David Malcolm Part 25

"Married a year ago to a rich broker," she answered, laughing.

"How long I have been away!" I exclaimed.

I glanced covertly at Penelope. Despite the tone of formality in which she addressed me she seemed quite content to sit here weaving hieroglyphics with the point of her parasol, for I noticed that she was smiling, unconscious, perhaps, that I was studying her face. A while ago I had stood a little in awe of Penelope, but it was an awe inspired by her surroundings rather than by her. Going from Miss Minion's to face the critical eye of her pompous English butler was itself an ordeal; to Mrs. Bannister I was a poor young man whom it was a form of charity to patronize; the great library, the carved mantel, the portrait, the heavy silver on the tea-table, these were emblems of another world than mine. But here in this piazzetta, with the broad Italian landscape before us, those days of awkward constraint were in the far past. This quiet Penelope at my side contentedly tracing circles in the sand was, after all, the simple, kindly Penelope of the days in the valley. I had no fear of her. If she tossed her head disdainfully, I could fancy the blue ribbon bobbing there again and smile to myself as I recalled the morning when we had galloped together out of the mountains on the mule. There were questions which I wanted answered, and I dared to ask them.

"Penelope," I said, "I am glad to hear that Mrs. Bannister is happily married. Now tell me of my friend Talcott--what of him?"

Penelope sat up very straight and her head tossed. "David, I should think that one subject which you would avoid."

"I confess myself consumed with merely idle curiosity," I returned.

"Talcott once made a great deal of trouble for me. Don't you remember the day on the Avenue when you cut me?"

"And if I had met you here a year ago, David, I should not have known you," she said severely. "A woman resents being made a fool of, nor can she easily forgive one who exposes the sham in which she has a part. The fault was mine and Mrs. Bannister's, and back of it there was something else."

"Something else?" I questioned.

Penelope did not answer. She had turned from me to the parasol and the sand. I repeated the question.

"Herbert Talcott is married--a year now," she said in a measured tone.

"His wife was a Miss Carmody--the daughter of Dennis Carmody, who owns the Sagamore--or something like that--mine." A pause. Her head tossed. "He recovered very quickly."

"But the something else?" I insisted.

"There are some things which you will never understand," she answered carelessly.

"There are some things which you must understand," I cried. "The hardest task that ever I had was to go to your uncle as I did, like a bearer of idle gossip. It would have been easier to let you go on as you were going, ignorant and blind. I knew that it meant an end of our friends.h.i.+p. That day when I spoke I believed that I was going out of your life forever. I was not surprised when, on the Avenue, you looked at me as though I were beneath your notice." I rose and stood before her. "Had I to do it over again, I would, a thousand times, for your sake. And didn't I prove that it was for your sake, when I banished myself and gave up all claim to you?"

"Claim to me?" Penelope's lips curled defiantly. "I should have thought that you would have been occupied making good your claim to Miss Dodd, or Bodd, or whatever her name was. I suppose you did right, but none the less it was unpleasant. I thank you. You see I forgive you, or we should not be here now talking." She raised her parasol as though about to rise. "We must go. My uncle is waiting for me, and if you care to, you may come with me and see him before we start for Rome."

She did not rise; but the matter-of-fact tone in which she made the threat chilled me, and for a moment I stood silent, looking down at the black figure. The brim of her hat hid her face from me, but she was making circles in the sand. I asked myself if this was the time for me to speak of that claim, to speak my whole heart to her.

She looked up. "David," she said, "you need not stand there so long.

It might be bad for your wound."

"My wound?" I asked, and I took my old place at her side.

"Why, yes," she said. "Were you not wounded in the Sudan? Uncle Rufus told me that you were. He read about it in the papers. A Major Bennett, or somebody, ran out under a heavy fire and pulled you out of the hands of a lot of Arabs and saved your life."

