Part 18

The body that is molded upon a spirit such as his--or hers--becomes as mobile to its changes as cloud to sun and wind. Boris's good looks always had a suggestion of the superhuman, as if the breath of life in him were a fiercer, more enduring flame than in ordinary mortals. That superhuman look it was that had made Neva, the sensitive, the appreciative, unable ever quite to shake off all the awe of him she had originally felt. The man before her now had never looked so superhuman; but it was the superhumanness of the fiend. She shrank in fascinated terror. His sensuous features were sensuality personified; his rings, his jeweled watch guard, his odor of powerful perfume, all fitted in with his expression, where theretofore they had seemed incongruous. "Boris!" she repeated. "Is that _you_?"

Her face brought him immediately back to himself, or rather to his normal combination of cynical good-humored actuality and cynical good-humored pose. The vision had vanished from her eyes, so utterly, so swiftly, that she might have thought she had been dreaming, had it not remained indelibly upon her mind--especially his eyes, like hunger, like thirst, like passion insatiable, like menace of mortal peril. It is one thing to suspect what is behind a mask; it is quite another matter to see, with the mask dropped and the naked soul revealed. As she, too, recovered herself, her terror faded; but the fascination remained, and a certain delight and pride in herself that she was the conjurer of such a passion as that. For women never understand that they are no more the authors of the passions they evoke than the spark is the author of the force in the dynamite it explodes or of the ensuing destruction; if the dynamite is there, any spark, rightly placed, will do the work.

"Yes, it's I," replied Raphael, rather confusedly. He was as much disconcerted by what he had himself seen of himself, as by having shown it to her. A storm that involves one's whole being stirs up from the bottom and lifts to the surface many a strange secret of weakness and of wickedness, none stranger than the secrets of one's real feelings and beliefs, so different from one's professions to others and to himself. Raphael had seen two of these secrets--first, that he was insanely jealous of Armstrong; second, that he was in love with Neva. Not the jealousy and the love that yet leave a man master of himself, but the jealousy and the love that enslave. In the silence that followed this scene of so few words and so strong emotions, while Neva was hanging fascinated over the discovery of his passion for her, he was gazing furtively at her, the terror that had been hers now his.

He had been fancying he was leading her along the flower-walled path he had trod so often with some passing embodiment of his passing fancy, was luring her to the bower where he had so often taught what he called and thought "the great lesson." Instead, he was himself being whirled through space--whither? "I love her!" he said to himself, tears in his eyes and tears and fears in his heart. "This is not like the others--not at all--not at all. I love her, and I am afraid." And then there came to him a memory--a vision--a girl whom he had taught "the great lesson" years before; she had disappeared when he grew tired--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, when he had exhausted for the time the capacity of his nerves; for how can a man grow tired of what he never had?--and the rake kills the bird for the one feather in its crest. At any rate, he sent her away; he was seeing now the look in her eyes, as she went without a murmur or a sigh. And he was understanding at last what that look meant. In the anguish of an emotion like remorse, yet too selfish, perhaps, too self-pitying for remorse, he muttered, "Forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing."

The vision faded back to the oblivion from which it had so curiously emerged. He glanced at Neva again, with critical eyes, like a surgeon diagnosing stolidly his own desperate wound. She was, or seemed to be, busy at her easel. He could study her, without interruption. He made slow, lingering inventory of her physical charms--beauties of hair and skin and contour, beauties of bosom's swell and curve of arm and slant of hip and leg. No, it was not in any of these, this supreme charm of her for him. Where then?

For the first time he saw it. He had been assuming he was regarding her as he had regarded every other woman in the long chain his memory was weaving from his experiences and was coiling away to beguile his days of the almond tree and the bated sound of the grinding. And he had esteemed these women at their own valuation. It was the fashion for women to profess to esteem themselves, and to expect to be esteemed, for reasons other than their physical charms. But Boris, searcher into realities, held that only those women who by achievement earn independence as a man earns it, have title to count as personalities, to be taken seriously in their professions. He saw that the women he knew made only the feeblest pretense to real personal value other than physical; they based themselves upon their bodies alone. So, women had been to him what they were to themselves--mere animate flesh.

He attached no more importance--beyond polite fiction--than did they themselves to what they thought and felt; it was what men thought of their persons, what feelings their persons roused in men--that is, in him. And he meted out to them the fate they expected, respected him the more for giving them; when they ceased to serve their sole purpose of ornament or plaything he flung them away, with more ceremony, perhaps, but with no less indifference than the emptied bottles of the scent he imported in quantity and drenched himself with.

