Wings: Tales of the Psychic/To Be Accounted For

by Achmed Abdullah

 

TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR

It was now his custom to sit by the open window.

He would look out into the mean, cramped streets, at the jerry-built houses, and up at the high, sharp-contoured sky, which seemed to be always packed with dirty clouds. Then he would pity himself, and hate the rest of the world.

He despised the present. Yet he clutched at it with both hands, and was surprised and irritated because he could not get away from the past.

And the tale of the past, the shame of it, was hot and acrid in his brain.

That's why he sat by the window. That's why he soaked his ears and his soul in the terrible, muffled noise of the great city—those sounds of death and hate, of love and joy, and the sharp drumbeats of thousand-armed business. At least, they spelled a living, pulsing world. There were men there, and women—and in a measure they comforted him, because he did not know them and because they did not know him.

So he felt safe with them. He could look at them without blushing.

It was only when he turned his back to the window, when he shut out the world from his ears and his eyes, when he felt the choking, mephitic solitude of the four walls that he thought. And he did not like to think.

For here, in the little gray room on East Eleventh, with his back to the world of strangers who crowded the streets, he saw the life which he lived as he was living it; and it was mainly expressed by the furniture which packed its corners—the iron bed, the gangrened deal table, the ridiculous spindle-legged bureau, and the horrible, fly-specked chromos on the walls.

Then he thought, of course, of the little cabinet in his mother's salon, back there in the castle of the Puys de Dôme; the little glass cabinet all filled with Tanagra statuettes, cups of Ming celadon, enamel from Norway, Meissen and Sèvres china, and boxes in Vernis-Martin.

Dry, lifeless things they were, representing so and so much money and so and so much skill and artistry. But to him they meant more. They meant the brave, clanking hopes of his youth. They meant the name and the pride of the family to which he belonged. His memory had ensouled them with a softness, a throbbing which was deeper than the heart of woman.

For they meant to him the things he had lost. They meant to him the things he had thrown away, the things he had hurt and cheated and polluted; the name he had disgraced, the escutcheon he had fouled—the mother, cold and haughty, dry-eyed and thin-lipped, who had given up everything for him, and given up in vain—the sister, bitter and dowerless, forced into the convent which she hated and feared—the younger brother who had to sacrifice the diplomatic career for which he had been trained, to go into the office of a fat agent de change, who patronized him and bullied him because of the noble name he bore.

Why, even the little glass cabinet had been sold; even the dun-colored Tanagra statuettes, the boxes in Vernis-Martin, the glasses of Gallé-Nancy, and the many other objects of virtu.

The forests had been sold, the fields, the paintings, the famed wine cellar; finally the house itself; the huge gray castle, which had housed one of his name and race since the days of Pepin the Bold.

Only the keeper s lodge remained; and there, in the damp, flat-roofed hovel built of rough-hewn stones, his mother lived now lived—like a peasant woman.

And he was here in New York, worthless and nameless.

He clenched his fists. He gave a little cry of impotent fury.

Then he laughed. He thought of the life-insurance agent who somehow had drifted up to his room that very morning and had tried to insure him against death.

The fool! To ask a man to protect himself against the only hopeful, the only pure moment of life!

His memory swayed up into the past as the sea sways to the touch of the moon.

It had been cards at first; and afterward the little ivory ball which drops so noiselessly, so fatefully:

Vingt-quatre—noir—impaire—passe.

Those foolish words and the bits of gaudy pasteboard—what a tragedy they held—what a record of weakness and selfishness and self-contempt!

He felt a puling, selfish satisfaction in convincing himself that it had not been an inborn passion with him; that it had not even been his own fault. During his school years and during the years spent at the military academy he had never touched a card. Even during his first ten months of actual army life, after he had received his commission in the Forty-Third Infantry, he had never thought of them—had never used them.

Came the maneuvers. The long, heart-breaking marches, the bivouac at night; and then one evening the drawling voice of his company commander, Captain Xavier Lesueur, asking him if he played cards—baccarat by preference:

"Non, mon capitaine."

Lesueur had laughed.

"Very well, my little innocent provincial, you must learn. We must have a little distraction. I'll teach you baccarat. Nothing to it. Simply watch the nines, and look sharp after the naturals. You'll get the hang of it in no time."

The rules of the game had been simple indeed. He had mastered them inside of a few minutes, and the other congratulated him on his quickness.

So he had played.

And he had lost.

"Never mind," the captain had consoled him. "We must all stump up for our apprenticeship."

The play had been small, and that first day he had not lost much—just a few gold pieces, which did not worry him.

But the next evening some cavalrymen had dropped in; they were wealthy men, sons of Norman farmers and Lyons bankers. They had forced the game again and again until finally the roof was the limit.

He had lost more than the rest. He had wired to his mother, and she had promptly remitted.

Her husband had been in the army, her father, her grandfather. She knew. She understood. She even laughed a little at the tragic wording of the telegram which he had sent.

"We must all grow up, my boy," she had told him on his visit home in October, when he had taken a short leave to shoot birds. "A little cards will not hurt you. We're not paupers."

At the end of the maneuvers his regiment had been sent to Paris. There had been more cards. More losses. Again he had been forced to write home. This time there was no ready money in the bank. His mother had been forced to sell some forest land.

He was the first son, after all. The estate was his.

And he had played again. He had tried to win back what he had lost; and that not because he was greedy after either money or cards, but simply because his people were not over-wealthy, and he wanted to recuperate what he had lost.

