A WAY OF ESCAPE.
The amazement of Miss Montressor had a double origin; the primary one,
that Mr. Dolby should turn up, in this unexpected and extraordinary
manner, in a place with which he had no connection that she had the
most remote suspicion of; the secondary one, that her sister should
have rushed into that gentleman's arms, and called him 'Ephraim.'
Within the last few days her mind had been so absorbed in the terrible
details of the Griswold story, that Mr. Dolby had hardly crossed it;
and positively since that morning she had never remembered his
existence until the fact was recalled to her in this unprecedented
fashion. When she had thought of him at all, it was always with the
fixed idea that he had preceded her to America for the purpose of
watching her, and now she firmly believed her suspicions to be
realised; but even the rapidity of thought did not enable her to do
more than realise this fact before her sister said, turning to her,
while she still clutched the stranger by the arm, 'This is my husband,
Clara; what can you mean by calling him Mr. Dolby?'
Never had the self-possession inseparable from anything like a fair
proficiency in her art stood Miss Montressor in such stead as at this
moment. She recovered herself instantly, and replied, 'My dear Bess,
is this really your husband, your Ephraim of whom we were talking only
a few minutes ago? How very odd that an accidental but strong likeness
should have led me to have imagined he was a friend of mine!'
'So he will be a friend of yours, I suppose,' said Mrs. Jenkins, with
just the slightest possible revival of a combatant tone in her voice;
for even the joy of her husband's unexpected return could not silence
her from some measure of protest against her sister's indifference.
'And what in the world has brought you back, Eph, and why did you not
tell me you were coming?'
'Why in the world was I sent for, Bess?' was Ephraim Jenkins's reply,
as he fixed his eyes upon his wife's face with an unmistakably sincere
expression of surprise.
Miss Montressor was not prepared to find her sister's husband a
good-looking, gentlemanly, and well-dressed man; but these
circumstances made no difference at all in the sensation of quiet,
sincere, and irrepressible vexation with which she regarded this
meeting. It was her most earnest wish that she should never be brought
in contact with Jenkins under any circumstances; but to meet him under
the present, and at Mrs. Griswold's, where she had such strong motives
for disguising her identity with Mrs. Jenkins's sister, was especially
annoying to her. Of course the secret could not be kept now, was
almost her first thought, but it was worth trying for, and so she
unceremoniously interrupted the explanation which Ephraim was about to
give to his astonished wife by hurriedly explaining to him that no one
must know of their relationship.
'Bess has made me a solemn promise,' she said, 'that she will not tell
it, and I expect you to observe it for her sake.'
'Whoever do you suppose I am going to talk to about you,' said Jenkins
roughly, with an instantaneous relief, throwing off all the
gentlemanly manner and appearance, which was the merest disguise, and
with which he equally discarded his previously striking resemblance to
Mr. Dolby. 'Bess knows her own business, so do you; and if you don't
want to acknowledge her, I'm not going to peach.'
'Thank you,' said Miss Montressor, with great self-command, and she
actually put out her hand graciously to her detested brother-in-law.
He took it rather sulkily, and growled out that she need not be in
such a hurry to disavow folks that didn't want anything from her.
'That's not my motive,' said Miss Montressor, 'as Bess will explain to
you. But I must go now; she won't want me to stay with her now she has
got you.'
'O, pray don't go!' exclaimed Mrs. Jenkins. 'I do want to talk to
Ephraim, and find out how it is that he has dropped from the clouds in
this unexpected way, but perhaps you won't mind staying all the same.
There is no one in the boudoir, and I could take you up there while I
talk to Ephraim. Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey will be here very shortly.'
Good-nature and curiosity united induced Miss Montressor to comply
with her sister's request. 'Very well,' she said; 'I will go to the
boudoir; you need not take me up, I know my own way there. Don't you
remember, Bess, I have been all over the house with you.' And she went
towards the door, but just as she had reached it, Ephraim Jenkins
stopped her with a question.
