Part 9 (1/2)

”When Valentine Simmons had sold my place, the place my grandfather built, I had about a thousand dollars left, and I thought I would start a little business with it, a ... a gun store,--I like guns,--here in Greenstream.

And I'd sharpen scythes, put sickles into condition, you know, things like that. I went to Stenton with my capital in my pocket, looking for some stock to open with, and met a man in a hotel who said he was the representative of the Standard Hardware Company. He could let me have everything necessary, he said, at a half of what others would charge. We had dinner together, and he made a list of what I would need--files and vises and parts of guns. If I mailed my cheque immediately I could get the half off. He had cards, catalogues, references, from Richmond. I might write there, but I'd lose time and money.

”None of the Makimmons have been good business men; we are not distrustful. I sent the cheque to the address he said, made out to him for the Standard Hardware Company, so that he would get the commission, the credit of the sale.” He drew a deep breath, gazing across the moonlit fields. ”The Makimmons are not distrustful,” he reiterated; ”he robbed me of all my savings.”

His lie would have fared badly with Pompey Hollidew, he thought grimly; it was unconvincing, wordy; he was conscious that his a.s.sumed emotion rang thinly. But its calculated effect was instantaneous, beyond all his hopes, his plan.

Lettice leaned close to him with a sobbing inspiration of sympathy and pity. ”How terrible!” she cried in low tones; ”you were so n.o.ble--” He breathed heavily once more. ”What a wicked, wicked man. Couldn't you get anything back? did it all go?”

”All.” His hand fell upon hers, and neither of them appeared to notice its pressure. Her face was close to his, a tear gleamed on her young, moon-blanched cheek. A sudden impatience seized him at her credulity, a contempt at the ease with which she was victimized; the effort was almost without spice. Still his grasp tightened upon her hand, drew it toward him. ”In Greenstream,” he continued, ”men don't like me, they are afraid of me; but the women make me unhappy--they tell me their troubles; I don't want them to, I keep away from them.”

”I understand that,” she declared eagerly, ”I would tell you anything.”

”You are different; I want you to tell me ... things. But the things I want to hear may not come to you. I would never be satisfied with a little. The Makimmons are all that way--everything or nothing.”

She gently loosened her hand, and stood up, facing him. Her countenance, turned to the light, shone like a white flame; it was tensely aquiver with pa.s.sionate earnestness, lambent with the flowering of her body, of dim desire, the heritage of flesh. She spoke in a voice that startled Gordon by its new depth, the brave thrill of its undertone.

”I could only give all,” she said. ”I am like that too. What do you wish me to tell you? What can I say that will help you?”

”Ever since I first saw you going to the Stenton school,” he hurried on, ”I have thought about you. I could hardly wait for the Christmas holidays, to have you in the stage, or for the summer when you came home. n.o.body knows; it has been a secret ... it seemed so useless. You were like a ... a star,” he told her.

”How could I know?” she asked; ”I was only a girl until--until Buckley ... until to-night, now. But I can never be that again, something has happened ... in my heart, something has gone, and come,” her voice grew shadowed, wistful. It carried to him, in an intangible manner, a fleet warning, as though something immense, unguessed, august, uttered through Lettice Hollidew the whisper of a magnificent and terrible menace.

He felt again as he had felt as a child before the vast mystery of night.

An impulse seized him to hurry away from the portico, from the youthful figure at his side; a sudden, illogical fear chilled him. But he summoned the hardihood, the skepticism, of his heart; he defied--while the sinking within him persisted--not the girl, but the nameless force beyond, above, about them. ”You are like a star,” he repeated, in forced tones.

He rose and stood before her. She swayed toward him like a flower bowed by the wind. He put his arms around her, her head lay back, and he kissed the smooth fullness of her throat. He kissed her lips.

The eternal, hapless cry of the whippoorwills throbbed on his hearing. The moon slipped behind a corner of the house, and a wave of darkness swept over them. Lettice began to tremble violently, and he led her back to their place on the veranda's edge. She was silent, and clung to him with a reluctant eagerness. He kissed her again and again, on a still mouth, but soon her lips answered his desire. It grew constantly darker, the silvery vistas shortened, grew blurred, trees merged into indistinguishable gloom.

Lettice murmured a shy, unaccustomed endearment. Gordon was stereotyped, commonplace; he was certain that even she must recognize the hollowness of his protestations. But she never doubted him; she accepted the dull, leaden note of his spurious pa.s.sion for the clear ring of unalloyed and fine gold.

Suddenly and unexpectedly she released herself from his arms. ”Oh!” she exclaimed, in conscience-stricken tones, ”Mrs. Caley's medicine!

I--forgot; she should have had some long ago.” He tried to catch her once more in his embrace, restrain her. ”It would be better not to wake her up,” he protested, ”sleep's what sick folks need.” But she continued to evade him. Mrs. Caley must have her medicine. The doctor had said that it was important. ”It's my duty, Gordon,” she told him, ”and you would want me to do that.”

He stifled with difficulty an impatient exclamation. ”Then will you come back?” he queried. He took her once more close in his arms. ”Come back,”

he whispered hotly in her ear.

”But, dear Gordon, it is so late.”

”What does that matter? don't you love me? You said you were the sort of a girl to give all; and now, because it is a little late, you are afraid.

What are you afraid of? Tell me that! You know I love you; we belong to each other; what does it matter how late it is? Beside, no one will know, no one is here to spy on us. Come back, my little girl ... my little Lettice; come back to a lonely man with nothing else in the world but you.

I'll come in with you, wait inside.”

”No,” she sobbed, ”wait ... here. I will see ... the medicine. Wait here for me, I will come back. It doesn't matter how late it is, nothing matters ... trust in you. Love makes everything good. Only you love me, oh, truly?”

”Truly,” he rea.s.sured her. ”Don't be long; and, remember, shut Mrs.