"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Then, for heaven's sake, obey your impulses and let other people obey theirs. From now on you are to be identified with a profession that transcends the petty conventions of society. Confess! Aren't you already a little ashamed of getting angry with me just now?"
She was not ashamed, not in the least; but her ardent desire to prove her fitness for that coveted profession, together with the compelling insistence of that persuasive voice, prompted her to hold out a reluctant hand and to smile.
"You are a darling child!" said Captain Phipps, with a level glance of approval. "I shall see you to-morrow. When? Where?"
But she would make no engagement. She was in a flutter to be gone. It was her first experience at dancing on a precipice, and, while she liked it, she could not deny, even to herself, that at times it made her uncomfortably hot and dizzy.
CHAPTER 5
Eleanor's thoughts were still in a turmoil as she slowed her car to a within-the-law limit of speed and brought it to a dignified halt before an imposing edifice on Third Avenue. The precaution was well taken, for a long, pale face that had been pressed to a front window promptly transferred itself to the front door, and an anxious voice called out:
"Oh, Nellie,whydid you stay out so late? Didn't you know it was your duty to be in before five?"
"It's not late, Aunt Isobel," said Eleanor impatiently. "It gets dark early, that's all."
"And you must be frozen," persisted Miss Isobel, "with those thin pumps and silk stockings, and nothing but that veil on your head."
"But I'mhot!" declared Eleanor, throwing open her coat. "The house is stifling. Can't we have a window open?"
Miss Isobel sighed. Like the rest of the family, she never knew what to expect from this troublesome, adorable, disturbing mystery called Eleanor. She worshiped her with the solicitous, over-anxious care that saw fever in the healthy flush of youth, regarded a sneeze as premonitory of consumption, and waited with dark certitude for the "something dreadful" that instinct told her was ever about to happen to her darling.
"I am afraid your grandmother is terribly upset about your staying out so late," she said, with a note of warning in her voice.
"What made you tell her?" demanded Eleanor.
"Because she asked me, and of course I could not deceive her. I don't believe you know how hard it is to keep things from her."
"Don'tI!" said Eleanor, with the tolerant smile of a professional for an amateur. "Well, a few minutes more won't make any difference. I'll go and change my dress."
"No, dear; you must go to her first. She's been sending Hannah down every few minutes to see if you were here."
"Oh, dear! I suppose I'm in for it!" sighed Eleanor, flinging her coat across the banister. Then, in answer to a plaintive voice from the library, "Yes, Aunt Enid?"
"Why on earth are you so late, sweetheart? Didn't you know your grandmother would be fretted?"
The possessor of the plaintive voice emerged from the library, trailing an Oriental scarf as she came. Like her elder sister, she was tall and thin, but she did not wear Miss Isobel's look of martyred resignation. On the contrary, she had the starved look of one who is constantly trying to pick up the crumbs of interest that other people let fall.
Enid Bartlett might have passed for a pretty woman had her appearance not been permanently affected by an artist once telling her she looked like a Botticelli. Since that time she had done queer things to her hair, pursed her lips, and cultivated an expression of chronic yearning.
"I haven't seen you since breakfast, Nellie," she said gently. "Haven't you a kiss for me?"
Eleanor presented a perfunctory cheek over the banisters, taking care that it was not the one that had been kissed a few minutes before.
"Remember your promise," Aunt Enid whispered; "don't forget that your grandmother is an old lady and you must not excite her."
"But she excites me," said Eleanor doggedly. "She makes me want to smash windows and scream."
"Why, Nellie!" Miss Enid's mournful eyes filled with tears. Instantly Eleanor was all contrition.
"I'm sorry!" she said, with a real kiss this time. "I'll behave. Give you my word I will!" And, with an affectionate squeeze of the hand that clasped hers, she ran up the steps.
The upper hall, like the rest of the house, was pervaded by an air of gloomy grandeur. Everything was dreary, formal, fixed. Not an ornament or a picture had been changed since Eleanor could remember. She was the only young thing about the place, and it always seemed to her as if the house and its occupants were conspiring to make her old and staid and stupid, like themselves.
At the door of her grandmother's room she paused. As far back as she could remember, her quarrels with her grandmother had been the most terrifying events of her life. Repetition never robbed them of their horror, and no amount of spoiling between times could make up to her for the violence of the moment. It took all the courage she had to turn the knob of the door and enter.
A brigadier-general planning an important campaign would have presented no more commanding presence than did the formidable old lady who sat at a flat-top desk, issuing orders in a loud, decisive tone to a small meek-looking man who stood before her. The most arresting feature about Madam Bartlett was a towering white pompadour that began where most pompadours end, and soared to a surprising height above her large, handsome, masculine face. The fact that her hair line had gradually receded from her forehead to the top of her head affected no change whatever in the arrangement of her coiffure. Neither in regard to her hair nor to her figure had she yielded one iota to the whims of Nature. Her body was still confined in the stiffest of stays, and in spite of her seventy years was as straight as an arrow. At Eleanor's entrance she motioned her peremptorily to a chair and proceeded with the business in hand.
"You go back and tell Mr. Bangs," she was saying to the meek-looking person, "that I want him to send somebody up here who knows more than you do. Do you understand?"
The meek one evidently understood, for he reached nervously for his cap.
"Wait!" commanded Madam peremptorily. "Don't start off like that, while I am talking to you! Tell Mr. Bangs this is the third time I've asked him to send me the report of Bartlett " Bangs' export business for the past year. I want it immediately. I am not in my dotage yet. I still have some say-so in the firm. Well, what are you waiting for?"
"I was waiting to know if there was anything more, ma'am."
"If there had been I would have said so. Tell Hannah to come in as you go out."
Eleanor looked at her grandmother expectantly, but there was no answering glance. The old lady was evidently in one of her truculent moods that brooked no interference.
"Has the plumber come?" she demanded of the elderly colored maid who appeared at the door.
"No, ma'am. He can't get here till to-morrow."
"Tell him I won't wait. If he can't come within an hour he needn't come at all. Where is Tom?"
Hannah's eyes shifted uneasily. "Tom? Why, Tom, he thought you discharged him."
"So I did. But he's not to go until I get another butler. Send him up here at once."
"But he ain't here," persisted Hannah fearfully, "He's went for good this time."
Eleanor, sitting demurely by the door, had a moment of unholy exultation. Old black Tom, the butler, had been Madam's chief domestic prop for a quarter of a century. He had been the patient buffer between her and the other servants, taking her domineering with unfailing meekness, and even venturing her defense when mutiny threatened below stairs. "You-all don't understand old Miss," he would say loyally. "She's all right, only she's jes' nachully mean, dat's all."
In the turning of this humble worm, Eleanor felt in some vague way a justification of her own rebellion.
