The Re-Creation of Brian Kent Part 16

Burns. And now that you have--ah--been properly--not to say gloriously--extravagant at poor Judy's expense, we had better do a little thinking, don't you think?"

The man's cheeks reddened at her words; but the straightforward, downright sincerity of those gray eyes, that looked so frankly into his, held him steady; while the interrogation at the end of her remark carried its usual conviction.

"There is only one possible thing left for me to do, Miss Williams," he said earnestly.

"And what is that?" A smile that sent a glow of courage to Brian Kent's troubled heart accompanied the flat question.

"I can't face Auntie Sue again, knowing what I know now." He spoke with pa.s.sion.

"Of course you would expect to feel that way, wouldn't you?" came the matter-of-fact answer.

"The only thing I can do," he continued, "is to give myself up, and go to the penitentiary; arranging, somehow, to do it in such a way that the reward will go to Auntie Sue. G.o.d knows she deserves it! Sheriff Knox would help me fix that part, I am sure."

For a moment there was a suspicious moisture in Betty Jo's gray eyes.

Then she said, "And you would really go to prison for Auntie Sue?"

"It is the least I can do for her now," he returned.

And Betty Jo must have felt the sincerity of his purpose, for she said, softly: "I am sure that it would make Auntie Sue very happy to know that you would do that; and"--she added--"I know that you could not possibly make her more unhappy and miserable than by doing it, could you?"

Again she had given an unexpected turn to the subject with the usual convincing question-mark.

"But what can I do?" he demanded, letting himself go a little.

Betty Jo steadied him with: "Well, suppose you listen while I consider?

Did I tell you that 'considering' was another of my strong points, Mr.

Burns? Well, it is. You may consider me while I consider, if you please.

"The first thing is, that you must make Auntie Sue happy,--as happy as you possibly can do at any cost. The second thing is, that you must pay her back that money, every penny of it. Now, it wouldn't make her happy for you to go to prison, and the reward wouldn't pay back all the money; and if you were in prison, you never could pay the rest; besides, if you were wasting your time in prison, she would just die of miserableness, and she wouldn't touch a penny of that reward-money--not if she was to die for want of it. So that settles that, doesn't it?"

And Brian was forced to admit that, as Betty Jo put it, it did.

"Very well, let us consider some more: Dear Auntie Sue has been wonderfully, gloriously happy in doing what she has for you this past winter,--meaning your book and all. I can see that she must have been.

No one could help being happy doing such a thing as that. So you just simply can't spoil it all, now, by letting her know that you know what you know."

Brian started to speak, but she checked him with: "Please, Mr. Burns, I must not be interrupted when I am considering. Next to the prison,--which we have agreed won't do at all,--you could do nothing that would make Auntie Sue more unhappy than to spoil the happiness she has in your not knowing what you have done to her. That is very clear, isn't it? And think of her miserableness if, after all these weeks of happy antic.i.p.ation, your book should never be published. No, no, no; you can't rob Auntie Sue of her happiness in you just because you stole her money, can you?"

And Brian knew in his heart that she was right.

"So, you see," Betty Jo continued, "the only possible way to do is to go right along just as if nothing had happened. And there is this final consideration,--which must be a dark secret between you and me,--when the book is finished, you must see to it that every penny that comes from it goes to Auntie Sue until she is paid back all that she lost through you. Now, isn't that pretty fine 'considering,' Mr. Burns?"

And Brian was convinced that it was. "But," he suggested, "the book may not earn anything. Nothing that I ever wrote before did."

"You never wrote one before just like this, did you?" came the very matter-of-fact answer. "And, besides, if your book never earns a cent, it will do Auntie Sue a world more good than your going to prison for her. That would be rather silly, now that you think of it, wouldn't it?

And now that we have our conspiracy all nicely conspired, we must hurry to the house before that man arrives with my things."

She went for the ma.n.u.script as she spoke. "See," she cried, "it is quite dry, and not a bit the worse for its temperamental experience!" She laughed gleefully.

"But, Miss Williams," exclaimed Brian, "I--I--can't understand you!

You don't seem to mind. What I have told you about myself doesn't seem to--to--make any difference to you--I mean in your att.i.tude toward me."

"Oh, yes, it does," she returned. "It makes me very interested in you, Mr. Burns."

"But, how can you have any confidence--How can you help me with my book now that you know what I am?" he persisted, for he was sincerely puzzled by her apparent indifference to the revelation he had made of his character.

"Auntie Sue,"--she answered,--"just Auntie Sue. Come,--we must go."

"How in the world can I ever face her!" groaned Brian.

"You won't get the chance at her, for awhile, with me around;--she will be so busy with me that she won't notice anything wrong with you. So you will get accustomed to the conspiracy feeling before you are even suspected of conspiring. You know, when one has once arrived at the state of not feeling like a liar, one can lie with astonishing success.

