The forenoon sunshine, beating strong upon the thin snow along the edges of
the porch floor, tattered them with a little thaw here and there; but it
had no effect upon the hard-packed levels of the street, up the middle of
which Bartley walked in a silence intensified by the muffled voices of
exhortation that came to him out of the churches. It was in the very heart
of sermon-time, and he had the whole street to himself on his way up to
Squire Gaylord's house. As he drew near, he saw smoke ascending from the
chimney of the lawyer's office,--a little white building that stood apart
from the dwelling on the left of the gate, and he knew that the old man was
within, reading there, with his hat on and his long legs flung out toward
the stove, unshaven and unkempt, in a grim protest against the prevalent
Christian superstition. He might be reading Hume or Gibbon, or he might be
reading the Bible,--a book in which he was deeply versed, and from which
he was furnished with texts for the demolition of its friends, his
adversaries. He professed himself a great admirer of its literature, and,
in the heat of controversy, he often found himself a defender of its
doctrines when he had occasion to expose the fallacy of latitudinarian
interpretations. For liberal Christianity he had nothing but contempt, and
refuted it with a scorn which spared none of the worldly tendencies of the
church in Equity. The idea that souls were to be saved by church sociables
filled him with inappeasable rancor; and he maintained the superiority of
the old Puritanic discipline against them with a fervor which nothing but
its re-establishment could have abated. It was said that Squire Gaylord's
influence had largely helped to keep in place the last of the rigidly
orthodox ministers, under whom his liberalizing congregation chafed for
years of discontent; but this was probably an exaggeration of the native
humor. Mrs. Gaylord had belonged to this church, and had never formally
withdrawn from it, and the lawyer always contributed to pay the minister's
salary. He also managed a little property for him so well as to make him
independent when he was at last asked to resign by his deacons.
In another mood, Bartley might have stepped aside to look in on the Squire,
before asking at the house door for Marcia. They relished each other's
company, as people of contrary opinions and of no opinions are apt to do.
Bartley loved to hear the Squire get going, as he said, and the old man
felt a fascination in the youngster. Bartley was smart; he took a point as
quick as lightning; and the Squire did not mind his making friends with
the Mammon of Righteousness, as he called the visible church in Equity. It
amused him to see Bartley lending the church the zealous support of the
press, with an impartial patronage of the different creeds. There had been
times in his own career when the silence of his opinions would have greatly
advanced him, but he had not chosen to pay this price for success; he liked
his freedom, or he liked the bitter tang of his own tongue too well, and he
had remained a leading lawyer in Equity, when he might have ended a judge,
or even a Congressman. Of late years, however, since people whom he could
have joined in their agnosticism so heartily, up to a certain point, had
begun to make such fools of themselves about Darwinism and the brotherhood
of all men in the monkey, he had grown much more tolerant. He still clung
to his old-fashioned deistical opinions; but he thought no worse of a man
for not holding them; he did not deny that a man might be a Christian, and
still be a very good man.
The audacious humor of his position sufficed with a people who liked a
joke rather better than anything else; in his old age, his infidelity was
something that would hardly have been changed, if possible, by a popular
vote. Even his wife, to whom it had once been a heavy cross, borne with
secret prayer and tears, had long ceased to gainsay it in any wise. Her
family had opposed her yoking with an unbeliever when she married him,
but she had some such hopes of converting him as women cherish who give
themselves to men confirmed in drunkenness. She learned, as other women do,
that she could hardly change her husband in the least of his habits, and
that, in this great matter of his unbelief, her love was powerless. It
became easier at last for her to add self-sacrifice to self-sacrifice than
to vex him with her anxieties about his soul, and to act upon the feeling
that, if he must be lost, then she did not care to be saved. He had never
interfered with her church-going; he had rather promoted it, for he liked
to have women go; but the time came when she no longer cared to go without
him; she lapsed from her membership, and it was now many years since she
had worshipped with the people of her faith, if, indeed, she were still of
any faith. Her life was silenced in every way, and, as often happens with
aging wives in country towns, she seldom went out of her own door, and
never appeared at the social or public solemnities of the village. Her
husband and her daughter composed and bounded her world,--she always talked
of them, or of other things as related to them. She had grown an elderly
woman, without losing the color of her yellow hair; and the bloom of
girlhood had been stayed in her cheeks as if by the young habit of
blushing, which she had kept. She was still what her neighbors called very
pretty-appearing, and she must have been a beautiful girl. The silence of
her inward life subdued her manner, till now she seemed always to have come
from some place on which a deep hush had newly fallen.
