he looked at her, as a lover can;
she looked at him, as one who awakes.
the statue and the bust.
there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.—proverbs.
in his salad days, a long time ago, denis had fallen in love with the daughter of a respectable suburban fishmonger, after tumbling out of the sky on the roof of her house. the young lady's parents were rich but honest; the young lady herself—well, she had an extremely pretty face, which occupied denis to the exclusion of a blue and yellow sports coat and a large string of pearls. his love dream lasted six weeks; then he fell out of his aeroplane again and broke his handsome nose, or was supposed to have done so, and miss tyrrell broke the engagement. "i c-couldn't bear you with a broken nose!" she wept. whatever denis broke, it was not his heart. when he looked back on the episode, it was with devout and wondering thankfulness; but he preferred not to look back on it at all.
this was his sole experience of the tender passion. in his single-minded and laborious life there had been no room for more; even nina tyrrell had been sandwiched between two flying accidents. denis was at bottom a simple soul. he had three main interests—his religion, his aeroplanes, his friends; and they were all bound up together by a child-like faith. he believed in others because his own heart was pure. it was this bloom of innocence which gardiner loved in his friend, and which both he and lettice were tender to protect; and it was this which made his feeling for dorothea at once so beautiful, and so vulnerable.
[pg 122]
he took the revelation very simply, very seriously, with reverence and awe; among other primitive virtues, denis had a fine stock of awe. love was to him a sacrament, a gift direct from heaven; he carried it in his heart like a jewel almost too precious for human hands to touch, and gave humble thanks to god. a good old-fashioned churchman, denis had been accustomed to "say his prayers" night and morning, walking in a decent english soul-silence the rest of the day; but this new gratitude transcended all rules and overflowed in ceaseless praise. nobody, he was certain, had ever felt like this before. he was happy—happier than it had ever entered his head to imagine, in sunshine which turned all the gray of life to gold.
all that day he could settle to nothing, but mooned about the house, getting in the way of miss simpson, who had planned to turn out his room. next day, in town, he looked at wandesforde the married man with new curiosity. he did not in the least want to unbosom himself; but he would have liked to extract confidences from somebody who had been through it all before. wandesforde, however, was not given to making confidences, and if ever he had been driven into speech his partner was the last man he would have chosen to receive his outpourings. he put down denis's unusual silence to his liver, and genially advised him to take more exercise—that venerable joke, which always seems so good to the maker and so poor to the recipient!
that night denis lay awake, building castles in the air. dorothea had told him all her sad little story as far as her marriage, one squally day when they were sheltering in the hangar; he set up in his heart a shrine of protective love and reverence and worshiped her there, his little lady of the sorrows—dorothea, with a heart full of black hate! yet denis was not blind. he saw one side of her clearly enough, and was ready to own with tender indulgence that she had plenty of endearing imperfections, of small gray faults; but of the other side, the dark half of the moon, she had shown him nothing, and how was he to divine it? with him, indeed, she was what he believed her: true to her true self,[pg 123] since but for her starved girlhood dorothea would never have learned to hate. he scarcely dared hope she loved him yet, though he had a shy confidence that he would win her in the end; but he meant to ask her at once, that very day when she came for her lesson. he was up and out at six o'clock, among pearly mists, and saw the sun rise in rose and gold over meadows spread with the thin silver of the frost. then he came in to breakfast, took up his letters, and met his first check. there was a note from miss byrd to say they could not come.
she wrote for dorothea, whose hand was troubling her again; perhaps she had strained it yesterday; at any rate, she thought best not to use it at present. but would mr. merion-smith come to tea with them to-morrow after church instead? she hoped this would be convenient and that they might have the pleasure of his company, and she was his very sincerely, mary anne byrd. denis's face, which had darkened, cleared again; after all, it was not such a bad thing. better say what he had to say in a drawing-room than shout it through the hum of a propeller.
