XIX. A WINDFALL FROM “GENTLEMAN JOE”
I went to my rooms, purposing to go straight to bed, and get a good sleep. I did make a start toward undressing; then I realized that I should only lie awake with my brain wearing me out, spinning crazy thoughts and schemes hour after hour—for my imagination rarely lets it do any effective thinking after the lights are out and the limitations of material things are wiped away by the darkness. I put on a dressing-gown and seated myself to smoke and to read.
When I was very young, new to New York, in with the Tenderloin crowd and up to all sorts of pranks, I once tried opium smoking. I don't think I ever heard of anything in those days without giving it a try. Usually, I believe, opium makes the smoker ill the first time or two; but it had no such effect on me, nor did it fill my mind with fantastic visions. On the contrary, it made everything around me intensely real—that is, it enormously stimulated my dominant characteristic of accurate observation. I noticed the slightest details—such things as the slight difference in the length of the arms of the Chinaman who kept the “joint,” the number of buttons down the front of the waist of the girl in the bunk opposite mine, across the dingy, little, sweet-scented room. Nothing escaped me, and also I was conscious of each passing second, or, rather, fraction of a second.
As a rule, time and events, even when one is quietest, go with such a rush that one notes almost nothing of what is passing. The opium seemed to compel the kaleidoscope of life to turn more slowly; in fact, it sharpened my senses so that they unconsciously took impressions many times more quickly and easily and accurately. As I sat there that night after leaving Anita, forcing my mind to follow the printed lines, I found I was in exactly the state in which I had been during my one experiment with opium. It seemed to me that as many days as there had been hours must have elapsed since I got the news of the raised Textile dividend. Days—yes, weeks, even months, of thought and action seemed to have been compressed into those six hours—for, as I sat there, it was not yet eleven o'clock.
And then I realized that this notion was not of the moment, but that I had been as if under the influence of some powerful nerve stimulant since my brain began to recover from the shock of that thunderbolt. Only, where nerve stimulants often make the mind passive and disinclined to take part in the drama so vividly enacting before it, this opening of my reservoirs of reserve nervous energy had multiplied my power to act as well as my power to observe. “I wonder how long it will last,” thought I. And it made me uneasy, this unnatural alertness, unaccompanied by any feverishness or sense of strain. “Is this the way madness begins?”
I dressed myself again and went out—went up to Joe Healey's gambling place in Forty-fourth Street. Most of the well-known gamblers up town, as well as their “respectable” down town fellow members of the fraternity, were old acquaintances of mine; Joe Healey was as close a friend as I had. He had great fame for squareness—and, in a sense, deserved it. With his fellow gamblers he was straight as a string at all times—to be otherwise would have meant that when he went broke he would stay broke, because none of the fraternity would “stake” him. But with his patrons—being regarded by them as a pariah, he acted toward them like a pariah—a prudent pariah. He fooled them with a frank show of gentlemanliness, of honesty to his own hurt; under that cover he fleeced them well, but always judiciously.
That night, I recall, Joe's guests were several young fellows of the fashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big down town operators who hadn't yet got hipped on “respectability”—they playing poker in a private room—and a couple of flush-faced, flush-pursed chaps from out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was dealing faro from what looked to my experienced and accurate eye like a “brace” box.
Joe, very elegant, too elegant in fact, in evening dress, was showing a new piece of statuary to the oldest son of Melville, of the National Industrial Bank. Joe knew a little something about art—he was much like the art dealers who, as a matter of business, learn the difference between good things and bad, but in their hearts wonder and laugh at people willing to part with large sums of money for a little paint or marble or the like.
As soon as Joe thought he had sufficiently impressed young Melville, he drifted him to a roulette table, left him there and joined me.
“Come to my office,” said he. “I want to see you.”
He led the way down the richly-carpeted marble stairway as far as the landing at the turn. There, on a sort of mezzanine, he had a gorgeous little suite. The principal object in the sitting-room or office was a huge safe. He closed and locked the outside door behind us.
“Take a seat,” said he. “You'll like the cigars in the second box on my desk—the long one.” And he began turning the combination lock. “You haven't dropped in on us for the past three or four months,” he went on.
“No,” said I, getting a great deal of pleasure out of seeing again, and thus intimately, his round, ruddy face—like a yachtman's, not like a drinker's—and his shifty, laughing brown eyes. “The game down town has given me enough excitement. I haven't had to continue it up town to keep my hand in.”
In fact, I had, as I have already said, been breaking off with my former friends because, while many of the most reputable and reliable financiers down town go in for high play occasionally at the gambling houses, it isn't wise for the man trying to establish himself as a strictly legitimate financier. I had been playing as much as ever, but only in games in my own rooms and at the rooms of other bankers, brokers and commercial leaders. The passion for high play is a craving that gnaws at a man all the time, and he must always be feeding it one way or another.
“I've noticed that you are getting too swell to patronize us fellows,” said he, his shrewd smile showing that my polite excuse had not fooled him. “Well, Matt, you're right—you always did have good sound sense and a steady eye for the main chance. I used to think the women'd ruin you, they were so crazy about that handsome mug and figure of yours. But when I saw you knew exactly when to let go, I knew nothing could stop you.”
By this time he had the safe open, disclosing several compartments and a small, inside safe. He worked away at the second combination lock, and presently exposed the interior of the little safe. It was filled with a great roll of bills. He pried this out, brought it over to the desk and began wrapping it up. “I want you to take this with you when you go,” said he. “I've made several big killings lately, and I'm going to get you to invest the proceeds.”
“I can't take that big bundle along with me, Joe,” said I. “Besides, it ain't safe. Put it in the bank and send me a check.”