His departure, however, did not tend to clear the domestic atmosphere. By the time Madam had settled the plumbing question and expressed her opinion of Tom and all his race, she was in no mood to deal leniently with the shortcomings of a headstrong young granddaughter.
"Well," she said, addressing her at last, "why didn't you make it midnight?"
"It's only a little after five." Eleanor knew she was putting up a feeble defense, and her hands grew cold.
"It is nearly six, and it is dark. Couldn't you have withdrawn the sunshine of your presence from the hospital half an hour sooner?"
Under her sharp glance there was a curious protective tenderness, the savage concern of a lioness for her whelp; but Eleanor saw only the scoffing expression in the keen eyes, and heard the note of irony in all she said.
"Your going out to the hospital is all foolishness, anyhow," the old lady continued, sorting her papers with efficiency. "Contagious diseases, germs, and what not. But some women would be willing to go to Hades if they could tie a becoming rag around their heads. Why didn't you dress yourself properly before you came in here?"
"I wanted to, but Aunt——"
"Aunt Enid, I suppose! If it was left to her she'd have you trailing around in a Greek tunic and sandals, with a laurel wreath on your head."
There was an ominous pause, during which Madam's wrinkled, bony hands, flashing with diamonds, searched rapidly among the papers.
"You are all ready to start on Monday? Your clothes are in good condition, I presume?"
Eleanor brought her gaze from a detached contemplation of the ceiling to a critical inspection of her finger-nails.
"I suppose Aunt Isobel has attended to them," she said indifferently.
"Aunt Isobel, indeed!" snarled Madam. "You'd lean on a broken reed if you depended on Isobel. And Enid is no better.Iattended to your clothes. I got you everything you need, even down to a new set of furs."
"Silver fox?" asked Eleanor, brightening visibly.
"No, mink. I can't abide fox. Ah! here's what I am looking for. Your ticket and berth reservation. Train leaves at ten-thirty Monday morning."
"Grandmother," ventured Eleanor, summing up courage to lead a forlorn hope, "you are just wasting money sending me back to Baltimore."
"It's my money," said the old lady grimly.
"It's your money, but it is my life," Eleanor urged, with a quiver in her voice. "If you are going to send me away, why not send me to New York and let me do the one thing in the world I want to do?"
That Madam should be willing to furnish unlimited funds for finishing schools, music lessons, painting lessons, and every "extra" that the curriculum offered, and yet refuse to cultivate her one real talent, seemed to Eleanor the most unreasonable autocracy. She had no way of knowing that Madam's indomitable pride, still quivering with the memory of her oldest son's marriage to an unknown young actress, recoiled instinctively from the theatrical rock on which so many of her old hopes had been wrecked.
Eleanor's persistence in recurring to this most distasteful of subjects roused her to fury. A purple flush suffused her face, and her cheeks puffed in and out as she breathed.
"I suppose Claude Martel has it all mapped out," she said. "He and that fool Harold Phipps have stirred you up to a pretty pitch. What do you see in that silly coxcomb, anyhow?"
"If you mean Captain Phipps," Eleanor said with dignity, "I see a great deal. He is one of the most cultivated men I ever met."
"Fiddlesticks! He smells like a soap-counter! When I see an affected man I see a fool. He has airs enough to fill a music-box. But that's neither here nor there. You understand definitely that I do not wish you to see him again?"
Eleanor's silence did not satisfy Madam. She insisted upon a verbal assurance, which Eleanor was loath to give.
"I tell you once for all, young lady," said Madam, by this time roused to fury, "that you havegotto do what I say for another year. After that you will be twenty-one, and you can go to the devil, if you want to."
"Grandmother!" cried Eleanor, shrinking as if from a physical blow. Then, remembering her promise to her Aunt Enid, she bit her lip and struggled to keep back the tears. As she started to leave the room, Madam called her back.
"Here, take this," she said gruffly, thrusting a small morocco box into her hand. "Isobel and Enid never had decent necks to hang 'em on. See that you don't lose them." And without more ado she thrust Eleanor out of the room and shut the door in her face.
Eleanor fled down the hall to her own room, and after locking the door flung herself on the bed. It was always like that, she told herself passionately; they nagged at her and tormented her and wore her out with their care and anxiety, and then suffocated her with their affection. She did not want their presents. She wanted freedom, the right to live her own life, think her own thoughts, make her own decisions. She did not mean to be ungrateful, but she couldn't please them all! The family expectations of her were too high, too different from what she wanted. Other girls with half her talents for the stage had succeeded, and just because she was a Bartlett——
She clenched her fists and wished for the hundredth time that she had never been born. She had been a bone of contention all her life, and, even when the two families were not fighting over her, the Bartlett blood was warring with the Martel blood within her. Her standards were hopelessly confused; she did not know what she wanted except that she wanted passionately to be let alone.
"Nellie!" called a gentle voice on the other side of the door. "Are you ready for dinner?"
"Don't want any dinner," she mumbled from the depths of a pillow.
The door-handle turned softly and the voice persisted:
"You must unlock the door, dearie; I want to speak to you."
Eleanor flung herself off the bed and opened the door. "I tell you, I don't want any dinner, Aunt Enid," she declared petulantly.
Miss Enid drew her down on the bed beside her and regarded her with pensive persuasion. "I know, Nelchen; I often feel like that. But you must come down and make a pretense of eating. It upsets your grandmother to have any one of us absent from meals."
"Everything I do upsets her!" cried Eleanor with tragic insistence. "I can't please her—there's no use trying. Why does she treat me the way she does? Why does she sometimes almost seem to hate me?"
Miss Enid's eyes involuntarily glanced at the picture of Eleanor's mother over the desk, taken in the doublet and hose ofRosalind.
"Hush, child; you mustn't say such awful things," she said, drawing the girl close and stroking her hair. "Mother adores you. Think of all she has done for you ever since you were a tiny baby. What other girl of your acquaintance has her own car, all the pretty clothes she can wear, and as much pin-money as she can spend?"
"But that's not what Iwant!" cried Eleanor tragically. "I want tobesomething and todosomething. I feel like I am in prison here. I'm not good and resigned like you and Aunt Isobel, and I simply refuse to go through life standing grandmother's tyranny."
Poor Eleanor, so intolerably sensitive to contacts, so hopelessly confused in her bearings, sitting red-eyed and miserable, kicking her feet against the side of the bed, looked much more like a naughty child than like the radiant Lady Bountiful who had dispensed favors and received homage in the hospital a few hours before.
So swift was the sympathetic action of her nerves that any change in her physical condition affected her whole nature, making her an enigma to herself as well as to others. Even as she sat there rebellious and defiant, her eyes fell upon the small morocco box on her pillow, and she picked it up and opened it.
"Oh, Aunt Enid!" she cried in instant remorse. "Just look what she's given me! Her string of pearls! The ones she wore in the portrait! And just think of what I've been saying about her. I'm a beast, a regular little beast!"
