Between Friends

“I’ll look it over, but—”

“And,” interrupted Guilder, “you had better get that Miss White for the Virgin—before she goes off somewhere out of reach.”

Drene looked up somberly:

“I haven’t kept in touch with her. I don’t know what her engagements may be.”

“One of her engagements just now seems to be to go about with Graylock,” said Guilder.

Drene flushed, but said nothing.

“If he marries her,” added Guilder, “as it’s generally understood he is trying to, the best sculptor’s model in town is out of the question. Better secure her now.”

“He wants to marry her?” repeated Drene, in a curiously still voice.

“He’s mad about her. He’s abject. It’s no secret among his friends. Men like that—and of that age—sometimes arrive at such a terminal—men with Graylock’s record sometimes get theirs. She has given him a run, believe me, and he’s brought up with a crash against a stone wall. He is lying there all doubled up at her feet like a rabbit with a broken back. There was nothing left for him to do but lie there. He’s lying there still, with one of her little feet on his bull neck. All the town knows it.”

“He wants to marry her,” repeated Drene, as though to himself.

“She may not take him at that. They’re queer—some women. I suppose she’d jump at it if she were not straight. But there’s another thing—” Guilder looked curiously at Drene. “Some people think she’s rather crazy about you.”

Drene gazed into space.

“But that wouldn’t hurt her,” added Guilder, in his calm, pleasant voice. “She’s a straight little thing—white and straight. She could come to no harm through a man like you.”

Drene continued to stare at space.

“So,” continued the other, confident, “when she recovers from a natural and childlike infatuation for you she’ll marry somebody… Possibly even such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can’t ever tell about such men at the eleventh hour.”

Drene turned his eyes on him. There was no trace of color in his face.

“Aren’t you pretty damned charitable?”

“Charitable? Well, I—I’m so inclined, I fancy.”

“You’d be content to see that girl marry a dog like that?”

“I did not say so. I am no judge of men. No man knows enough to condemn souls.”

Drene looked at him:

“Well, I’ll tell you something. I know enough to do it. I had rather damn my soul—and hers, too—than see her marry the man you have named. It would be worth it to me.”

After a strained silence, Guilder said:

“There is a mode of dealing with those who have injured you, which is radically different—”

“I deal with such people in my own fashion!”

“But, after all, the infamy is Graylock’s. Why oblige him by sharing it with him?”

“Do you know what he did to me and mine?”

“A few of us know,” said Guilder, gently, “—your old friends.”

There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene’s eyes:

“I’ll take your commission for that altar piece,” he said.

“What is it? An Annunciation?”

IV

Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by the middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine until five; every evening they had dined together at the seashore or other suburban and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer entertainment in town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings together in his studio, chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes discussing he work in hand or other subjects of he moment, even topics covering a wider and more varied range than he had ever before discussed with any woman.

He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had been absent from his face—the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to have become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times, smoothed out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.

If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety had been not entirely spontaneous, his smile shadowed with something duller, his laughter a trifle forced, she had not perceived it in her surprised and shyly troubled preoccupation with this amazing and delightful transfiguration.

At first she scarcely knew what to look for, what to expect from him, from herself, when she came into the studio after many weeks of absence; and she always halted in the doorway, trembling a little, as always, when in contact with him.

But he was very delightful, smiling, easy, and deferential enough to reassure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and released it.

From the moment of their reunion he had never touched her, save for a quick, firm, smiling hand-clasp in the morning and another at the night’s parting.

Now, little by little, she was finding herself delightfully at ease with him, emerging by degrees from her charming bewilderment out of isolation to a happy companionship never before shared with any man.

Nor even vaguely had she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and sympathy.

And never, now, was her troubled consciousness aware of anything disquieting in his attitude, of anything to perturb her.

He seemed to enjoy himself like a boy, with her companionship, wholly, heartily, without any motive other than the pleasure of the moment; and so, little by little, she gave herself up to it too, in the same fashion, unguardedly, frankly, innocently revealing herself to him by degrees as their comradeship became deliciously unembarrassed.