he went to afternoon church, and listened to the evangelical vicar's sermon on christian evidences, which he seemed to rest mainly on the fact that there have been martyrs for the faith (a proposition over which denis knit his brows, though he could not imagine that the congregation then present was liable to have its faith upset by faulty logic); and when the choir of little girls recited the general thanksgiving, he recited it with them, in great seriousness and devotion. coming out into the sunny white road, with the ink-blue sea on one hand, the grayish cliff grass on the other, he walked down to dorothea's bungalow—the one bungalow of bredon, which he already knew sufficiently well, having lived there for several years himself. the car was at the door; he paused to look over it before he rang the bell.
miss byrd received him in the drawing-room, and for the first half-hour entertained him alone; a tall, slim woman with a complexion of wrinkled ivory, gentle and dignified and intelligent. as a teacher she had been subject to storms[pg 124] of nervous anger, for which she was not too proud to apologize, even to a pupil; it was an incident of this sort which had stamped her indelibly in dorothea's affections. always a little shy of denis, to-day she seemed in a state of nervous tremor; her hands were shaking as she arranged and rearranged the cozy, and wondered for the tenth time what could be keeping dot. denis, who had one manner for the mighty and another for the humble and meek, set himself to soothe her alarms. he was just succeeding when the door unclosed and the truant swept in.
"am i very frightfully late?" she inquired unconcernedly. "so sorry; having only one hand makes you awkward, you know. do you mind doing this for me, birdie?"
she stood bending her graceful head while miss byrd settled the rose point of her collar. she was wearing a velvet dress, very rich, very sumptuous, cut open at the throat and bordered with sable fur. round her neck went a gold chain, rough links nearly an inch across, hanging to her knees and looking barbarously heavy. she sank into a chair, and there was the gleam of a golden shoe, a cinderella slipper with jeweled straps crossing on the arch of a silken instep. what a transformation! but the greater change was in her manner.
"have you been to church?" she asked. "how pious of you! i haven't; but then i'm not pious, you know. i went for a joy-ride instead. my hand? oh yes, thanks, i managed all right. i generally do manage to do what i want to," she added, spreading out a slender hand with the diamonds upon it which lettice had admired long ago. she looked up at denis through her lashes. "no, i didn't want to come yesterday; not particularly; wasn't that sad? but i did want you to come here this afternoon—"
"that's all right, since here i am," denis interrupted, laughing at her. he put her off for an instant, but only for an instant; she recovered herself, and swept on:
"and i'll tell you why: because i wanted a real heart-to-heart talk, without any aeroplanes or things to interrupt. i've a bone to pick with you."
[pg 125]
"a bone to pick, have you?"
"a big, big bone. another lump of sugar, please, birdie—yes, that little fella will do; i shan't let you make tea if you don't give me enough sugar. why didn't you ever tell us that exciting story about mr. gardiner?"
she leaned back among her cushions, stirring her cup, watching denis with those dark eyes full of overt insolence and covert eagerness. but denis was not noticing subtleties of expression; this time she had got home.
"what excitin' story about mr. gardiner?"
it was her turn to laugh. "oh, you know! about that man he killed, or didn't kill, up in the lakes somewhere. i really think it was your duty to have told—anybody mightn't have cared to stop at his hotel after a thing like that!"
"who told you anything about it?"
"louisa, of course. louisa's always my newsmonger. she had it from the maid of the man's wife—mrs. tyne, wasn't her name? no, trent. i knew it was some river or other. maids tell each other everything. it only came out yesterday, else i'd have been at you about it before. louisa swears mr. gardiner really did it, and you screened him. did he? and did you? do tell! it isn't every day one comes across a thrilling tale like this!"
"there was an inquest," said denis stiffly. "you can read all about it in the papers, if you choose. it was brought in accidental death."
"well, i know that, or mr. gardiner would have gone to prison, wouldn't he? but what louisa says is that the whole truth didn't come out at the inquest. he knocked the man down, or something, instead of his tumbling of himself. i can quite believe he would knock a man down, if he lost his temper. did he really do it, and make you hush it up? i do so want to know!"
