Part 3

When he recovered his senses, it would be difficult to shoot effectively in the dark, for this was not the gloom of night--it was an absolute void, black, thick, impenetrable. She could not make out her hand at the slightest distance from her eyes. He might even attack her from behind and knock the revolver from her hand before she could shoot. Sooner or later the man must die. Even if she did not kill him it would be accomplished by the command of the prince at the end of the three days.

Far better that it should be done at once--that he should never awaken from his sleep. She reached the decision calmly and crept forward to him. Very lightly she passed her hand over his clothes. She had to move his arm to uncover the breast over his heart; the arm was a limp weight, but the muscles were firm, round, and solid. The first qualm troubled her as she realized that this must be a young man, at least a man in the prime of his physical strength.

Then it occurred to her that often bullets fired into the breast are deflected from the heart by bones; it would be far more certain to lay the muzzle against the temple--press the trigger--the soul would depart.

The soul! She paused with a thrill of wonder. A little touch would loose the swift spirit. The soul! For the first time she saw the tragedy from the viewpoint of the unknown man. His life was cut in the middle; truly a blind fate had reached out and chosen him from a whole city. Yet she was merely hastening the inevitable. She reached out and found his forehead.

It was broad and high. Tracing it lightly with the tips of her fingers she discovered two rather prominent lumps of bony structure over the eyes. Some one had told her that this represented a strong power of memory. She tried to visualize that feature alone, and very suddenly, as a face shows when a man lights his cigarette on the street at night, she saw in memory the figure of Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Young Painter." He sits at his drawing board, his pencil poised, ready for the stroke which shall give vital character to his sketch. There is only one high light, falling on the lower part of the face. Inspiration has tightened the sensitive mouth; the questing eyes peer out from the shadow of the soft cap. She broke off from her vision to realize with a start that when she touched the trigger she would be stepping back through the centuries and killing her dream of the original of Rembrandt's picture. A foolish fancy, truly, but in the dark a dream may be as true, as vivid as reality.

The unconscious man sighed. She leaned close and listened to his breathing, soft, hurried, irregular as if he struggled in his sleep, as if the subconscious mind were calling to the conscious: "Awake! Death is here!"

At least there was plenty of time. She need not fire the shot until he moved. She laid the revolver on her lap and absently allowed her hands to wander over his face, lingering lightly on each feature. She grew more alert after a moment. Every particle of her energy was concentrated on seeing that face--on seeing it through her sense of touch. The blind, she knew, grow so dextrous that the delicate nerves of their finger tips record faces almost as accurately as the eyes of the normal person.

Ah, for one moment of that power! She tried her best. The nose, she told herself, was straight and well modeled. The eyes, for she traced the bony structure around them, must be large; the cheek bones high, a sign of strength; the chin certainly square and prominent; the lips full and the mouth rather large; the hair waving and thick; the throat large. One by one she traced each detail and then, moving both hands rather swiftly over the face, she strove to build the mental picture of the whole--and she achieved one, but still it was always the young painter whom great Rembrandt had drawn. The illusion would not go out of her mind.

An artist's hands, it is said, must be strong and sinewy. She took these hands and felt the heavy bones of the wrist and strove to estimate the length of the fingers. It seemed to her that this was an ideal hand for a painter--it must be both strong and supple.

He sighed again and stirred; she caught up the weapon with feverish haste and poised it.

"Ah, it is well," said the sleeper in his dream.

She made sure that he was indeed unconscious and then leaned low, whispering: "Adieu, my dear."

At some happy vision he laughed softly. His breath touched her face. Surely he could never know; he had so short a moment left for living; perhaps this would pass into his latest dream on earth and make it happy.

"Adieu!" she whispered again, and her lips pressed on his.

She laid the muzzle of the revolver against his temple, and, summoning all her will power, she pressed the trigger. It seemed as if she were pulling against it with her full strength, and yet there was no report. Then she realized that all her might was going into an inward struggle. She summoned to her aid the voice of the prince as he had said: "We put a mask on nature and call it love; we name an abstraction and call it God. _Le Dieu, c'est moi!_" She placed the revolver against the temple of the sleeper; he stirred and disturbed the surety of her direction. She adjusted the weapon again.

