On the north side of the old tavern was a great cherry orchard. In
years back it had been a source of considerable revenue to Silas
Berry, but for some seasons his returns from it had been very small.
The cherries had rotted on the branches, or the robins had eaten
them, for Silas would not give them away. Rose and her mother would
smuggle a few small baskets of cherries to Sylvia Crane and Mrs.
Barnard, but Silas's displeasure, had he found them out, would have
been great. "I ain't a-goin' to give them cherries away to nobody,"
he would proclaim. "If folks don't want 'em enough to pay for 'em
they can go without."
Many a great cherry picnic had been held in Silas Berry's orchard.
Parties had come in great rattling wagons from all the towns about,
and picked cherries and ate their fill at a most overreaching and
exorbitant price.
There were no cherries like those in Silas Berry's orchard in all the
country roundabout. There was no competition, and for many years he
had had it all his own way. The young people's appetite for cherries
and their zeal for pleasure had overcome their indignation at his
usury. But at last Silas's greed got the better of his financial
shrewdness; he increased his price for cherries every season, and the
year after the tavern closed it became so preposterous that there was
a rebellion. It was headed by Thomas Payne, who, as the squire's son
and the richest and most freehanded young man in town, could incur no
suspicion of parsimony. Going one night to the old tavern to make
terms with Silas for the use of his cherry orchard, for a party which
included some of his college friends from Boston and his fine
young-lady cousin from New York, and hearing the preposterous sum
which Silas stated as final, he had turned on his heel with a strong
word under his breath. "You can eat your cherries yourself and be
damned," said Thomas Payne, and was out of the yard with the gay
swagger which he had learned along with his Greek and Latin at
college. The next day Silas saw the party in Squire Payne's big
wagon, with Thomas driving, and the cousin's pink cheeks and white
plumed hat conspicuous in the midst, pass merrily on their way to a
cherryless picnic at a neighboring pond, and the young college men
shouted out a doggerel couplet which the wit of the party had made
and set to a rough tune.
"Who lives here?" the basses demanded in grim melody, and the tenors
responded, "Old Silas Berry, who charges sixpence for a cherry."
Silas heard the mocking refrain repeated over and over between shouts
of laughter long after they were out of sight.
Rose, who had not been bidden to the picnic, heard it and wept as she
peered around her curtain at the gay party. William, who had also not
been bidden, stormed at his father, and his mother joined him.
"You're jest a-puttin' your own eyes out, Silas Berry," said she;
"you hadn't no business to ask such a price for them cherries; it's
more than they are worth; folks won't stand it. You asked too much
for 'em last year."
"I know what I'm about," returned Silas, sitting in his arm-chair at
the window, with dogged chin on his breast.
"You wait an' see," said Hannah. "You've jest put your own eyes out."
And after-events proved that Hannah was right. Silas Berry's cherry
orchard was subjected to a species of ostracism in the village. There
were no more picnics held there, people would buy none of his
cherries, and he lost all the little income which he had derived from
them. Hannah often twitted him with it. "You can see now that what I
told you was true," said she; "you put your own eyes out." Silas
would say nothing in reply; he would simply make an animal sound of
defiance like a grunt in his throat, and frown. If Hannah kept on, he
would stump heavily out of the room, and swing the door back with a
bang.
This season Hannah had taunted her husband more than usual with his
ill-judged parsimony in the matter of the cherries. The trees were
quite loaded with the small green fruit, and there promised to be a
very large crop. One day Silas turned on her. "You wait," said he;
"mebbe I know what I'm about, more'n you think I do."
Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly
leering face. "What be you agoin' to do?" she demanded. But she got
no more out of him.
One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went
halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter
Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few
stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were his errand.
Rose was spreading out the lengths of linen in a wide sunny space
just outside the shade of the cherry-trees. Her father paused, tilted
his head back, and eyed the trees with a look of innocent reflection.
Rose glanced at him, then she went on with her work.
