Chapter 6

On the morning of the eleventh of December, 1918, I had been in the basement helping to unpack a consignment just come in from India, as I had first done two years before. I had, therefore, not known what passed on the floor above during the forenoon, and should have been little interested had I been there. What I needed to know the Floater told me when I appeared after lunch to take my shift on the main floor with Bridget and the Finn.

"You're to go with the two lads down-stairs"�the two of our six porters who were always transient�"to this number in East Seventy-sixth Street, and show the big Chinee antique, 4792, and the modern Chinee, 3628, to a lady that's stayin' there, and explain to her the difference between them. She'll take the new one if she thinks it's just as good, and you're to show her that it isn't. She's not the lady of the house. Her name is Mrs. Mountney, and she comes from Boston. She saw them both this morning, but said she couldn't judge till she'd viewed 'em private."

It was not an unusual expedition, though it was new to me. For special customers, or in cases of big bits of business, we sent out rugs on approval or for private view, though I had never before been intrusted with the mission. I didn't wholly like the job; but we were accustomed to take both things we didn't like and things we did as all in the day's work.

At the house in East Seventy-sixth Street we found ourselves expected, the footman explaining that we were to carry our wares to the music-room and lay them out. The ladies were resting after lunch, but Mrs. Mountney would come to us as soon as she left her room. With the pleasant free-masonry of caste he confided to me, as with our burdens we made our way into the hall, that Mrs. Mountney was a nice little bit of fluff, though not so tony as he had looked for in an old girl out of Boston. When it came to class, the lady of the house, whom I thought he spoke of as Luke, could hang it all over her.

It was so long since I had been in a house of the kind that I took notes more acutely than was my habit, though my habit was always to be observant. What struck me chiefly was its resemblance on a larger scale to the last of its type I had visited. Perhaps the name Lulie had turned my thoughts backward; but there was certainly the same square hall, containing a few monumental bits of furniture because they were monumental, the same dining-room opening out of it, full of high-backed and Italian ... And then, across a corridor that ran to some region behind the dining-room, I thought I saw a stocky figure grope its way with the kind of movement I had not seen since the last time I had met Drinkwater. A door opened and closed somewhere, and before we reached the music-room I heard the distant click of a typewriter.

That I was nervous goes without saying, but there were so many chances of my fear being groundless that I did my best to dismiss it. The music-room was simple, spacious, white-and-gold, admirably adapted not only to the purpose it served but to that which had brought us there. When our carpets were spread they made a magnificent gold spot in the center of a sumptuous emptiness.

A few minutes later the nice little bit of fluff tripped in, justifying the description. She was one of those instances, of which we saw a good many among our customers, where a merciful providence had given a great deal of money to some one who would have been quite too insignificant without it. A worn fairness of complexion was supplemented by cosmetics, and an inadequate stock of very blond hair arranged in artistic disarray in order to make the most of it. To offset the laces and pearls of an elaborate neglig�e by a "democratic" manner, and so put poor working-men at their ease, she nodded to us in a friendly, offhand way, saying, briskly:

"Now then! Let's see! Which is the modern one and which is the antique? I can't tell; can you?" Looking at me archly, she changed her tone to the chaffing one which the French describe as blagueur. "But of course you'll say you can, because that's your business. You've got them marked with some sort of secret sign, like a conjurer with coins, so as to tell one from the other, without my knowing it."

Having said this, she began to march round the two great gold-covered oblongs with the movement of a prowling little animal. Keeping my eye on the main doorway, I pointed out that while the modern piece would please the ordinary eye only the antique would satisfy the elect. There was no question but that the Indian reproduction was good. Any one who took it would do more than get his money's worth, since it would tone down with the years, while the hard wool of which it was woven would make it stand comparatively rough usage. But�didn't madam see?�the antique, made on the old Chinese looms, was of the softer, richer sheen imparted by the softer, richer wool; and wasn't the heavenly turquoise-blue of the ornaments and border of a beauty which the modern dyes had not begun to reproduce?

As I explained this and some other characteristics of rugs, I was more or less talking against time. The suspicion that had seized me on entering the house began to deepen, without my knowing why.

"Y-yes; y-yes," the little lady agreed; "it is lovely, isn't it? And I suppose that if you're buying a good thing it's better to get the�"

She paused, looking out through the great doorway into the hall. I, too, looked out, to see Mrs. Averill in a tea-gown, gazing in at us distraitly.

