Vision House Part 33

"Well, I'll say good night, then, me dear ones," said Mothereen. "It's made me as happy as a bird, sure it has, to see your happiness. The Lord is good to us all, He who brought Johnny back, safe and sound, out o'

the Furnace. His blessin' on ye both this night!"

Then she was gone.

Her words had brought a sense of peace into the room, as if a white dove had flown in.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE VIGIL LIGHT

"I'll go and rouse up one of the hotels," said Garth.

"But you're in evening dress," Marise reminded him. "You can't come back like that in the morning. Besides, what would the people think?"

"Hang the people!" Garth replied.

"One can't--unfortunately."

"Well, here's a better plan. I'll sit outside in the garden court. I can come in--if you'll let me--before there's any chance of being seen."

Marise shivered. "It would be cold!"

"Pooh!" said Garth. "It's never really cold here. Don't forget it wasn't exactly a picnic, those years in France. I don't think I shall ever mind cold again."

"Anyhow, I should feel a brute sleeping calmly here, with you sitting on a hard bench out of doors. I may not be a very nice person," Marise criticised herself, "but I'm not a thorough-paced _pig_. We must think of some other possible arrangement."

"There's only one other possible arrangement. And you'd not consider that possible."

"What is it?" rather breathlessly.

"For you to make yourself comfortable behind a barricade of those two useful screens in your bedroom, while I sit up in an armchair--or spread myself out on this sofa."

"I _do_ consider that possible," said Marise, "now I know what kind of a man you are. That's what we'll do! I'll slip on a dressing-gown and curl up on top of the bed under an eiderdown. And early in the morning the one that's awake will call the other. It's quite simple--and you see I'm not so disagreeable as you thought."

"Have I ever given you cause to believe I thought you disagreeable?"

"Dear me, yes! Whole heaps of times! Not that it matters."

"I suppose it wouldn't matter to you. But it does matter to me, 'what kind of a man' you 'now know' me to be. Have you been studying me? I hadn't noticed it. But if you have, I'd be interested to hear what conclusions you've come to. Do you mind telling me?"

"Oh, my conclusions mostly concern your state of mind regarding _me_!"

said Marise.

"What, according to you, is it?"

"Dislike," she replied promptly.

"That's a strong word!" Garth blurted out. They were standing in the middle of the room, eyeing each other as might a pair of duellists obliged to fight over some technical dispute. "Have I been so brutal to you as all that?"

"You haven't been brutal lately. You were--_dreadfully_--at first."

"H'm! You weren't exactly angelic to me."

"There's nothing very angelic in the--in the affair."

"What, precisely, do you mean by 'the affair'?"

"The--er--bargain."

"I thought I'd convinced you that the 'bargain' had collapsed."

"Well, our--marriage, then, if you like that better. I've wondered every minute what you did marry me for, if it wasn't money. And sometimes I think it couldn't have been, because you seem to have plenty of your own. Still----"

"Some men with plenty could do with more. Is that what you'd say?"

"I'm not sure what I'd say--about you."

"I suppose you think that a million dollars would always be worth having. I'm sure your mother would think that."

"The question is, not what _we'd_ think, but what you thought--when you married me."

Garth looked at her for a moment in silence, as if weighing his answer, wondering whether to stick to his fixed plan of remoteness, or risk "giving himself away."

"Do you remember any of the things I said to you the first day we met?"

he asked at last.

"Yes, I remember you thought--then--you lo--you admired me a good deal.

But you were a different man that day from what you were afterwards."

"You're right! I was. A different man. The word you broke off just now was the one word for what I felt. Only it didn't express half. I loved you with all there was of me. I adored and worshipped you. But--I don't believe you've ever been in love yourself except on the surface, or I'd ask you how much you think love can stand, and live?"

Marise felt the blood pour up to her cheeks and tingle in the tips of her ears. So it was true that he _didn't_ love her now! The thought hurt her vanity. She hated to believe that a man who'd loved her once could _un_love her in a few days or weeks. But it annoyed her very much to flush. She wished to look entirely unmoved. Instead, she wanted to cry.

"Please do tell me once for all _why_ you married me if it wasn't either for love or money!" she said crossly, with a quiver in her voice.

"When one makes a bold move on the chessboard--the chessboard of life--there are often several motives," Garth replied. "Sometimes it's to save the queen from being taken by an enemy piece. Perhaps that was my princ.i.p.al motive, who can tell?--I don't know just what piece to compare with Severance, though with a _card_ it would be easy. He's not a knight. Nor yet a bishop. We might call him a castle. I hear he's got one--which needs a bit of doing up before it would suit a queen."

"You married me only to keep Tony Severance from getting me?"

"That might have had something to do with it."

"Not for the million?"

"I leave you to guess that, from what you say you know of me."