She answered the door when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the
gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street
while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. “Oh!” he
said, “I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. Isn't Marcia at
home?”
“She went to church, this morning,” replied her mother. “Won't you walk
in?”
“Why, yes, I guess I will, thank you,” faltered Bartley, in the
irresolution of his disappointment. “I hope I sha'n't disturb you.”
“Come right into the sitting-room. She won't be gone a great while, now,”
said Mrs. Gaylord, leading the way to the large square room into which
a door at the end of the narrow hall opened. A slumberous heat from a
sheet-iron wood-stove pervaded the place, and a clock ticked monotonously
on a shelf in the corner. Mrs. Gaylord said, “Won't you take a chair?” and
herself sank into the rocker, with a deep feather cushion in the seat, and
a thinner feather cushion tied half-way up the back. After the more active
duties of her housekeeping were done, she sat every day in this chair with
her knitting or sewing, and let the clock tick the long hours of her life
away, with no more apparent impatience of them, or sense of their dulness,
than the cat on the braided rug at her feet, or the geraniums in the pots
at the sunny window. “Are you pretty well to-day?” she asked.
“Well, no, Mrs. Gaylord, I'm not,” answered Bartley. “I'm all out of sorts.
I haven't felt so dyspeptic for I don't know how long.”
Mrs. Gaylord smoothed the silk dress across her lap,--the thin old black
silk which she still instinctively put on for Sabbath observance, though it
was so long since she had worn it to church. “Mr. Gaylord used to have it
when we were first married, though he aint been troubled with it of late
years. He seemed to think then it was worse Sundays.”
“I don't believe Sunday has much to do with it, in my case. I ate some
mince-pie and some toasted cheese last night, and I guess they didn't agree
with me very well,” said Bartley, who did not spare himself the confession
of his sins when seeking sympathy: it was this candor that went so far to
convince people of his good-heartedness.
“I don't know as I ever heard that meat-pie was bad,” said Mrs. Gaylord,
thoughtfully. “Mr. Gaylord used to eat it right along all through his
dyspepsia, and he never complained of it. And the cheese ought to have made
it digest.”
“Well, I don't know what it was,” replied Bartley, plaintively submitting
to be exonerated, “but I feel perfectly used up. Oh, I suppose I shall get
over it, or forget all about it, by to-morrow,” he added, with strenuous
cheerfulness. “It isn't anything worth minding.”
Mrs. Gaylord seemed to differ with him on this point. “Head ache any?” she
asked.
“It did this morning, when I first woke up,” Bartley assented.
“I don't believe but what a cup of tea would be the best thing for you,”
she said, critically.
Bartley had instinctively practised a social art which ingratiated him with
people at Equity as much as his demands for sympathy endeared him: he gave
trouble in little unusual ways. He now said, “Oh, I wish you would give me
a cup, Mrs. Gaylord.”
“Why, yes, indeed! That's just what I was going to,” she replied. She went
to the kitchen, which lay beyond another room, and reappeared with the
tea directly, proud of her promptness, but having it on her conscience
to explain it. “I 'most always keep the pot on the stove hearth, Sunday
morning, so's to have it ready if Mr. Gaylord ever wants a cup. He's a
master hand for tea, and always was. There: _I_ guess you better take it
without milk. I put some sugar in the saucer, if you want any.” She dropped
noiselessly upon her feather cushion again, and Bartley, who had risen to
receive the tea from her, remained standing while he drank it.
