Moonlight (Kibbe Turner)/Part 3
The broken half-whisper of a crying girl: “No last good-night! No last good-night!”
The Story Thus Far:
JOHN SCHMAAR was quite sure that he knew women for what they were—light things, beautiful, expensive toys. He'd had little experience with them in his early days as a professional gambler in the West; of late, however, he had found them useful in the more highly evolved financial operations he carried on at his country place on the Hudson.
Take Aileen Dulcifer, for instance, the pretty little waster who had run through her inheritance, and to pay a bridge-debt gave Schmaar a check which was returned N. S. F., by the bank. Schmaar found it easy, under the circumstances, to persuade Aileen to accept much-needed money from him, easy to persuade her that there was no harm in doing what he asked in exchange—keep the wealthy young Westerner, Gladden, amused, so that Gladden would stay on in New York until a certain “financial deal” Schmaar had on with him should be completed. And when, that afternoon, a group of Schmaar's guests, men and women, were out on the cliff above the river in front of his place, and the Bannerman girl told again the story of the Indian maiden who had jumped over in the effort to save her lover,—and thus gave the place the name Lovers' Leap—Schmaar again showed his opinion by offering a thousand dollars to any modern woman who would make even the first partial descent.
So, some days later, when Schmaar informed Aileen that the deal had turned out badly for Gladden, that it would now be unwise for her to marry the impoverished Westerner, the gambler was a bit surprised that she took the matter so seriously. He let her run on, however—best let her work off her hysteria. And then it was that Aileen Dulcifer, in the effort to save her lover from Schmaar, made a strange proposal to him. She dared Schmaar to fight an “American duel” with her—charged him with cowardice if he refused. And Schmaar, unable to believe her in earnest, consented. It all was to hang on the turn of a card—the loser pledged himself within forty-eight hours to take the fatal Lovers' Leap.
The agreement, signed and sealed, was a secret between them, but placed in Gladden's hands, to be opened after two days. In the presence of Schmaar's other guests, who were ignorant of the underlying tragedy, the cards were cut, and Aileen lost..... Later, when in a moment of misunderstanding Gladden left without saying good-night to her, Aileen fainted and was carried to her room.
The Story Continues:
IT was moonlight when John Schmaar stepped out—October moonlight. He closed the door softly. His foot crunched on the gravel driveway. He looked up at the windows in the northeast corner of the house. They were dark. The other women had gone away and left Aileen, he surmised.
Schmaar walked on, after a minute, along the path through the rhododendrons out to Lovers' Leap. There was practically a quarter of an hour yet before eleven o'clock; he thought he would make sure that nothing had gone wrong—out there.
He stepped out of the black-green thicket into the open space on the edge of the Palisades. He saw it was empty, as he might have known—empty, silent, carpeted with moonlight. Looking up, a little to the southeast he saw it—the great, soft, yellow full-moon of October. The sky was saturated with its light, the stars dimmed, the eastern edges of the horizon, above the rolling hills across the river, dulled and thickened with faint golden mist.
Beneath, a little to the south, a broken path of gold lay upon the glossy river. And on the soft black surface to the north of it the high white light and the low larger red light of a north-going tug swam like moving jewels through the night. You heard the thing, the only but placed in Gladden's hands, to be opened after two days. In sound within the horizon, like something breathing, very faintly, in the dark.
John Schmaar, with his great cigar, stood by the rustic summer-house, dripping with its old, twisting, snakelike wistaria, its latticed and still more twisting shadows underneath it cut out black upon the green-gold grass. It seemed more credible, this adventure he was in—here, in these surroundings. No more impossible, or needing explanation, as he stood there listening, watching in this land of black and crooked shadows, than he himself. After all, what thing is stranger in the world—when you are alone, in absolute stillness, where you can hear your breathing and your heart beats in your ears—than you yourself, this thing that you can never leave behind, nor part from, nor understand, that goes on, beating like a watch for a few years, until finally it stops?
John Schmaar had for a second a new and unfamiliar sense of instability and insecurity, an odd feeling that he himself, out here alone, was scarcely more substantial than what he saw around him—the crooked, twisting shadows of the moon, that house of his,—that silly castle built of wood,—this silliest of all things, this Lovers' Leap. And over and above this, he felt, as one feels sometimes in such surroundings, the disagreeably oppressive and half-suffocating sense that there was Something besides himself out there watching him, waiting in a hostile and implacable silence.
He experienced, indeed, as he had never in his life before, that sensation you have outdoors at night, especially in these black-bordered little clearings lighted by the full light of the moon—that sensation of something not human or with any sound, reasonable, daylight intentions toward you something waiting for you out there beyond, sure to meet you finally like a lover—or a doom!
Schmaar stirred, shifted his cigar, disturbed by these unusual thoughts. And suddenly a night scene quite different from this sprang into his mind—a thing which for some little time had been struggling to float up into his consciousness, the memory of something he had heard once from the lips of a great man, a very great man indeed—the man, in fact, who had first turned his whole career and made it possible for him to move from his gambling-house into the greater game of finance.
It was in the last gambling-house, after Schmaar had moved to New York. They sat together, three of them, after the rest had gone, with the stale smoke and cigar-stubs and trays of empty glasses around them. They were talking, as you do sometimes late at night, of things you really think; and the old man got started finally.
“Do you know what the greatest thing in all the world is?” the man asked them, looking at the tip of his cigar in his big old wrinkled hand. “The greatest power?”
Schmaar could see him still—his rounded, heavy, meaty shoulders, the black round skullcap he wore to protect the top of his head, the long odd-shaped cigar he always smoked. The old man was getting pretty old. It was not many years afterward that he died.
“What is?” Schmaar had asked him.
“Moonshine!” said the old man, and went on to give them some examples.
“You mean bunk!” Schmaar said
“I mean moonshine,” said the old man in his dictatorial way. “It gives the idea better, the flavor!”
“Maybe you're right.” Schmaar answered him, listening, thinking how old and experienced he looked: the wisest old man in America, who had seen more, from the California gold-rush on, than perhaps anybody else in the country—a kind of old, hardened modern prophet in a skullcap.
“What do they run campaigns with in politics? What do they run wars with? What is it—the most important thing of all—that gets the human race born and raised and taken care of till it gets on its feet?
“What keeps the race together, always hopeful, always moving on, raising children, new generations, feeding them, each generation breaking its own back for the next? What keeps families and tribes and peoples together? Moonshine,” he answered himself, “pure moonshine.”
