The Man Thou Gavest Part 27

"You are eager to see--Mrs. Morrell?" Truedale asked, and suddenly recalled the relation Lynda had once held to Morrell. He had not thought of it for many a day.

"Very. You see I hope to be great friends with her. I want--"

"What, Lynda?"

"Well, to help her understand--John."

"Let me b.u.t.ton your glove, Lyn"--for Truedale saw her hands were trembling though her eyes were peaceful and happy. And then as the long, slim hand rested in his, he asked:

"And you--have never regretted, Lyn?"

"Regretted? Does a woman regret when she's saved from a mistake and gets off scot-free as well?"

They looked at each other for a moment and then Lynda drew away her hand.

"Thanks, Con, and please miss us a little, but not too much. What will you do to pa.s.s the time until we return?"

"I think"--Truedale pulled himself up sharply--"I think I'll go up under the eaves and get out--the old play!"

"Oh! how splendid! And you will--let me hear it--some day, soon?"

"Yes. Business is going easier now. I can think of it without neglecting better things. Good-night, Lyn. Tuck your coat up close, the night's bad."

And then, alone in the warm, bright room, Truedale had a distinct sense of Lynda having taken something besides herself away. She had left the room hideously lonely; it became unbearable to remain there and, like a boy, Conning ran up to the small room next the roof.

He took the old play out--he had not unpacked it since he came from Pine Cone! He laid it before him and presently became absorbed in reading it from the beginning. It was after eleven when he raised his tired eyes from the pages and leaned back in his chair.

"I'm like--all men!" he muttered. "All men--and I thought things had gone deeper with me."

What he was recognizing was that the play and the subtle influence that Nella-Rose had had upon him had both lost their terrific hold. He could contemplate the past without the sickening sense of wrong and shock that had once overpowered him. Realizing the full meaning of all that had gone into his past experience, he found himself thinking of Lynda as she had looked a few hours before. He resented the lesser hold the past still had upon him--he wanted to shake it free. Not bitterly--not with contempt--but, he argued, why should his life be shadowed always by a mistake, cruel and unpardonable as it was, when she, that little ignorant partner in the wrong, had gone her way and had doubtless by now put him forever from her mind?

How small a part it had played with her, poor child. She had been betrayed by her strange imagination and suddenly awakened pa.s.sion; she had followed blindly where he had led, but when catastrophe had threatened one who had been part of her former life--familiar with all that was real to her--how readily the untamed instinct had reverted to its own!

And he--Truedale comforted himself--he had come back to _his_ own, and his own had made its claim upon him. Why should he not have his second chance? He wanted love--not friends.h.i.+p; he wanted--Lynda! All else faded and Lynda, the new Lynda--Lynda with the hair that had learned to curl, the girl with the pretty white shoulders and sweet, kind eyes--stood pleadingly close in the shabby old room and demanded recognition. "She thinks," and here Truedale covered his eyes, "that I am--as I was when I began my life--here! What would she say--if she knew? She, G.o.d bless her, is not like others. Faithful, pure, she could not forgive the _truth_!"

Truedale, thinking so of Lynda Kendall, owned to his best self that because the woman who now filled his life held to her high ideals--would never lower them--he could honour and reverence her. If she, like him, could change, and accept selfishly that which she would scorn in another, she would not be the splendid creature she was. And yet--without conceit or vanity--Truedale believed that Lynda felt for him what he felt for her.

Never doubting that he could bring to her an unsullied past, she was, delicately, in finest woman-fas.h.i.+on, laying her heart open to him. She knew that he had little to offer and yet--and yet--she was--willing!

Truedale knew this to be true. And then he decided he must, even at this late day, tell Lynda of the past. For her sake he dare not venture any further concealment. Once she understood--once she recovered from her surprise and shock--she would be his friend, he felt confident of that; but she would be spared any deeper personal interest. It was Lynda's magnificent steadfastness that now appealed to Truedale. With the pa.s.sing of his own season of madness, he looked upon this calm serenity of her character with deepest admiration.

"The best any man should hope for," he admitted--turning, as he thought, his back upon his yearning--"any man who has played the fool as I have, is the sympathetic friends.h.i.+p of a good woman. What right has a man to fall from what he knows a woman holds highest, and then look to her to change her ideals to fit his pattern?"

Arriving at this conclusion, Truedale wrapped the tattered shreds of his self-respect about him and accepted, as best he could, the prospect of Lynda's adjustment to the future.

Brace and Lynda did not return in time to see Truedale that night. At twelve, with a resigned sigh, he put away his play and went to his lonely rooms in the tall apartment farther uptown. His dog was waiting for him with the reproachful look in his faithful eyes that reminded Truedale that the poor beast had not had an outing for twenty-four hours.

