The Shield of Silence Part 45

"I can never expect to have your forgiveness. I thank G.o.d that it is possible for us to part and, alone, seek to forget this horror. I will never intrude. I promise you that. Back in my college days I found out that I could not drink. It did something to me that it does not do to others. I never quite knew what until to-day. When I saw you standing there--the devil got loose. I know now. My G.o.d! To think that all one's life does not count when the devil takes hold."

"Oh! Yes, it does, and it is the knowing that will help." Joan was crying softly. "You will have the right to trust yourself hereafter because you know."

"I will always think of women as I see you now." Raymond spoke reverently.

"You must not. Some women do not have to learn--I did. I think the best women know."

"You must not say that."

"Yes, I feel it. Had I shown you a better self while we played all would have been different. You would not have misunderstood. Women must not expect what they are not willing to give. I had done things that no girl can safely do and be understood and then--when you lost control--you thought of me as you really believed me. I can see it all now, see how I hurt you; hurt myself and hurt other girls; but it was because--not because I am a bad girl--but because I did not know myself any more than you knew yourself. How could we hope to know each other? I seem so old, now--so old! And I understand--at last."

Raymond looked at her and pity filled his eyes, for she looked so touchingly young.

"I think," he said, "that I shall see all girls for ever as I see you at this minute."

"Oh, you must not." Joan gave a sob. "They are not like me, really."

There was an awkward silence. Then:

"Will you tell me your name? Will you try to trust me--just a little? It would prove it, if you only would."

"I do not want you to know my name. You must promise to keep from knowing. It is all I ask."

"Will you let me tell you--mine?"

"No! no!" Joan put up her hands as if to ward off something tangible.

"I only meant"--Raymond dropped his eyes--"that there isn't anything under heaven I wouldn't do to prove to you my sense of remorse. I thought if you knew you might call upon me some day to prove myself. I'm bungling, I know, but I wish I could make you understand how I feel."

"I do." And now Joan got up rather unsteadily. "And some day--I--I may call upon you--for--for I have known your name--always!"

"What!"

"Please--forgive me. I was taking an advantage--but it did not seem to matter then, and I must keep the advantage now--for your sake as well as mine. And now, before we say good-bye, I want to tell you that I know you are going to have your ideals again. You will try to get them back, won't you?"

"I will get them back, yes! I only lost them when the devil in me drove me mad."

"And bye and bye, try to believe that although one cannot make the unreal real, still there are some foolish people that think they can--and be kind to such people. Help them, do not hurt them."

"Will you--take my hand?" Raymond stretched his own forth.

"Why--of course--and tell you that I am glad, oh, so glad because--you have come back! Glad because it was I not another who saw that other you--for I can forget it!"

"And--and we are--to see each other some day?" This came hopefully.

"Some day--as we left ourselves--back before this?"

"Some day--some day? Perhaps. If we do--we will understand better than we did then."

"Yes. We'll understand some things."

Raymond bent and touched Joan's hand with his lips and went quickly from the room.

He was conscious of pa.s.sing, on the stairs, a wet and draggled young woman, but he did not pause to see the frightened look she cast upon him.

A moment later Joan raised her head from the pillow on which she was weeping the weakest--and the strongest--tears of her life.

"Oh! Pat," she sobbed. "Oh! Pat."

Patricia came to the couch and sat down. She was thinking fast and hard.

Life had not been make-believe to Patricia; she had builded whatever towers had been hers with hard facts.

She drew wrong and bitter conclusions now--but she dealt with them divinely.

"You poor kid," she whispered, "and I left you--to this. I! Joan, I told you not to trust men. It's when you trust them that you get hurt.

"Listen, you poor little lamb, I felt you calling me, tugging at me. The storm delayed me, or I would have been here sooner. Joan, I had nearly run off the track myself--it was the thought of you that got me. I kept remembering that night you made the little dinner for me--no one had ever taken care of me like that--and, child, I've accepted that job in Chicago. If I go alone, remembering that dinner you got for me, I don't know what I'll do. Come with me, Joan, will you? No man in the world is worth such tears as these. You don't have to tell _me_ anything. We'll begin anew. You'll have your music--I'll have my work--and we'll have a dinner every night."

Patricia was s.h.i.+vering in her wet clothing.

Joan put her arms about her. At that moment nothing so much appealed to her as to get away--get away to think and make sure of herself. Get away from the place where her idols lay shattered.

"Yes, Pat. I will go. But"--and here she took Patricia's face in her hot palms--"don't you believe that any man can be trusted?"

"No, I don't. It isn't their fault. They are not made for trust--they're made to do things."

"Pat, you're all wrong. It's girls like you and me that cannot be trusted. I--I didn't know myself that was the trouble. Pat--you mustn't--think what you are thinking--you are mistaken."

"I saw him--on the stairs," gasped Patricia.

"Suppose you did?"

"Joan, do you know what time it is?"

"No. I do not care. It takes time to have the world tumble about your ears."

"You--you--do not--love him, do you?"

Joan paused and considered this as if it were a startlingly new idea.

"Love him?--why, no. I'm sure I don't. But, Pat, what is it that seems like love, but isn't--you're sure it isn't--but it hurts and almost kills you?"

The two young faces confronted each other blankly.

"I don't know," Patricia said.

"Nor I, Pat. But we've got to know. All women have unless they want to mess their own lives and the lives of men. They cannot be free until they do."

Then Joan took hold of Patricia and exclaimed: