Talbot Mundy - "Winds of the World"

Fannie E. Newberry - "Sara, a Princess"

E. P. Roe - "Without a Home"

Unkown - "United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches"

Winding Paths

G >> Gertrude Page >> Winding Paths




It sent the blood rushing to her white cheeks, and made her heart beat
wildly. She moved forward a little unsteadily.

"I saw about Miss Vivian's death to-day, and I was afraid Hal would be
all alone fretting... so I came to see -"

She broke off. Something like a sudden appeal in his eyes was
unnerving her.

Dudley only heard vaguely what she said.

As she came forward he had seen that she was rather overcome; he had
seen the quick scarlet in her face, followed by a striking parlor, and
the bewildered surprise in her eyes.

What was it Hal had said that evening before she left? He could not
remember, but he knew it meant that she did not think Ethel indifferent
to him as he believed.

He knew she had meant more, but he had not dared to dwell upon it.

He stood up, but did not move towards her. Instead, he just stood
looking, looking into her eyes. Hers fell, and again the quick colour
came and went.

"Hal is not here," he said simply; "she went to Miss Vivian last week."

"Oh, I am glad. I was afraid she had not had time. I thought, when I
saw the flowers..." An idea seemed to strike her suddenly. She looked
at him, and her eyes were full of a question she could not ask. "I
thought only Hal knew I should be returning to-day."

"I knew," he said simply.

"Did you... did you..." she was at a loss to finish.

This hesitating nervousness was new to him. He had never seen her
before other than calmly self-possessed. It called, with
swift-calling, to his natural masculine strength and masculine
protectiveness. It enabled him to grow sure of himself, and strong.

"Yes, I sent the flowers," he answered. "I wanted badly to come to the
station to meet you, but I was afraid you might think it an
impertinence." He came a little nearer. "Sould you have thought so?"

He seemed to be waiting for an answer, and she said shyly:

"I should have thought it very kind of you."

"I am always wanting to do things for you," he said, "and I am always
afraid I shall only vex you. And I wouldn't vex you for the world," in
a low, fervent voice.

Again she gave him a swift, shy, questioning glance, and he grew bolder
still.

He came closer, and stood beside her.

"Most of all, I want to tell you that I love you with all my heart and
soul and strength, and, until this moment, I have been afraid that that
would vex you too."

She raised her eyes then, swimming in sudden tears of gladness.

"But it doesn't?... " he said eagerly, "you... you... Oh, Ethel! is it
possible you would like me to say it?"

"It has been possible a long time, Dudley, but I did not think it would
ever be said."

He took her hands in his and kissed first one and then the other. For
the moment he was too overwhelmed at the suddenness of his joy to
understand it.

"I thought you despised me," he breathed. "It did not seem possible
you could do anything else; but Hal said I was wrong."

She smiled faintly.

"Yes; Hal knew," she told him. "I think she has known some time."
Then she seemed to sway a little.

"You are tired out," he exclaimed in quick commiseration. "What a
brute I am, letting you stand all this time, after your long journey
too! I have told myself over and over how I would take care of you if
I might, and this is how I begin! Forgive me -."

He gently pushed her towards his own big chair, and when she had sunk
down in it, fetched a cushion and a footstool. She leaned back
wearily, looking up at him with eyes that were full of deep joy, if not
yet emancipated from their long, long vigil of sorrow.

"Is this all true, or am I dreaming? Yesterday - an hour ago - I
thought it could never happen at all."

"I too."

He was kneeling on one knee beside her now, holding her hand against
his face for the comfort of it.

"I was thinking of you when you came. I am always thinking of you. My
whole life is like a long thought of you. I was afraid it would never
become any more. Since I grew to know myself better, it has never
seemed possible any one like you could care for such as I."

She gave him her other hand confidingly.

"I think I have always cared, Dudley. Beside Basil, there has never
been any one else who counted very much at all."

