The words of Bott lingered obstinately in Maud Matchin's mind. She gave
herself no rest from dwelling on them. Her imagination was full, day
after day, of glowing pictures of herself and Farnham in tete-a-tete;
she would seek in a thousand ways to tell her love--but she could never
quite arrange her avowal in a satisfactory manner. Long before she came
to the decisive words which were to kindle his heart to flame in the
imaginary dialogue, he would himself take fire by spontaneous
combustion, and, falling on his knees, would offer his hand, his heart,
and his fortune to her in words taken from "The Earl's Daughter" or the
"Heir of Ashby."
"Oh, pshaw! that's the way it ought to be," she would say to herself.
"But if he won't--I wonder whether I ever could have the brass to do
it? I don't know why I shouldn't. We are both human. Bott wouldn't have
said that if there was nothing in it, and he's a mighty smart man."
The night usually gave her courage. Gazing into her glass, she saw
enough to inspire her with an idea of her own invincibility; and after
she had grown warm in bed she would doze away, resolving with a stout
heart that she would try her fate in the morning. But when day came,
the enterprise no longer seemed so simple. Her scanty wardrobe struck
her with cowardice as she surveyed it. The broad daylight made
everything in the house seem poor and shabby. When she went
down-stairs, her heart sank within her as she entered the kitchen to
help her mother, and when she sat with the family at the breakfast-table,
she had no faith left in her dreams of the rosy midnight. This
alternation of feeling bred in her, in the course of a few days, a sort
of fever, which lent a singular beauty to her face, and a petulant tang
to her speech. She rose one morning, after a sleepless night, in a
state of anger and excitement in which she had little difficulty in
charging upon Farnham all responsibility for her trouble of mind.
"I won't stand it any longer," she said aloud in her chamber. "I shall
go to him this day and have it out. I shall ask him what he means by
treating me so."
She sat down by her bureau and began to crimp her hair with grim
resolution. Her mother came and knocked at her door. "I'm not coming to
breakfast, I've got a headache," she said, and added to herself, "I
sha'n't go down and get the smell of bacon on me this morning."
She continued her work of personal adornment for two hours, going
several times over her whole modest arsenal of finery before she was
ready for the fray. She then went down in her street costume, and made
a hasty meal of bread and butter, standing by the pantry. Her mother
came in and found her there.
"Why, Mattie, how's your head?"
"I'm going to take a walk and see what that will do."
As she walked rapidly out of Dean Street, the great clock of the
cathedral was striking the hour of nine.
"Goodness!" she exclaimed, "that's too early to call on a gentleman.
What shall I do?"
She concluded to spend the time of waiting in the library, and walked
rapidly in that direction, the fresh air flushing her cheeks, and
blowing the frizzed hair prettily about her temples. She went straight
to the reference rooms, and sat down to read a magazine. The girl who
had prompted her to apply for a place was there on duty. She gave a
little cry of delight when she saw Maud, and said:
"I was just crazy to see you. I have got a great secret for you. I'm
engaged!"
The girls kissed each other with giggles and little screams, and the
young woman told who _he_ was--in the lightning-rod business in
Kalamazoo, and doing very well; they were to be married almost
immediately.
"You never saw such a fellow, he just won't wait;" and consequently her
place in the library would be vacant. "Now, you must have it, Maud! I
haven't told a soul. Even the Doctor don't know it yet."
Maud left the library and walked up the avenue with an easier mind. She
had an excuse for her visit now, and need not broach, unless she liked,
the tremendous subject that made her turn hot and cold to think of. She
went rustling up the wide thoroughfare at a quick pace; but before
arriving at Farnham's, moved by a momentary whim, she turned down a
side street leading to Bishop's Lane. She said to herself, "I will go
in by that little gate once, if I never do again." As she drew near,
she thought, "I hope Sam isn't there."
