The Lost Road, etc.

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Lost Road, etc.

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"Lady Firth," he said, "you've been so awfully kind to me, made this
place so like a home to me, that I want you to put this mare in your
stable. The Sultan wanted her, but when he learned I meant to turn
her over to you, he let her go. We both hope you'll accept."

Lady Firth had no scruples. In five minutes she had accepted, had
clapped a side-saddle on her rich gift, and was cantering joyously
down the Pearl Road.

Polly Adair looked after her with an expression that was
distinctly wistful. Thus encouraged, Hemingway said:

"I'm glad you are sorry. I hope every time you see that pony
you'll be sorry."

"Why should I be sorry?" asked the girl.

"Because you have been unkind," said Hemingway, "and it is not your
character to be unkind. And that you have shown lack of character
ought to make you sorry."

"But you know perfectly well," said Mrs. Adair, "that if I were
to take any one of these wonderful things you bring me, I wouldn't
have any character left."

She smiled at him reassuringly. "And you know," she added, "that
that is not why I do not take them. It isn't because I can't afford to,
or because I don't want them, because I do; but it's because I don't
deserve them, because I can give you nothing in return."

"As the copy-book says," returned Hemingway, "'the pleasure is in
the giving.' If the copy-book don't say that, I do. And to pretend
that you give me nothing, that is ridiculous!"

It was so ridiculous that he rushed on vehemently. "Why, every
minute you give me something," he exclaimed. "Just to see you,
just to know you are alive, just to be certain when I turn in at
night that when the world wakes up again you will still be a part
of it; that is what you give me. And its name is--Happiness!"

He had begun quite innocently; he had had no idea that it would
come. But he had said it. As clearly as though he had dropped
upon one knee, laid his hand over his heart and exclaimed: "Most
beautiful of your sex, I love you! Will you marry me?" His eyes
and the tone of his voice had said it. And he knew that he had
said it, and that she knew.

Her eyes were filled with sudden tears, and so wonderful was the
light in them that for one mad moment Hemingway thought they were
tears of happiness. But the light died, and what had been tears
became only wet drops of water, and he saw to his dismay that she
was most miserable.

The girl moved ahead of him to the cliff on which the agency
stood, and which overhung the harbor and the Indian Ocean. Her
eyes were filled with trouble. As she raised them to his they begged
of him to be kind.

"I am glad you told me," she said. "I have been afraid it was
coming. But until you told me I could not say anything. I tried
to stop you. I was rude and unkind--"

"You certainly were," Hemingway agreed cheerfully. "And the more
you would have nothing to do with me, the more I admired you. And
then I learned to admire you more, and then to love you. It seems now
as though I had always known and always loved you. And now this
is what we are going to do."

He wouldn't let her speak; he rushed on precipitately.

"We are first going up to the house to get your typewriting-machine,
and we will bring it back here and hurl it as far as we can off this cliff.
I want to see the splash! I want to hear it smash when it hits that rock.
It has been my worst enemy, because it helped you to be independent
of me, because it kept you from me. Time after time, on the veranda,
when I was pretending to listen to Lady Firth, I was listening to that
damned machine banging and complaining and tiring your pretty
fingers and your dear eyes. So first it has got to go. You have been
its slave, now I am going to be your slave. You have only to rub
the lamp and things will happen. And because I've told you nothing
about myself, you mustn't think that the money that helps to make
them happen is 'tainted.' It isn't. Nor am I, nor my father, nor my
father's father. I am asking you to marry a perfectly respectable
young man. And, when you do--"

Again he gave her no opportunity to interrupt, but rushed on
impetuously: "We will sail away across that ocean to wherever
you will take me. To Ceylon and Tokio and San Francisco, to Naples
and New York, to Greece and Athens. They are all near. They are
all yours. Will you accept them and me?" He smiled appealingly,
but most miserably. For though he had spoken lightly and with
confidence, it was to conceal the fact that he was not at all confident.
As he had read in her eyes her refusal of his pony, he had read, even
as he spoke, her refusal of himself. When he ceased speaking the girl
answered:

"If I say that what you tell me makes me proud, I am saying too little."
She shook her head firmly, with an air of finality that frightened
Hemingway. "But what you ask--what you suggest is impossible."

"You don't like me?" said Hemingway.

