Wild Wings Part 4

He smiled at Carlotta as he made the confession, but she did not respond.

Her face gave not the slightest indication as to what was going on in her mind as he talked.

"I wouldn't be any good at all in your father's establishment. I've never wanted to make money on the grand scale. I wouldn't be my father's son if I did. I couldn't be a banker or a broker if I tried, and I don't want to try."

"Not even for the sake of--having me?" Carlotta's voice was as expressionless as her face. She still watched the train, almost vanis.h.i.+ng from sight now in the far distance, leaving a cloud of ugly black smoke behind it to mar the l.u.s.trous azure of the June sky.

Phil, too, looked out over the valley. He dared not look at Carlotta. He was young and very much in love. He wanted Carlotta exceedingly. For a minute everything blurred before his gaze. It seemed as if he would try anything, risk anything, give up anything, ride rough shod over anything, even his own ideals, to gain her. It was a tense moment. He came very near surrendering and thereby making himself, and Carlotta too, unhappy forever after. But something stronger held him back. Oddly enough he seemed to see that sign _Stuart Lambert and Son_ written large all over the valley. His gaze came back to Carlotta. Their eyes met. The hardness was gone from the girl's, leaving a wistful tenderness, a sweet surrender, no man had ever seen there before. A weaker lad would have capitulated under that wonderful, new look of Carlotta's. It only strengthened Philip Lambert. It was for her as well as himself.

"I am sorry, Carlotta," he said. "I couldn't do it, though I'd give you my heart to cut up into pieces if it could make you happy. Maybe I would risk it for myself. But I can't go back on my father, even for you."

"Then you don't love me." Carlotta's rare and lovely tenderness was burned away on the instant in a quick blaze of anger.

"Yes I do, dear. It is because I love you that I can't do it. I have to give you the best of me, not the worst of me. And the best of me belongs in Dunbury. I wish I could make you understand. And I wish with all my heart that, since I can't come to you, you could care enough to come to me. But I am not going to ask it--not now anyway. I haven't the right.

Perhaps in two years time, if you are still free, I shall; but not now.

It wouldn't be fair."

"Two years from now, and long before, I shall be married," said Carlotta with a sharp little metallic note in her voice. She was trying to keep from crying but he did not know that and winced both at her words and tone.

"That must be as it will," he answered soberly. "I cannot do any differently. I would if I could. It--it isn't so easy to give you up. Oh, Carlotta! I love you."

And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself and Carlotta, he had her in his arms and was covering her face with kisses. Carlotta's cheeks flamed. She was no longer a lily, but a red, red rose. Never in her life had she been so frightened, so ecstatic. With all her dainty, capricious flirtations she had always deliberately fenced herself behind barriers. No man had ever held her or kissed her like this, the embrace and kisses of a lover to whom she belonged.

"Phil! Don't, dear--I mean, do, dear--I love you," she whispered.

But her words brought Phil back to his senses. His arms dropped and he drew away, ashamed, remorseful. He was no saint. According to his way of thinking a man might kiss a girl now and then, under impulsion of moons.h.i.+ne or mischief, but lightly always, like thistledown. A man didn't kiss a girl as he had just kissed Carlotta unless he had the right to marry her. It wasn't playing straight.

"I'm sorry, Carlotta. I didn't mean to," he said miserably.

"I'm not. I'm glad. I think way down in my heart I've always wanted you to kiss me, though I didn't know it would be like that. I knew your kisses would be different, because _you_ are different."

"How am I different?" Phil's voice was humble. In his own eyes he seemed pitifully undifferent, precisely like all the other rash, intemperate, male fools in the world.

"You are different every way. It would take too long to tell you all of them, but maybe you are chiefly different because I love you and I don't love the rest. Except for Daddy. I've never loved anybody but myself before, and when you kissed me I just seemed to feel my _meness_ going right out of me, as if I stopped belonging to myself and began to belong to you forever and ever. It scared me but--I liked it."

"You darling!" fatuously. "Carlotta, will you marry me?"

It was out at last--the words she claimed she had brought him up the mountain to say--the words he had willed not to speak.

"Of course. Kiss me again, Phil. We'll wire Daddy tomorrow."

"Wire him what?" The mention of Carlotta's father brought Phil back to earth with a jolt.

"That we are engaged and that he is to find a suitable job for you so we can be married right away," chanted Carlotta happily.

Phil's rainbow vanished almost as soon as it had appeared in the heavens.

He drew a long breath.

"Carlotta, I didn't mean that. I can't be engaged to you that way. I meant--will you marry me when I can afford to have a fairy princess in my home?"

Carlotta stared at him, her rainbow, too, fading.

"You did?" she asked vaguely. "I thought--"

"I know," groaned Phil. "It was stupid of me--worse than stupid. It can't be helped now I suppose. The damage is done. Shall we take the next car down? It is getting late."

He rose and put out both hands to help her to her feet. For a moment they stood silent in front of the gray bowlder. The end of the world seemed to have come for them both. It was like Humpty Dumpty. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't restore things to their old state nor bring back the lost happiness of that one perfect moment when they had belonged to each other without reservations. Carlotta put out her hand and touched Philip's.

"Don't feel too badly, Phil," she said. "As you say, it can't be helped--nothing can be helped. It just had to be this way. We can't either of us make ourselves over or change the way we look at things and want things. I wish I were different for both our sakes. I wish I were big enough and brave enough and fine enough to say I would marry you anyway, and stop being a princess. But I don't dare. I know myself too well. I might think I could do it up here where it is all still and purple and sweet and sacred. But when we got down to the valley again I am afraid I couldn't live up to it, nor to you, Philip, my king.

Forgive me."

Phil bent and kissed her again--not pa.s.sionately this time, but with a kind of reverent solemnity as if he were performing a rite.

"Never mind, sweetheart. I don't blame you any more than you blame me.

We've got to take life as we find it, not try to make it over into something different to please ourselves. If some day you meet the man who can make you happy in your way, I'll not grudge him the right. I'm not sure I shall even envy him. I've had my moment."

"But Phil, you aren't going to be awfully unhappy about me?" sighed Carlotta. "Promise you won't. You know I never wanted to hurt the moon, dear."

Philip shook his head.

"Don't worry about the moon. It is a tough old orb. I shan't be too unhappy. A man has a whole lot of things beside love in his life. I am not going to let myself be such a fool as to be miserable because things started out a little differently from what I would like to have them."

His smile was brave but his eyes belied the smile and Carlotta's heart smote her.

"You will forget me," she said. It was half a reproach, half a command.

Again he shook his head in denial.

"Do you remember the queen who claimed she had Calais stamped on her heart? Well, open mine a hundred years from now and you'll read _Carlotta_."

"But won't you ever marry?" pursued Carlotta with youth's insistence on probing wounds to the quick.

"I don't know. Probably," he added honestly. "A man is a poor stick in this world without a home and kiddies. If I do it will be a long time yet though. It will be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter where I look."

"But I am horrid--selfish, cowardly, altogether horrid."

"Are you?" smiled Phil. "I wonder. Anyway I love you. Come on, dear.

We'll have to hurry. The car is nearly due."

And, as twilight settled down over the valley like a great bird brooding over its nest, Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain.

CHAPTER IV

A BOY WHO WASN'T AN a.s.s BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE

Baccalaureate services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls.