“Yes,” I answered. “They think you took the money.”
“H’m. I’ve made it up to them without their knowing. So that’s all right. And—what about Aurora?”
I told him about Aurora. He was longer with his “H’m” that time. Do you know? I believe the fellow was human enough to be jealous of an astrologer whom he didn’t envy! However, he ended by letting out another:
“So that’s all right.”
“And you?” I ventured.
He didn’t say anything at first. He sat there fingering his gewgaws and staring at the sea.
“How’s a man to know whether he’s all right or all wrong?” he finally demanded.
“Hell!” objected I. “It isn’t your fault if you happen to be sitting in Batum instead of in Zerbetta—or at the bottom of the Golden Horn. You couldn’t have invented such an end for yourself if you had tried till you were black in the face. That antiquity gang is responsible, not you. But I bet—”
But I concluded not to. As for Michael, he continued to study the afternoon blue of the sea. Down the edge of it a steamer trailed a long dark line of smoke toward the West.
“I suppose I could go back home if I really wanted to,” he said, “now that my antiquity man has pulled off his republic. Yet after all, what good would it do? You can see for yourself—The worst of it, though, is that I don’t really want to. You get interested in people, you know, in spite of yourself—even when they have Jew noses and jabber Armenian. I’d like to see their show through. Then they’ve been no end decent to me. I’ve a vine and fig tree of my own—up Ararat way! I have a house to live in, and a horse to ride, and a wife to beat. I do it, too. I’ve learned that much,” he pronounced darkly, in a tone that struck me at first as irrelevant. On consideration, however, I decided it wasn’t. “Anyhow,” he went on, “I’m alive; and I can’t say I’m sorry. The funny thing about it is that I never knew it till I came so near stepping off. I’ve had some pretty narrow squeaks since then, too. And my chances of dropping in my boots are still a lot brighter than yours. All the same, it’s better than peddling those damned hay-rakes. But once in a while,” the inconsequent devil blurted out, “I come down here and listen to the band.”