Heth Works (Pickle) Art in Factory Worker
See Mr. Dayne--Settlement--Begin canvass not
before Feb. 1. H. Cooney
Todd Inst.--Night School?
Socks?--Or darning
Playground. (Council Com. meets Fri. 5 P.M.)
Jack D.
Mrs. G. Loan 20c.
Through the next to the last item, Vivian absently drew a pencil mark, the weekly cheering letter to Weymouth, Texas, having been written just after the memorandum. However, the young man's eye remained fixed on the item erased. He lit his pipe, took his head in both hands and continued to stare....
Dalhousie had called at the Dabney House on the night of his departure for the new country. His reappearance in the flesh proved at least that that fierce instability of character, which betrays men in moments of disaster to the irreparable rashness, was not in him. So much was a comfort, for the witch fear had ridden Vivian in the silent weeks following the Beach.
But the reparting was a heart-rack none the less. Dalhousie was no lifelong friend like O'Neill, or even like Chas Cooney. But Vivian, having made his acquaintance most informally one night in the summer, had responded at sight to the unconscious claim of weakness; he had come to feel a strong bond, conceived splendid reformatory plans. The boy's fall and disgrace, coming like a crash from the blue, had been a severe shock to him, which would last. His self-exile, while probably advisable for a time at least, had been a prospect full of sadness. If poor Dalhousie had, woven into him, a vitiating twist for self-dramatization, if he said, "My God, why can't I die?" less with the terrible dignity of ruin than like a lad portraying his idea of ruin on the stage, his native missing of the utter ring of truth never occurred to Vivian. To him this boy, broken for cowardice and cast off by his father and friends, was as tragic a figure as Oedipus.
And what made the farewell so peculiarly sad was that Dal, out of his painful bewilderment, was evidently still clinging to some sort of hope. He himself had said, and said again, that there was no hope for such as he. He admitted with bitterness his insane passion that sunny afternoon; remembered and acknowledged a wild impulse to overturn the boat, and let come what might. He paced the floor and cried out that nothing that they said of him could be too bad. And yet he hoped. He had come to the Dabney House with hope. He had given his Texas address with a falter of hope.
But of course there was no hope. Drink, the great fowler, had bagged one more....
Without, there rose a lonesome booming, far and ghostly in the stillness of the great empty hotel. It was the Garlands' crazy clock, memento of Mister in his prodigal bridal days. Harried forever by some obscure intestinal disorder, the mad timepiece stayed voiceless for days together, and then, without warning, embarked upon an orgy of profligate strikings. Now it struck fourteen, and fell abruptly silent.
Vivian stirred, and remembered the reception. His uncle, who derided and castigated his Dabney House career, had said emphatically that he would consider it most disrespectful if his solitary nephew absented himself from the annual greeting of friends. The nephew, since his home-coming, had grown very fond of the old gentleman. Yet he knew quite well that he wasn't giving up this evening solely to please his uncle.
He rose, relit his pipe, and walked about. Though useful bones were missing from his left foot, he liked to walk: was rather an accomplished pedestrian. In time he came to a halt before a dilapidated little cabinet partly full of the shiny tools of his trade. The cabinet seemed quite out of place in the tall state chamber: but then so did the man. He did not look in the least like a doctor (just as Miss Heth had said). The faint scent of iodoform that he now gave off was a heterogeneity, like a whiff of brandy on a parson.
The young man stood gazing into his cabinet, fathoms deep in thought. That Miss Heth was responsible for a meaningless lie which took away more than life itself from one who had loved her truly in his way: this was a hypothesis so wild and weak that it collapsed at the first opportunity for calm, just examination. The sight of her again, the other night, had merely clinched the matter; driven by a glance the last nail in the coffin of Dalhousie's hope; and by the same stroke, swept away the last lingering trace of diabolical suspicion. But that Miss Heth had treated Dal pretty badly before the Beach was only too probable. The boy's bitter complainings had left small doubt of that.