IT was in the forenoon following the Englishman’s staging of an
imitative attempt to “shoot up the town” that Reddick spent an earnest
hour trying to find Bromley, and finally ran across him as he was
coming out of the Colorado National Bank.
“Been hunting high and low for you,” said the redheaded one. “There is
the devil to pay and no pitch hot. Have you seen Phil this morning?”
“No,” said the play-boy.
“Well, I have. One of our county officials is sending his family east,
and I went up to the court house this morning to take him the tickets.
While I was there, Phil came in and went through some sort of business
at the counter. He didn’t see me; and after he was gone, I was curious
enough to go and pry. He is taking the big jump, Harry--the one that
will smother him for life! His business at the court house was to take
out a marriage license for himself and ‘Little Irish’ Connaghey!”
“And who is the Connaghey?”
“She is a girl in Madam Blanche’s. Phil was asking me about her the
other day. I told him the truth; that she was one of the straightest of
the lot--for whatever that was worth. I thought he might be wanting to
help her in some way, but I hadn’t the remotest idea he was thinking of
making a complete fool of himself.”
“Where did Phil go after he left the court house?”
“I don’t know; I haven’t seen him since. It’s up to you to hustle,
Harry. If this thing goes through, it is the end of Phil Trask. You
know that as well as I do.”
“I do, indeed. Thank you for putting me on. I’ll find Phil, if I have
to take out a search warrant for him.”
Losing no time, Bromley went first to the Alamo Building, and in the
upper corridor he met a Jew second-hand furniture dealer coming out of
Philip’s rooms and his heart sank. This meant that Philip was already
disposing of his effects and preparing for flight. In the sitting-room
he found Philip packing a trunk.
“Quit that, Phil, for a minute or so and talk to me,” he began
abruptly. Then: “We’ll skip the preliminaries; I know all about
it--what you’ve done, and what you are intending to do. Don’t you know
that it is preposterously impossible?”
“No, I don’t,” was the firm denial. “It isn’t impossible. Jim Garth did
it, and nothing but good came of it. He would be a different man to-day
if the woman he rescued and married hadn’t died. But that is beside the
mark, Harry. You know what I have done: I have spoiled my life, and I
am no better than the woman I am going to marry; not half as good in
some respects.”
“She isn’t too good to let you ruin yourself, world without end, by
marrying her!” retorted the play-boy.
“You are mistaken again,” was the mild dissent. “She proved to me, no
longer ago than last night, that she was capable of sacrificing herself
utterly to break my determination. I have come around to your point of
view, Harry. There is no poor wretch on earth too low down to answer
the appeal if one only knows how to make it. It has cost me pretty much
everything I value, or used to value, to learn this, but I have learned
it, at last.”
“But, good heavens--you can’t love this woman!”
“Who said anything about love? Don’t make another mistake, Harry; it
isn’t an infatuation. I am merely giving this girl a chance to become
what God intended her to be--a one-man woman; and the obligation this
will impose will keep me from sinking any deeper in the mud--or I hope
it may.”
For a fervid half-hour the play-boy argued and pleaded, all to no
purpose. It was quite in vain that, argument and persuasion failing, he
plied the whip, refusing to credit the altruistic motive, and accusing
Philip of making the final and fatal sacrifice to his own swollen ego;
not, indeed, that he believed this to be wholly true, but only that he
hoped there might be enough of the steel of truth in it to strike fire
upon the hard flint of Philip’s desperate resolution.
“If that is your motive--a monkish idea that by punishing yourself you
can wipe the slate of whatever things you’ve been writing on it since
you let yourself go--it’s a gross fallacy, Phil, and you know it. You
may fool yourself, but you can’t fool the God you still believe in.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Harry,” was the placatory answer to this.
“I am still enough of a Christian to believe that there is only one
sacrifice for sin. That isn’t it at all. I’m not trying to atone; I am
merely trying to give another human being, to whose plane I have sunk
myself, a chance for the only redemption that can ever come to her--in
this life. I wish I could make you understand that I am not playing to
my own gallery--not consciously, at least. The ego you speak of is very
dead, these days. God knows, it needed to die. It wasn’t fit to live.”
It was in sheer desperation that Bromley fired his final shot.
