The Diary of a Saint. Bates Arlo

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СКАЧАТЬ good. I've had so much preaching in my life that I'm not to be rounded up by piety."

      I smiled as well as I could, though it made me want to cry to hear the hard bravado of his tone.

      "I'm not generally credited with overmuch piety, Tom. The whole town thinks all the Privets heathen, you know."

      "Humph! It's a pity there weren't a few more of 'em."

      I laughed, and thanked him for the compliment, and then we went on in silence for a little way. I had to ignore what he said about George, but it did not make it easier to begin. I was puzzled what to say, but the time was short that we should be walking together, and I had to do something.

      "Tom," I began, "you may not be very sensitive about old friendships, but I am loyal; and it hurts me that those I care for should be talked against."

      "Oh, in a place like Tuskamuck," he returned, at once, I could see, on the defensive, "they'll talk about anybody."

      "Will they? Then I suppose they talk about me. I'm sorry, Tom, for it must make you uncomfortable to hear it; unless, that is, you don't count me for a friend any longer."

      He threw back his head in the way he has always had. I used to tell him it was like a colt's shaking back its mane.

      "What nonsense! Of course they don't talk about you. You don't give folks any chance."

      "And you do," I added as quietly as I could.

      He looked angry for just the briefest instant, and then he burst into a hard laugh.

      "Caught, by Jupiter! Ruth, you were always too clever for me to deal with. Well, then, I do give the gossips plenty to talk about. They would talk just the same if I didn't, so I may as well have the game as the name."

      "Does that mean that your life is regulated by the gossips? I supposed that you had more independence, Tom."

      He flushed, and stooped down to pick up a stick. With this he began viciously to strike the bushes by the roadside and the dry stalks of yarrow sticking up through the snow. He set his lips together with a grim determination which brought out in his face the look I like least, the resemblance to his mother when she means to carry a point.

      "Look here, Ruth," he said after a moment; "I'm not going to talk to you about myself or my doings. I'm a blackguard fast enough; but there's no good talking about it. If you'd cared enough about me to keep me straight, you could have done it; but now I'm on my way to the Devil, and no great way to travel before I get there either."

      We had come to the turn of the Rim Road where the trees shut off the view of the houses of the village. I stopped and put my hand on his arm.

      "Tom," I begged him, "don't talk like that. You don't know how it hurts. You don't mean it; you can't mean it. Nobody but yourself can send you on the wrong road; and I know you're too plucky to hide behind any such excuse. For the sake of your father, Tom, do stop and think what you are doing."

      "Oh, father'll console himself very well with prayers; and anyway he'll thank God for sending me to perdition, because if God does it, it must be all right."

      "Don't, Tom! You know how he suffers at the way you go on. It must be terrible to have an only son, and to see him flinging his life away."

      "It isn't my fault that I'm his son, is it?" he demanded. "I've been dragged into this infernal life without being asked whether I wanted to come or not; and now I'm here, I can't have what I want, and I'm promised eternal damnation hereafter. Well, then, I'll show God or the Devil, or whoever bosses things, that I can't be bullied into a molly-coddle!"

      The sound of wheels interrupted us, and we instinctively began to walk onward in the most commonplace fashion. A farmer's wagon came along, and by the time it had passed we had come to the head of the Rim Road, in full sight of the houses. Tom waited until I turned to the right, toward home, and then he said, —

      "I'm going the other way. It's no use, Ruth, to talk to me; but I'm obliged to you for caring."

      I cannot see that I did any good, and very likely I have simply made him more on his guard to avoid giving me a chance; but then, even if I had all the chance in the world, what could I say to him? And yet, Tom is so noble a fellow underneath it all. He is honest and kind, and strong in his way; only between his father's meekness and his mother's sharpness – for she is sharp – he has somehow come to grief. They have tried to make him religious so that he would be good; and he is of the sort that must be good or he will not be religious. He cannot be pressed into a mould of orthodoxy, and so in the end – But it cannot be the end. Tom must somehow come out of it.

      January 13. When George came in to-night I was struck at once with the look of pleasant excitement in his face.

      "What pleases you?" I asked him.

      "Pleases me?" he echoed, evidently surprised. "Isn't it a pleasure to see you?"

      "But that's not the whole of it," I said. "You've something pleasant to tell me. Oh, I can read you like a book, my dear; so it is quite idle trying to keep a secret from me."

      He seemed confused, and I was puzzled to know what was the matter.

      "You are too wise entirely," was his reply. "I really hadn't anything to tell."

      "Then something good has happened," I persisted; "or you have heard good news."

      "What a fanciful girl you are, Ruth," George returned. "Nothing has happened."

      He walked away from me, and went to the fire. He was strangely embarrassed, and I could only wonder what I had said to confuse him. I reflected that perhaps he was planning some sort of a surprise, and felt I ought not to pry into his thoughts in this fashion whatever the matter was that interested him. I sat down on the other side of the hearth, and took up some sewing.

      "George," I asked, entirely at random, "didn't you say that the Miss West you met at Franklin is a cousin of the Watsons?"

      I flushed as soon as I had spoken, for I thought how it betrayed me that in my desire to hit on a new subject I had found the thought of her so near the surface of my mind. I had not consciously been thinking of her at all, and certainly I did not connect her with George's strangeness of manner. There was something almost weird, it seems to me now, in my putting such a question just then. Perhaps it was telepathy, for she must have been vividly in his thoughts at that moment. He started, flushed as I have never seen him, and turned quickly toward me.

      "What makes you think that it was Miss West?"

      "Think what was Miss West?" I cried.

      I was completely astonished; then I saw how it was.

      "Never mind, George," I went on, laughing and putting out my hand to him. "I didn't mean to read your thoughts, and I didn't realize that I was doing it."

      "But what made you" —

      "I'm sure I don't know," I broke in; and I managed to laugh again. "Only I see now that you know something pleasant about Miss West, and you may as well tell it."

      He looked doubtful a minute, studying my face. The hesitation he had in speaking hurt me.

      "It's only that she's coming to visit the Watsons," he said, rather unwillingly. "Olivia Watson told me just now."

      "Why, that will be pleasant," I answered, as brightly as if I were really СКАЧАТЬ