So many different kinds of feeling had been chasing around inside of me
that I had numb spots in my emotional ornaments and intellectual organs.
The room cleared out of everybody but Doctor Kirby and Colonel Tom and
me. But the sound of the crowd going into the road, and their footsteps
dying away, and then after that their voices quitting, all made but very
little sense to me. I could scarcely realize that the danger was over.
I hadn't been paying much attention to Doctor Kirby while the colonel
was making that grandstand play of his'n, and getting away with it.
Doctor Kirby was setting in his chair with his head sort of sunk on his
chest. I guess he was having a hard time himself to realize that all
the danger was past. But mebby it wasn't that--he looked like he might
really of forgot where he was fur a minute, and might be thinking of
something that had happened a long time ago.
The colonel was leaning up agin the teacher's desk, smoking and looking
at Doctor Kirby. Doctor Kirby turns around toward the colonel.
"You have saved my life," he says, getting up out of his chair, like
he had a notion to step over and thank him fur it, but was somehow not
quite sure how that would be took.
The colonel looks at him silent fur a second, and then he says, without
smiling:
"Do you flatter yourself it was because I think it worth anything?"
The doctor don't answer, and then the colonel says:
"Has it occurred to you that I may have saved it because I want it?"
"WANT it?"
"Do you know of any one who has a better right to TAKE it than I have?
Perhaps I saved it because it BELONGS to me--do you suppose I want any
one else to kill what I have the best right to kill?"
"Tom," says Doctor Kirby, really puzzled, to judge from his actions, "I
don't understand what makes you say you have the right to take my life."
"Dave, where is my sister buried?" asts Colonel Tom.
"Buried?" says Doctor Kirby. "My God, Tom, is she DEAD?"
"I ask you," says Colonel Tom.
"And I ask you," says Doctor Kirby.
And they looked at each other, both wonderized, and trying to
understand. And it busted on me all at oncet who them two men really
was.
I orter knowed it sooner. When the colonel was first called Colonel Tom
Buckner it struck me I knowed the name, and knowed something about it.
But things which was my own consarns was attracting my attention so hard
I couldn't remember what it was I orter know about that name. Then I
seen him and Doctor Kirby knowed each other when they got that first
square look. That orter of put me on the track, that and a lot of other
things that had happened before. But I didn't piece things together like
I orter done.
It wasn't until Colonel Tom Buckner called him "Dave" and ast him about
his sister that I seen who Doctor Kirby must really be.
HE WAS THAT THERE DAVID ARMSTRONG!
And the brother of the girl he had run off with had jest saved his life.
By the way he was talking, he had saved it simply because he thought he
had the first call on what to do with it.
"Where is she?" asts Colonel Tom.
"I ask you," says Doctor Kirby--or David Armstrong--agin.
Well, I thinks to myself, here is where Daniel puts one acrost the
plate. And I breaks in:
"You both got another guess coming," I says. "She ain't buried
anywheres. She ain't even dead. She's living in a little town in Indiany
called Athens--or she was about eighteen months ago."
They both looks at me like they thinks I am crazy.
"What do you know about it?" says Doctor Kirby.
"Are you David Armstrong?" says I.
"Yes," says he.
"Well," I says, "you spent four or five days within a stone's throw of
her a year ago last summer, and she knowed it was you and hid herself
away from you."
Then I tells them about how I first happened to hear of David Armstrong,
and all I had hearn from Martha. And how I had stayed at the Davises
in Tennessee and got some more of the same story from George, the old
nigger there.
"But, Danny," says the doctor, "why didn't you tell me all this?"
I was jest going to say that not knowing he was that there David
Armstrong I didn't think it any of his business, when Colonel Tom, he
says to Doctor Kirby--I mean to David Armstrong:
"Why should you be concerned as to her whereabouts? You ruined her life
and then deserted her."
Doctor Kirby--I mean David Armstrong--stands there with the blood going
up his face into his forehead slow and red.
"Tom," he says, "you and I seem to be working at cross purposes. Maybe
it would help some if you would tell me just how badly you think I
treated Lucy."
