Baldy Barnes faring forth to find Edith Towne on Sunday morning was a figure as old as the ages—youth in quest of romance. It was very cold and the clouds were heavy with wind. But neither cold nor clouds could damp his ardor—at his journey’s end was a lady with eyes of burning blue.
People were going to church as he came into the city and bells were ringing, but presently he rode again in country silences. He crossed the long bridge into Virginia and followed the road to the south.
It was early and he met few cars. Yet had the way been packed with motors, he would have still been alone in that world of imagination where he saw Edith Towne and that first wonderful moment of meeting.
So he entered Alexandria, passing through the narrow streets that speak so eloquently of history. Beyond the town was another stretch of road parallel to the broad stream, and at last an ancient roadside inn, of red brick, with a garden at the back, barren now, but in summer a tangle of bloom, with an expanse of reeds and water plants, extending[120] out into the river, and a low spidery boat-landing, which showed black at this season above the ice.
For years the old inn had been deserted, until motor cars had brought back its vanished glories. Once more its wide doors were open. There was nothing pretentious about it. But Baldy knew its reputation for genuine hospitality.
He wondered how Edith had kept herself hidden in such a place. It was amazing that no one had discovered her. That some hint of her presence had not been given to the newspapers.
He found her in a quaint sitting-room up-stairs. “I think,” she said to him, as he came in, “that you are very good-natured to take all this trouble for me——”
“It isn’t any trouble.” His assurance was gone. With her hat off she was doubly wonderful. He felt his youth and inexperience, yet words came to him, “And I didn’t do it for you, I did it for myself.”
She laughed. “Do you always say such nice things?”
“I shall always say them to you. And you mustn’t mind. Really,” Jane would have recognized returning confidence in that cock of the head, “I’m just a page—twanging a lyre.”
They laughed together. He was great fun, she decided, different.
“You are wondering, I fancy, how I happened[121] to come here,” she said, leaning back in her chair, her burnished hair against its faded cushions. “Well, an old cook of Mother’s, Martha Burns, is the wife of the landlord. She will do anything for me. I have had all my meals up-stairs. I might be a thousand miles away for all my world knows of me.”
“I was worried to death when I thought of you out in the storm.”
“And all the while I was sitting with my feet on the fender, reading about myself in the evening papers.”
“And what you read was a-plenty,” said Baldy, slangily. “Some of those reporters deserve to be shot.”
“Oh, they had to do it,” indifferently, “and what they have said is nothing to what my friends are saying. It’s a choice morsel. Every girl who ever wanted Del’s millions is crowing over the way he treated me.”
The look in his eyes disconcerted her. “Do you really think that?”
“Of course. We’re a greedy bunch.”
“I don’t like to hear you say such things.”
“Why not?”
“Because—you aren’t greedy. You know it. It wasn’t his millions you were after.”
“What was I after? I wish you’d tell me. I don’t know.”
“Well, I think you just followed the flock.[122] Other girls got married. So you would marry. You didn’t know anything about love—or you wouldn’t have done it.”
“How do you know I’ve never been in love?”
“Isn’t it true?”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know, really.”
“You’ll know some day. And you mustn’t ever think of yourself as mercenary. You’re too wonderful for that—too—too fine——”
She realized in that moment that the boy was in earnest. That he was not saying pretty things to her for the sake of saying them. He was saying them all in sincerity. “It is nice of you to believe in me. But you don’t know me. I am like the little girl with the curl. I can be very, very good, but sometimes I am ‘horrid.’”
“You can’t make me think it.” He handed her a packet of letters. “Your uncle sent these. There’s one from Simms on top.”
“I think I won’t read it. I won’t read any of them. It has been heavenly to be away from things. I feel like a disembodied spirit, looking on but having nothing to do with the world I have left.”
They were smiling now. “I can believe that,” Baldy said, “but I think you ought to read Simms’ letter. You needn’t tell me you haven’t any curiosity.”
