He was not aware of the sorry tragedy in his voice that contrasted so sharply with the ba.n.a.lity of his words. He felt that he was but a pitiful jester who was like a clown, compelled to play a merry part when there was anguish in his mind. But--he must play.

"I don't know why I was such a fool!" he declared. "Why I thought it could go on in this way--with you as Mary Allen, and I as Bill Jones.

You see--I may as well tell the truth--now that it's come to this--You see, I didn't know your name, or who you were! I thought on the day that we met in Fifth Avenue you were someone in the trade, and I was ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten where you came from. You knew who I was, but I couldn't remember you. And so, after that first meeting, I was a coward. I'm a coward now, Mary! Now that it doesn't matter!"

He sat staring at the rug and striving to his utmost to think of something to say in his own defense.

"Well," she said, "since you have been so frank, I suppose that I may as well add my confession. I never knew, until within the last five minutes, who you were. Therefore I had nothing the best of you."

"What? What's that?" he asked as if incredulous, or in fear that he had not heard her words aright.

He lifted his eyes and saw that she was now facing him.

"It's the truth," she bravely admitted. "I never knew that your name was James Gollop, and that you were a commercial man, until within the last five minutes! If there were need I could swear it."

"Then," he demanded, blankly, "who in the deuce did you think I was, anyhow?"

"I thought," she said with a slight shrug, "that you were Judge James Woodworth-Granger, of whom I suppose you have never heard. He is the Judge of the Fourth District Court, seated in a small city called Princetown."

He was so astounded that for the moment he was speechless. It seemed to him that all his chickens had come home to roost.

"Granger? Judge Granger--that inflated, stiff-necked, egotistical bag of conceit! And--and--you thought I was Granger!"

There was reproach in his voice as well as words.

"Yes," she admitted, "I thought you were Judge Granger. But--please wait a moment--I thought that you were different when away from your judicial position, admired your reticence concerning your profession, and--and I thought that I knew the real man better than anyone else. And I liked the change."

She uttered the last almost defiantly.

"I can at least thank you for that preference," his said, lowering his eyes. "I've come to dislike myself since I met him. He's bothered me a lot. Maybe I've bothered him. I played a joke on him one time and--he hasn't ever forgiven me, although I've tried to patch it up. I think he's about the most stupid, unforgiving, inhuman bounder that--"

"Please!" she objected, and Jimmy saw that she had turned toward the window, and so paused whilst she walked toward it, and stared out before again facing him. He wished that the light from without were less glaring, for it rendered her face and expression indistinct.

"It's not quite fair for me to listen to anything disparaging Judge Granger," she said. "That wouldn't be playing the game. Judge Granger is the man to whom I am betrothed."

He was incredibly shocked. Mary Allen betrothed to Granger! It was like the last blow--his ultimate humiliation. Had it been anyone but Granger it might have been less unendurable.

"I apologize," he said, mechanically. "I didn't understand the situation. Judge Granger is--is a very prominent man."

"Quite so," she a.s.sented. "A man who is distinguished, and I think will be more so."

"I expect he'll be a governor, and then a senator, and--maybe a president," said Jimmy, helplessly, and feeling his own insignificance.

"But--but does Judge Granger know that you knew me? I ask this because I'm afraid that if he does, he might object to our--our acquaintanceship. He doesn't exactly approve of me."

Somewhat to Jimmy's surprise she laughed as if amused.

"No," she said, "I don't think he does know that we are friends. Indeed, I'm rather certain of it. But--just the same, if you are such enemies--it's not fair for me to show friendship under existing circ.u.mstances, is it? See here, Mr. Gollop--that's a terrible name!--You could scarcely respect me if I who am engaged to marry Judge Granger were to stand here and let you criticise him. There is a limit to most things, isn't there?"

"There is," agreed Jimmy, soberly. "You are quite right in your att.i.tude. I'm helpless." He paused, got to his feet, b.u.t.toned his coat, looked absently for his hat, found it on the window ledge, and seemed undecided. It was the old, boyish impulsiveness that made him turn to her in what he believed to be a parting and say, "But--Mary! Mary Allen!

It doesn't matter what I am, or anything about the accidents and the misunderstandings--nothing matters now--to me--only this, that--that you believe that I was honest to you and to myself when you were but Mary Allen, and I but Bill Jones!"

"No," she said, "nothing else matters. That is something quite yours and mine--our own. Conditions are about as we all make them for ourselves.

Sometimes they run away from us. But we can't alter things that have been. This has been a mixup. Neither of us could help it."