“Not on your life,” replied Healey with a laugh. “The suckers we trimmed gave checks, and I turned 'em into cash as soon as the banks opened. I wasn't any too spry, either. Two of the damned sneaks consulted lawyers as soon as they sobered off, and tried to stop payment on their checks. They're threatening proceedings. You must take the dough away with you, and I don't want a receipt.”
“Trimming suckers, eh?” said I, not able to decide what to do.
“Their fathers stole it from the public,” he explained. “They're drunken little snobs, not fit to have money. I'm doing a public service by relieving them of it. If I'd 'a' got more, I'd feel that much more”—he vented his light, cool, sarcastic laugh—“more patriotic.”
“I can't take it,” said I, feeling that, in my present condition, to take it would be very near to betraying the confidence of my old friend.
“They lost it in a straight game,” he hastened to assure me. “I haven't had a 'brace' box or crooked wheel for four years.” This with a sober face and a twinkle in his eye. “But even if I had helped chance to do the good work of teaching them to take care of their money, you'd not refuse me. Up town and down town, and all over the place, what's business, when you come to look at it sensibly, but trading in stolen goods? Do you know a man who could honestly earn more than ten or twenty thousand a year—good clean money by good clean work?”
“Oh, for that matter, your money's as clean as anybody's,” said I. “But, you know, I'm a speculator, Joe. I have my downs—and this happens to be a stormy time for me. If I take your money, I mayn't be able to account for it or even to pay dividends on it for—maybe a year or so.”
“It's all right, old man. I'll never give it a thought till you remind me of it. Use it as you'd use your own. I've got to put it behind somebody's luck—why not yours?”
He finished doing up the package, then he seated himself, and we both looked at it through the smoke of our cigars.
“It's just as easy to deal in big sums as in little, in large matters as in small, isn't it, Joe,” said I, “once one gets in the way of it?”
“Do you remember—away back there—the morning,” he asked musingly—“the last morning—you and I got up from the straw in the stables over at Jerome Park—the stables they let us sleep in?”
“And went out in the dawn to roost on the rails and spy on the speed trials of old Revell's horses?”
“Exactly,” said Joe, and we looked at each other and laughed. “We in rags—gosh, how chilly it was that morning! Do you remember what we talked about?”
“No,” said I, though I did.
“I was proposing to turn a crooked trick—and you wouldn't have it. You persuaded me to keep straight, Matt. I've never forgotten it. You kept me straight—showed me what a damn fool a man was to load himself down with a petty larceny record. You made a man of me, Matt. And then those good looks of yours caught the eye of that bookmaker's girl, and he gave you a job at writing sheet—and you worked me in with you.”
So long ago it seemed, yet near and real, too, as I sat there, conscious of every sound and motion, even of the fantastic shapes taken by our upcurling smoke. How far I was from the “rail bird” of those happy-go-lucky years, when a meal meant quite as much to me as does a million now—how far from all that, yet how near, too. For was I not still facing life with the same careless courage, forgetting each yesterday in the eager excitement of each new day with its new deal? We went on in our reminiscences for a while; then, as Joe had a little work to do, I drifted out into the house, took a bite of supper with young Melville, had a little go at the tiger, and toward five in the clear June morning emerged into the broad day of the streets, with the precious bundle under my arms and a five hundred-dollar bill in my waistcoat pocket.
“Give my win to me in a single bill,” I said to the banker, “and blow yourself off with the change.”
Joe walked down the street with me—for companionship and a little air before turning in, he said, but I imagine a desire to keep his eye on his treasure a while longer had something to do with his taking that early morning stroll. We passed several of those forlorn figures that hurry through the slowly-awakening streets to bed or to work. Finally, there came by an old, old woman—a scrubwoman, I guess, on her way home from cleaning some office building. Beside her was a thin little boy, hopping along on a crutch. I stopped them.
“Hold out your hand,” said I to the boy, and he did. I laid the five hundred-dollar bill in it. “Now, shut your fingers tight over that,” said I, “and don't open them till you get home. Then tell your mother to do what she likes with it.” And we left them gaping after us, speechless before this fairy story come true.
“You must be looking hard for luck to-day,” said Joe, who understood this transaction where another might have thought it a showy and not very wise charity. “They'll stop in at the church and pray for you, and burn a candle.”
“I hope so,” said I, “for God knows I need it.”
XX. A BREATHING SPELL.
Langdon, after several years of effort, had got recognition for Textile in London, but that was about all. He hadn't succeeded in unloading any great amount of it on the English. So it was rather because I neglected nothing than because I was hopeful of results that I had made a point of telegraphing to London news of my proposed suit. The result was a little trading in Textiles over there and a slight decline in the price. This fact was telegraphed to all the financial centers on this side of the water, and reinforced the impression my lawyers' announcement and my own “bear” letter were making.
Still, this was nothing, or next to it. What could I hope to avail against Langdon's agents with almost unlimited capital, putting their whole energy under the stock to raise it? In the same newspapers that published my bear attack, in the same columns and under the same head-lines, were official denials from the Textile Trust and the figures of enormous increase of business as proof positive that the denials were honest. If the public had not been burned so many times by “industrials,” if it had not learned by bitter experience that practically none of the leaders of finance and industry were above lying to make or save a few dollars, if Textiles had not been manipulated so often, first by Dumont and since his death by his brother-in-law and successor, this suave and cynical Langdon, my desperate attack would have been without effect. As it was—
Four months before, in the same situation, had I seen Textiles stagger as they staggered in the first hour of business on the Stock Exchange that morning, I'd have sounded the charge, clapped spurs to my charger, and borne down upon them. But—I had my new-born yearning for “respectability”; I had my new-born squeamishness, which led me to fear risking Bob Corey and his bank and the money of my old friend Healey; finally, there was Anita—the longing for her that made me prefer a narrow and uncertain foothold to the bold leap that would land me either in wealth and power or in the bottomless abyss.
