Part 9

“Bring me?” I stammered. “Bring me—where?”

“Why, to our house!”

“When?”

“The time we’re talking about—when you upset Mrs. Sillinger’s coffee and broke the cup.”

It is difficult to say whether I was relieved or not. I could only falter, “I—I don’t believe I’m the man.”

She came back two or three steps toward me.

“Why, of course you’re the man! Isn’t your name Melbury?”

“Yes—but—but I’m not the only Melbury. Could it have been my—my brother, Jack?”

“What’s your name?”

“Frank.”

She gazed at me a minute before saying: “Then—then I think it must have been—your brother. I remember now that Annette did call him Jack.” She continued, “But what did you mean when—when you said it was you?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I haven’t the remotest idea.”

“Look at me again.”

“I can’t look at you again, because I’m looking at you all the time. You’re most wonderfully like your brother.”

“I don’t think I am. I met my uncle Van Elstine in the street the other day and he didn’t know me.”

“Oh, well, strangers often see resemblances that escape members of a family. All I get by looking at you is that I see your brother. He was awfully nice. We so—we so wished he’d come back. He—he wasn’t like everybody else.”

“He’s married now.”

I wonder if I am right in thinking that a slight shadow crossed her face. There may have been, too, a forced jauntiness in her tone as she said, “Oh, is he?”

I nodded.

She turned away again, but again wheeled half round to face me.

“Well, now we know what I meant; but what on earth did you mean?”

I drew myself up for real inspection.

“Can’t you think?”

She shook her head.

“I must say you seemed inordinately penitent over a broken cup, even if Mrs. Sillinger was so cross. She said you spilled the coffee all over her dress; but you didn’t.”

“You mean Jack.”

“Oh yes! What a bother! I shall always get you mixed up in the future.”

“I hope not—for his sake.”

“Now don’t tease me. Tell me where we met.”

“If I do—”

She brightened, the smile of the scarlet lips growing vividly brilliant.

“I know. It was at the Millings’, at Tarrytown.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then it was at the Wynfords’, at Old Westbury? They always have so many people there—”

“Think again.”

“What’s the good of thinking when, if I could remember you, I should do it right away?”

“It seems extraordinary to me that you can have forgotten.”

“You seem very sure of the impression you made on me.”

“I am.”

“And I’ve forgotten all about it!”

“You haven’t forgotten the impression; you’ve only forgotten me.”

“Oh, Mr. Melbury, tell me! Please! I’ve got to run off and overtake Mrs. Grace; and I can’t do it unless I know.”

You will admit that my duty at this juncture required some considering. In the end I said: “I sha’n’t tell you to-day. I may do it later. In any case, I’ve given you so many tips that you can’t fail to see for yourself what they lead to. You’ll probably have recalled by to-night.”

“Then I shall ring you up to-morrow and tell you.”

“No, please don’t do that; and yet, on second thoughts, I know that when you’ve remembered you won’t want to.”

She said, while withdrawing again toward the adjoining room, “You certainly know how to make a thing mysterious.”

“I’m not making anything mysterious. You’ll see that, after it’s all come back to you.”

But, having passed into the next room, she returned to the threshold to say: “I know you’re only making fun of me. I never met you, because I couldn’t have forgotten you. And I couldn’t have forgotten you, because you’re so like your brother. But we’ll talk about it all some other time.”

The first thing I did was to go to a room where there was a full-length mirror fixed to the wall and examine myself in the glass. Was it possible that I had changed so much in the brief space of four months? The reflection told me nothing. In the tall, slim figure in the neat gray check I could still see the sinister fellow who had slept at Greeley’s Slip and skulked about the Park and crept into a house at midnight. The transformation had come so imperceptibly that the one image was no more vital to me than the other. Inwardly, too, I felt no great assurance against a relapse. I was like an insect toiling up a slippery perpendicular. Not only was each step difficult, but it might in the end land me at the bottom where I began. In other words, I had still within me the potentialities of the drunkard; and to the drunkard all aberrations are possible.

That night I put the question up to Lovey.

“Lovey, do I look the same as I did four or five months ago?”

