Louis Joseph Vance

“ He ceased to speak, and her voice of golden velvet filled the house with the flowing beauty of its unforgettably sweet modulations. Beyond the footlights a handful of sophisticated and sceptical habitués of the theatre forgot for the moment their ingrained incredulity and thrilled in sympathy with the wonderful rapture of that voice of eternal Youth. Whitaker himself for the time forgot that he was the husband of this woman and her lover; she moved before his vision in the guise of some divine creature, divinely unattainable, a dream woman divorced utterly from any semblance of reality. ”

“ In the north the lighthouse stood like a horn on the brow of the headland, the lamp continuing to flash even though its light was darkened, its beams out-stripped by the radiant forerunners of the sun. Beyond it, over a breadth of water populated by an ocean-going tug with three barges in tow and a becalmed lumber schooner, a low-lying point of land (perhaps an island) thrust out into the west. On the nearer land human life was quickening: here and there pale streamers of smoke swung up from hidden chimneys on its wooded rises.
Whitaker eyed them with longing. ”

“ It was easy, now, to understand how the kidnappers had come to their disaster; at this distance he could see plainly, despite the scudding haze, the profile of a high bluff of wave-channelled and bitten earth rising from a boulder-strewn beach, upon which the surf broke with a roar deafening and affrighting. Even a hardy swimmer might be pardoned for looking askance at such a landing. And Whitaker had a woman to think of and care for. Difficult to imagine how he was to drag her, and himself, through that vicious, pounding surf, without being beaten to jelly against the boulders.... ”

“ Whitaker received an impression as of a tremendous force at work across the footlights. The woman diffused an effect as of a terrible and boundless energy under positive control. She was not merely an actress, not even merely a great actress; she was the very soul of the drama of to-day.
Beyond this he knew in his heart that she was his wife. Sara Law was the woman he had married in that sleepy Connecticut town, six years before that night. He had not yet seen her face clearly, but he knew. To find himself mistaken would have shaken the foundations of his understanding. ”

“ All round it in a radius of many yards the earth glowed red, while, to one side, the grim, homely façade of the farm-house edged blushing out of the ambient night, all its staring windows bloodshot and sinister.
The girl stirred uneasily, turning her head to look at Whitaker.
"You know," she said with a confused attempt to laugh: "this is really no canny, this place. Or else I'm balmy. I'm seeing things—shapes that stir against the blackness, off there beyond the light, moving, halting, staring, hating us for butchering their age-old peace and quiet. ”

“ Now and again, for all that, one would favour the Trouble with a quartering slap that sent a shower of spray aboard her to drench Whitaker and swash noisily round the cockpit ere the self-bailing channels could carry it off. He was quickly wet to the skin and shivering. The hour was past midnight, and the strong air whipping in from the open sea had a bitter edge. His only consolation inhered in the reflection that he had companions in his misery: those who drove the leading boat could hardly escape what he must suffer ”

“ The air was moveless, yet sonorously thrilled with the measured movement of the city's symphonic roar. Above the golden haze a drift of light cloud was burning an ever deeper pink against the vault of robin's-egg blue.
A view of ten thousand roofs, inexpressibly enchaining.... Somewhere—perhaps—in that welter of steel and stone, as eternal and as restless as the sea, was the woman Whitaker had married, working out her lonely destiny. A haphazard biscuit tossed from his window might fall upon the very roof that sheltered her: he might search for a hundred years and never cross her path. ”

“ Interim, Whitaker had quietly resumed his place in the life of the town, regaining old friendships, renewing old associations. Save for the fact that he pursued no gainful occupation, all with him was much as it had been: as if the intervening six years of exile had been blotted out, or had never been. The mild excitement occasioned by his reappearance had already subsided; he was again an accepted and substantial factor in the society of his kind.
He had abandoned all thought of returning to New Guinea, entertained, indeed, no inclination whatever to do so. ”

“ Not until the cars were in motion did he experience any sense of security from Peter Stark. He had been apprehensive until that moment of some unforeseen move on the part of his friend; Peter was capable of wide but sure casts of intuition on occasion, especially where his affections were touched. But now Whitaker felt free, free to abandon himself to meditative despair; and he did it, as he did most things, thoroughly. He plunged headlong into an everlasting black pit of terror. He considered the world through the eyes of a man sick unto death, and found it without health. ”