Instead of continuing to sell Textiles, I covered as far as I could; and I bought so eagerly and so heavily that, more than Langdon's corps of rocketers, I was responsible for the stock's rally and start upward. When I say “eagerly” and “heavily,” I do not mean that I acted openly or without regard to common sense. I mean simply that I made no attempt to back up my followers in the selling campaign I had urged them into; on the contrary, I bought as they sold. That does not sound well, and it is no better than it sounds. I shall not dispute with any one who finds this action of mine a betrayal of my clients to save myself. All I shall say is that it was business, that in such extreme and dire compulsion as was mine, it was—and is—right under the code, the private and real Wall Street code.
You can imagine the confused mass of transactions in which I was involved before the Stock Exchange had been open long. There was the stock we had been able to buy or get options on at various prices, between the closing of the Exchange the previous day and that morning's opening—stock from all parts of this country and in England. There was the stock I had been buying since the Exchange opened—buying at figures ranging from one-eighth above last night's closing price to fourteen points above it. And, on the debit side, there were the “short” transactions extending over a period of nearly two months—“sellings” of blocks large and small at a hundred different prices.
An inextricable tangle, you will say, one it would be impossible for a man to unravel quickly and in the frantic chaos of a wild Stock Exchange day. Yet the influence of the mysterious state of my nerves, which I have described above, was so marvelous that, incredible though it seems, the moment the Exchange closed, I knew exactly, where I stood.
Like a mechanical lightning calculator, my mind threw up before me the net result of these selling and buying transactions. Textile Common closed eighteen points above the closing quotation of the previous day; if Langdon's brother had not been just a little indiscreet, I should have been as hopeless a bankrupt in reputation and in fortune as ever was ripped up by the bulls of Wall Street.
As it was, I believed that, by keeping a bold front, I might extricate and free myself when the Coal reorganization was announced. The rise of Coal stocks would square my debts—and, as I was apparently untouched by the Textile flurry, so far as even Ball, my nominal partner and chief lieutenant, knew, I need not fear pressure from creditors that I could not withstand.
I could not breathe freely, but I could breathe.
XXI. MOST UNLADYLIKE
When I saw I was to have a respite of a month or so, I went over to the National Industrial Bank with Healey's roll, which my tellers had counted and prepared for deposit. I finished my business with the receiving teller of the National Industrial, and dropped in on my friend Lewis, the first vice-president. I did not need to pretend coolness and confidence; my nerves were still in that curious state of tranquil exhilaration, and I felt master of myself and of the situation. Just as I was leaving, in came Tom Langdon with Sam Ellersly.
Tom's face was a laughable exhibit of embarrassment. Sam—really, I felt sorry for him. There was no reason on earth why he shouldn't be with Tom Langdon; yet he acted as if I had caught him “with the goods on him.” He stammered and stuttered, clasped my hand eagerly, dropped it as if it had stung him; he jerked out a string of hysterical nonsense, ending with a laugh so crazy that the sound of it disconcerted him. Drink was the explanation that drifted through my mind; but in fact I thought little about it, so full was I of other matters.
“When is your brother returning?” said I to Tom.
“On the next steamer, I believe,” he replied. “He went only for the rest and the bath of sea air.” With an effort he collected himself, drew me aside and said: “I owe you an apology, Mr. Blacklock. I went to the steamer with Mowbray to see him off, and he asked me to tell you about our new dividend rate—though it was not to be made public for some time. Anyhow, he told me to go straight to you—and I—frankly, I forgot it.” Then, with the winning, candid Langdon smile, he added, ingenuously: “The best excuse in the world—yet the one nobody ever accepts.”
“No apology necessary,” said I with the utmost good nature. “I've no personal interest in Textile. My house deals on commission only, you know—never on margins for myself. I'm a banker and broker, not a gambler. Some of our customers were alarmed by the news of the big increase, and insisted on bringing suit to stop it. But I'm going to urge them now to let the matter drop.”
Tom tried to look natural, and as he is an apt pupil of his brother's, he succeeded fairly well. His glance, however, wouldn't fix steadily on my gaze, but circled round and round it like a bat at an electric light. “To tell you the truth,” said he, “I'm extremely nervous as to what my brother will say—and do—to me, when I tell him. I hope no harm came to you through my forgetfulness.”
“None in the world,” I assured him. Then I turned on Sam. “What are you doing down town to-day?” said I. “Are you on your way to see me?”
He flushed with angry shame, reading an insinuation into my careless remark, when I had not the remotest intention of reminding him that his customary object in coming down town was to play the parasite and the sponge at my expense. I ought to have guessed at once that there was some good reason for his recovery of his refined, high-bred, gentlemanly super-sensibilities; but I was not in the mood to analyze trifles, though my nerves were taking careful record of them.
“Oh, I was just calling on Tom,” he replied rather haughtily.
Then Melville himself came in, brushing back his white tufted burnsides and licking his lips and blinking his eyes—looking for all the world like a cat at its toilet.
“Oh! ah! Blacklock!” he exclaimed, with purring cordiality—and I knew he had heard of the big deposit I was making. “Come into my office on your way out—nothing especial—only because it's always a pleasure to talk with you.”
I saw that his effusive friendliness confirmed Tom Langdon's fear that I had escaped from his brother's toils. He stared sullenly at the carpet until he caught me looking at him with twinkling eyes. He made a valiant effort to return my smile and succeeded in twisting his face into a knot that seemed to hurt him as much as it amused me.
“Well, good-by, Tom,” said I. “Give my regards to your brother when he lands, and tell him his going away was a mistake. A man can't afford to trust his important business to understrappers.” This with a face free from any suggestion of intending a shot at him. Then to Sam: “See you to-night, old man,” and I went away, leaving Lewis looking from one to the other as if he felt that there was dynamite about, but couldn't locate it. I stopped with Melville to talk Coal for a few minutes—at my ease, and the last man on earth to be suspected of hanging by the crook of one finger from the edge of the precipice.