“Look here,” he said, shifting his big body slightly in his chair “Why is your country always right, and your particular god? And your wife and your children? We can't be all right at once in a fight,—both sides,—nor our tribal god who makes war with us. There can't be just one woman of the hundreds of millions in the world that is just right for you—and no other Any sensible man knows that.”
“Naturally,” Schmaar had said.
“Moonshine! Illusion! It's the greatest power in the world, bar none, and the wildest! And the great men, the really big men, are the ones who know its use—how to turn it to their advantage. Cæsar, Alexander, Napoleon—they were the great past masters in moonshine—in propaganda. Using it across whole maps just as, in their small way, all our newspapers and our politicians and our ministers try to use it now—make their living by it. And from that you go down to the most wonderful thing of all—the way year after year, one woman fools one man, and one man one woman, into the idea that neither can live without the other.”
Gladden looked up and saw the maid coming in—and let Schmaar drop back into his chair. “She's gone,” said the maid. “She isn't there in the room!”
“Oh, well,” Schmaar had said, “such stuff as that!”
“Don't fool yourself,” said the old man, looking at Schmaar with that look which saw all there was inside him. “We've all got our brand—our particular brand of moonshine that we're addicted to. You, for instance. Yours is plain enough—and common enough. You're just the brute—the common, successful, big, fighting brute. You're filled with the moonshine of the brute—the catchwords of brute strength and courage. Let anybody try to back you down, put you in a corner, call you a coward! How long could you stand for it, and keep still? You'd lose your mind and senses right away. I've watched you! And yet you know and I know there might be times when you'd be a thousand times better off just to lie low.
“Oh, no,” said the old man. Schmaar could see him still, getting up, brushing the cigar-ashes from his protruding vest. “It's irresistible. It drives us all. You can do anything in the world with it—if you can only handle it.
“But don't forget this, either,” he said, straightening up slowly, holding to the chair-arm till he got his balance. “It's just about as dangerous to you when you once start it; it will come back on you more than likely, the very thing you start—as it did with Cesar or Napoleon, almost any of them, destroying them in the end.
“I've used it myself—in my time,” said the old man. “But the older I get, the more I fear it. It scares me sometimes to see the whole world driven by it, ridden by it. I think sometimes that men are puppets, mechanical dolls, operated by it—like these electrical cars they've brought in the last few years, that look stranger to me than to you! Just as the electricity is the thing there, not the wood and iron cars, so all there is to us human beings, after all, is just this other thing—this power of pure moonshine that's driving us!”
He got up and went out after that, looking neither to the right nor left, as was his wont.
“The old man's getting pretty old,” said the third man to John Schmaar as they sat there watching him. Schmaar thought so himself at the time. But since then, a number of times, that talk had kept coming back to him, as it did tonight.
“Moonshine, huh! The greatest power on earth!” said Schmaar half aloud, shaking himself free of his memory, as you do of thoughts that puzzle and you don't quite care to pursue.
He came back again, with almost physical repugnance, to the actual light of the moon which surrounded him—that thing which made the real unreal, and the unreal real—that made old and surest notions seem distant and uncertain, that turned to cloth-of-gold the matted old fall grass on this still lawn, that painted black, crooked, living shadows by the crazy rustic arbor, made reasonable Lovers' Leaps, and turned the towers of his silly old-time wooden castle into stone.
He felt, as he never had before, exactly what the old man had meant. There it was, as he had said, the plainest thing in all the world—moonshine, the frozen moonshine of the past as well as of today, sticking out so no man's eye could miss it.
SCHMAAR looked at his watch and saw its face in that bright light with no trouble at all. It was eight minutes of the hour. So he started down the black path through the rhodedendrons, to where he could get a view of the house, and the girl's window.
From where Schmaar was now, he could see the great city across the river. Over it, like two lower stars, hung the lights of two high unseen towers. The one to the left was the one that his, and possibly another pair of eyes, were studying now, if that story he had heard was to be believed—this extraordinary story of the exchanging of good-nights between these two young fools—at the signal from a clock!
Schmaar thought for a moment, when he had come far enough,—standing behind the trunk of one of the largest trees,—that there might be some one, something white, just inside the nearer window on the chamber's eastern side. He wasn't sure. It might be the curtain.
He looked again at the city under the moonlight, thinking of it and the girl in that upper room, of the thousands of little artificial flowerlike creatures like her, who thronged its pavements and its theaters and restaurants at just this hour. Silk-clad children, frail compounds of indolence and impulse and ignorance, with no thought beyond the next dress, the next delicate dinner, the latest triviality in the theaters. These, it seemed, one of these,—the lightest human beings upon earth,—plus illusion, romance, moonshine, would become desperate, lofty, tragic creatures, capable of any virtue, of every possible resistance to bad, of every possible struggle for good, up to the last great sacrifice, so-called, for what they loved.
A likely, rational, probable idea! John Schmaar thought to himself, going back to his own common sense in spite of his surroundings.
And as he thought it, that lower star, that second light above the city to the left, was suddenly gone. It was the long pause before it started flashing out the hour.
And above him from the eastern window a pair of slender arms came out from the white curtains, and the broken half-whisper of a crying girl:
“No last good-night! No last good-night!”
Schmaar, in the black shelter of his tree, cursed incredulously, seeing the incredible, the impossible—the sight of a lovelorn maiden, from the upper story of a wooden castle, addressing a last good-night farewell to a clock-tower!
“The little crazy fool!” said Schmaar to himself.
It was a long while, after the slim white figure had gone back and the room was still, before Schmaar himself went back into his house to his own room.
Even then, at times he rose and looked out nervously, through the moonlight, toward Lovers' Leap.
CHAPTER VIII
JOHN SCHMAAR woke up after a short sleep, with real daylight in his windows. He was glad to see it. It was like getting back to earth again, after a round trip to the moon.
“What goes up must come down,” he said to himself—including women's nerves, he meant.
“Give them a night's sleep,” he said to himself, “and it all looks different—in the morning! The wilder they are, the quicker it's all over.” Thus he agreed with many sound psychologists.
As it was, he had outguessed her. He had taken a chance last night, when he grew cold and uncomfortable, and come away finally into the house. And now he knew he had guessed right. The girl did not come down to breakfast, but it was taken up to her. So she was there!
