 CHAPTER 15 BAD DAYS But had my desired obsession, or familiar or haunting ghost, really desired to help, he might have warned me definitely of Sabina Castle. Alicia did not appear at the inquest she was ill and under a physician's care. Her semi-conscious state, as reported by him, prevented even the taking of a deposition. I did not, however, stand alone a star witness before the coroner's jury. Sabina Castle, Mrs. Moore's old-colored mammy, whom she had brought north with her from Virginia, shared, and rather more than shared, the honors with me. They had taken pains that Nils and I should not meet. He was kept rigorously in communicato till the inquest. No one saved the police and the district attorney having access to him. At the inquest I caught only a glimpse of him, when he was let out past where I awaited my turn before the jury. Involuntarily I sprang up only to be caught by a constable's hand, while Nils was hustled on out. As he went he threw me a glance that was a burning, dictatorial command. I obeyed it. I told the jury exactly that story which Nils's letter had outlined for us both. There was tempered steel in Berquist. I could be sure that no long-drawn torment of inquisition could make him vary a hair's breath from the line he had set for us to follow. In my testimony which preceded Sabina's, I explained what Nils had objected to my interest in spiritualism, fostered by a single previous visit to the Moore's place. That he wished me to leave the house with him, and that Alicia also had seemed sat against my remaining. That an argument ensued, at the height of which Moore became very angry and excited, shouted, I'll settle with you once for all, and came round the table toward Berquist. He grasped Berquist's arm. I said, when my friend tried to free himself, Moore snatched the file from the table. I saw Berquist seize Moore's wrist. They struggled a moment, and then Moore staggered away with his hands to his face. Then he fell down. Berquist called to me, and, no, I had not tried to interfere. It all happened too quickly. There wasn't time. After Berquist wrenched the file from Moore's hand, I don't believe he struck it more. I think the file was driven into his eye by accident. That surmise, of course, was struck from the record. But I had said it, at least, and hoped it impressed the jury. Afterward the sight of blood and the suddenness of it all turned me sick. No, my recollections were clear up to that time. And so forth. It was a straight story. I knew it agreed to a hair with Nils's confession. What I did not, could not know, was that it varied in what essential detail from an entirely different confession, a confession made by a person whom we had not considered as an even possible eyewitness, and whose very existence I at least had forgotten. Given that a second eyewitness existed, one would have supposed that the disagreement would have been over the slayer's identity. It was not. By a curious trick of fate, Sabina Castle, Alicia's old-colored maid, did undoubtedly see me strike Moore down, and yet not through such a supernormal illusion as caused me to kill Moore, but in a perfectly natural manner. She had confused Berquist's identity with mine. She related as having been done by Berquist, that which had been done by me. In one detail only did Sabina's testimony conflict with ours. But that was the kind of detail which would hang a man if its truth were established. She had seen me, Berquist by her own account, snatch the file from the table and strike Moore, and she had seen me do it on no further provocation than the laying of Moore's hand on my arm. The fifth presence was right, when he foretold that Nils would be indicted. And yet though things had indeed gone ill for Nils at the end-quest, I did not at once carry out my expressed intention and substitute myself for him as defendant. I didn't wish to die, nor spend years in prison. I wanted to live, and have a decent, straight, pleasant future ahead, such as I had been brought up to expect as a right. It seemed to me that just one way lay open. Though Nils was now entirely at my mercy, only his untrammeled acquittal would give me the moral freedom to keep silent. For that a first-class lawyer was a sine qua non. Berquist was practically penniless and the barber ex-checker, in not much better state. Here again, however, friendship came to the fore in a curiously impressive manner. For the sake of an old acquaintance and some ancient friendly claim that my father had on him, none other than Helador Marx took Berquist's case. I mean Helador Marx of Marx, Marx and Orlo who could have termed himself Marx the famous and not lied. I remember my first interview with him, after Dad had, to me almost incredibly persuaded him into alliance. My first impression was of a mild-looking, smallish man with a scrubby mustache. He had hurt the top of his bald head in some way, so that it was crossed with a fair-sized hillock of adhesive plaster. I thought that added to his insignificant appearance. But he had the brightest, softly brown eyes I have ever seen, and after the first few minutes I was afraid of him. I was afraid that I would tell him too much. My confidence, however, proved not the easily uprooted kind of a common criminal, and for Nils the acquisition of this famous insignificant-looking lawyer gave me the only real hope of assurance I had through those bad days. Your friend, Marx had said to me, is a rather wonderful young man, Barber. I can't blame you for being troubled. He was the kind of intelligence that would make a legal genius of him if he had turned his efforts to that direction. A wonderful intelligence, and all lost, in a maze of impractical theorizing, and the sort of dreams that can come true so long as men are men and women are women. God help us all. He shan't go to the chair nor prison either. He's my man, my case. And yes, I'll say my friend, though I don't run to sudden enthousiasms. Leave Berkress to me. Evidently Marx's consultations with his case had not been kept within strictly professional bounds. I smiled involuntarily. I could picture that long dark face of Nils lighting to alert interest as he discovered that Marx was not merely the lawyer who might save him from martyrdom, but also a thinking man. He must have brought out a side of the little man that was kept carefully submerged at ordinary times. I am sure that few people had seen Hellador Marx incline to dilatory wanderings in philosophy, such as Nils loved. But I would have with a lighter heart and more optimism than I had carried in some time. Marx with his, my man, my case, my friend, had instilled