CHAPTER XIV
RAPID FIRE
"Well, now, we're glad to see you at our place, Mr. Kendrick," was Mr.Rufus Gray's hearty greeting. He had heard the sound of the motor-car asit came to a standstill just outside his window, and was in the doorwayto receive his guests. "As for Hugh, he knows he's always welcome,though it's a good while since he took advantage of it. Sit down here bythe fire and warm up before we send you out again. You see," heexplained enjoyingly, "we have instructions what to do with you."
Richard Kendrick noted the pleasant room with its great fireplaceroaring with logs ablaze; he noted also its absence of occupants. OnlyAunt Ruth, coming forward with an expression of warm hospitality on herface, was to be discovered. "They're all down at the river, skating,"she told the young men. "Forbes Westcott is just home again, and he andRobby had so much to talk over we asked him out to supper. He and thegirls--and Anna Drummond, one of our neighbours' daughters," sheexplained to Kendrick, "were taken with the idea of going skating. Theydidn't wait for you, because they wanted to get a fire built. Whenyou're warmed up you can go down."
"There'll be a girl apiece for you," observed Uncle Rufus. "Hugh knowsAnna--went to school with her. She's a fine girl, eh, Hugh?"
"She certainly is," agreed Benson heartily. "But I don't see how eitherof us is to skate with her or with anybody without--"
"Oh, that's all right. Look there," and Uncle Rufus pointed to a longrow of skates lying on the floor in a corner. "All the nieces andnephews leave their skates here to have 'em handy when they come."
So presently the two young men were rushing down the winding, snowy roadwhich led through pasture and meadow for a quarter of a mile toward abeckoning bonfire.
"I don't know when I've gone skating," said Hugh Benson.
"The last time I skated was two years ago on the Neva at St. Petersburg.Jove! but it was a carnival!" And Richard's thoughts went back for aminute to the face of the girl he had skated with. He had not cared muchfor skating since that night. All other opportunities had seemed tameafter that.
"You've travelled a great deal--had a lot of experiences," Benson said,with a suppressed sigh.
"A few. But they don't prevent my looking forward to a new one to-night.I never went skating on a river in the country before. How far can yougo?"
"Ten miles, if you like, down. Two miles up. There they are, cominground the bend four abreast. Westcott has more than his share of girls."
"More than he wants, probably. He'll cling to one and joyfully hand overthe others."
"You'll like Anna Drummond; we're old school friends. Forbes and MissRoberta naturally seem to get together wherever they are. And Miss Ruthis a mighty nice little girl."
Across the blazing bonfire two men scrutinized each other: ForbesWestcott, one of the cleverest attorneys of a large city, a man with arising reputation, who held himself as a man does who knows that everyday advances his success; Richard Kendrick, well-known youngmillionaire, hitherto a travelled idler and spender of his income, nowa newly fledged business man with all his honours yet to be won. Theylooked each other steadily in the eye as they grasped hands by thebonfire, and in his inmost heart each man recognized in the other anantagonist.
Richard skated away with Miss Drummond, a wholesomely gay and attractivegirl who could skate as well as she could talk and laugh. He devotedhimself to her for half an hour; then, with a skill of which he wasmaster from long exercise, he brought about a change of partners. Thenext time he rounded the bend into a path which led straight down themoonlight it was in the company he longed for.
Richard's heart leaped exultantly as he skated around the river bend inthe moonlight with Roberta. And when his hands gathered hers into hisclose grasp it was somehow as if he had taken hold of an electricbattery. He distinctly felt the difference between her hands and thoseof the other girl. It was very curious and he could not whollyunderstand it.
"What kind of gloves do you wear?" was his first inquiry. He held up thehand which was not in Roberta's muff and tried to see it in the dimlight.
"You _are_ deep in the new business, aren't you?" she mocked. "Whateverthey are, will you put them into your stock?"
"Don't you dare make fun of my new business. I'm in it for scalps andhave no time for joking. Of course I want to put this make in stock. Inever took hold of so warm a hand on so cold a night. The warmth comesright through your glove and mine to my hand, runs up my arm, and stirsup my circulation generally. It was running a little cold with some ofthe things Miss Drummond was telling me."
"What could they be?"
"About how all the rest of you know each other so well. She describedall sorts of good times you have all had together on this river in thesummer. It seems odd that Benson never told me about any of them whilewe were together at college."
