He was still in this state of perplexity when Charlie Geary arrived, pounding on the door and opening it immediately afterward as was his custom.
"h.e.l.lo!" said Vandover, surprised. "h.e.l.lo, Charlie! is that you?"
"Say," exclaimed Geary without returning his greeting, holding up his hand as if to interrupt him; "say, have you seen your lawyer yet--seen _any_ lawyer?"
"No," answered Vandover, shaking his head gravely; "no, I"ve only this minute read about it in the paper." He was glad that Geary had come; at once he felt a desire to throw this burden upon his chum"s shoulders, to let him a.s.sume the management of the affair, just as in the old college days he had willingly, weakly, submitted to the dictatorship of the shrewder, stronger man who smoothed out his difficulties for him, and extricated him from all his sc.r.a.pes. He knew Geary to be full of energy and resource, and he had confidence in his ability as a lawyer, even though he was so young in years and experience. Besides this, he was his friend, his college chum; for all Geary"s disagreeable qualities he knew he would do the right thing by him now.
"You"re the one man of all others I wanted to see," he exclaimed as he gripped his hand. "By George! I"m glad you have come. Here, sit down and let"s talk this over." Geary took the big leather chair behind the desk, and Vandover flung himself again upon the window-seat. It was as if the two were back in the room in Matthew"s; hundreds of times in those days they had occupied precisely these positions, Geary bending over at the study table, intent, nervous, very keen, Vandover lounging idly upon the window-seat, resting easily on his elbow listening to the other man"s advice.
"Now, what must I do, Charlie?" Vandover began. "See my lawyer, I suppose? But do you think a lawyer like Field would take my case? You know I haven"t a leg to stand on."
"But you haven"t seen him?" inquired Geary sharply. "Haven"t seen anybody about it?" Vandover shook his head. "Sure?" insisted Geary anxiously.
"Why, I have only just heard about it twenty minutes ago," protested Vandover. "Why are you so particular about that?" he added. Then Geary exploded his mine.
"Because," he said, with a smile of triumph that he could not restrain, "because we are the counsel for the other side. I am on the case."
Vandover bounded from the window-seat speechless with astonishment, bitterly disappointed. "_You?_ he shouted. Geary slowly nodded his head, enjoying Vandover"s bewilderment. Vandover dropped back upon the cushions again, staring at him wildly with growing suspicion and anger.
He would not have thought it possible that Geary could so sacrifice their old friendship to his own personal interest. The two continued staring at each other across the table for a moment. In the silence they heard the long rumble of a cable-car pa.s.sing the house, and the persistent jangling of its bell as it approached the street crossing. A grocery wagon went up the side street, the horses" hoofs making a cadenced clapping sound upon the asphalt.
"Well," exclaimed Vandover scornfully, "I suppose that"s business, but I would call it d.a.m.ned unkind!"
"Now, look here, old man," returned Geary consolingly. "Don"t you take the monkey-wrench off the safety valve like that. What am I here for if it isn"t to help you? Maybe you don"t know that this is a mighty unprofessional thing to do. Ah, you bet, if old Beale knew this I would get it right in the neck. Don"t you suppose I can help you more as Wade"s lawyer than I could as yours? And now that"s the very first thing I"ve got to tell you--to keep this dark, that I have seen you. I can"t do anything for you if you don"t promise that."
"Oh, that"s all right," returned Vandover, rea.s.sured. "That"s all right, you can--"
"It"s not considered the right thing to do," Geary continued, not heeding Vandover"s answer, "but I just do it because"--he began to make awkward gestures with both his hands--"because we"re old friends, like that. That was the very first thing I thought of when Beale Jr. told me that we two had the case--that I could get you out of this hole better as Wade"s lawyer than as your own. Ah, you bet, I was clever enough to see that the first thing."
"I"m sure it was awfully good of you, old man," said Vandover sincerely.
"I"m in a lot of trouble nowadays!"