“You looks just as good to me, sonny.”

“Yes, but suppose you hadn’t seen me in the mean while, and had come on me all of a sudden, would you know right off that it was me?”

“Slim, if I was blind and deaf and dumb, and couldn’t see nothink nor ’ear nothink nor feel nothink, I’d know it was you if you come ’arf a mile from where I was.”

Since this intuitiveness was of no help to me, I worked round to the subject when, later in the evening, I had gone in to smoke a good-night pipe with Cantyre.

He had a neat little corner suite which gave one a cheery view of the traffic in Madison Avenue north and south by a mere shifting of the eyes. I sat in the projecting semicircle that commanded this because, after my own outlook into an airshaft, I enjoyed the twinkling of the lights. To me the real Ville Lumière is New York. It scatters lights with the prodigal richness with which the heaven scatters stars. It strings them in long lines; it banks them in towering façades; it flings them in handfuls up into the darkness; it writes them on the sky. Twilight offers you a special beauty because, wherever you are in the city, it brings out for you in one window or another that first wan, primrose-colored beacon—in some ways more beautiful than the evening star. Behind the star you don’t know what there is, while behind the light there is a palpitating history. Then as you look down from some high perch other histories light their lamps, till within half an hour the whole town is ablaze with them—a light for every life-tale—as in pious places there is one for every shrine.

Those who were looking at ours saw nothing but a green-shaded lamp, and yet it lit up such bits of drama as Cantyre’s and mine. So behind every other shining star, in tower or tenement, dwelling-house or hotel, there was tragedy, comedy, adventure, farce, or romance, all in multifold complexity, while before each human story there glowed this tranquil fire.

If I had not been an architect, with a knowledge of interior decoration as part of my profession, I might not have been worried by the sybaritic note in Cantyre’s rooms. Being fond of flowers, he had sheaves of gladioluses and chrysanthemums wherever he could stack them. Over the tables he threw bits of beautiful old brocades, ineffable in color. Framed and glazed, a seventeenth-century chasuble embroidered in carnations did duty as a fire-screen. Japanese pottery grotesques and Barye bronzes jostled one another on the mantelpiece and low bookcases, while the latter housed rows of handsome volumes bound to suit Cantyre’s special taste and stamped with his initials. He himself, stretched in a long chair, wore a dressing-gown of an indescribable shade of plum faced with an equally indescribable shade of blue. The plum socks and blue leather slippers couldn’t have been an accident; and as I had dropped in on him unexpectedly I knew that all this _recherche_ was not to dazzle any one—I could have forgiven that—but for his own enjoyment.

No one could have been kinder to me than he was—and I liked him. I reminded myself that it was none of my business if his tastes were fastidious, and that to spend his money this way was better than in lounging about bar-rooms, as I had done; and yet I could understand that a girl like Regina Barry should be impatient of these traits in a husband.

I sat, however, with my back to it all, astride of a small chair, my pipe in my mouth, looking down on the lights and traffic.

Breaking a long silence, I said, as casually as I could do it: “I met Sterling Barry’s daughter the other day—Miss Regina Barry, her name is, isn’t it?”

Vague, restless movements preceded the laconic response, “Where?”

“She came to the memorial with Mrs. Grace.”

Hearing him strike a match, I knew he was making an effort at sang-froid by lighting a cigarette.

“Did you—did you—think her—pretty?”

“Pretty wouldn’t be the word.”

“Beautiful?”

“Nor beautiful.”

“What then?”

“No word that I know would be adequate. You might say fascinating if it hadn’t been vulgarized; and chic would be worse.”

“She’s tremendously animated—and vivid.”

“She has the most living eyes and mouth I’ve ever seen in a human being. I’ve never seen a face so aglow with mind, emotion, and color. She’s all flame, but a flame like that of the burning bush, afire from a force within.”

He spoke bitterly. “And people talk about that being conquered!”

To lead him further I said, “Has any one talked of it?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“How should I know? You—you’ve never told me.”

“Well, I’m—I’m telling you now.”

My sympathy was quite genuine.

