since French had received the cable, its possible significance to him took possession of his mind, and he flushed a dull red and fell into a reverie.
In all probability there was no longer any barrier between him and the woman he loved; nothing to prevent his striving to win her, but the period of her mourning – the respect she owed to the memory of a husband who was the palest shadow of a lover, and not even the ghost of a companion. He wondered whether she had ever guessed his feelings – feelings which he had subdued and held under with all the strength of his nature, partly through fear of forfeiting her friendship and partly because her charm was in the simplicity of her goodness. If love had once been named between them, Deena would have been other than herself.
Her voice roused him. She was excusing herself in order to go to her sister, and leave him and Ben to smoke. He held the door open for her to pass with a profound sense of relief – no suspicion of his awful secret had been betrayed. But oh! the comfort of talking it over with Ben, of sharing the burden with another! They discussed the meager announcement till they had exhausted every probability and found nothing to hope and everything to fear.
“I hope to Heaven he is dead!” cried Ben. “Imagine a man physically weak, like Ponsonby, enduring slow starvation in the damp and chill of the Patagonian seacoast. It will be a positive relief if we hear he fell overboard.”
“Anything is better than uncertainty,” said Stephen, and the speech must have been from the new point of view, the hope of Deena’s freedom, for the next moment he was conscious of a wave of shame.
“I ought to get an answer from Lopez before night,” he added, rising to go; “and as soon as I hear I will return and let you know.”
Ben followed him to the front door, whispering like a conspirator and glancing furtively up the stairs. There was a childish streak in the boy’s nature that gloried in a confidence; the joy of the secret nearly made up for the sorrow of the fact. But secrets and sorrows were soon put out of his head, for a crucial moment had come to the young Minthrops – one we anticipate and are never quite prepared for.
As he ran upstairs, after seeing Stephen off, he met Deena, evidently looking for him.
“Oh, Ben,” she said, “Polly is ill, and I have telephoned for – ”
But she got no further, for her big brother-in-law turned white as a frightened girl, and when he tried to speak no sound came from his lips.
“Goose!” said Deena, laying an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Shall I get a glass of brandy? Do you suppose no one has ever met with this experience before?”
Ben recovered himself with a fit of irritation, which seems the corollary to being frightened.
“Brandy!” he repeated. “Why in thunder should I want brandy? Really, Deena, for a sensible woman, you are given at times to saying the most foolish things I ever heard.”
In the meanwhile, as the afternoon was still early, French was anxious to find some occupation that might distract his thoughts. He decided to visit his aunt, whose conversation was usually startling enough to hold the attention of her hearers in any stress of agitation, and then when he was halfway up her steps repented the intention, on the ground that he needed soothing rather than stimulating; but his retreat was cut off by the good lady coming out of her door and discovering him, and, as she was about to walk round the block for exercise before taking her afternoon drive, she promptly claimed his company for both occasions. The wind blew her dress up to her ankles as she reached the sidewalk, displaying a pair of pointed-toed, high-heeled boots that perforce made walking – even round the block – a torturing task. But Mrs. Star was a brave woman, and walking a matter of conscience, so she tottered along beside her nephew, occasionally laying a hand on his arm when a bit of icy pavement made her footing more than usually uncertain.
“How I hate the late winter in New York!” she exclaimed, when a few minutes later they were seated in her sleigh on their way to the park. “Here we are at the threshold of February, when any self-respecting climate would be making for spring, and we must count on two months more of solid discomfort. Ah, well, this year I do not mean to face it. I have had the yacht put in commission, and she sails next week for the Mediterranean, where I shall overtake her by one of the German boats, and do a little cruising along the African coast. Come with me, Stephen,” she said, coaxingly. “Let this silly school-teaching go. You are a rich man – why under the sun do you want to work? If you are holding on to Harmouth on account of that pretty Mrs. Ponsonby, it can’t do you much good when she is in New York. Besides,” she added, quite as an afterthought, “it is bad morality, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He was about to turn and rend her for what he considered an unpardonable meddling with his affairs, when he saw her eyes fixed on him with tenderest affection and his anger melted.
“Dear Stevie,” she said, “be good-natured and bear an old woman company – you know you are as dear as my own sons.”
She used to call him Stevie when he was a lonely little boy, and she made her house his home; when all he knew of family life was supplied by that good-natured, worldly household – the name touched a chord of memory that softened his irritation.
“I wish I could, Aunt Adelaide,” he answered, “but I have managed to tie myself to my work in a way you cannot understand. You will have to take Bob as a companion.”
Bob was her only unmarried child, wedded only to his clubs and amateur soldiering, and even less available than Stephen for a cruise.
“Bob!” she said, contemptuously. “He never voluntarily went to a foreign country except Cuba, and I don’t believe he knows on which side of the Mediterranean Africa lies! I shall find some one who will be glad to go with me – perhaps your charming friend, Mrs. Ponsonby, might go. She looks as if she would be a pleasant traveling companion.”
French’s heart tightened as he thought of the horror that stood between Deena and pleasure, and was even debating in his mind whether it would not be better to tell his aunt the truth, when conversation was rendered impossible for the moment by the puffing and tooting of a great automobile advancing toward them down the west drive of the park – its wheels slipping in a crazy manner, that made the coachman of Mrs. Star’s sleigh give it a wide berth. Just as it got abreast of them, it became perfectly unmanageable – slewed to the left, made a semicircle which turned it round, and, catching the back of the sleigh on its low front, turned the light vehicle over as easily as if it had been made of pasteboard.
Mrs. Star allowed herself a shrill shriek as the sleigh went over and then lay quite still in a heap by the side of the road, with Stephen across her feet. The automobile seemed to have recovered its serenity, for it now stood still like any well-behaved machine, quiet save for its noisy breathing, while the sleigh was being bumped, on its side, far up the road, at the heels of the outraged horses.
French scrambled to his feet and endeavored to help his aunt, who had raised herself to a sitting posture and was looking white and disheveled, while she cast furious glances at the motor and its owner. She took her nephew’s hands and attempted to rise, but fell back, declaring she had broken her knee, as it hurt her excruciatingly when she tried to move it.
The owner of the auto now came forward in great contrition to offer help and apologies. He was a physician, he explained, hastening to a case of great urgency, and he had taken his automobile as the quickest means of covering the distance, though he had known it at times to behave badly on slippery and snowy roads.
The admission was a mistake – it put him in the wrong, and Mrs. Star, who distrusted all modern doctors, felt a consuming rage against this one in particular.
“You
