"I know it's not that." The old, affectionate tone went right to my heart. "But if you're thinking you'll find in them any explanation of my father's taking his own life, I'm here to tell you you're mistaken. Plenty there, no doubt, to have driven a tender hearted man off the earth.... He was different." Eyeing the book in my hand, the boy blurted with sudden heat, "Those damn' diaries have been wife and child and meat and drink to him. They were his reason for living—not dying!"
"Start me right in regard to your father, Worth," I urged anxiously. "It's important."
The boy gave me his shoulder and continued to stare down into the fire, as he said at last, slowly,
"I would rather leave him alone, Jerry."
I knew it would be useless to insist. Never then or thereafter did I hear him say more of his father's character. At that, he could hardly have told more in an hour's talk.
At random, I took the volume that covered the year in which, as I remembered, Thomas Gilbert's wife had secured her divorce from him. Neatly and carefully written in a script as readable as type, the books, if I am a judge, had literary style. They were much more than mere diaries. True, each entry began with a note of the day's weather, and certain small records of the writer's personal affairs; but these went oddly enough with what followed; a biting analysis of the inner life, the estimated intentions and emotions, of the beings nearest to him. It was inhuman stuff. But Worth was right; there was no soil for suicide in this matter written by a hand guided by a harsh, censorious mind; too much egotism here to willingly give over the rôle of conscience for his friends. Friends?—could a man have friends who regarded humanity through such unkindly, wide open, all-seeing eyes?
Worth, seated across from me on the other side of the fire, stared straight into the leaping blaze; but I doubted if that was what he saw. On his face was the look which I had come to know, of the dignified householder who had gone in and shut the door on whatever of dismay and confusion might be in his private affairs. I began to read his father's version of the separation from his mother, with its ironic references to her most intimate friend.
"Marion would like to see Laura Bowman ship Tony and marry Jim Edwards. I swear the modern woman has played bridge so long that her idea of the most serious obligation in life—the marriage vow—is, 'Never mind. If you don't like the hand you have got, shuffle, cut, and deal again!'"
I dropped the book to my knee and looked over at Worth, asking,
"This Mrs. Dr. Bowman that we met last night at Tait's—she was a special friend of your mother's?"