The Veiled Lady, and Other Men and Women Part 13

"Yes, certainly," a.s.sented Miss Jennings. "Let me take your arm--step carefully, and lean on me."

On reaching the stateroom, Sister Teresa waited until Miss Jennings had entered, then she locked the door and pulled the curtains close.

"Listen, Miss Jennings, before you judge me. You remember yesterday how I pleaded with you to help me find a bedroom where I could be alone.

You would not, and I could do nothing but let matters take their course. Fate has placed me in your hands. When you said that you were on the lookout for me and that you knew Hobson, the detective, I knew that all was lost unless your heart went out to me. I know him, too. I faced his eyes when I came aboard. I staggered with fright and caught at the ropes, but he did not suspect--I saw in his face that he did not. He may still trace me and arrest me when I land. If anybody comes for me, say you met me in the hospital where you work."

Nurse Jennings stood staring into the woman's eyes. Her first impulse was to ring the bell for the Steward and send for the s.h.i.+p's doctor.

Sudden insanity, the result of acute hysteria, was not uncommon in women leading sedentary lives who had gone through a heavy strain, and the troubles of this poor Sister had, she saw, unseated her reason.

"Don't talk so--calm yourself. No one is seeking you. You ought to lie down. Come--"

"Yes, I know you think I am crazy--I am crazy--crazy from a horrible fear that stares me in the face--from a spectre that--"

"Sister, you MUST lie down! I'll ring for the Doctor and he--"

Sister Teresa sprang forward and caught the hand of the Nurse before it touched the bell.

"Stop! STOP!--or all will be lost! I am not a Sister--I am the scene-painter--the father of that girl! See!" He threw back his hood, uncovering his head and exposed his short-cropped hair.

Nurse Jennings turned quickly and looked her companion searchingly in the face. The surprise had been so great that for an instant her breath left her. Then slowly the whole situation rushed over and upon her.

This man had made use of her privacy--had imposed upon her--tricked her.

"And you--you have dared to come into this room, making me believe you were a woman--and lied to me about your Hour of Silence and all the--"

"It was the only way I could be safe. You and everybody else would detect me if I did not shave and fix up my face. You said a minute ago the dark rings had gone from my eyes--it is this paint-box that did it.

Think of what it would mean to me to be taken--and my little girl!

Don't--don't judge me wrongly. When I get to New York I promise never to see you again--no one will ever know. If you had been my own sister I could not have treated you with more respect since I have been in the room. I will do anything you wish--to-night I will sleep on the floor--anything, if--"

"To-night! Not another hour will you stay here. I will go to the Purser at once and--"

"You mean to turn me out?"

"Yes."

"Oh, merciful G.o.d! Don't! Listen--you MUST listen. Let me stay! What difference should it make to you. You have nursed hundreds of men. You have saved many lives. Save mine--give me back my little girl! She can come to me in Quebec and then we can get away somewhere in America and be safe. I can still pa.s.s as a Sister and she as a child in my charge until I can find some place where I can throw off my disguise. See how good the real Sisters are to me; they do not condemn me. Here is a letter from the Mother Superior in Paris to the Mother Superior of a convent in Quebec. It is not forged--it is genuine. If they believe in me, why cannot you? Let me stay here, and you stay, too. You would if you could see my child."

The sound of a heavy step was heard outside in the corridor.

Then came a quick, commanding voice: "Miss Jennings, open the door, please."

The Nurse turned quickly and made a step toward the door. The fugitive sank upon the sofa and drew the hood over his face.

Again her name rang out--this time in a way that showed them both that further delay was out of the question.

Nurse Jennings shot back the bolt.

Outside stood the First Officer.

"There has been a bad accident in the steerage. I hate to ask you, Miss Jennings, knowing how tired you are--but one of the emigrants has fallen down the forecastle hatch. The Doctor wants you to come at once."

During the rest of the voyage Nurse Jennings slept in the steerage; she would send to Number 49 during the day for her several belongings, but she never pa.s.sed the night there, nor did she see her companion. The case was serious, she told the Stewardess, who came in search of her, and she dared not leave.

The fugitive rarely left the stateroom. Some days he pleaded illness and had his meals brought to him; often he ate nothing.

As the day approached for the vessel to arrive in New York a s.h.i.+vering nervousness took possession of him. He would stand behind the door by the hour listening for her lightest footfall, hoping against hope that, after all, her heart would soften toward him. One thought absorbed him: would she betray him, and if so, when and where? Would it be to the First Officer--the friend of Hobson--or would she wait until they reached New York and then hand him over to the authorities?

Only one gleam of hope shone out illumining his doubt, and that was that she never sent to the stateroom during the Hour of Silence, thus giving him a chance to continue his disguise. Even this ray was dimmed when he began to realize as they approached their destination that she had steadily avoided him, even choosing another deck for a breath of fresh air whenever she left her patient. That she had welcomed the accident to the emigrant as an excuse for remaining away from her stateroom was evident. What he could not understand was, if she really pitied and justified him, as she had done his prototype, why she should now treat him with such suspicion. At her request he had opened his heart and had trusted her; why then could she not forgive him for the deceit of that first night--one for which he was not responsible?

