The Weaker Sex

A PAPER IN THE PIGEONHOLE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY.

“ MILTON wrote Paradise Lost to ‘ justify the ways of God to men,’ ” said Jack. “ No one yet has ventured on an epic to justify the ways to them of women.”

“The ways of a young man with a maid, sang the Psalmist.”

“ Psalmist ? It’s Job. But never the ways of the maid to him.”

“ Yet the subject was not unworthy his attention,” rejoined the District Attorney. “ For instance, the ways to a man of his wife.”

“ Burton has an Arabian tale on that.”

“ Perhaps ; but Christian literature on the subject is lacking.”

“ It is cheaper to take the lighter view,” said Jack. “ Francis the First led off with his souvent femme varie.”

“ Femme there is woman, not wife,” said the District Attorney. “At best, it is window-pane literature.”

“ Then take an older authority, — English, this time,” — and Jack quoted the motto at the head of our tale. “ There the word is ‘ wyfe.’ ”

“And the man was a wittol,” growled the District Attorney. “ Talk is cheap ; had he given affection ” —

“ Men are full of affection ; that’s why they don’t get married.”

“ In your class, perhaps, economic independence turns the women’s heads — from matrimony. But in the class I see” —

Here Jack’s wife had to interrupt; her husband’s last speech left too strong a scent for any woman not to follow.

“ Affection ! ” she sniffed. “ Yes, for too many. Or, if he has it before marriage,” she cried, doubling her speed as Jack showed signs of overtaking, “ he drops it with the ceremony ! He has her then, and counts upon her loving him ever afterwards, — which, I am bound to say, she usually does,” Jack’s wife, with a sudden drop to a walk, ruefully ended.

Jack grinned. His wife was nothing if not honest; and if she rather rushed her fences, she told honestly what she found upon the other side.

The District Attorney interfered : “ I could tell you a tale about that ” —

“ Oh, do ! ” said Jack’s wife.

I.

It was many years ago, when I was only the Assistant. You have seen complaints in the newspapers about the evil practice of our office in pigeonholing indictments, complaints. This is the history of a pigeonholed complaint.

In those days I was interested in one of the earliest attempts to establish outposts of civilization in the slums. Some young men were in residence in a house we had hired for this purpose. We were very proud of the map we had prepared of the neighborhood. It hung in the private sanctum of the head brother, and depicted, on a scale of one inch to the hundred feet, the vice and crime of our environment. Our knowledge of this part of Boston was “ extensive,” if not “ peculiar ; ” for the only tangible result of our first three months was, perhaps, this chart. Barrooms on it were colored red ; other houses of entertainment, yellow ; and the tenements of the criminal or vicious poor were black. Any house against which, or its inmates, nothing had been proven was gray ; but the gray spots on the map were few and far between, and the only white ones were the police station, the society of St. Vincent de Paul’s, and ourselves. In fact, the map looked like the Kaiser’s dream of an imperial German flag, all red and black and yellow.

One bitterly cold night I started late for home. We had been holding one of our classes, and I had assigned the parts and heard Macbeth read aloud from end to end by Russian Jews. They were far and away the most artistic class we had, and understood Shakespeare much better than our native-born.

It was too cold to walk across the damp and dusty marsh that runs from the Neck to the Back Bay of Boston, in the teeth of that awful wind. A close student of the American climate, I was well aware of what had happened : the atmosphere, which protects the earth like a blanket from the cold of interstellar space, had been drawn away to a storm centre south of us, and the empyrean had dropped through into the resulting vacuum. The empyrean is absolute cold. To-night it was a furious cold wind ; to-morrow it would be colder still, without the wind; on the third day the vapor would be slowly restored from the west and south, like the bedclothes over a shivering sinner, and our rasped membranes would have a rest.

To-night it was too cold to face the blast that blew down from the unwarmed zenith like a forced draft, and I waited on the corner for a car. “ Shiner ” Dempsey’s saloon was on that corner, — a not unfriendly person, who evidently did not fear that the higher life we were inculcating would appreciably diminish his receipts ; called “ Shiner ” for the freshly ironed “topper” he wore outside of business hours. His business hours were long, as he worked for himself, being from about noon till after midnight; but on Sundays he got away, by force of the law he much complained of. “ Sure ’t is better a man come in here openly and take a load he can carry, than rush a growler home o’ Saturday nights fit to blind-drunk the whole flat up to Monday. It is not that I’m afther rag-tail rates ; for the bottle trade buys that more than makes the difference.” Thus would Shiner Dempsey reason with us afterward, when we knew him better. It was on that night I made his acquaintance.

For the car that plies from the slums to Beacon Street runs on a very uncertain half hour, and I was driven to shelter in Dempsey’s saloon, as many a poor man has been before me. There were three men drinking at one end of the high bar, and Dempsey (or the barkeeper, as I then knew him) gave the cherry shelf a wipe with his napkin in my direction, and looked at me inquisitively before throwing it aside. I told him whiskey ; and even while he was pouring it out I noticed the noisy behavior of the three other men. There was one fellow with a slouchy air veneered with cheap bravado ; and then there were two ineffable cutthroats of the accepted stage variety drinking with him. The surprising thing was that he seemed to be drinking at their expense.

Dempsey’s whiskey was not so bad, with plenty of soda. I finished my own drink, and went to the window, hoping any car would come while it kept my chill away. The car was invariably late on cold nights when you shivered waiting for it, and early on hot nights when you had to run for it. A loud dispute turned me back from the window.

“ Have a drink, — I tell ’ee, have a drink. Dempsey good — hic — feller, Dempsey have a drink.”

With the cynical shrug of one who discharges his own conscience, the barkeeper poured a very little whiskey for himself, and shoved the bottle to his drunken guest, who helped himself liberally enough to bring up the average, and shoved it on to his cutthroat companions.

Just then the door opened. I was struck with a sudden shrinkage in the man beside me. Following his eye, I was startled; so, I think, was Dempsey ; the jaws of the two cutthroats fell. With the cold blast from the street there came a woman, clad in black, with only a thin black shawl wrapped about her decent, well-worn dress. I just saw that she was fine and straight and sad, while she walked, like a Juno, straight to the bar, straight to the drunken man, and put her hand upon his arm. He seemed shorter than she, as he cowered, and set down his glass untasted. The two cutthroats began to bluster.

