by Anne Warner
CHAPTER EIGHT - THE RESOLUTION HE TOOK
That first meeting was in February, you know, and by the last of April ithad been followed by so many others that Burnett remarked one day to hischum:
"Say, aren't you going a little faster than auntie'll stand for?"
Jack turned in surprise.
"I never went so straight in my life before," he exclaimed, not inindignation but in astonishment.
"I didn't mean that," said Burnett. "Perhaps instead of 'auntie' I shouldhave said 'Betty.'"
Jack hoisted the colors of Harvard, and was silent.
"I warned you at first that that was Tangle town," his friend went on."Don't suppose I'm saying anything against her--or against you; but she'sjust as much to ten other men as she is to you, and they all are oldenough to carry lots of weight."
"And I suppose I'm not," Jack answered, going over by the fireplace. "Iknow that as well as anyone, of course."
"_Natuerlich_," said Burnett, with conclusiveness that was not meant to becruel, yet cut like a two edged knife.
There was silence in the room. Jack stood by the chimney-piece, his handsupraised to rest upon its lofty shelf, his head dropped forward, and hiseyes fixed on the empty blackness below.
"I wonder," he said at last, "I wonder what will become of me if--if--"
He stopped.
Burnett didn't speak.
"I wonder if she thinks of me as a boy," the young man continued. "Iwonder if she's so good to me because I'm her youngest brother's friend."
Burnett did not comment on this speech.
"I don't know what to do," the other said. "When I first met her I wantedto cut college and get out in the world and go to work like a man. I toldher so. But she wanted me to stay in college, and as it was the firstthing she'd ever wanted of me, I did it. I'd do anything she asked me.I've quit drinking. I'm going at everything as hard as it's in me to go;but--I don't know--I feel--I feel as if it isn't me--it's just because shewants me to, and, do you know, old man, it frightens me to think how--ifshe--if she went out of my--my life--"
He stopped and his broken phrases were not continued to any ending.
Another long silence ensued.
It was finally terminated by the brother's saying:
"You must confess, old man, that you aren't fixed so as to be able to sayone really serious word to any woman--unless it is, 'Wait.'"
"I know that," Jack answered; "but I suppose--"
"She'd be taking so many chances," the friend interrupted. "A man incollege is never the real thing. You'd better give it up."
Then the other whirled about and faced him.
"Give it up, did you say?" he asked almost angrily.
"Yes, that's what."
For a minute they looked at one another. Then:
"I shall never give it up," the lover said very slowly andsteadily--"never, until she gives me up."
Burnett sucked in his breath with a sudden compression of his lips.
"All right," he said, not unkindly; "but I don't believe you'll ever gether, and that's flat. There are too many being entered for that race, andlong before you and I get out of here she'll be Mrs. Somebody Else."
Jack stared at him as if he hardly heard, and then suddenly he steppednearer and spoke.
"Did she ask you to have this talk with me?"
"No," said the brother in surprise, "she never says anything about you tome."
A look of relief fled across his friend's face, and then a look ofresolution succeeded it.
"I'm not going to be discouraged," he said; "not for a while, at anyrate."
"You'd better be."
Jack laughed. The laugh sounded a trifle hollow, but still it was a laugh,and that in itself was a triumph of which none but himself might evermeasure the extent.
Because in that moment he decided to lay the whole case before her thenext time that he went to town, and the coming to a resolution was arelief from the uncertainty that clouded his days and nights--even if afurther black curtain of darkest doubt hung before the possibilities ofwhat her answer might be.