"You can't explain in such a way that--" She swung toward her hostess.
"Lulu, I must go straight back to Boston to-night. There's a train that
gets you there in the morning, isn't there? I hate night traveling. I
never sleep, and I have a headache all the next day--but what's that
when--? If Vio hears this from any one but--" She turned to me again.
"Then it _was_ true that you'd been seen in New York hotels?"
"Possibly; I don't know what you're referring to."
"Oh, every now and then some report went round in Boston that So-and-so
had seen you in this hotel or that; but nothing of the sort has been
said for a year or two, and we thought that it was just the kind of fake
story that gets about. But now! Well, I must break the news to Vio--"
"Why shouldn't I break it myself? I could call her up by long
distance."
"Man, if she heard your voice like that it would kill her. You don't
_know_. No, I must go; there's no help for it, headache or no headache.
Mildred dear, won't you call Annette? I told her she could go to the
theater to-night, but now she'll have to get our tickets, and pack!" She
wrung her hands. "Oh, dear! When a man's dead, he'd better stay dead!"
Mildred slipped from the room. A suspicion began to creep over me.
"Is there any special reason for my staying dead?"
"How _can_ you when you're alive? That's the important point. Vio will
never forgive you for being alive--and not telling her."
"She will when she's heard."
"She's got to hear right away, and I'm going to take charge of it. You
may say it's none of my business, but I'm making it mine. I've known
Vio Torrance since we were tots together."
I ventured to remind her that Vio might be her friend, but that she was
my wife.
"Wife!" she crowed, scornfully. "Have you treated her like a wife--to
be alive all this time and never let her know! When I tell you that
she's been in mourning for you and out again--positively out again--
Well, you can imagine!"
"I can imagine so many things--"
But she jerked her little person away from me toward the two fellows who
were trying dully to follow the scene they were witnessing without being
able to seize its drift.
"Take all this stuff back again to where you brought it from. I'm not
going to buy any of it. The idea of Billy Harrowby--" She repeated the
name with a squeal, "Billy _Harrowby!_ of all people in the world! Why,
it's enough to drive me out of my senses. I suppose you don't know,"
she continued, switching back to me again, "that they've put a new man
in your place at the Museum, over a year ago, a Frenchman; and that Vio
has given them all your prints and etchings for a William Harrowby
Memorial--that's what she called it--she had to do something of the sort
after your tragic end, in common decency; and you considered a hero,
something like Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger, and now what's it to
be--and you alive?" A dramatic gesture seemed to claim this confusion
as something for which Fate had made her specially responsible. "Lulu,
take me away, for Heaven's sake! I shall never look at a Chinese rug
again without thinking--"
When the two ladies, with arms around each other's waist, had passed
into the hallway, and out of sight, I turned to my colleagues, saying
merely:
"I think we'd better roll these up and beat it."
Neither made any comment till we were in the lorry on our way back to
Creed & Creed's, when one of them said in an awe-stricken tone:
"For the love o' Mike, Brogan, ain't your name--_Brogan_?"
*CHAPTER VII*
Two mornings later I was in Boston, sitting in the lobby of one of the
great hotels. I had come by order of a telegram from my brother-in-law,
Wolf Torrance. A note handed me on my arrival, late the previous
evening, requested me to wait for him before attempting to see Violet.
From her I had had nothing.
I had come as I was, with the hundred and thirty dollars of my savings
in my pocket, but without taking the time to dress otherwise than in my
working-man's best. Examining myself closely, now that I was face to
face with my old life again, I could see that by imperceptible degrees
my whole appearance had taken on those shades which distinguish the
working-man from men in more sophisticated walks in life. Vio Harrowby
as the wife of a working-man, or of any one looking like a working-man,
was an inconceivable image.
My leaving New York had been made simpler for me than I could have
ventured to hope. Whatever the tale told by the lads who had accompanied
me to East Seventy-sixth Street, it had awed the luggers, impressed the
salesmen, and reached the ears of the Olympian gods. It was not often,
I fancy, that Creed & Creed's was the scene of mystery. That there was
a secret about me every one knew, of course; but it had been connected
with vague romantic tales of squandering the family estate, of cheating
at cards, or of other forms of aristocratic misdoings. So long as I
didn't put on airs, and answered submissively to the name of Brogan,
this was not laid up against me or treated otherwise than as a
misfortune. Now that an explanation seemed to be coming to the light
the effect, for that morning at least, was to strike my comrades dumb.
They stared at me, but kept at a respectful distance, somewhat like
school-boys with one of their number smitten by domestic calamity.
Salesmen who, except for an order to pull out or put back a rug, had
never taken the trouble to notice me, came and engaged me in polite
conversation, while one or two of the partners made errands into the
shop on purpose, as I surmised, to get a look at me. The single moment
that could have been called dramatic fell to the Floater, who came in,
during the forenoon, with a telegram and a special-delivery letter in
his hand. They had been sent to Creed & Creed's, since that was my only
known address.
"I suppose these wouldn't be for you," was the Floater's choice of
words, as he offered them for my inspection.
The telegram was for William Harrowby, the letter to William Harrowby,
Esquire.
"That's my name, my real name," I admitted, humbly.
It was natural for him to hide his curiosity under a veil of sputtering
disdain.
"Thought it'd be. Never did take stock in that damfool name you give
when you first come here. 'Twa'n't fit for a dog or a horse--and you
goin' just as easy by the name o' Brogan. Couldn't any one _see_?"
