Part 20
He looked at her with mingled astonishment, doubt, contempt, pity, and even affection, after its kind. Would she really do it? And if she did what could he offer her in the way of that affection which she craved? Nothing, he knew that. She could never extricate herself from this awful group by which she was surrounded, her past, the memory of the things she had tried to do to him, and he--he was married. He was happy with his wife really, and could make no return. There was his career, his future, his present position. But that past of hers--what was it? How could it be that people could control another person in this way she claimed, especially scoundrels like these, and why wouldn’t she tell him about it? What had she done that was so terrible as to give them this power? Even if he did care for her what chance would he have, presuming her faithfulness itself, to either confront or escape the horde of secret enemies that was besetting him and her just now? They would be discovered and paraded forth at their worst, all the details. That would make it impossible for him to come forth personally and make the charge which would constitute him champion of the people. No, no, no! But why, considering all her efforts against him, should she come to his rescue now, or by doing so expect him to do anything for her by way of return? He smiled at her dourly, a little sadly.
“Yes. Well, Imogene, I can’t talk to you about that now, not for the present, anyhow. You’re either one of the greatest actresses and crooks that ever lived, or you’re a little light in the upper story. At any rate, I should think that you might see that you could scarcely expect me to like you, let alone to love you, all things considered, and particularly since this other thing has not been straightened out. You may be lying right now, for all I know--acting, as usual. But even so--let’s first see what you do about this other, and then talk.”
He looked at her, then away over the sea to where some boats were coming towards them.
“Oh, Ed,” she said sadly, observing his distracted gaze, “you’ll never know how much I do care for you, although you know I must care a lot for you, to do this. It’s the very worst thing I can do for me--the end, maybe, for me. But I wish you would try and like me a little, even if it were only for a little while.”
“Well, Imogene, let’s not talk about that now,” he replied skeptically. “Not until we’ve attended to this other, anyhow. Certainly you owe me that much. You don’t know what my life’s been, either--one long up-hill fight. But you’d better come along with me just as you are, if you’re coming. Don’t go upstairs to get any hat--or to change your shoes. I’ll get a car here and you can come with me just as you are.”
She looked at him simply, directly, beatenly.
“All right, Ed, but I wish I knew how this is going to end. I can’t come back here after this, you know, if they find it out. I know I owe this to you, but, oh dear, I’m such a fool! Women always are where love is concerned, and I told myself I’d never let myself get in love any more, and now look at me!”
They went off to the city together, to his office, to a notary, to the district attorney’s office--a great triumph. She confessed all, or nearly so, how she had formerly been employed by Mr. Swayne; how she had met Mr. Tilney there; how, later, after Swayne had fled, Tilney had employed her in various capacities, secretary, amanuensis, how she had come to look upon him as her protector; where and how she had met Mrs. Skelton, and how the latter, at Mr. Tilney’s request (she was not sure, only it was an order, she said) had engaged--commanded, rather--her to do this work, though what the compulsion was she refused to say, reserving it for a later date. She was afraid, she said.
* * * * *
Once he had this document in his possession, Gregory was overjoyed, and still he was doubtful of her. She asked him what now, what more, and he requested her to leave him at once and to remain away for a time until he had time to think and decide what else he wished to do. There could be nothing between them, not even friendship, he reassured her, unless he was fully convinced at some time or other that no harm could come to him--his wife, his campaign, or anything else. Time was to be the great factor.
