I had the bartender order a carriage, and while waiting I tried to cheer up Drislane. I told him that he must not think of going to sea next day, that I would see Captain Norman Sickles and get him off, and later go with him to Boston by rail.
He shook his head. He could hardly part his swollen lips to talk; and then could only half whisper. "I'll sail to-morrow on the Sirius," he said; and rolled his head over to see what Sickles was doing.
Sickles was just then stepping through that kitchen doorway where but two minutes earlier Rose had been standing. Drislane closed his eyes; and then, as if he thought he had to show me he wasn't beaten, he opened them and smiled. After I'd fully taken in that smile, I wished he had cried.
The bartender called through the slide that the carriage was waiting. I carried out Drislane, drove him to my hotel, and called in a doctor. Between us we gave him a hot bath, salved and plastered him, and put him to bed.
I turned in on a cot which I had had brought in. Hours after I heard him groan. I switched on the light and went to him. He was lying on his side with his head on one arm. His hands were clinched.
After a moment he said: "She is in trouble somewhere." That was another one of the things he believed in—telepathy.
He may or may not have had it right; but it certainly wasn't going to do him any good to let him lie there and be torturing himself. "Sh-h—go to sleep, son. Don't imagine things. You'll find everything will be all right to-morrow," I said.
"No," he said, "everything will never be all right while he's alive and I'm alive."
That didn't sound good to me, so I sat down by the bed and began to talk to him. We talked, I doing the most of it, until past daylight. We talked of her. "She's all right," he said at last, "I tell you she is. Even if she didn't like me and did him, it would be only natural. But she likes me—the best of her likes me better than him, and when she gets to know him all of her will like me. You'll see."
There were people who used to say Drislane was so innocent as to be a joke; but after that talk into that wintry dawn I had to salute him. He had just a little something on all of us who were so much more worldly-wise. It surely was a great gift he had—to see in every woman only the shining soul.