Part 20 (2/2)

She need say nothing now. If she'd wait, she'd see.

CHAPTER XIV

A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL

It was still May and the North Carolina mountain-side that John Wollaston looked out upon was at the height of its annual debauch of azalea blooms, a symphonic romance in the key of rose-color with modulations down to strawberry and up to a clear singing white. For him though, the invalid, cus.h.i.+oned and pillowed in an easy chair, a rug over his knees, these splendors and the perfume of the soft bright air that bathed them had an ironic significance.

He had arrived with Paula at this paradise early in the week, pretty well exhausted with the ordinary fatigues of less than a day's journey in the train. They were feeding him bouillon, egg-nogs and cream. On Paula's arm he had managed this afternoon, his first walk, a matter of two or three hundred yards about the hotel gardens, and at the end of it had been glad to subside, half reclining into this easy chair, placed so that through the open door and the veranda it gave upon, he could enjoy the view of the color-drenched mountain-side.

He had dismissed Paula peremptorily for a real walk of her own. He had told her, in simple truth, that he would enjoy being left to himself for a while. She had taken this a.s.surance for an altruistic mendacity, but she had yielded at last to his insistence and gone, under an exacted promise not to come back for at least an hour.

It offered some curious compensations though, this state of helplessness--a limpidity of vision, clairvoyant almost. For a fortnight he had been like a spectator sitting in the stalls of a darkened theatre watching the performances upon a brilliantly lighted stage, himself--himselves among the characters, for there was a past and a future self for him to look at and ponder upon. The present self hardly counted. All the old ambitions, desires, urgencies, which had been his impulsive forces were gone--quiescent anyhow. He was as s.e.xless, as cool, as an image carved in jade.

And he was here in this lover's paradise--this was what drew the tribute of a smile to the humor of the high G.o.ds--with Paula. And Paula was more ardently in love with him than she had ever been before.

The quality of that smile must have carried over to the one he gave her when she came back, well within her promised hour, from her walk. One couldn't imagine anything lovelier or more inviting than the picture she made framed in that doorway, coolly shaded against the bright blaze that came in around her. She looked at him from there, for a moment, thoughtfully.

”I don't believe you have missed me such a lot after all,” she said.

”What have you been doing all the while?”

”Crystal-gazing,” he told her.

She came over to him and took his hands, a caress patently enough through the nurse's pretext that she was satisfying herself that he had not got cold sitting there. She relinquished them suddenly, readjusted his rug and pillows, then kissed him and told him she was going to the office to see if there were any letters and went out again. She was gone but a moment or two; returning, she dropped the little handful which were addressed to him into his lap and carried one of her own to a chair near the window.

He dealt idly with the congratulatory and well-wis.h.i.+ng messages which made up his mail. There was but one of them that drew even a gleam of clearly focused intelligence from him. He gave most of his attention to Paula. She was a wonderful person to watch,--the expressiveness of her, that every nerve and muscle of her body seemed to have a part in. She had opened that letter of hers with nothing but clear curiosity. The envelope evidently had told her nothing. She had frowned, puzzled, over the signature and then somehow, darkened, sprung to arms as she made it out. She didn't read it in an orderly way even then; seemed to be trying to worry the meaning out of it, like one stripping off husks to get down to some sort of kernel inside. Satisfied that she had got it at last, she dropped the letter carelessly on the floor, subsided a little deeper into her chair and turned a brooding face toward the outdoor light and away from him.

”Are you crystal-gazing, too?” he asked. Unusually, she didn't turn at his voice and her own was monotonous with strongly repressed emotion.

”I don't need to. I spent more than a week staring into mine.”

That lead was plain enough, but he avoided, deliberately though rather idly, following it up. The rustle of paper told her that he had turned back to his letters.

”Anything in your mail?” she asked.

”I think not. You can look them over and see if I've missed anything. To a man in my disarticulate situation people don't write except to express the kindness of their hearts. Here's a letter from Mary designed to prevent me from worrying about her. Full of pleasant little anecdotes about farm life. It's thoroughly Arcadian, she says. A spot designed by Heaven for me to rusticate in this summer when--when we go back to town.

Somehow, I never did inhabit Arcady. There's a letter from Martin Whitney, too, that's almost alarmingly encouraging in its insistence that I mustn't worry. If only they knew how little I did--these days!”

”Well, that's all right then,” she said. ”Because those were Doctor Darby's orders. You weren't to be excited or worried about anything. But, John, is it really true that you don't? Not about anything?”

The fact that her face was still turned away as she asked that question gave it a significance which could not be overlooked.

”It's perfectly true,” he a.s.serted. ”I don't believe I could if I tried. But there's something evidently troubling you. Let's have it.

Oh, don't be afraid. You've no idea what an--Olympian position one finds himself in when he has got half-way across the Styx and come back. Tell me about it.”

”You know all about it already. I told you the first day you could talk--that I was going to give up singing altogether except just for you,--when you wanted me to. I knew I'd been torturing you about it. I thought perhaps you'd get well quicker,--want to get well more--if you knew that the torture wasn't to go on. It was true and it is true.

Perhaps you thought it was just one of those lies that people tell invalids--one of those don't-worry things. Well, is wasn't.

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