Mixed Faces

"It – it seems a travesty – a blunder," she said, at last. "I – I don't know quite what to do about it all! I feel as if this were a farewell. I – I don't like to think of it as such. You have been so kind, and so encouraging, and you are so frank and – Can't we have one day more? Can't you come back to-morrow afternoon, – here – and be just Bill Jones, the Pirate, for another day? I think we'd be happier – afterward – if you could, and if we could forget certain things. Say you will come."

And as he walked dejectedly up the narrow confines of the blind little alley after leaving her he loathed himself for his weakness in promising that he would.

CHAPTER XVI

It's a long way from MacDougall Alley to Fort George at any time. It is rendered longer when the wind is chill; but Jimmy, no longer the jester, could never remember how he reached there on that wintry afternoon, and its hills, bleak with snow, were no more drab and cold than the dead fires of his dreams. The skies above were leaden, with no ray of sunlight. Away behind him the smoke of the city seemed leveled like a shroud. Its distant monotone of sound became a dirge. Unmindful of the chill, he found a bench, brushed the snow from a corner and sat there for a long time, seeing nothing, unobservant of his surroundings, and thinking of all that somehow seemed left irrevocably behind. It was as if it had been ages ago! It had been ages ago since happiness had fled. There was not a laugh left in all the sad world that had abruptly grown old, and savorless. A vagrant, aged, dirty, ragged, accosted him, begging alms, and without looking up, Jimmy thrust a hand into his pocket and took therefrom a dollar note. The beggar mumbled thanks, stamped his feet, turned away, and then came back and said, "Hope you're not down on your luck. I wish you luck, sir!"

"Luck? Oh, no. It's all right. I'm not down on my luck. Only – 'They're hanging Danny Deever in the morning!'"

The vagrant shuffled away, shaking his head. He did not in the least appreciate the sorry quip. All that he knew was that sometimes well-dressed men who came and thus sat in the parks, were sometimes found in the same place by a policeman – and usually such men had holes, self-inflicted, in their heads. But long before he had passed from sight Jimmy had reverted to the thought that to-morrow was the end. To see her just once more, and after that – nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for, nothing to dream about. Strangely enough it is the men whose laugh is readiest, whose mental sufferings and depressions are greatest. Often the laugh is but a forced cloak for grief. Well, to-morrow he would laugh! Be Bill Jones for the last time! Make a decent finish of the dream! Leave with this girl he had so loved a kindly recollection of a strange adventure as he made his exit from her life! There should be neither sighs, sentiment, nor repining.

Despite the fact that he had slept so little on the previous night, he moved restlessly about his room all that evening, standing before his window now and then to look out over the lights that flared and glittered from electric signs, hearing absently the hoarse whistles of ships out in the harbors, and the clamor of street cars that surged up and down the arteries of the city and went heedlessly on with its existence. Jimmy wondered, as the street life of the night waned and the lights went out, if there were others out there in the darkness as unhappy as was he. His new employment that had so elated him with its promise of golden opportunity sometimes came to his mind, but now he felt that success was empty without Mary Allen to share it with him. It was not until dawn that he fell asleep, exhausted, and even then trouble pursued him in his dreams.

When he awoke, at noon, he tried for a few minutes to imagine that it was still a very happy, prosperous and promising world; but it was all in vain. He sat on the edge of his bed, and again thought that if he had lost to any other than the Judge, it might not have been so distressing. He got up and looked at his own face in the glass, and hated it for that peculiar resemblance. It was certain now, after her confession, that all the time she had believed him to be the Judge and yet, because when with Mary Allen the Judge's very existence had been forgotten, Jim could not accuse himself of having fostered her illusion. Honesty would compel her to admit that. And, on the other hand, thinking it over, he could not remember that he had ever talked of the road, his business, or commercial adventure, because it was a rule of his never to "talk shop" out of hours. He thought she had already experienced too much of that and she had told him once that she detested chocolates. The only feature for which he could at all censure himself was for lack of frankness.

