If Rosie lingered on the door-step it was not because she was afraid of the night sounds or of the dark. She was restrained for a minute by a sense of terror at what she was about to do. It was not a new terror.
She felt it on every occasion when she went forth to keep this tryst. As she had already said to her father, she knew what she was doing. She was neither so young nor so inexperienced as to be unaware of the element of danger that waited on her steps. No one could have told her better than she could have told herself that the voice of wise counsel would have bidden her stay at home. But if she was not afraid of the night, neither was she irresolute before the undertaking. Being forewarned, she was forearmed. Being forearmed, she could run the risks. Running the risks, she could enjoy the excitement and find solace in the romance.
For it was romance, romance of the sort she had dreamed of and planned for and got herself ready to be equal to, if ever it should come.
Somehow, she had always known it would come. She could hardly go back to the time when she did not have this premonition of a lover who would appear like a prince in a fairy-tale and lift her out of her low estate.
And he had come. He had come late on an afternoon in the preceding summer, when she was picking wild raspberries in the wood above Duck Rock. It was a lonely spot in which she could reasonably have expected to be undisturbed. She was picking the berries fast and deftly, because the fruitman who pa.s.sed in the morning would give her a dollar for her harvest. Was it the dollar, or was it the sweet, wandering, summer air?
Was it the mingled perfumes of vine and fruit and soft loam loosened as she crept among the brambles, or was it the shimmer of the waning sunlight or the whir of the wings of birds or the note of a hermit-thrush in some still depth of the woodland ever so far away? Or was it only because she was young and invincibly happy at times, in spite of a sore heart, that she sang to herself as her nimble fingers secured the juicy, delicate red things and dropped them into the pan?
He came like Pan, or a faun, or any other woodland thing, with no sound of his approach, not even that of oaten pipes. When she raised her eyes he was standing in a patch of bracken. She had been stooping to gather the fruit that cl.u.s.tered on a long, low, spiny stem. The words on her lips had been:
At least be pity to me shown If love it may na be--
but her voice trailed away faintly on the last syllable, for on looking up he was before her. He wore white flannels, and a Panama hat of which the brim was roguishly pulled down in front to shade his eyes.
He was smiling unabashed, and yet with a friendliness that made it impossible for her to take offense. "Isn"t it Rosie?" he asked, without moving from where he stood in the patch of trampled bracken. "I"m Claude. Don"t you remember me?"
A Delphic nymph who had been addressed by Apollo, in the seclusion of some sacred grove, could hardly have felt more joyous or more dumb.
Rosie Fay did not know in what kind of words to answer the glistening being who had spoken to her with this fine familiarity. Later, in the silence of the night, she blushed with shame to think of the figure she must have cut, standing speechless before him, the pan of red raspberries in her hands, her raspberry-red lips apart in amazement, and her eyes gleaming and wide with awe.
She remained vague as to what she answered in the end. It was confusedly to the effect that though she remembered him well enough, she supposed that he had long ago forgotten one so insignificant as herself.
Presently he was beside her, dropping raspberries into her pan, while they laughed together as in those early days when they had picked peas by her father"s permission in Grandpa Thorley"s garden.
Their second meeting was accidental--if it was accidental that each had come to the same spot, at the same hour, on the following day, in the hope of finding the other. The third meeting was also on the same spot, but by appointment, in secret, and at night! Claude had been careful to impress on her the disaster that would ensue if their romance were discovered.
But Rosie Fay knew what she was doing. She repeated that statement often to herself. Had she really been a Delphic nymph, or even a young lady of the best society, she might have given herself without reserve to the rapture of her idyl; but her circ.u.mstances were peculiar. Rosie was obliged to be practical, to look ahead. A fairy prince was not only a romantic dream in her dreary life, but an agency to be utilized. The least self-seeking of drowning maids might expect the hero on the bank to pull her out of the water. The very fact that she recognized in Claude a tendency to dally with her on the brink instead of landing her in a place of safety compelled her to be the more astute.
But she was not so astute as to be inaccessible to the sense of terror that a.s.sailed her every time she went to meet him. It was the fright of one accustomed to walk on earth when seized and borne into the air.
Claude"s voice over the telephone, as she had heard it that afternoon, was like the call to adventures at once enthralling and appalling, in which she found it hard to keep her head. She kept it only by saying to herself: "I know what I"m doing. I know what I"m doing. My father is ruined; my brother is in jail. But I love this man and he loves me. If he marries me--"
But Rosie"s thoughts broke off abruptly there. They broke off because they reached a point beyond which imagination would not carry her. If he marries me! The supposition led her where all was blurred and roseate and golden, like the mists around the Happy Isles. Rosie could not forecast the conditions that would be hers as the wife of Claude Masterman. She only knew that she would be transported into an atmosphere of money, and money she had learned by sore experience to be the sovereign palliative of care. Love was much to poor Rosie, but relief from anxiety was more. It had to be so, since both love and light are secondary blessings to the tired creature whose first need is rest.
It was for rest that Claude Masterman stood primarily in her mind. He was a fairy prince, of course; he was a lover who might have satisfied any girl"s aspirations. But before everything else he was a hero and a savior, a being in whose vast potentialities, both social and financial, she could find refuge and lie down at last.
It needed but this bright thought to brace her. She clasped her hands to her breast; she lifted her eyes to the swimming moon; she drew deep breaths of the sweet, strong air; she appealed to all the supporting forces she knew anything about. A minute later she was speeding through the darkness.
