Part 6 (1/2)

”You see, it was over. You see, you couldn't have made anything of it.”

It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much.

”You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that you are not too unhappy.”

”I don't know what I am,” Christopher said. ”But I know I've more to regret than having believed in her. I've all the folly and mischief I've made.” He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, not even when he went on, ”If it could have been in our way,--yours and mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she's chosen, it only means just that--folly, mischief,”--he turned to the fire and looked down into it,--”sin,” he finished.

She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find something else. ”It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, chose very differently. I'm not trying to s.h.i.+ft responsibility; to make mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can't even sin be atoned for? Doesn't it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that.”

He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting gentleness.

”You mean because I'm a poet? It isn't like you, really, to say that.

You don't believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It's too facile.”

”Not only because you are a poet. I wasn't thinking so much of that, although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good.”

”I'm not good enough,” said Christopher. ”And I'm too young. You've shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while meaning the best.”

She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his dispa.s.sionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity.

And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost Jane Amoret,--”Don't you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you are so young?”

He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her.

”Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you've been to me.

I'll do my best,” he promised her. ”But I seem to have lost everything.

I could be strong for her; I don't know that I can be strong enough for myself.”

”That's what I mean,” said Mrs. Delafield. ”It takes years to be strong enough for one's self, and even when one's old one hasn't sometimes learned how to be. I'm not sure, after this morning, that I've learned yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try?

Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas until the right person comes?”

”What do you mean?” he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears sprang to his eyes.

”We belong to each other. Didn't you say it?” she smiled. ”We are friends. We ought not to lose each other now.”

”Oh! But--” He gazed at her. ”How could you! After what I've done!”

”You've done nothing that makes me like you less.”

”Oh--I can't! I can't!” said Christopher Darley. ”How could I accept it from you? Already you've been unbelievably beautiful to me. It's not as if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece's discarded lover--no--I can't see it for you. I can imagine you being above the law, but I can't imagine you being above appearances. I don't think that I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are yours.”

It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton's face would be worth watching. Poor Tim's hovered more grievously in the background.

But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved.

”It's just because mine are so secure and recognized, don't you see, that I can do what I like with them,” she said. ”It's not for me a question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, you know.”

”Because of me! Because of me!” Christopher groaned. ”Do you think you need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of it? You'll get nothing. You've been tormented between us all, and you lose Jane Amoret.”