Part 36 (2/2)
To take the letter with her into exile, to read it every day, but to wait--wait--for the real crisis till she could quiet her racing emotions. One sweet at a time--not an armful of them. But the man--true to his nature--the man wanted the armful, and at once. And she had made him wait all these months; she could not, knowing her own heart, put him off longer now. The cool composure with which, last winter, she had answered his first declaration that he loved her was all gone; the months, of waiting had done more than show him whether his love was real: they had shown her that she wanted it to be real.
The day was a hard one to get through. The hours lagged--yet they flew.
At eight o'clock she went down, feeling as if it were all in her face; but apparently n.o.body saw anything beyond the undoubted fact that in her white frock she looked as fresh and as vivid as a flower. At half after ten Rosamond came to her to know if she had received an invitation from Richard Kendrick to go for a horseback ride, adding that she herself was delighted at the thought and had telephoned Stephen, to find that he also was pleased and would be up in time.
”I wonder where he's going to take us,” speculated Rosamond, in a flutter of antic.i.p.ation. ”Without doubt it will be somewhere that's perfectly charming; he knows how to do such things. Of course it's all for you, but I shall love to play chaperon, and Stevie and I shall have a lovely time out of it. I haven't been on a horse since Dorothy came; I hope I haven't grown too stout for my habit. What are you going to wear, Rob? The blue cloth? You are perfectly irresistible in that! Do wear that rakish-looking soft hat with the scarf; it's wonderfully becoming, if it isn't quite so correct; and I'm sure Richard Kendrick won't take us to any stupid fas.h.i.+onable hotel. He'll arrange an outdoor affair, I'm confident, with the Kendrick chef to prepare it and the Kendrick servants to see that it is served. Oh, it's such a glorious June day!
Aren't you happy, Rob?”
”If I weren't it would make me happy to look at you, you dear married child,” and Roberta kissed her pretty sister-in-law, who could be as womanly as she was girlish, and whose companions.h.i.+p, with that of Stephen's, she felt to be the most discriminating choice of chaperonage Richard could have made. Stephen and Rosamond, off upon a holiday like this, would be celebrating a little honeymoon anniversary of their own, she knew, for they had been married in June and could never get over congratulating themselves on their own happiness.
CHAPTER XXIII
RICHARD HAS WAKED EARLIER
Twelve o'clock, one o'clock, two o'clock. Roberta wondered afterward what she had done with the hours! At three she had her bath; at half after she put up her hair, hardly venturing to look at her own face in her mirror, so flushed and shy was it. Roberta shy?--she who, according to Ted, ”wasn't afraid of anything in the world!” But she _had_ been afraid of one thing, even as Richard Kendrick had averred. Was she not afraid of it now? She could not tell. But she knew that her hands shook as she put up her hair, and that it tumbled down twice and had to be done over again. Afraid! She was afraid, as every girl worth winning is, of the sight of her lover!
Yet when she heard hoofbeats on the driveway could have kept her from peeping out. The rear porch, from which the riding party would start, was just below her window, the great pillars rising past her. She had closed one of her blinds an hour before; she now made use of its sheltering interstices. She saw Richard on a splendid black horse coming up the drive, looking, as she had foreseen he would look, at home in the saddle and at his best. She saw the colour in his cheeks, the brightness in his eyes, caught his one quick glance upward--did he know her window?
He could not possibly see her, but she drew back, happiness and fear fighting within her for the ascendency. Could she ever go down and face him out there in the strong June light, where he could see every curving hair of eyelash? note the slightest ebb and flow of blood in cheek?
Rosamond was calling: ”Come, Rob! Mr. Kendrick is here and Joe is bringing round the horses. Can I help you?”
Roberta opened her door. ”I couldn't do my hair at all; does it look a fright under this hat?”
Rosamond surveyed her. ”Of course it doesn't. You're the most bewitching thing I ever saw in that blue habit, and your hair is lovely, as it always is. Rob, I have grown stout; I had to let out two bands before I could get this on; it was made before I was married. Steve's been laughing at me. Here he is; now do let's hurry. I want every bit of this good time, don't you?”
There was no delaying longer. Rosamond, all eagerness, was leading the way downstairs, her little riding-boots tapping her departure. Stephen was waiting for Roberta; she had to precede him. The next she knew she was down and out upon the porch, and Richard Kendrick, hat and crop in hand, was meeting her halfway, his expectant eyes upon her face. One glance at him was all she was giving him, and he was mercifully making no sign that any one looking on could have recognized beyond his eager scrutiny as his hand clasped hers. And then in two minutes they were off, and Roberta, feeling the saddle beneath her and Colonel's familiar tug on the bit at the start-off--he was always impatient to get away--was realizing that the worst, at least for the present, was over.
”Which way?” called Stephen, who was leading with Rosamond.
”Out the road past the West Wood marshes, please--straight out. Take it moderately; we're going about twelve miles and it's pretty warm yet.”
There was not much talking while they were within the city limits--nor after they were past, for that matter. Rosamond, ahead with her husband, kept up a more or less fitful conversation with him, but the pair behind said little. Richard made no allusion to his letter of the morning beyond a declaration of his grat.i.tude to the whole party for falling in with his plans. But the silence was somehow more suggestive of the great subject waiting for expression than any exchange of words could have been, out here in the open. Only once did the man's impatience to begin overcome his resolution to await the fitting hour.
Turning in his saddle as Colonel fell momentarily behind, pa.s.sing the West Wood marshes, Richard allowed his eyes to rest upon horse and rider with full intent to take in the picture they made.
”I haven't ventured to let myself find out just how you look,” he said.
”The atmosphere seems to swim around you; I see you through a sort of haze. Do you suppose there can be anything the matter with my eyesight?”
”I should think there must be,” she replied demurely. ”It seems a serious symptom. Hadn't you better turn back?”
”While you go on? Not if I fall off my horse. I have a suspicion that it's made up of a curious compound of feelings which I don't dare to describe. But--may I tell you?--I _must_ tell you--I never saw anything so beautiful in my life as--yourself, to-day. I--” He broke off abruptly. ”Do you see that old rosebush there by those burnt ruins of a house? Amber-white roses, and sweet as--I saw them there yesterday when I went by. Let me get them for you.”
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