Chapter V: Part 5

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.

And now came this first stirring of resurrection. It hurt me. I didn’t want it. It was like the return of life to a frozen limb. Numbness was preferable to anguish.

“Lovey,” I said, as the old man hung about me when I was undressing that night, “how would you feel if one of your daughters—”

He raised himself from the task of pulling off my boots, which to humor him I allowed him to perform, and looked at me in terror.

“They ain’t—they ain’t after me?”

“No, no! But suppose they were—wouldn’t you like to see them?”

He dropped the boot he held in his hand.

“Y’ain’t goin’ to ’ave them ’unted up for me, Slim?”

“I don’t know anything about them, Lovey. That isn’t my point at all. But suppose—just suppose—you could see them again; would you do it?”

He shook his bald head.

“They’re dead to me. I’m dead to them. If we was to see each other now ’twouldn’t be nothink but diggin’ up a corpse.”

“Nothink but diggin’ up a corpse,” I repeated to myself as I turned east from Fifth Avenue, leaving the brown trees of the Park behind me, and took the few steps necessary to reach my uncle Van Elstine’s door. He had married my mother’s sister, and during the lifetime of my aunt the families had been fairly intimate. Of late years they had drifted apart, as families will, though touch-and-go relations were still maintained.

I have to admit that while waiting for Annette in the library up-stairs I was nervous. I was coming back to that family life in which I should have interests, affections, cares, responsibilities. For the past three years I had had no one to think of but myself; and if in that freedom there were heartaches, there were no complexities.

Though it was not yet dark, the curtains were drawn and the room was lighted not only by a shaded lamp, but by the flicker of a fire. When Annette, wearing a tea-gown, appeared at last in the doorway she stood for a second to examine me.

“Why, Jack!” she exclaimed, then. “I didn’t know you were in New York. Have you brought Frank with you?”

“I am Frank,” I laughed, going forward to offer my hand. “I didn’t know Jack and I were so much alike. But you’re the second person who has said it within a few days.”

“It’s your mustache, I think,” she explained as we shook hands. “I never saw you wear one before.”

“I never did.”

“Do sit down. They’ll bring tea in a minute. I’m so glad to see you. But if it’s not a rude question, tell me why you’ve been here all this time and never let me know.”

It would be difficult to define the conditions which made Annette at the age of thirty-three what Cantyre styled one of the smartest women in New York, but the minute you saw her you felt that it was so. My uncle Van Elstine was only comfortably off; their house was not large; though they entertained a good deal, their manner of living was not showy. But my aunt Van Elstine had established the tradition—some women have the art of doing it—that whatever she had and did and said was “the thing,” and Annette, as her only child and heiress, had kept it up.

As far as I could understand the matter, which had been explained to me once or twice, my aunt was exclusive. In the rush of the newly come and the rise of the newly rich, which marked the last quarter of the nineteenth century in New York, she and a few like-minded friends had made it their business to pick and choose and form what might literally be called an _élite_. By 1913, however, the _élite_ was not only formed but founded on a rock as firm as the granite of Manhattan, and Annette’s picking and choosing could be on another principle. Hers was that more civilized American tendency to know every one worth knowing, which is still largely confined, so they tell me, to Washington and New York. Where her mother had withdrawn Annette went forward. Her _flair_ for the important or the soon to be important was unerring. Hers was one of the few drawing-rooms through which every one interesting, both domestic and foreign, was bound at some time to pass. Being frankly and unrestrainedly curious, she kept in touch with the small as well as with the great, with the young as well as with the old, maintaining an enormous correspondence, and getting out of her correspondents every ounce of entertainment they could yield her. On her side she repaid them by often lending them a helping hand.

The warmth of her greeting now was due not to the fact that I was her cousin, but to her belief that I had been up to something. It was always those who had been up to something with whom she was most eager to come heart to heart. Without temptations of her own, as far as I could ever see, she got from the indiscretions of others the same sort of pleasure that a scientist finds in studying the wrigglings of microbes under a microscope.

Having some inkling of this, I answered her questions not untruthfully, but with reservations, saying that I had not come to see her because I had been down on my luck.

“And how did you come to be down on your luck?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“You don’t look it now.”

“I’ve been doing better lately. I’ve made two or three friends who’ve given me a hand.” Carrying the attack in her direction, I asked, “How did you hear that I was in New York?”

“Hilda Grace told me. She said you’d been working on that memorial of hers. She thought it awfully strange—you won’t think me rude in repeating it?—that a man like you should be only in a secondary position.”