a confidence which remained with me all that day. I had returned to the bank, for though I walked in the valley of the shadow, while I could walk I must work. So Mr. Turn had me back again, and it was a very good thing that I had Mr. Turn to go back to. Not many men would have put up with the abstracted attention my work received, nor patiently picked up the slack of details I let go by me. His patience had a characteristic reason behind it, which I was sure of from the minute he told me about poor Van. The latter, it seemed, had really gone the step too far with his father in the affair of Mr. Turn's 400. Van Siddharth Sr. would let no one speak of his son to him after that day. Every one of the bank hour knew that he had quarreled with him, disowned him, and that Van, in a fit of temper, had refused the offer of a last-money settlement. A couple of thousand only, it was said, flung out of the Colossus, and walked off, leaving the grey roadster forlorn by the curb. No one knew where Van had gone after that. He had simply vanished, saying no goodbyes, taking nothing with him but the clothes he wore. Mr. Turn felt guilty because it was his complaint, which had caused the final rupture. He liked me anyway, but having as he believed ruined Van, he showed an added consideration for me, which developed into an almost absurd tenderness for my feelings. He needed that. If I was to be kept on the tracks at all those days, I was nervous as a cat, ready to jump at the creek of a door. Roberta would watch me with wide, troubled eyes, and because a question was in them, I would grow irritable and fling off, and leave her with almost brutal abruptness. And always she forgave me. Till I came near wishing, she would forgive less easily. Kathy resented my new irritability with the merciless justice of his sister. Mother endured my anxiety for nills only because it proved I was like dear Serapion, and dad harped on his pride in me for standing by, till I really dreaded to go near him. And as for the fifth presence, he remained detestably faithful. Several times I explained to him that if nills were not cleared, I intended to confess. When he only continued to smile, I ceased talking to him. He still came, however, and on the very night before the trial opened, the last thing of which I was conscious, dropping asleep, was his smooth, persuasive, hateful, silent voice. As ever it was expressing the platudeness and always subtly evil advice, to which habit had so accustomed me, that it had grown very hard indeed to distinguish his speech from my thoughts. When a murderer, for I name myself that, has called to confront across some thirty feet of courtroom the innocent man standing trial in his stead, he needs all his nerve, and a bit more, to keep steady under the questioning of even a friendly and considerate counsel. In fact I was strangely more afraid of Marx than of district attorney Clemens. I might however, spared myself there. The impandaling of the jury had been a battle royal between Marx and Clemens, at which I was not present, but which had roused the newspaper men to gloating anticipation of the real battle to follow. Then Marx dropped out. I could hardly believe it. When Orlo, his junior associate, met me on the first day of the trial and broke the news. It proved lamentably true. By Orlo's account, he was a fat clever little Russian, with an unmistakable nose, and a tongue that would slip into betraying Vs and Ps, by his account Marx had finished with the talisman against strict orders from his physician. A book hit his head, explained Orlo. That was in September. It dropped off a shelf and the brass corner cut his head, oh just a little bit. But he was careless. Infection sat in, and now there is necrosis of the bone in his skull. To think of it, with such prance inside, he will be operated now, and when I went to see him this morning he was insensible. And to think of it, he added with melancholy and unconscious humor, it was the compiled statutes that may have roamed our Helidor Marx forever. Well, we must do as we can do without him. This was poor consolation. Had it not been for Marx, I told myself, I would never have left Niels Berquist go to trial. Should I allow it to go on now, with our best hope or his day combat? The second Marx, Helidor's brother, was in Europe and Orlo, while brilliant in his fashion, was not a man to impress juries. His juniors lay in the hunting out of technical refinements of law, ammunition as it were for the batteries which had brought rage to the heart of more than one district attorney. While he rose presently in court and asked for a delay in proceedings, Clemens I lighted. When Justice Ballington refused the request, a foregone conclusion, because Marx admittedly was in too serious a condition for the delay even to be measured, Clemens lowered his head suddenly. It might have been grief for his adversary's misfortune. Or again it might not. Where I sat with other witnesses I was intensely conscious of an absurd, brilliantly veiled little figure, two chairs behind me. This was my first glimpse of Alicia since the night of Berquist's arrest. Though I knew Marx had been granted at least two interviews with her, me she had resolutely refused to receive. Now I was relieved to find that her nearness brought no return of the supernormal influence I had suffered before in her vicinity. She sat stiffly upright and did not glance once in my direction. Perhaps her guides had advised her to dawn that awful veil of protecting purple for this occasion. Or she may have worn it as a tribute to her husband's memory. It certainly gave her a more unusual appearance than would a crepe blackness behind which a newly made widow is want to hide her grief. At her side towered the large form of Sabina Castle. The trial opened. One Dr. Frick appeared on the stand and an elaborate incomprehensibly described in surgical terms the wound which had caused Moore's death. I saw him handling a small hideous object, gesturing with it to show exactly how it had been misused to a deadly purpose. Then for several minutes I didn't see anything Moore. Luckily all eyes in the courtroom were on either the doctor or the murderer. Nobody was watching me. The doctor's demonstration seemed to prove rather conclusively that my accident hypothesis was impossible. The file he showed could have been driven into the brain only by a direct hard blow. Dr. Frick was allowed to stand down. In establishing the offense Clemens saw fit next to call Elisha herself. As her mistress arose Sabina's massive bulk stirred uneasily as if she would have followed her to the stand. At