As Barstow went out, Donaldson crossed to the chemist"s desk. He fumbled nervously among the bottles until he found the little vial Barstow had pointed out. He had just time to thrust this into his pocket and reseat himself before Barstow returned. At the same moment there was a firm but decidedly feminine knock upon the outer door. The chemist seemed to recognize it, for instead of his usual impatient shout he went to the door and opened it. And yet, when the feeble light revealed his visitor he evinced surprise.
"What, you, Miss Arsdale?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_What, you, Miss Arsdale?_"]
"Yes, Professor," she answered, slightly out of breath. "I thought that if I hurried I might possibly find you here. I am all out of my brother"s medicine and I did not dare wait until to-morrow."
"I "m glad you did n"t," he responded heartily. "If you will sit down a moment I will prepare it."
Donaldson glanced up, irritated to think he had not left earlier and so escaped the inevitable introduction. He saw a young woman of perhaps twenty-two or three, and then--the young woman"s eyes. They were dark, but not black, a sort of silver black like gun metal. They were, he noted instantly, apparently more mature than the rest of her features, as is sometimes true when the soul grows out of proportion to the years. Her hair was of a reddish brown; brown in the shadows, a golden red as she stood beneath the gas-jet. She was a little below medium height, rather slight, and was dressed in a dark blue pongee suit, the coat of which reached to her ankles. One might expect most anything of her, thought Donaldson, child or woman. It would no more surprise one to see her in tears over a trifle than standing firm in a crisis; bending over a wisp of embroidery, or driving a sixty horse-power automobile. Of one thing Donaldson thought he could be sure; that whatever she did she would do with all her heart.
These and many other fugitive thoughts pa.s.sed through Donaldson"s brain during the few minutes he was left here alone with her. What was said he could not remember a minute afterwards; something of the night, something of the brilliant reflections of the gas-light in the varicolored bottles, something of the approaching summer. Her thoughts seemed to be as far removed from this small room as were his own.
"Your patient is better?" Barstow inquired, when he returned with the package.
Her face lightened instantly.
"Yes," she answered, "much better."
"Good." He added, "I should n"t think it safe for you to be out alone at night. Have n"t there been a good many highway robberies recently in your neighborhood?"
"You have heard?"
"It would be difficult to listen to the newsboys and not hear that.
The last one, a week ago, made the fourth, didn"t it?"
"I don"t know. I seldom read the papers. They are too horrible."
"I will gladly escort you if--"
"I could n"t think of troubling you," she protested, starting at once for the door. "I "m in the machine, so I "m quite safe. Good night."
With a nod and smile to both men she went out.
Donaldson himself prepared to go at once.
"Well, old man," he apologized nervously to the chemist, "pardon me for boring you so long. It is bad taste I know for a man to air such views as mine, but it has done me good."
"Take my advice and forget them yourself. Go into the country. Loaf a little in the sunshine. Stay a week. I "m going off for a while myself."
"You leave--"
"Within a few days, possibly. I can"t tell."
"Well, s" long and a pleasant trip to you."
Donaldson gripped the older man"s hand. The latter gazed at him affectionately, apprehensively.
"See here, Peter," he broke out earnestly. "There is one thing even better for you than the country, a thing that includes the sunshine and everything else worth while in life. I have hesitated about mentioning it, but this girl who was here made me think of it again. You know I "m not a sentimental man, Peter?"
"Unless you have changed. But your panacea?"
"Love."
"That"s a generic term."
"Just plain human love, love for a woman like this one who was here. I wish you knew her. She "d be good for you; she "d give your present self-centred life a broader meaning."
Donaldson turned away.
"Barstow," he replied uneasily, "you "re good,--good clear through, but we move in different worlds. It is n"t in me to love as you mean. I "m too critical, which is to say too selfish."
"I think you are selfish, Peter," Barstow agreed frankly, "but I don"t think it"s your nature. You "ve got into the Slough of Despond, and the only thing that will drag you out of that is love, love of something outside yourself. Try it."
Donaldson shook his head.
"You "re as good as gold," he declared, "but the things which content you and me are not the same. Good night."
"Good night. Be sure to drop in again when I get back."
Donaldson went out the door. He groped his way down the stairs into the street. Once he swung abruptly on his heel and stared at the pavement behind him. He thought he heard at his heels the scratching padded tread of the pup.
