"Oh, just that--that the future--"
"I hate the future."
It was one of her sudden outbursts, and the receiver was hung up.
After all, this abrupt termination to an unsatisfactory mode of speech
was the wisest method for us both. We couldn't go on sparring and there
was nothing to do but spar. Knowing that I couldn't speak plainly she
had ceased to expect me to do so, and yet...
When I say that this was a relief to me, you must understand it only in
the sense that my situation was too difficult to allow of my inviting
further complications. Had I been free--but I wasn't free. The
conviction that somewhere in the world I had permanent ties began to be
as strong as the belief that at some time in my life love had been the
dominating factor. There had been a woman. Lydia Blair had seen her.
Her flaming eyes haunted me from a darkness in which they were the only
thing living. The fact that I couldn't construct the rest of the
portrait no more permitted me to doubt the original than you can doubt
the existence of a plant after you have seen a leaf from it. The best I
could hope for now was the privilege of living and working in some
simple, elemental way that would give me the atmosphere in which to
re-collect myself, _recueillement_, the French graphically name the
process, and grow unconsciously back into the facts that effort would
not restore to me.
For that simple, elemental work and life the opportunity came to me at
last. I see now that it was opportunity, though I should not have said
so at the time. At the time it was only hard necessity, though hard
necessity with those products of shelter and food which in themselves
meant peace. I had peace, therefore, of a kind, and to it I am able now
to attribute that growth and progress backward, if I may so express
myself, which led to the miracle.
My work next day lay in peeling off the burlap from the newly arrived
consignment, stripping the rolls of the sheepskins in which they were
wrapped inside, spreading the rugs flat, and sweeping them with a stiff,
strong broom. After that we laid them in assorted piles, preparatory to
carrying them up-stairs. They were Khorassans, Kirmanshahs, Bokharas,
and Sarouks, with a superb lot of blue and gold Chinese reproduced on
the company's looms in India.
The good-natured Peter Bridget taking his turn up-stairs, my colleague
that day was an American of Finnish extraction, whose natural sunniness
of disposition had been soured by the thwarting of a strong ambition to
"get on." Combining the broad features of the Lapp with Scandinavian
hair and complexion, his expression reminded you of a bright summer day
over which a storm was beginning to lower. The son of one large family
and the father of another, he was at war with the world in which his
earning capacity had come to have its limitations fixed at eighteen
dollars a week.
He was not conversational; he only grunted remarks out of a slow-moving
bitterness of spirit.
"What's the good of always layin' the pipe and never gettin' no oil
along it? That's what I want to know. Went to work when I was
fourteen, and now I'm forty-two, and in exactly the same spot."
"You're not in exactly the same spot," I said, "because you've got your
wife and children."
"And the money I've spent on that woman and them kids!"
"But you're fond of them, aren't you?"
"No better wife no guy never had, and no nicer little fam'ly."
"Well, then, that's so much to the good. Those are assets, aren't they?
They'll mean more to you than if you had money in the savings bank and
didn't have _them_."
"I can't eddicate 'em proper, or send 'em to high-school, let alone
college, or give 'em nothin' like what they ought to have. All I can
leave 'em when I die is what my father left me, the right not to be able
to get nowhere--and yet you'll hear a lot of gabbers jazzin' away about
this bein' the best country for a working-man."
During the lunch-hour we drifted into Fifth Avenue, joining the throng
of those who for sixty minutes were like souls enjoying a respite from
limbo. Limbo, I ask you to notice, is not hell; but it is far from
paradise. The dictionary defines the word as a borderland, a place of
restraint, and it was in both those senses, I think, that the shop and
the factory struck the imaginations of these churning minds. The shop
and the factory formed a borderland, neither one thing nor another, a
nowhere; but a place of restraint none the less. More than the physical
restraint involved in the necessity for working was implied by this; it
was restraint of the spirit, restraint of the part of a man that soars,
restraint of the impulse to seize the good things of life in a world
where they seemed to be free.
