Chapter 11. Man Proposes

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_ CHAPTER XI. MAN PROPOSES

The young men cooled their heels for an hour before word was brought down to them that Mrs. Wrandall begged to be excused for the afternoon on account of a severe headache. Miss Castleton was with her, but would be down later on. Meanwhile they were to make themselves at home, and so on and so forth.

Booth took his departure, leaving Leslie in sole possession of the porch. He was restless, nervous, excited; half-afraid to stay there and face Hetty with the proposal he was determined to make, and wholly afraid to lorsake the porch and run the risk of missing her altogether if she came down as signified. Several things disturbed him. One was Hetty's deplorable failure to hang on his words as he had fondly expected her to do; and then there was that very--disquieting laugh of Sara's. A hundred times over he repeated to himself that sickening question: "What the devil was there to laugh at?" and no answer suggested itself. He was decidedly cross about it.

Another hour passed. His heels were quite cool by this time, but his blood was boiling. This was a deuce of a way to treat a fellow who had gone to the trouble to come all the way out in a stuffy train, by Jove, it was! With considerable asperity he rang for a servant and commanded him to fetch a time table, and to be quick about it, as there might be a train leaving before he could get back if it took him as long to find it as it took other people to remember their obligations! His sarcasm failed to impress Murray, who said he thought there was a schedule in Mrs. Wrandall's room, and he'd get it as soon as the way was clear, if Mr. Wrandall didn't mind waiting.

"If I minded waiting," snapped Leslie, "I wouldn't be here now."

"It's the thing most people object to in the country, sir," said Murray consolingly. "Waiting for trains, sir."

"And the sunset," added Mr. Wrandall pointedly, with a westward glare.

"We don't mind that, sir. We rather look forward to it. It means one day less of waiting for the trains." It was rather cryptic, but Leslie was too deeply absorbed in self-pity to take account of the pathos in Murray's philosophy.

"What time is it, Murray?"

"Five-twenty, Mr. Wrandall."

"That's all, Murray."

"Thank you, sir."

As the footman was leaving, Sara's automobile whirled up to the porte-cochere.

"Who is going out, Murray?" he called in surprise.

"Miss Castleton, sir. For the air, sir."

"The deuce you say!" gasped the harassed Mr. Wrandall. It was a pretty kettle of fish!

Hetty appeared a few minutes later, attired for motoring.

"Oh, there you are," she said, espying him. "I am going for a spin. Want to come along?"

He swallowed hard. The ends of his moustache described a pair of absolutely horizontal exclamation points. "If you don't mind being encumbered," he remarked sourly.

"I don't in the least mind," said she sweetly.

"Where are you going?" he asked without much enthusiasm. He wasn't to be caught appearing eager, not he. Besides, it wasn't anything to be flippant about.

"Yonder," she said, with a liberal sweep of her arm, taking in the whole landscape. "And be home in time to dress for dinner," she added, as if to relieve his mind.

"Good Lord!" he groaned, "do we have to eat again?"

"We have to dress for it, at least," she replied.

"I'll go," he exclaimed, and ambled off to secure a cap and coat.

"Sara has planned for a run to Lenox to-morrow if it doesn't rain," she informed him on his return.

"Oh," he said, staring. "Booth gets a day off on the portrait then."

"Being Sunday," she smiled. "We knock off on Sundays and bank holidays. But, after all, he doesn't really get a holiday. He is to go with us, poor fellow."

He looked as though he expected nothing. He could only sit back and wonder what the deuce Sara meant by behaving like this.

It was not by way of being a profitable excursion, if we are to judge by the amount of pleasure Leslie derived from the two hours' spin through the cool, leafy byways of the forest with the obj ect of his heart's desire on the seat beside him. He tried to screw up his courage to the point of asking her why he shouldn't kiss her band, which might have opened the way to more profound interrogations, but somehow he felt unable to cope with the serenity that confronted him. Moreover, he had a horrible conviction that the chauffeur was a brute with abnormally long ears and a correspondingly short sense of honour. No, it was not the time or the place for love-making. He would have to be content to bide his time till after dinner, which now began to lose some of its disadvantages. There was a most engaging nook, he remembered, in the corner of the garden facing the Sound, where the shadows were deep; where sentiment could thrive on its own ecstasy; where no confounded menial dared to show his face--although he had to admit that the chauffeur was most punctilious in that respect.