'Would you mind telling me, Miss Montressor,' he said ceremoniously,
and with a half-ironical sort of bow, 'who was the individual for whom
you did me the honour to mistake me just now? Would you mind
mentioning his name? I find it quite unpleasant enough to have one
double, as I have already, without being accommodated with two.'
'I mistook you,' she said, 'for Mr. George Dolby, who is an American,
like yourself, whom I knew very well in London. Pray don't be
offended; I assure you you might very well accept my error as a
compliment.'
'Mr. George Dolby,' repeated Ephraim, with an intent frown upon his
face as of one trying painfully to retrace a track of thought or to
work out a puzzle; 'Mr. George Dolby, an American? Is the gentleman in
New York just now?'
'To the best of my belief,' returned Miss Montressor briefly, 'he is;'
and with that she left the room.
'By Jove, Bess,' said Jenkins, laying his hand upon his wife's
shoulder, holding her at a little distance from him, and looking into
her face with an expression of strange mingled suspicion, curiosity,
and amusement, 'it is Warren, and he has been up to his game with her
in London--it must be, you know; but I am precious glad he has come
back, though why he should not have let me know he is back, I cannot
tell. However, his being here at New York gets me out of a devil of a
mess that I should have been very much puzzled how to get out of
myself; though I will tell you what it is,' he continued, drawing her
close to him and kissing her fondly, 'I would have got into it ten
times over, and trusted to my own luck, or the devil's own luck, to
get out of it, for the relief the sight of your face gave me, and when
I found there was nothing wrong with you.'
'But what brought you here, Eph, and how came you to think there was
anything wrong with me?'
His wife was not to be won from her uneasiness, or diverted from her
wish to understand precisely what had occurred, by even the
affectionate assurance which was so dear to her, and she reiterated
her question very earnestly.
'We shall have very little uninterrupted time, Eph,' she said;
'awful things have happened here. Mr. Griswold has been murdered in
England--you must have seen all about it in the papers?'
'No, I didn't; I should have known the meaning if I had, on account of
Warren as well as on account of you, Bess; for I haven't forgot, and I
don't mean to, how kind Mrs. Griswold has been to you. Poor thing, she
is awfully cut up, I suppose.'
'She's just heartbroken, Eph, and the police are coming here presently
to make her tell all she knows, poor soul; and as I was saying to
Nelly--to Clara, I mean--just now, that's not much, for they do say
Mr. Griswold was the closest man in New York about his affairs; and I
must leave you then and go to her; so you must tell me as much as you
can as quick as you can. Take off that great heavy coat, Eph, and that
hat, and sit down.'
'No, no; I mustn't do that, Bess,' replied Jenkins, drawing the coat
still more closely round him, and ramming the hat still further down
over his eyes by a blow on the crown. 'Whatever are you thinking
about? They know Warren perfectly well here, and if they either took
me for him, and found out I'm somebody else, or else if they
discovered that there's anybody about so uncommon like him as I am,
they might have their suspicions roused, and set to look for him
directly. And that would not pay, Bess, my dear, neither on his
account nor on my own; for though I don't suppose they could do me
much harm, and for certain they couldn't make me out to be up to
any--deliberate harm, I mean--of course, it ain't altogether on the
square, this lay I'm on for Warren. And, then, if he should be up to
anything out-of-the-way-fishy, which I'm sometimes tempted to suspect,
and they find out that he is not at Chicago while he's pretending to
be there, even suppose they couldn't molest me at all, they certainly
could stop _his_ little game; and in our present circumstances, Bess,
my girl, we must remember that stopping his little game means stopping
our rations.'
'Yes, yes,' said Mrs. Jenkins mournfully, twisting the end of her
apron about in her fingers in a way habitual to her in perplexity. 'I
know that, Eph; and yet I cannot tell you how uneasy and wretched I am
feeling, and have been feeling ever since we parted, and you went to
undertake this dark and dirty business for Warren. Dark we know it is,
and dirty I cannot but suspect it to be. O Eph, could you but give it
up? If you only would be satisfied to stick regularly to some kind of
fixed work, and let us live respectable, however poor!'
