Two Flights Up (10 page)

But she shook her head. “It wouldn’t do,” she said.

She looked at him. He was kind and thoughtful; somehow she had never thought of him as either of them, particularly. She was extremely touched, and inside her breast her heart felt like a lump of ice. She didn’t love him. She never would love him.

In the silence that fell between them, filled with relief on Furness’s part and a hundred flashing uncompleted thoughts on hers, she could hear faint, regular movements overhead, and knew that her mother was pacing the floor of her room, anxious, terrified, waiting for the outcome of the interview.

She stirred a little and put down her cup, and as if he had been awaiting this signal, Furness came over and sat down beside her.

“You poor darling!” he said. “And did you think I might let you go?” He put his arm around her and drew her closer. “I’ll never let you go,” he told her. “Never!”

There was more passion in the kiss he gave her than he had ever permitted himself before. And she closed her eyes and submitted to it, meekly, helplessly. What else was there to do? How could he know that when she closed her eyes it was to see James Cox huddled in a chair in the District Attorney’s office, gazing out with dull, bewildered eyes at a world which had suddenly turned unfriendly? And to see Aunt Margaret, too, her hand on James’s shoulder, ugly and militant, challenging that world.

Holly could still hear his voice: “Shut up, Margaret, for God’s sake! This has nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me—everything!”

Holly let Furness out, and then waited for a moment at the foot of the stairs, preparing herself for the interview that was waiting above. Glancing up, she saw a light, and knew Mrs. Bayne was at her door, or in the upper hall, listening, waiting.

She picked up her gloves and slowly made her way up; and her mother, hearing her, quietly closed her door and sat down on a chair. When Holly went in she was holding a book as though she had been reading.

“Well,” she said, “I dare say it’s all right?”

Holly stood just inside the door. She had carried up her hat, and now she stood with it in her hands, straightening the ribbons and staring at it. “Yes,” she answered after a moment. “So far as he is concerned, it’s all right.”

“As he is concerned?” said her mother sharply. “I don’t understand you.”

Holly looked up. There was appeal in her face, and a sort of desperation.

“I don’t think I can go through with it, Mother. I don’t really care for him. I’ve tried, and I just—can’t.”

“And you told him that?” said Mrs. Bayne slowly. “You’ve let things go on to this time, a month before the wedding, and now you’re talking of breaking it off?”

“I haven’t told him. I wanted first to know what you thought.”

“What
I
think!” said Mrs. Bayne, raising her voice. “What everyone will think! I’ve sacrificed for it; you’ll never know what I’ve sacrificed. And now you’re talking of throwing all that away; you’ll let them say Furness jilted you because your father is coming home and the whole wretched story’s been brought up once more. And you’ll wreck me for a whim. I’ve just begun to live again. God knows I haven’t lived for ten years. And all because you’re tired to-day, and you think you ‘don’t care’ for him.”

“I don’t, Mother. I hate him to touch me.”

Suddenly Mrs. Bayne was more calm. She appraised Holly with her faded, worldly eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “So that’s it. Don’t you know every girl has a fit of panic before her wedding day? If that’s all that’s wrong with you—”

But the day’s anxieties and this new shock had told on her. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

“Get me my smelling salts,” she said. “I feel as though I can’t breathe.”

Holly brought the salts, and for a long time Mrs. Bayne slowly inhaled them, holding the bottle delicately to her nose. Holly stood by her, helpless. She knew these attacks; Margaret had always maintained that they were temper, but she knew better now. The doctor had told her so some time ago. So she watched her with the salts, and any hope she had had of telling about James Cox and his terrible situation died within her.

She turned down the bed, filled a hot-water bottle, and later on she helped her mother to undress. There was a certain relief in these familiar homely duties; they kept her from thinking, and she knew that sooner or later she must get away somewhere and think.

It was while she was straightening her mother’s dressing table, with its ladylike litter of old ivory-backed brushes and toilet waters, that she saw another telegram lying there. She picked it up and read it—read it twice, with Mrs. Bayne’s eyes on her.

“You see, Mother,” she said slowly, “he is really ill if he can’t travel.”

