CHAPTER X
My problem was now as to how to tell Regina Barry who I was; and it would have been more urgent had I not felt sure that sooner or later she must guess. Indeed, she might have guessed already. I had no means of knowing. During the four or five days since her visit to the memorial no echo of our meeting had come back to me.
But I was not left long in doubt.
The William Grace Memorial was now practically ready for furnishing. Mrs. Grace was about to move back to town in order to undertake the task. Coningsby and I were going through the rooms one day with an eye to details that might have been overlooked when he said, “Well, there doesn’t seem much more for you to do here, does there?”
I replied that as far as any further need of my services was concerned I might knock off work there and then—thanking him for all his help through the summer.
“And now,” he went on, “I should like you to come in on this job at Atlantic City if you’d care to. You see, you and I understand each other; we speak the same language both professionally and socially; and it’s not so easy as you might think to pick up a chap of whom you can say that. Why not come up to our little place—say to-morrow night—and dine with us, and we could talk it over? My wife told me to ask you.”
Knowing that Coningsby had been aware of the state of my wardrobe a few months earlier, I blushed to the roots of my hair as I put the question: “What shall I wear? Tails—or a dinner jacket and black tie?”
“Oh, a dinner jacket. There’ll be just ourselves.”
But when I went I found not only my host and hostess, but Regina Barry to make the party square.
The Coningsbys lived on the top floor of an apartment-house on the summit of the ridge between the west side of the Park and the Hudson. Below them lay a picturesque tumble of roofs running down to the river, beyond which the abrupt New Jersey heights drew a long straight line against the horizon. Sunset and moonset were the special beauties of the site, with the swift and ceaseless current to add life and mystery to the outlook.
The apartment differed from Cantyre’s in that its simplicity would have been bare had it not produced an impression of containing just enough. The walls of the drawing-room were of a pale-gold ocher against which every spot of color told for its full value. On this background the green of chairs, the rose of lamp-shades, the mahogany of tables, and the satinwood of cabinets pleased and rested the eye. There were no pictures in the room but a portrait of Mrs. Coningsby, which one of the great artists of the day had painted for her as a gift. In its richness of copper-colored hair and diaphanous jade-green draperies the room got all the decoration it required.
I had heard Regina Barry’s voice on entering, and knew that I was up against my fate. That is to say, the revolver lay ready in my desk. Knowing that such a meeting as this must occur some time, I was in earnest as to using the weapon on the day when her eyes accused me. As I took off my overcoat and hat and laid them on asettle in the hall, I said I should probably do it when I went home that night. It would depend on how she looked at me.
Meeting me at the door of the drawing-room, Mrs. Coningsby was sweet and kindly in her welcome without being over-demonstrative. I had heard of her beauty, but was not prepared for anything so magnificent. Her height, her complexion, her hair, her free movements—were those of a goddess. I liked and admired Coningsby; but I wondered how even he had caught this Atalanta and imprisoned her in a flat on the west side of New York.
“You know Miss Barry, don’t you?” were the words with which she directed me toward the end of the room, where the other guest was seated in a low arm-chair by a corner of the fireplace.
So the supreme moment came. I went the length of the room knowing that I was facing it.
I suppose it is instinct that tells women how to avoid comparisons with each other by creating contrasts. Knowing that in competition with her hostess she would have everything to lose, Miss Barry used Mrs. Coningsby as a foil. In other words, she had divined the fact that her friend would be in black with a spangling of blue-green sequins, and so had enhanced her own vividness by dressing in a bright rose-red. What she lacked in beauty, therefore, she made up in a brilliancy that stood out against the pale-gold ocher background with the force of a flaming flower.
As I stooped to take the hand she held up languidly I tried to search her eyes. They told me nothing. The fire in them seemed not exactly to have gone out, but to have been hidden behind some veil of film through which one could get nothing but a glow. Had she meant tobaffle me she couldn’t have done it more effectively; but, as I learned later, she meant nothing of the kind. Her greeting, as far as I could judge of it, was precisely that which she would have accorded to any other diner-out.
During the exchange of commonplaces that ensued there were two things I noticed with curiosity and uneasiness. She wore the string of pearls I had seen once before—had had in my pocket, as a matter of fact—and the long diamond bar-pin. As to her rings I could not be sure, having on the night when I meant to steal them noticed nothing but their number. But the pearls and the diamonds arrested my attention—and my questionings. Was she wearing them on purpose? Was she holding them up as silent reminders between her and me? Was I to understand from merely looking at them the charge her eyes refused to convey?