“Thanks, old boy. I can see—I can see how hard it must have gone with you.”

“How hard it’s going, Frank. There’s a difference in tense. If you knew her better—”

“I’m not sure that I care to know her better; and that, old man, isn’t said out of rudeness. I don’t belong to her world any more; and I’d rather not try to get back into it.”

“Oh, get out! As a matter of fact I’m going to take you to see her.”

“You needn’t do that, because she asked me to come.”

“Right off the bat like that? The first time she’d ever seen you?”

“It wasn’t exactly that. She knew my brother Jack; and my cousin, Annette van Elstine, is a friend of hers.”

“Annette van Elstine is your cousin? Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“Oh, for reasons. I should think you’d see. Why should I claim Annette as a cousin? One of the smartest women in New York, I’m told she is.”

“One of the very smartest. She could do anything for you.”

“So there you are! When you think of what I was when you first met me—what I am still, really—” It seemed to me, however, that I had found my opening, so I went on in another vein. “I met Annette’s father in the street one day, not long ago, and he went by without recognizing me. Have I changed very much—since the spring?”

“I should know you anywhere, Frank; but Coningsby and Christian were saying last week that they wouldn’t take you to be the same man any more.”

“Did they mean morally—or physically?”

“Oh, they meant in looks. They said they’d never seen any one in whom good clothes and a straight life had so thoroughly created a new man.”

“So that you think my uncle might reasonably—”

“Pass you without recognition? Oh, Lord, yes! Besides, your mustache changes you a lot. I’d shave that off again if I were you; and you want to get back to your old self.”

To end the subject I said merely: “I’m glad to hear that I don’t look as I did; because—because I shouldn’t like to think that the good old fellow had cut me.”

_CHAPTER X_

My problem was now as to how to tell Regina Barry who I was; and it would have been more urgent had I not felt sure that sooner or later she must guess. Indeed, she might have guessed already. I had no means of knowing. During the four or five days since her visit to the memorial no echo of our meeting had come back to me.

But I was not left long in doubt.

The William Grace Memorial was now practically ready for furnishing. Mrs. Grace was about to move back to town in order to undertake the task. Coningsby and I were going through the rooms one day with an eye to details that might have been overlooked when he said, “Well, there doesn’t seem much more for you to do here, does there?”

I replied that as far as any further need of my services was concerned I might knock off work there and then—thanking him for all his help through the summer.

“And now,” he went on, “I should like you to come in on this job at Atlantic City if you’d care to. You see, you and I understand each other; we speak the same language both professionally and socially; and it’s not so easy as you might think to pick up a chap of whom you can say that. Why not come up to our little place—say to-morrow night—and dine with us, and we could talk it over? My wife told me to ask you.”

Knowing that Coningsby had been aware of the state of my wardrobe a few months earlier, I blushed to the roots of my hair as I put the question: “What shall I wear? Tails—or a dinner jacket and black tie?”

“Oh, a dinner jacket. There’ll be just ourselves.”

But when I went I found not only my host and hostess, but Regina Barry to make the party square.

The Coningsbys lived on the top floor of an apartment-house on the summit of the ridge between the west side of the Park and the Hudson. Below them lay a picturesque tumble of roofs running down to the river, beyond which the abrupt New Jersey heights drew a long straight line against the horizon. Sunset and moonset were the special beauties of the site, with the swift and ceaseless current to add life and mystery to the outlook.

The apartment differed from Cantyre’s in that its simplicity would have been bare had it not produced an impression of containing just enough. The walls of the drawing-room were of a pale-gold ocher against which every spot of color told for its full value. On this background the green of chairs, the rose of lamp-shades, the mahogany of tables, and the satinwood of cabinets pleased and rested the eye. There were no pictures in the room but a portrait of Mrs. Coningsby, which one of the great artists of the day had painted for her as a gift. In its richness of copper-colored hair and diaphanous jade-green draperies the room got all the decoration it required.

