Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Part 28

"You are very kind. It's the small satchel--a lot of stuff in it all mixed up. A bottle about as long as your hand."

Opening the bag in Congdon's berth Archie's hand fell upon a photograph that lay on top. The face swam before his eyes and he pitched forward in his agitation, b.u.mping his head viciously against the window. It was a photograph of Isabel Perry, an Isabel somewhat younger than the girl he knew, but Isabel--indubitably Isabel! Another dive into the bag's recesses brought up the photograph of Edith Congdon that had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the frame in the Bailey Harbor cottage. This was explicable enough, but the likeness of Isabel in Congdon's satchel was utterly inexplicable and astounding. He groped for the bottle and crept back to the smoking compartment.

"That's right; thanks. One teaspoonful in water if you don't mind. This is really quite unpardonable. You are very good to bother with me; I'd counted on the porter's help. Had a trained nurse for a while but you can't go traveling over the country with a nurse, and the woman had begun to bore me to death. I'd rather die than have doctors and nurses trailing me about."

"They're odious," Archie a.s.sented. "There! Now have a cigarette to kill the taste."

"Good idea! One more and I'll turn in."

A cigarette is the most insignificant of peace offerings, and yet Archie experienced a pleasurable thrill as Putney Congdon accepted one from his case. They were very good cigarettes, of a brand with which Archie had supplied himself generously at Tiffin and Congdon expressed his approval of them.

Congdon, the custodian of a photograph of Isabel Perry, demanded a more careful inspection, and Archie studied him with renewed interest. Isabel had in no way indicated that she knew Congdon; it was Mrs. Congdon that she was trying to serve, and Isabel was hardly a girl to bestow her photograph upon a married man. Congdon had no business with the photograph and Archie bitterly resented its presence in the man's luggage.

He jumped when Congdon announced that he was ready to turn in, followed him to the berth, and helped him to undress, even touching the wounded shoulder.

"That little scratch there's coming along all right now, but the bone's sore; suppose I'll feel weather changes as old chaps do who have rheumatism."

"Whistle if you need anything in the night," said Archie, and allowed the porter to push him into the upper berth, the first he had ever occupied. Wakened now and then by unusual jars, he heard nothing of Congdon. He stifled a desire to steal Isabel's photograph and in time slept the sleep of exhaustion.

When they were roused by the porter he helped Congdon into his clothes, chose a clean s.h.i.+rt for him and laughingly offered to shave him.

Congdon regarded him quizzically.

"You're a mighty good fellow! It's about time I was introducing myself.

My name is Congdon. I live in New York; just taking a little trip for my health; going up into the lakes."

"Comly's my name. No particular plans myself. Just knocking about a bit."

By the time Archie had made his toilet they were running into the Chicago station.

"Suppose we have breakfast in the station restaurant?" Congdon suggested. "If I go up to the University Club I'm likely to run into somebody who'll want me to do things. And I'm not up to it; really I'm not."

"I understand perfectly," said Archie.

"And see here, old man; I don't want to force myself on you, but you've been awfully decent to me. Don't be alarmed, but to tell you the honest truth my nerves are in such a state that I'm afraid to be alone. If a poor neurasthenic won't bore you too much I wish you'd let me tag you till my train leaves tonight. I promise not to be a nuisance and if it becomes unbearable, just chuck me!"

They not only breakfasted together, but after motoring through the parks they spent an hour at the art inst.i.tute and then Archie acted as host at luncheon. The fear of being accosted by an acquaintance made him nervous, and his anxiety seemed to be shared by Congdon, who chose an eating place unfrequented by travelers. By this time Archie was fully committed to the further journey into Michigan and contributed his half to the purchase of a stateroom for the trip.

"I'm using you; you can see that I'm using you, making a valet of you, dragging you into the wilderness!" exclaimed Congdon. "But I always was a selfish whelp."

He made the confession with a grim smile, and an impatient sweep of his free arm as though brus.h.i.+ng himself out of existence.

