MOONLIGHT
It was night and Pen with her indomitable carriage was trudging along
the road that led straight back between the fields. Under her arm was
the inevitable grass bag. Chin up and back very straight there was
always a sort of challenge in Pen's gait. As a child she had been just
the same, one of those adorable little fighters who conceal a heart as
tender as love itself. There was a photograph of her at the age of
three with a look wistful, proud, and astonished at meanness. She
still had that look.
A fantastic tangle of wild grape, trumpet vine, elder bush and
sassafras completely hid the rail fences and hemmed her in on either
hand, and an occasional pointed cedar or seedling cherry rose against
the night sky. The middle of the road and the screen of leafage on one
side were drenched with moonlight. The moon dangled in the sky like a
hanging lamp: one could see into the depths beyond her.
Pen walked along with her face up to the moon in an attitude of
surrender. Her face was haggard with emotion. All day she was obliged
to wear a mask, to weigh every word she uttered. What a relief it was
at last to let go, to let the moon have its way with her, to bathe in
her silver stream. Relief in a sense but hardly pleasure, for when she
let go she was so defenseless, so quivering that the stream of beauty
hurt her. It enervated her so, she was terrified lest she might not be
able to gird herself up again.
For she knew her respite was only momentary. She longed for and
dreaded what awaited her at the end of her walk. She couldn't give
herself up to Don as she could to the moon. She had to put on another
mask for him. A mask of cheer. He was her charge that she had to
watch over and care for and beguile into contentment. The fact that he
hotly resented being a charge on her did not make her task any easier.
They had been getting on each other's nerves a good deal.
Ever and anon as she walked, she glanced over her shoulder uneasily
aware that a man could follow her quite close under the dark side of
the green tangle, without her being aware.
At the corner of the last field on the left she vaulted over the low
bars. Inside a figure rose into the moonlight and a voice whispered
her name:
"Pen!"
She was horribly startled. "Drop down again!" she whispered sharply.
"Don't come after me until I am half way across the field."
He obeyed sullenly. Pen walked on across the field with a sore heart.
She had made him angry now. All day she lived for the moment of
meeting and now it was spoiled.
She headed diagonally across the field to that point in the woods which
was nearest his camp. She could walk but slowly because the ground was
so rough, old corn land that had been allowed to go to grass with the
hills unharrowed. She would not look back until she was nearly across.
A man's figure was rising over the swell of the field behind her.
Anxiety attacked her. Suppose it was not Don but somebody who had
followed her down the road. What would Don do? She dreaded to hear
the sounds of a struggle. Don could take care of himself of course,
but it would be the end of their secret. So well had that secret been
kept that not one of all the searchers at Broome's Point now suspected
that Don was still on the estate.
Pen waited alongside the fence that bounded the far side of the field.
It was Don, so her anxiety was relieved on that score. But he did not
come to her. A few yards away he leaned back with his elbows on the
top rail of the fence and gazed out across the moonlit field, making a
perfect silhouette of masculine soreness.
"I brought you some supper," ventured Pen.
"Thanks," he said ungraciously.
"Won't you eat?"
"Not hungry, thanks."
"What's the matter?" she asked with a touch of defiance. She could not
be meek, even with him.
"You spoke to me like a dog!" he burst out. "Down Fido!"
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "But you startled me so. You see I was
thinking maybe someone was following me in the road."
"I just went a little way to meet you," he grumbled. "Nice welcome I
got!"
Having said she was sorry, Pen could not humble herself further. She
remained silent.
"I suppose you're thinking I'm a thankless beast," he went on presently.
"No," said Pen.
"Well I am!" he said. "I appreciate what you do for me. Good God,
that's just the trouble. You heap favors on me! You've got me on the
rack!"
They had been over this so often!
"Well, I'm sick of it, too," Pen burst out as bitterly as he. "You're
always trying to make out that I do things for you just to make you
feel inferior! I hate to be benevolent. I never am. But what else
could I do under the circumstances? Or you? Why can't you take it for
granted?"
