When it became known that Madeline Anderson had finally decided to go
abroad for two years, her little circle in New York naturally talked
a good deal, in review, about her curious reason for never having gone
before. So much that happened afterward, so much that I am going to
tell, depends upon this reason for not going before, that I also must
talk about it and explain it; I could never bring it out just as we went
along. It would have been a curious reason in connection with anybody,
but doubly so as explaining the behaviour of Miss Anderson, whose
profile gave you the impression that she was anything but the
shuttlecock of her emotions. Shortly, her reason was a convict, Number
1596, who, up to February in that year, had been working, or rather
waiting, out his sentence in the State penitentiary. So long as he
worked or waited, Madeline remained in New York, but when in February
death gave him his quittance, she took her freedom too, with wide
intentions and many coupons.
Earlier in his career Number 1596 had been known in New York society
as Mr. Frederick Prendergast, and for a little while he was disapproved
there on the score of having engaged himself to a Miss Anderson,
Madeline Anderson, whom nobody knew anything about. There was her
own little circle, as I have said, and it lacked neither dignity nor
refinement, but I doubt whether any member of it was valeted from
London, or could imply, in conversation, a personal acquaintance with
Yvette Guilbert. There is no need, however, to insist that there are
many persons of comfortable income and much cultivation in New York,
who would not be met by strangers having what are called the ‘best’
introductions there. The best so often fails to include the better. It
may be accepted that Madeline Anderson and her people were of these, and
that she wondered sometimes during the brief days of her engagement what
it would be like to belong to the brilliant little world about her
that had its visiting list in London, Paris, or St. Petersburg, and was
immensely entertained by the gaucheries of the great ones of the earth.
Then came, with the most unexceptionable introductions, Miss Violet
Forde, from a Sloane Square address, London. She came leaning on the arm
of a brother, the only relative she had in the world, and so brilliant
was the form of these young people that it occurred to nobody to imagine
that it had the most precarious pecuniary foundation, must have faded
and shrivelled indeed, after another year or two of anything but
hospitality as generous as that of New York. Well-nourished and
undimmed, however, it concealed for them admirably the fact that it
was the hospitality they were after, and not the bracing climate or the
desire to see the fascinating Americans of London and Paris at home.
New York found them agreeable specimens of high-spirited young English
people, and played with them indefinitely. Miss Forde, when she sat
imperturbably on a cushion in the middle of the floor after dinner
and sang to a guitar the songs of Albert Chevalier, was an anomaly in
English decorum that was as pleasing to observe as it was amusing to
criticize.
The Americans she met delighted in drawing her out--it was a pastime
that took the lead at dinner-parties, to an extent which her hostess
often thought preposterous--and she responded with naivete and vigour,
perfectly aware that she was scoring all along the line. Upon many
charming people she made the impression that she was a type of the most
finished class of what they called ‘English society girls,’ that she
represented the best they could do over there in this direction. As
a matter of fact she might have sat to any of those ‘black and white’
artists, who draw townish young women of London, saying cynical things
to young men in the weekly papers. That was her type, and if you look
for her picture there, you will see that her face was very accurately
oval, with eyes that knew their value, and other features that didn’t
very much matter, except in so far as they expressed a very full
conception of the satisfactions of this life, and a wide philosophy as
to methods of obtaining them.
