Diane of the Green Van | Page 9

In the soft hollow of Diane's hand had lain the
destiny of a man who had the will to go unerringly the way he
chose. . . . Love and hunger--they were the great trenchant appetites of
the human race: one for its creation, the other for its perpetuation. . . .
To every man came first the call of passion; then the love-hunger for a
perfect mate. The latter had come to him to-night as Diane stood in the
doorway, a slender, vibrant flame of life keyed exquisitely for the finer,
subtler things and hating everything else.
Still he drank, but the fires of hell were rising now in his eyes. There
was treachery in the bottle. . . . Diane, he chose to fancy, had refused
him justice, salvation, respect to the memory of his mother! . . . So be
it! . . . His to wrench from the mocking, gold-hungry world whatever
he could and however he would. . . . Only his mother had
understood. . . . And Diane had mocked her memory. Still there had

been thrilling moments of tenderness for him in Diane's life. . . . But
Diane was like that--a flash of fire and then bewildering sweetness.
There was the spot Starrett's glass had struck; there the ancient carven
chair in which Diane had mocked his mother; there was red--blood-red
in the dying log--and gold. Blood and gold--they were indissolubly
linked one with the other and the demon of the bottle had danced wild
dances with each of them. A mad trio! After all, there was only one
beside his mother who had ever understood him--Philip Poynter, his
roommate at Yale. And Philip's lazy voice somehow floated from the
fire to-night.
"Carl," he had said, "you've bigger individual problems to solve than
any man I know. You could head a blood revolution in South America
that would outrage the world; or devise a hellish philosophy of
hedonism that by its very ingenuity would seduce a continent into
barking after false gods. You've an inexplicable chemistry of
ungovernable passions and wild whims and you may go through hell
first but when the final test comes--you'll ring true. Mark that, old man,
you'll ring true. I tell you I know! There's sanity and will and grit to
balance the rest."
Well, Philip Poynter was a staunch optimist with oppressive ideals, a
splendid, free-handed fellow with brains and will and infernal
persistence.
Four o'clock and the log dying! The city outside was a dark, clinking
world of milkmen and doubtful stragglers, Carl finished the whiskey in
his glass and rose. His brain was very drunk--that he knew--for every
life current in his body swept dizzily to his forehead, focusing there
into whirling inferno, but his legs he could always trust. He stepped to
the table and lurched heavily. Mocking, treacherous demon of the
bottle! His legs had failed him. Fiercely he flung out his arm to regain
his balance. It struck a candelabrum, a giant relic of ancient wood as
tall as himself. It toppled and fell with its candled branches in the fire.
Where the log broke a flame shot forth, lapping the dark wood with
avid tongue. With a crackle the age-old wood began to burn.
Carl watched it with a slight smile. It pleased him to watch it burn. That

would hurt Diane, for everything in this beautiful old Spanish room
linked her subtly to her mother. Yes, it would hurt her cruelly. Beyond,
at the other end of the table, stood a mate to the burning candlestick,
doubtless a silent sentry at many a drinking bout of old when roistering
knights gathered about the scarred slab of table-wood beneath his
fingers. A pity though! Artistically the carven thing was splendid.
Cursing himself for a notional fool, Carl jerked the candlestick from the
fire and beat out the flames. The heavy top snapped off in his hands.
The falling wood disclosed a hollow receptacle below the branches . . .
a charred paper. Well, there was always some insane whim of Norman
Westfall's coming to light somewhere and this doubtless was one of
them.
The paper was very old and yellow, the handwriting unmistakably
foreign. French, was it not? The firelight was too fitful to tell. Carl
switched on the light in the cluster of old iron lanterns above the table
and frowned heavily at the paper. No, it was the precise, formal English
of a foreigner, with here and there a ludicrous error among the stilted
phrases. And as Carl read, a gust of wild, incredulous laughter echoed
suddenly through the quiet room. Again he read, cursing the dizzy fever
of his head. Houdania! Houdania! Where was Houdania? Surely the
name was familiar. With a superhuman effort of will he clenched