A GIRL'S HEART
He walked his horse when he reached the farther shore. He was wondering
just what he was to say to Dennis Kavanagh. They had not parted in a
manner that invited further intimacy. From twin windows of the house on
the hill lights glowed redly, as though they were Dennis Kavanagh's
baleful little eyes. Fear was not the cause of the young man's
hesitation. But he dreaded another scene in the presence of the girl.
Kavanagh and his grandfather had brutally violated an innocent
friendship. They had put into insulting words what neither he nor Clare
had dreamed of--he hastily assured himself that they were not lovers.
More than ever before he now felt infinite tenderness toward
her--compassion, sympathy--an overpowering impulse to seek her. He had
much to tell her. He could not think of any one in all the world who
would listen as she would listen. The red eyes glowering out of the
summer gloom did not daunt him; they suggested tyranny and insulting
suspicion, and he pitied her the more. He rode on past the tall cross of
the church-yard. A voice out of the silence startled him. A white figure
stood in the shadow of the church porch.
"Come here, Big Boy," she said. "I'm not a ghost. I'm only Clare. I've
been waiting for you."
He left his horse, and hurried to her.
"Waiting for me? I did not write. Have you second sight, little Clare?"
"No, only first news. This isn't one of the big cities where the crowds
rush by and do not notice each other. It's only a lonesome little place,
Harlan, and gossip travels fast. I heard you were home five minutes
after the stage was in. So I came here and waited."
He took both her hands between his broad palms, caressing them.
"And you knew I'd hurry to come across the long bridge? That makes me
happy, Clare, for you must have been thinking about me."
"I haven't many things to do these days except think," she returned,
wistfully. "You'll understand why I came down here. I'm not trying to
hide away from my father, and I know you are not afraid of him. But
lectures on the subject of not doing the things you don't have any idea
of doing are not to my taste, and I know they don't suit you. So we'll
sit here in peace and quietness, and you shall tell me all about it."
He turned his back on the two red eyes of the Kavanagh house, and sat
down on the step below her, and began his story, eagerly, volubly.
Once in a while he looked up at her, and she gave wise little nods to
show she understood. In relating the early episodes of his journey, he
ventured to leave out details. But she insisted that he give them.
"I want to know about the world--how they all look, and how they speak,
and what they do. I've been lonely all these weeks. I've been wondering
all the time what you were doing. Now I want it to seem that you've come
to take me with you, back through it all. I want it to seem just as
though I were travelling along with you--that will make me forget how
lonely I've been, waiting here on the edge of the big woods."
And he humored her whim, for he had always understood her child's ways.
The woods had trained him to note the details of all he saw; his
experiences had been fresh and stirring, and he told his story with
zest.
Then he came to his mention of Madeleine Presson. "Her father is the
State chairman--the man you saw at 'The Barracks.' I was at their house
a few times. Her mother--"
"But about her! You are skipping again, Big Boy."
"There is not much about her," he said, stammering a bit. "I saw her
here and there, and talked with her, that's all."
"But I'm seeing with your eyes and hearing with your ears as I go along
with you," she insisted. "I want to know how other girls are in the
world outside. I have been waiting to have some one tell me. You saw
her, you heard her. Begin, Harlan: her looks, her clothes, her manners,
what she said, what she talks about. I have only you to ask."
His self-consciousness left him after he began. He drew his word-picture
as best he could.
"That makes her beautiful," she said, when he paused, searching his mind
for some word of description. "I think I can see her with your eyes, Big
Boy. Tell me what she knows; and how does she talk?"
In the dusk he could not see the expression on her face. He knew that
she listened intently, leaning above him. He was not conscious that he
praised Madeleine Presson's gifts of mind or person. But as he had found
her, so he portrayed her to the isolated girl of the north country,
describing her attainments, her culture, her breadth of view, her grasp
of the questions of the day, her ability to understand the big matters
in which men were interested.
She made no comment as he talked. She did not interrupt him when he had
finished with Madeleine Presson and went on to relate how he had been
forced into the forefront of the State's political situation.
"So, then, you have become a great man," she faltered. "I remember. I
was selfish. I did not want you to go away."
"No, I am not a great man, little Clare," he protested, laughingly. "I'm
only a little chap that a great man is using. And you were not selfish.
It was you that first put the thought into my mind that I ought to use
my opportunities. That night at the end of the bridge, you know! I was
sullen and obstinate. But you talked to me like a wise little woman. All
the time I was with my grandfather later that evening, trying to be
angry with him, I kept remembering your advice."