And with characteristic impetuosity she flung herself on Miss Enid's neck and burst into tears.
CHAPTER 6
The sun was getting ready to set on Sunday afternoon when a tall, trim-looking figure turned the corner of the street leading to the Martels' and broke into a run. In one hand he carried a large suit-case, and in the other he held a bead chain wrapped in tissue-paper. In the breast pocket of his uniform was a paper stating that Quinby Graham was thereby honorably discharged from the U.S.A.
Whether it was his enforced rest, or his state of mind, or a combination of the two, it is impossible to say; but at least ten pounds had been added to his figure, the hollows had about gone from his eyes, and a natural color had returned to his face. But the old cough remained, as was evident when he presented himself breathless at the Martels' door and demanded of Cass:
"Has she gone?"
"Who?"
"Miss Bartlett."
"I believe she's fixing to go now. What's it to you?"
"Oh, I just want to say good-by," Quin threw off with a great show of indifference. "She was awful good to me out at the hospital."
"Oh, I see." Then Cass dismissed the subject for one of far more importance. "Are you out for keeps? Have you come to stay?"
"You bet I have. How long has she been here?"
"Who?"
"Miss Bartlett, I tell you."
"Oh! I don't know. All day, I reckon. I got to take her home now in a minute, but I'll be back soon. Don't you go anywhere till I come back."
Quin seized his arm: "Cass, I'll take her home for you. I don't mind a bit, honest I don't. I need some exercise."
"Old lady'd throw a fit," objected Cass. "Old grandmother, I mean. Regular Tartar. Old aunts are just as bad. They devil the life out of Nell, except when she's deviling the life out of them."
"How do you mean?" Quin encouraged him.
"I mean Nell's a handful all right. She kicks over the traces every time she gets a chance. I don't blame her. They're a rotten bunch of snobs, and she knows it."
"Well, I could leave her at the door," Quin urged. "I wouldn't let her in for anything for the world. But I got to talk to her, I tell you; I got to thank her——"
Meanwhile, in the room above the young lady under discussion was leisurely adjusting a new and most becoming hat before a cracked mirror while she discussed a subject of perennial interest to the eternal feminine.
"Rose," she was asking, "what's the first thing you notice about a man?"
Rose, sitting on the side of the bed nursing little Bino, the latest addition to the family, answered promptly:
"His mouth, of course. I wouldn't marry a man who showed his gums when he laughed, not if every hair of his head was strung with diamonds!"
The visualization of this unpleasant picture threw Eleanor into peals of laughter which upset the carefully acquired angle of the new hat, to say nothing of the nerves of the young gentleman just arrived in the hall below.
"I wasn't thinking of his looks only," she said; "I mean everything about him."
"Why, I guess it's whether he notices me," said Rose after deliberation.
"Exactly," agreed Eleanor. "Not only you or me, but girls. Take Cass, for instance; girls might just as well be broomsticks to Cass, all except Fan Loomis. Now, when Captain Phipps looks at you——"
"He never would," said Rose; "he'd look straight over my head. I'll tell you who is a better example—Mr. Graham."
Eleanor smiled reminiscently. "Oh, Sergeant Slim?he'sthrilled, all right! Always looks as if he couldn't wait a minute to hear what you are going to say next."
"He's not as susceptible as he looks," Rose pronounced from her vantage-point of seniority. "He's just got a way with him that fools people. Cass says girls are always crazy about him, and that he never cares for any of them more than a week."
"Much Cass knows about it!" said Cass's cousin, pulling on her long gloves. Then she dismissed the subject abruptly: "Rose, if I tell you something will you swear not to tell?"
"Never breathe it."
"Captain Phipps is coming up to Baltimore for the Easter vacation."
"Does your grandmother know?"
"I should saynot. She's written Miss Hammond that I'm not to receive callers without permission, and that all suspicious mail is to be opened."
"How outrageous! You tell Captain Phipps to send his letters to me; I'll get them to you. They'll never suspect my fine Italian hand, with my name and address on the envelope."
Eleanor looked at her older cousin dubiously. "I hate to do underhand things like that!" she said crossly.
"You wouldn't have to if they treated you decently. Opening your letters! The idea! I wouldn't stand for it. I'd show them a thing or two."
Eleanor stood listlessly buttoning her glove, pondering what Rose was saying.
"I wonder if I could get word to the Captain to-night?" she said. "Shall I really tell him to send the letters to you?"
"No; tell him to bring them. I'm crazy to see what his nibs looks like."
"He looks like that picture of Richard Mansfield downstairs—the one taken asBeau Brummel. He's the most fastidious man you ever saw, and too subtle for words."
"He's terribly rich, isn't he?"
"I don't know," said Eleanor indifferently. "His father is a Chicago manufacturer of some kind. Does Papa Claude think he isverytalented?"
"Talented! He says he's one of the most gifted young men he ever met. They are hatching out some marvelous schemes to write a play together. Papa Claude is treading on air."
"Bless his heart! Wouldn't it be too wonderful, Rose, if Captain Phipps should produce one of his plays? He's crazy about him."
"You mean he's crazy about you."
"Who said so?"
"I don't have to be told. How about you, Nell? Are you in love with him?"
Eleanor, taking a farewell look in the mirror, saw a tiny frown gather between her eyebrows. It was the second time that week she had been asked the question, and, as before, she avoided it.
"Listen!" she said. "Who is that talking so loud downstairs?"
Investigation proved that it was Cass and Quin in hot dispute, as usual. On seeing her descend the stair the latter promptly stepped forward.
"Cass is going to let me take you home, Miss Bartlett."
"I never said I would," Cass contradicted him. "I'm not going to get her into trouble the night before she goes away."
"That's for her to decide," said Quin. "If she says I can go I'm going."
The very novelty of being called upon to decide anything for herself, augmented perhaps by the ardent desire in his eyes, caused Eleanor to tip the scales in his favor.
"I don't mind his taking me home," she said somewhat condescendingly. "They'll think it's Cass."
"All buck privates look alike to them," added Rose, laughing.
"My private days are over," said Quin grandly. "This time next week I'll be out of my uniform."
"You won't be half so good-looking," said Eleanor, surveying him with such evident approval that he had a wild idea of reënlisting at once.
"Tell Papa Claude I couldn't wait for him any longer," Eleanor then said. "Kiss him good-by for me, Rose, and tell him I'll write the minute I get to Baltimore."
Then Cass kissed her, and Rose and the baby kissed her, and Myrna came downstairs to kiss her, and Edwin was called up from the basement to kiss her. It seemed the easiest and most natural thing in the world for everybody to kiss her but Quin, who would have given all he had for the privilege.
