"What tainted people you have to deal with!" she exclaimed, unconsciously continuing her vein of silent thought. "I should crave another environment, I think."
"Your Christ lived with sinners and publicans. And they are not all tainted, my dear," added the mother, smiling so that Emily might know whom she meant to except. "There is so much in common between my son and Mr. Floyd. Both proud, serious, too serious, I tell him, and both true Castilians in honor. But the one looked about wisely and found him a—lady; and the other—"
"The other will grow gray by his good mother's side, I fear," said Shagarach, gently kissing the laughing and delighted old lady. Emily smiled herself to see John Davidson's sphinx, whose reticence outside was indeed a mask of stone, unbending thus to the frankness and simplicity of a child. The mother's ways were more demonstrative, but with deep reserves of dignity.
"But you are right, Miss Barlow. The lawyer's profession is one shade more distasteful than the surgeon's, for he handles the moral sores of humanity."
"Handles them to cure them," cried Emily, shifting about, like a true woman.
"Possibly. Though for my own part I agree with those who hold that the law perpetrates no less wickedness than it punishes—were it not that it prevents more than it perpetrates," he added, smiling, "we should live in a very troublesome world. It is a profession which uses the conscience as a whetstone upon which to sharpen the intellect. I attribute the venality of our congress and legislatures partly to the disproportion among them of lawyers."
"But surely there are exceptions?"
"In the criminal courts," answered Shagarach. Emily asked herself if this was Shagarach's destiny, to continue as a criminal lawyer. As if in answer to her question, he added:
"There alone one can feel at all times that he is either protecting the innocent or punishing the guilty. This is my working library," he pointed to the thumbed volumes on the shelves. Emily noticed that most of them were treatises on psychology, the old and the new.
"I do not carry the keys for those," said his mother, gayly.
"Light to illuminate our case," Shagarach took down one of the books. "By the way, my correspondent, Mr. Skull-and-Crossbones, has honored me again."
The two ladies started and the mother seized her son by the arm.
"A black-edged letter, apprising me that I am marked and doomed." Just then Emily heard the strange tapping that had startled her before. It came from the window of the front parlor this time. She shuddered in a sudden terror and drew closer to Mrs. Shagarach. The old lady had heard the sound and blanched a little, but her voice was firm when she spoke:
"Is that a mouse in the wainscoting, my son?"
"I thought it was a tapping at the window, mother."
"Go and look. There may be a stranger in the yard."
Shagarach raised the curtain and looked out, then opened the window. The cool night air flowed in and heightened Emily's tremors so that the elder lady took pity on her.
"There is no one in sight, mother, but I will put on my hat and go out the back door."
In a few minutes Shagarach returned by the street entrance.
"I thought I heard footsteps in the passageway and followed them around, but there is no one. The yard is empty."
"I will inform the policeman to-morrow," said his mother. "There are many loiterers about in these bad times. And you should acquaint them with the letter you received."
"I have done so, mother. I have considered it strange," he added, turning toward Emily, "that the parties opposed to us in the Floyd case should resort to murder. It is a confession of guilt."
"If they are caught."
"Murder will out. Moreover, I do not work alone. I have engaged the assistance of—whom do you think?"
"Of Mr. McCausland," said the mother, breaking in. "It was my suggestion."
"McCausland investigating Harry Arnold!" exclaimed Emily.
"Is it not amusing? But he will not allow that Arnold is at all open to suspicion, and of course I have not laid all my evidence before him."
"But surely the letters are connected with our case, and who else could it be?"
Since the finding of the glove and the testimony of the three gamins Emily was coming around to Shagarach's view of Harry Arnold's possible guilt and the attack on Robert's lawyer had aroused her sympathies so as almost if not quite to convince her.
"Mr. McCausland is very keen—a wonderful man—of deceptive exterior, but like the rest of us, he sometimes makes mistakes," said Shagarach. "His defect is that he uses the logical method only and ignores the psychological. It is necessary first to find out if the accused is capable of the crime. I first became sure of Robert Floyd's innocence when I saw him through the cell-bars of the jail. He is incapable of the crime."
"My son so admires your lover," added Mrs. Shagarach.
"These other friends of mine," continued her son, taking down the thumbed volume which he had put back when the tapping startled them, "commit the opposite error. They are strictly physiological. They predict too much from a man's physical peculiarities."
The book he opened for Emily was a treatment on criminology, illustrated with villainous heads in profile and full face. It was in Italian, so Shagarach exchanged it for another.
"Behold the brands of the true criminal—'enormous zygomae,' 'ear lobes attached to the cheek,' 'spatulate fingernails——'"
"That takes in Mr. McCausland," said Emily, roguishly. She had got over her fright by this time and the allusion to spatulate fingernails recalled the whole train of events which had ended in the inspector's discomfiture.
"The refutation of such theorists," said Shagarach, "is simple. We need only point to the fact that the greatest crimes are committed by men who are not professional criminals at all and who do not belong to the criminal type."
"Like this man," said the mother, going to a closet at one side and drawing forth a bundle of photographs. One of them she showed to Emily. It was Harry Arnold, bold and handsome, with the shaggy cape coat thrown carelessly over his shoulders.
"Has he enormous zygomae, ear-lobes attached to his cheek?" she asked.
"I wish I could see his fingernails," laughed Emily.
"Arnold's face in repose does not show much capacity for evil. But it lights up badly. I have seen him crossed and in passion."
"I think he looks as if he were veined of evil and good," said Emily frankly, studying the portrait long, as she loved to do. She had seen Harry once when he was at his best. Besides, her service in the photograph studio had made her something of a physiognomist, too, though not, of course, such a soul-reader as Shagarach.
