Part 10

"Yourself, Mrs. Cheever, Garraboy, and Miss Charters."

"Miss Charters?" said Beecher, turning in amazement to Mrs. Kildair.

She nodded, with a little frown.

"As I told Mrs. Kildair," said Slade, not noticing that Beecher, overwhelmed by this discovery, did not hear him, "I do not believe for a moment that the thief would return. Any one who had the daring to seize the ring the second time had the daring to carry off the ring; in fact, had some such plan in mind. Whoever came back may have come back out of sympathy, or with the idea that the ring was still in the studio--in which case, we have a third manifestation of instinct."

They had passed into the studio again. Slade spoke with all his old decision, the energy of action replacing the bitterness of his former meditative mood. He glanced at the clock, and took his leave in a quick, impersonal manner. Beecher, ignoring the looks Mrs. Kildair sent him, departed with Slade, refusing an invitation to join him in the automobile, and continuing on foot.

He was absolutely at a loss to account for Miss Charters' returning to the studio after having gone to her apartment. If she had any suggestion to offer, why had she not waited, or even requested him to return with her? Why, in fact, could she not have waited until the following day--instead of risking the journey at such an hour?

Full of disturbing surmises, he continued his walk until he reached the great thoroughfare of Forty-second Street, where he turned eastward toward the station, oblivious to the excitement in the street, the break-neck arrival of the newspaper wagons and the sudden, shrill scattering of urchins, extras in hand.

All at once, at the western corner of the station, he raised his eyes instinctively. A coupe with trunks behind it disengaged itself from the confusion of traffic and, turning, slowly passed him. Inside, he recognized the dark, defiant eyes of Mrs. Enos Bloodgood.

In a moment he guessed the full significance of her presence: she had come to meet Majendie, to burn all bridges behind her, in the supreme sacrifice of everything for the possession of a happiness she had never known.

The next instant he was gazing horror-stricken at the head-lines of an extra that a newsboy flung in his face:

SUICIDE OF BERNARD L. MAJENDIE

He became perfectly collected, clear in mind and instinctive in action, with the decision he had felt in the last charges of a wounded elephant. If Mrs. Bloodgood were here, it was because she expected to meet Majendie; because she was ignorant of the tragedy that had taken place.

Retracing his steps, he arrived at the carriage the moment Mrs. Bloodgood's hand had thrown open the door.

"Excuse me," he said, with an authority which instantly impressed the woman by its ominous seriousness. "Something terrible has happened. I must speak to you." Then, turning to the coachman, without being overheard, he gave him Mrs. Kildair's address, saying: "Drive there quickly. Five dollars to you if you get me there in ten minutes."

Then he opened the door and joined the woman who, drawn back in the corner like an animal at bay, already trembling with what she did not know, awaited him.

*CHAPTER XI*

For an interval, while the coachman, spurred on by the prospect of reward, tore through the short streets, Beecher continued looking into Mrs. Bloodgood's eyes--eyes that were aghast with mute, terrified interrogations which she did not dare to phrase.

Suddenly she perceived the extra which he had bought. She extended her hand, looking at it fearfully.

"Give it to me," she said.

He hesitated, and in the moment of irresolution she seized it. A cry of pain, a low cry torn from the soul, made him stiffen in his seat, steeling himself against the expected. But no further sound came. When he turned, she was sitting transfixed, staring wide-eyed at the newspaper which seemed glued to her fingers. Alarmed at the rigidity of her emotion, he leaned over and disengaged the paper from her unresisting fingers. The action seemed abruptly to revive her. She gave another cry, and tore the newspaper from him with such energy that a great, ill-shaped fragment remained in her clutch.

"No, no, not that--no, no!" she cried, frantically seeking to decipher the bare six lines that recorded the tragedy. All at once she flung the sheet from her, turning to read the truth in his face.

"Ah, it is true!" she cried, and her hand, as though holding him guilty of the fact, violently pushed him from her.

"Mrs. Bloodgood--" Beecher began hesitatingly, frightened at the paroxysm that shook her body.

