August First Part 6

"Coward!" gasped d.i.c.k--and Geoffrey put out his shaking hand.

"In mercy, d.i.c.k"--he was catching his breath, flus.h.i.+ng, laboring with each word--"don't--talk about--Was the boy--killed?"

"Killed, no, sound as a nut--but you----"

"That's all," said McBirney, and his eyes closed, and he turned his face to the wall. But he did not go to sleep. He was trying to meet life with self-respect gone. The last thing he remembered was that second of utter rebellion against wrecking his strength, his good muscles--he had not thought of his life--to save the child. There had been no time to choose; his past, his character, had chosen for him, and they had branded him as that impossible thing, a coward. He put up his hand and felt bandages on his head; he must have got a whack after all in saving his precious skin. He remembered now. "Didn't jump quick enough, I suppose," he thought, with a sneer at the man in whose body he lived, the man who was himself, the man who was a coward.

After a while he heard d.i.c.k Marston stir. He was bending over him.

"Got to go to dinner, old man," d.i.c.k said. "I wish you'd let me tell you what they all think about you."

McBirney shook his head impatiently, and d.i.c.k sighed heavily, and then in a moment the door shut softly.

Things were vague to him for hours longer, and a sleeping powder kept the next morning drowsy, but in the afternoon, when Marston came for his hourly look at the patient, "d.i.c.k," said the patient, "I want to talk to you."

"All right, old man," d.i.c.k answered, "but first just a word. I hate to bother you, but somebody's after you on long-distance. The fellow has telephoned three times--I was here the last time. He says----"

The man with the bandages on his head groaned. "Don't," he begged and tossed his hand out. "I know what he's wanting. I can't talk to him.

I don't want to hear. It's no use. Shut him off, d.i.c.k, can't you?"

"Sure, old man," Marston agreed soothingly. "Only, he says----"

"Oh, don't--I know what it is--don't let him say it," pleaded the invalid, quite unreasonable, entirely obstinate.

A committee from the vestry of a city church had, unknown to him at the moment, come to Warchester to hear him preach the Sunday before he had left on his trip. A letter from the rector since had warned him that they were full of enthusiasm about his sermon and himself and that a call to the rectors.h.i.+p of the church was imminent. This was a preliminary of the call; there was no doubt in his mind about that.

And knowing as he did how he was going to give up his work, writhing as he was under the last proof, as he felt it, of his unfitness, the thought of facing suave vestrymen even over a telephone, was a horror not to be borne.

"Tell 'em I'm dead, d.i.c.k, there's a good boy. I _won't_ talk to anybody--to-day or to-morrow, anyhow."

"All right," d.i.c.k agreed. The patient was flushed and excited--it would not do to go on. "But the chap said he might run down here," he added, thinking aloud.

The patient started up on his elbow and glared. "Great Scott--don't let him do that; you won't let him get at me, d.i.c.k? I'm sorry to be such a poor fool, but--just now--to-day--two or three days--d.i.c.k, I _can't_"--he stammered out, his hands shaking, his face twisting. And d.i.c.k Marston, as gently as a woman might, took in charge this friend whom he loved.

"Don't you worry, Geoffie; the bears shan't eat you this trip. I'll settle the chap next time he calls up."

And McBirney fell back, with closed eyelids, relieved, secure in d.i.c.k's strength. He lay, breathing quickly, a moment or two, and then opened his eyes.

"When can I get away, d.i.c.k?"

"We'll start to-morrow if you're strong enough."

"You needn't go, d.i.c.ky. I'll get a train. I'm----"

"None of that," said Marston. "Whither thou goest, for the present, I'll trot. But--Hope Stuart's anxious to--meet you."

"Who's Hope Stuart?"

d.i.c.k Marston hesitated, looked embarra.s.sed. "Why--just a girl," he said. "But an uncommon sort of girl. She's done some--big things.

Cousin of Don Emory's, you know. Came yesterday--just before your party. She--she's--well, she's different from the ruck of 'em--and she--said she'd like to meet you. I half promised she could."

McBirney flushed. "I _can't_ see people, d.i.c.k," he threw back nervously. "They're kind--it's decent of them. I suppose, as long as the boy wasn't killed--" he stopped.

"Geoff, you've got some bizarre idea in your head about this episode, and I can't fathom it," spoke d.i.c.k Marston. "What do you think happened anyway?" he demanded. And stopped, horrified at the look on the other's face.

"d.i.c.k, you mean to be kind, but you're being cruel--as death,"

whispered Geoffrey McBirney. "I simply--can't bear any conversation--about that. I've got to cut loose and get off somewhere and--and--arrange."

