less mine, too--when I’m with you or have been thinking about you till
my head’s turned. But--Rix”--he was powerfully in earnest now--“while
love may be all that’s necessary to make a woman happy, it isn’t so
with a man. For a man, love is to life what salt is to food--not the
food as it is with a woman, but the thing that gives the food savor.”
He paused. But she sat silent, her gaze upon her hands folded
listlessly in her lap. He went on: “You have been indulging this
whim of yours without giving it a serious thought. Now, I want you
to think--to help me save us from the folly your willfulness and my
weakness are tempting us to commit. I want you to ask yourself: ‘What
sort of life would Chang and I lead together? Would I tolerate his
devotion to his work? Would I respect him if he gradually yielded to my
temptings and gave up his work? Whichever way it turned out, wouldn’t I
either dislike or despise him?’”
“You--don’t love me,” she murmured.
“I do. But I’m not so selfish as your inexperience and thoughtlessness
make you.”
She scarcely heard. She was gazing with all her mind and heart at
the new Chang revealed clearly for the first time in the intense
earnestness of this their first profoundly and crucially serious
talk. This was the man her father had warned her about. There were
dark circles round her eyes as if they had been bruised, and in
them the look of present pain. He happened to glance at her. He
saw--groaned. “No matter!” he cried. “I love you. I can’t bear it. I’m
weak--contemptibly weak where you’re concerned. We’ll surely fail--fail
miserably. But we must go on, now. I had a presentiment--I was a damn
fool to come here to-day. Yes--we’ve drifted too far. We must go
on--over the falls.”
He stopped, appalled by his own passionate outburst. She shook her head
slowly. “No, we must not go on,” said she.
Her tone instantly calmed his runaway passion; he stared in amazement.
“You really feel like that?” she went on--“feel it’d be weak and wrong
for you to marry me?”
“I have told you the truth--about yourself and about me,” was his
reply. “You surely must see it.”
She gave a long sigh, furtive, deep. But her voice was steady as she
said sadly: “Then--we must give each other up.”
“That is certainly best,” promptly assented he. “You see now that you
didn’t want me, but only your own way.”
“I see that we should not be happy. I don’t understand your point
of view. I suppose I’m not experienced enough. But I see you are in
earnest--that it isn’t just a--a notion with you. So--” From her face
waned the last glimmer of its look of the springtime. Her voice sank
almost to a whisper--“I give up.”
He stood with aggressive erectness. “Then--it is settled.”
She nodded without looking at him. She could not trust herself to look.
“I’ll not bother you any more,” said she.
He saw that he was victor--had gained his point. Yet never did man
look or feel less the victor. He put out his hand; she let hers rest
in it. “Good-by, Rix,” he said with a brave attempt at philosophic
calm. “This is much better than seeing our love end in a quarrel and a
scandal--isn’t it?”
“You go--in the morning?”
“Yes.”
Her hand dropped to her lap. He looked steadily at her, with no
restraint upon his expression, because her eyes were down. “Good-by,”
he repeated. He waited for a reply, but none came. With that long,
sure stride of his, free and graceful, he went to the stairway and
descended--and departed.
XXI
ROGER WINS
La Provence was due to sail in twenty minutes. One whistle had
blown; one of the gangways was casting off. Roger, with a suppressed
excitement more effective than any shouting or waving of fists, was
superintending the taking of his luggage from the ship. “There’s still
one piece to come ashore--the old leather trunk with brass nails,”
he said to the polite chief steward. “It must be found. Double your
efforts and I’ll double your fee.” He turned, found himself squarely
facing Beatrice Richmond.
The color flamed in his face; it vanished from hers. “You got my note?”
she said. “And you are sailing anyhow?”
“I did not get your note,” replied he. “But I am not sailing.... One
moment, please.” Then to the chief steward: “There is also a note for
me. I must have it.”
“Parfaitement, Monsieur.” And the chief steward raced up the gangway.