"Guess there's goin' to be considerable many cherries this year,"
remarked her father, in an affable and confidential tone.
"I guess so," replied Rose, shortly, and she flapped out an end of
the wet linen. The cherries were a sore subject with her.
"I guess there's goin' to be more than common," said Silas, still
gazing up at the green boughs full of green fruit clusters.
Rose made no reply; she was down on her knees in the grass stretching
the linen straight.
"I've been thinkin'," her father continued, slowly, "that--mebbe
you'd like to have a little--party, an' ask some of the young folks,
an' eat some of 'em when they get ripe. You could have four trees to
pick off of."
"I should think we'd had enough of cherry parties," Rose cried out,
bitterly.
"I didn't say nothin' about havin' 'em pay anything," said her
father.
Rose straightened herself and looked at him incredulously. "Do you
mean it, father?" said she.
"'Ain't I jest said you might, if you wanted to?"
"Do you mean to have them come here and not pay, father?"
"There ain't no use tryin' to sell any of 'em," replied Silas. "You
can talk it over with your mother, an' do jest as you're a mind to
about it, that's all. If you want to have a few of the young folks
over here when them cherries are ripe, you can have four of them
trees to pick off of. I ain't got no more to say about it."
Silas turned in a peremptory and conclusive manner. Rose fairly
gasped as she watched his stiff one-sided progress across the yard.
The vague horror of the unusual stole over her. A new phase of her
father's character stood between her and all her old memories like a
supernatural presence. She left the rest of the linen in the basket
and sought her mother in the house. "Mother!" she called out, in a
cautious voice, as soon as she entered the kitchen. Mrs. Berry's face
looked inquiringly out of the pantry, and Rose motioned her back,
went in herself, and shut the door.
"What be you a-shuttin' the door for?" asked her mother, wonderingly.
"I don't know what has come over father."
"What do you mean, Rose Berry? He 'ain't had another shock?"
"I'm dreadful afraid he's going to! I'm dreadful afraid something's
going to happen to him!"
"I'd like to know what you mean?" Mrs. Berry was quite pale.
"Father says I can have a cherry party, and they needn't pay
anything."
Her mother stared at her. "He didn't!"
"Yes, he did."
They looked in each other's eyes, with silent renewals of doubt and
affirmation. Finally Mrs. Berry laughed. "H'm! Don't you see what
your father's up to?" she said.
"No, I don't. I'm scared."
"You needn't be. You ain't very cute. He's an old head. He thinks if
he has this cherry party for nothin' folks will overlook that other
affair, an' next year they'll buy the cherries again. Mebbe he thinks
they'll buy the other trees this year, after the party. How many
trees did he say you could have?"
"Four. Maybe that is it."
"Of course 'tis. Your father's an old head. Well, you'd better ask
'em. They won't see through it, and it'll make things pleasanter.
I've felt bad enough about it. I guess Mis' Thayer won't look down on
us quite so much if we ask a party here and let 'em eat cherries for
nothin'. It's more'n she'd do, I'll warrant."
"Maybe they won't any of them come," said Rose.
"H'm! Don't you worry about that. They'll come fast enough. I never
see any trouble yet about folks comin' to get anything good that they
didn't have to pay for."
Rose and her mother calculated how many to invite to the party. They
decided to include all the available young people in Pembroke.
"We might jest as well while we're about it," said Hannah,
judiciously. "There are cherries enough, and the Lord only knows when
your father 'll have another freak like this. I guess it's like an
eclipse of the sun, an' won't come again very soon."
Within a day or two all the young people had been bidden to the
cherry party, and, as Mrs. Berry had foretold, accepted. Their
indignation was not proof against the prospect of pleasure; and,
moreover, they all liked Rose and William, and would not have refused
on their account.
