Part 17

"Aren't you mistaken?" she said, without conviction.

"Mistaken!" The girl wrenched herself erect. "Last night I saw her in his arms."

"Amy!"

"I saw them--here--in my own house! Stella was here when Fred came home from Newark--I guess she knew he was coming--and he made her take off her things and stay to supper. It wasn't a good supper. The gas-range wouldn't work, and I'd forgotten to put Fred's beer in the ice-box. I was hot and cross from standing over the fire, and hadn't a minute to do my hair. I saw Fred looking from me to Stella, who was dressed to kill, and I knew what he thought. I could have cried right there. I don't know how I got through the meal, but it ended somehow, and they went off into the parlor, leaving me to clear away the things. I washed the dishes up, for, company or not, I hate to let them stand over until morning; and then fixed myself a little to go where they were. I must have got through sooner than they expected. I saw him kiss her as plain as I see you."

"Did they know you saw them?"

"I let them know," rejoined Amy, with a heart-breaking laugh. "I'll bet her ears burn yet. I ordered her out of the house, and she went, double-quick!"

"And he?"

The light died out of Amy's face.

"Fred went, too," she said numbly. "I haven't seen him since. I'll never see him again, I guess. I'm the most miserable girl alive! What shall I do? What shall I do?"

"Divorce the scoundrel," counseled Jean, promptly. "I'll take care of the lawyer. I'll employ detectives, too, if you need more evidence, as I suppose you will. He must be made to pay alimony. But you've nothing to fear, even if you don't get a cent. You earned your living once; you can do it again. Be rid of him at once."

Amy turned her face away.

"You don't know," she moaned.

"What is it I don't know?"

"The truth--the real truth."

"You mean you still care for him?"

"I do care for him--I always shall--but that's not what I mean. I can't divorce Fred. I'm not--not his wife."

Jean sprang to her feet.

"You're not married!"

A spasm of anguish racked the shrinking form.

"Not--not yet."

Jean stood in rigid dismay, striving to read this enigma.

"Not yet," she repeated slowly. "Did you believe, Amy, _could_ you believe, he ever meant to deal honestly with you?"

"Yes!" The girl turned passionately. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! He couldn't at first. His wife had divorced him, and he wasn't allowed to remarry for three years. The time wasn't up when we met again; it wasn't up when we began to live together. It seemed so long to wait. I trusted him. I loved him."

"But now? He is free now?"

"Yes."

"And does nothing!"

"We--we put it off."

"You mean, he put it off. Amy! Amy! Can't you realize that he is worthless? Can't you understand that you must root him out of your life? Face this like a brave woman. I'll help you make a fresh start. Be independent. Cut yourself off from him completely. Do it now--now!"

Amy's haggard eyes were unresponsive.

"It's too late."

"No, no!"

"It's too late. I can't cut myself off from him. Jean!" Her voice quavered to shrill intensity. "Jean! Don't you--don't you _see_!"

Jean saw and was answered, and her womanhood bade her sweep the weakling to her breast.

"I've kept it from him," wept Amy. "He hates children about. I did not dare tell him."

"I dare," cried Jean, like a trumpet-call. "And I will."

Her assurance quieted the girl like an anodyne, and presently she slept. Sundown, twilight, and night succeeded. The watcher's muscles grew cramped, but whenever she sought to loose the sleeper's clasp, Amy whimpered like a feverish child, and so she sat compassionately on aiding nature's healing work. Meanwhile she tried to frame her appeal to the drummer. How or when she should reach him she knew not; Amy must bring about a meeting. She did not believe that he had definitely deserted his victim. His sample-cases in the hall, his innumerable pipes, his clothing strewn about the bedroom, all argued a return. She longed that he might come now while her wrath burned hottest and she might scorch him to a sense of his infamy. It could be done. She was confident that she could stir him somehow. Surely, he was not all beast. Somewhere underneath the selfish hide lurked a torpid microscopic soul, some germ of pity, some spark of manhood.

