"No-don"t! Tell me--in the action of the story--what does he do?"
"Not a thing--really. Just sits around and thinks."
Strength came into her low voice: "Why--_why_ do you always belittle him so?"
Continuing to look at her, he said, remotely surprised: "Belittle him?
But I don"t."
The school-teacher"s fingers closed over the mantel, and the tips of her nails whitened.
"Then I don"t understand at all," she said, steadily. "I"ve been thinking that it was he who almost murdered the villain, and gave one of the Spinsters her old place back...."
Charles Garrott stood like a man turned to stone, fascinated gaze upon the eyes in the mirror: girlish eyes, doubtless, but quite unwavering now. And then, in an instant, his face was scarlet from neck to brow.
His embarra.s.sment was frightful to see: that of a soul too suddenly stripped bare.
"Oh!... So you"ve been looking through me--all along. I see ... the Judge didn"t confine himself to ... Well, his knowing--was purely an accident. He had, of course, no--"
"And why must my knowing be an accident, too?"
"I--it was simply something you had nothing whatever to do with. And there was an understanding--the--the matter was entirely private. You"ll please forget the Judge"s--small-talk, and--"
"Not if I live to be a thousand! I"ll forget everything--I"ll forget my name!--but that!--no, you ask too much of my feelings."
That, indeed, checked the young man"s horrible self-consciousness. He saw, with unsteadying bewilderment, that this was no light conversation of hers, that Mary Wing was more deeply moved than he had ever seen her.
And suddenly he was aware, by some swift flicker of his intuition, that it was to say this to him, and nothing else, that she had come home, made a holiday, to-day....
"And you told me you had done nothing for me," she said, in the same pa.s.sionate low voice--"that day--when you had just done everything--what n.o.body else in the wide world would ever have done for me! And you were--hurt, too...."
She stopped, abruptly. Her face quivered, just perceptibly, but he saw it. Strange and incalculable.... Surely he had tried to do bigger and better things for Mary, than the impromptu display of his primitive pa.s.sion.... Was this, also, of the primal and everlasting; did this, too, touch the immutable and true?
The helper was making reply, not exactly with _insouciance_: "Why!--why, but I can"t let you think of it--it was _nothing_! I _enjoyed_ it! I simply didn"t think he had behaved to you as he should. Naturally, I didn"t like that...."
"_You_ didn"t--because that"s the way you are. You expect nothing--but give everything. I don"t like to hear you make light of yourself. I don"t."
She turned away, went over to her desk by the window, where the school examination-books awaited her. But once more it was clear that she had no purpose here. She moved the piled books on the desk-leaf, half an inch, perhaps, and went on in a controlled voice:--
"But I can"t tell you how I felt, and feel, about it. And it"s foolish to--try to say thank you. We must talk of something else.... Sit down, won"t you? I"ll give you some light in a minute."
But the young man in the wedding raiment did not sit down, gave no sign at all that he had heard her conclusive and hortatory speech. His eyes, turning, had followed her as she went away from him. And now, as she ended, he only stood and looked; looked over the familiar room at the slender figure of a woman which, all so suddenly, had shot up to fill the world for him.
Fading light from the Green Park just touched Mary"s face, where she stood. She was a school-teacher, thirty years old. Life had buffeted her: hard contacts with the real world had left upon her their permanent marks, traced lines not to be eradicated beside these fine eyes. This woman"s first youth, her April bloom, was gone forever. But to this man on the hearthside, her presence, her nearness, were charged now with an intense power over depths in him which would stir to no fleshly prettiness.
He had her secret now. He knew her, a Woman revealed. And, standing and looking at her over the darkening room, he was mysteriously shaken with a profound emotion.
This was his best old friend, this was the being he admired most upon earth. She was his dearest comrade, his work-fellow and his playmate, his human free and equal. She had a mind as good as his, a spirit whose integrity he respected no less than his own; hands that were capable and feet that she stood upon, and did not depend. She had an honor that was not woman"s honor, a virtue and character that had no part with the business of s.e.x. There was no competence a man had that this woman did not have: she was as versatile and thoughtful and fearless and free as the best of them. And, through and beyond all this, there was the discovered marvel, that she had tilled and kept sweet the garden of her womanhood. Underlying her rich human worthiness, as the mothering earth lies under a tree, there was the treasure he had hardly glimpsed, this store of her secret tenderness.
So it was that Charles Garrott spoke up suddenly, with a kind of huskiness:--
"No, there"s only one thing to talk of now. You will have to hear my story."
The grammar-school teacher did not move. The twilit sitting-room was stiller than a church. The young man went toward her on feet not now to be stopped.
"But not from the beginning--no. That doesn"t matter. It"s the ending--I have waited to talk with you about."
He stood now by the hard-worked little desk, an elbow rested on the top; he looked down at the bent familiar head, the thick crown of feminine fair hair. Just so, he had stood and looked on that other day, when she had written upon his heart what freedom meant to her.
"I wanted to show how one man--got his education in womanhood--learned how strength is stronger for being sweet--just by coming to see and understand the moral beauty of one woman"s life.... That is my story.
But it isn"t enough to end with."
Some of his dignity, some of his self-control, seemed abruptly to forsake the hard-pressed young man.
"You are that woman," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "You"ve educated me. But it isn"t enough."
She, his only heroine, raised her head, gave him one look from under her arched brows; a strange look, that might have said good-bye to the perfect friendship he had forever changed now. And he saw in the dusk that her face was very pale.
"You"ve supposed I want nothing for myself. I am here asking for everything...."
Her lashes fell. He was so close to her now that, just by putting out his arm a little, he could have taken one of the small hands on the desk-leaf. So he did put out his arm thus. Her hand, possessed, was cold as ice; but it was not withdrawn. No, Mary"s hand seemed to stay and cling, like a hand come Home.
And now he heard her voice, as tender as a mother"s:--
"Ah, have I anything to give, do you think--that hasn"t been given? What sort of ending do you want?"
So Charles told her then what sort of ending he wanted. And that, and no other, was the sort of ending he had.
THE END