The Best Short Stories of 1919 Part 22

He pondered it. "That has a nice sound. I like it. And I--I like you. So don't ask me questions!"

The elder man was looking down at the thin white hands again, and the _nave_ comment brought a sudden contraction to his throat. "Poor little boy!" was on his lips, but an intuition like a woman's warned him that the words would make the desolate figure weep again, and his utmost strength quailed from the thought of seeing it, now that he had seen the face. As the white hands clasped themselves together, he had seen that the under sides of the wrists were bruised and dark. Facially, nothing could have been more unlike than this youth to the paint and plaster symbols that crowded before him from his memory, yet the red drops that he had seen drip to the floor, the wickedness and waste that he seemed to expiate and represent, the whole obvious torment of his being, had forced a simile upon him which he now blurted out.

"Whoever and whatever you are, whatever terrible thing you've done, I only know that you make me think of--of--Oh, the crown of thorns, the cross--you know what I mean!"

"Some one with a crown of thorns?" said the young man wonderingly. "Who was that?"

Mr. Montagu stared at him incredulously. That any man, no matter how base a criminal, and one, indeed, who had cried out again and again the name of G.o.d, should not know the story and the name of G.o.d's son, astonished him, for the moment, more than anything yet had done.

"Oh, yes, yes, I remember now," continued the boy. "Yes, that was very, very sad. But I'm selfish and preoccupied with my own dreadful trouble, and that whole history, tragic as it was, was a very happy one compared with mine!"

With a cold shudder, Henry Montagu believed him. He realized that as yet he had done nothing for him. Food and drink had occurred to him, but in the minutes that they had pa.s.sed together the stranger had grown more virile. He was no longer the incredible figure of wretchedness that had dashed into the room. He was sitting forward in the chair now, his eyes on the portrait.

"Is that your wife?" he asked.

"My--my dead wife," answered Mr. Montagu.

His own eyes reverting again and again to the lacerated wrists, he did not see the changing expressions in his visitor's as they studied the eyes of the portrait; but as the boy now leaped impulsively to his feet he saw in them a fierce gleam that was like the hatred of a maniac. He thrilled with renewed terror as the boy once more sprang to him like an animal, and with a growl in his throat rushed toward the portrait.

"Stop!" he shouted, and the boy almost cringed to a halt in the middle of the floor.

When, after his first chill of horror at the act itself, Henry Montagu realized that the desecration was his own thought, his own impulse carried into fierce determination, he sank weak and dizzy into the chair that the boy had left. But again he mastered his frightened mind and thrust away from it the sinister oppression of omen and coincidence.

Unwillingly but helplessly, he was letting into his thoughts the theory that, after he had opened the door instead of before he had opened it, the room had been harboring a maniac. And the theory stabbed him. A mushroom growth of tenderness had germinated in his pity and was growing nearer and nearer to a personal liking for the beautiful, pathetic figure of youth that stood before him, wilted and helpless again, in the center of the room.

"My boy," he said quietly, "I ought to resent that but strangely enough I don't find myself resenting the idea of your taking strange liberties in my house. In fact, I--I had that same impulse. I nearly did that myself, just before you burst in here."

The young man looked at him in amazement.

"_You_ were going to turn--Mrs. Montagu's picture to the wall? Wh--why, you old dirty beast!"

To Henry Montagu there was no vulgarity in the words. Their huge reproach of him drove every other quality out of them and a deep color into his face.

"But I--I quelled the impulse. And y--you would actually have done it!"

he stammered.

"I had a reason and a right to!" cried the young man. "I'd never seen it before and if it repelled me I had a right never to look at it again!

But she was _your wife_!"

Once more he stood, his eyes avoiding the portrait and wandering hungrily about the rest of the beautiful room.

"Well," he said, after a few moments, "good-by!" And he walked toward the door.

