Part 61 (1/2)
”What is it, la.s.s?” he asked; and when she looked up, not only her lashes, but her cheeks were wet.
”Eldred, am I hideously wicked?” she faltered. ”I was--I was thanking G.o.d that he _did_ take his chance. Think--if it _had_ been you! _Am_ I wicked?”
He drew her close, and kissed her. ”Hardly that, dearest. Only very human.”
”But there's no danger, is there? No permanent damage done?”
”No. Mercifully the bullet only grazed the bone. He may have a week of fever, and a slow convalescence; but you'll not grudge the trouble of nursing him, after what I've told you.”
”I'd never have done that. And now,”--she rose to her feet, her eyes kindling,--”now it will be a privilege. Oh, I'll be ever so good to him,” she added under her breath.
And for the next three weeks--being, as she had said, a creature of extremes--she was so uniformly and enchantingly 'good to him' that those long days of fever, pain, and enforced idleness were among the most delectable Max Richardson had ever known, or ever wished to know; that, in truth, each landmark on the road back to health and duty could no longer be regarded with that unmixed satisfaction common to the masculine invalid.
But Richardson was too little capable of a.n.a.lysis to be troubled by this wrong-headed state of things, or to detect the hidden seed from which his flower of contentment sprang. Mrs Lenox was astonis.h.i.+ngly kind to him, and quite the most charming companion a sick man could desire: that was all.
His sharp bout of fever once over, she sang to him, read to him, argued with him on a quaint variety of subjects, enlarging his mental horizon, drawing out thoughts and opinions at whose existence he had never guessed till now. But for him the hidden charm of their intercourse lay less in what she said or sang, than in the vibrations of her voice; in the quick response of lips and eyes to her April changes of mood; and more than all in her unfailing spirit of humour, which broke up the monotone of days spent in a long chair as a prism breaks white light into a band of brilliant colours. For Quita's genius was not of the highly specialised order. It did not inhabit an air-tight compartment of her brain where pictures grew. It pervaded her whole personality.
It was not merely a genius for art, but for living, for being vital, for seeing and feeling and doing all that it is possible to see and feel and do in the sum of man's threescore years and ten. Small wonder then if Max Richardson enjoyed his convalescence, and was in no hurry to complete the process.
As for Quita, she was unconsciously slipping back to her favourite pastime, to that alluring compound of friends.h.i.+p and etherealised flirtation which she had likened to fencing with the b.u.t.tons off the foils. The outcome of her last fencing-bout might have awakened glimmerings of caution in a less reckless offender. But Richardson was not to be named in the same day with James Garth; and in his case it was less a matter of fencing than of 'two heads bending over the same board till they touch, and the thrill pa.s.ses between them'; a dangerous variation of the same amus.e.m.e.nt. The two heads had not touched as yet.
In all probability they never would. But prophecy is unsafe where the human heart is in question: and as the month slipped by, and Eldred's reabsorption in the Battery and the hated articles left them constantly alone together, Quita grew genuinely fond of this big, fair man, with his unruffled sweetness of temper, and lazily smiling eyes. He satisfied the lighter elements in her nature as completely as her husband satisfied its deeper needs; and in truth, so little did one man's sphere of influence trench upon the other's, that she had almost been capable of loving both at once; each with a different set of faculties:--an achievement only possible to that bewildering creation, the artist woman!
Not that Quita had yet achieved anything so remarkable. But her feeling for Richardson, founded upon grat.i.tude and built up by sympathy, was a real thing; and being singularly free from the taint of baser clay, she frankly acknowledged the fact, not only to herself but, on more than one occasion, to her husband, thinking to please him by her appreciation of his friend.
But man is born to perversity as the sparks fly upward; which is more than half the reason why he is born to trouble. Also, perversity apart, it was early days for a husband, endowed with the normal man's desire for exclusive possession, to stand the strain of a triangular household. Therefore, when Quita, extolling Richardson's patience and grat.i.tude, remarked for the second time with unguarded fervour, ”One really grows much too fond of the dear fellow,” Lenox turned upon her a straight glance of scrutiny.
”Great luck for him. Have you ever told him so, I wonder?”
The undernote of sarcasm in his half-bantering tone brought the blood to her cheeks. But her manner froze in proportion to her inward heat.
”Am I given to making promiscuous declarations of that sort?”
”Not that I am aware of. But you have rather original ideas on the platonic question; and one can never quite tell where you draw the line.”
”I draw it at telling a man I am fond of him,” she answered, with a slight lift of her head. ”Even a man so little likely to misunderstand one as your d.i.c.k.”
”Is _that_ what you call him now?”
”I won't answer such a question. You may think what you please.”
Then, in defiance of dignity and pride, her lip quivered, and she came closer to him.
”Eldred, what makes you say such detestable things? I thought you wanted me to be good to him. Are you--angry with me about it now?”
The touch of hesitancy, so rare in her, disarmed the man, reawakened his better self; and slipping an arm round her, he crushed her against him with a force that took away her breath.
”I'm a selfish brute, Quita. That's all about it,” he said bluntly.
”And d.i.c.k's the best chap in the world.”
She hid her eyes a moment against his coat. Then straightened herself, and stood away from him. ”You exaggerate the selfishness, I a.s.sure you,” she said, smiling at his gravity of aspect. ”And even if you didn't, I could forgive that; but not that you should so misunderstand my whole nature. Honestly, Eldred, I would almost rather you struck me.”