At her first swift coming when she had cried out to him there in the
dark and run across to kneel at his knees, a dull, shamed flush had
stained his lean cheeks with the realization that, in his own great
bitterness he had failed even to wonder whether she had been
forgotten, too.
Now as his big hand hovered over the tumbled brightness of her hair,
loose upon his sleeve, that hot shame in turn disappeared. After the
quivering gasps were all but stilled, he twice opened his lips as if
to speak, and each time closed them again without a word. He was
smiling a faint, gravely gentle smile that barely lifted the corners
of his lips when she turned in his arms and lifted her face once more
to him.
"We don't mind very much," she repeated in a half whisper. "Do
we--either of us--now?"
Slowly he shook his head. With effortless ease he stooped and swung
her up on one arm, seating her upon the bare table before the window.
Another match flared between his fingers and the whole room sprang
into brightness as he touched the point of flame to the wick of the
lamp bracketed to the wall beside him.
She sat, leaning forward a little, both elbows resting upon her slim
knees, both feet swinging pendulum-like high above the floor, watching
with a small frown of curiosity growing upon her forehead, while he
stooped without a word of explanation and dragged a bulky package from
the table and placed it beside her. Then she sighed aloud, an audible
sigh of sheer surprise after he had broken the string and drawn aside
the paper wrapper.
Just as they had seemed in the picture they lay there under her amazed
eyes--the pointed, satiny black slippers of the dancing girl, with
their absurdly slender heels and brilliant buckles, and filmy
stockings to match. And underneath lay two folded squares of
shimmering stuff, dull black and burnished scarlet, scarce thicker
than the silk of the stockings themselves.
The faint, vaguely self-conscious smile went from Denny Bolton's lips
while he stood and watched her bend and touch each article, one by
one--the barest ghost of contact. Damp eyes glowing, lips curled half
open, she lifted her head at last and gazed at him, as he stood with
hands balanced on his hips before her.
A moment she sat immobile, her breath coming and going in soft,
fluttering gasps, and looked into his sober, questioning face; then
she turned again and picked up one web-like stocking and held it
against her cheek, as hotly tinted now beneath its smooth whiteness as
the shining scarlet cloth beside her.
He heard her murmur to herself little, broken, incoherent phrases that
he could not catch.
"Denny," he heard her whisper, "Denny--Denny!"
And then, with the tiny slippers huddled in her lap, her hands flashed
out and caught his face and drew it down against the too-small white
blouse, open at the throat.
"Man--man," she said, and he felt her breast rise and fall, rise and
fall, against his cheek. "Man, you didn't understand! It--it wasn't
the clothes, Denny, but--but I'm all the gladder, I think, because
you're so much of a man that you couldn't, not even if I tried a
hundred years to explain."
He drew the chair at the side of the table around in front of her and
dropped into it. With a care akin to reverence he lifted one slipper
and held it outstretched at arm's length upon his broad palm.
"I--I hadn't exactly forgotten, tonight," he told her. "I'd watched
for the light, and I meant to bring them--when I came." His steady
eyes dropped to her slim, swinging feet. "They're the smallest they
had in any shop at the county-seat," he went on, and the slow smile
came creeping back across his face. "I crossed over through the timber
late last night, after we had broken camp, and I--I had to guess the
size. Shall we--try them on?"
She reached out and snatched the small thing of satin and leather away
from him with mock jealous impetuosity, a little reckless gurgle of
utter delight breaking from her lips.
"Over these," she demanded, lifting one foot and pointing at the
thickly patched old stocking above the dingy, string-tied shoe.
"You--you are trying to shame me, Denny--you want to make me confess
they are too small!"
Then, almost in the same breath, all the facetious accusation left her
face. Even the warm glow of wonder which had lighted her wet eyes gave
way to a new seriousness.
"No one has ever told me," she stated slowly, "but I know it is so,
just the same. Somehow, because it was to be the first party I had
ever attended--or--or had a chance to attend, I thought it must be all
right, just once, for you to buy me these. There was no one else to
buy them, Denny, and maybe I wanted to go so very much I made myself
believe that it was all right. But there isn't any party now--for us.
And--and men don't buy clothes for women, Denny--not until they're
married!"
Her face was tensely earnest while she waited for the big man before
her to answer. And Young Denny turned his head, staring silently out
of the opposite window down toward the village, dark now, in the
valley below. He cleared his throat uncertainly.
"Do they?" She was leaning forward until her hair brushed his own. "Do
they, Denny?" A rising inflection left the words hanging in midair.
"I don't know just what the difference is," he began finally, his
voice very deliberate. "I've often tried to figure it out, and never
been quite able to get it straight"--he nodded his head again toward
the sleeping village--"but we--we've never been like the rest, anyhow.
