NOT TRIASSIC, CERTAINLY, BUT NEARLY AS OLD

To return again to the events attendant on the "Beggar's Opera." Harry slept late the morning after the performance, and when he awoke it was with a mind rested and vacant except for an intangible conviction that something pleasant had happened. He yawned and stretched delectably, and in a leisurely sort of way set about discovering just what it was.

"Let's see, now, what can it be?" he argued pleasantly. "Oh, yes, the 'Beggar's Opera.' It's all over, thank Heaven, and it went off creditably well. The wigs arrived in time and the prison set didn't fall over, and nobody lost a cue—so you could notice it." He lay back for a moment to give full rein to the enjoyment of these reflections. "There was something else, though." His mind languidly returned to the pursuit, as a dog crosses a room stretching at every step. "I'm sure there was something else...."

"Oh, yes, of course," he said at last; "I remember now. Madge Elliston."

If, say, ten seconds sufficed for enjoyment of the recollection of the "Beggar's Opera," how long should you say would be necessary for the absorption of the truth contained in those two words? A lifetime? An honest answer; we won't undertake to say it's not the right one. Harry, at least, seemed to be of that opinion.

"After all, though, it would be rather absurd to spend a whole lifetime in bed," he observed, after devoting twenty minutes to the subject. Then he jumped out of bed and pulled up the shade.

Vague flittings of poetry and song buzzed through his brain. One little phrase in particular kept humming behind his ears; a scrap from a song he had heard Madge herself sing often enough:—"What shall I do to show how much I love her?" The thing rather annoyed him by its insistence. He stood by the open window and inhaled a few deep breaths of the quickening March air. "What shall I do to show how much I love her!" sang the air as it rushed up his nose and became breath and out again and became carbon dioxide. "I really don't know, I'm sure," he answered, impatiently breaking off and starting on some exercises he performed on mornings when he felt particularly energetic and there was time. Their rhythm was fascinating; he found he could do them in two different ways:—What shall—I do—to show—how much—I love her, or, What shall I—do to show—how much I—? "Oh, hang it!" He suddenly lost all interest in them. With one impatient, dramatic movement he tore off the upper half of his pajamas, ripping off three buttons as he did so. With another slightly more complicated but even more dramatic, he extricated himself from the lower half, breaking the string in the process.

"Ts! ts! More work for somebody!" he said, making the sound in the roof of his mouth indicative of reproof. He kicked the damaged garments lightly onto the bed and sauntered into the adjoining bathroom.

He turned on the water in the bathtub and stood watching it a moment as it gushed out in its noisy enthusiasm. "WhatshallIdotoshowhowmuchIloveher?" it inquired uncouthly. "Oh, do stop bothering me," said Harry, turning disgustedly away; "I've got to shave."

He lathered his face and took the razor in his right hand, while with his left he delicately lifted the end of his nose, so as to make a taut surface of his upper lip. It was a trick he had much admired in barbers. "Somehow it's not so effective when you do it to yourself," he said regretfully, watching the effect in the mirror. It helped his shaving, however, and shaving helped his thinking. He was able to think quite clearly and seriously, in fact, in spite of the roaring of the water nearby.

"I suppose I might keep away from her for a while," he said presently.

That really seemed a good idea; the more he thought of it the better he liked it. "I'll go down and stay with Trotty," he said as he scraped the last strip of lather off his face, remembering how fervently Trotty, recovering from a severe illness on the Trotwood estate in North Carolina, had begged him to come down and cheer his solitude. "And I won't come back until I know," he continued. "One must be sure. Absolutely."

He plunged into his bath and the stimulus of the cold water set his brain working faster. "I'll start this very morning. Let's see; I've missed the ten-thirty, but I can catch the twelve-three, if I look alive, and get the three-fifty from New York.... No, on second thoughts, I'd better have lunch and pack comfortably and start this afternoon. That'll be better; it never does to be in too much of a hurry!"

It never did; he became even more convinced of that when he remembered at breakfast the many post-mortem arrangements to be made in connection with the "Beggar's Opera." However, he spent an active afternoon in completing what he could of these and delegating the remainder to subordinates, with the calm explanation that he was called away on business, and started for southern climes the next morning.

As soon as he had telegraphed Trotty and was actually on his way he became inclined to fear he had not done the right thing. It was so confoundedly quiet down there; he would have nothing to do but think about her. He should have plunged himself into some all-absorbing activity; he should have traveled or taken a nine-till-five clerkship or gone to New York for a while. This suspicion continued through his journey and even survived, though in a mangled form, Trotty's enthusiastic welcome of him. But after he had passed a few days among those pine-clad solitudes he began to see that he had done the wisest possible thing. Trotty was required to be out-of-doors practically the whole time, and the two drove endless miles in a dogcart through the quickening oaks and pines, or lay on fragrant carpets of needles, content with mere sensuous enjoyment of the wind and sun, sky and landscape.

