The Girl and The Bill Part 35

"The relative importance of our worldly affairs," she went on dreamily, "appears to change when one sees that they are all to stop at once. They recede into the background of the mind. What counts then is, oh, I don't want to think of it! My father--he----" Her shoulders shook for a moment under the stress of sudden grief, but she quickly regained her control.

"There, now," she whispered, "I won't do that."

For a time they sat in silence. His own whirling thoughts were of a sort that he could not fathom; they possessed him completely, they destroyed, seemingly, all power of a.n.a.lysis, they made him dumb; and they were tangled inextricably in the blended impressions of possession and loss.

"But you," she said at last, "is your father living?"

"No," he replied.

"And your mother?" she faltered.

"She has been dead many years. And I have no brothers or sisters."

"My mother died when I was a little child," she mused. "Death seemed to me much more awful then than it does now."

"It is always more awful to those who are left than to those who go," he said. "But don't think of that yet."

"We _must_ think of it," she insisted.

He did not answer.

"You don't wish to die, do you?" she demanded.

"No; and I don't wish you to die. Try to take a different view, Girl. We really have a chance of getting out."

"How?"

"Someone may come."

"Not at all likely," she sighed.

"But a chance is a chance, Girl, dear."

"Oh!" she cried, suddenly. "To think that I have brought you to this!

That what you thought would be a little favor to me has brought you to death."

She began to sob convulsively.

It was as though for the first time she realized her responsibility for his life; as though her confidence in her complete understanding of him had disappeared and he was again a stranger to her--a stranger whom she had coolly led to the edge of life with her.

"Don't, Girl--don't!" he commanded.

Her self-blame was terrible to him. But she could not check her grief, and finally, hardly knowing what he did, he put his arm around her and drew her closer to him. Her tear-wet cheek touched his. She had removed her hat, and her hair brushed his forehead.

"Girl, Girl!" he whispered, "don't you know?--Don't you understand? If chance had not kept us together, I would have followed you until I won you. From the moment I saw you, I have had no thought that was not bound up with you."

"But think what I have done to you!" she sobbed. "I never realized that there was this danger. And you--you have your own friends, your interests. Oh, I----"

"My interests are all here--with you," he answered. "It is I who am to blame. I should have known what Alcatrante would do."

"You couldn't know. There was no way----"

"I sent you up here to wait for me. Then, when he and I came in, I turned my back on him, like a blind fool."

"No, no," she protested.

"After all," he said, "it was, perhaps, something that neither you nor I could foresee. No one is to blame. Isn't that the best view to take of it?"

Her cheek moved against his as she inclined her head.

"It may be selfish in me," he went on, "but I can't feel unhappy--now."

Her sobs had ceased, and she buried her face in his shoulder.

"I love you, Girl," he said, brokenly. "I don't expect you to care so much for me--yet. But I must tell you what I feel. There isn't--there isn't anything I wouldn't do for you, Girl--and be happy doing it."

She did not speak, and for a long time they sat in silence. Many emotions were racing through him. His happiness was almost a pain, for it came to him in this extremity when there was no hope ahead. She had not yielded herself, but she had not resisted his embrace; even now her head was on his shoulder. Indeed, he had given her no chance to confess what she might feel for him.

Nor would he give her that chance. No, it was better that her love for him--he knew now that in her heart she must love him--it was better that it should not be crystallized by definite expression. For he had thought of a way by which she, at least, might be saved. With the faint possibility of rescue for them both, he hesitated to take the step. And yet every moment he was using that much more of the air that might keep her alive through the night.

It would be only right to wait until he was reasonably sure that all the clerks in the office had gone. That time could not be long now. But already the air was beginning to seem close; it was not so easy to breathe as it had been.

Gently putting her from him, he said: "The air will last longer if we lie down. The heart does not need so much blood, then."

She did not answer, but moved from her seat on his folded coat, and he took it and arranged it as a pillow and, finding her hand, showed her where it was. He heard the rustle of her clothing as she adjusted herself on the floor. She clung to his hand, while he still sat beside her.

"Now," he said, cheerfully, "I am going to find out what time it is, by breaking the crystal of my watch. I've seen blind men tell the time by feeling the dial."

His watch was an old hunting-case which had belonged to his father. He opened it and cracked the crystal with his pocket-knife. As nearly as he could determine by the sense of touch, it was seven o'clock. Bessie Wallingham would be wondering by this time why he had broken an engagement with her for the second time that day.

"There is one thing more to do," he said. "It is seven o'clock; I don't know how much longer we shall be able to breathe easily, and I am going to write a note which will explain matters to the persons who find us--if we should not happen to be able to tell them."

Laboriously he penciled on the back of an old envelope the explanation of their presence there, making a complete and careful charge against Alcatrante. He laid the message on the floor.

On second thought, he picked it up again and put it in his pocket, for if by any chance they should be rescued, he might forget it. In that event its discovery would possibly bring an exposure of facts which the girl and her father would not care to have disclosed.

A faint whisper from the girl.

"What is it?" he asked, bending tenderly for her answer.

"You must lie down, too."

He began to move away, as if to obey her.

"No," she whispered--"here. I want you near me."

Slowly he reclined and laid his head on the coat. Her warm breath was on his face. He felt for her hand, and found it, and it held tightly to his.

His own mind was still torn with doubts as to the best course. Should he put himself out of the way that she might live? The sacrifice might prove unnecessary. Rescue might come when it was too late for him, yet not too late, if he did not hurry his own end. And if she truly loved him and knew that she loved him, such an act on his part would leave her a terrible grief which time would hardly cure.