At the Age of Eve Part 29

"You thought I wanted to catch him for Evelyn?" she asked without embarra.s.sment. "Well, I did, but I shouldn't have gone to such lengths, except for the sake of keeping Richard in a good humor."

"Then he'll be in a very bad humor with me when he hears that I was the one who told about Sophie," I suggested, but she cut me short.

"Oh, he's in such a fiendish humor about something that happened to him on this trip of his that he will forget all about these things here at home."

"Is there some sort of political trouble?" I asked anxiously, but she shook her head.

"Richard never mentions his business affairs to us," she said, as she smoothed down her kimono and followed Sophie up the stairs.

Half an hour later Richard met me at the door of the breakfast-room, looking very tired and morose. We sat down and ate breakfast in unchaperoned gloom. He asked me a few perfunctory questions about the happenings here since he left, but he volunteered no information as to what kind of business it was which had taken him away, nor where he had been.

After breakfast we established ourselves in the library, he with a batch of newspapers which he had brought with him from the city and I had a new magazine, but he seemed to care little for reading, and he sat and smoked in moody silence for a while. The day was warm, but the sunshine of the early morning grew fainter, and by noon there were signs of a thunder-shower, the clouds seeming to gather from all directions; and the air became oppressively heavy.

Richard finally threw away the end of his cigar, yawned a time or two in an abstracted sort of fashion, then got up and walked over to the window. He pulled aside the curtains and looked out at the threatening sky.

"Get your hat and let's go out for a little fresh air before it rains," he suggested as he came back and threw himself into his chair again, stretching out his long legs to the fire.

I got up obediently and started toward the door, but he reached out, caught my hand and stopped me.

"Isn't it a devilish old day?" he said lazily, as he drew me down toward him. "You haven't kissed me once since I came home. Don't you love me any more?"

"Love you? Of course I love you!" I answered, kissing him on the forehead and smoothing back his fair hair. I had entirely forgotten the traitorous thoughts of the early morning. "But you have been in _such_ a mood! Who wants to kiss something that looks about as lover-like as Rameses II?"

He smiled a little and took my face between his hands.

"I _am_ a savage," he admitted, though not at all bearing the appearance of one at that moment; "but I've had a lot to try me lately--and then I was so disgusted when I came home and found that mother had let Evelyn dance herself into another of these attacks."

"Oh, Richard! Surely you don't really think it was the dance that brought it on? It might have been the dinner--but I shouldn't even suggest that to your mother. She is miserable enough already. You ought to try to comfort her."

"That's very charitable of you," he said, a sarcastic little flicker around the corners of his mouth, "but, all the same, I find that I can manage my womenkind better to use a little frankness with them occasionally."

I drew back from him somewhat.

"Frankness?" I cried in genuine surprise at his cold sarcasm. "Even if frankness were the right name for--this, do you consider that now is the time for it? When she is so wretched?"

He turned from me and threw down the paper he had picked up a moment before as I stood talking to him.

"Let's don't quarrel," he said finally, in a low tone; and, impulsively reaching out both hands to me, he added: "And, Ann, for G.o.d's sake, don't ever act as if you were afraid of me!"

"Afraid of you!"

He smiled. I think he has the most adorable smile of any man on earth.

"Go and get your hat," he said.

As I came down-stairs again with my hat on I found Sophie standing at the front door talking with Richard. She was dressed entirely in the garb of a nurse by this time, and I looked admiringly at the becoming white uniform, but Richard made no reference to the change nor anything that it entailed.

"Sophie thinks that we would better not go very far," he said to me as he stepped outside into the vestibule and looked up again at the clouds. "She says Evelyn is not resting so well--and mother, of course, has entirely lost her grip."

"Do you think that there is any new danger in Evelyn's case?" I asked anxiously.

"Well, we are eager for the surgeon to get here as quickly as possible," she answered.

