Max
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CHAPTER XXV
It was the morning after the reunion--the morning after the catastrophe,and Blake was breakfasting alone in his rooms.
Typically Parisian rooms they were, rooms that stood closed and silentfor more than half the year and woke to offer him a welcome when hiswandering footsteps turned periodically toward Paris; typicallyParisian, with their long windows and stiffly draped curtains, theirmarble mantelpieces and gilt-framed mirrors, their furniture arrangedwith a suggestion of ancient formality that by its very rigidity soothedthe eye.
At the moment, evidences of Blake's unusually long occupancy broke thisstiffness in many directions; intimate trifles that speak a man'spresence were strewn here and there--objects of utility, objects ofvalue and interest gathered upon his last long journey. Eminentlypleasant the _salon_ appeared in the sunshine of the May morning--fullof air and light, its gray carpet and gray-panelled walls making anagreeably neutral setting to the household gods of a gentleman ofleisure. But the gentleman in question, so agreeably situated, seemed tofind his state less gratifying than it might appear; a sense ofdissatisfaction possessed him, as he sat at his solitary meal, a senseof dulness and loss most tenacious of hold.
More than once he roundly called himself a fool; more than once he shookout the thin sheets of his morning paper and buried himself in theircontents, but unavailingly. The feeling of flatness, the sense ofdissatisfaction with the world as it stood, grew instead of diminishing.At last, throwing down the paper, he gave up the unequal struggle andyielded to the pessimistic pleasure of self-analysis. He recalled lastnight and its vexatious trend of events, and with something akin toshame, he remembered his anger against Max; but although he admitted itspossible exaggeration, the admission brought no palliation of Max'soffence. He, possibly, had behaved like a brute; but Max had behavedlike an imbecile!
At this point, he fell to staring fixedly in front of him, and throughthe meshes of his day-dream floated a face--not the face of the boy hewas condemning, but that of the mysterious cause of last night'scalamity.
He conjured it with quite astonishing vividness--the face of theportrait--the face so like, so unlike, the boy's. Every detail of thepicture assailed him; the subtle illusion of the mirror--the strange,reflected eyes propounding their riddle.
Looking in imagination into those eyes, he lost himself delightfully.Sensations, periods of time passed and repassed in hisbrain--speculation, desire, and memory danced an enchanting, tangledmeasure.
He recalled the hundred fancies that had held, or failed to hold him inhis thirty-eight years; he recalled the women who had loved too little,the women who had loved too much; and, quick upon the recollection, camethe consciousness of the disillusion that had inevitably followed uponadventure.
He did not ask himself why these dreams should stir, why these ghostsshould materialize and kiss light hands to him in the blue brilliance ofthis May morning; he realized nothing but that behind them all--areality in a world of shadows--he saw the eyes of the pictureinsistently propounding their riddle--the riddle, the question that fromyouth upward had rankled, inarticulate, in his own soul.
It arose now, renewed, with his acknowledgment of it--the troubling,insistent question that cries in every human brain, sometimes softly,like a child sobbing outside a closed door, sometimes loudly andterribly, like a man in agony. The eternal question ringing through theages.
He recognized it, clear as the spoken word, in this unknown woman'sgaze; and for the first time in all his life the desire to make answerquickened within him. He, who had invariably sought, invariablyquestioned, suddenly craved to make reply!
An incurable dreamer, the fancy took him and he yielded to its glamour.How delightful to know and study that exquisite face! How fascinatingbeyond all words to catch the fleeting semblance of his charming Max--tolose it in the woman's seriousness--to touch it again in some gleam ofboyish humor! It was a quaint conceit, apart from, untouched by anyprevious experience. Its subtlety possessed him; existence suddenly tookon form and purpose; the depression, the sense of loss dispersed asmorning clouds before the sun.
He rose, forgetful of his unfinished meal, his vitality stirring, hiscuriosity kindling as it had not kindled for years.
What, all things reckoned, stood between him and this alluring study? Aboy! A mere boy!
No thought came to him of the boy himself--the instrument of the desire.No thought came; for every human creature is a pure egoist in the firststirring of a passion, and stalks his quarry with blind haste, fearfulthat at any turn he may be balked by time or circumstance. Later, whengrief has chastened, or joy cleansed him, the altruist may peep forth,but never in the primary moment.
With no thought of the clinging hands and beseeching voice of lastnight--with no knowledge of a mournful figure that had dragged itself upthe stairway of the house in the rue Mueller and sobbed itself to sleepin a lonely bed, he walked across the room to his writing-table andcalmly picked up a pen.
He dipped the pen into the ink and selected a sheet of note-paper; then,as he bent to write, impatience seized him, he tore the paper across andtook up a telegraph form.
On this he wrote the simple message:
Will you allow me to meet your sister?--NED.
It was brief, it was informal, it was entirely unjustifiable. But whatcircumstance in his relation to the boy had lent itself either toformality or justification?
He rang the bell, dispatched his message, and then sat down to wait.
His attitude in that matter of waiting was entirely characteristic. Hedid not arrange his action in the event of defeat; he did not speculateupon probable triumph. The affair had passed out of his hands; thefuture was upon the knees of the gods!
He did not finish his breakfast in that time of probation; he did notagain take up the paper he had thrown aside. He made no effort to occupyor to amuse himself; he merely waited, and in due time the gods gave hima sign--a telegraphic message, brief and concise as his own:
Come to-night at ten. She will be here.--MAX.