RECOMPENCE
The summer slipped into the autumn, and the gold and brown and crimson
October days, with twilight skies of amethyst and pearl, were at hand.
Betty's hours were very full. The Colonel was growing daily more
feeble, but his indomitable eyes reflected an unquenchable spirit.
Only, he was gentler, tenderer, graver. As the year grew old, and the
swallows flew southward, and the cry of the wild geese clanged in the
blue air, a note of sadness seemed brooding upon the world. Betty was a
softer, quieter Betty than she had ever been, and there was a poignant
sweetness in her smile and in her eyes, which sometimes held unshed
tears. But it was ever a brave Betty. Her smiles were for the Colonel,
and the faithful servants, and poor little Kettle. Her tears were for
the few solitary hours she could command. These hours were when she
lay in her little white bed at night, wakeful, and a scant half-hour
at twilight, when she could walk up and down the garden path, by the
box hedge. And her thoughts were all of Fortescue, and her heart, poor
prisoner that it was, beat against the bars of fate and uttered its
mournful and passionate cry.
And so the autumn passed slowly.
One afternoon in late October, Betty, happening to glance through her
window toward Rosehill, saw the shutters thrown wide, and the blue
smoke curling out of the chimneys. She started and trembled; it was
as if a finger had been laid upon an exposed nerve, and she said to
herself:
"I will not let anything that happens at Rosehill affect me. I will not
let myself dream or wish," a thing easier said than done.
She slipped downstairs and into the garden, and began the steady walk
up and down by the box hedge; this walk was sometimes the only fresh
air she could get during the day. The afternoon was mild, and some
hardy chrysanthemums, their bold faces flaunting in the autumn air,
sent forth a pungent perfume. Whenever Betty walked in that spot, she
could live over again the few happy hours of her love. This afternoon,
the sight of Rosehill occupied, and the possibility that Fortescue
might be there, agitated her. As she walked along in the red light of
the declining day, she glanced up and saw Fortescue coming along the
garden path toward her. There was something different in his aspect
and carriage from what there had been, so Betty's quick and far-seeing
glance showed her at once. She stood still, while her heart beat wildly
and the ever-ready blood poured into her pale cheeks.
When Fortescue reached her, he held out his hand without a word, and
Betty put hers into it. For a moment they stood in agitated silence.
The woman, naturally, recovered herself first.
"I had not heard that you were at Rosehill," she said. "I only noticed
just now smoke coming out of the chimneys."
"Yes, I arrived this morning," answered Fortescue quietly, "to stay
some time."
"Then," said Betty, "you have a long leave."
"I have an indefinite leave," replied Fortescue.
Betty glanced at him in silence and surprise. They were then pacing
slowly up and down the walk in the light of the scarlet and gold
sunset. She saw that Fortescue was thin and pale, and that there were
strange marks under his eyes.
"Have you been ill?" she asked, the words coming involuntarily.
"Not exactly," replied Fortescue, and stopped.
Betty's eyes again sought Fortescue's. There was evidently something
the matter.
"Have your eyes been troubling you?" she said.
"Yes," replied Fortescue.
He seemed disinclined to give any particulars.
"I remember," said Betty, after a pause, and a thread of light stealing
into her mind, "that after the fire, when you came over the next day,
my grandfather told me that the smoke had affected your eyes. Did it
turn out to be anything serious?"
"Rather."
"And is that why you have an indefinite leave?"
Betty was determined to wring the truth out of Fortescue, and at last
succeeded.
"Yes," he replied; "the smoke affected my eyes very strangely. I went
to New York, and saw the best oculists there, and they told me my
eyes would probably recover, and did a variety of things for me, but
nothing seemed to do me any good. Then I got leave and went to Paris
and Vienna, with no better result. All the doctors have agreed that to
live a quiet country life, free from excitement, was my best chance. Of
course I had to get sick leave, but I would not ask to be retired. I
shall fight my retirement as long as I can. I want to be back in active
service."
"Of course," answered Betty promptly, her eyes plenteous with pity. "It
is a terrible thing to be retired at your age."
There was a pause, and they continued mechanically to pace slowly up
and down the garden path in the dying glow of the October afternoon.
Presently Fortescue spoke:
"I don't know whether I should have come here or not. But it was so
lonely at Rosehill--I can't read, you know--and you said we were to be
friends."
Betty, who could usually control her tears marvellously, suddenly felt
them dropping upon her cheeks. They came quickly in a flood and with
gasping little sobs. It was through her that Fortescue was menaced
with this calamity, that this tragic closing of his soldier's life had
come, perhaps never to be reopened. Her heart was so wrung with this
thought, she did not know that she was weeping, but Fortescue knew
it. He felt she had injured him and even insulted him by her conduct,
and he had once thought she had no heart, but now a strange and quick
conviction came to him that Betty was very far from being a heartless
coquette. And with it came a sudden illumination concerning himself. He
had been very hasty, very dictatorial. After all, their quarrel had not
been about a trifle, but about what was to become of Colonel Beverley,
a serious matter for them to consider, and Betty had shown more
unselfishness than he. Fortescue put some of this in broken words. He
took out his handkerchief, and, with his arm around Betty, wiped away
the tears that were streaming down her cheeks, and Betty, the haughty,
the arrogant, the resolute Betty, laid her head on Fortescue's
shoulder, and they asked forgiveness of each other, like two children
that have quarrelled. But they were not children: their hearts were
strong, and each knew its mate.
A half-hour went by; neither Betty nor Fortescue could have told what
passed, except that there were clinging kisses, and whispered pleas for
forgiveness, and tender promises. They were so quiet and low-voiced
that the blue pigeons which nested in the pigeon-house close by the
hedge fluttered around them, looking at them, and making little cooing
sounds as they stopped close to them on the brown earth. At last the
tension of emotion subsided a little, and Betty made Fortescue tell her
all the details of his trouble. His case was peculiar. There was not
much obvious injury to his eyes, so the doctors said, only he could not
see very well. But that was enough. He hoped that in a year or two,
perhaps, with country air and rest and quiet, a cure might be worked.
Betty, with all her old confidence, and smiling bravely, declared he
could get well, he should get well, he must get well.
They stayed out until the sunset glow was past and the purple dusk had
come. Then it was Betty who sent Fortescue home.
"I can't ask you to stay to supper," she said, "because I want first
to tell Grandfather that we have made up. Haven't we made up?"
Fortescue's answer was a true lover's answer.
"We have made up," he said, "and as you know right from wrong better
than I do, I mean to do what you think best, Betty, if we have to be
engaged for thirty-four years, until I shall be retired, even if I get
my eyesight back."
"Very well," answered Betty, with a wicked smile. "Let us see how long
you will remain in that virtuous frame of mind."