Sam was there, just finishing his work upon the greenhouse. Farnham was
there also; he had come down to inspect the job, and he and Sleeny were
chatting near the gate as Maud opened it and came in. Farnham stepped
forward to meet her. The unexpected rencounter made her shy, and she
neither spoke to Sam nor looked toward him, which filled him with a
dull jealousy.
"Could I have a few moments' conversation with you, sir?" she asked,
with stiff formality.
"Certainly," said Farnham, smiling. "Shall we go into the house?"
"Thank you, sir," she rejoined, severely decorous. They walked up the
garden-path together, and Sam looked after them with an unquiet heart.
She was walking beside Farnham with a stately step, in spite of the
scabbard-like narrowness of the dress she wore. She was nearly as tall
as he, and as graceful as a young pine blown to and fro by soft winds.
The carpenter, with his heart heavy with love and longing, felt a
bitter sense that she was too fine for him. They passed into the house,
and he turned to his work with a sigh, often dropping his busy hands
and looking toward the house with a dumb questioning in his eyes. After
a half hour which seemed endless to him, they reappeared and walked
slowly down the lawn. There was trouble and agitation in the girl's
face, and Farnham was serious also. As they came by the rose-house,
Maud paused and looked up with a sorrowful smile and a question.
Farnham nodded, and they walked to the open door of the long, low
building. He led the way in, and Maud, looking hastily around, closed
the door behind them.
"He's goin' to give her some more of them roses," said Sam, explaining
the matter to himself. But he worked for some time with his blond beard
on his shoulder in his impatience to see them come out. At last, he
could resist no longer. He knew a point where he could look through the
glass and see whatever was taking place among the roses. He walked
swiftly across the turf to that point. He looked in and saw Maud,
whose back was turned toward him, talking as if she were pleading for
her life, while Farnham listened with a clouded brow. Sleeny stood
staring with stupid wonder while Maud laid her hand upon Farnham's
shoulder. At that moment he heard footsteps on the gravel walk at some
distance from him, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Belding approaching.
Confused at his attitude of espionage, he walked away from his post,
and, as he passed her, Mrs. Belding asked him if he knew where Mr.
Farnham was.
"Yes," he answered, "he's in there. Walk right in;" and in the midst of
his trouble of spirit he could hardly help chuckling at his own
cleverness as he walked, in his amazement, back to the conservatory.
While she was in the house, Maud had confined herself to the subject of
the vacancy in the library. She rushed at it, as a hunter at a hedge,
to get away from the other matter which had tormented her for a week.
When she found herself alone with Farnham she saw that it would be
"horrid" to say what she had so long been rehearsing. "Now I can get
that place, if you will help me. No earthly soul knows anything about
it, and Minnie said she would give me a good chance before she let it
out."
Farnham tried to show her the difficulties in the way. He was led by
her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the
rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative
than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence. Whenever he paused,
she would insist with a woman's disconcerting directness:
"But they don't know anything about it this time--they can't combine on
anybody. You can certainly get one of them."
Farnham still argued against her sanguine hopes, till he at last
affected her own spirits, and she grew silent and despondent. As she
rose to go, he also took his hat to return to the garden, where he had
left Sleeny, and they walked over the lawn together. As they approached
the rose-house, she thought of her former visit and asked to repeat it.
The warm breath of the flowers saluted her as she crossed the
threshold, bringing so vivid a reminiscence of the enchantment of that
other day, that there came with it a sudden and poignant desire to try
there, in that bewitched atmosphere, the desperate experiment which
would decide her fate. There was no longer any struggle in her mind.
She could not, for her life, have kept silent now. She walked slowly
beside him to the place where the pots of roses stood ranged on their
frames, filling the air with dense fragrance. Her hands were icy cold
and quick flushes passed through her, while her face reddened and paled
like a horizon smitten by heat-lightning in a sultry night of summer.
She looked at the moist brick pavement at her feet, her eyelids seemed
too heavy to lift, and the long lashes nearly touched her cheeks.
"What sort will you have?" said Farnham, reaching for the gardener's
shears.
