A KISS.
Ismay went out into the clear, soft sunlight, treading lightly in her
smart, thick boots, with joy in her heart.
Things had played into her hands at last. Toward half-past two
o’clock, warm and lovely with her quick walk, she stood at Miles
Cylmer’s gates. They were heavy iron, hung from carved stone posts,
“Cylmer’s Ferry” cut deeply on them. She saw the significance of
the name, for a hundred yards in front of her a narrow river ran
sluggishly, cutting through Cylmer’s property for miles. There was a
high ivy-covered wall on both sides of the road, and the view, except
of the river, was limited.
Miss Trelane glanced up and down.
“Very considerate of Mr. Cylmer to have no lodge,” she observed aloud.
“A lodge-keeper and six children would have embarrassed me very much.”
She marched deliberately to the ivy-covered wall opposite the gate, and
swung herself up with the ease of long practise over Mrs. Barlow’s wall
at school. She had come up-hill all the way from Marchant’s Hold, and
now from the top of the six-foot wall the country lay before her like a
map.
She seated herself comfortably, and began with a capital appetite on
her lunch. As she took the peaches from her pocket she gave a little
nod of satisfaction. Far off down in the valley she could see the
hounds being taken home. There would be no late waiting for Mr. Cylmer,
since there had evidently been no sport to speak of. The peaches had
rubbed against her pocket and stained its smart green lining.
“Bother!” said the girl, with the thriftiness of poverty. She turned
the pocket inside out to dry.
“But the peaches are all right,” she added, as she finished them and
wiped her fingers on the fine damask napkin which she neatly bestowed
down a convenient hole in the wall. There were plenty more at Marchant
Hold, and it was greasy.
For a moment her back was to the road. She did not see a man riding
toward her, and turned with a real start, to discover Miles Cylmer on
a big chestnut horse within ten yards of her. The sunlight fell on his
handsome, hard face, his tawny mustache, his splendid figure in his
red coat and white riding-breeches. The sight of him brought dismay to
Ismay’s heart. She forgot all she had meant to say in sheer foolish
excitement at seeing him.
“I--I can’t get down,” she said childishly.
Cylmer stopped his horse and sat staring at her in utter amazement.
Who was this who sat on his wall like a lovely nymph, her water-green
eyes on his, her flaxen hair glinting like barley in the sun? There
flashed up before him the lights of the Palace Theater, a slim girl in
black who was hungry.
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered in his surprise. Could there be two
girls in the world with such scarlet lips and strange eyes, for surely
this could not be the lonely girl he had taken home that night? How
could she get here?
Ismay Trelane smiled in his perplexed face that slow, witch-smile that
was her best weapon.
“Don’t you know me, Mr. Cylmer? I know you, you see, and--please take
me down!” She held out her hands entreatingly.
Cylmer, like a man in a dream, swung himself off his horse and slipped
his arm through the reins.
He had seen Cristiane at the meet, lovely in her blue habit, had ridden
up to greet her, and been smartly snubbed for his pains. Somehow it
had stung unbearably. And the joy on the face of the girl he had never
thought to see again was like balm to his wounds.
Ismay, seated on the wall, leaned down and gave him both hands; her
eyes met his, strange and deep, with something in them that brought the
blood to his face.
“I told you we should meet again!” she cried, with soft delight in her
voice. “Are you glad to see me?”
Cylmer lifted her down, setting her safely clear of his fretting horse.
Her queer beauty dazzled him.
“Very glad,” he answered slowly.
For the first time in her life Ismay Trelane’s eyes fell before the
look of other eyes.
Cylmer stooped and kissed her lips.
* * * * *
For a moment the whole world swung dizzily to Ismay Trelane. A golden
mist blotted out the bare trees and ivied walls; a sound as of many
waters was in her ears. She staggered helplessly, and from far, far
away heard a voice that was very low and pitiful.
“My little girl, don’t look like that. I was a brute! Did I frighten
you?”
Was it fright that made her feel her own blood running in her veins?
She did not know. With a sharp wrench she was clear of him, and stood
leaning against his horse’s shoulder, her breath coming fast and hard.
Cristiane would have stamped her foot at him. Ismay only looked him
full in the face.
“Why did you do that?” she said quietly, though her hand went to her
breast as if something hurt her.