Up sprang the man, shouting: "Treason! Help!"

Then he stood silent a long moment; perhaps he was rehearsing the scene of his seizure.

"This is death," he muttered at last, "and I am in hell. I have always known what it would be--dark--utter and bitter loss of light."

As his hand moved, the chain rattled. He sprang back with such violence that his lunging weight jerked her to her feet.

"It is useless to struggle," she cried.

"A woman! Where am I?"

"You are lost."

"But what has happened? In God's name, _madame_, are we chained together?"

"We are."

"By whose power? By whose right and command?"

"By one against whom we cannot appeal."

"My crime?"

"None."

"For how long--"

"Three days."

He heaved a great sigh of relief.

"It is merely some practical joke, I see. That infernal Franz, I knew he was meditating mischief! Three days--and then free?"

"Yes, for then you die."

Once more he was silent.

Then: "This is a hideous dream. I will waken from it at once--at once. My dear lady--"

She heard him advancing.

"Keep the chain taut, sir, I am armed; I will fire at the slightest provocation."

He stopped and laughed.

"Come, come! This is not so bad. You have been smiling in your sleep at me. Up with the lights, my dear. If Franz has engaged you for this business, let me tell you that I'm a far better fellow than he must have advertised me. But what a devil he is to rig up such an elaborate hoax! By Jove, this chain--this darkness--it's enough to turn a fellow's hair white! The black night gets on my nerves. Lights! Lights! I yearn to see you; I prophesy your beauty by your voice! Still coy? Then we'll try persuasion!"

His breast struck the muzzle of the revolver.

She said quietly: "If I move my finger a fraction of an inch you die, sir. And every word I have spoken to you is the truth."

"Well, well! You do this finely. I shall compliment Franz on rehearsing you so thoroughly. Is this the fair Daphne of whom he told me--"

And his hand touched her shoulder.

"By everything that is sacred, I will fire unless you stand back--back to the end of the chain."

"Is it possible? The Middle Ages have returned!"

He moved back until the light chain was taut.

"My mind whirls. I try to laugh, but your voice convinces me. _Madame_, will you explain my situation in words of one syllable?"

"I have explained it already. You are imprisoned in a place from which you cannot escape. You will be confined here, held to me by this chain, for three days. At the end of that time you die."

"Will you swear this is the truth?"

"Name any oath and I will repeat it."

"There's no need," he said. "No, it cannot be a jest. Franz would never risk the use of a drug, wild as he is. Some other power has taken me. What reason lies behind my arrest?"

"Think of it as a blind and brutal hand which required a victim and reached out over the city to find one. The hand fell upon you. There is no more to say. You can only resign yourself to die an unknown death."

He said at last: "Not unknown, thank God. I have something which will live after me."

Her heart leaped, for she was seeing once more the artist from Rembrandt's brush.

"Yes, your paintings will not be forgotten."

"I feel that they will not, and the name of--"

"Do not speak of it!"

"Why?"

"I must not hear your name."

"But you know it already. You spoke of my painting."

"I have never seen your face; I have never heard your name; you were brought to me in this room darkened as you find it now."

"Yet you knew--"

Her voice was marvelously low: "I touched your face, sir, and in some way I knew."

After a time he said: "I believe you. This miracle is no greater than the others. But why do you not wish to know my name?"

"I may live after you, and when I see your pictures I do not wish to say: 'This is his work; this is his power; this is his limitation.' Can you understand?"

"I will try to."

"I sat beside you while you were unconscious, and I pictured your face and your mind for myself. I will not have that picture reduced to reality."

"It is a delicate fancy. You are blind? You see by the touch of your hands?"

"I am not blind, but I think I have seen your face through the touch."

"Here! I have stumbled against two chairs. Let us sit down and talk. I will slide this chair farther away if you wish. Do you fear me?"

"No, I think I am not afraid. I am only very sad for you. Listen: I have laid down the revolver. Is that rash?"

"_Madame_, my life has been clean. Would I stain it now? No, no! Sit here--so! My hand touches yours--you are not afraid?--and a thrill leaps through me. Is it the dark that changes all things and gives eyes to your imagination, or are you really very beautiful?"

