LADY AGATHA'S STORY
It was with the greatest difficulty that Cleggett repressed a start.
Another man might have shown the shock he felt. But Cleggett had the
iron nerve of a Bismarck and the fine manner of a Richelieu. He did
not even permit his eyes to wander towards the box in question. He
merely sat and waited.
Lady Agatha, having brought herself to the point of revelation, seemed
to find a difficulty in proceeding. Cleggett, mutely asking
permission, lighted a cigarette.
"Oh--if you will!" said Lady Agatha, extending her hand towards the
case. He passed it over, and when she had chosen one of the little
rolls and lighted it she said:
"Mr. Cleggett, have you ever lived in England?"
"I have never even visited England."
"I wish you knew England." She watched the curling smoke from her
tobacco as it drifted across the table. "If you knew England you would
comprehend so much more readily some parts of my story.
"But, being an American, you can have no adequate conception of the
conservatism that still prevails in certain quarters. I refer to the
really old families among the landed aristocracy. Some of them have not
changed essentially, in their attitude towards the world in general,
since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They make of family a fetish. They
are ready to sacrifice everything upon the altar of family. They may
exhibit this pride of race less obviously than some of the French or
Germans or Italians; but they have a deeper sense of their own dignity,
and of what is due to it, than any of your more flighty and picturesque
continentals. There are certain things that are done. Certain things
are not done. One must conform or----"
She interrupted herself and delicately flicked the ash from her
cigarette.
"Conform, or be jolly well damned," she finished, crossing one leg over
the other and leaning back in her chair. "This, by the way, is the
only decent cigarette I have found in America. I hate to smoke
perfume--I like tobacco--and most of your shops seem to keep nothing
but the highly scented Turkish and Egyptian varieties."
"They were made in London," said Cleggett, bowing.
"Ah! But where was I? Oh, yes--one must conform. Especially if one
belongs to, or has married into, the Claiborne family. Of all the men
in England the Earl of Claiborne is the most conservative, the most
reactionary, the most deeply encrusted with prejudice. He would stop
at little where the question concerned the prestige of the aristocracy
in general; he would stop at nothing where the Claiborne family is
concerned.
"I am telling you all this so that you may get an inkling of the blow
it was to him when I became a militant suffragist. It was blow enough
to his nephew, Sir Archibald, my late husband. The Earl maintains that
it hastened poor Archibald's death. But that is ridiculous. Archibald
had undermined his constitution with dissipation, and died following an
operation for gravel. He was to have succeeded to the title, as both
of the Earl's legitimate sons were dead without issue--one of them
perished in the Boer War, and the other was killed in the hunting field.
"Upon Archibald's death the old Earl publicly acknowledged Reginald
Maltravers, his natural son, and took steps to have him legitimatized.
For all of the bend sinister upon his escutcheon, Reginald Maltravers
was as fanatical concerning the family as his father. Perhaps more
fanatical, because he secretly suffered for the irregularity of his own
position in the world.
"At any rate, supported at first by the old Earl, he began a series of
persecutions designed to make me renounce my suffragist principles, or
at least to make me cease playing a conspicuous public part in the
militant propaganda. As my husband was dead and there were no
children, I could not see that I was accountable to the Claiborne
family for my actions. But the Claibornes took a different view of it.
In their philosophy, once a Claiborne, always a Claiborne. I was
bringing disgrace and humiliation upon the family, in their opinion.
Knowing the old Earl as I do, I am aware that his suffering was genuine
and intense. But what was I to do? One cannot desert one's principles
merely because they cause suffering; otherwise there could be no such
thing as revolution.
"Reginald Maltravers had another reason for his persecution. After the
death of Sir Archibald he himself sought my hand in marriage. I shall
always remember the form of his proposal; it concluded with these
words: 'Had Archibald lived you would have been a countess. You may
still be a countess--but you must drop this suffragist show, you know.
It is all bally rot, Agatha, all bally rot.' I would not have married
him without the condition, for I despised the man himself; but the
condition made me furious and I drove him from my sight with words that
turned him white and made him my enemy forever. 'You will not be my
countess, then,' he said. 'Very well--but I can promise you that you
will cease to be a suffragist.' I can still see the evil flash of his
eye behind his monocle as he uttered these words and turned away."
Lady Agatha shuddered at the recollection, and took a cup of tea.
"It was then," she resumed, "that the real persecution began. I was
peculiarly helpless, as I have no near relations who might have come to
my defense. Representing himself always as the agent of his father,
but far exceeding the Earl in the malevolence of his inventions,
Reginald Maltravers sought by every means he could command to drive me
from public life in England.
