CHAPTER X
Late in the afternoon of the day before Louise and Laura were to sail,John Blythe, having fled his office and a great mass of work at anunusually early hour and without any conscientious scruples whatever,strode up and down, back and forth, the entire length of hisapartment--barring the kitchen--many dozens of times. He subjected hishair to an absurd hand-tousling as he paced; he kicked up corners of therugs and then kicked them into place again on the next trip back; hestopped at tables to pick up books, glancing at their titles withunseeing eyes and then tossing them back on the tables with a bang; oncehe picked up an ordinary match-safe that he had owned for years, andcaught himself holding it out in front of him and staring curiously atit--but really far, far beyond it--as if he had never before clapped aneye upon it, and, emerging for a moment from that trance, he replacedthe match-safe on the table with a flickering smile.
Noticing all of which from the kitchen out of the corners of hersolicitous and suspicious eyes, Sarah became worried. Sarah was thestout, grey-wooled colored woman who managed, not to say ruled, JohnBlythe's bachelor establishment, including John Blythe himself. She hadbeen Blythe's boyhood nurse, and, never having been entirely out oftouch with him through all of his early struggles, she had returned tohim when he had won his way and set up his solitary Lares and Penates.She was highly privileged. There were times, indeed, when she exercisedthe actual veto power; as for example, when Blythe wanted to shift tooearly into lighter-weight linen, or sought to rush off to an appointmentwithout his breakfast, and so on.
Now, polishing a glass to give her hands something to do, she appearedat the door of the kitchen, completely filling it, and waited for Blytheto stride back that way. So intense was his absorption that he did notsee her until she coughed remindfully. Then he looked up and ather--still without seeing her, as she well knew.
"Yo' all ain't sick, is yo' Mistuh John?" inquired Sarah, gazing at himslantwise and showing a good deal of the whites of her eyes.
Blythe didn't hear her. He gazed right through her, and, thence on,through the rear wall of the kitchen. After quite a pause, however, itwas borne in upon his consciousness that she had said something.
"How is that, Sarah?" he asked her, coming to a standstill.
"Ah said, Is yo' tuk sick, suh?" repeated Sarah. "Dis heah crazy,triflin', no-'count N'Yawk weathuh is 'nough tuh mek anybody tuhn ovuhan' die, an' Ah got de misuhy in mah haid mahse'f. Is yo' got any fevuh,suh? Yo' face looks raid on de tips o' de cheeks."
Blythe, only half-hearing, felt tentatively of the "raid" spots on hischeeks, which, as a matter of fact, were decidedly flushed. Then hethrust his hands into his pockets and resumed his up-and-down pacing,saying:
"Oh, I'm all right, Sarah. Not a bit under the weather. Just--er--fixingup a case, that's all."
Sarah, polishing away at the glass, gazed intently at his back as hewalked away. Then she slowly turned and re-entered the kitchen,muttering to herself:
"Can't tell _me_ no sich conjingulatin' stuff--'fixin' up a case.' Decase dat boy is fixin' up weahs petticoats an' puffs an' maybe one o'dese heah D'rectory dresses--Ah reckon Ah can tell de symptoms!"
Wherein, as to the main point of her suspicion, the sagacious Sarah wasexactly right.
John Blythe was indubitably, whole-heartedly, whole-mindedly in lovewith Louise Treharne. He knew that. He had known it for some time. That,however, in accordance with a by no means uncommon rule in such cases,was, he considered, an exceedingly unimportant factor in the problem.The problem, briefly stated, was this: What did Louise Treharne think ofhim? He remembered now, with impatience, his words to Louise in thePark, when he had hoped that she might accept his "devotion as a man,"and her reply. His "devotion as a man?" That, Blythe reflected, mightmean anything, especially to a girl placed in a difficult position and,as a natural consequence, in need of all the devotion of any sort thatmight be offered her. Had Louise understood his words as he had meantthem? Blythe, with the customary self-depreciating pessimism of thelover, was afraid she had not. He reproached himself for not having madehis meaning more plain--another grisly pastime in which love-possessedmales indulge for the purpose of making themselves even more acutelymiserable. Immediately atop of this regret that he had not been moreexplicit, he flared at himself and decided that he would have been aninexcusable scoundrel had he done anything of the sort. It would havebeen taking a mean and an unworthy advantage of her in her distress.
