The Empty Sack Part 47

"I should think there were plenty of them to attend to that," she said, when he had expressed, as delicately as he could, his misgivings as to his own lack of rigor. "Whatever he did, and however bad it was, they've got all the power in the world to punish him, and they're going to do it. When there's just one person on earth to show him a little pity, I shouldn't think it could be too much." She added, after a second or two of silence: "He was sorry you didn't go in to see him. He missed you.

I-I think he's going to cling to you just like a drowning man, you know, to a hand that's stretched out to him from a boat. Very likely he'll have to drown; but so long as the hand is there, it's-it's something."

In this speech, which was long for Jennie and betokened her growing authority, there were two or three points on which Bob pondered as he drove them homeward from the Brig. Jennie sat beside him, Lizzie in the back seat. He took the longest and prettiest ways so as to give them something like an outing.

It was the afternoon of the day on which he had seen Stenhouse, and in the interval he had been thinking out a program. Whatever the restrictions he must put upon himself with regard to the boy, his duty to protect and distract Jennie and her family was clear. Teddy had also given him to understand that, more than anything done for himself, this would contribute to his peace of mind. Done for his mother and sisters, it would be done for him, and the doer could be sure that he wasn't loosening the foundations of society. Even where there was a born criminal to be judged, and perhaps put out of the way, something was gained when the innocent could be saved to any possible degree from suffering with the guilty.

In this, too, he was not without an eye to Indiana Avenue. Though he had no experience of suburban life, he was intuitive enough to feel sure that, to the neighbors, Jennie's marriage had a "queer look," and the more so since she was not living with her husband, now that he was back from South America. To counteract this, he meant to show himself in the street as much as possible, parading his car before the door. There must be no cheap gossip as to Jennie based on lack of his devotion, even though all arrangements between her and himself were no more than provisional.

To that point, then, his course was clear. He could not console the mother, whose reason was stricken at its base, nor the three young girls whose lives were overshadowed by tragedy; but he could divert their minds from dwelling too much on calamity by bringing in a new interest.

He could make it a big interest. He could enlarge the interest in proportion to their need; and, as Jennie spoke, it dawned on him that they themselves began to foresee that their need might be great indeed.

"They've got all the power in the world to punish him; and they're going to do it." "He's going to cling to you like a drowning man. Very likely he'll have to drown." Jennie had had one or two interviews with Stenhouse, and perhaps had inferred from that great man's talk the difficulties of his task.

But the help she gave Bob was in her response to his misgivings. "When there's just one person on earth to show him a little pity, I shouldn't think it could be too much." It couldn't be too much-not possibly. The worst enemy of mankind had a right to "a little pity," and even Judas Iscariot had received it. If Teddy didn't get it from him, Bob, he wouldn't get it from anyone-his mother and sisters apart. All civilized men were lined up against him, and doubtless could not be lined in any other way. In that case, punishment was a.s.sured, and, as Jennie said, there were plenty of people to take care of its infliction. He, Bob Collingham, since he stood alone, might well forget the heavy score against the boy in "bucking him up" to meet what lay ahead of him.

He worked this out before driving Jennie and her mother to their door, after which he waited for Gussie and Gladys to come home from work to take them, too, for an airing. Jennie sat beside him, as on the earlier drive, the two younger girls in the seat behind.

To both, the expedition was as the first stage of a glorification which might carry them up to any heights. Taken in connection with what they suffered on account of Teddy, it was like drinking an unmingled draught of the very bitter and the very sweet. Hardly able to lift up their heads from shame, they nevertheless felt the distinction of going out in an expensive high-powered car with a gentleman of wealth and position, who thus publicly proclaimed himself their relative.

"This'll settle Addie Inglis and Samuella Weatherby," Gladys whispered, in reference to some taunt or aspersion which Gussie understood. "Say, Gus, he's some sport, isn't he? Jen sure did cop a twenty-cylinder."

But Gussie had already turned over her new leaf. From the corner where she reclined with the grace of one accustomed from birth to this style of conveyance, she arched her lovely neck and turned her lovely head just enough to convey a hint of reprimand.

"Gladys dear, momma wouldn't like you to use that kind of language.

Remember that now we must carry out her wishes all the more because she isn't able to enforce them. Your companions may not always be Hattie Belweather and Suns.h.i.+ne Bright, and so-"

"Say, Gus, what's struck you? Has goin' out in a swell rig like this gone to your head?"

