CHAPTER XXCLUB CONFIDENCES
Late the same evening, in the billiard-room of the "Loungers Club" Clarence Sidwell met one Winston Hough, seemingly by chance, though in fact very much the reverse. Big and blonde, addicted to laughter, Hough was one of the few men with whom Sidwell fraternized,—why, only the Providence which makes like and unlike attract each other could have explained. However, it was with deliberate intent that Sidwell entered the most brilliantly lighted room in the place and sought out the group of which Hough was the centre.
"Hello, Chad!" the latter greeted the new-comer. "I've just trimmed up Watson here, and I'm looking for new worlds to conquer. I'll roll you fifty points to see who pays for a lunch afterward."
Sidwell smiled tolerantly. "I think it would be better for my reputation to settle without playing. Put up your stick and I'm with you."
Hough shook his head. "No," he objected, "I'm not a Weary Willie. I prefer to earn my dole first. Come on."
But Sidwell only looked at him. "Don't be stubborn," he said. "I want to talk with you."
Hough returned his cue to the rack lingeringly. "Of course, if you put it that way there's nothing more to be said. As to the stubbornness, however—" He paused suggestively.
Sidwell made no comment, but led the way directly toward the street.
"What's the matter?" queried Hough, when he saw the direction they were taking. "Isn't the club grill-room good enough for you?"
Sidwell pursued his way unmoved. "I said I wished to talk with you."
"I guess I must be dense," Hough answered gayly. "I certainly never saw any house rules that forbid a man to speak."
Sidwell looked at his companion with a whimsical expression. "The trouble isn't with the house rules but with you. A fellow might as well try to monopolize the wheat-pit on the board of trade as to keep you alone here. You're too confoundedly popular, Hough! You draw people as the proverbial molasses-barrel attracts flies."
The big man laughed. "Your compliment, if that's what it was, is a bit involved, but I suppose it'll have to do. Lead on!"
Sidwell sought out a modest littlecaféin a side street and selected a secluded booth.
"What'll you have?" he asked, as the waiter appeared.
Hough's blue eyes twinkled. "Are you with me, whatever I order?"
Sidwell nodded.
"Club sandwiches and a couple of bottles of beer," Hough concluded.
His companion made no comment.
"Been some time, hasn't it, since you surprised your stomach with anything like this?" bantered the big man, when the order had arrived and the waiter departed.
Sidwell smiled. "I shall have to confess it," he admitted.
"I thought so," remarked Hough dryly. "Next time you depict a plebeian scene you can remember this and thank me."
This time Sidwell did not smile. "You're hitting me rather hard, old man," he said.
"You deserve it," laconically answered Hough.
"But not from you!"
Hough meditatively watched the beads bursting on the surface of the liquor.
"Admitted," he said; "but the people who ought to touch you up are afraid to do so, and someone ought to." He smiled across the table. "Pardon the brutal frankness, but it's true."
Sidwell returned the glance. "You think it's the duty of some intimate to perform the kindness of this—touching up process occasionally, do you?"
Hough drank deep and sighed with satisfaction. "Jove! that tastes good! I limbered up my joints with a two-mile walk before I went to the club this evening, and I've been as dry as a harvest-hand ever since. All the wine in France or elsewhere won't touch the spot like a little good old brew when a man is really healthy." He recalled himself. "Your pardon, Sidwell. Seriously, I do thinkit's the duty of our best friends to bring us back to earth now and then when we've strayed too far away. No one who doesn't care for us will take the trouble."
"Ourverybest friends, I judge," suggested Sidwell.
"Certainly." The big man wondered what was coming next.
"A—wife, for instance."
Hough straightened in his chair. His jolly face grew serious.
"Are you in earnest, Chad," he queried, "or are you just drawing me out?"
"I never was more in earnest in my life."
Hough lost sight of the original question in the revelation it suggested.
"Do you mean you're really going to get married at last?"
Sidwell forced a smile. "If the matter were already settled, it would be too late to consider the advisability of the move, wouldn't it?" he returned. "It would be an established fact, and as such useless to discuss. I haven't asked the lady, if that answers your question."
Hough made a gesture of impatience. "Theoretically, yes, but practically, no. In your individual case, desire and gratification amount to the same. You're mighty fascinating with the ladies, Chad. Few women would refuse you, if you made an effort to have them do the reverse."
"Thank you," said Sidwell, equivocally.
His companion scowled. "Appreciation is unnecessary. I'm not even sure the remark was complimentary."
They sat a moment in silence, while the beer in their glasses grew stale.
"Suppose I were to consider marriage, as you suggest," said Sidwell at last. "What do you think would be the result? Judging from your expression, some opinion thereon is weighing heavily upon your mind."
The blonde man looked up keenly. One would hardly have recognized him as the easy-going person of a few moments before.
"It will, of course, depend entirely upon whom you choose. That's hackneyed. From the motions of straws, though, this Summer, I presume it's admissible that I jump at conclusions concerning the lady."
The other nodded.
"In that case, Chad, as surely as night follows day it'll be a failure." The blue eyes all but flashed. "Moreover, it's a hideous injustice to the girl."
Sidwell stiffened involuntarily.
"Your prediction sounds a bit strong from one who is himself a benedict," he returned coldly. "Upon what, if you please, do you base your opinion?"
Hough fidgeted in his chair.
"You want me to be frank, brutally frank, once more?"
"Anything you wish. I'd like to know why you spoke as you did."
"The reason, then, is this. You two would no more mix than oil and water."
Sidwell's face did not change. "You and Elise seem to jog along fairly well together," he observed.
Hough scowled as before. "Yes, but there's no possible similarity between the cases. You and I are no more alike than a dog and a rabbit. To come down to the direct issue, you're city bred, and Miss Baker has been reared in the country. She—"
Sidwell held up his hand deprecatingly. "To return to the illustration, Elise was originally from the country."
