see. But, if he loves his wife, he is the first. And after three years
of being married to Jeanne, and, before that, five years of wanting to
marry Jeanne, Jimmie loved her devotedly, entirely, slavishly. It was
the best thing _he_ did. So, when to Jeanne the change came, her husband
recognized it. What the cause was he could not fathom; he saw only that,
in spite of her impatient denials, she was discontented, restless,
unhappy. Thinking it might be that for too long they had gone "back to
the land," he suggested they might repeat their honeymoon in Paris. The
idea was received only with alarm. Concerning Jeanne, Jimmie decided
secretly to consult a doctor. Meanwhile he bought her a new hunter.
The awakening came one night at a dance at the country club. That
evening Jeanne was filled with unrest, and with Jimmie seemed
particularly aggrieved. Whatever he said gave offense; even his
eagerness to conciliate her was too obvious. With the other men who did
not dance, Jimmie was standing in the doorway when, over the heads of
those looking in from the veranda, he saw the white face and black eyes
of Maddox. Jimmie knew Maddox did not dance, at those who danced had
heard him jeer, and his presence caused him mild surprise. The editor,
leaning forward, unconscious that he was conspicuous, searched the
ballroom with his eyes. They were anxious, unsatisfied; they gave to his
pale face the look of one who is famished. Then suddenly his face lit
and he nodded eagerly. Following the direction of his eyes, Jimmie saw
his wife, over the shoulder of her partner, smiling at Maddox. Her face
was radiant; a great peace had descended upon it.
Jimmie knew just as surely as though Jeanne had told him. He walked out
and sat down on the low wall of the terrace with his back to the
club-house and his legs dangling. Below him in the moonlight lay the
great basin of the golf links, the white rectangle of the polo fields
with the gallows-like goals, and on a hill opposite, above the
tree-tops, the chimneys of his house. He was down for a tennis match the
next morning, and the sight of his home suggested to him only that he
ought to be in bed and asleep.
Then he recognized that he never would sleep again. He went over it from
the beginning, putting the pieces together. He never had liked Maddox,
but he had explained that by the fact that, as Maddox was so much more
intelligent than he, there could be little between them. And it was
because every one said he was so intelligent that he had looked upon his
devotion to Jeanne rather as a compliment. He wondered why already it
had not been plain to him. When Jeanne, who mocked at golf as a refuge
for old age, spent hours with Maddox on the links; when, after she had
declined to ride with her husband, on his return he would find her at
tea with Maddox in front of the wood fire.
That night, when he drove Jeanne home, she still was joyous, radiant; it
was now she who chided him upon being silent.
He waited until noon the next morning and then asked her if it were
true. It was true. Jeanne thanked him for coming to her so honestly and
straightforwardly. She also had been straightforward and honest. They
had waited, she said, not through deceit but only out of consideration
for him.
"Before we told you," Jeanne explained, "we wanted to be quite sure that
_I_ was sure."
The "we" hurt Jimmie like the stab of a rusty knife.
But he said only: "And you _are_ sure? Three years ago you were sure you
loved _me_."
Jeanne's eyes were filled with pity, but she said: "That was three years
ago. I was a child, and now I am a woman. In many ways you have stood
still and I have gone on."
"That's true," said Jimmie; "you always were too good for me."
"_No_ woman is good enough for you," returned Jeanne loyally. "And your
brains are just as good as mine, only you haven't used them. I have
questioned and reached out and gained knowledge of all kinds. I am a
Feminist and you are not. If you were you would understand."
"I don't know even what a Feminist is," said Jimmie, "but I'm glad I'm
not one."
"A Feminist is one," explained Jeanne, "who does not think her life
should be devoted to one person, but to the world."
Jimmie shook his head and smiled miserably.
"_You_ are _my_ world," he said. "The only world I know. The only world
I want to know."
He walked to the fireplace and leaned his elbows on the mantel, and
buried his head in his hands. But that his distress might not hurt
Jeanne, he turned and, to give her courage, smiled.
"If you are going to devote yourself to the World," he asked, "and not
to any one person, why can't I sort of trail along? Why need you leave
me and go with--with some one else?"
"For the work I hope to do," answered Jeanne, "you and I are not suited.
