When Jonas Lane knocked for the fourth time upon Martha Waring’s door
his expectancy was a quaint blend of eagerness and humour.
“Seems like things look more spruce than they did last time,” he
thought, eyeing the polished knocker, the panels of the door, the
slightly inclined planks of the veranda, and the flagstones of the path
running back to the kitchen. “That there hemlock’s grown a pile, too.
They planted that ’twixt last time and the time before, in place of the
old pine that was struck by lightnin’. Marthy never kept me so long
though,” he murmured impatiently.
Then the edge of the door began receding, very gently; and when it
reached a point which might afford the possibility of ingress or egress
to a pet animal a lady’s head approached the aperture. It was Miss
Waring, come to parley through the postern.
“Why, Jonas, is that you?” she exclaimed, a faint glow suddenly
brightening her countenance.
“Same old penny!” rejoined that worthy, putting forth his hand.
At the sight of this friendly member Miss Waring enlarged the aperture
over which she stood guard and drew her visitor in. Not only was it the
proper and Christian thing to do, but she had a disturbing intuition
of neighbourly eyes. Closing the door as gently as she had opened it,
she led the way into the parlour, raised the shades, and took a seat
opposite her suitor.
It must be confessed that while Miss Waring had received no immediate
warning of this visit--Jonas being, as Miss Cockerill had intimated to
Mrs. Webster, no great hand at writing--she had nevertheless been led
by experience to entertain a premonition of Jonas’ arrival not long
after any change in her own family circle. And on this occasion she was
more uncertain of herself than she had ever been. For the last ditch
was lost; and now the invader threatened her very person she knew not
whether to surrender or to withstand till the last drop of blood. She
wished that she had had more time to think.
It was evident that Jonas, too, as he sat twirling his hat and gazing
from his hostess to her furniture, felt a little less than his
customary assurance.
It was the woman, however, who relieved the situation by uttering:
“I hope you’re feeling well, Jonas. You’re looking just the same as
ever.”
“Thank you, Marthy,” rejoined her interlocutor. “You’re lookin’ just
about the same, too; but I hope you’re feelin’ different.” And before
Miss Waring could recover from this bold attack, Jonas went on: “You
know I ain’t no hand at beatin’ about the bush, Marthy. I might as well
tell you here and now what I’ve come for. I guess you know well enough,
though, without my tellin’. You’ve had chance aplenty to learn what it
means when I come here. But this time I ain’t going away without ye. Be
I now, Marthy?”
He rose from his place on the sofa and approached her. But then he
stopped, acutely embarrassed. His blind desire for vicinity had no
definite intent, and he did not know just what to do. As for Martha,
she stretched out her palms like a barrier before her, and gasped:
“O, Jonas! Don’t say such things!”
Unexpected as it was, that gave him definiteness. Sitting down beside
the lady of his heart Jonas laid a gnarled finger on her knee.
“I know it’s kind of unfair to come on ye sudden like, Martha, just
after you’ve lost your mother.
“But if anybody kin comfort ye, I’m the man to do it. I just couldn’t
wait a minute longer. I’ve waited purty long, Marthy.”
Martha brushed away the audacious finger, and covered her face with her
hands like a nymph at bay.
“O, don’t, Jonas!” she moaned.
Her gentle faun made no further attempt at violence, but looked at her
in amazement.
“Marthy!” he groaned: “What do you mean?”
There was that in his voice which at last compelled Martha to reply,
haltingly:
“I mean--Jonas--that I--just can’t--go back with you!”
Jonas at first could not speak. Then he said gravely:
“You’re only jokin’ and beatin’ about the bush, Marthy. It’s the way
women folks have. But what’s the use of doin’ it with me? You can’t
mean it. Didn’t ye always tell me that you liked me real well, and that
when there was nothin’ to keep ye you’d come?”
Martha so far recovered her composure as to let her hands resume their
customary position in her lap; but her cheeks and her voice betrayed
the moral stress under which she laboured.
“I know I did, Jonas,” she said. “And I meant it. But somehow it seems
different, now the time has come. I do like you real well, and I always
did. But it seems like I couldn’t leave this old house where I was
born and where all my people died, and go off among strangers. I just
can’t, Jonas!”
With which deliverance she raised a neatly folded handkerchief to
her eyes, and held it there. Poor Jonas looked on with the double
helplessness of a man before a woman’s tears, and of a lover in the
face of his mistress’s perversities. Of what all this could mean he
had not the slightest idea. But he felt ill-used, although a great
deference put him in a mood of concession.
