第141章

"Do you want "--he put it to her with a curious comprehending of her emotion--"to talk about him? Would it do you good?""Yes! Yes! I have never talked to any one.There has been no one to listen.""Talk all you want," he answered, with immense gentleness."I'm here.""I can't understand it even now, but he would not see me!" she broke out."I was half mad.I wrote, and he would not answer.I went to his chambers when I heard he was going to leave England.I went to beg him to take me with him, married or unmarried.I would have gone on my knees to him.He was gone! Oh, why? Why?""You didn't think he'd gone because he didn't love you?" he put it to her quite literally and unsentimentally."You knew better than that?""How could I be sure of anything! When he left the room that awful night he would not look at me! He would not look at me!""Since I've been here I've been reading a lot of novels, and I've found out a lot of things about fellows that are not the common, practical kind.Now, he wasn't.He'd lived pretty much like a fellow in a novel, I guess.What's struck me about that sort is that they think they have to make noble sacrifices, and they'll just walk all over a woman because they won't do anything to hurt her.There's not a bit of sense in it, but that was what he was doing.He believed he was doing the square thing by you--and you may bet your life it hurt him like hell.I beg your pardon--but that's the word--just plain hell.""I was only a girl.He was like iron.He went away alone.He was killed, and when he was dead the truth was told.""That's what I've remembered "--quite slowly--"every time I've looked at you.By gee! I'd have stood anything from a woman that had suffered as much as that."It made her cry--his genuineness--and she did not care in the least that the tears streamed down her cheeks.How he had stood things! How he had borne, in that odd, unimpressive way, insolence and arrogance for which she ought to have been beaten and blackballed by decent society! She could scarcely bear it.

"Oh! to think it should have been you," she wept, "just you who understood!""Well," he answered speculatively, "I mightn't have understood as well if it hadn't been for Ann.By jings! I used to lie awake at night sometimes thinking `supposing it bad been Ann and me!' I'd sort of work it out as it might have happened in New York--at the office of the Sunday Earth.Supposing some fellow that'd had a grouch against me had managed it so that Galton thought I'd been getting away with money that didn't belong to me--fixing up my expense account, or worse.And Galton wouldn't listen to what I said, and fired me; and I couldn't get a job anywhere else because I was down and out for good.And nobody would listen.And I was killed without clearing myself.And Little Ann was left to stand it--Little Ann! Old Hutchinson wouldn't listen, I know that.And it would be all shut up burning in her big little heart--burning.And T.T.dead, and not a word to say for himself.Jehoshaphat!"--taking out his handkerchief and touching his forehead--"it used to make the cold sweat start out on me.It's doing it now.Ann and me might have been Jem and you.That's why Iunderstood."

He put out his hand and caught hers and frankly squeezed it--squeezed it hard; and the unconventional clutch was a wonderful thing to her.

"It's all right now, ain't it?" he said."We've got it straightened out.You'll not be afraid to come back here if your mother wants you to." He stopped for a moment and then went on with something of hesitation: "We don't want to talk about your mother.We can't.But Iunderstand her, too.Folks are different from each other in their ways.She's different from you.I'll--I'll straighten it out with her if you like.""Nothing will need straightening out after I tell her that you are going to marry Little Ann Hutchinson," said Joan, with a half-smile.

"And that you were engaged to her before you saw me.""Well, that does sort of finish things up, doesn't it?" said T.

Tembarom.

He looked at her so speculatively for a moment after this that she wondered whether he had something more to say.He had.

"There's something I want to ask you," he ventured.

"Ask anything."