Читать книгу Nothing But the Truth - Isham Frederic Stewart - Страница 7

A footman had brought the message, which Bob now took and opened mechanically. It was from the commodore.

“For heaven’s sake,” it ran, “return at once to New York Will explain.”

Bob eyed it gloomily. The commodore must have been considerably rattled when he had sent that.

“Any answer, sir?” said the footman.

Bob shook his head. What could he answer? He couldn’t run away now; the commodore ought to know that. Of all fool telegrams! —

“A business message, I suppose?” purred the lady at his side. “I trust it is nothing very important, to call you away?”

“No, I shouldn’t call it important,” said Bob. “Quite unnecessary, I should call it.”

He crumpled up the message and thrust it into his pocket. At that moment one of Mrs. Ralston’s paid performers – a high-class monologist – began to earn his fee. He was quite funny and soon had every one laughing. Bob strove to forget his troubles and laugh too. Mrs. Dan couldn’t very well talk to him now, and relieved from that lady’s pertinent prattle, he gradually let that “dull-care grip” slip from his resistless fingers. Welcoming the mocking goddess of the cap and bells, he yielded to the infectious humor and before long forgot the telegram and everything save that crop of near-new stories.

But when the dinner was finally over, he found himself, again wrapped in deep gloom, wandering alone on the broad balcony. He didn’t just know how he came to be out there all alone – whether he drifted away from people or whether they drifted away from him. Anyhow he wasn’t burdened with any one’s company. He entertained a vague recollection that several people had turned their backs on him. So if he was forced to lead a hermit’s life it wasn’t his fault. Probably old Diogenes hadn’t wanted to live in that tub; people had made him. They wouldn’t stand him in a house. There wasn’t room for him and any one else in the biggest house ever built. So the only place where truth could find that real, cozy, homey feeling was alone in a tub. And things weren’t any better to-day. Nice commentary on our boasted “advanced civilization!”

Bob felt as if he were the most-alone man in the world! Why, he was so lonesome, he wasn’t even acquainted with himself. This was only his “double” walking here. He knew now what that German poet was driving at in those Der Doppleganger verses. His “double” was alone. Where was he? – the real he – the original ego? Hanged if he knew! He looked up at the moon, but it couldn’t tell him. At the same time, in spite of that new impersonal relationship he had established toward himself, he felt he ought to be immensely relieved in one respect. There would be no “cozy-cornering” for him that evening. He had the whole wide world to himself. He could be a wandering Jew as well as a Doppleganger, if he wanted to.

He made out now two shadows, or figures, in the moonlight. Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were walking and talking together, but somehow he wasn’t at all curious about them. His mental faculties seemed numbed, as if his brain were way off somewhere – between the earth and the moon, perhaps. Then he heard the purring of a car, which seemed way off, too. He saw Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence get into the car and heard Mrs. Dan murmur something about the village and the telegraph office, and the car slid downward. Bob watched its rear light receding this way and that, like a will-o’-the-wisp, or a lonesome firefly, until it disappeared on the winding road. A cool breeze touched him without cooling his brow. Bob threw away a cigar. What’s the use of smoking when you don’t taste the weed?

He wondered what he should do now? Go to bed, or – ? It was too early for bed. He wouldn’t go to bed at that hour, if he kept to that even-tenor-of-his-way condition. He hadn’t violated any condition, so far. Those fellows who had inveigled him into this wild and woolly moving-picture kind of an impossible freak performance would have to concede that. There could be no ground for complaint that he wasn’t living up to the letter and spirit of his agreement, even at the sacrifice of his most sacred feelings. Yes, by yonder gracious lady of the glorious moon! He wondered where his gracious lady was now and what she was doing? Of course, the hammer-thrower was with her.

“Are you meditating on your loneliness, Mr. Bennett?” said a well-remembered voice. The tones were even and composed. They were also distantly cold. Bob wheeled. Stars of a starry night! It was she.

She came right up and spoke to him – the pariah – the abhorred of many! His heart gave a thump and he could feel its hammering as his glowing eyes met the beautiful icy ones.

“How did you get rid of him?” he breathed hoarsely.

“Him?” said Miss Gwendoline Gerald, in a tone whose stillness should have warned Bob.

“That sledge-hammer man? That weight-putter? That Olympian village blacksmith, I mean? The fellow with the open honest face?”

“I don’t believe I understand,” observed the young lady, straight and proud as a wonderful princess in the moonlight. Bob gazed at her in rapture. Talk about the shoulders of that girl who had given him the cold shoulder at the dinner-table! – Miss Gwendoline’s shoulders were a thousand times superior; they would cause any sculptor to rave. Their plastic beauty was that of the purest marble in that pure light. And that pure, perfect face, likewise bathed in the celestial flood of light – until now, never had he quite realized what he had lost, in losing her.