"Oh no!" she retorted, with a laugh, as if the pleasure of its coming in so fitly were compensation for the shame of the fact. "The dream was what happened afterward. The dream was that you fell asleep there, and left me there with him--"
"Well, poor old Westover; he"s a gentleman! You needn"t be worried about him--"
"You"re not fit!" cried the girl. "I give it up." She got upon her feet and stood a moment listless.
"No, I"m not, Bessie. I can"t pull my mind together tonight. But look here!" He seemed to lose what he wanted to say. He asked: "Is it something I"ve got you in for? Do I understand that?"
"Partly," she said.
"Well, then, I"ll help you out. You can trust me, Bessie; you can, indeed. You don"t believe it?"
"Oh, I believe you think I can trust you."
"But this time you can. If you need my help I will stand by you, right or wrong. If you want to tell me now I"ll listen, and I"ll advise you the best I can--"
"It"s just something I"ve got nervous about," she said, while her eyes shone with sudden tears. "But I won"t trouble you with it to-night.
There"s no such great hurry. We can talk about it in the morning if you"re better then. Oh, I forgot! You"re going away!"
"No," said the young man, with pathetic dignity, "I"m not going if you need my help. But you"re right about me tonight, Bessie. I"m not fit.
I"m afraid I can"t grasp anything to-night. Tell me in the morning. Oh, don"t be afraid!" he cried out at the glance she gave the decanters.
"That"s over, now; you could put them in my hands and be safe enough.
I"m going back to bed, and in the morning--"
He rose and went toward the door. "If that doctor"s man comes to-night you can send him away again. He needn"t bother."
"All right, Alan," she said, fondly. "Good-night. Don"t worry about me.
Try to get some sleep."
"And you must sleep, too. You can trust me, Bessie."
He came back after he got out of the room and looked in. "Bess, if you"re anxious about it, if you don"t feel perfectly sure of me, you can take those things to your room with you." He indicated the decanters with a glance.
"Oh no! I shall leave them here. It wouldn"t be any use your just keeping well overnight. You"ll have to keep well a long time, Alan, if you"re going to help me. And that"s the reason I"d rather talk to you when you can give your whole mind to what I say."
"Is it something so serious?"
"I don"t know. That"s for you to judge. Not very--not at all, perhaps."
"Then I won"t fail you, Bessie. I shall "keep well," as you call it, as long as you want me. Good-night."
"Good-night. I shall leave these bottles here, remember."
"You needn"t be afraid. You might put them beside my bed."
Bessie slept soundly, from exhaustion, and in that provisional fashion in which people who have postponed a care to a given moment are able to sleep. But she woke early, and crept down-stairs before any one else was astir, and went to the library. The decanters stood there on the table, empty. Her brother lay a shapeless heap in one of the deep arm-chairs.
x.x.xVII.
Westover got home from the Enderby dance at last with the forecast of a violent cold in his system, which verified itself the next morning. He had been housed a week, when Jeff Durgin came to see him. "Why didn"t you let me know you were sick?" he demanded, "I"d have come and looked after you."
"Thank you," said Westover, with as much stiffness as he could command in his physical limpness. "I shouldn"t have allowed you to look after me; and I want you to understand, now, that there can"t be any sort of friendliness between us till you"ve accounted for your behavior with Lynde the other night."
"You mean at the party?" Jeff asked, tranquilly.
"Yes!" cried Westover. "If I had not been shut up ever since, I should have gone to see you and had it out with you. I"ve only let you in, now, to give you the chance to explain; and I refuse to hear a word from you till you do." Westover did not think that this was very forcible, and he was not much surprised that it made Jeff smile.
"Why, I don"t know what there is to explain. I suppose you think I got him drunk; I know what you thought that night. But he was pretty well loaded when he struck my champagne. It wasn"t a question of what he was going to do any longer, but how he was going to do it. I kept an eye on him, and at the right time I helped the caterer"s man to get him up into that room where he wouldn"t make any trouble. I expected to go back and look after him, but I forgot him."
"I don"t suppose, really, that you"re aware what a devil"s argument that is," said Westover. "You got Lynde drunk, and then you went back to his sister, and allowed her to treat you as if you were a gentleman, and didn"t deserve to be thrown out of the house." This at last was something like what Westover had imagined he would say to Jeff, and he looked to see it have the imagined effect upon him.
"Do you suppose," asked Jeff, with cheerful cynicism, "that it was the first time she was civil to a man her brother got drunk with?"
"No! But all the more you ought to have considered her helplessness.
It ought to have made her the more sacred"--Jeff gave an exasperating shrug--"to you, and you ought to have kept away from her for decency"s sake."
"I was engaged to dance with her."
"I can"t allow you to be trivial with me, Durgin," said Westover.
"You"ve acted like a blackguard, and worse, if there is anything worse."
Jeff stood at a corner of the fire, leaning one elbow on the mantel, and he now looked thoughtfully down on Westover, who had sunk weakly into a chair before the hearth. "I don"t deny it from your point of view, Mr. Westover," he said, without the least resentment in his tone. "You believe that everything is done from a purpose, or that a thing is intended because it"s done. But I see that most things in this world are not thought about, and not intended. They happen, just as much as the other things that we call accidents."
"Yes," said Westover, "but the wrong things don"t happen from people who are in the habit of meaning the right ones."
"I believe they do, fully half the time," Jeff returned; "and, as far as the grand result is concerned, you might as well think them and intend them as not. I don"t mean that you ought to do it; that"s another thing, and if I had tried to get Lynde drunk, and then gone to dance with his sister, I should have been what you say I am. But I saw him getting worse without meaning to make him so; and I went back to her because--I wanted to."
"And you think, I suppose," said Westover, "that she wouldn"t have cared any more than you cared if she had known what you did."
"I can"t say anything about that."
The painter continued, bitterly: "You used to come in here, the first year, with notions of society women that would have disgraced a Goth, or a gorilla. Did you form your estimate of Miss Lynde from those premises?"
"I"m not a boy now," Jeff answered, "and I haven"t stayed all the kinds of a fool I was."
"Then you don"t think Miss Lynde would speak to you, or look at you, after she knew what you had done?"
"I should like to tell her and see," said Jeff, with a hardy laugh.
"But I guess I sha"n"t have the chance. I"ve never been a favorite in society, and I don"t expect to meet her again."
"Perhaps you"d like to have me tell her?"
"Why, yes, I believe I should, if you could tell me what she thought--not what she said about it."
"You are a brute," answered Westover, with a puzzled air. What puzzled him most and pleased him least was the fellow"s patience under his severity, which he seemed either not to feel or not to mind. It was of a piece with the behavior of the rascally boy whom he had cuffed for frightening Cynthia and her little brother long ago, and he wondered what final malevolence it portended.