"I like you very much," returned the girl, "and, if I don't seem
unhappy that it can't be, it is because I always have known it can't
be--"

"Why can't it be?" rebelled Hemingway. "I don't mean that I can't
understand your not wanting to marry me, but if I knew your
objection, maybe, I could beat it down."

Again, with the same air of finality, the girl moved her head
slowly, as though considering each word; she began cautiously.

"I cannot tell you the reason," she said, "because it does not
concern only myself."

"If you mean you care for some one else," pleaded Hemingway,
"that does not frighten me at all." It did frighten him extremely,
but, believing that a faint heart never won anything, he pretended
to be brave.

"For you," he boasted, "I would go down into the grave as deep as
any man. He that hath more let him give. I know what I offer. I
know I love you as no other man--"

The girl backed away from him as though he had struck her. "You
must not say that," she commanded.

For the first time he saw that she was moved, that the fingers
she laced and unlaced were trembling. "It is final!" exclaimed
the girl. "I cannot marry--you, or any one. I--I have promised.
I am not free."

"Nothing in the world is final," returned Hemingway sharply,
"except death." He raised his hat and, as though to leave her,
moved away. Not because he admitted defeat, but because he
felt that for the present to continue might lose him the chance to
fight again. But, to deliver an ultimatum, he turned back.

"As long as you are alive, and I am alive," he told her, "all
things are possible. I don't give up hope. I don't give up you."

The girl exclaimed with a gesture of despair. "He won't understand!"
she cried.

Hemingway advanced eagerly.

"Help me to understand," he begged.

"You won't understand," explained the girl, "that I am speaking
the truth. You are right that things can change in the future,
but nothing can change the past. Can't you understand that?"

"What do I care for the past?" cried the young man scornfully. "I
know you as well as though I had known you for a thousand years
and I love you."

The girl flushed crimson.

"Not my past," she gasped. "I meant--"

"I don't care what you meant," said Hemingway. "I'm not prying
into your little secrets. I know only one thing--two things, that
I love you and that, until you love me, I am going to make your
life hell!"

He caught at her hands, and for an instant she let him clasp them
in both of his, while she looked at him.

Something in her face, other than distress and pity, caused his
heart to leap. But he was too wise to speak, and, that she might
not read the hope in his eyes, turned quickly and left her. He
had not crossed the grounds of the agency before he had made up
his mind as to the reason for her repelling him.

"She is engaged to Fearing!" he told himself. "She has promised
to marry Fearing! She thinks that it is too late to consider another
man!" The prospect of a fight for the woman he loved thrilled him
greatly. His lower jaw set pugnaciously.

"I'll show her it's not too late," he promised himself. "I'll show her
which of us is the man to make her happy. And, if I am not the
man, I'll take the first outbound steamer and trouble them no more.
But before that happens," he also promised himself, "Fearing must
show he is the better man."

In spite of his brave words, in spite of his determination, within the
day Hemingway had withdrawn in favor of his rival, and, on the
Crown Prince Eitel, bound for Genoa and New York, had booked his
passage home.

On the afternoon of the same day he had spoken to Polly Adair,
Hemingway at the sunset hour betook himself to the consulate. At
that hour it had become his custom to visit his fellow countryman
and with him share the gossip of the day and such a cocktail as
only a fellow countryman could compose. Later he was to dine at
the house of the Ivory Company and, as his heart never ceased
telling him, Mrs. Adair also was to be present.

"It will be a very pleasant party," said Harris. "They gave me a
bid, too, but it's steamer day to-morrow, and I've got to get my
mail ready for the Crown Prince Eitel. Mrs. Adair is to be
there."

Hemingway nodded, and with pleasant anticipation waited. Of Mrs.
Adair, Harris always spoke with reverent enthusiasm, and the man
who loved her delighted to listen. But this time Harris disappointed
him.

"And Fearing, too," he added.

Again Hemingway nodded. The conjunction of the two names surprised
him, but he made no sign. Loquacious as he knew Harris to be, he never
before had heard his friend even suggest the subject that to Zanzibar
had become of acute interest.

Harris filled the two glasses, and began to pace the room. When
he spoke it was in the aggrieved tone of one who feels himself
placed in a false position.

"There's no one," he complained suddenly, "so popularly unpopular
as the man who butts in. I know that, but still I've always taken his
side. I've always been for him." He halted, straddling with legs
apart and hands deep in his trousers pockets, and frowned down
upon his guest.

