V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

"But I don't understand. If he has told you all about it, I--I don't see why you have come to me at all."

Then the man appeared to recollect that he had omitted the most important part of his narrative--of course she didn't understand, no wonder!--and spoke with some eagerness.

"I should have explained that in the beginning!--only of course I don't like to trespass too far on your time.... You see--unfortunately--Dal's hardly in position to speak about the matter at all. I--"

He paused, as if seeking how to put it, and then spoke these doubt-destroying words:

"It is very perplexing, but the truth is--he says so himself--he doesn't know at all what took place."

"Oh!... He doesn't know!"

"I don't wonder you're astonished at his saying so," said the young man, in quite a gentle way. "And yet I do believe him absolutely...."

He now explained, in well-selected phrases, that Jack Dalhousie had been very drunk when he boarded the boat, having taken a running start on the evening preceding. Though he might have seemed normal enough, through long experience in control, he was actually quite irresponsible; and drink had played strange tricks with his mind before now. The boy could remember getting into the boat, it seemed; remember that--ah--that she had objected (very properly) to his presence; remember standing up in the boat, very angry, and the wind blowing in his face. The next thing he remembered was being in the water, swimming away. And then, when he landed, a man standing there on shore cursed him and struck him in the face.... Then he had looked out over the water; he saw the upset sailboat and the boatman rowing out, and the people, and it rushed over him what he must have done. Till then, he said, he had never dreamed that anything had happened. He could hardly believe it, even with the evidence of his own eyes. Then later Hofheim, the sort of fellow, had gone up to see him, and told him what people were saying, which so much more than confirmed his worst suspicions. Hofheim was a stranger, but he meant well....

Dalhousie, in short, was in the singular position of having to implore others to assure him that he hadn't done all these terrible things. And it appeared that Miss Carlisle Heth was the one person in the world who could possibly give him that assurance.

So spoke the stranger. That he had scattered lifelines, that all his oratory had come agrapple with nature's first law, evidently did not cross his mind. He gazed down at the girl's dimly limned face, and his gaze seemed full of an unconquerable hopefulness.