Though I could understand little of the conversation around me--Yiddish,
Polish, Armenian, Czech--I knew they were talking of jobs and bosses in
relation to politics and the big things of life.
"What's the matter with them guys at Albany and Washington that they
don't come across with laws--?"
That was the question and that was the complaint. It was one of the two
main blends in the current of dissatisfaction. The other blend was the
conviction that if those who had the power didn't right self-evident
wrongs, the wronged would somehow have to right themselves. There was
no speechmaking, no stump oratory, after the manner of a Celtic or
Anglo-Saxon crowd; all was smothered, sullen, burning, secretive, and
intense.
On our way back to the cavern the Finn remarked:
"No man doesn't mind work. He'd rather work than loaf, even if he was
paid for loafin'. What he can't stick is not havin' room to grow in,
bein' squeezed into undersize, like a Chinese woman's foot."
After all, I reflected, this might be the real limbo, not only of the
working-man, but of all the dissatisfied in all ranks throughout the
world--the denials of the liberty to expand. Mildred Averill was
rebelling against it in her way as much as the Finn in his, as much as
any Jew or Pole or Italian in all the crowd surging back at that minute
to the dens from which they had come out. Discontent was not confined
to any one class or to any one set of needs. Custom, convention, and
greed had clamped our energies round and round as with iron hoops, till
all but the few among us had lost the right to grow. It wasn't a
question of pay; it wasn't primarily a question of money at all, though
the question of money was involved in it. More than anything else, it
was one of a new orientation toward everything, with a shifting of basic
principles. The first must become last and the last must become
first--not in the detail of precedence but in that of the laws by which
we live--before men, as men, could get out of the prison-houses, into
which civilization had thrust them, to the broad, free air to which they
were born. The struggle between labor and capital was a mere duel
between blind men. It was bluff on the surface by those on both sides
who were afraid to put the ax to the root of the tree. No symbol was so
eloquent to me of the bondage into which the human elements in Church
and State had chained the spirit of man as the Finn's comparison of the
Chinese woman's foot.
When the Floater paid me another dollar and a half that night he told me
that if I worked like a dog, was as meek as a mouse, and "didn't get no
labor rot into my nut" I could have Clancy's job as a regular thing.
But by this time I was beginning to understand him. I have already
called him a terrier, and a terrier he was, with a terrier's bark, but
with a terrier's fundamental friendliness. If you patted him, he wagged
his tail. True, he wagged it unwillingly, ungraciously, and with a fond
belief that you didn't know he was wagging it at all; but the fact that
he did wag it was enough for me.
It was enough for us all. There was not a man among the "luggers" who
didn't understand him, nor among the salesmen either, as I came to
understand.
"Dee ye know how to take that little scalpeen? He's like wan of thim
Graaks or Eytalians that's got a quare talk of their own, but you know
you can put it into our talk and make it mane somethin'. Wance I was at
a circus where a monkey what looked like a little ould man talked his
kind o' talk, and it made sinse. Well, that's like the Floater. He's
like the monkey what can't talk nothin' but monkey-talk; but glory be to
God! he manes the same thing as a man. Don't ye moind him, Brogan.
When he talks his talk, you talk it to yerself in yer own talk, and
ye'll kape yer timper and get everything straight."
This kindly advice was given me by Denis Gallivan, the oldest of the
porters, and a sort of dean of our corps. Small, wiry, as strong as a
horse, with a wizened, leathery face that looked as if it had been dried
and tanned in a hot sunshine, there was a yearning in his blue-black
eyes like that which some of the old Italian masters put into the eyes
of saints. Denis, Bridget, and the Finn composed what I may call the
permanent staff, the two others, excluding myself, being invariably
restless chaps who, like Clancy, came for a few weeks and went off
again. With the three workers named I made a fourth, henceforth helping
to carry the responsibility of the house on my shoulders.
