DAVID CONFESSES HIS LOVE.
"Come live with me and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steep mountains, yield."--_Marlowe_.
Sanderson, recovering his self-possession almost immediately, drawled
out:
"Glad to see you, Dave. Came over thinking I might be in time to go
over to Putnam's with your people. They had gone, so I stopped long
enough to get warm. I must be going now. Good-night, Miss--Miss"--(he
seemed, to have great difficulty in recalling the name) "Moore."
David paid no attention to him; his eyes were riveted on Anna, who had
changed color and was now like ivory flushing into life. She trembled
and fell to her knees, making a pretense of gathering up her knitting
that had fallen.
"What brought Sanderson here, Anna? Is he anything to you--are you
anything to him?"
She tried to assume a playful lightness, but it failed dismally. It
was all her pallid lips could do to frame the words: "Why, Mr. David,
what a curious question! What possible interest could the 'catch' of
the neighborhood have in your father's servant?"
The suggestion of flippancy that her words contained irritated the
grave, quiet man as few things could have done. He turned from her and
would have left the room, but she detained him.
"I am sorry I wounded you, Mr. David, but, indeed, you have no right to
ask."
"I know it, Anna, and you won't give me the right; but how dared that
cub Sanderson speak to you in that way?" He caught her hand, and
unconsciously wrung it till she cried out in pain. "Forgive me, dear,
I would not hurt you for the world; but that man's manner toward you
makes me wild."
She looked up at him from beneath her long, dark lashes; he thought her
eyes were like the glow of forest fires burning through brushwood. "We
will never think of him again, Mr. David. I assure you that I am no
more to Mr. Sanderson than he is to me, and that is--nothing."
"Thank you for those words, Anna. I cannot tell you how happy they
make me. But I do not understand you at all. Even a countryman like
me can see that you have never been used to our rough way of living;
you were never born to this kind of thing, and yet when that man
Sanderson looks at you or talks to you, there is always an undertone of
contempt in his look, his words."
She sank wearily into an armchair. It seemed to her that her limit of
endurance had been reached, but he, taking her silence for
acquiescence, lost no time in following up what he fondly hoped might
be an advantage. "I did not go to the Putnams to-night, Anna, because
you were not going, and there is no enjoyment for me when you are not
there."
"Mr. David, if you continue to talk to me like this I shall have to
leave this house."
"Tell me, Anna," he said so gravely that the woman beside him knew that
life and death were balanced with her words: "tell me, when you said
that day last autumn by the well that you never intended to marry, was
it just a girl's coquetry or was there some deeper reason for your
saying so?"
She could not face the love in those honest eyes and answer as her
conscience prompted. She was tired, so tired of the struggle, what
would she not have given to rest here in the shelter of this perfect
love and trust, but it was not for her.
"Mr. David," she said, looking straight before her with wide, unseeing
eyes; "I can be no man's wife."
He knew from the lines of suffering written deep on the pale young
face, that maiden coquetry had not inspired her to speak thus; but word
for word, it had been wrung from out of the depths of a troubled soul.
"Anna!" cried David, in mingled astonishment and pain. But Anna only
turned mutely toward him with an imploring look. She stretched out her
hands to him, as if trying to tell him more. But words failed her.
Her tears overcame her and she fled, sobbing, to her room. All the way
up the winding night of stairs, David could hear her anguished moans.
He would have followed her, but Hi burst into the room, stamping the
snow from his boots. He shoved in the front door as if he had been an
invading army. He unwound his muffler and cast it from him as if he
had a grudge against it, as he proceeded to deliver himself of his
wrongs.
"If there's any more visitors coming to the house to-night that wants
their horses held, they can do it themselves, for I am going to have my
supper." David made no reply, but went to his own room to brood over
the day's events. And so Anna was spared any further talk with David
that night; a circumstance for which she was devoutly thankful.
The next day the snow was deeper by a foot, but this did not deter the
Squire from making his proposed trip to Belden. He started immediately
after breakfast, prepared to sift matters to the bottom.
An air of tension and anxiety pervaded the household all that long,
miserable day. Anna was tortured with doubts. Should she slip away
quietly without telling, or should she make her humiliating confession
to Kate? Mrs. Bartlett, who knew the object of her husband's errand,
could not control her nerves. She knew intuitively "that something was
going to happen," as the good soul put it to herself.
Altogether it was one of those nerve-wracking days that come from time
to time in the best regulated households, apparently for no other
purpose but to prove the fact that a solitary existence is not
necessarily the most unhappy.
Mrs. Bartlett, for the first time in her life, was worried about Dave.