"I lied to you!" she cried, so passionately that he leaped to his feet
and stared down on her. "I said it. I remember. But I lied. I was
punishing myself because I had been selfish about you. But I didn't
believe what I was saying--not deep in my heart. I wanted you to say you
wouldn't go--but I didn't want you to look back ever and blame me for my
selfishness. You see now how wicked and wrong and weak I am. I didn't
want the world to take you away from--from us up here: from the woods
and the plain folks. You'll hate me now. But I have to be truthful with
you!" Her voice broke.
"The world has not won me away from my friends, dear. You must know me
too well for that suspicion to shame me."
She crouched on the step before him. Her hands, fingers interlaced,
gripped each other hard to quiet their trembling. In her girlish
frailness, as she bent above her clasped hands, huddled there in the
black shadow of the porch, she seemed pitifully little and helpless and
forsaken. The woe in her tones thrilled him. She was trying hard to
control her voice.
"You see, Harlan, I can look ahead and understand how it will be. A
woman does understand such things. That's the awful thing about being a
woman--and looking ahead and knowing how it must be before it ever
happens!"
"Before what happens, Clare? I'm trying hard to understand you."
He leaned forward, and could see her eyes. He had seen that look in the
eyes of a stricken doe.
"The world is all outside of this place, Harlan. You know we have always
spoken of all other places than this as 'outside.' You have stepped
through the great door. Now you see. You can't help seeing. It's all
outspread before you. No one can blame you for not looking back here
into the shadows. The great light is all ahead. I am--I ought not to
speak about myself. I have no right to. But you'll forgive me. I didn't
have any one to tell me! I didn't have any mother to advise me. I have
played through all the long days, I don't know anything. Other girls--"
"Clare! God save you, little Clare--don't--don't!" he pleaded.
"You have been away only a few days, and yet you have found out the
difference. You told me about her. She is beautiful, and she is wise.
She has not wasted the long days. She can help you with knowledge. She
can--"
He put out his arms and tried to take her, cursing himself for his
thoughtless cruelty. Infinite pity and something else--fervent, hungry
desire to clasp her overmastered all the prudence of the past. But she
eluded him. She sprang away. She retreated to the upper step of the
church porch, and he paused, gazing up at her.
"Oh, Blessed Virgin, put your fingers on my lips!" she gasped. "Why did
I say it?"
"Listen to me, Clare," he urged, holding his arms to her. "I know now
that I've been waiting for you. I thought it was friendship, but now
I--"
She cried out so loudly, so bitterly, that he stopped.
"If you say it--if you say it now, Harlan, it will shame me so that I
can never lift my eyes to yours again. I realize what I have said. It is
I that have put the thoughts into your mind--almost the words in your
mouth. Don't speak to me now. Oh, you can see how little I know--what a
fool I am, forward, shameless, ignorant about all that a girl should
know! Do not come near me--not now!" He had started to come up the
steps--he was crying out to her. "Oh, Harlan, don't you understand?
Don't you see that I can't listen to you now? I have driven you to say
something to save my pride. I say I _have_! You are good and honest, and
you pity me--and my folly needs your pity. But if you should tell me now
that you love me, I'd die of shame--I'd distrust that love! I couldn't
help it--and I've brought it all on myself. Oh, my God, why have I grown
up a fool--why have I wasted the long days?"
She ran down past him. He did not try to stay her. He understood women
not at all. He obeyed her cry to be silent--to keep away from her.
She turned to him when she reached the ground.
"I haven't even known enough to understand how it stands between us.
Between us!" There was a wail in her voice. She sobbed the rest rather
than spoke it: "That river out there is between us! I don't even belong
to your country!"
She pointed at the great cross of the church-yard. It stood outlined in
the starlight.
"Religion stands between us! My father and your grandfather are between
us!"
She came back two steps, her face tear-wet, her features quivering with
grief.
"But there's something else between us, Harlan, blacker and deeper than
all the rest. Don't try to cross it to come to me. You will sink in it.
Fools for wives have spoiled too many men in this world. I understand
now! Your grandfather knew." She raised her eyes, and crossed herself
reverently. "Mother Mary, help me in this, my temptation!"
She turned, and ran away, sobbing.
Harlan hurried a few steps after her, crying appeals. But he did not
persist. Her passionate protests had come from her heart, he knew. He
did not dare to force himself on her when she was in that mood.
