Nothing But the Truth

by Frederic Stewart Isham

CHAPTER XIX—BOB FORGETS HIMSELF

“Miss Gerald,” said Bob as formally as if he were quoting from one of those deportment books, “may I have the pleasure of this dance?”

Her reply was at variance with what “How to Behave in the Best Society” taught young ladies to say. “Why do you ask?” said Gwendoline Gerald quietly.

“Got to,” said Bob.

“Why have you got to?”

“I promised I would.”

“Who made you promise?”

Bob told.

“Do you have to do what she tells you?”

“In this instance.”

“Of course you know what my reply will be?”

“I told her you would refuse.”

“You would hardly expect me to dance with you after all I know about you, would you?” There was still that deadly quietness in her tones.

“All you think you know about me,” Bob had the courage to correct her. “Of course not.”

“Some one has taken one of my rings,” observed Miss Gerald even more quietly.

“I haven’t got it,” exclaimed Bob. “Honest!” Wasn’t he glad he had got rid of it?

The violet eyes studied Bob as if he were something strange and inanimate—an odd kind of a pebble or a shell. “You are sure?” said Miss Gwendoline.

“Positive,” answered Bob in his most confident tones. He remembered now that during his dance with the jolly little pal he had observed the monocle-man talking with Miss Gerald. Perhaps he had told her he had seen the ring in Bob’s fingers when the latter had gone to the window. The monocle-man might have been spying all the while, on the other side. There might have been two Peeping Toms interested in Bob’s actions in the billiard room.

“Are you so positive you would be willing to submit to be searched?”

“I am that positive,” Bob answered. And then went on more eagerly: “Maybe you haven’t really lost it after all.” He could say that and still tell the truth. “Why, it may be in your room now. You may find it on your table or your dresser when you go upstairs to retire.”

Miss Gerald looked at him. “You seem to be rather certain?” she said tentatively.

“I am,” said Bob. “I’d almost swear—” He stopped suddenly. It wouldn’t do to be too certain.

“Don’t you find your own words rather strange?” the girl asked.

“Everything’s funny about me, nowadays,” said Bob.

“Did you enjoy renewing your acquaintance with Miss ——?” She called Gee-gee by that other, more conventional name.

“I did not. I dislike her profoundly.”

“Are you sure?” The violet eyes were almost meditative. “Now I should have thought—” She paused. Bob read the thought, however. A man like him was on a plane with Gee-gee; indeed, much lower. Miss Gerald would be finding in Gee-gee Bob’s affinity next.

“You haven’t refused me out-and-out, yet,” he suggested. “To dance, I mean.”

“You would rather, of course, I did refuse you?”

“Of course,” Bob stammered. The mere thought of dancing with her once again as of yore gave him a sensation of exquisite pain. But naturally she would never dream of dancing with one she considered a—?

“Well, you may have the pleasure,” she said mockingly.

Bob could not credit his hearing. She would permit him to touch her. Incredible! A great awe fell over him. He could not believe.

“I said you might have the pleasure,” she repeated, accenting in the least the last word.

Bob caught that accent. Ah, she knew then, what exquisite pain it would be for him to dance with her! She was purposely punishing him; she wished to make him suffer. She would drive a gimlet in his heart and turn it around. Bob somehow got his arm about his divinity and found himself floating around the room, experiencing that dual sensation of being in heaven and in the other place at one and the same time.

It was a weird and wonderful dance. Through it all he kept looking down at her hair, though its brightness seemed to dazzle him. Miss Dolly had confided to Bob that he “guided divinely,” but he didn’t guide divinely now; he was too bewildered. Once he bumped his divinity into some one and this did not improve his mental condition. But she bore with him with deadly patience; she was bound to punish him thoroughly, it seemed.

