“Not a bit of it, sir,” snapped Pollock, with fresh asperity. “If you haven’t anything against me personally, I should like to know what you are hinting about so darkly. Your air is insufferable! We may as well go to the bottom of this now and here. I’m not a child, as I have said before!”
Merriam smiled in a perplexed sort of way. He had spoken the truth. He was heartily sorry for what he had done. Pollock’s presence in town had annoyed him greatly; and the young man’s friendly relations with Zelda had really angered and distressed him. But here sat Pollock before him, in his own house, demanding an explanation to which he was entitled by all the rules that govern social intercourse. Merriam was uncomfortable, and he disliked being made uncomfortable. He had not often been cornered; and Pollock’s demand threw him back again into the past in which he had of late been living all too much.
“If I should refuse to talk to you—”
“You shan’t do anything of the kind! Your evasion and mysterious hints are all of a piece with your whole attitude toward me, and I am not going to stand it!”
Merriam bowed his head and was thoughtful for a moment. Then he raised his eyes again. Pollock had risen and taken a quick turn across the floor; but he sat down again, when he saw that Merriam was about to speak.
“My dear sir, I trust that it will be quite enough to say that your name is one that is associated with an unpleasant incident in my life. It doesn’t concern you at all. It was a matter between your father and myself.”
Pollock was on his feet again with a leap.
“You are mad or a fool! What in the devil are you driving at? I don’t suppose you ever saw my father in your life. He’s been dead fifteen years!”
“Quite that,” said the colonel. “I could, from my papers here, give you the exact date if it were important. Your father and I were somewhat acquainted,—during the Civil War,—and the recollection is unpleasant. I beg you to drop the matter. I am an old man—”
“You are mad, you are perfectly mad!” declared Pollock, his voice ringing out in the room. “You not only insult me, but you drag my dead father into this romance. If you didn’t like my seeing your nieces, why in the devil didn’t you say so in a straight manly way and not invent a lot of fanciful tales to back you up? It’s wholly possible that you knew my father. He was a man of honor! His name is a good one in his own state. I am proud of it. And it ought to count something for me that I am an officer in the army that he fought against. I would warn you, sir, that my father’s name is a sacred thing to me!”