'We couldn't easily be poorer than we've been when we lived
disrespectable,' said Jenkins, with a kind of surly good humour; 'and
I think I could stick to work if only the pay would stick _to me_--but
where is it to be had? You can't have forgotten, Bess, how hard I
have had to work in this place, and how I never got any for a
constancy--yes, yes, I know what your shake of the head means, and
you've good right to shake it, I'm not going for a moment to deny
that--and how, then, Warren was always giving me, or getting somebody
else to get me, odd jobs. Well, one can't work steadily at odd jobs;
it ain't in the nature of things, nor yet in one's own nature. If
one's business is unsteady, one must be unsteady with it; and where
any thing except odd jobs is to come from, especially if I vex Warren,
and he shunts me off in earnest, I cannot guess. Can you?'
'I think, Eph--indeed I am sure--Mrs. Griswold would be a good friend
to us, if you would let me tell her the truth--I don't mean about
Warren, of course, but about our difficulties. I think she would get
you a fixed place somewhere, through Mr. Carey's influence--and Warren
would never hear of it; or if he did hear of it, he would know, by her
ignorance of your being his brother, that you had not betrayed his
secret. And, after all, he would then be effectually rid of us,
Ephraim, and I think he would be very glad to be rid of us--or I
should say of you, because he does not know of my existence--at the
price of having his pride hurt by Mrs. Griswold or Mr. Carey observing
that there is a strong likeness between him and the husband of her
baby's nurse. Do think of it, Ephraim, and let me ask her, when she
has got over her great trouble a little, and can look beyond it for
the sake of other people. It will not be long first, for she is the
most unselfish woman, I do believe, in all the world. Will you let me
speak to her, Eph, when I can get an opportunity?'
'Well,' replied Ephraim Jenkins, with a little reluctance in his tone,
as of an instinctive, irrepressible shrinking from the burden of a
threatened respectability in the future, combined with regular hours
and regular work, 'I don't mind--only, you know, _I must_ see this
piece of business through to the end; and now, Bess, I must tell you
what has brought me here; you were awfully anxious to know a few
minutes ago, until you went off at a tangent all about Mrs. Griswold,
and a fixed occupation and what not, and now you seem to have
forgotten all about it.'
'No, I haven't, Ephraim dear,' replied his wife, as she put her arm
round his neck, and looked earnestly into his face; 'only the first
feeling of fright has gone off in the pleasure of seeing you again so
unexpected--for it did give me a shock of fright as well as a shock of
joy. I suppose it was some business of Warren's?'
'_I_ suppose it is too,' he said; 'but I only suppose, for I don't
_know_--and you have thrown more light on it since I came than it has
had on it all through the journey, and before I started; for I came
off in such a desperate mortal fright about you, my girl, that I never
remembered, until I was hours on my way, that the telegram was
intended for Warren, and not for me at all.'
'What telegram, Ephraim? I am all astray--I don't understand you. Did
you get a telegram? From whom?'
'Yes, _I_ got a telegram, but I suppose, as you are all right, the
message could not have had anything to do with me.'
He took out of a breast-pocket in his shaggy overcoat a crumpled and a
dirty telegraph form, which was to the following effect:
'From Thornton Carey, New York, to Trenton Warren, 3 Bryan's Block,
Chicago. You are earnestly requested by Mrs. Griswold to come to New
York without delay. It is of the utmost importance that she should see
you. A terrible calamity has occurred.'
Mrs. Jenkins read this document twice over with the seriousness of a
person unaccustomed to telegrams, and then returned it to Ephraim.
'The terrible calamity, of course, means Mr. Griswold's murder.'
