Invincible Minnie

Then, too, he might have foreseen and prevented her next step, but again he failed to do so, because it was a bit beyond his imagination. She wrote a terrific letter to Julie, telling her she was defrauding Lionel of his rights, that she knew Horace’s intentions, and ought, if she had any feeling of honour, to carry them out.

Julie replied briefly:

“You won’t get a red cent out of me, now or any other time. I’m sorry for Lionel, but he has got to lie in the bed he’s made.”

Lionel didn’t even reproach Minnie for having written. What was the use? His humiliation couldn’t be hidden from any one.

They had a serious situation to confront. They were in debt, and they had an income on which they couldn’t exist. And Minnie, although she bought the cheapest and nastiest of everything, and never spent a penny on anything gracious or luxurious, had not the gift of stretching a dollar. Her economy was all negative. She never thought, “What is the best I can get with my money?” but always, “How little can I spend?” She had no idea of values, of proportion.

The poor thing worried unceasingly, because it was her duty to do so; lay awake at night by the side of her magnificent and superior husband and planned with desperation. During the day she was cheerful, that also being her duty, and tried as she always had tried, to make Lionel comfortable. She really loved and admired him more than he ever realised. She considered him finer than herself; she wanted to spare him, to please him, to keep him contented and happy at any cost to herself.

He, for his part, was past any worry. He simply existed from day to day like a caged animal, absolutely without hope, fortitude his only virtue. He endured, she struggled.

In the course of time she evolved a plan.

She came out on the porch after she had finished her laborious work in the kitchen, and sat down at the top of the steps, near Lionel’s feet. From either side came the nasal voices of their neighbours, silly laughs, and the whining cries of tired children. Little Sandra lay asleep in the hammock nearby. There was an arc light almost opposite; it shone on Minnie’s earnest face and Lionel’s unpolished boots.

“It’s very hot, isn’t it?” she said, rather pitifully.

“Very,” he agreed.

There was a long silence.

“Lionel!”

Minnie’s voice came out of the dark, fatigued and insistent.

“I’ve been thinking—it’s such a shame for you to be wasted this way.... I saw an advertisement and I wrote to it.... I think it would be just the thing for you. Gentlemanly, and yet you could make any amount of money.”

“What is it?” he asked, without much interest.

“Here’s the booklet.” She began to read in a solemn voice, “‘Be your own master! Read what others have done! The Manhattan Institute of Tonico-Therapy. Ten weeks course renders you independent for life. Highly paid selected staff instructs in all branches.’ And it goes on to tell you the theory of it. How all illnesses come from the chemical action of poisons in the stomach. You learn the antidotes for all these poisons, and then how to find which poison is causing the trouble, and there you are! I think—it sounds wonderful.”

“What rot! The ordinary fake!” said Lionel, impatiently.

“And you should read the money the doctors make!”

“It’s a swindle, I tell you! There are any number of them. The rankest sort of fraud.”

Then Minnie showed the cloven hoof.

“What if it is?” she asked, “we’ve got to live. It wouldn’t do any one any harm. I dare say in lots of cases it’s very good——”

“I don’t intend to be a swindler,” he interrupted, “it’s no use talking any more about it. I’m surprised you could consider a thing like that.”

“Very well, then, think of something better.”

“I couldn’t think of anything much worse.”

“You could do it for a little while, and save up——”

He jumped up.

“No!” he cried, angrily. “It’s outrageous! Don’t mention it again! There are some things I will not do!”

But there weren’t!

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

She pressed a button, and presently in came a man whom she addressed as Doctor Peters. He was preposterously like a doctor, too, tall, grave, black-bearded, with a quite charming manner. He willingly led Lionel about, through the four rooms which constituted the “Institute.” There was the “laboratory” where one learned to compound the “antidotes”; there were two class-rooms, on the walls of which were blackboards and charts, and there was a snug little carpeted room which was the “office of the Dean and Examining Room.” There were pamphlets from which the pupils studied, but they were not to be removed from the premises. Upon completing the course, the student was given the “Twenty Famous Key-Prescriptions,” by means of which every ill could be remedied.

Poor Lionel was impressed. He stealthily scrutinised the students already engaged in the course; they were well-dressed, quiet fellows, six in all. Doctor Peters gave him information regarding them. Two of them had been hospital nurses, one was a qualified M. D., one a dentist, the other two former “business men.” “A good class of men,” the doctor said, “we don’t encourage any others.”

It was all so neat, so bright, so open to inspection. And Doctor Peters had nothing of the charlatan in looks or manners. He was courteous and very restrained; he did not in any way extol the facilities of the Institute to Lionel; he treated him as an intelligent layman anxious to be informed. If he wished to avail himself of these extraordinary advantages, very well. He could see for himself what was offered.

There was in Lionel’s mind nothing inquisitive, nothing critical. His rules of conduct had been supplied to him by persons of authority—persons not unlike Doctor Peters. He began to feel that there might be something in this thing, after all.

II

And he never quite lost that idea. Indeed, he developed a faith in Tonico-Therapy which no one—not even Minnie or Doctor Peters, suspected. He studied the course diligently, trying his utmost to understand and assimilate the farrago of nonsense in the pamphlets. He was too ignorant of physiology and chemistry to detect some of the grossest blunders, and he really fancied he was mastering a sort of profession.

