Traffic swirled past the two Southerners where they stood in a side eddy in the train shed. They were saying good-by, and now all at once the girl felt a curious weakness in her knees as though she were losing a dependable prop.
“I must get aboard,” he said, looking down at her from his greater height. “We’ll be leaving in a minute or so. You need not distress yourself about me, my dear. I could never have been happy for very long in this place—it’s not like our country. These Northern people mean well no doubt; but after all they’re not our people, are they? And this avocation was not suited for one of my years and—and antecedents; that I also realize. I have no regrets. In fact”—a flare lit in his faded old eyes—“in fact, I greatly enjoyed the momentary excitement of once more facing the enemies of our beloved land—even in make-believe. Indeed, I enjoyed it more than I can tell. I shall have that to look back on always—that and the very great pleasure of having known you, my dear.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it and started away, and she saw him going—a picture out of a picture book—through a sudden mist of tears. But he came back for one more farewell passage:
“Remember, my dear,” he said, “that we—you and I—are of the Old South—the land of real gentlemen and real ladies. You’ll remember that always, won’t you?”
And now, with both her arms around him and her lips pressed hard against his ruddy old cheek, she promised him she would.
She meant it, too, at the moment. And perhaps she did and then again perhaps she didn’t. The world she lived in is so full of Tobe Dalys. As the brethren of the leathern pants and the silken neckerchiefs of Hollywood are so fond of saying—those mail-order movie cow-punchers who provide living backgrounds for the Westerns—“Quien sabe?”
Killed with Kindness
