Danny's Own Story Part 33

"No," says I, cheering up a little, "I am going to do something they ain't many fellers would do, Martha. I'm going to forgive you. Free and fair and open. And give you back my half of that ring, and--"

Dern it! I had forgot I had lost that half of that there ring! I remembered so quick it stopped me.

"You always kept it, Danny?" she asts me, very soft-spoken, so as not to give pain to one so faithful and so n.o.ble as what I was. "Let me see it, Danny."

I made like I was feeling through all my pockets fur it. But that couldn't last forever. I run out of pockets purty soon. And her face begun to show she was smelling a rat. Finally I says:

"These ain't my other clothes--it must be in them."

"Danny," she says, "I believe you LOST it."

"Martha," I says, taking a chancet, "you know you lost YOUR half!"

She owns up she has lost it a long while ago. And when she lost it, she says, she knowed that was fate and that our love was omened in under an evil star. And who was she, she says, to struggle agin fate?

"Martha," I says, "I'll be honest with you. Fate got away with my half too one day when I didn't know they was crooks like her sticking around."

Well, I seen that girl seen through me then. Martha was awful smart sometimes. And each one was so derned tickled the other one wasn't going to do any pining away we like to of fell into love all over agin. But not quite. Fur neither one would ever trust the other one agin. So we felt more comfortable with each other. You ain't never comfortable with a person you know is more honest than you be.

"But," says Martha, after a minute, "if you didn't come back to make me marry you, what does Doctor Kirby want to see Miss Hampton about? And who was that with him?"

I had been nigh to forgetting the main thing we had all come here fur, in my gladness at getting rid of any danger of marrying Martha. But it come to me all to oncet I had been missing a lot that must be taking place inside that house. I had even missed the way they first looked when she met 'em at the door, and I wouldn't of missed that fur a lot.

And I seen all to oncet what a big piece of news it will be to Martha.

"Martha," I says, "they ain't no Dr. Hartley L. Kirby. The man known as such is David Armstrong!"

I never seen any one so peetrified as Martha was fur a minute.

"Yes," says I, "and the other one is Miss Lucy's brother. And they are all three in there straightening themselves out and finding where everybody gets off at, and why. One of these here serious times you read about. And you and me are missing it all, like a couple of gumps. How can we hear?"

Martha says she don't know.

"You THINK," I told her. "We've wasted five good minutes already. I've GOT to hear the rest of it. Where would they be?"

Martha guesses they will all be in the sitting room, which has got the best chairs in it.

"What is next to it? A back parlour, or a bedroom, or what?" I was thinking of how I happened to overhear Perfessor Booth and his fambly that-a-way.

Martha says they is nothing like that to be tried.

"Martha," I says, "this is serious. This here story they are thras.h.i.+ng out in there is the only derned sure-enough romanceful story either you or me is ever lible to run up against personal in all our lives. It would of been a good deal nicer if they had ast us in to see the wind-up of it. Fur, if it hadn't of been fur me, they never would of been reunited and rejuvenated the way they be. But some people get stingy streaks with their concerns. You think!"

Martha, she says: "Danny, it wouldn't be honourable to listen."

"Martha," I tells her, "after the way you and me went and jilted each other, what kind of senses of honour have WE got to brag about?"

She remembers that the spare bedroom is right over the sitting room.

The house is heated with stoves in the winter time. There is a register right through the floor of the spare bedroom and the ceiling of the sitting room. Not the kind of a register that comes from a twisted-around shaft in a house that uses furnace heat. But jest really a hole in the floor, with a cast-iron grating, to let the heat from the room below into the one above. She says she guesses two people that wasn't so very honourable might sneak into the house the back way, and up the back stairs, and into the spare bedroom, and lay down on their stummicks on the floor, being careful to make no noise, and both see and hear through that register. Which we done it.

CHAPTER XXIV

I could hear well enough, but at first I couldn't see any of them. But I gathered that Miss Lucy was standing up whilst she was talking, and moving around a bit now and then. I seen one of her sleeves, and then a wisp of her hair. Which was aggervating, fur I wanted to know what she was like. But her voice was so soft and quiet that you kind of knowed before you seen her how she orter look.

"Prentiss McMakin came to me that day," she was saying, "with an appeal--I hardly know how to tell you." She broke off.

"Go ahead, Lucy," says Colonel Tom's voice.

"He was insulting," she said. "He had been drinking. He wanted me to--to--he appealed to me to run off with him.

"I was furious--NATURALLY." Her voice changed as she said it enough so you could feel how furious Miss Lucy could get. She was like her brother Tom in some ways.

"I ordered him out of the house. His answer to that was an offer to marry me. You can imagine that I was surprised as well as angry--I was perplexed.

"'But I AM married!' I cried. The idea that any of my own people, or any one whom I had known at home, would think I wasn't married was too much for me to take in all at once.

"'You THINK you are,' said Prentiss McMakin, with a smile.

"In spite of myself my breath stopped. It was as if a chilly hand had taken hold of my heart. I mean, physically, I felt like that.

"'I AM married,' I repeated, simply.

"I suppose that McMakin had got the story of our wedding from YOU." She stopped a minute. The doctor's voice answered:

"I suppose so," like he was a very tired man.

"Anyhow," she went on, "he knew that we went first to Clarksville. He said:

"'You think you are married, Lucy, but you are not.'

"I wish you to understand that Prentiss McMakin did it all very, very well. That is my excuse. He acted well. There was something about him--I scarcely know how to put it. It sounds odd, but the truth is that Prentiss McMakin was always a more convincing sort of a person when he had been drinking a little than when he was sober. He lacked warmth--he lacked temperament. I suppose just the right amount put it into him. It put the devil into him, too, I reckon.

"He told me that you and he, Tom, had been to Clarksville, and had made investigations, and that the wedding was a fraud. And he told it with a wealth of convincing detail. In the midst of it he broke off to ask to see my wedding certificate. As he talked, he laughed at it, and tore it up, saying that the thing was not worth the paper it was on, and he threw the pieces of paper into the grate. I listened, and I let him do it--not that the paper itself mattered particularly. But the very fact that I let him tear it showed me, myself, that I was believing him.

"He ended with an impa.s.sioned appeal to me to go with him.

"I showed him the door. I pretended to the last that I thought he was lying to me. But I did not think so. I believed him. He had done it all very cleverly. You can understand how I might--in view of what had happened?"

I wanted to see Miss Lucy--how she looked when she said different things, so I could make up my mind whether she was forgiving the doctor or not. Not that I had much doubt but what they would get their personal troubles fixed up in the end. The iron grating in the floor was held down by four good-sized screws, one at each corner. They wasn't no filling at all betwixt it and the iron grating that was in the ceiling of the room below. The s.p.a.ce was hollow. I got an idea and took out my jack-knife.

"What are you going to do?" whispers Martha.

"S-sh-sh," I says, "shut up, and you'll see."