“If she knew how glad I was to get that—”

She changed the subject abruptly.

“When did you last hear from home?”

I thought it sufficient to say: “Not for a long time. I may as well admit that nowadays I never hear from home at all.”

“And, if it’s not a rude question, why don’t you?”

“Partly, I suppose, because I don’t write.”

“So I understood from Jack. But, Frank dear, do you think it kind?”

I broke in with the question, the answer to which I had really come to get, “When did you last see Jack?”

“About eighteen months ago; just before he was married. He knew you were somewhere about, but he wasn’t confidential on the subject.”

“No; he wouldn’t be. Did he seem all right?”

“Quite; and awfully in love with Mary Sweet. What’s she like, really?”

I described my new sister-in-law as I remembered her, going on to say: “I suppose you gave Jack a good time. Did you—did you take him about anywhere?”

“Let me see. I took him to—where was it? I took him to the Wynfords’—and—and—oh, yes!—to the Barrys’. And it’s too funny! I really think Regina fell in love with him at first sight. For a month or two she questioned me about him every time we met. Then all of a sudden she stopped. If she was struck by the thunderbolt, as the French put it—well, all I can say is that it serves her right.”

“Serves her right—what for?”

“Oh, the way she’s carried on. It’s disgraceful. Do you know her? Her father is an architect, like you.”

Annette’s round, dusky face, which had no beauty but a quick, dimpling play of expression, was one that easily betrayed her ruling passion of curiosity. It was now so alight with anticipation that I tried to be more than ever casual.

“I’ve—I’ve just met her.”

“Where?”

“Once at the memorial, when she came with Mrs. Grace; and a few nights ago I dined with her at the Coningsbys’.”

“I wonder she didn’t take you for Jack.”

To this I was not obliged to make a response for the reason that, the man having arrived with the tea, Annette had to give her attention to the placing of the tray.

When I had taken a cup of tea from her hand I created a diversion with the question, “What did you mean by saying the way she carried on was disgraceful?”

“Why, the way she gets engaged and disengaged. It’s been three times in as many years, and goodness knows how many more experiments—”

“I suppose she’s trying to find the right man.”

“It’s pretty hard on those she takes up and puts down in the process. She’ll get left in the end, you’ll see if she doesn’t.”

“Isn’t it better to get left than to marry the wrong man?”

“The very day I took Jack to see her she’d broken off her engagement to Jim Hunter. I didn’t know it at the time. It was two or three days later before it came out. If I had known it and told Jack—”

“Well, what then?”

“Oh, I don’t say anything. They were awfully taken with each other. But I’m glad he was saved. If he hadn’t gone straight back to Montreal he might now be in the place of poor Stephen Cantyre.”

“I see a good deal of Cantyre.”

“So I understand.”

“Who told you?”

“Elsie Coningsby.”

“You seem to have got a good deal of information about me all of a sudden.”

“Because you’ve dropped right into the little circle in which we all know one another with a kind of village-like intimacy. New York is really a congeries of villages.”

“But any one could see that Cantyre would never make a husband for a high-spirited girl like Miss Barry.”

“How do you know she’s high-spirited, if it’s not a rude question?”

“Oh, one can tell.”

“You’ve seen her only twice. You must have noticed her very particularly.”

“I’ve noticed Cantyre very particularly; and just as he wouldn’t make her the right kind of husband she wouldn’t make him the right kind of wife.”

When Annette said anything in which there was a special motive a series of concentric shadows fled over her face like ripples from the spot where a stone is thrown into a pool.

“Well, I’m glad you don’t like her, if it isn’t a rude thing to say.”

“What has my liking her or not liking her got to do with it?”

“Nothing but the question of your own safety. If she notices how much you’re like Jack—”

“If she was going to notice that,” I said, boldly, “she would have done it already.”

“And so much the worse for you if she has—unless you’re put on your guard.”

“If you mean put on my guard against the danger of being Cantyre’s successor in a similar experience—”

“That was my idea.”

“Well, I can give you all the reassurance you need, Annette. In the first place, I’ve got no money—”

The relevance of her interruption did not come to me till nearly a year later.

“Frank dear, I must ask you, while I think of it, didn’t you know that your mother was very, very ill?”

