CHAPTER VI
At four o'clock in the morning Stillman turned his car about and began to return to San Francisco. He did not feel tired, but he was chilled through. About him, in the faint mist of early dawn, the prune-orchards of the Santa Clara Valley stretched out in faintly green lines toward the foothills.
He had a sudden longing for companionship. If only Danilo were there to flame him with vicarious enthusiasm! Danilo!... What was there about Danilo that never failed to melt the cold forms of indifference and weary contempt? Was it the man himself, his intensity for a cause, or the mere novelty of the unique atmosphere which he radiated that had tempted Stillman beyond the pale boundaries of a formal acquaintanceship? Last night's celebration, for instance, had held very little that was traditionally appealing to a man of Stillman's upbringing, and yet he had been tricked into accepting the curious forms through which a totally strange people expressed themselves. In his travels abroad he had always enjoyed the spectacle of foreign life, but he had scarcely felt any desire to enter into it. He found the position of onlooker agreeable, and he was not indifferent to the merit of other traditions, but he had lacked the naïveté to surrender to their spell. When he was with Danilo it was different; the Serbian seemed to be a crucible which fused the most diverse elements, investing everything in life with simplicity and coherence. In Danilo's presence Stillman found himself capable of the most amazing confidences. He could speak out boldly about his hopes, his fears, even his shortcomings. He could discuss the magnitude of his fortune, his carefully guarded indiscretions, his domestic tragedy.
And now, at this moment, as Stillman rode back to San Francisco in the faintly spreading dawn, he had a vague feeling that if Danilo had been at his side he would have poured out his soul and yielded up the most precious secret of his heart. Well, perhaps it was best that Danilo was safely out of range. It was not that he felt any precise mistrust concerning Danilo; all his uncertainty had to do with the strange, hard, coldly flaming Claire that he had glimpsed in that terrible moment when he had first come upon her, seated next to Lycurgus at the Café Ithaca. He had never felt so impotent, so helpless as he had felt at that moment. He remembered, now, every detail of her costume: the blue-green iridescence that ran through every palpitation of her figure, the black, sinister patch near her eye, the brilliant red of her lips. And against all this color the amazing whiteness of her tapering arms had stood out too clearly. He had seen her arms bared before, to the elbow, but never boldly stripped clear to the shoulders. And her hair—that hair which always had graced her head with such unaffected artlessness—she seemed suddenly to have found the need to overdo, to strain for effective simplicity. Her words to him had not helped matters. It was not the memory of her defiance that left him cold; it was the indifference in her voice that froze his heart. She was indifferent—she no longer cared!
He began now to feel not only cold, but weary. What had possessed him to leave the Café Ithaca and flee down the peninsula like a thief in the night? To ride ... ride furiously, madly, that had been his first impulse. Just motion! It seemed that he could find no other outlet for his tumult. But now the leaping flames of emotion had died. He was burned out.
The dawn grew rosier; meadowlarks began to sing; groups of blackbirds rose in ardent, wheeling flights. The mist upon the hills parted and revealed pastoral secrets. But all this full-blooded pageantry left him unmoved.
He thought about his wife; not indirectly, evasively, as had been his habit, but with ruthless honesty. The bulletins from the sanatorium had grown less hopeful. Still, there was always the possibility that the mental fog would clear and leave her at the mercy of a wan sanity. Stillman could imagine nothing more terrible than this return to a chill, stark reason. It would be as if some smiling hillside had paid the toll of a devastating freshet, and was left a scarred and naked waste that a belated sun could never clothe again. And always there would be the sleeping and waking fear that the torrents would descend again with even greater fury. Now, at least, she had the warmth of her hallucinations to make life tolerable. What would be left her when these mirages melted into the dreary void of actual life?... For a moment it seemed to Stillman that reality was the greatest of all tragedies to face. The visions of youth, the ecstasies of the witless, the crooning dreams of old age—how they softened the relentless glare of things as they were! How they lured the traveler past the soul-killing monotonies, the bleak disillusionments!