Somehow these things brought calm and conviction to the heart of Harry. They seemed to rest and purge his soul from the fatigues of the past months; the anxiety and effort of the autumn before, the pangs of composition that had marked the winter, the hurry and worry to which these had given place during the last few weeks, and to give coherence and sanctity to the tremendous discovery of that Friday night. He could not tell why it was that the sight of a flock of feathery clouds scurrying across a blue sky or the sound of warm wind among pine needles should work this change in him, but it was so. "You're quite right," they seemed to say; "perfectly right. The thing has come, and it's not distracting or disturbing or frightening, as you feared it might be; it's just simple and great and unspeakably sweet. And you were quite right to come to us to find out about it; you can learn among us a great deal better than in all that hectic scrambling up north. So lay aside every thought and worry and ambition and open your whole heart and soul to us while we tell you how to take this, the greatest thing that ever was, is, or shall be!"

Trotty was also a source of comfort to him; Trotty had lost nothing of his former singular faculty of always rubbing him the right way. Not that either of them made any open or covert allusion to Harry's state of mind, for they did not, but there was something particularly reassuring, something strangely in tune with the great natural forces about them in his silent presence. For they would drive or read or simply lie about together for hours without speaking, after the manner of certain types of people who become very intimate with each other.

Whether these silences were to Trotty merely the intimate silences of yore or whether they had taken on for him also something of the character that colored them for Harry is not particularly clear; it is probable that he guessed something, but no more. As much might be gathered, at least, from the one occasion upon which their conversation even touched on anything vital.

This occurred on the eve of Harry's departure. For of course he had to leave some time. The birds and trees and sky were all very well for a while, but after three weeks the thought forced itself into his mind that any more time spent among them would smack of laziness if not of cowardice.

"Trotty," said he, "I'm going north on the twelve-fifty to-morrow."

"Oh," replied Trotty. "Bad news?"

"No."

"In love?"

"Yep."

"Oh." A silence of some length ensued.

"Carson?" asked Trotty at last.

"No, no—Elliston."

"Oh.... Well, here's luck."

"Thanks. I need it."

In this matter-of-fact, almost coarse form was cast the most intimate conversation the two ever had together.

Harry determined to "have it out," as he mentally expressed it, with Madge as soon as possible, and went to call on her the very first evening after his return. As he walked in the front door he caught sight of her ahead of him crossing the hall with a sheaf of papers under her arm, and immediately his heart began thumping in a way that fairly shocked him. Her appearance was so wonderfully everyday, so utterly at variance with the way his silly heart had been going on about her these weeks! He felt as if he had been intending to propose to an archangel who happened to be also a duchess.

"Hello! This is an unexpected pleasure! I thought you were away shooting things." Her manner was friendly enough; she was obviously glad, as well as surprised, to see him. He murmured something explanatory, which apparently satisfied her, for she went on: "I'm glad you're back, anyway, because you're just in time to help me with my arithmetic papers. Come along in."

He sat down almost in despair, with the idea of merely making an evening call and postponing more important matters to a time when he should be better inured to the effects of her presence. But as he sat and watched her as she talked to him and looked over her arithmetic papers he felt his courage gradually return. Her physical presence was simply irresistible, distant and difficult of approach as she seemed.

"Do tell all about North Carolina," said Madge; "it's a delightful state, isn't it?"

"Oh, delightful."

"So I understand. My idea of it is a fashionable place where people go to recover from something, but I suppose there's more to it than that. The only other thing I know about it is geological; a remnant of physical geography, ages ago. I seem to remember something about triassic.... What is your North Carolina like, fashionable or triassic?"

"Not triassic, certainly."

"No, I suppose not. It's very nice triassic, though; coal, and all sorts of lovely things, as I remember it. You must have been fashionable. Asheville, and that sort of thing."

"Not at all. I was helping Trotty to recover from something."

"Oh, really? What?"

"Pneumonia. Also pleurisy."

"Indeed! I didn't know anything about that; I thought you went simply to shoot things. So Jack Trotwood has had pleural pneumonia, has he? That's a horrid combination; poor Uncle Rudolph Scharndorst died of it. You often do if you have it hard enough and are old enough, or drink enough...."

"Well, Trotty doesn't," said Harry; "so he didn't."

