“On a job?”
“Mrs. Grace wants some measurements and specifications which she thinks
I haven’t given her exactly enough; and the first thing to be done is to
go over the whole blooming place with a foot-rule and a tape-measure; but
I’ll tell you about that to-morrow, too. For a chap with your training
it will be office-boy’s work; but as you’re doing nothing else for the
moment—”
It is needless to say that I hardly slept that night. It was not the
prospect of work alone that excited me; it was that of being gradually
drawn into the sphere in which I might meet Regina Barry. I was still
uncertain as to whether I wanted to do that or not. There was no hour of
the day when I didn’t think of her, and yet it was always with a sense
of thankfulness that she couldn’t know where I was or guess at what had
become of me. If I could have been granted the privilege of seeing her
without having her see me I should have jumped at it; but the ordeal of
her recognition was beyond my strength to face. Rather than have her say
with her eyes, “You were the man who came into my room and tried to rob
me,” I would have shot myself.
And yet I had to admit the fact that this danger was in the air. Ralph
Coningsby’s sister was the Elsie of that tragic night; Cantyre was the
Stephen. I was being offered work by Sterling Barry’s partner, and might
soon be doing it for Sterling Barry himself. The fatality that brought
about these unfoldings might go farther still, and before I knew it I
might find myself in the precise situation that filled me with terror—and
yet made me shiver with a kind of harsh delight. Before I could sleep I
had to make a compromise with my courage. I would not shoot myself rather
than meet her. I would meet her first, if it had to be. I would take that
one draft of the joy I had put forever out of reach—and shoot myself
afterward.
But in the morning I was more self-confident. Having examined myself
carefully in the cracked mirror in the bath-room, I found that my
mustache, which had grown tolerably long and thick, changed my appearance
not a little. Moreover, food, rest, and sobriety had smoothed away the
unspeakable haggardness that had creased my forehead, hardened my mouth,
and burnt into my eyes that woebegone desolation which I had noticed
among my companions when I arrived at the club. It is no exaggeration to
say that I was not only younger by ten years, but that I was changed in
looks, as a landscape is changed when, after being swept by rains, it is
bathed in sunshine. The one hope I built on all this was that, were I to
meet Regina Barry face to face, she would not recognize me at a first
glance, while I could keep her from getting a second.
On the way across the street Coningsby told me something of Charlie
Grace and his memorial. He had been the son of a former rector of St.
David’s—an important man in the New York of his day, who had outlived
his usefulness and been asked to resign his parish. The son had never
forgiven this slight, and the William Grace Memorial was intended to
avenge it. It had been the express desire of the widow, Mrs. Charlie
Grace, that he, Ralph Coningsby, should have sole charge of the building,
and the work had been going on since the previous autumn. In the coming
autumn the house would be ready for furnishing. It was for this purpose
that Mrs. Grace required the exact measurements of each room, with the
disposition of the wall spaces. During the summer she could thus consider
what she would have to do when the time came in October.
Only a corner of the new building was visible from Vandiver Street, the
main entrance being on Blankney Place, which was a parallel thoroughfare.
Standing in the middle of the grass-plot in front of the dumpy, spurious
1840 Gothic rectory, we had the length of the dumpy, spurious 1840
Gothic church in front of us. The memorial had to be fitted in behind
the chancel, on the space formerly occupied by a Sunday-school room.
This space had been enlarged by the purchase of the lot in Blankney
Place, giving an entry from a more populous neighborhood. The purpose
of the memorial had been more or less dictated by Mrs. Ralph Coningsby,
who, as Esther Legrand, the rector’s daughter, had from her childhood
upward worked among the people round about and knew their needs. As
far as I could gather, it was to be a sort of neighborhood club, with
parlors, reading-rooms, playing-rooms, a dancing-room, a smoking-room, a
billiard-room, a lecture-room, a gymnasium, baths, and so on, and open
to those who were properly enrolled, of both sexes and all ages. Of the
committee in charge Mrs. Coningsby was apparently the moving spirit,
though Mrs. Grace was reserving to herself the pleasure of fitting the
house up.
