"You needn't. To tell the truth, it's too late. I wrote to the office about that yesterday."
It was of no use to thank Weston for anything. I tried to, but he brushed it aside airily and told me to attend to my own affairs and light one of his cigars. When we were smoking together, his mood became more serious, and as he spoke of Tim and Tim's ambition, and of his interest in the boy, he was carried back to his own earlier life. So for the first time I came to understand his prolonged stay in the valley.
Like Elmer Spiker, in my heart Weston's conduct puzzled me. When he told me that he had come here simply because he liked the country I believed him that far, but I suspected some deeper reason to keep a man of his stamp dawdling in a remote valley. Now it was so simple. The foundation of Weston's fortunes had been laid in one small saloon; its bulk had been built on a chain stretching from end to end of the city. Its founder had been a coarse, uneducated man, but his success in the liquor trade had been too great to be forgotten, even years after he had abandoned it and built up the great commercial house that bore his name. His ambition for his son had been boundless. He had spared nothing to make him a better man in the world's eye than his father. He had succeeded. But the world had persisted in remembering the parental bar. Robert Weston had never seen that bar, for he had entered on the scene when there was a chain of them, and his father had brought him up almost in ignorance of their very existence. Even at the university he had little reason to be ashamed of them. It was after he had spent years in rounding out his education abroad, and had returned to take his place in those circles which he believed he was entitled to enter, that he found that the world persisted in pointing to the large revenue stamp that seemed to cling to him. A stronger man would have fought against odds like those and won for himself a place that would suffer no denial. But Weston was physically a delicate man. By nature he was retiring, rather than aggressive. If those who were his equals would have none of him because of his father's faults, then he would not seek them. Equally distasteful were those who equalled him in wealth alone, for by a strange contradiction, the very fact that the rumshop did not jar on their sensibilities, marked them for him as coarse and uncongenial. Weston had turned to himself. It is the study of oneself that makes cynics. The study of others makes egotists. Then a woman had come. Of her Weston did not say much, except that she had made him turn from himself for a time to study her. He had become an egotist and so had dared to love her. She had loved him, he thought, for she said so, and promised to become his wife. Things were growing brighter. But they met an officious friend. They were in Venice at the time, he having joined her there with her family. The officious friend joined the family too, and he held up his hands in horror when he heard of it. Didn't the family know? Oh, yes, Bob was himself a fine fellow; but he was Whiskey Weston!
"Of course, no good woman wants to be Mrs. Whiskey Weston," said my friend grimly. "Still, I think she did care a bit for me; but it was all up. Back I came, and here I am, Mark, just kind of stopping to stretch my legs and rest a little and breathe. I came on a wheel, for I had ridden for miles and miles trying to get my mind back on myself the way it used to be."
Then he smoked.
"Is that the dogs again?" I said, to break the oppressive silence.
Weston did not heed me, but pointed down the valley to the house by the clump of oaks.
"Do you know sometimes I think that Mary there, with all her bringing up, would edge away from me if she knew that my father had kept saloons and gambling places and all that." Weston spoke carelessly, puffing at his cigar, for he had recovered his easy demeanor. "I think a world of Mary, Mark. She is beautiful, and good, and honest. Sometimes I suspect that I've stayed here just for her. Sometimes I think I will not leave till she goes—" Weston sprang to his feet. "It's the dogs! Hear them!" he cried.
I was up too. Away down the ridge we heard the bay of the hounds again.
"I want to tell you something," I said, pointing to the house by the clump of oaks. "I wish for your sake that there were two Marys, Weston. But there is only one, and she is good and beautiful, and for some reason—Heaven only knows why—she is going to be my wife."