Then a new thought chilled him like an icy wind: her avoidance of him was only an evidence of her purpose! Thus far she had not exposed him, because then it would be known aboard that they had shared the stateroom together. He saw it all now. She was waiting until they reached the dock. Then no one would be the wiser.

When the steamer entered her New York slip and the gangplank was hoisted aboard, another thick-set, closely-knit man pushed his way through the crowd at the rail, walked straight to the Purser and whispered something in his ear. The next moment he had glided to where the Nurse and fugitive were standing.

"This is Miss Jennings, isn't it? I'm from the Central Office," and he opened his coat and displayed the gold s.h.i.+eld. "We've just got a cable from Hobson. He said you were on board and might help. I'm looking for a man. We've got no clew--don't know that he's on board, but I thought we'd look the list over. The Purser tells me that you helped the Doctor in the steerage--says somebody had been smashed up. Got anything to suggest?--anybody that would fit this description: 'Small man, only five-feet-six; blue eyes'"--and he read from a paper in his hand.

"No, I don't think so. I was in the steerage, of course, four or five days, and helped on a bad case, but I didn't notice anybody but the few people immediately about me."

"Perhaps, then, among the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers? Anybody peculiar there? He's a slick one, we hear, and may be working a stunt in disguise."

"No. To tell you the truth, I was so tired when I came aboard that I hardly spoke to any one--no one, really, except my dear Sister Teresa here, who shared my stateroom. They have driven her out of France and she is on her way to a convent in Quebec. I go with her as far as Montreal."

SAM JOPLIN'S EPIGASTRIC NERVE

I

"You eat too much, Marny." It was Joplin, of Boston, who was speaking--Samuel Epigastric Joplin, his brother painters called him.

"You treat your stomach as if it were a sc.r.a.p-basket and you dump into it everything you--"

"I do? You caricature of a codfish ball!"

"Yes, you do. You open your mouth, pin back your ears and in go pickles, red cabbage, Dutch cheese. It's insanity, Marny, and it's vulgar. No man's epigastric can stand it. It wouldn't make any difference if you were a kangaroo with your pouch on the outside, but you're a full-grown man and ought to have some common-sense."

"And you think that if I followed your idiotic theory it would keep me out of my coffin, do you? What you want, Joppy, is a square meal. You never had one, so far as I can find out, since you were born. You drank sterilized milk at blood temperature until you were five; chewed patent, unhulled wheat bread until you were ten, and since that time you've filled your stomach with husks--proteids, and carbohydrates, and a lot of such truck--isn't that what he calls em, Pudfut?"

The Englishman nodded in a.s.sent.

"And now just look at you, Joppy, instead of a forty-inch chest--"

"And a sixty-inch waist," interjected Joplin with a laugh, pointing at Marny's waistcoat.

"I acknowledge it, old man, and I'm proud of it," retorted Marny, patting his rotundity. "Instead, I say, of a decent chest your shoulders crowd your breast-bone; your epigastric, as you call it--it's your solar plexus, Joppy--but that's a trifle to an anatomist like you--your epigastric sc.r.a.pes your back-bone, so lonely is it for something warm and digestible to rub up against, and your-- Why, Joppy, do you know when I look at you and think over your wasted life, my eyes fill with tears? Eat something solid, old man, and give your stomach a surprise. Begin now. Dinner's coming up--I smell it. Open your port nostril, you shrivelled New England bean, and take in the aroma of beatific pork and greens. Doesn't that put new life into you? Puddy, you and Schonholz help Joppy to his feet and one or two of you fellows walk behind to pick up the pieces in case he falls apart before we can feed him. There's Tine's dinner-bell!"

White-capped, rosy-checked, bare-armed Tine had rung that bell for this group of painters for two years past--ever since Mynheer Boudier of the Bellevue over the way, who once claimed her services, had reproved Johann, the porter, for blocking up with the hotel trunks that part of the sidewalk over which the steamboat captain slid his gangplank.

Thereupon Tine slipped her pretty little feet into her white sabots--she and Johann have been called in church since--and walked straight over to the Holland Arms. Johann now fights the steamboat captain, backed not only by the landlord of the Arms, who rubs his hands in glee over the possession of two of his compet.i.tor's best servants, but by the whole coterie of painters whose boots Johann blacks, whose kits be packs and unpacks, whose errands he runs; while Tine, no less loyal and obliging, darns their stockings, mends their clothes, sews on b.u.t.tons, washes brushes, stretches canvases, waits on table, rings the dinner-bell, and with her own hands scrubs every square inch of visible surface inside and out of this quaint old inn in this sleepy old town of Dort-on-the-Maas--side-walks, windows, cobbles--clear to the middle of the street, her ruddy arms bare to the elbow, her st.u.r.dy, blue-yarn-stockinged legs thrust into snow-white sabots to keep her trim feet from the wet and slop.