The Pines of Lory/Chapter 9
IX
A SINNER’S RECOMPENSE
After a lapse of time–an unremembered period of whose length he had no conception–Pats awoke.
Was it a little temple of carved wood in which he lay? At each corner stood a column; above him a little dome of silk, ancient and much faded. Gradually–and slowly–he realized that he was reposing on a bed of vast dimensions and in a room whose furnishings belonged to a previous century. A mellow, golden light pervaded the apartment. This light, which gave to all things in the room an air of unreality–as in an ancient painting luminous with age–came from the sunshine entering through a piece of antiquated silk, placed by considerate hands against the window.
Pats’s wandering eyes encountered a lady in a chair. She sat facing him, a few feet away, her head resting easily against the carved woodwork behind, a hand upon each arm of the seat. She was asleep. In this golden mist she seemed to the half-dreaming man a vision from another world–something too good to be true–a divine presence that might vanish if he moved. Or, perhaps, she might fade back into a frame and prove to be only another of the portraits that hung about the room. So far as he could judge, with his slowly awakening senses, he was gazing upon the most entrancing face he had ever beheld. At first the face was unfamiliar, but soon, with returning memory, he recalled it. But it seemed thinner now. There were dark lines beneath the eyes, and something about the mouth gave an impression of weariness and care; and these were not in the face as he had known it. However, the closed lids, and the head resting calmly against the back of the high chair made a tranquil picture. For a long time he lay immovable, his eyes drinking in the vision. There was nothing to disturb the silence save the solemn ticking of a clock in another part of the cottage. He heard, beyond the big tapestry, the sound of a dog snapping at a fly. Pats smiled and would have whistled to Solomon, but he remembered the weary angel by his bed. With a sort of terror he recalled this lady’s capacity for contempt.
Being too warm for comfort he pushed, with exceeding gentleness and caution, the bed-clothes farther from his chin. But the movement, although absolutely noiseless, as he believed, caused the eyes of the sleeper to open. She arose, then stood beside him. A cool hand was laid gently upon his forehead; another drew up the bed-clothes to his chin, as they were before. With anxious eyes he studied her face, and when he found therein neither contempt nor aversion he experienced an overwhelming joy. And she, detecting in the invalid’s eyes an unwonted look, bent over and regarded him more intently. As his eyes looked into hers he smiled, faintly, experimentally, in humble adoration. The face above him lit up with pleasure. In a very low tone she exclaimed:
“You are feeling better!”
He undertook to reply but no voice responded. He tried again, and succeeded in whispering:
“Has anything happened?”
“You have been very ill.”
“How long?”
“This is the eighth day.”
“The eighth day!” He frowned in a mental effort to unravel the past. “Then I must have been–out of my head.”
“Yes, most of the time.” She was watching him with anxious eyes. “Perhaps you had better not talk much now. Try and sleep again.”
“No, I am–full of sleep. Is this the same house–we discovered that first day?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes, and again she rested a hand upon his brow.
“Who is here besides you?” he asked.
“No one–except Solomon.”
“Solomon!” and he smiled. “Is Solomon well?”
“Oh, yes! Very well.”
“Then you have taken care of me all this time?”
She turned away and took up a glass of water from a table near the bed.
“Yes; Solomon and I together. Are you thirsty? Would you like anything?”
Pats closed his eyes and took a long breath. There was no use in trying to say what he felt, so he answered in a husky voice, which he found difficult to control:
“Thank you. I am thirsty.”
“Would you like tea or a glass of water?”
“Water, please.”
“Or, would you prefer grapes?”
“Grapes!”
“Yes, grapes, or oranges, or pears, whichever you prefer.”
His look of incredulity seemed to amuse her. “Do you remember the two boxes and the barrel left by the Maid of the North on the beach with our baggage?”
He nodded.
“Well, one of those boxes was filled with fruit.”
“Is there plenty for both of us?”
“More than enough.”
“Then I will have a glass of water first and then grapes–and all the other things.”
He drank the water, and as she took away the empty glass, he said, in a serious tone: “Miss Marshall, I wish I could tell you how mortified I am and how–how–”
“Mortified! At what?”
“All this trouble–this–whole business.”
“But you certainly could not help it!”
“That’s very kind of you, but it’s all wrong–all wrong!”
She smiled and moved away, and as she drew aside the tapestry and disappeared, he turned his face to the wall, and muttered, “Disgraceful! Disgraceful! I must get well fast.”
