The Man in Lonely Land Part 7

"I don't believe you've opened your lips since Cousin Claudia went up-stairs," she said. "I don't wonder you don't know where you went this afternoon if you didn't see any more than you're hearing now.

You don't know a thing I've been talking about."

Laine raised his head with a start. "Oh yes, I do. You were saying--saying--"

"I told you so! You didn't even know where you were! You were way off somewhere." Dorothea's voice was triumphant. "I want to ask you something, Uncle Winthrop. I won't tell anybody." She settled herself more comfortably on the stool at his feet, and crossed her arms on his knees. "Don't you think my Cousin Claudia is nice?"

"Very nice." Laine took out his handkerchief, wiped his gla.s.ses, and held them to the light.

"And don't you think she has a lovely mouth? When she talks I watch her like I haven't got a bit of sense." Dorothea scanned her uncle's face critically. "Your eyes are dark; and hers are light, with dark rims around the seeing part, and she just comes to your shoulder; but you look so nice together. I hope you feel sorry about the things you said about her before she came."

"What things?"

"That maybe her face was red and her hair was red and her hands were red, or if they weren't, maybe they were blue. Aren't you sorry?"

"Very sorry, Dorothea. I was rude and tired and worried that evening. Let's forget it."

"I never have told her, but I supposed you must have changed your mind, for you've been here so much lately, and gone to so many places with her that you don't like to go to, that I thought--"

"Thought what, Dorothea?"

"That maybe--" Dorothea stroked Laine's fingers one by one--"maybe you liked her a little bit. Don't you remember I asked you please to like her, and you didn't seem to think you would. But you do, don't you? I won't tell anybody. Don't you like her, Uncle Winthrop?"

"I like her very much, Dorothea." Into Laine's clear-cut face the color crept to his temples, "She is very different from any one I've--"

"I knew you would." Dorothea's hands came together excitedly. "I knew it the minute I saw her, for she isn't a bit frilly, and you don't like frills any more than I do, and she doesn't, either. She's sees through people like they were gla.s.s, and she tells us the grandest, s.h.i.+veringest, funniest stories you ever heard. I bet she's telling Channing one this minute. She loves children. I'm so glad you like her, Uncle Winthrop. I knew you would if you saw her, but I didn't know you'd see her so much."

"How could I help it if I saw her once? The trouble has been to get her to see me. Perhaps she thinks I am too old to--"

"Oh, she knows you aren't the sweetheart kind--Miss Robin French told her so, and mother and everybody says you are too set in your ways to get married, and that's why I think she likes you, because you aren't that sort. She hates flum talk, and you talk sense and things. She told father so. Here she is now. Please stay with Uncle Winthrop, Cousin Claudia, while I ask mother if I may take dinner with you."

Dorothea got up. "You took off your riding boots, didn't you?"

Claudia looked at her slippers. "I surely did. I never wear high shoes in the house. Your mother says you may take dinner with us, but she wants to see you as soon as it is over. Her headache is better, but she doesn't feel like coming down to-night."

X

A DISCOVERY

In a chair of curious carving, his feet on a pile of books which had been unpacked, but for which there was as yet no place, Winthrop Laine leaned back, partly relaxed, partly tense, and with half-shut eyes looked at a picture on the wall opposite. For an hour, two hours, he had sat like this. On his desk was an unfinished article, but "The Punishments of Progress" did not interest to-night, and after vain effort to write he had thrown the pages aside and yielded to the unrest which possessed him.

In his hands was a small calendar, and with it he tapped unconsciously the arm of his chair; but after a while he again looked at it and with his pencil marked the date of the month. It was the fifteenth of December. Miss Keith was going home on the eighteenth.

Three days of her visit yet remained, a month of it had pa.s.sed, and after she went-- He stirred uneasily, changed his position, put down the calendar, then got up and began to walk the length of the room backward and forward. A long mirror filled the s.p.a.ce between the two southern windows, and for some time as he reached it he avoided the face seen therein; but after a while he stopped in front of it, hands in his pockets, and spoke with smiling bitterness to it.

"Take it off, man, take it off! All men wear masks, but they needn't go to bed with them. For years you've pretended, smiled, sworn, played with all the toys, worked with the best you had, and believed you were content. And you're finding out at forty what a fool you've been. You love her. She isn't married yet, if she is engaged to another man--and if you've no fight in you, go make a hole and get in it!"

In the gla.s.s he saw his face whiten, saw the lines on his forehead swell, saw his eyes grow dark with rebellious pain, and, turning away, went to a window, opened it, and let the cold air blow upon him. Few people were on the street, and in the windows opposite was little light. The neighborhood was exclusively correct; and only that evening walking home from the club the man with him had frankly envied his manner of life, his freedom and independence. He closed the window, turned off some of the lights, and went back to his chair. "I am an entirely free and independent person," he said aloud. "A most desirable condition for a man without a heart." Why did men have hearts, anyhow, and especially such a queer kind as he had. In the days of his youth he had expected the days of his maturity to find him married, find him with the responsibilities and obligations of other men; but he had strange views of marriage. One by one his friends had entered the estate; he had helped them enter it, but he had acquired an unhealthy habit of watching their venture with wonder at its undertaking and with doubt of its success, and the years had gone by with no desire on his part to a.s.sume the risk.