She did not deign to look at them, but only at her husband. She was pale, but she looked at him with all her eyes. And by Heaven, if I could see once such a look in a woman’s eyes for me, I would [the District Attorney was a bachelor] — I would ask any woman that had it to marry me! But it only comes after marriage, and you can’t tell. Well, my heart gave the leap that any man’s does when he meets such a soul; and as the cutthroats seemed inclined to make trouble for her, I looked at the barkeeper. At the same moment Dempsey took his eyes from her, and looked at me. “ Come, Elmer,” said the woman.

“ Come, Elmer,” mocked the first cutthroat. “ Come home to his missus. Christ! be a man, Wentworth, and take another drink ! ”

Elmer hesitated.

“ Perhaps the missus ’ull take a drink herself,” said the other cutthroat, with a leer.

It was an error of judgment. Wentworth straightened himself, as the woman’s white hand quivered slightly on his arm, — straightened himself slowly, pulled himself together to look a moment at the cutthroat who had spoken last. Then he turned to the woman. “ This is no place for you,” he said. And picking up his overcoat from a chair he put it on, she helping him.

There was a pile of hogsheads opposite the end of Dempsey’s bar, that served to partially screen the inmates from the street. In the recess that it made the cutthroats had been standing ; but now one of them took a step toward the door. At the same moment Dempsey lifted the hinged end of his bar, and stepped out alongside of me. Thus we two stood across the egress from the recess formed by the pile of casks, and between Wentworth’s two friends and his wife. All this time not a word was said ; she touched his arm again, and he slipped by us and followed her.

We all looked in silence after them. As she opened the door, her husband was not too drunk to draw the thin black shawl around her neck, though we could see that she was supporting him, as they turned the corner by the street lamp.

When they ceased to be seen through the window, the first cutthroat burst into an uneasy laugh, but the one who spoke last made as if to follow them. Dempsey interposed his hand.

“ Let’s see where the damned scab lives ! ”

“ You owe for four drinks,” said Dempsey quietly. The cutthroat looked at us ; but we were both large men. The paying took some time.

When they were gone, Dempsey turned to me. “ Much obliged to you, sir. Have a drink on it. Better not go out just yet, sir.”

“ Do you often have such trouble ? ” I asked, as I accepted his courtesy.

“ Not often. Generally they ’re not worth it. But she — Those two were a bad lot.”

“ Do you know her ? ” I asked again.

Dempsey looked at me with a shade of suspicion.

“ Never saw her before. But he, — he often comes here. I can’t help selling him liquor. At least, I could n’t ” —

I shook his hand. “ Good-night, Mr. Dempsey,” said I. “ I belong to Groton House, just round the corner.”

“ Good-night, sir. There comes your car ; better take it. I don’t know them, but they ’re a bad lot.” And I left Dempsey putting up his shutters.

II.

That night I got home safely, but some mysterious attraction brought me back to Groton House the next night. Or, no, it was not mysterious ; it was the attraction of that poor woman’s personality. And by that I don’t mean face and figure, or even her expression and her eyes, or even voice and manner. It is cheap to grin at a man for recognizing a noble soul, because that soul is a woman’s. Yes, Mrs. Jack (I fear that Mrs. Jack had smiled) ; and no one knows better than an old prosecuting attorney that we do see noble souls, men’s or women’s, clothing faces. Mere prettiness will hide any youthful soul ; but a face of thirty or forty is a telltale thing.

Well, I went down to Groton House the next night, and told my tale at dinner, over the pie. Pie was our second and last course, and brought the talking hour, like ices and cigars with us. Being men, they did not take so light a view as you did, ma’am ; but all agreed that they had met with no such woman. The man was harder to individualize : just a weak, average, vain young countryman.

“ Looked as if butter would n’t melt in his mouth, did he ? ” said the Skipper.

Now the “ Skipper ” was one of us, — perhaps the most successful. So called because he had made a three years’ voyage as second mate of an American bark manned by Norwegians and Lascars ; and he had seen his chief officer ripped up from groin to breastbone by a “ dago ” boatswain, in the harbor of Rio. After chucking the dago overboard, to save expense and demurrage, he had become first officer and navigated the ship back to Boston, where he became a clergyman of the extremest High Church order. But though he had a secret chapel in his closet, none of the neighbors mistrusted his profession : he had a roll in his walk, wore a straw hat in winter, and was known to Cheese-it Alley as the “ Skipper.” No sign of the cloth was about him, the hair shirt underneath the flannel one being invisible. And he was said to be the only soul, policemen included, that dared walk through Cheese-it Alley after dark. Hence it had become his favorite haunt: he went there on his vacations, Saturday afternoons, to see the sport begin; and on Sunday mornings they called him in to patch up the family rows and arrange for hospital service.

“ I saw a chap like that, up Cheese-it Alley,” the Skipper went on.

“ Oh, of course,” said the Rev. Septimus Brand. (He was a Unitarian.) “ Everything happens in Cheese-it Alley.”

“Well, it does,” retorted Barstow. (The Skipper’s name was Barstow.) “ Everything happens in the alley. We had a marriage there to-day. I did it. Father Nolan funked the job.”

“ You mean he was afraid to go there in broad daylight ? ”

“ No, no, — bless his heart, no, — nor nighttime either. Did n’t feel quite sure of his principals. I risked it.”

“ As justice of the peace ? ”

“ They thought so. Oh, I read the service ; they know I’m a kind of sea parson. Who was your man with ? ”

I described the two cutthroats as best I could.

“ My word, I believe I know that outfit. Regular conventional stage villains, and he the virtuous youth astray. Never saw the wife, though. You ’re sure she was his wife ? ” This to me, sharply.

“ I ’ll swear it,” I replied.

“ Well, well, don’t get in a wax. They usually are n’t, you know,” said the Rev. Barstow. “ Anyhow, there’s no such woman in Cheese-it Alley — or on earth,” the Skipper closed. “ She was a vision in Dempsey’s barroom.”

“ So you would advise us to ” —

“ Think no more of her. You may minister to the fallen ; but all other frequentation with that sex is incompatible with the higher light. St. Thomas à ” — “ Hang St. Thomas à Kempis ! ” said I. “ He knew nothing of the subject. We could help that woman, strong and fine as she is, — help her to save her husband.”

