IV

The blow, which he had many times dreaded, but which for two long years

he had thought of as blissfully escaped, had fallen. Until the summer

just passed, that length of time had elapsed--the first two years of

his University life--during which the affair with Ellen had reverted

to its original innocence. Before that they had drifted on, taking

what opportunities they could find. Potter, sometimes conscious that

the thing was an ordinary slavery, had struggled against it from time

to time, but half-heartedly. Habit and gratification were too strong.

Then, in a blinding flash of awakened responsibility, he realized that

physical consequences followed such relations, and under the guise of

moral repentance, he went to her and told her he wished to end it.

Ellen acquiesced simply enough in this, as she acquiesced, perforce, in

everything that concerned her. She dumbly worshipped him, but she knew

how much that mattered.

Then had come the summer of this year. It was accident that threw them

together one night, one very magical night, as Potter recalled. Both

were lonely; the Meadowburn family were all away on an August journey.

Their old intimacy, which in reality had been sordid and furtive, took

on a certain beauty--the sentiment of past things. Under that momentary

glamour forgetfulness took possession of them.

“She said,” recalled Potter, “that was the first time she had been

thoroughly happy and secure.”

He ruminated on, connecting this sudden, vivid pleasure of hers,

this mood of safety and surrender, with the deadening outcome they

now faced. His own fear had never left him since that night--that

one night, for it had had no sequel. Now he interpreted the event

fatalistically. Nature had waited for that happy mood of Ellen’s before

making her a mother. Nature was a subtle monster, a thing of scheming

purposes. She let you go on and on with impunity and then tripped you

when you weren’t thinking, when you felt particularly strong because

you had put up a long fight against her. She could even, in this awful

moment, make him thrill with the knowledge of having created life....

Potter had never had a confidant in the affair with Ellen. So far as he

knew the secret was her own and his, and had been from the beginning.

And it was something of a miracle, considering their narrow escapes

from detection.

But now that he needed support there was no one to turn to. Roget was

the last person in the world to whom he could take such a tale. He had

an idea that Roget would laugh him to scorn or question his taste in

becoming the victim of such an intimacy. Roget had been raised among

women and had acquired a knowledge of them that made his relations

toward them seem little short of uncanny to Potter. He gave the

impression of being successful with many and quite uninvolved with all.

To Potter women were the paralyzing mystery. It was one of the subjects

on which he and Roget did not meet.

Had there been an older man in town with whom he had developed any

sympathy, a faculty member or a person in authority of any kind, he

would have gone to him. There were many questions; there was money to

be got; there was common-sense guidance needed as to doctors and other

such matters, instinctively repugnant and dreadful to him.

Marriage! Sometimes in the dead of night, lying awake with his fears,

anticipating just this predicament, he had experienced exaltations,

mystic desires for sacrifice and immolation and simple, laborious

living; it was a surviving remnant of his intense religious life as

a very young boy. In such moments his mind had admitted the idea of

marriage. In broad day, the thought became abhorrent. And in all the

broad days that had preceded this one, his fears also had melted with

the sun; but now they would not melt.... He knew perfectly well that he

would urge marriage upon Ellen, sincerely in a fashion. He knew also

that she would flatly refuse, and that he would accept her refusal with

relief.

Yet what was she to do? He counted on no sympathy from the prudish

Meadowburns. They would loudly invoke the names of their young

daughters and fly from the scene. The family physician, Schottman,

a tolerant German-born physician of real ability, had taken an odd

sort of liking to Ellen and never visited the house without having a

talk with her wherever he happened to find her at work. He had been

their hope in earlier discussions. With him, there would be no danger,

while with others--Potter writhed before the spectres of horrible

little operating rooms, of death in agony, of murder and police and

squint-eyed judges with nose-glasses. But Ellen’s letter had settled

Schottman.

It was past noon before he realized it, and the golf links were

becoming populated by a few straggling faculty men with clubs. He

aimed for an outlying street which led into town and the act of motion

toward a definite objective revived his spirits, which had been sinking

hopelessly into the quicksand of despair. He went to the bank and drew

out all of his small balance but a dollar. The previous day his check

had come and he had paid his scot for October at the fraternity house.

