Parrot & Co. Part 32

"Wait," said Warrington, alighting.

"Yes, sir."

Warrington went up the broad veranda steps and pulled the old-fashioned bell-cord. He was rather amazed at his utter lack of agitation. He was as calm as if he were making a call upon a casual acquaintance.

His mother and brother, whom he had not seen in ten years! The great oak-door drew in, and he entered unceremoniously.

"Why, Ma.r.s.e A'thuh, I di'n't see yo' go out!" exclaimed the old negro servant.

"I am not Arthur; I am his brother Paul. Which door?"

Pop-eyed, the old negro pointed to a door down the hall. Then he leaned against the banister and caught desperately at the spindles.

For the voice was not Arthur's.

Warrington opened the door, closed it gently and stood with his back to it. At a desk in the middle of the room sat a man, busy with books.

He raised his head.

"Arthur, don't you know me?"

"Paul?"

The chair overturned; some books thudded dully upon the rug. Arthur leaned with his hands tense upon the desk. Paul sustained the look, his eyes sad and his face pale and grave.

XXI

HE THAT WAS DEAD

"Yes, it is I, the unlucky penny; Old Galahad, in flesh and blood and bone. I shouldn't get white over it, Arthur. It isn't worth while. I can see that you haven't changed much, unless it is that your hair is a little paler at the temples. Gray? I'll wager I've a few myself."

There was a flippancy in his tone that astonished Warrington's own ears, for certainly this light mockery did not come from within. At heart he was sober enough.

To steady the thundering beat of his pulse he crossed the room, righted the chair, stacked the books and laid them on the desk. Arthur did not move save to turn his head and to follow with fascinated gaze his brother's movements.

"Now, Arthur, I've only a little while. I can see by your eyes that you are conjuring up all sorts of terrible things. But nothing is going to happen. I am going to talk to you; then I'm going away; and to-morrow it will be easy to convince yourself that you have seen only a ghost. Sit down. I'll take this chair at the left."

Arthur's hands slid from the desk; in a kind of collapse he sat down.

Suddenly he laid his head upon his arms, and a great sigh sent its tremor across his shoulders. Warrington felt his heart swell. The past faded away; his wrongs became vapors. He saw only his brother, the boy he had loved so devotedly, Arty, his other self, his scholarly other self. Why blame Arthur? He, Paul, was the fool.

"Don't take it like that, Arty," he said.

The other's hand stretched out blindly toward the voice. "Ah, great G.o.d, Paul!"

"I know! Perhaps I've brooded too much." Warrington crushed the hand in his two strong ones. "The main fault was mine. I couldn't see the length of my nose. I threw a temptation in your way which none but a demi-G.o.d could have resisted. That night, when I got your note telling me what you had done, I did a d.a.m.nably foolish thing. I went to the club-bar and drank heavily. I was wild to help you, but I couldn't see how. At two in the morning I thought I saw the way. Drunken men get strange ideas into their heads. You were the apple of the mother's eyes; I was only her son. No use denying it. She worshiped you; tolerated me. I came back to the house, packed up what I absolutely needed, and took the first train west. It all depended upon what you'd do. You let me go, Arty, old boy. I suppose you were pretty well knocked up, when you learned what I had done. And then you let things drift. It was only natural. I had opened the way for you. Mother, learning that I was a thief, restored the defalcation to save the family honor, which was your future. We were always more or less hard-pressed for funds. I did not gamble, but I wasted a lot. The mother gave us an allowance of five thousand each. To this I managed to add another five and you another four. You were always borrowing from me. I never questioned what you did with it. I would to G.o.d I had! It would have saved us a lot of trouble."

The hand in his relaxed and slipped from the clasp.

"Some of these things will sound bitter, but the heart behind them isn't. So I did what I thought to be a great and glorious thing. I was sober when I reached Chicago. I saw my deed from another angle.

Think of it; we could have given our joint note to mother's bank for the amount. Old Henderson would have discounted it in a second. It was too late. I went on. The few hundreds I had gave out. I've been up against it pretty hard. There were times when I envied the pariah-dog. But fortune came around one day, knocked, and I let her in. I returned to make a rest.i.tution, only to learn that it had been made by you, long ago. A trick of young Elmore's. I shouldn't have come back if I could have sent the money."