Then he pondered the few words of hers that had so thrilled him. What,after all, had they amounted to? She had said that she was ready toaccept his devotion. What of that? Devotion, how? Devotion, from whom?Why, her guardian-to-be, of course! How else could her words possibly beviewed by a sane man? What right had he to seek to torture her simpleutterance into anything more meaningful, more solacing to his wretchedself-esteem? At this point of his cogitations Blythe became quiteindignant with himself.
Here he was (he reflected, figuratively hiding his head), a man ofthirty-two who had been brushing elbows with the world's people nearlyall his life, and wearing a few more than the average number of scars toshow for it--here he was, actually thinking of pouncing upon a girl ofnineteen, who had scarcely forgotten the discipline of school; actuallycontemplating the imbecility (why, worse than that--the crime!) ofhurling himself and his love at her, before she had so much as had achance to meet any other man or men, before, in fact, she had had even achance to turn around--for hadn't he (accidentally or not) begun tovaguely form these idiotic notions on the very day she was leavingschool? And what would be her natural implication? That he was seekingto take advantage of her inexperience and her helplessness, solely onthe strength of his being her legal guardian!
He had been all wrong (he mentally maundered on) the other day atLaura's when he had attributed Louise's perfectly proper restraint withhim to her keener realization of her mother's ostracized status in itsbearing upon her own position. What had Louise's mother's status to dowith Louise? And hadn't he been a complaisantly self-satisfied numbskullto suppose that this was the reason for Louise's obvious aloofness onthat day! The truth was (still he drivelled on, never sparing himself)that she had come to a perfectly proper realization of how presumptuoushe, Blythe, had been in his attitude toward her, and she had distinctlymeant to indicate to him in an unmistakable manner that any aspirationsof that kind on his part might as well be immediately suppressed,inasmuch as they were foredoomed to fail. True (taking again for themoment his own case as plaintiff), the love of any reasonably honest andfairly successful man for a woman ought to be at least worthconsidering, and Louise Treharne was the first woman he had whollyloved; other little affairs, scattered through the flown years, had beenmere inconsequentialities, the mutual amusements (and so mutuallyunderstood) of an hour, a day, a week, perhaps, at most, a month. Threemonths before Blythe would have smiled, if he had not laughed outright,if any smirking imp had whispered to him that the time was quite closeat hand when he would be shamefully neglecting his decidedly importantpractice because of his work-disqualifying absorption in thoughts, notto say dreams, of a woman. And yet here he was, supposedly aself-contained, level-headed man of the law, a man rigorously trainedin the austere school of experience--here he was, sighing like afurnace, drawing meaningless pictures on blotting pads when he shouldhave been preparing briefs, forgetting his meals, to Sarah's profoundworriment and scandalization, and walking the world in a veritableschoolboy trance! Blythe, in lucid moments, caught himself smilinginwardly at the thought of it. Was he sorry that such a thing had cometo be? He quickly beat down that trivial question, tentatively submittedby his subconsciousness. Schoolboy, furnace-sigher, sentimentalist,imbecile, what not--he was glad!
Ceaselessly pacing the apartment, then, and mulling the matter over,first condemning himself for his presumptuousness and then wondering ina blank sort of a way if Louise herself took this view of his attitude,Blythe found himself on the horns of his life's dilemma. It would not beso bad, he thought with a catch at the throat,
if she were not goingaway; but the thought of the wide Atlantic rolling between them causedhis heart to thump against his ribs and incited him to rumple his hairstill more outrageously.
At length, seized by an idea, he walked into his study, closed the doorafter him, sat down at his desk telephone, and called up Laura. Verypromptly he heard her musically rising "Well?"
"Greetings, Laura," he said. "This is your insane friend, John Blythe."
"Greetings, Deserter Blythe," replied Laura. "You have not been to seeus for an age. And how long have you been insane?"
"For several months, I believe. I am hardly a competent witness as tothat."
"I am so distressed to hear it--when your career and--and everythinglooks so promising, too!"
"'Everything?' Define 'everything.'"
"I haven't the gift of being specific. You have. What, then, is the mostconvincing manifestation of your insanity?"
"I am thinking of taking a great chance; prematurely, and thereforeinsanely."
