CHAPTER VIII
The summer passed with no more than two or three other incidents worth the jotting down.
In the first place, the day arrived when I had to make up my mind either to leave the club or to join it. Expecting some opposition from Lovey as to joining it, I was surprised to find him take the suggestion complacently.
“I’ve found out,” he whispered to me, “that yer can jine this club—and fall. Yer can fall three times before they’ll turn ye out.”
“Oh, but you wouldn’t want to fall in cold blood.”
“Well,” he muttered, doubtfully, “I ain’t partic’lar about the blood. Now my hadvice’d be this: ’Ere we are in July. That’s all right; we can jine. Then in Haugust we can ’ave a wee little bit of a fall—just two or three days like. We can do the same in September; and the same in Hoctober. That’ll use up our three times, and we can come back under cover for the worst months of the winter. We can’t fall no more after that; but in the spring we can try somethink else. There’s always things.”
“And suppose I don’t mean to fall?”
He looked hurt.
“Oh, if you can keep straight without me—”
“But if I can’t, Lovey? If I must keep straight and need you to help me?”
He clasped his hands against his stomach and drew a dismal face.
“That’d be a tight place for me.”
“And isn’t there,” I continued, “another point of view? Suppose we did what you suggest, do you think it would be treating all these nice fellows decently?”
“Oh, if you’re going to start out treatin’ people decent—”
“Well, why shouldn’t we? We can do it—you and I together.”
He drew a deep sigh.
“I must say, Slim, yer do beat everythink for puttin’ things on me.”
But in the end we were both admitted at one of the Saturday-evening meetings with, as usual, a large gathering of friends, and some bracing words from Straight. Pyn stood up with me as next friend, and little Spender did the same by Lovey. I have not said that during the ten days before I went to work Pyn blew in at the club during some minutes of every lunch hour to watch my progress. It was he, too, who found Lovey the job of washing windows, by which that worthy also had a chance of returning to honest ways. Indeed, though I cannot repeat it frequently enough, of the many hands stretched out to help me upward none was stronger in its grasp than that of the kindly keeper of the soda-water fountain to whom the club had given a veritable new birth.
Our admission as members had taken place while I was still doing the measurements at the memorial. By the time they were finished Coningsby had a new proposal. As it was the middle of July, he was anxious to take his wife and two little children to the country for a month. Carpenters, plasterers, painters, and plumbers were still atwork on the building, and they couldn’t be left without oversight. Would I undertake to give that—at a reasonable salary?
I had grown familiar with the work by this time, and had been able to throw into the furtherance of Coningsby’s plans an enthusiasm largely sprung of gratitude. In addition I was getting back my self-confidence in proportion as I got back my self-respect. The fact, too, that in the new summer suit and straw hat to which the colonel’s advice had helped me I could go about the streets without being ashamed of myself did something to restore my natural poise.
I could see that by taking this work I should really be helping Coningsby. He needed the rest; his wife and babies undoubtedly needed the change. It was not easy for a man with so important a piece of work as this on hand to get any one satisfactorily to take his place. I could accept the offer, then, without the suspicion—which any man would hate—that it was being made to me from motives of philanthropy. I was really being useful—more useful than in taking the measurements for Mrs. Grace, which any novice could have done—and making a creditable living for the first time in years.
Then, too, I had a great deal of Cantyre’s company. He spent most of the summer in town; chiefly because of his patients, but partly from a lack of incentive in going away. He explained that lack of incentive to me during one of the spins in his runabout to which he treated me on three or four evenings a week. Now and then I worked Lovey off on him for an outing, but he, Cantyre, was generally a little peevish after such occasions. It was not that he objected to giving Lovey or any one else the air; it was that he suspected me of notreally caring to go out with him. There are always men—very good fellows, too—in whom there is this strain of the jealousy of school-girls.
On this particular evening I had been kidding him about his depression, doing my best to rouse him out of it.
“Oh, I’ll pull round in time,” he said, in his resigned, lifeless tone. “If you knew the reason—”
I did know the reason, of course. My conscience never ceased to plague me with the fact that, though I could return Regina Barry’s trinkets, Cantyre’s secret was a theft I couldn’t get rid of. It was, indeed, partly to lead him on to confiding it to me of his own accord, so that I might know it legitimately, so to speak, that I brought the subject up.
“I suppose it’s about a girl.”
So long a time passed that I thought he was not going to respond to this challenge, when he said, “Yes.”
“Wouldn’t she have you?” I asked, bluntly.
“She said she would—and changed her mind.”
“So that you were actually engaged?”
“For about a month.”