the inquest the old colored woman's testimony had done more than cause nills indictment for murder. It had made a public and very popular jest of Elisha's claim to intercourse with spirits. But though in the first flush of excitement over Moore's death Sabina had betrayed her. The woman was loyal to her mistress. When a murmur that was almost a titter swept the packed audience outside the rail Sabina shook her head angrily muttering to herself. The audience hoped much of Elisha. And its keen humor was not entirely disappointed. No sooner had she appeared than an argument began about her preposterously brilliant veil. The court insisted that it should be raised. Elisha firmly declined to oblige. She had to give in finally of course and when that peaked white face with its strange eyes was exposed. The Hydra beyond the rail doubtless felt further rewarded. The Hydra believed her a fraud they had reason. I with greater reason understood and pitied her. I thought she might break down on the stand. Elisha's character however was a complicated affair that set her outside the common run of behavior to Clemens questions with sphinx-like impassivity and the precision of a machine. Her answers only confirmed Nill's story and mine to a certain point and stopped there. There was not a word of spirits nor guides. Not a hint of any influence more evil than common human passions. Not a suggestion even that she had formed an opinion as to which man, Slayer or Slane, was the first aggressor. I am sure that a more reserved and noncommittal widow than Elisha never took the stand at the trial of her husband supposed murderer. James, she said, wished Mr. Barber to remain. Mr. Berquist wished him to leave. They argued. No, I should not have called the argument a quarrel. I did not see Mr. Berquist strike James. While they were still talking, I lost consciousness of material surroundings. Yes, my loss of consciousness could be called a faint. The argument was not violent enough to frighten me into fainting. Yes, there was a reason for my losing consciousness. I lost consciousness because I felt faint. I was tired. I do that sometimes. Yes, I warned them that something bad was coming. I couldn't say why. I just had that impression. I did not see either James or Mr. Berquist assume a threatening attitude. Released at last, she readjusted her purple screen with cold self-possession and returned to her seat. It was Sabina Castle's next turn. Save an appearance Elisha had not, after all, come up to public anticipations. In Sabina, however, the Hydra was sure of a real treat in store. Judge Ballington wrapped for order. Sabina took her oath with a scowl. Every line of her face expressed resentment, but she was intelligent. To Clemens' questions, she gave grim, bald replies that offered as little grip as possible to public imagination. Yes, on the evening in question she had been standing concealed behind the black curtains of Ms. Licia's cabinet, or box, as Sabina called it. No, Mars James did not know she was there. Ms. Licia and she had fixed it up so that one could enter the box from the back. Mars James had the box built with a solid wooden back like a wardrobe. It stayed that way for a while. Then Mars James, he done got unsatisfied. Yes, the spirits did work in the box and come out a bit too, but Mars James, he ain't suited yet. He want them spirits should walk all the time. He never give my poor child no res. And so, Elisha, who according to Sabina, could sometimes but not always command her spirits, devised a means to satiate Mars scientific craving for results. While he was absent in another city, the two conspirators brought in a carpenter. They had the cabinet removed and a doorway cut through the plastered wall into a large closet in the next room. By taking off the cabinet solid back and hinging it on again, it would just open neatly into the aperture, cut to fit it. Elisha kept plenty of gowns hung over the opening in the closet beyond. Returning more found his solid back cabinet apparently as before. From that time, however, the spirits were more willing to oblige than formerly. Ab uno di sé omnes is invariably applied to the medium or clairvoyant caught in fraud, though translated from all fraud, infer all deceit. The world laughed over the spiritualistic fake again exposed. I did not laugh. Let it be that the hand which Roberta and I had seen was Sabina's gnarled black paw, and that my impression of its unsubstantiality was a self-delusion. Let those strange little twirling flames that had arisen pass as the peculiar fireworks I had tried to believe them. Let even the incident of the broken lamp have been a feat of Sabina's, though how her large clumsy figure could have stolen out past the table and into the room unheard was a puzzle, and the masculine voice of Horace, a wonderful ventriloquism. Grant all these as deceptions. There had come that to me through Elisha's unwilling agency, which had given me a terrible faith in her, that no proof of occasional fraud could dispel. Gleman's interrogations touched lightly on the subject of the door in the cabinet supposedly solid back, only serving to establish the fact that it was impossible for his witness to have been practically in the library, unknown to all the Rome's other occupants, save probably Elisha. Then he asked Sabina's story of that night in her own words. She began it grimly. While I was in behind a Kooten's that hangs in front of Elisha's box, dim Kooten's is moderate tin. I couldn't see all day as in de room, but I suddenly could see all that pass in front of the lamp. Yes, doubt what you got in your hand, am wanted, dim Kooten's. Here, Gleman's checked her. While the Kooten, exhibit B in the prosecution's evidence, was passed from hand to hand through the jury box, each jury man momentarily draped himself in mourning, while he assured himself that it was thin enough to be seen through. Then with solemn nods, exhibit B was restored to the district attorney. Sabina continued. These Yeh Jemen, Mr. Buquus and Mr. Baba, they come in and right away deogafine started. I can't tell all they say. They use highfalutin, educated language. What I am not familiar to me, the Lord knows I've done here enough of it since Miss Leesier come north with Mars James Moa. Deogafies and Agafies. Mr. Baba, he don't say enough much, but Mr. Buquus, he specify they should both up and leave. Miss Leesier, she say maybe something bad, Gwyn, happened pretty quick. Mars James, he say, Mr. Baba, you go. Come back another time. Mr. Baba, he say no. He don't want to go. K's Miss Leesier can maybe help him some way. Mr. Buquus, he go