The outcasts of poker flat 4 страница

The person reading was a trifle different; one would have said of him that he was of the world, worldly, albeit there was that in his attire which attested a certain fel­lowship with the organisms of his environment. His coat would hardly have passed muster in San Francisco; his foot-gear was not of urban origin, and the hat that lay by him on the floor (he was the only one uncovered) was such that if one had considered it as an article of mere personal adornment he would have missed its meaning. In countenance the man was rather prepossessing, with just a hint of sternness; though that he may have assumed or cultivated, as appropriate to one in authority. For he was a coroner. It was by virtue of his office that he had possession of the book in which he was reading; it had been found among the dead man's effects-in his cabin, where the inquest was now taking place.

When the coroner had finished reading he put the book into his breast pocket. At that moment the door was pushed open and a young man entered. He, clearly, was not of mountain birth and breeding: he was clad as those who dwell in cities. His clothing was dusty, however, as from travel. He had, in fact, been riding hard to attend the inquest.

The coroner nodded; no one else greeted him.

«We have waited for you,» said the coroner. «It is necessary to have done with this business to-night.»

The young man smiled. «I am sorry to have kept you,» he said. «I went away, not to evade your summons, but to post to my newspaper an account of what I suppose I am called back to relate.» The coroner smiled.

«The account that you posted to your newspaper,» he said, «differs, probably, from that which you will give here under oath.»

«That,» replied the other, rather hotly and with a vis­ible flush, «is as you please. I used manifold paper and have a copy of what I sent. It was not written as news, for it is incredible, but as fiction. It may go as a part of my testimony under oath.»

«But you say it is incredible.»

«That is nothing to you, sir, if I also swear that it is true.»

The coroner was silent for a time, his eyes upon the floor. The men about the sides of the cabin talked in whispers, but seldom withdrew their gaze from the face of the corpse. Presently the coroner lifted his eyes and said: «We will resume the inquest.»

The men removed their hats. The witness was sworn.

«What is your name?» the coroner asked.

«William Harker.»

«Age?»

«Twenty-seven.»

«You knew the deceased, Hugh Morgan?»

«Yes.»

«You were with him when he died?»

«Near him.»

«How did that happen-your presence, I mean?»

«I was visiting him at this place to shoot and fish. A part of my purpose, however, was to study him and his odd, solitary way of life. He seemed a good model for a character in fiction. I sometimes write stories.»

«I sometimes read them.»

«Thank you.»

«Stories in general-not yours.»

Some of the jurors laughed. Against a sombre back­ground humor shows high lights. Soldiers in the inter­vals of battle laugh easily, and a jest in the death cham­ber conquers by surprise.

«Relate the circumstances of this man's death,» said the coroner. «You may use any notes or memoranda that you please.»

The witness understood. Pulling a manuscript from his breast pocket he held it near the candle and turning the leaves until he found the passage that he wanted be­gan to read.

II

WHAT MAY HAPPEN IN A FIELD OF WILD OATS

«.. .The sun had hardly risen when we left the house. We were looking for quail, each with a shotgun, but we had only one dog. Morgan said that our best ground was beyond a certain ridge that he pointed out, and we crossed it by a trail through the chaparral. On the other side was comparatively level ground, thickly covered with wild oats. As we emerged from the chaparral Morgan was but a few yards in advance. Suddenly we heard, at a little distance to our right and partly in front, a noise as of some animal thrashing about in the bushes, which we could see were violently agitated.

"We've started a deer," I said. "I wish we had brought a rifle."

«Morgan, who had stopped and was intently watch­ing the agitated chaparral, said nothing, but had cocked both barrels of his gun and was holding it in readiness to aim. I thought him a trifle excited, which surprised me, for he had a reputation for exceptional coolness, even in moments of sudden and imminent peril. "(), come," I said. "You are not going to fill up a deer with quail-shot, are you?"

Still he did not reply; but catching a sight of his face as he turned it slightly toward me I was struck by the intensity of his look. Then 1 understood that we had seri­ous business in hand and my first conjecture was that we had "jumped" a grizzly. I advanced to Morgan's side, cock­ing my piece as I moved.

The bushes were now quiet and the sounds had ceased, but Morgan was as attentive to the place as be­fore.

"What is it? What the devil is it?" I asked.

"That Damned Thing!" he replied, without turning his head. His voice was husky and unnatural. He trembled visibly.

I was about to speak further, when I observed the wild oats near the place of the disturbance moving in the most inexplicable way. I can hardly describe it. It seemed as if stirred by a streak of wind, which not only bent it, but pressed it down-crushed it so that it did not rise; and this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly to­ward us.