It was a good place, with pleasant work. Two or three times I could
have had promotion and a raise in pay, but I had reasons of my own for
staying where I was.
My duties being simple, I enjoyed the sheer physical exertion I was
obliged to make. Arriving about seven in the morning I helped to sweep
the floors, with a special sweeping of the rugs, druggets, and mattings
that had lain out overnight. If there was anything to be carried from
the basement to the upper floor I helped in that. Then, having "cleaned"
myself, as the phrase went, I took my place in the shop, ready to pull
out the goods which the salesmen panted to display to customers, and to
put them back again.
For this there were always four of us in the spacious, well-lighted
shop, which must have been sixty feet long by thirty wide, and I liked
the dignity and quiet of all the regulation tasks. As a rule, we were
on the floor by nine, though it was generally after ten before we saw a
customer. During that hour of spare time we porters hung together at the
farther end, exchanging in low tones the gossip of the day, confiding
personal experiences, or discussing the war and the reconstruction of
society. Now and then one of the four or five salesmen would
condescendingly join with us, but for the most part the salesmen kept to
themselves, treating the same topics from a higher point of view. The
gods of Olympus did little more than enter by the main door from Fifth
Avenue, cross to their offices, after which we scarcely saw them. Only
the Floater moved at will between us and them, with a little dog's
freedom to be equally at home in the stable and the drawing-room.
A flicker of interest always woke with the arrival of customers. They
entered with diffidence, confused by the subdued brilliance of the
Persian and Chinese colors hanging on our walls, by the wide empty
spaces, and their own ignorance of what they came in search of.
"There's not tin women in New York 'll know the difference betwane a
Kirmanshah and an Anatolia," Denis said to me one day, "and it'd make ye
sorry for thim when they comes to furnishin'. Glory be to God, they'll
walk in here knowin' no more than that they want rugs, and it's all wan
to thim what ye puts before thim so long as it's the color they like and
it lays on the ground. If this wasn't the honestest house that the Lord
ever made there'd be chatin' till we was all in danger o' hell fire."
But in spite of this ignorance, we received our visitors courteously, a
salesman going forward to meet all newcomers and conducting them to the
row of reproduced Louis Seize cane-bottomed chairs placed for their
convenience. Then it would be, "Bridget, bring that Khorassan--3246,
you know, that fine specimen." And Bridget would know, and call the
Finn to help him lay it out. Or it would be, "Brogan, can you find the
Meshed that came in yesterday--2947? I think madam would like to see
it." On this Denis and I would haul out the big carpet, stretch it at
the lady's feet, listen to comments which, as Denis put it, had the
value of a milliner's criticism of the make of a "floyin'-machine," and
eventually carry it back to the pile whence we had taken it. I may say
here that for customers we had little respect, except from the point of
view of their purchasing power.
"Did ye ever see wan o' thim that could tell a Sehna knot from a
Giordes?" Denis asked, scornfully. "Did ye ever see wan o' thim that
knowed which rug had a woolen warp and which a cotton, or which rug 'd
wear, or which 'd all go up in flock? If a woman was to boy a shimmy
that 'll be in rags before it's been six toimes to the wash with as
little sinse as she'll boy a rug that ought to last for a hunderd years
her husband 'd be in jail for dit."
But for me, customers had one predominant interest. Among them there
might be some one I could recognize, or some one who would recognize me.
As to the last, I had one fear and many hopes. My one fear was that
Mildred Averill or Lulu Averill might one day wander in; but as time
went on and they didn't, I ceased to dread the mischance. As it also
proved in the end it was the same way with my hopes. No one turned up
whom I could hail as an acquaintance; no one ever glanced at me with an
old friend's curiosity.