The week before the party, when the cherries were beginning to turn
red, and the robins had found them out, was an arduous one to little
Ezra Ray, a young brother of Tommy Ray, who tended in Silas Berry's
store. He was hired for twopence to sit all day in the cherry orchard
and ring a cow-bell whenever the robins made excursions into the
trees. From earliest dawn when the birds were first astir, until they
sought their little nests, did Ezra sit uncomfortably upon a hard
peaked rock in the midst of the orchard and jingle his bell.
He was white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale
blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin
dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no
mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on
a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to
his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, and turn
pal of the robins instead of enemy. He dared not pull down any low
bough and have a surreptitious feast, for he understood well that
there were likely to be sharp eyes at the rear windows of the house,
that it was always probable that old Silas Berry, of whom he was in
mortal fear, might be standing at his back, and, moreover, he should
be questioned, and had not falsehood for refuge, for he was a good
child, and would be constrained to speak the truth.
They would not let him have a gun instead of a bell, although he
pleaded hard. Could he have sat there presenting a gun like a sentry
on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would
have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and
monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid
childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed
to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine
as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her
own shadow over the same pasture-ground.
And more than all, that twopence for which Ezra toiled so miserably
was to go towards the weaving of a rag carpet which his mother was
making, and for which she was saving every penny. He could not lay it
out in red-and-white sugar-sticks at the store. He sat there all the
week, and every time there was a whir of little brown wings and the
darting flash of a red breast among the cherry branches he rang in
frantic haste the old cow-bell. All the solace he obtained was an
occasional robin-pecked cherry which he found in the grass, and then
Mr. Berry questioned him severely when he saw stains around his mouth
and on his fingers.
He was on hand early in the morning on the day of the cherry picnic,
trudging half awake, with the taste of breakfast in his mouth,
through the acres of white dewy grass. He sat on his rock until the
grass was dry, and patiently jingled his cow-bell. It was to young
Ezra Ray, although all unwittingly, as if he himself were assisting
in the operations of nature. He watched so assiduously that it was as
if he dried the dewy grass and ripened the cherries.
When the cherry party began to arrive he still sat on his rock and
jingled his bell; he did not know when to stop. But his eyes were
upon the assembling people rather than upon the robins. He watched
the brave young men whose ignominy of boyhood was past, bearing
ladders and tossing up shining tin pails as they came. He watched the
girls swinging their little straw baskets daintily; his stupidly
wondering eyes followed especially Rebecca Thayer. Rebecca, in her
black muslin, with her sweet throat fairly dazzling above the
half-low bodice, and wound about twice with a slender gold chain,
with her black silk apron embroidered with red roses, and beautiful
face glowing with rich color between the black folds of her hair,
held the instinctive attention of the boy. He stared at her as she
stood talking to another girl with her back quite turned upon all the
young men, until his own sister touched him upon the shoulder with a
sharp nudge of a bony little hand.
Amelia Ray's face, blonde like her brother's, but sharp with the
sharpness of the thin and dark, was thrust into his. "You must go
right home now," declared her high voice. "Mother said so."
"I'm going to stay and help pick 'em," said Ezra, in a voice which
was not affirmative.
"No, you ain't."
"I can climb trees."
"You've got to go right straight home. Mother wants you to wind balls
for the rag carpet."
And then Ezra Ray, with disconsolate gaping face over his shoulder,
retreated with awkward lopes across the field, the cow-bell
accompanying his steps with doleful notes.
There were about forty young people at the party when all were
assembled. They came mostly in couples, although now and then a
little group of girls advanced across the field, and young men came
singly. Barnabas Thayer came alone, and rather late; Rebecca had come
some time before with one of her girl mates who had stopped for her.
Barnabas, slender and handsome in his best suit, advancing with a
stern and almost martial air, tried not to see Charlotte Barnard; but
it was as if her face were the natural focus for his eyes, which they
could not escape. However, Charlotte was not talking to Thomas Payne;
he was not even very near her. He was already in the top of a
cherry-tree picking busily. Barney saw his trim dark head and his
bright blue waistcoat among the branches, and his heart gave a guilty
throb of relief. But soon he noted that Charlotte had not her basket,
and the conviction seized him that Thomas had it and was filling it
with the very choicest cherries from the topmost branches, as was
indeed the case.
