Some of Us Are Married/Benson's Day

by Mary Stewart Cutting

 

BENSON'S DAY

BENSON CLARK, hat in hand, sat in the gilded lobby of the hotel, with its pictorial pink-and-green frescoed walls, just outside the gayly musical tea room, where dancers tangoed carefully between its tables. His lean face—still young in spite of those deep lines in it, as though he had been pulling upstream for a long time—was bent eagerly forward, and his keen eyes, under their straight brows, watched the revolving entrance doors for the first glimpse of Cecelie's light figure lilting in, with that graceful way she had, and her golden head held high. It was a girl's privilege to be late, of course, though he had travelled for two days to see her and should leave the following night.

He had been waiting a long time, but so had others.

It began to seem like a mysterious game, in which the people who were seated watched for those who did not appear, while the newcomers eagerly scanned the lines for those who were not there—only at far intervals two figures scored by matching, in joyful, subdued surprise, before hurrying off together.

Benson was not a dweller in the big city—only coming here on rare trips, like the present, from the mining town he happened to be in. All the sights and sounds—the environment, the people—had for the moment an agreeable foreignness that produced a vague exhilaration in addition to that absorbing prospect of meeting Cecelie, but with some vaguely depressing undercurrent, because as yet she had not come.

He had forborne to scan too closely the faces of the throng near him for fear of finding some hampering acquaintance—he had travelled enough to be apt to meet people he knew in any scene—but now a large-busted, bare-throated lady, rising from the chair beside him, revealed just beyond a slender, prettily dressed young woman with a delicate profile about which there seemed to grow something pleasingly familiar. As his eyes rested on her she dropped her muff and, reaching for it, let fall a pair of gloves and a pocketbook. The next instant he was before her, stooping for them.

"Allow me, Mrs. Varley! Perhaps you don't remember me, Benson Clark."

"Oh, I do—I do!" cried Mrs. Varley. A pretty flush overspread her face as she reached out her hand impulsively to him. "To think that it is eight years since we met, when Ferd and I were on our wedding trip! And you were so good! How did you happen to recognize me?"

"I didn't quite—until you began dropping things," he answered with a smile, seating himself beside her, still conscious, as he talked, of every person who passed or entered the revolving doors, with that dual perception that was one of his characteristics. "That brought everything back."

"Wasn't it silly!" said Mrs. Varley. Her eyes shone with delighted reminiscence as she began talking faster and faster. "And wasn't Ferd cross? I think people on their wedding trip are too funny for anything—neither one knows what the other is going to get deeply injured at. I can see his face now as he was introducing you to me on the hotel steps, and all my letters blew away, and the comb fell out of my hair, and the cologne bottle dropped from my bag and smashed!"

"You laughed," said Benson admonishingly.

"Yes; and that only made things worse. I think Ferd was morbidly afraid that people would think me childish and awkward—and he wanted me to seem perfect." Her eyes brimmed happily. "You were so lovely that day taking us to dinner and for the drive, and never forgetting me for a moment; and showing all the time that you knew Ferd was really fine, when he was so miserable and grumpy, and couldn't say a word—not a bit like a honeymooner! Real things turn out so different from the way you dream them, don't they? We've often laughed over that day since; but we've always loved to talk of you. I nearly called my youngest child Clark. Are you married?"

"No."

"Why not? You ought to be—a man like you!"

He offered the official masculine answer:

"I can't get anybody to have me. It's true! You have more than one child?"

"Four!" She flashed a proud glance at him. "The youngest is two—so grown up! I haven't any baby any more." Her tone seemed to have a divine half-regret in it. She broke off: "What have you been doing all this time?"

"Working—mostly." He hesitated slightly before going on; something in her clear eyes seemed to draw him to further speech. "You spoke of real things being different from one's dreams of them—don't you think we ever 'dream true'?"

She shook her head.

"No! Dreams turn out better, often; but, so far as the details go, always different. It's strange how clever they are in eluding us. I always thought my husband would have a tenor voice—and he's Ferd! Oh, here he is now! Ferd, who do you think this is?"

"I won't have to go very far to find out," said Mr. Varley heartily.

He had none of the graces of his wife; but in his large and slightly shabby aspect as a family man his kind smile, shining as through a dusty haze of business preoccupation, showed him to be the good fellow he was. Wealth was evidently one of the dreams that had not materialized.

They all stood talking together, both men with a little tender, chivalrous attitude toward pretty Mrs. Varley in the midst of the more jovial manner. When the couple parted from Benson, after an eager invitation for a future meeting, he sat down once more and watched them as they went off together, with a sort of God-bless-you-my-children-feeling, though Varley ranked him by half a dozen years.

It made him somehow feel lonely. Just this big, simple, commonplace happiness of theirs was what he had grown to long for more than anything else in the world, though the chances seemed less and less that he would ever have it; the mere idea of linking Cecelie with it was like tethering a will-o'-the-wisp to one's hearthstone. All through the pleasant conversation he had been conscious of a gradual sinking of the heart.

The lobby was thinning out; people had drifted off. He realized now—what he had known from the first, with a foreboding to which he had refused to give heed—that she would not, after all her promises, come to meet him. The fact struck him hard.