So I settled down to the routine which, though I didn't know it then,
was the mental rest that, according to Doctor Scattlethwaite, I needed
for my recovery. The days were so much alike that I could no more
differentiate between them than can a man in prison. On eighteen
dollars a week I contrived to live with that humble satisfaction of
humble needs which I learned to be all that a man requires. Little by
little I accommodated myself to the outlook of my surroundings, and if I
never thought exactly like my companions I found myself able to listen
to their views complacently. With all three of my more important
co-workers--Denis, Bridget, and the Finn--my relations were cordial, a
fact due largely to their courteous respect for my private history, into
which none of them ever pried. Like Lydia, Drinkwater, and every one
else, they took it for granted that there was something I wanted to
hide, and allowed me to hide it.
In this way I passed the end of the year 1916, the whole of 1917, and
all of 1918 up to the beginning of December. Though the country had in
the mean time gone to war it made little difference to us. Denis was
too old to be drafted; Bridget and the Finn were exempted as fathers of
large families; I was examined, and, for reasons I do not yet
understand, rejected. I should have made a very good fighting man; but
I think I was looked upon as of weak or uncertain mentality.
During all those months I courted the obscurity so easy to find.
Between Creed & Creed's and my squint-eyed room with the fungi on the
mantelpiece I went by what you might call the back ways, in order to
risk no meeting with Mildred Averill or her family. Since they
frequented the neighboring book store, one of the best known in New
York, they might at some time see me going in or out, and so I kept to
the direction of Sixth Avenue. Though I often drifted out into the
midday throng of which I have spoken already there was little danger in
that, because I was swallowed in the crowd. In company for the most
part with Sam Pelly, I took my meals in places so modest that Lydia
Blair was unlikely to run across me; and I had no one else to be afraid
of.
Peace therefore stole into my racked soul, though it was the peace of
death. While I had recurrences of the hope that my lost sense of
identity would one day be restored to me, I dropped into the habit of
not thinking much about it. I ate and drank; I had shelter and clothes.
The narrow margin on which other working-people lived came to seem
enough for me. Toward the great accidents of life, illness or
incapacity, I learned to take the same philosophic attitude as they,
trusting to luck, or to something too subtle and spiritual to put easily
into words, to take care of me. If I developed any deep, strong
principle of living it was along the lines of the wish that on a snowy
December afternoon had led me to Meeting-House Green. I knew that the
universe was filled with a great Will and tried to let myself glide
along on it in simplicity, and harmony.
*CHAPTER VI*
On the morning of the eleventh of December, 1918, I had been in the
basement helping to unpack a consignment just come in from India, as I
had first done two years before. I had, therefore, not known what
passed on the floor above during the forenoon, and should have been
little interested had I been there. What I needed to know the Floater
told me when I appeared after lunch to take my shift on the main floor
with Bridget and the Finn.
"You're to go with the two lads down-stairs"--the two of our six porters
who were always transient--"to this number in East Seventy-sixth Street,
and show the big Chinee antique, 4792, and the modern Chinee, 3628, to a
lady that's stayin' there, and explain to her the difference between
them. She'll take the new one if she thinks it's just as good, and
you're to show her that it isn't. She's not the lady of the house. Her
name is Mrs. Mountney, and she comes from Boston. She saw them both
this morning, but said she couldn't judge till she'd viewed 'em
private."
It was not an unusual expedition, though it was new to me. For special
customers, or in cases of big bits of business, we sent out rugs on
approval or for private view, though I had never before been intrusted
with the mission. I didn't wholly like the job; but we were accustomed
to take both things we didn't like and things we did as all in the day's
work.
At the house in East Seventy-sixth Street we found ourselves expected,
the footman explaining that we were to carry our wares to the music-room
and lay them out. The ladies were resting after lunch, but Mrs.
Mountney would come to us as soon as she left her room. With the
pleasant free-masonry of caste he confided to me, as with our burdens we
made our way into the hall, that Mrs. Mountney was a nice little bit of
fluff, though not so tony as he had looked for in an old girl out of
Boston. When it came to class, the lady of the house, whom I thought he
spoke of as Luke, could hang it all over her.