At the end of the ten weeks he received a diploma and a great deal of congratulation and good advice from the “Dean,” a white-haired old reprobate with a perpetual grin; and went home to Minnie, a full-fledged “Professor of Tonico-Therapy.” The “Dean” had suggested that he use “Professor” instead of “Doctor.”

Minnie was wild with delight; she considered their fortune made. She had had a sign printed for him “Lionel Naylor—Professor of Tonico-Therapy,” and it was displayed prominently in the sitting-room window. She also insisted upon an advertisement in one of the local papers, an advertisement modelled upon others she had read and no doubt admired, and which shocked Lionel, yet to which he could offer no reasonable objection. “If doctors have not helped you,” it ran, “why not try the Newer Way—Tonico-Therapy? Professor Lionel Naylor will see clients between 10 and 12 and between 3 and 5. Also by appointment.”

It would be difficult to find words for Lionel’s terror and distress. He showed nothing of it, except that he was quite unable to eat, but he sat, professionally concealed within the house, sick with dread at the idea of a patient’s coming. Minnie had arranged the room to look as office-like as she could; she had put a big table in the centre of it, with a big chair for the professor and other chairs ranged about the walls; there was a book-case containing second-hand medical books—imposing though not at all consistent with the theory Lionel was to maintain; even books on surgery, which was so bitterly denounced in the Tonico-Therapy pamphlets under the name of “going under the knife.”

He was devoutly thankful that his “system” required practically no examining; he had simply to record and classify the symptoms as told him, and then retire somewhere to consult his hand-book of Tonico-Therapy, which would tell him what the disease was and what the remedy. He hoped—he even went so far as to pray—that the patients would all be men.

On the day after the advertisement appeared, his first patient came. From the window he saw her mounting the steps, and he had a sort of paroxysm of fright. He wanted to hide. But Minnie had let her in, and there she was knocking at the door. She was a stout woman of forty or so, terribly in earnest. She sat down heavily, with a sigh, and began to describe, with great wealth of detail, the “torments” she endured with a “sick stomach.” Her symptoms were extraordinarily complicated and diverse; she enumerated all the articles she “dassen’t touch,” and gave another list of dubious ones, which sometimes were harmless and again would be “rank poison.”

“Like lead, those last sweet potatoes lay,” she told him mournfully, “right here. Not a wink of sleep did I get that night. Just groaning and moaning.”

Lionel listened in the proper attitude of dignified concern; he really felt sorry for the poor thing. And so afraid he couldn’t help her. Still, he said reassuringly:

“Wait here a moment please, while I go into the laboratory. I’ll prepare something that will relieve you.”

(This is what he had planned to say, in order to give himself a chance to consult his “handbook.”)

Minnie was in the dining-room when he entered.

“Oh, Lionel,” she whispered, excitedly, “does she——”

“Keep quiet!” he said, very rudely, and began copying the proper prescription on his little pad.

“I find I’ve run out of one of my drugs,” he told his patient, “but here is a prescription. If you’ll have this made up and take a teaspoonful three times a day, it will....”

“When shall I come again?”

“Oh, er—next week!”

She got up with another sigh, and straightened her hat.

“What’s your fee, doctor?” she asked.

He turned scarlet; the idea of taking money from this poor vulgar, suffering soul disgusted him, shamed him. And suppose he weren’t helping her at all?

“Two dollars,” he muttered.

She laid a limp bill on the table, and went out.

III

In the next six months he had just seven patients. Summer was coming on again, and they hadn’t a penny. He himself was shabby and cowed, the little girl was so ragged that the neighbours’ children were told to avoid her. Minnie was reduced to big aprons. They were hungry and wretched, hounded by creditors, suffering from the intolerable restraints of poverty. Lionel hadn’t even cigarettes. He pulled down the sign and went about looking for work again. Without success. He was the least desirable sort of worker there was. He had little physical strength, no manual ability, a faulty and useless education, and an unconsciously haughty and repellent manner. He went about exuding failure; he was shabby, gloomy and resentful. He knew he wasn’t any good.

At the very end, on the brink of ruin, he did get a job, addressing envelopes for a big directory. There he sat, hour after hour, writing away, surrounded by a heart-breaking collection of human wrecks, men who terrified him by their sinister incarnation of his own future. Old men, with broken shoes and no overcoats, with fawning smiles and drink-reddened noses, middle-aged men who had finished with life, still genteel, but fatally resigned.

He dallied with the thought of suicide. He couldn’t endure life. In his heart he didn’t care what happened to Minnie or to his child. They would be no worse off without him. He hated to see them. When he got home at night, he would not speak to them. He couldn’t eat the coarse and ill-cooked food Minnie put before him. He couldn’t sleep. He dreamed with sick longing of old days, of big, airy rooms, gay little suppers, he remembered his chest of drawers, with piles of clean linen and silk socks, his neckties, his boots. This unhappy slattern, this pale bit of a child, what had they to do with his dreams? They were unreal, didn’t belong to him.

He lived in a ghastly solitude; he confided in no one, was in touch with no one. He believed that the human being did not live who could comprehend his anguish.

Spring came again, and he had become what he so feared, a man with broken boots and the air of having once been a gentleman. He was ashamed to ride on the train, ashamed to enter the lift in the office building, ashamed to sit at a lunch counter. He had really made up his mind to die, quickly, before he got ill and helpless, and had to be sent to a charity hospital.

