The Lash Part 11

Micky stood quietly, his freckled face a queer study of mingled relief and misery. "It's more than I deserve, Mr. Harkins," he replied. "I'm a pup when I start drinkin'. You're right, it's a disease with me. I won't promise that it's a final attack, for I don't know, but I will promise,"

with meaning, "that you'll never have to jack me up for it again. If I can't hold on, why I'll quietly let go." He walked out.

Micky worked feverishly for a couple of days after that, his heart full of misgiving. His place was a.s.sured, true enough, but there was another matter, even more vital, which was rife with uncertainty. A girl's face, eloquent of horror and dismay, swam mistily before his eyes, as in the lighted street in front of the hotel when he was struggling with Glenwood. He closed his eyes with a shiver, but still saw the face, known for whose it was. Would she ever receive him, even nod to him again? Never, probably, and why should she? This was a new att.i.tude for the ordinarily rollicking, independent O'Byrn. It remains for the lover to sound the nethermost depths of humility.

He watched his mail those two days with apprehensive eyes, fearing to receive a note which should administer his _coup de grace_. None came, and, as a natural sequence, his suspense increased. It is the axe suspended that the fowl fears; with its fall subsequent proceedings fail to interest the bird.

Finally there arrived O'Byrn's night off. It could be employed but in one way; he must become definitely acquainted with his fate. Behold him, with set teeth and an air of impending martyrdom, at the Muldoons' door at eight of the evening. It was a Friday evening, but Micky was desperate. He breathed hard for a moment, wavered, then rang the bell heroically. There was a soft stir inside, the door opened. It was dark in the hall. Micky leaned forward.

"Is that you, Maisie?" he breathed. "I--"

"Naw," piped a childish treble, "it ain't Maisie. It's her brudder, Terence."

"Sure," murmured Micky confusedly. "Would've known from your general cut, Terence, but I can't see you. Where's the folks?"

"All out, Mister Micky," rejoined the youngster, thrusting his tousled head out of the doorway to inspect the visitor. "Ain't no one to home but me."

"Where's Maisie?" Micky demanded in a tone which indicated that Terence would fill no particular gap as far as he was concerned.

"Out to a dance," grinned Terence. "Gone with Billy Ryan." Micky's brow darkened, while Terence's grin grew wider. Billy Ryan! The cavalier who left a Manhattan to go out for beers! Micky's mind swiftly reverted to the Ironworkers' ball, to which Ryan had brought the lady and from which O'Byrn had escorted her home. And now--in a brief second Micky gathered some luminous ideas in evolution. He pulled himself together.

"Say, Terence," he murmured, with a cajoling wink, "take this and don't speak of my havin' called, see?" Terence nodded solemnly and closed the door, richer by a quarter. Micky strode savagely away, rich in a fund of swift-risen jealousy and in an empty, aimless night off.

"Ryan!" he ruminated with a groan. "I could stand for most anyone else.

But a soak like him! Blast it! Can't a girl get next to anything nowadays but what drinks?"

And indeed, in these degenerate days, with teetotalers well nigh outside her ken, many a maiden has had often ample occasion to ask herself that question.

The pot having apostrophized the kettle, Micky felt easier, though the thought of Ryan was productive of inward profanity through all of that singularly tedious and empty evening.

There ensued a miserable week for Micky, though it was a fortunate one for the Courier. Misery produces a wide diversity of results, depending upon the makeup of the afflicted subject. The one it can render absolutely useless to the needs of the workaday grind. The other, beneath its bitter lash, becomes a human dynamo, plunging into the nepenthe of toil. Of such was Micky, and a nervously brilliant week was credited to him in consequence.

But though the course was eminently more beneficial to him and his endangered journalistic prospects than bootless brooding would have been, it was a sorry week for him. Moreover, it was an interminably long one. He would not have believed that such a week, filled with a restless whirl of work, could have pa.s.sed so slowly. Conflicting emotions disquieted him, played pranks with an appet.i.te for meals ordinarily as reliably fixed as sea tides, filled his days with a wan restlessness and troubled his sleep. For Micky, though the soft impeachment would have probably won from him a picturesque denial, was in love, and misery is a privilege of lovers.

He watched the mails and the postman. The latter never stopped and Micky anathematized him in his heart, also a privilege of lovers whenever thorns and nettles spring up in Arcady. It is curious, this universal mental arraignment of the postman for the non-delivery of matter never sent. Why, in all reason, should he be forced to figure as a buffer? Yet he is, and the rancor against him felt by the disappointed is all the more bitter because of the absolute necessity for its repression. One would acquire only merited ridicule and punishment for thrashing the postman, though one would often like to. One may only glare, and, if the postman notices it, he doesn't mind. He has grown cynical in service. So to revert, as the days pa.s.sed so also did the postman; and Micky, while feeling quite murderous, simply glared.

Why didn't she write, and again, why should she? Micky writhed upon the twin horns of his dilemma. If she wrote, what in reason could she write except a definite sentence of banishment? If she did not write, what could the implied message naturally mean but the same? Oh, of course, he was out of it anyway. But in that case, what of Ryan? Was it possible that Ryan was considered preferable to him? When that query introduced itself Micky usually swore. Altogether it was a hard week.

