Anthony The Absolute

He looked up at me, and his voice trailed off into silence.

But I did nothing, except to say, in a voice that I knew to be my own because he was no longer speaking and there was certainly no other person in the room —

“So you talked of me!”

He bowed.

“You are frank, Sir Robert.”

He waved his hand. “Why not?” Then he went on. “The most puzzling point in her puzzling story is that part relating to the other man – the one that brought her out here. She makes no effort to justify her actions, as we expect a woman to do when she has gone wrong in the eyes of men.”

“Oh – so you asked her about that?”

“Yes.” He indulged in a wry, fleeting smile. “I brought up everything – used all my logic, Eckhart. I was, like you, a fool to want her at all with that crazy husband so close on her heels; but I did want her, and I worked hard for a few hours.” He sighed. “Do you know, all she has to say of the man with whom she traveled from New York clear to Peking, is – ’ That was a dreadful mistake. I was n’t the sort of woman he thought me.’ And when I spoke sympathetically of his cruelty in deserting her, she quietly informed me that he did nothing of the kind… What do you say to that, my boy? She left him!”

He was quite warmed up to his story now. He even chuckled.

“What do you say to that, young man? This exceedingly attractive young person, very nearly penniless, quite unhampered by practical experience, turns the man off, refuses his money, and starts out to face life – in Peking – alone and without so much as a plan of action! It is pitiful, of course. It is tragic. But it does stir the fancy. Now, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, “why I don’t beat you to death.”

His face, I thought, grew even whiter. But his eyes met mine.

“I know why,” he replied deliberately. “Because a gentleman does not commonly enter the room of another gentleman for any such unmannerly purpose.”

I bowed a sort of assent to this. He really had me there.

“Besides, Eckhart,” he added, “while you have a perfect right to call me a fool, you certainly can’t say that, as life runs, my attitude has been unnatural. The woman deliberately broke with life. As a result of her own acts, she is now outside the pale of decent society.”

“Outside – where we men are,” said I, very sad and bitter.

He sniffed, rather contemptuously. He thought my observation too obvious.

I added, as I turned toward the door —

“And at that, after your own tribute to the essential fineness of her character, your notion of ‘decent society’ sounds highly technical to me, Sir Robert. Good-by to you. You will forgive me for saying that I shall be very glad when you are gone.”

He did not reply. But as I laid my hand on the knob of the door, I caught a low exclamation behind me that seemed to have both pain and surprise in it.

I looked back. He had sunk down in his chair. One side of his face, the left side, had twitched upward so that there was a distinct slant to his mouth and an observably deep, curving line extending from the left lower corner of his nose.

“Are you ill?” I asked, after a moment.

He slowly shook his head. “Something snapped, I thought,” he replied, rather huskily. “But I am all here, evidently.”

“I shall be glad to call a doctor.”

“Thank you – it is quite unnecessary. If you will be so good as to have the manager send me a competent body servant, it will be sufficient.”

“But you may need medical attention.”

“Then it will not be difficult to reach McKenzie, over at the Legation. I won’t trouble you further – beyond that matter of the servant.”

I bowed and went out, closing his door behind me.

I stood there for a moment in the hall. It seemed a very long time since I had seen Heloise or heard from her. And now, thanks to that old man, I had a new set of mental pictures to touch my spirit, and stir me, and rouse feelings so subtle, so haunting, so poignant, that I could hardly bear them. Yet, I thought, these are my new mental companions, these thoughts and feelings and partly distinct, partly elusive, mind pictures, and it is with them I have got to live for the rest of my life.

I listened. She was in there, surely, behind that closed door. The transom was closed, too. I could hear no sound.

I decided then to make her speak to me. And it seemed to me that now I could give without asking.

My hopes for myself were running as high as that – to give without asking, and to reassure her poor tortured spirit by so appearing and acting that she would know, through her fine intuition, that I had risen to this point.

I ran downstairs and told the manager of Sir Robert’s request. I also suggested that in my judgment medical care was indicated. He looked puzzled, and a thought worried, that little French manager; as if unable to determine whether I had killed Sir Robert or had suddenly become his friend.