It was good to be sitting there together by a fireside. So good indeed
that it swept everything away that had stood between them, with swift,
generous sweeping. There had been nothing real in the barrier,
scarcely anything that needed explaining, only the foolish imaginings
of two hearts that had become imbued with wrong impressions.

"I thought I loved Doris," he told her, still caressing her hand; "but
afterwards it was like a pale fancy to my love for you."

"I was terrified lest she should wreck both your lives," She answered.
"She cared so much for money, and the things money can buy. Without
it, she might have grown bitter and hard and reckless. With it, she
wil grow kinder, I think. She felt Basil's death very much. She shed
the most genuine tears she has ever shed in her life. Dudley, if
Basil had known that this was coming, it would have been a great
comfort to him."

"He did know."

"He knew!..." in surprise. "How could he?"

"I told him. I saw he was fretting very much about you, and I guessed
what was in his mind. I told him I loved you better than my life; and
he said: "Thank God, it will all come right some day."

"Ah, I am glad that he knew. Dear Basil, dear Basil. If he had been
less splendid, Dudley, I think I should have taken my own life when he
died and left me alone. But in the face of courage like his, one could
not be a coward."

Later Dudley took her home. At the door he asked her pleadingly:

"May I came in for a moment? I want to see the flat as it looks now."

She led the way, and they stood together in the little sitting-room
where Basil had lived and died, and where Dudley's flowers now shed a
fragrance of welcome.

She buried her face in the delicate petals, with memories, and
thoughts, and feelings too deep for words.

"It feels almost as if his spirit were here with us now," he said
softly. "He was so sure he was only going to a grander and wider life.
I think he must have been right; and that to-night he _knows_."

Tears were in her eyes again. The loss was so recent still - the
memory so painful. He drew her to him, and kissed them away.

"That night, Ethel, that first, terrible night when you were alone, it
nearly killed me to have to go away and leave you, to feel I could not
do anything at all. You must let me comfort you doubly now to make up
for it. You must come to me quickly." She smiled softly, and he
added: "It would have been Basil's wish, too. He hated the office as
much as I do. Tell them to-morrow that you're not coming any more."

Her smile deepened at his boyishness.

"There are certain hard-and-fast rules to be observed about leaving.
I'm afraid they won't waive them for you."

"Well, tell them you are going to be married... You _are_ going to be
married, aren't you?..." for a moment he was almost like Hal. "Well,
why don't you answer? I want to know."

"I haven't made up my mind sufficiently yet," with a low, happy laugh.

"Then I must make it up for you."

His manner changed again to one of wondering, absorbing tenderness.
Hal had been right, as usual. Under the man's surface-narrowness and
superiority was a deep, true heart that had only been waiting the hour
of its great emancipation. He took her in his arms and kissed her
again and again.

"Child," he breathed, "haven't I waited long enough? Every hour of the
last few months, since I knew, has been like a year. Don't make me
leave you here alone one moment longer than is necessary."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. .

So it happened that when Hal came back to a dreary, empty, joyless
London, an unexpected gladness was waiting for her.

The last few days had almost broken her spirit. The pathos of that
lonely, far-off grave, in the little alien churchyard, where they
tenderly left the remains of the beautiful, brilliant woman who had
been so much in her life for so long, seemed more than she could bear.

They three had stood together, representing her richness in friendship,
her poverty in blood ties. The wire to her mother had only brought the
reply from some one in London that she was travelling in the South of
Italy, and could not possibly arrive in time.

Alymer still seemed almost stunned. He had scarcely spoken since
Danton told him what had happened. At first Hal had declined to see
him at all, but in the end Denton, with his shrewd common sense, had
talked her into a kindlier mood.

When they came back from the churchyard she had gone to him in the
little sitting-room, where he sat alone, with bowed head. He stood up
when she came in, but he did not speak. He waited for her to say what
she would, with a look of quiet misery in his eyes that touched her
heart.

For the first time she saw how changed he was. There seemed nothing of
the old boyishness left. Only a quiet, grave, deeply suffering man.

