The Bartlett Mystery Part 27

She lunched in a cheap restaurant and walked to her lodgings. Color flooded her cheeks, but she was appalled by her loneliness, by the emptiness of her life. To bind books and to live for binding books, that was not living. She had peeped into Paradise, but the gate had been shut in her face, and the bookbinding world seemed an intolerably flat and stale rag-fair in comparison.

How was she to live it through, she asked herself. When she went up to her room the once snug and homely place disgusted her. How was she to live through the vast void of that afternoon alone in that apartment?

How bridge the vast void of to-morrow? The salt had lost its savor; she tasted ashes; life was all sand of the desert; she would not see him any more. The resolution which had carried her through the interview with Carshaw failed her now, and she blamed herself for the murder of herself.

"Oh, how could I have done such a thing!" she cried, bursting into tears, with her hat still on and her head on the table.

She had to write a letter to the "agent," telling him that she did not mean to keep the rendezvous at East Orange, since she had obtained other work, and with difficulty summoned the requisite energy. Every effort was nauseous to her. Her whole nature was absorbed in digesting her one great calamity.

Next morning it was the same. Her arms hung listlessly by her side. She evaded little domestic tasks. Though her clothes were new, a girl can always find sewing and st.i.tching. A certain s.h.i.+rtwaist needed slight adjustment, but her fingers fumbled a simple task. She pa.s.sed the time somehow till half past four. At that hour there was a ring at the outer door. In the absorption of her grief she did not hear it, though it was "his" hour. A step sounded on the stairs, and this she heard; but she thought it was Miss Goodman bringing tea.

Then, brusquely, without any knock, the door opened, and she saw before her Carshaw.

"Oh!" she screamed, in an ecstasy of joy, and was in his arms.

The rope which bound her had snapped thus suddenly for the simple reason that Carshaw had promised never to come again, and was very strict, as she knew, in keeping his pledged word. Therefore, until the moment when her distraught eyes took in the fact of his presence, she had not the faintest hope or thought of seeing him for many a day to come, if ever.

Seeing him all at once in the midst of her desert of despair, her reason swooned, all fixed principles capsized, and instinct swept her triumphantly, as the whirlwind bears a feather, to his ready embrace.

He, for his part, had broken his promise because he could not help it.

He had to come--so he came. His dismissal had been too sudden to be credible, to find room in his brain. It continued to have something of the character of a dream, and he was here now to convince himself that the dream was true.

Moreover, in her manner of sending him away, in some of her words, there had been something unreal and unconvincing, with broken hints of love, even as she denied love, which haunted and puzzled his memory. If he had made a thousand promises he would still have to return to her.

"Well," said he, his face alight for joy as she moaned on his breast, "what is it all about? You unreliable little half of a nerve, Winnie!"

"I can't help it; kiss me--only once!" panted Winifred, with tears streaming down her up-turned face.

Carshaw needed no bidding. Kiss her once! Well, a man should smile.

"What is it all about?" he demanded, when Winifred was quite breathless.

"Am I loved, then?"

Her forehead was on his shoulder, and she did not answer.

"It seems so," he whispered. "Silence is said to mean consent. But why, then, was I not loved the day before yesterday?"

Still Winifred dared not answer. The frenzy was pa.s.sing, the moral nature re-arising, stronger than ever, claiming its own. She had promised and failed! What she did was not well for him.

"Tell me," he urged, with a lover's eagerness. "You'll have to, some time, you know."

"You promised not to come. You promised definitely," said Winifred, disengaging herself from him.

"Could I help coming?" cried he. "I was in the greatest bewilderment and misery!"

"So you will always come, even if you promise not to?"

"But I won't promise not to! Where is the need now? You love me, I love you!"

Winifred turned away from him, went to the window and looked out, seeing nothing, for the eyes of the soul were busy. Her lips were now firmly set, and during the minute that she stood there a rapid train of thought and purpose pa.s.sed through her mind. She had promised to give him up, and she would go through with it. It was for him--and it was sweet, though bitter, to be a martyr. But she recognized clearly that so long as he knew where to find her the thing could never be done. She made up her mind to be gone from those lodgings by that hour the next day, and to be buried from him in some other part of the great city. She would never in that case be able to ask him for help to keep going, without giving her address, but in a few days she would have work at the new bookbinder's. This well settled in her mind, she turned inward to him, saying:

"Miss Goodman will soon bring up tea. Come, let us be happy to-day.

