CHAPTER XII
AND THERE IS A FLAME
When Alan Massey strayed into the breakfast room, one of the latest arrivals at that very informal meal, he found a telegram awaiting him. It was rather an odd message and ran thus, without capitalization or punctuation. "Town named correct what is up let sleeping dogs lie sick." Alan frowned as he thrust the yellow envelope into his pocket.
"Does the fool mean he is sick, I wonder," he cogitated. "Lord, I wish I could let well enough alone. But this sword of Damocles business is beginning to get on my nerves. I have half a mind to take a run into town this afternoon and see the old reprobate. I'll bet he doesn't know as much as he claims to, but I'd like to be sure before he dies."
Just then Tony Holiday entered, clad in a rose hued linen and looking like a new blown rose herself.
"You are the latest ever," greeted Carlotta.
"On the contrary I have been up since the crack of dawn," denied Tony, slipping into a seat beside her friend.
Carlotta opened her eyes wide. Then she understood.
"You got up to see Dick off," she announced.
"I did. Please give me some strawberries, Hal, if you don't mean to eat the whole pyramid yourself. I not only got up, but I went to the station; not only went to the station, but I walked the whole mile and a half. Can anybody beat that for a morning record?" Tony challenged as she deluged her berries with cream.
Alan Massey uttered a kind of a snarling sound such as a lion disturbed from a nap might have emitted. He had thought he was through with Carson when the latter had made his farewells the night before, saying goodnight to Tony before them all. But Tony had gotten up at some ridiculously early hour to escort him to the station, and did not mind everybody's knowing it. He subsided into a dense mood of gloom. The morning had begun badly.
Later he discovered Tony in the rose garden with a big basket on her arm and a charming drooping sun hat shading her even more charming face. She waved him away as he approached.
"Go away," she ordered. "I'm busy."
"You mean you have made up your mind to be disagreeable to me," he retorted, lighting a cigarette and looking as if he meant to fight it out along that line if it took all summer.
Tony snipped off a rose with her big shears and dropped it into her basket. It rather looked as if she were meaning to snip off Alan Massey figuratively in much the same ruthless manner.
"Put it that way, if you like. Only stay away. I mean it."
"Why?" he persisted.
Thus pressed she turned and faced him.
"It is a lovely morning—all blue and gold and clean-washed after last night's storm—a good morning. I'm feeling good, too. The clean morning has got inside of me. And when you come near me I feel a pricking in my thumbs. You don't fit into my present, mood. Please go, Alan. I am perfectly serious. I don't want to talk to you."
"What have I done? I am no different from what I was yesterday."
"I know. It isn't anything you have done. It isn't you at all. It is I who am different—or want to be." Tony spoke earnestly. She was perfectly sincere. She did want to be different. She had not slept well the night before. She had thought a great deal about Holiday Hill and Uncle Phil and her brothers and—well, yes—about Dick Carson. They all armed her against Alan Massey.
Alan threw away his cigarette with an angry gesture.
"You can't play fast and loose with me, Tony Holiday. You have been leading me on, playing the devil with me for days. You know you have. Now you are scared, and want to get back to shallow water. It is too late. You are in deep seas and you've got to stay there—with me."
"I haven't got to do anything, Alan. You are claiming more than you have any right to claim."
But he came nearer, towered above her, almost menacingly.
"Because that nameless fool of a reporter with his sanctimonious airs and impeccable morals, has put you against me you want to sack me. You can't do it. Last night you were ready to go any lengths with me. You know it. Do you think I am going to be balked by a miserable circus brat—a mere nobody? Not so long as I am Alan Massey. Count on that."
Tony's dark eyes were ablaze with anger.
"Stop there, Alan. You are saying things that are not true. And I forbid you ever to speak of Dick like that again to me."
"Indeed! And how are you going to prevent my saying what I please about your precious protégé?" sneered Alan.
"I shall tell Carlotta I won't stay under the same roof with anybody who insults my friends. You won't have to restrain yourself long in any case. I am leaving Saturday—perhaps sooner."
"Tony!" The sneer died away from Alan's face, which had suddenly grown white. "You mustn't go. I can't live without you, my darling. If you knew how I worshiped you, how I cannot sleep of nights for wanting you, you wouldn't talk of going away from me. I was brutal just now. I admit it. It is because I love you so. The thought of your turning from me, deserting me, maddened me. I am not responsible for what I said. You must forgive me. But, oh my belovedest, you are mine! Don't try to deny it. We have belonged to each other for always. You know it. You feel it. I have seen the knowledge in your eyes, felt it flutter in your heart. Will you marry me, Tony Holiday? You shall be loved as no woman was ever loved. You shall be my queen. I will be true to you forever and ever, your slave, your mate. Tony, Tony, say yes. You must!"
But Tony drew back from him, frightened, repulsed, shocked, by the storm of his passion which shook him as mighty trees are shaken by tempests. She shrank from the hungry fires in his eyes, from the abandon and fierceness of his wooing. It was an alien, disturbing, dreadful thing to her.
"Don't," she implored. "You mustn't love me like that, Alan. You must not."
"How can I help it, sweetheart? I am no iceberg. I am a man and you are the one woman in the world for me. I love you—love you. I want you. I'm going to have you—make you mine—marry you, bell and book, what you will, so long as you are mine—mine—mine."
Tony set down her basket, clasped her hands behind her and stood looking straight up into his face.
"Listen, Alan. I cannot marry you. I couldn't, even if I loved you, and I don't think I do love you, though you fascinate me and, when we are dancing, I forget all the other things in you that I hate. I have been very foolish and maybe unkind to let it go on so far. I didn't quite know what I was doing. Girls don't know. That is why they play with men as they do. They don't mean to be cruel. They just don't know."
