Part 31

* * * * *

One night, a week later, Donaldson woke up with a start, his body wet with perspiration. He had been dreaming a terrible dream. It seemed as though he saw the white face of his wife with the red mark across the temple, only she was standing up and looking at him with an unfamiliar, ghastly expression in her eyes, and behind her, looking over her shoulder, was a satyr’s face, long and yellow.

Then this figure stepped out and came toward him, holding chains in its hands. Chains for him, Donaldson! He had had dreams like this before, varying slightly in detail sometimes, but always with the same terrible suggestion. And always he had waked up as he did now, wet and cold, with the same monstrous fear clutching him, pricking him like a thousand needles, drawing up his flesh, paralyzing him with a queer, uncanny thrill.

He wondered if he had talked in his sleep. Of course, there was no one to hear, still he wondered. It was something he could never know, an awful, threatening uncertainty that hung over him, that would always hang over him.

And those chains! He had a mental vision of himself in the penal stone quarries, chained to an iron ball.

He looked at his watch. It was later than he had thought—six o’clock. He got out of bed and dressed quickly. He knew from experience the only way to work off the stultifying effect of his dreams. It was physical

## action, to walk and walk until he tired himself out. Then his mind would

be loosed from this crazy, nervous terror, and he would relapse into the steady, dogged fear from which he knew no respite.

He opened the door and stepped into the street. The morning sun was beginning to lighten the grey, deserted court. Some one across the way closed a window. Donaldson straightened up, tightening his lips. Even this early they might see him. He must appear casual, like a man of leisure out for a morning stroll.

But it was an effort, for an unreasoning fear possessed him. He wanted to run. Something behind him seemed to urge his footsteps faster. It seemed to him that his feet actually were going faster than the rest of his body, as though they obeyed the will of that something behind him, while he himself was really moving only at a moderate gait.

He had a detached sense of two entities. One was John Donaldson as he appeared to the world, a slender, inconspicuous man, walking somewhat timidly along the street, and the other was the coward, the terrified being, running from the thing that followed him; alert, cunning to outwit his pursuer. Once, from an irresistible impulse, he dodged into an alley-way. Then, suddenly ashamed and realizing, he came out again, walking boldly, his eyes fixed on a passing horse, trying to appear unconcerned.

Toward noon he returned, and, remembering he had had no breakfast and that there was nothing to eat in the house, stopped at the corner grocery store. The grocer was waiting on another customer when Donaldson came in, but he looked up and nodded.

“Be with you in a minute, Mr. Donaldson.” And then, “Why, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”

Donaldson had sat down suddenly on a flour-barrel, clutching his side, his face gone grey with pain. The grocer ran to get a glass of water.

“Here, better drink this! What’s the matter? Can I help you?”

But Donaldson only shook his head over his knees, unable to speak. They got him home a little later, when the pain had eased a little, and sent a doctor in to see him. Donaldson did not want a doctor, but the grocer was frightened by his pale face and paid no attention to his protests.

The verdict was what Donaldson had anticipated, appendicitis and the necessity of an immediate operation. He heard it, lying on the bed, from a strange doctor, with a feeling, in spite of the pain in his side, that it must be another man under sentence. He could not take that anesthetic! The pain might kill him; then let him die! It would be better than those awful chains. For he knew that once unconscious, the truth would come out, that all the poison which had been maddening him for years would flow from his lips in self-exposure, once he was placed under an anesthetic. How many times had he already related it in the stillness of the night? What of his secret could the walls of his room not tell? They must have heard it over and over.

The doctor repeated his statement and Donaldson nodded.

“Yes,” he said mechanically. He must appease this man, lest a refusal make him too insistent. When the doctor was gone, he was safe again. He would get well. Everybody had these attacks; they meant nothing.

“I’ll be back to see you tonight,” said the doctor, as he prepared to leave.

“No,” said Donaldson, “don’t come. I’ll be all right.”

“I’ll be here,” answered the doctor, and went out.

Suddenly a great fatigue came over the sick man, an overwhelming drowsiness, a desire for sleep, one of the primal, insistent, compelling things that would not be denied.

When he awoke it was quite dark. He did not know the time. Lights shone in the houses across the street. The ticking of the clock was the only noise to be heard. The darkness of the room seemed palpable, as though it floated over and around him, breathing. Then the clock struck eight. Donaldson remembered. The doctor was coming back. He might return any minute. Only he must not! There were footsteps on the walk. It was he, and the door was unlocked! Donaldson rose and started toward it. He had forgotten his side. He was only conscious of a difficulty in moving, like in a nightmare, as though weights were dragging on his feet. The doctor was on the porch. Donaldson struggled. What was holding his feet?

