Sunlight Patch Part 15

"I should never have been so careless if something weren't on my mind,"

he laughed now. "The truth--the true truth--is that I needed a drink of wicked whiskey. Forgive me?"

"I might not find it so difficult to forgive if, in the future, you either stop trying to deceive me or talking to me; I really don't care which!"

"I say!" he looked up in surprise. "That's pretty straight talk! But it may be a worth-while thing for you to remember that a place does exist where men can't answer every question put to them, and I very much doubt your right to a.s.sume so much simply because I choose to keep a few of my affairs to myself. When I first came in here you asked what had happened. That was sympathetic, and I appreciated it; but it was something I couldn't answer, and told you so. You may remember that you seemed to resent that. Your manner was an invitation for me to make up some sort of a fairy-tale to appease your curiosity; and if I had, and you'd found it out, you would just as readily have called me a what's-his-name. You're illogical. You don't seem to share my sense of proportion, at any rate. I wanted a drink--I needed a drink; and I had every right in the world to take it, providing I didn't offend anyone.

But it would have offended you--so why announce my intention? If I'm put in a position where some sort of explanation is demanded, and the truth can't in fairness be told, I'm thrown back on the resort which your own s.e.x has taught me--that delectable s.e.x of sweet poisons and silent stilettoes, versatile in the art of lying; queens of the art, indeed--though innocent in it. And here's another plain truth: I'd love to be frank with you, and tell you everything in the world I can, because I think you are square with lots of things which most women side-step. I can't just express it, but you're broadminded and charitable, and smash right out from the shoulder at a thing as if you didn't have skirts on. I don't put it very well, but you know what I mean!"

She thought he did not put it very well, but she knew he put it sincerely, and her reply held a vein of banter which he might not have been expecting just then:

"Perhaps you'll begin by telling about your mysterious dryad in the Forest of Arden!"

"Suspicion," he peered through the gloom at her reprovingly, "is the solvent which disintegrates happiness; and happiness, reduced to its component parts, is trash. Withdraw your question!"

"Happiness cannot be reduced to its component parts," she laughed, "because its ingredients have strayed to us from the four corners of the universe, and cannot ever be returned. I insist upon your answer!"

"You are drawing a long bow," he said more soberly. "You employ femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her G.o.ds to put something in the way of getting hit. It's a satire on honesty."

"Never mind about honesty," she laughed again. "Did my G.o.ds fail me?"

He puffed a few times at his cigarette, finally taking a deep inhalation and blowing it slowly on the lighted end until the outlines of his face became softly visible in the glow. She saw how serious it seemed, and guessed he was purposely making it so.

"Since you insist--!" he began very carefully. "My dryad in this enchanted wood is the most enticing spirit ever clothed in the graces of woman. That's all."

Again he turned to his cigarette. Again the red glow and the serious face. Again her accurate suspicion.

"If that is all, you're not playing fair. Does she live in a tree?"

"No. She lives in a big white house with big white columns; by night she haunts me, but by day she holds school for mortals in a shady grove."

"I thought you were more original than that," she said, in an expressionless voice. "So we're not to talk any more, are we!"

"But I swear--" he began.

"So do I," she interrupted him, "that you bore me to extinction with things like that, Brent; honestly you do! If you can't be just a little bit sincere, I can't be interested in you."

They had known each other for more than two months; two months of almost daily, unconventional contact, but this was the first time she had called him Brent. It came now as a master-stroke for true understanding, and he threw back his head and laughed.

"My, but you're a corker--beg pardon--I mean a live wire!"

"Overwhelming flattery in either case," she smiled, "and that's the second sincere thing you've said."

"The second! Well, I like that! Perhaps when you begin thinking less about yourself, you'll be able to see more virtues in other people!"

"No one has ever accused me of thinking particularly about myself," she righteously flushed.

"No one has to," he replied, teasingly. "Being a teacher--although a very young and charming one--presupposes egotism."

"Your a.n.a.lysis is shrewd tonight," she coolly observed.

"Not at all," he affably continued. "An egoist, and a woman whose dress is unhooked in the back, are always blissfully unconscious that the world is seeing more of them than they normally would permit."

Her hand stole to the back of her waist. He saw this and again began to laugh, saying:

"I fancy that part is all right. And you know how far I am from meaning the other, too!"

