Sanford waited, looking down over the garden. He could see the shadowy outlines of the narrow walks and the white faces of the roses drooping over the gravel. When he spoke again there were hesitating, halting tones in his voice, as if he were half afraid to follow the course he had dared to venture on.
"Is Morgan coming home, Kate?"
"I don"t know," she replied dreamily, after a pause.
"Didn"t he say in his last letter?"
"Oh yes; answered as he always does,-when he gets through."
"Where is he now?"
"Paris, I believe."
She had not moved nor lifted her chin from her hand.
Minutes went by without her speaking again. A strange hush fell about them. Sanford could hear the click of the old clock in the hall, and the monotonous song of the crickets in the gra.s.s below.
A sense of great remoteness from her came over him. It was as though she had gone into a room alone with her griefs and her sobs, and had locked the door behind her. He had not meant to wound her by his questions, only to discover whether some new phase of the old grief were hurting her. If it were anything else but the sorrow he never touched, he stood ready to give her all his strength.
He looked at her intently. She had never appeared to him so beautiful, so pathetic: there was a hopeless weariness in her pose that vibrated through him as nothing had done in months. The change in her mood had come suddenly, as all changes did in her, but to-night he seemed unable to meet them. A great rush of feeling surged over him. He stepped closer, lifting his hand to lay on her head. Then, with an abrupt gesture, he turned and began pacing the veranda, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back. Strange, unutterable thoughts whirled through his brain; unbidden, unspeakable words crowded in his throat. He made one great effort at self-control, stopped once more, this time laying his hand upon her shoulder. He felt in his heart that it was the same old sorrow which now racked her, but an uncontrollable impulse swept him on. All the restraint of years seemed slipping from him.
"Kate, what is it? You break my heart. Is there something else to worry you,-something you haven"t told me?"
She shivered slightly as she felt the hand tighten on her shoulder.
Then a sudden, tingling thrill ran through her.
"I have never any right to be unhappy when I have you, Henry. You are all the world to me,-all I have."
It was not the answer he had expected. For an instant the blood left his face, his heart stood still.
Kate raised her head, and their eyes met.
There are narrow paths in life where one fatal step sends a man headlong. There are eyes in women"s heads as deep as the abyss below.
Hers were wide open, with the fearless confidence of an affection she was big enough to give. He saw down into their depths, and read there-as they flashed toward him in intermittent waves over the barrier of the reserve she sometimes held-love, truth, and courage.
To disturb these, even by the sympathy she longed to receive and he to give, might, he knew, endanger the ideal of that loyalty to another in her which he venerated most. To go behind it and break down the wall of that self-control of hers which held in check the unknown, untouched springs of her heart might loosen a flood that would wreck the only bark which could keep them both afloat on the troubled waters of life,-their friendship.
Sanford bent his head, raised her hand to his lips, kissed it reverently, and without a word walked slowly toward his chair.
As he regained his seat the butler pushed aside the light curtains of the veranda, and in his regulation monotone announced, "Miss Shirley, Major Slocomb, and Mr. Hardy."
"My dear madam," broke out the major in his breeziest manner, before Mrs. Leroy could turn to greet him, "what would life be in this bake-oven of a city but for the joy of yo"r presence? And Henry! You here, too? Do you know that that rascal Jack has kept me waiting for two hours while he took Helen for a five minutes" walk round the square, or I would have been here long ago. Where are you, you young dog?" he called to Jack, who had lingered in the darkened hall with Helen.
"What"s the matter now, major?" inquired Jack, shaking hands with Mrs.
Leroy, and turning again toward the Pocomokian. "I asked your permission. What would you have me do? Let Helen see nothing of New York, because you"-
"Do hush up, cousin Tom," said Helen, pursing her lips at the major.
"We stayed out because we wanted to, didn"t we, Jack? Don"t you think he is a perfect ogre, Mrs. Leroy?"
"He forgets his own younger days, my dear Miss Shirley," she answered.
"He shan"t scold you. Henry, make the major join you in a cigar, while I give Miss Helen a cup of coffee."
"They are both forgiven, my dear madam, when so lovely an advocate pleads their cause," said the Pocomokian grandiloquently, bowing low, his hand on his chest. "Thank you; I will join you," and leaned over Sanford as he spoke, and lighted a cigar in the blue flame of the tiny silver lamp.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Sanford ... raised her hand to his lips"]
It was delightful to note how the coming alliance of the Hardy and Slocomb families had developed the paternal, not to say patriarchal att.i.tude of the major toward his once boon companion. He already regarded Jack as his own son,-somebody to lean upon in his declining years, a prop and a staff for his old age. He had even sketched out in his mind a certain stately mansion on the avenue, to say nothing of a series of country-seats,-one on Crab Island in the Chesapeake,-all with porticoes and an especial suite of rooms on the ground floor; and he could hear Jack say, as he pointed them out to his visitors, "These are for my dear old friend Major Slocomb of Pocomoke,-member of my wife"s family." He could see his old enemy, Jefferson, Jack"s servant, cowed into respectful obedience by the new turn in his master"s affairs, in which the Pocomokian had lent so helpful a hand.