It was so long since I had been in a house of the kind that I took notes
more acutely than was my habit, though my habit was always to be
observant. What struck me chiefly was its resemblance on a larger scale
to the last of its type I had visited. Perhaps the name Lulie had
turned my thoughts backward; but there was certainly the same square
hall, containing a few monumental bits of furniture because they were
monumental, the same dining-room opening out of it, full of high-backed
and Italian ... And then, across a corridor that ran to some region
behind the dining-room, I thought I saw a stocky figure grope its way
with the kind of movement I had not seen since the last time I had met
Drinkwater. A door opened and closed somewhere, and before we reached
the music-room I heard the distant click of a typewriter.
That I was nervous goes without saying, but there were so many chances
of my fear being groundless that I did my best to dismiss it. The
music-room was simple, spacious, white-and-gold, admirably adapted not
only to the purpose it served but to that which had brought us there.
When our carpets were spread they made a magnificent gold spot in the
center of a sumptuous emptiness.
A few minutes later the nice little bit of fluff tripped in, justifying
the description. She was one of those instances, of which we saw a good
many among our customers, where a merciful providence had given a great
deal of money to some one who would have been quite too insignificant
without it. A worn fairness of complexion was supplemented by
cosmetics, and an inadequate stock of very blond hair arranged in
artistic disarray in order to make the most of it. To offset the laces
and pearls of an elaborate negligee by a "democratic" manner, and so put
poor working-men at their ease, she nodded to us in a friendly, offhand
way, saying, briskly:
"Now then! Let's see! Which is the modern one and which is the
antique? I can't tell; can you?" Looking at me archly, she changed her
tone to the chaffing one which the French describe as _blagueur_. "But
of course you'll say you can, because that's your business. You've got
them marked with some sort of secret sign, like a conjurer with coins,
so as to tell one from the other, without my knowing it."
Having said this, she began to march round the two great gold-covered
oblongs with the movement of a prowling little animal. Keeping my eye
on the main doorway, I pointed out that while the modern piece would
please the ordinary eye only the antique would satisfy the elect. There
was no question but that the Indian reproduction was good. Any one who
took it would do more than get his money's worth, since it would tone
down with the years, while the hard wool of which it was woven would
make it stand comparatively rough usage. But--didn't madam see?--the
antique, made on the old Chinese looms, was of the softer, richer sheen
imparted by the softer, richer wool; and wasn't the heavenly
turquoise-blue of the ornaments and border of a beauty which the modern
dyes had not begun to reproduce?
As I explained this and some other characteristics of rugs, I was more
or less talking against time. The suspicion that had seized me on
entering the house began to deepen, without my knowing why.
"Y-yes; y-yes," the little lady agreed; "it _is_ lovely, isn't it? And
I suppose that if you're buying a good thing it's better to get the--"
She paused, looking out through the great doorway into the hall. I,
too, looked out, to see Mrs. Averill in a tea-gown, gazing in at us
distraitly.
"Oh, Lulu, do come here. This man, this gentleman, has just been
telling me the most interesting things--"
She trailed into the music-room with the same graceful languor with
which she had trailed into the drawing-room on the occasion when we had
last met. The two other porters and myself being negligible figures in
the room, her almond eyes rested listlessly on the rugs, which she
studied without remark.
"Lulu," Mrs. Mountney began again, with animation, "did you know that in
Persian rugs the designs are outlined in rows of knots, and in Chinese
by clipping with the scissors? _cisele_, this ma--this gentleman calls
it, and you can feel a little line! Do put your hand down."
"Oh, I'm too tired," Mrs. Averill protested, in her sweet drawling
voice, "and this room's so stuffy. Mildred said she'd have it aired;
but I don't know what she's mooning over half her time. She's so
dreamy. I often think she ought to be in a convent, or something like
that."
