IT was not yet ten o’clock when Eris arrived at Jane Street. Gutters stank; the heated darkness reeked with the stench of stables, slops, and unwashed human bodies.
Sidewalks still swarmed; tenements had muted and disgorged; every alley spewed women and men in every stage of undress. Fat females with babies at breasts squatted beside dirty doorsteps; dishevelled hags hung out of open windows, frowsy men sprawled on chairs, or nude to the trousers, looked down from rusting fire-escapes at a screaming tumult of half-naked children shouting and dancing in the cataract of spray from a hose which two firemen had opened on them from a hydrant.
Flares burning redly on push-carts threw smoky glares here and there as far as Greenwich Avenue, where the light-smeared darkness was turbulent with human herd.
Into this dissonance and clamour, clothed in silk, came Eris, daughter of Discord. As in a walking dream she descended from her taxi; fumbled in her silken reticule to find the fare; paid, scarcely knowing what she was paying.
As she turned and ascended the low steps of her house, still searching about in the reticule for her latch-key, she became aware that a man was standing in the vestibule.
When she found her latch-key she glanced up at the shadowy shape.
Then the man uttered her name.
Instantly his voice awoke in her ears that alarming echo which sometimes haunted her dreams. And though the man’s features were only a grey blur in the obscurity, she knew him absolutely.
For an instant all her strength seemed to leave her body, and she sagged a little, sideways, resting against the vestibule wall.
The shock lasted but a second; blood rushed to her face; without a word she straightened up, stepped forward, refitted her latch-key.
“Eris,” he whimpered, “won’t you speak to me?”
As she wrenched open the front door, light from the hall gas-jet fell across the man’s pale visage, revealing his collarless shirt and shabby clothes.
Already she had set foot inside. Perhaps the ghastly pallor of the man halted her—perhaps some occult thing within the law held her fettered in chains invisible. She stood with head averted, dumb, motionless, grasping her key convulsively.
“My God,” he whispered, “won’t you even look at me?”
“What do you want?” she asked in the ghost of a voice. Then, slowly, she turned and looked at her husband.
“I’m sick——” He leaned weakly against the vestibule door, and she saw his closing eyes and the breath labouring and heaving his bony chest.
What was this miserable creature to her, who had cheated her girlhood and struck her a blow that never could entirely heal?
What had she to do with any sickness of this man and his poverty and misery?
“Why should you—come—to me?” she asked. Suddenly she felt her body quivering all over. “What do I owe to you?” she cried, revolted.
He muttered something;—“In sickness and in health—till—till death do us—part——”
A dry sob checked his mumbling. He shook his head, slightly. His heavy eyes closed.
She stood staring at him and holding the door partly open. Twice she clutched the knob in nervous fingers as though to slam the door in his face and bolt out this pallid spectre of the past. She could not stir.
“What is the matter with you?” she finally forced herself to ask.
He opened his sick eyes: “Hunger—I guess——”
“You may have money if you need it. Is that what you want?”
He seemed to summon strength to stand upright and pass his bloodless fingers over his face.
“It’s all right,” he muttered thickly; “I didn’t mean to bother you——”
He turned as though to go, steadying himself with one shaky hand on the stoop railing. At the door-step he stumbled, swayed, but recovered.
“Stuart!” she burst out, “come back!”
He pulled himself together; turned toward her: “I don’t want money.... I’m too sick——”
“Wait! You can’t go into the street that way!...”
He seemed so shaky and confused that she took hold of his ragged arm. Very slowly, and supported by her, he entered the doorway. They climbed the stairs together, wearily, in silence.
Hattie usually went home at night and arrived, by key, early in the morning. Eris unlocked her door, lighted the corridor, went on to the living-room and lighted that. Then she returned to her husband and led the way to the kitchen and pantry and lighted them both.
“There is a chair,” she said. “I’ll make you some hot coffee.”
She flung a cloth over the kitchen table, laid a cover, brought what there was in the ice-box,—cold lamb, sardines, butter, fruit. She went again to the pantry and sliced bread for him. Then she started the gas range in the kitchen.
“I’m putting you to a great deal of trouble,” he mumbled.
She paid him no attention but went on with her preparations. When finally she returned with the steaming coffee she found he had eaten nothing.
However, he drank some of the coffee. After that he slumped on his chair, dazed, inert, his lack-lustre gaze on the floor. But his bony, bloodless fingers—those long, clever, nimble fingers she remembered—picked aimlessly at everything—at his face, at his clothing, at the sliced bread.
“Have you been ill long?” she forced herself to ask.
He mumbled something. She bent nearer to understand, but he fell silent, continuing to pick and fumble and stare at space.
“Do you feel very ill, Stuart? I want you to tell me.”
“If I could have—a little whiskey—or something—to buck up——”
She rose, got the gift bottle that she had been saving; brought it to him with a tumbler; left him there with it.