"She is the child of my old age, so to speak, suh, and I, of co"se, gave my consent after great hesitation," he would frequently say, fully persuading himself that Helen had really sought his approbation, and never for one moment dreaming that, grateful as she was to him for his chaperonage of her while in New York, he was the last person in the world she would have consulted in any matter so vital to her happiness.
Jack accepted the change in the major"s manner with the same good humor that seasoned everything that came to him in life. He had known the Pocomokian for too many years to misunderstand him now, and this new departure, with its patronizing airs and fatherly oversight, only amused him.
Mrs. Leroy had drawn the young girl toward the divan, and was already discussing her plans for the summer.
"Of course you are both to come to me this fall, when the beautiful Indian summer weather sets in. The Pines is never so lovely as then.
You shall sail to your heart"s content, for the yacht is in order; and we will then see what this great engineer has been doing all summer,"
she added, glancing timidly from under her dark eyelashes at Sanford.
"Mr. Leroy"s last instructions were to keep the yacht in commission until he came home. I am determined you shall have one more good time, Miss Helen, before this young man ties you hand and foot. You will come, major?"
"I cannot promise, madam. It will depend entirely on my arrangin" some very important matters of business. I hope to be able to come for perhaps a day or so."
Jack looked at Sanford and smiled. Evidently Mrs. Leroy did not know the length of the major"s "day or so." Nor that it was apt to depend upon the date of the next invitation. He was still staying with Jack, and had been there since the spring.
Buckles, the butler, had been bending over the major as that gentleman delivered himself of this announcement of his hopes. When he had filled to the brim the tiny liqueur gla.s.s, the major-perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness-said, "Thank you, suh," at which Buckles"s face hardened. Such slips were not infrequent. The major was, in fact, always a little uncomfortable in Buckles"s presence. Jack, who had often noticed his att.i.tude, thought that these conciliatory remarks were intended as palliatives to the noiseless English flunky with the immovable face and impenetrable manner. The Pocomokian never extended such deference to Sam, Sanford"s own servant, or even to Jefferson.
"Here, Sam, you black scoundrel, bring me my hat," he would say whenever he was leaving Sanford"s apartments, at which Sam"s face would relax quite as much as Buckles"s had hardened. But then the major knew Sam"s kind, and Sam knew the major, and, strange to say, believed in him.
When Buckles had retired, Sanford started the Pocomokian on a discussion in which all the talking would fall to the latter"s share.
Mrs. Leroy turned to Helen and Jack again. There was no trace, in her voice nor on her features, of the emotion that had so stirred her. All that side of her nature had been shut away the moment her guests appeared.
"Don"t mind a word Jack says to you, my dear, about hurrying up the wedding-day," she laughed, in a half-earnest and altogether charming way,-not cynical, but with a certain undercurrent of genuine anxiety in her voice, all the more keenly felt by Sanford, who waited on every word that fell from her lips. "Put it off as long as possible. So many troubles and disappointments come afterwards, and it is so hard to keep everything as it should be. There is no happier time in life than that just before marriage. Oh, you needn"t scowl at me, you young Bluebeard; I know all about it, and you don"t know one little bit."
Helen looked at Jack in some wonder. She was at a loss to know how much of the talk was pure badinage, and how much, perhaps, the result of some bitter worldly experience. The young girl shuddered, yet without knowing what inspired the remark or what lay behind it. But she laughed quite heartily, as she said, "It is all true, no doubt; only I intend to begin by being something of a tyrant myself, don"t I, Jack?"
Before Jack could reply, Smearly, who had hurried by Buckles, entered unannounced, and with a general smile of recognition, and two fingers to the major, settled himself noiselessly in an easy-chair, and reached over the silver tray for a cup. It was a house where such freedom was not commented on, and Smearly was one of those big Newfoundland-dog kind of visitors who avail themselves of all privileges.
"What is the subject under discussion?" the painter asked, as he dropped a lump of sugar into his cup and turned to his hostess.
"I have just been telling Miss Shirley how happy she will make us when she comes to The Pines this autumn."
"And you have consented, of course?" he inquired carelessly, lifting his bushy eyebrows.
"Oh yes," answered Helen, a faint shadow settling for a moment on her face. "It"s so kind of Mrs. Leroy to want me. You are coming, too, are you not, Mr. Sanford?" and she moved toward Henry"s end of the divan, where Jack followed her. She had never liked Smearly. She did not know why, but he always affected her strangely. "He looks like a bear," she once told Jack, "with his thick neck and his restless movements."
"Certainly, Miss Helen, I am going, too," replied Sanford. "I tolerate my work all summer in expectation of these few weeks in the autumn."
The young girl raised her eyes quickly. Somehow it did not sound to her like Sanford"s voice. There was an unaccustomed sense of strain in it. She moved a little nearer to him, however, impelled by some subtle sympathy for the man who was not only Jack"s friend, but one she trusted as well.
"Lovely to be so young and hopeful, isn"t it?" said Mrs. Leroy to Smearly, with a movement of her head toward Helen. "Look at those two.
Nothing but rainbows for her and Jack."