"Stop!" cried Mr. Montagu again. He sat forward on the edge of the chair, trembling. After hours of successive surprises, the simple announcement of his visitor's departure had struck him cold with the acc.u.mulated force of his past lonely terror and his present intense curiosity. Again the boy had obeyed his command with a visible s.h.i.+ver, and it hurt the older man by recalling to him the suggestion of crime, of the place and the tragedy he must have escaped from, the unknown cloud he was under. But however involved in the horrible he might become by detaining him, shaken and filled with inexplicable grief as he was by his presence, worst of all was the fear of being alone again after a frightful, brief adventure in his life, vanished and unexplained. He wanted to rea.s.sure and comfort the wavering, sorrowful boy, but all he could stammer in apology for his shout was: "Wh--where are you going?"

"What difference does it make to _you_ where I go?" asked the boy drearily. "If you must know, I'm going to Maurice's."

Mr. Montagu sprang to his feet. With bitten lips he kept himself silent at this final thrust of the hypernatural, but the damp beads had returned to his brow. His terror lasted only a moment, and in his resurging desire to hold back the boy, he demanded both curiously and a.s.sertively:

"What are you going to _Maurice's_ for?"

He had not supposed that there was a particle of color in the pitiful face, but as the boy answered, a delicate flesh-tint seemed to leave it, turning him deathly white.

"I--I want to look at the women," he said.

At his agitation and pallor, the hectic whisper of his voice, above all, the light of fiendish hate that leapt into his beautiful eyes and ravaged their look, a physical sensation crept through the older man from head to foot and held him motionless.

But it was not horror at the boy himself. As he stood there wan and s.h.i.+vering before him, every best instinct in Henry Montagu rushed uppermost, and he felt that he would give anything in his life, gladly devote, if not actually give, that life itself, to set the boy right with the world. And with his terror gone and his horror going, he impulsively walked across the room and stood between him and the door.

"Why do you leave me this way? You mustn't mind what I say to you or how I say it, for it can't be any more abrupt or strange than the way you came here. I don't want you to go to Maurice's. And if you do, I'm going with you."

"No! No!" cried the boy fearfully.

"I don't want you to leave me. I want you to confide in me. I want you to trust me, and to tell me, without fear, what it is you've done."

"No, no, no, no! Don't ask me to!" cried the boy.

"I do ask you to. I have some right to know. I'd be justified in detaining you if I wanted to--"

"You couldn't!" cried the trembling youth pa.s.sionately.

"I said I'd be _justified_. Are _you_, in das.h.i.+ng like a shot into my life and then leaving me without a word to explain it? I've played host to you gladly, though you've torn my nerves to pieces. Remember how you came here!"

"Yes! Yes!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the boy bitterly. "I'm an intruder! I forced myself on you and I know it! G.o.d knows I know it!"

"I didn't mean it unkindly. I tell you, I want you to _stay_! I want you to, no matter what you are or what you've done. You've admitted that you've done something--something terrific--"

"And I have!" cried the boy, his eyes lighting wildly. "At last, at last! I've done it, I've _done_ it!"

"And in spite of it, I want you to stay! Whatever it is, I want to protect you from the consequences of it!"

"Look to yourself!" cried the boy. "You'll curse me yet for coming here!

Let me go, and protect _yourself_!"

"I am no longer considering myself, I've done that too much in my life, and to-night I'm reckless. No matter _what_ the crime you've done--"

"Crime?" His visitor flashed wondering eyes upon him. "You fool! You fool!" Again, the exclamation was like an echo of himself, but Mr.

Montagu had no time to entertain the thought, for the boy was stammering out his astonishment in hysterical syllables. "I--a criminal!

_I_--I--Oh, I might have _known_ it would seem that way to you! But _I_--"

Again under the penetrating gaze his host felt himself morbidly guilty, but there was a thrill of gladness in his heart that now welcomed the grim alternative of the boy's simple madness.

"Stay with me!" he cried. "Sleep here, and rest, and then--"

"Let me go to Maurice's!" cried the boy desperately. "You'll regret it if you don't! Oh, for the pity of G.o.d, for pity of _yourself_, let me leave you while I still _offer_ to leave you!"

Mr. Montagu backed himself against the door.

"Why do you want to go there?" he demanded. "What is it you want to look at the women in Maurice's for?"