"Tell Mr. Arkwright I"ll be down at once, please," she directed carelessly, as she turned back into the room.
But she was not down at once. She was not down until she had taken time to bathe her red eyes, powder her telltale nose, smoothe her ruffled hair, and whip herself into the calm, steady-eyed, self-controlled young woman that Arkwright finally rose to meet when she came into the room.
"I thought it was only women who were privileged to change their mind,"
she began brightly; but Arkwright ignored her attempt to conventionalize the situation.
"Thank you for coming down," he said, with a weariness that instantly drove the forced smile from the girl"s lips. "I--I wanted to--to talk to you."
"Yes?" She seated herself and motioned him to a chair near her. He took the seat, and then fell silent, his eyes out the window.
"I thought you said you--you wanted to talk, she reminded him nervously, after a minute.
"I did." He turned with disconcerting abruptness. "Alice, I"m going to tell you a story."
"I shall be glad to listen. People always like stories, don"t they?"
"Do they?" The somber pain in Arkwright"s eyes deepened. Alice Greggory did not know it, but he was thinking of another story he had once told in that same room. Billy was his listener then, while now--A little precipitately he began to speak.
"When I was a very small boy I went to visit my uncle, who, in his young days, had been quite a hunter. Before the fireplace in his library was a huge tiger skin with a particularly lifelike head. The first time I saw it I screamed, and ran and hid. I refused then even to go into the room again. My cousins urged, scolded, pleaded, and laughed at me by turns, but I was obdurate. I would not go where I could see the fearsome thing again, even though it was, as they said, "nothing but a dead old rug!"
"Finally, one day, my uncle took a hand in the matter. By sheer will-power he forced me to go with him straight up to the dreaded creature, and stand by its side. He laid one of my shrinking hands on the beast"s smooth head, and thrust the other one quite into the open red mouth with its gleaming teeth.
""You see," he said, "there"s absolutely nothing to fear. He can"t possibly hurt you. Just as if you weren"t bigger and finer and stronger in every way than that dead thing on the floor!"
"Then, when he had got me to the point where of my own free will I would walk up and touch the thing, he drew a lesson for me.
""Now remember," he charged me. "Never run and hide again. Only cowards do that. Walk straight up and face the thing. Ten to one you"ll find it"s nothing but a dead skin masquerading as the real thing. Even if it isn"t if it"s alive--face it. Find a weapon and fight it. Know that you are going to conquer it and you"ll conquer. Never run. Be a man. Men don"t run, my boy!""
Arkwright paused, and drew a long breath. He did not look at the girl in the opposite chair. If he had looked he would have seen a face transfigured.
"Well," he resumed, "I never forgot that tiger skin, nor what it stood for, after that day when Uncle Ben thrust my hand into its hideous, but harmless, red mouth. Even as a kid I began, then, to try--not to run.
I"ve tried ever since But to-day--I did run."
Arkwright"s voice had been getting lower and lower. The last three words would have been almost inaudible to ears less sensitively alert than were Alice Greggory"s. For a moment after the words were uttered, only the clock"s ticking broke the silence; then, with an obvious effort, the man roused himself, as if breaking away from some benumbing force that held him.
"Alice, I don"t need to tell you, after what I said the other night, that I loved Billy Neilson. That was bad enough, for I found she was pledged to another man. But to-day I discovered something worse: I discovered that I loved Billy _Henshaw_--another man"s wife. And--I ran.
But I"ve come back. I"m going to face the thing. Oh, I"m not deceiving myself! This love of mine is no dead tiger skin. It"s a beast, alive and alert--G.o.d pity me!--to destroy my very soul. But I"m going to fight it; and--I want you to help me."
The girl gave a half-smothered cry. The man turned, but he could not see her face distinctly. Twilight had come, and the room was full of shadows. He hesitated, then went on, a little more quietly.
"That"s why I"ve told you all this--so you would help me. And you will, won"t you?"
There was no answer. Once again he tried to see her face, but it was turned now quite away from him.
"You"ve been a big help already, little girl. Your friendship, your comradeship--they"ve been everything to me. You"re not going to make me do without them--now?"
"No--oh, no!" The answer was low and a little breathless; but he heard it.
"Thank you. I knew you wouldn"t." He paused, then rose to his feet. When he spoke again his voice carried a note of whimsical lightness that was a little forced. "But I must go--else you _will_ take them from me, and with good reason. And please don"t let your kind heart grieve too much--over me. I"m no deep-dyed villain in a melodrama, nor wicked lover in a ten-penny novel, you know. I"m just an everyday man in real life; and we"re going to fight this thing out in everyday living. That"s where your help is coming in. We"ll go together to see Mrs. Bertram Henshaw.
