Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

"No," said McVay. "I was at Annapolis for a few months. I had an idea I should like the navy, but Heavens above! I could not stand the Academy. They threw me out. It seems I had broken every rule they had ever made. It was worse than State's prison."

"Are you in a position to judge?" asked Geoffrey coolly.

"No," said McVay, as if he nevertheless had information on the subject.

"Well, you will be soon," said Holland, not sorry for an opportunity to point out that his heart was not softened by recollections of his school days. But McVay appeared to ignore this intimation.

"Yes," he said ruminatively; "I've done a lot of things in my time."

"Well, I don't want to hear about them," said Geoffrey, who had no intention of being drawn into an intimate interchange. The burglar looked more surprised than angered at this shortness, and only said:

"Would you have any objection to my putting a match to that fire?"

"No," said Geoffrey, and McVay, with wonderful dexterity, managed to start a cheering blaze with his left hand.

For a few minutes Geoffrey's determined attention to his book discouraged his companion, but presently rapping the pages of Tristram Shandy with the back of his hand, he exclaimed:

"Sterne! Ah, there was a man! Something of my own type, too, it sometimes strikes me. Capable, you know, really a genius, but so unfortunately different from other people. Ordinary standards meant nothing to him—too original—sees life from another standpoint, entirely. That's me! I—"

"Sit down," roared Geoffrey.

"Oh, it's nothing, nothing," said McVay, "only I talk better on my feet."

"Well, you wouldn't talk as well with a bullet in you."

McVay sank back again in his chair. "Yes," he said, "that's me. Why, Holland, I have no doubt you would be surprised if you knew the number of things that I can do—that I am really proficient in. Anything with the hands," he waved his fingers supplely in the air, "is no trouble to me at all. I have at once a natural skill that most people take a lifetime to acquire."

"I'm told there's work for all where you are going."

McVay looked a trifle puzzled for an instant, but never allowing himself to remain at a loss, he said:

"Work! Do you really mean to say that you believe in a utilitarian Heaven, where we are going to work with our hands? For my part—"

"I had reference to the penitentiary," said Geoffrey.

"Oh, yes, of course, the penitentiary. There are some wonderful men in the penitentiary. You don't admit that, I suppose, with your conventional ideas; but to me they are just as admirable as any other great creative artist,—sculptor or financier. I see you don't quite get that. You are hemmed in by conventional standards, and your possessions, and all the things to which you attach such great importance."

"I don't attach so much importance that I steal them from other people," said Geoffrey.

"Philistine, Holland, philistine! Is not any one who has anything stealing from some one or other? Of course. But I see you don't catch the idea. Well, I dare say I would not either in your place—rather think I would not. My sister is just the same way. Sweet girl, witty in her own way, but philistine. She is so good as to be my companion, apparently on equal terms, in many ways my superior, but it would be impossible for me even to mention these ideas to her,—ideas which are of the greatest interest to me."

"I wonder," said Geoffrey, "how much of all this rubbish you believe?"

McVay smiled with great sweetness. "I wonder myself, Holland. Still it is undeniably amusing, and the main thing is that I enjoy life,—a hard life too in many ways. Fate has dealt me some sad blows. Look at such a coincidence as your turning up to-night, of all nights in the year."

"It was scarcely a coincidence. I came—"

"Oh, I know, I know. You came to see after your sister's things, but still, if you look at it a little more carefully, you will see that it was a coincidence that you should be by nature a man of prompt action. Nine men out of ten in your place—still, I'm not depressed. You cannot say, Holland, that I behave or talk like a man who has ten years of hard labour before him, can you? I dare say you have never been thrown with a person who showed less anxiety. Yet as a matter of fact, there is something preying on my mind. Something entirely aside from anything you could imagine."

"You don't tell me!" said Geoffrey, who did not know whether to be most amused or infuriated by his companion's conversation.

"I am about to tell you," said McVay graciously, "I am very seriously worried about my sister. In fact I don't see that there is any getting away from it; you will have to let me go out for an hour or so and get her."

"Let you do what ?"

"Get my sister. She's living in a little hut in your woods, and I am actually afraid she will be snowed up."

"It seems highly probable."

"Well, then, I must go and get her."

Geoffrey stared at him a moment, and then said: "You must be crazy."

"Maybe I am," answered McVay, as if the suggestion were not without an amusing side. "Maybe I am, but that is not the point. Think of a girl, Holland, alone, all night, in such a storm. Now, I put it to you: it is not a position in which you would leave your sister, is it?"

Geoffrey began a sentence and finding it inadequate, contented himself with a laugh.

"There you see," said McVay. "It's out of the question. The place is draughty, too, though there is a stove. Do you remember the house at all? You would be surprised to see how nicely I've fixed it up for her."

"No doubt I should," replied Holland, thinking of the Vaughan and Marheim valuables.

"It is surprisingly livable, but it is draughty," McVay went on. "The truth is I ought to have gone south, as I meant to do last week. But one cannot foresee everything. The winters have been open until Christmas so often lately. However, I made a mistake and I am perfectly willing to rectify it. If you have no objection, I'll go and bring her back here."

"If you have any respect for your skin you won't move from that chair."

"Oh, the devil, Holland, don't be so—" he hesitated for the right word, not wishing to be unjust,—"so obtuse. Listen to that wind! It's cold here. Think what it must be in that shanty."

"Very unpleasant, I should think."

"More than that, more than that,—suffering, I have no doubt. Why, she might freeze to death if anything went wrong with the fire. It is not safe. It's a distinct risk to leave her. Let alone that a storm like this would scare any girl alone in a place like that, there is some danger to her life. Don't you see that?"

"Yes, I see," returned Geoffrey, "but you ought to have thought of that before you came burgling in a blizzard."

"Thought of it! Of course I thought of it. But I had no idea whatever of being caught, with old McFarlane laid up and the two boys away, it did seem about the safest job yet."

There was a pause, for Geoffrey evidently had no intention of even arguing the matter, and presently McVay continued:

"Now you know you would feel badly to-morrow morning if anything went wrong with her, and you knew you could have helped it!"

"Helped it!" said Geoffrey. "What do you mean? Let you loose on the county for the sake of a story no sane man would believe?"

"Well," returned McVay judicially, "perhaps you could not do that, but," he added brightly, "you could go yourself."

"Yes," said Geoffrey, "I could —"

"Then I think you ought to be getting along."

"Upon my word, McVay," said Holland, "you are something of a humorist, aren't you?"

McVay again looked puzzled, but rose to the occasion.

"Oh, hardly that," he said. "Every now and then I have a way of putting things,—a way of my own. I find often I am able to amuse people, but if you are cheerful yourself, you make other people so. I was just thinking that it must be a great thing for men who have been in prison for years to have some one come in with a new point of view."