“The first twelve hours are the worst,” said Schmaar to himself, now much more comfortable and confident. And he made up his mind that the best thing to do in the circumstances was to let her go on and have her lesson.
“How is she?” he asked Billie Bannerman at breakfast.
“She's all right, I guess,” she told him, “—only a little tired! She's going over with us to New York—when Eloise and I go home.”
“So that's it, huh?” said Schmaar to himself. It was just as he had thought it would be.
“It looks different, huh,” he said to himself, “now the daylight's turned on.”
“How do you feel?” he asked Aileen when she came down at last.
“Fine. Fine,” she answered. “Never better in my life. Getting ready to pay my bet.”
“Do you think you ought to go over there this morning?” he asked her—keeping up the gay byplay. “I'll stay home—and you and I can arrange the details.”
But she put him off; she wouldn't come around to him and surrender yet. That was too much to expect.
“Oh, all right,” said Schmaar to himself. “There's thirty-six hours left yet!”
At the same time, it seemed to him, too, watching her eyes, that she had something on her mind right now—some new idea!
“You don't suppose she'd clear out, run away?” said Schmaar to himself, thinking, of course, of what he had seen that man do—in that earlier time when he was a boy in the West. She could easily dodge the women when she got over to New York. But where would she go—what with? She had no money, to speak of.
So he sent them all off to the city in his sister's car, and afterwards ran over to town himself for a while. There was one thing sure: she couldn't even make a bluff at carrying out that silly bet of theirs—when she was in New York, anyway! Schmaar was glad to see her calming down again.
So Schmaar ran over to his office and back again in the afternoon; and a little afterward the two women—his sister and Aileen—came back, and both went on up to their rooms. He looked now to see the girl in the doorway of his library at any time—come to fix things up. But instead of that, he got his news on her latest move—her trip to New York.
He had a man who usually drove for him—his own chauffeur—who knew a few things, whom he used in affairs like this. He had sent him in with the limousine as a second man, a footman, and told him to keep his eyes on the Dulcifer girl. And if he wanted to get away from the machine at any time, if she should leave the other women, to just say Schmaar had sent him off with a message somewhere.
SO when Schmar came back, he had word from this man.
“Where do you think she went?” he asked Schmaar—and then told him. She had gone around, by a back way, to Gladden's rooms.
“To his rooms!” said Schmaar, surprised. He had never had any suspicions of anything like that—no reason for it.
The man nodded.
“Was he there?”
“No. He was out,” said Schmaar's man.
“I got to the elevator-boy,” he said. He had known them, of course, all the servants, from having been there before with Schmaar. “The first thing they knew about it, this woman's voice called up on the telephone, and asked if Gladden was there. They thought then it was a little peculiar.”
“Why?” Schmaar asked him, drinking this all in, for this was news, of course, real news!
“Because she said right off, before she asked for him, that she didn't want to speak to him—if he was there. To be sure of that! But just to know whether he was in or not—just whether he had gone yet! And they said yes, he had gone—as he always had by that time of day. And then she rang off without a word, and the next thing she was in there herself. They knew her voice well enough when she came in with her letter.”
“Her letter!” said Schmaar.
“Yeah! That was the time I slipped in after her. She came in, saying she was his sister, and had to see him, and they told her—as she knew they would in advance—that he was gone. And then she gave the boy this letter, to be delivered to him without fail as soon as he arrived. And a five-dollar bill just to jog his memory!”
“A five-dollar bill!” said Schmaar.
“Yeah! Some message, huh?”
“Was she ever there before?” Schmaar asked his man.
“They say not. No sir.”
“They do, huh?” said Schmaar, looking at him.
“I didn't believe it myself,” said the chauffeur, “but they held to it.”
“All right,” Schmaar told him finally. “Keep your eyes open from now on.”
“Yes sir,” said the fellow pocketing his bill. “I certainly will.”
How Schmaar laughed, after the man had gone out! He had had them try to frame him up before. If there was anything that made him ugly, that did. And yet it was a relief, too—to be back on ground he understood!
“And I thought,” he said to himself, “she was just a lightweight kid, mad with moonlight!”
The girl wavered for a minute..... The call, the song, started her moving toward it.
HE watched her at the dinner-table—with even more interest now, studying her next move.
“Oh, no, sister!” said Schmaar to himself, watching her—how innocent she looked. “You're good, but nothing like that!”
But she didn't do anything, make any sign, and after dinner went upstairs, pleading a headache. She avoided him still, he noticed, acting queer yet—laughing too hard to be natural at one minute, and the next seeming to draw away from him, to avoid him, to be scared of him, you'd say! Nervous, probably, over the move that was coming next—that Schmaar was all ready for!
The man, the Westerner, didn't show up until later, later than Schmaar had expected, not till about half-past ten, in fact. But when he came, Schmaar was right there waiting for him.
He fooled Schmaar at first. He drove up in a taxicab instead of walking. No singing now, no “Beautiful K-k-katy,” in the moonlight, though there was a sky full of moonlight outside, as there had been the night before. Schmaar heard the taxi go away, and the Westerner come in before he realized who it was. But he was ready, just the same.
“So here it comes!” said Schmaar to himself, watching him as he came in. He played it pretty well, Schmaar thought, studying him. You would almost have thought he was crazy.
Where was she—where was Aileen, he wanted to know, stammering.
“She's upstairs,” Schmaar answered, studying him. “Why?”
“Are you sure?” he asked then—his voice with the tremolo attachment going strong.
“Do you want to see her?” Schmaar asked back, making a motion to go and call her.
“No,” he answered right off, his voice changing, and an ugly look coming into his eyes. “Not yet—not if she's there!”
Schmaar watched him, working himself up. “Not yet, huh?” he said to himself, waiting.
And then, as he expected, the Westerner went on, dragging out his envelope.
“Now what is this thing? What's in here?”
“You don't know, do you?” said Schmaar, giving him the stony eye.
“No.”
“No. You don't know!” said Schmaar, watching him play innocent. “You wouldn't open it—would you?”
“How could I open it, when it's sealed—with sealing wax? When I am pledged not to?”
“So you want me to open it for you?” Schmaar asked him.
He could—yes. Or he could tell him what was in there. He had a right to—which the other man didn't.
“All right,” Schmaar answered, watching him and starting in his own campaign. “I will. I'll show you what's in it—when you show me what was in that note she left for you today!”
That caught him by surprise. He didn't answer that.
