Part 2

Oh, no more of that; no more! She crushed the sheet in her hands fiercely, crumpling it into a little ball; the candle-flame was too slow. No, she couldn’t stand it--she couldn’t, she couldn’t, and there was an end to it. She would go raving mad--she would kill herself--she would---- She lifted her head, wrenched suddenly back from that chaos of despair, alert and intent. There it was again, coming swiftly nearer and nearer from some immeasurable distance--down--down--nearer still--the very room was humming and throbbing with it, she could almost hear the singing in the wires. She swung far out over the window edge, searching the moon-drenched garden with eager eyes; surely, surely it would never fly so low unless it were about to land! Engine trouble, perhaps, though she could detect no break in the huge, rhythmic pulsing that was shaking the night. Still----

“Rosemary!” she called urgently. “Rosemary, listen--is there a place where it can land?”

“Where what can land?” asked a drowsy voice.

“An airplane. It’s flying so low that it must be in some kind of trouble; do come and see!”

Rosemary came pattering obediently toward her, a small docile figure, dark eyes misted with dreams, wide with amazement.

“I must be nine tenths asleep,” she murmured gently. “Because I don’t hear a single thing, Janet. Perhaps----”

“Hush--listen!” begged Janet, raising an imperative hand--and then her own eyes widened. “Why--it’s _gone_!” There was a note of flat incredulity in her voice. “Heavens, how those things must eat up space! Not a minute ago it was fairly shaking this room, and now----”

Rosemary stifled a yawn and smiled ingratiatingly.

“Perhaps you were asleep, too,” she suggested humbly. “I don’t believe that airplanes ever fly this way any more. Or it might have been that fat Hodges boy on his motorcycle; he does make the most dreadful racket. Oh, Janet, what a perfectly _ripping_ night--do see!”

They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white and shining beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a place of magic. The corners of Janet’s mouth lifted suddenly. How absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic, even little, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent--and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it need ever land; anything so fleet and strong and sure should fly for ever! But if they must rest, those beating wings--the old R. F. C. toast went singing through her head and she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling--“Happy landings! Happy landings, you!”

The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as “the Big Storm.” It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown incredible, even to Janet’s American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn for ever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness--it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Everyone had struggled through the day assuring one another that when evening came it would be all right, dangling the alluring thought of the cool darkness before each other’s hot and weary eyes; but the night proved even more outrageous than the day. To the little group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront. The darkness closed in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

“Like--like black cotton wool,” explained Rosemary, stirred to unwonted resentment. She had spent the day curled up in the largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and incredulity.

“I honestly think that we must be dreaming,” she murmured to her feverish audience; “I do, honestly. Why, it’s only _May_, and we never, never--there was that day in August about five years ago that was almost as bad, though. D’you remember, Mummy?”

“It’s hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, dear. Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk? I feel somehow that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet.”

Janet stirred a little, uneasily. She hated silence, that terrible empty space waiting to be filled up with your thoughts--why, the idlest chatter spared you that. She hated the terrace, too--she closed her eyes to shut out the ugly darkness that was pressing against her; behind the shelter of her lids it was cooler and stiller, but open eyed or closed, she could not shut out memory. The very touch of the bricks beneath her feet brought back that late October day. She had been sitting curled up on the steps in the warm sunlight, with the keen, sweet air stirring her hair and sending the beech-leaves dancing down the flagged path; there had been a heavenly smell of burning from the far meadow, and she was sniffing it luxuriously, feeling warm and joyous and protected in Jerry’s great tweed coat, watching the tall figure swinging across from the lodge gate with idle, happy eyes--not even curious. It was not until he had almost reached the steps that she had noticed that he was wearing a foreign uniform--and even then she had promptly placed him as one of Rosemary’s innumerable conquests, bestowing on him a friendly and inquiring smile.

“Were you looking for Miss Langdon?” Even now she could see the courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her, baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

“But no,” he had said gently, “I was looking for you, Miss Abbott.”

“Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was Miss Abbott?”

And he had smiled with his lips, not his eyes.

“I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Maurice Laurent, Miss Abbott.”

And “Oh,” she had cried joyously, “Liane’s Maurice!”

“But yes--Liane’s Maurice. They are not here, the others? Madame Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?”

“No, they’ve gone to some parish fair, and I’ve been wicked and stayed home. Won’t you sit down and talk to me? Please!”

“Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy’s Janie that I would say it. May I, then?”

It had seemed to Jeremy’s Janie that the voice in which she answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the grave and vivid face.

“Yes. And quickly, please.”

So he had told her, quickly, in his exquisitely careful English, and she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the details of the last drive instead of tearing her life to pieces with every word. She remembered now that it hadn’t seemed real at all; if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted, and went raving mad!