Nothing that I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this unfamiliar and unaccountable phenom­enon, yet I am unable to recall any sense of fear. I re-member-and tell it here because, singularly enough, I recollected it then-that once in looking carelessly out of an open window I momentarily mistook a small tree close at hand for one of a group of larger trees at a little dis­tance away. It looked the same size as the others, but being more distinctly and sharply defined in mass and detail seemed out of harmony with them. It was a mere falsification of the law of aerial perspective, but it star­tled, almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbance were distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him sud­denly throw his gun to his shoulder and fire both barrels at the agitated grain! Before the smoke of the discharge had cleared away I heard a loud savage cry-a scream like that of a wild animal-and flinging his gun upon the ground Morgan sprang away and ran swiftly from the spot. At the same instant I was thrown violently to the ground by the impact of something unseen in the smoke-some soft, heavy substance that seemed thrown against me with great force.

Before I could get upon my feet and recover my gun, which seemed to have been struck from my hands, 1 heard Morgan crying out as if in mortal agony, and min­gling with his cries were such hoarse, savage sounds as one hears from fighting dogs. Inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and looked in the direction of Mor­gan's retreat; and may Heaven in mercy spare me from another sight like that! At a distance of less than thirty yards was my friend, down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and seemed to lack the hand-at least, I could see none. The other arm was invisible. At times, as my mem­ory now reports this extraordinary scene, I could discern but a part of his body; it was as if he had been partly blotted out-I cannot otherwise express it-then a shifting of his position would bring it all into view again.

All this must have occurred within a few seconds, yet in that time Morgan assumed all the postures of a deter-

mined wrestler vanquished by superior weight and strength. I saw nothing but him, and him not always dis­tinctly. During the entire incident his shouts and curses were heard, as if through an enveloping uproar of such sounds of rage and fury as 1 had never heard from the throat of man or brute!

For a moment only I stood irresolute, then throwing down my gun I ran forward to my friend's assistance. I had a vague belief that he was suffering from a fit, or some form of convulsion. Before I could reach his side he was down and quiet. All sounds had ceased, but with a feeling of such terror as even these awful events had not inspired I now saw again the mysterious movement of the wild oats, prolonging itself from the trampled area about the pros­trate man toward the edge of a wood. It was only when it had reached the wood that I was able to withdraw my eyes and look at my companion. He was dead.»

Ill

A MAN THOUGH NAKED MAY BE IN RAGS

The coroner rose from his seat and stood beside the dead man. Lifting an edge of the sheet he pulled it away, exposing the entire body, altogether naked and showing in the candle-light a claylike yellow. It had, however, broad maculations of bluish black, obviously caused by extravagated blood from contusions. The chest and sides looked as if they had been beaten with a bludgeon. There were dreadful lacerations; the skin was torn in strips and shreds.

The coroner moved round to the end of the table and undid a silk handkerchief which had been passed under the chin and knotted on the top of the head. When the handkerchief was drawn away it exposed what had been the throat. Some of the jurors who had risen to gel a better view repented their curiosity and turned away their faces. Witness Harker went to the open window and leaned out across the sill, faint and sick. Dropping the handkerchief upon the dead man's neck the coroner stepped to an angle of the room and from a pile of cloth­ing produced one garment after another, each of which he held up a moment for inspection. All were torn, and stiff with blood. The jurors did not make a closer inspec­tion. They seemed rather uninterested. They had, in truth, seen all this before; the only thing that was new to them being Barker's testimony.

«Gentlemen,» the coroner said, «we have no more evi­dence, I think. Your duty has been already explained to you; if there is nothing you wish to ask you may go out­side and consider your verdict.»

The foreman rose-a tall, bearded man of sixty, coarse­ly clad.

«I should like to ask one question, Mr. Coroner,» he said. «What asylum did this year last witness escape from?»

«Mr. Harker,» said the coroner, gravely and tranquil­ly, «from what asylum did you last escape?»

Harker flushed crimson again, but said nothing, and the seven jurors rose and solemnly filed out of the cabin.

«If you have done insulting me, sir,» said Harker, as soon as he and the officer were left alone with the dead man, «I suppose I am at liberty to go?»

«Yes.»

Harker started to leave, but paused, with his hand on the door latch. The habit of his profession was strong in him-stronger than his sense of personal dignity. He turned about and said:

«The book that you have there-I recognize it as Mor­gan's diary. You seemed greatly interested in it; you read in it while I was testifying. May I see it?

