Ben Blair Part 40

"Such being the case, Clarence Sidwell," he went on, "caring for Florence Baker as I do, and knowing you as I do, why in G.o.d's name should I leave you, coward, in possession of the dearest thing to me in the world?" For an instant the voice paused, the protruding lower jaw advanced until it became a positive disfigurement. "Tell me why I should sacrifice my own happiness for yours. I have had enough of this word-play. Speak!"

In every human life there is at some time a supreme moment, a tragic climax of events; and Sidwell realized that for him this moment had arrived. Moreover, it had found him helpless and unprepared. Artificial to the bone, he was fundamentally disqualified to meet such an emergency; for artifice or subterfuge would not serve him now. One hasty glance into that relentless face caused him to turn his own away. Long ago, in the West, he had once seen a rustler hung by a posse of ranchers. The inexorable expression he remembered on the surrounding faces was mirrored in Ben Blair's. His brain whirled; he could not think. His hand pa.s.sed aimlessly over his face; he started to speak, but his voice failed him.

Ben Blair s.h.i.+fted forward in his seat. The long sinewy fingers gripped the chair like a panther ready to spring.

"I am listening," he admonished.

Sidwell felt the air of the room grow stifling. A big clock was ticking on the wall, and it seemed to him the second-beats were minutes apart.

His downcast eyes just caught the shape of the hands opposite him, and in fancy he felt them already tightening upon his throat. Like a drowning man, scenes in his past life swarmed through his brain. He saw his mother, his sisters, at home in the old family mansion; his friends at the club, chatting, laughing, drinking, smoking. In an impersonal sort of way he wondered how they would feel, what they would say, when they heard. On the vision swept. It was Florence Baker he saw now--Florence, all in fleecy white; the girl and himself were on the broad veranda of the Baker home. They were not alone. Another figure--yes, this same menacing figure now so near--was on the walk below them, his broad-brimmed hat in his hand, but leaving. Florence was speaking; a smile was upon her lips.

Like a flash of lightning the images of fancy pa.s.sed, the present returned. At last came the solution once before suggested,--the back-fire! Sidwell straightened, every nerve in his body tense. He spoke--and scarcely recognized his own voice.

"There is a reason," he said, "a very adequate reason, one which concerns another more than it does us." With a supreme effort of will the man met the blue eyes of his opponent squarely. "It is because Florence Baker loves me and doesn't love you. Because she would never forgive you, never, if you did--what you think of doing now."

For an instant the listening figure remained tense, and it seemed to Sidwell that his own pulse ceased beating; then the long sinewy body collapsed as under a physical blow.

"G.o.d!" said a low voice. "I forgot!"

Not one of the three spectators stirred or spoke. Like sheep, they awaited the lead of their master.

And it came full soon. Stiffly, clumsily, still in silence, Ben Blair arose. His face was drawn and old, his step was slow and halting. Like one walking in his sleep, he made his way to the door, took the key from his pocket, and turned the lock. Not once did he speak or glance back.

The door closed softly, and he was gone.

Behind him for a second there was silence, inactive incredulity as at a miracle performed; then, in a blaze of long repressed fury, Sidwell stood beside the table. Not pausing for a gla.s.s, he raised the red decanter to his lips and drank, drank, as though the liquor were water.

"Curse him! I'll marry that girl now if for no other reason than to get even with him. If it's the last act of my life, I swear I'll marry her!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE UPPER AND THE NETHER MILLSTONES

Out on the street once more, Ben Blair looked about him as one awakening from a dream. From the darkened arch of a convenient doorway he watched the endless pa.s.sing throng with a dull sort of wonder. He was surprised that the city should be awake at that late hour; and stepping out into the light he held up his watch. The hands indicated a few minutes past ten, and in surprise he carried the timepiece to his ear. Yes, it was running, and must be correct. He had seemed to be up there on the eleventh floor for hours; but as a matter of fact it had been only minutes. Practically, the whole night was yet before him.

Slowly, in a listless way, he started to walk back to his hotel. Instead of the night becoming cooler it had grown sultrier, and in places the walk was fairly packed with human beings. More than once he had to turn out of his way to pa.s.s the chattering groups. In so doing he was often conscious that the flow of small talk suddenly ceased, and that, nudging each other, the chatterers pointed his way. At first he looked about to see what had attracted them, but he very soon realized that he himself was the object of attention. Even here, cosmopolitan as were the surroundings, he was a marked man, was recognized as a person from a wholly different life; and his feeling of isolation deepened. He moved on more swiftly.

