Part 9

Oh, the thoughts that raced through my mind as I stood there in the doorway! And the pictures that my heated fancy contrived! I wanted to rush up those stairs and make her speak to me. It was all I could do to fight this impulse. I knew that I was going to do this, sooner or later; but I knew too that I could hold out a little longer. For I must not thrust myself, an ungoverned, passion-shaken man, into her trouble.

If Sir Robert had gone up, I am sure I would have followed him. But he did not. He sipped his tea for a long time, and nibbled his toast. I could look in through the doorway and see him. Then he tried to read. Then he wandered about the lounge, like a tortured ghost of passions that had died with his prime. Once he came to the hall and stood irresolute at the foot of the stairs, twisting his monocle in his shaking fingers.

But then he saw me standing there like a sentry. And he walked hurriedly back into the lounge.

So the time dragged on. When I looked again at my watch it was five minutes of eight. It was time for Sir Robert's dinner. Few things in life. I knew, were more Important to him. Perhaps he would go over to the Wagon-lits for it. Anyway, unless he had some definite knowledge of Crocker's whereabouts, he would not wait about here much longer, for he was a coward; his assurance had been undermined by the consciousness of his own guilty intentions. That much I had seen twenty-four hours and more earlier, when he warned me about Crocker.

But he did not go to the Wagon-lits. He went, instead, into the dingy dining-room of our own hotel. And I kept my watch, out there at the street door. A little later it occurred to me that I had seen no tray going up the stairs.

I stepped in and ordered the manager to send up a waiter to number eighteen. There seemed to be no use in holding back now. So far as that manager was concerned, I had crossed the line--both for myself and Heloise. And he, at least, would say nothing. His poor mind was already full of such unpleasant secrets as he imagined mine to be.

The waiter went up, and in a moment returned. The manager stepped out to me.

“The lady she does not answer to the waiter's knock,” said he, all concern and deference.

I could only bite my lip, and try to think, and then turn away from him.

Pretty soon Sir Robert came out from the dining-room, and made straight for the stairs. He was walking slowly and rather uncertainly. It seemed to me that he was a good deal bent. When he reached the hall, I observed that the spots of color had left his cheeks. His face, indeed, was pasty white.

I stepped inside and tried to make him face me. But he cut me again, magnificently. He reached for the railing, and slowly mounted the stairs.

Deliberately I followed. So we went up to the second floor--he fumbling along just ahead of me, I holding back.

I stood behind him while he unlocked his door. But weak as he was physically, he never once let down in his attitude of ignoring my existence. I am not so certain that he is a coward. I _am_ certain only that the human creature is extremely complex, extremely difficult to classify and formulate.

He went in, and made an effort to shut the door in my face. But I caught it on my elbow, and followed him in, closing it behind me.

He sank into a chair, and looked up at me. Now, at last he had to speak.

“Well--” he asked, “what is it? Why do you come in here?”

I kept my voice well in hand. Heloise must not hear this.

“To ask you several questions,” I replied. “Where is Crocker?”

“At the Wagon-lits--still drunk.”

“You know this?”

“I saw him, only a few hours hack. Went to his room, in fact.”

He was speaking, I have realized since, with some physical effort; but his mind was steady enough. He seemed to be simply making the best of it, since he had been unable to keep me out by force.

“He is not likely to be up and about before the morning?” said I.

“He is certain not to. But they stopped selling him liquor this afternoon. I learned that from the manager. So he will be nervous to-morrow. And probably dangerous. Undoubtedly dangerous.” His eyes flitted about the room, and then I saw that his baggage, all packed excepting one bag, was still there. “So I will leave him to you. I take the Tientsin train early to-morrow. And alone, I regret to add.”

This stung, but I held myself in control.

“I had hopes that the lady would leave with me,” he added. “I would have done very well by her. Extravagantly well. For she is, I may say, a person of unusual charm. But now, of course, that you are openly paying her bills, I leave the field to you.”

I kept my hands close at my sides, and stood straight there before him.