He sat down again on the church steps. He remained there in deep thought
until the red eyes in Dennis Kavanagh's house blinked out. He did not
find it easy to understand himself, exactly. His feelings had been
played upon too powerfully to permit calm consideration. He felt
confident in his affection for her. But her youth and the obstacles he
understood so well put marriage so out of immediate consideration that
he merely grieved rather than made definite plans for their future. With
moist eyes he looked up at the dark house on the hill and pledged
loyalty to the child-woman, knowing that he loved her. But that the love
was the love that mates man and woman for the struggles, the prizes, the
woes, and the contentment of life he was not sure--for he still looked
on Clare Kavanagh as more child than woman.
Marriage seemed yet a long way ahead of him. He rode slowly back to "The
Barracks." His problem seemed to be riding double with him. The problem,
one might say, was in the form of a maid on a pillion. But he did not
look behind to see whether the maid bore the features of Clare Kavanagh
or Madeleine Presson. At that moment he was sure that only Clare's image
rode with him. But in thinking of her he understood his limitations.
For, woodsman and unversed in the ways of women, he had not arrived at
that point in life where he could analyze even a boy's love, much less a
man's passion.
The next morning he left Fort Canibas with big Ben Kyle, to make a tour
of the Thornton camps. It was a trip that took in the cruising of a
township for standing timber on short rations and in the height of the
blackfly season, an experience not conducive to reflections on love and
matrimony.
But when he returned to Fort Canibas, on the eve of his departure to
take up his duties as General Waymouth's chief of staff, he saddled his
horse and rode across the long bridge.
This time there was no white figure on the church porch and no wistful
voice to call after him. He kept on up the hill. He was not thinking
about what Dennis Kavanagh might say to him. He had resolved to ask
Clare manfully if she would continue to trust him for a while until both
could be certain that their boy and girl love signified to them the love
that life needed for its bounty and its blessing. That seemed the honest
way. It seemed the only way, as matters lay between them and their
families.
Dennis Kavanagh was seated on his veranda, smoking his short pipe and
inhaling the freshness of the shower-cooled summer air along with the
aroma of his tobacco.
"I would like to see your daughter, Mr. Kavanagh," announced the young
man, boldly. "And I have not come sneaking by the back way. It will be a
good while before I can see her again."
"That it will," responded Mr. Kavanagh, dryly, "and it will be a good
long while before ye'll see her now--that may be mixed, but I reckon
ye'll get the drift of it!"
"It will be better for all our interests if I have a few words with
her," persisted the young man, trying to keep his temper.
"Will ye talk to her through the air or over the telephone?" inquired
the father, sarcastically. "She is not here, she is not near here, and
if ye wait for her to come back ye'll best arrange to have your meals
brought."
He did not pause for Harlan to ask any more questions. He came down from
the porch on his stubby legs and handed up an envelope. The flap of the
envelope had been opened.
"She left this," he said; "and having opened it and seen that it held
nothing but what ye might profitably know, Thornton's grandson, I here
give it into your hand, and ye needn't thank me."
Harlan, wondering, apprehensive, fearing something untoward, took out
the single sheet of paper. He read:
"BIG BOY,--Go on and let the world make you a great man. I'm groping.
Perhaps I'll see my way some day and can follow. But just as there's a
cure for ignorance, so there's a cure for hearts, maybe. Your friend,
CLARE."
Harlan looked over the edge of the paper into the twinkling little eyes
of the father. Mr. Kavanagh seemed to be getting much satisfaction from
the expression on his victim's face.
"Can't you tell me what this means, Mr. Kavanagh? I beg of you humbly,
and in all sincerity."
"The Kavanaghs are never backward in politeness, Mr. Harlan Thornton. It
means that my girl is done playing child and riding cock-horse. She's off
to learn to be the finest and knowingest lady in all the land--she's off
because she wanted to go, and she's got all of Dennis Kavanagh's fat
wallet behind her!" He slapped his breast-pocket.
"Off where?"
"Where they know things and teach things better than they do over in
your Yankeeland of airs and frills. And now good-day to ye!"
He climbed the porch steps, and relighted his pipe, gazing with much
relish past the flame of the match, studying Harlan's dismay.
The young man suddenly came to himself, struck his horse, and galloped
wildly away.
The next morning he departed to offer political hand and sword in the
cause of General Waymouth.