The Cost Part 30

"That pipe," she grumbled. "Please do put it away."

He tossed it into the sea. "Beg pardon," he said. "It was stupid of me. I was absorbed in--in my book."

"What's the name of it?"

He turned it to glance at the cover, but she went on: "No--don't tell me. I've no desire to know. I asked merely to confirm my suspicion."

"You're right," he said. "I wasn't reading. I was looking at you."

"That was impertinent. A man should not look at a woman when she doesn't intend him to look."

"Then I'd never look at all. I'm interested only in things not meant for my eyes. I might even read letters not addressed to me if I didn't know how dull letters are. No intelligent person ever says anything in a letter nowadays. They use the telegraph for ordinary correspondence, and telepathy for the other kind. But it was interesting--looking at you as you lay asleep."

"Was my mouth open?"

"A little."

"Am I yellow?"

"Very."

"Eyes red? Hair in strings? Lips blue?"

"All that," he said, "and skin somewhat mottled. But I was not so much interested in your beauty as I was in trying to determine whether you were well enough to stand two shocks."

"I need them," replied Gladys.

"One is rather unpleasant, the other--the reverse, in fact a happiness."

"The unpleasant first, please."

"Certainly," he replied. "Always the medicine first, then the candy."

And he leaned back and closed his eyes and seemed to be settling himself for indefinite silence.

"Go on," she said impatiently. "What's the medicine? A death?"

"I said unpleasant, didn't I? When an enemy dies it's all joy. When a friend pa.s.ses over to eternal bliss, why, being good Christians, we are not so faithless and selfish as to let the momentary separation distress us."

"But what is it? You're trying to gain time by all this beating about the bush. You ought to know me well enough to know you can speak straight out."

"Fanshaw's suing his wife for divorce--and he names Jack."

"Is that your news?" said Gladys, languidly. Suddenly she flung aside the robes and sat up.

"What's Pauline going to do? Can she--" Gladys paused.

"Yes, she can--if she wishes to."

"But--will she? Will she?" demanded Gladys.

"Jack doesn't know what she'll do," replied Langdon. "He's keeping quiet--the only sane course when that kind of storm breaks. He had hoped you'd be there to smooth her down, but he says when he opened the subject of your going back to Saint X you cut him off."

"Does she know?"

"Somebody must have told her the day you left. Don't you remember, she was taken ill suddenly?"

"Oh!" Gladys vividly recalled Pauline's strange look and manner. She could see her sister-in-law--the long, lithe form, the small, graceful head, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin as fine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows and golden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked in the spell of an icy trance, mysterious, fascinating, sometimes so melancholy.

"I almost hope she'll do it, Mowbray," she said. "Jack doesn't deserve her. He's not a bit her sort. She ought to have married--"

"Some one who had her sort of ideals--some one like that big, handsome chap--the one you admired so frantically--Governor Scarborough. He was chock full of ideals. And he's making the sort of career she could sympathize with."

"Scarborough!" exclaimed Gladys, with some success at self-concealment.

"I detest him! I detest 'careers'!"

"Good," said Langdon, his face serious, his eyes amused. "That opens the way for my other shock."

"Oh, the good news. What is it?"

"That I'd like it if you'd marry me."

Gladys glanced into his still amused eyes, then with a shrug sank back among her wraps. "A poor joke," she said.

"I should say that marriage was a stale joke rather than a poor one.

Will you try it--with me? You might do worse."

"How did you have the courage to speak when I'm looking such a wreck?"

she asked with mock gravity.

"But you ain't--you're looking better now. That first shock braced you up. Besides, this isn't romance. It's no high flight with all the longer drop and all the harder jolt at the landing. It's a plain, practical proposition."

Gladys slowly sat up and studied him curiously.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked. Each was leaning on an elbow, gazing gravely into the other's face.

"I'd never joke on such a dangerous subject as marriage. I'm far too timid for that. What do you say, Gladys?"

She had never seen him look serious before, and she was thinking that the expression became him.

"He knows how to make himself attractive to a woman when he cares to,"

she said to herself.

"I'd like a man that has lightness of mind. Serious people bore one so after a while." By "serious people" she meant one serious person whom she had admired particularly for his seriousness. But she was in another mood now, another atmosphere--the atmosphere she had breathed since she was thirteen, except in the brief period when her infatuation for Scarborough had swept her away from her world.

"No!" She shook her head with decision--and felt decided. But to his practised ear there was in her voice a hint that she might hear him further on the subject.

They lay back in their chairs, he watching the ragged, dirty, scurrying clouds, she watching him. After a while he said: "Where are you going when we reach the other side?"

"To join mother and auntie."