And as she spoke, she met his eyes for a moment, and then shrank from them.
"Come, shall we speak plainly?" he asked with evident impatience.
"Ah, you will, I know," she wailed, with a smile and a despairing gesture. She loved and dreaded him for it. "Not too plainly, Willie!"
His mouth relaxed.
"Why do you worry about the fellow?" he asked.
"Well, I"ll speak plainly, too," she cried. "He"s not a fool; and he"s an honest man. That"s why I don"t want him here;" and enduring only till she had flung out the truth, she buried her face in her hands.
"I"ve had enough of him," said Willie Ruston, frowning. "He"s always got in my way; first about the Company--and now----"
He broke off, pushing his chair back, and rising to his feet. He walked to the window of the little sitting-room where they were; the sun was setting over the sea, and early dusk gathering. It was still, save for the sound of the waves.
"Is there n.o.body at home?" he asked, with his back towards her.
"No. Marjory and the children have gone down to the _Rome_ to have tea with Bessie Semingham."
He waited a moment longer, looking out, then he came back and stood facing her. She was leaning her head on her hand. At last she spoke in a low voice.
"He"s Harry"s friend," she said, "and he used to be mine; and he trusted me."
Willie Ruston threw his head back with a little sharp jerk.
"Oh, well, I didn"t come to talk about Tom Loring," he said. "If you value his opinion so very much, why, you must keep it; that"s all," and he moved towards where his hat was lying. "But I"m afraid I can"t share my friends with him."
"Oh, I know you won"t share anything with anybody," said Maggie Dennison, her voice trembling between a sob and a laugh.
He turned instantly. His face lighted up, and the sun, casting its last rays on her eyes, made them answer with borrowed brilliance.
"I won"t share you with Loring, anyhow," he cried, walking close up to her, and resting his hand on the table.
She laid hers gently on it.
"Don"t go to Omof.a.ga, Willie," she said.
For a moment he sheerly stared at her; then he burst into a merry unrestrained peal of laughter. Next he lifted her hand and kissed it.
"You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said he, his mouth quivering with amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide for a moment.
"Well, what"s the matter? What have I done wrong now?"
She rose and walked up and down the room.
"I wish I"d never seen you," she said from the far end of it.
"I wish I"d never seen--Tom Loring."
"Ah, that"s the only thing!" she cried. "I may live or I may die, or I may--do anything you like; but I mustn"t have another friend! I mustn"t give a thought to what anybody else thinks of me!"
"You mustn"t balance me against Tom Loring," he answered between his teeth, all signs of his merriment gone now.
For a moment--not long, but seeming very long--there was silence in the room; and, while the brief stillness reigned, she fought a last battle against him, calling loyalty and friendship to her aid, praying their alliance against the overbearing demand he made on her--against his roughness, his blindness to all she suffered for him. But the strife was short. Lifting her hands above her head, and bringing them down through the air as with a blow, she cried,
"My G.o.d, I balance nothing against you!"
Her reward--her only reward--seemed on the instant to be hers. Willie Ruston was transformed; his sullenness was gone; his eyes were alight with triumph; the smile she loved was on his lips, and he had forgotten those troubled, useless, mazy musings on the jetty. He took a quick step towards her, holding out both his hands. She clasped them.
"Nothing?" he asked in a low tone. "Nothing, Maggie?"
She bowed her head for answer; it was the att.i.tude of surrender, of helplessness, and of trust, and it appealed to the softer feeling in him which her resistance had smothered. He was strongly moved, and his face was pale as he drew her to him and kissed her lips; but all he said was,
"Then the deuce take Tom Loring!"
It seemed to her enough. The light devil-may-care words surely covered a pledge from him to her--something in return from him to her. At last, surely he was hers, and her wishes his law. It was her moment; she would ask of him now the uttermost wish of her heart--the wish that had displaced all else--the pa.s.sionate wish not to lose him--not, as it were, to be emptied of him.
"And Omof.a.ga?" she whispered.
His eyes looked past her, out into the dim twilight, into the broad world--the world that she seemed to ask him to give for her, as she was giving her world for him. He laughed again, but not as he had laughed before. There was a note of wonder in his laugh now--of wonder that the prayer seemed now not so utterly absurd--that he could imagine himself doing even that--spoiling his heart of its darling ambition--for her.
Yet, even in that moment of her strongest sway, as her arms were about him, he was swearing to himself that he would not.
She did not press for an answer. A glance into his distant eyes gave her one, perhaps, for she sighed as though in pain. Hearing her, he bent his look on her again. Though he might deny that last boon, he had given her much. So she read; and, drawing herself to her full height, she released one of her hands from his, and held it out to him. For a moment he hesitated; then a slow smile breaking on his face, he bent and kissed it, and she whispered over his bent head, half in triumph, half in apology for bidding him bend his head even in love,
"I like pretending to be queen--even with you, Willie."
Her flattery, so sweet to him, because it was wrung from her all against her will, and was for him alone of men, thrilled through him and he was drawing her to him again when the merry chatter of a child struck on their ears from the garden.
She shrank back.
"Hark!" she murmured. "They"re coming."
"Yes," he said, with a frown. "I shall come to-morrow, Maggie."
"To-morrow? Every day?" said she.
"Well, then, every day. But to-morrow all day."
"Ah, yes, all day to-morrow."
"But I must go now."
"No, no, don"t go," she said quickly. "Sit down; see, sit there. Don"t look as if you"d thought of going."
He did as she bade him, trying to a.s.sume an indifferent air.
She, too, sat down, her eyes fixed on the door. A strange look of pain and shame spread over her face. She must bend to deceive her children, to dread detection, to play little tricks and weave little devices against the eyes of those for whom she had been an earthly providence--the highest, most powerful, and best they knew. Willie Ruston did not follow the thought that stamped its mark on her face then, nor understand why, with a sudden gasp, she dashed her hand across her eyes and turned to him with trembling lips, crying, in low tones,