A Republic Without a President and Other Stories Part 13

When the solemn ceremony was ended, and when, amid the craning of necks, the bride and groom were walking down the white-ribboned aisle, a diversion happened that arrested the newly wedded couple. But this was not construed into an ill-omen. A diminutive messenger boy, with a super-experienced countenance, had met them half way to the vestibule, and, with a saucy smile, held up an envelope to Mr. Swift's face.

"It's half an hour late. Wires burned out. Guess you'll read it now!"

Mr. Statis Ticks, who, although well and worthily married, officiated in some unprecedented capacity as best man, gave Professor Ariel, one of the ushers, an intelligent glance. The latter, being the happy possessor of a new balloon (which he ingenuously called _Reciprocity_), supplied to him by the always generous _Planet_, and fully elated by his present position, answered with a broad wink. Mr. Swift, unconscious of the thousands that were standing in their seats to look at him, and of the general buzz of interest, tore open the colored envelope with reportorial haste, and read as follows. It was cabled from his chief, the proprietor of the _Planet_, now unavoidably detained in England:

"_Congratulations. Advance of one thousand a year. Report after two months' bliss. G.o.d bless you!_"

A TERRIBLE EVENING.

Harland Slack sat in the cafe of the Parker House carelessly sipping whiskey and Apollinaris. He fondly cherished the thought that this combination was an excellent anti-intoxicant, a brain-quieter; on the same principle that B & S is supposed to clarify an Englishman's head.

Harland Slack was an attractively repulsive man. He was tall, and vigorously put together. Evening dress was becoming to him. He never appeared after six o'clock without it: for it set off his long blond mustache, his fine artificially curled, blond hair, and his pale regular features to their best advantage. Seen from the front there were times when he was considered positively handsome, after the same fas.h.i.+on that an aristocratic French doll is admired. When he turned his profile, then there appeared certain hard lines of the check and weak lines of the forehead and chin that grated on austere physiognomists. The giddy set of fas.h.i.+onable women, at whose five o'clock teas he still remained the _eprouvette positive_, thought him adorable: the matrons with marriageable girls thought him debatable: if he chanced upon a spiritual woman, she considered him dangerous. The club men privately thought him unreliable.

It was not so in college before his father died. Then the main features of his life were promising. If he indulged in occasional gayety he did not lose all of his self-respect. His cla.s.smates noted in him a certain quality of strength or reserve that was supposed to emanate from himself rather than from the hard fact that his paternal allowance was only seven hundred a year, and that he was threatened with disinheritance if he ran into debt.

But now he had inherited. He had changed. His hands trembled. His eyes twitched. The corners of his mouth danced the dance of St. Vitus. He had terrible nightmares, and awoke with parched mouth and with disagreeable eyes, and with a rebellious head whose disorders required what he called "an eye-opener" to cause them to abate.

His best friends took him apart and said: "Now really, old fellow, this won't do. Its--playing the devil with you. Come now, knock off for a bit. I'll bet you a hundred dollars you can't confine yourself to claret for a month."

And Harland Slack would answer:

"Done! Have a c.o.c.ktail?" He usually paid the bet before three hours were up. The limitation, he said, was too strict.

"I'll give him two years," said his nearest intimate; "and then--" He whistled The Dead March in Saul, and the fellows wagged their heads ominously over the sad case--and their ale.

In short, Harland was not only addicted to drink, but he was given over to it hand and soul. Yet he was very seldom drunk. He paused at that excessively polite stage which was the surveyor's line of inebriety. An eminent bar-keeper pointed him out one day and said:

"It isn't the boys that get drunk and then get over it, that go to the devil so fast: it's the fellows that take a little all day long and keep at it who can't be reformed."

So it naturally came about that while Harland Slack was in this benevolent mood, which usually lasted from ten in the morning till one in the morning, and which might aptly be described as betwixt h.e.l.l and Earth, he became the common prey of common humanity.

His was not to reason why; His was but to lend a fi'.

Theirs was but to take and sigh: "I'll pay you sometime by and by."

He seemed to take it as a compliment that his purse was everybody's bank, with a daily run on it. It was lucky for him that the enormous princ.i.p.al left by his economical father could not be touched. But at last, as it once in a while happens to the repleted, the unqualified ability to borrow, or rather, in this instance, to steal, led to a pall.

Unlock every safe, unbar every vault, open up every store to pillage, and the robber, glutted with desire, will disappear. On the same principle, at the time of our historiette, Harland's friends, even his bar-room acquaintances, were overtaken by a sentiment of self-reproach or honor, and there was a general movement to swear off borrowing from this man who never refused a loan.

On the evening of which we speak Harland sat languidly waiting for a friend who had an appointment to accompany him to the club. It was early, scarcely eight, and he aimlessly fingered a loose roll of bills in his waistcoat pocket, smiled inanely at the man behind the desk, and then, despairing of entertainment, began to spin a trade-dollar on the polished table. The cafe was nearly empty, and he was to all purposes alone. This was a state which he dreaded above all others. Like Napoleon, in the company of even one he felt an inspiring confidence and security. When he was with people, he forgot that whiskey was an insisting necessity: he only thought he drank because he was a good fellow and "one of the boys."

