THE NIGHT BEFORE.
Full of dissatisfaction I wandered into the shed and loitered
aimlessly about. As I stood there Jason came clattering homeward, his
coat collar turned up and his curly head bowed to the deluge.
“So you got home before me?” he said, shaking himself and squeezing
his cap out as he spoke.
“Yes; we came straight.”
“It was lovely in the meads, wasn’t it?” said he, with an odd glance
at me.
“It’s been lovely all this May,” said I.
“And that means a fat churchyard. Old Rottengoose says: ‘A cold May
and windy makes a full barn and findy.’ A queer one, old Peg is. She’d
die if she cast a woolen before the first of June. I wonder what she’d
think of sitting under a hedge in a northeaster?”
I started a little and shot a look askance at my brother. Could he
have seen us? But his next words reassured me.
“Or of falling asleep in the shade, as I did, till the rain on my face
woke me up.”
“Then you didn’t see us pass----” I began and stopped.
“See what? I saw nothing but my eyelids and the sky through ’em.”
I gave a sigh of relief. My feelings toward Zyp were boyish and
bashful and innocent enough, heaven knows; but in the shadow of my
rough past they were beginning to glimmer out so strange and sweet
that the merest suspicion of their incurring publicity filled me with
a shame-faced terror of ridicule that was agony.
Freed from this dread, I fell into an extreme of garrulity that landed
me in a quagmire of discomfiture.
After I had thus talked for a while, rather disconnectedly, he
interrupted me.
“Renny,” he said, “you’re pretty fond of the girl, aren’t you?”
I heard him with a little shock of surprise.
“Not that I care,” he went on, airily, “except for your sake, old
boy.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We’re up to a thing or two, aren’t we?” said he, “but she’s fifty
tricks to our one.”
“She has her good points, Jason.”
“Oh, yes; lots of them. So many that it hardly seems worth while
noticing her setting you up against me.”
“She’s never done anything of the sort!” I cried, hotly.
“Hasn’t she? Well, that’s all right, and we can be chums again. I only
wanted to warn you against putting faith in a chit that can wear a new
face easier than her dress, to you, or Modred, or--or any one.”
“Modred!” I cried, in astonishment.
“Oh, don’t suppose,” he said, “that you’re sole lord of her heart.”
“I never did suppose it,” I answered, thickly. “Why should I? She’s
free to fancy whom she likes”--but my heart sunk within me.
“Yes; that’s the way to look at it,” he said. “You wouldn’t think she
could find much to admire in that fatty, now, would you?”
“How do you know she does?”
“I do know--that’s enough.”
“Well, isn’t he a sort of brother to her?” I said--with a courageous
effort--“as we all are.”
“Of course. That’s it.”
“And I don’t know what you mean by ‘any one’ else.”
“Don’t you?” He laughed and flung away a stone he had been idly
playing with. “Well, I meant Modred, or--or any one else.”
“Who else?”
“Dad, say--or Dr. Crackenthorpe.”
“Oh, you’re an idiot!” I cried; “I won’t talk to you”--and I left him
and ran indoors.
But he had driven the sting home and the poison already worked
furiously in me. How can I explain why? It was true, what he had said,
every word of it. She had set me against him, Jason--not in words, but
by a tacit conviction of him as one who had of his own act bared his
soul momentarily, and revealed a sinister brand across it hitherto
unguessed at.
Well, this was the first waking from the boyish dream, and should I
ever dream it again? I had said we were all in a manner her brothers,
and that she was free to smile on whom she chose. What a pitiful
handful of dust for all eyes but my own! I felt the passion of longing
for her single love surge in me as I spoke. I had never till that
moment dreamed of combating another for possession of it. She had
seemed mine by right of fortune’s gift from the first, nor had she by
her behavior appeared to question the right. We had confidences,
discussions, little secrets together, which none but we might share
in. We walked and talked and leaned toward one another, with a sense
of mutual understanding that was pathetic, I am sure--at least as to
my share in it--in God’s eyes.
And now to find that all the time she was on like secret terms with
Modred--with Jason, too, perhaps, judging by his sidelong innuendoes,
though it made my heart sick to think that she could play so double
faced a game between me and one whom she professed to hate and
despise.
What a drama of dolls it was! And how soon the drama was to turn into
a tragedy!