“I gave you some advice the other day, my boy,” he continued. “Bear it in mind. The woman is helpless. I confess I don't see what on earth she can do. For she is a highly impractical little thing She has very little idea of the value of money. I offered more than I had any business to--offered to send her back to Europe and help her along with her studies. It seemed the only way to reach her, don't you know--the line of her ambition, and therefore her weakest point. I used all the familiar arguments. And God knows most of them are true enough--that private morality is of no consequence in an operatic career, that a woman need conform to suburban standards only if she is seeking a suburban success. I pointed out notorious episodes in the lives of great women performers whom we all admire, women of unquestioned position. But do you know, my boy, not one of these arguments appeared to reach her at all. She is to me, I must say, an extraordinary contradiction. Here she is, deserted and destitute on the China Coast, where a woman can not travel alone for a day without advertising herself as a marketable commodity; and yet, so far as I can see, she is, in a sense, a good woman. Really, it was n't until I pointed out the wreckage she was making of your life, and the service she could do you by accepting my money and getting away from you, that she would so much as listen to me--”

He looked up at me, and his voice trailed off into silence.

But I did nothing, except to say, in a voice that I knew to be my own because he was no longer speaking and there was certainly no other person in the room--

“So you talked of me!”

He bowed.

“You are frank, Sir Robert.”

He waved his hand. “Why not?” Then he went on. “The most puzzling point in her puzzling story is that part relating to the other man--the one that brought her out here. She makes no effort to justify her actions, as we expect a woman to do when she has gone wrong in the eyes of men.”

“Oh--so you asked her about that?”

“Yes.” He indulged in a wry, fleeting smile. “I brought up everything--used all my logic, Eckhart. I was, like you, a fool to want her at all with that crazy husband so close on her heels; but I did want her, and I worked hard for a few hours.” He sighed. “Do you know, all she has to say of the man with whom she traveled from New York clear to Peking, is--' That was a dreadful mistake. I was n't the sort of woman he thought me.' And when I spoke sympathetically of his cruelty in deserting her, she quietly informed me that he did nothing of the kind.... What do you say to that, my boy? _She left him!_”

He was quite warmed up to his story now. He even chuckled.

“What do you say to that, young man? This exceedingly attractive young person, very nearly penniless, quite unhampered by practical experience, turns the man off, refuses his money, and starts out to face life--in Peking--alone and without so much as a plan of action! It is pitiful, of course. It is tragic. But it does stir the fancy. Now, doesn't it?”

“I don't know,” I said slowly, “why I don't beat you to death.”

His face, I thought, grew even whiter. But his eyes met mine.

“I know why,” he replied deliberately. “Because a gentleman does not commonly enter the room of another gentleman for any such unmannerly purpose.”

I bowed a sort of assent to this. He really had me there.

“Besides, Eckhart,” he added, “while you have a perfect right to call me a fool, you certainly can't say that, as life runs, my attitude has been unnatural. The woman deliberately broke with life. As a result of her own acts, she is now outside the pale of decent society.”

“Outside--where we men are,” said I, very sad and bitter.

He sniffed, rather contemptuously. He thought my observation too obvious.

I added, as I turned toward the door--

“And at that, after your own tribute to the essential fineness of her character, your notion of 'decent society' sounds highly technical to me, Sir Robert. Good-by to you. You will forgive me for saying that I shall be very glad when you are gone.”

He did not reply. But as I laid my hand on the knob of the door, I caught a low exclamation behind me that seemed to have both pain and surprise in it.

I looked back. He had sunk down in his chair. One side of his face, the left side, had twitched upward so that there was a distinct slant to his mouth and an observably deep, curving line extending from the left lower corner of his nose.

“Are you ill?” I asked, after a moment.

He slowly shook his head. “Something snapped, I thought,” he replied, rather huskily. “But I am all here, evidently.”

“I shall be glad to call a doctor.”

“Thank you--it is quite unnecessary. If you will be so good as to have the manager send me a competent body servant, it will be sufficient.”

