“I’ve a lot to say to you,” he said, finding his voice again.
“Really? What about?”
He looked at her so appealingly, so miserably, that the faintest possible smile touched her lips.
“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Marque?”
“If — if you’d only let me speak to you — —”
“But I am letting you.”
“I mean — to-morrow, too — —”
“To-morrow? To-morrow is a very, very long way off. It is somewhere beyond those eastern hills — but a very, very long way off! — as far as the East is from the West. No; I know nothing about to-morrow, so how can I promise anything to anybody?”
“Will your promise cover to-day?”
“Yes. . . . The sun has nearly set, Mr. Marque.”
“Then perhaps when to-morrow is to-day you will be able to promise — —”
“Perhaps. Have you caught any fish?”
After a moment he said: “How did you know I was fishing? You didn’t turn to look.”
She said coolly: “How did you know I didn’t?”
“You never do.”
She said nothing.
At her window, elbows on the sill, the blossoms in her window-box brushing his sunburnt face, he stood, legs crossed, pipe in hand, the sunset wind stirring the curly hair at his temples.
“Did you hear the bird this evening?” he asked.
“Yes. Isn’t he a perfect darling!”
Her sudden unbending was so gracious, so sweet that, bewildered, he remained silent for a while, recovering his breath. And finally:
“I never knew whether or not you noticed his singing,” he said.
“How could you suppose any woman indifferent to such music?” she asked indignantly. She was beginning to realise how her silence had starved her all these months, and the sheer happiness of speech was exciting her. Into her face came a faint glow like a reflection from the pink clouds above the West.
“That little bird,” she said, “sings me awake every morning. I can hear his happy, delicious song above the rushing chorus of dawn from every thicket. He dominates the cheery confusion by the clear, crystalline purity of his voice.”
It scarcely surprised him to find himself conversing with a cultivated woman — scarcely found it unexpected that, in her, speech matched beauty, making for him a charming and slightly bewildering harmony.
Her slim hands lay in her lap sometimes; sometimes, restless, they touched her bright hair or caressed the polished instruments on the table before her. But, happy miracle! her face and body remained turned toward him where he stood leaning on her window-sill.
“There is a fish nibbling your hook, I think,” she said.
He regarded his bobbing cork vaguely, then went across the track and secured the plump perch. At intervals during their conversation he caught three more.
“Now,” she said, “I think I had better say good-night.”
“Would you let me give you my fish?”
She replied, hesitating: “I will let you give me two if you really wish to.”
“Will you bring a pan?”
“No,” she said hastily; “just leave them under my window when you go.”
Neither spoke again for a few moments, until he said with an effort:
“I have wanted to talk to you ever since I first saw you. Do you mind my saying so?”
She shook her head uncertainly.
He lingered a moment longer, then took his leave. Far away into the dusk she watched him until the trees across the bridge hid him. Then the faint smile died on her lips and in her eyes; her mouth drooped a little; she rested one hand on the table, rose with a slight effort, and lowered the shade. Listening intently, and hearing no sound, she bent over and groped on the floor for something. Then she straightened herself to her full height and, leaning on her rubber-tipped cane, walked to the door.
XIII
He came every day; and every day, at sundown, she sat sewing by the window behind her heliotrope and mignonette waiting.
Sometimes he caught perch and dace and chub, and she accepted half, never more. Sometimes he caught nothing; and then her clear, humorous eyes bantered him, and sometimes she even rallied him. For it had come to pass in these sunset moments that she was learning to permit herself a friendliness and a confidence for him which was very pleasant to her while it lasted, but, after he had gone, left her with soft lips drooping and gaze remote.
Because matters with her, with them both, she feared, were not tending in the right direction. It was not well for her to see him every day — well enough for him, perhaps, but not for her.
Some day — some sunset evening, with the West flecked gold and the zenith stained with pink, and the pink-throated bird singing of Paradise, and the brook talking in golden tones to its pebbles — some such moment at the end of day she would end all of their days for them both — all of their days for all time.
But not just yet; she had been silent so long, waiting, hoping, trusting, biding her time, that to her his voice and her own at eventide was a happiness yet too new to destroy.
That evening, as he stood at her window, the barrier of mignonette fragrant between them, he said rather abruptly:
“Are you ill?”
“No,” she said startled.
“Oh, I am relieved.”
“Why did you ask?”
“Because every Tuesday I have seen the doctor from Moss Centre come in here.”
In flushed silence she turned to her table and, folding her hands, gazed steadily at nothing.
Marque looked at her, then looked away. The big, handsome young physician from Moss Centre had been worrying him for a long while now, but he repeated, half to himself: “I am very much relieved. I was becoming a little anxious — he came so regularly.”
“He is a friend,” she said, not looking at him.
He forced a smile. “Well, then, there is no reason for me to worry about you.”
