CHAPTER XVQUICKSILVER IN A TUBE
“WHERE away, Miss Lockhart? May I come along a bit?”
Nan turned, to see Cary Ray’s tall figure falling into step beside her, his clean-cut face wearing the look of intent purpose which was now so marked upon it.
“Of course you may. I’m going to the station to meet Fanny. You knew her uncle died, and she went West to the funeral? She’s coming back to stay a few more days with me before she goes to join her mother.”
“I heard about the uncle. Is it a serious loss for her?”
“I believe he supplied Mrs. Fitch and Fanny with most of their funds, but I think they seldom saw him. He was rather eccentric and a good deal of a recluse.”
“Let’s hope the funds continue, anyhow,” said Cary, lightly, “in the shape of a big bequest. That will alleviate the sense of loss, besides providing a tender memory. These recluse uncles with large bank accounts and generous dispositions are all too uncommon—I never saw the shadow of one. If I only had one now! How I’d leap to make him a farewell visit—in uniform—if I ever get mine. I’m mightily afraid I shan’t get it, by the way, till I’m about to sail, so I’ll have no chance to strut around this town and call on you all with an air of conscious modesty.”
“Too bad,” laughed Nan. “But we’re quite sufficientlyimpressed now just by the knowledge that you’ll soon be off. What is the war-correspondent’s insignia, do you know?”
“Two fountain pens, crossed, on the collar, and a large splotch of ink on the left sleeve,” announced Cary, promptly. “Also, in time, presumably, a three-cornered tear over the right knee, and a couple of black eyes, from trying to push to the rear out of danger while rapidly taking notes on what a highly developed imagination assures him is undoubtedly occurring at the front.”
“Great! My imagination, though not so highly developed, pictures a quite different scene.... Oh, isn’t that the train coming in?”
“It is. The station clock lies, as usual. We must sprint for it if we want to be on the platform.”
They quickened their steps, and were in time to see Frances Fitch appear in the vestibule of her car, and to stare up at her with surprised and—at least in Cary’s case—appreciative eyes.
“Oh, Fanny!” It was Nan Lockhart’s inner cry to her incomprehensible friend, though her lips made no comment. “Howcouldyou? Don’t you think we mustknowyou’re acting? You don’t care enough for that.”
For Fanny was apparently in mourning, certainly in black, the most simple but effective black the eye and hand of skilled dressmaker and milliner could conceive, and in it she was undeniably a picture. Not all the cunning frills and artful colour combinations of her former dressing could approach in the setting forth of her blonde beauty the unrelieved black silks and misty chiffons of this new garb. To Nan’s sophisticated eye Fanny’s mourning was something of a travesty, for it was all of materials not ordinarily considered available for the trappings of woe;but it was undoubtedly only the more effective for that. Perhaps, Nan acknowledged, in that first quick glance, it represented the precise shade of honour due a recluse uncle who had been represented in his niece’s life principally by monthly cheques and not at all by intimate association.
“My word, but she’s a ripping beauty in that black, isn’t she?” came from Cary Ray under his breath, as he waved an eager greeting at the girl above him, and received an answering smile slightly touched with pensiveness. “Looks as if she’d been pretty unhappy, too. He was about all she had in the world, anyhow, wasn’t he?—except the invalid mother. Poor girl!”
Nan smothered a sigh. Thus was Fanny wont to carry off the interest and sympathy of the spectator, whatever she did, on the stage or off it—if she was ever really off the stage. Miss Lockhart now spoke sternly to her inner self: “Don’t be a prig, Nancy! Admit she’s perfectly stunning to look at, and she has the right to mourn her uncle if she wants to. She didn’t have to make a dowd of herself to do it, just so other women wouldn’t be envious.”
“Yes, she is a beauty,” she answered, in her usual generous way. “And I’m sure it was a great loss.”
And then she found herself almost instantly a supernumerary, as she was quite accustomed to be when with her friend in the company of any man on earth. After one ardent embrace, during which Fanny murmured the most affectionate of greetings in her ear—“You old darling—what itmeansto get back toyou!”—it was Cary to whom the newcomer turned, and toward whom she remained turned—so to speak—throughout the walk home. Nan had to concede to herself, as she kept pacewith the pair beside her, that Cary was doing his part most thoroughly, and that Fanny could not justly be blamed for giving him her attention. Before they had reached the house it began to look to Nan as if Fanny’s mourning had gone to Cary’s head!
