After the first flush of Hewson’s triumph had passed he began to enjoy it
less, and by-and-by he did not enjoy it at all. He had done right not
only in keeping St. John from plundering Miss Hernshaw, but in standing
firm and taking the punishment which ought to fall upon him and not on
her. But the sense of having done right sufficed him no more than the
sense of having got the better of St. John. What was lacking to him? In
the casuistry of the moment, which was perhaps rather emotional than
rational, it appeared to Hewson that he had again a duty toward Miss
Hernshaw, and that his feeling of dissatisfaction was the first effect of
its non-fulfilment. But it was clearly impossible that he should go again
to see her, and tell her what had passed between him and St. John, and it
was clearly impossible that he should write and tell her what it was
quite as clearly her right to know from him. If he went to her, or wrote
to her, he felt himself in danger of wanting to shine in the affair, as
her protector against the rapacity of St. John, and as the man of
superior quality who had outwitted a greedy fellow. The fear that she
might not admire his splendor in either sort caused him to fall somewhat
nervelessly back upon Providence; but if the moral government of the
universe finally favored him it was not by traversing any of its own
laws. By the time he had determined to achieve both the impossibilities
which formed his dilemma--had decided to write to Miss Hernshaw and call
upon her, and leave his letter in the event of failing to find her--his
problem was as far solved as it might be, by the arrival of a note from
Miss Hernshaw herself, hoping that he would come to see her on business
of pressing importance.
She received him without any pretence of Mrs. Rock’s intermediary
presence, and put before him a letter which she had received, before
writing him, from St. John, and which she could not answer without first
submitting it to him. It was a sufficiently straightforward expression of
his regret that he could not accept her very generous offer for St.
Johnswort because the place was already sold. He had the taste to forbear
any allusion to the motives which (she told Hewson) she had said prompted
her offer; but then he became very darkling and sinuous in a suggestion
that if Miss Hernshaw wished to have her offer known as hers to the
purchaser of St. Johnswort he would be happy to notify him of it.
“You see,” she eagerly commented to Hewson, “he does not give your name;
but I know who it is, though I did not know when I made him my offer. I
must answer his letter now, and what shall I say? Shall I tell him I know
who it is? I should like to; I hate all concealments! Will it do any harm
to tell him I know?”
Hewson reflected. “I don’t see how it can. I was trying to come to you,
when I got your note, to say that St. John had been to see me, and
offered to release me from my offer, because, as I thought, you had made
him a better one. He’s amusingly rapacious, St. John is.”
“And what did you--I beg your pardon!”
“Oh, not at all. I said I would stand to my offer.”
She repressed, apparently, some form of protest, and presently asked,
“And what shall I say?”
“Oh, if you like, that you have learned who the purchaser of St.
Johnswort is, and that you know he will not give way.”
“Well!” she said, with a quick sigh, as of disappointment. After an
indefinite pause, she asked, “Shall you be going to St. Johnswort?”
“Why, I don’t know,” Hewson answered. “I had thought of going to Europe.
But, yes, I think I shall go to St. Johnswort, first, at any rate. One
can’t simply turn one’s back on a piece of real estate in that way,” he
said, recognizing a fact that would doubtless have presented itself in
due order for his consideration. “My one notion was to forget it as
quickly as possible.”
“I should not think you would want to do that,” said the girl, seriously.
“No, one oughtn’t to neglect an investment.”
“I don’t mean that. But if such a thing had happened to me, there, I
should want to go again and again.”
“You mean the apparition? Did I tell you how I had always had the
expectation that I should see it again, and perhaps understand it? But
when I had behaved so shabbily about it, I began to feel that it would
not come again.”
“If I were in your place,” said the girl, “I should never give up; I
should spend my whole life trying to find out what it meant.”
“Ah!” he sighed. “I wish you could put yourself in my place.”
“I wish I could,” she returned, intensely.
They looked into each other’s faces.
“Miss Hernshaw,” he demanded, solemnly, “do you really like people to say
what they think?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then I wish you would come to St. Johnswort with me!”
“Would that do?” she asked. “If Mrs. Rock--”
He saw how far she was from taking his meaning, but he pushed on. “I
don’t want Mrs. Rock. I want you--you alone. Don’t you understand me? I
love you. I--of course it’s ridiculous! We’ve only met three or four
times in our lives, but I knew this as well the first moment as I do now.