He left the orchards behind, and came into the region of pretty, artless homes surrounded by gardens spilling their fragrance into the lap of morning. To the west the land dimpled with laughing hills, green and tremulous in the young light. Eucalyptus-trees bent gravely in the chance breezes or stood erectly still where the calm of dawn remained inviolate. Stillman received the impression of nature's calm contentment and took issue with it. He was in no mood to be snared by the false promise of morning.
He began now to think about himself, and immediately all his raillery at fate died. What had he ever done to prove his claim to happiness? Had he ever wrestled with God for a blessing? He thought of Danilo, remembering all the details of the doctor's hard-fisted battle with circumstances—starving days, shivering nights. There must be a full-blooded joy in giving fate blow for blow; in having to fight for every narrow foothold upon the ledge of fortune! Well, the heights had been his without the toil of scaling, and he had looked down upon the promised land with indifference. What had he been doing all these years, all these months, all these weeks? He had done his duty, perhaps; but scarcely more. Widows who cast their mite into the Lord's treasury did this much. He had never thought of spilling the wine from his brimming cup upon the parched lips of the thirsty, and he had measured the meal of obligation with too finely balanced a scale. Now had come a time when his greatest wish was to be prodigal, and the hands that should have received his outpouring were tied grimly. What would not he have given to see the fruits of his inheritance replenishing the scant store of the woman he loved! And yet, as he had said, the veriest beggar could do more—could fling his penny at the feet of Claire Robson and go on his starving way with a smile. Perhaps a man more trained in outwitting circumstances would have found a way out of the difficulty, but Stillman could see only blind alleys leading from every desire of his heart.... Danilo's ardent face rose before him. Here was a man who could no doubt feel the ecstasy of personal passion and yet have abundant thrill for bigger things. He had conquered a profession and now he was to surrender to the outpouring of the spirit upon the altars of his native land. His native land! Just what did an expression like this mean to Ned Stillman?—a smiling country untouched by the stress of nature, and only remotely disturbed by the grim expediency of war; a sky-blue birthright that yielded up the easy harvests which had reduced him to such sleek impotence. He felt suddenly tricked, cheated, as one does who looks back upon indulgent parents with a feeling of accusing scorn. Danilo's native land had made demands, forced the chains of loyalty in the white-heated fires of necessity. Danilo loved his Serbia because he had wept with her—because the claims of mutual tears are stronger than the claims of mutual laughter. Stillman felt loyal to the land of his birth. And he had worked hard, too. He had made sacrifices, of a kind, and he was prepared to do more. Yes, he would go the limit ... the absolute limit. He had every reason to be grateful for his inheritance, and yet, Danilo, penniless and tempered in the fires of a frugal birthright, had the best of the bargain....
Stillman was nearing San Francisco now. The landscape had the moth-eaten look that landscapes do when they make the transition from countryside to paved streets. But at least the morning air was still fresh, as yet unpolluted by the foul breath of drudgery and toil. He began to wonder vaguely whether Danilo would be stirring so early. He felt a sudden desire to see him. Well, why not? He remembered the doctor's address—a cheap lodging-house on Third Street. He had never favored Danilo before with a visit. It seemed absurd to burst in upon a man at the ungodly hour of six o'clock. But he had a wish to outrage his own sense of conventionality.
He found Danilo up and stirring. The room was clean and unincumbered with personal effects. A few photographs upon the bureau, a panorama of Belgrade, an American and a Serbian flag intertwined—these were all the evidences of occupation. Danilo himself was in a gay-flowered dressing-gown and he moved toward the door with a graceful gliding movement as he said:
"Why, my dear fellow, you look ill! What can be the matter?"
Stillman sank into a chair. It had needed just this word of sympathy to upset his poise utterly.
"I don't know," he answered. "I felt suddenly dizzy when I opened the door. Forgive me for breaking in on you at such an hour!"
Danilo answered with a laugh, and brought out cigarettes. Stillman took one. They began to smoke.
