Francis Lynde

“ And as for Harry, I would as soon think of the world coming to an end as of his giving her up.”
Dorothy was silenced, but not convinced.
“That was one thing I wanted to speak about, mamma,” she said, gathering herself for the plunge; “but there is another. I want to know what has come over us all lately. We seem to be groping about in the dark, trying to hide things from each other. What is the mystery? and why can’t I share it?”
“Mystery? Nonsense, child! there is no mystery.”
But Dorothy was insistent. “Yes, there is. First, Mr. Brant does us a kindness and drops us, all in the same day. ”

“ On the whole the promise of youth had been kept. The handsome boy had come to be a man good to look upon; a man upon whom any woman might look once, and turning, look again. The assayer was not given to profanity, but he swore softly in an upflash of angry grief at the thought that the passing years had marred Brant’s soul rather than his body.
None the less, it was shipwreck, hopeless and unrelieved, as Brant had asserted; and from contemplating the effect of it in the man, Hobart was moved to look upon the cause of it in the woman. ”

“ Having but now parted from Dorothy, Brant was in the seventh heaven of love’s aftermath when the cell door opened to admit the reporter; and since love breaks ground for far-reaching kindliness, the news-gatherer’s welcome was all that could be desired.
“I wonder if any unlucky dog of them all ever had better friends or more of them than I have, Jarvis? The way you all stand by me would warm the cockles of a worse heart than mine ever was.” Thus the prisoner of good hope, love-tempered; and Jarvis laughed.
“You don’t deserve to have any friends. May I sit on your bed? ”

“ Will a murderer? Oh, no; anything but that!
Not until his daughter had gone away and he had sat down to go thoughtfully over the details again did the judge realize what his championship of Brant would require of him. Then it became evident, with a keen pang of fresh misfortune, that he was bound hand and foot; that any effort made to clear Brant must inevitably result in entangling his own son. As the matter rested, William was free and unsuspected, and George Brant would hang—if the jury so willed. ”

“ Now Brant could be steel cold in the fiercest fray, but he was not beyond flinching under a friendly lash. Forsyth’s doubt whipped him out of his chair, and he made two or three quick turns up and down the narrow walkway behind the desk before the pot of passion boiled over.
“God in heaven, Forsyth, you don’t know what you are talking about!” he burst out. “I’d sell my soul and the reversion of it to win that girl’s love—and respect.”
“Exactly; but you are not required to sell it. You are expected to pay it out of debt.” ”

“ It was nearly two weeks since Brant had stopped coming, and there had been no intermission in Harry’s visits. Indeed, it was only a few days since he had taken Isabel to the opera. Dorothy choked down a little sigh, put herself and her own dream of happiness aside, and became from that moment her sister’s loyal and loving ally.
“Don’t be discouraged, dear,” she said caressingly. “You must learn to wait and be patient. I know him—better, perhaps, than you do—and I say he will come back. He will never take ‘No’ for an answer while you and he live.” ”

“ There was the typical perspiring crowd of rough men and tawdry women surging to and fro, pounding the dusty floor to the time beaten out of the discordant piano; the same flaring oil lamps and murky atmosphere thick with tobacco smoke and reeking with the [6] fumes of alcohol; the same silent groups ringing the roulette boards and the faro table. Hobart looked on, and was conscious of a little shiver of disgust—a vicarious thrill of shame for all concerned, but chiefly for his friend. And Brant had come to this for his daily bread! ”

“ Being very much in love with Isabel, Antrim was quite willing to turn his back upon the scenery for the sake of looking at her. And as between a winsome young woman swinging in a hammock—a young woman with laughing brown eyes and a profusion of glory-tinted hair framing a face to which piquancy and youthful beauty lent equal charms—who but a scenery-mad pilgrim of the excursion trains would think of making a comparison? ”

“ Davenport, well satisfied with an assistant whose capacity for hard work was commensurate with his apparent love for it, had made him a proposal pointing to a partnership survey in a still more remote field, but Brant had refused. He knew well enough that his battle of reinstatement was yet to be fought, and that it must be fought in the field of the wider world. And toward that field he set his face, though not without misgivings—the misgivings of one who, having given no quarter, need expect none. ”

“ Since early morning he had been fighting a desperate battle with the Apollyon who disputes the way with that man who is foolish enough to set the day and hour in which a question of moment is to be decided. No sooner had he written it down that Isabel should that evening be brought to hear reason, than an imp of disorder came and sat at his elbow, and after this the business of his office went awry and the day became a lengthened misery.
He had quarrelled with his stenographer, found fault with the operator, and made life burdensome for the office boy. ”

“ The dreadful suspicion that had just sent Dorothy sobbing to her room seized upon the judge and gripped him till his knees trembled. “You—you quarrelled?” he echoed. “Go on—go on, my son; let me know the worst.”
It is a hardened son indeed who can look unmoved upon the vicarious anguish of a father. William Langford was not unmoved, but the churlish habit had grown to be second nature, and all the gates of generous expression were closed and barred. ”

“ Hobart heard the sharp snap of the steel corset stay, and saw Brant, catching her as she reeled, fire once, twice, thrice at the desperado. Then the assayer lifted up his voice in a shout that dominated the tumult:
“Silverettes! Out with them—they’ve killed a woman!”
There was a fierce affray, a surging charge, and when the place was cleared Hobart ran back. Brant was on his knees beside the woman. The smoking oil lamps burned yellow in the powder reek, but there was light enough to show that she was past help. None the less, Hobart offered to go for a doctor. ”