He was making a full length study in clay now. All day long she sat there enthroned, her eyes partly closed, the head lifted a trifle and fallen back, and her lovely hands resting on her heart—and sometimes she strove to imagine something of the divine moment which she was embodying; pondering, dreaming, wondering; and sometimes, in the stillness, through her trance crept a thrill, subtle, exquisite, as though in faint perception of the heavenly moment. And once, into her half-dreaming senses came the soft stirring of wings, and she opened her eyes and looked up, startled and thrilled.

But it was only a pigeon which had come through the great window from the cote on the adjacent roof and which circled above her on whimpering wings for a moment and then sheered out into the sunlight.

They dined together at a roof garden that evening, the music was particularly and surprisingly good, and what surprised him even more was that she knew it and spoke of it. And continued speaking of music, he not interrupting.

Reticent hitherto concerning her antecedents he learned now something of them—and inferred more; nothing unusual—a musical career determined upon, death intervening dragging over her isolation the steel meshes of destitution—the necessity for self-support, a friend who knew a painter who employed models—not anything unusual, not even dramatic.

He nodded as she ended:

“Have you saved anything?”

“A hundred dollars.”

“That’s fine.”

She smiled, then sighed unconsciously.

“You are thinking,” he said, “that youth is flying.”

She smiled wistfully.

“Youth is the time to study. You were thinking that, too.”

She nodded.

“You could have married.”

“Why?” she asked, troubled.

“To obtain the means for a musical education.”

She gazed at him in amazement, then: “I could go out on the street, too, as far as that is concerned. It would be no more disgraceful.”

“Folk-ways sanction self-sale, when guaranteed by the clergy,” he said. She turned her head and he saw the pure, cold profile against the golden table-lamp, and he saw something else under the palms beyond—Graylock’s light eyes riveted upon them both.

“You know,” he said, under his breath, “that I shall not marry you. But—would you care to begin your studies again?”

There was a long silence: She remained with face partly averted until the orchestra ceased. Then she turned and looked at him, and he saw her lip tremble.

“I had not thought you meant to ask me—that. I do not quite understand what you mean.”

“I care enough for you to wish to help you. May I?”

“I was not sure you cared—enough—”

“Do you—for me?”

“Before I say that I do—care for you—” she began, tremulously—“tell me that I have nothing to fear—”

Neither spoke. Over her shoulder Drene stared at the distant man who stared back at him.

Presently his eyes reverted to hers, absently studying the childlike beauty of her.

“I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “Love is no more wonderful than hate, no more perfect, no more eternal. And it is less fierce, and not as strong.”

“What!” she whispered, bewildered at the sinister change in him.

“And I want to tell you another thing. I am alone in the world. What I have, I have devised to you—in case I step out—suddenly—”

He paused, hesitated, then:

“Also I desire you to hear something else,” he went on. “This is the proper time for you to hear it, I think—now—to-night—”

He lifted his blazing eyes and looked at the other man.

“There was a woman,” he said—“She happened to be my wife. Also there was my closest friend: and myself. The comedy was cast. Afterward she died—abroad. I believe he was there at the time—Kept up a semblance—But he never married her.... And I do not intend to marry—you.”

After a moment: “And that,” she whispered, “is why you once said to me that I should have let you alone.”

“Did I say that to you?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him, straight into his eyes: “But if you care for me—I do not regret that I did not let you alone.”

“I shall not marry you.”

Her lip trembled but she smiled.

“That is nothing new to me,” she said. “Only one man has offered that.”

“Why didn’t you take him?” he asked, with an ugly laugh.

“I couldn’t. I cared for you.”

“And now,” he said, “are you afraid of me?”

“Yes—a little.”

He leaned forward suddenly, “You’d better steer clear of me!” Her startled eyes beheld in him a change as swift as his words.

