"I didn"t blame you," protested the girl, "even if it was so. I thought maybe you got to thinking it over--and--didn"t want to be bothered with anyone so troublesome as I had made myself."
"How _could_ you suspect _me_ of such a thing?"
"Oh, I really didn"t," declared she, with all the earnestness of a generous nature, for she read into his heightened color and averted eyes the feelings she herself would have had before an unjust suspicion. "It was merely an idea. And I didn"t blame you--not in the least. It would have been the sensible----"
Next thing, this child-woman, this mysterious mind of mixed precocity and innocence, would be showing that she had guessed a Cousin Nell.
"You are far too modest," interrupted he with a flirtatious smile. "You didn"t realize how strong an impression you made.
No, I really broke my leg. Don"t you suppose I knew the twenty-five in the pocketbook wouldn"t carry you far?" He saw--and naturally misunderstood--her sudden change of expression as he spoke of the amount. He went on apologetically, "I intended to bring more when I came. I was afraid to put money in the note for fear it"d never be delivered, if I did. And didn"t I tell you to write--and didn"t I give you my address here? Would I have done that, if I hadn"t meant to stand by you?"
Susan was convinced, was shamed by these smooth, plausible a.s.sertions and explanations. "Your father"s house--it"s a big brick, with stone tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, standing all alone outside the little town--isn"t it?"
Spenser was again coloring deeply. "Yes," admitted he uneasily.
But Susan didn"t notice. "I saw the doctor--and your family--on the veranda," she said.
He was now so nervous that she could not but observe it. "They gave out that it was only a sprain," said he, "because I told them I didn"t want it known. I didn"t want the people at the office to know I was going to be laid up so long. I was afraid I"d lose my job."
"I didn"t hear anything about it," said she. "I only saw as I was going by on a boat."
He looked disconcerted--but not to her eyes. "Well--it"s far in the past now," said he. "Let"s forget--all but the fun."
"Yes--all but the fun." Then very sweetly, "But I"ll never forget what I owe you. Not the money--not that, hardly at all--but what you did for me. It made me able to go on."
"Don"t speak of it," cried he, flushed and shamefaced. "I didn"t do half what I ought." Like most human beings he was aware of his more obvious--if less dangerous--faults and weaknesses. He liked to be called generous, but always had qualms when so called because he knew he was in fact of the familiar type cla.s.sed as generous only because human beings are so artless in their judgments as to human nature that they cannot see that quick impulses quickly die. The only deep truth is that there are no generous natures but just natures--and they are rarely cla.s.sed as generous because their slowly formed resolves have the air of prudence and calculation.
In the hotel she went to the dressing-room, took twenty-five dollars from the money in her stocking. As soon as they were seated in the restaurant she handed it to him.
"But this makes it you who are having me to dinner--and more,"
he protested.
"If you knew what a weight it"s been on me, you"d not talk that way," said she.
Her tone compelled him to accept her view of the matter. He laughed and put the money in his waistcoat pocket, saying: "Then I"ll still owe you a dinner."
During the past week she had been absorbing as only a young woman with a good mind and a determination to learn the business of living can absorb. The lessons before her had been the life that is lived in cities by those who have money to spend and experience in spending it; she had learned out of all proportion to opportunity. At a glance she realized that she was now in a place far superior to the Bohemian resorts which had seemed to her inexperience the best possible. From earliest childhood she had shown the delicate sense of good taste and of luxury that always goes with a practical imagination--practical as distinguished from the idealistic kind of imagination that is vague, erratic, and fond of the dreams which neither could nor should come true. And the reading she had done--the novels, the memoirs, the books of travel, the fashion and home magazines--had made deep and distinct impressions upon her, had prepared her--as they have prepared thousands of Americans in secluded towns and rural regions where luxury and even comfort are very crude indeed--for the possible rise of fortune that is the universal American dream and hope. She felt these new surroundings exquisitely--the subdued coloring, the softened lights, the thick carpets, the quiet elegance and comfort of the furniture. She noted the good manners of the well-trained waiter; she listened admiringly and memorizingly as Spenser ordered the dinner--a dinner of French good taste--small but fine oysters, a thick soup, a guinea hen _en ca.s.serole_, a fruit salad, fresh strawberry ice cream, dry champagne. She saw that Spenser knew what he was about, and she was delighted with him and proud to be with him and glad that he had tastes like her own--that is, tastes such as she proposed to learn to have. Of the men she had known or known about he seemed to her far and away the best. It isn"t necessary to explain into what an att.i.tude of mind and heart this feeling of his high superiority immediately put her--certainly not for the enlightenment of any woman.
"What are you thinking?" he asked--the question that was so often thrust at her because, when she thought intensely, there was a curiosity-compelling expression in her eyes.
