Anthony The Absolute

April 12th – very late

I WALKED slowly Lack into my own room, trying to think; but my mind was inert.

In the next room Heloise was still singing, softly and brightly.

I stepped out on the little balcony.

What was it Sir Robert had said? Oh, yes, that Crocker had come to Peking. This was dreadful. It meant trouble. One way or the other, I myself was involved in this trouble. A wife is, in a sense, the property of her husband – in a sense. If she dishonors his home by leaving him for another, he has some right to be indignant. If his outraged sense of possession lashes him into a murderous passion he can not be stopped from killing her. In England now – something about competent witnesses. And the difficulty of convincing a jury that she was not living with me…

In the confusion of mind that lay over my faculties like a paralysis, one curious fact sticks out in my memory. I deliberately shook myself, standing there on my balcony. I tried to shake myself awake.

I seemed to be recalling a story that the fat vaudeville manager from Cincinnati told on the ship, one night. It had to do with a celebrated prize fight in New York some years back. He reveled in memories of fights, that vaudeville man. An odd mental habit!

On the occasion he mentioned, one fighter was knocked down and very nearly, as the phrase runs, “out.” Lying there upon the floor of the ring, dazed, all but unconscious, the man actually beat his own head against the door in a desperate effort to rouse himself.

Over and over again that picture rose in my mind. I have never witnessed such a spectacle. Primitive brutality has played, needless to say, no part in my life. But at this time, caught up and whirled about, as I was, in a bewildering conflict of primitive emotions, it was a second-hand recollection of the prize ring that came to my aid.

The fact is not uninteresting.

I chanced to glance down. A tiny, lacy ball lay there at my feet. I picked it up. It was Heloise’s handkerchief.

I held the absurdly small square of linen and lace in my two hands and looked at it. I folded and unfolded it. I pressed it to my lips, again and again.

Am I to become the helpless victim of these crude emotional uprushes – like any common clerk with his shopgirl? I, who have for so long observed the human herd from afar with a sort of casual interest?.. I wonder.

Suddenly the thought of the man Crocker came to me. He was in this city. He was over there in the Legation Quarter, behind the walls that I could see – over in the big hotel. He was drinking again. And there was murder in his heart.

It seems to me that this thought – I am trying to face my strange, new self, and set everything down; God know’s I need the discipline! – that this thought was followed by a little blaze of heroics. I am somewhat confused about this, of course – one can not analyze one’s own emotions with any degree of accuracy while they are still active – but I recall going out into the hall and standing there like a sentry. I was determined to protect my lady with my life. I saw myself fighting gloriously for her; and I saw her, close at hand, witnessing my ever valiant act, and exulting in my prowess.

A child has such notions. And, I note, a lover.

I stood for a time at the top of the stairs. Crocker should never mount those stairs alive. Behind me, through the transom of number eighteen, there occasionally came floating clear little threads of tone. Heloise was singing as she moved about her room. She did not know. And she should not know – not yet. Perhaps I could find a way to spare her. At any rate, Crocker would never pass those stairs without fighting his way over my body.

Once I tiptoed back and tapped at Sir Robert’s door; even tried the knob, but it was locked. He had gone, evidently.

I don’t seem to know quite why I sought that old man again. It was an impulse. Perhaps I wanted him to see that his warning had had no effect on me, none whatever.

It was getting on into the early evening now, say between seven and eight. I half-saw one of the Chinese waiters come up the stairs with a tray for Heloise. I leaned against the wall when he passed. But for some reason it did not occur to me to order food for myself. I could not have eaten out there in the hall, anyway; and were I to sit in my room, even with the door open, there was a possibility that Crocker might rush by before I could stop him. So I ate nothing, all the evening. I could n’t eat now, if food were brought to me. The reactions of what we call love are curiously related, it appears, to the various bodily appetites. I am almost ready to define love as a general disturbance of all the nerve centers, accompanied by strong, positive, emotional excitement and a partial paralysis of the reasoning faculty.

Some little time passed while I stood there at the head of the stairs. A fit of impatience, that may have had in it an element of morbid eagerness to hasten the event, took possession of me. After all, it was not essential that I should stand guard at that particular spot. I walked slowly down the stairs and, making a strong effort to appear unconcerned, through the office and out the door. He would have to come in this way.

