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Page 34
"O, she'll be in by night, sir, safe enough. Wind's freshened up a
good bit since; wouldn't take her long to rig a new bowsprit. Beg
pardon, sir, did you happen to know the party next door to you?"
"I know no one. What about him?"
"Can't find him nowhere, sir. Door locked this morning; hadn't used
his bed; must have come aboard, for there was a violin lying on the
bed in a black box, for all the world like a coffin, sir. Queer, ain't
it?"
The steward was called away, but Helwyse's uneasiness had returned.
Did this fellow suspect nothing? The student of men could not read his
face; the power of insight seemed to have left him. Reason could tell
him that it was impossible he should be suspected, but reason no
longer satisfied him.
He left the cabin and once more sought the deck, harried and anxious.
Why could not he be stolid and indifferent, as were many worse
criminals than he? Or was his disquiet a gauge of his moral
accountability? By as much as he was more finely gifted than other
men, was the stain of sin upon his soul more ineffaceable? Last night,
ignorance was the only evil; but had he been satisfied with less
wisdom, might he not have sinned with more impunity? Nevertheless,
Balder Helwyse would hardly have been willing to purchase greater ease
at the price of being less a man.
The steamer descended the narrow and swift current of East River,
rounded Castle Garden, and reached her pier before eight o'clock.
Shoulder to shoulder with the other passengers, Helwyse descended the
gangplank. The official who took his ticket eyed him so closely that
there was the beginning of an impulse in his weary brain to knock the
fellow down. Finding himself not interfered with, however, he passed
on to the rattling street, beginning to understand that the attention
he excited was not owing to a visible brand of Cain, but to his beard
and hair which were at variance with the fashion of that day. He was
neither more nor less a cynosure than at other times. But he was more
sensitive to notice, and it now occurred to him that his unique
appearance was unsafe as well as irksome. Were a certain body found,
in connection with evidence more or less circumstantial, how readily
might he be pointed out! He fancied himself reading the description in
a newspaper, and realized how many and how easily noted were his
peculiarities. His carelessness of public remark had been folly. The
sooner his peculiarities were amended, the better!
At the corner of the street stood a couple of policemen,--ponderous,
powerful men, able between them to carry to jail the most refractory
criminal. One path was open to Helwyse, whereby to recover his
self-respect, and regain his true footing with the world; and that led
into the hands of those policemen! With a revulsion of feeling perhaps
less strange than it seems, he walked up to them, resolved to
surrender himself on a charge of murder. It was the simplest issue to
his embarrassments.
"Policemen!" he began, with a return of his assured voice and
bearing. They stared at him, and one said, "How?"
"Direct me to the best hotel near here!" said Helwyse.
They stared, and told him the way to the Astor House.
There had been but the briefest hesitation in Helwyse's mind, but
during that pause he had reconsidered his resolve and said No to it.
Remembering some episodes of his past history, he cannot hastily be
accused of vulgar fear of death. In his case, indeed, it may have
required more courage to close his mouth than to open it. Be that as
it might, the question as to the degree and nature of his guilt was
still unsettled in his mind. Moreover, had he been clear on this
point, he yet distrusted the competence of human laws to do him
justice. He shrank from surrender, less as affecting his person than
as superseding his judgment. But, failing himself and mankind, to what
other court can he appeal? Should the fitting tribunal appear, will he
have the nerve to face it?
He did not go to the Astor House, notwithstanding the trouble he had
taken to ask his way thither. He coasted along the more obscure
thoroughfares, seeming to find something congenial in them. Here were
people, many of whom had also committed crimes, whose eyes he need
not shun to meet, who were his brethren. To be sure, they gave him no
friendly glances, taking him for some dainty aristocrat, whom idle
curiosity had led to their domains. But Helwyse knew the secret of his
kinship; and he perhaps indulged a wild momentary dream of proclaiming
himself to them, entering into their life, and vanishing from that
world that had known him heretofore. It is a shorter step than is
generally supposed, from human height to human degradation.
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