Miss Billy — Married. Eleanor H. PorterЧитать онлайн книгу.
her.
“If you'll forgive the unforgivable,” she read “you'll forgive me for not being here when you come down. 'Circumstances over which I have no control have called me away.' May we let it go at that?
“M. J. ARKWRIGHT.”
As Alice Greggory's amazed, questioning eyes left the note they fell upon the long white glove on the floor by the door. Half mechanically she crossed the room and picked it up; but almost at once she dropped it with a low cry.
“Billy! He—saw—Billy!” Then a flood of understanding dyed her face scarlet as she turned and fled to the blessedly unseeing walls of her own room.
Not ten minutes later Rosa tapped at her door with a note.
“It's from Mr. Arkwright, Miss. He's downstairs.” Rosa's eyes were puzzled, and a bit startled.
“Mr. Arkwright!”
“Yes, Miss. He's come again. That is, I didn't know he'd went—but he must have, for he's come again now. He wrote something in a little book; then he tore it out and gave it to me. He said he'd wait, please, for an answer.”
“Oh, very well, Rosa.”
Miss Greggory took the note and spoke with an elaborate air of indifference that was meant to express a calm ignoring of the puzzled questioning in the other's eyes. The next moment she read this in Arkwright's peculiar scrawl:
“If you've already forgiven the unforgivable, you'll do it again, I know, and come down-stairs. Won't you, please? I want to see you.”
Miss Greggory lifted her head with a jerk. Her face was a painful red.
“Tell Mr. Arkwright I can't possibly—” She came to an abrupt pause. Her eyes had encountered Rosa's, and in Rosa's eyes the puzzled questioning was plainly fast becoming a shrewd suspicion.
There was the briefest of hesitations; then, lightly, Miss Greggory tossed the note aside.
“Tell Mr. Arkwright I'll be down at once, please,” she directed carelessly, as she turned back into the room.
But she was not down at once. She was not down until she had taken time to bathe her red eyes, powder her telltale nose, smoothe her ruffled hair, and whip herself into the calm, steady-eyed, self-controlled young woman that Arkwright finally rose to meet when she came into the room.
“I thought it was only women who were privileged to change their mind,” she began brightly; but Arkwright ignored her attempt to conventionalize the situation.
“Thank you for coming down,” he said, with a weariness that instantly drove the forced smile from the girl's lips. “I—I wanted to—to talk to you.”
“Yes?” She seated herself and motioned him to a chair near her. He took the seat, and then fell silent, his eyes out the window.
“I thought you said you—you wanted to talk, she reminded him nervously, after a minute.
“I did.” He turned with disconcerting abruptness. “Alice, I'm going to tell you a story.”
“I shall be glad to listen. People always like stories, don't they?”
“Do they?” The somber pain in Arkwright's eyes deepened. Alice Greggory did not know it, but he was thinking of another story he had once told in that same room. Billy was his listener then, while now—A little precipitately he began to speak.
“When I was a very small boy I went to visit my uncle, who, in his young days, had been quite a hunter. Before the fireplace in his library was a huge tiger skin with a particularly lifelike head. The first time I saw it I screamed, and ran and hid. I refused then even to go into the room again. My cousins urged, scolded, pleaded, and laughed at me by turns, but I was obdurate. I would not go where I could see the fearsome thing again, even though it was, as they said, 'nothing but a dead old rug!'
“Finally, one day, my uncle took a hand in the matter. By sheer will-power he forced me to go with him straight up to the dreaded creature, and stand by its side. He laid one of my shrinking hands on the beast's smooth head, and thrust the other one quite into the open red mouth with its gleaming teeth.
“'You see,' he said, 'there's absolutely nothing to fear. He can't possibly hurt you. Just as if you weren't bigger and finer and stronger in every way than that dead thing on the floor!'
“Then, when he had got me to the point where of my own free will I would walk up and touch the thing, he drew a lesson for me.
“'Now remember,' he charged me. 'Never run and hide again. Only cowards do that. Walk straight up and face the thing. Ten to one you'll find it's nothing but a dead skin masquerading as the real thing. Even if it isn't if it's alive—face it. Find a weapon and fight it. Know that you are going to conquer it and you'll conquer. Never run. Be a man. Men don't run, my boy!'”
Arkwright paused, and drew a long breath. He did not look at the girl in the opposite chair. If he had looked he would have seen a face transfigured.
“Well,” he resumed, “I never forgot that tiger skin, nor what it stood for, after that day when Uncle Ben thrust my hand into its hideous, but harmless, red mouth. Even as a kid I began, then, to try—not to run. I've tried ever since But to-day—I did run.”
Arkwright's voice had been getting lower and lower. The last three words would have been almost inaudible to ears less sensitively alert than were Alice Greggory's. For a moment after the words were uttered, only the clock's ticking broke the silence; then, with an obvious effort, the man roused himself, as if breaking away from some benumbing force that held him.
“Alice, I don't need to tell you, after what I said the other night, that I loved Billy Neilson. That was bad enough, for I found she was pledged to another man. But to-day I discovered something worse: I discovered that I loved Billy Henshaw—another man's wife. And—I ran. But I've come back. I'm going to face the thing. Oh, I'm not deceiving myself! This love of mine is no dead tiger skin. It's a beast, alive and alert—God pity me!—to destroy my very soul. But I'm going to fight it; and—I want you to help me.”
The girl gave a half-smothered cry. The man turned, but he could not see her face distinctly. Twilight had come, and the room was full of shadows. He hesitated, then went on, a little more quietly.
“That's why I've told you all this—so you would help me. And you will, won't you?”
There was no answer. Once again he tried to see her face, but it was turned now quite away from him.
“You've been a big help already, little girl. Your friendship, your comradeship—they've been everything to me. You're not going to make me do without them—now?”
“No—oh, no!” The answer was low and a little breathless; but he heard it.
“Thank you. I knew you wouldn't.” He paused, then rose to his feet. When he spoke again his voice carried a note of whimsical lightness that was a little forced. “But I must go—else you will take them from me, and with good reason. And please don't let your kind heart grieve too much—over me. I'm no deep-dyed villain in a melodrama, nor wicked lover in a ten-penny novel, you know. I'm just an everyday man in real life; and we're going to fight this thing out in everyday living. That's where your help is coming in. We'll go together to see Mrs. Bertram Henshaw. She's asked us to, and you'll do it, I know. We'll have music and everyday talk. We'll see Mrs. Bertram Henshaw in her own home with her husband, where she belongs; and—I'm not going to run again. But—I'm counting on your help, you know,” he smiled a little wistfully, as he held out his hand in good-by.
One minute later Alice Greggory, alone, was hurrying up-stairs.
“I can't—I can't—I know I can't,” she was whispering wildly. Then, in her own room, she faced herself in the mirror. “Yes—you—can, Alice Greggory,” she asserted, with swift change of voice and manner. “This is your tiger skin, and you're going to fight