CHAPTER XVI
To the solitary and replete pike, lying motionless in shadow, no still-bait within reach is interesting. But the slightest movement in his vicinity of anything helpless instantly rivets his attention; any creature apparently in distress arouses him to direct and lightning action whether he be gorged or not--even, perhaps, while he is still gashed raw with the punishment for his last attempt.
So it was with Langly Sprowl. He had come into town, sullen, restless, still fretting with checked desire. Within him a dull rage burned; he was ready to injure, ready for anything to distract his mind which, however, had not given up for a moment the dogged determination to recover the ground he had lost with perhaps the only woman in the world he had ever really cared for.
Yet, he was the kind of man who does not know what real love is. That understanding had not been born in him, and he had not acquired it. He was totally incapable of anything except that fierce pa.s.sion which is aroused by obstacles when in pursuit of whatever evinces a desire to escape.
It was that way with him when, by accident, he saw and recognised Jessie Vining one evening leaving the Dankmere Galleries. And Langly Sprowl never denied himself anything that seemed incapable of self-defence.
He stopped his car and got out and spoke to her, very civilly, and with a sort of kindly frankness which he sometimes used with convincing effect. She refused the proffered car to take her to her destination, but could not very well avoid his escort; and their encounter ended by her accepting his explanations and his extended hand, perplexed, unwilling to misjudge him, but thankful when he departed.
After that he continued to meet her occasionally and walk home with her.
Then he sent his footman and the car for her; and drew Lord Dankmere out of the grab-bag, to his infinite annoyance. Worse, Dankmere had struck him with an impact so terrific that it had knocked him senseless across the table in a private dining-room of the Cafe Cammargue, where he presently woke up with a most amazing eye to find the terrified proprietor and staff playing Samaritan.
In various papers annoying paragraphs concerning him had begun to appear--hints of how matters stood between him and Mary Ledwith, ugly innuendo, veiled rumours of the breach between him and his aunt consequent upon his untenable position _vis-a-vis_ Mrs. Ledwith.
Until Dankmere had inconvenienced his features he had walked downtown to his office every day, lank, long-legged, sleek head held erect, hatchet face pointed straight in front of him, his restless eyes encountering everybody"s but seeing n.o.body unless directly saluted.
Now, his right eye rivalling a thunder-cloud in tints, he drove one of his racing cars as fast as he dared, swinging through Westchester or scurrying about Long Island. Occasionally he went aboard the _Yulan_, but a burning restlessness kept him moving; and at last he returned to South Linden in a cold but deadly rage, determined to win back the chances which he supposed he had thrown away in the very moment of victory.
Strelsa Leeds had now taken up her abode in her quaint little house; he learned that immediately; and that evening he went over and came upon her moving about in the dusky garden, so intent on inspecting her flowers that he was within a pace of her before she turned her head and saw him.
"Strelsa," he said, "can we not be friends again? I ask no more than that."
Too surprised and annoyed to reply she merely gazed at him. And, because, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he really felt every word he uttered, he spoke now with a certain simplicity and self-control that sounded unusual to her ears--so noticeably unlike what she knew of him that it commanded her unwilling attention.
For his unpardonable brutality and violence he asked forgiveness, promising to serve her faithfully and in friendship for the privilege of attempting to win back her respect and regard. He asked only that.
He said that he scarcely knew what to do with his life without the hope of recovering her respect and esteem; he asked for a beggar"s chance, begged for it with a candour and navete almost boyish--so directly to the point tended every instinct in him to recover through caution and patience what he had lost through carelessness and a violence which still astonished him.
The Bermuda lilies were in bloom and Strelsa stood near them, listening to him, touching the tall stalks absently at intervals. And while she listened she became more conscious still of the great change in herself--of her altered att.i.tude toward so much in life that once had seemed to her important. After he had ceased she still stood pensively among the lilies, gray eyes brooding. At length, looking up, she said very quietly:
"Why do you care for my friendship, Langly? I am not the kind of woman you think me--not even the kind I once thought myself. To me friendship is no light thing either to ask for or to give. It means more to me than it once did; and I give it very seldom, and sparingly, and to very, very few. But toward everybody I am gently disposed--because, I am much happier than I ever have been in all my life.... Is not my good will sufficient for any possible relation between you and me?"