Then I came back upstairs and entered my own room. I turned on the light.

I stepped softly to the shrunken door, and listened. For a moment I thought I heard nothing; then my heart gave a leap, for her bed began creaking as if she were tossing restlessly upon it.

She was in her room. However desperate, however tortured of spirit, she was there!

She made a sound – a sort of moan.

I tapped on the door.

She was silent.

I opened the door an inch. Her room was dark. Without looking in, I placed my mouth close to the opening, and said —

“Oh – Heloise!”

That was all. I had thought to conceal my own emotions. I had thought to speak gently, kindly – in a way that would make her feel me there as a steady, helpful friend. But my voice suddenly choked. And all I could say was, “Oh – Heloise!”

She did not reply.

I waited there. I felt that I must not intrude. I could not think just what would be best to do.

Then she tossed again, restlessly. And she moaned, with a sort of muffled shudder in her voice, as if she had set her teeth and was fighting with all her waning strength to keep from making a sound.

I could n’t stand it. I opened the door. The light from my room fell across her bed and showed her there, her lovely arms outside the coverlet, her dark hair, in a thick, long braid, lying on the pillow and across her shoulder.

Still she did not’ speak. I entered (thinking vividly of that first time that I had ventured unasked into this dingy little room that was the only place in the world she could call, even momentarily, her own ). I went straight to the bed. I took one unresisting hand in mine, and gazed down at her during the moment that my eyes were accustoming themselves to this dimmer light.

She rolled her head weakly around on the pillow, and looked up at me.

Then I saw that she was very white. Her eyes were shining at me out of great, dark circles. There were marks of pain, of physical suffering, on her dear face, such as I had never before seen there. Hitherto she had merely been sad.

I sank down, sitting on the edge of the bed. I could not say anything. I stroked her wrists. I gently smoothed her forehead and temples and cheeks. Her skin was cool, almost cold, to the touch.

Her great eyes sought mine. Weak and ill as she was, I knew that she was looking into my soul, and studying it, perhaps wondering about it.

At least, now, there would be no more evasion between us. I felt that. Whatever she might say to me, when she should feel able to talk, would come directly from the most sacred depths of her consciousness. We had never been so close. Even at that sad moment, the thought thrilled me.

I had to turn away.

Then I saw that her bureau, over which she and I had once expended, ages ago, an absurd amount of energy, had been moved, and stood squarely across the hall door.

Now, why had she done that?

I was still stroking her forehead and temples, trying to control the fever that was in my veins, trying to think clearly.

I looked again at her.

She made an effort to smile at me. There was infinite sadness in that effort.

Suddenly she turned toward me, on her side, hiding her face from me, pillowing it on my hands, which she held close, if weakly, with her own cold hands. And again that low, pitiful sound escaped her lips.

“I wanted to die,” she breathed. “I wanted to die! Why did n’t you let me die!”

My heart stood still.

I turned her face to mine, and bent low over her.

“What have you done?” I asked her.

She shook her head, almost convulsively, and tried to hide her face again.

“What, have you done?” I asked.

I looked more closely at the bureau, dreading what I might see upon it. But there were only the famihar little toilet accessories that I had seen there before. My eyes searched about among them, while I sat there on the bed, while she continued to press my hands, with her own cold ones, against her face.

Then I looked down. On the floor, almost at my feet, was a glass with a little water in it. Near by was a small brown medicine bottle, with beaded edges. The cork was out. A little cotton lay by it.

I picked up the bottle, and turned it over.

It was labeled:

“Poison.” And beneath this, “Morphia,

“Heloise!” I cried. I made her look at me. “Heloise, child! You don’t mean – you have n’t – ”

Her head moved between my hands; and I knew she was trying to nod an affirmation. Then she struggled again to turn her face from me, but so weakly that I held it there without much difficulty. I fear I was employing more strength than I realized.

“How much did you take?” I said. “Tell me – quickly.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “The bottle was full. I took them all.”

