# In Honey's house

Extracted from Scribner's magazine, 1921, pp. 741-754. Accompanying illustrations by Walter Tittle omitted.
IN HONEY'S HOUSE
By Wolcott LeCléar Beard
BECAUSE I had been a captain-doctor in France, where inconsiderate Teutons injected some mustard-gas and a few bits of H.E. shell into my system, my uncle and only relative purchased for me the practice of old Doctor Jenkins, who was anxious to retire. These facts are here given because they serve to explain me and my domiciliary advent in Greenwich Village. My advent is of importance, so far as this story is concerned, only because it placed me in a position to narrate said story.
Having thus attended to the above matters, I can begin fairly at the moment when I alighted at the Christopher Street Station from a Ninth Avenue train, dressed in brand-new civilian clothes. Setting my suitcase down on the platform, and assuming the attitude best calculated to ease the leg with a limp in it, I drew two keys from my pocket and proceeded to examine the tags that were fastened to them. They bore the inscriptions "Front Door" and "Back Door," respectively, with an address under each. The latter address was on Christopher Street.
"‘Back Door' has the jump on 'Front Door' by nearly five blocks," said I to myself. "It mayn't be a very dignified manner in which to enter my new domain, but this gimpy leg of mine isn't strong on dignity, just now. 'Back Door' wins!"
So I stumped eastward, and soon found the door I sought. It was set in a brick wall and led, as nearly as I could make out, into the back room of a corner saloon. Upon entering, however, I discovered my mistake.
I found myself in a narrow, flagged alley which evidently, when New York still lay south of Canal Street, and Greenwich Village really was a village, had led from a back lane through a garden. To one side grew an ailanthus-tree, with the sunshine of late spring filtering greenly through its leaves. A stone arch, within which the original garden-gate must have swung, still was standing, just inside the doorway that had admitted me. On the flat top of this arch stood a large flower pot with a dead geranium in it.
I am not likely soon to forget that flower-pot. It, the arch, the flagged alley, and the tree together formed, as it seemed to me, a quaintly picturesque fragment of old New York. I had paused, half turning, fully to take it in, and my eyes happened for the instant to be resting on the flower-pot in question.
At that instant there came a sound as though all the clocks in New York had tripped their winding pawls—or whatever the proper technical name of those things may be—had tripped their pawls and allowed their mainsprings to run unchecked. While this was still in progress there came a sort of "whish!" short but emphatic, followed by a report that might have been made by a rather heavy shotgun.
Coincidently with the report, that flower-pot behaved like a bursting shell. It started the dead geranium in business as a rocket, in which capacity it vanished into space. Its earth and shards were distributed impartially, far and wide. One of the latter struck me, and promptly I "took the count." Leaning against the alley wall, I slid downward until I sat on the flagged pavement and for a little the world, so far as I was aware, ceased to exist.
How long I sat there I don't know, but it could not have been very long. My bad leg regulated that matter, for it had fallen in a constrained position, and its emphatic protests brought me to myself. Slowly I climbed to my feet, feeling as though I had been kicked by a mule. The shard fortunately had hit me with its flat side, so the skin of my face was unbroken, but my eye was swelling so that already it was nearly closed, and I knew that soon it must look as though it had been operated upon by the late John L. Sullivan in his palmy days.
In this plight, covered with dust and dirt, limping worse than ever, I slunk in through the back door of the house for which I was bound. Mounting the basement stairs, one step at a time, I sank, an exhausted heap, into a chair of the office that was henceforward to be mine. It couldn't be called a really auspicious entrance upon the scene of my future labors.
Naturally I desired to rest a little, to brush myself off and bathe my eye before exploring my new domain. These moderate though heartfelt wishes were, however, denied me. I heard, as I thought, a rapping, coming from some point I could not locate. Then there came a voice—a girl's voice.
"Doctor!" it cried. "Doctor—oh, doctor!"
I made no move at first. The sounds were not loud, and with my head swimming as it was, I could not be sure whether they came from the inside of that head or the outside. But in a moment the rapping was repeated, and another voice called—a girl's voice still, but far deeper and more powerful than the first had been.
"Can't you answer, doctor?" it demanded imperiously. "We know you're there; Maisie saw the back door open, Come here—quick! It's for Honey. He'll die!"
I staggered to my feet, then. Leaving the office, I returned to the passage. "Where are you?" I asked.
"Here—at the door—Honey's door, Where did you suppose?" was the impatient reply, close to my ear.
Then, for the first time, I noticed the door in question. It was set in the passage wall, on the side opposite that from which my rooms opened. I drew a great bolt that fastened this door. Small wonder that we started—all three of us—the two girls and I.
Before me stood the most superb specimen of young womanhood that I have ever beheld. Very fair, with features of classical regularity, she was almost a giantess; yet her proportions must have approximated perfection as closely as human proportions ever can.