It was rare that his remittances from home exceeded forty dollars a

month. He converted the larger part of the sum he withdrew into a

money order at the Post Office and mailed it to Ellen, with a short

note in which he told her he would see her somehow before long, and if

possible to do nothing until then.

“Money,” he thought, as he stepped out of the Post Office, “if one

just had enough money one could fix up anything!”--an idea that had

come to him before in many a tight place and morning after. He fell to

day-dreaming about what he would do for Ellen if he had money, money in

his hand, money in plenty.

The mailing of the letter had brought a sudden release to his feelings.

It would cheer her up to hear from him.

In this state he responded more willingly to passing acquaintances,

did not avoid the livery stable man and the candy man, and the dozen

other town bodies who were always about. Catastrophes, he reflected,

had their good points. They furnished a reason for cutting classes and

loafing on a beautiful Fall day. He was tempted for a moment to call on

Roget, who lived, as no one but he would have lived, on the native side

of Broadway, a short distance off. But he decided against it. He would

be pressed to talk about his trouble and that he had resolved not to do

except in the worst extremity, and certainly not to Roget.

The decision to avoid Emmet left him no alternative, and he drifted

into Steve Ball’s bar. Those dark, quiet, wet-smelling precincts were

deserted at that hour, so far as his familiars were concerned. He was

glad they were. It would not have been easy to conceal the turmoil

within him, if forced into an extended conversation. He would take a

drink or two, slowly, he concluded, go home and try to forget the whole

thing, and to-morrow with a hard head, he would work out a plan of

action.

Frank, the experienced bar man, wiped up the much scarred and

initialled table of the private room, and hovered in the doorway with a

friendly smile.

“This is the sort of companionship a fellow needs in my fix,” thought

Potter. “Nothing like it. A good barkeep.”

Frank, however, soon proved too busy to talk, and Potter was left to

his own thoughts. The effect which liquor usually had on him was to

produce three distinct stages. It plunged him first into a dreamy and

altogether pleasant condition, in which his lot appeared the rosiest

in the world, and he radiated good will on all sides. This led to

melancholy and a gradual feeling of boredom with everything, aggravated

by a tendency to analyze his wrongs and conduct long, unspoken

conversations about them with the persons presumed to be responsible

for wronging him. Then followed a feverish desire for physical motion,

and the making of quick decisions, obeyed on the instant, however

ill-advised.

The first state of high spirits brought him agreeably to six o’clock

when he left Steve Ball’s for fear of encountering early drinkers

from the Campus. He was hungry and bolted sandwiches and coffee in a

nameless lunch-wagon around the corner. He found himself after that

in the “Bucket of Blood.” Night had fallen; the place was unspeakably

sordid with its dim lamps and shuffling bums, and his problem once more

assumed proportions that harried him. He began to assail Ellen for ever

having permitted the intimacy to start. Then he quickly reacted from

that attack. A profound, overwhelming wave of self-abasement engulfed

him. If there was suffering to be done poor Ellen would endure all of

it. She had been his victim and had given him what she had to give, in

all things. Had their ages been precisely reversed, he could not have

been more responsible.

As he ordered another bottle of beer, he became acutely conscious that

his money was disappearing. There was no more to be had, certainly for

several days. Mails had to take their time, even if there was anything

to hope for from them. This sense of impecuniousness made his mind veer

to another complicated grievance. In one of the banks at home, held for

his use at majority, lay what now seemed an incredible sum of money,

from his grandmother’s estate. He had twice entreated his father to

allow him to draw modestly on it. His father had not refused in either

case, but had probed good-naturedly into his reasons for desiring it.

But why, thought the boy, should his father have to know his private

business? How could his father understand his peculiar needs? These

questions had rankled time and again.

And now, he reflected bitterly, now that the trust fund might be the

means of lightening a burden that would follow him all his life, it

would be the same old story with his father. He would have to make a

full confession of the case. But he could not do this. How could he

tell his father such a yarn? Weren’t his whole family concerned as much

as he? Was there not a question of blood relationship involving them?

Common delicacy and loyal feeling toward them demanded that he conceal

the truth, unless he took the burden upon himself and parted with them

completely. He had thought all this out before and settled it. There

was nothing he could say to his father.

