A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 35

Donald rose from where he had been sitting at the table.

"Of course you know what is best," he said irresolutely. "And I know I've got no business shifting my responsibilities on you. By the way, can't I help you with some of this stuff? You look about done for to-night."

"Done for?" Mr. Sequin smiled ironically, and ran his fingers through his scant gray hair. "Why, Don, I'd change places with any old corpse to-night, just for a chance to lie down in a quiet corner and stop thinking! No, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anybody can do. Good night; close the door as you go out, and leave word downstairs if I am called over the 'phone to say I am not here."

All things considered it is small wonder that Donald pa.s.sed as little time as possible at Angora Heights. The time he was not occupied with his trial hung heavy on his hands. Distrustful of his friends, sensitive to criticism, and dreading the humiliating ordeal to come, he spent one of the most wretched months of his life. He tried to write, but fancy fled before the glare of the actual. The only place where he found temporary peace was under the roof of the grim-looking house in College Street.

From the first Doctor Queerington had championed his cause, and urged upon him his hospitality. To be sure the Doctor's hospitality usually began and ended with his welcome, after which he would take himself off to the study, and leave his guest to the care of the family.

At such times Miss Lady invariably went with him. In fact, Donald had never seen her alone since the night of his arrival, and the very fact that she seldom remained down-stairs in the evenings, made his conscience lighter about lingering in her vicinity.

Mrs. Ivy was the first to comment on his frequent visits. She confided to Mrs. Sequin that she was afraid he was getting interested in Connie Queerington, and that somebody ought to tell him that Connie had been in love with dear Gerald for years and years. An impartial observer might have expressed a less confident opinion concerning the object of Miss Connie's affections.

Noah Wicker, for instance, while not exactly an impartial observer, had arrived at quite a different conclusion.

"You watch the way she looks at Don," he said darkly to Miss Lady on one occasion.

Miss Lady laughed, "Oh! Connie's like the Last d.u.c.h.ess, she likes whate'er she looks on, and her looks go everywhere."

"Yes, but this is different. Has she ever said anything to you about him?"

"Mercy, yes, Connie talks to be about all the boys."

"Does she talk about me?" Noah's eyes were as wistful as a dog's.

For a second Miss Lady hesitated, then she compromised with truth and said, "yes." She did not add that Connie was particularly voluble on the subject of his hair, and the creak of his boots and his apparent genius for ubiquity.

"Do you know what I'd do if I were you, Noah?" she said. "I'd have me a new suit of clothes made."

"Why, these are new!"

"Yes, I know, but they don't fit. And get some shoes that don't creak, and--and you won't mind my telling you, Noah? Pompadours went out of style six years ago."

Noah gloomily shook his head. "It's not my clothes. It's not clothes that make Don Morley. By the way, aren't you two friends, any more?"

Miss Lady faced the question unflinchingly. "Yes, we are friends. Is he going to win out?"

"With Miss Connie?"

"No, you foolish boy. In his trial."

"I don't know."

"What will happen if he loses?"

"The case will be appealed."

"And if he loses in the Court of Appeals?"

"It's up to Gooch to see that he doesn't lose. I only wish I was as certain of a few other things as I am of Donald Morley's innocence!"

One afternoon, a few days before the trial, Donald after oscillating between the hotel and his club and finding each equally intolerable, jumped on the car and went out to the Queeringtons. It was a cold, raw day, with a fine mist filling the air, and even the dull formality of the drab parlor seemed a relief from the gloom without.

Miss Lady started up from the piano as he entered, but Connie pulled her back:

"You shan't run off and leave us, shall she, Cousin Don? She was just going to play for Mr. Wicker to sing. Did you know he could sing?"

"Oh, yes. Wick's the Original Warbler. Do you remember our serenades on the Cane Run Road, Wick?"

"Yes," said Noah glumly.

"I forgot that you and Mr. Wicker used to know each other," Connie said curiously. "Why the Cane Run Road runs by Thornwood, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Don calmly, seizing the conversation and shoving it out of shoal water. "Go ahead, Wick, and sing something; we'll join in the chorus."

But when the time for the chorus came Donald had forgotten his promise.

He was leaning back in a corner of the sofa, his hand shading his eyes, watching Miss Lady, and wondering what trick of fate had driven her to marry John Jay Queerington. There was no man in the world whose moral worth he admired more, but Miss Lady seemed as out of place in his life as a darting, quivering humming-bird in a museum of natural history. He noticed the faint shadows about her eyes, and the wistful droop of her lips. If he could only set her free! A mad desire seized him to see her once more joyously on the wing with all her old buoyancy and daring. And yet she had walked open eyed into her cage, and he had yet to see the tiniest flutter of her wings against the bars.

On that first night of his home-coming surely he had read a welcome in her eyes! But never since by word or gesture had he reason to think that she remembered. She was gracious and elusive, and she talked to him as she talked to Decker and Gerald Ivy, only she looked at them when she talked, and she never even looked at him.

Yet she _had_ cared! He had only to recall the flashing revelation of her eyes that night in the garden to know for one transcendent moment, at least, she was his. It was the look that had sustained his faith in her through all those weary months of silence, making him cling to the belief, until he heard the truth from her own lips, that she had failed to get his letter. It was the remembrance of that look and what it had promised that rushed upon him now as he watched her.

All the reckless impulse of his boyhood, the long years of unrestraint, surged over him, urging him on to wake in her some answer to his fierce, insistent demand. She should remember the way he had loved her, she should know the way he loved her now. If there was any heart left in her she must respond in some way to his imperative need.

But her eyes kept steadily on the key-board, and her fingers unfalteringly followed the notes. Could he have known how the tears burned under her lashes, and how cold her fingers were on the keys; could he have guessed how she sat there under his steady gaze, with tense muscles and quivering nerves, calculating the minutes that must elapse before Noah's interminable verses would end, and she could escape, he might have had compa.s.sion on her.

"Sing, Cousin Don!" demanded Connie; "you are leaving it all to Mr.

Wicker and me, while you sit there looking exactly as if you had lost your last friend."

"No, only my illusions, Connie."

"Where did you lose them?"

"In Singapore. All but one. I hung on to it clear around the world, only to lose it on Christmas night when I got home. Don't you feel sorry for me?"

"Not a bit," said Connie saucily. "I couldn't feel sorry for anybody as good looking as you are,--could you, Mr. Wicker? Where did Miss Lady go?"

"She said she was going to lie down, that her head ached," said Noah.

"I know what's the matter," said Connie; "she tries to keep us from seeing it, but she's all broken up over selling Thornwood."

"Thornwood!" cried Donald; "she hasn't sold it?"

"No, but it's been put up for sale. She'd die at the stake for Father.

He doesn't even know about it."

"But surely there is some other way." Connie shrugged her shoulders. "I am sure I don't know. Hattie's given up music and French, and we've put Bertie in the public school, and I haven't had but one party dress this winter. But a girl doesn't have to depend on clothes to have a good time, does she, Mr. Wicker?"

That night Donald sat up late, turning things over in his mind. Once the trial was over he must go away, where he could not see Miss Lady or hear of her. He must plunge into some business that would absorb his time and attention. But before he went he must make an investment and make it at once. In order to do so, he would follow Basil Sequin's advice, and offer his bank stock for sale in the morning.