PART THREE (continued 2)

The Rev. Needham gasped. This is really not an exaggeration. He gasped—and it was, this time, no merely inner gasping, either. Marjory—the new parish house ...!

"Why, Marjory!" he cried, his heart deeply touched. There sounded again here that former note of appeal or even pathos.

Nevertheless, long afterward, when the fine new parish house was all finished, and the church could hold its own a little while longer in a world which was changing so rapidly, a grim spectre stalked between the minister and her magnificent donation. It was the spectre of the Bishop whose bed she had seen made up. Did Marjory think he would sleep on two mattresses, like the Bishop? And buy an upper for his golf sticks?

Miss Whitcom had risen to bid them good night. The indignant cottage lamp had begun to sputter and fail. It had never before been kept burning so late. But she lingered long enough to give them the full benefit of one of her delightful and so characteristic shafts of bluntness.

"O'Donnell," she said, "has stood by all these years. Think of it! Think of its taking so long as that to be sure! Of course it wasn't that I ever cared two straws for anybody else. O'Donnell's never had any active competition, except from my overwhelming notions about being free to work out my life. Well, I've had my freedom, and I've worked it out. And now—well, he's asked me again—tonight. But what do you think? I haven't given him a definite answer yet—not yet! I'm going over to the Elmbrook Inn as soon as the sun's up, though. I guess I'll stand down under his window and call out to him softly. And when he comes to the window, I'll say: 'Barrett, I've had my fling!' Alfred—you don't think I could find my way through tonight ...?"

"Marjory! Of course not! Tomorrow, if you must...."

But she chattered gaily and unquenchably on. "I don't know how it's all going to turn out, I'm sure—about our future, I mean. You see, if he'll come along to Tahulamaji, I'll sell him a half interest in the business, and we could let the manager go. But I doubt if he'll do it. It's so far, and then, you see, he's been with the Babbits so long. I can fancy one's growing very much attached to the Babbits!"

"And if he doesn't want to go to Tahulamaji?" asked her sister.

"If he doesn't? If he doesn't? Well, then I'll have to follow his lead."

The Rev. Needham had a sudden flash of wholly disorganizing inspiration. "Marjory, you don't mean Babbit & Babbit?"

But it was just exactly what she did mean! "Yes, in that case I'll travel for Babbit & Babbit. Must be doing something, I can tell you, with all these parish houses to be built! And it won't be my first job on the road, by any manner of means, either!"

Then she kissed her sister affectionately on the mouth and her brother-in-law affectionately on the cheek. And then the cottage lamp went out.

8

When Hilda went up to bed she thought Louise already asleep, for she lay there with her eyes closed. Hilda undressed as stealthily as possible, and crept in beside her sister. At first she felt so excited that it seemed to her she must surely lie awake all night. But as a matter of fact, her eyes drooped at once, and in five minutes she was asleep.

Then it was that Louise stirred and opened her eyes. They were very wide and very full of perplexity. She had not been sleeping, but had feigned sleep because she dreaded the ordeal of talking. She wanted to be alone, and she wanted to think—all night. A feverish zeal was upon her.

Barry was abed too. His light had gone out and his room was quite silent. Was he asleep? She wondered. Or was he, too, lying there in the dark with eyes wide open, thinking?

The walk back from the roast had been a very silent one. The day had been crowded with emotion, and during the journey back to Beachcrest the tenseness had seemed, curiously, to be eased a little. At least there seemed a tacit understanding that, whatever the further developments might be, tomorrow must do. Tomorrow, tomorrow! Tonight all was hazed and half drowned in unshed, groping tears. Even emotion itself, through sheer, blessed weariness, was subtly obscured. So the walk had been silent, while somehow both had felt as though the air had cleared a little. It was easier to breathe.

They had stood together a moment on the porch.

"Goodnight," she said huskily.

"Goodnight, Louise," he returned gravely, giving her hand just a frank, brief pressure.

She wanted to throw herself at his feet. The impulse to do something splendid and expiating swept over her almost irresistibly. She wanted to implore his forgiveness—would that set their lives in order? If this were to be the end, she felt there ought to be something at least vaguely stupendous about it.

"Louise, dear—what is it?" he asked, quite tenderly and calmly, yet with an intensity, too, which seemed like a hot, reproachful breath against one's very soul.

She swayed a little, almost as though she might be about to fall in a faint. He touched her arm gently.

The opportunity passed. "It's nothing," she murmured. "I'm tired, that's all—so tired!" And she did not throw herself at his feet, or do anything splendid at all.

It was true, she was very tired. She expected to drop at once into a merciful drugged sleep. It had been like that after the affair with Richard. But now, lo! she found herself more wide awake, it seemed, than she had ever been. The weariness seemed all slipping from her, and her mind grew quite vibrant, as with a slowly dawning purpose.

Ah, tomorrow!

Would the situation be as tragic then? Could it be otherwise than tragic? But perhaps—perhaps they would see things more clearly....

"Yes," she thought, "I'll go to sleep now and let tomorrow bring what it must."

Mañana, mañana!

But this was not to be. She closed her eyes. She tried to turn into a snug and sleepy position. But she could not woo sleep; and every effort merely sharpened her senses. Again she found herself lying in the dark with wide eyes, and went on thinking, thinking.

What was the meaning of this strange commotion? Phantoms—of the past—presaging phantoms endlessly to follow.... At dawn she had gone out blithely enough to welcome her lover. He had come. And then.... But even before his coming, that curious battle had set in. Not his hat or the twist of his profile.... Phantoms. Phantoms rising up in her heart like some sinister cloud of retribution. And their single adversary: "You are mine, all mine...."

