Part 34 (1/2)

It took no longer for all that to go through her mind than Graham needed for his little explanatory speech on the door-step. There he stood waiting for her answer. The only choice she had was between shutting the door in his face without a word, or graciously inviting him to come in and propose to her--for the last time, at all events. It was not, of course, a choice at all.

”I'm afraid it's a terribly hot day for tea,” she said, moving back from the doorway to make room for him to come in. ”Wallace likes it, though. I might make you something cold if only I had ice, but of course there isn't any in the house. It's nice and cool, though, isn't it; from having been shut up so long?”

Anything,--any frantic thing that could be spun into words to cover the fact that she had no welcome for him at all, not even the most wan little beam of friendly tenderness. She had seen the hurt look come into his eyes, incipient panic at the flash of anger which had not been meant for him. She must float him inside, somehow, and anchor him to the tea table.

There she could get herself together and deal with him--decently.

He came along, tractably enough, sat in the chair that was to have been Wallace's, and talked for a while of the tea, and how hot it was this afternoon, and how beautifully cool in here. It was hot, too, out at Hickory Hill but one thought little of it. The air was drier for one thing. He and Rush had commented on the difference as they drove in to-day.

”Oh, Rush came in with you, did he?” she observed.

He flushed and stammered over the admission and it was easy to guess why.

The fact that her brother, as well as Wallace, was lurking in the background somewhere waiting for results gave an official cast to his call that was rather--asinine. She came to the rescue.

”I suppose he and Wallace had something they wanted to talk about,” she commented easily, and he made haste to a.s.sent.

She steadied herself with a breath. ”Did Wallace tell you,” she asked, ”about our explosion at Ravinia over Paula's new contract? And how furious both father and Paula are with me about it? And how I'm out looking for a job? He didn't say anything about his sister, did he; whether he'd written to her to-day or not?”

”Not whether he'd written. But he told us the rest. How you wanted to go to work. As a nursery governess.”

He paused there but she did not break in upon it. She had given him all the lead he needed. With the deliberate care that a suddenly tremulous hand made necessary he put down his teacup and spoke as if addressing it.

”I think you're the bravest--most wonderful person in the world. Of course, I've known that always. Not just since I came back last spring.

But this, that Mr. Hood told us this afternoon, somehow--caps the climax.

I can't tell you how it--got me, to think of your being ready to do--a thing like that.”

The last thing she would have done voluntarily was to put any obstacles in his way. Her program, on the contrary was to help him along all she could to his declaration, make a refusal that should be as gentle as was consistent with complete finality, and then get rid of him before anything regrettably--messy ensued. But to have her courage rhapsodized over like this was a thing she could not endure.

”It's nothing,” she said rather dryly, ”beyond what most girls do nowadays as a matter of course. I'm being rather cowardly about it, I think--on account of some silly ideas I've been more or less brought up with perhaps, but...”

”What if they do?” he broke in; ”thousands of them at the stores and in the offices. It's bad enough for them--for any sort of woman. But it's different with you. It's horrible. You aren't like them.”

She tried to check herself but couldn't. ”What's the difference? I'm healthy and half-educated and fairly young. I have the same sort, pretty much, of thoughts and feelings. I don't believe I like being clean and warm and well-fed and amused and admired any better than the average girl does. I ought to have found a job months ago, instead of letting Rush bring me home from New York. Or else gone to work when I came home. But every one was so horrified...”

”They were right to be,” he interrupted. ”It is a horrible idea. Because you aren't like the others. You _haven't_ the same sort of thoughts and feelings. A person doesn't have to be in love with you to see that. Your father and Rush and Mr. Hood all see it. And as for me--well, I couldn't endure it, that's all. Oh, I know, you can act like anybody else; laugh and dance and talk nonsense and make a person forget sometimes. But the other thing is there all the while--s.h.i.+ning through--oh, it can't be talked about!--like a light. Of--of something a decent man _wants_ to be guided by, whatever he does. And for you to go out into the world with that, where there can't be any protection at all ... I can't stand it, Mary. That's why I came to-day instead of Mr. Hood.”

She went very white during that speech and tears came up into her eyes.

Tears of helpless exasperation. It was such a cruelly inhuman thing to impose an ideal like that upon a woman. It was so smug, so utterly satisfactory to all romantic sentimentalists. Wallace would approve every word of it. Wallace had sent him to say just this;--was waiting now to be told the good news of his success.

The fact is worth recalling, perhaps, that away back in her childhood Wallace had sometimes reduced her to much this sort of frantic exasperation by his impregnable a.s.sumption that she was the white-souled little angel she looked. Sitting here in this very room he had goaded her into committing freakish misdemeanors.

She was resisting now an impulse of much the same sort, though the parallel did not, of course, occur to her. It was just a sort of inexplicable panic which she was reining in with all her might by telling herself how fond she really was of Graham and how terrible a thing it would be if she hurt him unnecessarily. She dared not attempt to speak so she merely waited. She was sitting relaxed, her head lowered, her chin supported by one hand. This stillness and relaxation she always resorted to in making any supreme demand upon her self-control.

He looked at her rather helplessly once or twice during the silence. Then arose and moved about restlessly.

”I know you don't love me. I've gone on hoping you could after I suppose I might have seen it wasn't possible. You've tried to and you can't. I don't know if one as white as you could love any man--that way. Well, I'm not going to ask any more for that. I want to ask, instead, that we be friends. I haven't spoiled the possibility of that, have I?”

She was taken utterly by surprise. It didn't seem possible that she had even heard aright and the face he turned to, as he asked that last question, was of one pitiably bewildered, yet lighted too by a gleam of grat.i.tude.