“Did she— You don’t mind my asking questions, do you?”
“Not if you won’t mind if I don’t answer.”
“Then with that proviso I’ll go on. Did she tell why she—why she broke it off?”
“Not—not exactly.”
“And haven’t you found out?”
“Elsie Coningsby, she’s her great friend, told me something of it. She said there were two kinds of women. Some liked to be wooed, and others weren’t satisfied unless they were conquered.”
“And you took the wrong method?”
“So it seems.”
“Well, why don’t you turn round now and take the right one?”
His dreamy, melancholy eyes slid toward me.
“Do you see me doing that? I’m the kind of bloke that would like a woman to conquer him. If it comes to that, there are two kinds of men.”
He had told me so much that I felt it right to give him a warning.
“Since you say she’s a friend of Elsie Coningsby’s, I mayn’t be able to help finding out who she is.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind that—not with you. As a matter of fact, I should like to introduce you to her one of these days.”
I broke in more hastily than I intended, “No, no; don’t do that—for God’s sake!”
He swung round in amazement. “Why—why, what’s the matter?”
I tried to recover myself. “Oh, nothing! Only, you must see for yourself that—that after what I’ve been through I’m not—not a lady’s man.”
“Oh, get out!” was his only observation.
We lapsed into one of our long silences, which was broken when we turned back toward town.
“Look here, Frank,” he said, suddenly, “you can’t go on living down there in Vandiver Street. Besides, the club will be needing your bed for some one else.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it. I simply don’t want to move.”
“You’ll have to, though.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He went on to suggest a small apartment in the bachelor house he was living in himself. Now was the time torent, before men began coming back to town. He knew of a little suite of three rooms and a bath which ought to be within my means. As we passed the house we stopped and looked at it. I liked it and promised to turn the matter over in my mind.
Next day I broached it to Lovey. The effect was what I expected. He grasped me by the arm, looking up at me with eyes the more eloquent from the fact that they were dead.
“Y’ain’t goin’ to leave me, Slim?”
“It wouldn’t be leaving you, Lovey.”
“Y’ain’t goin’ to live in another ’ouse, where I sha’n’t be seein’ ye every day?”
“You could get a room near.”
“’Twouldn’t be the same thing—not noway, it wouldn’t be. Oh, Slim!”
With a gesture really dramatic he smote his chest with his two clenched fists, and drew a long, grating sigh.
We were sitting on our beds, which were side by side in one of the dormitories. It was the nearest thing to privacy the club-house ever allowed us.
“This’ll be the hend of me; and it’ll be the hend of you, Slim, if I ain’t there to watch over you. You’ll never keep straight without me, sonny.” He was struck with a new idea, and, indeed, I had thought of it myself. “Didn’t ye say,” he went on, as he leaned forward and tapped my knee, “that in them rooms there was one little dark room?”
“Very little and very dark.”
“But it wouldn’t be too little or too dark for me, Slim, not if I could be your valet, like. I could do everythink for you, just like a gentleman. My father was a valet, and he larned me before he couldn’t larn me nothinkelse. I could keep your clothes so as you’d never need new ones, and I could mend and darn and cook your breakfasts—I’m a swell cook—I can bile tea and coffee and heggs—many’s the time I’ve done it—”
“All right, Lovey,” I interrupted. “It’s a bargain. We’re buddies.”
“No, Slim; we won’t be buddies no more. We’ll call that off. We’ll just be master and man. I’ll know my place and I’ll keep it. I sha’n’t call you Slim, nor sonny—”
“Oh yes, you must.”
He shook his head.
“No; not after we’ve moved from the club. I’ll call you Mr. Melbury and say sir to you; and you must call me Lovey, just as if it was my real name.” He added, unexpectedly to me: “I suppose ye know it ain’t my real name?”
“Oh, what does it matter?”
“It only matters like this: I ain’t—I ain’t—” He got up in some agitation and went to one of the windows. After looking out for a second or two he turned half round toward me. “Ye ain’t thinking me any better than I am, Slim, are you?”
“I’m not thinking whether you’re better or worse, Lovey. I just like you.”
“And I’ve took an awful fancy to you, Slim. Seems as if you was my whole family. But—but you’re not, sonny. I’ve—I’ve got a family. They’re dead to me and I’m dead to them; but they’re my family. Did ye know that, Slim?”
“I didn’t know it, and you needn’t tell me.”
“But if I was awful bad, sonny? If I was wuss than anythink that’d ever come into your ’ead?”
“We won’t talk about that. Perhaps there are thingsthat I could tell you which would show that there’s not much difference between us.”
