The Triumph of Night by Edith Wharton, Chapter one. It was clear that
the sleigh from Waymore had not come, and the shivering young traveler from Boston,
who had so confidently counted on jumping into it when he left the train
at Northridge Junction, found himself standing alone on the open platform, exposed to
the full assault of nightfall and winter. The blast that swept him came off
New Hampshire snow fields and ice hung forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable
leagues of frozen silence, filling them with the same cold roar, and sharpening
its edge against the same bitter black and white landscape. Dark, searching and
sword like, it alternately muffled and harried its victim, like a bullfighter,
now whirling his cloak and now planting his darts. This analogy brought home to
the young man the fact that he himself had no cloak, and that the
overcoat in which he had faced the relatively temperate airs of Boston seemed no thicker
than a sheet of paper. On the bleak heights of Northridge, George Faxon
said to himself that the place was uncommonly well named. It clung to an
exposed ledge over the valley from which the train had lifted him, and the
wind combed it with teeth of steel that he seemed actually to hear scraping against
the wooden sides of the station other building there was none. The village lay
far down the road, and thither since the Waymore sleigh had not come,
Faxxon saw himself under the immediate necessity of plodding through several feet of snow.
He understood well enough what had happened at Waymore. His hostess had forgotten that
he was coming. Young as Faxon was, this sad lucidity of soul had
been acquired as the result of long experience, and he knew that the visitors
who can least afford to hire a carriage are almost always those whom their hosts
forget to send for Yet to say missus Colmbe had forgotten him was perhaps too
crude a way of putting it. Similar incidents led him to think that she
had probably told her maid to tell the butler to telephone the coachman to tell
one of the grooms if no one else needed him to drive over to Northridge
to fetch the new secretary. But on a night like this what groom who
respected his rights would fail to forget the order. Faxxon's obvious course was to
struggle through the drifts to the village and their route out a slay to convey
him to way More. But if on his arrival at Missus Colmbs no one
remembered to ask him what this devotion to duty had cost, that again,
was one of the contingencies he had expensively learned to look out for, and
the perspicacity so acquired told him it would be cheaper to spend the night at
the north Ridge Inn and advise Missus Colm of his presence thereby telephone. He
had reached this decision and was about to entrust his luggage to a vague man
with a lantern who seemed to have some loose connection with the railway company,
when his hopes were raised by the sound of sleigh bells. Two vehicles were
just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost there sprang a young
man swathed in furs Way Moore, No, these are not the way More
sleighs. The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform,
a voice so agreeable that in spite of the words, it fell reassuringly
on Faxxon's ears. At the same moment, the wandering station lantern, casting
a transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be in the pleasantest
harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very young, hardly in
the twenties, Facsen thought, But his face, though full of a morning
freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine drawn, as though a vivid
spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness. Faxxon was perhaps the
quicker to notice such delicacies of balance, because his own temperament hung on lightly
vibrating nerves, which, yet, as he believed, would never quite swing
him beyond the arc of a normal sensibility. You expected a slave from waymore.
The youth continued standing beside Faxxon like a slender column of fur. Missus
Colmb's secretary explained his difficulty, and the newcomer brushed it aside with a contemptuous
oh, missus Colmb that carried both speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.
But then you must be, the youth broke off with a smile of interrogation.
The new secretary, yes, but apparently there are no notes to be
answered. This evening. Faxon's laugh deepened the sense of solidarity which had so
promptly established itself between the two. The newcomer laughed also. Missus colmb,
he explained, was lunching at my uncle's today, and she said you were
due this evening. But seven hours is a long time for missus Colmbe to
remember anything. Well, said Faxon, philosophically, I suppose that's one of
the reasons why she needs a secretary. And I've always the inn at Northridge,
he concluded. The youth laughed again. He was at the age when
predicaments are food for gaiety. Oh but you haven't, though it burned down
last week the deuce it did, said Faxon. But the humor of the
situation struck him also before its inconvenience. His life for years past had been
mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically
with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement.
Oh well, there's sure to be somebody in the place who can put
me up. No one you could put up with. Besides, Northridge is
three miles off, and our place in the opposite direction is a little nearer.
Through the darkness, Faxon saw his friend sketch a gesture of self introduction.
My name's Frank Rayner, and I'm staying with my uncle at Overdale.
I've driven over to meet two friends of his who are due in a few
minutes from New York. If you don't mind waiting till they arrive, I'm
sure Overdale can do you better than Northridge. We're only down from town for
a few days, but the house is always is ready for a lot of
people. But your uncle Faxon could only object with the odd sense through his
embarrassment, that it would be magically dispelled by his invisible friends. Next words,
Oh my uncle, you'll see I answer for him. I dare say
you've heard of him? John Lavington, John Lavington. There was a certain
irony in asking if one had heard of John Lavington, even from a post
of observation as obscure as that of Missus Colmbe's secretary. The rumor of John
Lavington's money, of his pictures, his politics, his charities, and his
hospitality was as difficult to escape as the roar of a cataract in a mountain
solitude. It might almost have been said that the one place in which one
would not have expected to come upon him was in just such a solitude as
now surrounded the speakers, at least in this deepest hour of its desertedness.