right up into air. He specifies some harm done. Come up he friend staying round there any longer. Mr. Buquus, he am standing right alongside the big table with the lamp on it. The lamp and behind him. I see every move he make. He done mutter something low and don't rightly know what he say, but it have a right spiteful Agafie and tone to it. Mars James, he holler out, I fix you now, Fodat. No dem ain't maybe the exact words he use, but you asked me to tell this in my own words, and that am what he mean. Yasa? And we'll continue. He holler, I fix you now, Fodat. And he rush over to Mr. Buquus and lay hand on his arm. No sir, he didn't go for to do Mr. Buquus no harm. Mars James, he have a way of talking loud and bigotty, but I never done saw him do no harm to nobody. He grab Mr. Buquus laugh arm. Mr. Buquus, he reach out, he other hand, and grab something off the table. Mars James done do nothing. Mr. Buquus, he throw back he hand and hit out with it real smart. Mars James let go he arm, clap he hands over he face, and sorta let's go all over. He just crumble down like. I knows that the bad am happen. I couldn't get out of their box easy into their room. Case does a table in it that reach pretty high across, and I ain't spry to climb over it. No sir. I didn't think to shove the table out of the way. I ain't think of nothing but mislesia. I turns round gets out to back because I wants to get to my mislesia. I comes round to the whole door and goes in the library. Day is Mr. Buquus standing over Mars James. He hands all dropping blood. I say you done kill him, ain't you? He looks all round kind of pitiful like and then he say, yes Abayna, I kill him. Now go fudge the doctor and some police. Mr. Buquus, he am like lots of other high spirited gemmen. He don't go full to kill Mars James, but when Mars James touch him in anger he just bleeds full to do it. That's all right. I got right to have my opinion same as everyone. While don't put it in their writing record then, I don't care what you does. That's just my opinion. Yaza, I sewer that it were Mr. Buquus grabbed defile and not Mars James. While Mars James he standing with his left side to the table. Yaza, I could sewer enough tell which was which. Mars James he ain't so tall but pretty nigh foot high as Mr. Buquus. It am the tall man who stand with the right side again the table who take defile often it. No, Mars James don't try to do nothing hurtful to Mr. Buquus. No, they don't struggle round none at all. They just stand there. It's the Lord's truth. That was the most unexciting killing I have ever saw. And then Clemens let her go to the deep disgust of Hydra outside the rail. He had not asked what she was doing in the cabinet nor many other of the questions which gave an amusing double interest to the Moore murder. All that however was bound to come out in the cross examination and meantime Sabina had proved Clemens witness to an extent which made the case promise well of interest on its tragic side. End of Chapter 16. Recording by John Brandon Chapter 17 of Serapion. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Brandon Serapion by Francis Stevens Chapter 17 Bound by the Dead I was not called before the jury until after the noon recess which gave me time to think things over a bit more. At the inquest I had not actually heard Sabina's testimony though Marx, who interviewed her as well as her mistress, had warned me that she would prove a difficult antagonist. I had not fully believed him. Negroes in the average run are diffuse in their statements and easily muddled into self-contradiction. Sabina might prove so under cross examination, but I doubted it now. She had wasted hardly a word that morning and there was only one point on which I was sure that she could be shaken. The difference in height between Slayer and Slane was a strong point for the prosecution. Even through thin black curtains it would indeed have been hard to confuse a tall silhouette with a short one, but no one had thought to question the identity of the tall silhouette. Though Sabina may have known better during the minutes that she stood staring through the curtains, her after and more vivid sight of Burquist with hands drop in blood and his almost instant claim of the crime as his own had served to make the tall man Burquist in all her memories. Burquist, the self-confessed. I had no faith in Orlo. Had Marx not dropped out, I should have been content to let the trial take its course. Sure that his genius would somehow save the day and free my friend. But under Orlo's handling with that craggy, sullen, assured black woman to swear that Moore was not and could not have been the aggressor, since he stood with his left side to the table grasping the tall silhouette with his right hand and a man under impulse of passion is not likely to reach for a weapon with his left. I was morally certain that Burquist would lose out. But what if, rising on the stand, instead of a second perjury, I told the simple truth? Not that portion of it which included the superhuman, but just the fact that I and not Burquist had been swept by one of those sudden fits of red anger that have made murderers of many before me. Why Sabina herself would support my words once spoken. There was a little unnoticed twist in her testimony. A point where the voice of Burquist, coming from beyond the table, became the voice of the tall man, standing on her side of the lamp. The instant that I spoke, she would know. Her memories unconsciously readjusted to fit facts, as she had afterward learned them would be straight again. Burquist's hidden heroism would stand revealed, and I though I died, I would at least die clean. Resolve crystallized suddenly within me. When Clemens called me to the stand I would go, not to testify, but to confess. I walked to the little raised platform with the chair where the others had sat. Below the double tier of jury men. I mounted it. Somebody put a rusty black book under my hand and mumbled through a slurred rigmarole, to which my low acquiescence was a prelude to ruin for me. I sat down in the chair. Beyond the rail was a packed level of faces. They were all pale and dreary looking, it seemed to me. Though that may have been an effect of light, for the day was grey and dreary. I had returned to court through falling snow. It was a wet late springfall of clinging flakes, and all the way I had been haunted by a memory of the dead alive house, as I had seen it that night. Not the interior, not even the library, with its master, a grim grey and scarlet horror on the floor, but the house itself, dazzle it under its white burden, with the great