The Bartlett Mystery

CHAPTER XVI

WINIFRED DRIFTS

Winifred, pale as death, rose to receive her lover, with that letter in her hand which made an appointment with her at a house in East Orange; a letter which she believed to have been written by a dramatic agent, but which was actually inspired by Senator Meiklejohn. It was the bait of the trap which should put her once more in the power of Meiklejohn and his accomplices.

During a few tense seconds the girl prayed for power to play the bitter part which had been thrust upon her – to play it well for the sake of the man who loved her, and whom she loved. The words of his mother were still in her ears. She had to make him think that she did not care for him. In the last resort she had to fly from him. She had tacitly promised to do this woeful thing.

Far enough from her innocent mind was it to dream that the visit of Rex’s mother had been brought about by her enemies in order to deprive her of a protector and separate her from her lover at the very time when he was most necessary to save her.

Carshaw entered in high spirits. “Well, I have news – ” he began. “But, hello! What’s the matter?”

“With whom?” asked Winifred.

“You look pale.”

“Do I? It is nothing.”

“You have been crying, surely.”

“Have I?”

“Tell me. What is wrong?”

“Why should I tell you, if anything is wrong?”

He stood amazed at this speech. “Odd words,” said he, looking at her in a stupor of surprise, almost of anger. “Whom should you tell but me?”

This touched Winifred, and, struggling with the lump in her throat, she said, unsteadily: “I am not very well to-day; if you will leave me now, and come perhaps some other time, you will oblige me.”

Carshaw strode nearer and caught her shoulder.

“But what a tone to me! Have I done something wrong, I wonder? Winnie, what is it?”

“I have told you I am not very well. I do not desire your company – to-day.”

“Whew! What majesty! It must be something outrageous. But what? Won’t you be dear and kind, and tell me?”

“You have done nothing.”

“Yes, I have. I think I can guess. I spoke of Helen Tower yesterday as of an old sweetheart – was that it? And it is all jealousy. Surely I didn’t say much. What on earth did I say? That she was like a Gainsborough; that she was rather a beauty; that she was elancée at twenty-two. But I didn’t mean any harm. Why, it’s jealousy!”

At this Winifred drew herself up to discharge a thunderbolt, and though she winced at the Olympian effort, managed to say distinctly:

“There can be no jealousy where there is no love.”

Carshaw stood silent, momentarily stunned, like one before whom a thunderbolt has really exploded. At last, looking at the pattern of a frayed carpet, he said humbly enough:

“Well, then, I must be a very unfortunate sort of man, Winifred.”

“Don’t believe me!” Winifred wished to cry out. But the words were checked on her white lips. The thought arose in her, “He that putteth his hand to the plow and looketh back – ”

“It is sudden, this truth that you tell me,” went on Carshaw. “Is it a truth?”

“Yes.”

“You are not fond of me, Winnie?”

“I have a liking for you.”

“That’s all?”

“That is all.”

“Don’t say it, dear. I suffer.”

“Do you? No, don’t suffer. I – can’t help myself.”

“You are sorry for me, then?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But how came I, then, to have the opposite impression so strongly? I think – I can’t help thinking – that it was your fault, dear. You made me hope, perhaps without meaning me to, that – that life was to be happy for me. When I entered that door just now no man in New York had a lighter step than I, or a more careless heart. I shall go out of it – different, dear. You should not have allowed me to think – what I did; and you should not have told me the truth so – quite so – suddenly.”

“Sit down. You are not fair to me. I did not know you cared – ”

“You – you did not know that I cared? Come, that’s not true, girl!”

“Not so much, I mean – not quite so much. I thought that you were flirting with me, as I – perhaps – was flirting with you.”

“Who is that I hear speaking? Is it Winifred? The very sound of her voice seems different. Am I dreaming? She flirting with me? I don’t realize her – it is a different girl! Oh! this thing comes to me like a falling steeple. It had no right to happen!”

“You should sit down, or you should go; better go – better, better go,” and Winifred clutched wildly at her throat. “Let us part now, and let us never meet!”

“If you like, if you wish it,” said Carshaw, still humbly, for he was quite dazed. “It seems sudden. I am not sure if it is a dream or not. It isn’t a happy one, if it is. But have we no business to discuss before you send me away in this fashion? Do you mean to throw off my help as well as myself?”

“I shall manage. I have an offer of work here in my hands. I shall soon be at work, and will then send the amount of the debt which I owe you, though you care nothing about that, and I know that I can never repay you for all.”

“Yes, that is true, too, in a way. Am I, then, actually to go?”

“Yes.”

“But you are not serious? Think of my living on, days and years, and not seeing you any more. It seems a pitiable thing, too. Even you must be sorry for me.”

“Yes, it seems a pitiable thing!”

“So – what do you say?”

“Good-by. Go – go!”

“But you will at least let me know where you are? Don’t be quite lost to me.”

