The Hills of Refuge Part 22

"You must take off your shoes and stockings and dry them," he said, with the firm confidence of a family doctor.

"Must!" She repeated the word to herself, and bit her lip; she made no motion to obey his wishes.

"Surely you are not offended at what I said," he went on, after a little silence. "It is a serious thing, you know. Dry feet at such a time as this are more important than a dry body."

"Oh, I don't mind!" she answered, and she bent down and began to fumble the strings of her shoes; but the water had drawn the knot tight and her fingers were benumbed with cold.

"You must permit me, Miss Rowland," Charles said, calmly. He sank on his knees before her and, without waiting for her consent, he skilfully loosened the knotted string and drew her shoe off. "Now the other, please."

She thrust it out, but rather reluctantly. "You have such a strange way about you!" she said, coldly. "That is, I mean--sometimes."

The string he was now working on seemed to be more tightly tied, and she heard him mutter something impatiently: "I don't want to cut it."

(Surely he had not heard her last remark, she thought.)

But he evidently had heard, for when he had removed the other shoe he said, "So you think I have a strange way about me at times, do you?"

He had seated himself on the bench beside her. Her head, neck, and shoulders in the red glow of the fire formed an exquisite picture. She had removed her hat, and her damp hair shone like a ma.s.s of bronze cobwebs. She was so dainty, so frail, so appealing! Not only had her young soul been torn to shreds, but the very elements had pounced upon her defenseless body. In her he saw the richest embodiment of a long line of patrician ancestors. How strange the whole situation! There she was storm-bound with a man whom the law held as no better than a felon, a nameless wanderer with no possibility of a respectable future ahead of him. She was silent, and he repeated what he had said.

"I don't mean anything wrong," she replied, smiling on him sweetly. "Now I suppose you will order me to take off my stockings. I don't have to, for they are drying as they are. See!"

She had put her small feet out to the fire. Her whole form was veiled in the rising vapor. It seemed to him to be a mist of enchantment out of which her eyes shone and her voice came like inexplicable music. An exquisite fancy held him in its grasp. His life and hers were but of a night's duration. They were besieged in an impenetrable forest by wild beasts, the prey of elemental forces. For the moment she was his, all his own. Frazier, her family, conventions, his own misfortune, would ultimately part them, but now in his ecstatic vision she was his, and the world might end with the dawn, for aught he cared. But one thing he suddenly began to fear, and that was that thoughts of her brothers'

trouble might again depress her. So he bent all his energies toward her entertainment. He told her of a trip to Europe he had made just after leaving college, filling his account with amusing anecdotes. Her eyes were bent on him with a stare of profound interest.

"How wonderful," she exclaimed, "to meet one who has been there so recently! It has always been like a dream of heaven to me. My mother went when she was a girl, and she used to tell us about it when we were children. There were some far-off cousins of hers living in London. The head of the house had a t.i.tle. I don't remember what it was--my father knows. Strange to say, he is proud of it, as if it would help us now. I suppose--I suppose"--her voice shook and mellowed as it fell deeper into her throat--"that those people over there would not care to keep up with us, now that we are so poor and my brothers are--like they are. I have an idea that old English families are very particular when it comes to the violation of the law."

"Don't think of your brothers' trouble," he pleaded. "Let us try to have cheerful, hopeful thoughts."

"I am trying," she responded, but even while she was speaking her face and tone showed the futility of her effort. "Poor Martin!" she went on.

"Do you know, somehow, I feel more for him than for Kensy. Kensy is rougher, harder, less sensitive, less imaginative. Martin has always been my baby of the two. He was sick once several years ago, and I waited on him, nursed him, and petted him nearly to death. This is terrible on him. He may be awake now in that cold, damp cave, and with those ghastly thoughts to keep him company. Oh, life is a tragedy, Mr.

Brown! As a child, I thought it was an endless dream of beauty and joy, and I have waked to this--to this!"

He tried again to cheer her with his stories, but her sweet face held shadows which he could not banish. Now and then she would smile faintly, but he saw that she was forcing herself to do so.

Something he said about his school-days evoked a sudden question for which he was not prepared.

"You speak of your home, but you have not yet told me where it was," she said.

He looked down at the pool of water which had dripped from his clothing, and hesitated. His pause brought a quick remark from her.

"Pardon me, I have no right to ask," she sighed.

"But you _have_ the right," he floundered, conscious of the flush on his face and the agitation in his manner. "It is only that--that I have put it behind me forever. It is mine no longer, you see."

"Never mind. I'm sorry I touched upon it." She sighed again and looked through the open door out into the raging wind and rain. "I'm always prying into your personal affairs, as when I spoke of the photograph of the pretty little girl in your room."

"Oh, I'm glad you noticed the picture of Ruth," he said, still embarra.s.sed, "for I love her very dearly."

"You miss her, I know you do," Mary said, softly. "The picture looks as if you had carried it in your pocket for a long time."

"I used to do that," he confessed, "but I found that it kept the past too close to me. Now I see it only just before going to bed."

Suddenly Mary leaned toward him; a portion of her wonderful hair fell against her cheek; her eyes gleamed as if with coming tears. "Mr.

Brown," she said, "you are so good and kind and n.o.ble that I am going to pray for one thing in particular to happen to you. G.o.d may have wise reasons for withholding it from you just at present, but I am going to pray that He will some day give you back your child."

"_My_ child!" He groped for her meaning. "She is not my own child. She is only my niece."

"Oh, then you are not married!"

"No, and I never have been. In fact, I never can be. My conduct in the past has made that impossible. Other men may marry and have children, but I am not like them."