She left them in the library, knowing well what was expected of her, and went upstairs wondering, as she had wondered a thousand times before, just why she cared so much for Fanny Fitch. And then, as a thousand times before, she found the explanation. To do Fanny entire justice, she was not one of the girls who find no time or taste for others of their own sex. Nobody could be more fascinating than she to Nan herself, when quite alone with her. Never down at heel or ragged at elbow in moments of privacy, always making herself charming from sheer love of her own alluring image in the mirror, capable of the most clever and entertaining talk when the mood took her, though there might be no man’s eye or ear within reach—it was impossible not indeed quite to adore her. Nan’s soberer yet highly intelligent self found a curiously satisfying complement at times in Fanny’s lighter but far more versatile personality. It was only when the more irresponsible and reckless side of the other girl’s nature came uppermost that Nan found herself critical and sometimes deeply disapproving and resentful.
It was a full hour before Fanny came upstairs. Nan had been waiting for her in the guest’s room, where she had had the luggage taken. As Fanny came in, the look of her struck Nan afresh as being past all precedent attractive and appealing. Her colour was now heightened, evidently by the interview with Cary, and her eyes were full of all manner of strange lights. She had not yet removed her hat, and somehow the whole effect of her wasthat of one poised but a moment at a resting place on a journey full of both excitement and peril.
The two met in the middle of the large and airy room.
“Well, dear—and aren’t you going to take off your hat and settle down?” Nan put up her hand to remove the demurely becoming hat in question. “Why didn’t you take it off downstairs and rest your head?”
“I felt better armoured for defense with it. Never mind taking it off—I’m going out again.”
“Did you need defense, then?”
“Doesn’t one, when a determined young man wants to marry one out of hand? I’ve only succeeded in putting him off for an hour or two, at that. He says he may go any day, and on seeing me just now he realized he couldn’t go without leaving me behind securely tied. What do you think of that, for a poor girl just from a funeral, to be confronted with a wedding?”
“But, Fanny——”
“That’s what I said—‘But, Cary——’ In fact, I never got further than that, though I tried it ten times over.”
“But did you—give him any encouragement?”
“Did I? Well, now, knowing me—as you think you do—what’s your idea of it?”
Nan studied her, without answering. Her gaze dropped from Fanny’s face to her black-clad shoulder, then suddenly she put her arm about that shoulder.
“I’m forgetting,” she said, gravely, “that you have lost a friend. I’m sorry. Somehow I didn’t expect to see you in black, and can’t yet realize that it means bereavement.”
“What a subtle way of telling me that my particular kind of black doesn’t wholly suggest bereavement! Well, my dear—it seemed to me only decent to show some respectto an old man who has been very decent to me, and left me enough to buy silk stockings and pumps in which to mourn him, to say nothing of other accessories. I don’t think he would have approved of henrietta cloth and crêpe—and besides—what I’m wearing suits me better, don’t you think? How do you imagine it will impress the Reverend Robert? I’ve already noted its effect on one young man. Can I hope to make another lose his head within the hour?”
Fanny walked over to the mirror and gave a touch or two to her hair beneath the black hat-brim. Nan’s eyes still followed her.
“I ought to be used to your breath-taking statements,” Nan observed, uneasily, “but I probably never shall be any more than I can become used to the covering up of what I know is your real self with all this pretense of lightness. You are sorry you have lost your uncle, but one would never guess it. And you care—or don’t care—for Cary Ray, and I haven’t an idea which. As for—the crazy things you’ve said all along about——”
“Don’t hesitate to mention his name—I adore hearing it. And I’m going to pronounce it myself to its owner this very hour—if he’s at home. That’s why I’m keeping on my hat. And why—” Fanny dived into a small and chastely elegant black leather travelling bag, and after a moment’s searching brought forth two filmily fine handkerchiefs which she tucked away in her dress—“why I am providing myself with the wherewithal to weep upon. I have no doubt that what the Reverend Robert says to me will bring forth tears, and I want to be prepared. But whether tears of joy or sorrow——”
“Fanny! You’re not—going to him?”