"How shall I say?"

"Be very frank, for I am a dying man, am I not? And I should hear the truth."

"You are a profound lover of the beautiful?"

"I am a painter, _madame_."

She called up the image of her face--the dingy brown hair, long and silken, to be sure; the colorless, small eyes; the common features which the first red-skinned farmer's daughter could overmatch.

"Describe me as you imagine me. I will tell you when you are wrong."

"May I touch you, _madame_, as you touched me? Or would that trouble you?"

She hesitated, but it seemed to her that the questing eyes of Rembrandt's portrait looked upon her through the dark--eyes reverent and eager at once.

She said: "You may do as you will."

His unmanacled hand went up, found her hair, passed slowly over its folds.

"It is like silk to the touch, but far more delicate, for there is life in every thread of it. It is abundant and long. Ah, it must shine when the sun strikes upon it! It is golden hair, _madame_, no pale-yellow like sea-sand, but glorious gold, and when it hangs across the whiteness of your throat and bosom the hearts of men stir. Speak! Tell me I have named it!"

She waited till the sob grew smaller in her throat.

"Yes, it is golden hair," she said.

"I could not be wrong."

His hand passed down her face, fluttering lightly, and she sensed the eagerness of every touch. Cold fear took hold of her lest those searching fingers should discover the truth.

"Your eyes are blue. Yes, yes! Deep-blue for golden hair. It cannot be otherwise. Speak."

"God help me!"

"_Madame?_"

"I have been too vain of my eyes, sir. Yes, they are blue."

The fingers were on her cheeks, trembling on her lips, touching chin and throat.

"You are divine. It was foredoomed that this should be! Yes, my life has been one long succession of miracles, but the greatest was reserved until the end. I have followed my heart through the world in search of perfect beauty and now I am about to die, I find it. Oh, God! For one moment with canvas, brush, and the blessed light of the sun! It cannot be! No miracle is complete; but I carry out into the eternal night one perfect picture. Canvas and paint? No, no! Your picture must be drawn in the soul and colored with love. The last miracle and the greatest! Three days? No, three ages, three centuries of happiness, for are you not here?"

Who will say that there is not an eye with which we pierce the night? To each of these two sitting in the utter dark there came a vision. Imagination became more real than reality. He saw his ideal of the woman, that picture which every man carries in his heart to think of in the times of silence, to see in every void. And she saw her ideal of manly power. The dark pressed them together as if with the force of physical hands. For a moment they waited, and in that moment each knew the heart of the other, for in that utter void of light and sound, they saw with the eyes of the soul and they heard the music of the spheres.

Then she seemed to hear the voice of the prince: "You should be grateful to me. Trust me, child, I am bringing you that love of which you dreamed. _Le Dieu, c'est moi!_"

Yes, it was the voice of doom which had spoken from those sardonic lips. The dark which annihilates time made their love a century old.

"In all the world," she whispered, "there is one man for every woman. It is the hand of Heaven which gives me to you."

"Come closer--so! And here I have your head beside mine as God foredoomed. Listen! I have power to look through the dark and to see your eyes--how blue they are!--and to read your soul beneath them. We have scarcely spoken a hundred words and yet I see it all. Through a thousand centuries our souls have been born a thousand times and in every life we have met, and known--"

And through the utter dark, the merciful dark, the deep, strong music of his voice went on, and she listened, and forgot the truth and closed her eyes against herself.

* * * * *

On the night which closed the third day the prince approached the door of the sealed room. To the officer of the secret police, who stood on guard, he said: "Nothing has been heard."

"Early this afternoon there were two shots, I think."

"Nonsense. There are carpenters doing repair work on the floor above. You mistook the noise of their hammers."

He waved the man away, and as he fitted the key into the lock he was laughing softly to himself: "Now for the revelation, the downward head, the shame. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

He opened the door and flashed on his electric lantern. They lay upon a couch wrapped in each other's arms. He had shot her through the heart and then turned the weapon on himself; his last effort must have been to draw her closer. About them was wrapped the chain, idle and loose. Surely death had no sting for them and the grave no victory, for the cold features were so illumined that the prince could hardly believe them dead.

