The Streets of Ascalon Part 94

"When did you arrive?"

"L-last night," he admitted.

"What! And didn't call me up! I refuse to believe it of you!"

She really seemed indignant, and he followed her into the pretty house where presently she became slightly mollified by his exuberant admiration of the place.

"Are you in earnest?" she said. "Do you really think it so pretty? If you do I'll take you upstairs and show you my room, and the three beautiful spick and span guest rooms. But _you'll_ never occupy one!"

she added, still wrathful at his apparent neglect of her. "I don't want anybody here who isn't perfectly devoted to me. And it's very plain that you are not."

He mildly insisted that he was but she denied it, hotly.

"And I shall _never_ get over it," she added. "But you may come upstairs and see what you have missed."

They went over the renovated house thoroughly; she, secretly enchanted at his admiration and praise of everything, pointed out any object that seemed to have escaped his attention merely to hear him approve it.

Finally she relented.

"You _are_ satisfactory," she said as they returned to the front veranda and seated themselves. "And really, Rix, I'm so terribly glad to see you that I forgive your neglect.... Are you well? You don't look very well," she added earnestly. "Why are you so white?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I wanted to surprise you,' he explained feebly."]

"I'm in fine shape, thank you."

"I didn't mean your figure," she laughed--"Oh, that _was_ a common kind of a joke, wasn't it? But I'm only a farmer, Rix. You must expect the ruder and simpler forms of speech from a lady of the woodshed!... Why are you so pale?"

"Do I seem particularly underdone?"

"That's horrid, too. Are you and I going to degenerate just because you work for a living? You _are_ unusually thin, anyway; and the New York pallor is very noticeable. Will you stay and get sun-burnt?"

"I _could_ stay a few days."

"How many?"

"How many do you want me? Two whole days, Strelsa?"

She laughed at him, then looked at him a trifle shyly, but laughed again as she answered:

"I want you to stay always, of course. Don't pretend that you don't know it, because you are perfectly aware that I never tire of you. But if you can stay only two days don't let us waste any time----"

"We're not wasting it here together, are we?"

"Don't you want to walk? I haven't a horse yet, except for agricultural purposes. I'll rinse my hands and take off this ap.r.o.n--" She stood unpinning and untying it, her gray eyes never leaving him in their unabashed delight in him.

Then she disappeared for a few minutes only to reappear wearing a pair of stout little shoes and carrying a walking-stick which she said she used in rough country.

And first they visited her garden where all the old-fashioned autumn flowers were in riotous bloom--scarlet sage, rockets, thickets of gladiolus, heavy borders of asters, marigolds, and coreopsis; and here she gave a few verbal directions to the yokel who gaped toothlessly in reply.

After that, side by side, they swung off together across the hill, she, lithe and slender, setting the springy pace and twirling her walking-stick, he, less accustomed to the open and more so to the smooth hot streets of the city, slackening pace first.

She chided and derided him and bantered him scornfully, then with sudden sweet concern halted, reproaching herself for setting too hot a pace for a city-worn and work-worn man.

But the cool shadows of the woods were near, and she made him rest on the little footbridge--the same bridge where he had encountered Ledwith for the first time in years. He recognised the spot.

After they had seated themselves and Strelsa, resting on the back of the bridge seat, was contentedly dabbling in the stream with her cane, Quarren said, slowly:

"Shall I tell you why I did not disturb you last night, Strelsa?"

"You can't excuse it----"

"You shall be judge and jury. It's rather a long story, though----"

"I am listening."

"Then, it has to do with Ledwith. He's not very well but he's better than he was. You see he wanted to take a course of treatment to regain his health, and there seemed to be n.o.body else, so--I offered to see him through."

"That's like you, Rix," she said, looking at him.

"Oh, it wasn't anything--I had nothing to do----"

"That's like you, too. Did you pull him through?"

"He pulled himself through.... It was strenuous for two or three days--and hot as the devil in that sanitarium." ... He laughed. "We both were wrecks when we came out two weeks later--oh, a bit groggy, that's really all.... And he had no place to go--and seemed to be inclined to keep hold of my sleeve--so I telephoned Molly. And she said to bring him up. That was nice of her, wasn't it?"

"Everybody is wonderful except you," she said.

"Nonsense," he said, "it wasn't I who went through a modified h.e.l.l. He's got a lot of backbone, Ledwith.... And so we came up last night....

And--now here's the interesting part, Strelsa! We strolled over to call on Mrs. Ledwith----"

"What!"

"Certainly. I myself didn't see her but--" he laughed--"she seemed to be at home to her ex-husband."

"Rix!"

"It's a fact. He went back there for breakfast this morning after he'd changed his clothes."

"After--_what_?"

"Yes. It seems that they started out in a canoe about midnight and he didn't turn up at Witch-Hollow until just before breakfast--and then he only stayed long enough to change to boating flannels.... You should see him; he's twenty years younger.... I fancy they'll get along together in future."

"Oh, Rix!" she said, "that was darling of you! You _are_ wonderful even if you don't seem to know it!... And to think--to _think_ that Mary Ledwith is going to be happy again!... Oh, you don't know how it has been with her--the silly, unhappy little thing!

"Why, after Mrs. Sprowl left, the girl went all to pieces. Molly and I did what we could--but Molly isn't strong and Mrs. Ledwith was at my house almost all the time--Oh, it was quite dreadful, and I'm sure she was really losing her senses--because--I think I'll tell you--I tell you everything--" She hesitated, and then, lowering her voice:

"She had come to see me, and she was lying on the lounge in my dressing-room, crying; and I was doing my hair. And first I knew she sobbed out that she had killed her husband and wanted to die, and she caught up that pistol that Sir Charles gave me at the Bazaar last winter--it looked like a real one--and the next thing I knew she had fired a charge of j.a.panese perfume at her temple, and it was all over her face and hair!... Don't laugh, Rix; she thought she had killed herself, and I had a horrid, messy time of it reviving her."

"You poor child," he exclaimed trying not to laugh--"she had no brains to blow out anyway.... That's a low thing to say. Ledwith likes her....

I really believe she's been scared into life-long good behaviour."