hearth-rug, his white hair tossing over his brow, as he recited from Mr.
Addison with the zest of a schoolboy of a hundred years ago.
“Hello, Beau! I hope you got your clothes,” was Champe's greeting, as he
shook his cousin's hand.
“Oh, they turned up all right,” said Dan, carelessly, “and, by-the-way,
there was an India shawl for grandma in that very trunk.”
Champe crossed to the fireplace and stood fingering one of the tall vases.
“It's a pity you didn't stop by Uplands,” he observed. “You'd have found
Virginia more blooming than ever.”
“Ah, is that so?” returned Dan, flushing, and a moment afterward he added
with an effort, “I met Betty in the turnpike, you know.”
Six months ago, he remembered, he had raved out his passion for Virginia,
and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to
surround the thought of her.
“So she told me,” replied Champe, looking steadily at Dan. For a moment he
seemed about to speak again; then changing his mind, he left the room with
a casual remark about dressing for supper.
“I'll go, too,” said Dan, rising from his seat. “If you'll believe me, I
haven't spoken to my old love, Aunt Emmeline. So proud a beauty is not to
be treated with neglect.”
He lighted one of the tall candles upon the mantel-piece, and taking it in
his hand, crossed the hall and went into the panelled parlour, where
Great-aunt Emmeline, in the lustre of her amber brocade, smiled her
changeless smile from out the darkened canvas. There was wit in her curved
lip and spirit in her humorous gray eyes, and the marble whiteness of her
brow, which had brought her many lovers in her lifetime, shone undimmed
beneath the masses of her chestnut hair. With her fair body gone to dust,
she still held her immortal apple by the divine right of her remembered
beauty.
As Dan looked at her it seemed to him for the first time that he found a
likeness to Betty--to Betty as she smiled up at him from the hearth in Aunt
Ailsey's cabin. It was not in the mouth alone, nor in the eyes alone, but
in something indefinable which belonged to every feature--in the kindly
fervour that shone straight out from the smiling face. Ah, he knew now why
Aunt Emmeline had charmed a generation.
He blew out the candle, and went back into the hall where the front door
stood half open. Then taking down his hat, he descended the steps and
strolled thoughtfully up and down the gravelled drive.
The air was still moist, and beyond the gray meadows the white clouds
huddled like a flock of sheep upon the mountain side. From the branches of
the old elms fell a few yellowed leaves, and among them birds were flying
back and forth with short cries. A faint perfume came from the high urns
beside the steps, where a flowering creeper was bruised against the marble
basins.
With a cigar in his mouth, Dan passed slowly to and fro against the lighted
windows, and looked up tenderly at the gray sky and the small flying birds.
There was a glow in his face, for, with a total cessation of time, he was
back in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and the rain was on the roof.
In one of those rare moods in which the least subjective mind becomes that
of a mystic, he told himself that this hour had waited for him from the
beginning of time--had bided patiently at the crossroads until he came up
with it at last. All his life he had been travelling to meet it, not in
ignorance, but with half-unconscious knowledge, and all the while the fire
had burned brightly on the hearth, and Betty had knelt upon the flat stones
drying her hair. Again it seemed to him that he had never looked into a
woman's face before, and the shame of his wandering fancies was heavy upon
him. He called himself a fool because he had followed for a day the flutter
of Virginia's gown, and a dotard for the many loves he had sworn to long
before. In the twilight he saw Betty's eyes, grave, accusing, darkened with
reproach; and he asked himself half hopefully if she cared--if it were
possible for a moment that she cared. There had been humour in her smile,
but, for all his effort, he could bring back no deeper emotion than pity or
disdain--and it seemed to him that both the pity and the disdain were for
himself.
The library window was lifted suddenly, as the Major called out to him that
“supper was on its way”; and, with an impatient movement of the shoulders,
he tossed his cigar into the grass and went indoors.
The next afternoon he rode over to Uplands, and found Virginia alone in the
dim, rose-scented parlour, where the quaint old furniture stood in the
gloom of a perpetual solemnity. The girl, herself, made a bright spot of
colour against the damask curtains, and as he looked at her he felt the
same delight in her loveliness that he felt in Great-aunt Emmeline's.
Virginia had become a picture to him, and nothing more.
When he entered she greeted him with her old friendliness, gave him both
her cool white hands, and asked him a hundred shy questions about the
countries over sea. She was delicately cordial, demurely glad.
