“No, not that, Hal. But a fair fight is one thing and brutality is another. And then, too, they say you’d been drinking.”
He laughed and slid his hand about her arm.
“I give you my word of honor, Laura, all I’d had was just a little nip to take the sea-chill out of my bones. Come, now, look at me, and tell me if I look like a thug and a drunkard!”
He stopped in the deserted road, swung the girl round toward him, and laid his hands on her shoulders. Through the sheer thinness of her dress he felt the warmth of her. The low-cut V of her waist tempted him, dizzyingly, to plant a kiss there; but he held steady, and met her questioning eyes with a look that seemed all candor.
For a long moment Laura kept silence, searching his face. Far off, mournfully the bell-buoy sent in its blur of musical tolling across the moving sea-floor.
“Well, Laura, do I look a ruffian?” asked Hal again, smiling.
Laura’s eyes fell.
“I’m going to believe you, Hal, whatever people say,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it happened at all, but I suppose that’s the way of a man. You won’t do anything like that again, though, will you?”
“No—dear! Never!”
He drew her toward him, but she shook her head and pressed him back. Wise with understanding, from sources of deep instinct, he let her go. But now the fires in his eyes were burning more hotly. And as they once more started down along the road he cast on her a glance of quick and all-inclusive desire.
Silence a minute or two. Then Hal asked:
“Laura, have you ever been up Geyser Rock?”
“No. Why?” Her look was wondering.
“Let’s go!”
“That’s pretty rough climbing for a girl, isn’t it?”
“Not for a girl like you, Laura. You can make it, all right. And the view—oh, wonderful!” His enthusiasm quickened now that he saw her coming to his hand. “On a clear day you can see Cape Ann, to northward, and Cross Rip Light, to the south. See that big Norway pine right there? That’s where the path leads in. Come on, Laura!”
“I—I don’t know—”
“Afraid?”
“Not where you are, Hal, to protect me!”
He took her hand and drew her into the thick-wooded path, in under the cool green shadows, gold-sprinkled with the magic of the sun’s morris-dance of little elfin light-fairies. New strength seemed to flood him. His heart, beginning to beat quickly, flushed his face with hot blood. Something as yet unawakened, something potent, atavistic, something that had its roots twined far into the past, surged through his veins.
“Come on, Laura!” he repeated. “Come on, I’ll show you the way!”
Half an hour had passed before they stood upon the summit. They had perhaps lingered a bit more than needful, even with so many leaves and flowers to pick and study over; and, moreover, part of the way their progress had been really difficult. Hal had carried her in his arms up some of the more dangerous pitches—carried her quite as if she had been a child. The clinging of her arms to his shoulders, the warmth and yielding of her, the blowing of her hair across his face, the faint perfume of her alluring femininity had kindled fires that glowed from his eyes—eyes like the eyes of Alpheus Briggs in the old days when the Malay girl had been his captive. Yet still the atavisms in him had been stifled down. For Hal was sober now. And still the metes and bounds of civilization and of law had held the boy in leash.
Thus they had reached the summit. Far up past the diving-ledge they had made their way, and so had climbed to the little sheltered nook facing the sky.
“I think you’re wonderful, Laura!” Hal said as he pressed aside the bushes for her to enter the grassy sward. His voice was different now; his whole manner had subtly altered. No longer words of college argot came to his lips. “I think you’re really very wonderful! There’s not another girl in this town who’d take a risk like this!”
“It’s nothing, Hal,” she answered, looking up at him in the sunshine with a smile. “I told you before I couldn’t possibly be afraid where you were. How could I be afraid?”
“Lots of girls would be, all the same,” said he. “You’re just a wonder. Well, now, let’s go over there to the edge. I won’t let you fall. I want you to see the view. Just through that fringe of birches there you’ll see it.”
