Half a Rogue

Chapter XI

Everybody had gone down the winding road to the granite entrance of the cemetery; the minister, the choir, the friends and those who had come because they reveled in morbid scenes. These were curious to see how Warrington was affected, if he showed his grief or contained it, so that they might have something to talk about till some one else died. There are some people in this merry world of ours who, when they take up the evening paper, turn first to the day's death notices; who see no sermons in the bright flowers, the birds and butterflies, the misty blue hills, the sunshine, who read no lesson in beauty, who recognize no message in the moon and the stars, in cheerfulness and good humor. On the contrary, they seem to abhor the sunshine; they keep their parlors for ever in musty darkness, a kind of tomb where they place funeral wreaths under glass globes and enter but half a dozen times a year. Well, even these had finally dragged themselves away from the grave, and left Warrington standing alone beside the brown roll of damp fresh earth. No carriage awaited him, for he had signified his intention of walking home.

All about him the great elms and maples and oaks showed crisp against the pale summer sky. Occasionally a leaf fell. A red squirrel chattered above him, and an oriole sang shrilly and joyously near by. The sun was reddening in the west, and below, almost at his feet, the valley swam in a haze of delicate amethyst. The curving stream glittered. From where he stood he could see them bundling up the sheaves of wheat. All these things told him mutely that the world was going on the same as ever; nothing had changed. In the city men and women were going about their affairs as usual; the smoke rolled up from the great chimneys. When all is said, our griefs and joys are wholly our own; the outsider does not participate.

Yes, the world went on just the same. Death makes a vacancy, but the Great Accountant easily fills it; and the summing up of balances goes on. Let us thank God for the buoyancy of the human spirit, which, however sorely tried, presently rises and assumes its normal interest in life.

Warrington looked dreamily at the grave, and the philosopher in him speculated upon the mystery of it. Either the grave is Heaven or it is nothing; one can proceed no farther. If there was a Heaven (and in the secret corner of his heart he believed there was), a new star shone in the sky at night, a gentle, peaceful star. Just now the pain came in the knowledge that she was gone; later the actual absence would be felt. For a month or so it would seem that she had gone on a journey; he would find himself waiting and watching; but as the weeks and months went by, and he heard not her step nor her voice, then would come the real anguish. They tell us that these wounds heal; well, maybe; but they open and reopen and open again till that day we ourselves cease to take interest in worldly affairs.

He stooped and picked up one of the roses which she had held in her hand. Reverently he pressed his lips to it and put it away in his wallet. Then he turned and went slowly down the hill. He had never really known her till these last few months; not till now did he realize how closely knit together had been their lives and affections. He lighted a cigar, and with his hands behind his back and his chin in his collar, he continued to the gates. The old care-taker opened and closed the gates phlegmatically. Day by day they came, and one by one they never went out again. To him there was neither joy nor grief; if the grass grew thick and the trees leaved abundantly, that was all he desired.

It was a long walk to Williams Street, and he was tired when he entered the house. Jove leaped upon him gladly. Warrington held the dog's head in his hands and gazed into the brown eyes. Here was one that loved him, wholly and without question. You will always find some good in the man who retains the affection of his dog. In good times or bad, they are stanch friends; and they are without self-interest, which is more than human. In the living-room he found the Angora curled up on a sofa-cushion. He smoothed her, and she stretched her lithe body luxuriously and yawned. There is no other animal which so completely interprets the word indifference. Warrington wondered what he should do with her, for he was not very fond of cats. But his aunt had loved her, so he passed on to the dining-room without deciding what to do.

It was a lonely supper. He kept his eyes on his plate as well as he could; for whenever he saw the back of her chair, his food choked him. He wondered why he did not take the decanter of whisky down from the sideboard; a generous tumblerful. ... No. This was the first time in months that the desire to drink deeply came to him. No; he would leave it there. Supper done, he went to his den and took down a book. Could he live here now? He doubted it, for it was a house of empty doors. He settled himself in a chair and turned the pages of the book to a place he loved well. It was where D'Artagnan, representing Planchet and Company, returns to the grocer with the bags of English gold which, for several good reasons, Charles Second has given him for General Monk's sword. He was well along toward the fainting of the honest Planchet on the money-bags, when the telephone rang. He took up the receiver.

"Well?"

"Mama wants you to come over and spend the night with us. John and Kate will be here, too."

He recognized Patty's voice.

"I shall be very glad to," he replied. "Good-by." He rang for Mary, who came in, her eyes red and swollen; Poor soul, she had also lost her best friend. "I am going over to the Benningtons' to spend the night, Mary.

"Very well, sir; just as you think best."