“That is impossible,” I argued, foolishly. “Two grains would have killed you. One grain, even.”

“I took them all,” she repeated. “I wanted so to die. I thought for a while that I was dying. Then I became dreadfully ill. I have been so ill, Anthony!”

All at once a note of relief had come into her voice – as if it meant something to her, after all, to have me there with her, and to be able to talk with me.

I felt that. But it was not the time to think of myself.

I stood up. But she clung to one of my hands, and I had to bend a little. I was trying to think – What do they give for morphine poisoning? What are the antidotes?.. Stimulants, surely.

I had some strychnine in my little medicine-chest. I gently withdrew my hand, and went into my room to look for it.

I felt uncertain about this treatment, for I am no physician. But it might be that there was no time to lose. She was weak, and extremely nervous. The coldness of her hands led me to believe that at some moment after she took the drug her heart action must have all but stopped.

Standing there, in my disordered room – for my steamer trunk was open, my clothes still lay in rumpled heaps on the bed, the cluttered bureau drawers stood about on chairs and on the table – I made up my mind to give her the strychnine. I did not realize then that there were physicians to be had. I felt only our remoteness from the conveniences of civilized life, here in this little hotel in the Tartar City.

It would doubtless have been better to administer the stimulant by the hypodermic syringe. But I had none. So I refilled her glass with water, gave her two of my strychnine pills, and raised her head while she sipped the water.

I do not recall now whether or not she resisted this treatment. I think she did, a little. But she was so completely exhausted, in body and spirit, by all she had gone through, that she really could do nothing but follow my instructions.

Then I rang for a boy – from my own room. It was getting pretty late in the evening; but I made him fetch me a large pot of black coffee.

I lifted her, and slipped the two pillows behind her that I had brought in from my own bed, and made her as nearly comfortable as I could. When the coffee came I poured out three cups of it, one after another, and stood over her while she drank them. She protested, every moment, but I paid no attention to her words, just held the cup to her lips until it was empty and then refilled it twice.

This done, I put the tray in my own room, and did what little I could to make her room more attractive to the eye. I moved the bureau from the hall door to its place against the side wall, the place it had occupied ever since she and I had moved it for the last time away from the door that connected our rooms. I even straightened out the various articles on the bureau.

And all this time I felt her great, weary eyes following me about, the room. She was distinctly relieved, I thought, at the sharp way in which I had taken command of her life. Poor child, she had tried hard enough to end that life. She had passed through the valley, of the shadow. And now, cheated yet relieved, she leaned on me.

Since that hour my mind has dwelt on the horrors she must have lived through that day. (She did not finally take the morphia until sometime after five in the afternoon.) She says nothing about the day; and of course I ask no questions. But she was there in her room through the noon hours and all the afternoon. And when I asked her if she slept at all the preceding night – the night that I sat up, without even undressing – she said no… But I think it is better for me not to dwell on this.

I walked over to the window to let the night air in on her, and perhaps also to think.

Suddenly I recalled that there was a telephone downstairs. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!

And Sir Robert had spoken of a physician at the British Legation. I should have remembered that! But on second thought, I could not bear to think of calling in Sir Robert’s man.

However, medical advice of some sort I must have. I knew nothing of the action of morphia on the system. She might be sinking at this moment.

I stepped back to the bedside and stood over her.

She did not look worse to me. It might have been only the temporary effect of the strychnine and coffee, but there certainly appeared to be a hint of color in her cheeks.

“I am going downstairs to telephone for a doctor,” I said, taking her hand. Her fingers twined weakly around mine, and clung a little. “Will you lie quietly here until I come back?”

“I don’t want a doctor,” she breathed. “I’m much better.”

I paid no attention to this. “And will you promise me never to – not to” – my voice was unsteady – “not to take any more of that dreadful stuff?”

“I could n’t,” she replied, in that maddeningly unsatisfactory way of answering serious questions that women appear to have. “There is n’t any more.”

I think I compressed my lips over this. But I went right downstairs.

