"A man."
"Good heavens!" he cried, "has somebody been making love to you?"
"Yes."
His face flushed. "Come," he said seriously, "what is the meaning
of this, Anna?"
She told him.
"Why aren't you angry with him?" she complained, drying her eyes.
"You sit there and don't say a word!"
"Do you expect me to be angry with any soul for loving you and
wishing to be loved by you? He cast his mite into the treasury,
Anna."
"I didn't mind the mite," she replied. "But he said I encouraged
him, that I encouraged him _systematically_."
"Did you expect him to be a philosopher?"
"I did not expect him to be a--" She hesitated at the harsh word.
"I'm afraid you expected him to be a philosopher. Haven't you been
kind to him?"
"Why, of course."
"Systematically kind?"
"Why, of course."
"Did you have any motive?"
"You know I had no motive--aren't you ashamed!"
"But did you expect him to be genius enough to understand that?
Did you suppose that he could understand such a thing as kindness
without a motive? Don't be harsh with him, Anna, don't be hard on
him: he is an ordinary man and judged you by the ordinary standard.
You broke your alabaster box at his feet, and he secretly suspected
that you were working for something more valuable than the box of
ointment. The world is full of people who are kind without a
motive; but few of those to whom they are kind believe this."
Before Miss Anna fell asleep that night, she had resolved to tell
Harriet. Every proposal of marriage is known at least to three
people. The distinction in Miss Anna's conduct was not in telling,
but in not telling until she had actually been asked.
Two mornings later Ambrose was again walking through his hall.
There is one compensation for us all in the large miseries of
life--we no longer feel the little ones. His experience in his
suit for Miss Anna's hand already seemed a trifle to Ambrose, who
had grown used to bearing worse things from womankind. Miss Anna
was not the only woman in the world, he averred, by way of swift
indemnification. Indeed, in the very act of deciding upon her, he
had been thinking of some one else. The road of life had divided
equally before him: he had chosen Miss Anna as a traveller chooses
the right fork; the left fork remained and he was now preparing to
follow that: it led to Miss Harriet Crane.
As Ambrose now paced his hallway, revolving certain details
connected with his next venture and adventure, the noise of an
approaching carriage fell upon his ear, and going to the front door
he recognized the brougham of Mrs. Conyers. But it was Miss
Harriet Crane who leaned forward at the window and bowed smilingly
to him as he hurried out.
"How do you do, Mr. Webb?" she said, putting out her hand and
shaking his cordially, at the same time giving him a glance of
new-born interest. "You know I have been threatening to come out
for a long time. I must owe you an enormous bill for pasturage,"
she picked up her purse as she spoke, "and I have come to pay my
debts. And then I wish to see my calf," and she looked into his
eyes very pleasantly.
"You don't owe me anything," replied Ambrose. "What is grass?
What do I care for grass? My mind is set on other things."
He noticed gratefully how gentle and mild she looked; there was
such a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough.
He liked her ringlets: they were a novelty; and there hung around
her, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual to
his sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high social
position. But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his neighbor
could wed a Meredith, surely he ought to be able to marry a Crane.
"If you want to see the calf," he said, but very reluctantly, "I'll
saddle my horse and we'll go over to the back pasture."
"Don't saddle your horse," objected Harriet, opening the carriage
door and moving over to the far cushion, "ride with me."
He had never ridden in a brougham, and as he got in very nervously
and awkwardly, he reversed his figure and tried to sit on the
little front seat on which lay Harriet's handkerchief and parasol.
"Don't ride backwards, Mr. Webb," suggested Harriet. "Unless you
are used to it, you are apt to have a headache," and she tapped the
cushion beside her as an invitation to him. "Now tell me about my
calf," she said after they were seated side by side.
As she introduced this subject, Ambrose suddenly looked out of the
window. She caught sight of his uneasy profile.
"Now, don't tell me that there's any bad hews about it!" she cried.
"It is the only pet I have."
"Miss Harriet," he said, turning his face farther away, "you forget
how long your calf has been out here; it isn't a calf any longer:
it has had a calf."
He spoke so sternly that Harriet, who all her life had winced
before sternness, felt herself in some wise to be blamed. And
coolness was settling down upon them when she desired only a
melting and radiant warmth.
"Well," she objected apologetically, "isn't it customary? What's
the trouble? What's the objection? This is a free country!
Whatever is natural is right! Why are you so displeased?"
About the same hour the next Monday morning Ambrose was again
pacing his hallway and thinking of Harriet. At least she was no
tyrant: the image of her softness rose before him again. "I make
no mistake this time."
