Sue never rightly remembered how the two months passed; the two months succeeding that hideous night when in paralyzed silence she watched Garrison away. The greatest sorrow is stagnant, not active. The heart becomes like a frozen morass. Sometimes memory slips through the crust, only to sink in the grim "slough of despond."
Waterbury's death had unnerved her, coming as it did at a time when tragedy had opened the pores of her heart. He had been conscious for a few minutes before the messenger of a new life summoned him into the great beyond. He used the few minutes well. If we all lived with the thought that the next hour would be our last, the world would be peopled with angels--and hypocrites.
Waterbury asked permission of his host, Colonel Desha, to see Sue alone. It was willingly granted. The girl, white-faced, came and sat by the bed in the room of many shadows; the room where death was tapping, tapping on the door. She had said nothing to her father regarding the events preceding the runaway and Waterbury's accident.
Waterbury eyed her long and gravely. The heat of his great passion had melted the baser metal of his nature. What original alloy of gold he possessed had but emerged refined. His fingers, formerly pudgy, well- fed, had suddenly become skeletons of themselves. They were picking at the coverlet.
"I lied about--about Garrison," he whispered, forcing life to his mouth, his eyes never leaving the girl's. "I lied. He was square--" Breath would not come. "For-forgive," he cried, suddenly in a smother of sweat. "Forgive--"
"Gladly, willingly," whispered the girl. She was crying inwardly.
His eyes flamed for an instant, and then died away. By sheer will- power he succeeded in stretching a hand across the coverlet, palm upward. "Put--put it--there," he whispered. "Will you?"
She understood. It was the sporting world's token of forgiveness; of friendship. She laid her hand in his, gripping with a firm clasp.
"Thank you," he whispered. Again his eyes flamed; again died away. The end was very near. Perhaps the approaching freedom of the spirit lent him power to read the girl's thoughts. For as he looked into her eyes, his own saw that she knew what lay in his. He breathed heavily, painfully.
"Could--could you?" he whispered. "If--if you only could." There was a great longing, a mighty wistfulness in his voice. Death was trying to place its hand over his mouth. With a mighty effort Waterbury slipped past it. "If you only could," he reiterated. "It--it means so little to you, Miss Desha--so much, so much to--me!"
And again the girl understood. Without a word she bent over and kissed him. He smiled. And so died Waterbury.
Afterward, the girl remembered Waterbury's confession. So Garrison was honest! Somehow, she had always believed he was. His eyes, the windows of his soul, were not fouled. She had read weakness there, but never dishonesty. Yes, somehow she had always believed him honest. But he was married. That was different. The concrete, not the abstract, was paramount. All else was swamped by the fact that he was married. She could not believe that he had forgotten his marriage with his true identity. She could not believe that. Her heart was against her. Love to her was everything. She could not understand how one could ever forget. One might forget the world, but not that, not that.
True to her code of judging not, she did not attempt to estimate Garrison. She could not bear to use the probe. There are some things too sacred to be dissected; so near the heart that their proximity renders an experiment prohibitive. She believed that Garrison loved her. She believed that above all. Surely he had given something in exchange for all that he owned of her. If in unguarded moments her conscience assumed the woolsack, mercy, not justice, swayed it.
She realized the mighty temptation Garrison had been forced against by circumstances. And if he had fallen, might not she herself? Had it not taken all her courage to renounce--to give the girl up North the right of way? Now she understood the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation."
Yes, it had been weakness with Garrison, not dishonor. He had been fighting against it all the time. She remembered that morning in the tennis-court--her first intimacy with him. And he had spoken of the girl up North. She remembered him saying: "But doesn't the Bible say to leave all and cleave unto your wife?"
That had been a confession, though she knew it not. And she had ignored it, taking it as badinage, and he had been too weak to brand it truth. Strangely enough, she did not judge him for posing as Major Calvert's nephew. Strangely enough, that seemed trivial in comparison with the other. It was so natural for him to be the rightful heir that she could not realize that he was an impostor, nor apportion the fact its true significance. Her brain was unfit to grapple. Only her heart lived; lived with the passive life of stagnation. It was choked with weeds on the surface. She tried to patch together the broken parts of her life. Tried and failed. She could not. She seemed to be existing without an excuse; aimlessly, soullessly.
After many horrible days, hideous nights, she realized that she still loved Garrison. Loved with a love that threatened to absorb even her physical existence. It seemed as if the very breath of her lungs had been diverted to her heart, where it became tissue-searing flame.
And at Calvert House life had resolved itself into silence. The major and his wife were striving to live in the future; striving to live against Garrison's return. They were ignorant of the true cause of his leaving. For Sue, the keeper of the secret, had not divulged it. She had been left with a difficult proposition to face, and she could not face it. She temporized. She knew that sooner or later the truth would have to come out. She put it off. She could not tell, not now, not now. Each day only rendered it the more difficult. She could not tell.