But it was just like Avington's brilliant ubiquity to put one in the wrong even
there. Oh, yes, I've heard of your uncle. Then you will
come, won't you. We've only five minutes to wait. Young Rayner urged
in the tone that dispels scruples by ignoring them, and Faxxon found himself accepting
the invitation as simply as it was offered. A delay in the arrival of
the New York train lengthened their five minutes to fifteen, and as they paced
the icy platform, Faxxon began to see why it had seemed the most natural
thing in the world to accede to his new acquaintance's suggestion. It was because
Frank Rayner was one of the privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the atmosphere
of confidence and good humor they diffuse. He produced this effect, Faxxon noted
by the exercise of no gift save his youth, of no art save his
sincerity. But these qualities were revealed in a smile of such appealing sweetness that
Faxon felt as never before what nature can achieve when she deigns to match the
face with the mind. He learned that the young man was the ward and
only nephew of John Lavington, with whom he had made his home since the
death of his mother. The great man's sister, Mister Lavington, Rayner said,
had been a regular brick to him, But then he is to everyone
you know, And the young fellow's situation seemed, in fact to be perfectly
in keeping with his person. Apparently the only shade that had ever rested on
him was cast by the physical weakness which Faxon had already detected. Young Rayner
had been threatened with a disease of the lungs, which, according to the
highest authorities, made banishment to Arizona or New Mexico inevitable. But luckily my
uncle didn't pack me off as most people would have done without getting another opinion.
Whose Oh, an awfully clever chap, a young doctor with a lot
of new ideas, who simply laughed at my being sent away and said I'd
do perfectly well in New York, if I didn't dine out too much,
and if I dashed off occasionally to Northridge for little fresh air. So it's
really my uncle's doing that. I'm not in exile, and I feel no
end better since the new chap told me I needn't bother young Rayner went on
to confess that he was extremely fond of dining out, dancing, and other
urban distractions, and facts and listening to him, concluded that the physician who
had refused to cut him off altogether from these pleasures was probably a better psychologist
than his seniors. All the same, you ought to be careful, you
know, the sense of elder brotherly concern that forced the words from facts and
made him, as he spoke, slip his arm impulsively through Frank Rayner's.
The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure. Oh, I am awfully,
awfully, And then my uncle has such an eye on me. But
if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to
your swallowing knives out here in the Siberian wild? Rayner raised his fur coat
with a careless gesture. It's not that that does it. The cold's good
for me, and it's not the dinners and dances. What is it,
then, Faxxon good humoredly insisted, to which his companion answered with a laugh,
Well, my uncle says it's being bored, and I rather think he's
right. His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath
that made Facxen, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter
of the fireless waiting room. Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against
the wall and pulled off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief.
He tossed aside his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which
was intensely white and beaded with moisture, though his face retained a healthy glow.
But Faxxen's gaze remained fastened to the hand he had uncovered. It was
so long, so colorless, so wasted, so much older than the brow.
He passed it over. It's queer, a healthy face, but dying
hands. The secretary mused, he somehow wished Young Rainer had kept on his
glove. The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet,
and the next moment two heavily furred gentlemen had descended to the platform and were
breasting the rigor of the night. Frank Rayner introduced to them as mister Grisbon
and mister Balch and Faxxen while their luggage was being lifted into the second sleigh,
discerned them by the roving lantern gleam to be an elderly, gray headed
pair, apparently of the average prosperous business cut. They saluted their host's nephew
with friendly familiarity, and mister Grisbon, who seemed the spokesman of the two,
ended his greeting with a genial and many more of them dear boy,
which suggested to Faxon that their arrival coincided with an anniversary, but he could
not express the inquiry for the seat allotted him was at the coachman's side,
while Frank Rayner joined his uncle's guests inside the sleigh. A swift flight behind
such horses as one could be sure of, John Lavington's having brought them to
tall gate posts, an illuminated lodge, and an avenue on which the snow
had been leveled to the smoothness of marble. At the end of the avenue.
The long house loomed through trees, its principal bulk dark, but one
wing sending out a ray of welcome, and the next moment Faxon was receiving
a violent impression of warmth and light, of hot house plants, hurrying servants,
a vast spectacular oak hall like a stage setting, and in its unreal
middle distance, a small, concise figure, correctly dressed, conventionally featured,
and utterly unlike his rather floored conception of the great John Lavington. The shock
of the contrast remained with him through his hurried dressing in the large, impersonally
luxurious bedroom to which he had been shown. I don't see where he comes
in was the only way he could put it. So difficult was it to
fit the exuberance of Lavington's public personality into his host's contracted frame and manner.
Mister Lavington, to whom Faxon's case had been rapidly explained by young Rayner,
had welcomed him with a sort of dry and stilted cordiality that exactly matched his
narrow face, his stiff hand, the whiff of scent on his evening handkerchief.
Make yourself at home, at home, he had repeated, in a
tone that suggested on his own part a complete inability to perform the feat.