Peeping timidly from behind her was the other girl, as tiny as the first was great. This girl had little real beauty; yet somehow there was an appeal in her wistful face that instantly aroused in any decent man the desire to protect her. Just now her bobbed hair was rather untidy, and her soft, brown eyes were disfigured by a pair of those hideous, stove-lid spectacles, framed with dark shell, The pair reminded me of nothing so much as a very small owl seeking the protection of a heroic, Norse version of Minerva, both owl and patron goddess being incongruously dressed in "mandarin" coats, blazing with gold-and-silver embroidery, loose bloomers to the knees, and black-silk stockings.
For their part, they saw a dusty, dishevelled blackguard, with a limp and a black eye, that looked as though he had come straight from a disreputable saloon as yet unaffected by prohibition. No; the fact that the blond goddess drew up her superb body in a manner that was almost threatening was not in the least to be wondered at, as I hinted before.
"I called for the doctor—for Doctor Jenkins," said she, with cold severity.
"I'm the doctor," I babbled confusedly forth. "Not Doctor Jenkins, of course—his successor. I know I don't look it. I've just had an accident. Hamilton's my name—John Hamilton."
She hesitated for a moment. It was only for a moment, however.
"We'll have to take a chance," said she. "So come on, John Hamilton—Doctor John Hamilton. You're needed badly."
She led me into a strange room which I had no time to notice, and past a young man whom I noticed despite the want of time, for he was as large for a man as the goddess, as I have called her, was for a woman. But unlike her, he had about him such a look of softness, physical and mental, such a look of confused indecision—funk is what it amounted to—that I learned to despise him even in the moment that it took me to reach the side of my patient.
My patient was reclining in a long chair, his eyes turned up so far that only the whites were visible. He must, I think, have been one of the least beautiful human beings in existence. His body was so weak, so puny and malformed, that it amounted almost to deformity. His face might have served for the model of a gargoyle. But of a kindly gargoyle; kindly and essentially so good that amount of ugliness could disguise that fact.
In one hand this patient of mine gripped the barrel of an archaic gun so tightly that I had difficulty in releasing it. He was quite unconscious, but it was no wound from the gun that made him so. No detailed examination was needed to tell me how far wrong his heart had gone. One glance at his face was enough.
"Go into my office, get the little, black-leather box out of my suitcase and bring it here and run!" I snapped, addressing the little owl-girl. "And you," I added, speaking to the young man, "help me get him to bed."
The little girl seemed to drift, rather than to run, like a bright-hued, wind-driven autumn leaf. The young man seemed somehow to shrink into himself as he sat, when he heard my words, but made no other move. It was the goddess who helped me get my patient to bed. Then I sent her from the room.
Long and anxiously I worked over that patient of mine. For a time it was touch and go. I shot enough nitroglycerine—hypodermically—into his system almost to have blown up the house, had it been put to its ordinary, non-medicinal use. After a while his heart-action strengthened, and he fell into a light but natural sleep. I tiptoed back into the room where I had found him.
There the goddess sat bolt upright in a chair, her eyes on the owl-girl and the objectionable young man in the opposite corner of the room. The young man, still seated, wore an expression of peevish discontent, as he read, or pretended to read, a huge volume of Shakespeare. The owl-girl knelt at his feet, her arms around his waist, and the stove-lid spectacles laid on the rug by her side in order that she might more comfortably cry into the handkerchief which she had wadded into a damp ball on the young man's knee.
The owl-girl sprang to her feet as I entered. All six eyes were fixed upon me. I hastened to answer the questions I knew they would ask.
"He's better—but nevertheless a very sick man," said I. "And there's another matter. Until now, you see, I never met——"
"Honey," supplied the goddess, as I hesitated.
Until now I never met Mr. Honey, and know nothing of his affairs," I resumed. "Therefore—though it's an awkward necessity—I'll have to get the information from you people. Has he any relatives? And how is he situated financially?"
The owl-girl and the objectionable young man looked first at each other and then at the goddess. It was the goddess who answered. It seemed always to be she who answered. There was a hard, sneering little laugh on her beautiful lips as she spoke,
"Honey hasn't a relative or a nickel in the world," said she. "But don't fear, Doctor John Hamilton. Your fee will be paid. I'll personally see that it is."
She turned her eyes meaningly on the objectionable young man. With a whine of protest he jumped to his feet. As he did so the big volume of Shakespeare closed with a resounding slap. I turned upon him furiously.
"Have you no better sense than to make a noise like that here?" I snarled. "Sit down and keep quiet. Do it now!"
He obeyed meekly. He was like a big, cowardly boy, who would like to bully, but doesn't dare. So I proceeded to empty the phials of my wrath upon the goddess.
"What right had you to assume that I spoke of my fee?" I hotly demanded. "As a matter of fact, the fee never entered my head. But this man will need care. Also many other things. It was a trained nurse I was thinking of."
The goddess smiled a wide and wonderful smile, showing perfect teeth. Also she held out her hand, which I found, when I took it, had the firm grasp of a man's.
"Doctor Jack, I beg your pardon," said she. "I ought to have had better sense. But you see," she added, with a motion of her head toward the objectionable young man, "I was thinking, for the moment, in terms of Harvey Priest, there."