“Fair warning!” he added: “look out for yourself.” Everything that was brutal in him; everything ruthless and violent had marred his features so that all in a moment the mouth had grown ugly and a hard, bruised look stamped the pallid muscles of his features and twitched at them.

“You’re taking chances from now on,” he said. “I told you once to let me alone. You’d better do it now. And—” he stared at the distant man—“I told you that hate is more vital than love. It is. I’ve waited a long time to strike. Even now it isn’t in me to do it as I have meant to do it. And so I tell you to keep away from me; and I’ll strike in the old-fashioned way, and end it—to-night.”

Stunned by his sudden and dreadful metamorphosis, her ears ringing with his disjointed incoherencies, she rose, scarcely knowing what she was doing, scarcely conscious that he was beside her, moving lightly and in silence out into the brilliant darkness of the streets.

It was only at her own door that he spoke again: standing there on the shabby steps of her boarding-house, the light from the transom yellowing his ghastly face.

“Something snapped”—he passed an unsteady hand across his eyes;—“I care very deeply for you. I—they’ll make over to you—what I have. You can study on it—live on it, modestly—”

“W-what is the matter? Are you ill?” she stammered, white and frightened.

But he only muttered that she had her warning and that she should keep away from him, and that it would not be long before she should have an opportunity in life. And he went his way not looking back.

When he reached his studio the hall was dark. As he turned the key he thought he heard something stirring in the shadows, but went in—leaving the door into the hallway open—and straight on across the room to his desk.

He was putting something into his coat pocket, and his back was still turned to the open door when Graylock stepped quietly across the threshold; and Drene heard him, but closed his desk, leisurely, and then, as leisurely, turned, knowing who had entered.

And so they stood alone together after many years.

V

Graylock looked at Drene’s heavily sagging pocket and knew what was in it. A sudden sweat chilled his temples, but he said steadily enough:

“I’d like to say a word or two—if you’ll give me time.” And, as Drene made no reply;—“You’re quite right: This business of ours should be finished one way or another. I can’t stand it any longer.”

“In that case,” remarked Drene with an evil stare at him, “I may postpone it—to find out how much you can stand.” He dropped his right hand into the sagging pocket, looking intently at Graylock all the while:

“What do you want here anyway?”

“I fancy that you have already guessed.”

“Maybe. All the same, what do you want?”—fumbling with his bulging pocket for a moment and then remaining motionless.

Graylock’s worn eyes rested on the outline of the shrouded weapon: he stood eyeing it absently for a moment, then seated himself on the sofa, his heavy eyes shifting from one object to another.

But there were few objects to be seen in that silent place;—a star overhead glimmering through the high expanse of glass above;—otherwise gray monotony of wall, a clay shape or two swathed in wet clothes, a narrow ring of lamp light, and formless shadow.

“It’s a long time, Drene.”

Drene mused in silence, now and then watching the other obliquely.

Presently he withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket, pulled an armchair toward him and seated himself.

“It’s many years,” repeated Graylock. “I expected you to do something before this.”

“Were you uneasy?” sneered Drene. Then he shrugged, knowing that Graylock was no coward, sorry he had intimated as much, like a man who deals a premature and useless blow.

He sat brooding for a while, his lean dangerous head lowered sideways as though listening; his oblique glance always covering Graylock.

“I suppose you’ll be surprised when I tell you one reason that I came here,” said Graylock.

“Do you suppose you can still surprise me by anything you may say or do?”

The man remained silent, sitting with his hands tightly clasped on his knees.

“Drene,” he said, in a low voice, “don’t strike at me through this young girl.”

Drene began to laugh, unpleasantly.

“Are you in love with her?”

“Yes.... You know it.”

Drene said, still laughing: “It’s the common rumor. You may imagine it amuses your friends—if you have any left.”

Graylock spoke in a voice that had a ghostly sound in the great room:

“Don’t harm her, Drene. It is not necessary. I shall never see her again—if that will content you.”