He urged on his visitor, any friend of Frank's, delighted, make yourself
thoroughly at home Chapter two. In spite of the balmy temperature and complicated conveniences
of Faxon's bedroom, the injunction was not easy to obey. It was wonderful
luck to have found a night's shelter under the opulent roof of Overdale, and
he tasted the physical satisfaction to the full. But the place, for all
its ingenuities of comfort, was oddly cold and unwelcoming. He couldn't have said
why, and could only suppose that mister Lavington's intense personality, intensely negative,
but intense all the same, must, in some occult way have penetrated every
corner of his dwelling. Perhaps, though, it was merely that Faxon himself
was tired and hungry, more deeply chilled than he had known till he came
in from the cold and unutterably sick of all strange houses and of the prospect
of perpetually treading other people's stairs. I hope you're not famished. Rayner's slim
figure was in the doorway. My uncle has a little business to attend to
with mister Grisbon, and we don't dine for half an hour. Shall I
fetch you or can you find your way down? Come straight to the dining
room the second floor, on the left of the long gowry. He disappeared,
leaving a ray of warmth behind him, and Faxxen relieved, lit a
cigarette and sat down by the fire. Looking about with less haste, he
was struck by a detail that had escaped him. The room was full of
flowers, a mere bachelor's room in the wing of a house opened only for
a few days in the dead middle of a new Hampshire winter. Flowers were
everywhere, not in senseless profusion, but placed with the same conscious art he
had remarked in the grouping of the blossoming shrubs that filled the hall. A
vase of rams stood on the writing table, a cluster of strange hued carnations
on the stand at his elbow, and from wide bowls of glass and porcelain,
clumps of freesia bulbs diffused their melting fragrance. The fact implied acres of
glass, but that was the least interesting part of it. The flowers themselves,
their quality, selection and arrangement, attested on someone's part, and on
whose but John Lavington's a solicitous and sensitive passion for that particular embodiment of beauty.
Well, it simply made the man, as he had appeared to Faxon,
all the harder to understand. The half hour elapsed, and Faxxen,
rejoicing at the near prospect of food, set out to make his way to
the dining room. He had not noticed the direction he had followed in going
to his room, and was puzzled when he left it to find that two
staircases of apparently equal importance invited him. He chose the one to the right
and reached at its foot a long gallery such as Rayner had described. The
gallery was empty, the doors down its length were closed, but Rayner had
said the second to the left, and Faxxon, after pausing for some chance
enlightenment, which did not come, laid his hand on the second knob to
the left. The room he entered was square, with dusky picture hung walls
in its center, about a table lit by veiled lamps. He fancied mister
Lavington and his guests to be already seated at dinner. Then he perceived that
the table was covered not with viands, but with papers, and that he
had blundered into what seemed to be his host's study. As he paused in
the irresolution of embarrassment, Frank Rayner looked up. Oh, there's mister Faxon.
Why not ask him? Mister Lavington, from the end of the table,
reflected his nephew's smile in a glance of impartial benevolence. Certainly come in,
mister Faxon, if you won't think it a liberty. Mister Grisbon,
who sat opposite his host, turned his solid head toward the door. Of
course, mister Faxon's an American citizen. Frank Rayner laughed, that's all right,
Oh no, not one of your pin pointed pens, Uncle Jack.
Haven't you got a quill somewhere. Mister Balch, who spoke slowly and as
if reluctantly, in a muffled voice of which there seemed to be very little
le left, raised his hand to say, one moment you acknowledge this to
be my last will and testament. Rayner's laugh redoubled. Well, I won't
answer for the last. It's the first one. Anyway, it's a mere
formula. Mister Balch explained, well, here goes. Rayner dipped his quill
in the inkstand his uncle had pushed in his direction, and asked a gallant
signature across the document. Facson, understanding what was expected of him and conjecturing
that the young man was signing his will on the attainment of his majority,
had placed himself behind mister Grisbon and stood awaiting his turn to affix his name
to the instrument. Rayner, having signed, was about to push the paper
across the table to mister Balch, but the latter, again raising his hand,
said in his sad, imprisoned voice, the seal. Oh does there
have to be a seal? Facsen, looking over mister Grisbon at John Lavington,
saw a faint frown between his impassive eyes. Really Frank, he seemed,
Faxon thought, slightly irritated by his nephew's for a volity. Who's got
a seal? Frank Rayner continued, glancing about the table. There doesn't seem
to be one here, mister Grisbon interposed. A wafer will do, Lavington,
You have a wafer mister Lavington had recovered his serenity. There must be
some in one of the drawers, but I'm ashamed to say I don't know
where my secretary keeps these things. He ought, of course, to have
seen to it that a wafer was sent with the document. Oh hang it,
Frank Rainer pushed the paper side. It's the hand of God, and
I'm hungry as a wolf. Let's dine first, Uncle Jack, I think
I've a seal upstairs, said Faxon. Suddenly mister Lavington sent him a barely
perceptible smile. So sorry to give you the trouble. Oh, I say,
don't send him after it. Now, let's wait till after dinner.
Mister Lavington continued to smile on his guest, and the latter, as if
under the faint coercion of the smile, turned from the room and ran upstairs.
Having taken the seal from his writing case, he came down again and
once more opened the door of the study. No one was speaking when he
entered. They were evidently awaiting his return with the mute impatience of hunger,
and he put the seal in Rayner's reach and stood watching while mister Grisbon struck
a match and held it to one of the candles flanking the inkstand. As
the wax descended on the paper, Faxon remarked again the singular emaciation, the
premature physical weariness of the hand that held it. He wondered if mister Lavington
had ever noticed his nephew's hand, and if it were not poignantly visible to
him. Now. With this thought in his mind, Faxon raised his eyes
to look at mister Lavington. The great man's gaze rested on Frank Rayner with
an expression of untroubled benevolence, and at the same instant Faxon's attention was attracted
by the presence in the room of another person who must have joined the group
while he was upstairs searching for the seal. The newcomer was a man of
about mister Lavington's age and figure, who stood directly behind his chair, and
who, at the moment when Faxon first saw him, was gazing at young
Rainer with an equal intensity of attention. The likeness between the two men,
perhaps increased by the fact that the hooded lamps on the table left the figure
behind the chair in shadow, struck Faxon the more because of the strange contrast
in their expression. John Lavington, during his nephew's blundering attempt to drop the
wax and apply the seal, continued to fasten on him a look of half
amused affection, while the man behind the chair, so oddly reduplicating the lines
of his features and figure, turned on the boy a face of pale hostility.