"You mean you'd do as much for anybody?"
"Certainly."
This of course in his perfect inconsistency, hurt him worse than what
had gone before. He dug his chin into his breast and relapsed into
silence.
Pen yearned over him. She loved him so for his male roughness, his
wrongheadedness, his school-boy pride. He was so absolutely different
from herself, both weaker and stronger. It was circumstances which had
given her the advantage over him; he was in a false position. She
exulted in it a little however she might protest to the contrary. It
is sweet to have the ascendancy, even in love. And she could dimly
foresee other circumstances in which she would be most terribly at his
mercy.
She made overtures. "I'm hungry," she said.
But the storm was still brewing in his breast. "A couple more days of
this and I'll go clean off my head!" he said savagely.
"How about me?" said Pen.
"You don't have to squat under the bushes all day."
"I have other troubles."
"I have things to bear that you don't know anything about. I have
never spoken of it."
Instantly Pen, who had been feeling so pleasantly sure of herself,
turned hot with jealousy. There was some other woman out in the world.
Of course there would be! He was tormented because he couldn't
communicate with her. Because he couldn't assure her of his innocence.
How could she find out about her for sure?
"If you'd tell me what it is," she said, schooling her voice, "perhaps
I could help."
"Not in this matter," he said with a bitter little laugh.
Then she was miserably sure. Nevertheless she persisted, as the
nightingale is supposed to press her breast against a thorn. "I've
often wondered why you don't allow me to write to some of your best
friends. Those you can trust I mean. The letters could be worded in
such a way that they'd mean nothing if they fell into the wrong hands."
"I've no one to write to," he said.
Pen thought: "Of course he wouldn't trust another woman to write to
her," and was exquisitely unhappy.
"Any news?" Don asked gloomily.
"No," said Pen. She had previously determined not to raise his hopes
by telling him about Blanche Paglar until something had come of it.
There was a long silence between them, and Pen became wretcheder and
wretcheder. When she could stand it no longer she put the bag down
beside the fence and said in an offhand tone:
"Well ... I must be getting back ... I'll come again to-morrow night."
She started to walk away with her sedate air, but a little quicker
perhaps than would suggest perfect calmness.
Before she had taken three steps he came after her. Pen broke into a
run. He overtook her. Ah! if he had only taken her in his arms! But
he only circled about her, spreading out his arms to bar her way.
"Pen, _Pen_, don't leave me!" he said imploringly. "That would be the
last straw! ... Don't leave me to brood over my own hatefulness."
The pain in his voice arrested her. She forgot her own pain. As in a
flash she had a clairvoyant glimpse of what he must be going through
day after day, the resolute young man compelled to skulk in the woods,
while his name was bandied about with the stigma of murder upon it.
"I'm a fool!" she said with a shaky little laugh. "To get sore ... I
won't go."
"Oh, Pen, you're so good to me!" he groaned. "I'm a stubborn brute,
Pen, I can't thank you properly. But Pen, I feel as if you were
heaping a load on me that I'd never be able to struggle from under!
But I ought not to feel that way, Pen."
Ever since he had got hold of that little name he could scarcely
address five words to her without using it, and every time he spoke it
he caressed it. Pen was reassured.
"Don't worry about how you ought to feel," she murmured. "Much better
for us to quarrel than to make pretenses to each other. Besides a lot
of that talk about doing things for people and earning their gratitude
is false. A person has really no right to put another person under a
debt of gratitude."
"The truth is, I'm afraid of you," he grumbled.
It was delicious to her to have him softened and faltering like this.
"I'm afraid of you, too," she confessed. "How silly we both are!"
For a moment or two they were wildly and unreasonably happy, standing
there in the bland moonlight close together but not touching. His face
was in the shadow but Pen could feel his eyes stabbing her out of the
dark. Her own went down. They were like reeds shaken in the same
gust. In that moment Pen knew that whatever bonds might be upon him
out in the world, he was hers. Still he did not speak; he did not draw
her to him. In the end she had to wrench herself away from the
magnetic attraction of his body, or else she must have flung herself
into his arms.
