Part 50

Jack was still silent. The thought of seeing Edith created a tumult in his mind. It seemed as if he were not quite ready, not exactly settled. He had been procrastinating so long, putting off going, on one pretext or another, that he had fallen into a sort of fear of going. At first, absorbed in his speculations, enthralled by the company of Carmen and the luxurious, easy-going view of life that her society created for him; he had felt Edith and his house as an irritating restraint. Later, when the smash came, he had been still more relieved that she was out of town. And finally he had fallen into a reckless apathy, and had made himself believe that he never would see her again until some stroke of fortune should set him on his feet and restore his self-respect.

But since he had been with Fletcher & Co. his feelings had gradually undergone a change. With a regular occupation and regular hours, and in contact with the sensible mind and business routine of Mr. Fletcher, he began to have saner views of life, and to realize that Edith would approve what he was now attempting to do much more than any effort to relieve himself by speculation.

As soon as he felt himself a little more firmly established, a little more sure of himself, he would go to Edith, and confess everything, and begin life anew. This had been his mood, but he was still irresolute, and it needed some outside suggestion to push him forward to overcome his lingering reluctance to go home.

But this had come suddenly. It seemed to him at first thought that he needed time to prepare for it. Mr. Fletcher pulled out his watch. “There is a later train at four. Take that, and we will get some lunch first.”

An hour of postponement was such a relief! Why, of course he could go at four. And instantly his heart leaped up with desire.

“All right,” he said, as he rose and closed his desk. “But I think I'd better not stay for lunch. I want to get something for the boy on my way uptown.”

“Very good. Tuesday, then. My best regards to Edith.”

As Jack came down the stairway from the elevated road at Twenty-third Street he ran against a man who was hurrying up--a man in a pronounced traveling-suit, grip-sack and umbrella in hand, and in haste. It was Mavick. Recognition was instantaneous, and it was impossible for either to avoid the meeting if he had desired to do so.

“You in town!” said Mavick.

“And you!” Jack retorted.

“No, not really. I'm just going to catch the steamer. Short leave. We have all been kept by that confounded Chile business.”

“Going for the government?”

“No, not publicly. Of course shall confer with our minister in London. Any news here?”

“Yes; Henderson's dead.” And Jack looked Mavick squarely in the face.

“Ah!” And Mavick smiled faintly, and then said, gravely: “It was an awful business. So sudden, you know, that I couldn't do anything.” He made a movement to pass on. “I suppose there has been no--no--”

“I suppose not,” said Jack, “except that Mrs. Henderson has gone to Europe.”

“Ah!” And Mr. Mavick didn't wait for further news, but hurried up, with a “Good-by.”

So Mavick was following Carmen to Europe. Well, why not? What an unreal world it all was, that of a few months ago! The gigantic Henderson; Jack's own vision of a great fortune; Carmen and her house of Nero; the astute and diplomatic Mavick, with his patronizing airs! It was like a scene in a play.

He stepped into a shop and selected a toy for the boy. It was a real toy, and it was for a real boy. Jack experienced a genuine pleasure at the thought of pleasing him. Perhaps the little fellow would not know him.

And then he thought of Edith--not of Edith the mother, but of Edith the girl in the days of his wooing. And he went into Maillard's. The pretty girl at the counter knew him. He was an old customer, and she had often filled orders for him. She had despatched many a costly box to addresses he had given her. It was in the recollection of those transactions that he said: “A box of marrons glaces, please. My wife prefers that.”

“Shall I send it?” asked the girl, when she had done it up.

“No, thanks; we are not in town.”

“Of course,” she said, beaming upon him; “nobody is yet.”

And this girl also seemed a part of the old life, with her little affectation of familiarity with its ways.

He went to his room--it seemed a very mean little room now--packed his bag, told the janitor he should be absent a few days, and hurried to the ferry and the train as if he feared that some accident would delay him. When he was seated and the train moved off, his thoughts took another turn. He was in for it now.

He began to regret that he had not delayed, to think it all out more thoroughly; perhaps it would have been better to have written.

He bought an evening journal, but he could not read it. What he read between the lines was his own life. What a miserable failure! What a mess he had made of his own affairs, and how unworthy of such a woman as Edith he had been! How indifferent he had been to her happiness in the pursuit of his own pleasure! How would she receive him? He could hardly doubt that; but she must know, she must have felt cruelly his estrangement. What if she met him with a royal forgiveness, as if he were a returned prodigal? He couldn't stand that. If now he were only going back with his fortune recovered, with brilliant prospects to spread before her, and could come into the house in his old playful manner, with the assumed deference of the master, and say: “Well, Edith dear, the storm is over. It's all right now. I am awfully glad to get home. Where's the rascal of an heir?”

Instead of that, he was going with nothing, humiliated, a clerk in a twine-store. And not much of a clerk at that, he reflected, with his ready humorous recognition of the situation.