"You are talking rationally enough. Perhaps your madness is a sort ofrecurrent mania, with lucid intervals?"
"No, there are no lucid intervals. At this moment I am obsessed by afear of the perils of the sea."
"That is odd, considering that you are not going to sea. Are you?"
"No; but you are--and she. Is she with you now?"
"No; she is in her room writing a letter to her father, the first shehas ever written to him. A little sad, is it not? I am in my dressingroom, quite comfortable, thank you, with my elbows on my writing desk;and so there is no danger of interruption. What is it you wish to tellme, John? Or ask me, perhaps?"
"It is something both to tell you and to ask you. In about an hour fromnow I want to ask Louise if she will marry me. That's the telling. Theasking is this: Would that be a fair thing to do?"
"Such Druid-like deliberation! You speak, John, as if you were leadingup to asking one for a cup of tea!"
"Do I? Well, I am mindful of this somewhat open medium of communication.Believe me, I feel anything but deliberate. But my question: Would it befair?"
"How could it possibly be viewed as anything else but fair?"
"Because the circumstances are unusual. In the first place, I am almostthe only man she knows--that she has had a chance to know. Then, I amher guardian. Would it not be rather presumptuous, not to say downrightunfair, for me to take advantage of these things?"
"That, I think, is what might be called an obliquely conscientious view,John."
"Then the disparity in our ages."
"The difference between nineteen and thirty-two hardly constitutes acase of May and December. Another wholly trivial consideration ofyours. Thirteen years' difference--and, by the way, haven't I heard youaffirm that thirteen is your lucky number?"
"Finally, I haven't the least imaginable reason for supposing that shehas ever thought of me in that respect."
"Haven't you? How perfectly unimportant! Isn't that quite the rule? Howmany men ever believed they were considered as possibilities until theyendured the travail of finding out?"
"You are riotously optimistic this afternoon. I wish I were in the samehumor. I think I shall be in need of a mood like that very soon."
"What a glorious opportunity for me to work in that antique bromidiom,'Faint heart ne'er won,' and so forth. But I shan't. In an hour, yousaid?"
"About an hour."
"Don't expect to see me. I am horribly busy packing silver and things.Perhaps I may see you a moment before you leave. If not, then at thesteamer in the morning."
"I wish I had words to tell you what a trump you are, Laura."
"I wish I had words to tell you how delighted I am, John."
"Not prematurely delighted, I hope, good friend. At this moment I findmyself believing that the perils of the sea are nothing to certainperils of the land. Goodbye."
"Goodbye. Don't lose confidence in your lucky number--even if you docall it a 'disparity!'"
* * * * *
It would have been the obvious thing for Laura, after her telephoneconversation with Blythe, to at least intimate to Louise that she wasupon the verge of an event quite universally and correctly deemed ofconsiderable importance in a young woman's life--her first proposal.Most women in Laura's place would have done so. But Laura's dislike forthe obvious was almost a part of her religion. She had none of thebenevolent marplot in her composition. She made it a point never tointerfere with symmetrical sequences. Her own unhappy marital experiencehad by no means bereft her of sentiment; and she felt that a girl aboutto receive an offer of marriage should be entitled to enjoy thesurprise--and in this case she knew it would be a surprise--inhering toso important an occasion. So Laura, although she visited Louise in herroom after her telephone talk with Blythe, said nothing about it; butshe craftily intimated, in order that Louise might look her best, thatshe would not be greatly surprised if Blythe were to drop in. Theintimation was sufficient. Louise, a very human woman, promptlyproceeded, as soon as Laura returned to her own quarters, to correcteven her most trifling disarrays; so that when Blythe (astonishinglyconforming to Laura's prophecy, Louise thought) arrived she looked verylovely in a one-piece dress of Quaker-grey rajah, with a band of greyvelvet, which somehow suggested to Blythe the insignia of a princess,around her wonderful hair. She was at the piano, striving, soft pedaldown, to extract musical sense from Strauss' "Salome" (impossible task!)when Blythe came in.
He noticed her grey dress at once.
"It is a comfort to have such a tractable, obedient ward," he said,studying the dress approvingly when she rose to greet him. "Here, alittle less than a week after I threatened to insist upon your adoptingthe Quaker garb, I find that you've voluntarily assumed it--the color,at any rate. I know some guardians who would envy me."