On one thing, however, he was determined. The matter should be settled, once for all, on his next night off. Perhaps Terence had been indiscreet and revealed the secret of his previous fruitless call. Maisie might expect him on the following Friday night and be away. Well, he would fix that. So he arranged for Thursday night. A little cunning might insure at least an audience.

Behold him, then, on the fateful evening at the Muldoons' door, heroically despairing. A soft glow shone through the curtained parlor windows. Within he heard the soft chords of her little organ. She might have company, Ryan perhaps. O'Byrn clenched his teeth and rang the bell.

The organ was suddenly silent. To the boy waiting outside, the succeeding moment of suspense was filled with a tumult of loud heart beats, with strange throbbings at the temples. Then the door slowly opened. "Who is there?" asked a voice.

He stepped inside without a word, laying his hat on the hall table.

Forbiddingly silent, she gazed an instant into his face, glacial blue eyes searching his own hungry ones, her face so cold as to cause him an inward shiver. Then without speaking, she entered the little parlor, he following.

They sat far apart. Her manner increased the gap immeasurably. Micky felt dimly that speech would partake of the nature of transmission over a long-distance telephone to the Klondike. However, he cleared his throat with some diffidence. It was something of an odd sensation for him.

"You were playin'," he ventured.

"Yes," somewhat pointedly. "I was."

"Well," he continued, "don't let me interrupt you. I like music."

"Oh, do you?" indifferently. "Sorry, but the pieces I was playin' are new ones. I don't know 'em well enough to play 'em before company."

"So?" he continued, calmly ignoring the reiterated hint. "Well, try some of the old ones. They're good enough for me." He watched her face eagerly.

It did not relax. "I think I've forgotten the old ones, Mr. O'Byrn," she said slowly.

"But I haven't," somewhat wistfully. "And it was not so long ago."

"Not so long ago!" her blue eyes brightening. "Mr. O'Byrn, it was longer ago than you seem to think."

"Yes, I guess it was," dejectedly. "It's a long way from 'Micky' to 'Mister' after all."

The girl's lip curled. "It's your own fault." she retorted. Then with a sudden burst of hurt resentment, "I couldn't believe it at first," with an involuntary little shiver, "when I saw you that night. My brother was pretty mad, I can tell you, said I ought to shake you. Such a sight!"

"So your brother was with you," exclaimed Micky, half to himself. One maddening surmise had been set at rest. The thought of Ryan had haunted him of late.

"Yes, who did you think it was? Couldn't you see him?" with sarcasm.

"I'm afraid I couldn't," with a humility strange in him, "but I could see you, Maisie, and it sobered me."

"High time!" she flashed. "But then," with an impatient gesture, "It ain't pleasant to talk about, so cut it out. What did you come here for, anyway?"

He straightened. "To apologize, Maisie, that's all," he said simply.

"Just that and to ask for another chance. I sha'n't whine or excuse myself. Only this. They gave me another chance at the office. Do I get one here?"

She tapped the carpet with an impatient foot. Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks flushed. Micky watched her wistfully. Suddenly she stole a swift glance at him, her blue eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears.

"Oh," she burst out, a pitiful break in her voice, "if I hadn't seen you--that way. It nearly killed me. And every time I've thought of you since--I've seen you--like that! Oh, Micky--" Her voice was lost in sobs, stifled in her handkerchief.

He sprang from his chair, kneeling at her side, stroking her hair with trembling fingers, pouring out his soul in broken, incoherent words.

"I'm a beast, Maisie, a beast! Don't cry so--dear. It's always been so, it's what's done for me all my life. My mother's dead, thank G.o.d! She died before she knew. But my father," striking his clenched hand on the arm of her chair, "he's got it to answer for, wherever he is, living or dead! He was a devil, Maisie, and he made me one. He fed me the stuff when I was a baby and I took to it like milk; it was his cursed blood in me, I suppose. It's driven me from pillar to post, from a job to the gutter, time and again. It's been up one minute and down the next with me. Oh, I'm not fit to touch you, Maisie, I'm a dog to ask it, but I tell you that, if I play out the game alone, this thing will drive me to h.e.l.l! Would you--stand by me, help me? It's always been stronger than I am, perhaps it always will be, but Maisie, I think I can beat it out, can be a man--with you!"

It was out at last, the sum of his pa.s.sionate longing, poured out despairingly in a flood of wild unrecking words; without forethought, wrung from him by the sudden yearning born of the sight of the girl in tears. Now that it was over he remained silent a moment, still torn by his emotion and by hers. Then, slowly and fearfully, his stinging eyes sought her face. It was buried in her little hands. Tears trickled through her clasped fingers.

He rose heavily to his feet. What madness had possessed him, what presumption! He had asked her to marry--a drunkard. He laughed with bitter brevity. The sound brought the sight of a startled face with tear-wet eyes.

"Overlook it, Maisie," he asked desolately, as he turned away, "and good-by. I don't know how I came to do it--but you cried."

He was half way to the hall. There was a soft step behind him, a light touch upon his arm. He turned swiftly, the ghost of a wan hope in his haggard eyes.

"Ah, Micky," she whispered, with a smile whose tender memory would live for him in endless summer through autumn's falling leaves till winter's winding sheets,--"don't you--don't you know--why--I cried?"