She had only to look at the old major; to look at his wife, to see that the blow would blast them. She had had youth to help her, and even she had been blasted. What chance had they? And so she said that Garrison and she had quarreled seriously and that in sudden anger, pique, he had left. Oh, yes, she knew he would return. She was quite sure of it. It was all so silly and over nothing, and she had no idea he would take it that way. And she was so sorry, so sorry.
It had all been her fault. He had not been to blame. It was she, only she. In a thoughtless moment she had said something about his being dependent on his uncle, and he had fired up, affirming that he would show her that he was a man, and could earn his own salt. Yes, it had been entirely her own fault, and no one hated herself as she did. He had gone to prove his manhood, and she knew how stubborn he was. He would not return until he wished.
Sue lied bravely, convincingly, whole-heartedly. Everything she did was done thoroughly. She would not think of the future. But she could not tell that Garrison was an impostor; a father of children. She could not tell. So she lied, and lied so well that the old major, bewildered, was forced to believe her. He was forced to acquiesce. He could not interfere. He could do nothing. It was better that his nephew should prove his manhood; return some time and love the girl, than that he should hate her for eternity.
Each day he hoped to see Garrison back, but each day passed without that consummation. The strain was beginning to tell on him. His heart was bound up in the boy. If he did not return soon he would advertise, institute a search. He well knew the folly of youth. He was br minded, great-hearted enough not to censure the girl by word or act. He saw how she was suffering; growing paler daily. But why didn't Garrison write? All the anger, all the quarrels in the world could not account for his leaving like that; account for his silence.
The major commenced to doubt. And his wife's words: "It's not like Sue to permit William to go like that. Nor like her to ever have said such a thing even unthinkingly. There's more than that on the girl's mind. She is wasting away"--but served to strengthen the doubt. Still, he was impotent. He could not understand. If his nephew did not wish to return, all the advertising in creation could not drag him back.
Yes, his wife was right. There was more on the girl's mind than that. And it was not like Sue to act as she affirmed she had. Still, he could not bring himself to doubt her. He was in a quandary. It had begun to tell on him, on his wife; even as it had already told on the girl.
And old Colonel Desha was likewise breasting a sea of trouble. Waterbury's death had brought financial matters to a focus. Honor imperatively demanded that the mortgage be settled with the dead man's heirs. It was only due to Sue's desperate financiering that the interest had been met up to the present. That it would be paid next month depended solely on the chance of The Rogue winning the Carter Handicap. Things had come to as bad a pass as that.
The colonel frantically bent every effort toward getting the thoroughbred into condition. How he hated himself now for posting his all on the winter ! Now that the great trial was so near, his deep convictions of triumph did not look so wonderful.
There were good horses entered against The Rogue. Major Calvert's Dixie, for instance, and Speedaway, the wonderful goer owned by that man Drake. Then there were half a dozen others--all from well-known stables. There could be no doubt that "class" would be present in abundance at the Carter. And only he had so much at stake. He had entered The Rogue in the first flush consequent on his winning the last Carter. But he must win this. He must. Getting him into condition entailed expense. It must be met. All his hopes, his fears, were staked on The Rogue. Money never was so paramount; the need of it so great. Fiercely he hugged his poverty to his breast, keeping it from his friend the major.
Then, too, he was greatly worried over Sue. She was not looking well. He was worried over Garrison's continued absence. He was worried over everything. It was besetting him from all sides. Worry was causing him to take the lime-light from himself. He awoke to the fact that Sue was in very poor health. If she died-- He never could finish.
Taken all in all, it was a very bad time for the two oldest families in Cottonton. Every member was suffering silently, stoically; each in a different way. One striving to conceal from the other. And it all centered about Garrison.
And then, one day when things were at their worst, when Garrison, unconscious of the general misery he had engendered, had completed Speedaway's training for the Carter, when he himself was ready for the fight of his life, a stranger stepped off the Cottonton express and made his way to the Desha homestead. He knew the colonel. He was a big, quiet man--Jimmie Drake.
A week later and Drake had returned North. He had not said anything to Garrison regarding what had called him away, but the latter vaguely sensed that it was another attempt on the indefatigable turfman's part to ferret out the eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark. And when Drake, on his return, called Garrison into the club-house, Garrison went white- faced. He had just sent Speedaway over the seven furlongs in record time, and his heart was big with hope.
Drake never wasted ammunition in preliminary skirmishing. He told the joke first and the story afterward.
"I've been South. Seen Colonel Desha and Major Calvert," he said tersely.
Garrison was silent, looking at him. He tried to read fate in his inscrutable eyes; news of some description; tried, and failed. He turned away his head. "Tell me," he said simply. Drake eyed him and slowly came forward and held out his large bloodshot hand.
