Once to Every Man Part 26

There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding her leaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs lay like patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watched its whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against its lighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had had time to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed, villageward.

It wasn't a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a house under the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze from the road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simply because she couldn't watch any longer--not even for a minute or two--that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turn there was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picket fence--a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until it stood full in front of the sagging gate.

And even as she watched Denny Bolton swung around from a long contemplation of that half-torn-down building to peer up at his own dark place on the hill--to peer straight back into the eyes of the girl whom he could not even see.

She saw the bewilderment in that big body's poise; even at that distance she sensed his dumb, numbed uncomprehension. From bare white throat to the ma.s.s of tumbled hair that cl.u.s.tered across her forehead the blood came storming up into her face; and with the coming of that which set the pulses pounding in her temples and brought an unaccountable ache to her throat, all the doubt which had squired her that day slipped away.

Before he had had time to turn back again she had flown on mad feet into the kitchen, swept the lamp from its bracket on the wall with heedless haste and raced back to that front window. And she placed it there behind a half-drawn shade--that old signal which they had agreed upon without one spoken word, years back.

Crouching in the semi-gloom behind the lamp she watched.

He stepped forward a pace and stopped; lifted one hand slowly, as though he did not believe what he saw. Bareheaded he waited an instant after that arm went back to his side. When he swung around and disappeared into the head of the path that led from the gate into the black shadow of the thicket in the valley's pit she lifted both arms, too, and stood poised there a moment, slender and straight and vividly unwavering as the lamp-flame itself, before she wheeled and ran.

It was dark in the thick of the underbrush; dark and velvety quiet, save for the little moon-lit patch of a clearing where he waited. He stood there in the middle of that spot of light and heard her coming long before she reached him--long before he could see her he heard her scurrying feet and the whip of bushes against her skirt.

But when she burst through the fringe of brush he had no time to move or speak, or more than lift his arms before her swift rush carried her to him. When her hands flashed up about his neck and her damp mouth went searching softly across his face and he strained her nearer and even nearer to him, he felt her slim body quivering just as it had trembled that other night when she had raced across the valley to him--the night when Judge Maynard's invitation had failed to come.

After a time he made out the words that were tumbling from her lips, all incoherent with half hysterical bits of sobs, and he realized, too, that her words were like that of that other night.

"Denny--Denny," she murmured, her small, gold-crowned head buried in his shoulder. "I'm here--I've come--just as soon as I could; Oh, I've been afraid! I knew you'd come, too--I knew you would tonight! I was sure of it--even when I was sure that you wouldn't."

For a long time he was silent, because dry lips refused to frame the words he would have spoken. Minutes he stood and held her against him until the rise and fall of her narrow shoulders grew quieter, before he lifted one hand and held her damp face away, that he might look into it. And gazing back at him, in spite of all the wordless wonder of her which she saw glowing in his eyes, she read, too, the grave perplexity of him.

"Why--you--you must have known I'd come," he said, his voice ponderously grave. "I--I told you so. I left word for you that I would be back--as soon as I could come."

He felt her slim body slacken--saw the lightning change flash over her face which always heralded that bewildering swift change of mood. It wiped out all the tenseness of lip and line.

There in the white light in spite of the shadows of her lashes which turned violet eyes to great pools of satin shadow, he caught the flare of mischief behind half-closed lids, before she tilted her head back and laughed softly, with utter joyous abandon straight up into his face.

"He--he didn't deliver it," she stated naively. "It wasn't his fault entirely, though, Denny--although I did give him lots of chances, at first anyway. I almost made him tell--but he--he's stubborn."

She stopped and laughed again--giggled shamelessly as she remembered.

But her eyes grew grave once more.

"I think he didn't quite approve of my att.i.tude," she explained to him as he bent over her. "He thought I wasn't--sorry enough--to deserve it at first. And then--and then I never gave him any opportunity to speak. I would have stopped him if he had tried. You--you see, I just wanted to--wait."

Head bowed she paused a moment before she continued.

"But--but I sent him to you--two days ago, Denny. I sent something that I asked him to give you--when--when it was over. Didn't you--get it?"

He fumbled in the pocket of his smooth black suit after she had disengaged herself and dropped to the ground at his feet. With her ankles curled up under her she sat in a boyish heap watching him, until he drew out the bit of a spangled crimson bow and held it out before him in the palm of one big hand. Then he swung down to the ground beside her.

