Part 9 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”What?” cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair]
Before she could finish the sentence Stanton had sprung from his chair, and stood trying to reason out madly whether one single more stride would catch her, or lose her.
”And as for something for you to think about the seventh day and night,” she gasped hurriedly. Already the door had opened to her hand and her little figure stood silhouetted darkly against the bright, yellow-lighted hallway, ”here's something for you to think about for _twenty_-seven days and nights!” Wildly her little hands went clutching at the woodwork. ”I didn't know you were engaged to be married,” she cried out pa.s.sionately, ”and I _loved_ you--_loved_ you--_loved_ you!”
Then in a flash she was gone.
IX
With absolute finality the big door banged behind her. A minute later the street door, four flights down, rang out in jarring reverberation.
A minute after that it seemed as though every door in every house on the street slammed shrilly. Then the charred fire-log sagged down into the ashes with a sad, puffing sigh. Then a whole row of books on a loosely packed shelf toppled over on each other with soft jocose slaps.
Crawling back into his Morris chair with every bone in his body aching like a magnetized wire-skeleton charged with pain, Stanton collapsed again into his pillows and sat staring--staring into the dying fire.
Nine o'clock rang out dully from the nearest church spire; ten o'clock, eleven o'clock followed in turn with monotonous, chiming insistency. Gradually the relaxing steam-radiators began to grunt and grumble into a chill quietude. Gradually along the bare, bleak stretches of unrugged floor little cold draughts of air came creeping exploringly to his feet.
And still he sat staring--staring into the fast graying ashes.
”Oh, Glory! Glory!” he said. ”Think what it would mean if all that wonderful imagination were turned loose upon just one fellow! Even if she didn't love you, think how she'd play the game! And if she did love you--Oh, lordy; Lordy! LORDY!”
Towards midnight, to ease the melancholy smell of the dying lamp, he drew reluctantly forth from his deepest blanket-wrapper pocket the little knotted handkerchief that encased the still-treasured handful of fragrant fir-balsam, and bending groaningly forward in his chair sifted the brittle, pungent needles into the face of the one glowing ember that survived. Instantly in a single dazzling flash of flame the tangible forest symbol vanished in intangible fragrance. But along the hollow of his hand,--across the edge of his sleeve,--up from the ragged pile of books and papers,--out from the farthest, remotest corners of the room, lurked the unutterable, undestroyable sweetness of all forests since the world was made.
Almost with a sob in his throat Stanton turned again to the box of letters on his table.
By dawn the feverish, excited sleeplessness in his brain had driven him on and on to one last, supremely fantastic impulse. Writing to Cornelia he told her bluntly, frankly,
”DEAR CORNELIA:
”When I asked you to marry me, you made me promise very solemnly at the time that if I ever changed my mind regarding you I would surely tell you. And I laughed at you.
Do you remember? But you were right, it seems, and I was wrong. For I believe that I have changed my mind. That is:--I don't know how to express it exactly, but it has been made very, very plain to me lately that I do not by any manner of means love you as little as you need to be loved.
”In all sincerity,
”CARL.”
To which surprising communication Cornelia answered immediately; but the 'immediately' involved a week's almost maddening interim,
”DEAR CARL:
”Neither mother nor I can make any sense whatsoever out of your note. By any possible chance was it meant to be a joke?
You say you do not love me 'as little' as I need to be loved. You mean 'as much', don't you? Carl, what do you mean?”
Laboriously, with the full prospect of yet another week's agonizing strain and suspense, Stanton wrote again to Cornelia.
<script>