CHAPTER II.
Itwas several days before Glenn felt able to resume his work. He kept away from Esther until he could give himself a chance to recover from the acute anaemia from which he suffered. Finally, when he called, he found that she had left that place, and her address could not be given him.
He was worried and bitterly wounded.
This girl, wild of heart, full of all sorts of emotions, full of unreasoning impulses who had once been easy for him to understand, had gained a complexity and subtlety new to him.
Yet he could do nothing now but treat it as a recurrence of her old fits of childish petulance. If, by some unaccountable chance, there was anyfinality in this step of hers, and her motive was to break off their old blameless intimacy, he would watch over her from afar. There was no malice in his heart for her. Nobody could make him believe a story, the truth of which would be unworthy of her. Yet the dim, persistent sense of dissatisfaction which he tried so hard to stifle, under a rush of work and recreation, would not vanish. Time, which he filled with the fever of his literary passion, together with keeping in touch with a few old friends, had become so strained, so intense, that in spite of the firm strength he had, the inordinate will, sheer physical weariness conquered, the tense nerves for a time relaxed.
It was in the latter part of April that Richmond Briarley happened to stop in a flower store to order a palm for some friend. At the counter stood a slender girl. There was something very unusual about her or he would not have given her a moment’s thought, nor the second look.
Her hair swept back in deep waves from herbrow, under the wide, soft hat. The dark blue of her eyes seemed to gently motion as she looked at the delicate orchids the clerk held across to her.
“That’s what I want.”
Then she turned away as he went to wrap them for her. She felt a sudden swelling of the heart, as she faced Richmond Briarley.
“How do you do, Miss Powel,” he said in acknowledgment of her recognition.
“I have quite lost track of you since our friend Andrews has been ill. You’ll be glad to know his doctor now thinks he may pull through.”
“Mr. Glenn ill—dangerously ill?” She was white to the lips.
The look on her face he would never forget while he lived.
“Where? Where?” she said, eagerly clasping her hands. “Let me go to him.”
“He has someone—you can do nothing. She does everything.”
He said very little beyond the bare statement, but his answer added to the pain of her wound.
There was nothing she could do. This was the bitterest, cruelest thought—she was not needed—she who would have died to spare him pain.
Richmond Briarley knew what it meant; his heart was touched for her.
“I’m going to see him now, if you care to send him a word.”
“Tell him how sorry I am, and would you take these flowers to him—orchids are his favorite flowers. I was going to wear them to a musicale to-night.”
“Certainly I will take them.”
“Wait just a minute.”
She took the pencil of her chatelaine and wrote her new address on the box; her fingers were trembling, so she doubted if he would recognize her signature.
She smiled a little as he lifted his hat, when he bade her good-by. Pride was a matter of principle with her.
What she suffered in the days that came after could not be told.
It was early in May before Glenn was able to be out again.
To see Esther was one of his first visits. She greeted him with a grave, solicitous face.
“I am glad you are better. I didn’t even know it until you had passed the crisis.”
“Whose fault was it?” That old perversity had not been subdued by suffering.
“Oh, don’t; not to-day, anyhow.” She put her hands up and gently turned down the collar of his coat. “Come, now; lie down on the divan. You’ve overdone your strength.”
His fingers in her folded grasp were trembling.
“I’m not equal to my work yet,” he said, as he stretched out among the pillows, closing his eyes wearily.
“I wouldn’t have come if it had not been your birthday,” turning his head, revealing the painful clearness of his profile.
“I remembered you had someone who loved you; to think of it always before—now there’s nobody.”
Sitting beside him she stroked his forehead very tenderly.
“You were always thoughtful of me.”
They were silent for a time.
“Sometimes I longed for the warm, sweet touch of your hand on my head,” he said at last; “it throbbed so, and ached.”
“Oh, dear, why didn’t you send for me?”
“You forget, I didn’t know where to send.”
She paled under the answer. “But you had someone you wanted more.” She said this with an impulsive touch of resentment.
“She was the best one I ever had. Professional nurses are not always as solicitous or as kind.”
“Professional,” Esther repeated to herself, betraying no sign of the relief it gave her.
The soft wind moved the curtains and let aflash of sunlight in. Glenn looked out; the air was full of spring.
He could not but think of the old days, the paths upon which they had strolled now lay green and solitary through field and woods.
For a man who loved to steep himself in the sunshine and open air, he but seldom indulged himself.
“Esther, get your hat; it’s too fine a day to be indoors. I’ll take you away, out to Van Cortlandt Park.”
“Are you able to stand the trip? Don’t go just for my pleasure.”
“I shall enjoy it more than you will,” he said. “It’s what I need. Haven’t I always told you how selfish I was.”
Without another word she obeyed him, delighted at the prospect. Van Cortlandt was beautiful. They took a little boat and went out on the lake. So precious was the silence—the solitude—the shadow of the willows, that Glenn allowed Esther to take the oars he had taught herto handle and stretched himself full length in the boat. The water trembled under the sweet wind that blew fresh upon him.
Esther was in one of her rapturous moods, gazing with wide, dilated eyes upon the spring woods opening out to screen the unresponsive world—leaving them alone together. She could see it all reviving him like wine.