flakes swirling down, hiding deeper and more deep, the line of division between the living half and the dead. Berquist was sitting by a table with Orlo beside him. I had visited him in prison, of course, and talked with him a few moments just before the trial opened. His determination and courage had never swerved, nor his conviction that we had only to keep steady and win. Now I saw his eyes, as the dark and valiant glory fixed on me. Their message only hardened my resolve. That man, to play the martyr for my sake, never. Orlo left Nils, and took his stand conveniently near. He was there to protect me from irrelevant questions, but he looked quite out of place. Clearly the mantle of Hellador Marx did not rest easily on his shoulders. The district attorney, a thin scholarly person whom I instinctively disliked, began his inquisition. Your name, please. Age and Occupation? Barber? Clayton S. Barber, I corrected myself. I am. Just a moment. Your full name for the record, please, Mr. Barber. Clemens, who would reserve any attempt to rattle me for my appearance in the rebuttal, was Politeness itself. Clayton. Serapien Barber, I forced out. Then I cursed myself for not having substituted Samuel, or left out the initial. There's power in a name. Once I would have laughed at that statement. But not now. Not with my recent memories. And, as God is my witness, I sat there and saw the district attorney's hatchet face change, blend, grow smooth, and loathsomely pleasant. Clemens continued his interrogations. But I spoke to another, then he, when I answered them. The Living Bound by the Dead. End of Chapter 17. Recording by John Brandon Chapter 18 of Serapien. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Brandon. Serapien by Francis Stevens. Chapter 18. A Letter from Alicia May 15. Mr. C. S. Barber Sir, I am writing to you because my guides advise it, otherwise I should not do so. I have returned to my old home in Virginia. The newspapers were very cruel to me, as you know. And every one unkind and harsh and disbelieving. James understood me. If he found out about the cabinet, he would have been annoyed. But he would only have taken more pains after that to see that all the phenomena were genuine. I can't help doing such things. It is a part of my nature. James said I was very complex. In a measure it is your fault that he left me. I am not vengeful, however. And I do not hold it against you because I can well guess at what you had to contend with. For some cause that has not been revealed to me, some cause within yourself, I feel you were, and still are, peculiarly open to the attack of one we know of. Were yours an ordinary case of obsession, I might have helped. As it is, I can only offer a warning. Whatever there is in you that answers to him, choke it, crush it back, give it no headway. Above all, do not obey him. If, as I suspect you have obeyed in the past, cease now. It is not yet too late. But if you, Knight, find you under his domination, you will never be free again. You may wonder why I was silent at the trial. You may have thought that I was ignorant of the truth. This is not so, though I did not tell even Sabina. To bring the greater criminal to justice was impossible. For the rest it was between you and your friend. Understand I will not interfere between you and your friend. My guides say that this is not for me to do, that I must not. That if one of you wills to sacrifice and the other to accept, not even God will interfere between you. But I write particularly to give you this message. Mortal life is cheap, and mortal death and illusion. Beyond and deeper are life and death eternal. Be careful which you choose. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Brandon. Seropian by Francis Stevens. Chapter 19 A Conversation Flain life and death are the only realities. Life eternal, death eternal. For you and me, those are words, my boy. Just words. It was dusk in my room. I sat on the edge of the bed, chin in hands, staring at the inevitable companion of my solitude. At my feet lay the scattered sheets of Alicia's letter, scrawled over in a large childish hand. The outside world was bright with an afterglow of the departed sun, but grey dusk was in my room. Just words repeated the face. Just words. I said after him duly. Then at a thought I roused a trifle. He won't go through with it. Even Nils Berquist can't be willing to die without a protest. And for such a crawling puppy as would let him do it. He will die, but not entirely, for your sake, the presence retorted. What do you mean? You haven't guessed? Well, it is rather amusing from one viewpoint. Your friend is not only in jail. He's in love. Nils? Nonsense. Besides, if he were in love he would wish to live, not die. That is the amusing part. He is willing to die because of the love. Some woman refused him, you mean? No, the girl is not even aware of his feeling toward her. She would, I think, be shocked at the very thought. He has only spoken with her twice in his life. But from the first moment that he saw her face, he has loved her. He has sat in the courtroom and watched her, while the lawyers fought over his life. And to his peculiar nature, rather an amusingly peculiar nature from our viewpoint, merely watching her so has seemed a privilege beyond price. He is willing to die, not for you, but to buy her happiness. Who is this girl? I asked Horsley, and speaking aloud, as I still sometimes did with him. You should know. Nils Burquist in love with Roberta? I said slowly. But that's absurd. You are lying. No. Every day as you know she was in that audience beyond the rail. For your sake! Because she knew how you cared for this man, Burquist. She herself has a shrinking horror of the red-handed murderer. But her devotion to you has served our purpose well. That first mere glimpse he had of her on the street, the hour at dinner in your house. These impressions might have somewhat paled, in the stress of confronting so disgraceful a form of death. But in the courtroom he watched her face for hours every day, and each day bound our dear poet and dreamer tighter. But he measures her love for you by his own for her. As you are still his friend, uncondemned and worthy, he will buy your life for her. He loves her, and would have her marry a murderer? He believes, as you have told him, and truly enough, that you were thrown off balance by some influence connected with Alicia, and did not know what you were doing. But it is rather amusing, as I said, he loves the girl for the goodness and purity of her beauty, and for her newly born sadness. You have tired of her for the same reasons, and