Major Vigoureux Part 33

"Were I but young for thee, as I haz been, We should have been gallopin' down in your green.

And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea; And ah, gin I were but young for thee!"

Of a sudden he sat up stiffly, at the sound of a tap-tap on the window-pane behind him.

Yes, decidedly the sound came from the window. The wind--as Archelaus had said--was rising; but this was no wind. Someone stood outside there in the darkness. He sprang up, stepped to the cas.e.m.e.nt and threw it open. For a moment his eyes distinguished nothing. He peered again and drew back a little as a figure stepped close to the sill, out of the night.

"You!"

"Who else?" answered Vashti, with a little laugh. "Give me your hand, please." He stretched it out obediently, and she took it and clambered in over the sill.

"It is cold outside," she announced, looking around her with something between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same furred cloak in which she had come ash.o.r.e from the _Milo_. Spray clung to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the lamplight.

"The wind has been getting up ever since sundown," she announced. "I have had a pretty stiff crossing; but the boat is all right, under the Keg of b.u.t.ter." Then, as he still stared at her, "You don't keep too warm a fire, my friend."

"I had given you up, and was getting ready for bed."

"Then you expected me? The guitar has come?"

Before he could answer she had caught sight of it, and picking it up from the arm-chair where the Commandant had dropped it, settled herself and laid the instrument across her lap.

"Also," she went on, throwing back her cloak, while she examined and tightened the strings, "I will confess that your guest is hungry." She looked up with a laugh. "In fact I came not only to fetch my guitar, but to sup with you and tell you of my doings."

The Commandant turned to the door. His face had suddenly grown gray and desperate.

"Ah, yes--supper, to be sure!" he said, and strode from the room.

As the latch fell behind him, Vashti glanced over her shoulder, put the guitar aside, and arose to stir the fire. The poker plunged into a heap of flaked ashes. "Paper? But the whole grate is choked with it. And, what is more, the whole room smells of burnt paper."

She turned about, and, with her back to the hearth, surveyed the room suspiciously. Her gaze fell upon the waste-paper basket, heaped high and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with torn doc.u.ments. This puzzled her again, and her brow contracted in a frown. But just then she caught the sound of the Commandant's footsteps returning along the flagged pa.s.sage, and bent anew over the fire.

The Commandant appeared in the doorway with a plate of ship's biscuit in his hand, and on his face a flush of extreme embarra.s.sment.

"Do you know, I really am ashamed of myself," he began with a stammer, holding out the plate. "But Archelaus has gone to bed, and--and this is all I can find."

"Capital!" she answered gaily. "Let us break into the back premises and forage. After my burglarious entry that will just suit my mood."

"I'm afraid--" he began, and hesitated. "I am very much afraid--" There was unmistakable trouble in his voice, and again he came to a halt.

Vashti straightened herself up. Her eyes were on him as he set the plate down on the table, but he avoided them, attempting a small forced laugh. The laugh was a dead failure. Silence followed it, and in the silence he felt horribly aware that she was grasping the truth--the humiliating truth; that moment by moment the scales were falling from her eyes that still persistently sought his.

The silence was broken by the noise of a poker falling against the fender. He started, met her gaze for a moment, and again averted his.

"You don't mean to say----"

Her voice trailed off, in pitiful surmise. Silence again; and in the silence he heard her sink back into the arm chair--and knew no more until, at the sound of one strangling sob, terrible to hear, he found himself standing at the arm of her chair and bending over her.

"My dear!" He used the familiar Island speech. "My dear, you must not--please!"

"And I have been living on you, ruining you!"

"My dear ... it is all paid for. It was paid for to-day. If ever a man was glad of his guest, I am he."

But she bent her head over the arm of the chair, sobbing silently. He saw the heave of her shoulders, and it afflicted him beyond words. But, though he longed, he dared not put out a hand to comfort her.

"You mistake--yes, you mistake.... It has been nothing.... I was only too glad," he kept stammering weakly.

She pulled herself together and sat upright. A moment her tear-stained eyes met his, then turned to the fire, which had begun to dance again on its small heap of coals.

"Now I see," said she, resting an elbow on the arm of the chair and so supporting her chin, while she stared resolutely into the blaze. She had resumed command of her voice. "Ah, pardon me, now I understand many things that puzzled me at first.... I--I am not a fool in money matters." She hesitated.

"I know you are not," he a.s.sured her gently. "And that, if you will understand, increased the small difficulty."

"Yes, I understand. But somehow--it was a long time since I had been acquainted with--with----"

"Want," he suggested. "Since you know the worst, do not hurt me more than you are obliged."

"G.o.d knows," she said, after an interval of musing, "I would hurt you last of all living men. Will you be kind to me, and trust me?"

"On conditions."

"Yes?" She glanced up with a strange eagerness in her eyes. "What conditions?"

"That you do not pity me at all; that you believe I have suffered nothing, or only such pain as has edged the joy of serving you."

She looked away and into the fire. "You make me very proud," she said.

"Yes. I can easily grant your conditions. I could not pity a man who practised so n.o.ble a courtesy."

The Commandant shook his head with a whimsical smile. "My dear," he answered, "it's undeniably pleasant to stand well in your opinion, but I am not used to compliments, and you run some risk of making me a vain fellow. You asked me to trust you. With what?"

"With the reason why you are poor."

"That," said he, "can be very simply told," and, briefly, in the simplest possible style, he told her of his brother's death, and how his sister-in-law and her family had been left in dest.i.tution. "You see," he wound up, "it's just an ordinary sad little tale. Cases of that kind happen daily, all the world over. One must be thankful when they happen within reach of help."

"Is your sister-in-law thankful?" asked Vashti, sharply. "But there!"

she added, as he stared at her obviously at a loss to find the question relevant. "You are quite right. It really does not matter two pins whether she is thankful or not." She turned her eyes to the fire again and sat musing. "But I am glad to have heard the story," she went on after a while. "It explains--oh, many things! I have been blind, inconsiderate; but I am seeing light at last. Do you know, my friend, that at first I found a great change in you?"

"Why--bless me!--you had only seen me once before in your life, and then for two minutes!"

"Listen, please, and don't interrupt. I found a great change in you, and the reason of it seemed to lie all on the surface. You had brought ambitions to the Islands, but you had forgotten them. You kept your kindness, your good nature, but you had forgotten all purpose in life.

In all, except a few personal habits, you were neglecting yourself; and this neglect came of your being content to live purposeless in this forgotten hole, and draw your pay without asking questions. Forgive me, but I seemed to see all this, and it drove me half wild."

He bowed his head. "I know it did," he answered very slowly, "and that is how you came to save me."

"Is--is this another story?" she asked, after eyeing him a moment or two in bewilderment.

"If you will listen to it." He drew his writing chair over to the fireside, and then, facing her across the hearth he told her the second story as simply as he had told the first, but more nervously, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, now and again spreading out his hands to the fire on which he kept his eyes bent during most of the recital. Vashti, too, leaned forward, intent on his face. One hand gripped the arm of her chair--so tightly that its pressure drove the blood from the finger tips, while the wonder in her eyes changed to something like awe. "And so," the commandant concluded, "the letter has gone. I posted it to-day."

"What will happen?"