The Danger Mark Part 71

"How long," asked Geraldine dangerously, "does that bet hold good?"

"All winter, if you like. It's the prettiest single jewel you can pick out against a new saddle-horse. I need a gay one; I'm getting out of condition. And all our horses are as interesting as chevaux de bois when the mechanism is freshly oiled and the organ plays the 'Ride of the Valkyries.'"

"I've half a mind to take that wager," said Geraldine, very pink and bright-eyed. "I think I will take it if----"

"Please don't, dear," said Kathleen anxiously. "The keepers say that a wounded boar is perfectly horrid sometimes."

"Dangerous?" Her eyes glimmered brighter still.

"Certainly, a wounded boar is dangerous. I heard Miller say----"

"Bosh!" said Scott. "They run away from you every time. Besides, Geraldine isn't going to have enough sporting blood in her to take that bet and make good."

Something in the quick flush and tilt of her head reminded Scott of the old days when their differences were settled with eight-ounce gloves.

The same feeling possessed his sister, thrilled her like a sudden, unexpected glimpse of a happiness which apparently had long been ended for ever.

"Oh, Scott," she exclaimed, still thrilling, "it _is_ like old times to hear you try to bully me. It's so long since I've had enough spirit to defy you. But I do now!--oh, yes, I do! Why, I believe that if we had the gloves here, I'd make you fight me or take back what you said about my not having any sporting spirit!"

He laughed: "I was thinking of that, too. You're a good sport, Sis.

Don't bother to take that wager----"

"I _do_ take it!" she cried; "it's like old times and I love it. Now, Scott, I'll show you a boar before we go to town or I'll buy you a horse. No backing out; what's said can't be unsaid, remember:

"King, king, double king, Can't take back a given thing!

Queen, queen, queen of queens, What she promises she means!"

That was a very solemn incantation in nursery days; she laughed a little in tender tribute to the past.

Scott was a trifle perturbed. He glanced uneasily at Kathleen, who told him very plainly that he had contrived to make her anxious and unhappy.

Then she fell back into step with Geraldine, letting Scott wander disconsolately forward:

"Dear," she said, pa.s.sing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so--so interested, so deliciously defiant--so like your real self----"

"I feel like it to-day, Kathleen; let me turn back in my own footsteps--if I can. I've been trying so very hard to--to get back to where there was no--no terror in the world."

"I know. But, darling, you won't run into any danger, will you?"

"Do you call a hard-hit beast a danger? I've wounded a more terrible one than any boar that ever bristled. I'm trying to kill something more terrifying. And I shall if I live."

"You poor, brave little martyr!" whispered Kathleen, her violet eyes filled with sudden tears; "don't you suppose I know what you are doing?

Don't you suppose I watch and pray----"

"Did _you_ know I was really trying?" asked the girl, astonished--"I mean before I told you?"

"Know it! Angels above! Of course I know it. Don't you suppose I've been watching you slowly winning back to your old dear self--tired, weary-footed, desolate, almost hopeless, yet always surely finding your way back through the dreadful twilight to the dear, sweet, generous self that I know so well--the straightforward, innocent, brave little self that grew at my knee!--Geraldine--Geraldine, my own dear child!"

"Hush--I did not know you knew. I am trying. Once I failed. That was not very long ago, either. Oh, Kathleen, I am trying so hard, so hard! And to-day has been a dreadful day for me. That is why I went off by myself; I paddled until I was ready to drop into the lake; and the fright that the boar gave me almost ended me; but it could not end desire!... So I took a rifle--anything to interest me--keep me on my feet and moving somewhere--doing something--anything--anything, Kathleen--until I can crush it out of me--until there's a chance that I can sleep----"

"I know--I know! That is why I dared not remonstrate when I saw you drifting again toward your old affectionate relations with Scott. I'm afraid of animals--except what few Scott has persuaded me to tolerate--b.u.t.terflies and frogs and things. But if anything on earth is going to interest you--take your mind off yourself--and bring you and Scott any nearer together, I shall not utter one word against it--even when it puts you in physical danger and frightens me. Do you understand?"

The girl nodded, turned and kissed her. They were following a path made by game; Scott was out of sight ahead somewhere; they could hear his boots crashing through the underbrush. After a while the sound died away in the forest.

"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require my attention--little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended.

And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so--the brooding, the memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine--like dinner--the--the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell you, physical fatigue must help to save me--must help my love for Duane, my love for you and Scott, my self-respect--what is left of it. This rifle"--she held it out--"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me."

"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly.

"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed fiercely. "I need something of that sort."

"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me about it," said Kathleen gently.

Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane....

Don't be alarmed; I can't--yet. But if I only could have him now! You see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the day--to keep me from myself----"

She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered:

"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I want him now--his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to love me--_love_ me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!"

A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a pa.s.sion scarcely understood.

Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her--the feeling of happy safety she had in his arms--the contact that thrilled almost past endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength--that set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins--that aroused her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest would have her.

And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride:

"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him than that?"

"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe that he can save you--if you really feel that he can----"

"I am trying to save myself--I am trying." She turned and looked off through the forest, a straight, slender shape in the moving shadows of the leaves.

"But if he could really help you--if you truly believe it, dear, I--I don't know whether you might not venture--now----"

"No, dear." She slowly closed her eyes, remained motionless for a moment, drew a deep, long breath, and looked up through the sunlit branches overhead.

"I've got to be fair to him," she said aloud to herself; "I must give myself to him as I ought to be, or not at all.... That is settled."

She turned to Kathleen and took her hand:

"Come on, fellow-pilgrim," she said with an effort to smile. "My cowardice is over for the present."

A few steps forward they sighted Scott coming back. He was unusually red in the face and rather excited, and he flourished a stick.

"Of all the infernal impudence!" he said. "What do you think has happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there--not a very big one--and he came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had to come to a halt!"

"I don't want to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with sudden conviction. "Please come home, all of us."

"Nonsense," he said. "I won't stand for being hustled out of my own woods. Give me that rifle, Geraldine."

"I certainly will not," she said, smiling.