Tales of Men and Ghosts

CULWIN paused again, and again Frenham sat motionless, the dusky contour of his young head reflected in the mirror at his back.

“And what became of Noyes afterward?” I finally asked, still disquieted by a sense of incompleteness, by the need of some connecting thread between the parallel lines of the tale.

Culwin twitched his shoulders.  “Oh, nothing became of him—­because he became nothing.  There could be no question of ‘becoming’ about it.  He vegetated in an office, I believe, and finally got a clerkship in a consulate, and married drearily in China.  I saw him once in Hong Kong, years afterward.  He was fat and hadn’t shaved.  I was told he drank.  He didn’t recognize me.”

“And the eyes?” I asked, after another pause which Frenham’s continued silence made oppressive.

Culwin, stroking his chin, blinked at me meditatively through the shadows.  “I never saw them after my last talk with Gilbert.  Put two and two together if you can.  For my part, I haven’t found the link.”

He rose stiffly, his hands in his pockets, and walked over to the table on which reviving drinks had been set out.

“You must be parched after this dry tale.  Here, help yourself, my dear fellow.  Here, Phil—­” He turned back to the hearth.

Frenham still sat in his low chair, making no response to his host’s hospitable summons.  But as Culwin advanced toward him, their eyes met in a long look; after which, to my intense surprise, the young man, turning suddenly in his seat, flung his arms across the table, and dropped his face upon them.

Culwin, at the unexpected gesture, stopped short, a flush on his face.

“Phil—­what the deuce?  Why, have the eyes scared you? My dear boy—­my dear fellow—­I never had such a tribute to my literary ability, never!”

He broke into a chuckle at the thought, and halted on the hearth-rug, his hands still in his pockets, gazing down in honest perplexity at the youth’s bowed head.  Then, as Frenham still made no answer, he moved a step or two nearer.

“Cheer up, my dear Phil!  It’s years since I’ve seen them—­apparently I’ve done nothing lately bad enough to call them out of chaos.  Unless my present evocation of them has made you see them; which would be their worst stroke yet!”

His bantering appeal quivered off into an uneasy laugh, and he moved still nearer, bending over Frenham, and laying his gouty hands on the lad’s shoulders.

“Phil, my dear boy, really—­what’s the matter?  Why don’t you answer? Have you seen the eyes?”

Frenham’s face was still pressed against his arms, and from where I stood behind Culwin I saw the latter, as if under the rebuff of this unaccountable attitude, draw back slowly from his friend.  As he did so, the light of the lamp on the table fell full on his perplexed congested face, and I caught its sudden reflection in the mirror behind Frenham’s head.

Culwin saw the reflection also.  He paused, his face level with the mirror, as if scarcely recognizing the countenance in it as his own.  But as he looked his expression gradually changed, and for an appreciable space of time he and the image in the glass confronted each other with a glare of slowly gathering hate.  Then Culwin let go of Frenham’s shoulders, and drew back a step, covering his eyes with his hands …

Frenham, his face still hidden, did not stir.