"He'll be here on the noon train, and, of course, he can operate immediately. And it hasn't been nearly twenty-four hours since the onset of the acute attack. The mortality is less than one per cent, if taken within--"

I had been looking into Sophie's eyes as I spoke and had not observed that Richard was listening intently to what I was saying, but as I made use of this last bit of medical jargon a contemptuous little half-laugh broke from him and I looked up quickly. He was smiling sardonically.

"Of course your friend, Doctor Morgan, is your authority," he said, his brows elevated and a disagreeable expression around his mouth.

"He is--and I couldn't ask a better," I flashed back at him.

We stood thus a moment, our eyes meeting in fiery challenge, and in that brief moment I realized that such a scene repeated a few times would cause us to hate each other. I felt suddenly as if the earth were receding from me and leaving me in a very uncertain stratum of air. I was violently angry with Richard--and he was infuriated.

"It's a pity the public continues to display such a lamentable ignorance in regard to this wonderful Hippocrates of yours," he sneered, though in an even voice.

"That ignorance is growing less every day," I responded easily, so easily, in fact, that I am sure Sophie never suspected that we were both at white heat.

But she was embarra.s.sed at the bad taste we were both exhibiting, so she made some excuse and quickly left us. We walked slowly down toward the gate, not that there was any joy left in the prospect of a quiet walk together, but because there seemed nothing better to do right then. Out through the gate and quite a distance up the street we pa.s.sed before either of us spoke, and I noticed once that his right hand, which clasped his slender silk umbrella, was trembling.

"Ann," he said finally, speaking in a remarkably low, gentle voice, "why does it seem to give you such pleasure to torture me that way?"

"Torture you?" I answered. "Oh, Richard! Why should you torture yourself into a pa.s.sion if I but mention anything even remotely connected with the medical profession?"

"Medical profession!" His voice was still very quiet. "You would imply then that I am--that I am jealous of this yearling doctor?"

There was infinite contempt in the word "yearling."

"I don't _imply_!" I responded warmly. "I have good, clear English for what I wish to say."

"You certainly have for all that you wish to say about this paragon of yours."

"He _is_ a paragon; but he isn't mine."

"No? I wonder why? You certainly might have won him!"

Was this a lovers' quarrel? I had always heard them spoken of as being frivolous, make-believe disagreements, whose sting was light as thistle-down and whose shadows were quick to disappear at the dawn of a beloved smile. But if this were true, then my altercation with Richard was a much more serious affair, for I found my patience strained to the breaking point when I finally burst out: "Richard, hush! This is disgraceful! I will not quarrel with you any longer. You make me wish that I had never seen your face!"

My vehemence seemed to startle him out of his own wrath, or, at all events, it acted as a signal to him that he was to go no further, for he began to retract; not humbly, not penitently, as if he had found himself in the wrong, but with a sudden sparkling brilliance, his eyes and his smile dazzling my senses as they did the sunny afternoon we spent together, sitting on the orchard fence.

"Well, I'm glad I have seen your face," he said fondly, as he looked down upon me with that same air of possession, "for you are the prettiest little spitfire I ever saw."

He suggested that we walk up to the river side, not a great distance away, but it is as secluded a spot as if it were miles away from human habitation. There are thickets of undergrowth just beyond a skirt of woods, and a stone wall where we might sit down for a quiet little talk.

We made for this spot in silence, and, as he placed a strong, lithe hand on either side of my waist to lift me bodily up on the wall he said, with that same directness of manner which I found characterized his speech: "Ann, I beg your pardon--ten thousand times, sweetheart!

Will you forgive me--and--and kiss me?"

His lips were already upon mine, and I knew then that there was nothing in this life so beautiful and sweet and intoxicating as their touch. I gave myself up to the exquisite madness with an abandon which shuts out all knowledge that Richard and I are not comrades, not even friends--that we have no ideals in common, no similar tastes! What does all this matter when he has his arms about me and I am so close to him that I can hear the quick thump, thump of his heart-beats, and I know how they quicken for me! Nothing matters! I love him!

"That's my own little girl," he said radiantly, as he lifted his face from mine and saw my entire surrender. "This is the first moment to-day that I have felt as if you really love me."