Red Pepper's Patients Part 22

Her face was toward the distant lights, and she did not answer for a minute. Then she said slowly: "I should like very much to see you again, Mr. King. But you surely understand that I couldn't make appointments with you to meet me in other towns. This has happened and it has been very pleasant, but it wouldn't do to make it keep happening. Even though I travel about with a book to sell, I--shall never lose the sense of--being under the protection of a home such as other girls have."

"I wouldn't have you lose it--good heavens, no! I only--well--" And now he stopped, set his teeth for an instant, and then plunged ahead. "But there's something I can't lose either, and it's--you!"

She looked at him then, evidently startled. "Mr. King, will you drive on, please?" she said very quietly, but he felt something in her tone which for an instant he did not understand. In the next instant he thought he did understand it.

He spoke hurriedly: "You don't know me very well yet, do you? But I thought you knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't say a thing like that unless I meant all that goes with it--and follows it. You see--I love you. If--if you are not afraid of a man in a plaster jacket--it'll come off some day, you know--I ask you to marry me."

There was a long silence then, in which King felt his heart pumping away for dear life. He had taken the bit between his teeth now, certainly, and offered this girl, of whom he knew less than of any human being in whom he had the slightest interest, all that he had to give.

Yet--he was so sure he knew her that, the words once out, he realized that he was glad he had spoken them.

At last she turned toward him. "You are a very brave man," she said, "and a very chivalrous man."

He laughed rather huskily. "It doesn't take much of either bravery or chivalry for a man to offer himself to you."

"It must take plenty of both. You are--what you are, in the big world you live in. And you dare to trust an absolute stranger, whom you have no means of knowing better, with that name of yours. Think, Mr. Jordan King, what that name means to you--and to your mother."

"I have thought. And I offer it to you. And I do know what you are. You can't disguise yourself--any more than the Princess in the fairy tale.

Do you think all those notes I had from you at the hospital didn't tell the story? I don't know why you are selling books from door to door--and I don't want to know. What I do understand is--that you are the first of your family to do it!"

"Mr. King," she said gravely, "women are very clever at one thing--cleverer than men. With a little study, a little training, a little education, they can make a brave showing. I have known a shopgirl who, after six months of living with a very charming society woman, could play that woman's part without mistake. And when it came to talking with men of brains, she could even use a few clever phrases and leave the rest of the conversation to them, and they were convinced of her brilliant mind."

"You have not been a shopgirl," he said steadily. "You belong in a home like mine. If you have lost it by some accident, that is only the fortune of life. But you can't disguise yourself as a commonplace person, for you're not. And--I can't let you go out of my life--I can't."

Again silence, while the sunset skies slowly faded into the dusky blue of night, and the lights over the distant city grew brighter and brighter. A light wind, warmly smoky with the pleasant fragrance of burning bonfires, touched the faces of the two in the car and blew small curly strands of hair about Anne Linton's ears.

Presently she spoke. "I am going to promise to write to you now and then," she said, "and give you each time an address where you may answer, if you will promise not to come to me. I am going to tell you frankly that I want your letters."

"You want my letters--but not me?"

"You put more of yourself into your letters than any one else I know. So in admitting that I want your letters I admit that I want yourself--as a good friend."

"No more than that?"

"That's quite enough, isn't it, for people who know each other only as we do?"

"It's not enough for me. If it's enough for you, then--well, it's as I thought."

"What did you think?"

He hesitated, then spoke boldly: "No woman really wants--a mangled human being for her own."

Impulsively she laid her hand on his. Instantly he grasped it. "Please,"

she said, "will you never say--or think--that, again?"

He gazed eagerly into her face, still duskily visible to his scrutiny.

"I won't," he answered, "if you'll tell me you care for me. Oh, don't you?--don't you?--not one bit? Just give me a show of a chance and I'll make you care. I've _got_ to make you care. Why, I've thought of nothing but you for months--dreamed of you, sleeping and waking. I can't stop; it's too late. Don't ask me to stop--Anne--dear!"

No woman in her senses could have doubted the sincerity of this young man. That he was no adept at love making was apparent in the way he stumbled over his phrases; in the way his voice caught in his throat; in the way it grew husky toward the last of this impa.s.sioned pleading of his.

He still held her hand close. "Tell me you care--a little," he begged of her silence.

"No girl can be alone as I am now and not be touched by such words," she said very gently after a moment's hesitation. "But--promising to marry you is a different matter. I can't let you rashly offer me so much when I know what it would mean to you to bring home a--book agent to your mother!"