Now, in this sombre hour shunned by sleep, the conflict achieved an effect of climax: she felt it to be that, obscurely yet with a desperate poignancy—felt that an issue precious in the scheme of her unfolding destiny faced decision. Legions of spent loves went by in marshalled battle trim. With an inward cry she watched them as they passed. Perfume still lingering in the house, though with the guest departed. Ghosts of a many-vizaged passion, homing at length, for the fulfilment of a barter Faust-like in its essence.

How lavish she had always been: how free! Shambles, now the glamour was gone stale. A monstrous cheapening—a heart flung out to-let in a public street. Yes, how easily and extravagantly she had spent herself—a profligate spending, for what the moment could return. Here, at last, was a love that demanded: "You must be mine, all mine—you must belong to me forever!" Curious, that of them all—of all the voices that had spoken of love before—it should be Lynndal's which, in fancy, thus first framed a so momentous contract!

He had been always so modest; in the beginning, to be loved in return had figured for him as a too, too generous conjecture. Gradually, however, there had been a return. Their lives had drawn together. The fact that this love had, from almost the very beginning, been challenged to the bridging of such distance began to assume for Louise a new and arresting significance. There had been something in it, in its very fibre, rising above any mere convenience of contact: a phenomenon unique, it struck her, in the long and turbulent history of her heart interests. Those letters.... "That was just it," she had groped when confronted by Aunt Marjie. Romancing appeared to have carried her far, how far! Mirage. And yet, behind the mirage a something deeper lurked. She sensed this now; but all the weary day she had sensed it also, dimly. Lynndal. Hitherto, the man himself had barely figured. Yet ever he had been there, too. He had come from far in the west to put a ring on her finger, and had found her in a panic of goblin doubt. That fancied voice in the shriek of steam: "Mine—mine!" Then the kiss which exposed her dilemma. But behind these things—the man; the man himself. And what was this that seemed for so long, in a fine and utter silence, to have been building? Sanctuary!...

Her mind, as she lay here in the dark, became indeed a battleground for this ultimate climax of struggle. An unimagined realm they made of it. Her heart beat faster and her cheeks grew hot. To-let, in a public street. "Richard! I have done what he would have done—what he did! I am no better—no better!" She writhed, and the bitterness did not leave her—carried her instead to a yet more awful conclusion: "I am no better than a—than a—" The terrible word scorched across her heart, leaving a scar behind. Sobs shook her body, and the tears were bitter tears of hopelessness and regret.

But then, slowly, the bitterness eased a little; and, full of amazement, she felt a shy presence of freshness stealing mysteriously in, as from some empire where struggle is no citizen. A strange and beautiful sense of disentanglement. In the previous moment of unwithheld relentless purgatory, she had caught the rhythm of that something—that something behind the mirage! So that, in time, as she lay relaxed, with tears undried on her face, it came to her that just one fact remained, of all the febrile facts which, out of a long inglorious past, had attained the immortality of ghost-hood. Just one—one "living" fact: Lynndal!

Until today he had but filled a niche—but carried on the pattern of the many; now, however, the power to stem this ruinous tide revealed itself as at hand, just waiting to be seized—the courage to give herself completely, and to achieve a love as steadfast and unchanging as his had proved to be.

The night wore on. The moon grew sleepy and drooped in the starry western sky. But Louise did not sleep. There was high drama in her heart, and she could not sleep till it was all played out.

She began laying plans. What would her life be like if she married Lynndal? Dry-farming. But later he would run for Congress—perhaps he would be Governor some day. And in the meantime, love—and there would perhaps be children.... Security! Peace! An anchorage—something to steady her and set her wayward heart at rest!

"I'm the kind of girl," she told herself, with a grimness which still went hand in hand with the orgy of honesty and fearless insight that had been making these dark hours so memorable, "—the kind that must be married. I—I'm not safe otherwise—not to be trusted."

And then her mood lightened again a little and grew grimly whimsical: "They say a minister's children are always the worst!"

She must have fallen into a little sleep; for she opened her eyes with a start and gazed up at a slight abrasion in the shingle roof through which morning blinked. For a moment she wondered why she had waked so early. The July birds were all aflutter outside. It was a radiant summer dawn.

Hilda lay beside her, sound asleep. The house was very still. It was tomorrow!

Downstairs on the mantelpiece in the cottage living room the Dutch clock was ticking in its wiry, indignant way. There came a whirr—so like a wheeze of decrepitude. And then it struck: one, two, three, four....

Very quietly Louise slipped out of bed. She did not want to waken Hilda, but she had a sudden desire to be out under the sky.

Quickly putting on her clothes, she stole from the cottage. The morning was very still and fresh. She felt as though she must shout the gladness that was in her. Tomorrow! Who could possibly have foreseen that it would be like this?

Louise climbed up out of the valley toward the little rustic "tea-house" where Leslie had waited for her yesterday at dawn. She thought she would sit there a long, long time, trying to realize her great new contrite happiness. She reached the door. A figure stirred. Lynndal was there. He had risen even before she was awake, for slumber had not come to him at all. When he saw her face, he could not believe the new happiness that seemed rushing upon him out of the dark chaos of their yesterday.

She stretched out her hands to him. She snuggled up against him with a brief, glad sigh. "I want to be yours, all yours, Lynndal," she said softly and just a little humorously. "I want to be yours forever and ever. I don't want to belong to any one but you!"