Blacksheep! Blacksheep! - Meredith Nicholson (freenovel24 .txt) 📗
- Author: Meredith Nicholson
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"Oh yes! Well, I was ready to jump at anything and she diagnosed my case with marvelous penetration. Really, Comly, it was staggering! She said I faced life with the soul of a coward; she'd got an inkling, I suppose, of my father's freakishness and injustice; and she told me I lacked assurance and initiative. Suggested that I go armed and shoot any one who stepped on my toes. All this with a laugh, of course; but nevertheless I felt that she really meant it. She said a man can do anything he really determines to do; it's up to him. She recited a piece of verse to the effect that a man fears his fate too much if he won't put his life to the test. I was fool enough to believe it. I tried to follow her advice. It ended in my having a row with my father that beat all the other rows I ever had with him and he turned against my wife—said she was trying to estrange us. And when I ran away to escape from the nasty mess he sent her telegrams in my name threatening to kidnap the children and he did in fact kidnap my little daughter. Snatched her away from her mother and carried her out to one of his farms in Ohio. But my wife's a great woman, Comly; one of the dearest, bravest women in the world. She's played a clever trick on the old gentleman and got the child back again and I'm damned glad of it. I got a message that the little girl's up in Michigan, so that's really where I'm headed for. I don't dare believe that she sent me the message, but I hope to God she did. That's the way things have gone with me ever since I listened to that girl. Everything all upside down. She's a siren; a dangerous character; I ought to have known better!"
"She's beautiful, I suppose," Archie ventured, fanning himself with his hat.
"Devilishly handsome!" Congdon exclaimed.
Archie had suffered a blow but he was meeting it bravely. Having believed that Isabel had given him this same advice quite spontaneously, it was with a shock that he realized that she had offered it in similar terms to Congdon. There was no question as to the identity of the girl who had bidden Congdon plant his back to the wall and defy the world; no one but Isabel would ever have done that.
"And this young woman," Archie asked after a long glance at the lake, "pardon me if I ask whether she affected you in a sentimental way? Did you well, er—"
"If you mean am I in love with her," began Congdon, "I believe I can say honestly that it hardly amounts to that. And yet she made a curious impression on me. You know how it is, Comly! A man may love his wife with all his heart and soul and he may mean to be awfully square with her; and yet there may be a face or a voice now and then that will, well, you know, make him wobble a little. I did think about that girl a lot; it was damned funny how I thought of her. She'd pop up in my mind when I had absolutely willed that I would never think of her again. And yet the more I resolved to get her out of my mind the more stubbornly she'd keep coming into my thoughts.
"I suppose in a way it was my pride; I hated to think that a girl as pretty and clever and attractive as she is thought me a contemptible, slinking coward. We all want to be heroes to women; it's one of the damned weaknesses of our sex, Comly. I'd ceased to be a hero to my wife, who's the gentlest and most long suffering woman alive, but this other woman rather gave me hope that I might qualify for the finals in her eyes. Now, Comly, I see that you're a steady-going fellow; never thrown off your balance; not a chap to be made a fool of by a girl who amuses herself at your expense at a dinner party. I wish you'd tell me frankly just what you think of this?"
"I'd say," replied Archie, attempting to meet this demand with a philosophic air, "I'd say that the girl probably played the game on every man she thought she could impose on. Merely a part of her social technique; a stunt, so to speak, which she'd found would make us weak males sit up and take notice. If I were you I'd clean forget the whole business; on the other hand there's the suspicion that you appealed to her strongly, a girlish fancy, perhaps, and she thought you were the sort of fellow that would be hit harder if she roused you to action. I tell you, Congdon, women are curious creatures. Just when you think you've got your hand on a pretty bird she flutters away and sings merrily in another part of the wood."
"Right!" ejaculated Congdon. "By George, that expresses it exactly!"
"About your child, up there in Michigan," said Archie, pleased that he was scoring as a man of wisdom, "it's wholly possible that your wife sent you the wire as an approach to a reconciliation."
"Oh, Lord, no! You don't know my wife, Comly. You see I got answers to the telegrams father sent her in my name and she hit right back at me! Don't you believe that she's coaxing me to come back to her. And here's the message I got out there in Ohio that caused me to jump for the train."
He produced from his pocket a crumpled telegram which read:
Your daughter is in safe hands at Huddleston, Michigan. Proceed to that point with serenity and contemplate the stars with a tranquil spirit.
