Murder in Any Degree | Page 9

faintest sound. The waiting, nervous pose,
the slender figure on guard, brought to him a strange, almost uncanny
sensation of mystery, and feeling the sudden change in the mood of the
man at his side, he gazed at the figure of the wife and said to himself:
[Illustration: Our Lady of the Sparrows]
"I'd give a good deal to know what's passing through that little head.
What is she afraid of?"
"You're surprised to find me as I am," said Rantoul, abruptly breaking
the silence.
"Yes."
"You can't understand it?"
"When did you give up painting?" said Herkimer, shortly, with a sure
feeling that the hour of confidences had come.
"Seven years ago."
"Why in God's name did you do it?" said Herkimer, flinging away his
cigar angrily. "You weren't just any one--Tom, Dick, or Harry. You had
something to say, man. Listen. I know what I'm talking about,--I've
seen the whole procession in the last ten years,--you were one in a
thousand. You were a creator. You had ideas; you were meant to be a
leader, to head a movement. You had more downright savage power,
undeveloped, but tugging at the chain, than any man I've known. Why
did you do it?"
"I had almost forgotten," said Rantoul, slowly. "Are you sure?"

"Am I sure?" said Herkimer, furiously. "I say what I mean; you know
it."
"Yes, that's true," said Rantoul. He stretched out his hand and drank his
coffee, but without knowing what he did. "Well, that's all of the
past--what might have been."
"But why?"
"Britt, old fellow," said Rantoul at last, speaking as though to himself,
"did you ever have a moment when you suddenly got out of yourself,
looked at yourself and at your life as a spectator?--saw the strange
strings that had pulled you this way and that, and realized what might
have been had you turned one corner at a certain day of your life
instead of another?"
"No, I've gone where I wanted to go," said Herkimer, obstinately.
"You think so. Well, to-night I can see myself for the first time," said
Rantoul. Then he added meditatively, "I have done not one single thing
I wanted to."
"But why--why?"
"You have brought it all back to me," said Rantoul, ignoring this
question. "It hurts. I suppose to-morrow I shall resent it, but to-night I
feel too deeply. There is nothing free about us in this world, Britt. I
profoundly believe that. Everything we do from morning to night is
dictated by the direction of those about us. An enemy, some one in the
open, we can combat and resist; but it is those that are nearest to us
who disarm us because they love us, that change us most, that thwart
our desires, and make over our lives. Nothing in this world is so
inexorable, so terribly, terribly irresistible as a woman without strength,
without logic, without vision, who only loves."
"He is going to say things he will regret," thought Herkimer, and yet he
did not object. Instead, he glanced down the dimly flushed path to the
house where Mrs. Rantoul was sitting, her embroidery on her lap, her

head raised as though listening. Suddenly he said:
"Look here, Clyde, do you want to tell me this?"
"Yes, I do; it's life. Why not? We are at the age when we've got to face
things."
"Still--"
"Let me go on," said Rantoul, stopping him. He reached out
absent-mindedly, and drank the second cup. "Let me say now, Britt, for
fear you'll misunderstand, there has never been the slightest quarrel
between my wife and me. She loves me absolutely; nothing else in this
world exists for her. It has always been so; she cannot bear even to
have me out of her sight. I am very happy. Only there is in such a love
something of the tiger--a fierce animal jealousy of every one and
everything which could even for a moment take my thoughts away. At
this moment she is probably suffering untold pangs because she thinks
I am regretting the days in which she was not in my life."
"And because she could not understand your art, she hated it," said
Herkimer, with a growing anger.
"No, it wasn't that. It was something more subtle, more instinctive,
more impossible to combat," said Rantoul, shaking his head. "Do you
know what is the great essential to the artist--to whoever creates? The
sense of privacy, the power to isolate his own genius from everything
in the world, to be absolutely concentrated. To create we must be alone,
have strange, unuttered thoughts, just as in the realms of the soul every
human being must have moments of complete isolation--thoughts,
reveries, moods, that cannot be shared with even those we love best.
You don't understand that."