"I thought it must have been Old Jerry who brought it. I didn't see him, and no one could remember his name or knew where he had gone when they thought to look for him. They--they just described him to me."

He turned the bow of silk over, touching it almost reverently.

"Some one gave it to me," he continued slowly. "I don't know exactly how or when. It--it was just put into my hand--when I needed it most.

I wasn't sure Old Jerry had brought it, but I knew it came from you, knew it when I didn't--know--much--else!"

She was very, very quiet, content merely in his nearness. Even then she didn't understand it--the reason for his going that night, weeks before--for the papers which had told her a little had told her nothing of his brain's own reason. The question was on her lips when her narrow fingers, searching the shadow for his, found that bandaged wrist and knuckles. Almost fiercely she drew that hand up into the light. From the white cloth her gaze went to the discolored, bruised patches on face and chin--the same place where that long, ugly cut had been which dripped blood on the floor the night she had run from him in the dark--went to his face, and back again, limpid with pity. And she lifted it impulsively and tucked it under her chin, and held it there with small hands that trembled a little.

"Then--then if you haven't seen Old Jerry--why--why you--he couldn't have told you anything at all yet, about me."

The words trailed off softly and left the statement hanging interrogatively in midair.

Denny nodded his head in the direction of John Anderson's house that had been.

"About that?" he asked.

She nodded her head. And then she told him; she began at the very beginning and told him everything from that night when she had watched him there under cover of the thicket. Once she tried to laugh when she related Old Jerry's panic, a week or two later, when he had come to find her packing in preparation to leave. But her mirth was waveringly unsteady. And when she tried to explain, too, how she had chanced to buy up the mortgage on his own bleak house on the hill, her voice again became suddenly, diffidently small.

There was a new, sweet confusion in her refusal to meet his eyes and Denny, reaching out with his bandaged hand, half lifted her and swung her around until she needs must face him.

"You--you mean you--bought it, yourself?" he marvelled.

Then, face uplifted, brave-eyed, she went on a little breathlessly.

"I bought it, myself," she said, "the week you went away." And, in a m.u.f.fled whisper: "Denny, I didn't have faith--not much, at first. But I meant to be here when you did come, just--just because I thought you might need me--mighty badly. And waiting is hard, too, when one hasn't faith. And I did wait! That was something, wasn't it, Denny?

Only--only now, today, I--I think I realized that my own need of you is greater than yours could ever be for me!"

She sat, lips apart, quiet for his answer.

An odd smile edged the boy's lips at her wistful earnestness. It was a twisted little smile which might have been born of the pain of stinging lids and dryer, aching throat. He could not have spoken at that moment had he tried. Instead he lifted her bodily and drew her huddled little figure into his arms. It was his first face to face glimpse of the wonder of woman.

But he knew now something which she had only sensed; he knew that the big, lonesome, bewildered boy whom she had tried to comfort in his bitterness that other night when she had hidden her own hurt disappointment with the white square card within her breast, had come back all man.

He looked down at her--marvelled at her very littleness as though it were a thing he had never known before.

"And--and you still--would stay?" he managed to ask, at last. "You'd stay--even if it did mean being like them," he inclined his head toward the distant village, "like them, old and wrinkled and worn-out, before they have half lived their lives?"

She nodded her head vehemently against his coat. He felt her thin arms tighten and tighten about him.

"I'll stay," she repeated after him in a childishly small voice.

"You--you see, I _know_ what it is now to be alone, even just for a week or two. I think I'll stay, please!"

There had been a bit of a teasing lilt in her half smothered words. It disappeared now.

"I--I'd be pretty lonesome, all the rest of my life--man--if I didn't!"

And long afterward she lifted her head from his arm and blinked at him from sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes.

"Why, Denny?" she asked in drowsy curiosity. "Why did you go--why, really? Don't you realize that you haven't told me even yet?"

He rose and lifted her to her feet, but that did not cover the slow flush that stained his face--the old, vaguely embarra.s.sed flush that she knew so well. He groped awkwardly for words while he stared again at the bit of silk in his hand, before his searching fingers found the thick, crisp packet that had lain with it in his pocket.

"The Pilgrim's share of the receipts amounted to $12,000," had been the tale of Morehouse's succinct last paragraph.

Then, "It--took me almost two months to save fifteen dollars," Young Denny explained in painful self-consciousness.

She understood. She remembered the scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt with its dots of tinsel, and the stockings and slim-heeled slippers.