And he carried out this resolve. Every hour brought new strength. In less than a week he was out of bed and sitting up. During this early period of convalescence–the period of tremulous legs and ravenous hunger–the Fourth of July arrived, and they celebrated the occasion by a sumptuous dinner. There was soup, sardines, cold tongue, dried-apple sauce, baked potatoes, fresh bread, and preserved pears, and the last of the grapes. At table, Elinor faced the empty chair that held the miniature, for the absent lady’s right to that place was always respected. Pats sat at the end facing the door. They dined at noon. A bottle of claret was opened and they drank to the health of Uncle Sam.
Toward the end of the dinner, Pats arose, and with one hand on the table to reinforce his treacherous legs, held aloft his glass. Looking over to the dog, who lay by the open door, his head upon his paws, he said:
“Solomon, here’s to a certain woman; of all women on earth the most unselfish and forgiving, the most perfect in spirit and far and away the most beautiful–the Ministering Angel of the Pines. God bless her!”
At these words Solomon, as if in recognition of the sentiment, arose from his position near the door, walked to Elinor’s side and, with his habitual solemnity, looked up into her eyes.
“Solomon,” said Pats, “you have the soul of a gentleman.”
In Elinor’s pale face there was a warmer color as she bent over and caressed the dog.
After the dinner all three walked out into the pines, Pats leaning on the lady’s arm. The day was warm. But the gentle, southerly breeze came full of life across the Gulf. And the water itself, this day, was the same deep, vivid blue as the water that lies between Naples and Vesuvius. The convalescent and his nurse stopped once or twice to drink in the air–and the scene.
Pats filled his lungs with a long, deep breath. “I feel very light. Hold me fast, or I may float away.”
Both his head and his legs seemed flighty and precarious. Those two glasses of claret were proving a little too much–they had set his brain a-dancing. But this he kept to himself. She noticed the high spirits, but supposed them merely an invalid’s delight in getting out of doors.
Under the big trees they rested for a time, in silence, Elinor gazing out across the point, over the glistening sea beyond. The shade of the pines they found refreshing. The convalescent lay at full length, upon his back, looking up with drowsy eyes into the cool, dark canopy, high above. Soothing to the senses was the sighing of the wind among the branches.
“This is good!” he murmured. “I could stay here forever.”
“That may be your fate,” and her eyes moved sadly over the distant, sailless sea. “It is a month to-day that we have been here.”
“So it is, a whole month!”
Elinor sighed. “There is something wrong, somewhere. It seems to me the natural–the only thing–would be for somebody to hunt us up.”
“Certainly.”
“Could they have sailed by this bay and missed us?”
“Not unless they were idiots. Everybody on the steamer knew we sailed into a bay to get here.”
“Still, they may have missed us.”
“Well, suppose they did go by us, once or twice, or several times; people don’t abandon their best friends and brothers in that off-hand fashion.”
After a pause he added, “Something may have happened to Father Burke or to Louise.”
“But even then,” said Elinor, turning toward him, “wouldn’t they try and discover why I had not arrived? And wouldn’t they hunt you up?”
“No, I was to be a surprise. None of them knew I was coming. They think I am still in South Africa.”
There was a long silence, broken at last by Pats. “What a hideous practical joke I have turned out! In the first place I strand you here and–”
“No! I was very unjust that day and have repented–and tried to atone.”
“Atone! You! Angels defend us! If atonement was due from you, where am I? Instead of getting you away, I go out of my head and have a fever–and am fed–like a baby.”
She smiled. “That is hardly your fault.”
“Yes, it is. No man would do it. Pugs and Persian cats do that sort of thing. For men there are proper times for giving out. But there is one thing I should like to say–that is, that my life is yours. This skeleton belongs to you, and the soul that goes with it. Henceforth I shall be your slave. I do not aspire to be treated as your equal; just an abject, reverent, willing slave.”
She smiled and played with the ears of the sleeping Solomon.
“I am serious,” and Pats raised himself on one elbow. “Just from plain, unvarnished gratitude–if from nothing else–I shall always do whatever you command–live, die, steal, commit murder, scrub floors, anything–I don’t care what.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“I do.”
“Then stop talking.”
With closed eyes he fell back into his former position. But again, partially raising himself, he asked, “May I say just one thing more?”
“No.”
Again he fell back, and there was silence.
For a time Elinor sat with folded hands gazing dreamily beyond the point over the distant gulf, a dazzling, vivid blue beneath the July sun. When at last she turned with a question upon her lips and saw the closed eyes and tranquil breathing of the convalescent, she held her peace. Then came a drowsy sense of her own fatigue. Cautiously, that the sleeper might not awake, she also reclined, at full length, and closed her eyes. Delicious was the soft air: restful the carpet of pine-needles. No cradle-song could be more soothing than the muffled voices of the pines: and the lady slept.