“There never was any reason — was there?”
“No, no reason.”
“You don’t say it cheerfully, Mr. Marque. You speak as though it might have been a pleasure for you to worry over my general health and welfare.”
“I think of little else,” he said.
There was a silence. Between them, along the barrier of heliotrope and mignonette, the little dusk moths came hovering on misty wings; the sun had set, but the zenith was bright crimson. Perhaps it was the reflection from that high radiance that seemed to tint her face with a softer carmine.
She looked out into the West across the stream, thinking now that for them both the end of things was drawing very near. And, to meet fate half way with serenity — nay, to greet destiny while still far off, with a smile, she unconsciously straightened in her chair and lifted her proud little head.
“Lord Marque,” she said quietly, “why do you not go back to England?”
For a moment what she had said held no meaning for him. Then comprehension smote him like lightning; and, thunderstruck, he remained as he was without moving a muscle, still resting against her window-sill, his lean, sun-browned face illuminated under the zenith’s fiery glory.
“Who are you?” he said, under his breath.
“Only an English girl who happened to have seen you in London.”
“When?”
She turned deliberately and, resting one arm across the back of her chair, looked him steadily in the eyes.
“I am twenty-five. Since I was twenty your face has been familiar to me.”
They exchanged a long and intent gaze.
“I never before saw you,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
“Have I?”
“Who can know what a fashionable young man really looks at — through a monocle.”
“I don’t wear it any more. I lost it out West,” he said, reddening.
“You lost your top hat once, too,” she said.
He grew red as fire.
> “So you’ve heard of that, too?”
“I saw it.”
“You! Saw me attacked?” he demanded angrily, while the shame burnt hotter on his cheeks.
“Yes. You ran like the devil.”
For a moment he remained mute and furious; then shrugged: “What was I to do?”
“Run,” she admitted. “It was the only way.”
He managed to smile. “And you were a witness to that?”
She nodded, eyes remote, her teeth nipping at the velvet of her underlip. He, too, remained lost in gloomy retrospection for a while, but finally looked up with a more genuine smile.
“I wonder whatever became of that fleet-footed girl who hung to my heels long after the more solidly constructed aristocracy gave up?”
“Lady Diana Guernsey?”
“That’s the one. What became of her?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because she gave me the run of my life. She was a good sport, that girl. I couldn’t shake her off; I took to a taxi and she after me in another; my taxi broke down in the suburbs and I started across country, she after me. And the last I saw of her was just after I leaped a hedge and she was coming over it after me — a wonderful athletic young figure in midair silhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. I fancy she must have pulled up dead beat — or perhaps she came a cropper.”
“She did,” said the girl in a low voice.
“Is that so?” he said, interested. “Hope it didn’t damage her.”
“She broke her thigh.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” he exclaimed. “If I’d guessed any such thing I’d have come back. . . . The poor little thing! I mean that, though she was nearly six feet, I seem to think of her as little — and, of course, I’m six — two and a half. . . . Good little sport, that Diana girl! She got over it all right, I hope.”
“It lamed her for life, Lord Marque.”
Shocked, for a moment he could find no words to characterise his feelings. Then:
“Oh, dammitall! I say, it’s a rotten shame, isn’t it? And all on account of me — that superb young thing taking hedges like a hunter! Oh, come now, you know I — it hurts me all the way through. I wish I’d let her catch me! What would she have done to me? I wouldn’t mind being pulled about a bit — or anything — if it would have prevented her injury. By gad, you know, I’d even have eaten her plum cake, frosting and all, to have saved her such a fate.”
The girl’s eyes searched his. “That was not the most tragic part of it, Lord Marque.”
“God bless us! Was there anything more?”
“Yes. . . . She was in love with you.”
“With — with me?” he repeated, bewildered.
“Yes. As a young, romantic girl she fell in love with you. She was a curious child — like all the Guernseys, a strange mixture of impulse and constancy, of romance and determination. If she had fallen in love with Satan she would have remained constant. But she only fell in love with young Marque. . . . And she loves him to this day.”
“That — that’s utterly impossible!” he stammered. “Didn’t she become a suffragette and carry a banner and chase me and vow to make me eat my own words frosted on a terrible plum cake?”
“Yes. And all the while she went on loving you.”
“How do you know?” he demanded, incredulously.
“She confided in me.”
“In you!”
“I knew her well, Lord Marque. . . . Not as well as I thought I did, perhaps; yet, perhaps better than — many — perhaps better than anybody. . . . We were brought up together.”
“You were her governess?”
“I — attempted to act in a similar capacity. . . . She was difficult to teach — very, very difficult to govern. . . . I am afraid I did not do my best with her.”
“Why did you leave her to come here?” he asked.
She made no reply.
“Where is she now?”
She looked out into the cinders of the West, making no answer.
He gazed at her in silence for a long time; then:
“Is she really lame?”