"I'm probably different from most of your friends," she spoke rather quickly, "because I'd rather tell an unpleasant truth than a conventional falsehood. Truth, to me, is the bravest and most beautiful thing in life. And one reason," she added, leaning imperceptibly nearer to see his face, "that women so love it in a man is because it makes of him a sort of restful harbor she can steer to from gathering worries. No man can possibly know how comforting it is for a girl's course to be laid within easy running distance of a safe harbor. He may know of wrecks which occur without them, but seldom considers how easily many of these might have been averted."

"Men sometimes feel that way about girls," he suggested. "Only, in girls, they ask for tenderness."

She took the rebuke, simply adding:

"Girls feel tenderness for shelter, not for a destroying sea."

They were quiet then. The hum of night life was about them, and from the house came faintly the mellow notes of a piano, where the Colonel and Bob were watching out of shadow the enraptured light in Dale's face as Ann introduced him for the first time in his life to that type of instrumental music.

As though this were in some way made known to her, Jane broke the silence.

"A man with an honest purpose in life," she gently said, "with a duty to perform, who sticks to it through thick and thin, admitting no defeat, hammering upon stubborn places, finds in good womankind an ever-ready tenderness. It is the feminine answer to masculine courage."

"There are two kinds of courage," he replied after a polite pause, "just as there are two kinds of duty, and two kinds of pride--each so closely resembling its other self that men, and particularly women, are often misled. When fear tugs at a fellow's heart (and without fear there would be no courage) he is courageous who walks resolutely into every uncertainty if duty chances to be there calling. I think you will agree with me. But what is duty? There's your stumbling block! A false conception of this--a belief that he sees ahead of him what there is not--may cause him to be sacrificed as ignominiously as a bone tossed to a dog; his life would be gobbled up for no better purpose. That's bad business. Humanity would be bankrupt at such a rate. So, if a man of courage be not also a man of foresight--"

"You mean that he would have no excuse for keeping out of danger," she laughed. "That when he saw a duty, or heard its call, he would not be able to justify himself in sitting calmly down to consider if the sacrifice were worth while! Then, indeed, would the world be a sorry place! Personally, I'd rather see fat dogs stalking over the earth than just bones!"

"I hope you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said," he flushed furiously. "Fear of physical and mental pains are just the same, requiring the same courage to go through." He stopped, as though weighing the wisdom of continuing. "Oh, I don't care," he moved uneasily, "I want to tell you nearer what I mean. Once, a long time ago--maybe three years or four--there was a girl for whom I'd have suffered anything and thanked G.o.d for the pain. That's loving some! And there was another chap, a sort of friend of mine, and a right decent sort; steady, always at work, and people said she'd make a great mistake by taking me. They saw him only when he was making money by his own grinding, you know, and saw me only when I was spending my allowance. He wanted her, too; and it was a pretty nice race between us, with a foregone conclusion that she'd take one or the other. She didn't pay any attention to what the people said, but one day I picked up some kind of a self-righteous, courageous microbe, and decided the proper way for her--I stepped aside."

"And?" she asked, when he did not continue.

"My courage was there, but my point of view was warped; I was out of focus on duty," he quietly a.s.serted. "She married the other fellow, and it developed too late that his life was a shabby muss. Now her eyes are heavy with an endless sorrow. I think that was when I tried--well, when I began drinking some."

"Wouldn't you have done that anyway?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he slowly answered.

"If he had not married her, and she were here now, would you?"

"Not since you are here," he debonairly smiled.

She might not have heard this from the way she sat, looking down and thinking.

"I suppose," she said at last, "that all men's lives are shabby musses.

You may think me unkind, but without a shadow of doubt you would have made her unhappy, too. You are that type."

"I'm very much obliged to you," he murmured. "It seems that I've come to a friend, and found a judge; that my search for sympathy has brought me to a sentence. You're most encouraging, Jane. Perhaps it would be interesting to know how you've found all this out!"

"Oh, I can't say just how," she answered, feeling that his rebuke held more than a share of justice. "It comes from so many small things, which, apart, might be immaterial, but, together, speak volumes and make you quite an impossible quant.i.ty in the scheme of domesticity. For instance, the other day, when you had someone's gun in your hands, you deliberately fired at an overflying woodp.e.c.k.e.r to test your skill. The dead bird was useless. That showed the instinct of a wanton destroyer, and a wanton destroyer, my friend, is not just the safest place for a girl's happiness."

"How do you know I wasn't keeping in practice, in order to become a good protector?" he murmured, but she was not in the mood for flippancy, and continued:

"You shirk responsibilities, and have that dear old Colonel drinking more than he has done in years; while your own hedonism is shocking."