But Pats was not asleep. He soon opened his eyes and gazed dreamily upward among the branches overhead, then moved his eyes in her direction. For an easier study of the inviting creature not two yards away, he partially raised himself on an elbow. The contemplation of this lady he had found at all times entrancing; but now, from her unconscious carelessness and freedom she became of absorbing interest. Her dignity was asleep, as it were: her caution forgotten. With captivated eyes he drank in the graceful outlines of her figure beneath the white dress, the gentle movement of the chest, the limp hands on the pine-needles. Some of the pride and reserve of the clean-cut, patrician face–of which he stood in awe–had melted away in slumber.
Maybe the murmur of the pines with the drowsy, languorous breeze relaxed his conscience; at all events the contours of the upturned lips were irresistible. Silently he rolled over once–the soft carpet of pine-needles abetting the manœuvre–until his face was at right angles to her own, and very near. Then cautiously and slowly he pressed his lips to hers. This contact brought a thrill of ecstasy–an intoxication to his senses. But the joy was brief.
More quickly than his startled wits could follow she had pushed away his face and risen to her feet. Erect, with burning cheeks, she looked down into his startled eyes with an expression that brought him sharply to his senses. It was a look of amazement, of incredulity, of contempt–of everything in short that he had hoped never to encounter in her face again. For a moment she stood regarding him, her breast heaving, a stray lock of hair across a hot cheek, the most distant, the most exalted, and the most beautiful figure he had ever seen. Then, without a word, she walked away. Across the open, sunlit space his eyes followed her, until, through the doorway of the cottage, she disappeared.
For a moment he remained as he was, upon the ground, half reclining, staring blankly at the doorway. Then, slowly, he lowered himself and lay at full length along the ground, his face in his hands.
Of the flight of time he had no knowledge: but, at last, when he rose to his feet he appeared older. He was paler. His eyes were duller. About the mouth had come lines which seemed to indicate a painful resolution. But to the shrunken legs he had summoned a sufficient force to carry him, without wavering, to the cottage door. He entered and dropped, as a man uncertain of his strength, into the nearest chair–the one beside the doorway. Solomon, who had followed at his heels, looked up inquiringly into the emaciated face. Its extraordinary melancholy may have alarmed him. But Pats paid no attention to his dog. He looked at Elinor who was ironing, at the heavy table–the dining-table–in the centre of the room. Her sleeves were rolled back to the elbow; her head bent slightly over as she worked.
The afternoon sun flooded the space in his vicinity and reached far along the floor, touching the skirt of her dress. Behind her the old tapestry with the two marble busts formed a stately background. To the new arrivals she paid no attention.
After a short rest to recover his breath, and his strength, Pats cleared his throat:
“Miss Marshall, you will never know, for I could not begin to tell you–how sorry–how, how ashamed I am for having done–what I did. I don’t ask you to forgive me. If you were my sister and another man did it, I should–” He leaned back, at a loss for words.
“I don’t say it was the claret. I don’t try to excuse myself in any way. But one thing I ask you to believe: that I did not realize what I was doing.”
He arose and stood with his hand on the back of the chair. As he went on his voice grew less steady. “Why, I look upon you as something sacred; you are so much finer, higher, better than other people. In a way I feel toward you as toward my mother’s memory; and that is a holy thing. I could as soon insult one as the other. And I realize and shall never forget all that you have done for me.”
In a voice over which he seemed to be losing control, he went on, more rapidly:
“And it’s more than all that–it’s more than gratitude and respect. I–” For an instant he hesitated, then his words came hotly, with a reckless haste. “I love you as I never thought of loving any human being. It began when I first saw you on the wharf. You don’t know what it means. Why, I could lay down my life for you–a thousand times–and joyfully.”
From Elinor these words met with no outward recognition. She went quietly on with her ironing.
Pats drew a deep breath, sank into his chair and muttered, in a lower tone, “I never meant to tell you that. Now I–I–have done it.”
During the pause that followed these last words she said, quietly, without looking up:
“I knew it already.”
He straightened up. “Knew what already?”
She lifted a collar she was ironing and examined it, but made no reply.
“You knew what already?” he repeated. “That I was in love with you?”
She nodded, still regarding the collar.
“Impossible!”
She laid the collar beside other collars already ironed and took up another; but he heard no answer.
“How did you know?” he asked. “From what?”
“From various things.”
“What things?”
There was no reply.
“From things I did?”