"I can't think what is the matter with me," Stillman began, awkwardly.
Danilo seated himself. "I can. You're in love. You are afraid to talk about it.... Ah yes, I knew that I was not wrong! You are blushing like a school-boy. Tell me, what is her name?"
Stillman breathed heavily. He made no answer.
Danilo rose. "Ah, my friend, forgive me!" he said, quickly. "I didn't realize it was...."
Stillman made a little gesture of appeal. "I didn't myself until.... God, it's all so horrible!"
"Your wife, you mean?... Well, perhaps there could be a way out."
"No, there's no way out!... What would you do if you saw the woman you loved going down ... down ... down, and you were powerless to save her?"
"A question of money or morals?"
"Money first of all...."
"That ought not to be much of a problem in your case."
"Ah, you don't understand! Oh no! can't you see? In this case it would be impossible!"
"Then it is a question of morals.... I know. Sometimes these things happen—how do you say it?—in the best of regulated families. If I were in your position and it happened to the woman.... Well, in my country it is all very simple. We call the man out and shoot him. Here ... I suppose here you tell your troubles to a policeman, do you not?"
Stillman darted a swift, searching look at Danilo.
"Not always.... Sometimes we commit the indiscretion of telling our friends."
Danilo rose quickly. He went over and put his hand caressingly on Stillman's shoulder.
"Indiscretion, my brother?" he queried. "Ah, you do not know me, even yet! Well, we are companions in misery, if it comes to that. But in my case I do not think I shall need the pistol. I shall marry the girl. And that will end everything."
Stillman pressed Danilo's hand. "A girl of your own people?"
"No—one of your American girls.... Some day, when it is all settled, I shall invite you to meet her.... I came very near letting you see her last night. But it happened otherwise, and I am as well pleased." He laughed, showing his teeth pleasantly. "I do not want you as a rival, my brother. That would be a nasty business between friends."
Stillman rose. "My dear Danilo, I wish you every happiness," he said. He wanted to say more, to sound a warmer note, but the words would not shape themselves. But Danilo seemed to divine his intent.
"And you, brother.... No, I shall not mock you with a return of the compliment. But I shall hope that it will all come right for you, somehow. That this woman you love shall be worthy of a good man. At least, then you will have your faith. Cold comforts are better than none at all!"
Stillman smiled grayly. "And what is to become of the Serbian project, now that you are to be...."
"My dear fellow, marriage is not the end of everything. A man still has his duties—his enthusiasms! Everything will go on as I have planned it."
"You said she was an American.... Perhaps she will object to being left...."
"Left?... Why, she will go with me! Remember, I am marrying a wife, and, naturally, a wife does what her husband—"
"Oh, of course, of course! That goes without saying." Stillman laughed disagreeably. "Really, I must be running along. I am tired. I have been riding all night."
"I am afraid my name-day celebration was disturbing," Danilo said, giving Stillman his hand.
"Life is so full of unexpected turns," Stillman ventured as he swung open the door. "I didn't think that your life and my life were touched by the same currents."
"Are they?"
"Remotely ... by the merest chance."
Danilo looked puzzled. "Chance is like a deep pool; you never know what ghastly thing it will yield up."
Stillman narrowed his eyes. He began to remember things. Again he heard the sharp slam of a taxi door, again he felt his cheeks burn as he leaned forward to pick up his hat, again he laid an inquisitive hand upon the shoulder of a slim, beetle-browed figure standing with one finger upon the call-bell of an elevator. And again that figure turned, fixing him with a red-lipped smile.... Yes, at this moment, standing before Danilo, it all came back.
"An American girl.... So he is to marry an American girl!... I wonder if...."
For a moment he felt the hot coals of smoldering lawlessness flare within him. But a chill followed ... a bleak, dead, lifeless chill of resignation. He put out his hand.
"I hope everything good for you, my friend," he said, sadly. "Everything good for you ... and ... and this woman you are to marry."