It had rained hard during the earlier part of the night, and the carriageswaiting in triple line before the Gildermeres' door were still domed byshining umbrellas, while the electric lamps extending down the avenueblinked Narcissus-like at their watery images in the hollows of thesidewalk. A dry blast had come out of the north, with pledge of frostbefore daylight, and to Woburn's shivering fancy the pools in the pavementseemed already stiffening into ice. He turned up his coat-collar andstepped out rapidly, his hands deep in his coat-pockets.
As he walked he glanced curiously up at the ladder-like door-steps whichmay well suggest to the future archaeologist that all the streets of NewYork were once canals; at the spectral tracery of the trees about St.Luke's, the fretted mass of the Cathedral, and the mean vista of the longside-streets. The knowledge that he was perhaps looking at it all for thelast time caused every detail to start out like a challenge to memory, andlit the brown-stone house-fronts with the glamor of sword-barred Edens.
It was an odd impulse that had led him that night to the Gildermere ball;but the same change in his condition which made him stare wonderingly atthe houses in the Fifth Avenue gave the thrill of an exploit to the tamebusiness of ball-going. Who would have imagined, Woburn mused, that such asituation as his would possess the priceless quality of sharpening theblunt edge of habit?
It was certainly curious to reflect, as he leaned against the doorway ofMrs. Gildermere's ball-room, enveloped in the warm atmosphere of theaccustomed, that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by him withlooks of friendly recognition would start at the thought of having seenhim and slur over the recollection of having taken his hand!
And the girl he had gone there to see: what would she think of him? Heknew well enough that her trenchant classifications of life admitted nooverlapping of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalculableinterplay of motives that justifies the subtlest casuistry of compassion.Miss Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate tints of themoral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified by a peculiarconcreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this tendency and shewas surrounded by people who focussed life in the same way. To the girlsin Miss Talcott's set, the attentions of a clever man who had to work forhis living had the zest of a forbidden pleasure; but to marry such a manwould be as unpardonable as to have one's carriage seen at the door of acheap dress-maker. Poverty might make a man fascinating; but a settledincome was the best evidence of stability of character. If there wereanything in heredity, how could a nice girl trust a man whose parents hadbeen careless enough to leave him unprovided for?
Neither Miss Talcott nor any of her friends could be charged withformulating these views; but they were implicit in the slope of everywhite shoulder and in the ripple of every yard of imported tulle dapplingthe foreground of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room. The advantages of line andcolour in veiling the crudities of a creed are obvious to emotional minds;and besides, Woburn was conscious that it was to the cheerful materialismof their parents that the young girls he admired owed that finedistinction of outline in which their skilfully-rippled hair andskilfully-hung draperies cooeperated with the slimness and erectness thatcame of participating in the most expensive sports, eating the mostexpensive food and breathing the most expensive air. Since the processwhich had produced them was so costly, how could they help being costlythemselves? Woburn was too logical to expect to give no more for a pieceof old Sevres than for a bit of kitchen crockery; he had no faith inwonderful bargains, and believed that one got in life just what one waswilling to pay for. He had no mind to dispute the taste of those whopreferred the rustic simplicity of the earthen crock; but his own fancyinclined to the piece of pate tendre which must be kept in a glass caseand handled as delicately as a flower.
It was not merely by the external grace of these drawing-room ornamentsthat Woburn's sensibilities were charmed. His imagination was touched bythe curious exoticism of view resulting from such conditions; He hadalways enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott even more than looking at her.Her ideas had the brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of thosetropical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott's opinions had noconnection with the actual; her very materialism had the grace ofartificiality. Woburn had been enchanted once by seeing her helplessbefore a smoking lamp: she had been obliged to ring for a servant becauseshe did not know how to put it out.
Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for grantedthat people are born with carriages and country-places: it never occurredto her that such congenital attributes could be matter for self-consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche prudery whichclasses poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave in thepresence of either.
The conditions of Woburn's own life had made him peculiarly susceptible tothose forms of elegance which are the flower of ease. His father had losta comfortable property through sheer inability to go over his agent'saccounts; and this disaster, coming at the outset of Woburn's school-days,had given a new bent to the family temperament. The fathercharacteristically died when the effort of living might have made itpossible to retrieve his fortunes; and Woburn's mother and sister,embittered by this final evasion, settled down to a vindictive war withcircumstances. They were the kind of women who think that it lightens theburden of life to throw over the amenities, as a reduced housekeeper putsaway her knick-knacks to make the dusting easier. They fought meanconditions meanly; but Woburn, in his resentment of their attitude, didnot allow for the suffering which had brought it about: his own tendencywas to overcome difficulties by conciliation rather than by conflict. Suchsurroundings threw into vivid relief the charming figure of Miss Talcott.Woburn instinctively associated poverty with bad food, ugly furniture,complaints and recriminations: it was natural that he should be drawntoward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series of peaceful andgood-humored acts, unimpeded by petty obstacles. To spend one's time insuch society gave one the illusion of unlimited credit; and also,unhappily, created the need for it.
It was here in fact that Woburn's difficulties began. To marry MissTalcott it was necessary to be a rich man: even to dine out in her setinvolved certain minor extravagances. Woburn had determined to marry hersooner or later; and in the meanwhile to be with her as much as possible.
