Suddenly he drew his arms away, rose and strode nervously into the hallway, leaving her in a crouching attitude upon the seat.
She waited eagerly, voiceless.
She perceived his figure between the portières and heard him say:
"I'm sorry—perhaps I must ask you to forgive me—I know I've been a fool—I shall go now——"
She glided toward him with a silent, undulating movement. He felt irresistibly impelled to meet her. Afterward he recalled how he had struggled that moment; had fought; had lost.
He felt her cool, soft arms against his cheeks.
"Don't go,—Jack," she whispered.
He raised his hands and seized her wrists as though to fling her from him.
"Why?" he muttered hoarsely.
"Because,"—her face was hidden against his shoulder and her voice was faint—"because—I don't want you to."
She flung back her head then and he looked down into her face, and kissed her. He kissed her many times, upon the forehead, lips and eyes, while she clung to him, murmuring fondly.
He wrenched himself from her close embrace, at last, and rushing into the hallway, snatched his coat from the chair where she had flung it.
Standing passively where he had left her, Florence heard the outer door slam, followed by his swift tread upon the walk and the click as the gate latched.... Then there was silence.
For a long time she stood there, one hand clutching the back of a quaint, old-fashioned chair. A shudder passed over her. She went to the window and looked out, but in the darkness of the street she could see nothing but the vague outlines of the houses across the way and a blot where the lilac-bush was in the yard.
Sinking upon the seat she proceeded to uncoil her heavy hair, braiding it deftly over her shoulder. Gathering up her combs from the cushion, she went into the hallway and pressed the button regulating the lights. In the white glow she regarded her face in the mirror over the fireplace shelf and smiled back faintly at the reflection.
As she turned to the stairway she perceived a white card lying on the floor. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. It was a little photograph of a young, sweet-faced girl and written across the margin at the bottom she read—the writing ordinary—"To Jack, from Susie." She turned and stared an instant at the vestibule door. Then she mounted the stairs, slowly.
Her mother's voice from the hallway below awakened her.
"I'm here, dear," she called back. "I went to bed—I was so tired."
III
There is this to be said of Jack Houston: whenever he took liquor—which was often—he took it like a man. None of the alley-door for him; through the front door, as sturdy and frank as a Crusader or not at all—that was his way. Let a faculty man be coming toward him half a block distant, there was no hesitation; not a waver. He—if such were the circumstance—would nod and pass directly beyond the double swinging screens, and not give the incident another thought. Nor were bottles ever delivered to his room in boxes marked "Candles." Indeed the outward signs were that he took pride in the bravado with which he carried on the business; for there on the boxes were the stenciled labels—plain enough to be read distinctly across the street—"Perth Whiskey." But it was not that he had a pride in what certain of his fellows were wont to call his "independence." It was simply that he drank—drank when he chose; paid for what he drank; and drank it like a man—a Southern man, honorably. The real trouble was not that he saw fit and cared to drink, or what he drank; but that he drank so much.
And he was in love now; reveling in a multitude of agreeable sensations, which, perhaps, he had not even dreamed himself destined ever to experience in such fulness. Analyzing his emotions he marveled at the condition he discovered. He set himself apart and regarded the other Jack Houston critically. He denied his heart's impeachment; the other Jack sneered and called him a fool. He laughed; the other Jack said,—or seemed to say: "Laugh away; but it's a serious business all the same." He flaunted; the other adhered to the original charge. In the end he stood before that other Jack and held out his hand, as it were, and—like a man—confessed. And it devolved upon him forthwith to celebrate the discovery of a cardiac ailment he had not experienced before as he was experiencing it now. So, with barbaric, almost beautiful, recklessness, he got drunk; thoroughly, creditably drunk.
The next morning, heavy-headed, thick-tongued, he shifted his eyes sheepishly about the room, while Crowley, from the high ground of his own invincible virtue, talked down to him roundly. He did not interrupt the steady flow of malediction in which his immaculate room-mate seemed determined to engulf him; but when the lecture was ended, he looked up, steadily, and said: "Never mind, old top, it's the last; on the square it is."
As he had a perfect right to do under the circumstances, Crowley shrugged his shoulders, and looked out the window into the green of a maple.
"All right, old top," Houston driveled on pathetically—"mebbe I've said it before; but this time I mean it—see if I don't." And he reached across the table for a bottle of bitters. He poured half a small glass with shaking hands. Over the edge of the drink he perceived the sneer on Crowley's face. He set the glass and bottle on the chiffonier carefully.
"Confound you! don't you believe me, you white-ribbon parson!" he cried.
Crowley smiled broadly.
Houston seized the glass. "There!" he exclaimed—"Now do you believe me?—Not even a bracer!" And he flung glass and liquor into the waste-paper basket.
Crowley laughed aloud at that, and went down-stairs, and Houston, as he finished dressing, heard him talking to the landlady's collie on the front porch.
For that afternoon—it being Saturday—he had planned a boating trip, with a picnic supper, down the river. The care-taker at the boathouse helped him tote the canoe around the dam, while Florence, her face shaded by the blue parasol she carried, stood on the bank by the railway. Her hamper was stowed away securely, and while the man held fast to the frail craft, Houston lifted her fairly from the ground and set her, fluffy and cool, in the bow where he had arranged the cushions. To the attendant music of many little cries of half fright, the canoe, at one sweep of the paddle, shot into midstream.
The river was unusually high; the spring rains had been frequent and plentiful, and now the water ran flush with the green banks on either side. Past the ivy-hung station they drifted with the current. Florence sat silent among the cushions watching the rhythmic, graceful sweep of the paddle, strongly, evenly manipulated by her flannel-clad gondolier.
It was an occasion for unvoiced enjoyment. On the left rose the hills—threaded by the winding, white boulevard—thick with greenery, through which now and then were to be caught glimpses of The Hermitage—poised obliquely on the hillside, a sheer declivity falling from its broad canopied piazza. Skirting the bank, the passage of the canoe wrought havoc among the birds, and they flew to and fro across the stream, or, hopping nervously from branch to branch, screamed their displeasure at the rude invasion of their domestic quiet.
Florence removed her rings, and, dropping her hand over the low rail, let it trail through the dark-green water, alive with the shivering reflections of the bank verdure.
The boat glided beneath the old wooden bridge at the boulevard beginning, and two small boys who were fishing from the weather-stained structure forgot their lines to watch the passage of the silent craft. Further on, the current ran more swiftly and Jack ceased paddling, relaxed, steered merely.
They talked of many things in the stillness. Now and then they were moved to outbursts of sentiment occasioned by the beauty of the hills and the little surprises of charm that nature, at each curve of the wandering stream, brought into view. Overhead, feathery clouds, almost opalescent, floated in a turquoise sky; and the breeze that was wafted across the hills kissed cool their faces.