“My beloved Annette, the number of times in the courseof my acquaintance with you that you have pronounced the word ‘Fanny!’ in precisely that tone of expostulatory shock couldn’t be numbered!—I am going to him—since I don’t know any way of making him come to me. Cary happened to say that Mr. Black also was liable to be called at any hour, and I dare not delay. I want to have an important—very important—interview with him while my courage is high. I told you, some time ago, that I should find a way, and I’ve found it. Wish me good luck!”
That was all there was to it. Although Nan Lockhart was more than anxious as to what might underlie Fanny’s mystifying language, she could not doubt, when Fanny presently set forth from the house, that she was going, as she had declared, to the manse. It was by now four in the afternoon. Nan had offered to accompany her friend, saying that she thought, if Fanny must go, that she would best not go alone. She had been told that she was a meddling old granny, and that her place was by the fireside. So—with a kiss—Miss Fitch had walked away, and as Nan anxiously watched her go down the street she had been forced to admit to herself, as she had admitted many times before, that there was an unexplainable and irresistible witchery about Fanny, and that there could be little doubt that somebody was in danger. She wondered which of them it was—if any could be in greater danger than Fanny herself.
The master of the manse was at home when his bell rang presently, so it fell out, though ten minutes before he had not been there, nor would have been ten minutes later. He had rushed in for a certain book he wanted, and was just within his own front door when he heard the bell. He opened it, his thoughts upon the book in hishand—it was one on “Minor Tactics,” by the way, and he wanted it for one of his boys. So he confronted his caller with no means of escape—if he had wanted any. Why mortal man should wish to escape from the vision of sad-eyed beauty which awaited him upon his doorstep none who had seen her there could say—certainly not Cary Ray, who had seen her there, and who was now stalking angrily up and down a side street, intent on keeping her somehow within his reach. He knew that Fanny had meant to come—had she not told him so? Why she had not let him come with her——
“I’m sorry to delay you, Mr. Black, but—I need your help very much. Will you let me come in for a very few minutes?”
“Certainly, Miss Fitch, come in.”
What else was there to do? All sorts and classes of people were accustomed to enter the manse doors at all hours, so why not this girl in black with the shadows under her eyes and the note of appeal in her voice, who said she needed his help? What was he there for, except to help? And yet, somehow, Robert Black had never been quite so unwilling to admit a visitor. Something within him seemed to warn him that if ever he had been on his guard, he must be on it now.
If Nan could have seen Fanny, as she took her seat in the chair Black placed for her, she would have wondered if she knew her friend, after all. This the girl with the glitter in her eyes, the reckless note in her voice, the captivating ways which Cary Ray knew so well? This was a girl of another sort altogether; one in deep trouble, who presented to the man before her a face so sadly sweet, lifted to him eyes in which lay such depths of anxiety, that he might well summon his best resources to her aid. Ifever sincerity looked out between lifted lashes, it showed between those heavily shadowing ones which were among Fanny’s most conscious and cherished possessions.
So then Fanny told Black her story. It was a touching story, bravely told. Whenever the lines of it began to verge too decidedly upon the pathetic she brought herself up, as she caught her red lips between her teeth, said softly, “Oh, never mind that part—it’s no different from thousands of others,” and went quietly and clearly on. She told him of the invalid mother, so dear and so helpless—of the uncle who had died, the one man left in the bereaved family, for whom she obviously wore her mourning—“though he would have told me not, wonderful old man, who wanted nobody to grieve for him.” She spoke of the future, so obscure, and what it was best to do; and now, suddenly, when she least expected it—she hesitated, then came frankly out with it—here was this suitor besieging her, whom she must answer. And with it all—she was suffering a great longing for something which she had not—a sense that there was a God who cared, which she found it, oh! so difficult to believe. This last was the greatest, much the greatest, need of all. She had come to him because she knew no one else who could point the way....
