PART VI
THE GUEST-CHAMBER
CHAPTER XXV
It was remarked in the offices of the Mexican International Railroad about this time that something had gone wrong with Harboro. He made mistakes in his work. He answered questions at random—or he did not answer them at all. He passed people in the office and on the street without seeing them. But worse than all this, he was to be observed occasionally staring darkly into the faces of his associates, as if he would read something that had been concealed from him. He came into one room or another abruptly, as if he expected to hear his name spoken.
His associates spoke of his strange behavior—being careful only to wait until he had closed his desk for the day. They were men of different minds from Harboro’s. He considered their social positions matters which concerned them only; but they had duly noted the fact that he had been taken up in high places and then dropped without ceremony. They knew of his marriage. Certain rumors touching it had reached them from the American side.
They were rather thrilled at the prospect of a dénouement to the story of Harboro’s eccentricity. They used no harsher word than that. They liked him and they would have deplored anything in the nature of a misfortune overtaking him. But human beings are all very much alike in one respect—they find life a tedious thing as a rule and they derive a stimulus from the tale of downfall, even of their friends. They are not pleased that such things happen; they are merely interested, and they welcome the break in the monotony of events.
As for Harboro, he was a far more deeply changed man than they suspected. He was making a heroic effort in those days to maintain a normal bearing. It was only the little interstices of forgetfulness which enabled any one to read even a part of what was taking place in his thoughts.
He seemed unchanged to Sylvia, save that he admitted being tired or having a headache, when she sought to enliven him, to draw him up to her own plane of merriment. He was reminding himself every hour of the night and day that he must make no irretrievable blunder, that he must do nothing to injure his wife needlessly. Appearances were against her, but possibly that was all.