LOVE’S TRAPS FOR CONFESSIONS.
SOME time before nightfall, the two having shared their luncheons
together and wandered on, through the delightful patches of sunlight,
slanting through the trees, they came upon one of the farms where Garde
had already tested the hospitality of the good people residing by the
highway.
Here, by a little dexterity, and through Adam’s generosity toward the
delicate boy, to whom he had taken such a fancy, Garde occupied the
spare apartment she had made her own when headed in the other direction,
and Adam contented himself in the hay-loft of the barn.
In the morning they were up betimes, to greet another smiling sun, and
so resumed their leisurely journey toward the north. At noon they halted
as before, and made a meal of the stock of bread and other provisions
they had been able to secure at the farm-house.
Garde sat upon a mossy bank, while Adam reclined on a stone, somewhat
below her woodland throne. Adam looked at her so long and so steadfastly
that she grew most uneasy, lest he were about to pierce her disguise.
“What are you looking at?” she said, with an attempt to be boyishly
pert.
“I was looking at your legs,” said Adam, frankly. “They are uncommonly
symmetrical, but a shade too pretty for a boy.”
Garde immediately bent the plump objects of interest underneath her and
sat on her heels.
“You find a great deal of fault with me,” she said, a little vexed.
“It’s because you have faults, as a boy,” Adam told her, honestly. “You
know, my lad, you could be a bit sturdier and none the worse. And yet, I
like you immensely as you are. Perhaps if you were changed, you would
lose some charm and spoil it all. I shall have to let you be, and
content myself with you as you are.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Garde, already smiling at him again, to herself.
“Then please make no more remarks about me.”
“About your legs? Well, I won’t, since you appear so sensitive about
them. Mind you, they will do well enough, after all.”
“Shall we go on?” Garde asked him. She was a little weary and would have
been glad of further rest, but she found she was much more comfortable
when they were walking side by side.
Adam was up at once, for walk they never so fast, he felt he could by no
means come up with his thoughts and desires, which had run so far ahead
of them always.
“Never mind what I say,” said he, as they resumed the onward march. “I
have to have my say out, when I think it. And you know you do puzzle me
constantly.”
“I don’t see why, or how,” said Garde.
“It’s because I seem to think I have seen you somewhere before. And yet
I know that is impossible, hence I am driven to think of your
girlishness, for an explanation.”
Garde said: “I think this is very much in your imagination, Adam Rust.”
“Not a bit of it,” corrected her comrade. “You were patterned for a
girl, my boy, depend upon it. There was some mistake, or some bit of
trickery, when you became one of us. Why, a man couldn’t even think a
little oath, in your presence.”
“Then is it not better that I was raised somewhat after the manner of
girls?” said Garde, complimented as much by the reverent tone in his
voice as by what he had said. “Does not the rearing I have known serve
some good purpose, if what you say is so?”
“By my faith, yes. But then you do admit that you were treated in your
younger days, somewhat as a girl?”
“I hope it is no shame to confess this is so,” she answered, looking
down on the ground to hide the dancing of her eyes. “I was treated
somewhat in this manner and I was even dressed as a girl, at times.”
“Ah, that accounts for your bashfulness and so forth. But you need not
blush for this. Bless your heart, a man’s the better for it, if he has
something of the woman in his heart—and even in his hand.”
“I am glad to hear you say so,” murmured the girl.
“Oh, yes, it’s all right,” said Adam magnanimously. He looked at her
with frank admiration. “Only it is something of a pity you were not a
girl, you know.”
“Oh. But why?”
“Because you would be such an one as a man could love.”
“But not you, Adam Rust. You have said you love a sweetheart already.”
“I do—mightily! But if you were a girl I would enjoy finding a man
worthy to love you.”
“But this is unseemly. You forget that I am a boy.”
“Yes, for some reason or other, it is easy to forget that. But I was
merely supposing. Say that a man had come along when you were dressed as
a girl—why, what then?”
“What then indeed,” said she, with some spirit, “would you have talked
like this to me, of—of love?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Rust, stoutly enough. “It would then have been
quite another matter. As it is, you play the deuce with my brain and
fancy. I start in to talk to you as man to man, and then I think you are
almost better fitted to be a girl—and you admit you were raised somewhat
in that manner, so what can one expect?”
“Well, what if your sweetheart heard you speaking thus?” said Garde, who
was enjoying the situation the more for the very danger of it. “Should
you like to have her hear you telling me I should have made a girl that
a man could—could love?”
“You being a boy, why not?” Adam made answer. “Ah, she is too present in
my thought and feeling for me to say anything I would be loth for her to
hear.”
