Chapter 12

Innocent as had been his impulse toward Maurice's and full as was Broadway with places as glittering and noisy, his morbid duty to debar that one resort seemed to him to condemn him to the house for the night. Why was it the butler's night out? Even to know that he was below stairs--Would other nights be like this? _Every_ night--The possibility turned him cold. His thoughts were racing now, and even as he gripped the arms of the chair a still worse terror gripped his mind. His loneliness seemed to have become an actual thing, real as a person, a spirit haunting the luxurious, silent house. He was facing the door, and its heavy mahogany, fixing his attention through his staring gaze, seemed to be shutting him alone with the dead. Save for his trembling self and his wife's painted eyes, the big room was lifeless. It was beyond the closed door that his imagination, now running beyond control, pictured the presence of his frightful guest--his own solitude, coming in ironical answer to his craving for companionship.

Were those live eyes of the dead creating his sense of an impending life in the house? Was it his wife, who, never having created a child for him, was forcing on him now a horrible companion? Again he started desperately toward the picture, again he caught himself, again he cried, "My God!" and faced his terror passionately, facing too, this time, the closed door.

"You fool! You fool!"

His voice sounded weak and strange to him as if indeed some one else had spoken. The paralyzing thought that such a mood of panic could be the beginning of real madness had shaken his voice and his whole body, and again Maurice's, now as a positive savior, rushed into his mind. But he threw the idea of refuge contemptuously away. He would stand his ground and not leave the house that night; yet even as he stood, he asked himself if this was not because he feared to open the door.

With a gasp, he drew himself up in the center of the room, and in a surge of determined anger, with his eyes on the door, facing it as he would have faced an enemy before he attacked, he deliberately gave his mind to his fear, letting it sweep through him, trying to magnify it, reading every horror that he could into the imagined presence that he intended to dispel, and then, tormenting himself with slow steps, he walked to the door, reached his hand to the knob, and opened it.

Though his mouth opened for a cry of terror, no sound came from him as he staggered back, and a waiting figure pitched into the room, rushed wildly past him with a whimper like that of a wounded animal, and flung itself, face forward, into the empty chair.

As if through the same doorway that had given entrance to the desperate wretch, his terror seemed to leave him. While he stood gasping, with pounding heart, staring at the limp, shuddering manhood that had hurled itself into his home, Henry Montagu suddenly felt himself a man again.

With the cold plunge of his senses into rationality, they told him that he was in the presence of some fatal and soul-sickening tragedy, yet this horror that had dashed into the hollow privacy of his house was at least real to him. Overwhelmed as he was by the frightful appearance of the young man, who was now weeping abandonedly, he had no fear of him, and his first act was a practical one--he swiftly, quietly closed the door. It was done in an instinct of protection. It would be useless to question him yet, but that he was a fugitive, and from something hideous, Montagu took for granted.

He stood looking across the room at his outlandish guest, trying to docket the kaleidoscopic flock of impressions that had flown into his mind from the instant he swung back the door. Though noble, even splendid in its slender lines, the youth's figure had half-fallen, half-sprung through the doorway, animal-like. There had not been even a ghost of sound in the hallway, yet it was as if he had been in the act of hurtling himself against the closed door, hammering at it with upraised hands. Mr. Montagu had been horrified by it instantaneously, as by a thing of violence with every suggestion of the sordid, but the poor sobbing fellow who now lay in the chair with his arms and head drooping over the big leather arm seemed to him as immaculately dressed as himself. Remembering the fleeting posture at the door, his eyes went involuntarily to the hanging, graphic hands. In the light of his reading-lamp they gleamed white, and as he watched, his heart sinking with pity at their thinness, two slow red drops rolled from under the cuffs down the palms, and fell to the floor.

"Good God!" breathed Henry Montagu.

He had never doubted for the fraction of a second that his guest was a criminal, and in every sense a desperate one, but, just as instinctively, he felt certain that no matter what the horror he had run from, he was more sinned against than sinning. Every line in the boy's fragile, pathetic figure went straight to the older man's heart. It came to him, almost joyously, that there had been premonition in his strange mood of longing for a son. As an end to this nerve-racking night, there was work to do--for the remainder of it, at least for a brief moment, he had a companion in his grim, empty house.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed aloud.

