 22 So many different cans of feeling had been chasing around inside of me that I had none spots in my emotional ornaments and intellectual organs. The room cleared out of everybody but Dr. Kirby and Colonel Tom and me. But the sound of the crowd going on in the road and their footsteps dying away, and then after that their voices quitting, all made but very little sense to me. I could scarcely realize that the danger was over. I hadn't been paying much attention to Dr. Kirby while the Colonel was making that grandstand play of his and getting away with it. Dr. Kirby was sat in his chair with his head sort of sunk on his chest. I guess he was having a hard time himself to realize that all the danger was past. But maybe it wasn't that. He looked like he might really have forgot where he was for a minute and might be thinking of something that had happened a long time ago. The Colonel was leaning up against the teacher's desk, smoking and looking at Dr. Kirby. Dr. Kirby turns around towards the Colonel. You have saved my life, he says, getting up out of his chair like he had a notion to step over and thank him for it, but was somehow not quite sure how that would be took. The Colonel looks at him silent for a second and then he says without smiling, do you flatter yourself? It was because I think it worth anything. The doctor don't answer and then the Colonel says has it occurred to you that I may have saved it because I want it? Want it? Do you know of anyone who has better right to take it than I have? Perhaps I save it because it belongs to me. Do you suppose I want anyone else to kill what I have the best right to kill? Tom says Dr. Kirby really puzzled to judge from his actions. I don't understand what makes you say you have the right to take my life. Dave, where is my sister buried? Ask Colonel Tom. Buried, says Dr. Kirby. My God, Tom, is she dead? I ask you, says Colonel Tom. And I ask you, says Dr. Kirby. And they looked at each other, both wonder eyes and trying to understand. And it busted on me all at once it whom them two men really was. I ought to know it sooner. When the Colonel was first called Colonel Tom Buckner, it struck me I know the name and I know something about it. But things which was my own concerns was attracting my attention so hard I couldn't remember what it was I ought to know about that name. Then I seen him and Dr. Kirby know each other when they got that first square look. That order have put me on the track. That and a lot of other things that had happened before. But I didn't piece things together like I ought to done. It wasn't until Colonel Tom Buckner called him Dave and asked about his sister that I seen who Dr. Kirby really must be. He was that dead David Armstrong. And the brother of the girl he had run off with had just saved his life. By the way, he was talking. He had saved it simply because he had thought he had the first call on what to do with it. Where is she asked Colonel Tom? I ask you says Dr. Kirby. Oh, David Armstrong again. Well, I think to myself, here is where Daniel puts one across the plate. And I breaks in. You both got another guest coming. I says she ain't berries anywhere. She ain't even dead. She's living in little town in Indiana called Athens. Or she was about 18 months ago. They both looks at me like they think I am crazy. What do you know about it says Dr. Kirby. Are you David Armstrong says I? Yes, says he. Well, I says, you spent four or five days within a stone's throw of her a year ago last summer. And she noted was you and hid herself away from you. And then I tells them about how I first happened to hear of David Armstrong and all I heard from Martha and how I had stayed at the Davises in Tennessee and got some more of the same story from George the old nigga there. But Danny says the doctor. Why didn't you tell me all this? I was just going to say that knowing he was that dead David Armstrong. I didn't think it any obvious business. When Colonel Tom, he says to Dr. Kirby. I mean to David Armstrong. Why should you be concerned as to her whereabouts? You ruined her life and then deserted her. Dr. Kirby. I mean David Armstrong stands there with the blood going up his face into his forehead. Slow in red. Tom, he says, you and I seem to be working across purposes. Maybe it would help some if you would tell me just how badly you think I treated Lucy. You ruined her life and then deserted her says Colonel Tom again, looking at him hard. I didn't deserve her said Dr. Kirby. She got disgusted and left me. Left me without a chance to explain myself. As far as ruining her life is concerned, I suppose that when I married her. Married her cried out the Colonel and David Armstrong stares at him with his mouth open. My God, Tom, he says. Did you think and they both come to another standstill? And then they talked some more and only got more mixed up than ever. For the doctor thinks she has left him and Colonel Tom thinks he has left her. Tom says the doctor. Suppose you let me tell my story and you'll see why Lucy left me. Him and Colonel Tom had been chums together when they went through Princeton, it seems. I picked that up from the talk and some of his story I learned afterward. He had come from Ohio in the beginning and his dad had had considerable money, which he had enjoyed spending of it. And when he was a young fella, never like to work at anything else. It suited him. Colonel Tom, he was considerable like him in that way. So they was good pals when they was at that school together. They both quit about the same time. A couple of years after that, when they was about 25 or six years old, they run across each other accidental in New York one autumn. The doctor, he was there figuring out on going to work at something or other. But they, they was so many things to do, he was finding it hard to make a choice. His father was dead by that time and looking for a job in New York. The way he had been doing it was awful expensive. And he was running shard of money. His father had let him spend so much while he was alive, he was very disappointed to find out he couldn't keep on forever looking for work that way. So Colonel Tom says, why not come down home into Tennessee with him for a while? And they will both try and figure out what he ought to go to work at. It was the fall of the year. And they was pretty good hunting around there where Colonel Tom lived. And Dave had never been south any. And so he goes. He figures he better take a good long vacation anyhow. But if he goes to work that winter or the next spring, and ties up with some job that keeps him in an office, there may be months and months passed by before he has another chance at a vacation. That is the worst part of a job. I found that out for myself. You never can tell when you are going to get shut out of it. Once you are full enough to start in. In Tennessee, he had met Miss Lucy, which her wedding to Prince MacMacken was billed for to come off about the first of November, just a month away. I don't know whether I ever told you or not says the doctor. But I was engaged to be married myself, Tom. When I went down to your place. That was what started all the trouble. You know, engagements are like vaccinations. Sometimes they take and sometimes they don't. Of course, I had thought at one time I was in love with this girl I was engaged to. When I found out I wasn't, I should have told her so right away. But I didn't. I thought that she would get tired of me after a while and turn me loose. I gave her plenty of chances to turn me loose. I wanted her to break the engagement instead of me. But she wouldn't take hints. She hung on like an Ohio Grand Army veteran to a country post office. About half the time I didn't read her letters. And about 1920, it's over the time I didn't answer them. