CHAPTER III

IN WHICH THE STORM BREAKS

"Unless--unless--what?"

Gabrielle St. Leger asked the question not because she wished to ask it, but because outward things forced her.

All disease is actually infecting, if not actively infectious, since contact with it disturbs the emotional and functional equilibrium, maintenance of which constitutes perfect health. Such disturbance is most readily and injuriously produced in persons of fine sensibility. Just now Madame St. Leger's faculties and feelings alike were in disarray. René Dax, his genius and the neurosis from which he suffered, his strange dwelling-place, all that which had happened in and--morally--adhered to it, combined to put compulsion upon her. In a sense, she knew the world. She was not inexperienced. But the amenities of a polished and highly civilized society, whose principal business it is to veil and mitigate the asperities of fact, had stood between her and direct acquaintance with the fundamental brutalities of life. Now she consciously met the shock of those brutalities, and met it single-handed. This exclusively man's world, the gates of which she had forced with wilful self-confidence, produced in her humiliation and helplessness, a sense of having projected herself into regions where accustomed laws are inoperative and direction-posts--for guidance of wandering feminine footsteps--agitatingly non-existent. Under this stress of circumstance her initiative deserted her. The vein of irony--running like a steel ribbon through her mentality--became suddenly and queerly worked out. She could not detach herself from the immediate position, stand aside, review it as a whole, and deal with it. That which made for individuality had gone under. Only her womanhood as womanhood--a womanhood sheltered, petted, moving ever in a gracefully artificial atmosphere--was left. She had come, intending to console, to minister, sagely to advise. It looked quite anxiously much as though, tyrannized by rude, unfamiliar forces, she would remain to yield and to obey. Thus, taking up the tag-end of René Dax's speech, she asked, unwillingly, almost fearfully:

"Unless--unless what?"

"Unless you consent to save me, Madame," he replied, with insinuating gravity and sweetness. "Unless you consecrate yourself to the work of my recovery, you and the delicious Mademoiselle Bette."

"But, my poor friend," she reasoned, "how is it possible for me to do that?"

"In a way very obvious and simple, wholly consonant to the most exalted aspirations of your nature," he returned. "I have planned it all out. No serious difficulties present themselves. Good will, Madame, on your part, some forethought on mine, and all is satisfactorily arranged. As to Mademoiselle Bette, she will find herself in a veritable paradise. You know her affection for me? And, putting aside my own gifts as a comrade, I have most pleasing little animals for her to play with. You have seen those in the aquarium? There is also Aristides. To my anguish I struck him last night with a hearth-brush during my pursuit of the red man, and Giovanni has charge of him in hospital to-day. The affair was purely accidental. I am convinced that he bears me no malice, poor cherished little cabbage; yet it cuts me to the quick to see his empty chair. But to return to your coming, Madame. For it is thus that you will save me--by coming here to remain permanently, by devoting yourself to me unremittingly, exclusively--by coming here--here to live."

The color rushed into Madame St. Leger's face and neck. Then ebbed, leaving her white to the lips, deathly white as against the black brocade of the chair-back. Here was a direction-post, at last, with information written upon it of--as it seemed to her--the very plainest and ugliest sort; the road which it signalized leading to well-known and wholly undesirable places, though trodden, only too frequently, by wandering feminine feet! For the moment she doubted his good faith; doubted whether he was not playing some infamous trick upon her; doubted whether his illness was not, after all, a treacherous fabrication. Her mouth and throat went dry as a lime-kiln. She could barely articulate.

"Monsieur," she said sternly, "I fear it is already too late to save you. In making such a proposition you show only too convincingly that you are already mad."

But the young man's expression lost nothing of its triumph or his manner of its sweetness.

"Madame, that is a very cruel speech," he said.

"You deserve it should be cruel," she answered.

