The Best Short Stories of 1920 12 – Anonymous · Verses Across
Literature · Short Stories
The Best Short Stories of 1920 12The Anonymous (part 3)
18
Literature · Short Stories
The Best Short Stories of 1920 12
The Anonymous (part 3)
AnonymousEnglish
Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.
"What's that to you?" she flared.
She heard her husband's hypocritical and soothing tones, "Now, now, Olga! That ain't the way to talk to these gentlemen. Tell them who made these tracks."
"You did!" she cried. All about her she could feel the smoothness of a falling trap.
Mart smiled still more broadly.
"Look here, Olga, don't get so warm over it. You're nervous now. Tell the gentlemen who made those tracks."
She turned to Munn desperately. "What do you want to know for?" she asked him.
The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her corner.
"Blood!" she cried suddenly. "Blood on his hands!"
In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously toward the old woman and then sought each other with speculative stares. Mrs. Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances, said roughly, "That's Mart's mother. She ain't right! What are you bothering us for?"
Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the arm. There was something touching in her frightened old face.
"A man--a stranger was killed upon the hill," Munn told her.
"What's that got to do with us?" she countered.
"Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I've just to make sure where every man in the village was this afternoon."
Mrs. Brenner's lids flickered. She felt the questioning intentness of Sheriff Munn's eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did not miss the tremor of her eyes.
"Where was your son this afternoon?"
She smiled defiance. "I told you, on the beach."
"Whose room is that?" Munn's forefinger pointed to Tobey's closed door.
"That's Tobey's room," said his mother.
"The mud tracks go into that room. Did he make those tracks, Mrs. Brenner?"
"No! Oh, no! No!" she cried desperately. "Mart made those when he came in. He went into Tobey's room!"
"How about it, Brenner?"
Mart smiled with an indulgent air. "Heard what she said, didn't you?"
"Is it true?"
Mart smiled more broadly. "Olga'll take my hair off if I don't agree with her," he said.
"Let's see your shoes, Brenner?"
Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for Munn's inspection. The other silent men leaned forward to examine them.
"Nothing but pieces of seaweed," said Cottrell Hampstead.
Munn eyed them. Then he turned to look at the floor.
"Those are about the size of your tracks, Brenner. But they were made in red clay. How do you account for that?"
"Tobey wears my shoes," said Brenner.
Mrs. Brenner gasped. She advanced to Munn.
"What you asking all these questions for?" she pleaded.
Munn did not answer her. After a moment he asked, "Did you hear a scream this afternoon?"
"Yes," she answered.
"How long after the screaming did your son come in?"
She hesitated. What was the best answer to make? Bewildered, she tried to decide. "Ten minutes or so," she said.
"Just so," agreed Munn. "Brenner, when did you come in?"
A trace of Mart's sullenness rose in his face. "I told you that once," he said.
"I mean how long after Tobey?"
"I dunno," said Mart.
"How long, Mrs. Brenner?"
She hesitated again. She scented a trap. "Oh, 'bout ten to fifteen minutes, I guess," she said.
Suddenly she burst out passionately, "What you hounding us for? We don't know nothing about the man on the hill. You ain't after the rest of the folks in the village like you are after us. Why you doing it? We ain't done nothing."
Munn made a slight gesture to Roamer, who rose and went to the door, and opened it. He reached out into the darkness. Then he turned. He was holding something in his hand, but Mrs. Brenner could not see what it was.
"You chop your wood with a short, heavy ax, don't you, Brenner?" said Munn.
Brenner nodded.
"It's marked with your name, isn't it?"
Brenner nodded again.
"Is this the ax?"
Mrs. Brenner gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, ever the handle marked with bloody spots, the ax was theirs.
Brenner started to his feet. "God!" he yelped, "that's where that ax went! Tobey took it!" More calmly he proceeded. "This afternoon before I went down on the beach I thought I'd chop some wood on the hill. But the ax was gone. So after I'd looked sharp for it and couldn't find it, I gave it up."
"Tobey didn't do it!" Mrs. Brenner cried thinly. "He's as harmless as a baby! He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
"How about those clay tracks, Mrs. Brenner? There is red clay on the hill where the man was killed. There is red clay on your floor." Munn spoke kindly.
"Mart tracked in that clay. He changed shoes with Tobey. I tell you that's the truth." She was past caring for any harm that might befall her.
Brenner smiled with a wide tolerance. "It's likely, ain't it, that I'd change into shoes as wet as these?"
"Those tracks are Mart's!" Olga reiterated hysterically.
"They lead into your son's room, Mrs. Brenner. And we find your ax not far from your door, just where the path starts for the hill." Munn's eyes were grave.
The old woman in the corner began to whimper, "Blood and trouble! Blood and trouble all my days! Red on his hands! Dripping! Olga! Blood!"
"But the road to the beach begins there too," Mrs. Brenner cried, above the cracked voice, "and Tobey saw his pa before he came home. He said he did. I tell you, Mart was on the hill. He put on Tobey's shoes. Before God I'm telling you the truth."
Dick Roamer spoke hesitatingly, "Mebbe the old woman's right, Munn. Mebbe those tracks are Brenner's."
Mrs. Brenner turned to him in wild gratitude.
"You believe me, don't you?" she cried. The tears dribbled down her face. She saw the balance turning on a hair. A moment more and it might swing back. She turned and hobbled swiftly to the shelf. Proof! More proof! She must bring more proof of Tobey's innocence!
She snatched up his box of butterflies and came back to Munn.
"This is what Tobey was doin' this afternoon!" she cried in triumph. "He was catchin' butterflies! That ain't murder, is it?"
"Nobody catches butterflies in a fog," said Munn.
"Well, Tobey did. Here they are." Mrs. Brenner held out the box. Munn took it from her shaking hand. He looked at it. After a moment he turned it over. His eyes narrowed. Mrs. Brenner turned sick. The room went swimming around before her in a bluish haze. She had forgotten the blood on her hand that she had wiped off before Mart came home. Suppose the blood had been on the box.