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But it isn't so. It makes them all founder of you. I got into the habit of thinking that while Emma might be engaged to me, I wasn't engaged to Emma. Not but why Emma was a nice girl, you know, but well, I met Lucy. We fell in love with each other. It just happened. I kept intending to write to the other girl and tell her plainly that everything was off. I kept intending to write to the other girl and tell her plainly that everything was off. But I kept postponing it. It seemed like a deuce of a hard job to tackle. But finally, I did write to her. That was the very day Lucy promised to throw print Mac Mac in over and marry me. You know how determined all your people were that Lucy should marry Mac Mac in Tom? They had brought her up with the idea that she was going to and of course, she was bored with him for that reason. We decided that the best plan would be to slip away quietly and get married. We knew it would raise a row. But there was bound to be a row anyhow when they found she intended to marry me instead of Mac Mac in. So we figured we might just as well be away from there. We left our place early in the morning of October 31 1888. Do you remember the date Tom? We took the train for Clarksville, Tennessee and got there about two o'clock that afternoon. I suppose you have been in that interesting center of the tobacco industry. If you have, you may remember that the courthouse of Montgomery County is right across the street from the best hotel. I got a license and a preacher without any trouble. And we were married in the hotel parlor that afternoon. One of the hotel clerks and the county clerk himself were the witnesses. We went to Cincinnati and from there to Chicago. There we got rooms out on the South Side. Hyde Park, they called it. I got me a job. I had some money left, but not enough to buy cohenours and race horses with. Beside, I really wanted to get to work. Wanted it for the first time in my life. You remember young Clayton in your class? He and some other enterprising citizens had a building and loan associations. Such things are no doubt immoral. But I went to work for him. We had been in Chicago a week when Lucy wrote home what she had done and begged forgiveness for being so abrupt about it. At least I suppose that is what she wrote. It was. I remember exactly what she wrote says Colonel Tom. I never knew exactly says the doctor. The same male that brought word from you that your grandfather had had some sort of a stroke as a consequence of our loatement. Brought also two letters from Emma. They had been forwarded from New York to Tennessee. And you had forwarded them to Chicago. Those letters began the trouble. You see, I hadn't told Emma when I wrote breaking off the engagement that I was going to get married the next day. And Emma hadn't received my letter or else had made up her mind to ignore it. Anyhow, those letters were regular love letters. I hadn't really read one of Emma's letters for months. But somehow I couldn't help reading these. I had forgotten what a gift for the expression of sentiment Emma had. She fairly reveled in it Tom. Those letters were simply writhing with clinging female adjectives. They squirmed with affection. You may remember that Lucy was a rather jealous sort of person. Right in the midst of her alarm and grief and self reproach over her grandfather, and in the midst of my efforts to comfort her, she spied the feminine handwriting on those two letters. I had glanced through them hurriedly and laid them on the table. Tom, I was in bad. The dates on them, you know, were so recent. I didn't want Lucy to read them. But I didn't dare act as if I didn't want her to. So I handed them over, I suppose, to a bride who had only been married a little more than a week, and who had hurt her grandfather nearly to death in the marrying. Those letters must have sounded rather cold. I tried to explain, but all my explanations only seemed to make the case worse for me. Lucy was furiously jealous. We really had a devil of a row before we were through with it. I tried to tell her that I loved no one but her. She pointed out that I must have said much the same sort of thing to Emma. She said she was almost as sorry for Emma as she was for herself. When Lucy got through with me, Tom, I looked like thirty cents and felt like twenty-five of that was plugged. I didn't have sense enough to know that it was most of it grief over her grandfather and nerves and hysteria, and the fact that she was only eighteen years old and lonely, and that being a bride had a certain amount to do with it. She had told me that I was a beast, and made me feel like one, and I took the whole thing hard and believed her. I made a fine five-act tragedy out of a jealous fit I might have softened into comedy if I had had the wit. I wasn't so very old myself, and I hadn't ever been married before. I should have kept my mouth shut until it was over, and then when she began to cry I should have coaxed her up and made her feel like I was the only solid thing to hang on to in the whole world, but the bottom had dropped out of the universe for me. She had said she hated me. I was full enough to believe her. I went downtown and began to drink. I came home late that night. The poor girl had been waiting up for me, waiting for hours, and becoming more and more frightened when I didn't show up. She was over her jealous fit, I suppose. If I had come home in good shape or anything like it, we would have made up then and there, but my condition stopped all that. I wasn't so drunk, but that I saw her face change when she let me in. She was disgusted. In the morning I was sick and feverish. I was more than disgusted with myself. I was in despair. If she had hated me before, and she had said she did, what must she do now? It seemed to me that I had sunk so far beneath her that it would take years to get back. It didn't seem worthwhile making any plea for myself. You see, I was young and