第86章

"All this wealth," she continued, her head dropping back upon the cushion of the chair as she spoke, "what does it matter; for what does it compensate? Oh, Iwould give it all gladly, gladly, to be that little black-haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn's water lot; with my hands stained with the whortle-berries and the nettles in my fingers--and my little lover, who called me his beau-heart and bought me a blue hair ribbon, and kissed me behind the pump house.""Ah," said Corthell, quickly and earnestly, "that is the secret.It was love--even the foolish boy and girl love--love that after all made your life sweet then."She let her hands fall into her lap, and, musing, turned the rings back and forth upon her fingers.

"Don't you think so?" he asked, in a low voice.

She bent her head slowly, without replying.Then for a long moment neither spoke.Laura played with her rings.The artist, leaning forward in his chair, looked with vague eyes across the room.And no interval of time since his return, no words that had ever passed between them, had been so fraught with significance, so potent in drawing them together as this brief, wordless moment.

At last Corthell turned towards her.

"You must not think," he murmured, "that your life is without love now.I will not have you believe that."But she made no answer.

"If you would only see," he went on."If you would only condescend to look, you would know that there is a love which has enfolded your life for years.You have shut it out from you always.But it has been yours, just the same; it has lain at your door, it has looked--oh, God knows with what longing!--through your windows.You have never stirred abroad that it has not followed you.Not a footprint of yours that it does not know and cherish.Do you think that your life is without love? Why, it is all around you--all around you but voiceless.It has no right to speak, it only has the right to suffer."Still Laura said no word.Her head turned from him, she looked out of the window, and once more the seconds passed while neither spoke.The clock on the table ticked steadily.In the distance, through the open window, came the incessant, mournful wash of the lake.

All around them the house was still.At length Laura sat upright in her chair.

"I think I will have this room done over while we are away this summer," she said."Don't you think it would be effective if the wainscotting went almost to the ceiling?"He glanced critically about the room.

"Very," he answered, briskly."There is no background so beautiful as wood.""And I might finish it off at the top with a narrow shelf.""Provided you promised not to put brass 'plaques' or pewter kitchen ware upon it.""Do smoke," she urged him."I know you want to.You will find matches on the table."But Corthell, as he lit his cigarette, produced his own match box.It was a curious bit of antique silver, which he had bought in a Viennese pawnshop, heart-shaped and topped with a small ducal coronet of worn gold.On one side he had caused his name to be engraved in small script.Now.as Laura admired it, he held it towards her.

"An old pouncet-box, I believe," he informed her, "or possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails." He spilled the matches into his hand."You see the red stain still on the inside; and--smell," he added, as she took it from him."Even the odour of the sulphur matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume, distilled perhaps three centuries ago."An hour later Corthell left her.She did not follow him further than the threshold of the room, but let him find his way to the front door alone.

When he had gone she returned to the room, and for a little while sat in her accustomed place by the window overlooking the park and the lake.Very soon after Corthell's departure she heard Page, Landry Court, and Mrs.Wessels come in; then at length rousing from her reverie she prepared for bed.But, as she passed the round mahogany table, on her way to her bedroom, she was aware of a little object lying upon it, near to where she had sat.

"Oh, he forgot it," she murmured, as she picked up Corthell's heart-shaped match box.She glanced at it a moment, indifferently; but her mind was full of other things.She laid it down again upon the table, and going on to her own room, went to bed.

Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the morning Laura presided at breakfast table in his place.Landry Court, Page, and Aunt Wess' were there; for occasionally nowadays, when the trio went to one of their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed over night at the house.

"Any message for your husband, Mrs.Jadwin?" inquired Landry, as he prepared to go down town after breakfast.

"I always see him in Mr.Gretry's office the first thing.Any message for him?""No," answered Laura, simply.

"Oh, by the way," spoke up Aunt Wess', "we met that Mr.

Corthell on the corner last night, just as he was leaving.I was real sorry not to get home here before he left.I've never heard him play on that big organ, and I've been wanting to for ever so long.I hurried home last night, hoping I might have caught him before he left.I was regularly disappointed.""That's too bad," murmured Laura, and then, for obscure reasons, she had the stupidity to add: "And we were in the art gallery the whole evening.He played beautifully."Towards eleven o'clock that morning Laura took her usual ride, but she had not been away from the house quite an hour before she turned back.

All at once she had remembered something.She returned homeward, now urging Crusader to a flying gallop, now curbing him to his slowest ambling walk.That which had so abruptly presented itself to her mind was the fact that Corthell's match box--his name engraved across its front--still lay in plain sight upon the table in her sitting-room--the peculiar and particular place of her privacy.

It was so much her own, this room, that she had given orders that the servants were to ignore it in their day's routine.She looked after its order herself.