But he saw the truth about Neva now--saw why, after the few first weeks of their acquaintance, he had not even been made impatient by her bad days--the days when her skin clouded, her eyes dimmed, her hair lost its luster, and the color, leaving her lips, seemed to take with it the dazzling charm of her blue-white teeth. Why? Because her appeal to his senses was not so strong as her appeal to-- He could not tell what it was in him this inner self of hers appealed to. Heart? Hardly; that meant her physical beauty. Intellect? Certainly not that; intellect rather wearied him than otherwise, and the sincerest permanent longing of his life was to cease from thinking, to feel, only to feel--birds, flowers, perfumed airs, the thrill of winds among grasses and leaves, sunshine, the play of light upon women's hair, the ecstasy of touch drifting over their smooth, magnetic bodies. No, it was neither her intellect nor her heart, any more than it was her loveliness. Or, rather, it was all three, and that something more which makes a man happy he knows not why and cares not to know why.

"I would leave anyone else to come to her," he said to himself. "And if anyone else lured me away from her, it would be only for the moment; I would know I should have to return to her, as a dog to its master." He repeated bitterly, mockingly, "As a dog to its master. That's what it means to be artist--more woman than man, and more feminine than any woman ever was."

He stood behind her, looking at her work. "You'd better stop for to-day," he said presently. "You're only spoiling what you did yesterday."

"So I am," said she.

She put down palette and brushes with a sigh and a shrug. When she turned, he stood his ground and looked into her eyes. "I've been letting outside things come between me and my work," she went on, pretending to ignore his gaze.

"You guessed my secret a few minutes ago?" he asked.

She nodded, and it half amused, half hurt him to note that she was physically on guard, lest he should seize her unawares.

His smile broadened. "You needn't be alarmed," said he, clasping his hands behind his back. "I've no intention of doing it."

She was smiling now, also. "Well," she said. "What next?"

"Why are you afraid?"

"I am not afraid." She clasped her hands behind her, like his, looked at him with laughing, level eyes; for he and she were of the same height. "Not a bit."

"Why were you afraid?" he corrected. "You never were before."

She seemed to reflect. "No, I never was," she admitted. Her gaze dropped and her color came.

"Neva," he said gently, "do you love me?"

She lifted her eyes, studied him with the characteristic half closing of the lids that made her gaze so intense and so alluring. He could not decide whether that gaze was coquetry, as he hoped, or simply sincere inquiry, as he feared. "I do not know," she said. "I admire and respect you above all men."

He laughed, carefully concealing how her words had stung him. "Admire! Respect!" He made a mocking little bow. "I thank you, madam. But--in old age--after death--is soon enough for that cold grandeur."

"I do not know," she repeated. "I had never thought about it until a while ago--when you--when your expression--" She dropped her gaze again. "I can't explain."

Coquetry or shyness? He could not tell. "Neva, do you love anyone else?"

"I think--not," replied she, very low.

His eyes were like a tiger peering through a flower-freighted bush. "You love Armstrong," he urged, softly as the purr before the spring.

She was gazing steadily at him now. "We were talking of you and me," rejoined she, her voice clear and positive. "If I loved you, it would not be because I did not love some other man. If I did not love you it would not be because I did love some other."

There might be evasion in that reply, but there could be no lack of sincerity. "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I forgot. The idea that there could be such a woman as you is very new to me. A few minutes ago, I made a discovery as startling as when I first saw you--there at the Morrises."

"How much I owe you!" she exclaimed, and her whole face lighted up.

But his shadowed; for he remembered that of all the emotions gratitude is least akin to love. "I made a startling discovery," he went on. "I discovered you--a you I had never suspected. And I discovered a me I had never dreamed of. Neva, I love you. I have never loved before."

She grew very pale, and he thought she was trembling. But when, with her returning color, her eyes lifted to his, they were mocking. "Why, your tone was even better than I should have anticipated. You--love?" scoffed she. "Do you think I could study you this long and not find out at least that about you?"

"I love you," he insisted, earnestly enough, though his eyes were echoing her mockery.

"You could not love," affirmed she. "You have given yourself out little by little--here and there. You have really nothing left to give."

A man of less vision, of slower mind would have been able to protest. But Boris instantly saw what she meant, felt the truth in her verdict. "Nothing left to give?" he repeated. "Do you think so?"

"I know it," replied she.

There are some words that sound like the tolling of the bells of fate; those words of hers sounded thus to him. "Nothing left to give," he repeated. Had he indeed wasted his whole self upon trifles? Had he lit his lamps so long before the feast that now, with the bride come, they were quite burned out? He looked at her and, like the vague yet vivid visions music shows us and snatches away before we have seen more than just that they were there, he caught a haunting glimpse of the beauty supernal which he loved and longed for, but with his tired, blunted senses could not hope to realize or attain.... The blasphemer's fate!--to kiss the dust before the god he had reviled.... He burst out laughing, his hearty, sensuous, infectious laughter. "I'm getting senile," said he. With a flash of angrily reluctant awe, "Or rather, you have bewitched me." He got ready to depart. "So, my lady of joy and pain, you do not love me--yet?" he inquired jestingly.

