I felt uncomfortable. It was one of the rare occasions on which I had
seen this flower-like face drop its bantering mask and grow serious.
The _voix de Montmartre_ had deepened in tone and put me on the
defensive.
"I thought you told me on board ship that you looked on all people of
Miss Averill's class as the prey of those in--in ours."
"I don't care what I told you on board ship. You're to keep where you
belong as far as she's concerned--or I'll give the whole bloomin' show
away, as they say in English vawdville."
"There again; it's what you said you wouldn't do. You said you'd be my
friend--"
"I'll be your friend right up to there--but that's the high-water mark."
I thought it permissible to change my front. "If it comes to that, I've
done no hanging round Miss Averill on my own account. It's you who've
come for me to the Hotel Barcelona every time--"
"Harry made me do that; but even so--well, you don't have to fall in the
water just because you're standing on a wharf."
"It doesn't hurt the water if you do. You can get soaked, and make
yourself look ridiculous, but the beautiful blue sea doesn't mind."
"You can make it splash something awful, and send ripples all over the
lot. Don't you be too sure of not being dangerous. You wouldn't be
everybody's choice--but you have that romantic way--like a prince-guy
off the level--and she not used to men--or having a lot of them around
her all the time, like--"
"Like you."
"Like me," she accepted, composedly; "and so if I see anything that's
not on the square I'll--I'll hand out the right dope about you without
the least pity."
"And when you hand out the right dope about me what will it be?"
"You poor old kid, what do you think it will be? If you make people
think you're a swell crook it's almost the same as being one."
"But do I make people think I'm a swell crook?"
"You make me."
"What do I do to--"
"It's not what you do, it's what you don't do--or what you don't say.
Why don't you tell people who you are, or what your business is, or
where you come from? Everybody can hitch on to something in a world,
but you don't seem to belong anywhere. If any one asks you a question
it's always No! No! No! till you can tell what your answer will be
beforehand. Surely there's a Yes somewhere in your life! If you always
hide it you can't blame people for thinking there's something to be
hidden."
"And yet you'd be my friend."
"Oh, I've been friends to worse than that. I wasn't born yesterday--not
by a lot. All I say is, 'Hands off little old Milly Averill!' but for
the rest you can squeak along in your own way. I'm a good sort. I
don't interfere with any one."
Drinkwater being on the threshold and the conversation having yielded me
all I hoped to get, I made an excuse for going. Miss Averill had not
appeared, and now I was glad of it. Had she come I could not have met
her under Lydia's cold eye without self-consciousness. It began to
strike me, too, that the best thing I could do was to step out from the
circle of all their lives and leave no clue behind me.
*CHAPTER XII*
It was not a new reflection, as you know; and of late it had been
growing more insistent. The truth is that I needed to find work. My
nearly one hundred dollars was melting away with unbelievable rapidity.
Expenses being reduced to a rule of thumb, I could count the days after
which I shouldn't have a cent. Winter was coming. Already there were
mornings with the nip of frost in them. I should require boots,
clothes, warm things of all sorts. Food and shelter I couldn't do
without.
It was the incredible, the impossible. Nebuchadnezzar driven from men
and eating grass like an ox couldn't have been more surprised to see
himself in such a state of want. Somewhere, out of the memories that had
not disappeared, I drew the recollection that to need boots and not be
able to afford them had been my summary of an almost inhuman degree of
poverty. I could remember trying to picture what it would be like to
find myself in such a situation and not being able to do so. I had
bought a new pair since coming to New York, and they were already
wearing thin.
It came to me again--it came to me constantly, of course--that I could
save myself by going to some sympathetic person and telling him my tale.
I rejected now the idea of making Boyd Averill my confidant; but there
were other possibilities. There were doctors, clergymen, policemen. As
a matter of fact, people who suffered from amnesia, and who didn't know
their names, generally applied to the police.
In the end I opted for a clergyman as being the most human of these
agencies. Vaguely I was aware that vaguely I belonged to a certain
church. I had tested myself along the line of religion as well as along
other lines, with the discovery that the services of one church were
familiar, while those of others were not.
From the press I learned that the Rev. Dr. Scattlethwaite, the head of a
large and wealthy congregation, was perhaps the best known exponent in
New York of modern scientific beneficence, and by attendance at one of
his services I got the information that at fixed hours of every day he
was in his office at his parish house for the purpose of meeting those
in trouble. It was a simple matter, therefore, to present myself, and
be met on the threshold of his waiting-room by the young lady who acted
as his secretary.
She was a portly young lady, light on her feet, quick in her movements,
dressed in black, with blond fluffy hair, and a great big welcoming
smile. The reception was much the same as in any doctor's office, and I
think she diagnosed my complaint as the drug habit. Asking me to take a
seat she assured me that Doctor Scattlethwaite would see me as soon as
he was disengaged. When she had returned to her desk, where she seemed
to make endless notes, I had leisure to look about me.
Except for a large white wooden cross between two doors, it might have
been a waiting-room in a hospital. Something in the atmosphere
suggested people meeting agonies--or perhaps it was something in myself.
As far as that went, there were no particular agonies in the long table
strewn with illustrated papers and magazines, nor in the bookrack
containing eight or ten well-thumbed novels. Neither were agonies
suggested by the Arundel print of the Resurrection on one bit of
wall-space, nor by the large framed photograph of the Arch of
Constantine on another. All the same there was that in the air which
told one that no human being in the world would ever come into this room
otherwise than against his will.
