Julius had not seen Ridge Jordan make his move to spring from the car,
but he had felt it--felt Ridge's hand strike his shoulder, his knee hit
his back. He had not taken in its meaning at the instant, but when he had
turned about and seen Ridge sitting stiffly facing ahead it came to him
what had happened at the crisis. He had wondered whether Dot had seen it.
Now he knew. Not that she said it. In fact, she said nothing
intelligible, but she held her brother tight before she sent him away;
and somehow he understood that Fate had helped him to show Dorothy her
"real man."
Somehow she had known that Waldron would write. It was impossible to
recall his face and not know that he was a man of action. He would not go
away for six months and leave behind him only a memory to hold her
thoughts to his. She wondered only when his letter would come.
Four times a day the postman was accustomed to leave the mail in an
interesting heap upon the table in Mrs. Jack Elliot's hall. Dorothy, from
the very morning after the trip to Saxifrage Inn, had found herself
scanning the pile with a curious sense of anticipation. She wondered what
Waldron's handwriting was like. She recalled his workmanlike little
figures upon the blackboard, and made up her mind that his penmanship
would be of a similar character, compact and regular. Another man would
have sent her flowers before he sailed. Instinctively she knew that
Waldron would not do this; she did not expect nor wish it. But he would
write--unquestionably. How would he write? That was the question which
made her pulses thrill.
It was some time before the letter came, as she had guessed it would be.
He had written on shipboard, and the letter came back to her from Greater
Inagua, the first West Indian island at which his ship had touched.
Coming in one September evening from a long walk through the hazy air,
its breath fragrant with the peculiar pungent odour of distant forest
fires, Dorothy found the letter on the hall table. She knew it was his
before she saw the postmark; recognized, as if she had often seen it, the
clean cut, regular lettering, the mark of the man of exactness and order,
of the well-trained mind. Her heart leaped at sight of it, a heart which
had never before really leaped at sight of any man's handwriting. She
picked up the letter and went away upstairs with it to her room. Here she
locked the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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