Again there came that whine of protest from the objectionable young man, now identified as Harvey Priest. Harvey's whine availed him nothing, however, even though it was backed by a little cry from the owl-girl. With a wave of her hand the goddess temporarily abolished them both and went serenely on.
"I fear we can't run to a trained nurse," said she, "but I think we can manage the rest. Harvey, how much does Honey ask for that gun you're going to buy?"
"I never said that I'd buy it—I don't know that I want to," cried Harvey. "I won't buy anything till I know what it's worth. I won't, I say!"
The goddess, for a little, stood gazing at him with infinitely calm reproof. As Harvey shifted uneasily under her gaze, I observed him more minutely than previously I had been able to do. The inspection was not satisfactory.
Harvey's voice was thin and mean. It was not at all in keeping with his big frame; but with one aspect of his face—though with only one aspect—it was perfectly in keeping. For the face, though both handsome and intellectual in its way, was also mean; mean with the suspicious keenness of the petty trader, yet was soft despite its keenness. Harvey's dress was studiously negligent, his hair longish, his tie flowing. These things, constituting almost an official uniform of a certain class of beings that infest Greenwich Village, still failed to classify Harvey. For though that class is ridiculous enough, and possessed of many faults, those of the petty trader are not usually numbered among those faults.
In short, Harvey seemed to be a sort of contradiction in terms. Though my observation caused me to dislike him more than ever, I failed utterly to explain him. This the goddess then proceeded, in a measure, to do.
"Harvey's people, you see, began in a very small way," said she, quite as though Harvey was elsewhere. "But they rose in the world until now they manufacture an enormous quantity of frightfully ugly furniture in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In some respects Harvey takes after his people. But he prefers writing poetry to stealing designs for furniture. And though you mightn't think it, it's good poetry, too.
"Harvey," she went on, turning to the person addressed, "you made Honey prove that the old gun would shoot by firing it out of the back window—though what difference it makes whether an antique like that will shoot or not, only people from Grand Rapids can tell. But you know it's worth more than Honey asks for it because Honey says it is."
"Honey says it's—old Honey says it's worth the money," cried Harvey, "but how do I know that Honey knows? Just see it! Does it look like fifty dollars? Say!"
Harvey's voice had risen to a wail of protest. He pointed, and I then saw that the goddess had picked up the old piece that I had loosened from my patient's clutching hand. With the fierce joy that only an enthusiastic collector can feel, I took it from her and bent over it in close and loving examination.
"Who ever saw a thing like that, anyhow?" demanded Harvey, pointing again.
"Not many people," I answered. "There aren't many of them in the world, and never were. It's a wheel-lock."
Instantly Harvey's suspicions came to the fore. He proceeded to conduct a severe direct examination.
"Is it worth fifty dollars?" he demanded to know.
"Yes," said I. "Or ten times that."
"When was it made?"
"In the early part of the sixteenth century, probably."
"How does it work?"
"It's wound up with a key, like a clock. When the trigger is pulled the clockwork makes that little, toothed wheel buzz around against the flint, throwing a shower of sparks into the priming. But you know perfectly well how it works," I added impatiently. "You probably didn't see—that ailanthus-tree concealed me—but I was coming in by the back way when that thing was fired and scattered bits of flower-pot all over the place." And ruefully, tenderly, but quite unconsciously, I caressed the swollen and blackened place where formerly my eye had been visible.
The owl-girl laughed at this—a high, silvery peal of mirth. The egregious Harvey fairly brayed his appreciation of the joke at my expense, and the goddess again smiled that wonderful smile of hers. I didn't blame them. That involuntary caress must have been funny. I grinned myself, when I came to think of it.
Better, the joke seemed to have relieved a certain tension that was developing. Still laughing, with his suspicions apparently at rest, Harvey counted out fifty dollars from a big roll of bills and placed the amount in the goddess's hand.
"Let's go to dinner," said he. "Where shall it be?"
"The usual place," answered the goddess decidedly. "You run along and take that gun to your rooms and then go to the restaurant. Maisie and I will meet you there."
To this proposition Maisie—which evidently was the owl-girl's name—assented with enthusiasm. Therefore she wriggled into a long coat which covered her bloomers and her upper gorgeousness. She jammed a boyish hat down over her bobbed hair. Still like an autumn leaf—a brown one, this time—she drifted into the bedroom, and before I could stop her, had kissed my patient, but so lightly that he did not stir. Drifting back again, she kissed the egregious Harvey, who was departing.
She did not kiss me, and of course I did not expect her to, but I was conscious of an absurd disappointment because she hadn't. I was also conscious of a distinct pang of resentment as she kissed Harvey. I knew that in the circles which she affected, where ordinary conventions are banned with elaborate care, kisses are nearly as free as sunshine, and in Maisie's case as innocent. But one wanted her kisses to remain innocent, and felt instinctively that those rather thick, red lips of Harvey's were not nice lips for a girl like her to kiss.
With a nod and a smile at me, Maisie went out to dance little jigs on the stoop while waiting for the goddess. The goddess was standing at a window, looking out in the direction taken by Harvey, with a look on her gravely beautiful face that made me wonder. Apparently she was lost in a brown study, but after a little, with a deep sigh, she recovered her consciousness of outside affairs, and turned to face me.
