Short Fiction · A Transaction In Hearts (7/12) (1/2)

VI

It was midnight when the train halted at Bronx. During the journey Jones had been loquacious and Gonfallon dumb. To the one the illness of the countess represented an eternal farewell to the exigencies of syndicates and publishers; to the other, a refuge from the scandal with which New York would presently resound.

Jones, enveloped in an Inverness, wandered out into voluptuous anticipations of wealth to be. “I can go to Constantinople,” he confided to his companion, “or, like Stevenson, I can sail the Southern seas. I can lounge in Quaritch’s, or on the Grand Canal. I can go to Ecuador and foment a revolution. I can turn Buddhist and penetrate Tibet. From an editor’s chair I can bombard my friends and caress my enemies. I will have time to be noble, to be just, and to forgive. I can disappear as though the earth had swallowed me, or I can write a book to please myself. I can live, as Baudelaire wanted to, in a grot of basalt surrounded by slaves whose sole duty it will be to discover the secret of my immense ennui. Like Flaubert, I can call to a chimera to lift me on its wings. Like the Chimera, I can whisper to the Sphinx, ‘O Unknown, I am amorous of thine eyes.’ On the fingers of my sweethearts I can put the crystallized essence of banknotes. I can even pay my debts⁠—some of them, at least. I can⁠—”

And while Jones rambled on, discounting his inheritance in advance, Gonfallon’s thoughts had also taken him afar. In the abruptness of the departure he had no time to make so much as an effort to stay the approaching joust; and now, as he tormented himself with its possibilities, some breath of the philosophies to which the preceding night had been given rose to him, graciously as a balm. “Whatever will be, is,” he mused. “No one can combat the inevitable. If it is written that Bucholz is to founder in the mire and bespatter us all with the mud, no act of mine can prevent it.” But, even as his fancy was comforted, abruptly before him the reef to which he was veering loomed, and in the wreck which it menaced he saw the bishopric gone forever, Gethsemane lost as well. He saw himself a wanderer in unfamiliar parishes, the pulpit loaned on trial, the subsidence in some Western town, and then that most terrible trial of all, the attempt to begin life anew.

In his misery he moaned, dumbly and vaguely afflicted. In an effort to console himself he reflected that Jesus had been a vagabond too⁠—one who had not where to lay his head. Yet Jesus, he instantly remembered, had conquered the world, while he could not conquer himself.

Presently his thoughts deserted father for daughter, and as the train flashed through the night, something in the roll of the car seemed to echo the music of her voice. The irritation which had visited him in the afternoon faded, as irritation ever does. He closed his eyes: he was alone with her again, in his ears was the bubbling ripple of her laugh, his lips were on hers, his were the savors of her skin, his the wonders and caresses of her hair.

Yes, the poets were right: nothing in all the world imitated happiness more perfectly than did love. And if only that nightmare would disappear! If the memory of Bucholz and of his visit would vanish, life, full surely, would be a pleasant gift. But Bucholz declined to be dismissed. He surged like a partition between happiness and Claire. He dominated and appalled. It was all very well to rememorate the precepts of the masters, yet in the rememoration Gonfallon recalled that speech of the warrior Frederick, “Against the ills of the past or of the future philosophy is the best of remedies, but against the ills of the present it is without effect.” And as the train cleft the darkness he blamed himself for his cowardice, for his haste, for the weakness which had made him accept the first excuse for flight, and wished himself back in town, imploring aid there of Usselex, of Manhattan, of Jerolomon even, of anyone who had the power to throttle this thing at its birth. Again he groaned and writhed as Laocoön did.

“It is Wednesday,” he told himself: “by tomorrow noon I can be back in town. Cost what it may, I will get that money, and everything may yet be well. Surely Manhattan will not refuse; and if he does, and Jerolomon declines, then will I mortgage the homestead. H’m, it is odd I should have thought of that last. Meanwhile⁠—”

“Bronx!” The door before him had opened, and a brakeman was bawling in his face.

“We are punctual as a comet,” he heard Jones exclaim.

Gathering their traps, they descended into the night. At the station but one vehicle was discernible, and that, from a loutish driver who stood dandling his whip, they presently discovered was for them. “You ought to have come earlier,” he remarked, with the affectionate familiarity which is peculiar to the New-Englander. “It was sundown when she died.”

“Well,” said Jones, when they had seated themselves in the carriage, “she was a good woman, and a Christian. It’s deuced rough I couldn’t have got here in time. I was her favorite relative,” he added, meditatively. And with that he drew out a large cigar, which he lighted with infinite care.

