...
III
At noon next day when I called,
I found Boris walking restlessly about his studio.
"Geneviève is asleep just
now," he told me, "the sprain is nothing, but why should she have such
a high fever? The doctor can't account for it; or else he will not," he
muttered.
"Geneviève has a fever?"
I asked.
"I should say so, and has actually
been a little light-headed at intervals all night. The idea, gay little
Geneviève, without a care in the world,and she keeps saying her
heart's broken, and she wants to die."
My own heart stood still.
Boris leaned against the door of
his studio, looking down, his hands in his pockets, his kind, keen eyes
clouded, a new line of trouble drawn "over the moth's good mark, that made
the smile." The maid had orders to summon him the instant Geneviève
opened her eyes. We waited and waited, and Boris growing restless wandered
about fussing with modelling wax and red clay. Suddenly he started for
the next room. "Come and see my rose-colored bath full of death," he cried.
"Is it death?" I asked to humor
his mood.
"You are not prepared to call it
life, I suppose," he answered. As he spoke he plucked a solitary gold fish
squirming and twisting out of its globe. "We'll send this one after the
other--wherever that is," he said. There was feverish excitement in his
voice. A dull weight of fever lay on my limbs and on my brain as I followed
him to the fair crystal pool with its pink-tinted sides; and he dropped
the creature in. Falling, its scales flashed with a hot orange gleam in
its angry twistings and contortions; the moment it struck the liquid it
became rigid and sank heavily to the bottom. Then came the milky foam,
the splendid hues radiating on the surface and then the shaft of pure serene
light broke though from seemingly infinite depths. Boris plunged in his
hand and drew out an exquisite marble thing, blue-veined, rose tinted and
glistening with opalescent drops.
"Child's play," he muttered, and
looked wearily, longingly at me, as if I could answer such questions. But
Jack Scott came in and entered into the "game" as he called it with ardor.
Nothing would do but to try the experiment on the white rabbit then and
there. I hated to see the life go out of a warm, living creature and I
declined to be present. Picking up a book at random I sat down in the studio
to read. Alas, I had found "The King in Yellow." After a few moments which
seemed ages, I was putting it away with a nervous shudder, when Boris and
Jack came in bringing their marble rabbit. At the same time the bell rang
above and a cry came from the sick room. Boris was gone like a flash, and
the next moment he called "Jack, run for the doctor; bring him back with
you. Alec, come here."
I went and stood at her door. A
frightened maid came out in haste and ran away to fetch some remedy. Geneviève,
sitting bolt upright, with crimson cheeks and glittering eyes, babbled
incessantly and resisted Boris' gentle restraint. He called me to help.
At my first touch she sighed and sank back, closing her eyes, and thenstraight
into Boris' face, poor fever-crazed girl, and told her secret. At that
some instant, our three lives turned into new channels; the bond that had
held us so long together snapped forever and a new bond was forged in its
place, for she had spoken my name, and as the fever tortured her, her heart
poured out its load of hidden sorrow. Amazed and dumb I bowed my head,
while my face burned like a live coal, and the blood surged in my ears,
stupefying me with its clamor. Incapable of movement, incapable of speech,
I listened to her feverish words in an agony of shame and sorrow. I could
not silence her, I could not look at Boris. Then I felt an arm upon my
shoulder, and Boris turned a bloodless face to mine.
"It is not your fault, Alec, don't
grieve so if she loves you--" but he could not finish; and as the doctor
stepped swiftly int the room saying -- "Ah, the fever!" I seized Jack Scott
and hurried him to the street saying, "Boris would rather be alone." We
crossed the street to our own apartments and that night, seeing I was going
to be ill too, he went for the doctor again. The last thing I recollect
with any distinctness was hearing Jack say, "For Heaven's sake, doctor,
what ails him, to wear a face like that?" and I thought of "The King in
Yellow" and the Pallid Mask.
I was very ill, for the strain of
two years which I had endured since that fatal may morning when Geneviève
murmured, "I love you, but I think I love Boris best" told on me at last.
I had never imagined that it could become more than I could endure. Outwardly
tranquil, I had deceived myself. Although the inward battle raged night
after night, and I, lying alone in my room, cursed myself for rebellious
thoughts unloyal to Boris and unworthy of Geneviève, the morning
always brought relief, and I returned to Geneviève and to my dear
Boris with a heart washed clean by the tempests of the night.
Never a word or deed or thought
while with them, had I betrayed my sorrow even to myself.
The mask of self-deception was not
longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare
the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and
when day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord. These thoughts
passed through my troubled mind as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly
entangled with visions of white creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about
in Boris' basin, of the wolf's head on the rug, foaming and snapping at
Geneviève, who lay smiling beside it. I thought, too, of The King
in Yellow wrapt in the fantastic colors of his tattered mantle, and that
bitter cry of Cassilda, "Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!" Feverishly
I struggled to put it from me, but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank,
without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind
the moon. Aldebaran, The Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud
rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like scalloped tatters
of The King in Yellow. Among all these, one sane thought persisted. It
never wavered, no matter what else was going on in my disordered mind,
that my chief reason for existing was to meet some requirement of Boris
and Geneviève. What this obligation was, its nature was never clear;
sometimes it seemed to be protection, sometimes support through a great
crisis. Whatever it seemed to be for the time, its weight rested only on
me, and I was never so ill or so weak that I did not respond with my whole
soul. there were always crowds of faces about me, mostly strange, but a
few I recognized, Boris among them. Afterward they told me that this could
not have been, but I know that once at least he bent over me. It was only
a touch, a faint echo of his voice, then the clouds settled back on my
senses, and I lost him, but he did stand there and bend over me once at
least.
