The Militants Part 22

Sir Richard shook his head firmly. "Not nearly as much as the Revenge was worth. I kept gangs of men scrubbing that boat till I nearly went into bankruptcy. And, what's more, you ought to keep your word, you know. You said you were going to marry Richard Leigh--Richard Grenville Cary Leigh is his whole name, you know. Will you keep your word?"

"But I--but you--but I didn't know," stammered Sally, feebly.

He went on eagerly. "You told me how he should wear his name--high and--and all that." He had no time for abstractions. "He can never do it alone--will you come and help him?"

Sally was palpably starching about for weapons to aid her losing fight.

"Why do you like me? I'm not beautiful like Anne Ford." He laughed. "I'm not rich, you know, like lots of American girls. We're very poor"--she looked at him earnestly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I felt myself pulled by two pairs of hands.]

"I don't care if you're rich or poor," he said. "I don't know if you're beautiful--I only know you're you. It's all I want."

She shook a little at his vehemence, but she was a long fighter. "You don't know me very much," she went on, her soft voice breaking. "Maybe it's only a fancy--the moonlight and the sailing and all--maybe you only imagine you like me."

"Imagine I like you!"

And then, at the sight of his quick movement and of Sally's face I managed to get behind a curtain and put my fingers in my ears. No woman has a right to more than one woman's love-making. And as I stood there, a few minutes later, I felt myself pulled by two pairs of hands, and Sally and her lover were laughing at me.

"May I have her? I want her very much," he said, and I wondered if ever any one could say no to anything he asked. So, with a word about Sally's far-away mother and father, I told him, as an old woman might, that I had loved him from the first, and then I said a little of what Sally was to me.

"I like her very much," I said, in a shaky voice that tried to be casual. "Are you sure that you like her enough?" For all of his answer, he turned, not even touching her hands, and looked at her.

It was as if I caught again the fragrance of the box hedges in the southern sunshine of a garden where I had walked on a spring morning long ago. Love is as old-fashioned as the ocean, and us little changed in all the centuries. Its always yielding, never retreating arms lie about the lands that are built and carved and covered with men's progress; it keeps the air sweet and fresh above them, and from generation to generation its look and its depths are the same. That it is stronger than death does not say it all. I know that it is stronger than life. Death, with its crystal touch, may make a weak love strong; life, with its every-day wear and tear, must make any but a strong love weak.

I like to think that the look I saw in Richard Leigh's eyes as he turned toward my girl was the same look I shall see, not so very many years from now, when I close mine on this dear old world, and open them, by the sh.o.r.e of the ocean of eternity, on the face of Geoffrey Meade.

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BOB AND THE GUIDES

_By_

MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS

Ill.u.s.trated by F.C. YOHN

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Books by Mary R.S. Andrews

VIVE L'EMPEREUR

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The Great Lincoln Story

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