“ The farm-house stood on high ground, commanding an uninterrupted sweep of the horizon. As they drew near it, Whitaker paused and turned, narrowing his eyes as he attempted to read the riddle of the enigmatic, amber-tinted distances.
To north and east the island fell away in irregular terraces to wide, crescent beaches whose horns, joining in the northeast, formed the sandy spit. To west and south the moorlands billowed up to the brink of a precipitous bluff. In the west, Whitaker noted absently, a great congregation of gulls were milling amid a cacophony of screams, just beyond the declivity. ”

“ But Max had this advantage of Drummond: he was not his own dupe; whereas Drummond would go to his grave believing himself bored to extinction by the commonplaceness of his fantastical self....
Irresponsibly, his reverie reëmbraced the memory he had of the woman who alone held the key to his matrimonial entanglement. The business bound his imagination with an ineluctable fascination. No matter how far his thoughts wandered, they were sure to return to beat themselves to weariness against that hard-faced mystery, like moths bewitched by the light behind a clouded window-glass. ”

“ True, he had followed her; true, he had watched her at a moment when she had every reason to believe herself alone with the sky, the sand, the sea and the squabbling gulls. But—the beach was free to all; there was no harm done; he hadn't really meant to spy upon her, and he had not the slightest intention of forcing himself upon her consciousness.
Intentions, however, are one thing; accidents, another entirely. History is mainly fashioned of intentions that have met with accidents.
Whitaker turned to go, and turning let his gaze sweep up from the beach and along the brow of the bluff. ”

“ There followed a shriek, a heavy fall that shook the bungalow, the report of a revolver, sounds of scuffling....
Whitaker, half dazed, found himself standing in the doorway, regardless of his injury.
He saw, as one who dreams and yet is conscious that he does but dream, Ember lighting candles—calmly applying the flame of a taper to one after another as he made a round of the sconces. The moonlight paled and the windows turned black as the mellow radiance brightened. ”

“ Impulsively Whitaker got up to follow Max, then hesitated and sank back in doubt, his head awhirl. He was for the time being shocked out of all capacity for clear reasoning or right thinking. Uppermost in his consciousness he had a half-formed notion that it wouldn't help matters if he were to force himself in upon the crisis behind the scenes.
Beyond all question his wife had recognized in him the man whom she had been given every reason to believe dead: a discovery so unnerving as to render her temporarily unable to continue. ”

“ Cold horror crawled in his brain like a delirium—horror of himself, of his morbid flesh, of that moribund body unfit to sheathe the clean fire of life. The thought of struggling to keep animate that corrupt Self, tainted by the breath of Death, was invincibly terrible to him. All sense of human obligation disappeared from his cosmos; remained only the biting hunger for eternal peace, rest, freedom from the bondage of existence....
At about four o'clock the train stopped to drop the dining-car. Wholly swayed by blind impulse, Whitaker got up, took his hand-bag and left the car. ”

“ She paused, regarding him with her whimsical, indulgent smile. "You strange creature!" she said softly. "Are you angry with me—impatient—for this too facile descent from heroics to the commonplace? But, Hugh"—she touched his arm with a gentle and persuasive hand—"it must be commonplace. We're just mortals, after all, you know, no matter how imperishable our egos make us feel: and the air of the heights is too fine and rare for mortals to breathe long at a time. Life is, after all, an everyday affair. We've just got to blunder through it from day to day—mostly on the low levels. ”

“ An inexplicable fit of trembling seized Whitaker. Dropping into a chair, he pillowed his head on his folded arms. Presently the seizure passed, but he remained moveless. With the drift of minutes, insensibly his taut muscles relaxed. Odd visions painted the dark tapestries of his closed eyes: a fragment of swinging seas shining in moonlight; white swords of light slashing the dark night round their unseen eyrie; the throat of a woman swelling firm and strong as a tower of ivory, tense from the collar of her cheap gown to the point of her tilted chin ”

“ Every fibre of my being loves you.
"Mary."
Obviously not a note to be cavilled at. Whitaker took a serene and shining face to breakfast in the saloon, under the eyes of Ember.
Veins of optimism and of gratulation like threads of gold ran through the texture of their talk. There seemed to exist a tacit understanding that, with the death of Drummond, the cloud that had shadowed the career of Sara Law had lifted, while her renunciation of her public career had left her with a future of glorified serenity and assured happiness. ”