She nodded, rather solemnly, and her face, what he could see of it–seemed very serious. Pats was watching her intently, and exclaimed, in surprise:
“That is very curious, for I kept it to myself!”
“Any woman would have known.”
Pats leaned back, and frowned. A torturing thought possessed him. In an anxious tone he said: “I hope I did not talk much when I had the fever.”
As she made no reply he studied the back of her head for some responsive motion. But none came.
“Did I?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
A look of terror came into his face and his voice grew fainter as he asked: “Did I talk about you?”
“Freely.”
With trembling fingers he felt for his handkerchief and drew it across his brow. “Did I say things that–that–I should be ashamed of?”
She nodded.
Pats sunk lower in his chair and closed his eyes. Judging from the lines in his cadaverous face the last three minutes had added years to his age.
“Would you mind telling me,” he asked in a deferential voice, so low that it barely reached her, “whether they were impertinent and ungentlemanly–or–or–what?”
“Everything.”
His lips were dry, and on his face came a look of anguish–of unspeakable shame. There was a pause, broken only by the faint sound of the flatiron.
“Then I really talked about you–at one time?”
She nodded.
“More than once?”
“For days together.”
Pats closed his eyes in pain, and there was a silence. Then he opened them: “Would you mind telling me some of the things I said?”
“I could not remember.”
“Have you forgotten all?”
“No–but I prefer not repeating them.”
On Pats’s face the look of shame deepened. In a very low voice he said: “Please remember that I was not myself.”
“I make allowance for that.”
“Excuse my asking, but if I was out of my head and irresponsible, what could I have said to make you believe that I was–in love with you?”
“You protested so violently that you were not.”
With unspeakable horror and humiliation Pats began to realize the awful possibilities of that divulgence of his most secret thoughts. A cold chill crept up his spine. He looked down at the floor, from fear that she might glance in his direction and meet his eyes. Solomon, who felt there was trouble in the air, came nearer and placed his cold wet snout against the clinched hands of his master; but the hands were unresponsive.
At last, the stricken man mustered courage enough to stammer in a constrained voice:
“It is not from curiosity I ask it, but would you mind telling me–giving me at least some idea of what I said?”
Elinor carefully deposited a neatly folded handkerchief upon a little pile of other handkerchiefs. Then, looking down at the table and not at Pats, she said calmly, as she continued her work:
“You said I was a pious hypocrite–coldblooded and heartless–and a fool. You repeated a great many times that I was superior, pretentious, and ‘everlastingly stuck on myself,’–I think that was the expression. Of course, I cannot repeat your own words. They were forcible, but exceedingly profane.”
“Oh!”
“You kept mentioning three other men who could have me for all you cared.”
Pats felt himself blushing. He frowned, grew hot, and bit his lip. Mingled with his mortification came an impotent rage. He felt that behind her contempt she was laughing at him. As there was a pause, he muttered bitterly:
“Go on.”
But she continued silently with her ironing.
“Please go on. Tell me more; the worst. I should like to know it.”
Raising one of the handkerchiefs higher for a closer examination, she added: “You sang comic songs, inserting my name, and with language I supposed no gentlemen could use.”
Pats gasped. His cheeks tingled. In shame he closed his eyes. The ticking of the old clock behind the door seemed to hammer his degradation still deeper into his aching soul. As his wandering, miserable gaze encountered the marble face of the Marshal of France he thought the old soldier was watching him in contemptuous enjoyment.
But Elinor went on quietly with her ironing.
Suddenly into his feverish brain there came a thought, heaven-born, inspiring. It lifted him to his feet. With a firm stride he approached the table. No legs could have done it better. He stood beside her, but she turned her back as she went on with the ironing. His expression was of a man exalted, yet anxious; and he spoke in a low but unruly voice.
“You say you have known I was in love with you ever since the fever?”
She nodded slightly, without looking up.
“And yet you have been very–kind, and not–not annoyed or offended. Perhaps after all, you–you–oh, please turn around!”
But she did not turn, so he stepped around in front. Into her cheeks had come a sudden color, and in her eyes he saw the light that lifts a lover to the highest heaven.
It was Pat’s cry of joy and his impulsive and somewhat violent embrace of this lady that awakened the dog reposing by the door. Looking in the direction of the voice Solomon seemed to see but a single figure. This was a natural mistake. In another moment, however, he realized that extraordinary things were happening,–that these two distinct and separate beings with a single outline signified some momentous change in human life. Whether from an over-mastering sympathy, from envy, delicacy, or disgust, Solomon looked the other way. Then, thoughtfully, with drooping head, he walked slowly out and left the lovers to themselves.