The Night (Vance)

by Louis Joseph Vance

THE NIGHT

By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

AND this is your life!" observed the elder man thoughtfully.

The other nodded, smiling his tolerant, pleasant smile. "Such is my life."

He would have said more, apparently, but, interrupted by the locust warning of the buzzer, he turned and, taking up the nickeled headpiece of the receiver, fitted it to his head.

For a few moments his slender fingers moved deftly about the clustered apparatus on the plain wood table, here tightening a turn-screw, there locking a switch. Then sitting passive, he listened, his abstracted gaze ranging through the open window, over the sun-smitten sweep of dunes and naked glaring beach, beaten upon by sleek, green-bellied, silver-crested combers, over the purple-sheeted sea to the dark heaving rim of it: a prospect patterned in level low lines broken by the abrupt skeleton of the aërial.

"Steamer?" inquired the guest, bending forward in eager interest.

"Yes—calling Montauk. So far no answer. I'll cut in."

The supple fingers were again momentarily busy with the instruments, at length settling gently on the sending key. Instantaneously, with a rippling crackle startlingly loud, a violet-colored spark like lightning bridged the gap between the platinum knobs of the induction coil. For a brief time thereafter crash after crash responded in syncopated rhythm to the expert manipulation of the key, shaking the little cottage upon its foundations.

As suddenly as if had begun, the racket ceased. "There's Montauk at last," commented the operator. He swung round, maintaining his intent expression. "It's the Minnesota, of the Transatlantic Transport Line, two days overdue—heavy weather, she says. Do you care to listen, Wain?"

The elder man assenting, his friend made place for him and surrendered the headpiece. After a time, with a perplexed expression, "I don't hear anything but a faint, intermittent ticking, Speed—like a watch with locomotor ataxia," Wain complained.

Speed laughed quietly. "That's it—that's the still small voice of Wireless. It's loud enough—you heard—when it starts out, but after it has filtered through a few odd miles of atmosphere it sneaks down the aërial like a dying whisper,"

"I don't understand it at all—don't presume I ever shall." Wain vacated the chair in Speed's favor, but the latter merely laid aside the receiver and shut off the current from the variegated and formidable-looking mechanisms.

"It's simple, really," he explained carelessly. "You've seen ripples widening from the spot where a stone has dropped into a pool? It's just that way with Wireless; you drop an electric impulse into a sea of Hertzian waves, and they go rippling off indefinitely. Now figure to yourself a chip of wood rocked by the wavelets on the pool; it corresponds to the receiving station—the aërial, out there, the sensitive antenna that receives the impulse and passes it on down to the resonator, here. You see?"

"I begin to. And you're devoting your life to this business?"

"Not altogether. I am experimenting with—along certain lines; the Wireless paraphernalia is merely a sort of guide."

"Don't the Marconi people object?"

"No-o; we're working together in one direction. I'm on the track of a few simplifications of the system, which is at present clogged by too much machinery."

"But aside from that—?" persisted Wain, inquisitive, "Those 'certain lines'——?"

"It'd be hard to explain without going pretty deep into an abstruse subject." Speed eyed him a bit uneasily. "You believe in telepathy?"

"Thought transference?" Wain shook his square head, a sturdy skeptic. "I doctor the body of man, not his brain."

"Well, it's in that direction. Few people realize how thin is the wall between the phenomena we call wireless telegraphy and pure, abstract telepathy."

"I hope they never will," grumbled the elder man sharply, half in scorn, half in acquiescence. It was with the physician's eye that he looked Speed up and down. "You're trained pretty fine," he summed up tersely. "Smoking much?"

"Inordinately," laughed Speed. "I always did, you know."

"Hmm. Sleep well?"

"No-o." Speed averted his keen young face from the too searching gaze. "I—er—haven't, you know, since——"

"You're lonely?" It was, however, as much an assertion of fact as a question.

"I have Chester," evaded Speed.

"Your valet? Where is he now?"

"I sent him to New York to make some purchases. He'll be back to-morrow morning."

"Wel-l." Wain consulted his watch. "I presume you realize it's madness—or the quickest, surest way there—to bury yourself alive in this solitude. I am equally convinced that argument and advice would be wasted on you. Come along over to the dock with me; it's nearly six, and if I don't start now I'll be late for dinner."