Drene laughed: “I never saw my wife again. Did that help me? I never saw her again, but as long as she lived I knew what she was … My wife. And when she died, still my wife. There was no relief—no relief.”

Graylock, deathly white, framed his haggard face between his hands and stared at nothing:

“I know,” he said. “I understand now. I am here to-night to pay the reckoning.”

“You can’t pay it.”

“No, not the whole score. There’s another bill, I suppose, waiting for me—somewhere. But I can settle my indebtedness to you—”

“How?”

“That’s up to you, Drene.”

“How?” repeated Drene, violently.

Graylock made a slight gesture with his head toward Drene’s sagging pocket: “That way if you like. Or,” he added, “There is a harder punishment.”

“What is it?”

“To give her up.”

“Yes,” said Drene, “that is harder. But I can make it even harder than that. I can make it as hard for you as you made it for me. I can let you live through it.”

He laughed, fisted in his pocket, drew out the lumpy automatic and leisurely pushed the lever to “safe.”

He said: “To kill you would be like opening the cell door for a lifer. You know what you are while you’re alive; maybe you’d forget if you were dead. I—”

He ceased, fiddling absently with the dull-colored weapon on his knee; and for a while they remained silent, not looking at each other. And when Drene spoke again he was still intent upon the automatic.

“If I knew what happens after a man dies I could act intelligently.” He shot an ugly look at Graylock: “I don’t know about you, either. You’re a rat. But you might fool me at that. You might be repentant. And in that case you’d get away—if it’s true that the eleventh hour is not too late.... If it’s true that Christ is merciful.... So I’ll take no chances of a getaway. You might fool me—one way or another—if you were dead.”

Graylock lifted his head from his hands: “I don’t know how much of the other debt I’ve already paid, Drene. But I’ve paid heavily since I knew her—if that is any satisfaction to you. And since I knew she cared for you, and when I realized that you meant to strike me through her—I have paid, heavily.... Yet, if you were honestly in love with her—”

“Is that any of your damned business?”

“She’s only a child—”

“You rat! That’s what’s coming to you!”

“If you say so. But what is coming to her, Drene?”

“Continue to guess. But I know you. It’s yourself you’re sorry for and what you’ll have to endure—live through. That’s what you can’t stand, and remain the sleek, self-satisfied rat you are. No, it will make earth a living hell for you; never a second, day or night, will you be able to forget—if you really do love her.... And I believe you do—I don’t understand how a thing like you can love—but it seems it can.”

After a silence Graylock said: “You don’t care if you damn yourself?”

“It’s worth it to me.”

“Are you willing that I should know you are as great a blackguard as I am?” Drene’s gaunt features reddened and he set his jaws in silence.

“Don’t you care what you do to her?” asked Graylock, unsteadily. “It’s a viler business than that for which you are punishing me.”

For a long time Drene sat there looking down at the weapon on his knees. And after a while, the other man spoke huskily: “It’s bad enough either way for me, Drene. I’ll do what you wish in the matter. I’ll leave the country; I’ll stay; whichever you say. Or,” he said with a ghastly smile, “I’ll clean out that automatic for you to-night—if you’ll marry her.”

Drene looked up, slowly:

“What did you say?”

“I said that I’d clean out your automatic for you—to-night—if you wish.... It can be an accident or not, just as you say.”

“Where?”

“In my own rooms—if it is to be an accident.”

“Do you offer—”

“Yes; if you’ll marry her afterwards. If you say you will I’ll take your word.”

“And then you’ll be out of your misery, you damned coward!”

“God knows.... But I think not,” said Graylock, under his breath.

Drene twisted the automatic, rose and continued to twirl it, considering. Presently he began to pace the floor, no longer noticing the other man. Once his promenade brought him up facing the wall where a calendar hung.

He stood for a while looking at it absently. After a few moments he stepped nearer, detached the sheet for the present month, then one by one tore off the remaining sheets until he came to the month marked December, Graylock watching him all the while.