“That does seem to go to the spot,” he said, as he sipped it, thoughtfully
observant of its effect upon his disagreeable feelings. “I wish I had
you to take care of me, Mrs. Gaylord, and keep me from making a fool of
myself,” he added, when he had drained the cup. “No, no!” he cried, at her
offering to take it from him. “I'll set it down. I know it will fret you to
have it in here, and I'll carry it out into the kitchen.” He did so before
she could prevent him, and came back, touching his mustache with his
handkerchief. “I declare, Mrs. Gaylord, I should love to live in a kitchen
like that.”
“I guess you wouldn't if you had to,” said Mrs. Gaylord, flattered into a
smile. “Marcia, she likes to sit out there, she says, better than anywheres
in the house. But I always tell her it's because she was there so much when
she was little. I don't see as she seems over-anxious to do anything there
_but_ sit, I tell her. Not but what she knows how well enough. Mr. Gaylord,
too, he's great for being round in the kitchen. If he gets up in the night,
when he has his waking spells, he had rather take his lamp out there, if
there's a fire left, and read, any time, than what he would in the parlor.
Well, we used to sit there together a good deal when we were young, and he
got the habit of it. There's everything in habit,” she added, thoughtfully.
“Marcia, she's got quite in the way, lately, of going to the Methodist
church.”
“Yes, I've seen her there. You know I board round at the different
churches, as the schoolmaster used to at the houses in the old times.”
Mi's. Gaylord looked up at the clock, and gave a little nervous laugh.
“I don't know what Marcia will say to my letting her company stay in the
sitting-room. She's pretty late to-day. But I guess you won't have much
longer to wait, now.”
She spoke with that awe of her daughter and her judgments which is one of
the pathetic idiosyncrasies of a certain class of American mothers. They
feel themselves to be not so well educated as their daughters, whose
fancied knowledge of the world they let outweigh their own experience of
life; they are used to deferring to them, and they shrink willingly into
household drudges before them, and leave them to order the social affairs
of the family. Mrs. Gaylord was not much afraid of Bartley for himself, but
as Marcia's company he made her more and more uneasy toward the end of the
quarter of an hour in which she tried to entertain him with her simple
talk, varying from Mr. Gaylord to Marcia, and from Marcia to Mr. Gaylord
again. When she recognized the girl's quick touch in the closing of the
front door, and her elastic step approached through the hall, the mother
made a little deprecating noise in her throat, and fidgeted in her chair.
As soon as Marcia opened the sitting-room door, Mrs. Gaylord modestly rose
and went out into the kitchen: the mother who remained in the room when her
daughter had company was an oddity almost unknown in Equity.
Marcia's face flashed all into a light of joy at sight of Bartley, who
scarcely waited for her mother to be gone before he drew her toward him
by the hand she had given. She mechanically yielded; and then, as if the
recollection of some new resolution forced itself through her pleasure at
sight of him, she freed her hand, and, retreating a step or two, confronted
him.
“Why, Marcia,” he said, “what's the matter?”
“Nothing,” she answered.
It might have amused Bartley, if he had felt quite well, to see the girl
so defiant of him, when she was really so much in love with him, but it
certainly did not amuse him now: it disappointed him in his expectation of
finding her femininely soft and comforting, and he did not know just what
to do. He stood staring at her in discomfiture, while she gained in outward
composure, though her cheeks were of the Jacqueminot red of the ribbon at
her throat. “What have I done, Marcia?” he faltered.
“Oh, you haven't done anything.”
“Some one has been talking to you against me.”
“No one has said a word to me about you.”
“Then why are you so cold--so strange--so--so--different?”
“Different?”
“Yes, from what you were last night,” he answered, with an aggrieved air.
“Oh, we see some things differently by daylight,” she lightly explained.
“Won't you sit down?”
“No, thank you,” Bartley replied, sadly but unresentfully. “I think I had
better be going. I see there is something wrong--”
“I don't see why you say there is anything wrong,” she retorted. “What have
_I_ done?”
