“Oh, how can I explain it?” that lady cried, desperately. “Well,” she said, drawing a long breath, “let’s begin at the beginning. Of course you understand that I don’t want any such clothes for myself?”
“No, ma’am, I suppose not,” murmured Mrs. Doherty, evidently suspecting that the other was slightly insane.
“Well, I wanted to ask you about them, because I thought your husband might have some clothes he did not want. I’d pay him a good price for them, and they needn’t be very good”—and again Miss Slopham struck that terrible snag of the conversation—“I want them for a gentleman who’s got into trouble; I can’t tell you what it is, but he’s got to keep out of the way of people. And the thing I wanted to ask you most, Mrs. Doherty,” she said, in a pleading voice, conscious that she was twisting it all into a sad snarl, “was whether I couldn’t get you and Mr. Doherty to take him to board up here with you for a while,” and here the good lady sighed a sigh of relief in spite of her misery and confusion. She had at last let the cat out of the bag.
Mrs. Doherty’s eyes were growing very large. The man needed new clothes; must have them that afternoon; there was a reason for his keeping out of the way; Miss Slopham would not tell what it was; the man had got into trouble. The idea grew bigger and bigger in Mrs. Doherty’s mind, until at last it burst out with,
“But is it a jail-bird ye’ve got there, ma’am?”
“No, no,” cried Miss Slopham, badly frightened in her turn at the other’s fear. “How could you think such a thing? He’s a gentleman, you know; quite an important man where he comes from. There are reasons why I can’t tell you who he is. He doesn’t want anybody to know it either. But a jail-bird! why, wait till you see him, Mrs. Doherty. He looks so gentle, and he’s really handsome.”
Mrs. Doherty looked at Miss Slopham. Miss Slopham was a wealthy tenant, and paid a large rent, and Mrs. Doherty was only the janitor’s wife. But, after all, Mrs. Doherty was a woman, and Miss Slopham was a woman also, and Mrs. Doherty looked at Miss Slopham in the way in which only a woman can look at another woman; looked at her gray and withered curls, and at her face, which had never, in the spring-time of Miss Slopham’s youth, been the kind of face which painters celebrate and poets embalm in verse, and said nothing. What she may have thought, or whether she thought anything, was a matter of little consequence, for when the richer lady came to mention the terms at which she rated the hospitality of the Doherty household, Mrs. Doherty showed a positive anxiety to oblige her, and even murmured something about being glad to do anything in their power for such a kind lady.
Now began a week of agony for Miss Slopham. Ogla-Moga was duly installed in the Doherty apartment, and duly invested with a suit of Mr. Doherty’s clothes. But the taste for roving was still strong upon him. The inner life of an apartment-house seemed to arouse all his savage curiosity, and the fact that the entrance to every apartment looked like the entrance to every other apartment gave rise to some disagreeable complications. In the second floor front, for example, a skirmish with a view to matrimony had long been in progress between the daughter of the family, Miss Josephine Ayr, and Mr. Margent, of the young and prosperous stock-broking firm of Margent & Bar, and the decisive engagement was plainly near at hand. The progress of the acquaintanceship had been watched with an interest not altogether friendly by the second floor back, while Miss Slopham had deigned to catch such neutral and impartial glimpses of it as she could over the stairs from the third floor front. In fact, the second floor back, who bore the name of Pound, had in an unguarded moment introduced Mr. Margent to the second floor front, and had then in silent rage seen him borne away from them by Miss Josephine. Perhaps this was to be accounted for by the fact that the two marriageable daughters in the second floor back had been offered, to use the coarse expression of the young stock-broker, “with no takers” for a series of years, and perhaps by the bold and shocking manners of Miss Josephine, which were often the subject of remark in the Pound household, where the opinion was frequently heard that it was difficult to understand how old Mrs. Ayr could keep so cheerful with a daughter whose behavior was the scandal of all her acquaintances. By one of those unaccountable coincidences which will occur in apartment-houses, the remarks of the Ayrs about the Pounds were repeated to the Pounds, while at the same time the remarks of the Pounds about the Ayrs were repeated to the Ayrs, the result being that Miss Josephine said that it must be a great satisfaction to Mrs. Pound to feel that she would probably always have her daughters with her, especially as they were already of an age to have many tastes in common with her, and the Misses Pound said that it was truly painful to see people who had once been very wealthy reduced in circumstances, like the Ayrs, for example, and that both families were carefully polite when they met.
Now Mr. Margent was thought to be on the point of declaring himself, and when he appeared one afternoon his intentions were obvious. He was, if possible, more scrupulously dressed than ever. His clothes, trimly cut in the latest style, were new and spotless. His plump, not to say puffy, face, of an overfed white, was as smooth-shaven as ever. His plentiful watch-chain and his elegant shoes and his expensive stockings were, if possible, more plentiful and elegant and expensive than ever. When Miss Josephine appeared in a fresh costume, his small gray eyes revolved about her with an appearance of sluggish satisfaction which for him was almost animation.
“Business,” said he—“business’s been splendid this year. Tip-top. C. B. & Q. brought us in ten thousand at one clip the other day. Fact;” and Mr. Margent paused for a fresh supply of ideas.