The impression was so startling Faxon forgot what was going on about him.
He was just dimly aware of young reigners exclaiming your turn, mister Grisbon,
of mister Grisbon's ceremoniously protesting no, no, mister Faxxon first, and of
the pen's being thereupon transferred to his own hand. He received it with a
deadly sense of being unable to move or even to understand what was expected of
him, till he became conscious of mister Grisbon's paternally pointing out the precise spot
on which he was to leave his autograph. The effort to fix his attention
and steady his hand prolonged the process of signing, and when he st up
a strange weight of fatigue on all his limbs. The figure behind mister Lavington's
chair was gone. Faxxon felt an immediate sense of relief. It was puzzling
that the man's exit should have been so rapid and noiseless. But the door
behind mister Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxxon concluded that the
unknown looker on had merely had to raise it to pass out. At any
rate. He was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted.
Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mister Balch meticulously inscribing his name at
the foot of the document. Mister Lavington, his eyes no longer on his
nephew, examining a strange white winged orchid in the vase at his elbow.
Everything suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple again, and Faxxon found himself
responding with a smile to the affable gesture, which's host declared, And now
mister Faxon will dine Chapter three. I wonder how I blundered into the wrong
room Just now, I thought you told me to take the second door to
the left, Faxon said to Frank Rainer, as they followed the older men
down the gallery. So I did, but I probably forgot to tell you
which staircase to take coming from your bedroom. I ought to have said the
fourth door to the right. It's a puzzling house because my uncle keeps adding
to it from year to year. He built this room last summer for his
modern pictures. Young Rainer, pausing to open another door, touched an electric
button which sent a circle of light about the walls of a long room hung
with canvases of the French Impressionist school. Faxxon advanced, attracted by a shimmering
monet, but Rainer laid a hand on his arm. He bought that last
week for a thundering price. But come along, I'll show you all of
this after dinner, or he will rather he loves it. Does he really
love things? Rayner stared clearly perplexed at the question, Rather flowers and pictures
especially, haven't you noticed the flowers? I suppose you think his manner's cold.
It seems so at first, but he's really awfully keen about things.
Faxxon looked quickly at the speaker. Has your uncle a brother, brother?
No? Never had. He and my mother were the only ones or any
relation who looks like him who might be mistaken for him, not that I
ever heard of. Does he remind you of someone? Yes, that's queer.
We'll ask him if he's got a double come on. But another picture
had arrested Faxxon, and some minutes elapsed before he and his young host reached
the dining room. It was a large room with the same conventionally handsome furniture
and delicately grouped flowers, and Faxxon's first glance showed him that only three men
were seated about the dining table. The man who had stood behind Lavington's chair
was not present, and no seat awaited him. When the young men entered,
mister Grisbon was speaking, and his host, who faced the door,
sat looking down at his untouched soup plate and turning the spoon about in his
small dry hand. It's pretty late to call them rumors. They were devilishly
close to facts when we left town this morning, mister Grisbon was saying,
with an unexpected incisiveness of tone. Mister Lavington laid down his spoon and smiled
interrogatively. Oh facts, what are facts? Just the way a thing happens
to look at a given minute. You haven't heard anything from town, mister
Grisbon persisted, not a syllable, so you see Balch, a little more
of that petite marmit, mister Faxson, between Frank and mister Grisbon, please.
The dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses, ceremoniously benced by a
stout butler, attended by three tall footmen, and it was evident that mister
Lavington took a somewhat puerile satisfaction in the pageant that Faxon reflected was probably the
joint in his armor, that and the flowers. He had changed the subject,
not abruptly but firmly when the young men entered, but Faxon perceived that
it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly visitors, and mister Balch presently
observed, in a voice that seemed to come from the last survivor down a
mineshaft. If it does come, it will be the biggest crash since ninety
three. Mister Lavington looked bored. But polite wall Street can stand crashes better
than it could. Then it's got a robuster constitution. Yes, But speaking
of constitution, mister Grisbon intervened, Frank, are you taking care of yourself?
A flush rose to young Rayner's cheeks. Why, of course, isn't
that what I'm here for. You're here about three days in the month,
aren't you, And the rest of the time it's crowded restaurants and hot ball
rooms in town. I thought you were to be shipped off to New Mexico.
Oh, I've got a new man who says that's all rough. Well,
you don't look as if your new man were right, said mister Grisbon
bluntly. Faxon saw the lad's color fade and the rings of shadow deepen under
his gay eyes. At the same moment, his uncle turned to him with
a renewed intensity of attention. There was such solicitude in mister Lavington's gaze that
it seemed almost to fling a tangible shield between his nephew and mister Grisbon's tactless
scrutiny. We think Frank's a good deal better, he began, the new
doctor. The butler coming up bent discreetly to whisper a word in his ear,
and the communication caused a sudden change in mister Lavington's expression. His face
was naturally so colorless that it seemed not so much to hale as to fade,
to dwindle, and recede into something blurred and blotted out. He half
rose, sat down again, and sent a rigid smile about the table.
Will you excuse me the telephone. Peter's gone with the dinner. With small,
precise steps, he walked out of the door, which one of the
footmen had hastened to throw open. A momentary silence fell on the group.
Then mister Grisbon once more addressed himself to Rayner. You ought to have gone,
my boy, You ought to have gone. The anxious look returned to
the youth's size. My uncle doesn't think so. Really, you're not a
baby to be always governed on your uncle's opinion. You came of age today,
didn't you. Your uncle spoils you, That's what's the matter. The
thrust evidently went home for Rayner laughed and looked down with a slight accession of
color. But the doctor, use your common sense, Frank, you had
to try twenty doctors to find one to tell you what you wanted to be
told. A look of apprehension overshadowed Rayner's gaiety. Oh come, I say,
what would you do? He stammered, Pack up and jump on the
first train. Mister Grisbon leaned forward and laid a firm hand on the young
man's arm. Look here, my nephew, Jim Grisbon is out there,
ranching on a big scale. He'll take you in and be glad to have
you. You say, your new doctor thinks it won't do you any good,
But he doesn't pretend to say it will do you harm, does he.
Well, then give it a trial. It'll take you out of hot
theaters and night restaurants anyhow, and all the rest of it. Hey Bulch,
go said mister Bulch, hollowly. Go at once, he added,
as if a closer look at the youth's face had impressed on him the need
of backing up his friend. Young Rayner had turned ashy pale, He tried
to stiffen his mouth into a smile. Do I look as bad as all
that mister Grisbon was helping himself to terrapin? You look like the day after
an earthquake, he added, concisely. The terrapin had encircled the table and
been deliberately enjoyed by mister Lavington's three visitors. Rainer Faxon noticed left his plate
untouched before the door was thrown open to readmit their host. Mister Lavington advanced
with an air of recovered composure. He seated himself, picked up his napkin,
and consulted the gold monogram de menu. No, don't bring back the
filet some terrapin. Yes, he looked affably about the table. Sorry to
have deserted you, but the storm has played the deuce with the wires,
and I had to wait a long time before I could get a good connection.
It must be blowing up for a blizzard. Uncle Jack, young Rainer
broke in. Mister Grisbine's been lecturing me. Mister Lavington was helping himself to
terrapin. Ah, what about he thinks I ought to have given New Mexico
a show. I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa
Pas, stay there till his next birthday. Mister Lavington signed to the butler
to hand the turpan to mister Grisbon, who, as he took a second
helping, addressed himself again to Rayner Jim's in New York. Now and going
back the day after tomorrow in Olephant's private car. I'll ask Elephant to squeeze
you in if you'll go. And when you've been out there a week or
two, in the saddle all day and sleepy nine hours a night, I
suspect you won't think much of the doctor who prescribed New York. Faxxon spoke
up. He knew not why I was out there once. It's a splendid
life. I saw a fellow, Oh, a really bad case who'd been
simply made over by it. It does sound jolly, Rayner laughed, a
sudden eagerness of anticipation in his tone. His uncle looked at him gently.
Perhaps Grisbon's right, it's an opportunity. Faxxon looked up with a start.
The figure dimly perceived in the study was now more visibly and tangibly planted behind
mister Lavington chair. That's right, Frank, you see your uncle approves,
and the trip out there with olephant isn't a thing to be missed. So
drop a few dozen dinners and be at the Grand Center the day after tomorrow.
At five, mister Grisbon's pleasant gray eye sought corroboration of his host,
and Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as
he turned his glance on mister Lavington. One could not look at Lavington without
seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that the next minute,
some change in mister Grisbon's expression must give his watcher a clue. But
mister Grisbon's expression did not change. The gaze he fixed on his host remained
unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the startling one of not seeming to
see the other figure. Faxon's first impulse was to look away, to look
anywhere else, to resort again to the Champagne glass. The watch for Butler
had already brimmed, but some fatal attraction at war in him, with an
overwhelming physical resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they feared. The figure
was still standing more distinctly and therefore more resemblingly, at mister Lavington's back,
And while the latter continued to gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart,
as before, fixed young Rayner with eyes of deadly menace. Faxxon, with
what felt like an actual wrench of muscles, dragged his own eyes from the
sight to scan the other countenances about the table, But not one revealed the
least consciousness of what he saw, and a sense of mortal isolation sank upon
him. It's worth considering, certainly. He heard mister Lavington continue, and
as Rayner's face lit up, the face behind his uncle's chair seemed to gather
into its look all the fierce weariness of old, unsatisfied hates. That was
the thing that, as the minutes labored by Faxxon was becoming most conscious of,
the watcher behind the chair was no longer merely malevolent. He had grown
suddenly unutterably tired. His hatred seemed to well up out of the very depths
of balked effort and thwarted hopes, and the fact made him more pitiable and
yet more dire. Faxon's look reverted to mister Lavington, as if to surmise
in him a corresponding change. At first none was visible. His pinched smile
was screwed to his blank face, like a gas light to a whitewashed wall.
Then the fixity of the smile became ominous. Faxxon saw that its wear
was afraid to let it go. It was evident that mister la Rington was
unutterably tired too, and the discovery sent a cold current through Faxxon's veins.
