The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 150/212

"You heard that Pickle shot himself, didn't you?" Meredith asked. There

was no answer; John did not hear him.

"Do you know that poor Jeny Haines killed himself, last March?" Tom said

sharply.

There was only silence in the room. Meredith got up and rattled some tongs

in the empty fireplace, but the other did not move or notice him in any

way.

Meredith set the tongs down, and went quietly out of the room, leaving his

friend to that mysterious interview.

When he came back, after a remorseful cigarette in the yard, Harkless was

still sitting, motionless, looking up at the photograph above the mantel-

piece.

They drove abroad every day, at first in the victoria, and, as Harkless's

strength began to come back, in a knock-about cart of Tom's, a light trail

of blue smoke floating back wherever the two friends passed. And though

the country editor grew stronger in the pleasant, open city, Meredith felt

that his apathy and listlessness only deepened, and he suspected that, in

Harkless's own room, where the photograph reigned, the languor departed

for the time, making way for a destructive fire. Judge Briscoe, paying a

second visit to Rouen, told Tom, in an aside, that their friend did not

seem to be the same man. He was altered and aged beyond belief, the old

gentleman whispered sadly.

Meredith decided that his guest needed enlivening--something to take him

out of himself; he must be stirred up to rub against people once more. And

therefore, one night he made a little company for him: two or three

apparently betrothed very young couples, for whom it was rather dull,

after they had looked their fill of Harkless (it appeared that every one

was curious to see him); and three or four married young couples, for whom

the entertainment seemed rather diverting in an absent-minded way (they

had the air of remembering that they had forgotten the baby); and three or

four bachelors, who seemed contented in any place where they were allowed

to smoke; and one widower, whose manner indicated that any occasion

whatever was gay enough for him; and four or five young women, who

(Meredith explained to John) were of their host's age, and had been "left

over" out of the set he grew up with; and for these the modest party took

on a hilarious and chipper character. "It is these girls that have let the

men go by because they didn't see any good enough; they're the jolly

souls!" the one widower remarked, confidentially. "They've been at it a

long while, and they know how, and they're light-hearted as robins. They

have more fun than people who have responsibilities."

All of these lively demoiselles fluttered about Harkless with

commiserative pleasantries, and, in spite of his protestations, made him

recline in the biggest and deepest chair on the porch, where they

surfeited him with kindness and grouped about him with extra cushions and

tenderness for a man who had been injured. No one mentioned the fact that

he had been hurt; it was not spoken of, though they wished mightily he

would tell them the story they had read luridly in the public prints. They

were very good to him. One of them, in particular, a handsome, dark, kind-

eyed girl, constituted herself at once his cicerone in Rouen gossip and

his waiting-maid. She sat by him, and saw that his needs (and his not-

needs, too) were supplied and oversupplied; she could not let him move,

and anticipated his least wish, though he was now amply able to help

himself; and she fanned him as if he were a dying consumptive.