"They have happened mostly in the last two summers, since Mr. Bensonleft college. We always spend at least part of our summers here, and wehave had worlds of fun on the river and beside it--and in it."
"I'm glad I'm a business man in Eastman. I can imagine what this riveris like in summer. It's wonderful to-night, isn't it? Let's skate ondown to the mouth and out to sea. What do you say?"
"A beautiful plan. We have a good start; we must make time or it will bemoonset before we come to the sea."
"This is a glorious stroke; let's hit it up a little, swing a littlefarther--and make for the mouth of the river. No talking till we come insight. We're off!"
It was ten miles to the mouth of the river, as they both understood, sothis was nonsense of the most obvious sort. But the imagination tookhold of them and they swung away on over the smooth, shining floor withthe long vigorous strokes which are so exhilarating to the accomplishedskater. In silence they flew, only the warm, clasped hands making a linkbetween them, their faces turned straight toward the great golden diskin the eastern heavens. Richard was feeling that he could go onindefinitely, and was exulting in his companion's untiring progress,when he felt her slowing pull upon his hands.
"Tired?" he asked, looking down at her.
"Not much, but we've all the way back to go--and we ought not to be awayso long."
"Oughtn't we? I'd like to be away forever--with you!"
She looked straight up at him. His eyes were like black coals in the dimlight. His hands would have tightened on hers, but she drew them away.
"Oh, no, you wouldn't, Mr. Richard Kendrick," said she, as quietly asone can whose breath comes with some difficulty after long-sustainedexertion. "By the time we reached--even the mouth of the river, you'd betired of my company."
"Should I? I think not. I've thought of nothing but you since the day Isaw you first."
"Really? That's--how long? Was it November when you came to help UncleCalvin? This is February. And you've never spent so much as a whole houralone with me. You see, you don't even know me. What a foolish thing tosay to a girl you barely know!"
"Foolish, is it?" He felt his heart racing now. What other girl he knewwould have answered him like that? "Then you shall hear something thatbacks it up. I've loved you since that day I saw you first. What willyou do with that?"
She was silent for a moment. Then she turned, striking out toward home.He was instantly after her, reached for her hands, and took her alongwith him. But he forced her to skate slowly.
"You'll trample on that, too, will you?" said he, growing wrathful underher silence.
But she answered, quite gently, now: "No, Mr. Kendrick, I don't trampleon that. No girl would. I simply--know you are mistaken."
"In what? My own feeling? Do you think I don't know--"
"I _know_ you don't know. I'm not your kind of a girl, Mr. Kendrick. Youthink I am, because--well, perhaps because my eyes are blue and myeyelashes black; just such things as that do mislead people. I can dancefairly well--"
He smothered an angry exclamation.
"And skate well--and play the 'cello a little--and--that's nearly allyou know about me. You don't even know whether I can teach w
ell--or talkwell--or what is stored away in my mind. And I know just as little aboutyou."
"I've learned one thing about you in this last minute," he muttered."You can keep your head."
"Why not?" There was a note of laughter in her voice. "There needs to beone who keeps her head when the other loses his--all because of a littlewinter moonlight. What would the summer moonlight do to you, I wonder?"
"Roberta Gray"--his voice was rough--"the moonlight does it no more thanthe sunlight. Whatever you think, I'm not that kind of fellow. The dayI saw you first you had just come in out of the rain. You went back intoit and I saw you go--and wanted to go with you. I've been wanting itever since."
They moved on in silence which lasted until they were within aquarter-mile of the bonfire, whose flashing light they could see abovethe banks which intervened. Then Roberta spoke:
"Mr. Kendrick"--and her voice was low and rich with its kindestinflections--"I don't want you to think me careless or hard because Ihave treated what you have said to-night in a way that you don't like.I'm only trying to be honest with you. I'm quite sure you didn't mean tosay it to me when you came to-night, and--we all do and say things on anight like this that we should like to take back next day. It's quitetrue--what I said--that you hardly know me, and whatever it is thattakes your fancy it can't be the real Roberta Gray, because you don'tknow her!"
"What you say is," he returned, staring straight ahead of him, "that Ican't possibly know what you really are, at all; but you know so wellwhat I am that you can tell me exactly what my own thoughts and feelingsare."
