Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 53

He lowered his voice and looked into her eyes. "Say all your wors.h.i.+ppers," he corrected, and she turned from him to her left-hand neighbor.

She laughed and jested as lightly as if her heart were a feather, and went home at last to weep upon her pillow.

For the next few days she lived like one animated by an unnatural stimulant. She talked and moved nervously, and her eyes shone with suppressed excitement, but she had never appeared more brilliant, and her manner was charged with an irresistible vivacity. To Miss Ramsey she was unusually gentle and generous.

Each morning, on rising, the thought fired her, "He may come to-day"; each night the change was rung to, "He may come to-morrow"; and she would toss feverishly until daybreak, to dress and meet her engagement, with a laugh upon her lips. To a stranger she would have seemed to face pain as she faced joy, with a dauntless insolence to fate. To a closer observer there would have appeared, with the sharper gnawing at her heart, the dash of a freer grace to her gestures, a richer light to her eyes. It was as if she proposed to conquer destiny by the exercise of personal charm.

At the end of the week she came down to luncheon one day with a softer warmth in her face. When the meal was over she went up to her room and called her maid. "I want the gray dress," she said; but when it was laid on the bed she tossed it aside. "It is too gloomy," she complained.

"Bring me the red;" and from the red she turned to the green.

She dressed herself with pa.s.sionate haste, arranging and rearranging the coil of her hair, and altering with reckless fingers the lace at her throat. At last she drew back from the gla.s.s, throwing a dissatisfied glance at her reflection--at the green-clad figure and the small and brilliant face, surmounted by its coils of s.h.i.+ning brown. Then she added a knot of violets to the old lace on her breast, and went down-stairs to walk the drawing-room floor. An instinctive belief in his coming possessed her. As she walked slowly up and down on the heavy carpet, the long mirrors suspended here and there threw back at her fugitive glimpses of her moving figure. In the dusk of the room beyond she saw herself irradiated by the glimmering firelight.

The hands of the clock upon the mantel travelled slowly round the lettered face. As she watched it she felt a sudden desire to shake them into swiftness. She touched the clock and drew back, laughing at her childishness. A carriage in the street caught her ears and she went to the window, glancing through the half-closed curtains. It pa.s.sed by.

Then a tall, black figure turning the corner arrested her gaze, and her heart leaped suddenly. The figure came on and she saw that it was an elderly clergyman with white hair and a benevolent face. She was seized with anger against him, and her impatience caused her to press her teeth into her trembling lip. In the street a light wind chased a cloud of dust along the sidewalk until it danced in little eddying waves into the gutter. An organ-grinder, pa.s.sing below, looked up and lifted his hand.

She took her purse from the drawer of the desk and threw him some change; but when the broken tune was ground out she shook her head and motioned him away. The sound grated upon her discordant nerves.

She left the window and crossed the room again. The hands of the clock had made a half-hour's progress in their tedious march.

A book of poems lay on the table, and she opened it idly, her mental fever excited by the lighter words of one who had sounded the depths and sunk beneath.

"If Midge will pine and curse its hours away, Because Midge is not everything--for aye, Poor Midge thus loses its one summer day, Loses its all--and winneth what, I pray?"

She threw the book aside and turned away--back to the window where there was dust and wind--back into the still room where the monotonous tick of the clock maddened her quivering mood. She walked to and fro in that silent waiting which is the part of women, and beside which the action of battle is to be faced with a song of thanksgiving.

The trembling of her limbs frightened her, and she flung herself upon a divan. The weakness pa.s.sed, and she got up again. Another half-hour had gone.

All at once there was a ring at the bell. For an instant she felt her heart contract, and then a delirious dash of blood through her veins to her temples. Her pulses fluttered like imprisoned birds.

A footstep crossed the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened.

"Mr. Ryder!"

She wavered for an instant and went forward to meet him with an hysterical laugh. Her eyes were like emeralds held before a blaze, and the intense, opaline pallor of her face was warm as if tinged by a flame.

He took her outstretched hand hungrily, his face flus.h.i.+ng until the purplish tint rose to his smooth, white forehead.

"Were you expecting me?" he asked. "I would sell my soul to believe that you were--with that look in your eyes."

She shook her head impatiently.

"I was not," she answered. "I was expecting no one. It is very warm in here--that is all."

He looked disappointed.

"Have you ever expected me?" he questioned, moodily--"or thought of me when I was not with you?"

She smiled. "Oh yes!" she returned, lightly. "When I had a note from you saying that you were coming."

He set his teeth.

"You are as cruel as a--a devil, or a woman," he said.

"What you call cruelty," she answered, gently, "is merely a weapon which we sometimes thrust too far. When you talk to me in this way, you force me to use it." And she added, flippantly, "Some day I may thrust it to your heart."

"I wish to G.o.d you would!"

But she laughed merrily and led him to impersonal topics, talking rapidly, with a constant play of her slim, white hands. She allowed him no time for protestations. It was all bright, frivolous gossip of the day, with no hint of seriousness. As she talked, there was no sign that her ears were straining for an expected sound, or her flesh quivering with impatience.

At last he rose to go.

"You are the only woman I know," he remarked, as he looked at her with his easy and familiar glance, "who is never dull. How do you manage it?"

"Oh, it is not difficult," she answered. "To laugh is much easier than to cry."

"And much more agreeable. I detest a woman who weeps."

Her brilliant laugh rang out.

"And so do I," she said.

When he had gone, and the house door had closed after him, she crossed to the heavily hanging curtains, pushed them aside, and looked out.

Only dust and wind and gray streets and the sound of the footsteps of a pa.s.ser-by. From out the blue mist a single light burst, then another and another. She held her head erect, a scornful smile curving her lips.

Again the bell rang, and again she quivered and started forward, listening to the steps that crossed the hall. The door opened.

"Mr. Buisson!"

She hesitated a moment, and then went forward with the same cordial gesture of her cold, white hand.

CHAPTER XI

Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in the mission districts, which began before the early Ma.s.s, to end long after dusk, when the calls of his richer paris.h.i.+oners had been treated and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment.

One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appet.i.te with me," he explained, "not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without eating, his stale roll.

The younger man remonstrated, his face flus.h.i.+ng from embarra.s.sment.

"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr.

Salvers?"

Father Algarcife shook his head.

"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in the day, and I'll mention it to him."