Cylmer bit his lip.
“Because I----” he hesitated. The truth, because she was so fair, would
be an insult.
“Never mind looking for a reason,” she said; and he saw that even her
lips were white.
“You did it, and that’s enough. If you will move your horse out of the
way I will go home.”
She shook from head to foot. He had kissed her, as a man kisses a girl
he has met alone at a music-hall, and she had kissed him like a nun who
kisses the cross.
Her voice cut, but something in it made Miles Cylmer take off his hat
and stand bareheaded before her.
“I won’t even ask you to forgive me.” His voice was low and sweet as
perhaps but one other woman knew it could be. “I behaved unpardonably.
Yet if you can believe me, I was so much more than glad to see you that
I--I forgot myself.”
“And me!” she interrupted with a hard little smile. “You remembered me
as a toy: you greeted me as one. If it is of any interest to you I may
tell you the toy is--broken!” She made a little gesture and turned away
without looking at him.
Cylmer, leading his horse, was at her side before she had taken ten
steps.
“Don’t go away like this,” he said, a shamed color on his tanned
cheek. “I deserve all you can say to me, and more. I only want you
to let me beg your pardon. I won’t”--his keen eyes very sweet, very
honest--“even ask you to forgive me.”
“It would be of no use if you did,” she returned quietly. “I never
forgave anything I had against any one in all my life. You were the
first person I ever knew who was kind to me, and now you have made me
sorry that you were.”
Her even, level voice had an implacable ring to it. Cylmer, disgusted
with himself, went off on a new tack.
“You looked so tired that night, and so childlike,” he said, with a
little pause before the last word. Ismay turned on him, her eyes full
of somber fire.
“You thought me some little milliner,” she cried superbly. “Yet you
treated me there like a lady, while to-day----” she shrugged her lovely
shoulders as though she were at a loss for words. Yet presently, as she
went on, her tone softened.
“I had run away that night. I had just come home from school and had no
dresses fit to wear. My mother had some one to dinner, and I was too
shabby to be seen. It was dull sitting alone, so I took all the money I
had and went out. The reason I was hungry was that I wouldn’t eat the
dinner that was sent up to me; it was horrid,” with a little laugh.
“But it was a mad thing to do; don’t you know that?” he said
wonderingly.
“I didn’t then; I do now.” Her self-possession had come back to her;
her smile had that indefinite womanly quality in it that had struck him
long ago, when he had been puzzled as to her age.
“You mean I have taught you this morning! Will you give me leave to try
and make you forget that?”
“You may never see me again.”
“I will if you do not move to another planet,” remarked Mr. Cylmer
deliberately, “or tell the butler you are never at home to me.”
“I cannot do either,” she said, with an indifference that he never
dreamed was imitation. “I have no butler, for one thing, and I don’t
mean to die if I can help it.”
“My dear little lady, I didn’t mean that.”
“Didn’t you? I do! I have a horror of dying.” She shivered suddenly, as
if neither the afternoon nor the quick blood in her veins could warm
her. “To die, and be put in the cold, damp earth, and not even know
the sun shone over your grave! I often think of it, just because it
terrifies me.”
“You have all your life to live first,” he said, with a wandering
glance at her. She piqued him with her changes of mood.
“Life is very amusing,” she observed calmly. “You see so much you are
not meant to see. Now I saw why you kissed me just now.”
Mr. Cylmer’s bronzed cheek showed a faint trace of red.
“I was an ungentlemanly beast,” he cried hotly. “Be kind and let us
forget it.”
Ismay looked at him, and once more her beauty startled him.
“Forget it, by all means--if you can!” she retorted. “But I don’t think
you will. Good-by, I am going home now.” And before he could speak she
had slipped through a gap in the hedge, which, she had seen as he came,
led by a short cut to Marchant’s Hold.
“But you haven’t even told me your name, or how you know mine, or where
you live,” Mr. Cylmer spoke to the empty air apparently, but a light
laugh, sweet as spring, answered him from the other side of the hedge.
“You can find out all those things by diligence,” returned a voice full
of mockery.
Mr. Cylmer scrambled hastily through the gap in the hedge, reins in
hand, and his horse’s head pushing through behind him.
“You’d better tell me,” he observed calmly. “I might tell, you know,
how you went to see the world one night.”
