"Well, after you wouldn't take me to Europe, you know--"
"You naughty girl!"
"No interruptions, sir. After you _couldn't_ take me to Europe I felt
very much hurt and wounded, and ready to catch at any straw of
suspicion. I ran away from you that night and left you in the parlor,
hoping that you would call me back, and yet longing to hide myself
from you too. You understand?"
"Yes, let us not dwell on that."
"Well, I believe I never thought once of Fanny Meyrick's going to
Europe too until she joined us on the road that day--you remember?--at
the washerwoman's gate."
"Yes; and do _you_ remember how Fidget and I barked at her with all
our hearts?"
"I was piqued then at the air of ownership Fanny seemed to assume in
you. She had just come to Lenox, I knew; she could know nothing of our
intimacy, our relations; and this seemed like the renewal of something
old--something that had been going on before. Had she any claim on
you? I wondered. And then, too, you were so provokingly reticent about
her whenever her name had been mentioned before."
"Was I? What a fool I was! But, Bessie dear, I could not say to even
you, then, that I believed Fanny Meyrick was in--cared a great deal
for me."
"I understand," said Bessie nodding. "We'll skip that, and take it for
granted. But you see _I_ couldn't take anything for granted but just
what I saw that day; and the little memorandum-book and Fanny's
reminiscences nearly killed me. I don't know how I sat through it all.
I tried to avoid you all the rest of the day. I wanted to think, and
to find out the truth from Fanny."
"I should think you _did_ avoid me pretty successfully, leaving me to
dine coldly at the hotel, and then driving all the afternoon till
train-time."
"It was in talking to Fanny that afternoon that I discovered how she
felt toward you. She has no concealment about her, not any, and I
could read her heart plainly enough. But then she hinted at her
father's treatment of you; thought he had discouraged you, rebuffed
you, and reasoned so that I fairly thought there might be truth in it,
_remembering it was before you knew me."_
"Listen one minute, Bessie, till I explain that. It's my belief, and
always was, that that shrewd old fellow, Henry Meyrick, saw very
clearly how matters were all along--saw how the impetuous Miss Fanny
was--"
"_Falling in love_: don't pause for a 'more tenderer word,' Charlie.
Sam Weller couldn't find any."
"Well, falling in love, if you _will_ say it--and that it was
decidedly a difficult situation for me. I remember so well that night
on the piazza, when Fanny clung about me like a mermaid, he bade her
sharply go and change her dripping garments, and what Fanny calls 'a
decidedly queer' expression came into his face. He could not say
anything, poor old chap! and he always behaved with great courtesy to
me. I am sure he divined that I was a most unimpassioned actor in that
high-comedy plunge into the Hudson."
"Very well: I believe it, I'm sure, but, you see, how could I know
then what was or was not true? Then it was that I resolved to give you
leave--or rather give her leave to try. I had written my note in the
morning, saying _no_ finally to the Europe plan, and I scrawled across
it, in lead-pencil, while Fanny stood at her horse's head, those ugly
words, you remember?"
"Yes," I said: "'Go to Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to
Lenox, both of you, when you return.'"
"Then, after that, my one idea was to get away from Lenox. The place
was hateful to me, and you were writing those pathetic letters about
being married, and state-rooms, and all. It only made me more
wretched, for I thought you were the more urgent now that you had been
lacking before. I hurried aunt off to Philadelphia, and in New York
she hurried me. She would not wait, though I did want to, and I was so
disappointed at the hotel! But I thought there was a fate in it to
give Fanny Meyrick her chance, poor thing! and so I wrote that
good-bye note without an address."
"But I found you, for all, thanks to Dr. R----!"
"Yes, and when you came that night I was so happy. I put away all
fear: I had to remind myself, actually, all the time, of what I owed
to Fanny, until you told me you had changed your passage to the
Algeria, and that gave me strength to be angry. Oh, my dear, I'm
afraid you'll have a very bad wife. Of course the minute you had
sailed I began to be horribly jealous, and then I got a letter by the
pilot that made me worse."
"But," said I, "you got my letters from the other side. Didn't that
assure you that you might have faith in me?"
"But I would not receive them. Aunt Sloman has them all, done up and
labeled for you, doubtless. She, it seems--had you talked her
over?--thought I ought to have gone with you, and fretted because she
was keeping me. Then I couldn't bear it another day. It was just after
you had sailed, and I had cut out the ship-list to send you; and I had
worked myself up to believe you would go back to Fanny Meyrick if you
had the chance. I told Aunt Sloman that it was all over between
us--that you might continue to write to me, but I begged that she
would keep all your letters in a box until I should ask her for them."
"But I wrote letters to her, too, asking what had become of you."
"She went to Minnesota, you know, early in February."
"And why didn't you go with her?"
"She scolded me dreadfully because I would not. But she was so well,
and she had her maid and a pleasant party of Philadelphia friends; and
I--well, I didn't want to put all those hundreds of miles between me
and the sea."
"And was Shaker Village so near, then, to the sea?"
