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The Guest of Quesnay, a novel by Booth Tarkington |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII I do not like to read those poets who write of pain as if they loved it; the study of suffering is for the cold analyst, for the vivisectionist, for those who may transfuse their knowledge of it to the ultimate good of mankind. And although I am so heavily endowed with curiosity concerning the people I find about me, my gift (or curse, whichever it be) knows pause at the gates of the house of calamity. So, if it were possible, I would not speak of the agony of which I was a witness that night in the apartment of my friends at Madame Brossard's. I went with reluctance, but there was no choice. Keredec had sent for me. ... When I was about fifteen, a boy cousin of mine, several years younger, terribly injured himself on the Fourth of July; and I sat all night in the room with him, helping his mother. Somehow he had learned that there was no hope of saving his sight; he was an imaginative child and realised the whole meaning of the catastrophe; the eternal darkness.... And he understood that the thing had been done, that there was no going back of it. This very certainty increased the intensity of his rebellion a thousandfold. "I WILL have my eyes!" he screamed. "I WILL! I WILL!" Keredec had told his tragic ward too little. The latter had understood but vaguely the nature of the catastrophe which overhung his return to France, and now that it was indeed concrete and definite, the guardian was forced into fuller disclosures, every word making the anguish of the listener more intolerable. It was the horizonless despair of a child; and that profound protest I had so often seen smouldering in his eyes culminated, at its crisis, in a wild flame of revolt. The shame of the revelation passed over him; there was nothing of the disastrous drunkard, sober, learning what he had done. To him, it seemed that he was being forced to suffer for the sins of another man. "Do you think that you can make me believe _I_ did this?" he cried. "That I made life unbearable for HER, drove HER from me, and took this hideous, painted old woman in HER place? It's a lie. You can't make me believe such a monstrous lie as that! You CAN'T! You CAN'T!" He threw himself violently upon the couch, face downward, shuddering from head to foot. "My poor boy, it is the truth," said Keredec, kneeling beside him and putting a great arm across his shoulders. "It is what a thousand men are doing this night. Nothing is more common, or more unexplainable--or more simple. Of all the nations it is the same, wherever life has become artificial and the poor, foolish young men have too much money and nothing to do. You do not understand it, but our friend here, and I, we understand because we remember what we have been seeing all our life. You say it is not you who did such crazy, horrible things, and you are right. When this poor woman who is so painted and greasy first caught you, when you began to give your money and your time and your life to her, when she got you into this horrible marriage with her, you were blind--you went staggering, in a bad dream; your soul hid away, far down inside you, with its hands over its face. If it could have once stood straight, if the eyes of your body could have once been clean for it to look through, if you could have once been as you are to-day, or as you were when you were a little child, you would have cry out with horror both of her and of yourself, as you do now; and you would have run away from her and from everything you had put in your life. But, in your suffering you must rejoice: the triumph is that your mind hates that old life as greatly as your soul hates it. You are as good as if you had never been the wild fellow--yes, the wicked fellow--that you were. For a man who shakes off his sin is clean; he stands as pure as if he had never sinned. But though his emancipation can be so perfect, there is a law that he cannot escape from the result of all the bad and foolish things he has done, for every act, every breath you draw, is immortal, and each has a consequence that is never ending. And so, now, though you are purified, the suffering from these old actions is here, and you must abide it. Ah, but that is a little thing, nothing!