It was the irresistible childish plea to be forgiven, but for the first time it failed to move him. His hand was resting on the table.

She reached across until her fingers almost touched his and again she called, "Billy," but it was almost a whisper this time and very unsteady. The brown fingers closed quickly and warmly over the reconciliatory hand and held it for a minute longer than necessary, but the hurt had not quite left him. With all her "socially trained"

delicacy, he realized that she had no scruples about rushing into what he considered sacred ground. The armor of her frivolity was always ready as a check to his seriousness, and while she could seem alluringly in earnest herself sometimes, the minute he turned to follow her again she brought his pursuit down to the level of common philandering. Suddenly he reddened and slowly released her hand; at the next table a sleek, muddy-eyed man with a theatrical-looking woman, was doing the same thing.

Whether it was an effort or not, he caught the spirit of her gaiety very well after that. On their way to the theatre they called at a florist's and he experienced a new, thrilling sense of nearness in being allowed to hold the long-stemmed roses in place while she pinned them to her dress. It was nearly midnight when their car threaded its way out from the flashing, snorting tangle of limousines and taxis, and gradually leaving the lights and the noises behind, purred out toward the snowy darkness of the hills. The moon had gone; there were no lights in the houses, and they felt strangely alone and quiet.

Presently in a thin, groping little voice she said:

"I almost made you angry to-night, didn't I?"

He laughed. "I'm afraid you did. A man is generally an awful crank about some things, and if a thing means very much to him he can't stand to have it handled lightly."

"You mean----"

"That I love you. You see I've been trying so long to let you know.

Most of the time I see what a fool I am to dream of such a thing.

Then sometimes I go blind for a while and almost wonder if you don't care a little; but all the time, whether you care or not, it seems impossible to think of going on without you."

He was talking with a hard edge in his voice, both hands gripping the wheel as though he could manage them better if he kept them there.

When she didn't answer, he turned and searched her face hungrily for a minute, but looked away again unrewarded.

"Don't worry about it," he said gently. "I almost knew you couldn't.

I shouldn't have said anything."

Marjorie was not accustomed to such unsensational _denouements_ as this. She caught her breath in something so nearly like a sob that he came back more penitent than ever.

"Don't," he pleaded. "It's all right, I shouldn't have told you."

"But I didn't say that I didn't care--" She was going on to explain that a highly emotional nature was capable of varying shades of caring, but there was nothing in Billy's simple code of ethics to antic.i.p.ate such a fine a.n.a.lysis of the case. Perhaps he waited for one breathless second to be sure he had heard aright; the next, she was pushing him away.

"How could you!" she stormed. "How could you!" She was angry and injured and tearful--or she seemed to be, and for the minute the thought of his mistake staggered him. Then very quietly he said:

"I didn't understand, and I'm sorry; but I'm not ashamed. I know I've offended you, but you wouldn't be offended if you knew what I meant.

You think it's savage and primitive. It is that, I guess; but I want you to know that at least it's genuine, and--it's _not_ brutal.

If things had been different, if you could have cared and married me, you would know."

Marjorie was considering. It was not her first experience of this kind. You can't make a practice of playing with animals and not get mussed up sometimes, but with a girl in her social position most men of the "socially experienced" set would not have bl.u.s.tered into things so whole heartedly. If they did, beneath their cajoling apologies afterwards, there would lurk a quizzical half-smile, as much as to say, "What did you start the thing for? Just what is the game?" It generally meant the end of a flirtation and the loss of the girl's prestige in that particular quarter; but, somehow, Billy had left her with all her self-respect. It was hard to know what to do, for even with the weak pa.s.sion of which her selfish make-up was capable, she had unwittingly stumbled into a little love herself.

"I--I don't want to be silly about this," she advanced magnanimously after a while. "I'm not offended, but don't let's spoil everything by being serious on our last night together."

"Our _last_ night?"

"The last for a while, anyway. I guess I didn't tell you that I'm going to town for the winter--my really official _debut_ in society. Auntie wants me, and Dad and Mother have consented to let me go for the season. You see," she explained rather plaintively, "I've never really had an opportunity of trying my wings at all, and I just crave life and excitement and company. Maybe some day I'll settle down and be the domestic little wren you'd like to see me; but don't you see, I'm so young--I don't want to get married. I just want to live for awhile. I think a winter in town will do me lots of good.