He came home one evening as usual, striding down the street past all the neighbours with a scowl on his face. He went up the steps of his little house with a familiar feeling of disgust and fatigue. Minnie was nowhere about; he sat down, still with his hat on, and stared out of the window at the placid sky which the sun had so lately deserted, a clear and faintly luminous expanse, without clouds.

It occurred to him that the house was very still. No sound from the kitchen or overhead. He didn’t care, though. He didn’t stir until it was quite dark; then he got up to find a match for his wretched cigar. It was odd, after all,—no one about, no lights anywhere. His indifference was mere bravado now; he wouldn’t let himself call out....

When at last he did go upstairs he found an envelope addressed to himself on his bureau.

“My own dearest Lionel: I have gone away for just a little while, because I have a plan to help us all. Stay where you are, and I shall be able to send you some money very soon. Don’t worry; everything will soon be all right, and we shall be all together again. Take care of yourself, dearest. Your loving, loving wife, Minnie. P.S.—There is a delicious meat pie for you in the ice box.”

He read it again, and still it didn’t stir his indifference. He ate the meat pie, an unusually pretentious dish which must have cost Minnie much time and trouble; he sat on the porch for a while and at last went to bed, to fall asleep easily. Minnie and Sandra gone? Very well; they couldn’t be any worse off anywhere else.

He waked up just before dawn, with a shock of realisation. Minnie lost too! Everything gone! He began to think of what the poor little woman had suffered and endured, of her patience, her loyalty to him. He remembered her, working so anxiously, so blindly, not questioning, not complaining, trying her poor best to give him what comfort she could.

And she had had nothing. He wondered how in Heaven’s name she had lived. He thought of the long days she had spent with her poor little child, the child she so loved, and whom she had had to see hungry and ragged. Her utter loneliness, her pitiful faith in him, her hope of finding in him all of life and happiness.

IV

For months he didn’t know where she had gone. She wrote to him loyally and sent him money, but she had the letters posted in New York, and he could imagine no way of tracing her. With the money she sent him and what he earned, he managed to keep alive, and he stayed on in the miserable little house, as she had told him. He was so sunk in wretchedness that he no longer suffered. He sometimes had a violent longing for the sound of Minnie’s pleasant voice, or to see her solicitous, kindly face, but his chief thought, his chief concern was his own health. He was ill; he knew it; he had that mysterious certainty of imminent danger which has nothing to do with symptoms.

Creditors hounded him, until he grew desperate. They wouldn’t wait; he couldn’t expect them to; he couldn’t very well expect them to have implicit faith in Minnie’s vague promise that everything would soon be all right. And that was all he could offer. The house was a pig-sty, an offense, and he didn’t care. For days at a time he didn’t even shave. He used to look at himself in the mirror and laugh at the blue stubble on his haggard face, his uncut hair, his frayed necktie and dirty collar.

“Anyway I can’t go any lower,” he would tell himself, “I’m at the bottom!”

He recalled stories he had read of beach-combers, all sorts of derelicts drifting through strange countries, and it occurred to him that they were probably people like himself, who had loved fine living, who had been fastidious, who couldn’t adjust themselves to what was poor and ugly. And they were, he reflected, always saved in the end by some woman. Never by a woman in the least like Minnie; always by some splendid, handsome creature. Like Frances.

He put that thought away from him, and that image.

He was literally driven out of the house. The gas was cut off, the telephone, and at last the water. He groped about in the dark for a day or two, even went to his work unwashed after the taps were empty, but he couldn’t endure thirst. He wanted water to drink, lots of it.

He left the house; simply walked out of it and closed the door after him. He went to a cheap lodging house for men in the city, directed his mail forwarded there, and waited on and on.

He grew very sullen and angry. He wanted to write to Minnie, to tell her things, to complain: he cursed her infernal secretiveness, and muddle-headedness. Where in God’s name was she and what was she trying to do?

At last, after six months, she wrote that she had a good position as housekeeper in Brownsville Landing, but that he’d better write her in care of the post-office at Sanasset, the next village, for she had “thought best” to call herself a widow.

He answered sharply that he wished to see her, and she’d have to arrange it. A bitter and resentful letter.

She answered with propitiating quickness, and proposed a meeting in the little wood. She brought him a package of sandwiches and some money, kissed him and consoled him and sent him back to New York like a baby pacified with a sugar plum. After that, he came out regularly every Saturday afternoon, and as regularly complained bitterly at the secrecy which appeared to him so unnecessary. But Minnie assured him that it was not, and entreated him to be patient until she had enough money saved to start a new home.

He grew more and more ill; at last she advised him to give up his work.

“I’ll find you a place to board somewhere near,” she said, “and you can rest for a few weeks.”

Under the circumstances, it was extraordinarily difficult to find a place for him where there was no possibility of his hearing of Mr. Petersen and Mr. Petersen’s household. She had to be satisfied with a room in a family of Hungarians who spoke very little English and knew no one outside of their own colony. They lived three miles away, in Sanasset.

The poor fellow was glad enough to rest, glad, too, to get away from the dreadful men’s lodging house in the city. Minnie met him every day and brought him things to eat, which he took back to his clean, lonely little room and consumed with relish. Minnie explained to him that the family where she was housekeeper was very wasteful, very capricious.

“You might just as well have this,” she would say, “Otherwise it would only be thrown away.”