"If I hadn't been such a rotten coward, and had told her plainly after the first afternoon I ever had with her who I was, that I'd forgotten her name and all, it would never have come to this!" he soliloquized, and then, an instant later, reversed himself, considered that if he had been frank he might never have got to love her at all, and – to have loved her for so long and to have been with her so many times, was worth more than all else. Could he but have that measure of delight again, and then die, Death wouldn't be so grim and hopeless as this present pass. He flattered himself that she could never imagine all his folly of love. He was grateful to Fate that he had never uttered such avowal and suffered its inevitable rejection; for now she could always remember him as a friend. Rejections, he decided, must inevitably leave unpleasant or harrowing memories. He throttled all his sad eagerness for the farewell visit and resolutely delayed it until late in the afternoon. He schooled himself to the determination that there should be no sentimental speech or action lest she suspect his wounds and perhaps be thereby saddened. He had come to her with a laugh, he would leave her with a laugh. That was the brave way.

When he entered the studio for the last time, it seemed in twilight, for the shadows of a midwinter afternoon were already long. He saw that she had set out a dainty little tea table and his heart gave a throb when he discerned in its center, in a cut glass bowl, the violets that he had brought her on the preceding day. They seemed to scent the room with a definite and yet elusive fragrance, quite like her personality that was so soon to be but a memory.

"Well, Bill Jones, Pirate, you are late," she said, as she took his hat from his hand, while he removed his overcoat and hung it on the tiny little cloak stand in the corner, thinking as he did so, that there it brushed, honored, against her hanging garments.

"The obsequies of a pirate are best held in late afternoon," he replied. "It's a time-honored form. I'm very formal, as you know."

"I suppose Mary Allen has to die, too, doesn't she? That's the way pirate romances should end," she retorted. "I don't see why we never hear what becomes of the pirate's lady friends. Surely any decent, self-respecting pirate who is an honor to his profession, should have a woman somewhere to either mourn his loss or – as I suggested – go to the gallows and hang with him."

She turned to shift the tiny brass tea kettle that was beginning to steam in the little grate, and, fascinated by her grace, he forgot to speak. He thought he should always remember the firelight on her profile – there in the shadows of the room.

"Remember the time we had tea together in that funny little inn out on Long Island?" she asked, and then, before he could answer, laughed, gently, and added, as if pleased by the reminiscence – "and the car broke down on the way home, and we had to walk three miles to get another? And then we were so hot and thirsty that we stopped in the inn and had beer – plain, frothy beer – while the chauffeur was trying to start his old contraption into life. Um-mh! That seems a dreadfully long time ago."

"It does! It does!" he assented glumly, and fell to staring into the fire as if therein he could bring it all back to vision. "We agreed, then, that some day when summer came again, we'd do it all over. And now – there will be no more summers!"

Unconsciously he had betrayed himself in a despair of voice and twitch of movement.

"Are – are you sorry?" she asked, softly. "Are you sorry that Bill Jones and Mary Allen are finished?"

All his previous resolutions were forgotten, swept away as it by the hand of grief. All his pre-imagined repression vanished. He was but the heart-broken jester now, impulsive, outspoken.

"Oh, if I could live these few times over again, I think I could die happy! Mary! Mary! I never knew until yesterday how precious they were. Never knew that when Bill Jones died, the heart of me died with him! I'm – I'm – " He checked himself, shut his hands tightly over the arms of his chair, and exclaimed, "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean to tell you anything; because I've no right to say anything of the sort to you – now that Bill Jones is dead! I can't seem to remember that he was executed in that moment when you told me of your betrothal."

She abruptly dropped the steaming kettle back into the fender and he feared that she thus indicated resentment of his outburst. She got to her feet and walked across to the window where the rapidly waning light seemed hastily pulling drop curtains over their brief romance and he, fearful that he had offended her, sat dejectedly in his chair.

"One imagines many things! One is curious about them, sometimes," she said, softly. "And so – and so I wonder what you would have said, if Bill Jones had not passed out."

She stood as if considering something of grave importance and then, as if resolved, turned and came back until she stood near the chair in which he sat with bent head and shoulders, so unlike the buoyant, erect man she had known.