"I forgot to tell you, Doctor Jack, that my name is Hilda Alslrom," said she. "You had better call me Hilda. You'll fall into the habit anyway, so you may as well begin soon as late. Now tell me something. You don't want to appear in public—do you?—with that eye of yours. No? I thought not. Another question. Isn't there some doctor who has charge of your practice until you take it over?"
"Yes," I answered. "A Doctor Clark. I don't know him."
"I do," said she. "I'll see him when I go out, and tell him that you'll be stuck here in the house for some days. Then you can put in some of your spare time in taking care of poor old Honey. I'll help with the nursing, of course, and so will Maisie. But mostly me. We all of us love Honey, but I love him better than any of the others, I think. You see, we're so alike—in spots."
I looked to see if she was joking, but she was not. On the contrary, her face was sad, with a sadness that somehow seemed bigger than that of other people, like everything else about her. But that this superb creature could in any way resemble the pitiful wreck in the next room seemed far too absurd a statement to be made seriously.
Evidently she perceived my doubts. She smiled again.
"What I told you is true," said she. "I think, a little later, you'll see that it is. Now you'd better write me a list of the things needed for Honey. I'll fetch them when I come back. I'll fetch your dinner, too."
"Bring back your own also, and eat it here with me," I begged.
"All right," she agreed. "Now get busy with the list."
While I wrote the list, she was putting on her long coat and buttoning it. I handed her the paper, together with a bill large enough to cover the costs. She stuffed both into her pocket in as matter of fact a manner as any man friend could have done. I think 1 began to estimate Hilda at her true worth right then.
"Now you go and bathe that eye of yours, get into your pajamas and a bath-robe, and make yourself comfy," she commanded, as she was about to go. "Oh, yes; I forgot. Give Honey this when he comes to himself. It'll do him more good than any amount of medicine."
She pressed the fifty dollars into my hands, and was gone.
I went back to my own domain, to bathe my eye and change my clothing, as Hilda had suggested. I got the hang of the peculiar layout of the place now; it was really very simple. The house originally had been a very large one, standing by itself. Years before its lower part had been divided from front to rear by a partition. On one side of this partition was Honey's house; on the other my office and quarters. The communicating door had probably been cut through for the convenience of some former tenant who had rented both places. Above, the old house was divided into studio apartments, as I afterward learned, in one of which Hilda made little statuettes and Maisie pretended to paint.
Returning to Honey's house, I prepared some capsules of beef extract that he had, and which Hilda had pointed out to me. When I carried the steaming cup to Honey's bedside, I found that his eyes were open and fixed upon me.
"I haven't been really asleep, or unconscious, or whatever it is, for ever so long," said he, as I approached. "I was rather hazy for a little—I always am, after these turns, though I never before had one as bad as this. The haziness soon passed away. I just lay here listening and thinking. I didn't want to talk—not then."
"You'd better not want to talk now," said I, lifting his head and holding the cup to his lips. "Drink this, and then go to sleep."
He took the extract obediently; but there his obedience ceased.
"I've got something to say," he persisted doggedly. "And to say it will harm me much less than I'd be harmed by holding it in. You know that—or ought to."
All doctors know that sometimes the exertion of talking is less than that of keeping silent. But this is something that depends upon circumstances. I refused to commit myself. Honey went on.
"You heard those girls call me Honey," he said. "It's my real name—Alfred Honey—but one sinks the Alfred. I rejoice in my family name. I rejoice in it because, when applied to me, it's infinitely more ridiculous than any nickname could possibly be. Therefore it forestalls possible nicknames, which would make me writhe, while I had to make a bluff of laughing at them. 'Honey!'—a term of careless endearment, born of perfect understanding between a man and woman who love each other—and me; a grotesque little bogie with a rotten heart. Can you imagine any woman loving me?"
"I can't imagine anything more utterly morbid than the rot you're talking," I replied. "Moreover, Hilda told me only a few minutes ago that she——"
"I know what Hilda said; I heard her—and God bless her for saying it!" he interrupted. "But the love she spoke of isn't the love I mean—and you know it isn't. The love I mean—the love that one woman has for one man—is denied me as completely as though I were already as dead as I ought to have been long ago—as dead as I soon will be."
"You soon will be if you allow yourself to get worked up, as you're doing," I scolded. But he went on, unheeding, and I didn't quite dare leave him by himself, He might have tried to follow me. He was quite capable of trying, and I knew it.
"You know what I am outside. I suppose you know that inside I'm just a man. A man—like you, it seems—with a collector's passion for arms—for weapons, and especially missile-throwing weapons. I love their history, their mechanism—their use, except when they're used to kill something. I can't bear to kill. Moreover, I have a morbid terror—inborn—prenatal, I suppose—of the sound of firearms. I dread the report of a gun infinitely more than I dread its bullet, Harvey Priest knows that—he's a sort of cousin of mine. That's why he made me fire that wheel-lock. He wants me to die. On account of Maisie."
