"Do you know, the finest days, the ripping ones, were those back in the old school, when I used to be carried off the field on the shoulders of a mob. That was something real! I loved it! We used to sing about shedding our blood, and all that funny rot, for the glory of the red and black—and I believed it, too. Lord bless that queer cuss. Good days! I used to play the game like a raging little devil, ready to fling my life away! The Lindaberry boys—they haven't forgot us yet! It was so at college, only not quite the same. But at school, four hundred fellows, and to be king! Ambition? I was chock-full of it then. But they took it away from me! That's what knocked me out! And who did it? The one who loved us best—the governor!
"Out of college, forty thousand a year, and told to have a good time! Put that down for my epitaph! The dad, poor old fellow, didn't know any better! He'd worked like a pirate; said he'd never been young; wanted us to live! Forty thousand a year each, and let her go! I remember the day we started, with a whoop! Wonder is, we lasted a year! Tom, the young one, didn't!"
"Dead?"
"To the world, yes; asylum. Killed the governor. He tried to stop us, but it was too late! Now the race is between Jock and me. My lord, if they'd only packed us off—started us in a construction gang, anywhere, temperature a hundred in the shade—might have owned a state to-day! Remember what I said about the feeling you get out here alone—the awaking into something new? If Jock would go, I'd cut to-morrow—ship before the mast, and God take the rudder! He won't. But, by jove, to get into a new life, a new chance! You'll understand—or, no. I hope you never will!"
She could see but a faint blurred mass at her side. Under the goblin shadows of autumn trees, a brook sunk in the field told its hidden story to piping crickets and rovers of the night. She felt in her a great need of compassion, a yearning emptiness in her arms, a desire to lay her comforting touch across his eyes, as once she had put into slumberland the tear-stained cheeks of Snyder's little child. No other sentiment came to mingle with this pure stream of maternal longing; but all about her and all within her so impelled her to follow the instinct of the ages that she drew back with a sigh.
"Here! Don't do that for me!" he said, straightening up ashamed.
She could not tell him what in her had called forth that sigh, so she said hurriedly:
"No, no. Then, of course, there was a woman?"
"Yes, of course!" he assented. He opened his match-case, lighted a cigarette and then flung it away nervously. "Lord, but I was a child in those days. I believed implicitly! Women? A religion to me. I was ready to fall down and worship! We were engaged—secret until I had got hold of myself. Easy? It was child's play! I could have won out in three months. Then, quite by accident, I found she was playing the same game with my best friend—how many others, God knows! Great God! talk about smashing idols for poor old heathen Chinese! Whew—there was nothing left! I didn't even see her. Went off, crazy as a loon. A wild letter, and good-by for a year. Bang around the world to get the poison out of my system. Little good it did, too!" He stopped, considered a moment, and added: "Now that I look back, I think she did care for me—as much as she could in her polygamous little soul—else she wouldn't have done what she did! When I got back—fool that I was—I found her Mrs. Jock Lindaberry, and the devil in the saddle!"
"What! your own brother?" she said incredulously. "How did she dare?"