Ironheart

It was an upsetting thing, this that had happened to Betty, as decided and far less explainable than a chemical reaction. It seemed to her as though life had suddenly begun to move at tremendous speed, without any warning to her whatever that Fate intended to step on the accelerator. She was caught in the current of a stream of emotion sweeping down in flood. Though it gave her a great thrill, none the less it was devastating.

She wanted to escape, to be by herself behind a locked door, where she could sit down, find herself again, and take stock of the situation. To sit beside this stranger who had almost in the twinkling of an eye become of amazing import to her, to feel unavoidable contact of knee and elbow and shoulder, magnetic currents of attraction flowing, was almost more than she could bear.

Betty talked, a little, because silence became too significant. She felt a sense of danger, as though the personality, the individuality she had always cherished, were being dissolved in the gulf where she was sinking. But what she said, what Hollister replied, she could never afterward remember.

Ruth ran to meet them with excited little screams of greeting. “Hoo-hoo, Daddy! Hoo-hoo, Betty! Oh, goody, goody!”

Her sister was out of the sled and had the child in her arms almost before the horses had stopped. “You darling darling!” she cried.

Buxom Bridget came to the door, all smiles of welcome. “And is it your own self at last, Betty mavourneen? It’s glad we are to see you this day.”

Betty hugged her and murmured a request. “Better fix up the south bedroom for Mr. Hollister. He ought to rest at once. I’m kinda tired.”

“Sure, an’ I’ll look after him. Don’t you worry your head about that. The room’s all ready.”

The girl’s desire to question herself had to be postponed. She had reckoned without Ruth, who clung to her side until the child’s bedtime. Pleading fatigue, Betty retired immediately after her sister.

She slipped into a négligée, let her dark hair down so that it fell a rippling cascade over her shoulders, and looked into the glass of her dressing-table that reflected a serious, lovely face of troubled youth. A queer fancy moved in her that this girl who returned her gaze was a stranger whom she was meeting for the first time.

Did love play such tricks as this? Did it steal away self-confidence and leave one shy and gauche? She saw a pulse fluttering in the brown slender throat. That was odd too. Her nerves usually were steel-strong.

She combed her hair, braided it, and put on a crêpe-de-chine nightgown. After the light was out and she was between the sheets, her thoughts settled to more orderly sequence. She could always think better in the dark, and just now she did not want to be distracted by any physical evidences of the disorder into which she had been flung.

How could she ever have thought of marrying Justin? She had spent a good deal of time trying to decide calmly, without any agitation of the blood, whether she was in love with him. It was no longer necessary for her to puzzle over how a girl would know whether she cared for a man. She knew. It was something in nature, altogether outside of one’s self, that took hold of one without rhyme or reason and played havoc with dispassionate tranquillity; a devouring flame clean and pure, containing within itself all the potentialities of tragedy—of life, of death, of laughter, love and tears.

And then, as is the way of healthy youth, in the midst of her puzzlement she was asleep—and with no lapse of time, as though a curtain had rolled up, she was opening her eyes to a new day.

If Tug had let himself count on long full hours with Betty in the pleasant living-room, of books and ideas to be discussed together, of casual words accented to meaning by tones of the voice and flashes of the eye, he was predestined to disappointment. In the hill cabin they had been alone together a good deal. She contrived to see that this never occurred now. Except at table or in the evening with Ruth and her father, he caught only glimpses of her as she moved about her work.

Her eyes did not avoid his, but they did not meet in the frank, direct way characteristic of her. She talked and laughed, joined in the give-and-take of care-free conversation. To put into words the difference was not easy. What he missed was the note of deep understanding that had been between them, born less of a common point of view than of a sympathy of feeling. Betty had definitely withdrawn into herself.

Had he offended her? He could not think how, but he set himself to find out. It took some contriving, for when one will and one will not a private meeting is not easily arranged.

He was in the big family room, lying on a lounge in the sunshine of the south window. Ruth had finished her lessons and was on the floor busy with a pair of scissors and a page of magazine cutouts. She babbled on, half to herself and half to him. They had become great friends, and for the time she was his inseparable, perhaps because he was the only one of the household not too busy to give her all the attention she craved. Her talk, frank with the egotism of childhood, was wholly of herself.

“I been awful bad to-day,” she confided cheerfully, almost proudly. “Gettin’ in Bridget’s flour bin ’n’ ev’ryfing to make a cake ’n’ spillin’ a crock o’ milk on the floor.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Oh, I been the baddest,” she reflected aloud enjoyably. Then, unhampered by any theory of self-determination, she placed the blame placidly where it belonged, “When I said my prayers last night I asked God to make me good, but he didn’t do it.”

Tug did not probe deeper into this interesting point of view, for Betty came into the room with an armful of books and magazines.

“Thought from what you said at breakfast you’re hungry for reading,” she said. “So I brought you some. If you’re like I am, you’ll want to browse around a bit before you settle down. This Tarkington story is good—if you haven’t read it. But maybe you like Conrad better.”

Through the open door came a delicious odor of fresh baking from the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye Tug took in Ruth. He sniffed the spicy aroma and audibly sounded his lips.

“My! Cookies!” he murmured.

Instantly Ruth responded to the suggestion. She scrambled to her feet and trotted out, intent on achieving cookies at once. Betty turned to follow, but her guest stopped her with a question.

“What’s the Tarkington story about?”

“About a girl who’s hanging on to the outskirts of society and making all kinds of pretenses—a pushing kind of a girl, who has to fib and scheme to get along. But he makes her so human you like her and feel sorry for her.”

“Sounds interesting.” He fired his broadside while he still held her eyes. “Miss Reed, why am I being punished?”

Into her cheeks the color flowed. “Punished?” she murmured, taken aback.

Betty had stopped by the table and half turned. He reached for the umbrella he used as a support and hobbled toward her. “Yes. What have I done?”

A turmoil of the blood began to boil in her. “The doctor said you were to keep off your feet,” she evaded.

“Yes, and he said you were to entertain me—keep me interested.”

“That was when you were too sick to read. And I’m busy now. Lots of work piled up while I was away.”

“Then you’re not offended about anything.”

She had picked up a book from the table and was reading the title. Her eyes did not lift to his. “What could I be—offended about?” In spite of the best she could do, her voice was a little tremulous.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“No.” The lashes fluttered up. She had to meet his gaze or confess that she was afraid to.

“You’re different. You—”

He stopped, struck dumb. A wild hope flamed up in him. What was it the shy, soft eyes were telling him against her will? He stood on the threshold of knowledge, his heart drumming fast.

During that moment of realization they were lost in each other’s eyes. The soul of each was drawn as by a magnet out of the body to that region beyond space where the spirits of lovers are fused.

Betty’s hands lifted ever so slightly in a gesture of ultimate and passionate surrender to this force which had taken hold of her so completely.

Then, with no conscious volition on the part of either, they were in each other’s arms, swept there by a rising tide of emotion that drowned thought.