“ There came one dark and sultry night, heavy beneath skies overcast, in August. Whitaker left a roof-garden in the middle of a stupid performance, and walked the streets till long after midnight, courting the fatigue that alone could bestow untroubled sleep. On his return, a sleepy hall-boy with a wilted collar ran the elevator up to his tenth-floor landing and, leaving him fumbling at the lock of his door, dropped clankingly out of sight. Whitaker entered and shut himself in with the pitch-blackness of his private hall. ”

“ She stood by the wash-stand, with her back to the light, her attitude one of tense expectancy: hardly more than a silhouette of a figure moderately tall and very slight, almost angular in its slenderness. She had been holding a tumbler in one hand, but as Whitaker appeared this slipped from her fingers; there followed a thud and a sound of spilt liquid at her feet. Simultaneously she cried out inarticulately in a voice at once harsh and tremulous; the cry might have been "You!" or "Hugh!" ”

“ They entered the house by the back door, finding themselves in the kitchen—that mean and commonplace assembly-room of narrow and pinched lives. The immaculate cleanliness of decent, close poverty lay over it all like a blight. And despite the warmth of the air outside, within it was chill—bleak with an aura of discontent bred of the incessant struggle against crushing odds which went on within those walls from year's end to year's end....
Whitaker busied himself immediately with the stove. ”

“ He caught eagerly at the thought: he might "die" again—go away once more, and forever; bury himself deep beyond the groping tentacles of civilization; disappear finally, notifying her of his intention, so that she might seek legal freedom from his name. It only needed Max's silence, which could unquestionably be secured, to insure her against the least breath of scandal, the faintest whisper of gossip.... Not that Max really knew anything; but the name of Whitaker, as identified with Hugh Morten, might better be permitted to pass unechoed into oblivion.... ”

“ And who was she, this Miss Fiske? This self-reliant and self-sufficient woman who chose to spend her summer in seclusion, with none but servants for companions; who had comprehension of machinery and ran her motor-boat alone; who went for lonely swims in the surf at dawn; who treated men as her peers—neither more nor less; who was spied upon, shadowed, attacked, kidnapped by men of unparalleled desperation and daring; who had retained her self-possession under stress of circumstance that would have driven strong men into pseudo-hysteria ”

“ Probably no more severe critic of his own chivalric foolishness ever set himself to succour a damsel in distress. Withal he entertained not the shadow of a thought of drawing back. As long as the other boat remained in sight; as long as the gasoline and his strength held out; as long as the Trouble held together and he retained the wit to guide her—so long was Whitaker determined to stick to the wake of the kidnappers. ”

“ The gangway lights vanished in a breath. The single cluster-stand on the stage disappeared—and the house disappeared utterly with its extinguishment. There remained alight only the single dull bulb in the doorman's cubicle.
Whitaker slipped an arm round his wife. She trembled within his embrace.
"Black out," she said in a gentle and regretful voice: "the last exit: Curtain—End of the Play!"
"No," he said in a voice of sublime confidence—"no; it's only the prologue curtain. Now for the play, dear heart ... the real play ... life ... love...." ”

“ He maintained a serene faith in his star, a spirited temper that refused to recognize obstacles in the way of his desire.
In the taxicab, en route to the Theatre Max, he contrived even to distil a good omen from the driving autumnal downpour itself.... The rain-swept pavements, their polished blackness shot with a thousand strands of golden brilliance; the painted bosom of the lowering, heavy sky; the tear-drenched window-panes; even the incessant crepitation on the roof of the scurrying, skidding cab seemed to lend a colour of assurance to his thoughts. ”

“ Whitaker interrupted briskly, consulting his watch. "Here, boy," he hailed a passing page; "call a taxicab for me." And then, rising alertly: "Come along; I've got to hustle home and make myself look respectable enough for the occasion; but at that, with luck, I fancy we'll be there before the first curtain."
This mood of faith, of self-reliance and assured optimism held unruffled throughout the dash homewards, his hurried change of clothing and the ride to the theatre. Nothing that Ember, purposely pessimistic, could say or do availed to diminish the high buoyancy of his humour. ”

“ Whitaker's jaw dropped and his eyes widened with wonder and pity. He couldn't deny the man, yet he found it hard to believe that this quivering, shaken creature, with his lean and pasty face and desperate, glaring eyes, this man in rough, stained, soiled and shapeless garments, could be identical with the well set-up, prosperous and confident man of affairs he remembered as Drummond. And yet they were one. Appalling to contemplate the swift devastating course of moral degeneration, that had spread like gangrene through all the man's physical and mental fibre.... ”