And--and anyway," he reached out one hand and laid it upon her knees,
"we're to be married, too--when--when----"
With swift, caressing haste she lifted the slippers that lay cradled
in her lap and set them back inside the open package. Lightly she
swung herself down and stood before him, both hands balanced upon his
shoulders. For just the fraction of a moment her eyes lifted over his
head, flickering toward the stone demijohn that stood in the far,
shadowy corner near the door. Her voice was trembling a little when
she went on.
"Then let me come soon, Denny," she begged. "Can't it be soon? Oh, I'm
going to keep them!" One hand searched behind her to fall lightly upon
the package upon the table. "They're--they're so beautiful that I
don't believe I could ever give them back. But do we have to wait any
longer--do we? I can take care of him, too."
Vehemently she tilted her head toward the little drab cottage across
under the opposite hill.
"He hardly ever notices when I come or go. I--I want to come, Denny.
I'm lonesome, and--and--" her eyes darkened and swam with fear as she
stared beyond him into the dusky corner near the door, "why can't I
come now, before some time--when it might be--too late?"
He reached up and took her hands from his shoulders and held them in
front of him, absently contemplating their rounded smoothness. She
bent closer, trying to read his eyes, and found them inscrutable. Then
his fingers tightened.
"And be like them?" he demanded, and the words leaped out so abruptly
that they were almost harsh. "And be like all the rest," he
reiterated, jerking his head backward, "old and thin, and bent and
worn-out at thirty?" A hard, self-scathing note crept into the words.
"Why, it--it took me almost a month--even to buy these!"
He in turn reached out and laid a hand upon the bundle behind her. But
she only laughed straight back into his face--a short, unsteady laugh
of utter derision.
"Old?" she echoed. "Work! But I--I'd have you, Denny, wouldn't I?"
Again she laughed in soft disdain. "Clothes!" she scoffed. And then,
more serious even than before: "Denny, is--is that the only reason,
now?"
The gleam that always smoldered in Denny Bolton's eyes whenever he
remembered the tales they told around the Tavern stove of Old Denny's
last bad night began to kindle. His lips were thin and straight and as
colorless as his suddenly weary face as he stood and looked back at
her. She lifted her hands and put them back upon his shoulders.
"I'm not afraid--any more--to chance it," she told him, her lips
trembling in spite of all she could do to hold them steady. "I'm never
afraid, when I'm with you. It--it's only when I'm alone that it grows
to be more than I can bear, sometimes. I'm not afraid. Does it--does
it have to stay there any longer, in the corner, Denny? Aren't we sure
enough now--you and I--aren't we?"
He stopped back a pace--his big body huge above her slenderness--stepped
away from the very nearness of her. But as she lifted her arms to him
he began to shake his head--the old stubborn refusal that had
answered her a countless number of times before.
"Aren't we?" she said again, but her voice sounded very small and
bodiless and forlorn in the half dark room.
He swung one arm in a stiff gesture that embraced the entire valley.
"They're all sure, too," his voice grated hoarsely, "They're all sure,
too--just as sure as we could ever be--and there's a whole town of
them!"
She was bending silently over the table, retying the bundle, when he
crossed back to her side, a lighted lantern dangling in one hand.
"I don't know why myself," he tried to explain. "I only know I've got
to wait. And I don't even know what I'm waiting for--but I know it's
got to come!"
She would not lift her head when he slipped his free arm about her
shoulders and drew her against him. When he reached out to take the
package from her she held it away from him, but her voice, half
muffled against his checkered coat, was anything but hard.
"Let _you_ carry them?" she murmured. "Why--I wouldn't trust them to
any other hands in the world but my own. You can't even see them
again--not until I've finished them, and I wear them--for you."
With head still bowed she walked before him to the open door. But
there on the threshold she stopped and flashed up at him her
whimsically provocating smile.
"Tell me--why don't you tell me, Denny," she commanded imperiously,
"that I'm prettier than all the others--even if I haven't the pretty
clothes!"
When the ridges to the east were tinged with the red of a rising sun,
Denny Bolton was still sitting, head propped in his hands, at the
table before the window, totally oblivious to the smoking lamp beside
him, or to anything else save the square card which he had found lying
there beneath the table after he had taken her back across the valley
to John Anderson's once-white cottage. He rose and extinguished the
smoking wick as the first light of day began to creep through the
room.
"---- requests the pleasure of Miss Dryad Anderson's company," he
repeated aloud. And then, as he turned to the open door and the work
that was waiting for him, in a voice that even he himself had never
before heard pass his lips:
"And she could have gone--she could have, and she didn't--just
because----"
His grave voice drifted off into silence. As if it were a perishably
precious thing, he slipped the square card within its envelope and
buttoned the whole within his coat.