Amherst looked at her again—she seemed to be growing remote and inaccessible. “You mean that you don’t want to stay?”
His tone was so abrupt that it called forth one of her rare blushes. “No—not that. I have been very happy with Cicely—but soon I shall have to be doing something else.”
Why was she blushing? And what did her last phrase mean? “Something else—?” The blood hummed in his ears—he began to hope she would not answer too quickly.
She had sunk into the seat behind the desk, propping her elbows on its lid, and letting her interlaced hands support her chin. A little bunch of violets which had been thrust into the folds of her dress detached itself and fell to the floor.
“What I mean is,” she said in a low voice, raising her eyes to Amherst’s, “that I’ve had a great desire lately to get back to real work—my special work…. I’ve been too idle for the last year—I want to do some hard nursing; I want to help people who are miserable.”
She spoke earnestly, almost passionately, and as he listened his undefined fear was lifted. He had never before seen her in this mood, with brooding brows, and the darkness of the world’s pain in her eyes. All her glow had faded—she was a dun thrush-like creature, clothed in semi-tints; yet she seemed much nearer than when her smile shot light on him.
He stood motionless, his eyes absently fixed on the bunch of violets at her feet. Suddenly he raised his head, and broke out with a boyish blush: “Could it have been Wyant who was trying to see you?”
“Dr. Wyant—trying to see me?” She lowered her hands to the desk, and sat looking at him with open wonder.
He saw the irrelevance of his question, and burst, in spite of himself, into youthful laughter.
“I mean—It’s only that an unknown visitor called at the house yesterday, and insisted that you must have arrived. He seemed so annoyed at not finding you, that I thought…I imagined…it must be some one who knew you very well…and who had followed you here…for some special reason….”
Her colour rose again, as if caught from his; but her eyes still declared her ignorance. “Some special reason–-?”
“And just now,” he blurted out, “when you said you might not stay much longer with Cicely—I thought of the visit—and wondered if there was some one you meant to marry….”
A silence fell between them. Justine rose slowly, her eyes screened under the veil she had lowered. “No—I don’t mean to marry,” she said, half-smiling, as she came down from the platform.
Restored to his level, her small shadowy head just in a line with his eyes, she seemed closer, more approachable and feminine—yet Amherst did not dare to speak.
She took a few steps toward the window, looking out into the deserted street. “It’s growing dark—I must go home,” she said.
“Yes,” he assented absently as he followed her. He had no idea what she was saying. The inner voices in which they habitually spoke were growing louder than outward words. Or was it only the voice of his own desires that he heard—the cry of new hopes and unguessed capacities of living? All within him was flood-tide: this was the top of life, surely—to feel her alike in his brain and his pulses, to steep sight and hearing in the joy of her nearness, while all the while thought spoke clear: “This is the mate of my mind.”
He began again abruptly. “Wouldn’t you marry, if it gave you the chance to do what you say—if it offered you hard work, and the opportunity to make things better…for a great many people…as no one but yourself could do it?”
It was a strange way of putting his case: he was aware of it before he ended. But it had not occurred to him to tell her that she was lovely and desirable—in his humility he thought that what he had to give would plead for him better than what he was.
The effect produced on her by his question, though undecipherable, was extraordinary. She stiffened a little, remaining quite motionless, her eyes on the street.
“You!“ she just breathed; and he saw that she was beginning to tremble.
His wooing had been harsh and clumsy—he was afraid it had offended her, and his hand trembled too as it sought hers.
“I only thought—it would be a dull business to most women—and I’m tied to it for life…but I thought…I’ve seen so often how you pity suffering…how you long to relieve it….”
She turned away from him with a shuddering sigh. “Oh, I hate suffering!” she broke out, raising her hands to her face.
Amherst was frightened. How senseless of him to go on reiterating the old plea! He ought to have pleaded for himself—to have let the man in him seek her and take his defeat, instead of beating about the flimsy bush of philanthropy.
“I only meant—I was trying to make my work recommend me…” he said with a half-laugh, as she remained silent, her eyes still turned away.
The silence continued for a long time—it stretched between them like a narrowing interminable road, down which, with a leaden heart, he seemed to watch her gradually disappearing. And then, unexpectedly, as she shrank to a tiny speck at the dip of the road, the perspective was mysteriously reversed, and he felt her growing nearer again, felt her close to him—felt her hand in his.
“I’m really just like other women, you know—I shall like it because it’s your work,” she said. XXXII
EVERY one agreed that, on the whole, Mr. Langhope had behaved extremely well.
He was just beginning to regain his equanimity in the matter of the will—to perceive that, in the eyes of the public, something important and distinguished was being done at Westmore, and that the venture, while reducing Cicely’s income during her minority, might, in some incredible way, actually make for its ultimate increase. So much Mr. Langhope, always eager to take the easiest view of the inevitable, had begun to let fall in his confidential comments on Amherst; when his newly-regained balance was rudely shaken by the news of his son-in-law’s marriage.
The free expression of his anger was baffled by the fact that, even by the farthest stretch of self-extenuating logic, he could find no one to blame for the event but himself.
“Why on earth don’t you say so—don’t you call me a triple-dyed fool for bringing them together?” he challenged Mrs. Ansell, as they had the matter out together in the small intimate drawing-room of her New York apartment.
Mrs. Ansell, stirring her tea with a pensive hand, met the challenge composedly.
“At present you’re doing it for me,” she reminded him; “and after all, I’m not so disposed to agree with you.”
“Not agree with me? But you told me not to engage Miss Brent! Didn’t you tell me not to engage her?”
She made a hesitating motion of assent.
“But, good Lord, how was I to help myself? No man was ever in such a quandary!” he broke off, leaping back to the other side of the argument.
“No,” she said, looking up at him suddenly. “I believe that, for the only time in your life, you were sorry then that you hadn’t married me.”
She held his eyes for a moment with a look of gentle malice; then he laughed, and drew forth his cigarette-case.