Ronicky Doone Part 21

"I think I noticed that for myself."

"And, when he told me how poor Bill Gregg had come clear across the continent--"

"No wonder you were touched, my dear. New Yorkers won't travel so far, will they? Not for a girl, I mean."

"Hardly! But Ronicky Doone made it such a sad affair that I promised I'd go across and see Bill Gregg."

"Not in his room?"

"I knew you wouldn't let him come to see me here."

"Never presuppose what I'll do. But go on--I'm interested--very. Just as much as if Ronicky Doone himself were telling me."

She eyed him shrewdly, but, if there were any deception in him, he hid it well. She could not find the double meaning that must have been behind his words. "I went there, however," she said, "because I was sorry for him, John. If you had seen you'd have been sorry, too, or else you would have laughed; I could hardly keep from it at first."

"I suppose he took you in his arms at once?"

"I think he wanted to. Then, of course, I told him at once why I had come."

"Which was?"

"Simply that it was absurd for him to stay about and persecute me; that the letters I wrote him were simply written for fun, when I was doing some of my cousin's work at the correspondence schools; that the best thing he could do would be to take my regrets and go back to the West."

"Did you tell him all that?" asked John Mark in a rather changed voice.

"Yes; but not quite so bluntly."

"Naturally not; you're a gentle girl, Caroline. I suppose he took it very hard."

"Very, but in a silly way. He's full of pride, you see. He drew himself up and gave me a lecture about deceiving men."

"Well, since you have lost interest in him, it makes no difference."

"But in a way," she said faintly, rising slowly from her chair, "I can't help feeling some interest."

"Naturally not. But, you see, I was worried so much about you and this foolish fellow that I gave orders for him to be put out of the way, as soon as you left him."

Caroline Smith stood for a moment stunned and then ran to him.

"No, no!" she declared. "In the name of the dear mercy of Heaven, John, you haven't done that?"

"I'm sorry."

"Then call him back--the one you sent. Call him back, John, and I'll serve you the rest of my life without question. I'll never fail you, John, but for your own sake and mine, for the sake of everything fair in the world, call him back!"

He pushed away her hands, but without violence. "I thought it would be this way," he said coldly. "You told a very good lie, Caroline. I suppose clever Ronicky Doone rehea.r.s.ed you in it, but it needed only the oldest trick in the world to expose you."

She recoiled from him. "It was only a joke, then? You didn't mean it, John? Thank Heaven for that!"

A savagery which, though generally concealed, was never far from the surface, now broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. "Get to your room," he said fiercely, "get to your room. I've wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I've done? I've a mind to wash my hands of all of you--and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I shall do."

She went, cringing like one beaten, to the door, and he followed her, trembling with rage.

"Or have you a choice?" he asked. "Brother or lover, which shall it be?"

She turned and stretched out her hands to him, unable to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her arms and laughed in her face. In mute terror she fled to her room.

Chapter Seventeen

_Old Scars_

In his room Bill Gregg was striding up and down, throwing his hands toward the ceiling. Now and then he paused to slap Ronicky Doone on the back.

"It's fate, Ronicky," he said, over and over again. "Thinking of waking up and finding the girl that you've loved and lost standing waiting for you! It's the dead come to life. I'm the happiest man in the world.

Ronicky, old boy, one of these days I'll be able--" He paused, stopped by the solemnity of Doone's face. "What's wrong, Ronicky?"

"I don't know," said the other gloomily. He rubbed his arms slowly, as if to bring back the circulation to numbed limbs.

"You act like you're sick, Ronicky."

"I'm getting bad-luck signs, Bill. That's the short of it."

"How come?"

"The old scars are p.r.i.c.kling."

"Scars? What scars?"

"Ain't you noticed 'em."

It was bedtime, so Ronicky Doone took off his coat and shirt. The rounded body, alive with playing muscles, was striped, here and there, with white streaks--scars left by healed wounds.

"At your age? A kid like you with scars?" Bill Gregg had been asking, and then he saw the exposed scars and gasped. "How come, Ronicky," he asked huskily in his astonishment, "that you got all those and ain't dead yet?"

"I dunno," said the other. "I wonder a pile about that, myself. Fact is I'm a lucky gent, Bill Gregg."

"They say back yonder in your country that you ain't never been beaten, Ronicky."

"They sure say a lot of foolish things, just to hear themselves talk, partner. A gent gets pretty good with a gun, then they say he's the best that ever breathed--that he's never been beat. But they forget things that happened just a year back. No, sir; I sure took my lickings when I started."

"But, dog-gone it, Ronicky, you ain't twenty-four now!"

"Between sixteen and twenty-two I spent a pile of time in bed, Bill, and you can lay to that!"