Part 5

“No! Listen! Don’t you know how dangerous this is? It’s illegal--it’s not allowed.”

“I do no harm.”

“But it’s against the law.”

“No one will trouble about me, so obscure, so--”

“The man who came with me is a detective. You’ll be arrested.”

“My God!” she cried. “My God! I--arrested?”

To him, an American, her alarm seemed exaggerated. To be arrested had not the same terrible meaning that it had for her. The hand that had clutched his arm trembled violently.

“Arrested? No, no! I do no harm. I help many people. I am very psychic. I am very sympathetic. I comprehend the troubles of others. If you knew! So many people bring their friends to me, because I have helped them! Oh, no! I _cannot_ be arrested! Oh, my friend! At my age! And I am so alone here, in a foreign land! It will kill me! I shall die!”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Wait! Let me think! Can you slip out without being seen? I will wait for you on the corner of Fifth Avenue. Hurry!”

He went stealthily down the dark hall, opened the front door, and went out. He didn’t know whether the formidable Clendenning had seen him or not. He expected every moment to feel a hand on his shoulder, to see that handsome and ironic face; and then he would be lost. He felt himself absolutely incapable of deceiving Clendenning, or of outwitting him.

But no one came. Hardy stood in the shadow, nervous as a cat, watching the quiet street. He saw some one go up the steps of the house, and enter, but no one came out. Why didn’t she hurry? Had Clendenning already seized her?

He stopped a passing taxi and told the driver to wait, and once more he looked down the silent street. Certainly Clendenning would be growing impatient; if she didn’t come soon--

He was startled to hear her voice behind him.

“I left by the back door and went through the yards to the next street,” she whispered. “I am sure that no one saw me. Oh, my friend!”

He hurried her into the taxi.

“Be quick!” he said to the driver.

He took her to his lodging house, where they entered unobserved and went upstairs to his little room. He locked the door behind them and sat down on the bed, trying to smile, to reassure her; but he expected every moment to hear a knock at the door, and the detective’s voice, demanding satisfaction for this outrageous betrayal. What in Heaven’s name was he to do with her?

“Now, you know,” he said, with a distorted smile, “it wouldn’t be such a serious matter, even if you _were_ arrested. Perhaps a fine--”

“No!” she said firmly. “I should die. If they come to arrest me, I shall kill myself. I have a pistol here in my hand bag!”

“Nonsense!” he cried impatiently. “Don’t be so absurd!”

“Do you think, then, that I have so much to live for?” she asked. “I have nothing--nothing at all. When you went away, without a word--I had thought I should always have you. Well, never mind; let us not speak of it. I am a foolish old woman. Let us say no more.”

He stared at her with a new idea dawning upon him. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t much over forty, he imagined, and she had certainly not renounced the intention to charm. He observed her queer little hat, made up of odds and ends of jet, lace, and satin, her carefully powdered face, her earrings, her drab hair artfully disposed, all her harmless coquetry. He recalled all that she had done for him, how she had nursed him and provided for all his wants. He thought of his base suspicions with shame. The poor soul had simply been holding her psychic consultations to earn money--so much of which she had used for him.

Why hadn’t he seen it before? She loved him--it must be that! For what other reason would a woman do all that she had done?

What sublime sacrifices she had made, and how brutally he had rewarded her! He thought he had never heard of so generous and noble a nature before. He felt crushed and immeasurably humiliated before her--her who had almost undoubtedly saved his life.

“Why shouldn’t I make a sacrifice?” he asked himself. “What better could I do with my life than to try to make her happy? I’m not much good. I’ll never be much use any other way.”

He began to walk up and down the room.

“Of course she’s at least twelve years older than I; but she’s a charming, intelligent woman, and I respect her.”

And then the unworthy thought came to him--what a startling and distinguished thing it would be to marry her!

He stopped short.

“Mme. Sensobiareff,” he said, with dignity, “will you marry me?”

“_What?_” she asked with a frown.

“I know I’ve acted badly, but I--at the time I didn’t understand. I didn’t really appreciate you; but now--if you will--”

“Marry you!” she said, with a look that amazed him. “Are you mad?”

“But--”

“Is it possible that you didn’t _know_?” she said. “Couldn’t you _see_? That man--that _saint_--”

She began to weep, holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes.

“One of the master minds of Russia--a noble soul--the kindest and best of men!” she sobbed. “Is it possible that you think--oh, how little you know of women! You think I would replace _him_?”

“Replace _him_ by _you_,” her tone implied.

Hardy was completely taken aback. He couldn’t speak.

“No,” she said, drying her eyes. “I have thought of nothing but him. Only help me to get away, where I shall be safe, and then forget me! I am the most unhappy wretch in the world. I have wished only to gain my living, and it seems that I have become a criminal. Only save me from this disgrace!”

“Yes, of course!” he said hurriedly. “Let me see!”

