He pushed open the swinging door and found himself in a long corridor
with a tessellated floor, at the end of which, in a brightly-lit
enclosure of plate-glass and mahogany, the night-clerk dozed over a
copy of the _Police Gazette_. The air in the corridor was rich in
reminiscences of yesterday’s dinners, and a bronzed radiator poured a
wave of dry heat into Woburn’s face.
The night-clerk, roused by the swinging of the door, sat watching
Woburn’s approach with the unexpectant eye of one who has full
confidence in his capacity for digesting surprises. Not that there
was anything surprising in Woburn’s appearance; but the night-clerk’s
callers were given to such imaginative flights in explaining their
luggageless arrival in the small hours of the morning, that he fared
habitually on fictions which would have staggered a less experienced
stomach. The night-clerk, whose unwrinkled bloom showed that he throve
on this high-seasoned diet, had a fancy for classifying his applicants
before they could frame their explanations.
“This one’s been locked out,” he said to himself as he mustered Woburn.
Having exercised his powers of divination with his accustomed accuracy
he listened without stirring an eye-lid to Woburn’s statement; merely
replying, when the latter asked the price of a room, “Two-fifty.”
“Very well,” said Woburn, pushing the money under the brass lattice,
“I’ll go up at once; and I want to be called at seven.”
To this the night-clerk proffered no reply, but stretching out his hand
to press an electric button, returned apathetically to the perusal of
the _Police Gazette_. His summons was answered by the appearance of a
man in shirt-sleeves, whose rumpled head indicated that he had recently
risen from some kind of makeshift repose; to him the night-clerk tossed
a key, with the brief comment, “Ninety-seven;” and the man, after a
sleepy glance at Woburn, turned on his heel and lounged toward the
staircase at the back of the corridor.
Woburn followed and they climbed three flights in silence. At each
landing Woburn glanced down, the long passage-way lit by a lowered
gas-jet, with a double line of boots before the doors, waiting, like
yesterday’s deeds, to carry their owners so many miles farther on the
morrow’s destined road. On the third landing the man paused, and after
examining the number on the key, turned to the left, and slouching past
three or four doors, finally unlocked one and preceded Woburn into a
room lit only by the upward gleam of the electric globes in the street
below.
The man felt in his pockets; then he turned to Woburn. “Got a match?” he
asked.
Woburn politely offered him one, and he applied it to the gas-fixture
which extended its jointed arm above an ash dressing-table with a
blurred mirror fixed between two standards. Having performed this office
with an air of detachment designed to make Woburn recognize it as an
act of supererogation, he turned without a word and vanished down the
passage-way.
Woburn, after an indifferent glance about the room, which seemed to
afford the amount of luxury generally obtainable for two dollars and a
half in a fashionable quarter of New York, locked the door and sat down
at the ink-stained writing-table in the window. Far below him lay the
pallidly-lit depths of the forsaken thoroughfare. Now and then he heard
the jingle of a horsecar and the ring of hoofs on the freezing pavement,
or saw the lonely figure of a policeman eclipsing the illumination of
the plate-glass windows on the opposite side of the street. He sat thus
for a long time, his elbows on the table, his chin between his hands,
till at length the contemplation of the abandoned sidewalks, above which
the electric globes kept Stylites-like vigil, became intolerable to him,
and he drew down the window-shade, and lit the gas-fixture beside the
dressing-table. Then he took a cigar from his case, and held it to the
flame.
The passage from the stinging freshness of the night to the stale
overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked the
preternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcely
conscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have
thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the hour fixed
for his departure. He thought it safest, instead, to seat himself once
more by the table, in the most uncomfortable chair that he could find,
and smoke one cigar after another till the first sign of dawn should
give an excuse for action.
He had laid his watch on the table before him, and was gazing at the
hour-hand, and trying to convince himself by so doing that he was still
wide awake, when a noise in the adjoining room suddenly straightened him
in his chair and banished all fear of sleep.
