Lydia's note was a summons to Spencer to go to drive with her on the
following morning. When he arrived she was ready with her village cart
and a fast cob. Regardless of appearances, her project was to seek some
distant spot where they would not be interrupted. The woods near Duck
Pond--in which they had passed pleasant hours together twice
already--commended themselves to her, and thither she directed their
course under the mellow October sunshine. She spoke of their jaunt as a
picnic, the edible manifestations of which she disclosed to him stowed
in neat packages behind. But she vouchsafed no immediate explanation of
the true purpose of this impromptu expedition. She was biding her time
until they should walk together in the sylvan paths, free from all
danger of interference. Since matters were approaching a climax, she was
glad also to give herself up for the moment to the glamour of sitting at
his side and realizing their affinity. Of all the men of her
acquaintance he was the only one who had never bored her; who seemed to
divine and cater to her moods; who amused her when she craved
entertainment, and was alive to the precious value of opportune silence.
He seemed to her possessed of infinite tact--and Lydia experienced an
increasing repugnance when her social sensibilities were jarred. That
had been one great trouble with Maxwell; he was forever doing the right
thing in the wrong way. His very endearments were awkward, whereas her
present companion's slightest gallantry gave a pleasant fillip to her
blood.
Spencer, on his part, was quite content to ask no questions. He was with
the woman who exercised a subtler and more permanent fascination over
him than anyone he had hitherto met, not excepting Miss Wilford, and
this drive was only cumulative proof of favor on her part, one more sign
that their relations were approaching a crisis. What the precise and
ultimate result of their growing intimacy was to be he had not felt the
need to consider. For the moment it sufficed to know that, though both
her partiality for him and his influence over her were unmistakable, she
had up to this point kept him at bay--eluded him when she seemed on the
point of throwing herself into his arms. This skilful restraint on her
part had served to heighten the interest of his pursuit, and also to
deepen the ardor of his attachment.
Before they had gone beyond the limits of Westfield several of their
mutual acquaintance were encountered, all of whom were too well-bred to
betray the vivid interest which the meeting aroused. Mrs. Cole, on her
way to play golf at the club, nodded to them blithely from her phaeton,
as though it were the most natural thing in the world they should be
together, and so concealed from them her dire suspicions which were thus
afforded fresh material to batten on. Gerald Marcy, sportsman-like and
dignified on his grizzled hunter, saluted them with the off-hand decorum
of a man of the world.
"Glorious weather for man and beast," he asserted, as much as to say
that he knew how to mind his own business. When they had passed him,
however, he tugged nervously at his mustache and wagged his head like a
soothsayer.
The newly engaged couple, sitting side by side in a village cart of
similar pattern to theirs, managed to conceal that they did not know
which way to look, and sustained the ordeal creditably, though the girl
was conscious that her cheeks were flushing. As they left the culprits
behind, Peggy clutched her lover's arm and whispered hoarsely, "Did you
see that?"
"It's too bad," said Guy, who, being neither blind nor imbecile, had not
failed to take in the full import of the situation. "I for one am all in
the dark as to how this thing is going to end."
"I knew they would be great friends, but I never supposed for a minute
that it would come to anything like this," mused the maiden sadly. "Even
when she chaperoned us that night I took for granted it was nothing
really serious."
Mrs. Gordon Wallace, who, being a new-comer from the West, was less of
an adept, perhaps, in disguising her real feelings, put up her eye-glass
a little feverishly as she bowed. Whereupon it pleased Lydia to whisk
her head round a moment later.
"She was staring after us with all her eyes!" she exclaimed. "I knew she
would; she couldn't resist the temptation. She will report that I have a
guilty conscience, whereas I was merely studying human nature in
violation of my own social instincts."
"What did she see, after all?" queried Spencer, supposing that his
companion stood in need of a little soothing.
"Everyone is talking about us, as you know," Lydia answered, ignoring
the query. "We have been for months the burning topic at Westfield, and
the fame of our misdeeds has spread abroad. Everything considered,
people have been wonderfully forbearing to our faces--perfect moles, in
fact--but behind our backs they are chattering like magpies. Fannie Cole
intimated as much, though I had guessed it."
"Why need we care what they say?" he asked sedulously. What better
opportunity would he have than this for feeling his way? "We know that
there have been no misdeeds."
She touched the horse with the tip of her whip, and he bounded forward.
"Is it not the prince of misdeeds that we love one another?" she said
after a moment.
"We cannot help that."
"But since it is true, what are we going to do about it, my friend?"
"Do? Lydia," he whispered eagerly and bent his cheek toward hers, "it is
for you to say."
She recoiled chastely from his endearment, though she thrilled at the
proximity. "Is it? I am not sure. I asked you to come with me this
morning in order to find out. It appears that we have reached the
parting of the ways."
