A MOTE IN THE EYE.
In Pompeii, eighteen hundred years ago, people--a good many people,
were dreadfully afraid of dogs; so much so that many of the
householders in that famous old city put _Cave Canem_ on their
front-door-sills, as a friendly piece of advice to all comers-in and
goers-out. Just how their feelings were affected towards the domestic
cow, we are left to conjecture; but now, after eighteen hundred years,
and in less famous localities, people--a good many people--are still
afraid of dogs, and without a nice sense of discernment in their
fears, include cows, putting the two together as beasts that want
"discourse of reason."
Now, this is unrighteous judgment; for even a cow should be looked at
fairly, even if she does show the cloven hoof. There are cows and
cows, as well as men and men. Suke, the young Jersey, would not toss
her horns at a butterfly, much less hurt a baby. She was sagacity
itself, and granting she did not know the buttered side of bread,
which is likely, she did know, to a moral certainty, where she got her
grass and how.
Early the next morn, Suke began to low, and hoping to be heard by
virtue of insistence, kept it up until nightfall, by which time she
had bellowed herself hoarse. Suke could make nothing out of it, and no
doubt dropped to sleep, theorizing on the perversity of remote
contingencies, and wondering why it was that she had spent all the
long hours of that breezy summer day in the lot, and the companion of
her outings in the house.
The late afternoon found Mell in dainty attire, seated on the front
porch, gazing wistfully in the direction of the Bigge House. He had
not found her in the meadow in the morning, perhaps, he would seek for
her in the little house on the hill, in the evening. It could not be
that he had avoided paying her any attention that could be noticed by
others; she had sometimes thought so, but then it could not be. She
dismissed the idea; it was too uncomplimentary to herself, and too
defamatory towards him.
But the slow hours dragged on; he came not. Mell sat alone. At ten
o'clock she crept sadly into bed--into bed, but not into the profound
slumber of youth and a mind at ease. Far into the night, her unquiet
thoughts were yet heaving to and fro; advancing as restless billows of
the sea, retreating as vaporous cloud-mists in the sky. Her snow-white
bed--a feathered nest--erst so well suited to light-hearted repose,
had changed its flexible lines of comfort into rigid lines of care.
Dropping to sleep at last, Mell dreamed she had made the world all
over, from pole to pole, after a new model and on a modern plan, and
having fitted it up expressly for her own needs, found it ever so much
pleasanter, and a great improvement on the old.
It was upon the same old world, however, she opened her eyes the next
morning, and into one of its most worrying days, holding, indeed, more
than its share of disappointment and worry.
But when the third day was drawing to its weary close, and her
longing heart longed still unsatisfied, existence had become a burden
almost insupportable to poor Mell. For the third time she donned her
prettiest dress. He _must_ come to-day. Out again upon the little
porch, with a book in her hand, and trying to read, Mell was oppressed
with a sense of extreme isolation, a wasting famine of the heart, a
parching thirst of the eye. In her despairing loneliness, incapable of
any other occupation, she scanned eagerly every passer by; brooded
deeply on many passing thoughts. This lonely waiting, in a small waste
corner of the great wide universe, for a girl of Mell's ambitious turn
of mind, was, in truth, hard. It was lowest pauperism to her panting
spirit--panting to achieve not little things but great. Humble strife
in a little world, amid work-a-day environment, and among everyday
people, had no charms for Mell. Such living was, in a word,
unbearable.
And over there across that beauteous valley, in the enchanted halls of
the unattainable, life was a delightful series of interesting events,
redolent of delicate sentiments and sweet-smelling savors, spiced with
novelty, brimful of pleasure, amusing, absorbing, far-reaching,
all-embracing; in brief, a ceaseless symposium, purged of every ugly,
common or narrow element, as roseate and as captivating to the fancy,
as hand-painted satin framed in mosaic.