Arthur raised his head and sat up. "Ah, why did you not write? Why did you not let me know where you were? G.o.d is my witness, if there is a corner of this world unsearched for you. For two years I had a man hunting. He gave up. I believed you dead."

"Dead? Well, I was in a sense."

"You have suffered, but not as I have. Always you had before you your great, splendid, foolish sacrifice. I had nothing to buoy me up; there was only the drag of the recollection of an evil deed, and a moment of pitiful weakness. The temptation was too great, Paul."

"How did it happen?"

"How does anything like that happen? Curiosity drew me first, for at college I never played but a few games of bridge. Curiosity, desire, then the full blaze of the pa.s.sion. You will never know what that is, Paul. It is stronger than love, or faith, or honor. G.o.d knows I never thought myself weak; at school I was the least impetuous of the two.

Everything went, and they cheated me from the start. Roulette and faro. Then I put my hand in the safe. To this day I can not tell why.

I owed nothing to those despicable thieves, Craig least of all."

"Craig. I met him over there. Pummeled him."

"I didn't act like a man. Some day a comfortable fortune would fall to the lot of each of us. But I took eight thousand, lost it, and came whining to you. You don't belong to this petty age, Paul. You ought to have been a fellow of the Round Table." Arthur smiled wanly. "To throw your life away like that, for a brother who wasn't fit to lace your shoes! If you had written you would have learned that everything was smoothed over. The Andes people dropped the matter entirely. You loved the mother far better than I."

"And she must never know," quietly.

"Do you mean that?"

"I always mean everything I say, Arty. Can't you see the uselessness of telling her now? She has gone all these years with the belief that I am a thief. A thief, Arty, I, who never stole anything save a farmer's apples. They would have called you a defaulter; that's because you had access to the safe, whereas I had none." Arthur winced. "I don't propose to disillusion the mother. I am strong enough to go away without seeing her; and G.o.d knows how my heart yearns, and my ears and eyes and arms."

Warrington reached mechanically for the portrait in the silver frame, but Arthur stayed his hand.

"No, Paul; that is mine."

Warrington dropped his hand, puzzled. "I was not going to destroy it,"

ironically.

"No; but in a sense you have destroyed me. Compensation. What trifling thought most of us give that word! The law of compensation.

For ten years Elsa has been the flower o' the corn for me. She almost loved me. And one day she sees you; and in that one day all that I had gained was lost, and all that you had lost was gained. The law of compensation. Sometimes we escape retribution, but never the law of compensation. Some months ago she wrote me a letter. She was always direct. It was a just letter."

A pause. Arthur gazed steadily at the portrait, while Warrington twisted his yellow beard.

"The ways of mothers are mysterious," said the latter, finally. He wondered if Arthur would confess to the blacker deed, or have it forced from him. He would wait and see. "The father and the mother weren't happy. Money. There's the wedge. It's in every life somewhere. A marriage of convenience is an unwise thing. When we were born the mother turned to us. Up to the time we were six or seven there was no distinction in her love for us. But on the day the father set his choice upon me, she set hers upon you. You'll never know how I suffered as a boy, when I saw the distance growing wider and wider with the years. Perhaps the father understood, for he was always kind and gentle to me. I expect to return to China shortly. The Andes has taken me back. Sounds like a fairy-tale; eh? I shall never return here. But did you know who Elsa Chetwood was?"

"Not until that letter came."

Neither of them heard the faint gasp which came from behind the portieres dividing the study and the living-room. The gasp had followed the invisible knife-thrusts of these confidences. The woman behind those portieres swayed and caught blindly at the jamb. With cruel vividness she saw in this terrible moment all that to which she had never given more than a pa.s.sing thought. No reproaches; only a simple declaration of what had burned in this boy's heart. And she had almost forgotten this son. A species of paralysis laid hold of her, leaving her for the time incapable of movement.

She heard the deep voice of this other son say:

"Lots of kinks in life. There is only one law that I shall lay down for you, Arty. You must give up all idea of marrying Elsa Chetwood."

"It will be easy to obey that. Are you playing with me, Paul?"

"Playing?" echoed Warrington.

"Yes. Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you don't know why I shall never marry her?"