“Oh, you have not _done_ anything; I take it back. It is all right. But
when I came here this morning--encouraged--hoping--that you had the same
feeling as myself, and you seem to forget everything but a ceremonious
acquaintanceship--why, it is all right, of course. I have no reason to
complain; but I must say that I can't help being surprised.” He saw her
lips quiver and her bosom heave. “Marcia, do you blame me for feeling hurt
at your coldness when I came here to tell you--to tell you I--I love you?”
With his nerves all unstrung, and his hunger for sympathy, he really
believed that he had come to tell her this. “Yes,” he added, bitterly, “I
_will_ tell you, though it seems to be the last word I shall speak to you.
I'll go, now.”
“Bartley! You shall _never_ go!” she cried, throwing herself in his way.
“Do you think I don't care for you, too? You may kiss me,--you may _kill_
me, now!”
The passionate tears sprang to her eyes, without the sound of sobs or the
contortion of weeping, and she did not wait for his embrace. She flung her
arms around his neck and held him fast, crying, “I wouldn't let you, for
your own sake, darling; and if I had died for it--I thought I should
die last night--I was never going to let you kiss me again till you
said--till--till--now! Don't you see?” She caught him tighter, and hid
her face in his neck, and cried and laughed for joy and shame, while he
suffered her caresses with a certain bewilderment. “I want to tell you
now--I want to explain,” she said, lifting her face and letting him from
her as far as her arms, caught around his neck, would reach, and fervidly
searching his eyes, lest some ray of what he would think should escape
her. “Don't speak a word first! Father saw us at the door last night,--he
happened to be coming downstairs, because he couldn't sleep,--just when
you--Oh, Bartley, don't!” she implored, at the little smile that made his
mustache quiver. “And he asked me whether we were engaged; and when I
couldn't tell him we were, I know what he thought. I knew how he despised
me, and I determined that, if you didn't tell me that you cared for me--And
that's the reason, Bartley, and not--not because I didn't care more for you
than I do for the whole world. And--and--you don't mind it, now, do you? It
was for your sake, dearest.”
Whether Bartley perfectly divined or not all the feeling at which her words
hinted, it was delicious to be clung about by such a pretty girl as
Marcia Gaylord, to have her now darting her face into his neck-scarf with
intolerable consciousness, and now boldly confronting him with all-defying
fondness while she lightly pushed him and pulled him here and there in the
vehemence of her appeal. Perhaps such a man, in those fastnesses of his
nature which psychology has not yet explored, never loses, even in the
tenderest transports, the sense of prey as to the girl whose love he has
won; but if this is certain, it is also certain that he has transports
which are tender, and Bartley now felt his soul melted with affection that
was very novel and sweet.
“Why, Marcia!” he said, “what a strange girl you are!” He sunk into his
chair again, and, putting his arms around her waist, drew her upon his
knee, like a child.
She held herself apart from him at her arm's length, and said, “Wait! Let
me say it before it seems as if we had always been engaged, and everything
was as right then as it is now. Did you despise me for letting you kiss me
before we were engaged?”
“No,” he laughed again. “I liked you for it.”
“But if you thought I would let any one else, you wouldn't have liked it?”
This diverted him still more. “I shouldn't have liked that more than half
as well.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. She dropped her face awhile on his shoulder,
and seemed to be struggling with herself. Then she lifted it, and “Did you
ever--did you--” she gasped.
“If you want me to say that all the other girls in the world are not worth
a hair of your head, I'll say that, Marcia. Now, let's talk business!”
This made her laugh, and “I shall want a little lock of yours,” she said,
as if they had hitherto been talking of nothing but each other's hair.
“And I shall want all of yours,” he answered.
“No. Don't be silly.” She critically explored his face. “How funny to have
a mole in your eyebrow!” She put her finger on it. “I never saw it before.”
“You never looked so closely. There's a scar at the corner of your upper
lip that I hadn't noticed.”
“Can you see that?” she demanded, radiantly. “Well, you _have_ got good
eyes! The cat did it when I was a little girl.”
