The Whirligig of Time Part 25

"Yes," answered his aunt; "I tried to make her stay at home, but she would go." Then after a moment she gently added, as though in answer to James' unspoken reproach: "I would have let her take the carriage, but of course I could not ask Thomas to go out in such weather."

James entirely failed to see why not. He would willingly have condemned Thomas and the horses to perpetual driving through something much more disagreeable than rain and slush if it could have saved Beatrice one particle of her present discomfort.

But being, in fact as well as in appearance, a daughter of Crusaders, and consequently well used to climatic rigors in the country from which her ancestors had marched to meet the Paynim foe, Beatrice was really not suffering nearly as much as James' lover-like anxiety supposed her to be. She had thick boots, a mackintosh, an umbrella and a thick tweed skirt to protect her from the weather, and could have walked miles without so much as wetting her feet. If she had got wet, she certainly would have changed her garments immediately on reaching home, and even if she had not changed then she probably would not have caught cold, having a strong const.i.tution. Nevertheless James stood at the window and silently worried about her, and his first words as he met her at the front door were expressive of this mood.

"Beatrice!" he cried eagerly, as he threw the door open, "I do hope you're not wet through!"

She had not seen him standing at the window, so his appearance at the door was consequently a complete surprise to her, and the expression that came over her face as she saw him was one of pure pleasure. James'

heart leaped within him at her unaccustomed smile, and then fell again as he saw it change to an expression of ever so slight and well-restrained surprise, not at his being there, but at the manner and words of his greeting. He realized in a second that he had allowed his tongue to betray his heart.

Beatrice paid no immediate attention to the remark, and her welcoming words "James, of all people in the world!" gave no sign of anything more than a friendly pleasure. She was entirely at her ease. James found himself running on, quite easily:

"Yes--just got a day or two off and came on to say Howdy-do to you all.

Got to start back this afternoon, worse luck. How well you're looking!"

By this time they were practically in the library, in the restraining presence of Aunt Selina, and Beatrice had no more chance to introduce the topic clamoring for discussion in the minds of both than the question "You've seen Harry?" uttered in an undertone as they went through the door, allowed her. Church, the weather and the unexpected pleasure of James' arrival were politely discussed for a few moments, and then Aunt Selina withdrew to prepare for dinner.

"James," Beatrice burst out, "tell me about Harry. I know you've come on about that; tell me all about it! Has anything been done? Can anything be done?"

"It can," said James, smiling at her impetuosity. "Like-wise, it has. In fact, it's all over!"

"What do you mean?... Have you paid her off?"

"No; she withdrew of her own accord."

"James, don't be irritating! Tell me about it. You've done something, I know you have!"

"Well--possibly!" He smiled tantalizingly at her--so like a man!

"What?"

"Well, I'll tell you--on one condition."

"What's that?"

"That you'll promise not to thank me when you've found out!" James considered this rather a masterly piece of deceptive strategy, more than making up for his indiscretion at the front door.

Beatrice dropped her eyes and drew down the corners of her mouth, with an expression half humorous, half contemptuous. "Go ahead," said she.

James went ahead and told her the whole affair at some length. His position during this narrative was a not unenviable one; it is not often that one gets a chance to recount to one's lady-love a story in which one is so obviously the hero. Nor did he lose anything by being the narrator of his own prowess; his omissions spoke louder in his favor than the most laudatory comments of a third person could have.

"So, he is free!" she said at last, when she had cross-questioned the whole thing out of him. "He is free again!..."

What was there about these words that seemed to blast James' feeling of triumph, to chill the very marrow in his bones? Was it only the words; was it not rather the extraordinary intensity of the pleasure on her face; a pleasure which did not fade with her smile, but lived on in the dreamy expression of the eyes, gazing sightlessly out of the window?...

She spoke again in a moment or two, asking a question about some detail in the case, and the feeling left him again. He answered her question with perfect composure. Such hysterical vapors must be incidental to love, he supposed. He was not troubled about it at all, unless, very vaguely, by the fleeting memory of a similar experience, occurring--oh, a long time ago. Nothing to worry about.