“I ’ope there is, Slim. And she was terr’ble aggravatin’; a drinkin’ woman, besides. I didn’t drink then—’ardly not at all. It was after I was acquitted I begun that. And my two gells—well, bein’ acquitted didn’t make no difference to them; they’d seen. Only, they didn’t swear that way in their hevidence. They swore she fell down the stairs she was found at the bottom of, her neck broken; and, bein’ a drinkin’ woman, the jury thought—But the two gells knew. And when I was let off they didn’t ’ave no more to do with me—so I come over ’ere—”
I rose and went to him, laying my hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t, Lovey. That’s enough. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, we’ll stick it out together. The only thing is that we’ll have to give up the booze.”
“For good and all, Slim?”
“Yes; for good and all.”
“It’ll be awful ’ard.”
“Yes, it will be; but the worst of that is over.”
He seized one of my hands in both of his.
“Slim, if it’s got to be a ch’ice between you and liquor—well, I’m danged if—if I won’t”—he made a great resolution—“give up the liquor—and so ’elp me!”
So when I moved Lovey moved with me. Washing windows having become a lucrative profession, he insisted on taking no wages from me and on paying for his own food. In the matter of names we agreed on a compromise. “Before company,” as he expressed it, I was Mr. Melbury and sir; when we were alone together we reverted to the habits of Greeley’s Slip and the Down and Out, and I became Slim and sonny.
I was truly sorry to leave the club, for its simple, brotherly ways, wholesome and masculine, if never the most refined, had become curiously a part of me. I had liked the fellowship with rough men who were perhaps all the more human for being rough. For the first time in my life I had known something of genuine fraternity. I do not affirm that we lived together without disagreements or misunderstandings or that there were no minutes electric with the tension that makes for an all-round fight. But there was always some “wise guy,” as we called him, to make peace among us; and on the whole we lived together with a mutual courtesy that proved to me once for all that it is nothing external which makes a gentleman. Finer gentlemen in the essentials of the word I never met than some of those who were just struggling up from the seemingly bottomless pit.
Thus the summer of 1913 became for me a very happy one. There were reserves to that happiness, and there were fears; but the optimism most of us bring to the day’s work enabled me to face them. Of Regina Barry I heard much from my friend Cantyre, and I made what I heard suffice me. He was always willing to talk of this girl, whom he never named; and little by little I formed an image in my heart, which would never be anywhere but in my heart as long as I could help it. As long as I could help it I should not see her, nor should she see me. As to that I was now quite positive. Nothing could be gained by my seeing her, while by her seeing me everything might be lost.
If everything was lost in one way I was sure it would be lost in another. Because I have said little or nothing of the fight I was making you must not suppose that I was free from the necessity of making it. I was makingit every day and hour. There were times when, if I hadn’t had Lovey to think of, I should have yielded to that suggestion which had come to me as neatly as it had come to him of having a little fall. Falls were far from unknown among us. They were accepted as an unhappy matter of course. Some of our steadiest members had made full use of the three times the law of the club allowed them before finally settling down. I believed that I could exercise this privilege—and come back. But not so with Lovey! Once he failed in this attempt, I knew he would be gone. As a matter of fact, he would have failed at any time after the first week if it hadn’t been on my account; so I couldn’t fail on his. When I would have done it eagerly, wildly, I was withheld by the old-fashioned motto ofnoblesse oblige.
And yet in proportion as I grew stronger I realized more clearly that my future was, as it were, balanced on the point of a pin. Once I had met Regina Barry, and her eyes had said, “You are the man who stole my gold-mesh purse,” I knew it would be all up with me. She wouldn’t have to say a word. Her look would bring the accusation. Then, if I was weak I should go off and get drunk; I should drink till I drank myself to death. If I was strong I should shoot myself. There was just one thing of which I was sure—I should never face that silent charge a second time.
But as the weeks went by and nothing happened I began to be confident that nothing would. We reached the end of September and I never heard Regina Barry’s name. Even Cantyre hadn’t told me that, and didn’t suppose that I knew it. I calculated the chances against our ever meeting. I built something, too, on the possibility that were we to meet she wouldn’t know me again.
In this I got encouragement from the fact that one day in Fifth Avenue I met my uncle Van Elstine. He didn’t know me. He wouldn’t have cut me for anything in the world; he was too good-natured and kind; but he let his wandering gaze rest on me as on any passing stranger, and went on his way. I argued then that time, vicissitude, a hard life, and a mustache had worked an effective disguise. If my own uncle, who had known me all my life, could go by like that, how much more one to whom I could be nothing but a sinister shadow seen for three or four minutes in a rose-colored gloom.
