"Why didn"t you fall over?"
"I suppose it was because you married Jack Dysart," he said simply.
"Was _that_ all?"
"All?" He thought he perceived the jest, and managed to laugh again.
"Really, I am perfectly serious," repeated Rosalie. "Was that all that prevented you from falling in love with me--because I was married?"
"I think so," he said. "Wasn"t it reason enough?"
"I didn"t know it was enough for a man. I don"t believe I know exactly how men consider such matters.... You"ve managed to hook that fly into my gown again! And now you"ve torn the skirt hopelessly! What a devastating sort of creature you are, Delancy! You used to step on my slippers at dancing school, and, oh, Heaven! how I hated you.... Where are you going?" for he had begun to walk away, reeling in his wet line as he moved, his grave, highly coloured face lowered, troubled eyes intent on what he was doing.
When she spoke, he halted and raised his head, and she saw the muscles flexed under the bronze skin of the jaw--saw the lines of pain appear where his mouth tightened. All of the clumsy boy in him had vanished; she had never troubled herself to look at him very closely, and it surprised her to see how worn his face really was under the eyes and cheek-bones--really surprised her that there was much of dignity, even of a certain n.o.bility, in his quiet gaze.
"I asked you where you are going?" she repeated with a faint smile.
"Nowhere in particular."
"But you are going _somewhere_, I suppose."
"I suppose so."
"In my direction?"
"I think not."
"That is very rude of you, Delancy--when you don"t even know where my direction lies. Do you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman before she offers him his conge?"
He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the reel-guide, shifted his creel, b.u.t.toned on the landing-net, and quietly turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart.
"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy, had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?"
"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered.
"I don"t suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not offended now.... Because I could not be with you.... But I am tired of it, and I thought it better that you should know it--after all these years."
Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the pa.s.sionless reproof, a stinging flush deepened over her pretty face.
"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarra.s.sment.
"N-no."
"Then may I take my departure?"
She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and intense curiosity.
"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked.
"Because I haven"t meant to."
He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly smile fascinated her.
"You haven"t intended to," he said. "It"s all right, Rosalie----"
"But--have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me."
In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous att.i.tude of her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her att.i.tude?
She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life--that is, she had neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the curiosity and interest now stirring her.
"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins.
"But--good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there"s nothing to be ashamed of in it! I"m not laughing at you, Delancy; I am thinking about it with--with a certain re--" She was going to say regret, but she subst.i.tuted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting to him.
She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of the awkwardness with which he moved--a great, big powerful machine, continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of his awkwardness--unskilful self-control--a vague consciousness of the latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, and controlled unskilfully.
She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm, listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun, with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the water in their ears--a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure, sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond.
"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the undisturbed accord.
"Wood-ibis--do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her, warmed her.
"Let me look at your book?"
He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him between forefinger and thumb.
"Shall we try it?"
"Certainly," he said.
Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his head and looked after them.
"That"s a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and continued his carving.
CHAPTER IX
CONFESSION
So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be made somehow; Geraldine and Nada Mallett doubled up; twin beds were installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient to last over from the winter.
The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter--he of the rambling and casual legs--more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt shared Mrs. Severn"s room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his studio at Hurryon Lodge.
The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter.
As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism--quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any att.i.tude about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a conscious effort to ignore it, an att.i.tude to disregard what custom has sanctioned.