The Triflers Part 43

"Only for the moment," she broke in. "But soon--in a week or two--he will be quite himself again. He has a great many things to do. He has tennis and--and golf."

She checked herself abruptly. ("d.a.m.n golf!" Monte had said.)

"There's too much of a man in him now to be satisfied with such things," said Peter. "It's a pity--it's a pity there are not two of you, Marjory."

"Of me?"

"He thinks a great deal of you. If he had met you before he met this other--"

"What are you saying, Peter?"

"That you're the sort of woman who could have called out in him an honest love."

There, beside Peter who could not see, Marjory bent low and buried her face in her hands.

"You 're the sort of woman," he went on, "who could have roused the man in him that has been waiting all this time for some one like you."

How Peter was hurting her! How he was pinching her with red-hot irons!

It hurt so much that she was glad. Here, at last, she was beginning her sacrifice for Monte. So she made neither moan nor groan, nor covered her ears, but took her punishment like a man.

"Some one else must do all that," she said.

"Yes," he answered. "Or his life will be wasted. He needs to suffer.

He needs to give up. This thing we call a tragedy may be the making of him."

"For some one else," she repeated.

Peter was fumbling about for her hand. Suddenly she straightened herself.

"It must be for some one else," he said hoa.r.s.ely--"because I want you for myself. In time--you must be mine. With the experience of those two before us, we must n't make the same mistake ourselves. I--I was n't going to tell you this until I had my eyes back. But, heart o'

mine, I 've held in so long. Here in the dark one gets so much alone.

And being alone is what kills."

She was hiding her hand from him.

"I can't find your hand," he whispered, like a child lost in the dark.

Summoning all her strength, she placed her hand within his. "It is cold!" he cried.

Yet the day was warm. They were speeding through a sunlighted country of olive trees and flowers in bloom--a warm world and tender.

He drew her fingers to his lips and kissed them pa.s.sionately. She suffered it, closing her eyes against the pain.

"I've wanted you so all these months!" he cried. "I should n't have let you go in the first place. I should n't have let you go."

"No, Peter," she answered.

"And now that I've found you again, you'll stay?"

He was lifting his face to hers--straining to see her. To have answered any way but as he pleaded would have been to strike that upturned face.

"I--I 'll try to stay," she faltered.

"I 'll make you!" he breathed. "I 'll hold you tight, soul of mine.

Would you--would you kiss my eyes?"

Holding her breath, Marjory lightly brushed each of his eyes with her lips.

"It's like balm," he whispered. "I've dreamed at night of this."

"Every day I'll do it," she said. "Only--for a little while--you 'll not ask for anything more, Peter?"

"Not until some day they open--in answer to that call," he replied.

"I did n't mean that, Peter," she said hurriedly. "Only I'm so mixed up myself."

"It's so new to you," he nodded. "To me it's like a day foreseen a dozen years. Long before I saw you I knew I was getting ready for you.

Now--what do a few weeks matter?"

"It may be months, Peter, before I'm quite steady."

"Even if it's years," he exclaimed, "I've felt your lips."

"Only on your eyes," she cried in terror.

"I--I would n't dare to feel them except on my eyes--for a little while. Even there they take away my breath."

CHAPTER XXIII

LETTERS

Letter from Peter Noyes to Monte Covington, received by the latter at the Hotel Normandie, Paris, France:--

NICE, FRANCE, July 22.

_Dear Covington_:--

I don't know whether you can make out this scrawl, because I have to feel my way across the paper; but I'm sitting alone in my room, aching to talk with you as we used to talk. If you were here I know you would be glad to listen, because--suddenly all I told you about has come true.

Riding to Cannes the very next day after you left, I spoke to her and--she listened. It was all rather vague and she made no promises, but she listened. In a few weeks or months or years, now, she'll be mine for all time. She does n't want me to tell Beatrice, and there is no one else to tell except you--so forgive me, old man, if I let myself loose.

Besides, in a way, you're responsible. We were talking of you, because we missed you. You have a mighty good friend in her, Covington. She knows you--the real you that I thought only I had glimpsed. She sees the man in the game--not the man in the grand-stand. Her Covington is the man they used to give nine long Harvards for. I never heard that in front of my name. I was a grind--a "greasy grind," they used to call me. It did n't hurt, for I smiled in rather a superior sort of way at the men I thought were wasting their energy on the gridiron.

But, after all, you fellows got something out of it that the rest of us did n't get. A 'Varsity man remains a 'Varsity man all his life.

To-day you stand before her as a 'Varsity man. I think she always thinks of you as in a red sweater with a black "H." Any time that you feel you're up against anything hard, that ought to help you.