The Witness Part 21

"Feel what?" she asked, sharply. "I felt something, yes. What did you mean?" Her voice had softened wonderfully, and she drew near to him and slipped her hand again within his arm. There was an eagerness in her voice that Courtland wholly misinterpreted.

"Feel the Presence!" He said it gently, reverently, as if it were a magic word, a pa.s.sword to a mutual understanding.

"Presence?" she said, bewildered. "Yes, I felt a presence, but what presence did you mean?" Her voice was soft with meaning.

"The Presence of G.o.d."

She turned upon him and jerked her arm away. "The Presence of G.o.d in that place?" she demanded. "No! _Never!_ How perfectly dreadful! I think that is irreverent!"

"Irreverent?"

"Yes! Very irreverent!" said Gila, piously. "And a man like that is profaning holy things. If you really care for religious things you ought to come to my church, where everything is quiet and orderly and where there are decent people. Why, those people there to-night looked as if they might all be thieves and murderers! And outlandis.h.!.+ My soul! I never saw anything like it! Some of their things must have come out of the Ark! Did you see that girl with the tight green skirt? Imagine it! A whole year and a half out of date! I think it is immodest to wear things when they get out of style like that! And the idea of that man daring to talk to that kind of people about G.o.d coming down to live with them! I think it was the limit! As if G.o.d cared anything about people of that sort! I think that man ought to be arrested, putting notions into poor people's heads! It's just such talk as that that makes riots and things. My father says so! Getting common, stupid people all worked up about things they can't understand. I think it's wicked!"

Gila raved all the way home. Courtland, for the most part, let her talk and was silent.

Seated finally in the library, for he could not go away yet, somehow.

There was something he must ask her. He turned to her, calling her for the first time by her name:

"But, Gila, you said you felt a Presence. What did you mean?"

Gila was silent. The tumult in her face subsided.

She dropped her lashes and played with the frill on the wrist of the long chiffon sleeve of her blouse. Her eyes beneath their concealing lashes kindled. Her mouth grew sweet and sensitive, her whole att.i.tude became shy and alluring. She sat and drooped before the fire, casting now and then a wide, shy, innocent look up, her face half turned away.

"Does she look adown her ap.r.o.n!" floated the words through his brain.

Ah! Here at last was the Gila he had been seeking! The Gila who would understand!

"Tell me, Gila!" he said, in an eager, low appeal.

She stirred softly, drooped a little more toward him, her face turned away till only the charming profile showed against the rich darkness of a crimson curtain. Now at last he was coming to it!

"It was--_you_--I meant!" she breathed softly.

He sat up sharply. There was subtle flattery in her tone. He could not fail to be stirred by it.

"Me!" he said, almost sternly. "I don't understand!" but his voice was gentle, almost tender. She looked so small and scared and "Solveig"-like.

"You meant _me_!" he said, again. "Won't you please explain?"

CHAPTER XXI

Courtland went back to college that night in a tender and exalted mood.

He thought he was in love with Gila!

That had been a wonderful little scene before the fire, with the soft, hidden yellow lights above, and Gila with her delicate, fervid little face, great, dark eyes, and shy looks. Gila had risked a tear upon her pearly cheek and another to hang upon her long lashes, and he had had a curious desire to kiss them away; but something held him from it.

Instead, he took his clean handkerchief, softly wiping them, and thought that Gila was shy and modest when she shrank from his touch.

He did not take her in his arms. Something held him from that, too. He had a feeling that she was too sacred, and he must not lightly s.n.a.t.c.h her for himself. Instead, he put her gently in the big chair by his side, and they sat and talked together quietly. He did not realize that he had done the most of the talking. He did not know what they had talked about; only that reluctant whispered confession of hers had somehow entered him into a close intimacy with her that pleased and half awed him. But when he tried to tell her of a wonderful experience he had had she lifted up her little hand and begged: "Please, not to-night! Let us not think of anything but just each other to-night!" And so he had let it pa.s.s, knowing she was all wrought up.

He had not asked her to marry him, nor even told her he loved her. They had talked in quiet, wondering ways of feeling drawn to each other; at least _he_ had talked, and Gila had sat watching him with deep, dissatisfied eyes. She had sense enough to see that she could not win him with the arts that had won others. His was a nature deeper, stronger. She must bide her time and be coy. But her spirit chafed beneath delay, and dark pa.s.sions lurked behind and brooded in her eyes.

Perhaps it was this that held him in a sort of uncertainty. It was as if he waited permission from some unseen source to take what she was so evidently ready to give. He thought it was the sacredness in which he held her. Almost the sermon and the feeling of the Presence were out of mind as he went home. There played around him now a little phantom joy that hovered over like a will-o'-the-wisp above his heart, and danced, giving him a strange, inexplicable exhilaration. Was this love? Was he in love?

He flung himself down on Tennelly's couch when he got back to the dormitory. Bill Ward was deep in a book under the drop-light, and Tennelly was supposed to be finis.h.i.+ng a theme for the next day.

"Nelly, what is love?" asked Courtland, suddenly, in the midst of the silence. "How do you know when you are in love?"