These reflections, repeated over and over again, embroidered upon,

attacked at every angle, adorned with many duplications of the same

phrases, led nowhere. The bill at the “Bucket of Blood” had to be paid,

and nothing was left to do but to get up and go. Well, well, he felt

like moving anyhow. If only there were anything he could do now, right

now, it would be a relief. He started walking rapidly uptown toward the

fraternity house. Then at the corner where Broadway turned into his

own street he stopped abruptly.

“What a fool!” he muttered aloud. “What a triple-plated iron-head! Why

did I send that money to Ellen? Why didn’t I go myself?” He stopped and

began to curse his idiocy with all the eloquence and thoroughness of

which he was capable.

Then he reflected, again aloud: “But is it too late? The jerk-water

goes over to Jamestown in half an hour. I could make it to Jamestown.

But I haven’t enough money to go all the way. Well, I’ve got enough to

go to Jamestown.”

The thought of bluffing his way on the through train with a promise to

pay at the other end rushed into his mind. His name, his identification

by letters in his pocket, his father’s acquaintance with railroad

officials, these might carry him through. He turned and started toward

the station.

“If I can get home I can raise that money. I can raise it on a note. I

can get some Jew like Stern to shave the note. Or maybe I can get it

from Colonel Cobb. I’ll bet Colonel Cobb would let me have it.”

This line of reasoning had to be exhausted with the usual number of

variations and redundancies as he sat in the little branch train of

two cars, with its dusty, worn plush seats, its threadbare blue

trainmen ambling back and forth, and its scattering of anonymous,

unimportant-looking passengers. Fortunately nobody was leaving town

that he knew. That was to be expected six weeks after the opening of

term. For the first time, the thought struck him that he himself was

bolting, perhaps for several days, without the formality of an excuse

from the Dean, without even notifying the men at the house. Ordinarily

this would have been a serious infraction of the rules, punishable by

suspension.

“I can’t help it,” he thought, “I’ve _got_ to go. If they knew why I

guess they’d think so.”

This, however, upon reflection, sounded illogical and inadequate.

The danger of trouble with the authorities would not down so easily.

There’d be mystery in his disappearance, a search would be made for him

in the morning, and a wire probably sent to his folks. A moment later

he had the solution. How easy! He could fix that up by telephoning the

fraternity from Jamestown. It would cost him a quarter and he’d still

have more than a dollar left. He would get old Ed Taylor to see the

Dean to-morrow. Some lie would do. Ed could turn the Dean around his

finger. Maybe he could keep the whole thing from his father. He could,

if he slipped back to town on the next night’s train. If his father got

hold of it, he’d be puzzled, want to know things, and this was no time

to be submitted to questioning of any kind.

“At the same time,” he pursued, “I’d better not try the through train.

Fellows have been pinched for it. They might take me off the train at

Fayette, and then, oh, my God....”

A picture rose before him of a night in the county jail, of wiring home

for money to pay his fine, of his father coming to Fayette, of scandal

untold and unending, and no help to Ellen whatever. Rather the reverse,

because he would be in disgrace and his hands, therefore, completely

tied for some time to come.

“No, I can’t try the through train. Too big a chance. I wonder how

about the freight. Hell, plenty of other fellows have done that, with

no worse results than a swipe on the ear or a bawling out. Besides I’ve

got a little money. Brakies are all right.”

The wind at that moment coming through the leaky train was devilishly

sharp, and he had no overcoat, nothing but his fall-weight suit. It

would be still colder later, especially on an unprotected freight car

roof, which was the only place he could think of to ride.

“Can’t help it,” he concluded. “It’s got to be the freight. I can get

a half pint of rot gut at Jamestown. Keep me warm enough. It’s just a

nice little ride in the open air.”

An hour later, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his

bottle in his breast pocket, Potter stepped from the smoke-draped,

kerosene-smelling barroom of the little junction town. By buying

a round of beer for two loafers he had obtained the advice and

information he wanted. The freight train now resting on tracks just

back of those on which the through train was soon expected would pull

out for his destination about ten-thirty. He crept down perhaps a half

a dozen cars from the station and found himself practically in open

country. An overgrown fence lay twenty feet to the side of one of the

big, dirty-looking red cars. He sat down in the shadow of the fence to

wait, listening to the frogs in the dim, unwelcoming marshes behind him.