“But you promised, Marthy,” he said gently. “And how can you live here
all by yourself? Who will look out for you?”
“I know I promised, Jonas,” tearfully murmured Miss Waring; “and I just
hate to go back on my word. But it comes over me now that I oughtn’t
to have promised--that I never could have done it. You needn’t bother
about my living alone, though, I’ve always looked out for people,
instead of their looking out for me. I shouldn’t know what to do in a
strange house, with everything done for me.”
For a moment Jonas looked lost. But then he burst out:
“Why, bless your heart, Marthy, that’s easy enough to fix! You needn’t
go away and have people look out for you at all. You can stay right on
here, and I’ll come and live with you, instead of taking you away, and
then you’ll still have somebody to look out for!”
At this sudden change of front Miss Waring lowered her flag of truce
and looked at the enemy askance.
“What is it, Marthy?” inquired that gentleman anxiously. “Won’t that
suit ye?”
Evidently Martha had never entertained such a possibility. And of this
she presently gave verbal assurance, in a tone of the most doubting.
“I never thought of that, Jonas,” she said slowly. “It would seem so
odd to live here and have a stranger in the house.”
“A stranger, Marthy!” expostulated Jonas piteously. “I, a stranger! And
whose fault is it if I’m a stranger to you? But never mind about that,”
he added hastily. “Just give me a chance, and we’ll get acquainted fast
enough! Won’t ye, Marthy--dear?” He uttered the last word timidly and
drew nearer his love.
This lady felt her heart as water within her. Indeed, a little of it
exuded from her eyes, to the further confusion and agony of Jonas Lane.
“What is the matter, Marthy?” he cried. “For mercy’s sake tell me!
Heaven knows I don’t want to make you feel bad! I only want to make you
happy and to be happy with you--as I’ve looked forward to for twenty
years.”
“I know it, Jonas,” conceded the lady of his dreams. “And I hate to
be like this. But--it would be so odd--so odd! And if you came here I
s’pose we’d have to be--married----”
As she paused, plucking at a fold of her skirt, the wondering Jonas
broke in:
“I rather guess we’d have to, Marthy.”
“O Jonas! Don’t!” supplicated Miss Waring with an agonised blush. “I
just meant--that I could never go through it--and live.”
“How do you mean, Marthy?” inquired Jonas, utterly dazed.
“Why, I mean,” explained Miss Waring hesitantly, “that there’d have to
be a dress. And I never could go down to the store and ask to see white
satin, and buy ever and ever so many yards of it, and take it to Hannah
Lee, and tell her to make me up a--a wedding gown. I never could in the
world. Everybody would know, and talk, and I couldn’t stand it.”
“I s’pose they’d have to know,” said Jonas apologetically. “There’s too
much of me to be hid. Is that all?”
“No,” pursued Martha, relentlessly implanting another dart in her
lover’s bosom. “There’d have to be a wedding. And I’ll do a good deal
for you, Jonas, but I’ll never stand up with you before the minister
and have everybody whispering about Martha Waring and her old beau
Jonas Lane, and how they’ve got married at last, and it’s a pity they
didn’t do it afore.”
“It is a pity, Marthy,” admitted the doleful Jonas, “but----”
“That isn’t the worst, though,” continued Martha, to whom the whole
grim scene unfolded itself in its entirety. “The worst would be the
rice. They’d throw it at us when we went away, and the people on
the cars would see, and it would stick in our clothes, and roll out
wherever we went, and everybody would know, and laugh. O Jonas, I
can’t! I’m sorry, but I just can’t!”
To poor Jonas world within world of undreamt feminine perversity had
of a sudden been revealed. He felt as one bound by cobwebs. But, after
staring for some moments in silence at his liege lady, he addressed her
again the word.
“Marthy Warin’,” he asked solemnly, “would you marry me if you could
do it without rice, and without a weddin’ dress, and without anybody’s
knowin’?”
She regarded him with doubt.
“Seems like it wouldn’t be really getting married,” she objected
incautiously.
The face of Jonas darkened with despair. After this, what was there to
hope? Martha, however, returned shamefacedly to her guns.
“I would though, Jonas, if I could.”
“Honour bright, Marthy? Will ye promise?” demanded that gentleman,
visibly expanding.
“Why, yes, Jonas, if there was a way,” breathed the hunted victim.
“All right,” exclaimed the victor cheerfully, rising forthwith. “We’ll
elope then! And now you’ve promised, I’m going off to see about it.”
With which he departed, before the agitated Miss Waring had time
to protest against the base advantage which had been taken of her
defenceless condition.