The sheriff opened the box. A bruised butterfly, big, golden, fluttered up out of it. Very quietly the sheriff closed the box, and turned to Mrs. Brenner.
"Call your son," he said.
"What do you want of him? Tobey ain't done nothing. What you tryin' to do to him?"
"There is blood on this box, Mrs. Brenner."
"Mebbe he cut himself." Mrs. Brenner was fighting. Her face was chalky white.
"In the box, Mrs. Brenner, is a gold watch and chain. The man who was killed, Mrs. Brenner, had a piece of gold chain to match this in his buttonhole. The rest of it had been torn off."
Olga made no sound. Her burning eyes turned toward Mart. In them was all of a heart's anguish and despair.
"Tell 'em, Mart! Tell 'em he didn't do it!" she finally pleaded.
Mart's face was inscrutable.
Munn rose. The other men got to their feet.
"Will you get the boy or shall I?" the sheriff said directly to Mrs. Brenner.
With a rush Mrs. Brenner was on her knees before Munn, clutching him about the legs with twining arms. Tears of agony dripped over her seamed face.
"He didn't do it! Don't take him! He's my baby! He never harmed anybody! He's my baby!" Then with a shriek, as Munn unclasped her arms, "Oh, my God! My God!"
Munn helped her to her feet. "Now, now, Mrs. Brenner, don't take on so," he said awkwardly. "There ain't going to be no harm come to your boy. It's to keep him from getting into harm that I'm taking him. The village is a mite worked up over this murder and they might get kind of upset if they thought Tobey was still loose. Better go and get him, Mrs. Brenner."
As she stood unheeding, he went on, "Now, don't be afraid. Nothing'll happen to him. No jedge would sentence him like a regular criminal. The most that'll happen will be to put him some safe place where he can't do himself nor no one else any more harm."
But still Mrs. Brenner's set expression did not change.
After a moment she shook off his aiding arm and moved slowly to Tobey's door. She paused there a moment, resting her hand on the latch, her eyes searching the faces of the men in the room. With a gesture of dreary resignation she opened the door and entered, closing it behind her.
Tobey lay in his bed asleep. His rumpled hair was still damp from the fog. His mother stroked it softly while her slow tears dropped down on his face with its expression of peaceful childhood.
"Tobey!" she called. Her voice broke in her throat. The tears fell faster.
"Huh?" He sat up, blinking at her.
"Get into your clothes, now! Right away!" she said.
He stared at her tears. A dismal sort of foreboding seemed to seize upon him. His face began to pucker. But he crawled out of his bed and began to dress himself in his awkward fashion, casting wistful and wondering glances in her direction.
She watched him, her heart growing heavier and heavier. There was no one to protect Tobey. She could not make those strangers believe that Mart had changed shoes with Tobey. Neither could she account for the blood-stained box and the watch with its length of broken chain. But if Tobey had been on the beach he had not been on the hill, and if he hadn't been on the hill he couldn't have killed the man they claimed he had killed. Mart had been on the hill. Her head whirled. Some place fate, destiny, something had blundered. She wrung her knotted hands together.
Presently Tobey was dressed. She took him by the hand. Her own hand was shaking, and very cold and clammy. Her knees were weak as she led him toward the door. She could feel them trembling so that every step was an effort. And her hand on the knob had barely strength to turn it. But turn it she did and opened the door.
"Here he is!" she cried chokingly. She freed her hand and laid it on his shoulder.
"Look at him," she moaned. "He couldn't 'a' done it. He's--he's just a boy!"
Sheriff Munn rose. His men rose with him.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Brenner," he said. "Terrible sorry. But you can see how it is. Things look pretty black for him."
He paused, looked around, hesitated for a moment. Finally he said, "Well, I guess we'd better be getting along."
Mrs. Brenner's hand closed with convulsive force on Tobey's shoulder.
"Tobey!" she screamed desperately, "where was you this afternoon? All afternoon?"
"On the beach," mumbled Tobey, shrinking into himself.
"Tobey! Tobey! Where'd you get blood on the box?"
He looked around. His cloudy eyes rested on her face helplessly.
"I dunno," he said.
Her teeth were chattering now; she laid her hand on his other shoulder.
"Try to remember, Tobey. Try to remember. Where'd you get the watch, the pretty watch that was in your box?"
He blinked at her.
"The pretty bright thing? Where did you get it?"
His eyes brightened. His lips trembled into a smile.
"I found it some place," he said. Eagerness to please her shone on his face.
"But where? What place?" The tears again made rivulets on her cheeks.
He shook his head. "I dunno."
Mrs. Brenner would not give up.
"You saw your pa this afternoon, Tobey?" she coached him softly.
He nodded.
"Where'd you see him?" she breathed.
He frowned. "I--I saw pa----" he began, straining to pierce the cloud that covered him.
"Blood! Blood!" shrieked old Mrs. Brenner. She half-rose, her head thrust forward on her shriveled neck.
Tobey paused, confused. "I dunno," he said.
"Did he give you the pretty bright thing? And did he give you the ax--" she paused and repeated the word loudly--"the ax to bring home?"
Tobey caught at the word. "The ax?" he cried. "The ax! Ugh! It was all sticky!" He shuddered.
"Did pa give you the ax?"
But the cloud had settled. Tobey shook his head. "I dunno," he repeated his feeble denial.
Munn advanced. "No use, Mrs. Brenner, you see. Tobey, you'll have to come along with us."
Even to Tobey's brain some of the strain in the atmosphere must have penetrated, for he drew back. "Naw," he protested sulkily, "I don't want to."
Dick Roamer stepped to his side. He laid his hand on Tobey's arm. "Come along," he urged.
Mrs. Brenner gave a smothered gasp. Tobey woke to terror. He turned to run. In an instant the men surrounded him. Trapped, he stood still, his head lowered in his shoulders.
"Ma!" he screamed suddenly. "Ma! I don't want to go! Ma!"
