Once to Every Man Part 3

"You've not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn't be frightened like that!

We know, you and I, don't we, that you never could forget? You're just tired. Now, that's better--that's brave! And now--look! Isn't this the way--isn't this the way it ought to be?"

Face uptilted, bloodless lips falling apart in the faintest of pallid smiles, she swayed forward, both arms outstretched toward him. And as she stood the wide eyes and straight nose and delicately pointed chin of her colorless face took line for line the lines of all those, chalky white, against the wall.

For a moment John Anderson's eyes clung to her--clung vacant with hopeless doubt; then they glowed again with dawning recollection. He, too, was smiling once more as his fingers fluttered in nervous haste above the lips of the clay face on the bench before him, and almost before the girl had stepped back beside him he had forgotten that she was there.

"Marie!" she heard him murmur. "Marie, why, you mustn't be afraid!

We'll never forget--you and I--we never could forget!"

Even while she waited another instant those plastic earthen lips began to curl--they began to curve with hungry longing like all the rest. He was talking steadily now, mumbling broken fragments of sentences which it was hard to understand. Her hand hovered a moment longer over his bowed head; once at the door she paused and looked back at him.

"It's only for a little while," she promised unsteadily. "I--I have to go--but it's only for a little while. I'll be back soon--so soon! And you'll be safe until I come!"

He gave no sign that he had heard, not even so much as a lifted glance. But as she drew the door shut behind her she heard him pick up the words, caressingly, after her.

"You'll be safe, Marie," he whispered. "It'll be only for a little while, now. You'll be safe till I come." An ineffably peaceful smile flickered across his face. "We couldn't forget--why, of course, we couldn't forget--you and I!"

With the short black skirt lifted even higher above her ankles that she might make still more speed, Dryad turned into the dark path that twisted crookedly through the brush to the open clearing beside the brook and from there on to the black house on the hill.

She ran swiftly, madly, through the darkness, with the wild, panic-stricken, headlong abandon of a hunted thing, finding the narrow trail ahead of her by instinct alone. Only once she overran it, but that once a low hanging branch, face high, caught her full across the forehead and sent her crashing back in the underbrush. Just once she put one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevice between two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall that racked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect she was talking--stammering half incoherent words that came bursting jerkily from her lips as she tore on.

"Help me ... in time ... G.o.d," she panted, "Just this once ... get to him ... in time. Lord, forgive ... own vanity. Oh, G.o.d, please in time!"

Small feet drumming the harder ground, she flashed up the last rise and across the yard to the door of that unlighted kitchen. Her hands felt for the latch and failed to find it; then she realized that it was already open--the door--but her knees, all the strength suddenly drained from them at the black quiet in that room, refused to carry her over the threshold. She rocked forward, reaching out with one hand for the frame to steady herself, and in that same instant the man who lay a huddled motionless heap across the table top, moved a little and began to speak aloud.

"They didn't want me," he muttered, and the words came with m.u.f.fled thickness. "Not even for the strength of my shoulders."

She took one faltering step forward--the girl who stood there swaying in the doorway--and stopped again. And the man lifted his head and laughed softly, a short, ugly rasping laugh.

"Not even for the work I could do," he finished.

And then she understood. She tried to call out to him, and the words caught in her throat and choked her. She tried again and this time her voice rang clear through the room.

"Denny," she cried, "Denny, I've come to you! Strike a light! I'm here, Denny, and--oh, I'm afraid--afraid of the dark!"

Before he could rise, almost before his big-shouldered body whirled in the chair toward her, her swift rush carried her across to him. She knelt at his knees, her thin arms clutching him with desperate strength. Denny Bolton felt her body shudder violently as he leaned over, dumb with bewilderment, and put his hands on her bowed head.

"Thank G.o.d," he heard her whispering, "thank G.o.d--thank G.o.d!"

But far more swiftly than his half numbed brain could follow she was on her feet the next instant, tense and straight and lancelike in the gloom.

"d.a.m.n 'em," she hissed. "d.a.m.n 'em--d.a.m.n 'em--d.a.m.n 'em!"

His fingers felt for and found a match and struck it. Her face was working convulsively, twisted with hate, both small fists lifted toward the huge house that crowned the opposite hill. It made him remember that first day when he had looked up, with the rabbit struggling in his arms, and found her standing there in the thicket before him, only now the fury that blazed in her eyes was not for him.

There was a rough red welt across her forehead only half hidden by the tumbled hair that cascaded to her waist, torn loose from its scant fastenings by the whipping brush. And as he stood with the flame of the flickering match scorching his fingers, Denny Bolton remembered all the rest--he remembered the light that still burned unanswered in the window across the valley. He bowed his head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HOLD ME TIGHT--OH! HOLD ME TIGHTER! FOR THEY FORGOT ME, TOO, DENNY; THEY FORGOT ME TOO!"]

