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Read Ebook: Ramshackle House by Footner Hulbert
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Ebook has 1688 lines and 49899 words, and 34 pages
he moon. She had to put on another mask for him. A mask of cheer. He was her charge that she had to watch over and care for and beguile into contentment. The fact that he hotly resented being a charge on her did not make her task any easier. They had been getting on each other's nerves a good deal.
Ever and anon as she walked, she glanced over her shoulder uneasily aware that a man could follow her quite close under the dark side of the green tangle, without her being aware.
At the corner of the last field on the left she vaulted over the low bars. Inside a figure rose into the moonlight and a voice whispered her name:
"Pen!"
She was horribly startled. "Drop down again!" she whispered sharply. "Don't come after me until I am half way across the field."
He obeyed sullenly. Pen walked on across the field with a sore heart. She had made him angry now. All day she lived for the moment of meeting and now it was spoiled.
She headed diagonally across the field to that point in the woods which was nearest his camp. She could walk but slowly because the ground was so rough, old corn land that had been allowed to go to grass with the hills unharrowed. She would not look back until she was nearly across. A man's figure was rising over the swell of the field behind her. Anxiety attacked her. Suppose it was not Don but somebody who had followed her down the road. What would Don do? She dreaded to hear the sounds of a struggle. Don could take care of himself of course, but it would be the end of their secret. So well had that secret been kept that not one of all the searchers at Broome's Point now suspected that Don was still on the estate.
Pen waited alongside the fence that bounded the far side of the field. It was Don, so her anxiety was relieved on that score. But he did not come to her. A few yards away he leaned back with his elbows on the top rail of the fence and gazed out across the moonlit field, making a perfect silhouette of masculine soreness.
"I brought you some supper," ventured Pen.
"Thanks," he said ungraciously.
"Won't you eat?"
"Not hungry, thanks."
"What's the matter?" she asked with a touch of defiance. She could not be meek, even with him.
"You spoke to me like a dog!" he burst out. "Down Fido!"
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "But you startled me so. You see I was thinking maybe someone was following me in the road."
"I just went a little way to meet you," he grumbled. "Nice welcome I got!"
Having said she was sorry, Pen could not humble herself further. She remained silent.
"I suppose you're thinking I'm a thankless beast," he went on presently.
"No," said Pen.
"Well I am!" he said. "I appreciate what you do for me. Good God, that's just the trouble. You heap favors on me! You've got me on the rack!"
They had been over this so often!
"Well, I'm sick of it, too," Pen burst out as bitterly as he. "You're always trying to make out that I do things for you just to make you feel inferior! I hate to be benevolent. I never am. But what else could I do under the circumstances? Or you? Why can't you take it for granted?"
"You mean you'd do as much for anybody?"
"Certainly."
This of course in his perfect inconsistency, hurt him worse than what had gone before. He dug his chin into his breast and relapsed into silence.
Pen yearned over him. She loved him so for his male roughness, his wrongheadedness, his school-boy pride. He was so absolutely different from herself, both weaker and stronger. It was circumstances which had given her the advantage over him; he was in a false position. She exulted in it a little however she might protest to the contrary. It is sweet to have the ascendancy, even in love. And she could dimly foresee other circumstances in which she would be most terribly at his mercy.
She made overtures. "I'm hungry," she said.
But the storm was still brewing in his breast. "A couple more days of this and I'll go clean off my head!" he said savagely.
"How about me?" said Pen.
"You don't have to squat under the bushes all day."
"I have other troubles."
"I have things to bear that you don't know anything about. I have never spoken of it."
Instantly Pen, who had been feeling so pleasantly sure of herself, turned hot with jealousy. There was some other woman out in the world. Of course there would be! He was tormented because he couldn't communicate with her. Because he couldn't assure her of his innocence. How could she find out about her for sure?
"If you'd tell me what it is," she said, schooling her voice, "perhaps I could help."
"Not in this matter," he said with a bitter little laugh.
Then she was miserably sure. Nevertheless she persisted, as the nightingale is supposed to press her breast against a thorn. "I've often wondered why you don't allow me to write to some of your best friends. Those you can trust I mean. The letters could be worded in such a way that they'd mean nothing if they fell into the wrong hands."
"I've no one to write to," he said.
Pen thought: "Of course he wouldn't trust another woman to write to her," and was exquisitely unhappy.
"Any news?" Don asked gloomily.
"No," said Pen. She had previously determined not to raise his hopes by telling him about Blanche Paglar until something had come of it.
There was a long silence between them, and Pen became wretcheder and wretcheder. When she could stand it no longer she put the bag down beside the fence and said in an offhand tone:
"Well ... I must be getting back ... I'll come again to-morrow night."
She started to walk away with her sedate air, but a little quicker perhaps than would suggest perfect calmness.
Before she had taken three steps he came after her. Pen broke into a run. He overtook her. Ah! if he had only taken her in his arms! But he only circled about her, spreading out his arms to bar her way.
The pain in his voice arrested her. She forgot her own pain. As in a flash she had a clairvoyant glimpse of what he must be going through day after day, the resolute young man compelled to skulk in the woods, while his name was bandied about with the stigma of murder upon it.
"I'm a fool!" she said with a shaky little laugh. "To get sore ... I won't go."
"Oh, Pen, you're so good to me!" he groaned. "I'm a stubborn brute, Pen, I can't thank you properly. But Pen, I feel as if you were heaping a load on me that I'd never be able to struggle from under! But I ought not to feel that way, Pen."
Ever since he had got hold of that little name he could scarcely address five words to her without using it, and every time he spoke it he caressed it. Pen was reassured.
"Don't worry about how you ought to feel," she murmured. "Much better for us to quarrel than to make pretenses to each other. Besides a lot of that talk about doing things for people and earning their gratitude is false. A person has really no right to put another person under a debt of gratitude."
"The truth is, I'm afraid of you," he grumbled.
It was delicious to her to have him softened and faltering like this. "I'm afraid of you, too," she confessed. "How silly we both are!"
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