"Three times he succeeded in having me flung into Holloway Jail. I need
not tell you of the terrors of that institution, nor of the degrading
horrors of forcible feeding. They are known to a shocked and
sympathetic world. But Reginald Maltravers contrived, in my case, to
add to the usual brutalities a peculiar and personal touch. By
bribery, as I believe, he succeeded in getting himself into the prison
as a turnkey. It was his custom, when I lay weak and helpless in the
semistupor of starvation, to glide into my cell and, standing by my
couch, to recite to me the list of tempting viands that might appear
daily upon the board of a Countess of Claiborne.
"He soon learned that his very presence itself was a persecution. After
my release from jail the last time, he began to follow me everywhere.
Turn where I would, there was Reginald Maltravers. At suffrage meetings
he took his station directly before the speaker's stand, stroked his
long blond mustache with his long white fingers, and stared at me
steadfastly through his monocle, with an evil smile upon his face.
Formerly he had, in several instances, prevented me from attending
suffrage meetings; once he had me spirited away and imprisoned for a
week when it fell to my lot to burn a railroad station for the good of
the cause. He strove to ruin me with my leaders in this despicable
manner.
"But in the end he took to showing himself; he stood and stared. Merely
that. He was subtle enough to shift the persecution from the province
of the physical to the realm of the psychological. It was like being
haunted. Even when I did not see him, I began to THINK that I saw him.
He deliberately planted that hallucination in my mind. It is a wonder
that I did not go mad.
"I finally determined to flee to America. I made all my arrangements
with care and--as I thought--with secrecy. I imagined that I had given
him the slip. But he was too clever for me. The third day out, as one
of the ship's officers was showing me about the vessel, I detected
Reginald Maltravers in the hold. It is not usual to allow women so far
below decks; but I had insisted on seeing everything. Perspiring,
begrimed, and mopping the moisture from his brow with a piece of cotton
waste, there he stood in the guise of a--of--a croaker, is it, Mr.
Cleggett?"
"Stoker, I believe," said Cleggett.
"Stoker. Thank you. He turned away in confusion when he saw that he
was discovered. I perceived that, designing to cross on the same ship
with me, he had thought himself hidden there. He was not wearing his
monocle, but I would know that sloping forehead, that blond mustache,
and that long, high, bony nose anywhere."
Lady Agatha broke off for a moment. She was extremely agitated. But
presently she continued: "I endeavored to evade him. The attempt was
useless. He found me out at once. The persecution went on. It was
more terrible here than it had been in England. There I had friends. I
had hours, sometimes even whole days, to myself.
"But this was not the worst. A new phase developed. From his
appearance it suddenly became apparent to me that Reginald Maltravers
could not stop haunting me if he wished!"
"COULD not stop?" cried Cleggett.
"COULD not," said Lady Agatha. "The hunt had become a monomania with
him. It had become an obsession. He had given his whole mentality to
it and it had absorbed all his faculties. He was now the victim of it.
He had grown powerless in the grip of the idea; he had lost volition in
the matter.
"You can imagine my consternation when I realized this. I began to
fear the day when his insanity would take some violent form and he
would endeavor to do me a personal injury. I determined to have a
bodyguard. I wanted a man inured to danger; one capable of meeting
violence with violence, if the need arose. It struck me that if I
could get into touch with one of those chivalrous Western outlaws, of
whom we read in American works of fiction, he would be just the sort of
man I needed to protect me from Reginald Maltravers.
"I did not consider appealing to the authorities, for I have no
confidence in your American laws, Mr. Cleggett. But I did not know how
to go about finding a chivalrous Western outlaw. So finally I put an
advertisement in the personal column of one of your morning papers for
a reformed convict."
"A reformed convict!" exclaimed Cleggett. "May I ask how you worded the
ad.?"
"Ad.? Oh, advertisement? I will get it for you."
She went into the stateroom and was back in a moment with a newspaper
cutting which she handed to Cleggett. It read:
Convict recently released from Sing Sing, if his reform is really
genuine, may secure honest employment by writing to A. F., care Morning
Dispatch.
"Out of the answers," she resumed, "I selected four and had their
writers call for a personal interview. But only two of them seemed to
me to be really reformed, and of these two Elmer's reform struck me as
being the more genuine. You may have noticed that Elmer gives the
appearance of being done with worldly vanities."
"He does seem depressed," said Cleggett, "but I had imputed it largely
to the nature of his present occupation."
"It is due to his attempt to lead a better life--or at least so he
tells me," said Lady Agatha. "Morality does not come easy to Elmer, he
says, and I believe him. Elmer's time is largely taken up by inward
moral debate as to the right or wrong of particular hypothetical cases
which his imagination insists on presenting to his conscience."