"Thank God! Thank God!"

The young man had spoken, and Mr. Montagu, as he heard the words, remembered that between the sobs there had been, in faint, broken syllables, "My God! My God!" again and again, and that he had understood at last what it was to hear that from a man who was neither ruined by the Stock Exchange nor the weak victim of childish terror. But now, this repetition of his varied expression startled him. It was like an echo of himself.

Again he shook himself together. If the boy could speak, it was time to question him. He had not yet seen his face, beyond a flashing imprint on his brain of a look of terrific fear and terrific exultation as it had dashed past him, but he was prepared to like it. He braced himself, walked over and stood in front of the chair. With an object--even this object--to justify it, he gladly surrendered himself now to the fatherly instinct he had so bitterly struggled against, and he felt that he would like, with his first words, to put his hand reassuringly on the crumpled shoulder. But the night had left his nerves still raw--in his sensitivity he could not bear the thought that the trembling figure would shrink from his touch, and he kept his hand firmly at his side.

"My boy," he said gently, "you mustn't be afraid of me. Tell me what you've done."

The young man raised his head, sank back in the chair, and looked at him.

Not once in the long evening of lonely terror, not when he had first heard himself talking aloud, not when he had dashed at his wife's portrait, not when he had faced the thought of madness, had Mr. Montagu had such a shock. An eternally lost soul, a damned thing staring at paradise, seemed to gaze at him out of the boy's eyes. He thought he was seeing all the sins of the world in them, yet the look was appallingly innocent. He seemed to be discovering those sins in the dark, ravening eyes, but to be feeling them in himself as if the forgotten, ignored innermost of his own life were quaking with guilt under the spell of this staring presence. In the state of horrified sympathy to which it had precipitated him, he morbidly felt almost responsible for the brooding evil in the boy as well as aghast at it. But even this sense of sin, implying as it did a skeleton of naked, primal right and wrong seemed of small import to his astounded mind beside the nameless, unmentionable sorrow that pervaded the face and stabbed at Henry Montagu's heart. He knew without question that he was looking at tragedy--worse than he had supposed the world could hold or any human thing, in any world, be subject to. It was a man's face in every line and poise and suggestion, but for all its frightful knowledge he had to call it beautiful--the clear-cut word "handsome" ran away from it like a mouse into a hole, leaving it a superb horror that, as soon as his paralyzed muscles could respond to his instinct, drove his hand to his face to shut away the deliberate, searching gaze.

"Done?" answered the young fellow at last. "What have I done? _Good God!_"

For the third time, it was one of his own three exclamations totally new to him that night, and the coincidence drove home to him, this time, with a sense of omen. But his guest was speaking again, and, forcing himself to look calmly at the tragic face he listened breathlessly.

"I've done a thing never accomplished in human life before, a thing more terrific than the world's entire history, from the moment of the first atom crawling on it has ever known!"

He could not have spoken more solemnly and convincingly if he had reverently murdered, one by one, a whole nation of people, and it was some such picture that came into Henry Montagu's mind as, shivering and fascinated, he watched him and listened.

But the young man said no more.

"If--if you will tell me what you've done," said Mr. Montagu haltingly, his pity sweeping every caution away, "or simply what you want of me, I will do anything for you that I possibly can."

"There is nothing in this world," answered the boy wearily, "that anybody can do for me." But suddenly, impulsively, he added: "There is just one thing, that you can do--not for me, but for yourself. Don't ask me questions. For your own sake don't!"

"But--" began Mr. Montagu.

"If you knew who I am or what I am, and what I've deliberately done," cried the boy, "you'd curse this night, and curse me, the longest day you lived! What--what is _your_ name?"

"Henry Montagu," said his host simply.

He pondered it. "That has a nice sound. I like it. And I--I like you. So don't ask me questions!"

