The Main Chance Part 46

Three weeks pa.s.sed before he saw her, and then he went to her with an excuse for his visit in his mind and heart. Warry had left a will in which the bulk of his property--and it was a respectable fortune--was given for the endowment of a hospital for children. Saxton was named as executor and as a trustee of the fund thus set apart. Warry had never mentioned the matter to any one; he had probably never thought of it very seriously, and John wished to talk to Evelyn about it.

It seemed strange that the Porter drawing-room was the same, when everything else had changed; he had not been there since the afternoon when he walked home with Evelyn through the cold. He despised himself for that now; it was an act of disloyalty to Warry; but he would now be more loyal to the dead than he had been to the living.

As they talked together he saw no change in her; and he felt himself wondering what manner of change it was that he had expected to find. He had heard of people who aged suddenly with grief, but Evelyn was the same, save for a greater composure, a more subdued note of manner and voice. She bent forward in her deep interest in what he told her of Warry's bequest. He wished her help, and asked for it as if it were her right to give it. Surely no one had a better claim than she, he thought.

"It is so like Warry," she said. "It will be a beautiful memorial, and there is enough to do it very handsomely."

"He liked things to be done well," said John. He marveled that she could speak of it so quietly. Failure and grief possessed his eyes, and Evelyn was conscious of a deepening of the pathos she had always seen and felt in him, as he sat talking of his dead friend. She pitied him, and was obedient to his evident wish to talk of Warry.

John spoke of Warry's last photographs, and Evelyn went and brought a number which he had never seen. Several of them dated back to Warry's boyhood. They were odd and interesting--boyish pictures which the spectacles made appear preternaturally old. One of these, that John liked particularly, Evelyn asked him to take, and his face lighted with pleasure when she made it plain that she wished him to have it. She told of some of Warry's pranks in their childhood, and they laughed over them with guarded mirth.

"It was wonderful that so many kinds of people were fond of Warry," said Evelyn. "He never tried to please, and yet no man in town ever had so many friends."

"It's like genius, I suppose," said John. "It's something in people that wins admiration. No one can define it or explain it. I think, though,"

he added in a lower tone, "I know how it was in my own case. I had always wanted a friend like him to take me out of myself and help me; but a man like Warry had never come my way before; and if he had he would probably have been in a hurry."

He laughed and then was very grave. "But Warry always had time for me."

At his last words he looked up at her and saw tears shining in her eyes.

"Oh, forgive me--forgive me!" he cried. "It must--I know it must hurt you to talk of him. But I couldn't help it. I thought you must understand what he meant to me. Dear old Warry!"

He held in his hand the little card photograph she had given him, and he rose and thrust it into his pocket.

"He was a charming, gentle spirit," said Evelyn. "It will mean a great deal to us that we knew him. You meant a great deal to him, Mr. Saxton.

You helped him. It was--" She halted, confused, and had evidently intended to say more. The color suddenly mounted to her face. She did not offer him her hand which he had stepped forward to take, and he dropped his own, which he had half extended.

"Good night." Her eyes followed him to the hall.

On his way home--he still lived at the club--John reviewed, sentence by sentence, his talk with Evelyn. He had not expected her to speak so frankly of Warry; but, he told himself, it was like her. He touched the photograph she had given him, and held it up as he pa.s.sed under an arc lamp to be sure of it. He was surprised that she had given it to him; he did not think a girl would give away a rare picture of a dead lover, which must have a peculiar sacredness for her. Then he was angry with himself for a thought that criticised her. She had given it to him because he was Warry's friend!

When he reached his room he put the photograph of Warry on his table and took another similar card from a drawer. It was the little picture of Evelyn which he had often seen on Warry's dressing-table. It showed her standing by a tall chair; her hair hung in long braids. It was very girlish and quaint; but it was unmistakably Evelyn.

Warry in his will had directed that John should have such of his personal effects as he might choose; the remainder he was to destroy or sell. John chose a few of the books that Warry had liked best, and the picture. He put it down now beside the photograph of Warry. They bore the name of the same photographer, and had probably been taken in the same year. He lighted his pipe and tramped back and forth across the floor, occasionally stopping at his desk to look at the cards carefully.

He had no right to Evelyn Porter's picture, he told himself. He was taking advantage of his dead friend's kindness to appropriate it. He would not destroy it; he would give it to some one--to Mrs. Whipple, to Evelyn herself! Yes, it should be to Evelyn; and having reached this conclusion, he put the two pictures away together and went to bed.

The next day he was called away unexpectedly to Colorado to close a sale of the Neponset Trust Company's interest in the irrigation company. The call came inopportunely, as the plans for the reorganization of the Traction Company were not yet perfected; but the matter was urgent, and Fenton told him to go. There was not time, he a.s.sured himself, to return the photograph before leaving, so he carried both the little cards away with him, with a half-formed intention of sending Evelyn's to her from Denver; but when he returned to Clarkson he still carried the photographs in his pocket.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

"IT IS CRUEL"

"It is cruel of them to say it!"

Evelyn was at the Whipples'. It was a morning in May. Spring possessed the valley. The long vistas across the hills were closing as the leaves crept into the trees again. The windows were open, and the snowy curtains swayed to the wind. Lilacs again in the Whipples' dooryard bloomed, and the general's young cherry trees were white with blossoms.

It was not well that any one should be heavy of heart on such a morning, but Evelyn Porter was not happy. She sat leaning forward with both hands resting on the ivory ball of her parasol. A querulous note crept into her voice. It is strange how the heartache to which the face never yields finds a ready prey in the voice.

