Footsteps sounded lightly through the hall as the maid went through to the front door. Noel reached up quickly and turned up the electric lamp on the table behind her head.
“I didn’t realize how dark it was growing,” she said rather quickly, he thought. Then the maid stood in the doorway.
“Mr Templeton,” she announced.
“Oh, yes,” agreed Noel.
Mr Templeton, with a Harvard-Oxford drawl, mature, very much at home, looked at him with just a flicker of surprise, nodded, mumbled a bare politeness and took an easy position in front of the fire. He exchanged several remarks with Noel which indicated a certain familiarity with her movements. Then a short silence fell. Juan rose.
“I want to see you soon,” he said. “I’ll phone, shall I, and you tell me when I can call?”
She walked with him to the door.
“So good to talk to you again,” she told him cordially. “Remember, I want to see a lot of you, Juan.”
When he left he was happier than he had been for two years. He ate dinner alone at a restaurant, almost singing to himself; and then, wild with elation, walked along the waterfront till midnight. He awoke thinking of her, wanting to tell people that what had been lost was found again. There had been more between them than the mere words said—Noel’s sitting with him in the half-darkness, her slight but perceptible nervousness as she came with him to the door.
Two days later he opened the Transcript to the society page and read down to the third item. There his eyes stopped, became like china eyes:
Mr and Mrs Harold Garneau announce the engagement of their daughter Noel to Mr Brooks Fish Templeton. Mr Templeton graduated from Harvard in the class of 1912 and is a partner in——
VI.
At three o’clock that afternoon Juan rang the Garneaus’ doorbell and was shown into the hall. From somewhere upstairs he heard girls’ voices, and another murmur came from the drawing-room on the right, where he had talked to Noel only the week before.
“Can you show me into some room that isn’t being used?” he demanded tensely of the maid. “I’m an old friend—it’s very important—I’ve got to see Miss Noel alone.”
He waited in a small den at the back of the hall. Ten minutes passed—ten minutes more; he began to be afraid she wasn’t coming. At the end of half an hour the door bounced open and Noel came hurriedly in.
“Juan!” she cried happily. “This is wonderful! I might have known you’d be the first to come.” Her expression changed as she saw his face, and she hesitated. “But why were you shown in here?” she went on quickly. “You must come and meet everyone. I’m rushing around today like a chicken without a head.”
“Noel!” he said thickly.
“What?”
Her hand was on the door knob. She turned, startled.
“Noel, I haven’t come to congratulate you,” Juan said, his face white and , his voice harsh with his effort at self-control. “I’ve come to tell you you’re making an awful mistake.”
“Why—Juan!”
“And you know it,” he went on. “You know no one loves you as I love you, Noel. I want you to marry me.”
She laughed nervously.
“Why, Juan, that’s silly! I don’t understand your talking like this. I’m engaged to another man.”
“Noel, will you come here and sit down?”
“I can’t, Juan—there’re a dozen people outside. I’ve got to see them. It wouldn’t be polite. Another time, Juan. If you come another time I’d love to talk to you.”
“Now!” The word was stark, unyielding, almost savage. She hesitated.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
“I’ve really got to go, Juan.”
She sat down uncertainly, glancing at the door. Sitting beside her, Juan told her simply and directly everything that had happened to him since they had met, a year and a half before. He told her of his family, his Cousin Cora, of his inner humiliation at Culpepper Bay. Then he told her of his coming to Boston and of his success, and how at last, having something to bring her, he had come only to find he was too late. He kept back nothing. In his voice, as in his mind, there was no pretence now, no self-consciousness, but only a sincere and overmastering emotion. He had no defence for what he was doing, he said, save this—that he had somehow gained the right to present his case, to have her know how much his devotion had inspired him, to have her look once, if only in passing, upon the fact that for two years he had loved her faithfully and well.
When Juan finished, Noel was crying. It was terrible, she said, to tell her all this—just when she had decided about her life. It hadn’t been easy, yet it was done now, and she was really going to marry this other man. But she had never heard anything like this before—it upset her. She was—oh, so terribly sorry, but there was no use. If he had cared so much he might have let her know before.
But how could he let her know? He had had nothing to offer her except the fact that one summer night out West they had been overwhelmingly drawn together.
“And you love me now,” he said in a low voice. “You wouldn’t cry, Noel, if you didn’t love me. You wouldn’t care.”
“I’m—I’m sorry for you.”
“It’s more than that. You loved me the other day. You wanted me to sit beside you in the dark. Didn’t I feel it—didn’t I know? There’s something between us, Noel—a sort of pull. Something you always do to me and I to you—except that one sad time. Oh, Noel, don’t you know how it breaks my heart to see you sitting there two feet away from me, to want to put my arms around you and know you’ve made a senseless promise to another man?” There was a knock outside the door.
“Noel!”
She raised her head, putting a handkerchief quickly to her eyes.
“Yes?”
“It’s Brooks. May I come in?” Without waiting for an answer, Templeton opened the door and stood looking at them curiously. “Excuse me,” he said. He nodded brusquely at Juan. “Noel, there are lots of people here——”
“In a minute,” she said lifelessly.
“Aren’t you well?”
“Yes.”
He came into the room, frowning.
“What’s been upsetting you, dear?” He glanced quickly at Juan, who stood up, his eyes blurred with tears. A menacing note crept into Templeton’s voice. “I hope no one’s been upsetting you.”
For