"How strangely you talk--how very strangely!" Mary said, her eyes still tensely strained toward his. "You talk as if--as if there were certain dishonorable things against you. Why"--here she actually laughed in derision--"if you were to lay your hand on an open Bible and say that you were dishonorable, or ever had been, I'd not believe it! It isn't in you; it never was. My intuition tells me so, and I know I am right."

"I am what I am," he said, sighing. "I won't go into it all; it would do no good. I have no right to a decent place in any society. I want you to know me for what I am, Miss Rowland. G.o.d knows I'll not make false pretenses while I am under your father's roof. I am here to work for you both. What I was when you picked me up in my filth and squalor I still am and shall continue to be."

Mary stood up and turned her back to the fire, to dry her clothing. He rose as she did and stood beside her. He looked at his watch. It was near midnight. He showed the dial to her in the firelight. She nodded thoughtfully, but was silent. The rain was steadily beating on the roof, a newly made brook was gurgling and swashing past the door. The wind had died down. Drops of water fell through the low chimney into the hot coals, but not in sufficient quant.i.ty to depress the fire. He put on some more wood. His vision of the short-lived possession of her companionship still swirled about him like ineffable, soul-feeding light. He could have touched her with his hands; he almost felt that she would not have been deeply offended; the yearning to do so rose from depths that could not be fathomed. She was looking at him steadily from beneath her long lashes, the lashes which gave to her features the evasive expression he could not describe.

"How strange you are!" she said, softly, sincerely. "I don't know why it is, Mr. Brown, but when I'm here with you like this my troubles seem to stand aside. I almost hope. I do--I really do."

"I was wondering if your father will worry, knowing that we are out in the storm," he said.

"No, he won't, but it would have driven my mother crazy with anxiety.

Even if she knew we were sheltered here she would worry. She belonged to the old school. The fact"--Mary laughed softly--"that we have no chaperon would be a terrible misfortune. But don't think I care about such things. This is a new age and I'm simply a hang-over from an older one. Even if the rain were to let up we couldn't make our way back in the dark. There is nothing to do but wait till daylight."

"Your clothing is quite dry," he said, touching her sleeve, "and so is my coat. Would you like to recline here by the fire and take a nap? I can put the coat down. It would be a hard couch, but--"

"I'm not sleepy--not a bit!" she a.s.sured him; "but you must be, and tired, too, after all you've been through. Suppose you lie down by the fire, and I'll keep watch over you."

He smiled and flushed as he declined, and then his face became grave.

"You touched upon something just now," he faltered, "that perhaps I ought to think about. Since your mother would not have quite approved of your being here like this with a stranger, there may be others in the neighborhood who might gossip about it. If you would not be afraid to remain alone, I could go on home and send some conveyance. I can find the way, and as for the rain, it's nothing. I have often worked all day and part of the night up to my knees in water."

"How silly of me to have said what I did!" she exclaimed, and caught his arm. He felt the warmth of her pulsing fingers through the thin sleeve of his shirt as she turned him toward her. "Why do you hold that against me? I wasn't thinking how it sounded. Why did you speak of it?"

"Because I'd rather die than be the cause of the slightest whisper against you," he said, reverently. "I know how narrow-minded small communities are, Miss Rowland, and I know better than any one else how little I have to recommend me to strangers. I am worse than nothing in the eyes of the world, and it is beyond my power now ever to change their view."

A pained look crossed Mary's face. She sat down again and put her feet out toward the fire. She folded her arms. "I wish," she said, compressing her lips, "that you would stop abusing yourself. The rest of the world may condemn you, as you say they do, but I shall not. I have known a good many gentlemen in my life, but I've never met one in whom I had more confidence. I could swear by you. You may think that strange, but I could. I feel the truth streaming from your whole personality, your voice, your eyes, your very silence at times. I don't know how it was, but in some way you have not been fairly treated. You have not! You have not! I thought it might be perhaps an unfortunate marriage, but since it is not that it is something else. You seem to me to be the loneliest man in all the world, with a great aching heart; but notwithstanding that you are thinking and acting only for me. Do you think I can overlook that sort of thing? Mr. Brown, you are helping me, and if I am not able to help you some day I shall never be content."

He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Don't think of me at all," he sighed.

"I am responsible for my position in life, but I am not unhappy--I really am not. There is such a thing, Miss Rowland, as throwing off an old shackled life for a new, freer one; and the new one will be normal, if the old one is crushed out completely. It is simply a psychological fact. The most wonderful thing in the world is autosuggestion. If one holds before himself constantly the thought that things are beautiful they will be so. If he thinks otherwise, he thereby d.a.m.ns himself. When it became necessary for me to adopt my--my present way of living, I determined always to look upon it as a sort of rare adventure, and it has been one full of something like hope. Since I came to work for you and found you in trouble I have thought of nothing but the prospect of seeing you happy again."

The girl was strangely moved. She had lowered her head, and he looked down now only on the ma.s.s of wonderful, firelit hair that hid her face from view.

"Sit down, please," she suddenly said, huskily, and he obeyed. She was silent. The rain still beat heavily on the boards overhead; the mountain streams still gurgled and sang. The wind had died down. The darkness was heavy and thick.

Presently Mary seemed to find her voice. She raised her head and smiled sweetly as she remarked: "How strange we two are! Life is beating, pounding, crushing us--you in one way and me in another; and yet here we are like two ants huddled together on a floating chip, drifting we know not where. I cling to you for support, and I wish it were so that you could cling to me. The only difference is--well, you know why I'm on the chip, but I may only surmise why you are on it. I'll bet I know, though; I'll bet I know," was her afterthought.

"You know what?" he asked, startled slightly, and he sat wondering what she would say as she locked her hands and seemed to hesitate.