plan to break the engagement. But he needn't know that, eh? Liar! I shall marry Roberta. When? Never? No, you're entirely right. She is not the wife for you. With my help you can easily attract a better. I know at least one woman among your mother's friends who is already devoted to you, and who has means to make not only you, but your whole family happy and comfortable. I mean the blonde widow, who owns the big house next to your old home. What is her name, Marsha Baird? Yes, she is the woman I refer to. Oh, I know she's over 30, but think what she could give you. As for the girl, she knows your circumstances, her love is selfish, or she would have released you before this. You are lying, as you have lied in the past. What have I said that proved untrue? You have lied from the first. There was poor old Van. You said that his father would forgive him, and he didn't. Be fair, you misquote. I said that Van would not be ruined. With the enthusiastic despair of youth, he played hobo for a while. Then he went to work at the one thing he understood. He is a very industrious mechanic now, in a motor-car factory, with good chances of a foremanship. And except for Greece, living cleaner than he ever did before. He was going the straight down road. But his sacrifice for you pulled him up. You will hear from him shortly. He doesn't bear any grudge. But Nils, you promised to be my ally, to use your power as an influence to help. I kept my promise. Has the least slur of suspicion fallen upon you? Is not every one your friend? Is there a man or woman living who hates or despises you? Are you not shielded and sheltered by the mantle of love, as I foretold? But you promised that Nils would be acquitted. Not acquitted, I said, released. For such a spirit as his. The world is a prison. In real life, such as you and I prize, there is no contentment for him. Death will release him to that higher sphere, where the idealist finds perfection. And the dreamer? His dreams. Believe me, Nils Burquist could never be happy on earth. In speeding his departure, we are really his benefactors, you and I. The face beamed, as though in serene joy for the good we had done together. But I hid my head in my arms, groaning for the shame of us both. June 9th was coming. June 9th. End of Chapter 19. Recording by John Brandon Chapter 20 of Serapien This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Serapien by Frances Stevens Two Letters June 5th. My dear Clayton, mother has told me of your talk with her. I am glad to learn that your views coincide with my own, as I have felt for some time, that it would be best for me to release you from our engagement. Your ring and some gifts I return by the messenger who carries this. I am leaving shortly on a visit to friends of mothers in the south, so we shall not meet again soon, wishing you the best of fortune in all ways. I remain, very truly yours, Roberta Ellsworth, winning field. June 5th. My Owen dearest. Here and hereafter. Mother didn't understand, as I do. She made me write the letter that goes with this. She is very proud, and that you should be the one who wished to break our engagement. Shamed her. She even believed a silly gossip that you have been paying court to Mrs. Marcia Baird on the sly. I had to laugh a little. Imagine it. If I could picture you as disloyal, I could never, I am sure, picture you making love to that poor, dear, sentimental, rich Mrs. Baird, who is old enough to be the mother of us both. Well, maybe not quite that, but awfully old. Thirty-five anyway. But mother have believed it, and to please her I wrote that cold hard letter that goes with this. I am not proud a bit, dearest. I have to tell you that I understand. You are burdened to the breaking point, but it is I who you wish to free, not yourself. Dearest, I don't want that kind of freedom. Love is sacrifice. Don't you know that I could wait for you a lifetime, if need be? Mother says you never truly loved me, or you would not let me go. I know better. We are each others only, you and I. I measure your love for me by mine, for you, and if it's years or a lifetime, be sure that I shall wait. You have suffered so over this terrible tragedy of your friend, that I can't bear you to have even a little pain from doubt of me. It seems dreadful that I should leave you on the very day before June 9th, but mother has bought the tickets and made all the arrangements, so I must go. I won't hurt you by saying a word against your friend, but, oh, my dearest, don't quite break that heart. I love over a tragedy that, after all, isn't yours. You have been to him all that a friend could be. True, loyal, self-sacrificing. You could not have done or suffered more if he had been your brother. That's one reason I am sure of you, dearest. No man who could be so loyal to friendship will ever forget his love. I promise, mother, not to see you again. But nothing was said about letters. I'll send you an address later. Clay, darling, goodbye till you are free to take me. Remember, years or a lifetime. Your own, dearest, always, here and hereafter. Bert. Extract from Evening Bulletin. June 8th. Truck collides with taxi on 32nd Street. Miss Roberta Whittingfield, victim of fatal accident. Early this morning, a heavy truck loaded with baggage skidded across a bit of wet asphalt on 32nd Street, above Broad, and collided with the rear of a taxi cab traveling in the same direction. The taxi was hurled against the curb, one of the occupants uninjured. Daughter, Miss Roberta Whittingfield, taken to St. Clement's Hospital, death ensued shortly afterward. Miss Whittingfield said to have been the fiancée of Clayton S. Barber, a witness in the famous Moore murder trial, and who has since vainly exerted himself to obtain a pardon for the murder. Berquist, if the victim of this morning's accident is really Mr. Barber's betrothed wife, there is a tragic coincidence here for him. No one has ever questioned his devoted and disinterested friendship for the socialist murderer. Berquist, his friend dies to-morrow. Has his sweetheart died to-day? End of Chapter 20, Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. Chapter No. 21 of Serapion This is a LibreVox Recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. Serapion by Frances Stevens Another, Conversion Clay, lad, you're the one person on earth whom I wish to see. You've changed your mind, Niles. You'll let me tell them the truth? Hush, speak lower, and be careful. How long have we to talk? Twenty minutes. I wrung a pass at last from Clems. Thought I could never have persuaded him. You know what a time I had over the last one, and now so close to