The Seventh Noon Part 6

Miss Arsdale came to a chair a little to the left of Donaldson, brushing back from her eyes the soft hair which in the firelight shone like burnished copper. He smiled at the strange chance which led her to seat herself almost directly in front of the grandfather's clock, so that facing her he faced the pendulum which ticked out to him the cost of each new picture he had of her. It was now within a few minutes of midnight--one half of his first day gone before he had more than raised the gla.s.s to his lips. He felt for a moment the petulant annoyance of a man imposed upon--as though Time were playing him unfairly; until today the hours had dragged heavily enough; now they sped like arrows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Facing her he faced the pendulum which ticked out to him the cost of each new picture he had of her_]

And yet he did not count the time as ill spent. Though he had antic.i.p.ated nothing of this sort, he found himself enjoying the situation with as deep a satisfaction as anything which had so far occurred in the swift hours which had sped by since noon. Outside lay the quick-moving throngs which he so loved, in his room there waited for him the gentle marine, the bit of brown ivory, the luxury of deep blooming roses, and yet he was not conscious of missing them. Those things had been waiting for him all through the long tedious years, and this--well perhaps this, too, had been waiting for him. He wondered if this effect was produced by the surroundings which were much as he would have chosen them if he had possessed the means from the first.

The sober good taste of the room, its quiet richness, its air of being a part of several generations of men of culture pleased him.

He turned to the girl again. She too was one with this past of the room. The straight nose with its sh.e.l.l-like nostrils as sensitive to her thoughts as her eyes, the sharp cut corners of her mouth, and the fine hair over her white forehead dated back to women whose features had long been refined through their souls. All that he wished to crowd into a week, they had possessed for a hundred years or more. It showed even in this girl who had not yet come into the fulness of her womanhood.

She sat uneasily far forward on her chair, leaning toward the flames as though fearful of what might happen next. The light played upon her hair and her white face, making her seem almost a thing of some lighter, spirit world.

"I don't feel that I ought to detain you," she said, breaking the silence which he for his part would have been willing to continue, "but"--she looked up at him with a half-shamed smile--"I have n't the courage to refuse your kindness."

"You have the right to accept it merely as a woman," he a.s.sured her.

"But I should n't need help," she answered with some spirit. "I don't know what has come over me. I 'm just afraid of being alone."

"It is n't good for any one to be alone."

"You know?"

He answered slowly,

"Yes, I know."

Did any one know better? The curse of it had driven him to secure at any cost the broader comradeship of men and women which, if it does not come through some more subtle means such as she now seemed to suggest to him, can be found in that cruder relationship always at the command of those with some fortune. The thought swept over him that if he had known her before yesterday, he could never have felt alone again. But what had he to do with yesterday any more than with to-morrow?

"It is n't that there is anything to be afraid of here," she protested, to ward off any suspicions that might be lurking in his mind. "It is n't that. I 'm perfectly safe."

He nodded, though he by no means agreed with her.

"It would be just the same," she insisted with almost too much emphasis, "if Ben were well. I think I must have become panic stricken with myself."

He frowned. Then he broke out fiercely,

"It's the feel of all the silent people in the city around you, perhaps. They are ghosts, these strangers,--human ghosts with fingers which clutch your throat if you are n't careful. You sense them in New York as nowhere else."

She glanced up quickly,

"That's an odd idea," she replied. "The loneliness comes then because you are n't really alone."

"Yes--here in New York."

"But that is n't true of the woods," she a.s.serted.

"You have been much among the trees?" he asked quickly, his voice softening.

"Not very much. But enough to learn to love them. Especially the inner woods."

He knew what she meant--the forests where things still grow for the sky and the beasts and not for man; where man may come as guest but not as master.

"No," he answered, "one never feels alone there."

"In there," she faltered, trying to express vague thoughts which yet were most real to her, "everything seems to be normal."

He studied her with increasing interest and a growing sense of comradeship. Her eyes were wonderful as she sat chin in hands, gazing into the fire, lost in some pleasant picture of the past. When he looked into them, they caught him up again as they had done in the cafe. They swept him to the rhythm of some haunting music back to the days when his blood had run strong--back to the beauty of the hills at twenty when he had not felt big enough by himself to absorb their full marvel. In a dim mystical way he had realized even then that the keenest edge of their meaning was escaping him. The blue sky above the trees had seemed like the laughing eyes of a woman and the rustle of leaves like the whisper of her skirt. He had laughed back boldly then, feeling in the pride of his strength little need of them.

