THE TRUTH ABOUT SUSQUEHANNA
Jordan King, directing his car with necessary caution through the
traffic of a small but crowded city, two hundred miles from home,
suddenly threw out his clutch and jammed his brakes into urgent use.
Beside him Aleck, flinging out a hasty arm to warn drivers pressing
closely behind, gazed at his employer in wonder. There was absolutely
nothing to stop them, and an autocratic crossing policeman just ahead
was impatiently waving them forward.
But King, his eyes apparently following something or some one in the
throng, which had just negotiated the crossing of the street at right
angles to his own direction, spoke hurriedly: "Turn to the right here,
Aleck, and wait for me at the first spot down that street where they'll
let you stop."
He was out of the car and off at a dangerous slant through the
procession of moving vehicles, dodging past great trucks and slipping by
the noses of touring cars and coupés with apparent recklessness of
consequences.
Aleck, sliding into the driver's seat and forced to lose sight of
King's tall figure because of the urgency of the crowding mass behind,
was moved to curious speculation. As he turned the designated corner, he
was saying to himself with a chuckle: "He always was quick on the
trigger, but I'll be darned if that wasn't about the hastiest move I
ever saw him make. What's he after, anyhow, in this town where he just
told me he didn't know a soul? Well, it's some wait for me, I'll bet."
If he could have seen his master as that young man plunged along through
the crowd Aleck would have found plenty to interest him. King was doing
his best to pursue and catch up with a figure which he now and again
lost sight of in the throng, so that he slowed his pace lest he go by it
unawares. The fear that he might thus miss and lose it sharpened his
gaze and gave to his face an intent look, so that many people stared at
him as he passed them, wondering what the comely, dark-eyed young man
was after that he was rushing at such a pace.
There came a moment when King paused, uncertain, his heart standing
still with the certainty that he was off the track and that his quarry
had unconsciously doubled and eluded him. An instant later he drew a
quick breath of relief, his gaze following a slender black figure as it
mounted the steps of an old church which stood, dingy but still
dignified, close by the highway, its open doors indicating that it had
remained in this downtown district for a purpose. King sprang up the
steps, then paused in the great doorway, beyond which the darkness and
quiet of an empty interior silently invited passers-by to rest and
reflect. At that moment a deep organ note sounded far away upon the
stillness, and King took a step inside, looking cautiously about him.
The figure he pursued had vanished, and after a moment more he crossed
the vestibule and stood, hat in hand, gazing into the dim depths beyond.
For a little, coming as he had from the strong light of the September
afternoon, he could see absolutely nothing; but as his vision cleared he
was able to make out a small group of people far toward the front of the
spacious interior, and the form of the organist himself before his
manuals low at the right of the choir. But he had to look for some time
before he could descry at the farthermost side of the church a solitary
head bent upon the rail before it. Toward this point the young man
slowly made his way, his heart hammering a most unwonted tattoo within
his broad breast.
Several pews behind and to one side of the kneeling figure he took his
place, his gaze fastened upon it. He looked his fill, secure in his own
position, which was in the shadow of a great stone pillar, where the
dim light from the sombre-toned windows did not touch him. And, as he
looked, the conviction he had had since his first meeting with this girl
deepened and strengthened into resolution. He would not lose her again,
no matter what it might cost to hold her. He would not believe a man
could be mistaken in that face, in that exquisite and arresting
personality. There was not such another in the whole wide world.
Suddenly she turned, and evidently she saw that some one was near her,
though he knew it was not possible that she had recognized him. She sat
quite still for another five minutes, then rose very quietly, gathering
up the remembered black handbag, and moved like a young nun into the
aisle, head downbent. King slipped out of his pew, made a quick circuit
around the pillar, and met her squarely as she came toward him.
He stood still in her path, and she, looking partially up to pass him
with that complete ignoring of his presence which young women of
breeding employ when strangers threaten to take notice, heard his low
voice: "Please don't run away--from your friend!"
