第53章

She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had bought against his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once fastidious taste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the easy silence of old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where it had been broken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have been her son-in-law but for her own firm attitude. He had known her daughter very much better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated. Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later he had learned in what convent she was going to school and there had been surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries--till the Duchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-out talk with Joe; the romance had suddenly ended; and later Larry's mother had married elsewhere. But the snuffed-out romance had made no difference in the friendship between the Duchess and Joe; each had recognized the other as square, as that word was understood in their border world.

To Joe Ellison the Duchess was changed but little since twenty-odd years ago. She had seemed old even then; though as a youth he had known old men who had talked of her beauty when a young woman and of how she had queened it among the reckless spirits of that far time.

But to the Duchess the change in Joe Ellison was astounding. She had last seen him in his middle thirties: black-haired, handsome, careful of dress, powerful of physique, dominant, fiery-tempered, fearless of any living thing, but with these hot qualities checked into a surface appearance of unruffled equanimity by his self-control and his habitual reticence. And now to see him thin, white-haired, bent, his old fire seemingly burned to gray ashes--the Duchess, who had seen much in her generations, was almost appalled at the transformation.

At first the Duchess skillfully guided the talk among commonplaces.

"Larry tells me you're out with him."

"Yes," said Joe. "Larry's been a mighty good pal."

"What're you going to do when you get back your strength?"

"The same as I'm doing now--if they'll let me."

And after a pause: "Perhaps later, if I had the necessary capital, I'd like to start a little nursery. Or else grow flowers for the market."

"Not going back to the old thing, then?"

Joe shook his white head. "I'm all through there. Flowers are a more interesting proposition."

"Whenever you get ready to start, Joe, you can have all the capital you want from me. And it will cost you nothing. Or if you'd rather pay, it'll cost you the same as at a bank--six per cent."

"Thanks. I'll remember." Joe Ellison could not have spoken his gratitude more strongly.

The Duchess now carefully guided the talk in the direction of the thing of which she had thought so constantly.

"By the way, Joe, Larry told me something about you I'd never heard before--that you had been married, and had a child."

"Yes. You didn't hear because I wasn't telling anybody about it when it happened, and it never came out."

"Mind telling me about it, Joe?"

He pulled at his perfecto while assembling his facts; and then he made one of the longest speeches Joe Ellison--"Silent Joe" some of his friends had called him in the old days--was ever known to utter. But there was reason for its length; it was an epitome of the most important period of his life.

"I had a nice little country place over in Jersey for three or four years. It all happened there. No one knew me for what I was; they took me for what I pretended to be, a small capitalist whose interests required his taking occasional trips. Nice neighbors. That's where I met my wife. She was fine every way. That's why I kept all that part of my life from my pals; I was afraid they might leak and the truth would spoil everything. My wife was an orphan, niece of the widow of a broker who lived out there. She never knew the truth about me. She died when the baby was born. When the baby was a year and a half my big smash came, and I went up the river. But I was never connected up with the man who lived over in Jersey and who suddenly cancelled his lease and moved away."

The Duchess drew nearer to the heart of her thoughts.

"Was the baby a boy or girl, Joe?"

"Girl."

The Duchess did not so much as blink. "How old would she be by this time?"

"Eighteen."

"What was her name?"

"Mary--after her mother. But of course I ordered it to be changed. I don't know what her name is now."

The Duchess pressed closer.

"What became of her, Joe?"

A glow began to come into the somber eyes of Joe Ellison. "I told you her mother was a fine woman, and she never knew anything bad about me.

I wanted my girl to grow up like her mother. I wanted her to have as good a chance as any of those nice girls over in Jersey--I wanted her never to know any of the lot I've known--I wanted her never to have the stain of knowing her father was a crook--I wanted her never to know even who her father was."

"How did you manage it?"

"Her mother had left a little fortune, about twenty-five thousand--twelve or fifteen hundred a year. I turned the money and the girl over to my best pal--and the squarest pal a man ever had--the only one I'd let know about my Jersey life. I told him what to do. She was an awfully bright little thing; at a year and a half, when I saw her last, she was already talking. She was to be brought up among nice, simple people--go to a good school--grow up to be a nice, simple girl.

And especially never to know anything about me. She was to believe herself an orphan. And my pal did just as I ordered. He wrote me how she was getting on till about four years ago, then I had news that he was dead and that the trust fund had been transferred to a firm of lawyers, though I wasn't given the name of the lawyers. That doesn't make any difference since she's getting the money just the same.

"What was your pal's name, Joe?"

"Jimmie Carlisle."

The Duchess had been certain what this name would be, but nevertheless she could not repress a start.

"What's the matter?" Joe asked sharply. "Did you know him?"