A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 39

"A broker named Gilson."

"It was my stock," Donald cried "Of course she's got to be paid back!

And all the rest of them. I'll buy back every share of it, if it takes my last dollar!"

"Will it take all you have?" Miss Lady scanned his face anxiously.

"Yes, and more. I made an investment with some of the money before I knew the bank was in trouble; then there's the double liability law. It wouldn't matter so much if it weren't for the trial."

"Your sister, of course, will be ready to help you. Or has she, too, lost?"

"No," said Donald, his lips tightening, "she hasn't lost. She's had no stock in the bank for a year. But I shan't call upon her."

"Because she opposed your course so violently? Oh, I see. A point of honor on which I quite agree with you. But you are not going under, Donald. We will see to that. I am not a wealthy man, as you know. There have been times recently when the future looked very dark. But this little lady has steered us into calmer waters. If you should, in the course of the next few months, be in need of a reasonable sum, I am happy to say we will be in a position to accommodate you."

Donald gripped his hand. "I shan't call on you, Doctor. But once I'm through with this accursed trial, I'll try to justify your belief in me."

The tall clock in the hall gave a preliminary wheeze, then hiccoughed nine times violently. The Doctor carefully arranged his voluminous papers in a shabby, brown portfolio, and rose with an effort.

"You will excuse me now if I bid you good night? My physician has become rather arbitrary in regulating my hours. Keep up your courage, my boy; that courage that 'scorns to bend to mean devices for a sordid end.' I admire the course you have taken, I admire you. Good night to you both."

They watched him go, with his tall, stooped figure, and his fine, serious eyes that saw life only through the stultifying medium of books.

Then they looked at each other.

"I'll call Connie," Miss Lady said, moving to the door.

"Just a minute, please."

She came back reluctantly, and stood with her hands clasped on the back of a chair, breathing quickly.

"Do you remember," Donald asked, standing in front of her and speaking in a low, tense voice, "the last time we stood in this room, and the promises I made you? Well, I've kept them. I've fought like the devil,--You don't know what it means, you can't know. But I've kept them. Now I want to tell you that I've got to break over. You are right about the bank-stock money. It's not mine. I'll pay it back to-morrow.

But more money has to come from somewhere to carry on the trial. There's only one chance I can think of. I've got to enter Lickety Split for the Derby."

"No, you haven't! There are other ways. You must go to work."

"Work!" he broke out fiercely. "Haven't I been trying to get a position ever since I came home? Who wants to tie up to me until this cursed case is decided? I have been trying to write, but my things come back faster than I can send them out. What am I good for? A game at billiards, _sixty_ miles an hour in a motor car, a lark with any idler that happens in the club. Bah! I'm sick of having people patronize me because I am not in the game, because I've never earned a penny, except by gambling, in my life!"

"But that's all behind you, Don! You've got the rest of your life to live differently. When the case is decided--"

"Yes, and suppose it goes against me? It did before, it may again. Talk about justice and truth! I've failed to find them. I've had enough of this glorious thing called life; I'm ready to quit."

"You can't quit, Don!" She said it softly, with the firelight flushing her eager, solicitous face. "Don't you suppose we all want to quit sometimes? We've just got to take a fresh grip on our courage and fight it out. I'm in trouble myself, to-night, Don. Will you help me?"

His eyes flew to hers as he half knelt on the chair before her.

"I've sold Thornwood," she went on, her lips trembling. "I can hardly speak of it, even yet. I feel like a traitor to Daddy, to all the Ca.r.s.eys who ever lived here, to myself! You know what the place means to me. I believe I should die if I ever saw any one else living here! I don't know who bought it, I don't want to know. All I know is that I've been perfectly wretched every hour since I signed the paper, until just now when the Doctor offered to lend you the money. Oh! Don, if I thought selling Thornwood meant that we could help clear your name, there'd never be another instant of regret! You'll let us help you?"

He put up his hand as if to ward off a blow: "Don't," he said harshly.

"I can't take your help. I can't even take your friendship, or the Doctor's. Don't you see that I'm going through h.e.l.l? Don't you know that I love you?"

The color left her face, and her eyes wavered a moment, then steadied.

"You must never say that again, Don! You must try not to think of it.