The sidewalk in front of his hotel was fringed with a row of chairs, in which sat guests in various stages of negligee costume. Nearly every man was smoking, and the effect in the semi-darkness was like that of footlights turned low. Steps and lobby were likewise crowded; but Ben made his way straight to his room. One idea now possessed him. His business was finished, and he wanted to be away. Turning on a light, he found a railroad guide and ran down the columns of figures. There was no late night train going West; he must wait until morning. Extinguis.h.i.+ng the light, he drew a chair to the open window and lit a cigar.

With physical inactivity, consciousness of his surroundings forced themselves on his attention. Subdued, pulsating, penetrating, the murmur of the great hotel came to his ears; the drone of indistinguishable voices, the pattering footsteps of bell-boys and _habitues_, the purr of the elevator as it moved from floor to floor, the click of the gate as it stopped at his own level, the renewed monotone as it pa.s.sed by.

Continuous, untiring, the sounds suggested the unthinking vitality of a steam-engine or of a dynamo in a powerhouse. A mechanic by nature, as a school-boy Ben had often induced Scotty to take him to the electric light station, where he had watched the great machines with a fascination bordering on awe, until fairly dragged away by the prosaic Englishman. This feeling of his childhood recurred to him now with irresistible force. The throb of the motor of human life was pulsating in his ears; but added to it was something more, something elusive, intangible, but all-powerful. The moment he had arrived within the city limits he had felt the first trace of its presence. As he approached the centre of congestion it had deepened, had become more and more a guiding influence. Since then, by day or by night, wherever he went, augmenting or diminis.h.i.+ng, it was constantly with him. And it was not with him alone. Every human being with whom he came in contact was likewise consciously or unconsciously under the spell. The crowds he had pa.s.sed on the streets were unthinkingly answering its guidance. The trolley cars echoed its voice. It was the spirit of unrest--a thing ubiquitous and all-penetrating as the air that filled their lungs--a subtle stimulant that they took in with every breath.

Ben Blair arose and put on his hat. He had been sitting only a few minutes, but he felt that he could not longer bear the inactivity. To do so meant to think; and thought was the thing that to-night he was attempting to avoid. Moreover, for one of the few times in his life he could remember he was desperately lonely. It seemed to him that nowhere within a thousand miles was another of his own kind. Instinctively he craved relief, and that alleviation could come in but one way,--through physical activity. Again he sought the street.

To some persons a great relief from loneliness is found in mingling with a crowd, even though it be of strangers; but Ben was not like these. His desire was to be away as far as possible from the maddening drone.

Boarding a street car, he rode out into the residence section, clear to the end of the loop; then, alighting, he started to walk back. A full moon had arisen, and outside the shadow-blots of trees and buildings the earth was all alight. The asphalt of the pavements and the cement of the walks glistened white under its rays. Loth to sacrifice the comparative out-of-door coolness for the heat within, practically every house had its group on the doorsteps, or scattered upon the narrow lawns.

Accustomed to magnificent distances, to boundless miles of surrounding country, to privacy absolute, Ben watched this scene with a return of the old wonder,--the old feeling of isolation, of separateness. Side by side, young men and women, obviously lovers, kept their places, indifferent to his observation. Other couples, still more careless, sat with circling arms and faces close together, returning his gaze impa.s.sively. Nothing, apparently, in the complex gamut of human nature was sacred to these folk. To the solitary spectator, the revelation was more depressing than even the down-town unrest; and he hurried on.

Further ahead he came to the homes of the wealthy,--great piles of stone and brick, that seemed more like hotels than residences. The forbidding darkness of many of the houses testified that their owners were out of town, at the seaside or among the mountains; but others were brilliantly lighted from bas.e.m.e.nt to roof. Before one a long line of carriages was drawn up. Stiffly liveried footmen, impa.s.sive as automatons, waited the erratic pleasure of their masters. A little group of spectators was already gathered, and Ben likewise paused, observing the spectacle curiously.