I went indoors and upstairs to the room which Jason and I shared and
flung myself on the bed. Then I was properly shocked and horrified to
find that my cheeks were suddenly wet with tears--a humiliating
discovery for a tough-sinewed young barbarian to make. What an
admirable sight, indeed! Renalt Trender, sniffing and snuffling for a
girl’s favor!
Pride, however, is everywhere indigenous, and this came to my
assistance. If the minx played sham with me I would meet her with her
own tactics and affect indifference. What a triumphant picture this:
Zyp--“Why have you been different to me of late, Renny? Aren’t you
fond of me now?”
Renny--“My good little Zyp, the fact is I have tired a bit of the
novelty. It has been my first experience of the society of a girl, you
know, and very pleasant while it lasted; but I confess to a little
longing for a resumption of the old independence and freedom. Perhaps
some day again we will walk and converse together as of old.”
Atop of this imaginary question and answer rose a smugly anguishing
picture of Zyp flushed and in tears (my imagination insisted on these
in bucketsful, to out-flood my own temporary weakness); of Zyp hurt
and sorrowing, but always striving by every means in her power to win
back my lost favor.
Alas, poor little clown! I fear it is just those who have the fancy to
conjure up such pictures who suffer most cruelly from the
non-realization of the hopes of youth. Braced to the test, however,
and not knowing myself in weak armor, I came down to supper that
evening prickling all through with resolve.
Jason was in the room alone, as I entered, and was walking feverishly
up and down.
“Hist!” he said, softly, seizing me by the arm; “come here and look
for yourself.”
He dragged me to the little square window, which was open. It looked
out at the back, and beneath was the railed platform before mentioned.
I knew that I was urged to act the spy, and yet--so demoralizing is
jealousy--like a dog I went. Softly we craned our necks through the
opening and looked down. Trees all about here bordered the river
banks, so as to make the rear of our mill quite secret and secluded.
She, Zyp, was standing on the platform with her arm round Modred’s
neck. She seemed trying to coax something from him which he was
reluctant to part with. As he evaded her efforts I saw what it
was--the little round yellow object I had noticed in his hand earlier
in the afternoon.
“Darling,” she said, in a subdued voice, “do let me have it.”
He laughed and looked at her loutishly.
“You know the condition, Zyp.”
“I have let you kiss me over and over again.”
“But you haven’t kissed me yet.”
She stamped her foot. “Nor ever shall!” she cried.
“Then here goes,” he said, and slipped it into his pocket.
At that she rushed at him and wound her arms about him like a young
panther.
“Shall I tear you with my teeth?” she said, but instead she smoothed
his face with one hand disengaged and murmured to him:
“Modred, dear, you got it for me, you know; you said so.”
“And precious frightened I was, Zyp.”
“Well, it is mine, isn’t it?”
“If you give me the kiss.”
My father’s step on the stairs brought our heads in with a clatter. We
heard them scuttle into the house, and a moment later they appeared in
the room. Modred’s face was flushed and bore a heavy, embarrassed
expression, but Zyp looked quite cool and self-possessed.
I took no notice of her during the meal, but talked, daring in my
misery, to my father, who condescended to answer me now and again, and
I could see that she wondered at me.
Supper over, I hurried to my room, and shutting myself in, went and
sat by the window and gave my tormented soul to the night. Had I never
met Zyp, I doubt if I should ever in my manhood have realized what the
grown-up, I think, seldom do, the amount of torture and wrong the
young heart may endure without bursting--with no hope of sympathy,
moreover, except that half-amused tolerant form of it which the old
think it sufficient to extend to youth’s elastic grievances.
By and by Jason stole in. For some little time he sat upon his bed,
silent; then he said in a soft voice:
“Let’s cry quits, Renny. I think I’ve paid you out for that little
accident of the meads.”
“I hate you!” I said, quietly, and indeed it seemed to me that his
cruelty deserved no better a reward.
He laughed, and was silent again, and presently began to undress for
bed, whistling softly all the time.
I took no notice of him; but long after when he was breathing
peacefully asleep, I laid my own aching head, tired with misery, on
the pillow, and tried to follow his example. I was not to succeed
until faint daylight came through the casement and the birds were
twittering outside--was never, indeed, to know sleep in its innocence
again.