The manager was in his little den behind the hotel office. I beckoned him out, and asked about physicians.

His eyes sought my face. But I told him nothing.

With his assistance – for the telephone service of Peking is not that of New York or Chicago —

I called up an English medical mission that was not far from the hotel.

The head physician had gone to bed. At first they refused to disturb him. But I insisted.

It was half an hour before he arrived. I drew a chair to Heloise’s bedside, talking with her and rubbing her head and her forearms while we waited.

She gave every evidence of rather rapid improvement. She was weak, of course; and so nervous that her body would twitch for no reason, and the slightest unexpected sound would give her a start. But the pupils of her eyes, that had been very small, were widening out to something like their normal size. And behind the gaze that she kept turning to me and the occasional faint suggestion about her mouth of a gentle but sad and enigmatic smile, I felt, even then, that she was doing some sober thinking.

After a time she said:

“I have clung to one thought to-day. My life has been all a blunder. But it has helped a little to know that you have your scales, Anthony – and that you would n’t have them except for me.”

I went limp at this. For it had made me feel sound and strong to be caring for her, and now her words plunged me back into the depths of that dreadful day. I dropped my chin on my hands.

“Anthony!” said she. “What is it?”

I could only shake my head.

“But you have the scales, Anthony?”

I shook my head again.

She came up on her elbow – all weak and shaking. She had on that gray silk kimono that I love – the one with the wistaria blossoms embroidered on it. I felt her eyes searching my thoughts, and I could only look at the soft gray blossoms on her sleeve and study out the pattern.

“Anthony,” she was saying, with something of that musical “edge” in her voice – “Anthony, what have you done?”

I told her. I even moved my chair aside and let her gaze past me and through the open doorway into my room, where she could see bits of the broken cylinders scattered about the floor.

Was I pleading the cause of my love for her, of my – yes – of my desire for her, in thus giving way to the unexpected impulse to have her see those broken cylinders with her own eyes? God pity me, I do not know! All I am sure of is that I suddenly wanted her to know all about those miserable, weak hours of mine. And a strange, tremulous hope was fluttering to life in my heart. It was possible that we should again work together, she and I!

This hope fluttered and grew. I felt my heart beat more quickly, and a touch of that odd dryness in the throat that comes to me when Heloise and I are close, when I touch her hand or her sleeve and know at the same moment that she is thinking of me and that her feelings are in some mysterious way interwoven with mine.

I recall that I moved forward on my chair I moved still farther, and sat on the edge of the bed. I slipped my arm behind her head. I drew her lovely, dark head against my breast. I bent over and kissed her fragrant hair and rubbed my cheek against it.

I was stroking her hair and her soft cheek. I bent lower and kissed her forehead. Then I kissed her cheek.

I could not help it. I did not know I was going to do it. I know now that she had stopped resisting before this. She let me kiss her.

Slowly this fact made itself felt in my mind and in my heart. She had let me kiss her, but she had been unable to respond. And I remembered what she had said, hours or years ago, and the poignant sadness of it —

“Something has died in me. I don’t believe I can ever love a man again.”

I lowered her head against the pile of pillows. I held the thick braid of her hair for a moment, then let it fall over her shoulder. I looked into her eyes, hoping against hope that I might find a responsive light there.

Then I sank back on my chair, and covered my face with my hands.

She reached out and laid her hand on my arm.

For a little time we sat that way. I could not look at her. I could not say anything. I was glad of the gentle touch of her hand.

It was she who broke the silence.

“Oh, Anthony,” she breathed. “If I only could!”

Then we were still again.

But this would not do. I was all egotism – I, who had so wished to help her.

Finally I looked up, and took her hand in mine and stroked it. I even smiled at her. At least, it seemed to me that I smiled.

It was one of those moments that come, in our times of greatest bewilderment, when for a space we see clearly. I suddenly felt that I could think again.

“I don’t know what is to become of us, Heloise dear,” I said. “You have been close to the end of your life. But I think that you will have to let me help you. For I know now that I shall not want to live unless I can help you. And I shall not leave you alone in Peking. I think you will have to bear with me, at least until I can know that you have got back into the current of your life and work.”

