Part 36

“I read about it,” said Jacqueline simply, “in a book by Luther Stafford, ‘Vistas of Enchantment.’”

“No!” he cried, his dark face all alight. “Please allow me to introduce myself--Luther Stafford, the writer of that little book.”

So it came about that Mr. Terrill and Mr. Stafford were presented to each other. When the enthusiastic Stafford suggested it, Terrill drove them all in the car to see the doorway of the old Veagh house; but he was singularly lukewarm about that architectural relic, and he did not even pretend to share in Miss Miles’s hitherto unsuspected passion for old doorways.

No--he simply drove the car, and Miss Miles and Stafford sat on the back seat. He heard them talking. Miss Miles was not imperious now. She was so sweet, so gentle, so serious, so humbly anxious to be instructed. She seemed to possess such a surprising acquaintance with architectural terms!

And all the time Jacqueline was praying in her heart:

“Oh, let me make him like me! Oh, please, let me make him like me!”

If she could only win Stafford’s unqualified approval, think what it might mean to Barty and herself! She had never wanted anything so much in her life before.

Barty had often told her that Stafford was the most thoroughly likable fellow he had ever met; but, hearing of the famous architect’s high-strung nerves, his squeamishness, his minor affectations, she had privately doubted the soundness of this estimate. Now she understood, however. His fine enthusiasm for his art, his eagerness to share it, his spontaneous courtesy, and, above all, something generous and frank and indisputably great that was obvious in all that he said and did, won her immediate respect and liking. And, oh, how she wanted him to like her!

As they drove away from the abandoned farmhouse, it occurred to Stafford that the sun was going down the sky.

“By George!” he cried, alarmed. “I _am_ an idiot! It ’ll be dark now, and I have all that stuff to carry back! The young chap who’s with me is laid up--”

“Laid up?” cried Jacqueline.

“Yes, or he’d have come with me; but now--”

“What’s the matter with him?” Jacqueline demanded fiercely.

Her tone made Stafford turn toward her, and Terrill threw a startled glance over his shoulder.

“Why, it’s nothing much,” replied Stafford, puzzled. “He caught his foot in an old trap that was buried under some leaves.”

“Is it serious?”

“No, it isn’t--not if it’s properly looked after.”

“What are you doing for it?”

He looked at her with a faint frown, and her eyes met his steadily.

“I want to know,” she said bluntly, “because I’m Barty Leadenhall’s wife.”

There was a long silence. The sun had vanished now, and the dusty road before them was somber under the deepening shadow of the trees. The sky was pallid, the world was without light or color, and a terrible oppression had suddenly descended upon Jacqueline.

She no longer saw this episode as a gay little comedy. It was very close to tragedy. Her high spirits of the afternoon seemed to her now only heartless flippancy, tarnishing the dignity of her wifehood.

“Then you’re the friend he went away with?” asked Stafford.

“Yes,” she answered.

“And--did you send him back to me?”

Her face flushed.

“He didn’t need sending,” she said. “He wanted to go. He--”

“I see!” said Stafford, and again he was silent for a long time. “I think you’d better come back with me,” he said at last.

“But--you mean--now?” cried Jacqueline. “I don’t see how--”

Terrill turned his head, only for an instant, just long enough for her to see on his face a smile she never forgot.

“I would if I were you, Mrs. Leadenhall,” he said. “Set your mind at rest about--your husband.”

There was nothing in his voice but honest, chivalrous kindness. He did not resent her trickery, he did not despise her. He was only kind--so kind that in the dusk she wept a little to herself.

VII

They set off together across the fields. Stafford was burdened with a tremendous sack, which he did not know how to carry properly. Jacqueline could have given him good advice, for she had had five years’ experience of girls’ camps; but she tactfully refrained.

Whenever they came to an unusually rough bit of the trail, Stafford took her arm, to render her assistance, which she did not in the least require; but she accepted it with polite gratitude. There was absolutely nothing of the pal in Stafford. He would only have thought the less of her for knowing how to carry heavy sacks, and for being able to look out for herself.

A canoe was waiting for them at the head of a lake. As a matter of course Jacqueline took up the second paddle, but Stafford earnestly entreated her to put it down. He paddled in a very amateurish fashion, and she could have done much better; but she held her tongue, and listened to Stafford while he reassured her about Barty.

Barty’s foot had not been badly injured in the first place, and it was now almost healed.

“He’s walking about,” said Stafford. “He could just as well have come to-day, but I thought I’d like to try it alone.”

The shores of the lake, where trees and bushes grew, were densely black, but in the center of the lake there was a dim reflection of the moonlight, though the moon itself was not yet visible. It was very still. The woods were all alive with bird, beast, and insect, and the water beneath the canoe was teeming with life, but no sound reached their human ears but the dip of the paddle. Stafford’s voice broke the stillness.

