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A short story by Margery Verner Reed |
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Old Scores |
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Title: Old Scores Author: Margery Verner Reed [More Titles by Reed] A NIGHT of untold beauty. COBWEBS on the heavens. A GRAY winter sky, brightened by the moon shining through it. BARE branches of hundreds of trees interlacing their silvery boughs. AND a cottage with thatched roof and square leaded panes--a setting for romance, for dreams of visionary splendor. IS the master at home, asked a strange woman of the old man servant. HE has not yet returned. THEN I will wait for him. AND despite the protests of the servant, Donna Maria entered the room. It was a story and a half in height. THERE was a huge fireplace, and everywhere, without arrangement, in the happy disorder of a studio, were canvases and palettes. ANOTHER setting for romance. BUT romance--at least for tonight--has not found its way to the studio in the woods. * * * * * THERE was perhaps some intuition, some forewarning of disaster in the mind of Robert Hale. He walked abstractedly, untouched by the beauty of the night. HE was deep in the inner experience of the conception of a new picture. HE entered his house. THERE is a woman, sir. A WOMAN----but I want to be alone. THE old servant slept--roused for a moment by the closing of a door. SHE'S gone, he muttered--and slept again. * * * * * THROUGH the splendor of the night they went--through its mystery, its beauty. SHE, tense, frightened lest her power should fail on the verge of success-- HE in a kind of trance, with wavering mind--strange thoughts--nothing clear--a haze THEY stopped under a great oak. DO you remember your Egyptian Dancer asked Donna Maria for the hundredth time. EGYPTIAN Dancer, he answered tonelessly. No, I tell you I killed him. WITH a sense of victory she led him on through the night. HER mind incessantly repeated to the overpowered mind of the artist YOU killed him------You killed him. THE alienist gave his testimony. The prisoner was mad. Clearly. TO every question he responded--I killed him. AND endlessly the court room resounded with dull, monotonous voices SOME pleading for--some against the artist. DONNA MARIA was satisfied. SHE would go away and Robert--well, no matter-- SHE hated him. HE had scorned her advances--her coquettish smiles, years ago in Rome when he was a student. SHE had been unable to forget. Her pride was like an open wound. HALE was acquitted. BUT his mind was gone. A harmless type of insanity expressing itself in vague reiterations of a fixed idea. DAY after day he walked in the open--Once on and on, down a slope. He slipped. And made a violent clutch to save himself. The cold waters of the river closed over him. Shock and sudden pain--the penetrating pain that comes with returning consciousness-- HE began to struggle, got his stroke and swam. * * * * * DID you kill the Banker Brunton, the physician inquired gently. THE Banker Brunton--Hale asked curiously--I never heard of him. A TRAIN of thought seemed starting. BUT I remember a woman--she dropped her muff--I stooped to pick it up SHE must have struck me-- OR was it her eyes! ONCE, long ago--in Rome--she tried to influence me that way. I DESPISE her. WHEN she came back I was tired. I gave in. Let's not talk about it. THE physician looked at Hale with the look of a kind big brother. THEN he went to the telephone. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |