Vance gazed in return at him, dumbfounded. And something deep stirred in him, fear, suspicion, dread, perhaps something more and probably worse. He reached for Sid’s hand then, but the latter withdrew it. Then aware of the younger fellow’s disappointment at his withholding his affection, Sid took his hand tight in his heavy, rough grasp and held it to the point of pain.
“Sidney, why don’t you unburden yourself to me? Don’t you trust me? I know there probably was something between you and the renderer as you call him, and I have always wondered if maybe your quarrel with him had something to do with the trouble between you and Brian McFee. . . . I mean, Sid . . .”
“Don’t, please, don’t!” Sidney implored. (He acted, you see, like the younger brother and always had.) “I can’t bear no more after what I’ve went through in prison. But yes, for your information, I guess Roy Sturtevant had a hand in all that happened to me and Brian. . . . Don’t ask me to explain it, Vance, for I can’t. I mean I don’t understand it myself . . . Yes, maybe he’s behind it all.”
Sidney threw himself now into his brother’s arms and held onto him with might and main.
“You know about me anyhow, don’t you, Vance?” came his smothered voice. “Don’t you?” he cried on, pressing his mouth against his brother’s mended jacket. “You’re so good, Vance, it’s hard to feel worthy of you. You’re so straight and upright. . . . I guess maybe you suspicioned about what I am, and must have guessed the truth about Brian and me, that we . . .” ■
“It don’t matter now.” Vance broke away from his brother’s close embrace. His voice rose to a hysterical wail. “We won’t think about any of that . . . It’s over and done with. . . .”
“No, Vance, it’s not over and done . . . I’m trying to level with you, see, to explain to you. . . .”
“Sid, you’re all I’ve got.” Vance spoke now with almost the same fierce incoherence that had been Sidney’s a moment before. “It don’t matter to me what you’ve done anyhow . . . I’ve just waited for you to come back to me. I don’t have nothing else to live for. . . .”
“Don’t say that, Vance. For God’s sake, don’t please . . . I’m not worth that much when all’s said and done. . . .”
Going up to his brother, Sid spoke almost into the younger boy’s teeth: “You’ve got to find something worthy of you, Vance . . . You’re straight, and you ought to marry . . . Don’t bank your whole life on somebody like me, hear? . . . Forget me.”
“You are my life, Sid.”
“I hear . . . ,” Sidney began after a long struggle to find his voice. “I hear also you went to the Governor and that you got him to intercede for me.”