wasn’t to hear anything like that that I sent for you. The reason I
asked you to come down here was merely to see how far you would face
it out, whether you would have the nerve to come, really, that was
all--oh, just to see whether you would have a new lie to spring, and I
see you have. You’re a wonder, you are! But I’d like to ask you just
one favor: Won’t you please let me alone in the future? I’m tired, and
I can’t stand it any longer. I’m going away now. This fellow Tilney you
are working for is very clever, but it’s all over. It really is. You’ll
never get another chance at me if I know myself.” He started to walk
off.
“Ed! Ed!” she called. “Please--just a minute--don’t go yet, Ed,” she
begged. “There’s something I want to say to you first. I know all you
say is true. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t said to myself
a thousand times. But you don’t understand what my life has been like,
what I’ve suffered, how I’ve been pushed around, and I can’t tell
you now, either--not now. Our family wasn’t ever in society, as Mrs.
Skelton pretended--you knew that, of course, though--and I haven’t
been much of anything except a slave, and I’ve had a hard time, too,
terrible,” and she began dabbing her eyes. “I know I’m no good. Last
night proved it to me, that’s a fact. But I hadn’t meant to do you any
harm even when I came alone that way--really I didn’t. I pretended to
be willing, that was all. Hear me out, Ed, anyhow. Please don’t go yet.
I thought I could signal you to run without them seeing me--really I
did. When I first left you the door was locked, and I came back for
that sole reason. I suppose they did something to it so I couldn’t open
it. There were others up there; they made me go back--I can’t tell you
how or why or who--but they were all about me--they always are. They’re
determined to get you, Ed, in one way or another, even if I don’t help
them, and I’m telling you you’d better look out for yourself. Please
do. Go away from here. Don’t have anything more to do with me. Don’t
have anything more to do with any of these people. I can’t help myself,
honestly I can’t. I didn’t want to, but--oh----” she wrung her hands
and sat down wearily, “you don’t know how I’m placed with them, what it
is----”
“Yes? Well, I’m tired of that stuff,” Gregory now added grimly and
unbelievingly. “I suppose they told you to run back and tell me this
so as to win my sympathy again? Oh, you little liar! You make me sick.
What a sneak and a crook you really are!”
“Ed! Ed!” she now sobbed. “Please! Please! Won’t you understand how
it is? They have watched every entrance every time we’ve gone out
since I came here. It doesn’t make any difference which door you come
through. They have men at every end. I didn’t know anything about it
until I went upstairs. Really, I didn’t. Oh, I wish I could get out of
all this! I’m so sick of it all. I told you that I’m fond of you, and
I am. Oh, I’m almost crazy! I wish sometimes that I could die, I’m so
sick of everything. My life’s a shabby mess, and now you’ll hate me all
the time,” and she rocked to and fro in a kind of misery, and cried
silently as she did so.
Gregory stared at her, amazed but unbelieving.
“Yes,” he insisted, “I know. The same old stuff, but I don’t believe
it. You’re lying now, just as you have been all along. You think by
crying and pretending to feel sad that you might get another chance
to trick me, but you won’t. I’m out of this to-day, once and for all,
and I’m through with you. There’s no use in my appealing to the police
under this administration, or I’d do that. But I want to tell you
this. If you follow me any longer, or any of this bunch around here,
I’m going to the newspapers. There’ll be some way of getting this
before the courts somewhere, and I’ll try it. And if you really were on
the level and wanted to do anything, there’s a way, all right, but you
wouldn’t do it if you had a chance, never, not in a million years. I
know you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, Ed! Ed! You don’t know me, or how I feel, or what I’ll do,” she
whimpered. “You haven’t given me a chance. Why don’t you suggest
something, if you don’t believe me, and see?”
“Well, I can do that easily enough,” he replied sternly. “I can call
that bluff here and now. Write me out a confession of all that’s been
going on here. Let me hear you dictate it to a stenographer, and then
come with me to a notary public or the district attorney, and swear to
it. Now we’ll see just how much there is to this talk about caring for
me,” and he watched her closely, the while she looked at him, her eyes
drying and her sobs ceasing. She seemed to pause emotionally and stare
at the floor in a speculative, ruminative mood. “Yes? Well, that’s
different, isn’t it? I see how it is now. You didn’t think I’d have
just the thing to call your bluff with, did you? And just as I thought,
you won’t do it. Well, I’m onto you now, so good-day. I have your
measure at last. Good-by!” and he started off.
