“Another two,” said the soft and happy voice of a girl, rising to them; and a boyish voice answered:
“The night is full of them.”
The canoe merged with the darkness. The two figures on the bridge, silent, followed it with their blind speculations into an unknown world. From far across the open spaces of the lake came the music of women’s voices blended, which the night breeze hushed to hear; a modulation of wistful, minor strains:
“In dreams she grows not older
The lands of Dream among,
Though all the world wax colder
Though all the songs be sung.”
The latter couplet was repeated, a haunting, yearning, falling melody, that suddenly swelled and rose into the splendid, fulfilling major:
“In dreams doth he behold her
Still fair and kind and young.”
The taller figure on the bridge stirred from a dream. “That is your song, Marcia.”
“Yes,” said the girl, a little away from him in the darkness. “I arranged it for them, to be sung so; in parts.”
“You sang it the first day we really began to know each other.”
“Very long ago,” she assented, with her serene gravity. “Two months, is it not?”
“Or years. Or centuries. It doesn’t seem to matter.”
“I am glad they sang that tonight. For us,” she concluded, after the briefest of pauses.
He put his hand over hers, which rested on the stone coping of the bridge. She did not stir nor speak. But it was his hand, not hers, that trembled. A heavy rowboat came lumbering down the reach, two students at the oars.
“Politics for me,” said one confidently. “We’re going to run the country from this end now. I’m for Mart Embree’s band-wagon.”
“Too dull,” said another. “Gimme a touch of Nuh York.”
“It’s a rough world for poor, lost lambs like us to be spilled into, anyway,” boomed a resonant bass from the stern seat, and their laughter died away around the bend of the island.
Marcia Ames freed her fingers from her companion’s clasp.
“Jem,” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
Her figure, dim-white in the darkness, neither withdrew from nor swayed toward him. But he thought that he saw her head half turn with a sorrowful intent.
“Jem,” she said again, “I came here to—”
“I love you, Marcia,” he repeated with a still insistence.
“Wait. I am going away.”
“When?”
“Very soon. This week. Perhaps sooner.”
“For how long?”
“Will you not understand, Jem? I am going away.”
The quiet repetition fell, chill and deadening, upon his heart.
“From me?”
“From everything here.”
“Why?”
“I must.”
“Then you don’t care!”
She was silent.
“You’re going back?” He made an obvious effort to gather his force for the determinative word. “Abroad?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll follow you,” he declared grimly.
“Now you are angry with me, are you not?” She spoke with a sorrowful, disappointed intonation.
“Haven’t I a right to be?”
“Have you?”
“Tell me, if you can, that you haven’t cared for me a bit; not at any time. You see,” he added with conviction but without triumph, “you can’t!”
“If I had ever cried—in my life—since I was a child—I think—I should cry now,” she said, in little, uneven sections of speech.
“Marcia!” All the anger passed away from Jem, leaving him shaken. “Don’t feel that way. What has happened? What have I done to change you toward me?”
“I cannot tell you—more than I have told you.”
“Try,” he urged. “Let’s have it out!”
“I am not clever at explaining. Not—not such things as this. There is something that rises up inside and—and forbids. Oh, Jem! You must know, without my putting it into words.”
“It’s that cursed Wade story, of course. But that’s because you don’t understand. Surely, between you and me a—a petty little matter such as that—”
“Petty!”
“Why, Marcia, it’s just part of the day’s work. Ask any newspaper man. Ask Andrew Galpin.”
“Who has perhaps half-spoiled his life by defending his friend.”
“That’s different—I’d have done that.”
“Would you?”
“Can’t you believe that of me, Marcia? Do you think I’m a coward?”
“Falsehood is always cowardly,” she said very low. “Perhaps I am abnormal about it. I cannot help it. I was bred that way.”
“But try to be fair to me,” he pleaded.
“Fair to you? I was more than that. I could not believe that you had written it. When I went into Eli Wade’s shop that morning there was a strange, violent white-haired little man there with him—”
“Nick Milliken.”
“Yes. He said what—what you have said; that it was all part of the day’s work; that you were no worse than any other reporter. He said that you had boasted to him that nobody could control your pen.”
Jeremy groaned. “It’s true.”
“And then he laughed, and said things about you that I would not endure to hear—as I told him.”
“You defended me against Milliken!”
“I tried to.”
“Can’t you defend me against yourself, Marcia?”
He could hear her long, slow-drawn breath before she answered. “I could defend you against yourself, in my own heart. But I cannot defend the ideal of you that I had built up, against what you have done to it.”
“Couldn’t you have told me?”
“Told you what, Jem?”
“That I did represent an ideal to you. Think what it would have meant to me to—to know that.”
Something told him that she was smiling in the darkness and that there was pain and pity as well as a sweet mockery in the smile. “Could I tell you that before you told me—what you have told me tonight?”
“That I love you? You can’t pretend that you didn’t know it. But I’d no business to tell you then: I’ve no business to tell you now,” he added gloomily. “What have I got to offer a girl like you!”