'Of course that is clear enough now; but can you not understand, Bess,
that not knowing a word of that, and merely having this vague
instruction, and being so accustomed to be and see myself called
Trenton Warren in words and in writing, and, above all, having my mind
so full of you, the mere notion of a calamity in connection with this
house meant merely _you_ for my fears, and I started at once, never
remembering that Mrs. Griswold could not possibly have meant to
address me. It all came quite clear to me after a while, but then I
began to torment myself again with fresh fears. "What," I thought, "if
Bess should be very ill and dying, and have confessed it all to this
kind woman whom she likes, and Mrs. Griswold should have taken this
clever way of letting me know that she knows, and that I need not be
afraid of anything but just come to her at once?" From the instant
that flashed into my thoughts, Bess, you may guess I was in an agony
to get on every mile of the road, and I give you my word I could
hardly drag myself up the stoop to ring at the door-bell, so
completely had that second notion taken possession of my mind. I was
in such a state of alarm and suspense that, God forgive me, I do
believe the news that old fellow told me at the door did not seem half
terrible to me.'
'You were always fond of me, Eph, any way,' said his wife, as she
kissed him heartily, while tears glittered in her frank sweet eves.
'I should think so, Bess,' he replied. 'I am bad enough, I know, but
not such a duffer, no, nor such a brute neither, as I should be if I
ever leave off being _that_. Hollo! there's somebody coming. I hope it
isn't the police people, in which case I had better clear out. I can
come back, you know, when they're gone; but I've a constitutional
objection, to say nothing of the present circumstances, to being
inside a house with them.'
The approaching steps were not those of undesirable intruders. It was
only Annette, who had brought the baby--she carried the little
creature very much as Moggs carried Gabriel Varden's sword, as if she
was terribly afraid of it--to her nurse. Annette explained that the
child having grown restless, madame had rung her bell, and asked for
Mrs. Jenkins and on being told that Mrs. Jenkins had a friend to see
her, she had merely asked her to carry the child down to her. Annette
reported that madame was still where Mrs. Jenkins had left her,
sitting at her writing-table sorting letters and other papers, and
that she was quite composed, though looking very ill and mortally
pale. And Annette, to whom Miss Montressor had been most gracious, had
just glanced into the boudoir as she came down-stairs, and found the
celebrity fast asleep.
Mrs. Jenkins laughed. Her sister had always been famous for a most
enviable power of going to sleep. 'I never remember a time when
Nelly--Clara, I mean--could not eat and sleep, no matter what
happened, or to whom it occurred,' she said admiringly to Ephraim, who
remembered that those faculties were useful, but not particularly
sentimental, 'and that for his part, he liked a touch of nerves about
a woman; least-ways what some people called nerves, but he called
feelings.'
In this pointed remark Ephraim Jenkins did injustice to his fair
sister-in-law. Miss Montressor was by no means deficient in feeling,
but she was very healthy, and just now she was very tired, so that it
was her nature to sleep under the circumstances, and sleep she
accordingly did. Having made her communications, Annette tripped out
of the room, after having honoured Mrs. Jenkins's visitor with a
condescending bow and a long, steady, attentive stare, of which he was
uncomfortably conscious, and which he tried to avoid, but in vain.
He need not have felt alarmed, however, at any risk of recognition by
Mdlle. Annette. She merely remarked in soliloquy, 'How all these
Yankees resemble one another in an astonishing fashion. When one has
seen one of them, one has seen them all, except just in the regard of
height and thinness. It is only in France that we find variety of
physiognomy.'
'What a pretty child!' said Ephraim Jenkins, touching the infant's
dimpled cheek with his finger, as it lay close to his wife's
breast--'not much like our poor little man, Bess?'
'No, bless her heart; not like him in the plump healthy face, but
sweet and clever like him;' and the mother, who had not buried
her dead out of her memory, hugged the baby with a slight
rapidly-suppressed sob, and loved her husband all the more dearly for
the reference to the little crippled sufferer who had been her
treasure and her heartache in one.
