CLUB CONFIDENCES
Late the same evening, in the billiard-room of the "Loungers Club" Clarence Sidwell met one Winston Hough, seemingly by chance, though in fact very much the reverse. Big and blonde, addicted to laughter, Hough was one of the few men with whom Sidwell fraternized,—why, only the Providence which makes like and unlike attract each other could have explained. However, it was with deliberate intent that Sidwell entered the most brilliantly lighted room in the place and sought out the group of which Hough was the centre.
"Hello, Chad!" the latter greeted the new-comer. "I've just trimmed up Watson here, and I'm looking for new worlds to conquer. I'll roll you fifty points to see who pays for a lunch afterward."
Sidwell smiled tolerantly. "I think it would be better for my reputation to settle without playing. Put up your stick and I'm with you."
Hough shook his head. "No," he objected, "I'm not a Weary Willie. I prefer to earn my dole first. Come on."
But Sidwell only looked at him. "Don't be stubborn," he said. "I want to talk with you."
Hough returned his cue to the rack lingeringly. "Of course, if you put it that way there's nothing more to be said. As to the stubbornness, however—" He paused suggestively.
Sidwell made no comment, but led the way directly toward the street.
"What's the matter?" queried Hough, when he saw the direction they were taking. "Isn't the club grill-room good enough for you?"
Sidwell pursued his way unmoved. "I said I wished to talk with you."
"I guess I must be dense," Hough answered gayly. "I certainly never saw any house rules that forbid a man to speak."
Sidwell looked at his companion with a whimsical expression. "The trouble isn't with the house rules but with you. A fellow might as well try to monopolize the wheat-pit on the board of trade as to keep you alone here. You're too confoundedly popular, Hough! You draw people as the proverbial molasses-barrel attracts flies."
The big man laughed. "Your compliment, if that's what it was, is a bit involved, but I suppose it'll have to do. Lead on!"
Sidwell sought out a modest little café in a side street and selected a secluded booth.
"What'll you have?" he asked, as the waiter appeared.
Hough's blue eyes twinkled. "Are you with me, whatever I order?"
"Club sandwiches and a couple of bottles of beer," Hough concluded.
His companion made no comment.
"Been some time, hasn't it, since you surprised your stomach with anything like this?" bantered the big man, when the order had arrived and the waiter departed.
Sidwell smiled. "I shall have to confess it," he admitted.
"I thought so," remarked Hough dryly. "Next time you depict a plebeian scene you can remember this and thank me."
This time Sidwell did not smile. "You're hitting me rather hard, old man," he said.
"You deserve it," laconically answered Hough.
"But not from you!"
Hough meditatively watched the beads bursting on the surface of the liquor.
"Admitted," he said; "but the people who ought to touch you up are afraid to do so, and someone ought to." He smiled across the table. "Pardon the brutal frankness, but it's true."
Sidwell returned the glance. "You think it's the duty of some intimate to perform the kindness of this—touching up process occasionally, do you?"
Hough drank deep and sighed with satisfaction. "Jove! that tastes good! I limbered up my joints with a two-mile walk before I went to the club this evening, and I've been as dry as a harvest-hand ever since. All the wine in France or elsewhere won't touch the spot like a little good old brew when a man is really healthy." He recalled himself. "Your pardon, Sidwell. Seriously, I do think it's the duty of our best friends to bring us back to earth now and then when we've strayed too far away. No one who doesn't care for us will take the trouble."
"Our very best friends, I judge," suggested Sidwell.
"Certainly." The big man wondered what was coming next.
"A—wife, for instance."
Hough straightened in his chair. His jolly face grew serious.
"Are you in earnest, Chad," he queried, "or are you just drawing me out?"
"I never was more in earnest in my life."
Hough lost sight of the original question in the revelation it suggested.
"Do you mean you're really going to get married at last?"
Sidwell forced a smile. "If the matter were already settled, it would be too late to consider the advisability of the move, wouldn't it?" he returned. "It would be an established fact, and as such useless to discuss. I haven't asked the lady, if that answers your question."
Hough made a gesture of impatience. "Theoretically, yes, but practically, no. In your individual case, desire and gratification amount to the same. You're mighty fascinating with the ladies, Chad. Few women would refuse you, if you made an effort to have them do the reverse."
"Thank you," said Sidwell, equivocally.
His companion scowled. "Appreciation is unnecessary. I'm not even sure the remark was complimentary."