A boy walked up the garden path. The young lady seated on the porch,
saw him coming, and a feeling of exultation shot through all the blood
in her veins. The boy held a note in his hand, and Mell jumped into
the contents of that note, intellectually, in less than the millionth
part of a second. He could not stand it any longer; he was writing to
know if he might call, and when. She had a great mind to let him come
this very evening, though he did not deserve it; but then, do men ever
deserve just what they get, good and bad, at women's hands?
"A note, ma'am," said the boy. Mell took it in silence, opened it
tremulously, and read:
"Suke is unhappy. Me too. Don't disappoint us to-morrow, and send me a
bit of a line, sweet lassie, to say that you will not. J. P. D."
"The scribblings of a school-boy," muttered Mell, inconceivably
dashed.
"No answer," she told the boy. When the messenger was beyond reach of
recall, she was sorry she had not replied to the note, or sent word,
yes; for, perhaps, it would be better to see him once more, have a
plain talk, and come to some understanding. The more she dwelt upon
the matter, the more certain she became that this was her best course;
so upon the morrow, the half-past five o'clock breakfast was hardly
well over, when, with alternate hope and fear measuring swords within
her, she fled to the lot for Suke. With one arm thrown affectionately
around the Jersey's neck, the two proceeded most amicably to the
meadow. There she waited an hour nearly, before Jerome came; but he
did come, eventually, wearing the loveliest of shooting-jackets, with
an English primrose in his buttonhole, radiantly handsome, deliciously
cool, and as much at his leisure as if it did not make much difference
to him whether he ever reached his destination or not.
Thus Jerome--but what of Mell? Every medullary thread, every
centripetal and centrifugal filament in her entire body was excited
over his coming. She was flushed, and so hot and flurried, and had
been waiting for him, it seemed to her, twelve months at least, and it
enraged her now to see him sauntering so slowly toward her, just as if
they had parted five minutes ago. Poor Mell, after her experiences of
the past three days, was in that condition of body when a trifle
presses upon one's nervous forces with all the weight of a mountain.
Irritated, she returned his good morning coldly.
"Dear me, Mr. Devonhough! Is it really you? Why did you come? I did
not send you word I would be here."
"No, you did not. Nevertheless, I knew you would."
"Nevertheless, you knew nothing of the sort! How can you say that? I
had a strong notion not to come."
Jerome made a gesture of incredulity.
"Oh, a notion! I dare say. Girls live on notions, bonbons, sugar-plums,
taffy, and what not; a pound of sweetened flattery to every half
ounce of wholesome truth. But laying all notions aside, you will always
come, Mellville, when I send for you."
"How dare you," began Mell, nettled to the quick and purposed to give
him an emphatic piece of her mind, and then ignominiously breaking
down, constrained, dismayed, crimsoning to the tips of her ears,
paling to the curves of her lips, and wishing she had died before she
left the farm-house that morning.
"And now I have offended you," said Jerome drawing nearer, "and I did
not mean to do that, pretty one! I cannot help teasing you, sometimes,
because when you are teased your face has that innocent, grieved
expression of a thwarted child, which I do so dearly love to see. And
I must, perforce, do something in self-defence, you have been so cruel
to me." His tones were low, now, and as oily as a lubricating
life-buoy. "I have waited for you one hour each day; I have gone away
after every waiting, desolate and unhappy. Don't you know, when two
people think of each other as we do, when two people love each other
as we do, that separation is the worst form of misery? Then why have
you been so cruel, Mell?"
Peeping under the fluted archway of the white sun-bonnet for an
answer, his face came in dangerous nearness to its wearer; their
quickened breath united in a symphony of sweet sighs, their quickened
pulses throbbed in a unison of reciprocal emotion.
One moment more, and--Mell stood off at some little distance, looking
back roguishly at the figure kneeling alone beside the old stump, with
outstretched arms tenderly embracing naught, and stealthy lips
defrauded of their prey.
