Understanding something of Terry's weariness of spirit he strove hard to persuade him to spend the evening in the pleasant Club, but was unsuccessful. Desisting, he talked a few minutes with Terry and then left, a little embarrassed, wholly disappointed.
Alone again, Terry slumped into a big cane chair drawn up by the table. His cheeks burned; he thought, vaguely, that he must have shaved too closely. Loosening his stiffly starched blouse, he crackled the letter from Ellis, opened it without much interest: then his whole being tensed.
Crampville, Nov. 23, 191-.
Dear Dick:
Everything lovely here—and things are going to pick up with you when you read this!
Yesterday Deane's father came in the bank and asked to see me confidentially. Thinking he had come on bank business I took him into my private office. Well, he just sat there facing me for several minutes, not knowing how to begin. You would have thought he had been robbing a train or something, he looked so absurdly guilty!
I just sat there watching him, taking a most unchristian joy in his trouble, whatever it was: I have had it in for him ever since—since you know what. I liked the way his Adam's apple chased up and down his throat.
Finally he swallowed hard and began: "Ellis, I came over to—to ask you to—to send over that fox skin that Terry gave Deane last Christmas."
Just like that! It sure was a pill for the old boy to swallow but he went the whole hog like the old Puritan he is. Once started he kept going, though still phased. Said that he was glad that you had found something worth doing and were doing it well, that he took a lot of interest in your goings-on—as he called it—and that Deane always read your letters aloud. And the last thing he said before he went out was that he hoped you would soon get spunk enough to write her some letters she "wouldn't dast read out loud!"
He said THAT about my brother-in-law! Great leaping frogs! What is the matter with you?
Get busy! Write—and make 'em sizzle!
Ellis.
P.S.—I forgot to say that I am sure she made him come to see me. Also that Sue took the skin over last night. And also that Bruce is more than professionally interested in the nurse he imported from Albany to look after his office. It has been some time since he hung around Hunter's—and as to why, I do not know, but I sure am some little guesser!
Terry had never questioned the decision he thought she had made that Christmas eve in returning the fox skin, had thought it hers, and final. As the burden of a year fell from him he sat quietly, smoothing at his stubborn, crown lock, the wistful twist of mouth ironed out by a faint smile. He bent to read the letter again but after a few lines the words were blurred out by a salty rush to his steady gray eyes. Rising, he went into his bedroom and closed the door quietly behind him, emerging in a few minutes. Perfect peace lay in his eyes and they shone with the light that will never die in this world as long as men live, and women.
Two days to Christmas, he thought, and he had sent her no remembrance. He stood at the window, tasting the cool thickness of the evening, breathing the fragrance of ylang-ylang: leaf and frond, stirred by the monsoon, purred in gentle contact. In the starlight the old stone church outlined its old-world, old-time architecture in friendly shadows which veiled the pitiful scars and age-stains: the bamboo shacks across the square—wry, flimsy, smutted by a hotly jealous sun—had yielded to the magic of the night to become little golden houses in which the fairies abode till the morning stars should fade.
A present for her ... he pondered long, the while he stifled his desire to go outside and shout the joy that tugged at his restraint. Suddenly he started, tightened as the idea fastened upon him, then fairly ran to his desk. A hurried search for cable blanks and he wrote in desperate haste that consumed four misused forms before he accomplished an intelligible message:
Miss Deane Hunter, Crampville, Vermont.
Christmas greetings from palmed coast to snowy shore. Please cable will you accept so humble a Christmas offering as an equal share in the future of one
Richard Terry.
Buttoning his blouse as he ran, he raced down out of the house and over to his orderly room, where he typed the message and sent it out by a soldier. The dozen Macabebes lounging in the cuartel, who had sprung to attention when he passed, stared at him and then at each other—this joyous, whistling boy was new to them! He crossed the dark plaza: natives, looking out of raised windows, wondered who that Americano was who walked in and out of the shadows of the great acacias, singing:
When in thy dreaming
Moons like these shall shine again:
Being natives they did not understand the English words, but being natives and instinctively attuned to the most ancient of emotions that throbbed in the low baritone, they listened silently and stared out into the night long after the singer had passed.