The Seventh Noon Part 3

At the end of other colorless days, when he had come back here only to be tortured by the stretch of gray road before him, he had considered as a possibility that which now was almost a reality. He had always been checked by this desire to have first his taste of life and by the troublesome conviction that there was something unfair about seizing it in this way. Furthermore, though he could, without Barstow's discovery, have lived his week and closed it by any one of a dozen effective means, he realized that he could not trust even himself to fulfill at the end--no matter how binding the oath--so fearful a decree. A few deep draughts of joyous life might turn his head. It was as dangerous an experiment as taking the first smoke of opium, as tampering with the first injection of morphine, upon the promise of stopping there. No, before beginning he must set at work some power outside himself which should be operative even against his will; which should be as final as death itself. Until to-night this had seemed an impossibility. Now, with that chief obstruction removed, he had but to consider the ethics of the question.

In arguing with Barstow he had been sincere. He believed as he had said that a man had the right to end the contract so long as he cheated no one by so doing. All his life he had paid his way like a man, done his duty like a good citizen, given a fair return for everything he took. He did not feel himself indebted to his country, his state, his city, nor to any living man or woman. In one form and another, he had paid. Few men could claim this as sincerely as Donaldson. He had lived conscientiously, so very conscientiously in fact that it was as much rebellion against self-imposed fetters which now drove him on to an opposite extreme as any bitterness against that society which had spurned his idealism. He had refused to compromise and learned that the world uses only as martyrs those who so refuse. The limitations of his nature were defined by the fact that he withdrew from so self sacrificing an end as that. But now if he demanded nothing more--if he was tired of this give and take--why should he not balance accounts?

Chiefly because there would still be one week to account for--that last week in which he should demand most. Like an inspiration came the solution to this, the final difficulty; economically he was wasting a life; very well, but if he could find a way of not wasting it, of giving his life to another, then he would have paid even this last bill. In the excitement of this new idea, he paced his room. If he could give his life for another! But supposing this were impossible, supposing no opportunity should offer, it would be something if he held himself open, offered himself a free instrument of Fate. He could promise--and he knew he could keep so sacred a promise as this with death approaching in so inevitable a form,--he could promise to offer himself upon the slightest pretext, recklessly and without fear, instantly and without thought, to the first chance which might come to him to give his life for another.

That was the bond he would give to Fate--the same Fate which had produced him--his life for the life of another. Let society use him so if such use could be found for him. He would stand ready, would live up to the spirit and the letter of the bond unhesitatingly. For one week he would live his life in the present upon that condition--one week with the eighth day a blank, one week with the whole world his plaything.

He stared with new eyes from his window to the jumble of houses below, to the jumble of stars above. The whole world expanded and vibrated before the intensity of his pa.s.sion. He was to condense a possible thirty or forty years into seven days. To-day was the twenty-third of May. By to-morrow noon he could adjust all his affairs. With nothing to demand of them in the future it would be an easy matter to cut them off. On Friday, May twenty-fourth, then, he could begin. This would bring the end on the thirty-first.

He considered a moment; was it better to die at noon or at night? An odd thing for a man to decide, but such details as this might as well be fixed now as later. It took but a moment's deliberation; he elected to go out at high noon. There would be dark enough afterwards--possibly an eternity of dark. He would face the sun with his last gaze; he would have the mad riot of men and women at midday ringing last in his ears.

As he drew in deep breaths it was as if he inhaled the whole world. He felt as though, if he but stepped out st.u.r.dily enough, he could foot the darkness. His head was light; his brain teemed with wild fancies. Then pressing through this medley he saw for a moment the young woman who had come to Barstow's laboratory. The effect was to steady him. He remembered the sweet girlishness of her face, the freshness of it which was like the freshness of a garden in the early morning. He realized that she stood for one thing that he could never know. What was it that he saw now in those strange eyes that left him a bit wistful at thought of this? There was not a detail of her features, of her dress, of her speech, that he could not see now as vividly as though she were still standing before him. That was odd, too. He was not ordinarily so impressionable. It occurred to him that he would not like her to know what he was about to do. Bah, he was getting maudlin!

Late as it was, he left his room and went downtown to his office. He worked here until daylight, falling asleep in his chair from four to seven. He awoke fresh, and even more eager than the night before to undertake his venture.

There remained still a few men to be seen. He transacted his business with a brilliant dispatch and swift decision that startled them. He disposed of all his office furniture, his books, destroyed all his letters, made a will leaving instructions for the disposal of his body, and concluded every other detail of his affairs before eleven o'clock.

When he left his office to go back to his room, he had in his pocket every cent he possessed in the world in crisp new bank notes. It amounted to twenty-eight hundred and forty-seven dollars. Not much to scatter over a long life,--not much as capital. Invested it might yield some seventy dollars a year. But as ready cash, it really stood for a fortune. It was the annual income at four per cent on over seventy thousand dollars, the monthly income on eight hundred and forty thousand dollars, the weekly income on over three million. For seven days then he could squander the revenue of a princely estate.