"His crimes are of the preventable order and therefore the more culpable. There are men born to crime, as the theorists argue; others driven to crime. For both of these classes it is hardly more than a misplaced emphasis, a wrong direction of energies."
"Here is another volume—I am showing you all my workshop. Does it fatigue you?"
"Nothing which helps to clear up the mystery is dull to me," answered Emily.
"This treatise deals with 'Incidental Homicide.' Rather legal than clinical. The cases are all parallel to ours. The indictment, by the way, has just been given out. The weakest count charges Robert Floyd with arson and murder in the second degree. The punishment for that is only imprisonment for life."
"Only! Robert says he would rather be hanged."
"Let him have no fear of either," said Mrs. Shagarach, cheerily.
"The newspapers tell us that the government offered much new evidence," said Shagarach.
"I should like to know what it was," cried Emily, eagerly.
"So should I. Ordinarily, the grand-jury room is leaky enough, but Mr. McCausland, who is the government in this case, appears to have found a way to seal it hermetically."
"Perhaps he padlocked the jurors' lips," suggested Emily, whereat all three were merry.
From time to time during the conversation relapses of the old shudder had come back to Emily, though the tapping had utterly ceased since Shagarach investigated the yard. He had left the curtain half-raised, so that any one approaching the window would be visible from within. It was just at this moment that she happened to change her seat, bringing her face around to the darkened window. Before the others could catch her, she had risen, pointed to the window and fallen to the floor with a terrified shriek.
Shagarach started to raise her, but the terrible detonation of a pistol rung out, sacrilegiously invading their quietude. Then all was darkness, a noise of crashing glass telling that the lamp had been shattered and extinguished. Another report followed and another. Mrs. Shagarach, trembling, heard her son quickly crossing to the window. The panes seemed to be broken, and there were sounds of a scuffle, mingled with a gnashing of teeth and growls more animal than human. Suddenly, with a ripping sound, the scuffle ceased, and rapid footsteps were heard pattering away. Then her son spoke to her in the loud, firm voice which he used in all practical affairs.
"Light the little lamp, mother. It is safe now. There are matches on the mantel."
"Are you hurt, Meyer?" she asked, anxiously, while lighting the lamp.
"A little," he answered.
"You were shot, my son?" she cried, embracing him.
"No. Let us revive Miss Barlow. Some water, Rachel," he said to the old servant who had come to the door.
When Emily came to she found Mrs. Shagarach sponging her forehead, while her son was washing his hands in a basin of bloody water.
"Wrap the cotton around them quickly, Rachel," he was saying. "I must notify the police."
"Meyer, it is not safe."
Emily heard the mother protesting, then swooned again. When full consciousness returned the lawyer was gone and the three women were alone in the room. Rachel began picking up the fragments of the lamp. Only its chimney and globe had been broken, the metal being still intact. The windowpanes showed great ragged holes, which explained the laceration of Shagarach's hands.
"Poor lady," cried the mother. "This is ill treatment we give you. But we are not to blame. It is the wicked enemies who are pursuing us all—your lover and my son." With terms of endearment she petted the weak girl back into a coherent understanding of her position. But every now and then the remembrance of something would cause her to shudder again visibly; whereat the elder lady would renew her caresses.
"I have notified the policeman. That was the best I could do," said Shagarach, re-entering. He looked extremely grave. It was a narrow escape for one or more of the three. "This is all I have to identify him by. It was detached in the struggle."
He laid a common coat button down on the table, with a piece of cloth adhering.
"That face! Who could ever forget it?" cried Emily.
"You saw him, then?" asked son and the mother in one breath.
"Shall I call it 'him'? Was it a man?" answered Emily. "Rather a monster, no more than half-human."
"It had the form of a man," said Shagarach, "as I felt it through the glass."
Rachel was busy bandaging his cuts with plaster during this conversation, but they bled through, calling for the surgeon's thread.
"But it snarled like a tiger," said the mother.
"Oh the wild, blue eyes! They were staring at me through the cleft of the draperies. And the demon leer, and the forehead, retreating like a frog's——"
"It is the oaf I passed on the pier," cried Shagarach, interrupting Emily. "We have found Mr. Skull-and-Crossbones."
"Oaf? What is oaf?" asked the mother.
"An idiot, a monster."
She shuddered.
"A man of that description cannot long elude search," said the son in a more hopeful tone.
"They are often very cunning," replied the mother.
"Can it be Harry Arnold would employ such an agent?" asked Emily, still trembling.
"Twice," said Shagarach, as if speaking to himself. "A cap and a button. Men have been captured on slighter clews."
"You will give the button to Mr. McCausland," said the mother.
"Yes; since it fits with the cap."
"Maybe he will help you to bring Harry Arnold to justice."
"And so to acquit Robert Floyd," said Shagarach, smiling to cheer his guest.
The mention of her lover restored the wilted girl, who was brave enough when there was anything definite to be done. Shagarach showed her the book on "Arson" which he had been holding when the first shot was fired. The bullet had pierced it on its career toward the lamp.
"The bullets will be evidence also," he said, "and I will measure the footprints before the rain comes down and washes them away."
"You will wish to go home, poor child," said Mrs. Shagarach to Emily. "Not yet, but soon, when you are stronger. Rachel!"
The soothing words of the mother warmed Emily quite as much as the wine which Rachel brought. Meanwhile two policemen entered and began to examine the premises. Shagarach visited the yard in their company and soon returned with a tape measure and a paper block, on which he had recorded the lengths of the footprints.