“When she was around at your rooms!”
“Who told you that? How do you know that?” he asked, looking uglier and uglier every minute now.
“I know a number of things—some that you don't!” Schmaar told him, not troubling much to keep back his own feelings now.
“Let's have them, quick,” said this big Westerner, threatening him.
“I'll let you have them good!” said Schmaar, looking at him, getting a little weary of watching this stuff.
And he told him, in a few well-chosen words, just where he stood in that mine matter.
“I just tell you this,” he said, “to be sure she didn't miss any of the details when she went over it with you.”
HE had him staring quite a few—listening, not talking! Acting as if he had never heard the thing before! But now he broke in.
“She!” he said, talking uglier still. “What do you mean? She!”
“No. You don't know anything about that, either,” said Schmaar. “Well, I guess there are some things you don't, at that! Maybe she didn't tell you all!”
And he went on to tell him, then, the whole story about her—how she had worked in with Schmaar to hold him there in the first place.
“That's one thing, maybe, she didn't tell you all the details of,” Schmaar went on, “—how she held you here!”
“You lie!” said the Westerner—flat.
“That's a fighting word,” said Schmaar.
“I know that,” said Gladden.
“We'll talk about that a little later,” said Schmaar—putting the thing over. “But now look at these.”
SCHMAAR showed him his little collection of checks with her name on the back.
Gladden acted very queer at that. Instead of going on, loud and ugly, he got still and white—as if something had struck him—and he was going to kill Schmaar, anyway. He almost trembled, keeping from doing it, apparently.
“Do you mean to say,” he cried—and stopped himself, “anything about her—”
“I don't mean to say anything,” Schmaar answered him, “but what I can prove. There they are; look them over.”
That got to him worse than ever, apparently. He started trembling, and moving toward Schmaar again.
“She ruined me, you say,” he said then, stopping and looking at Schmaar. “Let's understand this: You claim you ruined me, and paid her to help—with these checks. But that's all you claim—about her?”
“I claim nothing at all,” said Schmaar. “There they are.”
“You're wise.”
“Maybe I am,” said Schmaar. Gladden was bigger and younger than he, but he didn't scare him any.
“She ruined me,” he said, holding himself back still—seeming to, “and you paid her. Then what?”
“That's the joke,” said Schmaar
“The joke!” said Gladden, talking uglier and uglier.
“Yes,” Schmaar told him. “After that, she saves you! That's where the envelope comes in, huh?”
“Saves me! The envelope!”
“Ah, forget it!” said Schmaar, tiring of this play-acting. “You don't know anything about it, do you!”
But the man just looked black—appeared to.
“Let me ask you a question,” said Schmaar then. “Where did you get that freak idea about the American duel?”
“The American duel!” he cried. That got to him, Schmaar saw, gave him a real jolt! His whole face changed.
“You don't deny that too, do you? You don't claim you never spoke to her about that? Or do you?”
“I spoke to her about it—yes,” he said, his whole voice changed now, as well as his face. “Why?”
“When did you?” said Schmaar. “Under what circumstances?”
He stared at first—as if he weren't going to answer.
“I told her Sunday afternoon,” he went on, speaking slowly. keeping up that strained stare, “just after we were out there, and had that dispute by that Lovers' Leap!”
“After that talk about women and bravery—and the great sacrifice?” said Schmaar.
“Yes,” he answered again. “It did have something to do with that. Why? What's this all about?” he asked, hurrying.
“So that's why you cooked it up?” said Schmaar, bringing it up to him.
“Cooked it up? Cooked what up?”
“This act we're going through now,” said Schmaar. “This life-saving act. How the woman saves the man—the only way you can stage an equal fight between a man and woman—the American duel!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You saw it, didn't you—that cutting of the cards?” said Schmaar. “What else? And I fell for it too, at first. But not entirely—not to the full extent!”
“What is this thing?” said the Westerner, staring down into Schmaar's eyes, hurrying him faster and faster.
“You're good at acting—aren't you?” Schmaar said to him—getting a little mad to see him. “I'll tell you what it is. It's where the joke comes in—the life-saving act—the duel between the woman and the man. For the newspapers! And I fell for it, but not to the full extent. You had me fooled—a ways. But not to the limit. I'd be likely, wouldn't I, to bet my life with a crazy hysterical girl, or what I took for one then, anyhow, with my own cards! Betcha my life!”
THE man stood staring still.
“Oh, it's quite a joke,” said Schmaar. “I know. But not to that extent! It wasn't all entirely serious, even with me. You may have noticed.” he told him, “when we made that cut, two things: first that she cut first always; and second, that when the time came, I happened to have the card that was low enough two times out of three!”
“You cheated her. you mean!” said the Westerner, speaking finally in a kind of hoarse voice.
“What would I be likely to do,” said Schmaar, getting a little madder all the time. “And you can put that in your story too, when you peddle it out to the newspapers—the grand story of the American duel, that the man wasn't quite so crazy as he looked!”
Then the Westerner spoke up finally, in his queer hoarse voice.
“Stand up,” he said to Schmaar, talking very slowly. “See if I get this right: You claim she helped you—hold me—take my property from me?”
“Yep,” said Schmaar, on his feet now.
“And you paid her money to do it—her expenses?
“I do. Yes.”
“And then you say she wanted to fight you, an American duel, to save me!”
“Oh, what's the use!” said Schmaar, turning away, sick of this farce.
Gladden reached out his big hand. “I want that envelope!” he said.
“Sure thing!” said Schmaar, handing it to him
He ripped it open—read it aloud:
“'The loser will take the Lovers' Leap, as agreed!'
“What's this?” he almost yelled.
John Schmaar thought that the man's voice sounded queer. He almost believed now that he wasn't acting. And yet he knew he must be!
“You ought to know,” said Schmaar, watching him. “You and your American duel! You're some little planner!”
GLADDEN didn't answer. “Where is she now?” he called instead—like a lunatic. “Aileen?”
“She's upstairs,” said Schmaar, gazing at him. “Shall I send for her?”
“The sooner the quicker,” the other man told him.
So Schmaar sent a maid up after her.
“Now, then,” he said to the Westerner, who stood glaring out toward the hall-way, “she might take a minute, dolling herself up, getting ready to come down. In the meanwhile, what about that note? Do I see it, now you've opened up the envelope?”
You would have thought for a minute the Westerner was going to smash him where he stood. But then he stopped, and seemed to hesitate.