As he stood leaning in the doorway of the Gildermere ball-room, watchingher pass him in the waltz, he tried to remember how it had begun. Firstthere had been the tailor's bill; the fur-lined overcoat with cuffs andcollar of Alaska sable had alone cost more than he had spent on hisclothes for two or three years previously. Then there were theatre-tickets; cab-fares; florist's bills; tips to servants at the country-houses where he went because he knew that she was invited; the OmarKhayyam bound by Sullivan that he sent her at Christmas; thecontributions to her pet charities; the reckless purchases at fairs whereshe had a stall. His whole way of life had imperceptibly changed and hisyear's salary was gone before the second quarter was due.
He had invested the few thousand dollars which had been his portion of hisfather's shrunken estate: when his debts began to pile up, he took a flyerin stocks and after a few months of varying luck his little patrimonydisappeared. Meanwhile his courtship was proceeding at an inverse ratio tohis financial ventures. Miss Talcott was growing tender and he began tofeel that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the goal exasperatedhim. She was not the girl to wait and he knew that it must be now ornever. A friend lent him five thousand dollars on his personal note and hebought railway stocks on margin. They went up and he held them for ahigher rise: they fluctuated, dragged, dropped below the level at which hehad bought, and slowly continued their uninterrupted descent. His brokercalled for more margin; he could not respond and was sold out.
What followed came about quite naturally. For several years he had beencashier in a well-known banking-house. When the note he had given hisfriend became due it was obviously necessary to pay it and he used thefirm's money for the purpose. To repay the money thus taken, he increasedhis debt to his employers and bought more stocks; and on these operationshe made a profit of ten thousand dollars. Miss Talcott rode in the Park,and he bought a smart hack for seven hundred, paid off his tradesmen, andwent on speculating with the remainder of his profits. He made a littlemore, but failed to take advantage of the market and lost all that he hadstaked, including the amount taken from the firm. He increased his over-draft by another ten thousand and lost that; he over-drew a farther sumand lost again. Suddenly he woke to the fact that he owed his employersfifty thousand dollars and that the partners were to make their semi-annual inspection in two days. He realized then that within forty-eighthours what he had called borrowing would become theft.
There was no time to be lost: he must clear out and start life over againsomewhere else. The day that he reached this decision he was to have metMiss Talcott at dinner. He went to the dinner, but she did not appear: shehad a headache, his hostess explained. Well, he was not to have a lastlook at her, after all; better so, perhaps. He took leave early and on hisway home stopped at a florist's and sent her a bunch of violets. The nextmorning he got a little note from her: the violets had done her head somuch good--she would tell him all about it that evening at the Gildermereball. Woburn laughed and tossed the note into the fire. That evening hewould be on board ship: the examination of the books was to take place thefollowing morning at ten.
Woburn went down to the bank as usual; he did not want to do anything thatmight excite suspicion as to his plans, and from one or two questionswhich one of the partners had lately put to him he divined that he wasbeing observed. At the bank the day passed uneventfully. He discharged hisbusiness with his accustomed care and went uptown at the usual hour.
In the first flush of his successful speculations he had set up bachelorlodgings, moved by the temptation to get away from the dismal atmosphereof home, from his mother's struggles with the cook and his sister'scuriosity about his letters. He had been influenced also by the wish forsurroundings more adapted to his tastes. He wanted to be able to givelittle teas, to which Miss Talcott might come with a married friend. Shecame once or twice and pronounced it all delightful: she thought it sonice to have only a few Whistler etchings on the walls and the simplestcrushed levant for all one's books.
To these rooms Woburn returned on leaving the bank. His plans had takendefinite shape. He had engaged passage on a steamer sailing for Halifaxearly the next morning; and there was nothing for him to do before goingon board but to pack his clothes and tear up a few letters. He threw hisclothes into a couple of portmanteaux, and when these had been called forby an expressman he emptied his pockets and counted up his ready money. Hefound that he possessed just fifty dollars and seventy-five cents; but hispassage to Halifax was paid, and once there he could pawn his watch andrings. This calculation completed, he unlocked his writing-table drawerand took out a handful of letters. They were notes from Miss Talcott. Heread them over and threw them into the fire. On his table stood herphotograph. He slipped it out of its frame and tossed it on top of theblazing letters. Having performed this rite, he got into his dress-clothesand went to a small French restaurant to dine.
He had meant to go on board the steamer immediately after dinner; but asudden vision of introspective hours in a silent cabin made him call forthe evening paper and run his eye over the list of theatres. It would beas easy to go on board at midnight as now.
He selected a new vaudeville and listened to it with surprising freshnessof interest; but toward eleven o'clock he again began to dread theapproaching necessity of going down to the steamer. There was somethingpeculiarly unnerving in the idea of spending the rest of the night in astifling cabin jammed against the side of a wharf.
He left the theatre and strolled across to the Fifth Avenue. It was nownearly midnight and a stream of carriages poured up town from the operaand the theatres. As he stood on the corner watching the familiarspectacle it occurred to him that many of the people driving by him insmart broughams and C-spring landaus were on their way to the Gildermereball. He remembered Miss Talcott's note of the morning and wondered if shewere in one of the passing carriages; she had spoken so confidently ofmeeting him at the ball. What if he should go and take a last look at her?There was really nothing to prevent it. He was not likely to run acrossany member of the firm: in Miss Talcott's set his social standing was goodfor another ten hours at least. He smiled in anticipation of her surpriseat seeing him, and then reflected with a start that she would not besurprised at all.
His meditations were cut short by a fall of sleety rain, and hailing ahansom he gave the driver Mrs. Gildermere's address.