There was no mistaking the nature of the noise; it was that of a woman’s
sobs. The sobs were not loud, but the sound reached him distinctly
through the frail door between the two rooms; it expressed an utter
abandonment to grief; not the cloud-burst of some passing emotion, but
the slow down-pour of a whole heaven of sorrow.
Woburn sat listening. There was nothing else to be done; and at least
his listening was a mute tribute to the trouble he was powerless to
relieve. It roused, too, the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was
touched by the chance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a great city
throbbing with multifarious passions. It would have been more in keeping
with the irony of life had he found himself next to a mother singing her
child to sleep: there seemed a mute commiseration in the hand that had
led him to such neighborhood.
Gradually the sobs subsided, with pauses betokening an effort at
self-control. At last they died off softly, like the intermittent drops
that end a day of rain.
“Poor soul,” Woburn mused, “she’s got the better of it for the time. I
wonder what it’s all about?”
At the same moment he heard another sound that made him jump to his
feet. It was a very low sound, but in that nocturnal silence which gives
distinctness to the faintest noises, Woburn knew at once that he had
heard the click of a pistol.
“What is she up to now?” he asked himself, with his eye on the door
between the two rooms; and the brightly-lit keyhole seemed to reply with
a glance of intelligence. He turned out the gas and crept to the door,
pressing his eye to the illuminated circle.
After a moment or two of adjustment, during which he seemed to himself
to be breathing like a steam-engine, he discerned a room like his own,
with the same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the same table
in the window. This table was directly in his line of vision; and beside
it stood a woman with a small revolver in her hands. The lights
being behind her, Woburn could only infer her youth from her slender
silhouette and the nimbus of fair hair defining her head. Her dress
seemed dark and simple, and on a chair under one of the gas-jets lay a
jacket edged with cheap fur and a small travelling-bag. He could not see
the other end of the room, but something in her manner told him that she
was alone. At length she put the revolver down and took up a letter that
lay on the table. She drew the letter from its envelope and read it
over two or three times; then she put it back, sealing the envelope, and
placing it conspicuously against the mirror of the dressing-table.
There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show that Woburn felt
sure that her next act would be to return to the table and take up the
revolver; but he had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After putting
the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, standing a little
sideways, so that he could now see her face, which was distinctly
pretty, but of a small and unelastic mould, inadequate to the expression
of the larger emotions. For some moments she continued to study herself
with the expression of a child looking at a playmate who has been
scolded; then she turned to the table and lifted the revolver to her
forehead.
A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her darting backward to the
opposite side of the room. Woburn had broken down the door, and stood
torn and breathless in the breach.
“Oh!” she gasped, pressing closer to the wall.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said; “I saw what you were going to do and I
had to stop you.”
She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he saw the terrified
flutter of her breast; then she said, “No one can stop me for long. And
besides, what right have you--”
“Every one has the right to prevent a crime,” he returned, the sound of
the last word sending the blood to his forehead.
“I deny it,” she said passionately. “Every one who has tried to live and
failed has the right to die.”
“Failed in what?”
“In everything!” she replied. They stood looking at each other in
silence.
At length he advanced a few steps.
“You’ve no right to say you’ve failed,” he said, “while you have breath
to try again.” He drew the revolver from her hand.
“Try again--try again? I tell you I’ve tried seventy times seven!”
“What have you tried?”
She looked at him with a certain dignity.
“I don’t know,” she said, “that you’ve any right to question me--or to
be in this room at all--” and suddenly she burst into tears.
The discrepancy between her words and action struck the chord which, in
a man’s heart, always responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She
dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in her hands, while
Woburn watched the course of her weeping.
At last she lifted her head, looking up between drenched lashes.
“Please go away,” she said in childish entreaty.
“How can I?” he returned. “It’s impossible that I should leave you in
this state. Trust me--let me help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and
let’s see if there’s no other way out of it.”
Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and it was now
trembling with profoundest pity. Its note seemed to reassure the girl,
for she said, with a beginning of confidence in her own tones, “But I
don’t even know who you are.”
Woburn was silent: the words startled him. He moved nearer to her and
went on in the same quieting tone.
