With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions" mouths.
"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the ladies.
Part III
Miriam
XIII
On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist"s report. Taking a lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn color on which they were looking down:
"You didn"t see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"
"No, I didn"t--not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I"m almost reconciled to living in a town."
As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that the suggestion of wildness--or, more correctly, of a wild origin--was as noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her from a childhood pa.s.sed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural enough--just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or that." It resisted a.n.a.lysis, as it defied description. Though it might have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the observer"s apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest"s closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was always some fear on Conquest"s part lest the world should so a.s.similate her that her distinctiveness--which was more like an influence that radiated than a characteristic that could be seen--would desert her; and it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of some months, that it was still there.
He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile--a profile becoming clearer cut as she grew older--features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and suppleness of movement came--in Conquest"s imagination at least--from her far-off forest ancestry.
"I couldn"t live anywhere else but here--if it must be in New York," she said, turning from the window. "I couldn"t do without the sense of woods, and s.p.a.ce, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of things--that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to do--that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks--and that the Adirondacks take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."
"I think you"re something like Sh.e.l.ley"s Venice," he smiled, "a sort of "daughter of the earth and ocean." You never seem to me to belong in just the ordinary category--"
She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.
"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb.
I didn"t tell you that I"ve had Mrs. Wayne"s room done over for Evie. It"s so much larger and lighter than her old one--"
He cleared his throat uneasily.
"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the spring. It"s one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"
"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man about to break unpleasant news. "Won"t you sit down? I"ll ring for tea.
We"re not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."
She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she were sitting idle.
"I"ve had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable, while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as Stephens and Jarrott"s legal adviser, and partly as a friend."
He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.
"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."
"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."
"Then she probably told you about the house."
"The house? What house?"
"The house they"ve asked me to take for the winter--for Miss Jarrott and her."
The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes scanning her obliquely.
"So I"m not to have her?" she said, at last.
"It"s only for this winter--"
"Oh, I know. But what"s for this winter will be for every winter!"
"And she won"t be far away. I"ve taken the Grant"s house in Seventy-second Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining.
You see, they want to give her a good time--"
"I quite understand all that. Evie has to "come out." I"ve not the least doubt that they"re managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that.
If I feel a little--well, I won"t say hurt--but a little--sorry--it"s because I"ve almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I"m the person she"s most fond of--as far as she"s fond of any one."
"I presume she"s fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."
"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She"s too young to be deeply in love--unless it was with one romantic. And Billy isn"t that. I"m not sure that there isn"t trouble ahead for him."
"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I"ve got other things to think about."
When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the courage.
"It"ll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will.
It"s foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.
It"s only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I"ve got--"
"They needn"t be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down, like a man preparing for action.
She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her eyes to let the subject drop.
If he meant to go on with it, he took his time--flecking a few crumbs from his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed himself for what he was--a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.
There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache, faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other men--to "see through" life--compelling its favors from the world rather than asking them. The detailed exactness and un.o.btrusive costliness of everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.
"It"s all nonsense--your living as you do--like a professional trained nurse."
"The life of a professional trained nurse isn"t nonsense."
"It is for you."