Anne in different surroundings, expressed the most hopeful view
possible when he said that doubtless it would all look charming when
she had arranged her own belongings.
Anne made a little gesture. "I haven't any belongings," she said.
I didn't know what she meant, perhaps merely a protest against the
tyranny of things, but I saw the effect her speech produced on her
auditor. Perhaps she saw it too, for presently she added: "Oh, yes!
I have one."
And she went away, and came back carrying a beautiful old silver
loving cup. I knew it well. It came from Julian's forebears. Anne
had always loved it, and I was delighted that she should have it now.
She set it on a table before a mirror, and here it did a double
share to make the room possible.
When we were alone I expressed my opinion of her choice of lodgings.
"This sunless cavern!" I said. "This parlour-car furniture!"
She looked a little hurt. "You don't like it?" she said.
"Do you?" I snapped back.
After a time I had recourse to the old argument that it didn't look
well; that it wasn't fair to Julian. But she had been expecting this.
"My dear Walter," she answered, "you must try to be more consistent.
In Paris you told me that I must cease to regulate my life by Julian.
You were quite right. This place pleases me, and I don't intend to go
to a hotel, which I hate, or to take a house, which is a bother, in
order to soothe Julian's feelings. I have begun to lead my life to
suit myself."
The worst of it was, I could think of no answer.
A few evenings afterward we dined at the same house. Anne arrived
with a scarf on her head, under the escort of a maid. She had come
in a trolley car. Nobody's business but her own, perhaps, if she
would have allowed it to remain so, but when she got up to go, and
other people were talking of their motors' being late, Anne had to
say: "Mine is never late; it goes past the corner every minute."
I could almost hear a sigh, "Poor angel!" go round the room.
The next thing that happened was that Julian sent for me. He was in
what we used to call in the nursery "a state."
"What's this I hear about Anne's being hard up?" he said. "Living in
a nasty flat, and going out to dinner in the cars?" And he wouldn't
listen to an explanation. "She must take more; she must be made to
take more."
I had one of my most unfortunate inspirations. I thought I saw an
opportunity for Julian to make an impression.
"I don't think she would listen to me," I said. "Why don't you get
Mr. Granger to speak to her?"
The idea appealed to Julian. He admired Mr. Granger, and remembered
that he and Anne had been friends. Whereas I thought, of course, that
Mr. Granger would thus be made to see that the fault, if there were
a fault, was not of Julian's generosity. Stupidly enough I failed to
see that if Julian's offer was graceful Anne's gesture of refusal
would be upon a splendid scale.
And it must have been very large, indeed, to stir old Granger as it
did. He told me there had been tears in his eyes while she spoke of
her husband's kindness. Kindness! He could not but compare her
surroundings with the little house, all geraniums and muslin curtains,
in which the new Mrs. Chelmsford was lodged. Anne had refused, of
course. In the circumstances she could not accept. She said she had
quite enough for a single woman. The phrase struck Granger as almost
unbearably pathetic.
One day I noticed the loving cup--which was always on Anne's table,
which was admired by everyone who came to the apartment, and was
said to recall her, herself, so pure and graceful and perfect--one
day the loving cup was gone.
I was so surprised when my eye fell on its vacant place that I
blurted out: "Goodness, Anne, where's your cup?"
The next moment I could have bitten out my tongue. Anne stood still
in the middle of the room, twisting her hands a little, and
everyone--there were three or four of us there--stopped talking.
"Oh," she said, "oh, Walter, I know you'll scold me for being
officious and wrong-headed, but I have sent the cup back to Julian's
son. I think he ought to have it."
Everyone else thought the deed extremely noble. I took my hat and
went to Rose. Rose was not very enthusiastic. A beautiful letter had
accompanied the cup. We discussed the advisability of sending it back;
but of course that would have done no good. The devilish part of a
favour is that to accept or reject it is often equally incriminating.
Anne held the situation in the hollow of her hand. Besides, as Rose
pointed out, we couldn't very well return it without asking Julian,
and we had both agreed that for the present Julian had better remain
in ignorance of the incident. He would have thought it mean-spirited
to allow any instance of Anne's generosity to remain concealed from
the public. Rose and I were willing to allow it to drop.
I was sorry, therefore, when I found, soon after, not only that
everyone knew of the gift but that phrases of the beautiful letter
itself were current, with marks of authenticity upon them. It was
not hard to trace them to Anne's intimates.
I have no idea to this day whether Anne was deliberately trying to
ruin the man for whom she had sacrificed so much; or whether one of
those large, unconscious, self-indulgent movements of our natures
was carrying her along the line of least resistance. There are some
people, I know, who can behave well only so long as they have the
centre of the stage, and are driven by a necessity almost moral to
regain such a place at any cost, so that they may once again begin
the exercise of their virtues.
Anne's performance was too perfect, I thought, for conscious art,
and she was not a genius. She was that most dangerous of all engines,
a good person behaving wickedly. All her past of high-mindedness and
kindness protected her now like an armour from the smallest suspicion.
All the grandeur of her conduct at the time of the divorce was
remembered as a proof that she at least had a noble soul. Who could
doubt that she wished him well?
If so, she soon appeared to be the only person who did. For, as we
all know, pity is one of the most dangerous passions to unloose. It
demands a victim. We rise to pathos, only over the dead bodies of
our nearest and dearest.
Every phrase, every gesture of Anne's stirred one profoundly, and it
was inevitable, I suppose, that Julian should be selected as the
sacrifice. I noticed that people began to speak of him in the past,
though he was still moving among us--"As Julian used to say."
He and Anne fortunately never met, but she and the new Mrs. Julian
had one encounter in public. If even then Anne would have shown the
slightest venom all might still have been well. But, no, the worn,
elderly woman, face to face with the young beauty who had possessed
herself of everything in the world, showed nothing but a tenderness
so perfect that every heart was wrung. I heard Rose criticized for
not receiving her in the same spirit.
The next day Julian was blackballed at a philanthropic club at which
he had allowed himself to be proposed merely from a sense of civic
duty.
Over the incident I know Anne wept. I heard her tears.
"Oh, if I could have spared him that!" she said.
My eyes were cold, but those of Mr. Granger, who came in while her
eyelids were still red, were full of fire.
She spent a week with the Grangers that summer. The whole
family--wife, sons and daughters--had all yielded to the great
illusion.
It must not be supposed that I had failed to warn Julian. The
supineness of his attitude was one of the most irritating features
of the case. He answered me as if I were violating the dead; asked
me if by any chance I didn't see he deserved all he was getting.
No one was surprised when in the autumn he resigned from his firm.
There had been friction between the partners for some time. Soon
afterward he and Rose sailed for Italy, where they have lived ever
since. He had scarcely any income except that which he made in his
profession; his capital had gone to Anne. He probably thought that
what he had would go further abroad.
I do not know just how Anne took his departure, except that I am
sure she was wonderful about it. I had ceased to see her. She has,
however, any number of new friends, whose fresh interest in her
story keeps it continually alive. She has given up her ugly flat and
taken a nice little house, and in summer I notice she has red
geraniums in the window boxes. I often see a nice little motor
standing before her door--the result doubtless of a year's economy.
Whenever her friends congratulate her on the improvement in her
finances she says she owes it all to me--I am such an excellent man
of business.
"I admire Walter so much," I am told she says, "though I'm afraid I
have lost him as a friend. But then, in the last few years I have
lost so much." And she smiles that brave sad smile of hers.
THE FACE IN THE WINDOW
BY WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
From _The Red Book_
At nine o'clock this morning Sheriff Crumpett entered our New England
town post-office for his mail. From his box he extracted his monthly
Grand Army paper and a letter in a long yellow envelope. This
envelope bore the return-stamp of a prominent Boston lumber-company.
The old man crossed the lobby to the writing-shelf under the Western
Union clock, hooked black-rimmed glasses on a big nose and tore a
generous inch from the end of the envelope.
The first inclosure which met his eyes was a check. It was heavy and
pink and crisp, and was attached to the single sheet of letter-paper
with a clip. Impressed into the fabric of the safety-paper were the
indelible figures of a protector: _Not over Five Thousand_ ($5000)
_Dollars_.
The sheriff read the name of the person to whom it was payable and
gulped. His gnarled old hand trembled with excitement as he glanced
over the clipped letter and then went through it again.
November 10, 1919.
