HARRIET
Sponley talked to Mr. Meredith somewhat longer than was strictly
necessary; and when there was nothing more to say, he still delayed a
little in hanging up the receiver. He could not decide just what he had
best say to Harriet when he turned away from the telephone. To some
ears his messages would have sounded innocent enough, but Harriet was
different; still he could not be sure that she had listened at all.
As he rang the bell for disconnection, he fancied he heard a movement
in the room, and when he turned to speak to her, Harriet was gone. He
called her name, but there was no answer, and while he listened for it,
he thought he heard her step on the stairs. Considerably surprised,
though somewhat relieved at having his awkward explanation deferred for
a moment, he went out into the hall and again called to her, but still
there was nothing to show him that she had heard, though there had been
hardly time for her to get quite out of earshot. He walked part way up
the stairs, hesitated, and finally turned back; then, after ringing for
his carriage, he went out.
He had enough on his mind during the next few hours without thinking of
Harriet or trying to explain her apparently unaccountable behavior.
Harriet would not have listened to the messages he had sent over the
telephone if the first word he said as she entered the room had not
been the name of Curtin. Harriet hated Curtin exactly as she hated a
rat, and equally strongly she loathed the thought of Melville Sponley’s
association with him. In all the months since it had begun she had
never been able to conquer that feeling or even to conceal it from her
husband. So she listened to the enigmatical instructions, and was so
fully occupied in wondering what they might mean that she did not catch
the import of Sponley’s message to Mr. Meredith until just as he was
at the end of it. Then it suddenly came over her that her husband, who
always knew so well the effect his words would have, must be aware
that what he was saying to poor, timorous Mr. Meredith was anything but
reassuring. The full meaning of the move was not then apparent to her;
but with the first dim perception of it came the feeling that she must
be alone, and without trying to resist it or to account for it, she
had literally fled upstairs. Before she reached her room she regretted
having yielded to the impulse, and after standing a moment irresolute,
she turned to go back. When he called to her the second time, she tried
to answer, but could not command her voice, so taking from a drawer a
fresh handkerchief which should serve as the excuse for her flight,
she walked back to the head of the stairs; just as she reached it, she
heard her husband go out. With a feeling of relief at being left alone,
she threw herself upon her bed, and for a long time she lay there,
staring at the ceiling and trying not to think.
As Dawson had suggested, Melville Sponley had a strong preference for
truth and fair dealing whenever they were practicable; but it will
not be imagined that in the course of a quarter century of commercial
privateering he had not many times committed acts as irregular and as
immoral--I am not speaking of commercial morality--as this attempt to
wreck Bagsbury’s bank. He had concealed none of these things from her,
and she had heard of them and taken her part in them with such entire
equanimity that he had quite naturally been surprised at her outburst
when she had first learned of his putting Curtin in the bank as a spy
upon John.
Harriet looked upon life from a thoroughly unmoral point of view.
Of abstract right and wrong she had little conception. So long as
Sponley’s operations were directed against men she did not know,
except as her husband’s opponents, she never applied the criterion
of fair play. But all that was changed as soon as John Bagsbury was
concerned in the fighting. She regarded him almost as a brother, her
loyalty to him was only less than her loyalty to her husband, and the
mere suspicion of what Sponley had been doing that afternoon, of the
meaning of his talk with Hauxton and of his two telephone messages, was
intolerable.
About an hour after Sponley went out, the butler knocked at her door.
“Mr. Curtin is here,” he said, “to see Mr. Sponley. He says it is
important and wishes to know when Mr. Sponley will be back.”
Harriet said that she knew nothing about it, but presently the man
returned, saying that Mr. Curtin wished to see her. She asked to be
excused, but Curtin was persistent, and once more the butler came back,
this time with a message.
“He says, will you please tell Mr. Sponley when he comes in that Mr.
Curtin has seen Mr. Hauxton and is sure he has started him off on the
right track.”
“I will take no message,” said Harriet, impatiently. “If Mr. Curtin
wishes to leave any word for Mr. Sponley, he may write a note. Don’t
come back again, whatever Mr. Curtin says.”
But though the servant obeyed her, Harriet could not banish Curtin from
her thoughts. She had always hated him, even before he had given her
cause. His covert admiration was almost nauseating, and his miserable
makeshift excuses for seeking her company when he knew that she could
barely tolerate him exasperated her. She recalled with disgust the
evening when he had forced himself into their dining room, and she
wondered that his accusation of her husband had affected her as it did;
she wished now that Sponley had sent him to prison.