Naturally he was not altogether happy in such an existence, living on his wife’s earnings, taking money from her even for his cigarettes, fed with the munificent scraps from her employer’s table. He had nothing to do, no living soul to speak to, he was ill and growing no better. But he wasn’t anything like so miserable as one might imagine. His feelings were all dull, torpid; he really didn’t think at all. He was forced—literally forced by nature to lie quiescent, to rest.

He was, in a way, beginning to be healed of his terrible moral wounds in this solitude and idleness he so needed. He was not under the influence of anyone now; he was little by little going back to his old traditions.

And then came Minnie’s note; exactly what the familiar phrase calls a “bolt from the blue,” a dazzling and awful blow.

“Dearest Lionel: For reasons which I will explain when I see you, I have thought best to call myself Mr. Petersen’s wife. I want you to come back with him and I will explain everything. He thinks you are my brother, named Alec. Don’t say anything to him, but wait until you have seen me. I am very ill. I cannot write any more.

Minnie.”

Even then he hadn’t been much impressed; he did not realise what her words implied. Simply another piece of her tiresome chicanery; posing as someone’s wife to make herself more important, or something of that sort. Treachery to himself he never suspected, or that she could possibly be actually guilty of bigamy.... Until Mr. Petersen told him of the baby that was expected. Minnie was to be the mother of another man’s child!

Oh, even she couldn’t explain that away, couldn’t make him swallow that! He might be contemptible, a tool in her hands, but there was a limit, an end! He walked beside the innocent other man in the dark, smiling grimly to himself, filled with a curiously impersonal thirst for revenge. That woman must be exposed, disgraced, crushed. He was savagely delighted to do it. A long repressed and unrecognised wish came struggling to the surface of his mind, the wish to be free of her and her domination. So long as she loved him and was faithful to him, worked and schemed for him, he couldn’t even wish to be rid of her. Only falseness in her could justify him, and he rejoiced now in finding her false.

“It’s the end of her,” he reflected, “of her and her beastly trickery!”

But it was not. When he got to the house, and actually saw her, ill, tortured with anxiety, when he once more heard her voice, his resolution failed him. It was not so much through pity or affection, either; it was the woman’s uncanny plausibility, the preposterous air of respectability she threw over all she did. He could not see her as a criminal.

Fate had reserved curious sufferings for him, unique pains. To live through that night, with honest Mr. Petersen, to be in his house, while Minnie bore his child.... And then, still at Mr. Petersen’s side, to go in to her, and look at her son....

He was in a state of utter chaos. His little girl didn’t know him. In a year and a half she had quite forgotten him, was growing up contentedly under another man’s roof. It hurt him beyond measure. He had no idea how he had changed, what with his beard, and the ravages of his illness. It gave him a sensation of being already dead and buried and forgotten.

He couldn’t make himself feel as he believed he should feel. He could not hate Minnie, and he actually liked Mr. Petersen. And pitied them both. He thought, more seriously than he had ever thought before in his life, and came to a conclusion which was quite at variance with his tradition.

“I’m no good to Minnie or Sandra,” he said to himself, “I’ll go away, and leave them to the man who can take care of them.”

And above all, he wished to consider Mr. Petersen. He was more anxious to spare him than to spare Minnie. His one comfort was that he was not “wronging” that honest man, that he was, in fact, making an honourable and terribly difficult sacrifice for him, in thus giving up to him not only Minnie but little Sandra. He would leave Mr. Petersen undisturbed in his fool’s Paradise. He wanted passionately, with all his soul, to do this one decent thing, to atone for Minnie’s sins and his own by this restitution. It saved him in his own eyes.

Minnie did not oppose him. But she begged him to wait until she was a little better. She was so heart-broken over the separation and so docile that he yielded, and waited there in Mr. Petersen’s house during the days of her convalescence.

But, no sooner had she begun to grow well again than she began shamelessly to—as the novels say—persecute him with her attentions. He was immeasurably shocked; he told her plainly what he thought of such conduct. Under Mr. Petersen’s very roof!

“But you’re my own husband,” said Minnie.

“Do you mean to say you’re so depraved that you can’t see? That you’d deceive that fine fellow again?”

“He’s nothing to me,” said Minnie, “I never even pretended to love him.”

And added:

“I only did it for Sandra’s sake.”

“Didn’t you know it was criminal? You’re a bigamist. You——”

She began to cry.

“I know it! But a mother will do anything in the world for her child. If she’s a true woman.”

She was not to be convinced of wrong-doing. It wasn’t nice to have two husbands; that she conceded: it was a painful and disagreeable necessity, her only means of providing for her child.

“And Chris never need know,” she said. “It’s not doing him any harm. In fact, he’s very happy.”

“Then you intend to go on like this forever?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” she cried, impatiently, “one has to be guided by circumstances.”

And they were all the guide she had. Or could they be called a guide, when she so deliberately manufactured them, and distorted them? Even the poor chap’s love for Sandra she tried to utilise, in order to keep him near her. She was continually throwing them together, fostering the child’s affection for her “uncle.”

“She didn’t recognise you,” she said. “Poor little baby! But she knows you. She feels differently toward you.”

