The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary Part 17

"A great difference."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Do you want to have the truth?" he said. "If you really do, I'll tell you. But I don't ask to tell you, recollect, and if I were you I'd drop the whole-I certainly would.-If I were you."

She looked at him in astonishment.

"I don't understand," she said. "Tell me what you mean."

He raised his hand to his bandaged head again.

"I think," he said, fighting hard to speak with utter indifference, "I think that it would have been better if you had told me about Holloway."

At that her big eyes opened widely.

"What should I tell you about Mr. Holloway?" she asked. "What could I tell you about him?"

"It isn't any use speaking like that," he said; and with the words he suddenly leaped from his chair and began to plunge back and forth across the small room. "You see I'm not a boy any more. I've come to my senses. I know now! I understand now! It's all plain to me now. Now and always. I've been fooled once but only once and by All that Is, I never will be fooled again. Your're pretty and awfully fascinating, and it's always fun for the woman-especially if she knows all her bets are safely hedged. And I was so completely done up that I was even more sport than the common run, I suppose; but-" she was staring at him in unfeigned amazement, and he was las.h.i.+ng himself to fury with the feelings that underlaid his words-"but even if you made it all right with yourself by calling your share by the name of 'having a good influence' over me (I know that's how married women always pat themselves on the back while they're sending us to the devil), even then, I think that it would have been better to have been fair and square with me. It would have been better all round. I'd have been left with some belief in-in people. As it is, when I saw that you'd only been laughing at me, I-well, I went pretty far."

He stopped short, and transfixed her paleness with his big, dark eyes.

"Why weren't you honest?" he asked angrily. And then he said again, more bitterly, more scornfully, than before: "Why wasn't I told about Holloway?"

She clasped her hands tightly together.

"What has been told you about Mr. Holloway and myself?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Then why do you speak as you do?"

At that he thrust his hands into his pockets and again began to fling himself back and forth across the room.

"Perhaps you'll think I'm a sneak," he said, "but I wasn't a sneak. I went in to see you that Sat.u.r.day as usual, and when I went upstairs-you were with him in the library. I heard three words. G.o.d! they were enough! I didn't know that anything could knock the bottom out of life so quickly.

My sun and stars all fell at once-I reckon my Heaven went too. At all events I went out of your house and down town and I drank and drank-and all to the truth and honor of women."

He halted with his back to her, and there was silence in the room for many minutes.

When he faced around after a little, she was weeping bitterly, having turned in her seat so that her face might be buried in the chair back. Her whole body was shaking with suppressed sobs. He stood still and stared down upon her and finally she lifted up her face and said with trembling lips:

"And all the trouble came from that. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I say?"

"I don't know what you can do, or what you can say," he said, remaining still and watching her sincere distress. "I'd feel pretty blamed mean if I were you, though. Understand, I don't question your good taste in choosing Holloway, nor your right to love him, nor his right to be there; but I fail to understand why you were to me just as you were, and I think it was unfair-out-and-out mean!"

"Mr. Denham," she said almost painfully, "you've made a dreadful mistake."

Then she stopped and moistened her lips. "I don't know just what words you overheard, but the dramatic instructor was there that afternoon drilling Mr. Holloway and myself for the parts which we took in the charity play that week; after he went out we went over one of the scenes alone. Perhaps you heard part of that." She stopped and almost choked. "Mr. Holloway has never really made any love to me-perhaps he never wanted to-perhaps I've never wanted him to."

Jack stared. His misconception was so strongly intrenched in the forefront of his brain that he could not possibly dislodge it at once.

Mrs. Rosscott continued to dry the tears that continued to rise; she seemed terribly affected at finding herself to have been the cause (no matter how innocently) of this latest tale of wrack and ruin.

"Do you mean to say," the young man said, at last, "that there was no truth in what I heard? Don't you expect to marry Holloway?"

"I never expect to marry anyone, but certainly not him," she replied, trying to regain her composure.

"Honest?"

"a.s.suredly."

It was as if an unseen orchestra had suddenly burst forth just near enough and just far enough away. He came to the side of her chair and laid his hand upon its back.

"Then what have you been thinking of me lately?" he asked.

"Very sad thoughts," she confessed-hiding her face again.

"Did you care?"

"Yes, I cared."

He stood beside her for a long time without speaking or moving. Then he suddenly pulled a chair forward, and sat down close in front of her.

"Don't cry," he said, almost daring to be tender. "There's nothing to cry about _now_, you know."

"I think there's plenty for me to cry about," she said, looking up through her long wet lashes. "It is so terrible for me to be the one that is to blame. Papa swears he'll never forgive Bob, and your aunt-"

"Lord love you!" he exclaimed; "don't worry over me or my aunt. I don't. I don't mind anything, with Holloway staked in the ditch. I can get along well enough now."

He smiled-actually smiled-as he spoke.

"Oh, you mustn't speak so," she said, blus.h.i.+ng; "indeed, you must not."

And smiled, too, in spite of herself.

"Who's going to stop me?" he said. "You know that you can't; I'm miles the biggest."

She looked at him and tried to frown, but only blushed again instead. He put out his hand and took hers into its clasp.

"I'm everlasting glad to shake college," he declared gayly; "it never was my favorite alley. I've made up my mind to go to work just as soon as I get these pastry strips off my head."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Anywhere. I don't care."

"But you'll come to my house when Bob comes next week, won't you?" she asked suddenly. "I can see now why you wouldn't before, but-but it's different now. Isn't it?"

"Is it?" he said, asking the question chiefly of her pretty eyes. "Is it honestly different now?"

"I think it is," she answered.