And yet two weeks later, due to a telephone message from her to his office for just one word, a few minutes, anywhere that he would suggest, they met again, this time merely for a moment, as he told himself and her. It was foolish, he shouldn’t do it, but still---- At this interview, somehow, Imogene managed to establish a claim on his emotions which it was not easy to overcome. It was in one of the small side booths in the rather out-of-the-way Grill Parzan Restaurant in the great financial district. Protesting that it was only because she wished to see him just once more that she had done this, she had come here, she said, after having dropped instantly and completely out of the life at Triton Hall, not returning even for her wardrobe, as he understood it, and hiding away in an unpretentious quarter of the city until she could make up her mind what to do. She seemed, and said she was, much alone, distrait. She did not know what was to become of her now, what might befall her. Still, she was not so unhappy if only he would not think badly of her any more. He had to smile at her seemingly pathetic faith in what love might do for her. To think that love should turn a woman about like this! It was fascinating, and so sad. He was fond of her in a platonic way, he now told himself, quite sincerely so. Her interest in him was pleasing, even moving, “But what is it you expect of me?” he kept saying over and over. “You know we can’t go on with this. There’s ‘the girl’ and the kid. I won’t do anything to harm them, and besides, the campaign is just beginning. Even this is ridiculously foolish of me. I’m taking my career in my hands. This lunch will have to be the last, I tell you.”
“Well, Ed,” she agreed wistfully, looking at him at the very close of the meal, “you have made up your mind, haven’t you? Then you’re not going to see me any more? You seem so distant, now that we’re back in town. Do you feel so badly toward me, Ed? Am I really so bad?”
“Well, Imogene, you see for yourself how it is, don’t you?” he went on. “It can’t be. You are more or less identified with that old crowd, even though you don’t want to be. They know things about you, you say, and they certainly wouldn’t be slow to use them if they had any reason for so doing. Of course they don’t know anything yet about this confession, unless you’ve told them, and I don’t propose that they shall so long as I don’t have to use it. As for me, I have to think of my wife and kid, and I don’t want to do anything to hurt them. If ever Emily found this out it would break her all up, and I don’t want to do that. She’s been too square, and we’ve gone through too much together. I’ve thought it all over, and I’m convinced that what I’m going to do is for the best. We have to separate, and I came here to-day to tell you that I can’t see you any more. It can’t be, Imogene, can’t you see that?”
“Not even for a little while?”
“Not even for a day. It just can’t be. I’m fond of you, and you’ve been a brick to pull me out of this, but don’t you see that it can’t be? Don’t you really see how it is?”
She looked at him, then at the table for a moment, and then out over the buildings of the great city.
“Oh, Ed,” she reflected sadly, “I’ve been such a fool. I don’t mean about the confession--I’m glad I did that--but just in regard to everything I’ve done. But you’re right, Ed. I’ve felt all along that it would have to end this way, even the morning I agreed to make the confession. But I’ve been making myself hope against hope, just because from the very first day I saw you out there I thought I wouldn’t be able to hold out against you, and now you see I haven’t. Well, all right, Ed. Let’s say good-bye. Love’s a sad old thing, isn’t it?” and she began to put on her things.
He helped her, wondering over the strange whirl of circumstances which had brought them together and was now spinning them apart.
“I wish I could do something more for you, Imogene, I really do,” he said. “I wish I could say something that would make it a little easier for you--for us both--but what would be the use? It wouldn’t really, now would it?”
“No,” she replied brokenly.
He took her to the elevator and down to the sidewalk, and there they stopped for a moment.
“Well, Imogene,” he began, and paused. “It’s not just the way I’d like it to be, but--well----” he extended his hand “----here’s luck and good-by, then.” He turned to go.
She looked up at him pleadingly.
“Ed,” she said, “Ed--wait! Aren’t you--don’t you want to----?” she put up her lips, her eyes seemingly misty with emotion.
He came back and putting his arm about her, drew her upturned lips to his. As he did so she clung to him, seeming to vent a world of feeling in this their first and last kiss, and then turned and left him, never stopping to look back, and being quickly lost in the immense mass which was swirling by. As he turned to go though he observed two separate moving-picture men with cameras taking the scene from different angles. He could scarcely believe his senses. As he gazed they stopped their work, clapped their tripods together and made for a waiting car. Before he could really collect his thoughts they were gone--and then----
“As I live!” he exclaimed. “She did do this to me after all, or did she? And after all my feeling for her!--and all her protestations! The little crook! And now they have that picture of me kissing her! Stung, by George! and by the same girl, or by them, and after all the other things I’ve avoided! That’s intended to make that confession worthless! She did that because she’s changed her mind about me! Or, she never did care for me.” Grim, reducing thought! “Did she--could she--know--do a thing like that?” he wondered. “Is it she and Tilney, or just Tilney alone, who has been following me all this time?” He turned solemnly and helplessly away.
