CHAPTER VIII.
THE COLONEL'S CONFESSION.
Garrison did not sleep that night. His position was clearly credited and debited in the ledger of life. He saw it; saw that the balance was against him. He must go—but he could not, would not. He decided to take the cowardly, half-way measure. He had not the courage for renunciation. He would stay until this pot of contumacious fact came to the boil, overflowed, and scalded him out.
He was not afraid of the eminent Mr. Snark. Possession is in reality ten-tenths of the law. The lawyer had cleverly proven his—Garrison's—claim. He would be still more clever if he could disprove it. A lie can never be branded truth by a liar. How could he disprove it? How could his shoddy word weigh against Garrison's, fashioned from the whole cloth and with loyalty, love on Garrison's side?
No, the letter was only a bluff. Snark would not run the risk of publicly smirching himself—for who would believe his protestations of innocency?—losing his license at the bar together with the certainty of a small fortune, for the sake of over-working a tool that might snap in his hand or cut both ways. So Garrison decided to disregard the letter.
But with Waterbury it was a different proposition. Garrison was unaware what his own relations had been with his former owner, but even if they had been the most cordial, which from Major Calvert's accounts they had not been, that fact would not prevent Waterbury divulging the rank fraud Garrison was perpetrating.
The race-track annual had said Billy Garrison had followed the ponies since boyhood. Waterbury would know his ancestry, if any one would. It was only a matter of time until exposure came, but still Garrison determined to procrastinate as long as possible. He clung fiercely, with the fierce tenacity of despair, to his present life. He could not renounce it all—not yet.
Two hopes, secreted in his inner consciousness, supported indecision. One: Perhaps Waterbury might not recognize him, or perhaps he could safely keep out of his way. The second: Perhaps he himself was not Billy Garrison at all; for coincidence only said that he was, and a very small modicum of coincidence at that. This fact, if true, would cry his present panic groundless.
On the head of conscience, Garrison did not touch. He smothered it. All that he forced himself to sense was that he was “living like a white man for once”; loving as he never thought he could love.