His message, though she had declined to receive it, and though she
tried not to think of it, went over and over in her thoughts, and in
spite of herself she wondered what it meant. What could “the right
track” mean except the suspicion that the bank was in trouble? Why
should her husband wish Hauxton to entertain that suspicion unless he
was deliberately planning to ruin John Bagsbury? If he were--
But this guessing, she told herself, was nonsense, useless nonsense.
When her husband came home, she would tell him just what she suspected
and ask him to show her everything. He would surely set her mind
at rest. Then with a sharp sensation of pain she realized that she
would not be able to believe his word. While he talked to her, while
he was with her, she would be convinced that his course was not
dishonorable,--and it was that conviction rather than the truth that
she wanted,--but with the next morning, when she was alone, waiting to
learn what was happening, to-day’s fears and to-day’s distrust would
come back again stronger than ever. No, she could not look to him for
help. She must fight out this battle, this last battle--alone.
Going to her desk she pencilled a little note:--
“Will you please excuse me if I don’t come down to dinner? Don’t bother
about it, it’s nothing serious. I’m tired--that’s all--and I’m trying
to get a long rest.”
Then she called her maid. “I’m not going down to dinner. I wish you’d
give this to Mr. Sponley when he comes in.” As she gave the note to the
maid, their fingers touched. “How cool your hands are!” she exclaimed.
“Don’t go just yet. I want them on my forehead. Why are your hands so
cold, child?”
“Your head is very hot,” the maid answered. “I think that is the
reason.”
“They feel cool, anyway,” said Harriet. “There, that will do. I’m a
great deal better already.”
“Shall I bring you anything--anything to eat or a cup of tea?”
“I think I should like some coffee,” Harriet answered, after a moment’s
reflection. “Oh, and anything to eat that you please; I don’t want to
think about it.”
Harriet regretted her decision the moment the maid was fairly out of
the room; she needed company, not something to eat. At the end of ten
minutes she was wondering impatiently why the maid did not come back,
and her uneasiness grew steadily greater during the half hour that
elapsed before she heard the familiar step outside her door. But the
reprimand that was on Harriet’s lips was checked by the look of misery
in her attendant’s face. Neither spoke, and there was silence until, as
the girl spilled some of the coffee she was trying to pour, and then
dropped the cup, she burst out crying.
“Oh, don’t cry, don’t cry!” said Harriet, easily; “that doesn’t matter.
But you shouldn’t have stopped to quarrel with James. That always makes
you unhappy afterward, you know.”
“I didn’t, I haven’t--quarrelled with him--since yesterday morning.”
Harriet smiled. “You aren’t going to tell me that James has at last got
up heart enough to scold you. You ought to be glad if he has. It’s
very good for people to be scolded when they are young; but I’ve never
been able to do it.”
But the girl refused to be comforted, and Harriet saw that here was
something more serious than the almost daily lovers’ quarrels which had
been affording her so much entertainment in the past few months.
“Stop crying,” she commanded quietly, “and try to tell me just what the
trouble is.”
With an effort the girl controlled herself. “James is going to lose all
his money, the money he saved up so we could get married. It’s in the
bank, and he says the bank is going to fail.”
“What bank is it in?”
“Mr. Bagsbury’s.” Her voice failed, and with a sob she buried her face
in her hands.
“Stop it,” Harriet commanded, almost roughly. She laid her hand on the
girl’s arm. “You are very foolish to be frightened. The bank isn’t
going to fail. Do you understand? I tell you it isn’t going to fail.
Who--” and now it was her voice that halted in the throat--“who told
James that it would?”
“The coachman told James, and he said--”
But Harriet knew who had told the coachman before the bewildered maid
had time to speak the name.
For a little, though Harriet’s words had quite reassured her, the mere
impetus of her emotion kept the girl whimpering, her face still buried
in her hands; but when she looked up the change that had come over her
mistress startled her out of the very recollection of it.
“What is it?” she cried, “what is the matter?”
“Nothing at all. Only go away; I want to be by myself.”
“But you are sick,” the maid persisted; “can’t I get you something?
Shall I call Mr. Sponley?”
“Certainly not,” Harriet spoke slowly and evenly; “there is nothing
the matter;” but her affected composure vanished as the girl still
hesitated at the door. “Oh, why won’t you leave me alone! Go, I tell
you! Go!”