At last he found himself alone with her in the street, trying to catch step and wondering whether or not it was proper to take hold of a young lady's elbow. With commendable self-restraint he compromised on street crossings and muddy places. It was not quite dark yet, but it was going to be very soon, and a big pale moon was hiding behind a tall chimney, waiting for a chance to pounce out on unwary young couples who might be venturing abroad.
As they started across Central Park, an open square in the heart of the city, Eleanor stopped short, and with eyes fixed on the sky began incanting:
"Star light, star brightVery first star I see to-nightWish I may, wish I might—May these three wishes come true before to-morrow night."
"Star light, star brightVery first star I see to-nightWish I may, wish I might—May these three wishes come true before to-morrow night."
"Star light, star bright
Very first star I see to-night
Wish I may, wish I might—
May these three wishes come true before to-morrow night."
"I haven't got three wishes," said Quin solemnly; "I've only got one."
"Mercy, I have dozens! Shall I lend you some?"
"No! mine's bigger than all yours put together."
She flashed a look at him from under her tilted hat-brim:
"What on earth's the matter with you? You look so solemn. I don't believe you wanted to bring me home, after all."
Quin didn't know what was the matter with him. Heretofore he had fallen in love as a pebble falls into a pond. There had been a delicious splash, and subsequent encircling ripples, each one further away than the last. But this time the pebble had fallen into a whirlpool, and was being turned and tossed and played with in a manner wholly bewildering.
"Oh, I wanted to come, all right," he said slowly. "Ihadto come. Say, I wish you weren't going away to-morrow."
"So do I. I'd give anything not to."
"But why do you go, then?"
"Because I am always made to do what I don't want to do."
Quin, who had decided views on individual freedom and the consent of the governed, promptly espoused her cause.
"They've got no right to force you. You ought to decide things for yourself."
"Do you really think that? Do you think a girl has the right to go ahead and do as she likes, regardless of her family?"
"That depends on whether she wants to do the right thing. Which way do we turn?"
"This way, if we go home," said Eleanor. Then she stopped abruptly. "What time is it?"
Quin consulted his watch and his conscience at the same time.
"It's only five-thirty," he said eagerly.
"I wonder if you'd do something for me?"
"You bet I will."
"I want to go out to the hospital. I can get out there and back in my machine in thirty minutes. Would you be willing to go with me?"
Would he be willing? Two hours before he had sworn that no power on earth could induce him to return to those prison walls, and now he felt that nothing could keep him away. Forty minutes of bliss in that snug little runabout with Miss Bartlett, and the destination might be Hades for all he cared.
It took but a few minutes to get to the garage and into the machine, and then they were speeding out the avenue at a pace that would surely have landed them in the police station had the traffic officer been on his job.
Quin, doubled up like a jack-knife beside her, was drunk with ecstasy. His expression when he looked at her resembled that of a particularly maudlin Airedale. Having her all to himself, with nobody to interfere, was an almost overwhelming joy. He longed to pour out his soul in gratitude for all that she had done for him at the hospital; he burned to tell her that she was the most beautiful and holy thing that had ever come into his life; but instead he only got his foot tangled in the steering gear, and muttered something about her "not driving a car bad for a girl"!
But Eleanor was not concerned with her companion or his silent transports. She evidently had something of importance on her mind.
"What time is the officers' mess?" she asked.
"About six. Why?"
"I want to catch Captain Phipps before he leaves the hospital."
Quin's glowing bubble burst at the word. ShewasCaptain Phipps' girl, after all! She had simply pressed him into service in order to get a last interview with the one officer in the battalion for whom he had no respect.
The guard challenged them as they swung into the hospital area, but, seeing Quin's uniform, allowed them to enter. Past the long line of contagious wards, past the bleak two-story convalescent barracks, and up to the officers' quarters they swept.
"You are not going in yourself?" Quin protested, as she started to get out of the car.
"Why not? Haven't I been coming out here all the time?"
"Not at night—not like this."
"Nonsense. What's the harm? I'll only be a minute?"
But Quin had already got out, and was holding the door with a large, firm hand.
"No," he said humbly but positively; "I'll go and bring him out here."
The unexpected note of authority in his voice nettled her instantly.
"I shall go myself," she insisted petulantly. "Let me out."
For a moment their eyes clashed in frank combat, hers angry and defiant, his adoring but determined.
"Listen here, Miss Bartlett," he urged. "The men wouldn't understand your coming out like this, at night, without your uniform. I told Cass I'd take care of you, and I'm going to do it."
"You mean that you will dare to stop me from getting out of my own car? Take your hand off that door instantly!"
She actually seized his big, strong fingers with her small gloved ones and tried to pull them away from the door. But Quin began to laugh, and in spite of herself she laughed back; and, while the two were childishly struggling for the possession of the door-handle, Captain Phipps all unnoticed passed out of the mess-hall, gave a few instructions to his waiting orderly, and disappeared in the darkness.
CHAPTER 7
By the time they were on their way home, the moon, no longer dodging behind chimneys, had swaggered into the open. It was a hardened old highwayman of a moon, red in the face and very full, and it declared with every flashing beam that it was no respecter of persons, and that it intended doing all the mischief possible down there in the little world of men.
Miss Eleanor Bartlett was its first victim. In the white twilight she forgot the social gap that lay between her and the youth beside her. She ceased to observe the size and roughness of his hands, but noted instead the fine breadth of his shoulders. She concerned herself no longer with his verbal lapses, but responded instead to his glowing confidence that everybody was as sincere and well intentioned as himself. She discovered what the more sophisticated Rose had perceived at once—that Quinby Graham "had a way with him," a beguiling, sympathetic way that made one tell him things that one really didn't mean to tell any one. Of course, it was partly due to the fact that he asked such outrageously direct questions, questions that no one in her most intimate circle of friends would dare to ask. And the queer part of it was that she was answering them.
Before she realized it she was launched on a full recital of her woes, her thwarted ambition to go on the stage, her grandmother's tyranny, the indignity of being sent back to a school from which she had run away six months before. She flattered herself that she was stating her case for the sole purpose of getting an unprejudiced outsider's unbiased opinion; but from the inflection of her voice and the expressive play of eyes and lips it was evident that she was deriving some pleasure from the mere act of thus dramatizing her woes before that wholly sympathetic audience of one.
It was not until they reached the Eastern Parkway and were speeding toward the twinkling lights of the city that their little bubble of intimacy, blown in the moonlight, was shattered by a word.
"Say, Miss Eleanor," Quin blurted out unexpectedly, "do you like me?"
The question, together with the fact that he had dared used her first name, brought her up with a start.
"Like you?" she repeated in her most conventional tone, "Why, of course. Whatever made you think I didn't?"
"I didn't think that. But—do you like me enough to let me come to see you when you come back?"
Now, a romantically wounded hero receiving favors in a hospital is one thing, and an unknown discharged soldier asking them is quite another. The very thought of Quinby Graham presenting himself as a caller, and the comments that would follow made Eleanor shy away from the subject in alarm.
