A Fool There Was

by Porter Emerson Browne

"I won't see the lady after all."

Parks nodded, and quietly withdrew. Left alone, Schuyler for some moments sat silent and motionless before his desk. But nowadays, he could not sit motionless for long. There was that inside his brain—inside his soul— which would not let him. It kept him moving—moving—moving, without rest, without cessation; even as he had paced the deck of the liner, on that other morning, almost until the day had come to claim again from the night that which was its own.

Of a sudden he rose from his chair. Swift strides took him across the room. Quickly, nervously, he drew back the curtain from the window…. He could see, beneath him in the street, the van that had come for the belongings of his wife—of the woman who had borne him his child—the child which he had not seen since, upon the dock, she had waved him farewell.

John Schuyler had wandered into the Unknown. Unwillingly, knowing full well what he was doing, but powerless to help—powerless to prevent—he had gone…. Sometimes it did not seem real to him. It was a nightmare— a horrid, horrible, awful, grewsome, rotten dream, a dream that brought to his nostrils a stench—to his soul a coldness unutterable—a coldness beside which that of death might seem a grateful warmth…. He would wake sometimes from his dreams, a cold sweat enveloping him like a pall, a scream upon his lips…. And then, again—He did not understand. He could not understand. It was hopeless, utterly, utterly hopeless…. Why should such things be? How could such things be? There was a God, presumably. Presumably, that God was good…. There was no logic in it—no reason in it…. What did it all mean? "Why?" he asked himself, again and again, and yet again. "Why?" … There had been no answer….

He watched the van load. He watched the heavy horses throw themselves into the traces, as the whip fell across their flanks. He watched the van slowly gather momentum. He watched it rumble heavily down the sodden asphalt…. At length it turned the corner….

John Schuyler swung on his heel. And then he laughed; it was a laugh that, God grant, you may never laugh, nor I!

[Illustration]

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

THE RED ROSE.

He did not see her enter. He did not hear her enter. Yet he knew that she was there, although he had left her across an ocean…. Another sense, it seemed, there was within him…. He knew that she had crossed the room; that she was leaning, rounded arms all bare, across the back of the great chair, by the window. He did not know; he had not looked; yet he could see her, beautiful, gloriously beautiful in her strange, weird, dark beauty; head poised like a tiger lily upon its stalk; great masses of dead black hair coiled in the disorder that, of her, was order above the low, white forehead; vivid lips parted to reveal the gleam of shining teeth; long, lithe limbs in the easy relaxation that is of the panther, or the leopard.