"Oh, Lulu, do come here. This man, this gentleman, has just been telling me the most interesting things�"

She trailed into the music-room with the same graceful languor with which she had trailed into the drawing-room on the occasion when we had last met. The two other porters and myself being negligible figures in the room, her almond eyes rested listlessly on the rugs, which she studied without remark.

"Lulu," Mrs. Mountney began again, with animation, "did you know that in Persian rugs the designs are outlined in rows of knots, and in Chinese by clipping with the scissors? cisel�, this ma�this gentleman calls it, and you can feel a little line! Do put your hand down."

"Oh, I'm too tired," Mrs. Averill protested, in her sweet drawling voice, "and this room's so stuffy. Mildred said she'd have it aired; but I don't know what she's mooning over half her time. She's so dreamy. I often think she ought to be in a convent, or something like that."

The little bit of fluff was more interested in rugs than in Mildred.

"Do tell Mrs. Averill�I'm staying with her�what you've just been saying about the wool. Did you know, Lulu, that Indian wool is hard and Chinese soft?" She looked again toward the hallway, where a second figure had come into view. "Mildred, do come here. There's the most interesting things�I'm so glad I went to that place this morning�and they've sent me the most interesting man�Lulu's like ice, but you're artistic."

Miss Averill, too, advanced into the room; but though I was in full view she paid me and my comrades no particular attention. It was the easier for me not to speak, or to draw any one's glance to myself, for the reason that Mrs. Mountney chattered on, repeating for Mildred's benefit the facts I had just been giving her.

"Just think of having the patience to clip with the scissors round all these designs, and it's the same in the modern rug as in the antique. Do stoop down, Mildred, and let your fingers run along the ciseling; that's what this�this gentleman calls it."

As the girl stooped to satisfy Mrs. Mountney, I ventured to look at her more closely. She was perhaps not older than when I had last seen her two years before, but her face had undergone a change. It made you think of faces chastened, possibly purified, by suffering. Where there had been chiefly a sympathetic common sense there was now the beauty that comes of elevation.

Luckily for me Mrs. Mountney ran on, while we three men, with the lack of individuality of employees before customers, remained indistinguishable objects in the background.

"That's the modern and that's the antique; and I'm sure no one but a rug-man could tell the difference between them. This man�this gentleman�says they can, but that's only business. Hundreds of dollars difference in the price, almost as much as between a pair of real pearl ear-rings and imitation ones. What do you say, Mildred? Would anybody ever notice�?"

"I suppose you'd be buying the best because it's the best, and not because any one would notice�"

"I should be buying it for what every one would see. What's the good of having a thing if it doesn't show what it is? I hate the way some people have of calling your attention to every fine thing they've got in the house, as if you weren't used to fine things of your own. If I've got to tell every one that that's a genuine old Chinese masterpiece before they notice it�well, it isn't worth it. But at the same time the effect is richer; and some people do know, and talk about it to other people who know�there's that to consider."

By this time I was conscious of something else.

Having got through so many minutes without recognition I was beginning to hope that, by blotting myself out, as it were, between my fellow-workmen I might finally escape detection. No one had as yet dissociated any of us from another, the very absence of personality on our part reducing us to the place of mere machines. As a mere machine Mrs. Averill and Mildred might continue to overlook me, passing out of the room as unobservant as they had come in.

But Lulu had begun a curious movement round the square of the carpets. She seemed to be studying them; though with the long slits of her Mongolian eyes her glance might be traveling anywhere. Having had the opportunity to look me in the face, she moved to where she got me in profile, afterward passing behind me and returning to her original standpoint beside her sister and her friend. Without further reference to Mrs. Mountney, she slipped her arm through Mildred's, leading her toward the grand piano, against which they leaned.

For me there was nothing to do but to stand still. A word, a sign, might easily betray me, if I had not been betrayed already. As the conversation went on, Mildred kept her back to me, but Mrs. Averill stood sidewise, so as to be able to throw me an occasional appraising glance. Apparently she was in some doubt, my position and my clothes rendering absolute certainty difficult.

But Mildred turned away from the piano at last, and without examining me directly came slowly down the long room. Entirely mistress of herself she walked with sedateness and composure. The shyness and brusqueness which had given her a kind of aura in my thoughts during the past two years seemed to have been overcome by experience. In this self-command more than in any other detail I observed a change in her.