"Let's walk," she said hurriedly. "We're safe enough in this
out-of-the-way corner. You must need exercise. We'll circle round the
field. Over in the corner there's a path leading down to an arm of
Back creek where Dad keeps his boat in the winter."
Don came down to earth with a sigh. He had a curious way, when his
thoughts annoyed him, of shaking his head like a dog, to clear it.
Without saying anything he tied the jute bag to an overhanging branch
out of reach of four-footed prowlers, and came along with Pen.
They kept to the fence line, silent for the most part. Their breasts
were oppressed by moonlight, that high, pure medium which nevertheless
stirs us so poignantly. The moon herself is all very well in her way,
a lovely lamp in the dark, but one can stare at the moon all night
without being transported. One must turn one's back on the moon to
experience her magic. It is the strange light she casts on the face of
our mother Earth, and Earth's smile under moonlight, soft, subtle and
infinitely suggestive, that thrill us, that disquiet us, that unlock
our spirits. On the one hand as they walked the field lay spread with
a bloomy, gossamer coverlet of moonlight; on the other hand the
swelling tree masses rose in rich velvety blackness under a lazulite
sky.
Their two shadows soberly preceded them, always with a narrow space of
moonlight between. Pen resented that little gap. She had forgotten
about the supposed other woman, or if she remembered she no longer
cared. She lived in the moment only; there was no more past, no
future. She was in the grip of sensations that scarcely permitted her
to breathe. Yet she had to conceal from him those sighs with which she
sought to relieve her breast. Sometimes she fell behind a step just
for the satisfaction of looking at him without his knowing, at the way
his hair curled at the nape of his neck, at his flat, straight back, at
the curious grace of his level walk. He was wearing an old pair of
trousers and a shirt of khaki that she had brought him as being less
conspicuous in the woods than his own white clothes. The thin garments
betrayed his beauty to her.
The moon was high in the sky and their shadows were short at their
feet. Pen beheld a curious thing. The dewy grass refracting the
strong moonlight made a silvery nimbus around the heads of the two of
them.
"Look!" she said with her shaky little laugh. "We've been canonized."
"Not me," he said. "They just let me walk under your halo."
Having circled round two sides of the field, they climbed over another
pole gate and were swallowed up in the woods. Instantly the silence
wrapped them as in a cloak, and the heavy air became charged with a
curious significance. High over head they glimpsed the moon pacing
with them over the tree-tops. She splashed the trunks fantastically,
and occasionally lay down a bar of silver on the path, but for the most
part the underworld was black, black, black; a crouching blackness that
held its breath as if in preparation for a spring. The path was
well-beaten but narrow. They had to walk in single file, Pen ahead.
"I'm glad you're here," murmured Pen.
"It's a fearsome sort of place," he said. "It was not like this the
other night we walked through the woods."
"These woods have not been cut out," said Pen. "The old presences have
never been disturbed."
Finally the path with a sharp turn brought them abruptly out under the
open sky again. It was as if something had been lifted off their
heads. They had come to a low bank at the head of a straight, narrow
arm of water thrust into the heart of the pines. A great bird arose
from below them and passed away like a shadow with a soft swishing of
wings. The path ended in a shaky little wharf with a single plank laid
upon it. They stepped gingerly out upon it hand in hand, and stood
looking down the reach. The South wind passed high above their heads
and the surface of the water was perfectly unruffled.
At the moment the moon was looking down the straight arm so squarely
one might have said she had cleft the opening herself with her silver
blade of light. Down at the end of the narrow arm they had the sense
of a wider body of water running at right angles, a pearly, fairy-like
strait. On the point which separated the two bodies of water stood a
little white house gleaming wanly in the moonlight. In a window of the
house, a curious note in that dreamy world of opal and pearl, shone an
insistent yellow light.
"Surely real people can't live there," murmured Don.