"Of Maisie?" I repeated stupidly,
"Yes—Maisie. Priest made me fire that gun hoping that the shock of the report might kill me, and I didn't dare refuse for fear that Maisie might despise me, and my influence over her would be gone. I don't mind dying; but for her it's the worst thing I could do. My dying won't save her. And she must be saved."
"You mean from Harvey Priest?" I asked.
"Yes. Listen, doctor. With a dozen men that I know of—real men—I don't include myself among them—ready to fall at her feet and worship her, Maisie chooses to fall prostrate at the shrine of—Harvey Priest! Harvey Priest, who really cares for nothing but his own big carcass and its appetites and vanities; who's poisoning that pure mind of hers exactly as the drippings from a sewer will poison a spring. Maisie doesn't know. She won't know! So there's no one but me——"
"Can't Hilda influence her?" I asked, crossing the room in order to put down the cup that had held that beef extract.
"Hilda does what she can. She can't do much more. At best Hilda's only a woman, and Maisie's beginning to balk. I tell you, there's no one but me. Me—whom Maisie trusts because I'm such a damned horror to look at that she can't conceive my love for her being other than pure. So I can't die! Don't you see? I mustn't die! And you must keep me alive. So promise! Promise——"
At this point he actually raised himself on one elbow, and shouted so that his voice rang through the house. I made one jump across the room to his bedside. But he had fallen back, white and gasping, before I could get to him.
Well, it wasn't as bad as it might have been, of course—because Honey still lived. As a matter of fact, he showed more recuperative power than I had given him credit for. But the time that followed was a desperately anxious one, for all that. In the end I was obliged to give him a mild narcotic, which I was reluctant to do. He fell into as near an approach to a natural sleep as a narcotic can create.
Going into the front room, I filled a pipe with some tobacco I found there, and smoked, while examining the old arms with which the walls were covered. Beautiful specimens they were, one and all, that filled my heart with joy to behold. Some of them were without duplicates that I know of; and I know most of the world's great collections.
Then a key rallied in the lock of the front door, and Hilda appeared, together with two small boys, who put down a huge basket they had been carrying between them, and promptly disappeared. Hilda threw off her long coat and dragged a big table into the middle of the room.
"How's Honey?" she asked, as she began deftly to set the table.
"He talked himself into a semidelirium. I couldn't stop him," I replied. "He is quiet now, and will pull through this attack. But not the next one, I fear."
"Did he talk about Maisie?" she asked.
"Yes," I said; and she nodded understandingly.
We sat down, and she served the soup. She smiled as she handed me my plate.
"This is frightfully improper—our dining alone like this," she remarked.
I only laughed. To think of impropriety where Hilda was concerned seemed somehow so absurd. She nodded again, as though she had spoken with a purpose, and fell silent. So did I, for the dinner was good, and I very hungry.
"I was later than I intended to be," said she, after a long pause. "I found that the big table in the restaurant, where we usually sit, was unoccupied. So I waited until some of Harvey's friends came in. I don't like them, but there's safety in numbers. If I left Harvey and Maisie alone, he'd recite poetry to her. I don't approve Swinburne's poetry for Maisie's use."
"Does she like it?" I asked.
"I don't know. Neither does she. Maisie's mind is like a brook; just as pure, just as bright, and just as shallow. It isn't easy to pollute it. It can be done, of course—but it shan't be."
Honey had likened Maisie's mind to a spring. Naturally the similarity of the images struck me.
"Have you been talking with Honey about Maisie?" I asked.
"Not in this way," answered Hilda. "There's no occasion; we both know her so well."
Again Hilda fell silent, while I ate steadily on. It was some time before I noticed that she had apparently lost all consciousness of the food before her, and was sitting with her big, blue eyes gazing into space.
"Maisie isn't beautiful," she said thoughtfully, and half to herself. "Strictly speaking she's hardly even pretty. She has no more mind than a kitten. Yet men fall in love with her—go wild about her! Real men—men with brains, some of whom don't even particularly like her; for liking has nothing to do with loving. And Maisie collapses utterly at the feet of Harvey Priest, who loves nothing in the world except himself, who'd be tired to death of her in a week, but is willing to amuse himself for that week. It seems to me that those things are horribly mismanaged in this world. I wonder what laws govern them, anyway."
She had asked one of the questions that has defied the wisdom of the ages to answer. There was nothing that I could say. Then, so suddenly that it startled me, Hilda jumped to her feet.
"I must rejoin that party of Harvey's beastly little friends before it breaks up, so as to bring Maisie home," said she. "I'll be back afterward."
So she went. Honey slept. I pottered about, smoking, re-examining Honey's collection, of which I would never tire, and in between times dozing in my chair. In the early hours of the morning Hilda returned.
"I'll relieve you now," said she, peeling off her coat. "Tell me what to do; then go and get some rest."
When I had finished the few directions I had to give, Hilda made no comment, but stood looking down at Honey as he slept; and though he was much older than she, it seemed to me that there was something maternal in her gaze.