“It seems an age since you went away,” she said flatteringly, “and so many
things have happened--one of the big trees blew down on the lawn, and Jack
Powell broke his arm--and--and Mr. Morson has been back twice, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered, “but I rather think the tree's the biggest
thing, isn't it?”
“Well, it is the biggest,” admitted Virginia, sweetly. “I couldn't get my
arms halfway round it--and Betty was so distressed when it fell that she
cried half the day, just as if it were a human being. Aunt Lydia has been
trying to build a rockery over the root, and she's going to cover it with
portulaca.” She went to the long window and pointed out the spot where it
had stood. “There are so many one hardly misses it,” she added cheerfully.
At the end of an hour Dan asked timidly for Betty, to hear that she had
gone riding earlier with Champe. “She is showing him a new path over the
mountain,” said Virginia. “I really think she knows them all by heart.”
“I hope she hasn't taken to minding cattle,” observed Dan, irritably. “I
believe in women keeping at home, you know,” and as he rose to go he told
Virginia that she had “an Irish colour.”
“I have been sitting in the sun,” she answered shyly, going back to the
window when he left the room.
Dan went quickly out to Prince Rupert, but with his foot in the stirrup, he
saw Miss Lydia training a coral honeysuckle at the end of the portico, and
turned away to help her fasten up a broken string. “It blew down
yesterday,” she explained sadly. “The storm did a great deal of damage to
the flowers, and the garden looked almost desolate this morning, but Betty
and I worked there until dinner. I tell Betty she must take my place among
the flowers, she has such a talent for making them bloom. Why, if you will
come into the garden, you will be surprised to see how many summer plants
are still in blossom.”
She spoke wistfully, and Dan looked down on her with a tender reverence
which became him strangely. “Why, I shall be delighted to go with you,” he
answered. “Do you know I never see you without thinking of your roses? You
seem to carry their fragrance in your clothes.” There was a touch of the
Major's flattery in his manner, but Miss Lydia's pale cheeks flushed with
pleasure.
Smiling faintly, she folded her knitted shawl over her bosom, and he
followed her across the grass to the little whitewashed gate of the garden.
There she entered softly, as if she were going into church, her light steps
barely treading down the tall grass strewn with rose leaves. Beyond the
high box borders the gay October roses bent toward her beneath a light
wind, and in the square beds tangles of summer plants still flowered
untouched by frost. The splendour of the scarlet sage and the delicate
clusters of the four-o'clocks and sweet Williams made a single blur of
colour in the sunshine, and under the neatly clipped box hedges, blossoms
of petunias and verbenas straggled from their trim rows across the walk.
As he stood beside her, Dan drew in a long breath of the fragrant air. “I
declare, it is like standing in a bunch of pinks,” he remarked.
“There has been no hard frost as yet,” returned Miss Lydia, looking up at
him. “Even the verbenas were not nipped, and I don't think I ever had them
bloom so late. Why, it is almost the first of October.”
They strolled leisurely up and down the box-bordered paths, Miss Lydia
talking in her gentle, monotonous voice, and Dan bending his head as he
flicked at the tall grass with his riding-whip.
“He is a great lover of flowers,” said the old lady after he had gone, and
thought in her simple heart that she spoke the truth.
For two days Dan's pride held him back, but the third being Sunday, he went
over in the afternoon with the pretence of a message from his grandmother.
As the day was mild the great doors were standing open, and from the drive
he saw Mrs. Ambler sitting midway of the hall, with her Bible in her hand
and her class of little negroes at her feet. Beyond her there was a strip
of green and the autumn glory of the garden, and the sunlight coming from
without fell straight upon the leaves of the open book.
She was reading from the gospel of St. John, and she did not pause until
the chapter was finished; then she looked up and said, smiling: “Shall I
ask you to join my class, or will you look for the girls out of doors?
Virginia, I think, is in the garden, and Betty has just gone riding down
the tavern road.”
“Oh, I'll go after Betty,” replied Dan, promptly, and with a gay “good-by”
he untied Prince Rupert and started at a canter for the turnpike.
A quarter of a mile beyond Uplands the tavern road branched off under a
deep gloom of forest trees. The white sand of the turnpike gave place to a
heavy clay soil, which went to dust in summer and to mud in winter,
impeding equally the passage of wheels. On either side a thick wood ran for
several miles, and the sunshine filtered in bright drops through the green
arch overhead.