As he drove up the avenue he looked about him like a traveller in astrange city. The buildings which had been so unobtrusively familiar stoodout with sudden distinctness: he noticed a hundred details which hadescaped his observation. The people on the sidewalks looked likestrangers: he wondered where they were going and tried to picture thelives they led; but his own relation to life had been so suddenly reversedthat he found it impossible to recover his mental perspective.
At one corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the shadow of the sidestreet; as the hansom passed, a policeman ordered him to move on. Fartheron, Woburn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a handsome house.She had drawn a shawl over her head and was sunk in the apathy of despairor drink. A well-dressed couple paused to look at her. The electric globeat the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw the lady, who was youngand pretty, turn away with a little grimace, drawing her companion afterher.
The desire to see Miss Talcott had driven Woburn to the Gildermeres'; butonce in the ball-room he made no effort to find her. The people about himseemed more like strangers than those he had passed in the street. Hestood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the women and theresigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible that these were hisfriends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, theseapathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cutout of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among such puppets that hehad sold his soul? What had any of these people done that was noble,exceptional, distinguished? Who knew them by name even, except theirtradesmen and the society reporters? Who were they, that they should sitin judgment on him?
The bald man with the globular stomach, who stood at Mrs. Gildermere'selbow surveying the dancers, was old Boylston, who had made his pile inwrecking railroads; the smooth chap with glazed eyes, at whom a prettygirl smiled up so confidingly, was Collerton, the political lawyer, whohad been mixed up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying transaction;near him stood Brice Lyndham, whose recent failure had ruined his friendsand associates, but had not visibly affected the welfare of his large andexpensive family. The slim fellow dancing with Miss Gildermere was AlecVance, who lived on a salary of five thousand a year, but whose wife wassuch a good manager that they kept a brougham and victoria and always putin their season at Newport and their spring trip to Europe. The littleferret-faced youth in the corner was Regie Colby, who wrote the Entre-Nous paragraphs in the Social Searchlight: the women were charming tohim and he got all the financial tips he wanted from their husbands andfathers.
And the women? Well, the women knew all about the men, and flattered themand married them and tried to catch them for their daughters. It was adomino-party at which the guests were forbidden to unmask, though they allsaw through each other's disguises.
And these were the people who, within twenty-four hours, would be agreeingthat they had always felt there was something wrong about Woburn! Theywould be extremely sorry for him, of course, poor devil; but there arecertain standards, after all--what would society be without standards? Hisnew friends, his future associates, were the suspicious-looking man whomthe policeman had ordered to move on, and the drunken woman asleep on thedoor-step. To these he was linked by the freemasonry of failure.
Miss Talcott passed him on Collerton's arm; she was giving him one of thesmiles of which Woburn had fancied himself sole owner. Collerton was asharp fellow; he must have made a lot in that last deal; probably shewould marry him. How much did she know about the transaction? She was ashrewd girl and her father was in Wall Street. If Woburn's luck had turnedthe other way she might have married him instead; and if he had confessedhis sin to her one evening, as they drove home from the opera in their newbrougham, she would have said that really it was of no use to tell her,for she never could understand about business, but that she did entreathim in future to be nicer to Regie Colby. Even now, if he made a bigstrike somewhere, and came back in ten years with a beard and a steamyacht, they would all deny that anything had been proved against him, andMrs. Collerton might blush and remind him of their friendship. Well--whynot? Was not all morality based on a convention? What was the stanchestcode of ethics but a trunk with a series of false bottoms? Now and thenone had the illusion of getting down to absolute right or wrong, but itwas only a false bottom--a removable hypothesis--with another false bottomunderneath. There was no getting beyond the relative.
The cotillion had begun. Miss Talcott sat nearly opposite him: she wasdancing with young Boylston and giving him a Woburn-Collerton smile. Soyoung Boylston was in the syndicate too!
Presently Woburn was aware that she had forgotten young Boylston and wasglancing absently about the room. She was looking for some one, and meantthe some one to know it: he knew that Lost-Chord look in her eyes.
A new figure was being formed. The partners circled about the room andMiss Talcott's flying tulle drifted close to him as she passed. Then thefavors were distributed; white skirts wavered across the floor likethistle-down on summer air; men rose from their seats and fresh couplesfilled the shining parquet.
Miss Talcott, after taking from the basket a Legion of Honor in redenamel, surveyed the room for a moment; then she made her way through thedancers and held out the favor to Woburn. He fastened it in his coat, andemerging from the crowd of men about the doorway, slipped his arm abouther. Their eyes met; hers were serious and a little sad. How fine andslender she was! He noticed the little tendrils of hair about the pinkconvolution of her ear. Her waist was firm and yet elastic; she breathedcalmly and regularly, as though dancing were her natural motion. She didnot look at him again and neither of them spoke.
When the music ceased they paused near her chair. Her partner was waitingfor her and Woburn left her with a bow.
He made his way down-stairs and out of the house. He was glad that he hadnot spoken to Miss Talcott. There had been a healing power in theirsilence. All bitterness had gone from him and he thought of her now quitesimply, as the girl he loved.
At Thirty-fifth Street he reflected that he had better jump into a car andgo down to his steamer. Again there rose before him the repulsive visionof the dark cabin, with creaking noises overhead, and the cold wash ofwater against the pier: he thought he would stop in a cafe and take adrink. He turned into Broadway and entered a brightly-lit cafe; but whenhe had taken his whisky and soda there seemed no reason for lingering. Hehad never been the kind of man who could escape difficulties in that way.Yet he was conscious that his will was weakening; that he did not mean togo down to the steamer just yet. What did he mean to do? He began to feelhorribly tired and it occurred to him that a few hours' sleep in a decentbed would make a new man of him. Why not go on board the next morning atdaylight?