"And to repeat once more," exclaimed Hough, "there's again no similarity. Elise and I have been married eight years. We met at college, and grew together normally. We were both young and adaptable. Besides, at the risk of being tedious, I reiterate that you and I are totally unlike. I'm only partially urban; you are completely so—to your very finger-tips. I'm half savage, more than half. I like to be out in the country, among the mountains, upon the lakes. I like to hunt and fish, and dawdle away time; you care for none of these things. I can make money because I inherited capital, and it almost makes itself; but it's not with me a definite ambition. I have no positive object in life, unless it is to make the little woman happy. You have. Your work absorbs the best of you. You haven't much left for friendships, even mild ones like ours. I've been with you for a good many years, old man, and I know what I'm talking about. You are old, older than your years, and you're not young even in them. You're selfish—pardon me, but it's true—abominably selfish. Your character, your point of view, your habits—are all formed. You'll never change; you wouldn't if you could. Miss Baker is hardly more than a child. I know her—I've made it a pointto know her since I saw you were interested in her. Everything in the world rings genuine to her as yet. She hasn't learned to detect the counterfeit, and when the knowledge does come it will hurt her cruelly. She'll want to get back to nature as surely as a child with a bruised finger wants its mother; and you can't go with her. Most of all, Chad, she's a woman. You don't know what that means—no unmarried man does know. Even we married ones never grasp the subtleties of woman-nature completely. I've been studying one for eight years, and at times she escapes me. But one thing I have learned; they demand that they shall be first in the life of the man they love. Florence Baker will demand this, and after the first novelty has worn off you won't satisfy her. I repeat once more, you're too selfish for that. As sure as anything can be, Chad Sidwell, if you marry that girl it will end in disaster—in divorce, or something worse."
The voice ceased, and the place was of a sudden very quiet. Sidwell tapped on his thin drinking-glass with his finger-nail. His companion had never seen him nervous before. At last he looked up unshiftingly. "You've given me a pretty vivid portrait of myself, of what I'm good for, and what not," he said. "Would you like me to return the compliment?"
Again Hough wondered what was coming. "Yes, I suppose so," he answered hesitatingly.
"You've often remarked," said Sidwell, slowly, "that you knew of no work for which you were especially adapted. I think I could fit you out exactly to yourliking. Just get a position as guard to a lake of brimstone in the infernal regions."
Hough laughed, but Sidwell did not. "I fancy," he continued monotonously, "I see you now, a long needle-pointed spear in your hands, jabbing back the poor sinners who tried to crawl out."
"Chad!" interrupted the other reproachfully. "Chad!" But Sidwell did not stop.
"You'd stand well back, so that the sulphur fumes wouldn't irritate your own nostrils, and so that when the bubbles from the boiling broke they wouldn't spatter you, and with the finest kind of intuition and the most delicate aim you'd select the tenderest place in your intended victim's anatomy for your spear-point." He smiled ironically at the picture. "Gad! you'd be a howling success there, old man!"
An expression of genuine contrition formed on Hough's jolly face. "I'm dead sorry I hurt you, Chad," he said, "but you asked me to be frank."
"You certainly were frank," rejoined the other bluntly.
"What I said, though, was true," reiterated Hough.
Sidwell leaned a bit forward, his face, handsome in spite of its shadings of discontent, clear in the light.
"Perhaps," he went on. "The trouble with you is that you don't give me credit for a single redeeming virtue. No one in this world is wholly good or wholly bad. You forget that I'm a human being, with natural feelings and desires. You make me out a sort of machine, cunningly constructed for a certain work. You limit my life to that work alone. A human being, even one bornof the artificial state called civilization, isn't a contrivance like a typewriter which you can make work and then shut up in a box until it is wanted again. There are certain emotions, certain wants, you can't suppress by logic. Even a dog, if you imprison him alone, will go mad in time. I'm a living man, with red blood instead of ink in my veins, not an abstract mathematical problem. I've had my full share of work and unhappiness. You'll have to give me a better reason for remaining without the gate of the promised land than you've yet done."
Hough looked at the speaker impotently. "You misunderstood me, Chad, if you thought I was trying to keep you from your due, or from anything which would really make for your happiness. I was simply trying to prevent something I feel morally certain you'll regret. Because one isn't entirely happy is no adequate reason why he should make himself more unhappy. I can't say any more than I've already said; there's nothing more to say. My best reason for disapproving your contemplated action I gave you first, and you've not considered it at all. It's the injustice you do to a girl who doesn't realize what she is doing. With your disposition, Chad, you'd take away from her something which neither God nor man can ever give her back—her trust in life."
Sidwell's long fingers restlessly twirled the glass before him. The remainder of the untouched beer was now as so much stagnant water.
"If I don't undeceive her someone else will," he said."It's inevitable. She'll have to adjust herself to things as they are, as we all have to do."
Hough made a motion of deprecation.
"Miss Baker is no longer a child," continued Sidwell. "If you've studied her as you say you've done, you've discovered that she has very definite ideas of her own. It's true that I haven't known her long, but she has had an opportunity to know me well such as no one else has ever had, not even you. No one can say that she is leaping in the dark. Time and time again, at every opportunity, I have stripped my very soul bare for her observation. The thing has not been easy for me; indeed, I know of nothing I could have done that would have been more difficult. Though the present instance seems to give the statement the lie, I am not easily confidential, my friend. I have had a definite object in doing as I have done with Miss Baker. I am trying, as I never tried before in my life, to get in touch with her—as I'll never try again, no matter how the effort results, to get in touch with a person. She knows the good and bad of me from A to Z. She knows the life I lead, the kind of people who make up that life, their aims, their amusements, their standards, social and moral, as thoroughly as I can make her know them. I have taken her everywhere, shown her every phase of my surroundings. For once in my life at least, Hough, I have been absolutely what I am,—absolutely frank. Farther than that I cannot go. I am not my brothers keeper. She is an individual in a world of individuals; a free agent, mental, moral, and physical. The decision of her future actions, the choiceshe makes of her future life, must of necessity rest with her. For some reason I cannot point to a definite explanation and say this or that is why she is attractive to me. She seems to offer the solution of a want I feel. No system of logic can convince me that, after having been honest as I have been with her, if she of her own free will consents to be my wife, I have not a moral right to make her so."