Tennelly dropped his fountain-pen in his surprise, and had to crawl under the table after it. He and Bill Ward exchanged one lightning glance of relief as he emerged from the table.

"Search me!" said Tennelly, as he sat down again. "Love's an illusion, they say. I never tried it, so I don't know."

There was silence again in Tennelly's room. Presently Courtland got up and said good-night. Over in his own room he stood by the window, looking out into the moonlight. The preacher had said prayer was talking with the Lord face to face. That was a new idea. Courtland dropped upon his knees and talked aloud to G.o.d as he had never opened his heart to living creature before. If prayer was that, why, prayer was good!

Gila, standing bewildered, studying her pretty, discontented little face in the mirror, with all its masks laid aside, would have s.h.i.+vered in fear and been all the more uncertain of her success if she could have known that the man she would have had for a lover was on his knees talking about her to G.o.d. Her little naked soul in a garden all alone with the Lord G.o.d, and a man who was set to follow Him!

Tennelly looked up and raised his eyebrows as Courtland closed the door.

"Guess you needn't have written that letter, after all!" chuckled Bill Ward. "I thought Gila would get in her little old work!"

"Well, it's written and mailed, so that doesn't do any good now. And, anyway, it's always well to have more than one string to your bow!"

growled Tennelly. Courtland in love! He wasn't exactly sure he liked it.

Courtland and Gila! What kind of a girl was Gila, anyway? Was she good enough for Court? He must look into this.

"Say, Bill, why don't you introduce me to your cousin? I think it's about time I had a chance to judge for myself how things are getting on," growled Tennelly, presently.

"Sure!" said Bill. "Good idea! Why didn't you mention it before? How about going now? It's only half past ten. Court didn't stay very late, did he? No, it isn't too late for Gila. She never goes to bed till midnight, not if there's anything interesting on. Wait. I'll call her up and see. I'm privileged, anyway, you know. Cousins can do anything. I'll tell her we're hungry."

So it came about that an hour after Gila had sat in the firelight with Courtland and listened, puzzled, to his reverent talk of a soul-friends.h.i.+p, she ushered into the same room her cousin and Tennelly.

She met Tennelly with a challenge in her eye.

Tennelly had one in his. Their glances lingered, sparred and lingered again, and each knew that this was a notable meeting.

For Tennelly was tall and strikingly handsome. He had those deep black eyes that hold a maiden's gaze and dare a devil; yet there was behind his look something strong, das.h.i.+ng, scholarly. Gila saw at once that he was distinguished in his way, and though her thoughts were strangely held by Courtland she could not let one like this go by unchallenged. If Courtland did not prove corrigible, why, there was still as good fish in the sea as ever was caught. It were well to have more than one hook baited. So she received Tennelly graciously, boldly, impressively, and in three minutes was talking with that daring intimacy that young people of her style love to affect; and Tennelly, fascinated by her charms, yet seeing through them and letting her know he saw through them, was fencing with her delightfully. He told himself it was his duty for Courtland's sake. Yet he was interested for his own sake and knew it.

But he did not like the idea of Court and this girl! They did not fit.

Court was too genuine! Too tender-hearted! Too idealistic about women!

With himself, now, it was different. He knew women! Understood this one at a glance. She was "a peach" in her way, but not the "perfect little peach" Court ought to have. She would flirt all her life and break old Court's heart if he married her.

So he laughed and joked with Gila, answering her challenging glances with glances just as ardent, while Bill Ward sat and watched them both, chuckling away to himself.

And Courtland, on his knees, talked with G.o.d!

The next morning Courtland awoke with a pleasant sensation of eagerness to see what life had in store for him. Was this really the wonderful experience of love into which he had begun to enter? He thought of Gila all in halos now. The questionings and unpleasantnesses were forgotten.

He told himself that she would one day see and understand the wonderful experience through which he had been pa.s.sing. He would tell her just as soon as possible. Not to-day, for he would be busy, and she had engagements Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday. He had not noticed the subtle withdrawing as she told him, the quick, furtive calculation in her glance. She knew how to make coming to her a privilege. Just because she had let him think he saw a bit of her heart that night, she meant to hold him off. Not too long, for he was not sufficiently bound to her to be safe from forgetting, but just long enough to whet his eagerness. Her former experience in such matters had taught her to expect that he would probably call her up and beg to see her sooner, when she might relent if he was humble enough. And she had not misjudged him. He was looking forward to Thursday as a bright, particular goal, planning what he would say to her, wondering if his heart would bound as it had when she looked at him Sunday night, and if the strange sweetness that seemed about to be settling upon him would last.

Before he left his room that morning he did something he had never done before in college; he locked his door and knelt beside his bed to pray, with a strong, sweet sense of the Presence standing beside him, and breathing power into his soul.

He had not much to ask for himself. He simply craved that Presence, and it had never seemed so close. As he unlocked his door and hurried down the hall to the dining-room he marveled that a thing so sweet had been so long neglected from his life. Prayer! How he had sneered at it! Yet it was a reasonable thing, after all, now that he had come believing.