“You say--that his back is broken?”

“But yes, my dear,” Liane’s Maurice told her, and she had seen the tears shining in his gray eyes.

“And he is badly burned?”

“My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask; not good, not good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry--and so dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from hell itself, because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to tell you, most lucky lady ever loved.”

“You mean--that he isn’t going to die?”

“I tell you that into those small hands of yours he has given his life. Hold it fast.”

“Will he--will he get well?”

“He will not walk again; but have you not swift feet to run for him?”

And there had come to her, sitting on the terrace in the sunshine, an overwhelming flood of joy, reckless and cruel and triumphant. Now he was hers for ever, the restless wanderer, delivered to her bound and helpless, never to stray again. Hers to worship and serve and slave for, his troth to Freedom broken--hers at last!

“I’m coming,” she had told the tall young Frenchman breathlessly. “Take me to him--please let’s hurry.”

“_Ma pauvre petite_, this is war. One does not come and go at will. God knows by what miracle enough red tape unwound to let me through to you, to bring my message and to take one back.”

“What message, Maurice?”

“That is for you to say, little Janie. He told me, ‘Say to her that she has my heart; if she needs my body, I will live. Say to her that it is an ugly, broken, and useless thing; still, hers. She must use it as she sees fit. Say to her--no, say nothing more. She is my Janie, and has no need of words. Tell her to send me only one, and I will be content.’ For that one word, Janie, I have come many miles. What shall it be?”

And she had cried out exultantly, “Why, tell him that I say----” But the word had died in her throat. Her treacherous lips had mutinied, and she had sat there, feeling the blood drain back out of her face, out of her heart--feeling her eyes turn black with terror while she fought with those stiffened rebels. Such a little word “Live!”--surely they could say that. Was it not what he was waiting for, lying far away and still, schooled at last to patience, the reckless and the restless? Oh, Jerry, Jerry, live! Even now she could feel her mind like some frantic little wild thing, racing, racing to escape Memory. What had he said to her? “You, wise beyond wisdom, will never hold me--you will never hold me--you will never----”

And suddenly she had dropped her twisted hands in her lap and lifted her eyes to Jerry’s ambassador.

“Will you please tell him--will you please tell him that I say--‘Contact’?”

“Contact?” He had stood smiling down at her, ironical and tender. “Ah, what a race! That is the prettiest word that you can find for Jerry? But then it means to come very close, to touch, that poor harsh word--there he must find what comfort he can. We, too, in aviation use that word; it is the signal that says--‘Now you can fly!’ You do not know our vocabulary, perhaps?”

“I know very little.”

“That is all then? No other message? He will understand, our Jerry?”

And Janie had smiled--rather a terrible, small smile.

“Oh, yes,” she told him. “He will understand. It is the word that he is waiting for, you see.”

“I see.” But there had been a grave wonder in his voice.

“Would it”--she had framed the words as carefully as though it were a strange tongue that she was speaking--“would it be possible to buy his machine? He wouldn’t want any one else to fly it.”

“Little Janie, never fear. The man does not live who shall fly poor Peg again. Smashed to kindling-wood and burned to ashes, she has taken her last flight to the heaven for good and brave birds of war. Not enough was left of her to hold in your two hands.”

“I’m glad. Then that’s all, isn’t it? And thank you for coming.”

“It is I who thank you. What was hard as death you have made easy. I had thought the lady to whom Jeremy Langdon gave his heart the luckiest creature ever born--now I think him that luckiest one.” The grave grace with which he had bent to kiss her hand made of the formal salutation an accolade. “My homage to you, Jerry’s Janie!” A quick salute, and he had turned on his heel, swinging off down the flagged path with that swift, easy stride past the sun-dial, past the lily-pond, past the beech trees--gone! For hours and hours after he had passed out of sight she had sat staring after him, her hands lying quite still in her lap--staring, staring--they had found her there when they came back, sitting where Rosemary was seated now. Why, there, on those same steps, a bare six months ago---- Something snapped in her head, and she stumbled to her feet, clinging to the arm of her chair.

“I can’t _stand_ it!” she gasped. “No, no, it’s no use--I can’t, I tell you. I----”

Rosemary’s arm was about her, Mrs. Langdon’s soft voice in her ears, a deeper note from Rosemary’s engineer.

“Oh, I say, poor girl! What is it, dear child--what’s the matter? Is it the heat, Janie?”

“The heat!” She could hear herself laughing; frantic, hateful, jangling laughter that wouldn’t stop. “Oh, Jerry! Oh-h, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!”

“It’s this ghastly day. Let me get her some water, Mrs. Langdon. Don’t cry so, Janie--please, please don’t, darling.”