Now after all his career was in danger. His wife had returned and all was seemingly well, but if he proceeded with his exposures as he must, then what? This picture would be produced! He would be disgraced! Or nearly so. Then what? He might charge fraud, a concocted picture, produce the confession. But could he? Her arms had been about his neck! He had put his about her! Two different camera men had taken them from different angles! Could he explain that? Could he find Imogene again? Was it wise? Would she testify in his behalf? If so what good would it do? Would any one, in politics at least, believe a morally victimized man? He doubted it. The laughter! The jesting! The contempt! No one except his wife, and she could not help him here.
Sick at heart and defeated he trudged on now clearly convinced that because of this one silly act of kindness all his work of months had been undone and that now, never, so shy were the opposing political forces, might he ever hope to enter the promised land of his better future--not here, at least--that future to which he had looked forward with so much hope--neither he nor his wife, nor child.
“Fool! Fool!” he exclaimed to himself heavily and then--“fool! fool!” Why had he been so ridiculously sympathetic and gullible? Why so unduly interested? but finding no answer and no clear way of escape save in denial and counter charges he made his way slowly on toward that now dreary office where so long he had worked, but where now, because of this he might possibly not be able to work, at least with any great profit to himself.
“Tilney! Imogene! The Triton!” he thought--what clever scoundrels those two were--or Tilney anyhow--he could not be sure of Imogene, even now, and so thinking, he left the great crowd at his own door, that crowd, witless, vast, which Tilney and the mayor and all the politicians were daily and hourly using--the same crowd which he had wished to help and against whom, as well as himself, this little plot had been hatched, and so easily and finally so successfully worked.
THE CRUISE OF THE “IDLEWILD”
It would be difficult to say just how the trouble aboard the _Idlewild_ began, or how we managed to sail without things going to smash every fifteen minutes; but these same constitute the business of this narrative. It was at Spike, and the weather was blistering hot. Some of us, one in particular, were mortal tired of the life we were leading. It was a dingy old shop inside, loaded with machines and blacksmithing apparatus and all the paraphernalia that go to make up the little depots and furniture that railways use, and the labor of making them was intrusted to about a hundred men all told--carpenters, millwrights, wood-turners, tinsmiths, painters, blacksmiths, an engineer, and a yard foreman handling a score of “guineas,” all of whom were too dull to interest the three or four wits who congregated in the engine room.
Old John, the engineer, was one of these--a big, roly-poly sort of fellow, five foot eleven, if he was an inch, with layers of flesh showing through his thin shirt and tight trousers, and his face and neck constantly standing in beads of sweat. Then there was the smith, a small, wiry man of thirty-five, with arms like a Titan and a face that was expressive of a goodly humor, whether it was very brilliant or not--the village smith, as we used to call him. Then there was Ike, little Ike, the blacksmith’s helper, who was about as queer a little cabin boy as ever did service on an ocean-going steamer or in a blacksmith’s shop--a small misshapen, dirty-faced lad, whose coat was three, and his trousers four, times too large for him--hand-me-downs from some mysterious source; immensely larger members of his family, I presume. He had a battered face, such as you sometimes see given to satyrs humorously represented in bronze, and his ears were excessively large. He had a big mouthful of dirty yellow teeth, two or three missing in front. His eyes were small and his hands large, but a sweeter soul never crept into a smaller or more misshapen body. Poor little Ike. To think how near he came to being driven from his job by our tomfoolishness!
I should say here that the _Idlewild_ was not a boat at all, but an idea. She evolved out of our position on Long’s Point, where the Harlem joins the Hudson, and where stood the shop in which we all worked, water to the south of us, water to the west of us, water to the north of us, and the railroad behind us landward, just like the four--or was it the six? hundred--at Balaklava. Anyhow, we got our idea from the shop and the water all around, and we said, after much chaffering about one thing and another, that we were aboard the _Idlewild_, and that the men were the crew, and that the engineer was the captain, and I was the mate, just as if everything were ship-shape, and this were a really and truly ocean-going vessel.