He could not go back to his rooms, for on leaving the house he had takenthe precaution of dropping his latch-key into his letter-box; but he wasin a neighborhood of discreet hotels and he wandered on till he came toone which was known to offer a dispassionate hospitality to luggagelesstravellers in dress-clothes.
II
He pushed open the swinging door and found himself in a long corridor witha tessellated floor, at the end of which, in a brightly-lit enclosure ofplate-glass and mahogany, the night-clerk dozed over a copy of the PoliceGazette. The air in the corridor was rich in reminiscences of yesterday'sdinners, and a bronzed radiator poured a wave of dry heat into Woburn'sface.
The night-clerk, roused by the swinging of the door, sat watching Woburn'sapproach with the unexpectant eye of one who has full confidence in hiscapacity for digesting surprises. Not that there was anything surprisingin Woburn's appearance; but the night-clerk's callers were given to suchimaginative flights in explaining their luggageless arrival in the smallhours of the morning, that he fared habitually on fictions which wouldhave staggered a less experienced stomach. The night-clerk, whoseunwrinkled bloom showed that he throve on this high-seasoned diet, had afancy for classifying his applicants before they could frame theirexplanations.
"This one's been locked out," he said to himself as he mustered Woburn.
Having exercised his powers of divination with his accustomed accuracy helistened without stirring an eye-lid to Woburn's statement; merelyreplying, when the latter asked the price of a room, "Two-fifty."
"Very well," said Woburn, pushing the money under the brass lattice, "I'llgo up at once; and I want to be called at seven."
To this the night-clerk proffered no reply, but stretching out his hand topress an electric button, returned apathetically to the perusal of thePolice Gazette. His summons was answered by the appearance of a man inshirt-sleeves, whose rumpled head indicated that he had recently risenfrom some kind of makeshift repose; to him the night-clerk tossed a key,with the brief comment, "Ninety-seven;" and the man, after a sleepy glanceat Woburn, turned on his heel and lounged toward the staircase at the backof the corridor.
Woburn followed and they climbed three flights in silence. At each landingWoburn glanced down, the long passage-way lit by a lowered gas-jet, with adouble line of boots before the doors, waiting, like yesterday's deeds, tocarry their owners so many miles farther on the morrow's destined road. Onthe third landing the man paused, and after examining the number on thekey, turned to the left, and slouching past three or four doors, finallyunlocked one and preceded Woburn into a room lit only by the upward gleamof the electric globes in the street below.
The man felt in his pockets; then he turned to Woburn. "Got a match?" heasked.
Woburn politely offered him one, and he applied it to the gas-fixturewhich extended its jointed arm above an ash dressing-table with a blurredmirror fixed between two standards. Having performed this office with anair of detachment designed to make Woburn recognize it as an act ofsupererogation, he turned without a word and vanished down the passage-way.
Woburn, after an indifferent glance about the room, which seemed to affordthe amount of luxury generally obtainable for two dollars and a half in afashionable quarter of New York, locked the door and sat down at the ink-stained writing-table in the window. Far below him lay the pallidly-litdepths of the forsaken thoroughfare. Now and then he heard the jingle of ahorsecar and the ring of hoofs on the freezing pavement, or saw the lonelyfigure of a policeman eclipsing the illumination of the plate-glasswindows on the opposite side of the street. He sat thus for a long time,his elbows on the table, his chin between his hands, till at length thecontemplation of the abandoned sidewalks, above which the electric globeskept Stylites-like vigil, became intolerable to him, and he drew down thewindow-shade, and lit the gas-fixture beside the dressing-table. Then hetook a cigar from his case, and held it to the flame.
The passage from the stinging freshness of the night to the staleoverheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked thepreternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcelyconscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have thrownhimself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the hour fixed for hisdeparture. He thought it safest, instead, to seat himself once more by thetable, in the most uncomfortable chair that he could find, and smoke onecigar after another till the first sign of dawn should give an excuse foraction.
He had laid his watch on the table before him, and was gazing at the hour-hand, and trying to convince himself by so doing that he was still wideawake, when a noise in the adjoining room suddenly straightened him in hischair and banished all fear of sleep.
There was no mistaking the nature of the noise; it was that of a woman'ssobs. The sobs were not loud, but the sound reached him distinctly throughthe frail door between the two rooms; it expressed an utter abandonment togrief; not the cloud-burst of some passing emotion, but the slow down-pourof a whole heaven of sorrow.
Woburn sat listening. There was nothing else to be done; and at least hislistening was a mute tribute to the trouble he was powerless to relieve.It roused, too, the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was touched by thechance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a great city throbbing withmultifarious passions. It would have been more in keeping with the ironyof life had he found himself next to a mother singing her child to sleep:there seemed a mute commiseration in the hand that had led him to suchneighborhood.
Gradually the sobs subsided, with pauses betokening an effort at self-control. At last they died off softly, like the intermittent drops thatend a day of rain.
"Poor soul," Woburn mused, "she's got the better of it for the time. Iwonder what it's all about?"
At the same moment he heard another sound that made him jump to his feet.It was a very low sound, but in that nocturnal silence which givesdistinctness to the faintest noises, Woburn knew at once that he had heardthe click of a pistol.
"What is she up to now?" he asked himself, with his eye on the doorbetween the two rooms; and the brightly-lit keyhole seemed to reply with aglance of intelligence. He turned out the gas and crept to the door,pressing his eye to the illuminated circle.