Frederick Prendergast was unacquainted with the popular pictures I
have mentioned, having a very reasonable preference for the illustrated
papers of his own country; otherwise--there is no telling--he might
have observed the resemblance and escaped the State prison, whither he
assuredly never would have gone had he married Madeline Anderson--as
he fully intended to do when Miss Forde came over. He was worth at that
time a great deal of money, besides being more personable than any one
would have believed who knew him as ‘1596.’ His fiancee was never too
obtrusively in evidence, and if Miss Forde thought of Miss Anderson with
any scruple, it was probably to reflect that if she could not take care
of these things she did not deserve to have them. This at all events was
how her attitude expressed itself practically; and the upshot was that
Miss Anderson lost them. There came a day when Frederick Prendergast,
in much discomfort of mind, took to Violet the news that Madeline had
brought their engagement to an end. She, Violet, gave him some tea, and
they talked frankly of the absurd misconception of the relations between
them upon which his dismissal was founded; and Prendergast went away
much comforted and wholly disposed to respect Miss Anderson’s startling
wishes. She, with what both the others thought excellent taste,
persuaded her mother and sister to move to Brooklyn; and so far as the
thoroughfares and social theatres of New York were concerned, the city
over the river might have been a nunnery which had closed its gates upon
her. It was only in imagination that she heard Frederick Prendergast’s
wedding-bells when, two months later, he was united to Miss Forde in
Grace Church, and that after the fact, their melody being brought to her
inner sense next day by the marriage notice in the ‘Tribune’.
It would be painful, in view of what we know of Frederick Prendergast,
to dwell upon what Madeline Anderson undeniably felt. Besides her
emotions were not destructively acute, they only lasted longer than
any one could have either expected or approved. She suffered for him as
well; she saw as plainly as he did the first sordid consequences of his
mistake the afternoon he came to solicit her friendship, having lost
other claims; and it was then perhaps, that her responsibility in
allowing Violet Forde to spoil his life for him began to suggest itself
to her. Up to that time she had thought of the matter differently, as
she would have said, selfishly. He was not permitted to come again; but
he went away lightened, inasmuch as he had added his burden to hers.
When a year later the national credit involved that of Prendergast’s
firm, Madeline read financial articles in the newspapers with heavy
concern, surprising her family with views on ‘sound money’; and when,
shortly afterward, his partners brought that unhappy young man before
the criminal courts for an irregular use of the firm’s signature, which
further involved it beyond hope of extrication, there was no moment of
the day which did not find her, in spirit, beside him there.
The case dragged on through appeal, and the decision of the lower courts
was not reversed. The day this became known the fact also transpired
that poor Prendergast would never live to complete his ten years’ term
of imprisonment. He went to prison with hardly more than one lung, and
in the most favourable physical condition to get rid of the other. Mrs.
Prendergast wept a little over the installation, and assured Frederick
that it was perfectly absurd; they were certain to get him out again;
people always got people out again in America. She took him grapes and
flowers once a week for about a month, and then she sailed for Europe.
She put it about that her stay was to be as brief as was consistent with
the transaction of certain necessary business in London; but she never
came back, and Madeline Anderson had taken her place, in so far as
the grapes and flowers were concerned, for many months, when the
announcement of his wife’s death reached Prendergast in an English
paper published in Paris. About a year after that it began to be thought
singular how he picked up in health, and Madeline’s mother and sister
occasionally romanced about the possibility of his recovering and
marrying her after all--they had an enormous opinion of the artistic
virtue of forgiveness--but it was not a contingency ever seriously
contemplated by Miss Anderson herself. Her affection, pricked on by
remorse, had long satisfied itself with the duties of her ministry. If
she would not leave him until he died, it was because there was no one
but herself to brighten the long day in the prison hospital for him,
because she had thrown him into the arms of the woman who had deserted
him, because he represented in her fancy her life’s only budding towards
the sun. Her patience lasted through six years, which was four years
longer than any doctor had given Frederick Prendergast to live; but when
one last morning she found an empty bed, and learned that Number 1596
had been discharged in his coffin, she rose from the shock with the
sense of a task fully performed and a well-developed desire to see what
else there might be in the world.
She announced her intention of travelling for a year or two with a maid,
and her family expressed the usual acquiescence. It would help her, they
said, to ‘shake it off’; but they said that to one another. They were
not aware--and it would have spoiled an ideal for them if they had
been--that she had shaken it off, quite completely, into Prendergast’s
grave.
This was the curious reason why Miss Anderson’s travels were so long
postponed.