had serious streaks all through me. So when she told me that she had written home again and was going back, was going to leave me, I didn't see that it was only a bluff. I didn't see that she was really only waiting to forgive me if I gave her a chance. I started downtown to the building and loan office, wondering when she would leave, and if there was anything I could do to make a change of mind. I must repeat again that I was a fool, that I needed only to speak one word. Had I but known it? If I had gone straight to work, everything might have come round all right even then. But it didn't. I had that what's the use feeling. And I stopped in at the Palmer House bar to get something to sort of pull me together. While I was there, who should come up to the bar and order a drink but print McMacken. Yes says Colonel Tom, as near excited as he ever got. Yes says Armstrong, nobody else. We saw each other in the mirror behind the bar. I don't know whether you ever noticed it or not Tom, but McMacken's eyes had a way of looking almost like cross size when he was startled or excited. They were a good deal too near together at any time. He gave me such a look when our eyes met in the mirror that for an instant I thought he intended to do me some mischief. Shoot me, you know, for taking his bride to be away from him or some full thing like that. But as we turned towards each other, I saw he had no intention of that. Hadn't he says Colonel Tom, mighty interested. No says the doctor looking at Colonel Tom very puzzled. Did you think he had? Yes, I did says the Colonel, right thoughtful. On the contrary says Armstrong, we had a drink together and he congratulated me, made me a little speech in fact. One of the flowery kind, you know Tom, and said that he bore no more rancor and all that. The juice he did says Colonel Tom, very low, like he was talking to himself. And then what? Then says the doctor, then let me see. It's all a long time ago, you know. And MacMackin's part in the whole thing isn't really important. I'm not so sure it isn't important, says the Colonel, but go on. Then says Armstrong, we had another drink together. In fact, a lot of them. We got awfully friendly and like a fool I told him of my quarrel with Lucy. Like a fool, says Colonel Tom nodding his head. Go on. There isn't much more to tell, says the doctor, except that I made a worse idiot of myself yet. And left MacMackin about two o'clock in the afternoon. And near as I can recollect, somewhere about ten o'clock that night I went home. Lucy was gone. I haven't seen her since. Dave, says Colonel Tom. Did MacMackin happen to mention to you that day just why he was in Chicago? I suppose so, says the doctor. I don't know. Maybe not. That was twenty years ago. Why? Because, says Colonel Tom, very grim and quiet. Because your first thought has to his intention when he met you in the bar was my idea also. I thought he went to Chicago to settle with you. You see, I got to Chicago that same afternoon. The same day? Yes, we were to have come together. But I missed the train and he got there a day ahead of me. He was waiting at the hotel for me to join him. And then we were going to look you up together. He found you first and I never did find you. But I don't exactly understand, says the doctor. You say he had the idea of shooting me? I don't understand everything myself, says Colonel Tom. But I do understand that print MacMackin must have played some sort of two faced game. He never said a word to me about having seen you. Listen, he goes on. When you and Lucy ran away, it nearly killed our grandfather. In fact, it finally did kill him. When we got Lucy's letter that told you were in Chicago, I went up to bring her back home. We didn't know what we were going to do, MacMackin and I. But we were agreed that you needed killing. And he swore that he would marry Lucy anyhow, even marry her, sings out the doctor. But we were married. Dave, Colonel Tom says very slow and steady. You keep saying you were married, but it's strange. It's rather strange about that marriage. And he looked at the doctor hard and close, like he would drag the truth out of him. And the doctor met his look free and open. You would have thought Colonel Tom was saying with his look, you must tell me the truth. And the doctor with his was answering, I have told you the truth. But Tom says the doctor, that letter she wrote to you from Chicago must. Do you know what Lucy wrote, interrupts Colonel Tom? I remember exactly. It was simply, forgive me. I loved him so, I am happy. I know it is wrong, but I love him so, you must forgive me. But couldn't you tell from that we were married? cries out the doctor. She didn't mention it, says Colonel Tom. She supposed that her own family had had enough faith in her to take it for granted, says the doctor, very scornful, his face getting red. But wait Dave, says Colonel Tom, quiet and cool. Don't bluster with me. There are still a lot of things to be explained. And that marriage is one of them. To go back a bit, you say you got to the house somewhere around 10 o'clock that evening and found Lucy gone. Do you remember the day of the month? It was November 14, 1888. Exactly, says Colonel Tom. I got to Chicago at six o'clock of that very day. And I went at once to the address in Lucy's letter. I got there between seven and eight o'clock. She was gone. My thought was that you must have got wind of my coming and persuaded her to leave with you in order to avoid me. Although I didn't see how you could know when I would get there, either, when I thought it over. And you have never seen her since, says Armstrong pondering. I have seen her since, says Colonel Tom. And that is one thing that makes me say your story needs further explanation. But where? When? Did you see her? asked the doctor, mighty excited. I am coming to that. I went back home again. And in July of the next year, I heard from her. Heard from her? By letter. She was in Galesburg, Illinois, if you know where that is. She was living there alone. And she was almost destitute. I wrote her to come home. She would not. But she had to live. I got rid of some of our property in Tennessee and took enough cash up there with me to fix her in a decent sort of way for the rest of her life and put it in the bank. I was with her there for 10 days. Then I went back home to get Aunt Lucy Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her to return. But when I got back north with Aunt Lucy, she had gone. Gone? Yes. And when we returned without her to Tennessee, there was a letter telling us not to try to find her. We thought, I thought, that she might have taken up with you once again. But my God, Tom, the doctor busts out. You were with her 10 days there in Galesburg? Didn't she tell you then? Couldn't you tell from the way she acted that she had married me? That's the odd thing, Dave, says the Colonel, very slow and thoughtful. That's what is so very strange about it all. I merely assumed by my attitude that you were not married and she let me assume it without a protest. But did you ask her? Ask her? No. Can't you see that there was no reason why I should ask her? I was sure. And being sure of it naturally, I didn't talk about it to her. You can understand that I wouldn't, can't you? In fact, I never mentioned you to her. She never mentioned you to me. You must have mistaken her, Tom. I don't think it's possible, Dave, said the Colonel. You can mistake words and explanations a good deal easier than you can mistake an atmosphere. No, Dave, I'll tell you that there's something odd about it. Married or not, Lucy didn't believe herself married the last time I saw her. But she must have known, says the Doctor, as much to himself as to the Colonel. She must have known. Anyone could have told by the way he said it, he wasn't lying. I could see that Colonel Tom believed in him too. They was both sickening their intellects on to the job of figuring out how it was that Lucy didn't know. Finally, the Doctor says very thoughtful, whatever became apprentice McMacken, Tom. Dead, says Colonel Tom, quite a while ago. Hmm, says the Doctor still thinking hard, and then looks at Colonel Tom like they was an idea in his head, which he don't speak her out, but Colonel Tom seems to understand. Yes, he says, nodding his head. I think you are on the right track now. Yes, I shouldn't wonder. Well, they puts this and that together, and they agrees that whatever happened to make things hard to explain must have happened between the time that afternoon when Prentice McMacken left the Doctor, and the time Colonel Tom went out to see his sister and found she had went. Must have happened somehow through Prentice McMacken. We go home with Colonel Tom that night. In the next day all three of us in our way to Athens, Indiana, where I seen Miss Lucy at, end of chapter 22. Chapter 23 of Danny's Own Story. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Arup Sen. Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis. Chapter 23 For my part, as the train kept getting further and further north, my feelings kept getting more and more mixed. It come to me that I might be steering straight for a bunch of trouble. The feeling that sadness and melancholy and seriousness was laying ahead of me kept me from really enjoying them dollar a piece meals on the train. It was Martha that done it. All this past and gone love story I had been hearing about reminded me of Martha and I was steering straight toward her in no way out of it. How did I know but what that girl might be expecting for to marry me or something like that? Not but what I was awful in love with her whilst we was together, but it hadn't really set in on me very deep. I hadn't forgot about her right away, but pretty soon I had got to forgetting her oftener than I remembered her and now it wasn't no use talking. I just wasn't in love with Martha no more and didn't have no ambition to be. I had went around the country a good bit and got entrusted in other things and saw several other girls I like pretty well keeping steady in love and just one girl is mighty hard if you are moving around a good bit, but I was considerable worried about Martha. She was an awful, romanceful kind of girl and even the most sensible is said to be fools about getting their hearts broke and pining away and dying over a fella. I would hate to think Martha had pined herself sick. I couldn't shut my eyes to the fact we was engaged to each other legal all right and if she wanted to act mean about it and take it to court it would be likely to be binding on me. Then I says to myself is she mean enough to do that? I'll be damned if I don't go to jail before I marry her and stay there and then my conscience got to working inside of me again and a picture of her getting thin and not eating her vitals regular and waiting and waiting for me to show up and me never doing it come to me and I felt sorry for poor Martha and I thought maybe I would marry her just to keep her from dying for you would feel pretty tough if a girl was to get so stuck on you it killed her. Not that I ever seen that really happen either but first and last there has been considerable talk about it it wasn't but what I like Martha well enough it was the idea of getting married and staying married made me feel so anxious being married may work all right for some folks but I know that it would never work any with me or not for long because why should I want to be tied down to one place or have a steady job that would be a mean way to live of course with the person that was the doctor's age it would be different he had done his running around and would be willing to settle down now I guess that is if he could get his difference with this here Buckner family patched up satisfactory I wondered whether he would be able to or not him and Colonel Tom were talking constant on the train all the way up from the little stretches of their talk I couldn't help hearing I guessed each one was telling each other all that had happened to him in the time that had passed by Colonel Tom what kind of life he had lived and how he had married and his wife had died and left him a widower without any kids and the doctor it was always hard for me to get to calling him anything but dr. Kirby and how he had happened to start out with a good chance at in life and turn into just a traveling fact here well I thinks to myself now that he has got to be that maybe her and him won't suit so well now even if they does get their differences patched up for all the forgiving in the world ain't going to change things or make them no different what so long as the doctor appeared to want to find her so darn bad I was awful glad I had been the means of getting him and miss Lucy together he had done a lot for me first and last the doctor had and I felt like it helped pay him a little though if they was to settle down like married folks I would feel like a good old sport was spoiled in the doctor too we had to change cars at Indianapolis to get to that there little town we was due to reach it about two o'clock in the afternoon in the nearer we got to the place the nervoser and nervoser all three of us become and not owning we was the last hour before we hit the place I took a drink of water every three minutes I was so nervous and when we come into the town I was already standing out to the platform I wouldn't have been surprised to find martha and miss Lucy down there to the station but of course they wasn't for some reason I felt glad that they wasn't now I says to them too as we got off the train follow me and I will show you the house everybody rubbers at strangers in a country town and wonders why they have come and what they are selling and if they may be going to start a new green elevator or by land or what