He fell on his knees. Heavy childish sobs racked him. Deserted, terrified, he called upon the only friend he knew.
"Ma! Please, Ma!"
Munn lifted him up. Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they drew him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing every corner of the room.
They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could. The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.
Mart closed the door. Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when Tobey had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run. She looked as though she might have been carved there. Her light breath seemed to do little more than lift her flat chest.
Mart turned from the door. His eyes glittered. He advanced upon her hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.
"So you thought you'd yelp on me, did you?" he snarled, licking his lips. "Thought you'd put me away, didn't you? Get me behind the bars, eh?"
"Blood!" moaned the old woman in the corner. "Blood!"
Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a lumpy package wrapped in his handkerchief. He threw it down on the table. It fell heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.
"But I fooled you this time! Mart wasn't so dull this time, eh?" He turned toward her again.
Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big bruised yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.
Mart drew back a little. The butterfly flew toward Olga and brushed her face with a velvety softness.
Then Brenner lurched toward her, his face black with fury, his arm upraised. She stood still, looking at him with wide eyes in which a gleam of light showed.
"You devil!" she said, in a little, whispering voice. "You killed that man! You gave Tobey the watch and the ax! You changed shoes with him! You devil! You devil!"
He drew back for a blow. She did not move. Instead she mocked him, trying to smile.
"You whelp!" she taunted him. "Go on and hit me! I ain't running! And if you don't break me to bits I'm going to the sheriff and I'll tell him what you said to me just now. And he'll wonder how you got all that money in your pockets. He knows we're as poor as church-mice. How you going to explain what you got?"
"I ain't going to be such a fool as to keep it on me!" Mart crowed with venomous mirth. "You nor the sheriff nor any one won't find it where I'm going to put it!"
The broken woman leaned forward, baiting him. The strange look of exaltation and sacrifice burned in her faded eyes. "I've got you, Mart!" she jeered. "You're going to swing yet! I'll even up with you for Tobey! You didn't think I could do it, did you? I'll show you! You're trapped, I tell you! And I done it!"
She watched Mart swing around to search the room and the blank window with apprehensive eyes. She sensed his eerie dread of the unseen. He couldn't see any one. He couldn't hear a sound. She saw that he was wet with the cold perspiration of fear. It would enrage him. She counted on that. He turned back to his wife in a white fury. She leaned toward him, inviting his blows as martyrs welcome the torch that will make their pile of fagots a blazing bier.
He struck her. Once. Twice. A rain of blows given in a blind passion that drove her to her knees, but she clung stubbornly, with rigid fingers to the table-edge. Although she was dazed she retained consciousness by a sharp effort of her failing will. She had not yet achieved that for which she was fighting.
The dull thud of the blows, the confusion, the sight of the blood drove the old woman in the corner suddenly upright on her tottering feet. Her rheumy eyes glared affrighted at the sight of the only friend she recognized in all her mad, black world lying there across the table. She stood swaying in a petrified terror for a moment. Then with a thin wail, "He's killing her!" she ran around them and gained the door.
With a mighty effort Olga Brenner lifted her head so that her face, swollen beyond recognition, was turned toward her mother-in-law. Her almost sightless eyes fastened themselves on the old woman.
"Run!" she cried. "Run to the village!"
The mad woman, obedient to that commanding voice, flung open the door and lurched over the threshold and disappeared in the fog. It came to Mart that the woman running through the night with her wail of terror was the greatest danger he would know. Olga Brenner saw his look of sick terror. He started to spring after the mad woman, forgetful of the half-conscious creature on her knees before him.
But as he turned, Olga, moved by the greatness of her passion, forced strength into her maimed body. With a straining leap she sprawled herself before him on the floor. He stumbled, caught for the table, and fell with a heavy crash, striking his head on a near-by chair. Olga raised herself on her shaking arms and looked at him. Minute after minute passed, and yet he lay still. A second long ten minutes ticked itself off on the clock, which Olga could barely see. Then Mart opened his eyes, sat up, and staggered to his feet.
Before full consciousness could come to him again, his wife crawled forward painfully and swiftly coiled herself about his legs. He struggled, still dizzy from his fall, bent over and tore at her twining arms, but the more he pulled the tighter she clung, fastening her misshapen fingers in the lacing of his shoes. He swore! And he became panic-stricken. He began to kick at her, to make lunges toward the distant door. Kicking and fighting, dragging her clinging body with him at every move, that body which drew him back one step for every two forward steps he took, at last he reached the wall. He clutched it, and as his hand slipped along trying to find a more secure hold he touched the cold iron of a long-handled pan hanging there.
With a snarl he snatched it down, raised it over his head, and brought it down upon his wife's back. Her hands opened spasmodically and fell flat at her sides. Her body rolled over, limp and broken. And a low whimper came from her bleeding lips.
Satisfied, Mart paused to regain his breath. He had no way of knowing how long this unequal fight had been going on. But he was free. The way of escape was open. He laid his hand on the door.
There were voices. He cowered, cast hunted glances at the bloody figure on the floor, bit his knuckles in a frenzy.
As he looked, the eyes opened in his wife's swollen face, eyes aglow with triumph. "You'll swing for it, Mart!" she whispered faintly. "And the money's on the table! Tobey's saved!"
Rough hands were on the door. A flutter of breath like a sigh of relief crossed her lips and her lids dropped as the door burst open to a tide of men.
The big yellow butterfly swung low on his golden wings and came to rest on her narrow, sunken breast.
Copyright, 1920, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921, by Rose Sidney.
THE ROTTER
#By# FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER
From Harper's Magazine
In the taxi Ayling suddenly realized that there was no need for all this haste. After twenty-five years, and a loitering, circuitous journey home--six weeks to the day since he had said good-by to India--this last-minute rush was, to say the least, illogical, particularly as there was no one in London waiting for him; no one who was even aware of his arrival. Indeed, it was likely that there was no one in London who was aware of his existence, except, perhaps, the clerk of the club, to whom he had telegraphed ahead for accommodations.