"Oh--Mr. King!" Her eyes, startled, met his indeed, and into her face,
as she spoke his name, poured a flood of beautiful colour, at sight of
which King all but lost his head.
He managed, however, to retain sufficient sanity to grasp her hand after
the fashion approved as the proper sign of cordiality in meeting a
valued acquaintance, and to say, in an outwardly restrained manner:
"Won't you sit down again here? We can talk so much better than
outside--and I must talk with you. You have no idea how hard I have
tried to find you."
She seemed to hesitate for an instant, but ended by slipping into the
pew by the pillar where King had been sitting, and to which he pointed
her, as the most sheltered spot at hand, where the group of people at
the front of the church were hidden from view, and only the now low and
throbbing notes of the organ could remind the pair that they were not
absolutely alone.
"This is wonderful--for me," King began, in the hushed tone befitting
such a place--and the tone which suited his feelings as well. "I have
thought of you a million times in these months and longed to know just
how you were looking. Now that I see for myself my mind is a bit
easier--and yet--I'm somehow more anxious about you than ever."
"There's no reason why you should be anxious about me, Mr. King," she
answered, her eyes releasing themselves from his in spite of his effort
to hold them. "I'm doing very well, and--quite enjoying my work. How
about yourself? I hardly need to ask."
"Oh, I'm coming on finely, thank you. I've plunged into my work with all
the zest I ever had. Only one thing has bothered me: I seemed unable to
get out of the habit of watching the mails. And they have been mighty
disappointing."
"You surely couldn't expect," she said, smiling a little, "that once you
were well again you should be pampered with frequent letters."
"I certainly haven't been pampered. One letter in all this time--"
"Book agents haven't much time for writing letters. And surely engineers
must be busy people."
He was silent for a minute, studying her. She seemed, in spite of her
youth and beauty, wonderfully self-reliant. Again, as in the room at the
hospital, her quiet poise of manner struck him. And though she was once
more dressed in the plainest and least costly of attire--as well as he
could judge--he knew that he should be entirely willing to take her
anywhere where he was known, with no mental apologies for her
appearance. This thought immediately put another into his mind, on which
he lost no time in acting.
"This is a great piece of luck," said he, and went on hurriedly, trying
to use diplomacy, which always came hard with him: "I don't want it to
slip away too soon. Why couldn't we spend the rest of the day together?
I'm just on my way back home from a piece of work I've been
superintending outside this city. I've plenty of time ahead of me, and
I'm sure the book business can't be so pressing that you couldn't take a
few hours off. If you'll venture to trust yourself to me we'll go off
into the country somewhere, and have dinner at some pleasant place. Then
we can talk things over--all sorts of things," he added quickly, lest
this seem too pointed. "Won't you--please?"
She considered an instant, then said frankly: "Of course that would be
delightful, and I can't think of a real reason why I shouldn't do it.
What time is it, please?"
"Only three o'clock. We'll have time for a splendid drive and I'll
promise to get you back at any hour you say--after dinner."
"It must be early."
"It shall be. Well, then--will you wait in the vestibule out here two
minutes, please? I'll have the car at the door."
Thus it happened that Aleck, four blocks away, having just comfortably
settled to the reading of a popular magazine on mechanics, found himself
summarily ejected from his seat, and sent off upon his own resources
for a number of hours.
"Take care of yourself, Al, and have a good time out of it if you can,"
urged his master, and Aleck observed that King's eyes were very bright
and his manner indicative of some fresh mental stimulus received during
the brief time of his absence. "Have the best sort of a dinner wherever
you like."
"All right, Mr. King," Aleck responded. "I hope you're going to have a
good time yourself," he added, "after all the work you've done to-day. I
was some anxious for fear you'd do too much."
"No chance, Aleck, with Doctor Burns's orders what they are. And I
didn't do a thing but stand around and talk with the men. I'm feeling
fit as a fiddle now." And King drove off in haste.