“You told me once, Phil, that you had never said or done anything to
let Jean know that you were in love with her, or to win her love. That
was not true.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean just this: that you did win her love, whether you meant to or
not.”
“I don’t believe it, Harry; but if it were true, it applied only to the
Philip Trask she knew--or thought she knew--and not at all to the man
who is going to marry Mona Connaghey. Surely you can see that?”
“I can see that you don’t yet know any more about women than a new-born
baby!” was the fierce retort. “I have been living in the same house
with Jean Dabney all summer, and----”
“Hold on,” Philip interposed; “let’s get this thing straight, while we
are about it. I love Jean Dabney; I never knew how much I loved her
until after I had made it a shame to think of her in the same breath
with myself. But I have done just that, Harry. Whatever else I have
gained or lost in the past few months, I haven’t lost the sense of the
fitness of things. If Jean knew ... but probably she does know ... that
is the bitterest drop in the cup for me ... to know that she’d feel
she’d be obliged to cross the street to avoid meeting me. But what is
done is done, and can’t be undone.”
“Then there is nothing I can say or do that will keep you from taking
this last long jump into the depths?” said the play-boy, disheartened
at last.
“Nothing at all. It is no sudden impulse. I have considered it well in
all its bearings. We shall go away from Denver, of course; the farther
the better. If I don’t see you again----”
A lump came into Bromley’s throat as he grasped the hand of
leave-taking, and the fierceness of what he said was only a mask for
the emotion that was shaking him.
“You are a hideous fool, Phil, and if I did what I ought to, I’d break
a chair over your head to bring you to your senses. Since I can’t do
that--well, I hope the time may never come when you’d sell your soul to
undo what you are planning to do to-day. Good-by.”
In the street the play-boy hesitated, but only for a moment. He knew,
none better, what a blow this last irrevocable plunge of Philip’s would
be to the woman who had loved him--who still loved him--and his one
thought, born of manly pity and sympathy, was to soften the blow for
her, if that could be done.
A few minutes later he was leaning upon the counter in Madame
Marchande’s millinery shop and making his plea to the ample-bodied
Frenchwoman into whose good graces he had long since won his way.
“Ah, Monsieur; I think you will make marry with this preetty Mees Jean
wan day, is it not? Then I shall lose my bes’ hat-trimmer. How you
goin’ pay me for dat, eh? You say you’ll wan’ take her for buggy ride?
_Eh bien_; she can go w’en you come for her.”
Bromley ate his luncheon alone. What he had to say to Jean could not be
said across a restaurant table. Moreover, he knew she had carried her
luncheon to the shop, as usual. As soon as he thought he had given her
time to eat it, he called for her, with the little white mare of the
livery string between the shafts of the light side-bar buggy.
“How did you know that I was tired enough to fairly long for a
half-holiday?” she asked, as the little mare whisked them over the long
Platte River bridge in a direction they had once before driven, toward
the Highlands.
“How does anybody know anything?” he returned, smiling and adding: “I
flatter myself that there is not much about you that I don’t know,
Jeanie, dear.”
“I wonder?” she said soberly; then: “You have been a good brother to me
this summer, Harry.”
“I hope I have been something more than a brother. Brothers are not
exactly my idea of a hilariously good time. Shall we drive on up to our
little lake?”
“Anywhere you please. It is such a joy to be out of the shop and
outdoors on a day like this that places don’t matter in the least.”
Accordingly, he repeated the programme of the former excursion,
hitching the mare among the cottonwoods on the shore of the tiny
highland lake, and spreading the lap-robe on the hillside where they
had sat once before to revel in the glorious view of sky-pitched
mountains and swelling plain. For a time they spoke of nothing but the
view; but that was only because Bromley was waiting for his opening. It
came when Jean said:
“The other time we sat here it was to talk about Philip. Do you see
much of him now?”
“Not very much.” Then he took his courage firmly in hand: “I am afraid
we shall have to forget Philip, in a way, Jean. Do you think you can do
that?”
“Why should we forget him?”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“You can’t always forget people just because you might want--because it
might be best to forget them.”
“But--what if they deliberately walk out of the picture?”
She looked up quickly, and in the pools of the dark eyes there was the
shock of a fear realized.
“Philip has done that?” she asked.
He nodded sorrowfully.
“That is what it amounts to. You remember what you once said: that he
might do the irrevocable thing that would cut him off from us for good
and all?”
