is the story Lionel would have told, if he could. But, poor devil, he was as incapable of explaining himself as if he had been a creature from another planet. Even the few extenuating circumstances of his case he was never able to bring forward. He had always taken pride in his reticence, in concealing his sentiments. And from having lain ignored so long, they had grown unfamiliar to him, he didn’t know them when they came forth. Didn’t actually recognise his own feelings, past or present. He saw only that he was guilty; he accepted that sentence, not pleading his own weakness even to himself.
Poor devil! Poor devil! He never even knew that he had been the innocent victim of a most cruel seduction.
His martyrdom had begun on New Year’s Day, when he had gone to meet Frankie’s train, and Frankie had not come. He had returned for the next, two hours later, in vain, and for all the others, until late at night. He had eaten a wretched little supper in a cheap restaurant nearby and gone home to bed. He was stunned; he couldn’t believe in his misfortune.
Next morning a telegram came.
He hadn’t a penny. He sat in his room all day waiting for the letter, which reached him in the last mail that evening.
“My dearest boy,” she wrote, “the most dreadful thing has happened. My sister has gone away and of course I can’t leave Grandma alone and helpless. I am trying my best to think of some plan, but oh, Lionel, I am so worried about you! I enclose five dollars, which is all I have. I can’t imagine how you will make out. I have written a special delivery to Miss Eppendorfer to send me my salary, and I will forward it to you the instant it comes. My dear old boy! This is so miserable! Minnie has found some sort of place for herself, and says she is going to stay there for a year. I am thinking and thinking what I can do. Take care of yourself, my dear.
“P.S. Minnie is at my aunt Mrs. Lounsbury’s, 226 Lenover Street, Brooklyn. You might go to see her and see if you can persuade her to come home. I don’t think it will do the least good, but it won’t do any harm to try.”
He went that very evening, used Frankie’s five dollars for a taxi, in order to make a good impression. It was a raw, wet night, fit for his desperate mood. He was determined to force the beastly, selfish sister to release his Frankie.
The taxi went across the bridge, over the mystical river, shrouded in fog, and turned into an avenue where trolleys crashed by and elevated trains thundered overhead, where fruit stalls did a brisk business with swarthy foreigners; a slum, he called it. He watched from the window in vain to find any place possible for an aunt of Frankie’s to inhabit. Then abruptly the driver swung round a corner, and left the unsavoury turmoil for a dark and quiet street, paved with cobblestones. A wind was blowing from the nearby river, bringing a dreary din of horns and whistles; there was no other sound, no traffic, no footsteps.
“No. 226,” said the driver. “Here you are!”
He got out, paid the fare with his last bill on earth, and climbed the steep flight of steps to the front door. There was an old-fashioned bell to be pulled; he heard it jangle inside. He waited in the wretched drizzle a long time, then rang again. The house was quite dark and the street too; the blurred lamps showed nothing but glistening cobblestones and pavement, and one stealthy cat slinking past. He shivered and sighed.
At last the door was opened and a head peered out cautiously.
“Well?” enquired a feminine voice.
“May I see Miss Defoe?” he asked. “It’s Mr. Naylor.”
“Come in!” said the voice.
He entered a narrow hall, lighted by a “Turkish” lamp, a pierced iron sort of thing, in which a feeble jet of gas burned. His guide turned to the right and lighted another gas jet, revealing a vast drawing-room, all the furniture shrouded in covers.
“Sit down,” she said, pleasantly. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long, but we go to bed very early, and the servants can’t hear the bell, up on the third floor.”
He asked again for Miss Defoe; he had no interest in anything else.
“I’m Miss Defoe,” said she. “What can I do for you?”
He scarcely looked at her.
“I’ve come to see” he said, “to try to influence you if possible to”
“I suppose to go back and let Frankie come to the city again,” she interposed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”
“I don’t think you realised what you were doing,” he said. “If you had, you wouldn’t—you couldn’t—have cut us off this way, without any warning. It was—absolutely inhuman. Did you know that your sister and I intended to be married?”
“She mentioned it,” said Minnie.
Her calmness infuriated him.