XII
They went; and they made their plans together over beefsteak and potatoes, as daringly as three musketeers of romance conspiring to overturn a dynasty with their rapiers. They returned through the quiet streets in a line abreast, all keyed up to Pittsey's high spirits, swaggering and talking as freely as if they were irresponsible young tourists in a foreign land—as indeed they seemed to Don, when he looked around at the shops and the houses that watched him with such an alien impassiveness as he paraded by. Pittsey left them at Mrs. Stewart's door, and went off whistling martially; but his spirit presided over the flushed council which Don and Conroy kept in session until two o'clock on Sunday morning, perfecting their plans in detail, counting their money and encouraging their hopes.
In pursuance of those plans, Don the next day wrote to his mother that, after all, his father had been right; that he felt he would be better at work; that Conroy—as she would probably hear from the McLeans—had gotten into trouble at the University and was leaving for New York in a few days; and that he had decided to accompany his cousin.
They would be better together. They had saved enough money to keep them until they could find something to do. He was sorry that this would prevent him from spending his summer holiday in Coulton, but if all went well—as he was sure it would—he could be home for a happy Christmas.
"Frank can take my place at the University," he concluded. "His success will make up with father for my failure. I intend to do better where I am going. I will think of you and write to you every day. Address me, for the present, at the General Post Office, New York City."
He did not add any messages of affection; he felt that in his present mood they would be hypocritical.
He wrote to his aunt that Conroy—as she would probably hear from Conroy himself—was leaving the University on account of a breach of college discipline for which he had been blamed, although he was by no means the ringleader in it; that he himself had decided he could not afford to waste three years more on his education; and that they were going to make a start together in New York.
No doubt it would seem very foolish to her, but Conroy was afraid to go home and face Uncle John. For his own part, he had quarrelled with his father at Christmas about refusing to study law, and in order to avoid further trouble he was taking his affairs into his own hands. They were both well supplied with money; she need not worry about that. He owed most of his to her, but he was going to earn now, and he hoped to be able to repay her—although, of course, he could never repay her for her kindness.
She was not to worry about Conroy. Everything would come out all right. They would look after each other. They had plenty of money.
And then, finding that he was repeating himself and arriving no nearer an end, he subscribed himself abruptly, "Your affectionate nephew," and was done.
He addressed his envelopes with a heavy apprehension of the grief and anxiety which they would bring to Coulton; but he consoled himself, in the hopefulness of youth, with the assurance that grief was a passing accident of life which would be forgotten in the rosy future to follow. He saw himself returning with Conroy to Coulton, for their Christmas holiday, with money in their pockets and success in their smiles; and he felt that the joy of such a reunion would more than compensate for the partings which were necessary to make it possible.
He spent his afternoon erasing his name from his college texts so that he might sell them second-hand, tearing up his note-books and papers, and packing his trunk. He underlined, in Emerson's Essays, the sentence: "One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail." He put the proof of Margaret's photograph between the first pages of the Essay on Love, tied up the volume with a shoe-string, and hid it in the bottom of his trunk beside the Bible which his mother had given him at Christmas. And he carried himself, through all these preparations, with the air of a man who has taken his decision and is resolved to act on it without further thought.
Conroy's cheque came in the morning mail. And they were ready—all but Pittsey. He was waiting for word from his brother, who, it seemed, was an actor of uncertain address, generally written to "in care" of a dramatic paper because he was more often "on the road" than in New York. Pittsey had mailed his letter Saturday morning; he should have a reply on Tuesday; in any case they would wait no later than Tuesday morning. Conroy hurried to the bank to cash his cheque, and Don accompanied him part of the way, going to sell his books to a second-hand dealer. They agreed to meet again at the railroad offices to buy their tickets.
But the first dealer to whom Don offered his volumes haggled interminably over the purchase, offering so little for them that Don refused to sell them and carried them to a second dealer who would give less than the first. They were finally sold at such a loss that Don felt too poor to pay his street-car fare to the ticket office, and he walked, ruefully fingering the few silver coins in the pocket of his trousers and despising the commercial world that made second-hand book-dealers what they were. Half way to their rendezvous, Conroy hailed him from the rear platform of a passing street-car, beckoning him warningly to turn back, his face as ghastly as if he were waving a red flag to save a railway train from destruction. Don ran after the car, alarmed, and saw Conroy alighting at a street corner. They met in the middle of a block. Conroy drew him into a doorway.
"They—they wouldn't cash it," he gasped. "He telegraphed them to stop payment. He must know. They must have written—from the University. He'll be coming himself. What'll I do?"
Don wiped his forehead; the walking and the running had made him hot, and this new catastrophe brought the perspiration out on him like a fear. "I can buy the tickets," he said faintly. "You'd better go and stay with Pittsey. He'll not find you there."
