Burns opened the white gate--it was sagging a little on its hinges--and
walked up the moss-grown path between the rows of liveoaks to the
tall-columned portico of the still stately, if somewhat timeworn and
decayed, mansion among the shrubbery. It was just at dusk, and far away
somewhere a whippoorwill was calling. It was the only sound on the quiet
air.
The door was opened by an old negro servant, who hesitated over his
answer to the question put by this unknown person looming up before him
with his arm in a sling. Mrs. Elmore was in, but she was not well and
could not see any visitors this evening.
“Is Mrs. Lessing in?”
“Yas, Sah, she is. But she done tole me she couldn't see nobody herse'f.
She tekkin' cah ob Miss Lucy.”
Burns produced his card and made a persuasive request. The old darky
led the way to a long, nearly dark apartment, where the scent of roses
mingled with the peculiar odour of old mahogany and ancient rugs and
hangings. The servant lit a tall, antique lamp with crystal pendants
hanging from its shade, the light from which fell upon a bowlful of
crimson roses so that they glowed richly. He left Burns, departing
with a shuffling step and an air of grudging the strange gentleman the
occupancy of the room, although it was to be for only so long as it
would take to bring back word that neither of the ladies would see him
to-night.
Burns sat still for the space of two minutes then, as no further sound
could be heard in the quiet house, he became restless. His pulses beat
rather heavily and, to quiet them or the sense of them, he got up and
walked about, pausing at one of the long French windows to gaze out
into the dusky labyrinth of a garden, where he could just make out paths
winding about among the bushes. The night was mild, and the window stood
ajar as if some one had lately come in.
Then he turned and saw her. She had almost reached him, but he had not
heard her, her footfall upon the old Turkey carpet with its faded roses
and lilies had been so light. She was in white, and the light from the
old lamp shone on her arms end face and brought out the shadows of her
hair and eyes. She put out both hands--then quickly drew back one as her
glance fell upon the sling, and gave him her left, smiling. But he drew
the arm that had been broken out of its support and held it out.
“Please take this hand, too,” he said. “It will be its first experience
and, perhaps, it will put new life into it. It's pretty limp yet.”
She laid hers in it very gently, looking down at it as his fingers
closed slowly over hers.
“That's doing very well, I should think,” she said. “It's barely time
for it to be independent yet, is it?”
“About time. I had something of a wrestle with Doctor Buller to get him
to leave the splints off. How warm and soft your hand is. This one of
mine has forgotten how the touch of another hand feels.”
“I'm sure you ought not to use it yet. Please put it back in the sling.”
She drew her own hand gently away.
It occurred to him that while he had been absent from her he had not
been able to recall half her charm, and that if he had he would never
have been able to wait half so long before pursuing her down into this
Southern haunt of hers. He drew a full, contented breath.
“At last,” he said, “I am face to face with you. It's worth the
journey.”
In the lamplight it seemed to him the rose cast a reflection on her face
which he had not observed at first.
“I'm so sorry Aunt Lucy isn't able to see you tonight,” she
said--“unless she would consent go see you professionally. She really
ought--”
He held up his hand “Not unless she is in serious straits, please,” he
begged. “I've fled from patients, only to find them all the way down
on the train. I don't know what there can be about me to suggest to a
conductor that I'm the man he's looking for to attend some emergency
case, but he seems to spot me. Only at the station before this did I get
released from the last of the series. Let me forget my profession for a
bit if I can, just now I'm only a man who's come a long way to see you.
Is it really you?”
He leaned forward, studying her intently. His head, with its coppery
thatch of heavy hair, showed powerful lines in the lamplight; beneath
his dark throws the hazel eyes glowed black.
“It's certainly I,” she answered lightly. “And being I, with the
mistress of the house prevented from showing you hospitality, I must
offer it. She begged me to make you comfortable and to tell you she
would see you in the morning. You've had a long journey. You must want
the comfort of a room and hot water. I'll ring for Old Sam.”
She crossed the room and pulled an old-fashioned bell-cord, upon which a
bell was heard to jangle far away. The old darky reappeared.
“I should have gone to a hotel,” Burns said, “if I could have found one
in the place.”
“There is none. And if there had been Aunt Lucy would have been much
hurt to have you go there. Where did you leave your bag?”
“At the station. I can stay only for a night and a day, so it's a small
one.”
“I'll send Young Sam for it. Now let Sam take you to your room, and in a
few minutes I'll give you supper.”
“Don't bother about supper at this hour. I only want--”
“You want what you are to have,--some of Sue's delicious Southern
cookery.” She smiled at him as he looked back at her, following the old
servant. “She's been in the family for forty years and she loves to have
company to appreciate her dishes. Sam, you are to help Doctor Burns. He
has had a broken arm.”
When Burns came down, fresh from a bath and comfortable with clean
linen, he smelled odours which made him realize that, eager as he was
for other things, he was human enough to be intensely hungry with a
healthy man's appetite. So he surrendered himself to the fortunes that
now befell him.
Old Sam conducted him to the dining-room, a quaintly attractive
apartment where candle-light illumined the bare mahogany of the round
table laid with a large square of linen at his place and set with
delicate ancient china and silver. Ellen Lessing was already there in
a high-backed chair opposite the one set for him, a figure to which his
eyes were again drawn irresistibly and upon which they continued to rest
as he took his seat.
Sam disappeared toward the kitchen, and Burns spoke in a low voice
across the table.
“I feel as if I were in a dream,” said he. “Forty-eight hours ago I
was rushing about, hundreds of miles from here, trying to attend to the
wants of a lot of people who seemed determined not to let me get away.
