The Tyranny of the Dark Part 43

He rose from the table and left the room, and Mrs. Lambert followed him fearful of what he might do in his rage.

"Tony, Tony!" she called.

He turned and faced her, his face set in horrible lines, his fists clinched. "I've been a fool, a fool!" he declared, through set teeth.

"Why didn't you warn me? I should have made her safely my own before I came East. She loves him, but he shall not have her--by G.o.d he shall not! Where is she? Tell her I must see her!"

She pleaded for delay, and at last calmed him so that he left her and went to his room. She then hastened to Viola and locked the door behind her.

"Viola, dear, get ready! We must leave this house at once," she said, breathlessly.

"What has happened?" asked Viola.

Mrs. Lambert took time to think. "It was very disagreeable. They are wrangling again about that challenge and about you."

"About me! Yes, that's what wears on me--they wrangle about me as if I had no right to say what part I am to take. But it's all over, mother; unless grandfather holds me by the throat every mortal minute to-day I'm going into the street--"

A knock at the door startled them both, but it proved to be the maid, who said, "Here is a note from Mr. Clarke, miss; he said, 'be sure and bring an answer,' miss."

The note was a pa.s.sionate appeal for a meeting, but Viola wrote across it in firm letters, "No. It is useless," and returned it to the girl.

"Take that to him," she said, careless of the fact that her refusal was open to the eyes of the messenger.

When they were again in private she said: "We'll go if we have to telephone the police to help us. And I'm going to wire Papa-Joe to come and take us home."

"You are cruel to Tony, child."

"No, I'm not! He must understand, once for all, that I belong to myself. I never really cared for him. Deep in my heart I was afraid of him, and now he has grown so egotistical that he is willing to sacrifice me to his own aims, and I hate him. I will not see him again if I can avoid it."

The mother protested less and less strongly, for she was forced to admit that something fine and true had gone out of her idol, and that he now stood in a new and harsh light. All the hard lines of his face appeared to her, and his pallor, his deep-set eyes were those of a sick and restless soul. She no longer rejoiced at the thought of giving her daughter into his hands.

Clarke was truly in a pitiable state of incert.i.tude and despair. His oration, his interdicted challenge, his book, his religion were all swallowed in by the one great pa.s.sion which now flooded and filled his brain--his love for Viola. "She belongs to me," he repeated, as he walked his room with shaking limbs, a dry, hard knot in his throat, his eyes hot with tears that would not fall. "She must surrender herself to me--finally and now--to-day, I will wait no longer. She must leave this house at once--but she must go as my wife! She is right. Pratt is a beast--a savage. He will rage--he will vilify us both, but we will defy him. Our 'guides' will confound him. We are, after all, not dependent upon him. We can go on--" The maid, returning, handed him Viola's answer and went hastily out. He read it and reread it till its finality burned into his brain, then dropped into a deep chair and there lay for a long time in despairing stupor.

Was it all over, then? Was her final decision in that curt scrawl? She had returned his own note as if with intent to emphasize her refusal to see him, and yet only a few days ago she had a.s.sented to all his plans, leaning upon his advice. What had produced this antagonism?

What evil influence was at work?

He rose on a sudden, fierce return of self-mastery, and went to Mrs.

Lambert's door and knocked, and when she opened to him demanded of her a full explanation. "What is the matter? Is she sick or is she hatefully avoiding me?"

"She's all upset, Anthony. Don't worry, she will see you by-and-by."

"She _must_ see me! After what she said last night I can't think--I am in agony. What is the matter with us all? Yesterday we were triumphant; to-day I feel as if everything were sinking under my feet.

She shall not leave me! I will not have it so! Tell her I insist on seeing her! I beg her to speak to me if only for a moment."

"I will tell her you are here." She left him at the threshold, a haggard and humble suitor, while she knocked at her daughter's door.

"Viola, child, Anthony is here. Let me in just a moment."

As he waited the half-frenzied man noted the absence of certain family portraits and cried aloud, poignantly: "She is packing! She is going away!" And when Mrs. Lambert returned he seized her by the arm, his eyes wild and menacing. "Tell me the truth! She is preparing to leave."

Mrs. Lambert looked away. "I tried to reason with her, Anthony. I wanted her to 'sit for council,' but she's so crazy to get away she will not do it. She will hardly speak to _me_."

"She must not go--she shall not leave me! I will not permit her to go to him!" His voice rose and his lifted hand shook.

"Hush, Tony! She will hear you. Please go away and let me deal with her."

He lifted his face and spoke with closed eyes. "Donald McLeod, if you are present, intercede for me. Bring her to me. Command her to remain.

You gave her to me. You led us here. Will you permit her to ruin all our plans? Stretch out your hand in power. Do you hear me?" There was no answer to his appeal, neither tap nor rustle of reply. In the silence his heart contracted with fear. "Have you deserted me, too?"