He was assiduous in his regrets and inquiries toward Emily and insisted on accompanying her home in a carriage, which the mother, however, would not allow them to enter until she had exacted from her visitor a promise that she would come again on an appointed evening, and pressed upon her in true oriental fashion a certain rose-embroidered gossamer scarf for which Emily had expressed admiration.
At her own door the sweet girl heard Shagarach order the hackman to drive to Dr. Lund's, and she guessed that his cuts would be somewhat worse for the delay in stitching them. That night she saw gorgon faces leering in at her window, and her dreams were of new-moon scimiters and the rocking of the camel ride.
"Put your wrists together!"
The voice was totally different from Dobbs' whine; a strong, deep register, like a ledge of the basal rock peeping out from a smiling meadow. For the first time Robert felt the veiled strength which resided in the detective's character. There was no option but to obey.
"Pull up the curtains, Johnnie."
The servant had been attracted by the crash of the lamp. A faint stream of daylight entered the chamber, and the noises of the city could be heard in the distance. McCausland's face seemed to have altered in every line.
"Get a hack! Jump into those shoes!" He tossed a curt order right and left, one for Johnnie, the other for Robert.
"To the county jail," was his direction to the hack driver. Robert wondered at this, but he sat back smiling and said nothing during all the ride.
"Here's your prisoner," said McCausland when they arrived. It was not yet 6 o'clock, but the sheriff was up and showed no great surprise. Robert wondered at this again and his amazement was not abated when they assigned him to his original cell in murderers' row. However, the change was to his liking, for the surroundings were less presageful of permanency.
"You missed your vocation as a character actor," was his parting shot at McCausland.
It is easy to imagine the dismay in the prison that morning when the escape was discovered. Col. Mainwaring was a very different man from Warden Tapp, and for a time it looked as though McCausland might lose his badge. But when he showed an order from the sheriff empowering him to bring the body of Robert Floyd from the state prison back to the county jail, which had now been put in repair, Col. Mainwaring saw a light; and when McCausland pointed out that he had laid his finger precisely on certain weaknesses of the bastile, frequently suggested without avail to Tapp, the new warden thanked him pleasantly.
The story at first was given to the public that Inspector McCausland had captured the fugitive, Robert Floyd, and for a time not only did the detective's cap wear a bright new feather but all the credit of Robert's conduct during the riot was canceled by this outbreak, which was construed as a confession of guilt. But of course the truth leaked out, and the failure of his "nest-egg game," with its brilliant but desperate climax, was made the occasion of much chaffing to the contriver.
"Has Bill Dobbs been taken yet?" a brother-in-buttons would ask him; and the two lovers had many a good laugh over the game which they had played and won. For the first time since the great shadow fell across them they were as happy and hopeful as lovers should be, and for several days little smiles of reminiscence would creep into the corners of Emily's lips while she was touching out the blemishes in some negative destined to pass from young Amaryllis to her Strephon or old Darby to his Joan.
Meanwhile Shagarach, too, was interesting himself in the study of photographs.
"Have they all been returned?" he asked Aronson one morning.
"All but Meester Davidson's."
"And none of the neighbors saw Arnold coming out?"
"They all shake their heads and say no, they don't know that face."
"Very well. Jacob may put them in his desk. We shall hardly need them again. Go over to the second session and answer for me in the Morrow case. I am expecting Mr. McCausland."
"Speak of angels," said the inspector, entering cordially. "You know the rest of the saying."
"Good-morning. Be seated."
It did not escape even modest Saul Aronson what a contrast the antagonists made, sitting with the table between them. McCausland had, apparently, not glanced around with more than casual interest, yet, if blindfolded then and there and put to the test, he could have surprised those who did not know him with the minute and copious inventory of the office, not excluding its occupants, which this glance had furnished him. It was this, with his almost infallible memory, which made him so formidable an opponent at whist. Shagarach was hardly his equal in mere perception, perhaps not his superior in analysis, when the subject was within McCausland's range. His advantage lay, if anywhere, as he had said himself, in his deeper insight into the human soul, in his psychological reach.
"Sorry I was out when you called the other day," said McCausland. "I've been looking up your matter."
"With what result?"
"These clippings may interest you."
Shagarach glanced rapidly over the newspaper scraps.
"The Broadbane murder—I remember that well."
"It occurred about a week before your first attack. You remember Broadbane lured the young woman to a lonely bridge in his carriage and threw her into the river."
"The circumstances were similar to my adventure. The second item is strange to me."
"It's from a New York paper, dated July 28—the very day before your second attack. The circumstances are closely similar this time again. A jealous husband shot his wife through the window of her room."
"Our monster reads, then."
"He is a lunatic (puff)," said McCausland, who had lighted his invariable cigar.
"You believe so?"
"The evidence convinces me. They have an itch to imitate, as you are aware. This man is a victim of homicidal mania, of which you have unfortunately become the object (puff)."
"Why Shagarach and not another?"
"Newspaper notoriety. You should see my crop of cranks. This particular crack-brain has aimed his illusion at you. We must strait-jacket him before it goes further."
"You expect, then, to have him soon?"
"Sooner or later (puff). Let us know if you hear anything. I see you were hurrying off as I came in. Good-day."
McCausland had been deputed to investigate the attacks on Shagarach, because they connected themselves so manifestly, through the threatening letters, with the Floyd case, which he was handling. Neither he nor Shagarach had objected to this opportunity to meet and possibly force each other's hands a little.
"I shall be in the Criminal Court, second session, Jacob. Remain here till Mr. Aronson comes." Shagarach was gone and Jacob left alone to his meditations.