Again Hough made a deprecatory motion. "It is useless to argue with you," he said helplessly, "and I won't attempt it. If I were to try, I couldn't make you realize that the very methods of frankness you have used to make Miss Baker know you intimately have defeated their own purpose, and have unconsciously made you an integral part of her life. I said before that when you wish you're irresistibly fascinating with women. All that you have said only exemplifies my statement. It does not, however, in the least change the homely fact that oil and water won't permanently mix. You can shake them together, and for a time it may seem that they are one; but eventually they'll separate, and stay separate. As I said before, though, I do not expect you to realize this, or to apply it. I can't make what I know by intuition sufficiently convincing. I wish I could. I feel that somehow this has been my opportunity and I have failed."
For the instant Sidwell was roused out of himself. He looked at his companion with appreciation. "At least you can have the consolation of knowing you have honestly tried," he said earnestly.
Hough returned the look with equal steadiness. "But nevertheless I have failed."
Sidwell put on his hat, its broad brim shading his eyes and concealing their expression.
"Providence willing," he said finally, "I shall ask Miss Baker to be my wife."
CHAPTER XXILOVE IN CONFLICT
The habits of a lifetime are not changed in a day. Ben Blair was accustomed to rising early, and he was astir next morning long before the city proper was thoroughly awake. In the hotel where he was stopping, the night clerk looked his surprise as he nodded a stereotyped "Good-morning." The lobby was in confusion, undergoing its early morning scrubbing, and the guest sought the street. The sun was just risen, but the air was already sultry, casting oppression and languor over every detail of the scene. The bare brick and stone fronts of the buildings, the brown cobblestones of the pavements, the dull gray of the sidewalks, all looked inhospitable and forbidding. Few vehicles were yet in motion—distributors of necessities, of ice, of milk, of vegetables—and they partook of the general indolence. The horses' ears swayed listlessly, or were set back in dogged endurance. The drivers lounged stolidly in their seats. Even the few passengers on the monotonously droning cars but added to the impression of tacit conformity to the inevitable. Poorly dressed as a rule, tired looking, they gazed at their feet or glanced out upon the street with absent indifference. It was all depressing.
Ben, normal, vigorous, country bred, shook himself and walked on. He was as susceptible as a child to surrounding influences, and to those now about him he was distinctly antagonistic. Life, as a whole, particularly work, the thing that does most to fill life, he had found good. That others should so obviously find it different grated upon him. He wanted to get away from their presence; and making inquiry of the first policeman he met, he sought the nearest park.
All his life he had heard of the beauty of the New York parks. The few people he knew who had visited them emphasized this beauty above all other features. Perhaps in consequence he was expecting the impossible. At least, he was disappointed. Here was nature, to be sure, but nature imprisoned under the thumb of man. The visitor had a healthy desire to roll on the grass, to turn himself loose, to stretch every joint and muscle; yet signs on each side gave warning to "keep off." The trees, it must be admitted, were beautiful and natural,—they could not live and be otherwise; but somehow they had the air of not being there of their own free-will.
Ben chose a bench and sat down. A listlessness was upon him that the ozone of the prairies had never let him feel. He felt cramped for room, as though, should he draw as full a breath as he wished, it would exhaust the supply. A big freshly-shaven policeman strolled by, eying him suspiciously. It gave the young man the impression of being a prisoner out on good behavior; and in an indefinite way it almost insulted his self-respect. For the lack of something better to do he watched the minion of thelaw as he pursued his beat. Not Ben Blair alone, but every person the officer passed, went through this challenging inspection. The countryman had been too much preoccupied to notice that he had companions; but now that his interest was aroused, he began inspecting the occupants of the other benches. The person nearest him was a little old man in a crumpled linen suit. Most of the time his nose was close to his morning paper; but now and then he raised his face and looked away with an absent expression in his faded near-sighted eyes. Was he enjoying his present life? Ben would have taken his oath to the contrary. Again there flashed over him the impression of a prison with this fellow-being in confinement. There was indescribable pathos in that dull retrospective gaze, and Ben looked away. In the land from which he came there could not be found such an example of hopeless and useless age. There the aged had occupation,—the care of their children's children, a garden, an interest in crops and growing things, a fame as prophets of weather,—but such apathy as this, never.
A bit farther away was another type, also a man, badly dressed and unshaven. His battered felt hat was drawn low over the upper half of his face, and he was stretched flat upon the narrow bench. He was far too long for his bed, and to accommodate his superfluous length his knees were bent up like a jack-knife. Carrying with them the baggy trousers,—he wore no underclothes,—they left a hairy expanse between their ends and the yellow, rusty shoes. His chest rose and fell in the motion of sleep.