I rang the Ellerslys' bell at half-past nine that evening. The butler faced me with eyes not down, as they should have been, but on mine, and full of the servile insolence to which he had been prompted by what he had overheard in the family.
“Not at home, sir,” he said, though I had not spoken.
I was preoccupied and not expecting that statement; neither had I skill, nor desire to acquire skill, in reading family barometers in the faces of servants. So, I was for brushing past him and entering where I felt I had as much right as in my own places. He barred the way.
“Beg pardon, sir. Mrs. Ellersly instructed me to say no one was at home.”
I halted, but only like an oncoming bear at the prick of an arrow.
“What the hell does this mean?” I exclaimed, waving him aside. At that instant Anita appeared from the little reception-room a few feet away.
“Oh—come in!” she said cordially. “I was expecting you. Burroughs, please take Mr. Blacklock's hat.”
I followed her into the reception-room, thinking the butler had made some sort of mistake.
“How did you come out?” she asked eagerly, facing me. “You look your natural self—not tired or worried—so it must have been not so bad as you feared.”
“If our friend Langdon hadn't slipped away, I might not look and feel so comfortable,” said I. “His brother blundered, and there was no one to checkmate my moves.” She seemed nearer to me, more in sympathy with me than ever before.
“I can't tell you how glad I am!”
Her eyes were wide and bright, as from some great excitement, and her color was high. Once my attention was on it, I knew instantly that only some extraordinary upheaval in that household could have produced the fever that was blazing in her. Never had I seen her in any such mood as this.
“What is it?” I asked. “What has happened?”
“If anything disagreeable should be said or done this evening here,” she said, “I want you to promise me that you'll restrain yourself, and not say or do any of those things that make me—that jar on me. You understand?”
“I am always myself,” replied I. “I can't be anybody else.”
“But you are—several different kinds of self,” she insisted. “And please—this evening don't be that kind. It's coming into your eyes and chin now.”
I had lifted my head and looked round, probably much like the leader of a horned herd at the scent of danger.
“Is this better?” said I, trying to look the thoughts I had no difficulty in getting to the fore whenever my eyes were on her.
Her smile rewarded me. But it disappeared, gave place to a look of nervous alarm, of terror even, at the rustling, or, rather, bustling, of skirts in the hall—there was war in the very sound, and I felt it. Mrs. Ellersly appeared, bearing her husband as a dejected trailer invisibly but firmly coupled. She acknowledged my salutation with a stiff-necked nod, ignored my extended hand. I saw that she wished to impress upon me that she was a very grand lady indeed; but, while my ideas of what constitutes a lady were at that time somewhat befogged by my snobbishness, she failed dismally. She looked just what she was—a mean, bad-tempered woman, in a towering rage.
“You have forced me, Mr. Blacklock,” said she, and then I knew for just what purpose that voice of hers was best adapted—“to say to you what I should have preferred to write. Mr. Ellersly has had brought to his ears matters in connection with your private life that make it imperative that you discontinue your calls here.”
“My private life, ma'am?” I repeated. “I was not aware that I had a private life.”
“Anita, leave us alone with Mr. Blacklock,” commanded her mother.
The girl hesitated, bent her head, and with a cowed look went slowly toward the door. There she paused, and, with what seemed a great effort, lifted her head and gazed at me. How I ever came rightly to interpret her look I don't know, but I said: “Miss Ellersly, I've the right to insist that you stay.” I saw she was going to obey me, and before Mrs. Ellersly could repeat her order I said: “Now, madam, if any one accuses me of having done anything that would cause you to exclude a man from your house, I am ready for the liar and his lie.”
As I spoke I was searching the weak, bad old face of her husband for an explanation. Their pretense of outraged morality I rejected at once—it was absurd. Neither up town nor down, nor anywhere else, had I done anything that any one could regard as a breach of the code of a man of the world. Then, reasoned I, they must have found some one else to help them out of their financial troubles—some one who, perhaps, has made this insult to me the price, or part of the price, of his generosity. Who? Who hates me? In instant answer, up before my mind flashed a picture of Tom Langdon and Sam Ellersly arm in arm entering Lewis' office. Tom Langdon wishes to marry her; and her parents wish it, too; he is the man she was confessing to me about—these were my swift conclusions.
“We do not care to discuss the matter, sir,” Mrs. Ellersly was replying, her tone indicating that it was not fit to discuss. And this was the woman I had hardly been able to treat civilly, so nauseating were her fawnings and flatterings!
“So!” I said, ignoring her and opening my batteries full upon the old man. “You are taking orders from Mowbray Langdon now. Why?”
As I spoke, I was conscious that there had been some change in Anita. I looked at her. With startled eyes and lips apart, she was advancing toward me.
“Anita, leave the room!” cried Mrs. Ellersly harshly, panic under the command in her tones.
I felt rather than saw my advantage, and pressed it.
“You see what they are doing, Miss Ellersly,” said I.
She passed her hands over her eyes, let her face appear again. In it there was an energy of repulsion that ought to have seemed exaggerated to me then, knowing really nothing of the true situation. “I understand now!” said she. “Oh—it is—loathsome!” And her eyes blazed upon her mother.
“Loathsome,” I echoed, dashing at my opportunity. “If you are not merely a chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any self-respect in you, you will keep faith with me.”
“Anita!” cried Mrs. Ellersly. “Go to your room!”
I had, once or twice before, heard a tone as repulsive—a female dive-keeper hectoring her wretched white slaves. I looked at Anita. I expected to see her erect, defiant. Instead, she was again wearing that cowed look.
