Part 6 (1/2)
”Dentville, Pike County, Missouri.”
”What was your mother's name?”
”Spalding, I reckon.”
”Where are your parents now?”
”Mother got divorced from father, and married again down South, somewhere. Father left home twenty years ago. He's somewhere in California--if he ain't dead.”
”He isn't dead.”
”How do you know?”
”Because I am Henry Guest, of Dentville, and”--he stopped, and, shading his eyes with his hand as he deliberately examined the tramp, added coldly--”your father, I reckon.”
There was a slight pause. The young man put down the boot he had taken up. ”Then I'm to stay here?”
”Certainly not. Here my name is only West, and I have no son. You'll go on to San Jose, and stay there until I look into this thing. You haven't got any money, of course?” he asked, with a scarcely suppressed sneer.
”I've got a little,” returned the young man.
”How much?”
The tramp put his hand into his breast, and drew out a piece of folded paper containing a single gold coin.
”Five dollars. I've kept it a month; it doesn't cost much to live as I do,” he added, dryly.
”There's fifty more. Go to some hotel in San Jose, and let me know where you are. You've got to live, and you don't want to work. Well, you don't seem to be a fool; so I needn't tell you that if you expect anything from me, you must leave this matter in my hands. I have chosen to acknowledge you to-day of my own free will: I can as easily denounce you as an impostor to-morrow, if I choose. Have you told your story to any one in the valley?”
”No.”
”See that you don't, then. Before you go, you must answer me a few more questions.”
He drew a chair to his table, and dipped a pen in the ink, as if to take down the answers. The young man, finding the only chair thus occupied, moved the Doctor's books aside, and sat down on the table beside him.
The questions were repet.i.tions of those already asked, but more in detail, and thoroughly practical in their nature. The answers were given straightforwardly and unconcernedly, as if the subject was not worth the trouble of invention or evasion. It was difficult to say whether questioner or answerer took least pleasure in the interrogation, which might have referred to the concerns of a third party. Both, however, spoke disrespectfully of their common family, with almost an approach to sympathetic interest.
”You might as well be going now,” said the Doctor, finally rising. ”You can stop at the fonda, about two miles further on, and get your supper and bed, if you like.”
The young man slipped from the table, and lounged to the door. The Doctor put his hands in his pockets and followed him. The young man, as if in unconscious imitation, had put HIS hands in his pockets also, and looked at him.
”I'll hear from you, then, when you are in San Jose?” said Dr. West, looking past him into the grain, with a slight approach to constraint in his indifference.
”Yes--if that's agreed upon,” returned the young man, pausing on the threshold. A faint sense of some purely conventional responsibility in their position affected them both. They would have shaken hands if either had offered the initiative. A sullen consciousness of gratuitous rect.i.tude in the selfish mind of the father; an equally sullen conviction of twenty years of wrong in the son, withheld them both. Unpleasantly observant of each other's awkwardness, they parted with a feeling of relief.
Dr. West closed the door, lit his lamp, and, going to his desk, folded the paper containing the memoranda he had just written and placed it in his pocket. Then he summoned his foreman. The man entered, and glanced around the room as if expecting to see the Doctor's guest still there.
”Tell one of the men to bring round 'Buckeye.'”
The foreman hesitated. ”Going to ride to-night, sir?”