The public would

«The book will cut no figure in this matter,» replied the official, slipping it into his coat pocket; «all the en­tries in it were made before the writer's death.»

As Harker passed out of the house the jury reentered and stood about the table, on which the now covered corpse showed under the sheet with sharp definition. The foreman seated himself near the candle, produced from his breast pocket a pencil and scrap of paper and wrote rather laboriously the following verdict, which with vari­ous degrees of effort all signed:

«We, the jury, do find that the remains come to their death at the hands of a mountain lion, but some of us thinks, all the same, they had fits.»

IV

AN EXPLANATION FROM THE TOMB

In the diary of the late Hugh Morgan are certain interesting entries having, possibly, a scientific value as suggestions. At the inquest upon his body the book was not put in evidence; possibly the coroner thought it not worth while to confuse the jury. The date of the first of the entries mentioned cannot be ascertained; the upper part of the leaf is torn away; the part of the entry remain­ing follows:

«.. .would run in a half-circle, keeping his head turned always toward the centre, and again he would stand still, barking furiously. At last he ran away into the brush as fast as he could go. I thought at first that he had gone mad, but on returning to the house found no other alter­ation in his manner than what was obviously due to fear of punishment. Can a dog see with his nose? Do odors impress some cerebral centre with images of the thing that emitted them?...

Sept. 2.-Looking at the stars last night as they rose above the crest of the ridge east of the house, I observed them successively disappear-from left to right. Each was eclipsed but an instant, and only a few at the same time, but along the entire length of the ridge all that were within a degree or two of the crest were blotted out. It was as if something had passed along between me and them; but I could not see it, and the stars were not thick enough to define its outline. Ugh! I don't like this.» ...

Several weeks' entries are missing, three leaves be­ing torn from the book.

«Sept. 27.-It has been about here again-I find evidenc­es of its presence every day. I watched again all last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buck­shot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep-in­deed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.

Oct. 3.-I shall not go-it shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward...

Oct. 5.-I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me-he has a level head. I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad.

Oct. 7.-I have the solution of the mystery; it came to me last night-suddenly, as by revelation. How simple-how terribly simple!

There are sounds that we cannot hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top-the tops of several trees-and all in full. Suddenly – in a moment – at absolutely the same in­stant-all spring into the air and fly away. How? They could not all see one another-whole tree-tops intervened. At no point could a leader have been visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I have ob­served, too, the same simultaneous flight when all were silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds-quail, for example, widely separated by bushes-even on oppo­site sides of a hill.

It is known to seamen that a school of whales bask­ing or sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earth between, will sometimes dive at the same instant-all gone out of sight in a mo­ment. The signal has been sounded-too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck-who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the bass of the organ.

As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as "actinic" rays. They represent colors-integral colors in the composition of light-which we are unable td discern. The human eye is an imperfect in­strument; its range is but a few octaves of the real "chro­matic scale." I am not mad; there are colors that we can­not see.

And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!»

Henry James

THE TWO FACES

I

T

he servant, who, in spite of his sealed stamped look, appeared to have his reasons, stood there for instruction in a manner not quite usual after announc­ing the name. Mrs. Grantham, however, took it up-«Lord Gwyther?»-with a quick surprise that for an in­stant justified him even to the small scintilla in the glance she gave her companion, which might have had exactly the sense of the butler's hesitation. This com­panion, a shortish fairish youngish man, clean-shaven and keen-eyed, had, with a promptitude that would have struck an observer-which the butler indeed was-sprung to his feet and-moved to the chimney-piece, though his hostess herself meanwhile managed not otherwise to stir. «Well?» she said as for the visitor to advance; which she immediately followed with a sharp­er «He's not there?»

«Shall I show him up, ma'am?» «But of course!» The point of his doubt made her at last rise for impatience, and Bates, before leaving the room, might still have caught the achieved irony of her appeal to the gentleman into whose communion with her he had broken. «Why in the world not-? What a way-!» she exclaimed as Sutton felt beside his cheek the pas­sage of her eyes to the glass behind him.

«He wasn't sure you'd see any one.»

«I don't see "any one," but I see individuals.»
«That's just it-and sometimes you don't see them.»

«Do you mean ever because of you?» she asked as she touched into place a tendril of hair. «That's just his impertinence, as to which I shall speak to him.»

«Don't,» said Shirley Sutton. «Never notice anything.»

«That's nice advice from you,» she laughed, «who notice everything!»

«Ah but 1 speak of nothing.»

