II
Grace and Trenton watched the car turn the long bend toward the highway and hurried back to the fire of hickory logs that crackled merrily in the living-room fireplace.
“Now for tea!” said Grace. “I ate a huge dinner but our tramp’s given me a new appetite.”
She sat down before the tray while he stood by the hearth, resting his elbow on the mantel-shelf, watching her. Jerry asked if he should turn on the lights.
“Thank you, no, Jerry;” Grace answered. “The fire gives light enough. No; don’t trouble about dinner. You might give us some sandwiches with our tea.”
There was a broad smile on Trenton’s face as he took his cup and sat down near her.
“What’s the joke, Ward?” she asked. She was now finding it easy to call him Ward.
“It’s not a joke; I was just admiring your manner of addressing Jerry. It was quite perfect. He was greatly impressed by it.”
“Oh, was that it! What did you expect me to do—snap at him?”
“No; I was only thinking how charming you’d be as the lady of a great house. Your slaves would worship you. Jerry caught the idea too; I never saw him bow so low.”
“Jerry’s adorable,” she murmured, her eyes flashing her appreciation of Trenton’s compliment. “But, really I must look awful; my hair’s in a mess. I’ll run upstairs and give it a smoothing as soon as we’ve had tea.”
“Please don’t! I like it that way. The dark frame for your face adds a charm that’s bewildering!”
“What did Tommy mean about Cummings?” she asked presently. “Isn’t the Cummings business prospering?”
“Tommy must know what he’s talking about. He never quite loses his head even when he’s drunk. These are anxious times and it’s quite possible that Cummings is hard up. Tommy can afford to feel easy because he’s well off even without his manufacturing business. I’ve got to do something about Tommy, though,” he went on thoughtfully. “His New York doctor told me he’ll have to stop his monkey shines or something unpleasant will happen to him. While I’m here I’m going to try to get him to submit to treatment. But he’s not easy to manage—frankly says he prefers a short life and a merry one. We’ve got to save Tommy if we can.”
He smiled a little sadly. Grace liked the way he talked of Kemp and listened attentively while he gave many instances of Tommy’s kindness and generosity.
“About your father’s improvements on the motor,” Trenton continued, “I’ll go into that while I’m here. From the claims of the new patents it would appear that he’s got something of real value; but we’ll have to give them a try-out. We can do that at Kemp’s shop. Of course Tommy will be anxious to get the new ideas if they’re practical.”
“Even a small success just now will mean so much to father,” said Grace. “He was greatly excited by your letter and had to be convinced that you weren’t acting for Cummings. He pretends to mother that there was nothing unfair in Cummings’s treatment of him, but deep down in his heart he’s terribly bitter.”
A fire makes for intimacy and their concord was now so complete that silence had all the felicity of speech. The perfect expression of love may be conveyed in a glance and from time to time their eyes met in communications too precious for words. After these mute periods the talk would ripple on again unhurriedly as though they were the inheritors of immeasurable time.
In moments of animation when her dark eyes flashed and she smilingly invited his response she disclosed new and beguiling charms. In its disorder her hair emphasized what Irene was fond of calling Grace’s gypsy look.
The tea disposed of, she sent away the tray and as his cigarette case was empty she filled it from a box Jerry found for her.
“It seems funny to be using other people’s things this way,” she remarked. “It’s like finding a house in perfect running order on a desert island.”
“You don’t know what a joy it is to be waited on in this fashion.”
He looked up at her fondly as she stood beside him. When she returned the case he drew her upon his knees, took her hand and scrutinized it closely. He pressed a kiss upon the palm and closed his fingers upon it.
“How long will you keep it?” he asked.
“The hand?” she asked provokingly.
“No; what I’ve just put into it!”
“Oh, I don’t need to keep that, do I? Won’t there be some more?”
“Millions!” he replied and clasped her tight.
“Your hands are finely shaped and interesting, Ward. Oh, you have a double life line! You’ll never die! The Mount of Apollo is wonderfully developed—don’t you see it, right there? Of course that’s what that is. It’s plain enough why music affects you so. You really might have been an artist of some kind yourself.”