He was moody and morose, even to her, his sworn friend and ally, with
whom he had never had a word's difference. He had gone off that
morning shortly after the Squire left the house; and his mother,
watching him carefully at breakfast, noticed that he had shoved away
his plate with the food untasted.
A fatal symptom to the ever-watchful maternal eye.
Kate felt sulky because her aunt and uncle had been urging her to marry
Dave, and apparently Dave had no affection for her beyond that of a
cousin, the situation irritating her in the extreme.
"Aunt Louisa, what is the matter with every one?" she said, flouncing
into the kitchen. "Something seems to have jarred the family nerves.
Here is uncle off on some mysterious business, Dave goes off in the
snow in a tantrum, and you look as if you had just buried your last
friend." And the young lady left the room as suddenly as she entered
it.
"It does feel as if trouble was brewing," Mrs. Bartlett admitted to
Anna, with a gloomy shake of the head. "I'm getting that worried about
Dave, he's been away all day, and it's not usual for him to stay away
like this." Her voice broke a little, and she left the room hurriedly.
He came in almost immediately, stamping the snow from his boots and
looking twice as savage as when he went away.
"Mrs. Bartlett had been worrying about you all day, Mr. David," Anna
said as she turned from the dresser with her arms full of plates.
"And did you care, Anna, that I was not here?" He gave her the
appealing glance of a great mastiff who hopes for a friendly pat on the
head.
"My feelings on the subject can be of no interest to you," she answered
with chilling decision.
"All right," and he went to the hat-rack to get his muffler and cap,
preparatory to again facing the storm.
The snow had been falling steadily all day. Drifting almost to the
height of the kitchen window, it whirled about the house and beat
against the window panes with a muffled sound that was inexpressibly
dreary to the girl, who felt herself the center of all this pitiful
human contention.
"David, David; where have you been all day, and where are you going
now?" His mother looked at his gray, haggard face and tried to guess
his hidden trouble, the first he had ever kept from her.
"Mother, I am not a child, and you can't expect me to hang about the
stove like a cat, all my life." It was his first harsh word to her and
she shrank before it as if it had been a blow. David, her boy, to
speak to her like that! She turned quickly away to hide the tears, the
first she had ever shed on his account.
"Here, Anna," she said, struggling to recover her composure, "take this
bucket and get it filled for me, please."
The girl reached for her cloak that hung on a peg near the door.
"No, Anna, you shall not go out for water a night like this; it's not
the work for you to do." David had sprung forward and caught the
bucket from her hand and plunged with it into the storm. Kate's quick
eyes caught the expression of David's face--while Mrs. Bartlett only
heard his words. She gave Anna a searching look as she said: "So it is
you whom David loves." At last Kate understood the secret of Anna's
distracted face--and at last the mother understood the secret of her
boy's moodiness--he loved Anna. And her heart was filled with
bitterness and anger at the very thought; she had taken her boy, this
stranger, with whom the tongue of scandal was busy. The kindly,
gentle, old face lost all its sweetness; jealous anger filled it with
ugly lines. Turning to Anna she said:
"It would have been better for all of us if we had not taken you in
that day to break up our home with your mischief."
Anna was cut to the quick. "Oh, Mrs. Bartlett, please do not say that;
I will go away as soon as you like, but it is not with my consent that
David has these foolish fancies about me."
"And do you mean to say that you have never encouraged him,"
indignantly demanded the irate mother, who with true feminine
inconsistency would not have her boy's affections go begging, even
while she scorned the object of it.
"Encouraged him? I have begged, entreated him to let me alone; I do
not want his love."
An angry sparrow defending her brood could not have been more
indignantly demonstrative than this gentle old lady.
"And isn't he good enough for you, Miss?" she asked in a voice that
shook with wrath.
"Dear Mrs. Bartlett, would you have me take his love and return it?"
"No, no; that would never do!" and the inconsistent old soul rocked
herself to and fro in an agony of despair.
Anna did not resent Mrs. Bartlett's indignation, unjust though it was;
she knew how blind good mothers could be when the happiness of their
children is at stake. She felt only pity for her and remembered only
her kindness. So slipping down on her knees beside the old lady's
chair, she took the toil-worn old hands in her own and said:
"Do not think hardly of me, Mrs. Bartlett. You have been so good--and
when I am gone, I want you to think of me with affection. I will go
away, and all this trouble will straighten itself out, and you will
forget that I ever caused you a moment's pain."
