The Return of Peter Grimm - David Belasco (best books to read for knowledge .TXT) 📗

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As he left the desk, Marta entered from the kitchen with the light supper he had ordered:--coffee, with sugar and cream, and a plate of little cakes. She went to the desk and began clearing a space among the scattered papers for the supper tray. As her free hand moved among the papers, the Dead Man was at her elbow.

"Marta!" he whispered, as though fearing his words might reach Frederik. "Look! _Look!_"

He pointed excitedly to the torn letter and the photograph that lay face downward under her hand. And she picked up both letter and picture, to make room for the tray.

"Marta!" urged the Dead Man, almost incoherent in his wild haste. "See what you have there! Look down at that picture in your hand! Turn it over and _look_ at it! Look at the hand-writing on that torn letter! Look quickly! Then run with them to Miss Kathrien. Make her piece the letter together and read it! Quick! It's the only way she can learn the truth. Frederik will never tell her. Marta!--_Ah!_"

His wild plea broke off in a cry of chagrin. For Frederik, turning from the sideboard, had seen the old woman.

"Your coffee, Mynheer Frederik," said she, laying down the photograph and letter without a glance at them.

"Yes, yes. Of course," answered Frederik. "I forgot. Thanks."

She turned to leave the room. Frederik, coming over to the desk, caught sight of the torn blue envelope and the picture, where she had laid them.

Hurriedly covering them with his hand, he glanced at her in quick, terrified suspicion. But the face she turned to him as she hesitated for a moment at the kitchen door showed him at once that he was safe. Nevertheless, Marta lingered on the threshold.

"Well?" queried Frederik, seating himself beside the tray.

"Is there," she stammered, "is there no--no word--no letter----?"

"Word? Letter?" he echoed nervously. "What do you mean?"

"From----" began the old woman in timid hesitation, then in a rush of courage: "From my little girl. From Anne Marie."

"No!" he snapped. "Of course not. I----"

"But--at a time like this--if she knows--oh, I felt it,--I hoped--that there would be _some_ message from her! Every day I have hoped----"

"No," he broke in. "Nothing's come. No letter. No word of any sort from her. I'd have let you know if there had. By the way, I have an appointment at the hotel in a few minutes. Tell Miss Kathrien, if she asks for me."

He busied himself with the tray. Marta looked at him a moment longer, held by some power that she could not explain. Then years of habit overcame impulse. She courtesied and withdrew to her kitchen.

As the door shut behind her, Frederik caught up the torn blue letter. Tossing it in a metal ash tray he struck a match. Peter Grimm, divining his intent, sprang forward with a wordless cry to stop him. The Dead Man's hands tore at the wrists of the Living; sought by main strength to snatch the paper out of his reach; with pitiful helplessness tried to thrust back the hand that held the lighted match.

Unknowingly, Frederik touched the flame to the paper, shook out the match, and watched the torn letter blaze and curl. Then he tossed the charred bits into a jardiniere on the floor, and picked up the picture.

"There's an end to _that_!" he murmured, turning to throw the photograph into the smoking embers of the fireplace.

Peter Grimm stood erect. A new hope drove the sick despair from his face. Looking toward Willem's room he raised his arm and beckoned.

At once the door stealthily opened. A white little figure slipped out onto the gallery and toward the stairs. Down the flight of steps, clad in his white flannel pajama suit, his eyes wide, his yellow hair tumbled, Willem ran.

Frederik, in the act of consigning the photograph to the fire, was arrested by the sound of pattering feet. Laying the picture on the desk, he turned guiltily, in time to see Willem speeding across the room toward the bay window.

"What are you doing down here?" demanded Frederik. "If you're so sick, you ought not to get out of bed. That's the place for sick boys."

"The circus!" mumbled Willem in the queer, strained voice of a sleep walker. "The circus music waked me up. So I had to come and hear it."

"Circus music?" repeated Frederik amazedly, as he watched the boy tugging at the rain-tightened window sash to force it upward.

"Yes, it woke me. I can see the parade if I can get this window open. It----"

"Why, you're half asleep!" exclaimed Frederik. "The circus left town ten days ago!"

"No, no!" insisted Willem, raising the window with one final wrench of his frail arms. "The band's playing _now_. Hear it?"

A gust of chilly, wet air dashed in through the open window, sending a sharp draught across the room and waking the boy wide as it beat into his hot face.

"Why," babbled Willem, rubbing his eyes, and staring about him, "why, it's _night_ time! I wonder what made me think the circus was here. I--I guess it was a dream."

Frederik strode to the window impatiently and slammed it shut. As he passed Willem on the way back to the desk the boy intuitively cowered away from him.

"You've had a fever," said Frederik crossly, "and you're liable to catch cold, wandering around this draughty old barn in your night clothes. Go back to bed."

"Yes, sir," whimpered the boy, cringing under the sharp tone and starting back for the stairs. But, before he reached the lowest step, he halted. Peter Grimm stood barring his way. For a moment the Dead Man and the child stood face to face. Then, still frightened but unable to resist, Willem turned back toward Frederik, who had just picked up the photograph once more; to put it in the smouldering ashes.