He did not say much after he had completed his narrative. He was content simply to sit and look at her, drinking in her smiles, her comments, her little e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of pleasure and answering her stray questions about the great affair. The joy of discovery was not yet even tinged with the thirst for possession. It was enough to watch her as she talked and laughed and moved about; to watch her, the living original, and think how much more glorious she was than the most vivid of his recollections of her. Oh, how wonderful she was!

Presently he was aware of her making remarks laudatory of himself, and primed his ears to listen.

"But how clever it was of you, James," she was saying, "to work out the whole thing, just from that one little glimpse--and so quickly, too! Of course it was just a Heaven-sent chance, your seeing her at that moment, but I can see how much more there was to it than that. What a frightfully clever person you are, James--a regular detective! You really must give up making motor cars and be another Sherlock Holmes!"

All this fell very pleasantly on his ears, though he could have wished, if he had taken the time to, that she could have employed some other adjective than "clever." But there was no time for such minor considerations. Just at that moment they heard the rattle of the front door latch, and Beatrice, knowing that none but Harry ever entered the house without first ringing, jumped from her chair and started towards the hall, the words "There he is now!" glowing on her lips....

And then the universe crumbled about James' ears. Had his father's early readings extended into the minor Elizabethan Drama, he might have remembered the words of Beaumont--

This earth of mine doth tremble, and I feel A stark affrighted motion in my blood

and applied them quite aptly to his present state. For a moment the earth literally seemed to reel; he staggered slightly, unnoticed, and caught hold of the back of a chair. Then, while Beatrice went out to meet Harry, he stood there and wished he had never been born to live through such a moment.

Beatrice was in love with Harry--that was the long and the short of it.

There was no mistaking the import of the look of utter glorification that came over her face as she heard his hand on the doork.n.o.b; such an expression on the face of a human being could mean but one thing.... He wondered, despairingly, if his face had borne such a look a little while ago, when he caught sight of Beatrice....

Whether or not Harry was on similar terms with Beatrice he could not say. He rather thought that he was, or if not, it was only a question of time till he would be. He was not a witness of the actual moment of meeting; that occurred in the hall, and all he got of it was Harry's initial remark: "Well, Beatrice, have you heard the good news? James has made a respectable woman of me!" drowned in a sort of flutter from Beatrice, in which he could distinguish nothing articulate--nor needed to. The character of the remark--flippant to the verge of good taste!--might at another time have excited his disgust; but now it made as little impression on him as it did on Beatrice.

Harry himself might not have made it at another time; it was the result of his embarra.s.sment. So, also, was the expression which he wore when he came into the room with Beatrice a moment later--a very unusual look, due to a very unusual cause. Beatrice had, in fact, all but given herself away to him. He followed her into the room embarra.s.sed and fl.u.s.tered. It was incomparably the worst of the series of strained moments in his intercourse with Beatrice, and it gave point and coherency to the others in a way he hated to think of.... Once in the library he found himself leading conversation, or what pa.s.sed for conversation among the three for the next few moments. The others appeared conversationally extinct; Beatrice--he hardly dared look toward her--trying to recover her composure; James preternaturally grave and silent, for some unknown reason. The atmosphere seemed surcharged with an unexpected and, to him, inappropriate gravity. He felt like a schoolboy among grown-ups.

Presently Aunt Selina returned and dinner was announced.

Poor James--he had won Paradise only to lose it the next instant! No one could have guessed anything from his behavior--he was not the sort of person to make an exhibition of his emotional crises; but he really lived very hard during the meal that followed. His state of mind was at first nothing but a ghastly chaos, from which but one thing emerged into certainty--he must not betray himself or Beatrice; he must go on exactly as if nothing unusual had occurred. It never paid to make a fool of oneself, and--this was the next thought, the next plank that floated to him from the wreck of his happiness--he had not, that he knew of, given himself away. That was a tremendous thing to be thankful for; what a blessing that he had got wind of Beatrice's true feelings before he had the chance to blunder into making love to her and so precipitate a series of horrors which he could not even bear to contemplate! Now, he told himself rea.s.suringly, as he tried desperately to contribute his fourth to the none too spontaneous conversation, he had only to keep himself in check, keep his mouth shut, keep from making of himself the most unthinkable a.s.s that ever walked G.o.d's earth--and it would all come out right!