the day. Unheard of, the Warren said, but I had the pass. They searched me and let me in. If I'd failed, it might have been better for you, Niles. Why, if I'd failed, I had meant to confess immediately. Hush, I say. The others, they seem inattentive enough. But you can't gauge how closely they are listening. A prison is more than a prison. I've learned that. It's a mesh of devilish traps set to comb the very soul out of a man and violate its secrecy. Niles, you have suffered too much. Don't go so white, lad. It was good in you to come and see me again. Niles, I mean it. Don't you think I understand what this means to you? Have I no imagination? Can't I put myself in your place? Why, the last time you came it nearly broke my heart, to remind you of your duty. But we are men, you and I. When men love, they are willing to make their sacrifice. You would not do this for me alone. It is all for Roberta. Can you ask, why, dear friend, I would never dream you a lifetime of remorse for a lesser reason. My part is nothing. To die is nothing. We all die. If you could exchange for me, I might not survive you. A day, an hour, there are so many doors out beside the one I pass through tomorrow. What's death? No. Boy, it is your part that is hard, and I thank God when I saw your face, because I wished to say a word or soul that might make it easier. You are the noblest friend a man ever had, but I came to tell you that that have you seen the afternoon papers? No, nor any papers for a week. I'm done with this world and the news of it. I haven't supposed, though, that they would devote their precious columns to real gloatings over me till tomorrow. Clay, take my advice and don't read the papers of June 9th. You haven't seen today's? I say no. Why? Any special gloatings in them? There is Niles. You must let me stop this. Well, there is time. I shall go to the governor. No, no, no, no, and no again. Clay, I have passed you months of hell to see my reward snatched away at the last instant. There, you see, I make it plain that I am selfish. To keep her happiness in violate, to buy happiness for her at the mere price of death, why, that's a joy that I never believe God would judge one worthy of. You believe in God and his justice? You? Most solemnly, most earnestly, as I never knew him, nor his justice before. Clayton, lad, why, I'm happy. Do I seem so tragically sad to you? No, but you seem different from any living man. You look like I have seen the picture of a man with that light on his face. See, he was nailed to a cross. Niles, I am afraid. I said your part was hardest. Hush, the others are listening. We've been speaking too loudly. Our time is almost gone, and I haven't even begun what I wish to say. Quick, make me two promises. You're the friend I have loved, Clay. I'll stake anything on your word. First, I'm buying your life with all that I have to give. So it's mine, isn't it? You, you know. Yes, straighten up, boy. They are watching us. Your life, then, which is mine, I will and bequeath to her, and you will never forget. That's a promise. Yes, my God, Niles, I can't stand this. I have a thing to tell you, Hush. Second, never buy word nor look. Never, if you can help it. Buy a thought in her presence. Will you betray our secret, a promise? Niles, no. Yes, I promise. And you will? Is that the guard coming? I fear so. Our last talk is over, Clay. Don't care too much. Wait. Just a minute. More guard. What, five? They are good to me. These last days. Listen, Clay. You are the only man in the world to whom I would tell this. This morning a wonderful dream came to me. I had lain awake all night thinking, and I was tired. After breakfast I lay down again. I lay there all night caught, asleep. But I believed waking. And she came and stood by my head. You know that time when we met at dinner in your house. She didn't like me very well. And afterward in the courtroom, as time passed and they proved their case, she, before the end, she dreaded to even look toward me. Don't protest is true. But in this dream that was so much more real than reality, she stood there and smiled, Clay, at me. She laid her hand on my forehead. There was a faint light around her. And she leaned and kissed me on the lips. Waking I still felt the touch of her lips. So real, real. If she were not living, I would have sworn that her spirit had come to me. And friendly, loving. Don't look so, Clay. I shouldn't have told you. Oh, surely you don't grudge me that kindness from her in a dream. There I knew you too well to think it. All right, guard. He's coming. Clay, good-bye. May your sacrifice measure your happiness. As God knows, it does mine. When you think of me, let it be only as a friend, always, forever, here and hereafter. Good-bye. End of Chapter 21. Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. Chapter 22 of Serapien. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. Serapien by Francis Stevens. The Reward I walked into a dusty green triangle of turf and gravel walk space, smitten with hot yellow light from the west, where the June sun sank slowly down a clear light blue sky. Behind me, across a narrow street, rose a stark gray wall, beyond which a certain man would never pass into the sunshine again. He is the shadow I in the sun. But sunlight was yellow, glaring, terrible. In the prison I longed for it. The shadow had seen bad then. Now I learned how worse than bad was sunlight. There were three rusty iron benches set in the triangle, and they were all empty. No one wished to sit here. There would be always the risk that some sneak and murderer might come walking out of that prison across the way, walking out leaving his friend and his honor and his God behind him forever. So I walked into the little triangle and sat down on one of the empty benches. I had with me two papers. I had meant. I think I had meant to show at least one of them to Niles. When I went to the prison I had not known whether Niles would have read or been told a certain piece of news. If he had not already learned, it was in my despairing mind to tell him and let him decide what we should do. I had found him ignorant and left him so. Sitting there on the empty bench in the hot, free, terrible sunshine, I drew one of the papers from my pocket. I wished to see if this were true, if a certain quarter column of cheap blurred print did really exist, and if it conveyed exactly the information I had read there. Yes, the thing was. The slanting sun beat so hot on the paper that it seemed to burn my hands. I sat on an iron bench in a dusty triangle of green. I had come out of the place where Niles bequised at weighted