The Cost Part 8

He glanced at her. She was leaning on her elbow, obviously weaving day-dreams round those boughs as they trembled with the ecstasy of spring.

"You are happy to-day?" he said.

"Yes--happier than I have been for a year." She smiled mysteriously.

"I've had good news." She turned abruptly, looked him in the eyes with that frank, clear expression--his favorite among his memory-pictures of her had it. "There's one thing that worries me--it's never off my mind longer than a few minutes. And when I'm blue, as I usually am on rainy days, it makes me--horribly uncomfortable. I've often almost asked your advice about it."

"If you'd be sorry afterward that you told me," said he, "I hope you won't. But if I can help you, you know how glad I'd be."

"It's no use to tell Olivia," Pauline went on. "She's bitterly prejudiced. But ever since the first month I knew you, I felt that I could trust you, that you were a real friend. And you're so fair in judging people and things."

His eyes twinkled.

"I'm afraid I'd tilt the scales--just a little--where you were concerned."

"Oh, I want you to do that," she answered with a smile. "Last fall I did something--well, it was foolish, though I wouldn't admit that to any one else. I was carried away by an impulse. Not that I regret. In the only really important way, I wouldn't undo it if I could--I think."

Those last two words came absently, as if she were debating the matter with herself.

"If it's done and can't be undone," he said cheerfully, "I don't see that advice is needed."

"But--you don't understand." She seemed to be casting about for words.

"As I said, it was last fall--here. In Saint X there was a man--and he and I--we'd cared for each other ever since we were children. And then he went away to college. He did several things father didn't like.

You know how older people are--they don't make allowances. And though father's the gentlest, best--at any rate, he turned against Jack, and--"

Scarborough abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to her.

After a pause Pauline said, in a rush, "And he came here last fall and we got married."

There was a long silence.

"It was DREADFUL, wasn't it?" she said in the tone of one who has just made a shocking discovery.

Scarborough did not answer.

"I never realized till this minute," she went on after a while. "Not that I'm sorry or that I don't--don't CARE--just as I always did. But somehow, telling it out loud to some one else has made me see it in a different light. It didn't seem like treachery to them--to father and mother--then. It hasn't seemed like a--a marriage REALLY marriage--until now."

Another long silence. Then she burst out appealingly: "Oh, I don't see how I'm ever going to tell them!"

Scarborough came back to his chair and seated himself. His face was curiously white. It was in an unnatural voice that he said: "How old is he?"

"Twenty-five," she replied, then instantly flared up, as if he had attacked Dumont: "But it wasn't his fault--not in the least. I knew what I was doing--and I wanted to do it. You mustn't get a false impression of him, Hampden. You'd admire and respect him. You--any one--would have done as he did in the same circ.u.mstances." She blushed slightly. "You and he are ever so much alike--even in looks. It was that that made me tell you, that made me like you as I have--and trust you."

Scarborough winced. Presently he began: "Yet you regret----"

"No--no!" she protested--too vehemently. "I do NOT regret marrying him. That was certain to be sooner or later. All I regret is that I did something that seems underhanded. Perhaps I'm really only sorry I didn't tell them as soon as I'd done it."

She waited until she saw he was not going to speak. "And now," she said, "I don't know HOW to tell them." Again she waited, but he did not speak, continued to look steadily out into the sky. "What do you think?" she asked nervously. "But I can see without your saying. Only I--wish you'd SAY it."

"No, I don't condemn you," he said slowly. "I know you. YOU couldn't possibly do anything underhanded. If you'd been where you'd have had to conceal it directly, face to face, from some one who had the right to know--you'd never have done it." He rested his arms on the table and looked straight at her. "I feel I must tell you what I think. And I feel, too, it wouldn't be fair and honest if I didn't let you see why you might not want to take my advice."

She returned his gaze inquiringly.

"I love you," he went on calmly. "I've known it ever since I missed you so at the Christmas holidays. I love you for what you are, and for what you're as certain to be as--as a rosebud is certain to be a full-blown rose. I love you as my father loved my mother. I shall love you always." His manner was calm, matter-of-fact; but there was in his musical, magical voice a certain quality which set her nerves and her blood suddenly to vibrating. She felt as if she were struggling in a great sea--the sea of his love for her--struggling to reach the safety of the sh.o.r.e.

"Oh--I WISH you hadn't told me!" she exclaimed.

"Suppose I hadn't; suppose you had taken my advice? No"--he shook his head slowly--"I couldn't do that, Pauline--not even to win you."

"I'm sorry I said anything to you about it."

"You needn't be. You haven't harmed yourself. And maybe I can help you."

"No--we won't talk of it," she said--she was pressing her hand on her bosom where she could feel her wedding ring. "It wouldn't be right, now. I don't wish your advice."

"But I must give it. I'm years and years older than you--many, many years more than the six between us. And----"

"I don't wish to hear."

"For his sake, for your own sake, Pauline, tell them! And they'll surely help you to wait till you're older before you do anything--irrevocable."

"But I care for him," she said--angrily, though it could not have been what he was saying so gently that angered her. "You forget that I care for him. It IS irrevocable now. And I'm glad it is!"

"You LIKE him. You don't LOVE him. And--he's not worthy of your love.

I'm sure it isn't prejudice that makes me say it. If he were, he'd have waited----"

She was on her feet, her eyes blazing.

"I asked for advice, not a lecture. I DESPISE you! Attacking the man I love and behind his back! I wish to be alone."

He rose but met her look without flinching.

"You can send ME away," he said gently, "but you can't send away my words. And if they're true you'll feel them when you get over your anger. You'll do what you think right. But--be SURE, Pauline. Be SURE!" In his eyes there was a look--the secret altar with the never-to-be-extinguished flame upon it. "Be SURE!, Pauline. Be SURE."

Her anger fell; she sank, forlorn, into a chair. For both, the day had shriveled and shadowed. And as he turned and left the room the warmth and joy died from air and sky and earth; both of them felt the latent chill--it seemed not a reminiscence of winter past but the icy foreboding of winter closing in.

When Olivia came back that evening from shopping in Indianapolis she found her cousin packing.

"Is it something from home?" she asked, alarmed.

Pauline did not look up as she answered:

"No--but I'm going home--to stay--going in the morning. I've telegraphed them."

"To stay!"

"Yes--I was married to Jack--here--last fall."

"You--married! To JOHN DUMONT--you, only seventeen--oh, Pauline--"

And Olivia gave way to tears for the first time since she was a baby.