--that suffering-- compared to what you have gained, for you have gained your own soul!" The desperate young man on the couch answered only with the sobbing of a broken-hearted child. I came back to my pavilion after midnight, but I did not sleep, though I lay upon my bed until dawn. Then I went for a long, hard walk, breakfasted at Dives, and begged a ride back to Madame Brossard's in a peasant's cart which was going that way. I found George Ward waiting for me on the little veranda of the pavilion, looking handsomer and more prosperously distinguished and distinguishedly prosperous and generally well-conditioned than ever--as I told him. "I have some news for you," he said after the hearty greeting--"an announcement, in fact." "Wait!" I glanced at the interested attitude of Mr. Earl Percy, who was breakfasting at a table significantly near the gallery steps, and led the way into the pavilion. "You may as well not tell it in the hearing of that young man," I said, when the door was closed. "He is eccentric." "So I gathered," returned Ward, smiling, "from his attire. But it really wouldn't matter who heard it. Elizabeth's going to marry Cresson Ingle." "That is the news--the announcement--you spoke of?" "Yes, that is it." To save my life I could not have told at that moment what else I had expected, or feared, that he might say, but certainly I took a deep breath of relief. "I am very glad," I said. "It should be a happy alliance." "On the whole, I think it will be," he returned thoughtfully. "Ingle's done his share of hard living, and I once had a notion"--he glanced smiling at me--"well, I dare say you know my notion. But it is a good match for Elizabeth and not without advantages on many counts. You see, it's time I married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I think her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to her wish to make all clear for a new mistress of my household,--though that's putting it in a rather grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you probably guess, I have an idea that some such arrangement might be somewhere on the wings of the wind on its way to me, before long." He laughed again, but I did not, and noting my silence he turned upon me a more scrutinising look than he had yet given me, and said: "My dear fellow, is something the matter? You look quite haggard. You haven't been ill?" "No, I've had a bad night. That's all." "Oh, I heard something of a riotous scene taking place over here," he said. "One of the gardeners was talking about it to Elizabeth. Your bad night wouldn't be connected with that, would it? You haven't been playing Samaritan?" "What was it you heard?" I asked quickly. "I didn't pay much attention. He said that there was great excitement at Madame Brossard's, because a strange woman had turned up and claimed an insane young man at the inn for her husband, and that they had a fight of some sort--" "Damnation!" I started from my chair. "Did Mrs. Harman hear this story?" "Not last night, I'm certain. Elizabeth said the gardener told her as she came down to the chateau gates to meet me when I arrived--it was late, and Louise had already gone to her room. In fact, I have not seen her yet. But what difference could it possibly make whether she heard it or not? She doesn't know these people, surely?" "She knows the man." "This insane--" "He is not insane," I interrupted. "He has lost the memory of his earlier life--lost it through an accident. You and I saw the accident." "That's impossible," said George, frowning. "I never saw but one accident that you--" "That was the one: the man is Larrabee Harman." George had struck a match to light a cigar; but the operation remained incomplete: he dropped the match upon the floor and set his foot upon it. "Well, tell me about it," he said. "You haven't heard anything about him since the accident?" "Only that he did eventually recover and was taken away from the hospital. I heard that his mind was impaired. Does Louise--" he began; stopped, and cleared his throat. "Has Mrs. Harman heard that he is here?" "Yes; she has seen him." "Do you mean the scoundrel has been bothering her? Elizabeth didn't tell me of this--" "Your sister doesn't know," I said, lifting my hand to check him. "I think you ought to understand the whole case--if you'll let me tell you what I know about it." "Go ahead," he bade me. "I'll try to listen patiently, though the very thought of the fellow has always set my teeth on edge." "He's not at all what you think," I said. "There's an enormous difference, almost impossible to explain to you, but something you'd understand at once if you saw him. It's such a difference, in fact, that when I found that he was Larrabee Harman the revelation was inexpressibly shocking and distressing to me. He came here under another name; I had no suspicion that he was any one I'd ever heard of, much less that I'd actually seen him twice, two years ago, and I've grown to-- well, in truth, to be fond of him." "What is the change?" asked Ward, and his voice showed that he was greatly disquieted. "What is he like?" "As well as I can tell you, he's like an odd but very engaging boy, with something pathetic about him; quite splendidly handsome--" "Oh, he had good looks to spare when I first knew him," George said bitterly. "I dare say he's got them back if he's taken care of himself, or been taken care OF, rather! But go on; I won't interrupt you again. Why did he come here? Hoping to see--" "No. When he came here he did not know of her existence except in the vaguest way. But to go back to that, I'd