I laughed. I would have given all I owned in the world to have had at that moment an interesting and conspicuous wound, for I knew how sympathy formed love, and how to a woman's mind a wound added interest to a man. A few weeks ago, though unwounded, I had at least been very thin and brown; but even of those mild attractions I had thoughtlessly allowed myself to be robbed by too high living and a kinder sun than the desert's. How I envied Bennett with his sunken eyes and tottering gait!

"The telegraph evidently mixed the names," I said. "It was Bennett who was shot."

"And you saved his life!" Penelope cried, forgetting herself.

However modest the man may be who hides his light under a bushel, it is always pleasing to him to have another lift the basket. As a matter of fact, on that morning at Omdurman it was almost as uncomfortable in the disordered and retreating ranks as it was in our rear, where Bennett lay crushed in the sand under his dead camel. If I did run back to him in the face of the oncoming horde of dervishes, a half-dozen of his own black troopers ran with me and helped to drag him to safety. It was an ordinary incident of the heat of battle, yet I did wish that Bennett were here to tell her about it, with his grateful exaggeration. To me fell the hard task not only of hiding my light, but of blowing it out.

"We got him away," I returned carelessly, accenting the p.r.o.noun as though the whole corps were concerned. "A lot of his men ran back to him and put him on my horse. I simply led him out of danger."

"Oh!" Penelope exclaimed in a tone of disappointment.

She looked over the plain; and I beside her, with my stick bent across my knee, studied her face, trying to read in it some promise of kindness and hope. But I found none. She seemed lost in the fair prospect. She had met an old friend and had spoken to him. That was enough. Now it mattered little whether he went away or stayed. It came to me then to try an old, old ruse to test the quality of her indifference.

"We had best be going," I said, rising.

To my consternation she rose, too, and began to move off carelessly, as though she expected me to follow her to the hotel to see Rufus Blight and then to bid her a casual farewell. I did not follow. Indifferent she might be, but my mind was made up that she should hear me. There was no longer any gulf between us. There was only the barrier of cool indifference which she had raised, and I would fight to break it down.

"Penelope," I said, "there are other things that you and I must speak of before we go."

"What?" she asked, looking back over her shoulder.

"Of your father," I answered, stepping to the wall and leaning on it.

I think that she saw reproof in my eyes. She hesitated, stirring the sand with her parasol, and then came to the wall beside me.

"Is there anything that I do not know of him?" she asked, as she stood with her chin in her hands, looking over the plain. "You wrote so fully--to my uncle. You might have written to me, David--but still you wrote to my uncle." There was no hard note in Penelope's voice. "You cared for him, David, and he died in your arms. It was for that I forgave you--everything."

"Everything? What do you mean by everything?"

"There are some things that you will never understand."

"But you speak as though I had done much that needed forgiveness."

"We have been to Thessaly, David," she went on, as though she had not heard me. "We found the very shrine where he died and the place where you buried him, and we marked it. It seemed best that he should lie there where he had fought so bravely--his last fight--as though he would have it that way. How could I help forgiving you after that--everything?"

"Everything? Penelope, I do not understand."

She laid a hand lightly on my arm. "Tell me, David, what were my father's last words to you?"

"I wrote them to you," I answered.

"To Uncle Rufus--not to me."

"How could I write to you after that day on the Avenue?"

"That was a small thing, and I was foolish. Now I want to hear it from you myself."

I looked straight before me as I repeated the words which her father had said that night as he lay dying on the plain of Thessaly. "Tell them at home--it was a good fight."

I felt her hand lightly on my arm again. I heard her quiet voice ask: "Was that all?"

"The rest I could not write," I answered, turning to her, and she looked from me to the mountains. "He said to me: 'David, take care of Penelope.'"

For a moment Penelope was very still. It was as though she had not heard me. Then she half-raised herself from the wall. One hand rested there; the other was held out to me in reproof.

"And how have you done it, David? With a year of silence."

"But that day on the Avenue?" I said.