"But you know now, my Tony?" His dark, stormy face was very close to hers. Tony felt her heart leap but she did not flinch nor pull away this time.
"Yes, Alan, I know, in a way, at least. We mustn't go on like this. It is bad for us both. I'll tell Carlotta I am going home to-morrow."
"You want—to go away from me?" The haunting music of his voice, more moving in its hurt than in its mastery of mood, stirred Tony Holiday profoundly, but she steadied herself by a strong effort of will. She must not let him sweep her away from her moorings. She must not. She must remember Holiday Hill very hard.
"I have to, Alan," she said. "I am very sorry if I have hurt you, am hurting you. But I can't marry you. That is final. The sooner we end things the better."
"By God! It isn't final. It never will be so long as you and I are both alive. You will come to me of your own accord. You will love me. You do love me now. But you are letting the world come in between where it has no right to come. I tell you you are mine—mine!"
"No, no!" denied Tony.
"And I say yes, my love. You are my love. I have set my seal upon you.
You can go away, back to your Hill, but you will not be happy without me.
You will never forget me for a waking moment. You cannot. You are a part
of me, forever."
There was something solemn, inexorable in Alan's tones. A strange fear clutched at Tony's heart. Was he right? Could she never forget him? Would he always be a part of her—forever? No, that was nonsense! How could it be true? How could he have set his seal upon her when he had never even kissed her? She would not let him hypnotize her into believing his prophecy.
She stooped mechanically to pick up her roses and remembered the story of Persephone gathering lilies in the vale of Enna and suddenly borne off by the coal black horses of Dis to the dark kingdom of the lower world. Was she Persephone? Had she eaten of the pomegranate seeds while she danced night after night in Alan Massey's arms? No, she would not believe it. She was free. She would exile Alan Massey from her heart and life. She must.
This resolve was in her eyes as she lifted them to Alan's. The fire had died out of his now, and his face was gray and drawn in the sunshine. His mood had changed as his moods so often did swiftly.
"Forgive me, Tony," he said humbly. "I have troubled you, frightened you. I am sorry. You needn't go away. I will go. I don't want to spoil one moment of happiness for you. I never shall, except when the devil is in me. Please try to remember that. Say always, 'Alan loves me. No matter what he does or says, he loves me. His love is real, if nothing else about him is.' You do believe that, don't you, dearest?" he pleaded.
"I do, Alan. I have always believed it, I think, ever since that first night, though I have tried not to. I am very sorry though. Love—your kind of love is a fearful thing. I am afraid of it."
"It is fearful, but beautiful too—very beautiful—like fire. Did you ever think what a strange dual element fire is? It consumes—is a force of destruction. But it also purifies, burns out dross. Love is like that, my Tony. Mine for you may damn me forever, or it may take me to the very gate of Heaven. I don't know myself which it will be."
As he spoke there was a strange kind of illumination on his face, a look almost of spiritual exaltation. It awed Tony, bereft her of words. This was a new Alan Massey—an Alan Massey she had never seen before, and she found herself looking up instead of down at him.
He stooped and kissed her hand reverently, as a devotee might pay homage at the shrine of a saint.
"I shall not see you again until to-night, Tony. I am going into town. But I shall be back—for one more dance with you, heart's dearest. And then I promise I will go away and leave you tomorrow. You will dance with me, Tony—once? We shall have that one perfect thing to remember?"
Tony bowed assent. And in a moment she was alone with her roses.
That afternoon she shut herself in her room to write letters to the home people whom she had neglected badly of late. Every moment had been so full since she had come to Carlotta's. There had been so little time to write and when she had written it had given little of what she was really living and feeling—just the mere externals and not all of them, as she was very well aware. They would never understand her relation with Alan. They would disapprove, just as Dick had disapproved. Perhaps she did not understand, herself, why she had let herself get so deeply entangled in something which could not go on, something, which was the profoundest folly, if nothing worse.
The morning had crystallized her fear of the growing complication of the situation. She was glad Alan was going away, glad she had had the strength of will to deny him his will, glad that she could now—after to-night—come back into undisputed possession of the kingdom of herself. But in her heart she was gladder that there was to-night and that one last dance with Alan Massey before life became simple and sane and tame again, and Alan and his wild love passed out of it forever.
She finished her letters, which were not very satisfactory after all. How could one write real letters when one's pen was writing one thing and one's thoughts were darting hither and thither about very different business? She threw herself in the chaise longue, not yet ready to dress and go down to join the others. There was nobody there she cared to talk to, somehow. Alan was not there. Nobody else mattered. It had come to that.
Idly she picked up a volume of verse that lay beside her on the table and fluttered its pages, seeking something to meet her restless mood. Presently in her vagrant seeking she chanced upon a little poem—a poem she read and reread, twice, three times.
"For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear.
And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I make moan.
The heart in my bosom is not my own!
Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!
Love is a terrible thing!"
Tony laid the book face down upon the table, still open at the little verse. The shadows were growing long out there in the dusk. The late afternoon sun was pale honey color. A soft little breeze stirred the branches of a weeping willow tree and set them to swaying languorously. Unseen birds twittered happily among the shrubbery. A golden butterfly poised for a moment above the white holly hocks and then drifted off over the flaming scarlet poppies and was lost to sight.
It was all so beautiful, so serene. She felt that it should have come like a benediction, cooling the fever of her tired mind, but it did not. It could not even drive the words of the poem out of her head.
Oh, would I were free as the wind on wing!
Love is a terrible thing!