They sat a moment in silence, while the beer in their glasses grew stale.
"Suppose I were to consider marriage, as you suggest," said Sidwell at last. "What do you think would be the result? Judging from your expression, some opinion thereon is weighing heavily upon your mind."
The blonde man looked up keenly. One would hardly have recognized him as the easy-going person of a few moments before.
"It will, of course, depend entirely upon whom you choose. That's hackneyed. From the motions of straws, though, this Summer, I presume it's admissible that I jump at conclusions concerning the lady."
The other nodded.
"In that case, Chad, as surely as night follows day it'll be a failure." The blue eyes all but flashed. "Moreover, it's a hideous injustice to the girl."
Sidwell stiffened involuntarily.
"Your prediction sounds a bit strong from one who is himself a benedict," he returned coldly. "Upon what, if you please, do you base your opinion?"
Hough fidgeted in his chair.
"You want me to be frank, brutally frank, once more?"
"Anything you wish. I'd like to know why you spoke as you did."
"The reason, then, is this. You two would no more mix than oil and water."
Sidwell's face did not change. "You and Elise seem to jog along fairly well together," he observed.
Hough scowled as before. "Yes, but there's no possible similarity between the cases. You and I are no more alike than a dog and a rabbit. To come down to the direct issue, you're city bred, and Miss Baker has been reared in the country. She—"
Sidwell held up his hand deprecatingly. "To return to the illustration, Elise was originally from the country."
"And to repeat once more," exclaimed Hough, "there's again no similarity. Elise and I have been married eight years. We met at college, and grew together normally. We were both young and adaptable. Besides, at the risk of being tedious, I reiterate that you and I are totally unlike. I'm only partially urban; you are completely so—to your very finger-tips. I'm half savage, more than half. I like to be out in the country, among the mountains, upon the lakes. I like to hunt and fish, and dawdle away time; you care for none of these things. I can make money because I inherited capital, and it almost makes itself; but it's not with me a definite ambition. I have no positive object in life, unless it is to make the little woman happy. You have. Your work absorbs the best of you. You haven't much left for friendships, even mild ones like ours. I've been with you for a good many years, old man, and I know what I'm talking about. You are old, older than your years, and you're not young even in them. You're selfish—pardon me, but it's true—abominably selfish. Your character, your point of view, your habits—are all formed. You'll never change; you wouldn't if you could. Miss Baker is hardly more than a child. I know her—I've made it a point to know her since I saw you were interested in her. Everything in the world rings genuine to her as yet. She hasn't learned to detect the counterfeit, and when the knowledge does come it will hurt her cruelly. She'll want to get back to nature as surely as a child with a bruised finger wants its mother; and you can't go with her. Most of all, Chad, she's a woman. You don't know what that means—no unmarried man does know. Even we married ones never grasp the subtleties of woman-nature completely. I've been studying one for eight years, and at times she escapes me. But one thing I have learned; they demand that they shall be first in the life of the man they love. Florence Baker will demand this, and after the first novelty has worn off you won't satisfy her. I repeat once more, you're too selfish for that. As sure as anything can be, Chad Sidwell, if you marry that girl it will end in disaster—in divorce, or something worse."
The voice ceased, and the place was of a sudden very quiet. Sidwell tapped on his thin drinking-glass with his finger-nail. His companion had never seen him nervous before. At last he looked up unshiftingly. "You've given me a pretty vivid portrait of myself, of what I'm good for, and what not," he said. "Would you like me to return the compliment?"
Again Hough wondered what was coming. "Yes, I suppose so," he answered hesitatingly.
"You've often remarked," said Sidwell, slowly, "that you knew of no work for which you were especially adapted. I think I could fit you out exactly to your liking. Just get a position as guard to a lake of brimstone in the infernal regions."
Hough laughed, but Sidwell did not. "I fancy," he continued monotonously, "I see you now, a long needle-pointed spear in your hands, jabbing back the poor sinners who tried to crawl out."
"Chad!" interrupted the other reproachfully. "Chad!" But Sidwell did not stop.
"You'd stand well back, so that the sulphur fumes wouldn't irritate your own nostrils, and so that when the bubbles from the boiling broke they wouldn't spatter you, and with the finest kind of intuition and the most delicate aim you'd select the tenderest place in your intended victim's anatomy for your spear-point." He smiled ironically at the picture. "Gad! you'd be a howling success there, old man!"