Charlotte never looked at Barney, although she knew well when he
came. She stood smiling beside another girl, her smooth fair hair
gleaming in the sun, her neck showing pink through her embroidered
lace kerchief, and her gleaming head and her neck seemed to survey
Barney as consciously as her face. Suddenly the fierceness of the
instinct of possession seized him; he said to himself that it was his
wife's neck; no one else should see it. He felt like tearing off his
own coat and covering her with rude force. It made no difference to
him that nearly every other girl there, his sister among the rest,
wore her neck uncovered by even a kerchief; he felt that Charlotte
should not have done so. The other young men were swarming up the
trees with the girls' baskets, but he stood aloof with his forehead
knitted; it was as if all his reason had deserted him. All at once
there was a rustle at his side, and Rose Berry touched him on the
arm; he started, and looked down into her softly glowing little face.
[Illustration: "Charlotte stood beside another girl"]
"Oh, here you are!" said she, and her voice had adoring cadences.
Barney nodded.
"I was afraid you weren't coming," said she, and she panted softly
through her red parted lips.
Rose's crisp pink muslin gown flared scalloping around her like the
pink petals of a hollyhock; her slender white arms showed through the
thin sleeves. Barney could not look away from her wide-open,
unfaltering blue eyes, which suddenly displayed to him strange
depths. Charlotte, during all his courtship, had never looked up in
his face like that. He could not himself have told why; but Charlotte
had never for one moment lost sight of the individual, and the
respect due him, in her lover. Rose, in the heart of New England,
bred after the precepts of orthodoxy, was a pagan, and she worshipped
Love himself. Barney was simply the statue that represented the
divinity; another might have done as well had the sculpture been as
fine.
"I told you I was coming," Barney said, slowly, and his voice sounded
odd to himself.
"I know you did, but I was afraid you wouldn't."
Rose still held her basket. Barney reached out for it. "Let me get
some cherries for you," he said.
"Oh, I guess you hadn't better," Rose returned, holding the basket
firmly.
"Why not?"
"I'm--afraid Charlotte won't like it," Rose said. Her face, upturned
to Barney, was full of pitiful seriousness, like a child's.
"Give me the basket," demanded Barney, and she yielded. She stood
watching him as he climbed the nearest tree; then she turned and met
Charlotte's stern eyes full upon her. Rose went under the tree
herself, pulled down a low branch, and began to eat; several other
girls were doing the same. Thomas Payne passed the tree, bearing
carefully Charlotte's little basket heaped with the finest cherries.
Rose tossed her head defiantly. "She needn't say anything," she
thought.
The morning advanced, the sun stood high, and there was a light wind,
which now and then caused the cherry-leaves to smite the faces of the
pickers. There were no robins in the trees that morning; there were
only swift whirs of little wings in the distance, and sweet flurried
calls which were scarcely noted in the merry clamor of the young men
and girls.
Silas Berry stood a little aloof, leaning on a stout cane, looking on
with an inscrutable expression on his dry old face. He noted
everything; he saw Rose talking to Barney; he saw his son William
eating cherries with Rebecca Thayer out of one basket; but his
expression never changed. The predominant trait in his whole
character had seemed to mould his face to itself unchangeably, as the
face of a hunting-dog is moulded to his speed and watchfulness.
"Don't Mr. Berry look just like an old miser?" a girl whispered to
Rebecca Thayer; then she started and blushed confusedly, for she
remembered suddenly that William Berry was said to be waiting upon
Rebecca, and she also remembered that Charlotte Barnard, who was
within hearing distance, was his niece.
Rebecca blushed, too. "I never thought of it," she said, in a
constrained voice.