“Ed!” she called, jumping up suddenly and starting after him. “Ed!
Wait--don’t go! I’ll do what you say. I’ll do anything you want. You
don’t believe I will, but I will. I’m sick of this life, I really am.
I don’t care what they do to me now afterwards, but just the same I’ll
come. Please don’t be so hard on me, Ed. Can’t you see--can’t you
see--Ed--how I feel about you? I’m crazy about you, I really am. I’m
not all bad, Ed, really I’m not--can’t you see that? Only--only----”
and by now he had come back and was looking at her in an incredulous
way. “I wish you cared for me a little, Ed. Do you, Ed, just a little?
Can’t you, if I do this?”
He looked at her with mingled astonishment, doubt, contempt, pity, and
even affection, after its kind. Would she really do it? And if she did
what could he offer her in the way of that affection which she craved?
Nothing, he knew that. She could never extricate herself from this
awful group by which she was surrounded, her past, the memory of the
things she had tried to do to him, and he--he was married. He was happy
with his wife really, and could make no return. There was his career,
his future, his present position. But that past of hers--what was it?
How could it be that people could control another person in this way
she claimed, especially scoundrels like these, and why wouldn’t she
tell him about it? What had she done that was so terrible as to give
them this power? Even if he did care for her what chance would he have,
presuming her faithfulness itself, to either confront or escape the
horde of secret enemies that was besetting him and her just now? They
would be discovered and paraded forth at their worst, all the details.
That would make it impossible for him to come forth personally and make
the charge which would constitute him champion of the people. No, no,
no! But why, considering all her efforts against him, should she come
to his rescue now, or by doing so expect him to do anything for her by
way of return? He smiled at her dourly, a little sadly.
“Yes. Well, Imogene, I can’t talk to you about that now, not for the
present, anyhow. You’re either one of the greatest actresses and
crooks that ever lived, or you’re a little light in the upper story.
At any rate, I should think that you might see that you could scarcely
expect me to like you, let alone to love you, all things considered,
and particularly since this other thing has not been straightened out.
You may be lying right now, for all I know--acting, as usual. But even
so--let’s first see what you do about this other, and then talk.”
He looked at her, then away over the sea to where some boats were
coming towards them.
“Oh, Ed,” she said sadly, observing his distracted gaze, “you’ll never
know how much I do care for you, although you know I must care a lot
for you, to do this. It’s the very worst thing I can do for me--the
end, maybe, for me. But I wish you would try and like me a little, even
if it were only for a little while.”
“Well, Imogene, let’s not talk about that now,” he replied skeptically.
“Not until we’ve attended to this other, anyhow. Certainly you owe me
that much. You don’t know what my life’s been, either--one long up-hill
fight. But you’d better come along with me just as you are, if you’re
coming. Don’t go upstairs to get any hat--or to change your shoes. I’ll
get a car here and you can come with me just as you are.”
She looked at him simply, directly, beatenly.
“All right, Ed, but I wish I knew how this is going to end. I can’t
come back here after this, you know, if they find it out. I know I owe
this to you, but, oh dear, I’m such a fool! Women always are where love
is concerned, and I told myself I’d never let myself get in love any
more, and now look at me!”
They went off to the city together, to his office, to a notary, to the
district attorney’s office--a great triumph. She confessed all, or
nearly so, how she had formerly been employed by Mr. Swayne; how she
had met Mr. Tilney there; how, later, after Swayne had fled, Tilney had
employed her in various capacities, secretary, amanuensis, how she had
come to look upon him as her protector; where and how she had met Mrs.
Skelton, and how the latter, at Mr. Tilney’s request (she was not sure,
only it was an order, she said) had engaged--commanded, rather--her
to do this work, though what the compulsion was she refused to say,
reserving it for a later date. She was afraid, she said.
* * * * *
Once he had this document in his possession, Gregory was overjoyed, and
still he was doubtful of her. She asked him what now, what more, and he
requested her to leave him at once and to remain away for a time until
he had time to think and decide what else he wished to do. There could
be nothing between them, not even friendship, he reassured her, unless
he was fully convinced at some time or other that no harm could come to
him--his wife, his campaign, or anything else. Time was to be the great
factor.