To judge from his expression, they were never very pleasant. Perhaps, like Job of old, he daringly questioned the power behind human destiny, why he showers cleverness and attraction on one boy of 14, while another is afflicted with a manner of nose preposterous, conspicuous and undistinguishable, to carry which is a burden. That godlike young man in the photograph, how he would like to be as handsome as he! Was there no way to attain it? He took the bundle of photographs out of his drawer and laid them on his desk to study and admire.
While thus engaged the jingle of harness outside attracted him. He knew by the sound that the carriage had stopped before his door. It wasn't often that equipages, sprinkling sleigh-bell music in their course, paused at the door of the dingy old business building. So Jacob became interested enough to approach the window of the inner office languidly and peep down into the street.
There stood a covered black carriage, as polished as a mirror, with a buff-liveried coachman holding the reins. His seat was perched so high that his legs made one straight, unbending line to the footrest, and his back was as vertical as a carpenter's plummet. Mrs. Arnold was not careless of these niceties. It would have shocked her sense of the fitness of things almost as much to publish the fact that her coachman had knees, as if her own lorgnette should stray from the proscenium box higher than the first balcony—an impropriety which had happened only once to her knowledge, and that by inadvertence, on an opera night.
"This is Mr. Shagarach's office, I believe," said the grand lady to Jacob.
"Yes'm," he mumbled, abashed.
"He is out, I perceive. Does he return soon?"
"No'm."
"About when could I see him if I should wait?"
"He is trying a case'm, over in the second court'm, criminal session," answered Jacob, mixing things badly in his confusion.
"Couldn't you send for him?"
"Mr. Aronson will be here soon. Perhaps he would know."
"I will wait a few minutes," said the lady, sitting down with hauteur in the cushioned chair which Jacob pushed toward her. After a spell of silence she addressed him again in a gentler tone:
"What is your name, little boy?" she asked.
"Jacob," he answered. Servants and office boys grow to think of themselves as having only one name.
"Jacob. That is a very old and dignified name. Are you Mr. Shagarach's clerk?"
"No'm."
"His errand boy, then?"
"Yes'm."
"It's too bad you had to leave school so young. I suppose you give all you earn to your mother?"
"Yes'm."
"Haven't you any father?"
"No'm."
Jacob thought he had never met such a kind lady. How sympathetic she seemed and was it not gracious of her to inquire about his father and mother? How much more agreeable it was to deal with real ladies and real gentlemen who never, never would call vulgar names. He would have given almost half his week's spending money to oblige this sweet-tongued lady then, and his only regret was that he could think of no better answer to her questions than "Yes'm" and "No'm."
"If you are an errand boy perhaps you could do a little errand for me," said the lady sweetly after a pause.
"Yes'm," answered Jacob, putting a world of eagerness into the word.
"You are sure you can do errands and not make a mistake?"
"No'm—yes'm," he replied, a little puzzled as to which of the two words which seemed to constitute his whole vocabulary fitted into his meaning here.
"Then, perhaps, I will let you take this for me."
She drew out the tiniest, daintiest purse Jacob's eyes had ever beheld, and, opening its clasp, gingerly fingered forth a bill.
"I want very much to have this changed. Mr. Shagarach will not be back immediately, you say?"
"No'm."
"Then perhaps you can spare a moment to run down to the corner and get some silver for this."
"They'll change it upstairs," said Jacob, at last finding his voice.
"Upstairs? Very well, you may take it upstairs and bring me back small silver, Jacob."
With a skip of elation Jacob mounted the stairs. There was a little delay in the mission, to which he had repaired. When he came downstairs, the silver clutched in his hand, his heart rose to his mouth at discovering that the office was empty. To think that he had kept the kind lady waiting so long! Probably she had become disgusted with him. He stood a moment in perplexity. Then glancing at his own desk, he opened his mouth in horror.
"My pictures!" cried Jacob. The photographs were gone.
If there was one being that Jacob reverenced and feared it was his master. To feel now that he had betrayed him at the prompting of a grand lady, who deceived him with honeyed words and was undoubtedly one of his master's enemies—how could he ever face Shagarach again?
"My pictures!" he cried a second time, running into the entry. But here at the head of the stairs a dubitation seized him. Shrill and re-echoing through the narrow passage came the flute-like warble which Jacob knew only too well. It was the precursor of torment for him. True, the Whistler himself had almost ceased to pick on the office boy and even taken him under his wing of late, but Turkey Fenton and Toot Watts were as implacable as inquisitors turning a heretic on a lukewarm gridiron.
Turkey's tyranny was of the grosser order, as became an urchin who in Jacob's presence had swallowed a whole banana, skin and all. Toot's nature was subtle and spiderlike. He possessed the enviable distinction of being able to wag his ears, and his devices of torture were correspondingly refined and ingenious. During the last visit of the boys he had played a small mirror into Jacob's eyes all the while behind Shagarach's back, and it wasn't until they were going out that Jacob discovered why he had been dazzled almost to blindness.
If he took the stair route down he would be stopped and teased and the wicked lady would get away. Perhaps she was already gone—gone with the photographs which should have been securely locked in his drawer. Why had he ever taken them out?
The emergency was desperate and Jacob met it heroically. Rushing to Shagarach's window, he saw the grand lady just crossing the sidewalk and waving her parasol to the coachman. In a moment she would be ensconced on the cushions within and the disaster would be beyond remedy. The window was open, and there was a little piazza outside. Jacob stepped out and shouted. The lady looked up and hastened her pace. Leading down to the first story from the piazza was a flight of steps, and from the first story down to within twelve feet of the ground, another—an old-fashioned fire-escape.