"Oh, you'll be on the other side of the world by the time I get back," she said lightly.
"Not me. Not if there's a chance of seeing you again."
A momentary diversion followed, during which Eleanor fancied there was something wrong with the radiator and expatiated at length on her preference for air-cooled cars.
Quin listened patiently. A gentleman more versed in social subtleties would have accepted the hint and said no more. But he was still laboring under the error that language was invented to reveal rather than to conceal thought.
"You didn't answer my question," he said, when Eleanor paused for breath.
"What question?"
"About my coming to see you."
She took shelter in a subterfuge.
"I told you that the family was horrid to everybody that came to see me. To tell you the truth, I don't think you would be comfortable."
"I'm not afraid of 'em," Quin insisted fatuously. "I'd butt in anywhere to get to see you."
Eleanor's eyes dropped under his gaze.
"You don't know my grandmother," she said; "and, what is much more important, she doesn't know you."
"No, but she might like to," urged Quin, with one of his most engaging smiles. "Old ladies and cats always cotton to me."
Eleanor laughed. It was impossible to be dignified and superior with a person who didn't know the first rules of the game.
"She might," she admitted; "you never can tell about grandmother. She really is a wonderful person in many ways, and just as generous and kind when you are in trouble! But she says the most dreadful things; she's always hurting people's feelings."
"She couldn't hurt mine, unless I let her," said Quin.
"Oh, yes, she could—you don't know her. But even if she happened to be nice to you, there's Aunt Isobel."
"What is she like?"
"Horriblygood and conscientious, and shocked to death at everything people do and say. I don't mean that she isn't awfully kind. She'll do anything for you if you are sick. But Uncle Ranny says her sense of duty amounts to a vice. Whatever she's doing, she thinks she ought to be doing something else. And she expects you to be just as good as she is. If she knew I was out here with a strange man to whom I'd never been introduced——"
Eleanor was appalled at the effect upon her aunt of such indiscretion.
"Oh, I could handle her all right," said Quin boastfully. "I'd talk foreign missions to her. Any others?"
"Heaps. There's Aunt Flo and Uncle Ranny. He's a dear, only he's the black sheep of the family. He says I am a promising gray lamb, which makes grandmother furious. They all let her twist them round her finger but me. I won't twist. I never intend to."
"Is that all the family?"
"No; there's Aunt Enid. She is the nicest of them all."
"What is her line?"
"Oh, she's awfully good, too. But she's different from Aunt Isobel. She was engaged to be married once, and grandmother broke it off because the man was poor. I don't think she'll ever get over it."
"Do you think she would like me?" Quin anxiously inquired.
"Yes," admitted Eleanor, "I believe she would. She simply adores to mold people. She doesn't care how many faults they have, if they will just let her influence them to be better. And she does help loads of people. I am her one failure. She wouldn't acknowledge it for the world, but I know that I am the disappointment of Aunt Enid's life."
She gazed gloomily down the long moonlit road and lapsed into one of her sudden abstractions. A belated compunction seized her for not going straight home from the Martels', for being late for dinner on her last night, for going on with her affair with Captain Phipps, when she had been forbidden to see him.
"Miss Nell," said the persistent voice beside her, "do you know what I intend to do while you are away?"
"No; what?"
"I'm going to start in to-morrow morning and make love to your whole darn family!"
Now, if there is one thing Destiny admires in a man, it is his courage to defy her. She relentlessly crushes the supine spirit who acquiesces, but to him who snaps his fingers in her face she often extends a helping hand. In this case she did not make Quin wait until the morrow to begin his colossal undertaking. By means of a humble tack that lay in the way of the speeding automobile, she at once set in motion the series of events that were to determine his future life.
By the time the puncture was repaired and they were again on their way, it was half-past seven and all hope of a timely arrival was abandoned. As they slowed up at the Bartlett house, their uneasiness was increased by the fact that lights were streaming from every window and the front door was standing open.
"Is that the doctor?" an excited voice called to them from the porch.
"No," called back Eleanor, scrambling out of the car. "What is the matter?"
No answer being received, she clutched Quin's sleeve nervously.
"Something has happened! Look, the front hall is full of people. Oh, I'm afraid to go in! I——"
"Steady on!" said Quin, with a firm grip on her elbow as he marched her up the steps and into the hall.
Everything was in confusion. People were hurrying to and fro, doors were slamming, excited voices were asking questions and not waiting for answers. "What's Dr. Snowden's telephone number?" "Can't they get another doctor?" "Has somebody sent for Randolph?" "Are they going to try to move her?" everybody demanded of everybody else.
Eleanor pushed through the crowd until she reached the foot of the steps. There, lying on the floor, with her towering white pompadour crushed ignominiously against the newel-post, lay the one person in the house who could have brought prompt order out of the chaos. On one side of her knelt Miss Enid frantically applying smelling salts, while on the other stood Miss Isobel futilely wringing her hands and imploring some one to go for a minister.
Suddenly the buzz of excited talk ceased. Madam was returning to consciousness. She groaned heavily, then opened one eye.
"What's the matter?" she demanded feebly. "What's all this fuss about?"
"You fell down the steps, mother. Don't get excited; don't try to move."
But Madam had already tried, with the result that she fell back with a sharp cry of pain.
"Oh, my leg, my leg!" she groaned. "What are you all standing around like fools for? Why don't you send Tom for the doctor?"
"Tom isn't with us any more, dearest," said Aunt Enid with trembling reassurance, "and Dr. Snowden is out of town. But we are trying to get Dr. Bean."
"I won't have Bean," Madam declared, clinching her jaw with pain. "I'll send him away if he comes."
"Dr. Vaughn, then?" suggested Miss Enid tenderly.
"Vaughn nothing! Send for Rawlins. He's an old stick, but he'll do till Dr. Snowden gets here."
"But, mother," protested Miss Isobel. "Dr. Rawlins lives in the country; he can't get here for half an hour."
"Do as I tell you and stop arguing," commanded Madam. "Has anybody telephoned Ranny?"
The two sisters exchanged significant glances.
"Their line is busy," said Miss Enid soothingly. "We will get him soon."
"I want to be taken upstairs," announced Madam; "I want to be put in my own bed."
A buzz of protest met this suggestion, and a small, nervous man in clerical garb, who had just arrived, came forward to add his voice to the rest.
Madam glared at him savagely. "There'll be plenty of time for parsons when the doctors get through with me," she said. "Tell some of those able-bodied men back there to come here and take me upstairs."
Quin, who had been standing in the background looking down at the formidable old lady, promptly came forward.
"I'll take you up," he said. "Which leg is hurt?"
The old lady turned her head and looked up at him. The note of confidence in his voice had evidently appealed to her.
"It's my left leg. I think it's broken just above the knee."
"Do you want me to put a splint on it?"