"Billy Garrison--'Bud'--'Kid'--William C. Dagget," he said, nodding his head.
Garrison rose with difficulty, the sweat on his face.
"William C. Dagget? Me? Me? Me?" he whispered, his head thrown forward, his eyes narrowed, starting at Drake. "Just God, Jimmie! Don't play with me----" He sat down abruptly covering his quivering face with his hands.
Drake laid a hand on the heaving shoulders. "There, there, kid," he murmured gruffly, as if to a child, "don't go and blow up over it. Yes, you're Dagget. The luckiest kid in the States, and--and the damnedest. You've raised a muss-pile down South in Cottonton. Dagget or no Dagget, I'm talking straight. You've been selfish, kid. You've only been thinking of yourself; your regeneration; your past, your present, your future. You--you--you. You never thought of the folks you left down home; left to suffocate with the stink you raised. You cleared out scot-free, and, say, kid, you let a girl lie for you; lie for you. You did that. A girl, by heck! who wouldn't lie for the Almighty Himself. A girl who--who----" Drake searched frantically for a fitting simile, gasped, mopped his face with a lurid silk handkerchief, and flumped into a chair. "Well, say, kid, it's just plain hell. That's what it is."
"Lied for me?" said Garrison very quietly.
"That's the word. But I'll start from the time the fur commenced to fly. In the first place, there's no doubt about your identity. I was right. I've proved that. I couldn't find Snark--I guess the devil must have called him back home. So I took things on my own hook and went to Cottonton, where I moseyed round considerable. I know Colonel Desha, and I learned a good deal in a quiet way when I was there. I learned from Major Calvert that his half-sister's--your mother's--name was Loring. That cinched it for me. But I said nothing. They were in an awful stew over your absence, but I never let on, at first, that I had you bunked.
"I learned, among other things, that Miss Desha had taken upon herself the blame of your leaving; saying that she had said something you had taken exception to; that you had gone to prove your manhood, kid. Your manhood, kid--mind that. She's a thoroughbred, that girl. Now, I would have backed her lie to the finish if something hadn't gone and happened." Drake paused significantly. "That something was that the major received a letter--from your father, kid."
"My father?" whispered Garrison.
"Um-m-m, the very party. Written from 'Frisco--on his death-bed. One of those old-timey, stage-climax death-bed confessions. As old as the mortgage on the farm business. As I remarked before some right-meaning chap says somewhere something about saying nothing but good of the dead. I'm not slinging mud. I guess there was a whole lot missing in your father, kid, but he tried to square himself at the finish, the same as we all do, I guess.
"He wrote to the major, saying he had never told his son--you, kid--of his real name nor of his mother's family. He confessed to changing his name from Dagget to Garrison for the very reasons I said. Remember? He ended by saying he had wronged you; that he knew you would be the major's heir, and that if you were to be found it would be under the name of Garrison. That is, if you were still living. He didn't know anything about you.
"There was a whole lot of repentance and general misery in the letter. I don't like to think of it overmuch. But it knocked Cottonton flatter than stale beer. Honest. I never saw such a time. I'm no good at telling a yarn, kid. It was something fierce. There was nothing but knots and knots; all diked up and tangles by the mile. And so I had to step in and straighten things out. And--and so, kid, I told the major everything; every scrap of your history, as far as I knew it. All you had told to me. I had to. Now, don't tell me I kicked in. Say I did right, kid. I meant to."
"Yes, yes," murmured Garrison blankly. "And--and the major? What--did he say, Jimmie?"
Drake frowned thoughtfully.
"Say? Well, kid, I only wish I had an uncle like that. I only wish there were more folks like those Cottonton folks. I do. Say? Why, Lord, kid, it was one grand hallelujah! Forgive? Say," he finished, thoughtfully eyeing the white-faced, newly christened Garrison, "what have you ever done to be loved like that? They were crazy for you. Not a word was said about your imposition. Not a word. It was all: 'When will he be back?' 'Where is he?' 'Telegraph!' All one great slambang of joy. And me? Well, I could have had that town for my own. And your aunt? She cried, cried when she heard all you had been through. Oh, I made a great press-agent, kid. And the old major-- Oh, fuss! I can't tell a yarn nohow," grumbled Drake, stamping about at great length and vigorously using the lurid silk handkerchief.
William C. Dagget was silent--the silence of great, overwhelming joy. He was shivering. "And--and Miss Desha?" he whispered at length.
