“You’ve taken him,” she continued, “and used him as a piece of dough for your crooked medium, to make pie out of—pie for all the hysterical women who think you’re a great man. Call you great? Without any respect for the dignity and reticence of death? You’re a toothless, yellow old man without even the excuse of real grief for playing on your own credulity and that of a lot of other fools. That’s all—I’m through.”
With that, she turned and as suddenly as she had come walked with her head erect down the path toward me. I waited until she had passed and gone some twenty yards out of sight of the window. Then I followed her along the soft grass and suddenly spoke to her.
“Miss Thalia.”
She faced me, somewhat startled.
“Miss Thalia, I want to tell you that there’s a surprise for you down the lane—somebody you haven’t seen for many months.”
Her face showed no understanding.
“I don’t want to spoil anything,” I continued, “but I don’t want you to be frightened if in a few moments you get the surprise of your existence.”
“What do you mean?” she asked quietly.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just continue along the road and think of the nicest things in the world and all of a sudden something tremendous will happen.”
With this, I bowed very low and stood smiling benevolently with my hat in my hand.
I saw her look at me wonderingly and then turn slowly and walk away. In a moment she was lost to view beyond the curve of the low stone wall under the magnolia trees.
IV
It was four days—four sweltering anxious days—before I could bring enough order out of the chaos to arrange any sort of business conference. The first meeting between Cosgrove Harden and his uncle was the most tremendous nervous strain of my life. I sat for an hour on the slippery edge of a rickety chair, preparing to spring forward every time I saw young Cosgrove’s muscles tighten under his coat sleeve. I would make an instinctive start and each time slip helplessly from the chair and land in a sitting position on the floor.
Dr. Harden finally terminated the interview by rising and going upstairs. I managed to pack young Harden off to his room by dint of threats and promises and wrung out of him a vow of twenty-four hours’ silence.
I used all my available cash in bribing the two old servants. They must say nothing, I assured them. Mr. Cosgrove Harden had just escaped from Sing Sing. I quaked as I said this but there were so many lies in the air that one more or less made little difference.
If it hadn’t been for Miss Thalia I would have given up the first day and gone back to New York to await the crash. But she was in such a state of utter and beatific happiness that she was willing to agree to anything. I proposed to her that if she and Cosgrove were to marry and live in the West under an assumed name for ten years I would support them liberally. She jumped for joy. I seized the opportunity and with glowing colors painted a love bungalow in California, with mild weather all the year around and Cosgrove coming up the path to supper and romantic old missions nearby and Cosgrove coming up the path to supper and the Golden Gate in a June twilight and Cosgrove and so forth.
As I talked, she gave little cries of joy and was all for leaving immediately. It was she who persuaded Cosgrove on the fourth day to join us in conference in the living room. I left word with the maid that we were on no account to be disturbed and we sat down to thresh the whole thing out.
Our points of view were radically divergent.
Young Harden’s was very similar to the Red Queen’s in Alice in Wonderland. Someone had blundered and someone had to suffer for it right away. There had been enough fake dead men in this family and there was going to be a real one if someone didn’t look out!
Dr. Harden’s point of view was that it was all an awful mess and he didn’t know what to do about it, God knew, and he wished he were dead.
Thalia’s point of view was that she had looked up California in a guidebook and the climate was adorable and Cosgrove coming up the path to supper.
My point of view was that there was no knot so tight that there wasn’t a way out of the labyrinth—and a lot more mixed metaphors that only got everybody more confused than they were in the beginning.
Cosgrove Harden insisted that we get four copies of “The Aristocracy of the Spirit World” and talk it over. His uncle said that the sight of a book would make him sick to his stomach. Thalia’s suggestion was that we should all go to California and settle the question out there.
I got four books and distributed them. Dr. Harden shut his eyes and groaned. Thalia opened hers to the last page and began drawing heavenly bungalows with a young wife standing in the doorway of each. Young Harden hunted furiously for page 226.
“Here we are!” he cried. “Just opposite the picture of ‘Cosgrove Harden the day before he sailed, showing the small mole above his left eye’ we see the following: ‘This mole had always worried Cosgrove. He had a feeling that bodies should be perfect and that this was an imperfection that should in the natural order be washed away.’ Hmm! I have no mole.”