The rigidity of his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more than it was worth, and he sat forward again, looking out.
Yes, things were familiar enough--but familiar like old photographs one has forgotten the significance of. The emotion had gone out of them. It was the new things, the unfamiliar contours, that were most apparent, that seemed to thrust upon his consciousness the city's gigantic, self-centered indifference. Yet it was just that quality that he had loved most in London. She had let him alone. She had been--he recalled the high-flown phrase of his youth--the supremely indifferent friend! Perhaps, he thought to himself, when one is fifty, one cares less to be "let alone"; less for indifference as the supreme attribute of a friend.
He felt a queer sweep of homesickness for India, whence he had come; but to feel homesick for India was ridiculous, since he had just come out of India because he was homesick for England. He had been homesick for England, he had been telling himself, for all those twenty-five years.
Well! here he was. Home!
Strange he hadn't thought of the automobiles and the electricity, and the difference they would make.
The taxi backed suddenly, gears shifted, and drew up alongside the curb. Looking out, Ayling recognized the high, familiar street door of the club. Something about it had been changed, or replaced, he couldn't quite make out what. The driver opened the door, lifted out Ayling's bag, and deposited it expertly with a swing on the step. Then he waited respectfully while Ayling fished in his pockets for change. Having received it, he leaped with great agility to the seat, shifted gears, chugged, backed and turned, and was abruptly round the corner and out of sight.
At the desk, Ayling experienced a momentary surprise to find himself actually expected.
"Mr. Ayling? Yes, sir. Your room is ready, I believe." The clerk rang a bell, and began to give instructions about Mr. Ayling's luggage.
Ayling felt that he ought to ask for some one, inquire if some of the old members were in; but, standing there, he could not think of a single name except names of a few non-resident members like himself, men who were at that moment in India.
"Will you go up, sir?"
"Later," said Ayling. "Just send up my things."
He crossed the foyer and entered the lounge. Here, as before in the streets, it was the changes of which he was most aware--figured hangings in place of the old red velours, the upholstery renewed on the old chairs and divans. Strangers sat here and there in the familiar nooks, strangers who looked up at him with a mild curiosity and returned to their papers or their cigars. He wandered on through the rooms, seeking--without quite saying so to himself--seeking a familiar face, and found none. Even the proportions of the rooms seemed changed; he could hardly have said just how; not much, but slightly, though, all in all, the club was the same. Names began to come back to him; memories resurrected themselves, rose out of corners to greet him as he passed. They began to give him a queer sense of his own unreality, as if he himself were only another memory.... Abruptly he turned, made his way back to the desk, and asked to be shown to his room. There he spent an hour puttering aimlessly, adjusting his things, putting in the time.
Then he dressed and went down to a solitary dinner. There was a great activity in the club at that hour, comings and goings, in parties of four and five. He found a kind of dolorous amusement in seeing now much more at home all the youngsters about him seemed than he. And he had been at home there when they were in the nursery doing sums.
Here and there at the tables were older men, men of his own age, and he reflected that among them might easily be some of his boyhood friends. He would never know them now. He searched their faces for a familiar feature, watched them for a gesture he might recognize. But in the end he gave it up. "Old town," he said to himself, "old town, by Jove! you've forgotten me!"
That night he went alone to a theater, walked back through the crowds to the club, and went immediately to bed. He was grateful to find himself suddenly very tired.
The next morning he rose late and did not leave his room until noon, when he went down to a solitary lunch. After lunch he stopped at the clerk's window and inquired about one or two old members. The clerk looked up the names. After a good deal of inquiry and fussing about, he ascertained that one of the gentlemen was in China, one was dead, and a third about whom Ayling also inquired could not be traced at all. Ayling went out and walked for a while through the streets, but was driven back to the club by the chill drizzle which suddenly began to descend.
He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite. Settled there, he remembered the position of a near-by bell, just under the window-curtain.... Yes, there it was. He rang, and a waiter came--a rotund, pink-faced, John-Bullish waiter, with little white tufts on each cheek. Ayling ordered a whisky-and-soda, and when presently the waiter brought it Ayling asked how long he had been in the service of the club.
"Thirty-five years, sir."
Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he asked.
The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir--I couldn't just at the moment say--"
"And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here, to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?"
"Chedsey, sir."
"Seems familiar--" He shook his head. "You don't recall a Mr. Ayling--twenty-five or thirty years ago?"
"Ayling, sir? I recall there was a member of that name.... You're not Mr. Ayling, sir?"
"We're not very flattering, either of us, it seems. But then, privilege of the aged, I suppose."
"Beg pardon, sir. I'm sorry--I ought to remember you."
"We're wearing masks, Chedsey, you and I."
"You're right, sir, I'm afraid."
They regarded each other, those two, Chedsey, rotund and pink, looking down upon Ayling, long and lean, with fine wrinkles about his eyes, and hair considerably grayed, wondering, both of them, why names should be so much more enduring than they themselves had been.
It was not until Ayling had begun to ask Chedsey for news of old friends, and chanced almost at once to mention Lonsdale, that both he and the old waiter exclaimed in the same breath, "Major Lonsdale!" as if the Major's name had been a key to open the doors of both their memories.
"And you're young Mr. Dick Ayling! I remember you perfectly now!" Chedsey beamed. How could he have failed to remember any one of those gay young friends of the major's?
"And where," asked Ayling, "is the major now?"
"Major Lonsdale, sir--has been gone seven years. Hadn't you heard?"
Lonsdale gone! Lonsdale dead! Lonsdale had begun life so brilliantly. Ayling did feel left over and old.
"What happened?" he asked, and Chedsey, glad to talk of the major, told how he had left the club to be Major Lonsdale's man just after he came back from the Boer War. How things hadn't seemed to go well with the major after that; he lost money--just how, Chedsey didn't say, but gave one to understand that it was a misfortune beyond the major's control. In the end he was forced to give up his house, and Chedsey came back to the club. A few years later the major was taken with pneumonia, quite suddenly, and died. Did Mr. Ayling know Major Lonsdale's wife?
