THE NAME OF ONE TURL COMES UP
A month passed. All the work in which Larcher had enlisted Davenport's
cooperation was done. Larcher would have projected more, but the
artist could not be pinned down to any definite engagement. He was
non-committal, with the evasiveness of apathy. He seemed not to care any
longer about anything. More than ever he appeared to go about in a dream.
Larcher might have suspected some drug-taking habit, but for having
observed the man so constantly, at such different hours, and often with
so little warning, as to be convinced to the contrary.
One cold, clear November night, when the tingle of the air, and the
beauty of the moonlight, should have aroused any healthy being to a sense
of life's joy in the matchless late autumn of New York, Larcher met his
friend on Broadway. Davenport was apparently as much absorbed in his
inner contemplations, or as nearly void of any contemplation whatever, as
a man could be under the most stupefying influences. He politely stopped,
however, when Larcher did.
“Where are you going?” the latter asked.
“Home,” was the reply; thus amended the next instant: “To my room, that
is.”
“I'll walk with you, if you don't mind. I feel like stretching my legs.”
“Glad to have you,” said Davenport, indifferently. They turned from
Broadway eastward into a cross-town street, high above the end of which
rose the moon, lending romance and serenity to the house-fronts. Larcher
called the artist's attention to it. Davenport replied by quoting,
mechanically:
“'With how slow steps, O moon, thou clim'st the sky,
How silently, and with how wan a face!'”
“I'm glad to see you out on so fine a night,” pursued Larcher.
“I came out on business,” said the other. “I got a request by telegraph
from the benevolent Bagley to meet him at his rooms. He received a 'hurry
call' to Chicago, and must take the first train; so he sent for me, to
look after a few matters in his absence.”
“I trust you'll find them interesting,” said Larcher, comparing his own
failure with Bagley's success in obtaining Davenport's services.
“Not in the slightest,” replied Davenport.
“Then remunerative, at least.”
“Not sufficiently to attract _me_,” said the other.
“Then, if you'll pardon the remark, I really can't understand--”
“Mere force of habit,” replied Davenport, listlessly. “When he summons, I
attend. When he entrusts, I accept. I've done it so long, and so often, I
can't break myself of the habit. That is, of course, I could if I chose,
but it would require an effort, and efforts aren't worth while at this
stage.”
With little more talk, they arrived at the artist's house.
“If you talk of moonlight,” said Davenport, in a manner of some
kindliness, “you should see its effect on the back yards, from my
windows. You know how half-hearted the few trees look in the daytime;
but I don't think you've seen that view on a moonlight night. The yards,
taken as a whole, have some semblance to a real garden. Will you come
up?”
Larcher assented readily. A minute later, while his host was seeking
matches, he looked down from the dark chamber, and saw that the
transformation wrought in the rectangular space of back yards had not
been exaggerated. The shrubbery by the fences might have sheltered
fairies. The boughs of the trees, now leafless, gently stirred. Even the
plain house-backs were clad in beauty.
When Larcher turned from the window, Davenport lighted the gas, but not
his lamp; then drew from an inside pocket, and tossed on the table,
something which Larcher took to be a stenographer's note-book, narrow,
thick, and with stiff brown covers. Its unbound end was confined by a
thin rubber band. Davenport opened a drawer of the table, and essayed
to sweep the book thereinto by a careless push. The book went too
far, struck the arm of a chair, flew open at the breaking of the
overstretched rubber, fell on its side by the chair leg, and disclosed a
pile of bank-notes. These, tightly flattened, were the sole contents of
the covers. As Larcher's startled eyes rested upon them, he saw that the
topmost bill was for five hundred dollars.
Davenport exhibited a momentary vexation, then picked up the bills, and
laid them on the table in full view.
“Bagley's money,” said he, sitting down before the table. “I'm to place
it for him to-morrow. This sudden call to Chicago prevents his carrying
out personally some plans he had formed. So he entrusts the business to
the reliable Davenport.”
“When I walked home with you, I had no idea I was in the company of so
much money,” said Larcher, who had taken a chair near his friend.
“I don't suppose there's another man in New York to-night with so much
ready money on his person,” said Davenport, smiling. “These are large
bills, you know. Ironical, isn't it? Think of Murray Davenport walking
about with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket.”
“Twenty thousand! Why, that's just the amount you were--” Larcher checked
himself.
“Yes,” said Davenport, unmoved. “Just the amount of Bagley's wealth that
morally belongs to me, not considering interest. I could use it, too, to
very good advantage. With my skill in the art of frugal living, I could
make it go far--exceedingly far. I could realize that plan of a
congenial life, which I told you of one night here. There it is; here am
I; and if right prevailed, it would be mine. Yet if I ventured to treat
it as mine, I should land in a cell. Isn't it a silly world?”
He languidly replaced the bills between the notebook covers, and put them
in the drawer. As he did so, his glance fell on a sheet of paper lying
there. With a curious, half-mirthful expression on his face, he took this
up, and handed it to Larcher, saying:
“You told me once you could judge character by handwriting. What do you
make of this man's character?”