“There used to be Indians here,” he said.

A singularly inept remark for a man of his intelligence, yet in Jacqueline’s mind it conjured up the most vivid images. She turned her eyes toward the dark woods.

The naked, copper-colored figures which had passed by there, silent as the beasts themselves, the other canoes which had sped through these waters; and after them their enemy, the paleface--an enemy inferior in strength and endurance, ignorant of the forest ways, utterly alien here, and yet, because of the invincible spirit in him, always conquering. Indian and pioneer, warriors, hunters, killers--and behind them the faithful, patient shadow of the burden bearer, the woman. Squaw woman and white woman, carrying babies in their arms or on their backs, their own God-given burdens; and always with other burdens, too--the homely implements of daily life laid upon the shoulders of women, so that the hands of the men might be free for their weapons.

It had to be so. Only by the strong arm of her man could the woman and her child live; but all that was over and done with. Where civilization was established, woman was the friend and equal of man.

Jacqueline moved a little, uneasy and resentful at the thoughts that came to her. Those half legendary loves that were the glory of the civilized world, those names which had, after hundreds of years, still the power to stir the heart--_Romeo_ and _Juliet_, Hero and Leander, _Paul_ and _Virginia_--magic names of imperishable glamour and beauty! All good pals, weren’t they? All the women for whom men had ventured sublime and terrible things, the women who had inspired the heroic undertakings of history and romance, the women for whom men had gladly died--all good pals, weren’t they?

A pal? The nearest approach to a pal was the Indian squaw. She had shared her man’s life, she had been his indispensable helper, and the humble, unconsidered bearer of his burdens. The whole idea was a turning back, a renunciation of something lofty and beautiful for something commonplace and inferior. Barty had wanted to be a lover, and she made him a comrade. He had asked for bread, and she had given him a stone. He had longed for the high romance and glory of life, and she had said they couldn’t afford it. She had tried to keep his money in his pockets for him. She had kept his spirit pinned to the earth.

VIII

The sack had bumped poor Stafford black and blue. With a weary sigh he flung it across the other shoulder--and whack, those stony potatoes caught him on the left leg. But he was nearly there now. That silly, adorable girl must have had plenty of time to make her explanation to Barty. Stafford had sent her on ahead from the landing stage with an electric flash light. It was only a short half mile over a good trail, and he was only a little way behind her, never out of hearing of a call. He thought that she ought to see Barty alone. They must arrange their own affairs in their own pathetic, blundering way.

Whack! This time just behind the knee. Stafford flung the sack on the ground and began to drag it after him. Let happen what might, he had the tobacco safely in his pocket. If further meals depended upon carrying that accursed sack any more, then he preferred never to eat again.

Ah! He saw the flare of the camp fire now.

“Hallo-o-o, Barty!” he shouted.

“Halloo-o-o, Stafford!” Barty responded cheerfully. “What’s been keeping you so late? I was beginning to get a bit uneasy.”

Stafford made no answer, but came on at a very much quickened pace, dragging the sack behind him over the rough ground.

“Leadenhall!” he said. He stood still, looking anxiously about him. The flickering light of the fire illumined a small cleared space in the dark woodland, and there was no one there but Barty. “Didn’t some one else come?” he demanded sharply.

“Some one else?” said Barty, with a laugh. “Expecting callers?”

Then Stafford told him.

At first it seemed to Barty preposterous, and even a little annoying, that the alert and self-reliant Jacko should have got herself lost in this fashion. The trail up from the landing was perfectly clear and easy to follow, and Stafford had given her his flash light.

Barty went all the way down to the lake again, calling her name. Then, as he stood on the shore of the black water, the note in his voice changed. A fitful wind had sprung up, driving clouds across the face of the moon. The trees stirred and sighed. No matter what feminine folly had induced her to leave the trail, she _had_ left it. She was gone, beyond reach of his voice. Which way?

He remembered Stafford’s words--hard words for a young man of his temper to swallow.

“You accepted the responsibility for her life and her happiness,” Stafford had said; “and you left her--a young, lovely thing like that. I think you failed her pretty badly, Leadenhall!”

It was Barty’s way to hold his tongue, and he had held his tongue then, but he had thought.

“I tried to please her and I tried to please you,” was what he thought; “and I’m hanged if either of you know what you want. All right--_I_ do!”

So he had set off in a grim and dogged humor. Of course, he was glad--very glad--that Stafford had found Jacko so charming. Of course he did not object to her going about with that fellow named Terrill--certainly not! He trusted Jacko absolutely, and he was glad she had been able to amuse herself a little; only it was a queer sort of gladness. Of course, he wanted to be fair to his little pal.

“Jacko!” he shouted.

His lusty voice died away across the lake, and nothing answered. The canoe was still there, so she couldn’t have gone back. She must have turned off the trail into the woods. It was not a cold night; and there was nothing there that could hurt her. Barty said that over and over again to himself as he turned back--not along the trail, but through the whispering wood.

His flash light threw a valiant little pathway through the surrounding darkness. He stopped every now and then to call her. He limped painfully, and because of his injured foot he had on soft moccasins, not good for going over stones and broken branches; but he could have gone barefoot over red-hot plowshares then, and scarcely known it.

What, nothing here to hurt her--little Jacko, alone in the black shadow of the whispering trees--in the forest, where the old enemies, the nameless and formless things, never wholly forgotten by the most civilized heart, still lurked? He saw the wood not with his own eyes, but with Jacko’s. Little Jacko, with her eager, beautiful gait, her gallant little head held so high, and her pitiful youth and slightness!

“Jacko!” he shouted in anguish. “Jacko!”

He was in a panic now, trying to run, stumbling and falling, whirling the flash light in a wide circle, shouting until his voice was hoarse and strange. There was no fear, however baseless, that he did not feel for her now, no disaster that he did not foresee.

And at last he heard her. Her voice answered his.

“Here, Barty!” she called faintly.

He found her sunk on the ground in a heap, under a tree, white and limp.

“I got lost, Barty,” she said, with a sob. “I’m--sorry!”

He caught her up in his arms and held her strained against his heart. The flash light had fallen to the ground, and he could not see her face.

“Are you hurt?” he cried. “Jacko, are you hurt?”

She flung her arms round his neck and drew down his head. He felt tears on her cheeks. He was filled with a sublime and almost intolerable tenderness for this beloved creature, clinging to him. He had no words. He could only hold her close in his arms and kiss her cold face again and again.

“Barty!” she said. “Your foot! Let me down!”

But he would not. He carried her back to the camp, and he did not stumble or falter once. White and haggard with exhaustion, he came staggering into the friendly firelight with Jacko in his arms, her face hidden on his shoulder, her dark hair hanging loose over his arm.

When he set her down, and she looked at him, she did not regret his pain, his weariness, or the fear he had felt for her. On his face there was a look that she would never forget--an exultation, a sort of splendor that stirred her beyond all measure. This was his hour, the hour that was due him, his hour of supreme effort and glorious victory.

He could not quite suppress a groan as he turned aside, for his foot throbbed horribly; but she knew that he was glad to endure it for her, that it was his right and his pride so to endure for the woman he loved. For the sake of his love she had done this for him. She had strayed away so that he might find her anew, so that they might start all over again, with the past effaced and the future all before them.

Barty came limping toward her with a plate of unduly solid flapjacks that he himself had cooked. He was followed by Stafford with a cup of ferociously strong coffee. Both of them were so anxious, so concerned, so busy doing clumsily what Jacqueline could have done so easily herself. What she longed to do was to throw her arms about Barty’s neck, to tell him that she did not want him to wait on her and serve her, but to let her help him and share everything, good or bad, with him.

But she stifled that longing. As he stood before her, she looked up into his face with a smile--a strange and beautiful smile which he did not quite understand.

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

MAY, 1925 Vol. LXXXIV NUMBER 4

Flowers for Miss Riordan

A CAVALIER’S FLORAL TRIBUTE WHICH HELPED ITS RECIPIENT TO ACHIEVE THE FREEDOM OF HER SOUL

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

The gates were opened, and the crowd went shuffling and pushing out of the dim ferry house. Fleet and glittering motor cars shot by, and after them came thundering trucks, and great dray horses with earth-shaking tramp--the whole world going by on parade, until it seemed that only an enchanted ship could hold all of it. Then bells clanged and winches rattled, the gates shut before Miss Riordan’s nose, and off went the boat, with the world aboard, leaving in its wake a strip of foaming water that after a while grew tranquil and a lucent green.

Miss Riordan turned back and began to saunter up and down the ferry house. She wore an annoyed expression. She was a cruel lady, frowning upon the tardiness of her cavalier, who was doubtless rushing to her from somewhere, breathless and humbly apologetic.

“I am here,” she said in effect, “and I may as well wait, but it shall never happen again--never!”

Two boats gone! That meant forty minutes.

“Well, of course, I came too early,” she reflected. “That makes it seem longer; but I just won’t wait after the next one.”

She knew she would, though. He knew it, too--knew he would find her there. He would come when it suited him, and there she would be, waiting for him.

“He makes me sick!” she said to herself, with a sudden rush of tears. “Who does he think he is, anyway? I bet, if everything was known--”

But she hoped the time would never come when everything was known, even if it should effect the well deserved humiliation of Mr. Louis Pirini.

