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Updated: June 14, 2025
I don't know. Look at me. What would you say?" Harber shook his head. Barton laughed bitterly. "Yes, I'm pretty bad," he agreed readily. And then, as he talked that day and the two following, he told Harber a good many things. "I tell you, Harber," he said, "we'll do anything for money. Here I am and I knew damned well it was killing me, too.
"'Somebody come to see ME? she says, anxious-like. "'No, says I, 'and I'm glad of it fer this one 'at's come wants to git married, and o' course I wouldn't harber in my house no young feller 'at was a-layin' round fer a chance to steal away the "Nest-egg," says I, laughin'.
"The root of all evil," he resumed after a little. "Well, but you've got to have it can't get along without it in this world. You've done well, you say?" Harber nodded. "Well, so should I have, if the cursed fever had let me alone. In another year or so I'd have been raking in the coin. And now here I am busted done ; fini, as the French say.
Harber got the leather case from the grip and took it at once to his own stateroom. When he returned, Barton seemed for the moment, with the commission off his mind, a little brighter. "No end obliged, Harber," he murmured. "All right," said Harber, "but ought you to talk?" "Won't matter now," said Barton grimly. "Feel like talking now. To-morrow may be too late!"
She smiled, and her smile seemed the most precious thing in the world. "You, too? But it isn't new to you ... and when the newness is gone every one here at least seems dead to it!" "Sometimes I think it's always new," replied Harber. "And yet I've had years of it ... but how did you know?" "You're Mr. Harber, aren't you?" "Yes. But "
"I had a letter from her just before we sailed," went on the other, more cheerfully. "I'd like awfully, some time, to have you meet her. She's a wonderful girl wonderful. She's clever. She's much cleverer than I am, really ... about most things. When we get to Victoria, you must let me give you my address." "Thanks," said Harber. "I'll be glad to have it."
Was it that, feeling her chances in Tawnleytown so few, counting the soil there so barren, driven by an ambition beyond the imagination of staid, stodgy, normal Tawnleytown girls, she felt she must create opportunities where none were? She was very lovely, Harber tells me, in a fiery rose-red of the fairy-tale way; though even without beauty it needn't have been hard for her.
As he came closer, Harber observed the tawny beard, the sea-blue eyes surrounded by the fine wrinkles of humour, the neat black clothing, the polished boots, and, above all, the gold earrings that marked the man in his mind as Farringdon, the sea-captain who had been anxious to meet him.
And they walked home slowly, wrapt once more in their fascinating talk, fanning the flames of one another's desires, painting for their future the rich landscapes of paradise. Youth! Brave, hot youth! The next day Harber contemptuously threw over his job in the bank and fared forth into the wide world that was calling. Well, he went south, then east, then west, and west, and farther west.
Or again, do I wrong her there, and were there no more than the two of them, and did she simply suffer a solitary revulsion of feeling, as Harber did? But no, I'm sure I'm right in supposing Barton and Harber to have been but two ventures out of many, two arrows out of a full quiver shot in the dark at the bull's-eye of fortune.
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