Her car turned in, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.
“But what if I were not a craven? What if I were man enough to so want her back that it would not matter if it were impossible? But I am not that man, and to me such things do not happen.”
He saw the sweep of the lights past his window, and heard the crunch of the car over the soft snow. But he was livid and scared liverless.
“I must be objective. That has always been natural for me. He said that it was only a gusty night and that I mistook the noises. He said that I had to believe it.”
And for a moment he did believe it. Then he went cold and all the juice drained out of his heart.
“I am objective. And tonight is not gusty. Tonight is still.”
The bird downstairs woke and broke into excited song. It always became excited when Vivian arrived.
“Perhaps it is that I do not have an objective bird. That will be a little hard to remedy.”
And just as her key was in the door, the whistled song of the bird turned into ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, clear and fine as she had taught it.
“God, why didn’t I bar the door? She has her key. But no, she does not have her key. It is with the rest of her effects locked in the deposit box. She is dead! I have to remember that she is dead! Let nothing confuse this issue. A sane man can account for every phenomenon. Somehow I will account for this.”
She was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stairs, the tone of them just above middle ‘C’. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the ‘Dreamer’ as she ascended.
“But she is dead! Is it that I am afraid of my own wife? She never harmed anything in her life. But—but—she is not in her life. Am I really afraid of Vivian?”
And for answer he piled chairs and desk and wardrobe in front of the door in frantic terror.
“Objective,” he moaned. “What is more objective than a pile of furniture?”
And she came to the top of the stairs like music, humming the ‘Dreamer’.
“Vivian!! You’re dead! You’ve got to believe that you’re dead. Go back! Go! Go!”
Her hand was on the door. But in all reason her hand could not be on the door, dead or alive. And if she were a ghost it would not matter what furniture was piled there. Still she would come in.
But in logic she could not be and could not come.
But she came through the door.
“Vivian! No! No! You’re dead! You’ve got to believe—”
FROM THE TOMB,
by Guy De Maupassant
The guests filed slowly into the hotel’s great dining-hall and took their places, the waiters began to serve them leisurely, to give the tardy ones time to arrive and to save themselves the bother of bringing back the courses; and the old bathers, the yearly habitues, with whom the season was far advanced, kept a close watch on the door each time it opened, hoping for the coming of new faces.
New faces! the single distraction of all pleasure resorts. We go to dinner chiefly to canvass the daily arrivals, to wonder who they are, what they do and what they think. A restless desire seems to have taken possession of us, a longing for pleasant adventures, for friendly acquaintances, perhaps, for possible lovers. In this elbow-to-elbow life our unknown neighbors become of paramount importance. Curiosity is piqued, sympathy on the alert and the social instinct doubly active.
We have hatreds for a week, friendships for a month, and view all men with the special eyes of watering-place intimacy. Sometimes during an hour’s chat after dinner, under the trees of the park, where ripples a healing spring, we discover men of superior intellect and surprising merit, and a month later have wholly forgotten these new friends, so charming at first sight.
There, too, more specially than elsewhere, serious and lasting ties are formed. We see each other every day, we learn to know each other very soon, and in the affection that springs up so rapidly between us there is mingled much of the sweet abandon of old and tried intimates. And later on, how tender are the memories cherished of the first hours of this friendship, of the first communion in which the soul came to light, of the first glances that questioned and responded to the secret thoughts and interrogatories the lips have not dared yet to utter, of the first cordial confidence and delicious sensation of opening one’s heart to someone who has seemed to lay bare to you his own! The very dullness of the hours, as it were, the monotony of days all alike, but renders more complete the rapid budding and blooming of friendship’s flower.
That evening, then, as on every evening, we awaited the appearance of unfamiliar faces.
There came only two, but very peculiar ones, those of a man and a woman—father and daughter. They seemed to have stepped from the pages of some weird legend; and yet there was an attraction about them, albeit an unpleasant one, that made me set them down at once as the victims of some fatality.
The father was tall, spare, a little bent, with hair blanched white; too white for his still young countenance, and in his manner and about his person the sedate austerity of carriage that bespeaks the Puritan. The daughter was, possibly, some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was very slight, emaciated, her exceedingly pale countenance bearing a languid, spiritless expression; one of those people whom we sometimes encounter, apparently too weak for the cares and tasks of life, too feeble to move or do the things that we must do every day. Nevertheless the girl was pretty, with the ethereal beauty of an apparition. It was she, undoubtedly, who came for the benefit of the waters.
They chanced to be placed at table immediately opposite to me; and I was not long in noticing that the father, too, had a strange affection, something wrong about the nerves it seemed. Whenever he was going to reach for anything, his hand, with a jerky twitch, described a sort of fluttering zig-zag, before he was able to grasp what he was after. Soon, the motion disturbed me so much, I kept my head turned in order not to see it. But not before I had also observed that the young girl kept her glove on her left hand while she ate.
Dinner ended, I went out as usual for a turn in the grounds belonging to the establishment. A sort of park, I might say, stretching clear to the little station of Auvergne, Chatel-Guyon, nestling in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, from which flowed the sparkling, bubbling springs, hot from the furnace of an ancient volcano. Beyond us there, the domes, small extinct craters—of which Chatel-Guyon is the starting point—raised their serrated heads above the long chain; while beyond the domes came two distinct regions, one of them, needle-like peaks, the other of bold, precipitous mountains.
It was very warm that evening, and I contented myself with pacing to and fro under the rustling trees, gazing at the mountains and listening to the strains of the band, pouring from the Casino, situated on a knoll that overlooked the grounds.
Presently, I perceived the father and daughter coming toward me with slow steps. I bowed to them in that pleasant Continental fashion with which one always salutes his hotel companions. The gentleman halted at once.
“Pardon me, sir,” said he, “but may I ask if you can direct us to a short walk, easy and pretty, if possible?”
“Certainly,” I answered, and offered to lead them myself to the valley through which the swift river flows—a deep, narrow cleft between two great declivities, rocky and wooded.
They accepted, and as we walked, we naturally discussed the virtue of the mineral waters. They had, as I had surmised, come there on his daughter’s account.
“She has a strange malady,” said he, “the seat of which her physicians cannot determine. She suffers from the most inexplicable nervous symptoms. Sometimes they declare her ill of a heart disease; sometimes of a liver complaint; again of a spinal trouble. At present they attribute it to the stomach—that great motor and regulator of the body—this Protean disease of a thousand forms, a thousand modes of attack. It is why we are here. I, myself, think it is her nerves. In any case it is sad.”