She had no conception that she, personally, added every hour and every
moment to that suffering. She did not know he was enduring a bitter
sense of having lost her for ever, as well as the friend and
benefactress he had undoubtedly loved very dearly, if not with the same
passionate love that she had known for him.

But he only stood before her there, very straight and very still, and
with that old, quiet, ineradicable dignity which never failed him.

"Lorraine left a little written message for me," she said to him.

She paused a moment, and her eyes wandered away out to the little
garden, with its last fading summer beauty yielding already to autumn.
And so she did not see the expression in his fine face when he
ventured to look at her. She did not know that because of his hopeless
love, and withal his quiet courage and quiet pain, at that moment he
looked even more splendidly a man than perhaps he had ever done before.

Had life been kinder, he would have crossed the space between them in
one step, and folded her in such an embrace as would have lost her slim
form entirely in his enfolding bigness. He would have given her a
love, and a lover, such as falls to the lot of but few women.

And she stood there, with her head half turned away; with sad eyes and
drooping lips that went to his heart; her mind full of her dead friend,
and scarcely a glance for him.

"She said I was not to blame you for anything, and she told me to give
you her dear, dear love."

He winced visibly, but stood his ground.

"Thank you," he said, in a very low voice.

Then, with a sudden, longing triumphing over all:

"I prefer to take the blame upon myself, but even then I hope some day
you will find it possible to forgive me."

"I shall never forget how much Lorraine loved you," was all the poor
hope she gave him.

"Will that make it possible for us to remain friends?"

"Yes; I hope so." She gave him her hand with an old-fashioned
solemnity. "For Lorraine's sake," she said very simply, and then left
him.

He turned with a stifled groan, and, leaning his elbows on the
mantelpiece, buried his face in his hands.

Yet in that painful hour, out of all the tragic mistakes of her life,
Lorraine might have gleaned this gladness. In that hour he was nearer
than he had ever been before to the man she had striven to make him;
for, mercifully for all mankind, there is a "power outside ourselves,"
which out of wrong, and weakness, and pain can bring forth good.

The sad trio returned to London the following day, and Hal wondered
forlornly if Dudley would leave his office early to come and meet her.

When she stepped out on the platform he and Ethel were standing
together, looking for her. Then they saw her, and Ethel came forward
first, holding out both hands, with a subdued light in her face, that
made Hal pause and wonder.

"How did you know? It was nice of you to come," she said, with another
question in her eyes.

"Dudley told me, dear. I have been thinking of you so much."

Then Dudley stepped up to them, and in his face, too, was this subdued
gladness.

Hal looked from one to the other.

"Have you?..." she began, and paused uncertainly.

"Yes, dear"; and Ethel blushed charmingly. "I am going to be your
sister, so I thought you would let me begin at once, and come to meet
you, and try to comfort you a little."

"Oh," said Hal, drawing a deep breath; "and I thought I was never going
to be glad about anything again."





CHAPTER XLVI


It is necessary to take but a cursory glance at the events that
followed. Life flowed smoothly enough in its way, but it flowed
towards higher and greater achievements for some, and that can only
mean a story of obstacles, and drawbacks and difficulties sturdily
overcome.

For the three inmates of the Cromwell Road flat it held many prizes.

Alymer Hermon's career continued to advance by leaps and bounds. The
"taking up" by Sir Philip Hall became quickly an actual fact, and he
was soon easily first among the juniors. What he lacked in years and
experience his striking presence and personal charm supplied, and his
calm gravity and self-possession went far to counteract his youthful
appearance.

Dick Bruce finished his great novel, and though it was not quite the
jumble about vegetables and babies he had prophesied, it was considered
the most original book of the year, and brought him instantaneous
recognition and fame.

Quin inherited some money, and built a wonderful East End Club House
that is all his own, and is as the apple of his eye.

If the great solution of life is to find one's true environment, he has
at any rate found his; and in finding it knows a happiness, even amid
the squalid poverty of Shoreditch, such as is found by few.