"Then you are no longer angry with me?"
"No--no longer angry."
"Can we be friends again? Can you really forgive me, Strelsa?"
"Why--yes, I could do that.... But, Langly, what have you and I in common as a basis for friendship? What have we ever had in common?
Except when we encounter each other by hazard, why should we ever meet at all?"
"You have not pardoned me, Strelsa," he said patiently.
"Does that really make any difference to you? It doesn"t to me. It is only because I never think of you that it would be an effort to forgive you. I"ll make that effort if you wish, but really, Langly, I never think about you at all."
"If that is true, let me be with you sometimes, Strelsa," he said in a low voice.
"Why?"
"Because I am wretchedly unhappy. And I care for you--more than you realise."
She said seriously: "You have no right to speak that way to me, Langly."
"Could you ever again give me the right to say I love you?"
A quick flush of displeasure touched her cheeks; he saw it in the dusk of the garden, and mistook it utterly:
"Strelsa--listen to me, dear! I have not slept since our quarrel. I must have been stark mad to say and do what I did.... Don"t leave me! Don"t go! I beg you to listen a moment----"
She had started to move away from him and his first forward step broke a blossom from its stalk where it hung white in the dusk.
"I ask you to go," she said under her breath. "There are people here--on the veranda----"
Every sense within him told him to go, pretending resignation. That was his policy. He had come here for martyrdom, cuira.s.sed in patience. Every atom of common sense warned him to go.
But also every physical sense in him was now fully aroused--the silvery star-dusk, the scent of lilies, a slender woman within arm"s reach--this woman who had once been so nearly his--who was still rightfully his!--these circ.u.mstances were arousing him once more to a temerity which his better senses warned him to subdue. Yet if he could only get nearer to her--if he could once get her into his arms--overwhelm her with the storm of pa.s.sion rising so swiftly within him, almost choking him--so that his voice and limbs already trembled in its furious surge----
"Strelsa--I love you! For G.o.d"s sake show me some mercy!" he stammered.
"I come to you half crazed by the solitude to which your anger has consigned me. I cannot endure it--I need you--I want you--I ask for your compa.s.sion----"
"Hush!" she pleaded, hastily retreating before him through the snowy banks of rockets--"I have asked you not to speak to me that way! I ask you to go--to go now!--because----"
"Will you listen to me! Will you wait a moment! I am only trying to tell you that I love you, dear----"
He almost caught her, but she sprang aside, frightened, still retreating before him.
"I cannot go until you listen to me!--" he said thickly, trampling through the flowers to intercept her. "You"ve got to listen!--do you hear?"
She had almost reached the terrace; the shadowy veranda opened widely beyond.
"There are people here! Don"t you understand?" she said once more in a choking voice; but he only advanced, and she fell back before him to the very edge of the porch lattice.
"Now listen to me!" he said between his teeth. "I love you and I"ll never give you up----"
Suddenly she turned on him, hands tightly clenched:
"Be silent!" she whispered fiercely. "I tell you what you say is indecent, revolting! If there were a man here he"d kill you! Do you understand?"
At the same instant his eyes became fixed on a figure in white which took shadowy shape on the dark veranda, rising and coming slowly forward.
Ghostlike as it was he knew it instantly, stood rooted in his tracks while Strelsa stole away from him through the star-lit gloom, farther, farther, slipping forever from him now--he knew that as he stood there staring like a d.a.m.ned man upon that other dim shape in the darkness beyond.
It was his first glimpse of her since her return from Reno. And now, unbidden, memories half strangled were already in full resurrection, gasping in his ears of things that had been--of forgotten pa.s.sion, of pleasure promised; and, because never tasted, it had been the true and only pleasure for such a man as he--the pleasure of antic.i.p.ation. But the world had never, would never believe that. Only he, and the phantom there in the dusk before him, knew it to be true.