that evening, in the luminous dusk of our sitting-room, i sat up and gave duke my history. he would have stopped me at the outset, but i would brook no eccentric philosophy in the imperious fever of insistence that was my mood. i told him of all that related personally to me—my deed, my repentance—my brother’s exposure and renewed menaces; but to zyp i only referred in such manner as to convey the impression that whatever influence she had once exerted over me was dead with boyhood and scarcely to be resurrected.
that here i intentionally told a half-truth only, cowardly in the suspicion that the whole would be resented by my hearer on dolly’s behalf, i cannot deny. i dared not commit myself to a policy of absolute confidence.
when i had finished there was a silence, which i myself was forced to at length break.
“duke,” i said, “haven’t you a remark to make—no word of advice or rebuke?”
“not one, renny. what concern have we with that past existence of yours?”
“oh, for heaven’s sake drop that nonsense for once in a way. it’s a very real trouble to me, whatever it is to you.”
“old man, you did and you repented in one day. the account up there must balance.”
“you think it must?”
“we are masters of our acts—not of our impulses. you strike a bell and it clangs. you strike a man and the devil leaps out at his eyes. it’s in the rebound that the thought comes that decides the act. in this case yours was natural to yourself, for you are a good fellow.”
“and so are you, a hundred times over, to take it so. you don’t know the terror it has been to me—that it must be to me still in a measure. the account may balance; but still——”
“well?”
“the boy—my brother—died.”
“yes—after you had tried to save him.”
“duke—duke, you can’t hold me not to blame.”
“i don’t, indeed. you were very much to blame for not retreating when your better angel gave you the chance. it’s for that you’ll be called to account some day—not the other.”
“well, i’ll stand up and cry ‘peccavi!’” i said, sadly.
“renny,” said duke, from the shadow of his side of the room, “what’s this elder brother of yours like?”
i explained jason’s appearance to the best of my power.
“ah,” he said, quietly, “i thought so.”
“what do you mean?”
“nothing. only i saw him this afternoon taking the bearings of the office from t’other side the street.”
“very likely. he mentioned something about using my influence with ripley to give him a berth later on. probably he was debating his ground.”
“you haven’t given your confidence to any one but me in this matter?”
“no.”
“do you intend to?”
“if you think it right. shall i tell ripley?”
“it’s my opinion you should. forestall your brother in every direction.”
“well, yours and his are the only two that concerns me.”
“one other, renny.”
“who?”
“dolly.”
he leaned forward and looked at me with such intensity of earnestness that his black eyes seemed to pierce to my very soul.
“shall i,” he said—and his gaze never left my face—“shall i acknowledge your confidence with another?”
“it shall be sacred, duke,” i answered low, “if it refers to past or present.”
he threw himself back with a sudden wail.
“to both!” he cried; “to both!”
he was himself again directly.
“bah!” he cried; “what a woman i am! renny, you shall for once find me sick of philosophy and human.”
i resumed my seat, fairly dumfounded at this revelation of unwonted depths in my friend, and stared at him in silence; once more he leaned forward and seemed to read me through.
“renny, tell me—do you wish to make dolly your wife?”
“duke, upon my soul i don’t know.”
“do you love her?”
“if i thought i did, as you meant it, i could answer your first question.”
“and you can’t?”
“no, i can’t.”
“renny, make her happy. she loves you with all her heart.”
“would that be fair to her, duke? let me know my own mind first.”
“ah, i am afraid you don’t care to know it; that you are playing with a pleasurable emotion. take care—oh, take care, i tell you! the halt and maimed see further in the dark than the vigorous. renny, there is trouble ahead. i know more of women than you do, perhaps, because, cut off from manly exercises, i can gauge their temptations and their weaknesses. i see a way of striking at you that you don’t dream of. be great with resolve! save my little book-sewer, i implore you.”
“duke,” i said, with extreme emotion, for i fancied i could catch the shine of most unaccustomed tears in his dark eyes, “my good, dear fellow, what is the meaning of this? i would do anything to make you or dolly happy; but where is the sense of half-measures? if you feel like this, why don’t you—i say it with all love—why don’t——”
he struggled to his feet, and with a wild, pathetic action drew emptiness about him with enfolding arms.
