He woke late, with a longing to put his two senses of her to the proof
of day; and as early in the forenoon as he could hope to see her, he
walked out towards her aunt's house. It was a mild, dull morning, with a
misted sunshine; in the little crimson tassels of the budded maples
overhead the bees were droning.
The street was straight, and while he was yet a good way off he saw the
gate open before the house, and a girl whom he recognized as Miss
Bingham close it behind her. She then came down under the maples towards
him, at first swiftly, and then more and more slowly, until finally she
faltered to a stop. He quickened his own pace and came up to her with a
"Good-morning" called to her and a lift of his hat. She returned neither
salutation, and said, "I was coming to see you, Mr. Langbourne." Her
voice was still a silver bell, but it was not gay, and her face was
severely unsmiling.
"To see _me_?" he returned. "Has anything--"
"No, there's nothing the matter. But--I should like to talk with you."
She held a little packet, tied with blue ribbon, in her intertwined
hands, and she looked urgently at him.
"I shall be very glad," Langbourne began, but she interrupted,--
"Should you mind walking down to the Falls?"
He understood that for some reason she did not wish him to pass the
house, and he bowed. "Wherever you like. I hope Mrs. Simpson is well?
And Miss Simpson?"
"Oh, perfectly," said Miss Bingham, and they fenced with some questions
and answers of no interest till they had walked back through the village
to the Falls at the other end of it, where the saw in a mill was
whirring through a long pine log, and the water, streaked with sawdust,
was spreading over the rocks below and flowing away with a smooth
swiftness. The ground near the mill was piled with fresh-sawed, fragrant
lumber and strewn with logs.
Miss Bingham found a comfortable place on one of the logs, and began
abruptly:
"You may think it's pretty strange, Mr. Langbourne, but I want to talk
with you about Miss Simpson." She seemed to satisfy a duty to convention
by saying Miss Simpson at the outset, and after that she called her
friend Barbara. "I've brought you your letters to her," and she handed
him the packet she had been holding. "Have you got hers with you?"
"They are at the hotel," answered Langbourne.
"Well, that's right, then. I thought perhaps you had brought them. You
see," Miss Bingham continued, much more cold-bloodedly than Langbourne
thought she need, "we talked it over last night, and it's too silly.
That's the way Barbara feels herself. The fact is," she went on
confidingly, and with the air of saying something that he would
appreciate, "I always thought it was some _young_ man, and so did
Barbara; or I don't believe she would ever have answered your first
letter."
Langbourne knew that he was not a young man in a young girl's sense; but
no man likes to have it said that he is old. Besides, Miss Bingham
herself was not apparently in her first quarter of a century, and
probably Miss Simpson would not see the earliest twenties again. He
thought none the worse of her for that; but he felt that he was not so
unequally matched in time with her that she need take the attitude with
regard to him which Miss Bingham indicated. He was not the least gray
nor the least bald, and his tall figure had kept its youthful lines.
Perhaps his face manifested something of his suppressed resentment. At
any rate, Miss Bingham said apologetically, "I mean that if we had known
it was a _serious_ person we should have acted differently. I oughtn't
to have let her thank you for those seedsman's catalogues; but I thought
it couldn't do any harm. And then, after your letters began to come, we
didn't know just when to stop them. To tell you the truth, Mr.
Langbourne, we got so interested we couldn't _bear_ to stop them. You
wrote so much about your life in New York, that it was like a visit
there every week; and it's pretty quiet at Upper Ashton in the winter
time."
She seemed to refer this fact to Langbourne for sympathetic
appreciation; he said mechanically, "Yes."
She resumed: "But when your picture came, I said it had _got_ to stop;
and so we just sent back my picture,--or I don't know but what Barbara
did it without asking me,--and we did suppose that would be the last of
it; when you wrote back you were coming here, we didn't believe you
really would unless we said so. That's all there is about it; and if
there is anybody to blame, I am the one. Barbara would never have done
it in the world if I hadn't put her up to it."