She looked at him a moment «You're still more imperti­nent than Bates. You'll please not budge,» she went on.

«Really? I must sit him out?» he continued as, after a minute, she had not again spoken-only glancing about, while she changed her place, partly for another look at the glass and partly to see if she could improve her seat. What she felt was rather more than, clever and charm­ing though she was, she could hide. «If you're wonder­ing how you seem I can tell you. Awfully cool and easy.»

She gave him another stare. She was beautiful and conscious. «And if you're wondering how you seem-»

«Oh I'm not!» he laughed from before the fire. «I al­ways perfectly know.»

«How you seem,» she retorted, «is as if you didn't!»

Once more for a little he watched her. «You're looking lovely for him-extraordinarily lovely, within the marked limits of your range. But that's enough. Don't be clever.»

«Then who will be?»

«There you are!» he sighed with amusement.

«Do you know him?» she asked as, through the door left open by Bates, they heard steps on the landing.

Sutton had to think an instant, and produced a «No» just as Lord Gwyther was again announced, which gave an unexpectedness to the greeting offered him a moment later by this personage-a young man, stout and smooth and fresh, but not at all shy, who, after the happiest rapid passage with Mrs. Grantham, put out a hand with a straight free «How d' ye do?»

«Mr. Shirley Sutton,» Mrs. Grantham explained.

«Oh yes,» said her second visitor quite as if he knew; which, as he couldn't have known, had for her first the interest of confirming a perception that his lordship would be-no, not at all, in general, embarrassed, only was now exceptionally and especially agitated. As it is, for that matter, with Button's total impression that we are partic­ularly and almost exclusively concerned, it may be fur­ther mentioned that he was not less clear as to the really handsome way in which the young man kept himself to­gether and little by little-though with all proper aid in-deed-fmally found his feet. All sorts of things, for the twenty minutes, occurred to Sutton, though one of them was certainly not that it would, after all, be better he should go. One of them was that their hostess was doing it in perfection-simply, easily, kindly, yet with something the least bit queer in her wonderful eyes; another was that if he had been recognised without the least ground it was through a tension of nerves on the part of his fel­low guest that produced inconsequent motions; still an­other was that, even had departure been indicated, he would positively have felt dissuasion in the rare promise of the scene. This was in especial after Lord Gwyther not only had announced that he was now married, but had mentioned that he wished to bring his wife to Mrs. Grantham for the benefit so certain to be derived. It was the passage immediately produced by that speech that provoked in Sutton the intensity, as it were, of his arrest. He already knew of the marriage as well as Mrs. Grantham herself, and as well also as he knew of some other things; and this gave him doubtless the better meas­ure of what took place before him and the keener con­sciousness of the quick look that, at a marked moment-though it was not absolutely meant for him any more than for his companion-Mrs. Grantham let him catch.

She smiled, but it had a gravity. «I think, you know, you ought to have told me before.»

«Do you mean when 1 first got engaged? Well, it all took place so far away, and we really told, at home, so few people.»

Oh there might have been reasons; but it had not been quite right. «You were married at Stuttgart? That wasn't too far for my interest, at least, to reach.»

«Awfully kind of you-and of course one knew you would be kind. But it wasn't at Stuttgart; it was over there, but quite in the country. We should have managed it in England but that her mother naturally wished to be present, yet wasn't in health to come. So it was really, you see, a sort of little hole-and-corner German affair.»

This didn't in the least check Mrs. Grantham's claim, but it started a slight anxiety. «Will she be-a-then Ger­man?»

Sutton knew her to know perfectly what Lady Gwyther would «be,» but he had by this time, while their friend explained, his independent interest. «Oh dear no! My father-in-law has never parted with the proud birthright of a Briton. But his wife, you see, holds an estate in Wiir-temberg from her mother, Countess Kremnitz, on which, with the awful condition of his English property, you know, they've found it for years a tremendous saving to live. So that though Valda was luckily born at home she has practically spent her life over there.»

«Oh I see.» Then, after a slight pause, «Is Valda her pretty name?» Mrs. Grantham asked.

«Well,» said the young man, only wishing, in his can­dour, it was clear, to be drawn out-«well, she has, in the manner of her mother's people, about thirteen; but that's the one we generally use.»

Mrs. Grantham waited but an instant. «Then may I generally use it?»

«It would be too charming of you; and nothing would give her-as I assure you nothing would give we-greater pleasure.» Lord Gwyther quite glowed with the thought.

«Then I think that instead of coming alone you might have brought her to see me.»