Mrs. Bayne was propped up in bed with a silk jacket over her shoulders. She felt easier sitting up. Beside her the reading lamp sent a soft rosy glow over her, making her look younger, almost childish.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I forgot to give you that. It gives us a chance to breathe, anyhow.”

Holly turned out the other lights and raised a window. She stood there for a minute or two, inhaling the cold night air. Her mother’s heartlessness where her father was concerned was nothing new to her. It was compounded of old neglects and old frictions, as well as the final culminating matter of his disgrace.

She wondered vaguely if there had ever been any love between them, in the way she herself thought of love. She tried to look back to the days when the two of them had occupied that very chamber, but the low spots of that early life had left no impression on her; only the high lights, of dinners and evening clothes, constant movement, comings and goings, cars and callers, had remained with her.

And all the time she knew her mind was evading what it must face. She had gone to the District Attorney’s office with Margaret, determined to make a clean breast of the matter and throw herself on his mercy. After all, he was a human being; he would understand. And the bank was getting back what it had never expected. It could afford to be lenient.

True, one bond was missing, but she would pay that back. She could go to work and save; she would work her fingers to the bone. And she would say
she
had given the bond to Mr. Warrington to sell. That ought to fix that.

But the District Attorney had been in court, and his assistant had been arranging about James Cox’s bond. People kept coming in and going out, and a little man with shrewd eyes and a kindly mouth, who turned out to be one of Mr. Cox’s employers, Mr. Steinfeldt, was haranguing James as he huddled in his chair.

“We don’t do this for everybody, Mr. Cox, y’understand,” he said. “But when people stick by Steinfeldt and Roder, we stick by them. Only the other day I said to Mr. Roder: ‘Do the square thing by our people, and they’ve got no comeback.’ See?”

“I’m much obliged to you,” said James Cox dully.

“Now, as I figure it,” Mr. Steinfeldt went on, expanding, “you’ve been a fool. You don’t mind my saying that, Mrs. Cox? This aristocratic sister-in-law of yours has put one over, see? She knew Bayne was getting out and would be wanting to get away somewhere, so she sends the loot where he can pick it up easy. And she sells one bond, see, so he can get off.”

“I guess that’s about it,” said James Cox humbly.

And Holly had ignored Margaret’s warning glance and thrown her hat into the ring.

“How do you know my mother sold the bond?” she demanded.

“You’ve been very kind, Mr. Steinfeldt, but you have no right to accuse her without knowing anything about it.”

But Mr. Steinfeldt had only smiled at her and had taken no offense.

“And I suppose you’d say
you
did it, eh?” he said shrewdly. “You’d say to me, ‘Mr. Steinfeldt, I took that bond and sold it,’ eh? Don’t say that, miss, because I wouldn’t believe it anyhow.”

And that had been all. Mr. Cox and Aunt Margaret had gone down in the elevator with her, a strange, humbled Mr. Cox, stepping apologetically out of people’s way, as if he had done something he shouldn’t: a silent, defeated Mr. Cox, his flag down and his banner trailing in the dust. …

When Holly turned from the window, her mother put down her smelling salts.

“Did you tell your Aunt Margaret about using the lace on the train of your dress?” she asked. “I think, if it comes from the shoulders—”

Holly looked at her, so comfortable once more, so secure; her colour was better, and her lips were no longer blue.

“I told her,” she said quietly, and went out of the room.

T
HERE WAS NO DOUBT
that the house was being watched, nor any doubt in Warrington’s mind as to why.

“They’d have picked me up before this if it hadn’t been for that dog,” he considered grimly.

He retreated from the window and stood in the centre of the darkened room, and swaying branches by the street lamps threw ghostly shadows on the walls. He might have been a ghost himself, so still he stood.

All sorts of thoughts were hurtling through his brain. Suppose the fellow had followed him that morning and saw him leave the suitcase at the Cox apartment? That would involve them undoubtedly; and the fact of Holly’s mysterious absence that afternoon began to obtrude itself. Suppose it had already involved them!

