XI
BETTY
_In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical ResearchAre Revealed to the Very Young_
At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voicecame to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter,more distant, receding; then silence.
Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterraneandepths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.
He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellardoor swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; andas he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttledaround the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "whereare you?"
"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Couldyou help me, please?"
"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. Hestruck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
"Betty! Where are you?"
"Oh, I am here--in the coal."
"What?"
"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark andit all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."
Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it,and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectaclehe had ever witnessed.
The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She wasquite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopelessfor mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements ofa catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he atlast succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own,breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through theflame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then shelooked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked,lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been apair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summergown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get toOyster Bay?"
He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stainedhands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she strippedthe soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms andhands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
"What," she asked, "am I to do?"
"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at OysterBay."
"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water--we can't evenw-wash our hands!" she faltered.
He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid withsome clothes for you--if you don't mind being left alone in an emptyhouse for a little while."
"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of thecellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"
He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, andhe left by the basement door.
He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor,unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and hergarments in the laundry looking-glass.
At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops atleast; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inactionbecoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended tothe floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search forClarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furnitureat her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize hervoice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry,instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew therecould be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine floodedthe place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growinghungrier every moment.
Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with alittle cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry,and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadfulcoal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marblebasin brimming with Apollinaris.
As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-coloredmorning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found morethan that there--rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile ofexquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in theirfreshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then beganto make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts ofApollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them,talking happily to herself all the time.
"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a niceboy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of himquite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?"She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds.He was nowhere in sight.
Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself inher lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair intodiscipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lidsclosing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when hereturns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, butit's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they sendsomebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'llcatch Clarence and call a cab----"
A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"
Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire.It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
"I--I _couldn't_ talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enoughas it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran downthe three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless,radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him,a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its rootin perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
"I found some clothes--not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughingat his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook myattire; I was _so_ full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinarisfor my necessities.... _What_ did they say at Sandcrest?"
He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I hadbetter come in for a few minutes--if you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way."Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is--isanything wrong at Sandcrest?"
"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief;"I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."
"W-why not?"
"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use--Itried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in thismorning's electric storm, it seems."
She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, footswinging.
"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I amto do?"
"Haven't you anything to travel in?"
"Not one solitary rag."
"Then--you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of yourfriends--you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"
"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman intown."
He was silent.
"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in thehouse, no t
elephone to order anything----"
He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, sowhen I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi andvisiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearestplumber. It seems he is your own plumber--Quinn, I believe his name is;and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."
"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.
"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serveluncheon and dinner here for you----"
"You _did?_"
"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day----"
"That was perfectly splendid of you!"
"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that maybe the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.
It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver,china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, inwarmers, a most delectable luncheon.
Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed theprocessional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room,where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting eachother.
"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."
Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."
"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain--somewhere onthe premises--until your maid arrives."
"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.
"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."
"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with thesparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
Silence--the ironing board between them--she standing, bright headlowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following everymovement, fascinated, spellbound.
After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me--in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget iteasily--even if I might wish to."
"I can never forget _you!_... I d-don't want to."
The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again andspoke as though gravely addressing it:
"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance--the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a moreformal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little--irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope wemay meet--sometime."
"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and sosuccessful an imitation of her politely detached interest in conventionthat she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quietvoice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in hiseyes.
For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her whitefingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbedthem; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the areagate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.presented himself at the doorway:
"Luncheon is served, madam."
"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed atrifle.
"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I'll g-go," hesaid with a heartbroken smile.
"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" shesaid. Her inflection made it a question.
Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She movedforward, turned, undecided.
"_Have_ you lunched?"
"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checkedhimself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herselfof embarrassment with a little laugh.
"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the backfences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in myown cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheonwith me.... Is it?"
"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil ofyou to ask me!"
"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than bePresident of this Republic."
The butler pro tem. seated her.
"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And withthe faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had hisorders to lay two covers. Had he?"
"From me?" he protested, reddening.
"You don't suspect _me_, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Thenglancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners ofthe lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are eitherdreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
And a little while later when he returned from the basement afteradmitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greetinghis return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Suchsalad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can'timagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded oneanother over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straightgaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dinedtogether, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-roomswhere, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece,and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh,young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the endof the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it _seems_ all right--and--andwe _know_ that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....Shall I?" he asked evenly.
She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; sheabsently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicatelips and chin.
Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them tosee each other as in a dull afterglow.
"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the looseroses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering histhroat.
Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink ofglass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber'sprogress from floor to floor.
"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how _very_ nice you have been tome? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poorClarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone tothe cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have luncheddivinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safeindoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric lightand the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is_all_ due to you!"
