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Arthur Christopher Benson - "Watersprings"

Eliza Chase - "Over the Border: Acadia"

The Window Gazer

I >> Isabel Ecclestone Mackay >> The Window Gazer




She had spoken to him cheerfully, ignoring his mood, and he had
replied irritably, like a bad-tempered child who resents some
unnecessary claim upon its attention. But she did not observe him
closely. Had she done so, she might have noticed a curious glazing
of the eyes as they lifted to follow her--shining and depthless like
blue steel.

"I do not expect to stay long, father," she told him. "Only until I
find something to do. I am a woman now, you know, and must support
myself."

She spoke as one might speak to a child, and he had nodded and
mumbled: "Yes, yes . . . a woman now . . . certainly." Then he had
begun to laugh. She had always hated this silent, shaking laugh of
his. Even now it stirred something in her, something urgent and
afraid. But she was too tired to be urged or frightened. She refused
to listen.

In the afternoon she had sat out in the sun, not thinking, willing
to be rested by the quiet and drugged by the scent of pine and sea.
To her had come Sami, appearing out of nothing as by magic, his
butter-colored face aglow with joy. Sami had almost broken up her
weary calm. He was so glad, so warm, so alive, so little! But even
while he snuggled against her side, her Self had drifted away. It
would not feel or know. It was not ready yet for anything save rest.

Li Ho had made luncheon, Li Ho had brought tea. Otherwise Li Ho had
left her alone. About one thing only had he been fussy. She must not
sleep in her old room. It was not aired. It needed "heap scrub." He
had arranged, he said, a little tent "all velly fine." desire was
passive. She did not care where she slept.

When bedtime had come, Li Ho had taken her to the tent. It was
cozily hidden in the bush and, as he had promised, quite
comfortable. But she thought his manner odd. "Are you nervous, Li
Ho?" she asked with a smile.

The Chinaman blinked rapidly, disdaining reply. But in his turn
asked a question--his first since her arrival. Had the honorable
Professor Spence received an insignificant parcel? Desire replied
vaguely that she did not know. What was in the parcel?

"Velly implotant plasel," said Li Ho gravely. "Honorable husband
arrive plenty click when read um insides."

There had seemed no sense to this. But Desire did not argue. She did
not even attend very carefully when Li Ho added certain
explanations. He had found, it appeared, some papers which had
belonged to her mother and had felt it his duty to send them on.

"Where did you find them, Li Ho?"

Instead of answering this, Li Ho, after a moment's hesitation, had
produced from some recess of his old blue coat an envelope which he
handled with an air of awed respect.

"Li Ho find more plasel too. Pletty soon put um back. Honorable Boss
indulge in fit if missing."

"Which means that it belongs to father and that you have--borrowed
it?" suggested she, delicately.

"No b'long him. B'long you," said Li Ho, thrusting the packet into
her hand. And, as if fearful of being questioned further, he had
taken the candle and departed.

"Leave me the candle, Li Ho," she had called to him. But he had not
returned. And a candle is a small matter. She was used to undressing
in the dusk. Almost at once she had fallen asleep.

Now in the morning, as she lay and watched the shadows of the
leaves, she remembered that, though he had taken the candle, he had
left the letter. It lay there on the strip of old carpet beside her
cot. Desire withdrew her attention from the leaves and picked it up.
With a little thrill she saw that Li Ho had been right. It was her
own name which was written across the envelope . . .

Her own name, faded yet clear on a wrinkled envelope yellowed at the
edges. The seal of the envelope had been broken. . . .

Sometime in her childhood Desire must have seen her mother's
writing. Conscious memory of it was gone, but in the deeper recesses
of her mind there must have lingered some recognition which
quickened her heart at sight of it.

A letter from the dead? No wonder Li Ho had handled it with
reverence. With trembling fingers the girl drew it from its violated
covering.

"Little Desire"--the name lay like a caress--"if you read this it
will be because I am not here to tell you. And, there is no one
else. My great dread is the dread of leaving you. If I could only
look into the future for one moment, and see you in it, safe and
happy, nothing else would matter. But I am afraid. I have always
been too much afraid. You are not like me. I try to remember that.
You are like your grandfather. He was a brave man. His eyes were
grey like yours. He died before you were born and he never knew that
Harry was not really my husband. I did not know it either, then. You
see, he had u wife in England. I suppose he thought it did not
matter. But when he diea, it did matter. There was no one then on
whom either you or I had any claim. I should have been brave enough
to go on by myself. But I was never brave.

"It was then that Dr. Farr, who had been kind through Harry's
illness, asked me to marry him. He was a middle-aged man. He said he
would take care of w both. You were just three months old.

"I know now that I made a terrible mistake. He is not kind. He is
not good. I am terrified of him. But the fear which makes me brave
against other fears is the thought of leaving you. I try to remember
my father. If I had been like him I could have worked for you and we
might have been happy. Perhaps my mother was timid. I don't remember
her.

"I don't know what to put in this letter, or how to make you
understand. I loved your father. He was not a bad man. I am sure he
never harmed anyone. He would have taken care of me all his life.
But he didn't live. It was Dr. Farr who found out about the English
wife. He pointed out that you would have no name and offered to give
you his.