Back at the church he watched with intense satisfaction Miss Anne
Linton's descent of the dusty steps. The September sunshine was
hazily bright, the air was warmly caressing, and there were several
hours ahead containing such an opportunity as he had not yet had to
try at finding out the things he had wanted to know. Not this girl's
circumstances--though he should be interested in that topic--not any
affairs of hers which she should not choose to tell him; but the future
relationship between herself and him--this was what he must establish
upon some sort of a definite basis, if it were possible.
Out through the crowded streets into the suburbs, on beyond these to the
open country, the car took its way with as much haste as was compatible
with necessary caution. Once on the open road, however, and well away,
King paid small attention to covering distance. Indeed, when they had
reached a certain wooded district, picturesque after the fashion of the
semi-mountainous country of that part of the state, he let his car idle
after a fashion most unaccustomed with him, who was usually principally
concerned with getting from one place to another with the least possible
waste of time.
And now he and Anne Linton were talking as they never had had the chance
to talk before, and they were exploring each other's minds with the zest
of those who have many tastes in common. King was confirming that of
which he had been convinced by her letters, that she was thoroughly
educated, and that she had read and thought along lines which had
intensely interested him ever since he had reached the thinking age. To
his delight he found that she could hold her own in an argument with as
close reasoning, as logical deduction, as keen interpretation, as any
young man he knew. And with it all she showed a certain quality of
appreciation of his own side of the question which especially pleased
him, because it proved that she possessed that most desirable power,
rare among those of her sex as he knew them--the ability to hold herself
free from undue bias.
Yet she proved herself a very girl none the less by suddenly crying out
at sight of certain tall masses of shell-pink flowers growing by the
roadside in a shady nook, and by insisting on getting out to pick them
for herself.
"It's so much more fun," she asserted, "to choose one's own than to
watch a man picking all the poorest blossoms and leaving the very best."
"Is that what we do?" King asked, his eyes feasting upon the sight of
her as she filled her arms with the gay masses, her face eager with her
pleasure in them.
"Yes, indeed. Or else you get out a jackknife and hack off great
handfuls of them at once, and bring them back all bleeding from your
ruthless attack."
"I see. And you gather them delicately, so they don't mind, I suppose.
Yet--I was given to understand that 'Susquehanna' died first. I've
always wondered what you did to her. I'd banked on her as the huskiest
of the lot."
She flashed a quick look at him, compounded of surprise, mirth, and
something else whose nature he could not guess. "'Susquehanna' was
certainly a wonderful rose," she admitted.
"Yet only next morning she was sadly drooping. I know, because I
received a report of her. And I lost my wager."
"You should have known better," she said demurely, her head bent over
her armful of flowers, "than to make a wager on the life of a rose sent
to a girl who was just coming back to life herself."
"You weren't so gentle with 'Susquehanna,' then, I take it, as you are
with those wild things you have there."
"I was not gentle with her at all." Anne lifted her head with a
mischievously merry look. "If you must know--I kissed her--hard!"
"Ah!" Jordan King sat back, laughing, with suddenly rising colour. "I
thought as much. But I suppose I'm to take it that you did it solely
because she was 'Susquehanna'--not because--"
"Certainly because she was her lovely self, cool and sweet and a
glorious colour, and she reminded me--of other roses I had known.
Flowers to a convalescent are only just a little less reviving than
food. 'Susquehanna' cheered me on toward victory."
"Then she died happy, I'm sure."
He would have enjoyed keeping it up with nonsense of this pleasurable
sort, but as soon as Anne was back in the car she somehow turned him
aside upon quite different ground, just how he could not tell. He found
himself led on to talk about his work, and he could not discover in her
questioning a trace of anything but genuine interest. No man, however
modest about himself, finds it altogether distressing to have to tell a
charming girl some of his more exciting experiences. In the days of his
early apprenticeship King had spent many months with a contracting
engineer of reputation, who was executing a notable piece of work in a
wild and even dangerous country, and the young man's memory was full of
adventures connected with that period. In contrast with his present
work, which was of a much more prosaic sort, it formed a chapter in his
history to which it stirred him even yet to turn back, and at Anne's
request he was soon launched upon it.
