Chapter III “Forsaken Guts and Creeks”
“If we have loved but well
Under the sun,
Let the last morrow tell
What we have done.”
—Bliss Carman.
On an exceptionally disreputable Montreal street stood a particularly unsavoury old studio building. Like other unsavoury things it had an interesting history, having, in its palmy days, belonged to an English duke. The duke was now dust and the studio building unpopular with the constabulary. Yet an air of former greatness enveloped it and its large, spacious halls and lofty ceilings bore mute and pathetic testimony to the grandeur of former days.
In an apartment which a duchess had once inhabited rats and spiders revelled, unrebuked, save when, once a week, a wild-eyed slattern clattered noisily in and attacked them with broom and scrubbing-brush. Sometimes the heavy old-fashioned door was locked and she went away rejoicing; sometimes it was merely closed, in which case she entered fearlessly and performed her tasks as expeditiously and abominably as possible. Frequently, during these revels, the lithe form of Mr. Ricossia might have been discerned, stretched upon the studio couch in deep and peaceful slumber. Even the prosaic and work-harrowed drudge of the Chatham was wont to pause occasionally and gaze with something approaching awe at the frail form and beautiful face of the opium-drugged consumptive. A spiritual majesty lay on his brow and his whole being seemed expressive of an unearthly peace and a sombre loveliness. Like some dark, fallen star he lay quiescent in the dim light of the studio; a thing to make one’s heart ache when one reflected that he, too, was born of a human mother.
Mr. Ricossia’s movements were uncertain, however; and one fine January evening found him sitting at the studio table, smoking and scribbling, busily. Presently the door opened; he looked up, pleasantly, showing no surprise, and bent over his writing.
“Just a minute!” he said, in a low voice.
The visitor nodded, closed the door quietly, and stood as though waiting. Presently she raised a thick veil and fixed her eyes intently on the writer. They were sombre eyes, not over large but somewhat expressive; and as she watched the other occupant of the studio, they dilated and glowed in a way that was almost fierce and wholly human. So might a fire-tortured martyr have regarded in death the symbol of his faith, the cross for which he died.
Presently the woman spoke.
“I can only stay a few minutes, my darling,” she said in a low voice, vibrating with painful tenderness. “There is the money.”
The boy sprang to his feet and grasped it, his dark eyes aflame with eagerness. Hastily, greedily, he counted it over, then put it in his pocket and turned to the woman with a brilliant smile.
“That is fine,” he said, his flute-like voice making melody in the studio and in his hearer’s heart. “You must have done well, lately. How much have you sold altogether?”
“A long story to the ‘Alhambra,’ a funny skit to the ‘Woman’s Hearth’ and an article or two to some smaller concerns. Try to make it last, for I had to spend nearly all my month’s salary—oh, Liol, Liol!”
A burst of coughing interrupted her and turned her wind-flushed face white. She stood in silence, knowing that nothing infuriated the dying boy like sympathy, and held her breath, waiting for the paroxysm to pass. So long did it last, however, that she forgot all caution and, rushing to the sick man’s side, caught his hand and screamed aloud.
“Oh, Liol, Liol, do you want to kill me? Won’t you go to that retreat? and try to live for my sake? Oh try, only try! I can’t bear it! I thought I could, but I can’t. Oh, for God’s sake, go! try it, only try it for a little while”—
He snatched his hand away and flung himself on the couch, shaking with weakness and fury.
“Again?” he cried, raging. “You ask me again to go to one of those vile cures? after all I’ve said and sworn? God in Heaven! how often must I tell you that, if I’ve only a few months to live, I’m going to live! not die by inches. Fool that you are!”
She covered her face with her hands and turned away from him.
“Go to those beastly mountains,” he snarled, venomously. “Go where all that makes life worth living will be out of reach and I dogged by a pack of vile, prying doctors and attendants! If you’re tired of keeping me I’ll take an extra dose and end it to-night!”
“Liol!”
“Then don’t madden me! Here! you said you couldn’t stay long, didn’t you? My last poems are on the table. Send a couple more to ‘Hosmer’s Monthly’—they asked for them—God! is this another fit coming on?... There! I feel better. It passes sometimes and I daresay I’ll outlive you all, yet.” His face brightened and became luminous with hope and defiance. The terrible paroxysm of coughing had flooded his dusky cheeks with rose; his black hair curled limply back from his damp forehead; his magnificent eyes expanded and fired with the consumptive’s cheating illusion of future health. Beside his glowing, burning beauty Lynn Thayer seemed one of those daughters of earth who, in former ages, loved the sons of God. She devoured him with her eyes in a silence so tense and sorrow-laden that the very air seemed to vibrate with it.