Down these steps Jacob scrambled, scratching his hands and nearly losing his balance, to the first piazza and thence to the lowermost round, where the awful fall of twelve feet checked him. But the sight of the coachman mounting his box nerved his courage and he released his hands. For a moment he felt dizzy. But the horses were already started. With a flying leap he caught the tailboard in his hand, and after being dragged along with great giraffe-like bounds for nearly a block managed to draw himself up to something like a sitting position.
There, through an eye-shaped dead-light in the back of the carriage he obtained a dim view of its occupant. His master's stolen pictures were in her hand. What was she kissing them for—and crying? But Jacob was determined to have no pity upon her. He had just resolved to call out and demand her attention, when the crack of a lash made him turn and his lip began to tingle. The coachman had discovered his unlawful presence on the tailboard and had reached him with just the tip end of his whip.
Probably he had meant only to frighten the lad. If so, he had thoroughly succeeded. Again the whip curled backward over the coachman's shoulder and snapped like a pistol shot close to Jacob's ear. To add to his discomfort a great St. Bernard, which had been running under the carriage, had become aware of his intrusion, and began rearing at him in a manner more alarming than dangerous, to be sure, but sufficient to make a peaceable lad tremble. Between the whip and the dog's teeth his ride had begun to be worse torture than the gantlet of the stairway, flanked by the three gamins, would have been, when the ordeal was brought to a sudden end by the stopping of the carriage at a great brick railroad station.
Jacob's time had come. Disregarding the St. Bernard, he jumped down and stood on the sidewalk. The dog growled and the coachman spoke to him roughly as he opened the door with practiced alacrity for his mistress. But Jacob was now within his legal rights.
"I want my pictures," he said, catching the grand lady by the arm. Mrs. Arnold looked down at him with amazement not unmingled with fear. It was the same stupid little boy she had bribed to go upstairs in the office where Harry's photographs had been lying—for no good purpose, her instincts told her.
"What does this little ragamuffin say?" she asked.
"I want my photographs," said Jacob, doggedly, as the coachman shoved him aside. He ran after Mrs. Arnold, the tears in his eyes, and clung to her dress. A scene was imminent. The policeman approached, doubtless to render assistance to the lady in distress. But Mrs. Arnold did not desire his assistance just then. With a quick motion she removed a parcel from her pocket and placed it in Jacob's hands.
"Take back your things, then, and don't bother me," she said, with a flushed face.
Jacob gloated on his recovered treasures. Then his hands likewise sought his trousers pocket, and he jingled a handful of silver into Mrs. Arnold's hand.
"Take the money, Joseph," she said to the coachman. "These small storekeepers are so ill-mannered."
The policeman gave Jacob a hard look as he passed him, but the office boy was obliviously counting his pictures.
When he returned to the office the gamins were gone and Aronson was there alone. To Aronson's question where he had been, Jacob, not being an imaginative boy, gave an answer which was strictly truthful, whereupon Aronson, not being a humorous young man (for such are always grave), laughed immoderately, and proposed that the fire escape henceforth be known as Jacob's ladder.
"Mother, my friend, Miss March."
Mrs. Arnold came forward on the rose-embroidered veranda. An old look crept into her face. Her brow darkened. Her heart froze. But love conquered jealousy, and for Harry's sake she took both hands of the young woman whom she knew he loved, and smiled.
"And Mr. Tristram March."
"Welcome to Hillsborough. Will you not come inside?"
"Let's sit on the veranda," said Harry, throwing himself on a seat. "It's cooler here."
The others became seated and submitted their foreheads to the cool caresses of the breeze.
"I enjoy your road from the station so much, Mrs. Arnold. It winds like a river all the way," said Tristram March.
"A narrow river, I fear, and rough in parts," answered the lady.
"Do you know I like a soft country road. It seems padded for the horse's hoofs," said Miss March.
"Rosalie is a philanthropist, you know. She is vice-president—one of the vice-presidents—I believe there are nineteen—of the ladies' league for the abolition of race dissension in the south by the universal whitewashing of negroes."
"Mrs. Arnold knows better than to believe that."
"A chimerical plan, I should call it," said Mrs. Arnold.
"Not at all," added Tristram. "Most scientific. The whitewash is indelible. All charity fads must be scientific nowadays."
"Brother Tristram plays the cynic, Mrs. Arnold," said Rosalie. "But he has an excellent heart of his own."
"It is a burned-out crater," said Tristram, solemnly, at which Harry burst into a laugh and the sister smiled.
Watching her furtively, Mrs. Arnold saw that she was as exquisite a masterpiece as nature had ever put forth. Her figure was virginal and full; her manner, auroral; her age, Hebe's, the imperceptible poise of the ascending ball before it begins to descend, which in woman is earlier by a decade than in man; her coloring, a mixture of the wild rose and gold. Art seconded nature; she was faultlessly dressed. In that instant of inspection the mother knew that her son's heart had been weaned from her forever. She had always felt that it would be a blonde woman. Are they charged with opposite magnetisms from northern and southern poles, that they attract each other so, the dark type and the fair?
"Will you never be serious, Tristram?" cried Rosalie.
"Well, dear, the crater has humming-birds' nests built along its inner sides, like the old volcano of Chocorua, and the little winged jewels flash out sometimes and land in Sister Rosalie's lap."
"What is this?"
"You prefer rubies. I picked those up at a sale in the city. Did you ever meet such stones—perfect bulbs?"
"How can I ever rebuke you again?"
"Then I needn't try to be serious?"
"Oh, if it's a bribe——"
"Look at the name on the plate behind—'Alice.'"
"That will have to be changed," said Harry, coming nearer to glance at the brooch. "Why!" he snatched at the jewels, but caught himself in time. His mother looked at him in an eloquent appeal for silence.
"Where did you get them?" he asked.