After a moment or two of adjustment, during which he seemed to himself tobe breathing like a steam-engine, he discerned a room like his own, withthe same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the same table in thewindow. This table was directly in his line of vision; and beside it stooda woman with a small revolver in her hands. The lights being behind her,Woburn could only infer her youth from her slender silhouette and thenimbus of fair hair defining her head. Her dress seemed dark and simple,and on a chair under one of the gas-jets lay a jacket edged with cheap furand a small travelling-bag. He could not see the other end of the room,but something in her manner told him that she was alone. At length she putthe revolver down and took up a letter that lay on the table. She drew theletter from its envelope and read it over two or three times; then she putit back, sealing the envelope, and placing it conspicuously against themirror of the dressing-table.
There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show that Woburn felt surethat her next act would be to return to the table and take up therevolver; but he had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After puttingthe letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, standing a littlesideways, so that he could now see her face, which was distinctly pretty,but of a small and unelastic mould, inadequate to the expression of thelarger emotions. For some moments she continued to study herself with theexpression of a child looking at a playmate who has been scolded; then sheturned to the table and lifted the revolver to her forehead.
A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her darting backward to theopposite side of the room. Woburn had broken down the door, and stood tornand breathless in the breach.
"Oh!" she gasped, pressing closer to the wall.
"Don't be frightened," he said; "I saw what you were going to do and I hadto stop you."
She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he saw the terrifiedflutter of her breast; then she said, "No one can stop me for long. Andbesides, what right have you--"
"Every one has the right to prevent a crime," he returned, the sound ofthe last word sending the blood to his forehead.
"I deny it," she said passionately. "Every one who has tried to live andfailed has the right to die."
"Failed in what?"
"In everything!" she replied. They stood looking at each other in silence.
At length he advanced a few steps.
"You've no right to say you've failed," he said, "while you have breath totry again." He drew the revolver from her hand.
"Try again--try again? I tell you I've tried seventy times seven!"
"What have you tried?"
She looked at him with a certain dignity.
"I don't know," she said, "that you've any right to question me--or to bein this room at all--" and suddenly she burst into tears.
The discrepancy between her words and action struck the chord which, in aman's heart, always responds to the touch of feminine unreason. Shedropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in her hands, while Woburnwatched the course of her weeping.
At last she lifted her head, looking up between drenched lashes.
"Please go away," she said in childish entreaty.
"How can I?" he returned. "It's impossible that I should leave you in thisstate. Trust me--let me help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and let'ssee if there's no other way out of it."
Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and it was now tremblingwith profoundest pity. Its note seemed to reassure the girl, for she said,with a beginning of confidence in her own tones, "But I don't even knowwho you are."
Woburn was silent: the words startled him. He moved nearer to her and wenton in the same quieting tone.
"I am a man who has suffered enough to want to help others. I don't wantto know any more about you than will enable me to do what I can for you.I've probably seen more of life than you have, and if you're willing totell me your troubles perhaps together we may find a way out of them."
She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver.
"That's the only way out," she said.
"How do you know? Are you sure you've tried every other?"
"Perfectly sure, I've written and written, and humbled myself like a slavebefore him, and she won't even let him answer my letters. Oh, but youdon't understand"--she broke off with a renewal of weeping.
"I begin to understand--you're sorry for something you've done?"
"Oh, I've never denied that--I've never denied that I was wicked."
"And you want the forgiveness of some one you care about?"
"My husband," she whispered.
"You've done something to displease your husband?"
"To displease him? I ran away with another man!" There was a dismalexultation in her tone, as though she were paying Woburn off for havingunderrated her offense.
She had certainly surprised him; at worst he had expected a quarrel over arival, with a possible complication of mother-in-law. He wondered how suchhelpless little feet could have taken so bold a step; then he rememberedthat there is no audacity like that of weakness.
He was wondering how to lead her to completer avowal when she addedforlornly, "You see there's nothing else to do."
Woburn took a turn in the room. It was certainly a narrower strait than hehad foreseen, and he hardly knew how to answer; but the first flow ofconfession had eased her, and she went on without farther persuasion.
"I don't know how I could ever have done it; I must have been downrightcrazy. I didn't care much for Joe when I married him--he wasn't exactlyhandsome, and girls think such a lot of that. But he just laid down andworshipped me, and I was getting fond of him in a way; only the life wasso dull. I'd been used to a big city--I come from Detroit--and Hinksvilleis such a poky little place; that's where we lived; Joe is telegraph-operator on the railroad there. He'd have been in a much bigger place now,if he hadn't--well, after all, he behaved perfectly splendidly aboutthat.
"I really was getting fond of him, and I believe I should have realized intime how good and noble and unselfish he was, if his mother hadn't beenalways sitting there and everlastingly telling me so. We learned in schoolabout the Athenians hating some man who was always called just, and that'sthe way I felt about Joe. Whenever I did anything that wasn't quite righthis mother would say how differently Joe would have done it. And she wasforever telling me that Joe didn't approve of this and that and the other.When we were alone he approved of everything, but when his mother wasround he'd sit quiet and let her say he didn't. I knew he'd let me have myway afterwards, but somehow that didn't prevent my getting mad at thetime.
"And then the evenings were so long, with Joe away, and Mrs. Glenn (that'shis mother) sitting there like an image knitting socks for the heathen.The only caller we ever had was the Baptist minister, and he never tookany more notice of me than if I'd been a piece of furniture. I believe hewas afraid to before Mrs. Glenn."
She paused breathlessly, and the tears in her eyes were now of anger.
"Well?" said Woburn gently.