"Oh, no, I didn't mean--"
"That's precisely what you do mean. I'm so plainly labelled 'worthless'that you don't have to stop to examine me. You--"
"I didn't--"
"I beg your pardon. I can tell you exactly what you think of me: A youngfool who runs after the latest sensation, to drop it when he finds anewer one. His head turned by every pretty girl--to whom he says justthe sort of thing he has said to you to-night. Superficial and ordinary,incapable of serious thought on any of the subjects that interest you.As for this business affair in Eastman--that's just a caprice, a game tobe dropped when he tires of it. Everything in life will be like that tohim, including his very friends. Come, now--isn't that what you've beenthinking? There's no use denying it. Nearly every time I've seen youyou've said some little thing that has shown me your opinion of me. Iwon't say there haven't been times in my life when I may have deservedit, but on my honour I don't think I deserve it now."
"Then I won't think it," said Roberta promptly, looking up. "I trulydon't want to do you an injustice. But you are so different from theother men I have known--my brothers, my friends--that I can hardlyimagine your seeing things from my point of view--"
"But you can see things from mine without any difficulty!"
"It isn't fair, is it?" Her tone was that of the comrade, now. "But youknow women are credited with a sort of instinct--even intuition--thatleads them safely where men's reasoning can't always follow."
"It never leads them astray, by any chance?"
"Yes, I think it does sometimes," she owned frankly. "But it's as wellfor the woman to be on her guard, isn't it? Because, sometimes, youknow, she loses her head. And when that happens--"
"All is lost? Or does a man's reasoning, slower and not so infallible,but sometimes based on greater knowledge, step in and save the day?"
"It often does. But, in this case--well, it's not just a case ofreasoning, is it?"
"The case of my falling in love with a girl I've onlyknown--slightly--for four months? It has seemed to me all along it wasjust that. It's been a case of the head sanctioning the heart--and youprobably know it's not always that way with a young man's experiences.Every ideal I've ever known--and I've had a few, though you might notthink it--every good thought and purpose, have been stimulated by mycontact with the people of your father's house. And since I have met yousome new ideals have been born. They have become very dear to me, thosenew ideals, Miss Roberta, though they've had only a short time to grow.It hurts to have you treat me as if you thought me incapable of them."
"I'm sorry," she said simply, and her hands gave his a little quickpressure which meant apology and regret. His heart warmed a very little,for he had been sure she was capable of great generosity if appealed toin the right way. But justice and generosity were not all he craved, andhe could see quite clearly that they were all he was likely to get fromher as yet.
"You think," he said, pursuing his advantage, "we know too little ofeach other to be even friends. You are confident my tastes and pleasuresare entirely different from yours; especially that my notions of realwork are so different that we could never measure things with the samefootrule."
He looked down at her searchingly.
She nodded. "Something like that," she admitted. "But that doesn't meanthat either tastes or notions in either case are necessarily unworthy,only that they are different."
"I wonder if they are? What if we should try to find out? I'm going tostick pretty closely to Eastman this winter, but of course I shall be intown more or less. May I come to see you, now and then, if I promise notto become bothersome?"
It was her turn to look up searchingly at him. If he had expected theusual answer to such a request, he began, before she spoke, to realizethat it was by no means a foregone conclusion that he should receiveusual answers from her to any questioning whatsoever. But her replysurprised him more than he had ever been surprised by any girl in hislife.
"Mr. Kendrick," said she slowly, "I wish that you need not see me againtill--suppose we say Midsummer Day,[A] the twenty-fourth of June, youknow."
[Footnote A: Midsummer comes at the time of the summer solstice, aboutJune 21st, but Midsummer Day, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, is the24th of June.]
He stared at her. "If you put it that way," he began stiffly, "youcertainly need not--"
"But I didn't put it that way. I said I wished that you need not see me.That is quite different from wishing I need not see you. I don't mindseeing you in the least--"
"That's good of you!"
"Don't be angry. I'm going to be quite frank with you--"
"I'm prepared for that. I can't remember that you've ever been anythingelse."
"Please listen to me, Mr. Kendrick. When I say that I wish you would notsee me--"
"You said 'need not.'"
"I shall have to put it 'would not' to make you understand. When I say Iwish you would not see me until Midsummer I am saying the very kindestthing I can. Just now you are under the impression--hallucination--thatyou want to see much of me. To prove that you are mistaken I'm going toask this of you--not to have anything whatever to do with me until atleast Midsummer. If you carry out my wish you will find out for yourselfwhat I mean--and will thank me for my wisdom."
