"That was his meaning."
"And what did you reply?" Under the spur of her disclosure he had risen.
Resting his arm on one of the spiky knobs of the rustic pillar in front
of him, he looked down at her inquiringly. Yet his long, athletic,
indolent figure still shrank from the conclusion that the status of
their affairs had been permanently disturbed.
"I managed not to commit myself at the moment." She paused briefly. "I
desired to talk with you first, Harry. I felt that I must know what you
would like me to do."
He straightened himself as from surprise. "I could not like you to do
that--leave the house."
"It would only be possible provided I went to you."
For a moment he seemed dumfounded. "From his house to me? But,
Lydia"--the boldness of the proposition was so staggering to Spencer, he
felt that he must have misunderstood her, and was groping for her
meaning. His consternation was evidently not unexpected, nor did it
elicit reproach. "No one would call on me, of course," she said dryly.
Then she added with cumulating tenseness, as one pleading a cause which
she suspects to be hopeless, "It would mean the end of everything else
in the world which I care for except one--my love for you. We could
leave this place forever, Harry, go to Australia, the world's end,
wherever you will, and be happy."
A scampering squirrel with a nut in its mouth hopped into view on the
path, scanned them for an instant, then bounded into the underbrush. But
only just in time. It seemed to Spencer that the little animal was
grinning at him, and he had reached for a missile as an outlet for his
doubly harassed feelings.
"My dear girl, you are crazy."
"Very likely, Harry."
"I love you to distraction, God knows, but that sort of thing is out of
date. Why, Lydia, you would be the first to tire of it. Happy? We should
neither of us be happy, for what would we have to live on?" The final
inflection of his voice was veritable triumph, so irrefutable appeared
his logic.
Lydia gave a profound sigh. "I knew you would say that," she answered
quickly. "But it was our only chance. Suppose I get my divorce and we
marry here, what have we to live on? I have three thousand a year of my
own. And you?"
"Not quite so much--assured."
"Exactly. And there you are!--as Henry James's characters are so fond of
saying."
They gazed at each other mutely.
"We should be beggars with our tastes," she resumed. "It would never
do, would it, dear? You see, I have considered the subject."
"I perceive that you have." The pensiveness of his tone was a virtual
admission that he had failed to recognize how subtle she had been.
"The other was our only chance," she repeated. "I would have gone with
you, probably, if you had consented."
"But I do consent, if you wish it," he asserted eagerly; and falling on
his knee he reached for her hand and pressed it to his lips. For the
first time in his life he had yielded to the intoxication of love
against his reason. The charm of this elusive, chameleon-like being had
got the better for the moment both of his discretion and his inherent
selfishness.
Though the capitulation entranced Lydia, it had come too slowly and too
late. She shook her head. "It is you who have convinced _me_. You are
perfectly right. I should tire without things--of living on next to
nothing. It would be impossible. You knew me better than I did myself."
She freed her hand gently from his blandishments and smiled in his face.
He rose and looked down at her again from the rustic pillar. "We might
manage somehow. I should be ready to try." He was nerved for the
sacrifice.
"On six thousand? Oh, no, you wouldn't. At any rate, I should not."
It was futile to pretend that it would be adequate. "We might live
abroad. Things are cheaper there," he suggested.
"But I don't wish to live abroad. I wish to remain here, and I could not
hold up my head on much less than I have now, for, under the
circumstances, no one would call on us if we were poor."
He showed that he saw the point, but it suited her to enlarge upon it.
"If one has millions and good manners one can do anything in America;
everything else is forgiven. But I would never put myself in the
position where I might be snubbed or pitied. That's why I must be rich.
And as for you, Harry," she continued, "unless you had a stable, steam
yacht, and at least two establishments, you would feel, after you had
cooled off, that you had thrown yourself away, and, consequently, we
should both be miserable."
He laughed a little sceptically, but he did not deny the impeachment.
"What a clever woman you are, Lydia! That's one reason I love you so.
The thing to do," he said in his caressing voice, "is to prevent
matters from reaching the desperate stage. You must patch it up somehow
with Maxwell, and--and we shall find ways to see each other," he added
meaningly.
She appeared not to hear his suggestion. "One million is the very least
that you and I could marry on--and be perfectly happy. And, if we had
it, we might be very happy."
Her sigh of regret encouraged his alert warmth. He leaned toward her and
whispered, "Let us, then, be happy in the only way which is possible."
She raised a warning hand. It was clear that she had understood his
previous innuendo. "To be happy under the rose is respectable abroad,
but here it may mean social ostracism," she replied demurely. "I tell
you that Herbert is dreadfully in earnest. Besides," she added after one
of her deliberate pauses, "Do you not love me? That is what I crave.
That is the essential thing for me."
"You are mocking me," he said with choler.
"No; only showing myself conservative and sensible like yourself.
Neither of us can afford to sacrifice everything, yet it would be
infinitely preferable to live together. You must find our million."
Spencer shrugged his shoulders. "Where? In the stock-market? One plunge,
and drink wormwood if I lost? I will make you listen to me yet," he said
with the rising energy of one who feels himself at bay. His eyes gleamed
ardently, and the lines of his dark countenance, little accustomed to
brook opposition, grew rigid as they did in the moments when he
concentrated all his nerves on accomplishment.
The charm of his mastering mood was not lost on Lydia, but its effect
was to fix her wits still more closely on the problem of their future.
Where was the necessary escape or remedy to be found? She lifted her
eyes to meet her lover's gaze, but they stared beyond him into the realm
of speculation. Suddenly she started as one who sees a
spectre--something weird and forbidden. Yet her stricken vision seemed
to gather fascination from a longer look, and she moved her lips as
though she were bandying words with doubts which fell like nine-pins
before her intelligence. Then, with a transport which revealed that she
had taken the intruder, however terrible, to her breast as the bringer
of a dispensation, she exclaimed:
"Harry, I have found a way."
"A way?" he ejaculated, for to him there now seemed only one course open
consistent with their necessities, and he feared some radical proposal
as the outcome of her trance.
"For us to marry. We shall have enough."
"Where is the gold mine?" he asked indulgently.
She looked at him musingly with bright, searching eyes. In that moment
she concluded not to reveal her secret. "Yes, a gold mine," she
answered. "We shall have our million--perhaps two. Why not two?" She
asked the question of herself, and it was plain that she saw no stable
obstacle to her now widening ambition.
Meanwhile Spencer surveyed her with scrutinizing wonder. Evidently her
transport was genuine. He knew her too well to doubt that there was
some basis for her specific statement as to the money.
"Two would be better than one, Lydia. Let it be two, by all means," he
said jauntily.
"It shall be two," she replied with the assurance of a necromancer
confident of compelling respect for his magic wand by the performance of
the marvels he has foretold. "You may kiss me, Harry--once."