At last, one morning I awoke to
find the sunlight falling across my bed, and Jack Scott reading beside
me. I had not strength enough to speak aloud, neither could I think, much
less remember, but I could smile feebly, as Jack's eye met mine, and when
he jumped up and asked eagerly if I wanted anything, I could whisper, "Yes,
Boris." Jack moved to the head of my bed, and leaned down to arrange my
pillow: I did not see his face, but he answered heartily, "You must wait,
Alec, you are too weak to see even Boris."
I waited and I grew strong; in a
few days I was able to see whom I would, but meanwhile I had thought and
remembered. From the moment when all the past grew clear again in my mind,
I never doubted what I should do when the time came, and I felt sure that
Boris would have resolved upon the same course so far as he was concerned;
as for what pertained to me alone, I knew he would see that also as I did.
I no longer asked for any one. I never inquired why no message came from
them; why during the week I lay there, waiting and growing stronger, I
never heard their name spoken. Preoccupied with my own searching for the
right way, and with my feeble but determined fight against despair, I simply
acquiesced in Jack's reticence, taking for granted that he was afraid to
speak of them, lest I should turn unruly and insist on seeing them. Meanwhile
I said over and over to myself, how it would be when life began again for
us all. We would take up our relations exactly as they were before Geneviève
fell ill. Boris and I would look into each other's eyes and there would
be neither rancor nor cowardice nor mistrust in that glance. I would be
with them again for a little while in the dear intimacy of their home,
and then, without pretext or explanation, I would disappear from their
lives forever. Boris would know, Genevièvethe only comfort was that
she would never know. It seemed, as I thought it over, that I had found
the meaning of that sense of obligation which had persisted all through
my delirium, and the only possible answer to it. So, then I was quite ready,
I beckoned Jack to me one day, and said, "Jack, I want Boris at once; and
take my dearest greeting to Geneviève. . . ."
When at last he made me understand
that they were both dead, I fell into such a wild rage as to throw all
my little convalescent strength to atoms. I raved and cursed myself into
a relapse, from which I crawled froth some weeks afterward a boy of twenty-one
who believed that his youth was gone forever. I seemed to be past the capability
of further suffering, and one day when Jack handed me a latter and the
keys to Boris' house, I took them without a tremor and asked him to tell
me all. It was cruel of me to ask him, but there was no help for it, and
he leaned wearily on his thin hands, to reopen the wound which could never
entirely heal. He began quietly.
"Alec, unless you have a clue that
I know nothing about, you will not be able to explain any more than I what
has happened. I suspect that you wold rather not hear these details, but
you must learn them, else I would spare them the relation. God knows I
wish I could be spared the telling. I shall use few words.
"That day when I left you in the
doctor's care and came back to Boris, I found him working on the 'Fates.'
Geneviève, he said, was sleeping under the influence of drugs. She
had been quite out of her mind, he said. He kept working, not talking any
more, and I watched him. Before long, I saw that the third figure of the
group -- the one looking straight ahead, out over the world -- bore his
face; not as you ever saw it, but as it looked then and to the end. This
is one thing for which I should like to find an explanation, but I never
shall.
"Well, he worked and I watched him
in silence, and we went on that way until near midnight. Then we heard
a door open and shut sharply, and a swift rush in the next room. Boris
sprang through the doorway and I followed; but we where too late. She lay
at the bottom of the pool, her hands across her breast. Then Boris shot
himself through the heart." Jack stopped speaking, drops of sweat stood
under his eyes, and his thin cheeks twitched. "I carried Boris to his room,
and turning on all the water, washed the marble clean of every drop. When
at length I dared descend the steps, I found her lying there as white as
snow. At last, when I had decided what was best to do, I went into the
laboratory, and first emptied the solution in the basin into the waste-pipe;
then I poured the contents of every jar and bottle after it. There was
wood in the fire-place, so I built a fire, and breaking the locks of Boris'
cabinet I burnt every paper, note-book and letter that I found there. With
a mallet form the studio I smashed to pieces all the empty bottles, then
loading them into a coal scuttle, I carried them to the cellar and threw
them over the red-hot bed of the furnace. Six times I made the journey,
and at last, not a vestige remained of anything which might again aid in
seeking for the formula which Boris had found. Then at last I dared call
the doctor. He is a good man, and together we struggled to keep if from
the public. Without him I never could have succeeded. At last we got the
servants paid and sent away into the country, where old Rosier keeps them
quiet with stories of Boris' and Geneviève's travels in distant
lands, from whence they will not return for years. We buried Boris in the
little cemetery of Sèvres. The doctor is a good creature and knows
when to pity a man who can bear no more. He gave his certificate of heart
disease and asked no questions of me."
Then lifting his head from his hands,
he said, "Open the letter, Alec; it is for us both."
I tore it open. It was Boris' will
dated a year before. He left everything to Geneviève, and in case
of her dying childless, I was to take control of the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile,
and Jack Scott, the management at Ept. On our deaths the property reverted
to his mother's family in Russia, with the exception of the sculptured
marbles executed by himself. These he left to me.
The page blurred under our eyes,
and Jack got up and walked to the window. Presently he returned and sat
down again. I dreaded to hear what he was going to say, but he spoke with
the same simplicity and gentleness.
"Geneviève lies before the
Madonna in the marble room. The Madonna bends tenderly above her, and Geneviève
smiles back into that calm face that never would have been except for her."
His voice broke, but he grasped
my hand, saying, "Courage, Alec." Next morning he left for Ept to fulfil
his trust.
End of PART THREE..... GO TO PART
FOUR..... 