Looking down at his untouched plate, he caught the soliciting twinkle of the champagne
glass, but the sight of the wine turned him sick. Well, we'll
go into the details presently, he heard mister Lavington say, still on the
question of his nephew's future, let's have a cigar first. No, not
here, Peters. He turned a smile on Faxxon. When we've had coffee,
I want to show you my pictures. Oh, by the way,
uncle Jack, mister Faxon wants to know if you've got a double. A
double. Mister Lavington, still smiling, continued to address himself to his guest,
not that I know of, Have you seen one, mister Faxxon.
Faxxon thought, my god, if I look up now, they'll both be
looking at me. To avoid raising his eyes, he made as though to
lift the glass to his lips, but his hand sank inert and he looked
up. Mister Lavington's glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening
of the strain about his heart, he saw that the figure behind the chair
still kept its gaze on Rayner. Do you think you've seen my double?
Mister Faxon would the other face turn if he said yes, Faxon felt a
dryness in his throat. No, he answered, ah, it's possible,
I've a dozen. I believe I'm extremely usual looking. Mister Lavington went on
conversationally, and still the other face watched Rayner. It was a mistake,
a confusion of memory. Faxon heard himself stammer. Mister Lavington pushed back his
chair, and as he did so, mister Grisbon suddenly leaned forward. Lavington,
what have we been thinking of? We haven't drunk Frank's health. Mister
Lavington reseated himself. My dear boy, Peter's another bottle. He turned to
his nephew. After such a a sin of omission, I don't presume to
propose the toast myself, but Frank knows. Go ahead, Grispon. The
boys shone on his uncle. No, no, Uncle Jack. Mister Grispon
won't mind nobody but you today. The butler was replenishing the glasses. He
filled mister Lavington's last, and mister Lavington put out his small hand to raise
it. As he did so, Faxon looked away. Well, then,
all the good I've wished you in all the past years, I put it
into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and many.
Dear boy Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses automatically,
he made the same gesture. His eyes were still on the table, and
he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence, I won't look up. I
won't, I won't. His fingers clasped the stem of the glass and raised
it to the level of his lips. He saw the other hands making the
same motion. He heard mister Grispin's genial hear here and mister Balch's hollow echo.
He said to himself, as the rim of the glass touched his lips,
I won't look up. I swear I won't. And he looked.
The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold it there,
brimming and suspended during the awful interval before he could trust his hand to
lower it again, untouched to the table. It was this merciful preoccupation which
saved him, kept him from crying out, from losing his hold, from
slipping down into the bottomless blackness that gaped for him. As long as the
problem of the glass engaged him. He felt able to keep his seat,
manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the group, But as the glass touched
the table, his last link with safety snapped. He stood up and dashed
out of the room Chapter four. In the gallery, the instinct of self
preservation helped him to turn back and signed to young Rayner not to follow.
He stammered out something about a touch of dizziness and joining them presently, and
the boy waved an unsuspecting hand and drew back. At the foot of the
stairs, Faxon ran against a servant. I should like to telephone to Way
more, he said, with dry lips. Sorry, sir, wires all
down. We've been trying the last hour to get New York again for mister
Lavington. Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted
the door. The mild lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books in the
ashes, A log still glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid
his face. The room was utterly silent, The whole house was still nothing
about him gave a hint of what was going on darkly and dumbly in the
horrible room he had flown from and with the covering of his eyes. Oblivion
and reassurance seemed to fall on him, but they fell for a moment.
Only then his lids opened again to the monstrous vision. There it was stamped
on his pupils, a part of him, forever unindelible, horror burnt into
his body and brain. But why into his just his? Why had he
alone been chosen to see what he had seen? What business was it of
his? In God's name? Any one of the others, thus enlightened,
might have exposed the horror and defeated it. But he, the one weaponless
and defenseless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand
if he attempted to reveal what he knew, he alone had been singled out
as the victim of this atrocious initiation. Suddenly he sat up, listening.
He had heard a step on the stairs, someone, no doubt, was
coming to see how he was to urge him if he felt better to go
down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his door. Yes, it
was young Rayner's step. Faxon looked down the passage, remembered the other stairway,
and darted to it. All he wanted was to get out of the
house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominable air. What business was
it of his? In God's name? He reached the opposite end of the
lower gallery, and beyond it saw the hall by which he had entered.
It was empty, and on a long table. He recognized his coat and
cap among the furs of the other travelers. He got into his coat,
unbolted the door, and plunged into the purifying night. The darkness was deep,
and the cold so intense that for an instant it stopped his breathing.
Then he perceived that only a thin snow was falling, and resolutely set his
face for flight. The trees along the avenue dimly marked his way as he
hastened with long strides over the beaten snow. Gradually, while he walked,
the tumult in his brain subsided. The impulse to fly still drove him forward,
but he began to feel that he was flying from a terror of his
own creating, and that the most urgent reason for escape was the need of
hiding his state of shunning other eyes scrutiny till he should regain his balance.
