CHAPTER IX
“Haven’t we met before?”
Regina Barry said this as she came into the room with her rapid, easy movement and took two or three paces toward me, stopping as abruptly as she entered.
I hung my head, crimsoning slowly.
“Yes.”
“I thought so, though I didn’t recognize you at first. I knew I had some association with you, but it was so vague—”
“Of course.”
“Then I had no idea you were an architect.”
“How could you?”
“You see, meeting you for so short a time—”
“And practically in the dark—”
“I don’t remember that. But I had no chance to ask anything about you. I only hoped you’d come back.”
“Oh, I couldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“I should think you’d understand.”
“I don’t—considering that I asked you particularly.”
“I know you asked me particularly, but anything in life—or death—would have been easier than to obey you.”
“What did I do to frighten you so?”
“Nothing but show me too much mercy.”
“Oh, I didn’t think anything of that.”
“Of what? Of the crime—or of the forgiveness?”
“Of the crime, of course.”
I stepped back from her in amazement.
“You didn’t think anything of—”
“Why, no! I’ve often done the same myself.”
“You? You’ve often done—”
“Of course! Everybody has—at one time or another in their lives. Naturally it doesn’t happen every day—and one wouldn’t want it to. One wouldn’t have anything left in the house if it did; but once in a way—it’s nothing. What astonishes me is that you should have thought of it.”
“But—but you’ve thought of it.”
“Oh, well—that’s different. But please don’t suppose that I’ve thought of it seriously. It simply happened that that evening—” The only sign of embarrassment she gave was in grasping the greenish-goldish veil with her left hand and pulling it round over her bosom. The great eyes, of which the light made one doubtful as to the color, glowed feverishly, and the long scarlet lips threw at me one of their daring, challenging smiles. “Do you want me to be absolutely frank?”
“We began with frankness, didn’t we? Why shouldn’t we keep it up?”
“Well, it happened that that evening I’d broken off my engagement.”
Not to betray all I had learned by my eavesdropping behind the rose-colored hangings, I merely said, “Indeed?”
“Yes; and so I was a little—well, perhaps a little excited. And anything that happened impressed me more than it would have done ordinarily. If I’ve thought of the way you appeared—and what happened when youdid—it’s only been because it was part of the hours right after—” There was another of those smiles that were amusingly apologetic as well as amusingly provocative. “You’re—you’re not married, are you?”
“No.”
“Nor engaged?”
“No.”
“Ever been?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t imagine what it is to have been engaged and nearly married—and then to find yourself free again. Everything associated with the minute comes to be imprinted on your memory. That’s why I’ve thought of it, though I didn’t for the minute recognize you as the man.”
“And now that you have recognized me—”
“I hope you’ll do as I asked you before, and come and see us again.” She added, as she was about to turn away, “How’s Annette?”
I had been puzzled hitherto; I was now bewildered.
“You mean Annette Van Elstine? Did you know she was my cousin?”
“Of course! Didn’t she bring you?”
“Bring me?” I stammered. “Bring me—where?”
“Why, to our house!”
“When?”
“The time we’re talking about—when you upset Mrs. Sillinger’s coffee and broke the cup.”
It is difficult to say whether I was relieved or not. I could only falter, “I—I don’t believe I’m the man.”
She came back two or three steps toward me.
“Why, of course you’re the man! Isn’t your name Melbury?”
“Yes—but—but I’m not the only Melbury. Could it have been my—my brother, Jack?”
“What’s your name?”
“Frank.”
She gazed at me a minute before saying: “Then—then I think it must have been—your brother. I remember now that Annette did call him Jack.” She continued, “But what did you mean when—when you said it was you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea.”
“Look at me again.”
“I can’t look at you again, because I’m looking at you all the time. You’re most wonderfully like your brother.”
“I don’t think I am. I met my uncle Van Elstine in the street the other day and he didn’t know me.”
“Oh, well, strangers often see resemblances that escape members of a family. All I get by looking at you is that I see your brother. He was awfully nice. We so—we so wished he’d come back. He—he wasn’t like everybody else.”
“He’s married now.”
I wonder if I am right in thinking that a slight shadow crossed her face. There may have been, too, a forced jauntiness in her tone as she said, “Oh, is he?”
I nodded.
