frolickingthrough the top of the Parish House, might not blow it away. Standingover it, bending to it, sitting down, he read it and re-read it, andpaced the room and came back and bent over it. He groaned as he lookedat the date. Seven months ago if he had had it--what could have heldhim? She loved him--what on earth could have kept him from her,knowing that? Not illness nor oceans or her will. No, not her will,if she cared; and she had said it. He would have swept down her willlike a tidal wave, knowing that.
Seven months ago! He would have followed her to Germany. He laughedat the thought that she believed herself hidden from him. The worldwas not big enough to hide her. What was a trip to Germany--toMadagascar? But now--where might she not be--what might not havehappened? She might be dead. Worse--and this thought stopped hispulse--she might be married.
That was the big, underlying terror of his mind. In his restlesspacing he stopped suddenly as if frozen. His brain was working thisway and that, searching for light. In a moment he knew what he woulddo. He dashed down the familiar steep stairs; in four minutes more hehad raced across the street to the rectory, and brought up, breathless,in the rector's study.
"What's the matter--a train to catch?" the rector demanded, regardinghim.
"Just that, doctor. Could I be spared for three days?"
The rector had not failed to have his theories about this brilliant,hard-working, unaccountable, highly useful subaltern of his. His hearthad one of its warmest spots for McBirney. Something was wrong withhim, it had been evident for months; one must help him in the dark ifbetter could not be done.
"Surely," said the rector.
There was a fast train west in an hour; the man and his bag were on it,and twenty-four hours later he was stumbling off a car at the solid,vine-covered, red brick station at Forest Gate. An inquiry or two, andthen he had crossed the wide, short street, the single business streetof the rich suburb, facing the railway and the station, and was in thepost-office. He asked about one Robert Halarkenden. The postmasterregarded him suspiciously. His affair was to sort letters, not toanswer questions. He did the first badly; he did not mean to do theother at all.
"No such person ever been in town," he answered coldly, after amoment's staring. The man who had hurried a thousand miles to ask thequestion, set his bag on the floor and faced the postmaster grimly.
"He must have been," he stated. "I sent a lot of letters to him lastyear, and they reached him."
"Oh--last year," the official answered stonily. "He might 'a' beenhere last year. I only came January." And he turned with insultedgloom to his labors.
McBirney leaned as far as he might into the little window. "Lookhere," he adjured the man inside, "do be a Christian about this. I'vecome from the East, a thousand miles, to find Halarkenden, and I knowhe was here seven months ago. It's awfully important. Won't you treatme like a white man and help me a little?"
Few people ever resisted Geoffrey McBirney when he pleaded with them.The stolid potentate turned back wondering, and did not know that whathe felt stirring the dried veins within him was charm. "Why, sure," heanswered slowly, astonished at his own words, "I'll help you if I can.Glad t' help anybody."
There was a cock-sure assistant in the back of the dirty sanctum, andto him the friend of mankind applied.
"Halarkenden--Robert," the assistant snapped out. "'Course. Iremember. Gardener up to the Edward Reidses," and McBirney thrilled asif an event had happened. "Uncle Ted" was "the Edward Reidses." Itmight be her name--Reid.
"He went away six or seven months ago, I think," McBirney suggested,breathing a bit fast. "I thought he might be back by now."
"Nawp," said the cock-sure one. "I remember. 'Course. Family brokeUp. Old man died."
"No, he didn't," the parson interrupted tartly. "He went to Germany."
"Aw well, then, 'f you know mor'n I do, maybe he did go to Germany.Anyhow, the girl got married. And Halarkenden, he ain't been aroundsince. Leastaways, ain't had no letters for him." There was an unduesilence, it appeared to the officials inside the window. "That all?"demanded Cocksure, thirsting to get back to work.
"What 'girl' do you speak of--who was married?" McBirney asked slowly.