Through the window Gonfallon gazed at the frostbitten road which he knew so well. Over there, to the right, was the parsonage he had occupied. And here, to the right, was Sever’s house. How small it looked! And as the carriage rattled over the ruts one after another, he recalled the names of retreating structures.

“Yes, indeed,” he answered; “yes, indeed.”

“A woman,” Jones continued, “who may have been misunderstood, as good women often are, but who was never the subject of gossip. I was in knickerbockers when her husband ran off, but I can see him now. He looked like a young emperor of old Rome. And from her never a murmur could be wrung. She did not so much as mention him, or her friend, even, who disappeared at the same time⁠—Mira Wheat her name was, the Admirable Miranda I remember she was called, a famous beauty, and a catch to boot. The count went down at Gravelotte, but what ever became of his travelling companion no one ever heard. It’s odd, those abrupt disappearances. You knew of the Besaluls, didn’t you? There’s a case in point. Besalul married a girl⁠—a Miss Forbush, I think: to all intents and purposes they were dead in love with each other. Two months afterwards, when Besalul, after bringing his wife home from some reception, was sitting in the parlor over the Post, the butler announced dinner. ‘Go upstairs,’ said Besalul, ‘and tell my wife.’ The butler went up and came down: Mrs. Besalul was undiscoverable. They searched the house. In her room were the mantle and bonnet which she had worn at the reception, but of the lady herself not a trace. The night changed to morning, and morning into noon, and still no sign of the absentee. No one had heard her leave the house, and it seemed impossible for her to have done so unobserved. Detectives were summoned, rewards were offered, but all in vain. Three or four years later, when she was practically forgotten, a friend of Besalul’s happened in journeying through France to stop at Toulouse, and while wandering about the town recognized my lady in a rose-garden. She had run off with a man with whom no one knew she was even acquainted.”

And Jones, flicking the ashes from his cigar, added, “I would have worked it up into a novel, but somehow it lacked the dramatic. I never seemed to get a climax. Ah! here we are.”

A servant, a pensioner rather, Rebecca Hays by name, a woman white of face and of hair, whom Gonfallon remembered well, met and led them into the hall. Grief or excitement seemed to have made her vague of speech. The lids of her eyes were watery and pink, her lips twitched spasmodically.

“Elle est devenue idiote,” Jones remarked. “I suppose we had better go up.”

And, motioning to the woman to precede them, the novelist, followed by the clergyman, mounted the creaking stair.

It was a large room which they presently entered, a room that leaned to the south. Across one wall was a stretch of tapestry, not Gobelins, but Gothic, and pictorial of the visit of the Magi. The angle was bare, the other walls cut by windows that gave on the valley below. The floor was of lacquered wood, the centre protected by a rug. Between the rug and the tapestry was a bed draped with curtains that fell from a panoply affixed to the ceiling above. On either side of the bed was a chest of oak. And on these chests candles had been placed.

Very reverently Gonfallon drew one of the curtains aside, and then, as he took one of the candles and held it aloft that he might see the better, Jones peered over his shoulder.

Death had dealt gently with the occupant of that bed. The hue of the skin was little different from what it had been, the folded hands not a whit more transparent than before. Even the expression of the face had not altered: in the elevation of the brow which death had not lowered, in the resignation of the mouth which it had been impotent to distort, the countess looked in the shroud as she had looked in life⁠—as though under her something had been killed, a hope, an illusion, or a dream.

“ ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ ” Gonfallon through sheer force of habit repeated, and turned to his companion; but Jones had already left him; he stood a little beyond, reading some paper which the white-haired woman who hovered in the doorway presumably had brought.

Ah, yes, the resurrection and the life! He let the curtain fall, and moved to a window. Save for the uncertain rustle of the paper which Jones was reading, the house was so still that one might have thought the countess had already elected it for her tomb. The air, too, was still. Gonfallon looked out into the shadows. To the left some leafless trees crossed their arms, beyond them others, blurred by the night, seemed to crouch in suspense, while beneath in the valley was the shimmer of a lake in which the hillside had turned upside down and the moonbeams danced with the ripples.

“The resurrection and the life, indeed! Where is the faith to which I clung? Gone are its flowers,” he mused, and with a finger beat a muffled tattoo on the windowpane. “Well do I remember the days when death to me was an illusion, a mask of the continuity of life. Now, what is it? At most a chasm into which the stars fall and nations disappear, a depth from which no spar returns, a silence from which no cry ascends. Is there in its darkness a flicker, an intimation even other than that of the ephemeralness of man? There may be. Yes, there may be, but to me no sign is vouchsafed. The countess who died steadfast in the unalterableness of her perfect faith must at the last have caught the flutter of angels’ wings. The grace which⁠—eh?”