"Mynheer Frederik," asked the boy in a voice not his own, "where is Anne Marie?"

"What?" barked Frederik with an uncontrollable start and whipping the photograph around behind his back like a guilty child caught in theft. "What's that? Anne Marie? Why do you ask _me_ about her? How should _I_ know?"

He turned his back on the boy and began to tear the photograph into tiny bits. Willem hesitated, then went back to the stairway. Again at the foot of the steps he confronted the Dead Man. Again they stood for an instant, looking wordlessly into each other's eyes. And again Willem turned back into the room.

"Mynheer Frederik," he asked in a sort of dazed bewilderment, "_where_ is Mynheer Grimm?"

"Eh? Mynheer Grimm? Dead, of course. Dead."

"Are--are you _sure_? Because just now----"

"Oh, go to bed! At once, do you hear! Go, or I'll have you punished!"

Under this dire threat and the scowl that went with it, not even the Dead Man's power could stem Willem's defeat. Up the stairs he scuttled. At the door of his room, the fever thirst in his hot, parched throat for the moment overcame fear.

"Could--could I have a drink of water?" he whimpered, gazing longingly down at the full ice-water pitcher on the sideboard.

An angry glance from Frederik sent him into his own room like a rabbit into its warren.

Frederik, the fragments of the picture clenched in his sweat-damp hand, glowered after the retreating lad and took a step toward the fire. The movement brought him close to the desk. The lamp had suddenly burned very low. But for the faint gleam of firelight the room was in almost total darkness.

And out of that gloom leaped a Face. A Face close to Frederik's own;--a Face indescribably awful in its aspect of unearthly menace. The face of Peter Grimm. Not kindly and rugged as in life, or even as since the Dead Man's return. But terrible, accusing, bathed in a lurid glow.

Frederik, with a scream of crass horror, reeled back. The bits of cardboard tumbled from his fear-loosened grip and strewed the surface of the desk.

"My God!" croaked Frederik, his throat sanded with terror. "My God! Oh, my _God_!"

The Face was gone. The room was in shadow again and very silent. The dropping of a charred ember from andiron to hearth made the panic-stricken man jump convulsively.

Scarce breathing, crouched in a position of grotesque fright, the fear-sweat streaming down his face, Frederik Grimm peered about him through the flickering gloom. The place seemed peopled with elusive Shapes. His teeth clicked together as his loosened jaw was nerve-racked. He shivered from head to foot.

"I--I thought----" he began, half aloud.

Then he fell silent, afraid of his own voice in that dreadful silence. For a moment he cowered, numb, inert. Then he remembered the fragments of the photograph that still strewed the table.

"I must get rid of them," he thought.

He took an apprehensive step toward the desk. But the memory of what he had seen there was too potent. He knew he could no more approach that spot than he could walk into a den of rattlesnakes. He halted, sweating, aghast. Again he crept forward,--a step--two steps--in the direction of the torn picture. But his fears clogged his feet and brought him to a shivering stand-still. Had the wealth of the world lain strewed on that desk instead of a mere handful of scattered pasteboard bits he could not have summoned courage to step forth and seize it.

The Dead Man, in the shadows, read his mind and smiled.

"No one's likely to come in here till I get back," Frederik told himself, in self-excuse for his cowardice. "And if any one does, the picture is too badly torn to be recognised. I----"

He found that his terror-ridden subconsciousness was backing his trembling body toward the outer door. The door that led from that haunted room--from the desk he dared not go near,--out into the safe, peace-giving night of summer.

And, snatching up his hat and stick, the shuddering, white-faced young master of the Grimm fortune half-stumbled, half-ran, from his home.

"Hicks's lawyer will be waiting," he said to his battered self-respect. "I'm late as it is. I must hurry."

And hurry he did, nor checked his rapid pace until he had reached his destination.

Scarce had the door banged shut after Frederik when Peter Grimm raised his eyes once more toward Willem's room. And again the little white-clad figure appeared, and tiptoed toward the stair head.

Willem paused a moment, looked over the banisters to make certain that Frederik had gone, then stole down to the big living-room. His cheeks were flushed with fever. He was tired all over. His head throbbed. And his throat was unbearably dry. The perpetual thirst of childhood, augmented by the gnawing, unbearable thirst of fever, sent him speeding to the sideboard. He picked up the big ice-water pitcher,--chilled and frosted by inner cold and outer dampness--and poured out a glassful of the stingingly cold water. The boy gulped down the contents of the glass in almost a single draught. Then he filled a second glass and, with epicurean delight, let the water trickle slowly and coolingly down his hot throat. Peter Grimm stood beside him, a gentle hand on the thin little shoulder. His thirst slaked, Willem glanced fearfully toward the front door.

"Oh, he won't come back for a long time," Peter Grimm soothed him. "Don't be afraid. He went out in a hurry and he hasn't yet stopped hurrying.