The Definite Object Part 87

Without more words Spike s.n.a.t.c.hed the money, crammed it into his pocket and, running down the stairs, was gone.

Then, after having lighted another cigarette, Soapy descended to M'Ginnis's dingy office, where having dragged away the desk, he brought a chair and sat with his ear against the safe, turning the combination lock with long, delicate fingers. To and fro he turned it, very patiently hearkening to the soft clicks the mechanism gave forth while the cigarette smouldered between his pallid lips. Soapy, among other accomplishments, was a yeggman renowned in the profession, and very soon the heavy door swung softly back, and Soapy became lost in study. Money there was and valuables of many kinds, and these he didn't trouble with, but to the papers he gave a scrupulous attention; sometimes as he read his white eyelids fluttered somewhat, and sometimes the dangling cigarette quivered. Presently he arose and bore these many papers to the sheet iron upon which stood the rusty stove; here he piled them and set them alight and stood watching until they were reduced to a heap of charred ash. Then, returning to the safe, he took out a bundle of letters tied up in a faded blue ribbon, and seating himself at M'Ginnis's desk, he slipped off the ribbon and very methodically began to read these letters one after the other.

But as he read the humble entreaties, the pa.s.sionate pleading of those written words, blotted and smeared with the bitter tears of a woman's poignant shame and anguish, Soapy's pendent cigarette fell to the floor and lay there smouldering and forgotten, and his lips were drawn back from sharp, white teeth--pallid lips contorted in a grin the more awful because of the great drops that welled from the fierce, half-closed eyes. Every letter he read and every word, then very methodically set them back within the faded blue ribbon and sat staring down at them with eyes wider open than usual--eyes that saw back into the past. And as he sat thus, staring at what had been, he repeated a sentence to himself over and over again at regular intervals, speaking with a soft inflection none had ever heard from him before:

"Poor little Maggie--poor little kid!"

CHAPTER XLII

TELLS HOW RAVENSLEE BROKE HIS WORD AND WHY

"Past eleven o'clock, dear," said Hermione.

"Still so early?" sighed Ravenslee.

They were sitting alone in the fire glow, so near that by moving his hand he could touch her where she sat curled up in the great armchair; but he did not reach out his hand because they were alone and in the fire glow, and Hermione had never seemed quite so alluring.

"How cosy a fire is--and how unnecessary!" she sighed contentedly.

"I'm English enough to love a fire, especially when it is unnecessary,"

he answered.

"English, dear?"

"My mother was English; that's why I was educated in England."

"Your mother! How she must have loved you!"

"I suppose she did; but, you see, she died when I was a baby."

"Poor lonely mite!" Here her hand came out impulsively to caress his coat sleeve and to be prisoned there by two other hands, to be lifted and pressed to burning lips, whereat she grew all rosy in the fire glow.

"I suppose," said he, the words coming a little unevenly, "it would be too much to ask my wife to--come a little--nearer?"

"Nearer? Why, Geoffrey, dear, our chairs are touching now."

"Our chairs? Why, yes--so they are! I suppose," sighed he, "I suppose it would be breaking my word to my wife if I happened to--kiss my wife?"

"Why, Geoffrey--of course it would!"

"Yes, I feared so!" he nodded and kissed her hand instead, and there fell a silence.

"How heavenly it is!" she whispered softly, leaning a little nearer to him.

"Heavenly!" he answered, leaning a little nearer to her and watching the droop of her lashes.

"So--so quiet and--peaceful!" she added, drawing away again, conscious of his look.

"Horribly!" he sighed.

"Geoffrey!"

"Quiet and peace," he explained, "may hold such an infinitude of possibilities impossible of realisation to a husband who is bound by promises, that it is apt to be a little--trying."

Hermione didn't speak but drew his hand to be caressed by the soft oval of a cheek and touched by the velvet of shy lips.

"And yet," he went on, staring resolutely at the fire, "I wouldn't change--this, for anything else the world could offer me!"

"Bear with me--a little longer, dear!" she murmured.

"As long as you will, Hermione--providing--"

"Well, my Geoffrey, dear?"

"That it is only--a little longer."

"You don't think I'm very--silly, do you, dear?" she enquired, staring into the fire.

"No, not very!"

"Oh!" she said softly, glancing at him reproachfully. "You don't think me--cruel?"

"Not very," he answered, kissing her hand again.

"Dear Geoffrey, you don't think I'm very selfish, do you?" she questioned wistfully.

"No--never that!" he answered, keeping his gaze averted.

"Because if--"

"If?" said he.

"If it is hard for you--" the soft voice faltered.

"Yes, Hermione?"

"If you really think I'm--cruel and--silly, you--needn't wait--any longer--if you wish--"

His arms were about her, drawing her near, clasping her ever closer, and she held him away no more, but--beholding her wistful eyes, the plaintive droop of her vivid mouth, and all the voiceless pleading of her, he loosed her and turned away.

"I love you so much--Hermione, so much, that your will shall be my will."

She rose, and leaning against the carved mantel stared down into the fire; when at last she spoke, there was a note in her voice he had never heard before,