"Come on, old fellow," he said, "better late than never," and the two descended to the street. They walked sedately for an hour. The dog longed to gambol; he was young enough to a.s.sociate outdoors with license; but being a friend as well as a dog, he felt that this was rather a time for close comrades.h.i.+p, so he pattered along at his master's heels and once in a while pushed his cold nose into the limp hand swinging by Truedale's side. "Thank G.o.d!" Conning thought, reaching down to pat the sleek head, "I can keep you without--confession!"

For three days and nights Truedale stayed away from the old home.

Business was his excuse--he offered it in the form of a note and a bunch of violets. Lynda telephoned on the second day and asked him if he were quite well. The tone of her voice made him decide to see her at once.

"May I come to dinner to-night, Lyn?" he asked.

"Sorry, Con, but I must dine with some people who have bought a hideous house and want me to get them out of the sc.r.a.pe by remodelling the inside. They're awfully rich and impossible--it's a sort of duty to the public, you know."

"To-morrow then, Lyn?"

"Yes, indeed. Only Brace will be dining with the Morrells; by the way, she's a dear, Con."

The next night was terrifically stormy--one of those spring storms that sweep everything before them. The bubbles danced on the pavements, the gutters ran floods, and fragments of umbrellas and garments floated incongruously on the tide.

Battling against the wind, Conning made his way to Lynda's. As he drew near the house the glow from the windows seemed to meet and touch him with welcome.

"I'll economize somewhere," Lynda often said, "but when darkness comes I'm always going to do my best to get the better of it."

Just for one blank moment Truedale had a sickening thought: "Suppose that welcome was never again for him, after this night?" Then he laughed derisively. Lynda might have her ideals, her eternal reservations, but she also had her superb faithfulness. After she knew _all_, she would still be his friend.

When he went into the library Lynda sat before the fire knitting a long strip of vivid wools. Conning had never seen her so employed and it had the effect of puzzling him; it was like seeing her--well, smoking, as some of her friends did! Nothing wrong in it--but, inharmonious.

"What are you making, Lyn?" he asked, taking the ottoman and drawing close to her.

"It--it isn't anything, Con. No one wants trash like this. It fulfils its mission when it is ravelled and knitted, then unravelled. You know what Stevenson says: 'I travel for travel's sake; the great affair is to move.' I knit for knitting's sake; it keeps my hands busy while my--my soul basks."

She looked up with a smile and Truedale saw that she was ill at ease. It was the one thing that unnerved him. Had she been her old, self-contained self he could have depended upon her to bear her part while he eased his soul by burdening hers; but now he caught in her the appealing tenderness that had always awakened in old William Truedale the effort to save her from herself--from the cares others laid upon her.

Conning, instead of plunging into his confession, looked at her in such a protecting, yearning way that Lynda's eyes fell, and the soft colour slowly crept in her cheeks.

In the stillness, that neither knew how to break, Truedale noticed the gown Lynda wore. It was blue and clinging. The whiteness of her slim arms showed through the loose sleeves; the round throat was bare and girlish in its drooping curve.

For one mad moment Truedale tried to stifle his conscience. Why should he not have this love and happiness that lay close to him? In what was he different from the majority of men? Then he thought--as others before him had thought--that, since the race must be preserved, the primal impulses should not be denied. They outlived everything; they rallied from shock--even death; they persisted until extinction; and here was this sweet woman with all her gracious loveliness near him. He loved her! Yes, strange as it seemed even then to him, Truedale acknowledged that he loved her with the love, unlike yet like the love that had been too rudely awakened in the lonely woods when he had been still incapable of understanding it.

Then the storm outside reached his consciousness and awakened memories that hurt and stung him.

No. He was not as many men who could take and take and find excuse. The very sincerity of the past and future must prove itself, now, in this throbbing, vital present. Only so could he justify himself and his belief in goodness. He must open his heart and soul to the woman beside him. There was no other alternative.

But first they dined together across the hall. Truedale noted every special dish--the meal was composed of his favourite viands. The intimacy of sitting opposite Lynda, the smiling pleasure of old Thomas who served them, combined to lure him again from his stern sense of duty.

Why? Why? his yearning pleaded. Why should he destroy his own future happiness and that of this sweet, innocent woman for a whim--that was what he tried to term it--of conscience? Why, there were men, thousands of them, who would call him by a harsher name than he cared to own, if he followed such a course; and yet--then Truedale looked across at Lynda.

"A woman should have clear vision and choice," his reason commanded, and to this his love agreed.

But alone with Lynda, in the library later, the conflict was renewed.

Never had she been so sweet, so kind. The storm beat against the house and instead of interfering, seemed to hold them close and--together. It no longer aroused in Truedale recollections that smarted. It was like an old familiar guide leading his thought into ways sacred and happy. Then suddenly, out of a consciousness that knew neither doubt nor fear, he said:

"You and I, Lyn, were never afraid of truth, were we?"

"Never."

She was knitting again--knitting feverishly and desperately.