“Esther?” The name and touch thrilled her.
“When they told me I might not get well, I thought of you—I had something to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“That was if I had to die.”
“Oh, don’t speak of your death!” Her voice thrilled with a passion she herself did not understand.
“What I said as a child is still true. Life could not be sweet to me with you out of it.”
“Nonsense! With a great future flashing before you.”
“Could any fortune be sweet, or any gift it brought a woman be worth having, if the onefor whom she cared were not there to share it with her?”
“A woman’s love is essentially spiritual in its nature. It does not depend so much upon sight,” he said.
She had dropped the oars. They were drifting dreamily.
The sun had gone down below the horizon, leaving purple shadows on its rim. The willows sent their seductive motions across the face of the waters.
She looked at him as though to draw him nearer and enfold him in her stretched-out arms. The warm impulses of her heart were warring in their wild effort to be free. Silence was the language of youth and love to him—they needed no words.
The force and the sweetness, the purity and power of his nature as she interpreted it, was the complete realization of her beautiful dreams.
“Have you ever forgiven me for spilling your blood and leaving a scar?” Her thrillingly delicatetouch on his knee swept him with a swift, vigorous delight.
“Forgiven! I’ve blessed you. That is something from you that I shall carry with me through life. And there’s another I want—a memory. You never have called me by my name.”
Looking into his fine, clear face, she felt the love flowing softly like a fountain in her heart. “Glenn,” she whispered his beloved name.
“Esther! dearest!” Drawing her toward him, he kissed her on her lips as he held her close in the clasp of his arms with the intensity of his commanding love. Her hat had fallen off; he caught the dank fragrance of her hair.
Something fluttered in her breast—something new and strange and strong. She did not understand that she had left girlhood behind and become a woman. All the woman in her was quickened by his kiss.
“Oh, how I love to feel your heart beating against mine.”
Her words, her kiss, touched his soul to itsdepths. He was startled at the depths he had stirred.
“Heart! dear heart of mine!” She was in a fit of adoring fury. Her lips met his, again and again. She loved him so humanly and yet there was only the tender throb and thrill of the sensitive nature in all its refinement. Sweet emotions shot through her breast.
“Love me, no matter what comes, Esther, love me.”
He too felt some hurting power bound through his blood, and wrestle with his reserve—his equilibrium.
His low voice, his soft eyes, held her; not a tone, not a look but it caressed her.
The soft shadows, the limpid waters, the open air—with it altogether he felt a strange softening.
“You never said sweet words straight from your heart to me before.”
“Why words? Instinct, nature, tells us when a thing is true. That great silent power often stands between the soul and what it loves. It istoo deep for speech. Did you ever drop a pebble into a well to sound its depth? If it is shallow, you hear it when it strikes the bottom. But if you wait and never hear a sound, you know it is very deep.”
Her sweet, low laugh rippled out over the waters.
“Your laugh is like that of a child in a happy dream. I hope it will always keep that sound.”
Straining her to him a moment, he then put his hands to his face to shut out the dangerous sweetness.
“Nobody but you will ever understand what my nature is, because they have never so nearly felt it.”
“That’s true,” he said, “the only difference is that I know what is best for us and what is not.”
“To make music, one must have genuine feeling for it; that is true of love. There has always been a sympathy between us, but never before so deep as now. The greater the love, you know, the stronger the sympathy. Natures so well tempered,so sympathetically adapted, very seldom can endure; neither can afford to indulge in the beauty of one he loves, for he may lose his own seekings in sharing hers. Ideal love is not to be satisfied.”
He said this with such an expression of grief and sentiment that no one could doubt his belief in his own philosophy.
This was life indeed. If he could only hold it forever. He wanted to—he longed to—might he not desecrate this beautiful soul, by intruding his upon it for so short a time?
A sudden chill went through him. The horror of their ideals being endangered made him draw back. He had never entirely lost sight of the delicacy and nobility of the relation. He was her friend—her protector.
Slightly moving his position, he said: “Esther, what is sweeter than comprehensive sympathy? Each knows the other’s highest aims and hopes, and each tries to help the other reach and preserve those ideals. There is somethingbeautiful, noble in the endeavor to sustain the ideals of one we love, even though they should not always succeed.”
“I believe that. The desire, the effort—shouldn’t that go for something?”
“I think so, but will you always think it?”
“I hope I shall.”
As they anchored alongside the bank, Glenn held out his hand to help her; her cheeks were in bloom with life, and he was going home rested, with all his senses and passions much keener and many degrees finer in their possibilities.
“We have had a day of delicious happiness, we should be thankful for that,” he said. “In a whole life there are but a few days in which we really live—we only exist most of the time,” lowering his voice and looking into her sweet eyes.
“To be wholly happy is to forget the world and one’s obligations to it.” There was almost a caress in the way Glenn took out his handkerchief and lightly brushed the drops of water from her skirt. In putting the handkerchief back hetouched the pretty trifle—a souvenir to recall her twenty-first birthday. Twirling it between his fingers he said:
“This is for you. Wear it for the sake of the man who became a boy and learned what May meant.”