“I don’t know about that, Coningsby. The fact is I’m not—Well, hang it all! Can’t you see? I haven’t a rag in the world but what I stand up in, and I can’t go where I’m likely to run into decent people.”
“You won’t run into any one but carpenters and painters. I’m not going to take no for an answer, old chap. Besides, there’s method in this madness, for—now don’t buck!—for I’m going to put you on a job.”
I could only stare vacantly.
“On a job?”
“Mrs. Grace wants some measurements and specifications which she thinks I haven’t given her exactly enough; and the first thing to be done is to go over the whole blooming place with a foot-rule and a tape-measure; but I’ll tell you about that to-morrow, too. For a chap with your training it will be office-boy’s work; but as you’re doing nothing else for the moment—”
It is needless to say that I hardly slept that night. It was not the prospect of work alone that excited me; it was that of being gradually drawn into the sphere in which I might meet Regina Barry. I was still uncertain as to whether I wanted to do that or not. There was no hour of the day when I didn’t think of her, and yet it was always with a sense of thankfulness that she couldn’t know where I was or guess at what had become of me. If I could have been granted the privilege of seeing her without having her see me I should have jumped at it; but the ordeal of her recognition was beyond my strength to face. Rather than have her say with her eyes, “You were the man who came into my room and tried to rob me,” I would have shot myself.
And yet I had to admit the fact that this danger was in the air. Ralph Coningsby’s sister was the Elsie of that tragic night; Cantyre was the Stephen. I was being offered work by Sterling Barry’s partner, and might soon be doing it for Sterling Barry himself. The fatality that brought about these unfoldings might go farther still, and before I knew it I might find myself in the precise situation that filled me with terror—and yet made me shiver with a kind of harsh delight. Before I could sleep I had to make a compromise with my courage. I would not shoot myself rather than meet her. I would meet her first, if it had to be. I would take that one draft of the joy I had put forever out of reach—and shoot myself afterward.
But in the morning I was more self-confident. Having examined myself carefully in the cracked mirror in the bath-room, I found that my mustache, which had grown tolerably long and thick, changed my appearance not a little. Moreover, food, rest, and sobriety had smoothed away the unspeakable haggardness that had creased my forehead, hardened my mouth, and burnt into my eyes that woebegone desolation which I had noticed among my companions when I arrived at the club. It is no exaggeration to say that I was not only younger by ten years, but that I was changed in looks, as a landscape is changed when, after being swept by rains, it is bathed in sunshine. The one hope I built on all this was that, were I to meet Regina Barry face to face, she would not recognize me at a first glance, while I could keep her from getting a second.
On the way across the street Coningsby told me something of Charlie Grace and his memorial. He had been the son of a former rector of St. David’s—an important man in the New York of his day, who had outlived his usefulness and been asked to resign his parish. The son had never forgiven this slight, and the William Grace Memorial was intended to avenge it. It had been the express desire of the widow, Mrs. Charlie Grace, that he, Ralph Coningsby, should have sole charge of the building, and the work had been going on since the previous autumn. In the coming autumn the house would be ready for furnishing. It was for this purpose that Mrs. Grace required the exact measurements of each room, with the disposition of the wall spaces. During the summer she could thus consider what she would have to do when the time came in October.