Swept along by a passionate excitement that seemed actually to consume
her, Cherry lived through the next three days. Alix noticed her mood,
and asked her more than once what caused it. Cherry would press a hot
cheek to hers, smile with eyes full of pain, and flutter away. She was
well, she was quite all right, only she--she was afraid Martin would
summon her soon--and she didn't want to go to him--!
Alix was puzzled, watching her sister with anxious eyes. The cleaning
and refurnishing of the old home was proceeding rapidly, and Alix
feared that the constant memory of the old times would be too much for
Cherry. She tried to induce her to rest, to spend this morning or that
afternoon in the hammock, but Cherry gently but irresistibly refused.
Her one hope was to be busy, to tire her brain and body before night.
Suspecting something gravely amiss, Alix tried to win her confidence
regarding Martin. But briefly, quickly, and with a sort of affectionate
and apologetic impatience, Cherry refused to discuss him.
"I shall not go back to him!" she said, breathing hard, and with the
air of being more absorbed in what she was doing than what she was
saying. She and Alix were dusting the books in their father's old
library, and arranging them on the shelves, on a quiet September
morning.
"But, Cherry, dear, you were saying yesterday that you dreaded his
sending for you!" Alix said, in a troubled surprise.
"Yes, I know I was!" Cherry admitted, quickly.
"But did you mean that you are really going to leave him?" the older
sister questioned. And as Cherry was silent she repeated: "Are you
going to leave him, dear?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do!" Cherry half sobbed.
"But, dearest--dearest, you're only twenty-four; don't you think you
might feel better about it as time goes on?" Alix urged. "Now that the
money is all yours, Cherry, and you can have this nice home to come to
now and then, isn't it different?"
Cherry, an old volume in her hand, was looking at her steadily.
"You don't understand, Sis!" she said.
"I understand that you don't love Martin," Alix said, perplexed. "But
can't people who don't love each other live together in peace?" she
added, with a half smile.
"N-n-not as man and wife!" Cherry stammered.
Alix sat back on her heels, in the ungraceful fashion of her girlhood,
and shrugged her shoulders.
"Think of the people who are worrying themselves sick over bills, or
sick wives, or children to bring up!" she suggested, hopefully. "My
Lord, if you have enough money, and food, and are young, and well--!"
"Yes, but, Alix," Cherry argued, eagerly, "I'm NOT well when I'm
unhappy. My heart is like lead all the time; I can't seem to breathe!
People--isn't it possible that people are different about that?" she
asked, timidly.
"I suppose they are!" Alix conceded, thoughtfully. "Anyway, look at all
the fusses in history," she added, carelessly, "of GRANDE PASSIONS, and
murders, and elopements, and the fate of nations--resting on just the
fact that a man and woman hated each other too much, or loved each
other too much! There must be something in it that I don't understand.
But what I DO understand," she added, after a moment, when Cherry,
choked with emotion, was silent, "is that Dad would die of grief if he
knew you were unhappy, that your life was all broken up in
disappointment and bitterness!"
"But is that my fault!" Cherry exclaimed, with sudden tears.
Alix, after watching her for a troubled minute, went to her, and put
her arm about her. "Don't cry, Cherry!" she pleaded, sorrowfully.
Cherry, regaining self-control, resumed her work silently, with an
occasional, sudden sigh. Alix, clapping the heavy covers of a
leatherbound volume in Buck's inquisitive nose, presently laughed gaily
as he sneezed and pawed.
She had opened the subject with reluctance; now she realized that they
had again reached a blank wall.
Three days after their talk in the moonlit garden Peter found chance to
speak alone to Cherry.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Quite!" she said, raising blue eyes to his.
"What about your suitcase?"
"I took it into San Francisco yesterday; Alix went in early, and I
followed at noon. It's checked in the ferry building, waiting."
"It's to-morrow then, Cherry!" he said.
"To-morrow!" He saw the colour ebb from her face as she echoed him.
This was already late afternoon; perhaps her thoughts raced ahead to
to-morrow afternoon at this time when they two would be leaning on the
rail of the little steamer, gazing out over the smooth, boundless blue
of the Pacific, and alone in the world.
"To-morrow you will be mine!" he said.
"That's all I think of," she answered. And now the colour came up in a
splendid wave of flame, and the face that she turned toward his was
radiant with proud surrender.
He told her the number of the dock; they discussed trains.