Roger and Beatrice stood aside in a quiet place, a calm in the surging
crowd of the voyagers and their friends. Beatrice looked at him with
that fine, frank directness which had been her most conspicuous trait
in all her dealings with him. Said she: “In my note I asked you to take
me on any terms or on no terms. All I wish is to be near you and to
love you.”
She spoke the words without any trace of emotion in either tone or
manner--spoke them with a certain monotonous finality that gave them
all the might of the simply genuine. And he answered in much the same
way. “I am not sailing,” said he, “because--because to love you and to
have you--that’s life for me. The rest isn’t worth talking about.”
“Not worth talking about,” echoed she. “I don’t know whether we’ll be
happy or not, but I do know it’s my only chance to be anything but
miserable.”
“I don’t know whether I could get over you or not,” was his matching
confession, “but I do know that I don’t want to--and won’t.”
A moment’s silence, with the two gazing up at the towering steamer
through the great doors in the pier shed. Then his eyes turned to her,
to look at her with an intensity that made her feel as if she had been
suddenly seized in strong yet gentle arms and were being borne by
mighty wings up and up and still up.
“Chang,” she said between laughing and sobbing, “I must have been crazy
yesterday to refuse you.”
“No--you’re crazy to-day. So am I. That is, I’m normal again--what’s
been normal for me ever since I knew you. And I hope the day’ll never
come when I’ll be sane.”
“Are you happy now?”
“Delirious.”
“As we used to be when we were together by the cascade?”
“Like that--only a thousand times more so.” And they gazed at each
other with foolish-fond eyes, and from their lips issued those
extraordinary sounds that seem imbecile or divine, according as the
listening ears are attuned.
“Your father was right,” said Roger. “Love is master.” Again she was
seeing the new and more wonderful and more compelling Chang. “I found
that everything was going to stop stock-still if I went away from you.”
The chief steward, bearing the note, and his assistants who had been
collecting Roger’s luggage around him, now appeared. Roger tore open
the note, read its one brief sentence of unconditional surrender. Then
he dismissed the men with fees so amazing to them that they thanked him
with tears in their eyes. “But you really must be careful,” cautioned
Beatrice. “You know we’ve got no money to throw away.”
Roger gave her a look that dazzled her. “I see you understand,” said
he. “Well, we may be happy in spite of all--all the difficulties.”
She laughed. “I don’t think, dear,” said she, “that you’re so weak as
you fear, or I so foolish.... Maybe you’d like me to keep on with the
dressmaking?”
He frowned in mock severity. “I don’t want ever to hear of it again.”
“Then you never shall,” replied she with mock humility. “You want a
meek slave--and you shall have one.” Her lips moved with no sound
issuing.
“What are you saying there?” demanded he.
“What Ruth said to Naomi.” She gazed at him with ecstatic, incredulous
eyes. “Have I _really_ got you?” she said.
He looked at her with an amused smile. It died away slowly, and his
gaze grew solemn. “That will depend on--you,” he said.
She saw there was more than the surface meaning in the words; then she
saw their deeper meaning--saw as clearly as an inexperienced girl may
see, but only so clearly, the hidden reality of the man she had been
striving to win, and would ever have to strive to keep. And beautiful
was the light in her eyes as she murmured: “Love will teach me!”
He half turned away to hide the wave of emotion that almost unmanned
him. When he spoke it was to say in a queer, husky voice: “Let me see
the expressman about this luggage--then--we’ll go to lunch somewhere.”
“Let’s go--in--” She halted, eyes dancing.
“In a cab?”
She blushed and laughed. “Isn’t it about time?” said she, eyes full of
that charming audacity of hers. “How well we understand each other! How
congenial we are!”
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” cried he. “I hope there have been other cases
like ours--lots of ’em. But I doubt it.”
She waited while he negotiated the return of the baggage to Deer
Spring. When he rejoined her--or, rather, gave her his undivided
attention, for he had not let her get so much as three feet away from
him--she said: “Now I must telephone father.”
“Oh, why hurry about that?”
“I must tell him not to engage passage for next Wednesday,” explained
she.
And they both burst out laughing.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.