Auntie knows the very best people, and she entertains beautifully.

Would you--I wonder if you'd care to see some of my little dresses?"

Later, in her luxurious little sitting-room, she brought out the "little dresses" and caressingly displayed them one by one for his stupid admiration. They were very artful creations and considerably expensive, but Mrs. Evison, who appreciated the value of clothes as a social a.s.set, considered them a good investment for her daughter. To Billy they emphasized how meagre she would find the kind of life he could give her, so far as purchasable things were concerned.

"You should consider yourself a very privileged person," she told him archly. "I don't know another man I'd show them to, but you won't be there when I wear them, and I just couldn't go without letting you see them. I wish you were coming, too. I hope you won't be lonesome when I've gone."

"Can I come to see you?"

She considered, surveying him slantwise. "If you'd asked me that yesterday, I might have said 'yes'; but after to-night--I wonder.

You'd better wait. Maybe I'll send for you."

When he was leaving her he begged:

"I can see you to-morrow, anyway, can't I? You say you leave the day after."

"I'm sorry, but we're having a little dinner-party to-morrow. Dr.

Knight and some of his friends have planned for a sleigh-ride. I guess I'll have to say good-bye to-night." Her voice seemed to be trembling a little. "And whatever happens, I'll always remember our little times together as some of the dearest of my life. You've been very good to me, Billy; I know, whatever happens, you won't think I've been heartless, or that I haven't cared at all. You're so much more generous than most men. I've read, somewhere, that where a girl is concerned, men are generally like boys setting out to catch a bird. They have a cage and they want a bird for it, and someone has told them that they can catch one by putting salt on its tail.

Whenever they think they have just caught it, the bird flits off and waits till they come up again; it doesn't want to go into a cage.

When it gets tired being pursued and flies away out of reach altogether, the little savage in them crops out, and they throw stones at the bird for leading them on. You won't ever think I did that, will you?"

She felt rather alone after he had gone, but then she knew that he would come back any time she wanted him. For the present alluring possibilities were awaiting elsewhere. Dr. Knight had been very attentive in the way of motoring out to see her, but of course a great many liked to motor out to pleasant country homes on holidays.

Once launched in society under the prestige of her aunt's influential wing, the situation would be different. From various angles she consulted her mirror, and decided that her prospects were good. She could already picture the quaint old Anglican church in the village decorated for her wedding; there would be lilies and smilax--she had often talked that over with her mother, and she would have a little empire dress, very girlish and bride-like, with her veil caught up in a Juliet cap. She visualized herself very distinctly coming down the church aisle. It would be very hard for Billy, for of course he would be there to follow her with that tragic worship in his sober eyes--it was far from likely that he would ever love anyone else--and when he came to say he hoped she would be happy, she just knew she wouldn't be able to keep the tears back, and she would lift her face--heavens, no!--she couldn't do that. Why, everything would be at an end with Billy, and she would have to go away with Dr. Knight. But she would know that he would be thinking about her and loving her just the same. And whenever she came home to her mother's receptions and things, she would see that he was invited, and she would be very gracious to him.

A wicked little voice suggested another idea. What if she should come back sometime to find Billy in love with someone else? Men were so queer. She had known them to be married a year after some girl had supposedly broken their hearts, and to actually fall desperately and permanently in love with their wives. The possibility made her furious. If only Billy had had Dr. Knight's position--he would have been so everlastingly good to live with, and recklessly she made up her mind that if nothing materialized from her season in town--if Dr.

Knight remained indefinite, she would come back and marry Billy. She couldn't go on a farm with him, of course, and she couldn't live all her life in small towns like this, but he could get something else to do; she had heard a man tell her father that he hoped to see him in the federal parliament some day. So if nothing else developed, she would marry Billy. The idea left her feeling beautifully generous and secure.

CHAPTER XII.

"_These laid the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene That men call age; and those who would have been Their sons, they gave, their immortality._"

--_Rupert Brooke._

There was no sense of loss for Billy in the days that followed Miss Evison's leaving the neighborhood--you can't lose a thing you never had. Removed from the fascination of her presence, and reviewing one incident after another, there was only one theory to accept. It had been the affair of a moment for her, a diversion acceptable for the want of something better; now it was over, and she wanted to be free from any further obligation. Still, it was disconcerting to an agricultural expert, holding forth late in some village hall, while the fire in the boxstove burned low and the frost patterns crept over the steamy window panes, to have his efforts to inspire a sleepy audience with the need of greater production, suddenly sidetracked by a vision of a regal little figure in some palm-bordered ballroom, brilliant and excited and restless as a beautiful moth that has found the light.

