There was a good deal of the winsome Hal about him, and Kenneth began to feel its influence, and held the pistol at his side, but would not sit down.
“I may shoot you yet, and can do it better standing,” he said. “Begin at once, and be sure you tell the truth. I shall know if you are lying, and my pistol will not miss its mark.”
“Heavens and earth!” Hal exclaimed. “Do you think I can lie with a loaded revolver in front of me, and you looking black as thunder? No, sir! I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
He was getting flippant again, and Kenneth scowled as he began: “You remember the blow-out when Pondy rolled under the table.”
Kenneth nodded and Hal went on: “Poor little beggar! He died last year in London with delirium tremens. I happened to be in the same hotel and was with him at the last, and just before he died he said to me, ‘I am going to enshoy myshelf immenshly,’ and perhaps he is, who knows? I don’t think our Heavenly Father holds grudges and blows out fellow’s brains for something he never did. Do you?”
“Leave Pondy and go on!” was Kenneth’s stern reply; and Hal went on: “You remember Pondy toasted Constance Elliott as the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and you were so mad to hear her name from his lips that you smashed a cut-glass tumbler. Well, Pondy said she was a great heiress, or would be if some mines panned out as they were likely to do. About that time I was thinking of heiresses, for I wanted money badly,—had a lot of debts on hand. Kitty Haynes was in my mind the prettiest girl I’d ever met, but I wanted to see this Connie. I went abroad, you know; heard where she was and found her. I’d got into a kind of scrape in Paris and seen my name rather unpleasantly conspicuous in the newspapers, and just for a lark I thought I’d change it for a while. Our family name years ago was Meurice, and my second name Harold, so I put the two together and was Harold Meurice, from New York, which had a more aristocratic sound than plain Harry Morris, Millville, smelling of factories and things. I needn’t tell you that I look well and talk well.”
“The devil is not your equal,” Kenneth interposed, and Hal continued, with the most imperturbable good humor.
“I don’t believe he is when I lay myself out, as I did with Connie. I made love to her for six weeks, and found her like Barkis,—’willin’! There, there! Keep that pistol down. I did not mean any disrespect. She was an innocent, simple-hearted girl, who had been in a convent school so long that she knew nothing of the world, certainly not of men like me, and she believed every word I said. Her aunt was a regular she-dragon, who disliked and distrusted me, and did her best to keep her niece from seeing me alone, and encouraged her marrying a measly count, whom she afterwards took herself. At last I received a telegram from Tom Haynes, saying he and Kitty were in Paris, and wanted me to join them. By this time I was pretty far gone, and felt that I could not give Connie up. There was a walk we had once taken out towards Lauterbrunnen, and we took it that last afternoon of my stay in Interlaken. I told her I was going away the next morning, but should soon come back, and in the meantime I wanted to bind her to me, so that her meddling aunt could not separate us, or persuade her to take the count. I think the devil put the plan into my head; he has helped me a good many times.”
Kenneth nodded approvingly, and Harry went on: “I suggested that we be married, and when she asked how we could without priest or witness, I did some tall lying. I told her that the marriage ceremony was far more simple to be binding than she thought; that if we pledged ourselves to each other in the words of the Prayer Book it was lawful. I was a lawyer and I knew and cited some cases I had known, and talked law and civil law, and said that as a lawyer I could marry myself and all that, until her brain was in a whirl and she believed all I said,—lies, of course. Oh, pray don’t hold that ugly thing that way. It might go off, and this pretty room be spattered with my brains and you tried for murder. I meant no harm to the girl. I only wanted to have her believe she was mine, for, with her yielding nature, I feared her aunt’s influence. There was a big bowlder by a brook which had its source in the mountains back of us, and there we sat down and pledged our faith to each other. I, Harold take thee, Connie, and so on. You know how it goes. ‘You are mine now,’ I said, ‘just as truly as if a bishop had heard our vows, but when I come to claim you we will, of course, have the ceremony in public, to satisfy your aunt.’ There was a troubled look on her face, whose expression I shall never forget, as she said to me, ‘It does not seem a marriage with no prayer in it. Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer together.’”
“Oh,” Kenneth groaned, tightening his hold on the pistol and recalling the little girl who had once said that prayer at his side.