"Are you a doctor?"
"No, ma'am; but I can fix it so's it won't hurt you so bad when we move you," Quin replied.
"How do you know you can?"
Quin ran his fingers through his hair and smiled.
"Well, I wasn't with the Ambulance Corps for six months in France for nothing."
Madam eyed him keenly for a moment; then, "Go ahead," she commanded.
A chorus of protests from the surrounding group only deepened her determination.
"It'smyleg," she said irritably. "If he knows how to splint it, let him do it. I want to be taken upstairs."
It is difficult enough to apply a splint properly under favorable circumstances; but when one has only an umbrella and table napkins to work with, and is hemmed in by a doubtful and at times protesting audience, it becomes well-nigh impossible.
Quin worked slowly and awkwardly, putting the bones as nearly as possible in position and then binding them firmly in place. He paid no more attention to the agitated comments of those about him than he had paid to the whizzing bullets when he rendered first aid to a fallen comrade in No Man's Land.
During the painful operation Madam lay with rigid jaws and clenched fists. Small beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead and her lips were white. Now and then she flinched violently, but only once did she speak, and that was when Miss Enid held the smelling salts too close to her high-bridged nose.
"Haven't I got enough to stand without that?" she sputtered, knocking the bottle into the air and sending the contents flying over the polished floor.
When Quin finished he looked at her with frank admiration.
"You got nerve, all right," he said; then he added gently: "Don't you worry about getting upstairs; it won't hurt you much now."
"You stay and help," said Madam peremptorily.
"Sure," said Quin.
It was not until she was in her own bed, and word had come that Dr. Rawlins was on his way, that she would let Quin go, and even then she called him back.
"You! Soldier! Come here," was the faint edict from the canopied bed. She was getting very weak from the pain, and her words came in gasps. "Do you know where—the—Aristo Apartments are?"
"No, but I can find out," said Quin.
"I want you—to—go for my son—Mr. Randolph Bartlett. If he's not at home—you find him. I'll make it—worth your while."
"I'll find him," Quin said, with a reassuring pat on her wrinkled hand.
As he went into the hall, Eleanor slipped out of the adjoining room and followed him silently down the stairs. She did not speak until they were at the front door, and even then took the precaution of stepping outside.
"I just wanted to come down and say good-by," she said.
"But you surely won't be going now?" said Quin hopefully.
"Yes, I'm to go. Grandmother has just told Aunt Isobel that everything is to be carried out exactly as she planned it. But I wish they'd let me stay and help. Poor granny!"
Her eyes brimmed with ready tears.
"She'll pull through all right," said Quin, to whom the tear-dimmed eyes of youth were more unnerving than age's broken bones. "Don't worry, Miss Eleanor, please. What time does your train go in the morning?"
"Ten-thirty."
"I'll be there at ten."
Eleanor brushed her tears away quickly. "No, no—you mustn't," she said in quick alarm. "They don't know that we ever saw each other before. They think you just happened to be passing and ran in to help. Oh, I don't want to give them any more trouble. Promise me not to come!"
"Well, when you come back, then?"
"Yes, yes, when I come back," she whispered hurriedly. Then she put out her hand impulsively. "I think you've been perfectly splendid to-night. Good-by."
For a moment she stood there, her dainty figure silhouetted against the bright doorway, with the light shining through her soft hair giving her an undeserved halo. Then she was gone, leaving him on the steps in the moonlight, tenderly contemplating the hand that had just held hers.
CHAPTER 8
It was well that Quin had an errand to perform that night. His emotions, which had been accumulating compound interest since five o'clock, demanded an outlet in immediate action. He had not the faintest idea where the Aristo Apartments might be; but, wherever they were, he meant to find them. Consultation with a telephone book at the corner drug-store sent him across the city to a newer and more fashionable residence quarter. As he left the street-car at the corner indicated, he asked a man who was just dismounting from a taxi-cab for further information.
When the dapper gentleman, thus addressed, turned toward him, it was evident that he had dined not wisely but too well. He was at that mellow stage that radiates affection, and, having bidden a loving farewell to the taxi driver, he now linked his arm in Quin's and repeated gaily:
"'Risto? Of course I can find it for you, if it's where it was this morning! Always make a point of helping a man that's worse off than I am. Always help a sholdier, anyhow. Take my arm, old chap. Take my cane, too. I'll help you."
Thus assisted and assisting, Quin good-humoredly allowed himself to be conducted in a zigzag course to the imposing doorway of a large apartment-house across the street.
"Forgive me f' taking you up stairway," apologized the affable gentleman. "Mustn't let elevator boy see you in this condishun. Take you up to my apartment. Put you bed in m' own room. Got to take care sholdiers."
At the second floor Quin tried to disentangle himself from his new-found protector.
"You can find your way home now, partner," he said. "I got to go down and find out which floor my party lives on."
But his companion held him tight.
"No, my boy! Mustn't go out again to-night. M.P.'s'll catch you. I'll get you to bed without anybody knowing. Mustn't 'sturb my wife, though. Mustn't make any noise." And, adding force to persuasion, he got his arms around Quin and backed him so suddenly against the wall that they both took an unexpected seat on the floor.
At this inopportune moment a door opened and a delicate blonde lady in a pink kimono, followed by an inquisitive poodle, peered anxiously out.
"'S perfectly all right, darling!" reassured the nethermost figure blithely. "Sholdier friend's had a little too much champagne. Bringing him in so's won't be 'rested. Nicest kind of chap. Perfectly harmless!"
Quin scrambled to his feet and exchanged an understanding look with the lady in the doorway.
"I found him down at the corner. Does he belong here?" he asked. And, upon being informed sorrowfully that he did, he added obligingly, "Don't you want me to bring him in for you?"
"Will you?" said the lady in grateful agitation. "The maids are both out, and I can't handle him by myself. Would you mind bringing him into his bedroom?"
Quin succeeded in detaching an affectionate arm from his right leg and, getting his patient up, piloted him into the apartment.
"I'd just as leave put him to bed for you if you like?" he offered, noting the nervousness of the lady, who was fluttering about like a distracted butterfly.
"Oh, would you?" she asked. "It would help me immensely. If he isn't put to bed he is sure to want to go out again."
"Shure to!" heartily agreed the object of their solicitude. "Leave him to me, darling. I'll hide his uniform so's he can't go out. Be a good girl, run along—I'll take care of him."
Thus left to each other, a satisfactory compromise was effected by which the host agreed to be undressed and put to bed, provided Quin would later submit to the same treatment. It was not the first time Quin had thus assisted a brother in misfortune, but he had never before had to do with gold buttons and jeweled cuff-links, to say nothing of silk underwear and sky-blue pajamas. Being on the eve of adopting civilian clothes for the first time in two years, he took a lively interest in every detail of his patient's attire, from the modish cut of his coat to the smart pattern of his necktie.
