"Don"t talk! I am so tired--so tired."....
From the hillside below came a whistled note, then the bar of a song, like a bird call. Some workman on the place going to his work, Vickers thought.
It was repeated, and suddenly Isabelle took her arms from his neck,--her eyes clear and a look of determination on her lips.
"No, Vick; you don"t convince me.... You did the other thing when it came to you. Perhaps we _are_ alike. Well, then, I shall do it! I shall dare to live!"....
And with that last defiance,-the curt expression of the floating beliefs which she had acquired,--she turned towards the house.
"Come, it is breakfast time."
She waited for him to rise and join her. For several silent moments they lingered to look at Dog Mountain across the river, as if they were looking at it for the last time, at something they had both so much loved.
"You are dear, brother," she murmured, taking his hand. "But don"t lecture me. You see I am a woman now!"
And looking into her grave, tear-stained face, Vickers saw that he had lost. She had made her resolution; she would "dare to live," and that life would be with Cairy! His heart was sad. Though he had tried to free himself of his old dislike of Cairy and see him through Isabelle"s eyes, it was useless. He read Tom Cairy"s excitable, inflammable, lightly poised nature, with the artist glamour in him that attracted women. He would be all flame--for a time,--then dead until his flame was lighted before another shrine. And Isabelle, proud, exacting, who had always been served,--no, it was hopeless! Inevitable tragedy, to be waited for like the expected motions of nature!
And beneath this misery for Isabelle was the bitterest of human feelings,--personal defeat, personal inadequacy. "If I had been another!"
"Don"t lecture me!" she had said almost coldly. The spiritual power of guidance had gone from him, because of what he had done. Inwardly he felt that it had gone. That was part of the "marrow of the man" that had been burned out. The soul of him was impotent; he was a sh.e.l.l, something dead, that could not kindle another to life.
"I could have saved her," he thought. "Once I could have saved her. She has found me lacking _now_, when she needs me most!"
The whistle sounded nearer.
"Will you do one thing for me, Isabelle?"
"All--but one thing!"
"Let me know first."
"You will know."
Cairy was coming down the terrace, cigarette in hand. His auburn hair shone in the sunlight. After his sleep, his bath, his cup of early coffee, he was bright with physical content, and he felt the beauty of the misty morning in every sense. Seeing the brother and sister coming from the beeches together, he scrutinized them quickly; like the perfect egotist, he was swiftly measuring what this particular conjunction of personalities might mean to him. Then he limped towards them, his face in smiles, and bowing in mock veneration, he lay at Isabelle"s feet a rose still dewy with mist.
Vickers turned on his heel, his face twitching. But Isabelle with parted lips and gleaming eyes looked at the man, her whole soul glad, as a woman looks who is blind to all but one thought,--"I love him."
"The breath of the morn," Cairy said, lifting the rose. "The morn of morns,--this is to be a great day, my lady! I read it in your eyes."
CHAPTER LIII
It was still sultry at four o"clock in the afternoon, and the two men walked slowly in the direction of the river. Cairy, who had been summoned by telegram to the city, would have preferred to be driven to the junction by Isabelle, but when Vickers had suggested that he knew a short cut by a shady path along the river, he had felt obliged to accept the implied invitation. He was debating why Price had suddenly evinced this desire to be with him, for he felt sure that Vickers disliked him. But Isabelle had shown plainly that she would like him to accept her brother"s offer,--she was too tired to go out again, she said, and the only horse that could be used was a burden to drive. So he set forth on the two-mile walk this oppressive afternoon, not in the best mood, determined to let Vickers do the talking.
They plodded across the meadow in silence, Cairy thinking of the interview in the city, his spirits rising as they always soared at the slightest hint of an "opening." "I"ll make her take the play," he said to himself; "she isn"t much good as an actress, but I must get the thing on. I"ll need the money." He hoped to finish his business with this minor star, who had expressed a desire to see him, and return to Grafton by the morning express. Isabelle would be disappointed if he should not be back for luncheon.
Vickers"s head was bent to the path. He had seized this chance of being alone with Cairy, and now that they were beyond the danger of interruption his blood beat uncomfortably in his head and he could not speak--for fear of uttering the wrong word.... When they reached the river, the two men paused involuntarily in the shade and looked back up the slope to the Farm, lying in the warm haze on the brow of the hill. As they stood there, the shutter of an upper chamber was drawn in, and Cairy smiled to himself.
"The house looks well from here," he remarked. "It"s a pleasant spot."
"It is a dear old place!" Vickers answered, forgetting for the moment the changes that Isabelle had wrought at the Farm. "It"s grown into our lives,--Isabelle"s and mine. We used to come here as boy and girl in vacations.... It was a day something like this when my sister was married.
I remember seeing her as she came out of the house and crossed the meadow on my father"s arm. We watched her from the green in front of the chapel.... She was very beautiful--and happy!"
"I can well imagine it," Cairy replied dryly, surprised at Vickers"s sudden loquacity on family matters. "But I suppose we ought to be moving on, hadn"t we, to get that express? You see I am a poor walker at the best."
Vickers struck off by the river path, leading the way. Suddenly he stopped, and with flushed face said:--
"Tom, I wish you wouldn"t come back to-morrow!"
"And why the devil--"
"I know it isn"t _my_ house, it isn"t _my_ wife, it isn"t _my_ affair. But, Tom, my sister and I have been closer than most,--even husband and wife. I love her,--well, that"s neither here nor there!"
"What are you driving at, may I ask?" Cairy demanded coldly.
"What I am going to say isn"t usual--it isn"t conventional. But I don"t know any conventional manner of doing what I want to do. I think we have to drop all that sometimes, and speak out like plain human beings. That"s the way I am going to speak to you,--as man to man.... I don"t want to beat about the bush, Tom. I think it would be better if you did not come back to-morrow,--never came back to the Farm!"
He had not said it as he meant to phrase it. He was aware that he had lost ground by blurting it out like this. Cairy waited until he had lighted a cigarette before he replied, with a laugh:--
"It is a little--brusque, your idea. May I ask why I am not to come back?"
"You know well enough! ... I had hoped we could keep--other names out of this."
"We can"t."
"My sister is very unhappy--"
"You think I make your sister unhappy?"
"Yes."
"I prefer to let her be the judge of that," Cairy retorted, walking ahead stiffly and exaggerating his limp.
"You know she cannot be a judge of what is best--just now."
"I think she can judge of herself better than any--outsider!"
Vickers flushed, controlled himself, and said almost humbly:--
"I know you care for her, Tom. We both do. So I thought we might discuss it amicably."
"This doesn"t seem to me a discussable matter."
"But anything that concerns one I love as I do Isabelle _must_ be discussable in some way."
"Your sister told me about her talk with you this morning.... You did your best then, it seems. If you couldn"t succeed in changing _her_ mind,--what do you expect from me?"