“ Like a stone from a catapult Brant was upon them, smashing the globe of the bracket light in passing, and while one might draw a quick breath three pairs of hands clutched fiercely in the darkness for the weapon on the table. In the midst of the struggle—if that which has no duration in time can be said to have a middle part—came the crash of a pistol shot. ”

“ Now a fine scorn of obstacles was another of the lessons learned in the hard school of abandonment, and Brant set his teeth on a doughty resolution to override them in the race for retrieval, as he had overridden them in the mad gallop pitward. Self-respect, or some comforting measure of it, should be regained though the devil himself held the present reversion of it. There should yet come a day, please God, when he would not be constrained in common decency to put the length of a Pullman car between himself and a good woman. ”

“ Brant did not hasten to explain, and when he [322] spoke again it was to ask a seemingly irrelevant question.
“Do you know what it means to love a woman, Ned?”
“I’m supposed to, am I not?”
“I don’t know. There’s many a man married—happily married, too—who doesn’t know what it means. Luckily for the common good, the kind of love I have in mind is a thing apart. It is both more and less than a passion; it is a mania in the sense that it blinds the eye to everything save the present happiness of its object. ”

“ Brant, the honour man, the athlete, the well-beloved of all who knew him!
Hobart let himself drift with the ebb and flow of those who, like himself, were as yet only onlookers, coming to anchor when he had found a vantage point from which he could see and study the face of the fallen one. For all the hardening years it was not yet an evil face. The cheeks of the man were thinner and browner than those of the boy, and the heavy mustache hid the mouth, the feature which changes most with the changing years ”

“ Brant stirred it into a blaze and was drawing up a chair when Forsyth entered.
“Good man!” he exclaimed cheerily. “Sit down and light a fresh cigar while I unfold you a tale. Did my note stir up your curiosity? or do you disown any such womanish weakness?”
Brant laughed. “I disown nothing in the way of weaknesses, and we’ll admit the curiosity, with this qualification: it isn’t a womanish weakness—on the contrary, it is altogether masculine. What is the mystery?” ”

“ At thirty a man does not fall in love at first sight, and in the beginning Dorothy Langford had figured in his thoughts of her only as an incarnation of pure womanhood. But latterly the point of view had been changing. She was no longer a type; she was the eidolon of the type. Brant asked himself a blunt question, and the ink dried between the nibs of his ruling pen while the question waited for its answer. ”

“ The dance hall was the greater attraction, and here the din and clamour grew apace until the raucous voice of the caller shouting the figures of the dance could no longer be heard above the clanging of the piano, the yells and catcalls, and the shuffling and pounding of feet on the floor. Hilarity was as yet the keynote of all the uproar, but Hobart knew that the ceaseless activity of the bartenders must shortly change the pitch to the key quarrelsome, and he began to wish himself well out of it. ”

“ Brant laid his hand on the doorknob, and at that moment the noises ceased and a boyish oath dropped into the gap of silence.
“I won’t pay it—that’s all there is about it!”—this in the voice of the boyish oath. “By gad, I’m tough enough, Mr. Harding, and I don’t like him any better than you do; but I’m not a sneak thief yet!”
[211] “I don’t see but you will have to pay it, Willie; it is a debt of honour, you see,” the gambler insisted. “You put up your promise for a stake in the game, and you have lost, fair and square. It won’t be much trouble—knowing him as well as you do.” ”

“ By the time the car had reached the crossing nearest the mission school he had fought and won his battle—the fiercest, and, as it chanced, the most unnecessary, that had ever been thrust upon him—and was ready with an assurance of good faith which was quite as sincere as it was costly.
“We mustn’t be discouraged, and we must just go on hoping against hope,” he said, when he took Dorothy’s hand at parting. “It is a most intricate tangle, and I can’t begin to unravel it yet; but you may count on one thing: what one man may do to help Brant will be done. ”

“ Not in any moment of the long evening did he remotely connect the sorry memories with the young woman in Section Six, who was at most no more than a name to him. Nevertheless, though he knew it not, it was the young woman who was chiefly responsible. If a good man’s introduction had not made him accountable for the welfare of a good woman, Brant might have smoked a cigar and gone to bed without this first reckoning with the past. ”

“ Brant was lying down when he heard the heavy step of the turnkey in the corridor; heard the heavy step and a lighter one, and the rustle of a woman’s dress. He made sure it was another of the cut-flower faddists who had lately been making his prison life a hot bath of vicarious shame, and sprang up with a muttered malediction comprehensive enough to include the entire procession of the sentimentalists. ”

“ Brant went to the dining room with the other passengers, and when Miss Langford did not appear, he sent the porter to her with a luncheon and a cup of tea.
“It is about what I had a right to expect,” he told himself when he was once more back in the solitude of the smoke den. “She was afraid to trust herself in the same dining room with me. Why the devil couldn’t I have held my cursed temper just ten seconds longer? Here I’ve had to sit all day and eat my heart out, when I might have been getting miles away from the old life in her company. What a fool a man can make of himself when he tries!” ”

“ The athletic young head waiter, drawn to the door of No. 4 by what promptings of curiosity he knew not, had his eye glued to a crack in the panel and his ears strained to catch the reply to Harding’s appeal; and knowing nothing of the man, but much of the danger signals readable in the man’s face, he wondered at Brant’s preoccupation. And when Brant began to speak without looking up, the athlete swore softly to himself, and cautiously tried the handle of the door—tried it and found it locked. ”

“ It was about this time that she began to notice a rather remarkable change in Isabel. From being the most outspoken member of the family, the younger sister had developed a degree of reticence which was second only to Will’s churlishness, though Dorothy fancied it was sorrowful rather than sullen. From day to day she spent less time at her easel, and twice Dorothy had come upon her when her eyes were red with weeping. ”