Then that dual sensation in Bob’s breast began gradually to partake more of heaven than of the other place, and he yielded to the pure and unadulterated joy of the divinity’s propinquity. He forgot there was a big black blot on his escutcheon, or character. He ceased to remember he was a renegade and criminal. The nearness of the proud golden head set his heart singing until tempestuously and temerariously he flung three words at her, telepathically, from the throbbing depths of his soul.

The dance ending abruptly “brought him to.” He looked around rather dazed; then struggling to awake, gazed at her. Her face still wore that expression of deadly calm and pride. Bob didn’t understand. She was no statue, he would have sworn, yet now she looked one—for him. And a moment before she had seemed radiantly, gloriously alive—no Galatea before the awakening! It was as if she had felt all the vibrating joy of the dance. But that, of course, could not have been. Bob felt like rubbing his eyes when he regarded her. He did not understand unless—

She wished once more to “rub it in,” to make him realize again more poignantly all that he had lost. She let him have a fuller glimpse of heaven just to hurl him from it. She liked to see him go plunging down into the dark voids of despair. He yielded entirely to that descending feeling now; he couldn’t help it.

“I thank you,” said Bob, in his best deportment-book manner.

The enigmatic violet eyes lighted as they rested on him. Bob would have sworn it was a cruel light. “Oh,” she said, “as long as you are a guest—? There are certain formalities—”

“I understand,” he returned.

The light in the violet eyes deepened and sparkled. So a cruel Roman lady might have regarded a gladiator in the arena, answering his appeal with “Thumbs down.” Bob lifted his hand to his brow. The girl’s proud lips—lips to dream of—were curved as in cruel disdain. Then Bob forgot himself again.

“I won’t have you look at me like that,” he said masterfully. “I’m not a criminal. Confound it, it’s preposterous. I didn’t steal your ring and I want you to know it, too. I never stole a thing in my life.” They were standing somewhat apart, where they couldn’t be overheard. He spoke in a low tone but with force, gazing boldly and unafraid now into the violet eyes.

“I won’t let you think that of me,” he said, stepping nearer. “Steal from you?” he scoffed. “Do you know the only thing I’d like to steal from you?” His eyes challenged hers; the violet eyes didn’t shrink. “Yourself! I’d like to steal you, but hang your rings!” He didn’t say “hang”; he used the other word. He forgot himself completely.

A garden of wild roses blossomed on the girl’s fair cheek, but she held herself with rare composure. “I wonder, Mr. Bennett,” she observed quietly, “how I should answer such mad irresponsible talk?”

“It’s the truth. And if I were a thief—which I’m not—I wouldn’t steal your rings. Even a thief wouldn’t steal the rings of the girl he loves.”

More roses! Outraged flushing, no doubt! Yet still the girl managed to maintain her composure. “You dare go very far, do you not, Mr. Bennett?”

“Yes; and I’ll go further. I love every hair of your head. Even when you’re cruel,” he hurried on recklessly, “and heaven knows you can be cruel enough, I love you. I love your lips when they say the unkindest and most outrageous things to me. I love your eyes when they look scorn. I ought not to love you, but I do. Why, I loved you the first time I saw you. And do you think if I were all those things you think me, I’d dare stand up here and tell you that? I didn’t mean to tell you ever that I loved you. But that’s my answer when you imply I’m a rank criminal. A man’s got to have a clear conscience to love you as I do. Such love can only go with a clear conscience. Why, you’re so wonderful and beautiful to me I couldn’t—” Bob paused. “Don’t you see the point?” he appealed to her. “A man couldn’t have you in his heart and not have the right to hold up his head among his fellow men.”

Miss Gerald did not at once answer; she had not moved. The sweeping dark lashes were lowered; she was looking down. “You plead your cause very ingeniously, Mr. Bennett,” she observed at length, her lashes suddenly uplifting. The lights were still there in the violet eyes; they seemed yet mocking him. “You invoke the sacred name of love as a proof of your innocence. The argument is unique if not logical,” she went on with pitiless accents and the red lips that uttered the “sacred name of love” smiled. “I have been rather interested, however, in following your somewhat fantastic defense of yourself. That it has incidentally involved me is also mildly interesting. Do you expect me to feel flattered?” The red lips still smiled. Bob was quite near but she didn’t move away. She seemed quite unafraid of him.