"I can certainly imagine no state of mind less enjoyable," said
Cleggett.
"Nor I," replied Lady Agatha. "But to resume: The very fact that I
had employed a guard seemed to put Reginald Maltravers beside himself.
He followed me more closely than ever. Regardless of appearances, he
would suddenly plant himself in front of me in restaurants and
tramcars, in the streets or parks when I went for an airing, even in
the lifts and corridors of the apartment hotel where I stopped, and
stare at me intently through his monocle, caressing his mustache the
while. I did not dare make a scene; the thing was causing enough
remark without that; I was, in fact, losing my reputation.
"Finally, goaded beyond endurance, I called Elmer into my apartment one
day and put the whole case before him.
"'I will pay almost any price short of participation in actual crime,'
I told him, 'for a fortnight of freedom from that man's presence. I
can stand it no longer; I feel my reason slipping from me. Have I not
heard that there are in New York creatures who are willing, on the
payment of a certain stipulated sum, to guarantee to chastise a person
so as to disable him for a definite period, without doing him permanent
injury? You must know some such disreputable characters. Procure me
some wretches of this sort!'
"Elmer replied that such creatures do, indeed, exist. He called
them--what did he call them?"
"Gunmen?" suggested Cleggett.
"Yes, thank you. He brought two of them to me whom he introduced
as----"
She paused. "The names escape me," she said. She called: "Elmer, just
step here a moment, please."
Elmer, who was still putting ice into the oblong box, moodily laid away
his tools and approached.
"What WERE the odd names of your friends? The ones who--who made the
mistake?" asked Lady Agatha, resuming her seat.
Elmer rolled a bilious eye at Cleggett and asked Lady Agatha, out of
that corner of his mouth nearer to her:
"Is th' guy right?"
"Mr. Cleggett is a friend of mine and can keep a secret, if that is
what you mean," said Lady Agatha. And the words sent a thrill of
elation through Cleggett's being.
"M' friends w'at makes the mistake," said Elmer, apparently satisfied
with the assurance, and offering the information to Cleggett out of the
side of his mouth which had not been involved in his question to Lady
Agatha, "goes by th' monakers of Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat."
"Picturesque," murmured Cleggett.
"Picture--what? Picture not'in!" said Elmer, huskily. "The bulls got
not'in' on them boys. Them guys never been mugged. Them guys is too
foxy t' get mugged."
"I infer that you weren't always so foxy," said Cleggett, eyeing him
curiously.
The remark seemed to touch a sensitive spot. Elmer flushed and
shuffled from one foot to the other, hanging his head as if in
embarrassment. Finally he said, earnestly:
"I wasn't no boob, Mr. Cleggett. It was a snitch got ME settled. I was
a good cracksman, honest I was. But I never had no luck."
"I intended no reflection on your professional ability," said Cleggett,
politely.
"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Cleggett," said Elmer, forgivingly.
"Nobody's feelin's is hoited. And any friend of th' little dame here
is a friend o' mine." The diminutive, on Elmer's lips, was intended as
a compliment; Lady Agatha was not a small woman.
"Elmer," said Lady Agatha, "tell Mr. Cleggett how the mistake occurred."
Oratory was evidently not Elmer's strongest point. But he braced
himself for the effort and began:
"When th' skoit here says she wants the big boob punched I says to
m'self, foist of all: 'Is it right or is it wrong?' Oncet youse got
that reform high sign put onto youse, youse can't be too careful. Do
youse get me? So when th' skoit here puts it up to me I thinks foist
off: 'Is it right or is it wrong?' See? So I thinks it over and I
says to m'self th' big boob's been pullin' rough stuff on th' little
dame here. Do youse get me? So I says to m'self, the big boob ought to
get a wallop on the nut. See? What th' big gink needs is someone to
bounce a brick off his bean, f'r th' dame here's a square little dame.
Do youse get me? So I says to the little dame: 'I'm wit' youse, see?
W'at th' big gink needs is a mont' in th' hospital.' An' the little
dame here says he's not to be croaked, but----"
But at that instant Teddy, the Pomeranian, sprang towards the uncovered
hatchway that gave into the hold, barking violently. Lady Agatha, who
could see into the opening, arose with a scream.
Cleggett, leaping towards the hatchway, was just in time to see two men
jump backward from the bottom of the ladder into the murk of the hold.
They had been listening. Drawing his pistol, and calling to the crew
of the Jasper B. to follow him, Cleggett plunged recklessly downward
and into the darkness.