The little bit of fluff was more interested in rugs than in Mildred.
"Do tell Mrs. Averill--I'm staying with her--what you've just been
saying about the wool. Did you know, Lulu, that Indian wool is hard and
Chinese soft?" She looked again toward the hallway, where a second
figure had come into view. "Mildred, do come here. There's the most
interesting things--I'm so glad I went to that place this morning--and
they've sent me the most interesting man--Lulu's like ice, but you're
artistic."
Miss Averill, too, advanced into the room; but though I was in full view
she paid me and my comrades no particular attention. It was the easier
for me not to speak, or to draw any one's glance to myself, for the
reason that Mrs. Mountney chattered on, repeating for Mildred's benefit
the facts I had just been giving her.
"Just think of having the patience to clip with the scissors round all
these designs, and it's the same in the modern rug as in the antique.
Do stoop down, Mildred, and let your fingers run along the ciseling;
that's what this--this gentleman calls it."
As the girl stooped to satisfy Mrs. Mountney, I ventured to look at her
more closely. She was perhaps not older than when I had last seen her
two years before, but her face had undergone a change. It made you
think of faces chastened, possibly purified, by suffering. Where there
had been chiefly a sympathetic common sense there was now the beauty
that comes of elevation.
Luckily for me Mrs. Mountney ran on, while we three men, with the lack
of individuality of employees before customers, remained
indistinguishable objects in the background.
"That's the modern and that's the antique; and I'm sure no one but a
rug-man could tell the difference between them. This man--this
gentleman--says they can, but that's only business. Hundreds of dollars
difference in the price, almost as much as between a pair of real pearl
ear-rings and imitation ones. What do you say, Mildred? Would anybody
ever notice--?"
"I suppose you'd be buying the best because it's the best, and not
because any one would notice--"
"I should be buying it for what every one would see. What's the good of
having a thing if it doesn't show what it is? I hate the way some
people have of calling your attention to every fine thing they've got in
the house, as if you weren't used to fine things of your own. If I've
got to tell every one that that's a genuine old Chinese masterpiece
before they notice it--well, it isn't worth it. But at the same time
the effect is richer; and some people do know, and talk about it to
other people who know--there's that to consider."
By this time I was conscious of something else.
Having got through so many minutes without recognition I was beginning
to hope that, by blotting myself out, as it were, between my
fellow-workmen I might finally escape detection. No one had as yet
dissociated any of us from another, the very absence of personality on
our part reducing us to the place of mere machines. As a mere machine
Mrs. Averill and Mildred might continue to overlook me, passing out of
the room as unobservant as they had come in.
But Lulu had begun a curious movement round the square of the carpets.
She seemed to be studying them; though with the long slits of her
Mongolian eyes her glance might be traveling anywhere. Having had the
opportunity to look me in the face, she moved to where she got me in
profile, afterward passing behind me and returning to her original
standpoint beside her sister and her friend. Without further reference
to Mrs. Mountney, she slipped her arm through Mildred's, leading her
toward the grand piano, against which they leaned.
For me there was nothing to do but to stand still. A word, a sign,
might easily betray me, if I had not been betrayed already. As the
conversation went on, Mildred kept her back to me, but Mrs. Averill
stood sidewise, so as to be able to throw me an occasional appraising
glance. Apparently she was in some doubt, my position and my clothes
rendering absolute certainty difficult.
But Mildred turned away from the piano at last, and without examining me
directly came slowly down the long room. Entirely mistress of herself
she walked with sedateness and composure. The shyness and brusqueness
which had given her a kind of aura in my thoughts during the past two
years seemed to have been overcome by experience. In this self-command
more than in any other detail I observed a change in her.
