The Playwright and the Lady/Chapter 14
XIV.
How long they stood there, with only little, broken words and soft sounds between them, who knows, save, perchance, the moon? Surely not they!
But, after a time, she drew herself away and stood off at arm’s length, looking at him with eyes and mouth grown strangely wistful. A little shiver of wind passed across the garden, rustling the leaves and showering the white petals of the solitary rose. It was as though a cloud had for a moment hidden the moon; life became real again, something more than a dream in a fairy garden; memories of yesterdays and knowledge of to-morrows came to them with an awakening shock; the moonlight’s splendor paled. Roger, resisting the qualm of depression, strove to draw her back into his arms. But she shook her head, holding herself away.
“Let me go now, please,” she whispered.
“Never!”
“Yes, please, please! You must be kind to me—to-night.”
“Kind? Sweetheart, all my life shall be kindness,” he answered, gently. “Don’t you know that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I did not mean—kiss me good-night, dear, and let me go.” She turned her soft, oval face up to the moonlight and his lips.
“Good-night,” he murmured, and then: “Ah, but it’s hard to say!” he cried, tremblingly.
“Hush, hush! Now let me go. Good-night—good-night”
“Only ‘good-night’?” he asked, detaining her with his hand on hers.
“Good-night, dear love,” she whispered, meeting his eyes with hers for a moment. Her hand slipped and she was hurrying across the moonlit space toward the lawn and the distant house. He watched her until she was part of the shadows, hoping for a backward look and feeling tragically disappointed when none came. After a moment he turned toward home. As he passed the rose bush he plucked a loose-petaled bloom and crushed it to his lips. The fragrance made him gasp with a delight that was half a pain. Ever afterward the odor of old-fashioned roses brought back to him a vision of that moonlit garden with its silvery lights and its sharp, black shadows.
Sleep came to him with the-first flush of dawn, and it was long after eight when he awoke again to find the sunlight flooding the valley and a fresh west wind swaying the branches outside the window. And the world was a new world to him, a glad, merry, singing world that spun around in a blue, cloud-flecked space in time to the beating of his heart. And the wind on his cheek was like the caress of her soft, cool hands, and a thrush at the edge of the meadow sang “She loves you—loves you—loves you!” over and over in a throbbing pean of triumph and bliss.
He went in to his breakfast with no premonition of ill. Even when he had sighted and seized upon the square gray envelope beside his place only fresh delight came to him. That somewhat angular and rather English handwriting was hers! He studied it for a moment with a tender smile in his brown eyes; it was very beautiful, he thought. As he carefully slit the envelope he glanced inquiringly at Alfred.
“From the ’All, sir,” the latter explained. “Hit was delivered ten minutes ago, sir.”
Roger nodded and opened the missive. As he read it the smile faded from his face, giving way to a look of perplexity and trouble.
- If what I am going to write hurts you, try and forgive me. It is hurting me, too. But I deserve the pain and you do not. I hardly know how to write what I must say. Last night I behaved badly to you. All along I have behaved badly, for I knew what was coming—knew that you were growing to care for me, and that it mustn’t be. And I allowed you to believe things that were not true. At first it was only a fancy of mine to let you deceive yourself as you did; afterward I should have told you, but I did not; and then, suddenly, it was too late. Last night everything seemed so unreal, so much more like a dream than reality, that I scarcely knew what I was doing. Oh, that isn’t true! I did know, but I didn’t care. I forgot, I think, that dreams must have their awakening. And now there is a to-morrow and there is no moonlight to change the shapes of things. You must forget what happened, and forget me. We are bound to meet again before long, but before that happens you must put me out of your thoughts. Perhaps if you do not forgive me it will be better; if you hate me a little—just a little—it will be easier for you not to care. I shan’t see you again now, for I am going away. I beg you not to try and see me. If you come to the Hall I shall not see you. Perhaps some day, when we are quite, quite ourselves again, I can explain some things so that you will not hate me very much. I hope this will not matter with your work, for—and this is not selfishness—I want your play to be a great success. But I know that it will. And you must finish it soon. You will, won’t you? And now, good-by. I am very, very sorry.