Mr. Devonhough did mind a losing game such as this. To be made to feel
foolish and to look foolish, was more than he could tolerate under any
conjuncture of circumstances. He extricated himself as speedily and as
gracefully as possible.
"Miss Creecy!"
"Mr. Devonhough!"
"You will probably treat me with ordinary civility, at the time of our
next meeting."
"And you will probably do the same toward me."
"We shall see, as to that."
He bowed blandly, and turned upon his heel. He was going away? Well,
he wouldn't go far. Mell was so confident on this point, that she
seated herself comfortably on the old stump again, and gave herself no
uneasiness. She could not credit the evidences of her own senses when
the moving figure became first a mere speck upon the horizon, and then
a something gone, lost, swallowed up into the unseen.
"It passes belief," said Mell; "surely he will come back, even yet!"
She waited one hour longer; she waited two--he evidently did not
intend to come back.
She went home with a troubled heart.
The next morning, feeling somewhat more cheerful at what she
considered the certain prospect of seeing him again, and to a somewhat
better purpose, she called for Suke, in feverishly high spirits, and
the two set off together on a spirited race down the hill.
One hour--two hours--three hours--and not a sign of her truant lover.
Mell burst into an agony of tears.
"I am no match for him," she sobbed. "He is heartless and cynical, and
imperious and selfish. He does not care in the very least bit for me
and I"--springing to her feet, and dashing away her tears--"I do not
know, at this moment, Jerome Devonhough, whether I most love or hate
you!"
This feeling of sullen resentment sustained her through that long,
long day. In the cool of the evening her mother sent her on an errand
to the little country store, about a mile distant. Coming back she
encountered a gay cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen on horseback,
conspicuous among them, Jerome. She had no reason to suppose he
recognized, or even saw, the quiet figure plodding along on foot, and
catching the dust from their horses' hoofs.
"This is my life," said Mell, looking after them with yellow eyes,
"while others ride, I walk!"
The noise of their clattering feet and merry voices had scarcely died
away, when there came another sound; faint at first and uncertain, it
came nearer and nearer. A solitary horseman dashed up to her side and
dismounted.
"Jerome! Is it you?" exclaimed Mell, with a glad start, forgetting all
the anger she had been nursing against him since yesterday, in the joy
of seeing him again. "How could you tear yourself away from that
lively crowd?"
"One, if she is the right one, is crowd enough for me," declared
Jerome, with a laugh; and throwing his bridle reins negligently across
his arm, he walked along beside her. "When I saw you, Mellville, I
dropped my whip out of pure delight, and as it is a dainty trifle
belonging to Clara--Miss Rutland, that is--adorned with a silver
stag's head and tender associations, I had, of course, to come back
for it. At all events, I could not have closed my eyes this night,
without seeing you, making my humble confessions, and imploring your
forgiveness for my conduct of yesterday. I behaved abominably. I
confess it. I am truly sorry. And, at the risk of falling in your
esteem, I am going to tell you something--my temper is a thing
vile--villainous, but it does not often get the better of me as it did
yesterday. Forgive me, dearest?"
"I am not your dearest," Mell informed him, with head erect.
"Not? Why, how's that? 'Nay, by Saint Jamy,' but you are! I have one
heart, but one, it is all yours; you have one, but one, it is all
mine. We are to each other, dearest, _Ita lex scripta_."
"The matter is one in which I, myself, shall have a say-so."
"You have had a say-so! You have said: 'Jerome, I love you!'"
"How can you speak so falsely? It is not true--I did not say so."
"Not in words," conceded her tormentor, "but you do, all the same,
don't you, petite?"
"I am not your petite, either," protested Mell, driven almost to
desperation.
"No? Then you are sure to be my darling. That's it, Mell! You are
certainly a darling, and mine."
"I am not!" shrieked Mell, choking with anger. This mockery of a sore
subject was really unbearable.
"Not my darling, either?" inquired Jerome, grave as a Mussulman. "Then
what the dickens are you?"