She was conscious that her own spell had waned; she could do nothing with him. No matter how she clung to him, how she implored him, he would not so much as say he loved her. He was absolutely impervious to her seductions, although he was touched by her blind love for him. She would have caused any suffering to Mr. Petersen if it would have benefited Lionel. He was, as she said, and he well knew, the only man she had ever cared for, the first and the last. She would even go so far as to admit that she regretted having been obliged to marry Mr. Petersen. Not because it was wrong, but because it hurt Lionel. She acknowledged that it had not been an altogether loyal act, although, like so very many of her sex, she couldn’t see that a merely physical infidelity really mattered much. An idea that men have, which must be submitted to, because of its importance to them.

“But in my heart,” she insisted, “there’s never been anyone but you.”

The war seemed to offer Lionel a remarkable opportunity for carrying out his plan with dignity and nobility. He might even get himself killed, which, according to his tradition, rights every wrong, wipes out every offense. He resisted Minnie’s objections with firmness.

Then, so cruelly, before he had made his great renunciation, came Frances and the shameful and horrible revelation. He was forced to go away with Minnie; he couldn’t desert her then, when she was so utterly alone. He tried to comfort her a little, and found it only too easy. She wasn’t really very much ashamed or grieved. She was willing, eager, to take up life with him again, the same slipshod and futile life of their former years. She looked forward happily to another little house, more amazing financial adventures, and, quite frankly, a subsidy from Mr. Petersen.

“He’d be glad!” she told Lionel, “On account of little Robert. And he has plenty of money. He could easily spare two or three thousand a year.”

That was the final straw. Lionel said nothing against her scheme; he saw her decently settled in a respectable boarding-house, well-supplied with money salvaged from Mr. Petersen’s housekeeping allowance; then he went away, disappeared. He left her a note, to say that he was going to enlist, but she never quite knew what became of him.

BOOK FIVE: THE VICTORIOUS CONCLUSION

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Mr. Petersen had good reasons for his reticence. He was ashamed of his thoughts; he would not have divulged them to any living creature. Because he was longing and longing for Minnie, for the old turmoil and disorder, Sandra running round the table while he ate, for Minnie, holding the crying baby on her lap and feeding it sugar and water from a spoon, Minnie in a wrapper, with her hair coming down, and her eternally anxious look, worn out after having accomplished nothing.

He was aware of Frances opposite him, beautiful, severely neat, in her starched blouse. He knew she was much better than Minnie, that she had been cruelly wronged, and was behaving nobly. And yet he felt no sympathy for her. All his pity was ridiculously, futilely given to Minnie. He did not even blame her. The upright, honourable Mr. Petersen was able to see the thing from her distorted angle; he could almost hear her saying:

“But I tried to do what seemed best at the time.”

No anger, no bitterness, only a great sense of bereavement and grief. He actually sat there worrying about her, thinking she had no money, afraid she would suffer without her children.... That poor tiny Viking, replica of himself, left now without a mother! And poor, poor mother, bereft of such a son!

II

Frankie’s thoughts were altogether different. She was angry, burning with resentment against her sister. She hated her! She remembered Lionel’s dreadful face when he had seen her, the shame and anguish in his eyes. Oh, she hated her! The man he might have been, and the thing Minnie had made of him!

She had as little sympathy for Mr. Petersen as he for her. Simply he didn’t matter. When she looked at his stolid face, she felt that it wouldn’t be hard to hate him, too.

What Lionel must have endured to force him into such a course! Living in Mr. Petersen’s house, on Mr. Petersen’s bounty, seeing his wife living with Mr. Petersen, bearing his child! A feeling she didn’t know was in her came rushing up; a longing to see Minnie suffer, even a little of what she had inflicted upon others. She couldn’t stand Mr. Petersen’s presence another moment—silly sheep—fatuous dupe of a vile woman!

She got up abruptly.

“I think I’ll go upstairs to the children,” she said. “Good-night!”

They were sleeping beautifully. She lighted a little night lamp and looked at them, these children of Minnie, with curiously mixed emotions. She bent over the baby; its fat little cheeks were puffed out, its earnest mouth closed in a sort of pout. An ineffable fragrance rose from the warm little body. Her breath stirred the fine fair hairs on its head, where the pulse still beat so pitifully. Child of that hated sister and that fool of a Petersen—but a baby none the less and sacred and dear. She regarded it with love, she pitied the poor deserted little man. She touched the tiny clenched fist, and at once it seized upon her finger and clung to it blindly. Very gently she unclasped the absurd little fingers and went over to Sandra.

This was the child that should have been hers; Lionel’s daughter. The baby was delightful, but Sandra——! She was a dream child, she was beauty in its purest, most exquisite moment. Her pale face, her clear features, her cloud of fine-spun hair, the slender grace of her little limbs, were, Frances thought, like some child angel in an old painting, altogether spiritual. She sat down beside her, to think. It helped her to look down at that innocent and fragile loveliness, sublimation of her poor lover. She grew softer; at last began to weep a little.

Very much later, toward two in the morning, she went down to find Mr. Petersen. She was quite sure he would not be in bed.

There he was, in his study, reading something.

“Mr. Petersen,” she said, “I’ve been thinking—about the children.”

He looked at her mutely.

“It seems to me—if you’d like me to—it would be better if I stopped here and looked after them.”

“I thought you were going abroad,” he said, stupidly.

“I don’t care much where I go, as long as I’m more or less useful. And it seems to me that I could be, here.”

He couldn’t answer.

“I’d like—— How can I help you best about them?” she asked.