"Yes, dear; perhaps it has. And if you'll take my advice you'll let it go to yours."

The only immediate response from Gladys was a c.o.c.king of the eye and a "clk" of the tongue against the cheek, something like a Zulu vowel; but Gussie noticed that in Palisade Park, where they descended from the car to make Bob's acquaintance, Gladys reverted to the intonation and idiom in which she had first picked up her English.

The jaunt tended to deepen the sensation which had been creeping over the girls within the past few days, that they were heroines of a dramatic romance. They had figured in the papers, their beauty, personalities, and histories becoming points of vital national concern.

One legend made them the scions of an ancient English family fallen on evil days, but now to be revived through alliance with the Collinghams, while another came near enough to the truth to embody the Scarborough tradition and connect them with the historic house in Cambridge. In no case was there any waste of the picturesque, the detail that Jennie had been an artist's model and "the most beautiful woman in America" being especially underscored.

It was only little by little that Gussie and Gladys came to a sense of this importance, thus finding themselves enabled to react to some small degree against their sense of disgrace. In the shop, Gussie had heard Corinne whisper to a customer:

"That pretty girl over there is the sister of Follett, who murdered Flynn, and whose sister made that romantic marriage with the banker."

Though she glanced up from the feather she was twisting only through the tail of her eye, Gussie could reckon the excitement caused by this announcement. When it had been made a second time, and a third, as new customers came in, she saw herself an a.s.set to the shop. Stared at, wondered at, discussed, and appraised, she began to feel as princesses and actresses when recognized in streets.

Similarly, Hattie Belweather had run to Gladys to report what Miss Flossie Grimm had said over the counter, in the intervals of displaying stockings.

"See that little red-headed, snub-nosed thing over there? That's the Follett child, sister to the guy that shot the detective and the girl that married the banker sport. Some hummer he must be. Jennie, the married one's name is. They say she's had an offer of a hundred plunks a week to go into vawdeville. Fast color? Oh, my, yes! We don't carry any other kind."

Thus Gladys began to find it difficult to discern between notoriety and eminence, moving among the other cash girls as a queen incognita among ordinary mortals.

Most of this publicity was over by the time Bob reached New York, though the echoes still rumbled through the press. His own arrival reawakened some of it, offering opportunities that were never ignored of drawing dramatic contrasts. He was represented as having been "born in the purple," and stooping to a "maiden of low degree." Low degree was poetically fused with the occupation of a model, and by one publication the statement was thrown in, without comment, and as it were accidentally, that the present Mrs. Robert Bradley Collingham, Junior, of Marillo Park, had been greatly admired by appreciative connoisseurs as the figure in Hubert Wray's already famous picture, "Life and Death."

Hubert Wray was even credited with "discovering" this beauty when she was starving in the slums.

Except for the detail of Wray's picture, the publicity was something of a relief to Bob, since it left him nothing to explain. The truth in these many reports being tolerably easy to disengage, his friends and acquaintances knew of his position, and, in view of its circ.u.mstances, they respected it. He went to the bank; he went to his club; he pa.s.sed the time of day with such neighbors as remained at Marillo Park, finding it the easier to come and go because everyone knew what had happened.

From almost the first day he fell into a routine-the bank, Stenhouse, Teddy, Indiana Avenue. Though he was not yet working at the bank, he felt it wise to show himself daily on the premises, in order to establish the fact that his relations with his family were unchanged.

Stenhouse he didn't visit every day, but only when there were matters connected with the case to talk over. He saw Teddy as often as the Brig regulations would allow, growing more and more touched by the eagerness with which the boy welcomed him. In Indiana Avenue he was a.s.siduous.

Whatever the hints flung out by Addie Inglis and Samuella Weatherby, they received contradiction as far as that was possible from obvious devotion.

As for his personal relations with Jennie, they changed little from the _modus vivendi_ agreed upon. That she was growing more and more grateful was evident, but grat.i.tude wasn't what he wanted. What he wanted he himself didn't know, and, in a measure, he didn't care. Till she got what she wanted, he could never be wholly satisfied; and if she wanted Wray....

