He was man enough to understand that she did not care for him that way, soldier enough to face his fate, keen enough, long since, to understand that Quarren meant more to the woman he cared for than any other man.
Cool, self-controlled, he watched every chance for an opening in his own behalf. No good chance presented itself. So he made one and offered himself with a dignity and simplicity that won Strelsa’s esteem but not her heart.
After that he stayed on, not hoping, but merely because he liked her. Later he remained because of a vague instinct that he might as well be on hand while Strelsa went through the phase with Langly Sprowl. But he was a wise man, and weeks ago he had seen the inevitable outcome. Also he had divined Quarren’s influence in the atmosphere, had watched for it, sensed it, seen it very gradually materialise in a score of acts and words of which Strelsa herself was totally unconscious.
Then, too, the afternoon before, he had encountered Sprowl riding furiously with reeking spurs, after his morning’s gallop with Strelsa; and he had caught a glimpse of the man’s face; and that was enough.
So there was really nothing to keep him in America any longer. He wanted to get back to his own kind — into real life again, among people of real position and real elegance, where live topics were discussed, where live things were attempted or accomplished, where whatever was done, material or immaterial, was done thoroughly and well.
There was not one thing in America, now, to keep him there — except a warm and kindly affection for his little friend Chrysos Lacy with whom he had been thrown so constantly at Witch-Hollow.
Strolling across the lawn, he thought of her with warm gratitude. In her fresh and unspoiled youth he had found relief from a love unreturned, a cool, sweet antidote to passion, a balm for loneliness most exquisite and delightful.
The very perfection of comradeship it had been, full of charming surprises as well as a rest both mental and physical. For Chrysos made few demands on his intellect — that is, at first she had made very few. Later — within the past few weeks, he remembered now his surprise to find how much there really was to the young girl — and that perhaps her age and inexperience alone marked any particular intellectual chasm between them.
Thinking of these things he sauntered on across country, and after a while came to the grounds of the Ledwith place, wondering a little that a note from Mrs. Sprowl the evening before should have requested him to present himself at so early an hour.
A man took his card, returned presently saying that Mrs. Ledwith had not yet risen, but that Mrs. Sprowl would receive him.
Conducted to the old lady’s apartments he was ushered into a dressing-room done in pastel tints, and which hideously set forth the colouring and proportions of Mrs. Sprowl in lace bed-attire, bolstered up in a big cane-backed chair.
“I’m ill,” she said hoarsely; “I have been ill all night — sitting here because I can’t lie down. I’d strangle if I lay down.”
He held her hand in his firm, sun-tanned grasp, looking down compassionately:
“Awf’lly sorry,” he said as though he meant it.
The old lady peered up at him:
“You’re sailing to-morrow?”
“To-morrow,” he said, gravely.
“When do you return?”
“I have made no plans to return.”
“You mean to say that you’ve given up the fight?”
“There was never any fight,” he said.
Mrs. Sprowl scowled:
“Has that heartless girl refused you again, Sir Charles?”
“Dear Mrs. Sprowl, you are too much my partisan. Mrs. Leeds knows better than you or I where her heart is really inclined. And you and I can scarcely question her decision.”
“Do you think for a moment it is inclined toward that miserable nephew of mine?” she demanded.
“No,” he said.
“Then — do you mean young Quarren?”
“I think I do,” he said smiling.
“I’m glad of it!” she said angrily. “If it was not to be you I’m glad that it may be Rix. It — it would have killed me to see her fall into Langly’s hands.... I’m ill on account of him — his shocking treatment of me last evening. It was a brutal scene — one of those terrible family scenes! — and he threatened me — cursed me — —”
She closed her eyes a moment, trembling all over her fat body; then they snapped open again with the old fire undiminished:
“Before I’ve finished with Langly he’ll realise who has hold of him.... But I’m not well. I’m going to Carlsbad. Shall I see you there?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“You are going back into everything, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“To forget her, I suppose.”
He said pleasantly:
“I do not wish to forget her. One prefers to think often of such a woman as Mrs. Leeds. There are not many like her. It is something of a privilege to have cared for her, and the memory is not — painful.”
Mrs. Sprowl glared at him; and, as she thought of Langly, of Strelsa, of the collapse of her own schemes, the baffled rage began to smoulder in her tiny green eyes till they dwindled and dwindled to a pair of phosphorescent sparks imbedded in fat.
“I did my best,” she said hoarsely. “I’m not defeated if you’re not. Say the word and I’ll start something—” And suddenly she remembered Langly’s threat involving the memory of a dead man whose only son now stood before her.
She knew that her words were vain, her boast empty; she knew there was nothing more for her to do — nothing even that Sir Charles might do toward winning Strelsa without also doing the only thing in the world which could really terrify herself. Even at the mere thought of it she trembled again, and fear forced her to speech born of fear:
“Perhaps it is best for you to go,” she faltered. “Absence is a last resort.... It may be well to try it — —”
He bent over and took her hand:
“There is no longer even a last resort,” he said kindly. “I am quite reconciled. She is different from any other woman; ours was and is a high type of friendship.... Sometimes, lately, I have wondered whether it ever could have been any more than that to either of us.”
