Edgar Saltus: The Man Part 15

Switching on the lights I opened the door, and Mr. Saltus came in.

"Forgive me, little girl," he said. "I'm a devil. I'm all you say I am, but I have not wrecked your life, Mowgy. If I am less to you than a dog you never saw till yesterday I have failed,--totally failed. All the same I have never wanted anything but to see you smile. Try me again."

By that time there were two of us weeping, with Toto jumping up upon us licking our hands; taking on, as she did, our vibrations as might a delicately constructed instrument.

The following day I went to Mr. Saltus and said:--

"I'm dreadfully sorry over what occurred last night, and while there is no possible danger I want you to have your wound attended to."

"Don't worry over that," he said. "I had it cauterized this morning.

Anyway, it did its work. That poor dog was trying to protect the house. He and I are on the same job and we will make friends."

They made up, and to such an extent that when after a few days a home was found for the stray, Mr. Saltus had to be persuaded to let him go.

Neither Mr. Saltus nor those nearest to him realized that his nervous system was undergoing a change. Had this been recognized, the episode which followed would in all probability never have occurred. Mention of it is made because a great deal was said about it at the time, it being given out that Mr. Saltus had tried to kill me. This episode, unpleasant as it is, marked the last time that he ever lost control of himself.

It began in the dining-room after dinner while Mr. Saltus was enjoying his usual cigar. Some chance remark,--a hasty answer, more fuel, and the fuse was fired. Once again he was an It,--a Thing,--a submerged _ent.i.ty_, deprived of his child and acting as a nursemaid to dogs. The more I tried to soothe him the more vehement he became. Distressed beyond words Auntie left the room and went upstairs, declaring that she would pack her things and leave the house the next morning, and that we could fight it out and find each other out,--she was done. Repeated efforts to calm him had only the contrary effect. To leave him alone for a time seemed the only solution. Picking up the leash to fasten it to Toto's collar, with the idea of going for a walk while Mr. Saltus cooled down, was misunderstood by him.

Seizing a carving knife from the serving table, and pulling the leash suddenly out of my hands, he dragged Toto behind him into the butler's pantry and locked the door. It was the cook's evening off. From his place of security he announced that he was going to cut Toto's throat and then his own. Turning on a faucet so that the water would trickle ever so slightly and suggest the dripping of blood, he became silent.

Had I argued or pleaded with him one cannot know what the result would have been. Silence on my part,--silence absolute and unbroken,--was the only course. A more horrible half-hour than that, Dante and Goya together could not have imagined. At the end of that time the door opened and Mr. Saltus, with Toto wagging her tail behind him, reappeared. Relief at knowing that a tragedy was averted was such that I could only sink into a seat. Thereupon, possibly because I had said nothing, Mr. Saltus picked up tumblers and decanters from the sideboard and smashed them against the walls like so many eggsh.e.l.ls, still vowing that he was going to kill himself. While in the pantry he had, instead of cutting his throat, consumed a whole bottle of gin. That strengthened his arm and his courage.

To leave him in such a condition would have been brutal. To remain was hazardous, for he brandished the knife and went on screaming. The night wore on, and the effects of the gin began to change their character.

Deciding the time had come for a determined stand, I went up to him, and took the knife out of his hand. In his amazement at my effrontery he offered little resistance, although he still screamed of his wrongs. It was no time to argue. Neighbours hearing the racket telephoned to the police that a lunatic was in the house and was trying to kill some one. An officer was sent to the door to inquire. That had a sobering effect. Kicking the broken gla.s.s out of his way Mr. Saltus finally decided to go to his room.

By this time the sun was rising (not setting) upon his wrath.

At noon I went to consult our friend Dr. Hazeldine, a metaphysician as well as a physician, and he returned with me to the house. Mr. Saltus, he said, was in a very critical condition. Unable to eat, thrashing about in his bed like a spirit in torture, he presented a tragic picture, and the doctor decided to remain at the house until he could bring him around. This he did; but when the bringing was accomplished, bag, baggage and dog, I left the house, and saying "Good-bye forever," went down to San Diego.

That was more effectual than the visit of the police had been, knowing as he did that threats were not in my line. Letters and telegrams followed like shadows of sin. They were answered, but in no way to offer encouragement. Clearly and firmly he was told that his conduct justified much that had been said against him, and though two women had escaped with their lives and sanity a third would be walking into a padded cell and taking on a life sentence voluntarily.

The reaction on Mr. Saltus was serious. He became really ill and his letters frantic. A novice still in Theosophy, accepting its theory of life, but ignoring its personal application, this lapse of his acted like an auger. It cut its way into the center of his consciousness, and in the realization of his failure, there was stimulated the dormant aspiration to re-create himself. A page from one of his letters is indicative of this:

".... _De profundis clamavi._ Don't make me die insane. In writing to you I have said everything that a human being can. If there was an a.s.surance unexpressed it was through no fault of mine. Your answer was that your faith in me is shattered. I once said that if you had a child by a negro I would forgive you and console you too. Yet your faith in me is shattered.

Child----child,--you are not to blame. If after all my love and care of you, you could write me that, it is because I have in the past betrayed the faith of other people. No,--you are not to blame. You are my own hands striking me in the face. As I measured it to others it is meted now to me.

I may be your cross but you are crucified to me, and death alone can tear the nails from your hands. Even then it will leave the stigmata."

It was a difficult situation to cope with, for what he said was quite true.

The ties which bind one to another are spun out of threads like cobwebs,--so gossamer in texture, so frail and unsubstantial, that they seem a thing one can brush aside with a touch. They are so fine,--they appear to have emerged from nothing,--a memory, an incident, a sorrow shared and forgotten,--but they persist. Delicate as they are, they are spun from the center of one's being. Turned, twisted and plaited by the hand of fate, they become cables of steel. Reason may tell one they can be broken, but the soul knows better. Nothing in life can tear them completely asunder.