“Yes.”
“Very?”
“It is hip disease.”
“But — but that can be cured!” he exclaimed. “It is now perfectly curable. Why doesn’t she go to Vienna or to New York — —”
“She is going.”
“She ought to lose no time!”
“She is going. She only learned the nature of her trouble very recently.”
“You mean she has been lame all this time and didn’t know what threatened her?”
“She was — too busy to ask. Finally, because she did not get well, she called in a physician. But she is a very determined girl; she refused to believe what the physician told her — until — very recently — —”
“See here,” he said, “are you in constant communication with her?”
“Constant.”
“Then tell her you know me. Tell her how terribly sorry I am. Tell — tell her that I’ll do anything to — to — tell her,” he burst out excitedly, “that I’ll eat her plum cake if that will do her any good — or amuse her — or anything! Tell her to bake it and frost it and fill it full of glue, for all I care — and express it to you; and I’ll eat every crumb of that silly speech I made — —”
“Wait!” she exclaimed. “Do you realise what you’re saying? Do you realise what you’re offering to do for a girl — a lame girl — who is already in love with you?”
His youthful face fell.
“By gad,” he said, “do you think I ought to marry her? How on earth can I when I’m — I’m dead in love with — somebody myself?”
“You — in love?” she said faintly.
He gazed across the brook at the darkening foliage.
“Oh, yes,” he said with a pleasant sort of hopelessness, “but I fancy she cares for another man.”
“W-why do you think so?”
“He comes to see her.”
“Is that a reason?”
“She won’t talk about him.”
“When a woman won’t talk about a man is it always because she cares for him in that way?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
They had lifted their heads now, facing each other in the violet dusk. Between them the scent of heliotrope grew sweeter. He said:
“I’ve been all kinds of a fool. For all I know women have as many rights on earth as men have. All I wish is that the plucky girl who took that hedge, banner in hand, were well and happy and married to a really decent fellow.”
“But — she loves you.”
“And I” — he looked up, encountering her blue eyes— “am already hopelessly in love. What shall I do?”
She said under her breath: “God knows. . . . I can not blame you for not wishing to marry a lame girl — —”
“It isn’t that!”
“But you wouldn’t anyhow — —”
“I would if I loved her!”
“You couldn’t — love a — a cripple! It would not be love; it would be pity — —”
He said slowly: “I wish that you were that lame girl. Then you’d understand me.”
For a while she sat bolt upright, clasped hands tightening in her lap. Then, turning slowly toward him, she said:
“I am going to say good-night. . . . And thank you — for Diana’s sake. . . . And I am going to say more — I am going to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye! Where are you going?”
“To New York.”
“When?”
“Before I see you again.”
“There is no train until — —”
“I shall drive to Moss Centre.”
“Where that — that doctor lives — —”
“Yes. I am going to New York with him, Lord Marque.”
He stood as though stunned for a moment; then set his teeth, clenched his hands, and pulled himself together.
<
br /> “I think I understand,” he said quietly. “And — I wish you — happiness.”
She stretched out her hand to him above the heliotrope.
“I — wish it — to you — —” suddenly her voice broke; again her teeth caught at her underlip like a child who struggles with emotion. “You — don’t understand,” she said. “Wait a little while before you — come to any — unhappy — conclusions.”
After a moment she made a slight effort to disengage her hand — another — then turned in her chair and dropped her head on the table, her right hand still remaining in his. Presently he released it; and she placed both hands on the edge of the table and her forehead upon them.
“I am coming in,” he said.
She straightened up swiftly at his words.
“Please don’t!” she said in a startled voice, still tremulous.
But he was gone from the dark window, and, frightened, she bent over, caught up her walking stick, and took one impulsive step toward the door. And stood stock still in the middle of the floor as he entered.
His eyes met hers, fell on the supporting cane; and she covered her face with her left arm, standing there motionless.
“Good God!” he breathed. “You!”
She began to cry like a child.
“I didn’t want you to know,” she wailed. “Oh, I didn’t want you to know. I thought there was no use — no hope — until yesterday. . . . I — wanted to go to New York with the doctor and be made all sound and well again b-before — before I let you love me — —”
“Oh, Diana — Diana!” he whispered, with his arms around her. “Oh, Diana — Diana — my little girl Diana!”
Which was silly enough, she being six feet — almost as tall as he.
“Turn your back,” she whispered. “I want to go to my desk — and I can’t bear to have you see me walk.”
“You darling — —”
“No, no, no! Please let them cure me first. . . . Turn your back.”
He kissed her hands, held her at arm’s length a second, then turned on his heel and stood motionless.
He heard her move almost noiselessly away; heard a desk open and close; heard the chair by the window move as she seated herself.
“Come here,” she said in a curious, choked voice.
He turned, went swiftly to her side.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 625