Then Amy awoke, refreshed, heartened, yet still spineless, clinging, and dependent; and Jean threw herself into the task of cheering this mockery of a home. She made Amy bathe her dreadful eyes, arrange her hair, don a dress the drummer liked; and then set her ordering the neglected flat, while she herself conjured up a meal from the unpromising materials which a search of the larder disclosed. The little kitchen was haunted with ghosts of her other life. The dentist's astonishing ice-cream freezer and the patent dish-washer stared her in the face, and her hunt for the tea-canister revealed the kit of tools she had bought to surprise him. Not a utensil hung here which was not of their choosing.

And so it was with the other rooms. When she came to lay the cloth, its grape-vine pattern greeted her like a forgotten acquaintance; the colonial sideboard and the massive table, as formerly, united to resist invasion of their tiny stronghold. The silver candelabra, restored to the giver, still flanked Grimes's Louis XV clock upon the mantelpiece; the galaxy of American poets hung where she had appointed. The Jean who had done these things, lived this existence, was a distant, shadowy personality, and the feat of making her intelligible to another seemed more than ever impossible. She rejoiced that she had locked this chapter from Craig. Her present self was her real self, the Jean he idealized, the real Jean.

The belated supper braced Amy's mood. She became apologetic for the drummer and sanguine of the future.

"Don't be harsh with Fred," she entreated. "Tell him the truth, but don't hurt his pride. Fred is so proud. He's the proudest man I ever knew. Besides, I'm every bit as much to blame. Stroke him the right way, and he'll do almost anything you want. I could have managed him, if I'd been well. He means all right. He'll do right, too. I wish--I wish you could see us married, Jean. If he would only come now, we could get a minister in and have it over to-night."

Jean hoped as fervently as Amy for the drummer's coming, and in this hope lingered till she could wait no longer.

"Go to bed," she charged. "Sitting up won't hurry him home. If he comes, don't weep, don't reproach him, don't plead with him, don't--above all--don't apologize. Keep him guessing for once, and leave the talking to me. Find out in some way where I can see him. If he will be home to-morrow evening, I'll come here; if there's a chance of catching him earlier at the office of his firm, let me know and I'll go there. Meanwhile say nothing, but look your best."

Amy promised all things, and Jean hurried out, horrified at the lateness of the hour. The long down-town journey at this hour daunted her till she shook off the atmosphere of the Lorna Doone sufficiently to recall that penny-saving was no more a vital factor in her life. Cabs were not wont to stalk custom in this neighborhood, however, and even a search of the nearest cross-street, where business predominated, was fruitless. As she hesitated, scouring the scene, the attentions of a group of corner loafers became pointed, and, believing one of them about to accost her, she darted down a convenient stair of the subway and boarded a train which was just about to depart. She rode past two stations before she discovered that in her haste she had entered from an uptown platform.

Dismounting, she began a wait in the whited suffocating cavern, which seemed endless. Under the hard glitter of the arc-lights the raw flamboyant advertisements of soaps, whiskies, hair tonics, liver pills, and department-store specials became a physical pain. The voices of the ticket-choppers, gossiping across the tracks of the President whom they called by a diminutive of his first name, were like the drone of monster flies in a bottle. Then the green and yellow eyes of her dilatory train gleamed far down the tunnel, and the rails quickened and murmured under its onset. This show of speed was delusive, however. They halted leisurely at platforms where no one got off or on, and loitered mysteriously in the bowels of the earth where were no stations whatsoever. The system seemed hopelessly out of joint and the handful of passengers sighed or swore, according to sex, and tried with grotesque noddings to nap through the tedious delays. Then more waits and more stations succeeded, and the ranks of the sufferers thinned until only Jean and a red-nosed woman, who smelled of gin and thirsted for conversation, were left.

At last came release, and, spurred forward by the waxing friendliness of the red-nose, who also alighted, she hurried to the surface. The remaining distance was short, and in five minutes she was rummaging her shopping-bag for a latch-key. The servants were of course abed. Not a light was visible. All the house apparently slumbered in after-midnight peace. She experienced a burglarious sense of adventure in fitting her key to the lock, and a guilty start when the heavy door escaped her fingers and shut with a resounding slam. At the same instant a light streamed from the library at the farther end of the hall, disclosing Julie haughtily erect in the opening, and Craig's stricken face just behind.