“Yes,” he said then, in a level voice. “I guess you'd better—so you can appreciate better what's going to happen to you!”
“Is that right!” said Schmaar, looking back just as ugly as he did, and taking the thing from him and opening it up.
It was a queer, scrawly-looking kind of stuff, the half-formed hand that girls write nowadays, lines running up and down, full of dots and dashes and underscorings, and here and there a blot. It was quite long, too. Schmaar could hardly make it out at first. Finally he read:
- I couldn't tell you, about that envelope, in advance, dear. I wouldn't, anyway—be able to! For when it is opened, it will be the end for me—with you! (Blot.) And I can't tell you now either—only this!—that it was, as it turned out, the only possible way!
“The only possible way, huh?” said Schmaar to himself, reading it. “How nice!” And he went on reading:
- He had me cornered so! It all came so suddenly! Just after we were so sure and happy. (Another blot.) I could hardly think. And then that idea came to me, and I tried and lost! And that was lucky too. For I can see now—that that was the only possible way. The best—that I should lose!
“THIS certainly is rich,” said Schmaar to himself—and yet puzzled a little too, by the thing. He went on reading:
- Best for me, I mean—not you! I'm talking selfishly now. For suppose that I had won, or I had quit and run away! Or I had gone to you and told you everything—the truth! You couldn't have believed me—quite—or in me! There would still be doubt—would have to be! I saw it plain as day. That was the most terrible thing of all—the way he had me fixed—with everything-—all those checks. I couldn't even tell the truth to you—and have even you believe me! But now—this way, I can tell the truth, and prove it! No one can doubt me. I'll tell the truth now. They'll all know I couldn't lie now!
- So this is the truth, dear and I will prove it!
“Prove it, huh!” thought Schmaar, getting interested in spite of himself, going on:
- I didn't ever try to ruin you. I just didn't know. I loved you from the very first. And this will prove that.
- I was a coward at first. But I did try to save you, really—not just talk about it! And this will prove that too
- I did love money. More than anything on earth—to spend it! But not now. Because I could have all I wanted of it—if I'd just take it. So this will prove that too.
- I did take money from him—at first. But only for a loan! I wasn't bad! Don't ever think I was. I wasn't bad—the way he would make it look, and would prove it too, almost—unless proved he lied—the only way I can!
Schmaar shifted his feet, reading the thing. It almost got him believing that she meant it—and made him hurry on to read it to the end.
- So, dear (another blot), although it's all over—and you'll hate me probably—after that envelope is opened, anyway—maybe you do now!—I want you to help me the only possible way I can be helped now—and to do just what I ask!
- First—you must not try to see me! I wouldn't see you, anyway. I couldn't now!
- But last night you left me—without warning—without good night! You were to blame for that. It wasn't fair!
- So tonight—at our hour—in our old way—without fail, just say good night, good-by, the best of luck!
- It will help a lot, dear, the only way you can.
Your Aileen.
John Schmaar was dazed when he finished. He almost believed the thing, until he thought of the game he was pretty sure they were working on him!
“The only way, huh!” he said, giving that Gladden a look. “For her! That's a scream.”
And just that second he felt that young devil's hands upon his throat. He had no idea he was so strong. He thought that he would certainly choke him then and there.
It was lucky for Schmaar that the next thing happened the way it did that Gladden looked up and saw the maid coming in—and let Schmaar drop back into his chair.
“She's gone!” said the maid. “She isn't there in her room!”
“Gone!” said the Westerner.
THE whole thing was a little indistinct, blurred to John Schmaar, recovering his breath—feeling a touch of his old vertigo.
“Gone!” said Schmaar, out of his dizziness. “How do you know?”
“I went in and looked, sir.”
“Did you notice anything? Was her window open?” the Westerner asked her.
“Yes sir—I—I—think it was,” the maid stammered—drawing away, surprised at his glaring.
“That's all,” said Gladden sharply.
Schmaar sent her away.
“You know what's happened,” the Westerner said to Schmaar.
“I don't—I don't believe it,” said John Schmaar, his mind still hazy, and his speech confused.
But the other man didn't answer him.
“What time is it?” he said aloud, and snatched out his own watch.
“Eight minutes of eleven,” he answered himself—while Schmaar sat watching. “There's eight minutes yet,” he said, still talking aloud to himself.
But Schmaar understood, of course, although the other man didn't know it, his mind going back to that night before—the clock-tower out in the moonlight.
“Are you willing to help?” Gladden said to Schmaar, “—or are you anxious to be a murderer?”
“I'll help,” said Schmaar, “—if there's anything to help at.”
“Come on,” said the Westerner, starting—Schmaar after him.
He stopped at the door.
“Before we go,” he said to Schmaar, “let's understand each other. We've got a number of scores to settle, you and I. But now that's all off—until we see if we can get her—in time!”
“Yes.”
“But remember this,” he said to Schmaar, “if she's there—down there! I'll give you warning now—you'll go after her!”
“Or you do,” said Schmaar, still eying him.
“For if she is—you've driven her out of life—murdered her, as certainly as if you had shot her.
“If she's there, huh?” said Schmaar.
“But now, for the present, we'll let that rest,” said Gladden, and went on and outlined what they would better do. “Maybe I'd better take charge,” he said. “I've been more used than you, I guess, to hunting animals—and men.”
He was alluding probably, in that last, Schmaar saw, to what he had done other nights—hunting over across into the German trenches.
“That's right, probably,” John Schmaar assented.
“You follow me—do what I say!” the Westerner told him.
“Yes,” Schmaar agreed, watching him now turn the knob.
THE sense of unreality, of physical apprehension, came back to John Schmaar. He felt again that twinge of fear which comes to men suddenly witnessing the incredible. It was intensified, a hundred times, from the night before. He was perhaps a murderer if this thing were true—about to be murdered, or murder in his turn, if he and this big enemy of his did not rescue this crazy girl from Lovers' Leap. Going to her death in a land made entirely out of her imagination!
And so John Schmaar stepped out again into the moonlight.
CHAPTER IX
IT was an entirely different night than the night before, an entirely different light—not so yellow, but silver; not still, but disturbed, full of hurrying shadows.
Looking ahead, Schmaar saw the Westerner beckon him to shut the door at once and follow, saw him turn then to the right, keeping within the narrow shadow by the house wall. He stopped below the Dulcifer girl's window.