"You ruined her life, and then deserted her," says Colonel Tom agin,
looking at him hard.
"I DIDN'T desert her," said Doctor Kirby. "She got disgusted and left
ME. Left me without a chance to explain myself. As far as ruining her
life is concerned, I suppose that when I married her--"
"Married her!" cries out the colonel. And David Armstrong stares at him
with his mouth open.
"My God! Tom," he says, "did you think--?"
And they both come to another standstill. And then they talked some more
and only got more mixed up than ever. Fur the doctor thinks she has left
him, and Colonel Tom thinks he has left her.
"Tom," says the doctor, "suppose you let me tell my story, and you'll
see why Lucy left me."
Him and Colonel Tom had been chums together when they went through
Princeton, it seems--I picked that up from the talk and some of his
story I learned afterward. He had come from Ohio in the beginning, and
his dad had had considerable money. Which he had enjoyed spending of it,
and when he was a young feller never liked to work at nothing else. It
suited him. Colonel Tom, he was considerable like him in that way. So
they was good pals when they was to that school together. They both quit
about the same time. A couple of years after that, when they was
both about twenty-five or six years old, they run acrost each other
accidental in New York one autumn.
The doctor, he was there figgering on going to work at something or
other, but they was so many things to do he was finding it hard to make
a choice. His father was dead by that time, and looking fur a job in
New York, the way he had been doing it, was awful expensive, and he was
running short of money. His father had let him spend so much whilst
he was alive he was very disappointed to find out he couldn't keep on
forever looking fur work that-a-way.
So Colonel Tom says why not come down home into Tennessee with him fur
a while, and they will both try and figger out what he orter go to work
at. It was the fall of the year, and they was purty good hunting around
there where Colonel Tom lived, and Dave hadn't never been South any, and
so he goes. He figgers he better take a good, long vacation, anyhow. Fur
if he goes to work that winter or the next spring, and ties up with some
job that keeps him in an office, there may be months and months pass by
before he has another chance at a vacation. That is the worst part of a
job--I found that out myself--you never can tell when you are going to
get shut of it, once you are fool enough to start in.
In Tennessee he had met Miss Lucy. Which her wedding to Prent McMakin
was billed fur to come off about the first of November, jest a month
away.
"I don't know whether I ever told you or not," says the doctor, "but I
was engaged to be married myself, Tom, when I went down to your place.
That was what started all the trouble.
"You know engagements are like vaccination--sometimes they take, and
sometimes they don't. Of course, I had thought at one time I was in love
with this girl I was engaged to. When I found out I wasn't, I should
have told her so right away. But I didn't. I thought that she would
get tired of me after a while and turn me loose. I gave her plenty of
chances to turn me loose. I wanted her to break the engagement instead
of me. But she wouldn't take the hints. She hung on like an Ohio Grand
Army veteran to a country post-office. About half the time I didn't read
her letters, and about nineteen twentieths of the time I didn't answer
them. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But it isn't
so--it makes them all the fonder of you. I got into the habit of
thinking that while Emma might be engaged to me, I wasn't engaged to
Emma. Not but what Emma was a nice girl, you know, but--
"Well, I met Lucy. We fell in love with each other. It just happened.
I kept intending to write to the other girl and tell her plainly that
everything was off. But I kept postponing it. It seemed like a deuce of
a hard job to tackle.
"But, finally, I did write her. That was the very day Lucy promised to
throw Prent McMakin over and marry me. You know how determined all your
people were that Lucy should marry McMakin, Tom. They had brought her up
with the idea that she was going to, and, of course, she was bored with
him for that reason.
"We decided the best plan would be to slip away quietly and get married.
We knew it would raise a row. But there was bound to be a row anyhow
when they found she intended to marry me instead of McMakin. So we
figured we might just as well be away from there.
"We left your place early on the morning of October 31, 1888--do you
remember the date, Tom? We took the train for Clarksville, Tennessee,
and got there about two o'clock that afternoon. I suppose you have been
in that interesting centre of the tobacco industry. If you have you may
remember that the courthouse of Montgomery County is right across the
street from the best hotel. I got a license and a preacher without any
trouble, and we were married in the hotel parlour that afternoon. One of
the hotel clerks and the county clerk himself were the witnesses.