But Proctor and I are suited. He says he never met a woman who
understands him as I do."
"Hell!" said Jimmie. After that he did not speak for some time. Then he
asked roughly:
"He's going to marry you, of course?"
Jeanne flushed crimson.
"Of course!" she retorted. Her blush looked like indignation, and so
Jimmie construed it, but it was the blush of embarrassment. For Maddox
considered the ceremony of marriage an ignoble and barbaric bond. It
degraded the woman, he declared, in making her a slave, and the man in
that he accepted such a sacrifice. Jeanne had not argued with him. Until
she were free, to discuss it with him seemed indecent. But in her own
mind there was no doubt. If she were to be the helpmate of Proctor
Maddox in uplifting the world, she would be Mrs. Proctor Maddox; or,
much as he was to her, each would uplift the world alone. But she did
not see the necessity of explaining all this to Jimmie, so she said: "Of
course!"
"I will see the lawyers to-morrow," said Jimmie. "It will take some time
to arrange, and so," he added hopefully, "you can think it over."
Jeanne exclaimed miserably:
"I have thought of nothing else," she cried, "for six months!"
Jimmie bent above her and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
"I am sorry, so sorry," he said. "If I'd any brains I'd have seen how it
was long ago. Now I'll not waste time. You'll be rid of me as quick as
the courts can fix it."
He started for the door, but Jeanne caught his hand.
"Won't you kiss me, Jimmie?" she said.
Jimmie hesitated unhappily and Jeanne raised her eyes to his.
"Not since we were married, Jimmie," she said, "has any one kissed me
but you."
So Jimmie bent and kissed her. She clung to his sleeve.
"Jimmie," she begged, "you haven't told me you forgive me. Unless you
forgive me I can't go on with it. Tell me you forgive me!"
"Forgive you?" protested Jimmie. "I love you!"
When Jimmie went to the office of the lawyer, who also was his best
friend, and told him that Jennie wanted a separation, that young man
kicked the waste-paper basket against the opposite wall.
"I'll not do it," he protested, "and I won't let you do it, either. Why
should you smear your name and roll in the dirt and play dead to please
Jeanne? If Jeanne thinks I'm going to send you to a Raines hotel and
follow you up with detectives to furnish her with a fake divorce, you
can tell her I won't. What are they coming to?" demanded the best
friend. "What do they want? A man gives a woman all his love, all his
thoughts, gives her his name, his home; only asks to work his brains out
for her, only asks to see her happy. And she calls it 'charity,' calls
herself a 'slave'!" The best friend kicked violently at the place where
the waste-basket had been. "_Give_ them the vote, I say," he shouted.
"It's all they're good for!"
The violence of his friend did not impress Jimmie. As he walked up-town
the only part of the interview he carried with him was that there must
be no scandal. Not on his account. If Jeanne wished it, he assured
himself, in spite of the lawyer, he was willing, in the metaphor of that
gentleman, to "roll in the dirt and play dead." "Play dead!" The words
struck him full in the face. Were he dead and out of the way, Jeanne,
without a touch of scandal, could marry the man she loved. Jimmie halted
in his tracks. He believed he saw the only possible exit. He turned
into a side street, and between the silent houses, closed for the
summer, worked out his plan. For long afterward that city block remained
in his memory; the doctors' signs on the sills, the caretakers seeking
the air, the chauffeurs at the cab rank. For hours they watched the
passing and repassing of the young man, who with bent head and fixed
eyes struck at the pavement with his stick.
That he should really kill himself Jimmie did not for a moment
contemplate. To him self-destruction appeared only as an offense against
nature. On his primitive, out-of-door, fox-hunting mind the ethics of
suicide lay as uneasily as absinthe on the stomach of a baby. But, he
argued, by _pretending_ he were dead, he could set Jeanne free, could
save her from gossip, and could still dream of her, love her, and occupy
with her, if not the same continent, the same world.
He had three problems to solve, and as he considered them he devotedly
wished he might consult with a brain more clever than his own. But an
accomplice was out of the question. Were he to succeed, everybody must
be fooled; no one could share his secret. It was "a lone game, played
alone, and without my partner."