"Glad to."

The two men left the cottage and, turning their backs to the surf, swung shoulder to shoulder along a well-defined path through the dunes, from the sea beach to the edge of the landlocked bay. Before them, beyond the intense green of the flats, the water stretched wide, a serene sheet mirroring flawlessly the translucent glory of the summer evening's sky. On the farther shore the lighthouse thrust a red finger high above the ragged, dark contour of scrub-oak and pine forest. Along the water line straggled a string of summer cottages, dwarfed by the barrackslike hotel.

As they gained the rude landing stage to which was moored the catboat in which Wain had crossed, Speed prematurely congratulated himself upon having turned the conversation.

"You won't come over and dine?" Wain dropped heavily into the tiny cockpit of the boat and prepared to hoist sail. "My wife wants to see you, and the hotel table isn't altogether impossible."

"You're good, but—no, thank you," returned Speed from the dock. "Shall I cast you off?"

"Please. I'll sing out when." Wain tugged, panting, at the halyards until he had the canvas spread to his satisfaction, thereafter making fast to cleats and slowly coiling up the surplus rope. "These experiments?" he demanded suddenly, with a troubled face. "Do they lead anywhere? You get results?"

"To some extent, yes."

"I gather you're trying to project your voice——?"

"And you succeed?"

"I—can't say; I get answers."

"The deuce you do! From whom?"

"Perhaps I exaggerate. What I mean is that I have caught words and fragments of phrases that might be replies."

Wain snorted indignantly, tucking the coiled slack between peak-halyard and trunk. "Oh, voices! Recognize any of 'em?"

Speed moistened his lips nervously and stared purposely toward the mainland. "Only my wife's," he admitted eventually, in a low tone.

"But how d'you know she's not?"

"Bess isn't dead," asserted Speed with quiet conviction.

"But you don't know!" disputed the physician vehemently. And then, more mildly: "Can't you forget?"

"No, I—A fellow doesn't, you know. I dare say it was my fault. It still hurts."

There was real pain in the faltered admission; Wain, tender of heart, melted in compassion and forbore further intrusion into the sanctuary of his friend's sorrow. To no other living being, he knew, would Speed have opened his heart; and he prized this proof of intimacy. To-morrow, possibly, the man might be won back to society and the ways of sanity by a little explicit argument based on accepted truths of medical science. But for to-night—"I'm ready," Wain announced, grasping the tiller and trimming the main sheet. "Till to-morrow, then!"

"I count on you." Speed cast the painter aboard and gave the bows a shove. The cat slid away irresolutely; then, sail filling, it heeled and gathered momentum.

Speed watched its breadth of rose-tinted canvas dwindle to a tiny drifting patch ere he turned again toward the lonely cottage in the dunes—with a sigh. For Wain had hit upon the truth; Speed was lonely, desperately so, and more so at that moment, perhaps, than ever he had been since, without warning or explanation, his wife had left him. That day marked the second anniversary of their marriage—since waking his mind had been filled with the consciousness of it. Within six months would come the second anniversary of their separation.… He bowed his head, eyes somber and vacant, lips twitching. For him there could be neither oblivion nor surcease of longing.

For distraction, that night, after eating mechanically, he threw himself with a certain fierce ardor into the pursuit of his vision—struggling, through the long, lamplit hours, with his great problem, the solution of which was to revolutionize the world's methods of communication, doing away not only with the antiquated telegraph and telephone, but with wireless itself. He dreamed curious dreams, this man; and the greatest of them was this.

It was midnight ere, worn and spent, he put aside books, plans, and blueprints, and seated himself before the little deal table, switching a heavy voltage into the strange yet ample combination of devices wherewith he sought to aid the transference of thought by the more gross expedient of projecting the human voice through space. Nightly at this hour, when conditions were most propitious, he experimented thus, striving always in the one direction—to reach the subliminal ear of the woman who was his wife.