“No man ever tried to save a woman but lost his own soul,” dogmatized the Skipper. “I never interfere between husband and wife ” —

“ Please, sir, do come to mother. Popper ’s got her down, and ’e’s a-beatin’ of her dreadful.” The door (we were back in the front room by this time) had opened while we were discussing, and it was a child of nine who spoke, — blue-eyed, freckle-faced, barefooted but for a pair of old slippers, the falling snow upon her hair. The Skipper grabbed his hat amid the general laughter, and I followed.

“ Family’s English,” said Barstow to me. “ Only three English families in the alley ; good class, but they will beat their wives. Now tell me about your men. Both American : dyed mustache on one, other blond and pink-necked — too well dressed for the neighborhood — blond a Yankee, New York finish? — Lead on, Mary! ”

I nodded.

“ Wait a bit till I fix up Mary’s mother’s case. Her man must have stopped halfway for want of money. They ’re next door, but they don’t live there — just wait here.” We were already in the alley. “ In the entry, you tenderfoot.” I slouched in the dark entry while the Skipper and Mary ran upstairs. “It’s all right; she’s still talking. I won’t be long.”

Talking she was, and so was he, and there were occasional other voices. I confess I passed my time inventing excuses to the proprietors of Cheese-it Alley flats for my presence there. They seemed, however, to pay no attention to what was going on above me ; and in a moment the voices ceased, and the Rev. Barstow reappeared with a heavy Lancashireman, evidently Mary’s popper.

“ You go down to Shiner Dempsey’s, and he ’ll give you one more drink. Then don’t you dare come home until you ’re sober.” The fellow slunk off. “ Case of necessity,” said the Skipper to my look of inquiry. “ Like a dose of morphine. He’s really dangerous at this stage. Stop a moment, though; his fighting mood may come in handy. — John Dene, this man wants to see a friend. That friend is the young fellow down with two men in that basement next door. You go down and tell him his wife wants him.”

It was easy to see the ascendency Barstow had established over Cheese-it Alley. His orders would have appeared vague to a sober man. But John Dene half touched his hat, and plunged down a greasy cellar stairway. Halfway down he tripped and fell, apparently, and broke open a door, for we heard a crashing of wood. “ Now,” said the Skipper, “ you watch and see if that’s your man. Stand back there, in the dark.”

We heard loud swearing from below. “ Suppose he don’t come ? ” said I.

“ They ’ll let him come all right; they don’t want a row, and people rushing in on their business, I suspect.” And sure enough, we heard a low voice in argument with the swearer.

“ Can’t you see he’s drunk ? Get him out of here, — let Wentworth go.” A hoarse roar and a bang followed ; John Dene was getting in his work. The man I had seen in Shiner Dempsey’s ran upstairs, and I gripped the Skipper’s arm.

“Mr. Wentworth?” said the Skipper. “ Your wife wants you. Mr. Lane, — Mr. Lane, Mr. Wentworth. Mr. Lane is a lawyer; but he did n’t quite know his way about the alley, so I came with him. Lane ’ll go back with you. (Make your story up as you go ; you ’re properly introduced.) ”

The last words were an aside to me. I looked at Wentworth, and he recognized me. “ She is n’t sick, is she ? ”

A voice below saved me the trouble of replying, and I turned to the Skipper. “ But what ’ll you do ? ”

“ Rather think I’ve got to see John Dene through. I want to get my eye on the two men’s game,” he whispered. “ Tell her simply you came to get him away from them.”

Wentworth and I walked off, and Barstow plunged down the stairway. The audible appearances were that John Dene was having it all his own way.

III.

Wentworth was a young fellow, slender, small - boned, freckle - faced, with something of the air of the country dandy about him. He did not look as if brought up on a farm, but rather as one who had worn a black coat over his shirt sleeves, done his work behind a desk, and for sport gone buggy-riding of a Sunday. His face was bright enough, with delicate black mustache, and fine if rather furtive brown eyes. I deemed it best to meet the coming question.

“I don’t think Mrs. Wentworth is ill,” I said. “ I saw you the other night at Shiner Dempsey’s.”

“ I remember. I was a bit shiny myself,” he answered civilly, with a smile a woman might have called attractive. “ And you ” — Suddenly his face changed. “ Did she tell you? Did she say where I was ? Damn her! I ’ll fix her ! ”

Any one who had seen the two together might have doubted the possibility of his fixing her ; but I hastened to reply : “ Your wife had nothing to do with it. Do you know who those two men are ? ” This was a random shot, but it evidently took effect.

“They’re friends of mine, — that should be enough for you, and her too. Who are you, anyway ? ”

I drew my cardcase, and gave him my card ; and this act seemed to mollify him. With a flourish he produced a card in exchange. It bore the legend, “Elmer H. Wentworth, First National Bank, Claremont, N. H.”

“I’ve left the bank,” he said, as he saw me read it. “ Dead little hole. But it gave me considerable knowledge of financial affairs in that section. I am looking for a city position; and I don’t mind telling you I’ve had devilish hard work getting one.”

“ I’m a member of Groton House; college settlement, you know.” He looked at me blankly. “ Our men there were surprised at seeing people like yourself and your wife in this part of the town.”

“ Beggars must n’t be choosers,” said the young man, as if in jest. “ But stop in at Shiner’s and have a drink with me.”

He had evidently not been drinking yet, and I saw no way to refuse without leaving him. I confess I had too much interest in Mrs. Wentworth to do that so soon. Moreover, the Skipper had dropped a hint about the two men. Wentworth took his whiskey (I compromised on beer), and I could see it go to his nerves at once. Still we went on, apparently on the same footing.

“ Have you any letters from the bank ? I should gladly do what I can,” I said, by way of filling up the time as we walked.

“ No, I did n’t ask for letters. I just left. But I know all the boys on the road.”

We came to a poor but decent-looking brick lodging house ; he led me up two flights of stairs, and entered, without knocking, a back room. I heard, though it was late in the evening, the whir of a sewing machine. His wife rose, and looked at me in surprise ; then I saw that she recognized me. She colored, and I felt his suspicions return.