"The worst kind, unfortunately," said Pen. "That's where the oystermen
go to get drunk."
They retraced their steps up the bank. When they trod firm earth
again, Pen repossessed herself of her hand.
"Where now?" asked Don.
"There's no place to go but back."
"Not yet," he pleaded. "Let's stay here awhile. There's plenty of
time. There are no mosquitoes to-night."
An old skiff had been dragged up on top of the bank and turned over.
"Sit here," he urged.
Blaming herself for her weakness, she sat upon it with her hands in her
lap. The moonlight was strong upon her. There was a wall of
undergrowth at her back. Her face and hands stood out against it
sharply. Don dropped to the ground at her feet.
"It's damp there," she objected.
"Can't see you when I sit beside you," he said. "I can from here.
With only your face and hands showing out of your black dress you look
like a spirit."
"A lost spirit!" she said with her little laugh.
"Oh Pen!" he said in distress. "Why should you be unhappy?"
"I hate the moon!" she said. "It makes a fool of me!"
His touch of sympathy unnerved her. That and the glamorous destructive
light that would not let her breast be. The last of her defenses
collapsed. In spite of herself the tears welled up in her eyes and
brimmed over. She lowered her head to hide them, but he caught the
sparkle of the drops as they fell. It electrified him. He scrambled
to his knees.
"Pen! Pen!" he whispered brokenly.
She covered her face with her hands. He dragged them down, and crushed
them under his own hands on her knees.
"Pen!" he gasped. "It breaks my heart to see you! What is the matter?"
She strained away from him. "Nothing!" she said crossly. "I'm not the
sort that cries!"
"But you're crying now. I see your tears!"
"It's nothing. I'm just nervous. Don't notice me."
"Oh Pen, I love you so!" he groaned. "It kills me to see your tears!"
She looked at him with a kind of horror.
He dropped his head in her lap. "There it's out!" he groaned. "All
evening I've been fighting against it. Every night I've been with you.
I swore I wouldn't tell you. But here I am ... just like a baby. God
knows I'll regret it to-morrow!"
"But why?" she gasped.
"Because it drives me wild to think of bringing unhappiness into your
life. I'd sooner jump off the wharf yonder. It's unmanly to tell you
now!"
"Blessed unmanliness!" whispered Pen, brooding over him.
Presently she jerked her head up as if she needed more air, more light.
The moon shone in her wet face. It was transfigured.
He was still humbled over her knees. "This isn't the way I wanted to
come to the woman I love," he said bitterly. "I've nothing to offer
you ... less than nothing ..."
"Do you want to buy me or to love me," she murmured with soft reproach.
He scarcely heard her. "It is impossible for you to respect a man who
is as dependent on you as a baby!"
Pen put her cheek in his hair. "Foolish one! What has respect to do
with it?"
"You can only be sorry for me!"
Her hands turned over and found his face. "Foolish! Foolish!
Foolish!" she murmured. "You must have got your idea of loving out of
books! ... How selfish you are!"
He raised his head, struck by the word.
Her voice deepened. "Don't you understand how sweet it has been for me
to work for you; to lie for you; to steal food out of the house? Why
do you begrudge it to me? ... Oh, sometimes I could almost wish you
_had_ committed a murder so I could go with you and be disgraced with
you!"
"Pen! ... Pen!" he cried amazed and full of delight. Then added
quaintly in a voice of reproof: "You're talking wildly!"
Pen laughed deep in her throat. She slipped off the boat to the ground
beside him, where she could wreathe her arms about him, and hide her
face on his shoulder.
"You're only a man," she murmured laughing and passionate. "What do
you know about love? ... Ah, but only let me love you and I will be
content!"
"You'll see whether I can love or not," he said, piqued.
"Keep telling me," she murmured. "My ears are starving for it!"
"I can't tell you to order," he grumbled, manlike. "It must come of
itself."
But she knew from the timbre of his voice, from his arms, from the
adoring droop of his head, and was content.