better tell you first that the woman we saw with him, one day on the boulevard, and who was in the accident with him--" "La Mursiana, the dancer; I know." "She had got him to go through a marriage with her--" "WHAT?" Ward's eyes flashed as he shouted the word. "It seems inexplicable; but as I understand it, he was never quite sober at that time; he had begun to use drugs, and was often in a half- stupefied condition. As a matter of fact, the woman did what she pleased with him. There's no doubt about the validity of the marriage. And what makes it so desperate a muddle is that since the marriage she's taken good care to give no grounds upon which a divorce could be obtained for Harman. She means to hang on." "I'm glad of that!" said George, striking his knee with his open palm. "That will go a great way toward--" He paused, and asked suddenly: "Did this marriage take place in France?" "Yes. You'd better hear me through," I remonstrated. "When he was taken from the hospital, he was placed in charge of a Professor Keredec, a madman of whom you've probably heard." "Madman? Why, no; he's a member of the Institute; a psychologist or metaphysician, isn't he?--at any rate of considerable celebrity." "Nevertheless," I insisted grimly, "as misty a vapourer as I ever saw; a poetic, self-contradicting and inconsistent orator, a blower of bubbles, a seer of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer--about as scientific as Alice's White Knight! Harman's aunt, who lived in London, the only relative he had left, I believe--and she has died since--put him in Keredec's charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and virtually hidden for two years, the idea being literally to give him something like an education--Keredec's phrase is 'restore mind to his soul'! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him. But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder--he'd been some sort of stable-manager for Harman once--and set him on the track. He ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts to a species of sordid siege." "She wants money, of course." "Yes, MORE money; a fair allowance has always been sent to her. Keredec has interviewed her notary and she wants a settlement, naming a sum actually larger than the whole estate amounts to. There were colossal expenditures and equally large shrinkages; what he has left is invested in English securities and is not a fortune, but of course she won't believe that and refuses to budge until this impossible settlement is made. You can imagine about how competent such a man as Keredec would be to deal with the situation. In the mean time, his ward is in so dreadful a state of horror and grief I am afraid it is possible that his mind may really give way, for it was not in a normal condition, of course, though he's perfectly sane, as I tell you. If it should," I concluded, with some bitterness, "I suppose Keredec will be still prating upliftingly on the saving of his soul!" "When was it that Louise saw him?" "Ah, that," I said, "is where Keredec has been a poet and a dreamer indeed. It was his PLAN that they should meet." "You mean he brought this wreck of Harman, these husks and shreds of a man, down here for Louise to see?" Ward cried incredulously. "Oh, monstrous!" "No," I answered. "Only insane. Not because there is anything lacking in Oliver--in Harman, I mean--for I think that will be righted in time, but because the second marriage makes it a useless cruelty that he should have been allowed to fall in love with his first wife again. Yet that was Keredec's idea of a 'beautiful restoration,' as he calls it!" "There is something behind all this that you don't know," said Ward slowly. "I'll tell you after I've seen this Keredec. When did the man make you his confidant?" "Last night. Most of what I learned was as much a revelation to his victim as it was to me. Harman did not know till then that the lady he had been meeting had been his wife, or that he had ever seen her before he came here. He had mistaken her name and she did not enlighten him." "Meeting?" said Ward harshly. "You speak as if--" "They have been meeting every day, George." "I won't believe it of her!" he cried. "She couldn't--" "It's true. He spoke to her in the woods one day; I was there and saw it. I know now that she knew him at once; and she ran away, but--not in anger. I shouldn't be a very good friend of yours," I went on gently, "if I didn't give you the truth. They've been together every day since then, and I'm afraid--miserably afraid, Ward--that her old feeling for him has been revived." I have heard Ward use an oath only two or three times in my life, and this was one of them. "Oh, by God!" he cried, starting to his feet; "I SHOULD like to meet Professor Keredec!" "I am at your service, my dear sir," said a deep voice from the veranda. And opening the door, the professor walked into the room. _ |
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