The door opened, and Mrs. Gaylord surprised them in the celebration of
these discoveries,--or, rather, she surprised herself, for she stood
holding the door and helpless to move, though in her heart she had an
apologetic impulse to retire, and she even believed that she made some
murmurs of excuse for her intrusion. Bartley was equally abashed, but
Marcia rose with the coolness of her sex in the intimate emergencies which
confound a man. “Oh, mother, it's you! I forgot about you. Come in! Or I'll
set the table, if that's what you want.” As Mrs. Gaylord continued to look
from her to Bartley in her daze, Marcia added, simply, “We're engaged,
mother. You may as well know it first as last, and I guess you better know
it first.”
Her mother appeared not to think it safe to relax her hold upon the door,
and Bartley went filially to her rescue--if it was rescue to salute her
blushing defencelessness as he did. A confused sense of the extraordinary
nature and possible impropriety of the proceeding may have suggested her
husband to her mind; or it may have been a feeling that some remark was
expected of her, even in the mental destitution to which she was reduced.
“Have you told Mr. Gaylord about it?” she asked of either, or neither, or
both, as they chose to take it.
Bartley left the word to Marcia, who answered, “Well, no, mother. We
haven't yet. We've only just found it out ourselves. I guess father can
wait till he comes in to dinner. I intend to keep Bartley here to prove
it.”
“He said,” remarked Mrs. Gaylord, whom Bartley had led to her chair and
placed on her cushion, “'t he had a headache when he first came in,” and
she appealed to him for corroboration, while she vainly endeavored to
gather force to grapple again with the larger fact that he and Marcia were
just engaged to be married.
Marcia stopped down, and pulled her mother up out of her chair with a hug.
“Oh, come now, mother: You mustn't let it take your breath away,” she said,
with patronizing fondness. “I'm not afraid of what father will say. You
know what he thinks of Bartley,--or Mr. Hubbard, as I presume you'll want
me to call him! Now, mother, you just run up stairs, and put on your best
cap, and leave me to set the table and get up the dinner. I guess I can get
Bartley to help me. Mother, mother, mother!” she cried, in happiness that
was otherwise unutterable, and clasping her mother closer in her strong
young arms, she kissed her with a fervor that made her blush again before
the young man.
“Marcia, Marcia! You hadn't ought to! It's ridiculous!” she protested. But
she suffered herself to be thrust out of the room, grateful for exile, in
which she could collect her scattered wits and set herself to realize the
fact that had dispersed them. It was decorous, also, for her to leave
Marcia alone with Mr. Hubbard, far more so now than when he was merely
company; she felt that, and she fumbled over the dressing she was sent
about, and once she looked out of her chamber window at the office where
Mr. Gaylord sat, and wondered what Mr. Gaylord (she thought of him, and
even dreamt of him, as Mr. Gaylord, and had never, in the most familiar
moments, addressed him otherwise) _would_ say! But she left the solution
of the problem to him and Marcia; she was used to leaving them to the
settlement of their own difficulties.
“Now, Bartley,” said Marcia, in the business-like way that women assume in
such matters, as soon as the great fact is no longer in doubt, “you must
help me to set the table. Put up that leaf and I'll put up this. I'm going
to do more for mother than I used to,” she said, repentant in her bliss.
“It's a shame how much I've left to her.” The domestic instinct was already
astir in her heart.
Bartley pulled the table-cloth straight from her, and vied with her in the
rapidity and exactness with which he arranged the knives and forks at right
angles beside the plates. When it came to some heavier dishes, they agreed
to carry them turn about; but when it was her turn, he put out his hand
to support her elbow: “As I did last night, and saved you from dropping a
lamp.”
This made her laugh, and she dropped the first dish with a crash. “Poor
mother!” she exclaimed. “I know she heard that, and she'll be in agony to
know which one it is.”
Mrs. Gaylord did indeed hear it, far off in her chamber, and quaked with an
anxiety which became intolerable at last.
“Marcia! Marcia!” she quavered, down the stairs, “what _have_ you broken?”
Marcia opened the door long enough to call back, “Oh, only the old
blue-edged platter, mother!” and then she flew at Bartley, crying, “For
shame! For shame!” and pressing her hand over his mouth to stifle his
laughter. “She'll hear you, Bartley, and think you're laughing at her.” But
she laughed herself at his struggles, and ended by taking him by the hand
and pulling him out into, the kitchen, where neither of them could be
heard. She abandoned herself to the ecstasy of her soul, and he thought she
had never been so charming as in this wild gayety.