She compressed her lips, and her dear eyes glistened. Then I felt her fingers tighten around mine.

“Anthony,” she said, low and uncertain, “I would do anything. I would love you if I could. I would go to you without love if I thought I could make you happy, or even help you. You gave me hope by helping me to work. Now, in spite of the dreadful facts of my life that I know so well to be true, you are stirring me to hope again. But all the time I know that the dreadful facts are there, that they will be there when this hope is faded.”

“I think,” said I, “that we can triumph over those dreadful facts.”

“Oh, Anthony,” she murmured, “if you only knew how dreadful they are. I wondered before whether I ought to tell you. I lay awake here night after night, trying to think it out – whether I ought to tell you. And then even worse news came. It was too much for me. I gave up, Anthony. It seemed to me, only a few hours ago, that the kindest thing I could do – the kindest thing I could do to you, dear – would be to leave this world. I brought only trouble into it. I thought it would be best to leave it.”

She paused. She looked past me, toward the window. Her brows were knit. She was very sober. And her reticence, that I had always felt, was gone. She continued:

“And now I’ve made a failure even of that. And here I am again, disturbing your life, a burden – ”

I leaned forward and took her other hand and looked at her. She faltered. She stopped. I held her two hands firmly. For a moment I considered telling her that I knew her story. Then I knew that I could n’t tell her. To-morrow, perhaps; but not now. This hour was hers and mine. Crocker had no place in it. I would not so much as have his name spoken. Further than this, my mind, that had failed me so miserably of late, was working again; and a plan was forming there.

I could not yet see all the way. But from moment to moment I could feel my habitual confidence in my mental processes coming back to me. I was beginning to believe, as I always used to believe, that I should prove equal to the situation, as it might develop. And the first thought of renunciation was coming to me like a clear light.

It is obvious, of course (even in this tense moment the fact became reasonably clear to me) that where personal desire is the major premise, logic is impossible.

It was time I came; in some degree to my senses.

She must have seen something of all this in my face, when I bent forward and took her two hands so firmly and looked into her eyes.

“Heloise dear,” I said, “you are not going to die. You are going to live. For the present you are going to let me help you start at rebuilding your life. You will do this because I love you, and because it is unthinkable that I should not help you. One way or the other” – I repeated this phrase with a peculiar emphasis that, I could see, puzzled her – “one way or the other I am going to help you. It may be that I can never stir you to love me. I shall do this if I can, Heloise; but it may be that I shall not succeed. I am glad that I have” – my voice broke here, so confusing is love – “have kissed you, but I shall not kiss you again. Not again, dear. We shall work this out, however. You and I, one way or the other, we shall work it out.”

“But Anthony,” said she. “You must let me tell you! It is – I am not free – there is – ”

“You shall not tell me to-night,” I said to her. “You shall tell me nothing. I will not permit it. I will not listen. Free or bound, however dreadful the facts may seem – these things are nothing. Nothing!” My voice rose a little, I fear, at this point. “They can not possibly concern us now, you and me. For one way or the other – ”

“But, dear, you don’t understand – you don’t know!”

“I know enough,” said I. “I know all that need concern me and the woman I love more than my life, more than my work, more than everything else in the world and the sky.”

She seemed almost to shudder at this.

“Anthony! Please, dear!” She was whispering these broken sentences. “This is all wrong! Please!”

Her voice trailed off. I was still bending forward, all eager and flushed with the great thoughts that were stirring within me. Her eyes seemed almost to cling to mine. She stirred a little, but did not turn away. Her hands were still in mine.

It seemed to me that I ought to surrender her hands and sit back in my chair.

Her eyes were glistening wet, the outlines of her mouth softened from the sadness that had been there. It almost seemed to me that she was drawing me forward with her hands.

Certainly something – some quality of the spirit, perhaps, was draw ing me nearer and nearer to her. I knew that my head was bending closer. I thought of resisting, but I did not resist.