The Whirligig of Time Part 23

"I happened to see you--perhaps a minute after you were married, coming out of the marriage license office, with a man. Compromising! You had been pointed out to me before, here, so I knew what you looked like. But what made you so keen to go through with--with the business? You don't look like that kind, somehow...."

She gave the last finis.h.i.+ng touch to his hand and started to gather up her belongings before replying. "You don't know what it is not to have plenty of money, Mr. Wimbourne, or you would not ask that question. You don't know what it is to watch other people sailing by in sixty horsepower limousines and realize that you would look every bit as well there as any of them, and better than most, and to realize, above all, that you could make so much more out of your wealth than most of them. I am under no delusions about myself; I know perfectly well that I'm not a manicure type. I have brains, I have good looks, I have social possibilities. Only, I happened to be born without money or social position, and the handicap is too great.... Well, it's all up now.

There's no hope for anything better now."

The tone in which she spoke these words was so perfectly quiet and resigned, so utterly lacking in vulgar desire to advertise her woes, that James felt deeply moved. He could not think of anything to say to rea.s.sure or encourage her. Presently he blurted out, desperately:

"You've got a good husband in Edward Jennings, anyway. He's a good chap, according to all accounts...."

She smiled, deprecatorily. "He's a nice boy. But he'll never make any money."

James made up an excuse to consult Mr. Raynham again, and after that walked the snow-covered streets till dinner time. His first impulse was to look up Harry, but he discarded the idea; he would not see him, Aunt Selina, any one, till his task was done, every detail completed. He dined alone in an obscure restaurant and with some difficulty succeeded in frittering away the time till ten o'clock, at which hour he returned to the barber shop on Chapel Street.

He proceeded at once to business, taking out two papers which he gave to Miss Mowbray to sign. She read and signed without comment. When she had finished he said: "Would you mind delivering this for me?" and handed her an unsealed envelope bearing the simple superscription "Mr. Edward Jennings."

Miss Mowbray fingered the envelope indecisively a moment; then she opened it and took out the contents.

She rose from her seat and glanced apprehensively at James. "I can't--we--thank you, but I simply can't accept this," she whispered.

"n.o.body asked you to do anything, except deliver the letter," replied James cheerfully. "I'd like to know what business you have opening other people's letters, anyway. It isn't nice.--Wedding present, you know," he went on, with a change of voice; "I'm rather hoping to have the honor of giving you your first. Please try to make him accept it from me, won't you? Good-by!"

He shook her hand quickly and was actually off before she had time to offer another word of objection.

He made his way straight across the snowy street to Harry's rooms in Vanderbilt Hall. There was no answer to his knock, but the door yielded to a turn of the k.n.o.b--how like Harry to leave it unlocked! The room was dark and empty, but he went in and found the embers of a fire dying on the hearth. He threw off his hat and overcoat, struck a light and looked about for materials with which to rebuild the fire.

In a few minutes the logs were blazing merrily before him. He turned out the gas, drew up an armchair and sat down in front of the fire to wait for Harry.

CHAPTER XIV

UN-ANGLO-SAXON

He came in before long, stamping the snow from his boots. In the second or two that pa.s.sed before he spoke, James saw that though he looked haggard and depressed, there was no trace of weakness of dissipation about his eyes or mouth. Nor did he slink; he blundered in with the impetuosity of a schoolboy for whom the world has no terrors. For which, though he was shocked to see how badly he looked, James was profoundly thankful.

He was aware of Harry's eyes trying to pierce the half-gloom; there was a touch of pathos, to James, in his momentary bewilderment.

"Hullo, Harry," he said gently.

"James!" The immediate, unconscious look of delight that came over Harry's face--even though it faded to something else within the second--pleased James more than anything had pleased him yet. Harry was glad to see him; that mattered much more than his almost instant recovery of his self-possession, his continuing, in the manner of the Harry of two years ago, the Harry of the previous Commencement: "Whatever are you doing here now, James?"

"I've got good news for you, Harry," he replied, rising and taking hold of the other's hand. "The Mowbray woman has withdrawn her suit. It's all right; she's signed things, and you have no more to fear from her." He dropped Harry's hand and moved off a step, as though to give him a chance to take in the news.

There was something rather fine in the simplicity, the humility, even of his manner as he did this, that did not escape Harry. He was deeply moved; self-possession and all it implied fell from him again.

"James, have you done this? What has happened? Tell me all about it! You haven't paid her all that money, James--don't tell me you've done that!"

"No, of course I haven't--there was no need for it. She was married out in Minneapolis last September, and I happened to get onto the fact--that's all. She had no business to be suing at all."

