Part 3 (1/2)

”Gee!” he muttered as he pa.s.sed down the hall, ”they must have had an awful sc.r.a.p!” He turned and quietly retraced his steps. In the library he switched on the lights and crossed to the telephone.

”There isn't any sense in that,” he said, speaking to himself. ”Bill loves Eth--that's a cinch. And she does love him, too, even if she won't let on.

”She wouldn't stick up in her room all day bawling her eyes out if she didn't. I'll call Bill up and tell him so, then he'll come and they'll make up. I bet he's sorry, too, by now.”

At the Carmody residence he was told that Bill was not in. He received the same answer from several clubs, at each of which he left explicit instructions for Mr. Carmody to call him up at the first possible moment.

Thereafter Charlie frequented the gymnasiums and made industrious inquiry, but it was many a day before he again saw his idol. Bill Carmody was missing from his accustomed haunts, and none could tell whither he had gone.

Those were days fraught with anxiety for the boy. Ethel, to whom he was devoted, went about the house listless and preoccupied, in spite of her efforts to appear cheerful. When he attempted to reason with her she burst into tears and forbade him to mention Bill Carmody's name in her hearing as long as he lived. Whereupon the youngster retired disconsolately to his room to think things over.

”Love's a b.u.m thing,” he told himself. ”If they do get married they die or get a divorce or something; and if they don't--well, Bill has prob'ly committed suicide and Eth is moping around, and most likely now she'll marry that dang St. Ledger.” He made a wry face as he thought of St. Ledger.

”Runty little mollycoddle! Couldn't lick a chicken--him and his monocle. And that day the wind took his hat and rolled it through the mud, and he said: 'Oh, pshaw!' instead of d.a.m.n it! Oh--_slus.h.!.+_ And I promised mother I'd take care of Eth.”

He burrowed his face deep into the pillow, as, in spite of himself, tears came to his eyes.

CHAPTER IV

LOVE OR HATE

Thus a week pa.s.sed, in the course of which the heart of the girl was torn by conflicting emotions. Love clashed with hate and self-pity with self-reproach. Was it true--what he had said? Had she administered the final kick to a man who was down--who, loving her--and deep down in her heart she knew that he did love her--had come to her in the extremity of his need for a word of encouragement?

Now that he was gone she realized how much he had meant to her. How, in spite of his reckless disregard of life's serious side, she loved him.

Try as she would she could not forget the look of deep hurt that dulled his eyes at her words.

Had she not been justified? Had he not needed just that to bring him to a realization of his responsibilities? Had she not, at the sacrifice of her own love, spurred and strengthened his purpose to make good? Or, had she, by raising a barrier between them, removed his one incentive to great effort?

Over and over the girl pondered these things. One moment her heart cried out for his return, and the next she reiterated her undying hate for the man in whose power it was so sorely to wound her with a word.

And so she sat one evening before an open fire in the library which had been the scene of their parting. Mechanically she turned the pages of a novel, but her mind was elsewhere, and her eyes lingered upon the details of the room.

”He stood there,” she mused, ”and I here--and then--those awful words.

And, oh! the look in his eyes that day as the portieres closed between us--and he was gone. Where?”

Somehow the idea obsessed her that he had gone to sea. She pictured him big and strong and brave, battling before the mast on some wallowing, storm-hectored trading s.h.i.+p outbound, bearing him away into the melting-pot of strange world-ways.

Would he come clean through the moil, winning honor and his place among men? And thus would he some day return--to _her_? Or would the sea claim him for her own, roughen him, and buffet him about through the long years among queer Far Eastern h.e.l.l-ports where, jostling shoulder to shoulder with brutish men and the women who do not care, he would drink deep and laugh loud among the flesh-pots of society's discards?

The uncertainty was terrible to the girl, and she forced her thoughts into the one channel in which there was a ray of comfort.

”At least,” she murmured, ”he has ceased to be a menace to Charlie.”

”Mr. Hiram Carmody, miss.”

The old manservant who had been with the Mantons always, stood framed in the inverted V of the parted portieres.

Ethel started. Why had he called? During the lifetime of her father the elder Carmody had been a frequent visitor in the Manton home.