He held her a little away from him that he might see her better. Pen
yielded up her soul to him through her eyes.
"Good God! how beautiful you are!" he whispered sharply.
Their lips came together. They achieved forgetfulness.
Even lovers must come back to earth. Pen drew away from him. "The
dawn will surprise us," she murmured.
He consulted his watch. "Only half-past two."
"We must go."
"Oh, no! no!"
"Well, we must begin to go," she amended. "I can't leave you quickly."
She sat on the ground as Diana must have sat, her legs folded against
her, her waist curving to preserve her equilibrium, both round arms up
and her fingers busy with her hair.
"How beautiful you are so," he murmured. "Don't move!"
She laughed. "Help me up," she commanded, extending him her hands.
As he pulled her to her feet he was for enfolding her again, but she
put her hands up between them. "Not now! I want to get away from you
a little."
"Pen!" he cried reproachfully.
She laughed. "Dearest! I just mean you have numbed me ... I must get
away from you in order to realize you."
"You soon have enough of me," he grumbled.
"Somebody must be the first to stop."
"But you do love me, don't you?"
"Not always in the same way."
"You do! You do! I know it now!"
"Then why worry? ... Come, it's a long way back. We can talk as we go."
"But wait a minute, Pen. No, I won't touch you if you don't want me to
... I want to tell you something. Oh, if I could only tell you right!
... What this wonderful thing means to me!"
"Sh! Dearest! It can't be told. It simply can't!"
"But I must try."
"You're not sorry then that you told me?"
"No, by God! I don't deserve this ... but I'm not sorry. That was
just childish pride ... If you really are the better man of the two I
might as well make up my mind to it!"
Pen laughed. "But I'm not! ... Oh, my tongue is quicker than yours. I
can tangle you all up in words. But you have a simplicity! I sit at
your feet!"
"Pen!"
"Come on, I shouldn't have told you that! ... Come on, I feel as light
as air, now!" She whirled around and gave his elbows a little squeeze.
"Isn't it blessed to be relieved of that horrible constraint that lay
on us." She was off ahead again. "I can say whatever I like to you
now without thinking ... I expect I'll shock you sometimes. I'm no
lady!"
"I guess I can stand it," he said grinning.
Pen had a hundred questions to ask as they went. The most trifling
details of his childhood were important to her.
"Have you any photographs of yourself as a child?" she asked eagerly.
"How I should love them!"
"All ages," he said lightly. Suddenly his voice became embittered. "I
suppose they're in the hands of the police."
"We'll get them back!" said Pen confidently.
He stopped in the path. "Good God, Pen! _What is before us_? I had
forgotten it!"
"You are going to clear yourself."
"But if I shouldn't be able to?"
"Whatever happens to you, I share it," she said quickly.
"But I've got to take care of you!"
Ignoring this, she resumed her questions. Gradually she drew him back
into a lighter mood.
"Haven't you any brothers and sisters, Don?"
"No, I was an only child."
"I, too. It's unnatural. I mean to have four."
He pulled her to him. "Oh, my Pen!" he said a little hoarsely. "My
heart almost stops beating at the thought!"
She freed herself. "Bear!" she said. "I didn't invite you to assist
me in bringing up my family!"
"You've got to have some assistance," he said wickedly.
She changed the subject. "I suppose you've been in love dozens of
times," she said.
"Not like this. Flirtations."
"Oh, the last time is always the only time," she said mockingly.
"Well, how about yourself?" he parried.
"Not a flirtation!" said Pen ruefully. "Not the least little bit of a
one. Only dreams."
"The men were afraid of you," said Don sagely. "It takes courage to
make up to a girl like you."
"Conceit!" said Pen ... "Tell me about your flirtations."
"I forget," he said warily.
"Well, the first one. You couldn't forget that."
"No, I don't mean to tell you," he said coolly. He groped for his
words. "You're the only woman who ever mattered a damn to me. If you
don't know that now, you will know it ... And it isn't that I want to
make myself out any better than I am. Pretty poor average sort ... But
I won't tell you. I have a feeling that you're the sort to bedevil me
into telling you things with a laugh, and then store them up and brood
over them and magnify them."
