"STEADY ON!"
On the day following the departure of James Stuart for England, while
the two literary workmen were hard at it in the old manse study, the
July weather having mercifully turned decidedly cooler for a space, the
village telegraph messenger, a tall youth with a shambling gait,
appeared with a message for Mr. Jefferson. Georgiana brought it to him,
and waited to know whether there was a reply.
She saw the message--evidently a long one--twice read, and noticed a
peculiar lighting of the grave face which had bent over it. Mr.
Jefferson wrote an answer, briefer than the message received, and
himself took it to the waiting boy. When he returned he sat down and
began to put in order the papers on which he had been working.
"I have another trade, as you have guessed," he said to Georgiana. "It
seems necessary for me to go away and work at it for a few days, perhaps
a fortnight. It is fortunate for me that you are here, for I should not
have felt that I ought to leave your father, and yet I should hardly
have been able to refuse the call of that message."
"Then I am very glad," she returned, "that I am here. Can you leave me
work to do?"
"I am afraid not, beyond that already laid out for to-day. Won't you
rest while I am gone? This is vacation time for most people, you know."
She shook her head. "With only father to look after I shall have little
enough to do."
"You won't--forgive me!--go up into that blistering attic and make rugs?
I hope not!" She felt that he was looking keenly at her.
"Why should you hope not? I am one of the people who must be busy to be
contented. How soon do you go, Mr. Jefferson?"
"On the noon train." He looked at his watch. "I have an hour to make
ready. No, don't go. I will come back when I am ready, and we will put
things in shape to leave, so that we shall know exactly where to take
them up again."
In half an hour he was back, and together the two put the results of
their joint work into such shape that at a moment's notice they might
resume it. This done, they went to Mr. Warne, and the intending traveler
explained briefly the situation--without, as Georgiana fully realized,
explaining it at all. Then, shortly, he went away, with something in his
manner which subtly told her that he was very glad to go, and that he
was thinking of little besides the errand which took him from them,
careful though he was in every courteous detail of leave-taking.
When he had gone Georgiana and her father looked at each other.
"Daughter," said Mr. Warne, looking intently at the vivid face, with the
eyes which saw so many things, "do you know what you remind me of?"
"No, Father Davy. Of a cross child?"
"Of a young colt, penned into a very small enclosure, with only one lame
and blind old horse to keep it company. And within sight, off on the
hillside, is a great, green pasture, with other colts and lambs sporting
gayly about, and the summer sunshine over all--except in the corral,
over which a dark cloud hangs. And I am sorry--sorry!"
"Father Davy!" Georgiana choked back a lump in her throat. "But it is
hot July, and the cloud makes it cooler and nicer in the corral. And
besides--the lame, blind horse is such a dear--has drawn such heavy
loads and would be so lonely now without company. And--and the colt has
many long years to sport on hillsides."
Mr. Warne smiled, more sadly than was his wont. "But not while it is a
colt." Then, after a pause, "My dear, we shall miss Mr. Jefferson."
"Shall we?"
"I shall miss him more than I should have realized till I saw him go
down the path. And James Stuart, too. That is why I know that you will
miss them."
"We shall live through it," prophesied his daughter cheerfully, and
betook herself to the kitchen, which she found looking, in spite of its
well-ordered neatness, more like a jail than ever before.
The following days went by on feet of lead. Never had Georgiana had to
make such an effort to maintain ordinary, everyday cheerfulness and
patience. She found herself longing, with one continuous dull ache from
morning till night, for something to happen, something which would
absorb her every faculty. She rose early and went for long walks, and
went again in the late afternoons, with the one purpose of tiring her
vigorous young body so that it would keep her restless mind in order.
She worked at her rug-making many hours, spent many more in reading
aloud to her father, and still there were hours left to fill. She forced
herself to go to see all her acquaintances, to visit those few who were
ill; there was nobody in want in the whole place, it seemed, in this
summer prosperity of garden.
"There's nothing to do for any one," she said to her father one day. "I
feel guilty times without number because I'm not of more use to the
people about me."
Her father studied her. "Dear," he said slowly, "what you need just now
is something the good Father knows you need, and I believe He will not
deny it to you. In the meantime, remember that simply being cheerful and
patient under enforced waiting is sometimes the greatest service that
can be rendered."
"If you haven't taught me that, it isn't because you haven't illustrated
it every day of your life," she cried--and fled.