Here she rested her case, and sat silently looking down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her face paling with the stress of her repressed emotion. Yes, it did pale, as well it might. When one dares to play with sacred things, small wonder if the blood seeps away from the capillaries, and the pulse beats fast and small. And Fanny knew—who could know better?—that she was playing, playing a desperate game, with the last cards she held.
It was very perfect acting, and yet, somehow, it did not make the man who watched it lower his guard. He had had no great experience with just this sort of thing, and yet—he had seen Fanny act before, and had detected in her acting that it never once forgot itself in the grip of a genuine emotion. When she ceased speaking, and it became necessary to answer her, he felt his way with every word he spoke.
“Have you told all this to Miss Lockhart?” was the unexpected question he put to her.
Imperceptibly Fanny winced, but she replied quietly: “Nan knows much, but not all. She doesn’t quite understand me, I think. I can never make her realize that flippant and frivolous as I can be on the surface, underneath something runs deep.”
“Yet she must want to assure herself of that, she’s so finely genuine herself. Ever since I have known her I have thought her one of the best-balanced young women I ever knew. She seems very devoted to you. And as for her faith in things unseen, I am sure it is very real. I don’t see how you could do better than to put yourself under her tuition.”
“I have tried, Mr. Black—I assure you I have. Nan and I are dear friends, and I respect and admire her devotedly. But I can’t talk about these things even to her. Somehow I can’t to any woman. I need—I think I need a man’s point of view. And not only a man’s but—a priest’s.”
Her eyes lifted themselves slowly to his, and there was a spiritual sort of beseeching in them which very nearly veiled and covered the terribly human wish which was behind. For a moment Black wondered with a heart-sinking throb of anxiety if he were right in distrusting hermotive in coming to him as he had thus far distrusted it. How should he dare not to respond to her need, if it were real? How send her from him unanswered and unsatisfied, if he could really do anything for her? Why, merely because she was fascinating to look upon, must she be a deceiver; while if she sat before him with a plain face and red, white-lashed eyes, he would be far surer that she was in real distress. It wasn’t fair to her, was it, to doubt her without the proof?
While he hesitated over what to say to this appeal, all at once he was confronted with a new situation; one ever calculated to weaken and undermine the judgment of man. Fanny sat close beside his study desk, from the opposite side of which he faced her. When his silence had lasted for a full minute she quietly turned and laid her arm upon the desk—a roundly white arm, the fair flesh showing through the sheer black fabric of her close sleeve—and buried her face in her arm. With her free hand she found her handkerchief—one of the two with which she had provided herself—and then Black saw that she was softly sobbing, and seemingly trying with much difficulty to control herself.
Well—was this acting, too? Can a woman weep at will? And if she were as unhappy as she seemed, what was he to do about it? It was an extremely uncomfortable and disquieting situation, and Black wondered for a moment if he could possibly see it through without blundering. He was wishing ardently that he had a mother or a sister at hand. There was only Mrs. Hodder whom he could call in, and she was assuredly not the person to act as duenna to this young woman. To bring her in would be to send Fanny out. And was it possible that this was really his opportunity, and thathe must forget everything except to use it for all that there was in it?
“I’m sorry you are unhappy,” he said. “Of course it’s not possible for me to advise you as to Cary Ray—only yourself can answer that question. I’ve grown to like and respect him very thoroughly, and if you could be to him what he needs in the way of a sheet anchor, it would help him more than anything in the world to steer a straight course.”
Fanny lifted a tear-wet face. “Would you advise me to marry him—without—loving him?”
“Certainly not.”
“If I cared with all my heart and soul for—someone else——” She rose suddenly to her feet, and stood before him, a tragic, lovely figure of despair. “Oh,” she breathed, “you simply have to know—I can’t keep it from you. You are going so soon—there’s no time to wait. I—I don’t know what you will think, but—over there you are going to go into all sorts of danger. I may never see you again. Is it a time to be afraid—for even a woman to be afraid—to speak? You may despise me for—showing my heart—but—oh, I can’t help it! Don’t—turn me away. If you do, I think I shall—die!”