And so he was satisfied to sit back in the corner of the seat and feed his senses on the lovely creature before him. He had never seen her so beautiful, so utterly worth having as now. He was conscious of a great, overwhelming sense of pride, somewhat smothering in its vastness. She was a creature to be proud of! His heart was very full.

They returned at seven. Dinner was unusually merry. Sara appeared to have recovered from her indisposition; there was colour in her cheeks and life in her smile. He took it to be an omen of good fortune, and was immeasurably confident. The soft cool breezes of the star-lit night blew visions of impending happiness across his lively imagination; fanned his impatience with gentle ardour; filled him with surpressed sighs of contentment, and made him willing to forego the delight of conquest that he might live the longer in serene anticipation of its thrills.

Ten o'clock came. He arose and stretched himself in a sort of ecstasy. His heart was thumping loudly, his senses swam. Walking to the verandah rail he looked out across the moonlit Sound, then down at the selected nook over against the garden wall--spot to be immortalised!--and actually shivered. In ten minutes' time, or even less, she would be down there in his arms! Exquisite meditations!

He turned to her with an engaging smile, in which she might have discerned a prophecy, and asked her to come with him for a stroll along the wall. And so he cast the die.

Hetty sent a swift, appealing look at Sara's purposely averted face. Leslie observed the act, but misinterpreted its meaning.

"Oh, it is quite warm," he said quickly. "You won't need a wrap," he added, and in spite of himself his voice trembled. Of course she wouldn't need a wrap!

"I have a few notes to write," said Sara, rising. She deliberately avoided the look in Hetty's eyes. "You will find me in the library."

She stood in the doorway and watched them descend to the terrace, a sphinx-like smile on her lips. Hetty seemed very tall and erect, as one going to meet a soldier's fate.

Then Sara entered the house and sat down to wait.

A long time after a door closed stealthily in a distant part of the house--the sun-parlour door, she knew by direction.

A few minutes later an upstairs door creaked on its hinges. Some one had come in from the mellow night, and some one had been left outside.

Many minutes passed. She sat there at her father's writing table and waited for the other to come in. At last quick, heavy footfalls sounded on the tiled floor outside and then came swiftly down the hall toward the small, remote room in which she sat. She looked up as he unceremoniously burst into the room.

He came across and stood over her, an expression of utter bewilderment in his eyes. There was a ghastly smile on his lips.

"Damn it all, Sara," he said shrilly, "she---she turned me down."

He seemed incapable of comprehension.

She was unmoved. Her eyes narrowed, but that was the only sign of emotion.

"I--I can't believe--" he began querulously. "Oh, what's the use? She won't have me. 'Gad! I'm trembling like a leaf. Where's Watson? Have him get me something to drink. Never mind! I'll get it from the sideboard. I'm--I'm damned!"

He dropped heavily into a chair at the end of the table and looked at her with glazed eyes. As she stared back at him she had the curious feeling that he had shrunk perceptibly, that his clothes hung rather limply on him. His face seemd to have lost all of its smart symmetry; there was a looseness about the mouth and chin that had never been there before. The saucy, arrogant moustache sloped dejectedly.

"I fancy you must have gone about it very badly," she said, pursing her lips.

"Badly?" he gasped. "Why--why, good heavens, Sara, I actually pleaded with her," he went on, quite pathetically. "All but got down on my knees to her. Damn me, if I can understand myself doing it either. I must have lost my head completely. Begged like a love-sick school-boy! And she kept on saying no--no--no! And I, like a blithering ass, kept on telling her I couldn't live without her, that I'd make her happy, that she didn't know what she was saying, and--But, good Lord, she kept on saying no! Nothing but no! Do--do you think she meant to say no? Could it have been hysteria? She said it so often, over and over again, that it might have been hysteria. I never thought of that. I--"

"No, Leslie, it wasn't hysteria, you may be sure of that," she said deliberately. "She meant it, old fellow."

He sagged deeper in the chair.

"I--I can't get it through my head," he muttered.

"As I said before, you did it badly," she said. "You took too much for granted. Isn't that true?"

"God knows I didn't EXPECT her to refuse me," he exclaimed, glaring at her. "Would I have been such a fool as to ask her if I thought there was the remotest chance of being--" The very thought of the word caused it to stick in his throat. He swallowed hard.

"You really love her?" she demanded.

"Love her?" There was a sob in his voice. "I adore her, Sara. I can't live without her. And the worst of it is, I love her now more than I did before, Oh, it's appalling! It's horrible! What am I to do, Sara? What AM I to do?"