The three problems were: first, in order to protect his wife, to
provide for the suicide a motive other than the attentions of Maddox;
second, to make the suicide look like a real suicide; third, without
later creating suspicion, to draw enough money from the bank to keep
himself alive after he was dead. For his suicide Jeanne must not hold
herself to blame; she must not believe her conduct forced his end; above
every one else, she must be persuaded that in bringing about his death
she was completely innocent. What reasons then were accepted for
suicide?
As to this, Jimmie, refusing to consider the act justified for any
reason, was somewhat at a loss. He had read of men who, owing to loss of
honor, loss of fortune, loss of health, had "gone out." He was
determined he owed it to himself not to go out under a cloud, and he
could not lose his money, as then there would be none to leave Jeanne;
so he must lose his health. As except for broken arms and collar-bones
he never had known a sick-bed, this last was as difficult as the others,
but it must serve. After much consideration he decided he would go
blind. At least he would pretend he was going blind. To give a semblance
of truth to this he would that day consult distinguished oculists and,
in spite of their assurances, would tell them that slowly and surely
his eyesight was failing him. He would declare to them, in the dread of
such a catastrophe, he was of a mind to seek self-destruction. To others
he would confide the secret of his blindness and his resolution not to
survive it. And, later, all of these would remember and testify.
The question of money also was difficult. After his death he no longer
could sign a check or negotiate securities. He must have cash. But if
from the bank he drew large sums of actual money, if he converted stocks
and bonds into cash and a week later disappeared, apparently forever,
questions as to what became of the sums he had collected would arise,
and that his disappearance was genuine would be doubted. This difficulty
made Jimmie for a moment wonder if being murdered for his money, and
having his body concealed by the murderer, would not be better than
suicide. It would, at least, explain the disappearance of the money. But
he foresaw that for his murder some innocent one might be suspected and
hanged. This suggested leaving behind him evidence to show that the one
who murdered him was none other than Proctor Maddox. The idea appealed
to his sense of humor and justice. It made the punishment fit the
crime. Not without reluctance did he abandon it and return to his plan
of suicide. But he recognized that to supply himself with any large sum
of money would lead to suspicion and that he must begin his new life
almost empty-handed. In his new existence he must work.
For that day and until the next afternoon he remained in town, and in
that time prepared the way for his final exit. At a respectable
lodging-house on West Twenty-third Street, near the ferry, he gave his
name as Henry Hull, and engaged a room. To this room, from a department
store he never before had entered, he shipped a trunk and valise marked
with his new initials and filled with clothes to suit his new estate. To
supply himself with money, at banks, clubs, and restaurants he cashed
many checks for small sums. The total of his collections, from places
scattered over all the city, made quite a comfortable bank roll. And in
his box at the safe-deposit vault he came upon a windfall. It was an
emerald bracelet left him by an eccentric aunt who had lived and died in
Paris. The bracelet he had offered to Jeanne, but she did not like it
and had advised him to turn it into money and, as the aged relative had
wished, spend it upon himself. That was three years since, and now were
it missing Jeanne would believe that at some time in the past he had
followed her advice. So he carried the bracelet away with him. For a
year it would keep a single man in comfort.
His next step was to acquaint himself with the nature of the affliction
on account of which he was to destroy himself. At the public library he
collected a half-dozen books treating of blindness, and selected his
particular malady. He picked out glaucoma, and for his purpose it was
admirably suited. For, so Jimmie discovered, in a case of glaucoma the
oculist was completely at the mercy of the patient. Except to the
patient the disease gave no sign. To an oculist a man might say, "Three
nights ago my eyesight played me the following tricks," and from that
the oculist would know the man was stricken with glaucoma; but the eyes
would tell him nothing.
The next morning to four oculists Jimmie detailed his symptoms. Each
looked grave, and all diagnosed his trouble as glaucoma.
"I knew it!" groaned Jimmie, and assured them sooner than go blind he
would jump into the river. They pretended to treat this as an
extravagance, but later, when each of them was interviewed, he
remembered that Mr. Blagwin had threatened to drown himself. On his way
to the train Jimmie purchased a pair of glasses and, in order to invite
questions, in the club car pretended to read with them. When his friends
expressed surprise, Jimmie told them of the oculists he had consulted,
and that they had informed him his case was hopeless. If this proved
true, he threatened to drown himself.