In her own room she beat her strong young hands together. "Oh, dear God!"
she said aloud, "if I could only, only have the thing I want, I would
take anything, _anything_ that might go with it and not complain!"
And then, suddenly, one early August night, Mr. Jefferson returned. He
came up the path, bag in hand, and saw a solitary figure standing on the
small front porch, where a latticework sheltered opposing seats. It was
a white figure in the early dusk and it rose as he approached.
"The fortnight is not quite up," said Georgiana quietly. "But I put your
room in order to-day, hoping you would come. My father never missed
anybody so much."
"That sounds very pleasant." He set down his bag and shook hands. "It
makes it the harder to say that I must be off again in the morning.
And--I shall not be coming back. If it had not been that I could not
leave without seeing you and Mr. Warne I should have sent on to ask you
to pack and send my trunk."
"Really? How very unexpected! But I would gladly have sent on the
trunk," said Georgiana. Something cold clutched at her heart.
"Would you? That sounds rather inhospitable! Do you care to hear my
plans?"
"If you care to tell them, Mr. Jefferson."
"I wonder," said he, "if you would be willing to go around to the other
porch and sit there. I have a fancy for being where I can get the scent
from your garden. I shall miss that spicy fragrance. Is your father
still up?"
"He has just gone to bed. He would be very happy if you would go in and
speak to him," said Georgiana.
Mr. Jefferson ran upstairs with his bag, and made a brief call upon Mr.
Warne. Then he came down, to find Georgiana standing with her arms about
a white pillar, her face looking off toward the garden. The lamplight
from the central hall, whose rear door opened upon the porch, gleamed
rosily out upon her.
Mr. Jefferson came out and stood beside her. "I came back," he said,
"just to offer you my friendship in any time of need. I couldn't go away
without doing that; I couldn't be content merely to write it back to
you. I have lived here in your home with your father and yourself until
it has come to seem almost as if I belonged here. But my work calls me;
I must go back to it. The book must wait, to be finished in spare
moments as other books have been finished. I thought I could give myself
this year away from my profession to accomplish this task and perhaps to
lay in fresh stores of energy. But I find I can't be easy in mind to do
this longer. So I am going back."
After an instant Georgiana answered, without turning her eyes away from
the garden: "You are a very fortunate person."
"To have work that calls so loudly? I am sure of that. And it is work
which absorbs me to the full. But I shall always have time to give to
you or to your father, if in any way I can ever be of service to you. I
have no family to call upon me for any attention whatever; I have no
near relative except the married sister who lives abroad, as I have told
you. By the way, Allison has bidden me more than once to thank you for
her for taking such good care of me. You know her by her picture, if you
have noticed it--the one on my bureau."
Georgiana nodded. She did not trust her lips, which were suddenly
trembling, to tell him that though he had often spoken of this sister he
had never mentioned the fact that the photograph on his bureau was hers.
But--what did it matter now? It was far better that she had not known,
that she had had this restraint upon her imagination to keep her from
ever letting herself go. It was far better---- But he was speaking; she
must listen.
"While I have been in this house I have felt," he was saying, "as if I
had a real home. It is hard to give that up. Association with your
father has become much to me. I can't tell you what he has given me out
of his stores of wisdom and experience. And you--have been very good to
me; I shall not forget it."
"I have done nothing," murmured Georgiana with dry lips, "except feed
you and dust your room. You might have had such service anywhere."
"Might I? I doubt it. And there is something else. If I may I should
like to tell you how I have admired you for your steady facing of each
day's routine. There is no heroism in the world, Miss Georgiana, equal
to that, to my thinking."
She shook her head. "I'm not heroic; please don't tell me I am."
"But you are, and I must tell you so. Why not? I have seen more than you
may have realized. My whole life's training has been in the line of
observation of other human beings. And you must know that no one could
be with you and not understand that the fires of longing to live and
live strongly and vitally burn in you with more than ordinary
fierceness. Yet you subdue them every day for the sake of the one who
needs you. That is real heroism, and the sight of it has touched me very
much."
Suddenly she found herself struggling to keep back the choking in her
throat. How well he had understood her--and what unsuspected depths of
tenderness there were in his rich and quiet voice. She could not speak
for a little, and he stood beside her in a comprehending silence.
"I can't go away," he said presently, "without telling you that your
happiness has come to seem very important to me. I have--necessarily--a
fairly wide knowledge of men, their characters, their motives, their
ideals--or their lack of them. Miss Georgiana, when you come to
choose--will you let me say it?--don't be misled by superficial
attributes, even the most attractive. Don't let the desire to have your
horizon apparently expanded, to go far and see much and live intensely,
overbalance your appreciation of fine and lasting qualities in one who
could give you little excitement but much that is real and worth having.