"Well--then Arthur Hackett came along; he was travelling for a bigpublishing firm in Philadelphia. He was awfully handsome and as clever andsarcastic as anything. He used to lend me lots of novels and magazines,and tell me all about society life in New York. All the girls were afterhim, and Alice Sprague, whose father is the richest man in Hinksville,fell desperately in love with him and carried on like a fool; but hewouldn't take any notice of her. He never looked at anybody but me." Herface lit up with a reminiscent smile, and then clouded again. "I hate himnow," she exclaimed, with a change of tone that startled Woburn. "I'd liketo kill him--but he's killed me instead.
"Well, he bewitched me so I didn't know what I was doing; I was likesomebody in a trance. When he wasn't there I didn't want to speak toanybody; I used to lie in bed half the day just to get away from folks; Ihated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. When he came back the dayswent like a flash; we were together nearly all the time. I knew Joe'smother was spying on us, but I didn't care. And at last it seemed as if Icouldn't let him go away again without me; so one evening he stopped atthe back gate in a buggy, and we drove off together and caught the easternexpress at River Bend. He promised to bring me to New York." She paused,and then added scornfully, "He didn't even do that!"
Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching her attentively. It wascurious to note how her passion was spending itself in words; he saw thatshe would never kill herself while she had any one to talk to.
"That was five months ago," she continued, "and we travelled all throughthe southern states, and stayed a little while near Philadelphia, wherehis business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then he was sentto Albany, and we stayed a week at the Delavan House. One afternoon I wentout to do some shopping, and when I came back he was gone. He had takenhis trunk with him, and hadn't left any address; but in my travelling-bagI found a fifty-dollar bill, with a slip of paper on which he had written,'No use coming after me; I'm married.' We'd been together less than fourmonths, and I never saw him again.
"At first I couldn't believe it. I stayed on, thinking it was a joke--orthat he'd feel sorry for me and come back. But he never came and neverwrote me a line. Then I began to hate him, and to see what a wicked foolI'd been to leave Joe. I was so lonesome--I thought I'd go crazy. And Ikept thinking how good and patient Joe had been, and how badly I'd usedhim, and how lovely it would be to be back in the little parlor atHinksville, even with Mrs. Glenn and the minister talking about free-willand predestination. So at last I wrote to Joe. I wrote him the humblestletters you ever read, one after another; but I never got any answer.
"Finally I found I'd spent all my money, so I sold my watch and my rings--Joe gave me a lovely turquoise ring when we were married--and came to NewYork. I felt ashamed to stay alone any longer in Albany; I was afraid thatsome of Arthur's friends, who had met me with him on the road, might comethere and recognize me. After I got here I wrote to Susy Price, a greatfriend of mine who lives at Hinksville, and she answered at once, and toldme just what I had expected--that Joe was ready to forgive me and crazy tohave me back, but that his mother wouldn't let him stir a step or write mea line, and that she and the minister were at him all day long, tellinghim how bad I was and what a sin it would be to forgive me. I got Susy'sletter two or three days ago, and after that I saw it was no use writingto Joe. He'll never dare go against his mother and she watches him like acat. I suppose I deserve it--but he might have given me another chance! Iknow he would if he could only see me."
Her voice had dropped from anger to lamentation, and her tears againoverflowed.
Woburn looked at her with the pity one feels for a child who is suddenlyconfronted with the result of some unpremeditated naughtiness.
"But why not go back to Hinksville," he suggested, "if your husband isready to forgive you? You could go to your friend's house, and once yourhusband knows you are there you can easily persuade him to see you."
"Perhaps I could--Susy thinks I could. But I can't go back; I haven't gota cent left."
"But surely you can borrow money? Can't you ask your friend to forward youthe amount of your fare?"
She shook her head.
"Susy ain't well off; she couldn't raise five dollars, and it coststwenty-five to get back to Hinksville. And besides, what would become ofme while I waited for the money? They'll turn me out of here to-morrow; Ihaven't paid my last week's board, and I haven't got anything to givethem; my bag's empty; I've pawned everything."
"And don't you know any one here who would lend you the money?"
"No; not a soul. At least I do know one gentleman; he's a friend ofArthur's, a Mr. Devine; he was staying at Rochester when we were there. Imet him in the street the other day, and I didn't mean to speak to him,but he came up to me, and said he knew all about Arthur and how meanly hehad behaved, and he wanted to know if he couldn't help me--I suppose hesaw I was in trouble. He tried to persuade me to go and stay with hisaunt, who has a lovely house right round here in Twenty-fourth Street; hemust be very rich, for he offered to lend me as much money as I wanted."
"You didn't take it?"
"No," she returned; "I daresay he meant to be kind, but I didn't care tobe beholden to any friend of Arthur's. He came here again yesterday, but Iwouldn't see him, so he left a note giving me his aunt's address andsaying she'd have a room ready for me at any time."
There was a long silence; she had dried her tears and sat looking atWoburn with eyes full of helpless reliance.
"Well," he said at length, "you did right not to take that man's money;but this isn't the only alternative," he added, pointing to the revolver.
"I don't know any other," she answered wearily. "I'm not smart enough toget employment; I can't make dresses or do type-writing, or any of theuseful things they teach girls now; and besides, even if I could get workI couldn't stand the loneliness. I can never hold my head up again--Ican't bear the disgrace. If I can't go back to Joe I'd rather be dead."
"And if you go back to Joe it will be all right?" Woburn suggested with asmile.
"Oh," she cried, her whole face alight, "if I could only go back to Joe!"