"Rabofsky. An old bric-a-brac man. Why, do you fancy they're stolen?"
"Oh, no. I congratulate your sister. The name made me start. It is my mother's, you know."
"I was Alice Brewster," said Mrs. Arnold.
"Speaking of philanthropists, Rosalie," said Tristram, to change the subject, "how did you like the noble Earl of Marmouth?"
"The most overbearing person."
"With the courtesy of a snapping-turtle," said Tristram.
"And the humor of a comic valentine," added Harry.
"Still there is something grand about the title of earl," said Mrs. Arnold, who chose to forget that the original Brewster of Lynn was a yeoman.
"Mme. Violet interested me more," said Rosalie. "Rumor is linking their names, you know. I feel that she and I might become friends."
"She has just the saving spark of deviltry that you lack, Rosalie."
"It isn't every brother who can call his sister an angel so happily," said Mrs. Arnold.
"Nothing was farther from his thoughts than to compliment me, Mrs. Arnold. You should hear him abuse me in private. I am a philistine, a prude. But I grow accustomed to his taunts."
"Dear Rosalie, you are only not esthetic because you are so divinely moral. Just think, she objects to my marble cupids, that they are not ashamed of their innocence."
"Surely that is going far," interposed Harry, who had long been silent. "The modeling was capital. Most little cupids are just doughy duplicates of each other. But yours have character—baby-face wisdom—Puck and Ariel linking arms."
"Say two Pucks, Harry, or Rosalie will moralize. Ariel was a wicked little sprite. He used to go on bats."
Rosalie lifted a finger of reproof.
"But from my standpoint a dash of wickedness is just the sine qua non in art. How fascinating the Inferno is! And how tame the Paradiso! In art, do I say? In religion itself? What the horizon line is to the landscape—a rare pageant you have before you, Mrs. Arnold—such is the fall in the garden to the faith of our fathers."
"Do you mean that it separates earth from heaven?" laughed Harry.
"You would think, to hear this grumbler, it was his strait-laced sister and not his own laziness that prevented him from—" Rosalie hesitated.
"From amounting to something. Say it out. Ah, Rosalie, you have indeed achieved. Your Rosalind is divine, Carp says—and surely Carp knows."
"And Portia," added Harry.
"While my medallions——"
"Would be glorious if they were ever finished. But come," continued Harry, "I must dress for my wager. Where's Indigo?"
"He is about the house, Harry."
"What a name! Your valet, I suppose?" asked Tristram.
"And secretary. That is, he answers my duns."
"And so spares you the blues?"
"Punning again, Tristram," said Rosalie. "And you profess not to consider word-plays respectable."
"Right, always right, Rosalie."
The party passed inside, and the Marches were escorted to their rooms, while Harry went in quest of Indigo. When he returned he found his mother alone in the front room. She seemed to be awaiting him.
"The rubies, mother?"
"They were mine. Sit down, Harry. I must speak with you."
Her manner was sad, and Harry thought in the strong light her face looked careworn.
"We are very much pressed for money—temporarily, of course. As soon as your uncle's estate is settled our income will be larger than ever; and even without that, Mr. Hodgkins has hopes——"
"But mother, you did not sell the rubies?"
"I have sold all my jewels, Harry."
Harry stood up. His mother gave him a long look. She had made this sacrifice for him. He understood and colored when he remembered the fate of the money his mother's rubies had brought. It was luck alone which had saved their name from a blot on the evening when McCausland raided the Dove-Cote.
"I must curtail my expenses," he said, rising to go.
"There is another matter, Harry," said his mother, still sadly but gently. "I saw Mr. McCausland in town today. He desires you to testify at your cousin's trial."
"Testify against Bob!"
"It is in relation to the will—the disinheriting of your cousin."
"Why, he admits that himself."
"He may deny it if his conviction hangs upon that point Mr. McCausland wishes to leave no weak link in the chain."
"Hang it, mother, I don't want to be mixed up in it. Think of the looks."
"All he wants is a word. You heard your cousin say he was disinherited under the will."
"Yes, that is—why, of course, I knew it. He told me at the jail that day."
"Then I will write to Mr. McCausland that your testimony covers that point——"
"No, but mother——"
Rosalie March re-entered at this moment. Her first glance was toward Harry and his toward her. Their thoughts had been traveling the same route and meeting half-way all during the talk on the veranda, when Harry was so unwontedly silent. Alas, he knew well that he was unfit even to look at her.
In their outward demeanor to each other he was embarrassed and she reserved. The religious difference seemed likely to be permanent. For Rosalie was a Catholic, the daughter of an eminent Maryland family, as historic and proud as the Brewsters and more wealthy than even the Arnolds. But this barrier between them only acted with the charm of a material fence over which or through which a rustic couple are plighting forbidden troth.
"All ready to win my wager," cried Tristram, following his sister in. He, also, had changed his attire, and looked very handsome in his curling Vandyke beard of the cut which artists affect.
"What wager is that?" asked Mrs. Arnold.
"We passed the river coming down, and I offered to canoe the rapids."
"And the river so low, Harry. It is rash."
"Would you have them set me down a boaster?" Harry was eager now. His mother knew "them" meant "her," and her heart yearned more and more to the son who was drifting away.
"Indigo!" he cried out the window to his valet.
"But the danger—was it not there the canoeist was drowned last year?" said his mother, anxiously.
"Hang the danger! It's the prospect of scraping the bottom off my new canoe that troubles me."
"Old age is privileged to prate, I suppose," said Mrs. Arnold, feebly attempting to smile.
"Cut the fingers off that lemon-colored mitten, Indigo, and get me some salve double quick. My oar blister's worse than ever."