Before going inside we discussed the difficulties of harmonizing a
modern building with the efforts of the early nineteenth century, and I
had an opportunity to commend Coningsby’s judgment. He had kept to the
brownstone of the church and rectory, and had suggested their spirit
while working on sober, well-proportioned lines.
In the middle of this I broke off to say: “Look here, old chap! I hope
you’re not inventing this job of yours just for the sake of giving me
something to do.”
His frank gaze convinced me.
“Honest, I’m not. Mrs. Grace is particularly anxious to have the
measurements sent down to her at Rosyth, and we’re so short-handed—”
“Then that’s all right. Let’s go in, and you can show me what I’m to do.”
As Coningsby had said, it was office-boy’s work, but it suited me. It was
a matter of getting broken in again, and—whether it came by accident or
my friend’s good-heartedness—an easy job in which there was no thinking
or responsibility was the most effective means that could have been found
of nursing me along. At the end of a week I was treated to the well-nigh
incredible wonder of a check.
Early on a Sunday morning I took it to Christian, asking that it should
be turned in toward my expenses at the club.
Having read its amount, he held it in his fingers, twisting it and
turning it.
“You see, Frank,” he said, after thinking for a minute, “the primary
object of the club is not to be paid for what it spends—though that is an
object—it’s to help fellows to get on their feet. Of you nineteen chaps
who are in the house at present twelve are regularly paying for their
board and lodging, and that pretty well carries us along. If there’s a
deficit it’s covered by the back payments of men who’ve gone out and who
are making up. So that this isn’t pressing for the minute—”
“But I should like to pay it, sir.”
“Yes, of course; but it’s a question of what is most urgent. Now this
isn’t urgent; we can extend your credit; whereas, the first bit of bluff
we’ve all got to put up when we’re pulling ourselves together is in
clothes.”
He asked me how long my present job would go on. I said for about three
weeks.
“Then keep this check,” he pursued, handing it back to me, “till you get
as much again. That will be enough to turn you out quite smart. Go to
Straight, at Bruch Brothers—all our fellows go to him—and he’ll advise
you to the best advantage.”
The words were accompanied by such a smile that I, who am not emotional,
felt my eyes smart.
_CHAPTER VIII_
The summer passed with no more than two or three other incidents worth
the jotting down.
In the first place, the day arrived when I had to make up my mind
either to leave the club or to join it. Expecting some opposition from
Lovey as to joining it, I was surprised to find him take the suggestion
complacently.
“I’ve found out,” he whispered to me, “that yer can jine this club—and
fall. Yer can fall three times before they’ll turn ye out.”
“Oh, but you wouldn’t want to fall in cold blood.”
“Well,” he muttered, doubtfully, “I ain’t partic’lar about the blood.
Now my hadvice’d be this: ’Ere we are in July. That’s all right; we
can jine. Then in Haugust we can ’ave a wee little bit of a fall—just
two or three days like. We can do the same in September; and the same
in Hoctober. That’ll use up our three times, and we can come back under
cover for the worst months of the winter. We can’t fall no more after
that; but in the spring we can try somethink else. There’s always things.”
“And suppose I don’t mean to fall?”
He looked hurt.
“Oh, if you can keep straight without me—”
“But if I can’t, Lovey? If I must keep straight and need you to help me?”
He clasped his hands against his stomach and drew a dismal face.
“That’d be a tight place for me.”
“And isn’t there,” I continued, “another point of view? Suppose we did
what you suggest, do you think it would be treating all these nice
fellows decently?”
“Oh, if you’re going to start out treatin’ people decent—”
“Well, why shouldn’t we? We can do it—you and I together.”
He drew a deep sigh.
“I must say, Slim, yer do beat everythink for puttin’ things on me.”