Then his brain waxed hot with mad hate. His hand clinched in a savage vow. "I swear I will kill her before I will let her go to that man!

Together we will enter the spirit-world."

He sprang towards the door, but Mrs. Lambert, with eyes expanded in horror, caught him by the arm. "Tony, Tony! What are you doing? Are you crazy?"

Her hand upon his arm, her face drawn and white with fear, recalled him to himself. He laughed harshly. "No--oh no; I'm not mad, but it's enough to make me so. I didn't mean it--of course I didn't mean it."

"You are dreadfully wrought up, Tony. Go out and walk and clear your brain, and by-and-by we'll sit for council."

In the end she again persuaded him to return to his chamber, but he did not leave the house--neither could he rest. Every word the girl had said of his selfishness, his egotism, burned like poison in his brain. Had his hold on her been so slight, after all? "She despises me. She hates me!" And in his heart he despised and hated himself. He cursed his poverty, his lack of resource. "Why am I, the evangel of this faith, dependent on others for revelation. Why must I beg and cringe for money, for power?" He was in the full surge of this flood of indignant query when Pratt shuffled into his room.

"Some reporters below want to see you. I guess you better--"

Clarke turned, the glare of madness in his eyes. "Curse you and your reporters! Go away from me! I don't want to be bothered by you nor by them."

Pratt stared in dull surprise, which turned slowly to anger. "What's the matter with you _now_?" he roared. "d.a.m.n you, anyway. You've upset my whole house with your crazy notions. Everything was moving along nicely till you got this bug of a big speech into your head, and then everything in my life turns topsy-turvy. To h.e.l.l with you and your book! You can't use me to advertise yourself. I want you to understand that right now. I see your scheme, and it don't work with me."

He was urging himself into a frenzy--his jaws working, his eyes glittering, like those of a boar about to charge, all his concealed dislike, his jealousy of the preacher's growing fame and of his control of Viola turning rapidly into hate. "I don't know why you're eating my bread," he shouted, hoa.r.s.ely. "I've put up with you as long as I am going to. You're nothing but a renegade preacher, a dead-beat, and a hypocrite. Get out before I kick you out!"

This brought the miserable evangel to a stand. "I'll go," he said, defiantly, "but I'll take your psychic with me--we'll go together."

"Go and be d.a.m.ned to the whole tribe of ye!" retorted Pratt, purple with fury. "Go, and I'll publish you for a set o' leeches--that's what I'll do," and with this threat he turned on his heel and went out, leaving Clarke stupefied, blinded by the force of his imprecations.

The situation had taken another turn for the worse. To leave the house of his own will was bad enough; to be kicked out by his host, and to be followed by his curse was desolating. "And yet this I could endure if only she would speak to me--would go with me."

He fell at last into a deep gulf of self-pity. Yesterday, now so far away, so irrevocable, was full of faith, of promise, of happiness, of grand purpose; now every path was hid by sliding sand. The world was a chaos. His book, his splendid mission, his communion with Adele, his very life, depended upon this wondrous psychic. Without her the world was a chaos, life a failure, and his faith a bitter, mocking lie. With a sobbing groan he covered his face, his heart utterly gone, his brain benumbed, his future black as night.

And yet outside the window, in reach of his hand, the spring sunlight vividly fell. The waves of the river glittered like gla.s.s and s.h.i.+ps moved to and fro like b.u.t.terflies. The sky was full of snowy clouds--harbingers of the warm winds of spring. Sparrows twittered along the eaves, and the mighty city, with joy in its prosaic heart, was pacing majestically into the new and pleasant month.

XVII

WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE

At breakfast next morning Morton took up the paper with apprehension, and though he found Clarke's name spread widely on the page, he was relieved to find only one allusion to the unknown psychic on whose mystic power the orator was depending.

"She has another day of grace," he said to himself, thinking of Lambert.

All the way down to his laboratory he pretended to read the news, but could not succeed in interesting himself in the wars and famines of the world, so much more vital and absorbing were his own pa.s.sions and retreats, so filmy was the abstract, so concrete and vital the particular. A million children might be starving in India, a thousand virgins about to be sold to slavery in Turkestan; but such intelligence counted little to a man struggling with doubt of the woman he loves, and questioning further the right of any philosopher to marry and bring children into a life of bafflement and pain and ultimate annihilation.

This must ever be so. The particular must outweigh the general, and philosophers, even the monists, must continue to be inconsistent. The individual must of necessity consider himself first and humanity afterwards; for if all men considered the welfare of the race to the neglect of self, the race would die at the root and the individual perish of his too-widely diffused pity. To be the altruist, one must first be the egoist (say the philosophers), to give, one must first have.