"I did you a great wrong. His name--better far to have no name than
his! I am sure it is a wicked name. So I want you to know that it is
not yours. You have no name by law, but I think, now, that there are
worse things. Your father's name was Harry Strangeways. His people
are English, a good family but very strict. I could not let them
know about us. They would never have forgiven Harry. It would have
been like slandering the dead. Do not blame him, little Desire, for
I am sure he meant to do right. He was always light-hearted. And
kind--always kind. Your laugh is just like his. Think of us both, if
you can, with kindness--your unhappy Mother."

Long before Desire came to the end of the crumpled sheets her tears
were falling hot and thick upon them. Tears which she had not been
able to shed for her own broken hope came easily now for this long
vanished sorrow. Her mother! How pitifully bare lay the shortened
story of that smothered life. Desire's heart, so much stronger than
the heart of her who gave it birth, filled with a great tenderness.
She saw herself once more a little frightened child. She felt again
that sense of Presence in the room. And knew that, for a child's
sake, a gentle soul had not made haste to happiness.

For that gay scamp, her father, Desire had no tear. And no
condemnation. Her mother had loved him. Her gentleness had seen no
flaw. Lightly he had taken a woman to protect through life--to
neglect, as lightly, the little matter of living. Desire let his
picture slip unhindered from her mind.

There was relief, though, in the knowledge that she owed no duty
there--or here. The instinct which had always balked at kinship with
the strange old man who had held her youth in bondage had not been
the abnormal thing she once had feared it was. She had fought
through--but it was good to know that she had fought with Nature,
not against her. At least she could start upon her new life clean
and free. . . .

A pity, though, that life should lie like ashes on her lips!




CHAPTER XXXIX

Nevertheless, and despite the taste of ashes, one must live and take
one's morning bath. desire thought, not without pleasure, of the
pool beneath the tree. Wrapped in her blue kimona, her leaf-brown
hair braided tightly into a thick pigtail and both hands occupied
with towels and soap, she pushed back the tent flap and stepped out
into the green and gold of morning.

The first thing she saw was Benis sitting on a fallen log and
waiting. He had been waiting a long time. In the flashing second
before he saw her, Desire had time to draw one long breath of
wonder. After that, there was no time for anything. The professor's
patience suddenly gave out.

He had intended to begin with an explanation. But it is a poor lover
who can't find a better beginning than that . . . And what could
Desire do, with towels in one hand and soap in the other?

When he released her at last, blushing and glowing, it was to find
the most urgent need for explanation past.

"Idiots, weren't we?" asked Benis happily.

Desire agreed. But her eyes questioned.

"There isn't any Mary, you see," he told her hastily. "Never was;
never could be. (Let me take your soap?) Mary was a figment--mortal
mind, you know. Your fault entirely."

"But--"

"Yes, I know. But I did it to please you. I am a truthful person,
really. (Let me take your towels?) And I thought you had more sense-
-Oh, Desire, darling!"

"But--"

"Oh, I was a fool, too. I admit it. I thought you were fretting
about John. Fancy your fretting about dear old Bones! I thought--oh
well, it seems silly enough now. But the day I found you crying over
his photo-graph--"

"Her photograph," interposed Desire shakily.

"Eh?"

"It was Mary's photograph. I found it on your desk."

"It was John's, when I saw it."

"Yes--but you didn't see it soon enough."

"Oh--you young deceiver! But once you went to John's office and came
away smiling."

"Why not? I went to find Mary. And I didn't find her. When the real
Mary came--"

"There is no real Mary."

"Oh, Benis--isn't she?"

"She positively isn't."

"But you said--"

"I lied, my dear. It was a jolly good lie, though."

"A lie is never--"

"No, but this one was. You wouldn't have married me if I hadn't. And
you told a whopper yourself once. You said that children--" but
Desire refused to listen.

Later on, as they sat together on the log with a squirrel hiding
provender in one of Desire's slippers and another chattering
agreeably in Benis's ear, he told her briefly the history of the
night. That is, he told her all that he thought it needful she
should know. Of the scraps of diary in his pocket he said nothing,--
some day, perhaps, when she had become used to happiness, and the
cottage on the mountain was far away. But now--of what use to drag
out the innermost horror or add an awful query to her memory of her
mother's death? The old man was gone--let the past go with him.

Desire listened silently. Sorrow she could not pretend. The
suddenness of the end was shocking and death is ever awful to the
young. But the eyes she lifted to her husband, though solemn, were
not sad. When he had finished, she slipped into his hand, with new,
sweet shyness, the letter which lifted forever the shadow of the
dead man from across their path.

Benis Spence read it with deep thankfulness. Fate was indeed making
full amends. No dread inheritance now need narrow the way before
them. It meant--he stole a glance at Desire who was industriously
emptying her slipper. The curve of her averted cheek was faintly
flushed. The professor's whimsical smile crept out.

"Let me!" he said. He took her slipper from her and, kneeling, felt
her breath like flowers brush his cheek.

"It was a whopper, Benis," Desire whispered.

Looking up, he saw the open gladness of her face.

THE END

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