“I c-can’t help it--I c-can’t----” She paused, listening intently, her hand closing sharply over Rosemary’s wrist. “Oh, listen, listen, there it comes again--I told you so!”

“Thank Heaven,” murmured Mrs. Langdon devoutly, “I thought that it never was going to rise this evening. It’s from the south, too, so I suppose that it means rain.”

“Rain?” repeated Janet vaguely. “Why in the world should it mean rain?” Her small, pale face looked suddenly brilliant and enchanted, tilted up to meet the thunderous music that was swinging nearer and nearer. “Oh, do listen, you people! This time it’s surely going to land!”

Rosemary stared at her blankly. “Land? What _are_ you talking about, Janie?”

“My airplane--the one that you said was the fat Hodges boy on a motorcycle! Is there any place near here that it can make a landing?”

“Darling child”--Mrs. Langdon’s gentle voice was gentler than ever--“darling child, it’s this wretched heat. There isn’t any airplane, dear; it’s just the wind rising in the beeches.”

“The wind?” Janet laughed aloud; they really were too absurd. “Why, Mrs. Langdon, you can hear the _engines_, if you’ll only listen! You can hear them, can’t you, Mr. Bain?”

The young engineer shook his head. “No plane would risk flying with this storm coming, Miss Abbott. There’s been thunder for the last hour or so, and it’s getting nearer, too. It’s only the wind, I think.”

“Oh, you’re laughing at me; of course, of course you hear it. Why, it’s as clear as--as clear as----”

Her voice trailed off into silence. Quite suddenly, without any transition or warning, she knew. She could feel her heart stand perfectly still for a minute, and then plunge forward in mad flight--oh, it knew, too, that eager heart! She took her hand from the arm of the chair, releasing Rosemary’s wrist very gently.

“Yes, of course, it’s the heat,” she said quietly. She must be careful not to frighten them, these kind ones. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Langdon, I think that I’ll go down to the gate to watch the storm burst. No, please, don’t any of you come; I’ll promise to change everything if I get caught--yes, everything! I won’t be long; don’t wait for me.”

She walked sedately enough until she came to the turn in the path, but after that she ran, only pausing for a minute to listen breathlessly. Oh, yes--following, following, that gigantic music! How he must be laughing at her now, blind, deaf, incredulous little fool that she had been, to doubt that Jerry would find a way! But where could he land? Not in the garden--not at the gates--oh, now she had it--the far meadow. She turned sharply; it was dark, but the path must be here. Yes, this was the wicket gate; her groping fingers were quite steady; they found the latch, released it--the gate swung to behind her flying footsteps. “Oh, Jerry, Jerry!” sang her heart. Why hadn’t she worn the rose-coloured frock? It was she who would be a ghost in that trailing white thing. To the right here; yes, there was the hawthorn hedge--only a few steps more--oh, now!

She stood as still as a small statue, not moving, not breathing, her hands at her heart, her face turned to the black and torn sky. Nearer, nearer, circling and darting and swooping; the gigantic humming grew louder--louder still--it swept about her thunderously, so close that she clapped her hands over her ears, but she stood her ground, exultant and undaunted. Oh, louder still--and then suddenly the storm broke. All the winds and the rains of the world were unleashed, and fell howling and shrieking upon her; she staggered under their onslaught, drenched to the bone, her dress whipping frantically about her, blinded and deafened by that tumultuous clamour. She had only one weapon against it--laughter--and she laughed now, straight into its teeth. And as though hell itself must yield to mirth, the fury wavered--failed--sank to muttering. But Janie, beaten to her knees and laughing, never even heard it die.

“Jerry?” she whispered into the darkness, “Jerry?”

Oh, more wonderful than wonder, he was there! She could feel him stir, even if she could not hear him; so close was he that if she even reached out her hand, she could touch him. She stretched it out eagerly, but there was nothing there--only a small, remote sound of withdrawal, as though someone had moved a little.

“You’re afraid that I’ll be frightened, aren’t you?” she asked wistfully. “I wouldn’t be--I wouldn’t--please come back!”

He was laughing at her, she knew, tender and mocking and caressing; she smiled back, tremulously.

“You’re thinking, ‘I told you so!’ Have you come far to say it to me?”

Only that little stir; the wind was rising again.

“Jerry, come close--come closer still. What are you waiting for, dear and dearest?”

This time there was not even a stir to answer her; she felt suddenly cold to the heart. What had he always waited for?

“You aren’t waiting--you aren’t waiting to go?” She fought to keep the terror out of her voice, but it had her by the throat. “Oh, no, no, you can’t--not again! Jerry, Jerry, don’t go away and leave me; truly and truly I can’t stand it--truly!”

