She nodded, eyes remote, her teeth nipping at the velvet of her underlip.
He, too, remained lost in gloomy retrospection for a while, but finally
looked up with a more genuine smile.
"I wonder whatever became of that fleet-footed girl who hung to my heels
long after the more solidly constructed aristocracy gave up?"
"Lady Diana Guernsey?"
"That's the one. What became of her?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because she gave me the run of my life. She was a good sport, that girl.
I couldn't shake her off; I took to a taxi and she after me in another;
my taxi broke down in the suburbs and I started across country, she after
me. And the last I saw of her was just after I leaped a hedge and she was
coming over it after me--a wonderful athletic young figure in midair
silhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. I
fancy she must have pulled up dead beat--or perhaps she came a cropper."
"She did," said the girl in a low voice.
"Is that so?" he said, interested. "Hope it didn't damage her."
"She broke her thigh."
"Oh, that's too bad!" he exclaimed. "If I'd guessed any such thing I'd
have come back. . . . The poor little thing! I mean that, though she was
nearly six feet, I seem to think of her as little--and, of course, I'm
six--two and a half. . . . Good little sport, that Diana girl! She got
over it all right, I hope."
"It lamed her for life, Lord Marque."
Shocked, for a moment he could find no words to characterise his
feelings. Then:
"Oh, dammitall! I say, it's a rotten shame, isn't it? And all on account
of me--that superb young thing taking hedges like a hunter! Oh, come now,
you know I--it hurts me all the way through. I wish I'd let her catch me!
What would she have done to me? I wouldn't mind being pulled about a
bit--or anything--if it would have prevented her injury. By gad, you
know, I'd even have eaten her plum cake, frosting and all, to have saved
her such a fate."
The girl's eyes searched his. "That was not the most tragic part of it,
Lord Marque."
"God bless us! Was there anything more?"
"Yes. . . . She was in love with you."
"With--with _me_?" he repeated, bewildered.
"Yes. As a young, romantic girl she fell in love with you. She was a
curious child--like all the Guernseys, a strange mixture of impulse and
constancy, of romance and determination. If she had fallen in love with
Satan she would have remained constant. But she only fell in love with
young Marque. . . . And she loves him to this day."
"That--that's utterly impossible!" he stammered. "Didn't she become a
suffragette and carry a banner and chase me and vow to make me eat my own
words frosted on a terrible plum cake?"
"Yes. And all the while she went on loving you."
"How do you know?" he demanded, incredulously.
"She confided in me."
"In _you_!"
"I knew her well, Lord Marque. . . . Not as well as I thought I did,
perhaps; yet, perhaps better than--many--perhaps better than anybody. . .
. We were brought up together."
"You were her governess?"
"I--attempted to act in a similar capacity. . . . She was difficult to
teach--very, very difficult to govern. . . . I am afraid I did not do my
best with her."
"Why did you leave her to come here?" he asked.
She made no reply.
"Where is she now?"
She looked out into the cinders of the West, making no answer.
He gazed at her in silence for a long time; then:
"Is she really lame?"
"Yes."
"Very?"
"It is hip disease."
"But--but that can be cured!" he exclaimed. "It is now perfectly curable.
Why doesn't she go to Vienna or to New York----"
"She is going."
"She ought to lose no time!"
"She is going. She only learned the nature of her trouble very recently."
"You mean she has been lame all this time and didn't know what threatened
her?"
"She was--too busy to ask. Finally, because she did not get well, she
called in a physician. But she is a very determined girl; she refused to
believe what the physician told her--until--very recently----"
"See here," he said, "are you in constant communication with her?"
"Constant."
"Then tell her you know me. Tell her how terribly sorry I am. Tell--tell
her that I'll do anything to--to--tell her," he burst out excitedly,
"that I'll eat her plum cake if that will do her any good--or amuse
her--or anything! Tell her to bake it and frost it and fill it full of
glue, for all I care--and express it to you; and I'll eat every crumb of
that silly speech I made----"
"Wait!" she exclaimed. "Do you realise what you're saying? Do you realise
what you're offering to do for a girl--a lame girl--who is already in
love with you?"
His youthful face fell.
"By gad," he said, "do you think I ought to marry her? How on earth can I
when I'm--I'm dead in love with--somebody myself?"
"You--in love?" she said faintly.
He gazed across the brook at the darkening foliage.
"Oh, yes," he said with a pleasant sort of hopelessness, "but I fancy she
cares for another man."
"W-why do you think so?"
"He comes to see her."
"Is that a reason?"
"She won't talk about him."
"When a woman won't talk about a man is it always because she cares for
him in _that_ way?"
"Isn't it?"
"No."
They had lifted their heads now, facing each other in the violet dusk.
Between them the scent of heliotrope grew sweeter. He said:
"I've been all kinds of a fool. For all I know women have as many rights
on earth as men have. All I wish is that the plucky girl who took that
hedge, banner in hand, were well and happy and married to a really decent
fellow."
"But--she loves you."