“i tell you,” he cried, in a broken voice, “that i would give my life to stand in your shoes, valuing the evil as nothing to the sweet.”
he dropped his head on his breast and i had no word to say. my willful blindness seemed to me at that moment as vile a thing as any in my life.
suddenly he stood erect once more.
“renny,” he said, with a faint smile, “for all your good friendship you don’t know me yet, i see. i’m too stiff-jointed to kneel.”
“don’t curse me for blighting your life like this. but, duke—i never guessed. if i had—it didn’t matter to me—i would have walked over a precipice rather than cross your path.”
“how could you know? wasn’t i sworn to philosophy?”
“and it can’t be now?”
“it can never be.”
“think, duke—think.”
“i never do anything else. love may exist on pity, but not on charity. i put myself on one side. it is her happiness that has to be considered first; and, renny, you know the way to it.”
“duke, have you always felt like this toward her?”
“always? i feel here that i should answer you according to my theory of life. but i have shown you my weak side. every negro, they say, worships white as the complexion of his unknown god. from my first sight of her i have tried to rub my sooty soul clean—have tried every means like the ‘black-gob’ committee in hood’s poem.”
“i think you have been successful—if any rubbing was necessary. i think at least you have proved your affinity to her, and will claim and be claimed by her in the hereafter.”
“i shall not have the less chance then, for striving to procure her happiness here.”
“oh, duke—no!”
i stood abashed in presence of so much lofty abrogation of self.
“what am i to do?” i said, humbly. “i will be guided by you. shall i study to make our interests one and trust to heaven for the right feeling?”
“first tell her what you have told me. you need have no fear.”
“very well. i will do so on the first opportunity.”
“that confidence alone will make a bond between you. but, renny—oh, don’t delay.”
“i won’t, duke—i won’t. but i wish you would tell me what danger it is you fear.”
“if i did you would think it nothing but a phantom of my brain. i have said i see in the dark. this room is full of fantastic shapes to me. perhaps they are only the goblin lights born of warp and disease.”
“i will speak to her next sunday.”
“not sooner?”
“i can’t very well. we must be alone together without risk of interruption.”
i would have told him of our yesterday’s talk, only that it seemed a cruel thing to take even him into that broken and tender confidence.
“very well. let it be then, as you value her happiness.”
all day it had been close and oppressive and now thunder began to moan and complain up the lower slopes of the night.
suddenly, in the ominous stirring of the gloom, i became conscious that my companion was murmuring to himself—that a low current of speech was issuing from his lips monotonous as the babble of delirium.
“there was a window in the roof, where stars glittered like bubbles in the glass—and the ceiling came almost down to the floor on one side and i cried often with terror, for the window and i were alone. sometimes the frost gathered there, like white skin over a wound, and sometimes the monstrous clouds looked in and mocked and nodded at me. i was very cold or else my face cracked like earth with the heat, and i could not run away, for he had thrown me down years before and the marrow dried in my bones. there had been a time when the woman came with her white face and loved me, always listening, and crept away looking back. but she went at last and i never saw her again.”
“duke!” i whispered—“duke!” but he seemed lost to all sense of my presence.
“he came often, and there was a great dog with him, whose flesh writhed with folds of gray, and the edges of his tongue were curled up like a burning leaf—and the dog made my heart sick, for its eyes were full of hate like his, and when he made it snarl at me i shivered with terror lest a movement of mine should bring it upon me. and sometimes i heard it breathing outside the door and thought if they had forgotten to lock it and it came in i should die. but they never forgot, and i was left alone with the window in the roof and nothing else. but now i feel that if i could meet that dog—now, now i should scream and tear it with my teeth and torture it inch by inch for what it made me suffer.”
i cried to him again, but he took no heed.
“there was water, in the end, and great dark buildings went up from it and the thunder was thick in the sky. then he said, ‘drink,’ and held something to my lips; and i obeyed because i was in terror of him. it was fire he gave me, and i could not shriek because it took me by the throat—but i fell against the water and felt it lap toward me and i woke screaming and i was in a boat—i was in a boat, i tell you.”
there came a booming crash overhead and the room for a moment weltered with ghastly light. in its passing i saw duke leap to his feet, and there was something beside him—a shape—a mist—one of the phantoms of his brain—no, of mine—modred, pointing and smiling. it was gone in an instant—a mere trick of the nerves. but, as i stood shivering and blinded, i heard duke cry in a terrible voice:
“renny—listen! it was on such a night as this that my father poisoned me!”