“I remember.”
“Well, it is done; or the same as done.”
She drew a quick breath. “Tell me, Harry.”
“I will, but only because you’d have to know it anyhow, a little later.
This morning he took out a marriage license for himself and a--a--I
can’t name the woman for you, Jean. I suppose they are married by this
time. Will you believe me when I say that I did everything I could
think of to prevent it?”
There was no answer to this, and when he looked aside at her again he
saw that she was crying quietly, and his heart grew hot.
“Don’t cry,” he broke out almost roughly. “He isn’t worth it, Jean.”
“Yes, he is,” she faltered. “You don’t know him as I do, Harry; though
you have been more to him and closer to him than I ever could be. _I_
know why he has done this.”
“Well, I guess I do, too,” he admitted grudgingly. “I must talk plainly
to you this once, Jean, if I never do again. The woman is--oh, well,
we’ll say she is pretty nearly everything she ought not to be; and
Philip thinks and says that he can go no lower than he has already
gone. What he said to me when I wrestled with him was this: ‘I’m merely
trying to give another human being, to whose plane I have sunk myself,
a chance for the only redemption that can ever come to her--in this
life.’ And I’ll do him this much justice: he didn’t know--because I
couldn’t tell him--how much it was going to hurt you.”
A cool breeze swept across the plain from the mountain rampart in the
west, and the yellow leaves of the cottonwoods sifted down upon them
in a golden shower. Over in the Clear Creek valley a freight train
inched its way along toward Denver like a monstrous caterpillar. In
the transparent atmosphere of the perfect autumn day Long’s Peak stood
out as clearly as if its vast bulk rose from just behind the nearest
swelling of the foot-hills. When the silence grew over-long, the
play-boy spoke again.
“Philip didn’t know--doesn’t know; but I have known all along. You love
him, Jean. It is nothing to be ashamed of,” he hastened to add. “It is
just something to be sorry for, now. I know well enough you can never
give another man what you have given him ... but I want the right to
stand by you--to comfort you. I’m asking you to marry me, Jean, dear.”
The shock of a fear realized had gone out of her eyes when she turned
to him, and in its place there was something almost like adoration.
“You’d make sacrifices, too, wouldn’t you?” she said, very gently.
Then: “Are you forgetting Miss Follansbee?”
“Oh, no; Eugie is going to marry Stephen Drew. I meant to have told
you. It is to be next month, I believe.”
Another speechless moment while a second shower of the yellow leaves
came circling down. Then she spoke again, still more gently.
“I think you are one of God’s gentlemen, Harry; I shall always think
so. But there are two good reasons why we can’t marry. One is----”
“I know what you are going to say,” he interrupted: “that I don’t love
you at all--in a marrying way; that I am only sorry for you. But let
that go. Suppose there isn’t any marrying love on either side. You
remember what you said the evening when I told you about Eugie; that
people might marry and be a comfort to each other without that kind of
love. Besides, when you come right down to it, what is marrying love,
anyway?”
She got up and shook the fallen leaves from her lap.
“You have given one of the reasons, Harry; and some day, when you are
not expecting it, I may hold a looking-glass before you and show you
the other. You ask me what marrying love is: it is what I have seen,
more than once, in your eyes ... and you were not looking at me. Let us
get in and drive somewhere else. I don’t believe I shall ever want to
come back to this place again.”
As it chanced, it was at the precise moment when Bromley was putting
his companion into the buggy preparatory to continuing the afternoon
drive, that Philip was descending from a hired hack before a door that
was seldom opened for callers in the daytime. It was Madam Blanche
herself, a woman who still retained much of what had once been the
beauty and charm of a riant, joyous girlhood, who admitted him. He
stated his errand briefly.
“I have come for Mona--the girl you call ‘Little Irish.’ Is she ready
to go with me?”
“Ready? Why, she’s gone!”
“Gone?--gone where?”
“She wouldn’t tell me where she was going; wouldn’t give me even a
hint. But I guess she took one of the morning trains. She left early
enough to catch any one of ’em. She said you’d given her the money to
go with.”
“No,” he denied soberly; “I gave her money so that she could pay you
whatever she might be owing you, and get ready to marry me.”
The woman collapsed into the nearest chair.