XXVIII

"It is I, Craig," Jean called. "Surely you haven't worried?"

The man groaned.

"Worried!" he cried. "What does it all mean, Jean?"

He would have come out to her, but Julie laid a restraining hand on his sleeve, saying,--

"Keep yourself in hand, Craig dear."

Jean moved quickly down the hall and confronted them.

"What is this mystery?" she demanded. "Did not the servant deliver my message?"

Mrs. Van Ostade signed for her to enter the library. She passed in with a bewildered look at Atwood, who walked uncertainly to the fireplace and stood gazing down into its lifeless grate. His sister shut the door and put her back against it.

"Didn't you receive my message?" Jean again addressed Craig. "Miss Hepworth was with you, and I disliked to interrupt. There was no time for a note. I left too hurriedly."

"With whom?" The question was Julie's and was delivered like a blow.

Jean faced her.

"I went alone," she replied quietly. "Does it matter?"

Mrs. Van Ostade flung out an imperious finger.

"Read that card beside you on the desk," she directed. "'Paul Bartlett, D.D.S. Crown and bridge work a specialty,' Do you deny meeting that person to-day?"

"Certainly not. He brought word that a sick friend needed me, and left immediately afterward."

"And you have not seen him since?"

"No." Her denial rang out emphatically. "Craig," she appealed, "what is the meaning of this catechism? I have been with Amy ever since I left the house. She is in great trouble. It is a terrible story."

"It is indeed," struck in Julie. "Do you swallow it, Craig? Can anybody! Perhaps now you will begin to use the reasoning powers which your infatuation for this adventuress has clouded. How could you ever have trusted her! Wasn't the bare fact of the reformatory enough?"

"Craig!" Appeal, reproach, anguish, all blended in that bitter cry.

Atwood disclaimed responsibility with a gesture.

"Your mother," he said.

"Yes; your mother," Julie echoed. "Before she sat ten minutes in this room she had told all she knew--do you understand me?--_all she knew_! I was your friend till then. I don't pretend I was not cut to the heart by Craig's mad marriage. I would have given my right hand to prevent it. Hadn't I seen you before you ever entered his studio? Didn't I know how vulgar your associates were? Perhaps your 'Amy' was the drunken little fool who created a scene in the restaurant where I made your acquaintance? But I tried to put that out of mind when I accepted the marriage. I took you into my own home; I hoped to school you to fill your new place in life worthily."

"And have I not?" Jean interpolated proudly. "Have I shamed you or him?"

Julie scorned reply.

"But I knew nothing of the refuge story," she railed on. "I never suspected the awful truth when you evaded every question I asked about your girlhood. I knew your past had been common; I could not dream it had also been criminal."

"Julie!" Atwood entreated.

"The time has come for plain dealing," she answered him. "You will live to thank me for opening your eyes."

Jean took a step nearer her accuser.

"Let her go on," she challenged contemptuously. "She only distorts what I have told you already."

Julie's dark face grew thunderous.

"Do I!" she retorted. "Let us see. What have you told Craig of this man Bartlett? What have you told him of the flat at the Lorna Doone? Where are your glib answers now? Can you suppose that, knowing your history, I would suspect nothing when Satterlee put you out of countenance at the Copley Studios? A double, indeed! From that moment you avoided the place. From that moment every shift of yours strengthened my belief that I had stumbled on one more murky chapter of your life. Satterlee's memory improved; he recalled your twin's name. Thereafter my investigations were child's play. Can you, dare you, deny that you were known at the Lorna Doone as Bartlett's wife?"

Jean's face grew pale; Craig's, her agonized glance perceived, was whiter still.

"It was a mistake," she answered. "They thought--"

"Ah!" Julie's cry was long-drawn, triumphant. "Do you hear, Craig? She admits that she was known as Mrs. Bartlett. My poor brother! By her own confession you have married either a discarded mistress or a bigamist!"

Jean's brain whirled. That passion could put such a monstrous construction on her conduct, passed belief.

"Lies!" she gasped.

"Prove them false!"

"Lies, cruel lies!"

Atwood sprang to her side.

"I could not believe them, Jean," he cried. "You are too honest, too pure--"

"Prove them false!" Julie challenged again.