The Benningtons were very kind to him. They engaged his interest the moment he entered the house. They talked of a thousand and one things diverting: the foreign news, the political outlook, the September horse-show at which Patty would ride and jump, what was contemplated in society for the fall and winter, the ice-carnival, and the engagements.

"Why don't you enter your Irish hunter?" asked John, when the talk veered around to horses again.

"I ride for the mere pleasure of it," replied Warrington; "or, if you will, I'm too lazy to learn the judges' catechism."

Presently they had him telling how he had written his first play, and how completely Mrs. Jack had fooled him on their first meeting.

"No, I have not the slightest desire to return to the stage," said Mrs. Jack, in answer to a casual inquiry made by Warrington.

"Not while I'm around," supplemented John.

"Why, nothing could lure me back to it," Mrs. Jack declared emphatically. "I am happy. I am very happy. I have nothing to wish for, save that my happiness may endure."

Mrs. Bennington, who had long since grown to love her daughter-in-law, smiled benignly.

"You will always be happy, my dear; you were born to be. It is the just reward for making those around you happy."

"Patty," said Warrington, "would you like the Angora?"

"I should love it dearly."

"Then I'll send it over to you in the morning."

And that was as near as they approached the subject they were tacitly avoiding.

At a quarter of nine, to the consternation of every one, Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene was announced.

"Take me up stairs to the billiard-room," said Warrington; "I am not in the mood to meet that woman to-night."

"Come on, then," cried John, willing enough. "There's the servants' stairs. I'll give you a handicap of twenty in a hundred points."

"I'll beat you at those odds."

"That remains to be seen."

And the two hurried up the stairs just as the hall-door closed. The billiard-room was situated at the head of the front stairs. Warrington won the bank, and he ran a score of ten. While he was chalking his cue he heard voices.

"It is very sad." It was Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene talking. "We shall miss her in church work. It is a severe blow to Mr. Warrington."

"That was a good draw, John. Three cushions this time. Good. You're playing strong to-night."

"Did you think to bring over your pajamas?" John asked irrelevantly.

Warrington smiled in spite of himself.

"I forgot all about them," he admitted.

"Thought you would, so I brought over two sets. We're about the same size. Pshaw! that was an easy one, too."

Warrington missed his shot; He heard voices again.

"And I want you to help me." It was Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene again. "We shall reorganize the Woman's Auxiliary Republican Club, and we shall need you. It is principally for that that I came over."

"I take very little interest in anything outside my home," replied Mrs. Bennington.

"Did you get that?" whispered John, as he drew back for a carom.

"But this is very important for the city's welfare," pursued Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene.

"I doubt it. So long as we do not vote—"

"That's just it. We can't vote, but we can get together and control the male vote in the family. That's something."

John grinned at Warrington, who replied with a shrug.

"And they all call me the meddler!" he said.

"What's the matter with your staying on here a few days, Dick?"

"I should be nothing but a bother to you."

"Rot! You can't stay alone over there."

"I'll have to; I can't leave those poor old souls alone. They are broken-hearted. I sent her two hundred every month regularly, just for pin-money; and what do you think she did with it? Hoarded it up and willed something like two thousand to Mary and her husband. I'm all in, Dick. But go on; I'll finish the game."

"All right. But whenever you feel lonesome, come here or over to my house. There'll always be a spare room for you in either house."

"It's mighty kind of you, John. My shot?" Warrington ran four and missed.

Voices again.

"I never believe what I hear, and only half of what I see." That was Mrs. Jack speaking.

Murmurs. The billiard-balls clicked sharply as John played for position.

"The stage doesn't appeal to you any more, then?" Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene.

"Not in the least. It never did appeal to me. I am so far away from it now that I am losing the desire to witness plays."

"And for whom will Mr. Warrington write his plays now?"

"The vacancy I made has long ago been filled. I was but one in a thousand to interpret his characters. There is always a lack of plays, but never of actors."

"Excuse me for a moment." It was Patty this time.

"Certainly, my dear."

Warrington heard nothing more for several minutes.

"Is it true what I hear about Patty and that rich young Mr. Whiteland, of New York?"

"What is it that you have heard?"

"Why, that their engagement is about to be announced."

Warrington stood perfectly still. Whiteland had been a guest at the Adirondack bungalow earlier in the summer. He waited for the answer, and it seemed to him that it would never come.

"I am not engaged to any one, Mrs. Haldene, and I hope you will do me the favor to deny the report whenever you come across it." Patty had returned. "It seems incredible that a young man may not call upon a young woman without their names becoming coupled matrimonially."

"Nevertheless, he is regarded as extremely eligible."

"I have often wondered over Haldene's regular Saturday night jag at the club," said John, stringing his count, "but I wonder no longer. They say she never goes out Saturdays."