“But you may need medical attention.”

“Then it will not be difficult to reach McKenzie, over at the Legation. I won't trouble you further--beyond that matter of the servant.”

I bowed and went out, closing his door behind me.

I stood there for a moment in the hall. It seemed a very long time since I had seen Heloise or heard from her. And now, thanks to that old man, I had a new set of mental pictures to touch my spirit, and stir me, and rouse feelings so subtle, so haunting, so poignant, that I could hardly bear them. Yet, I thought, these are my new mental companions, these thoughts and feelings and partly distinct, partly elusive, mind pictures, and it is with them I have got to live for the rest of my life.

I listened. She was in there, surely, behind that closed door. The transom was closed, too. I could hear no sound.

I decided then to make her speak to me. And it seemed to me that now I could give without asking.

My hopes for myself were running as high as that--to give without asking, and to reassure her poor tortured spirit by so appearing and acting that she would know, through her fine intuition, that I had risen to this point.

I ran downstairs and told the manager of Sir Robert's request. I also suggested that in my judgment medical care was indicated. He looked puzzled, and a thought worried, that little French manager; as if unable to determine whether I had killed Sir Robert or had suddenly become his friend.

Then I came back upstairs and entered my own room. I turned on the light.

I stepped softly to the shrunken door, and listened. For a moment I thought I heard nothing; then my heart gave a leap, for her bed began creaking as if she were tossing restlessly upon it.

She was in her room. However desperate, however tortured of spirit, she was there!

She made a sound--a sort of moan.

I tapped on the door.

She was silent.

I opened the door an inch. Her room was dark. Without looking in, I placed my mouth close to the opening, and said--

“Oh--Heloise!”

That was all. I had thought to conceal my own emotions. I had thought to speak gently, kindly--in a way that would make her feel me there as a steady, helpful friend. But my voice suddenly choked. And all I could say was, “Oh--Heloise!”

She did not reply.

I waited there. I felt that I must not intrude. I could not think just what would be best to do.

Then she tossed again, restlessly. And she moaned, with a sort of muffled shudder in her voice, as if she had set her teeth and was fighting with all her waning strength to keep from making a sound.

I could n't stand it. I opened the door. The light from my room fell across her bed and showed her there, her lovely arms outside the coverlet, her dark hair, in a thick, long braid, lying on the pillow and across her shoulder.

Still she did not' speak. I entered (thinking vividly of that first time that I had ventured unasked into this dingy little room that was the only place in the world she could call, even momentarily, her own ). I went straight to the bed. I took one unresisting hand in mine, and gazed down at her during the moment that my eyes were accustoming themselves to this dimmer light.

She rolled her head weakly around on the pillow, and looked up at me.

Then I saw that she was very white. Her eyes were shining at me out of great, dark circles. There were marks of pain, of physical suffering, on her dear face, such as I had never before seen there. Hitherto she had merely been sad.

I sank down, sitting on the edge of the bed. I could not say anything. I stroked her wrists. I gently smoothed her forehead and temples and cheeks. Her skin was cool, almost cold, to the touch.

Her great eyes sought mine. Weak and ill as she was, I knew that she was looking into my soul, and studying it, perhaps wondering about it.

At least, now, there would be no more evasion between us. I felt that. Whatever she might say to me, when she should feel able to talk, would come directly from the most sacred depths of her consciousness. We had never been so close. Even at that sad moment, the thought thrilled me.

I had to turn away.

Then I saw that her bureau, over which she and I had once expended, ages ago, an absurd amount of energy, had been moved, and stood squarely across the hall door.

Now, why had she done that?

I was still stroking her forehead and temples, trying to control the fever that was in my veins, trying to think clearly.

I looked again at her.

She made an effort to smile at me. There was infinite sadness in that effort.

Suddenly she turned toward me, on her side, hiding her face from me, pillowing it on my hands, which she held close, if weakly, with her own cold hands. And again that low, pitiful sound escaped her lips.