“I am a man who has suffered enough to want to help others. I don’t want
to know any more about you than will enable me to do what I can for you.
I’ve probably seen more of life than you have, and if you’re willing to
tell me your troubles perhaps together we may find a way out of them.”
She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver.
“That’s the only way out,” she said.
“How do you know? Are you sure you’ve tried every other?”
“Perfectly sure, I’ve written and written, and humbled myself like a
slave before him, and she won’t even let him answer my letters. Oh, but
you don’t understand”--she broke off with a renewal of weeping.
“I begin to understand--you’re sorry for something you’ve done?”
“Oh, I’ve never denied that--I’ve never denied that I was wicked.”
“And you want the forgiveness of some one you care about?”
“My husband,” she whispered.
“You’ve done something to displease your husband?”
“To displease him? I ran away with another man!” There was a dismal
exultation in her tone, as though she were paying Woburn off for having
underrated her offense.
She had certainly surprised him; at worst he had expected a quarrel over
a rival, with a possible complication of mother-in-law. He wondered
how such helpless little feet could have taken so bold a step; then he
remembered that there is no audacity like that of weakness.
He was wondering how to lead her to completer avowal when she added
forlornly, “You see there’s nothing else to do.”
Woburn took a turn in the room. It was certainly a narrower strait than
he had foreseen, and he hardly knew how to answer; but the first flow of
confession had eased her, and she went on without farther persuasion.
“I don’t know how I could ever have done it; I must have been downright
crazy. I didn’t care much for Joe when I married him--he wasn’t exactly
handsome, and girls think such a lot of that. But he just laid down and
worshipped me, and I _was_ getting fond of him in a way; only the life
was so dull. I’d been used to a big city--I come from Detroit--and
Hinksville is such a poky little place; that’s where we lived; Joe
is telegraph-operator on the railroad there. He’d have been in a much
bigger place now, if he hadn’t--well, after all, he behaved perfectly
splendidly about _that_.
“I really was getting fond of him, and I believe I should have realized
in time how good and noble and unselfish he was, if his mother hadn’t
been always sitting there and everlastingly telling me so. We learned in
school about the Athenians hating some man who was always called just,
and that’s the way I felt about Joe. Whenever I did anything that wasn’t
quite right his mother would say how differently Joe would have done it.
And she was forever telling me that Joe didn’t approve of this and that
and the other. When we were alone he approved of everything, but when
his mother was round he’d sit quiet and let her say he didn’t. I knew
he’d let me have my way afterwards, but somehow that didn’t prevent my
getting mad at the time.
“And then the evenings were so long, with Joe away, and Mrs. Glenn
(that’s his mother) sitting there like an image knitting socks for the
heathen. The only caller we ever had was the Baptist minister, and he
never took any more notice of me than if I’d been a piece of furniture.
I believe he was afraid to before Mrs. Glenn.”
She paused breathlessly, and the tears in her eyes were now of anger.
“Well?” said Woburn gently.
“Well--then Arthur Hackett came along; he was travelling for a big
publishing firm in Philadelphia. He was awfully handsome and as clever
and sarcastic as anything. He used to lend me lots of novels and
magazines, and tell me all about society life in New York. All the girls
were after him, and Alice Sprague, whose father is the richest man in
Hinksville, fell desperately in love with him and carried on like a
fool; but he wouldn’t take any notice of her. He never looked at anybody
but me.” Her face lit up with a reminiscent smile, and then clouded
again. “I hate him now,” she exclaimed, with a change of tone that
startled Woburn. “I’d like to kill him--but he’s killed me instead.
“Well, he bewitched me so I didn’t know what I was doing; I was like
somebody in a trance. When he wasn’t there I didn’t want to speak to
anybody; I used to lie in bed half the day just to get away from folks;
I hated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. When he came back the
days went like a flash; we were together nearly all the time. I knew
Joe’s mother was spying on us, but I didn’t care. And at last it seemed
as if I couldn’t let him go away again without me; so one evening he
stopped at the back gate in a buggy, and we drove off together and
caught the eastern express at River Bend. He promised to bring me to New
York.” She paused, and then added scornfully, “He didn’t even do that!”
Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching her attentively. It
was curious to note how her passion was spending itself in words; he saw
that she would never kill herself while she had any one to talk to.
“That was five months ago,” she continued, “and we travelled all through
the southern states, and stayed a little while near Philadelphia, where
his business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then he was sent
to Albany, and we stayed a week at the Delavan House. One afternoon I
went out to do some shopping, and when I came back he was gone. He
had taken his trunk with him, and hadn’t left any address; but in my
travelling-bag I found a fifty-dollar bill, with a slip of paper on
which he had written, ‘No use coming after me; I’m married.’ We’d been
together less than four months, and I never saw him again.
“At first I couldn’t believe it. I stayed on, thinking it was a joke--or
that he’d feel sorry for me and come back. But he never came and never
wrote me a line. Then I began to hate him, and to see what a wicked fool
I’d been to leave Joe. I was so lonesome--I thought I’d go crazy. And I
kept thinking how good and patient Joe had been, and how badly I’d
used him, and how lovely it would be to be back in the little parlor
at Hinksville, even with Mrs. Glenn and the minister talking about
free-will and predestination. So at last I wrote to Joe. I wrote him the
humblest letters you ever read, one after another; but I never got any
answer.
“Finally I found I’d spent all my money, so I sold my watch and my
rings--Joe gave me a lovely turquoise ring when we were married--and
came to New York. I felt ashamed to stay alone any longer in Albany; I
was afraid that some of Arthur’s friends, who had met me with him on
the road, might come there and recognize me. After I got here I wrote
to Susy Price, a great friend of mine who lives at Hinksville, and she
answered at once, and told me just what I had expected--that Joe was
ready to forgive me and crazy to have me back, but that his mother
wouldn’t let him stir a step or write me a line, and that she and the
minister were at him all day long, telling him how bad I was and what
a sin it would be to forgive me. I got Susy’s letter two or three days
ago, and after that I saw it was no use writing to Joe. He’ll never
dare go against his mother and she watches him like a cat. I suppose I
deserve it--but he might have given me another chance! I know he would
if he could only see me.”
Her voice had dropped from anger to lamentation, and her tears again
overflowed.
Woburn looked at her with the pity one feels for a child who is suddenly
confronted with the result of some unpremeditated naughtiness.
“But why not go back to Hinksville,” he suggested, “if your husband is
ready to forgive you? You could go to your friend’s house, and once your
husband knows you are there you can easily persuade him to see you.”
“Perhaps I could--Susy thinks I could. But I can’t go back; I haven’t
got a cent left.”
“But surely you can borrow money? Can’t you ask your friend to forward
you the amount of your fare?”
She shook her head.
“Susy ain’t well off; she couldn’t raise five dollars, and it costs
twenty-five to get back to Hinksville. And besides, what would become of
me while I waited for the money? They’ll turn me out of here to-morrow;
I haven’t paid my last week’s board, and I haven’t got anything to give
them; my bag’s empty; I’ve pawned everything.”
“And don’t you know any one here who would lend you the money?”
“No; not a soul. At least I do know one gentleman; he’s a friend of
Arthur’s, a Mr. Devine; he was staying at Rochester when we were there.
I met him in the street the other day, and I didn’t mean to speak to
him, but he came up to me, and said he knew all about Arthur and how
meanly he had behaved, and he wanted to know if he couldn’t help me--I
suppose he saw I was in trouble. He tried to persuade me to go and stay
with his aunt, who has a lovely house right round here in Twenty-fourth
Street; he must be very rich, for he offered to lend me as much money as
I wanted.”
“You didn’t take it?”
“No,” she returned; “I daresay he meant to be kind, but I didn’t care to
be beholden to any friend of Arthur’s. He came here again yesterday, but
I wouldn’t see him, so he left a note giving me his aunt’s address and
saying she’d have a room ready for me at any time.”
There was a long silence; she had dried her tears and sat looking at
Woburn with eyes full of helpless reliance.