"Suppose," he began aggressively, "I see a man driving his car
over a cliff. If I tell him that road will take him over a cliff,
the worst that can happen to me is to be told to mind my own
business, and I can always answer back: 'I was only trying to
help you.' If I don't speak, the man breaks his neck. Between
the two, it seems to me, sooner than have any one's life on my
hands, I'd rather be told to mind my own business."

Hemingway stared into his glass. His expression was distinctly
disapproving, but, undismayed, the consul continued.

"Now, we all know that this morning you gave that polo pony
to Lady Firth, and one of us guesses that you first offered it to
some one else, who refused it. One of us thinks that very soon,
to-morrow, or even to-night, at this party you may offer that
same person something else, something worth more than a polo
pony, and that if she refuses that, it is going to break you all
up, is going to hurt you for the rest of your life."

Lifting his eyes from his glass, Hemingway shot at his friend a
glance of warning. In haste, Harris continued:

"I know," he protested, answering the look, "I know that this is
where Mr. Buttinsky is told to mind his business. But I'm going
right on. I'm going to state a hypothetical case with no names
mentioned and no questions asked, or answered. I'm going to
state a theory, and let you draw your own deductions."

He slid into a chair, and across the table fastened his eyes on those
of his friend. Confidently and undisturbed, but with a wry smile
of dislike, Hemingway stared fixedly back at him.

"What," demanded Harris, "is the first rule in detective work?"

Hemingway started. He was prepared for something unpleasant, but
not for that particular form of unpleasantness. But his faith was
unshaken, and he smiled confidently. He let the consul answer his
own question.

"It is to follow the woman," declared Harris. "And, accordingly,
what should be the first precaution of a man making his get-away?
To see that the woman does not follow. But suppose we are dealing
with a fugitive of especial intelligence, with a criminal who has
imagination and brains? He might fix it so that the woman could
follow him without giving him away, he might plan it so that no one
would suspect. She might arrive at his hiding-place only after many
months, only after each had made separately a long circuit of the
globe, only after a journey with a plausible and legitimate object.
She would arrive disguised in every way, and they would meet as
total strangers. And, as strangers under the eyes of others, they
would become acquainted, would gradually grow more friendly,
would be seen more frequently together, until at last people would
say: 'Those two mean to make a match of it.' And then, one day,
openly, in the sight of all men, with the aid of the law and the
church, they would resume those relations that existed before the
man ran away and the woman followed."

There was a short silence.

Hemingway broke it in a tone that would accept no denial.

"You can't talk like that to me," he cried. "What do you mean?"

Without resentment, the consul regarded him with grave solicitude.
His look was one of real affection, and, although his tone held the
absolute finality of the family physician who delivers a sentence
of death, he spoke with gentleness and regret.

"I mean," he said, "that Mrs. Adair is not a widow, that the man
she speaks of as her late husband is not dead; that that man is
Fearing!"

Hemingway felt afraid. A month before a rhinoceros had charged
him and had dropped at his feet. At another time a wounded lioness
had leaped into his path and crouched to spring. Then he had not
been afraid. Then he had aimed as confidently as though he were
firing at a straw target. But now he felt real fear: fear of something
he did not comprehend, of a situation he could not master, of an
adversary as strong as Fate. By a word something had been snatched
from him that he now knew was as dear to him as life, that was life,
that was what made it worth continuing. And he could do nothing
to prevent it; he could not help himself. He was as impotent as the
prisoner who hears the judge banish him into exile. He tried to adjust
his mind to the calamity. But his mind refused. As easily as with his
finger a man can block the swing of a pendulum and halt the progress
of the clock, Harris with a word had brought the entire world to a full
stop.

And then, above his head, Hemingway heard the lazy whisper of the
punka, and from the harbor the raucous whistle of the Crown Prince
Eitel, signalling her entrance. The world had not stopped; for the
punka-boy, for the captain of the German steamer, for Harris seated
with face averted, the world was still going gayly and busily forward.
Only for him had it stopped.

In spite of the confident tone in which Harris had spoken, in spite of
the fact that unless he knew it was the truth, he would not have spoken,
Hemingway tried to urge himself to believe there had been some
hideous, absurd error. But in answer came back to him snatches
of talk or phrases the girl had last addressed to him: "You can
command the future, but you cannot change the past. I cannot
marry you, or any one! I am not free!"