His uncertainty at the present moment was concerned solely with the
problem of what his offering should be in this case: under what
image should love present itself? The right thought came to him by
and by; and taking from his storeroom an ornamental basket with a
top to it, he went out to his pigeon house and selected two blue
squabs. They were tender and soft and round; without harshness,
cruelty, or deception. Whatever they seemed to be, that they were;
and all that they were was good.
But as Ambrose walked back to the house, he lifted the top of the
basket and could but admit that they did look bare. Might they
not, as a love token, be--unrefined? He crossed to a flower bed,
and, pulling a few rose-geranium leaves, tucked them here and there
about the youngsters.
It was not his intention to present these to Harriet in person: he
had accompanied the cream--he would follow the birds; they should
precede him twenty-four hours and the amative poison would have a
chance to work.
During that forenoon his shining buggy drawn by his roan mare,
herself symbolic of softness, drew up before the entrance of the
Conyers homestead. Ambrose alighted; he lifted the top of the
basket--all was well.
"These pets are for your Miss Harriet," he said to the maid who
answered his ring.
As the maid took the basket through the hall after having watched
him drive away, incredulous as to her senses, she met Mrs. Conyers,
who had entered the hall from a rear veranda.
"Who rang?" she asked; "and what is that?"
The maid delivered her instructions. Mrs. Conyers took the basket
and looked in.
"Have them broiled for my supper," she said with a little click of
the teeth, and handing the basket to the maid, passed on into her
bedroom.
Harriet had been spending the day away from home. She returned
late. The maid met her at the front door and a few moments of
conversation followed. She hurried into the supper room; Mrs.
Conyers sat alone.
"Mother," exclaimed Harriet with horror, "have you _eaten_ my
squabs?"
Mrs. Conyers stabbed at a little pile of bones on the side plate.
"This is what is left of them," she said, touching a napkin to her
gustatory lips. "There are your leaves," she added, pointing to a
little vase in front of Harriet's plate. "When is he going to send
you some more? But tell him we have geraniums."
The next day Ambrose received a note:
"Dear Mr. Webb: I have been thinking how pleasant my visit to you
was that morning. It has not been possible for me to get the
carriage since or I should have been out to thank you for your
beautiful present. The squabs appealed to me. A man who loves
them must have tender feeling; and that is what all my life I have
been saying: Give me a man with a heart! Sometime when you are in
town, I may meet you on the street somewhere and then I can thank
you more fully than I do now. I shall always cherish the memory of
your kind deed. You must give me the chance to thank you very
soon, or I shall fear that you do not care for my thanks. I take a
walk about eleven o'clock.
"Sincerely yours,
"HARRIET CRANE."
Ambrose must have received the note. A few weeks later Miss Anna
one morning received one herself delivered by a boy who had ridden
in from the farm; the boy waited with a large basket while she read:
"Dearest Anna: It is a matter of very little importance to mention
to you of course, but I am married. My husband and I were married
at ------ yesterday afternoon. He met me at an appointed place and
we drove quietly out of town. What I want you to do at once is,
send me some clothes, for I left all the Conyers apparel where it
belonged. Send me something of everything. And as soon as I am
pinned in, I shall invite you out. Of course I shall now give
orders for whatever I desire; and then I shall return to Mrs.
Conyers the things I used on my bridal trip.
"This is a very hurried note, and of course I have not very much to
say as yet about my new life. As for my husband, I can at least
declare with perfect sincerity that he is mine. I have made one
discovery already, Anna: he cannot be bent except where he has
already been broken. I am discovering the broken places and shall
govern him accordingly.
"Do try to marry, Anna! You have no idea how a married woman feels
toward one of her sex who is single.
"I want you to be sure to stand at the windows about five o'clock
this afternoon and see the Conyers' cows all come travelling home:
they graze no more these heavenly pastures. It will be the first
intimation that Mrs. Conyers receives that I am no longer the
unredeemed daughter of her household. Her curiosity will, of
course, bring her out here as fast as the horse can travel. But,
oh, Anna, my day has come at last! At last she shall realize that
I am strong, _strong_! I shall receive her with the front door
locked and talk to her out of the window; and I expect to talk to
her a long, _long_ time. I shall have the flowers moved from the
porch to keep them from freezing during that interview.
"As soon as I am settled, as one has so much more time in the
country than in town, I may, after all, take up that course of
reading: would you object?
"It's a wise saying that every new experience brings some new
trouble: I longed for youth before I married; but to marry after
you are old--that, Anna, is sorrow indeed.
"Your devoted friend,
"HARRIET CRANE WEBB.
"P.S. Don't send any but the _plainest_ things; for I remember,
noble friend, how it pains you to see me _overdressed_."