THE COLONEL'S CONFESSION.
Garrison did not sleep that night. His position was clearly credited
and debited in the ledger of life. He saw it; saw that the balance was
against him. He must go--but he could not, would not. He decided to take
the cowardly, half-way measure. He had not the courage for renunciation.
He would stay until this pot of contumacious fact came to the boil,
overflowed, and scalded him out.
He was not afraid of the eminent Mr. Snark. Possession is in
reality ten-tenths of the law. The lawyer had cleverly proven
his--Garrison's--claim. He would be still more clever if he could
disprove it. A lie can never be branded truth by a liar. How could
he disprove it? How could his shoddy word weigh against Garrison's,
fashioned from the whole cloth and with loyalty, love on Garrison's
side?
No, the letter was only a bluff. Snark would not run the risk of
publicly smirching himself--for who would believe his protestations of
innocency?--losing his license at the bar together with the certainty of
a small fortune, for the sake of over-working a tool that might snap in
his hand or cut both ways. So Garrison decided to disregard the letter.
But with Waterbury it was a different proposition. Garrison was unaware
what his own relations had been with his former owner, but even if they
had been the most cordial, which from Major Calvert's accounts they had
not been, that fact would not prevent Waterbury divulging the rank fraud
Garrison was perpetrating.
The race-track annual had said Billy Garrison had followed the ponies
since boyhood. Waterbury would know his ancestry, if any one would.
It was only a matter of time until exposure came, but still Garrison
determined to procrastinate as long as possible. He clung fiercely,
with the fierce tenacity of despair, to his present life. He could not
renounce it all--not yet.
Two hopes, secreted in his inner consciousness, supported indecision.
One: Perhaps Waterbury might not recognize him, or perhaps he could
safely keep out of his way. The second: Perhaps he himself was not Billy
Garrison at all; for coincidence only said that he was, and a very
small modicum of coincidence at that. This fact, if true, would cry his
present panic groundless.
On the head of conscience, Garrison did not touch. He smothered it. All
that he forced himself to sense was that he was “living like a white man
for once”; loving as he never thought he could love.
The reverse, unsightly side of the picture he would not so much as
glance at. Time enough when he was again flung out on that merciless,
unrecognizing world he had come to loathe; loathe and dread. When that
time came it would taste exceeding bitter in his mouth. All the more
reason, then, to let the present furnish sweet food for retrospect; food
that would offset the aloes of retribution. Thus Garrison philosophized.
And, though but vaguely aware of the fact, this philosophy of
procrastination (but another form of selfishness) was the spawn of
a supposition; the supposition that his love for Sue Desha was not
returned; that it was hopeless, absurd. He was not injuring her. He was
the moth, she the flame. He did not realize that the moth can extinguish
the candle.
He had learned some of life's lessons, though the most difficult had
been forgotten, but he had yet to understand the mighty force of love;
that it contains no stagnant quality. Love, reciprocal love, uplifts.
But there must be that reciprocal condition to cling to. For love is
not selfishness on a grand scale, but a glorified pride. And the fine
differentiation between these two words is the line separating the love
that fouls from the love that cleanses.
And even as Garrison was fighting out the night with his sleepless
thoughts, Sue Desha was in the same restless condition. Mr. Waterbury
had arrived. His generous snores could be heard stalking down the
corridor from the guest-chamber. He was of the abdominal variety of the
animal species, eating and sleeping his way through life, oblivious of
all obstacles.
Waterbury's ancestry was open to doubt. It was very vague; as vague as
his features. It could not be said that he was brought up by his hair
because he hadn't any to speak of. But the golden flood of money he
commanded could not wash out certain gutter marks in his speech, person,
and manner. That such an inmate should eat above the salt in Colonel
Desha's home was a painful acknowledgment of the weight of necessity.
What the necessity was, Sue sensed but vaguely. It was there,
nevertheless, almost amounting to an obsession. For when the Desha and
Waterbury type commingle there is but the one interpretation. Need
of money or clemency in the one case; need of social introduction or
elevation through kinship in the other.
The latter was Waterbury's case. But he also loved Sue--in his own way.
He had met her first at the Carter Handicap, and, as he confided
to himself: “She was a spanking filly, of good stock, and with good
straight legs.”
His sincere desire to “butt into the Desha family” he kept for the
moment to himself. But as a preliminary maneuver he had intimated that
a visit to the Desha home would not come in amiss. And the old colonel,
for reasons he knew and Waterbury knew, thought it would be wisest to
accede.
Perhaps now the colonel was considering those reasons. His room was next
that of his daughter, and in her listening wakefulness she had heard him
turn restlessly in bed. Insomnia loves company as does misery. Presently
the colonel arose, and the strong smell of Virginia tobacco and the
monotonous pad, pad of list slippers made themselves apparent.
Sue threw on a dressing-gown and entered her father's room. He was in a
light green bathrobe, his white hair tousled like sea-foam as he passed
and repassed his gaunt fingers through it.
“I can't sleep,” said the girl simply. She cuddled in a big armchair,
her feet tucked under her.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “I can't, either,” he said, and laughed
a little, as if incapable of understanding the reason. “I think late
eating doesn't agree with me. It must have been the deviled crab.”
“Mr. Waterbury?” suggested Sue.
“Eh?” Then Colonel Desha frowned, coughed, and finally laughed. “Still a
child, I see,” he added, with a deprecating shake of the head. “Will you
ever grow up?”
“Yes--when you recognize that I have.” She pressed her cheek against the
hand on her shoulder.
Sue practically managed the entire house, looking after the servants,
expenses, and all, but the colonel always referred to her as “my little
girl.” He was under the amiable delusion that time had left her at the
ten-mile mark, never to return.