But in the end we were both admitted at one of the Saturday-evening
meetings with, as usual, a large gathering of friends, and some bracing
words from Straight. Pyn stood up with me as next friend, and little
Spender did the same by Lovey. I have not said that during the ten days
before I went to work Pyn blew in at the club during some minutes of
every lunch hour to watch my progress. It was he, too, who found Lovey
the job of washing windows, by which that worthy also had a chance of
returning to honest ways. Indeed, though I cannot repeat it frequently
enough, of the many hands stretched out to help me upward none was
stronger in its grasp than that of the kindly keeper of the soda-water
fountain to whom the club had given a veritable new birth.
Our admission as members had taken place while I was still doing the
measurements at the memorial. By the time they were finished Coningsby
had a new proposal. As it was the middle of July, he was anxious to take
his wife and two little children to the country for a month. Carpenters,
plasterers, painters, and plumbers were still at work on the building,
and they couldn’t be left without oversight. Would I undertake to give
that—at a reasonable salary?
I had grown familiar with the work by this time, and had been able to
throw into the furtherance of Coningsby’s plans an enthusiasm largely
sprung of gratitude. In addition I was getting back my self-confidence in
proportion as I got back my self-respect. The fact, too, that in the new
summer suit and straw hat to which the colonel’s advice had helped me I
could go about the streets without being ashamed of myself did something
to restore my natural poise.
I could see that by taking this work I should really be helping
Coningsby. He needed the rest; his wife and babies undoubtedly needed
the change. It was not easy for a man with so important a piece of work
as this on hand to get any one satisfactorily to take his place. I
could accept the offer, then, without the suspicion—which any man would
hate—that it was being made to me from motives of philanthropy. I was
really being useful—more useful than in taking the measurements for Mrs.
Grace, which any novice could have done—and making a creditable living
for the first time in years.
Then, too, I had a great deal of Cantyre’s company. He spent most of the
summer in town; chiefly because of his patients, but partly from a lack
of incentive in going away. He explained that lack of incentive to me
during one of the spins in his runabout to which he treated me on three
or four evenings a week. Now and then I worked Lovey off on him for
an outing, but he, Cantyre, was generally a little peevish after such
occasions. It was not that he objected to giving Lovey or any one else
the air; it was that he suspected me of not really caring to go out with
him. There are always men—very good fellows, too—in whom there is this
strain of the jealousy of school-girls.
On this particular evening I had been kidding him about his depression,
doing my best to rouse him out of it.
“Oh, I’ll pull round in time,” he said, in his resigned, lifeless tone.
“If you knew the reason—”
I did know the reason, of course. My conscience never ceased to plague
me with the fact that, though I could return Regina Barry’s trinkets,
Cantyre’s secret was a theft I couldn’t get rid of. It was, indeed,
partly to lead him on to confiding it to me of his own accord, so that I
might know it legitimately, so to speak, that I brought the subject up.
“I suppose it’s about a girl.”
So long a time passed that I thought he was not going to respond to this
challenge, when he said, “Yes.”
“Wouldn’t she have you?” I asked, bluntly.
“She said she would—and changed her mind.”
“So that you were actually engaged?”
“For about a month.”
“Did she— You don’t mind my asking questions, do you?”
“Not if you won’t mind if I don’t answer.”
“Then with that proviso I’ll go on. Did she tell why she—why she broke it
off?”
“Not—not exactly.”
“And haven’t you found out?”
“Elsie Coningsby, she’s her great friend, told me something of it. She
said there were two kinds of women. Some liked to be wooed, and others
weren’t satisfied unless they were conquered.”
“And you took the wrong method?”
“So it seems.”
“Well, why don’t you turn round now and take the right one?”
His dreamy, melancholy eyes slid toward me.
“Do you see me doing that? I’m the kind of bloke that would like a woman
to conquer him. If it comes to that, there are two kinds of men.”
He had told me so much that I felt it right to give him a warning.
“Since you say she’s a friend of Elsie Coningsby’s, I mayn’t be able to
help finding out who she is.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind that—not with you. As a matter of fact, I should
like to introduce you to her one of these days.”
I broke in more hastily than I intended, “No, no; don’t do that—for God’s
sake!”
He swung round in amazement. “Why—why, what’s the matter?”
I tried to recover myself. “Oh, nothing! Only, you must see for yourself
that—that after what I’ve been through I’m not—not a lady’s man.”