This called for an argument in the course of which she got illuminative glimpses of him as a boy who was always interested in machinery. He had been predestined to the calling he had chosen but confessed that sometimes he wished that he had tried his hand at executive work.
“I may do it yet,” he said. “I have opportunities occasionally, which I’m probably foolish to let pass, to take hold of big concerns. But I’ve liked my freedom to roam. It’s helped solve my problem to be able to wander.”
“Yes, I understand, dear,” she said softly, stroking his hair. She knew that by his problem he meant his wife. Though she had accepted as sincere his explanation of his relations with Mrs. Trenton, she resented in spite of herself even this remote reference to the woman whom she had never seen but had constantly tried to visualize.
“I might even move to Indianapolis one of these days,” he was saying. “I have a standing offer from Tommy to come and help him run his plant. I tell him it’s his game to wish his job on me so he can have more time to play. And Tommy doesn’t need that!”
She drew from his waistcoat pocket the locket that had so aroused her curiosity at their first meeting.
“What’s in this, Ward?” she asked, holding up the round gold trinket.
“Oh, that!” he said, frowning at it.
“Don’t look so cross! Must I tease you to show me what’s inside?”
As she dangled it at arm’s length he encouraged the idea that its contents were secret by snatching it away.
“It’s the darkest of mysteries. What will you give me for a peep?”
“I might give you one kiss,” she said, deliberating, “if I like what’s inside.”
“Oh, I must have three!”
“Agreed. But don’t show me if you don’t want to.”
“Well, it’s a great concession, a privilege reserved only for royalty.”
He opened the locket guardedly, so turning it as to conceal the inner surfaces.
“Just a moment, please. Do you stand by the bargain?”
“Absolutely.”
He gave it to her, laughing at her disappointment at finding it empty.
“Fraud!” she exclaimed. “How long has it been empty?”
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, suddenly grave.
“Yes; but not if you’d rather not tell me.”
“I can’t give the exact date, but you can approximate it for yourself. Do you remember the first time I wrote you—from St. Louis? It seems aeons ago!”
“Yes; I’ll never forget that.”
“Well, that night I took out and destroyed a little photograph I’d carried there for a good many years. I’ll leave you to guess why I didn’t care for it any more.”
“Your wife’s picture?”
“Yes; I bought the locket right after we were engaged and the picture had been there until I took it out that night in St. Louis.”
“Tell me more about how you came to take it out,” she asked with the insistence of a child demanding the continuation of a story. “Didn’t it have any kind of meaning for you any more,—not even little associations—memories—you wouldn’t lose?”
“No; it was as though something had died in me and utterly ceased to be. I was wondering about a lot of things that night. After I had written to you I wrote a letter to Mrs. Trenton. She had said from time to time that if I ever found myself interested in another woman not to be afraid to tell her. I don’t know how seriously she meant that. Odd as it may seem, I don’t know Mrs. Trenton! I used to think I did but that was sheer conceit on my part. As long as she had made that suggestion—about telling her if I met a woman who really appealed to me more than she did—I thought I’d tell her about you. Oh, I didn’t tell your name nor where you live!” he exclaimed seeing the look of consternation on Grace’s face. “My agreement with her was half a joke; in later years I’ve never quite known when to take her seriously. I suppose I wrote her more to feel her out as to whether she might not have reached the point where it would be a good thing to quit altogether.”
“Well,” Grace asked, “what did she say?”
“Oh, so far her only answer has been a magnificent silence! The philosophers agree, don’t they, that a woman doesn’t always mean what she says? But a silence is even more baffling. What would you say about it?”
“A little ominous—perhaps——”
“Contempt, disdain, indifference? Maybe she’s just awaiting further advices, as we say in business.”
“Possibly she never got the letter.”
“That’s conceivable; she’s a fast traveler; the mails have hard work to catch up with her.”
“You don’t really know whether she got the letter or what she would have written if she received it. Maybe she’s just waiting for a chance to talk to you about it.”
“Well, in any event we needn’t worry about it,” said Trenton with a shrug. She rose and drew up a low rocker and sat beside him, facing the fire.