But the emotion was still of horror, without as yet the realization of the finality that had come. She felt that Majendie was in danger--in terrible danger; that she must get to him, somehow, some way, and fling herself in front of that awful something that threatened him, ward off, in some way prevent, the thing that was coming. She seized the arm of the terrified young man, imploring him, still dry-eyed:

"Take me to him--at once--no--I must--take me--Bernard--oh!"

She fell back exhausted, faint.

"Be calm; please be calm," he repeated, helpless before the utter disorder of her suffering.

All at once the annihilation of self into which she had fallen was succeeded by a quick paroxysm of energy. She bounded upright on the seat, seizing his arm so that the nails hurt him.

"I will go to him!" she cried. "You shall not stop me. He may be only wounded. The report is false--must be false. I will go to him!"

"The very thing that you must not do--that you can not do," he said firmly; and then, seized with an inspiration, he added: "Listen--listen to me, Mrs. Bloodgood, I am taking you to Rita's; if you must go to him, go with her. Two women can go; one would cause a great scandal. You can not put that on him--you must think of him now. We are going to Rita's--Rita's!" he added, putting his lips to her ears to make her hear him.

He put his hand on her shoulder and forced her gently back. She held her clasped hands rigidly strained between her knees, staring out beyond the confines of the carriage.

"He is not dead," she said in a whisper; "he is wounded."

"As soon as we get to Rita's," he continued reassuringly, "I will telephone. I'll find out everything."

"Wounded," she repeated, nodding--without hearing him.

"If he is, we three can go--it will seem quite natural," he said hastily, eying nervously her dry, uncomprehending grief, fearing the coming outburst of realization.

"Almost there," he said, looking out of the window. "Hold on to yourself. Be game. There are always a few persons below."

She did not answer, but her lips curled slightly in contempt, and she put her hand spasmodically to her throat.

"You're right, the whole thing may be false--a wild rumor," he said quickly, talking to her as to a child. "A fake story--who knows? See, there are no details. Here we are. A little courage! Go right into the elevator."

He signaled the driver to wait, and followed her hastily into the elevator, standing between her bowed figure and the boy.

Mrs. Kildair was in the studio, pacing the floor; and at the first glance each saw that she knew the report, and that it was true. Mrs. Bloodgood crumpled on the floor, without consciousness.

"My smelling-salts are on my bureau," said Mrs. Kildair quickly. "Lift her on the sofa first, and then get them."

"Is it true?" he said, raising the slender, lifeless body.

"Yes."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"When did it happen?"

"At two o'clock."

"She wishes to go to him," he said warningly. "The carriage is below. She has her trunks. She was to have met him at the station. What shall I do?"

"She must be gotten back to her house as soon as possible," said Mrs. Kildair with energy. "The trunks must return at once. Everything hangs on a hair; I know Bloodgood." She cast a glance at the still inanimate body and added: "Wait. Spirits of ammonia will be better. I'll get it."

Mrs. Bloodgood returned to consciousness slowly, looking from one to the other with a dazed, pleading look.

"Then it is so," she said at last.

The two looked at her without being able to answer. Suddenly she bounded up erect, her fists striking her forehead.

"It is I who have done it!" she cried, and for the second time fell back lifeless on the floor.

"Go down now; send the trunks back," said Mrs. Kildair to Beecher. "Tell him to do it as quickly as possible--no, tell him nothing. Go quickly."

When Beecher returned, Mrs. Bloodgood was on her feet again, passing from spot to spot ceaselessly, one hand clutching a handkerchief to press back the sobs that shook her from time to time, the other stretched out in front of her, beating a mechanical time to the one phrase which she repeated again and again:

"I've done it--I've done it--I've done it!"

Mrs. Kildair, leaning by the piano, knowing that each period must have its expression, awaited the right moment. Beecher, at a sign from her, slipped quietly into a chair.

"Yes, it's I--it's I--I!" said the indistinguishable voice.

"You have done nothing," said Mrs. Kildair solemnly. "It is fate."

"No, no. Only I am to blame," she answered, stopping short, each word coming slowly through the torrents of tears.

Mrs. Kildair passed quietly to her side.