“Don’t come in,” he gasped. “I’m all right!”

Then came the pain, like a sudden knife-blade, piercing him. He screamed, one awful, uncontrollable yell, and pitched forward.

* * * * *

There was a queer, unfamiliar smell, and stillness. Not the empty stillness of his own house, but the stillness of human beings and hushed movements.

Nausea possessed him. He opened his eyes for a moment and then closed them. He was in a white-walled room, darkened. Against the drawn blind he could feel the sunlight beating. A ray of it came in between the shade and the window-jamb and struck the opposite wall. It was broad day. Suddenly, quick and clear as an arrow released from a taut bow-string, Donaldson’s mind leaped up into consciousness.

He was in a hospital, and it was over—the operation. It was the anesthetic which had nauseated him. What had he said? Had he betrayed himself? Yet here he was, lying quietly in this room. However, they couldn’t take him away while he was sick.

They were waiting—waiting till he got well to put the chains on him! He knew it. That was why they were so quiet, not to make him suspicious. He would ask the nurse. She could tell him whether he had talked.

But the nurse was not there. She did not know he was awake. Well, he would wait and ask her. Maybe he hadn’t talked. People didn’t always. The sun streamed against the blind. Light, hope! It might be that he would see it again, free! That he would walk along the streets in the open day.

The door opened and the nurse entered. She came to his bedside. He would smile at her easily, indifferently. She would think his question a casual one.

“Nurse,” he began. His voice sounded far away, weaker than it should have.

The nurse smiled. “How is my patient? Feeling better?”

“Nurse,” he strove valiantly to make his voice strong, casual. He even smiled weakly. “Did I—er—talk under the ether?”

“No, not a word. Now rest quietly and I’ll come back after a while.” And she went out.

Donaldson sighed. He was still safe. She had told him so. She would not deceive a sick man. And yet—wouldn’t she? He remembered reading somewhere that patients were always told they had not talked, lest the knowledge excite them and hinder their recovery.

That was why she had said it. They wanted him to get well, so they could put the chains on him. Hadn’t she hesitated a bit before she answered? He had thought she looked at him a bit suspiciously. Now he was sure of it. And that was why. They didn’t want him to know they knew. They wanted to be sure they’d get him.

Just then Donaldson’s thoughts were interrupted by a noise on the street. Some vehicle clattering over the pavement and the sound of a bell. The door was standing slightly ajar. Two nurses were passing in the hall, and Donaldson’s straining ear caught their voices:

“What is all the noise about?” asked one.

“I don’t know,” replied the other. “It sounds like a police patrol.”

They were after him! What should he do? He threw back the bedclothes. His mind was working like lightning. They would never get him. He slipped to the floor. How he got to the door he never knew. Fear lends strength. He closed it and stumbled back across the floor, half-falling against the bed.

He knew what he was going to do. He pulled up the bed-clothes from the foot of the bed with feverish haste. The sheet—that was what he wanted! He ripped open the hem a few inches, turning it back so that he could get the raw edge of the material. Then he tore off a strip the whole length of the sheet. He laughed excitedly. They’d never get him!

By this time, the cut in his side had re-opened, but he did not notice it. He knew nothing but his one mad purpose. His senses seemed to have deserted him. It was as though he were in a dream. He felt as though his mind were standing off, directing his body to do these things, and as though he were putting a senseless and inanimate other half of him through certain prescribed motions.

He tied one end of the strip to one of the iron bed-posts, then he climbed into bed and lay down. He circled the other end of the strip around his neck. The head of the bed was looped between the posts with scrolls of white iron-work. He lifted his knees and pushed with his feet till his head was through one of these openings, hanging down in the space between the bed and the corner of the room. His neck was now in a straight line between the bed-posts, bent backward, and as he breathed, he emitted from his lips little hoarse noises that seemed to struggle out protestingly from his strained throat. He knew that he could not strangle himself to death, for as soon as unconsciousness came, he would relax his hold. If he could tie the other end! That was sure and safe.

The blood rushed to his head. He pulled the knot tight, very tight, and gasped. He felt as though he were drowning. His temples throbbed, and his ears beat as though the waves were knocking against the inside of his head, now roaring, now singing with queer, unearthly hum. He relaxed his hand, and the noose slackened.

There! That was not so bad, but the blood rushed back from his brain, and the waves swirled around him now and made him fearfully dizzy. He felt like a little brig, tossed in the valley of a tempestuous sea, beaten, dazed, apathetic.