'Now then, Bess, we must consult about what is to be done, for I do
think things look extremely queer. The last communication I had from
Warren was from London, and there was nothing at all unusual in it; he
merely enclosed some letters to be sent on to New York, and sent me a
lot of blank signatures. He has never given me the slightest inkling
of what his business in England is really about. By the bye, isn't it
odd that there should be the same sort of mystery about what Mr.
Griswold has been doing over there? I wonder if they were in the same
boat.'
'I have heard Mr. Warren spoken of among the servants,' said Mrs.
Jenkins, 'as being Mr. Griswold's greatest friend, but I have never
heard them say anything about any business partnership between them,
and there is no other name in the firm that I know of.'
'O, then I suppose they were not mixed up in business,' said Ephraim,
'and I must say, knowing what I do of my worthy brother, I should feel
inclined to add, so much the better for poor Mr. Griswold during his
own lifetime, and for those whom he has left to profit by his gains. I
suspect they would find them materially reduced if Warren had had the
handling of any of them. Of course, I have not had much to do with his
affairs down at Chicago; but there is a precious lot of bogus in what
I have had to do with, and I have been asked some very nasty questions
lately--in writing, of courser I mean, and in his person, which I was
totally unable to answer; and as he didn't authorise me to go in for
cable expenses, I have been obliged to leave them unanswered, and I
expect some of my correspondents are getting rather impatient under
these circumstances. Bess, you will observe that what Miss Montressor
let out just now when she took me for Mr. Dolby has rather a curious
meaning; for suppose Warren should have left London, as her account of
Mr. Dolby seems to imply, he will not have got my last letters
informing him of the dilemma in which I find myself; and how I am to
get out of it I am sure I can't tell should this be the case. Of
course, as long as I felt sure he was in England, it was tolerably
plain sailing; there was nothing to fear but delay; but if he has left
England and come back here, and is hiding about anywhere and not
communicating with me, I consider something much worse than delay is
to be apprehended, and I don't at all bargain for getting into any
extensive and difficult scrape in the matter. So that you see I had
more motives than one in coming up immediately on receipt of the
telegram; because, though I really did make the blunder I have told
you of in forgetting that it could not be addressed to me in reality,
I have had for some weeks a great wish to find out, if possible, what
Warren is about. I don't think I can be involved in any serious
mischief, because I have taken such care never to forge his name--all
papers that have left my hands bearing it are genuine signatures.'
'That's a comfort,' said Bess; 'but how can you find out anything about
him here? You can't go to any of the places where he is known without
betraying him.'
'That's just my difficulty,' said Jenkins, 'because it's a perfectly
new light to me that his real business friends here, the people with
whom he is actually mixed up in big transactions, verily and indeed
believe him to be at Chicago. My notion was that it was only some one
or two particular persons he wanted to impose upon; but the matter
takes a completely different complexion now that I find out his most
confidential people here believe him to be where he is not.'
'How do you know they are also imposed upon?' asked Bess.
'By the telegram, my dear. Of course Mr. Carey must have got the
address from Mrs. Griswold, or at Warren's office--there can be no two
ways about that--and of course, under the circumstances, they would
not deceive him, nor can Mrs. Griswold be reasonably supposed to be in
ignorance of his whereabouts. If any one was to be in the secret, it
would be the people in this house; and now it is plain that Warren is
deceiving them all round, and, you see, it isn't pleasant. He was
always a good hand at getting from out of one more than one bargained
for; but I must say, in this matter I should like to know what amount
of dirty work I am expected to do, and how deep the dirtiness is.'
Jenkins had said all this in his usual light and careless way, and
while he was speaking had kept playing with the baby in his wife's
arms; but she, watching him closely, discerned very real alarm and
anxiety under his slightly-swaggering manner and at once well-founded
fright.
