“Oh, listen to me—just a word—don’t
turn away like that. Don’t go—
don’t leave me, so—stay one moment.
On my honor—”
“On my honor I am what I say! And I will
prove it, and you will believe, I know you will.
I will bring you a message—a cablegram—”
“What will it prove? What should it prove?”
“If you force me to say it—possibly
the presence of a confederate somewhere.”
This was a hard blow, and staggered him. He
said, dejectedly:
“It is true. I did not think of it.
Oh, my God, I do not know any way to do; I do everything
wrong. You are going?—and you won’t
say even good-night—or good-bye?
Ah, we have not parted like this before.”
“Oh, I want to run and—no, go, now.”
A pause—then she said, “You may
bring the message when it comes.”
“Oh, may I? God bless you.”
He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already
quivering, and now she broke down. Through her
sobbings her words broke from time to time.
“Oh, he is gone. I have lost him, I shall
never see him any more. And he didn’t
kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss
from me, and he knowing it was the very, very last,
and I expecting he would, and never dreaming he would
treat me so after all we have been to each other.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!
He is a dear, poor, miserable, good-hearted, transparent
liar and humbug, but oh, I do love him so—!”
After a little she broke into speech again.
“How dear he is! and I shall miss him so, I
shall miss him so! Why won’t he ever think
to forge a message and fetch it?—but no,
he never will, he never thinks of anything; he’s
so honest and simple it wouldn’t ever occur to
him. Oh, what did possess him to think he could
succeed as a fraud—and he hasn’t
the first requisite except duplicity that I can see.
Oh, dear, I’ll go to bed and give it all up.
Oh, I wish I had told him to come and tell me whenever
he didn’t get any telegram—and now
it’s all my own fault if I never see him again.
How my eyes must look!”
Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn’t
come. This was an immense disaster; for Tracy
couldn’t go into the presence without that ticket,
although it wasn’t going to possess any value
as evidence. But if the failure of the cablegram
on that first day may be called an immense disaster,
where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase
sizeable enough to describe the tenth day’s
failure? Of course every day that the cablegram
didn’t come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours’
more ashamed of himself than he was the day before,
and made Sally fully twenty-four hours more certain
than ever that he not only hadn’t any father
anywhere, but hadn’t even a confederate—and
so it followed that he was a double-dyed humbug and
couldn’t be otherwise.
