CHAPTER XXXV
LOVE
When Dicky strolled in at eight, his old immaculate, nonchalant self, it was hard for her to believe that he was the same man she had seen a few hours before smudge-covered and in greasy overalls. As she came forward excitedly to greet him, her big eyes were full of questions.
“Tell me,” she said eagerly, “from the beginning.”
His own eyes took fire at the beauty of her. In all the years he had known her he had never seen her look fairer. She was all she had ever been at her best and something more. It was that something more that puzzled him. It was as though all her superficial charms had suddenly grown deeper—as though her eyes, always deep, had now become like one of those bottomless lakes in the mountains, and her lips, always tender, had taken on the infinite tenderness of a mother. He had come prepared to put all the past behind him, and he found it intensified.
“I’d rather forget it all—with you,” he answered.
“Why?” she asked directly.
The reason was that he felt a man ought never to come to her except with tales of success—with reports of good fortune. A lady does not care to hear from her knight of reversals. And yet as he looked into those new depths he found it difficult to express this in any way that would not hurt her.
“It isn’t pleasant reading,” he replied awkwardly.
“You are ashamed?” she asked in astonishment.
“No,” replied Dicky quickly. “Not that.”
“Then tell me.”
He sat down opposite her and leaned forward with his hands clasped over his knees. He wanted to make the recital as brief as possible.
“After all, it’s an old story,” he said. “Dad took a turn at the market and got cleaned out. It was necessary to cash in everything to pay up. That left us broke so we moved to a flat in Brooklyn and I took a job with the new firm to learn the business. Now tell me about yourself. How did you happen to drift in there?”
“I came in with Mr. Devons. Don’t you remember him?”
Dicky squinted his eyes a moment.
“Seems to me I saw him somewhere once.”
“He was at the house. He is the man I—I almost ran over.”
“Good Lord, is that the fellow?”
“He is the man for whom I borrowed the money. Why, he’s a partner of yours, Dicky.”
He looked puzzled.
“A partner of mine?”
“When I took the money I agreed to make you a silent partner. So you’re a partner of mine and a partner of his. You and I have between us a one-third interest.”
Dicky rose to his feet.
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he exclaimed. “Then I’ll be able to pay back that five thousand to dad!”
“You went to him for it?”
“I had no other place to go.”
“You can pay back that and a great deal more besides. Why, Mark says—”
“Mark?” he interrupted.
The color came to her cheeks.
“Mr. Devons,” she explained. “He expects to make his fortune on his share.”
“Then dad ought to make half a fortune,” he nodded.
“Only it’s really yours.”
“Mine? I’d have a nerve to claim it. Why, it was all on account of me that he got into the hole.”
He had said too much and realized it the next second when she pressed him to go on.
“Somehow,” he faltered ahead,—“somehow dad thinks a lot of me. I’m sort of a weakness of his. One day I got to telling of something I wanted a whole lot—something I wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything. So what does he do but try to get it for me. He figured it would take several million, and had it all worked out on a pad how he could get that. Only he didn’t get it. Instead the other fellows got all he had. I guess it’s up to me now to return what I can.”
“Was what you wanted—as valuable as all that?”
“If dad had made all he set out to make and then doubled that, what I wanted would have been worth it and more if I could have got it,” he answered earnestly.
“But what—”
“The chance has passed, anyway,” he concluded. “But I want to get back to him and tell him about this. He’s worried and that interferes with his golf.”
Apparently he had recovered his old good-humor.
“You ought to see dad playing golf,” he smiled. “He has taken off fifteen pounds already. It’s doing him a world of good, but I couldn’t see how I was going to manage it much longer on twelve dollars a week. But if he’s going to get dividends—why, he thought I lost that five thousand the first week!”
“And you?”
“I thought so, too,” he admitted.
“You—you didn’t have much confidence in me, Dicky.”
“Not as a business woman,” he confessed. “And here you come out ahead of the whole crowd of us.”
He met her eyes a moment.
“Joan,” he trembled, “if you go ahead and reveal any more talents or anything, I won’t be able to stand it.”
“Stand what?” she demanded.
“You. Just your wonderful self. You make a man dizzy.”
“But, Dicky—” she began gently.
He turned away from her.
“Good-night,” he said abruptly. “I must go.”
It’s a pity that he did not look once again into the depths of those eyes, for there was something in them at that moment it would have done his soul good to see.
And it remained there as she sat on alone long after he had gone. As the realization of what it was seeped to the very heart of her, it quickened her pulse and glorified her face until she felt as though suddenly she had stepped out of the shade into the full beat of the living sun. For a little while she gave herself up to the sheer magic warmth of it without daring to look about—without daring to give it a name. So one awakens sometimes in the month of May, scarcely venturing to awaken fully lest the celestial chorus of bird songs and blossom fragrance and the springtime radiance of golden light vanish. But insistently the word she tried to suppress—the word that expressed it all—worked its way through her consciousness to her lips, until finally, very gently, she whispered it. Such a tiny word it was to mean so much. Such a soft, tender word it was to harbor such creative power. Love! One could pronounce it between heart-beats on the tag end of a breath. A sigh took more effort. And yet, when once pronounced, how it sent her blood to racing—how it put her in touch with the stars in their firmament, how it made her one with the eternal verities of life, even of death!
She rose and faced him where he had been. With her head back and her two arms stretching out unconsciously, she whispered, “Dicky!”
That was all she said, and yet it meant as much as that other word. The two words meant the same. Love was one word and Dicky was the other. And they meant the same thing. They stood for the same thing. They were synonymous.
But as soon as she admitted this her cheeks turned a flaming scarlet and she looked about as though afraid of being seen. She raised one hand to her lips as though cautioning them to be careful. Because in a way she had no right to utter his name as she had. He had said nothing of love. He had come at her bidding and hurried away as soon as he could. Once, a few months back, he had spoken, but she had silenced him. Much had happened since then. Much had happened to them both.
Her thoughts went back to Dicky as he had lifted his face all smudged when she came upon him in the factory. He was in greasy overalls. He was so disguised that one would have thought she could not recognize him, and yet it was at that moment she seemed to pierce externals to the heart of him. With only his eyes to look into, she had looked so far into them that she had come upon the man himself. Once before she had glimpsed this man—when uncovered in the snow he had stood by the door of the limousine and sworn her allegiance. The two men were the same. The man who had been with her this evening was the same.
So the burn left her cheeks and she raised her head again.
To herself she said:
“Dicky, I can’t help it. Dicky, I—I love you.”
It was a pity he was not there to hear.