"And I"--he looked up, encountering her blue eyes--"am already hopelessly
in love. What shall I do?"
She said under her breath: "God knows. . . . I can not blame you for not
wishing to marry a lame girl----"
"It isn't that!"
"But you wouldn't anyhow----"
"I would if I loved her!"
"You _couldn't_--love a--a cripple! It would not be love; it would be
pity----"
He said slowly: "I wish that _you_ were that lame girl. Then you'd
understand me."
For a while she sat bolt upright, clasped hands tightening in her lap.
Then, turning slowly toward him, she said:
"I am going to say good-night. . . . And thank you--for Diana's sake. . .
. And I am going to say more--I am going to say good-bye."
"Good-bye! Where are you going?"
"To New York."
"When?"
"Before I see you again."
"There is no train until----"
"I shall drive to Moss Centre."
"Where that--that doctor lives----"
"Yes. I am going to New York with him, Lord Marque."
He stood as though stunned for a moment; then set his teeth, clenched his
hands, and pulled himself together.
"I think I understand," he said quietly. "And--I wish you--happiness."
She stretched out her hand to him above the heliotrope.
"I--wish it--to you----" suddenly her voice broke; again her teeth caught
at her underlip like a child who struggles with emotion. "You--_don't_
understand," she said. "Wait a little while before you--come to
any--unhappy--conclusions."
After a moment she made a slight effort to disengage her
hand--another--then turned in her chair and dropped her head on the
table, her right hand still remaining in his. Presently he released it;
and she placed both hands on the edge of the table and her forehead upon
them.
"I am coming in," he said.
She straightened up swiftly at his words.
"Please don't!" she said in a startled voice, still tremulous.
But he was gone from the dark window, and, frightened, she bent over,
caught up her walking stick, and took one impulsive step toward the door.
And stood stock still in the middle of the floor as he entered.
His eyes met hers, fell on the supporting cane; and she covered her face
with her left arm, standing there motionless.
"Good God!" he breathed. "_You!_"
She began to cry like a child.
"I didn't want you to know," she wailed. "Oh, I didn't want you to know.
I thought there was no use--no hope--until yesterday. . . . I--wanted to
go to New York with the doctor and be made all sound and well again
b-before--before I let you love me----"
"Oh, Diana--Diana!" he whispered, with his arms around her. "Oh,
Diana--Diana--my little girl Diana!"
Which was silly enough, she being six feet--almost as tall as he.
"Turn your back," she whispered. "I want to go to my desk--and I can't
bear to have you see me walk."
"You darling----"
"No, no, no! Please let them cure me first. . . . Turn your back."
He kissed her hands, held her at arm's length a second, then turned on
his heel and stood motionless.
He heard her move almost noiselessly away; heard a desk open and close;
heard the chair by the window move as she seated herself.
"Come here," she said in a curious, choked voice.
He turned, went swiftly to her side.
"Great heavens!" he said. "When did you bake that cake?"
"Y-yesterday."
"Why?"
"B-because I was going away to New York and would never perhaps see you
again unless I was entirely cured. And I meant to leave this for you--so
you would know that I had followed you even here--so you would know I had
made a plucky try at you--through all these months--"
"You--you corker!"
"D-do you really mean it?"
"Mean it! I tell you, Diana, you women put it all over the lords of
creation--or any lord ever created! Mean it! You bet I do, sweetness!
I'll take back everything I ever said about women. They're _the_ real
thing in the world! And the best thing for the world is to let them run
it!"
"But--dear----" she faltered, lifting her beautiful eyes to him, "if men
are going to feel _that_ way about it, we won't want to run anything at
all. . . . It was only because you wouldn't let us that we wanted to."
He said in impassioned tones:
"Let the bally world run itself, Diana. What do we care--you and I?"
"No," she said, "we don't care now."
Then that rash and infatuated young man, losing his head entirely, drew
from his jeans a large jack-knife, and, before she could prevent him, he
had sliced off an enormous hunk of plum cake heavily frosted with his own
words.
"Don't, dear!" she begged him. "I couldn't ask _that_ of you----"
"I will!" he said, and bit into it.
"Don't!" she begged him; "please don't! I haven't had much experience
with pastry. It may give you dreadful dreams!"
"Let it!" he said. "What do I care for dreams while you remain real!
Diana--Diana--huntress of bigger game than ever fled through the age of
fable!"
And he bolted a section of frosting and began to chew vigorously upon
another, while she slipped both hands into his, regarding him with tender
solicitude.
"Have no fears for me, dearest," he said indistinctly; "fortified by
months of pie I dread no food ever prepared by youth and beauty. Even the
secret dishes of the Medici----"
"John!"
"W-what, darling?"
"After all--I don't cook so badly."
So, in the gloaming, he swallowed the last crumb and gathered her into
his strong young arms, and drew her golden head down close to his.
"Take it from me," he whispered, relapsing into the noble idioms of his
adopted country, "you're all to the mustard, Diana; your eats were bully
and I liked 'em fine!"
[Illustration]