"Yes," said Ayling. "What became of Mrs. Lonsdale?"
"Here in London, sir."
"Wasn't there," asked Ayling, "a child, a little girl?"
"Ah, Miss Peggy, sir!" It was plain that "Miss Peggy" was one of Chedsey's enthusiasms. A young lady now ... and soon to be married to a fine young gentleman of one of the best Scotch families.... She'll have a title some day.... Picture in the Sketch recently--perhaps he could find it for Mr. Ayling.
"Never mind," said Ayling, who was not thinking of Miss Peggy at all, but of her parents, young Major Harry Lonsdale, and his pretty wife.--He remembered her as a bride--Bessie, the major had called her--a graceful young creature with brown hair and brown-flecked eyes, already at that age a charming hostess in the fine old house Harry Lonsdale had inherited from his father.
"They are living in Cambridge Terrace," Chedsey was saying. "Would Mr. Ayling like the address?"
Ayling wrote down the address Chedsey gave him, and put it away in his pocket, with no more definite idea than that some day, if opportunity offered, he might look her up, for his old friend's sake.
He began to inquire about other men--Carrington, Farnsby, Blake. Dead, all three of them--Farnsby only last spring. Was it some fate that pursued his particular friends? But those men had all, he reflected, been older than he. And yet, he recalled the words of his doctor:
"A man's as old as his arteries. You've been too long out here. Be sensible, Ayling.... Go home--take it easy--rest. You'll have a long time yet...."
Just a week later, to the day, Ayling stepped into a telephone-booth, looked up Mrs. Lonsdale's number, and telephoned. He had not counted upon loneliness.
At forty-five Bessie Lonsdale had encountered one of those universal experiences which invariably give us, as individuals, so strong a sense of surprise. She had discovered suddenly, upon completion of the task to which she had so long given her energies, that she had become the task; that she no longer had any identity apart from it. And her consciousness of having arrived at exactly the place where hundreds before her must have arrived had only added to the strangeness of her experience.
A week ago she had seen her twenty-year-old daughter off to the north of Scotland for a month's visit to the family which she was soon to enter as a bride. It seemed to her that Peggy had never been so lovely as when she said good-by to her at the station that day, slim, fragrant, shining-eyed, and looking very patrician indeed in her smart sable jacket (cut from the luxurious sable cape that had been part of her mother's trousseau), with the violets pinned into the buttonhole. And Bessie Lonsdale had seen with pride and no twinge of jealousy the admiration in the eyes of that aristocratic, if somewhat stern-faced, old lady who was to be Peggy's mother-in-law, and who, with true Scotch propriety, had come all the way down to London to take her home with her.
"I don't like leaving you alone," Peggy had said, as they kissed each other good-by. "You're going to let yourself be dull."
And her mother had patted the soft cheek, and replied: "I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. I mean to have a good rest and get acquainted with myself."
When, a few moments later, she waved them good-by as the train moved slowly out of the station, Bessie Lonsdale had turned away with a long-drawn and involuntary sigh--a sigh of thanksgiving and relief.
Peggy at last was safe! Her happiness and her future assured. All those years of hoping and holding steady had come now to this happy end. Ever since her husband's early death Bessie Lonsdale had centered herself upon the future of her child. She had had only her few hundred a year saved from the wreck of her husband's affairs, but she had set her course, and, with an air of sailing in circles for pleasure's sake, stood clear of the rocks and shoals. She had never borrowed; she had never apologized; had never been considered a poor relation, or spoken of as pathetic or "brave." Her little flat was an achievement. It was astonishing how she had managed at once so much simplicity, so much downright comfort, and so charming an atmosphere. She had done so much with so little, yet hers were not anxious rooms, like the rooms of so many women of small means. They had space, repose, good cheer, even an air of luxury. It was the home of a gentlewoman who could make a little better than "the best of things." She had even entertained a little, now and then--more of late, now that Peggy's education was complete--but this at the cost of many economies in the right quarter, and many extravagances also rightly placed.
Call this "climbing" if you will, and a stress upon false values. Bessie Lonsdale gave herself to no such futile speculations as that. She was too busy at her task. She was neither so young nor so hypocritical as to pretend that these things were to be despised. She had done only what every other mother in the world wishes to do--to guide and protect her child and see her future provided for; only she had done it more efficiently than most; had brought, perhaps, a greater fitness or a greater consecration to the task. And the success of her achievement lay in the art with which she had concealed all trace of effort and strain. Peggy herself would have been first to laugh at the notion that her mother had had anything whatever to do with her falling in love with Andrew McCrae. She believed that it was by the sheer prodigality of the Fates that, besides being in love with her, romantically, as only a Scotchman can be, young Andrew McCrae was heir to one of the most substantial fortunes in all the north, and would succeed to a title one day....
So Bessie Lonsdale had sighed her deep sigh of peace and gone back to her flat. And because she had really wanted to be alone she had sent her one faithful old servant away for a long-postponed visit to country relatives. Then she had sat down to rest, and to "get acquainted with herself." And in two days she had made her discovery. There was no "herself." She had been Peggy's mother so long that Bessie Lonsdale as a separate entity had entirely ceased to exist.
It was at the end of the week that Ayling telephoned. And, although she had been avoiding even chance meetings with acquaintances, she found herself asking Ayling, whom she had not seen for twenty-five years, and whom she had known but slightly then, to come that day at five to tea. She realized only after she had left the telephone that it was because his voice had come to her out of that far time before she had become the mother of Peggy, and because she had a vague sort of hope that he might help to bring back a bit of the old self she had lost.
She was, when she thought of it, a little puzzled by his looking her up. Had he and Harry been such friends?
