IN THE SUMMER.
Maude spent her summer vacation at Uncle Phil’s, where she was received
with every demonstration of joy by each one of the family, Uncle Phil
dragging her off at once to see the “_suller hole_” of his chapel, or
“synagogue,” as he called it, which was not progressing very fast; “such
hard work to get the men, and when they do come, they won’t work more
than half the time, and want such all-fired big wages, it is enough to
break a feller; but then I’m in for it, and it’s got to go,” he said to
Maude, who expressed so much delight, and called him a darling man so
many times, and showed her trim, pretty ancles and dainty white tucks
and ruffles with such _abandon_, as she stepped over the stones and
sticks of timber, that Uncle Phil felt “curis again at the pit of his
stomach,” and did not care how much his synagogue cost, if Maude was
only pleased.
Maude did not talk to Edna quite so much as usual at first; she was
studying her closely, and trying to recall what she had heard Georgie
say of Mrs. Charlie Churchill’s looks. Then she began to lay little
traps for her, and Edna fell into some of them, and then fell out again
so adroitly, that Maude was kept in a constant fever of excitement,
until one day, early in August, when, in walking by herself up the road
which led to the hotel on the mountain, she met Jack Heyford, who had
arrived the night before, and was on his way, he said, to call on her.
“I was up here a few years ago,” he explained, as they walked back
together, “and I retained so pleasant a remembrance of the mountain
scenery that I wanted to see it again; so, as I could have a vacation of
two weeks, I came first to Oakwood, but it was lonely there with Georgie
gone; she’s off to Saratoga, you know, and hearing you were here, I
concluded to come too. You are stopping at a farm-house. I have an
indistinct recollection of Mr. Overton; a queer old fellow, isn’t he?”
He talked very fast, and Maude did not hear more than half he said, for
her tumultuous thoughts. If Louise Overton were really Edna Churchill,
then Jack Heyford would recognize her, for he had been with her at the
time of the accident, and had seen her frequently in Chicago.
“Yes, I have her now,” Maude thought, as she said to Jack. “Mr. Overton
has a niece living with him, Miss Louise Overton, a pretty little
creature, whom you are sure to fall in love with. I hardly think she
could have been here when you were at Rocky Point before.”
“No, I think not. I have no recollection of seeing a person of that
name. Pretty, is she?” Jack answered as indifferently as if he really
had no idea of meeting any young lady at the farm-house, except Maude
herself, and that his sole object that morning, was to call upon the
girl chatting so gayly at his side, and telling him how pretty and
charming and sweet Miss Overton was, and how he was certain to lose his
heart at once.
“Suppose I have lost it already,” Jack said, glancing at Maude, whose
cheeks flushed a little, and who tossed her head airily and made him
some saucy reply.
Of all the young men she had known, Maude liked Jack Heyford the best.
She had thought him a little awkward and rusty when she first saw him at
Oakwood, but had recognized through all the genuine worth and goodness
of the man, and felt that he was true as steel. He was greatly improved
since that time, and Maude was not unconscious of the attention she was
attracting as she sauntered slowly on with the handsome stranger at her
side. Edna saw them coming.
Indeed, she had watched all the morning for Jack, for she knew he was to
have reached the Mountain House the night before, and that he would call
on _Miss Somerton_ that morning, and be introduced to her; and her
conscience smote her for the part she was acting.
“If Uncle Phil was not so foolish about it, I should tell Maude at
once,” she thought, as after Maude’s departure for a walk she made her
toilet, in expectation of Jack Heyford’s call.
She had schooled herself so well that when at last Jack came and was
presented to her, she received him without the least sign that this was
not their first meeting; and Maude, who watched them curiously, felt
chagrined and disappointed that neither manifested the slightest token
of recognition, but met as entire strangers.
“It’s funny, when I am so sure,” she thought; and for several days she
lived in a constant fever of excitement and perplexity.
Regularly each day Jack came to the cottage, and stayed so long that
Becky suspected him to be “Miss Maude’s beau;” while Ruth Gardner, who
was there frequently to help make up the game of croquet, interpreted
his manner differently, and guessed that while he jested with and teased
Miss Somerton, his preference was for Edna, who was evidently bent upon
not encouraging him in the least, or giving him a chance to speak.
But Jack had his chance at last, on a morning when Maude and Ruth, with
Maria Belknap and the Unitarian minister, were playing croquet upon the
lawn behind the farm-house, and Edna was sitting alone on the stoop of
the front door. Uncle Phil was gone, and as Aunt Becky was busy with her
dinner in the kitchen, there was nothing in the way, and Jack told his
story in that frank, outspoken way which characterized all he did. It
was not like Charlie’s wooing; it lacked the impetuous, boyish fire
which refused to be denied, and yet Edna knew that the love offered to
her now was worth far more than Charlie’s love had been; that with Jack
Heyford she should rest secure, knowing that no shadow of wrong had ever
soiled his garments. And for a moment she hesitated, and thought of
Annie, whom she loved, and looked up into the honest eyes regarding her
so eagerly, and coming gradually to have a sorry, anxious expression as
she did not answer.