Haven't you found it so?"

They laughed together over this as they went toward the house.

As they reached the porch, Betty Jo whispered a last word of instruction: "You better find Judy, and fix her the first thing;--fix her good and hard. Here is Auntie Sue now. Don't worry about her noticing anything strange about you. I'll attend to her."

And the next minute, Betty Jo had the dear old lady in her arms.

CHAPTER XV.

A MATTER OF BUSINESS.

The weeks that followed the coming of Betty Jo to the little log house by the river pa.s.sed quickly for Brian Kent. Perhaps it was the peculiar circ.u.mstances of their first meeting that made the man feel so strongly that he had known her for many years, instead of for only those few short weeks. That could easily have been the reason, because the young woman had stepped so suddenly into his life at a very critical time;--when his mental faculties were so confused by the turmoil and suffering of his emotional self that the past was to him, at the moment, far more real than the present.

And Betty Jo had not merely come into his life casually, as a disinterested spectator; but, by the peculiar appeal of herself, she had led Brian to take her so into his confidence that she had become immediately a very real part of the experience through which he was then pa.s.sing, and thus was identified with his past experience out of which the crisis of the moment had come.

Again Betty Jo, in the naturalness of her manner toward him, and by her matter-of-fact, impersonal consideration of his perplexing situation, had brought to his unsettled and chaotic mind a sense of stability and order; and by subtly insinuating her own practical decisions as to the course he should follow, had made herself a very literal part of his inner life. In fact, Betty Jo knew Brian Kent more intimately at the close of their first meeting than she could have known him after years of acquaintanceship under the ordinary course of development.

Brian's consciousness of this would naturally cause him to feel toward the young woman as though she had long been a part of his life. Still other causes might have contributed to the intimate companionship that so quickly became to them both an established and taken-for-granted fact; but, the circ.u.mstances of their first meeting, given, of course, their peculiar individualities, were, really, quite enough. The fact that it was springtime might also have had something to do with it.

The morning after her arrival, Betty Jo set to work typing the ma.n.u.script. Brian went to his work on the timbered hillside. In the evenings, Brian worked over the typewitten pages,--revising, correcting, perfecting,--and then, as Betty Jo made the final copy for the printers, they went critically over the work together.

So the hours flew past on busy wings, and the days of the springtime drew toward summer. The tender green of the new-born leaves and gra.s.ses changed to a stronger, deeper tone. The air, which had been so filled with the freshness and newness of bursting buds and rain-blessed soil, and all the quickening life of tree and bush and plant, now carried the perfume of strongly growing things,--the feel of maturing life.

To Brian, the voices of the river brought a fuller, deeper message, with a subtle undertone of steady and enduring purpose.

From the beginning, Betty Jo established for herself the habit of leaving her work at the typewriter in the afternoons, and going for a walk over the hills. Quite incidentally, at first, her walks occasionally led her by way of the clearing where Brian was at work with his ax, and it followed, naturally, that as the end of the day drew near, the two would go together down the mountain-side to the evening meal. But long before the book was finished, the little afternoon visit and the walk together at the day's close had become so established as a custom that they both accepted it as a part of their day's life; and to Brian, at least, it was an hour to which he looked forward as the most delightful hour of the twenty-four. As for Betty Jo,--well, it was really Betty Jo who established the custom and developed it to that point where it was of such importance.

Auntie Sue was too experienced from her life-long study of boys and girls not to observe the deepening of the friendship between the man and the woman whom she had brought together. But if the dear old lady felt any twinges of an apprehensive conscience, when she saw the pair day after day coming down the mountain-side through the long shadows of the late afternoon, she very promptly banished them, and, quite consistently, with what Brian called her "River philosophy," made no attempt to separate these two life currents, which, for the time at least, seemed to be merging into one.

And often, as the three sat together on the porch after supper to watch the sunsets, or later in the evening as Auntie Sue sat with her sewing while they were busy with their work and un.o.bserving, the dear old lady would look at them with a little smile of tender meaning, and into the gentle eyes would come that far-away look that was born of the memories that had so sweetened the long years of her life, and of the hope and dream of a joy unspeakable that awaited her beyond the sunset of her day.

In her long letter to Betty Jo, asking the girl to come, Auntie Sue had told the young woman the main facts of Brian's history as she knew them, omitting only the man's true name and the name of the bank. She had even mentioned her conviction that there had been a woman in his trouble. But Auntie Sue had not mentioned in her letter the money she had lost; nor did she now know that Brian had himself told Betty Jo at the time of their first meeting.

On the day that Betty Jo typed the last page, and the book was ready for the printers, the young woman went earlier than usual to the clearing where Brian was at work. The sound of his ax reached her while she was yet some distance away, and guided her to the spot where he was chopping a big white oak.