"A woman not to be trifled with," said Mell, hotly; "who finds it much
easier to magnify injuries than to forgive them."
"Like the rest of us," interposed Jerome; "but that is not Christian,
you know."
"You are enough to turn the saintliest Christian into a cast-away,"
proceeded Mell, severely. "Can't you be serious for a little
while? I am not a child to be mocked at and cajoled and cozened and
hood-winked, _faire pattes de velours_, treated to flim-flam and
sweet-meats, knowing all the while that you are ashamed of my mere
acquaintance."
"You can't think such a thing!"
"I do think it! I have cause to think it! See here, suppose you were
in love with Miss Rutland--"
"I can't suppose that! I couldn't be if my life depended on it; not
after seeing you. Why do you wish me to suppose that?"
He shot a keen glance at her.
"That I may ask you this question--If you were, would you make love to
her after the same methods you employ toward me?"
"No; I don't believe I would. I am quite sure I would not. The woman
is herself responsible for the way in which love is made to her. I
can't be with you any time without wanting to call you some pet name,
and I never feel that way with Clara."
"It is my fault, then, that you are so disrespectful?"
"Am I disrespectful?"
"You are. Listen to me for a moment, Mr. Devonhough. If you really
care for my society, as you say you do, why do you not seek it as you
do the society of other young ladies--at home? My father is a poor
man, but he is honest; and honesty should count for something, even in
good society. He is also illiterate, but no one can say aught against
his character; and character ought to be more desirable than much
learning. Then, again, although the blood in my veins may lack in
blueness, it is pure, which is a matter of some importance.
Altogether, I don't see why you should look down upon me."
"I do not look down upon you!" Jerome was earnest enough now. "I
know that I ought to have called at the house, but--ahem! my time is
not exactly at my own disposal. In a word, I have not had an
opportunity."
Jerome, saying this, looked far away in pensive thoughtfulness. Mell,
listening, looked hard into his face.
"Opportunity!" ejaculated Mell. "You manage somehow to call upon me
pretty often elsewhere!"
"Not at a visitable hour."
"Were I a man and wanted to see a girl, I'd _make_ my opportunity!"
She laughed, derisively--there is something very undiverting in such a
laugh.
"Would you, Mell? No, you would not. You would do like the rest of
mankind; submit as best you could to the inflexible logic of events
and do the best you could under the circumstances."
"Is a cornfield the best you can do under the circumstances?"
"It is Mell--the very best. Now, my sweet Mell, I am going to be
serious--really serious--dreadfully in earnest. I acknowledge that you
have some cause to find fault with me. There are things 'disjoint and
out of frame' in my wooing, which I cannot explain to you at this
time. Bear with them, bear with me for a little--there's a dear
girl--and when I come back--"
"You are going away! Where, Jerome? When?"
"Only a run over to Cragmore, for a week or ten days. I have friends
there, who are writing for me. Another guest is coming to the Bigge
House, and I rather think we shall be in each other's way, Mell."
She leant upon his words as if they planned
"Eternities of separate sweetness."
"Mell, will your regard for me bear a heavy test? I cannot now speak
such words to you as my feelings prompt me to speak, but will you not
trust me blindly until certain difficulties which surround me are
overcome? Is your affection great enough for that?"
"I do not know," faltered Mell; "I would trust you to the world's end,
and to the very crack of doom, if you would only tell me."
"And then it would not be trust," Jerome gently reminded her, with his
mysterious smile. Catching his glance of penetrating tenderness, a
vivid breathing reality from a misty background of fogs and doubt,
under the spell of its enchantment, Mell thought she could. Her face
softened.
"It will be hard, Jerome, but I will try."
"Then, believe me, all will yet be well with us. Whatever untoward
event may occur, whatever else you may have cause to doubt, never
question the sincerity of my attachment. I call upon God, who readeth
the heart of man, to witness that you, only, are dear to me--you,
only, precious in my sight. Believe that; be patient, and trust me."
