The Everlasting Whisper | Page 8

you, Ben."
Gaynor led the way through a room where were piano and victrola and
from the floor of which the rugs were still rolled; through a
dining-room and into what was at once a small library and Gaynor's
study; King noted that even a telephone had found its way hither. A
chair pulled forward, a box of cigars offered, and the two friends took
stock in each other's eyes of what the last year had done for each.
"You look more fit than ever, Mark--and younger."

King wanted to say the same thing of his friend, but the words did not
come. Gaynor was by far the older man, King's senior by a score of
years, and obviously had begun to feel the burden of the latter greying
days. Or of cares flocking along with them; they generally come
together. His were seriously accepted responsibilities, where Mark
gathered unto himself fresh hopes and eager joys; the responsibilities
which come in the wake of wife and daughter; a home to be maintained
in the city, the necessity to adapt himself, even if stiffly, to unfamiliar
conditions. This big log house itself, it seemed to King, was carried on
the back of old Ben.
They had been friends together since King could remember, since Ben
had big-brothered him, carried him on his back, taught him to swim and
shoot. Then one year while King was off at school his friend took unto
himself a wife. This with no permission from Mark King; not even
after a conference with him; in fact, to his utter bewilderment. King did
not so much as know of the event until Gaynor, after a month of
honeymooning, remembered to drop him a brief note. The bald fact
jarred; King was hurt and grew angry and resentful with all of that
unreason of a boy. He went off to Alaska without a word to Gaynor.
With the passage of time the friends had again grown intimate, had
been partners in more than one deal, and the youthful relationship had
been cemented by the years. But it had happened, seemingly purely
through chance, although King knew better, that he had never met
Gaynor's wife or daughter. When Gloria was little, Mrs. Gaynor had
been impressed by the desirability of a city environment, had urged the
larger schools, music teachers, proper young companions, and a host of
somewhat vague advantages. Hence a large part of the year Gaynor
kept bachelor's quarters in his own little lumber town in the mountains
where his business interests held him and where his wife and daughter
came during a few weeks in the summer to visit him. At such periods
King always managed to be away. This year the wife and daughter,
drawn by the new summer home, had come early in the season, and
King's business was urgent. Besides, he had told himself a dozen times,
there really existed no sane reason in the world why he should avoid
Ben Gaynor's family as though they were leprous.

... What King said in answer to his friend's approval was by way of a
bantering:
"Miracles do happen! Here's Ben Gaynor playing he's a bird of paradise.
Or emulating Beau Brummel. Which is it, Ben? And whence the fine
idea?"
Gaynor, with a strange sort of smile, King thought, half sheepish and
the other half tender, cast a downward glance along the encasement of
the outer man. Silk shirt, a very pure white; bright tie, very new; white
flannels, very spick and span; silken hose and low white ties. This garb
for Ben Gaynor the lumberman, who felt not entirely at his ease, hence
the sheepish grin; a fond father decked out by his daughter as King well
guessed; hence that gleam of tenderness.
"Gloria's doings," he chuckled. "Sent ahead from San Francisco with
explicit commands. I guess I'd wear a monkey-jacket if she said so,
Mark." But none the less his eyes, as they appraised the rough garb of
his guest, were envious. "I can breathe better, just the same, in boots
like yours," he concluded. He stretched his long arms high above his
head. "I wish I could get out into the woods for a spell with you,
Mark."
And he did not know, did not in the least suspect, that he was failing
the minutest iota in his loyalty to Gloria and her mother. He was
thinking only of their guests, whom he could not quite consider his
own.
"The very thing," said King eagerly. "That's just what I want."
But Gaynor shook his head and his thin, aristocratic face was briefly
overcast, and for an instant shadows crept into his eyes.
"No can do, Mark," he said quietly. "Not this time. I've got both hands
full and then some."
King leaned forward