A WALK IN THE PARK
The funeral occurred on Monday. It was an ostentatious affair, with a
long list of honorary pall-bearers, a picked corps of city firemen in
uniform ranged around the casket, and enough money wasted in floral
pillows and sheaves of wheat tied with purple ribbon, to have given all
the hungry children in town a square meal.
Amid all this state Margery moved, stricken and isolated. She went to
the cemetery with Edith, Miss Letitia having sent a message that, having
never broken her neck to see the man living, she wasn't going to do it
to see him dead. The music was very fine, and the eulogy spoke of this
patriot who had served his country so long and so well. "Following the
flag," Fred commented under his breath, "as long as there was an
appropriation attached to it."
And when it was all over, we went back to Fred's until the Fleming house
could be put into order again. It was the best place in the world for
Margery, for, with the children demanding her attention and applause
every minute, she had no time to be blue.
Mrs. Butler arrived that day, which made Fred suspicious that Edith's
plan to bring her, far antedated his consent. But she was there when we
got home from the funeral, and after one glimpse at her thin face and
hollow eyes, I begged Edith to keep her away from Margery, for that day
at least.
Fortunately, Mrs. Butler was exhausted by her journey, and retired to
her room almost immediately. I watched her slender figure go up the
stairs, and, with her black trailing gown and colorless face, she was an
embodiment of all that is lonely and helpless. Fred closed the door
behind her and stood looking at Edith and me.
"I tell you, honey," he declared, "_that_ brought into a cheerful home
is sufficient cause for divorce. Isn't it, Jack?"
"She is ill," Edith maintained valiantly. "She is my cousin, too, which
gives her some claim on me, and my guest, which gives her more."
"Lady-love," Fred said solemnly, "if you do not give me the key to the
cellarette, I shall have a chill. And let me beg this of you: if I ever
get tired of this life, and shuffle off my mortality in a lumber yard,
or a political club, and you go around like that, I shall haunt you. I
swear it."
"Shuffle off," I dared him. "I will see that Edith is cheerful and
happy."
From somewhere above, there came a sudden crash, followed by the
announcement, made by a scared housemaid, that Mrs. Butler had fainted.
Fred sniffed as Edith scurried up-stairs.
"Hipped," he said shortly. "For two cents I'd go up and give her a good
whiff of ammonia--not this aromatic stuff, but the genuine article. That
would make her sit up and take notice. Upon my word, I can't think what
possessed Edith; these spineless, soft-spoken, timid women are leeches
on one's sympathies."
But Mrs. Butler was really ill, and Margery insisted on looking after
her. It was an odd coincidence, the widow of one state treasurer and the
orphaned daughter of his successor; both men had died violent deaths,
in each case when a boiling under the political lid had threatened to
blow it off.
The boys were allowed to have their dinner with the family that evening,
in honor of Mrs. Butler's arrival, and it was a riotous meal. Margery
got back a little of her color. As I sat across from her, and watched
her expressions change, from sadness to resignation, and even gradually
to amusement at the boys' antics, I wondered just how much she knew, or
suspected, that she refused to tell me.
I remembered a woman--a client of mine--who said that whenever she sat
near a railroad track and watched an engine thundering toward her, she
tortured herself by picturing a child on the track, and wondering
whether, under such circumstances, she would risk her life to save the
child.
I felt a good bit that way; I was firmly embarked on the case now, and I
tortured myself with one idea. Suppose I should find Wardrop guilty, and
I should find extenuating circumstances--what would I do? Publish the
truth, see him hanged or imprisoned, and break Margery's heart? Or keep
back the truth, let her marry him, and try to forget that I had had a
hand in the whole wretched business?
After all, I decided to try to stop my imaginary train. Prove Wardrop
innocent, I reasoned with myself, get to the bottom of this thing, and
then--it would be man and man. A fair field and no favor. I suppose my
proper attitude, romantically taken, was to consider Margery's
engagement ring an indissoluble barrier. But this was not romance; I was
fighting for my life happiness, and as to the ring--well, I am of the
opinion that if a man really loves a woman, and thinks he can make her
happy, he will tell her so if she is strung with engagement rings to the
ends of her fingers. Dangerous doctrine? Well, this is not propaganda.
Tuesday found us all more normal. Mrs. Butler had slept some, and very
commendably allowed herself to be tea'd and toasted in bed. The boys
were started to kindergarten, after ten minutes of frenzied cap-hunting.
Margery went with me along the hall when I started for the office.
"You have not learned anything?" she asked cautiously, glancing back to
Edith, at the telephone calling the grocer frantically for the Monday
morning supply of soap and starch.
"Not much," I evaded. "Nothing definite, anyhow. Margery, you are not
going back to the Monmouth Avenue house again, are you?"
"Not just yet; I don't think I could. I suppose, later, it will have to
be sold, but not at once. I shall go to Aunt Letitia's first."
"Very well," I said. "Then you are going to take a walk with me this
afternoon in the park. I won't take no; you need the exercise, and I
need--to talk to you," I finished lamely.
When she had agreed I went to the office. It was not much after nine,
but, to my surprise, Burton was already there. He had struck up an
acquaintance with Miss Grant, the stenographer, and that usually frigid
person had melted under the warmth of his red hair and his smile. She
was telling him about her sister's baby having the whooping-cough, when
I went in.
"I wish I had studied law," he threw at me. "'What shall it profit a man
to become a lawyer and lose his own soul?' as the psalmist says. I like
this ten-to-four business."
