The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 43

"What's the matter with the man, anyway?" I asked, for that confession had brought the pacing stranger into something very close and kindred to me.

"'Tis nothin' much," was the big man's answer. "Like as not he's been over-eatin' and havin' a bad night or two."

And with that my friend the patrolman, turning on his heel, pursued his way through the quiet canyons of the streets where a thousand happy sleepers knew nothing of his coming and saw nothing of his going.

I stood there, looking after him as he went. Then I crossed to the northwest corner of that iron-fenced enclosure and waited for that youth whom the arm of wakefulness was swinging about like a stone in a sling.

I deliberately blocked his way as he tried to edge irritably about me.

"Pardon me," I began. He looked up, like a somnambulist suddenly awakened. "Pardon me, but I think I ought to warn you that you are being followed."

"Am I?"

"Yes; and I think you ought to know it."

"Oh, I know it," was his apathetic response. "I'm even beginning to get used to it."

He stepped back and leaned against the iron fence. His face, under the street-lamps, was a very unhappy looking one. It carried a woebegone impa.s.sivity, the impa.s.sivity which implied he was so submerged in misery that no further blow could be of consequence to him. And yet, beyond the fixed pallor of that face there was something appealing, some trace of finer things, some touch which told me that he and the nocturnal underworld had nothing in common.

"But are you getting used to the other thing?" I asked.

"What other thing?" was his slow inquiry. I could see the twin fires of some dull fever burning in the depths of his cavernous eyes.

"Going without sleep," I answered. For the second time he stared at me.

"But I'm going to sleep," he answered. "I've got to!"

"We all have to," I plat.i.tudinously remarked. "But there are times when we all don't."

He laughed a curious little mirthless laugh.

"Are you ever troubled that way?" he asked.

We stood there facing each other, like two kindred ghosts communing amid the quietness of a catacomb. Then I laughed, but not so bitterly, I hope, as he had done.

"I've walked this square," I told him, "a thousand times to your one."

"I've been doing it here for the last three hours," he quietly confessed.

"And it's done you up," I rejoined. "And what we both need is a quiet smoke and an hour or two with our feet up on something?"

"That's very good of you," he had the grace to admit, as his gaze followed mine toward the house door. "But there are a number of things I've got to think out."

He was a decent sort. There was no doubt of that. But it was equally plain that he was in a bad way about something or other.

"Let's think it out together!" I had the boldness to suggest.

He laughed mirthlessly, though he was already moving southward along the square with me as he began to speak again.

"There is something I've got to think out alone," he told me. He spoke, this time without resentment, and I was glad of it. That unhappy-eyed youth had in some way got a grip, if not on my affection, at least on my interest. And in our infirmity we had a bond of sympathy. We were like two refugees pursued by the same bloodhounds and seeking the same trails of escape. I felt that I was violating no principle of reticence in taking him by the arm.

"But why can't you slip in to my digs," I suggested, "for a smoke and a drop of Bristol Milk?"

I was actually wheedling and coaxing him, as a stubborn child is coaxed.

"Milk!" he murmured. "I never drink milk."

"But, my dear man, Bristol Milk isn't the kind that comes from cows.

It's seventy-year old sherry that's been sent on a sea-voyage to Australia and back. It's something that's oil to the throat and music to the senses!"

He looked at me as though the whole width of a Hudson River flowed between us.

"That sounds appealing," he acknowledged. "But I'm in a mess that even Bristol Milk won't wash me out of."

"Well, if it's that bad, it's worth forgetting for an hour or two!" I announced. He laughed again, relaxingly. I took a firmer and more fraternal grip on his arm.

And side by side we went up the steps and through the door into the quietness of that sober-fronted house which I still called by the empty name of home.

In five minutes I had a hickory log ablaze in the fireplace, the library-chairs drawn up, and Criswell, my captive, with his hat and coat off. At his side stood a plate of biscuits and a gla.s.s of Bristol Milk. But he seemed to find more consolation in sitting back and peering at the play of the flames. His face was a very tired one. The skin was clammy and dead-looking; and yet from the depths of that fatigue flared the familiar ironic white lights of wakefulness. I think I knew about how he felt.

We sat there without speaking, yet not unconscious of a silent communion of thought. I knew, however, that Bristol Milk was not in the habit of leaving a man long tongued-tied. So I turned to refill his gla.s.s. I had noticed that his hands were shaky, just as I had noticed the telltale twitch to one of his eyelids. But when his uncontrolled fingers accidently knocked the gla.s.s from the edge of the table, it gave me a bit of a start.

He sat there looking studiously down at the scattered pieces of crystal.

"It's h.e.l.l!" he suddenly burst out.

"What is?" I inquired.

"Being in this sort of shape!" was his vehement response. I did not permit myself to look at him. Sympathy was not the sort of thing he needed. Seventy-year-old sherry, I felt, was more to the purpose.

"Especially when we haven't any excuse for it," I lazily commented, pa.s.sing him a second gla.s.s, filling it, and turning to watch the fire.

"Warming stuff, that Bristol Milk," he said with a catch of the breath that was too short to be called a sigh. Then, laughing and wiping the sweat from his forehead, he went on with an incoherence that approached that of childhood.

"I've _got an excuse_."

I waited for a moment or two.

"What is it?"

"That man you saw trailing me around the square, for one thing."

"Even that isn't altogether an excuse," I maintained.

"But it's what he stands for," protested my visitor. He sat staring into the fire for a minute or two. I sat beside him, again conscious of some inarticulate and evasive companions.h.i.+p.

"How did it begin?" I finally asked.