“Why, Marsh! I never saw you carry on so before!”
“You never saw me engaged before! That's the way all girls act--if they get
the chance. Don't you like me to be so?” she asked, with quick anxiety.
“Rather!” he replied.
“Oh, Bartley!” she exclaimed, “I feel like a child. I surprise myself as
much as I do you; for I thought I had got very old, and I didn't suppose I
should ever let myself go in this way. But there is something about this
that lets me be as silly as I like. It's somehow as if I were a great deal
more alone when I'm with you than when I'm by myself! How does it make you
feel?”
“Good!” he answered, and that satisfied her better than if he had entered
into those subtleties which she had tried to express: it was more like a
man. He had his arm about her again, and she put down her hand on his to
press it closer against her heart.
“Of course,” she explained, recurring to his surprise at her frolic mood,
“I don't expect you to be silly because I am.”
“No,” he assented; “but how can I help it?”
“Oh, I don't mean for the time being; I mean generally speaking. I mean
that I care for you because I know you know a great deal more than I
do, and because I respect you. I know that everybody expects you to be
something great, and I do, too.”
Bartley did not deny the justness of her opinions concerning himself, or
the reasonableness of the general expectation, though he probably could
not see the relation of these cold abstractions to the pleasure of sitting
there with a pretty girl in that way. But he said nothing.
“Do you know,” she went on, turning her face prettily around toward him,
but holding it a little way off, to secure attention as impersonal as might
be under the circumstances, “what pleased me more than anything else you
ever said to me?”
“No,” answered Bartley. “Something you got out of me when you were trying
to make me tell you the difference between you and the other Equity girls?”
She laughed, in glad defiance of her own consciousness. “Well, I _was_
trying to make you compliment me; I'm not going to deny it. But I must say
I got my come-uppance: you didn't say a thing I cared for. But you did
afterward. Don't you remember?”
“No. When?”
She hesitated a moment. “When you told me that my influence had--had--made
you better, you know--”
“Oh!” said Bartley. “That! Well,” he added, carelessly, “it's every word
true. Didn't you believe it?”
“I was just as glad as if I did; and it made me resolve never to do or say
a thing that could lower your opinion of me; and then, you know, there at
the door--it all seemed part of our trying to make each other better. But
when father looked at me in that way, and asked me if we were engaged, I
went down into the dust with shame. And it seemed to me that you had just
been laughing at me, and amusing yourself with me, and I was so furious I
didn't know what to do. Do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to run
downstairs to father, and tell him what you had said, and ask him if he
believed you had ever liked any other girl.” She paused a little, but he
did not answer, and she continued. “But now I'm glad I didn't. And I shall
never ask you that, and I shall not care for anything that you--that's
happened before to-day. It's all right. And you _do_ think I shall always
_try_ to make you good and happy, don't you?”
“I don't think you can make me much happier than I am at present, and I
don't believe anybody could make me feel better,” answered Bartley.
She gave a little laugh at his refusal to be serious, and let her head, for
fondness, fall upon his shoulder, while he turned round and round a ring he
found on her finger.
“Ah, ha!” he said, after a while. “Who gave you this ring, Miss Gaylord?”
“Father, Christmas before last,” she promptly answered, without moving.
“I'm glad you asked,” she murmured, in a lower voice, full of pride in the
maiden love she could give him. “There's never been any one but you, or the
thought of any one.” She suddenly started away.
“Now, let's play we're getting dinner.” It was quite time; in the next
moment the coffee boiled up, and if she had not caught the lid off and
stirred it down with her spoon, it would have been spoiled. The steam
ascended to the ceiling, and filled the kitchen with the fragrant smell of
the berry.
“I'm glad we're going to have coffee,” she said. “You'll have to put up
with a cold dinner, except potatoes. But the coffee will make up, and I
shall need a cup to keep me awake. I don't believe I slept last night till
nearly morning. Do you like coffee?”
