CHAPTER V.
A WEIGHTY CONFIDENCE.
AT the tavern, when Adam entered, Halberd had succumbed to a plethora of comfort, which had followed too soon on the paucity thereof, which had been the program of the three for many weeks. He was snoring fiercely in a corner. Pike, on the other hand, was inflated with life and activity of speech. He was bragging eloquently, not only of his own prowess, but also of that of Halberd and Adam as well.
Adam heard the end of a peroration of self-appraisement in which the doughty Pike announced that one of his recent feats had been the slaying of two murderous, giant pirates with his naked fists.
Among the sailors, dock-hands and tavern-loafers who made up the auditors who were being entertained by these flights of narrative, was a little, red-nosed, white-eyed man of no significance, who now stood up and removed his coat.
“If you would like to have a bit of fun with me,” said he. “I’ll play one of those pirates, till we see what you can do.”
Pike looked at him ruefully, rubbing his chin while thinking what to answer to this challenge. He then waved his hand, grandly.
“Good sir,” he said, “the Sachem, my honored associate, has such an appetite for these encounters that until he shall be satisfied I would have no heart to deprive him of such good material as I can see you would make for a fight. Doubtless I can arrange for him to do you the honor you seek, after which I shall be pleased to weep at your funeral.”
“I would rather fight with him than you,” said the would-be belligerent, “but before he comes, if you would like to have your neck broken——”
Satisfied that this business had gone far enough, Adam strode into the tap-room, where the jovial spirits had congregated.
“My friends,” he interrupted, “you can put your necks to better purpose by pouring something down them. Landlord, attend my guests. Pike——”
But the pirate-exterminator had fled, first edging to the door, at the appearance of his chief, and then clattering up the stairs to the rooms above with a noise like cavalry in full retreat.
“But if you would like to fight,” started the accommodating manikin, still in process of baring his drum-stick arms, “why, Mr. Sachem——” but he was not permitted to finish.
“Leave off the gab,” said a burly sailor. Clapping his private tankard—a thing of enormous dimensions—fairly over the little head of the challenger, he snuffed him completely and suddenly lifted him bodily to the top of the bar, amid the guffaws of the entire company.
Rust lost no time in arousing Halberd, whom he herded to the apartments aloft with brief ceremony.
Wainsworth, who had been sitting up in his room, writing letters while he waited for Adam’s return, now heard his friend coming and opened his door to bid him welcome. With another big hand-shake, and a smile over their recent mis-encounter, the two went into the lighted apartment, Wainsworth closing the door behind him.
“It’s a wonder you find me anything more than a small heap of ashes,” said Wainsworth, “for I have fairly burned and smoked with my eagerness to see you back.”
“I can smell the smoke,” said Adam. “How very like tobacco it is. And now that I am here I presume you are quite put out.”
“You are not in love or your wits would be as dull as mine,” his friend replied. “But sit down, sit down, and tell me all about yourself.”
“I thought you wanted to do the telling.”
“Well, I do, confound you, but——”
“What’s all this?” interrupted Adam. He had caught sight, on the table, of two glittering heaps of money, English coins, piled in two apparently equal divisions on the cloth.
“That? Oh, nothing, your share and mine,” said Wainsworth, taking Adam’s hat and sweeping one of the heaps into its maw with utter unconcern. “Stow it away and be seated.”
“Well, but——” started Rust.
“Stow it, stow it!” interrupted Wainsworth. “I didn’t bother you with buts and whyfores when you divided with me. I have something of more importance to chat about.”
“This is ten times as much as I gave to you,” objected Adam, doggedly.
“You gave me ten times more than you kept yourself, when it meant ten times as great a favor. I am mean enough only to divide even,” answered Wainsworth. “Say anything more about it, and I shall pitch my share out of the window.”
As a matter of fact, Rust had impoverished himself for this friend, when in England, at a moment most vital in Wainsworth’s career. He had no argument, therefore, against accepting this present, much-needed capital. He placed the clinking coins in his pocket, not without a sense of deep obligation to his friend. It made one more bond between them, cementing more firmly than ever that affectionate regard between them, on the strength of which either would have made a great personal sacrifice for the other. No sooner, however, had Adam cleared his hat and weighted his clothing with the money, than he realized that the only good argument he had possessed to oppose to Captain Phipps’ scheme to take him away from Boston, namely, his poverty, was now utterly nullified. He started as if to speak, but it was already too late. If the Captain found him out, what could he say or do?
“Now then,” said Wainsworth, “we can talk.”
“I am an empty urn, waiting to be filled with your tales and confessions,” said Adam.
Wainsworth settled back in his chair and stroked his small imperial, hung on his under lip. “Yes, we can talk,” he repeated. He sat upright again, and once more leaned backward. “I don’t know where to begin,” he admitted.
“You might start off by saying you’re in love.”
“Who told you I’m in love? I haven’t said so. You’d be in love yourself, if ever you had met her. She’s a beauty, Adam! She’s divine! She’s glorious! Odds walruses, you’d be clean crazy about her! Why, you would simply rave—you couldn’t be as calm as I am if you knew her, Adam! She’s the loveliest, sweetest, most heavenly angel that ever walked the earth! Why, I can’t give you an idea! She,—she, she just takes your breath! There is nothing in Boston like her—nothing in the world. Why, man, you couldn’t sit still if you had ever seen her!” He got up and paced the room madly. “You could no more sit there and tell me about her as I am telling you than you could drink the ocean!”