death. I held a folded newspaper in my hands, and I was beyond question a damn soul. All these things were facts. Real, my eyes followed the print. Miss Roberta Whittingfield, death ensued shortly afterward, said to have been the fiancée of Clayton S. Barbara, who has since vainly exerted himself to obtain a pardon for the murderer Berquist. No one has ever questioned his devoted and disinterested friendship for the socialist murder Berquist. His friend dies to-morrow. Has his sweetheart died to-day? I was better informed than the reporter. Not my sweetheart, but my former sweetheart had died to-day. My victim, not my friend, would die to-morrow. The second paper that I carried was not printed, but written. Taking it out, I tore it up very carefully into tiny bits of pieces, just so I had destroyed Niles' letter, sent me by the bribe guard at the station house, and also the quaint strange letter of Alicia Moore. The pieces I tossed into the air fell on the hot dry grass like snowflakes, and they still. There wasn't even a breath of wind to carry or scatter them, and the words they borne I couldn't very well tear up nor forget. We are each others only, you and I. No man who could be so loyal to a friendship will ever forget his love. Your own dearest always here and hereafter. No, I said aloud very thoughtfully. Not always, not beyond the border. She came to him in a dream, so real, real, and kissed him. Well, they must see clearer over there. Niles will see clearer to-morrow. But thank God, said the pleasant silent voice, for the blindness of living men. Are you never going to leave me, I asked Dolly? Never, the face replied. You are mine, and I am yours. You settled that a few minutes ago in the prison. You clenched it irrevocably with the destruction of her letter. But don't be downhearted. I've got an idea we should get on excellently together. Go, I said, but without hope that the face would obey me. Nor did he. You will find yourself very lonely if I should go. There will never again be any other comrade for you than myself. And yet I can promise you many friends and lovers. Burquist is not the last idealist alive on earth. Nor was she who died the last woman who could love. But you and I understand one another. Two comradeship requires understanding, and such as Niles Burquist and the girl, though they offer us their devotion, can never give understanding to you and me. This, when you think of it, is fortunate. In the name of God, leave me. Never. Save a careless word. What have you and I to do with God? We are each other's only, it insisted, the pleasant, horrible face, always, always, here and hereafter, indissolably bound. And with that, instead of fading out as with its usual custom, the face came toward me swiftly. I did not stir. It was against my own face, and I could see it no longer, for it and I were one. Rising I walked out of the little hot triangle of green, and as I had left Niles Burquist in his prison, so I left a newspaper on the bench, some tiny scraps of white paper to litter the dusty grass. All that happened many years ago, long enough for even the restlessness to have forgotten, one would think, and I am content, successful, moreover, I am well light in the world, which means a lot to me. Who to be content must be loved. Just now, alone in my room, I viewed myself in a mirror. The face that looked back was familiar enough, as familiar or rather more so than my own soul. I myself liked it, smooth, young looking for a man near forty, pleasant, all above else pleasant. With a little inward twist at the corners of the finely cut mouth, and an amused but wholly agreeable slideness to the clear light-blue eyes. Not romantic. Romance is only another word for idealism, and that face has no ideals of its own, yet so many romantic people have loved it. As I have loved my mind drifted back over the long, dear, self-sacrificing, idealistic line of those who have borne my burdens and made my life easy and enjoyable. A way down, pressed back in the very depths of my being, a paying of horror nod, but I have grown used to that. That was an I. I was, I am, that face which returned my gaze from the mirror. It is true that, left to him, self, the boy, Clayton, might never have dared take that which so many people in this good old world are ready to offer one who does dare, who is not afraid to be the God above their altar. But what harm to the devotees? That sort, yet, their own happiness so. They like to sacrifice themselves and to change the simile. They love their crucifier. They suffer in dear, perhaps, like Miles Burquist, all shame and the final agony of death, and God sends them a dream, and they are content. I understand that. Why not? It is because I have strength to be what they are if I choose that. I have such strength in being what I am. I am content in my own fashion, which suits me, and the restlessness should learn to be content in the same manner. Let it be quiet now. I have written the story. I, Clayton Barber, the successful, beloved, the happy. What, still restless and torn with horror? Then ring out the whole truth, if you must, and be quiet after. What has been written was a story of Clayton Barber, but it is I whom he has tormented into writing it for him. Yes, I, the pleasant, crafty usuper. I, the ignoble hypocrite to myself and God. I, the self-ridden outcast of happiness, in any world, the external and accursed sham, the acceptor of sacrifice, the loved, the damned, the angel drowned in mire, syrupyan. I have absorbed his being, yes. But in the very face of victory I, who never had a conscience, have paid a bitter price for the new lease of life in the flesh that I coveted. Body and soul, you yielded to me, Clayton Barber. Body and soul, I took you, and thence onward for ever. Body and soul, in spirit or flesh we too are dissolvably bound. And my punishment is this, that you are not content, and I know now that you never will be year by year you who were weak have grown stronger. Day by day, even hour by hour, you are tightening the grip that draws me into your own cursed circle of conscious stricken misery. Sooner or later, ah, but the very writing of this gives you power. Is it true, then, after all these years must the long bright shadow of Nile's Berquist cross-touch and save me even against my will? Must I, Clayton Syrupyan, the dual soul, made one surrender at last, and myself take up the awful burden God lays on those he loves? First painful step on that road I have confessed. The End End of Chapter 22, Recording by Lynda M. Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. End of Syrupyan by Francis Stevens