Mrs. Sprowl looked up at him, her face so altered and softened that his own grew graver.
“You are like your father,” she said unsteadily. “It was my privilege to share his friendship.... And his friendship was of that kind — high-minded, generous, pure — asking no more than it gave — no more than it gave — —”
She laid her cheek against Sir Charles’s hands, let it rest there an instant, then averting her face motioned his dismissal.
He went with a pleasant and gentle word or two; she sat bolt upright among her silken pillows, lips grimly compressed, but on her tightly closed eyelids tears trembled.
Sir Charles drew a long deep breath in the outer sunshine, filling his lungs with the fragrant morning air. Hedges still glistened with spiders’ tapestry; the birds which sulked all day in their early moulting-fever still sang a little in the cool of the morning, and he listened to them as he walked while his quiet, impartial eye ranged over the lovely rolling country, dew-washed and exquisite under a cloudless sky.
Far away he saw the chimneys of Langly Sprowl’s sprawling country-seat, smoke rising from two, but he saw nothing of the angry horseman of the day before. Once, in the distance on the edge of a copse, he saw a man creeping about on all-fours, evidently searching for some lost object in the thicket. Looking back from a long way off he saw him still searching on his hands and knees, and wondered at his patience, half inclined to go back and aid him.
But about that time one of Sprowl’s young bulls came walking over toward him with such menacing observations and deportment that Sir Charles promptly looked about him for an advance to the rear-front — a manœuvre he had been obliged to learn in the late Transvaal unpleasantness.
And at the same moment he saw Chrysos Lacy.
There was no time for explanations; clearly she was too frightened to stir; so he quietly picked her up on his advance to the rear-front, carrying her in the first-aid style approved by the H. B. M. medical staff, and scaled the five-bar fence as no barrier had ever been scaled at Aldershot or Olympia by any warrior in khaki or scarlet tunic.
“Th-thank you,” said Chrysos, unwinding her arms from the baronet’s neck as the bull came trotting up on the other side of the fence and bellowed at them. Not the slightest atom of fright remained, only a wild-rose tint in her cheeks. She considered the bull, absently, patted a tendril of hair into symmetry; but the breeze loosened it again, and she let it blow across her cheek.
“We should have been in South Africa together,” said Sir Charles. “We manœuvre beautifully as a unit.”
The girl laughed, then spying more wild strawberries — the quest of which had beguiled her into hostile territory — dropped on her knees and began to explore.
The berries were big and ripe — huge drops of crimson honey hanging heavily, five to a stalk. The meadow-grass was red with them, and Sir Charles, without more ado, got down on all-fours and started to gather them with all the serious and thorough determination characteristic of that warrior.
“You’re not to eat any, yet,” said Chrysos.
“Of course not; they’re for your breakfast I take it,” he said.
“For yours.”
He straightened up on his knees: “For mine?”
“Certainly.”
“You didn’t go wandering afield at this hour to pick wild strawberries for my breakfast!” he said incredulously.
“Yes, I did,” said the girl; and continued exploring, parting the high grass-stems to feel for and detach some berry-loaded stem.
“Do you know,” he said, returning to his labours, “that I am quite overcome by your thought of me?”
“Why? We are friends.... And it is to be your last breakfast.”
“‘And it is to be your last breakfast.’”
There was not the slightest tremor in her voice, but her pretty face was carefully turned away so that if there was to be anything to notice in the features he could not notice it.
“I’ll miss you a lot,” he said.
“And I you, Sir Charles.”
“You’ll be over, I suppose.”
“I suppose so.”
“That will be jolly,” he said, sitting back on his heels to rest, and to watch her — to find pleasure in her youth and beauty as she moved gracefully amid the fragrant grasses, one little sun-tanned hand clasping a great bouquet of the crimson fruit which nodded heavily amid tufts of trefoil leaves.
In the barred shadow of the pasture-fence they rested from their exertions, she rearranging their bouquets of berries and tying them fast with grass-stems.
“It has been a pleasant comradeship,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You have found it so, too?”
“Yes.”
She appeared to be so intent, so absorbed on her bouquet tying that he involuntarily leaned nearer to watch her. A fragrance faintly fresh seemed to grow in the air around him as the hill-breeze stirred her hair. If it came from the waving grass-tops, or the honeyed fruit or from her hair, or perhaps from those small, smooth hands, he did not know.
For a long while they sat there without speaking, she steadily intent on her tying. Then, while still busy with a cluster, her slim fingers hesitated, wavered, relaxed; her hands fell to her lap, and she remained so, head bent, motionless.
After a moment he spoke, but she made no answer.
Through and through him shot the thrilling comprehension of that exquisite avowal, childlike in its silent directness, charming in its surprise. A wave of tenderness and awe mounted within him, touching his bronzed cheeks with a deeper colour.
“If you will, Chrysos,” he said in a still voice.
She lifted her head and looked directly at him, and in her questioning gaze there was nothing of fear — merely the question.
“I can’t bear to have you go,” she said.
“I can’t go — alone.”
“Could you — care for me?”
“I love you, Chrysos.”