“I'd have given all I ever expect to be worth for a cup of it, last night,”
he said. “I was awfully hungry when I got back to the hotel, and I couldn't
find anything but a piece of mince-pie and some old cheese, and I had to be
content with cold milk. I felt as if I had lost all my friends this morning
when I woke up.”
A sense of remembered grievance trembled in his voice, and made her drop
her head on his arm, in pity and derision of him. “Poor Bartley!” she
cried. “And you came up here for a little petting from me, didn't you? I've
noticed that in you! Well, you didn't get it, did you?”
“Well, not at first,” he said.
“Yes, you can't complain of any want of petting at last,” she returned,
delighted at his indirect recognition of the difference. Then the daring,
the archness, and caprice that make coquetry in some women, and lurk a
divine possibility in all, came out in her; the sweetness, kept back by the
whole strength of her pride, overflowed that broken barrier now, and she
seemed to lavish this revelation of herself upon him with a sort of tender
joy in his bewilderment. She was not hurt when he crudely expressed the
elusive sense which has been in other men's minds at such times: they
cannot believe that this fascination is inspired, and not practised.
“Well,” he said, “I'm glad you told me that I was the first. I should have
thought you'd had a good deal of experience in flirtation.”
“You wouldn't have thought so if you hadn't been a great flirt yourself,”
she answered, audaciously. “Perhaps I have been engaged before!”
Their talk was for the most part frivolous, and their thoughts ephemeral;
but again they were, with her at least, suddenly and deeply serious. Till
then all things seemed to have been held in arrest, and impressions, ideas,
feelings, fears, desires, released themselves simultaneously, and sought
expression with a rush that defied coherence. “Oh, why do we try to talk?”
she asked, at last. “The more we say, the more we leave unsaid. Let us keep
still awhile!” But she could not. “Bartley! When did you first think you
cared about me?”
“I don't know,” said Bartley, “I guess it must have been the first time I
saw you.”
“Yes, that is when I first knew that I cared for you. But it seems to me
that I must have always cared for you, and that I only found it out when I
saw you going by the house that day.” She mused a little time before she
asked again, “Bartley!”
“Well?”
“Did you ever use to be afraid--Or, no! Wait! I'll _tell_ you first, and
then I'll _ask_ you. I'm not ashamed of it now, though once I thought I
couldn't bear to have any one find it out. I used to be awfully afraid you
didn't care for me! I would try to make out, from things you did and said,
whether you did or not; but I never could be certain. I believe I used to
find the most comfort in discouraging myself. I used to say to myself,
'Why, of course he doesn't! How can he? He's been everywhere, and he's seen
so many girls. He corresponds with lots of them. Altogether likely he's
engaged to some of the young ladies he's met in Boston; and he just goes
with me here for a blind.' And then when you would praise me, sometimes,
I would just say, 'Oh, he's complimented plenty of girls. I know he's
thinking this instant of the young lady he's engaged to in Boston.' And it
would almost kill me; and when you did some little thing to show that you
liked me, I would think, 'He doesn't like me! He hates, he despises me. He
does, he does, he does!' And I would go on that way, with my teeth shut,
and my breath held, I don't know _how_ long.” Bartley broke out into a
broad laugh at this image of desperation, but she added, tenderly, “I hope
I never made you suffer in that way?”
“What way?” he asked.
“That's what I wanted you to tell me. Did you ever--did you use to be
afraid sometimes that I--that you--did you put off telling me that you
cared for me so long because you thought, you dreaded--Oh, I don't see what
I can ever do to make it up to you if you did! Were you afraid I didn't
care for you?”
“No!” shouted Bartley. She had risen and stood before him in the fervor
of her entreaty, and he seized her arms, pinioning them to her side, and
holding her helpless, while he laughed, and laughed again. “I knew you were
dead in love with me from the first moment.”
“Bartley! Bartley Hubbard!” she exclaimed; “let me go,--let me go, this
instant! I never heard of such a shameless thing!”
But she really made no effort to escape.