He arrived at Upper Ashton Falls long enough before the early autumnal
dusk to note that the crimson buds of the maples were now their crimson
leaves, but he kept as close to the past as he could by not going to
find Barbara before the hour of the evening when he had turned from her
gate without daring to see her. It was a soft October evening now, as it
was a soft May evening then; and there was a mystical hint of unity in
the like feel of the dull, mild air. Again voices were coming out of the
open doors and windows of the house, and they were the same voices that
he had last heard there.
He knocked, and after a moment of startled hush within Juliet Bingham
came to the door. "Why, Mr. Langbourne!" she screamed.
"I--I should like to come in, if you will let me," he gasped out.
"Why, certainly, Mr. Langbourne," she returned.
He had not dwelt so long and so intently on the meeting at hand without
considering how he should account for his coming, and he had formulated
a confession of his motives. But he had never meant to make it to Juliet
Bingham, and he now found himself unable to allege a word in explanation
of his presence. He followed her into the parlor. Barbara silently gave
him her hand and then remained passive in the background, where Dickery
held aloof, smiling in what seemed his perpetual enjoyment of the Juliet
Bingham joke. She at once put herself in authority over the situation;
she made Langbourne let her have his hat; she seated him when and where
she chose; she removed and put back the lampshades; she pulled up and
pulled down the window-blinds; she shut the outer door because of the
night air, and opened it because of the unseasonable warmth within. She
excused Mrs. Simpson's absence on account of a headache, and asked him
if he would not have a fan; when he refused it she made him take it, and
while he sat helplessly dangling it from his hand, she asked him about
the summer he had had, and whether he had passed it in New York. She was
very intelligent about the heat in New York, and tactful in keeping the
one-sided talk from falling. Barbara said nothing after a few faint
attempts to take part in it, and Langbourne made briefer and briefer
answers. His reticence seemed only to heighten Juliet Bingham's
satisfaction, and she said, with a final supremacy, that she had been
intending to go out with Mr. Dickery to a business meeting of the
book-club, but they would be back before Langbourne could get away; she
made him promise to wait for them. He did not know if Barbara looked any
protest,--at least she spoke none,--and Juliet went out with Dickery.
She turned at the door to bid Barbara say, if any one called, that she
was at the book-club meeting. Then she disappeared, but reappeared and
called, "See here, a minute, Bab!" and at the outer threshold she
detained Barbara in vivid whisper, ending aloud, "Now you be sure to do
both, Bab! Aunt Elmira will tell you where the things are." Again she
vanished, and was gone long enough to have reached the gate and come
back from it. She was renewing all her whispered and out-spoken charges
when Dickery showed himself at her side, put his hand under her elbow,
and wheeled her about, and while she called gayly over her shoulder to
the others, "Did you ever?" walked her definitively out of the house.
Langbourne did not suffer the silence which followed her going to
possess him. What he had to do he must do quickly, and he said, "Miss
Simpson, may I ask you one question?"
"Why, if you won't expect me to answer it," she suggested quaintly.
"You must do as you please about that. It has to come before I try to
excuse myself for being here; it's the only excuse I can offer. It's
this: Did you send Miss Bingham to get back your letters from me last
spring?"
"Why, of course!"
"I mean, was it your idea?"
"We thought it would be better."
The evasion satisfied Langbourne, but he asked, "Had I given you some
cause to distrust me at that time?"
"Oh, no," she protested. "We got to talking it over, and--and we thought
we had better."
"Because I had come here without being asked?"
"No, no; it wasn't that," the girl protested.
"I know I oughtn't to have come. I know I oughtn't to have written to
you in the beginning, but you had let me write, and I thought you would
let me come. I tried always to be sincere with you; to make you feel
that you could trust me. I believe that I am an honest man; I thought I
was a better man for having known you through your letters. I couldn't
tell you how much they had been to me. You seemed to think, because I
lived in a large place, that I had a great many friends; but I have very
few; I might say I hadn't any--such as I thought I had when I was
writing to you. Most of the men I know belong to some sort of clubs; but
I don't. I went to New York when I was feeling alone in the world,--it
was from something that had happened to me partly through my own
fault,--and I've never got over being alone there. I've never gone into
society; I don't know what society is, and I suppose that's why I am
acting differently from a society man now. The only change I ever had
from business was reading at night: I've got a pretty good library.
After I began to get your letters, I went out more--to the theatre, and
lectures, and concerts, and all sorts of things--so that I could have
something interesting to write about; I thought you'd get tired of
always hearing about me. And your letters filled up my life, so that I
didn't seem alone any more. I read them all hundreds of times; I should
have said that I knew them by heart, if they had not been as fresh at
last as they were at first. I seemed to hear you talking in them." He
stopped as if withholding himself from what he had nearly said without
intending, and resumed: "It's some comfort to know that you didn't want
them back because you doubted me, or my good faith."
"Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Langbourne," said Barbara compassionately.
"Then why did you?"
"I don't know. We--"
"No; _not_ 'we.' _You!_"
She did not answer for so long that he believed she resented his
speaking so peremptorily and was not going to answer him at all. At last
she said, "I thought you would rather give them back." She turned and
looked at him, with the eyes which he knew saw his face dimly, but saw
his thought clearly.
"What made you think that?"
"Oh, I don't know. Didn't you want to?"
He knew that the fact which their words veiled was now the first thing
in their mutual consciousness. He spoke the truth in saying, "No, I
never wanted to," but this was only a mechanical truth, and he knew it.
He had an impulse to put the burden of the situation on her, and press
her to say why she thought he wished to do so; but his next emotion was
shame for this impulse. A thousand times, in these reveries in which he
had imagined meeting her, he had told her first of all how he had
overheard her talking in the room next his own in the hotel, and of the
power her voice had instantly and lastingly had upon him. But now, with
a sense spiritualized by her presence, he perceived that this, if it was
not unworthy, was secondary, and that the right to say it was not yet
established. There was something that must come before this,--something
that could alone justify him in any further step. If she could answer
him first as he wished, then he might open his whole heart to her, at
whatever cost; he was not greatly to blame, if he did not realize that
the cost could not be wholly his, as he asked, remotely enough from her
question, "After I wrote that I was coming up here, and you did not
answer me, did you think I was coming?"
She did not answer, and he felt that he had been seeking a mean
advantage. He went on: "If you didn't expect it, if you never thought
that I was coming, there's no need for me to tell you anything else."
Her face turned towards him a very little, but not so much as even to
get a sidelong glimpse of him; it was as if it were drawn by a magnetic
attraction; and she said, "I didn't know but you would come."
"Then I will tell you why I came--the only thing that gave me the right
to come against your will, if it _was_ against it. I came to ask you to
marry me. Will you?"
She now turned and looked fully at him, though he was aware of being a
mere blur in her near-sighted vision.
"Do you mean to ask it now?"
"Yes."
"And have you wished to ask it ever since you first saw me?"
He tried to say that he had, but he could not; he could only say, "I
wish to ask it now more than ever."