He in his turn resolved to say those more serious things at the earliest opportunity. He felt that in caressing her as he had done, down there by the spring, he had placed himself under a binding obligation to explain at the first possible opportunity, and the explanation could take but one form—a full and free declaration of his yet unspoken passion. This, he felt, he had no right to delay one moment longer than he must, but as she lay still with closed eyes, her head upon his shoulder and his arm about her, he realized that his present and very pressing task was to place her as soon as possible in the tender care of his mother and her maids.
The rest must wait.
II
A SONG WITHOUT WORDS
The physician for whom Boyd Westover sent a young negro at breakneck speed, while his mother's maids were getting Margaret Conway to bed, reported that she had "sustained painful contusions" and was additionally "suffering from shock," but that no bones were broken and, so far as he could determine, no serious internal injuries had befallen. He directed that she should remain in bed for a few days, and then stay quietly at Wanalah, without attempting a homeward journey until he should himself give permission.
"Above all," he said to Boyd, "she must not be excited in any way—pleasurably or the reverse—lest hysteria supervene."
Boyd smiled a little over the medical man's stilted diction, and rejoiced in the assurance of Margaret's safety which the ponderous phraseology gave him. But upon reflection he chafed a good deal over the restraint the doctor's instructions required him to put upon himself. He was impatient now to put into words the declaration of love which his caresses had implied and promised. He was still more impatient for her reply to that declaration, for, like the modest young lover that he was, he gravely feared his fate and was annoyed by the necessity of waiting before putting it to the test.
Her words, spoken half consciously when she had received or repelled his embraces—for he could not determine in his own mind whether she had meant to do the one or the other—in no wise encouraged his self-confidence. He recalled those words:—"I reckon you mustn't do that"—and questioned them closely as to their significance, but no satisfactory answer came. The utterance might mean anything or nothing. And what did the suddenly flushing face that accompanied it suggest? Was it joy or sorrow, pleasure or resentment that had sent the blood to her cheeks in that way, and prompted her attempt to escape him by rising? Wonder as he might he could not tell, and as he paced the colonnaded porch that night after all the house was asleep, he succeeded only in working himself into a passionate fury of impatience and maddening perplexity.
He tried to reason with himself, only to find himself utterly unreasonable. Doubtless Margaret would be enjoying the air in the porch within a few days, resting and perhaps interestingly helpless still. The attentions he must lavish upon her in that case promised abundant opportunity for a tenderness of care which would open the way for his passionate declaration. At that point in his planning another and a very annoying thought obtruded itself.
"Confound it!" he muttered, "Colonel Conway is a stickler for all the conventions of our artificial social life. He will insist upon the idiotic rule that a young man mustn't address a girl in his own house or at any time when she is under his protection. What utter nonsense it is, anyhow! But I suppose I must obey it or bring down Colonel Conway's wrath upon my head. I must let all my opportunities slip away, and restrain my impulses during all the time she's here, making myself seem to her a cold-blooded brute who has taken advantage of her helplessness to force caresses upon her and then doesn't think enough of her dignity to explain himself."
Perhaps Boyd Westover's mood was playing tricks with his logical faculties. It is certain that if he had been asked at any ordinary time his opinion of the social requirement which he now scorned as an idiotic convention, he would have answered that it was eminently right and reasonable, that it was imperatively necessary indeed, for the protection of the young woman in the case against the embarrassment of having to accept hospitality or escort or favor of other kind from a man whose proffer of love she has just rejected.