Carter, and Other People

by Don Marquis

There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour.

It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard them. She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It was her own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping back, like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It was her own fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill herself there were moments when he cursed and hated her.

But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that, though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied his guilt, or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was essentially a lying denial, he knew that guilt there was.

Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the old hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, and turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again.

At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. His pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, had fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief period his sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe it was going to be like this—a gradual easing off of the strain in answer to his prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether he should be forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told himself. God was going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke everything would be all right again—bearable at least.

So he mused, half asleep.

And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from nowhere in particular, there passed a puff of smoke!

What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled for a moment almost into something like peace, and—now—this puff of smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer?

He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid that he would see—something—if he looked behind him. He was afraid that he would in another moment hear something—a voice!

He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, he scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable cause, and not meant for him.