She saw him every day; she dined at the club table now.
Miss Garcide's hay-fever increased with the ripening summer, and she lay
in her room with all the windows closed, sneezing and reading Anthony
Trollope.
When Miss Castle told her that Mr. Crawford was a guest at the club,
Miss Garcide wept over her for an hour.
"I feel like weeping, too," said Miss Castle, tremulously--"but not over
myself."
"Dot over hib?" inquired Miss Garcide.
"Yes, over him. He ought to marry a girl who could fall in love with
him."
Meanwhile Crawford was dining every evening with her at the great club
table, telling her of the day's sport, and how a black bear had come
splashing across the shallows within a few rods of where he stood
fishing, and how the deer had increased, and were even nibbling the
succulent green stalks in the kitchen garden after nightfall.
During the day she found herself looking forward to his return and his
jolly, spirited stories, always gay and humorous, and never tiresome,
technical, nor conceited, although for three years he had held the club
cup for the best fish taken on Sagamore water.
She took sun-baths in her hammock; she read novels; she spent hours in
reverie, blue eyes skyward, arms under her head, swayed in her hammock
by the delicious winds of a perfect June.
All her composure and common-sense had returned. She began to experience
a certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford--a feeling almost
maternal.
"He's so amusingly shy about speaking," she told Miss Garcide; "I
suppose he's anxious and bashful. I think I'll tell him that it is all
arranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don't see why I
don't; _I'm not a bit embarrassed_."
But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle had
not taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover.
"Oh, this is simply dreadful," she argued with herself. "Besides, I want
to know how soon the man expects to marry me. I've a few things to
purchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together in
a day, he's a--a man!"
That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide as
scrupulously as she kept all her promises.
She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford
had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be
frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear and
overcome it.
"I'm going to walk down to the little foot-bridge," she said, steadily,
examining the coffee in her tiny cup; "and if you will stroll down with
your pipe, I ... I will tell you something."
"That will be very jolly," he said. "There's a full moon; I mean to have
a try at a thumping big fish in the pool above."
She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door.
Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank.
This is what he wrote:
"_James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N.Y._:
"I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return?
"JAMES H. CRAWFORD."
The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking and
thinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that he
should miss very, very soon.
Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the little
foot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn.
A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face.
She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodland
rivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon,
and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wings
of moths.
"Surely," she said, aloud--"surely there is something in the world
besides men. I love this--all of it! I do indeed. I could find happiness
here; I do not think I was made for men."
For a long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her whole
body saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then she
raised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenly
became faintly spiced with tobacco smoke.
Where did the smoke come from? She turned instinctively. On a rock
up-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a white
fly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out into the
dusk.
After a few moments' casting, she saw him step ashore and saunter
towards the bridge, where she was standing; then his step jarred the
structure and he came up, cap in one hand, rod in the other.
"I thought perhaps you might like to try a cast," he said, pleasantly.
"There's a good-sized fish in the pool above; I raised him twice. He'll
scale close to five pounds, I fancy."
"Thank you," said Miss Castle; "that is very generous of you, because
you are deliberately sacrificing the club loving-cup if I catch that
fish."
He said, laughing: "I've held the cup before. Try it, Miss Castle; that
is a five-pound fish, and the record this spring is four and a half."
She took the rod; he went first and she held out her hand so that he
could steady her across the stones and out into the dusk.
"My skirts are soaked with the dew, anyway," she said. "I don't mind a
wetting."
He unslung his landing-net and waited ready; she sent the line whirling
into the darkness.
"To the right," he said.
For ten minutes she stood there casting in silence. Once a splash in
the shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat.
"By-the-way," she said, quietly, over her shoulder, "I know why you and
I have met here."
And as Crawford said nothing she reeled in her line, and held out her
hand to him as a signal that she wished to come ashore.
He aided her, taking the rod and guiding her carefully across the dusky
stepping-stones to the bank.
She shook out her damp skirts, then raised her face, which had grown a
trifle pale.
"I will marry you, Mr. Crawford," she said, bravely,--"and I hope you
will make me love you. Mr. Garcide wishes it.... I understand ... that
you wish it. You must not feel embarrassed, ... nor let me feel
embarrassed. Come and talk it over. Shall we?"
There was a rustic seat on the river-bank; she sat down in one corner.
His face was in shadow; he had dropped his rod and landing-net abruptly.
And now he took an uncertain step towards her and sat down at her side.
"I want you to make me love you," she said, frankly; "I hope you will; I
shall do all I can to help you. But--unless I do--will you remember
that?--I do _not_ love you." As he was silent, she went on: "Take me as
a comrade; I will go where you wish. I am really a good comrade; I can
do what men do. You shall see! It will be pleasant, I think."
After a little while he spoke in a low voice which was not perfectly
steady: "Miss Castle, I am going to tell you something which you must
know. I do not believe that Mr. Garcide has authorized me to offer
myself to you."
"He told me that he desired it," she said. "That is why he brought us
together. And he also said," she added, hastily, "that you were somewhat
bashful. So I thought it best to make it easy for us both. I hope I
have."
Crawford sat motionless for a long while. At last he passed his hands
over his eyes, leaning forward and looking into her face.
"I've simply got to be honest with you," he said; "I know there is a
mistake."
"No, there is no mistake," she said, bending her head and looking him in
the eyes--"unless you have made the mistake--unless," she said,
quickly--"you do not want me."
"Want you!" he stammered, catching fire of a sudden--"want you, you
beautiful child! I love you if ever man loved on earth! Want you?" His
hand fell heavily on hers, and closed. For an instant their palms lay
close together; her heart almost stopped; then a swift flame flew to her
face and she struggled to withdraw her fingers twisted in his.
"You must not do that," she said, breathlessly. "I do not love you--I
warned you!"
He said: "You _must_ love me! Can't you understand? You made me love
you--you made me! Listen to me--it is all a mistake--but it is too late
now. I did not dare even think of you--I have simply got to tell you the
truth--I did not dare think of you--I must say it--and I can't
understand how I could ever have seen you and not loved you. But when
you spoke--when I touched you--"
"Please, please," she said, faintly, "let me go! It is not a mistake;
I--I am glad that you love me; I will try to love you. I want to--I
believe I can--"
"You _must_!"
"Yes, ... I will.... Please let me go!"
Breathless and crimson, she fell back into her corner, staring at him.
He dropped his arm on the back of the rustic seat.
Presently he laughed uncertainly, and struck his forehead with his open
hand.
"It's a mistake," he said; "and if it is a mistake, Heaven help the
other man!"
She watched him with curious dismay. Never could she have believed that
the touch of a man's hand could thrill her; never had she imagined that
the words of a man could set her heart leaping to meet his stammered
vows. A new shame set her very limbs quaking as she strove to rise. The
distress in her eyes, the new fear, the pitiful shyness, called to him
for mercy.
For a miracle he understood the mute appeal, and he took her hand in his
quietly and bade her good-night, saying he would stay and smoke awhile.
"Good-night," she said; "I am really tired. I would rather you stayed
here. Do you mind?"
"No," he said.
"Then I shall go back alone."
He watched her across the lawn. When she had gone half-way, she looked
back and saw him standing there in the moonlight.
And that night, as her little silver hand-glass reflected her brilliant
cheeks, she veiled her face in her bright hair and knelt down by her
bedside.
But all she could say was, "I love him--truly I love him!" which was one
kind of prayer, after all.