"Never mind the roses," she said, in a dry voice which she hardly
recognized as her own. "I have something to say to you."
He turned and looked at her with surprise. She raised her eyes to his
with a great effort, and then, blushing fiery red, she said, in a
clear, low voice, "I love you."
Like many another daughter and son of Eve, she was startled at the
effect of these momentous words upon herself. Of all forms of speech
these three words are the most powerful, the most wonderworking upon
the being who utters them. It was the first time they had ever passed
her lips, and they exalted and inebriated her. She was suddenly set
free from the bashful constraint which had held her, and with a leaping
pulse and free tongue she poured out her heart to the astonished and
scandalized young man.
"Yes, I love you. You think it's horrid that I should say so, don't
you? But I don't care, I love you. I loved you the first time I saw
you, though you made me so angry about my glasses. But you were my
master, and I knew it, and I never put them on again. And I thought of
you day and night, and I longed for the day to come when I might see
you once more, and I was glad when I did not get that place, so that I
could come again and see you and talk with you. I can tell you over
again every word you ever said to me. You were not like other men. You
are the first real man I ever knew. I was silly and wild when I wanted
to be your secretary. Of course, that wouldn't do. If I am not to be
your wife, I must never see you again; you know that, don't you?" and,
carried away by her own reckless words, she laid her hand on his
shoulder. His frown of amazement and displeasure shook her composure
somewhat. She turned pale and trembled, her eyes fell, and it seemed
for an instant as if she would sink to the floor at his feet. He put
his arm around her, to keep her from falling and pressed her closely to
him. She threw her head back upon his shoulder and lifted her face to
him. He looked down on her, and the frown passed from his brow as he
surveyed her flushed cheeks, her red full lips parted in breathless
eagerness; her dark eyes were wide open, the iris flecked with golden
sparks and the white as clear and blue-tinged as in the eyes of a
vigorous infant; her head lay on his shoulder in perfect content, and
she put up her mouth to him as simply and as sure of a response as a
pretty child. He was entirely aware of the ridiculousness of his
position, but he stooped and kissed her.
Her work seemed all done; but her satisfaction lasted only a second.
Her face broke into happy smiles.
"You do love me, do you not?" she asked.
"I certainly do not," he answered; and at that instant the door opened
and Mrs. Belding saw this pretty group of apparent lovers on a rich
background of Jacqueminot roses.
Startled more at the words of Farnham than at the entry of Mrs.
Belding, Maud had started up, like Vivien, "stiff as a viper frozen."
Her first thought was whether she had crushed her hat on his shoulder,
and her hands flew instinctively to her head-gear. She then walked
tempestuously past the astonished lady out into the garden and brushed
roughly by Sleeny, who tried to detain her.
"Hold your tongue, Sam! I hate you and all men"; and with this general
denunciation, she passed out of the place, flaming with rage and shame.
Mrs. Belding stood for a moment speechless, and then resorted to the
use of that hard-worked and useful monosyllable,
"Well!" with a sharp, falling inflection.
"Well!" returned Farnham, with an easy, rising accent; and then both of
them relieved the strained situation with a laugh.
"Come, now," said the good-natured woman, "I am a sort of guardian of
yours. Give an account of yourself."
"That is easily given," said Farnham. "A young woman, whose name I
hardly know, came to me in the garden this morning to ask for help to
get some lady-like work to do. After discussing that subject
threadbare, she came in here for a rose, and, apropos of nothing, made
me a declaration and a proposal of honorable wedlock, _dans toutes les
formes_."
"The forms were evident as I entered," said Mrs. Belding, dryly.
"I could not let her drop on the damp floor," said Farnham, who was
astonished to find himself positively blushing under the amused
scrutiny of his mother-confessor. "Consider, if you please, my dear
madam, that this is the first offer I have ever received, and I was
naturally somewhat awkward about declining it. We shall learn better
manners as we go along."
