BURTON'S LAST APPEARANCE AS AN AMBASSADOR
When Burton parted from Ralston at the latter's office, the day was
beginning to break. He went to his hotel, where only a surprised and
solitary watchman saw him enter. He walked up to the second floor
instead of taking the elevator, and went at once to his room. To his
surprise, the door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open,--and faced
Mrs. Bussey.
"How did you get into my room?" he demanded in his first surprise.
She did not answer that,--but no other answer than the ring of
chambermaid's keys in her hand was necessary. She cowered away from
him in the blinking timidity that she had always shown, and then she
suddenly bristled up like a wrathful squirrel.
"What have you done with Ben?"
"Did you come here to look for him?"
"He should be home before this! Have they found him out? Have they
found him out?"
"Yes, they have found him out. They have taken him to the police
station." He spoke as gently as possible. Nothing could make the facts
less than tragic to her, poor thing.
She wrung her hands. "I wish you had never come here! It would have
been all right if you had never come!"
Burton could not blame her for her point of view, since wiser
philosophers than she had held before this that right and wrong are
merely a way of looking at things. Instead, he asked abruptly:
"What made you take that letter out of my room?"
She stopped her whimpering cry, and with a look of terror darted
suddenly past Burton, who did not try to check her, and so out of the
room.
So that matter was also explained. She it was who had brought him that
note of threat, and afterwards had abstracted it from his room. She
probably helped the maids at times, and so had the pass-keys to the
rooms, and she was a sufficiently familiar figure to excite no comment
by her comings and goings. The whole thing had been a combination of
cunning and chance, and Mrs. Bussey's low mentality and Ben's insane
shrewdness might have kept the whole town in hot water for years
longer if Burton had not come upon the scene. The police had been too
committed to the Henry Underwood theory to see anything else, until it
was actually forced upon them.
A soldier forgets his personal wound in the heat of battle, but when
the excitement is past, the smart comes again to his consciousness. As
Burton's mind calmed from the excitement of the night, he grew more
and more vividly conscious of the exceedingly disagreeable task yet
before him,--to give Miss Underwood an account of Mrs. Overman's visit
yesterday. It was so inexpressibly irksome a commission that he was
almost tempted to repeat Mrs. Bussey's wail. Why had he ever come? Now
that the condition which she had set had been fulfilled, she would of
course expect a certain urgency on his part for her promise. To tell
her that his principal had reconsidered the matter and would not ask
anything further at her hands was so near an insult, under all the
circumstances, that in his perplexity as to how he was to manage the
matter he almost forgot to be angry.
As he stood by the window waiting and trying to collect his thoughts,
he saw Mr. Hadley walking down the street, producing, quite by
himself, all the effect of a procession. The man was funny, but he
wasn't half a bad sort! Burton hated to think he should never see him
again. He glanced over at the Hadley house, and had a glimpse of Miss
Hadley--no, of Mrs. Henry Underwood, to be sure!--running down the
stairs and past a window. The haste was explained when he saw Henry
himself crossing the street diagonally toward the house. She had seen
him from an upper window! Burton turned from his own window, with a
throb of interest so keen that it surprised him. He wanted
tremendously to know how that experiment was going to work out. Henry
was a babe in the wood,--and the featherheaded Minnie! It would be
mighty interesting to see how they "found" themselves. And the
doctor--and Leslie-- He whistled softly and picked up his hat. One
might as well have the thing over.
The doctor was waiting at the door to receive him, and leaned on his
arm as they walked to the surgery with a weight that Burton felt was
more affection than need of support.
"I should have to read up in Oriental literature to get a vocabulary
to properly express my feelings," he said. "You are the roof-tree of
my house and the door-sill of my granary, the protector of the poor
and the defender of the right. All of which means, in plain English,
that I don't know how to say what I want to."
"I am only too glad that I had a chance to have a hand in the matter,"
said Burton, "but the chances are that the mystery would soon have
been solved, in any event. Ben was getting too confident, and
therefore reckless."
"It was the check you gave him that made him reckless. Of course he is
insane. Such a long, brooding course of revenge for a boyish quarrel
is clear proof of insanity. But the insanity might have remained
latent for years if he had not been crossed. No, you can't get out of
it. You will have to reconcile yourself to being regarded as a
benefactor."
"Well, perhaps I can stand it, mixed in with some other memories I
shall have to take away with me," said Burton grimly. Leslie had not
appeared, and he knew what was yet before him. "I had a bad time
getting away from you yesterday when you wanted to make me stay and
tell you what I was doing. I wasn't sure I was doing anything! I felt
like a boy who is speculating whether the Fourth-of-July mud can which
he is watching is really dead or only sleeping. If my mud can should
go off, I could see that the effect would be wholly satisfying. On the
other hand, it might be a mud can, only that and nothing more, and
nothing could be more humiliating than to be sedulously watching a mud
can which might safely be given to children who cry for it."
The doctor laughed. "The explosion was fully up to the claims of the
prospectus."
"There's another matter that I am still somewhat in doubt about," said
Burton seriously. "That's Selby's death. I said to Miss Underwood
yesterday that I hoped Henry wouldn't shoot Selby when he heard of his
engagement to Miss Hadley. I am fairly certain that Mrs. Bussey heard
me and repeated the remark to Ben. Also, it seems that I precipitated
a quarrel between Ben and Selby about the price of his work. Taking
these things together, how far am I responsible for Selby's death?"
