ALL ROADS LEAD TO EAST ORANGE
The next day Winifred set about her new purpose of finding some other
occupation than that connected with the stage, though she rose from bed
that morning feeling ill, having hardly slept throughout the night.
First, she read over once more the "agent's" letter, and was again
conscious of an extremely vague feeling of something queer in it when
she reflected on the lateness of the hour of the rendezvous--eight in
the evening. She decided to write, explaining her change of purpose, and
declining the interview with this nebulous "client." She did not write
at once. She thought that she would wait, and see first the result of
the day's search for other employment.
Soon after breakfast she went out, heading for Brown's, her old
employers in Greenwich Village, who had turned her away after the yacht
affair and the arrest of her aunt.
As she waited at the crossing where the cars pass, her eyes rested on a
man--a clergyman, apparently--standing on the opposite pavement. He was
not at the moment looking that way, and she took little notice of him,
though her subconsciousness may have recognized something familiar in
the lines of his body.
It was Fowle in a saintly garb, Fowle in a shovel hat, Fowle interested
in the comings and goings of Winifred. Fowle, moreover, in those days,
floated on the high tide of ease, and had plenty of money in his pocket.
He not only looked, but felt like a person of importance, and when
Winifred entered a street-car, Fowle followed in a taxi.
There was a new foreman at Brown's now, and he received the girl kindly.
She laid her case before him. She had been employed there and had given
satisfaction. Then, all at once, an event with which she had nothing
more to do than people in China, had caused her to be dismissed. Would
not the firm, now that the whole business had blown over, reinstate her?
The man heard her attentively through and said:
"Hold on. I'll have a talk with the boss." He left her, and was gone ten
minutes. Then he returned, with a shaking head. "No, Brown's never take
any one back," said he; "but here's a list of bookbinding firms which
he's written out for you, and he says he'll give you a recommendation if
any of 'em give you a job."
With this list Winifred went out, and, determined to lose no time,
started on the round, taking the nearest first, one in Nineteenth
Street. She walked that way, and slowly behind her followed a clergyman.
The firm in Nineteenth Street wanted no new hand. Winifred got into a
Twenty-third Street cross-town car. After her sped a taxi.
And now, when she stopped at the third bookbinder's, Fowle knew her
motive. She was seeking work at the old trade. He was puzzled, knowing
that she had wished to become a singer, and being aware, too, of the
appointment for the next night at East Orange. Had she, then, changed
her purpose? Perhaps she was seeking both kinds of employment, meaning
to accept the one which came first. If the bookbinding won out that
might be dangerous to the rendezvous.
In any case, Fowle resolved to nip the project in the bud. He would go
later in the day to all the firms she had visited, ask if they had
engaged her, and, if so, drop a hint that she had been dismissed from
Brown's for being connected with the crime committed against Mr. Ronald
Tower. A bogus clergyman's word was good for something, anyhow.
From Twenty-third Street, where there was no work, Winifred made her way
to Twenty-ninth Street, followed still by the taxi. Here things turned
out better for her. She was seen by a manager who told her that they
would be short-handed in three or four days, and that, if she could
really produce a reference from Brown's he would engage her permanently.
Winifred left him her address, so that he might write and tell her when
she could come.
She lunched in a cheap restaurant and walked to her lodgings. Color
flooded her cheeks, but she was appalled by her loneliness, by the
emptiness of her life. To bind books and to live for binding books, that
was not living. She had peeped into Paradise, but the gate had been shut
in her face, and the bookbinding world seemed an intolerably flat and
stale rag-fair in comparison.
How was she to live it through, she asked herself. When she went up to
her room the once snug and homely place disgusted her. How was she to
live through the vast void of that afternoon alone in that apartment?
How bridge the vast void of to-morrow? The salt had lost its savor; she
tasted ashes; life was all sand of the desert; she would not see him any
more. The resolution which had carried her through the interview with
Carshaw failed her now, and she blamed herself for the murder of
herself.
"Oh, how could I have done such a thing!" she cried, bursting into
tears, with her hat still on and her head on the table.
She had to write a letter to the "agent," telling him that she did not
mean to keep the rendezvous at East Orange, since she had obtained other
work, and with difficulty summoned the requisite energy. Every effort
was nauseous to her. Her whole nature was absorbed in digesting her one
great calamity.
Next morning it was the same. Her arms hung listlessly by her side. She
evaded little domestic tasks. Though her clothes were new, a girl can
always find sewing and stitching. A certain shirtwaist needed slight
adjustment, but her fingers fumbled a simple task. She passed the time
somehow till half past four. At that hour there was a ring at the outer
door. In the absorption of her grief she did not hear it, though it was
"his" hour. A step sounded on the stairs, and this she heard; but she
thought it was Miss Goodman bringing tea.
Then, brusquely, without any knock, the door opened, and she saw before
her Carshaw.
"Oh!" she screamed, in an ecstasy of joy, and was in his arms.