"You did decline, then?" said Mrs. Belding, easily persuaded of the
substantial truth of the story, and naturally inclined, as is the way
of woman, to the man's side. Then, laughing at Arthur's discomfiture,
she added, "I was about to congratulate you."
"I deserve only your commiseration."
"I must look about and dispose of you in some way. You are evidently
too rich and too fascinating. But I came over to-day to ask you what I
ought to do about my Lake View farm. I have two offers for it; if I had
but one, I would take either--well, you know what I mean;" and the
conversation became practical. After that matter was disposed of, she
said, with a keen side-glance at Farnham, "That was a very pretty girl.
I hope you will not be exposed to such another attack; I might not be
so near the next time."
"That danger, thanks to you, is over; Mademoiselle will never return,"
he answered, with an air of conviction.
Mrs. Belding went home with no impression left of the scene she had
witnessed but one of amusement. She thought of it only as "a good joke
on Arthur Farnham." She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and
if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on
her hat and hurried off to tell it. But she was a woman who lived very
much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling. She was several
times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was
prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of
story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance. So she
restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment of it irritated her.
They were sitting on the wide porch which ran around two sides of the
house just as twilight was falling. The air was full of drowsy calls
and twitters from the grass and the trees. The two ladies had been
sitting ever since dinner, enjoying the warm air of the early summer,
talking very little, and dropping often into long and contented
silences. Mrs. Belding had condescended to grenadine in consideration
of the weather, and so looked less funereal than usual. Alice was
dressed in a soft and vapory fabric of creamy bunting, in the midst of
which her long figure lay reclined in an easy chair of Japanese bamboo;
she might have posed for a statue of graceful and luxurious repose.
There was light enough from the rising moon and the risen stars to show
the clear beauty of her face and the yellow lustre of her hair; and her
mother cast upon her from time to time a glance of pride and fondness,
as if she were a recovered treasure to which the attraction of novelty
had just been added anew.
"They say she looks as I did at her age," thought the candid lady; "but
they must flatter me. My nose was never so straight as that: her nose
is Belding all over. I wonder whom she will care about here? Mr. Furrey
is a nice young man, but she is hardly polite to him. There he is now."
The young man came briskly up the walk, and ran up the steps so quickly
that he tripped on the last one and dropped his hat. He cleverly
recovered it, however, and made very elaborate bows to both the ladies,
hoping that he found them quite well. Mrs. Belding bustled about to
give him a chair, at which Alice knitted her pretty brows a little. She
had scarcely moved her eyelashes to greet her visitor; but when Mrs.
Belding placed a light chair near her daughter and invited Mr. Furrey
to take it, the young lady rose from her reclining attitude and sat
bolt upright with a look of freezing dignity. The youth was not at all
abashed, but took his seat, with his hat held lightly by the brim in
both hands. He was elegantly dressed, in as faithful and reverent an
imitation as home talent could produce of the costume of the gentlemen
who that year were driving coaches in New York. His collar was as stiff
as tin; he had a white scarf, with an elaborate pin constructed of
whips and spurs and horseshoes. He wore dog-skin gloves, very tight and
red. His hair was parted in the middle with rigorous impartiality and
shed rather rank fragrance on the night. He began conversation with an
easy air, in which there was something of pleasurable excitement mixed.
"I come to receive your congratulations, ladies!"
"What, you are engaged?" said Mrs. Belding, and even the placid face of
Miss Alice brightened with a look of pleased inquiry.
"Oh, dear, no; how could you think so?" he protested, with an arch look
at Alice which turned her to marble again. "I mean I have this day been
appointed assistant cashier of our bank!" Napoleon, informing Madame de
Beauharnais [* - Perhaps Josephine told Napoleon herself, but I think
she was clever enough to let him imagine he owed the appointment to his
merits.] that he was to command the army of Italy, probably made less
ado about it.
Mrs. Belding made haste to murmur her congratulations. "Very
gratifying, I am sure,--at your age;" to which Alice responded like a
chorus, but without any initiative warmth, "Very gratifying, I am
sure."