“That would not matter,” she answered him proudly. “It is the other that matters.”
“Wade, again! I can’t see that it matters so much, even to him. How was I to guess that it would hurt a simple-minded old dreamer of that sort?”
“Have you been to see him since?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The direct query had the stunning force of accusation. “You’re right,” he said dully. “I knew all the time it was a rotten thing to do, only I wouldn’t face it. And I’ve kept away from the Boot & Shoe Infirmary because I was afraid to go there. It’s curious,” he added, in a flat, detached manner of speech, “how the little things of life—the things you think are little—wreck the whole business for you, when it’s too late to do anything.”
“Jem!” gasped the girl. “I cannot bear to hear you talk so. It—it is unlike you. It hurts me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, dear, Heaven knows. I only want to get this clear. You—you think I’m unfit to be—that I’m untrustworthy. Is that it?”
“Am I being very cruel?” she whispered.
“You’ve answered. It’s the truth that’s cruel, not you.”
“I must trust. Absolutely. Or—there is nothing.”
“I see. When do you go?”
Of a sudden her strong young arms were about his shoulders; her hot, sweet face was pressed against his. He felt the quick throbbing of the vein in her temple, and was shaken to the foundations of his being with the dear and bewildering shock of it.
“Oh, Jem!” Her whisper fluttered close to
his ear. “Why do you let me go! Never let me go. It breaks my heart to go. To leave you. Never to see you again. Why must I go!”
“You mustn’t. You shan’t. Marcia, darling! After this you can’t leave me.”
He lifted her head to press his lips upon her eyes. They were hot and dry. But when he sought her mouth, her quick hand interposed. As abruptly as she had come into his arms she escaped their jealous clasp and stood back from him.
“How could I!” she panted. “It was unfair of me. I never meant it.”
“You can’t tell me that—now,” he answered, with a new note of joy and triumph.
“It was wrong—so wrong,” she mourned. “It did not mean what—what you hoped. For I must go.”
“Go?” he repeated incredulously. “And not come back?”
“Oh, want me to come back, Jem!” she pleaded. “Keep wanting me to come back. If anything could ever bring me, that would. But it will not. Nothing can. I know it. I am holding to a dream.”
“I’ve lost mine,” said Jem. “And everything in life with it—if you go, now.”
“Forgive me. And believe that I never meant to hurt you. If I have, it was my ignorance.”
“Ignorance? You? I wish I could see your face now, to see how wise it is!”
“You are smiling at me again,” she said. “But I am not wise. I am very foolish. And I am very young. Jem, do you know how old I am?”
“Sometimes I’ve thought you must be at least a hundred.”
“I am not eighteen yet, Jem. Indeed, I am not. I once told you that I was old, as a child. So you must forgive me and believe me.”
“I’ll do anything but give you up.”
“That, too,” she said very low. She set her hand trustfully within his arm. “Come. You must take me home.”
It was a silent walk; the girl full of musings; the man of a grim, dogged determination. At the rose-bowered steps he took her hand.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be here directly I finish my work. No; I’ve got one errand I must do first.”
“What is that?” she asked wanly.
“I’m going to see Eli Wade.”
“Yes. I am glad,” said she.
He stopped for a moment at the gate, hoping for another sight of her. She had turned up the hall light and now stood in the doorway, beneath the roses. Her face was inexpressibly wistful, inexpressibly lovely, inexpressibly lonely. The subtle and changeful eyes stared widely into the darkness. Suddenly she threw her arm across them with a desolate, renunciatory gesture and turned away.
The shoes which Eli Wade had repaired for Jeremy Robson were leaden-soled to carry home a leaden and foreboding heart, that night.
With the new day came new courage to the lover. Marcia cared for him, by her own tacit confession. After all, his fault had been a minor one; there was sound defense for it: he could convince her of that, and overbear her intention of leaving him. What he failed to perceive was this: that the girl was concerned, not with a fault, but with a flaw of character divined by her subtle and powerful intuition. But a world without Marcia Ames was unthinkable to young Jeremy Robson, considering the prospect calmly in the light of day; and being unthinkable, there remained only to devise the best means of combating her illogical and even—he would go thus far—unfair judgment of himself. Growing more assured and comfortable in his mind, as the day wore on, he contrived to finish up his work early, and left the office at a jubilant skip, intent on getting to Montgomery Street with the least possible delay. He wasn’t even going by way of the Boot & Shoe Infirmary. Eli Wade could wait.
On the sidewalk he was accosted by young Burton Higman, who glanced sidelong at him out of ashamed-looking, swollen eyes.
“Cut it short, Buddy,” said the hasting Jem.
“She’s gone,” said the small boy.
Jem stopped dead in his tracks. “Who’s gone?”
“Miss Marcy.”
“Where? When?” demanded Jem wildly.
“Chicago. Three-thirty-seven,” returned the precise Buddy.
A pall of dimness settled down over the glaring street; hot, stark, sterile dimness through which the figures of trivial folk moved lifelessly on futile errands.
“Did she leave any message?” inquired Jem, presently, in a voice which would have been life-like from a phonograph.