Adjusting the duplex receiver so that both ears were covered, he bent forward, tuned up the induction coil, and called repeatedly into the transmitter, in a voice vibrant and clear, the one word; "Bess!" And at each iteration of the monosyllable a brilliant spark leaped silently between the knobs. Then, swiftly shifting the current to the receiving mechanism, he hung in suspense, waiting, scarce breathing, listening, while the great hush of the night-wrapped world sang sibilant in his hearing, only accentuated by the crisp rattle and thud of the slow-breaking surf.

Suddenly he stiffened in the chair, a spot of color burning above either cheek bone, an odd light in his eyes. Had he heard, or had he dreamed he heard, that attenuated whisper which, night after night, had seemed to sound in answer to his heart's bitter cry?

"Allan!"

"Bess!" he cried. "Bess! It is I—Allan, your husband! Do you hear? Answer me!"

An uncontrollable tremor shook him violently. Faint and sweet and far as the winding of a fairy's horn he seemed to catch the answer: "Allan, I hear, and I am coming!" And then, as always, fell the dead silence.

After a while, despairing of further attempts, he shut off the current and sat back, profoundly agitated. Reality or illusion? His wife's voice, or the articulate yearning of his soul? He clenched his hands tightly, knotting his brows in anguish. Was Wain but too justly vindicated of his solicitude for his friend's sanity?

The harsh alarm of the buzzer again disturbed and distracted him. Unthinkingly he had diverted the current into the Wireless apparatus. Out of the vast void of darkness some one was calling the Marconi station at Montauk. Abstractedly Speed put on the receiver and eavesdropped—his privilege, by reason of his understanding with the Wireless management.

The buzzer silenced, his ears were filled with a ceaseless, frantic repetition of the code signal for Montauk, thrilled with an accent of emergency. It educed no answer. After a minute or two Speed cut in, giving the signal of the Nokomis Experimental Station—thinking it probable that some accident had temporarily disabled the regular station. The reply came immediately:

"Hello, Nokomis! What's the matter with Montauk?"

"I don't know," Speed drummed out. "Who are you?"

"Minnesota, Liverpool-New York, twenty miles southwest Nokomis Light, Please transmit these messages to Montauk or New York as soon as possible."

"Go ahead," Speed reached for pad and pencil.

"Transatlantic Transport, N. Y.," he translated the faint, rapid tapping in the receiver. "Ss. Minnesota, 20 m. S.W. Nokomis, struck derelict this p.m. 11.50. Sinking by the bows. Steerage uncontrollable, rioting on boat deck. Two boats lowered, overloaded, and sunk. Sea quiet. No vessel in sight. Hopeless. {Signed) Barrester, Captain."

"Great God!" whispered Speed, stripping off the sheet of paper, and dropping pencil for sending key. "Hello, Minnesota!" he called. "Can nothing be done?"

"Nothing," came the curt reply. "Don't waste time. Water may reach engine room any moment. I'll keep on sending until we sink or blow up. Ready?"

"Ready."

Stupefied with horror, torn with pity, the young man began to write.

"Passengers' messages," came out of the night. "A. L. Speed, Sciences Club, N. Y. We were coming back to you, Bes…"

The clicking stopped; inexorable silence ensued. Though for the better part of the next half hour the cottage quivered and resounded with the dull thunder of his signaling, Speed got no further answer.

Dropping the key at length he stood erect, compressing his temples with both hands in the effort to compose himself and think. The thought of what had taken place twenty miles out at sea, coupled with the consciousness of his impotency, menaced him with madness. He was conscious of black despair closing down upon his sentience like a palpable cloak of darkness.

Something happened within his head—something which his overwrought mind could compare only to the closing of a circuit; he seemed almost to hear the sharp metallic click as the switch was clamped. A mist wavered, tenuous, dissolving, before his eyes, oppressing him with a passing sensation of vertigo. He swallowed with difficulty, gritted his teeth as if in superhuman endeavor, and lifted his head, staring blankly with eyes credulous and luminous with happiness and peace: For he was no longer alone.

