COURTLANDT TELLS A STORY
The Colonel and his guests at luncheon had listened to Courtlandt without sound or movement beyond the occasional rasp of feet shifting under the table. He had begun with the old familiar phrase—“I’ve got a story.”
“Tell it,” had been the instant request.
At the beginning the men had been leaning at various negligent angles,—some with their elbows upon the table, some with their arms thrown across the backs of their chairs. The partridge had been excellent, the wine delicious, the tobacco irreproachable. Burma, the tinkle of bells in the temples, the strange pictures in the bazaars, long journeys over smooth and stormy seas; romance, moving and colorful, which began at Rangoon, had zigzagged around the world, and ended in Berlin.
“And so,” concluded the teller of the tale, “that is the story. This man was perfectly innocent of any wrong, a victim of malice on the one hand and of injustice on the other.”
“Is that the end of the yarn?” asked the colonel.
“Who in life knows what the end of anything is? This is not a story out of a book.” Courtlandt accepted a fresh cigar from the box which Rao passed to him, and dropped his dead weed into the ash-bowl.
“Has he given up?” asked Abbott, his voice strangely unfamiliar in his own ears.
“A man can struggle just so long against odds, then he wins or becomes broken. Women are not logical; generally they permit themselves to be guided by impulse rather than by reason. This man I am telling you about was proud; perhaps too proud. It is a shameful fact, but he ran away. True, he wrote letter after letter, but all these were returned unopened. Then he stopped.”
“A woman would a good deal rather believe circumstantial evidence than not. Humph!” The colonel primed his pipe and relighted it. “She couldn’t have been worth much.”