Garrison's Finish Part 6

And then Mrs. Calvert, a dear, middle-aged lady, had her arms about Garrison's neck and was saying over and over again in the impulsive Southern fashion: "I'm so glad to see you, dear. You've your mother's own eyes. You know she and I were chums."

Garrison had choked, and if the eminent lawyer's wonderful vocabulary and eloquent manner had not just then intervened, Garrison then and there would have wilted and confessed everything. If only, he told himself fiercely, Major Calvert and his wife had not been so courteous, so trustful, so simple, so transparently honorable, incapable of crediting a dishonorable action to another, then perhaps it would not have been so difficult.

The ride behind the spanking bays was all a dream; all a dream as they drove up the long, white, wide Logan Pike under the nodding trees and the soft evening sun. Everything was peaceful--the blue sky, the waving corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope.

With this air to aid him he might successfully grapple with consumption.

Garrison was in the rear seat of the phaeton with Mrs. Calvert, mechanically answering questions, giving chapters of his fict.i.tious life, while she regarded him steadily with her grave blue eyes. Mr.

Snark and the major were in the middle seat, and the eminent lawyer was talking a veritable blue streak, occasionally flinging over his shoulder a bolstering remark in answer to one of Mrs. Calvert's questions, as his quick ear detected a preoccupation in Garrison's tones, and he sensed that there might be a sudden collapse to their rising fortunes. He was in a very good humor, for, besides the ten thousand, and the bonus he would receive from Garrison on the major's death, he had accepted an invitation to stay the week end at Calvert House.

Garrison's inattention was suddenly swept away by the clatter of hoofs audible above the noise contributed by the bays. A horse, which Garrison instinctively, and to his own surprise, judged to be a two-year-old filly, was approaching at a hard gallop down the broad pike. Her rider was a young girl, hatless, who now let loose a boyish shout and waved a gauntleted hand. Mrs. Calvert, smilingly, returned the hail.

"A neighbor and a lifelong friend of ours," she said, turning to Garrison. "I want you to be very good friends, you and Sue. She is a very lovely girl, and I know you will like her. I want you to. She has been expecting your coming. I am sure she is anxious to see what you look like."

Garrison made some absent-minded, commonplace answer. His eyes were kindling strangely as he watched the oncoming filly. His blood was surging through him. Unconsciously, his hands became ravenous for the reins. A vague memory was stirring within him. And then the girl had swung her mount beside the carriage, and Major Calvert, with all the ceremonious courtesy of the South, had introduced her.

She was a slim girl, with a wealth of indefinite hair, now gold, now bronze, and she regarded Garrison with a pair of very steady gray eyes.

Beautiful eyes they were; and, as she pulled off her gauntlet and bent down a slim hand from the saddle, he looked up into them. It seemed as if he looked into them for ages. Where had he seen them before? In a dream? And her name was Desha. Where had he heard that name? Memory was struggling furiously to tear away the curtain that hid the past.

"I'm right glad to see you," said the girl, finally, a slow blush coming to the tan of her cheek. She slowly drew away her hand, as, apparently, Garrison had appropriated it forever.

"The honor is mine," returned Garrison mechanically, as he replaced his hat. Where had he heard that throaty voice?

CHAPTER V.

ALSO A READY-MADE HUSBAND.

A week had pa.s.sed--a week of new life for Garrison, such as he had never dreamed of living. Even in the heyday of his fame, forgotten by him, unlimited wealth had never brought the peace and content of Calvert House. It seemed as if his niche had long been vacant in the household, awaiting his occupancy, and at times he had difficulty in realizing that he had won it through deception, not by right of blood.

The prognostications of the eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, to the effect that everything would be surprisingly easy, were fully realized. To the major and his wife the birthmark of the spur was convincing proof; and, if more were needed, the thorough coaching of Snark was sufficient.

More than that, a week had not pa.s.sed before it was made patently apparent to Garrison, much to his surprise and no little dismay, that he was liked for himself alone. The major was a father to him, Mrs. Calvert a mother in every sense of the word. He had seen Sue Desha twice since his "home-coming," for the Calvert and Desha estates joined.

Old Colonel Desha had eyed Garrison somewhat queerly on being first introduced, but he had a poor memory for faces, and was unable to connect the newly discovered nephew of his neighbor and friend with little Billy Garrison, the one-time premiere jockey, whom he had frequently seen ride.

The week's stay at Calvert House had already begun to show its beneficial effect upon Garrison. The regular living, clean air, together with the services of the family doctor, were fighting the consumption germs with no little success. For it had not taken the keen eye of the major nor the loving one of the wife very long to discover that the tuberculosis germ was clutching at Garrison's lungs.

"You've gone the pace, young man," said the venerable family doctor, tapping his patient with the stethoscope. "Gone the pace, and now nature is clamoring for her long-deferred payment."

The major was present, and Garrison felt the hot blood surge to his face, as the former's eyes were riveted upon him.

"Youth is a prodigal spendthrift," put in the major sadly. "But isn't it hereditary, doctor? Perhaps the seed was cultivated, not sown, eh?"

"a.s.siduously cultivated," replied Doctor Blandly dryly. "You'll have to get back to first principles, my boy. You've made an oven out of your lungs by cigarette smoke. You inhale? Of course. Quite the correct thing. Have you ever blown tobacco smoke through a handkerchief? Yes?

Well, it leaves a dark-brown stain, doesn't it? That's what your lungs are like--coated with nicotine. Your wind is gone. That is why cigarettes are so injurious. Not because, as some people tell you, they are made of inferior tobacco, but because you inhale them. That's where the danger is. Smoke a pipe or cigar, if smoke you must; those you don't inhale. Keep your lungs for what G.o.d intended them for--fresh air. Then, your vitality is nearly bankrupt. You've made an old curiosity-shop out of your stomach. You require regular sleep--tons of it----"

"But I'm never sleepy," argued Garrison, feeling very much like a schoolboy catechised by his master. "When I wake in the morning, I awake instantly, every faculty alert--"

"Naturally," grunted the old doctor. "Don't you know that is proof positive that you have lived on stimulants? It is artificial. You should be drowsy. I'll wager the first thing you do mornings is to roll a smoke; eh? Exactly. Smoke on an empty stomach! That's got to be stopped.

It's the simple life for you. Plenty of exercise in the open air; live, bathe, in sunshine. It is the essence of life. I think, major, we can cure this young prodigal of yours. But he must obey me--implicitly."

Subsequently, Major Calvert had, for him, a serious conversation with Garrison.

"I believe in youth having its fling," he said kindly, in conclusion; "but I don't believe in flinging so far that you cannot retrench safely.

From Doctor Blandly's statements, you seem to have come mighty near exceeding the speed limit, my boy."

He bent his white brows and regarded Garrison steadily out of his keen eyes, in which lurked a fund of potential understanding.

"But sorrow," he continued, "acts on different natures in different ways. Your mother's death must have been a great blow to you. It was to me." He looked fixedly at his nails. "I understand fully what it must mean to be thrown adrift on the world at the age you were. I don't wish you ever to think that we knew of your condition at the time. We didn't--not for a moment. I did not learn of your mother's death until long afterward, and only of your father's by sheer accident. But we have already discussed these subjects, and I am only touching on them now because I want you, as you know, to be as good a man as your mother was a woman; not a man like your father was. You want to forget that past life of yours, my boy, for you are to be my heir; to be worthy of the name of Calvert, as I feel confident you will. You have your mother's blood. When your health is improved, we will discuss more serious questions, regarding your future, your career; also--your marriage." He came over and laid a kindly hand on Garrison's shoulder.

And Garrison had been silent. He was in a mental and moral fog. He guessed that his supposed father had not been all that a man should be.

The eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, had said as much. He knew himself that he was nothing that a man should be. His conscience was fully awakened by now. Every worthy ounce of blood he possessed cried out for him to go; to leave Calvert House before it was too late; before the old major and his wife grew to love him as there seemed danger of them doing.

He was commencing to see his deception in its true light; the crime he was daily, hourly, committing against his host and hostess; against all decency. He had no longer a prop to support him with specious argument, for the eminent lawyer had returned to New York, carrying with him his initial proceeds of the rank fraud--Major Calvert's check for ten thousand dollars.

Garrison was face to face with himself; he was beginning to see his dishonesty in all its hideous nakedness. And yet he stayed at Calvert House; stayed on the crater of a volcano, fearing every stranger who pa.s.sed, fearing to meet every neighbor; fearing that his deception must become known, though reason told him such fear was absurd. He stayed at Calvert House, braving the abhorrence of his better self; stayed not through any appreciation of the Calvert flesh-pots, nor because of any monetary benefits, present or future. He lived in the present, for the hour, oblivious to everything.

For Garrison had fallen in love with his next-door neighbor, Sue Desha.

Though he did not know his past life, it was the first time he had understood to the full the meaning of the ubiquitous, potential verb "to love." And, instead of bringing peace and content--the whole gamut of the virtues--h.e.l.l awoke in little Billy Garrison's soul.

The second time he had seen her was the day following his arrival, and when he had started on Doctor Blandly's open-air treatment.

"I'll have a partner over to put you through your paces in tennis," Mrs.

Calvert had said, a quiet twinkle in her eye. And shortly afterward, as Garrison was aimlessly batting the b.a.l.l.s about, feeling very much like an overgrown schoolboy, Sue Desha, tennis-racket in hand, had come up the drive.

She was bareheaded, dressed in a blue sailor costume, her sleeves rolled high on her firm, tanned arms. She looked very businesslike, and was, as Garrison very soon discovered.

Three sets were played in profound silence, or, rather, the girl made a spectacle out of Garrison. Her services were diabolically unanswerable; her net and back court game would have merited the earnest attention of an expert, and Garrison hardly knew where a racket began or ended.

At the finish he was covered with perspiration and confusion, while his opponent, apparently, had not begun to warm up. By mutual consent, they occupied a seat underneath a spreading magnolia-tree, and then the girl insisted upon Garrison resuming his coat. They were like two children.

"You'll get cold; you're not strong," said the girl finally, with the manner of a very old and experienced mother. She was four years younger than Garrison. "Put it on; you're not strong. That's right. Always obey."

"I am strong," persisted Garrison, flushing. He felt very like a schoolboy.

The girl eyed him critically, calmly.

"Oh, but you're not; not a little bit. Do you know you're very--very--rickety? Very rickety, indeed."

Garrison eyed his flannels in visible perturbation. They flapped about his thin, wiry shanks most disagreeably. He was painfully conscious of his elbows, of his thin chest. Painfully conscious that the girl was physical perfection, he was a parody of manhood. He looked up, with a smile, and met the girl's frank eyes.

"I think rickety is just the word," he agreed, spanning a wrist with a finger and thumb.

"You cannot play tennis, can you?" asked the girl dryly. "Not a little, tiny bit."

"No; not a little bit."

"Golf?" Head on one side.