TOM MAKES A DECLARATION.
Tom led his captive into the parlor. Elsie looked about in
surprise--there was not a soul visible.
"Are you crazy, Tom Fuller?" cried she; "Bessie is not here."
"She shall be here in a minute," stammered Tom; "just wait, please."
"Indeed I will do no such thing," returned Elsie, sharply, snatching her
hand from his arm. "Did she send you for me, Tom Fuller?"
"No," cried Tom, with sudden energy, "I told a lie! I couldn't stand it
any longer; I must speak with you; waiting was impossible!"
Elsie turned on him like a little kingbird darting on a hawk.
"What do you mean by this unwarrantable liberty!" she exclaimed. "Have
you no idea of the common usages of society? Don't come near me again
to-night; don't speak to me."
She was darting away, but Tom caught her hand.
"Oh, wait, Elsie, wait!"
"You ridiculous creature!" said Elsie, beginning to laugh in spite of
her vexation. "What on earth do you want?"
"Laugh at me!" groaned Tom; "I deserve it--I expect it--but I can't live
this way any longer! You are driving me crazy. I love you, Elsie! Only
speak one kind word--just say you don't hate me."
He was holding out his two hands, looking so exceedingly energetic in
his wretchedness, that Elsie burst into perfect shrieks of laughter.
"You silly old goose!" she said; "don't you know you mustn't talk in
that way to me! You have no right, and it is very impertinent! There, go
along--I forgive you."
Tom stared at her with his astonished eyes wide open.
"You can laugh at me!" he exclaimed. "Why, all these weeks you have let
me go on loving you, and never hinted that it was so very disagreeable."
"Now, Tom, don't be tiresome!"
Tom groaned aloud.
"Why I never saw such conduct!" cried Elsie, impatiently. "It's too bad
of you to behave so--you are spoiling my whole evening! You are just as
disagreeable as you can be. Oh, I hate you!"
"Elsie! Elsie!"
"Let go my hand; suppose anybody should come in! Oh, you old goose of a
Tom--let me go, I say."
"Just one minute, Elsie--"
"To-morrow--any time! Don't you know civilized beings never behave in
this way at a ball."
"I don't know--I can't think! I only feel I love you, Elsie, and must
speak out. I will speak out."
A few weeks earlier Elsie would only have been amused at all this from
general lack of amusement, but now it vexed and irritated her. Girl-like
she had not the slightest pity on his pain. He was keeping her sorely
against her wishes.
"I am served right for treating you as a friend," she said; "I looked
upon you as a relation, and thought you understood it; now you are
trying to make me unhappy. Bessie will be angry, and tell Grant. Oh, you
ought to be ashamed."
"I won't make you any trouble," shivered Tom; "I won't distress you!
There--I beg your pardon, Elsie, I am sorry! And you don't--you never
can, Elsie, Elsie--"
"No, no, you silly old fellow, of course not! Now be good, and I'll
forget all about this folly. Let me go, Tom, I can't stay here any
longer--let me go."
Tom still held her hand.
"This is earnest!" he said.
"Yes, yes! Tom, if you don't let me go I'll scream! You are absurd--why,
you ought to be put in a straight jacket."
Tom dropped her hand, and stood like a man overpowered by some sudden
blow.
Elsie saw only the comical side of the matter, and began to laugh again.
"Don't laugh," he said, passionately; "for mercy's sake don't laugh!"
There was a depth of suffering in his tone which forced itself to be
realized even by that selfish creature; but it only made her begin to
consider herself exceedingly ill-used, and to blame Tom for spoiling her
pleasure.
"Now you want to blame me," she said, angrily, "and I haven't done a
thing to encourage you."
"No, no; I don't blame you, Elsie," he said; "it's all my own fault--all
mine."
"Yes, to be sure," cried Elsie. "Who could think you would be so
foolish. There, shake hands, Tom, for I'm in a hurry. You are not
angry?"
"Angry--no," said Tom, drearily.
"That's right! Good-by--you'll be wiser to-morrow."
Elsie glided away, and Tom watched her go out of the room, and realized
that she was floating out of his life forever, that the dream of the
past was at an end, and he was left alone in the darkness.
Poor old Tom! It was very hard, but no one could have resisted a smile
at his appearance! When Elsie left him, he dashed out of the room, and
hid himself in the most out of the way corner he could find.
As he crossed the hall, he heard Elizabeth call--
"Tom, Tom!"
He stopped, and she came towards him. One look at his face revealed the
whole truth. She did not speak, but took his hand in hers, with a mute
expression of sympathy which overpowered him.
"Don't! don't!" he said. "Let me go, Bessie! I'm a fool--it's all over
now! There, don't mind me--I'll be better soon! I've got a chance to go
to Europe for awhile, in fact it's to Calcutta. I shall be all right
when I come back."
"Oh, my poor old Tom! Elsie is a wicked girl to have trifled with you
so."