She wrung her hands together desperately; she was on her knees to him--did he wish her to go lower still? Oh, she had never learned to beg!

Not a sound, not a stir, but well she knew that he was standing there, waiting. She rose slowly to her feet.

“Very well--you’ve won,” she said hardly. “Go back to your saints and seraphs and angels; I’m beaten. I was mad to think that you ever cared--go back!”

She turned, stumbling, the sobs tearing at her throat; she had gone several steps before she realized that he was following her--and all the hardness and bitterness and despair fell from her like a cloak.

“Oh, Jerry,” she whispered, “Jerry, darling, I’m so sorry. And you’ve come so far--just to find this! What is it that you want; can’t you tell me?”

She waited tense and still, straining eyes and ears for her answer--but it was not to eyes or ears that it came.

“Oh, of course!” she cried clearly. “Of course, my wanderer! Ready?”

She stood poised for a second, head thrown back, arms flung wide, a small figure of Victory, caught in the flying wind.

And, “Contact, Jerry!” she called joyously into the darkness. “Contact!”

There was a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell, and then grow fainter--fainter still--dying, dying--dying----

But Janie, her face turned to the storm-swept sky, was smiling at the stars which shone behind it. For she had sped her wanderer on his way--she had not failed him!

THERE WAS A LADY

There is one point on which Larry Benedick’s best friend and worst enemy and a lot of other less emphatic individuals are thoroughly and cordially agreed. Ask his closest female relative or his remotest business acquaintance or the man who plays an occasional hand of auction with him at the club why Benedick has never married, and they will one and all yield to sardonic mirth, and assure you that the woman who could interest that imperturbable individual has not yet been born--that he is without exception the coldest-hearted, hardest-headed bachelor who has ever driven fluttering débutantes and radiant ladies from the chorus into a state of utter and abject despair--that romance is anathema to him and sentiment an abomination.

“Benedick!” they will chorus with convincing unanimity. “My dear fellow, he’s been immune since birth. He’s never given any girl that lived or breathed a second thought--it’s extremely doubtful if he ever gave one a first. You can say what you please about him, but this you can take as a fact; you know one man who is going down to the grave as single as the day he was born.”

Well, you can take it as a fact if you care to, and it’s more than likely that you and the rest of the world will be right. Certainly, no one would ever have called him susceptible, even at the age when any decent, normal young cub is ready to count the world well lost for an eyelash. But not our Benedick--no, long before the gray steel had touched the blue of his eyes and the black of his hair he had apparently found a use for it in an absolutely invulnerable strong box for what he was pleased to call his heart. Then as now, he had faced his world with curled lips and cool eyes--graceful and graceless, spoiled, arrogant, and indifferent, with more money and more brains and more charm and a better conceit of himself than any two men should have--and a wary and sceptical eye for the charming creatures who circled closer and closer about him. The things that he used to think and occasionally say about those circling enchantresses were certainly unromantic and unchivalrous to a degree. Rather an intolerable young puppy, for all his brilliant charm--and the years have not mellowed him to any perceptible extent. Hardly likely to fall victim to the wiles of any lady, according to his worst enemy and his best friend and the world in general. No, hardly. But there was a lady....

It wasn’t yesterday that he first saw her--and it wasn’t a hundred years ago, either. It was at Raoul’s; if you are one of the large group of apparently intelligent people whose mania consists in believing that there is only one place in the world that any one could possibly reside in, and that that place is about a quarter of a mile square and a mile and a half long and runs up from a street called Forty-second on an island called Manhattan, you undoubtedly know Raoul’s. Not a tea room--Heaven save the mark! Not a restaurant--God forbid! Something between the two; a small room, clean and shabby, fragrant with odours more delectable than flowers. No one is permitted to smoke at Raoul’s, not even ladies, because the light blue haze might disturb the heavenly aroma, at once spiced and bland, that broods over the place like a benediction. Nothing quite like it anywhere else in America, those who have been there will tell you; nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. It costs fine gold to sit at one of the little round tables in the corner, but mere gold cannot pay for what you receive. For to Raoul the preparation of food is an art and a ceremony and a ritual and a science--not a commercial enterprise. The only thing that he purchases with your gold is leisure in which to serve you better. So who are you to grudge it to him?

Larry Benedick lunched there every day of his life, when he was in New York, heedless of a steady shower of invitations. He lived then in one of those coveted apartments not a stone’s throw from Raoul’s brown door--a luxurious box of a place that one of the charming creatures (who happened to be his sister-in-law) had metamorphosed into a bachelor’s paradise, so successfully that any bachelor should have frothed at the mouth with envy at the mere sight of it.