Jean turned her back upon her.

"This is between you and me, Craig," she pleaded, struggling for self-control. "I am the honest woman you have always believed me. I have concealed nothing shameful. My only thought was to spare you pain. You shall know now, everything; but it is a story for your ears alone. It concerns us only, dear, our happiness, our love."

He cast a look of entreaty at Julie, who met it with an acid smile.

"You are wax in her hands," she taunted. "She can cajole you into thinking black is white."

"No, no," he protested. "You are unjust to her, Julie. I know her as you cannot. She is the soul of truth."

Jean's heart leaped at his words.

"God bless you for that!" she exclaimed. "Let her hear, then! Why should I fear her now?"

The dentist's attentions at the boarding-house, their walks and theater-goings, his help when the department store cast her out, their engagement, the taking and furnishing of a flat, the apparition of Stella, the confession and the crash--all she touched upon without false shame, without attempt to gloss her free agency and responsibility. She dealt gently with Paul, magnifying his virtues, palliating his great fault, bearing witness to the sincerity of his remorse. But Craig she could not spare, pity him as she might. She saw his drawn face wince as if under bodily pain, and before she ended he was groping for a chair. She perceived, as she had feared, that an ideal was gone from him, perhaps the dearest ideal of all; yet she did not realize what a blow she had struck this stunned, flaccid figure with averted head, till, breaking the long silence which oppressed the room when she had done, he asked,--

"Did you love this man, Jean?"

She weighed her answer painfully.

"Not as we know love, Craig," she said.

"You would have sold yourself for a home--for a flat in the Lorna Doone! Where was your remembrance of the birches then?"

She forgave the words in pity for the pain which begot them. She forgot Julie. Nothing in life mattered, if love were lost. A great devouring fear lest he slip from her drove her forward and flung her kneeling at his side.

"You were with me always, Craig, always," she said brokenly. "Is it too hard to believe? If you try to paint an ideal and the picture falls short, does that make your ideal less dear? What hope had I ever to meet you again? How could I dream that I stood for more in your thoughts than a heedless fugitive of whom you were well rid? You could not know that you had given me courage for the guardhouse and the prison; made me strive to become the girl you thought me; changed the whole trend of my foolish life! How then have I been unfaithful? Was it treachery to you, whom I never looked to see again, that when a good man--yes; at heart, Paul is a good man--offered me a way of escape I should take it? You ask me if I would have sold myself for a home, for that poor little flat in the Lorna Doone whose cheapness I never appreciated till to-night--I answer no. I know now that I did not love him; but I did not know it then. It was left for you to teach me."

He made no response when she ceased. His hands lay nerveless under hers; his eyes still brooded on the fireless hearth. So for a hundred heart-beats they remained together.

"You believe me, Craig?"

"Yes," he wrenched forth at last.

Jean slowly withdrew her hands.

"But you cannot wholly forgive?"

He had no answer.

"I can say no more," she added, rising; and came again face to face with Julie, who made way for her at the door. "I leave your house to-morrow, Mrs. Van Ostade. If I could, I would go to-night."

Free of gnawing secrecies at last! The thought brought a specious sense of peace. Julie's yoke broken! Her step on the stair grew buoyant. The battle desired by MacGregor had been fought. Precipitated by causes with which neither had reckoned, waged with a fierce heat alien to art, Craig's emancipation had nevertheless been at stake. The break had come, and it was beyond remedy. He must cleave to his wife.

Too excited for sleep, she began at once her preparations for quitting Julie's hateful roof, and one after another overcame the obstacles which packing in the small hours entailed. Each overflowing chair, every yawning door and drawer, testified the increased complexity of her life and the bigness of her task. The bride of a single dinner-dress had become under Craig's lavish generosity the mistress of great possessions. There were gowns of many uses and many hues; hats and blouses in extravagant number; shoes--a little regiment of shoes aligned neatly in their trees; costly trifles for her desk; books and pictures in breath-taking profusion.