He had now considerable free time in the evenings which might be turned to good account in his work, but people had become so accustomed to finding the office locked at night, that they had stopped calling, and it would be difficult to win back their interest. With notes of Miss Evison's social engagements in town constantly finding their way into the local papers, he could scarcely advertise that henceforth his evenings would be at the service of the community.

But it was not the blow of Miss Evison's dismissal, nor dissatisfaction with his work, which turned his affairs in another direction where things like these don't count for much. It was the first winter of the war and like many another young man absorbed in the peaceful industries of the green country, the Representative had had some serious debates with himself. The men who directed his work, peering through the chaos of the country's general unpreparedness to probable starvation ahead, kept the wires from head quarters hot, suggesting plans for growing bigger crops in the district, leaving it with the Representative to put the plans before the people. This they considered his best service just then. At the same time newspapers were bringing home reports that made it hard for men to go on tilling their fields, even to feed the men who were fighting, or the people whose homes had been outraged by an invading army.

Most of these steady, thinking young men with ambitions in other directions, made no attempt to explain the motives which led them to put away all the things they cared for to enter a new life as hateful as it was strange to them. It might have been just the chivalry that guided their every-day conduct in less spectacular ways, or the more plebeian, but equally unselfish, spirit of doing an unpleasant, but necessary, thing because someone had to do it; perhaps the comradeship with others who were making the sacrifice had some part.

Anyway, without discussion or ceremony, the Representative gave up his plans for the community and the possibilities of the place on the hill, which of course didn't mean anything now, anyway, and joined the county battalion. It would have been harder if his mother had been living, but as things were he reasoned it wouldn't matter much to anyone but Jean, and she had developed a splendid faculty for taking care of herself. It was difficult to a.s.sociate the easy, self-a.s.sured young varsity student with the shy little school-teacher who in the years when she felt the loss of her mother most, had cried to him over problems on which he was helplessly ignorant. His unfailing solution was to send her to Ruth Macdonald for advice, until she acquired the habit of going herself, and didn't need his help any more. In one way, however, Jean remained unchanged from the little girl who had trotted after him everywhere with the faithfulness of a little spaniel. He had taught her to climb trees, and skate, and swim, and though naturally timid and afraid of the water, she would float with him, perfectly confident, out to the deepest places. When, nervous and ill with the loneliness of her first school, she had sent for him, he had only to gather her up like the child she was, and she went right to sleep, secure and quiet in the strength and gentleness of his great body. With all the admirable, twentieth-century young woman's independence, he knew that the hero worship of the little sister remained the same, and at the thought of leaving her he was painfully conscious of his neglect since his interests and his holidays had been given so wholly to Miss Evison.

It was when he returned from the ceremony of putting on his uniform that this reproach seemed verified. The mail had brought a note from Ruth Macdonald saying "Jean has just been sent home for a nerve rest.

I believe the trouble is mostly loneliness. If you could be with her for a while you might tide it over."

The stenographer covertly sizing up the Representative, with the popular feminine admiration for a uniform, wondered if his courage had suddenly failed him that he went so white. The idea wasn't convincing, however. The afternoon mail offered a more interesting explanation. With amazing constructive genius she reported that Miss Evison had written offering to take him back--"and him signed up,"

she lamented tragically. The theory gained weight, but travelled faster, when Billy was seen taking the first train for the city.

Even Ruth became a victim to circ.u.mstantial evidence. The next day she found Jean alone, and troubled.

"Billy's enlisted," she shuddered.

Ruth experienced all the cold terror that the news has given women the world over when the men they cared about joined the army. She didn't say anything--people are so sick of the glib plat.i.tudes about the glory of sacrifice when they can't drive from their imaginations the actual torture of soul and body. Besides it never mattered whether Ruth put her sympathy into words or not. It came to you from the understanding kindness in her eyes, the quick, warm pressure of her hands, and a thousand little thoughtfulnesses which antic.i.p.ated your needs. Her concern was perhaps too evident, for Jean hurried on to explain.