The Tyranny of Weakness | Page 5

Into the night stole
its pervasive sweetness and the old house was like a temple built of
blue gray shadows with columns touched into ivory whiteness by the
lights of door and window. A low line of hills loomed beyond, painted
of silver gray against the backdrop of starry sky and the pallor of moon
mists. From the porch came the desultory tinkle of a banjo and the
voices of young people singing and in a pause between songs more
than once the boy heard a laugh--a laugh which he recognized. He
could even make out a scrap of light color which must be her dress.
Such were the rewards of his night watch, a melancholy and external
gaze upon a Paradise barred to him by a stubbornness which his youth
mistook for honorable pride.
At last two buggies rattled down the drive with much shouting of
farewells and ten minutes later Jimmy's saddle horse clattered off at a
gallop. The visitors were gone silence was left behind them. But

Conscience did not at once turn into the house and close the door
behind her. She stood by one of the tall pillars and the boy strained his
gaze to make out more than the vague outline of a shadow-shape. Then
slowly she came down the stairs and out onto the moonlit lawn,
walking meditatively in the direction of Stuart Farquaharson's hiding
place. The boy's heart leaped into a heightened tattoo and he bent
eagerly forward with his lips parted. She moved lightly through the
luminance of a world which the moon had burnished into tints of
platinum and silver, and she was very lovely, he thought, in her
child-beauty and slenderness, the budding and virginal freshness that
was only beginning to stir into a realization of something meant by
womanhood. He bent, half kneeling, in his ambuscade with that dream
of love which was all new and wonderful: a thing of such untarnished
romance as only life's morning can give to the young.
Then into the dream welled a futile wave of resentment and poisoned it
with bitterness. She had played with him and mocked him and cast him
aside and to her he was less than nothing. A few moments ago her
voice had drifted to him in an abandonment of merriment though she
was going away without seeing him. Night after night he had come
here, merely for the sad pleasure of watching her move through the
shadows and the distance.
Now, unconscious of his nearness, the girl came on until she halted
beyond the fence, not more than ten yards away. Cardinal Richelieu
fidgeted on his haunches and silenced, with a difficult self-repression,
the puzzled whine which came into his throat. The tempered spot-light
of the moon was on Conscience's lashes and lips, and the boy stiffened
into a petrified astonishment, for quite abruptly and without warning
she carried both slim hands to her face and her body shook with
something like a paroxysm of sobs.
In a moment she took her hands away and her eyes were shining with a
tearful moisture. A lock of hair fell over her face. She tossed it back,
then she moved a few steps nearer and rested both arms on the top rail
of the fence. In them she buried her cheeks and began to cry softly.
Stuart Farquaharson could almost have touched her but he was quite

invisible. He felt himself an eavesdropper, but he could not escape
without being seen.
The case was different with Cardinal Richelieu. Repressed emotions
have been said to kill strong men. They did not kill the Cardinal, but
they conquered him. From his raggedly whiskered lips burst a growl
and a yawp which, too late, he regretted.
The girl gave a little scream and started back and Stuart realized it was
time to reassure her. He rose up, materializing into a tall shape in the
shadows like a jinn conjured from empty blackness.
"It's only me--Stuart Farquaharson," he said, and Conscience gave a
little outcry of delight in the first moment of surprise. But that she
swiftly stifled into a less self-revealing demeanor as she demanded with
recovered dignity, "What are you doing here?"
The boy vaulted the fence and stood at her side while the mollified
Cardinal waved a stubby tail, as one who would say--"Now you see it
took my dog sense to bring you two together. Without me you were
quite helpless."
"Why were you crying, Conscience?" Stuart asked, ignoring alike her
question and the rebuke in her voice, but she reiterated, "What are you
doing here?"
The moon showed a face set with the stamp of tragedy which he
imagined to have settled on his life, but his eyes held hers gravely and
he was no longer hampered with bashfulness.