Ben Blair had seen many a human derelict on thefrontier; the country was full of them,—adventurers, searchers after lost health—popularly denominated "one-lungers"—soldiers of fortune; but he had never known such a class as this man represented,—useless cumberers of the earth, wanderers by day, sleepers on the benches of public parks by night. Had he been a student of sociology he might have found a certain morbid interest in the spectacle; but it was merely depressing to him; it destroyed what pleasure he might otherwise have taken in the place. This man was but a step beneath those dull toilers he had seen on the cars. They had not yet given up the struggle against the inevitable, or were too stolid to rebel; while he—
Ben sprang to his feet and began retracing his steps. People bred in the city might be callous to the miseries of their fellows; those provided with plenty might be content to live their lives side by side with such hopeless poverty, might even apply to their own profit the necessities of others; but his was the hospitality and consideration of the frontier, the democracy that shares its last loaf with its fellow no matter who he may be, and shares it without question. The heartless selfishness of the conditions he was observing almost made his blood boil. He felt that he was amid an alien people: their standards were not as his standards, their lives were not of his life, and he wanted to hurry through with his affairs and get away. He returned to the hotel.
Breakfast was ready by this time, and after some exploration he succeeded in finding the dining-room. The head-waiter showed him to a seat and held his chair obsequiously. Another, a negro of uncertain age, fairly exuding dignity and impassive as a sphinx, poured water over the ice in his glass with a practised hand, produced the menu, and waited for his order. Without intending it, the countryman had selected a rather fashionable place, and the bill of fare was unintelligible as Sanskrit to him. He looked at it helplessly. A man across the table, observing his predicament, smiled involuntarily. Ben caught the expression, looked at its bearer meaningly, looked until it vanished, and until a faint red, obviously a stranger to that face, took its place. By a sudden inspiration Blair's hand went to his pocket and returned with a silver coin.
"Bring me what a healthy man usually eats at this time of day, and plenty of it," he said. He glanced absently, blandly past his companion.
The gentleman of color looked at the speaker as though he were a strange animal in a "zoo."
"Yes, sah," he said.
While he was waiting, Ben looked around him with interest. The room was big, high, massive of pillars and of beams. Every detail had been carefully arranged. The heavy oak tables, the spotless linen, the sparkling silver and glassware appealed to the sense of luxury. The coolness of the place, due to unseen ventilating fans which he heard faintly droning somewhere in the ceiling, and increased by the tile floor and the skilfully adjusted shades, was delightful. The few other people present were as immaculate as bath, laundry, tailor, and modiste could make them. From one group at which Ben looked came the suppressed sound of a woman's laugh; from another,a man's voice, well modulated, illustrated a point with a story. At a small table in an alcove sat four young men, and notwithstanding the fact that for them it was yet very early in the day, the pop of a champagne cork was heard, and soon repeated. Blair, fresh from a glimpse of the outer and under world, observed it all, and drew comparisons. Again he saw the huddled figure of the tramp on the bench; and again he heard the careless music of the woman's laugh. He saw the dull animal stare of workers on their way to uncongenial toil; the hands still unsteady from yesterday's excesses lifting to dry lips the wine that would make them still more unsteady on the morrow. Could these contrasts be forever continued? he wondered. Would they be permitted to exist indefinitely side by side? Again, problem more difficult, could it be possible that the condition in which they existed was life? He could not believe it. His nature rebelled at the thought. No; life was not an artificial formula like this. It was broad and free and natural, as the prairies, his prairies, were natural and free. This other condition was a delirium, a momentary oblivion, of which the four young men in the alcove were a symbol. Transient pleasure, the life might mean; but the reverse, the inevitable reaction as from all intoxication, that—
Finishing his breakfast, Ben lit a cigar and sauntered out to the street. He had intended spending the morning seeing the town; but for the present he felt he had had enough—all he could mentally digest. Without at first any definite destination, in mere excess of healthy animal activity, he began to walk; but his principal object incoming to the city, the object he made no effort to conceal, acted upon him like a lodestone, and almost ere he was aware he was well out in the residence portion of the city and headed directly for the Baker home. He was unaware that morning was not the fashionable time to call upon a lady. To him the fact of inclination and of presence in the vicinity was sufficient justification; and mounting the well-remembered steps he rang the doorbell stoutly. A prim maid in cap and diminutive apron, a recent addition to the household, answered his ring.
"I'd like to see Miss Baker, if you please," said Ben.
The girl inspected the visitor critically. Beneath her surface decorum he had a suspicion that she was inclined to smile.
"I hardly think Miss Baker is up yet," she announced at last. "Will you leave your card?"
Ben looked at the sun, now well elevated in the sky, with an eye trained in the estimate of time. He drew mental conclusions silently.
"No," he said. "I will call later."
He did call later,—two hours later,—to receive from Scotty himself the intelligence that Florence was out but would soon return. Evidently the Englishman had been instructed; for, though he added an invitation to wait, it was only half-hearted, and being declined the matter was not pressed.
Ben returned to the hotel, ate his lunch, and considered the situation. A lesser man would have given up the fight and hidden his bruise; but Benjamin Blair was in no sense of the word a little man. He had come to townwith definite intent of seeing a certain girl alone, and see her alone he would. At four o'clock in the afternoon he again pressed the button on the Baker door-post, and again waited.
Again it was the maid who answered, and at the expected query she smiled outright. It seemed to her a capital joke that she was assisting in playing upon this man of unusual attire.
"Miss Baker is engaged," she announced, with the glibness of previous preparation.
To her surprise the visitor did not depart. Instead, he gave her a look which sent her mirth glimmering.
"Very well," he said. The door leading into the vestibule and from thence into the library was open, and without form of invitation he entered. "Tell her, please, that I will wait until she is not engaged."
The girl hesitated. This particular exigency had not been anticipated.
"Shall I give her a name?" she suggested, with an attempt at formality.
Ben Blair did not turn. "Tell her what I said."
He chose a chair facing the entrance and sat down. Departing on her mission, he heard the maid open another door on the same floor. There was for a moment a murmur of feminine voices, one of which he recognized; then silence again, as the door closed.