When Dan first caught sight of Betty she was riding in a network of sun and
shade, her face lifted to the bit of blue sky that showed between the
tree-tops. At the sound of his horse she threw a startled look behind her,
and then, drawing aside from the sunken ruts in the “corduroy” road,
waited, smiling, until he galloped up.
“Why, it's never you!” she exclaimed, surprised.
“Well, that's not my fault, Betty,” he gayly returned. “If I had my way, I
assure you it would be always I. You mustn't blame a fellow for his ill
luck, you know.” Then he laid his hand on her bridle and faced her sternly.
“Look here, Betty, you haven't been treating me right,” he said.
She threw out a deprecating little gesture. “Do I need to put on more
humility?” she questioned, humbly. “Is it respect that I have failed in,
sir?”
“Oh, bosh!” he interposed, rudely. “I want to know why you went riding
three afternoons with Champe--it wasn't fair of you, you know.”
Betty sighed sadly. “No one has ever asked me before why I went riding with
Champe,” she confessed, “and the mighty secret has quite gnawed into my
heart.”
“Share it with me,” begged Dan, gallantly, “only I warn you that I shall
have no mercy upon Champe.”
“Poor Champe,” said Betty.
“At least he went riding with you three afternoons--lucky Champe!”
“Ah, so he did; and must I tell you why?”
He nodded. “You shan't go home until you do,” he declared grimly.
Betty reached up and plucked a handful of aspen leaves, scattering them
upon the road.
“By what right, O horse-taming Hector (isn't that the way they talk in
Homer?)”
“By the right of the strongest, O fair Helena (it's the way they talk in
translations of Homer).”
“How very learned you are!” sighed Betty.
“How very lovely you are!” sighed Dan.
“And you will really force me to tell you?” she asked.
“For your own sake, don't let it come to that,” he replied.
“But are you sure that you are strong enough to hear it?”
“I am strong enough for anything,” he assured her, “except suspense.”
“Well, if I must, then let me whisper it--I went because--” she drew back,
“I implore you not to uproot the forest in your wrath.”
“Speak quickly,” urged Dan, impatiently.
“I went because--brace yourself--I went because he asked me.”
“O Betty!” he cried, and caught her hand.
“O Dan!” she laughed, and drew her hand away.
“You deserve to be whipped,” he went on sternly. “How dare you play with
the green-eyed monster I'm wearing on my sleeve? Haven't you heard his
growls, madam?”
“He's a pretty monster,” said Betty. “I should like to pat him.”
“Oh, he needs to be gently stroked, I tell you.”
“Does he wake often--poor monster?”
Dan lowered his abashed eyes to the road.
“Well, that--ah, that depends--” he began awkwardly.
“Ah, that depends upon your fancies,” finished Betty, and rode on rapidly.
It was a moment before he came up with her, and when he did so his face was
flushed.
“Do you mind about my fancies, Betty?” he asked humbly.
“I?” said Betty, disdainfully. “Why, what have I to do with them?”
“With my fancies? nothing--so help me God--nothing.”
“I am glad to hear it,” she replied quietly, stroking her horse. Her cheeks
were glowing and she let the overhanging branches screen her face. As they
rode on silently they heard the rustling of the leaves beneath the horses'
feet, and the soft wind playing through the forest. A chain of lights and
shadows ran before them into the misty purple of the distance, where the
dim trees went up like gothic spires.
Betty's hands were trembling, but fearing the stillness, she spoke in a
careless voice.
“When do you go back to college?” she inquired politely.
“In two days--but it's all the same to you, I dare say.”
“Indeed it isn't. I shall be very sorry.”
“You needn't lie to me,” he returned irritably. “I beg your pardon, but a
lie is a lie, you know.”
“So I suppose, but I wasn't lying--I shall be very sorry.”
A fiery maple branch fell between them, and he impatiently thrust it aside.
“When you treat me like this you raise the devil in me,” he said angrily.
“As I told you before, Betty, when I'm not Lightfoot I'm Montjoy--it may be
this that makes you plague me so.”
“O Dan, Dan!” she laughed, but in a moment added gravely: “When you're
neither Lightfoot nor Montjoy, you're just yourself, and it's then, after
all, that I like you best. Shall we turn now?” She wheeled her horse about
on the rustling leaves, and they started toward the sunset light shining
far up the road.
“When you like me best,” said Dan, passionately. “Betty, when is that?” His
ardent look was on her face, and she, defying her fears, met it with her
beaming eyes. “When you're just yourself, Dan,” she answered and galloped
on. Her lips were smiling, but there was a prayer in her heart, for it
cried, “Dear God, let him love me, let him love me.”