the usual ones around the depot rubbered at us and I heard one geezer say to another see that big fella there he was through here a year or two ago selling patent medicine you don't say so says the other one like it was something important like a president or a circus had come and his eyes are bugging out and the doctor earned them too for some reason or other he flushed up and cut a look out of the corner of his eye at colonel tom we went right through the main street and out towards the edge of town by the creek where miss lucy's house was and if anything all of us feeling nervous or yet and saying nothing and not looking at each other and colonel tom rolling cigarettes and fumbling for matches and lighting them and slinging them away well how does anybody know how women is going to take even the most ordinary little things I know the way well enough and where the house was but as we went round the turn in the road I run across a surprised feeling I come onto the place where our campfire had been them nights we was there louis had drug an old fence post into the fire one night and the post had only burned half up the butt end of it all charred and flaked was still lying in the grass and weed there it hit me with a queer feeling like it was only yesterday that fire had been lit there and yet I know that had been a year and a half ago well it has always been my luck to run into things without the right kind of a lie fixed up ahead of time there was three or four pretty good stories I had been turning over in my head to tell martha when I seen her any one of them stories might have done all right but I hadn't decided which one to use and of course I run plum into martha she was standing by the gate which was about 20 yards from the veranda and all four lies popped into my head and once it and I got so mixed up with one another there I seen right off it was useless to try and tell anything that sounded straight besides when you were in the fix I was in what can you tell a girl anyhow so I just says to her hello martha she had been fussing around some flower bushes with a pair of shears and gloves on she looks up when I says that and she sizes us all up standing by the gate and her eyes pops open and so does her mouth and she is so surprised to see me she drops her she is and she looks scared too is miss bukna at home asked colonel tom lifting his hat very polite miss bukna math martha stutters very scared like and not taking her eyes off me to answer him miss hampton martha I says yes she is says martha I wondered what was the matter with her it was always my luck to get left all alone with my troubles the doctor and the colonel they walked right past us when they said yes and up towards the house and left her and me standing there I could have went along and butted in maybe but I says to myself I will have the done thing out here and now and know the worst and I was so interested in my trouble and martha that I didn't even notice if miss lucy met him at the door and if so how she acted when I next looked up they was all in the house martha I begins but she breaks in danish she says looking like she is going to cry don't look at me like that if you knew all you wouldn't blame me you wouldn't blame you for what I asked her I know it's wrong of me she says begging like maybe it is and maybe it ain't I says but what is it but you never wrote to me she says you never wrote to me I says not wanting her to get the best of me whatever it was you might be talking about but then he came to town who I asked her don't you know she says the man I am going to marry when she said that I felt all of a sudden like when you are broke and hungry and run across a half dollar you had forgotten about in your other pants I was so glad I jumped great guns I says I had never really known what being glad was before oh Danny Danny she says putting her hands in front of her face and here you come to claim me before your bride which showed me why she had looked so scared that their girl had went and got engaged to another fella he had been lying awake nights suffering for fear I would turn up again and now I had Louie he always said never to trust a woman Martha I says you ain't acted right with me oh Danny Danny she says I know it I know it some fellas in my place I says would raise the dickens of a row I did love you once she says looking at me from between her fingers yes says I acting real melancholy you did and now you've quit it they don't seem to me to be nothing left to live for Martha she was an awful romance full girl I got the notion that maybe she was enjoying her own remorsefulness a little bit I fetched a deep sigh and I says some fellas would kill their sales on the spot oh oh oh says Martha but Martha says I ain't that mean I ain't gonna do that that darn girl actually gave me a disappointed look if anything she was just a bit too romance full Martha was no says I cheering up a little I'm gonna do something they ain't many fellas would do Martha I'm going to forgive you free in fair and open and give you back my half of that ring and darn it I had forgot I had lost that half of that their ring I remembered so quick it stopped me you always kept it Danny she asked me very soft spoken so as not to give pain to one so faithful and so noble as what I was let me see it Danny I made like I was feeling through all my pockets for it but that couldn't last forever I run out of pockets pretty soon and her face began to show she was smelling a rat finally I says these ain't my other clothes it must be in them Danny she says I believe you lost it Martha I says taking a chance at you know you lost your half she owns up she has lost it a long while ago and when she lost it she says she knows that was fate and that our love was omened in under an evil star and who was she she says to struggle again fate Martha I says I'll be honest with you fate got away with my half too one day when I didn't know they was crooks like her sticking around well I seen that girl seen through me then Martha was awful smart sometimes and each one was so darn tickled the other wasn't going to do any pining away we liked to or fell into love all over again but not quite for neither one would ever trust the other one again so we felt more comfortable with each other you ain't never comfortable with a person you know is more honest than you be but says Martha after a minute if you didn't come back to make me marry you what dr. Kirby wanted to see miss Hampton about and who was that with him I had been nine to forgetting the main thing we had all come for in my gladness of getting rid of my danger of marrying Martha but it come to me all to once it that I had been missing a lot that must be taking place inside the house I had even missed the way they first looked when she met him at the door and I wouldn't have missed that for a lot and I seen all to once it what a big