On his return home he explained to Jeanne he had seen the lawyer, and
that that gentleman suggested the less she knew of what was going on the
better. In return Jeanne told him she had sent for Maddox and informed
him that, until the divorce was secured, they had best not be seen
together. The wisdom of this appealed even to Maddox, and already, to
fill in what remained of the summer, he had departed for Bar Harbor. To
Jimmie the relief of his absence was inexpressible. He had given himself
only a week to live, and, for the few days still remaining to him, to be
alone with Jeanne made him miserably happy. The next morning Jimmie
confessed to his wife that his eyes were failing him. The trouble came,
he explained, from a fall he had received the year before
steeplechasing. He had not before spoken of it, as he did not wish to
distress her. The oculists he had consulted gave him no hope. He would
end it, he declared, in the gun-room.
Jeanne was thoroughly alarmed. That her old playmate, lover, husband
should come to such a plight at the very time she had struck him the
hardest blow of all filled her with remorse. In a hundred ways she tried
to make up to him for the loss of herself and for the loss of his eyes.
She became his constant companion; never had she been so kind and so
considerate. They saw no one from the outside, and each day through the
wood paths that circled their house made silent pilgrimages. And each
day on a bench, placed high, where the view was fairest, together, and
yet so far apart, watched the sun sink into the sound.
"These are the times I will remember," said Jimmie; "when--when I am
alone."
The last night they sat on the bench he took out his knife and carved
the date--July, 1913.
"What does that mean?" asked Jeanne.
"It means to-night I seem to love you more and need you more than ever
before," said Jimmie. "That is what it means. Will you remember?"
Jeanne was looking away from him, but she stretched out her hand and
laid it upon his.
"To-morrow I am going to town," said Jimmie, "to see that oculist from
Paris. They say what he tells you is the last word. And, if he says--"
Jeanne swung toward him and with all the jealousy of possession held
his hand. Her own eyes were blurred with tears.
"He will tell you the others are wrong!" she cried. "I know he will. He
must! You--who have always been so kind! God could not be so cruel!"
Jimmie stopped her.
"If I am not to see _you_--"
During his last week at home Jimmie had invented a Doctor Picard, a
distinguished French oculist, who, on a tour of the world, was by the
rarest chance at that moment in New York. According to Jimmie, all the
other oculists had insisted he must consult Picard, and might consider
what Picard said as final. Picard was staying with a friend--Jimmie did
not say where--and after receiving Jimmie was at once taking the train
for San Francisco. As Jimmie had arranged his scenario, it was Picard
who was to deal him his death sentence.
Her husband seemed so entirely to depend on what Picard might say that
Jeanne decided, should the verdict be unfavorable, she had best be at
his side. But, as this would have upset Jimmie's plan, he argued against
it. Should the news be bad, he pointed out, for her to receive it in her
own home would be much easier for both. Jeanne felt she had been
rebuffed, but that, if Jimmie did not want her with him, she no longer
was in a position to insist.
So she contented herself with driving him to the train and, before those
who knew them at the station, kissing him good-by.
Afterward, that she had done so comforted her greatly.
"I'll be praying for you, Jimmie," she whispered. "And, as soon as you
know, you'll--"
So upset was Jimmie by the kiss, and by the knowledge that he was saying
farewell for the last time, that he nearly exposed his purpose.
"I want the last thing I say to you," he stammered, "to be this: that
whatever you do will be right. I love you so that I will understand."
When he arrived in New York, in his own name, he booked a stateroom on
the _Ceramic_. She was listed to sail that evening after midnight. It
was because she departed at that hour that for a week Jimmie had fixed
upon her as furnishing the scene of his exit. During the day he told
several of his friends that the report of the great oculist had been
against him. Later, they recalled that he talked wildly, that he was
deeply despondent. In the afternoon he sent a telegram to Jeanne:
"Verdict unfavorable. Will remain to-night in town.
All love. J."
At midnight he went on board. The decks and saloons were swarming and
noisy with seagoers, many of whom had come to the ship directly from the
theatres and restaurants, the women bareheaded, in evening gowns. Jimmie
felt grateful to them. They gave to the moment of his taking off an air
of gentle gayety. Among those who were sailing, and those who had come
to wish them "bon voyage," many were known to Jimmie. He told them he
was going abroad at the command of his oculist. Also, he forced himself
upon the notice of officers and stewards, giving them his name, and
making inquiries concerning the non-appearance of fictitious baggage.