“Marry you? Why, my dear man! What do you think she’s made of? She’s
too good a girl to do anything like that!”
“Too good?” he queried vaguely.
“Sure! She’d know too well what it would do to you on the day you’d
want to turn your back on the sporting life. She cried when she went,
but she wouldn’t tell me what for: she said I’d know some time to-day.
And I do know now. She went to keep you from doing the craziest thing a
man of your kind ever does. Some day maybe you’ll know what she’s done
for you, and what it cost the poor little soul to do it.”
Philip found his hat and moved toward the door.
“I think I know it now,” he returned half absently; and after he
had paid and dismissed the hackman, he went in search of the Jew
second-hand man to stop the dismantling of his rooms which had already
begun, tearing a small legal document, which he took from his pocket,
into tiny squares and scattering them in the street as he hurried along.
Two days later, Reddick, who had dropped into the Curtis Street chop
house for a midday bite, found himself seated opposite Bromley.
“Well,” he observed, “it proved to be a false alarm, after all, didn’t
it?”
“I suppose it was, if you say so,” replied the play-boy with his
good-tempered grin; “only I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“You don’t? Haven’t you seen Phil?”
“Not since day before yesterday when I bade him good-by.”
“Gosh! Then it’s all new to you, is it? He is still here--in his old
diggings in the Alamo. It was a flash in the pan--that marriage of
his. The girl saved his bacon by skipping out.”
“Um,” said Bromley curiously. “She must have hated him good and hard to
run away from half a gold mine.”
“Hate nothing! It was exactly the other way around. She thought too
much of him to let him ruin himself for life. Madam Blanche was in the
office yesterday, and she told me about it. A mighty fine thing for the
little outcast to do, it strikes me. This is a queer old round world,
and you can’t most always sometimes tell what’s going to happen in it
next.”
“Amen,” chanted the play-boy; and his appetite, which had been
capricious for a pair of days, began to return with gratifying zest.
During the afternoon, which dragged interminably, he changed his mind
a dozen times as to the advisability of telling Jean the newest news.
On one hand, it seemed to be a plain duty; but there was also something
to be said in rebuttal. Jean had already been given the deepest wound
she could suffer, and he hoped it was beginning to heal--a little. Was
it any part of kindness to reopen it? True, she might learn any day
for herself that Philip had not left Denver; but every day’s delay was
something gained for the healing process.
About the time when, still undetermined as to which course to pursue,
he was on his way to Madame Marchande’s to walk home with Jean,
he suddenly remembered that he had a dinner engagement with the
Follansbees. Telling himself that this postponed the decision for the
time, at least, he hailed a passing hack, made a swift change to
dinner clothes in his West Denver room, and kept his engagement at the
house in Champa Street.
It was three hours later when he had himself driven home from the
rather dull dinner and its still duller aftermath. Entering the cottage
living-room, he found Jean in hat and coat, as if she had just come in
or was just going out, and there was a napkin-covered basket on the
table beside her.
“I was hoping you would come before it got too late,” she said. “Are
you too tired to walk a few blocks with me?”
“Never too tired when I can be of any use to you--you know that,” he
answered cheerfully. “Where to?”
“You remember the poor old lady who had the room next to ours in the
Whittle Building, don’t you?”
“Old Mrs. Grantham?--sure!”
“I found a note from her when I came home this evening. She is sick and
she wants me to come and see her. It is late, but I think I ought to
go. She is all alone, you know; no relatives or friends. That is the
pitiful thing about so many people here in Denver.”
“I know. Let’s toddle along. I have been to a pretty stodgy dinner
and the walk will do me good. No you don’t--I’ll carry that basket of
goodies, if you please. What else am I good for, I’d like to know?”
All the way down Eleventh Street to Larimer, and over the Cherry Creek
bridge to the cross street leading to the dubious district centered by
the Corinthian varieties and gambling rooms, Bromley was trying once
more to decide whether or not to say the word which, as he made sure,
would reopen the grievous wound in the sore heart of his companion.
But when at last he took her arm to help her up the dark stair in the
disreputable tenement opposite the Corinthian, the word was still
unspoken. And the thing he was hoping for most devoutly was that they
might be permitted to do their charitable errand and win back to better
breathing air without running afoul of the man who, as he had ample
reason to know, was now no stranger to the purlieus below Larimer
Street.