And yet two weeks later, due to a telephone message from her to his
office for just one word, a few minutes, anywhere that he would
suggest, they met again, this time merely for a moment, as he told
himself and her. It was foolish, he shouldn’t do it, but still---- At
this interview, somehow, Imogene managed to establish a claim on his
emotions which it was not easy to overcome. It was in one of the small
side booths in the rather out-of-the-way Grill Parzan Restaurant in
the great financial district. Protesting that it was only because she
wished to see him just once more that she had done this, she had come
here, she said, after having dropped instantly and completely out of
the life at Triton Hall, not returning even for her wardrobe, as he
understood it, and hiding away in an unpretentious quarter of the city
until she could make up her mind what to do. She seemed, and said she
was, much alone, distrait. She did not know what was to become of her
now, what might befall her. Still, she was not so unhappy if only he
would not think badly of her any more. He had to smile at her seemingly
pathetic faith in what love might do for her. To think that love should
turn a woman about like this! It was fascinating, and so sad. He was
fond of her in a platonic way, he now told himself, quite sincerely
so. Her interest in him was pleasing, even moving, “But what is it
you expect of me?” he kept saying over and over. “You know we can’t
go on with this. There’s ‘the girl’ and the kid. I won’t do anything
to harm them, and besides, the campaign is just beginning. Even this
is ridiculously foolish of me. I’m taking my career in my hands. This
lunch will have to be the last, I tell you.”
“Well, Ed,” she agreed wistfully, looking at him at the very close of
the meal, “you have made up your mind, haven’t you? Then you’re not
going to see me any more? You seem so distant, now that we’re back in
town. Do you feel so badly toward me, Ed? Am I really so bad?”
“Well, Imogene, you see for yourself how it is, don’t you?” he went on.
“It can’t be. You are more or less identified with that old crowd, even
though you don’t want to be. They know things about you, you say, and
they certainly wouldn’t be slow to use them if they had any reason for
so doing. Of course they don’t know anything yet about this confession,
unless you’ve told them, and I don’t propose that they shall so long as
I don’t have to use it. As for me, I have to think of my wife and kid,
and I don’t want to do anything to hurt them. If ever Emily found this
out it would break her all up, and I don’t want to do that. She’s been
too square, and we’ve gone through too much together. I’ve thought it
all over, and I’m convinced that what I’m going to do is for the best.
We have to separate, and I came here to-day to tell you that I can’t
see you any more. It can’t be, Imogene, can’t you see that?”
“Not even for a little while?”
“Not even for a day. It just can’t be. I’m fond of you, and you’ve been
a brick to pull me out of this, but don’t you see that it can’t be?
Don’t you really see how it is?”
She looked at him, then at the table for a moment, and then out over
the buildings of the great city.
“Oh, Ed,” she reflected sadly, “I’ve been such a fool. I don’t mean
about the confession--I’m glad I did that--but just in regard to
everything I’ve done. But you’re right, Ed. I’ve felt all along that
it would have to end this way, even the morning I agreed to make the
confession. But I’ve been making myself hope against hope, just
because from the very first day I saw you out there I thought I
wouldn’t be able to hold out against you, and now you see I haven’t.
Well, all right, Ed. Let’s say good-bye. Love’s a sad old thing, isn’t
it?” and she began to put on her things.
He helped her, wondering over the strange whirl of circumstances which
had brought them together and was now spinning them apart.
“I wish I could do something more for you, Imogene, I really do,” he
said. “I wish I could say something that would make it a little easier
for you--for us both--but what would be the use? It wouldn’t really,
now would it?”
“No,” she replied brokenly.
He took her to the elevator and down to the sidewalk, and there they
stopped for a moment.
“Well, Imogene,” he began, and paused. “It’s not just the way I’d like
it to be, but--well----” he extended his hand “----here’s luck and
good-by, then.” He turned to go.
She looked up at him pleadingly.
“Ed,” she said, “Ed--wait! Aren’t you--don’t you want to----?” she put
up her lips, her eyes seemingly misty with emotion.
He came back and putting his arm about her, drew her upturned lips to
his. As he did so she clung to him, seeming to vent a world of feeling
in this their first and last kiss, and then turned and left him, never
stopping to look back, and being quickly lost in the immense mass which
was swirling by. As he turned to go though he observed two separate
moving-picture men with cameras taking the scene from different
angles. He could scarcely believe his senses. As he gazed they stopped
their work, clapped their tripods together and made for a waiting car.