He recovered somewhat. The police! They must be on their way up! The waves were calling. Their restless surging hammered upon his brain, dulling its sensibility. There was peace beneath those waves. Unchanging peace!

But he must hurry. A cloud rose before his eyes, grey and inviting. He seemed to forget. What was he going to do? Where was that peace? Peace, something he had not known for aeons, aching, endless aeons of time. Where was it? Ah, yes! Beneath the waves, those heaving, restless, insistent waves.

“I’m coming,” he murmured thickly. His tongue seemed swollen. There was need of haste. He shook himself to clear his mind for the final effort. Then he pulled the noose tight with all his strength, and tied it quickly to the right-hand bedpost.

The waves seemed to open and he was going down. He saw a faint, opalescent light beneath him. There was something precious down there. It was peace.

“I’m coming,” he muttered, struggling, his arms stretched out toward it. “I’m coming!”

THE SIREN

_A Storiette That Is “Different”_

_By_ TARLETON COLLIER

With an abrupt jerk, Joe Wilson, from lying on a cot in the little tent, lifted himself on his elbow in an attitude of intent listening. There was no sound except the hum of a sleepy breeze through the pines, the sleepier contralto of a mocking bird, and the purring undertone of rippling water.

“That’s her!” he whispered. With an effort he sat erect, and again told himself: “That’s her!”

All at once there came the crackle of voices without, the sound of thudding footsteps. Joe flung himself back on the cot and closed his eyes with furious energy as the flap of the tent was lifted and the engineer and the doctor peered within.

“He’s asleep,” said the engineer in a low voice.

“_Hm!_” said the doctor. He was a wizened little man with spectacles. Then he let the flap drop, and his voice came to Joe brusquely through the canvas. “Well, we’ll come back. I want to talk to him. He’s probably not very sick, but—by God, man, you’ve got to keep your men from the water around here, or you’ll never finish your railroad!”

They were walking away as he spoke, and to Joe the voice seemed to fade.

“I tell you ... polluted ... fever....”

Then they were gone, the sound of them swallowed up in the ripple of the little creek over the rocks. With a start, Joe again was erect, his eyes furtive, glancing about the little canvas chamber. He tiptoed to the flap, and lifted it a bare inch, peering out upon the receding figures of the two men as they passed beneath a water-oak.

With no less caution he crept to the other end of the tent, and stepped through the flap into the open. For a moment he stood irresolute, his eyes closed, as if he were dizzy.

“Keep away from the water, you fool!” he whispered.

There was no other sound of life in the woods now; the breeze had died and the mocking bird was silent. Only the prattle of a nearby stream over its rocky bed....

With a stumbling, nervous stride that was almost a run, Joe Wilson went toward the sound of the water, and at last he plunged through a thick clump of willows and stood stiff, half-crouching, at the top of a bank of damp green moss that sloped steeply to a little stream with pools like black wells, still and silent. Only the silver shallows between pools rippled with life.

At the foot of the bank was a shelf of rock, splotched green with moss, reaching into the stream barely an inch above the water. Upon it Joe’s glance rested, as if held by a power outside himself. He drew back into the willows, his sunken eyes closed in his pale face; then, with a sudden spring, he was over the bank and perched upon the rock.

Something like a smile lighted his face, as if with the leap he had settled a troublesome matter. He sat down as easily and comfortably as he might, his legs doubled, his hands clasped about his knees; and stared intently into the black pool at his feet.

And then, between a closing and an opening of his eyes, a woman was there where he had looked for her.

There was no sense of suddenness about the apparition; only, when he closed his eyes against a dizziness, there was the water and nothing else; when he opened them, an instant later, she was standing in the midst of the pool, almost where he could touch her. And it was as if she had been there all the while.

The water reached a little above her ankles. Her legs were bare to the knees, clothed above that, and her body as well, in a soft clinging garment of white that seemed a part of her; white throat and arms were bare. Her face was alive with a pleasant smile; her eyes, of green and gray together, were alive and pleasant, too.

“You are late,” she said. There was something of the stream’s bright ripple in her voice.

Joe Wilson could only smile, in answer; then his smile faded and his face was scornful and somewhat stubborn.

“Yes,” he said, “and I came near not coming at all. I swore I wouldn’t.”

“But you came,” she said, still smiling.

“Only to tell you that this is the last time.”

Her smile, merrier now, was accompanied by a sound that might have been the gurgle of a little whirlpool in the rapids, or it might have been a low note of laughter.

“You didn’t mean it, then, that you love me,” she chided, coming nearer. It was not by a step that she moved, or by any perceptible effort. The space between them all at once was lessened, nothing else.

Joe had lost his careless air and posture. He was on his knees, a fury in his words.

