“And the rest?”
Jones gave his head the shake which a bull gives at a toreador. “To the devil—to some other Jones—to you, perhaps. As if I cared. It’s gone: that’s the end of it.”
“I am sorry; really I am. I can understand—”
“Yes,” replied Jones, “I am sorry too.” He paused and gazed at the points of his patent-leather shoes. His anger seemed to have spent itself.
“You have no plans, have you?” Gonfallon asked, as a servant appeared with his valise.
“No,” Jones answered, pensively. “No; for the moment, none at all. I may stay in the country and raise hexameters, or return to town and dabble in experimental physiology. But as for Tahiti and Japan, I must give them up. Hereafter I can travel, as I have hitherto, on the map.—Well, I am sorry you have to go. Remember me to your wife.”
“And now,” murmured Gonfallon, as the carriage swept down the hill, “to the rescue.”
VIII
But for that day the rescue was of necessity postponed. Shortly after leaving Bronx the train in which Gonfallon was seated hesitated and halted, barricaded by the derailment of the Boston Express. And there between open fields for four mortal hours Gonfallon sat and twirled his thumbs. Instead of arriving in town at noon, the encroachments of dusk had begun before the station was reached.
As he drove to the rectory he weighed the feasibility of bearding Usselex in his house or of waylaying Manhattan at his club. On Jerolomon no attempt could be made, for that vulture took wing each night to an eyry on the Palisades whither pursuit were futile. The cab moved slowly; a stream of carriages was descending from the Park, and suddenly the rumble of the Avenue was punctuated by a stroke of brass, the trailing cry of a horn, and a coach swept by displaying for a second’s space a panorama of high hats, smart bonnets, and grooms the arms folded, impassible, correct. In its wake came a landau, the panel decorated with a coat of arms that was haughtier than a closed crown, and for occupant a brewer’s mistress. And behind it, interrupted by drays and hansoms, came traps from the stables of Robinson, of Madden, Dunwoodie, Forbush, and Attersol, men whose signatures could ransom popes, to whose daughters princes offered their hands, not the left either, but both, and whose wives could not find houses large enough for the plenitude and atrocities of their taste.
These people Gonfallon passed on his way to the rectory, and as the cab turned into Fifty-Second Street an omnibus lumbered by, and in it he caught a glimpse of Bleecker Bleecker, the richest man out of mythology, who sat caressing his chin, his coat-collar turned up, and in his face that vacuity which only omnipotence can bring.
It was to these people that each Sunday he spoke. At their marriages he officiated; when death came among them, so did he. It was he that baptized their children, it was he that gave them Bread and Wine at the Supper of Our Lord, it was he that counselled and that warned. He was their spiritual guide, their friend as well, one whom they welcomed and feasted and in whose converse they took delight. Yet did he in the direness of his distress go to any one of them now, what metamorphoses might he not encounter, interest changed to apathy, cordiality to rebuff, and, for climax, the door! As he stepped from the cab there came to him the giddiness of a sudden fall. On one side he saw the frayed coat of the mendicant priest, and in it an outcast that was himself; on the other gleamed the rochet, the satin robe, the insignia of the episcopate. It was for him to choose; and as he let himself into the rectory, about the muscles of his jaw there seemed to rise the stamp of that force which is known as Will.
“That money shall be got,” he muttered, “ay, though I dig it from the earth with my teeth.” And as he threw his coat from him, raging at the pusillanimity which had sent him careering over the country, losing him hours of which each moment was a treasure, and determining that, however late it might be, he would not sit himself down until the means of intercepting that forgery were obtained, his eye fell on a telegram that lay awaiting him on the table. “More about the bishop, I suppose.” And thereat he opened it with a stab of the thumb.
“God will reward you,
” it ran. “I have only thanks.
” And for signature—Bucholz
.
Gonfallon read the message twice, gazing at it the while with the air and attitude of a lunatic who thinks himself the proprietor of the asylum in which he dwells. For the moment it even occurred to him that Bucholz through some sympathetic intussusception might have divined the current of his thought and was expressing in advance his gratitude for the effort about to be made in his behalf.
“He is mad,” he muttered. “What can he mean?”
“Chris!”
Rumpling the telegram, he turned.
“Chris!” From the floor above, Ruth’s voice descended, and as he looked he saw the jonquil of her hair.
“Yes,” he answered, “in a moment.” And presently, the telegram in his pocket, his gloves withdrawn and folded, he mounted, still perplexed, to where she stood. “He is mad,” he kept repeating.
“Oh, Chris, I am so glad you are come! I hardly expected you today.” As she spoke, her voice wavered, as though she too were thinking of other things.
“Your father has been here, has he not?” he asked, abruptly.
“No,” she replied; “no one has been here. Is she better?”
Evidently she was referring to the countess, and by way of answer Gonfallon made a vague gesture. But the question seemed to have slipped from her, and to the gesture she gave no heed. She turned and appeared to listen.
“What can he mean?” he repeated to himself. “What