The frightened maid ran out of the room, and Harriet closed the door
behind her.
So now she knew. Oh, why was it all so hopelessly evident! She had
been trying to comprehend; but now she clasped her hands over her dry
eyes as if to blot out the clear, cruel understanding that had come
to her of her husband’s devious strategy. It was bad enough that the
temptation of a promising campaign should have led him to turn upon
his friend; but why--why should it not have been fair open fighting;
why need it come to a piece of loathsome treachery like this blow from
behind? She must stand by and see it struck; and then for always, she
told herself, she must despise the author of it.
In that hour Harriet felt the very foundation of her world trembling
under her. She had no children, no friends, no interests but
his,--nothing but her absolute devotion to Melville Sponley. And stanch
as that was, the stroke he was aiming at John Bagsbury would cut to the
root of it.
She recalled that evening when first she had heard of his understanding
with Curtin, and when she had asked him if there was anything that
counted with him beside his one great ambition; whether his friendship
for John and his affection for her were anything more than good
investments. She had her answer now.
Her first comfort came with the thought that it had not always been so.
There had been a time when he cared, and as she was thinking of the
time gone by she found his defence.
It would not have weighed heavily with a jury of his peers; to an
impartial mind it would hardly have been a defence at all, but in her
eyes it saved him.
Her very knowledge of the game he had played this score of years, the
knowledge that had enabled her to discover his contemplated treachery,
was what now furnished his justification. Being a mere spectator and
understanding his moves had hardened her, she knew, and had already
made an old woman of her. And, she argued, it was small wonder that he
who had played the game, had fought the battles, should have become
hard, and that the long straining of his eyes toward one object should
have blinded him to every other consideration. He was not himself, for
in this last campaign the fever was in his blood, and his going to
any length to win was as inevitable as his regret afterward would be
unavailing.
Mercifully blind to the pathetic weakness of the plea, and unconscious
of the confession of its weakness that lay in her much protesting, she
told herself that it was not his fault.
He was making his last fight; this temptation that beguiled him would
be the last. If only she could save him from its consequences!
For a moment she entertained the notion of going to him, but she saw
that even if she could turn him it would be too late. Not even his
wonderful ingenuity could avert the ruin it had been exercised to
provoke. But perhaps there was yet time to warn John and to save the
bank.
Then in a second her resolve was taken.
She had on a thin house dress, and with the idea of putting on
something better suited for street wear in this summer evening, she
tugged impatiently at its fastenings, but her shaking fingers would not
obey her will. She dared not call her maid, for after what had happened
an hour before, the girl would be certain to protest against her going
out, and might tell her husband. She must go as she was. With a quick
motion she partly rearranged her disordered hair, and pinning on a hat,
any hat, and seizing her purse, she sped softly down the stairs, and
without being observed she reached the street. She hesitated for an
instant, then set out resolutely for the nearest elevated station.
For months a fear had been following her which she had never dared to
look at squarely, to which she had even been afraid to give a name.
Sometimes it had been almost upon her, and sometimes so far behind that
she had thought it could never overtake her again. When it was at her
heels, she stayed within doors; for the very thought of a crowd, or of
revolving wheels, was terrifying. At such times she told herself that
she dared not look over the banister rail in her own upper hall, and
fancied that her familiar servants eyed her curiously and whispered. A
physician would have given her morbid fancies a name common enough in
medical practice nowadays, and would have told her that she was as safe
on a high place or in a crowd or beside the railroad tracks as anybody
else. But to Harriet, her disease was simply a nameless, indeterminate
horror, which brought with it the melancholy foreboding that in some
season of stress it was certain to conquer her.
In her new excitement this old dread had been forgotten, save in her
momentary nervousness when she found herself alone in the street. She
reached the station without experiencing even the fear that she would
be afraid. But the platform was crowded, and she grew a shade paler as
she was pushed and jostled close to the edge, and the reflection of the
lights from the gleaming steel rails wakened a terror which was all the
sharper because she knew it was perfectly irrational. When she saw the
headlight of the train growing bigger and brighter out of the distance,
she tried to step back, and failing that, her fear mastered her
completely, and she clutched for support at the person who stood beside
her. When the train came jolting to a stop, the screaming of the brakes
sounded to her ears like an articulate human cry, and in fancy she saw
a woman’s body mangled under the trucks. She did not know that she had
stood hesitating, blocking the way for all the impatient passengers
behind her, until the exasperated guard had taken her arm and fairly
thrust her into the car; but when the horrible vision left her eyes,
and she again became conscious of her present surroundings, she knew
that she must have done something out of the ordinary, for everybody in
the car who could see was staring at her.