“I wanted to die,” she breathed. “I wanted to die! Why did n't you let me die!”

My heart stood still.

I turned her face to mine, and bent low over her.

“What have you done?” I asked her.

She shook her head, almost convulsively, and tried to hide her face again.

“What, have you done?” I asked.

I looked more closely at the bureau, dreading what I might see upon it. But there were only the famihar little toilet accessories that I had seen there before. My eyes searched about among them, while I sat there on the bed, while she continued to press my hands, with her own cold ones, against her face.

Then I looked down. On the floor, almost at my feet, was a glass with a little water in it. Near by was a small brown medicine bottle, with beaded edges. The cork was out. A little cotton lay by it.

I picked up the bottle, and turned it over.

It was labeled:

“Poison.” And beneath this, “Morphia,

“Heloise!” I cried. I made her look at me. “Heloise, child! You don't mean--you have n't--”

Her head moved between my hands; and I knew she was trying to nod an affirmation. Then she struggled again to turn her face from me, but so weakly that I held it there without much difficulty. I fear I was employing more strength than I realized.

“How much did you take?” I said. “Tell me--quickly.”

“I don't know,” she whispered. “The bottle was full. I took them all.”

“That is impossible,” I argued, foolishly. “Two grains would have killed you. One grain, even.”

“I took them all,” she repeated. “I wanted so to die. I thought for a while that I was dying. Then I became dreadfully ill. I have been so ill, Anthony!”

All at once a note of relief had come into her voice--as if it meant something to her, after all, to have me there with her, and to be able to talk with me.

I felt that. But it was not the time to think of myself.

I stood up. But she clung to one of my hands, and I had to bend a little. I was trying to think--What do they give for morphine poisoning? What are the antidotes?... Stimulants, surely.

I had some strychnine in my little medicine-chest. I gently withdrew my hand, and went into my room to look for it.

I felt uncertain about this treatment, for I am no physician. But it might be that there was no time to lose. She was weak, and extremely nervous. The coldness of her hands led me to believe that at some moment after she took the drug her heart action must have all but stopped.

Standing there, in my disordered room--for my steamer trunk was open, my clothes still lay in rumpled heaps on the bed, the cluttered bureau drawers stood about on chairs and on the table--I made up my mind to give her the strychnine. I did not realize then that there were physicians to be had. I felt only our remoteness from the conveniences of civilized life, here in this little hotel in the Tartar City.

It would doubtless have been better to administer the stimulant by the hypodermic syringe. But I had none. So I refilled her glass with water, gave her two of my strychnine pills, and raised her head while she sipped the water.

I do not recall now whether or not she resisted this treatment. I think she did, a little. But she was so completely exhausted, in body and spirit, by all she had gone through, that she really could do nothing but follow my instructions.

Then I rang for a boy--from my own room. It was getting pretty late in the evening; but I made him fetch me a large pot of black coffee.

I lifted her, and slipped the two pillows behind her that I had brought in from my own bed, and made her as nearly comfortable as I could. When the coffee came I poured out three cups of it, one after another, and stood over her while she drank them. She protested, every moment, but I paid no attention to her words, just held the cup to her lips until it was empty and then refilled it twice.

This done, I put the tray in my own room, and did what little I could to make her room more attractive to the eye. I moved the bureau from the hall door to its place against the side wall, the place it had occupied ever since she and I had moved it for the last time away from the door that connected our rooms. I even straightened out the various articles on the bureau.

And all this time I felt her great, weary eyes following me about, the room. She was distinctly relieved, I thought, at the sharp way in which I had taken command of her life. Poor child, she had tried hard enough to end that life. She had passed through the valley, of the shadow. And now, cheated yet relieved, she leaned on me.

Since that hour my mind has dwelt on the horrors she must have lived through that day. (She did not finally take the morphia until sometime after five in the afternoon.) She says nothing about the day; and of course I ask no questions. But she was there in her room through the noon hours and all the afternoon. And when I asked her if she slept at all the preceding night--the night that I sat up, without even undressing--she said no.... But I think it is better for me not to dwell on this.

