--lately, I mean?"

The clerk shook his head.

"Well," impressively, "it makes me wonder if he didn't know something about that murder. You know, he was here that night. He never passes through his door now that he don't stop and look down the hall toward Doctor Westbrook's office. I bet nobody else has noticed it. That shows what it is to be observant; it's just little things like that that Sherlock Holmes worked out his wonderful cases by. I've seen Slade do it--look down the hall, I mean--many a time. He stands there just as if he heard or saw something. Queer, isn't it? And if any one comes up on him suddenly, he acts as though he had been caught doing something crooked, and hurries away."

If there's any virtue in old wives' saws, Mr. Slade's ears should have burned. Beyond, in the front office, overlooking Court Street, the abstracter was again a topic of discussion; but this time between personages no less important than the president, the secretary, and the treasurer of the Guaranty Abstract Company. At this conference it was decided that the company could thenceforth dispense with Slade's services, and it fell to the secretary so to inform him.

A few minutes later, when Slade comprehended the intelligence, he got unsteadily to his feet. He tugged aimlessly at his untidy collar a time or two, as if it were too tight, and when he again spoke a whine crept into his harsh utterance.

"You won't hurry me, will you? Say you won't hurry me. Give me another month; time to--to adjust myself to the new conditions. You are right: I am old; I--I sha'n't last much longer. I've received a mortal blow,--not this, though, not this."

But the secretary hardened. "We're not hurrying you," said he. "You have till February first--practically a month--and in the meantime you can do pretty much as you please. Understand?"

During the rest of that day Slade conducted himself like a man dazed. There was a forward droop to his knees, to his shoulders, and to his head; and altogether he presented a most unlovely spectacle of irresolution and helplessness.

From long force of habit he did not leave Room 6 until five o'clock; but at that hour he got slowly into his overcoat--once black, but now plum-colored where the light struck upon it--and donned his hat, preparatory to departing for the night. The clerks across the hall, the occupants of the other offices, passed out one by one or in couples, their brisk homeward-bound footsteps clattering cheerfully in the hall; and when he finally turned off the light the building was deserted save for himself and one other. As he slowly descended the stairs, clinging tenaciously to the railing, Doctor Westbrook passed him--also descending,--and as he did so, bent a keen look toward the meagre, tottering form and the parchment-like countenance, drawn by acute physical pain and overcast by an unhealthy pallor. He nodded as he went by, but Slade did not observe it; neither did he see that the physician paused at the foot of the stairs and looked back at him.

Somehow Slade arrived at his single cheerless, disordered apartment. It was dirty, damp, and fireless. He lighted a candle--so primitive were his conveniences--which with some difficulty he stood upright on a corner of the table, where it was held steady by its congealed drippings.

And all that night, and until well into the next forenoon, Slade left the bare table only once or twice: once to get from a shelf a bit of bread and a tin box of sardines. The latter, after several vain attempts to open, he cast aside and contented himself with the crust. The rest of the night he wrote sedulously, though slowly and with much labor; and when he had finished, a considerable pile of numbered pages reposed by his hand. About ten o'clock in the morning the cold enveloped him like an icy mantle; the pen slipped from his nerveless fingers, and he allowed it to remain where it fell; he dropped upon a cot which stood against the wall, pulled the covering closely about him, and slept immediately. In the afternoon he was awakened by a vivid dream and sat suddenly upright, his eyes once more jet-like with the light of a newly formed purpose.

The drifting shadows of the old Fairchild homestead were destined to behold strange sights and to hear strange sounds before being finally banished from beneath the crumbling roof.

Within the roomy dining-hall a heavy table has lost its identity beneath a thick coat of dust and a heap of plaster, sometime fallen from the ceiling; yet it is of solid mahogany, with legs richly carved, and hides a warm, brilliant lustre under its coat of dirt and neglect.

The shadows deepen. The chilly mist without becomes a rain, dripping mournfully from the decaying, moss-covered eaves, and filling the old house with strange, hollow echoes, weird and fantastic.