He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on a discouraging
situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had turned to exasperation when he found
that the way more Sleigh was not awaiting him. It was absurd, of
course, but though he had joked with Rainer over missus Colm's forgetfulness to confess
it had cost a pang. That was what his rootless life had brought him
to. For lack of a personal stake in things, his sensibility was at
the mercy of such trivial accidents. Yes, that and the cold and fatigue,
and absence of hope, and the haunting sense of starved aptitudes. All
these had brought him to the perilous verge, over which once or twice before
his terrified brain had hung, why else, in the name of any imaginable
logic, human or devilish, should he, a stranger, be singled out
for this experience? What could it mean to him? How was he related
to it? What bearing had it on his case? Unless indeed it was
just because he was a stranger, a stranger everywhere, because he had no
personal life, no warm, strong screen of private egotisms to shield him from
exposure. That he had developed this abnormal sensitiveness to the vicissitudes of others.
The thought pulled him up with a shudder. No, such a fate was
too abominable. All that was strong and sound in him rejected it a thousand
times better regard himself as ill, disorganized, deluded than as the predestined victim
of such warnings. He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge.
The wind had risen and was sweeping the snow into his face and lacerating streamers.
The cold had him in its grasp again, and he stood uncertain should
he put his sanity to the test and go back. He turned and looked
down the dark drive to the house. A single ray shone through the trees,
evoking a picture of the lights, the flowers, the faces grouped about
that fatal room. He turned and plunged out into the road. He remembered
that about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had pointed out the road to
Northridge, and he began to walk in that direction. Once in the road,
he had the gale in his face and the wet snow on his mustache
and eyelashes instantly hardened to metal. The same metal seemed to be driving a
million blades into his throat and lungs, but he pushed on, desperately,
determined the vision of the warm room pursuing him. The snow in the road
was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts and sank into drifts, and
the wind rose behind him like a granite cliff. Now and then he stopped,
gasping as if an invisible hand had tightened an iron band about his body.
Then he started again, stiffening himself against the stealthy penetration of the cold.
The snow continued to descend out of a pall of inscrutable darkness, and
once or twice he paused, fearing he had missed the road to Northridge,
but seeing no sign of a turn, he plowed on doggedly. At last,
feeling sure that he had walked more than a mile, he halted and
looked back. The act of turning brought immediate relief, first because it put
his back to the wind, and then because far down the road it showed
him the advancing gleam of a lantern. A sleigh was coming, a sleigh
that might perhaps give him a lift to the village. Fortified by the hope.
He began to walk back toward the light. It seemed to come forward
very slowly, with unaccountable zigzags and waverings, and even when he was within
a few yards of it, he could catch no sound of sleigh bells.
Then the light paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though carried by
a pedestrian who had stopped exhausted by the cold. The thought made Faxxen hasten
On, and a moment later he was stooping over a motionless figure huddled against
the snow bank. The lantern had dropped from its bear's hand, and Faxon,
fearfully raising it, threw its light into the face of Frank Rainer.
Rainer, what on earth are you doing here, the boy smiled back through
his Pallor what are you? I'd like to know, he retorted, and
scrambling to his feet, with a clutch on Faxon's arm, he added gaily,
Well I've run you down anyhow. Thaxxon stood confounded, his heart sinking.
The lad's face was gray. What madness, he began, Yes,
it is What on earth did you do it for? I do what?
Why? I was just taking a walk. I often walk at night.
Frank Rayner burst into a laugh. On such nights, then you hadn't bolted?
Bolted because I'd done something to offend you. My uncle thought you had,
Facxon grasped his arm. Did your uncle send you after me? Well?
He gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room with
you when you said you were ill. And when we found you'd gone,
we were frightened, and he was awfully upset. So I said I'd catch
you. You're not ill? Are you ill? No? Never better?
Facson picked up the lantern. Come let's go back. It was awfully hot
in that dining room, he added, yes, I hoped it was only
that. They trudged on in silence for a few minutes. Then Facson questioned,
you're not too done up? Oh no, it's a lot easier with
the wind behind us. All right, don't talk anymore. They pushed ahead,
walking in spite of the light that guided them more slowly than Faxon had
walked alone into the gale. The fact of his companions stumbling against adrift gave
him a pretext for saying, take hold of my arm, and Rainer,
obeying, gasped out, I'm blown, so am I who wouldn't be what
a dance you led me if it hadn't been for one of the servants happening
to see you. Yes, all right, and now woon't you kindly shut
up? Rayner laughed and hung on him. Oh the cold doesn't hurt me.
For the first few minutes after Rayner had overtaken him, anxiety for the
lad had been Faxxon's only thought. But as each laboring step carried them nearer
to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his flight grew more
ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was not
distraught and luded. He was the instrument singled out to warn and save.
And here he was irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back to his doom.
The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps, But what could he
do or say? At all costs, he must get Rainer out of the
cold, into the house, and into his bed. After that he would
act. The snowfall was thickening, and as they reached a stretch of the
road between open fields, the wind took them at an angle, lashing their
faces with barbed thongs. Rainer stopped to take breath and Faxon felt the heavier
pressure of his arm. When we get to the lodge, can't we telephone
to the stable for sleigh, if they're not all asleep at the lodge.