“You needn’t feel ashamed,” said Bob sturdily. And his eyes flashed. They seemed to say no woman ought to be ashamed of an honest man’s love. “I may be mad over you,” he went on, “but I’m not ashamed of it. There isn’t a thought I have of you that doesn’t make me want to be a better man, and a stronger and more useful one, too,” he added, squaring his shoulders.

Again the long lashes swept slightly downward, masking the violet, and the girl’s lips moved—a ripple of amusement, no doubt. She looked up, however, once more with that appearance of deadly calm. “Then you deny it, in toto, having seen my ring to-night?”

Bob swallowed. Again he dropped from the heights.

“You do not speak,” said Miss Gerald, studying him.

“I—wish you wouldn’t ask me that,” he managed to say.

“Why not?” lifting her brows. “Even if you saw it you could say you hadn’t.”

“That’s just the point,” Miserably. “I couldn’t.”

“Then you did see it?”

“I did.”

“You had it, perhaps?”

“I did.”

“You have it now?”

“No.”

“Ah, you have passed it on to an accomplice, perhaps.” Mockingly. Miss Gerald drew up her proud figure. “And this is the man,” she said, “who talks to me of love. Love!” With a low musical laugh. “The tenderest passion! The purest one! Dare you repeat now,” with crushing triumph in the violet eyes, “what you said a moment ago.”

“I love you,” said Bob, with burning glance. “I shall carry your image with me to the grave.”

This slightly staggered even one of her regal young bearing. His tone was that of the master once more. No criminal in his look when he said that! Miss Gerald’s slender figure swayed in the least; her breast stirred. Bob put his handsome reckless face nearer. That was the way he answered her challenge. He wore his fighting look.

“I love you,” he said. “And that,” he flung at her, “is still the answer I dare make.”

Miss Gerald did not reply to this bold defiance at once. How she would have answered, Bob never knew, for at that moment the hammer-thrower came up and the girl at once turned to him, looking slightly paler as she did so. Both then walked away, Bob’s somber gaze following them. But he was not long permitted even this mournful privilege.

“Phone, sir,” said a voice at his elbow. “Mr. Robert Bennett is urgently wanted on the phone.”

“All right.” And Bob followed the servant. “What now?” he asked himself wearily.

The voice at the other end was Dan’s. Fortunately the telephone was isolated and no one in the house could catch what Bob said. The good old commodore frantically wished to know all about Gee-gee and Gid-up. He had heard that Bob had got out of the sanatorium and gone back to Mrs. Ralston’s. Dan’s desire for information was greater even than his resentment toward Bob, as he had stooped to calling him up.

Bob obliged the commodore with such news as he could give. He told how he had tried unsuccessfully to sway Gee-gee and to show her the error of her ways; how she, however, seemed resolutely determined on her course of action and was not to be swayed. He related also that there was a legal light in the house.

At this point Dan’s remarks became explosive; it was like the Fourth of July at the other end of the line. Bob waited until the racket ceased and then he went on with further details, trying to be as conscientious and informing as possible. Finally he couldn’t think of anything more to say. But Dan thought of a lot—and some of it was personal, too. It didn’t ruffle Bob at all, however. It rolled off him like water off a duck’s back.

“You’ll be arrested,” said Bob at last. “There’s a law against that kind of talk through telephones, you know.”

“I’m afraid it’s all up,” moaned Dan.

“’Fraid it is!” affirmed Bob. “How does Clarence take it?”

“He’s sitting here, all broke up.”

“Well, tell him to cheer up if he can,” said Bob. “Gid-up isn’t nearly so dangerous as Gee-gee. At least that’s my opinion.”