The deep silence which followed these words was broken only by their
slow moving feet, crushing the crisp leaves beneath them, and the wild
palpitations of the girl's heart. Crystal stars made haste to lend
their liquid glimmering to the scene, and blinked knowingly at each
other from azure heights on high. The sweet south wind, in melting
mood, murmured tunefully above their heads, swelling in delicious
diapason of melodious suggestions, and mingling with mysterious
elements in stirring pulse and thrilling nerves.
The rasp of a discordant tone, thrust vehemently into this sweet
blending of concordant harmonies, disturbed upon a sudden Mell's
unwonted peace of soul. She heard her father's voice. He was saying:
"Don't truss him, Mell; don't truss him."
"How can I be patient," she asked, with a touch of her old petulance,
"unless I know why it is you treat me so? Jerome, tell me your
difficulties."
"And by so doing increase them? No. My hands are full enough as it is,
and to have you incessantly fretting and fuming about little crooked
things which all the fretting in creation won't straighten out, would
be more than I could stand. Melville, you must really consent to be
guided blindly by my judgment in this matter. I have studied the
subject carefully, and it is only for a little while, sweet. We are
young, we can afford to take things easy."
"Men of pluck," exclaimed Mell, with spirit, "don't take things easy!
They grip hold of things and turn them into moulds of purpose."
"Do they, little wiseacre? Then, manifestly, I am not a man of pluck.
I am made of weak stuff, a feeble straw, perhaps, in your estimation,
tossed about by every little puff of air! Ha! ha! ha! How little you
know about me, Mell!"
"That is true," responded Mell, promptly, adding, with that lively
turn of expression which gave such zest to her conversation, "very
little, and that little nothing to your credit!"
Jerome was amused. He laughed and stopped, and forthwith laughed
again.
"Ah, Melville, you charm me afresh at every meeting. Where do you get
all your _sauce piquant_? Beside you for life, that old meddling
busy-body, _ennui_, will never get a single chance at a fellow. Your
name ought to be Infinite Variety."
"And yours," retorted Mell, with the quickness he enjoyed, "Palpably
Obscure! But here we are at my own gate. Fasten your horse and come
in."
Her voice was absolutely pleading.
"I would with ever so much pleasure, but--that whip is yet to be
found, and the riders will be coming back. I must at once rejoin them.
Good night, Mell."
"Good-night," responded Mell, from the other side of the gate, and in
angered tones, "Jerome, have I not spoken plainly enough to you? Must
I repeat that I am not your toy--not your plaything--but a resolute
woman, determined to maintain my own respect and to accept nothing
less than yours? You shall not so much as make free with the tip end
of this little finger of mine, until--"
"Well," said Jerome, "let me know the worst. When will that terrible
interdict be removed?"
"When you can enforce the right by virtue of possession."
"Heaven speed that moment!" exclaimed he, sighing audibly and mounting
his horse. "When shall we meet again, Melville?"
"That rests with you."
"Let me see, then. Not to-morrow, for at daylight we are off to Gale
Bluff for the day. Not on Wednesday, for there's a confounded picnic
afoot for that day. I wish the man who invented picnics had been
endowed with immortal life on earth and made to go to every blessed
one of 'em! But on Thursday, Mell, I shall be in the meadow at the
usual hour."
"But I won't!"
"Yes, you will, Mell."
"Positively, _I will not!_"
"Nonsense. What is your objection? Where is the harm? The young ladies
at the Bigge House entertain me out of doors."
"Do they?"
Mell was astonished, and began to waver.
"I thought it wasn't considered the thing."
"On the contrary, it is _the_ one thing warranted by the best usage.
Out-of-doors is now in the fashion. Doctors preach it, preachers
expound it, legislators enact it, and the whole people make it a
decree _plebiscite_. Clara sits with me for hours under the trees--"
"Oh, does she!" interrupted poor Mell, with a pang. Seeing her way to
a question she had long been wanting to ask, she subjoined quickly:
"And what do you think of Clara Rutland, Jerome? Do you call her an
interesting girl?"
