Ben Blair Part 33

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 think it'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."

"Our _very_ best 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 gla.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 point to 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-gla.s.s 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 your liking. 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 born of 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."