Larcher read the following note, which was written in a small, precise,
round hand:
“MY DEAR DAVENPORT:--I will meet you at the place and time you suggest.
We can then, I trust, come to a final settlement, and go our different
ways. Till then I have no desire to see you; and afterward, still less.
Yours truly,
“FRANCIS TURL.”
“Francis Turl,” repeated Larcher. “I never heard the name before.”
“No, I suppose you never have,” replied Davenport, dryly. “But what
character would you infer from his penmanship?”
“Well,--I don't know.” Put to the test, Larcher was at a loss. “An
educated person, I should think; even scholarly, perhaps. Fastidious,
steady, exact, reserved,--that's about all.”
“Not very much,” said Davenport, taking back the sheet. “You merely
describe the handwriting itself. Your characterization, as far as it
goes, would fit men who write very differently from this. It fits me,
for instance, and yet look at my angular scrawl.” He held up a specimen
of his own irregular hand, beside the elegant penmanship of the note,
and Larcher had to admit himself a humbug as a graphologist.
“But,” he demanded, “did my description happen to fit that particular
man--Francis Turl?”
“Oh, more or less,” said Davenport, evasively, as if not inclined to give
any information about that person. This apparent disinclination increased
Larcher's hidden curiosity as to who Francis Turl might be, and why
Davenport had never mentioned him before, and what might be between the
two for settlement.
Davenport put Turl's writing back into the drawer, but continued to
regard his own. “'A vile cramped hand,'” he quoted. “I hate it, as I have
grown to hate everything that partakes of me, or proceeds from me.
Sometimes I fancy that my abominable handwriting had as much to do with
alienating a certain fair inconstant as the news of my reputed
unluckiness. Both coming to her at once, the combined effect was too
much.”
“Why?--Did you break that news to her by letter?”
“That seems strange to you, perhaps. But you see, at first it didn't
occur to me that I should have to break it to her at all. We met abroad;
we were tourists whose paths happened to cross. Over there I almost
forgot about the bad luck. It wasn't till both of us were back in New
York, that I felt I should have to tell her, lest she might hear it first
from somebody else. But I shied a little at the prospect, just enough to
make me put the revelation off from day to day. The more I put it off,
the more difficult it seemed--you know how the smallest matter, even the
writing of an overdue letter, grows into a huge task that way. So this
little ordeal got magnified for me, and all that winter I couldn't brace
myself to go through it. In the spring, Bagley had use for me in his
affairs, and he kept me busy night and day for two weeks. When I got
free, I was surprised to find she had left town. I hadn't the least idea
where she'd gone; till one day I received a letter from her. She wrote as
if she thought I had known where she was; she reproached me with
negligence, but was friendly nevertheless. I replied at once, clearing
myself of the charge; and in that same letter I unburdened my soul of the
bad luck secret. It was easier to write it than speak it.”
“And what then?”
“Nothing. I never heard from her again.”
“But your letter may have miscarried,--something of that sort.”
“I made allowance for that, and wrote another letter, which I registered.
She got that all right, for the receipt came back, signed by her father.
But no answer ever came from her, and I was a bit too proud to continue a
one-sided correspondence. So ended that chapter in the harrowing history
of Murray Davenport.--She was a fine young woman, as the world judges;
she reminded me, in some ways, of Scott's heroines.”
“Ah! that's why you took kindly to the old fellow by the river. You
remember his library--made up entirely of Scott?”
“Oh, that wasn't the reason. He interested me; or at least his way of
living did.”
“I wonder if he wasn't fabricating a little. These old fellows from the
country like to make themselves amusing. They're not so guileless.”
“I know that, but Mr. Bud is genuine. Since that day, he's been home in
the country for three weeks, and now he's back in town again for a 'short
spell,' as he calls it.”
“You still keep in touch with him?” asked Larcher, in surprise.
“Oh, yes. He's been very hospitable--allowing me the use of his room to
sketch in.”
“Even during his absence?”
“Yes; why not? I made some drawings for him, of the view from his window.
He's proud of them.”
Something in Davenport's manner seemed to betray a wish for reticence on
the subject of Mr. Bud, even a regret that it had been broached. This
stopped Larcher's inquisition, though not his curiosity. He was silent
for a moment; then rose, with the words:
“Well, I'm keeping you up. Many thanks for the sight of your moonlit
garden. When shall I see you again?”
“Oh, run in any time. It isn't so far out of your way, even if you don't
find me here.”
“I'd like you to glance over the proofs of my Harlem Lane article. I
shall have them day after to-morrow. Let's see--I'm engaged for that day.
How will the next day suit you?”
“All right. Come the next day if you like.”
“That'll be Friday. Say one o'clock, and we can go out and lunch
together.”
“Just as you please.”
“One o'clock on Friday then. Good night!”
“Good night!”
At the door, Larcher turned for a moment in passing out, and saw
Davenport standing by the table, looking after him. What was the
inscrutable expression--half amusement, half friendliness and
self-accusing regret--which faintly relieved for a moment the
indifference of the man's face?