With quickened breath the girl peered down through the trees, at land and sea spread far below, while Hal’s arm held her from disaster. Branches and twigs had pulled at her, in the ascent. Her voile dress showed a tear or two; and all about her face the disordered hair strayed as the sea-breeze freshened over the top of Geyser. The boy kept silence that matched hers. A kind of vague, half-realized struggle seemed taking place in him—a conflict between the sense of chivalry, protecting this woman in his absolute power, and the old demon-clutch that reached from other days and other places.
Now, though his thoughts and hers lay far apart as the world’s poles, each felt something of the same mysterious oppression. For the first time quite alone together, up there aloft in that snug, sun-warm nest embowered in greenery, a kind of mystic and half-sensed languor seemed to envelop them; a yearning that is older than old Egypt; a wonder and a dream.
Hal’s arm tightened a very little ’round her body. She felt it tremble, and, wondering, understood that she, too, felt a little of that tremor in her own heart. She realized in a kind of half-sensed way that more dangers lay here than the danger of falling from the cliff. Yet in her soul she knew that she was glad to be there.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LAURA UNDERSTANDS
Thus she remained, holding to a silver birch, leaning out a little toward the chasm. Up from the depths echoed a gurgling roar as the white fury drenched and belabored the gray, sheer wall, then fell back, hissing.
For a moment Laura peered down, held by the boy’s encircling arm. She looked abroad upon the sunshining waters flecked with far, white boats and smudged with steamer-smoke. Then she breathed deep and lifted up her face toward the gold filigree of sun and leaf, and sighed:
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Hal! I never even guessed it could be anything like this!”
“Wonderful isn’t the name for it, Laura,” he answered. He pointed far. “See the lighthouse? And Cape Ann in the haze? And the toy boats? Everything and everybody’s a toy now except just you and me. We’re the only real people. I wish it were really so, don’t you?”
“Why, Hal? What would you do if it were?”
“Oh,” he answered with that heart-warming smile of his, “I’d take you in a yacht, Laura, away off to some of those wonderful places the Oriental poems tell about. We’d sail away ‘through the Silken Sea,’ and ‘Beyond the Wind,’ wherever that is. Wouldn’t you like to go there with me, dear?”
“Yes. But—”
“But what, Laura?” His lips were almost brushing the curve of her neck, where the wind-blown hair fell in loose ringlets. “But what?”
“I—I mustn’t answer that, Hal. Not now!”
“Why not now?”
“While you’re still in college, Hal? While there’s so much work and struggle still ahead of you?”
The boy frowned, unseen by her, for her eyes were fixed on the vague horizons beyond which, no doubt, lay Silken Seas and far, unknown places of enchantment beyond all winds whatsoever. Not thus did he desire to be understood by Laura. The whim of June shrinks from being mistaken for a thing of lifelong import. Laura drew back from the chasm and faced him with a little smile.
“It’s very wrong for people to make light of such things,” she said. Her look lay steadily upon his face. “While the sun is shining it’s so easy to say more than one means. And then, at the first cloud, the fancy dies like sunlight fading.”
“But this isn’t a mere fancy that I feel for you,” Hal persisted, sensing that he had lost ground with her. “I’ve had plenty of foolish ideas about girls. But this is different. It’s so very, very different every way!” His voice, that he well knew how to make
convincing, really trembled a little with the thrill of this adventuring.
“I wish I could believe you, Hal!”
He drew her toward him again. This time she did not resist. He felt the yielding of her sinuous young body, its warmth and promise of intoxication.
“You can believe me, Laura! Only trust in me!”
“I—I don’t know, Hal. I know what men are. They’re all so much alike.”
“Not all, dear! You ought to know me well enough to have confidence in me. Think of the long, long time we’ve known each other. Think of the years and years of friendship! Why, Laura, we’ve known each other ever since we were a couple of children playing on the beach, writing each other’s names in the sand—”
“For the next high tide to wash away!”
“But we’re not children now. There’s something in my heart no tide can obliterate!”
“I hope that’s true, Hal. But you’re not through college yet. Wait till you are. You’ve got to graduate with flying colors, and make your dear old grandfather the proudest man in the world, and be the wonderful success I know you’re going to be! And make me the happiest girl! You will, won’t you?”