An expression of genuine contrition formed on Hough's jolly face. "I'm dead sorry I hurt you, Chad," he said, "but you asked me to be frank."
"You certainly were frank," rejoined the other bluntly.
"What I said, though, was true," reiterated Hough.
Sidwell leaned a bit forward, his face, handsome in spite of its shadings of discontent, clear in the light.
"Perhaps," he went on. "The trouble with you is that you don't give me credit for a single redeeming virtue. No one in this world is wholly good or wholly bad. You forget that I'm a human being, with natural feelings and desires. You make me out a sort of machine, cunningly constructed for a certain work. You limit my life to that work alone. A human being, even one born of the artificial state called civilization, isn't a contrivance like a typewriter which you can make work and then shut up in a box until it is wanted again. There are certain emotions, certain wants, you can't suppress by logic. Even a dog, if you imprison him alone, will go mad in time. I'm a living man, with red blood instead of ink in my veins, not an abstract mathematical problem. I've had my full share of work and unhappiness. You'll have to give me a better reason for remaining without the gate of the promised land than you've yet done."
Hough looked at the speaker impotently. "You misunderstood me, Chad, if you thought I was trying to keep you from your due, or from anything which would really make for your happiness. I was simply trying to prevent something I feel morally certain you'll regret. Because one isn't entirely happy is no adequate reason why he should make himself more unhappy. I can't say any more than I've already said; there's nothing more to say. My best reason for disapproving your contemplated action I gave you first, and you've not considered it at all. It's the injustice you do to a girl who doesn't realize what she is doing. With your disposition, Chad, you'd take away from her something which neither God nor man can ever give her back—her trust in life."
Sidwell's long fingers restlessly twirled the glass before him. The remainder of the untouched beer was now as so much stagnant water.
"If I don't undeceive her someone else will," he said. "It's inevitable. She'll have to adjust herself to things as they are, as we all have to do."
Hough made a motion of deprecation.
"Miss Baker is no longer a child," continued Sidwell. "If you've studied her as you say you've done, you've discovered that she has very definite ideas of her own. It's true that I haven't known her long, but she has had an opportunity to know me well such as no one else has ever had, not even you. No one can say that she is leaping in the dark. Time and time again, at every opportunity, I have stripped my very soul bare for her observation. The thing has not been easy for me; indeed, I know of nothing I could have done that would have been more difficult. Though the present instance seems to give the statement the lie, I am not easily confidential, my friend. I have had a definite object in doing as I have done with Miss Baker. I am trying, as I never tried before in my life, to get in touch with her—as I'll never try again, no matter how the effort results, to get in touch with a person. She knows the good and bad of me from A to Z. She knows the life I lead, the kind of people who make up that life, their aims, their amusements, their standards, social and moral, as thoroughly as I can make her know them. I have taken her everywhere, shown her every phase of my surroundings. For once in my life at least, Hough, I have been absolutely what I am,—absolutely frank. Farther than that I cannot go. I am not my brothers keeper. She is an individual in a world of individuals; a free agent, mental, moral, and physical. The decision of her future actions, the choice she makes of her future life, must of necessity rest with her. For some reason I cannot point to a definite explanation and say this or that is why she is attractive to me. She seems to offer the solution of a want I feel. No system of logic can convince me that, after having been honest as I have been with her, if she of her own free will consents to be my wife, I have not a moral right to make her so."
Again Hough made a deprecatory motion. "It is useless to argue with you," he said helplessly, "and I won't attempt it. If I were to try, I couldn't make you realize that the very methods of frankness you have used to make Miss Baker know you intimately have defeated their own purpose, and have unconsciously made you an integral part of her life. I said before that when you wish you're irresistibly fascinating with women. All that you have said only exemplifies my statement. It does not, however, in the least change the homely fact that oil and water won't permanently mix. You can shake them together, and for a time it may seem that they are one; but eventually they'll separate, and stay separate. As I said before, though, I do not expect you to realize this, or to apply it. I can't make what I know by intuition sufficiently convincing. I wish I could. I feel that somehow this has been my opportunity and I have failed."
For the instant Sidwell was roused out of himself. He looked at his companion with appreciation. "At least you can have the consolation of knowing you have honestly tried," he said earnestly.
Hough returned the look with equal steadiness. "But nevertheless I have failed."
Sidwell put on his hat, its broad brim shading his eyes and concealing their expression.
"Providence willing," he said finally, "I shall ask Miss Baker to be my wife."