And then to comfort himself, he called up the look he had surprised
in her eyes when he stood holding her hands in his. He clung to it,
as a drowning man will clutch even at a piece of floating seaweed.

When he tried to speak he found his voice choked and stifled, and
that his distress was evident, he knew from the pity he read in the
eyes of Harris.

In a voice strange to him, he heard himself saying: "Why do you
think that? You've got to tell me. I have a right to know. This
morning I asked Mrs. Adair to marry me."

The consul exclaimed with dismay and squirmed unhappily. "I
didn't know," he protested. "I thought I was in time. I ought to
have told you days ago, but--"

"Tell me now," commanded Hemingway.

"I know it in a thousand ways," began Harris.

Hemingway raised his eyes hopefully.

But the consul shook his head. "But to convince you," he went on,
"I need tell you only one. The thousand other proofs are looks they
have exchanged, sentences I have chanced to overhear, and that each
of them unknown to the other has told me of little happenings and
incidents which I found were common to both. Each has described
the house in which he or she lived, and it was the same house. They
claim to come from different cities in New England, they came from
the same city. They claim--"

"That is no proof," cried Hemingway, "either that they are married,
or that the man is a criminal."

For a moment Harris regarded the other in silence. Then he said:
"You're making it very hard for me. I see I've got to show you.
It's kindest, after all, to cut quick." He leaned farther forward,
and his voice dropped. Speaking quickly, he said:

"Last summer I lived outside the town in a bungalow on the Pearl
Road. Fearing's house was next to mine. This was before Mrs.
Adair went to live at the agency, and while she was alone in
another bungalow farther down the road. I was ill that summer;
my nerves went back on me. I couldn't sleep. I used to sit all night
on my veranda and pray for the sun to rise. From where I sat it was
dark and no one could see me, but I could see the veranda of Fearing's
house and into his garden. And night after night I saw Mrs. Adair
creep out of Fearing's house, saw him walk with her to the gate, saw
him in the shadow of the bushes take her in his arms, and saw them
kiss." The voice of the consul rose sharply. "No one knows that but
you and I, and," he cried defiantly, "it is impossible for us to believe
ill of Polly Adair. The easy explanation we refuse. It is intolerable.
And so you must believe as I believe; that when she visited Fearing
by night she went to him because she had the right to go to him,
because already she was his wife. And now when every one here
believes they met for the first time in Zanzibar, when no one will be
surprised if they should marry, they will go through the ceremony
again, and live as man and wife, as they are, as they were before he
fled from America!"

Hemingway was seated with his elbows on the table and his face in
his hands. He was so long silent that Harris struck the table roughly
with his palm.

"Well," he demanded, "why don't you speak? Do you doubt her?
Don't you believe she is his wife?"

"I refuse to believe anything else!" said Hemingway. He rose, and
slowly and heavily moved toward the door. "And I will not trouble
them any more," he added. "I'll leave at sunrise on the Eitel."

Harris exclaimed in dismay, but Hemingway did not hear him. In
the doorway he halted and turned back. From his voice all trace
of emotion had departed. "Why," he asked dully, "do you think
Fearing is a fugitive? Not that it matters to her, since she loves
him, or that it matters to me. Only I would like to think you were
wrong. I want her to have only the best."

Again the consul moved unhappily.

"I oughtn't to tell you," he protested, "and if I do I ought to tell the
State Department, and a detective agency first. They have the call.
They want him, or a man damned like him." His voice dropped to a
whisper. "The man wanted is Henry Brownell, a cashier of a bank in
Waltham, Mass., thirty-five years of age, smooth-shaven, college-bred,
speaking with a marked New England accent, and--and with other
marks that fit Fearing like the cover on a book. The department and
the Pinkertons have been devilling the life out of me about it for nine
months. They are positive he is on the coast of Africa. I put them off.
I wasn't sure."

"You've been protecting them," said Hemingway.

"I wasn't sure," reiterated Harris. "And if I were, the Pinkertons can do
their own sleuthing. The man's living honestly now, anyway, isn't he?"
he demanded; "and she loves him. At least she's stuck by him. Why
should I punish her?"

His tone seemed to challenge and upbraid.

"Good God!" cried the other, "I'm not blaming you! I'd be proud of the
chance to do as much. I asked because I'd like to go away thinking she's
content, thinking she's happy with him."