He went back to the window again and saw that the Brooks car was still there. A moment later, however, he heard the door close and watched it moving off, and he started down the stairs. He must see Holly and learn what had happened. But he did not go down.

Mrs. Bayne was on the landing below, peering down so absorbedly that she had not heard him.

“Scared!” he said to himself. “Knows something’s wrong, and doesn’t know what it is.”

Well, let her be scared. She had got them all into a pretty mess. She and her fine-lady ways and her shallow, unscrupulous mind. Only, she wasn’t going to involve Holly; he’d damn’ well take care of that.

He heard Holly go into her mother’s room and the door close; and leaving his own door open, he sat down in the worn chair by his empty hearth and waited as patiently as he could. He had an idea, possibly unfounded, that to turn on his lights would be to bring a ring at the bell and perhaps a warrant for his arrest. Yet there were moments as he sat there when the whole situation seemed not only incredible but ridiculous. A dozen other things might account for the man across the street; it was because he himself felt guilty that he was so sure the espionage was for him.

Odd, how even to be suspected of wrongdoing undermined a man’s morale!

Sometime during that long period of waiting he had a new thought: If they were really after him, they might be watching the rear of the house too. He made his way quietly into Margaret’s empty room across the hall and stared out, but he could see nothing. Only the forlorn dog had crept out of his shelter and was growling and sniffing at the gate.

He considered it extremely probable that the gate, like the front of the house, was being watched.

“Taking no chances!” he reflected, and went back to his room.

Of course, there was this chance: They had certainly found the bond, but had they found the suitcase? If not, things were not so bad. Mrs. Bayne might claim her husband had given the bond to her years ago, and that she had been holding it for an emergency. Whether they believed her or not did not matter, once the suitcase was turned over.

But he had to know. …

At eight o’clock he heard Holly going down the stairs and followed her. He needed only one look at her face to know that the worst had happened. She was in the hall, and without speaking she pointed to the drawing room. He went in, and she came a moment later.

“The police found it,” she told him. “Somebody must have followed you.”

“What have they done?”

“They’ve arrested Mr. Cox.”

She told him all, omitting nothing except her own resolution to say she had sold the bond: of the arrest, and Margaret’s visit, and of Mr. Steinfeldt and the bond; and when she had finished—

“You poor child!” he said. “I’d have done anything in the world for you, and I’ve let you in for this.”

“You’ve only done what I asked you to do.”

“I’ve been stupid—criminally, damnably stupid. That’s all.”

“It is we who have been both stupid and—criminal,” she said painfully. “It has nothing to do with you. You’d better not try to save us. You’d better just go away and leave us. We’re sinking, anyhow.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he said. “You know, if you know anything in the world, that what concerns you concerns me. Always. I’m not undercutting Brooks or anything of that sort. I know you are—not for me or I for you. I’m not making love to you, Holly. I just want you to know how things are with me. Then you won’t talk about my getting out.”

“You know I have to marry Furness, don’t you?” she said, in a hushed voice.

“I know that. At least—I’m accepting it. I’m only offering you an anchor to windward.”

He held out his hand, and she took it. Then she did something that fairly shook his resolution; she put the hand to her cheek and held it there a moment. “You are the best man I ever knew,” she said wistfully, and dropped it.

She had told him what she knew—little more than he had already surmised. Not for a moment did she see him actually involved in the business. James Cox was arrested, and Mr. Steinfeldt had gone on his bond; she had herself gone down to see the District Attorney, Mr. Phelps, but he had been in court and had not returned to the office afterward.

She had gone back home with Margaret and James, and things there were heartbreaking. James just sat in a chair and would not speak.

“I’ll soon fix that,” Warrington told her. “Cox isn’t in this thing at all. I’ll go down and see him to-night and tell him so.”

He wanted desperately to take her in his arms before, obedient to his order, she started up to bed. He may have been wrong, too, but he thought she might not have minded. She looked as though she needed the protecting clasp of warm and loving arms, comfort and reassurance, and a sanctuary into which to creep just for a moment.

But he had himself well in hand by that time. When she turned, at the angle of the staircase, he was looking up, reassuringly smiling.