It was more than four years since they had first met; they had spent a month in the same summer camp together. He had not really known that he had fallen in love until he had gone home—perhaps because the mere fact of being with her had absorbed all power of thought. She was a veritable gleam of a girl—when you left her everything else seemed dark and you could not tell in just what her charm lay. She had that magnetic drawing power which is often independent of the will of its possessor, and which, once felt by the victim, refuses to release its hold.

She was slender and not so tall as she looked; her hair was golden; her eyes varied in colour with her mood; she had a pearly skin, and a red mouth that was as lovely when it drooped as when it smiled.

They swam and fished, and had played tennis, danced and driven together. She was what is called a good sport. They had tramped in the rain, and they had read lying out under the trees in the sun; she broke her engagements with everyone else for him. She had the courage of her delightfully audacious moods—you never could tell what she might say or do!—and she had also the most irrational timidities, out of which she could not be argued. She had a physical elusiveness that partook of her quality of light.

As soon as Benson reached home he had written to her, asking her to marry him. She had replied very sweetly, pleading for time to decide. He had kissed the letter rapturously, with a fatuous vision of the happiness to be his.

It had been a stern chase ever since. She had never come to any decision—except that he had better give up caring for her, though she would miss him terribly if he did. They had corresponded voluminously. Heavens! What hours he had spent writing to her from his bare room in the hotel in the far Western town—what anguished days when her replies were delayed!

He had been here once or twice a year to see her, flying visits looked forward to passionately for months—only to fail of all satisfaction but that of letting his hungry eyes rest on her in the intervals of her many engagements, and leaving her surrounded by a host of men, with the anguished thought that if he could only stay he might win her. She wrote him candidly of all she was doing—scant comfort in that!

There was the letter in which she thought it right to tell him that she had fallen in love with a young officer, home on leave. Benson would always remember the night after he received that letter—he had walked and walked, out of town and along the railroad track that stretched lonesomely across the prairie—walked until the gray dawn drove him back, his face drawn and his eyes burnt out as if from the heat of the fires of hell. It was two weeks before he heard from her again; then she said, thank goodness, the officer was gone; and she hated every man but Benson.

Then there was that time he would always remember by what he had missed—it was just after his last visit—when she had been too unkind, and in one of her audacious flights she had journeyed thirty-six hours by train to the town where he then lived to tell him how dreadfully sorry she was, and take the return train that left in an hour. And then, in a panic of maiden timidity when she alighted at the station, she had taken that return train without seeing him! She had written and confessed it all. And she had been so near!

After that had come the period when she not only hated men but Benson among them, and had left the world to work among the little children in a settlement for two or three months—and was quite happy because, for once, she was some good in the world; or would have been happy if it were not for a strange feeling at times that there was something wrong about her; she could not seem really to love any one—not even him!—and so would have to miss what luckier women had. Then she had come back to society gayer than ever.

And once—he reddened now as he remembered that—he had captured her masterfully in his arms and kissed her. She had stood quite still, with an icy disdain that took all the fire from his blood.

"Well, I never! If here isn't my little Bennie again!"

A clear voice, with a strong English accent, brought him instantly to his feet as a tall lady, passing with a largely moustached gentleman, held out her hand. She had brilliant auburn hair, eyes of intense blue, with artificial shadows below them, and a high colour so natural that it flooded her face as she spoke. Her clinging green silk gown, adorned with dabs of fur, revealed an angular yet graceful thinness; she wore a small straw hat, trimmed with pink rosebuds, gold braid, and a mauve feather, on her vivid hair.

"Mrs. Batsford-Wring!"

"Well, we do meet, don't we? It was the Rawkies last. I haven't a moment now; but come and see us—we're visitin' friends at the Ayreslea. Do now!"

"I'd like to; but I leave to-morrow night," Benson called after her as she hurried on. Everybody was kind but Cecelie!

Benson had hurried, on his arrival the evening before, to the big house where she lived with her father. After her last letter he had telegraphed her that he was coming. Heaven only knows with what dreams he always came! She was lovelier than ver as she lilted across the floor to greet him, with her golden head thrown back and her laughing eyes raised to his. She seemed very glad to see him.

The room was filled with a family party. He had talked to her iron-visaged banker father, to large and smiling Aunt Ida, thin and joking Uncle Henry, and fragile old Cousin Bella, who seemed held together with such difficulty that she might dissolve at any minute.

After his first blank dismay he had been patiently sure of a reward. It came as he was leaving: Cecelie had asked him to meet her at the Venetia at half-past four the next day, and they would have their afternoon uninterrupted. And, after all, she had not come! Oh, she never kept her promises—she fooled you every time! What would have alienated in another was only a deeper allure in her; she drew like a magnet, whatever she did. Why must she always fly from him when he was near?

He had an incredibly insistent vision of following after her down a long, dark street of years, when, as fast as she fled, he gradually gained and gamed until his arms closed tight round her; and instead of standing icily still in that embrace she leaned to him, with her warm lips upraised to his. Different, indeed, from the reality!

In the intense bitterness that surged over him now existence seemed nauseating; this state of things was sapping at the very roots of life. What a spineless thing he had become! He swore to himself in an access of cold fury that, one way or another, this time the thing should end.

There she was now—coming down the corridor, with a slight, pale girl and two men; one dark, supercilious, and foreign, the other a tall boy, leaning over her entranced. As Benson jumped up she detached herself from the group and ran forward to meet him, her light figure, under its long fur stole, arrayed in something blue and shimmery that puffed out above and narrowed down close round her slender ankles, the blue feather in her little hat tilting as she stepped.

