Читать книгу The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales онлайн

9 страница из 51

“Comfort! He was laughing in his sleeve, the infernal scoundrel, that he was so outwitting me! And I at that very time was holding him up like a rock, to save him from utter ruin before the world! But go on; for Heaven’s sake, tell me all!”

“That is all, Tom. He sent me a clipping about his essay, and I was proud. Then he came once again, in June, to tell me he was going to sail with Billy Innis around the world—and from that day to this I have never heard from him.” Her head dropped forward forlornly upon her breast. Large tears flooded her blue eyes and streamed down her childish face. Tom’s tender heart smote him for having so increased her grief.

“My dear,” he said, gently, “I would give anything on earth if you had confided in me before. In my desire to shelter a false and contemptible fellow I have let you run into a trouble that makes my blood boil to think of it. Now listen, Eunice, and believe I speak plain truth. Not only did Ash Carmichael throw me overboard the minute our father lost his money, but last February he was guilty of a transaction involving me that might have landed him in state’s prison if I had not consented to hush it up. Judge, then, if he is likely to present himself before you again. No, Eunice, he will never come back. He was a coward, a cad, a sneak, to gratify himself at your expense in that way; and my heart aches for you, dear. But now that you know him as he is you will never care for him again. Think how much worse suffering was his sister’s, to whom he wrote confessing all, when he was in abject fear that I’d expose him. He had the cunning to make her come East to beg for him. For, at the first sight of that brave, tortured girl I was disarmed of my thoughts of punishment for him. For her sake, not his, I and two or three other men he had involved in the affair resolved to let him go and never to speak of it. Except to you, now, the matter has not passed my lips. And you best know why I have broken our vow of secrecy.”