|IN the outer room, the door closed behind them, Paul Veniza and
Hawkins stared into each other's eyes. Hawkins' face had lost its ruddy,
weatherbeaten color, and there was a strained, perplexed anxiety in his
expression.
“D'ye hear what she said?” he mumbled. “D'ye hear what he said? Going
to be married! My little girl, my innocent little girl, and--and that
dope-feeding devil! I--I don't understand, Paul. What's it mean?”
Paul Veniza laid his hand on the other's shoulder, as much to seek, it
seemed, as to offer sympathy. He shook his head.
“I don't know,” he said blankly.
Hawkins' watery blue eyes under their shaggy brows traveled miserably in
the direction of the staircase.
“I--I ain't got the right,” he choked. “You go up and talk to her,
Paul.”
Paul Veniza ran his fingers in a troubled way through his white hair;
then, nodding his head, he turned abruptly and began to mount the
stairs.
Hawkins watched until the other had disappeared from sight, watched
until he heard a door open and close softly above; then he swung sharply
around, and with his old, drooping shoulders suddenly squared, strode
toward the door that shut him off from Doctor Crang and the man he had
recognized as his passenger in the traveling pawn-shop earlier that
night. But at the door itself he hesitated, and after a moment drew
back, and the shoulders drooped again, and he fell to twisting his hands
together in nervous indecision as he retreated to the center of the
room.
And he stood there again, where Paul Veniza had left him, and stared
with the hurt of a dumb animal in his eyes at the top of the staircase.
“It's all my fault,” the old man whispered, and fell to twisting his
hands together once more. “But--but I thought she'd be safe with me.”
For a long time he seemed to ponder his own words, and gradually they
seemed to bring an added burden upon him, and heavily now he drew his
hand across his eyes.
“Why ain't I dead?” he whispered. “I ain't never been no good to
her. Twenty years, it is--twenty years. Just old Hawkins--shabby old
Hawkins--that she loves 'cause she's sorry for him.”
Hawkins' eyes roved about the room.
“I remember the night I brought her here.” He was still whispering to
himself. “In there, it was, I took her.” He jerked his hand toward the
inner room. “This here room was the pawn-shop then. God, all those years
ago--and--and I ain't never bought her back again, and she ain't known
no father but Paul, and----” His voice trailed off and died away.
He sank his chin in his hands.
Occasionally he heard the murmur of voices from above, occasionally the
sound of movement through the closed door that separated him from Doctor
Crang; but he did not move or speak again until Paul Veniza came down
the stairs and stood before him.
Hawkins searched the other's face.
“It--it ain't true, is it, what she said?” he questioned almost
fiercely. “She didn't really mean it, did she, Paul?”
Paul Veniza turned his head away.
“Yes, she meant it,” he answered in a low voice. “I don't understand.
She wouldn't give me any explanation.”
Hawkins clenched his fists suddenly.
“But didn't you tell her what kind of a man Crang is? Good God, Paul,
didn't you tell her what he is?”
“She knows it without my telling her,” Paul Veniza said in a dull tone.
“But I told her again; I told her it was impossible, incredible. Her
only answer was that it was inevitable.”
“But she doesn't love him! She can't love him!” Hawkins burst out.
“There's never been anything between them before.”
“No, she doesn't love him. Of course, she doesn't!” Paul Veniza said, as
though speaking to himself. He looked at Hawkins suddenly under knitted
brows. “And she says she never saw that other man in her life before
until he stepped into the car. She says she only went out to-night
because they were so urgent about it up at the house, and that she felt
everything would be perfectly safe with you driving the car. I can't
make anything out of it!”
Hawkins drew the sleeve of his coat across his brow. It was cool in the
room, but little beads of moisture were standing out on his forehead.
“I ain't brought her nothing but harm all my life,” he said brokenly.
“I----”
“Don't take it that way, old friend!” Paul Veniza's hands sought the
other's shoulders. “I don't see how you are to blame for this. Claire
said that other man treated her with all courtesy, and left the car
after you had gone around the block; and she doesn't know how he
afterwards came here wounded any more than we do--and anyway, it can't
have anything to do with her marrying Doctor Crang.”
“What's she doing now?” demanded Hawkins abruptly. “She's up there
crying her heart out, ain't she?”
Paul Veniza did not answer.
Hawkins straightened up. A sudden dignity came to the shabby old figure.
“What hold has that devil got on my little girl?” he cried out
sharply. “I'll make him pay for it, so help me God! My little girl, my
little------”
“S-sh!” Paul Veniza caught hurriedly at Hawkins' arm. “Be careful, old
friend!” he warned. “Not so loud! She might hear you.”
Hawkins cast a timorous, startled glance in the direction of the stairs.
He seemed to shrink again, into a stature as shabby as his clothing. His
lips twitched; he twisted his hands together.
“Yes,” he mumbled; “yes, she--she might hear me.” He stared around the
room; and then, as though blindly, his hands groping out in front of
him, he started for the street door. “I'm going home,” said Hawkins.