So I reasoned and became a little comforted. And then one day my arguments were put to the test.
It was quite at the end of September. The memorial was now so nearly completed that Coningsby, who had returned to town, left it almost entirely to my charge. A new bit of work at Atlantic City having come his way, he was closely absorbed in it. Mrs. Grace had motored up once or twice to consult me as to papers, rugs, and other details of interior decoration. I found her a grave, beautiful woman who gave the impression of nourishing something that lasts longer than grief—a deep regret. Our intercourse was friendly but impersonal.
Once she was accompanied by a young lady whose voice I recognized as they approached the room in which I was at work. It was a clear, bell-like, staccato voice, whose tones would have made my heart stop still had I heard it in heaven. Mrs. Grace entered the room, followed by a girl as Anglo-Saxon in type as her brother, only with a decision and precision in the manner which he had not.
In my confusion I was uncertain as to whether or not there was an introduction, but I remember her saying:“Oh, Mr. Melbury, Ralph is so indebted to you for all the help you’ve given him. He says if it hadn’t been for you he wouldn’t have been able to get away from New York this summer.”
She, too, regarded me impersonally, as her brother’s assistant, and no more. I mean by that that she showed none of the interest good people generally display in a brand that has been plucked from the burning.
“Is it possible she doesn’t know it?” I asked Cantyre the next time I saw him.
“Of course she doesn’t. That would be the last thing Coningsby would tell her. We never speak of these things outside the club. If a fellow likes to do it himself—well, that’s his own affair.”
But early in October I came face to face with it all.
I was standing at one of the upper windows, looking down into Blankney Place, when I saw a motor drive up to the door. I knew it was Mrs. Grace’s motor, having seen it a number of times already. When the footman held open the door Mrs. Grace herself stepped out, to be followed by Miss Coningsby, who in turn was followed by....
I strolled away from the window into the interior of the house. I was not so much calm as numb. There were details about which I had to speak to Mrs. Grace, but they all went out of my mind. They went out of my mind as matters with which I had no more concern. A dying man might feel that way about the earthly things he is leaving behind. I was, in fact, not so much like a dying man as like a man who in the full flush of vigor is told that he must in a few minutes face the firing-squad.
So I stood doing nothing, thinking nothing, while I listened to the three voices as they floated up, first fromthe lower floor, then from the stairway, then from the floor on which I was waiting in this seeming nervelessness.
They drifted nearer—Mrs. Grace’s gentle tones, Elsie Coningsby’s silvery tinkle, and then the rich mezzo, which by association of ideas seemed to shed round me a rose-colored light.
Mrs. Grace and Miss Coningsby came in together, the one in black, the other in white. Both bade me a friendly, impersonal good morning, while Mrs. Grace proceeded at once to the question of rugs. Didn’t I think that good serviceable American rugs, with some of those nice Oriental druggets people used in summer cottages, would be better than anything more fragile and expensive?
I made such answers as I could, keeping my eyes on the door. Presently she appeared on the threshold, looking about with interest and curiosity in her great, dark eyes. Of the minute I retain no more than a vision in rough green English tweed, with a goldish-greenish motoring-veil round the head like a nimbus. She impressed me as at once more delicate and more strong than I remembered her—eager, alert, independent.
“This is to be the men’s smoking-room,” Miss Coningsby explained.
“Wouldn’t you know it?” Miss Barry said, lightly. “One of the nicest rooms in the house—I think the very nicest. It’s wonderful how well men do themselves, isn’t it?”
“Oh, but in this case it’s Hilda.”
“It’s your brother first of all. You’ll see. It will be the snuggest corner of the whole place, and they won’t let a woman look into it.”
She glanced at me—but casually. She glanced again—but casually again. As no one introduced me, a greetingbetween us was not called for. But when Mrs. Grace finished her questions about the rugs and they were passing into the next room, Regina Barry turned and looked at me a third time. It was now an inquiring look, and significant.
“Elsie, who’s that man?” I heard her say, after she had joined her companions.
The reply gave my name.
“Oh!”
“He’s been helping Ralph all summer. That’s how he and Esther were able to get away.”
“Oh!”
“Now we’re going on to the day nursery—”
But Regina Barry said: “Wait a minute! No; go on. I’ll overtake you. I’m—I’m perfectly sure that that’s the very man who—” She added, as if forcing herself to a determination: “I’m going back to speak to him. Tell Hilda I’ll be with her in an instant.”
So I waited, repeating to myself the formula agreed on two or three months before, that I would see her first—and shoot myself afterward.