Part 38 (1/2)
”No; it isn't dangerous,” he a.s.sured her, ”because I'm out of danger now.
Thank the Lord, that's all over. I don't have to live with a great hulking terror behind me any longer. I'm a man like any other. You can't imagine what it means to be yourself, and not to care who knows it. I'm afraid I parade my name just like a boy with a new watch, who wants to tell every one the time. So far no one has paid any particular attention; but I dare say that will come. Is Evie here?”
”She's not here--to-day.”
”Why not?” he asked, sharply. ”She said she would be. She said she'd come to town--”
”She did come to town, but she thought she'd better not--stay.”
”Not stay? Why shouldn't she stay? Is anything up? You don't mean that Miss Jarrott--?”
”No; Miss Jarrott had nothing to do with it. I know her brother has written to her, in the way you must be prepared for. But she couldn't have kept Evie from waiting for you, if Evie herself--”
”Had wanted to,” he finished, as she seemed to hesitate at the words.
Since she said nothing to modify this a.s.sertion, she hoped he would comprehend its gravity. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to attenuate that when he spoke next.
”I suppose she had engagements--or something.”
”She did have engagements--but she could have put them off.”
”Only she didn't care to. I see.”
She allowed him time to accept this fact before going on.
”Her return to Lenox,” she said then, ”wasn't because of her engagements.”
”Then it must have been because of me. Didn't she want to see me?”
”She didn't want to tell you what she felt she would have to say.”
”Oh! So that was it.”
He continued to sit looking at her with an expression of interrogation, though it was evident from his eyes that his questions had been answered.
They sat in the same relative positions as on the night of their last long talk together, he in his big arm-chair, she in her low one. It struck her as strange--while he stared at her with that gaze of inquiry from which the inquiry was gone--that she, who meant so little to his inner life, should be called on again to live through with him minutes that must forever remain memorable in his existence.
”Poor little thing! So she funked telling me.”
The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed to her.
”She wasn't equal to it.”
”But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?” He smiled with that peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was concealing pain.
”One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same,” she added, with an impulse she could not repress, ”I'm sorry to be always a.s.sociated in your mind with things that must be hard for you.”
”You're a.s.sociated in my mind with everything that's high and n.o.ble.
That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have found the way.”
”Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain things a little better than Evie could.”