It may be very daring in me to say this to you, but I find myself
impelled to it. I want you to live, and live gloriously, and find
employment for every one of your splendid energies, and there is only
one being in the world who can help you do that--the man whom you can
respect as well as love, and love as well as respect. Will you promise
me to choose him and nobody else?"
She turned suddenly and fiercely upon him. "How can you think I----" She
stopped short, her eyes blazing in the darkness.
"I can foresee," said he, very gently, "an hour for you when you will be
tempted out of your senses to do the thing which promises change, any
change. You are starving for it; you are desperate with longing for
it----"
"Mr. Jefferson----"
"Miles Channing came into town when I did: his car raced my train for
the last two miles. He has gone to the hotel. Doubtless you will see him
within the hour. Miss Georgiana, I can't let you marry him without
telling you that if you do you will be an unhappy woman for the rest of
your life."
She was speechless for a moment with surprise. She forgot her encounter
with the speaker in her astonishment at his news. Channing had come
back, then, even as he had vowed, long before the rest of the party. The
knowledge that he was close at hand again, bringing back with him such a
wild will to accomplish that of which he had been thwarted that he had
not been able to brook delay upon the other side of the water, was
knowledge of the sort which stopped the breath.
"Will you forgive me?" said Mr. Jefferson's low voice in her ear.
"But--but I--don't understand," she stammered--and now at last she
showed him her unhappy eyes.
"What I have to do with it? How can I fail to have something to do with
it? When I let you sail in the same party with this young man without
warning you, it was because I had no possible notion that he was to be
along. When I learned that he had gone and that he had followed you
back, I knew that he was in earnest--at least in his pursuit of you. I
had thought there was no actual danger for you on account of your
friend--your real friend--the young man whom you had known and trusted
so long and with such reason. But now, with him away and you alone here
and lonely and full of the hunger for life--yes, I know I am speaking
plainly, but I feel that I must put you on your guard. And I want you to
feel that though I shall be gone to-morrow night I am here to-night, and
if you have any need for me--for an elder brother----"
"Oh, how can you think----"
"I do think--and I know--and I fear for you. Not because I do not
believe in you, but because I know the manner of man who will approach
you. You have never known his sort. Let me be a brother to you--just for
to-night, if only in your thought. It may help to steady you."
There was silence between them for a little. Then steps upon the front
porch, quick, ringing steps, as of one who comes with eagerness.
Georgiana felt her hand taken for an instant and pressed warmly between
two firm hands. Then her companion left her....
Three hours afterward Georgiana flung herself, breathing fast, upon her
knees beside her open window and lifted her face toward the sky. She
would have fled to her garden for this vigil she must keep, but the
extraordinary truth was that she did not dare be alone there. Her hands
gripped the sill, her eyes stared without seeing at the vaulted depths
above her. After a long time--hours--she rose and went to her door,
opened it without making a sound, and, listening till she had made sure
that the house was as silent as all houses should be at two in the
morning, she stole slowly along the upper hall. Presently she stood
outside the closed door of the guest who was sleeping under the roof for
the last time. With a fast-beating heart she noiselessly laid her hand
upon the panel of that door.
"You did steady me," she whispered. "I couldn't have done it if you
hadn't warned me--fortified me. Oh, what shall I do without you?"
Inside suddenly a footstep sounded, the footstep of a shod foot.
Instantly the girl was off down the hall like a frightened deer. In her
own room she stood with her hand upon her breast. "Up--at this hour!"
her startled consciousness was repeating. "Why? There was no light in
his room. Couldn't he sleep either? Why? Is _that_ what it means to him
to be a brother?"
In the morning Mr. Jefferson took his leave. His parting with Mr. Warne
was like that between father and son. When he came to Georgiana he
looked straight down into her eyes.
"Remember," he said, "that what I have told you of my wish to be of any
possible use to you and your father holds good, even though I should be
at the other side of the world. I shall write now and then to ask about
you both. I can't tell you how I hope for your happiness--Georgiana."
When he had gone she went to her room and dropped upon her knees beside
her bed, her arms outflung upon the old blue and white counterpane.
"O God," she whispered passionately, "how could You show it to me if I
couldn't have it? How _could_ You?"