"Ah, Cecelie!"

As she stretched out both hands sheer delight filled him; her lovely face broke into an irresistible smile when her eye met his, as one who owns herself caught, and confesses and defies and pleads all at once. When she looked like that you could not help smiling, too.

"You don't know how awfully attractive and gloomy you looked sitting there, with your head on your hand—I actually didn't recognize you!" She stopped short and stared at him blankly. "You don't mean to say you've been waiting for me here all the afternoon?"

"Oh, I've been strolling round part of the time," he replied, with a startled glance at the clock. "I'd no idea it was so late; but everything's all right, now you've come."

"Oh, but I haven't!" she mourned. "I'm with a party. It was an old engagement. When I found I couldn't meet you I telephoned you; I felt dreadfully about it."

"All right; we'll let it go at that," said Benson, gayly. "Leave your friends now and come with me!"

Her eyes sparkled.

"Very well—I will. Oh, no—I can't!" She looked genuinely distressed. "There's a girl I can't leave—what a shame! I'll tell you—you come with us; it was one of the things I tried to telephone you about. We are to dine and go to the theatre." Her lips took on their coaxing smile; her eyes plunged into his. "Do! You shall sit by me all the time—I promise you."

His face changed. "No."

"Oh, dear! You make me so unhappy!" She gazed at him in tender concern, with that provocative effect of sweetly giving that meant—as he knew so well—instant withdrawal if one presumed on it. "Why do you take everything so seriously?" Her voice dropped to a pleading tone. "Why won't you be good and come with us?"

"Because I'm tired of only seeing you with a ruck of other people. Will you be home to-morrow morning?"

Her eyes grew suddenly misty.

"Why, yes." She added hastily: "I have to go out at eleven."

Benson smiled, a peculiar smile that gave an oddly sweet expression to his worn face and a keener glance to his eyes. "This time I'll be there before you go out," he said significantly.

II

It WAS, in fact, hardly half-past ten when Cecelie came slowly lilting down the brownstone steps of the house, dressed in sober gray, with big gray furs, and a little gray hat pulled down closely over her lovely golden head. She looked thoughtfully up and down the street—the air was cold, the pale blue sky full of white and wandering clouds that had come over from the countryside across the river. Down the block some little children were roller-skating with gay cries; no one else was in sight, as she casually assured her- self. As she gazed, a limousine waiting opposite whirled around, stopped, and Benson jumped out, lifting his hat as he came toward her.

"Good morning! I told you you couldn't escape me this time."

"Oh, but I was coming back—honestly! I was, indeed. I was only going up to the sewing school," she protested hastily. "I left word for you to wait for me. I——"

She stopped short suddenly and began to laugh, her eye resting on him with involuntary approval. He looked extremely well groomed and was dressed with particular nicety. His lavender tie harmonized with his brown suit and big overcoat, and the soft hat was brown of a slightly lighter shade; his gloves were of the freshest. His face, usually pale, had a colour in it, and his laughing eyes seemed peculiarly bright. A new exhilaration breathed from him.

"But I'll go back to the house now. Come on in!"

"No; that's not necessary. I'll take you on to your sewing school—or whatever it is. Let me help you in."

He gave the directions to the chauffeur, stepping in after her hastily and closing the door. As he sat down beside her a certain tenseness in him seemed to relax; he gave a quick sigh of relief.

"Where did you get the limousine?" she questioned.

"Hired it. Oh, I nearly forgot!" He reached down under the seat and brought up a great bunch of violets. "Please put them on at once. Here's the pin."

"I thought I smelled something very sweet," she said gratefully, burying her flower-like face in them. "Confess! Didn't you regret not coming with me last night?"

"Infinitely!" His bright gaze rested on her. "I went to see some nice people I'd met in the afternoon—they're very happy and have four children; you wouldn't be interested to hear of them. But I couldn't stay. Then a man I knew found me and I didn't get rid of him until he became intoxicated. I was wild for you! But I shouldn't have fitted in with your party. I'd have knifed your dark friend and just naturally choked that slobbering youth. The young girl wouldn't have enjoyed herself. What's the matter?"

"Oh, Benson, I wish you wouldn't care for me so much!" said Cecelie. Her eyes were full of tears. She put out her slim, gray-gloved hand and laid it on his coat sleeve lightly for an instant. "If you knew how I'd thought about you! I——"

"Haven't you cared sometimes, too—a little?"

"Yes—oh, yes—lots! When you're away you seem so near to me; I fancy each time before I see you that it's going to be.—And then it isn't! I only want to get away! I've tried and tried to make myself love you, but there's some dreadful twist in me. I cry sometimes because you're so good to me—honest I do! I couldn't bear you not to care for me any more." Her golden eyelashes drooped; her breath caught. "I've thought sometimes I'd get married and trust to the love coming afterward—but I know I'd go crazy if I felt that I couldn't get free. There was something left out of my composition when the Lord made me—I just can't care for any one."

She buried her tearful face against the violets, as if for comfort from their soft and fragrant depths.

"I wouldn't feel that way about it," said Benson.

Something in his voice made her look up suddenly; her gaze took in the outer scene and her voice changed.

"Why, Benson! We've gone ever so far beyond Fifty-first Street! This is One Hundred and Fourth."