As she turned her back and walked nervously toward the front of the house, he peeped after her out of shadowy eyes, not lifting his head. Then he poured out half a glass of neat whiskey, steadily enough, swallowed it, looked around.
In the living-room Eris flung scarf and reticule on the sofa, stood for a moment twisting her fingers in helpless revolt; then, fighting off nervous reaction, she paced the room striving to think what to do, what was right to do in this miserable emergency.
Did she owe this man anything more than she owed to any sick, hungry, ragged man? If so, what? How much? How far did the law run that fettered her? What were the statutes which exacted service? And the ethics of the case—what were they? Anything except the bare morals involved? Anything except the ordinary humanity operating generally in such cases and involving her in obvious obligation? Were they the obligations which once involved those who looked upon Lazarus and “passed by on the other side”? Were they really more vital?
She went slowly back to the kitchen. Hearing her approach, her husband had crossed both arms on the table and dropped his marred face in them.
“Are you really very ill, Stuart?” she asked calmly.
“No. I’ll go——” He tried, apparently, to get to his feet; fell back on the chair, whimpering.
There was a small room off the pantry where, in emergency, Hattie sometimes slept on a box-couch.
“You can lie down there for a while if you wish,” she said. She helped him get up; he stumbled toward the pantry, guided by her, to the couch in the little room beyond. Here he sank down and dropped his head between his hands. She had turned to leave but halted and looked back at him from the pantry doorway.
“I had better call a physician,” she said, frightened by his deathly colour.
He might have explained that his pasty skin was partly due to prison pallor, partly to drugs. Instead he asked for a little more whiskey.
“I don’t want a doctor,” he muttered; “I’ll be all right after a nap. This whiskey will pull me together.... You go to bed.”
After a while he looked up at her, rested so, his shadowy eyes fixed on her with a sort of stealthy intentness.
“You’d better sleep if you can,” she said. “I’ll have to wake you soon. It is growing very late.”
“Oh God!” he burst out suddenly, “what a wreck I’ve made of our lives!”
“Not of mine,” she retorted coolly; and turned to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he whined. “I didn’t mean to get you in wrong.... I meant to go straight after we were married.... But they got me wrong, Eris, they got me wrong!... It was the very last job I ever meant to do.... I gave up the plates. That’s how they let me off with a light one.... I’m out over a month, now——”
“Were you in—in prison!” she demanded with an overwhelming surge of disgust.
He began to snivel: “You couldn’t get over that, could you, Eris?... And what I did to you—getting you in wrong—disgracing you that way——”
She made no answer but her grey eyes grew cold.
“You couldn’t ever forgive me, could you, Eris?” he whimpered, watching her intently.
“I can forget you, in time, if you keep away from me.... But—it is terrible to see you—terrible!”
He licked his dry lips, furtively, always watching her.
“If ever you would let me try to make amends—if you’d just let me work for you,—slave for you——”
For an instant she stared at him, incredulous that she had heard correctly. Then wrath set her cheeks ablaze: but her voice remained controlled, and she chose and measured her words:
“Listen to me, Stuart: I wouldn’t let you lift a finger for me; I wouldn’t let you touch me,—I don’t expect ever to see you again,—I don’t want even to hear of you. And that’s that!”
“Do you hate me so bitterly, Eris?” he whimpered, cringing but always watching her face.
“It isn’t hate. For what you did to an ignorant girl—for your deception, your meanness, your lying, I have no hatred. I don’t hate: I merely rid myself of what offends me.”
He began to snivel again, seated on the edge of the box-couch, swaying from side to side:
“I know I shouldn’t have married you. But I wanted to go straight. I was madly in love with you, Eris—and I haven’t changed. Haven’t you a word for me——”
She gazed at him with a loathing in which no saving spark of anger mitigated the cold disgust. She said, slowly:
“All I need ever say to you can be said through a lawyer. That is all that concerns you. If you wish to lie down, do so. I don’t want you here; but I wouldn’t turn a sick snake out of doors.”
She left him and went back to her bed-room. For an hour she sat there, unstirring, waiting, listening at moments. The flush remained on her cheeks; and into her eyes there came a glint at times, as where storms brood behind grey horizons.
The day, indeed, had bred storms for Eris—for Eris, daughter of Discord—sitting here in her dim chamber all alone.
Twice after midnight she had gone to the little room off the pantry, only to find her husband heavily asleep. He seemed so wretched a thing, so broken, so haggard, that she had yet not found courage to awake him and send him into the street.
So now, once more, she returned to her bed-room and her sombre vigil; sat there brooding, waiting, listening at intervals, wondering what to do, and how, and when.
The fatigue of that unhappy day had strained her nerves, not her courage. But for the advent of this miserable man she would have had leisure to think about what was to be done for the future and face the fact that she was out of work.
Now she felt too weary to think—too tired to examine the situation which so suddenly confronted her when Albert Smull flung his last insult in her shrinking face.
Troubles thickened about her; trouble was invading her very door; but she was too sleepy to consider the misfortunes that involved her—the menacing situation at the studio—the sordid problem in the next room.