The rope which bound her had snapped thus suddenly for the simple reason
that Carshaw had promised never to come again, and was very strict, as
she knew, in keeping his pledged word. Therefore, until the moment when
her distraught eyes took in the fact of his presence, she had not the
faintest hope or thought of seeing him for many a day to come, if ever.
Seeing him all at once in the midst of her desert of despair, her reason
swooned, all fixed principles capsized, and instinct swept her
triumphantly, as the whirlwind bears a feather, to his ready embrace.
He, for his part, had broken his promise because he could not help it.
He had to come--so he came. His dismissal had been too sudden to be
credible, to find room in his brain. It continued to have something of
the character of a dream, and he was here now to convince himself that
the dream was true.
Moreover, in her manner of sending him away, in some of her words, there
had been something unreal and unconvincing, with broken hints of love,
even as she denied love, which haunted and puzzled his memory. If he had
made a thousand promises he would still have to return to her.
"Well," said he, his face alight for joy as she moaned on his breast,
"what is it all about? You unreliable little half of a nerve, Winnie!"
"I can't help it; kiss me--only once!" panted Winifred, with tears
streaming down her up-turned face.
Carshaw needed no bidding. Kiss her once! Well, a man should smile.
"What is it all about?" he demanded, when Winifred was quite breathless.
"Am I loved, then?"
Her forehead was on his shoulder, and she did not answer.
"It seems so," he whispered. "Silence is said to mean consent. But why,
then, was I not loved the day before yesterday?"
Still Winifred dared not answer. The frenzy was passing, the moral
nature re-arising, stronger than ever, claiming its own. She had
promised and failed! What she did was not well for him.
"Tell me," he urged, with a lover's eagerness. "You'll have to, some
time, you know."
"You promised not to come. You promised definitely," said Winifred,
disengaging herself from him.
"Could I help coming?" cried he. "I was in the greatest bewilderment and
misery!"
"So you will always come, even if you promise not to?"
"But I won't promise not to! Where is the need now? You love me, I love
you!"
Winifred turned away from him, went to the window and looked out, seeing
nothing, for the eyes of the soul were busy. Her lips were now firmly
set, and during the minute that she stood there a rapid train of thought
and purpose passed through her mind. She had promised to give him up,
and she would go through with it. It was for him--and it was sweet,
though bitter, to be a martyr. But she recognized clearly that so long
as he knew where to find her the thing could never be done. She made up
her mind to be gone from those lodgings by that hour the next day, and
to be buried from him in some other part of the great city. She would
never in that case be able to ask him for help to keep going, without
giving her address, but in a few days she would have work at the new
bookbinder's. This well settled in her mind, she turned inward to him,
saying:
"Miss Goodman will soon bring up tea. Come, let us be happy to-day.
You want to know if I love you? Well, the answer is yes, yes; so
now you know, and can never doubt. I want you to stay a long time
this afternoon, and I invite you to be my dear, dear guest on one
condition--that you don't ask me why I told you that awful fib the
day before yesterday, for I don't mean to tell you!"
Of course Carshaw took her again in his arms, and, without breaking her
conditions, stayed with her till nearly six. She was sedately gay all
the time, but, on kissing him good-by, she wept quietly, and as quietly
she said to her landlady when he was gone:
"Miss Goodman, I am going away to-morrow--for always, I'm afraid."
Soon after this six o'clock struck. At ten minutes past the hour Miss
Goodman brought up two letters.
Without looking at the handwriting on the envelopes, Winifred tore open
one, laying the other on a writing-desk, this latter being from the
agent in answer to the one she had written. She had told him that she
did not mean to keep the appointment at East Orange, and he now assured
her that he had certainly never made any appointment for her at East
Orange. The thing was some blunder. New York impresarios did not make
appointments in East Orange. He asked for an explanation.
Pity that she did not open this letter before the other--or the other
was of a nature to drive the existence of the agent's letter--of any
letter--out of her head; for days afterward that all-important message
lay on the table unopened.
The note which Winifred did read was from the bookbinding manager who
had all but engaged her that day. He now informed her that he would have
no use for her services. The clergyman in the taxi had followed very
effectively on Winifred's trail.
She was stunned by this final blow. Her eyes gazed into vacancy. What
she was to do now she did not know. The next day she had to go away into
strange lodgings, with hardly any money, without any possibility of her
applying again to Rex, without support of any sort. She had never known
real poverty, for her "aunt" had always more or less been in funds; and
the prospect appalled her. She would face it, however, at all costs,
and, the bookbinding failing her, her mind naturally recurred, with a
gasp of hope, to the singing.
There was the appointment at East Orange at eight. She looked at the
clock; she might have time, though it would mean an instant rush. She
would go. True, she had written the agent to say that she would not, and
he might have so advised his client. But perhaps he had not had time to
do this, since she had written him so late. In any case, there was a
chance that she should meet the person in question, and then she could
explain. Suddenly she leaped up, hurried on her hat and coat, and ran
out of the house. In a few minutes she was at the Hudson Tube, bound for
Hoboken and East Orange.
Of course it was a mad thing to leave an unopened letter on the table,
but just then poor Winifred was nearly out of her mind.