"Poor old Honey!" said she softly, after a little. "Did you ever stop to think of the heart-breaking tragedy of that pitiful body, with inside it all the loves and longings that all the things that a man—and a woman too—wants and ought to have? But I know you must feel it, though not as I do. Very few can feel it as I do. That's why few people can love him as much as I."
To me it seemed clear that now she implied what she had plainly stated the previous afternoon; namely, that there was some mysteriously unfortunate resemblance between Honey and her. It looked like affectation, the first trace of it she had shown.
"Hilda, why will you persist in talking such rot?" I demanded peevishly.
"Rot!" she repeated; then turned to face me. "Look at me," she ordered.
"I'm looking," I answered. "It's the easiest thing I know how to do."
"Never mind that sort of stuff!" she cried. "I know what I am and what I look like. I know exactly what my limitations are. And those limitations bar everything—just everything in the world—that a woman wants."
"What on earth do you mean?" I asked, utterly at a loss to understand.
With startling quickness, and an astoundingly small show of exertion, she reached forward, caught me by my bent elbows, lifted me a foot or more from the ground, and set me down again. And I am by no means a small man.
"There!" she exclaimed. "I can put the shot, throw the hammer and box. I can whip most men in a fair fight, and on occasion I've done it. What brains I have are mostly man's brains. Men don't think of me as a woman but—unconsciously—as another man, just different enough from themselves to be interesting. You do yourself. You laughed when I joked about the impropriety of our dining here alone. That's why I made the joke—to hurt myself a little more, just as you'll always be pushing your tongue against a tender tooth. You know what I mean."
She turned away, and I was almost sure that there was a catch in her voice; something like a birth-strangled sob. With her back to me, as she pretended to arrange something on the mantelpiece, she went on.
"I don't usually talk like this, especially on so short an acquaintance," said she apologetically. "But now—well, the circumstances are different—and you're a doctor—and all that. But don't try to answer what I said. Please! Just go to bed!"
I started to go; it was the only thing that in decency I could do. As I opened the door that separated Honey's house from mine, she spoke again.
"And don't run away with the idea that it's any unresponsive man that I'm pining for," she railed. "It isn't. I only wish it were. Good night."
I didn't attach much importance to these last words, just then; I thought merely that Hilda was repenting of her frankness, and was therefore hedging. Nevertheless, I went to bed thoughtful and rather troubled. Of course Hilda had been absurdly morbid. Yet—was all that she said so absurd?
I am an average sort of man, I think, and therefore took myself as an example. I liked Hilda enormously. More than that, even in the few hours since first we met, I had formed a warm affection. But as to falling in love with her—well, I simply couldn't imagine myself in that position. It would be like falling in love with the Venus of Milo, or the Goddess of Liberty, or anything else that was unattainably big and beautiful, and though nominally feminine, still practically sexless.
But I understood what Hilda had meant when she spoke of the resemblance between herself and Honey. It was plain enough, now.
I went to sleep. At noon Hilda woke me and gave me breakfast. Then began the first of those pleasant, restful days that I shall always fondly remember.
Honey rapidly progressed toward the farthest point he ever could reach on the road to health. He recovered much more rapidly than I did; for recuperation from the partial failure of a weak heart is not nearly so tedious an affair as the recovery of the normal appearance of an eye that had been blacked as thoroughly as mine.
The two girls and Harvey Priest, and many others as well, ran in and out more than at first I really ought to have allowed; but for much of the time Honey and I naturally were alone; and our friendship grew with a rapidity possible only to a friendship between those circumstanced as were we. Every hour that passed served to increase my affection for a clean man, a great soul, housed in a body that was simply a living curse, and which soon must fail even as such.
In our love of ancient weapons, we met on the congenial ground of a common hobby. Honey was supposed to deal in them, but this was mostly pretense. He never would sell a really good specimen unless his collection boasted a better one. He had a little income of his own, and one instalment of it fell due during the time of our close association. He spent it all, and part of Harvey Priest's fifty dollars besides, in the purchase of his last toy.
It was an arblast—one of the military sort, intended for use against plate armor, Its bow, of solid steel, was wider and as thick as a small wagon-spring, though shorter. No unaided man was supposed to bend that bow. To accomplish this the crossbowmen of old used a small windlass that fitted, when required for use, over the butt of the weapon, and was operated by two cranks, one for each hand. It was a wonderful specimen. I was as enthusiastic concerning it as was Honey himself, and we must, I think, have behaved rather like two children.
Bowstring and windlass lines of course were missing; had disappeared in the course of the centuries since last they were used. So Honey and I proceeded to replace them. Sash-cord served very well for the windlass. The bowstring we made from many strands of picture-wire. To manufacture bolts for the old weapon was a more difficult problem, but at last we solved it by cutting the spring-roller of an old window-shade into sections and running melted lead into the resultant wooden cylinders. We only made two; the rest were failures.
Then we tried it out. Placing a pillow at one end of the passage, I stood at the other. I bent the bow, unshipped the windlass, and laid the bolt in its groove, Then, raising the ponderous weapon to my hip, I pressed the "goat's foot"—in other words, the trigger.