Her eyes widened in wonder:
“You — you don’t love me — do you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I do. Will you marry me, Chrysos?”
Her fascinated gaze met his in silence. He drew her close to his shoulder; she laid her cheek against it.
CHAPTER XV
Toward the end of the first week in August Strelsa wrote to Quarren:
“Sometimes I wonder whether you realise how my attitude toward everything is altering. Things which seemed important no longer appear so in the sunlit tranquillity of this lovely place. Whatever it is that seems to be changing me in various ways is doing it so subtly, yet so inexorably, that I scarcely notice any difference in myself until some morning I awake with such a delicious sense of physical well-being and such a mental happiness apropos of nothing at all except the mere awaking into the world again, that, thinking it over, I cannot logically account for it.
“Because, Rix, my worldly affairs seem to be going from bad to worse. I know it perfectly well, yet where is that deadly fear? — where is the dismay, the alternate hours of panic and dull lethargy — the shrinking from a future which only yesterday seemed to threaten me with more than I had strength to endure — menace me with what I had neither the will nor the desire to resist?
“Gone, my friend! And I am either a fool or a philosopher, but whichever I am, I am a happy one.
“I wish to tell you something. Last winter when they fished me out of my morbid seclusion, I thought that the life I then entered upon was the only panacea for the past, the only oblivion, the only guarantee for the future.
“Now I suppose I have gone to the other extreme, because, let me tell you what I’ve done. Will you laugh? I can’t help it if you do; I’ve bought a house! What do you think of that?
“The owner took back a mortgage, but I don’t care. I paid so very little for it, and thirty acres of woods and fields — and it is a darling house! — built in the eighteenth century and not in good repair, but it’s mine! mine! mine! — and it may need paint and plumbing and all sorts of things which perhaps make for human happiness and perhaps do not. But I tell you I really don’t care.
“And how I did it was this: I took what they offered for my laces and jewels — about a third of their value — but it paid every debt and left me with enough to buy my sweet old house up here.
“But that’s not all! I’ve rented my town house furnished for a term of five years at seven thousand dollars a year! Isn’t it wonderful?
“And that is not all, either. I am going into business, Rix! Don’t dare laugh. Jim has made an arrangement with an independent New York florist, and I’m going to grow flowers under glass for the Metropolitan market.
“And, if I succeed, I may try fruits outdoors and in. My small brain is humming with schemes, millions of them. Isn’t it heavenly?
“Besides, from my second-story windows I shall be able to see Molly’s chimneys above the elms. And Molly is going to remain here all winter, because, Rix — and this is a close secret — a little heir or heiress is coming to make this House of Wycherly ‘an habitation enforced’ — and a happier habitation than it has been since they bought it.
“So you see I shall have neighbours all winter — two neighbours, for Mrs. Ledwith is wretchedly ill and her physicians have advised her to remain here all winter. Poor child — for she is nothing else, Rix — I met her for the first time when I went to call on Mrs. Sprowl. She’s so young and so empty-headed, just a shallow, hare-brained, little thing who had no more moral idea of sin than a humming-bird — nor perhaps has she any now except that the world has hurt her and broken her wings and damaged her plumage; and the sunlight in which she sparkled for a summer has faded to a chill gray twilight! — Oh, Rix, it is really pitiful; and somehow I can’t
seem to remember whether she was guilty or not, because she’s so ill, so broken — lying here amid the splendour of her huge house ——
“You know Mrs. Sprowl is on her way to Carlsbad. You haven’t written me what took place in your last interview with her; and I’ve asked you, twice. Won’t you tell me?
“Langly, thank goodness, never disturbs us. And, Rix, do you know that he has never been to call on Mary Ledwith? He keeps to his own estate and nobody even sees him. Which is all I ask at any rate.
“So Sir Charles called on you and told you about Chrysos? Isn’t Sir Charles the most darling man you ever knew? I never knew such a man. There is not one atom of anything small or unworthy in his character. And I tell you very frankly that, thinking about him at times, I am amazed at myself for not falling in love with him.
Strelsa Leeds.
“Which is proof sufficient that if I couldn’t care for him I cannot ever care for any man. Don’t you think so?
“Now all this letter has been devoted to matters concerning myself and not one line to you and the exciting success you and Lord Dankmere are making of your new business.
“Oh, Rix, I am not indifferent; all the time I have been writing to you, that has been surging and laughing in my heart — like some delicious aria that charmingly occupies your mind while you go happily about other matters — happy because the ceaseless melody that enchants you makes you so.
“I have read your letter so many times, over and over; and always the same thrill of excitement begins when I come to the part where you begin to suspect that under the daubed surface of that canvas there may be something worth while.
“Is it really and truly a Van Dyck? Is there any chance that it is not? Is it possible that all these years none of Dankmere’s people suspected what was hidden under the aged paint and varnish of that tiresome old British landscape?
“And it remained for you to suspect it! — for you to discover it? Oh, Rix, I am proud of you!
“And how perfectly wonderful it is that now you know its history, when it was supposed to have disappeared, where it has remained ever since under its ignoble integument of foolish paint.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 611