Dave came in with the bucket of water that had caused the little squall
and prevented his mother from replying, but the hard lines had relaxed
in the good old face. She was again "mother" whom they all knew and
loved. Sanderson followed close after David; he had just come from
Boston, he said, and inquired for Kate with a simple directness that
left no doubt as to whom he had come to see.
It is an indisputable law of the eternal feminine for all women to
flaunt a conquest in the face of the man who had declined their
affection. Kate was not in love with her cousin David, but she was
devoutly thankful to Providence that there was a Lennox Sanderson to
flaunt before him in the capacity of tame cat, and prove that he "was
not the only man in the world," as she put it to herself.
Therefore when Lennox Sanderson handed her a magnificent bunch of
Jacqueminot roses that he had brought her from Boston, Kate was not at
all backward in rewarding Sanderson with her graciousness.
"How beautiful they are, Mr. Sanderson; it was so good of you."
"You make me very happy by taking them," he answered with a wealth of
meaning.
Anna, who had gone to the storeroom for some apples, after her
reconciliation with Mrs. Bartlett, returned to find Sanderson talking
earnestly to Kate by the window. Kate held up the roses for Anna to
smell. "Aren't they lovely, Anna? There is nothing like roses for
taking the edge off a snowstorm."
Anna was forced to go through the farce of admiring them, while
Sanderson looked on with nicely concealed amusement.
"Well, what do you think of them, Anna?" said Kate, disappointed that
she made no comment.
"The best thing about roses, speaking generally, Miss Kate, is that
they fade quickly and do not embarrass one by outliving the little
affairs in which they have played a part." She returned Sanderson's
languid glance in a way that made him quail.
"That is quite true," said Kate, being in the humor for a little
cynicism. "What a pity that love letters can't be constructed on the
same principle."
Sanderson did not feel particularly at ease while these two young women
served and returned cynicism; he was accordingly much relieved when
Mrs. Bartlett and Anna both left the room, intent on the solemn
ceremony of opening a new supply of preserved peaches.
"Kate, did you mean what you just said to that girl?" Sanderson asked
when they were alone.
"What did I say? Oh, yes, about the love letters. Well, what
difference does it make whether I meant it or not?"
"It makes all the difference in the world to me, Kate." He read
refusal in the big blue eyes, and he made haste to plead his cause
before she could say anything.
"Don't answer yet, Kate; don't give me my life-sentence," he said
playfully, taking her hand. "Think it over; take as long as you like.
Hope with you is better than certainty with any other woman."
[Illustration: Lillian Gish and Burr McIntosh.]
Professor Sterling, who had been to a neighboring town on business for
the past two or three days, walked into the middle of this little
tableau in time to hear the last sentence. Kate and Sanderson had
failed to hear him, partly because he had neglected to remove his
overshoes, and partly because they were deeply engrossed with each
other.
Though his rival's declaration, which he had every reason to suppose
would be accepted, was the death blow to his hopes, yet he unselfishly
stepped out into the snow, waited five minutes by his watch--a liberal
allowance for an acceptance, he considered--and then rapped loud and
theatrically before entering a second time. Could unselfishness go
further?
Kate and Sanderson had no other opportunity for confidential talk that
evening.
They were barely seated about the supper table, when there came a
tremendous rapping at the door, and Marthy Perkins came in, half
frozen. For once her voluble tongue was silenced. She retailed no
gossip while submitting to the friendly ministrations of Mrs. Bartlett
and Anna, who chafed her hands, gave her hot tea and thawed her back to
life--and gossip.
"Is the Squire back yet?" asked Marthy with returning warmth. "Land
sakes, what can be keeping him? Heard him say last night that he
intended going away this morning, and thought he might have come back."
"With news?" naively asked Sanderson.
"Why, yes. I did think it was likely that he might have gathered up
something interesting, away a whole day." Every one laughed but Mrs.
Bartlett. She alone knew the object of her husband's quest.
"Your father's not likely to be back to-night--do you think so, Dave?"
she asked her son, more by way of drawing him out than in the hope of
getting any real information.
"No, I do not think it is likely, mother," he answered.
"Good land! and I nearly froze to death getting here!" Marthy said in
an aside to Mrs. Bartlett. "I tell you, Looizy, there is nothing like
suspense for wearing you out. I couldn't get a lick of sewing done
to-day, waiting for Amasy to get in with the news."
"Hallo! hallo! Let us in quick--here we are, me and the Squire--most
froze! Hallo, hallo"--The rest of Hi's remarks were a series of whoops.
Every one rose from the table, Mrs. Bartlett pale with apprehension.
Marthy flushed with delight. She was not to be balked of her prey.
The Squire was here with the news.