"We went to Cincinnati and from there to Chicago. There we got rooms out
on the South Side--Hyde Park, they called it. And I got me a job. I had
some money left, but not enough to buy kohinoors and race-horses with.
Beside, I really wanted to get to work--wanted it for the first time
in my life. You remember young Clayton in our class? He and some other
enterprising citizens had a building and loan association. Such things
are no doubt immoral, but I went to work for him.
"We had been in Chicago a week when Lucy wrote home what she had done,
and begged forgiveness for being so abrupt about it. At least, I suppose
that is what she wrote. It was--"
"I remember exactly what she wrote," says Colonel Tom.
"I never knew exactly," says the doctor. "The same mail that brought
word from you that your grandfather had had some sort of a stroke, as a
consequence of our elopement, brought also two letters from Emma. They
had been forwarded from New York to Tennessee, and you had forwarded
them to Chicago.
"Those letters began the trouble. You see, I hadn't told Emma when I
wrote breaking off the engagement that I was going to get married the
next day. And Emma hadn't received my letter, or else had made up her
mind to ignore it. Anyhow, those letters were regular love-letters.
"I hadn't really read one of Emma's letters for months. But somehow
I couldn't help reading these. I had forgotten what a gift for the
expression of sentiment Emma had. She fairly revelled in it, Tom. Those
letters were simply writhing with clinging female adjectives. They
SQUIRMED with affection.
"You may remember that Lucy was a rather jealous sort of a person.
Right in the midst of her alarm and grief and self-reproach over her
grandfather, and in the midst of my efforts to comfort her, she spied
the feminine handwriting on those two letters. I had glanced through
them hurriedly, and laid them on the table.
"Tom, I was in bad. The dates on them, you know, were so RECENT. I
didn't want Lucy to read them. But I didn't dare to ACT as if I didn't
want her to. So I handed them over.
"I suppose--to a bride who had only been married a little more than a
week--and who had hurt her grandfather nearly to death in the marrying,
those letters must have sounded rather odd. I tried to explain. But
all my explanations only seemed to make the case worse for me. Lucy was
furiously jealous. We really had a devil of a row before we were through
with it. I tried to tell her that I loved no one but her. She pointed
out that I must have said much the same sort of thing to Emma. She said
she was almost as sorry for Emma as she was for herself. When Lucy
got through with me, Tom, I looked like thirty cents and felt like
twenty-five of that was plugged.
"I didn't have sense enough to know that it was most of it grief over
her grandfather, and nerves and hysteria, and the fact that she was
only eighteen years old and lonely, and that being a bride had a certain
amount to do with it. She had told me that I was a beast, and made me
feel like one; and I took the whole thing hard and believed her. I made
a fine, five-act tragedy out of a jealous fit I might have softened into
comedy if I had had the wit.
"I wasn't so very old myself, and I hadn't ever been married before. I
should have kept my mouth shut until it was all over, and then when she
began to cry I should have coaxed her up and made her feel like I was
the only solid thing to hang on to in the whole world.
"But the bottom had dropped out of the universe for me. She had said she
hated me. I was fool enough to believe her. I went downtown and began
to drink. I come home late that night. The poor girl had been waiting up
for me--waiting for hours, and becoming more and more frightened when I
didn't show up. She was over her jealous fit, I suppose. If I had come
home in good shape, or in anything like it, we would have made up then
and there. But my condition stopped all that. I wasn't so drunk but that
I saw her face change when she let me in. She was disgusted.
"In the morning I was sick and feverish. I was more than disgusted with
myself. I was in despair. If she had hated me before--and she had said
she did--what must she do now? It seemed to me that I had sunk so far
beneath her that it would take years to get back. It didn't seem worth
while making any plea for myself. You see, I was young and had serious
streaks all through me. So when she told me that she had written home
again, and was going back--was going to leave me, I didn't see that
it was only a bluff. I didn't see that she was really only waiting to
forgive me, if I gave her a chance. I started downtown to the building
and loan office, wondering when she would leave, and if there was
anything I could do to make her change her mind. I must repeat again
that I was a fool--that I needed only to speak one word, had I but known
it.