It was open, as the maid had said. But there was nothing to be seen of her about the yard, and no sound to be heard.
There was an old-fashioned iron balcony outside the window, put on the wooden castle for good measure—so they could come out moonlight nights and sing, probably, John Schmaar used to say. A kind of a boxlike little thing, with scroll-iron sides. Hanging down from it was one of those old snaky wistaria vines—a big thing that had been growing there for sixty or seventy years, probably, from the time the house was built.
“Look!” said Schmaar, whispering and pointing.
There was something light dangling just above their heads.
The Westerner jumped and got it—taking hold of the old wistaria vine to help him. It was a little piece of fine cloth, from a woman's dress, probably. At any rate, it might be.
Schmaar caught his breath, seeing it and watched the Westerner as he bent down.
Suddenly he twitched Schmaar's clothing—and Schmaar bent down beside him. There in the dirt, where the gardener had kept the ground around the old vine loose, were the sharp-cut prints of small heels, the high, slender heels which women wear on evening slippers.
John Schmaar straightened up—to avoid too much giddiness and its accompanying sense of unreality. The twinge of apprehension, the fear of the incredible grew on him always now, rather than diminished.
The man with him, after a careful stare about, now moved across the driveway, motioning to Schmaar to stay where he was. He saw him stooping down from time to time, moving swiftly toward the path into the rhododendrons, as if he were following a trail or trying to. It was a dirt path there, soft with the dampness of fall. If there were any prints, they would show there.
SCHMAAR thought he saw the figure of the Westerner straighten up, separate itself from the crowd of moving shadows, come toward him across the driveway.
“She's out there!” he said, and clasped his painful grip upon Schmaar's shoulder.
“Listen,” went on the Westerner. “From now on, we've got to work this mighty careful. You stay here. Understand? You wait.”
Schmaar nodded—watched him disappear silently into the rustle of black rhododendrons, then followed silently to the mouth of the path into the thicket—stood alone in the moving shadows, and the incredible situation—with his own confused and shifting thoughts.
“Moonshine—the greatest power on earth, huh!” said Schmaar to himself glancing up into the sky, recalling the memory which had come to him out there the night before.
His heart was hammering in his body still.
He looked behind him, at the window of the crazy girl they were hunting—then beyond, to the lights of the great city. Over them stood the the high towers, those lower stars, the farthest of which would now very soon be suddenly extinguished.
John Schmaar, thinking, pulled out his watch. It was five minutes of eleven.
Ahead he could see now—his eyes getting more accustomed to the light—the figure of the Westerner in the other mouth of the path—filling the bar of light in the black mass of the rhododendrons—standing very still.
“Moonshine, the greatest power on earth!” said Schmaar again, thinking of that talk, the claim of that wise and un-emotional old man, that we were all driven by it, by our own crazy emotions taken in from somewhere outside
Was it true? Was nothing real? Was everything that he had lived for, that you felt with your fingers and your lips—were you yourself—nothing but an instrument for this greater thing, this power outside of you, that lured you on with pretty lights, that changed the strong into the weak, that changed the weak into strong, that had changed this one—this creature they were hunting, artificial as a Parisian flower in an opera dress—into something resolute, self-sacrificing, desperate, through the power of emotion—of love?
“The most wonderful and mysterious thing of all,” he heard the old man's voice again, as if he heard it in his ear. “The love of one woman for one man!”
Schmaar dropped it, with a sense of almost superstitious dread, trying to forget, to laugh it off.
“All for love, huh!” he said almost aloud to himself—trying to return if possible to his more normal trend of thought.
He stared down the dark path now—impatient for the other man to move. Saw him standing motionless, like an insentient thing. A puff of wind set the hard-leaved rhododendrons shaking, a bare twig on a tree just before him twitched with the silly and irrational spasms of something dying. He looked ahead again, and now he saw that the black figure in the path moved, turned, came toward him.
“She's there!” the Westerner told him.
“Where?”
“Out on that rock—that Lovers' Leap.”
“Yes?” asked John Schmaar—with a sense of sudden yielding and acceptance.
CHAPTER X
“I WANTED to locate her first—be sure!” the other man was saying.
“Yes,” said Schmaar obediently.
“I wasn't sure first, in this light—until she moved!”
“Moved!” said Schmaar after him, the idea still growing on him how odd it was to be out here stalking a woman, like an animal, through the night.
“Yes,” the other man replied, whispering. “You know how the thing stands—out beyond the rest?”
“Yes.”
“She was out there, sitting still. I thought it was something! Then the clouds went, and the moon shone, and she moved—let down her hands. That's her, all right! I could see even the color of the moonlight on her hair.”
“Did she see you?”
“No,” said the Westerner. “But her face is this way—toward New York.”
“The tower!”
“Yes,” the Westerner answered—his mind too busy now to feel surprised that Schmaar should know it.
“We'll have till then, anyway.”
“Yes.”
The Westerner went on planning, talking in a whisper.
John Schmaar, listening to him, felt the sense of apprehension of the unreal the unseen, the incredible sweep over him again like a rush of blood to the head of a man in anger. Here they were whispering, in this little thicket in the moonshine, stalking a woman—a soft indoor creature of laces and tulles and satins—through the night, with desperate chances of death for more than one hanging upon the outcome!
“We can't go out there,” the Westerner was saying, “—into the open. She'd see us. There's only one thing—I can think of.”
“What?”
“If we could catch her attention—one of us, some way!”
That was reasonable, John Schmaar told himself—the only thing to be done. Catch her attention—yes, but how?
“I had one idea,” the man was telling him, hurrying whispering on. “Only I hate to take the chance!” he said, and stopped.
“What?” Schmaar urged him. And another point of oddness came to him through the dull detached way he saw things now: here they were now, face by face, planning; and in a few moments more they would be murdering each other!
“What is it?” he went on when the Westerner did not answer him at once. “You've got to do something.”
“And right off!” the other man replied nervously. He went on, clearly afraid to take his gamble, but knowing that something must be tried at once, before that clock she had her face toward now would start flashing out—its good-by!
“You know that song of mine?” he whispered—as if Schmaar and he were still the closest of dear friends. “That fool thing I've always sung coming up here, when I walked?”
Schmaar nodded, in the half light.
“It got to be a call, at last, for her.”
“Yes,” said Schmaar, hurrying him, catching the idea. “And tonight you didn't sing it!”
