She retreated, as he advanced, within the deeper obscurity of an opened
door but he had seen, in the shimmering, elusive light, her features,
gathered the unmistakable, intangible impression of her person.
"It's me, Gordon Makimmon," he said. He paused by the step, on which he
laid the trout, shining with sudden, liquid gleams of silver in the
moonlight.
"Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice; "oh!" She moved forward,
materializing, out of the dark, into a figure of white youth. Her face was
pale, there were white ruffles on her neck, on her arms, her skirt clung
simply, whitely, about her knees and ankles.
"I stopped to see Sim," he explained further, "and took you for Mrs.
Caley. I reckoned I'd bring them some trout: I didn't know your father was
here."
"Won't you sit down. Mrs. Caley is sick, and Sim's on the mountain with
the cattle. Father isn't here."
He mounted to the portico, mentally formulating a way of speedy escape; he
thought, everywhere he turned Lettice Hollidew stood with her tiresome
smile. "I come out here every summer," she volunteered, sinking upon a
step, "and spend two weeks. I was born here you see, and," she added in a
stiller voice, "my mother died here. Father Merlier calls it my yearly
retreat."
"I'd be pleased if you'd take the fish," he remarked; "I guess I'd better
be moving--I've got to see the priest."
"Why, you haven't stopped a minute," she protested, "not long enough to
smoke one of your little cigarettes. Visitors are too scarce here to let
them go off like that."
At the implied suggestion he half-mechanically rolled a cigarette. The
chair he found was comfortable; he was very weary. He sat smoking and
indifferently studying Lettice Hollidew. She was, to-night, prettier than
he had remembered her. She was telling him, in a voice that rippled cool
and low like the stream, of Mrs. Caley's indisposition. Her face, now
turned toward the fields, was dipped in the dreaming radiance; now it was
blurred, vaguely appealing, disturbing. Her soft youth was creamy,
distilling an essence, a fragrance, like a flower; it was one with the
immaculate flood of light bathing the world in virginal beauty.
A new interest stirred within him, a satisfaction grew from her palpable
liking for him, and was reflected in the warmer tones of his replies; a
new pain ordered his comments. The situation, too, appealed to him; his
instinct responded to the obvious implications of the position in the
exact degree of his habit of mind. The familiar, professional gallantry
took possession of him, directing the sensuality to which he abandoned
himself.
He moved from the chair to the step by her side. Nearer she was more
appealing still; a lovely shadow dwelt at the base of her throat; the
simple dress took the soft curves of her girlish body, stirred with her
breathing. Her hands lay loosely in her lap, and the impulse seized him to
take them up, but he repressed it ... for the moment.
"I saw Buckley Simmons, yesterday," she informed him, "his face is nearly
well. He wanted to come out here, but I wouldn't let him. He wants to
marry me," she continued serenely; "I told him I didn't think I'd every
marry."
"But you will--some lucky, young man."
"I don't think I like young men, that is," she qualified carefully, "not
very young. I like men who are able to act ever so quickly, no matter what
occurs, and they must be terribly brave. I like them best if they have
been unfortunate; something in me wants to make up to them for--for any
loss," she paused, gazing at him with an elevated chin, serious lips,
intent eyes.
This, he told himself complacently, was but a description of himself, as
pointed as she dared to make it. "A man who had had trouble couldn't do
better than tell you about it," he assured her; "I have had a good lot of
trouble."
"Well, tell me," she moved toward him.
"Oh! you wouldn't care to hear about mine. I'm a sort of nobody at
present. I haven't anything in the world--no home, nothing in the whole
world. Even the little saving I had after the house was sold was--was
taken from me by sharpers."
"Tell me," she repeated, "more."
"When Valentine Simmons had sold my place, the place my grandfather built,
I had about a thousand dollars left, and I thought I would start a little
business with it, a ... a gun store,--I like guns,--here in Greenstream.
And I'd sharpen scythes, put sickles into condition, you know, things like
that. I went to Stenton with my capital in my pocket, looking for some
stock to open with, and met a man in a hotel who said he was the
representative of the Standard Hardware Company. He could let me have
everything necessary, he said, at a half of what others would charge. We
had dinner together, and he made a list of what I would need--files and
vises and parts of guns. If I mailed my cheque immediately I could get the
half off. He had cards, catalogues, references, from Richmond. I might
write there, but I'd lose time and money.
"None of the Makimmons have been good business men; we are not
distrustful. I sent the cheque to the address he said, made out to him for
the Standard Hardware Company, so that he would get the commission, the
credit of the sale." He drew a deep breath, gazing across the moonlit
fields. "The Makimmons are not distrustful," he reiterated; "he robbed me
of all my savings."
His lie would have fared badly with Pompey Hollidew, he thought grimly; it
was unconvincing, wordy; he was conscious that his assumed emotion rang
thinly. But its calculated effect was instantaneous, beyond all his hopes,
his plan.
Lettice leaned close to him with a sobbing inspiration of sympathy and
pity. "How terrible!" she cried in low tones; "you were so noble--" He
breathed heavily once more. "What a wicked, wicked man. Couldn't you get
anything back? did it all go?"
"All." His hand fell upon hers, and neither of them appeared to notice its
pressure. Her face was close to his, a tear gleamed on her young,
moon-blanched cheek. A sudden impatience seized him at her credulity, a
contempt at the ease with which she was victimized; the effort was almost
without spice. Still his grasp tightened upon her hand, drew it toward
him. "In Greenstream," he continued, "men don't like me, they are afraid
of me; but the women make me unhappy--they tell me their troubles; I don't
want them to, I keep away from them."