"Well, now don"t you bother, Van," answered Geary consolingly. "I guess we can pull you out of this all right." He drew up to the table, looking about from side to side. "Got any writing paper concealed about the premises?" he asked. Vandover pushed him over his writing pad, and Geary, taking the cap from his fountain pen, began asking a series of questions, taking down his answers in shorthand. After he had asked him as to his age, length of residence in the city, his property, and some few other technical matters, he leaned back in his chair and said:
"Now, let"s hear your side of the story, Van. I don"t suppose you like to go over the thing again, but you see I ought to know." Vandover told of the affair, Geary making notes as he went along. It was nearly noon before their interview was at an end. Then Geary gathered up the papers and reached for his hat and stick, saying:
"Well, now, that"s all we can do to-day. I think I"ll be up to see you again day after to-morrow, in the afternoon. Beale Jr. and I have a date with Mr. Wade again to-morrow, I think, and I can talk to you more definitely after that. You know this is the devil of a thing to do," he suddenly exclaimed apprehensively, "this playing back and forth between the two parties like this; regularly dishonourable, don"t you know?"
"If you think it"s dishonourable," said Vandover as he accompanied Geary to the door, "if you think it"s dishonourable, Charlie, why, don"t do it! I don"t want to ask you to do anything dishonourable for me."
"Oh, that"s all right," replied Geary uneasily; "I had just as soon do it for you, only listen to this: don"t you say a word about the case to anybody, not to your lawyer, nor to anybody. If Field should write to you, you tell him you have counsel already. And, look here! you may have the reporters up here pretty soon, and don"t you open your face to them; you mind that; don"t you let them get a thing out of you. And there"s another thing you must understand: I"m not your lawyer, of course; you see that. I could be disbarred if I was lawyer for both sides. It"s like this, you see: I"m Wade"s lawyer--at least the firm I am with are his lawyers--and of course I"m acting in Wade"s interest. But you"re an old chum of mine, and if I can I"m going to try and make it easier for you.
You understand, don"t you?"
"Yes, I understand, Charlie," answered Vandover, "and you are just a brick."
Vandover pa.s.sed the rest of the day in his sitting-room, the suspense of the situation slowly s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his nerves tenser and tenser. He walked for hours back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent down, his forehead drawn into a frown of anxiety and exasperation, or he stood for a long time at the window looking out into the street with eyes that saw nothing. At supper that night he found that his appet.i.te had left him; the very thought of food revolted him. He returned to his room between seven and eight o"clock, his body and mind completely f.a.gged, feeling a crying need of some diversion, some escape from the thoughts that had been hounding him all day.
He made up his mind to read a little before going to bed, and all at once remembered a book that he had once begun a long time ago but had never finished: the story of two men who had bought a wrecked opium ship for fifty thousand dollars and had afterward discovered that she contained only a few tins of the drug. He had never read on to find how that story turned out. Suddenly he found himself repeating, "Twenty-five thousand dollars, twenty-five thousand dollars--where will _I_ find twenty-five thousand dollars?" He wondered if he would go to jail if he failed to pay. His interest in the book was gone in a moment, and he took up another of his favourite novels, the story of a boy at the time of Christ, a Jewish boy unjustly condemned to the galleys, liberated afterward, and devoting his life to the overthrow of his enemy, whom at last he overcame and humbled, fouling him in a chariot race, all but killing him.
He sat down in the huge leather chair, and, drawing it up to the piano lamp and c.o.c.king his feet upon the table, began to read. In a few moments the same numbness stole into his head like a rising fog, a queer, tense feeling, growing at the back of his forehead and at the base of his skull, a dulness, a strange stupefying sensation as of some torpid, murky atmosphere. He looked about him quickly; all the objects in the range of his vision--the corner of the desk, the corduroy couch, the low bookcase with Flossie"s yellow slipper and Barye"s lioness upon it--seemed to move back and stand upon the same plane; the objects themselves appeared immovable enough, but the sensation of them in his brain somewhere behind his eyes began to move about in a slow, dizzy whirl. The old touch of unreasoning terror came back, together with a sudden terror of the spirit, a sickening sinking of the heart, a loathing of life, terrible beyond words.
Vandover started up, striving to keep himself in hand, fighting against a wild desire to rush about from wall to wall, shrieking and waving his arms. Over and over again he exclaimed, "Oh, _what_ is the matter with me?" The strangeness of the thing was what unsettled and unnerved him.
He had all the sensations of terror, but without any a.s.signable reason, and this groundless fear became in the end the cause of a new fear: he was afraid of this fear that was afraid of nothing.