"Be a man for a little while, that's all," she said coolly.

"Don't joke with me," he groaned.

"Go to bed, and when you see her in the morning tell her that you understand. Thank her for what she has done for you. Be--"

"Thank her?" he almost shouted.

"Yes; for destroying all that is detestable in you, Leslie,--your self-conceit, your arrogance, your false notions concerning yourself,--in a word, your egotism."

He blinked incredulously. "Do you know what you're saying?" he gasped.

She went on as if she hadn't heard him.

"Assure her that she is to feel no compunction for what she has done, that you are content to be her loyal, devoted friend to the end of your days."

"But, hang it, Sara, I LOVE her!"

"Don't let her suspect that you are humiliated. On the contrary, give her to understand that you are cleansed and glorified."

"What utter tommy--"

"Wait! Believe me, it is your only chance. You will have to learn some time that you can't ride rough-shod among angels. Think it over, old fellow. You have had a good lesson. Profit by it."

"You mean I'm to sit down and twirl my thumbs and let some other chap snap her up under my very nose? Well, I guess not!"

"Not necessarily. If you take it manfully, she may discover a new interest in you. Don't breathe a word of love to her. Go on as if nothing had happened. Don't forget that I told you in the beginning not to take no for an answer."

He drooped once more, biting his lip. "I don't see how I can ever tell mother that she refused--"

"Why tell her?" she inquired, rising.

His eyes brightened. "By Jove, I shan't," he exclaimed.

"I am going up to the poor child now," she went on. "I dare say you have frightened her almost to death. Naturally she is in great distress. I shall try to convince her that her decision does not alter her position in this house. I depend on you to do your part, Leslie. Make it easy for her to stay on with me."

He mellowed to the verge of tears.

"I can't keep on coming out here after this, as I've been doing, Sara."

"Don't be silly! Of course you can. This will blow over."

"Blow over?" he almost gasped.

"I mean the first effects. Try being a martyr for a while, Leslie. It isn't a bad plan, I can assure you. It may interest you to know that Challis proposed to me three times before I accepted him, and yet I--I loved him from the beginning."

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, coming to his feet with a new light in his eyes. The hollows in his cheeks seemed to fill out perceptibly.

"Good-night!"

"I say, Sara dear, you'll--you'll help me a bit, won't you? I mean, you'll talk it over with her and--"

"My sympathy is entirely with Miss Castleton," she said from the doorway. His jaw dropped.

He was still ruminating over the callousness of the world in respect to lovers when she mounted the stairs and tapped firmly on Hetty's door.

His hopes began to revive. A new thought had entered in and lodged securely among them, bracing them up amazingly. "By Jove," he said to himself, staring hard at the floor, "I dare say I did go about it badly. Sara was clever enough to see it. I must have taken her off her feet with my confounded earnestness. Girls do lose their heads, bless 'em, if you go at them with a rush. I'm sure she'll look at it differently when she's had time to compose herself." He was perplexed, however, over something he had not revealed to Sara, and his sudden frown proved that it was still disturbing him. "I can't for the life of me understand why she should have been so damned horrified at the idea."

He started for the dining-room, recalling his need of a drink, but changed his mind in the hall. Grabbing up his hat and stick, he darted out of the house and was soon swinging briskly down the moonlit avenue. He had come to the conclusion that a long walk would prove settling; and moreover it wasn't a stupid idea to go over and have his drink with Brandon Booth. The longer he walked, the more springy his stride. Sara was quite right; he HAD gone about it badly. He'd go about it differently next time.

Half way to Booth's cottage his pace slackened. A disconcerting thought struck him, almost like a dash of cold water in the face: Was she in love with Booth? He sat down on the rugged stone fence to ponder. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. When he next resumed his walk, his back was towards Booth's cottage. He attributed the perspiration to the violence of his exercise.

Hetty Castleton was standing in the middle of her room when Sara entered. From her position, it was evident that she had stopped short in her nervous, excited pacing of the floor. She was very pale but there was a dogged, set expression about her mouth.

"Come in, dear," she said, in a manner that showed she had been expecting the visit. "Have you seen him?"

Sara closed the door, and then stood with her back against it, regarding her agitated friend with serious, compassionate eyes.

"Yes. He is terribly upset. It was a blow to him, Hetty."

"I am sorry for him, Sara. He was so dreadfully in earnest. But, thank God, it is over!" She threw back her head and breathed deeply. "That horrible, horrible nightmare is ended. I suppose it had to be. But the mockery of it--think of it, Sara!--the damnable mockery of it!"