Before he could really collect his thoughts they were gone--and then----
“As I live!” he exclaimed. “She did do this to me after all, or did
she? And after all my feeling for her!--and all her protestations! The
little crook! And now they have that picture of me kissing her! Stung,
by George! and by the same girl, or by them, and after all the other
things I’ve avoided! That’s intended to make that confession worthless!
She did that because she’s changed her mind about me! Or, she never did
care for me.” Grim, reducing thought! “Did she--could she--know--do a
thing like that?” he wondered. “Is it she and Tilney, or just Tilney
alone, who has been following me all this time?” He turned solemnly and
helplessly away.
Now after all his career was in danger. His wife had returned and all
was seemingly well, but if he proceeded with his exposures as he must,
then what? This picture would be produced! He would be disgraced! Or
nearly so. Then what? He might charge fraud, a concocted picture,
produce the confession. But could he? Her arms had been about his neck!
He had put his about her! Two different camera men had taken them from
different angles! Could he explain that? Could he find Imogene again?
Was it wise? Would she testify in his behalf? If so what good would it
do? Would any one, in politics at least, believe a morally victimized
man? He doubted it. The laughter! The jesting! The contempt! No one
except his wife, and she could not help him here.
Sick at heart and defeated he trudged on now clearly convinced that
because of this one silly act of kindness all his work of months had
been undone and that now, never, so shy were the opposing political
forces, might he ever hope to enter the promised land of his better
future--not here, at least--that future to which he had looked forward
with so much hope--neither he nor his wife, nor child.
“Fool! Fool!” he exclaimed to himself heavily and then--“fool! fool!”
Why had he been so ridiculously sympathetic and gullible? Why so unduly
interested? but finding no answer and no clear way of escape save in
denial and counter charges he made his way slowly on toward that now
dreary office where so long he had worked, but where now, because of
this he might possibly not be able to work, at least with any great
profit to himself.
“Tilney! Imogene! The Triton!” he thought--what clever scoundrels those
two were--or Tilney anyhow--he could not be sure of Imogene, even now,
and so thinking, he left the great crowd at his own door, that crowd,
witless, vast, which Tilney and the mayor and all the politicians were
daily and hourly using--the same crowd which he had wished to help and
against whom, as well as himself, this little plot had been hatched,
and so easily and finally so successfully worked.
THE CRUISE OF THE “IDLEWILD”
It would be difficult to say just how the trouble aboard the _Idlewild_
began, or how we managed to sail without things going to smash every
fifteen minutes; but these same constitute the business of this
narrative. It was at Spike, and the weather was blistering hot. Some of
us, one in particular, were mortal tired of the life we were leading.
It was a dingy old shop inside, loaded with machines and blacksmithing
apparatus and all the paraphernalia that go to make up the little
depots and furniture that railways use, and the labor of making them
was intrusted to about a hundred men all told--carpenters, millwrights,
wood-turners, tinsmiths, painters, blacksmiths, an engineer, and a yard
foreman handling a score of “guineas,” all of whom were too dull to
interest the three or four wits who congregated in the engine room.
Old John, the engineer, was one of these--a big, roly-poly sort of
fellow, five foot eleven, if he was an inch, with layers of flesh
showing through his thin shirt and tight trousers, and his face and
neck constantly standing in beads of sweat. Then there was the smith,
a small, wiry man of thirty-five, with arms like a Titan and a face
that was expressive of a goodly humor, whether it was very brilliant
or not--the village smith, as we used to call him. Then there was Ike,
little Ike, the blacksmith’s helper, who was about as queer a little
cabin boy as ever did service on an ocean-going steamer or in a
blacksmith’s shop--a small misshapen, dirty-faced lad, whose coat was
three, and his trousers four, times too large for him--hand-me-downs
from some mysterious source; immensely larger members of his family,
I presume. He had a battered face, such as you sometimes see given to
satyrs humorously represented in bronze, and his ears were excessively
large. He had a big mouthful of dirty yellow teeth, two or three
missing in front. His eyes were small and his hands large, but a
sweeter soul never crept into a smaller or more misshapen body. Poor
little Ike. To think how near he came to being driven from his job by
our tomfoolishness!
I should say here that the _Idlewild_ was not a boat at all, but an
idea. She evolved out of our position on Long’s Point, where the Harlem
joins the Hudson, and where stood the shop in which we all worked,
water to the south of us, water to the west of us, water to the north
of us, and the railroad behind us landward, just like the four--or was
it the six? hundred--at Balaklava. Anyhow, we got our idea from the
shop and the water all around, and we said, after much chaffering about
one thing and another, that we were aboard the _Idlewild_, and that the
men were the crew, and that the engineer was the captain, and I was the
mate, just as if everything were ship-shape, and this were a really and
truly ocean-going vessel.
