"It's simpler that way," said Fenton, speaking to Saxton one day of the necessity of this method of procedure. "He's a perfect brick, and he'll like us a lot better if we let him think he's doing all the work."
"He is a brick all right," said John thoughtfully, "but he's a peculiar brick."
CHAPTER XXXVIII OLD PHOTOGRAPHS
In the days that followed, John Saxton knew again the heartache and loneliness which he had known before Warry Raridan came into his life. He had lost the first real friend he had ever had, and his days were once more empty of light and cheer. His work still engrossed him, but it failed to bring him the happiness which he had found in it when he and Warry discussed its perplexities together. His memory sought its old ruts again; the hardship and failure of his years in Wyoming were like fresh wounds. He talked to no one except Bishop Delafield, who had reasoned him out of his self-indictment for Warry's death. He did not know that his own part in the recovery of Grant Porter, as Bishop Delafield described it, was touched with a fine and generous courage, and he would have resented it if he had known.
Warry was constantly in his thoughts; but he thought much of Evelyn too; through all the years to come, he told himself, he would remember them and they would be his ideals. Echoes of the gossip which connected Warry's name and Evelyn's reached him, and he felt no shock that such surmises should be afloat. Warry and he had understood each other; they had talked of Evelyn frequently; Warry had come to him often with the confidences of a despairing lover, and John had encouraged and consoled him. He predicted his ultimate success; it had always seemed to him an inevitable thing that Warry and Evelyn should marry.
Three weeks passed before he saw her, and then he went to her with an excuse for his visit in his mind and heart. Warry had left a will in which the bulk of his property—and it was a respectable fortune—was given for the endowment of a hospital for children. Saxton was named as executor and as a trustee of the fund thus set apart. Warry had never mentioned the matter to any one; he had probably never thought of it very seriously, and John wished to talk to Evelyn about it.
It seemed strange that the Porter drawing-room was the same, when everything else had changed; he had not been there since the afternoon when he walked home with Evelyn through the cold. He despised himself for that now; it was an act of disloyalty to Warry; but he would now be more loyal to the dead than he had been to the living.
As they talked together he saw no change in her; and he felt himself wondering what manner of change it was that he had expected to find. He had heard of people who aged suddenly with grief, but Evelyn was the same, save for a greater composure, a more subdued note of manner and voice. She bent forward in her deep interest in what he told her of Warry's bequest. He wished her help, and asked for it as if it were her right to give it. Surely no one had a better claim than she, he thought.