“Told me to tell you.”
“Why did she go—so soon?” The query was put, not to young Mr. Higman but to a blind and juggernaut providence.
It was young Mr. Higman, however, who responded. “Afraid,” he stated.
“Afraid? What of?”
“Herself. She told me so when she k-k-kissed me goodbye.” Buddy’s eyes winked rapidly. “But she didn’t tell me to tell you that,” he reflected.
“Did she give you any other message?”
“Not exac’ly a message.”
“Go on! Out with it.”
“You needn’t bite a feller,” expostulated young Mr. Higman. “She told me if ever you got what you was after, to go to you an’ ast for a job, when I needed it, for the sake of a mut—mut—some kind of friend.”
Jem registered a silent and pious vow. “Is that all?”
“Yes. Do I get the job?”
“If I can give it to you.”
“Say, Mr. Robson. I guess she meant you was that kind of friend. Are you a friend of hern?”
Jem got it out at last: “Yes.”
Young Mr. Higman’s eyes became suddenly more strained and ashamed-looking. “I’m goin’ to miss her somethin’ awful, Mr. Robson,” he said. “Ain’t you?”
But Mr. Robson had passed on. Buddy wondered whether he had suffered a touch of the sun. He seemed uncertain in his walk.
8
In the course of a long and varied life, Miss Editha Greer had been consistently eccentric. In the close of it she was not less so. Witness the following telegram received by her great-nephew, Jeremy Robson:
Philadelphia, July 30, 1912
I am dead. Do not come to funeral. Letter follows.
E. Greer.
To say that the recipient of this posthumous message was overcome with grief, would be excessive. His feeling for his aged relative had been one of mild and remote piety, relieved by an intermittent sense of amusement, and impregnated with a vague dread of what she might do next. No more next now for E. Greer. Jeremy was honestly sorry; not on his own account, but for the old lady herself. She had so enjoyed life! Doubtless she had relinquished it with courage; but, also, he felt certain, with profound dissent from the verdict. But, having duly dismissed him from consideration in her lifetime, what should she be writing him about now that she was dead?
Like the telegram, the letter, when it arrived, proved to be an anticipatory document. It dealt, in a frank and unflattering style, with Jeremy’s expectations upon her property which, she observed characteristically, was much less than most fools supposed.
I have long considered you a bit of a ninny [continued this pleasing document]. Nor have I valid cause to alter my opinion. But I recently met at a country house a young woman who knows you. [Jeremy’s heart performed a porpoise-roll within his breast.] She tells me that I am an old fool. I interpret her expression and bearing, not her words, which are that I do not understand you. Apparently she believes that she does. If I left you all my money, she would perhaps marry you for it. On the whole, however, I believe not. She has neglected much more brilliant opportunities here. Moreover, when I put the question to her, she said not. She added that I was impertinent, and that impertinence was no more tolerable from the old to the young than from the young to the old. I like your Miss Marcia Ames.
The point of importance is that she considers the modest, in fact I may say nominal and complimentary, sum set apart for you in my will, quite insufficient. We discussed it at length. She is possessed of a devil of frankness. She maintains that I should leave you a modest competency. She thinks that it might save your immortal soul, if I correctly interpret her atti
tude. She thinks your immortal soul is worth saving. She assumes that you have an immortal soul. She even appeared to think that I have an immortal soul. Upon that moot point I shall be better able to judge by the time this letter goes forward to you; but it is improbable that I shall communicate any further or more authoritative information.
She is a strange creature. You should have married her, though she is far too old for you. A hundred years at least. I judge you might have married her but lost your chance. [Here the reader groaned.] She might have made a success of you. I gravely doubt whether my money can.
Do not hastily assume that the money is within your grasp. There is a condition to be fulfilled. I believe that you will not fulfill it. She believes that you will, even though she does not know what it is. Nor shall you. Whether you receive a small pittance or a roundly comfortable sum, depends now entirely upon yourself. I am still malicious enough—I forget that I am now, as you read this, dead and safely buried—I was still malicious enough to wish that I might see your struggles of mind upon receiving this, the last communication wherewith you will ever be troubled from
Your dutiful great-aunt,
E. Greer.
Perturbation over the prospect of comparative enrichment was quite subordinated, as Jeremy read this curious epistle, to the turbulence of emotion excited by the knowledge that Marcia had been interesting herself so intimately in his affairs. So far, the joke turned against Great-Aunt Greer. But she was more than avenged by the sting in her surmise that Jem had forfeited his chance with Marcia. Where was Marcia? If he got the money, or the assurance of it, why should he not set out to find her, even though it took him across the world, and try once more? Would she have the force to escape from him again? Was not her flight the initial confession, upon which her queer relations with E. Greer set the seal? Only as an afterthought came the consideration of the condition upon which he was to secure the larger legacy. He could not seem to get excited or disturbed over it. Nothing mattered much in the bleak soul of Jeremy Robson but Marcia Ames. Great-Aunt Greer would have been sorely disgusted! Or, perhaps she wouldn’t.
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