“It had occurred to me that as Mr. Pickering’s allowance wasn’t what you might call generous it was better to augment it—Well, sir, I took the liberty of advancing a trifle, as you might say, to the estate. Your grandfather would not have had you starve, sir.”
He left hurriedly, as though to escape from the consequences of his words, and when I came to myself Larry was gloomily invoking his strange Irish gods.
“Larry Donovan, I’ve been tempted to kill that fellow a dozen times! This thing is too damned complicated for me. I wish my lamented grandfather had left me something easy. To think of it—that fellow, after my treatment of him—my cursing and abusing him since I came here! Great Scott, man, I’ve been enjoying his bounty, I’ve been living on his money! And all the time he’s been trusting in me, just because of his dog-like devotion to my grandfather’s memory. Lord, I can’t face the fellow again!”
“As I have said before, you’re rather lacking at times in perspicacity. Your intelligence is marred by large opaque spots. Now that there’s a woman in the case you’re less sane than ever. Bah, these women! And now we’ve got to go to work.”
Bah, these women! My own heart caught the words. I was enraged and bitter. No wonder she had been anxious for me to avoid Pickering after daring me to follow her!
We called a council of war for that night that we might view matters in the light of Pickering’s letter. His assuredness in ordering me to leave made prompt and decisive action necessary on my part. I summoned Stoddard to our conference, feeling confident of his friendliness.
“Of course,” said the broad-shouldered chaplain, “if you could show that your absence was on business of very grave importance, the courts might construe in that you had not really violated the will.”
Larry looked at the ceiling and blew rings of smoke languidly. I had not disclosed to either of them the cause of my absence. On such a matter I knew I should get precious little sympathy from Larry, and I had, moreover, a feeling that I could not discuss Marian Devereux with any one; I even shrank from mentioning her name, though it rang like the call of bugles in my blood.
She was always before me,—the charmed spirit of youth, linked to every foot of the earth, every gleam of the sun upon the ice-bound lake, every glory of the winter sunset. All the good impulses I had ever stifled were quickened to life by the thought of her. Amid the day’s perplexities I started sometimes, thinking I heard her voice, her girlish laughter, or saw her again coming toward me down the stairs, or holding against the light her fan with its golden butterflies. I really knew so little of her; I could associate her with no home, only with that last fling of the autumn upon the lake, the snow-driven woodland, that twilight hour at the organ in the chapel, those stolen moments at the Armstrongs’. I resented the pressure of the hour’s affairs, and chafed at the necessity for talking of my perplexities with the good friends who were there to help. I wished to be alone, to yield to the sweet mood that the thought of her brought me. The doubt that crept through my mind as to any possibility of connivance between her and Pickering was as vague and fleeting as the shadow of a swallow’s wing on a sunny meadow.
“You don’t intend fighting the fact of your absence, do you?” demanded Larry, after a long silence.