“I’d like to have seen your letter,” said Grace, musingly.
“I told her you kissed me. Like a brave man I put the responsibility on you!”
“Oh, that wasn’t fair!” she cried hastily. “It would be sure to give her a bad impression of me.”
“I think I intimated that it was only such a kiss as a daughter might bestow upon a father she didn’t think so badly of! I shall always be glad that our first kiss was like that; we’ve traveled a long way since then.”
“Every step has been so dear,” she said contentedly. “I think I could never forget one single thing. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten a word you’ve ever said to me. And when you were away I lived our times all over again. And I like to imagine that we talk to each other by our own private wireless even when you are miles away. I think I can imagine just what you would say and how you would look when you said it. Oh,—” she bent forward quickly and grasped his hand in both of hers; her lips quivered and there was a mist in her eyes. “Oh!—I wish I didn’t love you so much!”
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked, “that we’re alone away out here in the woods?”
“I don’t feel a bit lonesome; I’d never be afraid anywhere with you!”
The fire had burned low and she watched admiringly his manner of replenishing it. He used the shovel to push back the ashes and bring the embers together in a neat bed, in the center of which he dropped a fresh log with calculated accuracy. It was his scientific mind, she reflected, habituated to careful planning even in unimportant things. He stood for a moment inspecting his work; moved the log a trifle; watched attentively the effect of the change, and as the dry loose bark broke into flame brushed the hearth neatly and smiled into her eyes as he found her at his side.
“You do everything just right! I love to see you use your hands,” she said. “They’re so strong and skillful.”
“I ought to know something about fires; I’ve made enough of them. As a young fellow I did a lot of jobs that took me into remote places, surveying and construction gangs; and I’ve camped a bit—hunting and fishing. I might even say that I can make coffee and fry bacon without utterly destroying their food values.”
She established him before the fire in the most comfortable chair in the room and sat at his feet. With her arms folded upon his knees to make a resting place for her head she listened with the rapt attention a child gives to a beguiling chronicler as he told how he was lost for three days in the Canadian wilds, and of a flight by canoe on a stormy night to fetch a doctor for one of his party who had fallen ill. He had given her from the first a sense of far horizons, and tonight her fancy perfected every picture his narratives suggested of hills and woodlands and streams. They constituted a new background against which she saw in him an heroic figure equal to any demand that might be made upon his strength and courage.
“One of these days,” he went on, “We must do the Canadian Rockies together; and then I’d like to take you to some places I know in Maine—just guides and canoes and us; and I want to do India before I die, but not without you. You’re in all my future! I want to live a long time to enjoy life with you. Does that appall you?”
She was gazing wide-eyed into the fire, her dark eyes the harbor of dreams, and he laughed and bent forward to touch her cheek and break the spell that bound her.
“I should love it all, dear!” she said with a happy sigh. “To be with you, to share everything with you! Oh, that would be more happiness than I could bear!”
“You do love me; tell me, dear, once more, that you do!”
“More than all this earth and the stars! More than all the other universes beyond this one!” she cried, laughing at her extravagance.
He raised his hand and bade her listen.
“I thought the wind changed awhile ago. The weather spirit’s abroad. Let’s have a look.”
He threw on the porch lights and opened the front door. It was snowing hard; the porch steps and driveway were already covered, and the nearest trees had been transformed into ghostly sentinels. She clapped her hands in delight at the beauty of it.
“It makes me think of ‘Snow Bound,’” she said when they had gone back to the fire. “I used to know some of that poem. Little Grace will now recite for you!” She assumed the attitude of a school girl recitationist and repeated, gesturing awkwardly:
“‘What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.’
I’m talented; you can see that! What if we should be snowed in?”
“What if we should!” he answered. “Tommy always carries a full larder and we wouldn’t starve to death.”
With her hands clasped before her she gazed down at the flames. He drew his arm about her waist and the room was silent save for the cosy murmur of the fire.
“Why not stay here all night? Jerry hasn’t left and he’ll spend the night if I ask him and give us breakfast. I suppose you have to go to the store tomorrow?”
“Yes,—” the assent was to one or all of his questions as he might choose to interpret it.