He fancied he heard a footstep on the stairs. He turned pale.

“Have you any money?” he cried. “If you could go to Canada--”

“Yes, I have money. In time, if it had not been for this, I should have become rich. But why are you so pale? Is there danger?”

“There’s no time to lose. Are you ready?”

She rose, adjusted her queer little hat before his mirror, and carefully patted her eyes.

“I am ready,” she said.

They went down the stairs and through the sleeping house with noiseless steps.

“Wait!” said Hardy. “Let me look first!”

He went out into the street and looked carefully up and down. No one there! He returned to fetch her. She took his arm with a pathetic, appealing gesture, and they went off through the quietest and darkest streets, both filled with haste and dread, unable to speak.

She was terribly out of breath when they reached the Grand Central Station. While he bought her ticket, she sat panting on a bench, her face concealed by a thick veil, but her little plump hands clasped passionately. A more forlorn, utterly foreign figure couldn’t be imagined.

They had nearly an hour to wait. He sat down beside her and tried to reassure her.

“You needn’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure there won’t be much of a search for you, and probably there’s no fear of further trouble. Only--you’ll never do _that_ again, will you?”

“Never!”

“What will you do? Write me as soon as you reach Montreal. I’ll be anxious until I hear from you.”

“Yes, I shall write,” she said.

“How will you manage there?”

“I shall find a way.”

He persuaded her to take a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the lunch counter. Then he bought her some magazines and a box of chocolates.

“It’s time for you to go now,” he said. “I want you to know that never, as long as I live, shall I forget what you did for me. It was--”

“Hush!” she said. “You are repaying me, my dear. I only hope I have not brought you any trouble.”

The image of Clendenning rose up before him, but he answered valiantly:

“Certainly not! But when I think of what you did for me--a stranger--”

He could no longer repress the question which tormented him.

“But _why_ did you do it? _Why_ were you so good to me?”

She raised her veil and smiled at him.

“Ah, my dear!” she said “It is the Russian heart!”

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER, 1922 Vol. LXXVI NUMBER 4

Hanging’s Too Good for Him

THE PATHETIC STORY OF TOMMY ELLINGER, OF NEW YORK, AND AN INNOCENT YOUNG GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

He first emerged from obscurity at his father’s funeral. He was the only son and the heir to everything, and therefore, of course, the center of interest; but immediately and forever he destroyed all the tepid sympathy and good will of the assembled relatives by his curious air of immense carelessness, his foppish nonchalance.

He hadn’t even the decency to wear a dark suit, they observed. He was dressed in light gray, evidently quite new, and he kept his hands in his pockets. It never occurred to any of them that his indifference might be a clumsy effort to conceal an immeasurable embarrassment. Neither did any one else remember what he remembered--that his father had detested any sort of formal mourning. And it was Tommy’s destiny always to do a thing in the wrong way, always to antagonize, invariably to blunder.

It was not regret for the loss of his father, or any great regard for his opinions, that caused Tommy to remember and to respect his wishes. It was nothing more than a naïve and kindly sentimentality. His father had been a horrible bully to him, the great bogey of his childhood. His mother had died when he was very little, and he had been sent off to boarding school at once.

It seemed to the family that Tommy had always been at school, winter and summer. Once in a great while he had emerged at some cousin’s Christmas party, a rather silly blond boy in military uniform, always spoken of as “poor little Tommy Ellinger.” There were no family rumors or traditions about him, no reports of his behavior at school.

Now, however, that he had definitely come to life, it was necessary for the family to decide upon him, and they decided unfavorably. He got, then and there, the name of being “defiant” and “conceited.”

His father’s elder brother was to be his guardian until he was twenty-one--a task which disgusted and appalled Uncle James. He was an old bachelor lawyer, living in a hotel. Naturally his first thought for Tommy was college, which would remove the boy for all his minority, and even longer; but Tommy fought desperately against that. His hatred for books, for herding with other young males, for all the bullying and chaffing which terrified his awkward innocence, for the competition which dazed his lumbering mind, made him unusually resolute. Business, too, he summarily repudiated.

“Then what do you intend to do?” his uncle demanded, with false patience.

“Well,” said Tommy desperately, “why couldn’t I be a lawyer, like you?”

His uncle looked at him with a grim smile, and answered nothing. The subject was dropped for the time being, and Tommy went to live at his uncle’s hotel, to make up his mind about his very important future. He lived a wretched sort of life, forever hanging about the lobby, or sitting through vaudeville shows and musical comedies. He ate breakfast with his exasperated old uncle every morning, and dinner almost every evening.

There was something peculiarly and intolerably irritating about Tommy--some quality which, in spite of his invariable good temper and his ingratiating manners, infuriated his uncle. A perfect young ass, the old lawyer called him.