A half-hour passed, lengthened into an hour, all but repeated itself, and still apparently Florence was engaged; and still the visitor sat on. No power short of fire or an earthquake could have moved him now. Everyfragment of the indomitable perseverance of his nature was aroused, and instead of discouraging him each minute as it passed only made his determination the stronger. He shifted his chair so that it faced the window and the street, crossed his legs comfortably, half closed his eyes, resting yet watchful, and meditatively observed the growing procession of homeward bound wage-earners in car and on foot.
Suddenly there was the rustle of a woman's skirts, and he was conscious that he was no longer alone. He turned as he saw who it was, sprang to his feet, and despite the intentional slight of the long wait, a smile flashed to his face. He started to advance, but stopped.
"You wished to see me, I understand," a voice said coldly, as the speaker halted just within the doorway.
Ben Blair straightened. The hot blood mounted to his brain, throbbing at his throat and temples. It was not easy for him to receive insult; but outwardly he gave no sign.
"I think I have demonstrated the fact you mention," he replied calmly.
Florence Baker clasped her hands together. "Yes, your persistency is admirable," she said.
Ben Blair caught the word. "Persistency," he remarked, "seems the only recourse when past friendship and common courtesy are ignored."
Florence made no reply, and going forward Ben placed a chair deferentially. "It seems necessary for me to reverse the position of host and guest," he said. "Won't you be seated?"
The girl did not stir.
"I hardly think it necessary," she answered.
"Florence," Ben Blair's great chin lifted meaningly, "I will not be offended whatever you may do. I have something I wish to say to you. Please sit down."
The girl hesitated, and almost against her will looked the man fairly in the eyes, while her own blazed. Once more she felt his dominance controlling her, felt as she did when, in what seemed the very long ago, he had spread his blanket for her upon the prairie earth.
She sat down.
Ben drew up another chair and sat facing her. "Why," he was leaning a bit forward, his elbow on his knee, "why, Florence Baker, have you done everything in your power to prevent my seeing you? What have I done of late, what have I ever done, to deserve this treatment from you?"
The girl evaded his eyes. "It is not usually considered necessary for a lady to give her reasons for not wishing to see a gentleman," she parried. The handkerchief in her lap was being rolled unconsciously into a tight little ball. "The fact itself is sufficient."
Ben's free hand closed on the chair-arm with a mighty grip. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but I cannot agree with you. There's a certain amount of courtesy due between a woman and a man, as there is between man and man. It is my right to repeat the question."
The girl felt the cord drawing tighter, felt that in the end she would bend to his will.
"And should I refuse?" she asked.
"You won't refuse."
The girl's eyes returned to his. Even now she wondered that they did so, that try as she might she could not deny him. His dominance over her was well-nigh absolute. Yet she was not angry. An instinct that she had felt before possessed her; the longing of the weaker for the stronger—the impulse to give him what he wished. Her whole womanhood went out to him, with an entire confidence that she would never give to another human being. Naturally, he was her mate; naturally,—but she was not natural. She hesitated as she had done once before, a multitude of conflicting desires and ambitions seething in her brain. If she could but eliminate the artificial in her nature, the desire for the empty things of the world, then—But she could not yet give them up, and he could never be made to care for them with her. She was nearer now to giving them up, to giving up everything for his sake, than when she had sat alone with him out on the prairie. She realized this with an added complexity of emotion; but even yet, even yet—
A minute passed in silence, a minute of which the girl was unconscious. It was Ben Blair's voice repeating his first question that recalled her. This time she did not hesitate.
"I think you know the reason as well as I do. If we were mere friends or acquaintances I would be only too glad to see you; but we are not, and never can be merely friends. We have got to be either more or less." The voice, brave so far, dropped. A mist came over the brown eyes. "And we can't be more," she added.
The man's grip on the chair-arm loosened. He bent his face farther forward. "Miss Baker," he exclaimed. "Florence!"
Interrupting, almost imploring, the girl drew back. "Don't! Please don't!" she pleaded; then, as she saw the futility of words, with the old girlish motion her face dropped into her hands. "Oh, I knew it would mean this if I saw you!" she wailed. "You see for yourself we cannot be mere friends!"
The man did not stir, but his eyes changed color and seemed to grow darker. "No," he said, "we cannot be mere friends; I care for you too much for that. And I cannot be silent when I came away off here to see you. I would never respect myself again if I were. You can do what you please, say what you please, and I'll not resent it—because it is you. I will love you as long as I live. I am not ashamed of this, because it is you I love, Florence Baker." He paused, looking tenderly at the girl's bowed head.
"Florence," he went on gently, "you don't know what you are to me, or what your having left me means. I often go over to your old ranch of a night and sit there alone, thinking of you, dreaming of you. Sometimes it is all so vivid that I almost feel that you are near, and before I know it I speak your name. Then I realize you are not there, and I feel so lonely that I wish I were dead. I think of to-morrow, and the next day, and the next—the thousands of days that I'll have to live through without you—and I wonder how I am going to do it."
The girl's face sank deeper into her hands. A muffled sob escaped her. "Please don't say any more!" she pleaded. "Please don't! I can't stand it!"
But the man only looked at her steadily.
"I must finish," he said. "I may never have a chance to say this to you again, and something compels me to tell you of myself, for you are my good angel. In many ways it is of necessity a rough life I lead, but you are always with me, and I am the better for it. I haven't drank a drop since I came to know that I loved you, and we ranchers are not accustomed to that, Florence. But I never will drink as long as I live; for I'll think of you, and I couldn't then if I would. Once you saved me from something worse than drink. There was a man who shot Mr. Rankin and before this, from almost the first thought I can remember, I had sworn that if I ever met him I would kill him. We did meet. I followed him day after day until at last I caught up with him, until he was down and my hands were upon his throat. But I didn't hurt him, Florence, after all; I thought of you just in time."