"Oh, Charlie," hiding her face on my shoulder, "that was cowardice in
me. You know I meant to keep the cottage open and live there. It was
the saddest place in all the world, but still I wanted to be
there--alone. But I found I could not be alone; and the last people
who came drove me nearly wild--those R----s, Fanny Meyrick's
friends--and they talked about her and about you, so that I could bear
it no longer. I wanted to hide myself from all the world. I knew I
could be quiet at the Shaker village. I had often driven over there
with Aunt Sloman: indeed, Sophia--that's the one you saw--is a great
friend of Aunt Maria's."
"So the lady-abbess confessed, did she?" I asked with some curiosity.
"Yes: she said you were rudely inquisitive; but she excused you as
unfamiliar with Shaker ways."
"And were you really at Watervliet?"
"Yes, but don't be in a hurry: we'll come to that presently. Sophia
gave me a pretty little room opening out of hers, and they all treated
me with great kindness, if they _did_ call me Eliza."
"And did you," I asked with some impatience, remembering Hiram's
description--"did you sew beads on velvet and plait straw for mats?"
"Nonsense! I did whatever I pleased. I was parlor-boarder, as they say
in the schools. But I did learn something, sir, from that dear old
sister Martha. You saw _her_?"
"The motherly body who invited me in?"
"Yes: isn't she a dear? I took lessons from her in all sorts of
cookery: you shall see, Charlie, I've profited by being a Shakeress."
"Yes, my darling, but did you--you didn't go to church?"
"Only once," she said, with a shiver that made her all the dearer,
"and they preached such dreary stuff that I told Sophia I would never
go again."
"But did you really wear that dress I saw you in?"
"For that once only. You see, I was at Watervliet when you came. If
you had only gone straight there, dear goose! instead of dodging in
the road, you would have found me. I had grown a little tired of the
monotony of the village, and was glad to join the party starting for
Niskayuna, it was such a glorious drive across the mountain. I longed
for you all the time."
"Pretty little Shakeress! But why did they put us on such a false
track?"
"Oh, we had expected to reach home that night, but one of the horses
was lame, and we did not start as soon as we had planned. We came back
on Saturday afternoon--Saturday afternoon, and this is Monday
morning!", leaning back dreamily, and looking across the blue distance
to the far-off hills. "Then I got your card, and they told me about
you, and I knew, for all the message, that you'd be back on Sunday
morning. But how could I tell then that Fanny Meyrick would not be
with you?"
"Bessie!" and my hand tightened on hers.
"Oh, Charlie, you don't know what it is to be jealous. Of course I did
know that--no, I didn't, either, though I must have been _sure_
underneath that day. For it was more in fun than anything else, after
I knew you were in the meeting-house--"
"How did you know?"
"I saw you drive up--you and Hiram and Mrs. Hiram."
"You didn't think, then, that it was Mrs. Charles?"
"So I stole into Sophia's room, and put on one of her dresses. She is
tall too, but it did not fit very well."
"I should think not," I answered, looking down admiringly at her.
"In fact," laughing, "I took quite a time pinning myself into it and
getting the neckerchief folded prim. I waited till after the sermon,
and then I knew by the singing that it was the last hymn, so I darted
in. I don't know what they thought--that I was suddenly converted, I
suppose, and they would probably have given thanks over me as a brand
snatched from the burning. Did I do the dance well? I didn't want to
put them out."
"My darling, it was a dreadful masquerade. Did you want to punish me
to the end?"
"I was punished myself, Charlie, when you fell. Oh dear! don't let's
talk about the dreadful thing any more. But I think you would have
forgiven Elder Nebson if you had seen how tenderly he lifted you into
the wagon. There, now: where are we going to live in New York, and
what have we got to live on besides my little income?"
"Income! I had forgotten you had any."
"Ask Judge Hubbard if I haven't. You'll see."
"But, my dear," said I gravely, drawing forth the packet from my
breast, "I, too, have my story to tell. I cannot call it a confession,
either; rather it is the story of somebody else--Hallo! who's broken
the seal?" For on shipboard I had beguiled the time by writing a sort
of journal to accompany Fanny's letter, and had placed all together in
a thick white envelope, addressing it, in legal parlance, "To whom it
may concern."
"_I_ did," said Bessie faintly, burying her face on my arm. "It fell
out of your pocket when they carried you up stairs; and I read it,
every word, twice over, before you came to yourself."
"You little witch! And I thought you were marrying me out of pure
faith in me, and not of sight or knowledge."
"It was faith, the highest faith," said Bessie proudly, and looking
into my eyes with her old saucy dash, "to know, to feel sure, that
that sealed paper concerned nobody but me."
And so she has ever since maintained.
Transcriber's Note:
This is a compiled version of a novel published in sections
in the LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
List of the e-books from which this text was compiled:
[EBook #13828] August 1873
[EBook #14036] September 1873
[EBook #13964] October 1873
End of Project Gutenberg's On the Church Steps, by Sarah C. Hallowell