I walked over to the window to let the night air in on her, and perhaps also to think.

Suddenly I recalled that there was a telephone downstairs. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!

And Sir Robert had spoken of a physician at the British Legation. I should have remembered that! But on second thought, I could not bear to think of calling in Sir Robert's man.

However, medical advice of some sort I must have. I knew nothing of the action of morphia on the system. She might be sinking at this moment.

I stepped back to the bedside and stood over her.

She did not look worse to me. It might have been only the temporary effect of the strychnine and coffee, but there certainly appeared to be a hint of color in her cheeks.

“I am going downstairs to telephone for a doctor,” I said, taking her hand. Her fingers twined weakly around mine, and clung a little. “Will you lie quietly here until I come back?”

“I don't want a doctor,” she breathed. “I'm much better.”

I paid no attention to this. “And will you promise me never to--not to”--my voice was unsteady--“not to take any more of that dreadful stuff?”

“I could n't,” she replied, in that maddeningly unsatisfactory way of answering serious questions that women appear to have. “There is n't any more.”

I think I compressed my lips over this. But I went right downstairs.

The manager was in his little den behind the hotel office. I beckoned him out, and asked about physicians.

His eyes sought my face. But I told him nothing.

With his assistance--for the telephone service of Peking is not that of New York or Chicago--

I called up an English medical mission that was not far from the hotel.

The head physician had gone to bed. At first they refused to disturb him. But I insisted.

It was half an hour before he arrived. I drew a chair to Heloise's bedside, talking with her and rubbing her head and her forearms while we waited.

She gave every evidence of rather rapid improvement. She was weak, of course; and so nervous that her body would twitch for no reason, and the slightest unexpected sound would give her a start. But the pupils of her eyes, that had been very small, were widening out to something like their normal size. And behind the gaze that she kept turning to me and the occasional faint suggestion about her mouth of a gentle but sad and enigmatic smile, I felt, even then, that she was doing some sober thinking.

After a time she said:

“I have clung to one thought to-day. My life has been all a blunder. But it has helped a little to know that you have your scales, Anthony--and that you would n't have them except for me.”

I went limp at this. For it had made me feel sound and strong to be caring for her, and now her words plunged me back into the depths of that dreadful day. I dropped my chin on my hands.

“Anthony!” said she. “What is it?”

I could only shake my head.

“But you have the scales, Anthony?”

I shook my head again.

She came up on her elbow--all weak and shaking. She had on that gray silk kimono that I love--the one with the wistaria blossoms embroidered on it. I felt her eyes searching my thoughts, and I could only look at the soft gray blossoms on her sleeve and study out the pattern.

“Anthony,” she was saying, with something of that musical “edge” in her voice--“Anthony, what have you done?”

I told her. I even moved my chair aside and let her gaze past me and through the open doorway into my room, where she could see bits of the broken cylinders scattered about the floor.

Was I pleading the cause of my love for her, of my--yes--of my desire for her, in thus giving way to the unexpected impulse to have her see those broken cylinders with her own eyes? God pity me, I do not know! All I am sure of is that I suddenly wanted her to know all about those miserable, weak hours of mine. And a strange, tremulous hope was fluttering to life in my heart. It was possible that we should again work together, she and I!

This hope fluttered and grew. I felt my heart beat more quickly, and a touch of that odd dryness in the throat that comes to me when Heloise and I are close, when I touch her hand or her sleeve and know at the same moment that she is thinking of me and that her feelings are in some mysterious way interwoven with mine.

I recall that I moved forward on my chair I moved still farther, and sat on the edge of the bed. I slipped my arm behind her head. I drew her lovely, dark head against my breast. I bent over and kissed her fragrant hair and rubbed my cheek against it.

I was stroking her hair and her soft cheek. I bent lower and kissed her forehead. Then I kissed her cheek.