"I--I forgot," he faltered at last. "I did not know it was so late. I must have been--pretty tired."

Slowly the girl's clenched hands came away from her throat while she stared up into his face, brown and lean and very hard and bitter. The ashen terror upon her own cheeks disappeared with a greater, growing comprehension of all that lay behind that dully colorless statement.

For just a moment her fingers hovered over the opening at the neck of her too small blouse and felt the thick white card that lay hidden within, before she lifted both arms to him in impulsive compa.s.sion, trying to smile in spite of the wearily childish droop at the corners of her lips.

"I know, Denny," she quavered. "I--I understand." Her arms slipped up around his neck. "Hold me tight--oh, hold me tighter! For they forgot me, too, Denny; they forgot me, too!"

As his arms closed about her slim body she buried her bright head against the vividly checkered coat and sobbed silently--great noiseless gasps that shook her small shoulders terribly. Once, after a long time, when she held his face away to peer up at him through br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes, she saw that all the numb bitterness was gone from it--that he had forgotten all else save her own hurt.

"Why, you mustn't feel so badly for me," she told him then, warmly tremulous of mouth. "I--I don't mind now, very much. Only"--her voice broke unsteadily--"only I did want to go just once where all the others go; I wanted them to see me just once in a skirt that's long enough for me--and--and to wear stockings without any patches, and silk, Denny, silk--next to my skin!"

CHAPTER IV

At her first swift coming when she had cried out to him there in the dark and run across to kneel at his knees, a dull, shamed flush had stained his lean cheeks with the realization that, in his own great bitterness he had failed even to wonder whether she had been forgotten, too.

Now as his big hand hovered over the tumbled brightness of her hair, loose upon his sleeve, that hot shame in turn disappeared. After the quivering gasps were all but stilled, he twice opened his lips as if to speak, and each time closed them again without a word. He was smiling a faint, gravely gentle smile that barely lifted the corners of his lips when she turned in his arms and lifted her face once more to him.

"We don't mind very much," she repeated in a half whisper. "Do we--either of us--now?"

Slowly he shook his head. With effortless ease he stooped and swung her up on one arm, seating her upon the bare table before the window.

Another match flared between his fingers and the whole room sprang into brightness as he touched the point of flame to the wick of the lamp bracketed to the wall beside him.

She sat, leaning forward a little, both elbows resting upon her slim knees, both feet swinging pendulum-like high above the floor, watching with a small frown of curiosity growing upon her forehead, while he stooped without a word of explanation and dragged a bulky package from the table and placed it beside her. Then she sighed aloud, an audible sigh of sheer surprise after he had broken the string and drawn aside the paper wrapper.

Just as they had seemed in the picture they lay there under her amazed eyes--the pointed, satiny black slippers of the dancing girl, with their absurdly slender heels and brilliant buckles, and filmy stockings to match. And underneath lay two folded squares of shimmering stuff, dull black and burnished scarlet, scarce thicker than the silk of the stockings themselves.

The faint, vaguely self-conscious smile went from Denny Bolton's lips while he stood and watched her bend and touch each article, one by one--the barest ghost of contact. Damp eyes glowing, lips curled half open, she lifted her head at last and gazed at him, as he stood with hands balanced on his hips before her.

A moment she sat immobile, her breath coming and going in soft, fluttering gasps, and looked into his sober, questioning face; then she turned again and picked up one web-like stocking and held it against her cheek, as hotly tinted now beneath its smooth whiteness as the shining scarlet cloth beside her.

He heard her murmur to herself little, broken, incoherent phrases that he could not catch.

"Denny," he heard her whisper, "Denny--Denny!"

And then, with the tiny slippers huddled in her lap, her hands flashed out and caught his face and drew it down against the too-small white blouse, open at the throat.

"Man--man," she said, and he felt her breast rise and fall, rise and fall, against his cheek. "Man, you didn't understand! It--it wasn't the clothes, Denny, but--but I'm all the gladder, I think, because you're so much of a man that you couldn't, not even if I tried a hundred years to explain."

He drew the chair at the side of the table around in front of her and dropped into it. With a care akin to reverence he lifted one slipper and held it outstretched at arm's length upon his broad palm.

"I--I hadn't exactly forgotten, tonight," he told her. "I'd watched for the light, and I meant to bring them--when I came." His steady eyes dropped to her slim, swinging feet. "They're the smallest they had in any shop at the county-seat," he went on, and the slow smile came creeping back across his face. "I crossed over through the timber late last night, after we had broken camp, and I--I had to guess the size. Shall we--try them on?"

She reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the small thing of satin and leather away from him with mock jealous impetuosity, a little reckless gurgle of utter delight breaking from her lips.

"Over these," she demanded, lifting one foot and pointing at the thickly patched old stocking above the dingy, string-tied shoe.

"You--you are trying to shame me, Denny--you want to make me confess they are too small!"