"If I had gone straight to work, everything might have come around all
right even then. But I didn't. I had that what's-the-use feeling. And I
stopped in at the Palmer House bar to get something to sort of pull me
together.
"While I was there, who should come up to the bar and order a drink but
Prent McMakin."
"Yes!" says Colonel Tom, as near excited as he ever got.
"Yes," says Armstrong, "nobody else. We saw each other in the mirror
behind the bar. I don't know whether you ever noticed it or not, Tom,
but McMakin's eyes had a way of looking almost like cross-eyes when he
was startled or excited. They were a good deal too near together at any
time. He gave me such a look when our eyes met in the mirror that, for
an instant, I thought that he intended to do me some mischief--shoot me,
you know, for taking his bride-to-be away from him, or some fool thing
like that. But as we turned toward each other I saw he had no intention
of that sort."
"Hadn't he?" says Colonel Tom, mighty interested.
"No," says the doctor, looking at Colonel Tom very puzzled, "did you
think he had?"
"Yes, I did," says the colonel, right thoughtful.
"On the contrary," says Armstrong, "we had a drink together. And he
congratulated me. Made me quite a little speech, in fact; one of the
flowery kind, you know, Tom, and said that he bore me no rancour, and
all that."
"The deuce he did!" says Colonel Tom, very low, like he was talking to
himself. "And then what?"
"Then," says the doctor, "then--let me see--it's all a long time ago,
you know, and McMakin's part in the whole thing isn't really important."
"I'm not so sure it isn't important," says the colonel, "but go on."
"Then," says Armstrong, "we had another drink together. In fact, a
lot of them. We got awfully friendly. And like a fool I told him of my
quarrel with Lucy."
"LIKE a fool," says Colonel Tom, nodding his head. "Go on."
"There isn't much more to tell," says the doctor, "except that I made
a worse idiot of myself yet, and left McMakin about two o'clock in the
afternoon, as near as I can recollect. Somewhere about ten o'clock that
night I went home. Lucy was gone. I haven't seen her since."
"Dave," says Colonel Tom, "did McMakin happen to mention to you, that
day, just why he was in Chicago?"
"I suppose so," says the doctor. "I don't know. Maybe not. That was
twenty years ago. Why?"
"Because," says Colonel Tom, very grim and quiet, "because your first
thought as to his intention when he met you in the bar was MY idea
also. I thought he went to Chicago to settle with you. You see, I got to
Chicago that same afternoon."
"The same day?"
"Yes. We were to have come together. But I missed the train, and he got
there a day ahead of me. He was waiting at the hotel for me to join him,
and then we were going to look you up together. He found you first and I
never did find you."
"But I don't exactly understand," says the doctor. "You say he had the
idea of shooting me."
"I don't understand everything myself," says Colonel Tom. "But I do
understand that Prent McMakin must have played some sort of a two-faced
game. He never said a word to me about having seen you.
"Listen," he goes on. "When you and Lucy ran away it nearly killed our
grandfather. In fact, it finally did kill him. When we got Lucy's letter
that told you were in Chicago I went up to bring her back home. We
didn't know what we were going to do, McMakin and I, but we were both
agreed that you needed killing. And he swore that he would marry Lucy
anyhow, even--"
"MARRY HER!" sings out the doctor, "but we WERE married."
"Dave," Colonel Tom says very slow and steady, "you keep SAYING you were
married. But it's strange--it's right STRANGE about that marriage."
And he looked at the doctor hard and close, like he would drag the truth
out of him, and the doctor met his look free and open. You would of
thought Colonel Tom was saying with his look: "You MUST tell me the
truth." And the doctor with his was answering: "I HAVE told you the
truth."
"But, Tom," says the doctor, "that letter she wrote you from Chicago
must--"
"Do you know what Lucy wrote?" interrupts Colonel Tom. "I remember
exactly. It was simply: 'FORGIVE ME. I LOVED HIM SO. I AM HAPPY. I KNOW
IT IS WRONG, BUT I LOVE HIM SO YOU MUST FORGIVE ME.'"