“I think it happened on Christmas,” remarked Drene turning toward the other and laying a finger on the number 25 printed in red.

Graylock’s head bent slightly.

“Very well. Suppose about eleven o’clock on Christmas night you give your automatic a thorough cleaning.

“If you say so.”

“You have one?”

“I shall buy one.”

“Didn’t you come here armed?”

“No.”

Drene looked at him very intently. But Graylock had never been a liar. After a few moments he went over to his desk, replaced the weapon under the papers, and, still busy, said over his shoulder:

“All right. You can go.”

VI

He wrote to Cecile once:

Hereafter keep clear of men like Graylock and like me. We’re both of a stripe—the same sort under our skins. I’ve known him all my life. It all depends upon the opportunity, the circumstances, and the woman. And, what is a woman between friends—between such friends as Graylock and I once were—or between the sort of friends we have now become? Keep clear of such men as we are. We were boys together.

For a week or two he kept his door locked and lived on what the janitor provided for him, never going out of the studio at all.

He did no work, although there were several unexecuted commissions awaiting his attention and a number of sketches, clay studies, and one marble standing around the studio in various stages of progress. The marble was the Annunciation. The head and throat and slender hands were completed, and one slim naked foot.

Sometimes he wandered from one study to the next, vague-eyed, standing for a long time before each, staring, lost in thought. Sometimes, in the evening he read, choosing a book at random among the motley collection in a corner case—a dusty, soiled assortment of books, ephemeral novels of the moment, ponderous volumes which are in everybody’s library but which nobody reads, sets of histories, memoirs, essays, beautifully bound and once cared for, but now dirty from neglect—jetsam from a wrecked home.

There had been a time when law, order and neatness formed the basis of Drene’s going forth and coming in. He had been exact, precise, fastidious; he had been sensitive to environment, a lover of beautiful things, a man who deeply appreciated any symbol that suggested home and hearth and family.

But when these three were shattered in the twinkling of an eye, something else broke, too. And he gradually emerged from chaos, indifferent to all that had formerly been a part of him, a silent emotionless, burnt out thing, callous to all that he had once cared for.

Yet something of what he had been must have remained latent within him for with unimpaired precision and logic he constructed his clay and chiseled his marble; and there must have been in him something to express, for the beauty of his work, spiritual and material, had set him high among the highest in his profession.

Sometimes sorrow changes the dross from the lamp of the spirit so that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears, rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is noble, hardening all that is ignoble; and is extinguished leaving a devil behind it—fully equipped to slay the crippled soul.

Alone in his studio at night, motionless in his chair, Drene was becoming aware of this devil. Reading by lamplight he grew conscious of it; recognized it as a companion of many years, now understanding that although pain had ended, hatred had remained, hiding, biding, and very, very quiet.

And suddenly this hatred had flamed like hell-fire, amazing even himself—that day when, lifted out of his indifference for an instant by a young girl’s gaiety—and with a smile, half-responsive, on his own unaccustomed lips, he had learned from her in the same instant, that the man he had almost ceased to remember was honestly in love with her.

And suddenly he knew that he hated and that he should strike, and that there could be no comparison in perfection between hatred and what perhaps was love.

Sometimes, at night, lying on the studio couch, he found himself still hesitating. Could Graylock be reached after death? Was it possible? If he broke his word after Graylock was dead could he still strike and reach him through the woman for whose sake he, Graylock, was going to step out of things?

That occupied his mind continually, now. Was there anybody who could tell him about such matters? Did clergymen really know whether the soul survived? And if it did, and if truly there were a hell, could a living man add anything to its torments for his enemy’s benefit?

One day the janitor, lingering, ventured to ask Drene whether he was feeling quite well.

“Yes” said Drene, “I am well.”

The janitor spoke of his not eating. And, as Drene said nothing, he mentioned the fact that Drene had not set foot outside his own quarters in many weeks.

Drene nodded: “I expect to go for a walk this evening.”

But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness, wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days.