"You should play your stupid game to win," she repeated terribly. "You are too ingenious at finding balm in defeat." That little golden roughness in her voice seemed to grate on my bared heart. I left her eyes with a last desperate appeal to the game. My hand shook as it laid down the final eight cards.
"Have I ever had any reason to think I could win?" I found I could ask this if I kept my eyes upon the cards.
She laughed a curious, almost silent, confidential little laugh, through which a sigh of despair seemed to breathe.
I looked quickly up, but again there was that strange gleam in her eyes, a gleam of sternest resolve I should have called it under other circ.u.mstances.
"You see!" I exclaimed, pointing with a trembling but triumphant finger at the cards. "You see! I am beaten now, in this game that seemed easy up to the very last moment. What could I hope for in a game where the cards fell wretchedly from the very start? If I hoped now, I"d be a hopeless fool, indeed!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THAT WILL DO," I SAID SEVERELY. "REMEMBER, THERE IS A GENTLEMAN PRESENT."]
"Are you sure you know how to play this game?"
There was a sort of finality in her words that sickened me.
"I have abided always by the rules," I answered doggedly, "and I do know the rules. Look--this game is neatly blocked by one little four-spot on that queen. If that queen were free, I could finish everything."
"Oh, oh--I"ve told you it"s a stupid game with stupid rules--and it makes its players--" She did not complete that, but went about on another tack--with the danger note in her voice. "Just now I overheard your caller say a thing--"
"Ah, I feared you overheard."
The arrogance of the gesture with which she interrupted me was splendid.
"He said, "How long are you going to keep up that--that--""
"That will do," I said severely. "Remember there is a gentleman present." But my voice sounded queerly indeed to the ears most familiar with its quality. Also it trembled, for her gaze, almost stern in its questioning, had not released me.
"But how long _are_ you?" Her own voice had trembled, as mine did. She might as well have used the avoided word. Her tone carried it far too intelligibly. It was quite as bad as swearing. I tried twice before I succeeded in finding my voice.
"I"ve _told_ you," I said desperately; "can"t you see--that queen isn"t free?"
Swiftly--I regret to say, almost with a show of temper--she s.n.a.t.c.hed the four of diamonds from its lawful place and laid it brazenly far outside the game.
"The creature _is_ free," she said crisply--but at once her arrogance was gone and she drooped visibly in weakness.
So quickly did I rise from the table that the cards of the game were hurled into a meaningless confusion. I stood at her side. I had lost myself.
"Little Miss,--oh, Little Miss! I"ve a thousand arms all crying for you."
Slowly she made her eyes come to mine--not without effort, for we were close.
"I am glad we left you,"--she had meant to say "that arm," I judge, but there was a break in her voice, a swift movement, and she suddenly said "_this_ arm," with a little shudder in which she could not meet my eyes; for, such as the arm was, she had finished her speech from within it.
Close I held her, like a witless moonling, forgetting all resolves, all lessons, all treaties--all but that she was not a dream woman.
"Oh, Little Miss!" was all I could say; and she--"Calvin Blake!" as if it were a phrase of endearment.
"Little Miss, that loss has put me out, but never has it been the hardship it is now--one arm!"
I had not thought it possible for her to come nearer, but a successful nestling movement was her answer.
"I feel the need of a thousand arms, and yet their strength is--"
"Is in this one." She completed my sentence with her own nestling emphasis for "this one."
"Can you believe now, Little Miss?"
"Yes--you gave it to me again."
"Can you believe that I--I--"
"_That_ was never hard. I believed that the first evening I saw you."
"A womanish thing to say--I didn"t know it myself."
But she laughed to me, laughed still as I brought her face nearer--so near. Only then did her parted lips close tensely in the woman fear of what she read in my eyes. I have reason to believe that she would have mastered this fear, but at that instant Miss Caroline coughed rather alarmingly.
"You should do something for that right away," I said, as we struck ourselves apart. "You let a cough like that run along and you don"t know what it may end in." Whereupon, having kissed no one on this occasion, I now kissed Miss Caroline,--without difficulty, I may add.
"I"ve been meaning to do it for a year," I explained.
"I must remind you that they were far less deliberate in _my_ day," said she, with a delicate hint of reminiscence in her tone. Whereupon she looked searchingly at each of us in turn. Then, with a little gasp, she wept daintily upon my love"s shoulder.
I had long suspected that tears were a mere aesthetic refreshment with Miss Caroline. I had never known her weaken to them when there seemed to be far better reasons for it than the present occasion furnished.
"I must take her home," said my love, without speaking.
"_Do!_" I urged, likewise in silence, but understandably.
"And I must be alone," she called, as they stepped out on to the lawn.
"So must I." It had not occurred to me; but I could see thoughts with which my mind needed at once to busy itself. I watched them go slowly into the dusk. I thought Miss Caroline seemed to be recovering.
When they had gone, I stepped out to look up at the strange new stars.
The measure of my dream was full and running over. To stand there and breathe full and laugh aloud--that was my prayer of grat.i.tude; nor did I lack the presence of mind to hope that, in ascending, it might in some way advantage the soul of J. Rodney Potts, that humble tool with which the G.o.ds had wrought such wonders.
It was no longer a dream, no vision brief as a summer"s night, when the light fades late to come again too soon. Before, in that dreaming time, I saw that I had drawn water like the Danaides, in a pitcher full of holes. But now--I wondered how long she would find it good to be alone.
I felt that I had been alone long enough, and that seven minutes, or possibly eight, might suffice even her.
She came almost with the thought, though I believe she did not hurry after she saw that I observed her.
"I had to be alone a long time, to think well about it--to think it all out," she said simply.
I thought it unnecessary to state the precise number of minutes this had required. Instead I showed her all those strange new stars above us, and together we surveyed the replenished heavens.
"How light it is--and so late!" she murmured absently.
"Come back to our porch."