"What'll we do?"
"What? Why, well go to New York, I suppose. There isn't anything else to do now."
"He'll follow us."
"Well, if he can't find you here, how will he—I don't know. Ask Pittsey. Go and ask Pittsey." He disliked the part of a plotter.
Conroy saw himself cast off, like a drowning man, to his own frantic struggles. "You—you won't leave me?" he faltered.
Don asked plaintively: "Why should I leave you? I'll see you to-night. Stay with Pittsey." He found himself looking to Pittsey's high spirits as an intoxicant against depression. He added guiltily as he helped Conroy aboard another car: "I'll hide your things under your bed—in case he comes."
He came.
And he must have come hard on the heels of his telegram, for he arrived at the boarding-house soon after midday, and mounted heavily to the boys' room after a gruff "I'll find them," addressed to Mrs. Stewart at the foot of the stairs. He filled the doorway like a huge and angry obstruction to their plans.
"Where is he?" he demanded.
Don answered, at bay: "He's not here. He's out."
"What's he been doing?"
Don stammered a confused explanation of Conroy's misbehaviour, apologetically. Mr. McLean heard him through with a worried glare, blocking the door. "Why didn't you write and tell me what was going on?"
"I didn't know. He didn't let me know. He left me here when he went into Residence. I couldn't afford"
Mr. McLean tossed his hat on the bed, and sat down in a chair that received him creakingly. "He's had too much money," he summed it up. His bulky shoulders sank down on him in a way that gave him an appearance of stricken weariness, and though he kept his eyes fixed on Don it was with a blank gaze that did not seem to see the boy. "Things have been made too easy for him." He fingered his beard, and plucked it impatiently, frowning. "Should have looked after him."
"He—he's all right," Don tried to console him. "It wasn't his fault. The boys he got in with—they led him on to it."
"Does he say what he's going to do?"
"Well"—Don drew a long breath—"I'm leaving college. I quarrelled with father about studying law. I'm going to New York with a friend who knows the city, and Conroy wants to go with me. We'll find something to do there—some work. We're wasting our time here. I think it'll be a good thing for him. We'll not have enough money to more than pay board."
His uncle had focussed a surprised stare on him. "What sort of work?"
"Why, anything we can find."
Mr. McLean made a mouth and shook his head. "New York!" he said. "Ten thousand people are looking for work in New York. Where is he? I'll take him home with me."
"I'm afraid he won't go, sir," Don replied with a sudden daring. "He's afraid—and I guess he's ashamed. He knew you were coming; they refused payment on his cheque at the bank. He wouldn't come back here with me for fear you'd find him."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
Mr. McLean shifted irritably in his chair. "Wants to run away, does he?"
"He's—he's not—he hasn't been doing anything very wrong," Don pleaded, "except the drinking, and that—he's been led into that."
Mr. McLean did not listen. He took a cigar from an upper pocket of his waistcoat, struck a match and puckered his eyes on the smoke. "Huh!" he grunted over his thoughts. He began to scrutinize Don meditatively, and the boy looked away. It was evident that a decision was coming out of the silence. Don did not speak.
His uncle asked: "Do you know what it is to earn your own living—away from home?"
"No."
"No. Neither does he." He relapsed into thought again.
Don waited.
"Do you know what it is to be on the streets without enough to eat? No." He chewed his cigar. He grumbled: "It wouldn't hurt him to learn." He shook his head. He muttered, in his beard: "Boys nowadays Huh!"
Suddenly he asked: "How much money have you?"
"I have a hundred and fifty-seven dollars. And Con has a little—I don't know how much—twenty-some dollars."
He smoked. "Will you look after him?"
"Yes."
After another interval of communion with his cigar, he demanded: "Will you write to me?"
"Yes."
"Will you promise not to write to me for money for him unless he hasn't enough to buy food?"
"I'll promise not to write to you for money at all."
"No, you won't. I don't want that. I want him to have to work, but I don't want him to have to starve. . . . And you're not to let him know that I'm sending you money for him, do you understand?"
"I'll not let him know anything about it unless you wish me to."
"Don't let him know that I'm sending him money—that's all."
"Aunt Jane," Don hinted. "Is she to know?"
Mr. McLean looked at him with an amused appreciation of his opinion of Aunt Jane's ability to keep a secret. "No one's to know but you and me. No one, now, understand?"
Don understood.
Mr. McLean reflected slowly. "Now look here," he said, "I could take him home and put him to work, but I don't want to make a whipped cur of him. And I don't want to treat him the way the old people treated me. I want him to find his feet—if he can. And I want you to help him."
"Yes, sir. I understand."
"When are you going?"
"To-morrow."
"To-morrow, eh? What does your father say?"
"I don't know. I haven't heard from him yet."