She"s asked us to, and you"ll do it, I know. We"ll have music and everyday talk. We"ll see Mrs. Bertram Henshaw in her own home with her husband, where she belongs; and--I"m not going to run again. But--I"m counting on your help, you know," he smiled a little wistfully, as he held out his hand in good-by.
One minute later Alice Greggory, alone, was hurrying up-stairs.
"I can"t--I can"t--I know I can"t," she was whispering wildly. Then, in her own room, she faced herself in the mirror. "Yes--you--can, Alice Greggory," she a.s.serted, with swift change of voice and manner. "This is _your_ tiger skin, and you"re going to fight it. Do you understand?--fight it! And you"re going to win, too. Do you want that man to know you--_care_?"
CHAPTER VI. "THE PAINTING LOOK"
It was toward the last of October that Billy began to notice her husband"s growing restlessness. Twice, when she had been playing to him, she turned to find him testing the suppleness of his injured arm.
Several times, failing to receive an answer to her questions, she had looked up to discover him gazing abstractedly at nothing in particular.
They read and walked and talked together, to be sure, and Bertram"s devotion to her lightest wish was beyond question; but more and more frequently these days Billy found him hovering over his sketches in his studio; and once, when he failed to respond to the dinner-bell, search revealed him buried in a profound treatise on "The Art of Foreshortening."
Then came the day when Billy, after an hour"s vain effort to imprison within notes a tantalizing melody, captured the truant and rain down to the studio to tell Bertram of her victory.
But Bertram did not seem even to hear her. True, he leaped to his feet and hurried to meet her, his face radiantly aglow; but she had not ceased to speak before he himself was talking.
"Billy, Billy, I"ve been sketching," he cried. "My hand is almost steady. See, some of those lines are all right! I just picked up a crayon and--" He stopped abruptly, his eyes on Billy"s face. A vaguely troubled shadow crossed his own. "Did--did you--were you saying anything in--in particular, when you came in?" he stammered.
For a short half-minute Billy looked at her husband without speaking.
Then, a little queerly, she laughed.
"Oh, no, nothing at all in _particular_," she retorted airily. The next moment, with one of her unexpected changes of manner, she darted across the room, picked up a palette, and a handful of brushes from the long box near it. Advancing toward her husband she held them out dramatically. "And now paint, my lord, paint!" she commanded him, with stern insistence, as she thrust them into his hands.
Bertram laughed shamefacedly.
"Oh, I say, Billy," he began; but Billy had gone.
Out in the hall Billy was speeding up-stairs, talking fiercely to herself.
"We"ll, Billy Neilson Henshaw, it"s come! Now behave yourself. _That was the painting look!_ You know what that means. Remember, he belongs to his Art before he does to you. Kate and everybody says so. And you--you expected him to tend to you and your silly little songs. Do you want to ruin his career? As if now he could spend all his time and give all his thoughts to you! But I--I just hate that Art!"
"What did you say, Billy?" asked William, in mild surprise, coming around the turn of the bal.u.s.trade in the hall above. "Were you speaking to me, my dear?"
Billy looked up. Her face cleared suddenly, and she laughed--though a little ruefully.
"No, Uncle William, I wasn"t talking to you," she sighed. "I was just--just administering first aid to the injured," she finished, as she whisked into her own room.
"Well, well, bless the child! What can she mean by that?" puzzled Uncle William, turning to go down the stairway.
Bertram began to paint a very little the next day. He painted still more the next, and yet more again the day following. He was like a bird let out of a cage, so joyously alive was he. The old sparkle came back to his eye, the old gay smile to his lips. Now that they had come back Billy realized what she had not been conscious of before: that for several weeks past they had not been there; and she wondered which hurt the more--that they had not been there before, or that they were there now. Then she scolded herself roundly for asking the question at all.
They were not easy--those days for Billy, though always to Bertram she managed to show a cheerfully serene face. To Uncle William, also, and to Aunt Hannah she showed a smiling countenance; and because she could not talk to anybody else of her feelings, she talked to herself. This, however, was no new thing for Billy to do From earliest childhood she had fought things out in like manner.
"But it"s so absurd of you, Billy Henshaw," she berated herself one day, when Bertram had become so absorbed in his work that he had forgotten to keep his appointment with her for a walk. "Just because you have had his constant attention almost every hour since you were married is no reason why you should have it every hour now, when his arm is better! Besides, it"s exactly what you said you wouldn"t do--object--to his giving proper time to his work."