Promptly at five he came. At the door they greeted each other with a sudden unexpected warmth. And while he was clasping her hand and saying how jolly it was, after all this time, to find her here, and she was saying how nice it was to see him, how nice of him to look her up, he was thinking to himself that he might have recognized her by the brown-flecked eyes, and she was thinking, "He's an old man, older than I--the age Harry would have been----"
"So you've come home," she said, "to stay?"
"Yes, we all do. It's what we look forward to out there."
"I know." With a little hospitable gesture and a step backward she brought him in.
They had not mentioned the major who was gone, nor had they mentioned the years that had passed since their last meeting, yet suddenly, without any premonition, those two turned their eyes away from each other, to avoid bursting senselessly into tears. An almost inconceivable disaster, yet one for the moment perilously imminent.
Yet neither of them was thinking of Major Lonsdale nor of anything so grievous as death; they were thinking of those terrifying little wrinkles round their eyes, and of the little up-and-down lines that would never disappear, and something inside them both gave suddenly away, melted, flooding them inside with tears that must not be shed.
She held out her hand for his hat and stick. For an instant they both felt a deep constraint, and as he was getting out of his coat each wondered if the other had noticed it.
Ayling turned about and stumbled awkwardly over a small hassock on the floor, and they both laughed, which helped them recover themselves.
"How long has it really been?" she asked, as she faced him beside the fire.
"Twenty-five years." He smiled at her, shaking his head. "Twenty-five years!"
"You must feel the prodigal son!"
"Not until I came in your door just now, I didn't at all." And then, without in the least intending to say it, he added, "You were the only person in London I knew."
It was the first of many things he had not intended to tell. As it was the first of many afternoons when they sat before the fire in her pretty drawing-room--that gallant little blaze that did its best to combat the gloom and chill of London's late winter rains--and drank their tea and talked, the comfortable, scattering talk of old friends; although it was not because of the past that they were friends, but because of the present and their mutual need. They did not speak of loneliness; it was a word, perhaps, of which they were both afraid.
When they talked of her husband, of the old house, the old days, she felt herself coming back, materializing gradually again, out of the past. Ayling said to himself that he could talk to Bessie Lonsdale of things he had never been able to speak of to any one else, because they had had so much common experience. For from the beginning Ayling had had the illusion that Bessie Lonsdale, as well as he, had been away all those years, and had just come back to London again. He had said this to her as he was leaving on that first afternoon, and she had smiled and said, "So I have, just that--I've been away and come back, and I hardly know where to begin." Later he understood. For once or twice he met there a few of her friends, people who dropped in to inquire what she had heard from Peggy; people who talked of how they were missing Peggy, of the time when she would be coming home, of her approaching wedding, and one and all they commented upon the emptiness of the flat without Peggy there, and how lonely it must be for dear Mrs. Lonsdale with Peggy away.
"I seem to be the only person in London not missing Peggy," he said to her one day. Her brown-flecked eyes looked at him straight for an instant, and then slowly they smiled, for she knew that he understood. She had not needed to tell him, for he had divined it for himself. Just as he had not needed to tell her how much her being in London had meant to him.
As it was, the incessant chill and dampness of the weather had done his health no good. His blood was thin from long years of Indian sun, and he found it a constant effort to resist. The gloom seemed even worse than the cold, and, although he had thought that he should never wish for sun again, after India, he did wish for it now, wished for it until it became a sheer physical need. For the first time in his life he began to feel that he was getting old. Or was it, he asked himself, only that he had time now to think of such things? Bessie Lonsdale saw it, for her eyes were quick and keen, and she had long been in the habit of mothering. "It's this beastly London," she said. "I know!" And it was she who made him promise to go away for a week in the country, where he might have a glimpse at least of the sun. He remembered an inn at Homebury St. Mary, where he had spent a summer as a child, and it was there, for no reason except the memory of so much sun, that he planned to go, "by the middle of next week," he said, "when Peggy will be coming home."
They had been talking of her return, and he had confessed to the notion that he would feel himself superfluous, out of place, somehow, when Peggy came home. His confession had pleased her, she hardly knew why. As for herself, she had had something of the same thought that when Peggy came there would be--well, a different atmosphere.
She was looking forward daily now to a letter saying by what train Peggy would return. On Thursday there arrived, instead, a letter from Lady McCrae, begging that they be allowed "to keep our dear Peggy for another ten days." The heavy weather had kept the young people indoors, and a great many excursions which they had planned had had to be put off on account of it. She said, in her dignified way, many things vastly pleasing to a mother's heart, and Mrs. Lonsdale could do nothing but write, giving her consent.
When she had written the letter and sent it off she began to be curiously depressed, and she wandered through the flat, conscious at last of just how much she had really missed Peggy's laughter, her gaiety, and her swift young step. The week before her loomed longer than all the time she had been away.
That afternoon she told Ayling her news, but it was not until she had finished telling him that she remembered that he, too, would be going away. She hadn't known until then how much his being there had meant.
"I don't know," she said, "how I shall put in the week! After all, I've been missing her more than I knew."
It occurred to Ayling that, standing there before him with Lady McCrae's letter, which she had been showing him, in her hand, she was exactly like a little girl who was going to be left all alone.
The idea came to him suddenly. "Look here, Bessie; come down to Homebury St. Mary with me! It would do you no end of good."
The quality of their friendship was clear in the simplicity with which he made the suggestion, and the absence of self-consciousness with which she heard it made.
"I should love it!" she said.
"Then come along. You've nothing to keep you here; the country's just what you need."
She did not answer at once, but stood looking away from him, a little frown between her eyes. She was thinking how absurd it would be to object, and how equally absurd it seemed to say yes. It was so nice to have some one think of her as he thought of himself, simply, normally, humanly, as Dick Ayling seemed to have thought of her from the first.
Then abruptly she accepted his simplification. "I'll go," she said.
"Good! I'll telephone through for a room for you.... When can you be ready?" he asked.
"To-day--this afternoon. Let's get away before I discover all the reasons to prevent! I won't bother about a lot of luggage--my big bag will do."
"Great! I'll ask about trains."