MY DEAR SHERIFF:
Enclosed please find my personal check for five thousand dollars.
It is made out to Mrs. McBride. Never having known the lady
personally,
and because you have evidently represented her with the authorities,
I am sending it to you for proper delivery. I feel, from your
enthusiastic account of her recent experience, that it will give
you
pleasure to present it to her.
Under the circumstances I do not begrudge the money. When first
advised of Ruggam's escape, it was hot-headed impulse which
prompted
me to offer a reward so large. The old clan-blood of the Wileys
must
have made me murder-mad that Ruggam should regain his freedom
permanently
after the hellish thing he did to my brother. The newspapers heard
of it,
and then I could not retract.
That, however, is a thing of the past. I always did detest a
welcher,
and if this money is going to a woman to whom it will be manna from
heaven--to use your words--I am satisfied. Convey to her my
personal
congratulations, gratitude and best wishes.
Cordially yours,
C. V. D. WILEY.
"Good old Chris!" muttered the sheriff. "He's rich because he's white."
He thrust both check and letter back into the long envelope and
headed for the office of our local daily paper at a smart pace.
The earning of five thousand dollars reward-money by Cora McBride
made an epochal news-item, and in that night's paper we headlined it
accordingly--not omitting proper mention of the sheriff and giving
him appropriate credit.
Having so started the announcement permeating through the community,
the old man employed the office phone and called the local
livery-stable. He ordered a rig in which he might drive at once to
the McBride house in the northern part of town.
"But half that money ought to be yourn!" protested the proprietor of
the stable as the sheriff helped him "gear up the horse" a few
minutes later.
"Under the circumstances, Joseph, can you see me takin' it? No; it
ain't in me to horn in for no rake-off on one o' the Lord's miracles."
The old man climbed into the sleigh, took the reins from the
liveryman and started the horse from the livery yard.
Two weeks ago--on Monday, the twenty-seventh of the past October--the
telephone-bell rang sharply in our newspaper-office a few moments
before the paper went to press. Now, the telephone-bell often rings
in our newspaper-office a few moments before going to press. The
confusion on this particular Monday afternoon, however, resulted from
Albany calling on the long-distance. Albany--meaning the nearest
office of the international press-association of which our paper is
a member--called just so, out of a clear sky, on the day McKinley
was assassinated, on the day the _Titanic_ foundered and on the day
Austria declared war on Serbia.
The connection was made, and over the wire came the voice of young
Stewart, crisp as lettuce.
"Special dispatch ... Wyndgate, Vermont, October 27th ... Ready?"
The editor of our paper answered in the affirmative. The rest of us
grouped anxiously around his chair. Stewart proceeded:
"'Hapwell Ruggam, serving a life-sentence for the murder of Deputy
Sheriff Martin Wiley at a Lost Nation kitchen-dance two years ago,
killed Jacob Lambwell, his guard, and escaped from prison at noon
to-day.
"'Ruggam had been given some repair work to do near the outer
prison-gate. It was opened to admit a tradesman's automobile. As
Guard Lambwell turned to close the gate, Ruggam felled him with his
shovel. He escaped to the adjacent railroad-yards, stole a corduroy
coat and pair of blue overalls hanging in a switchman's shanty and
caught the twelve-forty freight up Green River.'"
Stewart had paused. The editor scribbled frantically. In a few words
aside he explained to us what Stewart was sending. Then he ordered
the latter to proceed.
"'Freight Number Eight was stopped by telegraph near Norwall. The
fugitive, assuming correctly that it was slowing down for search,
was seen by a brakeman fleeing across a pasture between the tracks
and the eastern edge of Haystack Mountain. Several posses have
already started after him, and sheriffs all through northern New
England are being notified.
"'Christopher Wiley, lumber magnate and brother of Ruggam's former
victim, on being told of the escape, has offered a reward of five
thousand dollars for Ruggam's capture, dead or alive. Guard Lambwell
was removed to a hospital, where he died at one-thirty'.... _All
right_?"
The connection was broken, and the editor removed the headpiece. He
began giving orders. We were twenty minutes behind usual time with
the papers, but we made all the trains.
When the big Duplex was grinding out newsprint with a roar that shook
the building, the boys and girls gathered around to discuss the thing
which had happened.
