The Pines of Lory Part 16

There was no reply.

"From things I did?"

She nodded, rather solemnly, and her face, what he could see of it--seemed very serious. Pats was watching her intently, and exclaimed, in surprise:

"That is very curious, for I kept it to myself!"

"Any woman would have known."

Pats leaned back, and frowned. A torturing thought possessed him. In an anxious tone he said: "I hope I did not talk much when I had the fever."

As she made no reply he studied the back of her head for some responsive motion. But none came.

"Did I?" he demanded.

"Yes."

A look of terror came into his face and his voice grew fainter as he asked: "Did I talk about you?"

"Freely."

With trembling fingers he felt for his handkerchief and drew it across his brow. "Did I say things that--that--I should be ashamed of?"

She nodded.

Pats sunk lower in his chair and closed his eyes. Judging from the lines in his cadaverous face the last three minutes had added years to his age.

"Would you mind telling me," he asked in a deferential voice, so low that it barely reached her, "whether they were impertinent and ungentlemanly--or--or--what?"

"Everything."

His lips were dry, and on his face came a look of anguish--of unspeakable shame. There was a pause, broken only by the faint sound of the flatiron.

"Then I really talked about you--at one time?"

She nodded.

"More than once?"

"For days together."

Pats closed his eyes in pain, and there was a silence. Then he opened them: "Would you mind telling me some of the things I said?"

"I could not remember."

"Have you forgotten _all_?"

"No--but I prefer not repeating them."

On Pats's face the look of shame deepened. In a very low voice he said: "Please remember that I was not myself."

"I make allowance for that."

"Excuse my asking, but if I was out of my head and irresponsible, what could I have said to make you believe that I was--in love with you?"

"You protested so violently that you were not."

With unspeakable horror and humiliation Pats began to realize the awful possibilities of that divulgence of his most secret thoughts. A cold chill crept up his spine. He looked down at the floor, from fear that she might glance in his direction and meet his eyes. Solomon, who felt there was trouble in the air, came nearer and placed his cold wet snout against the clinched hands of his master; but the hands were unresponsive.

At last, the stricken man mustered courage enough to stammer in a constrained voice:

"It is not from curiosity I ask it, but would you mind telling me--giving me at least some idea of what I said?"

Elinor carefully deposited a neatly folded handkerchief upon a little pile of other handkerchiefs. Then, looking down at the table and not at Pats, she said calmly, as she continued her work:

"You said I was a pious hypocrite--coldblooded and heartless--and a fool. You repeated a great many times that I was superior, pretentious, and 'everlastingly stuck on myself,'--I think that was the expression.

Of course, I cannot repeat your own words. They were forcible, but exceedingly profane."

"Oh!"

"You kept mentioning three other men who could have me for all you cared."

Pats felt himself blus.h.i.+ng. He frowned, grew hot, and bit his lip.

Mingled with his mortification came an impotent rage. He felt that behind her contempt she was laughing at him. As there was a pause, he muttered bitterly:

"Go on."

But she continued silently with her ironing.

"Please go on. Tell me more; the worst. I should like to know it."

Raising one of the handkerchiefs higher for a closer examination, she added: "You sang comic songs, inserting my name, and with language I supposed no gentlemen could use."

Pats gasped. His cheeks tingled. In shame he closed his eyes. The ticking of the old clock behind the door seemed to hammer his degradation still deeper into his aching soul. As his wandering, miserable gaze encountered the marble face of the Marshal of France he thought the old soldier was watching him in contemptuous enjoyment.

But Elinor went on quietly with her ironing.

Suddenly into his feverish brain there came a thought, heaven-born, inspiring. It lifted him to his feet. With a firm stride he approached the table. No legs could have done it better. He stood beside her, but she turned her back as she went on with the ironing. His expression was of a man exalted, yet anxious; and he spoke in a low but unruly voice.

"You say you have known I was in love with you ever since the fever?"

She nodded slightly, without looking up.

"And yet you have been very--kind, and not--not annoyed or offended.

Perhaps after all, you--you--oh, please turn around!"

But she did not turn, so he stepped around in front. Into her cheeks had come a sudden color, and in her eyes he saw the light that lifts a lover to the highest heaven.