He turned the electric torch on the painter. He was a man about fifty, with long, iron-gray hair, and a stubble of three days' growth covering his face. It was a singularly ugly countenance, strong, but savagely lined, and the forehead corrugated with the wrinkles of long, mental labor. But death had made Bertha beautiful. Her eyes under the shadow of her lashes, seemed a deep-sea blue, and her loose, brown hair, falling across the white throat and breast, seemed almost golden under the light of the torch. A draft from the open door moved the hair and the heart of the prince stirred in him.

He strove to loosen the arms of the painter, but they were frozen stiff by death.

"She was a fool, and the loss is small," sighed the prince. "After all, perhaps God was nearer than I thought. I bound them together with a chain. He saw my act and must have approved, for see! He has locked them together forever. Well, after all--_le Dieu, c'est moi!_"

THIRD TALE

PLUMB NAUSEATED

BY E. K. MEANS

I.

"Yes, suh, I feels plum' qualified to take on a wife."

The black negro blushed to a darker hue and his face shone like polished ebony in the blazing August sun. In his embarrassment he twisted his shapeless wool hat into a wad, thrust it under his arm like a bundle, turned his back upon the white man's quizzical eyes, and sat down upon the lowest step of the porch.

At the feet of the white man lay half a dozen pairs of handcuffs. He stooped and picked up a pair which showed rusty in the bright light, rubbed the rust off with sand-paper, squirted some oil into the mechanism from a little can, and busied himself for a few minutes seeing that his police hardware was in good condition.

The sheriff remained silent for so long that the negro imagined he had been forgotten. Then Flournoy fired a question so unexpectedly that the black man winced: "What's your name?"

"Dey calls me Plaster Sickety."

"Gosh!" the sheriff exploded. "Can any woman be induced to exchange a perfectly decent name for a smear like that?"

"Suttinly," the negro grinned. "Dat gal's name ain't so awful cute. Dey calls her Pearline Flunder."

"Plaster Sickety and Pearline Flunder--help, everybody! What sort of children will issue from a matrimonial alliance of such names?"

"I reckin our chillun will all be borned Huns, Marse John; but I cain't he'p it."

Under his manipulation the sheriff's worn handcuffs took on a polish like new. At intervals he glanced up from his task to see the sunlight spraying from the pecan-trees like water and the heat rising from the ground, visible as a boiling cloud. Once he heard an eagle scream, and glanced toward the Little Mocassin swamp to behold a black speck sail into the haze that hung like a curtain of purple and gold upon the horizon. The negro sat motionless except for glowing black eyes restless as mercury and all-perceiving.

Suddenly the bear-trap mouth of the big sheriff twisted into a little smile.

"How'd you like to give your girl one of these things for a wedding-present, Plaster?" he asked, as he tossed a polished pair of handcuffs on the step beside the negro.

"I's kinder pestered in my mind 'bout gittin' a fitten weddin'-present, Marse John, but--" Plaster rose to his feet and returned the manacles without completing his sentence.

"How much money have you got?" Flournoy asked.

"I ain't got none till yit."

"How you going to buy the license? How you going to pay the preacher?" Flournoy asked.

"Dat's whut I come to git a view from you about, Marse John. All de cullud folks gives you a rep dat you is powerful good to niggers an' I figgered dat you an' me mought fix up some kind of shake-down so I could git married 'thout costin' me nothin'."

"Don't you ever read the Bible?" Flournoy growled. "Even Adam's wife cost him a bone."

"Yes, suh," the negro grinned. "But I figger ef Sheriff Flournoy had been aroun' anywheres at dat time, maybe Adam would 'a' got off a whole lot cheaper."

"Have you got a job to support your wife?" Flournoy asked.

"Naw, suh."

"Have you got a house to live in?"

"Naw, suh."

"Where are you going to live with her--in a hollow sycamore-tree?"

"Yes, suh, I reckin so--dat is, excusin' ef you don't he'p us none."

"Where are you two idiots going to derive your sustenance--from the circumambient atmosphere?"

"Dat's de word, Marse John--dat is, excusin' ef you don't loant us a hand in our troubles," the negro murmured, wondering what the sheriff's big talk meant.