A social event of some sort was in progress. From some concealed place came the music of a string orchestra. Every window of the great pile was open for ventilation, and Ben could hear and see almost as plainly as the guests themselves. For a time, deep, insistent, throbbing in measured beat, came the drone of the 'cello, the wail of the clarionet, and, faintly audible beneath, the rustle of moving feet. Then the music ceased; and a few seconds later a throng of heated dancers swarmed through the open doorway to the surrounding veranda, and simultaneously a chatter broke forth. Fans, like gigantic b.u.t.terfly wings, vibrated to and fro. Skilful waiters, in black and white, glanced in and out.

Laughter, thoughtless and care-free, mingled in the general scene.

The music still, Ben Blair was about to move on, when suddenly a man and a girl in the shadow of a window on the second floor caught and held his attention. As far as he could see, they were alone. Evidently one or the other of them knew the house intimately, and had deliberately sought the place. From the veranda beneath, the flow of talk continued uninterruptedly; but they gave it no attention. The spectator could distinctly see the man as he leaned back in the light and spoke earnestly. At times he gesticulated with rapid pa.s.sionate motions, such as one unconsciously uses when deeply absorbed. Now and again, with the bodily motions that we have learned to connect with the French, his shoulders were shrugged expressively. He was obviously talking against time; for his every motion showed intense concentration. No spectator could have mistaken the nature of his speech. Pa.s.sion supreme, abandon absolute, were here personified. As he spoke, he gradually leaned farther forward toward the woman who listened. His face was no longer in the light. Suddenly, at first low, as though coming from a distance, increasing gradually until it throbbed into the steady beat of a waltz, the music recommenced. It was the signal for action and for throwing off restraint. The man leaned forward; his arm stretched out and closed about the figure of the woman. His face pressed forward to meet hers, again and again.

Not Ben alone, but a half-dozen other spectators had watched the scene.

An overdressed girl among the number t.i.ttered at the sight.

But Ben scarcely noticed. With the strength of insulted womanhood, the girl had broken free, and now stood up full in the light. One look she gave to the man, a look which should have withered him with its scorn; then, gathering her skirts, she almost ran from the room.

Only a few seconds had the girl's face been clear of the shadow; yet it had been long enough to permit recognition, and instantly liquid fire flowed in the veins of Benjamin Blair. His breath came quick and short as that of a runner pa.s.sing under the wire, and his great jaw set. The woman he had seen was Florence Baker.

With one motion he was upon the terrace leading toward the house.

Another second, and he would have been well upon his way, when a hand grasped him from behind and drew him back. With a half-articulated imprecation Ben turned--and stood fronting Scotty Baker. The Englishman's face was very white. Behind the compound lenses his eyes glowed in a way Ben had not thought possible; but his voice was steady when he spoke.

"I saw too, Ben," he said, "and I understand. I know what you want to do, and G.o.d knows I want to do the same thing myself; but it would do no good; it would only make the matter worse." He looked at the younger man fixedly, almost imploringly. His voice sank. "As you care for Florence, Ben, go away. Don't make a scene that will do only harm. Leave her with me. I came to take her home, and I'll do so at once." The speaker paused, and his hand reached out and grasped the other's with a grip unmistakable. "I appreciate your motive, my boy, and I honor it. I know how you feel; and whatever I may have been in the past, from this time on I am your friend. I am your friend now, when I ask you to go," and he fairly forced his companion away.

Once outside the crowd, Ben halted. He gave the Englishman one long look; his lips opened as if to speak; then, without a word, he moved away.

There was no listlessness about him now. He was throbbing with repressed energy, like a great engine with steam up. His feet tapped with the regularity of clock-ticks over mile after mile of the city walks. He longed for physical weariness, for sleep; but the day, with its manifold mental exaltations and depressions, prevented. It seemed to him that he could never sleep again, could never again be weary. He could only walk on and on.

Down town again, he found the crowds smaller and the border of chairs in front of his hotel largely empty. A few cigars still burned in the half-light, but they were the last flicker of a conflagration now all but extinguished. The restless throb of the human dynamo was lower and more subdued. The street cars were practically empty. Instead of a constant stream of vehicles, an occasional cab clattered past. The city was preparing for its brief hours of fitful rest.

