Somewhere in France

by Richard Harding Davis

Pleading fever, Jimmie explained to his landlord that for him to venture out by day was most dangerous, and sent the landlord after the newspapers. The feelings with which he read them were mixed. He was proud of the complete success of his plot, but the inevitableness of it terrified him. The success was too complete. He had left himself no loophole. He had locked the door on himself and thrown the key out of the window. Now, that she was lost to him forever, he found, if that were possible, he loved his wife more devotedly than before. He felt that to live in the same world with Jeanne and never speak to her, never even look at her, could not be borne. He was of a mind to rush to the wharf and take another leap into the dark waters, and this time without a life-line. From this he was restrained only by the thought that if he used infinite caution, at infrequent intervals, at a great distance, he still might look upon his wife. This he assured himself would be possible only after many years had aged him and turned his hair gray. Then on second thoughts he believed to wait so long was not absolutely necessary. It would be safe enough, he argued, if he grew a beard. He always had been clean-shaven, and he was confident a beard would disguise him. He wondered how long a time must pass before one would grow. Once on a hunting-trip he had gone for two weeks without shaving, and the result had not only disguised but disgusted him. His face had changed to one like those carved on cocoanuts. A recollection of this gave him great pleasure. His spirits rose happily. He saw himself in the rags of a tramp, his face hidden in an unkempt beard, skulking behind the hedges that surrounded his house. From this view-point, before sailing away from her forever, he would again steal a look at Jeanne. He determined to postpone his departure until he had grown a beard. Meanwhile he would plead illness, and keep to his room, or venture out only at night. Comforted by the thought that in two weeks he might again see his wife, as she sat on the terrace or walked in her gardens, he sank peaceably to sleep.

The next morning the landlord brought him the papers. In them were many pictures of himself as a master of foxhounds, as a polo-player, as a gentleman jockey. The landlord looked at him curiously. Five minutes later, on a trivial excuse, he returned and again studied Jimmie as closely as though he were about to paint his portrait. Then two of the other boarders, chums of the landlord, knocked at the door, to borrow a match, to beg the loan of the morning paper. Each was obviously excited, each stared accusingly. Jimmie fell into a panic. He felt that if already his identity was questioned, than hiding in his room and growing a beard nothing could be more suspicious. At noon, for West Indian ports, a German boat was listed to sail from the Twenty-fourth Street wharf. Jimmie decided at once to sail with her and, until his beard was grown, not to return. It was necessary first to escape the suspicious landlord, and to that end he noiselessly packed his trunk and suit-case. In front of the house, in an unending procession, taxi-cabs returning empty from the Twenty-third Street ferry passed the door, and from the street Jimmie hailed one. Before the landlord could voice his doubts Jimmie was on the sidewalk, his bill had been paid, and, giving the address of a hotel on Fourteenth Street, he was away.

At the Fourteenth Street hotel Jimmie dismissed the taxi-cab and asked for a room adjoining an imaginary Senator Gates. When the clerk told him Senator Gates was not at that hotel, Jimmie excitedly demanded to be led to the telephone. He telephoned the office of the steamship line: and, in the name of Henry Hull, secured a cabin. Then he explained to the clerk that over the telephone he had learned that his friend, Senator Gates, was at another hotel. He regretted that he must follow him. Another taxi was called, and Jimmie drove to an inconspicuous and old-fashioned hotel on the lower East Side, patronized exclusively by gunmen. There, in not finding Senator Gates, he was again disappointed, and now having broken the link that connected him with the suspicious landlord, he drove back to within a block of his original starting-point and went on board the ship. Not until she was off Sandy Hook did he leave his cabin.

It was July, and passengers to the tropics were few; and when Jimmie ventured on deck he found most of them gathered at the port rail. They were gazing intently over the ship's side. Thinking the pilot might be leaving, Jimmie joined them. A young man in a yachting-cap was pointing north and speaking in the voice of a conductor of a "seeing New York" car.

"Just between that lighthouse and the bow of this ship," he exclaimed, "is where yesterday James Blagwin jumped overboard. At any moment we may see the body!"

An excitable passenger cried aloud and pointed at some floating seaweed.

"I'll bet that's it now!" he shouted.

Jimmie exclaimed indignantly:

"I'll bet you ten dollars it isn't!" he said.

In time the ship touched at Santiago, Kingston, and Colon, but, fearing recognition, Jimmie saw these places only from the deck. He travelled too fast for newspapers to overtake him, and those that on the return passage met the ship, of his death gave no details. So, except that his suicide had been accepted, Jimmie knew nothing.