"Do you love this black girl very much?" the sheriff asked with that odd turn of tone with which every man speaks of love when he is in love with love.

"Boss," the black man answered in a voice which throbbed, "I been lovin' dat gal ever since she warn't no bigger dan--dan--dan a June-bug whut had visited accidental a woodpecker prayer-meetin'."

"Is she good to look at, Plaster?" Flournoy smiled.

"Well, suh, I cain't lie to no white man, Marse John; an' I tells you honest--she looks a whole heap better at night in de dark of de moon."

"If she ain't a good-looker, why do you love her?" Flournoy asked without a smile.

"She's good sense an' jedgment, Marse John," the black man answered earnestly. "An'--an'--I jes' nachelly loves her."

Flournoy studied a moment, twisting a pair of steel handcuffs in his giant hands. Finally he spoke:

"Plaster, I have a cabin down on the Coolie Bayou which I have given to three young married couples in succession on the condition that they live there in peace and amity one year."

"Yes, suh."

"Every couple broke up and got a divorce within nine months."

"Too bad, Marse John, dat's mighty po' luck."

"You niggers think you love each other until you get hitched and then you don't stay hitched."

"Some shorely don't--dey don't fer a fack."

"Now I make you and Pearline Flunder this offer. I will buy your marriage license, pay Vinegar Atts to marry you, bear all the expense of a church wedding, give you a job so you can support your wife, and I will make you a present of that cabin down on the Coolie Bayou if you and your wife will live together for three days without busting up in a row."

"Three days, Marse John!" the negro howled. "Boss, I motions to make it thurty years!"

"No!" Flournoy snapped. "Three days!"

"I's willin', Marse John," the negro laughed, cutting a caper on the grass.

"All right!" the sheriff said as he stooped and picked up a pair of handcuffs. "Now listen: I intend to cut the little chain on these two manacles and attach each cuff to a ten-foot chain. When you and Pearline are married, I am going to put one of these manacles around her wrist and one around your wrist"--the negro showed the whites of his eyes--"and bind you two honey-loves together with a ten-foot chain." The negro looked behind him toward the gate and the public highway, took a tighter grip upon his hat, and made a furtive step backward. "You are to remain bound together for three days." The negro smiled and stepped forward. "At the end of that time you are to come here and report, and if you agree to spend the remainder of your life together, the cabin is yours!"

"Make it a two-feets chain, Marse John, so us kin git clost to each yuther," Plaster pleaded.

"What I have spoken I have spoken," Flournoy proclaimed autocratically. "Now, go tell your sweetheart all about it."

II.

The Big Four of Tickfall sat around a much bewhittled pine table in the Hen-Scratch saloon. The room was hazy with their tobacco smoke. Conversation languished. The session was about to adjourn until to-morrow at the same hour. Figger Bush laid his cigarette upon the edge of the table, lifted his head like a dog baying the moon, and chanted:

"O you muss be a lover of de landlady's daughter Or you cain't git a secont piece of pie!"

Before the other could catch the tune, the green-baize doors of the saloon were thrown open and a white man entered. Every negro looked up into that granite face with its deep-set eyes, iron jaw, and rugged lines of strength and purpose, and smiled a joyful welcome:

"Mawnin', Marse John. 'Tain't no use to come sheriffin' down dis way. No niggers ain't done nothin'."

"I am hunting for a Methodist clergyman of color," Flournoy grinned.

"Boss," Vinegar Atts chuckled as he rose to his feet, "I's de blackest an' best nigger preacher whut is, an' I b'lieves in de Mefdis doctrine of fallin' from grace an' grease. Ef you misdoubts my words, ax my wife. Dat ole woman admits dat fack herse'f."

"I want you to perform a wedding ceremony at the Shoofly Church to-night at seven o'clock," the sheriff announced.

Instantly the Rev. Vinegar Atts thrust both hands into the pockets of his trousers and brought his hands out, turning out the pockets and showing them empty.

"Dar now, Figger Bush!" Vinegar bellowed. "I tole you dat de good Lawd would pervide a way fer me to pay fer dem near-booze grape-juices I been guzzlin' in yo' sinful saloom! Five dollars will sottle wid you an' leave a few change over fer seegaws."