“I shall be here for some time. But you won’t come. I mustn’t see you. I demand that much.”

“No, no. I won’t come, you may be sure. And you, on your part, promise that if you have need of money you will let me know? That is the least I can expect of you.”

“I will; but go. I will have you in my – memory. Only go from me now, if you – love – ”

“Good-by, then. I do not understand, but good-by. I am all in, Winnie; but still, good-by. God bless you – ”

He kissed her hand and went. Her skin was cold to his lips, and, in a numb way, he wondered why. A moment after he had disappeared she called his name, but in an awful, hushed voice which he could not hear; and she fell at her length on the couch.

“Rex! My love! My dear love,” she moaned, and yet he did not hear, for the sky had dropped on him.

There she lay a little while, yet it was not all pain with her. There is one sweetest sweet to the heart, one drop of intensest honey, sweeter to it than any wormwood is bitter, which consoled her – the consciousness of self-sacrifice, of duty done, of love lost for love’s sake. Mrs. Carshaw had put the girl on what Senator Meiklejohn cynically called “the heroic tack”; and, having gone on that tack, Winifred deeply understood that there was a secret smile in it, and a surprising light. She lay catching her breath till Miss Goodman brought up the tea-tray, expecting to find the cheery Carshaw there as usual, for she had not heard him go out.

Instead, she found Winifred sobbing on the couch, for Winifred’s grief was of that depth which ceases to care if it is witnessed by others. The good landlady came, therefore, and knelt by Winifred’s side, put her arm about her, and began to console and question her. The consolation did no good, but the questions did. For, if one is persistently questioned, one must answer something sooner or later, and the mind’s effort to answer breaks the thread of grief, and so the commonplace acts as a medicine to tragedy.

In the end Winifred was obliged to sit up and go to the table where the tea-things were. This was in itself a triumph; and her effort to secure solitude and get rid of Miss Goodman was a further help toward throwing off her mood of despair. By the time Miss Goodman was gone the storm was somewhat calmed.

During that sad evening, which she spent alone, she read once more the letter making the appointment with her at East Orange. Now, reading it a second time, she felt a twinge of doubt. Who could it be, she wondered, whom she would have to see there? East Orange was some way off. A meeting of this sort usually took place in New York, at an office.

Her mind was not at all given to suspicions, but on reading over the letter for the third time, she now noticed that the signature was not in the handwriting of the agent. She knew his writing quite well, for he had sent her other letters. This writing was, indeed, something like his, but certainly not his. It might be a clerk’s; the letter was typed on his office paper.

To say that she was actually disturbed by these little rills of doubt would not be quite true. Still, they did arise in her mind, and left her not perfectly at ease. The touch of uneasiness, however, made her ask herself why she should now become a singer at all. It was Carshaw who had pressed it upon her, because she had insisted on the vital necessity of doing something quickly, and he had not wished her to work again with her hands. In reality, he was scheming to gain time.

Now that they were parted she saw no reason why she should not throw off all this stage ambition, and toil like other girls as good as she. She had done it. She was skilled in the bookbinding craft; she might do it again. She counted her money and saw that she had enough to carry her on a week, or even two, with economy. Therefore, she had time in which to seek other work.

Even if she did not find it she would have not the slightest hesitation in “borrowing” from Rex; for, after all, all that he had was hers – she knew it, and he knew it. Before she went to bed she decided to throw up the singing ambition, not to go to the appointment at East Orange, but to seek some other more modest occupation.

About that same hour Rex Carshaw walked desolately to the apartment in Madison Avenue. He threw himself into a chair and propped his head on a hand, saying: “Well, mother!” for Mrs. Carshaw was in the room.

His mother glanced anxiously at him, for though Winifred had promised to keep secret the fact of her visit, she was in fear lest some hint of it might have crept out; nor had she foreseen quite so deadly an effect on her son as was now manifest. He looked care-worn and weary, and the maternal heart throbbed.

She came and stood over him. “Rex, you don’t look well,” said she.

“No; perhaps I’m not very well, mother,” said he listlessly.

“Can I do anything?”

“No; I’m rather afraid that the mischief is beyond you, mother.”

“Poor boy! It is some trouble, I know. Perhaps it would do you good to tell me.”

“No; don’t worry, mother. I’d rather be left alone, there’s a dear.”

“Only tell me this. Is it very bad? Does it hurt – much?”

“Where’s the use of talking? What cannot be cured must be endured. Life isn’t all a smooth run on rubber tires.”

“But it will pass, whatever it is. Bear up and be brave.”

“Yes; I suppose it will pass – when I am dead.”

She tried to smile.

“Only the young dream of death as a relief,” she said. “But such wild words hurt, Rex.”

“That’s all right, only leave me alone; you can’t help. Give me a kiss, and then go.”

A tear wet his forehead when Mrs. Carshaw laid her lips there.

CHAPTER XVII

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.