Not till she reached the corner of the long carpet did she give me the first clear, straightforward look. That recognition did not come instantly told me that I, too, must have changed. Laborious work and a rough way of living had doubtless aged and probably hardened me. I was dressed, too, like any other working-man, though with the tidiness which our position on the selling floor exacted. A working-man in his Sunday clothes would perhaps have described me, while my features must have adapted themselves to altered inward conditions with the facility which features possess.

"Is it really you?"

She was standing in front of me now, singling me out from the two boys who had fallen a little back. She didn't offer to shake hands; perhaps she wasn't sure enough of my identity; but that the circumstances in which she found me made no difference to her was the one fact apparent. Any emotion she may have felt was expressed in the quiver of a faint smile.

"I hoped you wouldn't recognize me," was all I found to say.

"Why?"

"Oh, for all the reasons that�that almost anybody would see at a glance."

"Perhaps I'm not�not almost anybody."

"No; you're not."

"Have you been doing this ever since�?"

I nodded. "It's the job I told you I might get. I did get it; and so�"

"Have you liked it?"

"Extremely."

"Is that true, or is it just�?

"No; it's true. I could have had better jobs. They offered two or three times to make me a salesman; you may remember that I knew a good deal about rugs already�; but I preferred to stay where I am."

"For what reason?"

"I hardly know that I can tell you, unless it was to�to�"

"To find your soul?"

"Possibly."

"And have you found it?"

"I've found�something. I'm not sure whether it's my soul or not."

All this was said within the space of perhaps two minutes, during which I watched Mrs. Averill and Mrs. Mountney, toward whom Mildred turned her back, putting their head together on a whispered conversation. That it was about me I could have gathered from their glances; but a little crow on the part of Mrs. Mountney left me no doubt about it.

"Jasper Soames! Why, that's the name�"

It was all I caught; but it was enough to put even Mildred Averill on a secondary plane.

"If you've found your soul�" she was saying.

"Oh, I'm not sure of that. I only feel that I've found�something. I mean that something has come, or gone, I'm not sure of which; only that�"

Mrs. Mountney wheeled suddenly from the piano, trotting back to the edge of the carpet, across which she spoke to me.

"Did you ever hear of Copley's great portrait of Jasper Soames?"

I nodded, speechlessly. I had heard of it. In my mind's eye I saw it, at the head of a great staircase, a full-length figure, wearing knee-breeches of bottle-green satin, a gold-embroidered waistcoat, and a long coat of ruby velvet with a Russian sable collar falling back almost to the shoulders. A plate let into the foot of the frame bore the name Jasper Soames, with the dates of a birth and a death. Somewhere in my life the picture had been a familiar object.

I had no time to follow up this discovery before Mrs. Mountney began again:

"Are you one of his descendants?"

"No; but my wife is."

The reply came out before I realized its significance. I hardly knew what I had said till I heard Lulu Averill exclaim with as much indignation as her indolent tones could carry:

"But you told my husband that you were not a married man! Didn't he, Mildred?"

The situation was so unexpected that I felt myself like a bird swinging in a cage. Nothing was steady; everything around me seemed to whirl. Then I heard Mildred speaking as if her voice reached me through a poor connection on a telephone.

"Oh, that didn't matter. I knew he was married all along�at least I was pretty sure of it. What difference could it make to us?

"It made the difference," Mrs. Averill drawled, peevishly, "that we believed him."

But Mrs. Mountney intervened, waving the others aside with a motion of the arm.

"Wait!" She looked at me again across the carpet. "If you married a descendant of Jasper Soames then it was Violet Torrance."

The mist that had hitherto enshrined two flaming eyes seemed to part as if torn by-lightning. The figure disclosed was not static like that of Jasper Soames, but alive as the sky is a ive in a storm. It was that of my wife as I had last seen her. My mind resumed its action at the point where its memory of Vio had been shut ott.

"And," Mrs. Mountney went on, pressing her facts, "you're Billy Harrowby."

I could only bend my head in assent.

"That's my name."

"Then why�why�?"

She flung her hands apart, unable to continue. Lulu Averill, moving with the tread of a tigress stalking silently, stole down from the piano to the edge of the carpet. Mildred's eyes as she still faced me were all amber-colored fire. I was like a man waking in the morning from a night of troubled dreams.