"Indeed," René replied, looking calmly at her. "Indeed, I do not. You rush too hastily to injurious conclusions. It is an error to do so. You cause yourself unnecessary annoyance. You, also, cause me a waste of tissue, which, in my existing condition of health, I can ill afford. It is irrevocably decided that you come here to live. Evidently it has to be. I make no disloyal proposition to you. As I have told you, I earnestly consider your good. It is to rescue you from threatening perversions of office and of instinct, from declension to a lower emotional level, that I invite you, require you, to make your home with me. For I crave your presence not as other men crave for association with so beautiful a person--that is, sensually, for gratification of the beast within them--but spiritually, as an object of faith, an object of worship, as a healing and purifying aura, a divine emanation efficacious to the exorcism of that devouring devil, my art. Mistress--wife--pah!--Madame, my art has been all that to me, and more than that--not to mention those more active amatory excursions, common to generous youth, in which I do not deny participation. But my art has never been to me that thing so far more sacred, more human--a mother."

René Dax leaned toward her, both arms wide extended, his somber eyes glowing as though a red lamp shone behind them, his features contracted by spasms of pain.

"This," he pursued, "is what I ask, what in the depths and heights, in the utmost sincerity of my being, I need and must have.--The Madonna of the Future, the perfect woman, whose experience as woman is at once passionless and complete, human yet spiritual--the ever-lasting mother. A mother, moreover, such as in the entire course of the uncounted ages no man has ever yet possessed; still young, young as himself, unsoiled, untired, still in the spring-time of her charm, yet mysterious, in a sense awful, so that she is hedged about with inviolable reverence and respect, the intimate wonders of whose beauty never fully disclose themselves, but continue adorably unknown and remote. This is what I need; and this you only can give. It is your unique and commanding destiny. You must, rallying your fortitude and virtue, rise to it."

He stood up, his head thrown back, his arms still extended, as he indicated the extent and appointments of the studio with large, sweeping gestures.

"See," he cried, in increasing excitement, "here is the temple prepared for your worship! I had decorated the walls of it with obscenities which have caused rapture to the most emancipated intellects in Paris. To spare you offense, when I decided that you should come to me, I sent for plasterers, for whitewashes, who, even while they worked, rocked with laughter at the masterpieces of humor they were in process of destroying. The more intelligent of them mutinied, declaring it vandalism to obliterate such expressions of genius. I seized a brush. I myself worked, hailing invectives upon them. I never rested till my purpose was achieved. Then, when the temple was cleansed, I wrote to you."

He sank down, squatting on the carpet, a queer black lump amid the surrounding blackness, his shoulders resting against the front of the divan, his hands clasped behind and supporting his pale, unwieldy head.

"Ah, ah!" he cried plaintively; "the pain, the pain--again it pierces me! It becomes extravagant. Surely, Madame, I need not explain to you any further? You witness my sufferings. Terminate them. It is in your power to do so. You cannot refuse a request so wholly reasonable and natural! You consent to remain with me?--There need be no delay. Giovanni, my servant, is a good fellow, trustworthy and intelligent. He will take a motor-cab and proceed immediately to the _Quai Malaquais_. After informing Madame, your mother, that you remain here permanently, he will return accompanied by Mademoiselle Bette. Within the course of half an hour the thing is done; it becomes an accomplished fact. Your welfare is assured; and I, Madame, I am rescued from the bottomless pit, from a hell of unspeakable disgust.--The pain ceases. The brazen Moloch no longer presses me to his burning breast. I am recreated. My childhood is given back to me--but a childhood of such peace, such innocent gaiety as no child ever yet experienced. I sleep in exquisite content. I wake, not merely to find and pray for help from your image reflected there upon paper, but to find you yourself my guest and my savior, you here moving to and fro among my possessions, breathing, speaking, smiling, making day and night alike fragrant by your presence, distilling the healing virtue of a deified maternity, of an enshrined and consecrated life."

As he finished speaking the young man rose to his feet. He came near to Gabrielle, and stood looking down at her, solemn, imploring, yet with a strange, flickering impishness in his manner and his face. He clasped his hard little hands, turning the palms of them outward, alternately bowing over her and rising on tiptoe, holding himself stiffly erect.