piece of news it will be to Martha Martha says they ain't no dr. Hartley L Kirby the man known as such is David Armstrong I never seen anyone so petrified as Martha was for a minute yes is I and the other one is miss Lucy's brother and they are all three in there straightening themselves out and finding where everybody gets off at and why one of these here serious times you read about and you or me are missing it all like a couple of gums how can we hear Martha says she don't know your thing I told her we've wasted five good minutes already I've got to hear the rest of it where would they be Martha guesses they will all be in the sitting room which has got the best chairs in it what is next to it a back parlor or bedroom or what I was thinking of how I happened to over here professor bow than his family that away Martha says there is nothing like that to be tried Martha says this is serious this here story they are threshing out in there is the only darn sure enough romance full story either you or me is ever liable to run up against personal in our lives it would have been a good deal nicer if they had asked us in to see the wind up of it for if it hadn't been for me they never would have reunited and rejuvenated the way they be but some people get stingy streaks with their concerns you think Martha she says Danny it wouldn't be honorable to listen Martha tells her after the way you and me went and jilted each other what kind of senses of honor have we got to brag about she remembers that the spare bedroom is right over the sitting room the house is heated with stoves in the winter time there is a register right through the floor of the spare bedroom and the ceiling of the sitting room not the kind of a register that comes from a twisted around shaft in a house that uses furnace heat but just really a hole in the floor with a cast iron grating to let the heat from the room below into the one above she says she guesses two people that wasn't so very honorable might sneak into the house the back way and up the back stairs and into the spare bedroom and lay down on their stomachs on the floor being careful to make no noise and both see and hear through that register which we done it end of chapter 23 chapter 24 of Danny's own story this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Zach Brewstergeis Greenbelt Maryland Danny's own story by Don Marquis chapter 24 I could hear well enough but at first I couldn't see any of them but I gathered that Miss Lucy was standing up whilst she was talking and moving around a bit now and then I seen one of her sleeves and then a wisp of her hair which was aggravating for I wanted to know what she was like but her voice was so soft and quiet that you kind of knowed before you seen her how she ought to look Prentice MacMacon came to me that day she was saying with an appeal I hardly know how to tell you she broke off go ahead Lucy says Colonel Tom's voice he was insulting she said he had been drinking he wanted me to to he appealed to me to run off with him I was furious naturally her voice changed as she said it enough so you could feel how furious Miss Lucy could get she was like a brother Tom in some ways I ordered him out of the house his answer to that was an offer to marry me you can imagine that I was surprised as well as angry I was perplexed but I am married I cried the idea that any of my own people or anyone whom I had known at home would think I wasn't married was too much for me to take in all at once you think you are said Prentice MacMacon with a smile in spite of myself my breath stopped it was as if a chilly hand had taken hold of my heart I mean physically I felt like that I am married I repeated simply I suppose that MacMacon had got the story of our wedding from you she stopped a minute the doctor's voice answered I suppose so like he was a very tired man anyhow she went on he knew that we went first to Clarksville he said you think you are married Lucy but you are not I wish you to understand that Prentice MacMacon did it all very very well that is my excuse he acted well there was something about him I scarcely know how to put it it sounds odd but the truth is that Prentice MacMacon was always a more convincing sort of a person when he had been drinking a little than when he was sober he lacked warmth he lacked temperament I suppose just the right amount put it into him it put the devil into him too I reckon he told me that you and he Tom had been to Clarksville and had made investigations and that the wedding was a fraud and he told it with a wealth of convincing detail in the midst of it he broke off to ask to see my wedding certificate as he talked he laughed at it and tore it up saying that the thing was not worth the paper it was on and he threw the pieces of paper into the great I listened and I let him do it not that the paper itself mattered particularly but the very fact that I let him tear it showed me myself that I was believing him he ended with an impassioned appeal to me to go with him I showed him the door I pretended to the last that I thought he was lying to me but I did not think so I believed him he had done it all very cleverly you can understand how I might in view of what had happened I wanted to see miss Lucy how she looked when she said different things so I could make up my mind whether she was forgiving the doctor or not not that I had much doubt but what they would get their personal troubles fixed up in the end the iron grating in the floor was held down by four good-sized screws one at each corner they wasn't no filling at all betwixt did in the iron grating that was in the ceiling of the room below the space was hollow I got an idea and took out my jackknife what are you going to do whispers Martha I says shut up and you'll see one of the screws was loose and I picked her out easy enough the second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on like you nearly always do on a screw when it snapped Colonel Tom he says what's that he was powerful quick of hearing Colonel Tom was I laid low till they went on talking again then Martha slides out on tiptoe and comes back in three seconds with one of these here little screw drivers they use around sewing machines and the little oil can that goes with it I oils them screws and has them out in a holy minute and lifts the grating from the floor careful and lays it careful on the rug by doing all of which I could get my head and shoulders down into that their whole and by twisting my neck a good deal see a little ways to each side into the room instead of just underneath the grating the doctor I couldn't see yet and only a little of Colonel Tom but Miss Lucy quite plain you mean thing Martha whispers you are blocking it up so I can't hear keep still I whispers pulling my head out of the hole so the sound wouldn't float downward into the room below you are just like all other