"Poor Leslie!" sighed the other. "Poor old Leslie."

Hetty's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, I AM sorry for him. He didn't deserve it. God in heaven, if he really knew everything! If he knew why I could not listen to him, why I almost screamed when he held my hands in his and begged--actually begged me to--Oh, it was ghastly, Sara!"

She covered her face with her hands, and swayed as if about to fall. Sara came quickly to her side. Putting an arm about the quivering shoulders, she led the girl to the broad window seat and threw open the blinds.

"Don't speak of it, dearest,--don't think of THAT. Sit here quietly in the air and pull yourself together. Let me talk to you. Let me tell you how deeply distressed I am, not only on your account, but his."

They were silent for a long time, the girl lying still and almost breathless against the other's shoulders. She was still wearing the delicate blue dinner gown, but in her fingers was the exquisite pearl necklace Sara had given her for Christmas. She had taken it off and had forgotten to drop it in her jewel box.

"I suppose he will go up to the city early," she said monotonously.

"Leslie is a better loser than you think, my dear," said Sara, looking out over the tops of the cedars. "He will not run away."

Hetty looked up in alarm. "You mean he will persist in--in his attentions," she cried.

"Oh, no. I don't believe you will find him to be the bugbear you imagine. He can take defeat like a man. He is devoted to you, he is devoted to me. Your decision no doubt wrecks his fondest hope in life, but it doesn't make a weakling of him."

"I don't quite understand--"

"He is sustained by the belief that he has paid you the highest honour a man can pay to a woman. There is no reason why he should turn his back on you, as a sulky boy might do. No, my dear, I think you may count on him as your best, most loyal friend from this night on. He has just said to me that his greatest pain lies in the fear that you may not be willing to accept him as a simple, honest, unpresuming friend since--"

"Oh, Sara, if he will only be that and nothing more!" cried the girl wonderingly.

Sara smiled confidently. "I fancy you haven't much to fear in that direction, my dear. It isn't in Leslie Wrandall's make-up to court a second repulse. He is all pride. The blow it suffered to-night can't be repeated--at least, not by the same person."

"I am so sorry it had to be Leslie," murmured Hetty.

"Be nice to him, Hetty. He deserves that much of you, to say the least. I should miss him if he found it impossible to come here on account of--"

"I wouldn't have that happen for the world," cried the girl in distress. "He is your dearest friend. Send me away, Sara, if you must. Don't let anything stand in the way of your friendship for Leslie. You depend on him for so much, dear. I can't bear the thought of--"

"Hush, dearest! You are first in my love. Better for me to lose all the others and still have you."

The girl looked at her in wonder for a long time. "Oh, I know you mean it, Sara, but--but how can it be true?"

"Put yourself in my place," was all that Sara said in reply, and her companion had no means of translating the sentence.

She could only remain mute and wondering, her eyes fixed on that other mystery: the cameo face in the moon that hung high above the sombre forest.

"If it were not for the trip to Lenox," she murmured plaintively.

"The trip is off," announced Sara. She too was staring at the cloudless sky. "There will be rain tomorrow."

"It is very clear to-night, Sara."

"Do you hear that little wail in the trees--as if a child were whimpering out there? That is the plaint of the fairies who live in the buds and twigs, in the flower cups and mosses. They famish, their gods will hear. Their gods hear when ours is deaf. You will see. There will be clouds over us to-morrow and we will breathe the mist."

The girl shivered.

Many minutes afterward she said, as one who marvels: "I hear the promise in the wind, Sara,--the new, cool wind."

"The gods are whispering. Soon the fairies and elves will come forth to revel. Ah, what a wonderful thing the night is!"

"The fairies," mused the girl. "You believe in them?"

"Resolutely."

"And I too."

"We will never grow old, my dear," said Sara. "That is what the fairies are for: to keep those who love them young."

Hetty had relaxed. Her soft young body was warm again; that ineffably feminine charm was revived in her.

"Poor Leslie," murmured Sara, a long time afterward, a dreamy note in her voice. "I can't put him out of my thoughts. He will never get over it. I have never seen one so stricken and yet so brave. He would have been more than a husband to you, Hetty. It is in him to be a slave to the woman he loves. I know him well, poor boy."

Hetty was silent, brooding. Sara resumed her thoughtful observations.

"Why should you let what happened months ago stand in the way of--"

She got no farther than that. With an exclamation of horror, the girl sprang away from her and glowered at her with dilated eyes.