“Ah God, how I love you,” she said at last, hopelessly. “And you—oh, Liol, Liol, you never even kissed me, to-night.”
“What? Never even kissed you?” answered the other, good-humouredly. “Well, but, my dear old girl, you must remember that the fool doctors say that consumption’s catching. They’re right, too; I caught it from my father, curse him! I wouldn’t be where I am to-day if it wasn’t for him.” His face darkened, moodily; then he shrugged his shoulders and held out his arms with a smile that was more mirthful than tender.
Lynn Thayer walked swiftly to the couch, dropped on her knees beside it and buried her face in the frail shoulder of its occupant. She remained thus for a few minutes while he wound thin arms about her and murmured endearments which held a perfunctory note even to her love-deafened ears. Presently she rose.
“Leo Ricossia is making quite a name by his prose writing,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “I must try to keep it up, Liol. Do you remember when I called you ‘Liol’ once, before some people and they thought it so funny and we were so worried about it? Yet you see no one has ever suspected anything.”
“No. If they did, I suppose it would have to come out,” said the boy, slowly.
“What?”
Lynn started and looked confounded.
“What?” she cried. “Break my word to my dead mother? Tell who you are? how she made me promise to keep you and watch over you until you died and let no one know who you were?—What are you dreaming of, Liol?”
“Why, it’s nothing to me,” returned the other, watching her composedly. “Girls must go into heroics over something, I suppose; but you must see for yourself that all this would look pretty badly if it came out and wasn’t explained, and it would hardly be worth while to lose your reputation and your home and your position too, for an oath to a dead woman. Too bad you have to come here by night, but, of course, day-time is impossible, for people would be sure to see you, whereas the chances are ten to one against it in the dark and dressed as you are. That absurd oath! What was it now? And she was going to come back and curse you, too, if you broke it, wasn’t she?” He laughed.
“Our mother, Liol!” said Lynn, in a choked voice.
“Yes, our mother. I’ve almost forgotten what she looked like even, but I suppose you remember her better than I do, though I don’t see why you should, considering the length of time that you were away from her and—see here, Lynn, you’ve been here an ungodly time; I don’t want to hurry you, but—oh, I say! Amherst is puzzling his brains out as to how I can write such healthy, humourous prose. You would have shouted if you had heard him, the other night.”
“Perhaps. But I must go, directly.”
Lynn shivered and drew her fur a little more closely about her throat.
“I must go now, Liol,” she repeated in a low voice. “Good-bye. And don’t—but there! what’s the use of talking? Do as you please, dear; only try to love me a little if you can. You’re all I’ve got.”
“Mighty little at that, too! You have but little here below nor will you have that little long—there, don’t look like that, old girl! I’m only joking, you know.”
With this joke ringing in her ears Lynn left; passed down the rickety stairs, through the dark doorway, out upon the noisy street. It was not a savoury neighbourhood this, where her brother had elected to take up his abode. In fact, it was not a place for a lady at any hour of the day or night. In face of an overpowering compulsion, however, a woman sometimes forgets that she is a lady, and this was what had happened in Lynn’s case. The love which, in the majority of instances, is divided among parents, brothers, sisters, husband, children, had been concentrated upon one object. A foolish vow exacted by a delirious and dying woman had become the important thing in Lynn Thayer’s life, the keeping of it a sacred duty.
We are usually punished both for our follies and our virtues, and Lynn was certainly severely punished for hers. Ricossia, as he was called, in Montreal, kept her on a constant rack of uncertainty and suspense. Daily, hourly, she expected to hear of his death and, sometimes, in moments of more than usual bitterness and grief, she almost wished that he were safe in the grave and incapable of doing himself or her more harm. The unworthiness of the loved object, moreover, made life proportionately bitter; the necessity for constant deceit and stealth was a cruel necessity to one of her nature, and the witty tales which helped to procure her brother the luxuries he craved were frequently written in anguish of heart and despair of spirit. Poor Punchinello, dancing gaily on the night his love died and his heart was broken, has many a modern prototype.
Yet through all the disgust and grief which his nature and actions caused her, her love never faltered. To her, the drinking, drug-crazed youth in whose degenerate nature there was not a trace of anything high or kind was the baby brother of early days; the baby brother whom she had tended, adored, sacrificed and been sacrificed for during the most impressionable years of her life. The tiny creature had crept into the lonely heart of the child, satisfying every want, sweetening every bitterness. There had been nothing else in Lynn’s life that had held comparison with this.