Chapter XVI
Next morning when Brent went down to breakfast he was as a man who had passed through an illness. His eyes were bloodshot, his face was pale, his step was nervous and weak.
“Just what I expected,” muttered Mrs. Jones. “He was in a beastly condition last night. I shall speak to Mr. Perkins about it. He had no right to take and get him in such a state.”
She was more incensed than ever when the gay young clerk came in looking perfectly fresh. “He’s used to it,” she told herself, “and it doesn’t tell on him, but it’s nearly killed that poor young man.”
“Hullo there, Brent,” said Perkins. “You chucked me for good last night. Did you lose your way, or was your ‘character’ too interesting?”
“Character too interesting,” was the laconic reply.
“And I’ll bet you’ve been awake all night studying it out.”
“You are entirely right there,” said Brent, smiling bitterly. “I haven’t slept a wink all night: I’ve been studying out that character.”
“I thought you looked like it. You ought to take some rest today.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to put in my time on the same subject.”
Mrs. Jones pursed her lips and bustled among the teacups. The idea of their laughing over their escapades right before her face and thinking that she did not understand! She made the mental observation that all men were natural born liars, and most guilty when they appeared to be most innocent. “Character,” indeed! Did they think to blind her to the true situation of things? Oh, astute woman!
“Strange fellow,” said Perkins to his spoon, when, after a slight breakfast, Brent had left the table.
“There’s others that are just as strange, only they think they’re sharper,” quoth Mrs. Jones, with a knowing look.
“I don’t understand you,” returned her boarder, turning his attention from his spoon to the lady’s face.
“There’s none so blind as those who don’t want to see.”
“Again I say, I don’t understand you, Mrs. Jones.”
“Oh, Mr. Perkins, it’s no use trying to fool me. I know men. In my younger days I was married to a man.”
“Strange contingency! But still it casts no light on your previous remarks.”
“You’ve got very innocent eyes, I must say, Mr. Perkins.”
“The eyes, madam, are the windows of the soul,” Perkins quoted, with mock gravity.
“Well, if the eyes are the soul’s windows, there are some people who always keep their windows curtained.”
“But I must deny any such questionable performance on my part. I have not the shrewdness to veil my soul from the scrutiny of so keen an observer as yourself.”
“Oh, flattery isn’t going to do your cause one mite of good, Mr. Perkins. I’m not going to scold, but next time you get him in such a state I wish you’d bring him home yourself, and not let him come tearing in here like a madman, scaring a body half to death.”
“Will you kindly explain yourself? What condition? And who is ‘him’?”
“Oh, of course you don’t know.”
“I do not.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you weren’t out with Mr. Brent last night before he came home?”
“I assuredly was not with him after the first quarter of an hour.”
“Well, it’s hard to believe that he got that way by himself.”
“That way! Why, he left me at the door of Meyer’s beer-garden to talk to a temperance crank who he thought was a character.”
“Well, no temperance character sent him rushing and stumbling in here as he did last night. ’Character,’ indeed! It was at the bottom of a pail of beer or something worse.”
“Oh, I don’t think he was ‘loaded.’ He’s an author, and I guess his eye got to rolling in a fine frenzy, and he had to hurry home to keep it from rolling out of his head into the street.”
“Mr. Perkins, this is no subject for fun. I have seen what I have seen, and it was a most disgraceful spectacle. I take your word for it that you were not with Mr. Brent, but you need not try to go further and defend him.”
“I’m not trying to defend him at all; it’s really none of my business.” And Perkins went off to work, a little bit angry and a good deal more bewildered. “I thought he was a ‘jay,’ ” he remarked.
To Brent the day was a miserable one. He did not leave his room, but spent the slow hours pacing back and forth in absorbed thought, interrupted now and then by vain attempts to read. His mind was in a state of despairing apprehension. It needed no prophetic sense to tell him what would happen. It was only a question of how long a time would elapse before he might expect to receive word from Dexter summoning him home. It all depended upon whether or not the “California Pilgrim” got money enough last night for exploiting his disgraceful history to finish the last stage of the journey.
What disgusted the young man so intensely was that his father, after having led the life he had, should make capital out of relating it. Would not a quiet repentance, if it were real, have been quite sufficient? He very much distrusted the sincerity of motive that made a man hold himself up as an example of reformed depravity, when the hope of gain was behind it all. The very charity which he had preached so fiercely to his congregation he could not extend to his own father. Indeed, it appeared to him (although this may have been a trick of his distorted imagination) that the “Pilgrim” had seemed to take a sort of pleasure in the record of his past, as though it were excellent to be bad, in order to have the pleasure of conversion. His lip involuntarily curled when he thought of conversion. He was disgusted with all men and principles. One man offends, and a whole