“I'm going home to think this out.”
Paul Veniza's voice choked a little.
“Your hat, old friend,” he said, picking up the old man's hat from the
table and following the other to the door.
“Yes, my hat,” said Hawkins--and pulling it far down over his eyes,
crossed the sidewalk, and climbed into the driver's seat of the old,
closed car that stood at the curb.
He started the car mechanically. He did not look back. He stared
straight ahead of him except when, at the corner, his eyes lifted and
held for a moment on the lighted windows and the swinging doors of a
saloon--and the car went perceptibly slower. Then his hands tightened
fiercely in their hold upon the wheel until the white of the knuckles
showed, and the car passed the saloon and turned the next corner and
went on.
Halfway down the next block it almost came to a halt again when opposite
a dark and dingy driveway that led in between, and to the rear of,
two poverty-stricken frame houses. Hawkins stared at this uninviting
prospect, and made as though to turn the car into the driveway; then,
shaking his head heavily, he continued on along the street.
“I can't go in there and sit by myself all alone,” said Hawkins
hoarsely. “I--I'd go mad. It's--it's like as though they'd told me
to-night that she'd died--same as they told me about her mother the
night I went to Paul's.”
The car moved slowly onward. It turned the next corner--and the next. It
almost completed the circuit of the block. Hawkins now was wetting his
lips with the tip of his tongue. His hands on the wheel were trembling.
The car had stopped. Hawkins was staring again at the lighted windows
and the swinging doors of the saloon.
He sat for a long time motionless; then he climbed down from his seat.
“Just one,” Hawkins whispered to himself. “Just one. I--I'd go mad if I
didn't.”
Hawkins pushed the swinging doors open, and sidled up to the bar.
“Hello, Hawkins!” grinned the barkeeper. “Been out of town? I ain't seen
you the whole afternoon!”
“You mind your own business!” said Hawkins surlily.
“Sure!” nodded the barkeeper cheerily. “Same as usual?” He slid a
square-faced bottle and a glass toward the old man.
Hawkins helped himself and drank moodily. He set his empty glass back
on the bar, jerked down his shabby vest and straightened up, his eyes
resolutely fixed on the door. Then he felt in his pocket for his pipe
and tobacco. His eyes shifted from the door to his pipe. He filled it
slowly.
“Give me another,” said Hawkins presently--without looking at the
barkeeper.
Again the old man drank, and jerked down his vest, and squared his thin
shoulders. He lighted his pipe, tamping the bowl carefully with his
forefinger. His eyes sought the swinging doors once more.
“I'm going home,” said Hawkins defiantly to himself. “I've got to think
this out.” He dug into his vest pocket for money, and produced a few
small bills. He stared at these for a moment, hesitated, started to
replace them in his pocket, hesitated again, and the tip of his tongue
circled his lips; then he pushed the money across the bar. “Take the
drinks out of that, and--and give me a bottle,” he said. “I--I don't
like to be without anything in the house, and I got to go home.”
“You said something!” said the barkeeper. “Have one on the house before
you go?”
“No; I won't.”
“No,” said Hawkins with stern determination.
Hawkins crowded the bottle into the side pocket of his coat, passed out
through the swinging doors, and resumed his seat on the car. And again
the car started forward. But it went faster now. Hawkins' face was
flushed; he seemed nervously and excitedly in haste. At the driveway
he turned in, garaged his car in an old shed at the rear of one of the
houses, locked the shed with a padlock, and, by way of the back door,
entered the house that was in front of the shed.
It was quite dark inside, but Hawkins had been an inmate of the somewhat
seedy rooming-house too many years either to expect that a light should
be burning at that hour, or, for that matter, to require any light.
He groped his way up a flight of creaking stairs, opened the door of a
room, and stepped inside. He shut the door behind him, locked it, and
struck a match. A gas-jet wheezed asthmatically, and finally flung a
thin and sullen yellow glow about the place. It disclosed a cot bed, a
small strip of carpet long since worn bare of nap, a washstand, an old
trunk, a battered table, and two chairs.
Hawkins, with some difficulty, extricated the bottle from his pocket,
and lifted the lid of his trunk. He thrust the bottle inside, and in the
act of closing the lid upon it--hesitated.
“I--I ain't myself to-night, I ain't,” said Hawkins tremulously. “It's
shook me, it has--bad. Just one--so help me God!--just one.”
Hawkins sat down at the table with the bottle in front of him.
And while Hawkins sat there it grew very late.
At intervals Hawkins talked to himself. At times he stared owlishly
from a half-emptied bottle to the black square of window pane above the
trunk--and once he shook his fist in that direction.
“Crang--eh--damn you!” he gritted out. “You think you got her, do you?
Some dirty, cunning trick you've played her! But you don't know old
Hawkins. Ha, ha! You think he's only a drunken bum!”
Hawkins, as it grew later still, became unsteady in his seat. Gradually
his head sank down upon the table.
“I--hie!--gotta think this--out,” said Hawkins earnestly--and fell
asleep.