The Higgins boy, saucer-eyed over the experience of being "on the
inside" during the handling of the first sizable news-story since he
had become our local reporter, voiced the interrogation on the faces
of other office newcomers.
"Ruggam," the editor explained, "is a poor unfortunate who should
have been sent to an asylum instead of the penitentiary. He killed
Mart Wiley, a deputy sheriff, at a Lost Nation kitchen-dance two
years ago."
"Where's the Lost Nation?"
"It's a term applied to most of the town of Partridgeville in the
northern part of the county--an inaccessible district back in the
mountains peopled with gone-to-seed stock and half-civilized
illiterates who only get into the news when they load up with
squirrel whisky and start a programme of progressive hell. Ruggam
was the local blacksmith."
"What's a kitchen-dance?"
"Ordinarily a kitchen-dance is harmless enough. But the Lost Nation
folks use it as an excuse for a debauch. They gather in some sizable
shack, set the stove out into the yard, soak themselves in aromatic
spirits of deviltry and dance from Saturday night until Monday
noon----"
"And this Ruggam killed a sheriff at one of them?"
"He got into a brawl with another chap about his wife. Someone
passing saw the fight and sent for an officer. Mart Wiley was deputy,
afraid of neither man, God nor devil. Martin had grown disgusted
over the petty crime at these kitchen-dances and started out to
clean up this one right. Hap Ruggam killed him. He must have had help,
because he first got Mart tied to a tree in the yard. Most of the
crowd was pie-eyed by this time, anyhow, and would fight at the drop
of a hat. After tying him securely, Ruggam caught up a billet of
wood and--and killed him with that."
"Why didn't they electrocute him?" demanded young Higgins.
"Well, the murder wasn't exactly premeditated. Hap wasn't himself;
he was drunk--not even able to run away when Sheriff Crumpett
arrived in the neighbourhood to take him into custody. Then there
was Hap's bringing up. All these made extenuating circumstances."
"There was something about Sheriff Wiley's pompadour," suggested our
little lady proofreader.
"Yes," returned the editor. "Mart had a queer head of hair. It was
dark and stiff, and he brushed it straight back in a pompadour. When
he was angry or excited, it actually rose on his scalp like wire.
Hap's counsel made a great fuss over Mart's pompadour and the part
it sort of played in egging Hap on. The sight of it, stiffening and
rising the way it did maddened Ruggam so that he beat it down
hysterically in retaliation for the many grudges he fancied
he owed the officer. No, it was all right to make the sentence
life-imprisonment, only it should have been an asylum. Hap's not
right. You'd know it without being told. I guess it's his eyes. They
aren't mates. They light up weirdly when he's drunk or excited, and
if you know what's healthy, you get out of the way."
By eight o'clock that evening most of the valley's deer-hunters, all
of the local adventurers who could buy, borrow or beg a rifle, and
the usual quota of high-school sons of thoughtless parents were off
on the man-hunt in the eastern mountains.
Among them was Sheriff Crumpett's party. On reaching the timberline
they separated. It was agreed that if any of them found signs of
Ruggam, the signal for assistance was five shots in quick succession
"and keep shooting at intervals until the rest come up."
We newspaper folk awaited the capture with professional interest and
pardonable excitement....
In the northern part of our town, a mile out on the Wickford road,
is the McBride place. It is a small white house with a red barn in
the rear and a neat rail fence inclosing the whole. Six years ago
Cora McBride was bookkeeper in the local garage. Her maiden name was
Allen. The town called her "Tomboy Allen." She was the only daughter
of old Zeb Allen, for many years our county game-warden. Cora, as we
had always known--and called--her, was a full-blown, red-blooded,
athletic girl who often drove cars for her employer in the days when
steering-wheels manipulated by women were offered as clinching proof
that society was headed for the dogs.
Duncan McBride was chief mechanic in the garage repairshop. He was
an affable, sober, steady chap, popularly known as "Dunk the
Dauntless" because of an uncanny ability to cope successfully with
the ailments of 90 per cent, of the internal-combustion hay-balers
and refractory tin-Lizzies in the county when other mechanics had
given them up in disgust.
