A Fool There Was Part 13

He did not see The Woman again that day.... Her room was across the corridor from his. He heard her voice, directing the steward to bring to her her dinner....

It was dark that night--dark as night seldom gets in the northern lat.i.tudes, in June. The lights of the deck looked like vigorous glowworms. The stars seemed very far away. Far below, as he paced, he could see dimly a great blackness that was the sea, and against it the white of the waves as they broke sullenly against the huge hull.... Later it became yet more black. The stars vanished.... The ship seemed a world of its own, hurling through an eternity of utter, deadly s.p.a.ce. A wind sprang up, a wind from the East, wet and vicious, a wind that spat upon one, that chilled one, that slapped one with clammy fingers.

Schuyler paced the deck. Coming out of the dim half light of the promenade into the corner of the rail, by the bow, he thought he saw her.

He was not sure at first.... Then, though his eyes pierced no more clearly, he was sure.... He went closer. She stood there, white hands clasping the bare rail, lithe, sinewy, lazy body, tilted a bit backward as though in the grasp of the spitting wind. Her throat was bare to it, and her breast. Her lips were parted. Her eyes were deep lidded. Her head was poised like a tiger lily upon its stalk.... He stood there, enveloped in the blackness.... For a long time she stood motionless. Then she stretched her white arms above her head, stretched the long muscles of her body, as a panther stretches. She was very, very beautiful.... He stood watching.... The ship lurched. It reeled against a huge wave, shivering it into roaring spume. The wet fingers of the wind had wrapped her garments about her, every fold tight against her rounded body. She stood, arms above her head, lips parted, silhouetted against the foam....

The ship reeled again, and there came darkness utter.... When again there was light so that one might see, Schuyler stood alone.

Six bells had struck ere he went to his room. Then, scourged of body, scourged of soul, wracked, hara.s.sed, torn, he sought his berth. But he did not sleep. He thought of Parmalee, the boy who was a man. He thought of The Woman. He thought of himself. He thought of the wife that he loved. He thought of the child that he loved--the child that had come to him through that wife. He thought of all these things, and of many more; and he did not understand; he did not know. For G.o.d has shown even the wisest of us but little of this world in which we live.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

WHITE ROSES.

It was two months later. In the little garden that lay on the side of the big, rambling house at Larchmont where the sun best loved to dwell, roses were in bloom; and roses, even as the sun, seemed to love that garden. They cl.u.s.tered, great ma.s.ses of glowing white, against the latticed arbor--they caught playfully at one's hat as one would walk through the gate that led to the broad green lawn, and to the Sound beyond--they s.n.a.t.c.hed at one's clothing as one would walk past the largest bush--the one that stretched its branches across the French window. It was a real garden--an out-of-door home--a garden in which one might live, and in which one might be glad that one was alive.

At one side of a tiny writing table set upon the thick, carpet-like sward, sat the mother, pen in hand, before her a half-finished letter.

Across from her the child pressed strong white teeth into the yielding wood of her pencil; and before her, too, was a half-written letter--a sprawling, uncertain letter of childhood.

At length the child looked up. She could see that her mother was not writing; so if she spoke, she would not be interrupting.

"Mother, dear?"

"Yes, honey?"

"How do you spell love?"

"Don't you know, dearie?"

The child shook her head.

"L," prompted the mother.

Muriel ventured, dubiously:

"L-a-?"

Her mother shook her head. The child ventured again:

"L-i-?"

"No, honey."

The child kicked her brown little legs.

"Tell me, mother dear," she besought. "Please tell me."

"L-o-v-e," spelled the mother.

"Oh, yes! I 'member now.... Mother, dear?"

"Yes, little sweetheart?"

"When is a daddy coming home? It's awfully hard to write letters. He's been gone a long time now, hasn't he, mother dear?"

"Yes, dearie.... A long, long time." The violet eyes were sad.

"'Most a year?" persisted the little one.

Her mother smiled a little, wanly.

"It seems like it, doesn't it?" she said. "But it's only two months--not only two months," she corrected; "but two months."

Came a little pause. It was broken again by Muriel.

"Mother, dear."

"Yes?"

"Can't I make the rest just kisses?"

With a smile--a smile of infinite love and tenderness, the mother leaned across and kissed the child that was hers.

"Of course you may, dearie," she a.s.sented, softly.

"Why don't you write kisses, too, mother, dear?" queried the little one.

"It's lots easier.... Oh, mother, dear! I'll tell you what I wrote if you'll tell me what you wrote. Will you?"

Violet eyes gave loving a.s.sent.

"Oh, goody! We won't tell anyone else, will we?"

"No, dearie."

"Then," declared Muriel, "I'll read mine."

She picked up the wrinkled little sheet of sadly irregular chirography.

"Dear father daddy," she read. "It rained yesterday. Mother and I are well. We hope you are well and G.o.d gave our new cat four kittens." She looked up into the face of her mother. "G.o.d is awfully good to cats, isn't He, mother dear?" she asked. She went on, then, with the a.s.surance of childhood: "Please come home. We miss you. I fell in the lake yesterday, but didn't take cold. I love you.... And the rest is just kisses."

She eyed her mother anxiously.

"Do you think daddy will like that letter?" she asked.