"Old man's niece. Miss----"
But the name never got out. McBirney cut across the nasal speech. Hewould not learn that name in this way. "That's all," he said quickly."Thank you. Good-by."
So Geoffrey McBirney went back to St. Andrews. And the last state ofhim was worse than the first.
WARCHESTER, St. Andrew's Parish House, May 26th.
RICHARD MARSTON, ESQ. C/r Marston & Brooks, Consulting Engineers, Boston.
DEAR DICK--
Of course I'll go, unless something happens, as per usual. I've gotthe last three weeks of June, and nowhere in particular to waste themat. Shall I come to Boston, or where do we meet? Let me know whenwe're to start; likewise what I am to bring. Do you take a trunk, ordo we send the things ahead by express? I've never been on a longmotor trip before. I'm mighty glad to go; it's just what I would havewanted to do, if I'd wanted to do anything. Doesn't sound eager, doesit? What I mean is, it will be out-of-doors and I need that a gooddeal; and it will be with you, which I need more.
The chances are you won't find me gay. It's been a rotten winter,mostly, and it's left me not up to much. Not up to anything, in fact.Things have happened, and the bottom dropped out last autumn.
The fact is, I'm going to clear out. Try something else. I want totalk to you about that--I mean about the new job. I'd thought, maybe,of a school up in the country. I like youngsters. You remember thatScotch lad--the one with the money? I wrote you--I tutored him inLatin. That's where I got the notion. I had luck with him, And I'vemissed him a lot since. So maybe that's the thing. I don't know.We'll talk. Anyhow, this is ended.
I never let out what I thought about your being so decent, that nightat college, when I said I was going to be a parson; the chances are Inever will. But that's largely why I'm telling you this. I'm flunkingmy job--I have flunked it; the letter to the rector is written--he's toget it at the end of his holiday. I think I've stopped caring whatother people will say, but I hate to hurt him. But you see, I thoughtit through, and it's the only thing to do--just to get out. I pickedone definite job, for a sort of test, and it fell through. Thatsettled it.
I wanted to tell you for old sake's sake. Besides, I somehow needed tohave you know. And so now I'm going motoring with you. Write me aboutthe trunk, and about when and where.
As ever, MAC.
P. S. We needn't see people, need we?
The automobile with the two young men in the front seat sped smoothlyover June roads. For a week they had been covering ground day afterday; to-night they were due at Dick Marston's cousin's country house tostop for three days before the return trip through the mountains.
"Dick," reflected Geoffrey McBirney aloud, "consider again aboutdropping me in Boston. I'll be as much good at a house-party as acrape veil at a dance. You're an awful ass to take me."
"That's up to me," remarked Dick. "Get your feet out of the gears,will you? The Emorys are keen for you and I said I'd bring you, and Iwill if I have to do it by the scruff of the neck. Don Emory is awaybut will be back to-morrow."
"Splendid!" said McBirney, and then, "I won't kick and scream, youknow. I'll merely whine and sulk," he went on consideringly. "I'llhate it, and I'll be ugly-tempered, and they'll detest me. Up to you,however."
"It is," responded Marston, and no more was said. So that at twilightthey were speeding down the long, empty ocean drive with good salt airin their faces, and lights of cottages spotting the opal night withorange blurs. It was a large, gay house-party, and the person who hadbeen called, it was told from one to another, "the young PhillipsBrooks," a person who brought among them certain piquant qualities, wasa lion ready to their hand. With the general friendliness of a goodman of the world, there was something beyond; there was reality in thefrie
ndliness, yet impersonality--a detached attitude; the man had noaxes to grind for himself; one felt at every turn that this importantuniverse of the _haute monde_ was unimportant to him. Through hiscivility there was an outcropping of savage honesty which made thehouse-party sit up straight, more than once. Emerson says, in abetter-made sentence, that the world is at the feet of him who does notwant it. Geoffrey McBirney had taken a long jump, years back, andcleared the childishness, lifelong in most of us, of wanting the world.There is an
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