He still stared at her in speechless misery. He tried in vain to picture his future life, tried to realise that he was left with two small children who had no mother. Useless. He could imagine no other person in Minnie’s place. No one but Minnie looking after those children; anyone else would be an impostor, a fraud, intolerable.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I haven’t thought much about it yet.”

“I’d do my best for them,” Frances said, with something like entreaty in her voice.

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Petersen, “they may take away Sandra.”

And to his horror, a sob escaped him. He could not endure the idea of losing that beloved little girl; he fancied her gone, and his own poor baby more solitary than ever. Like a flash came the full realisation of the wreck of his life, the desolation ahead of him. He bowed his head in his huge hands.

Frances came over to him.

“Please!” she said, “Mr. Petersen!”

It was the first time she had felt any pity for him; she had pitied Lionel, pitied herself; now her heart was wrung for this poor fellow, innocent as herself, and more wronged.

“Anyway,” she said, “you have your little boy.”

“That makes it worse,” he answered, in a muffled voice. “He is an illegitimate child. He is disgraced.”

“Oh, you don’t believe such things!” cried Frances. “You’re far too sensible and broad-minded for that, I know!”

“No, no, I’m not.... If it was the ordinary thing—a passion—a love affair.... But she—lived here as my wife.... Everyone knew her.”

He raised his head and looked at her with honest, misty, blue eyes.

“What am I to say? Bigamy is a crime. She is a bigamist. I’ve got to keep it quiet. We were married here; it’s in the register.... I cannot tell anyone she was not my wife. I’ll have to let it be thought that she deserted me—ran off with this—this chap we called her brother. I’ll be the laughing stock of the place. Under his nose it went on, the neighbours will say. And I was a fool. Such a fool! I can’t believe it ...! My boy is going to hear all that in the course of time.”

“Can’t you leave here?”

“I’ve built up my name and reputation here. At my age—to start all over again ...!

“I’m very sorry,” she said, simply.

“Thank you,” he replied.

She could see that he wanted to be alone, and that he was not able to think then of the future. He was too bitterly concerned with the past and with the present. She said good-night to him, and went upstairs again, to be near the children.

III

She was awakening next morning by a cry from the baby, and she sprang up at once, to wait on it, to adore it, to serve it in any capacity.

She hurried down stairs to the ice box to fetch the bottle she had prepared overnight for it, warmed it, and flew up again to quiet its hearty cries. But it stopped directly she entered the room, and lay on her lap, swallowing the milk and staring at her, with its father’s great, solemn blue eyes. It didn’t cry again all morning; it was a baby of a happy and serene disposition. She put it back in its crib and it lay there, watching its own fat hands, while she dressed Sandra. The little girl was very quiet and docile, she fetched her own clean clothes and stood passively to have them buttoned. Just once, while her hair was being brushed, she looked up with her clear unfaltering gaze, and asked:

“Where’s Mother?”

“She’s gone away for a while, my darling. You’ll be happy with Aunt Frankie, won’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Sandra answered, truthfully.

It was still very early, so Frances got breakfast ready without waiting for Mrs. Hansen. Mr. Petersen came down at seven, and he was mighty glad to get his hot coffee. He sat down heavily opposite Frances, and drained his cup.

“If you could stay,” he began, apologetically, “just a few days, anyway—just a little while—till I get settled? I wasn’t—I didn’t appreciate your goodness last night. But I do now. Just for a day or two?”

“As long as you like,” Frances answered, heartily.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

They were at lunch, Frances, Mr. Petersen and Sandra, an exemplary group, almost too decorous, all consuming exactly the right sort of food for their health, served at the right moment. Then Mrs. Hansen brought in his letter, and without thinking, Frankie tore it open, and saw his writing again. She folded it again and sat through the meal; so very long before she could shut herself into her own room, and read it.

“Frankie: I can’t get into the army in any branch. I got one of the doctors to tell me, and he said I had tuberculosis and couldn’t last more than a year or two at the most. Frankie, I can’t do it. What’s the use, anyway, of waiting on like that, and dying in a charity hospital? I’m going to go now, as decently as I can. Don’t tell them, not even where I am. I want to be left in peace. But I wish you would come after it is all over. I will leave you a note. Good-bye. God bless you, dear old girl.

L.”

She hurried to him. She found him in a little basement-room like a cell, below the level of the street, with a barred window looking out on a filthy courtyard. She had steeled herself for this meeting; she was prepared for anything; she didn’t wince, didn’t falter, at the sight of his ghastly face. He stood before her in the dim light, a gaunt, stooping figure in a frayed suit; he looked really frightened at the sight of her. He had said good-bye to her forever in his own soul; he wasn’t prepared, wasn’t capable of seeing her again.

He tried to tell her something of his story; especially he insisted upon how he hadn’t “wronged” Mr. Petersen. He was very earnest about that.

“I don’t want you to think me worse than I am,” he said.

“My dear, I wouldn’t,” she assured him, gently.

He stared at her with his great hollow eyes.

“Frankie!” he cried, “You do understand, don’t you? That it was—I don’t know—a mistake of some sort. I can say it now. I always—loved you. Always. Never anyone else.”

She had a chill dread of what she felt he was about to ask her.

“If you could say—even a word——?”

She got up and went to him as he sat hunched up on a trunk; she stroked his hair very gently. She wanted terribly to give him some little comfort, but she couldn’t feed him with lies, even though he were starving.

“It’s all over and done with now, Lionel,” she said. “It’s better to try and forget it.”