He was silent, and suddenly the place seemed as still as an empty church. The girl's sobs were almost hysterical. The man's mood changed; he reached over and touched her gently on the shoulder.
"Forgive me for hurting you, Florence," he said. "I—I couldn't help telling you."
Involuntarily the girlish figure straightened.
"Forgive you!" A tear-stained face was looking into his. "Forgive you! I'll never be able to forgive myself!You are a million times too good for me, Ben Blair. Forgive you! I ought never to cease asking you to forgive me!"
"Florence!" pleaded the man. "Florence!"
But the girl, in her turn, went on. "I have felt all the while that certain things I saw here were unreal, that they were not what they seemed. I have prevaricated to you deliberately. I haven't really been here long, but it seems to me now that it's been years. As you said I would, I've looked beneath the surface and seen the sham. At first I wouldn't believe what I saw; but at last I couldn't help believing it, and, oh, it hurt! I never expect to be so hurt again. I couldn't be. One can only feel that way once in one's life." The small form trembled with the memory, and the listener made a motion as if to stop her; but she held him away.
"It isn't that I'm any longer blind; I am acting now with my eyes wide open. It is something else that keeps me from you now, something that crept in while I was learning my lesson, something I can't tell you." Once more the girl could not control herself, and sobbing, trembling, she covered her face. "Ben, Ben," she wailed, "why did you ever let me come here? You could have kept me if you would—you can do—anything. I would have loved you—I did love you all the time; only, only—" She could say no more.
For a second the man did not understand; then like a flash came realization, and he was upon his feet pacing up and down the narrow room. To lose an object one cares for most is one thing; to have it filched by another issomething very different. He was elemental, this man from the plains, and in some phases very illogical. The ways of the higher civilization, where man loves many times, where he dines and wines in good fellowship with him who is the husband of a former love—these were not his ways. White anger was in his heart, not against the woman, but against that other man. His fingers itched to be at his throat, regardless of custom or law. Temporarily, the rights and wishes of the woman, the prize of contention, were forgotten. Two young bucks in the forest do not consider the feelings of the doe that is the reward of the victor in the contest when they meet; and Ben Blair was very like these wild things. Only by an effort of the will could he keep from going immediately to find that other man,—intuition made it unnecessary to ask his name. As it was, he wanted now to be away. The tiny room seemed all at once stifling. He wanted to be out of doors where the sun shone, out where he could think. He seized his hat, then suddenly remembered, paused to glance—and that instant was his undoing, and another man's—Clarence Sidwell's—salvation.
And Florence Baker, at whom he had glanced? She was not tearful or hysterical now. Instead, she was looking at him out of wide-open eyes. Well she knew this man, and knew the volcano she had aroused.
"You won't hurt him, Ben!" she said. "You won't hurt him! For my sake, say you won't!"
The devil lurking in the cowboy's blue eyes vanished, but the great jaw was still set. He reached out and caught the girl by the shoulder. "Florence Baker," hesaid, "on your honor, is he worth it—is he worth the sacrifice you ask of me? Answer!"
But the girl did not answer, did not stir. "You won't hurt him!" she repeated. "Say you won't!"
A moment longer Ben Blair held her; then his hands dropped and he turned toward the vestibule.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."
CHAPTER XXIITWO FRIENDS HAVE IT OUT
Clarence Sidwell was alone in his down-town bachelor quarters; that is, alone save for an individual the club-man's friends termed his "Man Friday," an undersized and very black negro named Alexander Hamilton Brown, but answering to the contraction "Alec." Valet, man of all work, steward, Alec was as much a fixture about the place as the floor or the ceiling; and, like them, his presence, save as a convenience, was ignored.
The rooms themselves were on the eleventh floor of a down-town office-building, as near the roof as it had been possible for him to secure suitable quarters. For eight years Sidwell had made them his home when he was in town. The circle of his friends had commented, his mother and sisters (his father had been long dead) had protested, when, a much younger man, he first severed himself from the semi-colonial mansion which for three generations had borne the name of Sidwell; but as usual, he had had his own way.
"I want to work when I feel so inclined, when the mood is on me, whether it's two o'clock of the afternoon or of the morning,'" he had explained; "and I can't do it without interruption here with you and your friends."
For the same reason he had chosen to live near the sky. There, high above the noise and confusion, he could observe and catch the influence of the activity which is in itself a powerful stimulant, without experiencing its unpleasantness. Essentially, the man was an æsthete. If he went to a race or a football game he wished to view it at a distance. To be close by, to mingle in the dust of action, to smell the sweat of conflict, to listen to the low-voiced imprecations of the defeated, detracted from his pleasure. He could not prevent these features—therefore he avoided them.
This particular evening he was doing nothing, which was very unusual for him. The necessity for society, or for activity, physical or mental, had long ago become as much a part of his nature as the desire for food. Dilettante musician as well as artist, when alone at this time of the evening he was generally at the upright piano in the corner. Even Alec noticed the unusual lack of occupation on this occasion, and exposed the key-board suggestively; but, observing the action, Sidwell only smiled.
"Think I ought to, Alec?" he queried.
The negro rolled his eyes. Despite his long service, he had never quite lost his awe of the man he attended.
"Sho, yo always do that, or something, sah," he said.
Sidwell smiled again; but it was not a pleasant smile. So this was the way of it! Even his servant had observed his habitual restlessness, and had doubtless commented upon it to his companions in the way servants have of passing judgment upon their employers. And if Alec had noticed this, then how much more probable it was thatothers of Sidwell's numerous acquaintances had noticed it also! He winced at the thought. That this was his skeleton, and that he had endeavored to keep it hidden, Sidwell did not attempt to deny to himself. One of the reasons he hadnotgiven to his family for establishing these down-town quarters was this very one. Time and again, when he had felt the mood of protest strong upon him, he had come here and locked the doors to fight it out alone. But after all, it had been useless. The fact had been obvious, despite the trick; mayhap even more so on account of it. Like the Wandering Jew he was doomed, followed by a relentless curse.