What he saw was not the life he wanted. Just what he did want he was not sure; but years of contact with much that blights and withers had not killed his belief in certain old-fas.h.i.+oned things, and if they could not come true the journey would be made alone.

What whimsical ways fate had of deciding great issues. Four weeks ago he was something of a piece of mechanism, fairly content with his drab-colored life; and now a girl had entered it and brought to him visions too fair and beautiful to be viewed unveiled, and he knew at last the mystery and power of love. Almost a week of her stay had gone before he met her. In those that followed, he had seen her many times, but frequently he had to stand back and know that others were taking her time when there was none for him to lose.

Should love come to him, he had imagined he would pursue it with the same directness and persistence which had impelled the securing of whatever was determined upon, and instead he was that most despicable of things--a coward.

She was so young--fourteen years younger than he--and what was his to offer in exchange for her life of varied interests, of sweet, sane, helpful, happy things of which he knew so little? He had thought he knew life, its all sides; and unknown to herself she had shown him what had not been understood before, and his was cold and colorless by the side of the warmth and glow of hers.

Yesterday he had known, however, he would not wait long. After she had returned to her home he would go to it and tell her why he had come. All through the day certain words had sung in his ears, and over his books had danced and blurred the figures he was making; and before him in fancy she was waiting for his coming when the day was done, was in the room with outstretched hands to give him greeting as he entered the door. The light of a new vision had blinded, and in its fire the loneliness of his life had stood out in chill clearness, and no longer could it be endured. Some one to care if the days were dark, some one to share the giving and taking of life. At the thought of trust so sacred, his face had whitened, and in his heart unconscious prayer had sprung.

That was yesterday. This afternoon he had stopped at his sister's home for tea, as he had done for days past now, and, Dorothea being sick, he had gone up to see her and give her the book bought for her.

As usual, she had much to say, and he let her talk uninterruptedly.

It was of Claudia that she talked, always of Claudia, and he had listened in a silence that gave chance for much detail.

"She gets more letters!" Dorothea's hands came together as if very full. "Every day there is one from the same person, sometimes two, and specials and telegrams; and sometimes he talks over the telephone. I know his handwriting now. She lets me come in her room whenever I want to. I don't see how one person could have so much to say. I knew he must be her sweetheart, and I asked mother, and mother says she's engaged to a, man in Was.h.i.+ngton. Miss Robin French told her. Mother thinks it's real strange Claudia didn't tell her."

And he had answered nothing, but had gone down the steps and out of the house, and to no one said good night.

XI

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

Claudia glanced at the clock. She must be dressed by seven.

Hurriedly she put aside the letters which could wait, and began to write.

"Just three days more, precious mother, and I will leave for home.

I've seen such remarkable things; heard such wonderful music; been to so many parties and luncheons and teas and dinners; met so many people, some fearfully, dreadfully dressed, some beautifully, gorgeously gowned, that my brain is a plum-pudding, and my mind mere moving pictures. It's been a lovely visit. Channing is a dear, and Hope has done her full duty, but it's something of a strain to dwell in the tents of the wealthy. I'm so glad we're not wealthy, mother.

There are hundreds of things I'd like money for, but I've gotten to be as afraid of it as I am of potato-bugs when the plants are well up. It has a way of making you think things that aren't so. I do hope Uncle Bushrod's cold is better.

"I've tried to fill all the orders from everybody, but some I haven't found yet. Hope and her friends shop only in the expensive stores, and the prices are so paralyzing that, though outwardly I don't blink, I'm inwardly appalled; but I put the things aside as if undecided whether to get them or something nicer. I'm afraid I don't mean I'm glad we're not wealthy. Certainly when shopping I don't wish it. I want millions then. Millions! And when I get among the books I'd like to be a billionaire. To-morrow I'm going out by myself and finish up everything. Hope would be horrified at my purchases, for Hope has forgotten when she, too, had to be careful in her expenditures. Her brother hasn't.

"Did I tell you about the crazy mistake I made? I thought, from what Dorothea told me, he was an old gentleman, her mother's uncle, and wrote him a note before I met him. Dorothea adores him, and when his dog died I was so sorry I told him so. I wonder what does make me do such impulsive things! I get so discouraged about myself. I'll never, never be a proper person. He isn't old.

"I wish you could see the letter Beverly wrote me from Mammy Malaprop. She says she is 'numberating the date of my return to the dissolute land in which I live, and is a-preparing to serve for supper all the indelicacies of the season.' If I didn't know old Malaprop I'd think Beverly was making up her messages, but no imagination could conceive of her twists and turns of the English language.

"Are the hens laying at all? and please tell Andrews to watch the sheep carefully; it's so bitterly cold.

"I've had a beautiful time, but, oh, mother dear, I shall be so glad to get home, where there are real things to do and where you all love me just for myself! Every night I kiss your picture and wish it was you. Best love for everybody. I have Gabriel's little trumpet.

"Devotedly,"

"CLAUDIA."

"P. S.--We are going again to-night to the opera. If only you were going, too! I never see anything beautiful, hear anything beautiful, that I don't wish you could see it and hear it also. I'm so glad I brought my riding-habit. They have been the best things of all, the long, splendid rides in the country. So much nicer than motoring.

Mr. Laine rides better than any city man I know. Three days more and I leave for home.

"C."