Gilroy did not know just why he loved her or why she was so full of enchantment for him. But it had been so ever since he had first seen her. And now, at last, she was his... with reservations.
He had accepted those reservations. He knew — she had told him — that she had only second-hand love to give. He must be content with that. He had known something of it before, but she had told him the whole story the previous evening.
When she was a girl of seventeen she had loved Maurice Tisdale. She did not say a great deal about him, but Gilroy got the impression that Maurice had been a slim, romantic, starry-eyed youth, fonder of reading poetry than of work, although Vere most certainly did not say that. And her father, the irascible old entomologist, had sent him away.
“Father never liked him. He — he — the Maybee pride, you know. And Maurice was poor. I would have gone with him... what did I care for the Maybee pride or the Tisdale poverty? But I couldn’t leave Mother then. She was so ill. Maurice went west. We corresponded until... until the word of his death came. He had gone with a prospecting company into the mountains... he got lost... he was never found. Life seemed over for me... that kind of life anyway. I’ve never cared since... like that... and I never can. I do care for you, Gilroy, and if having me will give you happiness, why, take me. Only... you know I have to be frank, Gilroy... the real me will always belong to Maurice. I can’t forsake my dream. It has been a part of my life so long. He — he didn’t deserve that I should ever be unfaithful to him. He died loving me.”
Gilroy accepted it all and put it behind him. He would rather have half of her heart than the whole one of any other woman.
“All day I’ve been wondering if I only imagined last night,” he said. “Come, darling, never mind the roses... I’ve only an hour and I want you to give me every minute.”
“But I can give you only half an hour,” said Vere, smiling. “Then I’ve got to help Father classify some lovely new bugs he’s got. He’s so excited over them, poor dear. Myself, I can get a little tired of them. I think... I really think I’d prefer you.”
When the half hour was over and Vere had gone in to help Professor Maybee with his bugs, Gilroy went away, taking the short cut through the little park below the block where the old Maybee place was. He sat down on one of the benches to dream of Vere for a few minutes. He wondered if he would ever win her wholly... if there would ever come a time when he would not feel that his wife was the thrall of a dream whose core was another man... a dead man, dead in his youth... always young, romantic, alluring, in contrast to his — Gilroy’s — greying middle age. Gilroy sighed in spite of his happiness. But he had lived long enough to learn that there are very few unspoiled things in this world.
“Hot, ain’t it?” sympathetically agreed the man who was sitting on the other end of the bench.
Gilroy started slightly. He had not noticed his coming. He was a stout, rather commonplace man, rather flashily dressed, with a very weird and terrible necktie. He had taken off his hat to mop his forehead, and Gilroy saw that he was bald. His face was red, his eyes bleared and puffy. “I’ve been looking round this little old burg trying to locate someone I know,” said the stranger. “I was born and bred here and it’s sixteen years since I left. There doesn’t seem to be any of my old pals in the place.”
“That is... sad,” said Gilroy idiotically. He did not want to talk to this man.
“It would have been a bit of a shock to them if I had found them,” said the man, with a grin. He paused to light a cigarette, a huge diamond shining like a small sun on his little finger... the nail of which was not impeccable. “You see, everybody in this town thinks I’m dead.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. After I’d been west awhile I went out with a prospecting party and got lost. Had a dickens of a time finding my way back to civilization. Found everybody thought I was a goner, so I let ’em think so. I had my reasons. There was a skirt... well, you know. Lit out for another town and went into the real estate business. I’ve done well... you bet I ain’t the poverty-stricken kid I was when I left here. It used to be a saying that all the Tisdales had holes in their pockets. But you bet I sewed up mine.”
Gilroy sat as if stunned. He could not have spoken if his life had depended on it. This was Maurice Tisdale... this!
“I’m taking the wife and kids east to visit her people. She wanted to stop off in Trentville to see an old chum, so I thought I’d come on here and she could pick me up on the 6:15 train. But I’m blessed if I don’t wish I hadn’t bothered. Can’t find anyone who ever knew me and there isn’t even a place where a fellow could wet his whistle.”