I knew it when you came walking across the garden that morning, and I
haven’t known it any better since, and I couldn’t in a thousand years.
But of course--”
“Sit down,” she said, wafting herself into a chair, and he obeyed her. “I
should have to tell my father,” she began.
“Why, certainly,” and he sprang to his feet again.
She commanded him to his chair with an imperative gesture. “I have got
to find out what I think, first, myself. If I were sure that I loved
you--but I don’t know. I believe you are good. I believed that when they
were all joking you there at breakfast, and you took it so nicely; I have
_always_ believed that you were good.”
She seemed to be appealing to him for confirmation, but he could not very
well say that she was right, and he kept silent. “I didn’t like your
telling that story at the dinner, and I said so; and then I went and did
the same thing, or worse; so that I have nothing to say about that. And I
think you have behaved very nobly to Mr. St. John.” As if at some sign of
protest in Hewson, she insisted, “Yes, I do! But all this doesn’t prove
that I love you.” Again she seemed to appeal to him, and this time he
thought he might answer her appeal.
“I couldn’t prove that _I_ love _you_, but I feel sure of it.”
“And do you believe that we ought to take our feelings for a guide?”
“That’s what people do,” he ventured, with the glimmer of a smile in his
eyes, which she was fixing so earnestly with her own.
“I am not satisfied that it is the right way,” she answered. “If there is
really such a thing as love there ought to be some way of finding it out
besides our feelings. Don’t you think it’s a thing we ought to talk
sensibly about?”
“Of all things in the world; though it isn’t the custom.”
Miss Hernshaw was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I believe I should
like a little time.”
“Oh, I didn’t expect you to answer me at once,--I”
“But if you are going to Europe?”
“I needn’t go to Europe at all. I can go to St. Johnswort, and wait for
your answer there.”
“It might be a good while,” she urged. “I should want to tell my father
that I was thinking about it, and he would want to see you before he
approved.”
“Why, of course!”
“Not,” she added, “that it would make any difference, if I was sure of it
myself. He has always said that he would not try to control me in such a
matter, and I think he would like you. I do like you very much myself,
Mr. Hewson, but I don’t think it would be right to say I loved you unless
I could prove it.”
Hewson was tempted to say that she could prove it by marrying him, but he
had not the heart to mock a scruple which he felt to be sacred. What he
did say was: “Then I will wait till you can prove it. Do you wish me not
to see you again, before you have made up your mind?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see what harm there would be in our meeting.”
“No, I can’t, either,” said Hewson, as she seemed to refer the point to
him. “Should you mind my coming again, say, this evening?”
“To-night?” She reflected a moment. “Yes, come to-night.”
When he came after dinner, Hewson was sensible from the perfect
unconsciousness of Mrs. Rock’s manner that Miss Hernshaw had been telling
her. Her habit of a wandering eye, contributed to the effect she wished
to produce, if this were the effect, and her success was such that it
might easily have deceived herself. But when Mrs. Rock, in a supreme
exercise of her unconsciousness, left him with the girl for a brief
interval before it was time for him to go, Miss Hernshaw said, “Mrs. Rock
knows about it, and she says that the best way for me to find out will be
to try whether I can live without you.”
“Was that Mrs. Rock’s idea?” asked Hewson, as gravely as he could.
“No it was mine; I suggested it to her; but she approves of it. Don’t
you like it?”
“Yes. I hope I sha’n’t die while you are trying to live without me. Shall
you be very long?” She frowned, and he hastened to say, “I do like your
idea; it’s the best way, and I thank you for giving me a chance.”
“We are going out to my father’s ranch in Colorado, at once,” she
explained. “We shall start to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! May I come to see you off?”
“No, I would rather begin at once.”
“May I write to you?”
“I will write to you--when I’ve decided.”
She gave him her hand, but she would not allow him to keep it for more
than farewell, and then she made him stay till Mrs. Rock came back, and
take leave of her too; he had frankly forgotten Mrs. Rock, who bade him
adieu with averted eyes, and many civilities about seeing him again. She
could hardly have been said to be seeing him then.