They were both silent again; Woburn sat with his hands in his pocketsgazing at the floor. At length his silence seemed to rouse her to theunwontedness of the situation, and she rose from her seat, saying in amore constrained tone, "I don't know why I've told you all this."
"Because you believed that I would help you," Woburn answered, risingalso; "and you were right; I'm going to send you home."
She colored vividly. "You told me I was right not to take Mr. Devine'smoney," she faltered.
"Yes," he answered, "but did Mr. Devine want to send you home?"
"He wanted me to wait at his aunt's a little while first and then write toJoe again."
"I don't--I want you to start tomorrow morning; this morning, I mean. I'lltake you to the station and buy your ticket, and your husband can send meback the money."
"Oh, I can't--I can't--you mustn't--" she stammered, reddening and paling."Besides, they'll never let me leave here without paying."
"How much do you owe?"
"Fourteen dollars."
"Very well; I'll pay that for you; you can leave me your revolver as apledge. But you must start by the first train; have you any idea at whattime it leaves the Grand Central?"
"I think there's one at eight."
He glanced at his watch.
"In less than two hours, then; it's after six now."
She stood before him with fascinated eyes.
"You must have a very strong will," she said. "When you talk like that youmake me feel as if I had to do everything you say."
"Well, you must," said Woburn lightly. "Man was made to be obeyed."
"Oh, you're not like other men," she returned; "I never heard a voice likeyours; it's so strong and kind. You must be a very good man; you remind meof Joe; I'm sure you've got just such a nature; and Joe is the best manI've ever seen."
Woburn made no reply, and she rambled on, with little pauses and freshbursts of confidence.
"Joe's a real hero, you know; he did the most splendid thing you everheard of. I think I began to tell you about it, but I didn't finish. I'lltell you now. It happened just after we were married; I was mad with himat the time, I'm afraid, but now I see how splendid he was. He'd beentelegraph operator at Hinksville for four years and was hoping that he'dget promoted to a bigger place; but he was afraid to ask for a raise.Well, I was very sick with a bad attack of pneumonia and one night thedoctor said he wasn't sure whether he could pull me through. When theysent word to Joe at the telegraph office he couldn't stand being away fromme another minute. There was a poor consumptive boy always hanging roundthe station; Joe had taught him how to operate, just to help him along; sohe left him in the office and tore home for half an hour, knowing he couldget back before the eastern express came along.
"He hadn't been gone five minutes when a freight-train ran off the railsabout a mile up the track. It was a very still night, and the boy heardthe smash and shouting, and knew something had happened. He couldn't tellwhat it was, but the minute he heard it he sent a message over the wireslike a flash, and caught the eastern express just as it was pulling out ofthe station above Hinksville. If he'd hesitated a second, or made anymistake, the express would have come on, and the loss of life would havebeen fearful. The next day the Hinksville papers were full of OperatorGlenn's presence of mind; they all said he'd be promoted. That was earlyin November and Joe didn't hear anything from the company till the firstof January. Meanwhile the boy had gone home to his father's farm out inthe country, and before Christmas he was dead. Well, on New Year's day Joegot a notice from the company saying that his pay was to be raised, andthat he was to be promoted to a big junction near Detroit, in recognitionof his presence of mind in stopping the eastern express. It was just whatwe'd both been pining for and I was nearly wild with joy; but I noticedJoe didn't say much. He just telegraphed for leave, and the next day hewent right up to Detroit and told the directors there what had reallyhappened. When he came back he told us they'd suspended him; I cried everynight for a week, and even his mother said he was a fool. After that wejust lived on at Hinksville, and six months later the company took himback; but I don't suppose they'll ever promote him now."
Her voice again trembled with facile emotion.
"Wasn't it beautiful of him? Ain't he a real hero?" she said. "And I'msure you'd behave just like him; you'd be just as gentle about littlethings, and you'd never move an inch about big ones. You'd never do a meanaction, but you'd be sorry for people who did; I can see it in your face;that's why I trusted you right off."
Woburn's eyes were fixed on the window; he hardly seemed to hear her. Atlength he walked across the room and pulled up the shade. The electriclights were dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk-cartrattled down the street and, like a witch returning late from the Sabbath,a stray cat whisked into an area. So rose the appointed day.
Woburn turned back, drawing from his pocket the roll of bills which he hadthrust there with so different a purpose. He counted them out, and handedher fifteen dollars.
"That will pay for your board, including your breakfast this morning," hesaid. "We'll breakfast together presently if you like; and meanwhilesuppose we sit down and watch the sunrise. I haven't seen it for years."
He pushed two chairs toward the window, and they sat down side by side.The light came gradually, with the icy reluctance of winter; at last a reddisk pushed itself above the opposite house-tops and a long cold gleamslanted across their window. They did not talk much; there was a silencingawe in the spectacle.
Presently Woburn rose and looked again at his watch.
"I must go and cover up my dress-coat", he said, "and you had better puton your hat and jacket. We shall have to be starting in half an hour."
As he turned away she laid her hand on his arm.
"You haven't even told me your name," she said.
"No," he answered; "but if you get safely back to Joe you can call meProvidence."
"But how am I to send you the money?"
"Oh--well, I'll write you a line in a day or two and give you my address;I don't know myself what it will be; I'm a wanderer on the face of theearth."
"But you must have my name if you mean to write to me."
"Well, what is your name?"
"Ruby Glenn. And I think--I almost think you might send the letter rightto Joe's--send it to the Hinksville station."
"Very well."
"You promise?"
"Of course I promise."
