CHAPTER XVIII
Wally was the first to go.
On a wonderful moonlight night in May he called to bid Mary good-bye. He had received a commission in the aviation department and was already in uniform—as charming and romantic a figure as the eyes of love could ever wish to see.
But Mary couldn't see him that way—not even when she tried—making a bold little experiment with herself and feeling rather sorry, if anything, that her heart beat no quicker and not a thrill ran over her, when her hand rested for a moment on Wally's shoulder.
"I wonder if I'm different from other girls," she thought. "Or is it because I have other things to think about? Perhaps if I had nothing else on my mind, I'd dream of love as much as anybody, until it amounted to—what do they call it?—a fixed idea?—that thing which comes to people when they keep turning the same thing over and over in their minds, till they can't get it out of their thoughts?"
But you mustn't think that Mary didn't care that Wally was going—perhaps never to return. She knew that she liked him—she knew she would miss him. And when, just before he left, he sang The Spanish Cavalier in that stirring tenor which always made her scalp tingle and her breast feel full, she turned her face to the moonlit scene outside and lived one of those minutes which are so filled with beauty and the stirring of the spirit that pleasure becomes poignant and brings a feeling which isn't far from pain.
"I'm off to the war—to the war I must go,
To fight for my country and you, dear;
But if I should fall, in vain I would call
The blessing of my country and you, dear—"
All their eyes were wet then, even Wally's—moved by the sadness of his own song. Aunt Patty, Aunt Cordelia and Helen wiped their tears away unashamed, but Mary tried to hide hers.
And when the time came for his departure, Aunt Cordelia kissed him and breathed in his ear a prayer, and Aunt Patty kissed him and prayed for him, and Helen kissed him, too, her arms tight around his neck. But when it came to Mary's turn, she looked troubled and gazed down at her hand which he was holding in both of his.
"Come on out for a minute," he whispered, gently leading her.
They went out under the moon.
"Aren't you going to kiss me, too?" he asked.
Mary thought it over.
"If I kissed you, I would love you," she said, and tried to hide her tears no more.
He soothed her then in the immemorial manner, and soon she was tranquil again.
"Good-bye, Wally," she said.
"Good-bye, dear. You'll promise to be here when I come back?"
"I shall be here."
"And you won't let anybody run away with you until I've had another chance?"
"Don't worry."
She watched the light of his car diminish until it vanished over the crest of the hill. A gathering sense of loneliness began to assail her, but with it was a feeling of freedom and purpose—the feeling that she was being left alone, clear of distraction, to fight her own fight and achieve her own destiny.
Archey Forbes was the next to go. His going marked a curious incident.
He had applied for a commission in the engineers, and his record and training being good, it wasn't long before he received the beckoning summons of Mars.
Upon the morning of the day when he was to leave New Bethel, he went to the factory to say good-bye. The one he wished to see the most, however, was the first one he missed.
"Miss Mary's around the factory somewhere," said a stenographer.
Another spoke up, a dark girl with a touch of passion in her smile. "I think Mr. Burdon is looking for her, too."
Archey missed neither the smile nor the tone—and liked neither of them.
"He'll get in trouble yet," he thought, "going out with those girls," and his frown grew as he thought of Burdon's daily contact with Mary.
"I'll see if I can find her," he told himself after he had waited a few minutes; and stepping out into the full beauty of the June morning, he crossed the lawn toward the factory buildings.
On one of the trees a robin sang and watched him with its head atilt. A bee hummed past him and settled on a trellis of roses. In the distance murmured the falls, with their soothing, drowsy note.
"These are the days, when I was a boy, that I used to dream of running away and seeing the world and having great adventures," thought Archey, his frown forgotten. He didn't consciously put it into words, but deep from his mind arose a feeling of the coming true of great dreams—of running away from the humdrum of life, of seeing the world, of taking a part in the greatest adventure ever staged by man.
"What a day!" he breathed, lifting his face to the sun. "Oh, Lord, what a day!"
It was indeed a day—one of those days which seem to have wine in the air—one of those days when old ambitions revive and new ones flower into splendour. Mary, for instance, on her way to the machine shop, was busy with thoughts of a nursery where mothers could bring their children who were too young to go to school.
"Plenty of sun," she thought, "and rompers for them all, and sand piles, and toys, and certified milk, and trained nurses—" And while she dreamed she hummed to herself in approval, and wasn't aware that the air she hummed was the Spanish Cavalier—and wasn't aware that Burdon Woodward was near until she suddenly awoke from her dream and found they were face to face.
He turned and walked with her.
The wine of the day might have been working in Burdon, too, for he hadn't walked far with Mary before he was reminding her more strongly than ever, of Steerforth in David Copperfield—Baffles in the Amateur Cracksman. Indeed, that morning, listening to his drawl and looking up at the dark handsome face with its touch of recklessness, the association of Mary's ideas widened.
M'sieur Beaucaire, just from the gaming table—Don Juan on the Nevski Prospekt—Buckingham on his way to the Tuileries—they all might have been talking to her, warming her thoughts not so much by what they said as by what they might say, appealing to her like a romance which must, however, be read to the end if you wish to know the full story.
They were going through an empty corridor when it happened. Burdon, drawling away as agreeably as ever, gently closed his fingers around Mary's hand.
"I might have known," she thought in a little panic. "It's my own fault."
But when she tried to pull her hand away, her panic grew.
"No, no," said Burdon, laughing low, his eyes more reckless than ever, "you might tell—if I stopped now. But you'll never tell a soul on earth—if I kiss you."
Even while Mary was struggling, her head held down, she couldn't help thinking, "So that's the way he does it," and felt, I think, as feels the fly who has walked into the parlour. The next moment she heard a sharp voice, "Here—stop that!" and running steps approaching.
"I think it was Archey," she thought, as she made her escape, her knees shaking, her breath coming fast. She knew it was, ten minutes later, when Archey found her in the office—knew it from the way he looked at her and the hesitation of his speech—but it wasn't until they were shaking hands in parting that she saw the cut on his knuckles.
"You've hurt yourself," she said. "Wait; I have some adhesive plaster."
Even then she didn't guess.
"How did you do it?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know—"
Mary's glance suddenly deepened into tenderness, and when Archey left a few minutes later, he walked as one who trod the clouds, his head among the stars.
An hour passed, and Mary looked in Uncle Stanley's office. Burdon's desk was closed as though for the day.
"Where's Burdon?" she asked.
"He wasn't feeling very well," said Uncle Stanley after a long look at his son's desk, "—a sort of headache. I told him he had better go home."
And every morning for the rest of the week, when she saw Uncle Stanley, she gave him such an innocent look and said, "How's Burdon's head this morning? Any better?"
Uncle Stanley began to have the irritable feelings of an old mouse in the hands of a young kitten.
"That's the worst of having women around,"—he scowled to himself—"they are worse than—worse than—worse than—"
Searching for a simile, he thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop lying on its side, a hornet's nest—but none of these quite suited him. He made a helpless gesture.
"Hang 'em, you never know what they're up to next!" said he.