CHAPTER XIN THE COLD, GRAY DAWN
Chichester Barnardslipped off his evening coat and put on his smoking-jacket, and pausing in front of his chiffonier, gazed hungrily at a photograph of Marjorie Langdon leaning against his shaving-glass. The edges were cut evenly, and to the most casual eye it was obvious that the picture had been taken from a large silver frame from whose center smiled a speaking likeness of Janet Fordyce. Barnard picked up Marjorie’s photograph and studied it long and intently, and gradually the features assumed a life-like outline and the eyes a natural fire, so completely did her personality vitalize the inanimate photograph under his rapt attention. With a shudder he dropped it face downward.
“Ah! Madge, my darling,” he murmured sadly. “Janet may occupy the silver frame, but not my heart. I am tempted, sorely tempted, but dollars and sense go together.”
Catching up a box of cigarettes, he switched off the electric light, and entering his sitting-room, made his way to the fireplace where fresh logs were burning merrily on the hearth. He pulled up a Morrischair and warmed his hands at the blaze; then settled back and stared at his surroundings.
Barnard had inherited the Georgetown property on the death of his aunts, and, not having the means to keep up the fine old mansion, and finding it impossible to rent as a residence, he had had the building remodeled and made into an apartment house. He kept one of the bachelor apartments, comprising sitting-room, bedroom, and bath, for his own use. The two rooms were large and airy, and the handsome antique furniture, also an inheritance with the house, did not look amiss in their familiar setting.
Chichester Barnard was the last of a long line of distinguished ancestors, and from his earliest youth pride of family had been drilled into him, and the often repeated refrain, “A Barnard can do no wrong,” became a fetish with him. He was as familiar with family tradition as he was ignorant of true democracy, but soon after attaining his majority he was forced to realize that past glory did not pay grocers’ bills, and that his blue blood was not a useful commodity except in drawing-rooms. The pricking of his inflated family pride brought in its train a false value of money. With money what could he not accomplish? What not buy? And the acquisition of money became his lode-star.
By arduous work and much self-denial Barnard was winning a deserved reputation in his profession, but his impetuous temperament chafed at the slowness with which he accumulated money. He wasconstantly seeking unscrupulous get-rich-quick schemes and other short cuts to wealth, but with heart-breaking regularity they came to nothing. He had met Marjorie Langdon two years before and had fallen madly in love with her, had persuaded her to engage herself to him, and with a caution which he inwardly despised, had made her promise not to tell Madame Yvonett of their mutual attachment. He felt that if the engagement was once announced he would be irrevocably bound to marry her; he longed to marry her, but—he would not wed her while he was a poor man. He despised poverty as before he had despised low birth.
Exaggerated reports of Janet Fordyce’s reputed wealth, which she was to inherit on coming of age, reached Barnard and aroused his cupidity. In the past his affection for Marjorie had barred that all too frequently traveled road to “Easy Street,” a marriage for money; but he met Janet at a time when his finances were low, and the idea was not so distasteful as formerly; particularly when the girl, beside her wealth, had charm, youth, and a lovable disposition. But Barnard, like many another man, was tempted to play with fire. The more inevitable appeared his break with Marjorie, the more passionately he loved her, and only the lure of wealth kept him steadfast in his purpose.
Barnard was trying to pierce the future as he sat in his sitting-room, the cold, gray dawn creeping through the window blinds, and he smoked innumerable cigarettes with nervous rapidity. His rovingeyes restlessly examining each familiar piece of furniture, finally lighted on the huge antique sofa near by. Instead of having legs, the base of the sofa was a carved sphinx, a sadly battered sphinx, whose two breasts had been cut off because Barnard’s spinster aunts had deemed them immodest!
Just as Barnard lighted another cigarette, a man, lying on the sofa, rolled over and viewed him in stupid wonder.
“Feeling better, Cooper?” inquired Barnard politely.
“How’d I get here?” asked Joe, ignoring the other’s question. “And where am I, anyhow?”
“These are my diggings, and I brought you over here because you were so hopelessly pickled I judged your sister had better be spared a glimpse of you.”
Slowly memory of the night returned to Joe’s befuddled brain, and he sat bolt upright.
“Washington isn’t so slow,” he volunteered, after due reflection.
“There are plenty of people to help you go to the devil, here as elsewhere,” retorted Barnard. “Better pull up, Cooper, it doesn’t pay.”