Not till she reached the corner of the long carpet did she give me the
first clear, straightforward look. That recognition did not come
instantly told me that I, too, must have changed. Laborious work and a
rough way of living had doubtless aged and probably hardened me. I was
dressed, too, like any other working-man, though with the tidiness which
our position on the selling floor exacted. A working-man in his Sunday
clothes would perhaps have described me, while my features must have
adapted themselves to altered inward conditions with the facility which
features possess.
"Is it really you?"
She was standing in front of me now, singling me out from the two boys
who had fallen a little back. She didn't offer to shake hands; perhaps
she wasn't sure enough of my identity; but that the circumstances in
which she found me made no difference to her was the one fact apparent.
Any emotion she may have felt was expressed in the quiver of a faint
smile.
"I hoped you wouldn't recognize me," was all I found to say.
"Why?"
"Oh, for all the reasons that--that almost anybody would see at a
glance."
"Perhaps I'm not--not almost anybody."
"No; you're not."
"Have you been doing this ever since--?"
I nodded. "It's the job I told you I might get. I did get it; and
so--"
"Have you liked it?"
"Extremely."
"Is that true, or is it just--?
"No; it's true. I could have had better jobs. They offered two or three
times to make me a salesman; you may remember that I knew a good deal
about rugs already--; but I preferred to stay where I am."
"For what reason?"
"I hardly know that I can tell you, unless it was to--to--"
"To find your soul?"
"Possibly."
"And have you found it?"
"I've found--something. I'm not sure whether it's my soul or not."
All this was said within the space of perhaps two minutes, during which
I watched Mrs. Averill and Mrs. Mountney, toward whom Mildred turned her
back, putting their head together on a whispered conversation. That it
was about me I could have gathered from their glances; but a little crow
on the part of Mrs. Mountney left me no doubt about it.
"Jasper Soames! Why, that's the name--"
It was all I caught; but it was enough to put even Mildred Averill on a
secondary plane.
"If you've found your soul--" she was saying.
"Oh, I'm not sure of that. I only feel that I've found--something. I
mean that something has come, or gone, I'm not sure of which; only
that--"
Mrs. Mountney wheeled suddenly from the piano, trotting back to the edge
of the carpet, across which she spoke to me.
"Did you ever hear of Copley's great portrait of Jasper Soames?"
I nodded, speechlessly. I had heard of it. In my mind's eye I saw it,
at the head of a great staircase, a full-length figure, wearing
knee-breeches of bottle-green satin, a gold-embroidered waistcoat, and a
long coat of ruby velvet with a Russian sable collar falling back almost
to the shoulders. A plate let into the foot of the frame bore the name
_Jasper Soames_, with the dates of a birth and a death. Somewhere in my
life the picture had been a familiar object.
I had no time to follow up this discovery before Mrs. Mountney began
again:
"Are you one of his descendants?"
"No; but my wife is."
The reply came out before I realized its significance. I hardly knew
what I had said till I heard Lulu Averill exclaim with as much
indignation as her indolent tones could carry:
"But you told my husband that you were not a married man! Didn't he,
Mildred?"
The situation was so unexpected that I felt myself like a bird swinging
in a cage. Nothing was steady; everything around me seemed to whirl.
Then I heard Mildred speaking as if her voice reached me through a poor
connection on a telephone.
"Oh, that didn't matter. I knew he was married all along--at least I
was pretty sure of it. What difference could it make to us?
"It made the difference," Mrs. Averill drawled, peevishly, "that we
believed him."
But Mrs. Mountney intervened, waving the others aside with a motion of
the arm.
"Wait!" She looked at me again across the carpet. "If you married a
descendant of Jasper Soames then it was Violet Torrance."
The mist that had hitherto enshrined two flaming eyes seemed to part as
if torn by-lightning. The figure disclosed was not static like that of
Jasper Soames, but alive as the sky is a ive in a storm. It was that of
my wife as I had last seen her. My mind resumed its action at the point
where its memory of Vio had been shut ott.
"And," Mrs. Mountney went on, pressing her facts, "you're Billy
Harrowby."