He shook himself, and walking over to the sideboard poured out a glass of Cognac and drank it as though it were wine. Sidwell did not often drink spirits. Experience had taught him that to begin usually meant to end with regret the following day; but to-night, with his present mood upon him, the action was as instinctive as breathing. He moved back to his chair by the window.
The evening was hot, on the street depressingly so, but up here after the sun was set there was always a breeze, and it was cool and comfortable. The man looked out over the sooty, gravelled roofs of the surrounding lower buildings, and down on the street, congested with its flowing stream of cars, equipages, and pedestrians. Times without number he had viewed the currents and counter-currents of that scene, but never before had he so caught its vital spirit and meaning. Born of the elect,—reared and educated among them,—the supercilious superiority of his class was as much a part of him as his name. Whilehe realized that physically the high and the low were constructed on practically the same plan, he had been wont to consider them as on totally separate mental planes. That the clerk and the roustabout on ten dollars a week, breathing the same atmosphere,—seeing daily, hourly, minute by minute, from separate viewpoints, the same life,—that they should have in common the constant need of diversion had never before occurred to him. Multitudes of times, as a sociologist, or as a literary man in search of realism, he had visited the haunts of the under-man. Languidly, critically, as he would have observed at the "zoo" an animal with whose habits he was unacquainted, he had watched this rather curious under-man in his foolish, or worse than foolish, endeavor to find amusement or oblivion. He had often been interested, as by a clown at a circus; but more frequently the sight had merely inspired disgust, and he had returned to his own diversions, his own efforts to secure the same end, with an all but unconscious thankfulness that he was not such as that other. To-night, for the first time, and with a wonder we all feel when the obvious but long unseen suddenly becomes apparent, the primary fact of human brotherhood, irrespective of caste, came home to him. To-night and now he realized, diminutive in the distance as they were, that the swarm of figures that he had hitherto considered mere animals vain of display were impelled upon the street, compelled to keep moving, moving, without a pre-arranged destination, by the same spirit of unrest that had sent him to the buffet. At that moment he was probably nearer to his fellow-man than ever before in his life; but the truthrevealed made him the more unhappy. He had grown to consider his own unhappiness totally different and infinitely more acute than that of others; he had even taken a sort of morbid, paradoxical pleasure in considering it so; and now even this was taken from him. Not only had his own secret skeleton been visible when he believed it concealed, but all around him there suddenly sprang up a very cemetery of other skeletons, grinning at his blindness and discomfiture. His was not a nature to extract content from common discomfort, and but one palliative suggested itself,—the dull red decanter on the sideboard. Rising again and filling a glass, he returned and stood for a moment full before the open casement of the window gazing down steadily.
How long he stood there he hardly knew. Once Alec's dark face peered into the room, and disappeared as suddenly. At last there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," invited Sidwell, without moving. The door opened and closed, and Winston Hough stood inside. The big man gave one glance at the surroundings, saw the empty glass, and backed away. "Pardon my intrusion," he said with his hand on the knob.
Sidwell turned. "Intrusion—nothing!" He placed the decanter with glasses and a box of cigars on a convenient table. "Come and have a drink with me," and the liquor flowed until both glasses were nearly full.
Hough hesitated in a reluctance that was not feigned. He felt that discretion was the better part of valor, and that it would be well to escape while he could, even at the price of discourtesy.
"Really," he said, "I only dropped in to say hello. I—"
"Nonsense!" interrupted Sidwell. "You must think I'm as innocent as a new-born lamb. Come over here and sit down."
Hough hesitated, but yielded.
Sidwell lifted his glass. "Here's to—whatever the trouble may be that brought you here. People don't visit me for pleasure, or unless they have nowhere else to go. Drink deep!"
They drank; and then Sidwell looking at Hough said, "Well, what is it this time? Going to reform again, or something of that kind, are you?"
Hough did not attempt evasion. He knew it would be useless. "No," he said; "to tell you the truth, I'm lonesome—beastly lonesome."
Sidwell smiled. "Ah, I thought so. But why, pray? Aren't you a married man with an ark of refuge always waiting?"
Hough made a grimace. "Yes, that's just the trouble. I'm too much married, too thoroughly domesticated."
The other looked blank. "I fail to understand. Certainly you and Elise haven't at last—"
"No, no; not that." Hough repelled the suggestion with a gesture as though it were a tangible object. "Elise left to-day to spend a month with her uncle up in northern Wisconsin, and I can't get out of town for a week. I feel as I fancy a small bird feels when it has fallen out of the nest while its mother is away. The bottom seems to have dropped out of town and left me stranded."
The host observed his guest humorously—a bit maliciously. "It is good for you, you complacent benedict," he remarked unsympathetically. "You can understand now the normal state of mind of bachelors. Perhaps after a few more days you'll have been tortured enough to retract the argument you made to me about matrimony. I repeat, it's poetic justice, and good for a man now and then to have a dose of his own medicine."
Hough smiled as at an oft-heard joke. "All right, old man, have it as you please; only let's steer clear of a useless discussion of the subject to-night."
"With all my heart," said Sidwell. The decanter was once more in his hand. "Let's drink to the very good health of Elise on her journey."
Hough hesitated. He had a feeling that there was an obscure desecration in the toast, but it was not tangible enough to resent. "To her very good health," he repeated in turn.
For a moment he looked steadily into the face of his companion, now a trifle flushed. Again an inward monitor warned him it were better to go; but the first flood of the liquor had reached his brain, and the temptation to remain was strong.