All the blood in my body seemed to rush back to my heart and to stay there. We talked no more of Regina Barry, nor of anything but stark fundamental realities. In an instant they became as much the essentials of my life as if Regina Barry had never existed. Annette showed herself much better informed as to my career than she pretended to be, giving me to understand that the day on which I disappeared my mother had received a kind of death-blow. She was of the type to leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness to go after that which was lost; and in her inability to do so she had been seized, so Annette told me, with a mortal pining away. With her decline my father was declining also, and all because of me.

“I’ve been the most awful rotter, Annette,” I groaned, as I staggered to my feet. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Frank, I do know it. That’s why I’ve been so glad to get hold of you at last, and ask you to—to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself by going back?”

She looked up at me and nodded.

“Oh, but how can I?”

_CHAPTER XII_

My question was answered next evening by Beady Lamont.

Greatly to Lovey’s disgust, I made it a point to attend every Saturday meeting at the club.

“Them low fellas ain’t fit company for you, Slim,” he would protest. “What’s the use of cuttin’ out the booze and bein’ rich if you don’t ’old yer ’ead above the likes o’ that?”

“They’ve been awfully white with us, Lovey.”

“They wasn’t no whiter with us than they’d be with anybody else; and don’t three out o’ every five give ’em the blue Peter?”

But though we had this discussion once a week, he always accompanied me to Vandiver Street, showing his disapproval when he got there in sitting by himself and refusing to respond to advances.

I have to confess that I needed the fellowship of men who had been through the same mill as myself, in order to keep up the fight. Again let me repeat it, I am giving you but a faint idea of the struggle I had to make. No evil habit relinquishes its hold easily, and the one to which I had given myself over is perhaps the most tenacious of all. It would be wearisome if I were to keep telling you how near I came at times to courting the old disaster, and how close the shave by which I sheered away; but I never felt safer than a blind man walking along the edge of a cliff. More than once I tore the blue star from my buttonhole, though on each occasion I juggled myself into putting it back again. I juggled myself as I did on the morning when I gazed at the brown-green water flowing beneath Greeley’s Slip. I said that what I didn’t do to-day I would still be free to do to-morrow, thus tiding myself over the worst minutes, if only by a process of postponement.

But among my brothers at the club I heard so many tales of heroic resistance that I grew ashamed of my periods of weakness. What Pyn and Mouse and the Scotchman and the piano-mover and Beady Lamont could do, I told myself, I also could do. Moreover, new men came in, and more than one of the educated type turned to me for help. To a journalist named Edmonds, and to an actor named Prince, I stood as next friend, and only declined to officiate in the same capacity for Headlights, the big-eyed tailor, and the wee bye Daisy, when they returned, penitent, on the ground that I couldn’t watch over more than two men efficiently. With the actor I had no trouble, but twice I had to go down to Stinson’s and pull Edmonds out of a drunken spell. To keep him out was putting me on all my mettle; and in order to maintain my mettle I had to stay out myself. My courage was no whit nobler than that of the man who would turn tail in the battle if it weren’t for shame before his comrades; but there is something to be got out of even such valor as that.

And in the club I got it. Perhaps we were all putting up a bluff. Perhaps those whom I looked upon as heroes were inwardly no more glorious than I. But when the fellows whom I patted on the back patted me in their turn, I was obliged to live up to their commendation. There came, indeed, a time when I couldn’t help seeing that in the eyes of new-comers especially I was taken as a pillar of the club, and knew that I couldn’t fall without bringing down some of the living walls along with me. To be strong enough to hold up my portion of the weight became once more with me then a question of _noblesse oblige_.

The Saturday evening after my talk with Annette was a special one. After the actor, the journalist, Headlights, and Daisy had renewed their pledge for a week, Lovey and I stood up with the Scotchman, the piano-mover, and three or four others, and repeated ours for a month. It probably seems a simple thing to you; but for us who knew what had been our perils during the preceding month and the months preceding that, it was a solemn undertaking. The first vow of all had been relatively easy, since new resolutions have an attraction in themselves. The weekly vows that came afterward were not so fiercely hard, because they were but weekly. When it came to promising for a month—well, I can only say that to us a month had the length which it has to a child. It seemed to stretch on indefinitely ahead of one. The foe, retreating as we pressed forward, was always keeping up a rear-guard fight, and we never woke in the morning without being aware that we might strike an ambush before nightfall. We got so tired of the struggle that we often thought of the relief it would be to be captured; and many a time the resolution was made that when this month was up....

And just at these minutes the chaps who seemed stronger would close in about us, or those who seemed weaker would make some appeal, and when the critical Saturday evening came round we would walk up again, impelled by forces beyond our control, and repledge ourselves.