I walked slowly along the narrow street toward the Italian glacis. It would be better, much better, to meet him out here.

There has been a chill in the air this evening. And the wind has risen, stirring up clouds of the powdery loess dust that is the curse of this wonderful old city.

For a long time I paced that street, breathing at times through my handkerchief in order to avoid the choking dust.

As the evening wore away, my resolution weakened. I began to see myself for the absurdity I unquestionably was – I the thin, nervous man of science, pitifully inexperienced in the ways of this sadly violent world, yet endeavoring to swell myself up (like the frog in the fable) into a creature fit to cope with that world. It is absurd. I am not a violent man. I don’t understand violence. There is no place for it in my philosophy, for my philosophy is based on fact and reason. There is no room for violence in an orderly world. Yet, under the pretense of civilization which is spread so plausibly over the surface of modern human life, I am confronted at every turn by the spirit of violence. And my own reason and sense of fact, in which I have so often sought sanctuary, have now failed me utterly.

Little by little my walks to and fro carried me farther into the broad open park that is called the glacis. That odd, morbid eagerness was drawing me steadily nearer and nearer the little foreign city within the Legation walls.

Finally I entered the Quarter. The great masonry walls fairly breathed of violence.

There is a sharp angle in this narrow road where it enters the Quarter, so constructed that the street can not be raked, from without, by shot and shell.

I passed under a sentry box on the wall, from which an armed soldier peered out at me – placed there because he might be needed to prevent or commit murder. For he and his like are but the trained agents of violence, masquerading behind a thin film of patriotism and what men still call glory.

Once within the walls I walked very rapidly. I was conscious that my whole body had tightened nervously, but I was powerless to relax. The blood was racing through my arteries and veins. I could feel that old throbbing at the back of my head. And my forehead was sweating so that I had to push my hat back. I carried my heavy walking stick – it had seemed that I might need it – and I was swinging it as I walked, gripping it so tightly by the middle that it all but hurt my hand.

There was no stopping me now. I went straight through to Legation Street, hurried along it, past the bank and the big German store, and turned off south toward the great hotel with its hundreds of bright lights and its noisy little swarm of rickshaw men on the curb.

I entered the wide hall that leads to the office and stood there, while my eyes searched about among the moving, chatting groups of people. There was a circle of tourists about the old Chinese conjuror who sat on his heels in a corner among his cloths and bowls and what not; I walked slowly around this circle, seeking the erect figure, the solid shoulders, and the drink-flushed face of Crocker.

I walked deliberately through the lounge, studying every solitary figure there among the easy chairs and the little tables and the potted shrubbery.

I went down the long corridor to the bar, and stood squarely on the threshold surveying the large room. There was a considerable number of men there – fifty or more, easily. The dress uniforms of half the armies of Europe flashed their gilt at me. All the tables were occupied, and there was a solid rank at the bar, behind which slab of mahogany the sober, silent Chinese waiters worked deftly at catering to the vics of these dignified gentlemen from the Christian West, now and then pausing to take in the scene with inscrutable, slanting eyes. There was much loud talk, some laughter, and, at one of the tables, a little quarreling.

Here, sure enough, was Crocker.

He sat in the corner across from the door and a little to the left. He was alone. A whisky bottle stood before him on the table, and a number of glasses. His face was very red. His big, usually vigorous body leaned limply against the wall. His head rolled slowly back and forth. There could be no doubt that he was very drunk. It seemed to me that he would have rolled to the floor had not his body been wedged in between the wall and the back of his chair.

I will admit that I was profoundly relieved. Nothing could be done to-night. Crocker could not act, or talk, or even listen.

Even now I feel that relief. Though I have observed Crocker closely enough to know that when he recovers from this debauch he will be dangerously unbalanced, I am glad of even a day’s delay. He was in what he himself referred to as the “hangover” stage when he knocked down the waiter at Yokohama.

I may as well admit further – since this journal must be honest or else cease to exist – that this first sight of the man since Heloise entered my life and so vitally changed it was unexpectedly unsettling to me. Despite his condition at the moment, I felt again, looking at his shoulders and chest and arms and the outlines of his head, the primitive force of the man. And the expression of his face, now maudlin with drink, oddly recalled my memory of him as I had last seen him at the Yokohama station when there were tears on it. I had never before seen a man cry. I do not know that the possibility of such extreme emotion in a strong man had ever occurred to me.