The elder man was looking down at the thin white hands again, and the _naive_ comment brought a sudden contraction to his throat. "Poor little boy!" was on his lips, but an intuition like a woman's warned him that the words would make the desolate figure weep again, and his utmost strength quailed from the thought of seeing it, now that he had seen the face. As the white hands clasped themselves together, he had seen that the under sides of the wrists were bruised and dark. Facially, nothing could have been more unlike than this youth to the paint and plaster symbols that crowded before him from his memory, yet the red drops that he had seen drip to the floor, the wickedness and waste that he seemed to expiate and represent, the whole obvious torment of his being, had forced a simile upon him which he now blurted out.

"Whoever and whatever you are, whatever terrible thing you've done, I only know that you make me think of--of--Oh, the crown of thorns, the cross--you know what I mean!"

"Some one with a crown of thorns?" said the young man wonderingly. "Who was that?"

Mr. Montagu stared at him incredulously. That any man, no matter how base a criminal, and one, indeed, who had cried out again and again the name of God, should not know the story and the name of God's son, astonished him, for the moment, more than anything yet had done.

"Oh, yes, yes, I remember now," continued the boy. "Yes, that was very, very sad. But I'm selfish and preoccupied with my own dreadful trouble, and that whole history, tragic as it was, was a very happy one compared with mine!"

With a cold shudder, Henry Montagu believed him. He realized that as yet he had done nothing for him. Food and drink had occurred to him, but in the minutes that they had passed together the stranger had grown more virile. He was no longer the incredible figure of wretchedness that had dashed into the room. He was sitting forward in the chair now, his eyes on the portrait.

"Is that your wife?" he asked.

"My--my dead wife," answered Mr. Montagu.

His own eyes reverting again and again to the lacerated wrists, he did not see the changing expressions in his visitor's as they studied the eyes of the portrait; but as the boy now leaped impulsively to his feet he saw in them a fierce gleam that was like the hatred of a maniac. He thrilled with renewed terror as the boy once more sprang to him like an animal, and with a growl in his throat rushed toward the portrait.

"Stop!" he shouted, and the boy almost cringed to a halt in the middle of the floor.

When, after his first chill of horror at the act itself, Henry Montagu realized that the desecration was his own thought, his own impulse carried into fierce determination, he sank weak and dizzy into the chair that the boy had left. But again he mastered his frightened mind and thrust away from it the sinister oppression of omen and coincidence. Unwillingly but helplessly, he was letting into his thoughts the theory that, after he had opened the door instead of before he had opened it, the room had been harboring a maniac. And the theory stabbed him. A mushroom growth of tenderness had germinated in his pity and was growing nearer and nearer to a personal liking for the beautiful, pathetic figure of youth that stood before him, wilted and helpless again, in the center of the room.

"My boy," he said quietly, "I ought to resent that but strangely enough I don't find myself resenting the idea of your taking strange liberties in my house. In fact, I--I had that same impulse. I nearly did that myself, just before you burst in here."

The young man looked at him in amazement.

"_You_ were going to turn--Mrs. Montagu's picture to the wall? Wh--why, you old dirty beast!"

To Henry Montagu there was no vulgarity in the words. Their huge reproach of him drove every other quality out of them and a deep color into his face.

"But I--I quelled the impulse. And y--you would actually have done it!" he stammered.

"I had a reason and a right to!" cried the young man. "I'd never seen it before and if it repelled me I had a right never to look at it again! But she was _your wife_!"

Once more he stood, his eyes avoiding the portrait and wandering hungrily about the rest of the beautiful room.

"Well," he said, after a few moments, "good-by!" And he walked toward the door.

"Stop!" cried Mr. Montagu again. He sat forward on the edge of the chair, trembling. After hours of successive surprises, the simple announcement of his visitor's departure had struck him cold with the accumulated force of his past lonely terror and his present intense curiosity. Again the boy had obeyed his command with a visible shiver, and it hurt the older man by recalling to him the suggestion of crime, of the place and the tragedy he must have escaped from, the unknown cloud he was under. But however involved in the horrible he might become by detaining him, shaken and filled with inexplicable grief as he was by his presence, worst of all was the fear of being alone again after a frightful, brief adventure in his life, vanished and unexplained. He wanted to reassure and comfort the wavering, sorrowful boy, but all he could stammer in apology for his shout was: "Wh--where are you going?"