“I’ll do anything in the world for you, Laura!” he exclaimed. His face, flushed with enkindling desire, showed no sign of shame or dejection. Laura knew nothing of his débâcle at the university. Of course she must soon know; but all that still lay in the future. And to Hal nothing mattered now but just the golden present with its nectar in the blossom and its sunshine on the leaf. He drew her a little closer.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “Do you really care?”
“Don’t ask me—yet!” she denied him, turning her face away. “Come, let’s be going down!”
“Why, we’ve only just come!”
“I know, but—”
“You needn’t be afraid of me!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t, are you, dear?”
“No more than I am of myself,” she answered frankly, while her throat and face warmed with blood that suddenly burned there. “We—really oughtn’t to be alone like this, Hal.”
He laughed and opened his arms to let her go. For a moment she stood looking up at him; then her eyes, too innocent to find the guile in his, smiled with pure-hearted affection.
“Forgive me, Hal!” said she. “I didn’t mean that. But, you know, when you put your arms round me like that—”
“I won’t do it again,” he answered, instinct telling him the bird would take fright if the trap seemed too tightly closed. He dropped his arms, the palms of his hands spread outward. “You see, when you tell me to let you go, I mind you?”
“Yes, like the good, dear boy you are!” she exclaimed with sudden, impulsive affection. She reached up, took his face in both hands and studied his eyes. He thought she was about to kiss him, and his heart leaped. He quivered to seize her, to burn his kisses on her lips, there in the leafy, sun-glimmering shade; but already Laura’s arms had fallen, and she had turned away, back toward the path that would lead them downward from this tiny enchanted garden to the common level of the world again.
“Come, Hal,” said she, “we must be going now!”
He nodded, his eyes glowering coals of desire, and followed after. Was the bird, then, going to escape his hand? A sinister look darkened his face; just such a look as had made Captain Briggs a brute when he had shouldered his way into his cabin aboard the Silver Fleece, to master the captive girl.
“Laura, wait a minute, please!” begged Hal.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, half-turning, a beautiful, white, gracious figure in the greenery—a very wood-nymph of a figure, sylvan, fresh, enwoven with life’s most mystic spell—the magic of youth.
“You haven’t seen half my little Mysterious Island up here!”
“Mysterious Island?” asked she, pleased by the fanciful whim. “You call it that, do you?”
“Yes, I’ve always called it that ever since I read Jules Verne, when I was only a youngster. I’ve never told anybody, though. I haven’t told that, or a hundred other imaginings.” He had come close to her again, had taken her by the arm, was drawing her away from the path and toward the little flower-enameled greensward among the boulders crowned with birch and pine. “You’re the only one that knows my secret, Laura. You’ll never, never tell, now, will you?”
“Never!” she answered, uneasiness dispelled by his frank air. “Do you imagine things like that, too, Hal? I thought I was the only one around here who ever ‘pretended.’ Are you a dreamer, too?”
“Very much a dreamer. Sit down here, Laura, and let me tell you some of my dreams.”
He sat down in the grass, and drew her down beside him. She yielded “half willing and half shy.” For a moment he looked at her with eyes of desire. Then, still holding her hand, he said:
“It was all fairies and gnomes up here when I first came. Fairyland in those boyhood days. After a while the fairies went away and pirates began to come; pirates and Indians and a wild crew. I was sometimes a victim, sometimes a member of the brotherhood. There’s treasure buried all ’round here. Those were the days when I was reading about Captain Kidd and Blackbeard. You understand?”
“Indeed I do! Go on!”
He laughed, as her mood yielded under the subtle mastery of his voice, his eyes.