“But, Frankie.... If I could only know.... If you’d changed.... If you still care for me?”

“It’s no use talking of that, my dear.”

“Only tell me, before I die!” he entreated.

She looked up at him sorrowfully. And suddenly he clasped her in his arms, such a pitiful, desperate embrace! She clung to him, sobbing, strained him to her.

“Oh, I did, I did love you!” her heart cried. “When it was you. But not this ghost—this distortion of what was you!”

But she didn’t say it, didn’t say anything, she was too full of an aching and dreadful pity. Nothing on earth could save him; she saw death in his face; she knew that she was saying good-bye to him forever. He knew it, too. Ineffable moment! There were no words for it; they clung to each other, hopelessly, in an abandon of grief.

II

She persuaded him to go to a sanitarium she knew of; he didn’t want to, didn’t want to linger on, at her expense. But for her sake, for the sake of her anguish, he consented. He lived there nearly six months, writing to her now and then, stiff, stupid little notes. He died rather suddenly.

She never again mentioned him to a living soul; no one else knew what had happened to him. She let him die in peace, rest in peace. She went on just as usual; it was her pride to keep her pain to herself, to hide it absolutely. She never forgot him; really remained faithful to that pitiful wraith. She had duties, interests, even pleasures enough, she lived vigorously and fully. But that wound never healed. She was never again conscious of absolute content, or of real hope. She never regarded the future with eagerness. Her heart was not whole.

III

Mr. Petersen was becoming crushed by his disgrace. The amazing change of mistresses in his establishment had caused a tremendous scandal. He tried to go on as usual, but it was not possible. Many people shunned him, business fell off, the general atmosphere of respect in which his soul had flourished was poisoned, and unfit for his great lungs to breathe.

And, what is more, he worried very much about Frankie. The presence of this handsome young woman in his house, coincident with the disappearance of Minnie and Lionel, was a fact of ugly significance. He began very soon to see his course; he deliberated carefully, looked at it from her point of view as well as from his own, and came at last to the conclusion that it was a good plan.

He asked Frances to marry him.

“On account of the children,” he said, “You are so fond of them that I thought you would like to remain with them permanently. And it would be of the greatest benefit to them.... As for yourself, I haven’t much to offer.... I can only promise that I wouldn’t bother you, interfere with you in any sort of way. I can’t stop here. I’m—more or less—disgraced.... I’ll live wherever you like, California, if that’s best for your work. I have enough capital to start in business again——”

She was not surprised by his offer; she had expected it and thought about it. To her also it seemed the best course, on account of the children. So she accepted.

They understood each other perfectly, without being obliged to drag from their souls any explanation of feelings sacred and painful. These two candid and faithful creatures knew themselves to be strong enough and simple enough for a most difficult situation. They were tacitly agreed to remain constant, he to Minnie, she to Lionel, and to assume the poor little burdens deserted by them.

Frances was not anxious to return to California; she suggested a suburb of New York, in quite another direction from Brownsville Landing, and Mr. Petersen consented. She found a charming house there, the sort of house she had dreamed long ago of having with Lionel, a dignified, cheerful place with a fine garden. She had quite a bit of money saved, and she insisted upon using some of it to equip the place.

“Please don’t be proud!” she entreated Mr. Petersen, laughing. “Do let me have my own way about all this. I’ve always longed to furnish a house.”

This touched him. The poor defrauded girl! So he left it all to her.

She had a wonderful time over it, particularly with the children’s rooms. She was wilfully extravagant there. She had a nursery for little Robert, very scientific and expensive, with a bathroom off it, glitteringly white. Then a big, bright playroom, with little white-painted chairs and tables gay with painted birds and animals, with low shelves for toys, and not a sharp corner anywhere about; and next to this, an exquisite nest for Sandra, all white willow and blue chintz.

She spent days and days in the house, with Mrs. Hansen to help her. She would come back to Brownsville Landing—a five hours’ journey—very tired, but filled with enthusiasm. Mr. Petersen went out once or twice and found it charming. He planted a garden there, fruit trees and rose bushes, and had a stable built for his beloved horse.

When at last the house was ready there was nothing else to wait for. They went, one gay, cool morning in September, to the City Hall in New York, got their license, and were married by a peevish alderman. They were both curiously devoid of emotion. It was, after all, a matter of little importance to them. They would go on as they had been going for the last months.

Nevertheless, they considered it the polite and the correct thing to celebrate in some sort of way. So they went to a hotel, where Mr. Petersen ordered an elaborate lunch. He was just a little ill-at-ease, not being a frequenter of hotels, and the lunch was too heavy, too prolonged. Frankie conscientiously ate all she could, and praised everything.

But no use denying that her heart ached! She caught a glimpse of themselves in a mirror, saw her own proud distinction so incongruously escorted by Mr. Petersen’s enormous Socialistic bulk, and how could she help thinking of how Lionel had looked under similar circumstances, how help remembering his ways of ordering lunches ...?

Perhaps Mr. Petersen was rather heavy-hearted too, with memories of his other wedding—or what he had imagined at the time to be a wedding. Who knows but that for him there had been infinite romance in his dowdy Minnie?

They had planned to go back to Brownsville Landing and close up the house there, and then the next morning proceed by motor car with the children and the Hansens to the new home. For the last time they boarded the train, for the last time went flying through that familiar country along the river bank.