He uttered a low exclamation. "My life is my own, to do with as I please. If I'm satisfied, that's enough. You are what I want--all I want. As for my mother--when she knows you--But we'll not talk of that just yet. What I must know is--do you--can you--care for me--enough to marry me?" His hand tightened on hers, his voice whispered in her ear: "Anne, darling--can't you love me? I want you so--oh--I want you so! Let me kiss you--just once, dear. That will tell you--"

But she drew her hand gently but efficiently away; she spoke firmly, though very low: "No--no! Listen--Jordan King. Sometime--by next spring perhaps, I shall be in the place I call home. When that time comes I will let you know. If you still care to, you may come and see me there.

Now--won't you drive on, please?"

"Yes, if you'll let me--just once--_once_ to live on all those months!

Anne--"

But, when he would have made action and follow close upon the heels of pleading he found himself gently but firmly prevented by an uplifted small hand which did not quite touch his nearing face. "Ah, don't spoil that chivalry of yours," said her mellow, low voice. "Let me go on thinking you are what I have believed you are all along. Be patient, and prove whether this is real, instead of s.n.a.t.c.hing at what might dull your judgment!"

"It wouldn't dull it--only confirm it. And--I want to make you remember me."

"You have provided that already," she admitted, at which he gave an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as of relief--and of longing--and possibly of recognition of her handling of the whole--from her point of view--rather difficult situation. At the back of his mind, in spite of his disappointment at being kept at arm's length when he wanted something much more definite, was the recognition that here was precisely the show of spirit and dignity which his judgment approved and admired.

"I'll let you go, if I must; but I'll come to you--if you live in a hovel--if you live in a cave--if you live--Oh, I know how you live!"

"How do I live?" she asked, laughing a little unsteadily, and as if there were tears in her eyes, though of this he could not be sure.

"You live in a plain little house, with just a few of the things you used to have about you; rows of books, a picture or two, and some old china. Things may be a bit shabby, but everything is beautifully neat, and there are garden flowers on the table, perhaps white lilacs!"

"Oh, what a romanticist!" she said, through her soft laughter. "One would think you wrote novels instead of specifications for concrete walls. What if you come and find me living with my older sister, who sews for a living, plain sewing, at a dollar a day? And we have a long credit account at the grocery, which we can't pay? And at night our little upstairs room is full of neighbours, untidy, loud-talking, commonplace women? And the lamp smokes--"

"It wouldn't smoke; you would have trimmed it," he answered, quickly and with conviction. "But, even if it were all like that, you would still be the perfect thing you are. And I would take you away--"

"If you don't drive on, Mr. King," she interposed gently, "you will soon be mentally unfit to drive at all. And I must be back before the darkness has quite fallen. And--don't you think we have talked enough about ourselves?"

"I like that word," he declared as he obediently set the car in motion.

"Ourselves--that sounds good to me. As long as you keep me with you that way I'll try to be satisfied. One thing I'm sure of: I've something to work for now that I didn't have this morning. Oh, I know; you haven't given me a thing. But you're going to let me come to see you next spring, and that's worth everything to me. Meanwhile, I'll do my level best--for you."

When he drew up before the door of the church, where, in spite of his entreaties that he be allowed to take her to her lodging place, Anne insisted on being left, he felt, in spite of all he had gained that day, a sinking of the heart. Though the hour was early and the neighbourhood at this time of day a quiet one, and though she a.s.sured him that she had not far to go, he was unhappy to leave her thus unaccompanied.

"I wish I could possibly imagine why it must be this way," he said to himself as he stood hat in hand beside his car, watching Anne Linton's quickly departing figure grow more and more shadowy as the twilight enveloped it. "Well, one thing is certain: whatever she does there's a good and sufficient reason; and I trust her."

CHAPTER XIII

RED HEADED AGAIN

Crowding his hat upon his head with a vigorous jerk after his reluctant parting with Anne Linton at the church door, Jordan King jumped into his car and made his way slowly through the streets to the hotel where Aleck awaited him. For the first few miles out of the city he continued to drive at a pace so moderate that Aleck more than once glanced surrept.i.tiously at him, wondering if he were actually going to sleep at the wheel. It was not until they were beyond the last environs and far out in the open country that, quite suddenly, the car was released from its unusual restraint and began to fly down the road toward home at the old wild speed.