Part 73

"I wanted to travel with him alone--I planned a honeymoon in the desert, and we had it--and I planned after that to sail the seas to the land of Nowhere--and we sailed--and then--I wanted to go to the high plains--and ride and camp--and into the forests to hunt and fish--but he wouldn't. He said that we had wandered enough. He wanted to build a house--and have me warm--his slippers--"

"And so you quarreled?"

"We quarreled--great hot heavy quarrels--and we said things--horrid things--that we can't forgive--"

She was sobbing on my shoulder and I said softly: "Things that you can't forgive?"

"Yes. And that he can't. That's why I ran away from him."

I waited.

"I couldn't stand it to see him going around with his face stern and set and not like my lover's. And he didn't speak to me except to be polite. And he asked people to go with us--everywhere. And we were never alone--"

"What had you said to make him--like that?"

She raised her head. "I told him that I--hated him--"

"Oh, oh--"

She knelt back on her heels.

"It was a dreadful thing to say, wasn't it? That's why I ran away. I couldn't stand it. I knew it was a thing no man--could--forgive--"

I smoothed her hair and rocked her back and forth while she cried. It was strange how much of a child she seemed to me. And I was only the wife of a country grocer and lived over the store, and she was the wife of a man whose name was known from east to west, and all around the world. But you see she hadn't learned to live. Neither have I, really. But Billy has taught me a lot.

I think it was a comfort for her to feel that she had confided in me. But she made me promise that whatever happened I wouldn't let him know.

"Unless I--die," she said, and she was as white as a lily, "unless I die, and then you can--set him--free--"

Billy was sorry that I had promised. "Somehow I feel responsible, sweetheart, and I'll bet her poor husband is almost crazy."

"Would you be, Billy?"

He caught me to him so quickly that he almost shook the breath out of me. "Don't ask a thing like that," he said, and his voice didn't sound like his own. "If anything should happen to you--if anything should happen--I should--I should--oh, why will women ask things like that--?"

In the days that followed, Billy didn't want me out of his sight. He even hated to have me go up to the Davenant house with William Watters. "Take care of her, William," he would say, and stand looking after us.

William and I got to be very good friends. He was a wise old darky, and he was devoted to Lady Crusoe. He usually served tea for us out under the trees, unless it was a rainy day, and then we had it in the library.

It was on a rainy day that Lady Crusoe said: "I wonder what has become of William. I haven't seen him since you came. I have hunted and called, and I can't find him."

He appeared at tea time, however, with a plate of hot waffles with powdered sugar between. When his mistress asked him about his mysterious disappearance, he said that he had cleaned the attic.

"But, William, on such a day?"

"I kain't wuk out in the rain, Miss Lily, so I wuks in--"

That was all he would say about it, and after we had had our tea, she said to me, "There are a lot of interesting things in the attic. Let's go up and see what Willie has been doing--"

The dim old place was as shining as soap and water could make it, and there was the damp smell of suds. There was the beat of the rain on the roof, and the splash of it against the round east window. Through the west window came a pale green light, and there was a view over the hills. As we became accustomed to the dimness our eyes picked out the various objects--an old loom like a huge spider under a peaked gable, a chest of drawers which would have set a collector crazy, Chippendale chairs with the seats out, Windsor chairs with the backs broken, gilt mirror frames with no glass in them--boxes--books--bottles--all the flotsam and jetsam of such old establishments. Most of the things had been set back against the wall, but right in the middle of the floor was an object which I took at first for a small trunk.

Lady Crusoe reached it first, and knelt beside it. She gave a little cry. "My dear, come here!" and I went to her, and in another moment, I, too, was on my knees. For the dark object was a cradle--a lovely hooded thing of mahogany, in which the Davenants had been rocked for generations.

"William got it out," Lady Crusoe said, "ready to be carried down. Oh, my good old man Friday! Do you mind if I cry a little, you very dear?"