_An Interlude_
She was waiting for him in the library with an expression both eager
and worried. She crossed the room to meet him, but paused half-way as
though really fearful of some change. But she saw only the same kind,
tense face, looking perhaps a bit heavy from weariness, the same dark
eyes with their strange fires, the same slight droop of the shoulders.
There was certainly nothing to fear in him as he stood before her with
a tender, quizzical smile about his large mouth. He looked to her now
more like a big boy than the cold, stern man she had half expected.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
"No, not standing here where I can see you. But over the telephone
with your strange voice and your half meanings--what _did_ you mean?"
"Nothing you need worry about."
She became suddenly serious.
"I want to tell you now that there is no need of your trying to hide
anything at all from me about Ben."
"I am hiding nothing. But," he asked with quick intuition, "are _you_?"
She hesitated, met his eyes, and dropped her voice.
"I can tell you nothing--not even you--unless you have learned it."
"I, in my turn, don't know what you mean," he answered. "I have
learned nothing new about him. And it is too fair a morning," he
concluded abruptly, "to bother over puzzles. Things have happened so
rapidly that we are probably both muddled, and if we could spend the
time in explanations we should doubtless find that neither of us means
anything."
She was clearly relieved, but it raised a new question in Donaldson's
mind. Of course she understood nothing of what had taken place last
night unless by mental telepathy. But in these days of psychic
revelations a man could n't feel secure even in his thoughts. There
was apparently some inner secret--she had touched upon it
before--relating to the Arsdale curse. Doubtless if one pried
carefully enough many another skeleton could be found in the closets of
the house of this family half-poisoned now through three generations.
It was early and it suddenly occurred to her that he had probably not
yet breakfasted.
She struggled a moment with a conflicting sense of hospitality and
propriety, but finally said resolutely, "I should be glad if you would
breakfast with me. You ought to try your new cook."
The picture he had of her sitting opposite him at the coffee brought
the warm blood to his cheeks.
"I--why--"
"Will you have your chop well done?" she broke in, without giving him
time to frame an excuse.
"Yes," he answered.
She left him.
Within a very short time she announced the meal with pretty grace,
which concealed all trace of nervousness, save for the heightened color
of her cheeks, which, he noted, were as scarlet as though she herself
had been bending over a hot stove. She led the way into an exquisite
little dining room, which he at once took to be the expression of her
own taste. It was in white and apple green, with a large trellised
window opening upon the lawn. A small table had been placed in the sun
near the window, and was covered with dazzling white linen, polished
silver, and cut glass, which, catching the morning beams, reflected a
prismatic riot of colors. The chops, lettuce, bread and butter, and
coffee were already served. As he seated her, he felt as though he
were living out a dream--one of the dreams that as a very young man he
had sometimes dreamed when, lying flat upon his back in the sun, he had
watched the big cotton clouds wafted, like thistledown, across the blue.
It might have been Italy for the blue of the sky and the caressing
warmth of the sun. They threw open the big window and in flooded the
perfume of lilacs and the twitter of sparrows, which is the nearest to
a bird song one can expect in New York. But after all, this was n't
New York; nor Spain; nor even the inner woods; it was just Here. And
Here is where the eyes of a man and a woman meet with spring in their
blood.
Griefs of loss, bitter, poignant; sorrows of mistakes, bruising,
numbing; the ache of disappointments, ingratitudes, betrayals,--Nature
surging on to her fulfillment sweeps them away, like fences before a
flood, allowing no obstructions to Youth's kinship with Spring. So the
young may not mourn long; so, if they do, they become no longer young.
The man and the woman might have been two care-free children for all
they were able to resist the magic of this fair morning or the subtler
magic of their own emotions.
To the man it suggested more than to the woman because he gave more
thought to it, but the woman absorbed more the spirit of it because she
more fully surrendered herself.
Donaldson found himself with a good appetite. There was nothing
neurotic about him. He was fundamentally normal--fundamentally
wholesome--with no trace of mawkishness in his nature. As he sipped
the hot golden-brown coffee, he tried to get at just what it was that
he felt when he now looked at her. It came to him suddenly and he
spoke it aloud,
"I seem to have, this minute, a fresher vision of life than I have
known since I was twenty."
It was something different from anything he had experienced up to now.
It was saner, clearer.
"It is the morning," she hazarded. "I never saw the grass so green as
it is this morning; I never felt the sun so warm."
"It is like the peace of the inner woods,--only brighter," he declared.
"You said such peace never came to any one unless alone."
"Did I?"
She nodded.
"But it _is_ like that," he insisted. "Only more joyous. I think it
is the extra joy in it that makes us not want it alone. Queer, too, it
seems to be born altogether of this spot, of this moment. Understand
what I mean? It does n't seem to go back of the moment we entered this
room and--," he hesitated, "it does n't seem to go forward."
"It is as though coming in here we had stepped into a beautiful picture
and were living inside the frame for a little," she suggested.
"Exactly. The frame is the hedge; the picture is the sky, the sun, and
you."
She laughed, frankly pleased in a childish way, at his conceit.
"Then for me," she answered, "it must be the sun, the sky, and _you_."
"We are n't trying to compliment each other, are we?"
"No," she answered seriously. "I hope not."
