The summer day was drawing to a close. The shadows of the trees were
long upon the grass, the sun was sinking through a sky wistful and
delicate, faint rose and yellow.
There was a blessed quiet all through the house. Serena and her friends
had certainly intended to be back for tea, but they had not come. They
never could do what they meant to do. Obstacles intervened, and they
were not well equipped for dealing with obstacles. It took so little to
stop them, to bar a road, to turn them off toward a new destination.
They had not come back, and Geraldine was having her tea alone in the
library, reading a book as she sipped it.
That was how Sambo first saw her, sitting, very straight, in a
high-backed chair, with the last light of the sunset on her clear, pale
face. He said later that she had put him in mind of a Madonna, and there
were not many women he knew who could do that. He stood in the doorway,
staring at her, for quite a long time--so long that he never afterward
forgot how she looked then, so still, so lovely, so aloof. For a moment
he was almost afraid to disturb her.
But the fear of disturbing other persons had not yet greatly influenced
young Samuel Randall. He was a conqueror, nonchalant and superb. He took
whatever things pleased him in this world. Slender, almost slight, with
his fine features, his mournful dark eyes, he had a poetic and touching
look about him; but it belied him. He was not poetic. He was greedy, and
willful, and reckless.
He wanted to talk to this lovely image, so in he went.
“This a gentle hint?” he asked.
Geraldine put down her book and looked at him.
“I said I was coming to-day,” he went on, “and they’re all out. That
mean I’m not wanted?”
And he smiled his charming, arrogant smile, for he knew so well that he
was always wanted.
“Mrs. Page meant to be home by five,” said Geraldine, with no smile at
all. “Something must have delayed her.”
“Then you’ll give me a cup of tea, won’t you? I’m Randall, you know.”
She said yes, none too cordially, and rang the bell for fresh tea. He
sat down opposite her, slouching in his chair, his handsome head thrown
back, his dark eyes watching her.
“I’m Mrs. Page’s secretary,” she explained with cold formality.
“Lucky, lucky Mrs. Page!” said he.
A faint color rose in her cheeks. She resented his attitude, his easy
and careless manner, his appraising glance, and he read the resentment
in her face.
“Prudish!” he thought.
This did not annoy him. He liked this tall, dark, unsmiling girl just as
she was, a charming novelty; but he would have to change his tactics.
“You were reading, weren’t you?” he said respectfully. “I hope I didn’t
interrupt you.”
“No, Mr. Randall,” she answered.
Then, suddenly, his undisciplined soul was filled with a sort of envy
for this untroubled and superior creature who read books.
“I try to read,” he said. “I wish to Heaven I could; but it’s too late
now.”
“I don’t see how it could ever be too late to read,” said Geraldine,
with a trace of scorn.
He had straightened up in his chair. He was no longer staring at her,
but at the unlighted cigarette that he was rolling between his fingers.
“The thing is,” he said, “I’ve been spoiled. People listen to me--any
damned nonsense I spout--and I’ve got out of the way of listening
myself. Now, you see, when I take up a book that’s worth reading, I feel
as if the writer fellow had got me into a corner, and was trying to lay
down the law; so I want to contradict him, and I chuck the blamed thing
across the room.”
He spoke earnestly, and he was in earnest. It was his great charm that
he was always sincere. He was not inventing things to say to this girl.
He was simply selecting from his restless, curious mind those things
which he thought would interest her. He was succeeding, too--he saw
that.
Geraldine did not speak, because to her reserved and proud spirit it was
impossible to speak easily to a stranger; but she thought over his words
with an odd sensation of distress. She felt sorry for the conquering
Sambo.
He had picked up her book, and was turning the pages. It was a copy of
“The Hound of Heaven,” which her father had given her long ago.
“Poetry!” he said. “Queer sort of stuff!”
Then he read aloud:
“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind--”
He stopped, and for a moment he sat silent. The light was fading out of
the sky now, and in the dusk his face looked white and strained. The
echo of his strong young voice seemed still to drift through the shadowy
room.
Looking at him, Geraldine had an extraordinary fancy, almost a vision,
of his terribly defiant soul fleeing, swift and laughing, to its own
destruction. She was filled with an austere compassion and wonder. It
was as if, in an instant, and without a word spoken, he had told her all
the long tale of his wasted years.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the prey gets away from Him!”
“No!” said Geraldine steadily. “No--never!”
He struck a match, and by the flame that sprang out, vivid in the gray
dusk, she had a glimpse of his face, with eyes half closed, proud and
sorrowful; and he was changed in her sight forever. She saw him, not as
a puppet in a shameful drama, but as a fellow creature with a soul.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve got lost!”
The match went out, and the room seemed very dark now. Geraldine wanted
to speak, to tell him something, but she could not remember, afterward,
what incredible words had come to her mind. They were never to be
spoken, however, for just at that moment Serena came home.