He went back into his room, thinking how appropriate it was that sheshould have an absurd name like Ruby. As he re-entered the room, where thegas sickened in the daylight, it seemed to him that he was returning tosome forgotten land; he had passed, with the last few hours, into a whollynew phase of consciousness. He put on his fur coat, turning up the collarand crossing the lapels to hide his white tie. Then he put his cigar-casein his pocket, turned out the gas, and, picking up his hat and stick,walked back through the open doorway.
Ruby Glenn had obediently prepared herself for departure and was standingbefore the mirror, patting her curls into place. Her eyes were still red,but she had the happy look of a child that has outslept its grief. On thefloor he noticed the tattered fragments of the letter which, a few hoursearlier, he had seen her place before the mirror.
"Shall we go down now?" he asked.
"Very well," she assented; then, with a quick movement, she stepped closeto him, and putting her hands on his shoulders lifted her face to his.
"I believe you're the best man I ever knew," she said, "the very best--except Joe."
She drew back blushing deeply, and unlocked the door which led into thepassage-way. Woburn picked up her bag, which she had forgotten, andfollowed her out of the room. They passed a frowzy chambermaid, who staredat them with a yawn. Before the doors the row of boots still waited; therewas a faint new aroma of coffee mingling with the smell of vanisheddinners, and a fresh blast of heat had begun to tingle through theradiators.
In the unventilated coffee-room they found a waiter who had the melancholyair of being the last survivor of an exterminated race, and whoreluctantly brought them some tea made with water which had not boiled,and a supply of stale rolls and staler butter. On this meagre diet theyfared in silence, Woburn occasionally glancing at his watch; at length herose, telling his companion to go and pay her bill while he called ahansom. After all, there was no use in economizing his remaining dollars.
In a few moments she joined him under the portico of the hotel. The hansomstood waiting and he sprang in after her, calling to the driver to takethem to the Forty-second Street station.
When they reached the station he found a seat for her and went to buy herticket. There were several people ahead of him at the window, and when hehad bought the ticket he found that it was time to put her in the train.She rose in answer to his glance, and together they walked down the longplatform in the murky chill of the roofed-in air. He followed her into therailway carriage, making sure that she had her bag, and that the ticketwas safe inside it; then he held out his hand, in its pearl-colouredevening glove: he felt that the people in the other seats were staring atthem.
"Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye," she answered, flushing gratefully. "I'll never forget--never.And you will write, won't you? Promise!"
"Of course, of course," he said, hastening from the carriage.
He retraced his way along the platform, passed through the dismal waiting-room and stepped out into the early sunshine. On the sidewalk outside thestation he hesitated awhile; then he strolled slowly down Forty-secondStreet and, skirting the melancholy flank of the Reservoir, walked acrossBryant Park. Finally he sat down on one of the benches near the SixthAvenue and lit a cigar. The signs of life were multiplying around him; hewatched the cars roll by with their increasing freight of dingy toilers,the shop-girls hurrying to their work, the children trudging schoolward,their small vague noses red with cold, their satchels clasped in woollen-gloved hands. There is nothing very imposing in the first stirring of agreat city's activities; it is a slow reluctant process, like the wakingof a heavy sleeper; but to Woburn's mood the sight of that obscure renewalof humble duties was more moving than the spectacle of an army withbanners.
He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in his case, and murmuringto himself a line from Hamlet--the saddest, he thought, in the play--
For every man hath business and desire.
Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him feel the pressure of RubyGlenn's revolver in his pocket; it was like a devil's touch on his arm,and he sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just four dollarsand fifty cents; but that didn't matter now. He had no thought of flight.
For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the park; then the cold drovehim on again, and with the rapidity born of a sudden resolve he began towalk down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He brushed past a maid-servant who was washing the vestibule and ran up stairs to his room. Afire was burning in the grate and his books and photographs greeted himcheerfully from the walls; the tranquil air of the whole room seemed totake it for granted that he meant to have his bath and breakfast and godown town as usual.
He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of his pocket; for somemoments he held it curiously in his hand, bending over to examine it asRuby Glenn had done; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small cabinet,and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire.
After that he went quietly about the usual business of his toilet. Intaking off his dress-coat he noticed the Legion of Honor which MissTalcott had given him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole andtossed it into the fire-place. When he had finished dressing he saw withsurprise that it was nearly ten o'clock. Ruby Glenn was already two hoursnearer home.
Woburn stood looking about the room of which he had thought to take finalleave the night before; among the ashes beneath the grate he caught sightof a little white heap which symbolized to his fancy the remains of hisbrief correspondence with Miss Talcott. He roused himself from thisunseasonable musing and with a final glance at the familiar setting of hispast, turned to face the future which the last hours had prepared for him.
He went down stairs and stepped out of doors, hastening down the streettowards Broadway as though he were late for an appointment. Every now andthen he encountered an acquaintance, whom he greeted with a nod and smile;he carried his head high, and shunned no man's recognition.
At length he reached the doors of a tall granite building honey-combedwith windows. He mounted the steps of the portico, and passing through thedouble doors of plate-glass, crossed a vestibule floored with mosaic toanother glass door on which was emblazoned the name of the firm.
This door he also opened, entering a large room with wainscottedsubdivisions, behind which appeared the stooping shoulders of a row ofclerks.
As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man emerged from an inneroffice at the opposite end of the room.
At sight of Woburn he stopped short.
"Mr. Woburn!" he exclaimed; then he stepped nearer and added in a lowtone: "I was requested to tell you when you came that the members of thefirm are waiting; will you step into the private office?"
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