Part 30 (1/2)
When he sat down beside her again, she again laid her hand on his.
”What is it, John?” she asked anxiously.
”Nothing!” he said, with a brief glance and smile.
”I've made you cross?”
”You!” His dark gaze was on the floor, his hands locked. For a full minute there was silence in the room. Then he looked up at her with a disturbing smile. ”I am human, Martie,” he said simply.
The note was so new in their relations.h.i.+p that Martie's heart began to hammer with astonishment and with a curious thrilling pleasure. There was nothing for her to say. She could hardly believe that he knew what he implied, or that she construed the words aright. He was so different from all other men, so strangely old in many ways, so boyish in others.
A little frightened, she smiled at him in silence. But he did not raise his eyes to meet her look.
”I did not think that when I was thirty I would be a clerk in a furniture house, Martie!” he said sombrely, after awhile.
”You may not be!” she reminded him hearteningly. And presently she added: ”I did not think that I would be a poor man's wife on the upper East Side!”
He looked up then with a quick smile.
”Isn't it the deuce?” he asked.
”Life is queer!” Martie said, shrugging.
”I was up in Connecticut last week,” John said, ”and I'll tell you what I saw there. I went up to that neighbourhood to buy some old furniture for an order we were filling--I was there only a few hours. I found a little old white house, on a river bank, with big trees over it. It was on a foundation of old stones, that had been painted white, and there was an orchard, with a stone wall. The man wanted eighteen hundred dollars for it.”
”Is THAT all?” Martie asked, amazed.
”That's all. I sat there and talked to him for awhile.”
”Well?” said Martie, as he stopped.
”Well, nothing,” he answered, after a moment's pause. ”Only I've been thinking about it ever since--what it would be to live there, and write, and walk about that little farm! Funny, isn't it? Eighteen hundred dollars--not much, only I'll never have it. And you are another poor man's wife--only not mine! Do you believe in G.o.d?”
”You know I do!” she answered, laughing, but a little shaken by his seriousness.
”You think G.o.d manages things this way?”
”John, don't talk like a high school boy!”
”I suppose it sounds that way,” he said mildly, and he rose suddenly from his chair. ”Well, I have to go!” He looked at her keenly. ”But you don't look very well, Martie,” he said. ”You've no colour at all. Is it the weather?”
”John, what a baby you are!” But Martie was amazed, under her flush of laughter, at his simplicity. Could it be possible that he did not know?
”I am expecting something very precious here one of these days,” she said. He looked at her with a polite smile, entirely uncomprehending.
”Surely you know that we--that I--am going to have another baby, John?”
she asked.
She saw the muscles of his face stiffen, and the blood rise. He looked at her steadily. A curious silence hung between them.
”Didn't you know?” Martie pursued lightly.
”No,” he said at last thickly, ”I didn't know.” He gave her a look almost frightening in its wildness; shot to the heart, he might have managed just such a smile. He made a frantic gesture with his hands.