"We sail at eleven," said Peter, "but I shall be there shortly after
ten. I'll have the baggage on board, everything ready; you only have to
cross the gangplank. You have your baggage check; give it to me."
They were waiting in the car while Alix marketed; Cherry opened her
purse and gave him the punched cardboard.
"I'll tell Alix that I have a last dentist appointment at half-past
ten," she said. "If she goes in with me, we'll go to the very door. But
she says she can't come in to-morrow, anyway. I'll write her to-night,
and drop the letter on the way to the boat."
"Better wait until we are in Los Angeles," he said, pondering. "I'm
writing, too, of course. I'm simply saying that it is one of the big
things that come into people's lives and that one can't combat. Perhaps
some day--but I can't look forward; I can't tell what the future holds.
I only know that we belong to each other, and that life might as well
be ended as love!"
"To-morrow, then!" was Cherry's only answer. "I'm glad it's so soon."
"Good-bye!" said Cherry, leaning over the side of the car to kiss her
sister. Alix received the kiss, smiled, and stretched in the sun.
"Heavenly day to waste in the city!" said Alix.
"I know!" Cherry said, nervously. She had been so strangely nervous and
distracted in manner all morning that Alix had more than once asked her
if there was anything wrong. Now she questioned her again.
"You mustn't mind me!" Cherry said, with a laugh. "I'm desperately
unhappy," she said, her eyes watering. "And sometimes I think of
desperate remedies, that's all."
"I'd do anything in the world to help you, Cerise!" Alix said,
sympathetically.
"I know you would, Sis! I believe," Cherry said, trembling, "that
there's nothing you wouldn't give me!"
"That's easily said," Alix answered, carelessly, "for I don't get fond
of things, as you do! My dear, I'd go off with Martin to Mexico in a
minute. I mean it! I don't care a whoop where I live, if only people
are happy. I'd work my hands to the bone for you--as a matter of fact,
I do work 'em to the bone," she added, laughing, as she looked at the
hands that were stained and rough from gardening.
"How about Buck?" Cherry said, as the dog leaped to his place on the
front seat, and licked his mistress's ear.
Alix embraced him lovingly.
"Well--if he wanted to go with you!" she conceded, unwillingly. "But he
wouldn't!" she added, quickly. Cherry, going to the train, gave her an
April smile, and as she took her seat and the train drew on its way, it
seemed to her suddenly that she might indeed meet Peter, but it would
only be to tell him that what they had planned was impossible.
But on the deck of the Sausalito steamer, dreaming in the sunshine of
the soft, lazy autumn day, her heart turned sick with longing once
more. Alix was forgotten, everything was forgotten except Peter. His
voice, his tall figure, erect, yet moving with the little limp she knew
so well, came to her thoughts. She thought of herself on the other
steamer, only an hour from now, safe in his care, Martin forgotten, and
all the perplexities and disappointments of the old life forgotten, in
the flood of new security and joy. Los Angeles--New Orleans--France--it
mattered not where they wandered, they might well lose the world, and
the world them, from to-day on.
"So that is to be my life--one of the blamed and ignored women?" Cherry
mused, leaning on the rail, and watching the plunge of the receding
water. "Like the heroines of half the books--only it always seemed so
bold and so frightful in books! But to me it just seems the most
natural thing in all the world. I love Peter, and he loves me, and the
earth is big enough to hide us, and that's all there is to it. Anyway,
right or wrong, I can't help it," she finished, rejoicing to find
herself suddenly serene and confident, as the boat made the slip, and
the passengers streamed downstairs and so across the ferry place and
into the city.
It was twenty minutes past ten, a warm, sweet morning, with great
hurrying back and forth at the ferry, women climbing to the open seats
of the cable-cars, pinning on their violets or roses as they climbed.
In the air was the pleasant mingling of the scents of roasting coffee,
salt bay-water, and softening tar in the paving, that is native only to
San Francisco. Cars clanged about the circle, hummed their way up into
the long vista of Market Street, disturbing great flights of gulls that
were picking dropped oats from the very feet of feeding horses.
Cherry sped through it all, beside herself now with excitement and
strain, only anxious to have the great hands of the clock drop more
speedily from minute to minute, and so round out the terrible hour that
joined the old life to the new. She was hurrying blindly toward the
docks of the Los Angeles Line, absorbed in her one whirling thought,
when somebody touched her arm, and a voice, terrifyingly unexpected and
yet familiar, addressed her, and a hand was laid on her arm.
In utter confusion she looked up. It was Martin who had stopped her.