The Lighted Match Part 5

The master of "Idle Times" paced thoughtfully up and down the room. When at length he stopped it was to clap his hand on his cla.s.s-mate's shoulder.

"George," he said, with a voice hardened to edit down the note of sympathy that threatened it, "you seem to start out with the a.s.sumption that I am against you. Get that out of your head. Cara has hungered for freedom. We've felt that she had the right to, at least, her little intervals of recess. It happened that she could have them here. Here she could be Miss Carstow--and cease to be Cara of Maritzburg. I am sorry if you--and she--must pay for these vacations with your happiness. I see now that people who are sentenced to imprisonment, should not play with liberty."

"She is not going to play with liberty," declared Benton categorically.

"She is going to have it. She is going to have for the rest of her life just what she wants." He lifted his hand in protest against antic.i.p.ated interruption. "I know that you have got to line up with your royal relatives. I know the utter impossibility of what I want--but I'm going to win. If you regard me as a burglar, you may turn me out, but you can't stop me."

"I sha'n't turn you out," mused Van quietly. "I wish you could win. But you are not merely fighting people. You are fighting an idea. It is only for an idea that men and women martyr themselves. With Cara this idea has become morbid--an obsession. She has inherited it together with an abnormally developed courage, and her conception of courage is to face what she most hates and fears."

"But if I can show her that it is a mistaken courage--that instead of loyalty it is desertion?" The man spoke with quick eagerness.

Van shook his head, and his eyes clouded with the gravity of sympathy for a futile resolve.

"That you can't do. I am an American myself. I'm not policing thrones.

To me it seems a monstrous thing that a girl superbly American in everything but the accident of birth should have no chance--no opportunity to escape life-imprisonment. It doesn't altogether compensate that the prison happens to be a palace."

For a time neither spoke, then Bristow went on.

"At the age of five, Cara stood before a mirror and critically surveyed herself. At the end of the scrutiny she turned away with a satisfied sigh. 'I finks I'm lovely,' she announced. At five one is frank. Her verdict has since then been duly and reliably confirmed by everyone who has known her--yet she might as well have been born into unbeautiful, hopeless slavery."

Benton went to the window and stood moodily looking out. Finally he wheeled to demand: "How did the crown of Maritzburg come to your uncle?"

"When he married my aunt," said Bristow, "he fancied himself safe-guarded from the ducal throne by two older brothers. That's why he was able to choose his own wife. He was dedicated with pa.s.sionate loyalty to his brushes and paint tubes. He saw before him achievement of that sort. a.s.sa.s.sination claimed his father and brothers, and, facing the same peril, he took up the distasteful duties of government. My aunt's life was intolerably shadowed by the terror of violence for him.

She died at Cara's birth and the child inherited all the protest and acceptance so paradoxically bequeathed by her heart-broken mother."

"Realizing that Cara could not hope to escape a royal marriage, her father looked toward Galavia. There at least the strain was clean ...

untouched by degeneracy and untainted with libertinism. Karyl is as decent a chap as yourself. He loves her, and though he knows she accepts him only from compulsion, he believes he can eventually win her love as well as her mere acquiescence. It's all as final as the laws of the Medes and Persians."

Again there was a long silence. Bristow began to wonder if it was, with his friend, the silence of despair and surrender. At last Benton lifted his face and his jaw was set unyieldingly.

"Personally," he commented quietly, "I have decided otherwise."

Despite the raw edge on the air, the hardier guests at "Idle Times"

still clung to those outdoor sports which properly belonged to the summer. That afternoon a canoeing expedition was made up river to explore a cave which tradition had endowed with some legendary tale of pioneer days and Indian warfare.

Pagratide, having organized the expedition with that object in view, had made use of his prior knowledge to enlist Cara for the crew of his canoe, but Benton, covering a point that Pagratide had overlooked, pointed out that an engagement to go up the river in a canoe is entirely distinct from an engagement to come down the river in a canoe. He cited so many excellent authorities in support of his contention that the matter was decided in his favor for the return trip, and Mrs.

Porter-Woodleigh, all unconscious that her escort was a Crown Prince, found in him an introspective and altogether uninteresting young man.

Benton and the girl in one canoe, were soon a quarter of a mile in advance of the others, and lifting their paddles from the water they floated with the slow current. The singing voices of the party behind them came softly adrift along the water. All of the singers were young and the songs had to do with sentiment.