“Don't judge me too harshly,” she said pleadingly to me. “I know what is right and decent—God planted that too deep in me for them to be able to uproot it. But—oh, they have broken my will! They have broken my will! They have made me a coward, a thing!” And she hid her face in her hands and sobbed.
Mrs. Ellersly was about to speak. I could not offer better proof of my own strength of will than the fact that I, with a look and a gesture, put her down. Then I said to the girl:
“You must choose now! Woman or thing—which shall it be? If it is woman, then you have me behind you and in front of you and around you. If it is thing—God have mercy on you! Your self-respect, your pride are gone—for ever. You will be like the carpet under his feet to the man whose creature you become.”
She came and stood by me, with her back to them.
“If you will take me with you now,” she said, “I will go. If I delay, I am lost. I shall not have the courage. And I am sick, sick to death of this life here, of this hideous wait for the highest bidder.”
Her voice gained strength and her manner courage as she spoke; at the end she was meeting her mother's gaze without flinching. My eyes had followed hers, and my look was taking in both her mother and her father. I had long since measured them, yet I could scarcely credit the confirmation of my judgment. Had life been smooth and comfortable for that old couple, as it was for most of their acquaintances and friends, they would have lived and died regarding themselves, and regarded, as well-bred, kindly people, of the finest instincts and tastes. But calamity was putting to the test the system on which they had molded their apparently elegant, graceful lives. The storm had ripped off the attractive covering; the framework, the reality of that system, was revealed, naked and frightful.
“Anita, go to your room!” almost screamed the old woman, her fury tearing away the last shreds of her cloak of manners.
“Your daughter is of age, madam,” said I. “She will go where she pleases. And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not powerless, and”—here I let her have a full look into my red-hot furnaces of wrath—“I stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose me—at nothing!”
Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and trembling as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering, outstretched tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me guide her to the door. Her mother recovered speech. “Anita!” she cried. “What are you doing? Are you mad?”
“I think I must be out of my mind,” said Anita. “But, if you try to keep me here, I shall tell him all—all.”
Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it round her. Before she—or I—realized it, she was in my waiting electric.
“Up town,” I said to my man.
She tried to get out.
“Oh, what have I done! What am I doing!” she cried, her courage oozing away. “Let me out—please!”
“You are going with me,” said I, entering and closing the door. I saw the door of the Ellersly mansion opening, saw old Ellersly, bareheaded and distracted, scuttling down the steps.
“Go ahead—fast!” I called to my man.
And the electric was rushing up the avenue, with the bell ringing for crossings incessantly. She huddled away from me into the corner of the seat, sobbing hysterically. I knew that to touch her would be fatal—or to speak. So I waited.
XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY
As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through the tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I had a glimpse of her progress toward composure—now she was drying her eyes with the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms were up, and with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she was straight and still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap was edged drawn close about her throat. I shifted to the opposite seat, for my nerves warned me that I could not long control myself, if I stayed on where her garments were touching me.
I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there she was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I can not think of even now without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what the sun is to a blind man dreaming of sight. There she was on my side of the chasm that had separated us—alone with me—mine—mine! And my heart dilated with pride. But a moment later came a sense of humility. Her beauty intoxicated me, but her youth, her fineness, so fragile for such rough hands as mine, awed and humbled me.
“I must be very gentle,” said I to myself. “I have promised that she shall never regret. God help me to keep my promise! She is mine, but only to preserve and protect.”
And that idea of responsibility in possession was new to me—was to have far-reaching consequences. Now that I think of it, I believe it changed the whole course of my life.
She was leaning forward, her elbow on the casement of the open window of the brougham, her cheek against her hand; the moonlight was glistening on her round, firm forearm and on her serious face. “How far, far away from—everything it seems here!” she said, her voice tuned to that soft, clear light, “and how beautiful it is!” Then, addressing the moon and the shadows of the trees rather than me: “I wish I could go on and on—and never return to—to the world.”
“I wish we could,” said I.
My tone was low, but she started, drew back into the brougham, became an outline in the deep shadow. In another mood that might have angered me. Just then it hurt me so deeply that to remember it to-day is to feel a faint ache in the scar of the long-healed wound. My face was not hidden as was hers; so, perhaps, she saw. At any rate, her voice tried to be friendly as she said: “Well—I have crossed the Rubicon. And I don't regret. It was silly of me to cry. I thought I had been through so much that I was beyond such weakness. But you will find me calm from now on, and reasonable.”
“Not too reasonable, please,” said I, with an attempt at her lightness. “A reasonable woman is as trying as an unreasonable man.”
“But we are going to be sensible with each other,” she urged, “like two friends. Aren't we?”
“We are going to be what we are going to be,” said I. “We'll have to take life as it comes.”
That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague uneasiness in those strange circumstances to active alarm. For presently she said, in a tone that was not so matter-of-course as she had tried to make it: “We'll go now to my Uncle Frank's. He's a brother of my father's. I always used to like him best—and still do. But he married a woman mama thought—queer. They hadn't much, so he lives away up on the West Side—One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street.”
“The wise plan, the only wise plan,” said I, not so calm as she must have thought me, “is to go to my partner's house and send for a minister.”
“Not to-night,” she replied nervously. “Take me to Uncle Frank's, and to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it.”
“To-night,” I persisted. “We must be married to-night. No more uncertainty and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!”
“To-morrow,” she said. “But not to-night. I must think it over.”
“To-night,” I repeated. “To-morrow will be full of its own problems. This is to-night's.”
She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had begun—the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. “No, not tonight.” This in her tone for finality.