Robert Black stood as if turned to stone. He had risen as she had risen; he now stood staring at her across the massive old black walnut desk as if he could not believe the evidence of his own ears. If Fanny were to make this incredible declaration at all, she had done it in the only possible way—across that study desk. If she had attempted to come near him, to put her hand in his, to try upon him the least of all feminine arts in approaching man, he would have retreated, bodily and spiritually, and have been at once too far away for her to reach. Butthe very manner of her appeal to him carried with it a certain dignity. He could not conceivably repulse her in the same way that he could have done if she had played the temptress, or even the woman who counts upon her personal charm at close range to sway a man’s heart and influence his decision. Fanny had studied this man, and gauged him well. If she had any possible chance with him it was only by making her supplication to him from a distance, and by looking, when she had made it—as she did look—like a young princess who stoops to lift him of her choice to her estate. It was undoubtedly the greatest moment of Fanny’s dramatic experience; she was a real actress now, for beyond all question she was living the part she acted, and the emotion which stirred her was the strongest of her life.
It was not long that Black stared at her white face, his own face paling. It was only for a moment that she let him see all she could show him; then she turned and walked away, across the room, and stood with her back to him, her hands clasped before her, her head drooping. The figure she thus presented to him was still that of the princess, but it was also that of the woman who, having for the instant lifted the veil, drops it again, and awaits in proud patience the man’s pronouncement.
Black came slowly toward her—it did not seem possible courteously to address her across the many feet of space she had now put between them. He stopped when he was near enough—and not too near—he seemed to know rather definitely when this point had been reached. But before he could speak Fanny herself broke the stillness. She put out one hand without turning.
“Please don’t come nearer,” she breathed. “I can’t—bear it.”
And then she did turn, lifting to him a face so beseeching, lifting to him for one instant’s gesture arms so imploring, that if there had been in him one impulse towards her he would have been more than man if he had resisted her. But—how could there be in him one impulse towards her when, with every moment in her presence, there had been living more vividly in his remembrance that other moment, now days ago, when he had given Jane Ray—“all he had.” Though never again—never again—should even so brief a glory of experience come to him, rather would he have that one wonderful memory than all that there might be for him in these two outstretched arms.
Yet—how could he but be pitiful—and merciful—to Fanny Fitch? To have offered herself to him, and to have to stand there waiting to be taken or refused—there seemed to him no words too kind in which to make her understand. And yet—how to find words at all!
“You must know,” he said at last, and with difficulty, “that I am—that I have—no way to tell you—how badly I feel to have you tell me this, and to be—unable to——”
“You’re not unable—you’re just afraid. You’ve kept your heart sealed up so long—you’ve been so frightfully discreet—such a model minister—you don’t know at all what you’re putting away from you. It will never come back—you’ll never have the chance again I’m giving you—to live—tolive—oh, to live with all there is of you, not just with the nice, proper, priestly side of you!” The passionate voice lifted and dropped again in choking cadences. “You think I couldn’t adapt myself, couldn’t fill the part. I could—I could!—I would do anything you asked of me—become a mystic, like yourself—or——”
“Oh,stop!”
Fanny stopped—there was no disobeying that low, commanding voice. She knew herself that she had now gone too far. She stood with both hands pressed over her throat, which threatened to contract and shut off her breathing.
“I can’t let you—I won’t let you go on. You’re overwrought—you’re not yourself, Miss Fitch. Your long journey—your uncle’s death—Cary’s suit—everything has combined to overtax your nerves. You’re going to put away this hour as if it had never been, and so am I. You’re going to find happiness in being a good friend to Cary, whether or not anything comes of it. He’s worth all you can give him—and you’re going to give him your very best. Now—won’t you——”
“Go away?” She looked up at him with a twisted, angry smile. “Before you have—prayed with me, for the good of my wicked soul? You might at least do that, since it’s all you can do for me!”
Suddenly he felt as if he were in the midst of cheap melodrama, forced to take a part against his will. He had never believed in this girl, he believed in her less than ever now. For a moment she had convinced him that in her own fashion she loved him—if she knew what the word meant. But now he was driven to believe that only her passion for excitement had brought this scene upon him, and that this last cynical speech was just the expression of her fondness for the drama. He turned cold in an instant; his very spirit retreated from her.