Pen sent him a curious glance through her lashes. "Good gracious!
You're cleverer than I thought!" she said in a tone divided between
mockery and pique.
By the time they got out of the woods the moon had traveled a good bit
towards the West. Now it almost hung over the taller splotch of black
that marked the trees surrounding the big house.
Don said: "Every night as soon as it grows dark I come out of my hole
and lean on the fence and watch the house and wonder what you are doing
inside. Why is it I never see a light in any of the windows facing
this way?"
"It just happens that none of those rooms are used," Pen said. "In the
main house the back drawing-room and the guest room have windows facing
this way, and in the kitchen wing there is the back kitchen and two
servants' rooms upstairs.... After this every night I'll put a light
in one of the servants' rooms to tell you all is well. And when it
goes out you'll know I'm starting. And if it goes out and comes on
again you'll know I'm prevented from coming."
"That would be bad news," he said.
"We might get up a regular code of signals," Pen went on. "Suppose
there was danger, and I couldn't come to warn you. Suppose I wanted to
tell you to change your camp."
"We'd have to fix on some spot beforehand so you would know where to
find me."
"That's the difficulty. I don't know any place safer than this. What
place would be safe if they took it into their heads to search the
woods? ... There is a safe place though, that I have thought of."
"Where's that?"
"In the house itself."
"What!" he exclaimed.
"If I could once get you inside we could snap our fingers at them."
"How about the servants?"
"I wouldn't tell them. Aunt Maria never goes upstairs. I tend to the
upstairs myself. The third floor of the house is never visited at all."
"Oh Pen, I couldn't!"
"Why not?" she demanded.
"To hide behind your skirts like that!"
"I thought you were going to drop that nonsense."
"It dies hard!" he groaned.
"Well, if you're so reluctant to come to my house where I could see you
as much as I wanted," she said sorely, "I won't ask you unless I am
forced to ... But if it should be necessary ... Listen! ... I'll put a
light in each of the rooms over the kitchen. If you see two lights
shining this way you are to hide all your things as well as you can,
and come to the house."
"Where would I meet you?"
"I won't meet you outside. It would double the risk for the two of us
to try to get into the house together. Listen! Make your way over the
fields without going near the road. Give the negro cabin a wide berth.
When you are abreast of the big house strike for the evergreen hedge
that bounds that side of the grounds. You'll find a gap in it, broken
by the wind. You know how the porch runs around three sides of the
main building. At the end of the porch on that side there's a rough
clump of mock orange bushes. Behind the bushes you'll find a way into
the cellar. That's how I go and come. I'll be waiting for you in the
cellar. Or if I'm not there wait till I come."
"Oh Pen, I hate skulking!"
"I love it!" said Pen. "If I know I'm in the right. It's an
adventure!"
They came to the tree where they had left the grass bag hanging.
"Well..." began Pen.
Don swung her around inside his arm. "Oh my Pen, how can I let you go
to-night?" he groaned.
"Ah, don't kiss me any more," she pleaded. "I don't want to be drowned
again. I want to know I'm loving you."
"But I must before I lose you!"
She laid restraining hands on his arms. "Listen, dear," she murmured.
"There's something I want to tell you. From the very bottom of my
heart it comes. I love you so much you can make me your slave if you
want. But you should have pity on me. You should help me to keep
myself separate. For both our sakes. If sometimes I seem perverse and
tricksy to you it is only because of the desperate need I have to keep
something of myself back. If I become swallowed up in you as most
women do in their men you'll tire of me. I'll lose my flavor for you.
Let me give myself to you a mouthful at a time. Don't swallow me
whole!"
He but dimly understood her. "I'll try!" he said between a laugh and a
groan. "You funny darling child! ... But how can I keep from kissing
you?"
"I don't want you always to keep from it," Pen said.