He did not sleep well. He lay in bed, his hands clasped under his head,
looking out at the summer sky.
“She’s a queer girl,” he thought, with a sort of resentment. “She’s
bold--runs after a fellow; and yet you can see she doesn’t care two
straws for him.”
In long imaginary conversations with Esther he regained his lost
advantage. He was affable but cool--very cool. He could see her round
little face quite clearly before him, her serene eyes, her neat fair
hair.
He awoke after his restless night to a hot, still morning. He could not
find a bath tub. Dressing reluctantly, unrefreshed and a bit irritable,
he went downstairs. It was a few minutes after eight by his watch--a
very decent, early hour, he thought; but, looking into the dining room,
he saw only one place laid on the long table.
Mrs. Van Brink hurried in from the kitchen, limp, hot, and painfully
anxious.
“Set down to the table, Mr. Ellinger,” she cried in her shrill voice.
“I’ll bring your breakfast right off. We’re all done. You won’t have to
wait more’n a minute.”
He ate alone, a little resentful that Esther didn’t appear. Then he went
out on the porch. No one there--the shady street was quiet and empty. He
went around the house to the sun-baked little yard at the back, where he
discovered Mrs. Van Brink hanging dish towels on a line in terrible
haste. Her face became positively convulsed with worry at the sight of
his listlessness.
“Now, then!” she cried. “You don’t know what to do with yourself, I’ll
be bound! And I haven’t got a minute to spare, with the dinner I have to
get up for Mr. Van Brink at noon. His farm’s four miles off, you know.”
She stared at him, frowning, until an inspiration came.
“Maybe you’d enjoy to play on the harmonium,” she suggested. “Esther’s
got some real sweet music.”
Tommy did not know what a harmonium was; but she showed him a queer
little organ in the parlor, and he sat before it all the rest of that
intolerable morning, picking out tunes and experimenting with the stops.
At noon old Van Brink came driving home in his buggy, and his hot and
anxious wife began hurrying back and forth between the kitchen and the
dining room, bringing in an enormous hot dinner. The farmer had nothing
to say to Tommy. He sat there with his napkin tucked in his collar,
consuming one dish after the other as fast as his wife brought them in,
absorbed and ravenous, like a feeding animal. Now and again Tommy caught
the old man’s small blue eyes surveying him with an expression which he
could not comprehend, but which he didn’t like.
Van Brink drove off directly after eating, and his wife withdrew to the
kitchen again. With growing resentment, Tommy seized his hat and went
out, followed the route of the night before, and reached the village.
Entering the only hotel, the Gilbert House, he ordered a cocktail and
bought a newspaper; but the drink was shockingly bad, and he couldn’t
endure the stale dullness of the place long enough to read the paper
there.
He had never before in his life suffered from such boredom. He went back
to the house, determined to write at once to his uncle and say he
couldn’t stand it any longer.
And there, rocking on the porch and enjoying the cool of the afternoon,
sat Esther.
“Hello!” she said cheerfully.
“Good afternoon,” he replied stiffly.
“Well! What makes you look so cross?”
“I’ve had a rotten day.”
“I’m sorry; but it wasn’t my fault, was it? You needn’t be cross at me.”
“It was your fault, in a way. You might have told me what there is to do
in this place.”
“Oh, but there isn’t anything! I’ll take you for a walk after supper, if
you want.”
So after supper, when Mrs. Van Brink had gone back to the kitchen, and
her husband, in stocking feet, sat reading his newspaper, Esther and
Tommy set out again.
“Shall we go right out in the country?” Esther asked him. “Or would you
rather go through the village and see some of the fine houses?”
Tommy preferred the country.
They turned north, followed the dark and quiet street past all the
little houses, and into a road soft with dust, under the black shadow of
great trees, with a sweet breeze blowing from the meadows.
“One day’s enough for you,” said Esther. “How would you like to spend
_years_ here?”
“By Jove! How do you stand it?”
“Well, I won’t, any longer than I can help!”
They were going uphill steadily. The fields were left behind, and the
pine forest was closing in on them, dark and fragrant.
“This is my favorite walk,” said Esther. “I often come here by myself.”
“Rather lonely, isn’t it?”
“I’m never lonely.”
Again that vague alarm came over the boy. He felt defenseless, lost. He
dreaded to go farther; but, chattering pleasantly, Esther went on and
on, and he had to answer and to follow.
The road grew rougher, and his little comrade stumbled often.
“Hadn’t we better turn back?” suggested Tommy. “You’ll be tired.”
“Oh, no! I don’t call _this_ far!”
“And it’s getting late. Your mother and father--”
She laughed.
“You needn’t worry about them! Let’s sit down and rest a few minutes, if
you like.”
There was a great flat rock a little way up the bank from the roadway.
Sitting there, they could catch a glimpse of an enormous orange-colored
moon through the branches.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” said Esther. “And doesn’t my ring look pretty in
the moonlight?”
She held up a plump little hand for him to see.
“Are you engaged?” he asked, for even he knew that the question was
expected of him.
“Yes--to the young man you saw last night in the drug store. It’s a
secret, though; mommer and popper don’t know.”
“I hope you’ll be happy,” said Tommy, after a pause.
“I don’t see how I can be,” she answered plaintively. “I don’t really
like him; but oh, dear, what else can I do? Why, I’ve only seen one real
_refined_ man in all my life. He was a traveling salesman. He wanted to
marry me and go and live in New York; but popper wouldn’t let me. He
said I was too young.”
“Well, you know, you are, rather. You don’t want to be hasty, my dear
young lady!”