"You are not to blame, dear," she said; "don't think that."

"Oh, you don't know," she said, suddenly acquiring a terrible calm that froze the young man. "At what time did he--did it happen?"

"At two."

"I knew it! Ten minutes before, he telephoned me; he said--oh, what do I know?--said a thousand things but the one in his mind. Asked me if I still was resolved to go."

"But then, Elise--"

"You don't understand! It was I who insisted on his going--I--I! I told him, if he would not go, I would come openly to his house--I would not be separated from him. Oh, my God! I didn't know--I didn't!"

She abandoned herself to her transports once more, flinging herself on her knees and praying, as an uncomprehending child prays:

"O God, don't let it be true--please don't let it be so!"

Beecher covered his eyes suddenly with his hands. Mrs. Kildair allowed her for a moment to tire herself in supplication and anguish. Then she went to her, grasping her shoulder.

"Elise."

Mrs. Bloodgood stopped, rose, and went to the window, where she stood swaying.

"I'm going to him," she said, pressing her knuckles against her temples.

"Get hold of yourself," said Mrs. Kildair, avoiding the error of opposition.

For a long moment neither spoke, while Mrs. Bloodgood, passing to and fro, struggled to fight down the sobs that were choking her. At last she stopped, facing Mrs. Kildair.

"I am going to him," she said.

The other woman, with a look of great compassion, shook her head in a slow negation, looking full at her.

"But he said I could!" she cried, stretching out her hands toward Beecher.

"You can't."

"But he said so--he promised."

"No; it is impossible."

"I _will_ go!"

"There are twenty reporters waiting for just that," Said Mrs. Kildair. Then, raising her voice, she said impressively: "Elise, there is something you must do--something ten times more terrible."

"What?"

"Return home--and at once."

"Never!" The cry burst from her as her whole body was shaken with indignation. "Never in the world--never again!"

"Listen," said Mrs. Kildair, seizing her arm, and Beecher was struck with the savageness of her energy. "Things are no longer the same. You are alone--absolutely alone. Do you understand what that means--without a cent--alone?"

"What do I care?"

"Not now; but in a week, in a month-- You think you know the greatest suffering in the world; you don't--the greatest is poverty. Whatever has happened, you are Mrs. Enos Bloodgood. Only yourself can destroy that. One life is ended in you. You have loved. That will never come again--not the same. Life is long and terrible."

"What, you can suggest such a thing?" said Mrs. Bloodgood, raising her head indignantly. "Such an infamy?"

"Yes--because I know. The world is not an equal one. A woman can not fight as a man can. A year from now, when you can suffer no further, do you want to wake up in a dingy boarding-house, cut off from all you have lived in? For a great love--perhaps--but to be alone? No, no! Elise, you will do as I say because I can see better than you. You are Mrs. Enos Bloodgood--you have everything that a million women covet. It is your life; you will go back."

"Ah, how can you say that to me now?" said Mrs. Bloodgood, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.

"Because the world is different from the world of this morning--because everything is different, Elise. There are no longer the reasons that existed. You are alone against the world. You know your husband--one public word or action, and he will cast you off like an old shoe."

"How can I go back?" she said, sitting down, half subdued. "How can I get the strength? I don't know yet what has happened. I can't realize it--oh, if I had only had my way! If he had only let me leave a month--two months ago. If I'd only been firm; if we had gone that night--that night we were here--when I begged him to. If he had only loved me more than his honor, as I loved him. If only I--"

"Elise," said the quiet voice of Mrs. Kildair.

The young woman checked herself, breaking off and moving again; but almost immediately broke out again:

"And now you want me to go back to _him_. Oh, if you knew how I hate him, how I loathe him--what that life means--how cruel he can be, how he can make me suffer by a word or a look--how he enjoys--"

"Elise, Elise!"

"I can't go, Rita, I can't! Don't ask me to go now. Let me stay a while here, just tonight, where I can weep," she cried.

"No, no. It must be now--soon. You have left your home with your trunks--he knows it. If you return--you return because you are worried--the panic--on his account."

"Ah, what a lie!"