Still Gilroy said nothing. What was there to say?
Maurice Tisdale mopped his face again.
“Say, when I used to live here there was an old bug-hunter on that street up there... old Professor Maybee. Maybee, he was some guy. Went off his chump watching bugs. He had a daughter, though. There was some class to her... a bit skinny... no more figger than an umbrella. We were quite sweet on each other in those days. Not that I meant anything much, but her face was easy to look at and a fellow had to kill time. We read miles of poetry together... say, she used to write some herself, ‘pon my word, and read it to me. Then the bug-man got his dander up... the Maybees had a rotten pride. He packed me off... if you could have seen him” — Maurice paused to give, an imitation of Professor Maybee in the act of dismissal. It was so well done that even the frozen Gilroy almost smiled. The creature could mimic.
“I pretended to be a bit cut up — just to let Vere down easy — but I was glad enough to snap out of it. We wrote for a while after I went west, but when I found I was so conveniently dead... well, that suited me too. D’ye happen to know what became of Vere? I suppose she’s been married for years and put on weight like myself.”
“No, she is not married,” Gilroy found himself able to say.
“Whew! I’m surprised... and yet I’m not. ‘Taint everybody that would interest her. Well, she’s no chicken now. Must be pretty definitely on the shelf. Do they still live up there?”
“Yes.”
“Then I believe I’ll toddle up and see her. It’ll help to put the time in. I suppose since I’m safely married old Maybee won’t be scared of my running off with his lady daughter.”
For a moment Gilroy wavered. Should he let him go? If Vere saw him, just as he was... well, he, Gilroy, would be under no necessity of sharing her with a ghost all their life together. When she saw Maurice Tisdale of today her dream would be scorched out of existence in the humiliation of the moment. He would be left without a rival.
But... what would it do to her? If her dream went would it not take with it something that was part of her charm? She would be nothing but a shamed, broken woman, all the fine aloofness and evasive frost of her smirched and draggled. Could he do this thing to her?
“I’m afraid it’s no use your going up there,” he said quietly. “The Maybees aren’t home just now... off for a visit somewhere, I understand.”
Maurice Tisdale shrugged his fat shoulders.
“Just my luck. However, maybe it’s as well. Vere was the type that would make an awful skinny old maid. But she was one of the kind that sort of hang on to an idea. Just as well to let sleeping dogs lie. Guess I’ll toddle down to the hotel and wait for my train. It’s too darned hot to prowl about any longer.”
Gilroy watched him out of sight... the fatuous sordid creature who still held sway in the deepest recesses of Vere Maybee’s heart. He laughed... a little bitterly but unregretfully.
“I have saved her dream for her,” he thought.
The Price
On the day when Dr. Lennox told Agatha North that she was out of danger and would soon be as well as ever, if she took proper care of herself, Agatha smiled her old, gallant smile up at him and Christine and Nurse Ransome.
“That’s the most interesting thing you’ve said this long while,” she told him. “I was beginning to think you were stupid — yo
ur conversation has been so dull. I’m glad I’m going to get better. I want to live. There are so many things I want to do yet. And, oh, I’d hate to die and leave all my nice dishes and my open fire — and that row of tulips I planted out the day I took sick.”
Christine and Dr. Lennox laughed, the former with a note of heartfelt relief in her laughter. It was so nice to hear Agatha say a whimsical little thing like that again. She had been so ill; the attack of bronchitis had been very severe and there were complications. But all was well now; she would soon be her old self again — darling Agatha. Christine bent and kissed her impulsively.