She shook her head with a smile which the gleam of her eyes from their narrow lids and the sweeping lashes made coquettish. "Not yet," replied she, in his own tone.

"Well, don't try. Love doesn't come for must. To-morrow? Yes. A new day, a new deal."

They shook hands warmly, looked at each other with laughing eyes, no shadow of seriousness either in him or in her. "You are the first woman I ever loved," said he. "And you shall be the last. I do not like this love, now that I am acquainted with it." The sunlight pouring upon his head made him beautiful like a Bacchus, with color and life glittering in his crisp, reddish hair and virile, close-cropped beard. "I do not feel safe when my soul's center of gravity is in another person." He kissed her hand. "Till to-morrow."

She was smiling, coloring, trying to hide the smile; but he could not tell whether it was because she was more moved than she cared to have him see, or merely because his curious but highly effective form of adoration pleased her vanity and she did not wish him to see it. "To-morrow," echoed she.

He bowed himself out, still smiling, as if once beyond the door he might burst into laughter at himself or at her--or might wearily drop his merry mask. Her last look that he saw was covertly inquiring, doubtful--as if she might be wondering, Is he in earnest, does he really care, or was he only imagining love and exaggerating the fancy to amuse himself and me?

Outside the door, he did drop his mask of comedy to reveal a face not without the tragic touch in its somberness. "Does she care?" he muttered. And he answered himself, "After all my experience! ... Experience! It simply puts hope on its mettle. Do I not know that if she loved she would not hesitate? And yet-- Hope! You Jack-o'-lantern, luring man deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. I know you for the trickster you are, Hope. But, lead on!"

And he went his way, humming the "March of the Toreadors" and swinging his costly, showy, tortoise-shell cane gayly.

*XXI*

*A SENSATIONAL DAY*

When Fosdick, summoned by telephone, entered the august presence of the august committee of the august legislature of the august "people of the State of New York, by the grace of God free and independent," there were, save the reporters, a scant dozen spectators. The purpose of the committee had been dwindled to "a technical inquiry with a view further to improve the excellent laws under which the purified and at last really honest managements of insurance companies and banks had brought them to such a high state of honest strength." So, the announcement in the morning papers that the committee was to begin its labors for the public good attracted attention only among those citizens who keep themselves informed of loafing places that are comfortable in the cold weather. Fosdick bowed with dignified deference to the committee; the committee bowed to Fosdick--respectfully but nervously. There were five in the row seated behind the long oak table on the rostrum under the colossal figure of Justice. Furthest to the left sat Williams, in the Legislature by grace of the liquor interests; next him, Tomlinson, representing certain up-the-country traction and power interests; to the right of the chairman were Perry and Nottingham, the creatures of two railway systems. The chairman--Kenworthy, of Buffalo--had been in the Assembly nearly twenty years, for the insurance interests. He was a serious, square-bearded, pop-eyed little old man, most neat and respectable, and without a suspicion that he was not the most honorable person in the world, doing his full duty when he did precisely what the great men bade. Since the great capitalists were the makers and maintainers of prosperity, whatever they wanted must be for the good of all. The fact that he was on the private pay rolls of five companies and got occasional liberal "retainers" from seven others, was simply the clinching proof of the fitness of the great men to direct--they knew how properly to reward their helpers in taking care of the people. There are good men who are more dangerous than the slyest of the bad. Kenworthy was one of them.

The committee did not know what it was assembled for. It is not the habit of the men who "run things" to explain their orders to understrappers. Smelling committees are of four kinds: There is the committee the boss sets at doing nothing industriously because the people are clamoring that something be done. There is the committee the boss sends to "jack up" some interest or interests that have failed to "cash down" properly. There is the committee that is sent into doubtful districts, just before election, to pretend to expose the other side--and sometimes, if there has been a quarrel between the bosses, this kind of committee acts almost as if it were sincere. Finally, there is the committee the boss sends out to destroy the rivals of his employers in some department of finance or commerce. This particular smelling committee suspected it was to have some of the shortcomings of the rivals of the O.A.D. put under its nostrils by its counsel, Morris; it knew the late Galloway had owned the governor and the dominant boss, and that Fosdick was supposed to have inherited them, along with sundry other items of old Galloway's power. Again, the object might be purely defensive. There had been, of late, a revival of popular clamor against insurance companies, which the previous investigation, started by a quarrel among the interests and called off when that quarrel was patched up, had left unquieted. This committee might be simply a blindfold for the eyes of the ass--said ass being the public with its loud bray and its long ears and its infinite patience.