By the time the roast beef made its appearance he saw there was only one thing to do and without a moment's hesitation he embarked on the doing of it. Beatrice sat on his right; he raised his eyes to her and pa.s.sed them over each enthralling feature of her, her soft dark hair; her eyes, brown almost to black, gentle yet fearless in their gaze, and at the same time, quite calmly and unemotionally, told himself that she could never be his. She was Harry's. These two were intended for each other all along, made for each other. Could he not have seen that in the beginning, if he had kept his eyes open? Could he not have seen that their childish companionship, dating from Harry's English days, their being placed again, as though by a divine sort of accident, in the same town, and above all their obvious fitness for each other, was going to lead to love?

Well--thus he found himself to his one substantial comfortable support--he had hurt no one but himself. He had only to put Beatrice resolutely out of his mind and all would be well. She was Harry's; was that not the next best thing to her being his?--better, even? No longer ago than last night he had convinced himself that Harry was, when all was said and done, a better man than he was. Was it not perfectly just that the prize should go to him?

The thought helped him through the meal astonishingly. Unselfishness is a great stimulus. Once he saw that he could do something definite toward the happiness of those he loved best, he seemed, rather to his own surprise, perfectly willing and able to do it, at no matter what sacrifice to himself. His righteousness supported him not only through the meal, but well through that part of the afternoon that he spent in the house--up, indeed, to the very moment of parting.

James' plan was to take a five-o'clock train to New York, whence he would take a night train to Chicago and arrive in Minneapolis early Tuesday morning, having missed only three working days at the office. It was still raining at four o'clock and a cab was telephoned for. As it was plodding up the slushy drive, James, overcoated and hatted, stood on the porch ready to get into it. Harry, who was to go to the station with him, was "having a word" with Aunt Selina--or, more exactly, being had a word with by her--in the hall. Beatrice, by some fiendish chance, determined to do the same by James.

"James," she said, "I want you to know how perfectly splendid I think it was of you--all this about Harry, I mean. You may say it was no more than your duty, and all that; but it was fine of you, nevertheless.

Thank you, James, and good-by."

It really was rather awful. It amounted to his being rewarded and dismissed like a faithful servant. And her tacit, unconscious a.s.sumption of her right to thank people for favors conferred upon Harry--that was turning the knife in the wound. Of course she could have no idea of the pain she was giving, and James shook her hand and said good-by trying to give no sign of the pain he felt. All the comfortable stability of his logic faded from him as she spoke those words. All the way to the station, sitting by Harry's side in the smelly cab, he found himself crying inwardly, like a child, for what he could not have; wondering if, by the exercise of tact and patience, Beatrice could possibly be brought to love him; overcome at moments by an insane desire to throw himself on Harry's neck and beg him to let him have her--for surely, surely Harry could not be as fond of her as he! Oh, was it going to be as hard as this right along?...

"James," said Harry suddenly as the two paced the dreary platform in silence, waiting for the train to pull in; "it's sometimes awfully hard to say what you want without talking mawkish rot, but there's something I've simply got to say, rot or no rot, or drop dead on the asphalt.--I'm pretty young, of course, and haven't seen much of anything of life; but a person doesn't have to live long to get the general idea that it's rather a chaotic mess. Well, occasionally out of it there emerges a thing that appears to bring out all that's best in your nature and gives a certain coherence to the other things...."

"Yes?" said James, wondering what was to follow.

"Well, it seems to me that one of those things is--you and me. Since last night, I mean ... James, I don't know how you feel about it, but since then I've had a sense of nearness to you, such as I've never begun to have with any other human being--such as doesn't occur often in one lifetime, I imagine ... I really think very highly of you, James!" He broke off here with a smile, half embarra.s.sed at his brother's slowness of response, ready to retreat into the everyday and the trivial if the response did not come.

But he need not have worried; James was merely choosing his words; every nerve in him was thrilling in answer to Harry's advance. He returned the smile, but replied, in full seriousness: "You've hit it exactly; I should even say it couldn't be duplicated in one lifetime.... You're unique, Harry!"

"That's it--unique," said Harry, joining in with his mood. "You've mastered the art of uniquity, James."

"And what's more," went on the other, "it always has been that way--really. Even during these last few years. With me, I mean."