"Well, I don't know as he does," apologized the girl. "I suppose I
thought of it because he's thin. I always had an idea that a miser
was thin." Then she slipped away, and presently whispered to another
girl what a mistaken speech she had made, and they put their heads
together with soft, averted giggles.
The girls had brought packages of luncheon in their baskets, which
they had removed to make space for the cherries, and left with Mrs.
Berry in the tavern. At noon they sent the young men for them, and
prepared to have dinner at a little distance from the trees where
they had been picking, where the ground was clean. William and Rose
also went up to the tavern, and Rose beckoned to Barney as she passed
him. "Don't you want to come?" she whispered, as he followed
hesitatingly; "there's something to carry."
When the party returned, Mrs. Berry was with them, and she and Rose
bore between them a small tub of freshly-fried hot doughnuts. Mrs.
Berry had utterly refused to trust it to the young men. "I know
better than to let you have it," she said, laughing. "You'd eat all
the way there, and there wouldn't be enough left to go round. Me and
Rose will carry it; it ain't very heavy." William and Barney each
bore two great jugs of molasses-and-water spiced with ginger.
Silas pulled himself up stiffly when he saw them coming; he had been
sitting upon the peaked rock whereon Ezra Ray had kept vigil with the
cow-bell. Full of anxiety had he been all day lest they should pick
from any except the four trees which he had set apart for them, and
his anxiety was greater since he knew that the best cherries were not
on those four trees. Silas sidled painfully towards his wife and
daughter; he peered over into the tub, but they swung it
remorselessly past him, even knocking his shin with its iron-bound
side.
"What you got there?" he demanded, huskily.
"Don't you say one word," returned his wife, with a fierce shake of
her head at him.
"What's in them jugs?"
"It's nothing but sweetened water. Don't, father," pleaded Rose under
her breath, her pretty face flaming.
Her mother scowled indomitably at Silas tagging threateningly at her
elbow. "Don't you say one word," she whispered again.
"You ain't goin' to--give 'em--"
"Don't you speak," she returned, hissing out the "s."
Silas said no more. He followed on, and watched the doughnuts being
distributed to the merry party seated in a great ring like a very
garland of youth under his trees; he saw them drink his sweetened
water.
"Don't you want some?" asked his wife's defiantly pleasant voice in
his ear.
"No, I don't want none," he returned.
Finally, long before they had finished eating, he went home to the
tavern. There was no one in the house. He stole cautiously into the
pantry, and there was a reserve of doughnuts in a large milk-pan
sitting before the window. Silas crooked his old arm around the pan,
carried it painfully across the great kitchen and the entry into the
best room, and pushed it far under the bureau. Then he returned, and
concealed the molasses-jug in the brick oven. He stood for a minute
in the middle of the kitchen floor, chuckling and nodding as if to
the familiar and confidential spirit of his own greed; then he went
out, and a short way down the road to the cottage house where old
Hiram Baxter lived and kept a little shoemaker's shop in the L. He
entered, and sat down in the little leather-reeking place with Hiram,
and was safe and removed from inquiry when Mrs. Berry returned to the
tavern for the remaining doughnuts and to mix more sweetened water.
The doughnuts could not be found, but she carried a pail across to
the store, got more molasses from the barrel, and so in one point
outwitted her husband.
Mrs. Berry was famous for her rich doughnuts, and the first supply
had been quite exhausted. William went up to her at once when she
returned to the party. "Where's the rest of the doughnuts?" he
whispered.
"Your father's hid 'em," she whispered back. "Hush, don't say
anything."
William scowled and made an exclamation. "The old--"
"Hush!" whispered his mother again; "go up to the house and get the
sweetened water. I've mixed another jug."
"Where is he?" demanded William.
"I dunno. He ain't to the store."
