“It was no accident,” said the minister, sharply. “When a man starts out to do a thing and does it, you can’t say it is an accident.”
“I didn’t say so, sir,” said Peter Tounley diffidently.
“Quite true, quite true! You didn’t, but-this Coleman must be a man!”
“We think so, sir,” said be who was called Billie. “ He certainly brought us through in style.”
“But how did he manage it? “ cried the minister, keenly interested. “ How did he do it?”
“It is hard to say, sir. But he did it. He met us in the dead of night out near Nikopolis-”
“Near Nikopolis?”
“Yes, sir. And he hid us in a forest while a fight was going on, and then in the morning he brought us inside the Greek lines. Oh, there is a lot to tell-”
Whereupon they told it, or as much as they could of it. In the end, the minister said: “ Well, where are the professor and Mrs. Wainwright? I want you all to dine with me to-night. I am dining in the public room, but you won’t mind that after Epirus.” “ They should be down now, sir,” answered a Student.
People were now coming rapidly to dinner and presently the professor and Mrs. Wainwright appeared. The old man looked haggard and white. He accepted the minister’s warm greeting with a strained pathetic smile. “ Thank you. We are glad to return safely.”
Once at dinner the minister launched immediately into the subject of Coleman. “ He must be altogether a most remarkable man. When he told me, very quietly, that he was going to try to rescue you, I frankly warned him against any such attempt. I thought he would merely add one more to a party of suffering people. But the. boys tell- me that he did actually rescue you.”
“Yes, he did,” said the professor. “ It was a very gallant performance, and we are very grateful.”
“Of course,” spoke Mrs. Wainwright, “we might have rescued ourselves. We were on the right road, and all we had to do was to keep going on.”
“Yes, but I understand-” said the minister. “ I understand he took you into a wood to protect you from that fight, and generally protected you from all, kinds of trouble. It seems wonderful to me, not so much because it was done as because it was done by the man who, some time ago, calmy announced to me that he was going to do it. Extraordinary.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Wainwright. “ Oh, of course.”
“And where is he now? “ asked the minister suddenly. “Has he now left you to the mercies of civilisation?”
There was a moment’s curious stillness, and then Mrs. Wainwright used that high voice which-the students believed-could only come to her when she was about to say something peculiarly destructive to the sensibilities. “ Oh, of course, Mr. Coleman rendered us a great service, but in his private character he is not a man whom we exactly care to associate with.”
“Indeed” said the minister staring. Then he hastily addressed the students. “ Well, isn’t this a comic war? Did you ever imagine war could be like this? “ The professor remained looking at his wife with an air of stupefaction, as if she had opened up to him visions of imbecility of which he had not even dreamed. The students loyally began to chatter at the minister. “ Yes, sir, it is a queer war. After all their bragging, it is funny to hear that they are running away with such agility. We thought, of course, of the old Greek wars.”
Later, the minister asked them all to his rooms for coffee and cigarettes, but the professor and Mrs. Wainwright apologetically retired to their own quarters. The minister and the students made clouds of smoke, through which sang the eloquent descriptions of late adventures.
The minister had spent days of listening to questions from the State Department at Washington as to the whereabouts of the Wainwright party. “I suppose you know that you,are very prominent people in, the United States just now? Your pictures must have been in all the papers, and there must have been columns printed about you. My life here was made almost insupportable by your friends, who consist, I should think, of about half the population of the country. Of course they laid regular siege to the de. partment. I am angry at Coleman for only one thing. When he cabled the news of your rescue to his news. paper from Arta, he should have also wired me, if only to relieve my failing mind. My first news of your escape was from Washington-think of that.”
“Coleman had us all on his hands at Arta,” said Peter Tounley. “ He was a fairly busy man.”
“I suppose so,” said the minister. “ By the way,” he asked bluntly, “what is wrong with him? What did Mrs. Wainwright mean?”