“I suppose,” said Mr. Petersen, in his slow way, “that we are beginning a new life. I shall do all I can to make it a happy one for you.”

She smiled at him kindly.

“We’re old friends,” she said, and then grew very serious, “Chris,” she said, “we’ve missed—oh, almost everything, haven’t we? But if we can only make up to the children for all they’ve lost, all they’ll have to miss—that’s enough for us, isn’t it?”

“That’s enough,” he repeated, “enough to fill our lives.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“I don’t see——” he began.

“Of course you don’t! You never would. You haven’t any spirit in you. You just want to sit at home and——”

Frances intervened.

“I don’t think it’s quite your place to come here and abuse Mr. Petersen,” she said sternly.

“What have you got to do with it?” asked Minnie, “it’s none of your business, that I can see.”

She dried her eyes and sat up straighter.

“Where are the babies?” she asked.

“Asleep,” Frances answered.

Minnie got up and went toward the door, but Frances intercepted her.

“Let them alone!” she ordered.

Minnie stared at her.

“What do you mean! They’re my children.”

“They’re not! You’ve forfeited your right to them. You deserted them. You’ve disgraced them. I won’t ... I won’t let you disturb them!”

Minnie’s fine black eyes stared at her scornfully.

“They’re my children. I’ll do just as I think best about them. I’ve got on very well without consulting you so far, and I shan’t begin now.”

“Chris!” Frances appealed to Mr. Petersen, “Won’t you say something? You know she’s not fit to bring up children.”

“It takes an old maid to do that,” said Minnie.

That roused Mr. Petersen.

“Minnie,” he began, “it would be better—if you would consent....”

“I won’t consent to anything! I want my children, and I will have them. I’m going to take them now.”

“But—I have something to say about it,” he protested.

“You haven’t! Sandra’s not yours, and little Robert’s mine. I asked a lawyer. You’re not my husband. You haven’t any claim on him.”

Frances rose.

“Minnie,” she said, “listen to me!”

She looked like the goddess Athene, so handsome, so stern, so just.

“You must have some sort of conscience—some standard—something I can appeal to.... You’ve wronged me, you’ve wronged Mr. Petersen, in the cruelest way. You’ve brought shame and suffering on innocent people. You’ve thought only of yourself and your own desires, and had no mercy on anyone who stood in your way. And now you want to do something still worse. Just for your own selfish gratification, you want to take those poor little children away from people who are able and willing to do everything for them—honourable and decent people——”

“I suppose you mean yourself,” said Minnie, “I suppose you and Chris intended to start housekeeping with my children. Well, you can’t!”

“If you love them, Minnie, you can’t drag them into poverty and——”

“Oh, love, love, love!” cried Minnie impatiently. “What do you know about loving, anyway? When I love people, I fight for them. I’d die for them.... Or I’d murder. I’d do anything. I wouldn’t stop to reason and plan like you do. You couldn’t keep my babies away from me if you had an army of soldiers to help you.”

And she pushed by her sister and went upstairs.

They heard a sudden wild little shout.

“Oh, Mummy!” from Sandra. Then a number of sounds, Minnie walking about, opening bureau drawers, the creak of a rocking chair.

It tortured Mr. Petersen, brought back old days. He felt that if he went up now he would see Minnie in her horrible grey wrapper, with the baby in her arms, rocking away, just in the same way, with the gas turned low and Sandra sitting up in her crib. And then, when the baby was asleep, Minnie would come down, exhausted, sighing, but smiling too, and trail out into the kitchen, to look in the ice chest for something to eat. And then to sit on the arm of his chair and gossip.... He could not repress a groan.

“Oh, Minnie!” he whispered.

Frances looked at him with a pity not untinged with contempt. She knew he wasn’t thinking of the children at all.

“Chris!” she said, in a low voice.

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell her—that we’re married!”

He nodded assent.

They remained at the table, in silence. There was nothing to do, nothing to say, but to wait for Minnie’s next move.

Presently she came downstairs, carrying the baby and holding Sandra by the hand, all of them dressed for the street. Minnie’s eyes were red; evidently she had been crying up there.

“Good-bye, Chris,” she said, rather wistfully, “I’m sorry about all this.... But I had to do it, really, for Sandra’s sake. And I did make you happy, and comfortable, didn’t I?”

“Yes, yes!” he cried, and actually believed that she had. The pathos of the anxious little figure overwhelmed him.

“Minnie!” he cried. “Wait! Just a minute!”

She turned again.

“If—your—he has gone in to the army—what will you have to live on?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I’ll get on somehow.”

“No! ... That can’t be.... For old times’ sake—let me help you—and the children. An allowance—a settlement of some sort....”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Thank you, Chris dear,” she said, simply.

“If Frances will take the baby,” he suggested, “I’d like to speak to you in my office just a moment.”

So Frances sat in the dining-room, with the baby in her arms for the last time, holding Sandra’s little hand, forgotten and deserted, despoiled now of everything, while in the study Mr. Petersen wrote a generous cheque for Minnie.

She thought of the house in the suburbs, with the nursery and the playroom; even the new toys.

She thought of herself and Mr. Petersen married, for the sake of the children.

She thought of Minnie, who had carried off Lionel, and Lionel’s child, and Mr. Petersen’s child, and was now securing a supply of Mr. Petersen’s money.

She began to laugh heartily.

THE END