“Oh, isn’t she?” sneered Dan. And then there was some more Fourth of July at the other end of the line.

Bob waited patiently for it to subside. “Is that all you wanted to talk with me about?” he asked at length.

“It is not,” snapped Dan. “Those confounded blankety-blank detectives, some blankety-blank idiot has employed as gardeners about Mrs. Ralston’s place, have arrested that-blankety-blank medical head of the private sanatorium.”

“What?” exclaimed Bob jubilantly.

“They found him prowling around. He tells the police-station man who he is, but the police-station man won’t believe him.”

“Ha! ha!” Bob was glad he could laugh once more, but it was Fourth of July again for Dan.

“It isn’t any blankety-blank laughing matter,” he called back. “He’s one of my witnesses and I don’t want to lose him. Lost witnesses enough already!” Furiously.

“Well, why don’t you get him out?” said Bob with a gratified snicker.

“I tried to, but that blankety-blank station-house man is a blank bullet-head and the blankety detectives insist he shall be held, as they saw him looking through a window. What I want you to do is to come down to the village and help get him out.”

“Me?” said Bob loftily. “Me help get him out?”

“Yes, you can acknowledge he was after you, an escaped patient.”

“Where is he now?” asked Bob.

“Cell.”

“Well, you tell the station-man for me that he had better put him in a padded room. Ha! ha!” And Bob hung up the receiver.

But almost immediately the bell rang again.

“Hello!” said a voice. It was the telephone operator. “Is Mr. Bennett still there? Oh! Well, there’s a party on the long distance wants to speak to you.”

“Hello; that you, Bob?” came in far-away accents.

“It’s me. Who are you?”

“Dad.”

“Oh, hello, dad!” Bob tried to make his voice joyful.

“I called you up to tell you I caught a fifty-seven pounder. Thought you’d like to congratulate me.”

Bob did.

“They’ve made me a member of the Pius Piscatorials—swell club down here,” continued dad jubilantly, and again Bob did the congratulating act. “By the way, how’s hustling?” went on dad.

“I’m hustling all right.”

“That’s good. Well, good-by, son. I’ll be short of funds presently, but that doesn’t worry me. I’m having the time of my life. By-by, dear boy.”

“By-by, dad, dear.”

“Hold on, Mr. Bennett.” It was the telephone operator once more. “There’s another party that’s bound to speak to you, and take it from me I don’t like the sound of his voice. I hope he isn’t like that first party that was talking to you. What us poor girls has to put up with is something shameful, and—All right. Go ahead.”

“This is Dickie,” said a voice. “Say! you leave my girl alone. I’ve heard of your goings-on.”

“Who told you?” asked Bob. “That Peeping Tom? That maniac-medico?”

“I told you before I was going to marry her. You keep off the premises if you know what is good for you.” Dickie was so mad he was childish.

“No, you’re not going to marry her,” said Bob.

“You—you don’t mean to say you’re engaged to her?” came back in choked tones.

“No. She’s only my jolly little pal. But she thinks a lot of what I tell her and I’ll pick out a real man for her some day. You aren’t good enough. A chap that will punch another chap when he can’t defend himself isn’t the chap for jolly little pal.”

“I didn’t punch you when you couldn’t defend yourself,” said Dickie indignantly.

“I’m the one to know. You gave it to me all right, and thereby settled your chances with her. Do you think I’d let a girl like her marry a chap like you? Why, you might come home and beat your wife! You’re capable of it. I refuse my consent absolutely. I shall advise her to have nothing whatever to do with you.”

Dickie couldn’t speak and Bob left him in a state of coma. This time Bob was suffered to leave the telephone booth. He was awfully glad they had the maniac-medico locked up. Maybe he would get a cute little room with a cunning little window, and maybe there’d be a landscape? But there wouldn’t be any flowers.

Just at this moment the temperamental little thing hurried up to Bob in a state of great agitation. He saw that something serious had happened.