Sheltered beneath the powerful pen of Banneker, his idyll, fulfilled,
lengthened out over radiant months. Io was to him all that dreams had
ever promised or portrayed. Their association, flowering to the full
amidst the rush and turmoil of the city, was the antithesis to its
budding in the desert peace. To see the more of his mistress, Banneker
became an active participant in that class of social functions which get
themselves chronicled in the papers. Wise in her day and her protective
instinct of love, Io pointed out that the more he was identified with
her set, the less occasion would there be for comment upon their being
seen together. And they were seen together much.
She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry's,
met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes
with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate
hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an
evidence of being "in the know" thus to accommodate them. The openness
of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's
ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to _les
convenances_, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his
devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of
fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered women in
particular charitable of judgment toward the pair.
Sometimes in the late afternoon Banneker's private numbered telephone
rang, and an impersonal voice delivered a formal message. And that
evening Banneker (called out of town, no matter how pressing an
engagement he might have had) sat in The House With Three Eyes, now
darkened of vision, thrilling and longing for her step in the dim side
passage. There was risk of disaster. But Io willed to take it; was proud
to take it for her lover.
Immersed in a happiness and a hope which vivified every motion of his
life, Banneker was nevertheless under a continuous strain of
watchfulness; the _qui vive_ of the knight who guards his lady with
leveled lance from a never-ceasing threat. At the point of his weapon
cowered and crouched the dragon of The Searchlight, with envenomed fangs
of scandal.
As the months rounded out to a year, he grew, not less careful, indeed,
but more confident. Eyre had quietly dropped out of the world. Hunting
big game in some wild corner of Nowhere, said rumor.
Io had revealed to Banneker the truth; her husband was in a sanitarium
not far from Philadelphia. As she told him, her eyes were dim. Swift,
with the apprehension of the lover to read the loved one's face, she saw
a smothered jealousy in his.
"Ah, but you must pity him, too! He has been so game."
"Has been?"
"Yes. This is nearly the end. I shall go down there to be near him."
"It's a long way, Philadelphia," he said moodily.
"What a child! Two hours in your car from The Retreat."
"Then I may come down?"
"May? You must!"
He was still unappeased. "But you'll be very far away from me most of
the time."
She gleamed on him, her face all joyous for his incessant want of her.
"Stupid! We shall see almost as much of each other as before. I'll be
coming over to New York two or three times a week."
Wherewith, and a promised daily telephone call, he must be content.
Not at that meeting did he broach the subject nearest his heart. He felt
that he must give Io time to adjust herself to the new-developed status
of her husband, as of one already passed out of the world. A fortnight
later he spoke out. He had gone down to The Retreat for the week-end and
she had come up from Philadelphia to meet him, for dinner. He found her
in a secluded alcove off the main dining-porch, alone. She rose and came
to him, after that one swift, sweet, precautionary glance about her with
which a woman in love assures herself of safety before she gives her
lips; tender and passionate to the yearning need of her that sprang in
his face.
"Ban, I've been undergoing a solemn preachment."
"From whom?"
"Archie."
"Is Densmore here?"
"No; he came over to Philadelphia to deliver it."
"About us?"
She nodded. "Don't take it so gloomily. It was to be expected."
He frowned. "It's on my mind all the time; the danger to you."
"Would you end it?" she said softly.
"Yes."
Too confident to misconstrue his reply, she let her hand fall on his,
waiting.
"Io, how long will it be, with Eyre? Before--"
"Oh; that!" The brilliance faded from her eager loveliness. "I don't
know. Perhaps a year. He suffers abominably, poor fellow."
"And after--after _that_, how long before you can marry me?"
She twinkled at him mischievously. "So, after all these years, my lover
makes me an offer of marriage. Why didn't you ask me at Manzanita?"
"Good God! Would it possibly--"
"No; no! I shouldn't have said it. I was teasing."
"You know that there's never been a moment when the one thing worth
living and fighting and striving for wasn't you."
"And success?" she taunted, but with tenderness.
"Another name for you. I wanted it only as the reflex of your wish for
me."
"Even when I'd left you?"
"Even when you'd left me."
"Poor Ban!" she breathed, and for a moment her fingers fluttered at his
cheek. "Have I made it up to you?"
He bent over the long, low chair in which she half reclined. "A thousand
times! Every day that I see you; every day that I think of you; with the
lightest touch of your hand; the sound of your voice; the turn of your
face toward me. I'm jealous of it and fearful of it. Can you wonder that
I live in a torment of dread lest something happen to bring it all to
ruin?"
She shook her head. "Nothing could. Unless--No. I won't say it. I want
you to want to marry me, Ban. But--I wonder."
As they talked, the little light of late afternoon had dwindled, until
in their nook they could see each other only as vague forms.
"Isn't there a table-lamp there?" she asked. "Turn it on."
He found and pulled the chain. The glow, softly shaded, irradiated Io's
lineaments, showing her thoughtful, somber, even a little apprehensive.
She lifted the shade and turned it to throw the direct rays upon
Banneker. He blinked.
"Do you mind?" she asked softly. Even more softly, she added, "Do you
remember?"
His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of
emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of
dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had
broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light
upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no
fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by
the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown
helper in the desert shack:
"I don't know you. Do I?"
"Io!"
"Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's
true. _Do_ I know you?"
As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?"
"Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you."
"There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred.
"Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before
he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw
you, under the flash, as I see you now--Ban, dear, how little you've
changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!--the instant I saw you, I
trusted you."
"Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare
it.
Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want
to--so much! I did then. At first sight."
He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and
stressfully. He did not speak.
"At first sight," she repeated. "And--I think--I loved you from that
minute. Though of course I didn't know. Not for days. Then, when I'd
gone, I found what I'd never dreamed of; how much I could love."
"And now?" he whispered.
"Ah, more than then!" The low cry leapt from her lips. "A thousand times
more."
"But you don't trust me?"
"Why don't I, Ban?" she pleaded. "What have you done? How have you
changed?"
He shook his head. "Yet you've given me your love. Do you trust
yourself?"
"Yes," she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. "In that I
do. Absolutely."
"Then I'll chance the rest. You're upset to-night, aren't you, Io?
You've let your imagination run away with you."
"This isn't a new thing to me. It began--I don't know when it began.
Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I
was no more than a baby."
"Rede me your riddle, love," he said lightly.
"It's so silly. You mustn't laugh; no, you wouldn't laugh. But you
mustn't be angry with me for being a fool. Childhood impressions are
terribly lasting things, Ban.... Yes, I'm going to tell you. It was a
nurse I had when I was only four, I think; such a pretty, dainty Irish
creature, the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say--I
don't suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember--'Beware
the brown-eyed boys, darlin'. False an' foul they are, the brown ones.
They take a girl's poor heart an' witch it away an' twitch it away, an'
toss it back all crushed an' spoilt.' Then she would hug me and sob. She
left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition....
Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I'm a little fool!"
Approaching footsteps broke in upon them. The square bulk of Jim
Maitland appeared in the doorway.
"What ho! you two. Ban, you're scampin' your polo practice shamefully.
You'll be crabbin' the team if you don't look out. Dinin' here?"
"Yes," said Io. "Is Marie down?"
"Comin' presently. How about a couple of rubbers after dinner?"
To assent seemed the part of tact. Io and Ban went to their corner
table, reserved for three, the third, Archie Densmore, being a prudent
fiction. People drifted over to them, chatted awhile, were carried on
and away by uncharted but normal social currents. It was a tribute to
the accepted status between them that no one settled into the third
chair. The Retreat is the dwelling-place of tact. All the
conversationalists having come and gone, Io reverted over the coffee to
the talk of their hearts.
"I can't expect you to understand me, can I? Especially as I don't
understand myself. Don't sulk, Ban, dearest. You're so un-pretty when
you pout."
He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone. "I understand this,
Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me. That hurts."
"I don't want to hurt you. I'd rather hurt myself; a thousand times
rather. Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes! And yet--"
"Yet?"
"Isn't it strange, that deep-seated misgiving! I suppose it's my woman's
dread of any change. It's been so perfect between us, Ban." Her speech
dropped to its lowest breath of pure music:
"'This test for love:--in every kiss, sealed fast
To feel the first kiss and forebode the last'--
So it has been with us; hasn't it, my lover?"
"So it shall always be," he answered, low and deep.
Her eyes dreamed. "How could any man feel what he put in those lines?"
she murmured.
"Some woman taught him," said Banneker.
She threw him a fairy kiss. "Why haven't we 'The Voices' here! You
should read to me.... Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?"
"We shall be, some day."
She shuddered a little, involuntarily. "There's a sense of recall, isn't
there! Do you still love it?"
"It's the beginning of the Road to Happiness," he said. "The place where
I first saw you."
"You don't care for many things, though, Ban."
"Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper."
She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back
upon him afterward. "I shan't be jealous of that. Not as long as you're
true to it. But I don't think you care for The Patriot, for itself."
"Oh, don't I!"
"If you do, it's only because it's part of you; your voice; your power.
Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same
reason."
"Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that
nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can't
you realize and believe?"
"No; I shouldn't be jealous of the paper," she mused, ignoring his
appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: "I like your Russell Edmonds. Am
I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?"
"Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it.
'.............the nobleness that lies
Sleeping but never dead in other men,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own'"--
he quoted, smiling into her eyes.
"Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?"
"Often. He's my main and only reliance, politically."
"Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on
Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?"
Banneker was faintly surprised. "No. Why should he? Did you discuss that
with him?"
"Indeed not! I wouldn't discuss that particular editorial with any one
but you."
He moved uneasily. "Aren't you attaching undue importance to a very
trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway."
"Was it?" she murmured. "Probably I take it too seriously. But--but
Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first
about real things. When I began to discover you; when 'The Voices' first
sang to us. And he wasn't one of the Voices, exactly, was he?"
"He? He's a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet
you liked my editorial on that."
"I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it
beautiful."
"Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you'll
admit I made him--well, appetizing." His face took on a shade. "Love's
labor lost, too," he added. "We never did run the Wheelwright serial,
you know."
"Why?"
"Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly
respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite
scandalous Chicago society flapper."
"What connection has that with the serial?"
"Don't you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal
proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful
unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers--a million pious and
snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself spread in the
Amalgamated Wire dispatches, by a quick divorce and a hair-trigger
marriage, puff goes his piety--and his hold on his readers. We just
quietly dropped him."
"But his serial was just as good or as bad as before, wasn't it?"
"Certainly not! Not for our purposes. He was a dead wolf with his
sheep's wool all smeared and spotted. You'll never quite understand the
newspaper game, I'm afraid, lady of my heart."
"How brown your eyes are, Ban!" said Io.