Indigo sped up stairs for the scissors, and the party was soon on its way.
At the bridge Harry left them, proceeding alone to the boat-house, up-stream, while Indigo led the others to a rock below the rapids, where they were to witness the feat. To look at the long slope, nowhere steep, but white from end to end with foam, it did seem incredible that any craft could live through such a surge. The murmur was audible far away in the still countryside, and the air, even where the three onlookers stood, was moist with impalpable spray.
"Looks as though that wager was mine," said Tristram. "He might as well try to swim Niagara."
"Ought we not to have a rope in case of accident?" said Mrs. Arnold.
"By all means," cried Rosalie, and for an instant the two women were one in sympathy.
"Indigo," said Mrs. Arnold, "go over to Farmer Hedge's and procure a stout rope. If anything should happen——"
"Nothing will happen," said Indigo. But he obeyed her command, and departed in the direction of the nearest farmhouse. The moments were long drawn out with anxiety before he returned, until at last even Tristram's sallies could not draw a smile from the two ladies. So he coolly took out a pad of white paper, sharpened his pencil and sketched off the rapids.
"There he comes," cried Rosalie, peering up-stream.
"Harry!" murmured Mrs. Arnold, as her son rounded a bend of the river into view. Already he was coasting down without using his paddle. His brown arms rested on the handle before him and his muscles, seemingly relaxed, were tense for exertion.
A great log which had preceded him down had been whirled around like a chip and finally submerged, reappearing only in the clear water forty yards beyond. A similar fate surely awaited the light cockleshell which bore the beloved life.
As his canoe half-turned, Harry pushed his paddle into the water. Evidently it met a rock, for the prow righted at once and swept down a narrow channel where the rush was swiftest, but the foam seemed parted in two. Here again it caught, poised and spun around. It was fast on a ledge, and the young athlete was straining every sinew to push it off. While he was struggling in this peril, Indigo came down, staggering under a coil of thick rope.
"Indigo," said Mrs. Arnold, excitedly, "throw him the rope."
Indigo stood on the bank, but instead of obeying, ran farther down to a rock that jutted over the clear water where the rapids ended. On his way he heard the ladies shrieking.
"His oar is broken."
"But he has worked himself free," said Tristram, nonchalantly sketching. "He will win, confound it! Yet it's worth losing once to see that play of his right deltoid."
Harry's paddle had indeed broken in the last successful shove, but it was a double blade, and the half in his hand was used to good advantage. As he came sweeping down, his eyes intent on the prow before him, Tristram raised his hat and the ladies leaned forward, waving their kerchiefs. Harry answered their salute by standing up in the boat. It was a superb piece of bravado.
"He doesn't always wear a glove canoeing?" asked Mrs. Arnold of Indigo. Harry had just put ashore an eighth of a mile down stream.
"No, the mate to that one's lost," replied the valet, "and Mr. Harry told me to cut it up for his hand."
"When lost and where?" said Rosalie.
"I don't know that."
"Let me tell you."
"What a sibyl!" exclaimed brother Tristram.
"It was on Broad street, the afternoon of the fire. Don't you remember, when we saw him crossing the street so hurriedly and I remarked he had only one glove on."
"You must be mistaken," said Mrs. Arnold. "Harry was ill at home all that day."
Honora Riley, who washed for Mrs. Barlow, lived in a ramshackle, desolate district of the city which was appropriately known as "the Barrens." Colliers, sooty to the eyerims, trudging home; ashy dump-pickers; women cowled in drab shawls from beneath whose folds peeped pitchers brimmed with foam like the whipped surface of the milk pail, but the liquor was not milk; such were the sights Emily noticed when she called at Mrs. Riley's to inquire whether it was a spell of illness that had prevented her from coming to wash that Monday.
"Come in," a feeble voice answered her knock. "Oh, is it you, Miss Barlow?"
Emily saw that the supper on the table, laid for two, was untasted, and that the eyes of the woman who sat on the chair clasping her knees before her, were red.
"We thought you might be ill, Mrs. Riley," she said.
"It is heartsick I am, and too broken-hearted to work, dear. Land knows I have good reason or I wouldn't fail your mother."
"It isn't the pneumonia again, I hope."
"Shame and loneliness have come upon me in my old age," said Mrs. Riley, wiping her tears with the corner of her tidy apron. "They've taken Walter away."
"Who took him away?"
"The officer came with a warrant this morning—and he my only child, and the kindest boy to his mother, with no harm or wickedness in him at all, at all."
Walter was Mrs. Riley's only child, the last of seven. All the others had preceded their father to the grave, narrowing the resources of the little family with continual illnesses and funerals. Finally her husband himself, an honest roofer, had been fatally injured in a fall and had passed away, kissing the six-months' infant who would never know a father. This was long ago. For this child the good mother had provided by her willing labor, and he had grown to be her pride and hope, a promising boy of 14.
"'It was a bicycle he stole,' said the officer, 'away out in the country.' 'But I never meant to steal it, mother,' says Walter, and the boy was that truthful he never lied to a soul that breathes. 'I never meant to steal it, mother,' he says," repeated Mrs. Riley softly, her grief overmastering her.
"Did you say Walter stole a bicycle?" asked Emily, a vague reminiscence coming back to her.
"It was the bad company I warned him against, especially that Fenton boy and Mrs. Watts' little imp that has more tricks in him than a monkey. 'Keep away from them, Walter,' says I, but no, he would choose them for companions. And 'tis old Bagley, the junkman, I blame most of all. Upon my word, I believe he put them up to the trick. What would three little boys travel out to the country like that for, and ride away on three bicycles and then sell them to Bagley?"