“I didn’t mean it? You can’t say that. I have become less than a man, I love you so. You bring me here every day to do as you will, and I would die if I didn’t come, I love you so. For you I have broken my word to my friends back there in camp. And I don’t know who you are or _what_ you are.”

Again that gentle sound that might have been a sudden swirl of the water, or her laughter. Then she was nearer, and her pleasant eyes looked into his, mockery in them.

“You don’t know who I am?” she asked softly. “And yet I am yours.”

The stubborn lines in Joe’s face vanished. A quick throb of blood choked into a gulp the word he would have spoken, and he stretched out his arms. She was suddenly beyond his reach.

“Yours,” she said again, and that she laughed there was no doubt this time.

Joe’s eyes were hungry. Joe leaned forward upon his stiffened arms, and stared at her like a wistful dog.

“I don’t know who you are,” he whispered. “I don’t know who you are.”

“I am whoever you want me to be,” she said.

“I’ll call you Sadie,” he said.

“Sadie?” Her lids drooped, veiling her eyes, but their narrow glimmer was keenly alive.

“Yes, there is a girl—”

Between two words she was close before him at the edge of the rock.

“I am yours,” she said in a fierce, low voice. “What do you care for any girl? I am all woman, and you have me. What do you care for the world? You have me.”

He felt her breath on his face. There was warmth and fragrance in it. Her white beauty was greater than that of the dogwood blossoms showering there through the gloom under a sudden breeze; and a dizziness struck him, so that the trees swam before his eyes.

“I have you,” he repeated thickly, rising to his feet.

“And the girl ... Sadie?” she asked.

“You are Sadie. Only you. I have forgotten....” He put out his arms, but she was beyond his reach again, her eyes mysterious.

With outstretched arms, he begged her to return.

“I love you,” he said.

For a full breath she looked at him gravely. Then, “We shall see,” she said, plunging her hands into the stream. As she arose, her hands were cupped and brimming with water. She moved toward him, smiling.

Terror gathered in Joe’s white face.

“Drink,” she tempted him.

He whispered “No,” and the refusal seemed to strengthen him, for when she said again, “Drink,” he shouted it: “_No!_”

She dropped her hands, and the water went splashing back into the stream; and, smiling still, she came nearer until she was beside him upon the rock, her wet feet glistening silver upon its greenish-brown surface. Her eyes held fast his wide, frightened stare.

“Why?” she asked him, when she was so close that he was aware of the warmth and fragrance of her person.

He answered her steadily:

“I will not, that’s why. I must not. I have told you I must not, every day that I have come here, and yet I have always drunk this water. It has made me less than a man. It has made me break my word and my own rules.”

Once more her eyes were grave. “You must not?” she asked. Her voice might have been that of the purring shallows. There was no escaping her gaze, and before it his eyes wavered and shifted. His shoulders drooped.

“You will not?” the purring voice went on. “Not for me, and you say you love me? It is so little that I ask.”

There was pain in his voice as he cried, “Don’t ... Sadie! I have promised ... the rule....”

It was she whose figure drooped now, and her face that was mournful. “But you have broken the rules before this for me,” she murmured.

“I came today to say that I would no more.”

“But it is so little I ask. And I—am—yours.”

He pleaded: “_Don’t!_”

With sudden abandon, she flung herself against him, and for the first time his arms closed about her. She yielded to his fierce embrace, her head against his breast.

“You do not love me,” she whispered.

“Sadie...!” His arms tightened with his cry, and a red mist blinded him as he felt her warm, vital body closer against him.

She lifted her face and looked at him.

“You will?” she asked, smiling.

“No,” he said, almost with a moan.

She kissed him. “To drink, only to drink,” she said softly. “It is so little. I have given you myself ... isn’t that something?”

With one arm she clung to him as tightly as he held her; the other arm was free, and with her hand she stroked his face. Her kisses were hot upon his lips. His eyes were closed, and he swayed with a dizziness that was mightier than any other he had known.

“Only to drink,” she said. “Do you not care for me, and I have given you myself? What are those men in the camp to you, they and their rules? You will not drink ... yet I give you ... this....”

Her lips met his in an eternity of giving and taking.

“No!” he said again, but his voice quivered and broke, with the plain message of surrender.

With a little cry, she knelt at the edge of the pool, her arms still about him so that he was forced to kneel with her. She plunged her hands into the water, and lifted them to him with their silver freight.

With an eager, moaning sound, he drank the cool water; and as he did so the red mist before his eyes thickened, and his ears roared with the thunder of blood within. To drink became then his passion, and he cupped his own hands, filled them with water, and drank.