Part 6 (2/2)

”Oh, Thunder!” growled Stanton. The idea seemed to be new to him and not altogether to his taste. Then suddenly his face began to brighten.

”No, I'm lying,” he said. ”No, they haven't always sent me a printed slip. It was only yesterday that they sent me a rather real sort of letter. You see,” he explained, ”I got pretty mad at last and I wrote them frankly and told them that I didn't give a darn who 'Molly' was, but simply wanted to know _what_ she was. I told them that it was just grat.i.tude on my part, the most formal, impersonal sort of grat.i.tude--a perfectly plausible desire to say 'thank you' to some one who had been awfully decent to me these past few weeks. I said right out that if 'she' was a boy, why we'd surely have to go fis.h.i.+ng together in the spring, and if 'she' was an old man, the very least I could do would be to endow her with tobacco, and if 'she' was an old lady, why I'd simply be obliged to drop in now and then of a rainy evening and hold her knitting for her.”

”And if 'she' were a girl?” probed the Doctor.

Stanton's mouth began to twitch. ”Then Heaven help me!” he laughed.

”Well, what answer did you get?” persisted the Doctor. ”What do you call a realish sort of letter?”

With palpable reluctance Stanton drew a gray envelope out of the cuff of his wrapper.

”I suppose you might as well see the whole business,” he admitted consciously.

There was no special diffidence in the Doctor's manner this time. His clutch on the letter was distinctly inquisitive, and he read out the opening sentences with almost rhetorical effect.

”Oh, Carl dear, you silly boy, WHY do you persist in hectoring me so? Don't you understand that I've got only a certain amount of ingenuity anyway, and if you force me to use it all in trying to conceal my ident.i.ty from you, how much shall I possibly have left to devise schemes for your amus.e.m.e.nt? Why do you persist, for instance, in wanting to see my face? Maybe I haven't got any face! Maybe I lost my face in a railroad accident. How do you suppose it would make me feel, then, to have you keep teasing and teasing.--Oh, Carl!

”Isn't it enough for me just to tell you once for all that there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe, biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am utterly devoted to. Maybe, instead of any of these things, I'm a poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossing day and night on a very small bed of very big pain. Maybe worse than being sick I'm starving poor, and maybe, worse than being sick or poor, I am most horribly tired of myself. Of course if you are very young and very prancy and reasonably good-looking, and still are tired of yourself, you can almost always rest yourself by going on the stage where--with a little rouge and a different colored wig, and a new nose, and skirts instead of trousers, or trousers instead of skirts, and age instead of youth, and badness instead of goodness--you can give your ego a perfectly limitless number of happy holidays. But if you were oldish, I say, and pitifully 'shut in', just how would you go to work, I wonder, to rest your personality? How for instance could you take your biggest, grayest, oldest worry about your doctor's bill, and rouge it up into a radiant, young joke? And how, for instance, out of your lonely, dreary, middle-aged orphanhood are you going to find a way to short-skirt your rheumatic pains, and braid into two perfectly huge pink-bowed pigtails the hair that you _haven't got_, and caper round so ecstatically before the foot-lights that the old gentleman and lady in the front seat absolutely swear you to be the living image of their 'long lost Amy'? And how, if the farthest journey you ever will take again is the monotonous hand-journey from your pillow to your medicine bottle, then how, for instance, with map or tinsel or attar of roses, can you go to work to solve even just for your own satisfaction the romantic, s.h.i.+mmering secrets of--Morocco?

”Ah! You've got me now, you think? All decided in your mind that I am an aged invalid? I didn't say so. I just said 'maybe'. Likelier than not I've saved my climax for its proper place. How do you know,--for instance, that I'm not a--'Cullud Pusson'?--So many people are.”

Without signature of any sort, the letter ended abruptly then and there, and as though to satisfy his sense of something left unfinished, the Doctor began at the beginning and read it all over again in a mumbling, husky whisper.

”Maybe she is--'colored',” he volunteered at last.

”Very likely,” said Stanton perfectly cheerfully. ”It's just those occasional humorous suggestions that keep me keyed so heroically up to the point where I'm actually infuriated if you even suggest that I might be getting really interested in this mysterious Miss Molly! You haven't said a single sentimental thing about her that I haven't scoffed at--now have you?”

”N--o,” acknowledged the Doctor. ”I can see that you've covered your retreat all right. Even if the author of these letters should turn out to be a one-legged veteran of the War of 1812, you still could say, 'I told you so'. But all the same, I'll wager that you'd gladly give a hundred dollars, cash down, if you could only go ahead and prove the little girl's actual existence.”

Stanton's shoulders squared suddenly but his mouth retained at least a faint vestige of its original smile.

”You mistake the situation entirely,” he said. ”It's the little girl's non-existence that I am most anxious to prove.”

Then utterly without reproach or interference, he reached over and grabbed a forbidden cigar from the Doctor's cigar case, and lighted it, and retreated as far as possible into the gray film of smoke.

It was minutes and minutes before either man spoke again. Then at last after much crossing and re-crossing of his knees the Doctor asked drawlingly, ”And when is it that you and Cornelia are planning to be married?”

”Next April,” said Stanton briefly.

”U--m--m,” said the Doctor. After a few more minutes he said, ”U--m--m,” again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Maybe she is--'colored,'” he volunteered at last]

The second ”U--m--m” seemed to irritate Stanton unduly. ”Is it your head that's spinning round?” he asked tersely. ”You sound like a Dutch top!”

The Doctor raised his hands cautiously to his forehead. ”Your story does make me feel a little bit giddy,” he acknowledged. Then with sudden intensity, ”Stanton, you're playing a dangerous game for an engaged man. Cut it out, I say!”

”Cut what out?” said Stanton stubbornly.

The Doctor pointed exasperatedly towards the big box of letters. ”Cut those out,” he said. ”A sentimental correspondence with a girl who's--more interesting than your fiancee!”

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