Once as he sat there a man ran along the top of the train from the

caboose far off at the end of the line of cars and came back. Once just

a little before the scheduled hour, he heard cinders being crunched

under foot in the direction of the engine. The flashing rays of a

lantern, swung from an invisible shoulder, played under the cars and

the figure carrying it passed by hurriedly on the other side. At every

coupling the lantern was swung up between the cars. Osprey knew now why

the roustabouts had told him to lie low and keep away from the train

while it was still.

“Wait ’til she gives her first jerk, then grab her and climb like yer

momma was after you.”

Whistles shrieked and soon a long, noisy shiver travelled down the

length of the cars. Potter jumped for the iron treads closest to him.

The train was moving off and he with it. Once on top of the car, he

laid full length, making himself as small as possible on the side of

the roof farthest from the station, until it should be passed. Beyond

the little town he breathed freely, took a comfortable seat on the flat

boardway in the centre with his legs dangling over the car’s end, and

gripped the rusty steel shaft of the brake.

V

At first he did not mind the bumping, nor the penetrating wind, nor

the coldness of the metal on his palms. The occasional showers of

cinders were annoying, and this grew worse as the train increased its

speed. Nevertheless, he was exhilarated; the motionless friendly stars

overhead, the sense of succeeding in a wild and unreasonable adventure

gave him courage and high spirits. He only had to stand it for a few

hours and a few hours of discomfort never had killed anybody.

Misgivings crept over him gradually. His seat was being severely

lambasted by the bumping. It seemed incredible, in a way, how it

kept up and the violence of it. The steel bar to which he held grew

increasingly cold, yet he realized that come what may he would have

to cling to it or stand a chance of falling. The wind became more

biting and between it and the bar his fingers were stiffening fast. The

cinders, stinging his face with only brief cessations, might soon be

unendurable.

However, he argued, he could bear all these for some time, and when

he couldn’t bear them any longer, he could do something else, shift

his position. He deliberately decided to stand his present one as long

as he could, then change and stand the next one as long as he could.

In that way each new position would be so much the greater relief. He

would see the night through. A long pull at the flask revived him.

“I’ll get my second wind pretty soon,” he thought, “and it won’t be so

bad. That flask was an inspiration.”

The night wore on and Potter resorted to first one expedient and

then another. He put his right side to the wind and then his left,

thus partly protecting his face from the cinders. He wrapped

handkerchiefs--fortunately he had two--around his hands. It was no

good trying to get a decent hold of his board seat. He didn’t feel

secure that way. These makeshifts did not help his sore buttocks, which

were being hammered to insensibility, nor keep off the cold which was

creeping over his whole body, but they lessened the number of his pains.

Finally he could endure sitting no longer. He laid down first on one

side, then on the other, on his belly, and even for a while on his

back. He threw his arms around the brake shaft and doubled his body

into a bouncing, shaken ball, in order to keep the cold out of his

vitals. At the moment when he thought he was beginning to see the end

of his endurance the train ambled benevolently to a stop. He breathed a

sigh of thanks and drank.

They were on a siding. As the train continued still, for five minutes,

for ten minutes, a fresh fear assailed him. He had forgotten about the

train crew. The fellow at Jamestown had told him to get off and hide

whenever the train stopped.

“You got to do that if yer ridin’ in sight,” he said. Indeed, had the

man been a professional tramp instead of a village lounger, he would

have scouted the whole idea of riding on top.

But by this time Potter was so stiff and sore in every muscle that he

feared being unable to climb back while the train was in motion. The

relief from the rushing wind and bumping and cinders was too much. It

was too sweet to sit there and recover some use of his limbs, to feel

the warm blood in him once more for a brief spell. If he could only

smoke or get up and walk about--but that would be dangerously courting

attention. He had gone this far, and he would finish it; there was no

sense in taking more chances than were necessary.