«It's exactly what,» he instantly replied, «I came to ask your leave to do.» He explained that for the moment Lady Gwyther was not in town, having as soon as she arrived gone down to Torquay to put in a few days with one of her aunts, also her godmother, to whom she was an object of great interest. She had seen no one yet, and no one-not that that mattered-had seen her; she knew nothing what­ever of London and was awfully frightened at facing it and at what (however little) might be expected of her. «She wants some one,» he said, «some one who knows the whole thing, don't you see? and who's thoroughly kind and clev­er, as you would be, if I may say so, to take her by the hand.» It was at this point and on these words that the eyes of Lord Gwyther's two auditors inevitably and wonderful­ly met. But there was nothing in the way he kept it up to show he caught the encounter. «She wants, if I may tell you so, a real friend for the great labyrinth; and asking myself what I could do to make things ready for her, and who would be absolutely the best woman in London-»

«You thought naturally of me?» Mrs. Grantham had listened with no sign but the faint flash just noted; now, however, she gave him the full light of her expressive face- which immediately brought Shirley Sutton, looking at his watch, once more to his feet.

«She is the best woman in London!» He addressed himself with a laugh to the other visitor, but offered his hand in farewell to their hostess.

«You're going?»

«I must,» he said without scruple.

«Then we do meet at dinner?» «I hope so.» On which, to take leave, he returned with interest to Lord Gwyther the friendly clutch he had a short time before received.

II

They did meet at dinner, and if they were not, as it happened, side by side, they made that up afterwards in the happiest angle of a drawing-room that offered both shine and shadow and that was positively much appreci­ated, in the circle in which they moved, for the favoura­ble «corners» created by its shrewd mistress. Mrs. Grantham's face, charged with something produced in it by Lord Gwyther's visit, had been with him so constantly for the previous hours that, when she instantly challenged him on his «treatment» of her in the afternoon, he was on the point of naming it as his reason for not having remained with her. Something new had quickly come into her beauty; he couldn't as yet have said what, nor wheth­er on the whole to its advantage or its loss. Till he should see this clearer, at any rate he would say nothing; so that he found with sufficient presence of mind a better ex­cuse. If in short he had in defiance of her particular re­quest left her alone with Lord Gwyther it was simply because the situation had suddenly turned so exciting that he had fairly feared the contagion of it-the temptation of its making him, most improperly, put in his word.

They could now talk of these things at their ease. Oth­er couples, ensconced and scattered, enjoyed the same privilege, and Sutton had more and more the profit, such as it was, of feeling that his interest in Mrs. Grantham had become-what was the luxury of so high a social code-an acknowledged and protected relation. He knew his London well enough to know that he was on the way to be regarded as her main source of consolation for the trick Lord Gwyther had several months before publicly played her. Many persons had not held that, by the high social code in question, his lordship could have «reserved the right» to turn up that way, from one day to another, engaged to be married. For himself London took, with its short cuts and its cheap psychology, an immense deal for granted. To his own sense he was never-could in the nature of things never be-any man's «successor.» Just what had constituted the predecessorship of other men was apparently that they had been able to make up their mind. He, worse luck, was at the mercy of her face, and more than ever at the mercy of it now, which meant more­over not that it made a slave of him, but that it made, dis­concertingly, a sceptic. It was the absolute perfection of the handsome, but things had a way of coming into it. «I felt,» he said, «that you were there together at a point at which you had a right to the ease the absence of a listen­er would give. I was sure that when you made me prom­ise to stay you hadn't guessed-»

«That he could possibly have come to me on such an extraordinary errand? No, of course I hadn't guessed. Who would? But didn't you see how little I was upset by it?»

Sutton demurred. Then with a smile: «I think he saw how little.»

«You yourself didn't then?»

He again held back, but not, after all, to answer. «He was wonderful, wasn't he?»

«I think he was,» she returned after a moment. To which she added: «Why did he pretend that way he knew you?»

«He didn't pretend. He somehow felt on the spot that I was "in it."» Sutton had found this afterwards and found it to represent a reality. «It was an effusion of cheer and hope. He was so glad to see me there and to find you happy.» «Happy:''»

«Happy. Aren't you?»

«Because of you?»

«Well-according to the impression he received as he came in.»

«That was sudden then,» she asked, «and unexpected?»

Her companion thought. «Prepared in some degree, but confirmed by the sight of us, there together, so aw­fully jolly and sociable over your fire.»

Mrs. Grantham turned this round. «If he knew I was 'happy' then-which, by the way, is none of his business, nor of yours either-why in the world did he come?»

«Well, for good manners, and for his idea,» said Sutton.