"My God, Sara!" she whispered hoarsely. "Are you mad?"

The other sighed. "I suppose you must think it of me," she said dismally. "We are made differently, you and I. If I cared for a man, nothing in all this world could stand between me and him. My love would fortify me against the enemy we are prone to call conscience. It would justify me in slaying the thing we call conscience. In your heart, Hetty, you have not wronged Leslie Wrandall by any act of yours. You owe him no reparation. On the contrary, it is not far out of the way to say that he owes you something, but of course it is a claim for recompense and resolves itself into a sentimental debt, so there's really no use discussing it."

Hetty was still staring. "You don't mean to say you would have me marry Challis Wrandall's brother?" she said, in a sort of stupefaction.

Sara shook her head. "I mean this: you would be justified in permitting Leslie to glorify that which his brother desecrated; your womanhood, my dear."

"My God, Sara!" again fell in a hoarse whisper from the girl's lips.

"I simply voice my point of view," explained Sara calmly. "As I said before, we look at things differently."

"I can't believe you mean what you have said," cried Hetty. "Why--why, if I loved him with all my heart, soul and body I could not even think of--Oh, I shudder to think of it!"

"I love you," continued Sara, fixing her mysterious eyes on those of the girl, "and yet you took from me something more than a brother. I love you, knowing everything, and I am paying in full the debt he owes to you. Leslie, knowing nothing, is no less your debtor. All this is paradoxical, I know, my dear, but we must remember that while other people may be indebted to us, we also owe something to ourselves. We ought to take pay from ourselves. Please do not conclude that I am urging or even advising you to look with favour upon Leslie Wrandall's honourable, sincere proposal of marriage. I am merely trying to convince you that you are entitled to all that any man can give you in this world of ours,--we women all are, for that matter."

"I was sure that you couldn't ask me to marry him. I couldn't believe--"

"Forget what I have said, dearest, if it grieves you," cried Sara warmly. She arose and drew the girl close to her. "Kiss me, Hetty." Their lips met. The girl's eyes were closed, but Sara's were wide open and gleaming. "It is because I love you," she said softly, but she did not complete the sentence that burned in her brain. To herself she repeated: "It is because I love you that I would scourge you with Wrandalls!"

"You are very good to me, Sara," sobbed Hetty.

"You WILL be nice to Leslie?"

"Yes, yes! If he will only let me be his friend."

"He asks no more than that. Now, you must go to bed."

Suddenly, without warning, she held the girl tightly in her arms. Her breathing was quick, as of one moved by some sharp sensation of terror. When Hetty, in no little wonder, opened her eyes Sara's face was turned away, and she was looking over her shoulder as if cause for alarm had come from behind.

"What is it?" cried Hetty anxiously.

She saw the look of dread in her companion's eyes, even as it began to fade.

"I don't know," muttered Sara. "Something, I can't tell what, came over me. I thought some one was stealing up behind me. How silly of me."

"Ah," said Hetty, with an odd smile, "I can understand how you felt."

"Hetty, will you take me in with you to-night?" whispered Sara nervously. "Let me sleep with you. I can't explain it, but I am afraid to be alone to-night." The girl's answer was a glad smile of acquiescence. "Come with me, then, to my bedroom while I change. I have the queerest feeling that some one is in my room. I don't want to be alone. Are you afraid?"

Hetty held back, her face blanching.

"No, I am not afraid," she cried at once, and started toward the door.

"There IS some one in this room," said Sara a few moments later, when they were in the big bedroom down the hall.

"I--I wonder," murmured Hetty.

And yet neither of them looked about in search for the intruder!

Far into the night Sara sat in the window of Hetty's dressing-room, her chin sunk low in her hands, staring moodily into the now opaque night, her eyes sombre and unblinking, her body as motionless as death itself. The cooling wind caressed her and whispered warnings into her unheeding ears, but she sat there unprotected against its chill, her night-dress damp with the mist that crept up with sinister stealth from the sea.

In the flats below, a vast army of frogs shrilled in ceaseless chatter; night birds and insects responded to the bedlam challenge; the hoarse monotonous grunts of a fog-horn came up from the Sound. There were people out there, asleep in passage.

A cat mewed piteously somewhere in the garden. She was curiously disturbed by this. She hated cats. There had never been one on the place before. _

Read next: Chapter 12. The Approach Of A Man Named Smith

Read previous: Chapter 10. The Ghost At The Feast

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