You want to know if I love you? Well, the answer is yes, yes; so now you know, and can never doubt. I want you to stay a long time this afternoon, and I invite you to be my dear, dear guest on one condition--that you don't ask me why I told you that awful fib the day before yesterday, for I don't mean to tell you!"

Of course Carshaw took her again in his arms, and, without breaking her conditions, stayed with her till nearly six. She was sedately gay all the time, but, on kissing him good-by, she wept quietly, and as quietly she said to her landlady when he was gone:

"Miss Goodman, I am going away to-morrow--for always, I'm afraid."

Soon after this six o'clock struck. At ten minutes past the hour Miss Goodman brought up two letters.

Without looking at the handwriting on the envelopes, Winifred tore open one, laying the other on a writing-desk, this latter being from the agent in answer to the one she had written. She had told him that she did not mean to keep the appointment at East Orange, and he now a.s.sured her that he had certainly never made any appointment for her at East Orange. The thing was some blunder. New York impresarios did not make appointments in East Orange. He asked for an explanation.

Pity that she did not open this letter before the other--or the other was of a nature to drive the existence of the agent's letter--of any letter--out of her head; for days afterward that all-important message lay on the table unopened.

The note which Winifred did read was from the bookbinding manager who had all but engaged her that day. He now informed her that he would have no use for her services. The clergyman in the taxi had followed very effectively on Winifred's trail.

She was stunned by this final blow. Her eyes gazed into vacancy. What she was to do now she did not know. The next day she had to go away into strange lodgings, with hardly any money, without any possibility of her applying again to Rex, without support of any sort. She had never known real poverty, for her "aunt" had always more or less been in funds; and the prospect appalled her. She would face it, however, at all costs, and, the bookbinding failing her, her mind naturally recurred, with a gasp of hope, to the singing.

There was the appointment at East Orange at eight. She looked at the clock; she might have time, though it would mean an instant rush. She would go. True, she had written the agent to say that she would not, and he might have so advised his client. But perhaps he had not had time to do this, since she had written him so late. In any case, there was a chance that she should meet the person in question, and then she could explain. Suddenly she leaped up, hurried on her hat and coat, and ran out of the house. In a few minutes she was at the Hudson Tube, bound for Hoboken and East Orange.

Of course it was a mad thing to leave an unopened letter on the table, but just then poor Winifred was nearly out of her mind.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CRASH

When Carshaw came, with lightsome step and heart freed from care--for in some respects he was irresponsible as any sane man could be--to visit his beloved Winifred next day, he was met by a frightened and somewhat incoherent Miss Goodman.

"Not been home all night! Surely you can offer some explanation further than that maddening statement?" cried he, when the shock of her news had sent the color from his face and the joy from his eyes.

"Oh, sir, I don't know what to say. Indeed, I am not to blame."

Miss Goodman, kind-hearted soul, was more flurried now by Carshaw's manner than by Winifred's inexplicable disappearance.

"Blame, my good woman, who is imputing blame?" he blazed at her. "But there's a hidden purpose, a convincing motive, in her going out and not returning. Give me some clue, some reason. A clear thought now, the right word from you, may save hours of useless search."

"How can I give any clues?" cried the bewildered landlady. "The dear young creature was crying all day fit to break her heart after the lady called--"

"The lady! What lady?"

"Your mother, sir. Didn't she tell you? Mrs. Carshaw was here the day before yesterday, and she must have spoken very cruelly to Winifred to make her so downcast for hours. I was that sorry for her--"

Now, Carshaw had the rare faculty--rare, that is, in men of a happy-go-lucky temperament--of becoming a human iceberg in moments of danger or difficulty. The blank absurdity of Miss Goodman's implied a.s.sertion that Winifred had run away--though, indeed, running away was uppermost in the girl's thoughts--had roused him to fiery wrath.

But the haphazard mention of his mother's visit, the coincidence of Winifred's unexpectedly strange behavior and equally unexpected transition to a wildly declared love, revealed some of the hidden sources of events, and over the volcano of his soul he imposed a layer of ice. He even smiled pleasantly as he begged Miss Goodman to dry her eyes and be seated.