CHAPTER VII
Between the greenhouses, of which the gla.s.s gleamed dimly in the moonlight, Rosie followed a path that straggled down the slope of her father"s land to the new boulevard round the pond. The boulevard here swept inland about the base of Duck Rock, in order to leave that wooded bluff an inviolate feature of the landscape. So inviolate had it been that during the months since Rosie had picked wild raspberries in its boskage the park commissioners had seized on it as a spot to be subdued by winding paths and restful benches. To make it the more civilized and inviting they had placed one of the arc-lamps that now garlanded the circuit of the pond just where it would guide the feet of lovers into the alluring shade. Rosie was glad of this friendly light before engaging on the rough path up the bluff under the skeleton-like trees.
She was not afraid; she was only nervous, and the light gave her confidence.
But to-night, as she emerged on the broad boulevard from the weedy outskirts of her father"s garden, the clatter of horse-hoofs startled her into drawing back. She would have got herself altogether out of sight had there been anything at hand in the nature of a shrub high enough to conceal her. As it was she could only shrink to the extreme edge of the roadside, hoping that the rider, whoever he was, would pa.s.s without seeing her. This he might have done had not the bay mare Delia, unaccustomed to the sight of young ladies roaming alone at night, thought it the part of propriety to shy.
"Whoa, Delia! whoa! What"s the matter? Steady, old girl! steady!" There was a flash of the quick, penetrating eyes around the circle made by the arc-light. "Why, h.e.l.lo, Rosie! "Pon my soul! Look scared as a stray kitten. Where you going?"
Rosie could only reply that she wasn"t going anywhere. She was just--out.
"Well, it"s a fine night. Everybody seems to be out. Just met Claude."
The girl was unable to repress a startled "Oh!" though she bit her tongue at the self-betrayal.
Uncle Sim laughed merrily. "Don"t wonder you"re frightened--pretty girl like you. Devil of a fellow, Claude thinks he is. Suppose you don"t know him. Ah, well, that wouldn"t make any difference to him, if he was to run across you. I"ll tell you what! You come along with me." Chuckling to himself, he slipped from Delia"s back, preparing to lead the mare and accompany the girl on foot. "We"ll go round by the Old Village and up Schoolhouse Lane. The walk"ll do you good. You"ll sleep better after it.
Come along now, and tell me about your mother as we go. Did my nephew, Thor, come to see her? What did he give her? Did she take it? Did it make her sleep?"
But Rosie shrank away from him with the eyes of a terrified animal. "Oh no, Dr. Masterman! Please! I don"t want to take that long walk. I"ll go back up the path--the way I came. I just ran out to--to--"
He looked at her with suspicious kindliness. "Will you promise me you"ll go back the way you came?"
"Yes, yes; I will."
"Then that"s all right. It"s an awful dangerous road, Rosie. Tramps--and everything. But if you"ll go straight back up the path I"ll be easy in my mind about you." He watched her while she retreated. "Good night!" he called.
"Good night," came her voice from half-way up the garden.
She was obliged to wait in the shadow of an outlying hothouse till the sound of Delia"s hoofs, clattering off toward the Old Village, died away on the night. She crept back again, cautiously. Cautiously, too, she stole across the boulevard and into the wood. Once there, she flew up the path with the frantic eagerness of a hare. She was afraid Claude might have come and gone. She was afraid of the incident with old Sim.
What did he mean? Did he mean anything? If he betrayed Claude at home, would it keep the latter from meeting her? She had no great confidence in Claude"s ability to withstand authority. She had no great confidence in anything, not even in his love, or in her own. The love was true enough; it was ardently, desperately true; but would it bear the strain that could so easily be put upon it? She felt herself swept by an immense longing to be sure.
She had so many subjects to think of and to dread that she forgot to be frightened as she sped up the bluff. It was only on reaching the summit and discovering that Claude wasn"t there that she was seized by fear.
There was a bench beside her--a round bench circling the trunk of an oak-tree--and she sank upon it.
The crunching of footsteps told her some one was coming up the slope. In all probability it was Claude; but it might be a stranger, or even an animal. The crunching continued, measured, slow. She would have fled if there had been any way of fleeing without encountering the object of her alarm. The regular beat of the footsteps growing heavier and nearer through the darkness rendered her almost hysterical. When at last Claude"s figure emerged into the moonlight, his erect slenderness defined against the sky, she threw herself, sobbing, into his arms.
It was not the least of Claude"s attractions that he was so tender with women swept by crises of emotion. Where Thor would have stood helpless, or prescribed a mild sedative, Claude pressed the agitated creature to his breast and let her weep.
When her sobs had subsided to a convulsive clinging to him without tears, he explained his delay in arriving by his meeting with Uncle Sim.
They were seated on the bench by this time, his arms about her, her face close to his.
"Awful nuisance, he is. Regular Paul Pry. Can"t keep anything from him.
Scours the country night and day like the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Never know when you"ll meet him."
"I met him, too," Rosie said, getting some control of her voice.
"The deuce you did! Did he speak to you? Did he say anything about me?"
"He said he"d seen you."
"Is that all?"
She weighed the possible disadvantages of saying too much, coming to the conclusion that she had better tell him more. "No, it isn"t quite all.
He seemed to--warn me against you."
"Oh, the devil!" In his start he loosened his embrace, but grasped her to him again. "What"s he up to now?"
"Do you think he"s up to anything?"