She turned away again, but again wheeled half round to face me.
“Well, now we know what I meant; but what on earth did you mean?”
I drew myself up for real inspection.
“Can’t you think?”
She shook her head.
“I must say you seemed inordinately penitent over a broken cup, even if Mrs. Sillinger was so cross. She said you spilled the coffee all over her dress; but you didn’t.”
“You mean Jack.”
“Oh yes! What a bother! I shall always get you mixed up in the future.”
“I hope not—for his sake.”
“Now don’t tease me. Tell me where we met.”
“If I do—”
She brightened, the smile of the scarlet lips growing vividly brilliant.
“I know. It was at the Millings’, at Tarrytown.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then it was at the Wynfords’, at Old Westbury? They always have so many people there—”
“Think again.”
“What’s the good of thinking when, if I could remember you, I should do it right away?”
“It seems extraordinary to me that you can have forgotten.”
“You seem very sure of the impression you made on me.”
“I am.”
“And I’ve forgotten all about it!”
“You haven’t forgotten the impression; you’ve only forgotten me.”
“Oh, Mr. Melbury, tell me! Please! I’ve got to run off and overtake Mrs. Grace; and I can’t do it unless I know.”
You will admit that my duty at this juncture required some considering. In the end I said: “I sha’n’t tell you to-day. I may do it later. In any case, I’ve given youso many tips that you can’t fail to see for yourself what they lead to. You’ll probably have recalled by to-night.”
“Then I shall ring you up to-morrow and tell you.”
“No, please don’t do that; and yet, on second thoughts, I know that when you’ve remembered you won’t want to.”
She said, while withdrawing again toward the adjoining room, “You certainly know how to make a thing mysterious.”
“I’m not making anything mysterious. You’ll see that, after it’s all come back to you.”
But, having passed into the next room, she returned to the threshold to say: “I know you’re only making fun of me. I never met you, because I couldn’t have forgotten you. And I couldn’t have forgotten you, because you’re so like your brother. But we’ll talk about it all some other time.”
The first thing I did was to go to a room where there was a full-length mirror fixed to the wall and examine myself in the glass. Was it possible that I had changed so much in the brief space of four months? The reflection told me nothing. In the tall, slim figure in the neat gray check I could still see the sinister fellow who had slept at Greeley’s Slip and skulked about the Park and crept into a house at midnight. The transformation had come so imperceptibly that the one image was no more vital to me than the other. Inwardly, too, I felt no great assurance against a relapse. I was like an insect toiling up a slippery perpendicular. Not only was each step difficult, but it might in the end land me at the bottom where I began. In other words, I had still within me the potentialities of the drunkard; and to the drunkard all aberrations are possible.
That night I put the question up to Lovey.
“Lovey, do I look the same as I did four or five months ago?”
“You looks just as good to me, sonny.”
“Yes, but suppose you hadn’t seen me in the mean while, and had come on me all of a sudden, would you know right off that it was me?”
“Slim, if I was blind and deaf and dumb, and couldn’t see nothink nor ’ear nothink nor feel nothink, I’d know it was you if you come ’arf a mile from where I was.”
Since this intuitiveness was of no help to me, I worked round to the subject when, later in the evening, I had gone in to smoke a good-night pipe with Cantyre.
He had a neat little corner suite which gave one a cheery view of the traffic in Madison Avenue north and south by a mere shifting of the eyes. I sat in the projecting semicircle that commanded this because, after my own outlook into an airshaft, I enjoyed the twinkling of the lights. To me the real Ville Lumière is New York. It scatters lights with the prodigal richness with which the heaven scatters stars. It strings them in long lines; it banks them in towering façades; it flings them in handfuls up into the darkness; it writes them on the sky. Twilight offers you a special beauty because, wherever you are in the city, it brings out for you in one window or another that first wan, primrose-colored beacon—in some ways more beautiful than the evening star. Behind the star you don’t know what there is, while behind the light there is a palpitating history. Then as you look down from some high perch other histories light their lamps, till within half an hour the whole town is ablaze with them—a light for every life-tale—as in pious places there is one for every shrine.
Those who were looking at ours saw nothing but agreen-shaded lamp, and yet it lit up such bits of drama as Cantyre’s and mine. So behind every other shining star, in tower or tenement, dwelling-house or hotel, there was tragedy, comedy, adventure, farce, or romance, all in multifold complexity, while before each human story there glowed this tranquil fire.