"What difference does it make to _you_ where I go?" asked the boy drearily. "If you must know, I'm going to Maurice's."

Mr. Montagu sprang to his feet. With bitten lips he kept himself silent at this final thrust of the hypernatural, but the damp beads had returned to his brow. His terror lasted only a moment, and in his resurging desire to hold back the boy, he demanded both curiously and assertively:

"What are you going to _Maurice's_ for?"

He had not supposed that there was a particle of color in the pitiful face, but as the boy answered, a delicate flesh-tint seemed to leave it, turning him deathly white.

"I--I want to look at the women," he said.

At his agitation and pallor, the hectic whisper of his voice, above all, the light of fiendish hate that leapt into his beautiful eyes and ravaged their look, a physical sensation crept through the older man from head to foot and held him motionless.

But it was not horror at the boy himself. As he stood there wan and shivering before him, every best instinct in Henry Montagu rushed uppermost, and he felt that he would give anything in his life, gladly devote, if not actually give, that life itself, to set the boy right with the world. And with his terror gone and his horror going, he impulsively walked across the room and stood between him and the door.

"Why do you leave me this way? You mustn't mind what I say to you or how I say it, for it can't be any more abrupt or strange than the way you came here. I don't want you to go to Maurice's. And if you do, I'm going with you."

"No! No!" cried the boy fearfully.

"I don't want you to leave me. I want you to confide in me. I want you to trust me, and to tell me, without fear, what it is you've done."

"No, no, no, no! Don't ask me to!" cried the boy.

"I do ask you to. I have some right to know. I'd be justified in detaining you if I wanted to--"

"You couldn't!" cried the trembling youth passionately.

"I said I'd be _justified_. Are _you_, in dashing like a shot into my life and then leaving me without a word to explain it? I've played host to you gladly, though you've torn my nerves to pieces. Remember how you came here!"

"Yes! Yes!" ejaculated the boy bitterly. "I'm an intruder! I forced myself on you and I know it! God knows I know it!"

"I didn't mean it unkindly. I tell you, I want you to _stay_! I want you to, no matter what you are or what you've done. You've admitted that you've done something--something terrific--"

"And I have!" cried the boy, his eyes lighting wildly. "At last, at last! I've done it, I've _done_ it!"

"And in spite of it, I want you to stay! Whatever it is, I want to protect you from the consequences of it!"

"Look to yourself!" cried the boy. "You'll curse me yet for coming here! Let me go, and protect _yourself_!"

"I am no longer considering myself, I've done that too much in my life, and to-night I'm reckless. No matter _what_ the crime you've done--"

"Crime?" His visitor flashed wondering eyes upon him. "You fool! You fool!" Again, the exclamation was like an echo of himself, but Mr. Montagu had no time to entertain the thought, for the boy was stammering out his astonishment in hysterical syllables. "I--a criminal! _I_--I--Oh, I might have _known_ it would seem that way to you! But _I_--"

Again under the penetrating gaze his host felt himself morbidly guilty, but there was a thrill of gladness in his heart that now welcomed the grim alternative of the boy's simple madness.

"Stay with me!" he cried. "Sleep here, and rest, and then--"

"Let me go to Maurice's!" cried the boy desperately. "You'll regret it if you don't! Oh, for the pity of God, for pity of _yourself_, let me leave you while I still _offer_ to leave you!"

Mr. Montagu backed himself against the door.

"Why do you want to go there?" he demanded. "What is it you want to look at the women in Maurice's for?"

The boy hung fire under the determined voice.

"The--the women who go to Maurice's are--are--of a--certain _kind_, aren't they?"

"Some of them--most of them," said Mr. Montagu. "If you've never been there, why do you want so to go? They're not unusual; simply--painted women."