"My dear man, neither did Uncle Rudolph," rejoined Miss Elliston. "That wasn't what I meant; he just had it so hard he died of it—that was all.—How is he getting on?"

"Couldn't say, I'm sure."

"I mean Trotty, of course! Poor Uncle Rudolph!"

"Very well, indeed.—Madge!" he went on, gathering courage for a break, "I didn't come here to-night to talk about Uncle Rudolph!"

Miss Elliston raised her eyebrows ever so little and went on, with unabated cheerfulness: "We were talking about Jack Trotwood, I thought. However, here's this arithmetic; you can help me with that. Do you know anything about percentage? It's not so hard, when you really put your mind to it. Given the principal and interest, to find the rate—that's easy enough. Useful, too; if you know how much a person has a year all you have to do is to find what it's invested in and look it up on the financial page, and you can tell just what their capital is! It's quite simple!"

"Oh, yes, perfectly simple."

"Let's see—Florrie Vicars; did you ever hear of any one whose name was really Florrie before?... Florrie gets a C—she generally does. That isn't on a scale of A B C, it stands for 'correct.' Did you ever hear of anything so delightfully Victorian? That's the way we do things at Miss Snellgrove's.... Sadie Jones—wouldn't you know that a girl called Sadie Jones who wrote like that—look at those sevens—would have frizzy yellow hair and sticky-out front teeth?"

"Yes, indeed, without any doubt."

"Well, as a matter of fact she has straight black hair and a pure Grecian profile and is altogether the most beautiful creature you ever saw!... Marjorie Hamlin—she never could add two and two straight.... Jennie Fairbanks...."

Harry realized more sharply than before that ordinary conversational paths would not lead where he wanted to go; he must break through the hedge and he must break with courage and determination.

"Madge!" he burst out again, "I didn't come here to talk about little girls' arithmetic papers, either! I am here to-night to declare a state of—" He stopped, unable, when the moment came, to treat the matter with even that amount of lightness. He had been over-confident!

"Of what?" asked Madge, looking up from her arithmetic and smiling brightly yet distantly at him. There was just a chance that she might shame him back into mere conversation, even at this late moment.

"You know, perfectly well!" He sprang from his chair and took a step or two toward her. The thing was done now. A minute ago they had been occupied in trivial chatter; now they were launched on the momentous topic.

"Madge, don't pretend not to understand, at any rate!" He was by her side on the sofa now. "I used to think that when I was—when I was in love I should be able to joke and laugh about it as I have about every earthly thing in life. I thought that if love couldn't be turned into a joke it wasn't worth having. But it isn't that way, at all!... Oh, Madge, Madge, don't you see how it is with me?"

"Dear Harry, indeed I do!" said Madge impulsively, feeling a great wave of pity and unhappiness swell in her bosom. "Indeed I do!"

"Then don't you think that you could ever ... Madge, until you tell me you could possibly—feel that way—toward me, it's Hell, that's what it is, Hell!"

"Indeed it is, Harry; that's just what it is!"

"Then you think you can't—love me?"

"No—God forgive me, I can't!"

He sat still for a moment, looking quietly at her from his sad brown eyes in a way she thought would break her heart. "I was afraid so," he said at last; "I suppose I really knew it, all along. It's been my fault."

"Oh, Harry," she burst out, "if you only knew how much I wanted to! If you only knew how terrible it is to see you sit there and say that, and not be able to say yes! I like you so much, and you are such a dear altogether, and you're so wonderful about this—oh, why, why, in Heaven's name, can't I love you?"

"But Madge, surely you must be mistaken! How can you talk that way and not have—the real feeling? Madge, you must be in love with me, only you don't know it!"

"That's just what I've said to myself, time after time—I've lain awake whole nights telling myself that. But it isn't so, it isn't! I can't deceive myself into thinking so and I won't deceive you.... I just—can't—love you, because I'm not good enough! Oh, it is so terrible!..." Her voice suddenly failed; she sank to her knees on the floor and buried her head among the cushions of the sofa in an uncontrollable fit of weeping.

For a moment Harry was overcome by a desire to seize that grief-stricken little figure in his arms and kiss away her ridiculous tears. A second thought, however, showed the fruitlessness of that; small comfort to his arms if their souls could not embrace! Instead he quietly arose from his seat and shut the door, which seemed the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. He then walked over to the piano and stood leaning on it, head on hands, thoughtfully and silently watching the diminishing sobs of Madge.

When these at last reached the vanishing point their author turned suddenly. Harry continued to stare quietly back at her for a second or two and then slowly and solemnly winked his right eye. Madge emitted a strange sound between a laugh and a sob, turned her face away again and plied her handkerchief briskly.

