Certain things about the dinner at the Dallas house will always be obscure to
me. Dallas was something in the Fish Commission, and I remember his reeling off
fish eggs in billions while we ate our caviar. He had some particular stunt he
had been urging the government to for years—something about forbidding
the establishment of mills and factories on river-banks—it seems they
kill the fish, either the smoke, or the noise, or something they pour into the
water.
Mrs. Dallas was there, I think. Of course, I suppose she must have been; and
there was a woman in yellow: I took her in to dinner, and I remember she
loosened my clams for me so I could get them. But the only real person at the
table was a girl across in white, a sublimated young woman who was as brilliant
as I was stupid, who never by any chance looked directly at me, and who
appeared and disappeared across the candles and orchids in a sort of halo of
radiance.
When the dinner had progressed from salmon to roast, and the conversation had
done the same thing—from fish to scandal—the yellow gown turned to
me. “We have been awfully good, haven’t we, Mr. Blakeley?”
she asked. “Although I am crazy to hear, I have not said
‘wreck’ once. I’m sure you must feel like the survivor of
Waterloo, or something of the sort.”
“If you want me to tell you about the wreck,” I said, glancing
across the table, “I’m sorry to be disappointing, but I don’t
remember anything.”
“You are fortunate to be able to forget it.” It was the first word
Miss West had spoken directly to me, and it went to my head.
“There are some things I have not forgotten,” I said, over the
candles. “I recall coming to myself some time after, and that a girl, a
beautiful girl—”
“Ah!” said the lady in yellow, leaning forward breathlessly. Miss
West was staring at me coldly, but, once started, I had to stumble on.
“That a girl was trying to rouse me, and that she told me I had been on
fire twice already.” A shudder went around the table.
“But surely that isn’t the end of the story,” Mrs. Dallas put
in aggrievedly. “Why, that’s the most tantalizing thing I ever
heard.”
“I’m afraid that’s all,” I said. “She went her
way and I went mine. If she recalls me at all, she probably thinks of me as a
weak-kneed individual who faints like a woman when everything is over.”
“What did I tell you?” Mrs. Dallas asserted triumphantly. “He
fainted, did you hear? when everything was over! He hasn’t begun to tell
it.”
I would have given a lot by that time if I had not mentioned the girl. But
McKnight took it up there and carried it on.
“Blakeley is a regular geyser,” he said. “He never spouts
until he reaches the boiling point. And by that same token, although he
hasn’t said much about the Lady of the Wreck, I think he is crazy about
her. In fact, I am sure of it. He thinks he has locked his secret in the caves
of his soul, but I call you to witness that he has it nailed to his face. Look
at him!”
I squirmed miserably and tried to avoid the startled eyes of the girl across
the table. I wanted to choke McKnight and murder the rest of the party.
“It isn’t fair,” I said as coolly as I could. “I have
my fingers crossed; you are five against one.”
“And to think that there was a murder on that very train,” broke in
the lady in yellow. “It was a perfect crescendo of horrors, wasn’t
it? And what became of the murdered man, Mr. Blakeley?”
McKnight had the sense to jump into the conversation and save my reply.
“They say good Pittsburgers go to Atlantic City when they die,” he
said. “So—we are reasonably certain the gentleman did not go
to the seashore.”
The meal was over at last, and once in the drawing-room it was clear we hung
heavy on the hostess’ hands. “It is so hard to get people for
bridge in September,” she wailed, “there is absolutely nobody in
town. Six is a dreadful number.”
“It’s a good poker number,” her husband suggested.
The matter settled itself, however. I was hopeless, save as a dummy; Miss West
said it was too hot for cards, and went out on a balcony that overlooked the
Mall. With obvious relief Mrs. Dallas had the card-table brought, and I was
face to face with the minute I had dreaded and hoped for for a week.
Now it had come, it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I do not know if
there was a moon, but there was the urban substitute for it—the arc
light. It threw the shadow of the balcony railing in long black bars against
her white gown, and as it swung sometimes her face was in the light. I drew a
chair close so that I could watch her.