On the Day of Judgment there would be an angel with an immense book. He would ask you questions, and write down your answers in letters of fire; but he would know the right answers beforehand, or have them on file somewhere, so you’d have to be careful what you said. It was a comfort to think, though, that if that time came, you would be purely a soul, without bodily contours, and certainly without age. Miss Riordan was not very clear in mind about her sins, but she knew well enough which were the things that filled her with the greatest shame and guilt--her age and her physical luxuriance.

“Well, anyhow, I don’t look it!” she said forlornly to herself. “He don’t really know. He just tries to tease me--but I don’t care!”

The energy she was obliged to expend in not caring for the humorous remarks of Mr. Louis Pirini was, however, a considerable drain upon her nervous system. Usually she was able to laugh when he did; but sometimes he was too mean, and then she cried--a weakness she dreaded beyond measure. Always, whether she laughed or cried, when he was with her and when he was absent, she was filled with a passionate resentment against him.

Her grievances had grown monstrous; her heart was bursting with them. Sometimes, when she lay awake at night, she thought that the only good thing in the world would be to “get even” with him.

But Mr. Pirini was safe as an immortal god from her vengeance. There was no conceivable way in which she could hurt him. She couldn’t retaliate by making unpleasant remarks about his personal appearance, because they both knew that he was superb. She could not shame him by reminding him of all she had done for him--she had tried that once. She couldn’t even tell any one of her own generosity and his vile ingratitude. On the contrary, she felt obliged to lie quite wildly. When she bought anything new, she pretended that Louis had given it to her. When they went out together, she pretended that it was his treat.

“And he just stands there grinning!” she thought. “All I’ve done for him, and look how he acts! Look at last Sunday, down to Coney, when we met Sadie. She’s seen me and Louis going together nearly a year. It was perfectly natural for her to say was him and me going to get married; and what did he up and say, after all I’ve done for him? ‘Sure we are,’ he says, ‘when hell freezes over!’ I’d just like to have told Sadie a thing or two about him!”

Unattainable consolation! She couldn’t ever tell any one, for nobody would understand. She did not even care to bring the matter to the attention of God prematurely, for she feared He would not consider all the evidence, but would give a judgment based upon one or two salient facts; and the facts were somehow so insignificant, compared with her feelings.

Twelve minutes, now, before the next boat. A sort of panic seized her. He mustn’t come and discover her walking up and down like this, as if she were impatient, as if she were eagerly waiting for him. No--she would be found reading something with profound interest, unconscious of the passing of time, of the waste of this Saturday afternoon, so precious to her after a week’s work in the factory.

She sauntered up to the news stand and fluttered over the pages of a magazine. She thought it was “high-class,” and yet it was full of pictures. She paid for it, and sat down on a bench.

“Well, I read a lot of good things in school,” she reflected, always on the defensive. “‘Hiawatha,’ and all that. I was real good in English.”

She turned to an article on Turkey, a country which she thought immoral and interesting, but it was difficult to divert her attention from her feet. Funny, the way they hurt more when you were sitting down than when you were walking!

“Maybe I might have took a half a size longer,” she reflected. “Well, anyways! This shiny paper kind of hurts my eyes. It’s an awful foolish thing to wear glasses--makes you look so much older; only they do say it gives you wrinkles to squint.”

Wistfully she looked at the photograph of a group of Turkish beauties. Certainly they were all stout, but somehow it was a different sort of stoutness; and their eyes, their languorous, ardent eyes.

“Yes, but I bet if everything was known--” thought Miss Riordan.

Just then she became aware that some one was looking at her--some one who had sat down beside her. She began to assume various expressions of interest in her magazine. She frowned, as if absorbed. She raised her eyebrows, amazed. She smiled and shook her head, incredulous. Then, as she turned the page, she cast a furtive sidelong glance, to see who it was.

It was a little old man with a woeful face. His wrinkled brow, his hanging jowls, and his sad, dim old eyes gave him rather the look of a superannuated hound. Perhaps he was pathetic, but not to Miss Riordan. She was very angry. She stared at him in haughty surprise, and turned back to her magazine; but she could still feel his eyes fixed upon her.

“The nerve of the man!” she thought indignantly.

Presently he moved a little nearer and cleared his throat, as if about to speak. This time she gave him a look calculated to destroy; but, just the same, he did speak.

“I see you are reading _Travel_,” he said.

She glared at him.

“I have had the honor of contributing one or two articles to that publication,” he went on. “Little sketches of my various journeys; but after all--” He smiled. “After all,” he said, “east or west, home is best. I always return to Staten Island with renewed appreciation.”

Miss Riordan was perturbed. She did not wholly understand this speech, but she was impressed, and she was embarrassed. Clearly she had misjudged this man. There was no occasion here for haughty glances. He was venerable.