“ Did you tell this stranger where I was ? ” he asked angrily.

“ I ? No, no, Elmer,” she repeated earnestly. I interposed hastily.

“ My friend Mr. Barstow — a clergyman— has duties in a place called Cheese-it Alley. I went there to-night, and we found Mr. Wentworth with two men we have every reason to be suspicious of. I ventured to come back to warn you both about them. That is all, with every apology for the intrusion.”

“ There, Elmer,” said the wife softly. She was still standing, her noble presence quite belittling the pretentious young man, despite his entire unconsciousness of inferiority. “ I never liked that Sinclair and his friend.”

“You never like my friends. What have your people done for me, I’d like to know ? Ain’t I got to earn our living ?”

Mrs. Wentworth cast a half glance at the sewing machine, and I felt convinced that, for the moment, the living came from it.

“ I come from Groton House, where we are trying to help each other,” I said. “ I should like to write to Claremont about Mr. Wentworth, if he will let me. Meantime ” (I saw the books upon the worktable), “perhaps you could help us by taking a reading and a sewing class there ? We can afford to pay a little, a very little.”

“ No use writing to Claremont,” put in the husband. “ A fellow must stand on his own merits, in this world.”

“You know you are a beautiful bookkeeper, Elmer,” said the wife, with a pathetic look of trying to be proud of him. “ And I should like a little of the work, for a change. Our sewing does n’t take much time, for only the two of us.” Her inflection dropped as she ended, and I knew that there had been a baby who had died.

Before I left them, it had been arranged that she should go to Groton House for two hours, three evenings in the week. The young man insisted on coming with me to my car, and talked to me with a show of eagerness of his skill at selling bonds, his acquaintance with New Hampshire savings banks, with country investors. Then I left him, and I fear he took another drink at Dempsey’s.

Of course I wrote to the Claremont bank, and got the answer I expected. They had no charge to make against Mr. Wentworth, but had deemed it best to sever his connection with them. And I saw all the wearisome old story : the pretty country girl; the fascinating town bank clerk, with his buggy and his bright ways; the careless courtship and the careless marriage (on his part), followed by the lifelong devotion, so easily earned, so lightly prized. Nothing could be done for them in banking circles without a reference ; but I searched for something else for him. And the Skipper and the Rev. Septimus looked after her.

IY.

I am not telling the story of their lives, so I must hasten on to the catastrophe. Winter waned, and the warm weather came on. We found no place for Wentworth, and he did n’t seem to care. He began to talk grandiloquently of “ going on the road.” What line of enterprise this meant we could not see ; but his wife was evidently in terror of it. Since John Dene’s incursion the two cutthroats had moved, — to some place more recondite, if not redder and yellower, than Cheese-it Alley ; wherever it was, it was certainly off our map, for even Skipper Barstow had failed to find them. Barstow, as usual, had become the friend at hand to the Wentworth family ; to him Mrs. Wentworth confided her fears, and even her husband confided — his hopes and vainglory — as much confidence as he placed in anybody. But Barstow would not flatter him, and it was evident his other friends did ; also, that they gave him to drink, for he came home often with his poor nerves crazed. At such times, if he found Barstow, he was abusive ; whether more so when he found his wife alone we could not tell. She struggled bravely ; but she showed the struggle in her eyes.

Shiner Dempsey was the man who helped us in the end. The cutthroats never came to drink in his saloon again ; but, by the freemasonry of his trade, he was able to locate them, — in the private room adjoining the bar of a political friend of his in South Boston. One night the Skipper came to the house, late to dinner, full of satisfaction at the discovery. “ This is in your line, Lane,” he said to me. “ It looks like they ’re green-goods men.”

“ Counterfeiters ? ” I said. “ You mean they had their plant in Cheese-it Alley ? ”

“ Perhaps not, though perhaps they did. They did n’t seem to approve John Dene as a walking delegate. Perhaps they ’re only the first fence themselves. But it’s evident they want your sleek friend Wentworth to be the last, — to pass the money. He has a clerkly hand, — perhaps to alter numbers. Yet I doubt if he’s up to that. Perhaps he does n’t even know the game, — only suspects it. But when he goes on the road, to sell bonds, what more likely than that he should pass a bill or two ? Or he might even sell the original packages, to the people who would buy his bonds.”

“ Mrs. Wentworth is wild to get her husband into some occupation,” I said. “ She can read the men at sight, and knows they would use her husband for their tool. Her last proposition was to find for him some decent clerkship, at any pay, and arrange with the employer to increase it by what she can earn from her sewing machine, to make the place seem worth her Elmer’s while.”

“ You may be sure he has done something wrong ; not much, but just enough to make him lose his place while leaving the matter hushed up. She feels the crisis in his life, and would give her eyes to get him on the rails again. And he is just the sort of fellow to make a dangerous criminal.”

“ Oh, come ! ” said the Rev. Septimus Brand. But Barstow only shook his head.

“ I know the type, —the nervous temperament,— Yankee quickness, lack of stomach or stamina. He could forge, defraud, commit a sudden murder, — only nothing brutal. He would never beat his wife, like John Dene, though he might, I think, kill her.”

“ He’s drinking hard ; not, I believe, because he likes it, but to make the world look different,” said Brand, with the air of one making a discovery. Barstow roared. “ And yet you let yourself out for a sky pilot! I prescribe one month’s course of raw red whiskey, between meals ! Do you suppose men drink because they like the taste ? ”

“ I do, — I just love it,” said I, out of feeling for the Rev. Septimus, who was blushing for his innocence. “ And I ’ll bet John Dene does.”

“ Not men of the type of Wentworth, though. He is the degenerate aristocrat, all nerves and ganglia. I suppose that’s what made her marry him. Lane, can’t you do something ? Can’t we hand him over to the secular arm?”

“ Hand who over ? ” said I.

“ Him — or rather, them — the two outdacious villains — the impenitent thieves. Can’t you work the state police or something ? ”

“ The state police know all about them. The trouble is to catch them doing something,” said I loftily.

“ Oh, they do, do they ? Then will you kindly find out where the pair are lodging ? ”

“ I was just going to ask you that,” said I. “ If you find it out, I ’ll have a raid made.”