“Oh, get out!” was his only observation.
We lapsed into one of our long silences, which was broken when we turned
back toward town.
“Look here, Frank,” he said, suddenly, “you can’t go on living down there
in Vandiver Street. Besides, the club will be needing your bed for some
one else.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it. I simply don’t want to
move.”
“You’ll have to, though.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He went on to suggest a small apartment in the bachelor house he was
living in himself. Now was the time to rent, before men began coming
back to town. He knew of a little suite of three rooms and a bath which
ought to be within my means. As we passed the house we stopped and looked
at it. I liked it and promised to turn the matter over in my mind.
Next day I broached it to Lovey. The effect was what I expected. He
grasped me by the arm, looking up at me with eyes the more eloquent from
the fact that they were dead.
“Y’ain’t goin’ to leave me, Slim?”
“It wouldn’t be leaving you, Lovey.”
“Y’ain’t goin’ to live in another ’ouse, where I sha’n’t be seein’ ye
every day?”
“You could get a room near.”
“’Twouldn’t be the same thing—not noway, it wouldn’t be. Oh, Slim!”
With a gesture really dramatic he smote his chest with his two clenched
fists, and drew a long, grating sigh.
We were sitting on our beds, which were side by side in one of the
dormitories. It was the nearest thing to privacy the club-house ever
allowed us.
“This’ll be the hend of me; and it’ll be the hend of you, Slim, if I
ain’t there to watch over you. You’ll never keep straight without me,
sonny.” He was struck with a new idea, and, indeed, I had thought of it
myself. “Didn’t ye say,” he went on, as he leaned forward and tapped my
knee, “that in them rooms there was one little dark room?”
“Very little and very dark.”
“But it wouldn’t be too little or too dark for me, Slim, not if I
could be your valet, like. I could do everythink for you, just like a
gentleman. My father was a valet, and he larned me before he couldn’t
larn me nothink else. I could keep your clothes so as you’d never need
new ones, and I could mend and darn and cook your breakfasts—I’m a swell
cook—I can bile tea and coffee and heggs—many’s the time I’ve done it—”
“All right, Lovey,” I interrupted. “It’s a bargain. We’re buddies.”
“No, Slim; we won’t be buddies no more. We’ll call that off. We’ll just
be master and man. I’ll know my place and I’ll keep it. I sha’n’t call
you Slim, nor sonny—”
“Oh yes, you must.”
He shook his head.
“No; not after we’ve moved from the club. I’ll call you Mr. Melbury and
say sir to you; and you must call me Lovey, just as if it was my real
name.” He added, unexpectedly to me: “I suppose ye know it ain’t my real
name?”
“Oh, what does it matter?”
“It only matters like this: I ain’t—I ain’t—” He got up in some agitation
and went to one of the windows. After looking out for a second or two he
turned half round toward me. “Ye ain’t thinking me any better than I am,
Slim, are you?”
“I’m not thinking whether you’re better or worse, Lovey. I just like you.”
“And I’ve took an awful fancy to you, Slim. Seems as if you was my whole
family. But—but you’re not, sonny. I’ve—I’ve got a family. They’re dead
to me and I’m dead to them; but they’re my family. Did ye know that,
Slim?”
“I didn’t know it, and you needn’t tell me.”
“But if I was awful bad, sonny? If I was wuss than anythink that’d ever
come into your ’ead?”
“We won’t talk about that. Perhaps there are things that I could tell
you which would show that there’s not much difference between us.”
“I ’ope there is, Slim. And she was terr’ble aggravatin’; a drinkin’
woman, besides. I didn’t drink then—’ardly not at all. It was after I was
acquitted I begun that. And my two gells—well, bein’ acquitted didn’t
make no difference to them; they’d seen. Only, they didn’t swear that way
in their hevidence. They swore she fell down the stairs she was found at
the bottom of, her neck broken; and, bein’ a drinkin’ woman, the jury
thought—But the two gells knew. And when I was let off they didn’t ’ave
no more to do with me—so I come over ’ere—”