Part 41 (2/2)
There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate.
After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would not pause until he had rung the bell.
But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the house he stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the slender cane one knew so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to make a resolute slash with it to vindicate his irresolution.
After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then that a voice called out above him, ”h.e.l.lo, Gerald!”
He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from the terrace looked at each other for the s.p.a.ce of a few heart-beats with mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked:
”Aren't you going to come in?”
Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end of his hesitation, he asked:
”Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?”
”Why, certainly,” answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow.
She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle's and Tom's voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the big ball-room and pa.s.sed out through that.
The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and came to take her hand, saying:
”How good of you!”
”Well,” she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the situation,--looking after her dignity and all that. ”How jolly this is!
And you're all right again, Gerald. You're well enough to walk on your legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you're looking quite yourself again.
Well,”--she sighed again heartily,--”it's good for sore eyes to see you.
You're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset?
Hadn't we better go in?”
”This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow.”
”Oh, I haven't got a thing to do,” she precipitately a.s.sured him. ”Come, we'll walk up and down the path,--hadn't we better?--so as not to be standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the st.i.tch in your side?”
He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find it difficult somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy--make the atmosphere as it had used to be between them--so determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like a mill, about this, that, and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in her own manner, and little stories in her own taste, accompanied by her rich--on this occasion slightly nervous gurgle.
”Aurora dear,” he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as much as of protest, ”what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness, and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O'Flynn. Do you call it kind?”
A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking.
”Couldn't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?” His gesture vaguely designated the green inclosure, where the stone table stood, pale among the dark laurels.
But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his eye-sockets and kept them there.
”I am ridiculous!” he muttered and shook himself straight. After an ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, ”I am ridiculous!” he said again, and without further concession to weakness started in: ”I ought to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so deeply. It doesn't do much good to say I am sorry.”
”Your letter was all right,” broke in Aurora. ”I only didn't understand at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter _was all right_.”
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