It was unearthly still. Not a living thing seemed to stir for miles

about, over the uninterrupted fields of stubble just visible in the

starlight. Even the frogs were silent. Against the sky far off he saw

the silhouette of a group of buildings and trees, but they seemed

like apparitions in a dream. On the train he was in a separate world,

cut off from the other, a lonely world consisting of himself and his

thoughts. The long, tapering string of dark cars ahead struck him like

a procession of elephants asleep. They were impersonal and cruel, but

alive; and presently would begin to sway and lumber frightfully through

the murk. With their stopping his life, it seemed, had stopped.

Time went on. They had been there on the siding for fifteen, perhaps

twenty minutes. Suddenly he was conscious of a low, blurred humming

which rose from the main tracks alongside, and a succession of whistle

blasts at a great distance broke the monotony. The buzz of the rails

grew louder and the whistles shrieked again. His tussle with discomfort

was about to begin once more, but he felt infinitely rested and

refreshed. He sat up straight and peered down the tracks for the sight

of a headlight.

“Hullo!”

The head and shoulders of a man appeared over the top of the car,

followed by a short, wiry body.

“What the hell’s this? How’d you get here?”

“I’ve got to get to Mississippi City, to-night. I’m from the University

up at Athens.”

“Don’t care where yer from. This here ain’t no place fer you.”

“Say, old man, you’re not goin’ to put me off now, are you?”

“H’m.” The man leaned over and inspected him familiarly.

“Yeh, you don’t look much like a bum. University up at Athens, eh?

I’ve heard some about you God damn loafers, raisin’ hell on trains. Why

the Christ can’t you ride in the cars where you belong?”

“Didn’t have the price.”

“No. An’ you think this railroad’s a charity institootion?”

“Say,” pleaded Potter, “honest, this is a life and death matter. It’d

be a dirty trick to put a fellow off. Le’ me go the rest of the way, go

on.”

The brakeman was obviously relenting. He gazed at Potter’s huddled,

unhappy looking figure while the passenger train, like a streak of

exploding lights on a whirling black band, shot deafeningly by.

“How far are we, anyway?” asked Potter. “Must be more than half way.”

The brakeman chuckled.

“We ain’t even a third of the way yet. Guess you’ve been plenty cold up

here.”

The first sentence fell heavily upon Potter’s spirits.

“Gee, seems longer’n that,” he said, as casually as he could manage.

“Got on at Jamestown, did you?”

“Yes.”

“You got any money?”

“A little,” said Potter eagerly. “I’ll give you all I’ve got.”

He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew it forth with a collection

of small change.

“There,” he said, counting it over. “It’s seventy-five cents.”

The brakeman took it.

“That all you got, honest to God?”

“Every cent. I can get more at Mississippi City, though. You going to

be there a few hours?”

“Huh,” replied the other, “guess you’ll need breakfast by the time you

get in. Ain’t much used to this kind o’ business, eh? Well, here’s

coffee money.” He handed back a dime.

“Have a drink, old man?” asked Potter, almost jovially, pulling out his

bottle with a distinct feeling of pride.

“Sure.”

The man took a long pull at the depleted flask and returned it almost

empty.

“Ach,” he grunted appreciatively. “That’s red eye! Bet you were drunk,

boy, an’ thought ridin’ free was a picnic. Well, better come out o’

this and hustle up the track. They’s an empty box car about halfway up.

You’ll see it ’cause one door’s open. An’ you’re God damn lucky, son.

You’d just naturally a froze a lung off up here an’ maybe fell off an’

got winged. Shake a leg. Just time to make it. An’ hop off well outside

the yards when we get to town in the mornin’. Understand? If you don’t

you may see the judge.”

Before he had finished speaking Potter was stumbling frantically

along the cinder track-side. In one end of the empty car was a little

dirty straw and excelsior. Two minutes later he was asleep, jolting

happily along the streets of paradise in a royal coach. An old man in

a brakeman’s cap whom he took to be the king of the country sat beside

him....

A sudden, wrenching jolt and the screaming of brakes woke him. Daylight

filled the car, and in a moment he was out on his feet, recognizing

the familiar outskirts of his native city. He plunged into the park,

striding vigorously along over new-fallen crisp leaves, warming his

body, which had been chilled through during his sleep, even in that

protected corner. The woods were gay with the last of the autumn

colour; the morning was dewy and mysterious under long corridors of

trees. His day’s job seemed easy before him, such as it was, and beyond

that he was too happy and thankful to speculate. Quite a trip, he

thought, thoroughly surprised that he had attempted it and come through

all right.