This was one of but many defects in his vision. He was oblivious of
materialistic facts. He was innocent of the ways of finance. He had come
of a prodigal race of spenders, not accumulators. Away back somewhere
in the line there must have existed what New Englanders term a “good
provider,” but that virtue had not descended from father to son. The
original vast Desha estates decreased with every generation, seldom a
descendant making even a spasmodic effort to replenish them. There was
always a mortgage or sale in progress. Sometimes a lucrative as well as
love-marriage temporarily increased the primal funds, but more often the
opposite was the case.
The Deshas, like all true Southerners, believed that love was the only
excuse for marriage; just as most Northerners believe that labor is the
only excuse for living. And so the colonel, with no business incentive,
acumen, or adaptability, and with the inherited handicap of a luxurious
living standard, made a brave onslaught on his patrimony.
What the original estate was, or to what extent the colonel had
encroached upon it, Sue never rightly knew. She had been brought up
in the old faith that a Southerner is lord of the soil, but as she
developed, the fact was forced home upon her that her father was not
materialistic, and that ways and means were.
Twice yearly their Kentucky estate yielded an income. As soon as she
understood affairs, Sue took a stand which could not be shaken, even if
the easy-going mooning colonel had exerted himself to that extent. She
insisted upon using one-half the yearly income for household expenses;
the other the colonel could fritter away as he chose upon his
racing-stable and his secondary hobby--an utterly absurd stamp
collection.
Only each household knows how it meets the necessity of living. It is
generally the mother and daughter, if there be one, who comprise the
inner finance committee. Men are only Napoleons of finance when the
market is strong and steady. When it becomes panicky and fluctuates and
resolves itself into small unheroic deals, woman gets the job. For the
world is principally a place where men work for the pleasures and
woman has to cringe for the scraps. It may seem unchivalrous, but true
nevertheless.
Only Sue knew how she compelled one dollar to bravely do the duty of
two. Appearances are never so deceitful as in the household where want
is apparently scorned. Sue was of the breed who, if necessary, could
raise absolute pauperism to the peerage. And if ever a month came in
which she would lie awake nights, developing the further elasticity of
currency, certainly her neighbors knew aught of it, and her father least
of all.
The colonel recommenced his pacing. Sue, hands clasped around knees,
watched him with steady, unwinking eyes.
“It's not the deviled crab, daddy,” she said quietly, at length. “It's
something else. 'Fess up. You're in trouble. I feel it. Sit down there
and let me go halves on it. Sit down.”
Colonel Desha vaguely passed a hand through his hair, then, mechanically
yielding to the superior strength and self-control of his daughter,
eased himself into an opposite armchair.
“Oh, no, you're quite wrong, quite wrong,” he reiterated absently. “I'm
only tired. Only tired, girlie. That's all. Been very busy, you know.”
And he ran on feverishly, talking about Waterbury, weights, jockeys,
mounts--all the jargon of the turf. The dam of his mind had given way,
and a flood of thoughts, hopes, fears came rioting forth unchecked,
unthinkingly.
His eyes were vacant, a frown dividing his white brows, the thin hand on
the table closing and relaxing. He was not talking to his daughter, but
to his conscience. It was the old threadbare, tattered tale--spawn of
the Goddess fortune; a thing of misbegotten hopes and desires.
The colonel, swollen with the winning of the Carter Handicap, had
conceived the idea that he was possessor of a God-given knowledge of the
“game.” And there had been many to sustain that belief. Now, the colonel
might know a horse, but he did not know the law of averages, of chance,
nor did he even know how his fellow man's heart is fashioned. Nor that
track fortunes are only made by bookies or exceptionally wealthy or
brainy owners; that a plunger comes out on top once in a million times.
That the track, to live, must bleed “suckers” by the thousand, and that
he, Colonel Desha, was one of the bled.
He was on the wrong side of the table. The Metropolitan, Brooklyn,
Suburban, Brighton, Futurity, and a few minor meets served to swamp
the colonel. What Waterbury had to do with the case was not clear. The
colonel had taken his advice time and time again only to lose. But the
Kentucky estate had been sold, and Mr. Waterbury held the mortgage of
the Desha home. And then, his mind emptied of its poison, the colonel
slowly came to himself.
“What--what have I been saying?” he cried tensely. He attempted a laugh,
a denial; caught his daughter's eyes, looked into them, and then buried
his face in his quivering hands.
Sue knelt down and raised his head.
“Daddy, is that--all?” she asked steadily.
He did not answer. Then, man as he was, the blood came sweeping to face
and neck.
“I mean,” added the girl quietly, her eyes, steady but very kind,
holding his, “I had word from the National this morning saying that our
account, the--the balance, was overdrawn--”
“Yes--I drew against it,” whispered Colonel Desha. He would not meet
her eyes; he who had looked every man in the face. The fire caught him
again. “I had to, girlie, I had to,” he cried over and over again. “I
intended telling you. We'll make it up a hundred times over. It was my
only chance. It's all up on the books--up on The Rogue. He'll win the
Carter as sure as there's a God in heaven. It's a ten-thousand stake,
and I've had twenty on him--the balance--your balance, girlie. I can pay
off Waterbury--” The fire died away as quickly. Somehow in the stillness
of the room, against the look in the girl's eyes, words seemed so
pitifully futile, so blatant, so utterly trivial.
Sue's face was averted, eyes on floor, hands tensely clasping those of
her father. Absolute stillness held the room. The colonel was staring at
the girl's bent head.
“It's--it's all right, girlie. All right, don't fret,” he murmured
thickly. “The Rogue will win--bound to win. You don't understand--you're
only a girl--only a child----”
“Of course, Daddy,” agreed Sue slowly, wide-eyed. “I'm only a child. I
don't understand.”
But she understood more than her father. She was thinking of Billy
Garrison.