The man who had been a plunger at gaming table and race track, who had succeeded as an imitator of schemes that attracted major capital, was of necessity one of imagination. Perhaps had life dealt him different cards, Spurrier would have been a novelist or even a poet, for that imagination which he had put into heavy harness was also capable of flights into phantasy and endowed with something almost mystic.
Now under the stress of this conflict in his mind, as he sat before his hearth in shadows that were vague of light and shape, that unaccustomed surrender to imagination possessed him, peopling the dimness with shapes that seemed actual.
His eye fell upon the empty three-legged stool that stood on the opposite side of the hearth, and as though he were looking at one of those motion picture effects which show, in double negative one character confronting his dual and separate self, he seemed to see a figure sitting there and regarding him out of contemptuous eyes.
It was the figure of a very young man clad in the tunic of a graduating West Point cadet and it was a figure that bore itself with the prideful erectness of one who regards his right to wear his uniform as a privilege of knighthood. For Spurrier was fancying himself confronted by the man he had been in those days of eager forward-looking, and of almost religious resolve to make of himself a soldier in the best meaning of the word. Then as his eyes closed for a moment under the vividness of the fancy, the figure dissolved into its surroundings of shadow and near 160 the stool with folded arms and a bitterer scorn stood a lieutenant in khaki.
“So this is what you have come to be,” said the imaginary Spurrier blightingly to the actual Spurrier. “A looter and brigand no better than the false amigos that I fought over there. I was a gentleman and you are a cad!”
Had the man been dreaming in sleep instead of wakefulness, his vision could hardly have worn habiliments of greater actuality, and he found himself retorting in hot defensiveness.
“Whatever I am you made me. It was you who was disgraced. It is because I was once you that I am now I. You left me no choice but to fight with the weapons that came to hand, and those weapons were predatory.... If I have deliberately hardened myself it is only as soldiers of other days put on coats of mail—because soft flesh could not survive the mace and broadsword.”
“And when you win your prizes, if you ever win them,” the accusing vision appeared to retort, “you will have paid for them by spending all that was honorable in yourself; all that was generous and soldierly. When you were I, you led a charge across rice paddies without cover and under a withering fire. For that you were mentioned in dispatches and you had a paragraph in the Army and Navy Journal. Have you ever won a prize since then, that meant as much to you?”
John Spurrier came to his feet, with a groan in his throat. His temples were moist and marked with a tracery of outstanding veins and his hands were clenched.