Louise, quickly at ease--which had been Blythe's purpose in beginningwith persiflage--smiled with a woman's usual deprecation of acomplimented costume.
"Seeing that I have had this dress for more than a year," she said, "myobedience must have become an unconscious habit before I knew you."
Blythe, a trained hand at sparring, took advantage of the opening.
"Before you knew me, perhaps, Louise," he said. "But not before I knewyou. Aren't you forgetting that I knew you when you still believed inKris Kringle and Hans Andersen?" He sighed with rather too smiling anassumption of melancholy. "That reflection, I confess, makes me feelpretty aged."
"Does it?" asked Louise. "You forget that, if it makes you feel aged, itshould make me feel at least middle aged, don't you? And I believe inSanta Claus and in fairy tales yet, I think." Then, resuming the firstthread: "It seems singular that there should have been a time when youknew me and I didn't know you; that is, to remember you. For I didn'tremember you at all on the train that day. Come to think of it, youdidn't remember me, either, until you were reminded--that telegram, youknow. An odd chance, was it not?"
"So odd," said Blythe, "that I catch myself wondering what my life hadbeen before and what it would be now if--" He paused, already gropingfor words;--"if I had missed that train."
Louise, far from missing his meaning, grasped it so acutely that Blythecaught the tell-tale color mounting to her face.
"And now I am wondering," he went on, gazing for comfort at his nails,"since we are on the subject, whether my having known you for such along, long time confers upon me the privilege of--well, of beingentirely candid with you?"
"I should expect candor, in any case--from you," said Louise, tryingdesperately to concentrate her mind upon something quite matter-of-factin order to keep her color down.
"Why, particularly, from me?" said Blythe, grasping at straws.
"Oh, I can hardly say--because you are the embodiment of candor, orcandor itself," said Louise. "Aren't you?"
"I don't know," he answered as if really in doubt about it--as he was."It seems to me that if I actually possessed that quality in such a highdegree, I should have proved it to you, Louise, befo
re this. Proved it,for example, in the Park the other afternoon."
Louise knew quite well what he meant. Moreover, it never occurred to herto pretend that she did not know.
"Are you sure that you did not?" she asked him, flushing, but with adirect enough gaze.
"I am afraid that I did not," said Blythe, nervously rising and facingher. "Perhaps it was as well, too. For the first time in my life I am inmore than one mind as to whether a certain sort of candor is alwaysdesirable."
Having thus plunged into the domain of the purely ethical, Blythe couldscarcely have expected an offhand reply. As a matter of fact, he got noreply at all.
"What I am striving to say, I suppose, Louise," he went on, takinghimself a little better in hand, "is that, after you sail tomorrow, I amgoing to be more lonesome than I have ever been in my life before."
"Is that so hard to say?" Louise asked.
"Not when it is rewarded by so helpful an answer," said Blythe,conscious of a throbbing at his temples.
"I do not find it in the least hard to say that I shall miss you," saidLouise, frankly enough; nevertheless, to give herself countenance, shepicked up from the table a little carved ivory tiger and examined itwith great apparent curiosity.
"Miss me for--for my guardianly wisdom and ghostly counsel?" saidBlythe, his wide smile visibly nervous. Then, when there was a pause, hepressed the point: "Is that it, Louise?"
Her silence did not imply affirmation, and, the throbbing at his templesincreasing, Blythe knew it. He bent over her chair, gently but firmlyremoved the ivory tiger from her hands, took one of them in his own, andsaid:
"Listen to me, Louise. I am fearful, if I do not plunge ahead, ofbecoming entangled in a weave of subtleties. I don't want to beincoherent, even if my excuse would be that I became so while taking adesperate chance. I haven't the least idea what you think of me--I don'tmean as your guardian and interested friend, but as a man verysusceptible to human impulses. But I am not debarred from finding out.And I should have no right to ask you such a question before tellingyou, as I tell you now, that I love you." She rose as he spoke, her handstill tightly grasped in his, and their eyes mingled. "You have set anew light to glow within me. I am conscious of a new propulsion that Inever knew before--that I did not believe existed until I met you as awoman grown. It means everything to me--the world and all. I do not knowthat I am fair in saying this to you. I am incapable of judging. I doknow that I want to be fair. After all, there is no unfairness in mysimply telling you that I love you. It would be different, I think--butyou are to judge of that--if I were to ask you to marry me--yet. Butthat, Louise, is what I came here to ask you."