“I should feel,” he said, very quietly, “as if I were playing with prayer, if I made use of it just now. I think the best thing for you is to try to rest and sleep, and come back to a natural and sane way of looking at things. If doors don’t open at a touch, if they are locked and onehas no key, it’s not wise to try to force them. There are plenty of doors that will open at your touch——”
“But not yours! And now that you have locked and doubled barred it I want to tell you that it’s too late. I’ve seen inside, and know what a chilly, stony place it is. There’s no fire there—it’s all austerity. No woman could keep warm there, certainly not a woman like me. I’ve long wanted to know what was behind that granite face of yours, and now I’ve found out. I’ve kept my splendid, big-hearted Cary waiting till I could satisfy myself about you, and know that he was worth two, three—ten of you, Robert Black! I’m going back to him—and happy to go. Do you wish me joy? Or does even doing that go against your flinty conscience?”
He came toward her, pitying her again now, it was so obvious that she was trying to save her humiliated face.
“Miss Fitch,” he said, gently, “I do wish you joy—if you can find it in anything genuine. But don’t play with Cary Ray—he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Will you marry us to-night at eight o’clock?”
He looked at her steadily. “You don’t mean that!”
“I certainly do. That was what I came for—as he knows. And to settle a little wager I had with him. I’ve settled it. And now I’m doing my real errand. Will you marry us, Mr. Robert Black?—since you have refused—everything else?”
He walked away from her now, over to the window, and stood looking out for a space. Fanny watched him, her head up, her lips smiling a little, ready to face him when he turned again. He came back at last, and he spoke quietly and decidedly.
“If you will send Cary to me,” he said, “and he asks me to do this, I will do it. Not otherwise.”
“What do you want to do? Talk with him, and try to persuade him that I’m not good enough for him?”
“I want to talk with him. I want to ask him to wait to marry you till he comes back.”
“And why, if you please?”
“Because he’s going to find out, over there, that life is something besides a game. And when he comes back, if he still wants you, it will be because you have found it out, too. Oh, I wish—I wish with all my heart—you would stop playing and be real. Why not?”
“I think,” said Fanny Fitch, “it’s because I’m made that way. You might as well give me up. If I laugh, it’s as likely as not to be because I want to cry. And if I cry, it’s more than likely to be true that I’m laughing inside. I love to act, on the stage or off of it. How can I help that? It’s the true dramatic instinct. How can I be any more real than I am? Being what you call unreal is reality to me. If I were to try to be what to you is real, I should be more unreal than I am now. There, Mr. Minister what will you do with that?”
Black shook his head. “You are merely juggling with words now,” he said. “I think you know what I mean as well as I do. And I think something will happen which will make you unwilling to play with things—and people—as you do now. Meanwhile——”
The doorbell rang sharply. It was what Black had been expecting all along. There was nothing to do but answer it. Mrs. Hodder was accustomed to do this only by request, and he had not asked her for it to-day, for she was more than usually busy in her kitchen. Black went to the door, leaving Fanny behind, and hoping against hope that it might not be some caller who would be certain to misunderstand the whole situation. Itproved to be the one man whom he could have wished to see. Cary Ray had walked the street to a purpose, though he had not known, for he had met a messenger. With his message in his hand he had rushed to the manse door.
“Is Fanny here?”
“Yes. Come into my study, please.”
Breathless with his fast walk which had been all but a run, Cary confronted Fanny across the room. He crossed it, seized her hands, and stood looking down into her face with excited eyes. The drops stood out upon his forehead.
“You put me off too long,” he said. “I’m off—no time for anything but to throw my things together and catch the next train. I knew when the orders came they’d come this way. There isn’t even time for—what we’d have to get first if we did what I wanted. Perhaps—since you didn’t know your own mind—it’s just as well. Maybe—if I come back—you’ll know it better. And if I don’t—never mind. All I want is to get into the game somehow.”
Even at the moment Fanny looked past Cary at Robert Black.
“You see,” she said, “he calls it a game, too.”
“He won’t,” Black answered, “when he comes back—as please God he will.”