Warrington heard the words, but the sense of them passed by. He could realize only one thing, and that was, he loved Patty better than all the world. He could accept his own defeat with philosophy, but another man's success!—could he accept that? How strangely everything had changed in the last few days! He had never known real mental anguish; heartaches in others had always afforded him mild amusement and contempt. It was one thing, he reflected, to write about human emotions; it was entirely another thing to live and act them. He saw that his past had been full of egotism and selfishness, but he also saw that his selfishness was of the kind that has its foundation in indifference and not in calculation. The voices went on down stairs, but he ceased to pay any attention to them.

"John, there's been something in my mind for many months."

"What is it?"

"Do you recollect the night you came into my rooms in New York?"

"I shall never forget it," quietly.

"Your wife was there."

"I know it. I found her gloves." He made a difficult masse. "She told me all about it. At the time, however, I had a pretty bad case of heart-trouble. But I understand. She was in the habit of dropping in on you. Why not? Your cooperation made you both famous. A man in love finds all sorts of excuses for jealousy. But I'm glad you've spoken. I can readily understand how you felt when you found the gloves gone.

"You're a good man, John," said Warrington.

"Kate loves me; it ought to make any man good to have a wife who loves him. I have no use for a man who sees evil in everything and good in nothing. Say no more about it, boy."

"I hadn't seen you in so long that I was confused. If I had reflected ... But you see, I didn't know that you were engaged, or even that you knew her. I never understood, until you were gone, why she wanted to hide herself. I'm glad I've relieved my mind." Warrington sighed.

"It's all right. There! I told you that I'd win even at those odds."

Presently they heard a stir down stairs. Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene was going. The door closed. The family came up to the billiard-room. Warrington looked at Patty, whose cheeks were flushed and whose eyes flashed.

"Why, what's the matter, Pat?" John asked.

"Nothing."

"Mrs. Haldene has been making herself useful as usual," said Mrs. Jack, slipping her arm around Patty's waist.

Patty was in a rage about something; nobody seemed to know what it was.

"You are not going to join the Auxiliary, are you, mother?" John inquired, putting the cues in the rack.

"Indeed I am not. The men in my family always used their own judgment in politics. They have always been Whigs or Republicans."

"Did you ever meet a woman, Dick, who was a Democrat?" laughed John.

"Perhaps," was the reply, "but it has escaped my recollection."

But he was thinking: after all, he had a right to win Patty if he could. It was not what he had done in the past, it was what he was capable of doing from now on that counted.

"You're going to have a stiff fight at the convention," said John.

"I know it. But a fight of any kind will keep my mind occupied. The senator has assured me that I shall get the nomination."

On the way home Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene saw the flutter of a white dress on the Wilmington-Fairchilds' veranda. She couldn't resist, so she crossed the lawn and mounted the veranda steps. She did not observe her husband in the corner, smoking with the master of the house.

"I've been over to the Benningtons'," she began, rather breathless.

"What's the news?"

"There is no truth in the report of Patty's engagement to young Whiteland."

"There isn't? Well, there ought to be, after the way they went around together last winter."

"She told me so herself," Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene declared emphatically. "Do you know what I believe?"

"No," truthfully.

"I've an idea that Patty is inclined toward that fellow Warrington."

"You don't mean it!"

"He's always around there. He must have thought a great deal of his aunt. She was buried to-day, and there he is, playing billiards with John Bennington. If that isn't heartlessness!"

"What do you want a man to do?" growled her husband from behind his cigar. "Sit in a dark room and wring his hands all day, like a woman? Men have other things to do in life than mourn the departed."

"Franklyn? I didn't see you."

"You seldom do."

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene at once plunged into a discussion of fashion, the one thing that left her husband high and dry, so far as his native irony was concerned.

That same night McQuade concluded some interesting business. He possessed large interests in the local breweries. Breweries on the average do not pay very good dividends on stock, so the brewer often establishes a dozen saloons about town to help the business along. McQuade owned a dozen or more of these saloons, some in the heart of the city, some in the outlying wards of the town. He conducted the business with his usual shrewdness. The saloons were all well managed by Germans, who, as a drinking people, are the most orderly in the world. It was not generally known that McQuade was interested in the sale of liquors. His name was never mentioned in connection with the saloons.

One of these saloons was on a side street. The back door of it faced the towpath. It did not have a very good reputation; and though, for two years, no disturbances had occurred there, the police still kept an eye on the place. It was on the boundary line of the two most turbulent wards in the city. To the north was the Italian colony, to the south was the Irish colony. Both were orderly and self-respecting as a rule, though squalor and poverty abounded. But these two races are at once the simplest and most quick-tempered, and whenever an Irishman or an Italian crossed the boundary line there was usually a hurry call for the patrol wagon, and some one was always more or less battered up.