Very gradually, however, the crisis pa.s.sed away. He became a little calmer, and as he was mixing himself a gla.s.s of whisky and water at the sideboard he decided that he would go to bed. He was sure that he would be better for a good night"s rest; evidently his nerves were out of order; it would not do for him to read late at night. He realized all at once that his mind and body alike were exhausted.
He pa.s.sed a miserable night, dozing and waking at alternate hours until three o"clock, when he found it impossible to get to sleep; hour after hour he lay flat on his back staring open-eyed into the darkness, listening to the ticking of the clock, the mysterious footsteps that creaked the floors overhead, and the persistent drip of a water faucet.
Outside in the street he heard at long intervals the rattling of wheels as the early milk wagons came and went; a dog began to bark, three gruff notes repeated monotonously at exact intervals; all at once there was a long m.u.f.fled roll and an abrupt clacking noise; it ceased, then broke out again sharply, paused once more, then recommenced, settling to a prolonged minor hum; the cable was starting up; it was almost morning, the window of his room began to show a brighter blur in the darkness, while very far off he could hear the steady puffing of a locomotive. As the first cable-car trundled by the house he dropped off to sleep for the last time, being waked again toward nine o"clock by the sound of some one shovelling coal outside under his window, the shovel clinking and rasping upon the stone sidewalk.
He felt a little refreshed, but as he entered the dining-room for his late breakfast the smell of food repulsed him; his appet.i.te was gone; it was impossible for him to eat. Toward eleven o"clock that same morning he was pottering idly about his sitting-room, winding his clock and shaking down the ashes in the tiled flamboyant stove; his mind was still busy going over for the hundredth time all the possibilities of Hiram Wade"s suit, and he was just wondering whether something in the way of a compromise might not be arranged, when with the suddenness of a blow between the eyes the numbness in his head returned, together with the same unreasoning fear, the same depression of spirits, the same fearful sinking of the heart. What! it was coming back again, this strange attack, coming back even when his attention was not concentrated, even when there was no unusual exertion of his brain!
Then the torment began. This time the crisis did not pa.s.s off; from now on it persisted continually. Vandover began to feel strange. At first the room looked unfamiliar to him, then his own daily life no longer seemed recognizable, and, finally, all of a sudden, it was the whole world, all the existing order of things, that appeared to draw off like a refluent tide, leaving him alone, abandoned, cast upon some fearful, mysterious sh.o.r.e.
Nothing seemed worth while; all the thousand little trivial things that made up the course of his life and in which he found diversion and amus.e.m.e.nt palled upon him. A fearful melancholia settled over him, a despair, an abhorrence of living that could not be uttered. This only was during the day. It was that night that Vandover went down into the pit.
He went to bed early, his brain in a whirl, his frame worn out as if from long physical exertion. He was just dropping into a grateful sleep when his whole body twitched suddenly with a shock and a recoil of all his nerves; in an instant he was broad awake, panting and exhausted as if from a long run. Once more he settled himself upon the pillow, and once more the same leap, the same sharp spasm of his nerves caught him back to consciousness with the suddenness of a relaxed spring. At last sleep was out of the question; his drowsiness of the early part of the evening pa.s.sed away, and he lay back, his hands clasped behind his head, staring up into the darkness, his thoughts galloping incessantly through his brain, suffering without pain as he had never imagined a human being could suffer though racked with torture from head to heel.
From time to time a slow torsion and crisping of all his nerves, beginning at his ankles, spread to every corner of his body till he had to shut his fists and teeth against the blind impulse to leap from his bed screaming. His hands felt light and, as he told himself, "jumpy."
All at once he felt a peculiar sensation in them: they seemed to swell, the fingers puffing to an enormous size, the palms bulging, the whole member from the wrist to the nails distended like a glove when one has blown into it to straighten it out. Then he had a feeling that his head was swelling in the same way. He had to rub his hands together, to pa.s.s them again and again over his face to rid himself of the fancy.
But the strange numb feeling at the base of the skull did not keep him from thinking--he would have been glad if it had--and now at last when the terror overcame him it was no longer causeless; he knew now what he feared--he feared that he was going mad.