"Elise," said Mrs. Kildair, coming forward again and arresting the other's arm, "listen. You are not what I am. You are not strong--you are weak. You are a woman of the world, worldly, loving worldly things, who for a moment has been transformed by a great passion. The whole earth has no such passion any longer. Do you understand? Something is gone--your youth is ended. Keep tight hold of the little that is left. Come, be strong. Dissimulate as you have before. Come."

"Not now," said Mrs. Bloodgood, terrified.

"Yes, now. If possible, you must be back before he returns."

And Beecher, from his chair where he had watched, forgotten by both women, saw Mrs. Kildair, who not for a moment had deviated from the vital issue, draw the unresisting woman by the very force of her energy into the bedroom, from which shortly they emerged again.

"I am ready," said Mrs. Bloodgood in a voice that was scarcely distinguishable. She had thrown over her head a thick veil, behind which her features were only dimly visible.

"Telephone for a carriage," said Mrs. Kildair.

"I have done so," said Beecher, who had availed himself of the interval.

"But the trunks?" said Mrs. Bloodgood, turning helplessly.

"They went back long ago."

"Ah!" She took a few weak steps and turned. "But I shall see him?"

"I give you my word."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight."

Mrs. Bloodgood made a little sign of acquiescence, and passed out of the door. The carriage was waiting. Beecher silently handed her into it, feeling the sudden heaviness on his arm. They rolled away. She did not lift her veil, and he could not guess what look was on her face. Twice she made him change their course, in order to put off the final dreaded moment.

"You have been kind," she said at last. "I owe you much. Thank you. Now I will go back."

"Don't speak of thanks at such a time," he said hastily. "If I can help you in any way, any time--"

"I know." All at once, forgetting his presence, she burst out: "Oh, how I loved him! I would have done anything for him--anything! I can't believe it. It doesn't seem possible!"

"Be careful, Mrs. Bloodgood," he said, alarmed. "Be careful--please."

"You need have no fear," she said slowly. "All that is over." But, still obsessed, she seized his arm. "Only I want you to know that I loved him so that nothing made any difference. Any one can know it. I would have gone--"

"I know it," he said quickly, taking her hand to quiet her.

"Oh, yes, I loved him--the only real thing in my life!" she repeated, sinking back.

Ahead he saw the great Italian facade of the Bloodgood residence, where twenty servants awaited the call of this shadow at his side, whose invitation could make a social reputation. Then his quick eye, as they neared the steps, perceived the squat, stolid figure of Mr. Enos Bloodgood at the door.

"He is just come out--your husband," he said hurriedly, with a sudden new sensation of dread. And he repeated, a little excitement in his voice, fearing she did not understand the danger: "Be careful; he is there--your husband."

"Yes, I saw him."

She took the veil from her hat, and, folding it, handed it to him, her face set in hardness and contempt.

"You might say Mrs. Kildair had invited--"

"I know what to say," she said, checking him, and a smile incongruous at the moment gave the last touch of tragedy to the imagination of her companion. "Open the door."

He gazed at her, struck with the strange, dual personality in the frail, proud body--the abandon of the woman who loved and the calm of the woman who hated. She who a moment before had cared nothing for what she revealed to him in the unrestraint of her sorrow, did not hesitate now a moment, face to face with the peril of such a confrontation.

"Open the door," she repeated sharply.

Recalled to his senses, he sprang out and gave her his hand, accompanying her to the chiseled marble steps, where he left her, with a lift of his hat to the husband above who awaited her with a quiet, cynical enjoyment.

"I thought, my dear, you had gone off for a jolly little jaunt," said Mr. Bloodgood, without variation in the provoking evenness of his voice.

She came up the steps to his level, and acknowledged his presence with an inclination of her head.

"I intended to," she said, in the same ceremonious tone. "But I was so alarmed at the news from Wall Street that I did not wish to leave you at such a time."

"Indeed? I am quite touched," he answered, with perfect solemnity. "You are always so thoughtful, my dear."

She entered. He followed her as though shutting off all retreat, and the gorgeous flunky who had run out disappeared, too. To Beecher, with all the anguish of the scene at Rita Kildair's still vivid in his mind, it was as though he had seen a living woman enter her appointed tomb.