Her little mantel-clock struck two o’clock before she finally summoned energy to rise and go to awaken her husband.
He seemed to be in a sort of coma. Only after she twitched his sleeve repeatedly did he unclose his dangerous eyes. And then he merely muttered fretfully that he was too weak to move and meant to sleep where he lay until morning.
“You can’t remain here all night,” she said. “I can’t permit that. Do you understand, Stuart?”
But he only turned over, muttering incoherencies, and buried his dishevelled head in his ragged arms.
Not knowing what to do, she went wearily back to her bed-room. Twice, trying to think what to do, she fell asleep in her chair. The second waking found her on her feet, blind with sleep, but with instinct leading her to lock and bolt her bed-room door.... That is the last she remembered for a while.
She awoke, lying diagonally across her bed, fully dressed, in the dull, rosy glow of her little night-lamp. Something was scraping and scratching at her door. She turned her head, saw the door-knob twisting very softly, now this way, now that.
She got up from the bed and went quickly to the door.
“If you don’t leave this house,” she said in a low voice, “I shall telephone for a policeman.”
“Take me back, Eris,” he whined. “As God sees me, I love you! I’ll work my fingers to the bone for you——”
“Leave this house,” she repeated.
He tried the door again, gently, then wrenched at the knob. Suddenly he threw his full weight against the door. But they wrought well in the days when that old house was built.
Listening, she heard him moving off, softly, and realised he had removed his shoes.
For a long while she continued to listen, but heard no further sound from him. There was not the slightest sense of fear in her, merely loathing and weariness unutterable.
She went back, finally, to the bed and lay down across it.
Four o’clock struck in the living-room. After that she remembered listening and trying to remain awake.
She had been sleeping heavily for two hours when Eddie Carter, alias E. Stuart Graydon, tried the bolt with the blade of a kitchen knife. He had contrived, also, to fashion another instrument out of a steel fork. Neither of these worked.
As half-past five struck in the living-room, where he was seated, he concluded that the other plan had become inevitable. He had hoped it might be avoided. But the girl he now had to deal with was no longer the ignorant, impressionable child he had so easily moulded to his fancy.
There were two matters which preoccupied this man: the first, a genuine passion for the girl-wife he had been forced to abandon. Whatever this sentiment was,—love or a lesser impulse,—it had been born the moment he lost her; and it had painfully persisted through those prison months.
The second matter which absorbed him was hatred for the man who had sent him to a second term in prison. The charge was forgery; the firm of Smull, Shill & Co. procured his arrest.
On these two matters his mind had remained fixed until the poignancy of brooding became intolerable; and he sought relief in prison-smuggled drugs. Which, so far, was the history of Eddie Carter, addict, and penman par excellence.
Now, hunched up in an arm-chair in her living-room, he studied the immediate problem of Eris, picking eternally at the upholstery with scarred fingers, or at his clothing, his face, his own finger-nails—the skin around the base of the nails raw from long habit of self-mutilation.
His first plan of enlisting the girl’s sympathy had proven hopeless. There remained the alternate plan.
Six o’clock sounded from the mantel-clock. He got up and went to the pantry, where was a telephone extension for servants. With some difficulty and delay he got the person he was calling:
“Say, Abe, it’s Eddie. I’ve done what you said for me to do——”
“I didn’t tell you to do anything!” interrupted his lawyer, angrily. “Get next to yourself or I quit right now! D’you get that, you cheap dumbbell?”
“Sure! But listen, Abe. I’m here. I’ve been here since ten o’clock last night. We’re both here, Abe——”
“Is it fixed up?”
“No, Abe; and I want you to come right now. You understand, Abe——”
“Cut out the Abe every other word,” interrupted the attorney wrathfully. “What are you trying to do to me? Act like you got sense or I’m through!”
“All right. Take it on the run. I’ll let you in. You better not stop to shave; it’s six, now.”
“I’ll be around,” replied the lawyer briefly.
He came in a taxi-cab. Eddie Carter saw him from the front window, went downstairs in his stocking-feet, and let him in.
Climbing the stairs again they came into the living-room without exchanging a word; but here Carter pointed to the closed door of Eris’ bed-room.
“Asleep?” inquired the other, still breathing hard from the ascent.
“I don’t know. She’s locked in.”
The lawyer looked at him: “So she locked you out? When?”
“Last night.”
“Wouldn’t she make up?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ll have to fix it——”
There was a silence; then the short, fat attorney took hold of Carter’s arm and spoke close to his ear:
“Get this right! When she unlocks that door to come out, you came out with her!”
“You saw me,” nodded Carter.
They began to prowl around the apartment. In the kitchen the lawyer whispered: “She must have some kind of a maid that comes by the day.”
“Yes, a nigger. Her name’s Hattie. You going to buy her, Abe?”
“We don’t have to. She’s our witness anyway,” added the little fat attorney, with a hint of a grin.
At that moment a key rattled in the kitchen door.