Little Mrs. Mountney dragged her laces across both the rugs to confront me face to face, standing beside Mildred.

"Do you know who I am?"

I shook my head.

"I'm Alice Tarporley."

"Oh yes! You were a friend of Vio's before we were married. I've heard her speak of you; but you lived in Denver."

"I went back to Boston only two years ago, when poor Vio was in such trouble because you were�" She cried out, with another wide motion of the arms: "In the name of God, man, what does it all mean?"

But I couldn't go into explanations. I didn't know where to begin.

"Tell me first how Vio is�where she is."

"She was perfectly well the day before yesterday, and at your own house in Boston. But don't you know, don't you know�? Why, this is too awful! The more I think of it the more awful it becomes. Don't you know�?"

"I�I don't know anything."

She got it out at last.

"Don't you know�Vio thinks you're�you're dead?"

Iron clampings seemed to press me round the ribs.

"No; I didn't know that. What made her think so?"

"Who wouldn't think so? You were reported missing�and when weeks went by�and no news of you�and then, when your uniform was found on the bank of that river, near Tours, wasn't it? and your papers in the pockets�and your letter of credit, and everything� And here you are in New York, going under another name, working like a stevedore, and looking like a tramp! Why, it's enough to drive anybody crazy!"

I could only stammer: "I shall explain everything, after I've seen Vio."

"You can't explain in such a way that�" She swung toward her hostess. "Lulu, I must go straight back to Boston to-night. There's a train that gets you there in the morning, isn't there? I hate night traveling. I never sleep, and I have a headache all the next day�but what's that when�? If Vio hears this from any one but�" She turned to me again. "Then it was true that you'd been seen in New York hotels?"

"Possibly; I don't know what you're referring to."

"Oh, every now and then some report went round in Boston that So-and-so had seen you in this hotel or that; but nothing of the sort has been said for a year or two, and we thought that it was just the kind of fake story that gets about. But now! Well, I must break the news to Vio�"

"Why shouldn't I break it myself? I could call her up by long distance."

"Man, if she heard your voice like that it would kill her. You don't know. No, I must go; there's no help for it, headache or no headache. Mildred dear, won't you call Annette? I told her she could go to the theater to-night, but now she'll have to get our tickets, and pack!" She wrung her hands. "Oh, dear! When a man's dead, he'd better stay dead!"

Mildred slipped from the room. A suspicion began to creep over me.

"Is there any special reason for my staying dead?"

"How can you when you're alive? That's the important point. Vio will never forgive you for being alive�and not telling her."

"She will when she's heard."

"She's got to hear right away, and I'm going to take charge of it. You may say it's none of my business, but I'm making it mine. I've known Vio Torrance since we were tots together."

I ventured to remind her that Vio might be her friend, but that she was my wife.

"Wife!" she crowed, scornfully. "Have you treated her like a wife�to be alive all this time and never let her know! When I tell you that she's been in mourning for you and out again�positively out again� Well, you can imagine!"

"I can imagine so many things�"

But she jerked her little person away from me toward the two fellows who were trying dully to follow the scene they were witnessing without being able to seize its drift.

"Take all this stuff back again to where you brought it from. I'm not going to buy any of it. The idea of Billy Harrowby�" She repeated the name with a squeal, "Billy Harrowby! of all people in the world! Why, it's enough to drive me out of my senses. I suppose you don't know," she continued, switching back to me again, "that they've put a new man in your place at the Museum, over a year ago, a Frenchman; and that Vio has given them all your prints and etchings for a William Harrowby Memorial�that's what she called it�she had to do something of the sort after your tragic end, in common decency; and you considered a hero, something like Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger, and now what's it to be�and you alive?" A dramatic gesture seemed to claim this confusion as something for which Fate had made her specially responsible. "Lulu, take me away, for Heaven's sake! I shall never look at a Chinese rug again without thinking�"

When the two ladies, with arms around each other's waist, had passed into the hallway, and out of sight, I turned to my colleagues, saying merely:

"I think we'd better roll these up and beat it."

Neither made any comment till we were in the lorry on our way back to Creed & Creed's, when one of them said in an awe-stricken tone:

"For the love o' Mike, Brogan, ain't your name�Brogan?"