UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH
The kind-hearted Miss Kent had decreed a holiday for Howard. With
characteristic thoughtfulness she had volunteered to take Forbes off
his hands, and suggested they fill in the time by a long walk with
a picnic lunch in some shady place, dinner to be postponed until a
convenient hour after their return. Howard showed hilarious approval of
the plan, and Forbes aroused himself from his melancholy abstraction
sufficiently to agree, whereupon Agatha fell to making sandwiches,
giving directions to Phemie as she worked.
Nature in the raw did not appeal to Miss Finch. She hated long
walks. She hated sitting on the grass; while sandwiches, without
an accompanying cup of tea, were as ashes to her taste. The others
accepted her excuses with fortitude, and left her at home to see that
Phemie did not set the house afire, and to grope wearily toward a
solution of her vexing problem. Howard, having stuffed his pockets
with a generous proportion of the sandwiches, shouldered his fishing
rod and departed to make the most of his holiday. And while the
fragrant freshness of the night still lingered in the air, Forbes and
Agatha set out in the direction of the woods.
The serene confidence of her morning vigil still enfolded Agatha. She
walked as if keeping time to music, inaudible to all ears but her
own. Forbes had insisted on carrying the basket of lunch which also
contained a book or two, in case their mood should take a literary
turn. Agatha kept fast hold of his arm, the better to steer his steps,
and he thought there was a hint of friendliness in the firm clasp. The
lonely and unhappy man felt a disproportionate sense of gratitude.
They walked and rested, strolled on and rested again. Neither was
inclined to talk. Forbes had plenty to occupy his thoughts, and Agatha,
too, was reflective. She realized that the time was at hand when she
must confess to Forbes the deception she had practised on him, or else
allow him to go out of her life altogether. Neither alternative was
agreeable, but the latter was unthinkable.
A scheme occurred to her so in harmony with her native audacity that
she dallied with it lovingly, before reluctantly renouncing it as
impracticable. She could tell Forbes that she expected a visit from her
grand-niece, Agatha Kent, and prejudice him in favor of the newcomer
by assuring him of the extraordinary likeness existing between the
twentieth-century Agatha and her girlhood self. After the new Agatha's
arrival, she could leave him more and more to the society of the
younger woman, withdrawing by degrees into the background until her
sudden demise would hardly shock him, though he would naturally feel
more or less responsible for consoling her namesake and heir. Agatha's
final rejection of the plan was due less to doubt of her ability to
act the dual rôle, or to manage the embarrassing details of her own
interment, than to the realization that if her intimacy with Forbes
was to continue, it must be established on a foundation of absolute
truth. This deception on which she had entered so light-heartedly,
had its sole excuse in the impermanence of their relationship. Before
their friendship could become real there must be perfect understanding
between them.
They ate their sandwiches shortly after noon, washing them down with
deliciously cool water from a convenient spring. The day had grown warm
and very still. "It feels as if a thunder-storm might be brewing,"
Forbes remarked, breaking one of the periods of friendly silence.
"I think not," Agatha answered in a dreamy voice. "Don't you love this
stillness here in the shade? It's perfect, perfect!"
"'A book of verses underneath the bough,
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine--and thou,'"
quoted Forbes inevitably. He was laughing but the lines stirred her,
and to disguise the fact she spoke nonchalantly.
"There _is_ a book of poems in the basket, but I don't care for reading
to-day, do you? It's one of the times when you feel everything that has
ever been written and more too. You simply want to sit and think how
wonderful it is to be alive."
"By jove, it's you that's wonderful," Forbes exclaimed. "That
sensitiveness wears off with most people long before they're my age, to
say nothing of yours. But you feel the thrill of life and the mystery
and the adventure, as if you were a girl."
"Yes," Agatha acquiesced, "I do."
"I'd have known it without your telling me. It's been a continual
marvel all through our acquaintance, that ardent freshness of yours.
It's confirmed my faith in immortality."
Agatha had no answer ready. He groped for her hand and took possession
of it with becoming masterfulness.
"I've got something to say to you, something very important. I've meant
to say it for an age, but I've been too much of a coward to risk a no."
Agatha was obliged to remind herself that she was almost seventy years
of age. Otherwise she might have suspected she was listening to a
proposal.
"Before I can explain my plan, I want to ask you something. Aren't you
ever lonely here in winter?"
The question was less formidable than she had anticipated. Her quick
assent showed relief.
"And aren't you going to miss me a little when I go back to the city?"
"Of course I shall," she said faintly, and instinctively tried to
withdraw her hand. He tightened his hold, laughing.
"Please don't take it away. It does me good, and I'm sure it can't do
you any harm. Now you've given me just the encouragement I needed. If
you're lonely here, and if you're going to miss me, why shouldn't you
and I set up housekeeping together?"
"I--I don't understand." Again Agatha steadied herself with the
recollection of her three-score years and seven.
"I'm afraid you've spoiled me," Forbes continued with sudden
seriousness. "I've grown shamefully dependent on you. It isn't
altogether or chiefly that you've looked after my physical comfort
so wonderfully, though, of course, that counts. But you've been so
interested in all that concerns me, so sympathetic, such a good pal--"
He broke off, apparently at a loss for words. "You're as bracing as an
October breeze," he said. "God knows what I should have done without
you, this damnable summer."