I had heard Regina Barry’s voice on entering, and knew that I was up against my fate. That is to say, the revolver lay ready in my desk. Knowing that such a meeting as this must occur some time, I was in earnest as to using the weapon on the day when her eyes accused me. As I took off my overcoat and hat and laid them on a settle in the hall, I said I should probably do it when I went home that night. It would depend on how she looked at me.

Meeting me at the door of the drawing-room, Mrs. Coningsby was sweet and kindly in her welcome without being over-demonstrative. I had heard of her beauty, but was not prepared for anything so magnificent. Her height, her complexion, her hair, her free movements—were those of a goddess. I liked and admired Coningsby; but I wondered how even he had caught this Atalanta and imprisoned her in a flat on the west side of New York.

“You know Miss Barry, don’t you?” were the words with which she directed me toward the end of the room, where the other guest was seated in a low arm-chair by a corner of the fireplace.

So the supreme moment came. I went the length of the room knowing that I was facing it.

I suppose it is instinct that tells women how to avoid comparisons with each other by creating contrasts. Knowing that in competition with her hostess she would have everything to lose, Miss Barry used Mrs. Coningsby as a foil. In other words, she had divined the fact that her friend would be in black with a spangling of blue-green sequins, and so had enhanced her own vividness by dressing in a bright rose-red. What she lacked in beauty, therefore, she made up in a brilliancy that stood out against the pale-gold ocher background with the force of a flaming flower.

As I stooped to take the hand she held up languidly I tried to search her eyes. They told me nothing. The fire in them seemed not exactly to have gone out, but to have been hidden behind some veil of film through which one could get nothing but a glow. Had she meant to baffle me she couldn’t have done it more effectively; but, as I learned later, she meant nothing of the kind. Her greeting, as far as I could judge of it, was precisely that which she would have accorded to any other diner-out.

During the exchange of commonplaces that ensued there were two things I noticed with curiosity and uneasiness. She wore the string of pearls I had seen once before—had had in my pocket, as a matter of fact—and the long diamond bar-pin. As to her rings I could not be sure, having on the night when I meant to steal them noticed nothing but their number. But the pearls and the diamonds arrested my attention—and my questionings. Was she wearing them on purpose? Was she holding them up as silent reminders between her and me? Was I to understand from merely looking at them the charge her eyes refused to convey?

I had no means of seeking an answer to these questions, because Coningsby came in and the process of being welcomed had to be gone through again. Moreover, the commonplaces which, when carried on _à deux_, might have led to something more personal remained as commonplaces and no more when tossed about _à quatre_.

On our going in to dinner the same tone was maintained, and I learned nothing from any interchange of looks. There was, in fact, no interchange of looks. Miss Barry talked to her right and to her left, but rarely across the table. When it became necessary to speak a word directly to me she did it with so hasty a glance that it might easily not have been a glance at all. The burning eyes that had watched me so intently on our first meeting, and studied me with so much laughing curiosity on our second, kept themselves hidden. Since it was on them that I had reckoned to tell me what I was so eager to be sure of, I was like a man who hopes to look through a window and finds it darkened by curtains.

After dinner, however, I got an opportunity. Coningsby and his wife were summoned to the nursery to discuss the manifestations of some childish ailment. Miss Barry and I being left alone before the fire, I was able to say, “Well, have you thought of it?”

Some of the customary vivacity returned to her lips and eyes. She had at no time seemed unkindly—only absent and rather dreamy. She was rather dreamy still, but more on the spot mentally.

“Thought of what?”

“Of—of where we first met.”

“Oh, that! I’m sorry to say I’ve been too busy to do any searching in my memory. But one of these days I must.”

There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone. She had not searched in her memory; she had not considered it worth while. Her interest in our meeting at the memorial had probably passed before she had driven away.

I must plead guilty to feeling piqued. That she should be so much in my mind and that I should occupy so small a place in hers not only disappointed but annoyed me. I said to myself, “Oh, well, if she cares so little there is no reason why I should care more.” Aloud I made it: “Please don’t bother about it. One of these days the recollection will come back to you of its own accord.”

“Yes; I dare say.” She went on without transition, “Whom did your brother marry?”

I told her.

“He wasn’t like everybody else,” she pursued. “I wonder—I wonder if you are?”