When he married his employer's bookkeeper, Cora's folks gave her a
wedding that carried old Zeb within half an hour of insolvency and
ran to four columns in the local daily. Duncan and the Allen girl
motored to Washington in a demonstration-car, and while Dunk was
absent, the yard of the garage resembled the premises about a
junkshop. On their return they bought the Johnson place, and Cora
quickly demonstrated the same furious enthusiasm for homemaking and
motherhood that she had for athletics and carburetors.
Three years passed, and two small boys crept about the yard behind
the white rail fence. Then--when Duncan and his wife were "making a
great go of matrimony" in typical Yankee fashion--came the tragedy
that took all the vim out of Cora, stole the ruddy glow from her
girlish features and made her middle-aged in a twelvemonth. In the
infantile-paralysis epidemic which passed over New England three
years ago the McBrides suffered the supreme sorrow--twice. Those
small boys died within two weeks of each other.
Duncan of course kept on with his work at the garage. He was quieter
and steadier than ever. But when we drove into the place to have a
carburetor adjusted or a rattle tightened, we saw only too plainly
that on his heart was a wound the scars of which would never heal.
As for Cora, she was rarely seen in the village.
Troubles rarely come singly. One afternoon this past August, Duncan
completed repairs on Doc Potter's runabout. Cranking the machine to
run it from the workshop, the "dog" on the safety-clutch failed to
hold. The acceleration of the engine threw the machine into high.
Dunk was pinned in front while the roadster leaped ahead and rammed
the delivery truck of the Red Front Grocery.
Duncan was taken to our memorial hospital with internal injuries and
dislocation of his spine. He remained there many weeks. In fact, he
had been home only a couple of days when the evening stage left in
the McBride letter-box the daily paper containing the story of
Ruggam's "break" and of the reward offered for his capture.
Cora returned to the kitchen after obtaining the paper and sank
wearily into a wooden chair beside the table with the red cloth.
Spreading out the paper, she sought the usual mental distraction in
the three-and four-line bits which make up our local columns.
As the headlines caught her eye, she picked up the paper and entered
the bedroom where Duncan lay. There were telltale traces of tears on
his unshaven face, and an ache in his discouraged heart that would
not be assuaged, for it was becoming rumoured about the village that
Dunk the Dauntless might never operate on the vitals of an ailing
tin-Lizzie again.
"Dunnie," cried his wife, "Hap Ruggam's escaped!" Sinking down beside
the bedroom lamp, she read him the article aloud.
Her husband's name was mentioned therein; for when the sheriff had
commandeered an automobile from the local garage to convey him and
his posse to Lost Nation and secure Ruggam, Duncan had been called
forth to preside at the steering-wheel. He had thus assisted in the
capture and later had been a witness at the trial.
The reading ended, the man rolled his head.
"If I wasn't held here, I might go!" he said. "I might try for that
five thousand myself!"
Cora was sympathetic enough, of course, but she was fast approaching
the stage where she needed sympathy herself.
"We caught him over on the Purcell farm," mused Duncan. "Something
ailed Ruggam. He was drunk and couldn't run. But that wasn't all. He
had had some kind of crazy-spell during or after the killing and
wasn't quite over it. We tied him and lifted him into the auto. His
face was a sight. His eyes aren't mates, anyhow, and they were wild
and unnatural. He kept shrieking something about a head of
hair--black hair--sticks up like wire. He must have had an awful
impression of Mart's face and that hair of his."
"I remember about Aunt Mary Crumpett's telling me of the trouble her
husband had with his prisoner in the days before the trial," his
wife replied. "He had those crazy-spells often, nights. He kept
yelling that he saw Martin Wiley's head with its peculiar hair, and
his face peering in at him through the cell window. Sometimes he
became so bad that Sheriff Crumpett thought he'd have apoplexy
Finally he had to call Dr. Johnson to attend him."
"Five thousand dollars!" muttered Duncan. "Gawd! I'd hunt the devil
_for nothing_ if I only had a chance of getting out of this bed."
Cora smoothed her husband's rumpled bed, comforted him and laid her
own tired head down beside his hand. When he had dozed off, she
arose and left the room.
In the kitchen she resumed her former place beside the table with
the cheap red cloth; and there, with her face in her hands, she
stared into endless distance.
"Five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars!" Over and over she
whispered the words, with no one to hear.