Part 41 (1/2)
She read on from the letter: ”'All of us at St. Mary's are feeling very sore about lawyers. Old Mr. Winthrop had left the hospital fifteen thousand dollars in his will, and we'd been counting on that to make some changes in the operating-room and the men's accident ward that are awfully needed. And now comes along a miserable lawyer who finds something the matter with the will, and everything goes to that worthless Charlie Winthrop, who'll probably blow it all in on one grand poker-playing spree. It makes me tired! We can't begin to keep up with the latest X-ray developments without the new apparatus, and only the other day we lost a case, a man hurt in a railroad wreck, that I know we could have pulled through if we'd been better equipped!
Well, hard luck! But I try to remember Mother's old uncle's motto, ”Whatever else you do, _don't_ make a fuss!” Father has been off for a few days, speaking before Alumni reunions. He looks very well. Mother has got her new fruit cellar fixed up, and it certainly is great.
She's going to keep the carrots and parsnips there too. I've just heard that I'm going to graduate first in my cla.s.s--thought you might like to know. Have a good time, Sylvia. And don't let your imagination get away with you.
”'Your loving sister,
”'JUDITH,'”
”Of all the perfect characterizations!” murmured Page, as Sylvia finished. ”I can actually see her and hear her!”
”Oh, there's n.o.body like Judith!” agreed Sylvia, falling into a reverie, her eyes on the fire.
The peaceful silence which ensued spoke vividly of the intimacy between them.
After a time Sylvia glanced up, and finding her companion's eyes abstractedly fixed on the floor, she continued to look into his face, noting its fine, somewhat gaunt modeling, the level line of his brown eyebrows, the humor and kindness of his mouth. The winter twilight cast its first faint web of blue shadow into the room. The fire burned with a steady blaze.
As minute after minute of this hushed, wordless calm continued, Sylvia was aware that something new was happening to her, that something in her stirred which had never before made its presence known. She felt very queer, a little startled, very much bewildered. What was that half-thought fluttering a dusky wing in the back of her mind? It came out into the twilight and she saw it for what it was. She had been wondering what she would feel if that silent figure opposite her should rise and take her in his arms. As she looked at that tender, humorous mouth, she had been wondering what she would feel to press her lips upon it?
She was twenty-three years old, but so occupied with mental effort and physical activity had been her life, that not till now had she known one of those half-daring, half-frightened excursions of the fancy which fill the hours of any full-blooded idle girl of eighteen. It was a woman grown with a girl's freshness of impression, who knew that ravished, scared, exquisite moment of the first dim awakening of the senses. But because it was a woman grown with a woman's capacity for emotion, the moment had a solemnity, a significance, which no girl could have felt. This was no wandering, flitting, winged excursion.
It was a grave step upon a path from which there was no turning back.
Sylvia had pa.s.sed a milestone. But she did not know this. She sat very still in her chair as the twilight deepened, only knowing that she could not take her eyes from those tender, humorous lips. That was the moment when if the man had spoken, if he had but looked at her ...
But he was following out some thought of his own, and now rose, went to Mrs. Marshall-Smith's fine, small desk, snapped on an electric light, and began to write.
When he finished, he handed a bit of paper to Sylvia. ”Do you suppose your sister would be willing to let me make up for the objectionable Charlie Winthrop's deficiences?” he asked with a deprecatory air as though he feared a refusal.
Sylvia looked at the piece of paper. It was a check for fifteen thousand dollars. She held there in her hand seven years of her father's life, as much money as they all had lived on from the years she was sixteen until now. And this man had but to dip pen into ink to produce it. There was something stupefying about the thought to her.
She no longer saw the humor and tenderness of his mouth. She looked up at him and thought, ”What an immensely rich man he is!” She said to him wonderingly, ”You can't imagine how strange it is--like magic--not to be believed--to have money like that!”
His face clouded. He looked down uncertainly at his feet and away at the lighted electric bulb. ”I thought it might please your sister,” he said and turned away.
Sylvia was aghast to think that she had perhaps wounded him. He seemed to fear that he had flaunted his fortune in her face. He looked acutely uncomfortable. She found that, as she had thought, she could say anything, anything to him, and say it easily. She went to him quickly and laid her hand on his arm. ”It's splendid,” she said, looking deeply and frankly into his eyes. ”Judith will be too rejoiced! It _is_ like magic. And n.o.body but you could have done it so that the money seems the least part of the deed!”
He looked down at her, touched, moved, his eyes very tender, but sad as though with a divination of the barrier his fortune eternally raised between them.
The door opened suddenly and Mrs. Marshall-Smith came in quickly, not looking at them at all. From the pale agitation of her face they recoiled, startled and alarmed. She sat down abruptly as though her knees had given way under her. Her gloved hands were perceptibly trembling in her lap. She looked straight at Sylvia, and for an instant did not speak. If she had rushed in screaming wildly, her aspect to Sylvia's eyes would scarcely have been more eloquent of portentous news to come. It was a fitting introduction to what she now said to them in an unsteady voice: ”I've just heard--a despatch from Jamiaca--something terrible has happened. The news came to the American Express office when I was there. It is awful. Molly Sommerville driving her car alone--an appalling accident to the steering-gear, they think. Molly found dead under the car.”
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
THE ROAD IS NOT SO CLEAR
It shocked Sylvia that Molly's death should make so little difference.
After one sober evening with the stunning words fresh before their eyes, the three friends quickly returned to their ordinary routine of life. It was not that they did not care, she reflected--she _did_ care. She had cried and cried at the thought of that quivering, vital spirit broken by the inert crus.h.i.+ng ma.s.s of steel--she could not bring herself to think of the soft body, mangled, b.l.o.o.d.y. Austin cared too: she was sure of it; but when they had expressed their pity, what more could they do? The cabled statement was so bald, they hardly could believe it--they failed altogether to realize what it meant--they had no details on which to base any commentary. She who had lived so intensely, was dead. They were sorry for her. That was all.
As an apology for their seeming callousness they reiterated Aunt Victoria's dictum: ”We can know nothing about it until Felix comes.
Let us hold our minds in suspense until we know what to think.” That Morrison would be in Paris soon, none of them doubted. Indeed, they united in insisting on the number of natural--oh, perfectly natural--reasons for his coming. He had always spent a part of every winter there, had in fact a tiny apartment on the Rue St. Honore which dated from his bachelor life; and now he had a double reason for coming, since much of Molly's fortune chanced to be in French bonds.
Her father had been (among other things) American agent for the Comptoir National des Escomptes, and he had taken advantage of his unusual opportunities for acquiring solid French and remunerative Algerian securities. Page had said at once that Morrison would need to go through a good many formalities, under the French laws. So pending fuller information, they did not discuss the tragedy. Their lives ran on, and Molly, dead, was in their minds almost as little as Molly, living but absent, had been.
It was only two months before Felix Morrison arrived in Paris. They had expected him. They had spoken of the chance of his arrival on this or that day. Sylvia had rehea.r.s.ed all the possible forms of self-possession for their first meeting; but on the rainy February afternoon when she came in from representing Aunt Victoria at a reception and saw him sitting by the fire, her heart sank down and stopped for an instant, and when it went on beating she could hear no sound but the drumming of her pulse. The back of his chair was towards her. All she could see as she stood for a moment in the doorway was his head, the thick, graying dark hair, and one long-fingered, sensitive, beautiful hand lying on the arm of the chair. At the sight, she felt in her own palm the soft firmness of those fingers as palpably as ever she had in reality.