Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel
father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone.”
He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his
lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.
Beulah Sands turned to me. “Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is
soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt
its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever
from thinking of my father’s situation, I have had awful temptations. The
agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might
have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung
one’s elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind,
just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley
that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become
unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as
they seem in anticipation.”
I overtook Bob just outside the office. I did not speak to him, for I
realised that he was in no mood for company. I dropped in behind,
determined that I would not lose sight of him. It was almost one o’clock.
Wall Street was at its meridian of frenzy, every one on a wild rush. The
day’s doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were
shouting afternoon editions. “Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man
against millions. Robert Brownley broke ‘the Street.’ Made twenty millions
in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of
Asterfield National a suicide.” Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode
with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at
space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying
men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as
though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called
him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in
curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his
victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its
buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the
street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the
fence surrounding old Trinity’s churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either
hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen of Mammon
who once walked the earth and fought their heart battles, as he was
walking and fighting, but who now knew no ten o’clock, no three, who
looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the
worms that honeycombed their headstones’ bases. What thoughts went through
Bob Brownley’s mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless,
then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches
were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York’s
mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise:
Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose
frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, “from
the farm and mother’s watchful love.” On another bench an Italian woman
who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and
whose clothes told of the immigrant ship just into port. Bob Brownley
apparently saw none. But suddenly he stopped. Upon a bench sat a
sweet-faced mother holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a
curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic
lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman’s face was one of those that
blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. ’Twas
a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a
light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron
of the city.
“Mr. Brownley—” She started to rise.
He gently pushed her back with a “hush,” unwilling to rob the sleepers of
their heaven.
“What are you doing here, Mrs.——?” He halted.
“Mrs. Chase. Mr. Brownley, when I went away from Randolph & Randolph’s
office I married John Chase; you may remember him as delivery clerk. I had
such a happy home and my husband was so good; I did not have to typewrite
any longer. These are our two children.”
“What are you doing here?”
The tears sprang to her eyes; she dropped them, but did not answer.
“Don’t mind me, woman. I, too, have hidden hells I don’t want the world to
see. Don’t mind me; tell me your story. It may do you good; it may do me
good; yes, it may do me good.”
I had dropped into a seat a few feet away. Both were too much occupied
with their own thoughts to notice me or any one else. I could not overhear
their conversation, but long afterward, when I mentioned our old
stenographer, Bessie Brown, to Bob, he told me of the incident at the
Battery. Her husband, after their marriage, had become infected with the
stock-gambling microbe, the microbe that gnaws into its victim’s mind and
heart day and night, while ever fiercer grows the “get rich, get rich”
fever. He had plunged with their savings and had drawn a blank. He had
lost his position in disgrace and had landed in the bucket-shop, the
sub-cellar pit of the big Stock Exchange hell. From there a week before he
had been sent to prison for theft, and that morning she had been turned
into the street by her landlord. I saw Bob take from his pocket his
memorandum-book, write something upon a leaf, tear it out and hand it to
the woman, touch his hat, and before she could stop him, stride away. I
saw her look at the paper, clap her hands to her forehead, look at the
paper again and at the retreating form of Bob Brownley. Then I saw her,
yes, there in the old Battery Park, in the drizzling rain and under the
eyes of all, drop upon her knees in prayer. How long she prayed I do not
know. I only know that as I followed Bob I looked back and the woman was
still upon her knees. I thought at the time how queer and unnatural the
whole thing seemed. Later, I learned to know that nothing is queer and
unnatural in the world of human suffering; that great human suffering
turns all that is queer and unnatural into commonplace. Next day Bessie
Brown came to our office to see Bob. Not being able to get at him she
asked for me.
“Mr. Randolph, tell me, please, what shall I do with this paper?” she
said. “I met Mr. Brownley in the Battery yesterday. He saw I was in
distress and he gave me this, but I cannot believe he meant it,” and she
showed me an order on Randolph & Randolph for a thousand dollars. I cashed
her check and she went away.
From the Battery Bob sought the wharves, the Bowery, Five Points, the
hothouses of the under-worldlings of America. He seemed bent on picking
out the haunts of misery in the misery-infested metropolis of the new
world. For two hours he tramped and I followed. A number of times I
thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained.
I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its
outcome might depend Bob’s salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods,
the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when
battling for their soul, but Bob’s woods appeared to be the shadowy places
of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his
brook’s ripple the tears and tales of the man-damned of the great city,
for he stopped and conversed with many human derelicts that he met on his
course. The hand of the clock on Trinity’s steeple pointed to four as we
again approached the office of Randolph & Randolph. Bob was now moving
with a long, hurried stride, as though consumed with a fever of desire to
get to Beulah Sands. For the last fifteen minutes I had with difficulty
kept him in sight. Had he arrived at a decision, and if so, what was it? I
asked myself over and over again as I plowed through the crowds.
Bob went straight to Beulah Sands’s office, I to mine. I had been there
but a moment when I heard deep, guttural groans. I listened. The sound
came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands’s office. With a bound
I was at the open door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me
even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray
figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late,
sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her
elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had
evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been
reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his
hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by
the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the
eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of
a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom
he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some
unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come
the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half
turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob’s with a sweet, childish
perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so
intelligently masterful should be passive in the face of such anguish.
Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her
great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I
was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been
all that was intelligent, all that was godlike, all that was human. Their
soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in
body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty shell—a
woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the
mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I passed my hand
across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob’s
figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah
Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful
hand from the paper and passed it over Bob’s bronzed cheek, just as the
infant touches its mother’s face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I
almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great
black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been
reading:
“FRIDAY, THE 13TH.”
And beneath in one of the columns:
“TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA”
“THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND
EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE
FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS
TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER’S, AND THEN
HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY.”
In another column:
“ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF
WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.”
A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my
heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory
crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost
left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the
black and bloody canvas.
Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, “Man can
suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace,” understand the
wondrous wisdom of his God. Beulah Sands had gone beyond her limit and was
at peace.