The thought crossed her mind that this was her opportunity. Now that
they were alone, now that he had acknowledged his indebtedness, she
could safely throw herself upon his mercy. Her lips parted for her
confession, and an overmastering cowardly fear paralyzed the organs
of speech. Suppose he refused to forgive her. Then he would go away
and she would never see him again. She must make herself still more
indispensable. She must foster that feeling of dependence before she
risked self-accusation.
"Of course I must be in town next winter," Forbes went on. "Why
shouldn't I take a furnished apartment and have you as a sort of mother
confessor? We can get some good servants so you will be relieved of all
responsibility as far as the establishment is concerned, and your sole
duty will be to keep me content with life. How does that appeal to you?"
Agatha heard herself faltering something about Miss Finch.
"Oh, we'll find a place for Miss Finch," Forbes said tolerantly. "I
took it for granted Miss Finch would come along, just as I assumed that
your shadow would accompany you."
"It may be that Zaida will be married by fall," exclaimed Agatha,
seizing the opportunity to postpone the necessity of answering him.
She would not have risked the story on Warren, but she trusted Forbes
to understand that even while her voice broke with uncontrollable
laughter, she was not holding her old friend up to ridicule. As
she described Miss Finch's singular quandary, Forbes joined in her
laughter, more spontaneously than for many weeks, though he made no
effort to conceal his amazement.
"Miss Finch! I begin to feel that I haven't done justice to the lady's
charms. She has impressed me as colorless, not faded, you know, but
colorless from the start."
"It's well we don't all see alike," Agatha said demurely, though a
little startled by his perspicacity.
His next remark took her by surprise. "It's a thousand pities you never
married."
Her impertinent retort that there was still time for that, was checked
before it left her lips, and replaced by the less hazardous rejoinder,
"In that case, probably I shouldn't be sitting here with you."
"True. But my good luck has meant loss to so many. You would have been
an incomparable mother. It's a shame you didn't have a dozen children.
Do you know I've never in my life felt such a sense of being mothered
as I have since I came to Oak Knoll. My own mother was an invalid when
I first remember her."
A little confused, but gallantly striving to live up to her maternal
rôle, Agatha patted his arm with her disengaged hand. He showed his
filial appreciation by kissing the other.
"It wasn't my father's fault, anyway, that you didn't fulfil your
destiny. He took me into his confidence the last few months of his
life, not in any formal way, you understand, just a word dropped here
and there. He was the tenderest of husbands to my mother, but at the
last of his life, his thoughts were all with his first love." He turned
toward her with a gesture plainly interrogative. "He must have been
rather an attractive young fellow."
"He was." Agatha spoke with conviction.
"And still you turned him down. I suppose it would be presumptuous to
hazard a guess that there was another man."
"Yes, I think it would be rather presumptuous," Agatha said
breathlessly. "Anyway, it's foolish, dragging up old love-affairs. 'Let
the dead past bury its dead,' you know, though you modern young folks
don't hold Longfellow in such esteem as my generation did."
"I was only thinking that if there was a man who might have married you
and didn't, he's probably putting in his time in the next world cursing
his luck. But you're not going to be as hard on the son as you were on
the father, are you?"
"I--I--do you mean--"
"You're not going to blast all my hopes by saying no. How am I going to
get along without you; tell me that?"
"You must give me a little time to think," Agatha protested faintly.
She had vowed that morning to avoid all references in the future
to her advanced age, but the habit of acting a part was too strong
to be overcome by a single resolution. She heard herself continuing
mechanically, "Old people don't like to be hurried into important
decisions. Leaving the home of so many years and going away with a
young man may seem a very little thing to you, but to me it's a real
adventure."
"Take all the time you want for reflection," he conceded generously.
"Only understand, you must end by saying yes!"
"You might change your mind and not want me," Agatha said. The
playfulness oozed out of her tone as she voiced her haunting dread.
"You might find out something about me, some trait you had never
suspected. I might be any number of awful things--deceitful, for
instance." Again the impulse to confession took her by the throat.
Again she fought it off almost with terror. It was too soon. She was
not ready. She did not know what to say, and moreover the moment was
too sweet to spoil.
Forbes laughed tolerantly. "Oh, I'll take the risk. Shall we shake
hands on the bargain?"
He was amused by the fervor of her refusal, but his instinct warned
him he was carrying his teasing too far. He had a strong conviction
that she would end by accepting his proposition, but nothing would be
gained by hurrying her to a decision. Though in most things she was
strangely younger than her years, her age manifested itself in her
reluctance to change the established order. He congratulated himself
on broaching the subject early enough to give her time for accustoming
herself to the idea.
A comfortable silence fell between them. Forbes stretched himself on
the pine needles, and presently dropped off to sleep. He had held
to her hand throughout their talk with seeming playfulness, though
perhaps underneath was the instinct of the blind man to establish a
link between himself and his kind, to touch what he can not see. In
his sleep he moved nearer the imprisoned hand, and lay with his cheek
touching it. And though her arm grew very tired from staying in one
position so long, passing through the various stages from prickles to
excruciating pain, and finally to a numbness which made her wonder
if she could ever use it again, Agatha did not move. Indeed as she
sat listening to his quiet breathing, feeling through the torture of
her cramped muscles the touch of his cheek against her hand, her only
quarrel with the hour was that it could not last.