“We can go in of course, early in the morning. I have a nine o’clock engagement myself.”
“They’ll be expecting me at home,” she said, pondering deeply, “but if I could telephone from here——”
“I think Tommy’s connected direct with the city exchange. Jerry can tell us.”
He rang for Jerry, who confirmed his impression as to the telephone connection.
Trenton detained the boy to ask for more logs while Grace went to the pantry to telephone.
“Were you going into town tonight, Jerry?”
“No, Mr. Trenton; too complete snowing. I very well stay all night.”
“The runabout’s in order, is it?”
“Yezzah.”
“Miss Durland and I are spending the night. If you could give us breakfast, Jerry?”
“With much ease, Mr. Trenton.”
Trenton lit a cigarette and smoked meditatively while Jerry noiselessly filled the wood box. Grace reappeared as Jerry stood awaiting further instructions.
“Oh, Grace, what time shall we say for breakfast?” Trenton asked casually.
“I must be at the store at eight-thirty,” she answered from the door.
“Then breakfast at seven? We’d better allow a little extra time in case the snow keeps up. Seven it is, Jerry.”
The boy left them and could be heard moving about upstairs. A clock struck ten and Trenton exclaimed at the hour.
“I’d have guessed it wasn’t more than eight! The hours do jump along when the heart’s light. Any difficulty about not going in?”
“No; not at all. Every one was out but father and I merely said I was at the house of a girl friend and would spend the night there.”
She walked to a table and began inspecting the books that were arranged upon it in careful order. It might have seemed that she wished to avoid meeting his eyes immediately. He hesitated a moment then crossed to her quickly.
“It’s always interesting to see what books you find in a country house,” he said. “But it’s a mistake to judge the owner by the literature you find lying about; it’s usually the discards of the guests. At the place where I caused so much disappointment by not dying——”
“Oh, please don’t say it, even as a joke, Ward!” she pleaded, dropping a book she had opened and laying her hands on his arm.
“Well, I won’t then! I was jealous of that book. You were so absorbed I almost felt that I was alone in the room. And I was horribly oppressed by the general vacancy, emptiness, voidness! Now my vanity is touched to find that you hadn’t really gone away and left me; you’re very much here!”
“You’re so foolish!” she said. “What were the books you found in your room at that place where you were ill?”
“Oh, they were on the occult and had been left behind by some enthusiastic spook hunter. After that hour when I so plainly saw you right there by my bed I studied those books carefully. I wanted to explain the transformation of a very plain nurse in spectacles into the most beautiful girl in the world!”
“And,—did you explain it?”
“Yes; but not from the books!”
“How was it then?”
“My heart did the explaining. I knew I loved you! That’s the answer to all my questions.”
“You do love me, Ward, really and truly?”
“Yes, dear,” and then with head lifted he added as though repeating a pledge from some ritual: “With all my heart, with all my soul, with every hope of happiness I have for the future, I love you!”
He took her in his arms and held her so that he could look down into her eyes.
“I want to be everything to you; I want to fill your heart so that you will turn to me in every need. I want you, all or nothing!”
Her lips parted tremulously, inviting his kiss. She felt singularly secure and content in his arms.
“All or nothing?” she repeated in a low whisper.
“Yes! There was no escape for us from the beginning,” he said slowly. “It’s been like a drawing of the tide that no man’s hand could stay.”
They walked slowly to the hearth, his hands thrust deep into his coat pockets. He eyed the fire critically and rearranged the half-burnt logs.
“Guess I’d better put this up as a precaution,” he remarked lifting the wire screen that stood against the wall and laying it against the arch under the mantel. “Run along, dear. I’ll see to the locking up.”
He went into the hall and snapped on the lights and kissed his hand to her as she started up the steep, old-fashioned stair. The lights were turned on in all the rooms and humming softly she wandered through them, pausing finally in one in which a suitcase lay open on a chair, evidently placed there by Jerry. She recognized it as Irene’s, kept at The Shack for occasions when she spent the night there.
Below, Trenton was testing the fastening of the doors. She lifted her head, listening intently as she heard his step.