Part 47 (1/2)

”I should think there were plenty of them to attend to that,” she said, when he had expressed, as delicately as he could, his misgivings as to his own lack of rigor. ”Whatever he did, and however bad it was, they've got all the power in the world to punish him, and they're going to do it. When there's just one person on earth to show him a little pity, I shouldn't think it could be too much.” She added, after a second or two of silence: ”He was sorry you didn't go in to see him. He missed you.

I-I think he's going to cling to you just like a drowning man, you know, to a hand that's stretched out to him from a boat. Very likely he'll have to drown; but so long as the hand is there, it's-it's something.”

In this speech, which was long for Jennie and betokened her growing authority, there were two or three points on which Bob pondered as he drove them homeward from the Brig. Jennie sat beside him, Lizzie in the back seat. He took the longest and prettiest ways so as to give them something like an outing.

It was the afternoon of the day on which he had seen Stenhouse, and in the interval he had been thinking out a program. Whatever the restrictions he must put upon himself with regard to the boy, his duty to protect and distract Jennie and her family was clear. Teddy had also given him to understand that, more than anything done for himself, this would contribute to his peace of mind. Done for his mother and sisters, it would be done for him, and the doer could be sure that he wasn't loosening the foundations of society. Even where there was a born criminal to be judged, and perhaps put out of the way, something was gained when the innocent could be saved to any possible degree from suffering with the guilty.

In this, too, he was not without an eye to Indiana Avenue. Though he had no experience of suburban life, he was intuitive enough to feel sure that, to the neighbors, Jennie's marriage had a ”queer look,” and the more so since she was not living with her husband, now that he was back from South America. To counteract this, he meant to show himself in the street as much as possible, parading his car before the door. There must be no cheap gossip as to Jennie based on lack of his devotion, even though all arrangements between her and himself were no more than provisional.

To that point, then, his course was clear. He could not console the mother, whose reason was stricken at its base, nor the three young girls whose lives were overshadowed by tragedy; but he could divert their minds from dwelling too much on calamity by bringing in a new interest.

He could make it a big interest. He could enlarge the interest in proportion to their need; and, as Jennie spoke, it dawned on him that they themselves began to foresee that their need might be great indeed.

”They've got all the power in the world to punish him; and they're going to do it.” ”He's going to cling to you like a drowning man. Very likely he'll have to drown.” Jennie had had one or two interviews with Stenhouse, and perhaps had inferred from that great man's talk the difficulties of his task.

But the help she gave Bob was in her response to his misgivings. ”When there's just one person on earth to show him a little pity, I shouldn't think it could be too much.” It couldn't be too much-not possibly. The worst enemy of mankind had a right to ”a little pity,” and even Judas Iscariot had received it. If Teddy didn't get it from him, Bob, he wouldn't get it from anyone-his mother and sisters apart. All civilized men were lined up against him, and doubtless could not be lined in any other way. In that case, punishment was a.s.sured, and, as Jennie said, there were plenty of people to take care of its infliction. He, Bob Collingham, since he stood alone, might well forget the heavy score against the boy in ”bucking him up” to meet what lay ahead of him.

He worked this out before driving Jennie and her mother to their door, after which he waited for Gussie and Gladys to come home from work to take them, too, for an airing. Jennie sat beside him, as on the earlier drive, the two younger girls in the seat behind.

To both, the expedition was as the first stage of a glorification which might carry them up to any heights. Taken in connection with what they suffered on account of Teddy, it was like drinking an unmingled draught of the very bitter and the very sweet. Hardly able to lift up their heads from shame, they nevertheless felt the distinction of going out in an expensive high-powered car with a gentleman of wealth and position, who thus publicly proclaimed himself their relative.

”This'll settle Addie Inglis and Samuella Weatherby,” Gladys whispered, in reference to some taunt or aspersion which Gussie understood. ”Say, Gus, he's some sport, isn't he? Jen sure did cop a twenty-cylinder.”

But Gussie had already turned over her new leaf. From the corner where she reclined with the grace of one accustomed from birth to this style of conveyance, she arched her lovely neck and turned her lovely head just enough to convey a hint of reprimand.

”Gladys dear, momma wouldn't like you to use that kind of language.

Remember that now we must carry out her wishes all the more because she isn't able to enforce them. Your companions may not always be Hattie Belweather and Suns.h.i.+ne Bright, and so-”

”Say, Gus, what's struck you? Has goin' out in a swell rig like this gone to your head?”

”Yes, dear; perhaps it has. And if you'll take my advice you'll let it go to yours.”

The only immediate response from Gladys was a c.o.c.king of the eye and a ”clk” of the tongue against the cheek, something like a Zulu vowel; but Gussie noticed that in Palisade Park, where they descended from the car to make Bob's acquaintance, Gladys reverted to the intonation and idiom in which she had first picked up her English.

The jaunt tended to deepen the sensation which had been creeping over the girls within the past few days, that they were heroines of a dramatic romance. They had figured in the papers, their beauty, personalities, and histories becoming points of vital national concern.

One legend made them the scions of an ancient English family fallen on evil days, but now to be revived through alliance with the Collinghams, while another came near enough to the truth to embody the Scarborough tradition and connect them with the historic house in Cambridge. In no case was there any waste of the picturesque, the detail that Jennie had been an artist's model and ”the most beautiful woman in America” being especially underscored.

It was only little by little that Gussie and Gladys came to a sense of this importance, thus finding themselves enabled to react to some small degree against their sense of disgrace. In the shop, Gussie had heard Corinne whisper to a customer:

”That pretty girl over there is the sister of Follett, who murdered Flynn, and whose sister made that romantic marriage with the banker.”

Though she glanced up from the feather she was twisting only through the tail of her eye, Gussie could reckon the excitement caused by this announcement. When it had been made a second time, and a third, as new customers came in, she saw herself an a.s.set to the shop. Stared at, wondered at, discussed, and appraised, she began to feel as princesses and actresses when recognized in streets.

Similarly, Hattie Belweather had run to Gladys to report what Miss Flossie Grimm had said over the counter, in the intervals of displaying stockings.

”See that little red-headed, snub-nosed thing over there? That's the Follett child, sister to the guy that shot the detective and the girl that married the banker sport. Some hummer he must be. Jennie, the married one's name is. They say she's had an offer of a hundred plunks a week to go into vawdeville. Fast color? Oh, my, yes! We don't carry any other kind.”

Thus Gladys began to find it difficult to discern between notoriety and eminence, moving among the other cash girls as a queen incognita among ordinary mortals.

Most of this publicity was over by the time Bob reached New York, though the echoes still rumbled through the press. His own arrival reawakened some of it, offering opportunities that were never ignored of drawing dramatic contrasts. He was represented as having been ”born in the purple,” and stooping to a ”maiden of low degree.” Low degree was poetically fused with the occupation of a model, and by one publication the statement was thrown in, without comment, and as it were accidentally, that the present Mrs. Robert Bradley Collingham, Junior, of Marillo Park, had been greatly admired by appreciative connoisseurs as the figure in Hubert Wray's already famous picture, ”Life and Death.”

Hubert Wray was even credited with ”discovering” this beauty when she was starving in the slums.