The Penalty Part 27

"Just tell me _once_--" he began

"Don't," she said, "please. Now you confess."

"Well, Barbs," he said, "this week-end is a sort of good-by. I'm in very deep, and I'm going to a new place to live a new life."

"Well!" she exclaimed, "you're not running away?"

"Only from temptation," he said. "I have spoken to all my creditors but one, and they have behaved decently and kindly. Wherever I go I take my obligations with me, and, G.o.d willing, they shall all be paid."

"Oh," she said, "I think a man ought to make good in the midst of his temptations."

"Might just as well say that you ought to finish your bust of Blizzard with one hand tied behind your back, since it's a constant temptation to you to use both. You ought also to be blindfolded and to work in the dark, since you are constantly tempted to look at your model and see what you are doing."

"I shall miss you," she said simply, "like everything. Why--"

"Why what?"

"It fills the future with blanks that can't be filled in."

"That may or may not be, Barbs. If they can't be filled in, you will write to me, and I will come back."

"But I don't mean--"

"I don't believe you know what you mean. But you aren't Barbs now; you are my confessor. I confess to you, then, that I am in pretty much the same boat with Harry West. I am going away, partly, to get over you--if I can. Love is a fire. Feed it, and it grows. Let it alone, and it dies.

Confessor, there is a certain girl--one Barbara Ferris, I love her with all my heart and soul and have so done for many years. Since this leads to happiness for neither of us, I am going to cut her out of my life."

"Wilmot! Are you speaking seriously? You're not going to write to me?

I'll have no news of you? Not know how you are getting on? Not know if you are sick or well?"

"The first night," said Wilmot, "you cried. The second you slept and thought about work."

"But you are my oldest friend and my best. Whatever we are to each other, we are that--best friends. We have our roots so deep in the happenings of years and years that we can't be moved--and get away with it."

"We shall see," said Wilmot almost solemnly. "It isn't going to be easy for me, either. But time will soon show. If after a year we find that we cannot do without each other's friendship--why, then we must see each other again. That's all there is to it."

"At least you'll write?"

He shook his head.

"But I will."

"No, Barbs. The sight of your writing would be too much fuel for the fire."

She was silent for a quarter of a mile. She did not enjoy the idea of being deliberately cut out of Wilmot Allen's life and heart "Suppose,"

she said, "that at the end of the year the fire is still burning bright?"

He slowed the car down so that he could turn and look at her. His face looked very strong and stern. "In that case," he said, "I will come back and marry you,"

"And supposing that meanwhile, in a fit of loneliness and mistaken zeal, I shall have married some one else?"

"If I feel about you as I do now," said Allen, "I will take you away from him."

Once more the car began to run swiftly, so swiftly that Wilmot could not take his eyes from the road to look at Barbara's face. If he had, he would have seen in her eyes an extraordinary look of trouble and tenderness.

XXI

During the week-end Barbara and Allen were much together, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the other guests, who said: "_It's_ on again." But it was not really.

If Wilmot was going away, Barbara wished him to have good memories of last times together to carry with him. And Wilmot, like a foolish fellow who is going to swear off Monday, and in the meanwhile drinks to excess, saw no reason why he should dress his wounds in the present, since, in time to save his life, he was going to give them every attention possible. That he was going to "get over" Barbara in a year he did not believe. But observation and common-sense told him that life without her must become easier and saner as time pa.s.sed, and that to be forever caught up or thrown down by her varying moods toward him had ceased to be a self-respecting way of life. This is what common-sense and experience told him; but his heart told him that he would love her always, and that if he could not have her he must simply die.

Sunday night, after she had gone to bed, Barbara lay in the darkness and asked herself questions. Wilmot's life had not been fine, but his love had been very fine, and for longer than she could remember. Would it not be well to trust herself to such a love as that? Had she the right to send it away begging? Would it not be better, since marriage is a lottery, to grasp some things that in this case would be sure, instead of leaving everything to chance? If he kept away from her long enough, his love would probably die, or at least reduce itself to a state of occasional melancholy agitation. But if she belonged to him it would never die. Of this their whole past seemed a sure proof. If she married him he would always love her and be faithful to her; for her part she was wonderfully fond of him, and she believed that if she once actually committed herself to his care, she would be a good wife to him, and a loving. Then why not? She tried the effect of pretending that she had promised to marry him and meant to keep her word, and she found that the position, if only mentally, was strategically strong and secure. She would make him happy; she herself would cease from troubling him and other men. For her sake he would turn over new leaves and be everything that was fine. She would be obedient and have no more difficult knots to untangle for herself. Wilmot would simply cut them for her with a sure word, one way or the other.

She had not for a long time enjoyed so peaceful a night. Hours pa.s.sed, and she found that, without sleeping, she was becoming wonderfully rested. For it is true that nothing so rests the thinker as unselfish thinking.

She had breakfast in her room, but was down in time to catch the business men's train for town, or to be driven in Wilmot's borrowed runabout, if he should ask her. He did, and amid shouts of farewell and invitations to come again soon, they drove away together into the cool bright morning.

"Wilmot," Barbara said, when they had pa.s.sed the last outpost of the Bruces' shrubbery and whirled into the turnpike, "I spent most of last night thinking."

"You look fresh as a rosebud."

She shook her head as if to shake off the dew, and said: "I feel more rested than if I had slept soundly. If you will marry me, Wilmot, I will make you a good wife."

Wilmot's heart leaped into his throat with joy, and then dropped as if into a deep abyss of doubt. For all her confessions to him, and for all her promises of amendment, here was his darling Barbs unable to resist the temptation of hurting him again. "One of her impulses," he thought, and at once he was angry with her, and his heart yearned over her.

"Are you going to be able to say that, Barbs," he said gently, "a year from now, after we've been out of sight and hearing of each other all that time?"

"Wilmot," she said, "I'm not up to my old bad tricks. I am ready to give you my word this time, and to keep faith. Only I'd like everything to be done as soon as possible. I've been a very foolish girl, and perplexed and tired, and I want to lean on you, if you'll let me. We'll have a good life together, and I will keep my eyes in the boat."

"A few days ago, Barbs," he said, "you thought that you were seriously in love with another man."

"I know," she said, "but I wasn't."

"Are you in love with me now?" he asked wistfully.

"I know that you will always be good to me, and love me. And that is what I _know_ that I want."

"Poor little Barbs," he said.

"It seems to me rather," she said, "that I am now rich with chances of happiness for us both. I want to make my oldest and most deserving friend happy, and I trust him to make me happy."

"It isn't love, dear?"

"It's so much affection and friendship that perhaps it's better." She turned her face away a little. "The best that marriage can end in is affectionate companionship; why not begin with that, and so be sure of it for always?"

"If I had ever dreamed," said Wilmot unsteadily, "that you were going to say things like this to me, I'd have dreamed that I went wild with happiness, and drove you to the nearest clergyman. But now that you have actually said what you have said, in real life, I find that I love you more than ever, and that it is not compatible with so much love to take you on a basis of friendship. You feel that you have hurt me more than is possible for your conscience to bear, and you wish to make up for it.