"Yes; I believe it is," he answered, his eyes following hers. "That's all right, though."

"All right! What do you mean?"

"Why"—he fumbled for words under her direct and indignant gaze—"why, it's this way, Cecelie—— For heaven's sake, don't look at me like that! Don't get any foolishness into your head; I'm not running away with you. But you never will give me a chance to see you alone and speak for myself; so this time I've taken it. You're going to spend this day with me." He put up his hand detainingly, as she made a movement forward. "There's no use in your talking to the chauffeur—he's fixed. I've got it all planned out; I'm going to take you up into the country to Paley's. I telegraphed Mrs. Paley from the hotel this morning. I hear there's almost nobody there—this time in the week. We'll have a walk in the woods afterward and there'll be the long ride home. It's my last throw! You'll either consent to marry me this evening, dear—oh, in your father's house!—and go back with me to-morrow morning, or I drop out, so far as you are concerned. There'll be no more of me ever."

"You want me to marry you to-night?"

"That's what I said."

She laughed.

"It does sound funny, doesn't it?" he answered with a responsive smile. "Hello!"

The car had slightly slackened its pace in avoiding a construction truck that took up all the road. Swift as lightning Cecelie's hand was on the catch of the door—in another instant Benson's arms were around her, dragging her back, while she fought him wildly. Then there was a moment's fierce and silent struggle until he held both her hands in his capable grip, and gently forced her down on the seat.

"Don't do that again!" he ordered sternly. "You little wildcat! Do you want to kill yourself?"

"You're not behaving like a gentleman!" she flared at him furiously.

"All right; let it go at that."

"You're making me hate you—really!"

"Very well, only don't try jumping out again; it won't work! You can't catch me off my guard." His voice changed irritably. "For—heaven's—sake! Can't I for once have what I want—when it's so little—without all this fuss about it? You know you'd go off for a motor ride with any one else without turning a hair."

Her face contracted, she moved herself disdainfully as far away from him as possible into the blue-cushioned corner, her gray furs half round her. Her hair looked very golden, her skin very pearly, her lips very red—but there was a stony expression in the gray eyes that gazed past him. Benson's eyes were fixed on her.

They were whirling along now over the post road under the wintry sky, away beyond the confines of the city, with woods or fields or scattered houses on each side, and an occasional gateway leading into one of the big country places. They rode on and on and on—in silence.

Never had her magnetic charm been greater; yet, with the quick perception of a lover, Benson was conscious that in this apparent success of his temporary capture of her he had lost something; a slight instinctive leaning toward him, which he had always felt unerringly under all her caprices, had changed, with the merest hint of compulsion, into a steely resistance that might turn at any moment into downright dislike.

He grimly foresaw only failure at the end of his day, yet his exhilaration remained. Who that says he has no hope really has none? We get ahead in life by counting the milestones to the hopes we never reach! He wondered how much her pretty shoes cost, with a tender sense of possession; for the time being she was his anyhow.

Suddenly Cecelie hid her face in her arm, she shook from head to foot.

"What's the matter?" he asked, bending over, in quick distress. "Cecelie—you're not feeling so badly as that, dear? Cecelie!"

"Don't," she said, in a strangled voice, and suddenly raised her face. She was shaking with laughter. "Oh, dear!" she gasped. "It's all so perfectly ridiculous! You sit looking at me, with your eyes getting bigger and bigger, like an owl's. It's anything but se-se-ductive. Oh, dear!" Her voice rose piercingly in peal after peal, with a caught breath in between.

"Stop!" said Benson peremptorily, as her voice became an hysterical shriek. "Stop! Stop! Stop! The people in the two cars that just passed us are looking back—one is turning round! We'll have the police after us. Stop, Cecelie! Stop, I say!"

"I can't—I can't!"

"Yes, you can. You hear me? You must!"

"I can't—I can't!"

"You must." The contagion of a smile spread to his own face, but the control in his voice reached her. "There, there! You're letting up a little. Lie back in the cushions and rest. Heavens! What a care you are to me!"

"Yes; I hope you realize that," she said defiantly. "I don't see what you brought me out for if you're only going to sit and stare at me."

"Oh, we've got plenty of time to talk. For one thing, I was wondering how much your clothes cost—I see you'll be an awful bill of expense to me! But I fancy I can stand it—I've been saving up for four years." His voice changed. "Another thing I was thinking of—you remember that 'Last Ride,' by Browning, you used to read to me in Maine? I'm not much on poetry, you know, but I liked that. I was imagining now how we might go on like this forever—in a limousine! That's modernizing it with a vengeance, isn't it? I'm counting a lot on that ride back this evening. Suppose the world did end to-night?"

"Benson, don't!" she said plaintively. "I'm beginning to feel queer." She put out her hand with an appealing little gesture. Her red lips quivered; her lovely eyes sought his.

"Benson! Benson, I'm tired. If you love me take me home. You don't know how nice I'll be to you; honest, I will! Please do."

He looked at her searchingly—her eyes shifted; her eyelids fell. He smiled and slowly shook his head.

"Sorry; but I can't."

She flushed hotly and drew quickly over into her corner.

"Then take the consequences!" she said, and turned her face from him.

