Part 18 (1/2)
Mary thought it over.
”If I kissed you, I would love you,” she said, and tried to hide her tears no more.
He soothed her then in the immemorial manner, and soon she was tranquil again.
”Good-bye, Wally,” she said.
”Good-bye, dear. You'll promise to be here when I come back?”
”I shall be here.”
”And you won't let anybody run away with you until I've had another chance?”
”Don't worry.”
She watched the light of his car diminish until it vanished over the crest of the hill. A gathering sense of loneliness began to a.s.sail her, but with it was a feeling of freedom and purpose--the feeling that she was being left alone, clear of distraction, to fight her own fight and achieve her own destiny.
Archey Forbes was the next to go. His going marked a curious incident.
He had applied for a commission in the engineers, and his record and training being good, it wasn't long before he received the beckoning summons of Mars.
Upon the morning of the day when he was to leave New Bethel, he went to the factory to say good-bye. The one he wished to see the most, however, was the first one he missed.
”Miss Mary's around the factory somewhere,” said a stenographer.
Another spoke up, a dark girl with a touch of pa.s.sion in her smile. ”I think Mr. Burdon is looking for her, too.”
Archey missed neither the smile nor the tone--and liked neither of them.
”He'll get in trouble yet,” he thought, ”going out with those girls,” and his frown grew as he thought of Burdon's daily contact with Mary.
”I'll see if I can find her,” he told himself after he had waited a few minutes; and stepping out into the full beauty of the June morning, he crossed the lawn toward the factory buildings.
On one of the trees a robin sang and watched him with its head atilt. A bee hummed past him and settled on a trellis of roses. In the distance murmured the falls, with their soothing, drowsy note.
”These are the days, when I was a boy, that I used to dream of running away and seeing the world and having great adventures,” thought Archey, his frown forgotten. He didn't consciously put it into words, but deep from his mind arose a feeling of the coming true of great dreams--of running away from the humdrum of life, of seeing the world, of taking a part in the greatest adventure ever staged by man.
”What a day!” he breathed, lifting his face to the sun. ”Oh, Lord, what a day!”
It was indeed a day--one of those days which seem to have wine in the air--one of those days when old ambitions revive and new ones flower into splendour. Mary, for instance, on her way to the machine shop, was busy with thoughts of a nursery where mothers could bring their children who were too young to go to school.
”Plenty of sun,” she thought, ”and rompers for them all, and sand piles, and toys, and certified milk, and trained nurses--” And while she dreamed she hummed to herself in approval, and wasn't aware that the air she hummed was the Spanish Cavalier--and wasn't aware that Burdon Woodward was near until she suddenly awoke from her dream and found they were face to face.
He turned and walked with her.
The wine of the day might have been working in Burdon, too, for he hadn't walked far with Mary before he was reminding her more strongly than ever, of Steerforth in David Copperfield--Baffles in the Amateur Cracksman.
Indeed, that morning, listening to his drawl and looking up at the dark handsome face with its touch of recklessness, the a.s.sociation of Mary's ideas widened.
M'sieur Beaucaire, just from the gaming table--Don Juan on the Nevski Prospekt--Buckingham on his way to the Tuileries--they all might have been talking to her, warming her thoughts not so much by what they said as by what they might say, appealing to her like a romance which must, however, be read to the end if you wish to know the full story.