So the afternoon passed amidst the sights and sounds of the September
country. And now and again they stopped to look at some fine view from a
commanding height, or flew gayly down some inviting stretch of smooth
road. By and by they were at an old inn, well up on the top of the
world, which King had had in mind from the start, and to which he had
taken time, an hour before, to telephone and order things he had hoped
she would like. When the two sat down at a table in a quiet corner
there were flowers and shining silver upon a snowy cloth, and the food
which soon arrived was deliciously cooked, sustaining the reputation the
place had among motorists. And in the very way in which Anne Linton
filled her position opposite Jordan King was further proof that, in
spite of all evidence to the contrary, she belonged to his class.
Their table was lighted with shaded candles, and in the soft glow Anne's
face had become startlingly lovely. She had tucked a handful of the
shell-pink wild flowers into the girdle of her black dress, and their
hue was reflected in her cheeks, glowing from the afternoon's drive in
the sun. As King talked and laughed, his eyes seldom off her face, he
felt the enchantment of her presence grow upon him with every minute
that went by.
Suddenly he blurted out a question which had been in his mind all day.
"I had a curious experience a while back," he said, "when I first got
out into the world. I was in Doctor Burns's car, and we met some people
in a limousine, touring. They stopped to ask about the road, and there
was a girl in the car who looked like you. But--she didn't recognize me
by the slightest sign, so I knew of course it couldn't be you."
He looked straight at Anne as he spoke, and saw her lower her eyes for a
moment with an odd little smile on her lips. She did not long evade his
gaze, however, but gave him back his look unflinchingly.
"It was I," she said. "But I'm not going to tell you how I came to be
there, nor why I didn't bow to you. All I want to say is that there was
a reason for it all, and if I could tell you, you would understand."
Well, he could not look into her face and not trust her in whatever she
might elect to do, and he said something to that effect. Whereupon she
smiled and thanked him, and said she was sorry to be so mysterious. He
recalled with a fresh thrill how she had looked at him at that strange
meeting, for now that he knew that it was surely she, the great fact
which stayed by him was that she had given him that look to remember,
given it to him with intent, beyond a doubt.
They came out presently upon a long porch overhanging the shore of a
small lake. The September sun was already low, and the light upon the
blue hills in the distance was turning slowly to a dusky purple. The
place was very quiet, for it was growing late in the tourist season, and
the inn was remote from main highways of travel.
"Can't we stay here just a bit?" King asked pleadingly. "It won't take
us more than an hour to get back if we go along at a fair pace. We came
by a roundabout way."
With each hour that passed he was realizing more fully how he dreaded
the end of this unexpected and absorbing adventure. So far none of his
attempts to pave the way for other meetings, in other towns to which she
might be going in the course of her book selling, had resulted in
anything satisfactory. And even now Anne Linton was shaking her head.
"I think I must ask you to take me back now," she said. "I want to come
into the house where I am staying not later than I usually do."
So he had to leave the pleasant, vine-clad porch and take his place
beside her in the car again. It did not seem to him that he was having a
fair chance. But he thought of a plan and proceeded to put it into
execution. He drove steadily and in silence until the lights of the
nearing city were beginning to show faintly in the twilight, with the
sky still rich with colour in the west. Then, at a certain curve in the
road far above the rest of the countryside, he brought the car to a
standstill.
"I can't bear to go on and end this day," he said in a low voice of
regret. "How can I tell when I shall see you again? Do you realize that
every time I have said a word about our meeting in the future you've
somehow turned me aside? Do you want me to understand that you would
rather never see me again?"
Her face was toward the distant lights, and she did not answer for a
minute. Then she said slowly: "I should like very much to see you again,
Mr. King. But you surely understand that I couldn't make appointments
with you to meet me in other towns. This has happened and it has been
very pleasant, but it wouldn't do to make it keep happening. Even though
I travel about with a book to sell, I--shall never lose the sense
of--being under the protection of a home such as other girls have."
"I wouldn't have you lose it--good heavens, no! I only--well--" And now
he stopped, set his teeth for an instant, and then plunged ahead. "But
there's something I can't lose either, and it's--you!"