“Do you know,” I said, when she made no effort at speech,
“that you are a much more formidable person to-night, in that gown, than
you were the last time I saw you?”
The light swung on her face; she was smiling faintly. “The hat with the
green ribbons!” she said. “I must take it back; I had almost
forgotten.”
“I have not forgotten—anything.” I pulled myself up short.
This was hardly loyalty to Richey. His voice came through the window just then,
and perhaps I was wrong, but I thought she raised her head to listen.
“Look at this hand,” he was saying. “Regular pianola: you
could play it with your feet.”
“He’s a dear, isn’t he?” Alison said unexpectedly.
“No matter how depressed and downhearted I am, I always cheer up when I
see Richey.”
“He’s more than that,” I returned warmly. “He is the
most honorable fellow I know. If he wasn’t so much that way, he would
have a career before him. He wanted to put on the doors of our offices,
Blakeley and McKnight, P. B. H., which is Poor But Honest.”
From my comparative poverty to the wealth of the girl beside me was a single
mental leap. From that wealth to the grandfather who was responsible for it was
another.
“I wonder if you know that I had been to Pittsburg to see your
grandfather when I met you?” I said.
“You?” She was surprised.
“Yes. And you remember the alligator bag that I told you was exchanged
for the one you cut off my arm?” She nodded expectantly. “Well, in
that valise were the forged Andy Bronson notes, and Mr. Gilmore’s
deposition that they were forged.”
She was on her feet in an instant. “In that bag!” she cried.
“Oh, why didn’t you tell me that before? Oh, it’s so
ridiculous, so—so hopeless. Why, I could—”
She stopped suddenly and sat down again. “I do not know that I am sorry,
after all,” she said after a pause. “Mr. Bronson was a friend of my
father’s. I—I suppose it was a bad thing for you, losing the
papers?”
“Well, it was not a good thing,” I conceded. “While we are on
the subject of losing things, do you remember—do you know that I still
have your gold purse?”
She did not reply at once. The shadow of a column was over her face, but I
guessed that she was staring at me.
“You have it!” She almost whispered.
“I picked it up in the street car,” I said, with a cheerfulness I
did not feel. “It looks like a very opulent little purse.”
Why didn’t she speak about the necklace? For just a careless word to make
me sane again!
“You!” she repeated, horror-stricken. And then I produced the purse
and held it out on my palm. “I should have sent it to you before, I
suppose, but, as you know, I have been laid up since the wreck.”
We both saw McKnight at the same moment. He had pulled the curtains aside and
was standing looking out at us. The tableau of give and take was unmistakable;
the gold purse, her outstretched hand, my own attitude. It was over in a
second; then he came out and lounged on the balcony railing.
“They’re mad at me in there,” he said airily, “so I
came out. I suppose the reason they call it bridge is because so many people
get cross over it.”
The heat broke up the card group soon after, and they all came out for the
night breeze. I had no more words alone with Alison.
I went back to the Incubator for the night. We said almost nothing on the way
home; there was a constraint between us for the first time that I could
remember. It was too early for bed, and so we smoked in the living-room and
tried to talk of trivial things. After a time even those failed, and we sat
silent. It was McKnight who finally broached the subject.
“And so she wasn’t at Seal Harbor at all.”
“No.”
“Do you know where she was, Lollie?”
“Somewhere near Cresson.”
“And that was the purse—her purse—with the broken necklace in
it?”
“Yes, it was. You understand, don’t you, Rich, that, having given
her my word, I couldn’t tell you?”
“I understand a lot of things,” he said, without bitterness.
We sat for some time and smoked. Then Richey got up and stretched himself.
“I’m off to bed, old man,” he said. “Need any help with
that game arm of yours?”
“No, thanks,” I returned.
I heard him go into his room and lock the door. It was a bad hour for me. The
first shadow between us, and the shadow of a girl at that.