"Doesn't it look as though she were?" Harris protested. "She's followed
him--followed him half around the globe. If she'd been happier away
from him, she'd have stayed away from him."

So intent had been the men upon their talk that neither had noted
the passing of the minutes or, what at other times was an event
of moment, that the mail steamer had distributed her mail and
passengers; and when a servant entered bearing lamps, and from
the office the consul's clerk appeared with a bundle of letters
from the Eitel, both were taken by surprise.

"So late?" exclaimed Hemingway. "I must go. If I'm to sail with
the Eitel at daybreak, I've little time!"

But he did not go.

As he advanced toward Harris with his hand outstretched in adieu,
the face of the consul halted him. With the letters, the clerk
had placed upon the table a visiting-card, and as it lay in the
circle of light from the lamp the consul, as though it were alive
and menacing, stared at it in fascination. Moving stiffly, he
turned it so that Hemingway could see. On it Hemingway read,
"George S. Sheyer," and, on a lower line, "Representing William
L. Pinkerton."

To the woman he loved the calamity they dreaded had come, and
Hemingway, with a groan of dismay, exclaimed aloud:

"It is the end!"

From the darkness of the outer office a man stepped softly into
the circle of the lamp. They could see his figure only from the
waist down; the rest of him was blurred in shadows.

"'It is the end'?" he repeated inquiringly. He spoke the phrase
with peculiar emphasis, as though to impress it upon the memory
of the two others. His voice was cool, alert, authoritative. "The
end of what?" he demanded sharply.

The question was most difficult. In the silence the detective
moved into the light. He was tall and strongly built, his face
was shrewd and intelligent. He might have been a prosperous man
of business.

"Which of you is the consul?" he asked. But he did not take his
eyes from Hemingway.

"I am the consul," said Harris. But still the detective did not
turn from Hemingway.

"Why," he asked, "did this gentleman, when he read my card, say,
'It is the end'? The end of what? Has anything been going on here
that came to an end when he saw my card?"

Disconcerted, in deep embarrassment, Harris struggled for a word.
But his distress was not observed by the detective. His eyes,
suspicious and accusing, still were fixed upon Hemingway, and
under their scrutiny Harris saw his friend slowly retreat, slowly
crumple up into a chair, slowly raise his hands to cover his
face. As though in a nightmare, he heard him saying savagely:

"It is the end of two years of hell, it is the end of two years
of fear and agony! Now I shall have peace. Now I shall sleep!
I thank God you've come! I thank God I can go back!"

Harris broke the spell by leaping to his feet. He sprang between
the two men.

"What does this mean?" he commanded.

Hemingway raised his eyes and surveyed him steadily.

"It means," he said, "that I have deceived you, Harris--that I am
the man you told me of, I am the man they want." He turned to the
officer.

"I fooled him for four months," he said. "I couldn't fool you for
five minutes."

The eyes of the detective danced with sudden excitement, joy, and
triumph. He shot an eager glance from Hemingway to the consul.

"This man," he demanded; "who is he?"

With an impatient gesture Hemingway signified Harris.

"He doesn't know who I am," he said. "He knows me as Hemingway.
I am Henry Brownell, of Waltham, Mass." Again his face sank into
the palms of his hands. "And I'm tired--tired," he moaned. "I am
sick of not knowing, sick of running away. I give myself up."

The detective breathed a sigh of relief that seemed to issue from
his soul.

"My God," he sighed, "you've given me a long chase! I've had
eleven months of you, and I'm as sick of this as you are." He
recovered himself sharply. As though reciting an incantation, he
addressed Hemingway in crisp, emotionless notes.

"Henry Brownell," he chanted, "I arrest you in the name of the
commonwealth of Massachusetts for the robbery, on October the
eleventh, nineteen hundred and nine, of the Waltham Title and
Trust Company. I understand," he added, "you waive extradition
and return with me of your own free will?"

With his face still in his hands, Hemingway murmured assent. The
detective stepped briskly and uninvited to the table and seated himself.
He was beaming with triumph, with pleasurable excitement.

"I want to send a message home, Mr. Consul," he said. "May I use
your cable blanks?"

Harris was still standing in the centre of the room looking down
upon the bowed head and shoulders of Hemingway. Since, in
amazement, he had sprung toward him, he had not spoken. And
he was still silent.

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