“Well, I have,” she broke the envelope. “More than that I am madly curious. I wouldn’t confess it though to anyone—but you.”
[123]“They can cut me up in little pieces—before I break my silence.”
Again they laughed together. Then she broke the seal of the letter. Read it through to herself, then read it a second time aloud.
“Now that it is all over, Edith, I want to tell you how it happened. I know you think it is a rotten thing I did. But it would have been worse if I had married you. I am in love with another woman, and I did not find it out until the day of our wedding.
“She isn’t in the least to blame, and somehow I can’t feel that I am quite the cad that everybody is calling me. Things are bigger sometimes than ourselves. Fate just took me that morning—and swept me away from you.
“It isn’t her fault. She wouldn’t go away with me, although I begged her to do it. And she was right of course.
“She is poor, but she isn’t marrying me for my money. The world will say she is—but the world doesn’t recognize the real thing. It has come to me, and if it ever comes to you, you’re going to thank me for this—but now you’ll hate me, and I’m sorry. You’re a beautiful, wonderful woman—and I find no excuse for myself, except the one that it would have been a crime under the circumstances to tie us to each other.
“In spite of everything,
“Faithfully,
“Del.”
There was a moment’s silence, as she finished.[124] Then Edith said, “So that’s that,” and tore the letter into little shreds. Her blue eyes were like bits of steel.
“He’s right,” said Baldy. “I’d like to kill him for making you unhappy—but the thing was bigger than himself.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Of course if you are going to condone—dishonor——”
He was leaning forward hugging his knees. “I am not condoning anything. But—I know this—that some day if you ever fall in love, you’ll forgive——”
“I am not likely to fall in love,” coldly, “I’m too sensible——”
He studied her with his bright gray eyes. “Oh, no, you’re not. You’re not in the least—sensible. You think you are because the men you’ve met have been poor sticks who couldn’t make you care——”
“I’ve met some of the most distinguished men in America—and a few of them have fallen in love with me——”
“Oh, I know. You’ve had strings of lovers—you’re too tremendously lovely not to have. But they’ve all been afraid of you. No caveman stuff—or anything like that. Isn’t that the truth?”
“I should hate a caveman.”
“Of course, but you wouldn’t be indifferent, and you’d end by caring——”
“I dislike brutal types—intensely——”
He sat with his chin in his hand, his shoulders[125] hunched up like a faun or Pan at his pipes. “All cavemen aren’t brutal types. Some day I’m going to paint a picture of a man carrying off a woman. And I’m going to make him a slender young god—and she shall be a rather substantial goddess—but she’ll go with him—his spirit shall conquer her——”
She looked at him in surprise. “Then you paint?”
“I’ll say I do. Terrible things—magazine covers. But in the back of my mind there are masterpieces——”
He was a whimsical youngster, she decided. But no end interesting. “I don’t believe your things are terrible. And I shall want to see them——”
“You are going to see them. I have a studio in our garage. I sometimes wonder what happens at night when my little Ford is left alone with my fantasies. It must feel that it is fighting devils——”
He broke off to say, “I’m as garrulous as Jane. Please don’t let me talk any more about myself.”
“Is Jane your sister?”
“Yes. And now let’s get down to realities. Your uncle wants you to come home.”
“I’m not going. I know Uncle Fred. He’ll make me feel like a returned prodigal. He’ll kill the fatted calf, but I’ll always know that there were husks——”
“And hogs,” Baldy supplemented, dreamily. “Some people are like that.”
[126]“He’s always been worshipped by women. And I didn’t fall at his feet. That’s why we didn’t get on. He ruled his mother and his servants—and he couldn’t rule me. And he’d run away to his affinities to be comforted, and they’d tell him what a cat I was——”
“Affinities?”
“Oh, I call them that, because there has always been a procession of them. Women he adores for the moment. But it never lasts, and they spoil him to death—and I won’t spoil him. I like my o............