by David Garth
Well, there was no good answer to that. Why not? Memento of an interlude, perhaps.
He could see so clearly that what she held was not a narrow band of dull chased gold purchased in a small shop hidden away up a little side court. Much more—it was the promise and inspiration of a life spent with a girl who could be ethereally, almost unbelievably lovely, as when she had bent with swift gentle fingers in that candle-lighted old French church to bind up the wound of Winters’ bullet, and yet behind whose eloquent eyes sparkled the fighting spirit of a country editor grandfather who wrote the truth and kept his pistols primed.
“Berkeley, let me tell you something,” he said quietly. “When I came in and saw you waiting there I was hit instantly with the memory of one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to any man. A hundred years ago my great-grandfather returned to this house after killing a man in a duel—a man he had deliberately provoked to challenge him. Cary Rhodes fought that duel, knowing he would be universally regarded as a polite murderer, knowing that even his wife could not forgive it. And yet when he returned she was here, waiting for him, just as he had left her.
“To her, alone, Cary revealed that the poetical, delicate Bradman he had fought was a blackmailer, a black-hearted scapegrace, who had been ruining the life of a fine girl. Cary Rhodes brought him to book the best and only way he could. But for the sake of that girl and of Bradman’s family he never gave any reason—except to the girl who waited for him.”
His glance rested on her again. She was leaning back on the divan, her shadowed eyes meeting his without any discernible expression.
“I’ve thought of Cary Rhodes often during these past weeks and tried to do as he did. I couldn’t care what anyone might think of me if it interfered with the job I was trying to do. I knew that I had to be tougher than the thing I was up against to have any chance of licking it.”
And still he could not tell if she knew what he meant—the Rhodes men made it tough for themselves, but there was always a beloved girl to see them through with confidence and loyalty and love. At least, there had been for Cary Rhodes over a hundred years ago.
It was rather hard to stand and just look at her, he discovered. He took a couple of slow strides up and down before the fireplace, the tempered flexibility of one of those dueling rapiers in the movements of his lean, whipcord form.
“Lucian,” he heard her say, and paused abruptly. She was sitting forward, one clenched fist upon her knee. “Did our resolve to be tough,” she burst out suddenly, “have to include kicking a desperate refugee off the Lisbon Express?”
“Refugee?” he repeated. “Refugee—why, Berkeley, I didn’t kick a refugee off the Lisbon Express. I kicked off a Nazi plant, a stooge acting the part. Why, of course—I spotted him while I was out walking on the platform. He was smoking a cigarette with the very officers who pretended later to push him around, all of them standing at the very end of the train, off the platform near a parked army car. They were even fixing him up a little and once I heard him laugh.
“Why, it’s an old trick of the Axis boys, Berkeley. Plant somebody like that on a refugee train, somebody established as an object of pity and sympathy. You know, when those trains get over the frontier a lot of wraps come off in the general relief. A refugee plant often spots someone who might have slipped the net.”
Berkeley’s dark eyes were on him in a deeply intent glance.
“You see,” he said, “that’s what I mean. Do you think I liked the way you looked at me after I booted that stooge back on the platform where he belonged? I even came around to your compartment to explain, but you weren’t disposed toward my company—not that I blame you.”
And still she said nothing and the thought struck him that she might be finding his explanation hard to take all at once.
Resting his elbow on the mantel he glanced down meditatively into the flames.
“Of course,” he said casually, “the normal course for a man would be to start from scratch and build toward the goal of marrying a girl like you. I was different. I started off by marrying you and ever since it’s all been working toward divorce. Well, that marriage was just to catch a train.” He laughed slightly. “And yet it’s turned into a great memory for me—I’ve fallen in love with you for the rest of my natural life.”
There it was. Like that. He heard a slight movement and turned away from the fire and found her standing and slowly stretching out a hand to him that held a narrow band of dull chased gold.
“Lucian,” she said softly, “won’t you? If you’ll only put it back on my finger—it’s there to stay.” There was a quickening in her low, vibrant voice. “Oh, ninety-eight percent of me has loved you so much, Lucian, and two percent has caught me by the scruff of the neck every time I felt myself sliding toward a man who had seemed to be so needlessly brutal.” Her vivid mouth curved in a smile. “And now it’s all yours—all my love, darling.”
Her slender cool fingers were in his and that simple narrow band was back where it was meant to be before he could even find the words.
“That tough row to hoe you were talking about,” she whispered joyously. “Who cares? I’m wonderful company hoeing a row.”
She was more than that, she wars the real and the lasting and the true, this breathtaking girl, and suddenly, gloriously, the world seemed steady and strong and unconquerable.
“Row to hoe?” he said quickly. “Berkeley, dearest, there’s no row to hoe—except to help a country gentleman and playwright build a bright destiny for you, here in America—home. All is well. All is bright—”
But that could come later. He drew her toward him and she seemed to float into his arms. It was strange, she thought, how she could ever have thought his eyes hard and dangerous. Those black eyes were not hard—they were brilliant and lively and keen.
“Tell that great-grandmother of yours to move over,” she smiled. “We girls who wait for the men we love.”
He held her strong slim youthfulness close to him, conscious of the whole-hearted clasp of her arms around his neck, and kissed her as though every single step of the way from that judge’s chamber in Valleron had been dedicated straight to this one moment.
And the lights of the home of the great dueling family seemed to shine out more brightly, clearly, indomitably, into the darkness over the quiet countryside.