"Can you hesitate, Madame?" softly and sweetly he asked. "No--assuredly--it is inconceivable that you should hesitate!"

Gabrielle had stripped off her gloves, thrown back the fronts of her coat. Her bosom rose and fell with an abrupt irregular motion under the lace and chiffon of her blouse. More than ever was the air dead, the atmosphere suffocating. More than ever did those depraved forms and conceptions, defying expulsion by plaster and whitewash, crowd in upon and oppress her. Supernatural, moral, and physical terror, joining hands, created a very evil magic circle around her, isolating her, cutting her off from all familiar, amusing, pleasant, tender and gracious every-day matters dear to her social and domestic sense. She no longer entertained any doubt about the young man's mental condition. Shut away with him here, alone, behind closed doors, beneath black-muffled skylights, with only clay-cold fish and reptiles as witnesses, the situation began to appear alarming in the extreme. How to effect her escape? How to temporize until rescue should in some form come to her? Her circumstances were so incredible, so nightmarish in their improbability, their merciless reality, their insane logic, that her brain reeled under the strain. Wordlessly but passionately she prayed for strength, guidance, help.

"It is inconceivable, Madame, that you still hesitate," René repeated, insinuatingly.

Making a supreme effort, Gabrielle rose from her chair. She felt braver, more mistress of herself standing up. With an assumption of ease and indifference she buttoned her coat and began drawing on her long gloves.

"You are right," she replied, but without looking at him. "I no longer hesitate. You have made your meaning clear. You have also said many affecting and poetic things to me. But, as you will be the first to admit, there are certain filial obligations I am bound to discharge, and to discharge personally. My beloved mother has been my companion and my constant care for so long, that it is imperative I should go with Giovanni; and, in a few words, tell her myself of the decision we have arrived at. To commit the communication of such news to a servant, however excellent, who is also a stranger, would be both cruel and impertinent. You, who reverence motherhood so deeply, will sympathize with this mother from whom you propose to take away those dearest to her."

The sobs rose in Gabrielle's throat. But she swallowed them courageously. If she once gave way, once lost her head--well--

"Moreover," she continued, "unless I myself go, unless I myself claim her, my mother will, and rightly, refuse to part with my little Bette."

A pause followed, during which the young man appeared immersed in thought. During that pause a faint sound of footsteps seemed to reach Gabrielle's fear-quickened hearing; but whether from the common stairway, the flat underneath, or here, nearer at hand, she could not determine. She prayed with all the fervor of her spirit, while deftly, daintily smoothing out the wrinkles in the wrists of her long gloves.

"You appreciate the force of that which I say regarding my mother and my little Bette?" she asked, glancing at him.

"I do--most incontestably, I do."

The answer came so spontaneously and in so perfectly natural a tone that Gabrielle's glance steadied upon the speaker in swift inquiry and hope. Had the cloud lifted, leaving his mind clear, permitting an interval of lucidity, of reason and normal thought?

"Ah, my poor friend, then all is well?" she cried, a great thankfulness irradiating her face.

"Perhaps, yes," he returned, in the same quiet and natural manner. "Personally I should have preferred the other plan. To relinquish it disappoints me. All promised so well. But I put it aside, for toward Madame, your mother, I am, believe me, incapable of an unsympathetic or discourteous act."

Gabrielle continued her little preparations for departure. She began to arrange her veil. Raising both hands, she drew the edge of it forward over the crown of her hat. Later, reaction would set in. Safe in her own home, she would break down, paying in physical and mental exhaustion the price of this very terrible act of charity. But just now she felt strong and elate in her thankfulness for answered prayer and prospect of release. Never had family affection, the love of friends, all the wholesome sentiments of human intercourse, appeared to her so delightful or so good. Delicate color tinged her cheeks. Kindness and pity softened her golden-brown eyes. Standing there, with upraised hands and gently smiling lips, her beauty was very noble, full of soul as well as of victorious health and youth.

For some seconds René Dax gazed at her, as though fascinated, studying every detail of her appearance. Then, once more, a flickering impishness crossed his sad little face. He went down on one knee, laid hold of the hem of her dress, and, bowing his great head to the ground, kissed and again kissed it.