“I can’t stop a minute. Will you both go with me, over to my sister’s?”
“Of course.”
Black caught up his hat. Fanny snatched a glance at herself as she went by a sombre black-walnut-framed mirror in the hall. Cary mopped his brow and ran a finger round inside his collar. It was quite plain that his eagerness now was concentrated on the great news of his imminent departure. Suddenly nothing much matteredto him except that at last he was off, with his longed-for chance before him. That was the big thing to him now, not getting married in haste and leaving a bride behind him. It was as plain as could be in every word he said, and in the joyful sparkle in his eyes. Quicksilver in a tube was Cary Ray—and the mercury had jumped all but to the top!
The following hour was as wild a one as only those can conceive who have had an experience like it. At the end of it Cary and Jane, Fanny, Nan Lockhart, and Robert Black stood on the station platform with six minutes to spare. At almost the same instant Doctor Burns’s car drew up, and he and Mrs. Burns joined the group.
“You are all regular bricks, you know,” declared Cary, “to stand by me like this. Everybody’s here I could have wanted, except Tom, and since he beat me to a uniform, and there’s no way of getting his training camp on the wire in a hurry, I’ll have to go off unsped by him. But I know what he’d say: ‘This is the life!’ He’s said it to me at least once a week on a postcard, ever since he left us.”
“If you are half as happy to be in it as he is——” began Nan.
“I’m twice as happy—no question of it. And I want to tell all you people——” Cary paused, looked quickly from one to another, and his bright glance fell. “No, I don’t believe I can,” he confessed, “at least not in a group like this. I think what little I can say I owe my sister. If you’ll forgive me I’ll take her down the platform a bit and give her my parting instructions.”
He grasped her arm and walked away with her, the friendly eyes following the pair. Friendly? Black couldn’t help wondering just what Fanny was thinking as shelooked after them. Certainly she was paler than he had ever seen her—or was that her unaccustomed sombre attire?
“Sis,” Cary said in Jane’s ear, “it’s tough to go like this, after all, with all the things I want to say left up in the air. I hope you’ll somehow make those trumps back there know what their friendship has meant to me.—I say—” he broke off to stare at her—“by George! I didn’t know you were so easy to look at, little girl. You—you—why you’re the sweetest thing that ever happened—and not just soft sweet, either—stingingly sweet, I should put it.”
“Dear, you’re just seeing me through the eyes of parting. Cary, when I get across we can surely meet sometimes, can’t we? Correspondents have more freedom of movement than other men, I’m sure.”
“We’ll try it, anyhow. Janie—I want you to know how I just plain worship you for sticking by and pulling me out of the ditch the way you have—you and Bob Black, and the Doctor. Words can’t say it—but maybe actions can. I’m taking you three with me—and leaving behind a girl who doesn’t know whether she wants me or not. Best thing to do—eh?”
Well, he was excited, strung to a high tension, eager to be off—it could be read in his every word and look. He had barely said these things to Jane before he had her back with the others, and was getting off gay, daring speeches to one and another, sometimes aloud, sometimes under his breath for one ear only. The words he left with Fanny Fitch stayed with her for many a day.
“Get into the game, somehow—will you? You can do that much for me, anyhow. If you will I’ll call it square—of you.”
When he had gone, his handsome, eager face laughing back at them from the rear platform of his train, Robert Black found himself following Cary with an involuntary “God bless and keep you safe, Cary Ray!” the more fervent that it was unuttered. Suddenly his heart was very anxious for this audacious and lovable fellow. How would he come through? Yet it was not of Cary’s life that he was thinking.
Determinedly he took his place beside Jane. The party had dismissed their taxicab, now that the rush for the train was over, and were walking back. It was no time to allow circumstances or other people to come between them.
“Oh, how I wish,” breathed Jane, “that I could go this very night. I want so much to get away before—you do.”
“And I’m wanting to go before you! If you go first I shall see you off. If I go first, will you do the same for me?”
“Your whole church will be there.”
“Not if I can help it. But even if they are, it will make no difference. I shall want to look last at—you.”
“Did you think,” admitted Jane, smiling, “that I could possibly stay away?”