She sighed.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; but I’m so unhappy!”
He felt very sympathetic, but could think of nothing to say.
“I’m going to take off this ring now, while I’m with you,” Esther went
on. “I want to forget all about Will for a while.” She slipped her warm
little hand into his. “Oh, Tommy!” she said coaxingly. “Be nice, won’t
you?”
The light of the moon shone clearly on her pretty upturned face, her
white throat. He stared and stared at her. She leaned back, more and
more, until her head was resting on his breast and her smooth hair
brushed his lips.
The first wave of some immense and terrible emotion, something he had
never before experienced, came rushing over him. He clenched his hands,
struggling against a fierce desire to push her away.
“What are you doing to me?” he wanted to shout. “What’s happening to me?
Go away! Get out!”
But she did not stir. She rested against him, contented as a kitten,
soft, gentle, and still. Little by little his mood changed, his panic
was allayed, and he bent over and kissed her. Then he wanted never to
let her go again. He kissed her violently, time after time. He couldn’t
stop.
A sort of madness possessed him. A terror greater than ever assailed
him--a terror of himself. He knew he wasn’t to be trusted. He put her
aside brusquely and got up.
“Come on!” he said. “It’s late. Let’s go back!”
V
He sat at the open window of his room that night, oppressed by guilt and
dread.
“I shouldn’t have kissed her,” he said to himself. “Now she’ll think I’m
in love with her.”
He knew well enough that he was not. He disliked her--almost loathed
her; she was so soft and clinging, so irresistible and so inferior. He
didn’t want to see her again.
He hadn’t yet been able to devise a suitable attitude when he met her
the next morning. Seeing her so perfectly unmoved helped him, and they
sat down to breakfast in friendly accord.
“It’s another hot day,” she said. “Mommer thought maybe you’d enjoy a
picnic.”
“A picnic--just you and me?” he asked suspiciously.
She nodded, and waited for his reply, watching his face with candid
eyes. He grew red and hot.
“Very nice idea,” he said loftily.
He was racking his brains for some means of avoiding the excursion.
“Not if I know it!” he said to himself. “She won’t get me alone again!”
But his reflection in a distant mirror caught his eye. What? Here he
was, six feet tall, dressed in absolutely the latest fashion, a thorough
man of the world, and yet uneasy in the presence of this
sixteen-year-old country girl! “Dumpy,” he called her--stolid, ignorant,
rustic, in a cheap cotton frock.
His good humor came back. He smiled down upon her kindly, all alarm
gone. Let her make love to him if she liked--there was no harm in it.
They started directly after breakfast, walked mile after mile through
the fields in the full glare of the hot August sun, up stony hills,
through bramble-lined woodland paths, until Tommy, carrying the big
lunch basket and a walking stick, and wearing a rather heavy Norfolk
jacket--the only correct thing for picnics--was dazed and tired. Not
Esther, though; she was as fresh and cheerful as ever.
In the course of time they reached the place predestined by her for
lunching--a little clearing on the slope of the pine-covered mountain, a
sort of sunny nest in the forest, where a brook ran by, rapid and cool.
When he had at last satisfied his appetite--a strangely hearty and
indiscriminate one for such a man of the world--Tommy lay back against a
sun-warmed stone, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the bright sky.
It was nice to have Esther there, he admitted to himself. It was nice to
see her, contented and blessedly quiet, sitting beside him.
He turned his head to see her better. What a round, pretty, white throat
she had! And her lashes were almost dark against her cheeks. He was
annoyed by a sudden great longing to kiss her again. He tried to put
the thought out of his mind--tried desperately; but in some inexplicable
way, even as she sat there with her eyes closed and her little face so
tranquil, she conveyed the fact to him that she was waiting to be
kissed.
He did it, with a violence surprising to them both. She struggled
half-heartedly, then settled down, close to his side, with his arm about
her, and said no more. He kissed her again and again, stroked her hair,
looked at her in delight. Dear, gentle, ardent little soul! Truly it was
an afternoon on Olympus!
Tommy was done for now. She had awakened his innocent, primitive
manhood, had aroused in him a feeling which he was too immature to
appraise. He believed that he was, that he must be, in love with her.
How otherwise explain his joy in kissing her, his immeasurable
admiration for her charms?
“By Jove!” he said to himself. “I’m _in love_!”
He said it with amazement, with pride, with profound distress, because
his passion tormented him. He was ashamed of it. He knew very well that
it was not spontaneous; Esther had forced its growth. He had not wooed
and won her; he had been captured in a most obvious way. He was a slave,
and he knew and resented it.
Not that Esther was at all a difficult lady to serve. She had no whims,
no caprices. She was neither jealous nor exacting. Indeed, she required
nothing at all of Tommy. She let him alone. She was very affectionate,
whenever he was; but if he were moody or anxious, she was peacefully
silent.
There was always an air of content about her. She might have been the
personified ideal of the man of forty--the woman who is always
responsive, and yet who exacts nothing. Very, very different from the
ideal of generous eighteen!
Precious little joy did poor Tommy find in this his first love. He was
perplexed and confused; he couldn’t imagine any sort of end to it. He
couldn’t contemplate marrying Esther, and the idea of any other sort of
arrangement never occurred to him. In his eyes she was simply a
respectable young girl, under her father’s roof, not good enough, or not
suitable, to be the wife of a man of the world, but far too good to be
thought of in any improper way.
He didn’t even know what he wanted--whether he wanted to leave her, or
whether he couldn’t live without her. He was weary beyond measure, those
hot and sleepless August nights.