When we had gone into the inner office, and shut out Miss Grant and the
whooping-cough, he was serious instantly.
"Well," he said, sitting on the radiator and dangling his foot, "I guess
we've got Wardrop for theft, anyhow."
"Theft?" I inquired.
"Well, larceny, if you prefer legal terms. I found where he sold the
pearls--in Plattsburg, to a wholesale jeweler named, suggestively,
Cashdollar."
"Then," I said conclusively, "if he took the pearls and sold them, as
sure as I sit here, he took the money out of that Russia leather bag."
Burton swung his foot rhythmically against the pipes.
"I'm not so darned sure of it," he said calmly.
If he had any reason, he refused to give it. I told him, in my turn, of
Carter's escape, aided by the police, and he smiled. "For a suicide it's
causing a lot of excitement," he remarked. When I told him the little
incident of the post-office, he was much interested.
"The old lady's in it, somehow," he maintained. "She may have been
lending Fleming money, for one thing. How do you know it wasn't her
hundred thousand that was stolen?"
"I don't think she ever had the uncontrolled disposal of a dollar in her
life."
"There's only one thing to do," Burton said finally, "and that is, find
Miss Jane. If she's alive, she can tell something. I'll stake my
fountain pen on that--and it's my dearest possession on earth, next to
my mother. If Miss Jane is dead--well, somebody killed her, and it's
time it was being found out."
"It's easy enough to say find her."
"It's easy enough to find her," he exploded. "Make a noise about it;
send up rockets. Put a half-column ad in every paper in town, or--better
still--give the story to the reporters and let them find her for you.
I'd do it, if I wasn't tied up with this Fleming case. Describe her, how
she walked, what she liked to eat, what she wore--in this case what she
didn't wear. Lord, I wish I had that assignment! In forty-eight hours
she will have been seen in a hundred different places, and one of them
will be right. It will be a question of selection--that is, if she is
alive."
In spite of his airy tone, I knew he was serious, and I felt he was
right. The publicity part of it I left to him, and I sent a special
delivery that morning to Bellwood, asking Miss Letitia to say nothing
and to refer reporters to me. I had already been besieged with them,
since my connection with the Fleming case, and a few more made no
difference.
Burton attended to the matter thoroughly. The one o'clock edition of an
afternoon paper contained a short and vivid scarlet account of Miss
Jane's disappearance. The evening editions were full, and while vague as
to the manner of her leaving, were minute as regarded her personal
appearance and characteristics.
To escape the threatened inundation of the morning paper men, I left the
office early, and at four o'clock Margery and I stepped from a hill car
into the park. She had been wearing a short, crepe-edged veil, but once
away from the gaze of the curious, she took it off. I was glad to see
she had lost the air of detachment she had worn for the last three days.
"Hold your shoulders well back," I directed, when we had found an
isolated path, "and take long breaths. Try breathing in while I count
ten."
She was very tractable--unusually so, I imagined, for her. We swung
along together for almost a half-hour, hardly talking. I was content
merely to be with her, and the sheer joy of the exercise after her
enforced confinement kept her silent. When she began to flag a little I
found a bench, and we sat down together. The bench had been lately
painted, and although it seemed dry enough, I spread my handkerchief for
her to sit on. Whereupon she called me "Sir Walter," and at the familiar
jest we laughed like a pair of children.
I had made the stipulation that, for this one time, her father's death
and her other troubles should be taboo, and we adhered to it
religiously. A robin in the path was industriously digging out a worm;
he had tackled a long one, and it was all he could manage. He took the
available end in his beak and hopped back with the expression of one who
sets his jaws and determines that this which should be, is to be. The
worm stretched into a pinkish and attenuated line, but it neither broke
nor gave.
"Horrid thing!" Margery said. "That is a disgraceful, heartless
exhibition."
"The robin is a parent," I reminded her. "It is precisely the same as
Fred, who twists, jerks, distorts and attenuates the English language in
his magazine work, in order to have bread and ice-cream and jelly cake
for his two blooming youngsters."
She had taken off her gloves, and sat with her hands loosely clasped in
her lap.
"I wish some one depended on me," she said pensively. "It's a terrible
thing to feel that it doesn't matter to any one--not vitally,
anyhow--whether one is around or not. To have all my responsibilities
taken away at once, and just to drift around, like this--oh, it's
dreadful."
"You were going to be good," I reminded her.
"I didn't promise to be cheerful," she returned. "Besides my father,
there was only one person in the world who cared about me, and I don't
know where she is. Dear Aunt Jane!"
The sunlight caught the ring on her engagement finger, and she flushed
suddenly as she saw me looking at it. We sat there for a while saying
nothing; the long May afternoon was coming to a close. The paths began
to fill with long lines of hurrying home-seekers, their day in office or
factory at an end.
Margery got up at last and buttoned her coat. Then impulsively she held
out her hand to me.
"You have been more than kind to me," she said hurriedly. "You have
taken me into your home--and helped me through these dreadful days--and
I will never forget it; never."
"I am not virtuous," I replied, looking down at her. "I couldn't help
it. You walked into my life when you came to my office--was it only last
week? The evil days are coming, I suppose, but just now nothing matters
at all, save that you are you, and I am I."
She dropped her veil quickly, and we went back to the car. The prosaic
world wrapped us around again; there was a heavy odor of restaurant
coffee in the air; people bumped and jolted past us. To me they were
only shadows; the real world was a girl in black and myself, and the
girl wore a betrothal ring which was not mine.