I had no means of seeking an answer to these questions, because Coningsby came in and the process of being welcomed had to be gone through again. Moreover, the commonplaces which, when carried onà deux, might have led to something more personal remained as commonplaces and no more when tossed aboutà quatre.
On our going in to dinner the same tone was maintained, and I learned nothing from any interchange of looks. There was, in fact, no interchange of looks. Miss Barry talked to her right and to her left, but rarely across the table. When it became necessary to speak a word directly to me she did it with so hasty a glance that it might easily not have been a glance at all. The burning eyes that had watched me so intently on our first meeting, and studied me with so much laughing curiosity on our second, kept themselves hidden. Since it was on them that I had reckoned to tell me what I was so eager tobe sure of, I was like a man who hopes to look through a window and finds it darkened by curtains.
After dinner, however, I got an opportunity. Coningsby and his wife were summoned to the nursery to discuss the manifestations of some childish ailment. Miss Barry and I being left alone before the fire, I was able to say, “Well, have you thought of it?”
Some of the customary vivacity returned to her lips and eyes. She had at no time seemed unkindly—only absent and rather dreamy. She was rather dreamy still, but more on the spot mentally.
“Thought of what?”
“Of—of where we first met.”
“Oh, that! I’m sorry to say I’ve been too busy to do any searching in my memory. But one of these days I must.”
There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone. She had not searched in her memory; she had not considered it worth while. Her interest in our meeting at the memorial had probably passed before she had driven away.
I must plead guilty to feeling piqued. That she should be so much in my mind and that I should occupy so small a place in hers not only disappointed but annoyed me. I said to myself, “Oh, well, if she cares so little there is no reason why I should care more.” Aloud I made it: “Please don’t bother about it. One of these days the recollection will come back to you of its own accord.”
“Yes; I dare say.” She went on without transition, “Whom did your brother marry?”
I told her.
“He wasn’t like everybody else,” she pursued. “I wonder—I wonder if you are?”
“Wouldn’t that depend on what you mean by being like everybody else? I don’t know that I get your standard.”
“Oh, men are so much alike. There’s no more difference between them than between so many beans in a bottle.”
“I don’t see that. To my mind they’re all distinct from one another.”
“In little ways, yes. But when it comes to the big ways—”
“What are the big ways?”
She weighed this, a forefinger against a cheek.
“The big ways are those which indicate character, aren’t they? While the little ones only make for habits. Men differ as to their habits, but in character they’re all cut on the same pattern—two or three patterns at most.”
“But can’t you say the same of women?”
“Very likely; only I don’t have to marry a woman.”
Since she had become personal, I ventured to do the same.
“Oh, so it’s a question of marriage!”
“What other question is there when a girl like me is twenty-three? One has to decide that tiresome bit of business before one can tackle anything else.”
I grew bolder.
“Decide as to whom to marry—or whether or not to marry at all?”
“Suppose I said as to whether or not to marry at all?”
“You mean that you’d like advice?”
“I’d listen to advice—if you’ve any to give.”
I gathered all my strength together for the most tremendous effort of my life.
“Then, I should say this: That there are men in the world different from any you’ve ever seen yet. Wait!”
She laughed—an intelligent laugh, full of music, mirth, and comprehension.
“Do you know, that reminds me of something awfully strange that happened to me a few months ago? Some one else said just those words to me—or, rather, wrote them down.”
I pulled my chair so that her eyes rested on me more directly.
“How?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you. I said I never would—so I mustn’t. I should love to—though I never shall.”
“Was it—interesting?”
“Thrilling! But there! I’m not going to tell you. I shouldn’t have mentioned it if what you say hadn’t been so oddly like—”
But Coningsby came back into the room to ask if Miss Barry wouldn’t join his wife in the nursery to see little Rufus while he was awake. In the mean time he and I would retire to his own snuggery and talk business.
While I followed his account of the hotel he was building sufficiently to get his ideas and to know what he expected of me, I was saying to myself: “She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know me at all. It never occurs to her as a possibility that the man who wrote those words is the one she is now asked to meet at dinner. How am I ever to get the nerve to let her know?”
When I found the opportunity I put the question, “Have your wife and Miss Barry any idea about me?”
“About you? You mean about—”
“The Down and Out.”
“Lord, no! What would be the good of that?”
“The only good would be that—that I shouldn’t be sailing under false colors.”
“False colors be hanged! We’ve all got a right to the privacy of our private lives. You don’t go nosing into any one else’s soul; why should any one else go nosing into yours? Why, if I were to tell my wife all I could tell her about myself I should be ashamed to come home.”
I knew this argument, and yet when I came to apply it to my attitude toward Regina Barry I was not satisfied.