“Ah, but you won’t!” She was suddenly radiant, suddenly conscious that
nothing on earth would have bound him to her like that kiss. “You have
too much honor, Mr. Cylmer. Now, I have no honor at all. I could tell
my mother that you spoke to me without any introduction.”
He laughed, his eyes very sweet and kindly, as he said: “You won’t,
will you?”
“No,” she answered slowly, “and if you ever meet me it must be for the
first time. You won’t stammer and be surprised or anything, will you?”
“No, I think I can promise you that,” he said bluntly. “Only let me see
you; it was chaff, you know, about my telling tales.”
The girl looked at him with hard scrutiny, and as he met her eyes he
could have cut his hand off for this morning’s work. For her face was
strangely innocent, and pitifully young to be that of a girl who was
allowed to wander about by herself to a music-hall.
“My dear little lady,” he said slowly, “do you know that I can never
forgive myself? I don’t deserve your ever speaking to me or trusting me
again. And yet, I ask you to let me be your friend. Will you?”
A little quiver shook her. Would he really be her friend? Yet, after
all, why not? But like a dream there rose before her the image of
Cristiane le Marchant, young, lovely, and rich; behind that the vision
of Marcus Wray, his thick red lips mocking her in her fancy. What could
either of them have to do with Miles Cylmer? Yet she was cold with
fright, standing there in the winter sun, lest Cristiane le Marchant
might have more of Cylmer’s heart than she knew, and lest Marcus
Wray might find her hiding-place with his secret that could make her
forswear the sight of Cylmer’s face for very terror.
She drew a sharp breath.
Cylmer’s face grew blank as he looked at her.
“You won’t! You can’t forgive me?” he said gently. “Very well.”
Ismay put her hand in his, but with the gesture of a woman, not a girl.
“Be my friend, then!” she said slowly. “Promise me that you will
believe in me, and trust me. No one ever did that.”
“I will trust you through anything,” he said, puzzled. “It is a
bargain; you are to forgive me, and I am to be your friend for always.”
He clasped her hand hard, as if it were the hand of a comrade, and the
blood came red to her cheek.
“Won’t you tell who you are?” he asked, smiling at the fancy that kept
her nameless, as he released her hand.
“Don’t look so startled, it’s only the station bus!” For there was a
sound of wheels on the road behind him. It was a long instant before
she answered, and when she spoke she looked no longer the same girl.
“I am no one--of any importance,” she said, with a languid nod; then
she turned away and was gone without even a good-by.
Cylmer was forced to go through the hedge, outside of which his horse
was fretting and plunging with impatience.
“I’d swear she never kissed a man before,” he mused as he mounted. “And
she’s right, I can’t forget it. I wonder who she’s staying with.” Not
for a moment connecting her with the strange woman at Marchant’s Hold.
Yet the girl in his thoughts had at that moment forgotten all about him.
She was running swiftly toward Marchant’s Hold, with a deadly terror
at her heart. It was senseless, unreasonable, yet the glimpse she had
had through the hedge of the occupant of the station bus was so like a
glimpse of Marcus Wray that she had turned sick.
It was like waking from a dream of warmth and happiness, to find death
in the house. Yet it could not be that Wray had found them.
“He would never think of us in a respectable house,” she thought, as
she hurried on.
“But if he did, we have no more diamonds; we can’t buy him off any
more.”
She reached an open field, below her in the level valley rose the
strong towers of Marchant’s Hold, with the flag of England’s glory
flying on the highest of them. As she looked the flag went suddenly
down to half-mast. Some one, a Le Marchant born, must be lying dead!
Ismay Trelane, who hated death, would have stayed away for hours, but
she dared not. With lagging feet she came at last to the great hall
door, with its motto over it: “What Marchant held let Marchant hold,”
its pride a mockery, grim and trenchant, for there was a streamer of
crape on the door-handle.
A deadly terror of being out there alone came over her. She pulled
desperately at the door-handle. If she had seen Marcus Wray he would be
on his way to Marchant’s Hold; she would die if he came and caught her
here alone.
“Thomas,” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
The old butler who let her in could hardly answer.
“My master’s dead, Miss Trelane,” he whispered, “killed in a railway
accident.”
“Dead!” she fairly staggered. That would mean turning out into the
world again. She ran wildly past him up-stairs to her mother’s room.