The Younger Set Part 53

"So you won't have me?" he said.

"You haven't asked me--have you?"

"Well, I do now."

She mused, the smile resting lightly on lips and eyes.

"_Wouldn't_ such a thing astonish Nina!" she said.

He did not answer; a slight colour tinged the new sunburn on his cheeks.

She laughed to herself, clasped her hands, crossed her slender feet, and bent her eyes on the pool below.

"Marriage," she said, pursuing her thoughts aloud, "is curiously unnecessary to happiness. Take our pleasure in each other, for example.

It has, from the beginning, been perfectly free from silliness and sentiment."

"Naturally," he said. "I'm old enough to be safe."

"You are not!" she retorted. "What a ridiculous thing to say!"

"Well, then," he said, "I'm dreadfully unsafe, but yet you've managed to escape. Is that it?"

"Perhaps. You _are_ attractive to women! I've heard that often enough to be convinced. Why, even I can see what attracts them"--she turned to look at him--"the way your head and shoulders set--and--well, the--rest.

... It's rather superior of me to have escaped sentiment, don't you think so?"

"Indeed I do. Few--few escape where many meet to wors.h.i.+p at my frisky feet, and this I say without conceit is due to my mustachios. Tangled in those like web-tied flies, imprisoned hearts complain in sighs--in fact, the situation vies with moments in Boccaccio."

Her running comment was her laughter, ringing deliciously amid the trees until a wild bird, restlessly attentive, ventured a long, sweet response from the tangled green above them.

After their laughter the soberness of reaction left them silent for a while. The wild bird sang and sang, dropping fearlessly nearer from branch to branch, until in his melody she found the key to her dreamy thoughts.

"Because," she said, "you are so unconscious of your own value, I like you best, I think. I never before quite realised just what it was in you."

"My value," he said, "is what you care to make it."

"Then n.o.body can afford to take you away from me, Captain Selwyn."

He flushed with pleasure: "That is the prettiest thing a woman ever admitted to a man," he said.

"You have said nicer things to me. That is your reward. I wonder if you remember any of the nice things you say to me? Oh, don't look so hurt and astonished--because I don't believe you do... . Isn't it jolly to sit here and let life drift past us? Out there in the world"--she nodded backward toward the open--"out yonder all that 'progress' is whirling around the world, and here we sit--just you and I--quite happily, swinging our feet in perfect content and talking nonsense... . What more is there after all than a companions.h.i.+p that admits both sense and nonsense?"

She laughed, turning her chin on her shoulder to glance at him; and when the laugh had died out she still sat lightly poised, chin nestling in the hollow of her shoulder, considering him out of friendly beautiful eyes in which no mockery remained.

"What more is there than our confidence in each other and our content?"

she said.

And, as he did not respond: "I wonder if you realise how perfectly lovely you have been to me since you have come into my life? Do you? Do you remember the first day--the very first--how I sent word to you that I wished you to see my first real dinner gown? Smile if you wish--Ah, but you don't, you _don't_ understand, my poor friend, how much you became to me in that little interview... . Men's kindness is a strange thing; they may try and try, and a girl may know they are trying and, in her turn, try to be grateful. But it is all effort on both sides.

Then--with a word--an impulse born of chance or instinct--a man may say and do that which a woman can never forget--and would not if she could."

"Have I done--that?"

"Yes. Didn't you understand? Do you suppose any other man in the world could have what you have had of me--of my real self? Do you suppose for one instant that any other man than you could ever obtain from me the confidence I offer you unasked? Do I not tell you everything that enters my head and heart? Do you not know that I care for you more than for anybody alive?"

"Gerald--"

She looked him straight in the eyes; her breath caught, but she steadied her voice:

"I've got to be truthful," she said; "I care for you more than for Gerald."

"And I for you more than anybody living," he said.

"Is it true?"

"It is the truth, Eileen."

"You--you make me very happy, Captain Selwyn."

"But--did you not know it before I told you?"

"I--y-yes; I hoped so." In the exultant reaction from the delicious tension of avowal she laughed lightly, not knowing why.

"The pleasure in it," she said, "is the certainty that I am capable of making you happy. You have no idea how I desire to do it. I've wanted to ever since I knew you--I've wanted to be capable of doing it. And you tell me that I do; and I am utterly and foolishly happy." The quick mischievous sparkle of _gaminerie_ flashed up, transforming her for an instant--"Ah, yes; and I can make you unhappy, too, it seems, by talking of marriage! That, too, is something--a delightful power--but"--the malice dying to a spark in her brilliant eyes--"I shall not torment you, Captain Selwyn. Will it make you happier if I say, 'No; I shall never marry as long as I have you'? Will it really? Then I say it; never, never will I marry as long as I have your confidence and friends.h.i.+p... . But I want it _all_!--every bit, please. And if ever there is another woman--if ever you fall in love!--crack!--away I go"--she snapped her white fingers--"like that!" she added, "only quicker! Well, then! Be very, very careful, my friend! ... I wish there were some place here where I could curl up indefinitely and listen to your views on life. You brought a book to read, didn't you?"

He gave her a funny embarra.s.sed glance: "Yes; I brought a sort of a book."

"Then I'm all ready to be read to, thank you... . Please steady me while I try to stand up on this log--one hand will do--"

Scarcely in contact with him she crossed the log, sprang blithely to the ground, and, lifting the hem of her summer gown an inch or two, picked her way toward the bank above.

"We can see Nina when she signals us from the lawn to come to luncheon,"

she said, gazing out across the upland toward the silvery tinted hillside where Silverside stood, every pane glittering with the white eastern sunlight.

In the dry, sweet gra.s.s she found a place for a nest, and settled into it, head p.r.o.ne on a heap of scented bay leaves, elbows skyward, and fingers linked across her chin. One foot was hidden, the knee, doubled, making a tent of her white skirt, from an edge of which a russet shoe projected, revealing the contour of a slim ankle.

"What book did you bring?" she asked dreamily.

He turned red: "It's--it's just a chapter from a little book I'm trying to write--a--a sort of suggestion for the establishment of native regiments in the Philippines. I thought, perhaps, you might not mind listening--"

Her delighted surprise and quick cordiality quite overwhelmed him, so, sitting flat on the gra.s.s, hat off and the hill wind furrowing his bright crisp hair, he began, navely, like a schoolboy; and Eileen lay watching him, touched and amused at his eager interest in reading aloud to her this ma.s.s of co-ordinated fact and detail.

There was, in her, one quality to which he had never appealed in vain--her loyalty. Confident of that, and of her intelligence, he wasted no words in preliminary explanation, but began at once his argument in favour of a native military establishment erected on the general lines of the British organisation in India.

He wrote simply and without self-consciousness; loyalty aroused her interest, intelligence sustained it; and when the end came, it came too quickly for her, and she said so frankly, which delighted him.

At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into pabulum.

Lying there in the fragrant verdure, blue eyes skyward or slanting sideways to watch his face, she listened, answered, questioned, or responded by turns; until their voices grew lazy and the light reaction from things serious awakened the gaiety always latent when they were together.

"Proceed," she smiled; "_Arma virumque_--a n.o.ble theme, Captain Selwyn.