III

Paley's was seventy miles from town. In summer it was a charming place—all a green latticework of dining balconies overlooking the woodland and the inlet; but in the frozen whiter it had a somewhat chilly and meretricious air, like a lady in a low-necked muslin standing on the ice. The small room, however—empty as Benson had hoped it would be—was warm with crimson rugs and a leaping fire; the cloth on the little table set for two seemed dazzlingly white, the silver and glass on the oaken shelves unusually glittering. There was an atmosphere of warmth and hominess about the place; Mrs. Paley herself, rosy-cheeked and white-aproned, came forward to welcome them, and led Cecelie away to take off her wraps.

The little meal, when it was served, was charming, the waiter assiduous, his eyes popping out intermittently like rabbits from behind a bush. The only drawback was that Cecelie, lovelier than ever in the glow of the fire, sat with one elbow on the table, her head turned away, looking out of the window at the frozen inlet and the tall lightning-scarred tree in the distance—in the far top of which dangled something that the waiter explained was a fish-hawk's deserted nest—and refused, in spite of Benson's consternation, even to taste anything.

"But don't let that make any difference to you," she urged amiably. "Eat all you want."

"Oh, I will!" he replied coolly, yet with a chagrin it was impossible not to feel.

He had looked forward to that little meal alone with her, had been boyishly desirous that everything should be of the best, and that it should please her. He was a hungry man; but it is hard to eat enjoyingly through a bill of fare with a speechless vis-à-vis who will not so much as drink a glass of water with you. The waiter's assiduity became more and more agitated; he bent lower and lower with each dish, until he seemed almost to be proffering it on bended knee to the beautiful lady, who always refused.

There were voluble, half-heard conversations in the kitchen. Mrs. Paley herself appeared again, deeply solicitous. Was there anything the young lady would like? It could be cooked in a moment. Cecelie's golden lashes lifted; her eyes responded sweetly as well as her voice:

"Thank you so much; but I really don't want anything."

Benson could hardly help fondly smiling at the effect she produced; but he pushed his dessert away from him untasted at last.

"I would like to shake you!" he stated soberly.

"Well, I never!" said a clear voice, with an English accent. "Well, we do meet, don't we?"

Benson turned and sprang to his feet. From the side door the auburn-haired Mrs. Batsford-Wring was approaching. She wore the furry green silk and yellow straw hat, with a motoring coat over her arm, and was followed by the gentleman of the night before, tall and robustly bony, with a big moustache slightly streaked with gray, well-cut features, and a military bearing.

"What a surprise!" said Benson, shaking hands.

"This is my brother, Captain Hawkly, just back from Africa," announced Mrs. Batsford-Wring. "Oh, I've told him about me little Bennie! The motor broke down with us; we left it in the road with the chauffeur, and came over here for some tea before taking the train to town."

"Miss Sherwood, this is my friend, Mrs. Batsford-Wring, who nearly saved my life—once when I was ill at Baden—and earned my undying gratitude—and her brother, Captain Hawkly," said Benson formally. "Miss Sherwood is the daughter of Mr. Nevitt Sherwood, of whom you may have heard."

"How d'ye do? Some people are so particular about whom they meet when they're travellin'—but I'm nawt," said Mrs. Batsford-Wring pleasantly, with a stare at Cecelie, who was deeply observing in her turn, while the captain's glance fell on her, with the instantly resulting gleam. "Bennie's not tellin', though, of the time he pulled me out of the snowbank by my leg, in the Dakotah blizzard. That was a night!"

"I should say so! And how is Mr. Batsford-Wring?" asked Benson, smiling.

"He came a cropper in the huntin' field a twelve-month ago and the best thing for everyone, too," said his widow calmly. "Poor Batty! He always was a filthy brute—I never liked him. And you? Are you not married yourself?"

"No, indeed," said Benson, with an involuntary look at Cecelie, who, slim and graceful as a willow wand, was talking to the admiring captain.

"Shall we have some tea together?" pursued Mrs. Batsford-Wring hospitably. "You were very late finishin' your luncheon, weren't you?—but a cup of tea is refreshin' at any time. Now don't look at your watch, Bennie; you can't hurry off when we've so much to talk over. You'll have tea with us, Miss Sherwood?"

"Indeed I will!" said Cecelie gayly.

In the slight bustle that ensued in getting another table set and the preparation of tea things, Benson found a furtive chance to press the hand by his side—a yearning, clinging touch, light as it was, that seemed to say: "Ah, understand how much I want to get off to walk with you!"

There was no response, however. Her eyes when they met his had an elfish, mocking light in them. His face reddened for an instant and then turned pale, set enigmatically in its lines of habitual patience.

The tea-table episode, however—if it were not for that restless knowledge of how many precious moments he was losing—was not in itself unpleasing. Mrs. Batsford-Wring had the English woman's soothing official attitude toward that superior being, man. After ordering for her brother the special accessories he liked, and sending back his toast to be done over, and jumping up to pull down the blind a trifle to shade his eyes, she had solicitously placed a screen between Benson and the fire, and then sat with her graceful lankiness drooping toward him, and her enormous violet eyes waiting on his as she offered up autobiography, anecdote, or sentiment for his entertainment.

Benson was to call her by her pet name, Chickie, as he used to do. She deftly cast a web of comfort round him. Once or twice, indeed, he shot a glance at Cecelie, which said, dominantly: "This game is not over yet, wait until my time comes!" while she smiled beneath her golden lashes at the captain's handsome face, her light figure, with its suggestion of withdrawal, her head tilted back as she leaned forward, proving, as ever, a magnet.

