Читать книгу Mark Gilmore, Scout of the Air - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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The wind was blowing a hurricane and driving the rain through the opened window of Mark’s room as he entered. It caught the door which he had opened and blew it shut with such a resounding clamor that the brother downstairs thought that Mark had slammed it in angry defiance.

“Little devil,” he laughed. Then he drew himself together and lounged out of the room and upstairs to his own apartment, whose walls were gaily decorated with photographs of girls.

He was almost ready for bed, indeed he had but one thing to lay aside, and that was his cigarette, when he was astonished to see the door softly open and his younger brother enter, closing it as silently behind him.

Mark was still fully dressed, his eyes tear stained, his blond hair disheveled and tumbling down over his forehead. A more sympathetic observer than the gallant Edgar might have discerned that he had tossed upon the bed in the silence of his room and indulged in his little bit of tearful shame. Edgar was observant of only one thing and that was that Mark very softly turned the key in the door.

“What’s the big idea, kid?” asked Edgar, speaking softly. “A week! Holy Smoke, I used to go on the hook for an afternoon once in a while when there was a ball game. But a week! You might have known you’d get nailed. Where were you all the time; down at the carnival? I’ll tell you one thing, kiddo, the old man means business. He’s going to chase you up to Military School; you’ll be marching in line and saluting a lot of tin soldiers and turning out for a bugle. That’s what you’ll be doing, you stubborn little dumbbell. You must have been goofy to think you could get by with that.”

“And how do you think you’re going to get by with what you did and what you’ve been doing,” Mark said, with a kind of hopelessness in his voice. “Do you think you’ll always have me to cover you up—lying for you—yes, and working for you so’s Father and Mother won’t know what kind of a guy you really are!” Edgar’s face grew livid and he tiptoed over to his brother. “You mean you’re going to tell about...”

“Did I ever tell anything, Ed?” Mark asked. “It’s a week since you took that money out of Sis ’ drawer—the money Father gave her toward her vacation money. Maybe you didn’t hear Mother say it but Sis phoned this morning before school time and said that she’d he back home tomorrow. Alice Leslie’s mother will get back from Pennsylvania tonight and they won’t have need of Sis’ company. It’s a good thing I thought about Carlin’s truck farm—they pay pretty good money for just pulling weeds. Twenty dollars for a week’s work isn’t bad for a kid my age.”

Edgar’s face remained a pasty white except for two tiny points of color at his cheekbones. “And is that what you’ve been doing all week—at Carlin’s pulling weeds!” he exclaimed in utter amazement.

“Where else did you think the money would come from, huh?” Mark asked, curiously without so much as a hint of anger or disgust at this weak brother of his. “I knew when I caught you taking that out of Sis’ drawer that you’d never be able to replace it—never in the world. Someone had to get the money, so it might as well have been me.” A sardonic chuckle broke the stillness in the room.

“Sh!” warned Edgar as he tiptoed cautiously over to the door, opened it and listened. There was not a sound downstairs; evidently their parents had retired to their ground-floor room. All of the lights were out, and there was no sound but the incessant lashing of the storm, as it rattled the loose windows and streamed down the panes, tumbling like a waterfall off the porch roof. Satisfied, he came back close to his brother. “You went to a lot of trouble it seems to me—how would Sis have known who took it—how would anyone have known for that matter! There could be ways of making it look as if someone came in from outside, couldn’t there? Rumple up the dresser drawers and things like that? Seems to me...”

“Never mind, Ed—never mind,” said Mark, as if his brother’s growing weaknesses caused him intolerable pain. “There’s only one way for a feller to act when he’s got a brother like you, and that’s to act decent so’s to make up for him, sort of. It’s bad enough to steal other people’s money but when it comes to your own sister——”

“Not so loud,” the cringing Edgar pleaded. “Anyway, how do you know what I needed that money for? It might have been something important, how do you know?”

Mark smiled wistfully. “Don’t I know what you mean by important!” he said, indifferently. “It’s that pool room, that’s what, and I’d like to know what takes so much money in a dump of a looking place like that is.”

“They’re my friends,” said Edgar, trying to be at least manly in the role of loyalty to his friends, but making a pathetic failure of it. “They like me and treat me swell.”