VIII
BETTY'S UNBELIEF
“Dear God, let him love me,” she prayed again in the cool twilight of her
chamber. Before the open window she put her hands to her burning cheeks and
felt the wind trickle between her quivering fingers. Her heart fluttered
like a bird and her blood went in little tremours through her veins. For a
single instant she seemed to feel the passage of the earth through space.
“Oh, let him love me! let him love me!” she cried upon her knees.
When Virginia came in she rose and turned to her with the brightness of
tears on her lashes.
“Do you want me to help you, dear?” she asked, gently.
“Oh, I'm all dressed,” answered Virginia, coming toward her. She held a
lamp in her hand, and the light fell over her girlish figure in its muslin
gown. “You are so late, Betty,” she added, stopping before the bureau.
“Were you by yourself?”
“Not all the way,” replied Betty, slowly.
“Who was with you? Champe?”
“No, not Champe--Dan,” said Betty, stooping to unfasten her boots.
Virginia was pinning a red verbena in her hair, and she turned to catch a
side view of her face.
“Do you know I really believe Dan likes you best,” she carelessly remarked.
“I asked him the other afternoon what colour hair he preferred, and he
snapped out, 'red' as suddenly as that. Wasn't it funny?”
For a moment Betty did not speak; then she came over and stood beside her
sister.
“Would you mind if he liked me better than you, dear?” she asked,
doubtfully. “Would you mind the least little bit?”
Virginia laughed merrily and stooped to kiss her.
“I shouldn't mind if every man in the world liked you better,” she answered
gayly. “If they only had as much sense as I've got, they would, foolish
things.”
“I never knew but one who did,” returned Betty, “and that was the Major.”
“But Champe, too.”
“Well, perhaps,--but Champe's afraid of you. He calls you Penelope, you
know, because of the 'wooers.' We counted six horses at the portico
yesterday, and he made a bet with me that all of them belonged to the
'wooers'--and they really did, too.”
“Oh, but wooing isn't winning,” laughed Virginia, going toward the door.
“You'd better hurry, Betty, supper's ready. I wouldn't touch my hair, if I
were you, it looks just lovely.” Her white skirts fluttered across the
dimly lighted hall, and in a moment Betty heard her soft step on the stair.
Two days later Betty told Dan good-by with smiling lips. He rode over in
the early morning, when she was in the garden gathering loose rose leaves
to scatter among her clothes. There had been a sharp frost the night
before, and now as it melted in the slanting sun rays, Miss Lydia's summer
flowers hung blighted upon their stalks. Only the gay October roses were
still in their full splendour.
“What an early Betty,” said Dan, coming up to her as she stood in the wet
grass beside one of the quaint rose squares. “You are all dewy like a
flower.”
“Oh, I had breakfast an hour ago,” she answered, giving him her moist hand
to which a few petals were clinging.
“Ye Gods! have I missed an hour? Why, I expected to sit waiting on the
door-step until you had had your sleep out.”
“Don't you know if you gather rose leaves with the dew on them, their
sweetness lasts twice as long?” asked Betty.
“So you got up to gather ye rosebuds, after all, and not to wish me God
speed?” he said despondently.
“Well, I should have been up anyway,” replied Betty, frankly. “This is the
loveliest part of the day, you know. The world looks so fresh with the
first frost over it--only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die.”
“If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself,” remarked Dan, pointing,
with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. “Don't stand in the
grass like that, you make me shiver.”
“Oh, the sun will dry me,” she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare
earth of the rose bed. “Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels
like summer.” She talked on merrily, and he, paying small heed to what she
said, kept his ardent look upon her face. His joy was in her bright
presence, in the beauty of her smile, in the kind eyes that shone upon him.
Speech meant so little when he could put out his arm and touch her if he
dared.
“I am going away in an hour, Betty,” he said, at last.
“But you will be back again at Christmas.”
“At Christmas! Heavens alive! You speak as if it were to-morrow.”
“Oh, but time goes very quickly, you know.”
Dan shook his head impatiently. “I dare say it does with you,” he returned,
irritably, “but it wouldn't if you were as much in love as I am.”
“Why, you ought to be used to it by now,” urged Betty, mercilessly. “You
were in love last year, I remember.”
“Betty, don't punish me for what I couldn't help. You know I love you.”
“Oh, no,” said Betty, nervously plucking rose leaves. “You have been too
often in love before, my good Dan.”
“But I was never in love with you before,” retorted Dan, decisively.