Dr. Harden agreed.
“Possibly it was an imperfection in the negative,” he suggested.
“Great Scott! If the negative had failed to photograph my left leg you’d probably have me yearning all through the book for a left leg—and have it joined to me in Chapter Twenty-Nine.”
“Look here!” I broke in. “Can’t we reach some compromise? No one knows that you are in town. Can’t we—”
Young Harden scowled at me fiercely.
“I haven’t started yet. I haven’t mentioned the alienation of Thalia’s affections.”
“Alienation!” Dr. Harden protested. “Why, I have paid her no attention. She detests me. She—”
Cosgrove laughed bitterly.
“You flatter yourself. Do you think I was jealous of your old gray whiskers? I’m talking about her affections being alienated by these descriptions of me.”
Thalia bent forward earnestly.
“My affections never wavered, Cosgrove—never.”
“Come, Thalia,” Cosgrove said somewhat grumpily. “They must have been slightly alienated. How about page 223? Could you love a man who wore floating underwear? Who was—who was filmy?”
“I was grieved, Cosgrove. That is, I would have been grieved if I’d believed it, but I didn’t.”
“No alienation?” His tone expressed disappointment.
“None, Cosgrove.”
“Well,” Cosgrove said resentfully, “I’m ruined politically, anyway—I mean, if I decided to go into politics I can never be President. I’m not even a democratic ghost—I’m a spiritual snob.”
Dr. Harden’s face was sunk in his hands in an attitude of profound dejection.
I interrupted desperately, talking so loudly that Cosgrove was compelled to stop and listen.
“I will guarantee you ten thousand a year if you will go away for ten years!”
Thalia clapped her hands and Cosgrove seeing her out of the corner of his eye began for the first time to show a faint interest.
“How about after the ten years are up?”
“Oh,” I said hopefully, “Dr. Harden may be—may be—”
“Speak up,” the doctor said gloomily. “I may be dead. I sincerely trust so.”
“—so you can come back under your own name,” I continued callously. “Meanwhile we’ll agree to publish no new edition of the book.”
“Hmm. Suppose he’s not dead in ten years?” Cosgrove demanded suspiciously.
“Oh, I’ll die,” the doctor reassured him quickly. “That needn’t worry you.”
“How do you know you’ll die?”
“How does one know anyone will die? It’s just human nature.”
Cosgrove regarded him sourly.
“Humor is out of place in this discussion. If you’ll make an honest agreement to die, with no mental reservations—”
The doctor nodded gloomily.
“I might as well. With the money I have left I’ll starve to death in that time.”
“That would be satisfactory. And when you do, for heaven’s sake arrange to have yourself buried. Don’t just lie around the house here dead and expect me to come back and do all the work.”
At this the doctor seemed somewhat bitter, and then Thalia, who had been silent for some time, raised her head.
“Do you hear anything outside?” she asked curiously.
I had heard something—that is I had subconsciously perceived a murmur—a murmur growing and mingling with the sound of many footsteps.
“I do,” I remarked. “Odd—”
There was a sudden interruption—the murmur outside swelled to the proportions of a chant, the door burst open, and a wild-eyed servant rushed in.
“Dr. Harden! Dr. Harden!” she cried in terror. “There’s a mob, maybe a million people, comin’ along the road and up toward the house. They’ll be on the porch in a—”
An increase in the noise showed that they already were. I sprang to my feet.
“Hide your nephew!” I shouted to Dr. Harden.
His beard trembling, his watery eyes wide, Dr. Harden grasped Cosgrove feebly by the elbow.
“What is it?” He faltered.
“I don’t know. Get him upstairs to the attic right away—put leaves over him, stick him behind an heirloom!”
With that, I was gone, leaving the three of them in puzzled panic. Through the hall I rushed and out the front door onto the screen porch. I was none too soon.
The screen porch was full of men, young men in checked suits and slouch hats, old men in derbies and frayed cuffs, crowding and jostling, each one beckoning and calling to me above the crowd. Their one distinguishing