All at once, like two children, they became immensely exhilarated at the prospect before them--a week's holiday!
He went to the telephone and presently reported: "There's a train at two-forty. Can you make it by then?"
She looked at the clock on the mantel. "We'll make it," she said.
He was getting into his coat. "I'll go on to the club, get my things together, and come back for you at two-fifteen, then."
He rushed away, both of them almost forgetting to say good-by, and she went into her bedroom to pack.
When, promptly at two-fifteen, he rang her bell, she was waiting, hat and gloves on, and called out, "All ready!" as the taxi-driver followed Ayling up for her bag....
The spring had come up to meet them at Homebury St. Mary. So Bessie Lonsdale said to herself when she woke in her old-fashioned chintz-curtained room. The sun shone in at the windows, the air was balmy and sweet, and lifting herself on her elbow, she saw in a little round swale in the garden outside a faint showing of green nestled into the damp brown earth.
She got up, rang for a maid, who came, smiling, white-capped, rosy-cheeked. She had coffee and rolls with rich country cream while she dressed. Her room opened directly into the garden, and she put on stout boots and a walking-suit and a soft little hat of green felt, and went out. Ayling, who had evidently risen early, was coming toward her, swinging a great, freshly whittled staff cut from the woods beyond the inn. He called to her:
"You see! The sun does shine at Homebury St. Mary!" And then, as if in gratitude for so glorious a day, he wished to be fair to the rest of the world, he added, as he came up, "I wonder if it's shining in London, too."
"London?" she said. "London? There's no such place!"
"Glad you came?" he asked.
"Glad!" Her tone was enough.
"That's a jolly green hat," he said, and made her a little bow.
"Glad you like it," she laughed. "And that's a jolly staff."
He showed it off proudly. "Work of art," he said. "I made one just like it when I was here the summer I was twelve--I remembered it this morning when I woke up, and I came out to get this one."
She admired it critically, particularly the initials of the dark bark left on, but suggested an improvement about the knob.
"By Jove! you're right," he admitted, and set to work with his knife.
They were like two youngsters out of school. All morning they idled out-of-doors, exploring the little lanes that led off into the buff-colored hills, returning at noon, ravenous, to lunch in the dining-room of the inn, parting afterward in the corridor, and going to their own rooms to rest and read. At four Ayling tapped at her door to say that there was in the sitting-room "an absolutely enormous tea."
That night, before a beautiful fire in the sitting-room, they caught each other yawning at half past nine, and at ten they said good-night.
It had been so perfect that the next day found them following the same routine. And the next day, and the next. Bessie Lonsdale had not felt for years so much peace and so much strength. In their morning walks together her strength showed greater than his. The bracing air exhilarated her, and she felt she could have walked forever in the lovely rolling hills. Once she had walked on and on, faster and faster, not noticing how she had quickened her pace, her head up, facing the light wind blowing in from the sea. And, turning to ask a question of Ayling at her side, his white face stopped her instantly.
"Oh, I am sorry! Forgive me," she said.
He smiled, embarrassed, and waited a moment for breath before he said, "It's just the wind; it's pretty stiff."
And she had said no more, because it embarrassed him, but she suited her pace to his after that, never forgiving herself for her thoughtlessness. And she chose, instead of the hill roads, the level, winding lanes.
For five perfect spring days they spent their mornings out-of-doors in the sun, lunched, parted until tea, met at dinner again, and said good night at a preposterously early hour. And they could not have said whether they amused or interested or merely comforted each other. Perhaps they did all three. At any rate, it was an idyll of its kind, and of more genuine beauty than many less platonic idylls have been.
On the morning of the sixth day Bessie Lonsdale went out into the garden as usual, to find the sky overcast with light, fleecy clouds. But the air was soft, and she wandered about for half an hour before it occurred to her that perhaps Ayling was waiting for her inside. She went in to look, but saw him nowhere, and decided that he was sleeping late. She waited until eleven, and then went out to walk by herself. But she did not relish the walk because she was uneasy about Ayling. She was afraid he was ill. She forced herself to go on a little way, but when she came to the second turn in the road, she faced abruptly about and came back to the inn. Still Ayling was nowhere about. He was not in the garden; he was not in the coffee-room. She went to her own room and sat down with a book, but she could not read. So she went into the corridor, searching for some one of whom she might inquire. But no one was visible.
Ayling's room opened off of the little public sitting-room at the end of the corridor. She went on until she reached the sitting-room, which she entered, and then stood still, listening for some sound from beyond Ayling's door. The silence seemed to grow round her; it filled the room, it spread through the house. And then, propelled by that silence toward the door, she put out her hand and knocked softly. There was no response. She repeated the knock--twice--and only that pervading silence answered her. She took hold of the knob and turned it without a sound; the door gave inward and she stepped inside the room. The bed faced her, and Ayling was lying there, on his side. Even before she saw his face, her own heart told her that he was dead.... He lay there quite peacefully, as if he had died in his sleep.
For an instant Bessie Lonsdale thought she was going to faint. And then, moved by the force of an emotion which seemed to take possession of her from the outside, an emotion which she could not recognize, but which was irresistible and which, as the silence had propelled her a moment ago, took her backward now, step by step, noiselessly, out of that room; caused her to close the door after her, and, still moving backward without a sound, to come to a stop in the middle of the little sitting-room. For now that strange fear, premonition--she knew not what--which seemed to have been traveling toward her from a great distance, seemed suddenly to concentrate itself into a single name, "Peggy!" ... Confused, swirling, the connotations that accompanied the name took possession of her mind, of her body, her will. Peggy was threatened.... Through this thing that had happened Peggy's happiness might be destroyed! In a flash she saw the story--the cold facts printed in a newspaper--as they would undoubtedly be--or told by gossips, glad of a scandal to repeat: She, Peggy's mother--and Richard Ayling together at a country inn--the sudden and sensational discovery of Ayling's death.... She could see the stern face of Lady McCrae--the accusing blue eyes of Andrew McCrae ... and Peggy's stricken face.