It was the punishment that he had brought upon himself, some fearful nervous disease, the result of his long indulgence of vice, his vile submission to the brute that was to destroy his reason; some collapse of all his faculties, beginning first with that which was highest, most sensitive--his art--spreading onward and downward till he should have reached the last stages of idiocy. It was Nature inexorably exacting. It was the vast fearful engine riding him down beneath its myriad spinning wheels, remorselessly, irresistibly.
The dreadful calamities that he had brought upon himself recoiled upon his head, crushing him to the dust with their weight of anguish and remorse: Ida Wade"s suicide, his father"s death, his social banishment, the loss of his art, Hiram Wade"s lawsuit menacing him with beggary, and now this last, this approaching insanity. It was no longer fire driving out fire; the sense of all these disasters seemed to come back upon him at once, as keen, as bitter as when they had first befallen. He had told himself that he did not believe in a h.e.l.l. Could there be a worse h.e.l.l than this?
But all at once, without knowing why, moved by an impulse, a blind, resistless instinct, Vandover started up in bed, raising his clasped hands above him, crying out, "Oh, help me! Why don"t you _help_ me? You can if you only will!" Who was it to whom he had cried with such unerring intuition? He gave no name to this mysterious "You," this strange supernatural being, this mighty superhuman power. It was the cry of a soul in torment that does not stop to reason, the wild last hope that feels its own helplessness, that responds to an intuition of a force outside of itself--the force that can save it in its time of peril.
Trembling, his hands still clasped above him, Vandover waited for an answer, waited for the miracle. In the tortured exalted state of his nerves he seemed suddenly possessed of a sixth sense; he fancied that he would know, there in that room, in a few seconds, while yet his hands remained clasped above his head. It was his last hope: if this failed him there was nothing left. Still he waited; he felt that he should know when the miracle came, that he would suddenly be filled with a sense of peace, of quiet joy. Still he waited--there was nothing, nothing but the vast silence, the unbroken blackness of the night, a night that was to last forever. There was no answer, nothing but the deaf silence, the blind darkness. But in a moment he felt that the very silence, the very lack of answer, was answer in itself; there was nothing for him. Even that vast mysterious power to which he had cried could not help him now, _could_ not help him, could not stay the inexorable law of nature, could not reverse that vast terrible engine with its myriad spinning wheels that was riding him down relentlessly, grinding him into the dust. And afterward? After the engine had done its work, when that strange other time should come, that other life, what then? No, not even then, nothing but outer darkness then and the gnashing of teeth, nothing but the deaf silence, nothing but the blind darkness, nothing but the unbroken blackness of an eternal night.
It was the end of everything! With a m.u.f.fled cry, "Oh, I can"t stand this!" Vandover threw himself from his bed, groping his way out into the sitting-room. By this time he was only conscious of a suffering too great to be borne, everything else was blurred as in a thick mist. For nearly an hour he stumbled about in the darkened room, bruising himself against the furniture, dazed, numb, trying in vain to find the drawer of the desk where he kept his father"s revolver. At last his hand closed upon it, gripping it so tightly that the hundreds of little nicks and scratches made by the contact of the tacks and nails which he had hammered with it nipped and bit into his palm like the teeth of tiny mice. A vague feeling of shame overcame him at the last moment: he had no wish to be found sprawling upon the floor, dressed only in his night-gown. He lit the gas and put on his bathrobe, drawing the cords securely about his waist and neck.
When he turned about to pick up the revolver again he found that his determination had weakened considerably, and he was obliged to reflect again upon the wreck of his life and soul before he was back once more to the proper pitch of resolution. It was five minutes to two, and he made up his mind to kill himself when the clock struck the hour. He spent the intervening moments in arranging the details of the matter. At first he thought he would do it standing, but he abandoned that idea, fearing to strike his head against the furniture as he fell. He was about to decide upon the huge leather chair, when the remembrance of his father"s death made that impossible. He finally concluded to sit upon the edge of his bed, leaning a little backward so as not to fall upon the floor, and he dragged the bed out into the sitting-room, preferring somehow to die there. For a moment the idea of lying at length upon the bed occurred to him, but in an instant he recoiled from it, horrified at the thought of the death that struck from above; no, it would be best to sit upon the edge of the bed, falling backward with the shot. Then he wondered as to which it should be, his heart or his head; evidently the head was the better; there upon the right side in the little hollow of the temple, and the next moment he found himself curiously touching and pressing the spot with his fingers. All at once he heard the little clicking noise that the clock makes a minute or so before the hour. It was almost two; he sat down upon the edge of the bed, c.o.c.king the revolver, waiting for the clock to strike. An idea came to him, and he looked at the calendar that stood at the right of the clock upon the top of the low bookcase. It was the twelfth of April, Thursday; that, then, was to be the date of his death--Thursday, April twelfth, at two in the morning, so it would read upon his gravestone. For an instant the awfulness of the thing he was to do came upon him, and the next instant he found himself wondering if they still coursed jack-rabbits with greyhounds down at Coronado the way they used to do when he was there.