On such occasions there was always some word spoken to us by men who had fought longer than we had and seen the enemy routed more effectively. That night the speaker to the blue-star men was that club benefactor and favorite, Beady Lamont. He was a huge mass of muscle, turning the scale at three hundred and more. Strength was in every movement when he walked and every pose when he stood still. To my architect’s eye he planted his legs as though they were ancient Egyptian monoliths. Comparatively small round the abdomen, his chest was like a great drum. His arms—but why give a description? Hercules must have been like him, and Goliath of Gath, and Charlemagne, and the Giants that were in Those Days. They said that in drink he used to be terrible; but now his big, jolly face was all a quiver of good-will.

His voice was one of those husky chuckles of which the very gurgles make you laugh. To make you laugh was his principle function in the club. On this evening he began his talk with a string of those amusing, disconnected anecdotes which used to be a feature of after-dinner speeches, somewhat as a boy will splash about in the water before he begins to swim. But when he swam it was with vigor.

“And now some of you blue-star guys is probably hittin’ a question that sooner or later knocks at the nuts of most of us chaps that’s trying to make good all over again. That’s families. Say, ain’t families the deuce? You may run like a hare, or climb like a squirrel, or light away like a skeeter—and your family’ll be at your heels. It’s somethin’ fierce. You can never get away from them; they’ll never let you get away from them. Because”—his voice fell to a tone of solemnity—“because no matter how fast you sprint, or how high you climb, or how graceful you can dodge—you carries your family with you. You can no more turn your back on it than you can on your own stummick. You may refuse to pervide for it, you may treat it cruel, you may leave it to look out for itself; but you can never git away from knowin’ in your heart that if you’re a bum husband or father or son you’re considerable more bum as a man. That’s why the family is after us. Can’t shake ’em off! Got ’em where they won’t be shook off. God A’mighty Hisself put ’em there, and, oh, boys, listen to me and I’ll tell you why.”

He made dabs at his wrists as though to turn up his sleeves, like a man warming to his work. Taking a step or two forward he braced his left hand on his barrel-shaped hip, while his gigantic forefinger was pointed dramatically toward his audience.

“Say, did any of you married guys ever wish to God you was single again? Sure you did! Was any of you chaps with two or three little kids to feed ever sorry for the day when he heard the first of his young ones cry? Surest thing you know! Did any of us with a father and a mother, with brothers and sisters, too, very likely, ever kick because we hadn’t been born an orphan and an only child? You bet your sweet life we did! The drinkin’ man don’t want no hangers-on. He wants to be free. Life ain’t worth a burnt match to him when he’s got other people to think of, and a home to keep up, and can’t spend every penny on hisself. Some of us here to-night has cursed our wives; some of us has beat our children; some of us has cut out father and mother as if they’d never done nothin’ for us, and we could cast off from ’em with no more conscience than a tug’ll cast off from a liner.

“But, boys, when God A’mighty put us into this world He put us into a family first of all. He gives us kindness there, and care, and eddication, and the great big thing that fills the whole universe and that we ain’t got no other name for only love. As soon as we’d got pretty well grown He give us another feeling—one that druv us by and by to go and start a family for ourselves. Most of us went and started one, and them that haven’t done it yet’ll do it before the next few years is out. But, boys, what’s it all for? Everything’s got to be for somethin’ or else it’s just lumberin’ up the ground; and this here matter of families is either the worst or the best thing you’ll find anywhere on earth. If it’s not the best it’s the worst, and it has to be one or t’other.

“Now I stand before you as one who used to think it was the worst. I won’t say nothin’ of my father and mother. Them things is too sacred to be trotted out. But I’ll speak of my wife, because she’s that grateful for what’s been done for me—and everything done for me has been done twice as much, ten times as much, for her—that she’d like me to bring her into whatever I’ve got to say. I’ve known the time when I was as crazy to be quit of my family as a dog to be rid of the tin can tied to his tail. I had a wife, then, and three children; and, O my God! but I thought they was a drag! I couldn’t go nowhere without thinkin’ I ought to be with ’em, and I couldn’t take a drink without knowin’ I had to steal it from my little boy and my two little girls. They was the p’ison of my life. There was nights when I was reelin’ home and I used to hope that the house had been burnt down durin’ the day and they buried in the ashes. That’d leave me free again. Not to have no home—not to have to ante up for no one but myself—was the only thing I ever prayed for. And by gum, but my prayer was answered! One night I come home and found the house empty. My wife had decamped, and left a note that run somethin’ like this: ‘Dear Beady,’ says she, ‘I can’t stand this life no more,’ says she. ‘If it was only me I wouldn’t mind; but I can’t see my children kicked and beat and starved and hated, not by no one.’ And then she signed her name.