He had not seen her enter, but she was there, his wife, standing by the center table in one of her well-remembered poses of unaffected, unstudied grace. Her hair, he saw, was braided as she had been wont to braid it for the night A negligee, a flimsy silken thing of palest blue, trimmed with exquisite lace—a present he had made her—molded itself closely to the lines of her gracious body; at the throat it hung open, betraying the sweet firm contour of her neck, rising like rosy marble from the edging of her night-dress. About her waist was clasped a girdle of wrought gold and gems, richly shimmering in the lamp's soft light; this likewise he had given her. One small white hand rested palm down upon the table, supporting her; it was unadorned. Her left arm she held curiously crooked; the broad golden circlet of their wedding ring shone upon her hand. In the shadow of her wonderful hair her forehead showed serene, unlined, immaculate. Her lips he likened to rose leaves set against alabaster. In his sight she was unutterably lovely. His eyes were drawn ineluctably by hers, the changing violet eyes of a child.

He knew that she waited for him to speak; her face was a prayer and an appeal for his forgiveness. But he seemed unable to speak; he was suffocated with emotion—with joy, with love, with compassion. He noted that water dripped from her sodden clothing, forming in little pools upon the floor. Her name broke from his lips like a sob: "Bess!"

She inclined her head quaintly, lips shaped in a tender smile. He fancied that she breathed the words, "It is I." He grasped the chair beside him, steadying himself.

"You—you escaped?" he cried.

"I escaped, Allan." The deep nuances of her voice, rich with the love he had thought forever lost, thrilled the chords of his being like the smitten strings of a harp. He trembled in uncontrollable agitation.

She continued, her every accent and gesture piteous, saddened, breathing the spirit of her penitence. "What else could I, Allan, my husband? Night after night you have called me, my beloved; night after night my heart has answered that I would come. Could I suffer anything to stand between us, oh, my heart? 'Neither fire nor water.'" She smiled in gentle deprecation. He stood speechless. After a little time, and now stronger, the wonderful voice went on:

"I had dreamed that to-morrow, at the latest, I would come to you, kneel before you, beg your forgiveness, Allan. For, oh, the blame was altogether mine, my husband! But if I have caused you suffering, I, too, have suffered—sorrowed even in my greatest joy." She lowered her face momentarily above the inexplicably crooked arm, lifting it luminous with emotion.

He did not understand. "There is no need," he said brokenly—"no need, since you have come back to me——"

She stopped him with an imperative gesture. "There is need—great need, my husband. Between us there can no longer be any misunderstanding. Faith, faith and understanding as complete as our love, must be ours, henceforth and forevermore, Allan. You did not know, how did I guess, bow little worthy I was——"

"No!" he cried violently.

"But it is so, truly "so, Allan," she contended inflexibly. "I, who have sorrowed, know. Through sorrow I have learned. I did not appreciate; I thought, because you left me for your work, that your love must be a lesser thing than mine, who would have sacrificed my every desire and hour in your service, beloved. To keep you with me, always! But you would go. Insensibly I grew jealous of this rival; I conceived for the work of your life, a man's work and worthy of you, a hateful enmity; it seemed to threaten me, like some malicious, heartless identity, bent on separating you from me. I did not understand, Allan—I was too young, too poor in experience and knowledge. I lived in a world of illusion, unreal, woven of a girl's dreams, until we were married, and thereafter for a little time. The meaning of living and of love, the lesson of womanhood, I had never known. No—let me go on!"

"One day you seemed even more abstracted, less considerate than ever. That day I—for the first time, Allan"—a slow flush burned her cheeks, but her eyes held steadily to his own—"I was made to understand the meaning of my woman's birthright, the burden and the joy of it. I was dazed, frightened. Instead of turning to you, in my folly I turned away. I fled to England, staying with my mother's family. They were very sweet and good to me, but in the long months of waiting, Allan, I came to see my error, my sin against your love. Slowly I began to see.

"There came no word from you; I thought your heart must have turned against me. I waited, waited, hoping against hope, until that first night when your voice sounded in my ears, thou the sea lay between us, calling me back, back to your heart, Allan! Meanwhile the boy was born——"

"The boy!" he interrupted hoarsely. In his hands the back of the chair cracked, threatening to break. "What boy?"