She seemed to murmur only provocative monosyllables to his persuasive eloquence, which was punctuated by the loud hawhaws of his delighted enjoyment. Once Benson heard him murmur:

"I am a silly ass! If you'll only tell me what you want me to say——"

And her answer:

"I'll tell you later if I get a chance."

And his again:

"Oh, if that's all, you'll get it!"

The remarks served to cut short the tea-hour; Benson stood up suddenly and, excusing himself, went to settle with the beamingly talkative Mrs. Paley, and to interview the chauffeur. There was time yet for that planned walk with Cecelie before the return; but when he came back into the room Mrs. Batsford-Wring was there alone, stretched out indolently in a big chair by the fire.

"Your young friend was tellin' us that you and she are only by way of bein' chummy," she stated. "She says it's quite the thing here—you go off for the day without any preparation at all, you just tellyphone home; so simple, isn't it? My brother is all for making what you call a date—is it not?—with her."

"And where is she now?" asked Benson, looking around.

"She's gone out walkin' with him—they're so interested in the fish-hawk's nest," said Mrs. Batsford-Wring. "Ah, what is this? Are they coming back already?"

Cecelie's face appeared in the doorway, with Captain Hawkly towering over her.

"I just ran back for an instant," she announced sweetly, "to ask you to return in the car with us, Mrs. Batsford-Wring—you and your brother—instead of going by train. We can take them as well as not—can't we, Benson?"

Her tone faltered unexpectedly over the last words as she looked at him. There was a slight pause in which some strange tingling electrical disturbance made itself felt.

Then he answered:

"Certainly; that's a fine idea!"

There was a note in his voice she had never heard before. His face seemed to have changed to a coldness—a sternness—an indifference—so that he was no longer the same person. He began to laugh suddenly.

"You come and see the fish-hawk's nest with me, Chickie!" He waved his hand to the others. "Go on! We'll follow."

IV

The path down which they walked slowly led over roots, briers, rocks, slippery dead leaves, and the tangled, sinuous underbrush of whiter, on which Mrs. Batsford-Wring's gown left little dabs of fur in spite of all Benson's assiduous efforts in her behalf.

Chickie's colouring did not seem so barbaric out of doors amid the general brownness and russet, the white gleam of the frozen inlet, and the brilliance of the sun—a crimson ball before its setting. She certainly had a nice way with one. She wanted to be kind; to please him. It gave him a sudden warm sense of gratitude; he veered with fierce impatience from any thought of his former fond imaginings of this day that was to have been his. What was it that Mrs. Varley had said? "Things turn out so different from the way you dream them!"

He lingered with Chickie along the way; but when they finally reached the objective point the other two were there, sitting on a big, jutting stone in the midst of the dead leaves and the brown and beaten sedge, Cecelie with a downcast face and the captain murmuring in her ear.

The tree stretched bare and gaunt far, far upward; above swung the deserted nest, from here a small rough black-and-white mass, to which the fish-hawk in his days of wild and fierce living, six feet of him from strong wing-tip to wing-tip, had triumphantly brought his gleaming prey. Some sort of existence that—to swoop and strike and take and soar again, one's object accomplished, up, up into the wide kingdom of the sky and the safety of the winds and the rocking branches!

"And what is that hanging from the nest?" asked Mrs. Batsford-Wring idly.

"It must be a feather," said Benson, bending over her. "Would you like it as a souvenir?"

"Very much—but you couldn't possibly get it, dear boy."

"Oh, couldn't I!" He laughed and stood up, beginning to take off his coat. "Just watch me."

"Benson! Don't," said Cecelie sharply.

He turned in surprise, as though he had forgotten that she was there.

"Why not?"

"Mrs. Paley told me that lots of boys have tried to get the nest and couldn't. You can see where the lightning struck—those jagged branches may not hold you."

"Oh, the tree's all right."

"But, Benson! Please!" Her colour flickered. "I ask you not to. It's idiotic; I hate to see people in high places—it makes me dizzy."

"But Mrs. Batsford-Wring wants the feather," he argued seriously. "And if she wants it she must have it."

"Well, you are rather a dear, aren't you?" said Mrs. Batsford-Wring caressingly.

"Oh, he's sporty," agreed the captain. "If he fails, I'll bring it down for you, Miss Sherwood."

"I won't fail!" said Benson.

He gave a slight run and threw himself at the trunk of the tree, his feet grappling for a foothold; his wiry form swarmed up until he reached the first branch and stood out on it erect, his figure black against the crimson light beyond, before he turned and swung himself agilely upward, testing with eye and hand each jagged branch or stump before bearing his weight on it—up and up and up, with a clean, pulse-filling joy in the keen usage of his powers, until he reached the swaying nest and triumphantly waved the feather to the watching group below.

He rested a moment before attempting the descent, looking out over this brave new world—there was an invigorating tang in the air, the silver of the inlet reflected a rosy glow, the hoarse caw-caw of a swiftly flying crow broke against a wide, rarefied stillness.

"Well, he can climb, can't he!" said Mrs. Batsford-Wring. "Really he's quite an extraor'n'ry man, you know, Miss Sherwood; he does everything so well. The tales they tell of him out in Dakotah! My word, but those women at the ranch were mad over him! I thought he'd be married by now to the little Dalgarnie girl; but it seems he's nawt. Well, Bennie, you're back to earth again, aren't you?" Her violet eyes welcomed him.