This was so clearly the Governor's work that Archie found it difficult to refrain from laughing.
"My wife," Congdon continued, "would never send a message like that; you may be sure of it. You may think it queer that I set off, when I was ill and not feeling up to the trip, on the strength of a message like that. But ever since that girl told me I oughtn't to hesitate when I heard the bugle I can't resist the temptation to act on the spur of the moment. I'm a fool, I suppose. Tell me I'm a fool, Comly."
"I shall do nothing of the kind. There's always the chance that the girl had sized you up right and gave you sound advice. Don't answer if you don't want to, but have you really done anything, anything you wouldn't have done if that girl hadn't told you to step on the world a little harder?"
Congdon's free hand worked convulsively; he bent closer to Archie and whispered:
"I've killed a man!"
"You murdered a man!" Archie gasped.
"Not a question about it, my dear fellow! It was up at my house on the Maine shore. After father had driven my wife away I went there to look at the ruins of my home. A sentimental pilgrimage, feeling that I'd made a mess of everything and mighty blue. I was mooning through the house when I ran into a burglar. The scoundrel had gone to bed in the guest room. I was scared to death when I opened the door and spotted him but I thought of that girl's advice and pulled my gun and shot him. Couldn't have missed the fellow across a bedroom. As I ran down the stairway he took a shot at me; that's what's the matter with my shoulder. I got up to Portland and a doctor I know there fixed me up and kept the thing dark. I passed at the hospital as the victim of a pistol wound accidentally inflicted."
"Well, I'd say you're out of it easy. Of course you didn't kill him or he wouldn't have been able to wound you. I congratulate you on your escape!"
"Thanks, Comly; but you see he didn't die immediately, but crawled off and breathed his life out in some lonely place. It's horrible! Of course he was a thief and had no business in the house; but as I sit here on this park bench I'm a murderer! I never got beyond the headlines in the Portland papers; simply couldn't bear it and haven't dared look at a newspaper since. I shot a poor devil who had quite as much right to live as I have. The thing will hang over me till I die! I don't know just why I am confiding in you, but something tells me that you can look at the thing straight. If you say I ought to go to Maine and surrender myself and tell what I know about the shooting of that man I'll do it."
"Most certainly not!" cried Archie with mournful recollection of his own speculations on the same point in the hours when he believed that he himself was responsible for Hoky's death. The emotional strain of the talk was telling on him. He had never expected to hear from Congdon's lips the story of their duel at Bailey Harbor. Congdon had no idea that he had fired not at a man but at a reflection in a mirror; and it was a question whether common decency didn't demand that he set Congdon straight. Congdon in all likelihood wouldn't believe him. Nobody would believe such a story! And certainly if he should tell all he knew of the Congdons and Isabel, and wind up by acknowledging that it was he who had been in the Bailey Harbor house on the night of the shooting, Congdon would probably be so frightened that he would run away in terror to seek police protection.
Congdon, unaware of his companion's perturbation, rose and suggested a walk to freshen them up before train time.
"I thank God I fell in with you," he said with feeling. "Just talking to you has helped me a whole lot!"
Archie, his guilt heavy upon him, walked up Michigan Avenue beside the man he had shot.
They breathed deep of the tonic air of the North as they left the sleeper. Huddleston was a forlorn village with one street that displayed a single line of buildings against a background of saw mill and sawdust. An unpainted structure bearing the inscription, "Grand Hotel; Fishermen's Resort" presented a picture of complete desolation to the travelers. The further arm of the bay was a strip of green in the distance.
A fisherman posed in monumental majesty on a weatherbeaten pile of lumber on the wharf was the only human being in sight on the water side of the town. Just as the train pulled out he jerked up his pole, flinging a perch high in air and catching it with a yell of delight. Archie sighed with relief as the fisherman, now standing erect to unhook the perch, turned toward them. It was the Governor, rakishly trigged out in knickerbockers, with a cap smartly tilted over one ear and a scarf snapping about his face in the lively wind.
"This looks like the end of the world," Congdon remarked dejectedly as they walked toward the hotel. "I was a fool to come here and drag you along."
"Don't worry about me," said Archie cheerfully. "We'll make a lark of it. Your daughter's probably around here somewhere. We'll lay low and see what turns up."
A man emerged from the hotel and crossed the street. Archie identified him at once as Red Leary, to whom the Governor had delivered the stolen money at Walker's farm. Leary made no sign of ever having seen Archie before but picked up the luggage and led
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