“Splendid,” he cried. “That’s me. Splendid. I sure glitter in this bunch, don’t I?”
There was something irresistibly comic in the gesture with which he swept the group.
Patricia was still watching him—a puzzled expression in her eyes.
“Who is he?” she asked; but Crabb shook his head. “I haven’t an idea—but he is clever. And look at those boots—they’re the real thing. I wouldn’t want to try to dance in them, though.”
The tramp drained his glass—set it down on the table and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand—rose and disappeared between the palms and hydrangeas into the darkness.
For a guest in good standing the tramp then behaved strangely, for when he had reached a sheltered spot, in the bushes at the end of the English Garden, he sank at full length upon the grass and buried his head in his hands, groaning aloud. It was three years since he had seen her—three years, and yet she was just as he had seen her last. Time had touched her lightly, only caressing her playfully, rounding her features to matured beauty, while he—— A vision of camps, cities, skirmishes, orgies, came out of his mind in a disordered procession, all culminating in the incident which had brought him to ruin. Every detail of that at least was clear; the sudden rage where the bonds of patience had reached the snapping point—and then the blow. The tramp laughed outright. He could see now the smirk on the face of the drunken lieutenant as he toppled over backward and struck his head on the edge of the mahogany table. After that—irons, the court martial, the transport, Alcatraz, his chance, the friendly plank, the swim for the mainland, and freedom. He had never heard whether the man lived or died. He didn’t much care. He got what was coming to him.
The tramp was a fugitive still. He had walked since morning from Malvern station, where he had been thrown off the freight train on which he had worked a ride east from Harrisburg. At Bryn Mawr he had begged a meal—the irony of it had sunk into his soul—at the back door of a country house at which he had once been a welcome guest. A gossipy chauffeur had let him into his garage for a rest and had given him a cigarette over which he had learned the recent doings in the neighborhood. The thought of venturing into Philip Wharton’s grounds that night had entered his madcap brain while he lay in the woods along the Gulf Road, trying to make up his mind whether his tired feet would carry him the twelve miles that remained between him and the city.
Why had he returned? God knew. His feet had dragged him onward as though impelled by some force beyond his power to resist. Now that he was near the home of his boyhood it seemed as if any other place in the world would have been better. It was so real—the peaceful respectability of this country—so like Her. And yet its very peacefulness and respectability angered him. Was it nothing to have hungered and thirsted and sweated that the honor of these people and that of others like them might be preserved? Even Patricia’s blamelessness was intolerant—reproachful. The springs of memory that had gushed forth just now at the sight of her were dried in their source. There was a dull ache, a sinking of the spirit that was almost a physical pain; but the unreasoning fever of the wayward boy, the wrenching fury of the outcast soldier were lacking, and for a long time he lay where he had fallen without moving.