"And you--"

"I came here and told her so, to-day."

James sat down again where he had been sitting, as though to close the incident. Harry stood and gasped; he tried to speak but could not; his eyes filled with tears. Then he dropped at James' feet, clasping his knees in the manner of a suppliant of old. He buried his face in James'

lap and gave a few deep sobs of joy and relief.

The Anglo-Saxon race being what it is, a good deal of courage is needed to go on with the relation of what occurred next. However, there is no help for it; history is history, and we can only tell it as it actually occurred, regardless of whether the undemonstrative are outraged or not.

After Harry had thrown himself at his feet James took his brother's head gently between his hands, and then, with the greatest simplicity and naturalness in the world, bent forward and kissed it.

"Poor old thing," he said softly; "you have been having sort of a hard time of it, haven't you?"

"I wish you would tell me, James," said Harry somewhat later, as they sat gazing into the fire, James in the armchair and Harry on the floor, leaning back against James' legs, "I wish you would tell me just how you found out about her being married, and all about it. It seems so incredible--both that she should have been married and that you, of all people, should have been on the spot to discover it."

"Well, I just saw her, coming out of the marriage office with a man; that was all there was to it. I thought she probably wouldn't have been there unless she had just been married to him, so I had the register looked up, and there she was. She was under the name of Rosa Montagu--that gave us some trouble at first, because of course I didn't know that was her stage name. I put a fellow called Laffan, a young lawyer, onto the business, and he messed about with the register and the detective bureau and communicated with Raynham till he wormed it all out. Finally he got hold of a photograph of Rosa Montagu and showed it to me, and after that it was easy enough--Of course, it was a most G.o.d-given chance that I stumbled on her just at that compromising moment. She really wasn't as foolish as she sounds; she hadn't lived in Minneapolis for years and knew almost n.o.body there except her young man.

It was a long chance, what with using her stage name and all, that any one would ever find her out."

"Yes. But I don't quite see--You say she was married in September?"

"Yes--the third."

"Well, if you knew she was married then, I don't quite see why you didn't make use of your knowledge before. When I was playing round with her, I mean--of course I, like the brazen idiot I was, didn't write you, but you must have heard--"

"Oh, yes. Well, it was a very funny thing. I didn't remember about having seen her in that place till months afterward; not till the night I heard about the breach of promise business. You see, it was only the barest, vaguest glimpse, there in the City Hall; she didn't even see me and I didn't even remember where I had seen her face before, then. I scarcely thought about it at all, at the time; I was in a great hurry to get to a hearing before some commission or other, and the thing went bang out of my mind. Then, when I read of the breach of promise, it all came back, in one flas.h.!.+ Funny!"

"Yes. It's the kind of humor that appeals to me, I can tell you."

"The man, Jennings, curiously enough, happened to be in McClellan's for a while, once, in the counting department. He left there to become a clerk in some bank. We worked up his end too, a little....

"Harry, I wish you'd tell me one thing," went on James, after a pause.

"Anything I can, James."

"Why on earth, when you found you were getting in deep with that woman, didn't you call on me to do something? You couldn't be so far gone as to think that I wouldn't--"

"Oh, couldn't I? You have no idea of what depths of idiocy I can descend to, if I want.--I don't know--at the time, the more I wanted help the less I could talk of it to any one, and you least of all. The person that gave me the most comfort was Trotty, and he never once mentioned the subject to me, except when I introduced it myself! Yet even so, all through that time, it was you that I really wanted.--Look here, James, if you don't believe me, see what I've been carrying around with me all this time, as a sort of talisman!"

He took his wallet from his pocket and after a short search produced an old and dirty postal card bearing on its face the blurred but still readable legend "All right. James." He handed it to his brother.

"Gosh," said James, when he had read it, "do you mean to say you've kept that old thing ever since?"

"Ever since the day I got it. There was something about it that was comforting and optimistic and--well, like you; and I used to take it out and look at it occasionally when I got particularly down in the mouth.

And I used to persuade myself, after a while, that it all would come out right, in the end; that somehow James would make it all right--you see how the prophecy has come true!... And the extraordinary part of it is that even while I thought that way about you, I simply couldn't break the ice and tell you about it all. I don't know why--I just couldn't!"

"I know," said James; "I know the feeling."

"Isn't it incredible, James, that what seemed perfectly natural and reasonable--inevitable, even--a few weeks, or days, or even an hour ago, should appear so utterly asinine now!... Pride, vainglory and hypocrisy--all of them, and a lot more! Sometimes I can't believe it possible for one person to a.s.semble in himself all the vices that I do."