She went on after a moment's reflection,
"I have been puzzling over the strange chance that brought you into my
life at so opportune a time."
"I came because you believed in me and because you needed me. You
believed in me because--," he paused, his blood seeming suddenly to run
faster, "because I needed you."
"You needed me?"
"Yes," he answered, "I needed you. I needed you long ago."
"But how--why?"
"To show me the joy there is in the sunlight wherever it strikes; to
take me with you into this picture."
Their eyes met.
"Have I done that?" she asked.
"Yes."
She shook her head.
"I 'm afraid not," she disclaimed, "because the joy has n't been in my
own heart."
"Nor was it in mine--then."
Her eyes turned back to his. The silver in them came to the top like
the moon reflection on dark waters through fading clouds. He was
leaning a little towards her.
"It seems to be something that we can't get alone," he explained.
"Perhaps it is," she pondered, "perhaps."
She started back a little, as one who, lost in a sunset, leans too far
over the balcony. Then she smiled. Donaldson's heart answered the
smile.
"Your coffee is cooling," she said. "May I pour you some fresh?"
He passed his cup automatically. But the act was enough to bring him
back. A moment gone the room had grown misty. Something had made his
throat ache. He felt taut with a great unexpressed yearning. He
became conscious of his breakfast again. He sipped his hot coffee.
"I suppose," he reflected, "you ought to know something about me."
"I am interested," she answered, "but I don't think it matters much."
Again he saw in her marvelous eyes that look of complete confidence
that had thrilled him first on that mad ride. Again he realized that
there is nothing finer in the world. For a moment the room swam before
him at the memory of his doom. But her calm gaze steadied him at once.
He must cling to the Now.
"I have n't much I can tell you," he resumed. "My parents died when I
was young. They were New England farm-folk and poor. After I was left
alone, I started in to get an education without a cent to my name. It
took me fifteen years. I graduated from college and then from the law
school. I came here to New York and opened an office. That is all."
He waved his hand deprecatingly as though ashamed that it was so slight
and undramatic a tale. But she leaned towards him with sudden access
of interest.
"Fifteen years, and you did it all alone! You must have had to fight."
"In a way," he answered.
"Will you tell me more about it?" she asked eagerly.
"It's not very interesting," he laughed. "It was mostly a grind--just
a plain, unceasing grind. It was n't very exciting--just getting any
old job I could and then studying what time was left."
"And growing stronger every day--feeling your increasing power!"
"And my hunger, too, sometimes."
He tried to make light of it because he didn't wish her to become so
serious over it. He did n't like playing the part of hero.
"You did n't have enough to eat?" she asked in astonishment.
"You should have seen me watch Barstow's cake-box."
He told her the story, making it as humorous as he could. But when he
had finished, she wasn't laughing. For a moment his impulse was to lay
before her the whole story--the bitter climax, the ashen climax, which
lately he had thought so beautiful. She had said that nothing in the
past would matter--but this was of the future, too. Even if she ought
to know, he had no right to force upon her the burden of what was to
come. He found now that he had even cut himself off from the privilege
of being utterly honest with her. To tell her the whole truth might be
to destroy his usefulness to her. She might then scorn his help. He
must not allow that. Nothing could justify that.
"You are looking very serious," she commented.
Her own face had in the meanwhile grown brighter.
"It is all from within," he answered, "all from within. And--now
presto!--it is gone."
Truly the problem did seem to vanish as he allowed himself to become
conscious of the picture she made there in the sunshine. With her hair
down her back she could have worn short dresses and passed for sixteen.
The smooth white forehead, the exquisite velvet skin with the first
bloom still upon it, the fragile pink ears were all of unfolding
womanhood.
"Since my mother died," he said, "you are the first woman who has ever
made me serious."
"Have you been such a recluse then?"
"Not from principle. I have been a sort of office hermit by necessity."
"You should not have allowed an office to imprison you," she scolded.
"You should have gone out more."
"I have--lately."
"And has it not done you good?" she challenged, not realizing his
narrow application of the statement.
"A world of good."
"It brightens one up."
"Wonderfully."
"If we stay too much by ourselves we get selfish, don't we?"
"Intensely. And narrow-minded, and morbid, and petty and--," the words
came charged with bitterness, "and intensely foolish."
"I 'm glad you crawled out before you became all those things."
"You gave me a hand or I should n't."
"I gave you a hand?"
"Yea," he answered, soberly.
"Perhaps--perhaps this is another of the things that could n't have
happened to either of us alone."
"I think you are right," he answered.
He did not dare to look at her.
"Perhaps that is true of all the good things in the world," she
hazarded.
"Perhaps."
Once again the golden mist--once again the aching yearning.
The telephone jangled harshly. It was a warning from the world beyond
the hedge, the world they had forgotten.
The sound of it was to him like the savage clang of barbaric war-gongs.
With her permission he answered it himself. It was a message from his
man at the Waldorf.
"He's making an awful fuss, sir. He says as how he wants to go home.
I can hold him all right, only I thought I 'd let you know."
"Thanks, I 'll be right down."
"I 'd better go back to your brother," he said to her as he hung up the
receiver. "I want to have a talk with him before bringing him home."
Her eyes grew moist.
"How am I ever going to repay you for all you 've done?"
"You 've repaid me already," he answered briefly and left at once.