“Yes?” said Mark, going over and sitting down on the edge of his brother’s bed. “Tell me all about it—for instance: if they think so much of you, why they can’t trust you for twenty dollars or whatever amount it was that you owed them?”

“They’re business people and you can’t owe them money,” Edgar protested. “They make their living that way.” He stopped short as if he was aware that he had said a little bit more than he had originally intended.

Mark shrugged his shoulders as if he were tired of the whole affair. He dug his hands deep down into his trousers pocket and brought out the twenty dollars—a crackling, shiny new bill.

“Well, here you are, Ed,” he said, handing it to his brother. “Here it is. I even got it changed at the bank into a brand new bill—just the way that Father gave it to Sis.” He rose and stretched his arms way above his head, then suddenly stopped. “Maybe it won’t do any good for me to say so, but it wouldn’t hurt you to remember that Sis is a business person and so is Father. They both have to make a living the same as those rotten people...”

“Aw, all right,” Edgar interposed, and hiding his great relief under a cloak of boredom.

He yawned audibly and walked over to his bed. “You don’t need to rub it in. I know I’m not much good and that you’re a little brick for doing what you did.”

“You don’t need to thank me, Ed,” said Mark, wearily. “I honestly don’t know why I do these things for you and get myself in Dutch when you ought——”

Edgar wheeled around, cowardice showing in his every move. He came over to Mark and grabbed him by the shoulder, entreatingly. “You’re going to go and tell now, I can see it,” the wretched boy said. “Gee, you wouldn’t do that now, would you, Mark? Gosh, that isn’t being a good sport.”

Mark let the trembling hand remain on his shoulder. “It’s because you’re a punk sport that you think it of me, Ed,” he said, patiently. “You needn’t think I’ll ever tell. Not for anything.”

“How about Military School? You’ve always said you’d do anything rather than go away to one of those places. Suppose Father keeps his word and sends you—what then?”

“It won’t make a bit of difference,” answered Mark, loyally.

“How about Carlin’s—up at the farm?” Edgar asked with fear and trembling.

“Father doesn’t know—you ought to know that by now,” said Mark. “Goodnight, I’m going to bed now.”

But still the miserable brother detained him. He had at least the decency to reach for his brother’s hand and clasp it, gratefully. “All right, Mark,” he said, almost incoherently, “you’re all to the good, you are, but if you ever tell now, I’d...”

Mark paused and looked at his brother, thoughtfully. “You’d what?” he asked.

“I’d go throw myself in Lake George,” answered Edgar, with lowered eyes.

“Hmph,” said Mark, a pitying look in his eyes. “I didn’t think you were quite as bad as that, Ed. For one thing, I won’t tell and another thing is, that you’ve got the chance to quit that gang at the pool room and travel around with decent fellers. Wouldn’t Mother and Father be tickled to death if you said you’d get a job!”

“Maybe I will,” said Ed, not very convincingly. “I’ll pay you back for all this, Mark. Honest. Yes, I’ll pay you back.”

“Say, listen,” said Mark, pausing once more, “I don’t ask you to do anything but to work and be decent and quit doing things that I’ve got to cover up for you. Now, Father’ll send me away—away to one of those places, and you won’t have me to fall back on. You got to quit your monkey business then, Ed, or be found out yourself. I’m going to bed.”

The guilty Edgar was loath to let him go. Having no strength of character himself he could not comprehend his brother’s power to resist under pressure. “I’ll quit, Mark,” he said, “but how can I be sure you won’t squeal when it comes time to leave for the school?”

“You’re sure I won’t flunk now—at this minute, aren’t you?” Mark asked.

Edgar was sure.

“Well, you can be just as sure when it comes time for me to go,” said Mark, thoughtfully. Then: “I can promise you I won’t go if I can get out of it, so no matter where I go you can be sure I won’t flunk.” He released himself from his brother, unlocked the door and tiptoed softly into the hall and thence to his own room.

He did not go to bed. All unknown to him the gods had prepared an adventure that was worthy of him. The storm and lightning and thunder were ready to take him to their arms and bear him to his destiny. And that very night, amid the drenching and roaring tempest, he was to hear a voice—the voice of Fate.

Perhaps the gods had heard him say these words, “You can be sure I won’t flunk.” At all events they took him at his word.