"The parting?" he queried apprehensively.
"Not for us, unless we choose."
"Ah." It was the sigh of an ardent lover.
"Wait. I will tell you by and by when we can talk it out freely." She
turned and smiled on him with an effulgent grace such as she had never
in her life lavished on Maxwell. Therein she threw wide open for a
moment the casement of her soul and let him perceive the completeness of
the havoc he had wrought.
"You angel!" he answered, breathing softly, and he pressed her hand. He
divined that her dainty spirit was in the mood when all it asked of him
was his presence, and that speech would be a discord.
They were passing now beyond the confines of Westfield and the influence
of its colony into a more distinctly rural country--stretches of wilder
uplands, now pastures, now woods, alternating with small farm buildings
around which the fields lay stubbly with the party-colored remains of
the harvest, and redolent of autumn odors. Presently they reached a
village with a shady main street and old-fashioned white-faced houses,
most of the treasures of which, quaint andirons and other picturesque
relics of a simpler past, had been sent to market owing to the lure of
fancy prices. Then more fields, and at length they branched off from the
main road along a winding lane, on either side of which the view was
partially shut off by clusters of bushes gay with the colors of the
changing season. The perfume of the wild flowers was in the air, and
everywhere the blazon of the golden-rod was visible.
They had exchanged an occasional word of comment on the sights and
sounds of the varying landscape, yet wholly impersonal. Now once more
she turned toward him with the same lustrous smile, and said, like one
exalted:
"Love and the world are mine to-day."
Thrilled by this confession of faith, he looked into her eyes ardently,
and encircling her waist sought to draw her toward him.
"And they will be mine when you are mine. You must be mine; you shall be
mine."
She freed herself from his grasp. "Patience, my friend." Her voice had
the tantalizing exultation of an elusive fay. "What should I gain by
that? Would you love me any more than you do now?"
"Yes, yes indeed," he answered, disregarding logic.
"I doubt it much," she asserted archly. "But wait."
On they went, and finally the bushes along the winding lane became trees
and the sky above their heads was obscured by patches of foliage. They
were in an expanse of woods which, in spite of the proximity of
civilization, still smacked of luxuriant and elfish nature. The road,
though yet wide enough for a vehicle, wound gracefully between oaks and
pines stately with age. Some reverent hand had protected them. Their
trunks were scarred with weird growths, and on the carpet of the soil
big fungi flourished unmolested. It was a wild region to the imaginative
and uninitiated, yet there were evidences now and again of the nearness
of man and his devices, such as an occasional sign-post or rustic seat.
After half a mile of travel over a soft brown carpet sprinkled with
fragrant pine needles they brought up at their destination, a sort of
sylvan camp--a picnic-ground in reality, a favorite resort of the
masses in midsummer. Now it was deserted for the season.
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,
though the simile was applicable to the dismantled wooden buildings
rather than to the face of nature. The band-stand and eating pavilion
stood like starving ghosts amid the forest mysteries. But there was a
hitching-post at hand. Lydia knew her locality, and after the willing
cob had been secured and blanketed, she led the way down a short vista
to an arbor or summer house, to which clustering vines still imparted
some semblance of vernal cosiness. The view from it commanded through a
narrow clearing a picturesque outlook on the glistening waters of Duck
Pond, while the crackling underbrush furnished a cordon of alert
sentinels. On the rustic bench, where many inelegant predecessors had
carved their initials, there was ample room for two. Nor was it the
first time this pair had made use of it. Settling herself in her corner
with folded arms so as to face her companion, Lydia broke the silence.
"Herbert says we cannot go on as we are."
"He has intimated as much several times before."
"But this time he is in earnest. He has put down his foot. He introduced
the subject yesterday after you had gone. I told him again the
truth--the truth he already knew--that I love you, and not him, and that
I can never love him." She paused. Was it to pique his curiosity, or was
she feeling her way while she revelled for the moment in her
declaration?
He accepted her avowal complacently as a twice-told tale, but he was
interested obviously in what was to follow.
"Well?"
"He declines absolutely to be accommodating and resign himself to the
situation. The customary foreign point of view in such a case does not
appeal to him. When it came to the point I never supposed it would."
"We were getting along so nicely, too. What brought this on?" Spencer
remarked parenthetically. The triangular footing had been submitted to
by Maxwell for so many months without an outbreak that the logic of
events seemed to him to demand some special incident as a justification
for this sudden revolt.
"One can never tell when a volcano will assert itself. He simply
exploded, that's all," she answered. "The wonder is that he has put up
with it so long."
"And what is it that he requires?"
"He implored me never to see you again and to go abroad with him for two
years. When I declined, he said that he and I must separate."
"A divorce?"
"We did not discuss precise terms. The idea uppermost in his mind was
much less complex than that. He invited me to leave the house."