Why was it that the qualities which would have been so endearing in a girl of eighteen were so maddening in Tommy? Why was he, with his youth, his boundless good will, his plaintive innocence, really nothing on earth but a young ass?

He was a great lanky boy with a naïve, good-humored face and a preposterous foppish air, a man-of-the-world air; wearing clothes ostentatiously correct and an amazing eyeglass with a broad black ribbon. He imagined that he looked like a foreign diplomat, while at the bottom of his heart he was quite conscious of being and looking a puppy. He swaggered, but without any self-assurance.

He devoted great thought to his clothes, and he could not refrain from mentioning his sartorial inventions and improvements to his uncle.

“What do you think of the cut of this coat?” he would ask. “Do you notice this shoulder? Rather good, eh?”

“Beautiful!” his uncle would say. “I never saw such grace and elegance--a regular Beau Brummel! You’re fascinating. There’s nothing that interests me like the cut of your coats!”

Then Tommy would open the evening paper and laugh loudly and ostentatiously at something in it, to show how undisturbed he was.

“Why don’t you go out?” the old gentleman used to ask, often and often, when, their dinner finished, they went up together in the lift to the little sitting room they shared. “What’s the matter with you, Thomas? A boy of your age, sitting at home here with an old fellow like me, night after night! Why don’t you go out somewhere and enjoy yourself? Haven’t you any friends?”

Well, he hadn’t. All the boys he had known and liked in the military academy up the Hudson had come from the farthest ends of the country--from Texas, from California, from Maine. He had never been particularly popular, anyhow, and he was too shy and too ridiculous to make friends now.

His uncle attached great importance to this, for he himself had scores of friends. He wished Tommy to be a sort of creature the like of which is no longer to be found--the traditional, old-fashioned beau, the arbiter of elegance, welcomed everywhere, affable, agreeable, but forever unattached, the society man of a past generation. He supplied the boy with spending money, and introduced him to a few charming young married women and a great many old bachelors.

“Now go ahead!” he told him. “Make yourself popular! Make yourself liked! A young man of your age, of good family, with a little money in your pockets, with good prospects!”

He was invited to one or two sedate houses, for his uncle’s sake, but nothing came of it. The society life toward which his uncle urged him forever eluded him. In fact, he had no life of any sort. He was only waiting, hanging about in innocent and dreary idleness, unable to believe that life should so cheat him of every joy, every excitement.

It was spring when Tommy’s father died and he left the military academy. He spent a horrible summer with his uncle, in a hotel in town, or at other similar hotels in the mountains, on the coast, anywhere and everywhere. Then came a still worse winter, during which the old gentleman’s exasperation rose to a fury.

They would go now and then to a musical comedy of the liveliest sort, this being the Uncle James’s idea of what the boy ought to like. When the old man saw him sitting there not liking it, when he saw him not caring for or comprehending wines, a barbarian as to food, absolutely indifferent to the arts, and hopeless in regard to sport, he became almost homicidal.

“Go away!” he shouted at him. “Go and spend this summer by yourself! I won’t waste the money on taking you to a decent place. Go on a farm! Go to some cheap, miserable, damnable little country boarding house, where you can sit and gape all day, like the booby you are!”

Tommy felt that it would be paradise now to get away from his uncle, no matter where. The idea of going off alone, unbullied, unthwarted, quite dazzled him. He was only too ready to go anywhere his uncle suggested.

So Uncle James answered several newspaper advertisements, and at last found a place which he felt would be suitable. He wrote and made all arrangements, and then gave Tommy his directions, money that was to last him for a month, and the following advice:

“Don’t make a fool of yourself about any of the girls there. Remember, you haven’t a penny for the next three years except what I choose to allow you; and if you get yourself mixed up or compromised, I won’t help you. I won’t recognize any responsibility of that sort!”

Tommy turned scarlet.

“Not in my line, Uncle James!” he replied, with extreme jauntiness. And off he went.

II

His uncle almost forgot about Tommy for some time. He had a letter from the boy every week--a stupid, schoolboy letter which he hardly bothered to read. “The weather had been very hot. I guess you are glad not to be here, aren’t you? There is a lot of hay fever around now. It is certainly a lucky thing that you didn’t come”--and that sort of thing.

Then, while Uncle James was enjoying his little breakfast at the corner table in the grill room, which he had occupied for years and years, just as he was about to taste that invariable bowl of oatmeal with cream and powdered sugar, his eye was caught by a headline on the front page of his paper. He dropped his spoon on the floor.

FATHER SHOOTS GIRL’S BETRAYER--TRAGEDY NARROWLY AVERTED AT THE HOTEL TRESSILLON--SON OF THE LATE THOMAS ELLINGER WOUNDED

He stared and stared at the thing. The paper crackled in his trembling hands, the letters swam before his eyes. Nonsense! “Son of the late Thomas Ellinger”--must be a mistake!