They were silent for a time, but it seemed plain to him that it was not evidence that his question had demoralised them. They seemed to be deliberating upon the form of answer. Ultimately Peter Tounley coughed behind his hand. “ You see, sir,” he began, “ there is-well, there is a woman in the case. Not that anybody would care to speak of it excepting to you. But that is what is the cause of things, and then, you see, Mrs. Wainwright is-well-” He hesitated a moment and then completed his sentence in the ingenuous profanity of his age and condition. “ She is rather an extraordinary old bird.”
“But who is the woman?
“Why, it is Nora Blaick, the actress.” “Oh,” cried the minister, enlightened. “ Her Why, I saw her here. She was very beautiful, but she seemed harmless enough. She was somewhat-er- confident, perhaps, but she did not alarm me. She called upon me, and I confess I-why, she seemed charming.” “ She’s sweet on little Rufus. That’s the point,” said an oracular voice.
“Oh,” cried the host, suddenly. “ I remember. She asked me where he was. She said she had heard he was in Greece, and I told her he had gone knight- erranting off after you people. I remember now. I suppose she posted after him up to Arta, eh?”
“That’s it. And so she asked you where he was?
“Yes.”
“Why, that old flamingo-Mrs. Wainwright insists that it was a rendezvous.”
Every one exchanged glances and laughed a little. “ And did you see any actual fighting? “ asked the minister.
“No. We only beard it-”
Afterward, as they were trooping up to their rooms, Peter Tounley spoke musingly. “ Well, it looks to me now as if Old Mother Wainwright was just a bad-minded old hen.”
“Oh, I don’t know. How is one going to tell what the truth is?”
“At any rate, we are sure now that Coleman had nothing to do with Nora’s debut in Epirus.”
They had talked much of Coleman, but in their tones there always had been a note of indifference or carelessness. This matter, which to some people was as vital and fundamental as existence, remained to others who knew of it only a harmless detail of life, with no terrible powers, and its significance had faded greatly when had ended the close associat.ions of the late adventure.
After dinner the professor had gone directly to his daughter’s room. Apparently she had not moved. He knelt by the bedside again and took one of her hands. She was not weeping. She looked at him and smiled through the darkness. “ Daddy, I would like to die,” she said. “ I think-yes-I would like to die.”
For a long time the old man was silent, but he arose at last with a definite abruptness and said hoarsely “ Wait!”
Mrs. Wainwright was standing before her mirror with her elbows thrust out at angles above her head, while her fingers moved in a disarrangement of ‘her hair. In the glass she saw a reflection of her husband coming from Marjory’s room, and his face was set with some kind of alarming purpose. She turned to watch him actually, but he walked toward the door into the corridor and did not in any wise heed her.
“Harrison! “ she called. “ Where are you going?”
He turned a troubled face upon her, and, as if she had hailed him in his sleep, he vacantly said: “What?”
“Where are you going?” she demanded with increasing trepidation.
He dropped heavily into a chair. “Going?” he repeated.
She was angry. “Yes! Going? Where are you going?”
/> “I am going-” he answered, “I am going to see Rufus Coleman.”
Mrs. Wainwright gave voice to a muffled scream. “ Not about Marjory?”
“Yes,” he said, “about Marjory.”
It was now Mrs. Wainwright’s turn to look at her husband with an air of stupefaction as if he had opened up to her visions of imbecility of which she had not even dreamed. “ About Marjory!” she gurgled. Then suddenly her wrath flamed out. “Well, upon my word, Harrison Wainwright, you are, of all men in the world, the most silly and stupid. You are absolutely beyond belief. Of all projects! And what do you think Marjory would have to say of it if she knew it? I suppose you think she would like it? Why, I tell you she would keep her right hand in the fire until it was burned off before she would allow you to do such a thing.”
“She must never know it,” responded the professor, in dull misery.
“Then think of yourself! Think of the shame of it! The shame of it!”
The professor raised his eyes for an ironical glance at his wife. “ Oh I have thought of the shame of it!”
