Master of the Vineyard Part 29

[Sidenote: Effect of Moonlight]

"Didn't it occur to you that I might want to see yours?"

"Not especially."

"My son," she said, in her most matronly manner, "kindly remember that a woman past her first youth always prefers to sit with her back toward the light."

"I'm older than you are," he reminded her, "so don't be patronising."

"In years only," she returned. "In worldly wisdom and experience and all the things that count, I'm almost as old as your mother is. Sometimes,"

she added, bitterly, "I feel as though I were a thousand."

A shadow crossed his face, but, as his figure loomed darkly against the moon, Edith did not see it. The caressing glamour of the light revealed the sad sweetness of her mouth, but presently her lips curved upward in a forced smile.

"Why is it?" she asked, "that moonlight makes one think?"

"I didn't know it did," he replied. "I thought it was supposed to have quite the opposite effect."

"It doesn't with me. In the sun, I'm sane, and have control of myself, but nights like this drive me almost mad sometimes."

"Why?" he asked gently, leaning toward her.

"Oh, I don't know," she sighed. "There's so much I might have that I haven't." Then she added, suddenly: "What did you think of my husband's picture?"

[Sidenote: Edith's Husband]

The end of the chiffon scarf rose to meet a pa.s.sing breeze, then fell back against the softness of her arm. A great grey-winged night moth fluttered past them. From the high bough of a distant maple came the frightened twitter of little birds, wakeful in the night, and the soft, murmurous voice of the brooding mother, soothing them.

"How did you know?" asked Alden, slowly.

"Oh, I just knew. You were looking at my dressing-table first, and you picked up the picture without thinking. Then, as soon as you knew who it was, you put it down, found the scarf, and came out."

"Do you love him?"

"No. That is, I don't think I do. But--oh," she added, with a sharp indrawing of her breath, "how I did love him!"

"And he--" Alden went on. "Does he love you?"

"I suppose so, in his way. As much as he is capable of caring for anything except himself, he cares for me."

She rose and walked restlessly along the veranda, the man following her with his eyes, until she reached the latticed end, where a climbing crimson rose, in full bloom, breathed the fragrance of some far Persian garden. Reaching up, she picked one, on a long, slender stem.

[Sidenote: The Crimson Rose]

Alden appeared beside her, with his knife in his hand. "Shall I take off the thorns for you?"

"No, I'm used to thorns. Besides, the wise ones are those who accept things as they are." She thrust the stem into her belt, found a pin from somewhere, and pinned the flower itself upon the creamy lace of her gown.

"It's just over your heart," he said. "Is your heart a rose too?"

"As far as thorns go, yes."

She leaned back against one of the white columns of the porch. She was facing the moonlight, but the lattice and the rose shaded her with fragrant dusk.

"Father and Mother planted this rose," Alden said, "the day they were married."

"How lovely," she answered, without emotion. "But to think that the rose has outlived one and probably will outlive the other!"

"Mother says she hopes it will. She wants to leave it here for me and my problematical children. The tribal sense runs rampant in Mother."

"When are you and Miss Starr going to be married?" asked Edith, idly.

Alden started. "How did you know?" he demanded, roughly, possessing himself of her hands. "Who told you--Mother, or--Miss Starr?"

[Sidenote: Mutual Understanding]

"Neither," replied Edith, coldly, releasing herself. "I--just knew. I beg your pardon," she added, hastily. "Of course it's none of my affair."

"But it is," he said, under his breath. Then, coming closer, he took her hands again. "Look here, Edith, there's something between you and me--do you know it?"

"How do you mean?" She tried to speak lightly, but her face was pale.

"You know very well what I mean. How do you know what I think, what I do, what I am? And the nights--no, don't try to get away from me--from that first night when I woke at four and knew you were crying, to that other night when you knew it was I who was awake with you, and all the nights since when the tide of time has turned between three and four!

I've known your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams, as you've known mine!

"And the next day," he went on, "when you avoid me even with your eyes; when you try to hide with laughter and light words your consciousness of the fact that the night before you and I have met somewhere, in some mysterious way, and known each other as though we were face to face! Can you be miserable, and I not know it? Can I be tormented by a thousand doubts, and you not know it? Could you be ill, or troubled, or even perplexed, and I not know, though the whole world lay between us? Answer me!"

[Sidenote: Oblivious of Time and s.p.a.ce]

Edith's face was very white and her lips almost refused to move. "Oh, Boy," she whispered, brokenly. "What does it mean?"

"This," he answered, imperiously. "It means this--and now!"

He took her into his arms, crus.h.i.+ng her to him so tightly that she almost cried out with the delicious pain of it. In the rose-scented shadow, his mouth found hers.

Time and s.p.a.ce were no more. At the portal of the lips, soul met soul.

The shaded veranda, and even the house itself faded away. Only this new-born ecstasy lived, like a flaming star suddenly come to earth.

Madame stirred in her sleep. Then she called, drowsily: "Alden! Edith!"

No one answered, because no one heard. She got up, smothering a yawn behind her hand, wondered that there were no lights, waited a moment, heard nothing, and came to the window.

The moon flooded the earth with enchantment--a silvery ocean of light breaking upon earth-bound sh.o.r.es. A path of it lay along the veranda--opal and tourmaline and pearl, sharply turned aside by the shadow of the rose.

Madame drew her breath quickly. There they stood, partly in the dusk and partly in the light, close in each other's arms, with the misty silver lying lovingly upon Edith's hair.

[Sidenote: Pledges of Love]

She sank back into a chair, remembering, with vague terror, the vision she had seen in the crystal ball. So, then, it was true, as she might have known. Sorely troubled, and with her heart aching for them both, she crept up-stairs.