The bow twanged like a harp-string. Its vibrations, as its cord tightened, were almost like an electric shock. The other end of the passage looked as though a local snow-storm was raging there. This was on account of the feathers that flew as that shade-roller bolt ripped the pillow from end to end as it passed through to make a deep dent in the plaster beyond and to shatter itself to splinters by the impact.
Honey, who was reclining in a long chair, jumped to his feet with a squeal of joy. This recalled me to myself, and I got him back into his own chair, by the front window, for there was a paleness around his lips and the base of his nose that warned me against allowing him more exertion, mental or other.
Then Maisie came dancing in, wild with excitement. Hilda and Harvey Priest followed her. About them also there seemed to be a certain air of excitement, though more or less successfully suppressed. On the surface Hilda was simply grim and determined, Harvey sullen and mulish. I felt that something either had happened or was imminent between the three, though as to what it might be I could form no guess.
Honey saw nothing out of the ordinary; of that I was sure. He was full of his new toy and its late notable performance. At his behest I brought it forth and exhibited it to the newcomers.
The three guests showed a mild interest in our acquisition; in view of Honey's enthusiasm they hardly could have done less. Harvey Priest reached over and plucked the taut bowstring, so that it gave forth a deep, resonant note. He put his foot on the string and pressed, then shook his head and smiled at the resistance it offered. Maisie giggled at this, though there was nothing in the world, that I could see, to giggle about.
Then Hilda stepped forward. Picking up the arblast, she slipped her foot into the stirrup at its muzzle-end and, stooping, grasped the bowstring with both hands. She tried to straighten—failed—tried again. The bow bent, ever so little.
"Don't!" I cried. "You'll hurt yourself!"
She paid no heed. Her face flushed and certain cords, hitherto invisible, marred the smoothness of her neck. But her back straightened steadily, and slowly the bow curved more and more. I held my breath. The string, between her hands, crept upward along the groove. It reached the catch—hesitated, slipped into place with a click. The thing was done. The bow had been bent by pure, unaided human strength. It was a feat that I honestly believe could not have been duplicated by more than two or three men I have ever known.
We ought naturally to have laughed and applauded, but we didn't. Instead, there followed a short but awkward silence. For Hilda had glanced at Harvey, and by that glance all who saw it knew instantly that Hilda's performance was not merely a wonderful feat of strength. It also was a threat—a warning to beware of that strength, lest it be otherwise employed.
In the same half-hysterical manner that she had been giggling before, Maisie now began to whimper. I glanced at Honey, and the whiteness of his lips and around the base of his nose alarmed me; his former excitement and the present tenseness of the social atmosphere were both taking toll of him. This wouldn't do at all. I told the guests to clear out; that it was time for Honey's regular afternoon rest, and that he must begin to take that rest at once.
"I thought so," said Hilda. "Maisie, go up to our rooms and wait for me there. Harvey, go home. And walk slowly, so I can overtake you; I want to have a few words with you. Honey, dear, come with Hilda!"
She spoke as a nurse might speak to a tired child. And, like a nurse, she lifted him in her arms, and carrying him into his own room, laid him on the bed, then departed, full of her intention of overtaking Harvey.
Honey lay on the bed, his eyes closed. Then, a few minutes later, when I started to give him some medicine, he looked suddenly up at me.
"Where's Maisie?" he asked.
As though he had called her, Maisie at that moment came drifting in. She was dressed in conventional street-clothes, and this struck me, for it was the first time that I had seen her in any costume save the one she had worn when first we met. Slipping her arms around Honey's neck, she hugged his head close to her breast.
"Good-by, dear," she said. "I oughtn't to have taken the time—I'm late as it is—and I've had to duck Hilda in order to come. But I couldn't go away without some word of farewell."
"Go!" growled Honey. "Go where, pray?"
She made no reply; only kissed him and drifted out as she had drifted in, before I could tell her to go away, as I fully intended to do. From first to last, she had not so much as recognized the fact of my existence. For a moment I felt absurdly piqued; then Honey's excitement, now returned in full measure—and more—turned my mind to affairs of more immediate importance. Again I started to administer the deferred dose of medicine. He pushed it aside so roughly that most of it was spilled.
"Hamilton, the child is going away with that unspeakable Harvey Priest," he cried, his face livid. "I know it just as certainly as though I saw him waiting for her!"
"Piffle!" said I, trying to speak convincingly. "Probably her mother has suddenly appeared from Dayton, Ohio—isn't that where she comes from? and is going to take Maisie back home for a visit."
"Her mother is not here! She ought to be—I wrote and told her so. But she isn't. Not yet. She hasn't had time to come. No!—what I say is correct. Maisie is going with Harvey Priest—whose touch is defilement—to her everlasting sorrow. I know!"
"And I know that you've spilled your medicine, so I'll have to go and hunt up those tabloids to make some more," said I, and turned to go.
As I went into my own office I felt once more, as on many previous occasions, how powerless, outside the purely technical realms of medicine and surgery, a physician is. In the present instance I had used my very best manner of peevish semi-indifference, intended to allay Honey's excitement by conveying to him the impression that spilling that medicine was a far more important matter than Maisie's farewell. The manner wouldn't work, and I knew it wouldn't. But it was all I had to offer.