As I have said before, I do not know exactly how the idea started, except that it did. Old John was always admiring the beautiful yachts that passed up and down the roadstead of the Hudson outside, and this may have had something to do with it. Anyhow, he would stand in the doorway of his engine room and watch everything in the shape of a craft that went up and down the stream. He didn’t know much about boats, but he loved to comment on their charms, just the same.
“That there now must be Morgan’s yacht,” he used to say of a fine black-bodied craft that had a piano-body finish to it, an’ “That there’s the _Waterfowl_, Governor Morton’s yacht. Wouldn’ ja think, now, them fellers ’d feel comfortable a-settin’ back there on the poop deck an’ smokin’ them dollar cigars on a day like this? Aw, haw!”
It would usually be blistering hot and the water a flashing blue when he became excited over the yacht question.
“Right-o,” I once commented enviously.
“Aw, haw! Them’s the boys as knows how to live. I wouldn’ like nothin’ better on a day like this than to set out there in one o’ them easy chairs an’ do up about a pound o’ tobacco. Come now, wouldn’t that be the ideal life for your Uncle Dudley?”
“It truly would,” I replied sadly but with an inherent desire to tease, “only I don’t think my Uncle Dudley is doing so very badly under the circumstances. I notice he isn’t losing any flesh.”
“Well, I dunno. I’m a little stout, I’ll admit. Still, them conditions would be more congenial-like. I ain’t as active as I used to be. A nice yacht an’ some good old fifty-cent cigars an’ a cool breeze ’d just about do for me.”
“You’re too modest, John. You want too little. You ought to ask for something more suited to your Lucullian instincts. What do you say to a house in Fifth Avenue, a country place at Newport, and the friendship of a few dukes and earls?”
“Well, I’m not backward,” he replied. “If them things was to come my way I guess I could live up to ’em. Aw, haw!”
“Truly, truly, John, you’re quite right, but you might throw in a few shovelfuls of shavings just to show that there are no hard feelings between you and the company while you’re waiting for all this. I notice your steam is getting low, eh? What?”
“Hang the steam! If the road was decent they’d give a man coal to burn. It takes a hundred tons of shavin’s a day to keep this blinged old cormorant goin’. Think of me havin’ to stand here all day an’ shovelin’ in shavin’s! Seems to me all I do here is shovel. I’m an engineer, not a fireman. They ought to gimme a man for that, by rights.”
“Quite so! Quite so! We’ll see about that later--only, for the present, the shavings for yours. Back to the shovel, John!” The tone was heavily bantering.
“Well, the steam was gettin’ a little low,” John would cheerfully acknowledge, once he was able to resume his position in the doorway. It was these painful interruptions which piqued him so.
Out of such chaffering and bickering as this it was that the spirit of the _Idlewild_ finally took its rise. It came up from the sea of thought, I presume.
“What’s the matter with us having a boat of our own, John?” I said to him one day. “Here we are, out here on the bounding main, or mighty near it. This is as good as any craft, this old shop. Ease the thing around and hoist the Jolly Roger, and I’ll sail you up to White Plains. What’s the matter with calling her the _Idlewild_? The men will furnish the idle, and the bosses will furnish the wild, eh? How’s that for an appropriate title?”
“Haw! Haw!” exclaimed stout John. “Bully! We’ll fix ’er up to-day. You be the captain an’ I’ll be the mate an’----”
“Far be it from me, John,” I replied humbly and generously, seeing that he had the one point of vantage in this whole institution which would serve admirably as a captain’s cabin--with his consent, of course. It was more or less like a captain’s cabin on a tug-boat, at that, picturesque and with a sea view, as it were. “You be the captain and I’ll be the mate. Far be it from me to infringe on a good old sea dog’s rights. You’re the captain, all right, and this is a plenty good enough cabin. I’m content to be mate. Open up steam, Cap, and we’ll run the boat up and down the yard a few times. Look out the window and see how she blows. It’s ho! for a life on the bounding main, and a jolly old crew are we!”