women you got too much curiosity how about yourself says she who was it thought of taking the grating off I whispers back to her which settles her temporary but she says if I don't give her a chance to add it pretty soon she will tickle my ribs when I listens again they are burying that their print McMacon but without any flowers Miss Lucy she was half setting on half leaning against the arm of a chair which her head was just a bit bowed down so that I couldn't see her eyes but they was the beginnings of a smile onto her face it was both soft and sad well says Colonel Tom you two have wasted almost 20 years of life there is one good thing says the doctor it is a good thing that there was no child to suffer by our mistakes she raised her face when he said that Miss Lucy did and looked in his direction you call that a good thing she says in a kind of wonder and after a minute she sighs perhaps she says you're right heaven only knows perhaps it was better that he died died sings out the doctor and I heard his chair scrape back like he had risen to his feet sudden I nearly busted my neck trying for to see him but I couldn't I was all twisted up head down and the blood getting into my head from it so I had to pull it out every little while yes she says with her eyes wide didn't you know he died and then she turns quick toward Colonel Tom didn't you tell him she begins but the doctor cuts in Lucy he says his voice shaking and croaking in his throat I never knew there was a child I hear Colonel Tom hawk in his throat like a man who is either going to spit or else say something but he don't do either one no one says anything for a minute and then Miss Lucy says again yes he died and then she fell into a kind of muse I have been myself in the fix she looked to be in then so you forget for a while where you are or who is there whilst you think about something that has been in the back part of your mind for a long long time what she was musing about was that child that hadn't lived I could tell that by her face I could tell how she must have thought of it often and often for years and years and longed for it so that it seemed to her at times she could almost touch it and how good a mother she would have been to it some woman has just naturally got to mother something or other Miss Lucy was one of that kind I knowed all in a flash whilst I looked at her there why she had adopted Martha for her child it was a wonderful look that was on to her face and it was a wonderful face that look was on to I felt like I had known her forever when I seen her there like the thoughts of her the doctor had been carrying around with him for years and years and that I had caught him thinking once or twice had been my thoughts too all my life Miss Lucy she was one of the kind there's no use trying to describe the feller that could see her that away and not feel made good by it or have a wailing not the kind of sticky good feeling that makes you uncomfortable like being pestered by your conscience to gine at church or quit cussing but the kind of good that makes you forget they is anything on earth but just braveness of heart and being willing to bear things you can't help you knowed the world had hurt her a lot when you seen her standing there but you didn't have the nerve to pity your none either for you could see she had got over pitying herself even when she was in that muse longing with all her soul for the child she had never knowed you didn't have the nerve to pity her none he died she says again pretty soon with that gentle kind of smile Colonel Tom he clears his throat again like when you were awful dry the truth is he begins and then he breaks off again miss Lucy turns toward him when he speaks by the strange look that come on to her face there must have been something right curious in his manner too I was just simply laying on to my forehead mashing one of my durn eyeballs through a little hole in the grading but I couldn't even that way see for enough to one side to see how he looked the truth is says Colonel Tom trying it again that I well Lucy the child may be dead but he didn't die when you thought he did there was a flash of hope flared into her face that I hated to see come there because when it died out in a minute as I expected it would have to it looked to me like it might take all her life out with it her lips parted like she was going to say something with them but she didn't she just looked at why did you never tell me this that there was a child says the doctor very eager wait says Colonel Tom let me tell the story in my own way which he done it it seems when he had went to Galesburg this here child had only been born a few days and miss Lucy was still sick and the kid itself was sick and libel to die any minute by the looks of things which Colonel Tom wishes that it would die in his heart he thinks that it is an illegitimate child and he hates the idea of it and he hates the sight of it the second night he is there he is setting in his sister's room and the woman that has been nursing the kid and miss Lucy too is in the next room with the kid she comes to the door and beckons to him the nurse does he tiptoes toward her and she says to him very low voiced that it is all over meaning the kid has quit struggling for to live and just naturally floated away the nurse had thought miss Lucy asleep but as both her and Colonel Tom turn quick toward her bed they see that she is heard and seen and she turns her face toward the wall which he tries for to comfort her Colonel Tom does telling her is how it is an illegitimate child and for its own sake it was better it was dead before it ever lived any which she don't answer of him back but only stares in a wild eyed way at him and lays there and looks desperate and says nothing in his heart Colonel Tom is awful glad that it is dead he can't help feeling that way and he quits trying to talk to his sister for he suspicions that she will catch onto the fact that he is glad that it is dead he goes on into the next room he finds the nurse looking awful funny and bending over the dead kid she is putting a looking glass to its lips he asks her why she says she thought she might be mistaken after all she couldn't say just when it died it was alive and feeble and then pretty soon it showed no signs of life it was like it hadn't had enough strength to stay and it just went it didn't show any pulse and it didn't appear to be breathing and she had watched it and done everything before she beckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that it was dead but as she come back into the room where it was she thought she noticed something that was too light to be called a real flutter move its eyelids which she had closed down over its eyes it was the ghost of a move like it had tried to raise the lids or they had tried to raise their selves and had been too weak so she has got busy and wrapped a