If I had not been an architect, with a knowledge of interior decoration as part of my profession, I might not have been worried by the sybaritic note in Cantyre’s rooms. Being fond of flowers, he had sheaves of gladioluses and chrysanthemums wherever he could stack them. Over the tables he threw bits of beautiful old brocades, ineffable in color. Framed and glazed, a seventeenth-century chasuble embroidered in carnations did duty as a fire-screen. Japanese pottery grotesques and Barye bronzes jostled one another on the mantelpiece and low bookcases, while the latter housed rows of handsome volumes bound to suit Cantyre’s special taste and stamped with his initials. He himself, stretched in a long chair, wore a dressing-gown of an indescribable shade of plum faced with an equally indescribable shade of blue. The plum socks and blue leather slippers couldn’t have been an accident; and as I had dropped in on him unexpectedly I knew that all thisrecherchewas not to dazzle any one—I could have forgiven that—but for his own enjoyment.
No one could have been kinder to me than he was—and I liked him. I reminded myself that it was none of my business if his tastes were fastidious, and that to spend his money this way was better than in lounging about bar-rooms, as I had done; and yet I could understand that a girl like Regina Barry should be impatient of these traits in a husband.
I sat, however, with my back to it all, astride of a small chair, my pipe in my mouth, looking down on the lights and traffic.
Breaking a long silence, I said, as casually as I could do it: “I met Sterling Barry’s daughter the other day—Miss Regina Barry, her name is, isn’t it?”
Vague, restless movements preceded the laconic response, “Where?”
“She came to the memorial with Mrs. Grace.”
Hearing him strike a match, I knew he was making an effort at sang-froid by lighting a cigarette.
“Did you—did you—think her—pretty?”
“Pretty wouldn’t be the word.”
“Beautiful?”
“Nor beautiful.”
“What then?”
“No word that I know would be adequate. You might say fascinating if it hadn’t been vulgarized; and chic would be worse.”
“She’s tremendously animated—and vivid.”
“She has the most living eyes and mouth I’ve ever seen in a human being. I’ve never seen a face so aglow with mind, emotion, and color. She’s all flame, but a flame like that of the burning bush, afire from a force within.”
He spoke bitterly. “And people talk about that being conquered!”
To lead him further I said, “Has any one talked of it?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“How should I know? You—you’ve never told me.”
“Well, I’m—I’m telling you now.”
My sympathy was quite genuine.
“Thanks, old boy. I can see—I can see how hard it must have gone with you.”
“How hard it’s going, Frank. There’s a difference in tense. If you knew her better—”
“I’m not sure that I care to know her better; and that, old man, isn’t said out of rudeness. I don’t belong to her world any more; and I’d rather not try to get back into it.”
“Oh, get out! As a matter of fact I’m going to take you to see her.”
“You needn’t do that, because she asked me to come.”
“Right off the bat like that? The first time she’d ever seen you?”
“It wasn’t exactly that. She knew my brother Jack; and my cousin, Annette van Elstine, is a friend of hers.”
“Annette van Elstine is your cousin? Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Oh, for reasons. I should think you’d see. Why should I claim Annette as a cousin? One of the smartest women in New York, I’m told she is.”
“One of the very smartest. She could do anything for you.”
“So there you are! When you think of what I was when you first met me—what I am still, really—” It seemed to me, however, that I had found my opening, so I went on in another vein. “I met Annette’s father in the street one day, not long ago, and he went by without recognizing me. Have I changed very much—since the spring?”
“I should know you anywhere, Frank; but Coningsby and Christian were saying last week that they wouldn’t take you to be the same man any more.”
“Did they mean morally—or physically?”
“Oh, they meant in looks. They said they’d never seen any one in whom good clothes and a straight life had so thoroughly created a new man.”
“So that you think my uncle might reasonably—”
“Pass you without recognition? Oh, Lord, yes! Besides, your mustache changes you a lot. I’d shave that off again if I were you; and you want to get back to your old self.”
To end the subject I said merely: “I’m glad to hear that I don’t look as I did; because—because I shouldn’t like to think that the good old fellow had cut me.”