She shook her head, smiling. “And you are not in love with me now,” she
replied, gravely. “You have found out that my hair is pretty, or that I can
mix a pudding; but I do not often let down my hair, and I seldom cook, so
you'll get over it, my friend, never fear.”
He flushed angrily. “And if I do not get over it?” he demanded.
“If you do not get over it?” repeated Betty, trembling. She turned away
from him, strewing a handful of rose leaves upon the grass. “Then I shall
think that you value neither my hair nor my housekeeping,” she added,
lightly.
“If I swear that I love you, will you believe me, Betty?”
“Don't tempt my faith, Dan, it's too small.”
“Whether you believe it or not, I do love you,” he went on. “I may have
been a fool now and then before I found it out, but you don't think that
was falling in love, do you? I confess that I liked a pair of fine eyes or
rosy cheeks, but I could laugh about it even while I thought it was love I
felt. I can't laugh about being in love with you, Betty.”
“I thank you, sir,” replied Betty, saucily.
“When I saw you kneeling by the fire in free Levi's cabin, I knew that I
loved you,” he said, hotly.
“But I can't always kneel to you, Dan,” she interposed.
He put her words impatiently aside, “and what's more I knew then that I had
loved you all my life without knowing it,” he pursued. “You may taunt me
with fickleness, but I'm not fickle--I was merely a fool. It took me a long
time to find out what I wanted, but I've found out at last, and, so help me
God, I'll have it yet. I never went without a thing I wanted in my life.”
“Then it will be good for you,” responded Betty. “Shall I put some rose
leaves into your pocket?” She spoke indifferently, but all the while she
heard her heart singing for joy.
In the rage of his boyish passion, he cut brutally at the flowers growing
at his feet.
“If you keep this up, you'll send me to the devil!” he exclaimed.
She caught his hand and took the whip from his fingers. “Ah, don't hurt the
poor flowers,” she begged, “they aren't to blame.”
“Who is to blame, Betty?”
She looked up wistfully into his angry face. “You are no better than a
child, Dan,” she said, almost sadly, “and you haven't the least idea what
you are storming so about. It's time you were a man, but you aren't, you're
just--”
“Oh, I know, I'm just a pampered poodle dog,” he finished, bitterly.
“Well, you ought to be something better, and you must be.”
“I'll be anything you please, Betty; I'll be President, if you wish it.”
“No, thank you, I don't care in the least for Presidents.”
“Then I'll be a beggar, you like beggars.”
“You'll be just yourself, if you want to please me, Dan,” she said
earnestly. “You will be your best self--neither the flattering Lightfoot,
nor the rude Montjoy. You will learn to work, to wait patiently, and to
love one woman. Whoever she may be, I shall say, God bless her.”
“God bless her, Betty,” he echoed fervently, and added, “Since it's a man
you want, I'll be a man, but I almost wish you had said a President. I
could have been one for you, Betty.”
Then he held out his hand. “I don't suppose you will kiss me good-by?” he
pleaded.
“No, I shan't kiss you good-by,” she answered.
“Never, Betty?”
Smiling brightly, she gave him her hand. “When you have loved me two years,
perhaps,--or when you marry another woman. Good-by, dear, good-by.”
He turned quickly away and went up the little path to the gate. There he
paused for an instant, looked back, and waved his hand. “Good-by, my
darling!” he called, boldly, and passed under the honeysuckle arbour. As he
mounted his horse in the drive he saw her still standing as he had left
her, the roses falling about her, and the sunshine full upon her bended
head.
Until he was hidden by the trees she watched him breathlessly, then,
kneeling in the path, she laid her cheek upon the long grass he had trodden
underfoot. “O my love, my love,” she whispered to the ground.
Miss Lydia called her from the house, and she went to her with some loose
roses in her muslin apron. “Did you call me, Aunt Lydia?” she asked,
lifting her radiant eyes to the old lady's face. “I haven't gathered very
many leaves.”
“I wanted you to pot some white violets for me, dear,” answered Miss Lydia,
from the back steps. “My winter garden is almost full, but there's a spot
where I can put a few violets. Poor Mr. Bill asked for a geranium for his
window, so I let him take one.”
“Oh, let me pot them for you,” begged Betty, eager to be of service. “Send
Petunia for the trowel, and I'll choose you a lovely plant. It's too bad to
see all the dear verbenas bitten by the frost.” She tossed a rose into Miss
Lydia's hands, and went back gladly into the garden.