"Well, don"t look so sad about it," he said, in a voice of affectionate raillery. "I am quite unhappy enough over it without--"
"I"m afraid I can"t help you to feel happier--not to-night. If I look sad, you see, it is because I feel that way."
"Sad?" he echoed, bewildered. "Why should you be sad now--when it is all going to be straightened out--when--"
"Well, don"t you think it"s pretty sad--the part that can"t ever be straightened out?"
Unexpectedly she got up, and walked slowly away, a disconcerting trick she had; wandered about the room, looking about her something like a stranger in a picture gallery; touching a bowl of flowers here, there setting a book to rights; and West, rising too, following her sombrely with his eyes, had never wanted her so much in all his life.
Presently she returned to him; asked him to sit down again; and, still standing herself, began speaking in a quiet kind voice which, nevertheless, rang ominously in his ears from her first word.
"I remember," said Sharlee, "when I was a very little girl, not more than twelve years old, I think, I first heard about you--about Charles Gardiner West. You were hardly grown then, but already people were talking about you. I don"t remember now, of course, just what they said, but it must have been something very splendid, for I remember the sort of picture I got. I have always liked for men to be very clean and high-minded--I think because my father was that sort of man. I have put that above intellect, and abilities, and what would be called attractions; and so what they said about you made a great impression on me. You know how very young girls are--how they like to have the figure of a prince to spin their little romances around ... and so I took you for mine. You were my knight without fear and without reproach ... Sir Galahad. When I was sixteen, I used to pa.s.s you in the street and wonder if you didn"t hear my heart thumping. You never looked at me; you hadn"t any idea who I was. And that is a big and fine thing, I think--to be the hero of somebody you don"t even know by name ... though of course not so big and fine as to be the hero of somebody who knows you very well. And you were that to me, too. When I grew up and came to know you, I still kept you on that pedestal you never saw. I measured you by the picture I had carried for so many years, and I was not disappointed. All that my little girl"s fancy had painted you, you seemed to be. I look back now over the last few years of my life, and so much that I have liked most--that has been dearest--has centred about you. Yes, more than once I have been quite sure that I was in love with you. You wonder that I can show you my heart this way? I couldn"t of course, except--well--that it is all past now. And that is what seems sad to me.... There never was any prince; my knight is dead; and Sir Galahad I got out of a book.... Don"t you think that that is pretty sad?"
West, who had been looking at her with a kind of frightened fascination, hastily averted his eyes, for he saw that her own had suddenly filled with tears. She turned away from him again; a somewhat painful silence ensued; and presently she broke it, speaking in a peculiarly gentle voice, and not looking at him.
"I"m glad that you told me--at last. I"ll be glad to remember that ...
and I"m always your friend. But don"t you think that perhaps we"d better finish our talk some other time?"
"No," said West. "No."
He pulled himself together, struggling desperately to throw off the curious benumbing inertia that was settling down upon him. "You are doing me an injustice. A most tremendous injustice. You have misunderstood everything from the beginning. I must explain--"
"Don"t you think that argument will only make it all so much worse?"
"Nothing could possibly be worse for me than to have you think of me and speak to me in this way."
Obediently she sat down, her face still and sad; and West, pausing a moment to marshal his thoughts into convincing form, launched forth upon his defense.
From the first he felt that he did not make a success of it; was not doing himself justice. Recent events, in the legislature and with reference to Meachy T. Bangor, had greatly weakened his confidence in his arguments. Even to himself he seemed to have been strangely "easy"; his exposition sounded labored and hollow in his own ears. But worse than this was the bottomless despondency into which the girl"s brief autobiography had strangely cast him. A vast mysterious depression had closed over him, which entirely robbed him of his usual adroit felicity of speech. He brought his explanation up to the publication of the unhappy article, and there abruptly broke off.
A long silence followed his ending, and at last Sharlee said:--
"I suppose a sudden change of heart in the middle of a fight is always an unhappy thing. It always means a good deal of pain for somebody.
Still--sometimes they must come, and when they do, I suppose the only thing to do is to meet them honestly--though, personally, I think I should always trust my heart against my head. But ... if you had only come to us that first morning and frankly explained just why you deserted us--if you had told us all this that you have just told me--"
"That is exactly what I wanted and intended to do," interrupted West. "I kept silent out of regard for you."
"Out of regard for me?"
"When I started to tell you all about it, that night at Mrs. Byrd"s, it seemed to me that you had brooded over the matter until you had gotten in an overwrought and--overstrung condition about it. It seemed to me the considerate thing not to force the unwelcome topic upon you, but rather to wait--"
"But had you the right to consider my imaginary feelings in such a matter between yourself and ...? And besides, you did not quite keep silent, you remember. You said something that led me to think that you had discharged Mr. Surface for writing that article."
"I did not intend you to think anything of the kind. Anything in the least like that. If my words were ambiguous, it was because, seeing, as I say, that you were in an overstrung condition, I thought it best to let the whole matter rest until you could look at it calmly and rationally."
She made no reply.
"But why dwell on that part of it?" said West, beseechingly. "It was simply a wretched misunderstanding all around. I"m sorrier than I can tell you for my part in it. I have been greatly to blame--I can see that now. Can"t you let bygones be bygones? I have come to you voluntarily and told you--"
"Yes, after six weeks. Why, I was the best friend he had, Mr. West, and--Oh, me! How can I bear to remember what I said to him!"
She turned her face hurriedly away from him. West, much moved, struggled on.
"But don"t you see--I didn"t know it! I never dreamed of such a thing.
The moment I heard how matters stood--"
"Did it never occur to you in all this time that it might be a.s.sumed that Mr. Surface, having written all the reformatory articles, had written this one?"
"I did not think of that. I was short-sighted, I own. And of course," he added more eagerly, "I supposed that he had told you himself."
"You don"t know him," said Sharlee.
A proud and beautiful look swept over her face. West rose, looking wretchedly unhappy, and stood, irresolute, facing her.
"Can"t you--forgive me?" he asked presently, in a painful voice.
Sharlee hesitated.
"Don"t you know I said that it would only make things worse to talk about it to-night?" she said gently. "Everything you say seems to put us further and further apart. Why, there is nothing for me to forgive, Mr.
West. There was a situation, and it imposed a certain conduct on you; that is the whole story. I don"t come into it at all. It is all a matter between you and--your own-"
"You do forgive me then? But no--you talk to me just as though you had learned all this from somebody else--as though I had not come to you voluntarily and told you everything."
Sharlee did not like to look at his face, which she had always seen before so confident and gay.
"No," said she sadly--"for I am still your friend."
"_Friend!_"
He echoed the word wildly, contemptuously. He was just on the point of launching into a pa.s.sionate speech, painting the bitterness of friendship to one who must have true love or nothing, and flinging his hand and his heart impetuously at her feet. But looking at her still face, he checked himself, and just in time. Shaken by pa.s.sion as he was, he was yet enough himself to understand that she would not listen to him. Why should he play the spendthrift and the wanton with his love?
Why give her, for nothing, the sterile satisfaction of rejecting him, for her to prize, as he knew girls did, as merely one more notch upon her gun?
Leaving his tempestuous exclamation hanging in mid-air, West stiffly shook Sharlee"s hand and walked blindly out of the room.
He went home, and to bed, like one moving in a horrible dream. That night, and through all the next day, he felt utterly bereft and wretched: something, say, as though flood and pestilence had swept through his dear old town and carried off everything and everybody but himself. He crawled alone in a smashed world. On the second day following, he found himself able to light a cigarette; and, glancing about him with faint pluckings of convalescent interest, began to recognize some landmarks. On the third day, he was frankly wondering whether a girl with such overstrained, not to say hysterical ideals of conduct, would, after all, be a very comfortable person to spend one"s life with.
On the evening of this day, about half-past eight o"clock, he emerged from his mother"s house, light overcoat over his arm in deference to his evening clothes, and started briskly down the street. On the second block, as luck had it, he overtook Tommy Semple walking the same way.
"Gardiner," said Semple, "when are you going to get over all this uplift rot and come back to Semple and West?"
The question fell in so marvelously with West"s mood of acute discontent with all that his life had been for the past two years, that it looked to him strangely like Providence. The easy ways of commerce appeared vastly alluring to him; his income, to say truth, had suffered sadly in the cause of the public; never had the snug dollars drawn him so strongly. He gave a slow, curious laugh.
"Why, hang it, Tommy! I don"t know but I"m ready to listen to your siren spiel--now!"
In the darkness Semple"s eyes gleamed. His receipts had never been so good since West left him.
"That"s the talk! I need you in my business, old boy. By the bye, you can come in at bully advantage if you can move right away. I"m going to come talk with you to-morrow."