Scarborough often rode with Gladys and Pauline, sometimes with Gladys
alone. One afternoon in August he came expecting to go out with both.
But Gladys was not well that day. She had examined her pale face and
deeply circled eyes in her glass; she had counseled with her maid--a
discreetly and soothingly frank French woman. Too late to telephone
him, she had overruled her longing to see him and had decided that at
what she hoped was his "critical stage" it would be wiser not to show
herself to him thus even in her most becoming tea-gown, which compelled
the eyes of the beholder to a fascinating game of hide and seek with
her neck and arms and the lines of her figure.
"And Mrs. Dumont?" inquired Scarborough of the servant who brought
Gladys' message and note.
"She's out walking, sir."
Scarborough rode away, taking the long drive through the grounds of the
Eyrie, as it would save him a mile of dusty and not well-shaded
highway. A few hundred yards and he was passing the sloping meadows
that lay golden bronze in the sun, beyond the narrow fringe of wood
skirting and shielding the drive. The grass and clover had been cut.
Part of it was spread where it had fallen, part had been raked into
little hillocks ready for the wagons. At the edge of one of these
hillocks far down the slope he saw the tail of a pale blue skirt, a
white parasol cast upon the stubble beside it. He reined in his horse,
hesitated, dismounted, tied his bridle round a sapling. He strode
across the field toward the hillock that had betrayed its secret to him.
"Do I interrupt?" he called when he was still far enough away not to be
taking her by surprise.
There was no answer. He paused, debating whether to call again or to
turn back.
But soon she was rising--the lower part of her tall narrow figure hid
by the hillock, the upper part revealing to him the strong stamp of
that vivid individuality of hers which separated her at once from no
matter what company. She had on a big garden hat, trimmed just a
little with summer flowers, a blouse of some soft white material, with
even softer lace on the shoulders and in the long, loose sleeves. She
gave a friendly nod and glance in his direction, and said: "Oh,
no--not at all. I'm glad to have help in enjoying this."
She was looking out toward the mists of the horizon hills. The heat of
the day had passed; the woods, the hillocks of hay were casting long
shadows on the pale-bronze fields. A breeze had sprung up and was
lifting from the dried and drying grass and clover a keen, sweet,
intoxicating perfume--like the odor which classic zephyrs used to shake
from the flowing hair of woodland nymphs.
He stood beside her without speaking, looking intently at her. It was
the first time he had been alone with her since the afternoon at Battle
Field when she confessed her marriage and he his love.
"Bandit was lame," she said when it seemed necessary to say something.
She rode a thoroughbred, Bandit, who would let no one else mount him;
whenever she got a new saddle she herself had to help put it on, so
alert was he for schemes to entrap him to some other's service. He
obeyed her in the haughty, nervous way characteristic of
thoroughbreds--obeyed because he felt that she was without fear, and
because she had the firm but gentle hand that does not fret a horse yet
does not let him think for an instant that he is or can be free. Then,
too, he had his share of the universal, fundamental vanity we should
probably find swelling the oyster did we but know how to interpret it;
and he must have appreciated what an altogether harmonious spectacle it
was when he swept along with his mistress upon his back as light and
free as a Valkyr.
"I was sorry to miss the ride," Pauline went on after another pause--to
her, riding was the keenest of the many physical delights that are for
those who have vigorous and courageous bodies and sensitive nerves.
Whenever it was possible she fought out her battles with herself on
horseback, usually finding herself able there to drown mental distress
in the surge of physical exultation.
As he still did not speak she looked at him--and could not look away.
She had not seen that expression since their final hour together at
Battle Field, though in these few last months she had been remembering
it so exactly, had been wondering, doubting whether she could not bring
it to his face again, had been forbidding herself to long to see it.
And there it was, unchanged like all the inflexible purposes that made
his character and his career. And back to her came, as it had come
many and many a time in those years, the story he had told her of his
father and mother, of his father's love for his mother--how it had
enfolded her from the harshness and peril of pioneer life, had enfolded
her in age no less than in youth, had gone down into and through the
Valley of the Shadow with her, had not left her even at the gates of
Death, but had taken him on with her into the Beyond. And Pauline
trembled, an enormous joy thrilling through and through her.
"Don't!" she said uncertainly. "Don't look at me like that, PLEASE!"
"You were crying," he said abruptly. He stood before her, obviously
one who had conquered the respect of the world in fair, open battle,
and has the courage that is for those only who have tested their
strength and know it will not fail them. And the sight of him, the
look of him, filled her not with the mere belief, but with the absolute
conviction that no malign power in all the world or in the mystery
round the world could come past him to her to harass or harm her. The
doubts, the sense of desolation that had so agitated her a few minutes
before now seemed trivial, weak, unworthy.
She lowered her eyes--she had thought he would not observe the slight
traces of the tears she had carefully wiped away. She clasped her
hands meekly and looked--and felt--like a guilty child. The coldness,
the haughtiness were gone from her face.
"Yes," she said shyly. "Yes--I--I--" She lifted her eyes--her tears
had made them as soft and luminous as the eyes of a child just awake
from a long, untroubled sleep. "But--you must not ask me. It's
nothing that can be helped. Besides, it seems nothing--now." She
forced a faint smile. "If you knew what a comfort it is to cry you'd
try it."
"I have," he replied. Then after a pause he added: "Once." Something
in his tone--she did not venture to look at him again--made her catch
her breath. She instantly and instinctively knew when that "once" was.
"I don't care to try it again, thank you," he went on. "But it made me
able to understand what sort of comfort you were getting. For--YOU
don't cry easily."
The katydids were clamoring drowsily in the tops of the sycamores.
From out of sight beyond the orchard came the monotonous, musical whir
of a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful, careless "Bob White!"
from the rail fence edging the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled among
a cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the mower had spared. And
the breeze tossed up and rolled over the meadow, over the senses of the
young man and the young woman, great billows of that perfume which is
the combined essence of all nature's love philters.
Pauline sank on the hay, and Scarborough stretched himself on the
ground at her feet. "For a long time it's been getting darker and
darker for me," she began, in the tone of one who is talking of some
past sorrow which casts a retreating shadow over present joy to make it
the brighter by contrast. "To-day--this afternoon it seemed as if the
light were just about to go out--for good and all. And I came here. I
found myself lying on the ground--on the bosom of this old cruel--kind
mother of ours. And--" She did not finish--he would know the rest.
Besides, what did it matter--now?