In the meantime Hal continued to work and be independent. When Ethel
and Dudley married, they tried hard to persuade her to live with them,
but she had already bespoken a smaller sitting-room with her old
landlady, Mrs. Carr, and made up her mind to live there.

Later, when Dudley began to add to his income, they begged her to give
up her work, but she was obdurate, again expressing certain views on
the boon of steady occupation they could not gainsay.

"It is so boring sometimes," Ethel remonstrated, and she answered:

"Not so boring as idleness in the long run, and having to make up your
mind each day what you are going to do next. The girls who only enjoy
themselves without work little know what they miss in never waking up
in the morning to say, 'Hurray! this is a holiday.' No! give me my
work and my play well balanced, and I'll turn them into happiness."

It was months before Alymer dared to speak to her of love. It had
taken him long to win her to the old fooling again; and in a sudden
gladness at some little remark or touch that seemed to show him he was
truly forgiven for his own sake, he told her the story of his love, and
his long waiting.

Hal was very taken aback, and a little unhappy, but when she had
convinced him it was really quite hopeless, he forced himself back to
the old comradeship, and took up his self-imposed burden of waiting
once more.

Then followed a period of rapid successes, during which Hal told him
seriously he must now make a choice among the bevy of beauty, wealth,
and lineage at his disposal.

"You really ought, you know," she said, "out of consideration for all
the poor things left hoping against hope, and the numbers that are
yearly added to them!"

"I have made my choice," he answered; "it is not my fault about the
vain hopes. It is the obstinacy of one woman, who is keeping the
others in the unfortunate condition you describe."

But she only smiled lightly, and put him off again, concluding with:

"I should be frightened out of my life at possessing anything so
beauteous and attractive in the way of a husband."

So Hermon worked on, and waited, believing in his star.

Yet there were times when the apparent hopelessness of it weighed
heavily on his mind - times when the very lustre of his success seemed
only to mock him, because of that one thing he craved in vain.

It was so when the greatest achievement of his life came to his hands.

It was given him to plead for a woman's life against a charge of
poisoning her husband, pitting his youth and slender experience against
the greatest advocate of the Crown. The case caused a great stir, and
with a growing wonderment and pride she hardly dared to account for.
Hal followed the newspaper reports day by day.

The evening before the speech for the defence he came to her. She
greeted him as usual, saying little about his present notoriety, but
she noticed that he looked careworn, as if the strain were becoming too
much for him; and then suddenly he stated his errand.

"I want you to come to the court to-morrow, Hal. I - I - have a
feeling I want you to be there when I am speaking. Will you come?"

She looked up doubtfully.

"Why do you want me?"

"I hardly know. I mean to save this woman if I can. She did not give
the poison. I am quite certain of it; but we can't prove it
absolutely. We can only appeal in such a way to the jury that they
will feel the case is not merely not proven against her, but that she
is innocent. I think it would inspire me more than anything if you
were there." He paused, then added: "I love you so much, Hal, I feel
as if I shall save her life if you are there."

Hal looked touched, and agreed to go if he would arrange everything,
and telephone to her what time to arrive.

The next day she went to the court with the card he had given, and
found herself received with the utmost deference, and ushered at once
to a seat reserved for her.

A few minutes afterwards Alymer stood up to make his great speech, and
then Hal heard a subdued murmur around her, and saw that the judge was
watching him with some interest and expectancy.

It was the first time she had seen him in his wig and gown, in court,
and her heart began to beat strangely. She felt suddenly and
unaccountably incensed with the women all round, who whispered and
gazed. "What was he to them anyway! How idiotic of them to murmur to
each other how splendid he looked! What did he care for their
approval?"

Her heart carried her a little farther. "What is he to you?..." it
asked. She felt a sudden warm glow of pride, and her eyes grew very
soft as she watched him.