He read the story with a furious sort of incredulity. It was a nasty story of a young city man going out to a little country town for a vacation, boarding in the house of a decent farmer, and running off one night with the poor little sixteen-year-old daughter. He had taken her to a disreputable hotel and registered as man and wife, which they weren’t. And the decent farmer, the outraged, the desperate father, had tracked them, and, standing in the doorway of the crowded and noisy restaurant, had fired two shots at the girl’s betrayer--at Tommy! At the boy who a few months ago had been sitting opposite Uncle James at this very table!

“No! Nonsense!” he cried, crumpling up the paper and throwing it under the table. “One of those beastly newspaper stories! Damned lies, all of them!”

He went up to his room, got his hat and stick, and hurried out, furtive, terrified, afraid that every one was pointing him out as the uncle of that fellow. He wanted to telephone, where he would not be seen or heard, somewhere outside of his hotel. He went into a booth in a cigar store, and called for the Hotel Tressillon.

“Mr. Ellinger,” he demanded.

In a moment he heard that familiar young voice, with its exaggerated accent.

“This is Mr. Ellinger speaking.”

“Thomas!” cried the old gentleman.

The boy gave a sort of gasp. Then, with his unfailing genius for doing the wrong thing, he assumed an airy and offhand tone.

“Hello, Uncle James!” he said jauntily. “I didn’t know that you were back in town again.”

“See here!” shouted the old gentleman, in a tremendous voice. “Is it true--this abominable thing I saw in the papers? Is it _you_?”

“Yes,” replied Tommy.

“Yes?” repeated his uncle’s voice, incredulous. “Yes? _You_ did a thing like that? Good God! Explain yourself, Thomas!”

“I can’t!” said Tommy.

There was a brief silence.

“You--you young cur!” The old man’s voice was trembling. “Don’t ever come near me again. Don’t let me see you. I’d like to shoot you! You miserable, dastardly cur! You’ve disgraced the whole family. You’ve disgraced your father’s name. I’d like to see you hanged--only hanging’s too good for you!”

III

Tommy’s face was scarlet, as if he had been struck. He went across the room, as far as he could get from the telephone, sat down, tried to smoke a cigarette, and tried to smile carelessly. He had to give it up. He hid his hot face in his arms, and sat there, amazed, confounded, utterly overwhelmed, at his own deed and at the awful consequences of it.

His uncle’s voice he recognized as the voice of the world in general. That was how he was to be regarded in the future--a cad, a cur, hanging too good for him. A pariah--he who so valued the good opinion of others! It was the sort of thing one couldn’t live down, ever. His life was blasted at its very beginning.

He knew that he could never justify himself. There were the facts in the newspapers, and he couldn’t deny any of them. How explain, even try to explain, what lay behind them? He himself didn’t comprehend it. He was more surprised, more shocked, than any one else could possibly have been.

He looked at his wrist watch, which lay on the table because it couldn’t be put on over his bandaged wrist, and saw with dismay that it was only ten o’clock in the morning. The thought of the hours he would have to pass, shut up there alone, overwhelmed him. He was ashamed to go out, even into the corridor. He had already had to face a doctor and the waiter who had brought up his breakfast, and his raw sensibilities had made each of these encounters an ordeal.

He imagined a quite preposterous hostility. He was already an outcast, he was deserted, no one would come or telephone; he had nothing whatever to do now, or in the future. He looked around the ugly little hotel bedroom, and he felt that he was in prison, judged and convicted by his fellow men, and already banished from them.

Nothing to do, but plenty to think of, to recollect, and to examine. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, and tried his honest best to retrace all the steps of the affair and to discover the true measure of his guilt.

He remembered every minute detail. He saw himself getting on the train at the Grand Central, saw himself in the train reading magazines, hoping that the other passengers admired his clothes and his luggage, and fearing that they didn’t. He remembered the dust and the heat and the tedium.

It was late afternoon when he reached Millersburg, and he was gratified to see from the window that a fair proportion of the population was assembled to see the New York train arrive. He was confident that he was causing more or less of a sensation as he descended, with his irreproachable tweed suit, his imposing eyeglass, and the latest thing in traveling bags.

He walked leisurely over to a solitary old carriage, climbed in, and directed the driver to take him to Mr. Van Brink’s. Then he leaned back carelessly, prepared to review the landscape, when the jolting old vehicle stopped. They were not yet out of sight of the station, from whence the natives were still watching his progress.

“Well, what’s wrong?” he asked the old driver. “Horse given out already?”

“Here ye be!” the driver answered dryly. “Here’s Van Brink’s!”

Tommy knew very well that he was being laughed at by the loungers at the station, as well as by the old driver, and he liked it no better than any one else would have liked it; but he was a genuinely good-natured sort of devil, and he grinned, in spite of a very real chagrin at so unimposing an arrival.