The Long Lane's Turning Part 5

I do not think I shall send this letter--but perhaps I may at the end.

For I am going away. I sail to-morrow. Shall I see you again--ever--ever? What will you think--

That was all. It broke off abruptly as though the writer had laid it aside, never to be finished.

In the silent library the Judge looked at that mute witness as at one risen from the dead. Twenty years of absence and silence--twenty years out of his ken, save to the thriving memory! For how long the hand that had penned those lines had been dust, yet the poor symbols of ink and paper persisted to confront him now! How had the sheet come to be on that desk that she had bequeathed him? It had not lain there a moment before.

He brought the lamp and examined the desk attentively, pulling out every tiny drawer, sounding each carved part.i.tion, twisting and tugging at every projecting portion of the ornamentation. With a thin, metal paper-knife he explored each warp and crevice. But his search was fruitless. If the leaf had slipped from some crack--loosened, perhaps, by the fall of the bra.s.s bowl upon it that day--the old desk kept its secret.

A strange feeling stole over him, the feeling of mystery that comes to one with some sudden apposition of incident that thrills with a sense of an overpowering meaning in a circ.u.mstance in itself ba.n.a.l and trivial. Something of her proud and pa.s.sionate spirit she had etched into those lines. Might it be that spirit, somewhere in the great void, reached out to him through this silent witness--to say that love does not wholly die?

He gently spoke her name. "Eleanor! You forgave me for writing--that.

If you hadn't you wouldn't have left me this desk when you--died, away over there in Florence! So I've got your letter at last."

He sighed again and groping for his big chair, sat down, with the sheet of paper spread out upon his knee.

On the upper floor Mrs. Allen tapped lightly on Chilly's door and when there was no answer, opened it softly and entered. At the whisper of his name he started up in bed.

"d.u.c.h.ess!" he exclaimed.

The pet name, as always, touched her. It was a perennial tribute to that stateliness and dignity which she had made her own. She came and sat down on the edge of the bed and he caught her hand and held it to his lips. "You shouldn't have come," he chided. "You'll take cold."

"I heard your father talking to you," she whispered. "You--you know what he dislikes so. Why can you not be--discreet?"

Chilly moved uneasily: "Oh, I know," he said. "But I can't always be giving an imitation of a quaker meeting! I'm not a child."

"You must not anger him," she said. "I--for my sake, I wish you would be more careful."

He patted her hand. "All right, d.u.c.h.ess! I'll mind my p's and q's.

But you must go back to bed now. Don't you worry about me."

She bent down and kissed him on the forehead before she glided from the room.

CHAPTER VII

ARROWS OF DESIRE

"Here is the new rose," said Echo. "Its name is the Laurant Carle."

Cameron Craig looked--at her, not at the blossom. She was in simple white and as she stood there in the perfumed garden, vivid, elemental, tuned to the wonder and pa.s.sion of living, her slim figure outlined against the dark green shrubbery and her face and gold-bronze hair touched with the slanting sunlight, she seemed herself some great, rare, golden flower in a silver sheath. Lines he had somewhere read sprang into his mind:

"Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire,"

and, contained man that he was, he caught his breath at the sudden leap in him of the thing that had been covered and hidden there so long, something fine and keen as flame, that set his habitually cool blood beating under his eyelids.

"It was not the rose," he said. "I had another reason in asking you to come here."

"Yes?" Her voice was evenly inquiring.

"It was to ask you if you will marry me."

She took a quick step backward; a look of amaze had sprung to her face.

"I?" she exclaimed. "You want me to--_marry_ you?"

"Yes. Is there anything strange in that?"

She looked away. In all her thoughts of the man before her there had not lurked this possibility. She had been bred among youth who, whatever their other vices, maintained a chivalric ideal of womankind which excluded fast-and-loose conduct; and the whispers that clung about Cameron Craig--set, as they were, over against his force and undeniably brilliant attainments--had lent her opinion of him a certain cold contempt. And now here he was--he of all men!--saying this to her! And it was no hasty impulse: she read that in the steady, confident eyes, the hard, heavy jaw, the steadfast, deep-lined face.

She felt his waiting gaze. "No," she answered, slowly. "Perhaps it is not strange. It is only that the unexpected seems so." She looked at him curiously. "Why did you ask me--to-day?"

"The opportunity came," he said. "It must have, sooner or later."

"So you have intended for some time to say this to me?"

"Since I first met you, a year ago," he answered. "You have two things that I want--as I have their complements."

She considered this a moment. "Forgive me," she said then, "but I am a very curious person--as well, it seems, as a very blind one. Would you mind telling me what are those two qualities that you imagine I possess, which you value so highly?"

"Breeding, first," he replied, "and all that it implies. You represent a stock."

She nodded gravely. "And the other desideratum?"

"Beauty. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

"And--the complements of these things, that you possess?"

"Money," he answered. "And the power it gives--the accessories which a woman like you must have if she would really live. I think you don't doubt that my wife shall have these things."

She shook her head. "Not in the least. Indeed, I am sure she will.

But you see, Mr. Craig, I happen to be not at all the sort of person you think I am--the kind you wish to marry."

"I'll risk that!" he flung her.

"The proof is that you ask me--as you have. The things you have to offer seem overwhelmingly attractive to you, no doubt, but I'm afraid they mean much less to me." He could not see the look that was in her face now, for her head was turned away. "I have no longing for money.

I could be contented in a mountain lean-to, with morning-glories instead of an orchid conservatory. I could cook my own meals on a gas-stove and live in one room over a hardware store--with the man I loved. I don't care particularly for what you call 'place' either. I could be happy enough on a prairie--with the man I loved. But love must be there, Mr. Craig."

"Do you doubt my love for you?" he asked.

"You had not cited it," she rejoined, calmly. "You spoke of money first--"

"Because I have lived long enough to know that it is the paramount requisite in most women's eyes."

"Your estimate of me by the ma.s.s was flattering," she said with gentle satire. "Have you been so busy making this wonderful money of yours that you think it can take the place of everything?"

He made an abrupt, almost angered, gesture. "Surely you know money means--has meant--nothing to me!" he exclaimed. "I am rich, yes. I dare say I could buy and sell almost any one you know. But it was never the main thing. It was _winning_ that counted. It was the game, and money was only the counters. I played to win and I have won. And wealth was a stepping-stone to other things."