“No; I came in a machine. I didn't want her to know—when I came. So now,” he said, “if I should sing that now at just this time—if she should hear it! If I went back here in the driveway, perhaps, and sang. Maybe she might come out.”
“Try it!” urged Schmaar.
“And watch to see me—perhaps!”
“Try it!” said Schmaar, hurrying. “You've got to!”
It was within three minutes of the hour.
“I might. I might toll her away from there, and then—”
“Then I could catch her—head her off!”
“Yes,” the Westerner whispered. “There's only one place where she could go to look!”
“Yes,” said Schmaar, hurrying on. “I understand. This path! And I'd be here—or just one side. Or I could work around perhaps behind her.”
“It's a chance,” the Westerner said in an agony of hesitation. “It might not work. I hate—”
“Go on You've got to—take some chance!” said Schmaar, hustling him. “It's practically eleven now.... And remember this, now,” he added, raising his voice to talk above that wind. “You'll have to shout—to have her hear you.”
He caught Gladden's arm, before he went, reminding him of just how the land lay.
“I'll work around, if I can, to the east, to be back of her upon that path, along the edge. But there's another old, smaller path, you know, coming out at the west from near the entrance to the driveway.”
“I know.”
“You could work in back of her from there—after your first song. Then we would be back of her, on both sides—if she comes!”
THEY said no more. There was no more time. The Westerner stepped back toward the main road on the driveway; Schmaar worked his way out to the mouth of the path through the black of the rhododendrons. It was dark in there—the things were as old as the old place, as high as your head, a dense black thicket, the best possible ambush for a hunter. Schmaar took his stand at the mouth of the path through the rhododendrons, waiting for his quarry, looking out.
It was cloudy at first; the hurrying shadow of a small cloud shot across the open lawn between him and the cliff. Then suddenly the cold silver light flashed out again, bright as day. He saw it strike the dress and the hair of the girl upon Lovers' Leap—a small bowed heap of soft-hued textures in the moonlight. Then another shadow raced by, obliterating her. The whole night kept and intensified its sense of anxiety, the hurrying of hunted things.
John Schmaar had come now to the height of the incredible—the insane. Here he watched in ambush, hunting a woman with a song. But this no longer struck him with a more than dull perfunctory surprise. Besides, he had other matters to consider. For one thing, he saw now that he should move, so as to be behind her, if they should succeed, if she could be tolled away from her place. He saw that he should move at once. Where to? His eye fell naturally upon the rustic summerhouse, with its old wistaria, and the black and crooked shadows interlaced inside and around it. Once there, in an island of shadow on the open lawn, he could jump if necessary to the path along the sheer edge of the precipice and be entirely behind her, whatever way she might turn.
He must act soon. The other man would be hurrying out, starting singing at the earliest possible second. And in fact, as he thought this, he heard the first sound of his singing—heard that fool song of his rise above the sound of the wind in the treetops:
Kuk-kuk-kuk-Katy, beautiful Katy!”
It was loud enough—just about. The man had a good carrying voice, used no doubt often before out of doors—a strong, resonant, friendly baritone. John Schmaar heard it perfectly from where he stood. But did she?
For the fraction of a second she did not move. Then all at once, the clouds opening up another clear white burst of moonlight, he saw her, the heap of soft clothing on the rock, straightening, listening. He saw now that she heard it.
The song went on and she listened more and more attentively. It was exactly like some creature of the woods, stopping, listening to the call of some other creature of its kind, to its mate. She started to her feet, wavering—and John Schmaar lost her in another inky shadow of a little cloud!
Under its brief cover Schmaar jumped, reached the summerhouse, stood in his island of twisted shadows in the center of the open lawn. He placed himself beside a crooked pillar, in the largest mass of shade. So long as he stood there, absolutely still, there was small chance of her seeing him. But he was scarcely there, panting from the unusual exertion, when the fitful moonlight shone again.
The mocking song of moonshine and of courage came marching up the road, as it had marched before, no doubt, across the fields of France. Peering through the bars and shadows of the summerhouse, John Schmaar saw the effect of the singing upon the ear it was intended for.
The girl, standing now at full height, wavered for a minute more, hesitating—exactly like some slight, graceful creature of the woods, uncertain that it heard, of what it should do. It was now, of course, that the decision which would direct her next action was being made. And while John Schmaar watched her breathless, it came! The call, the song, started her moving toward it, exactly as the call the hunter uses in the northern woods—brought exactly the same unconscious, inevitable yielding to the impulse of that irresistible power that moves all sentient beings living on the earth, sometime, one toward another.
The girl stole out, slowly at first, then moving faster and still faster, straight down the path, toward the opening in the rhododendrons—toward the place where she could look through for herself and see, unseen, the singer of the song.
John Schmaar, as she came on, crept around the tangled network of shadows of the summerhouse, to be away from her, as she passed by. And here he waited—her hunter, in ambush. Beyond him the song, the toll. And over them the hurrying wind, the racing clouds, the patched uncertain light, the crazy moonlight—the sense of anxious restlessness, the sounds of flight that filled the air like some beating of tremendous wings.
He watched the figure of the girl stealing, hurrying lightly, in her frail, light clothing across the damp, tangled grass, coming nearer and nearer him. He saw very faintly the color of her hair in the moonlight; a glint of light flashed back from a buckle, a rhinestone on her satin slipper. He even saw the silken sheen upon her dress and stockings, she passed so close to him. And now, when she was almost to the mouth of the path through the rhododendrons, the song suddenly ceased.
IT was unfortunate. It should have gone on a little bit longer, until she had actually gone into the pathway. Then they would have had her. But Schmaar knew, too, what must have happened. That other man, that Gladden, must have come now to the turn of the path, the old footpath toward the west, where he was to dart in himself and get behind the girl. And when he did that, of course, he must stop his singing and make a rush for it, so that both of them could be behind her—between her and the cliff, if she started back again.
If the Westerner were doing this, as he must be now, there was no sound yet to show it, that could be heard above the noisy motion of the night. Schmaar heard none, at least, and the girl apparently did not. She stopped, though, stood listening. The appearance of almost automatic motion, as of a sleeper walking through a dream, suddenly left her. She stood listening, suspicious!
She poised herself, suddenly, as if she heard something, as if she were starting to draw back again to where she had come from. And now, unfortunately, John Schmaar thought that his time had come to act.
He stepped around and outside the confusing shadows of the summerhouse and spoke to her.