"It's a wish, is it? It sounds to me more like a decree."
"It's not a decree. I'll not refuse to see you if you come. But if youwill do as I ask I shall appreciate it more than I can tell you."
"It is certainly one of the cleverest schemes of getting rid of a fellowI ever heard. Hang it all! do you expect me not to understand that youare simply letting me down easy? It's not in reason to suppose thatyou're forbidding all other men the house. I beg your pardon; I knowthat's none of my business; but it's not in human nature to keep fromsaying it, because of course that's bound to be the thing that cuts. Ifyou were going into a convent, and all other fellows were cooling theirheels outside with me, I could stand it."
"My dear Mr. Kendrick, you can stand it in any case. You're going to putall this out of mind and work at building up this business here inEastman with Mr. Benson. You will find it a much more interesting gamethan the old one of--"
"Of what? Running after every pretty girl? For of course that's what youthink I've done."
She did not answer that. He said something under his breath, and hishands tightened on hers savagely. They were rounding the last bend butone in the river, and
the bonfire was close at hand.
"Can't you understand," he ground out, "that every other thought andfeeling and experience I've ever had melts away before this? You can putme under ban for a year if you like; but if at the end of that timeyou're not married to another man you'll find me at your elbow. I toldyou I'd make you respect me; I'll do more, I'll make you listen to me.And--if I promise not to come where you have to look at me tillMidsummer, till the twenty-fourth of June--heaven knows why you pick outthat day--I'll not promise not to make you think of me!"
"Oh, but that's part of what I mean. You mustn't send me letters andbooks and flowers--"
"Oh--thunder!"
"Because those things will help to keep this idea before your mind. Iwant you to forget me, Mr. Kendrick--do you realize that?--forget meabsolutely all the rest of the winter and spring. By that time--"
"I'll wonder who you are when we do meet, I suppose?"
"Exactly. You--"
"All right. I agree to the terms. No letters, no books, no--ye gods! ifI could only send the flowers now! Who would expect to win a girlwithout orchids? You do, you certainly do, rate me with thelight-minded, don't you? Music also is proscribed, of course; that's theone other offering allowed at the shrine of the fair one. All right--allright--I'll vanish, like a fairy prince in a child's story. But before Igo I--"
With a dig of his steel-shod heel he brought himself and Roberta to astandstill. He bent over her till his face was rather close to hers. Shelooked back at him without fear, though she both saw and felt thetenseness with which he was making his farewell speech.
"Before I go, I say, I'm going to tell you that if you were any othergirl on the old footstool I'd have one kiss from you before I let go ofyou if I knew it meant I'd never have another. I could take it--"
She did not shrink from him by a hair's breadth, but he felt hersuddenly tremble as if with the cold.
"--but I want you to know that I'm going to wait for it till--MidsummerDay. Then"--he bent still closer--"you will give it to me yourself. I'msaying this foolhardy sort of thing to give you something to rememberall these months--I've got to. You'll have so many other people sayingthings to you when I can't that I've got to startle you in order to makean impression that will stick. That one will, won't it?"
A reluctant smile touched her lips. "It's quite possible that it may,"she conceded. "It probably would, whoever had the audacity to say it.But--to know a fate that threatens is to be forewarned.And--fortunately--a girl can always run away."
"You can't run so far that I can't follow. Meanwhile, tell me just onething--"
"I'll tell you nothing more. We've been gone for ages now--there comethe others--please start on."
"Good-bye, dear," said he, under his breath. "Good-bye--till Midsummer.But then--"
"No, no, you must _not_ say it--or think it."
"I'm going to think it, and so are you. I defy you to forget it. You maysee that lawyer Westcott every day, and no matter what you're saying tohim, every once in a while will bob up the thought--Midsummer Day!"
"Hush! I won't listen! Please skate faster!"
"You _shall_ listen--to just one thing more. Just halfway between nowand Midsummer may I come to see you--just once?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because--I shall not want to see you."
"That's good," said he steadily. "Then let me tell you that I should notcome even if you would let me. I wanted you to know that."
A little, half-smothered laugh came from her in spite of herself, inwhich he rather grimly joined. Then the others, calling questions andreproaches, bore down upon them, and the evening for Richard Kendrickwas over. But the fight he meant to win was just begun.