"Here I am, of course," she said presently, "thinking of nothing but indulging my own silly feelings, as usual. And you, poor Harry, who really are capable of feeling, just stand there like Patience on a monument.... Harry, why don't you swear at me, kick me? do something to make it easier for me?..." She picked herself up, walked over toward the piano and laid her hands on its smooth black surface in a caressing sort of way. The piano had been given to her by her Aunt Tizzy and she loved it very much, but she did not think of it at all now. "Harry," she began again, "Harry, dear, I'll tell you what we'll do—I'll marry you, if you like, anyway.... I'll make you a lovely wife; I'll do anything in the wide world to be a comfort to you, just to show you how much I would love to love you if I could...."

Harry, still looking gravely at her, shook his head slowly. "It would never do, Madge," he said; "never in the world. We must wait until we can start fair. You see that?"

She nodded. "I suppose I do—from your point of view."

"No—from our point of view."

"Well, yes.... It is just a little bit hard, though, that the first offer of marriage I ever made should be turned down."

Harry laughed, loudly and suddenly. "That's right!" he said; "that's you! Not that self-denunciatory thing of a minute ago. Don't ever be self-denunciatory again, please. Just remember there's nothing in the world that can possibly be your fault, and then you'll be all right!... Now then, we can talk. I suppose," he went on, with a change of tone, "you like me quite well, just as much as ever, and all that; only when it comes to the question of whether you could ever be happy for one instant without me you are forced to admit that you could. Is that it?"

Madge nodded her head. "That's just about it. For a long time—oh, but what's the use in that...?"

"No, go ahead."

"Well, one or two people have been in love with me before—or thought they were, and though that disturbed me at times, it never amounted to much. In fact I thought the whole thing rather fun, as I remember it—Heaven forgive me for it! But then you came along and after a while—several months ago—it became borne in on me that you were going to—to act the same way, and I immediately realized that it was going to be much, much more serious than the others. And I—well, I had a cobblestone for a heart, and knew it. So I tried my best to keep you off the scent, in every way I could, knowing what a crash there would be if it came to that.... But I never knew what I missed till to-night, when you showed me what a magnificent creature a person really in love is, and what a loathsome, detestable, contemptible creature—"

"Come, come, remember my instructions," interpolated Harry.

"—a person incapable of love is. And it just knocked me flat for the moment."

"I see," said Harry thoughtfully; "I see."

"I suppose," continued Madge, "it would have been easier all around if I didn't like you so much. I could conceive of marriage without love, if the person was thoroughly nice and I was quite sure there was no chance of my loving any one else, just because it's nicer to be rich than poor, but with you—no!... And on the other hand, I daresay I might have come nearer falling in love with you if you hadn't been—such a notoriously good match ... you never realized that, perhaps?... I just couldn't bear the thought of giving you anything but the real thing, if I gave you anything—that's what it comes to!"

"Madge, what I don't see is how you can go on talking that way and feeling that way and not be in love with me! Not much, of course, but just a teeny bit!... Don't you really think your conscience is making—well, making a fool of you?"

"No, no, Harry—please! I can't explain it, but I really am quite, quite sure! No one could be gladder than I if it were otherwise!"

"One person could, I fancy. Well, the thing to do now is to decide what's to be done to make you love me.... For that is the next thing, you know," he went on, in reply to an inarticulate expression of dissent from Madge. "You don't suppose I'm going to leave this house to-night and never think of you again, do you? You don't suppose I'm ever going to give up loving you and trying to make you love me, as long as we two shall live and after?"

"I thought," murmured Madge, apparently to her handkerchief. The rest was almost inaudible, but Harry succeeded in catching the phrase "some nice girl."

"Oh, rot!!" he exclaimed vociferously. Then he sank down on the piano bench, rested his elbows on the keyboard cover and burst into paroxysms of laughter. The idea of his leaving Madge and going out in search of "some nice girl"! Madge, still leaning on the edge of the piano, watched him with some apprehension, occasionally smothering a reluctant smile in her handkerchief.

"Excuse me, Madge," he said at last, wiping his eyes, "but that's probably the funniest remark ever made!... A large, shapeless person, with yellow hair and a knitted shawl ... a sort of German type, who'd take the most wonderful care of my socks ... with a large, soft kiss, like ... like a hot cross bun!..." He was off again.

"Hush, Harry, don't be absurd! Hush, you'll wake Mama! Harry, you're impossible!" Madge herself was laughing at the portrait, for all that. It was some minutes before either of them could return to the subject in hand.