“Right-o, my hearty!” he now agreed, slapping me on the back at the same time that he reached for the steamcock and let off a few preliminary blasts of steam--by way of showing that we were moving, as it were. The idea that we were aboard a real yacht and about to cruise forth actually seized upon my fancy in a most erratic and delightsome way. It did on John’s, too. Plainly we needed some such idyllic dream. Outside was the blue water of the river. Far up and down were many craft sailing like ourselves, I said.
Inside of fifteen minutes we had appointed the smith, bos’n, and little Ike, the smith’s helper, the bos’n’s mate. And we had said that the carpenters and turners and millwrights were the crew and that the “guineas” were the scullions. Mentally, we turned the engine-room into the captain’s cabin, and here now was nothing but “Heave ho-s” and “How does she blow thar, Bill-s?” and “Shiver my timbers-s” and “Blast my top-lights-s” for days to come. We “heaved ho” at seven o’clock in the morning when the engine started, “lay to and dropped anchor” at noon when the engine stopped, “hoisted and set sail” again at one, for heaven knows what port, and “sighted Spike” and “put hard to port” at six. Sometimes during the day when it was hot and we were very tired we took ideal runs to Coney and Manhattan Beach and Newport, where the best of breezes are, in imagination, anyhow, and we found it equally easy to sail to all points of the compass in all sorts of weather. Many was the time we visited Paris and London and Rome and Constantinople, all in the same hour, regardless, and our calls upon the nobility of these places were always a matter of light comment. At night we always managed to promptly haul up at Spike, which was another subject of constant congratulation between the captain and the mate. For if we had missed our trains and gotten home late!--Regardess of the fact that we were seafaring men, we wanted our day to end promptly, I noticed.
During the days which followed we elaborated our idea, and the _Idlewild_ became more of a reality than is to be easily understood by those who have not indulged in a similar fancy. We looked upon the shop as a trusty ship with a wheel at the stern, where the millwright, an Irishman by the name of Cullen, ran the giant plane, and an anchor at the prow, where the engine-room was. And there was a light in the captain’s eye at times which, to me at least, betokened a real belief. It is so easy to enter upon a fancy, especially when it is pleasing. He would stand in the doorway of his small, hot engine-room, or lean out of the window which commanded the beautiful sweep of water so close to our door, and at times I verily believe he thought we were under way, so great is the power of self-hypnotism. The river was so blue and smooth these summer days, the passing boats so numerous. We could see the waters race to and fro as the tides changed. It was such a relief from the dull wearisome grind of shoveling in shavings and carrying out ashes or loading cars, as I was occasionally compelled to do--for my health, in my own case, I should explain. I am sure that, as an ordinary fifteen-cent-an-hour-shaving-carrier, I valued my title of mate as much as I ever valued anything, and the smith, “the village smith,” was smilingly proud to be hailed as “Bos’n.” Little Ike being of an order of mind that fancied the world ended somewhere abruptly in the Rocky Mountains, and that you really could shoot buffaloes after you left Buffalo, New York, did not grasp the meaning of it all at once, but at last it dawned upon him. When he got the idea that we really considered this a ship and that he was the bos’n’s mate with the privilege of lowering the boats in case of a wreck or other disaster, he was beside himself.
“Hully chee!” he exclaimed, “me a bos’n’s mate! Dat’s de real t’ing, ain’t it! Heave ho, dere!” And he fell back on the captain’s locker and kicked his heels in the air.
“You want to remember, though, Ike,” I said, once in an evil moment--what small things regulate the good and evil fortunes of all things!--“that this is the captain’s cabin and bos’n’s mates are not much shucks on a vessel such as the _Idlewild_. If you want to retain your position you want to be respectful, and above all, obedient. For instance, if the captain should choose to have you act as stoker for a few minutes now and then, it would be your place to rejoice at the request. You get that, do you?”