The man shook as if in an ague. He laid the letter on a table and
fastened it open with weights so that the May breeze, frolicking
through the top of the Parish House, might not blow it away. Standing
over it, bending to it, sitting down, he read it and re-read it, and
paced the room and came back and bent over it. He groaned as he looked
at the date. Seven months ago if he had had it--what could have held
him? She loved him--what on earth could have kept him from her,
knowing that? Not illness nor oceans or her will. No, not her will,
if she cared; and she had said it. He would have swept down her will
like a tidal wave, knowing that.
Seven months ago! He would have followed her to Germany. He laughed
at the thought that she believed herself hidden from him. The world
was not big enough to hide her. What was a trip to Germany--to
Madagascar? But now--where might she not be--what might not have
happened? She might be dead. Worse--and this thought stopped his
pulse--she might be married.
That was the big, underlying terror of his mind. In his restless
pacing he stopped suddenly as if frozen. His brain was working this
way and that, searching for light. In a moment he knew what he would
do. He dashed down the familiar steep stairs; in four minutes more he
had raced across the street to the rectory, and brought up, breathless,
in the rector's study.
"What's the matter--a train to catch?" the rector demanded, regarding
him.
"Just that, doctor. Could I be spared for three days?"
The rector had not failed to have his theories about this brilliant,
hard-working, unaccountable, highly useful subaltern of his. His heart
had one of its warmest spots for McBirney. Something was wrong with
him, it had been evident for months; one must help him in the dark if
better could not be done.
"Surely," said the rector.
There was a fast train west in an hour; the man and his bag were on it,
and twenty-four hours later he was stumbling off a car at the solid,
vine-covered, red brick station at Forest Gate. An inquiry or two, and
then he had crossed the wide, short street, the single business street
of the rich suburb, facing the railway and the station, and was in the
post-office. He asked about one Robert Halarkenden. The postmaster
regarded him suspiciously. His affair was to sort letters, not to
answer questions. He did the first badly; he did not mean to do the
other at all.
"No such person ever been in town," he answered coldly, after a
moment's staring. The man who had hurried a thousand miles to ask the
question, set his bag on the floor and faced the postmaster grimly.
"He must have been," he stated. "I sent a lot of letters to him last
year, and they reached him."
"Oh--last year," the official answered stonily. "He might 'a' been
here last year. I only came January." And he turned with insulted
gloom to his labors.
McBirney leaned as far as he might into the little window. "Look
here," he adjured the man inside, "do be a Christian about this. I've
come from the East, a thousand miles, to find Halarkenden, and I know
he was here seven months ago. It's awfully important. Won't you treat
me like a white man and help me a little?"
Few people ever resisted Geoffrey McBirney when he pleaded with them.
The stolid potentate turned back wondering, and did not know that what
he felt stirring the dried veins within him was charm. "Why, sure," he
answered slowly, astonished at his own words, "I'll help you if I can.
Glad t' help anybody."
There was a cock-sure assistant in the back of the dirty sanctum, and
to him the friend of mankind applied.
"Halarkenden--Robert," the assistant snapped out. "'Course. I
remember. Gardener up to the Edward Reidses," and McBirney thrilled as
if an event had happened. "Uncle Ted" was "the Edward Reidses." It
might be her name--Reid.
"He went away six or seven months ago, I think," McBirney suggested,
breathing a bit fast. "I thought he might be back by now."
"Nawp," said the cock-sure one. "I remember. 'Course. Family broke
Up. Old man died."
"No, he didn't," the parson interrupted tartly. "He went to Germany."
"Aw well, then, 'f you know mor'n I do, maybe he did go to Germany.
Anyhow, the girl got married. And Halarkenden, he ain't been around
since. Leastaways, ain't had no letters for him." There was an undue
silence, it appeared to the officials inside the window. "That all?"
demanded Cocksure, thirsting to get back to work.
"What 'girl' do you speak of--who was married?" McBirney asked slowly.
"Old man's niece. Miss----"
But the name never got out. McBirney cut across the nasal speech. He
would not learn that name in this way. "That's all," he said quickly.
"Thank you. Good-by."
So Geoffrey McBirney went back to St. Andrews. And the last state of
him was worse than the first.
WARCHESTER,
St. Andrew's Parish House,
May 26th.
RICHARD MARSTON, ESQ.
C/r Marston & Brooks, Consulting Engineers,
Boston.