"Yes--Miss Desha," echoed Drake, planting wide his feet and contemplating the other's bent head. "Yes, Miss Desha. And why in blazes did you tell her you were married, eh?" he asked grimly. "Oh, you thought you were? Oh, yes. And you didn't deny it when you found it wasn't so? Oh, yes, of course. And it didn't matter whether she ate her heart out or not? Of course not. Oh, yes, you wanted to be clean, first, and all that. And she might die in the meantime. You didn't think she still cared for you? Now, see here, kid, that's a lie and you know it. It's a lie. When a girl like Miss Desha goes so far as to-- Oh, fuss! I can't tell a yarn. But, see here, kid, I haven't your blood. I own that. But if I ever put myself before a girl who cared for me the way Miss Desha cares for you, and I professed to love her as you professed to love Miss Desha, than may I rot--rot, hide, hair, and bones! Now, cuss me out, if you like."
Garrison looked up grimly.
"You're right, Jimmie. I should have stood my ground and taken my dose. I should have written her when I discovered the truth. But--I couldn't. I couldn't. Listen, Jimmie, it was not selfishness, not cowardice. Can't you see? Can't you see? I cared too much. I was so unworthy, so miserable. How could I ever think she would stoop to my level? She was so high; I so horribly low. It was my own unworthiness choking me. It was not selfishness, Jimmie, not selfishness. It was despair; despair and misery. Don't you understand?"
"Oh, fuss!" said Drake again, using the lurid silk handkerchief. Then he laid his hand on the other's shoulder. "I understand," he said simply. There was silence. Finally Drake wiped his face and cleared his throat.
"And now, with your permission, we'll get down to tacks, Mr. William C. Dagget--"
"Don't call me that, Jimmie. I'm not that--yet. I'm Billy Garrison until I've won the Carter Handicap--proven myself clean."
"Right, kid. And that's what I wished to speak about. In the first place, Major Calvert knows where you are. Colonel and Miss Desha do not. In fact, kid," added Drake, rubbing his chin, "the major and I have a little plot hatched up between us. Your identity, if possible is not to be made known to the colonel and his daughter until the finish of the Carter. Understand?"
"No," said Garrison flatly. "Why?"
"Because, kid, you're not going to ride Speedaway. You're not going to ride for my stable. You're going to ride Colonel Desha's Rogue--ride as you never rode before. Ride and win. That's why."
Garrison only stared as Drake ran on. "See here, kid, this race means everything to the colonel--everything in the world. Every cent he has is at stake; his honor, his life, his daughter's happiness. He's proud, cussed proud, and he's kept it mum. And the girl--Miss Desha has bucked poverty like a thoroughbred. I got to know the facts, picking them up here and there, and the major knows, too. We've got to work in the dark, for the colonel would die first if he knew the truth, before he would accept help even indirectly. The Rogue must win; must. But what chance has he against the major's Dixie, my Speedaway, and the Morgan entry--Swallow? And so the major has scratched his mount, giving out that Dixie has developed eczema.
"Now, the colonel is searching high and low for a jockey capable of handling The Rogue. It'll take a good man. I recommended you. He doesn't know your identity, for the major and I have kept it from him. He only thinks you are /the/ Garrison who has come back. I have fixed it up with him that you are to ride his mount, and The Rogue will arrive to-morrow.
"The colonel is a wreck mentally and physically; living on nerve. I've agreed to put the finishing touches on The Rogue, and he, knowing my ability and facilities, has permitted me. It's all in my hands--pretty near. Now, Red McGloin is up on the Morgan entry--Swallow. He used to be a stable-boy for Waterbury. I guess you've heard of him. He's developed into a first-class boy. But I want to see you lick the hide off him. The fight will lie between you and him. I know the rest of the field--"
"But Speedaway?" cried Garrison, jumping to his feet. "Jimmie--you! It's too great a sacrifice; too great, too great. I know how you've longed to win the Carter; what it means to you; how you have slaved to earn it. Jimmie--Jimmie--don't tempt me. You can't mean you've scratched Speedaway!"
"Just that, kid," said Drake grimly. "The first scratch in my life-- and the last. Speedaway? Well, she and I will win again some other time. Some time, kid, when we ain't playing against a man's life and a girl's happiness. I'll scratch for those odds. It's for you, kid--you and the girl. Remember, you're carrying her colors, her life.
"You'll have a good fight--but fight as you never fought before; as you never hope to fight again. Cottonton will watch you, kid. Don't shame them; don't shame me. Show 'em what you're made of. Show Red that a former stable-boy, no matter what class he is now, can't have the licking of a former master. Show 'em a has-been can come back. Show 'em what Garrison stands for. Show 'em your finish, kid--I'll ask no more. And you'll carry Jimmie Drake's heart-- Oh, fuss! I can't tell a yarn, nohow."
In silence Garrison gripped Drake's hand. And if ever a mighty resolution was welded in a human heart--a resolution born of love, everything; one that nothing could deny--it was born that moment in Garrison's. Born as the tears stood in his eyes, and, man as he was, he could not keep up; nor did he shame his manhood by denying them. "Kid, kid," said Drake.
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