She looked at him then, evidently startled. "Mr. King, will you drive
on, please?" she said very quietly, but he felt something in her tone
which for an instant he did not understand. In the next instant he
thought he did understand it.
He spoke hurriedly: "You don't know me very well yet, do you? But I
thought you knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't say a thing like
that unless I meant all that goes with it--and follows it. You see--I
love you. If--if you are not afraid of a man in a plaster jacket--it'll
come off some day, you know--I ask you to marry me."
There was a long silence then, in which King felt his heart pumping
away for dear life. He had taken the bit between his teeth now,
certainly, and offered this girl, of whom he knew less than of any human
being in whom he had the slightest interest, all that he had to give.
Yet--he was so sure he knew her that, the words once out, he realized
that he was glad he had spoken them.
At last she turned toward him. "You are a very brave man," she said,
"and a very chivalrous man."
He laughed rather huskily. "It doesn't take much of either bravery or
chivalry for a man to offer himself to you."
"It must take plenty of both. You are--what you are, in the big world
you live in. And you dare to trust an absolute stranger, whom you have
no means of knowing better, with that name of yours. Think, Mr. Jordan
King, what that name means to you--and to your mother."
"I have thought. And I offer it to you. And I do know what you are. You
can't disguise yourself--any more than the Princess in the fairy tale.
Do you think all those notes I had from you at the hospital didn't tell
the story? I don't know why you are selling books from door to door--and
I don't want to know. What I do understand is--that you are the first of
your family to do it!"
"Mr. King," she said gravely, "women are very clever at one
thing--cleverer than men. With a little study, a little training, a
little education, they can make a brave showing. I have known a shopgirl
who, after six months of living with a very charming society woman,
could play that woman's part without mistake. And when it came to
talking with men of brains, she could even use a few clever phrases and
leave the rest of the conversation to them, and they were convinced of
her brilliant mind."
"You have not been a shopgirl," he said steadily. "You belong in a home
like mine. If you have lost it by some accident, that is only the
fortune of life. But you can't disguise yourself as a commonplace
person, for you're not. And--I can't let you go out of my life--I
can't."
Again silence, while the sunset skies slowly faded into the dusky blue
of night, and the lights over the distant city grew brighter and
brighter. A light wind, warmly smoky with the pleasant fragrance of
burning bonfires, touched the faces of the two in the car and blew small
curly strands of hair about Anne Linton's ears.
Presently she spoke. "I am going to promise to write to you now and
then," she said, "and give you each time an address where you may
answer, if you will promise not to come to me. I am going to tell you
frankly that I want your letters."
"You want my letters--but not me?"
"You put more of yourself into your letters than any one else I know. So
in admitting that I want your letters I admit that I want yourself--as a
good friend."
"No more than that?"
"That's quite enough, isn't it, for people who know each other only as
we do?"
"It's not enough for me. If it's enough for you, then--well, it's as I
thought."
"What did you think?"
He hesitated, then spoke boldly: "No woman really wants--a mangled human
being for her own."
Impulsively she laid her hand on his. Instantly he grasped it. "Please,"
she said, "will you never say--or think--that, again?"
He gazed eagerly into her face, still duskily visible to his scrutiny.
"I won't," he answered, "if you'll tell me you care for me. Oh, don't
you?--don't you?--not one bit? Just give me a show of a chance and I'll
make you care. I've _got_ to make you care. Why, I've thought of nothing
but you for months--dreamed of you, sleeping and waking. I can't stop;
it's too late. Don't ask me to stop--Anne--dear!"
No woman in her senses could have doubted the sincerity of this young
man. That he was no adept at love making was apparent in the way he
stumbled over his phrases; in the way his voice caught in his throat;
in the way it grew husky toward the last of this impassioned pleading of
his.
He still held her hand close. "Tell me you care--a little," he begged of
her silence.