"It is but a week ago when being – being somewhat tired of neglect, I wrote a letter. Oh, I could kick myself for that! I suppose it must have been rather – let's say – familiar. It was addressed to Judge Granger. By return mail came a proposal of marriage and – well – I accepted it. Then he came on and – oh, it was a dreadful mixup! After just one evening together I knew that he wasn't, and never could have been, Bill Jones, the Pirate. And I didn't know what to do, or who, or what Bill Jones really was, and – and I was furious, disappointed and humiliated, and then you returned and – and – "

She paused and he looked up to find that her eyes were not on him, and that she was twisting her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers quite as if considering whether such fury, disappointment and humiliation could ever be forgiven. He felt that he was on trial and that his future hung upon her judgment.

"But – but – it wasn't altogether my fault – Mary," he pleaded in a voice in which contrition, distress and desire were eloquently blended. "I didn't mean to be dishonest. Coward I may have been but – but – oh, Mary! What can I say or do to be forgiven? To be at least kindly remembered?"

He bent forward again, resting his elbows on his knees and clutching his temples in his palms as if utterly given over to despair. It seemed to him that there was a prolonged wait in which she was coming to her decision, an interval filled with portent and so lifeless and still that tiny sounds from without became magnified.

Her voice, hesitant, and low, but, to his relief, gentle, broke the interminable spell.

"Suppose – suppose I were to tell you that – that I'm not going to marry Judge Granger, because after you came here yesterday I knew how impossible it was and wrote and told him so. And – "

"Mary! Mary, don't make it supposititious," he appealed, leaping to his feet. "That would be cruelty! Tell me that it's true, and that I am free to tell you that I love you – love you! You know that I do, and that there's no use in my trying to hide it."

She retreated from him a trifle, as if to escape his impetuosity, then, when he paused as if fearing to frighten her with his ardor, smiled at him and said, "Yes, Bill Jones. It's true!"

He caught her in his arms. For a moment he held her close while she made her last resistance, and then slowly lifted her hands upward until they came to rest about his shoulders.

"That's why I made you promise to come back," she said. "I – I couldn't let you go! I couldn't! I don't care what anyone thinks of it, I am what I am, and – I love you!"

They were suddenly aware of heavy steps climbing the studio stairs and she pushed him away hurriedly, bashfully.

"My Father!" she whispered. "I – I forgot that he was coming to get me. But – you'll love Dad," and then, as if suddenly remembering something, she laughed softly and added hastily, "I don't believe you even know my name. Don't forget it, now that Mary Allen is dead. My name is Sayers – Margaret Sayers, and my father's name is Sayers, Thomas Sayers, and he's in the motor business and – for heaven's sake! – pretend we've known each other for years and years!"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Jimmy, panic-stricken, as she hastened toward the door. "Tom Sayers! My job's gone bust! I'm done!"

The door opened and her hand swept up to a light switch in the lintel, there was a click, and the room was brilliant.

"Dad," she said, trying to suppress some trepidation of voice, "I want you to know Mr. Gollop. And I'd like to have you like him, because you see, I'm going to marry him, if you do."

Jimmy had been tempted to run; but now stood bending his head forward, blinking, and holding his breath in astonishment

"Martin – Martin – Mr. Martin – and you are not Martin, but are Mr. Sayers, and – "

But the man he had known as Martin smiled, for the moment ignored him, permitted his daughter to cling to him, and as he caressed her hair with tender fingers, said soothingly, "There! There! Don't be afraid of me, my girl. I've known this boy Jim for some time. I knew that he knew you, and I satisfied myself what sort he was, too, before things went too far. I never did like Granger. When you first told me that you had met Granger here in New York, I knew it couldn't be so, because I had seen him going through Media City on the previous day to keep some political appointment. And then I met Jim, and – I fooled him a little bit because I wanted to know just what sort of a man it was who had dared to look at you, and to take you to a horse show. Let go now! Let go, while Jim and I shake hands. But – inasmuch as your mother has always belonged to the Granger party, I suppose – I suppose she'll just raise hell! That's a part of the affair that I reckon you two had best leave to me. There's time enough, because, mark you both, there'll be no wedding bells in this firm until Jim satisfies me that he can make good."

And then he turned discreetly to hang up his overcoat and hat as if unaware that Mary Allen, struggling artist, and Bill Jones, Pirate, jubilant and unabashed, were again in each others' arms.

THE END