Later, they also recalled the young man in dinner jacket and golf cap
who had lost a dressing-case marked "James Blagwin."
In his cabin Jimmie wrote two letters. The one to the captain of the
ship read:
"After we pass Fire Island I am going overboard. Do
not make any effort to find me, as it will be useless.
I am sorry to put you to this trouble."
The second letter was to Jeanne. It read:
"Picard agreed with the others. My case is hopeless.
I am ending all to-night. Forgive me. I leave you all
the love in all the world. Jimmie."
When he had addressed these letters he rang for the steward.
"I am not going to wait until we leave the dock," he said. "I am turning
in now. I am very tired, and I don't want you to wake me on any excuse
whatsoever until to-morrow at noon. Better still, don't come until I
ring!"
When the steward had left him, Jimmie pinned the two letters upon the
pillow, changed the steamer-cap for an Alpine hat, and beneath a
rain-coat concealed his evening clothes. He had purposely selected the
deck cabin farthest aft. Accordingly, when after making the cabin dark
he slipped from it, the break in the deck that separated the first from
the second class passengers was but a step distant. The going-ashore
bugles had sounded, and more tumult than would have followed had the
ship struck a rock now spread to every deck. With sharp commands
officers were speeding the parting guests; the parting guests were
shouting passionate good-bys and sending messages to Aunt Maria;
quartermasters howled hoarse warnings, donkey-engines panted under the
weight of belated luggage, fall and tackle groaned and strained. And the
ship's siren, enraged at the delay, protested in one long-drawn-out,
inarticulate shriek.
Jimmie slipped down the accommodation ladder that led to the well-deck,
side-stepped a yawning hatch, dodged a swinging cargo net stuffed with
trunks, and entered the second-class smoking-room. From there he elbowed
his way to the second-class promenade deck. A stream of tearful and
hilarious visitors who, like sheep in a chute, were being herded down
the gangway, engulfed him. Unresisting, Jimmie let himself, by weight of
numbers, be carried forward.
A moment later he was shot back to the dock and to the country from
which at that moment, in deck cabin A4, he was supposed to be drawing
steadily away.
Dodging the electric lights, on foot he made his way to his
lodging-house. The night was warm and moist, and, seated on the stoop,
stripped to shirt and trousers, was his landlord.
He greeted Jimmie affably.
"Evening, Mr. Hull," he said. "Hope this heat won't keep you awake."
Jimmie thanked him and passed hurriedly.
"Mr. Hull!"
The landlord had said it.
Somewhere out at sea, between Fire Island and Scotland Lightship, the
waves were worrying with what once had been Jimmie Blagwin, and in a
hall bedroom on Twenty-third Street Henry Hull, with frightened eyes,
sat staring across the wharves, across the river, thinking of a
farmhouse on Long Island.
His last week on earth had been more of a strain on Jimmie than he
appreciated; and the night the _Ceramic_ sailed he slept the drugged
sleep of complete nervous exhaustion. Late the next morning, while he
still slept, a passenger on the _Ceramic_ stumbled upon the fact of his
disappearance. The man knew Jimmie; had greeted him the night before
when he came on board, and was seeking him that he might subscribe to a
pool on the run. When to his attack on Jimmie's door there was no reply,
he peered through the air-port, saw on the pillow, where Jimmie's head
should have been, two letters, and reported to the purser. Already the
ship was three hundred miles from where Jimmie had announced he would
drown himself; a search showed he was not on board, and the evidence of
a smoking-room steward, who testified that at one o'clock he had left
Mr. Blagwin alone on deck, gazing "mournful-like" at Fire Island, seemed
to prove Jimmie had carried out his threat. When later the same
passenger the steward had mistaken for Jimmie appeared in the
smoking-room and ordered a drink from him, the steward was rattled. But
as the person who had last seen Jimmie Blagwin alive he had gained
melancholy interest, and, as his oft-told tale was bringing him many
shillings, he did not correct it. Accordingly, from Cape Sable the news
of Jimmie's suicide was reported. That afternoon it appeared in all the
late editions of the evening papers.