"She didn't!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "Don't blame her. I won't have
it. There's nobody in fault but me. I deserve it all! I'm a blundering,
wrong-headed donkey, and she's lovely as--as--"
Here Tom broke down, and going to a window looked resolutely out.
"But you won't go away, Tom?" said Elizabeth following him.
"Yes, I will. I shan't be gone but a few months. Don't try to keep me.
I'll be all right when we meet again."
"Oh, Tom, Tom!" said Elizabeth.
"Now, be still; that's a good girl; I don't want to be pitied. It's of
no consequence, not the slightest."
He broke abruptly away, and disappeared, leaving Elizabeth full of
sympathy for his distress, and regret at the idea of losing her old
playmate--she had depended on him so much during her husband's absence.
There had been a lull in the music, but it struck up again now, and the
saloons reverberated with a stirring waltz. Elizabeth stood a moment
listening to the crash of sound and the tread of light feet, but her
heart was full and her brow anxious. She went to the window and looked
out. It was a lovely night, but the eternal roll and sweep of the ocean
seemed to depress her with some terrible dread. In all that splendid
tumult she was alone. As she stood by the window her husband came down
the hall smiling upon the lady who hung upon his arm. He had not missed
her, would not miss her. There was no fear of that. She glided away with
this dreary thought in her mind. Mellen almost touched her as she turned
into a little room opening upon the conservatory, but she went on
unnoticed.
Tom Fuller had retreated into the conservatory, and was sitting
disconsolately in an iron garden chair, sheltered by a small tree,
drooping with yellow fringe-like blossoms, when a lady entered from one
of the side doors, and passed out towards the gardens.
Tom started up, and called out, "Bessie! Why, Bessie, is that you? What
on earth--"
The lady made no response, but looked over her shoulder, and sprang
forward like a deer, causing a tumult among the plants as she rushed
through them.
Tom stood motionless, lost in amazement; for over a ball dress which
seemed white--he could discover nothing more,--the lady was shrouded
head and person, in a blanket shawl, which he knew to be Elizabeth's,
from the broad crimson stripes that ran across it.
After his first amazement Tom sat down again, heaving a deep sigh, and
retreated further behind the flowering branches, that no one might look
upon his unmanly sorrow.
"Poor Bessie, poor thing," he muttered, "I suppose she feels just as I
do, like a fish out of water, in all these fine doings. I'd follow her,
and we'd take a melancholy walk together in the moonlight, if it was not
that Elsie might happen to get tired of dancing with those fellows, and
come in here to rest a minute, when I could hide away and look at her
through the plants."
Tom had in reality startled the lady shrouded in that great travelling
shawl, for once out of doors she stood full half a minute listening with
bated breath, and one foot advanced, ready to spring away if any sound
reached her. Then she walked on with less desperate haste, bending her
course through the shrubberies towards a grove of trees that lay between
the open grounds and the shore.
It was a balmy October evening, moonlight, but shadowed by hosts of
white scudding clouds. The wind blew up freshly from the water,
scattered storms of gorgeous leaves around her as she approached the
grove which was still heavy with foliage, perfectly splendid in the
sunlight, but now all shadows and blackness. On the edge of the grove,
just under a vast old oak, whose great limbs scarcely swayed in the
wind, the lady paused and uttered some name in a low, cautious voice.
A spark of fire flashed down to the earth, as if some one had flung away
his cigar in haste, and instantly footsteps rustled in the dead leaves.
The branches of the oak bent low, and behind it was a thicket of young
trees. The lady did not feel safe, even in the darkness, but moved on to
meet the person who advanced in the deeper shadows, where even the edges
of her white dress, which fell below the shawl, were lost to the eye.
As she stood panting in the shelter, a man's voice addressed her, and
his hand was laid upon her shoulder.
"How you tremble!"
The voice sounded, in that balmy October night, sweet and mellow as the
dropping of its over-ripe leaves. The female did indeed tremble
violently.
"Look, look! I am followed," she whispered.
The man stepped a pace forward, peered through the oak branches, and
stole cautiously to her side again.
"It is Mellen!"
She darted away, dragging her shawl from the grasp that man had fastened
upon it,--away under the old oak, and along the outskirts of the grove.
She paused a moment in breathless terror at the narrowest point of the
lawn, then darted across it, huddling the skirt of her ball dress up
with one hand, and sweeping the dead leaves in winrows after her with
the fringes of her shawl. She avoided the conservatory, for Tom was
still visible through its rolling waves of glass--and, turning to the
servants' entrance, ran up a flight of dark stairs into the shaded
lights of a chamber. She flung the heavy shawl breathlessly on a couch,
shook the snowy masses of her dress into decorous folds, and stole to
the window on tip-toe, where she stood, white and panting for breath,
watching the lawn and grove, with wild, eager eyes, as if she feared her
footsteps in the leaves might have been detected even in the darkness.