William strode off across the field, and he searched through the
house with an angry stamping and banging of doors, but he could not
find his father or the doughnuts. "Father!" he called, in an angry
shout, standing in the doorway, "Father!" But there was no reply, and
he went back to the others with the jug of sweetened water. Rebecca
watched him with furtive, anxious eyes, but he avoided looking at
her. When he passed her a tumbler of sweetened water she took it and
thanked him fervently, but he did not seem to heed her at all.
After dinner they played romping games under the trees--hunt the
slipper, and button, and Copenhagen. Mrs. Barnard and two other women
had come over to see the festivity, and they sat at a little distance
with Mrs. Berry, awkwardly disposed against the trunks of trees, with
their feet tucked under their skirts to keep them from the damp
ground.
Copenhagen was the favorite game of the young people, and they played
on and on while the afternoon deepened. Clinging to the rope they
formed a struggling ring, looping this way and that way as the
pursuers neared them. Their laughter and gay cries formed charming
discords; their radiant faces had the likeness of one family of
flowers, through their one expression. The wind blew harder; the
girls' muslin skirts clung to their limbs as they moved against it,
and flew out around their heels in fluttering ruffles. The cherry
boughs tossed over their heads full of crisp whispers among their
dark leaves and red fruit clusters. Over across the field, under the
low-swaying boughs, showed the old red wall of the tavern, and
against it a great mass of blooming phlox, all vague with distance
like purple smoke. Over on the left, fence rails glistened purple in
the sun and wind--a bluebird sat on a crumbling post and sang. But
the young men and girls playing Copenhagen saw and heard nothing of
these things.
They heard only that one note of love which all unwittingly, and
whether they would or not, they sang to each other through all the
merry game. Charlotte heard it whether she would or not, and so did
Barney, and it produced in them as in the others a reckless
exhilaration in spite of their sadness. William Berry forgot all his
mortification and annoyance as he caught Rebecca's warm fingers on
the rope and bent over her red, averted cheek. Barney, when he had
grasped Rose's hands, which had fairly swung the rope his way, kissed
her with an ardor which had in it a curious, fierce joy, because at
that moment he caught a glimpse of Thomas Payne's handsome, audacious
face meeting Charlotte's.
Barney had not wished to play, but he played with zeal, only he never
seemed to see Charlotte's fingers on the rope, and Charlotte never
saw his. The girls' cheeks flushed deeper, their smooth locks became
roughened. The laughter waxed louder and longer; the matrons looking
on doubled their broad backs with responsive merriment. It became
like a little bacchanalian rout in a New England field on a summer
afternoon, but they did not know it in their simple hearts.
At six o'clock the mist began to rise, the sunlight streamed through
the trees in slanting golden shafts, long drawn out like organ
chords. The young people gathered up their pails and baskets and went
home, flocking down the road together, calling back farewells to Rose
and William and their mother, who stood in front of the tavern
watching them out of sight.
They were not quite out of sight when they came to Hiram Baxter's
little house, and Silas Berry emerged from the shop door. "Hullo!" he
cried out, and they all stopped, smiling at him with a cordiality
which had in it a savor of apology. Indeed, Thomas Payne had just
remarked, with a hearty chorus of assents, that he guessed the old
man wasn't so bad after all.
Silas advanced towards them; he also was smiling. He fumbled in his
waistcoat pocket, and drew out a roll of paper which he shook out
with trembling fingers. He stepped close to Thomas Payne and extended
it.
"What is it?" asked the young man.
Silas smiled up in his face with the ingenuous smile of a child.
"What is it?" Thomas Payne asked again.
The others crowded around.
"It's nothin' but the bill," replied Silas, in a wheedling whisper.
His dry old face turned red, his smile deepened.
"The bill for what?" demanded Thomas Payne, and he seized the paper.
"For the cherries you eat," replied Silas. "I've always been in the
habit of chargin' more, but I've took off a leetle this time." His
voice had a ring of challenge, his eyes were sharp, while his mouth
smiled.