Furrey went on at some length to detail all the circumstances of the
event: how Mr. Lathers, the president of the bank, had sent for him,
and how he complimented him; how he had asked him where he learned to
write such a good hand; and how he had replied that it came sort of
natural to him to write well, that he could make the American eagle
with pen and ink before he was fifteen, all but the tail-feathers, and
how he discovered a year later that the tail-feathers had to be made by
holding the pen between the first and second fingers; with much more to
the like innocent purpose, to which Mrs. Belding listened with nods and
murmurs of approval. This was all the amiable young man needed to
encourage him to indefinite prattle. He told them all about the men in
the bank, their habits and their loves and their personal relations to
him, and how he seemed somehow to be a general favorite among them all.
Miss Alice sat very still and straight in her chair, with an occasional
smile when the laughter of Mr. Furrey seemed to require it, but with
her eyes turned to the moonlit night in vagrant reverie, and her mind
in those distant and sacred regions where we cannot follow the minds of
pure and happy girls.
"Now, you would hardly understand, if I did not tell you," said Mr.
Furrey, "how it is that I have gained the confidence----"
At this moment Alice, who had been glancing over Mr. Furrey's shoulder
for a moment with a look of interest in her eyes, which he thought was
the legitimate result of his entertaining story, cried:
"Why, there comes Mr. Farnham, mamma."
"So it is," said her mother. "I suppose he wants to see me. Don't move,
Mr. Furrey. Mr. Farnham and I will go into the house."
"By no means," said that gentleman, who by this time had mounted the
steps. "I was sitting all alone on my porch and saw by the moon that
yours was inhabited; and so I came over to improve my mind and manners
in your society."
"I will get a chair for you," said Mrs. Belding.
"No, thank you; this balustrade will bear my weight, and my ashes will
drop harmless on the flower-bed, if you will let me finish my cigar."
And he seated himself between the chair of Furrey and the willow fabric
in which Alice had resumed her place. This addition to the company was
not at all to the taste of the assistant cashier, who soon took his
leave, shaking hands with the ladies, with his best bow.
"After all, I do prefer a chair," said Farnham, getting down from his
balustrade, and throwing away his cigar.
He sat with his back to the moonlight. On his left was Alice, who, as
soon as Furrey took his departure, settled back in her willow chair in
her former attitude of graceful ease. On the right was Mrs. Belding, in
her thin, cool dress of gauzy black. Farnham looked from one to the
other as they talked, and that curious exercise, so common to young men
in such circumstances, went through his mind. He tried to fancy how
Mrs. Belding looked at nineteen, and how Miss Belding would look at
fifty, and the thought gave him singular pleasure. His eyes rested with
satisfaction on the kindly and handsome face of the widow, her fine
shoulders and arms, and comfortable form, and then, turning to the pure
and exquisite features of the tall girl, who was smiling so freshly and
honestly on him, his mind leaped forward through corning years, and he
said to himself: "What a wealth of the woman there is there--for
somebody." An aggressive feeling of disapproval of young Furrey took
possession of him, and he said, sharply:
"What a very agreeable young man Mr. Furrey is?"
Mrs. Belding assented, and Miss Alice laughed heartily, and his mind
was set at rest for the moment.
They passed a long time together. At first Mrs. Belding and Arthur
"made the expenses" of the conversation; but she soon dropped away, and
Alice, under the influence of the night and the moonlight and Farnham's
frank and gentle provocation, soon found herself talking with as much
freedom and energy as if it were a girls' breakfast. With far more,
indeed,--for nature takes care of such matters, and no girl can talk to
another as she can to a man, under favoring stars. The conversation
finally took a personal turn, and Alice, to her own amazement, began to
talk of her life at school, and with sweet and loving earnestness sang
the praises of Madame de Veaudrey.