“No, I suppose I couldn’t.”
“Of course you couldn’t. I’m an older man than you are—a whole year older—and I know what I am talking about. You would go raving mad, if you saw her. She is the most exquisite—Adam! She’s peerless!”
“Then you are in love?” said Adam. “Up to this last moment I thought there might be some doubts about it, but I begin to suspect perhaps you are.”
“Love? In love? My dear boy, you don’t know what love is! I adore her! I worship her! I would lay down my life for her! I would die ten thousand deaths for her, and then say I loved her still!”
“That would be a remarkable post-mortem power of speech,” said Adam. “And I suppose she loves you as fervently as you love her.”
“Of course she does—that is,—now, now why would you ask such a silly question as that? A love like mine just reaches forth and surrounds her; and it couldn’t do that if she didn’t—well, you know how those things are.”
“Oh, certainly. If she loves you and you love her, that makes it complete, and as I am a bit tired, and this leaves no more to be said——”
“But there is more to be said! Why don’t you ask me some questions?”
“Silly questions?”
“No! Of course not! Some plain, common-sense questions.”
“Well, then, is she beautiful?”
“Odds walruses, Adam, she is the most beautiful girl that ever breathed. She surpasses rubies and diamonds and pearls. She eclipses——”
“Ah, but is she lovely?”
“Lovely?—She’s a dream of loveliness. I wish you could see her! You would throw stones at your grandmother, if you could see how lovely she is. Lovely!—Can’t you invent some better word—something that means more? Lovely doesn’t express it. Go on, go on, ask me something more!”
“Oh, well, is she pretty or plain?”
“She is most radiantly beautiful.—Look here, Adam, you think I am an ass.”
“My dear old fellow, I didn’t stop to think.”
“You are making fun of me!”
“Impossible, Henry. You told me to ask you some simple questions. Does she live here in Boston?”
“She does, of course she does, or I shouldn’t be here, should I? She lives here and Boston has become my Heaven!”
“Oh, well, thanks for your hospitality. Let’s see,—is she beauti—but I may have asked that before.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes to keep them open. “Oh, I do think of another. What is her name?”
“Her name?” chuckled Wainsworth, walking up and down in an ecstasy of delight. “Her name is the prettiest name in the universe. It’s Garde—Garde Merrill—Garde! Oh, you just love to say Garde, Garde, Garde!”
Adam started, suddenly awake and alert. He passed his hand across his eyes stiffly. His face became as pale as paper. Wainsworth was still walking restlessly up and down, intent on his own emotions.
“It’s a name like a perfume,” he went on. “Garde, Garde. You can’t think how that name would cling to a man’s memory for years—how it rings in a man’s brain—how it plays upon his soul!”
Adam was thinking like lightning. Garde!—She loved Wainsworth—he had said so. It was this that had made her appear so restrained, unnatural, eager to return to the house. This was why her answers had been so evasive. The whole situation broke in on him with a vividness that stunned his senses.
A mad thought chased through his brain. It was that, if he had spoken first, this moment of insupportable pain could have been avoided, but that Wainsworth having spoken first had acquired rights, which he, as a friend, loving him dearly, would be bound to respect. He thought of the money he had just accepted from this brother-like friend. He saw the impossibility of ever saying to Henry that he too loved Garde Merrill—had loved her for seven years—had heard her name pealing like the bell of his own very being in his soul! But no—he couldn’t have spoken! He knew that. He would never dare to say that she loved him, in return for the love he had fostered for her, these seven years. No, he could not have spoken of her like this to any soul, under any circumstances. To him her name was too precious to be pronounced above a whisper to his own beating heart. He did not realize that, by that very token of her sacredness to him, he loved her far more deeply, far more sublimely than could any man who would say her name over and over and babble of his love.
He only knew that his brain was reeling. He could only see that Wainsworth, for whom he would have sacrificed almost anything, was all engrossed in this love which must mean so much. He only realized that all at once he had lost his right to tell this dearly beloved friend the truth, and with this he had also lost the right, as an honorable comrade, to plead his own soul’s yearning at the door of Garde’s heart.
Wainsworth, in his ecstatic strolling and ringing of praises, was tolling a knell for Adam, saying “Garde” and then “Garde” and again presently “Garde,” which was the only word, in all his rapid talk that reached the other’s ears.
Adam arose, unsteadily. Wainsworth had not observed his well-concealed agitation.
“I—must be going,” said Rust, huskily, turning his face away from the light. He tried to feign another yawn. “I am no longer good company. Good night.”
“What, going?” said Henry, catching him affectionately by the shoulders. “Ah, Adam, I suppose I am a bit foolish, but forgive me. You don’t know what it is to love as I have learned to love. And, dear friend, it has made me love you more—if possible—than ever.”
“Good night, Henry,” said Adam, controlling his voice with difficulty. “Good night—and God bless you.”
“Say ‘God bless Mistress Garde Merrill’—for my sake,” said Henry.
Adam looked at him oddly and repeated the words like a mere machine.