“Nothing pays,” Joe growled disconsolately. “D—mn it, man, I don’t want to listen to a temperance lecture,” and he rose a trifle unsteadily.
“Sit down, Cooper,” Barnard scanned him contemptuously, and Joe sulkily resumed his seat. “I’ve said my say.”
“Lot’s of snobs here,” commented Joe, after nursinghis grievances in silence for some time. “Take Duncan Fordyce, for instance; turned me down this evening when I asked to be introduced to a girl he was dancing with. I’ll get even with him, never fear.”
Barnard ran an appraising eye over his companion, and a mental picture of Duncan brought a smile to his lips. “Don’t try any hanky-panky business with Fordyce,” he advised. “He might knock you into the other world.”
“I’m not such a fool as to try physical force; but there are other ways of getting even,” Joe frowned, then winked. “I know a thing or two about the Fordyce family.”
Barnard blew ring after ring of smoke into the air and watched it evaporate with idle attention.
“Go carefully, Cooper,” he cautioned. “Damages for slander are heavy.”
“It’s no slander, but gospel truth,” affirmed Joe. “I had it straight from mother’s friend, Mrs. Watson, who was companion to Mrs. Fordyce before they went abroad, and I know it’s true by the way Duncan Fordyce acted when he heard me allude to the kink in his family,” and in a few words he described the scene in the Turkish Bath.
“That explains Fordyce’s lack of cordiality at Captain Nichol’s quarters after the drill,” commented Barnard. “If I were you, Cooper, I’d steer clear of arousing his wrath.”
“He can’t injure me,” Joe swaggered with the courage induced by overindulgence. “And you’vebeen mighty white this evening; it’s only right I should tip you off.”
“Keep your confidences to yourself,” Barnard rose and kicked the fire into a brighter blaze. “The matter does not concern me.”
“Doesn’t it, eh? Well, if I was planning to marry a girl, an’ I heard her family were dotty——” he stopped and shrank back as Barnard swung on him.
“What do you mean by your damnable insinuation?” he demanded, his eyes flashing with indignation.
“’Tisn’t a ’sinuation; it’s—it’s gospel truth I’m telling you,” stuttered Joe, retreating to the farther end of the sofa. “Take your hand off my collar. Anybody in San Francisco’ll tell you the Fordyces are all crazy.”
“You’ve said too much, and too little,” Barnard slowly returned to his chair. “Go ahead and make good your statement, if you can,” significantly. “And I warn you if I catch you lying, I won’t leave it to Duncan Fordyce to finish you off.”
“Nice way to talk to a friend who wants to do you a good turn,” whined Joe. “You can prove what I say by writing to Mrs. Watson at Santa Barbara. She says whenever any member of the Fordyce family dies the physicians have to cauterize them—what do you make of that?” triumphantly.
“Only a precautionary measure to test death,” said Barnard calmly. “I suppose the Fordyces have a dread of being buried alive.”
“That applies to their mental condition——”Barnard shook his head in utter disbelief, and Joe continued heatedly. “I tell you they are unbalanced; why the old lady, Mrs. Fordyce——”
“Is a hunchback, yes,” admitted Barnard. “She was injured in a railroad accident—that has nothing to do with mental trouble.”
“I’ve been told that injury to the spine does often affect the brain,” Joe stuck obstinately to his contention. “Anyway Mrs. Fordyce developed a mighty funny craze about dirt.”
“Dirt?” Barnard’s attention was fully aroused. “Do you mean she has mysophobia?”
“Maybe that’s the word; what does it mean exactly?”
“Mysophobia? A morbid fear of contamination—of soiling one’s hands by touching anything....”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Joe. “Mrs. Fordyce has a bad case of it. Mrs. Watson said she insisted on washing her plates, knives, and forks before eating; and she gave up traveling because of the dirt and dust which nearly drove her mad, and just shut herself up.”
“Poor soul!” ejaculated Barnard compassionately. “She must be in perpetual torment.”
“She’s tormented other people as well,” said Joe. “She grew so that she wouldn’t touch money; and once she gave away a soiled dollar bill to a beggar to get rid of it, then nearly had brain fever because she imagined she had passed on some disease to innocent people. I believe Calderon Fordyce spent a hundred just to trace that one dollar bill to have itreturned to the United States Treasury and redeemed, before his wife got over the worrying about her sinfulness in passing along dirty money. I wish she’d get rid of some of it in my direction.”