“Well,” he said at length, “you did right not to take that man’s
money; but this isn’t the only alternative,” he added, pointing to the
revolver.
“I don’t know any other,” she answered wearily. “I’m not smart enough to
get employment; I can’t make dresses or do type-writing, or any of the
useful things they teach girls now; and besides, even if I could get
work I couldn’t stand the loneliness. I can never hold my head up
again--I can’t bear the disgrace. If I can’t go back to Joe I’d rather
be dead.”
“And if you go back to Joe it will be all right?” Woburn suggested with
a smile.
“Oh,” she cried, her whole face alight, “if I could only go back to
Joe!”
They were both silent again; Woburn sat with his hands in his pockets
gazing at the floor. At length his silence seemed to rouse her to the
unwontedness of the situation, and she rose from her seat, saying in a
more constrained tone, “I don’t know why I’ve told you all this.”
“Because you believed that I would help you,” Woburn answered, rising
also; “and you were right; I’m going to send you home.”
She colored vividly. “You told me I was right not to take Mr. Devine’s
money,” she faltered.
“Yes,” he answered, “but did Mr. Devine want to send you home?”
“He wanted me to wait at his aunt’s a little while first and then write
to Joe again.”
“I don’t--I want you to start tomorrow morning; this morning, I mean.
I’ll take you to the station and buy your ticket, and your husband can
send me back the money.”
“Oh, I can’t--I can’t--you mustn’t--” she stammered, reddening and
paling. “Besides, they’ll never let me leave here without paying.”
“How much do you owe?”
“Fourteen dollars.”
“Very well; I’ll pay that for you; you can leave me your revolver as a
pledge. But you must start by the first train; have you any idea at what
time it leaves the Grand Central?”
“I think there’s one at eight.”
He glanced at his watch.
“In less than two hours, then; it’s after six now.”
She stood before him with fascinated eyes.
“You must have a very strong will,” she said. “When you talk like that
you make me feel as if I had to do everything you say.”
“Well, you must,” said Woburn lightly. “Man was made to be obeyed.”
“Oh, you’re not like other men,” she returned; “I never heard a voice
like yours; it’s so strong and kind. You must be a very good man; you
remind me of Joe; I’m sure you’ve got just such a nature; and Joe is the
best man I’ve ever seen.”
Woburn made no reply, and she rambled on, with little pauses and fresh
bursts of confidence.
“Joe’s a real hero, you know; he did the most splendid thing you ever
heard of. I think I began to tell you about it, but I didn’t finish.
I’ll tell you now. It happened just after we were married; I was mad
with him at the time, I’m afraid, but now I see how splendid he was.
He’d been telegraph operator at Hinksville for four years and was hoping
that he’d get promoted to a bigger place; but he was afraid to ask for
a raise. Well, I was very sick with a bad attack of pneumonia and one
night the doctor said he wasn’t sure whether he could pull me through.
When they sent word to Joe at the telegraph office he couldn’t stand
being away from me another minute. There was a poor consumptive boy
always hanging round the station; Joe had taught him how to operate,
just to help him along; so he left him in the office and tore home for
half an hour, knowing he could get back before the eastern express came
along.
“He hadn’t been gone five minutes when a freight-train ran off the rails
about a mile up the track. It was a very still night, and the boy heard
the smash and shouting, and knew something had happened. He couldn’t
tell what it was, but the minute he heard it he sent a message over
the wires like a flash, and caught the eastern express just as it was
pulling out of the station above Hinksville. If he’d hesitated a second,
or made any mistake, the express would have come on, and the loss of
life would have been fearful. The next day the Hinksville papers
were full of Operator Glenn’s presence of mind; they all said he’d be
promoted. That was early in November and Joe didn’t hear anything from
the company till the first of January. Meanwhile the boy had gone home
to his father’s farm out in the country, and before Christmas he was
dead. Well, on New Year’s day Joe got a notice from the company saying
that his pay was to be raised, and that he was to be promoted to a
big junction near Detroit, in recognition of his presence of mind in
stopping the eastern express. It was just what we’d both been pining for
and I was nearly wild with joy; but I noticed Joe didn’t say much. He
just telegraphed for leave, and the next day he went right up to Detroit
and told the directors there what had really happened. When he came back
he told us they’d suspended him; I cried every night for a week, and
even his mother said he was a fool. After that we just lived on at
Hinksville, and six months later the company took him back; but I don’t
suppose they’ll ever promote him now.”