The bibulous one, who up to the present had regarded the affair as humorous, now began to be lachrymose, and by the time Quin got him into the rose-draped bed he was in a state of deep dejection.
"My mother loves me," he assured Quin tearfully. "Gives me everything. I don't mean to be ungrateful. But I can't go on in the firm. Bangs is dishonest, but she won't believe it. She thinks I don't know. They both think I'm a cipher. Iama cipher. But they've made me one. Get so discouraged, then go break over like this. Promised Flo never would take another drink. But it's no use. Can't help myself. I'm done for. Just a cipher, a cipher, a ci——"
Quin standing by the bed waiting for him to get through adding noughts to his opinion of himself, suddenly leaned forward and examined the picture that hung above the table. It was of an imperial old lady in black velvet, with a string of pearls about her throat and a tiara on her towering white pompadour. His glance swept from the photograph to the flushed face with the tragic eyes on the pillow, and he seemed to hear a querulous old voice repeating: "Ranny—I want Ranny. Why don't they send for Ranny?"
With two strides he was at the door.
"Are you Mrs. Randolph Bartlett?" he asked of the lady who was nervously pacing the hall.
"Yes; why?"
"Because they sent me after him. It's his mother, you see—she's hurt."
"Madam Bartlett? What's happened?"
"She fell down the steps and broke her leg."
"How terrible! But she mustn't know about him," cried Mrs. Ranny in instant alarm. "It always makes her furious when he breaks over; and yet, she is to blame—she drives him to it."
"How do you mean?" asked Quin, plunging into the situation with his usual temerity.
"I mean that she has dominated him, soul and body, ever since he was born!" cried Mrs. Ranny passionately. "She has forced him to stay in the business when every detail of it is distasteful to him. His life is a perfect hell there under Mr. Bangs. He ought to have an outdoor life. He loves animals—he ought to be on a ranch." She pulled herself up with an effort. "Forgive me for going into all this before a stranger, but I am almost beside myself. Of course I am sorry for Madam Bartlett, but what can I do? You can see for yourself that my husband is in no condition to go to her."
"Can't you say he's sick?"
"She wouldn't believe it. She's suspicious of everything I do and say. Do youhaveto take back an answer?"
"I told the old lady I'd find him for her. You see, I'm a—sort of a friend of Miss Eleanor's."
Under ordinary circumstances Mrs. Ranny would have been the last to accept this without an explanation; but there were too many other problems pressing for her to worry about this one.
"I wonder how it would do," she said, "for you to telephone that we are both out of town for the night, spending the week-end in the country?"
"I guess one lie is as good as another," said Quin ruefully. He was getting involved deeper than he liked, but there seemed no other way out. "I'll telephone from the drug-store. Anything else I can do for you?"
"You have been so kind, I hate to ask another favor."
"Let's have it," said Quin.
"Would you by any chance have time to leave a package of papers at Bartlett " Bangs' for me the first thing in the morning? Mr. Bangs has been telephoning me about them all day, and I've been nearly distracted, because my husband had them in his pocket and I did not know where he was."
"Wait a minute," said Quin, going back into the bedroom. "Are these the ones?"
"Yes. They must be very important; that's why I am afraid to intrust them to my maid. Be sure to take them to Mr. Bangs himself, and if he asks any questions——" She caught her trembling lip between her teeth and tried to force back the tears.
"Don't you worry!" cried Quin. "I'll make it all right with him. You drink a glass of hot milk or something, and go to bed."
She looked up at him gratefully. "I don't know your name," she said, "but I certainly appreciate your kindness to me to-night. I wish you would come back some time and let us thank you——"
"Oh, that's all o.k.," said Quin, turning to the door in sudden embarrassment. Then he discovered that he was trying to shake hands and hold his cap with the same hand, and in his confusion he slipped on the hard-wood floor, and achieved an exit that was scarcely more dignified than his entrance a half-hour before.
CHAPTER 9
The news that Quin had broken through the Bartlett barrage afforded great amusement to the Martels at breakfast next morning. Of course they were sympathetic over Madam Bartlett's accident—the Martels' sympathy was always on tap for friend or foe,—but that did not interfere with a frank enjoyment of Quin's spirited account of her high-handed treatment of the family, especially the incident of the smelling salts.
"She ought to belong to the Tank Brigade," said Rose. "'Treat 'em rough' is her motto."
"I like the old girl, though," said Quin disrespectfully, "she's got so much pep. And talk about your nerve! You should have seen her set her jaw when I put the splint on!"
"Is the house very grand?" asked Myrna, hungering for luxurious details.
"No," Cass broke in scornfully. "I been in the hall twice. It looks like a museum—big pictures and statuary, and everything dark and gloomy."
"Yes, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid are the mummies," added Rose. "The only nice one in the bunch besides Nell is Mr. Ranny, and he is hardly ever sober."
"Well, I wouldn't be, either," said Cass, "if I'd been held down like he has all his life. The Bartlett estate was left in trust to the old lady, and she holds the purse-strings and has the say-so about everything."
Quin refrained from mentioning the fact that he had also met Mr. Ranny. It was a point to his credit, for the story would have been received with hilarity, and he particularly enjoyed making Rose laugh.
The entrance of Mr. Martel put an end to the discussion of the Bartletts. Bitter as was his animosity toward the old lady, he would permit no disrespect to be shown her or hers in his presence. In the garish light of day he looked a trifle less imposing than he had on New Year's eve in the firelight. His long white hair hung straight and dry about his face; baggy wrinkles sagged under his eyes and under his chin. The shoulders that once proudly carried Mark Antony's shining armor now supported a faded velvet breakfast jacket that showed its original color only in patches. But even in the intimacy of the breakfast hour Papa Claude preserved his air of distinction, the gracious condescension of a temporary sojourner in an environment from which he expected at any moment to take flight.
When Cass had gone to work and the girls were busy cleaning up the breakfast dishes, he linked his arm in Quin's and drew him into the living-room.
"I have never allowed myself to submit to the tyranny of time!" he said. "The wine of living should be tasted slowly. Pull up a chair, my boy; I want to talk to you. You don't happen to have a cigar about you, do you?"
"Yes, sir. Here are two. Take 'em both. I got to cut out smoking; it makes me cough."
Mr. Martel, protesting and accepting at the same time, sank into his large chair and bade Quin pull up a rocker. In the Martels' living-room all the chairs were rockers; so, in fact, were the table and the sofa, owing to missing castors.
"I am going to talk to you quite confidentially," began Mr. Martel, giving himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. "I am going to tell you of a new and fascinating adventure upon which I am about to embark. You have doubtless heard me speak of a very wealthy and talented young friend of mine—Mr. Harold Phipps?"
Quin admitted without enthusiasm that he had, and that he also knew him.
