Part 6 (1/2)
”I guess I understand,” said Aldous ”For some reason your anxiety is not that you will find hiray, but that you may find hieto say You will think I auest You have invited me to supper And--the potatoes are ready, and there is no fire!”
She had forced a smile back to her lips John Aldous whirled toward the door
”I will have the partridges in two seconds!” he cried ”I dropped theh the rapids”
The oppressive and crushi+ng effect of Joanne's first one He es that swept over him He accepted them as facts, and that was all Where a fewthat seeain the strange buoyancy hich he had gone to the Otto tent He began to whistle as he went to the river's edge He histling when he returned, the two birds in his hand
Joanne aiting for hiain her face was a faintly tinted vision of tranquil loveliness; her eyes were again like the wonderful blue pools over the sunlit mountains She smiled as he came up He was amazed--not that she had recovered so completely from the emotional excitement that had racked her, but because she betrayed in no way a sign of grief--of suspense or of anxiety A fewHe could alain as she stood there
Froray shadows began to creep in where the light had been, there was no other reference to the things that had happened or the things that had been said since Joanne's arrival For the first tiot his work He was lost in Joanne With the tre out in him she became more and more wonderful to him with each breath that he drew He h hi too apparent to her
The way in which Joanne had taken his invitation was as delightful as it was new to hiuest and hostess With her lovely arms bared halfway to the shoulders she rolled out a batch of biscuits ”Hot biscuits go so ith maring in the water, she gave him to understand that his duties were at an end, and that he could s of dusk he closed the cabin door that helaloould flood down upon the thick soft coils of her shi+ning hair
Every fibre in him throbbed with a keen and exquisite satisfaction as he sat down opposite her During the meal he looked into the quiet, velvety blue of her eyes a hundred tihtful sensation to talk to her and look into those eyes at the same time He told her more about himself than he had ever told another soul It was she who spoke first of theHe had spoken of certain adventures that had led up to the writing of one of his books
”And this last book you are writing, which you call 'Mothers,'” she said
”Is it to be like 'Fair Play?'”
”It was to have been the last of the trilogy But it won't be now, Ladygray I've changed my mind”
”But it is so nearly finished, you say?”
”I would have co it to an end at fever heat when--you came”
He saw the troubled look in her eyes, and hastened to add:
”Let us not talk about that ray Some day I will let you read it, and then you will understand why your co has not hurt it At first I was unreasonably disturbed because I thought that I must finish it within a week froe adventure, into the North”
”That means--the wild country?” she asked ”Up there in the North--there are no people?”
”An occasional Indian, perhaps a prospector now and then,” he said ”Last year I travelled a hundred and twenty-seven days without seeing a human face except that of my Cree companion”
She had leaned a little over the table, and was looking at hi
”That is why I have understood you, and read between the printed lines in your books,” she said ”If I had been a reat deal like you I love those things--loneliness, ereat spaces where you hear only the whisperings of the winds and the fall of no other feet but your own Oh, I should have been a man! It was born in me It was a part of rief had shot into her eyes Her voice broke almost in a sob
Amazed, he looked at her in silence across the table
”You have lived that life, Ladygray?” he said after aand unclasping her slim white hands ”For years and years, perhaps even more than you, John Aldous! I was born in it And it wastiling to subdue the quivering throb in her throat ”We were inseparable,” she went on, her voice becoe and quiet
”He was father, ether we hunted out the s in the out-of-the-way places of the earth It was his passion He had given birth to it in me I was alith him, everywhere And then he died, soon after his discovery of that wonderful buried city of Mindano, in the heart of Africa Perhaps you have read----”
”Good God,” breathed Aldous, so low that his voice did not rise above a whisper ”Joanne--Ladygray--you are not speaking of Daniel Gray--Sir Daniel Gray, the Egyptologist, the antiquarian who uncovered the secrets of an ancient and wonderful civilization in the heart of darkest Africa?”
”Yes”