Archie's intimate friends were few; men thought him difficult, or looked upon him as an invalid to be left to his own devices; and yet he felt that he had known Putney Congdon for years.

On a bench in Grant Park Congdon swung himself into a confidential att.i.tude.

"Life's the devil's own business," he said with a deep sigh. "I've got to a place where I don't care what happens--everything black anywhere I look. I've been trying for the past four or five years to do things G.o.d Almighty never intended me to do. I was happily married; two beautiful children; none finer,--but I'll shorten up the story so you can see what a monkey fate has made of me. My father's a crank, a genius in his way, but decidedly eccentric. My mother died when I was a youngster and as I was an only child father tried all sorts of schemes of educating me, whimsical notions, one after another. The result was I've never got a look in anywhere; unfitted for everything. After I married he still tried to hold the rein on me, wanted to put me into businesses I hated and kept meddling with my domestic affairs. All this made me weak and irresolute. I have a mechanical turn--not a strong bent but the only thing that ever tugged at me very hard. Almost made some important inventions, but only almost. About the time I'd get a good start father would shoot me off into something else, and if I refused he'd cut off my allowance. Never set me up for myself; keeps me dependent on his bounty.

Humiliating; positively humiliating!"

"I can imagine so," Archie agreed. He had now got the explanation of the blue prints in the Bailey Harbor house and found himself deeply interested in Congdon's recital.

"Well, sir, I was about to offer myself as exhibit _A_ on a slab in the nearest morgue," Congdon continued, "when I met a young woman who _seemed_ to understand me, and right there's where I made the greatest mistake of my life. It was last spring when that happened. Talk about plausibility, Comly! The word never had any meaning until that girl came along. She made a fool of me; that's the short of it. I took her into dinner at the house of some friends right here in Chicago--I lived here about a month trying to learn a patent medicine business father had gone into. The thing was a fake; a ghastly imposition on the public. Such things have a weird fascination for father; it's simply an obsession, for he doesn't need the money."

He was wandering into a description of various other dubious businesses that had attracted Eliphalet Congdon when Archie, nervously twisting a folded newspaper, brought him back to the girl who had played so mischievous a part in his life.

"Oh yes! Well, I was ready to jump at anything and she diagnosed my case with marvelous penetration. Really, Comly, it was staggering! She said I faced life with the soul of a coward; she'd got an inkling, I suppose, of my father's freakishness and injustice; and she told me I lacked a.s.surance and initiative. Suggested that I go armed and shoot any one who stepped on my toes. All this with a laugh, of course; but nevertheless I felt that she really meant it. She said a man can do anything he really determines to do; it's up to him. She recited a piece of verse to the effect that a man fears his fate too much if he won't put his life to the test. I was fool enough to believe it. I tried to follow her advice. It ended in my having a row with my father that beat all the other rows I ever had with him and he turned against my wife--said she was trying to estrange us. And when I ran away to escape from the nasty mess he sent her telegrams in my name threatening to kidnap the children and he did in fact kidnap my little daughter.

s.n.a.t.c.hed her away from her mother and carried her out to one of his farms in Ohio. But my wife's a great woman, Comly; one of the dearest, bravest women in the world. She's played a clever trick on the old gentleman and got the child back again and I'm d.a.m.ned glad of it. I got a message that the little girl's up in Michigan, so that's really where I'm headed for. I don't dare believe that _she_ sent me the message, but I hope to G.o.d she did. That's the way things have gone with me ever since I listened to that girl. Everything all upside down. She's a siren; a dangerous character; I ought to have known better!"

"She's beautiful, I suppose," Archie ventured, fanning himself with his hat.

"Devilishly handsome!" Congdon exclaimed.

Archie had suffered a blow but he was meeting it bravely. Having believed that Isabel had given him this same advice quite spontaneously, it was with a shock that he realized that she had offered it in similar terms to Congdon. There was no question as to the ident.i.ty of the girl who had bidden Congdon plant his back to the wall and defy the world; no one but Isabel would ever have done that.