“Dirt to dirt,” Barnard’s sneering tone was lost on Joe, who was busy searching his empty pockets. “There is nothing discreditable to the Fordyces in what you have told me, Cooper; quite to the contrary. And while Mrs. Fordyce suffers from a curious mania, possibly superinduced by her accident, she is not mentally unbalanced, and most certainly her condition will not be inherited by her children. Janet told me she and Duncan were born before the accident.”
“They may not inherit that particular craze,” acknowledged Joe. “But I tell you, man, there is insanity in the family. There is some story about Janet; I don’t know exactly what it is, but Pauline can tell you. She heard it from a schoolmate of Janet’s——”
“And she heard it from someone else, and so on, and so on—bosh! utter bosh!” Barnard brought down his clenched fist on the table with a force that made the glasses ring. “If I hear you repeating this rot I’ll make Washington too hot to hold you,” and cowed by his blazing wrath, Joe mumbled a hasty promise.
Across Rock Creek the city lights were paling, and the cold gray dawn found Marjorie still crouching before the dying embers of a grate fire, where shehad thrown herself on entering her bedroom some hours before. Slowly, very slowly her numbed senses grasped the significance of the occurrences of the night. Janet Fordyce was a kleptomaniac, and she, Marjorie Langdon, was branded a thief—caught with the goods! She shuddered in horror, and rubbed one cold hand over the other. Surely her God was a just God? Why was she picked out to be the victim of circumstance? First, Admiral Lawrence had believed her guilty of theft, and now Mrs. Walbridge had practically ordered her from her house as a thief. Of the theft of the codicil she could give no explanation, but she could at least clear herself of the charge of stealing the diamond sunburst by denouncing Janet.
Ah, but could she? Her dazed wits invariably returned to that point in her reasoning; was she not in honor bound to shield Janet? Mrs. Fordyce had taken her word in the face of her discharge from Admiral Lawrence’s employ. Since being with Janet she had met with every courtesy and kindness, and Mrs. Fordyce had gone out of her way to make her feel at home. No, a thousand times no, she could never betray Janet.
Her decision reached, a feeling of relief swept over her, to be checked the next moment by the realization that even if she did denounce Janet she would not be believed. She was poor, she needed money, she had the opportunity, and she stole; so would read the verdict. Janet had but to ask, and a dozen diamond sunbursts, if need be, would be purchasedto gratify her whim. She did not need to steal.
Marjorie rose slowly to her feet and stretched her stiff muscles, switched on the light, and then commenced to undress, but she gave little thought to what she was doing, her entire attention being taken up in trying to recall what she knew of kleptomania. She remembered being told that it was a mental derangement, an irresistible propensity to steal, and that the kleptomaniac cared nothing for the objects stolen as soon as the impulse to steal was gratified. Her father had once told her of a friend who would eat no food that was not stolen, and his servants (fortunately he was wealthy) had to secrete food about the house and permit him to steal it before he would satisfy his hunger. She had also read somewhere of a kleptomaniac so obsessed by his craze that he stole the crucifix from his confessor.
Merry, charming Janet to be the victim of such mental disorder! Marjorie wrung her hands in agony. Was there no way to help the child? If the news ever leaked out it would kill her delicate mother.
Marjorie, pleading her indisposition, had left Janet at the dance under Duncan’s care, and a sympathetic footman having engaged a cab for her, she had returned at once to the Fordyce residence. Some hours later Janet had rapped at her door and asked how she was, and satisfied with Marjorie’s answer, had gone straight to her room without entering,to Marjorie’s intense relief; she would have broken down if she had faced her then.
Marjorie was about to get into bed when she spied a note addressed to her lying on top of a neat package on her bedstead. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she tore open the envelope and listlessly read the few written lines; then, startled, read them a second and third time. The note was from her clergyman informing her that the contents of the accompanying package had been found the Sunday before in the Fordyce pew, and he thought it best to send them to her that she might return the property to the rightful owner.
The note slipped unheeded to the floor, and with trembling fingers she tore open the bundle, and out fell a dozen or more handsome silk and lace doilies. Not one was alike, and a cry of horror broke from Marjorie, as, picking them up, she recognized them as belonging to hostesses with whom she and Janet had recently lunched and dined.