His voice broke. d.i.c.k Marston's big hand was on his. "Old man," d.i.c.k said, "you're all wrong, but if you won't let me talk about it I won't--now. Look here--we'll sneak to-morrow. Everybody's going off in cars for an all-day drive, and I'll start, and pull out half-way on some excuse, and come back here, and you'll be packed, and we'll get out. I'll square it with Nanny Emory. She'll understand. I'll tell her you're crazy in the head, and won't be hero-wors.h.i.+pped."

"Hero-wors.h.i.+pped!" McBirney laughed bitterly to himself when d.i.c.k was gone. These good people, because he was a parson, because the child's blood, by some accident, was not on his head, were banded to keep his self-respect for him, to cover over his cowardice with some distorted theory of courage. Perhaps they did not know, but he knew, about that last thought of determined egotism, that shout of "I won't! I won't!"

before the car caught him. He knew, and never as long as he lived could he look the world in the eyes again, with that shame in his soul.

What would _she_ have thought, had she been there to see? She would not have been deceived; her clear eyes would have seen the truth.

So he felt; so he went over and over the five minutes of the accident till all covering seemed to be stripped from his strained nerves.

"You'd better dress now and go down in the garden and sit there,"

suggested d.i.c.k the next morning. "Take a book, and wait for me there.

The place will be empty in twenty minutes. I'll be along before lunch."

The garden rioted with color. The listless black figure strayed through the suns.h.i.+ne down a walk between a ma.s.s of scarlet Oriental poppies on one side and a border of swaying white lilies on the other.

Ranks of tall larkspur lifted blue spires beyond. The air was heavy with sweet smells, mignonette and alyssum and the fragrance of a thousand of roses, white and pink and red, over by the hedge. The hedge ran on four sides of the garden, giving a comforting sense of privacy. In spite of the suffering he had gone through, the raw nerves of the man felt a healing pressure settling over them, resting on them, out of the scented stillness. There were no voices from the house; bees were humming somewhere near the rose-bushes; the first cricket of summer sang his sudden, drowsy song and was as suddenly quiet.

The black figure strayed on, down the long walk between the flowers, to a rustic summer-house, deep in vines, at the end of the path. There were seats there, and a table. He sat down in the coolness and stared out at the bright garden. He tried manfully to pull himself together; he reminded himself that he could still work, could still serve the world, and that, after all, was what he was in the world for. There was a reason for living, then; there was hope, he reasoned. And then, the hopelessness, the helplessness of under-vitality, which is often the real name for despair, had caught him again. His arms were thrown out on the rough table and his head lay on them.

There was a sound in the vine-darkened little summer-house. McBirney lifted his head sharply; a girl stood there, a slim figure in black clothes. McBirney sprang to his feet astonished, angry. Then the girl put out her hand and held to the upright of the opening as if to hold herself steady, and began talking in a hurried tone, as if she were reciting.

"I had to come to tell you that you were not a coward, but a hero, and that you saved Toddy Winthrop's life, and it's so, and d.i.c.k Marston says you don't know it and won't let him tell you and I've got to have you know it, and it's so and you have to believe it, for it's so." The girl was gasping, clutching the side of the summer-house with her face turned away, frightened yet determined.

"Who are you?" demanded McBirney, sternly, staring at her. There was something surging up inside of him, unknown, unreasonable; heart's blood was rus.h.i.+ng about his system inconveniently; his pulse was hammering--why? He knew why; this sudden vision of a girl reminded him--took him back--he cut through that idea swiftly; he was ill, unbalanced, obsessed with one memory, but he would not allow himself to go mad.

"Who are you?" he repeated sternly. And the girl turned and faced him and looked up into his grim, tortured face, half shy, half laughing, all glad.

She spoke softly. "Hope," she said. "You needed me"--she said, "and I came."

With that, with the unreasonable certainty that happens at times in affairs which go beyond reason, he was certain. Yet he did not dare to be certain.

"Who are you?" he threw at her for the third time, and his eyes flamed down into the changing face, the face which he had never known, which he seemed to have known since time began. The laughter left it then and she gazed at him with a look which he had not seen in a woman's eyes before. "I think you know," she said. "Toddy Winthrop isn't the only one. You saved me--Oh, you've saved me too." Every inflection of the voice brought certainty to him; the buoyant, soft voice which he remembered. "I am Hope Stuart," she said. "I am August First."

"Ah!" He caught her hands, but she drew them away. "Not yet," she said, and the promise in the denial thrilled him. "You've got to know--things."

"Don't think, don't dream that I'll let you go, if you still care," he threw at her hotly. And with that the thought of two days before stabbed into him. "Ah!" he cried, and stood before his happiness miserably.

"What?" asked the girl.

"I'm not fit to speak to you. I'm disgraced; I'm a coward; you don't know, but I let--that child be killed as much as if he had not been saved by a miracle. It wasn't my fault he was saved. I didn't mean to save him. I meant to save myself," he went on with savage accusation.

"Tell me," commanded the girl, and he told her.