"But couldn't you tell from THAT we were married?" cries out the doctor.
"She didn't mention it," says Colonel Tom.
"She supposed that her own family had enough faith in her to take it for
granted," says the doctor, very scornful, his face getting red.
"But wait, Dave," says Colonel Tom, quiet and cool. "Don't bluster with
me. There are still a lot of things to be explained. And that marriage
is one of them.
"To go back a bit. You say you got to the house somewhere around ten
o'clock that evening and found Lucy gone. Do you remember the day of the
month?"
"It was November 14, 1888."
"Exactly," says Colonel Tom. "I got to Chicago at six o'clock of that
very day. And I went at once to the address in Lucy's letter. I got
there between seven and eight o'clock. She was gone. My thought was that
you must have got wind of my coming and persuaded her to leave with you
in order to avoid me--although I didn't see how you could know when I
would get there, either, when I thought it over."
"And you have never seen her since," says Armstrong, pondering.
"I HAVE seen her since," says Colonel Tom, "and that is one thing that
makes me say your story needs further explanation."
"But where--when--did you see her?" asts the doctor, mighty excited.
"I am coming to that. I went back home again. And in July of the next
year I heard from her."
"Heard from her?"
"By letter. She was in Galesburg, Illinois, if you know where that is.
She was living there alone. And she was almost destitute. I wrote her to
come home. She would not. But she had to live. I got rid of some of our
property in Tennessee, and took enough cash up there with me to fix her,
in a decent sort of way, for the rest of her life, and put it in the
bank. I was with her there for ten days; then I went back home to get
Aunt Lucy Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her to return.
But when I got back North with Aunt Lucy she had gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes, and when we returned without her to Tennessee there was a letter
telling us not to try to find her. We thought--I thought--that she might
have taken up with you once again."
"But, my God! Tom," the doctor busts out, "you were with her ten days
there in Galesburg! Didn't she tell you then--couldn't you tell from the
way she acted--that she had married me?"
"That's the odd thing, Dave," says the colonel, very slow and
thoughtful. "That's what is so very strange about it all. I merely
assumed by my attitude that you were not married, and she let me assume
it without a protest."
"But did you ask her?"
"Ask her? No. Can't you see that there was no reason why I should ask
her? I was sure. And being sure of it, naturally I didn't talk about it
to her. You can understand that I wouldn't, can't you? In fact, I never
mentioned you to her. She never mentioned you to me."
"You must have mistaken her, Tom."
"I don't think it's possible, Dave," said the colonel. "You can mistake
words and explanations a good deal easier than you can mistake an
atmosphere. No, Dave, I tell you that there's something odd about
it--married or not, Lucy didn't BELIEVE herself married the last time I
saw her."
"But she MUST have known," says the doctor, as much to himself as to the
colonel. "She MUST have known." Any one could of told by the way he said
it that he wasn't lying. I could see that Colonel Tom believed in him,
too. They was both sicking their intellects onto the job of figgering
out how it was Lucy didn't know. Finally the doctor says very
thoughtful:
"Whatever became of Prentiss McMakin, Tom?"
"Dead," says Colonel Tom, "quite a while ago."
"H-m," says the doctor, still thinking hard. And then looks at Colonel
Tom like they was an idea in his head. Which he don't speak her out. But
Colonel Tom seems to understand.
"Yes," he says, nodding his head. "I think you are on the right track
now. Yes--I shouldn't wonder."
Well, they puts this and that together, and they agrees that whatever
happened to make things hard to explain must of happened on that day
that Prentiss McMakin met the doctor in the bar-room, and didn't shoot
him, as he had made his brags he would. Must of happened between the
time that afternoon when Prentiss McMakin left the doctor and the time
Colonel Tom went out to see his sister and found she had went. Must of
happened somehow through Prent McMakin.
We goes home with Colonel Tom that night. And the next day all three of
us is on our way to Athens, Indiany, where I had seen Miss Lucy at.