It was nearly nine o’clock before Sponley came home after an arduous
and only partially successful quest. It is one of the perversities of
finance that when a man has plenty of money, people will crowd around
him, beseeching him to use theirs also; but when he needs it, when he
really must have it, they look at him from the corners of their eyes
and sidle away. After one or two flat failures, however, the Bear
had succeeded in misleading some people into coming to his help. He
had not got as much as he wanted; but enough, with luck and with the
reënforcement the run at Bagsbury’s would give him, to last him through
another day.
He had already dined, so, after reading Harriet’s note, he settled
himself in the library to the enjoyment of a cigar. It was a point of
pride with him, that once his day’s work was done, he could completely
banish its cares from his thoughts; and he had a hearty contempt for
all the amusements in which weaker spirits are wont to seek that
diversion, which with him was simply a matter of will. But to-night,
after an uneasy ten minutes, he took up “The Count of Monte Cristo,”
and tried to read.
Half an hour later the library door was flung open without ceremony,
and Harriet’s maid spoke his name.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Mrs. Sponley--” the girl began, but there her excitement and fright
choked her.
“What is it?” he repeated. “Here, stop that nonsense and tell me.”
“She’s gone,” at length she managed to say. “She isn’t in her room, and
she isn’t anywhere. She’s gone.”
What a mask that thick, swarthy face could be! Now it changed not at
all, save that the eyes grew narrower and he frowned impatiently.
“What you say would be very interesting if I did not know it already.
Mrs. Sponley is at Mrs. Bagsbury’s. She left me a note saying that she
meant to spend the evening there. Don’t be so hasty in your conclusions
another time.”
He nodded in the direction of the door and turned back to his book.
Before the maid was fairly out of the room it occurred to him that the
explanation he had given her was probably true, after all. He went
quickly to the telephone. Then, suddenly changing his mind, he rang for
a cab.
“Drive to the elevated as fast as you can,” he ordered shortly. “I’m in
a hurry.”
For all his efforts it seemed to the Bear an interminable while before
he reached John Bagsbury’s house, and in that time his thoughts were
grim indeed; but just as he was about to go up the steps he paused
suddenly and smiled, as though just possessed of an idea that pleased
him. He glanced at his watch and nodded with a satisfied air, then he
rang the bell.
He found Alice in the library, and the perfectly easy way in which she
greeted him convinced him that she knew as little of the lard deal
and its collateral incidents as though it were taking place in some
cannibal island.
“You know Harriet is here, of course,” she said. “She’s all right
now, I imagine; but she gave us a most terrible scare a couple of
hours ago. I didn’t see her when she came in; but Dick did, and she
saw that something was the matter with her, so she took her right up
to what she calls her den. Dick says she thinks that something must
have happened--something to frighten her on her way down here. Anyway,
before she had been here ten minutes she had sort of--well, the doctor
said it was a hysterical seizure. It wasn’t like any hysterics I’d
ever heard of, though. But whatever it was she’s all over it now, and
the doctor’s given her something to put her to sleep. I think she will
be all right by morning; but you’ll leave her here till then. We’ll
take good care of her. I wanted to telephone to you, but John and Dick
seemed to think it wasn’t necessary.”
John came into the room in time to hear the concluding words of Alice’s
explanation.
“I’m glad it’s no worse,” Sponley said. “I was a little afraid she
might break down. The--excitement of the last few days has been hard on
her.”
Then he turned to John.
“I came around on a business matter. It’ll take but a moment,” he
hesitated, “if Alice will excuse us.”
He led the way to a remote corner of the room. “I’ve been hearing
rumors all the afternoon about your bank; I’m afraid you’re likely to
have some trouble to-morrow. I wanted to warn you.”
“Thank you,” John answered drily. “I’ve heard something of it myself.
Harriet told Dick that you asked her to tell me that I was going to
have a run on my hands.”
“I fancy that Miss Haselridge did not understand precisely, or it may
be that in her excitement Harriet misunderstood me. I told her that I
meant to let you know.”
“I must be going on,” he added, again addressing Alice. “I’ll call up
in the morning and find out how Harriet is.”
Then, to John, “Well, good night. I wish you luck.”
John smiled, “I wish you the same thing,” he said.