Part 14 (2/2)
”I'm afraid I shall be denied the privilege of knowing you better,” I said slowly, ”I leave for the mountains to-morrow morning.”
”You won't be there forever,” she retorted, ”sha'n't we see you on the return trip?”
I shook my head.
”I must hurry back East.”
”I'm sorry,” she answered with sweet graciousness. Any woman in the country houses about her would probably have spoken in the same fas.h.i.+on, but to me it was a match touched to powder.
”I will quote you a parable,” I said, and although I attempted to smile, that the speech might be taken lightly, I had that rigid feeling about the lips and brow which made me conscious that my face was drawn and tell-tale.
”Icarus was the original bird-man, and he came to grief. His wings were fastened on with wax, but they worked fairly well until he soared too close to the sun. Then they melted ... and the first aviation disaster was chronicled.”
She looked at me frankly and level-eyed, but her face held only mystification.
”I'm afraid,” she said, ”you must construe the parable.”
I shook my head gravely. ”I'm glad you don't take its meaning.”
”I don't understand,” she repeated, yet we both felt that we were standing in the presence of dammed-up emotions which might at any moment break over and inundate us. She might yet have no realization of it, but I knew by an occult a.s.surance, in no way related to egotism, that I could make her love me. My fable was false after all. I had already fallen and been broken; my pinions were trailing and blood-stained.
There was yet time to save her. During our silence Weighborne opened the door and our interview was ended.
It had lasted a few minutes, yet during their continuance I had been several times perilously near the brink. I saw her rise and smile and leave the room, and I caught or fancied I caught a glance from her eyes and a miraculous curve of her lips at the threshold. The expression was subtle and challenging, seeming to say to me, ”You will tell me many things before I am through with you.” Of course, that, too, was my disordered imagination, yet for the moment it was as though she had actually spoken words of self-confidence and conquest. And I knew that if I saw her again I should say many things--forbidden things.
Resentment and bitterness and utter heartache possessed me, and I heard my host's voice in a maddeningly matter-of-fact pitch as he commented, ”Now I hope our interruptions are over.”
As I went to my room at the hotel that night a telegram was handed me. I did not at once open it. I presumed that it was from Keller, and it was all of a piece with my grotesque ill luck that the answer should come just after I had myself in the most painful possible way solved the problem. In my room, however, I read, under a San Francisco date, ”Name Weighborne, not Carrington. Keller.” It was evidently a telegraphic mistake and should have read ”Weighborne nee Carrington.” Keller had told me who she had been before she married Weighborne, the man whose name, in the words of my fellow unfortunate, Bobby Maxwell, ”looked well on a check.”
CHAPTER XVII
WE GO TO THE MOUNTAINS.
Weighborne was at the station on the following morning when, five minutes before train time, I arrived. He was clad for his mountain environment in high lace boots, corduroy breeches and flannel s.h.i.+rt, and in this guise he loomed bigger and stronger of seeming than in conventional clothing. His level, straight-gazing eyes held the cheery satisfaction of facing, after a good breakfast, a prospect of action. He was meanwhile willing to fill the interim of railroad travel with conversation. I, on the contrary, knew that sleeplessness had left me haggard, and met his advances, I fear, with churlish taciturnity.
In the smoking compartment, when we were under way, I sat gazing out of the car window at fleeting fields still a-sparkle with frost crystals on wood and stubble.
”You and Frances didn't just seem to hit it off,” commented my companion with a proffer of his cigar-case, ”or rather Frances liked you all right, but you--” He broke off with an amused smile and busied himself with the kindling of a panatella.
A man can hardly explain to his fellow-man, ”I was rude to your wife because I love her. I wors.h.i.+p her in a way your prosaic little soul can never understand. It is only because civilization is all distorted that I don't murder you and carry her off in triumph to my cave--where she belongs.”
So I mumbled some foolish contradiction. I thought her charming; I was merely not a woman's man. I was still part savage. My unfortunate temperament must be my apology.
Weighborne studied me for a moment in some perplexity. He knew I was lying, but he had no suspicion why I lied and he could hardly argue in her defense with me, a stranger. He changed the topic, but there was a hurt expression in his face as though he were unable to understand my subtle hostility, as he construed it, for a person entirely lovely. If I did not like Frances there must be something abnormal about me, and the expression was quite eloquent though wordless. I had no difficulty in reading it. It was as though he wanted to say to me and was saying to himself, ”After all, our relations are those of business, and your personal preferences and prejudices do not concern me, but we won't speak of Her again. It shall be a prohibited topic between us.” In this tacit att.i.tude I found an element of relief. If I were to be forced into his daily companions.h.i.+p I must not be specifically reminded at every turn that he was the husband of his wife. I had stepped knee-deep into this miserable Rubicon of financial venture as the agent of others, and turning back was impossible. Afterward.... But at this point I stopped.
I could not yet bring myself to think of any afterward.
Inasmuch as Weighborne and I were for a time to travel the same trail and since, as my reason insisted, he was guilty of no injury to me except an injury so fantastic that only destiny could be blamed, and since, too, he was all unconscious even of that, there must be truce between us.
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