He holds ideas regarding men, women and morality that are profoundly repellent to me, this crude yet not wholly unattractive man. He is permitting his life to be wrecked for these ideas – which at least indicates some sincerity. Heaven knows a man can’t “own” a woman, or a woman “own” a man. Neither can possibly possess more of the other than that other is compelled by the power of love to give. There are no “rights” in love.

Yet – and this is the puzzling thing – when I was with Crocker, I liked him. And he liked me.

Savagely as he is mistreating his splendidly vigorous body, desperately as he is permitting his mind to become confused and brutalized, he is, even now, by no means a besotted man. I am not certain that he could properly be termed a drunkard. There is yet stuff in him. There is energy in him, that could be used. But in his stubborn purpose of destruction he is incidentally destroying himself.

What is this mystery of sex that it should enter a man’s heart in the guise of love only to tear that heart to pieces?

Pale wanderings, these! And sad. For they tell me that in all the so-called practical affairs of life I am a weak person of confused mentality. There is bitterness in the thought.

I rather like that man. I think I feel a deep pity for him. And I am his mortal enemy. I can not understand it. But it is so.

I think I will give you up, you Journal that have so long been my companion in the rich solitude of my working life. For this life of mine is a working life no longer. It has turned off into the dark byways of passion. My purpose, hitherto compelling, falters now. My once clear mind is clouded and confused. I do not know when I shall work again. I do not know what I shall do. I only know that all is dark and still in the room next to this dingy room of mine, and that a sad, beautiful woman sleeps softly there. I only know that I love her beyond my strength, and yet that I seem unable to hate the man who would hate me if he knew.

It is only a little later – in the very early morning. I have reconsidered. I shall not yield to this weakness. After all, it may steady me to continue my old-time habit of writing everything down. Besides, it is clear that I shall have no sleep this night. It will be better to keep occupied at something.

It was my weakness for introspection, I think, that brought me to that state of bewilderment. I seem to get along better when I confine my narrative closely to the facts. I must resolve again, as I have resolved before, simply to tell what took place. Just tell it.

I turned away from the bar-room door. A number of men from one of the legations approached along the corridor. They were talking and laughing rather freely, and were all tall men, so that I neither heard nor saw the man behind them until after I had stepped aside and across the corridor to let them pass in to the bar. And the man behind followed them in without seeing me.

It was Sir Robert. He was in evening dress, of course, true to his British breeding. His monocle dangled against his shirt front. He was bowed a little. His hands shook perceptibly as he walked. And I observed that same new nervous twitching on the left side, of his face.

He stepped a little way into the room and looked about, as I had done. I waited. I did not seem to care whether he saw me or not, but felt no desire to invite conversation with him.

His eyes finally rested on the drunken man in the corner. His left eyelid drooped and drooped, as it always does when he is thinking intently. It seemed to me that he stood there for a long time, and that there was irresolution on his face. Myself, I could not take my eyes off him; it fascinated me to watch his drooping eyelid and the twitching corner of his mouth.

After a time he slowly turned and came out. He did not so much as know that I was there. He was studying the carpeted floor – thinking, thinking. I followed him.

He moved slowly out through the lounge to the street door, bowing coldly to certain of the individuals he passed. He went out, and down the steps.

The ragged rickshaw coolies pressed about him. He brushed them aside with his hand. For a moment he stood there, on the stone sidewalk. Once he turned, as if to reenter the hotel; but wavered, and stood still again.

I thought he saw me, waiting in the doorway, but believe now that he did not.

Finally he stepped up into a rickshaw, and waved his hand. His coolie picked up the shafts and set off on a run.

I hurried down the steps, leaped into the next rickshaw, and followed.

He went as directly as the streets permitted to our little Hôtel de Chine.

So he was coming back!

I dismissed my rickshaw at the corner of the street and walked to the hotel.

He was not to be seen in office or lounge, so I went on up the stairs.

As I mounted, I heard voices. I stopped short when my eyes cleared the top step, and looked down the corridor.

Heloise’s door was a little ajar. I could tell this by the rectangular shaft of light thrown from her room across the dim passage. Sir Robert had unlocked his own door, just across from it, and was standing with his hand on the knob, crouching a little, evidently listening to the conversation in her room.

I stood motionless.