Her voice again trembled with facile emotion.
“Wasn’t it beautiful of him? Ain’t he a real hero?” she said. “And I’m
sure you’d behave just like him; you’d be just as gentle about little
things, and you’d never move an inch about big ones. You’d never do a
mean action, but you’d be sorry for people who did; I can see it in your
face; that’s why I trusted you right off.”
Woburn’s eyes were fixed on the window; he hardly seemed to hear her. At
length he walked across the room and pulled up the shade. The electric
lights were dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk-cart
rattled down the street and, like a witch returning late from the
Sabbath, a stray cat whisked into an area. So rose the appointed day.
Woburn turned back, drawing from his pocket the roll of bills which he
had thrust there with so different a purpose. He counted them out, and
handed her fifteen dollars.
“That will pay for your board, including your breakfast this morning,”
he said. “We’ll breakfast together presently if you like; and meanwhile
suppose we sit down and watch the sunrise. I haven’t seen it for years.”
He pushed two chairs toward the window, and they sat down side by side.
The light came gradually, with the icy reluctance of winter; at last
a red disk pushed itself above the opposite house-tops and a long cold
gleam slanted across their window. They did not talk much; there was a
silencing awe in the spectacle.
Presently Woburn rose and looked again at his watch.
“I must go and cover up my dress-coat”, he said, “and you had better put
on your hat and jacket. We shall have to be starting in half an hour.”
As he turned away she laid her hand on his arm.
“You haven’t even told me your name,” she said.
“No,” he answered; “but if you get safely back to Joe you can call me
Providence.”
“But how am I to send you the money?”
“Oh--well, I’ll write you a line in a day or two and give you my
address; I don’t know myself what it will be; I’m a wanderer on the face
of the earth.”
“But you must have my name if you mean to write to me.”
“Well, what is your name?”
“Ruby Glenn. And I think--I almost think you might send the letter right
to Joe’s--send it to the Hinksville station.”
“Very well.”
“You promise?”
“Of course I promise.”
He went back into his room, thinking how appropriate it was that she
should have an absurd name like Ruby. As he re-entered the room, where
the gas sickened in the daylight, it seemed to him that he was returning
to some forgotten land; he had passed, with the last few hours, into a
wholly new phase of consciousness. He put on his fur coat, turning up
the collar and crossing the lapels to hide his white tie. Then he put
his cigar-case in his pocket, turned out the gas, and, picking up his
hat and stick, walked back through the open doorway.
Ruby Glenn had obediently prepared herself for departure and was
standing before the mirror, patting her curls into place. Her eyes were
still red, but she had the happy look of a child that has outslept its
grief. On the floor he noticed the tattered fragments of the letter
which, a few hours earlier, he had seen her place before the mirror.
“Shall we go down now?” he asked.
“Very well,” she assented; then, with a quick movement, she stepped
close to him, and putting her hands on his shoulders lifted her face to
his.
“I believe you’re the best man I ever knew,” she said, “the very
best--except Joe.”
She drew back blushing deeply, and unlocked the door which led into
the passage-way. Woburn picked up her bag, which she had forgotten,
and followed her out of the room. They passed a frowzy chambermaid,
who stared at them with a yawn. Before the doors the row of boots still
waited; there was a faint new aroma of coffee mingling with the smell of
vanished dinners, and a fresh blast of heat had begun to tingle through
the radiators.
In the unventilated coffee-room they found a waiter who had the
melancholy air of being the last survivor of an exterminated race, and
who reluctantly brought them some tea made with water which had not
boiled, and a supply of stale rolls and staler butter. On this meagre
diet they fared in silence, Woburn occasionally glancing at his watch;
at length he rose, telling his companion to go and pay her bill while
he called a hansom. After all, there was no use in economizing his
remaining dollars.