As Fosdick seated himself, after taking the oath, he noted for the first time the look on all faces--as if one exciting act of a drama had just ended and another were about to begin. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Westervelt and Armstrong, seated side by side--Westervelt, fumbling with his long white beard, his eyes upon the twenty-thousand-dollar sable overcoat lying across Fosdick's knees; Armstrong, huge and stolid, gazing straight at Fosdick's face with an expression inscrutable beyond its perfect calm. "He's taking his medicine well," thought Fosdick. "For Westervelt must have testified, and then, of course, he had his turn."

Morris, a few feet in front of him, was busy with papers and books that rustled irritatingly in the tense silence. Fosdick watched him tranquilly, as free from anxiety as to what he would do as a showman about his marionette. Morris straightened himself and advanced toward Fosdick. They eyed each the other steadily; Fosdick admired his servant--the broad, intelligent brow, the pallor of the student, the keen eyes of the man of affairs, the sensitive mouth. The fact that he looked the very opposite of a bondman, at least to unobservant eyes, was not the smallest of his assets for Fosdick.

"Mr. Fosdick," began the lawyer, in his rather high-pitched, but flexible and agreeable tenor voice, "we will take as little of your time as possible. We know you are an exceedingly busy man."

"Thank you, sir," said Fosdick, with a dignified bend of the head. A very respectable figure he made, sitting there in expensive looking linen and well cut dark suit, the sable overcoat across his knee and over one arm, a top hat in his other hand. "My time is at your disposal."

"In examining some of the books of the O.A.D.--you are a director of the O.A.D.?"

"Yes, sir. I have been for forty-two years."

"And very influential in its management?"

"They frequently call on me for advice, and, as the institution is a philanthropy, I feel it my duty always to respond."

Fosdick noted that a smile, discreet but unmistakably derisive, ran round the room. Morris's face was sober, but the smile was in his eyes. Fosdick sat still straighter and frowned slightly. He highly disapproved of cynicism directed at himself.

"In looking at some of the books with Mr. Westervelt a while ago," continued Morris, "we came upon a matter--several items--which we thought ought to be explained at once. We wish no public misapprehensions to arise through any inadvertence of ours. So we have turned aside from the regular course of the investigation, to complete the matter."

Fosdick's face betrayed his satisfaction--all had gone well; Armstrong was in the trap; it only remained for him to close it. Morris now took up a thin, well-worn account book which Fosdick recognized as the chief of Westervelt's four treasures. "I find here," he continued, "fourteen entries of twenty-five thousand dollars each--three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in all--drawn by the President of the O.A.D., Mr. Armstrong here. Will you kindly tell us all you know about those items?"

Mr. Fosdick smiled slightly. "Really, Mr. Morris," replied he, with the fluency of the well-rehearsed actor, "I cannot answer that question, as you put it. Even if I knew all about the items, I might not recognize them from your too scanty description."

"We have just had Mr. Armstrong on the stand," said the lawyer. "He testified that he drew the money under your direction and paid it--the most of it--in your presence to Benjamin Sigourney, who looked after political matters for your company."

Fosdick's expression of sheer amazement was sincerity itself. He looked from Morris to Armstrong. With his eyes and Armstrong's meeting, he said energetically, "I know of no such transaction."

"You do not recall any of the _fourteen_ transactions?"

"I do not recall them, because they never occurred. So far as I know, the legislative business of the O.A.D. is looked after by the legal department exclusively. I have been led to believe, and I do believe that, since the reforms in the O.A.D. and the new management of which Mr. Shotwell was the first head, the former reprehensible methods have been abandoned. It is impossible that Mr. Armstrong should have drawn such amounts for that purpose. You must--pardon me--have misunderstood his testimony."

"Let the stenographer read--only Mr. Armstrong's last long reply," said Morris.

The stenographer read: "Mr. Armstrong: 'Mr. Fosdick explained to me that the bills would practically put us out of business, except straight life policies, and that they would pass unless we submitted to the blackmail. As he was in control of the O.A.D., when he directed me to draw the money, I did so. All but two, I think, perhaps three, of the payments were made to Sigourney in his presence.'"

"That will do--thank you," said Morris to the stenographer.

There was a pause, a silence so profound that it seemed a suffocating force. Morris's clear, sharp tones breaking it, startled everyone, even Fosdick. "You see, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Armstrong was definite."

"I am at a loss to understand," replied Fosdick, gray with emotion, but firm of eye and voice. "I am profoundly shocked--I can only say that, so far as I am concerned, no such transaction occurred. And I regret exceedingly to have to add that if any such moneys were taken from the O.A.D. they must have gone for other purposes than to influence the Legislature."

"Then, you wish to inform the committee that to the best of your recollection you did not authorize or suggest those drafts, and did not and do not know anything about them?"

"I know nothing about them."

"But, Mr. Fosdick," continued Morris slowly, "we have had Mr. Westervelt on the stand, and he has testified that he was present on more than half a dozen occasions when you told Mr. Armstrong to draw the money, and that on one occasion you yourself took the money when Mr. Armstrong brought it from the cash department."