"Running away, too, are you?" He stretched out his thick leg with a chuckle and went down in his pocket for a roll of bills. He took off several for himself and held out the remainder to Don, with his cigar fuming in his mouth and his eyes closed against the bite of smoke that drifted into them. "Here."
"I don't need that, sir," Don said. "I have enough. Aunt Jane has been"
"Here!" he choked, one hand in his pocket, the other filled with bills.
Don took them from him to relieve him. He removed his cigar from below his nose, caught his breath, and said: "Twenty dollars won't see him far." He reached for his hat. "They'll teach you something about money before you're there long."
Don smiled crookedly over his embarrassment of riches.
"It's time you learned. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, sir," Don said gratefully. When his uncle was in the doorway again, he remembered to ask: "What'll I tell him—Conroy? He'll know you've been here."
"Tell him?" Mr. McLean answered savagely. "Tell him I think it'll do him good to go down to New York and get some sense bumped into him. Tell him we'll say no more about it if he comes back to me at Christmas with some honest wages in his pocket. Tell him I hope he'll learn what it is to have a good home and everything provided for him. That's what you'll tell him—and it's true. . . . If it isn't too late," he added, in another voice, "we'll make a man of him yet."
Don heard him stumping down the stairs. When he heard the front door shut with a slam, he turned over the roll of bills, and grinning fiercely he reached his arms up over his head, menacing the ceiling with the triumphant defiance of a prisoner who cries out insults on the walls of the dungeon he is about to leave.
He ran out, with the news, to find Conroy and Pittsey; and Conroy received it with a doleful relief that failed to see why Don was so elated. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with paying Mrs. Stewart, moving baggage and buying tickets, for they were to start on the early morning train. It was not until after supper that Don was free to call on "Miss Margaret," whom he had not seen since Saturday. "No, I can't come in," he told the maid, warned by the lights that the Kimballs were in the parlour. "Tell her I'll only keep her a moment."
He saw her come downstairs, as if from the isolation of her bedroom. He held out his hand to her from the threshold. He said, in a rush: "I've come to say good-bye. I'm starting, in the morning, for New York—with Conroy. We're leaving college. If you write to us at the General Post Office, New York—or if you're there—to send me your address. We leave to-morrow morning."
She cried, under her breath, "You're not!"
He smiled at her reassuringly, feeling the startled grip of her fingers, but unable to see her face because she had her back to the dim light. "Our baggage is at the station."
She backed him out on the porch and shut the door behind her. "You're not! You mustn't! It's Why! What are you doing!"
He laughed. "I was only wasting time here. I told you I'd make things come out right."
"Right!"
"I couldn't wait three years to begin. I want to be at work. I want to be nearer the—together—you."
She dropped his hand as if it had stung her. "Don!" It was all she could say, but the tone was eloquent of emotions which he had not expected. He waited, stiff. She went on, with a shudder in her voice: "Oh, you mustn't. I'm not—I'm not sure . . . of myself. I didn't mean to. I thought Oh!" And she began to sob.
He put on his hat. He opened his mouth to get his breath. He found himself hoping insanely that he would not have to speak, because his throat was trembling and his lips were sticking to his teeth. He heard her, at a distance from him, weeping in a vast hush that had settled down on him like the peace that broods over ruins in a desert, among sands, at night.
She was saying: "You promised—you said you'd wait. I old you—I told you I'd try. I didn't know—how could I? I didn't mean—I—I thought we'd be good friends . . . and write. I—I'm not ready yet. I don't want to think of—of marrying anyone yet. I want to be free."
He was conscious only of the need of getting away somewhere, alone. He stumbled to the edge of the porch. At a cry from her he stopped there. She came to him in the darkness and pleaded: "Don't! Don't! Don't do it. Don't leave college."
"It's too late," he said hoarsely, and gathering her into his arms, with a sort of despairing longing for what might have been, he found her wet cheek with his lips, and kissed her. "Good-bye," he whispered. "Don't cry. It's all right. I can stand it. I'm used to it. I can wait."
She released herself with a sudden effort and disappeared into the house.
He returned to his room, fighting with himself to maintain his resolution to endure this disappointment too, to wait for her, to work for her, to be true to her in spite of her. But even while he was saying to himself "I can wait; I can wait!" another voice was asking him whether it was worth waiting for, whether this belauded love was not all vanity and vexation, whether there could be anything divine in a sentiment which had brought him nothing but disappointment after disappointment, whether he was not playing the fool to his hopes and living in a delusion, and building his future on another make-believe. He sat down at his bare table in a room which held nothing of his, now, but his packed valise; and overcome by the desolation of the moment that stood empty between his past and his future, he struggled against the tears that choked him, clinging to his ideals, repeating blindly, "I can wait! I can wait!"