The Salamander Part 40

"Mine's nothing!" she said. "Let me talk about you."

But they did not at once begin--a little at a loss.

"How old are you?" she said at last.

"Twenty-eight ages!"

"Is it true, what they tell me?"

"That I'm riding h.e.l.lbent to the devil? Correct!"

He did not say it with braggadocio, and yet it seemed incongruous, after the glimpse she had had of the man.

"Why?" she said, laying her two hands impulsively on his arm and with every instinct of her feminine nature sending him a message of sympathy.

"It's such a long story!" he said slowly. Then, with a last return of the Saxon's fear of sentimentality: "If I were sober I wouldn't tell you!"

"You're not--"

"Drunk? Yes! For ten days," he said--"in my way! There's nothing to fear; never gets the best of me! When it does--crack! It'll be over in a second!"

"But why?" she asked helplessly.

"Why not?" he said fiercely. "All I care about is a good fight, and, by George, it _is_ a fight, a real sensation. You can't understand, but it's so! To have your temples beating like trip-hammers, to fight the mists out of your eyes--a great brute like this whipping back and forth, shaking you off. One slip, a hundredth of a second, and then to beat it all, to master it. G.o.d! it's gorgeous!"

Suddenly, with an attempt at evasion, he drew back.

"You know, I had a mind once. I reason things out now--I see straight!

Do you know how I figure it out? This way! What earthly use am I in the world? What earthly use is a cuss who is given forty thousand a year, without earning it, and told to amuse himself? None! By George!

Sometimes I believe dissipation is nature's way of getting rid of us!

And she's right, too; the sooner it's over, the more chance for some one real to come along!"

"Are you serious?"

He drew his hand across his forehead, pinching his temples.

"Curiously enough, I am! I'm quite hopeless, and I don't care in the least! So don't let's waste time!"

He started to crank the machine; but she stopped him.

"There was a woman?" she said.

"Yes, but not in the first place." He turned to her, puzzled. "Why do you want to make me talk?"

"I don't know; I do!"

"What's your name?"

She hesitated.

"Dodo."

"I like that!" he said reflectively. "So you are really interested? And you don't know our story? Lord! That's funny! I thought every one knew the story of the Lindaberry boys! We certainly raised enough Cain! Do you know, I really was a d.a.m.ned nice sort of kid--men adored me!" He drew in his breath reflectively, conjuring up, with a tolerant smile, a picture out of forgotten days. "Yes, a real decent cuss who'd have done something if he'd had half a chance! There's only one thing I love in this world--a fight; and they took it all away from me!

"Do you know, the finest days, the ripping ones, were those back in the old school, when I used to be carried off the field on the shoulders of a mob. That was something real! I loved it! We used to sing about shedding our blood, and all that funny rot, for the glory of the red and black--and I believed it, too. Lord bless that queer cuss. Good days! I used to play the game like a raging little devil, ready to fling my life away! The Lindaberry boys--they haven't forgot us yet! It was so at college, only not quite the same. But at school, four hundred fellows, and to be king! Ambition? I was chock-full of it then. But they took it away from me! That's what knocked me out! And who did it? The one who loved us best--the governor!

"Out of college, forty thousand a year, and told to have a good time!

Put that down for my epitaph! The dad, poor old fellow, didn't know any better! He'd worked like a pirate; said he'd never been young; wanted us to live! Forty thousand a year each, and let her go! I remember the day we started, with a whoop! Wonder is, we lasted a year! Tom, the young one, didn't!"

"Dead?"

"To the world, yes; asylum. Killed the governor. He tried to stop us, but it was too late! Now the race is between Jock and me. My lord, if they'd only packed us off--started us in a construction gang, anywhere, temperature a hundred in the shade--might have owned a state to-day!

Remember what I said about the feeling you get out here alone--the awaking into something new? If Jock would go, I'd cut to-morrow--s.h.i.+p before the mast, and G.o.d take the rudder! He won't. But, by jove, to get into a new life, a new chance! You'll understand--or, no. I hope you never will!"

She could see but a faint blurred ma.s.s at her side. Under the goblin shadows of autumn trees, a brook sunk in the field told its hidden story to piping crickets and rovers of the night. She felt in her a great need of compa.s.sion, a yearning emptiness in her arms, a desire to lay her comforting touch across his eyes, as once she had put into slumberland the tear-stained cheeks of Snyder's little child. No other sentiment came to mingle with this pure stream of maternal longing; but all about her and all within her so impelled her to follow the instinct of the ages that she drew back with a sigh.

"Here! Don't do that for me!" he said, straightening up ashamed.

She could not tell him what in her had called forth that sigh, so she said hurriedly:

"No, no. Then, of course, there was a woman?"

"Yes, of course!" he a.s.sented. He opened his match-case, lighted a cigarette and then flung it away nervously. "Lord, but I was a child in those days. I believed implicitly! Women? A religion to me. I was ready to fall down and wors.h.i.+p! We were engaged--secret until I had got hold of myself. Easy? It was child's play! I could have won out in three months. Then, quite by accident, I found she was playing the same game with my best friend--how many others, G.o.d knows! Great G.o.d! talk about smas.h.i.+ng idols for poor old heathen Chinese! Whew--there was nothing left! I didn't even see her. Went off, crazy as a loon. A wild letter, and good-by for a year. Bang around the world to get the poison out of my system. Little good it did, too!" He stopped, considered a moment, and added: "Now that I look back, I think she did care for me--as much as she could in her polygamous little soul--else she wouldn't have done what she did! When I got back--fool that I was--I found her Mrs. Jock Lindaberry, and the devil in the saddle!"

"What! your own brother?" she said incredulously. "How did she dare?"

"You don't know the lady!" he said, with a laugh. "There's nothing in this world she's afraid of. And--G.o.d, how she can hate! Fine revenge, eh?"

"But you didn't tell--"

"Jock? No! What's the use? We never talk much--and he knows! Then, there's a child, a boy--a Lindaberry; and that holds him. She was clever enough for that!"

"You see her?"

"Never have entered the house!"

"You were very much in love?" she asked.

"At twenty-three? Mad, crazy in love! Ready to take any man by the throat who dared insinuate a word!"

"Aren't you over it yet?"

"I? Yes and no. It was Kismet! If I'd been lucky enough, even then, to have found a woman who cared, whom I could wors.h.i.+p--who knows? Well! the other thing happened! Kismet!"

"But there are lots of women--"

"Yes, of course! But I--I've never trusted since."

"You are really a great coward, Mr. Lindaberry!"