Cecelie's face had flushed unaccountably. Was this the Benson she knew?

"And here's your feather, Chickie," he said, touching Mrs. Batsford-Wring gently on the cheek with it before handing it to her.

It was already dusk when the party at last started on the way back. Cecelie, looking stealthily at Benson from time to time, felt strangely removed from him as she sat slim and straight by Mrs. Batsford-Wring, with the two men opposite. Something seemed to have gone from him—it was as if, though he was conventionally polite, he no longer had any sense of her presence. It gave her a frightened feeling, and Cecelie was not used to feeling frightened.

His keen, bright eyes met hers with no suggestion of interest in them—his lips had a line she had never seen before; he looked both cold and hard.

She had whispered, with sudden compunction, before they entered the car:

"I'm sorry—I'm sorry we are not to have our Last Ride together!"

And he had answered aloud casually:

"Oh, it makes no difference at all, really!" It was strange to look at her and feel that what he said was true.

Mrs. Batsford-Wring frankly composed herself for sleep, in which she had a brilliant cubist effect. Benson and the captain kept up an interested conversation on the sports in Africa and how they differed from those in the States, while the former kept up that double tide of thought which was not exactly thought, but a sensation through everything of being free. It was as though he had been wounded so deeply that there was no more feeling left—something had been killed in him. He might wake some day to worse pain than ever; but just now it was entirely gone.

Cecelie sat with her golden head against the cushions, her red lips slightly parted, her eyes flashing out under their golden lashes; that soft, bright pearliness of hers and her magnetic charm were never more apparent.

Captain Hawkly's continually staring eyes took note of her. Benson, for the first time in years, could gaze and feel no thrill or any desire for her—the girl he had loved so wildly! Why had he ever loved her? Why had he thought she would care some day—as he had always persistently, in spite of everything, felt in his heart she would? That was what had made him constant, had given him hope, had made him masterfully take this last stand. It was all over now—and the beauty of it was that he did not care!

It was a long, long ride back—that ride to which he had so looked forward. Cecelie bent over once—ostensibly to pick up her handkerchief—as the car whizzed over a bridge, the lights above reflected in the black water that stretched out beyond on each side.

"Don't look at me like that!" she whispered fiercely between her little white teeth.

"I beg your pardon," he responded quickly in the same low tone. "I wasn't conscious that I was looking at you at all, truly!"

"I didn't ask you to bring me out!" she said, as though in answer to some voiced aspersion.

"No, no; of course you didn't," he replied at once. "It was all foolishness on my part. The whole thing is done with. Suppose we just let the subject drop."

"Very well," she assented, trying to keep back the unexpected tears.

Mrs. Batsford-Wring emerged from her doze.

"How you do fidget," she said amiably to Cecelie.

It was a long, long ride—perhaps Cecelie was feeling that she had lost something, too, though she talked gayly to the captain.

They were speeding, along the smooth post road at last, rapidly nearing the town. Now the lights of the city came into view, the houses growing closer and closer together—more lights, and noise and clatter.

"And here we are!" said Benson as the limousine stopped before the Sherwood mansion. He helped Cecelie up the steps after her adieus to the other guests, while the machine still stood waiting. "I'll begin to say good-night to you now, so as not to keep you standing here."

She looked up in blank surprise.

"Why, aren't you coming in?"

"No; I think not, if you'll excuse me."

"But, Benson! There are ever so many things I've been counting on saying to you all the way home. I expected you to come to dinner, of course—I——"

"I'm sorry; but I promised Mrs. Batsford-Wring to go back with them to the Ayreslea—they've some sort of party on hand to-night. And, by the way, I am afraid this will have to be good-bye, too, for some years. It's not likely that I'll see you again; I leave to-morrow."

The door was wide open now; the warmth streamed out from the brightly lighted interior as they still stood there, her lovely face raised perplexedly to his.

"Not see me again! But I don't understand. Why do you talk that way? Benson, you're not like yourself—your eyes are so dark—you look so proud."

He smiled involuntarily.

"Don't let my looks bother you," he responded gently; adding, with a deeper note: "I shall always thank you for many kindnesses in the past—believe that, Cecelie! You'd really better go in—you'll take cold standing here. Good-bye!"

He smiled again, took off his hat, ran down the steps like one very glad to go away, and disappeared in the limousine, which went whirring down the street.

V

That was a fine night! Benson did not know when he had enjoyed himself so much, with a strangely unthinking pleasure that seemed to have no connection with either past or future, but to be just the outcome of the gay moment.

After the little dinner with Chickie and the handsome captain, augmented by the presence of a sprightly young English artist and his pretty wife and young sister, the party had gone forth to take in the more conventional Bohemian shows.

They had danced experimentally, with much laughter, until after midnight, and supped after that. Mrs. Batsford-Wring, frankly solicitous for the pleasure of all the men, gave her pervading atmosphere of comfort to the evening, with a special little undercurrent of real warmth for Benson which touched him deeply.

"You'll not be wantin' me for a partner long," she warned him at the beginning of the revel. "My brother says I dahnce like a horse."

"Yes—and a spavined one at that, you know," put in the captain.

"My word! But that was a nasty one, wasn't it?" said his sister agreeably.