“Read that.” And Jones, who had approached him, thrust a letter in his hand.

Gonfallon crossed the room to the candles and leaned on one of the chests. The paper which Jones had given him was undated, but evidently it was old: the ink had faded a little, the writing was not wholly legible, and from the paper itself came a faint odor of must and of decay. So nearly as Gonfallon could discern, it ran as follows:

“Should you, my dear nephew, survive me, as I trust you may, you will find by my will that your wants are provided for. In return for this, I wish to ask of you a last favor. In my bedroom, where this letter, should you ever receive it, will be given you, are two chests clamped with iron. These chests I beg you to carry, with Rebecca’s aid, to the dining-hall below. They contain nothing of value; merely a few odds and ends, mementos of my late husband, that are of interest to no one but myself. When I die, they can be burned, and no one will be the poorer. Take them, then, unopened, to the dining-hall: they are not too large to go in the fireplace, and by putting in one at a time they can be easily destroyed. I rely on you, Fenwick, to do as I bid.

And beneath, by way of postscriptum, though evidently of more recent date, was written⁠—

“Rebecca seems to be failing. If possible, get Dr. Gonfallon to assist.”

“Well?” said Jones.

Gonfallon had read the letter, and stood eying the superscription. “Well,” he answered, “there is a law, whether common or statute I am uncertain, but there is a law which inhibits just such a thing as this. To oblige your aunt is an easy matter. The question is⁠—”

“The law be blowed! The question is whether you will assist me. Whether or not the mementos consist in the frippery of a dead soldier, what does it matter, after all? My aunt speaks of her late husband: who knows what she meant? Women have odd circumlocutions. It is my duty to do as she bids, and do it I will.”

As he spoke he turned to one of the chests, and, removing the candles, drew it to the centre of the room. “See,” he added, “if it were packed with tracts it couldn’t be lighter.” And the gesture which he made was so cynical yet so sincere that Gonfallon, divining the uselessness of argument, nodded his assent.

“Now,” continued Jones, “if you will take one end I will take the other. Yet wait a second.” He left the room, and presently returned. “The way is clear. The sooner we get them down, the better.”

At once then, the chest between them, they moved out into the hall. From the floor above came the faint waver of a light. Beneath, a lamp was burning. As they moved, the flooring creaked; the great house was alive with echoes.

On the landing Jones stopped and lowered his end of the chest. “I will get a candle,” he said, as he did so. But his movement must have been ill calculated or over-abrupt⁠—both, perhaps⁠—for the added and unexpected weight which Gonfallon was then called upon to maintain found his fingers unprepared; the chest slipped from him and with the reverberation of thunder bounded down the giant stair. Barely had it started in its tumultuous descent before it seemed to leap sheer into the air and fall with a final crash on the floor below. Yet even in that infinitesimal space of time, above the reverberations soared the anguish of a woman’s cry; and for one second, leaning on the banister above them, in the uncertain flicker, both caught a glimpse of the white-haired retainer, her eyes dilated and mouth agape. Then, at once, you could have heard a lizard move.

“H’m,” muttered Jones, with an uncomfortable shrug; “let’s ask the other chest to be good enough not to be in such a hurry.”

“Look!” Gonfallon exclaimed; “it has either split in two or the lid has been wrenched open.”

The novelist extracted a monocle from his waistcoat and gazed into the shadows.

“Serves it right,” he answered, and leisurely descended the stair. “ ‘And of the remnants⁠—’ ” he continued, but midway in the quotation he halted. On the floor at his feet was something that sent a thrill down his spine, an object but a trifle larger than a Dutch cheese, one that had ossified and turned from dull red to dingy white, an unpleasant thing that had no business there.

He stooped and eyed it. Near the base was the rictus which the New-England lad cuts in the face of a pumpkin, and above it near the top was a fissure that resembled the signature of an axe. By it a scrap of paper had fluttered, and just beyond, the chest lay yawning and empty.

When Jones stood up again the paper was in his hand⁠—a square bit of parchment stamped with ensigns armorial, under which for legend ran the splendid device, Malgré tout. Beneath, three or four lines had been written.

“ ‘This,’ ” he read aloud, “ ‘This is the head of Jean-Renest-Marie, Count of Cinq-Cygne, Seigneur of Dol, at one time second lieutenant in the 19th Dragoons. May God have mercy on his soul!’ ”