To argue with any woman in such circumstances would be dangerous; to argue with her would have been fatal. To reason with a woman is to flatter her into suspecting you of weakness and herself of strength. I told the chauffeur to turn about and go slowly up town. She settled back into her corner of the brougham. Neither of us spoke until we were passing Grant's Tomb. Then she started out of her secure confidence in my obedience, and exclaimed: “This is not the way!” And her voice had in it the hasty call-to-arms.
“No,” I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. “As I told you, our future shall be settled to-night.” That in my tone for finality.
A pause, then: “It has been settled,” she said, like a child that feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling arms of its father. “I thought until a few minutes ago that I really intended to marry you. Now I see that I didn't.”
“Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's,” said I.
She leaned forward so that I could see her face. “I can not marry you,” she said. “I feel humble toward you, for having misled you. But it is better that you—and I—should have found out now than too late.”
“It is too late—too late to go back.”
“Would you wish to marry a woman who does not love you, who loves some one else, and who tells you so and refuses to marry you?” She had tried to concentrate enough scorn into her voice to hide her fear.
“I would,” said I. “And I shall. I'll not desert you, Anita, when your courage and strength shall fail. I will carry you on to safety.”
“I tell you I can not marry you,” she cried, between appeal and command. “There are reasons—I may not tell you. But if I might, you would—would take me to my uncle's. I can not marry you!”
“That is what conventionality bids you say now,” I replied. And then I gathered myself together and in a tone that made me hate myself as I heard it, I added slowly, each word sharp and distinct: “But what will conventionality bid you say to-morrow morning, as we drive down crowded Fifth Avenue, after a night in this brougham?”
I could not see her, for she fell back into the darkness as sharply as if I had struck her with all my force full in the face. But I could feel the effect of my words upon her. I paused, not because I expected or wished an answer, but because I had to steady myself—myself, not my purpose; my purpose was inflexible. I would put through what we had begun, just as I would have held her and cut off her arm with my pocket-knife if we had been cast away alone, and I had had to do it to save her life. She was not competent to decide for herself. Every problem that had ever faced her had been decided by others for her. Who but me could decide for her now? I longed to plead with her, longed to let her see that I was not hard-hearted, was thinking of her, was acting for her sake as much as for my own. But I dared not. “She would misunderstand,” said I to myself. “She would think you were weakening.”
Full fifteen minutes of that frightful silence before she said: “I will go where you wish.” And she said it in a tone that makes me wince as I recall it.
I called my partner's address up through the tube. Again that frightful silence, then she was trying to choke back the sobs. A few words I caught: “They have broken my will—they have broken my will.”
My partner lived in a big, gray-stone house that stood apart and commanded a noble view of the Hudson and the Palisades. It was, in the main, a reproduction of a French château, and such changes as the architect had made in his model were not positively disfiguring, though amusing. There should have been trees and shrubbery about it, but—“As Mrs. B. says,” Joe had explained to me, “what's the use of sinking a lot of cash in a house people can't see?” So there was not a bush, not a flower. Inside—One day Ball took me on a tour of the art shops. “I've got a dozen corners and other big bare spots to fill,” said he. “Mrs. B. hates to give up money, haggles over every article. I'm going to put the job through in business style.” I soon discovered that I had been brought along to admire his “business style,” not to suggest. After two hours, in which he bought in small lots several tons of statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said, “This is too slow.” He pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop. “How much for that bunch of stuff?” he demanded. The proprietor gave him a figure. “I'll close,” said Joe, “if you'll give fifteen off for cash.” The proprietor agreed. “Now we're done,” said Joe to me. “Let's go down town, and maybe I can pick up what I've dropped.”
You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse than the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything, better than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about their lack of taste have taken great pains to prevent any one else from being deceived. One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the litter of gilded and tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls made the eyes ache.
The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me suggested that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had deposited himself without bothering to take off his clothes. At the sound of my voice, Ball peered out of his private smoking-room, at the far end of the hall. He started forward; then, seeing how I was accompanied, stopped with mouth ajar. He had on a ragged smoking-jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers. We had evidently caught the household stripped of “lugs,” and sunk in the down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called “comfort.” Joe was crimson with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he came out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and he rushed for us in a gorgeous velvet jacket with dark red facings, and a showy pair of slippers.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock”—in his own home he always addressed every man as Mister, just as “Mrs. B.” always called him “Mister Ball,” and he called her “Missus Ball” before “company.” “Come right into the front parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights.”
Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her delicate nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her. Her impulse to fly passed; her lifelong training in doing the conventional thing asserted itself. She lowered her head again, murmured an inaudible acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.
“Your wife is at home?” said I. If one was at home in the evening, the other was also, and both were always there, unless they were at some theater—except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's, because many fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few acquaintances. In their humbler and happy days they had had many friends, but had lost them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went to live, like uneasy, out-of-place visitors, in their grand house, pretending to be what they longed to be, longing to be what they pretended to be, and as discontented as they deserved.
“Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home,” Joe answered. “I guess she and Alva were—about to go to bed.” Alva was their one child. She had been christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the Balls “blossomed out” they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression was “smarter.”
At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were in no condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: “Let us go.”
I pretended not to hear. “Rout 'em out,” said I to Joe. “Then, take my electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a wedding—right here.” And I looked round the long salon, with everything draped for the summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off one chair, his man took off another. “I'll have the women-folks down in two minutes,” he cried. Then to the man: “Get a move on you, Billy. Stir 'em up in the kitchen. Do the best you can about supper—and put a lot of champagne on the ice. That's the main thing at a wedding.”
Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs. The wrap slipped back from her shoulders and—how proud I was of her! Joe gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back and to jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too, disappeared.
A wait followed, during which we could hear, through the silence, excited undertones from the upper floors. The words were indistinct until Joe's heavy voice sent down to us an angry “No damn nonsense, I tell you. Allie's got to come, too. She's not such a fool as you think. Bad example—bosh!”