"I wish you could know her," she said to Farnham, with a sudden impulse
of sympathy. He was listening to her intently, and enjoying her eager,
ingenuous speech as much as her superb beauty, as the moon shone full
on her young face, so vital and so pure at once, and played, as if glad
of the privilege, about the curved lips, the flashing teeth, the soft
eyes under their long lashes, and the hair over the white forehead,
gleaming as crisply brilliant as fine-spun wire of gold.
"By her fruits I know her, and I admire her very much," he said, and
was sorry for it the moment afterward, for it checked the course of the
young girl's enthusiasm and brought a slight blush to her cheek.
"I ought to have known better," he said to himself with real penitence,
"than to utter a stupid commonplace to such a girl when she was talking
so earnestly." And he tried to make amends, and succeeded in winning
back her attention and her slow unconscious smiles by talking to her of
things a thousand miles away. The moon was silvering the tops of the
linden-trees at the gates before they thought of the flight of time,
and they had quite forgotten the presence of Mrs. Belding when her
audible repose broke in upon their talk. They looked at each other, and
burst into a frank laugh, full of confidence and comradeship, which the
good lady heard in her dreams and waked, saying, "What are you laughing
at? I did not catch that last witticism."
The young people rose from their chairs. "I can't repeat my own mots,"
said Arthur: "Miss Belding will tell you."
"Indeed I shall not," replied Alice. "It was not one of his best,
mamma."
She gave him her hand as he said "Good-night," and it lay in his firm
grasp a moment without reserve or tremor.
"You are a queer girl, Alice," said Mrs. Belding, as they walked into
the drawing-room through the open window. "You put on your stiffest
company manners for Mr. Furrey, and you seem entirely at ease with Mr.
Farnham, who is much older and cleverer, and is noted for his sarcastic
criticisms."
"I do not know why it is, mamma, but I do feel very much at home with
Mr. Farnham, and I do not want Mr. Furrey to feel at home with me."
Upon this, Mrs. Belding laughed aloud. Alice turned in surprise, and
her mother said, "It is too good to keep. I must tell you. It is such a
joke on Arthur;" and, sitting in a low arm-chair, while Alice stood
before her leaning upon the back of another, she told the whole story
of the scene of the morning in the rose-house. She gave it in the
fullest detail, interrupting herself here and there for soft
cachinnations, unmindful of the stern, unsmiling silence with which her
daughter listened.
She finished, with a loud nourish of merriment, and then asked: "Did
you ever hear anything so funny in your life?"
The young lady was turning white and red in an ominous manner, and was
biting her nether lip. Her answer to her mother's question was swift
and brief:
"I never heard anything so horrid," and she moved majestically away
without another word.
Mrs. Belding sat for a moment abashed. "There!" she said to herself, "I
knew very well I ought not to tell her. But it was too good to keep,
and I had nobody else to tell." She went to bed, feeling rather
ill-used. As she passed her daughter's door, she said, "Good-night,
Alice!" and a voice riot quite so sweet as usual replied, "Good-night,
mamma," but the door was not opened.
Alice turned down her light and sat upon a cushioned seat in the
embrasure of her open window. She looked up at the stars, which swam
and glittered in her angry eyes. With trembling lips and clinched hands
she communed with herself. "Why, why, why did mamma tell me that horrid
story? To think there should be such women in the world! To take such a
liberty with him, of all men! She could not have done it without some
encouragement--and he could not have encouraged her. He is not that
kind of a vulgar flirt at all. But what do I know about men? They may
all be--but I did not think--what business have I thinking about it? I
had better go to bed. I have spent all the evening talking to a man
who--Oh! I wish mamma had not told me that wretched story. I shall
never speak to him again. It is a pity, too, for we are such near
neighbors, and he is so nice, if he were not--But I don't care how nice
he is, she has spoiled him. I wonder who she was. Pretty, was she? I
don't believe a word of it--some bold-faced, brazen creature. Oh! I
shall hate myself if I cry;" but that was past praying for, and she
closed her lattice and went to bed for fear the stars should witness
her unwelcome tears.