“Aileen!” he called.
She swung about and looked at him—then stood as if turned to stone, seeing the impossible.
“What's this?” asked Schmaar, hurrying—not knowing exactly what to say, trying to laugh, trying to jeer, trying to be at ease where he was not. “What's wrong with you? What are you out here for? Out taking the moonlight—all by yourself?”
At the last syllable she awoke again.
“You! You! You!” she said, and started.
It struck John Schmaar most strangely, like a sudden blow upon the face. Was he like that to her, to any woman? Like the accusation in that voice? The fear in that movement, the terror of the hunted for the hunter, reduced to its simplest, most primitive expression!
As she spoke, she swung away well in the other direction, toward where Schmaar had reason to believe that Gladden would now be, converging with him, behind her, to shut her off from danger.
His guess was right. The moon racing westward always, apparently through the clouds, had now sailed into a great area of clear sky. Its light broke upon the little open field, bright as day. At the other the figure of Gladden came out of the shrubbery, his voice calling to the girl.
She must have been beside herself, John Schmaar thought, with fear. She could not have recognized that voice. For she fled away from him as she had from Schmaar.
“No,” she cried. “No!” And she darted backward and between them in the line of Lovers' Leap.
THERE was perhaps an acre in the lawn—perhaps a little less. A perfectly open level plot, broken only by the summerhouse, beside which John Schmaar now stood. And along the border of it, curving with the contour, a footpath ran clear around, some six feet from the edge of the Palisades.
John Schmaar ran forward to head her off. He was a heavy man, not much used to running in recent years. She ran faster than he—he could not catch her. He cursed himself. He was only half a man. His dizziness started up again. He stood there frightened, breathing hard.
And then he saw that Gladden, running at top speed, beating her and calling what Schmaar should do now—what he had not done: to keep running!
The girl saw it too, paused and veered around. She must have lost her senses entirely; she could not have recognized the Westerner. She must have thought that he was merely some one working in with Schmaar.
“No—no!” she said again. “Not to him! Id rather die!”
She stood for a moment in the open plot, panting like some wild thing, cornered—watching where it would dart next.
John Schmaar saw beforehand where she would probably try—toward him, toward the slower-moving man. He turned back, hurrying toward the edge of the cliff on his side, to prevent her. It was hard for him in that half-light, that treacherous moonlight. He stumbled a little. She saw this probably—now darting out like a wild creature once again toward the unprotected edge on Schmaar's side, toward the east.
The cliff broke here in an irregular turn, and though Gladden was faster than she was, and outside her toward the cliff, yet that was far from meaning that he could keep her from the side toward Schmaar. It was Schmaar's work, and he was doing it—would have done it, if it had not been for just those circumstances, his weariness, his dizziness, the moonlight.
They were running at right angles—she toward the cliff, he along it. If he got ahead of her, it would be all right: the other man would be there immediately after him—would catch her! Yet after all, it was a very great physical strain. John Schmaar was not used to running like this. There were noises in his head; his breath came hideously hard. He had more and more the sense of laboring unreality which comes to any man whose powers are strained beyond their rightful use. And in addition, too, there was always, constantly growing now, that dizziness.
The path he was on was not of course upon the very edge, but near enough for John Schmaar to see perfectly the great fall beneath him—the still trees below, protected from the wind, the still moonlight on the brown stones: and out beyond, upon the river, where the wind struck again beyond the protection of the cliff, he could see a tiny turbulence in the water, in the wake of the moon.
He plunged on, his lungs bursting. It was but a few steps, a small thing for a younger man. But to John Schmaar, with his long lack of exercise, his tendency to dizziness, it grew terrible, almost unbearable.
And now in addition the feeling grew stronger and more certain that something outside of them was certainly oppressing him, bearing him down. It seemed now certainly as if this pressure, this burden he was bearing, must be due to some actual influence against him out there in the night. To that stuff that filled the air, that struck the trees, that shone up from the river, that touched a sheen upon the light dress and hair of this woman he was hunting, had always been hunting now.
She was beating him a little, he thought. Never mind; others had before! He had captured them, even when they evaded him—jumped off in the half-light of the moon, disappeared.
There was some one calling to him sharply—the voice of that Westerner Gladden, the poor fool.
“Look out! Look out! She'll beat you!”
IT was a close thing; Schmaar could see that—especially with this burden he was bearing—with this moonlight pressing down upon his lungs, his head. He could feel it quite clearly, on his head. It made him very dizzy, most unsteady, at the edge of this thing—this deep brown hole in the earth which lay beside him—quiet, out of the raging wind, full of moonshine, like a quiet lighted pit.
If she reached there first, of course, he would miss her forever. On the other hand, he was getting dizzier, more breathless, more unsteady—more oppressed by that stuff, that moonlight he was breathing, every minute. He could stop, of course, quit. Yes, he would be likely to—John Schmaar would probably quit flat—a coward!
John Schmaar plunged on, as certain not to stop as an unconscious force of nature.
It was a question of a foot or two more. If she reached there first, as she seemed to be doing, it would be a nice mess, wouldn't it, to be told of John Schmaar? That he quit and let her do it, that he didn't give everything in him to prevent her! She was going to do it, too. She would, unless he did one thing, unless he turned to the right, toward the cliff, cut down that narrow margin now between him and the pit, and stopped her.
He doubted now whether he could hold her—stop suddenly enough to hold them both. But he would save her just the same; he could jostle her, push her back, if he forged ahead—if this damned stupefying moonlight in his throat and brain would let him.
And it would, too—don't fret! Nobody would ever say of John Schmaar that a thing like that stuff, that moonlight, could scare him, strangle him, beat him down, make his lungs and head burst open, until he did what he was after, in spite of all the women, all the moonlight in the world.
He did it, too—just did it! He beat her back, struck her, passed on. That's all he could do. But that was enough, he knew—for the other man to reach her. He saw it—saw him catch her—as he himself stumbled.
As John Schmaar stumbled, clutched and twisted, his face turned up—and down again. He saw, with a feeling of surprise, hostility, but no great fear, the thing that had done for him! Everywhere—above him, under him, in the sky, the glistening water, the trees, even in the brown pit that rose quite slowly underneath him—lay the stuff.
Moonlight! Moonlight! Nothing but moonlight!
But it didn't best him, either. He wasn't beaten by the damned stuff. Nobody could say John Schmaar had ever been a coward—a quitter.
The End.