The girl b.u.t.toned her sweater closer about her throat. The man stuffed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and bent low to kindle it into a cheerful spot of light.

A belated lemon afterglow lingered at the edge of the sky ahead. Against it the gaunt branches of a tall tree traced themselves starkly. Below was the silent blackness of the woods.

Suddenly Benton raised his head.

"I have a present for you," he announced.

"A present?" echoed the girl. "Be careful, Sir Gray Eyes. You played the magician once and gave me a rose. It was such a wonderful rose"--she spoke almost tenderly,--"that it has spoiled me. No commonplace gift will be tolerated after that."

"This is a different sort of present," he a.s.sured her. "This is a G.o.d."

"A what!" Cara was at the stern with the guiding paddle. The man leaned back, steadying the canoe with a hand on each gunwale, and smiled into her face.

"Yes," he said, "he is a G.o.d made out of clay with a countenance that is most unlovely and a complexion like an earthenware jar. I acquired him in the Andes for a few _centavos_. Since then we have been companions.

In his day he had his place in a splendid temple of the Sun Worshipers.

When I rescued him he was squatting cross-legged on a counter among silver and copper trinkets belonging to a civilization younger than his own. When you've been a G.o.d and come to be a souvenir of ruins and dead things--" the man paused for a moment, then with the ghost of a laugh went on, "--it makes you see things differently. In the twisted squint of his small clay face one reads slight regard for mere systems and codes."

He paused so long that she prompted him in a voice that threatened to become unsteady. "Tell me more about him. What is his G.o.dship's name?"

"He looked so protestingly wise," Benton went on, "that I named him Jonesy. I liked that name because it fitted him so badly. Jonesy is not conventional in his ideas, but his morals are sound. He has seen religions and civilizations and dynasties flourish and decay, and it has all given him a certain perspective on life. He has occasionally given me good council."

He paused again, but, noting that the singing voices were drawing nearer, he continued more rapidly.

"In Alaska I used to lie flat on my cot before a great open fire and his G.o.d-ship would perch cross-legged on my chest. When I breathed, he seemed to shake his fat sides and laugh. When a pagan G.o.d from Peru laughs at you in a Yukon cabin, the situation calls for attention. I gave attention.

"Jonesy said that the major human motives sweep in deep channels, full-tide ahead. He said you might in some degree regulate their floods by rearing abutments, but that when you try to build a dam to stop the Amazon you are dealing with folly. He argued that when one sets out to dam up the tides set flowing back in the tributaries of the heart it is written that one must fail. That is the gospel according to Jonesy."

He turned his face to the front and shot the canoe forward. There was silence except for the quiet dipping of their paddles, the dripping of the water from the lifted blades, and the song drifting down river.

Finally Benton added:

"I don't know what he will say to you, but perhaps he will give you good advice--on those matters which the centuries can't change."

Cara's voice came soft, with a hint of repressed tears. "He has already given me good advice, dear--" she said, "good advice that I can't follow."

CHAPTER V

IT IS DECIDED TO MASQUERADE

The first day of quail-shooting found Van Bristow's guests afield.

Separated from the others, Benton and Cara came upon a small grove, like an oasis in the stretching acres of stubble. Under a scarlet maple that reared itself skyward all aflame, and shielded by a festooning profusion of wild-grape, a fallen beech-trunk offered an inviting seat. The girl halted and grounded arms.

The man seated himself at her feet and looked up. He framed a question, then hesitated, fearing the answer. Finally he spoke, controlling his voice with an effort.

"Cara," he questioned, "how long have I?"

Her eyes widened as if with terror. "A very--very little time, dear,"

she said. "It frightens me to think how little. Then--then--nothing but memory. Do you realize what it all means?" She leaned forward and laid a hand on each of his shoulders. "Just one week more, and after that I shall look out to sea when the sun sinks, red and sullen, into leaden waters and think of--of Arcady--and you."

"Don't, Cara!" He seized her hands and went on talking fast and vehemently. "Listen! I love you--that is not a unique thing. You love me--that is the miracle. And because of a distorted idea of duty, our lives must go to wreck. Don't you see the situation is ludicrous--intolerable? You are trying to live a medieval life in a day of wireless telegraph and air ships."

She nodded. "But what are we going to do about it?" she questioned simply.