“You will have to look out for Deverney—the barkeeper,” he said. “He is Brant’s friend. The first thing is to find out where he sleeps. We’ll go over to the other corner and wait for him till he comes out.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE GOODLY COMPANY OF MISERY
Having gone so far astray on the Sunday, it was inevitable that Brant should awake repentant and remorseful on the Monday. He slept late, and when he had breakfasted like a monk and had gone downtown to face another day of enforced idleness in his office, conscience rose up and began to ply its many-thonged whip.
What a thrice-accursed fool he had made of himself, and how completely he had justified Mrs. Langford’s opinion of him! How infinitely unworthy the love of any good woman he was, and how painstakingly he had put his future beyond the hope of redemption! If Colonel Bowran would only come back and leave him free to go and bury himself in some unheard-of corner of the world! This was the burden of each fresh outburst of self-recrimination.
So much by way of remorse, but when he thought of Dorothy, something like a measure of dubious gratitude was mingled therewith—a certain thankfulness that the trial of his good resolutions had come before he had been given the possible chance of free speech with her—a chance which might have involved her happiness as well as his own peace of mind.
“Good Lord!” he groaned, flinging himself into a chair and tossing his half-burned cigar out of the window. “I ought to be glad that I found myself out before I had time to pull her into it. If they had let me go on, and she would have listened to me, I should have married her out of hand—married an angel, and I with a whole nest of devils asleep in me waiting only for a chance to come alive! God help me! I’m worse than I thought I was—infinitely worse.—Come in!” This last to some one at the door.
It was only the postman, and Brant took the letters eagerly, hoping to find one from Hobart. He was disappointed, but there was another note from the end-of-track on the Condorra Extension, setting forth that the chief engineer’s home-coming would be delayed yet other days.
Brant read the colonel’s scrawl, and what was left of his endurance took flight in an explosion of bad language. A minute later he burst into Antrim’s office.
“Where is Mr. Craig?” he demanded.
“He has gone to Ogden,” said Antrim, wondering what had happened to disturb the serenity of the self-contained draughtsman.