"By the way, how are you coming on with your own affair of the heart? Have you propounded the momentous question to the lady?"
Sidwell pulled forward the box of cigars and helped himself to one. "No," he returned with deliberation. "I haven't had a good opportunity. A gentleman from the West, where they wear their hair long and their coat-tailsshort, has suddenly appeared like an obscuring cloud on the Baker sky. I have a suspicion that he has aspirations for the hand of the lady in question. Anyhow, he's haunted the house like a ghost to-day. Mother Baker has for some reason taken a fancy to your humble servant, and over the 'phone she has kept me informed of the stranger's tribulations. He seems to be meeting with sufficient difficulties without my interposition, so out of the goodness of my heart I've given him an open field. I hope you appreciate my consideration. I fear he's not of a stripe to do so himself."
Hough lit his cigar. "Yes, it certainly was kind of you," he said. "Very kind."
With a sweep of his hand Sidwell brought the two glasses together with a click. "I think so. Kind enough to deserve commemoration by a taste of the elixir of life, don't you agree?" and the liquor flowed beneath a hand steady in the first stages of intoxication.
Hough pushed back his chair. "No," he protested. "I've had enough."
"Enough!" The other laughed unmusically. "Enough! You haven't begun yet. Drink, and forget your loneliness, you benedict disconsolate!"
But again the big man shook his head. "No," he repeated. "I've had enough, and so have you. We'll be drunk, both of us, if we keep up this clip much longer."
The smile left the host's face. "Drunk!" he echoed. "Since when, pray, has that exalted state of the consciousness begun to inspire terror in you? Drunk! Winston Hough, you're the last man I ever thought would fail toprove game on an occasion like this! We're no nearer being babes than we were the last time we got together, unless the termination of life approximates the beginning. Drink!"
But still, this time in silence, Hough shook his head. From a partially open door leading into the adjoining room the negro's eyes peered out.
Sidwell shifted in his seat with exaggerated deliberation and leaned forward. His dark mobile face worked passionately, compellingly. "Winston Hough," he challenged, "do you wish to remain my friend?"
"I certainly do."
"Then you know what to do."
Deep silence fell upon the room. Not only the eyes but the whole of Alec's face appeared through the doorway. Hough could no more have resisted longer than he could have leaped from the open window. They drank together.
"Now," said Sidwell, "just to show that you mean it, we'll have another."
And soon the enemy that puerile man puts into his mouth to steal his brains was enthroned.
Sidwell sank into his chair, and lighting his cigar sent a great cloud of smoke curling up over his head. Hand and tongue were steady, unnaturally so, but the mood of irresponsible confidence was upon him.
"Since you've decided to remain my friend," he said, "I'm going to tell you something confidential, very confidential. You won't give it away?"
"Never!" Hough shook his head.
"On your honor?"
The big man crossed his hands over his heart in the manner of small boys.
Sidwell was satisfied. "All right, then. This is the last time you and I will ever get—this way together."
Hough looked as solemn as though at a funeral. "Why so?" he protested. "Are you angry with me yet?"
"No, it's not that. I've forgiven you."
"What is it, then?" Hough felt that he must know the reason of his lost position, and if in his power remove it.
"I'm going to quit drinking after to-night, for one thing," explained Sidwell. "It isn't adequate. But even if I didn't, I don't expect we'll ever be together again after a few days, after you go away."
The listener looked blank. Even with his muddled brains he had an intimation that there was more in the statement than there seemed.
"I don't see why," he said bewilderedly.
Again Sidwell leaned forward. Again his face grew passionate and magnetic.
"The reason why is this. I have had enough, and more than enough, of this life I've been living. Unless I can find an interest, an extenuation, I would rather be dead, a hundred times over. I've become a nightmare to myself, and I won't stand it. In a few days you'll have departed, and before you return I'll probably have gone too. Nothing but an intervention of Providence can prevent my marrying Florence Baker now. Life isn't a story-book or we who live it undiscerning clods. She knows I am going to ask her to marry me, and I know what heranswer will be. We'll be away on our wedding-trip long before you and Elise return in the Fall." The speaker's voice was sober. Only the heightened color of his face betrayed him.
"I say I'm through with this sort of thing," he repeated, "and I mean it. I've tried everything on the face of the earth to find an interest—but one—and Florence Baker represents that one. I hope against hope that I'll find what I'm searching for there, but I am skeptical. I have been disappointed too many times to expect happiness now. This is my last trump, old man, and I'm playing it deliberately and carefully. If it fails, Florence will probably return; but before God, I never will! I have thought it all out. I will leave her more money than she can ever spend—enough if she wishes to buy the elect of the elect. She is young, and she will soon forget—if it's necessary. With me, my actions have largely ceased to be a matter of ethics. I am desperate, Hough, and a desperate man takes what presents itself."
But Hough was in no condition to appreciate the meaning of the selfish revelation of his friend's true character. Since he married his lapses had been infrequent, and already his surroundings were becoming a bit vague. His one ambition was to appear what he was not—sober; and he straightened himself stiffly.
"I see," he said, "sorry to lose you, old pal, very sorry; but what must be must be, I s'pose," and he drew himself together with a jerk.
Sidwell glanced at the speaker sarcastically, almost witha shade of contempt. "I know you're sorry, deucedly sorry," he mocked. "So sorry that you'd probably like to drown your excess of emotion in the flowing bowl." Again the ironic glance swept the other's face. "Another smile would be good for you, anyway. You're entirely too serious. Here you are!" and the decanter once more did service.
Hough picked up his glass and nodded with gravity "Yes, I always was a sad devil." By successive movements the liquor approached his lips. "Lots of troubles and tribulations all my—"
The sentence was not completed; the Cognac remained untasted. At that moment there was a knock upon the door.