As a matter of fact his position was even more remarkable; he was as wealthy--so far as his own capacity for pleasure went--as though the possessor of thirty million. This because of his limitations; he was barred from travel; barred from the purchase of future holdings; barred from everything by this time restriction save what he could absorb within seven days through his five senses. Being an intelligent man of decent morals and no bad habits, he was also restrained from license and the gross extravagance accompanying it. But within his own world, there was not a desire which need remain unsatisfied.

Back again in his room he summoned his landlady.

"I am going away," he informed her briefly. "I sha'n't leave any address and I 'm going to take with me only the few things I can pack into a dress-suit case. I 'll give you the rest."

The woman--she had become rather fond of the quiet, gentle third story front--looked up sympathetically.

"Have you had bad news?"

"Bad news? No," he smiled. "Very good news. I 'm going to take a sort of vacation."

"Then perhaps you 'll come back."

"So, I 'm quite sure I shall never come back."

She watched him at his packing, still puzzled by his behavior. She noticed that he took nothing but a few trinkets, a handful of linen, and a book or two. He glanced at his watch.

"Madame," he announced, offering her his hand, "it is now eleven thirty.

My vacation begins in half an hour. I must hurry. The remainder of these things I bequeath to you."

In twenty minutes he was at the Waldorf. He asked for and was allotted one of the best rooms in the house, for which he paid the suspicious clerk in advance. When at length he was left alone in his luxurious apartments, it was still a few minutes before twelve. He drew the vial from his pocket without fear, without hesitation. He placed his watch upon the table before him. Then he sat down and wrote out the following oath:

"I, Peter Donaldson, swear by all that I hold most sacred that I will offer my life freely and without question for the protection of any human being needing it during these next seven days in which I shall live."

He signed this in a bold scrawling hand. It was as simply and earnestly expressed as he knew how to make it.

He uncorked the vial and poured the liquid into a gla.s.s without a quaver of his hand. He mixed a little water with it and raised it to his lips.

There he paused, for once again he seemed to see the big, calm eyes of the girl now staring at him as though in surprise. But this time he smiled, and with a little lift of the gla.s.s towards her swallowed the liquid at a gulp.

CHAPTER III

_The Beginning of the End_

Before the bitter taste of the syrup faded from his tongue, Donaldson's thoughts shifted from the Ultimate to the Now. He was too good a sportsman to question his judgment by worry when once committed to an enterprise. The world now lay before him as he had wished it--an enchanted land in which he could move with as great freedom as a prince in the magical kingdoms of Arabia. The Present became sharpened to poignancy. Even as he stood there musing over the marvel of the new world into which he had leaped--the old thin world of years condensed into one thick week--he realized that this very wondering had cost him five precious minutes. A dozen such periods made an hour, two dozen hours a day--one seventh of his living s.p.a.ce. This thought so whetted his interest that he could have sat on here indefinitely, thrilled to the marrow by the mere pageant of life as it pa.s.sed before his eyes on the street below. The slightest incident was now dramatic; the hurry of men and women on their way up-town and down-town, the swift movement of vehicles, the fluttering of birds in the sunshine, the unceasing, eager flux of life. It was through the eyes of youth he was looking--for is youth anything more than the ability to live the irresponsible days as they come? Youth is Omar without his philosophy.

He grew dizzy. Life taken so was too powerful a stimulant. He must brace himself.

He settled into one of the big chairs, closing his eyes to the wonders about him, and tried to think more soberly. He felt as though he must dull his quickened senses in some way. His unsheathed nerves quivered back from so direct a contact with life.

"Quiet, old man, quiet," he cautioned himself. "There 's a lot of things you wish to do in these next few days. So you must sober down--you must get a grip on yourself."

He rose to his feet determinedly. He must work out of such moods as this. One of the first things for him to do was to buy a decent personal outfit. As soon as he gave his mind a definite object upon which to work, his thoughts instantly cleared. It was just some such matter-of-fact task as this which he needed.

He went down-stairs, and stepping into a taxicab, was whisked to one of the large retail stores. He had no time to squander upon a tailor, but he was successful in securing a good fit in ready-made clothing. He bought several street suits, evening clothes, overcoats and hats, much silk underwear--a luxury he had always promised himself in that ghost future--and an extravagant supply of cravats, gloves, socks, and odds and ends. He omitted nothing necessary to make him feel a well-dressed man so far as he could find it ready made. There was nothing conceited about Donaldson, nothing of the fop, but he enjoyed both the feeling and the appearance of rich garments. He hired a messenger boy who announced his name as Bobby and who followed along at his heels, collecting the bundles and carrying them out to the waiting cab.

