From the Housetops Part 25

"I'm all right. Of course, I look like the d.i.c.kens, but who wouldn't? It has been terrible. Weeks and weeks of it. You'll never know what-" She shuddered so violently that he threw his arm about her and drew her close.

"Well, it's all over now, girlie. Brace up. Suns.h.i.+ne from now on. It was a bad day's work when you let yourself in for it, but that's all over now."

"Yes, it's all over," she said slowly. "Everything's all over." Her wide, sombre eyes fixed their gaze upon the rippling blue flames in the grate.

"Well, smile a little. It's time some one of us Tresslyns had a chance to grin a little without bearing it."

She raised her eyes and slowly inspected this big brother of hers.

Seemingly she had not taken him in as a whole up to that moment of consideration. A slight frown appeared on her brow.

"I've been hearing rather bad things about you, George," she said, after a moment. "Now that I look at you, you do look pretty shaky,-and pretty well threshed out. Is it true? Have you been as bad as they say?"

He flushed. "Has Simmy Dodge been talking?"

"Simmy is your friend, George," she said sharply.

"It's always a fellow's friends who do the most talking," said he, "and that's what hurts. You don't mind what your enemies say."

"Simmy has not mentioned your name to me in weeks."

"Well, I don't call that being friendly. He knows everything. He ought to have told you just how rotten I've been, because you could believe Simmy.

You can't believe every one, Anne, but I know Simmy would give it to you straight. Yes, I've been all that could be expected. The only thing I haven't been is a liar."

"Can't you brace up, George? You are really the best of the lot, if you only knew it. You-"

"I don't drink because I like it, you know, Anne," he said earnestly.

"I see," she said, nodding her head slowly. "You drink because it's the surest way to prove to Lutie that you are still in love with her. Isn't that it?" She spoke ironically.

"When I think how much you would have liked Lutie if she'd had a chance to-"

"Don't tell it to me, George," she interrupted. "I didn't in the least care whom you married. As a matter of fact, I think you married the right girl."

"You do?" he cried eagerly.

"Yes. But she didn't marry the right man. If you had been the right man and had been taken away from her as you were, she would have died of a broken heart long before this. Logic for you, isn't it?"

"She's got too much sense to die of a broken heart. And that isn't saying she wasn't in love with me, either."

"Oh, well," she sighed, "it doesn't matter. She didn't die, she didn't go to the bad, she didn't put on a long face and weep her eyes out,-as I recall them they were exceedingly pretty eyes, which may account for her determination to spare them,-and she didn't do anything that a sensible woman would have done under the circ.u.mstances. A sensible woman would have set herself up as a martyr and bawled her eyes out. But Lutie, being an ignoramus, overlooked her opportunities, and now see where she is! I am told that she is exasperatingly virtuous, abstemious and exceedingly well- dressed, and all on an income derived from thirty thousand dollars that came out of the Tresslyn treasure chest. Almost incomprehensible, isn't it? Nothing sensible about Lutie, is there?"

"Are you trying to be sarcastic, Anne?" demanded George, contriving to sit up a little straighter on the sofa. He was not in the habit of exerting himself in these days of unregeneration. Anne was always smarter than he; he never knew just how much smarter she was but he knew when to feel apprehensive.

"You wanted to see me, George," she said abruptly. "What is it you want?

Money?"

He scowled. "I might have known you would ask that question. No, I don't want money. I could have had some of old man Thorpe's money a couple of weeks ago if I'd been mean enough to take it, and I'm not mean enough to take it now-from you. I want to talk to you about Braden Thorpe."

For a moment or two Anne looked into his frowning eyes, and then she drew back into the corner of the couch, a queer shudder running through her body.

"About Braden?" she asked, striving to make her voice sound firm and unstrained.

"Where is he? Staying here in the house?"

"Of course not. I don't know where he is. He has not been near me since-since the day before-" She spoke rapidly, jerkily, and did not deem it necessary to complete the sentence.