All at once the clock struck two, and at the very last instant a strange impulse to seat himself before the mirror came upon him. He drew up a chair before it, watching his reflection intently, but even as he raised the revolver he suddenly changed his purpose without knowing why, and all at once crammed the muzzle into his mouth. He drew the trigger.
He heard no sound of a report; he felt no shock, but a great feebleness ran throughout his limbs, a relaxing and weakening of all his muscles; his eyes were open and he saw everything small and seemingly very far off as through the reversed end of an opera-gla.s.s. Suddenly he fainted.
When Vandover came to himself again it was early morning. The room was full of daylight, but the gas was still burning. Little by little the fearful things of the night came back to him; he realized that he had shot himself, and he waited for the end, not daring to move, his eyes closed, his hand still gripping the scratched b.u.t.t of the revolver in his lap. For a long time he lay back in the chair, motionless, his consciousness slowly returning like an incoming tide. At length he started to his feet with an expression of scorn and incredulity; he was as sound as ever, there was neither scratch nor scar upon him; he had not shot himself after all.
Curiously, he looked at the revolver, throwing open the breech--the cylinder was empty; he had forgotten to load it. "What a fool!" he exclaimed, laughing scornfully, and still laughing he walked to the centre of the room under the chandelier and turned out the gas.
But when he turned about, facing the day once more, facing that day and the next and the next throughout all the course of his life, the sense of his misery returned upon him in its full strength and he raised his clenched fist to his eyes, shutting out the light. Ah, no, he could not endure it--the horror of life overpa.s.sed the horror of death; he could not go on living. A new thought had come to him. Wretched as he was, he saw that in time his anguish of conscience, even his dread of losing his reason, would pa.s.s from him; he would become used to them; yes, even become used to the dread of insanity, and then he would return once more to vice, return once more into the power of the brute, the perverse and evil monster that was knitted to him now irrevocably, part for part, fibre for fibre. He saw clearly that nothing could save him, he had had his answer that night, there was to be no miracle. Was it not right, then, that he should destroy himself? Was it not even his duty? The better part of him seemed to demand the act; should he not comply while there yet was any better part left? In a little while the brute was to take all.
On the shelves above his washstand Vandover found the cartridges in a green pasteboard box, and loaded all the chambers of the revolver, carefully. He closed the breech; but as he was about to draw back the hammer all his courage, all his resolution, crumbled in an instant like a tower of sand. He did not dare to shoot himself--he was afraid. The night before he had been brave enough; how was it now that he could not call up the same courage, the same determination? When he thought over the wreck, the wretched failure of his life, the dreadful prospect of the future years, his anguish and his terror were as keen as ever. But now there was a shrinking of his every nerve from the thought of suicide, the instinctive animal fear of death, stronger than himself.
His suffering had to go on, had to run its course, even death would not help him. Let it go on, it was only the better part of him that was suffering; in a little while this better part would be dead, leaving only the brute. It would die a natural death without any intervention from him. Was there any need of suicide? Suicide! Great G.o.d! his whole life had been one long suicide.
That same morning Charlie Geary had eaten a very thick underdone steak for breakfast after enjoying a fine long sleep of eight hours. Toward eight o"clock he went downtown. He did not take a car; he preferred to walk; it helped his digestion and it gave him exercise. At night he walked home as well; that gave him an appet.i.te; besides, with the ten cents that he saved in this way, he bought himself a nice cigar that he smoked in the evening to help digest his supper. He was very careful of his health. Ah, you bet, one had to look out for one"s health.