"I understand that," she declared eagerly, "I would tell you anything."
"You are different; I want you to tell me ... things. But the things I
want to hear may not come to you. I would never be satisfied with a
little. The Makimmons are all that way--everything or nothing."
She gently loosened her hand, and stood up, facing him. Her countenance,
turned to the light, shone like a white flame; it was tensely aquiver with
passionate earnestness, lambent with the flowering of her body, of dim
desire, the heritage of flesh. She spoke in a voice that startled Gordon
by its new depth, the brave thrill of its undertone.
"I could only give all," she said. "I am like that too. What do you wish
me to tell you? What can I say that will help you?"
"Ever since I first saw you going to the Stenton school," he hurried on,
"I have thought about you. I could hardly wait for the Christmas holidays,
to have you in the stage, or for the summer when you came home. Nobody
knows; it has been a secret ... it seemed so useless. You were like
a ... a star," he told her.
"How could I know?" she asked; "I was only a girl until--until
Buckley ... until to-night, now. But I can never be that again, something
has happened ... in my heart, something has gone, and come," her voice
grew shadowed, wistful. It carried to him, in an intangible manner, a
fleet warning, as though something immense, unguessed, august, uttered
through Lettice Hollidew the whisper of a magnificent and terrible menace.
He felt again as he had felt as a child before the vast mystery of night.
An impulse seized him to hurry away from the portico, from the youthful
figure at his side; a sudden, illogical fear chilled him. But he summoned
the hardihood, the skepticism, of his heart; he defied--while the sinking
within him persisted--not the girl, but the nameless force beyond, above,
about them. "You are like a star," he repeated, in forced tones.
He rose and stood before her. She swayed toward him like a flower bowed by
the wind. He put his arms around her, her head lay back, and he kissed the
smooth fullness of her throat. He kissed her lips.
The eternal, hapless cry of the whippoorwills throbbed on his hearing. The
moon slipped behind a corner of the house, and a wave of darkness swept
over them. Lettice began to tremble violently, and he led her back to
their place on the veranda's edge. She was silent, and clung to him with a
reluctant eagerness. He kissed her again and again, on a still mouth, but
soon her lips answered his desire. It grew constantly darker, the silvery
vistas shortened, grew blurred, trees merged into indistinguishable
gloom.
Lettice murmured a shy, unaccustomed endearment. Gordon was stereotyped,
commonplace; he was certain that even she must recognize the hollowness of
his protestations. But she never doubted him; she accepted the dull,
leaden note of his spurious passion for the clear ring of unalloyed and
fine gold.
Suddenly and unexpectedly she released herself from his arms. "Oh!" she
exclaimed, in conscience-stricken tones, "Mrs. Caley's medicine!
I--forgot; she should have had some long ago." He tried to catch her once
more in his embrace, restrain her. "It would be better not to wake her
up," he protested, "sleep's what sick folks need." But she continued to
evade him. Mrs. Caley must have her medicine. The doctor had said that it
was important. "It's my duty, Gordon," she told him, "and you would want
me to do that."
He stifled with difficulty an impatient exclamation. "Then will you come
back?" he queried. He took her once more close in his arms. "Come back,"
he whispered hotly in her ear.
"But, dear Gordon, it is so late."
"What does that matter? don't you love me? You said you were the sort of a
girl to give all; and now, because it is a little late, you are afraid.
What are you afraid of? Tell me that! You know I love you; we belong to
each other; what does it matter how late it is? Beside, no one will know,
no one is here to spy on us. Come back, my little girl ... my little
Lettice; come back to a lonely man with nothing else in the world but you.
I'll come in with you, wait inside."
"No," she sobbed, "wait ... here. I will see ... the medicine. Wait here
for me, I will come back. It doesn't matter how late it is, nothing
matters ... trust in you. Love makes everything good. Only you love me,
oh, truly?"
"Truly," he reassured her. "Don't be long; and, remember, shut Mrs.
Caley's door."
She left him abruptly, and, standing alone in the dark, he cursed himself
for a fool for letting her go--a boy's trick. But then the whole affair
did not desperately engage him. He sat in the comfortable chair, and lit a
cigarette, shielding it with his hand so that she would not see it,
recognize in its triviality his detachment. A wave of weariness swept over
him; the night was like a blanket on the land. Minutes passed without her
return; soon he would go in search of her; he would find her ... in the
dark house.... He shut his eyes for a moment, and opened them with an
effort. The whippoorwills never for a moment ceased their melancholy
calling; they seemed to draw nearer to him; then retreat, far away. His
head fell forward upon his breast.
Lettice Hollidew! little fool; but what was that beyond her, blacker than
night?
He stirred, sat up sharply, his eyes dazzled by a blaze of intolerable
brilliancy. It was the sun, a full two hours above the horizon. He had
slept through the night. His muscles were cramped, his neck ached
intolerably. He rose with a painful effort and something fell to the
floor. It was a rose, wilted, its fragrance fled. He realized that Lettice
had laid it on his knee, last night, when the bud had been fresh. He had
slept while she stood above him, while the rose had faded. On the step the
fish lay, no longer brightly colored, in a dull, stiff heap. The house was
still; through the open door the sun fell on a strip of rag rug. He turned
and hurried down the steps, unlatched the gate, and almost ran across the
fields to the cover of a wood, fleeing from an unsupportably humiliating
vision.