"Where shall I drive, sir?" said the driver.

"Anywhere!" he cried furiously.

But at the end of five minutes he emerged from the stupor into which he had been plunged, the somber horror rolling away like scudding storm-clouds. A new emotion--the inevitable personal application--broke over him like a ray of light.

"To be loved like that--" he thought suddenly, with a feeling of envy. "Terrible, terrible--and yet how marvelous!"

He gave directions to drive to Nan Charters' with a new curiosity in his soul--the inevitable personal emotion that, strangely enough, even against his will, dominated all the somber melancholy which this reverse of a glittering medal had brought him.

*CHAPTER XII*

He had completely forgotten, in the press of dramatic events, the disturbing fact of Nan Charters' return the night of the theft. He remembered it suddenly, as one remembers sorrow after a profound sleep. But the recalling of it affected him differently. The revelation of Mrs. Bloodgood's hidden life had left him in a dangerous and vulnerable mood--a mood of quickened compassion and outgoing sympathy. He was still determined to force a direct answer from Miss Charters, but already he had formed that answer in his heart, as he for the hour felt no longer the selfish combat of vanity, but the need of charity and gentleness.

In one of the profound moods which color the visible world, he stood at the window of the little sitting-room, awaiting her arrival, looking out on the serried flight of unutterably commonplace roofs, gray and drab with the gray of the turning day. And it seemed to him that this twilight was different from other twilights, heavily weighted down with more of the sadness of inexplicable lives. One tragedy seemed to invoke a thousand tragedies, in the cramped immobility of these inscrutable windows which had not yet begun to warm with the flicker of human cheer. He saw only the brutal struggle to live, and felt only the mystery of suffering, which was still a thing apart from his life. Standing reverently thus, he asked himself two questions which, sooner or later, each man of heart and sensibility puts to himself in the awakening to conscious existence:

"Why do they go on?"

"What is my justification?"

And in his heart, still young and stirred to sympathy, he felt the beginning of a revolt at what he had been, at his inability to find a satisfying answer to that second question. He no longer awaited the interview in the spirit of strife, but with a sudden feeling of impulsive friendliness which, had he been an older man, might have alarmed him with its dangers. The profound melancholy of youth, violent because unconquered and strange, had him still in its grip when, all at once, he felt an emotion of well-being and returning comfort.

She came into the room and without formal greeting gave him her hand with a welcome in her eyes, as though their friendship were of such strong duration that formalities were out of place.

"Draw the curtains," she said, going to the electric lamp on the table, which woke like a golden sun from the shadows. "It's cozier. Shall we light the fire? Yes, it's more cheery."

"Let me," he said hastily.

"Quite unnecessary."

He watched her sudden stooping movement, that brought the loose, intricate tea-gown about her agile body, outlining the limbs, which had the quick animal grace that is peculiar to the unconquered maiden. Her pose, strong and alive with power and self-reliance, recalled to him sharply the sense of opposition. He was annoyed that she should have done so naturally what he should have done, feeling in her too much self-reliance.

She rose, looking down with a childish delight at the sudden burst and roar of the flame. Then she turned, studying his face. The artist in her made her quickly aware of the remnants of the emotion which had stirred him.

"What is it?" she said, with the gentleness that was tantalizing to him. "You have a strange look."

"Yes," he answered; "I have been behind the scenes."

"What do you mean?"

"I have been with Mrs. Bloodgood all the afternoon--found her at the station as she was leaving."

"Mrs. Bloodgood was running away," she said, puzzled, but with a fear in her eyes that did not escape him.

"What--you did not know!" he exclaimed. "Majendie killed himself this afternoon at two o'clock."

"Majendie--Mrs. Bloodgood!"

She looked at him a moment with a face struck with horror, and then fell back into a chair, seized with the suddenness of the climax.

"I beg your pardon; I thought you knew," he blurted out.

"No, no--nothing. Tell me--tell me all," she said; and he saw that back of her alarm was a significance to her that heightened the effect of the tragedy.