Then he began to speak, and it seemed as if everything in heaven and
earth has paused to listen. Surely there was no big thoroughfare with
hurrying multitudes just outside, no continual stream of noisy,
hurrying traffic; no busy newspaper offices awaiting each flying
message - nothing anywhere but that crowded hall, that white-faced
accused woman waiting for death or freedom, that man in his beauty of
manhood and power straining every nerve to save her.

An hour passed. No one spoke, no one moved. Sometimes a sob, hastily
stifled, broke the oppresive hush, sometimes a stifled cough.

Alymer rarely raised his voice, for his was no impassioned, heated
declaration. It was a magnificent piece of quiet oratory, which
carried every one along by its earnestness and convincing calm, and was
intensified by the look upon his noble, resolute face.

After a time every one knew instinctively that he had won. The tension
grew less taut and more emotinal. Women began to weep softly and
restrainedly. Men cleared their throats again and again. Some one
sitting next to Hal apparently knew him, and knew her.

"My God," he breathed in her ear, "he's magnificent. He's saved her.
I wouldn't have missed this for anything. I'm proud to be his friend."

Hal's eyes suddenly filled with tears. She began to feel dazed and
faint. It had been too much for her, and the relief was overwhelming.

She thought of Lorraine, and her heart swelled to think he had so
gloriously fulfilled her vast hopes, and crowned all she had done for
him. She longed that she might have been there, and then felt
mysteriously that she not only was there, but was speaking to her. In
a vague, unreal, mystical way, Lorraine was pleading with her to give
him his happiness.

She looked again, confusedly, at the big, strong, calm man; and
something that had been growing in her heart for months took shape and
form.

What did the other women matter? He was hers - hers - hers. Why stop
to question or demur? What did anything matter but that he had loved
her so long and faithfully; and that at last she loved him?

In a stress of unendurable emotion, she got up unsteadily, and left the
court.

A quarter of an hour later, Alymer finished his speech, and sat down
instantly turning his head to look for her. Instead of the familiar,
eager face of the first hour, he saw the empty space, and his
overwrought mind sank to a dull level of bitter disappointment.

She was not impressed, then - not even interested enough to stay until
the end. Oh, what did it matter? She was hard - hard, he was a fool
to love her so.

The jury went away and came back with their verdict of "Not guilty."

There was a rush and buzz of congratulations. He smiled, because he
had to smile, and grasped outstretched hands because he had to grasp
them. The moment it was possible to get away, he walked blindly and
hurriedly to the entrance, and got into a taxi, before the waiting
crowd had had time to recognise him.

"Where to?" a policeman asked him, and for a moment he was at a loss to
know. Then he gave Hal's address. "Better have it out and done with,"
was his thought. Once for all he would make her tell him if it was
hopeless, and if she said yes, he would go away and try to forget her
in another country.

When he was shown into Hal's little sitting-room, he found her
crouching on a footstool in the firelight, before the fire. He stood a
moment or two and looked at her, and then he said in a slightly harsh
voice:

"I suppose you hurried away because you were bored. I thought you
would have stayed until the end. I was a fool. Nothing I do ever has
interested you, or ever will."

Hal did not look round. She was staring into the flames, with her chin
resting in her hands. When he paused she said calmly:

"I can't hear what you say so far away."

He moved across the room and stood on the hearth beside her, towering
above her, with his eyes on the opposite wall.

"I don't know why I came here at all," he continued; "but it didn't
seem any use going anywhere else. Why did you run away in the middle!
Did you want to punish my presumption for wishing to try and
distinguish myself before you, as well as save a woman's life and
honour?"

A little smile shone in Hal's eyes, where the firelight caught them.

"I can't hear what you say, right up there, near the ceiling."

He looked down at the dark shapely head, and something in her poise and
in her voice made his heart suddenly begin to thump rather wildly.

"I haven't got a beanstalk," she added.

He leaned a little towards her.

"And if you had?" he asked tensely.

"If I had, I would perhaps climb up it."

He leaned lower still, his heart thumping yet more wildly.

"If you climbed up a ladder like that, you would be bound to climb into
my arms."

"Well - and what if I did?" she said.


THE END.

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