Now I'm down here in the midst of all this quiet and peace, with you
before me to look at, and nobody to demand anything of me for at least
twenty-four hours. It's all too good to be true.”
“It seems rather odd to me, too,” she answered, letting her eyes stray
from his and rest upon the bowl of japonicas of a glowing pink, which
stood in the centre of the table. The candle-light made little starry
points in her dark eyes as she looked at the rich-hued blooms. “The last
person in the world I was expecting to see to-night was you.”
“I suppose I was as far from your thoughts as your expectation,” he
suggested.
“How should I be thinking of a person who had not written to me for so
long I thought he had forgotten me?” she asked, and then as he broke out
into a delighted laugh at her expense she grew as, pink as her flowers
and seemed to welcome the return of Sam bearing a trayful of Sue's good
things to eat.
Fried chicken and sweet potatoes, beaten biscuit and fragrant coffee,
had a flavour all their own to Burns that night. He ate as a hungry man
should, yet never forgot his companion for a moment or allowed her to
imagine that he forgot her. And by and by the meal was over and the two
rose from the table.
“I must go and see that Auntie is comfortable for the night, if you will
excuse me for half an hour,” said the person he had come to see. “Will
you wait in the drawing-room? I will have Sam bring you some late
magazines.”
“I'll wait, and no magazines, thank you. I can fill the time somehow,”
he answered. “But don't let it be more than the half-hour, will you?”
He watched her until she disappeared from his sight at the turn of the
staircase landing, then went in to pace up and down the long room, his
left arm folded over his right, after the fashion he had acquired since
the right arm became useless. After what seemed an interminable interval
she came back. He met her at the door.
“Are the duties all done?” he inquired.
“All done for the present. I must look in on Auntie by and by, but I
think she is going to sleep.”
“May she sleep the sleep of the just! And there's nothing more you feel
it incumbent upon you to do for me? No more sending me to my room, no
more waiting upon me by Sam, no more feeding me till my capacity is
reached? Is there really no notion in your mind as to how you can put
off the coming hour?”
His voice had its old, whimsical inflection, but there was a deeper note
in it, too. She parried him gently, yet not quite so composedly as was
her wont.
“Why should I want to put if off? Aren't we going to sit down and have
a delightful talk? I want to hear all about Bob and Martha and all of
them, and about your work since I saw you.”
“You want to hear all about those things, do you? I had the impression
that we discussed them quite thoroughly while I was at supper. Still,
I can go over them all again if you insist. It may take up another five
minutes, and when one is fencing for time, even five minutes counts.”
It was his old way, with a vengeance. There was a saying of Arthur
Chester's current among his and Burns's friends that it never was of any
use to try to evade Red Pepper when once he had begun to fire upon your
defenses. With his eyes searching you and his insolent tongue putting
point blank questions to you, you might as well capitulate first as
last.
There being no conceivable answer to this thrust about fencing for time,
even for a woman experienced in replying skilfully to men under all
sorts of conditions, Ellen Lessing was forced to look up or play the
part of a shy girl. So she looked up, lifting her head bravely. There
really was nothing else to do.
It was all in his face. He had not come all those hundreds of miles to
pay her an evening call, nor did he mean to be put off longer. His eyes
held hers: she could not withdraw them.
“It's odd,” he said, speaking slowly, “how like a magnet drawing a steel
bar you've drawn me down here. Pull-pull-pull--an irresistible force. I
wonder if the magnet feels the attraction, too? Could it pull so hard if
it didn't?”
There was a long minute during which neither stirred--it might have
been the counterpart of that minute, months back, when they had first
observed each other. Recognition it was, perhaps, at the very first;
there could be no question about the recognition now--it went deep.
Suddenly he slipped his right arm out of the sling. Before she could
draw breath she was in the circle of his arms, but he had not touched
her.
“Am I wrong?” he was saying. “Has it pulled both ways from the first?”
It must be as useless for the magnet to resist as for the bar. And when
they, have come within a certain distance of each other--
If Red Pepper's left arm caught her in the stronger grasp, the right did
all, and more than all, that could have been expected of it. It was
his right arm which slowly drew her hands up, one after the other, and
indicated to them that their place was locked together, behind his
neck.
An old garden in South Carolina is a place to lure the Northerner
out-of-doors. Before breakfast next morning Burns was walking down the
box-bordered paths, feasting his gaze and his sense of fragrance on
the clumps of blue and white violets, the clusters of gay crocuses, the
splendid spikes of Roman hyacinths. But he did not fail to keep track of
all doorways in sight, and when she appeared at the open French window
of the drawing-room he was there in a trice, offering her a bunch of
purple violets and feasting his eyes upon her morning freshness.
“I'm still dreaming, I think,” said he when he had drawn her back
into the quiet room long enough to satisfy himself with the active
demonstration that possession means privilege, and had himself fastened
the violets in the front of her crisp white morning dress. “Dreaming
that I can stay down here in this wonderful paradise with you and not go
back to the slave's life I lead.”
“You would never be happy away from that slave's life long, you know,”
she reminded him. “The rush of it is the joy of it to you.”
“How will it be to you? I shall be yours, you remember, till Joe
Tressler or any other ne'er-do-weel wants me, then I'm his.”
“But you'll always come back to me,” said she.
“And will you be content with that?”
“So long as you want to come back.”
He looked steadily into her eyes, and his own took fire. “Want to come
back! I've waited a long time to find the woman I could be sure I should
always want to come back to. I thought there would never be such a
woman: not for an erratic fellow like me.... But now I'm wondering how I
shall ever be able to stay away.”