"Our boy, Allan—your son and mine," A second time she bent low over the curved, cradling arm. When again she faced him, she seemed transfigured with joy. "I have brought him home to you, beloved—the man-child, worthy of his father. See!" she cried proudly, lifting toward him her empty arms. "Is he not beautiful, your son, my beloved? Was ever a child more strong and sturdy and sweet and wonderful? See his little hands, the adorable creases in his little lags."

"Bess!" The cry was torn from the man's soul. For now it was made plain to him that she was mad. "You—you have not—he was not drowned, Bess?"

Her troubled eyes questioned his, bewildered. Slowly she shook her head. "I have told you that we escaped, he and I, Allan! No; he is there." She hugged close to her bosom the terribly empty cradle of her arms. "He is safe, my heart's dearest."

Choking, in his agony the man dropped the broken chair and strode toward her. And stopped, For suddenly she was not. And his heart became as ice in his breast; his tongue clave to the dry roof of his mouth; his brain reeled. Then, with an exceeding bitter cry, he turned and fled the awful desolation of that place.

An hour later, it may be, the shock of cold water brought him to partial rationality. He found himself standing waist deep in the surf, with arms outstretched, his eardrums throbbing with the echo of his wife's name, shrieked in a voice he failed to recognize as his own.

But for that, with the unceasing chant of the sea, the night had been quiet and beautiful. Overhead the sky was clear and splendid with stars. A slit haze, dimly luminous, blurred the distances. Out of its occult bosom long, black, foamless rollers shouldered sluggishly, with a singular seeming d reluctance lurching in over the outer bar, pale cold fire gleaming on their crests as they curled to break in a welter of phosphorescence.

Lowering his arms the man turned back. Behind the beach the dunes rolled away in ghostly procession, a chill breeze stirring the sand grass on their rounded summits and filling the air with eerie whisperings. Above them the unlovely facade of the cottage lifted up, flanked by the gaunt aërial, doors and windows golden with lamplight.

As he gained the unwashed beach the man's knees seemed to give beneath him. Racked by strange and terrible spasms of sobbing, he fell, pillowing his head instinctively upon his forearms.

In this posture, at length, a sort of syncope mercifully numbed him into insensibility. In this posture the day discovered him.

A film of water, upthrown by the making tide, half strangled him. He rose, staggering, a tittle blinded by the glare of light.

Over the edge of the placid sapphire sea the sun was rising, red and hot, its level rays splashing a scarlet lane across the waters. The wide arc of the horizon, stark against its border of magenta and purple cloud, was bare of any sail or smoke smudge; but, clear and black against the blood-red trail, something floated, a tiny spot, far ashore.

The man's eyes were arrested and held by it. Wan and haggard he stood at gaze for many minutes. Then, almost automatically, he stooped and unlaced his shoes.

Free of these, he was attired only in a light cotton shirt and duck trousers. Without any trace of hesitation he advanced into the surf. The water rose to his knees, a wave splashed him to the waist; presently his feet left bottom and he began to swim straight out for the drifting spot of black. He was a strong swimmer and unafraid. His methodical, long, powerful overhand strokes urged him rapidly through water limpid green and warm. Once only he paused to rest and regain his wasted breath. He had then covered half the distance; the spot had taken shape as a small life raft, composed of two air-tight metal cylinders with a scanty breadth of planking uniting them. Upon this fragile platform something lay without motion. As he watched a wave lifted the raft high in the brilliant sunlight. He saw a flutter of something white, backed by a shimmer of turquoise blue. A sunbeam shattered itself blindingly upon a jeweled boss of a golden girdle.

Speed turned upon his side and struck out, fear gripping his throat with fingers of ice.

Some moments later he grasped the edge of the the raft and skilfully lifted himself aboard.

As he knelt above her, his wife lay supine, at ease, as if asleep, face turned to the sun and glorified by its radiance. An end of rope had been passed round her waist and made fast, inexpertly, to the deck planks. Held jealously in her arms a child rested, chubby arms clasping her neck, one fat, rosy cheek against her own.

Wearying of the constraint of her embrace, he turned and whimpered in his sleep. The shadow of a smile moderated the anxious line of her scarlet drooping lips; a tinge of color crept into her cheeks; upon them the long, light lashes quivered and lifted. She sighed; and the first glance of her widening violet eyes probed deep into the soul of Speed.