CHAPTER II
_King of To-day_
Donaldson pressed his way along the lighted streets, clutching the vial in his pocket with the thrill of a man holding the key to fretting shackles. One week of life with the future eliminated; one week with no reckoning to be made at the end; one week with every human fetter struck off; one week in which to ignore every curbing law of futurity and abandon himself to the joy of the present! The future--even the narrow bounds of an earthly future--holds men prisoners. A few careless dogs, to be sure, live their day, blind to the years to come, but that is brute stupidity. A few brave souls swagger through their prime with some bravado, knowing the final cost, but willing to pay it by installments through the dribbling years which follow; but the usury of time makes that folly. The wise choke such gypsy impulses--admit the mortgage of the Present to the Future--and surrender the brisk liberty of youth to the limping freedom of old age. But Donaldson was too thoughtful a man to belong to either the first or second cla.s.s and yet of too l.u.s.ty stuff to join the third.
There were now just two doubtful points which checked him in his first impulse to swallow the deadly elixir at once,--two questions needing further thought before he would have a clear conscience about it; he must convince himself a trifle more clearly that he shifted nothing to the load of those he left behind, and he must make sure that no element of fear entered into his act. That phrase of Barstow"s, "It"s quitting not to stay," smarted a bit.
In spite of these vital problems, Donaldson was keenly conscious, even with his wild freedom still nothing but a conception, of sharpened senses which responded keenly to the lights and sounds about him. This bottle which he held made him feel like some old time king"s messenger who carried a warrant making him exempt from local laws. He moved among people whose perplexed thoughts wandered restlessly down the everlasting vista of the days ahead, and he alone of them all knew the secret of being untroubled beyond the week. The world had not for ten years appeared so gay to him. He felt the exhilarating sting of life as he had when it first surged in upon him at twenty. The very fact that he held even a temporary solution to his barren days was enough. In the joy of his almost august scorn of circ.u.mstance he forgot the minor difficulties which still lay before him.
He turned aside from the direct course to his room into Broadway. It was the last of May and early evening. The month revealed itself in the warm night sky and the buoyant spirits of those below its velvet richness.
Spring was in the air--a stimulation as of etherialized champagne. The spirit of adventure, the spirit of renaissance, the spirit of creation was abroad once more. Not a cranny in even this sprawling section of denaturalized earth but thrilled for the time being with budding hopes, sap-swollen courage, and bright, colorful dreams. Walking beneath the spitting glare of the arc-lights, through the golden mist flooding from the store windows, Donaldson hazily saw again the careless unburdened world of his early youth. He caught the spirit of Broadway and all Broadway means in the spring. It was a marionette world where marionettes dance their gayest. Yesterday this would have been to him nothing but a dead bioscope picture; now, though he still sat an onlooker in the pit, it was a living human drama at which he gazed.
Two dark-haired grisettes pa.s.sed him, their cheeks aglow and their eyes dancing. They appeared so full of life, so very gay, that he turned to glance back at them. He found the eyes of the prettier one upon him; she had turned to look at him. It was long since even so trifling an intrigue as this had quickened his life.
As a matter of fact Donaldson always attracted more interest in feminine eyes than, in his self engrossment, he was ever aware. Even in his shiny blue serge suit, baggy at the knees and sagging at the shoulders, even in his shabby hat, he carried himself with an air. Two things about his person were always as fine and immaculate as though he were a gentleman of some fortune, his linen and his shoes. But in addition to such slight externals Donaldson, although not a large man, had good shoulders, a well-poised head, and walked with an Indian stride from the hips that made him noticeable among the flat-footed native New Yorkers. He might have been mistaken for an ambitious actor of the younger school; even for a forceful young cleric, save for the fact that he smoked his cigarette with evident satisfaction.
He followed an aimless course--but a course fairly p.r.i.c.kling with new sensations--until he stood before one of the popular cafes, now effervescing with sprightly life. He paused here a moment to listen to the music. A group of well-groomed men and women laughingly clambered out of a big touring car and pa.s.sed in before the obsequious attendants.
He watched them with some envy. Music, good food, good wines, laughter, and bright eyes--the flimsiest vanities of life to be sure--and yet there was something in his hungry heart that craved them all. Well, ten years from now perhaps,--his hand fell upon the vial. No. Not ten years from now, but to-morrow, even tomorrow, he might claim these luxuries!
He jumped on a car and in thirty minutes stood in the lean, quiet street into which for three years he had stared from his third floor room.
These quarters seemed now more than ever a parody on home. This row of genteel structures which had degenerated into boarding houses for the indigent and struggling younger generation, and the wrecks of the past, embodied, in even the blank stare of their exteriors, stupid mediocrity.
He fumbled nervously in his pocket for his latch-key, and opening the door climbed the three stale flights to his room. He lighted both gas-jets, but even then the gloom remained. He craved more light--the dazzling light of arc-lamps, the glare reflected from polished mirrors.
Better absolute darkness than this. He turned out the gas and throwing open his window leaned far out over the sill. Then he concentrated his thoughts upon the issue confronting him.