OLD PHOTOGRAPHS
In the days that followed, John Saxton knew again the heartache and loneliness which he had known before Warry Raridan came into his life. He had lost the first real friend he had ever had, and his days were once more empty of light and cheer. His work still engrossed him, but it failed to bring him the happiness which he had found in it when he and Warry discussed its perplexities together. His memory sought its old ruts again; the hardship and failure of his years in Wyoming were like fresh wounds. He talked to no one except Bishop Delafield, who had reasoned him out of his self-indictment for Warry's death. He did not know that his own part in the recovery of Grant Porter, as Bishop Delafield described it, was touched with a fine and generous courage, and he would have resented it if he had known.
Warry was constantly in his thoughts; but he thought much of Evelyn too; through all the years to come, he told himself, he would remember them and they would be his ideals. Echoes of the gossip which connected Warry's name and Evelyn's reached him, and he felt no shock that such surmises should be afloat. Warry and he had understood each other; they had talked of Evelyn frequently; Warry had come to him often with the confidences of a despairing lover, and John had encouraged and consoled him. He predicted his ultimate success; it had always seemed to him an inevitable thing that Warry and Evelyn should marry.
Three weeks passed before he saw her, and then he went to her with an excuse for his visit in his mind and heart. Warry had left a will in which the bulk of his property—and it was a respectable fortune—was given for the endowment of a hospital for children. Saxton was named as executor and as a trustee of the fund thus set apart. Warry had never mentioned the matter to any one; he had probably never thought of it very seriously, and John wished to talk to Evelyn about it.
It seemed strange that the Porter drawing-room was the same, when everything else had changed; he had not been there since the afternoon when he walked home with Evelyn through the cold. He despised himself for that now; it was an act of disloyalty to Warry; but he would now be more loyal to the dead than he had been to the living.
As they talked together he saw no change in her; and he felt himself wondering what manner of change it was that he had expected to find. He had heard of people who aged suddenly with grief, but Evelyn was the same, save for a greater composure, a more subdued note of manner and voice. She bent forward in her deep interest in what he told her of Warry's bequest. He wished her help, and asked for it as if it were her right to give it. Surely no one had a better claim than she, he thought.
"It is so like Warry," she said. "It will be a beautiful memorial, and there is enough to do it very handsomely."
"He liked things to be done well," said John. He marveled that she could speak of it so quietly. Failure and grief possessed his eyes, and Evelyn was conscious of a deepening of the pathos she had always seen and felt in him, as he sat talking of his dead friend. She pitied him, and was obedient to his evident wish to talk of Warry.
John spoke of Warry's last photographs, and Evelyn went and brought a number which he had never seen. Several of them dated back to Warry's boyhood. They were odd and interesting—boyish pictures which the spectacles made appear preternaturally old. One of these, that John liked particularly, Evelyn asked him to take, and his face lighted with pleasure when she made it plain that she wished him to have it. She told of some of Warry's pranks in their childhood, and they laughed over them with guarded mirth.
"It was wonderful that so many kinds of people were fond of Warry," said Evelyn. "He never tried to please, and yet no man in town ever had so many friends."
"It's like genius, I suppose," said John. "It's something in people that wins admiration. No one can define it or explain it. I think, though," he added in a lower tone, "I know how it was in my own case. I had always wanted a friend like him to take me out of myself and help me; but a man like Warry had never come my way before; and if he had he would probably have been in a hurry."
He laughed and then was very grave. "But Warry always had time for me." At his last words he looked up at her and saw tears shining in her eyes.
"Oh, forgive me—forgive me!" he cried. "It must—I know it must hurt you to talk of him. But I couldn't help it. I thought you must understand what he meant to me. Dear old Warry!"
He held in his hand the little card photograph she had given him, and he rose and thrust it into his pocket.
"He was a charming, gentle spirit," said Evelyn. "It will mean a great deal to us that we knew him. You meant a great deal to him, Mr. Saxton. You helped him. It was—" She halted, confused, and had evidently intended to say more. The color suddenly mounted to her face. She did not offer him her hand which he had stepped forward to take, and he dropped his own, which he had half extended.
"Good night." Her eyes followed him to the hall.
On his way home—he still lived at the club—John reviewed, sentence by sentence, his talk with Evelyn. He had not expected her to speak so frankly of Warry; but, he told himself, it was like her. He touched the photograph she had given him, and held it up as he passed under an arc lamp to be sure of it. He was surprised that she had given it to him; he did not think a girl would give away a rare picture of a dead lover, which must have a peculiar sacredness for her. Then he was angry with himself for a thought that criticised her. She had given it to him because he was Warry's friend!
When he reached his room he put the photograph of Warry on his table and took another similar card from a drawer. It was the little picture of Evelyn which he had often seen on Warry's dressing-table. It showed her standing by a tall chair; her hair hung in long braids. It was very girlish and quaint; but it was unmistakably Evelyn.
Warry in his will had directed that John should have such of his personal effects as he might choose; the remainder he was to destroy or sell. John chose a few of the books that Warry had liked best, and the picture. He put it down now beside the photograph of Warry. They bore the name of the same photographer, and had probably been taken in the same year. He lighted his pipe and tramped back and forth across the floor, occasionally stopping at his desk to look at the cards carefully. He had no right to Evelyn Porter's picture, he told himself. He was taking advantage of his dead friend's kindness to appropriate it. He would not destroy it; he would give it to some one—to Mrs. Whipple, to Evelyn herself! Yes, it should be to Evelyn; and having reached this conclusion, he put the two pictures away together and went to bed.
The next day he was called away unexpectedly to Colorado to close a sale of the Neponset Trust Company's interest in the irrigation company. The call came inopportunely, as the plans for the reorganization of the Traction Company were not yet perfected; but the matter was urgent, and Fenton told him to go. There was not time, he assured himself, to return the photograph before leaving, so he carried both the little cards away with him, with a half-formed intention of sending Evelyn's to her from Denver; but when he returned to Clarkson he still carried the photographs in his pocket.