In a few moments she joined him under the portico of the hotel. The
hansom stood waiting and he sprang in after her, calling to the driver
to take them to the Forty-second Street station.
When they reached the station he found a seat for her and went to buy
her ticket. There were several people ahead of him at the window, and
when he had bought the ticket he found that it was time to put her in
the train. She rose in answer to his glance, and together they walked
down the long platform in the murky chill of the roofed-in air. He
followed her into the railway carriage, making sure that she had her
bag, and that the ticket was safe inside it; then he held out his hand,
in its pearl-coloured evening glove: he felt that the people in the
other seats were staring at them.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“Good-bye,” she answered, flushing gratefully. “I’ll never
forget--never. And you _will_ write, won’t you? Promise!”
“Of course, of course,” he said, hastening from the carriage.
He retraced his way along the platform, passed through the dismal
waiting-room and stepped out into the early sunshine. On the sidewalk
outside the station he hesitated awhile; then he strolled slowly down
Forty-second Street and, skirting the melancholy flank of the Reservoir,
walked across Bryant Park. Finally he sat down on one of the benches
near the Sixth Avenue and lit a cigar. The signs of life were
multiplying around him; he watched the cars roll by with their
increasing freight of dingy toilers, the shop-girls hurrying to their
work, the children trudging schoolward, their small vague noses red with
cold, their satchels clasped in woollen-gloved hands. There is nothing
very imposing in the first stirring of a great city’s activities; it
is a slow reluctant process, like the waking of a heavy sleeper; but
to Woburn’s mood the sight of that obscure renewal of humble duties was
more moving than the spectacle of an army with banners.
He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in his case, and
murmuring to himself a line from Hamlet--the saddest, he thought, in the
play--
_For every man hath business and desire_.
Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him feel the pressure of Ruby
Glenn’s revolver in his pocket; it was like a devil’s touch on his
arm, and he sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just four
dollars and fifty cents; but that didn’t matter now. He had no thought
of flight.
For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the park; then the cold
drove him on again, and with the rapidity born of a sudden resolve he
began to walk down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He brushed
past a maid-servant who was washing the vestibule and ran up stairs to
his room. A fire was burning in the grate and his books and photographs
greeted him cheerfully from the walls; the tranquil air of the whole
room seemed to take it for granted that he meant to have his bath and
breakfast and go down town as usual.
He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of his pocket; for
some moments he held it curiously in his hand, bending over to examine
it as Ruby Glenn had done; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small
cabinet, and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire.
After that he went quietly about the usual business of his toilet. In
taking off his dress-coat he noticed the Legion of Honor which Miss
Talcott had given him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole
and tossed it into the fire-place. When he had finished dressing he saw
with surprise that it was nearly ten o’clock. Ruby Glenn was already two
hours nearer home.
Woburn stood looking about the room of which he had thought to take
final leave the night before; among the ashes beneath the grate he
caught sight of a little white heap which symbolized to his fancy the
remains of his brief correspondence with Miss Talcott. He roused himself
from this unseasonable musing and with a final glance at the familiar
setting of his past, turned to face the future which the last hours had
prepared for him.
He went down stairs and stepped out of doors, hastening down the street
towards Broadway as though he were late for an appointment. Every now
and then he encountered an acquaintance, whom he greeted with a nod and
smile; he carried his head high, and shunned no man’s recognition.
At length he reached the doors of a tall granite building honey-combed
with windows. He mounted the steps of the portico, and passing through
the double doors of plate-glass, crossed a vestibule floored with mosaic
to another glass door on which was emblazoned the name of the firm.
This door he also opened, entering a large room with wainscotted
subdivisions, behind which appeared the stooping shoulders of a row of
clerks.
As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man emerged from an inner
office at the opposite end of the room.
At sight of Woburn he stopped short.
“Mr. Woburn!” he exclaimed; then he stepped nearer and added in a low
tone: “I was requested to tell you when you came that the members of the
firm are waiting; will you step into the private office?”