"Painted?" repeated the boy in astonishment. He turned to the portrait. "_That's_ a painted woman, too. Aren't they _alive_ at Maurice's?"

In his marvel at the enormous innocence of it, Mr. Montagu wondered, for the first time, what the young man's age could definitely be, but in a moment he remembered the one pitiful way to account for the pathetic question, and his voice was very gentle as he said:

"My boy, if you have your heart set on going to Maurice's, you shall go. But surely, after this mysterious time together in my house, and knowing that whatever you may be I welcome your companionship, you won't refuse my request to let me go with you? To say that I've enjoyed it would be to put a queer word to a terrible business that I have no way of understanding. But until you came I was bitterly, hungrily lonely--"

"Don't! Don't!" cried the boy. He had begun to tremble at the earnest tenderness of the voice. "I can't bear it! You don't know what you're talking about! Oh! let me go to Maurice's, and let me go alone! If you insist on going with me I can't stop you--"

"I do insist," said Mr. Montagu.

"But I can plead with you not to! And I can warn you what the price will be! Oh--" and he stretched out his hands in so imploring a gesture that his host could see the dull, dried blood of his cruelly injured wrists--"for God's sake, for _God's_ sake, believe what I tell you! _If you leave this house with me to-night, you're lost!_ Oh, God, God, I see you don't believe me! Tell me this, I beg of you, I demand of you--did you _feel_ that I was in the hall to-night, before you opened the door?"

"Yes," said Mr. Montagu.

"Had I made any noise?"

"No."

"Then I can prove to you that I know what I'm saying! I _did_ that! I _made_ you feel me! Till after you let me in, I wasn't strong enough to make a sound! Yet I made you know I was there! Am I telling the truth, then? When I started to leave you, and now, even now, in warning you I was doing, I _am_ doing, a more unselfish thing, a decenter thing, than any you've ever done in all your years of life! It's because I like you more than I want to! I'm unselfish, I tell you! I _wanted_ you to go to Maurice's with me! I intended to make you, as I made you let me in! But if you do, you'll find me out! I'll tell you! I won't be able to conceal it! You'll know the truth about me! You've said all this was mysterious--for your own sake, let it stay so! You needn't think all truths are beautiful, and the truth about me is the most ghastly in the universe!"

"I _want_ to find you out," said Mr. Montagu, steadying his voice. "I want to know the truth."

"By that cross and crown of thorns that mean so much to you and nothing at all to me," implored the boy, "_don't go!_ I swear to you, _mine is a more terrible secret than any living heart has ever held!_ You'll hate me, and I don't want you to! Oh, _while_ I don't, while I'm _merciful_ to you, believe me, and let me go alone! No loneliness that _you_ could ever suffer would equal the price that you will pay if you go with me!"

Though the sense of horror sweeping indomitably through him was worse than any he had felt before, Mr. Montagu's answer was deliberate and resolute:

"I told myself only a few minutes ago that I would sacrifice anything in my life, almost my life itself, to--well, to this. Do you mean that the price would be--my--death?"

He threw every possible significance demandingly into the word, and the boy's voice was suddenly quiet in its tensity as he gazed back at him.

"It would be worse than death," he said solemnly. "If you let me go, and face your loneliness here, there's a chance for you, though I've warned you as it is. If you leave the house with me to-night, you're as lost as I am, and I am irretrievably damned and always have been damned. As truly as you see me standing before you now, the price is--madness."

"Come," said Mr. Montagu, and without another word he opened the door.

At Maurice's, Mr. Montagu led the way to the far side of the big room, threading in a zigzag through the gleam of bright silver, the glitter of white linen, the crimson of deep carnations. Maurice's in its own way was admirably tasteful; as distinctively quiet and smooth in its manners and rich hangings as it was distinctly loud in its lights and ragged in its music. No after-theatre corner of Broadway had a crisper American accent of vice, or displayed vice itself more delicately lacquered. The place was as openly innocent as a street, with a street's sightless and irresponsible gaze for what occurred in it. And nothing remarkable occurred, save the fungus growth of what was to occur elsewhere.