In those words the implication that Miss Bingham had operated the whole
affair finally unfolded itself. But distasteful as the fact was to
Langbourne, and wounding as was the realization that he had been led on
by this witness of his infatuation for the sake of the entertainment
which his letters gave two girls in the dull winter of a mountain
village, there was still greater pain, with an additional embarrassment,
in the regret which the words conveyed. It appeared that it was not he
who had done the wrong; he had suffered it, and so far from having to
offer reparation to a young girl for having unwarrantably wrought her up
expect of him a step from which he afterwards recoiled, he had the duty
of forgiving her a trespass on his own invaded sensibilities. It was
humiliating to his vanity; it inflicted a hurt to something better than
his vanity. He began very uncomfortably: "It's all right, as far as I'm
concerned. I had no business to address Miss Simpson in the first
place--"
"Well," Miss Bingham interrupted, "that's what I told Barbara; but she
got to feeling badly about it; she thought if you had taken the trouble
to send back the circular that she dropped in the hotel, she couldn't do
less than acknowledge it, and she kept on so about it that I had to let
her. That was the first false step."
These words, while they showed Miss Simpson in a more amiable light, did
not enable Langbourne to see Miss Bingham's merit so clearly. In the
methodical and consecutive working of his emotions, he was aware that it
was no longer a question of divided allegiance, and that there could
never be any such question again. He perceived that Miss Bingham had not
such a good figure as he had fancied the night before, and that her eyes
were set rather too near together. While he dropped his own eyes, and
stood trying to think what he should say in answer to her last speech,
her high, sweet voice tinkled out in gay challenge, "How do, John?"
He looked up and saw a square-set, brown-faced young man advancing
towards them in his shirt-sleeves; he came deliberately, finding his way
in and out among the logs, till he stood smiling down, through a heavy
mustache and thick black lashes, into the face of the girl, as if she
were some sort of joke. The sun struck into her face as she looked up at
him, and made her frown with a knot between her brows that pulled her
eyes still closer together, and she asked, with no direct reference to
his shirt-sleeves,--"A'n't you forcing the season?"
"Don't want to let the summer get the start of you," the young man
generalized, and Miss Bingham said,--
"Mr. Langbourne, Mr. Dickery." The young man silently shook hands with
Langbourne, whom he took into the joke of Miss Bingham with another
smile; and she went on: "Say, John, I wish you'd tell Jenny I don't see
why we shouldn't go this afternoon, after all."
"All right," said the young man.
"I suppose you're coming too?" she suggested.
"Hadn't heard of it," he returned.
"Well, you have now. You've got to be ready at two o'clock."
"That so?" the young fellow inquired. Then he walked away among the
logs, as casually as he had arrived, and Miss Bingham rose and shook
some bits of bark from her skirt.
"Mr. Dickery is owner of the mills," she explained, and she explored
Langbourne's face for an intelligence which she did not seem to find
there. He thought, indifferently enough, that this young man had heard
the two girls speak of him, and had satisfied a natural curiosity in
coming to look him over; it did not occur to him that he had any
especial relation to Miss Bingham.
She walked up into the village with Langbourne, and he did not know
whether he was to accompany her home or not. But she gave him no sign of
dismissal till she put her hand upon her gate to pull it open without
asking him to come in. Then he said, "I will send Miss Simpson's letters
to her at once."
"Oh, any time will do, Mr. Langbourne," she returned sweetly. Then, as
if it had just occurred to her, she added, "We're going after
May-flowers this afternoon. Wouldn't you like to come too?"
"I don't know," he began, "whether I shall have the time--"
"Why, you're not going away to-day!"
"I expected--I--But if you don't think I shall be intruding--"
"Why, _I_ should be delighted to have you. Mr. Dickery's going, and
Jenny Dickery, and Barbara. I don't _believe_ it will rain."
"Then, if I may," said Langbourne.
"Why, certainly, Mr. Langbourne!" she cried, and he started away. But he
had gone only a few rods when he wheeled about and hurried back. The
girl was going up the walk to the house, looking over her shoulder after
him; at his hurried return she stopped and came down to the gate again.
"Miss Bingham, I think--I think I had better not go."
"Why, just as you feel about it, Mr. Langbourne," she assented.
"I will bring the letters this evening, if you will let me--if Miss
Simpson--if you will be at home."
"We shall be very happy to see you, Mr. Langbourne," said the girl
formally, and then he went back to his hotel.