“And you’ll accomplish nothing,” cried Mrs. Wain- wright. “ You’ll accomplish nothing. He’ll only laugh at you.”
“If he laughs at me, he will laugh at nothing but a poor, weak, unworldly old man. It is my duty to go.”
Mrs. Wainwright opened her mouth as if she was about to shriek. After choking a moment she said: “ Your duty? Your duty to go and bend the knee to that man? Yourduty?”
“‘It is my duty to go,”’ he repeated humbly. “If I can find even one chance for my daughter’s happi- ness in a personal sacrifice. He can do no more than he can do no more than make me a little sadder.”
His wife evidently understood his humility as a tribute to her arguments and a clear indication that she had fatally undermined his original intention. “ Oh, he would have made you sadder,” she quoth grimly. “No fear! Why, it was the most insane idea I ever heard of.”
The professor arose wearily. “ Well, I must be going to this work. It is a thing to have ended quickly.” There was something almost biblical in his manner.
“Harrison! “ burst out his wife in amazed lamenta- tion. You are not really going to do it? Not really!”
“I am going to do it,” he answered.
“Well, there! “ ejaculated Mrs. Wainwright to the heavens. She was, so to speak, prostrate. “ Well, there!”
As the professor passed out of the door she cried beseechingly but futilely after him. “ Harrison.” In a mechanical way she turned then back to the mirror and resumed the disarrangement of her hair. She ad- dressed her image. “ Well, of all stupid creatures under the sun, men are the very worst! “ And her image said this to her even as she informed it, and afterward they stared at each other in a profound and tragic reception and acceptance of this great truth. Presently she began to consider the advisability of going to Marjdry with the whole story. Really, Harrison must not be allowed to go on blundering until the whole world heard that Marjory was trying to break her heart over that common scamp of a Coleman. It seemed to be about time for her, Mrs. Wainwright, to come into the situation and mend matters.
CHAPTER XXVIL
WHEN the professor arrived before Coleman’s door, he paused a moment and looked at it. Previously, he could not have imagined that a simple door would ever so affect him. Every line of it seemed to express cold superiority and disdain. It was only the door of a former student, one of his old boys, whom, as the need arrived, he had whipped with his satire in the class rooms at Washurst until the mental blood had come, and all without a conception of his ultimately arriving before the door of this boy in the attitude of a supplicant. Hewould not say it; Coleman probably would not say it; but-they would both know it. A single thought of it, made him feel like running away. He would never dare to knock on that door. It would be too monstrous. And even as he decided that he was afraid to knock, he knocked.
Coleman’s voice said; “Come in.” The professor opened the door. The correspondent, without a coat, was seated at a paper-littered table. Near his elbow, upon another table, was a tray from which he had evidently dined and also a brandy bottle with several recumbent bottles of soda. Although he had so lately arrived at the hotel he had contrived to diffuse his traps over the room in an organised disarray which represented a long and careless occupation if it did not represent t’le scene of a scuffle. His pipe was in his mouth.
After a first murmur of surprise, he arose and reached in some haste for his coat. “ Come in, professor, come in,” he cried, wriggling deeper into his jacket as he held out his hand. He had laid aside his pipe and had also been very successful in flinging a newspaper so that it hid the brandy and soda. This act was a feat of deference to the professor’s well known principles.
“Won’t you sit down, sir? “ said Coleman cordially. His quick glance of surprise had been immediately suppressed and his manner was now as if the pro- fessor’s call was a common matter.
“Thank you, Mr. Coleman, I-yes, I will sit down,”. replied the old man. His hand shook as he laid it on the back of the chair and steadied himself down into it. “ Thank you!” -
Coleman looked at him with a great deal of ex- pectation.