"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendouslyI--I--" He stuck fast.
"What?"
"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling servicerendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."
"Say what? Please, I do
n't mind what you are--are going to say."
"It's--it's that I----"
"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait severalyears for chance and hazard."
"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low-breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to ventureto--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herselfresolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accidentlike this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of socialevents----"
"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control ofhimself.
"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval ofseveral weeks----"
"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-careso much--for--you."
She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he haddisgraced himself.
"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it--Icouldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm goingto tell you more."
"You need not," she said faintly.
"I must. Listen! I--I don't even know your full name--all I know is thatit is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's nameis Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it wouldhave been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you thatbefore the car, on which you rode, came into sight I _knew_ you were onit. And I--cared--for--you--before I ever saw you."
"I don't understand----"
"I know you don't. _I_ don't. All I understand is that what you and Ihave done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere--part only--down to--down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before youtook the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as itoccurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lostcourage--for I did not recognize anything after that except that I caredfor you.... _Do_ you understand one single word of what I have beensaying?"
The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; herlifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking hisastonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to hersome rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man wholooked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligencesatisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to anywoman.
"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible foryou to--care--for--me.... Is it?"
He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material andsocial circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career,the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, hisdiscussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as heemerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequentaltercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption ofClarence.
He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise,convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And shelistened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his storyunfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving thisyoung man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of theonly possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lipsparted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--thesoundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptiblybegun to tremble.
Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped inher lap.
For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yetarrived. The house was very still.
And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point herose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trelliswhere Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making afurry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygiandepths.
Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl wassitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while weare waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"
And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture,investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervalscalling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey,Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency sooften protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped tothink, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightlyclosed places.
In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened thedoor there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept theperfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garmentshanging on the wall.
As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominousclick, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing herealized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strangehouse, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, atany moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee froma man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocablypredestined for one another.
Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did nogood. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obligedto do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetratedown four flights of stairs.
He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He onlyrebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for readingfiction.
It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then suddenmisgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. Itwas no use.
The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruisinghimself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes andtextures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder andmadder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence ofwhich he had never dreamed himself capable.
Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listeningand delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritatehim; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-taintedair in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. Nowonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.Fortunately he did not realize it.
And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in arose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, anautomobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she triedthe telephone, found it working, summoned a coupe, and was now awaitingits advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take chargeof the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family toher assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destinybehind her mother's skirts.
Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable thatshe put a number of miles between hersel
f and this young man who had justinformed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man anygratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred,attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly steppedinto her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not,ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize theawful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her frominstant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon hercat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted upDooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told herthe maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destinywith a whole regiment of its employees!
She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay inher lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown cameback before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decidedon, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering theincredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline toencourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independentaffair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series ofbeats which annoyed her.
"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I canscarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave himwithout any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I mustremember that."
Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularlyas she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and apencil, and wrote rapidly:
"_Dear Mr. Brown:_
"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maidwill stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of thefamily. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you toldme about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or yourconduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It isonly that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and anew line begun).
"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choicein life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So Idon't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to presentus to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surelyunderstand.
"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, andchildish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you areperfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifyingto me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won'tyou?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see youagain.
"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossedout) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous andconsiderate--most--most----"
* * * * *
Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of BeekmanBrown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy andlooked at her.
She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mindevoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on theback of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him formany minutes now. Why was he so still?
She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,listening.
Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? HadClarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilatebig, strong young men. But _where_ was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, openingdoors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searchingmore quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quitesteady. There was no reply.
Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking upher rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet athand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of thecedar press and tore it wide open.
He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers andfurs, quite motionless.
She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windowsand, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youthacross the floor and into the fresh air.
"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, shetook hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercisewhich, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while hemade unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds becamearticulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. Heopened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands thatwere holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on thefloor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fearof death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips onthem.
Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to theheart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. Sheheard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It willnot harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; butunless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life isbut a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two peoplein all the world could be what we are and what we have been to eachother. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." Hepaused: "Dare we, Betty?"
Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; shesprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort torise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to meagain--not yet--not now."
But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turnedinstinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of achair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading herroses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by herslim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between thedoor and him, he spoke her name.
But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me toreply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
"Have I angered you?"
She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
"Do I look it?"
"I don't know."
"Nor I. Let me find out."
The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and handsglimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already sawahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. Shealready knew the end.
She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of thelast revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightenedinto two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sanklow, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in theworld.
She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her headwith an effort.
"Betty!"
Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressingthem to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of hislips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, shepressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no wordscame--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirsthe crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
The Green Mouse Page 11