"Oh, you'll love me all right, in time!" That laugh had cleared the atmosphere tremendously; it seemed much easier to talk freely and sensibly now. "Of course you don't think so now, and that's quite as it should be; but time makes one look at things differently."

"No, no, you mustn't count on that. If I don't now, I can't ever possibly! Really—"

"What, not love me? Impossible! Look at me!" He became serious and went on: "Madge, granting that you don't care a hang for me now, can you look into your inmost heart and say you're perfectly sure you never, never could get to care for me, some time in the dim future of years?"

"I—don't know," replied Madge inconclusively.

"There you are—you know perfectly well you can't! However, I don't intend to bother you about that now. What I want to suggest now is that we had better be apart for a while, now that we know how things stand between us—not see anything of each other for a long time. That's the best way. That's how I fell in love with you—how I became sure about it, at any rate. That was why I went to North Carolina, of course."

Madge thought seriously for a moment or two. What he said seemed reasonable. If he did go entirely out of her head after a few months' absence, he would be out of it for good and all, and there was the end of it. Whereas, in the unlikely event of his not going out of her head, but going into her heart, she would be much surer of herself than if under the continual stimulus and charm of his presence.

"Well," she said at length. "But how will you arrange it?"

"I shall simply go away—to-morrow. Abroad. You'll be here?"

"Yes."

"What do you do this summer?"

"I'm not sure—that is, I had thought of going to Bar Harbor, with the Gilsons—as governess. They have a dear little girl."

Harry made a gesture of impatience. "I suppose that's as good as anything. If you'll be happy?"

"Oh, perfectly. I should enjoy that, actually, more than anything else. Mama'll be with Aunt Tizzy. I think I'll do it, now. I'd rather be doing something."

"Well, we'll meet here, then, at the end of the summer, in September. I suppose we'd better not write. Unless, that is, you see light before the time is up. Then you're to let me know—that's part of the bargain. Just wire to my bankers the single word, 'Elliston.' I'll know."

"On one condition—that you do the same if you change your mind the other way!"

"Madge, what idiocy!"

"No, no; you must agree. Why shouldn't you be given a chance of changing your mind, as well as I?"

"Very well; it's probably the easiest bargain any one ever made.... Well, that's all, I think." They both paused, wondering what was to come next. The matter did seem to be fairly well covered. He made as if to go.

"Oh, one thing—your work!" Madge apparently was suffering a slight relapse of self-denunciation. "How absolutely like me, I never thought of that!"

"I can work abroad as well as here. I can work anywhere better than here—you must see that."

"I suppose so." She fixed her eyes on the carpet. A hundred thousand things were teeming in her brain, clamoring to be said, but she turned them all down as "absurd" and contented herself at last with: "You sail immediately, then?"

"Saturday, I expect. To the Mediterranean. I shall leave town to-morrow, though; you won't be bothered by me again!"

"You must give yourself plenty of time to pack. Be sure—" she checked herself, apparently embarrassed.

"Be sure what?"

"Nothing—none of my business."

"Yes, please! My dying request!"

"Well, I was going to tell you to be sure to take plenty of warm things for the voyage. Men are so silly about such things!"

As with Madge a minute ago, all sorts of things shouted to be done and said in his brain, but he shut the door firmly on all of them and replied quietly, "All right, I will," and started toward the door.

She could not let it go at that, after all. Before the door had swung to behind him she had rushed up and caught it.

"Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed; "if it does—if it should come off, wouldn't it be simply—Nirvana, and that sort of thing?"

"Madge," replied Harry solemnly from the doorstep, "it will make Nirvana look like the Black Hole of Calcutta!"

If there rose in her mind one pang of remorse for her behavior that evening, one suggestion of a desire to rush out on the doorstep and fling herself into his arms and tell him what a fool she was, it was reduced to subjection before she had closed the door and entirely smothered by the time she reached the parlor again.

"No," she told herself quite firmly as she rearranged the tumbled sofa cushions, "that would never do—that was part of the Bargain." Just what was part of the bargain or exactly what the bargain was she did not bother to specify. "No, I must wait," she continued, trying the locks of the windows; "I must wait, a long time, a long, long time. Till next September, in fact. One always has to wait to find out; nothing but time can show. And of course one must be sure"—she turned out the gas—"first. Perfectly sure—beyond all manner of doubt and question. Both on my own account"—she reached up with considerable effort and turned out the hall light—"and Harry's."

"No," she amended as she felt with her foot for the first step of the dark staircase; "not on my account. On Harry's."