Oh, all managed, don't talk, Thaxxon ordered, and they plodded on
at length. The lantern Ray showed ruts that curved away from the road under
tree darkness. Faxxon's spirit rose, there's the gate. We'll be there in
five minutes. As he spoke, he caught about the boundary hedge the gleam
of a light at the farther end of the dark avenue. It was the
same light that had shown on the scene, of which every detail was burnt
into his brain, and he felt again its overpowering reality. No, he
couldn't let the boy go back. They were at the lodge at last,
and Faxxon was hammering on the door. He said to himself, I'll get
him inside first and make them give him a hot drink. Then i'll see
I'll find an argument. There was no answer to his knocking, and after
an interval, Rayner said, look here, we'd better go on. No,
I can perfectly you shan't go to the house, I say, Faxxon
furiously redoubled his blows, and at length step sounded on the stairs. Rayner
was leaning against the lintel, and as the door opened, the light from
the hall flashed on his pale face and fixed eyes. Faxxon caught him by
the arm and drew him in. It was cold out there. He sighed,
and then abruptly, as if invisible shears at a single stroke had cut
every muscle in his body. He swerved, drooped on Faxxon's arm, and
seemed to sink into nothing at his feet. The lodge keeper and Faxon bent
over him, and somehow between them lifted him into the kitchen and laid him
on a sofa by the stove. The lodge keeper, stammering, I'll ring
up the house, dashed out of the room, But Faxxen heard the words
without heeding them. Omens mattered nothing now beside this woe fulfilled He knelt down
to undo the fur collar about Reyna's throat, and as he did so he
felt a warm moisture on his hands. He held them up and they were
read. Chapter five. The palms threaded their endless lines along the Yellow River.
The little steamer lay at the wharf, and George Faxon sitting in the
verandah of the Wooden Hotel, idly watched the coolies carrying the freight across the
gang plank. He had been looking at such scenes for two months. Nearly
five had elapsed since he had descended from the train at Northridge and strained his
eyes for the sleigh that was to take him to Waymore, Waymore, which
he was never to behold part of the interval, the first part was still
a great gray blur. Even now he could not be quite sure how he
had got back to Boston, reached the house of a cousin, and been
thence transferred to a quiet room looking out on snow under bare trees. He
looked out a long time at the same scene, and finally, one day
a man he had known at Harvard came to see him and invited him to
go out on a business trip to the Malay Peninsula. You've had a bad
shake up, and it'll do you no end of good to get away from
things. When the doctor came the next day, it turned out that he
knew of the plan and approved it. You ought to be quiet for year,
just loaf and look at the landscape, he advised. Faxon felt the
first faint stirrings of curiosity. What's been the matter with me? Anyhow well
over work? I suppose you must have been bottling up for a bad breakdown
before you started for New Hampshire last December. And the shock of that poor
boy's death did the rest. Ah. Yes, Rayner had died, he
remembered. He started for the east, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees,
life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was very
considerate and forbearing, and they traveled slowly and talked little. At first,
Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things. He seldom
looked at a newspaper. He never opened a letter without a moment's contraction of
the heart. It was not that he had any special cause for apprehension,
but merely that a great trail of darkness lay on everything he had looked too,
deep down into the abyss. But little by little health and energy returned
to him, and with them the common promptings of curiosity. He was beginning
to wonder how the world was going, And when presently the hotel keeper told
him there were no letters for him in the steamer's mail, bag. He
felt a distinct sense of disappointment. His friend had gone into the jungle on
a long excursion, and he was lonely, unoccupied, and wholesomely bored.
He got up and strolled into the stuffy reading room. There he found a
game of dominoes, a mutilated picture puzzle, some copies of Zion's Herald,
and a pile of New York and London newspapers. He began to glance through
the papers and was disappointed to find that they were less recent than he had
hoped. Evidently the last number had been carried off by luckier travelers. He
continued to turn them over, picking out the American ones first. These,
as it happened, were the oldest. They dated back to December and January
to Faxxon. However, they had all the flavor of novelty, since they
covered the precise period during which he had virtually ceased to exist. It had
never before occurred to him to wonder what had happened in the world during that
interval obliteration, but now he felt a sudden desire to know. To prolong
the pleasure, he began by sorting the papers chronologically, and as he found
and spread out the earliest number. The date at the top of the page
entered into his unconsciousness like a key slipping into a lock. It was the
seventeenth of December, the date of the day after his arrival at Northridge.
He glanced at the first page and read, in blazing characters, reported failure
of opal Cement Company. Lavington's name involved gigantic exposure of corruption, shakes Wall
Street to its foundations. He read on, and when he had finished the
first paper, he turned to the next. There was a gap of three
days, but the opal Cement investigation still held the center of the stage from
its complex revelations of greed and ruin. His eye wandered to the death notices,
and he read Rayner Suddenly at Northridge, New Hampshire, Francis John,
only, son of the late His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper
and sat for a long time with his face in his hands. When he
looked up again, he noticed that his gesture had pushed the other papers from
the table and scattered them on the floor at his feet. The uppermost lay
spread out before him, and heavily his eyes began their search again. John
Lavington comes forward with plan for reconstructing company offers to put in ten millions of
his own the proposal under consideration by the District Attorney ten millions, ten millions
of his own. But if John Lavington was ruined, Faxon stood up with
a cry that was it? Then that was what the warning meant. And
if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away from it into the
night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity. The power of darkness
might not have prevailed. He caught up the pile of newspapers and began to
glance through each in turn for the headline Wills admitted to probate. In the
last of all, he found the paragraph he sought, and it stared up
at him, as if with Rainer's dying eyes, that that was what he
had done. The powers of pity had singled him out to warn and save,
and he had closed his ears to their call, had washed his hands
of it, and fled, washed his hands of it. That was the
word. It caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge, when
raising himself up from Rainer's side, he had looked at his hands and seen
that they were read end of The Triumph of Night by Edith Wharton,