They had arrived at the edge of a brook which was somewhat swelled by
the snow, back on the hills, melting in the genial warmth of the sun. It
was nothing for Adam to stride across, stepping from rock to rock, but
Garde hesitated, her femininity uppermost in a moment, despite her
utmost efforts to be boyish.
“Here, give us your hand,” said big Adam, turning back to help her over.
“Now, then, jump!”
Thrilling with the delight of his warm, strong fingers closing so firmly
on her own, Garde came across the brook in safety and then reluctantly
released her grip from his.
Adam had not escaped unscathed from this contact of love, with which she
was fairly thrilling. He looked at her oddly, when they were safe again
on the further side. Garde caught her breath, in fear that she had
betrayed herself at last, in that moment of weakness.
“You are too much for me, John,” Adam admitted, shaking his head in
puzzlement. “You are a strange boy.”
“I thought it was all explained,” Garde replied, anxious to get him
quieted on the subject. “How far should you say it is to Boston?”
“I think I begin to work it out a little,” the man went on, musingly.
“It’s because you remind me of some one I have known.”
“Do I?” said Garde, half afraid of her question. “Of whom?”
“I don’t quite know,” he confessed, looking at her earnestly. “And yet I
ought to be able to tell. It was some one I liked, I am sure.”
“As much as you did your sweetheart?”
Adam seemed not to hear this question. “Your complexion,” he resumed,
“makes me think of a sweet maid I knew at Jamaica.”
“Oh!”
“And yet your eyes are like those of a lovely French damsel that I met,
one time.” Here he sighed. “Your hands bring back a memory of a charming
Countess at the court of Charles. Some of your ways make me think of a
nice little Indian Princess I once knew; while your ankles—but you don’t
care to hear about your ankles.”
Garde was duly shocked. She knew not what to think of Adam, who was
revealing such astonishing epochs in his life. This was terrible. Yet
she wished, or almost wished, he had gone on, just a little further,
though she dared not encourage him to do so, right as it might be for
her to know it if his heart had strayed elsewhere, at any time during
his absence. She was alarmed, curious, piqued. She forgot that she was a
boy to whom he had spoken.
“It seems to me,” she presently answered, “that I remind you of nothing
but the ladies and maids of these countries where you have traveled.”
“Well, you don’t remind me of the lads, that I admit,” said Adam.
Garde made up her mind to profit by the occasion. She piled her little
courage up to the top-most mark.
“And who was the little maid of Jamaica?” she asked.
“Oh, she was as sweet a little thing as ever prattled Spanish,” Rust
replied, with a reminiscent look in his eyes. “You would have liked her,
I know.”
Garde entertained and reserved her own opinion on that point. “Well—did
she like you?” she asked, indifferently.
“Oh yes, she said she did, and I am sure you could depend upon her to
tell the truth. She used to like to sit on my knee, dear little thing!”
Garde gasped. It was fortunate that Adam’s mind was occupied with
memories. His perfidy was coming forth finely. She knew not whether she
wished to cry or to stamp her foot in anger. She controlled her impulses
heroically.
“About how old was she?” was her next question.
“Three, I should say,” said Adam. “She was a pitiful little thing, more
than pretty. In a way she made me think of Garde, so I couldn’t help but
like her.”
Garde was flooded, all through her being, with feelings of love and
penitence. To think that she had entertained for a moment a notion that
Adam—and yet, stay, there were the others,—dames and countesses. They
could not all have been mere tots of children. Then she wondered if it
were fair, thus to try to trap the poor fellow and take advantage of
him, to make him confess these subjects as to another man. Of course for
his own good it might be better to let him tell. And she would
understand him so much more thoroughly.
“Was the French damsel only three also?” she summoned courage to
inquire.
“Oh dear, no. She was three and ninety, but still sprightly in the
minuet and with eyes that could easily have lighted the sun again, had
he chanced to go out. I shouldn’t have been sorry to have her for a
mother—except that I flatter myself I had a better one—once upon a
time.”
Garde would have felt like a coward indeed, had she desired to ask him
of any of the others. Having done him a little measure of injustice, she
made it up to him by loving him the more, now that she found him so
innocent. Nevertheless she had ears to listen with when he volunteered
some information about the countess he had seen and admired at the court
of Charles.
It turned out, however, that he had merely seen her safely married to
one of his royal friends, for whose happiness he had the most sincere of
wishes.
Garde felt her spirit of daring and merriment return. It was so tempting
to play around the point of her identity that she could not altogether
resist the impulse of her nature, to keep him talking.
“I seem to be happy in reminding you of many persons,” she said. “But I
think I would rather remind you of some one else. Since you claim to be
so much in love, it would compliment me more if I could remind you of
your Mistress Garde.”
“Maybe you would,” said Adam, “only that I am getting so near to Boston
that such a reminiscence, in a boy, would be sheer impertinence.”
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