“If I hadn’t got potty, I wouldn’t be here,” he told himself,

justifying thereby volumes of alcoholic adventures past and to come.

He looked down at his hands, his trousers, his shirt. He was filthy.

It would never do to appear before Colonel Cobb with the grime of a

hundred and forty miles of rough travel clinging to him. But this was

the home town, good old home town! and he could get breakfast, new

linen and a good wash without the outlay of a cent. He took the car

downtown and went first to a store, then to a hotel. By ten o’clock he

was breakfasting sumptuously and appeared fairly respectable.

Heretofore, Colonel Cobb had seemed in Potter’s mind a sort of complete

symbol of good fellowship. The all-weather friend of his father for

thirty years, Potter had heard everything there was to know about him

that could with discretion be told. He was the old-fashioned type of

publicity man, doing business largely through the medium of champagne

and dinners. Open-handedness and good nature were traits which a half

century of tradition had associated with his name.

A much older man than Potter’s father, Cobb wore a beard which was

nearly white, but he was one of those veterans to whom a beard imparted

an air of boldness and adventure rather than of piety or age. His

costume was youngish, smart-looking, but deeply wrinkled by lounging

ease. He greeted the young man cordially in his somewhat unpretentious

and disorderly office and indicated an upholstered arm chair to him.

Potter sank into it and the old man leaned back in his own to survey

him.

“Well,” he said, “Johnny’s boys are growing up. Let’s see, are you the

second or the third?”

“Third, Colonel.”

“I know your brother Kirk better’n I do the rest of you. I see a good

deal of him up at the Mercantile Club. Kirk’s a good boy and looks to

me like he’s goin’ to make his Dad proud. You ain’t old enough to drink

whiskey, are you? I guess not this time of the morning, anyway. Well,

have a cigar.”

He thrust out a spacious box.

“Colonel,” said Potter, “you may be surprised at what I’m here for. I’m

in a kind of a fix, a bad fix, to tell the truth, and I need money.

I’ve got twenty-eight hundred in the National Trust but I can’t draw

on it for two years, without my father’s consent. I want to get two

hundred and fifty dollars on a note for that length of time.”

As he mentioned the amount it seemed so enormous to Potter that he felt

a little absurd. He had never handled more than fifty dollars at a time

in his life.

“I see. H’m.”

The older man was smoking a well-used meerschaum and took a few puffs

on it in silence, looking at Potter quickly once or twice with a more

penetrating and appraising glance than at first. The latter noticed, in

spite of the Colonel’s genial expression, that his eyes, in reflection,

became a very cold and impersonal grey.

“H’m, that’s bad,” said the Colonel. “You see, your pa and me are

old pals. Now, why don’t you go over and tell him what the trouble

is? There’s nothin’ in the world you could tell John Osprey that he

wouldn’t understand. There ain’t a thing, son.”

“I think there is, Colonel,” said Potter gravely.

“Some girl trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I’d say you’re wrong. I’d say he’d be just the kind of man to

take that kind of a story to. Your old man has got nothing to learn

about human nature, son.”

Potter felt the moment had come for fuller confidence if he hoped to

succeed. He had anticipated this objection and intended to combat it by

laying stress on his own reasons for not wishing to tell his father.

These he felt would make a good impression upon any man. He launched

into the broad outlines of his story. Colonel Cobb listened with

seriousness and attention until he had finished. When Potter mentioned

the manner in which he had come to town that morning his eye lighted up

with a spark of the warmth that had marked his first reception.

“H’m,” he chuckled. “I like that. Yep, I used to hop those blamed

things myself. Then they got me to workin’ for ’em, and since then I’ve

had to ride in style--but I don’t enjoy it as much.”

He ruminated on in silence, puffing at the pipe held in one hand

and combing his beard downward with the other, at every stroke or so

stopping to scratch the tip of his thrust out chin, and drawing down

his lower lip somewhat in the manner of a bitted horse. Potter noticed

the long, blackened roots of his teeth, his puffy, reddish skin, and

the tiny network of blood vessels and wrinkles that crisscrossed his

cheeks around the eyes and nose. He felt a sudden disgust for life,

for the rotten universe and for his own silly predicament. He grew

restless, wishing for a decision one way or the other, scarcely caring

which it should be.