'Ephraim,' she said, laying her hand upon his arm impressively, 'have
you ever been sorry for listening to my advice?'
'Never, Bess', he replied; 'but I have very often been sorry for not
listening to it.'
'Well,' she said, 'hear it and take it now. Of course, I understand no
more, but a good deal less, of what your brother's object and actions
are than you do; but something within me, something which I have heard
before now in my life, and which never told me a lie, says plainly to
me that you have put yourself into a dreadful danger; that whatever
Warren is about it can be no good, and it is going wrong. Just think
for a moment. I suppose it was for the best of purposes in the world,
but how mad a thing it must be for any man well known in business in a
great city like New York to imagine that he could successfully pretend
to be in one place while he is in another, in these days of
telegraphs, for any length of time beyond a few hours or days at the
outside. He is a clever man, well up in business, and must have known
this,--the difficulty would have been quite plain to him,--and
therefore it is only reasonable to conclude that he had some motive
for running this great risk strong enough to induce him to throw aside
all his knowledge of business, and all his shrewd habits of
calculating the consequences. Is this motive likely to be a good one,
to say nothing of the crooked ways and the deceit through which he has
to carry it out? I think you know your brother by this time too well
to give him credit for good motives; besides, good things do not need
doing in the dark. Now I will tell you what you must do, Eph, and you
must do it at once if you want to save me from distraction, and
yourself from being mixed up in the ruin which I am certain is coming
on Warren. Whatever he intended to do while he was supposed to be at
Chicago he intended to do quicker than this; he never can have
imagined that the sham could be prolonged up to this time; and your
not having heard from him, his not having returned, or, if what Miss
Montressor says is the case, that he has been passing under the name
of Dolby, and that he has come back to America, which would make it
all look much more extraordinary and more dangerous, it is plain that
he has failed, and failure in any object which he had to gain by such
risky means must have a big meaning, and you must get out of it, Eph.'
'Get out of it, Bess? How am I to get out of it? I will do anything
you tell me; you have got a clearer head than mine--since I have been
down there at Chicago I have come to think myself no end of a
bungler--but all your clear-headedness won't see my way out of this
fix, at all events until we can get hold of Warren. If he comes back
and shows up, I will promise you I will face him, and tell him at once
that I will have no more of it, come what may; and I can't stir a peg
until he does come.'
'Yes you can, Eph, and you must,' said his wife; 'you must, or we
shall be utterly ruined, without doing him any good. I feel convinced
this is no business matter, but something very bad, in which he has
not succeeded, and which will involve us all. Now this is what you
must do. Get back to Chicago without an hour's delay, without seeing
any one, bring away all the business papers, take them to Warren's
real place of business, and get off to England.'
Jenkins stared at her in open-eyed wonder. 'Get off to England! What
on earth for?'
'How can I tell?' she said, rather impatiently. 'I speak under an
irresistible impulse and a great fear. You must have done with this
thing, and this is the only way to get rid of it.'
'But I haven't money to do all this,' said Jenkins. 'You don't suppose
Warren would trust me with more than he could help; and if I were to
leave him in the lurch in this way, I shouldn't like to take any in
advance, you know; that would look as ugly as anything he may have
been doing, for I suppose the worst of it has been dabbling in other
people's dollars.'
'Don't fret about that,' said his wife; 'there is a good deal coming
to me, and I have had some handsome presents since I have been here,
from people who have come to see the baby. I said nothing about it to
you in my letters, because I thought I should like to have a little
fund saved to give you a pleasant surprise. How thankful I am for it
now! Even if it should not be enough, I know Mrs. Griswold, who has
been most kind and generous to me, will help me, help me too in her
ladylike and considerate way, without asking me any distressing
questions. Besides, there is Nelly--Clara, I mean--she would help me
in a minute; but I would rather not ask her for any help of that kind,
but rather trust her to get you some employment in England.'
