The Knave of Diamonds Part 20

Anne said nothing. She would not, if she could help it, betray to any how much she was dreading the morrow. But she felt that he knew it in spite of her.

His next words revealed the fact. "You are going to purgatory," he said, "and I am going to perdition. Do you know, I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't do better to turn and fly in the face of the G.o.ds when they drive us too hard? Why do we give in when we've nothing to gain and all to lose?"

She met his look with her steadfast eyes. "Does duty count as nothing?" she said.

He made an impatient movement, and would have spoken, but she stopped him.

"Please don't rail at duty. I know your creed is pleasure, but the pursuit of pleasure does not, after all, bring happiness."

"Who wants pleasure?" demanded Nap fiercely. "That's only the anesthetic when things get unbearable. You use duty in the same way. But what we both want, what we both hanker for, starve for, is just life! Who cares if there is pain with it? I don't, nor do you. And yet we keep on stunting and stultifying ourselves with these old-fas.h.i.+oned remedies for a disease we only half understand, when we might have all the world and then some. Oh, we're fools--we're fools!" His voice rang wildly pa.s.sionate. He flung out his arms as if he wrestled with something.

"We've been cheated for centuries of our birthright, and we still put up with it, still bring our human sacrifices to an empty shrine!"

And there he broke off short, checked suddenly at the height of his outburst though she had made no second effort to stop him.

Her quiet eyes had not flinched from his. She had made no sign of shrinking. With the utmost patience she had listened to him. Yet by some means intangible the fiery stream of his rebellion was stayed.

There fell a brief silence. Then he rose. "I am afraid I am not fit for civilised society to-night," he said. "I will say good-bye." He held her hand for a moment. "You will let me see you sometimes?"

"I hope to come now and then to Baronmead," she answered quietly. "But you will not--please--come to the Manor again."

He looked down at her with eyes that had become inscrutable. "I shall not come against your will," he said.

"Thank you," she answered simply.

And so he left her.

CHAPTER XIV

A BIG THING

As the widowed rector's only daughter, Dot's occupations were many and various, and it was in consequence no difficult matter to be too deeply engrossed in these occupations to have any time to spare for intercourse with the rector's pupil.

Her brother had gone back to college, and there was therefore no excuse for the said pupil to linger when his studies were over, though he invented many that would not have borne a very close investigation.

But his ingenuity was all to no purpose. Dot could be ingenious too, and she evaded him so adroitly that at the end of a week he had abandoned his efforts.

He went about with a certain sternness in those days, but it was not the sternness of the vanquished, rather the dogged patience of the man who is quite sure of ultimate success. Dot, peeping from the kitchen window to see him ride away, marked this on more than one occasion and strengthened her defences in consequence. She had not the remotest intention of seeing Bertie alone again for many a month, if ever. His persistence had scared her badly on that night at Baronmead. She was horribly afraid of what he might feel impelled to say to her, almost terrified at the bare notion of an explanation, and the prospect of a possible apology was unthinkable. It was easier for her to sacrifice his good comrades.h.i.+p, though that of itself was no easy matter, and she could only thrust her sense of loss into the background of her thoughts by the most strenuous efforts.

She was st.u.r.dily determined to make him relinquish their former pleasant intimacy before they should meet again. She was growing up, she told herself severely, growing up fast; and intimacies of that sort were likely to be misconstrued.

She took the counsel of none upon this difficult matter. Her father was too vague a dreamer to guide her, or so much as to realise that she stood in need of guidance. And Dot had gone her own independent way all her life. Her healthy young mind was not accustomed to grapple with problems, but she did not despair on that account. She only resolutely set herself to cope with this one as best she might, erecting out of her multifarious duties a barrier calculated to dishearten the most hopeful knight.

But in thus constructing her defences there was one force with which she omitted to reckon and against which she in consequence made no preparation, a force which, nevertheless, was capable of shattering all her carefully-laid schemes at a touch.

As she emerged among the last of the congregation from the church on the Sunday morning following her visit to Baronmead, she found Lucas Errol leaning upon the open lych-gate.

He greeted her with that shrewd, kindly smile of his before which it was almost impossible to feel embarra.s.sed or constrained. Yet she blushed vividly at meeting him, and would gladly have turned the other way had the opportunity offered. For there in the road below, doing something to the motor, was Bertie.

"It's a real pleasure to meet you again, Miss Waring," said Lucas, in his pleasant drawl. "I was just hoping you would come along. I met your father before the service, and he promised to show me his orchids."

"Oh!" said Dot, nervously avoiding a second glance in Bertie's direction.

"Won't you come across to the Rectory then and wait for him there?"

"May I?" said Lucas.

He straightened himself with an effort and transferred his weight to his crutch. Dot shyly proffered her arm.

"Let me!" said Bertie.

He was already on the steps, but Lucas waved him down, and accepted the girl's help instead.

"We will go in the garden way," said Dot. "It's only just across the road."

He halted terribly in the descent, and glancing at him in some anxiety she saw that his lips were tightly closed. Overwhelming pity for the man overcame her awkwardness, and she spoke sharply over her shoulder.

"Bertie, come and take my place! You know what to do better than I do."

In an instant Bertie was beside her, had slipped his arm under his brother's shoulder, and taken his weight almost entirely off the crutch.

His active young strength bore the great burden unfalteringly and with immense tenderness, and there ran through Dot, watching from above, a queer little indefinable thrill that made her heart beat suddenly faster.

He certainly was a nice boy, as he himself had declared.

"That didn't hurt so badly, eh, old chap?" asked the cheery voice. "Come along, Dot. You can give him a hand now while I fetch the car round.

There are no steps to the Rectory, so he will be all right."

His airy friendliness banished the last of Dot's confusion. With a keen sense of relief she obeyed him. Those few seconds of a common solicitude had bridged the gulf at least temporarily.

"This is real good of you," Lucas Errol said, as he took her arm again.

"And it's a luxury I ought not to indulge in, for I can walk alone on the flat."

"Oh, it is horrid for you!" she said with vehemence. "How ever do you bear it?"

"We can all of us bear what we must," he said, smiling whimsically.

"But we don't all of us do it well," said Dot, as she opened the Rectory gate.

"I guess that's a good deal a matter of temperament," said the American. "A fellow like Nap, for instance, all hustle and quicksilver, might be expected to kick now and then. One makes allowances for a fellow like that."

"I believe you make allowances for everyone," said Dot, impetuously.

"Don't you?" he asked.

"No, I am afraid I don't."

There was a pause. The garden door was closed behind them. They stood alone.