"No, I am not. You found it a little hard, at first?"
"A little. When a man is relaxed and the reaction is on him--" He stopped.
"Tell me--tell me all," she breathed. "Every bit of it, Harry."
His lips twitched. To hear his almost forgotten name spoken again by her! A moment he seemed to waver. Temptation of violet eyes; wonder of the rapt face! Oh, that he might catch her in his arms, claim her anew; this time for all time! But again he mastered himself and went on succinctly, as quickly as possible. Between the lines, however, the girl might read the record of struggles which was very real to her. He had reverted "to the beginning" with poor tools and most scanty experience.
And there was that other fight that made it a double fight, the fiercer conflict with self. Hunger, privation, want, which she might divine, though he did not speak of them, became as lesser details. She listened enrapt.
"I guess that"s about all," he said at last.
She continued to look at him, his features, clear-cut in the white light. "And you didn"t ever really go back--to undo it all?"
"Once I did go back to "Frisco"--he told her of the relapse with cold candor--"out at heels, and ready to give up. I wanted the millions. They were gone."
"You mean, lost?"
"Yes; he had speculated; was dead. Poor fellow!"
"You say that? And you have never tried to get any of the money back?"
"Fortunately, he died bankrupt," said Mr. Heatherbloom calmly.
"And you failed to show the world he was a--thief?" Something in the word seared her.
"What was the use? He left a wife and children. Besides, he really served me by what the world would call robbing me. I _had_ to continue at the beginning. It was the foot of the ladder, all right," he added.
Her face showed no answering gaiety. "You are going to amount to a great deal some day," she said. "I think very few of us in this world find ourselves," she added slowly.
"Perhaps some don"t have to hunt so hard as others," observed Mr.
Heatherbloom.
"Don"t they?" Her lips wore an odd little smile.
He threw back his shoulders. "Good night, now. You are very tired, I know."
She put out her hand. He took it--how soft and small and cold! The seconds were throbbing hours; he couldn"t release it, at once. The little fingers grew warmer--warmer in his palm--their very pulsations seemed throbbing with his. Suddenly he dropped her hand.
"Good night," he said quickly.
He remembered he was nothing to her--that they would soon part for ever.
"Good night," she answered softly.
Then, silence.
CHAPTER XXIV
AN EXPLANATION
Morn came. They had heard or seen nothing of the prince and his men. Mr.
Heatherbloom walked back for a cold plunge in a stream that had whispered not far from their camping spot throughout the night. He and Betty Dalrymple breakfasted together on an old log; it wasn"t much of a meal--a few crackers and crumbs that were left--but neither appeared to mind the meagerness of the fare. With much gaiety (the dawn seemed to have brought with it a special allegrezza of its own) she insisted upon a fair and equitable division of their scanty store, even to the apportioning of the crumbs into two equal piles. Then, prodigal-handed for a castaway who knew not where her next meal might come from, she tossed a bit or two to the birds, and was rewarded by a song.
All this seemed very wonderful to Mr. Heatherbloom; there had never before been such a breakfast; compared to it, the _dejeuner a la fourchette_ of a Durand or a Foyot was as starvation fare. It was surprising how beautiful the dark places of the night before looked now; daylight metamorphosed the spot into a sylvan fairyland. Mr.
Heatherbloom could have lingered there indefinitely. The soft moss wooed him, somewhat aweary with world contact; she filled his eyes. The faint shadowy lines beneath hers which he had noted at the dawn had now vanished; the same sun-G.o.d that ordered the forest flowers to lift their gay heads commanded the rosebuds to unfold their bright petals on her cheeks. Her lips were as red berries; the cobwebs, behind, alight with sunshine, gleamed no more than the tossed golden hair. She had striven as best she might with the last, not entirely to her own satisfaction but completely to Mr. Heatherbloom"s. His untutored masculine sense rather gloried in the unconventionally of a superfluous tangle or two; he found her most charming with a few rents in her gown from branch or brier. They seemed to establish a new bond of camaraderie, to make blithe appeal to his nomadic soul. It was as if fate had directed her footsteps until they had touched and lingered on the outer circle of his vagabondage. Both seemed to have forgotten all about his excellency.
"Rested?" queried Mr. Heatherbloom.
"Quite," she answered. There was no trace of weariness in her voice.
"And you?"
"Ditto," he laughed. Then, more gravely, "You see, I fell asleep while watching," he confessed.
"I"m glad."
"You"d make a lenient commanding officer. Shall we go on?"
"Where?"
"I don"t exactly know," he confessed.
"That"s lovely." Then, tentatively, "It"s nice here."
"Fine," he a.s.sented. There was no hardness in the violet eyes as they rested on him. He did not pause to a.n.a.lyze the miracle; he only accepted it. A moment he yielded to the temptation of the lotus-eater and continued to luxuriate in the lap of Arcadia. Then he bestirred himself uneasily; it was not sufficient just to breathe in the golden gladness of the moment. "Yes; it"s fine," he repeated, "only you see--"
"Of course!" she said with a little sigh, and rose. "_I_ see you are going to be very domineering, the way you were yesterday."
"I? Domineering?"
"Weren"t you?" she demanded, looking at him from beneath long lashes.
"I"m sure I didn"t intend--" He stopped for she was laughing at him.
They went on and her mood continued to puzzle him. Never had he seen her so blithe, so gay. She waved her hand back at the woodland spot.
"Good-by," she said.
Then they came upon the little town suddenly--so suddenly that both appeared bewildered. Only a hillock had separated them from the sight of it the night before. They looked and looked. It lay beneath an upward sweep of land, in a cosy indenture of a great circle that swept far around and away, fringed with cocoanut trees. Small wisps or corkscrews of smoke defiled the blue of the sky; a wharf, with a steamer at the end, obtruded abruptly upon the curve of the sh.o.r.e. Mr. Heatherbloom regarded the boat--a link from Arcadia to the mundane world. He should have been glad but he didn"t seem overwhelmed at the sight; he stood very still. He hardly felt her hand on his sleeve; the girl"s eyes were full of sparkles.
"What luck!" he said at length, his voice low and somewhat more formal.
"Isn"t it?" she answered. And drawing in her breath--"I can scarcely, believe it."
"It"s there all right." He spoke slowly. "Come." And they went down. A colored worker in the fields stared at them, but Betty nodded gaily, and asked what town it was and the name of the island. He told them, growing wonderment in his gaze. How could they be here and not know that; where had they come from? To him they were as mysterious as two visitants from Mars. Regardless of the effect they produced on the dusky toiler they walked on. The island proved to be larger than they had thought and commercially important. They had, the day before, but crossed a neck of it.
Soon now they reached the verge of the town and stood on its main artery of traffic; the cobblestone pavement resounded with the rattling of carts and rough native vehicles. At a curb stood a dilapidated public conveyance to which was attached a horse of harmoniously antique aspect.
Miss Dalrymple got in and Mr. Heatherbloom took his place at her side.