But at this point his reasoning faculties failed him. If she wanted Wray and if Wray wanted her, there would, of course, be but one thing for him to do. It was that one thing itself which remained elusive or obscure, dodging, disturbing, and defying him. He could find a means to give Jennie her freedom, or he could take her by brute force, or, in certain circ.u.mstances, he could dismiss her as not worthy of his love. The trouble was that he couldn't see himself doing any of the three; and yet if what seemed to be true was true, he couldn't see himself as doing the other thing.

The _modus vivendi_, like all other arrangements of its kind, was therefore safe and convenient. It settled nothing; but it was what the term implied, a way of living. It was not an ideal way of living, or a way that s.h.i.+elded anyone from comment; but it was a way.

As for comment, it reached Bob only indirectly, and not oftener than every now and then. Perhaps it came in as pointed a form as it ever a.s.sumed for him in a seemingly chance remark from the chauffeur's wife, Mrs. Gull. It was not a chance remark, for the neat, pretty, thin-lipped, pinched-face Englishwoman who had pa.s.sed all her life "in service" didn't make ill-considered observations.

"I suppose we shall see the young lady down, sir, some day soon?"

"Yes, some day soon," Bob replied, cautiously, getting ready in the hall to go to town.

"To remain?"

It was all summed up in those three syllables-all the gossip on the Collingham estate, and on all the estates at Marillo, not to go farther afield.

"Not to remain just yet," Bob answered, judiciously. "Mrs. Follett isn't well, and Mrs. Collingham has two younger sisters whom she has to take care of."

That this explanation was not adequate he knew; and yet it was an explanation. "It certainly do seem queer," Mrs. Gull observed to the gardener and the gardener's wife, in a company that included Gull; and Gull, who was from Somersets.h.i.+re, replied, "It most zure and zertainly do."

But on the Sunday afternoon two weeks after Bob's return "the young lady" paid her visit to Collingham Lodge, accompanied by her mother and two sisters.

The journey was made in what Gladys characterized as "style," the style being mainly supplied by Gull in his sedate chauffeur's uniform. But the fact that he drove the car left Bob free to sit with his guests in the tonneau. He put Jennie, as hostess and mistress of the car, in the right-hand corner, Mrs. Follett in the left one, and Gussie in the middle. He and Gladys occupied the adjustable seats behind the chauffeur. At sight of the light linen rug with the Collingham initials in crimson applique, Gussie and Gladys exchanged appreciative glances, and they both searched the neighboring piazzas for a glimpse of Addie Inglis or Samuella Weatherby.

Acquainted now with the fact that Jennie had viewed the celestial country whither they were traveling, and with her descriptions of the wonders she had seen almost learned by rote, the girls came near to forgetting that Teddy was in a cell. But his mother didn't forget it.

Silent, austere, incapable of pleasure, and waiting only the moment of the boy's release and her own, her eyes roamed the parched September landscape and saw none of it. She did not appear unhappy-only removed into a world of her own, a world of long, long thoughts.

No one said much. There was not much to say and a great deal to think about. Even the house, the terraces, the gardens called forth no more than "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" of approval. Gladys declared that she felt herself wandering through the castle scenes in "The Silver Queen," the latest screen masterpiece, but no one else descended to such comparisons.

"It's like heaven," Gussie murmured timidly, to Bob, as they strolled between hedges of dahlias.

"Oh no, it isn't!" he laughed. "Three or four places at Marillo are much finer than this."

Subdued by sheer ecstasy, they a.s.sembled on the flagged terrace, where Mrs. Gull brought out tea. Bob was pleased at Jennie's bearing toward the chauffeur's wife-friendly with just the right touch of dignity.

"Mr. Collingham tells me you're English. We're almost English ourselves, since we were born in Canada. I've never been in England, but I should so love to go, though they say it's quite different since the war."

There was no more to it than that, but Mrs. Gull reported to her husband: "As much a lady as any I've ever served under-and I do know a lady when I see her. Miss Edith's a lady, too, but not a patch on this one. She may have been just as bad as they say she was, but you'd never believe it to look at her, and the sisters be'ave as pretty as pretty.

Oh dear! And they with a murderer for a brother! It do seem queer, now don't it?"

To which Gull replied in his usual antiphon, "It most zure and zertainly do."

The jarring chord in this harmony came from Lizzie, while Bob was in search of Gull to bid him bring round the car. Lizzie stood looking down the two flowered terraces, where in honor of the visitors the fountains had been turned on.