"Well, you'd better take it to a doctor and have it diagnosed." He half
turned. "It's only my natural nervousness at leaving Kathryn and Muriel--
and the importance of my mission. By the way," he asked, abruptly, "what
was that crowd doing on the dock as I came up?"
Blake, selecting a cigarette, lighted it.
"Suicide," he said, curtly.
Schuyler started.
"You say it mighty cold-bloodedly," he asserted. "Where did it happen?"
"Here, I believe. Almost where we are standing."
"Good God! Who was it?"
"Young chap, named Parmalee."
"What? The boy who's been in the papers so much lately--who disgraced
himself, and his people, for a woman?"
Blake nodded, and continued:
"Did you happen to notice the woman who passed a moment ago?--the one
carrying the red roses?"
Schuyler bent his head.
"I noticed her," he replied, slowly. "What of her?"
"The woman."
"You don't mean Parmalee--?"
"Yes, I do."
"Because his love was not returned?"
"Because," replied Blake, smiling mirthlessly "it _was_ returned....
Did you ever read that! thing of Kipling's, _The Vampire_?"
"Why, yes, of course," returned Schuyler. "Almost everyone's read that."
"Do you remember how it goes?" persisted Blake.
Schuyler thought a moment. Then, slowly, he recited:
"A fool there was, and he made his prayer,
(Even as you and I)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.
We called her the woman who did not care.
But the fool, he called her his Lady Fair--"
He broke off, abruptly. "A weird thing," he said, as though to himself.
"I never thought much about what it meant before...." He turned,
abruptly. "Why did you ask me if I'd read it?" he demanded.
"Well," said Blake, flicking the ashes from his cigarette, "there's the
fool," he nodded toward the drying spot upon the deck. "And there," he
indicated, with a backward toss of his well-shaped head, the corridor
down which had passed the woman, "is his lady fair. I've even heard," he
went on, "that she used to call him her 'fool,' quoting the poem. Pretty
little conceit, eh?" His jaw, firm, square, set tight. Then, with a touch
of deeper feeling. "She murdered that boy just as surely as if she had
cut his throat; and the worst of it is that she can't be held legally
guilty--morally, yes, guilty as sin; but legally--" He shook his head.
"The laws that man makes for mankind are a joke."
"As sometimes seem," added Schuyler, slowly, "the laws that God makes for
mankind.... If what you say about that woman be true, she ought to be
taken by the hair of the head and dragged through the hell she has built
for others." His brows were knitted; he was gazing with unseeing eyes
upon the bustle and confusion of the dock below.
Blake, eyeing him, remarked quietly, but in tones more light:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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