"Oh--about all this," replied she. "I like this sort of thing so much. I never had it in my life, yet now that I see it I feel as if I were part of it, as if it must belong to me." Her eyes met his sympathetic gaze. "You understand, don"t you?" He nodded.
"And I was wondering"--she laughed, as if she expected even him to laugh at her--"I was wondering how long it would be before I should possess it. Do you think I"m crazy?"
He shook his head. "I"ve got that same feeling," said he. "I"m poor--don"t dare do this often--have all I can manage in keeping myself decently. Yet I have a conviction that I shall--shall win. Don"t think I"m dreaming of being rich--not at all. I--I don"t care much about that if I did go into business. But I want all my surroundings to be right."
Her eyes gleamed. "And you"ll get it. And so shall I. I know it sounds improbable and absurd for me to say that about myself.
But--I know it."
"I believe you," said he. "You"ve got the look in your face--in your eyes. . . . I"ve never seen anyone improve as you have in this less than a year."
She smiled as she thought in what surroundings she had apparently spent practically all that time. "If you could have seen me!" she said. "Yes, I was learning and I know it. I led a sort of double life. I----" she hesitated, gave up trying to explain. She had not the words and phrases, the clear-cut ideas, to express that inner life led by people who have real imagination. With most human beings their immediate visible surroundings determine their life; with the imaginative few their horizon is always the whole wide world.
She sighed, "But I"m ignorant. I don"t know how or where to take hold."
"I can"t help you there, yet," said he. "When we know each other better, then I"ll know. Not that you need me to tell you. You"ll find out for yourself. One always does."
She glanced round the attractive room again, then looked at him with narrowed eyelids. "Only a few hours ago I was thinking of suicide. How absurd it seems now!--I"ll never do that again. At least, I"ve learned how to profit by a lesson. Mr. Burlingham taught me that."
"Who"s he?"
"That"s a long story. I don"t feel like telling about it now."
But the mere suggestion had opened certain doors in her memory and crowds of sad and bitter thoughts came trooping in.
"Are you in some sort of trouble?" said he, instantly leaning toward her across the table and all aglow with the impulsive sympathy that kindles in impressionable natures as quickly as fire in dry gra.s.s. Such natures are as perfect conductors of emotion as platinum is of heat--instantly absorbing it, instantly throwing it off, to return to their normal and metallic chill--and capacity for receptiveness. "Anything you can tell me about?"
"Oh, no--nothing especial," replied she. "Just loneliness and a feeling of--of discouragement." Strongly, "Just a mood. I"m never really discouraged. Something always turns up."
"Please tell me what happened after I left you at that wretched hotel."
"I can"t," she said. "At least, not now."
"There is----" He looked sympathetically at her, as if to a.s.sure her that he would understand, no matter what she might confess.
"There is--someone?"
"No. I"m all alone. I"m--free." It was not in the least degree an instinct for deception that made her then convey an impression of there having been no one. She was simply obeying her innate reticence that was part of her unusual self-unconsciousness.
"And you"re not worried about--about money matters?" he asked.
"You see, I"m enough older and more experienced to give me excuse for asking. Besides, unless a woman has money, she doesn"t find it easy to get on."
"I"ve enough for the present," she a.s.sured him, and the stimulus of the champagne made her look--and feel--much more self-confident than she really was. "More than I"ve ever had before. So I"m not worried. When anyone has been through what I have they aren"t so scared about the future."
He looked the admiration he felt--and there was not a little of the enthusiasm of the champagne both in the look and in the admiration--"I see you"ve already learned to play the game without losing your nerve."
"I begin to hope so," said she.
"Yes--you"ve got the signs of success in your face. Curious about those signs. Once you learn to know them, you never miss in sizing up people."
The dinner had come. Both were hungry, and it was as good a dinner as the discussion about it between Spenser and the waiter had forecast. As they ate the well-cooked, well-served food and drank the delicately flavored champagne, mellow as the gorgeous autumn its color suggested, there diffused through them an extraordinary feeling of quiet intense happiness--happiness of mind and body. Her face took on a new and finer beauty; into his face came a tenderness that was most becoming to its rather rugged features. And he had not talked with her long before he discovered that he was facing not a child, not a child-woman, but a woman grown, one who could understand and appreciate the things men and women of experience say and do.
"I"ve always been expecting to hear from you every day since we separated," he said--and he was honestly believing it now. "I"ve had a feeling that you hadn"t forgotten me. It didn"t seem possible I could feel so strongly unless there was real sympathy between us."
"I came as soon as I could."
He reflected in silence a moment, then in a tone that made her heart leap and her blood tingle, he said: "You say you"re free?"
"Free as air. Only--I couldn"t fly far."
He hesitated on an instinct of prudence, then ventured. "Far as New York?"