CHAPTER VII
No later than that evening my life took still another step.
A little before nine, just as I was about to go to bed—our hours at the club were early—Ralph Coningsby dropped in for a word with me. I happened to be at the foot of the stairs in the hall when Spender admitted him, and he refused to come farther inside.
“Been dining with my wife’s father and mother over the way,” he said, in explanation of his dinner jacket and black tie, “and just ran across to say something while I was in the neighborhood. You said last night you’d come and see the Grace Memorial with me.”
“If you say so,” I smiled, “I suppose I must have; but it’s the first time to my knowledge that I ever heard of it.”
“Oh, that’s the bit of work I told you about—the thing I’m doing on my own. It’s over here at St. David’s. You see, when Charlie Grace died he left a sum of money to build and endow this institution in memory of his father.”
I smiled again.
“I know I must have heard the name of Charlie Grace, but it seems to have slipped my memory. All the same—”
“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow. I merely want to say now that I’ll look in about ten in the morning, and take you across the street—”
The difficulty I had had to confront in the afternoon was before me again.
“I don’t know about that, Coningsby. The fact is I’m not—Well, hang it all! Can’t you see? I haven’t a rag in the world but what I stand up in, and I can’t go where I’m likely to run into decent people.”
“You won’t run into any one but carpenters and painters. I’m not going to take no for an answer, old chap. Besides, there’s method in this madness, for—now don’t buck!—for I’m going to put you on a job.”
I could only stare vacantly.
“On a job?”
“Mrs. Grace wants some measurements and specifications which she thinks I haven’t given her exactly enough; and the first thing to be done is to go over the whole blooming place with a foot-rule and a tape-measure; but I’ll tell you about that to-morrow, too. For a chap with your training it will be office-boy’s work; but as you’re doing nothing else for the moment—”
It is needless to say that I hardly slept that night. It was not the prospect of work alone that excited me; it was that of being gradually drawn into the sphere in which I might meet Regina Barry. I was still uncertain as to whether I wanted to do that or not. There was no hour of the day when I didn’t think of her, and yet it was always with a sense of thankfulness that she couldn’t know where I was or guess at what had become of me. If I could have been granted the privilege of seeing her without having her see me I should have jumped at it; but the ordeal of her recognition was beyond my strength to face. Rather than have her say with her eyes, “You were the man who came into my room and tried to rob me,” I would have shot myself.
And yet I had to admit the fact that this danger was in the air. Ralph Coningsby’s sister was the Elsie of that tragic night; Cantyre was the Stephen. I was being offered work by Sterling Barry’s partner, and might soon be doing it for Sterling Barry himself. The fatality that brought about these unfoldings might go farther still, and before I knew it I might find myself in the precise situation that filled me with terror—and yet made me shiver with a kind of harsh delight. Before I could sleep I had to make a compromise with my courage. I would not shoot myself rather than meet her. I would meet her first, if it had to be. I would take that one draft of the joy I had put forever out of reach—and shoot myself afterward.
But in the morning I was more self-confident. Having examined myself carefully in the cracked mirror in the bath-room, I found that my mustache, which had grown tolerably long and thick, changed my appearance not a little. Moreover, food, rest, and sobriety had smoothed away the unspeakable haggardness that had creased my forehead, hardened my mouth, and burnt into my eyes that woebegone desolation which I had noticed among my companions when I arrived at the club. It is no exaggeration to say that I was not only younger by ten years, but that I was changed in looks, as a landscape is changed when, after being swept by rains, it is bathed in sunshine. The one hope I built on all this was that, were I to meet Regina Barry face to face, she would not recognize me at a first glance, while I could keep her from getting a second.
On the way across the street Coningsby told me something of Charlie Grace and his memorial. He had been the son of a former rector of St. David’s—an importantman in the New York of his day, who had outlived his usefulness and been asked to resign his parish. The son had never forgiven this slight, and the William Grace Memorial was intended to avenge it. It had been the express desire of the widow, Mrs. Charlie Grace, that he, Ralph Coningsby, should have sole charge of the building, and the work had been going on since the previous autumn. In the coming autumn the house would be ready for furnishing. It was for this purpose that Mrs. Grace required the exact measurements of each room, with the disposition of the wall spaces. During the summer she could thus consider what she would have to do when the time came in October.
Only a corner of the new building was visible from Vandiver Street, the main entrance being on Blankney Place, which was a parallel thoroughfare. Standing in the middle of the grass-plot in front of the dumpy, spurious 1840 Gothic rectory, we had the length of the dumpy, spurious 1840 Gothic church in front of us. The memorial had to be fitted in behind the chancel, on the space formerly occupied by a Sunday-school room. This space had been enlarged by the purchase of the lot in Blankney Place, giving an entry from a more populous neighborhood. The purpose of the memorial had been more or less dictated by Mrs. Ralph Coningsby, who, as Esther Legrand, the rector’s daughter, had from her childhood upward worked among the people round about and knew their needs. As far as I could gather, it was to be a sort of neighborhood club, with parlors, reading-rooms, playing-rooms, a dancing-room, a smoking-room, a billiard-room, a lecture-room, a gymnasium, baths, and so on, and open to those who were properly enrolled, of both sexes and all ages. Of the committee in chargeMrs. Coningsby was apparently the moving spirit, though Mrs. Grace was reserving to herself the pleasure of fitting the house up.
Before going inside we discussed the difficulties of harmonizing a modern building with the efforts of the early nineteenth century, and I had an opportunity to commend Coningsby’s judgment. He had kept to the brownstone of the church and rectory, and had suggested their spirit while working on sober, well-proportioned lines.
In the middle of this I broke off to say: “Look here, old chap! I hope you’re not inventing this job of yours just for the sake of giving me something to do.”
His frank gaze convinced me.
“Honest, I’m not. Mrs. Grace is particularly anxious to have the measurements sent down to her at Rosyth, and we’re so short-handed—”
“Then that’s all right. Let’s go in, and you can show me what I’m to do.”
As Coningsby had said, it was office-boy’s work, but it suited me. It was a matter of getting broken in again, and—whether it came by accident or my friend’s good-heartedness—an easy job in which there was no thinking or responsibility was the most effective means that could have been found of nursing me along. At the end of a week I was treated to the well-nigh incredible wonder of a check.
Early on a Sunday morning I took it to Christian, asking that it should be turned in toward my expenses at the club.
Having read its amount, he held it in his fingers, twisting it and turning it.
“You see, Frank,” he said, after thinking for a minute,“the primary object of the club is not to be paid for what it spends—though that is an object—it’s to help fellows to get on their feet. Of you nineteen chaps who are in the house at present twelve are regularly paying for their board and lodging, and that pretty well carries us along. If there’s a deficit it’s covered by the back payments of men who’ve gone out and who are making up. So that this isn’t pressing for the minute—”
“But I should like to pay it, sir.”
“Yes, of course; but it’s a question of what is most urgent. Now this isn’t urgent; we can extend your credit; whereas, the first bit of bluff we’ve all got to put up when we’re pulling ourselves together is in clothes.”
He asked me how long my present job would go on. I said for about three weeks.
“Then keep this check,” he pursued, handing it back to me, “till you get as much again. That will be enough to turn you out quite smart. Go to Straight, at Bruch Brothers—all our fellows go to him—and he’ll advise you to the best advantage.”
The words were accompanied by such a smile that I, who am not emotional, felt my eyes smart.