“Mr. Coleman!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I—”
He halted then and passed his hand over his face. His eyes did not seem to rest once upon Coleman, but they occupied themselves in furtive and frightened glances over the room. Coleman could make neither head nor tail of the affair. He would not have believed any man’s statement that the professor could act in such an extraordinary fashion. “ Yes, sir,” he said again suggestively. The simple strategy resulted in a silence that was actually awkward. Coleman, despite his bewilderment, hastened into a preserving gossip. “ I’ve had a great many cables waiting for me for heaven knows- how long and others have been arriving in flocks to-night. You have no idea of the row in America, professor. Why, everybody must have gone wild over the lost sheep. My paper has cabled some things that are evidently for you. For instance, here is one that says a new puzzle-game called Find the Wainwright Party has had a big success. Think of that, would you.” Coleman grinned at the professor. “ Find the Wainwright Party, a new puzzle-game.”
The professor had seemed grateful for Coleman’s tangent off into matters of a light vein. “ Yes?” he said, almost eagerly. “ Are they selling a game really called that?”
“Yes, really,” replied Coleman. “ And of course you know that-er-well, all the Sunday papers would of course have big illustrated articles-full pages- with your photographs and general private histories pertaining mostly to things which are none of their business.” “ Yes, I suppose they would do that,” admitted the professor. “ But I dare say it may not be as bad as you suggest.”
“Very like not,” said Coleman. “ I put it to you forcibly so that in the future the blow will not be too cruel. They are often a weird lot.”
“Perhaps they can’t find anything very bad about us.”
“Oh, no. And besides the whole episode will probably be forgotten by the time you return to the United States.”
They talked onin this way slowly, strainedly, until they each found that the situation would soon become insupportable. The professor had come for a distinct purpose and Coleman knew it; they could not sit there lying at each other forever. Yet when he saw the pain deepening in the professor’s eyes, the correspondent again ordered up his trivialities. “ Funny thing. My paper has been congratulating me, you know, sir, in a wholesale fashion, and I think-I feel sure-that they have been exploiting my name all over the country as the Heroic Rescuer. There is no sense in trying to stop them, because they don’t care whether it is true or not true. All they want is the privilege of howling out that their correspondent rescued you, and they would take that privilege without in any ways worrying if I refused my consent. You see, sir? I wouldn’t like you to feel that I was such a strident idiot as I doubtless am appearing
now before the public.”
“No,” said the professor absently. It was plain that he had been a very slack listener. “ I-Mr. Coleman-” he began.
“Yes, sir,” answered Coleman promptly and gently.
It was obviously only a recognition of the futility of further dallying that was driving the old man on- ward. He knew, of course, that if he was resolved to take this step, a longer delay would simply make it harder for him. The correspondent, leaning forward, was watching him almost breathlessly.
“Mr. Coleman, I understand-or at least I am led to believe-that you-at one time, proposed marriage to my daughter?”
The faltering words did not sound as if either man had aught to do with them. They were an expression by the tragic muse herself. Coleman’s jaw fell and he looked glassily at the professor. He said: “Yes!” But already his blood was leaping as his mind flashed everywhere in speculation.
“I refused my consent to that marriage,” said the old man more easily. “ I do not know if the matter has remained important to you, but at any rate, I-I retract my refusal.”
Suddenly the blank expression left Coleman’s face and he smiled with sudden intelligence, as if informa- tion of what the professor had been saying had just reached him. In this smile there was a sudden be. trayal, too, of something keen and bitter which had lain hidden in the man’s mind. He arose and made a step towards the professor and held out his hand. “Sir, I thank yod from the bottom of my heart!” And they both seemed to note with surprise that Coleman’s voice had broken.
The professor had arisen to receive Coleman’s hand. His nerve was now of iron and he was very formal. “ I judge from your tone that I have not made a mis- take-somcthing which I feared.”
Coleman did not seem to mind the professor’s formality. “ Don’t fear anything. Won’t you sit down again? Will you have a cigar. * * No, I couldn’t tell you how glad I am. How glad I am. I feel like a fool. It—”
But the professor fixed him with an Arctic eye and bluntly said: “ You love her?”
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 59