George had the delicacy to hesitate. He even weighed, in that brief instant, the advisability of saying what he had come to say to her. Then a queer sense of duty, of brother to sister, took the place of doubt. She was his sister and she needed him now as never before, needed him now despite his self-admitted worthlessness.

"See here, Anne, I'm going to speak plainly," he blurted out, leaning forward. "You must not see Brady Thorpe again. If he comes here, you must refuse to receive him."

Her eyes were very dark and l.u.s.treless against the increased pallor of her cheeks. "He will not come here, George," she said, scarcely above a whisper. She moistened her lips. "It isn't necessary to-to warn me."

"Mind you, I don't say a word against him," he made haste to explain.

"It's what people will say that troubles me. Perhaps you don't know what they are going to say, Anne, but I do."

"Oh, I know what they will say," she muttered. She looked straight into his eyes. "They will say that he killed his grandfather-purposely."

"It doesn't matter that they say he killed his grandfather, Anne," said he slowly, "so much as that he killed your husband. That's the point."

"What have you heard, George?" she asked, in dread of his reply.

"Barely enough to let me understand that where one man is talking now, a hundred will be talking next week. There was a young doctor up there in the operating room. He doesn't say it in so many words, but he suspects that it wasn't an accidental slip of the-don't look like that, Anne! Gee, you looked awfully scary just then." He wiped his brow. "I-I thought you were about to faint. I say, we'll drop the matter this instant if-"

"I'm not going to faint," she exclaimed. "You need not be afraid. What is it that this young doctor says? And how do you happen to have heard-"

"It's what he said to Simmy," interrupted George, quickly. "Simmy let it slip last night. I was in his apartment. Then I made him tell me the whole thing. He says it is certain that if this young fellow saw anything wrong, the others also did. And you know there were three pretty big surgeons there looking on. Bates and those other fellows, you remember. It-it looks bad, Anne. That's why I tell you that you must not see Brady again."

"And what has all this to do with my not seeing Braden again?" she demanded steadily.

He stared. "Why,-why, you just mustn't, that's all. Can't you understand?"

"You mean that I ought not to be put in the position of sharing the blame with him. Is that it?"

"Well, if there should be a-er-criminal investigation, you'd be a blamed sight better off if you kept out of it, my girl. And what's more to the point, you can't afford to have people say that you are determined to do the thing they believe you set out to do in the beginning,-and that is to marry Braden as soon as-"

"Stop right there, George!" she cried hotly. "Other people may say what they please, but the same privilege is not extended to you. Don't forget that you are my brother."

"I'm sorry, Anne. I didn't mean it in that way. Of course, I know that it's all over between you and Brady. Just the same, I mean what I say when I advise you to see nothing of him. I've given you the hint, that's all."

"And I am sorry I spoke as I did just now," she said listlessly. "Thanks, George. You are looking out for me, aren't you? I didn't expect it.

Somehow, I've always felt that n.o.body cared whether I-"

"I'll look out for you as long as I'm able to stand," said he, setting his jaw. "I wish you could love me, Anne. I think we'd be pretty good pals, after all, if we got to thinking more about each other and less about ourselves. Of course, I'm a down-and-outer and don't deserve much in the way of-"

"You don't deserve sympathy," she interrupted, laying a firm hand upon his, "and I know you are not asking for it. Encouragement is what you need." Her voice shook slightly. "You want some one to love you. I understand. It's what we all want, I suppose. I'll try to be a real, true sister from now on, George. It-it will not be very hard for me to love you, I'm sure," she concluded, with a whimsical little smile that went straight to his sore, disfigured heart. A lump came into his throat and his eyes began to smart so suddenly that a mist came over them before he could blink his lids. He was very young, was George Tresslyn, despite the things that go to make men old.

"Gee!" he said, astonished by his own emotions. Then he gripped her slender, ringless hand in his huge palm,-and was further surprised to discover that she did not wince. "We're not acting like Tresslyns at all, Anne. We're acting just like regular people."