"Your harshness," he laughed. "A waft of eider."
"We must go," she said. He did not move, but sat staring at her like a thirsty man drinking. With an impulsive and pretty gesture she reached out her hand to him. Her little, white glove trembled in the night before his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet generosity; his thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that hand he had likened to a white b.u.t.terfly lay warm and light and quiet in his own. And as they had so often stood together in their short day and their two nights of the moon, so now again they stood with a serenading silence between them. A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the "cello and the silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by some witchcraft of hearing, they listened to music made for lovers dancing, and lovers listening, a hundred years ago.
"I care for only one thing in this world," he said, tremulously. "Have I lost it? I didn"t mean to ask you, that last night, although you answered. Have I no chance? Is it still the same? Do I come too late?"
The b.u.t.terfly fluttered in his hand and then away.
She drew back and looked at him a moment.
"There is one thing you must always understand," she said gently, "and that is that a woman can be grateful. I give you all the grat.i.tude there is in me, and I think I have a great deal; it is all yours. Will you always remember that?"
"Grat.i.tude? What can there--"
"You do not understand now, but some day you will. I ask you to remember that my every act and thought which bore reference to you--and there have been many--came from the purest grat.i.tude. Although you do not see it now, will you promise to believe it?"
"Yes," he said simply.
"For the rest--" She paused. "For the rest--I do not love you."
He bowed his head and did not lift it.
"Do you understand?" she asked.
"I understand," he answered, quietly.
She looked at him long, and then, suddenly, her hand to her heart, gave a little, pitying, tender cry and moved toward him. At this he raised his head and smiled sadly. "No; don"t you mind," he said. "It"s all right. I was such a cad the other time I needed to be told; I was so entirely silly about it, I couldn"t face the others to tell them good-night, and I left you out there to go in to them alone. I didn"t realize, for my manners were all gone. I"d lived in a kind of stupor, I think, for a long time; then being with you was like a dream, and the sudden waking was too much for me. I"ve been ashamed often, since, in thinking of it--and I was well punished for not taking you in. I thought only of myself, and I behaved like a whining, unbalanced boy. But I had whined from the moment I met you, because I was sickly with egoism and loneliness and self-pity. I"m keeping you from the dancing. Won"t you let me take you back to the house?"
A commanding and querulous contralto voice was heard behind them, and a dim, majestic figure appeared under the j.a.panese lantern.
"Helen?"
The girl turned quickly. "Yes, mamma."
"May I ask you to return to the club-house for supper with me? Your father has been very much worried about you. We have all been looking for you."
"Mamma, this is Mr. Harkless."
"How do you do?" The lady murmured this much so far under her breath that the words might have been mistaken for anything else--most plausibly, perhaps, for, "Who cares if it is?"--nor further did she acknowledge John"s profound inclination. Frigidity and complaint of ill-usage made a glamour in every fold of her expensive garments; she was large and troubled and severe. A second figure emerged from behind her and bowed with the suave dignity that belonged to Brainard Macauley.
"Mr. Macauley has asked to sit at our table," Mrs. Sherwood said to Helen. "May I beg you to come at once? Your father is holding places for us."
"Certainly," she answered. "I will follow you with Mr. Harkless."
"I think Mr. Harkless will excuse you," said the elder lady. "He has an engagement. Mr. Meredith has been looking everywhere for him to take Miss Hinsdale out to supper."
"Good-night, Miss Sherwood," said John in a cheerful voice. "I thank you for sitting out the dance with me."
"Good-night," she said, and gave him her hand. "I"m so sorry I shan"t see you again; I am only in Rouen for this evening, or I should ask you to come to see me. I am leaving to-morrow morning. Good-night.--Yes, mamma."
The three figures went toward the bright lights of the club-house. She was leaning on Macauley"s arm and chatting gaily, smiling up at him brightly. John watched her till she was lost in the throng on the veranda. There, in the lights, where waiters were arranging little tables, every one was talking and moving about, noisily, good-humored and happy. There was a flourish of violins, and then the orchestra swung into a rampant march that pranced like uncurbed cavalry; it stirred the blood of old men with militant bugle calls and blast of horns; it might have heralded the chariot of a flamboyant war G.o.d rioting out of sunrise, plumed with youth. Some quite young men on the veranda made as if they were restive horses champing at the bit and heading a procession, and, from a group near by, loud laughter pealed.
John Harkless lifted to his face the hand that had held hers; there was the faint perfume of her glove. He kissed his own hand. Then he put that hand and the other to his forehead, and sank into her chair.
"Let me get back," he said. "Let me get back to Plattville, where I belong."
Tom Meredith came calling him. "Harkless? John Harkless?"
"Here I am, Tom."
"Come along, boy. What on earth are you doing out here all alone? I thought you were with--I thought some people were with you. You"re bored to death, I know; but come along and be bored some more, because I promised to bring you in for supper. Then we"ll go home. They"ve saved a place for you by Miss Hinsdale."
"Very well, lad," answered Harkless, and put his hand on the other"s shoulder. "Thank you."
The next day he could not leave his bed; his wounds were feverish and his weakness had returned. Meredith was shaken with remorse because he had let him wander around in the damp night air with no one to look after him.
CHAPTER XVII. HELEN"S TOAST
Judge Briscoe was sitting out under the afternoon sky with his chair tilted back and his feet propped against the steps. His coat was off, and Minnie sat near at hand sewing a b.u.t.ton on the garment for him, and she wore that dreamy glaze that comes over women"s eyes when they sew for other people.
From the interior of the house rose and fell the murmur of a number of voices engaged in a conversation, which, for a time, seemed to consist of dejected monosyllables; but presently the judge and Minnie heard Helen"s voice, clear, soft, and trembling a little with excitement. She talked only two or three minutes, but what she said stirred up a great commotion. All the voices burst forth at once in e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns--almost shouts; but presently they were again subdued and still, except for the single soft one, which held forth more quietly, but with a deeper agitation, than any of the others.
"You needn"t try to bamboozle me," said the judge in a covert tone to his daughter, and with a glance at the parlor window, whence now issued the rumble of Warren Smith"s ba.s.so. "I tell you that girl would follow John Harkless to Jericho."
Minnie shook her head mysteriously, and bit a thread with a vague frown.
"Well, why not?" asked the judge crossly.
"Why wouldn"t she have him, then?"
"Well, who knows he"s asked her yet?"
Minnie screamed derisively at the density of man, "What made him run off that way, the night he was hurt? Why didn"t he come back in the house with her?"
"Pshaw!"
"Don"t you suppose a woman understands?"
"Meaning that you know more about it than I do, I presume," grunted the old gentleman.
"Yes, father," she replied, smiling benignantly upon him.
"Did she tell you?" he asked abruptly.
"No, no. I guess the truth is that women don"t know more than men so much as they see more; they understand more without having to read about it."
"That"s the way of it, is it?" he laughed. "Well, it don"t make any difference, she"ll have him some time."