"my dear," said miss byrd gently, "don't you see you're worrying mr. merion-smith!"
"am i?" said dorothea. she shot a cool, leisurely, searching glance at denis's troubled face. "well, i'm sure[pg 126] i don't see what there is to worry anybody in what i've been saying—unless, of course, it's true!"
denis had to say something. he felt for and found his voice, hoping it sounded more natural to her than it did to himself. "it was—rather a bad business," he got out. "i—don't much care for talkin' about it. i don't think miss o'connor quite realizes what it meant for us—we saw it, you know; and mrs. trent too—" he stuck fast. was that the best he could do for his friend? the old excuse rose to his lips. "but i can assure you it was an accident!"
"oh, well, of course i'm sorry if i said what i oughtn't. i only meant it for a joke!" said dorothea conventionally.
denis turned away to the window. what evil fiend had prompted her to dig up that story? it was none the sweeter for its long burial. on dorothea's lips it made him feel sick. he had a passing pain and wonder at her tone, so discordant, so unlike herself. but that was due to shyness, he told himself, the struggles of a wild thing to escape capture, and putting the thought by he went on steadily to his purpose. it was not easy to turn denis when his mind was made up. he spoke the sentence he had prepared before entering the house.
"have you seen your back tire?"
"my tire? no! is it down?"
out she ran—as he had guessed she would; but it was at any cost to get away from him, not for the car's sake—and that he did not guess. he followed her. dorothea, pretending to examine her tires, looked up and knew herself caught.
"why, they're all right," she said, rising from the last of the wheels. "did you think i had a puncture?"
"no, and i never said i did. i wanted to speak to you," said denis coolly.
she faced him across the car, as cool as he. "better not."
"i want to ask you something. i want to know if you will do me the very great honor of becoming my wife."
[pg 127]
how quietly he said it, looking at her with his steady eyes! dorothea shook her head. "never."
"ah, but i'm not askin' for an answer at once."
"never. never. never," she repeated with rising emphasis. "i never will—and you wouldn't ask it if you knew!"
"you're not engaged already?"
"oh, no!" she cried, with a laugh that set his teeth on edge. she turned towards the door. denis instinctively put out a hand to detain her. she flashed round, quick and dangerous as a cat.
"don't touch me, don't stop me—you'll be sorry for it if you do!"
denis was in far too great pain and confusion to obey, or even to take in what she said. "you weren't like this yesterday!" he said, pleading.
"i always was. always. i had my reasons for pretending to tolerate you for a time, but i always felt the same."
"you said you loved me!"
"it wasn't true, it wasn't true. i hate you."
"but why? what have i done?"
"told lies, and screened a murderer."
"what?"
"it's your own fault, you would have it," said dorothea, trembling with passion. "i told you not to stop me, and you would. saying it was an accident—that old story! i was sure enough before, i know for certain now."
denis's hand went up to his head. "what are you talking about?"
"about major trent, whom mr. gardiner killed. he did kill him. he knocked him down with a chisel, and he died. didn't he? didn't he? you know you can't deny it!"
he could not, nor could he meet her eyes, so he missed their expression. certain things are so cruelly hard that they must be carried through at a rush, or not at all. dorothea's vengeance had turned into a two-edged sword in her hands, and she hewed with it recklessly because it was cutting her to the bone.
[pg 128]
"why, it's not a year yet since he died, and do you think i'd let myself love a man who—who almost helped to kill him?" she cried with anguish. "oh, i hate, hate, hate you, and i always will. oh, guy, guy, do they think i'd forget so soon, and be friends with your murderers? i'd kill myself sooner!"
sobbing vehemently, she fled into the house.
when denis got home, he found a belated letter from lettice, which should have been delivered that morning, but had been carried on by mistake to the next farm. it had come, said miss simpson, just after he started; the boy must actually have passed him in the drive.