“You’re at college, you said?” asked the Colonel.

“Yes, State University. Two years.”

“How are you doin’ up there in your studies?”

“Well, a little better than the average, Colonel, right along,” said

Potter, smiling. It was somewhat less than the truth, yet he regretted

the words immediately, as a boast. But the Colonel did not mind.

“That’s good,” he said, heartily.

He lurched forward in his big leather swivel chair and laid down his

pipe.

“The way I figure it out is this,” he said. “If you know that there’s

two of us to get into trouble over this money, instead of one, you

maybe will be more careful not to do the wrong thing with it, so it

will get out. As for what’s the wrong thing I leave that to you. I’m

goin’ to take a chance on John Osprey’s skinnin’ me alive if he hears

about this transaction, and I guess there ain’t much likelihood of his

hearin’ about it from you or me, is there?”

He ponderously drew out a long black check-book, inked the pen and

looked at it, inked it again and wrote. Potter received the slip of

paper with its figures written in a big, round buccaneer’s Spencerian.

His fingers trembled in spite of himself.

“But, Colonel,” he began, suddenly feeling a sense of guilt.

“I don’t want a note,” interrupted Cobb, lifting his rotund body by the

arms of his chair. “The check’s enough. If you don’t pay me, I’ll send

it around to you some day, when you’re rich, and you can light your

cigar with it or pay, just the way you please. It’s made out to cash,

so’s you won’t have any trouble gettin’ the money, but you just write

your name along the back when you get to the bank. Good luck, son.”

With the money actually in his pocket, Potter’s despondency abruptly

returned. After all, what had he accomplished? The money was useless so

far as restoring Ellen to her normal self was concerned. Much more--a

simply unrealizable sum--would be needed to enable her to go away in

peace and have her child with dignity and comfort. At best, this would

only pay the price of a crime....

He found her in much the same mood as his own, tired and resigned.

She did not complain or accuse any one at all. But she seemed aching

with dull resentment at the inevitable, friendless future, hating

it and fearing it. She told him directly that she was not to have

an operation. Dr. Schottman had warned that in her case it meant an

exceptional risk. Her health was not good and having the baby would put

her in fine shape.... Potter felt the sting of a lash in every word she

uttered. He burst out at last.

“Ellen, you must marry me. You must. There’s no other way out.”

She did not laugh at him, but she simply refused to heed him. If she

had consented he would have felt in that moment infinitely happier;

and for even a ray of light in his present darkness, he would have

abandoned a great many of the future’s promises.

“But what will you do?”

“Dr. Schottman has arranged everything for me. He’s to take me to a

hospital in a few weeks. I could wait a month or two longer, I suppose,

without their knowing it, but I might as well go. At the hospital I’ll

have to work, until my time. Then he’s fixed it with some people for me

to stay. They won’t mind anything. He’s told them all about me. They’re

patients of his, nice people and well off. The Meadowburns will never

know anything, they’ll never see me again. Not even the doctor knows

about you and nobody will if you keep still. I’m just to walk out and

disappear.”

Potter stumbled down the stairway of the pretentious new Meadowburn

house in a daze of misery and meanness. Nightfall found him lying face

downward in the dried leaves of the park where the woods were thickest.

He might have built his house there and never have been discovered for

a generation. He might have become like “Clothes-pole Tom,” a hermit

hero of his childhood, and sold gopher skins for a living. Some such

method of losing himself would have been sweet....

But youth walks forward even though it harbours corroding secrets.

He could not escape the vision of Ellen in a hospital uniform, worn

and broken-spirited, carrying heavy buckets of dirty water and

swabbing down floors with a mop. He went back to college, lifeless

and desperate, whipping himself into work with torturing thoughts. By

January even his family saw something was wrong, and his father, who

saw farthest, told him to make his own plans, to leave school and go

where he liked. After a week of dismal idleness at home there followed

a telegraphic correspondence with Roget. The two started off together

to New York. Three years later, crossing the Atlantic to Paris, Osprey

still had not returned to his native city, and he repeated his oath

never to go back there again if it could be avoided.