"Accept my worship, my homage, oh! Madonna--Madonna of the Future!" he said.

He sprang upright, clasping his little hands again, the palms turned outward.

"Yes," he went on reflectively, "honestly, I prefer the other plan. Yet this one, as I increasingly perceive, possesses merits. Let us dwell upon them. They will console us. For, after all, what I am about to carry out is, also, a masterpiece--daring, voluptuous, merciless, at once lovely and hideous--and conclusive. Yes, amazingly conclusive. Unmitigated--just that. It will set the public imagination on fire. All Paris will seethe with it. All Paris which can gain admittance will rush, fight, trample, to obtain a look at it. It will represent the most scathing of my revenges upon the unfathomable stupidity of mankind. But it will do more than that. It will constitute my supreme revenge upon my art. Thus I sterilize the brazen Moloch, rendering him voiceless, eyeless, handless, denying him all means of self-expression. In myself dying, I make him worse than dead--though he still exists. Art, being eternal, necessarily still exists. Yet what an existence! I, who have so long parted company with laughter, could almost laugh! Yes, veritably I draw his teeth. By depriving him of my assistance as interpreter, by depriving him of the vehicle of my unrivaled technique, I annihilate his power. Blind, deaf, maimed, impotent, yes--yes--is it not beyond all words magnificent? Let us hasten, Madame, to accomplish this."

René had delivered himself of his harangue with growing indications of excitement, his voice rising finally to a scream. Throughout the nerve-shattering jar and rush of it, Madame St. Leger, in deepening terror, listened for any sound of delivering footsteps--listened and prayed. Now his manner changed, became cool, matter-of-fact, rather horribly busy and business-like.

"See, Madame," he said, "the divan on the left will certainly be the most suitable. You will place yourself at the farther end of it. There are plenty of cushions.--When Giovanni has filled the large bronze bowl--you see which I mean--there upon the ebony pedestal?"

He pointed with one hand. With the other he laid hold of Madame St. Leger's wrist, the hard, short fingers closing down like the teeth of a steel trap. To struggle was useless. Might God in his mercy hear and send help!

"When Giovanni, I repeat, has filled the bowl with warm water--warm, not too hot--and set it upon the center of the divan--thus--I will instruct him to draw the screen across, concealing us. You understand, we shall place ourselves on either side of the bowl, plunging our arms as far as the elbow into it. The warmth of the water at once soothes the nerves and accelerates the flow of blood.--Ah, do not draw back from me!" he pleaded. "Do not render my task more difficult. Obey your highest instincts. Be perfect in grace and in beneficence to the close. The pain racks my head. Do not by opposition or reluctance oblige me to concentrate my brain upon further explanation or thought.--Consider only that from which I save you. The degradation of marriage, of the embraces of a lover--of Adrian, my old schoolfellow--the impious assumption of the beast!--of Adrian Savage.--From the shame of old age, too--from the anguish of tears shed beside the bedside of, possibly, your child, your little Bette--of, certainly, Madame, your mother! And, as against all these tragedies, to what does the other amount? I give you my word it will not hurt. You will barely be sensible of that which is occurring.--The merest scratch.--In my student days I obtained bodies from the hospitals. With minute and faithful accuracy I dissected them out. I know precisely where to cut, what portion of the arteries and sinews to sever.--And we shall sit here alone--alone--you and I, behind the red screen, while our veins empty themselves of their red liquor, and slowly, serenely life ebbs, our vision growing dim and yet more--

"Help!" Gabrielle called aloud. "Help!"

For truly the sound of voices and of footsteps came at last. The studio door was thrown open. A man entered. Who he was she did not know; but, with a strength born of despair and of hope, she wrenched herself free from René Dax's grasp, ran across the big room, flung her arms round the man's neck, her beautiful head crushing down upon his breast, while her breath rushed out in great strangled, panting cries: "Ah!" And again, "Ah! Ah!"

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