An Alabaster Box Part 24

She appeared to wait for his question. But he remained silent, staring at the blue rim of distant hills.

"You don't ask me--you don't seem to care what I was planning," she said, her voice timid and uncertain.

He glanced quickly at her. Something in her look stirred him curiously. It did not occur to him that her appeal and his instant response to it were as old as the race.

"I wish you would tell me," he urged. "Tell me everything!"

She drew a deep breath, her eyes misty with dreams.

"For a long time I taught school," she went on, "but I couldn't save enough that way. I never could have saved enough, even if I had lived on bread and water. I wanted--I needed a great deal of money, and I wasn't clever nor particularly well educated. Sometimes I thought if I could only marry a millionaire--"

He stared at her incredulously.

"You don't mean that," he said with some impatience.

She sighed.

"I'm telling you just what happened," she reminded him. "It seemed the only way to get what I wanted. I thought I shouldn't mind that, or--anything, if I could only have as much money as I needed."

A sense of sudden violent anger flared up within him. Did the girl realize what she was saying?

She glanced up at him.

"I never meant to tell any one about that part of it," she said hurriedly. "And--it wasn't necessary, after all; I got the money another way."

He bit off the point of a pencil he had been sharpening with laborious care.

"I should probably never have had a chance to marry a millionaire,"

she concluded reminiscently. "I'm not beautiful enough."

With what abominable clearness she understood the game: the marriage-market; the buyer and the price.

"I--didn't suppose you were like that," he muttered, after what seemed a long silence.

She seemed faintly surprised.

"Of course you don't know me," she said quickly. "Does any man know any woman, I wonder?"

"They think they do," he stated doggedly; "and that amounts to the same thing."

His thoughts reverted for an uncomfortable instant to Wesley Elliot and f.a.n.n.y. It was only too easy to see through f.a.n.n.y.

"Most of them are simple souls, and thank heaven for it!"

His tone was fervently censorious.

She smiled understandingly.

"Perhaps I ought to tell you further that a rich man--not a millionaire; but rich enough--actually did ask me to marry him, and I refused."

"H'mph!"

"But," she added calmly, "I think I should have married him, if I had not had money left me first--before he asked me, I mean. I knew all along that what I had determined to do, I could do best alone."

He stared at her from under gathered brows. He still felt that curious mixture of shame and anger burning hotly within.

"Just why are you telling me all this?" he demanded roughly.

She returned his look quietly.

"Because," she said, "you have been trying to guess my secret for a long time and you have succeeded; haven't you?"

He was speechless.

"You have been wondering about me, all along. I could see that, of course. I suppose everybody in Brookville has been wondering and--and talking. I meant to be frank and open about it--to tell right out who I was and what I came to do. But--somehow--I couldn't.... It didn't seem possible, when everybody--you see I thought it all happened so long ago people would have forgotten. I supposed they would be just glad to get their money back. I meant to give it to them--all, every dollar of it. I didn't care if it took all I had.... And then--I heard you last night when you crossed the library. I hoped--you would ask me why--but you didn't. I thought, first, of telling Mrs.

Daggett; she is a kind soul. I had to tell someone, because he is coming home soon, and I may need--help."

Her eyes were solemn, beseeching, compelling.

His anger died suddenly, leaving only a sort of indignant pity for her unfriended youth.

"You are--" he began, then stopped short. A painter was swiftly descending his ladder, whistling as he came.

"My name," she said, without appearing to notice, "is Lydia Orr Bolton. No one seems to remember--perhaps they didn't know my mother's name was Orr. My uncle took me away from here. I was only a baby. It seemed best to--"

"Where are they now?" he asked guardedly.

The painter had disappeared behind the house. But he could hear heavy steps on the roof over their heads.

"Both are dead," she replied briefly. "No one knew my uncle had much money; we lived quite simply and unpretentiously in South Boston.

They never told me about the money; and all those years I was praying for it! Well, it came to me--in time."

His eyes asked a pitying question.

"Oh, yes," she sighed. "I knew about father. They used to take me to visit him in the prison. Of course I didn't understand, at first. But gradually, as I grew older, I began to realize what had happened--to him and to me. It was then I began to make plans. He would be free, sometime; he would need a home. Once he tried to escape, with some other men. A guard shot my father; he was in the prison-hospital a long time. They let me see him then without bars between, because they were sure he would die."

"For G.o.d's sake," he interrupted hoa.r.s.ely. "Was there no one--?"

She shook her head.

"That was after my aunt died: I went alone. They watched me closely at first; but afterward they were kinder. He used to talk about home--always about home. He meant this house, I found. It was then I made up my mind to do anything to get the money.... You see I knew he could never be happy here unless the old wrongs were righted first. I saw I must do all that; and when, after my uncle's death, I found that I was rich--really rich, I came here as soon as I could. There wasn't any time to lose."

She fell silent, her eyes s.h.i.+ning luminously under half closed lids.

She seemed unconscious of his gaze riveted upon her face. It was as if a curtain had been drawn aside by her painful effort. He was seeing her clearly now and without cloud of pa.s.sion--in all her innocence, her sadness, set sacredly apart from other women by the long devotion of her thwarted youth. An immense compa.s.sion took possession of him. He could have fallen at her feet praying her forgiveness for his mean suspicions, his harsh judgment.

The sound of hammers on the veranda roof above their heads appeared to rouse her.

"Don't you think I ought to tell--everybody?" she asked hurriedly.