Something of the change from our first being together, to this, was working in her. "It is hard," she said, trying to pa.s.s it off lightly, "to bear the weight of virtues that don't belong to me!"

Mr. Belknap leaned forward. He was a heavy-built, easy-moving man; you had to grant him a kind of elegance that went queer enough with the preacher-air he wore of his own will. He put his head out and looked at her. I watched him close, and I saw a crafty, hard light in his eyes as if the tiger in him had come for a look out of doors. He purred soft, like a tiger. "Nowhere is humility more becoming than in a beautiful woman."

At that minute his hold on me snapped. Believing him honest, he had me kiboshed--seeing that expression, which, I suppose, he didn't think worth while hiding from a gawky kid--I was my own man again, hating him and ready for war with him, in a blaze. Too young to understand much about love-affairs and the like of that, I still knew those eyes, that had shifted in a second from pompous piety to cunning, meant no good to Mary.

"I don't know about humility," says I, "but I'll go bail for Mary's honesty." I laid my hand on hers as I spoke. Funny that I did that and spoke as I did. It came to me at once, without thinking--like I'd been a dog and bristled at him for a sure-enough tiger.

Mary wasn't the kind to go back on a friend in any company. She put her other hand on mine and said: "That's the nicest thing you could say, Will."

Mr. Belknap didn't like it. He swung around as if he found me worth more attention than at first, and when our eyes met he saw I was on to him, bigger than a wolf. All he changed was a quick tightening of the lips.

We looked at each other steady. He ought to have showed uneasiness, consarn him, but he didn't. Instead he smiled, like I was amusing. I loved him horrible for that--me and my steeple hat and sash to be amusing!

"You have a most impulsive nature, Mr. Saunders," says he.

I wanted to tell him he was entirely correct, and that I'd like to chase two rascals the same day. I had sense enough not to, but said:

"I'm not ashamed to own it--particularly where Mary's concerned."

"Ah!" he says, raising his eyebrows, "you are old friends?"

"Not so very _old_," says Mary. "That seems cold--we're very warm, young friends."

"It is pleasant for the young to have friends," says he.

"That's hardly as surprising a remark as your face led me to expect,"

says I. "It's pleasant for _anybody_ to have friends."

It was his turn not to be overjoyed. I hid my real meaning under a lively manner for Mary's benefit, and while perhaps she didn't like my being quite so frivolous to the overpowering Mr. Belknap, she saw no harm in the speech. He did, though.

"Am I to count you among my friends?" says he.

"Any friend of Mary's is a friend of mine," I answered. He took. "Then that is a.s.sured," he says, with his smoothest smile.

We all waited.

"Ah, Youth!" says Mr. Belknap, with a look at Mary, and an explaining, indulgent smile at me. "How heartening it is to see its readiness, its resource in the untried years! Rejoice in your youth and strength, my young friend!--as for me--" he stopped and looked so grave he near fooled me again. "I am worn down so I barely believe in hope. My poor, commonplace ambitions, my dull idea of duty puts me out of the pale of friendship entirely--I have nothing pleasant to offer my friend."

"Oh, no! Mr. Belknap!" says Mary. "How can you speak like that? With your great work--how can you call it dull? I'm sure it is a high privilege to be listed with your friends!"

I felt a chill go over me--the whole business was tricky, stagy; of a piece with the highfalutin talk. Belknap was no old man, not a day over forty, and powerful as a bull, by the look of him, yet the tone of his voice, the air he threw around it, made him the sole and lonely survivor of a great misfortune, without a helping hand at time of need.

I felt mad and disgusted with Mary for being taken in. I had yet to learn that even the best of women are easy worked through the medium of making 'em feel they are the support of a big man. They'll take his word for his size, and swallow almost anything for the fun of supporting him.

Saxton made the great mistake of admitting his foolishnesses to be foolish, and swearing at 'em; he should have sadly regretted them as accidents. A woman has to learn a heap before she can appreciate a thoroughly honest man. There is a poetry in being honest, but like some kinds of music, it takes a highly educated person to enjoy it. Sing to the girls in a sweet and melancholy voice about a flower from your angel mother's grave, and most of 'em will forget you never contributed a cent to the angel mother's support--and it ain't that they like honesty the less, but romance the more, as the feller said about Julius Caesar. But when a woman like Mary does get her bearings she has 'em for keeps.

Now Sax was a durned sight more romantic really than this black-coated play-actor, but he would insist on stripping things to the bones, and the sight of the skeleton--good, honest, flyaway man frame that it was--scart Mary.

It came across me bitter that she looked at Brother Belknap the way she did. I got up.

"I must go," I says.

"Why, Will! won't you stay to supper? I thought you surely would."

"No," I says, "I've got another friend here it's time to remember--I'll take supper with Arthur Saxton."

Mary looked very confused and bothered. Belknap shot his eyes from her to me and back again, learning all he could from our faces. And in a twinkle I knew that he was the cause, through lies or some kind of devilry, of the coolness between Mary and Arthur Saxton.

The blood went to the top of my head.

"Good-by, Mr. Belknap," I says, "we'll meet again."

"I most certainly hope so," says he, bowing and smiling most polite.

"You keep that hope green, and not let it get away from you like the rest of 'em, and it sure will happen," says I. I turned and looked hard at Mary. "Have you any message for Arthur?" I asked her.

She bit her lips, and glanced at Belknap. "No," says she, short, "I have no message for Mr. Saxton."

"Too bad," says I. "He was a good friend of yours." With that I turned and stalked off. She followed me, and caught me gently by the sleeve.

"You're not angry at me, Will? I'm all alone here, you know."

I had it hot on my tongue to tell her I was angry plenty, but it crossed my mind how that would play into Belknap's hand, whatever scheme he was working, for Mary wouldn't stand too much from anybody; so, with an unaccountable rush of sense to the brain, I said:

"Not angry, Mary, but jarred, to see you go back on a friend."

"Will, you don't understand! It is not I who have gone back--who have been unfriendly to Mr. Saxton, it is he who has put it out of my power to be his friend--I can't even tell you--you must believe me."

"Did _he_ tell _you_ this?" I asked her.

"No," she said.

"Well, until he does, I'd as soon believe Arthur as Mr. Belknap."

"Mr. Belknap! How did you know--why, what do you mean, Will?"

"I mean that I don't like Belknap a little bit," said I most unwisely.

"And I do like you and Saxton."

"You don't know Mr. Belknap, and you are very unreasonable," she said, getting warm.

"Unreasonable enough to be afire all over at the thought of any one cheating you, Mary--will you excuse that?"

I held out my hand, but she gave me a hug. "I'm not going to pretend to be angry at you, for I can't," she said. "'You do not love me--no? So kiss me good-by, and go!' One minute, Will, may I speak to you as if you really were my brother?"

"I should say you could."

"Well, then, will you promise me that in this place you will do nothing, nor go anywhere with Arth--with any one that would make me ashamed to treat you as I do? Will you keep yourself the same sweet, true-hearted boy I have known, for your mother's sake, and for my sake?"

Her eyes had filled with tears. I'd have promised to sit quietly on a ton of dynamite until it went off--and kept my word at that.