Now the eyes of this girl, and the soft modeling of every line of her, filled him with an infinite tenderness for those forgotten hours. It was as though she cleared away the intervening years and made him face the fragrant Spring again. Without diminishing one whit of his vigorous enjoyment of life, she added an element of refinement to it.

Half in fear of what this might mean, he shook himself free of the mood, and moving a chair to the other side of the fire sat down.

Behind her the old clock still ticked as though in malicious appreciation of the situation.

She clung to the subject of the woods as though in it she found relief.

She wished to hear more of it from him. It made him appear less a stranger. When he spoke of these things he went back into her own past--into the most beautiful, intimate part of it. He was the only man other than Mr. Arsdale that she could have endured to a.s.sociate with those days. She felt at ease with him there, and this made her feel that he had more right to be here now. His eager face softened when he spoke of those things. There was in it then none of that fierceness which had for a moment startled her when he spoke of the loneliness he had found here in New York. At that moment he had looked like a man at bay. He had challenged life bitterly. It was not in keeping with the kindly generous strength of his mouth and chin.

"Tell me," she asked him, "of some of your days in the woods."

Yesterday he could not have complied. Those days had seemed dead and buried. Now he was in the mood for it. He found it pleasant, sitting here, to go back.

Each hour stood out as bright with sunshine as a Sorolla. It was as though they had sprung to life at a call from her--had come to bring her ease. He talked at random of brooks that start nowhere and go nowhere, save over white stones and past watercress; of thin ribbed ferns and of scarlet bunchberries. He told her of a stream he knew, where, if you lie very quiet in the moss, you see speckled trout dart over white pebbles into the darker water beneath the lichened rocks.

He told her of the shallows, and pools, and falls you find if you keep to its banks for the miles it sings by the grave trees. He told her of mountain tops where he had lain near the stars and watched the noon clouds sweep half a county with their big shadows. He told her of old wood roads he had followed through the young maples and birches and evergreens and pines--roads which lay silent all day long and all night long, month after month, ready for the feet which might tread it once in a year.

So she took him back again to the redolent shadows, back to the silences where dreams are born. Here he came upon other things--the old path gay flowered with illusions which led him toward that future--

A future? What had he to do with a future? Was he rushing headlong thus soon into another pit as bad as that from which he had just escaped? The Future was Now--not one minute, not one second beyond.

He was here before an open fire, with this girl in the background, with beautiful rugs and pictures about him, with a great seething, struggling, future-chained horde outside, and the eternal stars overhead. In the midst of it he was free, and this was enough for him to know. Now! Now! The girl was now and her eyes were now and the flush of her velvet cheek was now!

CHAPTER VI

_The Shadow on the Portraits_

He was roused by the sound of her voice and the single stroke of the clock back of her. It was one, and he could have sworn that they had been sitting here less than fifteen minutes.

"I must go to Ben now," she said. "It is time to give him more medicine."

"I will go with you."

"No," she decided, "I think I had better go alone. A stranger might frighten him."

He hesitated with an uneasy sense of foreboding, but she moved past him determinedly and went up the stairs, leaving him alone with the haunting picture upon the wall. He moved nearer to study it more in detail. He caught a trace of resemblance to the boy but none to the girl. The features were more rugged than those of young Arsdale, and the forehead was broader and higher, but the mouth was the same--thin, tense, and yet with no strength of jaw behind it. The cheek bones were rather high and the eyes set deep but over-close together. It was a face, thought Donaldson, of which great things might be expected, but upon which nothing could be depended. The man would move eratically but brilliantly, like those aquatic fireworks which dart in burning angles along the face of the water--scarlet serpents shooting to the right, the left, in their gorgeous irresponsible course towards the dark.

As he stood there Donaldson thought he heard the soft tread of feet in the hall and the click of the outside door as it was opened. He listened intently, but he heard nothing further. He crossed the library and looked out. The door was ajar. He flung it open and peered down the driveway; there was nothing to be seen but the dark ma.s.s of hedge bounding the yard. He went to the foot of the stairs and listened; there was no sound above.

The wind may have blown open the door if it had been unlatched, and the imagined footsteps in the hall may have been nothing but the rustling of the hangings, but still he was not satisfied. He ventured up the first flight and paused to listen. He thought he heard a movement above, but was not quite sure. He neither wished to intrude nor to frighten her unnecessarily, but he called her name. At first he received no response, and then, with a sense of relief that made him realize how deep his fear had been, he saw her come to the head of the stairs. The light came only from the sick room, so that he could not see her very clearly. She took a step towards them, and then he noticed that she swayed and clutched the banister. He was at her side in three bounds.

"What is the trouble?" he demanded.