"I never have called her that," replied Jerome, "never that I know
of, but--she'll do. One thing, she can talk a fellow stone blind at
one sitting. But that's nothing. Starlings and ravens can talk, too."
At the end of this speech, Mell was doubly anxious to know Jerome's
real opinion of Clara Rutland. It seemed to her that the question was
more open at both ends than it ever had been before.
Jerome patted his horse's head, told him to "Be quiet, sir!" and
resumed the threads of discourse.
"What was I saying? Oh, yes! We live out of doors at the Bigge House.
There wouldn't be any use for a house there at all, if it wasn't for
bad weather. Those girls try their best to be agreeable, but none of
them are _provoquante_ and charming, like you, Mell. While they sleep
away the sweetest hours of these golden summer mornings, what harm is
there in you and I enjoying pleasant converse together in the green
fields, inhaling the pure air of heaven? I promise you to be on my
best behavior. I promise you to uphold the integrity of the tip end of
that little finger inviolate; and so you will be on hand without fail,
Mell, and so will I, and so will something else."
"What else, Jerome?"
He bent low from his saddle-bow to whisper into her ear:
"That supreme happiness which is present everywhere when you and I are
together. Be sure to come, darling. And now, once more, good-night!"
He galloped off, leaving Mell standing in the gateway, and on the
uncomfortable side of a very knotty point. Did Jerome really love her?
She believed he did--ardently. Did he love her well enough to surmount
those difficulties of which he had spoken? Did he love her well enough
to marry her?
"Aye, there's the rub!" cried Mell. Her mind fairly swarmed with ugly
suspicions, some of them as infinitesimal, and at the same time as
dangerous as those microscopic bacteria which enter the physical
laboratory, disorganizing, and, if not quickly eliminated, destroying
the very stronghold of life itself. And as biological analysis was not
yet, at that time, practiced as a method of research into the germs of
things, Mell must needs fall back entirely upon inferential
deductions.
Those difficulties, what could they be that she might not know them?
If this tantalizing, and yet, withal, most fascinating, of created
beings, truly loved her--loved her in love's highest sense, and with
no thought of deception, would he at every turn put her off with
honeyed words and paltry evasions? Would he have said, "You must
really consent to be guided blindly by my judgment in this matter," if
he valued her as she valued him?
Of one thing she was sure; she would be guided blindly by no human
being, man or woman, in anything.
"_No, I won't!_" she audibly informed the dew-damp lilies and
the secretive rose, stamping her foot to impress it upon their
understanding. Catch any wide-awake, thoroughly independent,
altogether self-sufficient and splendidly educated American girl
going it blind at any man's behest! She would make short work of
his courtship, and him too--first.
Still pacing distractedly up and down the garden path, Mell heard a
window open, saw a head protrude, and heard a voice, which said:
"Send 'im ter his namesake, Mell. Let 'im git thar before he gits the
better o' you!"
"So he shall, father."
"Then go ter bed."
"I am going now--going to bed," she continued, communing with
herself--"to bed, but not to the meadow Thursday morning. I'll cut my
throat from ear to ear, just before I start to the meadow again at the
bidding of Jerome Devonhough!"
Bravo for Mell! Strong in this determination, she is now comparatively
safe, except for the one menacing fear, that this sentimental feeling
she has for Jerome may interfere with the more serious business of
life. Love was all well enough in its way, but what this country
maiden panted for, was a new life on a higher plane, with or without
love. It was the thing her education demanded. It was the thing she
intended to accomplish.
After all, she went to bed in very good spirits. She was tolerably
sure of bringing Jerome to her own terms, and if not--well, not to
make a sad subject likewise tedious, Mell, in spite of all her love
for Jerome, was as much for sale as ever.