“ And have them out of the state. Much good would that do us! ”

“ Could n’t we then make the Wentworths stay here ? Could n’t you tell her enough to make her stay here ? If I ’m any judge of character,” — I was then twenty-five, — “ he ’ll stay where his wife does.”

The Skipper slapped his clerical leg and said I’d hit it. That I remember very well. We all agreed that the one thing was to separate him from them, and trust to Mrs. Wentworth’s influence.

But the ways of Divine Providence were not then made known to the priest Barstow. Our only comfort afterward was from thinking that we were all in it, alike. Our action had commended itself to the wisest foresight of three intelligent men. Perhaps, after all, our action also was in the providence of God; though only John Barstow, priest, could think so, after the event.

V.

The Skipper went back the next evening to the dramshop in South Boston, accompanied by a small boy, an extraordinarily intelligent Russian Jew of eleven or twelve years, an acolyte of Cheese-it Alley. “I did n’t like to set him spying on the sly,” said Barstow, “so I told him frankly what he was there for. The end justifies the means, and we were trying to ‘ shake ’ two dangerous enemies of his dear friend Mrs. Wentworth. (You know, he goes to her reading class, and he simply adores her.) Well, he did better than I dreamed. When they went home, he met ’em outside and pretended to be a beggar; that is, he asked for a drink.”

“ Did he take it ? ” “A pretty way to ingratiate himself ! ” said I and Brand simultaneously.

“ That’s where you ’re dead wrong. Oh, he took it all right,” answered the Rev. Skipper, who was fond of slang. “ They were delighted with the way he took it. And there ’s nothing so inspires a rascal’s confidence as to make him think you ’re a rascal, too. You ’ve observed that in your profession, Lane.”

I admitted, but with dignity, that the rascally lawyer often found it easier to get clients. The vulgus confounds smartness with sharpness, trickiness with ability. How else do we find all the deserving poor mixed up with such shady attorneys ?

“ Well, they thought he was a peach, and let him go home with them. And in the cellar — well, I don’t want to know too much, but I think, if you get the lad before your police, Lane, they ’ll have grounds enough to make a raid.” The Skipper was always anxious not to know too much ; he had to learn plenty, as it was, but would no more “ peach,” after a thing was over and done, than a more Catholic confessor ; his mission was to persuade, not to punish. “ You’d better lose no time ; see your people at once, with the boy. Meantime, I ’ll go round to Mrs. Wentworth and tell her to keep her husband at home to-morrow, at any cost.”

This was done. The state police were more than ready, after hearing the boy’s story, to make a raid at once. From his description they seemed to recognize the criminals ; but they also appeared to be rather concerned for the boy’s safety in case the two cutthroats were not duly locked up. They recommended that influence should be made to send him to our best state industrial school; apparently also thinking the boy’s talents too great to be wasted in a sweatshop. But Stepan pleaded against this stoutly. The family affection of the Russian Hebrew is very strong, but also, I suspect, the boy could not bear separation from his adored Mrs. Wentworth in the trouble he evidently felt was to be hers. So it ended by my promising to keep him safe in Groton House until the thing was over.

I was busily detained at the office until after six, that night, keeping Stepan with me; but then went instantly to Groton House, where I found things quiet enough, and we sat down to our dinner as usual. Barstow had not thought it wise to see the Wentworths on that day, as he had frankly told the wife that her husband’s friends were probably counterfeiters, and were about to be “ pulled ” by the police. She was coming to one of her classes in the evening; meantime, we could only wait and hope that she had kept him by her, for by that time all would be over.

At seven o’clock she appeared, — earlier than usual, — her worn face bearing witness to the distress she had had. Barstow had cautioned her not to say anything that would tend to identify her with the coming coup. So she had had to plead illness, and rely solely on her powers of persuasion; and it was testimony to the affection her husband still bore for her that he had yielded to her entreaties on a day which he too seemed to have deemed of importance, for he had become (she told us) more and more nervously irritable as the day wore on. Several times she had to take his promise that he would go out but to return in a moment ; and each time, when he returned, he had evidently been drinking ; and the last time, about nightfall, though he had given the promise, he had not come back at all. To calm the poor woman’s anxiety, I promised to go at once to police headquarters (it was before the days of telephones) and find out what had occurred. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wentworth insisted, she would go on with her class ; it would do her good.

“We nabbed ’em in the nick of time,” said the inspector at the central station. “ Goods was all packed, and they just about ready to go on the road. But there was only one of them the man we wanted. The other was a kind of a country swell, — never met him before. He was rather a light weight, he was. We let him go.”

“ What was his name? ” I asked anxiously. Could Wentworth, after all, have got caught himself ?

“ Gave his name as Parker. Wa’n’t his real name, o’ course. Swore he did n’t know anythin’ about the goods. I don’t know— there was some good bills among ’em. Anyhow, we let him go.”

“ What did you let him go for ? What time was it ? ”

“ Oh, we ’ll get him any time easy enough. We’ve only just got back.”

It was Wentworth, without doubt; and he evidently had failed to inspire the experts with much respect for his powers as a criminal.

“ Why did you wait so long ? ” I asked. “ It was only two o’clock when you started.”

“ Well, we found the goods all right; but the shop was empty, and we thought we’d wait till the owners came to claim them,” the inspector grinned. “But we missed one barrel. It’s just Bowery Dave and a tenderfoot; that’s all he is, — just a tenderfoot.”

“ What is your man like ? Fat, blond, pink-necked,—looks like a prosperous gambler ? ”

“ That’s the feller, — sort o’ Jim Fisk type, — Dave Sinclair, well-known upper-class confidence man. Never knew him in anything so bad as this before.”

“ That’s because you have n’t got the worst of the two.” And I described as best I could the individual with the dyed mustache.

“Was that the feller?” said the inspector, pulling out a photograph from his desk drawer.

“ Precisely.”

“ I might ha’ known it. I — might — have—known it,” repeated the inspector, with added emphasis. “ And Mac’s been let in again. Where d’s the other feller live, I wonder ? ”

“The dyed mustache? I don’t ” —

“Of course you don’t. No, no; the tenderfoot, I mean. That’s the place to find out first.”

I hesitated a moment; then I spoke : “ I think I know.”

