Part 47 (2/2)
”Darley,” she said.
The listener halted, motionless as a figure in clay.
”Darley,” repeated the girl; and again that was all.
”'Darley!'” It was the man's voice this time, but it sounded as though coming from a distance. ”'Darley!' At last!--and now!”
”Darley,” yet once again, ”as I love you and you love me don't--desert me now!”
On the room fell a silence like death,--to those two actors worse than death; for it held thought infinite and complete realization at last of what might have been and was not; of what as well, unless a miracle intervened, could never be. In it they stood, each where he was, two figures in clay instead of one. Interrupting, awakening, torturing, sounded the thing they had so long expected; the impact of a step upon the floor of the porch without; a moment later another, uncertain, and another; a pause, and then, startlingly loud, the trill of an electric bell.
For an instant neither stirred. It was the expected; and still there is a limit to human endurance. The girl was trembling, in a nervous tension too great to bear longer. An effort indeed she made at control; but it was a pitiful effort and futile. In surrender absolute, abandon absolute, she dropped back into her seat, her arms crossed pathetically on the surface of the library table, her face buried from sight therein.
”Answer it, please,” she pleaded. ”I can't. I'm ashamed, unutterably; but I can't!”
Again the alarm of the bell sounded; curtly short this time and insistent.
Without a word or even a pause Darley Roberts obeyed. As he pa.s.sed out he closed the door carefully behind him.
Five minutes that seemed to the girl a lifetime dragged by. Listening, she heard the opening of the front door, the murmur of low, speaking voices,--a murmur ceasing as abruptly as it began; then, wonder of wonders, the door closed again with a snap and a retreating step sounded once, twice, as when it had come, on the floor of the porch. Following, she marked the even footfall of Roberts returning. The electric switch that he had turned on snapped back as he had found it, the intervening door opened, and he entered. But, strange to say, he did not pause or say a word. As one awakening from a dream and not yet wholly conscious, he returned silently to his former place. On his face was a look she had never seen before, which she could not fathom.
”Darley.” Unbelieving the girl leaned toward him appealingly. ”Tell me.
Wasn't it--he?”
The man looked at her then, and there was that in his gray eyes that tinged her face crimson.
”No. It was Harry Randall,” he said. ”It's all right, Elice. The miracle came.”
”The miracle!” The voice was uncertain again, but from a far different cause this time. ”Don't keep me waiting. Tell me. Is he--well?”
This time Roberts actually smiled,--smiled as he had not done before in months.
”Yes; and writing like mad! That's the miracle. He's been at it steady now for twenty hours, and won't even pause to eat. He sent for Harry to deliver the message. It's inspiration he's working under and he couldn't stop to come himself, wouldn't. He said to tell you, and me, that it was all right. He'd found himself at last. Those were his words,--he'd found himself at last.” As suddenly as it had come the smile pa.s.sed, and Roberts stood up, his big hands locked behind his back.
”We've thought we understood him all these years,” he said steadily, ”but at last I realize that we haven't at all. It would be humorous if it hadn't been so near to tragedy, so very near. Anyway, it's clear now.
Harry Randall sees it too. That's why he wouldn't stay. Steve Armstrong never cared for you really at all, Elice. He thought he did--but he didn't. It was himself he cared for; and a fancy. Neither you nor I nor any one can change him or help him more than temporarily. We're free.
He'll stand or go under as it was written in the beginning.” The voice lowered until it throbbed with the conviction that was in the speaker's soul. ”No man alive who really cared could find inspiration where he found it. The world is before us and we're free, Elice, free!”
Unconsciously, in answer to an instinct she obeyed without reason, the girl too arose, an exaltation in her face no artist could reproduce nor words describe.
”Yes,” she said. ”I see it all too at last. We've all been blind.” She caught her breath at the thought that would intrude, force it back as she would. ”And still we came so near, so very, very near--”
”Yes; but it's past.” The man opposite was advancing. Not the impa.s.sive, cold Darley Roberts the world knew, but the other Darley Roberts revealed to one alone; the isolate human alone and lonely. ”But it's past, past, do you hear? And to-day is December the sixth, our anniversary--ours.” He halted, waiting. He smiled, with a tenderness infinite. ”Is it 'Darley'
still, Elice? Won't you come and say it again?”
THE END
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