The night before, at the first intelligence of it, M. P. came nearer to giving up the ghost than is commonly advisable. Suffocation seized him.
An incubus within was pushing his life-springs out. So can emotion and an impaired digestion affect a father. The emotion was not caused by grief. It was fear. For weeks, for months, during the tedium and terror of the trial, his name, Paliser, would top the page! It had topped it before, very often, but that was years ago. Then he had not cared. Then the wine of youth still bubbled. No, he had not cared. But that was long ago. Since then the wine of youth had gone, spilled in those orgies which he had survived, yet, in the survival, abandoned more and more to solitude and making him seek, what the solitary ever do seek, inconspicuousness. For years he had courted obscurity as imbeciles court fame. And now!
If only the boy had had the decency to die of pneumonia!
It was then the incubus gripped him. For a second he saw the visage, infinitely consoling, that Death can display and possibly, but for an immediate drug, there too would have echoed the _Terra addio_!
He was then in white velvet. A preparation of menthe, dripping from a phial, spotted it green. He did not notice. At the moment the spasm had him. Then as that clicked and pa.s.sed, he looked in the expressionless face of the butler who had told him.
The spasm had shaken him into a chair.
The room, an oblong, was furnished after a fashion of long ago. The daised bed was ascended by low, wide steps. Beyond stood a table of lapis-lazuli. A mantel of the same material was surmounted by a mirror framed in jasper. Beneath the mirror, a fire burned dimly. The lights too were dim. They were diffused by tall wax candles that stood shaded in high gold sticks. On the table there were three of them.
The chair was near this table, at which M. P. had been occupied very laboriously, in doing nothing, a task that he performed in preparation for the bed, which was always ready for him, and for sleep, which seldom was. There he had been told. It had shaken him to his feet, shaken apoplexy at him and shaken him back in the chair.
Now, as he looked at the servant"s wooden mask, for a moment he relived an age, not a pleasant one either and of which this blow, had he known it, was perhaps the karma. He did not know it. He knew nothing of karma.
None the less, with that curious intuition which the great crises induce, he too divined the woman and wished to G.o.d that he had kept his hands off, wished that he had not interfered and told Monty to put her in a flat and be d.a.m.ned to her! It was she, he could have sworn it. At once, precisely as he wished he had let her alone, he hoped and quite as fervently that she had covered her tracks, that there would be no trial, nothing but inept conjectures and that forgetfulness in which all things, good and bad, lose their way.
The futility of wishing pa.s.sed. The time for action had come. He motioned. "Is Benny here?"
"He left this noon, sir."
"Did he say anything?"
The butler did not know whether to lie or not, but seeing no personal advantage in either course, he hedged. "Very little, sir."
That little, the old man weighed. A little is often enough. It may be too much.
"He spoke about a girl, eh?"
"He said a lady was stopping there. Yes, sir."
"What else?"
The butler shuffled. "He said she was very pretty, sir."
"Go on, Canlon."
"Well, sir, it seems there was a joke about it. The young lady thought she was married."
"How was that?"
"I"m not supposed to know, sir. But from what was let on, Benny was rigged out as a dominie and it made "em laugh."
The old man ran his head out like a turtle. "d.a.m.nation, what has that to do with it?"
"Why, sir, he pretended to marry her."
"Benny did?"
"Yes, sir."
"He pretended that she was his wife."
"No, sir, he pretended to marry her to Mr. Monty."
"Good G.o.d!" the old man muttered and sank back. The blackness was blacker than any black he had entered. In days gone by, he had agreeably shocked New York with the splendid uproar of his orgies. He had left undone those things which he ought to have done and done those things which he should have avoided. He had been whatever you like--or dislike--but never had he been dishonest. Little that would avail him now. If this turpitude were published, it would be said that he had fathered it. At the prospect, he felt the incubus returning. In a moment it would have him and, spillingly, he drank the green drug.
The agony receded, but the nightmare confronted him. He grappled with it.
"The coat I had on at dinner. There is a card-case in the pocket. Give it to me."
Probably it was all very useless. Probably no matter what he contrived, the police would ferret her out. There was just one chance though which, properly taken, might save the situation.
The card-case, pale damask, lined with pale silk, the man brought him.
He put it on the table.
"Canlon!"
"Yes, sir."
"Benny said nothing."
"Very good, sir."
"I have a few hundred for you here, between eight and nine, I think."
"Thank you, sir."
"To-morrow there will be more."
"I am sure I am very grateful, sir."
"Don"t interrupt me. Recently my son returned from Cuba. Occasionally he went visiting. Where he went, he did not tell you. That is all you know.
You know nothing else. You heard nothing. n.o.body here heard anything.
n.o.body, in this house, knows anything at all. You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then see to it. The police will come. You must be at the door. You know now what to say. They will want a word with me. I am too prostrated to see anybody."
"Thank you, sir."
"Telephone to the Place. Get Benny. Repeat my orders. Say I will do as well by him as I shall by you."
"Thank you, sir."
"Take the money. You may have the case also."