There was no signature.
Roger read it twice, the first time in sheer perplexity, the second with a miserable growing heaviness of heart. There was but one meaning to be gathered from it; she could not marry him. That she cared for him he could not doubt. Then there was but one explanation; she was already married and—yes, that was the deception she spoke of—she was not a widow.
He forgot his breakfast, and waved Alfred impatiently aside when the latter solicitously covered his coffee with an inverted saucer. Now and then he reread portions of her note, but for the rest he sat motionless, his eyes fixed unseeingly on the glinting river and the distant mountains. The thrush had flown from the meadow.
But presently the reaction came. The one supreme fact was that she loved him. To sit there inactive while happiness slipped from his grasp was a fool’s trick. Somewhere, somehow there must surely be a way. He bolted his coffee and sent for Denis. Then he sat down and wrote a note. Surely, he asked, she did not expect him to give her up without some evidence of the necessity? Her note told him nothing. He must see her, if only for a moment. At least, she owed him so much. He would come to the Hall or to the gate in half an hour.
When the message was dispatched his spirits arose. Perhaps, after all, the obstacle was an imaginary one; women have strange fancies oftentimes. Whatever it might be, a sensible talk could not fail to help matters. And about the time he had reached this point in his reflections, Denis returned from the Hall with the brief announcement that there was no answer!
Roger stormed, but to what purpose? Denis reiterated the fact that he had delivered the note into the hands of the lady herself, that she had read it and had told him that there was no reply; and he had come away.
“But, sure, if Mister Gale liked, he would go back and sit on the front shteps till they gave him one!”
Roger turned away impatiently and took his trouble out of doors. Scowling, uttering mild and fervent oaths from very helplessness, he lighted a cigarette and tramped down the Beech Walk.
Should he consider himself bound to obey her injunction not to seek her? Why not go to the Hall and insist upon his rights? He glanced at his watch; it was just ten. If she had intended going on the ten o’clock train, he was already too late. But it was not likely that she would have been at the Hall a quarter of an hour before had she been going to take the ten o’clock to the city. The next train left at a little after eleven; there was time enough to decide on a course of action before that. One thing was quite certain; he must see her before she left.
He was almost at the gate now, and, raising his eyes from the ground, he saw her there in the path a little distance away. But she had seen him as well, and already she had turned and was hurrying away. He called, but she did not pause. He called again, louder, and she broke into a run, and in a moment sped around the distant corner toward the house.
Roger frowned and gazed moodily after her. And while he gazed a third character appeared on the scene. Gretchen, nose to ground, tail in air, swung out onto the path from the grove, and after an instant of indecision came toward the gate. At Roger’s feet, her nose between the rusty bars, she came to a stand and barked her resentment at being stopped in the chase. Roger called her name, but she took no notice of him other than to glance suspiciously at his face, as though more than half inclined to connect him with the foiling of her efforts. Then she turned away with drooping tail, eloquent of disappointment. And as she turned an idea of great brilliancy occurred to Roger. He stooped and called enticingly:
“Here, Gretchen, here, girl! Nice dog! Come on, girlie; come and see me?”
The dachshund turned and viewed him inquiringly, sniffed at him and proceeded on her way. A moment more and all would be lost. Roger proved himself master of the situation. Dropping to the knees of his immaculate white trousers, he scratched enticingly in the earth under the gate.
“Here, here!” he called, excitedly. “Dig ’em out, girl! Go after ’em!”
In a second the dirt was flying. The dachshund’s shovel-like paws twinkled. Now and then she stopped to sniff in the hole she was digging. Evidently she smelled something—perhaps nothing more than a mole—that aroused her sporting proclivities, for each time that her head was withdrawn, covered with dirt, she returned yet more furiously to the assault.
In scarce the time it takes to tell, she had burrowed under the gate and Roger, lifting her to his arms, smiled the smile of a Machiavel.