“ You know ?—Here, Charley! ” The inspector rang a bell and spoke through a tube at his desk. “ Put two men — Bryan and Johnson — no, MacCann — he ’ll be all the better for this job now — in the carriage, and say I ’ll be down directly.—Now, Mr. Lane, come on. How d’ you know it, though ? ”

I told him about our interest in Mrs. Wentworth, and, through her, in him. But I made two conditions before giving the address: one was that he should not rearrest Wentworth, who, I felt sure, was not yet guilty ; the other, that we should call at Groton House, on the way, and reassure his wife’s mind. The inspector demurred to the second ; I only wish he had insisted.

The two men got inside with us (the carriage must look like an ordinary carriage, explained the inspector), and I gave the driver the address of Groton House. I would not let them go in, but hurried in alone, only to find that Mrs. Wentworth had finished her class and gone home, anxious about her husband ; Barstow escorting her. I ran down the steps, and made the inspector promise to keep his men concealed (unless the other cutthroat should be found actually in Wentworth’s room), and himself to come in as my friend : to both which conditions he (rather petulantly, I thought) assented.

We stopped the carriage at the nearest street corner. (Mrs. Wentworth and Barstow had but just gone, they had told me at Groton House.) Then I led the inspector up the dark stairs of the Wentworth family’s last poor home.

When we got to the second flight we heard Wentworth’s voice, that of a drunken man, talking loudly, apparently rating his wife. There was no reply. Then, after a moment’s waiting, a pistol shot and the heavy fall of a body.

“ That’s murder ! ” said the inspector, as he dashed forward up the pitch-dark stairs.

VI.

We burst into the room almost together, the inspector of police and I. There was Wentworth, crazed with drink, one hand grasping the still smoking revolver, Barstow holding him tight under both arms, just too late. No one else was in the room.

Just too late ; for on the floor lay his wife, with blood upon her breast, still breathing, but already unconscious. For a minute (it seemed an age) no one spoke ; there was no sound but the hard breathing of the poor woman. Then the inspector stepped forward and laid his hand gravely on the man. “ I arrest you for murder,” he said.

Wentworth paid no attention to him ; all his eyes were for the true wife who had loved him so, whom he had killed. It was terrible to see in his eyes the false spirit leave him, the sober consciousness return. Suddenly he burst from Barstow’s arms, and fell, in a storm of sobs, at her side. He tore the poor dress from her shoulder, seeking in vain to stanch the spot with his lips ; slowly, pitilessly, the red drops came. “ Stop,” said the inspector. “ Stop ; you only make it worse. Come away, you ” — he hurled Wentworth back roughly — “ and thank your stars if you have not killed her, after all.” He went to the window, threw it open, and whistled; in a moment the carriage dashed up. “ Drive for the nearest surgeon, — and drive like hell, — one of you ; the other come up with me.” We heard the carriage rattle off; the policeman came up the stairs, entered, started back as he saw her body. “ It is a job of murder, not counterfeiting, to-night,” said the inspector briefly.

Barstow, the sobbing Wentworth assisting, tried to lift her to a lounge. “ Leave her where she is, — leave her where she is,” ordered the inspector. “ Until the doctor comes,” — this to Barstow, demurring. “ Where is the other of you? ” he asked Wentworth.

The young man stopped sobbing, and seemed to think; suddenly his frame straightened, and he spoke in a voice that shook with anger : “ Driscoll ? Curse him! Driscoll” —

“ Oh, it’s Driscoll, is it ? ” said the inspector. “ I thought as much. Where is he ? ”

“ Curse him, he left me at the door. He brought me here, and told me I ’d find my wife with the parson, and ” —

“ And a pretty job you ’ve done,” said the inspector grimly. “ If she dies, you ’ll swing for it, thank God.”

Wentworth tore a piece of paper from his pocket. “ After you arrested Sinclair he sent Driscoll this.” The inspector took the scrawl and read it.

“ Now how’d he get that through my men ? ” He handed it to Barstow, who read it, and sank upon a chair. Only for a moment ; then he rose and faced Wentworth.

“ You cur ! ” he cried. “ Oh, you cur ! And you believed a felon’s lie — against — I won’t say against a priest of the Church of Christ, but against that woman, your wife ” —

“ No, no, my God, no ! ” sobbed the wretched man. “ I had come straight from the arrest — she had seemed to be expecting that — Driscoll made me drunk — Oh, God ! ”

“ Ay, he was drunk enough, poor wretch,” said Barstow to me. “ Read it, Lane.”

The message was scrawled upon a bit of memorandum book, and was but a line : —

“ D.,— The fool’s wife has blown upon us. I was nabbed in the shop. Tell the fool he ’ll find the sailor parson at home, quietly making love to his wife. They let him go, which is more than she counted on. D. S.”

“ I went to the house, and found she had been there, and gone home with him. He made me drunk. Mary, Mary, forgive me — for God’s sake, hear me ! It is Elmer ! ” The man had flung himself again on the floor, by her side.

“ Ah, she will forgive you, but it’s hanging just the same.” The inspector seemed to find relief in saying this. Thank Heaven, the door opened and the surgeon came just then.

We left the room while he was making the examination, Barstow and I and the policeman. Wentworth pleaded piteously to stay, and the inspector allowed it; partly, I suppose, to keep his eye on him. He had carefully removed the pistol, and had him searched for other weapons, evidently fearing suicide.

When we got to the street, I saw that Barstow was walking like a drunken man.

“ Come to the house ! Come ! ” he said.

We had time to go there and return before the examination should be over. I told them briefly what had happened. Meantime, Barstow, seeing no one, went up to his private room. The Rev. Septimus Brand began to cry. I seemed to have got beyond that, somehow, but the little Russian boy was crying, too. In a few minutes Barstow came down, dressed, for the first time I had seen him, in a priest’s cloth. He never took it off again.

We went back, he and I and Stepan, to get the surgeon’s report. Thank God, he gave us some faint hope ! She might at least recover consciousness; he would not yet say that she might live. He had not ventured to probe for the bullet; he doubted if it could be reached ; all depended on whether it had gone downward. Mrs. Wentworth was tall, and had been standing up when her husband fired : that gave ground for hope. Meantime, it would not be wise to move her.

