Part 47 (2/2)
”Because you just now told me you had been,” he smiled again.
”Brent,” she leaned over and looked very seriously into his face, ”don't temporize. I'm not in the humor for it! I heard about--something today, and I want to tell you that you're--that you're splendid!”
”What about?” There was no feigned surprise in his question.
”Oh,” she clapped her hands as a delighted child might have done, ”he doesn't know that Tusk is alive!” But added gravely: ”Suppose he'd been dead, Brent!”
He turned away; afraid, in this surprise and strange giddiness which was enveloping him, to trust himself to speak. There ensued a longer pause, broken by her wistful voice asking: ”Why did you, Brent?”
”Oh, I was just having a little fun with Dale,” he answered casually.
”Hurry, it's late! I'll race you to Bob's gate--and leave you!”
Turning his horse to put it in motion, he did not know that she sat drooping in the saddle, and staring--pale and staring--with a horrified fear and disappointment in her eyes.
”I'll not race,” she faltered. ”It is so near, so don't come. Perhaps I might have guessed--that--you--were--but I just--just hoped--. Good night. I didn't see the Colonel--please say I send my love.”
She was riding away, when he called desperately after her:
”Don't you want Dale to have a little of it?”
That one taunting, trembling, pa.s.sionate question, hurled at her with such bitterness of feeling, such hopeless sense of despair, touched a spring which opened the doors of the heretofore inscrutable, and flooded her with light. For an instant the pike danced before her eyes as though it were a road of bejeweled splendor! She wanted to laugh, and she did laugh; and, if he had guessed the reason, she might have had to use both whip and spur in a longer race than just to Bob's gate. But he did not guess, and she did not turn her head nor slacken pace. Unhappily and sullenly he rode on to Arden.
Several days pa.s.sed before they met; but in the meanwhile he had spent not a few nights sitting by that window in his darkened room, building castles and tearing them down, planning futures and destroying them; dreaming, dreaming. His att.i.tude had become merely deferential, requiring a studied reticence upon her own part, and precluding a reference to their meeting on the road, or any mention of n.o.bility, the sheriff, Dale or Tusk.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
THE MYSTIC GARDENER SHOWS HIS WORK
It was sundown about a week later when Brent came up the steps and threw himself in a chair by the Colonel's side. Jane and the faithful Mac had just left--indeed, the sound of her horse's hoofbeats might still be heard through the pulseless evening as the two men gazed in moody silence at the approaching night. The sky had taken on that deep blue velvet softness of Italian beauty, and the low, red west of the dying day might have been reflected from some funeral pyre in distant, mystic India. A murmur of drowsy birds came from the darkening trees--a few hushed, plaintive notes, wistfully calling in tones of twilight.
”Poor little Mesmie is having a bad time of it,” Brent spoke with an effort. ”It's been fourteen days, and Stone says he must try to graft skin. I offered mine, but he couldn't consider it.”
”That was very fine of you, Brent,” the old gentleman turned to him.
”Why wouldn't he take it?”
”Oh, there wasn't anything fine about it, Colonel,” he answered with a touch of irritation. ”He couldn't take it because he saw us with some juleps this morning. He says he has to have healthy skin for grafting.”
The Colonel cleared his throat. He had just been contemplating a signal to Zack, but now the idea seemed somehow inappropriate.
”Why not Bradford?” he asked. ”He's her father!”
”He's got poison-ivy, or hives, or something.” And, after another moment: ”Good night, sir, I think I'll go up stairs and work!”
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