So he had made a study of cards. He had the cold, logical Latin mind, and set himself to do the thing in earnest. He learned poker, trente et quarante, and then he joined the Cercle Richelieu and passed night after night playing roulette.

Steadily he had lost.

Steadily his mother had sold acres and acres of forest land—then a few rich acres his family owned in Corsica, and finally the vineyard of her father in the Champagne country which had been her dowry, and which she had meant to pass on as a dower to her only daughter. That also had gone.

But she had not complained.

Cold and haughty—he was her first-born son—his was the name, the title, the traditions—he must keep up his position among those shopkeepers who crowded the army since the empire had given way to the republic.

Let him play. Let him lose.

Presently he would settle down. He would marry a wealthy bourgeoise, and with her money he would buy back everything he had lost in gambling.

She had already picked out a bride for him.

He had laughed light-heartedly.

"And what does she look like, the little one?"

"What difference does it make? You will not marry her for her looks. You will marry her because it is your duty to yourself and to your family."

Then with light heart he had returned to Paris, and had gambled more than ever. Enfin, he said to himself, soon I shall have to settle down and marry. Then I shall have to quit the army and Paris, and all the fun, and cultivate my paternal acres in the Puy de Dome, and wear gaiters and altogether be an animal of a farmer; therefore, vogue la galère. Let's play, and the devil take the hindmost.

The end of it all had been sudden, shockingly unexpected.

A large sum, gold and paper and I. O. U. s, had been on the green cloth.

One more ace, he thought, studying his hand, and the pot would be his—enough to buy back every acre his mother had been forced to sell, enough to give back his sister s dowry, enough to give a decent life competence for the little brother who was studying for the diplomatic service, enough to release him from a loveless marriage.

Just the one pot, the one big gain—and he would never again touch cards.

Just the ace. That was all he needed.

And it was there in full view, in front of him. His right-hand neighbor had dropped out of the game, and had thrown down his cards upside down.

He had turned the trick very clumsily. There was a shout, a roar, a sharp-cutting word.

"You cheat, monsieur! You cheat!

That had been the end of it all. Of course, there had been no court-martial. Nothing of that sort ever happened in the Forty-Third Infantry. That regiment never preferred charges against brother officers. They washed their dirty linen in private.

Just the colonel's hard, dry words.

"Adieu! The Forty-Third does not want you. Nor does the army. Nor does France."

And his mother—haughty, stone-faced, thin-lipped, dry-eyed—had echoed the simple words.

"The Puy de Dôme does not want you. Your family does not want you." A little pause. "I do not want you, my son."

She had settled his debts, and it had ruined her. She had paid his passage to America. Now he was here, in the little gray room on East Eleventh, looking at the strangers who crowded the streets, and thinking of France, of his mother, of his regiment.

He picked up the afternoon paper. He studied the contents, though he knew them by heart.

They were fighting—fighting under the walls of Lille. They were hanging on by their teeth.

One report mentioned the Forty-Third Infantry, cut to pieces in a gallant charge. There were three lines devoted to the colonel—"Killed in action."

It was the colonel who had told him:

"The Forty-Third does not want you. Nor the army. Nor France."

Oh, yes, he remembered that; would always remember it. He laid down the paper. His head sank on his breast.

Vague shadows seemed to come from the distance; they enfolded him; they took his breath away. He shut his eyes.

Somewhere—to the east—he thought it very strange—he could hear voices singing:

"Amour sacré de la Patrie!"

Oh, yes, the marching song of the Forty-Third. They were fighting down there, near Lille, hanging on by their teeth.

There was a sound like the tearing of fine silk, a shrieking and whistling; then a sickening thud.

Sergeant Castel wiped his powder-blackened brows. He inserted another cartridge in his rifle, drew a bead, and fired. Then he turned to Lagrange, the lance-jack.

"The end, mon vieux! Presently they will eat us up."

Lagrange had no time to reply. His elbow was in continuous, jerky motion—load, fire—load, fire!

There was another tearing, whistling noise. Then a thud and a gurgle. This time it had done for Lesueur, the company commander.

Castel looked at the stark figure.

"The last of them—the last of the officers!"

Lagrange paused between shots. His rifle was red-hot. It needed cooling. Half a cigarette was stuck behind his left ear. He lit it, and blew the smoke into the air.

"Right, mon bougre! The last one indeed. And we need officers—God, what do I say? We need one officer, just one—to give the word—to lead—to charge." He sobbed. The tears flowed down into his thick, matted beard. "Just one officer—one!"

His voice snapped off in mid air.

He stared open-eyed. A trim, boyish figure rose from the trench, sword in hand. He waved it in circles.

"Fix bayonets! Charge, my boys; charge!"

Lagrange rubbed his eyes. He was utterly bewildered.

"But it is the little lieutenant. But he had been kicked out of the regiment."

He could not understand it at all. Again he looked at the trim, boyish figure. Then he charged, together with the others. On toward that belching belt of fire.

The servant girl knocked at the door—twice, three times. There was no answer. The landlady came.

"Open up there—open up! You can't play 'possum with the likes of me. You pay your rent to-day or—"

Suddenly a great fear engulfed her. She called the police. They forced the door open.

The Frenchman was dead. A bullet had pierced his heart. No weapon was found in his room. No trace of the assassin was ever found.

But the doctor who examined the body shook his head.

"Can't account for it," he murmured. "That bullet was fired from a great distance—from a very great distance. And yet there is no hole in window nor door nor wall."

And then he entered the case in the little book which contained his private collection of inexplicable deaths.