Anita started up. “Oh—please—please!” she cried. “Take me away—anywhere! This is dreadful.”
It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that moment, it would have gone hard with “Mrs. B.” and “Allie”—and heavy-voiced Joe, too. But I hid my feelings.
“There's nowhere else to go,” said I, “except the brougham.”
She sank into her chair.
A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the stairs. She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way of escape or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one of the curtains. There entered in a beribboned and beflounced tea-gown, a pretty, if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant baby face. She was trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly glanced at me before fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.
“Mrs. Ball,” said I, “this is Miss Ellersly.”
“Miss Ellersly!” she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced and took both Anita's hands. “Mr. Ball is so stupid,” she went on, with that amusingly affected accent which is the “Sunday clothes” of speech.
“I didn't catch the name, my dear,” Joe stammered.
“Be off,” said I, aside, to him. “Get the nearest preacher, and hustle him here with his tools.”
I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe as he hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him saying in the hall, “Go in, Allie. It's O K”; heard the door slam, knew we should soon have some sort of minister with us.
“Allie” entered the drawing-room. I had not seen her in six years. I remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of aimless questions and giggles and silly remarks that she and her mother thought funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young woman, with enough beauty points for an honorable mention, if not for a prize—straight and strong and rounded, with a brow and a keen look out of the eyes which it seemed a pity should be wasted on a woman. Her mother's looks, her father's good sense, a personality apparently got from neither, but all her own, and unusual and interesting. No wonder the Balls felt toward her much as a pair of barn-swallows would feel if they were to hatch out an eaglet. These quiet, tame American parents that are always finding their suppressed selves, the bold, fantastic, unadmitted dreams of their youth startlingly confronting them in the flesh as their own children!
“From what Mr. Ball said,”—Mrs. Ball was gushing affectedly to Anita,—“I got an idea that—well, really, I didn't know what to think.”
Anita looked as if she were about to suffocate. Allie came to the rescue. “Not very complimentary to Mr. Blacklock, mother,” said she good-humoredly. Then to Anita, with a simple friendliness there was no resisting: “Wouldn't you like to come up to my room for a few minutes?”
“Oh, thank you!” responded Anita, after a quick, but thorough inspection of Alva's face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had not counted on this; I had been assuming that Anita would not be out of my sight until we were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to interfere when she looked at me—for permission to go!
“Don't keep her too long,” said I to Alva, and they were gone.
“You can't blame me—really you can't, Mr. Blacklock,” Mrs. Ball began to plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing. “After some things—mere hints, you understand—for I'm careful what I permit Mr. Ball to say before me. I think married people can not be too respectful of each other. I never tolerate vulgarity.”
“No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person,” said I, forgetting her lack of humor.
“Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock,” she protested, in a panic lest she had done her husband damage with me. “I understand, men will be men, though as a pure-minded woman, I'm sure I can't imagine why they should be.”
“How far off is the nearest church?” I cut in.
“Only two blocks—that is, the Methodist church,” she replied. “But I know Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian.”
“Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian,” said I, recalling how in their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe's going twice every Sunday to sleep through long sermons.
She looked uncomfortable. “I was reared Presbyterian,” she explained confusedly, “but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to live here, we got out of the habit of church-going. And all Alva's little friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I find the service so satisfying—so—elegant. And—one sees there the people one sees socially.”
“How is your culture class?” I inquired, deliberately malicious, in my impatience and nervousness. “And do you still take conversation lessons?”
She was furiously annoyed. “Oh, those old jokes of Joe's,” she said, affecting disdainful amusement.
In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she used to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be “up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing.” They hired a teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the “latest literature, heavy and light.” On Tuesdays and Fridays she had an “indigent gentlewoman,” whatever that may be, come to her to teach her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the “standards of polite society.”
Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that raised roars of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so many of the other men had wives with the same ambitions and the same methods of attaining them.
Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.
“I am glad you are going to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of such a charming family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are in the West Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and New York is so large that one almost never meets any one outside one's own set.” This smooth snobbishness, said in the affected “society” tone, was as out of place in her as rouge and hair-dye in a wholesome, honest old grandmother.
I began to pace the floor. “Can it be,” I fretted aloud, “that Joe's racing round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a Methodist at hand?”
“I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England priest,” Mrs. Ball assured me loftily. “Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't think she was married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church.”
My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed her with an eye that must have had some fire in it. “I'm not marrying a fool, Mrs. Ball,” said I. “You mustn't judge her by her bringing-up—by her family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in spite of damn fool parents.”
She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only apology for getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in the last few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her affectation and snobbery were, and how little they interfered with her being a good mother and a good wife, up to the limits of her brain capacity.
“I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock,” she said plaintively, “I only wished to say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancée. I know she's a lovely girl. I've often admired her at the opera. She goes a great deal in Mrs. Langdon's box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk.” And so on, and on.
I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister—and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn't—her mind was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher of a sect unknown to fashionable circles.
“All I ask of you,” said I to him, “is that you cut it as short as possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous.” This while we were shaking hands after Joe's introduction.
“You can count on me, sir,” said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake before dropping it. “I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with all solemnity. The form is an incident—important, but only an incident.”
I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him. And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt—white showing at her wrists, at her neck and through slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet—the slippers had been replaced by boots. “And they're just right for her,” said Alva, who was following my glance, “though I'm not so tall as she.”
But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that they rarely lived long after the passing of the heat of the emergency that bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I've no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that very night, before she let him sleep. However, Anita's face was serious enough when we took our places before the minister, with his little, black-bound book open. And as he read in a voice that was genuinely impressive those words that no voice could make unimpressive, I saw her paleness blanch into pallor, saw the dusk creep round her eyes until they were like stars waning somberly before the gray face of dawn. When they closed and her head began to sway, I steadied her with my arm. And so we stood, I with my arm round her, she leaning lightly against my shoulder. Her answers were mere movements of the lips.