He was a fresh cheeked youngster with a quick interest in things. He could n't make up his mind whether Donaldson was really an Indian prince or whether as a result of drinking he merely felt like one. As time pa.s.sed and he saw that the man was neither an oriental nor drunk, his imagination then wavered between accepting him as an English duke or a member of the Vanderbilt family.

Donaldson perceived the keen interest the boy was taking in his purchases, saw the wonder in his eyes grow, based upon a faith that still accepted Aladdin as an ever-present possibility, and realized that Bobby was getting almost as much fun out of this game as he himself. He began to humor him further by consulting his taste in the matter of ties and waistcoats, though he found that the latter's sporting instincts led him to colors too p.r.o.nounced to harmonize with his own ideas. Still he appreciated the fact that Bobby was indulging in almost as many thrills as though he were actually holding the purse.

This became especially true when Donaldson allowed the boy to purchase for himself such articles as struck his fancy. As a matter of fact there was not so much difference in the present point of view of the man and the boy; it was to them both a fairy episode.

They lounged from one store to another, enjoying the lights, the colors, the beautiful cloths, choosing where they would with all the abandon of those with genii to serve them. Donaldson was indulging something more fundamental than his enjoyment of the things themselves; this was his first taste, as well as Bobby's, of gratifying desires without worry of the reckoning. His wishes were now stripped to bare wants. He was free of the skeleton hand of the Future which had so long held him prisoner--which had frightened him into depriving himself of all life's garnishings until his condition had been reduced to one of monastic simplicity without the monk's redeeming inspiration. He was no longer mocked by the thin cry of "Wait!"

He moved about this gay store world with a sense of kingly superiority.

He listened indulgently to the idle chatter of the shop girls, the rattle of the cash boxes, and smiled at the seriousness with which this business of selling was pressed. What a tremendous ado they made of living, with year after year, month after month, day after day, looming endlessly before them! Not an act which they performed, even to the tying up of a bundle, ended in itself, but was one of an endless vista of acts. The burden of the Future was upon them. They drooped, poor bloodless things, beneath the weight of the relentless days before them. And so this faded present was all their future, too. They saw nothing of the joyous world which spun around him bright as a new coin.

They were dead, because of the weary days to come, to the magical brilliancy of the big arc-lights, to the humor and action of the crowd, to the quick shifts of colors; they were stupefied by this great flux of life which swept them on day after day to another day. Often unexpressed, this, but felt dumbly below the chatter and dry laughter.

They waited, waited, circling about in a gray maelstrom until the grave sucked them in. He himself had been in the clutch of it. But that was yesterday.

To-day he saw all that lay unseen before their dulled vision--all the show with its million actors. He saw for example the pathos in the patient eyes of the old lady yonder--still waiting at eighty; he caught the flash of scarlet ribbon beyond, the silent message of the black one (another long waiting); the m.u.f.fled laugh and the m.u.f.fled oath; the careless eyes that tossed the coin to the counter, the sharp eyes that followed it, the dead ones that picked it up and threw it into the nickeled cash box which flew with it to its golden nest; the tread, the tread, the tread of a thousand feet, the beat, beat, beat of a thousand hearts. All these things he saw and heard and felt.

When he had fully replenished his wardrobe he still had several hours left to him. He remembered a unique book store just off Fifth Avenue at West Thirty-ninth Street which he had frequently pa.s.sed, often lingering in front of the windows to admire quaint English prints. On cloudy days especially he had often made it a point to walk up there and breathe in the spirit of sunshine that he found in the green gra.s.s of the old hunting scenes and in the scarlet coats of the hearty-cheeked men riding to hounds upon their lean horses.

"Come on," he called enthusiastically to Bobby. "We 've just begun."

"Gee!" gasped Bobby. "H'aint you spent it all? Have yer gut more left?"

"Lots. As much as I can spend until I die."

The boy's face grew eager.

"Say," he asked confidentially. "Where 'd yer git it?"

"Earned it,--the most of it. Sweat for it and starved for it and suffered for it! And I earned with it the right to spend it, the _right_, I tell you!"

Bobby shrank back a little before such fierceness. The boy felt a faint suspicion of what had not before occurred to him: that the man was crazy. But the next second the gentle smile returned to soften the tense mouth, and the boy's fear vanished. No one could fear Donaldson when he smiled.

In front of the modest shop with its quaint sign swinging above the door, they paused. Donaldson found it difficult to believe that he now had the right to enter. To him this store had never been anything else but a part of the scenery of life, a part of the setting of some foreign world at which he gazed like a boy from the upper galleries of a theatre. He had rebelled at this, looking with some hostility at the well groomed men and women who accepted it with such a.s.surance that it was for them alone, but now he realized the pettiness of that position.