He could find nothing to say, for he seemed involved in a cataclysm that had crushed him, and so moved toward the door. She walked by his side and stepped back when he opened it. He held out his hand as if to bid her good-by, for the last time, but she appeared to disregard it and stood quietly by his side.

"It--it seems a travesty--a blunder," she said, at last. "I--I don't know quite what to do about it all! I feel as if this were a farewell.

I--I don't like to think of it as such. You have been so kind, and so encouraging, and you are so frank and--Can't we have one day more? Can't you come back to-morrow afternoon,--here--and be just Bill Jones, the Pirate, for another day? I think we'd be happier--afterward--if you could, and if we could forget certain things. Say you will come."

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

CHAPTER XVI

It's a long way from MacDougall Alley to Fort George at any time. It is rendered longer when the wind is chill; but Jimmy, no longer the jester, could never remember how he reached there on that wintry afternoon, and its hills, bleak with snow, were no more drab and cold than the dead fires of his dreams. The skies above were leaden, with no ray of sunlight. Away behind him the smoke of the city seemed leveled like a shroud. Its distant monotone of sound became a dirge. Unmindful of the chill, he found a bench, brushed the snow from a corner and sat there for a long time, seeing nothing, un.o.bservant of his surroundings, and thinking of all that somehow seemed left irrevocably behind. It was as if it had been ages ago! It had been ages ago since happiness had fled.

There was not a laugh left in all the sad world that had abruptly grown old, and savorless. A vagrant, aged, dirty, ragged, accosted him, begging alms, and without looking up, Jimmy thrust a hand into his pocket and took therefrom a dollar note. The beggar mumbled thanks, stamped his feet, turned away, and then came back and said, "Hope you're not down on your luck. I wish you luck, sir!"

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

The vagrant shuffled away, shaking his head. He did not in the least appreciate the sorry quip. All that he knew was that sometimes well-dressed men who came and thus sat in the parks, were sometimes found in the same place by a policeman--and usually such men had holes, self-inflicted, in their heads. But long before he had pa.s.sed from sight Jimmy had reverted to the thought that to-morrow was the end. To see her just once more, and after that--nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for, nothing to dream about. Strangely enough it is the men whose laugh is readiest, whose mental sufferings and depressions are greatest.

Often the laugh is but a forced cloak for grief. Well, to-morrow he would laugh! Be Bill Jones for the last time! Make a decent finish of the dream! Leave with this girl he had so loved a kindly recollection of a strange adventure as he made his exit from her life! There should be neither sighs, sentiment, nor repining.

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

When he awoke, at noon, he tried for a few minutes to imagine that it was still a very happy, prosperous and promising world; but it was all in vain. He sat on the edge of his bed, and again thought that if he had lost to any other than the Judge, it might not have been so distressing.

He got up and looked at his own face in the gla.s.s, and hated it for that peculiar resemblance. It was certain now, after her confession, that all the time she had believed him to be the Judge and yet, because when with Mary Allen the Judge's very existence had been forgotten, Jim could not accuse himself of having fostered her illusion. Honesty would compel her to admit that. And, on the other hand, thinking it over, he could not remember that he had ever talked of the road, his business, or commercial adventure, because it was a rule of his never to "talk shop"

out of hours. He thought she had already experienced too much of that and she had told him once that she detested chocolates. The only feature for which he could at all censure himself was for lack of frankness.

"If I hadn't been such a rotten coward, and had told her plainly after the first afternoon I ever had with her who I was, that I'd forgotten her name and all, it would never have come to this!" he soliloquized, and then, an instant later, reversed himself, considered that if he had been frank he might never have got to love her at all, and--to have loved her for so long and to have been with her so many times, was worth more than all else. Could he but have that measure of delight again, and then die, Death wouldn't be so grim and hopeless as this present pa.s.s.

He flattered himself that she could never imagine all his folly of love.

He was grateful to Fate that he had never uttered such avowal and suffered its inevitable rejection; for now she could always remember him as a friend. Rejections, he decided, must inevitably leave unpleasant or harrowing memories. He throttled all his sad eagerness for the farewell visit and resolutely delayed it until late in the afternoon. He schooled himself to the determination that there should be no sentimental speech or action lest she suspect his wounds and perhaps be thereby saddened.

He had come to her with a laugh, he would leave her with a laugh. That was the brave way.

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

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

"The obsequies of a pirate are best held in late afternoon," he replied.

"It's a time-honored form. I'm very formal, as you know."

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

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

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