And yet in that I may be wrong, considering how many people there are
who enjoy the luxury of sorrow. I guessed, for example, that the
well-dressed woman in mourning who sat diagonally opposite me was
carrying her grief to every pastor in New York and refusing to be
comforted by any. Another woman in mourning, rusty and cheap in her
case, flanked by two vacant-eyed children, had evidently come to collect
a portion of the huge financial bill she was able to present against
fate. An extremely thin lady, with eyes preternaturally wide open, was
perhaps a sufferer from insomnia, while the little old man with broken
boots and a long red nose was plainly an ordinary "bum." These were my
companions except that a beaming lady of fifty or so, dressed partly
like a Salvation Army lassie and partly like a nun, and whom I took to
be Doctor Scattlethwaite's deaconess _en litre_, bustled in and out for
conferences with the fluffy-haired girl at the desk.
I beguiled the waiting, which was long and tedious, by co-ordinating my
tale so as to get the main points into salience. It was about ten in
the morning when I arrived, and around half past ten the lady who had
first claim on Doctor Scattlethwaite came out from her audience. She was
young and might have been pretty if she hadn't been so hollow-eyed and
walked with her handkerchief pressed closely to her lips. I put her
down as a case of nervous prostration.
The lady with the inconsolable sorrow was next summoned by the
secretary, and so one after another those who had preceded me went in to
take their turns. Mine came after the old "bum," when it was nearly
twelve o'clock.
The room was a kind of library. I retain an impression of books lining
the walls, a leather-covered lounge, one or two leather-covered
easy-chairs, and a large flat-topped desk in the center of the
floor-space. Behind the desk stood a short, square-shouldered man in a
dark-gray clerical attire, with a squarish, benevolent, clean-shaven
face, and sharp, small eyes which studied me as I crossed the floor.
His aspect and attitude were business-like, and business-like was his
manner of shaking hands as he asked me to sit down. An upright
arm-chair stood at the corner of the desk, and as I took it he resumed
his seat in his own revolving-chair which he tilted slightly backward.
With his elbows on the arms and fitting the tips of his fingers
together, he waited for me to state my errand, eying me all the while.
Relieved and yet slightly disconcerted by this non-committal bearing, I
stumbled through my story less coherently than I had meant to tell it.
Badly narrated, it was preposterous, especially as coming from a man in
seemingly full possession of his faculties. All that enabled me to
continue was that my hearer listened attentively, with no outward
appearance of disbelieving me.
"And you've come to me for advice as to the wise thing for you to do,"
he said, not unsympathetically, when I had brought my lame story to a
close.
"That's about it," I agreed, though conscious of a regret at having come
at all.
"Then the first thing I should suggest," he continued, never taking his
penetrating eyes from my face, "is that you should see a doctor--a
specialist--a neurologist. I'll give you a line to Doctor Glegg--"
"What would he do?" I ventured to question.
"That would depend on whether or not you could pay for treatment. I
presume, from what you've said of your funds giving out, that you
couldn't."
"No, I couldn't," I assented, reddening.
"Then he'd probably put you for observation into the free psychopathic
ward at Mount Olivet--"
"Is that an insane-asylum?"
"We don't have insane-asylums nowadays; but in any case it isn't what
you mean. It's a sanitarium for brain diseases--"
"I shouldn't want to go to a place like that."
"Then what would you suggest doing?"
"I thought--" But I was not sure as to what I had thought. Hazily I
had imagined some Christian detective agency hunting up my family,
restoring my name, and giving me back my check-book. It was probably on
the last detail that unconsciously to myself I was laying the most
emphasis. "I thought," I stammered, after a slight pause, "that--that
you might be inclined to--to help me."
"With money?"
The question was so direct as to take me by surprise.
"I didn't know exactly how--"
"An average of about fifteen people come to see me every day," he said,
in his calm, business-like voice, "and of the fifteen about five are
men. And of the five men an average of four come, with one plausible
tale or other, to get money out of me under false pretenses."
I shot out of my seat. The anger choking me was hardly allayed by the
raising of his hand and his suave, "Sit down again." He went on
quietly, as I sank back into my chair: "I only want you to see that with
all men who come telling me strange tales my first impulse must be
suspicion."
Indignation almost strangled me. "And--and--am I to understand
that--that it's suspicion--now?"
"So long as money is a factor in the case it must be--till everything is
explained."
"But everything _is_ explained."
"To your satisfaction--possibly; but hardly to mine."
"Then what explanation would be satisfactory to you?"
"Oh, any of two or three. Since you decline to put yourself under
Doctor Glegg, you might be able to offer some corroboration.
"But I can't. I've kept my secret so closely that no one has heard it
but myself. The few people I know would be as incredulous as you are."
"I don't say that I'm incredulous; I'm only on my guard. Don't you see?
I have to be."
"But surely when a man is speaking the truth his manner must carry some
conviction."
"I wish I could think so; but I've believed so many false yarns on the
strength of a man's manner, and disbelieved so many true ones on the
same evidence, that I no longer trust my own judgment. But please don't
be annoyed. If your mental condition is such as you describe, I'm
proposing the most scientific treatment you can get in New York. In
addition to that, I know that Doctor Glegg has had a number of such
cases and has cured them."
"You know that?"
"Perhaps I ought to say that they've been cured while under his care. I
think I've heard him say that as a matter of fact they've cured
themselves. Without knowing much of the malady, I rather think it's one
of those in which time restores the ruptured tissues, with the aid of
mental rest."
"If that's all--"
"Oh, I don't say that it's all; but as far as I understand it's a large
part of it. But then I don't understand very much. That's why I'm
suggesting--"
"I could get mental rest of my own accord if--"
"Yes? If--what?"
"If I could find out who--who I am."
"And you've no clues at all?"