Without warning, these quiet, melancholy sounds are disturbed by another, loud and startling. It is like a groan, dominating all other sounds and awakening its counterpart in every portion of the building.

Immediately uncertain footsteps, marked by many shufflings, as of some person laboring beneath a burden, approach the dining-room door; a load of some nature is eased to the floor without; next, the door itself turns on screaming hinges to reveal a dim form. The form enters, drags a prodigious bundle after it, upon which it collapses as if its endurance were quite spent, and discloses the sallow, marasmic countenance of Mr. William Slade.

He presents a spectacle of utter physical exhaustion as he sits all huddled together on his recent burden. But after a while he gets unsteadily to his feet and busies himself about the apartment.

Strange is this final scene upon which the shadows, marshalled in wonder in the farthest corners, are destined to look to-night; stranger still and more weird are the sounds that echo and re-echo through the empty, dark rooms. In all its history of comedy and tragedy the mouldering roof has never sheltered an act so incongruous as this.

Behold the heavy table spread for a feast and lighted with the soft glow of many wax candles; behold the flames on the cluttered, mossy hearth struggling for access up the choked chimney; and above all, behold the solitary figure seated at the board, fingering a wine-glass and seeking with rheumy eyes to penetrate the darker limits of the vast room--indeed, a spectre at the board. Mad, mad, clearly mad!

Yet, look closer still and this madness reveals a certain method: a ghastly significance may be traced in the details, in the man's actions and the words he mutters ceaselessly; and although the spectacle remains incongruous, it ceases to be ludicrous. The fire on the hearth and the wan light of the tapers only accentuate the cheerlessness and squalid ruin of the place--of Slade himself, and of that spread table which is a thing to shrink from.

There are two covers laid--even a bouquet of hothouse roses, somewhat wilted and crushed from having been too tightly packed in the bundle. But where is the guest of this eerie banquet? Has one of the shadows been summoned forth from the dismal chambers to share it?

The second chair is oddly decked with fabrics of faded hue and ancient design, inasmuch as they are plainly articles of feminine apparel marking a mode dead these twoscore years. Most conspicuous of these decorations is a faded lavender skirt of silk with many flounces, cut long, long ago, not to fit any woman's shape, but with the prodigality demanded by the wide hoop of the period. The garments were arranged on the chair with an obvious attempt to suggest a human occupant; but the effect is ghostly and repulsive, the semblance pitiful.

It is unlikely that Mr. Slade could have found anything with which he was less familiar than champagne, unless indeed it were the art of presiding at such a feast as this one pretended to be; for, witness!--merely two spoons and forks and glasses served all requirements. Mere ghost of a dinner--a shadow among the innumerable other shadows of the place Slade's gaucherie was not even relieved by a hint that he had ever been present at an actuality of the kind. The wine mounted quickly to his head and infused a temporary vitality into his dry frame; the lack-lustre eyes became jet-like once more; even a tinge of color glowed feverishly in his sallow cheek; more wonderful still, his tongue was loosened to an unwonted loquacity. But his voice remained harsh and rasping, his movements stiff and awkward, and no slumbering trace of amiability was quickened into life.

Clumsily he opened the bottles, losing half their contents as he dodged to escape the flying corks.

"Drink, my dear," he said, nodding to the draped chair with a sorry attempt at joviality. "That's right. Great thing, champagne; sorry I didn't know it before." He leaned across the table and tried to fill the second glass, already full many times over, and gave the sopping cloth, which had been spread regardless of the dust, another libation. "Drink. Drink and be merry, as the old saying is--Epicurus, eh? Wonderful how it warms your heart.... And to think I never knew how champagne could fire one!" He tossed off the contents of his own glass and clacked his tongue.