At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: “Is it over?”
“Yes,” McCabe answered—she was looking at him. “And I wish you all happiness, Mrs. Blacklock.”
At that name, her new name, she stared at him with great wondering eyes; then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a glass of champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she smiled up at Joe as she handed him the glass. “Is it bad luck,” she asked, “for me to be the first to drink my own health?” And she stood, looking tranquilly at every one—except me.
I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off.
When we came back, I said: “Now we must be going.”
“Oh, but surely you'll stay for supper!” cried Joe's wife.
“No,” replied I, in a tone that made it impossible to insist. “We appreciate your kindness, but we've imposed on it enough.” And I shook hands with her and with Allie and the minister, and, linking Joe's arm in mine, made for the door. I gave the necessary directions to my chauffeur while we were waiting for Anita to come down the steps. Joe's daughter was close beside her, and they kissed each other good-by, Alva on the verge of tears, Anita not suggesting any emotion of any sort. “To-morrow—sure,” Anita said to her. And she answered: “Yes, indeed—as soon as you telephone me.” And so we were off, a shower of rice rattling on the roof of the brougham—the slatternly man-servant had thrown it from the midst of the group of servants.
Neither of us spoke. I watched her face without seeming to do so, and by the light of occasional street lamps saw her studying me furtively. At last she said: “I wish to go to my uncle's now.”
“We are going home,” said I.
“But the house will be shut up,” said she, “and every one will be in bed. It's nearly midnight. Besides, they might not—” She came to a full stop.
“We are going—home,” I repeated. “To the Willoughby.”
She gave me a look that was meant to scorch—and it did. But I showed at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.
She drew farther into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a low voice: “How I hate you!” like the whisper of a bullet.
I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking—of a matter that had been finally and amicably settled, I began: “The apartment isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now telephoning my man that we are coming, and telephoning your people to send your maid down there.”
“I wish to go to my uncle's,” she repeated.
“My wife will go with me,” said I quietly and gently. “I am considerate of her, not of her unwise impulses.”
A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: “I am in your power just now. But I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you will wish you had never seen me.”
“I've wished that many times already,” said I sadly. “I've wished it from the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate has been forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me than to you. For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate me, too.” I laid my hand on her arm and held it there, though she tried to draw away. “Anita,” I said, “I would do anything for you—live for you, die for you. But there's that something inside me—you've felt it; and when it says 'must,' I can't disobey—you know I can't. And, though you might break my heart, you could not break that will. It's as much my master as it is yours.”
“We shall see—to-morrow,” she said.
“Do not put me to the test,” I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to be true: “But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger than your uncle, stronger than your parents, to swerve me from what I believe right for you and for me.” I had no fear for “to-morrow.” The hour when she could defy me had passed.
A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the arching trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the lower end of the Mall that she said evenly: “You have made me hate you so that it terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must come to you and to me.”
“And well you may be,” I answered gently. “For you've seen enough of me to get at least a hint of what I would do, if goaded to it. Hate is terrible, Anita, but love can be more terrible.”
At the Willoughby she let me help her descend from the electric, waited until I sent it away, walked beside me into the building. My man, Sanders, had evidently been listening for the elevator; the door opened without my ringing, and there he was, bowing low. She acknowledged his welcome with that regard for “appearances” that training had made instinctive. In the center of my—our—drawing-room table was a mass of fresh white roses. “Where did you get 'em?” I asked him, in an aside.
“The elevator boy's brother, sir,” he replied, “works in the florist's shop just across the street, next to the church. He happened to be down stairs when I got your message, sir. So I was able to get a few flowers. I'm sorry, sir, I hadn't a little more time.”
“You've done noble,” said I, and I shook hands with him warmly.
Anita was greeting those flowers as if they were a friend suddenly appearing in a time of need. She turned now and beamed on Sanders. “Thank you,” she said; “thank you.” And Sanders was hers.
“Anything I can do—ma'am—sir?” asked Sanders.
“Nothing—except send my maid as soon as she comes,” she replied.
“I shan't need you,” said I.
“Mr. Monson is still here,” he said, lingering. “Shall I send him away, sir, or do you wish to see him?”
“I'll speak to him myself in a moment,” I answered.
When Sanders was gone, she seated herself and absently played with the buttons of her glove.
“Shall I bring Monson?” I asked. “You know, he's my—factotum.”
“I do not wish to see him,” she answered.
“You do not like him?”
After a brief hesitation she answered, “No.” Not for worlds would she just then have admitted, even to herself, that the cause of her dislike was her knowledge of his habit of tattling, with suitable embroideries, his lessons to me.
I restrained a strong impulse to ask her why, for instinct told me she had some especial reason that somehow concerned me. I said merely: “Then I shall get rid of him.”
“Not on my account,” she replied indifferently. “I care nothing about him one way or the other.”
“He goes at the end of his month,” said I.
She was now taking off her gloves. “Before your maid comes,” I went on, “let me explain about the apartment. This room and the two leading out of it are yours. My own suite is on the other side of our private hall there.”
She colored high, paled. I saw that she did not intend to speak.
I stood awkwardly, waiting for something further to come into my own head. “Good night,” said I finally, as if I were taking leave of a formal acquaintance at the end of a formal call.
She did not answer. I left the room, closing the door behind me. I paused an instant, heard the key click in the lock. And I burned in a hot flush of shame that she should be thinking thus basely of me—and with good cause. How could she know, how appreciate even if she had known? “You've had to cut deep,” said I to myself. “But the wounds'll heal, though it may take long—very long.” And I went on my way, not wholly downcast.