I left Honey's house quickly, because inwardly I was almost as excited as he. For in my mind there was born and there grew the conviction that Honey was right—that in very truth Maisie was going away with Harvey Priest. Going to be married by some alderman or justice of the peace—perhaps. But in any event going to utter misery and neglect when the glamour of a week should have worn away.
And what could I do to prevent this? My duty lay with my patient. Yet one scheme of rescue, each more impracticable than the last, raced through my head as I absently hunted through a drawer for that box of tabloids that was in plain sight all the time.
Then it came—from the other side of that partition dividing Honey's house from mine—a single harp-like note, so faint in the short distance that I could not be sure that I really heard it.
Instantly there followed the agonized scream of a woman. This came from the street, and I sprinted for the front door. The woman screamed again as I flung the door open. It was Maisie. Somehow I had known from the first that it must be she.
With a travelling-bag clutched in one hand, and her face so white and drawn that I hardly knew it, she gazed at the form of Harvey Priest as it sprawled at her feet, a broad trickle of crimson creeping away from his head over the flag-stones.
In three jumps I was by his side—and so, as it seemed to me, was a fair half of the inhabitants of Greenwich Village, all of them chattering like sparrows. As I started to kneel by the fallen man, something rolled under my foot, nearly throwing me down.
A long-haired young artist—one whom I knew slightly as a visitor to Honey's house—picked up the object and weighed it in his hand. It was the section of shade-roller, run full of melted lead, that we had made for a crossbow bolt. I knew all along that it would be found there. The twang of that bowstring had told me so. But the wooden, lead-filled cylinder sent all others, the police included, far away on a false scent—and no wonder. Who could have guessed the truth?
"The man has been sandbagged!" shouted that excited young artist. "You could kill an ox with that thing. Is he dead, doctor?"
"No," I answered, trying to keep any note of regret out of my voice. "He was struck a glancing blow, and his hat partially shielded him. He isn't dead, nor likely to die."
What I now wanted to do was to get back to Honey. It seemed an interminable time before a policeman arrived on the scene. He rang for an ambulance, which also arrived in the course of time, bringing with it a cocky young medical student in a white jacket who took Harvey to St. Vincent's Hospital. Some of Maisie's girl friends took her away, laughing and crying at once, to their own quarters, wherever they might be.
Thus liberated, I ran back to Honey's house. There I found what I dreaded and half expected to find. Honey lay by the front window, the heavy arblast across his chest. His heart at last had made good its long-continued threat. He was dead.
Hours afterward, Hilda came in, as calm and efficient as ever—a tower of strength, physically and in every other way. But she stayed only a little while.
"I had intended to send Harvey to the railway-station to meet Maisie's mother," said she, "but when he evaded me, I had to go myself. Maisie's with her mother now. They're going back to that Ohio town—and a good thing, too."
The days that followed are a confused horror to me of bizarre but kindly meant attentions on the part of practically the whole Village. Many times did I wish for Hilda, but no one knew where she was. But at last the funeral was over, and with a sense of desolation that amounted to a physical pain, I was seated in Honey's house, when the door opened and Hilda came quietly in. She was dressed, I remember, in severe black. The straight lines made her look taller than ever, but I never saw her more beautiful.
"I've been with Harvey," said she, forestalling my question. "I took him away from the hospital to a little cottage I rented. He's almost well, though weak. I had to tell them at the hospital that I was his wife before they'd let me take him. I am his wife now."
"You're what?" I demanded, incredulous of having heard aright.
"His wife," she repeated.
"His wife—the wife of Harvey Priest, after what—" I began.
"Yes," she interrupted. "His wife, notwithstanding what he is and what I know him to be. For I've no illusions concerning Harvey. He's not a very likable person, I fear. But love has nothing to do with liking. I told you that before, and I spoke from positive knowledge, God knows."
"But—hang it all!" said I. "Harvey Priest didn't want to marry you. He was afraid of you."
"That's why he married me. He is a coward," she replied composedly.
"But you said—just as you were sending me to bed the other night—that there was no man whom you wanted," I persisted.
"Do you call Harvey Priest a man?" she asked by way of reply. "I don't. But he'll be more of a man from now on. He'll be happier, too, than he's ever been before. He may not know it—he certainly won't acknowledge it for years to come—but he will be."
"May the devil fly away with his happiness!" I snapped. "How about yours?"
"I've taken what I wanted," she answered, with a sigh. "The rest is up to me, isn't it? But I doubt if there's much unmixed happiness in this world. Good-by, Doctor Jack; I won't see you again. Harvey and I are leaving for Grand Rapids. Good-by once more!"
She touched her cool lips to my forehead and went away. I also went away—back, from Honey's house to mine, and drew the bolt of the connecting door. There I looked at myself in a mirror. The blackness of my eye had all but gone.
Once more, then, I was a citizen of the outer world. So, with a sigh, I resolved to put the days just passed behind me, and take up the work that was to come.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1937, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 86 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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