Straight on Ben walked, between the towering office buildings, beside the now darkened department-store hives, past the giant wholesale establishments and warehouses; until, quite unintentionally on his part, and almost before he realized it, he found himself in another world, another city, as distinct as though it were no part of the cosmopolitan whole. Again he came upon throbbing life; but of quite another type.

Once more he met people in abundance, noisy, chattering human beings; but more frequently than his own he now heard foreign tongues that he did not understand, and did not even recognize. No longer were the pedestrians well dressed or apparently prosperous. Instead, poverty and squalor and filth were rampant. More loth even than the well-to-do of the suburbs to go within doors, the swarming ma.s.s of humanity covered the steps of the houses, and overflowed upon the sidewalk, even upon the street itself. There were men, women, children; the lame, the halt, the blind. The elders stared at the visitor, while the youngsters, secure in numbers, guyed him to their hearts' content.

It was all as foreign to any previous experience of this countryman as though he had come from a different planet. He had read of the city slums as of Stanley's Central African negro tribes with unp.r.o.nounceable names; and he had thought of them in much the same way. To him they had been something known to exist, but with which it was but remotely probable he would ever come in contact. Now, without preparation or premeditation, thrown face to face with the reality, it brought upon him a sickening feeling, a sort of mental nausea. Ben was not a philanthropist or a social reformer; the inspiring thought of the inexhaustible field for usefulness therein presented had never occurred to him. He wished chiefly to get away from the stench and ugliness; and, turning down a cross street, he started to return.

The locality he now entered was more modern and better lighted than the one he left behind. The decorated building fronts, with their dazzling electric signs, partook of the characteristics of the inhabitants, who seemed overdressed and vulgarly ostentatious. The gaudily trapped saloons, _cafes_, and music halls, spoke a similar message. This was the recreation spot of the people of the quarter; their land of lethe. So near were the saloons and drinking gardens that from their open doorways there came a pungent odor of beer. Every place had instrumental music of some kind. Mandolins and guitars, in the hands of gentlemen of color, were the favorites. Pianos of execrable tone, played by youths with defective complexions, or by machinery, were a close second. Before one place, a crowd blocked the sidewalk; and there Ben stopped. A vaudeville performance was going on within--an invisible dialect comedian doing a German stunt to the accompaniment of wooden clogs and disarranged verbs.

A barker in front, coatless, his collar loosened, a black string tie dangling over an unclean s.h.i.+rt front, was temporarily taking a much-needed rest. An electric sign overhead dyed his cheeks with s.h.i.+fting colors--first red, then green, then white. Despite its veneer of brazen effrontery, the face, with its great mouth and two days'

growth of beard, was haggard and weary looking. Ben mentally pictured, with a feeling of compa.s.sion, other human beings doing their idiotic "stunts" inside, sweltering in the foul air; and he wondered how, if an atom of self-respect remained in their make-up, they could fail to despise themselves.

But the comedian had subsided in a roar of applause, and again the barker's hands were gesticulating wildly.

"Now's your time, ladies and gentlemen," he harangued. "It's continuous, you know, and Madame--"

But Ben did not wait for more. Elbow first, he pushed into the crowd, and as it instantly closed about him the odor of unclean bodies made him fairly hold his breath.

Straight ahead, looking neither to right nor to left, went the countryman; he turned the corner of the block, a corner without a light.

Suddenly, with an instinctive tightening of his breath, he drew back. He had nearly stepped upon a man, dead drunk, stretched half in a darkened doorway, half on the walk. The wretch's head was bent back over one of the iron steps until it seemed as if he must choke, and he was snoring heavily.

Not a policeman was in sight, and Ben, in great physical disgust, carried the helpless hulk to one side, out of the way of pedestrians, took off the tattered coat and rolled it into a pillow for the head, and then moved on with the sound of the stertorous drunken breathing still in his ears.

Still other experiences were in store for him. He made a half block without further interruption; then he suddenly heard at his back a frightened scream, and a young woman came running toward him, followed at a distance by a roughly dressed man, the latter apparently the worse for liquor. Blair stopped, and the girl coming up, caught him by the arm imploringly.

"Help me, Mister, please!" she pleaded breathlessly. "He--Tom, back there--insulted me. I--" A burst of hysterical tears interrupted the confession.