As to what any one could see I didn't inquire, being too eager to open
my telegram. Though I scarcely hoped that it could be from Vio my heart
sank a little when I saw that it was not.
"Come at once. Stay at the Normandy. Wait for me before seeing Violet.
Explanations expected. J. DEWOLFE TORRANCE."
The spirit of the letter was different. Bearing neither formal
beginning nor signature, it was dated from the house in East
Seventy-sixth Street.
"I am so glad for your sake. Though I do not understand, I have
confidence. I have always had confidence--without understanding. Some
day, perhaps, you will tell me; but that shall be as you please. Just
now I only want you to know that almost from the beginning of our
acquaintance I thought you had a wife. I can't tell you how or why the
conviction was borne in on me; but it was. Possibly I was interested in
you for her sake a little, with that kind of secret sisterhood which
more or less binds all women together, and which is not inconsistent
with the small mutual irritations we classify as feline. In any case I
knew it--or I so nearly knew it as to be able to take it for granted.
If you go back to your home, then, you will have more than my good
wishes, you will both have them. Should there be anything to keep you
apart you will have more than my good wishes still. Don't ask me why I
say these things, because I scarcely know. Don't try to interpret me,
either, for you are extremely likely to be wrong. In our talks together
you must have seen that I am in rebellion against being bound by other
people's rules of conduct, and as far as I have the courage I brave the
inferences drawn from what I do. My weakness is that I have not much
courage. All the same, as I want to give you a kind of blessing in this
new turn in your life, I keep repeating of you some words which I think
must come from Tennyson:
"'Go forth, and break through all,
Till one shall crown thee, far in the spiritual city.'"
This letter, too, made my leaving New York easier. Possibly it was
written with that intent. "Don't try to interpret me," she had said, and
I saw the wisdom of following the counsel. As a matter of fact the new
turn to the wheel taxed my mental resources to the utmost.
As nearly as I could judge, those mental resources were normal again.
My return to the old conditions I can only compare to waking from a
drugged unconsciousness. The repair of a broken telegraphic or
telephonic connection might also give an idea of what had taken place in
me. Re-establishment effected, messages went simply; that was all I
could say. The mental rest induced by two years of physical exertion,
with little or no thought for the morrow from any point of view, had
apparently given the ruptured brain cells the time to reconstruct
themselves. Physiologically I may be expressing myself inexactly; but
that is of no moment. What is important is the fact that from the
instant when Alice Mountney said, "You're Billy Harrowby," the complete
function of the brain seemed to be resumed. There was no more in the
nature of a shock than there is in remembering anything else forgotten.
More difficult to become accustomed to were the outward conditions.
Having accepted the habits of poverty, those of financial ease seemed
alien. They were uncomfortable, too, like an outlandish style of dress.
To sleep in a luxurious bed, to order whatever I chose for breakfast,
was as odd for me as a reversion to laces and ruffles in my costume.
There was a marvelous thrill in it, however, with a sense of trembling
anticipation. A soul on the outer edge of paradise, after a life of
vicissitude and stint, would doubtless have some such vision of
abundance and peace as that which filled my horizon.
But before Christian arrives at the Celestial City which is in sight he
is reminded that a few difficulties remain to be faced, and in some such
light I regarded the interview with Wolf. He came at last, pushing
round the revolving door, and standing on the threshold with a searching
look in his silly, hungry eyes. Hatted and fur-coated, he had that air
of divine right to all that was best on earth which was one of the
qualities that, to me at least, had always made him unbearable. Perhaps
because I had had the same conviction about myself I could tolerate it
less in him.
Every one called him Wolf, partly because of his name, but more because
he looked like the animal. With a jaw extraordinarily long and narrow,
emphasized rather than concealed by a beard trimmed carefully to a
point, his smile lit up a row of gleaming upper teeth best described as
fangs. His small eyes were at once eager, greedy, and fatuous; and yet
there was that in his personality which stamped him as of recognized
social superiority. In the same way that a picture can be spoken of as
a poor example of a good school, Wolf might have been reckoned as a
second-rate specimen of a thoroughbred stock. Even as he stood you
would have put him down as belonging to the higher strata in any
community, and in sheer right of his forebears a member of the best
among its clubs.
Instead of going forward and making myself known I allowed him to
discover me. It was one more proof of my having changed that more than
once his eye traveled over me without recognition. It must be
remembered that I was no longer seedy; I was only different. It was not
the degree but the kind that put him out of his reckoning.
When in the end he selected me from the crowd it was rather as a
possibility than as his very man. Coming forward with that inquiring,
and yet doubtful, air which people take on when scarcely able to believe
what they see, he halted with a bland, incredulous smile.
"Well!"
With feelings in no wise different from those of a man charged with a
crime of which he knows himself guilty, I struggled to my feet:
"Hello, Wolf!"
Wolfs small eyes roamed from my head to my feet and from my feet to my
head before he spoke again:
"So you've decided to come back."
The grin that accompanied these words was partly nervous, but partly due
to his pose of taking life as the kind of joke which he was
man-of-the-world enough to appreciate.
"As you see," I responded, with a sickly grin on my own part.
In some lifeless manner we shook hands, after which I asked him to be
seated.
On his taking off his hat I observed that during the three years and
more since I had seen him last he had grown bald, while, with something
of a pang, I wondered for the first time if I should find a change in
Vio.
"Why didn't you come before?"
"I should have come if I could. As a matter of fact, I couldn't."
"Couldn't--why?"
"Didn't know where to go."
"What's that mean?"
"Exactly what it says."
"That you didn't know where to--?"