There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again. In a few hours
now he would have taken a wife, and whatever travesty of marriage
resulted, he would have to keep away from Lily. He meant to play square
with Edith.
He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things she
must be trying to forget. He decided in the end that it would hurt her,
so he did not go. But he walked, on his way to see Pink Denslow at the
temporary bank, through a corner of the park near the house, and took a
sort of formal and heart-breaking farewell of her.
Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with Lily at
the end of it somewhere, like water to the thirsty traveler, or home to
the wanderer; like a camp fire at night. But now, life seemed to him a
broad highway, infinitely crowded, down which he must move, surrounded
yet alone.
But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the sunlight.
It was the weaklings who were crowded to the side. He threw up his head.
It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either from
Louis Akers or from the unseen enemy he was fighting. He had a curious
lack of physical fear. But once or twice that day, as he went about,
he happened to notice a small man, foreign in appearance and shabbily
dressed. He saw him first when he came out of the marriage license
office, and again when he entered the bank.
He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him
to be present. He meant to tell him the facts. The intimacy between them
was now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither
wanted nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He
had based his life on honesty.
Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set
before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his own sense
of obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme
sounded visionary and mock-heroic.
In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement
written large all over him.
“I sent for you,” he said, “because I think we've got something at last.
One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told you about
from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they're meeting,
back in the hills. He's made a map of it. Look, here's the town, and
here's the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile and a half, there's a
German outfit, a family, with a farm. They're using the barn, according
to this chap.”
“The barn wouldn't hold very many of them.”
“That's the point. It's the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in
to the movies in the town on meeting nights. The place has been searched
twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them
warning. The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have
rigged up telephones in the trees.”
There was a short silence. Willy Cameron studied the rug.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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