IV
Ritchie came home in a somewhat bitter humor, partly due to his having spent the night on a hard chair, and partly to other and finer causes. He hoped that drunken fellow would be gone. He wished never to see him again; but when Ritchie opened the door, there he was, lying on the bed and reading one of the little books.
“Hello!” he said, as joyously as if Ritchie were his heart’s dearest friend.
“Are you feeling better?” Ritchie curtly inquired.
Without waiting for a reply, he began to take off his grimy work clothes.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” the other went on. “Absolutely the whitest thing I ever heard of! I must have been pretty far gone last night—can’t remember a blamed thing.”
He was not discouraged by his host’s silence.
“I shan’t forget this, you know,” he continued. “You darned nearly saved my life. Can’t imagine what my people would have said, if I’d come home like that. You know how it is[Pg 96]—”
“No, I don’t,” interrupted Ritchie. “I’m a teetotaler.”
“Shows sense,” said the other warmly. “I think I’ll have to be one myself. My name’s Bradley.” He waited. “What’s yours?” he asked.
“Ritchie,” responded the other. “And as good as Bradley any day,” he added mentally.
In some respects, however, honesty obliged him to admit that he was not so good as Bradley.
Bradley, after stretching, got up. He was in his shirt sleeves, and Ritchie surveyed his tall, slender figure with the eye of a connoisseur in physiques. The fellow was young yet, not fully developed, but certainly those shoulders, that solid neck, that broad chest, were promising—very promising.
“Well, he probably eats too much meat,” thought Ritchie, with dejection. “Living like he does, he won’t last!”
In order to show his perfect ease and indifference, he began to wash, whistling when the process permitted.
“I must be badly in your way,” said the other, in his good-humored manner. “I’ll clear out, I think. Got a spare overcoat? I don’t like to go out like this.”
Ritchie grew scarlet. His overcoat—certainly spare enough—was in that place where winter overcoats naturally go in the spring.
“No,” he said sullenly.
“Then I—” began Bradley.
There was a knock at the door. Ritchie flung it wide open, with the air of one who has nothing to conceal. In the hall stood two resplendent young heroes, broadly smiling.
“Still alive, Bradley?” said the taller and older of the two.
They both came into the room as if Ritchie did not exist. Trembling with resentment, he stood aside, collarless, in his cheap striped shirt, with his black hair still wet on his forehead. These three well fed, well clothed creatures, with their vigorous voices, completely filled the room—filled, he thought, the whole world, squeezing him out of it.
In an affectionate and blasphemous manner Bradley reproached his friend for deserting him the night before.
“You ought to thank me,” said his friend, “for leaving you in the care of that peach of a girl!”
“What peach of a girl?” asked Bradley, pleasantly surprised.
The friend recounted the circumstances. No one observed Mr. Ritchie’s rage and dismay.
“I went there just now to make inquiries,” the friend went on, “and she told me where I’d find you. Bradley, old son, if you’re a man and a brother, you’ll go there at once and thank her! She’s a beautiful girl, and—”
“Here!” interrupted Ritchie. His voice was so strange that they all turned to look at him. “Leave her out!” he cried. “You can thank me!”
Bradley was smitten with compunction. He began thanking Ritchie with energy, introduced his friends, and invited him to dinner.
“No!” said Ritchie. Like many teetotalers, he had acquired the habit of saying “no” somewhat ungraciously. “No! But you can just leave her out!”
Again he was thanked by all of them, and at last they left his room; but he knew that Madeline would not be left out. He felt certain that they would go at once to Compson’s Chophouse. He could see them talking to Madeline. He knew how she would admire their dress, and their silly language, and their frivolous and disgusting manners.
“All right!” he said to himself. “You’re welcome to ’em; but you don’t catch me going there any more, to be made a fool of. Not much!”
Suddenly he decided that he wanted no dinner—not at Compson’s, or at any other place. He threw himself down on his cot, with a scornful laugh that sounded like a sob. Fellows like that always got everything. They thought they owned the earth—and very likely they did.