One of the voices – that of a man – grew a little louder; but I was too far off, there on the stairs, to catch what he was saying. Then rather abruptly, the door swung open and the man backed out. He was the manager of the hotel.

At the same instant Sir Robert, with agility surprising in one of his age, darted into his own room and swiftly, but softly, swung the door nearly to behind him. The manager was too intent on his own words and thoughts to know of this.

I could not think what to do. The one thing I was sure of was that I did not want to speak to the manager, coming, as he was, directly from her room. So I ran down the stairs, and was in the lounge looking at a magazine when he appeared on the ground floor.

I waited a few moments longer, then went up again. I simply had to know what Sir Robert was about. And again I stopped when my head rose just above the top step.

Sure enough, there he was – that old man! – crouching by her door and tapping softly at it with his shaking fingers. I felt a slow, cold sort of dread creep across my mind and my nerves. I did not move.

He tapped and tapped – oh, so softly! He stooped to the keyhole and whispered. I could not hear him, but I could see it all in pantomime.

He gave this up; and stood thinking. He slipped into his own room and switched on the light, but did not close the door. In a very short time he reappeared with a white paper in his hand – an envelope, doubtless.

And for the second time I had to watch this monstrous old man get down on his shaking knees and with a pencil thrust his evil communication in under her door.

This done, he got to his feet (I could hear his heavy breathing), lingered only a moment, then returned to his room, leaving his door ajar.

I came on up the stairs then, walking as heavily as possible, and let myself into my own room here.

I kept silent for quite a time until I heard Sir Robert’s door shut. Then I tapped on Heloise’s door. Again and again I tapped there, but she would not reply. She is avoiding me, and that is disturbing. Her light went out soon after that.

On looking back, I see that I have spoken of her as sleeping. Since then I have thought, on two occasions, that I have heard her tiptoeing about her room; but for the most part it has been unusually still there. I have wondered if she is out on her balcony; but I dare not look. I shrink from it. For she is avoiding me. She would not answer my tapping on her door – the light, nervous tapping that she knows so well. And one thought stands out in all the dreadful, turbulent confusion of this hour. It is that I must not try to see her if she does not wish to see me.

It is just two o’clock.

I shall not sleep. I shall not even undress. This is not wise of me, I suppose. But it is the way I feel. And I am a creature of feeling now. It would help to pass these dreadful hours if I could go on writing – or if I could read. But she will know it if I do not put out my light. Perhaps she would worry.

So I shall sit here in the dark. Or walk to the window and look out at the sleeping city – at this rich old capital of a peaceful people, who smile languidly at the turbulent West from which I spring (like Crocker and his sorry kind) – who turn from the miseries of actual life to the philosophy of their ancient seers.

Though, come to think of it, I am wrong here. Even gentle, contemplative old China has been drawn from her slumber of the ages into the whirlpool of modern life. I was thinking of the past. I had forgotten. They are carving out a republic here now. Their hands are stained with blood. And the sometimes violent bankers of the Western world sit coldly over them while they struggle.

There is no peace. There is no clear thought. There is only life. Only life.

April 14th

ALL the rest of that night of the 12th-13th I sat in my dark room, or softly walked the floor, or gazed out at the sleeping city fit un my one window. And all night I was conscious of unusual and increasingly violent nervous reactions. Turning the pages back, I note that I attempted the other day to write a definition of love. This was absurd. I do not know what love is. Nobody knows. It is a capricious and wild thing. It flashes like the lightning, and rushes like the wind. It grows by feeding on itself. It exalts. It devastates. It contains within itself all the latent possibilities of nobility and service, of lust and jealousy, of tenderness, of sacrifice, of murder. It is a blind, insistent force; yet it shines before the mind’s eye like dewdrops on the gossamer wings of fairies.

When morning finally came, I stood there at my window and watched the sun climb slowly over the Legation walls. It was a flat red sun, hung behind a film of dusty air.

I wondered how long it would be before I should tap on Heloise’s door. Not long. I feared. All night I had been waiting; all night I had been withholding my hand.

I heard her get up, and stir about her room. I wondered if she had slept. Perhaps, for she still did not know what I knew.

For a long, long time I waited.

Finally, at seven o’clock. I tiptoed across the creaking floor. I stood there by the door. I raised my hand, then dropped it. My throat became suddenly dry.