“Well, say, boys, most of you has heard what happened to me after that. I sure had one grand time while it lasted—and it lasted just about six months. I saw a man oncet—we was movin’ a party from Harlem to the Bronx—fall down a flight of stairs with a sofa on his back, and he sure did get some pace on. Well, my pace was just about as quick—and as dead easy as he struck the landin’ at the bottom I struck the gutter. Now you know the rest of my story, because some of you guys has had a hand in it.

“But what I want to tell you is this: That when I begun to come to again, as you might say, the first thing I wondered about was the wife and the kids. I couldn’t get ’em out of my mind, nohow. What did I ever have ’em for? I asked myself. Why in hell did I ever get married? Nobody never druv me into it. I did it of my own accord. I went hangin’ after the girl, who had a good place in the kitchen department of a big store, and I never let her have no peace till she said she’d marry me, and did it. Why had I been such a crazy fool? There was days and days, sittin’ right in there in that back room, when I asked myself that; and at last I got the answer. I’m goin’ to tell it to you now, because there’s a lot of you shysters that’s only been a few weeks in the club that’s askin’ yourselves that very same thing. You’ve got wives and kids, the Lord knows where—scattered to the four winds of heaven, for anything you know—and you wish you hadn’t. But, say, don’t you go on wishin’ no such thing; for I’m goin’ to tell you what God A’mighty said to me right there in that back settin’-room.”

He squared himself now, planting his Egyptian monoliths with a force which in itself was a kind of eloquence. His hands were thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his big chest expanded.

“‘Beady,’ God A’mighty says to me, and it was just as if I’d heard His voice, ‘if a man don’t have no one to think about but hisself he becomes the selfishest of all things under the sun. I’m God,’ says He, ‘with nothin’ to do but enj’y myself; and yet if I didn’t have you and the other things I make to care for and think about I wouldn’t have nothin’. I’ve just got to have ’em, for if I didn’t I’d go crazy. So I make beautiful worlds, and grand men, and noble women, and pretty kids, and strong animals, and sweet birds to sing, and nice flowers to bloom, and everything like that. I don’t make nothin’ ugly nor nothin’ bad, nor no sickness nor sufferin’ nor poverty. You guys does all that for yourselves, and I don’t take no rest day nor night tryin’ to show you how not to. Listen to me, Beady,’ says He. ‘Stop thinkin’ about yourself and that awful hulk of a body, and what it wants to eat and especially to drink. Don’t pay no more attention to it than you can help. Say, you’re my son, and you’re just like me. What you want is not the booze; it’s somethin’ outside yourself to think about. I’ve given you a wife and three fine youngsters. Now get out and get after them. Cut out livin’ for yourself and live for them. You must lose your life to find it; and the quickest way to lose your life is not to think about your beastly cravings at all.’

“Well, by gum! boys, if I didn’t take God A’mighty at His word. I says to myself, I’ll prove this thing or bust—and if I was to bust there’d be some explosion. When you fellows had kept me here long enough to let me be pretty nigh sure of myself I went and looked up the wife, and—well, there! I needn’t say no more. Some of you dubs has been up to my little place and you know that Whatever spoke to me that day in that back room is in my little tenement in the Bronx if He ever was anywhere—and that brings me at last to my p’int.

“I’m speakin’ to you blue-star men because you’ve showed pretty well by this time the stuff you’re made of. As long as you was in danger of slippin’ back I wouldn’t say this to you at all. But, say, you’ve weathered the worst of it, so it’s time for me to speak.

“Has any of you a wife? Then go back to her. Have you kids? Then go back to ’em. Have you a father or a mother? Then for God’s sake let them know that you’re doin’ well. Go to ’em—write to ’em—call ’em up on the ’phone—send ’em a telegraph—but don’t let ’em be without the peace o’ mind that’ll come from knowin’ that you’re on your two feet. One of the most mysterious things in this awful mysterious life is the way somebody is always lovin’ somebody. Here in these two rooms is a hundred and sixty-three by actual count of the seediest and most gol-darned boobs that the country can turn out. As we look at each other we can’t help askin’ if any one in their tarnation senses could care for the likes of us. And yet for every bloomin’ one of us you can foot up to eight or ten that’ll have us in their hearts as if we was gold-headed cherubs.