"Oh, you can't scare me off that way!" said Benson. "You'll certainly dance as well as I do."

"You're lookin' a lot more fit than you were; it's a pity I cahn't take you in hand oftener, isn't it?" she murmured once as, his arms around her, her graceful lankiness dipped and reared wildly to the rhythm of the music.

Benson's "Yes," gave quick assent; his hand pressed hers warmly.

"You're the kindest woman I ever knew, Chickie."

"Well, I've had some rawtten times myself, you know!" she answered simply, pressing his hand in return.

Though it was so late when he got to bed in the small hotel where he always stopped, he rose early to a day that from his high window was all a blue winter sky and a gilding sun on the housetops, and smoke-wreaths mingling with the light. He was shaving, and whistling during the process, when the telephone on his stand rang; he put down the razor to answer it.

"Hello!—Yes, this is Mr. Clark. Who is this?"

"Benson—it's Cecelie."

His face underwent a hardening change.

"Yes—Cecelie."

"Benson, I—I called you up so early because I was afraid you might go out. You forgot to leave me your address."

"I really don't know yet where I'm going to be."

"Oh! Benson——"

He curbed a rising irritation.

"Yes; I'm waiting."

Her voice reached him sweetly:

"I want you to come and see me this morning, Benson."

"I'm afraid it's impossible. I can't get so far up town again before I go. I have business appointments."

The thought of going to that house again—of walking up those brownstone steps as he had too many times before—was suddenly repugnant to him beyond words. He could not do it.

"But, Benson"—the lightness of her tone had changed to one of appeal—"I must see you before you go; honest, I must!" The familiar accents seemed to set some chord vibrating that he desired above all things not to feel. She went on: "If you can meet me at the Venetia—that's on your way—at ten o'clock, or before—any hour you say—I'll only keep you for a few moments. Benson, please!"

There was a pause.

"Very well," he answered at last reluctantly.

Make it three o'clock, then—I'll be there if I can on my way to the train. I've got to ring off now."

Why had she called him up? It shadowed the day for him; it tethered him still to all that bitter past which he wanted to be done with. He finished his shaving, but he no longer whistled at it.

It was long after the appointed hour when he entered the revolving entrance doors he had watched all that other memorable afternoon for the sight of Cecelie. She was sitting now—as a quick glance showed him—almost where he had sat, the lobby and the corridors filled as before, her slender figure slightly drooping forward over the big gray muff, and her golden head leaning on one hand.

Her face, as she raised it smilingly to his, gave him a start—her eyes looked very large; there was a strange translucence in the unusual pallor of her cheeks, but she had still that drawing quality which a person might curiously observe even without feeling it. She rose eagerly and went forward to greet him.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come! I've been waiting a long while."

"Yes; I was afraid I shouldn't be able to get here at all," Benson said formally. "I haven't much time now."

"Shall we go where we can talk?" she asked him.

"Just as you say."

She lilted across the empty space of a big drawing room, her head thrown back as usual, to a windowed alcove half concealed by heavy red curtains that shut in the immense cushioned armchairs in which they seated themselves. He could not help thinking cynically that she seemed to know the place very well, as he sat facing her with that new look in his eyes, one hand lying on his knee, waiting for her to begin, while she leaned forward.

"Benson, I'm so sorry about yesterday! I"—she went on with hurried lightness in spite of the slight stiffness that came over him—"I didn't know it was going to be like that to you—honest! I only thought——" Her agitation grew; she twisted her slender hands together. "No! You must let me speak. I only meant—I thought it would be just something to laugh over afterward; I—Benson——" She faltered; the great tears suddenly brimmed in her lovely eyes, but she smiled through them. "I know I've been such a horrid girl! But last night—I found out what it was to care—at last. I didn't know it could hurt so much; but—but—I do care for you! It's—it's dreadfully funny, isn't it—that I do?"

He had put up his hand at first as though to stop her, listening afterward with a forced patience; but now his face reddened violently—a strange tremor seemed to shake him. He looked round desperately as one seeking to escape from something dread and mastering. His eyes searched her face and a bitter smile overspread his.

"Oh, I don't believe you care—as much as you think now," he said. "It's very good of you—but it wouldn't last, you know; you'll feel quite differently to-morrow. I'd better go now, Cecelie."

"But, Benson——"

She had risen to her feet now—as had he—drawing farther back into the shelter of the curtain, her eyes hanging on his. He stood, irresolute. The words came as if in spite of himself:

"Would you marry me now and go back with me?"

She shrank instinctively, with drooping head.

"Oh, Benson——"

He raised his eyebrows, spreading out his hands as he spoke.

"You see! That's what it all amounts to. There's no use of my staying."

"You don't believe me?"

"No, I don't."

"But you shall!"

She flushed and paled, looking wildly around her; and then, like one who suddenly hurls herself from all hampering bonds, her arms—trembling—reached up round his neck and clung there; her lips—trembling too—reached upward for his; her exquisite magnetic charm stole through every sense.

"Oh! Oh, you must believe me now! … Never—never for any man but you, Benson! I want to sit by your hearth; I want to be in your home—always; I want to—to be your wife—now—this minute—any time you say!"

Was that a sob he gave as his strong arms closed around her, and that mighty tide of love rushed back over him?

His day? Oh, Mrs. Varley was right; better than any dreams of it—far, far better!