"Walter sold it, then?" said Emily, thoughtfully.
"Indeed, Walter did not. 'Mine is safe and sound in the club-room,' says he; that's Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen he lets them use for a meeting place. 'It's in the club-room,' says Walter, 'and I wouldn't sell it, mother, but I was afraid to give it back; only I never meant to steal it.'"
"That I believe, Mrs. Riley, for I saw him take that bicycle."
Mrs. Riley's tears stopped flowing for a moment in her surprise. Then Emily related the story of her trip to Hillsboro and the conversation of the boys which she had overheard, not forgetting to explain her own share in frightening them away.
"So perhaps by my officiousness I converted an innocent prank into something more serious," she concluded.
"If it was the price of it only, I'd give double that, and land knows I've no stockingful, like some that go to the city for help, for I'd rather rub my knuckles off than beg," said the good woman.
There was a piece of old carpet stuffed in one window-pane, adequate in summer, no doubt, but hardly impregnable to the winter winds—and Emily judged from the table before her that more than once the mother and son had sat down to a Barmecide feast, in which the imagination had to be called on to help appease the palate. So it was by inheritance that the Whistler came by his aversion to Shagarach's charity.
"I think it strange Walter and I have never become acquainted."
"Indeed he knows all your goodness to me."
"Is he still at school?"
"Graduated this year, and his masters recommend him for the best-tempered boy and as innocent—but full of the old Harry, like his father, that would always be dancing, even with seven children between him and his youth."
"What a pity if he should turn out bad now after you've made so many sacrifices for him."
"Oh, for the sacrifices, Walter's willing to take his share. With his paper route he would bring me in sometimes $2 a week, and there was nothing he wouldn't do, distribute handbills, deliver baskets in the meat-market on Saturday nights. Look, here's the shoeblack's kit he just bought. Come in, Miss Barlow."
Emily entered the small side room which completed Mrs. Riley's suite.
"There's the blacking-box. Bought it himself with his own savings."
"But he was too changeable. I should think he would have done better to stick to one thing."
"That's what I told him. But you know how a boy is fickle-minded. 'Get me something good, mother,' says he. There's the little cradle I rocked him in that I kept all these years—" Emily herself could hardly check her tears at thought of the mother rocking this empty memento.
"His Aunt Mary gave it to me—not that we couldn't afford it—plenty and to spare I had when my husband was alive, but it wasn't lucky to buy a cradle for your first baby, she said, and so I rocked them all in hers, and now six of them are in heaven with their father, God ha' mercy, and Walter, all that was left me, is in the lockup this night with the bad people."
Walter's little room was bare but not squalid. A knockabout suit hung on pegs at one side, and a washbowl stood on a cheap commode, like a prophecy of cleanliness in the occupant.
"Don't worry, Mrs. Riley. Since I helped Walter into this scrape, I am bound to help him out of it."
"Heaven bless you, if you can save my Walter—and I know you would try if you knew him. The lovingest boy, full of mischief like his father, but he'd give the blood out of his heart to a soul in trouble. Oh, well I knew he had something on his mind all these weeks. For he wouldn't run up stairs two steps at a time, as he used to, and whistle so that it was sweeter and louder than a cage full of canaries. When I heard him whistle low I knew it was something troubling his mind. 'Yes, mother, it is,' says he, but that was all I could get out of him."
"Suppose I bring a very great lawyer to be his counsel," said Emily, deeply moved by the lonely mother's sorrow, and haunted, too, by a dim remembrance of the central face among the three gamins—a frank boy-face, with red lips and cheeks. "Wouldn't he stand a better chance of getting off?"
"Just as you say, Miss Barlow," answered the sad woman, brightening a little.
"He is very busy, but I feel sure that he will attend to this if I ask him. I'll see him to-night. Don't brood over it too much and never mind about the washing. I will have Mr. Shagarach call at the station and talk with Walter, and then let you know. Good-night."
"Good-night and bless you," said Mrs. Riley, holding the little candlestick high at the landing. Emily picked her way down two crazy flights of stairs and a doorway barred with sprawling children on to the sidewalk. "While we wink, the lightning may have flashed," was a motto she had copied out of an old book of maxims and embroidered into her life; so, without taking time even for a wink, she hailed a passing car that would carry her near Shagarach's house.
Not all that Mrs. Riley had said of her boy, the Whistler, should be set down to a mother's partiality. Mischievous Walter was, if the unquenchable avidity for excitement which reigns at fourteen entitles a boy to such an aspersion. The five hours' rigid confinement at a school desk especially provoked him to perpetual fidget, and no teacher had yet been found who could make him buckle to his books so long. Yet he was a favorite with one and all, less because of his deft hand at the drawing lesson than because of the real salubrity of his nature, which made him exceptional among the slum children who were his fellow-pupils.
To these very schoolmates Walter figured as a hero, an Admirable Crichton, invincible at all games and master of most things worth knowing for boys. There was no swimmer of his age could equal him in grace or speed, and his dive from the top of the railroad dock was famous in local annals. So was his successful set-to in the brewery yard with Lefty Dinan, the Tenth street cock-of-the walk.
Yet for all his proficiency in the art of give, take and avoid, Walter was the least combative of boys, being, as his mother said, "loving" in disposition. The great gray Percherons with shaggy fetlocks, that drew the fire-engines, knew this, and admitted him to a brotherly comradeship, bowing with delight when he patted and stroked them. Mechanics found him handy beyond his years, and often employed him at odd jobs. For he had a carpenter's eye for short distances and a surveyor's for long, and there was no tool that did not fit his fingers. If he had run away to join the circus last summer, that was not the unpardonable sin.