Harland had never been visited by the uttermost penalty of his condition. It cannot be said that he never feared that state whose ugly name we omit when we can, or reduce to its significant initials; as if that reduced the horror of the fact. But he feared it: he feared it greatly. The possibility of delirium tremens unmanned him. Then he sweat drops of apprehension, and with vague, shuffling remorse promised himself to improve. He possessed all the weakness of Sydney Carton with none of that martyr's pathetic n.o.bility or ability.

Harland Slack sat alone and began to scowl at the bottle of Apollinaris.

His weak face looked haggard. Perhaps he felt that he had cast the key of his tomb through the grated door after he had immured himself within.

He glared at the whiskey, and his thoughts cursed it; then he smiled and took another swallow. Even as he drank his mind wandered back to his college days when he was unimplicated in high treason against himself.

He could not help remembering, sometimes: he seldom thought of the future.

The door opened. He tossed the remainder of his gla.s.s off, and looked around, expecting his companion. Then he turned back, disappointed. Then he looked again.

A stalwart man entered with an air of vitality which is often mistaken for authority. The vigorous development of his body gave a startling impression of height and power. He was dressed with elegant negligence.

His dark beard was cut to a point, and he looked like a Parisian artist.

Black eyes from under the brim of a silk hat compelled attention by reason of an imperious steadiness that indicated the possession of unusual self-control. The waiters jumped to serve this man. Harland was annoyed at this obsequiousness which he had never received. He tried to look haughtily indifferent, but he could not take his eyes from this person. The stranger returned his glance. He advanced upon the fas.h.i.+onable inebriate, and paused at his table. Harland Slack arose as if he were accepting a challenge, and trembled. The two looked at each other.

"I declare, old fellow. Is it you? Why, I haven't seen you since Cla.s.s Day. You know me, Slack, don't you?"

The speaker smiled and took off his hat. This action heightened the impression of power which he had first made. His forehead was literally the dome of his body. It was as if the Creator had determined on granting this man an unusual supply of brains, and had then packed them in until the pressure had distended the frontal lobes. His brow was an overhanging arch, ma.s.sive, high, compelling. This was so marked that the head gave almost a painful impression of superabundant intellectuality.

Harland immediately recognized his cla.s.smate from that distinguis.h.i.+ng feature. It was the only recognizable one left.

"Randolph?"

"The same. Do you live in Boston now?"

"Oh yes, of course. Sit down--and you?"

"I? I am a practising physician, now: that's all. Am just back from Paris a while ago, and have taken an office. I was telephoned suddenly to a patient out of town and ran in here for a chop before I went home."

The keen eyes of Dr. Alaric Randolph examined his vis-a-vis as he gave his brief explanation. He ordered his chops, declined an offer to drink, and noticed with professional intelligence Harland's demand for some more whiskey and the tremulous way with which it was taken. No words were necessary to tell this student of human miseries the nature of Harland Slack's disease.

Randolph was as much changed for the better as his cla.s.smate was for the worse. It was a wonder that they recognized each other at all. Harland felt the difference, but could not a.n.a.lyze it; while Randolph studied it more than he felt it. The college student who did not room in "Beck,"

and who was not a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, who had no time for society and theatricals, who was never seen at Carl's, who was suspected of being a little diffident, had suddenly become the patron; and the cla.s.smate whose father's wealth had given him an una.s.sailable social rank, yielded with feeble will to his own unspoken instinct of inferiority.

Harland's face had become weazened since he had left college. His manly frame had shrunken. On the other hand, Alaric's features had expanded.

His skull had filled out: even his frontal arch was rounded.

"What have you been doing in Paris, Randolph?" asked Harland with a good-natured laugh and a faint attempt at condescension.

Dr. Randolph looked across the table; his eyes twinkled over his cla.s.smate's tone, but he courteously answered:

"I've been experimenting there for five years. I went the usual round of hospitals and studied with Pasteur, and have raised scores of colonies of bacilli. Lately I have busied myself with investigations of too complex a nature to discuss. And you----"

"Oh,--I'm a--a member of the clubs, you know. I'm now engaged in breeding beagles. That takes lots of time you know. My father died some years ago, and I--eh--take care of the estate."

"So?" exclaimed Randolph with a German lengthening of the vowel sound.

Then taking the opportunity while Harland was emptying his gla.s.s, he regarded him thoughtfully.

"Look here, Slack," said the young doctor after a moment's hesitation.

"What do you say to spending the evening with me? I am lonely and want to talk over old days. You're done up and not fit to go to the club to-night."

Now Harland, though considerably astonished by the invitation, was also flattered.

"But my appointment! I never missed an appointment in my life, you know," wavered Harland unsteadily, while s.h.i.+fting his eyes to the door.

"Never mind that now. I'll leave word at the desk. Psst--garcon!"

The Doctor spoke masterfully; the gentleman obeyed him as readily as the servant. A pencil note, with strict injunctions for delivery solved the inebriate's sodden difficulty. Slack insisted upon adding that he would still meet his friend between ten and eleven o'clock. Randolph smiled indulgently, and they pa.s.sed out into the cool air arm in arm. Randolph hailed a coupe and got his friend into it with pardonable alacrity.