"But I have been working," he went on with sudden cunning; "working for you, Elinor. This is our homecoming; all my life, my dear, I've pictured you and me sitting here and facing each other, and the niggers waiting on us. Niggers 'fraid to come, damn 'em! But's all yours--within bounds, of course--within bounds. I'm rich, I am--moderately so--perhaps not rich, but enough; with economy, enough for comfort." He waved the glass about at arm's length, noticed that it was empty, and refilled it. "All yours--and mine. And here we are! I forget the past--'s all wiped out--your children shall be my God, and my children your-- You know; 's in the Bible. Wherever I goest you goest--"

There was a phonetic allusion in the repeated verb that cast a sudden damper over his exuberant spirits.

"Ghost!" he muttered, bending a dark look upon the lavender skirt, the time-stained cashmere shawl, the yellow bit of lace that adorned the chair facing him. Sitting so, he fell into a long, brooding silence.

The fire slowly sank upon the hearth, and the candles guttered unheeded down on the table. Without, the rain had settled into a steady downpour, its unbroken roar being intensified, in a muffled way, by the vast, empty house; a cold, penetrating wintry rain, such as drives the belated wayfarer to shelter however scant, and early empties the drenched streets of every living thing. And with a frequency growing more insistent as the minutes pass, the chill and the damp strike to Slade's very heart. Often now he fumbles with bottles and fills his glass--never forgetting the one opposite him, though it is never emptied--and at length the black mood is driven forth, only to stand once more at his elbow. Of a sudden he laughs harshly--a laugh that certainly would have startled any occupant of the room, had one been present to hear, for the laugh was both bitter and malignant.

"Come, drink up, m' dear. You're no ghos'--not you! Ha!" The glass rattled upon his teeth. "That damn' Peyton Wes'brook; he's a ghos', hey? Well, he is. Here's to the ghos'. Thought he'd get you, Elinor; but you're no ghos'--'s lie, tha's what 't is--lie. You're mine. All mine--house--money--you--all mine, at las'. We'll show 'em, curse 'em!" His unsteady hand overturned the brimming glass, but he poured on just the same; and when presently he noticed that the bottle was drained, he threw it with a wild laugh to a far dark corner, where it splintered against the panelling with a crash of sound that awed and frightened even him. But the vapors of the wine had too firm a hold on his brain for the feeling to remain. He laughed again, and went on with his mad monologue.

"Happy at las', too, El'nor. Been savin' all for you, m' dear. Ever hear me sing, hey? Remember this? Listen."

And, _mirabile dictu_, in a voice cracked, quavering, and harsh, William Slade burst into song.

It is needless to linger over this horrid banquet. It ended abruptly, with a jar of breaking glass. In the midst of a wild, discordant song something like intelligence flashed for a moment in the beady eyes; the singer paused, as if his drugged sensibilities had suddenly awakened to a distant call; then came that dreadful laugh again.

"It's a farce!" he muttered, bitterly, his eyes roving wildly about, as if he felt and feared another Presence. "You're dead! dead! and as far from me as everything I ever wanted in my life.... God!"

He was standing then, and attempted to hurl the glass at the empty chair.

"Curse you!" he shrieked in a frenzied outburst, and again, "Curse you! Curse you all!"

He dropped, his face striking upon the table with a thud; his arms were stretched straight in front of him, across the board, and he remained so, breathing stertorously. After some minutes he began to hiccough with such violence that his shoulders heaved spasmodically and his foot scraped on the floor. But these convulsions, by and by, came to be marked with longer intervals between them, and finally his shoulders lifted once and subsided in a single, long, slow exhalation.

The rain still reverberated from the roof; the candles flickered out one by one; occasionally the dull embers in the fireplace crackled faintly until they too became cold--nothing but gray, sodden ashes.

Then it was that the wan light of day began to show through the boarded windows; the shadows once more to flit through the chambers and the echoing halls; then it was that a venturesome mouse advanced to the centre of the floor, where, in the untouched comestibles of last night's feast, he discovered enough to maintain himself and his colony royally for many weeks.

And encountering nothing to alarm him, he remained.