'You're settling it all, Bess,' said Eph, shaking his head doubtfully,
but still with a lightening of his countenance and an additional
cheerfulness in his voice, which brought the consoling conviction to
his wife's mind that he was rapidly being swayed by her argument, and
seeing in her own she was tracing relief and a future. 'You're
settling it all very comfortably, and I believe you're right that it
is about the best thing I could do.'
'It is the only thing!' said Bess emphatically.
'I don't like leaving you behind,' he said; 'there's a big difference
between being parted as we are now, you in New York and I in Chicago,
and being parted as we should be then, you in New York and I Heaven
knows where, on the other side of the ferry; and I don't like it.'
'I don't like it either,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'but it can't be
otherwise, Eph dear, just now. You and I have to turn over a new
leaf--you know you have promised me you will begin, and I believe
you--but it is likely to be hard work just at first, and we shall want
help from good friends. The best I have in the world, I feel quite
sure, is Mrs. Griswold, and I could not desert her in this great
trouble; first, for gratitude sake; secondly, for policy sake; and
thirdly, because if I ask her to help us I must be ready to say I am
prepared to help her. That is only fair, you know; but I will follow
you, Eph, before very long, before the little store of money I shall
be able to let you take with you is exhausted, even if you should not
have good luck. But I feel you will have good luck, and Nelly--Clara,
I mean--will be sure to be able to get something for you, even from
the very first; now that she has seen you, she will know that you
won't disgrace her recommendation.'
A rapidly-suppressed smile at his wife's enthusiasm crossed Jenkins's
face. He did not absolutely believe that Miss Montressor had been
captivated by her brief interview with him; but he secretly thought it
by no means improbable that Miss Montressor would be glad to secure
herself from any ill-timed allusion on his part to his extraordinary
likeness to her very intimate friend Mr. Dolby, which might be
embarrassing on this side the Atlantic, by facilitating his passage to
the other; so that as his reflections on those Bess had reached the
same result, he did not think it necessary to descant upon the
divergence of their mental paths.
The desperate intentness of his wife's representations was seconded by
Ephraim Jenkins's own conviction, and he became more and more serious
as she pointed out how it must be known that Warren was being
personated, since he was mixed up with the affairs of the Griswolds,
and had been sent for in this emergency. She impressed upon her
husband that his own danger of discovery could at best be delayed only
until, weary of getting no reply to their telegrams and letters, Mrs.
Griswold's friends should send some one to Chicago, and their
ambassador would instantly discover that Warren was not at that city.
This final representation had more effect upon him than any of her
foregoing arguments. It showed him that the bubble was close upon
bursting, and immediately won him to obedience to her wishes.
After that their interview lasted only a few minutes. It was arranged
that he should start for Chicago that night, and immediately on his
arrival should telegraph, in reply to Mrs. Griswold's message, that
Warren was absent when it arrived; that he should then make immediate
preparations for his own departure, warning Warren by letter to London
of his determination, and come away, bringing all the business papers
with him for deposit at Warren's office. This done, he was again to
see his wife, receive from her the promised funds, and sail for
England within a week, leaving Warren forewarned as far as lay in his
power, but otherwise to get out of the Chicago scrape as well as he
could.
It did not escape either Ephraim or his wife that there might be
danger, supposing Warren should have returned to New York, of Eph's
encountering him, which would have the double disadvantage of
involving Ephraim in either the abandonment of his project of escape,
or in a violent quarrel with his arbitrary brother. Mrs. Jenkins was
much more disturbed when this possibility occurred to her mind; but
recollecting that if Warren should be skulking about New York, he
would be quite certain to avoid either his own offices or the steamer
wharves, Eph would be safe from the risk of encounter, provided on his
return he went to only those two places.
All this, and much more, having been hurriedly agreed upon between
them, the husband and wife parted most affectionately, and though with
much distress, with a dawning of hope in both hearts, and a conviction
on the part of Mrs. Jenkins that Ephraim had really and truly turned
over a new leaf.