Her head moved negatively, and once more she extended the note. He took
it and slowly tore it into shreds. With it he was tearing up the dream
and tossing it down the winds.
"The money will be placed to your credit at the bank on Monday. We can
not accept such a gift from any one. You would not, I know. But always
shall I treasure the impulse. It will give me courage in the
future--when I am fighting alone."
"What are you going to do?"
"I? I am going to appear before the public,"--with assumed lightness;
"I and my violin."
He struck his hands together. "The stage?"--horrified.
"I must live,"--calmly.
"But a servant to public caprice? It ought not to be! I realize that I
can not force you to accept my gift, but this I shall do: I shall buy
in the horses and give them back to you."
"You mustn't. I shall have no place to put them. Oh!"--with a gesture
full of despair and unshed tears, "why have you done all this? Why this
mean masquerade, this submitting to the humiliations I have contrived
for you, this act of generosity? Why?"
Perhaps she knew the answers to her own questions, but, womanlike,
wanted to be told.
And at that moment, though I am not sure, I believe Warburton's
guarding angel gave him some secret advice.
"You ask me why I have played the fool in the motley?"--finding the
strength of his voice. "Why I have submitted in silence to your just
humiliations? Why I have acted what you term generously? Do you mean to
tell me that you have not guessed the riddle?"
She turned her delicate head aside and switched the grasses with her
riding-crop.
"Well,"--flinging aside his cap, which he had been holding in his hand,
"I will tell you. I wanted to be near you. I wanted to be, what you
made me, your servant. It is the one great happiness that I have known.
I have done all these things because--because, God help me, I love you!
Yes, I love you, with every beat of my heart!"--lifting his head
proudly. Upon his face love had put the hallowed seal. "Do not turn
your head away, for my love is honest. I ask nothing, nothing; I expect
nothing. I know that it is hopeless. What woman could love a man who
has made himself ridiculous in her eyes, as I have made myself in
yours?"--bitterly.
"No, not ridiculous; never that!" she interrupted, her face still
averted.
He strode toward her hastily, and for a moment her heart almost ceased
to beat. But all he did was to kneel at her feet and kiss the hem of
her riding-skirt. He rose hurriedly.
"God bless you, and good-by!" He knew that if he remained he would lose
all control, crush her madly in his arms, and hurt her lips with his
despairing kisses. He had not gone a dozen paces, when he heard her
call pathetically. He stopped.
"Mr. Warburton, surely you are not going to leave me here alone with
the horses?"
"Pardon me, I did not think! I am confused!" he blundered.
"You are modest, too." Why is it that, at the moment a man succumbs to
his embarrassment, a woman rises above hers? "Come nearer,"--a command
which he obeyed with some hesitation. "You have been a groom, a butler,
all for the purpose of telling me that you love me. Listen. Love is
like a pillar based upon a dream: one by one we lay the stones of
beauty, of courage, of faith, of honor, of steadfastness. We wake, and
how the beautiful pillar tumbles about our ears! What right have you to
build up your pillar upon a dream of me? What do you know of the real
woman--for I have all the faults and vanities of the sex; what do you
know of me? How do you know that I am not selfish? that I am constant?
that I am worthy a man's loving?"
"Love is not like Justice, with a pair of scales to weigh this or that.
I do not ask _why_ I love you; the knowledge is all I need. And you are
_not_ selfish, inconstant, and God knows that you are worth loving. As
I said, I ask for nothing."
"On the other hand," she continued, as if she had not heard his
interpolation, "I know you thoroughly. I have had evidence of your
courage, your steadfastness, your unselfishness. Do not misunderstand
me. I am proud that you love me. This love of yours, which asks for no
reward, only the right to confess, ought to make any good woman happy,
whether she loved or not. And you would have gone away without telling
me, even!"
"Yes." He dug into the earth with his riding-boot. If only she knew how
she was crucifying him!
"Why were you going away without telling me?"
He was dumb.
Her arms and eyes, uplifted, appealed to heaven. "What shall I say? How
shall I make him understand?" she murmured. "You love me, and you ask
for nothing? Is it because in spirit my father has committed a
crime?"--growing tall and darting a proud glance at him.
"Good heaven, do not believe that!" he cried,
"What _am_ I to believe?"--tapping the ground with her boot so that the
spur jingled.
A pause.
"Mr. Warburton, do you know what a woman loves in a man? I will tell
you the secret. She loves courage, constancy, and honor, purpose that
surmounts obstacles; she loves pursuit; she loves the hour of
surrender. Every woman builds a castle of romance and waits for Prince
Charming to enter, and once he does, there must be a game of hide and
seek. Perhaps I have built my castle of romance, too. I wait for Prince
Charming, and--a man comes, dressed as a groom. There has been a game
of hide and seek, but somehow he has tripped. Will you not ask me if I
love you?"
"No, no! I understand. I do not want your gratitude. You are meeting
generosity with generosity. I do not want your gratitude."--brokenly.
"I want your love, every thought of your mind, every beat of your
heart. Can you give me these, honestly?"
She drew off a glove. Her hand became lost in her bosom. When she drew
it forth she extended it, palm upward. Upon it lay a faded, withered
rose. Once more she turned her face away.
He was at her side, and the hand and rose were crushed between his two
hands.
"Can you give what I ask? Your love, your thoughts, your heart-beats?"
It was her turn to remain dumb.
"Can you?" He drew her toward him perhaps roughly, being unconscious of
his strength and the nervous energy which the sight of the rose had
called into being.
"Can we give those things which are--already--given?"
Only Warburton and the angels, or rather the angels and Warburton, to
get at the chronological order of things, heard her, so low had grown
her voice.
You may tell any kind of secret to a horse; the animal will never
betray you. Warburton would never tell me what followed; and I am too
sensible to hang around the horses in hopes of catching them in the act
of talking over the affair among themselves. But I can easily imagine
this bit of equine dialogue:
_Jane_: Did you ever see such foolishness?
_Dick_: Never! And with all this good grass about!
Whatever _did_ follow caused the girl to murmur: "This is the lover I
love; this is the lover I have been waiting for in my castle of
romance. I am glad that I have lost all worldly things; I am glad,
glad! When did you first learn that you loved me?"
(Old, very old; thousands of years old, and will grow to be many
thousand years older. But from woman's lips it is the sweetest question
man ever heard.)
"At the _Gare du Nord_, in Paris; the first time I saw you."
"And you followed me across the ocean?"--wonderingly.
"And when did you first learn that you loved me?" he asked.
(Oh, the trite phrases of lovers' litany.)
"When I saw you in the police-court. Mercy! what a scandal! I am to
marry my butler!"
_Jane:_ They are laughing!
_Dick:_ That is better than weeping. Besides, they will probably walk
us home. (Wise animal!)
He was not only wise but prophetic. The lovers _did_ walk the horses
home. Hand in hand they came back along the road, through the flame and
flush of the ripening year. The god of light burned in the far west,
blending the brown earth with his crimson radiance, while the purple
shadows of the approaching dusk grew larger and larger. The man turned.
"What a beautiful world it is!" he said.
"I begin to find it so," replied the girl, looking not at the world,
but at him.
THE END
Postscript:
I believe they sent William back for the saddle-hamper and my jehu's
cap.