"Well, Mr. Phipps,—or Captain, as you probably know him,—after a short medical career has found it so totally distasteful that he is wisely returning to an earlier love. As soon as he gets out of the army he and I are going to collaborate on a play. Of course I have technic at my finger-tips. Construction, dramatic suspense, climax are second nature to me. But I confess I have a fatal handicap, one that has doubtless cost me my place at the head of American dramatists to-day. I have never been able to achieve colloquial dialogue! My style is too finished, you understand, my diction too perfect. Manager after manager has been on the verge of accepting a play, and been deterred solely on account of this too literary quality. I suffer from the excess of my virtue; you see?"
Quin did not see. Mr. Martel's words conveyed but the vaguest meaning to him. But it flattered his vanity to be the recipient of such a great man's confidence.
"Well, here's my point," continued his host impressively. "Mr. Phipps knows nothing of technic, of construction; but he has a sense for character and dialogue that amounts to genius. Now, suppose I construct a great plot, and he supplies great dialogue? What will be the inevitable result? A masterpiece, a little modern masterpiece!"
Mr. Martel, soaring on the wings of his imagination, failed to observe that his listener was not following.
"Does—does Miss Eleanor know about all this?" Quin asked.
"Alas, no. I had no opportunity to tell her. Ah, Mr. Graham, I must confess, it hurts me, it hurts me here,"—he indicated a grease-spot just below his vest pocket,—"to be separated from that dear child just when she needs me most. She should be already embarked in her great career. Ellen Terry, Bernhardt, Rachel, all began their training very early. If she had been left to me she would be behind the footlights by now."
"They'll never stand for her going on the stage," said Quin authoritatively. It was astonishing how intimate he felt with the Bartletts since he had put two of them to bed.
"Ah, my friend," said Mr. Martel, shaking his head and smiling, "what can be avoided whose end is purposed by the mighty gods? Eleanor will follow her destiny. She has the temperament, the voice, the figure—a trifle small, I grant you, but lithe, graceful, pliant as a reed."
"Yes, I know what you mean," Quin agreed ardently; "you can tell that in her dancing."
"But more than all, she has the great ambition, the consuming desire for self-expression, for——"
Quin's face clouded slightly and he again lost the thread of the discourse.
"Lots of girls are stage-struck," he said presently, breaking in on Mr. Martel's rhapsody. "Miss Eleanor's young yet. Don't you believe she will get over it?"
"Young! Why, Mary Anderson was playingMeg Merrilieswhen she was two years younger than Eleanor. I tell you, Quinby—you'll forgive my addressing you thus—I tell you, the girl will never get over it. She has inherited the histrionic gift from her mother—from me. The Bartletts have given her money, education, social position; but it remained for me—the despised Claude Martel—to give her the soul of an artist. And mark me,"—he paused effectively with a lifted forefinger,—"it will be Claude Martel who gives her her heart's desire. For years I have fostered in her a love for the drama. I have taken her to see great plays. I have taught her to read great lines, and above all I have fed her ambition. The time was limited—a night here, a day there; but I planted a seed they cannot kill. It has grown, it will flower; no one can stop it now."
The subject was one upon which Quin would fain have discoursed indefinitely, but a glance at his watch reminded him that the business of the day did not admit of further delay. He not only had an important errand to perform, but he must look for work. His exchequer, as usual, was very low and the need for replenishing it was imperative.
When he reached Bartlett " Bangs' on the outskirts of the city, the big manufacturing plant was ominously still. The only sign of life about the place was at the wide entrance doors at the end of the yards, where a group of men were talking and gesticulating excitedly.
"What's the shindy?" Quin asked a bystander.
"Union men trying to keep scabs from going to work," answered his informant. "Somebody's fixin' to get hurt there in about two minutes."
Quin, to whom a scrap was always a pleasant diversion, ran forward and craned his neck to see what was happening. Speeches were being made, hot impassioned speeches, now in favor of the union, now against it, and every moment the excitement increased. Quin listened with absorbed attention, trying to get the straight of the matter.
Just now a sickly-looking man, with a piece of red flannel tied around his throat, was standing on the steps, making a futile effort against the noise to explain his return to work.
"I can't let 'emstarve," he kept repeating in a hoarse, apologetic voice. "When a man's got a sick wife and eight children, he ain't able to do as he likes. I don't want to give in no more 'n you-all do. Neither does Jim here, nor Tom Dawes. But what can we do?"
"Do like the rest of us!" shouted some one in the crowd, "Stick it out! Learn 'em a lesson. They can't run their bloomin' old plant without us. Pull him down off them steps, boys!"
"Naw, you don't!" cried another man, seizing a stick and jumping at the steps. "We got a right to do as we like, same as you! Come on up, Tom Dawes! We ain't going to let our families in for the Charity Organization."
Quick cries of "Traitor!" "Scab!" "Pull 'em down!" were succeeded by a lively scrimmage in which there was a rush for the steps.
Quin, from his place at the edge of the crowd, saw a dozen men surround three. He saw the man with the red rag about his throat put up a feeble defense against two assailants. Then he ceased to see and began only to feel. Whatever the row was about, they weren't fighting fairly, and his blood began to rise. He stood it as long as he could; then, with a cry of protest, he plunged through the crowd. In his sternest top-sergeant voice he issued orders, and enforced them with a brawny fist that was used to handling men. A moment later he dragged a limp victim from under the struggling group.
This unexpected interruption by an unknown man in uniform, together with the appearance of a stern-faced man in spectacles at an upper window, had an instant effect on the crowd. The strikers began to slink out of the yards, while the three assaulted men dusted their clothes and entered the factory.
Quin followed them in, and upon inquiring for the office was directed to the second floor, where he followed devious ways until he reached the door of a large room filled with desks in rows, at each of which sat a clerk.
"Mr. Bangs?" repeated a red-nosed girl, in answer to his inquiry. "Got an appointment?"
"No," said Quin; "but I've got a parcel that's to be delivered in person."
The red-nosed one thereupon consulted the man at the next desk, and, after some colloquy, conducted Quin to one of the small rooms at the rear of the large one.
The next moment Quin found himself face to face with the stern-looking personage whose mere appearance at the window a few minutes before had had such a subduing effect on the crowd below.
As he listened to Quin's message he looked at him narrowly and suspiciously with piercing black eyes that seemed intent on seeking out the weakest spot of whatever they rested upon.
"When did Mr. Bartlett give you these letters?" he asked in a tone as cold as the tinkle of ice against glass.
"I got 'em last night, sir."
"Where?"
"At his house, when I went to carry word about his mother's accident."
"Close that door back of you," said Mr. Bangs, with a jerk of his head; then he went on, "So Mr. Bartlett was at home when you reached there last night?"
"Oh,yes, sir!" Quin assured him with an emphasis that implied Mr. Randolph Bartlett's unfailing presence at his own fireside on every Sabbath evening.