"No girl can be alone as I am now and not be touched by such words," she
said very gently after a moment's hesitation. "But--promising to marry
you is a different matter. I can't let you rashly offer me so much when
I know what it would mean to you to bring home a--book agent to your
mother!"
He uttered a low exclamation. "My life is my own, to do with as I
please. If I'm satisfied, that's enough. You are what I want--all I
want. As for my mother--when she knows you--But we'll not talk of that
just yet. What I must know is--do you--can you--care for me--enough to
marry me?" His hand tightened on hers, his voice whispered in her ear:
"Anne, darling--can't you love me? I want you so--oh--I want you so! Let
me kiss you--just once, dear. That will tell you--"
But she drew her hand gently but efficiently away; she spoke firmly,
though very low: "No--no! Listen--Jordan King. Sometime--by next spring
perhaps, I shall be in the place I call home. When that time comes I
will let you know. If you still care to, you may come and see me there.
Now--won't you drive on, please?"
"Yes, if you'll let me--just once--_once_ to live on all those months!
Anne--"
But, when he would have made action and follow close upon the heels of
pleading he found himself gently but firmly prevented by an uplifted
small hand which did not quite touch his nearing face. "Ah, don't spoil
that chivalry of yours," said her mellow, low voice. "Let me go on
thinking you are what I have believed you are all along. Be patient, and
prove whether this is real, instead of snatching at what might dull your
judgment!"
"It wouldn't dull it--only confirm it. And--I want to make you remember
me."
"You have provided that already," she admitted, at which he gave an
ejaculation as of relief--and of longing--and possibly of recognition of
her handling of the whole--from her point of view--rather difficult
situation. At the back of his mind, in spite of his disappointment at
being kept at arm's length when he wanted something much more definite,
was the recognition that here was precisely the show of spirit and
dignity which his judgment approved and admired.
"I'll let you go, if I must; but I'll come to you--if you live in a
hovel--if you live in a cave--if you live--Oh, I know how you live!"
"How do I live?" she asked, laughing a little unsteadily, and as if
there were tears in her eyes, though of this he could not be sure.
"You live in a plain little house, with just a few of the things you
used to have about you; rows of books, a picture or two, and some old
china. Things may be a bit shabby, but everything is beautifully neat,
and there are garden flowers on the table, perhaps white lilacs!"
"Oh, what a romanticist!" she said, through her soft laughter. "One
would think you wrote novels instead of specifications for concrete
walls. What if you come and find me living with my older sister, who
sews for a living, plain sewing, at a dollar a day? And we have a long
credit account at the grocery, which we can't pay? And at night our
little upstairs room is full of neighbours, untidy, loud-talking,
commonplace women? And the lamp smokes--"
"It wouldn't smoke; you would have trimmed it," he answered, quickly and
with conviction. "But, even if it were all like that, you would still be
the perfect thing you are. And I would take you away--"
"If you don't drive on, Mr. King," she interposed gently, "you will soon
be mentally unfit to drive at all. And I must be back before the
darkness has quite fallen. And--don't you think we have talked enough
about ourselves?"
"I like that word," he declared as he obediently set the car in motion.
"Ourselves--that sounds good to me. As long as you keep me with you that
way I'll try to be satisfied. One thing I'm sure of: I've something to
work for now that I didn't have this morning. Oh, I know; you haven't
given me a thing. But you're going to let me come to see you next
spring, and that's worth everything to me. Meanwhile, I'll do my level
best--for you."
* * * * *
When he drew up before the door of the church, where, in spite of his
entreaties that he be allowed to take her to her lodging place, Anne
insisted on being left, he felt, in spite of all he had gained that day,
a sinking of the heart. Though the hour was early and the neighbourhood
at this time of day a quiet one, and though she assured him that she had
not far to go, he was unhappy to leave her thus unaccompanied.
"I wish I could possibly imagine why it must be this way," he said to
himself as he stood hat in hand beside his car, watching Anne Linton's
quickly departing figure grow more and more shadowy as the twilight
enveloped it. "Well, one thing is certain: whatever she does there's a
good and sufficient reason; and I trust her."