She now remembered that her one trunk, with Craig's many upon which she depended, was stored on the top floor, and she debated whether to wake one of the servants or await her husband's help. In the end she did neither. She disliked Mrs. Van Ostade's servants, one and all, suspecting them of tale-bearing, and after a vain wait for Craig, who still lingered below, she went about the business for herself. It was a difficult matter to accomplish without rousing the house, and when, after much travail of mind and disused muscle, she effected the transfer of her own trunk, she was tempted to do what she could with it and let her other belongings follow as they might. This course, also, she rejected. Nothing except a complete evacuation would satisfy, and she craved the joy of leaving Julie's bridal gift conspicuously unpacked.

By three o'clock all was done, and as she flung herself wearily upon her bed she heard Craig's leaden step mount the stair. He entered their living-room, which, save for one or two small articles he would scarcely miss, she had not dismantled, switched on the electricity, and after a pause closed the door of the dressing-room connecting with the darkened chamber where she lay. Jean heard him light a cigarette and drop heavily into a chair, which he abandoned almost at once to pace the floor. The sound of his pacing went on and on, varied only by the scrape of matches as he lit cigarette after cigarette, the penetrating oriental scent of which began in time to seep into her own room and infect her with his unrest.

She took alarm to find him so implacable. Did his sister sway him still? Had Julie poisoned the truth with the acid of her hate? Might she lose him after all? She could scarcely keep herself from calling his name. And the monotonous footfall went on and on, on and on, trampling her heart, grinding its iteration into her sick brain. Then, when it seemed endurable no longer, it became a sedative, and she slept to dream that she was a new inmate of Cottage No. 6, with a tyrannous, vindictive matron whose face was the face of Julie Van Ostade.

She stirred with the day and lay with shut eyes, tasting the blissful reality of familiar things. This was no cell-like room, no refuge pallet. She had only to stretch out her hand--thus--to the bed beside her own, and touch--? Nothing! Craig's bed stood precisely as the maid had prepared it for his coming. Was he pacing yet? She listened, but no sound came. Creeping to the living-room door she listened again; then turned the knob. Empty! The untouched pillows of the divan, the overflowing ash-tray, the lingering haze, bespoke an all-night vigil. He had not only let the sun go down upon his wrath, he had watched it rise again! An answering glow kindled in her bruised pride.

Left rudderless by his silence, she cast about eagerly for some new plan of action while she dressed. Last night she had meant to order her things sent to the studio until they could plan the future, but that course seemed feasible no longer. She searched her pocketbook for funds and found only tickets for a popular comedy. She smiled upon them grimly. Comedy, forsooth! Here was more comic stuff--the screaming farce of woman's lot! Flouted, she had no choice but to fold her hands and wait while the dominant male in his wisdom decided her destiny.

At her accustomed hour she touched the bell for her coffee, and with sharpened observation saw at once that, unlike other days, the tray held but a single service.

"Mr. Atwood breakfasted downstairs?" she said carelessly.

The maid's eyes roved the dissipated scene of Atwood's reflections and lit upon a strapped trunk which Jean had for convenience pulled into the dressing-room.

"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Craig came down very early."

"Did he go out?"

"More than an hour ago."

Jean let the coffee go cold and crumbled her toast untasted. How could she endure this passivity! Must she forever be the spectator? Amidst these drab reveries her eyes rested for some minutes upon the topmost of the morning papers, which the maid had brought as usual with the breakfast, before one of its by no means modest head-lines resolved itself into the words,--

MURDERED IN CENTRAL PARK

Then a familiar name and a familiar address leaped from the context, and she seized breathlessly upon the brief double-leaded paragraph and read it twice from end to end.

"The northern extremity of Central Park," ran the account, "became last night the scene of a tragedy which its loneliness and insufficient lighting have long invited. Shortly after midnight the body of Frederic Chapman, a commercial traveler in the employ of Webster, Cassell & Co., residing in the Lorna Doone apartments, not ten blocks from the spot where he met his death, was found with a bullet through the heart. Up to the time of going to press, no trace of the murderer or weapon had been discovered, although the physician summoned by Officer Burns, who came upon the body in his regular rounds, was of the opinion that life had been extinct less than an hour. Both precinct and central office detectives are at work upon the case. Mr. Chapman leaves a young widow, who is prostrated by the blow."