Over this saloon was a series of small rooms which were called "wine rooms," though nobody opened wine there. Beer was ten cents a glass up stairs, and whisky twenty. Women were not infrequently seen climbing the stairs to these rooms. But, as already stated, everybody behaved. Schmuck, who managed the saloon, was a giant of a man, a Turnvereiner, who could hold his own with any man in town. It will be understood that the orderliness was therefore due to a respect for Schmuck's strength, and not to any inclination to be orderly.

On this night, then, at nine o'clock, a man entered and approached the bar. He was sharp-eyed, lean-faced, with a heavy blue beard closely shaven, saving the mustache, which was black and hung over the man's lips. He wore good clothes. There was a large diamond on one of his fingers and another in the bosom of his shirt, in which a white tie was tucked carefully. They were yellow diamonds. But those among whom this man moved did not know the difference between yellow stones and white. Morrissy was accounted very well-to-do.

"Hello, Schmuck!" he hailed. "Got the room up stairs in order?"

"Yes." Schmuck wiped the bar. "Der poss iss coming to-night, I see. Huh?"

"Yes. He ought to be along now," replied Morrissy, glancing at his watch, which was as conspicuous as his yellow diamonds.

"How you getting along mit der poys?"

"Oh, we're coming along fine, all right."

"Going to call 'em out uf der mills? Huh?"

"Perhaps. When the boss comes, tell him I'm up stairs."

Morrissy lighted a cigar, took the evening papers from the end of the bar, and disappeared. Schmuck could hear him moving the chairs about. Ten minutes later McQuade appeared. Schmuck nodded toward the stairs, and without a word McQuade went up.

"Good evening, Morrissy. I missed a car, or I'd have been here earlier."

"That's all right, Mr. McQuade; glad to wait for you." Morrissy threw aside his papers and drew his chair to the table.

McQuade closed the door and sat down.

"You got my letter?" he began, wiping his forehead.

Morrissy nodded.

"Well?"

"Well, the boys will go out Monday morning. A committee will wait on Bennington in the morning. He won't back down and discharge the English inventor, so it's a sure thing they'll walk out, every mother's son of them."

"On the morning they go out, I'll send you my check for five hundred."

"For the union?"

"I'll send it to you, and you can use it as you see fit. On Monday morning, then."

"Sure thing."

They smoked for a while. Suddenly McQuade laid a bulky envelope on the table, got up and went out. Morrissy weighed the envelope carefully, thrust it into his pocket, and also departed.

"Five hundred now, and five hundred on Monday. I can see him sending a check. It will be bills. Bah! I should have called out the boys anyhow."

McQuade hurried home. He had another appointment, vastly more important than the one he had just kept. Bolles had returned from New York. It was easy enough to buy a labor union, but it was a different matter to ruin a man of Warrington's note. Bolles had telegraphed that he would be in Herculaneum that night. That meant that he had found something worth while. Each time the car stopped to let passengers on or off, McQuade stirred restlessly. He jumped from the car when it reached his corner, and walked hurriedly down the street to his house, a big pile of red granite and an architectural nightmare. He rushed up the steps impatiently, applied his latch-key and pushed in the door. He slammed it and went directly to his study. Bolles was asleep in a chair. McQuade shook him roughly. Bolles opened his eyes.

"You've been on a drunk," said McQuade, quickly noting the puffed eyes and haggard cheeks.

"But I've got what I went after, all the same," replied Bolles truculently.

"What have you got? If you've done any faking, I'll break every bone in your body."

"Now, look here, Mr. McQuade; don't talk to me like that."

"What have you got, then?"

"Well, I've got something that's worth five hundred; that's what. I worked like a nigger for a month; pumped everybody that ever knew him. Not a blame thing, till night before last I ran into the janitor of the apartments where Warrington lived."

"Go on."

"He'd been fired, and I got him drunk. I asked him if any women had ever gone up to Warrington's rooms. One. He was sitting in the basement. It was a hot night, and he was sitting up because he could not sleep. At midnight a coupe drove up, and Warrington and a woman alighted. From the looks of things she was drunk, but he found out afterward that she was very sick. The woman remained in Warrington's apartments till the following morning."

"When was all this?"

"About four years ago. She left very early."

"Hell!" roared McQuade, doubling his fists. "And I've been sending you money every week for such news as this! I want something big, you fool! What earthly use is this information to me? I couldn't frighten Warrington with it."

"I haven't told you the woman's name yet," said Bolles, leering.

"The woman's name? What's that got to do with it?"

"A whole lot. It was Katherine Challoner, the actress, Bennington's wife; that's who it was!"

McQuade sat very still. So still, that he could hear the clock ticking in the parlor. Bennington's wife!