A private chivalry

“So you have quite made up your mind to leave Denver, have you?”

It was the day of deliverance, and Hobart, claiming the elder right, had met Brant at the opening of the prison doors, whisking him off straightway to Elitch’s and to a private box therein, where they could have a quiet talk over their luncheon and a quiet smoke afterward.

Brant shrugged. “That says itself, doesn’t it? I am not wholly shameless. After all the free advertising I have been getting lately, people will stop and point me out in the streets.”

Hobart’s laugh was a friendly jeer. “That is what you get for trying to play the part of Providence—a not altogether blameless Providence, either, since you were going to let a judge and a jury hang an innocent man. How did you come to get so befogged in the ethical part of you?”

Brant waved the question aside in the gesture which flicked the ash from his cigar.

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” he quoted. “We’ll drop that part of it, if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind; I am curious to know.”

Brant did not hasten to explain, and when he spoke again it was to ask a seemingly irrelevant question.

“Do you know what it means to love a woman, Ned?”

“I’m supposed to, am I not?”

“I don’t know. There’s many a man married—happily married, too—who doesn’t know what it means. Luckily for the common good, the kind of love I have in mind is a thing apart. It is both more and less than a passion; it is a mania in the sense that it blinds the eye to everything save the present happiness of its object. Can you grasp that?”

“Ye-yes, in a measure. But in your case there were so many things to be considered——”

“There was no time to consider them. In such a crisis one must act first and think afterward. At the critical moment I thought of but one thing—the misery of one woman if her brother should not have a chance to run for his life.”

Hobart nodded. “I can follow you that far. But afterward, when you found he wasn’t going to run for it?”

“That was another matter. I was bitter, at first; I had given him his chance, I thought, and he was contemptible enough to deny me mine. But I had time enough to think then; to see that the object to be attained remained the same; to see what a sorry sham I was and had been. It broke me, Ned; and while I was down I made a clean sweep of it. I hadn’t killed James Harding, as it happened, but under other conditions I might have killed him—should have killed him, I said. In which case the judge and jury couldn’t err greatly in hanging me.”

Hobart heard him through, but at the summing up he scoffed openly. “That is the baldest sophistry, George, and you know it,” he asserted.

Brant smiled. “Perhaps it is; but you must remember that I loved the woman. I meant never to speak of this to any one, Ned; none the less, I am glad you have made me speak of it to you.”

“Why?”

“Because if you can’t understand it, nobody else ever will. Shall we bury it and talk about something else?”

“It is dead and buried from this time on,” rejoined Hobart loyally. “But you are wrong when you say that I don’t understand. It is precisely because I do understand all you’ve admitted, and a lot more besides, that I am willing to give you all the rope you want. When a man makes seventeen different kinds of a knight-errant of himself in this cold-blooded age, he earns privileges that we ordinary mortals are bound to respect. This is my last word. Now, then, what are you going to do with yourself?”

“The one thing needful has been done for me. Colonel Bowran did not wait to be told that I should probably want to disappear. He took it for granted, and got me an appointment as engineer in charge of the work on the Chipeta Ditch down in the San Juan.”

“Is it a good billet?”

“Good pay and a deep grave; and the latter is all I yearn for just now. The colonel says there has not yet been so much as a stake driven on the preliminary survey. If I take it I can drop out of sight and hearing for a year or two at least.”

“You say ‘if.’ Of course, you will take it.”

Brant took time to balance his fruit knife accurately on the edge of his plate before he made answer. “I am not so sure about that,” he said finally. “It will depend very much upon the outcome of a little talk I mean to have with a certain lady.”

“Miss Langford?”

“No; Miss Langford’s mother.”

Hobart whistled softly. “Going to carry it up to the supreme court, are you?”

“Yes, and at once. Then I shall know better what I am going to do.”

“It is none of my business, George, but I am afraid the time isn’t propitious.”

“So am I; but it is all the time I have.”

“Oh, that doesn’t follow. And if you were to go away and stay till the edge has time to wear off—from what you have told me I fancy Dorothy will wait indefinitely.”

“She will; and we shall have to wait in any event; but that isn’t the point. When I go, if I go, I must carry with me the assurance that bygones will be bygones when I come back.”

“Doesn’t that smack a little of doing good that good may come?”

“Perhaps. You see that, notwithstanding your good opinion, there is nothing superhuman about me. But it is more than that, Ned. I mean to marry Dorothy some day, God willing, but it sha’n’t be until I have had it out with myself, nor even then without her mother’s fullest consent and approval. This last I am willing to try to earn, but I want some assurance that it is among the possibilities.”

Hobart followed out his own line of thought, and it presently led him back to the original proposition. “You will ‘gang yer ain gate,’ as you usually do, I suppose; but, as I remarked a minute ago, the time isn’t ripe. I have seen something of the family in the last few days—with my eyes open—and I can tell you pretty nearly how you stand. Dorothy would go to the stake for you, the judge would divide his ultimate dollar with you, Isabel worships you from afar, William the Curst swears by you, and Mrs. Langford—well, she doesn’t say much before me, as a matter of course, but it is as plain as the nose on your face that she has small use for you in spite of everything.”

“That is no more or less than I expected. None the less, I am going to see her—to-night.”

“Amen. I like your pluck, even if it is a bit like the zeal not according to knowledge that we read about. I shall be there—under the same ridgepole, at least. Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“Nothing; unless you will be charitable enough to stand by to pick up the pieces after she has demolished me. Shall we adjourn?—if you are through. I have some writing to do, likewise a bit of provisional packing.”