The doctor turned to look at him questioningly. "Don't blame yourself
for things you only touch at that distance," he said abruptly. "If the
little gods use us as instruments to carry out their plans, we have to
take that lot with the rest. Perhaps there is justice in their
schemes. We all have to take our chances in this skirmishing that we
call life,--and death isn't the worst that might happen."
"No," said Burton, with a sigh.
The doctor continued to observe him scrutinizingly, but he spoke
lightly. "Henry gave me a bad quarter of an hour last night," he said,
wrinkling his face in his old, funny grimace. "When I found he had
disappeared I thought for a while that my worst nightmares of these
past years had come true. That brilliant watch of Watson's didn't even
know he was gone. The boy may be--well, a problem, but no one ever
suggested he didn't have spirit enough to climb a tree."
"He will be all right after this. He has been worried by the
surrounding atmosphere of suspicion into appearing as a problem,
that's all. If that little fool--I beg a thousand pardons. That isn't
what I was going to talk about. I intended to say that if your new
daughter-in-law, who is a very beautiful girl with a sweet nature,
will only praise him enough,--and I think that is likely to be her
role,--he will probably be not only happy but good. The poor boy needs
coddling."
The doctor listened with the glimmer of a smile under his seriousness.
"We all do. It is the great human need." He twisted his face up
inscrutably as he added: "I hope you will get your share."
"Thank you," said Burton. His heart sank suddenly. He hadn't wanted to
be reminded of his own needs. "Am I to see Miss Underwood this
morning?" he asked, facing the inevitable.
"She wishes to see you," said the doctor, somewhat hesitatingly, and a
troubled look crossed his face. "She asked me to keep you; I'll tell
her you are here." He rose, polishing his glasses painstakingly. He
adjusted them carefully on his nose, and then looked over them at
Burton. "You saw--I understand that Mrs. Overman was in town
yesterday," he said.
"Yes," said Burton uncomfortably. "She was here between trains only.
There was no time--"
The doctor raised his hand deprecatingly. "You can tell Leslie about
it," he said. At the door he paused. "When the little gods take a hand
in any game, there is no use for any of us to borrow responsibility,"
he said enigmatically, and hastily departed, leaving Burton feeling
far from at ease.
He looked about the familiar room with a silent farewell. Here it was
that he had seen Leslie fired with generous anger at the attack on her
father. By this curtain she had hidden herself away on the evening
when that absurd committee came to "investigate," and he had thought
of her as a jewel whose beauty could never be concealed. Here he had
stood when the sound of her music came to him--
There was a faint sound behind him, and he turned swiftly to face her.
She had entered so softly that he had not heard her, and she stood by
the door looking at him with a shrinking dread that gave him a pang.
She was very pale, and if the dark circles about her eyes did not mean
tears, he was at a loss to interpret them.
"What is it? What troubles you?" he asked quickly.
"I am not--" she began. Then she interrupted herself. "Yes, I am
troubled and unhappy and wretched and ashamed,--oh, so ashamed! You
will despise me!"
"You are wrong there, at least. Can you tell me--?"
"Yes. I told father I wanted to see you alone. Oh, you mustn't think I
am not grateful for what you have done, and thankful beyond words to
have Henry cleared and all the truth of things made known. I am. I am
so thankful that I shall go softly all my days to remember it. That
only makes it worse!"
"Makes what worse?"
"My--defaulting! You did it all because of--of a promise I made you.
And I can't keep that promise. I can't. I thought while it was far off
that I could, and I didn't let myself think much about it, because I
was so anxious to have your help, and nothing, _nothing_, would be too
much to pay for it,--and it wouldn't be, only--I simply can't!"
"Do you mean your promise to Philip?" asked Burton, a light that made
him giddy coming over him.
"Yes. I--can't!"
"Why can't you?" he asked.
She caught her breath, and something flashed into her face that went
to his head. It was gone in an instant, but in that instant all the
wavering lights and shadows and uncertainties through which he had
been groping were crystallized into white light.
"Then you don't love Philip?" he said tyrannously.
"_No!_"
"Didn't you ever love him?"
"No."
"In that case, of course you can't marry him," he smiled.
"I--don't--want--to marry him!"
"Then how about me? Do you love _me?_"
The crimson tide flooded her face, and she flashed on him a look of
surprised reproach, but she did not leave the room with the haughty
air that would have been the proper sequel to such a look, for the
simple but sufficient reason that by this time he was holding both her
hands.
"Is there any least possibility of your caring for me? I have been
fathoms deep in love with you for--for ages! I don't know when it
began! It has always been! Oh, if you have hated the idea of marrying
Philip half as much as I have hated the idea that you would!
_Leslie!_" The way in which he spoke her name really left nothing more
to be said.
Somewhat later they came back into the story. She drew a little away
to look into Burton's face with dismay on her own.
"But poor Philip! How _can_ we ever tell him?"
"Leave that to me," said Burton, with a queer laugh.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Red House on Rowan Street, by Roman Doubleday