CHAPTER XXV
When he had helped her to dismount, and Dan had ridden on with the horses, they stood in silence for a full minute listening to the growl and mutter of the river along its banks, and its gurgle and chuckle amongst the piles below them.
“Ess,” he said at last, “I’m afraid I misunderstood something you said lately, and I wanted first to say I’m sorry.”
“I said – lately?” she said, wonderingly.
“In the boat. But I know now you didn’t mean it, and I was wrong to have thought you did. I – ”
“Please,” she said earnestly, “please say no more of it. I said nothing knowingly then that could have – hurt you. But I have said things – that night – that I have been very, very sorry for, and I’m glad you’ve given me this chance of telling you.”
“We can let all that pass,” he said. “We were both to blame that night, perhaps, but if one can afford to forgive, surely the other can.”
“I should be so – so glad to be friends again,” said Ess, with a catch in her voice.
“I want it to be something more, although I’ll be grateful if it can never be less, than friend,” he said gravely. “Ess, I want you to wipe out all that has gone between. Can we do that and go back to that moment when I lifted you to my saddle and kissed you good-bye?” He leaned towards her in the darkness, and his voice shook. “Can we do that, Ess?” Her mind and her body were quivering and thrilling at the tone in his voice and the light touch of his hand on hers as it lay on the bridge-rail, and a longing swept over her to only say “Yes,” and be within the rest and shelter of his arms; but she forced herself to stand motionless and to speak evenly.
“Before we can do that, Steve,” she said, “I have to – I want to tell you that I know I was wrong that night – no, please let me say it. It was only after I knew what Ned Gunliffe was capable of thinking of myself that I realised how – that I should never have listened to him. Now, if you say you will forgive me for believing him and refusing your word…”
“Stop a moment, Ess,” he said firmly. “We’ve had some misunderstandings between us, and I don’t wish to have another or let an old one live. Ned believed he was right, and he had reason enough to think he was right. Don’t blame him altogether.”
“I don’t,” she said quickly. “But even if he did, I should never have thought it. But it is enough that I don’t believe it now, and that I know you did nothing I would blame you for.”
“And is it enough,” he asked, “if I tell you this? That Ned was right so far – there was a woman who had left me at daybreak, as he saw, who came to me night after night when she could.”
Silence fell between them, and the rush and wash of the river ran unbroken for long seconds. Steve moved his hand from hers, and his hand gripped the rail till the knuckles cracked. And, more than the chill of the night struck on her hand when he moved his warm fingers, the chill of his words struck on her heart. Was she to lose him then after all? Was he making it impossible for her…
His voice, very soft and gentle, cut her thoughts.
“Ess, will you tell me – it fits here, though you may not see it – why did you break with Ned?”
“Why?” she said dully. “Because he wrote me a letter – because he believed me capable of doing things behind his back – not perhaps because it would have been a wrong thing, but because he did not trust me.”
“Ah – because he did not trust you,” said Steve, in full, deep tones, and again,“ – he did not … trust you.”
“No,” she said wearily, as if the thing were distasteful to her, “and no matter what proof – ”
Swiftly his hand fell again on hers and cut short her words. “No matter what proof …” he repeated after her again, stooping to peer at her face in the darkness.
Again the song of the river ran unbroken, till she turned to him with a quick movement and her voice trembling.
“Steve, I see it now. I must have trust, and I must give it, and there can be no happiness between or without. And I give it now – oh, believe me I give it, full and free, as I know it is given to me. Who or what the woman was I neither know nor care. You had a right and a reason, and none that you would be ashamed to tell, for her being there.”
He slipped an arm about her shoulders and a hand beneath her chin, and gently tilted her face until he could look down into her eyes.
“No reason,” he said, “that I cannot tell my promised wife, but can tell only to her. Have I the promise, Ess?”
He saw her eyes slowly close, and heard, and no more than heard, the soft whispered “Yes,” that was light as the sigh of a leaf lifting in the breeze, or the kiss of a wave on the lake shore; and he pressed his kiss warm upon her lips, and felt her answering kiss and the clinging of her arms. “I’ll say it in few words and quick,” he said, “for then I have other, and better, and sweeter things to say. They were good friends to me, and when they heard of my plight they came to me – a man and his wife – and brought me food, and tended my wounds, in turns as the chance offered. And they came by night because I was hunted, and we – they as much as I, and now, as it happens, more than I – risked much by their coming. If you had come alone that night I could have told you, but I dared not let the man be seen or known by another man who I felt was my enemy. The man was there then, and I made him promise to tell nothing even to his wife of what passed…”
In the dim light he could see a faint smile flickering on her lips. “Go on,” she said softly; “and why was the man not to tell his wife?”
“Because I was afraid she would think she ought to make it known who she was, to clear me. She would have done that, because once I was able to do a little thing for her – ”
“A little thing?” said Ess, and thought of the Staked Crossing and the naked child in its bath. “Mrs. Dan doesn’t call it a little thing.”
“Mrs. Dan …” he said, and drew a deep breath. “Did you know? Did she tell you?”
“She told me nothing,” and Ess opened her eyes full and looked up at him. “And now I know why, Steve, and I’m glad, dear. It was because she knew I ought to trust you without knowing, as I came to do. And because she knew the knowledge would be dearer to me after – this…”
And thereafter the river had its song to itself, long and unheeded, till presently she spoke again.
“Have you quite finished, Stevie dear? Because I’m waiting to hear the other – and sweeter – things you have to say. There’s nothing else matters now.” She nestled her head back on his shoulder and went on dreamily, “And once – oh, ever so long ago, in another world it must have been, where men toil and fight and the country is a field of battle – someone told me that a blow was never struck that could not be wiped out by a kiss, given and taken. It was a wise and gentle old man who told me, dear, and – was he right?”
“He was right, dear heart; he was right,” said Steve.
And “He was right, he was right,” gurgled and chuckled the river, running swift through the piles and swinging ashore, to press caresses and kisses on the land it had but lately smitten, even as another and warmer kiss was being given and taken.