Nurse Ransome had not smiled, did not intend to smile. Her small, pale, watery eyes expressed entire disapproval of such frivolity on her patient’s part; her narrow white face seemed to Christine narrower and whiter than ever. Christine hated her; she had not wanted to have her on the case, but no other nurse could be had at the time, and Miss Ransome was certainly competent. Nurse Ransome could not hate — she had not enough intensity for that — but she disliked Christine and pretended to herself that she disdained her. She would have said that Christine was a vain, proud, selfish, thoughtless, idle chatterbox. All of this, and more, was true; but it was equally true, though Nurse Ransome would never have said it, that Christine was an exquisitely pretty, loving, winsome, sensitive creature.
Dr. Lennox was thinking this, as he looked at her across Agatha’s bed. He was madly in love with Christine, as all Harrowsdene knew. They were not engaged yet, but everybody took it for granted they soon would be. A good many people thought Dr. Lennox was making a mistake. Of course, Christine was a North and would eventually be the heiress of Agatha’s not inconsiderable estate, including “Whiteflowers”; but then she was such a wild, laughing thing, “a pretty butterfly,” Dr. Lennox’s aunt called her contemptuously. She thought, they said, of nothing but dress, dances and beaus, and “spinning street yarn.” She laughed and talked too much and too freely—”you always heard her before you saw her.”
“A doctor’s wife above all things should know how to hold her tongue — she would ruin his practice.” She was far too intimate with Jen Keefe and her set; she was delicate; she was extravagant; she was, in short, thoroughly spoiled.
Ward Lennox had been told all these things at sundry times and by divers people, and they had made no impression on him at all. He had loved Christine from the moment of their first meeting, and he meant to ask her to marry him as soon as he could muster up the courage to do it. In his eyes she was all but perfection; her few faults were but the faults of petted youth; the only thing he seriously disapproved of in her was her intimacy with Jen Keefe, that lady of the pale gold hair and over-large dark eyes and free-and-easy ways. But once Christine was his wife she would see no more of the Keefes. Ward Lennox fondly believed that he could mould Christine to his views in all things; he had no idea of the strength of will that lay hidden under the soft curves and behind the coquettish eyes of her youth.
Agatha smiled up adoringly into Christine’s face. They were cousins, but Agatha was the senior by twenty years. She had brought Christine up, when the latter was orphaned by the death of both father and mother in babyhood. “Whiteflowers” was the only home Christine had ever known. She loved it and she loved Agatha passionately. But then everybody loved Agatha North, that busy, kindly, charitable, broadminded, wonderful woman, who was always helping somebody or something, always planning and engineering and succeeding, always full of life and interest and zest and wholesome laughter. Why, Harrowsdene could not get along without Agatha North. A sensation of relief and gladness went over the whole town like a wave when Dr. Lennox went away from “Whiteflowers” that day and spread the news that Agatha was going to get better and would be about in a few weeks. There had been anxiety; bronchitis so easily ran to pneumonia, and Agatha had the “North heart.”
Before he went away Dr. Lennox explained the change of medicines to Nurse Ransome and Christine.
“She is listening to him, not to what he says,” thought Nurse Ransome, watching Christine covertly.
Christine was more aware of Ward Lennox than of what he was saying. She thrilled with a delicious sense of his nearness; she was acutely conscious of his tall straightness, his glossy black hair, his luminous dark blue eyes, and the passionate tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his professional manner. But she heard what he said distinctly and remembered it perfectly for all this. She never forgot anything Ward said to her. In all the world there was no music like his voice.
“This is her regular medicine,” said the doctor. “Give her four of these tablets every three hours. This,” he held out another smaller bottle, “is only to be used if she has one of those restless attacks at night and cannot sleep. Give her one of these tablets — on no account more than one — every four hours if necessary. Two would be dangerous — three fatal. I’ll set the bottle up on this little shelf by itself.”