I arranged with him to procure all that was needful ; two nurses, another surgeon. He could not tell when, if ever, she would recover consciousness : it might be the next morning ; it might be the day after. We could do nothing more.

Reluctantly I turned to go. Barstow would watch until the end. The inspector laid his hand upon Elmer Wentworth ; the carriage was still below. Come ! ” said he. Then I heard the cry of a lost soul.

Even the inspector drew back; and Barstow sprang up, his face working silently. If such appeals are at the judgment gate, God must be merciful. Leave her ? Never would he leave her on earth, Wentworth said. His terror of the parting gave him superhuman strength ; he shook off the burly policeman like a terrier. Hang him ? Oh yes, they might hang him ; he would plead guilty ; he would go himself when she died — go when — They might handcuff him in the room, leave a force there.

“ In the name of Christ ” — his voice suddenly dropped, in his last appeal, not to me, not to the inspector, but to Barstow, the priest he had wronged — “ she might come to. I must speak to her — my Mary, Mary! ” He was in tears, and we bowed our heads. “ I must make my Mary hear me once more, only once more.” He fell at the foot of the bed where she lay. “ Mary, hear me ! Oh no, no, I will be quiet; I will be still,” he whispered, as the surgeon hushed him, drawing him away. On his knees he moved to Barstow. “ She might come to; she might miss me; she might one moment be well enough to hear me. In the name of Christ, you minister, I pray you make him not make me go ! ”

Then there was a silence ; he seemed to faint; we heard the sobbing of the little Russian boy. And the white, sweet face of the dying woman looked mutely at us.

Barstow stepped forward, book in hand. “ As I am a minister of God, I guarantee him to you,” he uttered hoarsely.

“ And as attorney for the Commonwealth, I will vouch for you,” said I.

“ It did n’t need you, sir,” faltered the inspector. “ I ’ll take the risk myself. MacCann ! ” — this gruffly to the softhearted Irishman. “ Don’t stand there blubbering ! Get yourself in some room over the way, and watch for Driscoll! ”

Then the inspector and I drove home.

VII.

Mrs. Wentworth did not become conscious that night nor the next day. The nurse and a young surgeon were always present; her husband never left her bedside, hardly even took his eyes off her face. He would neither eat nor sleep. Even the little Russian boy could not be kept from the door. But as for the Driscoll man, he never appeared ; the policeman kept his watch in vain. Some account of the shooting had necessarily got into the papers, and he doubtless thought it wise to leave the state. The devil had done his work. Sinclair was duly sentenced ; neither of the pair ever darkened the Wentworths’ way again.

Barstow called a dozen times a day. Of all men, he now alone had any influence over Wentworth. It was through his argument that Wentworth was persuaded to take food. It seemed as if the husband sought in any littlest way to mark his recovery from his insane suspicion of the woman who had linked her life to his.

It was not for the next world that he cared, but for this. Barstow, on his religious side, still made no appeal. It was the one word from the wife, living, that he wanted. Barstow saw it, and, as a man, he sympathized. I myself had some doubts whether Mrs. Wentworth would know that it was her husband who had shot her; if so, would it not, after all, be better she should not regain her consciousness, if death came ? I said as much to Barstow ; but he shook his head. Wentworth would never believe that she did not know, he said. Of course, from the priest’s point of view, she would know; but Barstow insisted it was not from this. Wentworth would have bartered immortality for one more mortal moment with her; and it was strange to find the priest sympathizing.

Morning, afternoon, and night I went there, — three times a day, — seven calls in all. Her condition remained much the same, only with failing pulse. But her husband’s life seemed to be burning away, from the fire in his eyes. He sat mute while I was there ; though Barstow said he sometimes spoke to him in private, and nothing would prevent him, when alone, from calling softly to his wife by name. After all, perhaps it did no harm.

After all, perhaps it did no harm ; for at the eighth visit I was stopped by Stepan, radiant at the door. It was Easter morning.

“ She is living ! ” he said. “ Christ is risen.”

The Russian Easter salutation came second in his mind, but he said it (out of habit of hearing, or because his own faith lacked such a phrase) though a Jew. I remembered, and replied, —

“ Christ is risen.”

“ You cannot see her to-day,” said the boy. “Nobody can see her to-day but the doctor and him.”

“ Him,” I knew, meant the husband. “ Does the doctor say she will get well ? ” I asked.

“ Get well ? Why, sure.” Then, as if the doubt first struck him, he began to sob. “You — do — not think — she will not get well — now ? ”

I comforted him as best I could. I told him there was every hope. But in the evening, when I went back, I was told that she had asked to see me. I was surprised, for even Barstow had not yet seen her; only, I was told by the surgeon, he and the nurse and her husband. It was her husband who had seen the first tremor of the eyelid ; and after a moment, to make sure that all was really well, the doctor had taken even the nurse away, and left them together. It had done no harm ; he had been allowed to talk to her for moments at intervals through the day, and each time she had seemed rather the stronger for it. There was hope of her recovery.

“ Much ? ” I said.

“ Some,” he answered. But he had not dared probe for the bullet.

I went upstairs. The husband met me at the door. “ She wants to see you alone,” he said. A great peace was in his face. He went away willingly. It was evident that he had told her.

But when I saw her face, I knew that he had told her more than this, that he had sought to kill her : he had told her that he loved her ; once again had he told it to her, in such a way that she believed. Never had I seen her look so happy. By heavens, I have never seen such happiness in any woman’s face ! I am a bachelor; but I should make a good husband, for I would confess my love after marriage. I believe that Mrs. Wentworth would have gone through it again, for the winning of her husband back to herself. For this was what she wanted to say to me : that he loved her (she did not even put in “ now ”); that he was wholly hers ; that he fired the shot in a moment of insanity. Now he was himself again, — forever. And hers, — now really hers. (And indeed I saw that this might well be true ; it was she that had won him now, not the mere instinct of a young man’s courtship.) Would they prosecute him?

The climax was unexpected. I stammered a little. “No — why, no — at least, if you get well — or rather — it was only assault, not such a serious offense — doubtless he was insane — I will do what I can ” —

“ And if I die ? ”

“ Oh, well —then, of course, it might be murder — that is, homicide — if you die within the year — from the effects of the shot — but you must not think of that ” —

(“ By heaven,” said Barstow, when I told him this, that night, “ I believe she would like to die, while he loves her so.”)