"And this young woman," Archie asked after a long glance at the lake, "pardon me if I ask whether she affected you in a sentimental way? Did you well, er--"

"If you mean am I in love with her," began Congdon, "I believe I can say honestly that it hardly amounts to that. And yet she made a curious impression on me. You know how it is, Comly! A man may love his wife with all his heart and soul and he may mean to be awfully square with her; and yet there may be a face or a voice now and then that will, well, you know, make him wobble a little. I did think about that girl a lot; it was d.a.m.ned funny how I thought of her. She'd pop up in my mind when I had absolutely willed that I would never think of her again. And yet the more I resolved to get her out of my mind the more stubbornly she'd keep coming into my thoughts.

"I suppose in a way it was my pride; I hated to think that a girl as pretty and clever and attractive as she is thought me a contemptible, slinking coward. We all want to be heroes to women; it's one of the d.a.m.ned weaknesses of our s.e.x, Comly. I'd ceased to be a hero to my wife, who's the gentlest and most long suffering woman alive, but this other woman rather gave me hope that I might qualify for the finals in _her_ eyes. Now, Comly, I see that you're a steady-going fellow; never thrown off your balance; not a chap to be made a fool of by a girl who amuses herself at your expense at a dinner party. I wish you'd tell me frankly just what you think of this?"

"I'd say," replied Archie, attempting to meet this demand with a philosophic air, "I'd say that the girl probably played the game on every man she thought she could impose on. Merely a part of her social technique; a stunt, so to speak, which she'd found would make us weak males sit up and take notice. If I were you I'd clean forget the whole business; on the other hand there's the suspicion that you appealed to her strongly, a girlish fancy, perhaps, and she thought you were the sort of fellow that would be hit harder if she roused you to action. I tell you, Congdon, women are curious creatures. Just when you think you've got your hand on a pretty bird she flutters away and sings merrily in another part of the wood."

"Right!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Congdon. "By George, that expresses it exactly!"

"About your child, up there in Michigan," said Archie, pleased that he was scoring as a man of wisdom, "it's wholly possible that your wife sent you the wire as an approach to a reconciliation."

"Oh, Lord, no! You don't know my wife, Comly. You see I got answers to the telegrams father sent her in my name and she hit right back at me!

Don't you believe that she's coaxing me to come back to her. And here's the message I got out there in Ohio that caused me to jump for the train."

He produced from his pocket a crumpled telegram which read:

Your daughter is in safe hands at Huddleston, Michigan. Proceed to that point with serenity and contemplate the stars with a tranquil spirit.

This was so clearly the Governor's work that Archie found it difficult to refrain from laughing.

"My wife," Congdon continued, "would never send a message like that; you may be sure of it. You may think it queer that I set off, when I was ill and not feeling up to the trip, on the strength of a message like that.

But ever since that girl told me I oughtn't to hesitate when I heard the bugle I can't resist the temptation to act on the spur of the moment.

I'm a fool, I suppose. Tell me I'm a fool, Comly."

"I shall do nothing of the kind. There's always the chance that the girl had sized you up right and gave you sound advice. Don't answer if you don't want to, but have you really done anything, anything you wouldn't have done if that girl hadn't told you to step on the world a little harder?"

Congdon's free hand worked convulsively; he bent closer to Archie and whispered:

"I've killed a man!"

"You murdered a man!" Archie gasped.

"Not a question about it, my dear fellow! It was up at my house on the Maine sh.o.r.e. After father had driven my wife away I went there to look at the ruins of my home. A sentimental pilgrimage, feeling that I'd made a mess of everything and mighty blue. I was mooning through the house when I ran into a burglar. The scoundrel had gone to bed in the guest room. I was scared to death when I opened the door and spotted him but I thought of that girl's advice and pulled my gun and shot him. Couldn't have missed the fellow across a bedroom. As I ran down the stairway he took a shot at me; that's what's the matter with my shoulder. I got up to Portland and a doctor I know there fixed me up and kept the thing dark. I pa.s.sed at the hospital as the victim of a pistol wound accidentally inflicted."