There is no eloquence, however ornately phrased, to compare with that ofa man or a woman who is altogether in earnest. Louise thrilled under thequiet, but, as she knew, deeply-felt words of this man whose clear-cut,rugged face, as he spoke, became positively handsome. She placed animpulsive hand on his arm.
"I told you that I should miss you," she said haltingly, but with awomanly sweetness that moved him like a harp-chord. "And I could notmiss you if I did not care for you? I do care for you--as much as Iesteem and honor you; and that is a great deal. I have not yet askedmyself, I think, if I love you. It may be that I do. If to miss youdreadfully when I do not see you every day--and, until now, I had notseen you for nearly a week!--is--is that, then perhaps I--"
Blythe, fighting, as if in actual conflict with something tangible, thetemptation to take her in his arms, grasped her other hand. His face wasvery close to hers, and her curved, girlish lips sent his blood swirlingwith their maddening proximity. But he held himself in a vise, knowingthat the hour had not yet struck for their contact of lips.
"It is enough that you care for me, Louise," he said, hoarsely fervid;and he felt as weak as a man who has successfully come through a greatperil. "I could ask no more; I ask no more. Your caring for me is, Iknow now, more than I ever hoped or dreamed. It is enough--for now. Itis a start." He smiled vaguely at the homeliness of his phrase. "Iscarcely know what I am saying, Louise. But it doesn't much matter whata man says, does it, when he is happier than he has ever before been inhis life?"
She raised the hand which had been resting on his arm and took hold,with thumb and forefinger, of a button of his coat. The unconsciouslittle intimacy set his pulses to throbbing again.
"I shall know when I come back," she said to him with a simplicity thatwas almost quaint, "whether--whether my caring for you is more than justthat. I believe that it is, but--but there are reasons--you know whatthey are--that restrain me from owning it, even if I knew positively;which I do not, yet, John."
John!
A quiver ran through the man, which, as she still was unconsciouslytoying with the button of his coat, she could not help but feel.
"Louise," he said, bending so close to her that he felt her cool,fragrant breath upon his cheek, "I want you to call me that; but notagain now. There must be an interval--tonight, say--for me to becomeused to it. I warn you of my irresponsibility if you call me that againbefore tomorrow. And I am not minding, my dear, about what you do notknow positively. Neither am I presuming upon it. You have made me happyenough. Everything else can wait. You are not committed. I wouldn'tdream of holding you committed. Your life is still all your unpromisedown. I tell you that it is enough for me now--it will be enough for mehereafter, if nothing else is to be--to know that I am even cared for,have been cared for, by a woman like you. I am going now. My heart israging with love and honor for you; I want to get out underneath thesky; feel the cold upon my face so that I shall know I am not dreaming.Goodbye, dear, until I send you away from me--send you away, not withwretchedness and despair in my heart, but with hope, and light, andhappiness--tomorrow!" and he pressed her hands, gazed at her with wide,kindling eyes, and went reeling from the room, as one who seeks a securefooting after many days at sea.
Laura, by design, was standing in the doorway of her sitting room whenhe passed unsteadily out.
"Well?" she said to him. "Did the 'disparity' number win, John?"
He stopped, gazed at her for an instant unseeingly, then shook himselftogether and grasped her outstretched hands.
"I may be a John o' Dreams, dear friend," he said to her huskily. "Infact, I am sure that I am, right now. But it is worth a little deliriumto find that, after all, I am not actually insane," and he strode out,Laura watching him with a dimpling face.
After a while Laura went in and found Louise standing musing before awindow, seeming to watch the twilight settling upon the vaguely greeningPark. Laura threw an arm around the girl's shoulder and kissed her.
"Did he tell you, dear?" Louise asked, turning.
"Not in words," replied Laura. "But one surmises. The air has beencharged with it. I know, of course, that he has been worshipping you asdid the shepherd of old a distant star. And you, heart of hearts?"
"I seem, somehow, to have been loving him all my life," said Louise.
"Did you tell him so?" asked Laura.
"I am afraid that he, too, surmises," said Louise, smiling shyly.
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