hot cloth around it and got a drop of brandy or two between its lips and was fighting to bring it back to life and thought she was doing it thought she had felt a little flutter in its chest and was trying if it had breath at all Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner family has always been at home and how high they had always held their heads and how none of the women has ever been like this before nor no disgrace of any kind and that their kid if it is alive is a sign of disgrace and he hoped to God he said it wasn't alive but he don't say so he stands there and watches that nurse fight for to hold on to the little mist of life she thinks now is still into it she unbuttons her dress and lays the kid against the heat of her own breast and wills for it to live and fights for it to and determines that it must and just naturally tries for it to bully rag death into going away and Colonel Tom watching and wishing that it wouldn't but he gets interested in that their fight and so pretty soon he is hoping both ways by spells and the fight all going on without a word spoken but finally the nurse begins for to cry not because she is sure it is dead but because she is sure it is coming back which it does slow but I have told her that it is dead says Colonel Tom jerking his head toward the other room where Miss Lucy is lying he speaks in a low voice and closes the door when he speaks for it looks now like it was getting strong enough so it might even squall a little I don't know what kind of a look there was on my face says Colonel Tom telling of the story to his sister and the doctor but she must have seen that I was and heaven help me but I was sorry that the baby was alive it would have been such an easy out of it had it been really dead she mustn't know that it is living I said to the nurse finally says Colonel Tom going on with the story I had been watching Miss Lucy's face as Colonel Tom talked and she was so worked up by that fight for the kids life she was breathless but her eyes was cast down I guess so her brother couldn't see them Colonel Tom goes on with his story you don't mean said the nurse startled no no I said of course not that but why should she ever know that it didn't die is it illegitimate asks the nurse yes I said the long and short of it was Colonel Tom went on to tell that the nurse went out and got her mother which the two of them lived alone only around the corner and give the child into the keeping of her mother who took it away then and there Colonel Tom had made up his mind there wasn't going to be no bastards in the Buckner family and now that Miss Lucy thought it was dead he would let her keep on thinking so and that would be settled for good and all he figured that it wouldn't ever hurt her none if she never noted the nurse's mother kept it all that week and it throwed Colonel Tom was coaxing of his sister to go back to Tennessee but she wouldn't go so he had made up his mind to go back and get his aunt Lucy Davis to come and help him coax he was only waiting for his sister to get well enough so he could leave her she got better and she never asked for the kid nor said nothing about it which was probable because she had seen he hated it so he had made up his mind before he went back after their aunt Lucy Davis to take the baby himself and put it into some kind of an institution I thought he says to Miss Lucy telling of the story that you yourself were almost reconciled to the thought that it hadn't lived Miss Lucy interrupted him with a little sound she was breathing hard and shaking from head to foot no one would have thought to look at her then she was reconciled to the idea that it hadn't lived it was cruel hard on her to tear her to pieces with the news that it really had lived but it lived away from her all these years she had been longing for it and no chance for her ever to mother it and no way to tell what had ever become of it I felt awful sorry for Miss Lucy then but when I got ready to leave Galesburg Colonel Tom goes on it suddenly occurred to me that there would be difficulties in the way of putting it in a home of any sort I didn't know what to do with it what did you what did you what did you cries out Miss Lucy pressing her hand to her chest like she was smothering the first thing I did says Colonel Tom was to get you to another house you remember Lucy yes yes she says excited and what then perhaps I did a very foolish thing says Colonel Tom after I had seen you installed in the new place and had bitten you goodbye I got a carriage and drove by the place where the nurse and her mother lived I told the woman that I had changed my mind that you were going to raise the baby that I was going to permit it I don't think she quite believed me but she gave me the baby what else could she do besides I had paid her well when I discharged her to say nothing to you and to keep the baby until I should come for it they needed money they were poor I was determined that it should never be heard of again it was about noon when I left Galesburg I drove all that afternoon with the baby in a basket on the seat of the carriage beside me everybody has read in books since books were first written and seen in newspapers too about children being left on door steps given an infant to dispose of that is perhaps the first thing that occurs to a person there was a thick plaid shawl wrapped around the child in the basket beside the baby was a nursing bottle about dusk I had it refilled with warm milk at a farmhouse near my head was beginning for to swim I pulled my head out of that there hole and rammed my foot into it it banged against that grating and loosened it it busted loose some plaster which showered down into the room underneath miss Lucy she screamed and the doctor and colonel Tom both yelled out to once who's that it's me I yells banging that grating again watch out below there and the third lick I give her she broke loose and clattered down right onto a center table and spilled over some photographs and a vase full of flowers and bounced off onto the floor look out below I yells I'm coming down I let my legs through first and swung them so I would land on one side of the table and held by my hands and dropped but struck the table a sideways swipe and turned it over and fell onto the floor the doctor he grabbed me by the collar and straightened me up and give me a shake and stood me onto my feet what do you mean he begins but I breaks in now then I says to colonel Tom did you leave that their child sucking that their bottle on the doorstep of a blacksmith's house next to his shop at the edge of a little country town about 20 miles northeast of Galesburg wrapped up in that their plaid shawl I did says colonel Tom then says I turning to miss Lucy I can understand why I've been feeling drawn to you for quite a spell I'm him end of chapter 24 end of Danny's own story by Don Marquis