The Silver Poppy Part 27

"I leave for Quebec to-morrow morning, to join Mrs. Spaulding. From there I think I shall go back home--back to Kentucky!"

"But why are you going?"

"For your sake," she said, giving him her eyes unrestrainedly.

"For my sake, Cordelia?" he repeated, astonished, openly miserable.

"Yes, for you," she said in a lighter tone, smiling. "But that's all you're going to be told at present."

She went to the window and looked out at the falling rain.

"I thought," she said, "that we might have one last little ride together, for the sake of--of the old days!"

"But it couldn't--surely it couldn't be for long?" he asked, still thinking of her departure, scarcely believing the news.

"I don't think I shall ever again come back to New York," she said slowly, with something that was almost a sob.

"But can't you tell me why?"

"No, I can't--not now!"

"My poor child," he said suddenly, taking her pale face between his hands and looking earnestly into her eyes--and what gloriously luminous eyes they were that poignantly happy moment! "My poor child, is it any trouble I could take on my own shoulders? Is it anything I could ever help you with?"

It was his first voluntary caress, his first spontaneous and unlooked-for touch of tenderness. Her heart was beating riotously.

She shook her head.

"But explain to me about Quebec."

"Mrs. Spaulding has written to me and asked me to join her there. Here is the letter; read it."

She handed the letter to him; it had reached her that morning most opportunely. Hartley took it, and read:

CHaTEAU FRONTENAC, QUEBEC CITY.

"MY DARLING CHILD:

"I am dying of loneliness up here in this dreary old town. Alfred has gone up in the woods to shoot moose or something, and Heaven only knows when he'll be back. I have decided that you and Mr.

Hartley had better take a holiday and run up here and join me for the rest of the week; and then we can all come down together. I refuse to take 'no' for an answer."

"That's really all," Cordelia broke in; "the rest is simply orders about the servants and messages to dressmakers and that sort of thing."

He handed the letter back to her, disheartened, depressed.

"Could you come?" she asked him hesitatingly.

He thought over it; he scarcely saw how he could, but a desire to be near her seemed to be shouldering out all other feelings.

"I should like to go, but--well, to be candid, I really can't afford it just now."

"That doesn't count!" she cried happily.

Then a sudden disturbing thought came to him.

"But, Cordelia, how about our book? What would be done with that in the meantime? And what will become of it in the end, if you leave?" He had often confessed to her that he was no business man, that even the thought of approaching an editor or a publisher could take away his appet.i.te for a day.

"Let's not talk about that!" Her hands were on his shoulders now, and she was reading his face hungrily.

"But what shall be done with it?"

"Well, everything _is_ done!" she said, reluctantly, he thought. Then, slipping away from him for a minute or two, she fluttered back to the room with a bit of paper in her hand.

"And as a sign and proof of the same, permit me to present you with something which is entirely your own!"

It was Slater & Slater's check for one thousand dollars, already indorsed and marked accepted. He held it out to her, determined.

"You know I can't accept this," he said. But she was equally determined.

"But you shall, and must!"

Again he refused it, absolutely, proudly, she thought; and again she thrust it back on him. Then she saw that it was useless, and with that discovery a new trouble came to her.

At last she made a suggestion that had fluttered to the ark of her indecision, like a dove with an olive-branch.

"Let's take it and spend it--on our holiday! No, let's spend half of it; we can decide about the other half later on!"

He stopped to consider her proposal, and as she saw him wavering she declared that she, like Mrs. Spaulding, would never take "no" for an answer.

And so it was decided; and drawing on her gloves she reminded him of their ride.

While the horses were being brought round she told him of her interview with her publisher--not all of it, but at least enough to show how she had succeeded in securing the terms she had first asked for.

"What a wonderful little warrior you are!" he cried, taking her hand laughingly, but gratefully. He looked down at the frail little white fingers admiringly. "It ought to guide an empire!" he cried.

But, strangely enough, she could not find it in her heart to share in his delight. Even the mention of the book, during all that day, in some manner distressed and worried her.

"Those are far-off things and battles long ago," she said, as they started out, shrugging her little shoulders, as though to lift from them some burden of useless care.

"This is the beginning of our holiday. You remember what you said: the fulness and color of life! So let's turn vagabond. Do you know," she continued, taking a tighter rein on her little chestnut mare, who was champing restively at her bit, "do you know, I don't believe you've enough of the rogue in you ever to make a poet!"

"Try me!" he laughed, yet not altogether pleased.

"You haven't enough of the dare-devil in your make-up. You are always too staid and English and respectable and self-contained. You ought to have more of the vagabond, the swashbuckler, more of the Villon!"

"Is that," he asked, "your ideal of man?"

"By no means!"