“Oh, but it’s a motley crew we’ve been up here, the pirates and I!” said he, leaning still closer. “‘Treasure Island’ peopled the place with adventurers—Long John Silver, and Pew and the Doctor, and all the rest. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ swept them all away, all but Man Friday; and then the savages had to come. If there’s anything at all I haven’t suffered in the way of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals and being rescued just in the nick of time up here, really I don’t know what it is. And since I’ve grown up, though of course I can’t ‘pretend’ any more, I’ve always loved this place to day-dream in, and wonder in, about the thing that every man hopes will come to him some day.”
“And what’s that, Hal?” she asked in a lower voice.
“Love!” he whispered. “Love—and you!”
“Hal, is that really true?”
“Look at me, Laura, and you’ll know!”
She could not meet his gaze. Her eyes lowered. He drew his arm about her as she drooped a little toward him.
“Listen to me!” he commanded, masterfully lying. “There’s never been anybody but you, Laura. There never will be. You’ve been in all my dreams, by night, my visions by day, up here in fairyland!”
His words were coming impetuously now. In his eyes the golden flame of desire was burning hot.
“You’re everything to me! Everything! I’ve sensed it for a long time, but only in the last month or two I’ve really understood. It all came to me in a kind of revelation, Laura, one day when I was translating a poem from the Hindustani.”
“A poem, Hal?” The girl’s voice was tremulous. Her eyes had closed. Her head, resting on his shoulder, thrilled him with ardor; and in his nostrils the perfume of her womanhood conjured up shimmering dream-pictures of the Orient—strange lands that, though unseen, he mysteriously seemed to know. “Tell me the poem, dear!” Laura whispered. “A love-poem?”
“Such a love-poem! Listen, sweetheart! It’s a thousand years old, and it comes from the dim past to tell you what I feel for you. It runs this way:
“Belovèd, were I to name the blossoms of the spring,
And all the fruits of autumn’s bounteousness;
Were I to name all things that charm and thrill,
And earth, and Heaven, all in one word divine,
I would name thee!
“Had I the gold of Punjab’s golden land,
Had I as many diamonds, shining bright
As leaves that tremble in a thousand woods,
Or sands along ten thousand shining seas;
Had I as many pearls of shifting hue
As blades of grass in fields of the whole world,
Or stars that shine on the broa
d breast of night,
I’d give them all, a thousand, thousand times,
To make thee mine!”
For a minute, while Hal watched her with calculation, Laura kept silence. Then she looked up at him, dreamy-eyed, and smiled.
“That’s wonderful, Hal. I only wish you meant it!”
“You know I do! I want you, Laura—God, how much! You’re all I need to make my fairyland up here a heaven!”
“What—what do you mean, Hal? Are you asking me to—to be your wife?”
His face contracted, involuntarily, but he veiled his true thought with a lie. What mattered just a lie to gain possession of her in this golden hour of sunshine?
“Yes, yes, of course!” he cried, drawing her to his lips in a betraying kiss—a kiss, to her, culminant with wonder and mystic with a good woman’s aspiration for a life of love and service—a kiss, to him, only a trivial incident, lawless, unbridled. At heart he cursed the girl’s pure passion for him. Not this was what he wanted; and dimly, even through the flame of his desire, he could see a hundred complications, perils. But now the lie was spoken—and away with to-morrow!
Again he kissed the girl, sensing, in spite of his desire, the different quality of her returning kiss. Then she smiled up at him, and with her hand smoothed back the thick, black hair from his forehead.
“It’s all so wonderful, Hal!” she whispered fondly. “I can’t believe it’s true. But it is true, isn’t it? Even though we’ve got to wait till you get through college. I’m willing to. I love you enough, Hal, to wait forever. And you will, too, won’t you?”
“Of—of course I will!”
“And it’s really, really true? It’s not just a fairy dream of wonderland, up here, that will vanish when we go down to the world again?”
“No, no, it’s all true, Laura,” he was forced to answer, baffled and at a loss. Not at all was this adventure developing as he had planned it. Why, Laura was taking it seriously! Laura was acting like a child—a foolish, preposterous child! The web that he had hoped to spread for her undoing had, because of her own trusting confidence, been tangled all about himself.
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