It was one of these frail threads which held now. Stronger ones by far, fashioned during the years, were there, but they fell apart. It was the frailest one which persisted. On the walls of memory was a picture. It was that of a man sitting on the top of a 'bus, sad and silent at the thought of returning to the States in a few days. It was early evening and we were going out to the extreme end of London,--Muswell Hill,--to compel distraction from the thoughts which pressed upon him from all sides. The 'bus was crowded, and we could not get a seat together. Mr. Saltus' however was directly behind my own, so we could talk to one another. Going up the hill toward Islington the 'bus swayed a bit, and I found myself swinging from side to side. In so doing a slight pull seemed to come from behind.

Looking down I saw that Mr. Saltus was leaning forward and holding a piece of my frock in his hands. He was unaware that I noticed it, nor did we ever refer to it later. It was such a little thing. Nothing worth speaking about, but it was his hand on the fold of my frock that held,--had held during the years, and held now.

When he wired that he was following to San Diego I was silent and let him come. It was then he realized how totally alone he was in the world, and how dependent also. My home was broken up and we were both wanderers.

Though we were living at different hotels and I refused to discuss the matter with him, Mr. Saltus' conversation was directed to me through Toto.

"Come here, Toto," he said. "I didn't really hurt you, did I? I'm not always a devil. I have intervals of goodness. Go 'woof, woof' to Mummy and tell her I will go and die if she throws me into the ashcan."

This was followed by a series of "wows" and the remark:

"Don't give Snippsy up to the dog-catchers. Snippsy likes to be a subordinate ent.i.ty. He isn't happy otherwise."

He was miserable and sincere, but self-preservation is a difficult thing to fight. The upshot of it was that Mr. Saltus agreed to go East for a month or two, leaving me in California to get my nerves in shape again. He was on probation, or, as he expressed it, "saved from the pound."

It was horrible to see him go, and yet we both needed perspective, being too excited to act or even think sanely, as the episode over Toto had made clear. Two highly temperamental people, no matter how devoted to one another, act and react at times to their mutual disadvantage.

Standing beside the Los Angeles Limited, which was to take him back via Chicago, Mr. Saltus slipped an envelope in my hand. Upon opening it a letter enclosing a poem fell out. That poem, under the t.i.tle of "My Hand in Yours," was published later.

As Mr. Saltus discovered on the train, our minds had been working along similar lines, for I had slipped letters in various pockets in his coats and others in satchels, to cheer him at intervals on the return trip.

CHAPTER XII

To New York Mr. Saltus went, returning to San Diego in less than three months. He was still thin and nervous and had done no writing at all. In the interval, the penetrating influence of his philosophy had done its work, and he was taking the matter of his own evolution seriously.

Allusions to Jean or the incident of the broken gla.s.s, were like burning raw flesh.

It was mid-winter when he returned, but no one would have suspected it from the June-like sunshine and roses. Taking long walks with Toto, with whom he loved to play hide-and-seek, he would go off for hours, resting in Balboa Park on the return trip.

In speaking of this afterward to Miss G----, she said that Mr. Saltus had looked so ill upon his return to New York that she thought he was in for a nervous breakdown. In the circ.u.mstances, the peace and quiet of San Diego were very restful to him.

Then the question of the future presented itself again, and he asked:--

"When are you going to absorb me?" That was the way he jestingly put it.

And then he asked:--

"Where shall we live?"

"California or London," I told him. "If one could combine the attractions of the two,--the climate of the former and the culture and comfort of the latter, heaven would not seem so vague a place. Take your choice, but New York--_jamais!_"

Mr. Saltus hated New York also,--hated clubs, although one had been more or less his headquarters for years. The old members of it were all dead, and he was not a man to make new friends. Barring the convenience of a club it was a horror to him. It was then agreed that he should return to the East, arrange his affairs and meet me in Montreal, where we would take the leap into matrimony and sail to England direct.

An incident occurred toward the end of March, shortly before Mr. Saltus left for New York, which indicated, more than anything else, how radical had been the change in him. We were invited for tea at the home of a friend, Mrs. Butler. As her home was at a distance from the center of the city it was decided that I should take a trolley, while for the benefit of the exercise, Mr. Saltus would walk with Toto. Before separating however, he accompanied me to the fifth floor of a shop, where I made a few purchases. Reaching the street I left him with the a.s.surance that he would rejoin me again in twenty minutes at Mrs. Butler's house. Toto, as usual, was a few feet in front of us, and, as it afterward developed, was unaware of the exact spot where we divided forces. It was over in a minute. I jumped into a trolley and disappeared.

Mrs. Butler's was reached. The twenty minutes doubled and redoubled, yet look as one might no sign of man or dog could be seen. That something had happened,--to the dog most likely,--seemed probable. It was a tense waiting. The rapid twilight of the south was closing like a fan, when, silhouetted against the distant skyline, a pygmy, preceded by an animated dot, developed into a man and a dog.

It was a tale with no wag that he poured into my ears.

"When you left and jumped into the trolley," he said, "I became suddenly aware that I was alone. Toto had vanished. Inquiries were futile and fruitless. No one had seen her. She appeared to have dematerialized in a flash. I went to both the hotels and to all the places where we were in the habit of stopping. The result was the same."

"And what then?"

"I stood in the middle of the street and wowed. I was sure that Totesy Babe had been killed or stolen. It was horrible. I could not face you alive."

It would have taken courage without a doubt.

"What did you decide to do,--run away?"