The Messengers | Page 4

should be that one.
Ainsley heartily agreed in this opinion, but in persuading Miss
Kirkland to share it he had not been successful. This was partly his own
fault; for when he dared to compare what she meant to him with what
he had to offer her he became a mass of sodden humility. Could he
have known how much Polly Kirkland envied and admired his depth of
feeling, entirely apart from the fact that she herself inspired that feeling,
how greatly she wished to care for him in the way he cared for her, life,
even alone in the silences of Lone Lake, would have been a beautiful
and blessed thing. But he was so sure she was the most charming and
most wonderful girl in all the world, and he an unworthy and
despicable being, that when the lady demurred, he faltered, and his
pleading, at least to his own ears, carried no conviction.
"When one thinks of being married," said Polly Kirkland gently, "it
isn't a question of the man you can live with, but the man you can't live
without. And I am sorry, but I've not found that man."
"I suppose," returned Ainsley gloomily, "that my not being able to live
without you doesn't affect the question in the least?"
"You HAVE lived without me," Miss Kirkland pointed out
reproachfully, "for thirty years."
"Lived!" almost shouted Ainsley. "Do you call THAT living? What
was I before I met you? I was an ignorant beast of the field. I knew as
much about living as one of the cows on my farm. I could sleep twelve
hours at a stretch, or, if I was in New York, I NEVER slept. I was a
Day and Night Bank of health and happiness, a great, big, useless
puppy. And now I can't sleep, can't eat, can't think--except of you. I
dream about you all night, think about you all day, go through the
woods calling your name, cutting your initials in tree trunks, doing all
the fool things a man does when he's in love, and I am the most
miserable man in the world--and the happiest!"
He finally succeeded in making Miss Kirkland so miserable also that
she decided to run away. Friends had planned to spend the early spring

on the Nile and were eager that she should accompany them. To her the
separation seemed to offer an excellent method of discovering whether
or not Ainsley was the man she could not "live without."
Ainsley saw in it only an act of torture, devised with devilish cruelty.
"What will happen to me," he announced firmly, "is that I will plain
DIE! As long as I can see you, as long as I have the chance to try and
make you understand that no one can possibly love you as I do, and as
long as I know I am worrying you to death, and no one else is, I still
hope. I've no right to hope, still I do. And that one little chance keeps
me alive. But Egypt! If you escape to Egypt, what hold will I have on
you? You might as well be in the moon. Can you imagine me writing
love-letters to a woman in the moon? Can I send American Beauty
roses to the ruins of Karnak? Here I can telephone you; not that I ever
have anything to say that you want to hear, but because I want to listen
to your voice, and to have you ask, 'Oh! is that YOU?' as though you
were glad it WAS me. But Egypt! Can I call up Egypt on the
long-distance? If you leave me now, you'll leave me forever, for I'll
drown myself in Lone Lake."
The day she sailed away he went to the steamer, and, separating her
from her friends and family, drew her to the side of the ship farther
from the wharf, and which for the moment, was deserted. Directly
below a pile-driver, with rattling of chains and shrieks from her
donkey-engine, was smashing great logs; on the deck above, the ship's
band was braying forth fictitious gayety, and from every side they were
assailed by the raucous whistles of ferry-boats. The surroundings were
not conducive to sentiment, but for the first time Polly Kirkland seemed
a little uncertain, a little frightened; almost on the verge of tears, almost
persuaded to surrender. For the first time she laid her hand on Ainsley's
arm, and the shock sent the blood to his heart and held him breathless.
When the girl looked at him there was something in her eyes that
neither he nor any other man had ever seen there.
"The last thing I tell you," she said, "the thing I want you to remember,
is this, that,