She tried to pull herself together--to think; her thoughts were not reasoning thoughts, but unrelated, floating, detached....
Suddenly, by some strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out clear. They stood out like the three facts of a simple syllogism.
There was nothing she could do for Richard Ayling now.... No one knew she was here.... A train for London passed Homebury St. Mary a little after noon.
All the years of Bessie Lonsdale's motherhood commanded her to act. Her muscles alone seemed to hear and obey. She was like a person hypnotized, who had been ordered with great detail and precision what to do.
Soundlessly, she went from the room and down the length of the corridor. In her own room she threw scattered garments into a bag, swept in the things from the dresser, glanced into the mirror, and was astonished to see that she had on her coat and hat. Then out through the door that led to the garden, a sharp turn to the right, and she was off, walking swiftly, with no sensation of touching the earth. A train whistled in the distance, came into sight. She raced with it, reached the station just as it drew alongside and came to a stop. The guard took her bag, and she swung onto the step. It did not seem strange to her that she had reached the station at precisely the same time as the train. It seemed only natural ... in accordance with the plan....
At seventeen minutes past three o'clock Bessie Lonsdale hurried into a telephone-booth in Victoria Station, called up a friend, and asked her to tea. Then she took a taxi to within a block of the flat, where she dismissed the taxi, went into a pastry-shop, bought some cakes, and five minutes later she was taking off her hat and coat in her own bedroom.
She worked quickly, automatically, without any sense of exertion, still as if she but obeyed a hypnotist's command. At four o'clock a leaping fire in the drawing-room grate flickered cheerily against silver tea-things, against the sheen of newly dusted mahogany; books lay here and there, carelessly, a late illustrated review open as if some one had just put it down, and dressed in a soft gown of blue crêpe, Bessie Lonsdale received her guest. She was not an intimate friend, but a casual one whom she did not often see. A Mrs. Downey, who loved to talk of herself and of her own affairs. Bessie Lonsdale did not know why she had chosen her. Her brain had seemed to work without direction, independent of her will. She could never have directed it so well.
Even now, as she brought her in and heard herself saying easy, friendly, commonplace things, she had no sense of willing herself to say them consciously. They said themselves. She heard nothing that Mrs. Downey said, yet she answered her. Later, while she was pouring Mrs. Downey's tea, she remembered a time, over a year ago, when she had heard Mrs. Downey say, "Two, and no cream." She put in the two lumps, and was startled to hear her guest exclaim, "My dear, what a memory!" ... She did not know whether Mrs. Downey told her one or many things that afternoon. Only certain words, parts of sentences, gestures, imprinted themselves upon her mind, never to be erased. She seemed divided into two separate selves, neither of them complete--one, the intenser of the two, was at Homebury St. Mary, looking down upon Ayling's still, dead face; and that self was filled with pity, with remorse, with a tenderness that hurt. The other self was here, in a gown of blue crêpe, drinking tea, and possessed of a voice which she could hear vaguely making the conversation one makes when nothing has happened, when one has been lonely and a little bored....
All at once something was going on in the room, a clangor that seemed to waken Bessie Lonsdale out of the unreality of a dream. It summoned her will to come back to its control.
Mrs. Downey was smiling and saying in an ordinary tone, "Your telephone."
Bessie Lonsdale rose and crossed the room, took the receiver from its stand, said, "Yes," and waited.
A man's voice came over the wire. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Lonsdale, please."
"I am Mrs. Lonsdale," she said in a smooth, low voice. Her voice was perfectly smooth because her will had deserted her again. Only her brain worked, clearly, independently.
"Ah, Mrs. Lonsdale; this is Mr. Burke speaking, Mr. Franklin Burke, of the Cosmos Club. I am making an effort to get into touch with friends of Mr. Richard Ayling, and I am told by a man named Chedsey, who I believe was at one time in your employ, that Mr. Ayling is an old friend of your family."
"Yes," she said, "we are old friends."
"You knew, then, I presume, that Mr. Ayling had gone away--to the country some days ago."
"Yes," she said, again, "I knew that he had not been well and that he had gone out of town for a week.... Is there--anything?" Her heart was beating very loudly in her ears.
"I dislike to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Lonsdale, but I must tell you that we have received a telephone message here at the club that--I hope it will not shock you too much--that Mr. Ayling died sometime to-day, at an inn where he was staying, at Homebury St. Mary, I believe."
His voice was very gentle and concerned. She hesitated perceptibly, and his voice came over the wire, "I'm sorry--very sorry, to tell you in this way--"
She heard herself speaking: "Naturally, I--it's something of a shock...."
"Indeed I understand."
Again she caught the sound of her own voice, as if it belonged to some one else, "I suppose it was his heart."
"He was known to have a bad heart?"
"Yes; it has been weak for years."
"I wonder, Mrs. Lonsdale, if I may ask a favor of you. You know, of course, that Mr. Ayling had very few close friends in London; you are, in fact, the only one we have been able, on this short notice, to find. For that reason I am going to ask that you let me come to see you this afternoon; you will understand that there are certain formalities, facts which it will be necessary for us to have, which only an old friend of Mr. Ayling could give--that we could get in no other way...."
"I understand, perfectly."
"Then I may come?"
"Certainly." ... There was nothing else she could say.
She did not know how she got rid of her guest, what explanation she made, nor how she happened to be saying good-by to her at the very moment when the dignified, elderly Mr. Burke arrived, so that they had to be introduced. Though she must have made some adequate explanation, since Mrs. Downey's last words were, in the presence of Mr. Burke, "It's always so hard, I think, to lose one's really old friends."
Mr. Burke came in. He was very correct, very kind. He begged Mrs. Lonsdale to believe that it was with the greatest regret that he called upon so sad an errand; that he came only because it was necessary and she was the only person to whom they could turn. He added that he had known her husband, Major Lonsdale, in his lifetime, and hoped that she would consider him, therefore, not so entirely a stranger to her.