As I have said before, I do not know exactly how the idea started,
except that it did. Old John was always admiring the beautiful yachts
that passed up and down the roadstead of the Hudson outside, and this
may have had something to do with it. Anyhow, he would stand in the
doorway of his engine room and watch everything in the shape of a
craft that went up and down the stream. He didn’t know much about
boats, but he loved to comment on their charms, just the same.
“That there now must be Morgan’s yacht,” he used to say of a fine
black-bodied craft that had a piano-body finish to it, an’ “That
there’s the _Waterfowl_, Governor Morton’s yacht. Wouldn’ ja think,
now, them fellers ’d feel comfortable a-settin’ back there on the poop
deck an’ smokin’ them dollar cigars on a day like this? Aw, haw!”
It would usually be blistering hot and the water a flashing blue when
he became excited over the yacht question.
“Right-o,” I once commented enviously.
“Aw, haw! Them’s the boys as knows how to live. I wouldn’ like nothin’
better on a day like this than to set out there in one o’ them easy
chairs an’ do up about a pound o’ tobacco. Come now, wouldn’t that be
the ideal life for your Uncle Dudley?”
“It truly would,” I replied sadly but with an inherent desire to tease,
“only I don’t think my Uncle Dudley is doing so very badly under the
circumstances. I notice he isn’t losing any flesh.”
“Well, I dunno. I’m a little stout, I’ll admit. Still, them conditions
would be more congenial-like. I ain’t as active as I used to be. A nice
yacht an’ some good old fifty-cent cigars an’ a cool breeze ’d just
about do for me.”
“You’re too modest, John. You want too little. You ought to ask for
something more suited to your Lucullian instincts. What do you say to a
house in Fifth Avenue, a country place at Newport, and the friendship
of a few dukes and earls?”
“Well, I’m not backward,” he replied. “If them things was to come my
way I guess I could live up to ’em. Aw, haw!”
“Truly, truly, John, you’re quite right, but you might throw in a few
shovelfuls of shavings just to show that there are no hard feelings
between you and the company while you’re waiting for all this. I notice
your steam is getting low, eh? What?”
“Hang the steam! If the road was decent they’d give a man coal to burn.
It takes a hundred tons of shavin’s a day to keep this blinged old
cormorant goin’. Think of me havin’ to stand here all day an’ shovelin’
in shavin’s! Seems to me all I do here is shovel. I’m an engineer, not
a fireman. They ought to gimme a man for that, by rights.”
“Quite so! Quite so! We’ll see about that later--only, for the present,
the shavings for yours. Back to the shovel, John!” The tone was heavily
bantering.
“Well, the steam was gettin’ a little low,” John would cheerfully
acknowledge, once he was able to resume his position in the doorway. It
was these painful interruptions which piqued him so.
Out of such chaffering and bickering as this it was that the spirit
of the _Idlewild_ finally took its rise. It came up from the sea of
thought, I presume.
“What’s the matter with us having a boat of our own, John?” I said to
him one day. “Here we are, out here on the bounding main, or mighty
near it. This is as good as any craft, this old shop. Ease the thing
around and hoist the Jolly Roger, and I’ll sail you up to White Plains.
What’s the matter with calling her the _Idlewild_? The men will
furnish the idle, and the bosses will furnish the wild, eh? How’s that
for an appropriate title?”
“Haw! Haw!” exclaimed stout John. “Bully! We’ll fix ’er up to-day. You
be the captain an’ I’ll be the mate an’----”
“Far be it from me, John,” I replied humbly and generously, seeing that
he had the one point of vantage in this whole institution which would
serve admirably as a captain’s cabin--with his consent, of course.
It was more or less like a captain’s cabin on a tug-boat, at that,
picturesque and with a sea view, as it were. “You be the captain and
I’ll be the mate. Far be it from me to infringe on a good old sea dog’s
rights. You’re the captain, all right, and this is a plenty good enough
cabin. I’m content to be mate. Open up steam, Cap, and we’ll run the
boat up and down the yard a few times. Look out the window and see how
she blows. It’s ho! for a life on the bounding main, and a jolly old
crew are we!”