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.