Short Fiction · A Transaction In Hearts (8/12)

VII

At the breakfast-table on the morrow Jones was taciturn and Gonfallon white. When a little before in the dim baronial hall the flames had lapped at the climax of three lives, there had come to them unawares one of those emotions that are as potent for good as the conglomerate precepts of sayers of sooth. It was not that sin had appalled, for that it always does: it was that forgiveness had been impossible to one they deemed a saint. And before their vision, as the drama unrolled, each had pictured it according to his nature, but both had dreamed.

To Gonfallon it had displayed another of the uncircuitable labyrinths of the human heart. To Jones it had been a document. Gonfallon had imagined the countess pleading with her husband, pleading with her friend, until forbearance had been warped and the deed was done. Jones had evoked the jealousy of a woman accustomed to reign; he had seen, as in a glass, the first suspicion, the affected cecity, the studied calm, the uncertainty, the vigilance, yet still the smile, the laughing yet observant eyes, then the accumulating trifles, some partial evidence, the lure, the surprise, the axe, and death.

Where Gonfallon had been perplexed at the absence of a tenet which he strove to hold paramount, that tenet which the Christ instilled, which turned the pagan into the knight, founded courtesy and banished the boor, charity to the failings of others and abnegation of self, where he had been perplexed at the absence of this sweetest virtue in one whom he thought little short of perfection itself, Jones had seen the artist in life, one who, having tried every means to retain supremacy and failing, had not hesitated to crush. And as both pondered on the two decenniums in which the countess, with her skulls in her bedchamber and her skeletons in the cellar, had fronted the world without once betraying her secret⁠—that secret which now was theirs⁠—“It is hideous,” thought Gonfallon: “It is great,” thought Jones. And both were wrong, and both were right.

And now, as they sat together, one was taciturn and the other white. Gonfallon broke his bread absently. Into the horrors through which he had strayed, there surged the lancinating dread of the scandal at home, and by way of accompaniment to his thoughts was the memory of Claire. Already he meditated some plan of escape. Truly the office for which he had been summoned was fulfilled, and was he not free to go?

“Jones,” he ventured, at last, “it is the same to you, is it not, if I leave today?”

At this the novelist started with the air of a man awakened abruptly, and Gonfallon felt himself called upon to address the question again.

“Absolutely,” Jones answered, as its meaning reached him, and at once relapsed into dream. Apparently, to him, everything had ceased to be.

Gonfallon left the room and interviewed the coachman. Then, his valise repacked, his preparations completed, he descended the stair and rejoined his host. But during his absence a mourner had come, a little old lady, her face full of wrinkles and benevolence, a friend of the deceased, and a former parishioner of his own. Jones, seemingly, was annoyed at the intrusion, for he sat gnawing his thumb, his face one great scowl.

“Oh, doctor!” the lady exclaimed, as Gonfallon entered, “is it not sad? What shall we ever do without her? And Mr. Jones! Oh, doctor, don’t let him sit there eating his tears; tell him that in the midst of life we are in death, tell him he should not grieve, tell him his dear aunt has gone to a better world, tell him⁠—”

“Gag that woman, can’t you?” Jones muttered in an aside to his friend; and, rising from his seat, he nervously paced the room.

At this the poor lady, anxious only to console, nay, even to distract, waded through the feeble channels of her thought till she encountered her son, a young man who was endeavoring to become one of the ten thousand lawyers with whom New York is blessed.

“And Alfred!⁠—Mr. Jones, the countess always liked him so much: she even promised to give him a case⁠—one of her tenants who kept sending her bills for repairs. Do you ever see him, Mr. Jones? He is very studious; he works I forget how many hours. But the law is slow, is it not?”

“And so is the turtle,” snarled Jones, “but it gets in the soup all the same.”

“Oh, Mr. Jones, you do say such encouraging things! I must write that to Alfred. He will value it coming from you. You know he is a great admirer of yours, Alfred is. I haven’t read any of your works myself, but he says they are great. Tell me, Mr. Jones, do you write, as he does, with a quill?”

And Jones, almost brutally, with a shrug of the shoulders that was tantamount to a slap in the face, answered, “No, madam, I write with my nerves,” and stalked from the room.

Gonfallon lingered a moment with the benevolent lady, and then, with a murmured apology, followed his host. Already the carriage had arrived, and on the porch was Jones.

“You will be back for the funeral, will you not?” he asked. “I would rather you officiated than the ignoramus that is here. Besides,” he added, “it would be more becoming.”

Gonfallon flicked from his sleeve a speck of dust. To the sensitive there are few things as contagious as irritation, and the irritation which Jones exhaled had not left him unruffled. But immediately he recovered himself. Because Jones happened to be vicious there was little reason why he should imitate him.

“I will be back, of course,” he answered, sedately. “But, Jones, if I were you I wouldn’t let this thing⁠—h’m, you know what I mean: it’s bad enough, in all conscience, and I can understand that you are upset, but⁠—”

“Upset? You think I am upset? Is that what you call it? I am in a rage beside which the anger of Achilles was a fleeting annoyance. Upset, indeed! Gonfallon, this morning⁠—no, let me begin aright, last night I was imbecile enough to build the usual castle in Castile: I had a right to, hadn’t I? I was my aunt’s favorite relative. She had forty⁠—fifty thousand a year. With an income like that, and strict economy, a man can go far. I intended to. I saw myself in Tahiti, in Japan, at the same time even. There is not an inviting shore in the world that I did not propose to visit⁠—in my own yacht at that, and with a picked orchestra in the forecastle. And this morning, before I was so much as able to get the taste of last night out of my mouth, Tapling turned up⁠—”

“The attorney, you mean?”

“Yes, the attorney; and, from what I could squeeze out of him, that dear aunt of mine, for whom I am guilty of compounding a felony, has left me this⁠—this cemetery and eighteen hundred a year to keep it up with. Eighteen hundred a year, Gonfallon; fancy the infamy of that!”

“And the rest?”

Jones gave his head the shake which a bull gives at a toreador. “To the devil⁠—to some other Jones⁠—to you, perhaps. As if I cared. It’s gone: that’s the end of it.”

“I am sorry; really I am. I can understand⁠—”

“Yes,” replied Jones, “I am sorry too.” He paused and gazed at the points of his patent-leather shoes. His anger seemed to have spent itself.

“You have no plans, have you?” Gonfallon asked, as a servant appeared with his valise.

“No,” Jones answered, pensively. “No; for the moment, none at all. I may stay in the country and raise hexameters, or return to town and dabble in experimental physiology. But as for Tahiti and Japan, I must give them up. Hereafter I can travel, as I have hitherto, on the map.⁠—Well, I am sorry you have to go. Remember me to your wife.”

“And now,” murmured Gonfallon, as the carriage swept down the hill, “to the rescue.”