"It is cruel of them to say it!"

"But it is natural too, dear," said Mrs. Whipple. "Many people must have wondered about you and Warry. If it will help any, I will confess that I wondered a good deal myself. Now you won't mind, will you? It seems hard, now that he has gone--but before--before, it was not unreasonable!"

"But the gossip! I don't care for myself, but it is cruel to him, to his memory, that this should be said. If it had been true; if--if we had been engaged, it would not be so wretched; but this--oh, it hurts me!"

She lay back in her chair. Her eyes were over-bright; her words ended in a wail.

Mrs. Whipple felt that Evelyn's view of the matter was absurd. If the people of Clarkson were trying to read an element of romance into Warry Raridan's death, they were certainly working no injury to his memory.

Such a view of the matter was fantastic. Evelyn did not know that another current story coupled her name with that of James Wheaton, who was spoken of in some quarters, and even guardedly in newspapers outside of Clarkson, as Raridan's rival for the affections of William Porter's daughter. Mrs. Whipple had shuddered hourly since the tragedy at Poindexter's when she remembered how much Wheaton had been about with Evelyn. He had been with her almost as much as Warry. Mrs. Whipple recalled the carnival of two years ago with shame. Her heart smote her as she watched the girl. It was a hideous thing that evil should have crept so near her life. Wheaton had been a strange species of reptile among them all.

"Poor dear! You must not take it so!" The silence had grown oppressive.

It was inc.u.mbent upon her to comfort the girl if she could.

"It isn't a thing that you can help, child. There's no way of stopping gossip; and if they persist in saying such things, they will have to say them, that's all. If you wish--if it will help you any, I will refute it when I can--I mean among our friends only."

"Oh, no! That would make it worse. Please don't say anything!"

Mrs. Whipple did not accept solicitude for Warry's memory as a sufficient explanation of Evelyn's troubles; nor was it like Evelyn to complain of gossip about herself. The girl had naturally felt Warry's death deeply; she made no secret of her great fondness for him. But if Evelyn had really cared for Warry with more than a friendly regard, she would never have come to her in this way. She a.s.sumed this hypothesis as she made irrelevant talk with the girl. Then she thought of Wheaton; if Wheaton had been the one Evelyn had cared for--if Warry had been the friend and he the lover! She gave rein for a moment to this idea.

Perhaps Evelyn followed the man now with sympathy--the thought was repulsive; she rejected it instantly with self-loathing for having harbored an idea that wronged Evelyn so miserably.

"What father feels is that his mistake in Wheaton argues a great weakness in himself," Evelyn was saying. She was more tranquil now. Mrs.

Whipple noticed that she spoke Wheaton's name without hesitation; she had dropped the prefix of respect, as every one had. We have a way of eliminating it in speaking of men who are markedly good or bad.

"Father takes it very hard. He isn't naturally morbid, but he seems to feel as if he had been responsible--Grant being back of it all. But we didn't know those men were going out there--we knew nothing until it was all over!" The girl spoke as if she too felt the responsibility. "And he thinks he ought to have known about Wheaton--ought to have seen what kind of man he was!"

Evelyn's blue foulard was beyond criticism and it matched her parasol perfectly; the girl had never been prettier. Mrs. Whipple inwardly apologized for having admitted the thought of Wheaton to her mind.

"We can all accuse ourselves in the same way. To think of it--that he has actually pa.s.sed tea in this very room!" Her shrug of loathing was so real that Evelyn shuddered.

Then Mrs. Whipple laughed, so suddenly that it startled Evelyn.

"It's dreadful! horrible!" Mrs. Whipple continued, "to find that a person you have really looked upon with liking--perhaps with admiration--has been all along eaten with a moral leprosy. If it weren't for poor Warry we should be able to look upon it as a profitable experience. There aren't many like Wheaton. The bishop thinks we ought to be lenient in dealing with him--that he was not really so bad; that he was simply weak--that his weakness was a kind of disease of his moral nature. But I can't see it that way myself. The man ought not to go scot-free. He ought to be punished. But it's too intangible and subtle for the law to take hold of."

Evelyn had picked up her card-case. It was a pretty trifle of silver and leather; she tapped the handle of her parasol with it. Something had occurred to Mrs. Whipple when she laughed a moment before, and seeing that Evelyn was about to rise, she said casually:

"Mr. Saxton doesn't share the bishop's gentle charity toward Wheaton."

She watched Evelyn as she applied the test. The girl did not raise her eyes at once. She bent over the parasol meditatively, still tapping the handle with the card-case.

"What does Mr. Saxton say?" Evelyn asked, dropping the trinket into her lap and looking at her friend vaguely, as people do who ask questions out of courtesy rather than from honest curiosity.

"Mr. Saxton says that Wheaton's a scoundrel--a d.a.m.ned scoundrel, to be literal. He told the general so, here, a few nights ago. He seemed very bitter. You know what close friends he and Warry were!"

"Yes; it was an ideal kind of friendship. They were devoted to each other," said Evelyn very earnestly; there was a little cry in her voice as she spoke. It was as though happiness, struggling against sorrow, had almost gained the mastery.

"It's fine to see that in men. I sometimes think that friendships among them have a quality that ours lack. I think Mr. Saxton is very lonely. I wasn't here when he called, but the general saw him. You know the general likes him particularly."

"Yes."

"You and he both knew and appreciated Warry."