The Streets of Ascalon Part 97

What in the world would I do if you were spoiled for me, Rix? I haven't anybody else.... What would I do here--all alone? I couldn't stay--I wouldn't know what to do--where to go in the world.... It would be lonely--lonely----"

She bent her head, and remained so, gray eyes fixed on her clasped fingers. For a long while she sat bowed over, thinking; once or twice she lifted her eyes to look at him, but her gaze always became confused and remote; and he did not offer to break the silence.

At last she looked up with a movement of decision, her face clearing.

"You understand, don't you, Rix?" she said, rising.

He nodded, rising also; and they descended the steps together and walked slowly away toward Witch-Hollow.

From the hill-top they noticed one of Sprowl's farm-waggons slowly entering the drive, followed on foot by several men and a little girl.

Her blond hair and ap.r.o.n fluttered in the breeze. She was too far away for them to see that she was weeping.

"I wonder what they've got in that waggon?" said Quarren, curiously.

Strelsa's gaze became indifferent, then pa.s.sed on and rested on the blue range of hills beyond.

"Isn't it wonderful about Chrysos," she said.

"The quaint little thing," he said almost tenderly. "She told Molly what happened--how she sat down under a fence to tie wild strawberries for Sir Charles, and how, all at once, she realised what his going out of her life meant to her--and how the tears choked her to silence until she suddenly found herself in his arms.... Can you see it as it happened, Strelsa?--as pretty a pastoral as ever the older poets--" He broke off abruptly, and she looked up, but he was still smiling as though the scene of another man's happiness, so lightly evoked, were a visualisation of his own. And again her gray eyes grew wistful as though shyly pleading for his indulgence and silently asking his pardon for all that she could never be to him or to any man.

So they came across fields and down through fragrant lanes to Witch-Hollow, where the fat setter gambolled ponderously around them with fat barkings and waggings, and where Molly, sewing on the porch, smoothed the frail and tiny garment over her knee and raised her pretty head to survey them with a smiling intelligence that made Strelsa blush.

"It _isn't_ so!" she found an opportunity to whisper into Molly's ear.

"If you look at us that way you'll simply make him miserable and break my heart."

Molly glanced after Quarren who had wandered indoors to find a cigarette in the smoking-room.

"If you don't marry that delectable young man," she said, "I'll take a stick and beat you, Strelsa."

"I don't want to--I don't _want_ to!" protested the girl, getting possession of Molly's hands and covering them with caresses. And, resting her soft lips on Molly's fingers, she looked at her; and the young matron saw tears glimmering under the soft, dark lashes.

"I _can't_ love him--that way," whispered the girl. "I would if I could.... I couldn't care for him more than I do.... And--and it terrifies me to think of losing him."

"Losing him?"

"Yes--by doing what you--what he--wishes."

"You think you'll lose him if you marry him?"

"I--yes. It would spoil him for me--spoil everything for me in the world----"

"Well, you listen to me," said Molly, exasperated. "When he has stood a certain amount of this silliness from you he'll really and actually turn into the s.e.xless comrade you think you want. But he'll go elsewhere for a mate. There are plenty suitable in the world. If you'd never been born there would have been another for him. If you pa.s.sed out of his life there would some day be another.

"Will we women never learn the truth?--that at best we are incidental to man, but that, when we love, man is the whole bally thing to us?

"Let him escape and you'll see, Strelsa. You'll get, perhaps, what you're asking for now, but he'll get what he is asking for, too--if not from you, from some girl of whom you and I and he perhaps have never heard.

"But she exists; don't worry. And any man worth his t.i.tle is certain to encounter her sooner or later."

The girl, flushed, dumb, watched her out of wide gray eyes in which the unshed tears had dried. The pretty matron slowly shook her head:

"Because you once bit into tainted fruit you laid the axe to the entire orchard. What nonsense! Rottenness is the exception; soundness the rule.

But you concluded that the hazard of bad fortune--that the unhappy chance of your first and only experience--was not an exception but the universal rule.... Very well; think it! He'll get over it some time, but you never will, Strelsa. You'll remember it all your life.

"For I tell you that we women who go to our graves without having missed a single pang--we who die having known happiness and its shadow which is sorrow--the happiness and sorrow which come through love of man alone--die as we should die, in deep content of destiny fulfilled--which is the only peace beyond all understanding."

The girl lowered her head and, resting her cheek on Molly's shoulder, looked down at the baby garment on her knees.

"That also?" she whispered.

"Yes.... Unless we pa.s.s that way, also, we can never die content.... But until a month ago I did not know it.... Strelsa--Strelsa! Are you never going to know what love can be?"

The girl rose slowly, flushing and whitening by turns, and stood a moment, her hands covering her eyes.

And standing so:

"Do you think he will go away--from me--some day?"

"Yes; he will go--unless----"

"Must it be--that way?"

"It will be that way, Strelsa."

"I had never thought of that."

"Think of it as the truth. It will be so unless you love him in his own fashion--and for his own sake. Try--if you care for him enough to try.... And if you do, you will love him for your own sake, too."

"I--I had thought of--of giving myself--for his sake--because he wishes it.... I don't believe I'll be--much afraid--of him. Do you?"

Molly's wise sweet eyes sparkled with silent laughter. Then without another glance at the tall, young girl before her she picked up her sewing, drew the needle from the hem, and smoothed out the lace embroidery on her knees.

After a while she said:

"Jim's returning on the noon train. Will you and Rix be here to luncheon?"

"I don't know."

"Well, ask him; I have my orders to give if you'll stay."

Strelsa walked into the house; Quarren, still hunting about for a cigarette, looked up as she entered the smoking-room.

"Where the d.i.c.kens does Jim keep his cigarettes?" he asked. "Do you know, Strelsa?"

"You poor boy!" she exclaimed laughingly, "have you been searching all this time? The wonder is that you haven't perished. Why didn't you ask me for one when we were at--our house?"

"_Your_ house?" he corrected, smiling.

Her gray eyes met his with a frightened sort of courage.