It was Christine’s turn to sit up that night. Nurse Ransome repeated the caution about the tablets before she went to her room. Christine listened with a slightly mutinous, insolent expression; there was no need of Nurse Ransome’s reminders. She had not forgotten what Ward had said; she was not a child. She sent a glance of pettish dislike after the spare figure of the nurse. She felt that Nurse Ransome insinuated doubts to the doctor as to her fitness for waiting on Agatha; it was agony to think he might have or acquire a poor opinion of her in this respect. Christine was vain and abnormally proud; she could not bear to be looked down upon by anybody for any reason. She hated Nurse Ransome because she felt that Nurse Ransome looked down upon her. Christine would have gone to the stake in olden days, not for her religion, but for dread of the contempt she would incur from her co-religionists if she proved too weak for the test of martyrdom. The most acute suffering of her childhood had been endured when a schoolmate had publicly taunted her with a distant cousin of the Norths who had been sent to prison for forgery. She never forgot the shame and humiliation and torture of that day.
Agatha was very restless that night. At the best of times she was liable to sleeplessness — strangely so for her type. At ten o’clock Christine gave her one of the tablets and at two another. She was very careful to set the bottle back on the bookshelf. She was afraid of it. She hoped Agatha would not need it again.
When a week had passed Agatha was feeling so well that she wanted to be allowed to sit up. Dr. Lennox would not permit it. He told her her heart was not yet fit for any exertion. “You must lie here for another week yet. Then I may let you sit up for a few minutes every day.”
“You tyrant!” she said, smiling up at him. “He is a tyrant, isn’t he, Christine? My heart isn’t going to kill me. My grandmother had the same kind of a heart and she lived for ninety-five years. I’m going to live for ninety-five years — and enjoy every minute of them, and do a thousand things I want to do.”
She laughed up at him and Christine. Dr. Lennox laughed back — dimples came out in his cheeks when he laughed — said good-night, and went out of the room.
Christine put the green shade over the light, and sat down by the window. It was her night to watch again, but the night vigils by now were little more than matters of form. Agatha had never required the sleeping tablets since that first night. She slept soundly, seldom waking until dawn. The sinister little bottle had never been taken down from the bookshelf.
Christine at the window began to dream, looking out into the chilly moonlit night of October. She was beginning to wish acutely that Agatha were quite well. She was getting tired of the sick room, tired of the monotonous existence which Agatha’s illness had necessitated. She wanted to get back to her gay round of social doings again, the dances, the teas, the dinners, all the diversions of the little town. She wanted to wear her pretty dresses and jewels again — Christine loved jewels. Agatha had given her a string of tiny real pearls and a glittering Spanish hair comb for her last birthday. She had never had a chance to wear them yet. She wanted to flood
“Whiteflowers” with music again. Next to her love for Ward, music was Christine’s most intense passion, and she had not touched her piano since Agatha became ill. She wanted to get off for a weekend at Jen Keefe’s Muskoka lodge for the deer-shooting. She knew Agatha wouldn’t want her to go, but she meant to go for all that. It was nothing but sheer envy that made people talk about Mrs. Keefe and her set. There was nothing wrong with them; they were gay and up-to-date and not hidebound by silly old conventions.
Then she let herself think of Ward Lennox — gave herself up to a vivid dream of their life together. She forgot her surroundings totally until she was recalled to them by a realization that Agatha was moving uneasily on her pillows.
Christine went to the bed. “Do you want anything?” —
“I think I must have one of those tablets,” said Agatha. “My restlessness has just returned — I thought perhaps it wouldn’t — I’ve been doing so well lately. But for half an hour now I’ve just wanted to toss and scream.”
Christine went over to the table, took down the bottle and returned with a tablet. She moved a little absently, for she was still partially in her dream of Ward.
After Agatha had taken her tablet she soon fell asleep. It was now eleven o’clock. Christine went back to the window and dreamed herself into a doze, leaning back in her big upholstered chair. She did not awaken until Agatha called her. It was the first time she had slept on guard.
“Would you like another tablet, dear?”
“No. The restlessness is gone. I think I’ll sleep normally now — but since I’m awake, give me my j regular dose. Ugh, when will I ever get square with Ward Lennox for all those hundreds of detestable little white tablets he’s made me swallow? But after all they’re preferable to the nauseous tablespoonfuls of liquid his father used to inflict on me.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 752