The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 149/212

This explanation of his continued presence in Rouen struck John as quite

as plausible as Meredith's more seriously alleged reasons for not joining

his mother and sister, at Winter Harbor. (He possessed a mother, and, as

he explained, he had also sisters to satiety, in point of numbers.)

Harkless knew that Tom had stayed to look after him; and he thought there

never was so poor a peg as himself whereon to hang the warm mantle of such

a friendship. He knew that other mantles of affection and kindliness hung

on that self-same peg, for he had been moved by the letters and visits

from Carlow people, and he had heard the story of their descent upon the

hospital, and of the march on the Cross-Roads. Many a good fellow, too,

had come to see him during his better days--from Judge Briscoe, openly

tender and solicitous, to the embarrassed William Todd, who fiddled at

his hat and explained that, being as he was in town on business (a

palpable fiction) he thought he'd look in to see if "they was any word

would wish to be sent down to our city." The good will the sick man had

from every one touched him, and made him feel unworthy, and he could see

nothing he had done to deserve it. Mr. Meredith could (and would not--

openly, at least) have explained to him that it made not a great deal of

difference what he did; it was what people thought he was.

His host helped him upstairs after dinner, and showed him the room

prepared for his occupancy. Harkless sank, sighing with weakness, into a

deep chair, and Meredith went to a window-seat and stretched himself out

for a smoke and chat.

"Doesn't it beat your time," he said, cheerily, "to think of what's become

of all the old boys? They turn up so differently from what we expected,

when they turn up at all. We sized them up all right so far as character

goes, I fancy, but we couldn't size up the chances of life. Take poor old

Pickle Haines: who'd have dreamed Pickle would shoot himself over a

bankruptcy? I dare say that wasn't all of it--might have been cherchez la

femme, don't you think? What do you make of Pickle's case, John?"

There was no answer. Harkless's chair was directly in front of the mantel-

piece, and upon the carved wooden shelf, amongst tobacco-jars and little

curios, cotillion favors and the like, there were scattered a number of

photographs. One of these was that of a girl who looked straight out at

you from a filigree frame; there was hardly a corner of the room where you

could have stood without her clear, serious eyes seeming to rest upon

yours.

"Cherchez la femme?" repeated Tom, puffing unconsciously. "Pickle was a

good fellow, but he had the deuce of an eye for a girl. Do you remember--"

He stopped short, and saw the man and the photograph looking at each

other. Too late, he unhappily remembered that he had meant, and forgotten,

to take that photograph out of the room before he brought Harkless in. Now

he would have to leave it; and Helen Sherwood was not the sort of girl,

even in a flat presentment, to be continually thrown in the face of a man

who had lost her. And it always went hard, Tom reflected, with men who

stretched vain hands to Helen, only to lose her. But there was one, he

thought, whose outstretched hands might not prove so vain. Why couldn't

she have cared for John Harkless? Deuce take the girl, did she want to

marry an emperor? He looked at Harkless, and pitied him with an almost

tearful compassion. A feverish color dwelt in the convalescent's cheek;

the apathy that had dulled his eyes was there no longer; instead, they

burned with a steady fire. The image returned his unwavering gaze with

inscrutable kindness.