No, she must not think of that. She would live, she answered. Of course she would live.

“ Elmer! ”

She called her husband back. A faint voice it was, but he heard. I saw him bend over her, and I came away.

VIII.

For some days she got better; at least, she seemed to lose no ground. Only, that one day the doctors sought to probe ; with rather alarming results, so they gave it up. Still, they offered us every hope. She had something like a fainting spell after the attempt, but the next day was better again. It was on that day she asked for Stepan. The little Russian boy was allowed to see her. Otherwise only Barstow; she had not asked again for me. My good friend the inspector had withdrawn all his police, from their house and from the house opposite ; even the cynical official knew that Wentworth was ready to appear when wanted.

But on the day after Stepan saw her she sent for me again. Barstow told me she had been particularly calm that day ; he was full of confidence ; she had even persuaded her husband to go for a short walk. So it happened that when I went in we were alone again ; at least, only the nurse was there, who retired, tactfully, just out of hearing.

Mrs. Wentworth’s first words were accompanied with a smile. “ You see, Mr. Lane, I am getting well.”

I could not have said truthfully that she looked to me stronger ; but I said I was sure of it.

“ It is a long time, a year and a day, though— You said a year and a day, did you not ? ”

It was curious, her harping on this. “ Oh, but you will get well long before that.”

“ If I don’t, though — oh, what would they do —to Elmer, I mean ? ”

I felt in my soul that they would hang him ; but I said, “ Oh, you must not think of that.”

“ Promise me, — Mr. Lane, you have the power, — promise me they shall not prosecute my Elmer for what he did while crazy. Oh, promise me ” —

I could not quite do that, but I begged her not to think of such things. I assured her I would do what I could. I told her that of course his insanity would be a defense. I said a thousand things ; I hardly now remember what, only that I closed by again begging her not to let her mind run on such unlikely evils. Yet I looked at her, and saw that I had failed to carry conviction to her mind. “ You know, he never intended to kill me. It was a sudden passion of jealousy, when he saw, as the poor crazy boy thought, the words of those terrible men come true. I must tell you: they had worked on him before for this ; they had been working on his mind a long time, — ever since that first night Mr. Barstow had interfered with them. And ” (this was in a very low tone) “ he really loved me all the time. He always carried the pistol with him ; it was one he used to have in the bank. It just came into his hand at the wrong moment; it was a sudden impulse ; surely that is not really — murder ? ”

How could I tell her that it was, — that the “ malice premeditated ” might begin actually upon the stairs; of the legal effect of his going home, with the revolver loaded, after seeing Sinclair’s note ? I was silent. She looked at me a few moments beseechingly ; then her eyes fell.

“At least, it could not be murder if I lived a year and a day. And it would not be murder if I died from something else ? ”

“ Why, no,” I said. “ But you will live, Mrs. Wentworth ; the doctors say so.”

She looked at me again, intently.

“ You are sure it would not be murder if I died from something else ? ” Then, as I nodded, puzzled, she hurried on : “ Thank you very much. I trust in you. I trust in all you say. Remember. And, whatever happens, you will help him,—be his lawyer, if you can ? Thank you. I am rather tired now.”

Still I only feared that I had talked too long, and I got up to go. Just as I was at the door she called again, “ Remember ! ”

Naturally, I turned round to look at her, my hand upon the knob. I saw her with a pistol at her breast, and as I sprang forward she fired. Her head fell back upon the pillow. I was too late.

IX.

The nurse rushed in, and the doctor. I saw them lift her head ; I saw them settle it upon the pillow, white amid the beautiful brown hair. I saw Barstow come, and Brand, and little Stepan. When the boy saw her, he gave a great cry ; all the others were silent. It seemed that all the world came in, while I sat dazed. But last of all her husband came, and they drew aside. He knelt, and buried his face.

“ Oh, why did she do it — she was going to get well — why did she do it — was she not, doctor ? ” It was Barstow who spoke, in low tones. We now were standing in a group at the other end of the room. The doctor was very pale, and hesitated. A light burst upon me.

“ Doctor, did you tell her she would get well ? ” said I.

The beads of sweat stood upon his forehead. “ I told her — this morning — she could not live another day.”

“ How did she get the revolver ? ” It was the inspector’s voice. I turned, and saw that he had entered with the two policemen. It was all so quick ; yet perhaps they had been watching all the time. There was a sob from Stepan ; the little Russian boy was lying at her feet.

“I got it. She made me get it. I would do it again for her.” So Stepan spoke. Again there was a long silence. Her white face was toward me, where I stood; her husband was sobbing, his face upon her hand.

“ Come,” said the inspector of police, touching him.

“ After the funeral, — oh, after the funeral! ” cried Barstow impetuously.

Wentworth himself was unresisting. Her hand in his, his dead wife seemed to look at me. Upon her lips I still saw the word “ remember.”

“Not then, nor now,” I said. “Inspector, you may go. It is no longer murder ; his bullet did not kill her.”

They all looked at me. “ I told her so, God help me. It is the law. It was a suicide. For the Commonwealth, inspector, I discharge you from this case.”

“ I take your word, sir. But there is still the assault.”

“ That is bailable. I will attend to the indictment. These gentlemen will be sureties.”

They were more than ready to go. My work was done. I sank upon a chair. But Barstow, in a clear, low voice, began a prayer. We knelt by the bedside of the dead woman with the husband whose life she had saved at peril of her soul.

In two days we were all at a quiet graveyard in the hills. Even the inspector was there, and Dempsey — Shiner Dempsey — had sent a wreath. Coming back in the train, Wentworth sat with Stepan; Barstow (who had decided to leave us for a Church brotherhood in New York) was talking to Brand ; the inspector came and spoke to me : “ You are sure about your law ? ”

“ There is a California case — People against Lewis — that quite settles it.”

“ I hope you won’t press the other indictment,” I looked at him, surprised. “ He has been punished more than we can do. And she died for that.”

“ What do you think he will do ? ” said I to Barstow, pointing to Wentworth.

“ I do not know. He has had a good woman live for him — and die for him. He has had his chance.”

F. J. Stimson.