I'll forgive you because I want you to forgive me for something. You know the letter you sent me from San Francisco? I burned it, unopened, right there where you are standing now. It was a cowardly thing to do, even though I thought you were in the wrong. If I had known the truth I never would have kept silent all those months. It was a great wrong I did you, Don; can you forgive me?"

He studied her face, as if he would by sheer intensity probe those luminous eyes that said everything and nothing. At last his head dropped.

"I was a fool ever to think you cared," he said brokenly; "I knew I wasn't good enough for you. I knew it from the first, but I tried. Shall I keep on trying for your sake?"

"No, Don, not for mine. For your own, and for the sake of the girl you'll some day make your wife. But I want you to remember that I shall feel responsible for whatever happens to you. If you give up the fight and go back to the old life, I shall know it was because I failed you; if you succeed, as I believe you will, I shall be happy always in knowing that I had a little part in it. Shall we say good night?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It was a great wrong I did you Don, can you forgive me?"]

He took the hand she offered him and one of those silences followed which once having pa.s.sed between a man and woman, is remembered above all spoken words, a silence in which all barriers fall away, and soul speaks to soul. It was like a great harmony quivering with beautiful things unsaid.

He left her standing in the firelight, her eyes shining strangely in her otherwise pa.s.sive face. He closed the door resolutely on the light and warmth of the homelike, cheery room, and pa.s.sing out to the road, miserably turned his steps toward the empty grandeur of the big house whose turreted and gabled roof broke the sky-line at the top of the Hill.

CHAPTER XXIII

In two of the gloomiest and dirtiest little rooms in the dirtiest and gloomiest of little streets that dangle at loose ends from the courthouse yard, Mr. Gooch had his office. It was a small dark place that suggested nothing so much as an overflowing sc.r.a.p-basket. Papers littered the table, and spilled out of every pigeon-hole of the old secretary; papers lay in stacks along the book-shelves, and bulged from fat envelopes on the mantel-shelf. Over and above and under all lay the undisturbed dust of months.

In the corner which was reduced to perpetual twilight by the proximity of the jail wall adjoining, Noah Wicker sat on his high stool, and by the a.s.sistance of a solitary swinging light, excavated lumps of legal lore from the mines of wisdom about him. To one who had not seen Noah since his first days of attorneyship, he presented an unfamiliar appearance. His feet, still hooked awkwardly under the rung of the stool, were shod in patent leather shoes of a style so p.r.o.nounced that they rendered him slightly pigeon-toed. His clothes were of the most approved cut, and his hosiery reflected the hue of his tie.

His hair, only, was reminiscent of the country youth who had emerged from the law school a short time before, in store clothes and creaking boots. A front lock that has been a.s.siduously urged to stand up for many years, is not inclined to sit down at the first whim of its owner. It has reached an age of independence, and is inclined to insist upon its rights.

Noah, alone in the office one spring day, surrept.i.tiously took from his desk a small object, which he held in the palm of his broad hand, and studied minutely. When the rays from the swinging electric happened to strike it, it sent spots of light dancing on the grimy ceiling. For Noah was becoming anxious about his pompadour and could not refrain from examining it at frequent intervals. Every expedient had been resorted to from surgery to soap, but the stubbly blond lock defied him. It seemed the last barrier that rose between him and cosmopolitan life.

A light step on the stairs sent the mirror into the desk, and brought a look of absorbed concentration to his expansive brow.

"Is Mr. Gooch here?" asked Connie Queerington, thrusting a plumed hat into his range of vision.

Noah disengaged himself from the stool and came forward eagerly, but paused when he found that she was not alone.

"Come on in, Gerald," she said hospitably. "You know Mr. Wicker, don't you? At any rate he knows you. I've told him reams about you, haven't I, Mr. Wicker?"

Noah bowed gravely, and after bringing forward chairs, retired to his desk, in a state of outward calm and inward wrath.

Gerald Ivy daintily dusted the chair with his handkerchief, and sat down, nursing one silk-clad ankle across his knee, in order not to expose more of his garments than was necessary to the grime of Mr.

Gooch's abode.

"What a nuisance he isn't here!" said Connie. "I could leave Father's message but I left word for Hat to meet me here. What time do you have to go, Gerald?"

"Four o'clock," said Gerald, then glancing at the clock, "it's only three-thirty now."

"The clock is slow," announced Noah unexpectedly from his corner.