Thomas Payne scowled over the bill. The other young men peered at it
over his shoulder, and repeated the amount with whistles and
half-laughs of scorn and anger. The girls ejaculated to each other in
whispers. Silas stood impervious, waiting.
The young men whipped out their purses without a word, but Thomas
motioned them back. "I'll pay, and we'll settle afterwards. We can't
divide up here," he said, and he crammed some money hard in Silas's
eagerly outstretched hand. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mr.
Berry," said Thomas Payne, his face all flaming and his eyes
flashing, but his voice quite steady. "I hope you'll have as good
luck selling your cherries next year."
There was a little exulting titter over the sarcasm among the girls,
in which Rebecca did not join; then the party kept on. The indignant
clamor waxed loud in a moment; they scarcely waited for the old man's
back to be turned on his return to the tavern.
But the young people, crying out all together against this last
unparalleled meanness, had not reached the foot of the hill, where
some of them separated, when they heard the quick pound of running
feet behind them and a hoarse voice calling on Thomas Payne to stop.
They all turned, and William came up, pale and breathing hard. "What
did you pay him?" he asked of Thomas Payne.
"See here, William, we all know you had nothing to do with it,"
Thomas cried out.
"What did you pay him?" William repeated, in a stern gasp.
"It's all right."
"You tell me what you paid him."
Thomas Payne blushed all over his handsome boyish face. He half
whispered the amount to William, although the others knew it as well
as he.
William pulled out his purse, and counted out some money with
trembling fingers. "Take it, for God's sake!" said he, and Thomas
Payne took it. "We all know that you knew nothing about it," he said
again. The others chimed in with eager assent, but William gave his
head a shake, as if he shook off water, and broke away from them all,
and pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that it seemed
as if he trod on it at every step.
A voice was crying out behind him, but he never heeded. There were
light, hurrying steps after him, and a soft flutter of girlish
skirts, but he never looked away from his own self until Rebecca
touched his arm. Then he looked around with a start and a great
blush, and jerked his arm away.
But Rebecca followed him up quite boldly, and caught his arm again,
and looked up in his face. "Don't you feel bad," said she; "don't you
feel bad. You aren't to blame."
"Isn't he my father?"
"You aren't to blame for that."
"Disgrace comes without blame," said William, and he moved on.
Rebecca kept close to his side, clinging to his arm. "It's your
father's way," said she. "He's honest, anyway. Nobody can say he
isn't honest."
"It depends upon what you call honest," William said, bitterly.
"You'd better run back, Rebecca. You don't want them to think you're
going with me, and they will. I'm disgraced, and so is Rose. You'd
better run back."
Rebecca stopped, and he did also. She looked up in his face; her
mouth was quivering with a kind of helpless shame, but her eyes were
full of womanly courage and steadfastness. "William," said she, "I
ran away in the face and eyes of them all to comfort you. They saw
me, and they can see me now, but I don't care. And I don't care if
you see me; I always have cared, but I don't now. I have always been
terribly afraid lest you should think I was running after you, but I
ain't afraid now. Don't you feel bad, William. That's all I care
about. Don't you feel bad; nobody is going to think any less of you.
I don't; I think more."
William looked down at her; there was a hesitating appeal in his
face, as in that of a hurt child. Suddenly Rebecca raised both her
arms and put them around his neck; he leaned his cheek down against
her soft hair. "Poor William," she whispered, as if he had been her
child instead of her lover.
A girl in the merry party speeding along at the foot of the hill
glanced around just then; she turned again, blushing hotly, and
touched a girl near her, who also glanced around. Then their two
blushing faces confronted each other with significant half-shamed
smiles of innocent young girlhood.
They locked arms, and whispered as they went on. "Did you see?"
"Yes." "His head?" "Yes." "Her arms?" "Yes." Neither had ever had a
lover.
But the two lovers at the top of the hill paid no heed. The party
were all out of sight when they went slowly down in the gathering
twilight. William left Rebecca when they came opposite her house.