“Wouldn’t that depend on what you mean by being like everybody else? I don’t know that I get your standard.”

“Oh, men are so much alike. There’s no more difference between them than between so many beans in a bottle.”

“I don’t see that. To my mind they’re all distinct from one another.”

“In little ways, yes. But when it comes to the big ways—”

“What are the big ways?”

She weighed this, a forefinger against a cheek.

“The big ways are those which indicate character, aren’t they? While the little ones only make for habits. Men differ as to their habits, but in character they’re all cut on the same pattern—two or three patterns at most.”

“But can’t you say the same of women?”

“Very likely; only I don’t have to marry a woman.”

Since she had become personal, I ventured to do the same.

“Oh, so it’s a question of marriage!”

“What other question is there when a girl like me is twenty-three? One has to decide that tiresome bit of business before one can tackle anything else.”

I grew bolder.

“Decide as to whom to marry—or whether or not to marry at all?”

“Suppose I said as to whether or not to marry at all?”

“You mean that you’d like advice?”

“I’d listen to advice—if you’ve any to give.”

I gathered all my strength together for the most tremendous effort of my life.

“Then, I should say this: That there are men in the world different from any you’ve ever seen yet. Wait!”

She laughed—an intelligent laugh, full of music, mirth, and comprehension.

“Do you know, that reminds me of something awfully strange that happened to me a few months ago? Some one else said just those words to me—or, rather, wrote them down.”

I pulled my chair so that her eyes rested on me more directly.

“How?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you. I said I never would—so I mustn’t. I should love to—though I never shall.”

“Was it—interesting?”

“Thrilling! But there! I’m not going to tell you. I shouldn’t have mentioned it if what you say hadn’t been so oddly like—”

But Coningsby came back into the room to ask if Miss Barry wouldn’t join his wife in the nursery to see little Rufus while he was awake. In the mean time he and I would retire to his own snuggery and talk business.

While I followed his account of the hotel he was building sufficiently to get his ideas and to know what he expected of me, I was saying to myself: “She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know me at all. It never occurs to her as a possibility that the man who wrote those words is the one she is now asked to meet at dinner. How am I ever to get the nerve to let her know?”

When I found the opportunity I put the question, “Have your wife and Miss Barry any idea about me?”

“About you? You mean about—”

“The Down and Out.”

“Lord, no! What would be the good of that?”

“The only good would be that—that I shouldn’t be sailing under false colors.”

“False colors be hanged! We’ve all got a right to the privacy of our private lives. You don’t go nosing into any one else’s soul; why should any one else go nosing into yours? Why, if I were to tell my wife all I could tell her about myself I should be ashamed to come home.”

I knew this argument, and yet when I came to apply it to my attitude toward Regina Barry I was not satisfied.

_CHAPTER XI_

A few days later I was surprised to receive a note from Annette van Elstine. It ran:

DEAR FRANK,—I have just heard that you are in New York—that you have been here some time. Why did you never come to see me? It was not kind. And didn’t you know that your mother has been heartbroken over your disappearance? Jerry and Jack knew you were somewhere in this country, but they’ve kept your mother in the dark. What does it all mean? Come to tea with me—just me—on Friday afternoon at five, and tell me all about it.

Your affectionate

ANNETTE.

As this was the first bit of connection with my own family since Jerry had practically kicked me down his steps, I was deeply perturbed by it. I am not without natural affection, and yet I seemed to have died to the old life as completely as Lovey to that with his daughters. I had never forgotten Jerry’s words: “And now get out. Don’t let any of us ever see your face or hear your name again.”

The very fact that he was justified had roused the foolish remnant of my pride.

I had loved my mother; I had reverenced my father; though my brothers were indifferent to me, I had felt a genuine tenderness for my sisters. But since that night on Jerry’s steps it had been to me as if I had put myself on one side of a flood and left them on the other, and that there was no magic skiff that would carry me back whence I came. I cannot say that I grieved for them; and it was the last of my thoughts that they would grieve for me. I accepted the condition that we were dead to each other, and tried to bury memory.