“Won’t you speak to me, Edna?” he said. “Won’t you answer me?”
“Oh, Mr. Heyford,” she cried at last. “I am so sorry you have told me
this, for I don’t believe I can say yes, at least not now. Give me till
to-morrow, and then if I find that I can be to you what your wife ought
to be, I will.”
Jack did not press her further, and when the croquet party came round
from the lawn, they found Edna sitting there alone, and Mr. Heyford gone
back to the Mountain House.
That night, when Uncle Phil came from the post-office, he brought a
letter from Aunt Jerry, enclosing one from Roy, who had written from a
little inn among the Scottish hills. It was only a pleasant, friendly
letter, telling of his journeyings and his mother’s health, which did
not seem to improve; but it sealed Jack Heyford’s fate.
Edna had no thought of ever marrying Roy, but she could not marry Jack,
and she sat down to tell him so on paper, feeling that she could do it
in this way with less of pain and embarrassment to them both. And as she
wrote, Roy’s letter lay open beside her, and Maude came bounding up the
stairs and stood at her side, almost before she knew that she was
coming. With a quick motion she put Roy’s letter away, but not until
Maude’s eyes had glanced at and recognized the handwriting.
“Eureka,” she whispered softly; and then, to Edna’s utter astonishment,
Maude knelt down beside her, and putting her arms around her neck, said
to her: “Dotty, don’t be angry, will you? I always find out things, and
you are Edna Churchill.”
Edna felt as if she was suffocating. Her throat closed spasmodically, so
that she could not speak, and for an instant she sat motionless, staring
at Maude, who, frightened at the expression of her face, kissed her
lips, and forehead, and cheek, and said:
“Don’t take it so hard. Nobody shall know your secret from me; nobody, I
assure you. I have guessed it ever so long. It was the _jet_ which
brought it to me. Roy spoke of his sister once last winter, and said he
had sent her some ornaments of jet, and then it flashed over me that my
little Dotty was the girl in whom I had been so interested ever since I
first heard of her. Speak to me, Dot. You are not offended?”
“No,” Edna gasped at last. “Only it came so sudden. I am glad you know.
I wanted you to know it, it seemed so like a miserable lie I was living
all the time.”
And then the two girls talked a long, long time, of Edna’s early life,
of Charlie, and of Roy, whose letter Edna showed to Maude, and of whom
she never tired of hearing. Thus it came about that Edna’s note to Jack
was not finished, and Edna gave him his answer verbally the next
morning, when, punctual to the appointed time, he came and walked with
her alone down to the clump of chestnut trees, which grew near the
roadside. Something in Edna’s face, when he first saw it that morning,
prepared him in part, but the blow cut deep and hurt him cruelly. Still
without love, Jack did not want any woman for his wife, and when Edna
said, “I respect and like you more than any man I know, but cannot find
in my heart the love you ought to have in return for what you give,” he
did not urge her, but took both her hands in his, and kissing them
reverently, said:
“You have dealt fairly with me, Edna, and I thank you for it, and will
be your friend just as I always have been. Let there be no difference
between us, and in proof thereof, kiss me once. I will never ask it
again.”
He stooped down to her, and she gave the boon he asked, and said to him,
in a choking voice:
“God bless you, Mr. Heyford, and you may one day find a wife tenfold
more worthy of you than I can ever be.” They walked slowly back to the
house, and found Maude waiting for them, with her mallet in hand, and
Uncle Phil in close custody, with a most lugubrious expression on his
face. Maude, who was nearly croquet mad, had waylaid the old man, and
captured him, and coaxed a mallet into his hand, and was leading him in
triumph to the playground, when Jack and Edna came up, and she insisted
upon their joining her.
“A four-handed game was so much nicer,” she said; “and Mr. Heyford and
Uncle Phil were so fairly matched,” and she looked so jaunty in her
short, coquettish dress, and pleaded so skilfully, that Jack took the
offered mallet, and, sad as was his heart just then, he found a space in
which to think how pretty Miss Somerton was, and how gracefully she
managed her mallet, and how small and well-shaped was the little foot
she poised so skilfully upon the balls when bent upon croqueting.
Maude Somerton was very beautiful, and there was a power in her sunny
blue eyes, and a fascination in her coaxing, winning ways, which few men
could resist. Even sturdy Uncle Phil felt their influence, and under the
witching spell of her beauty did things for which, when he was alone, he
called himself “a silly old fool, to be so carried away with a girl’s
pranks.”
Maude sported the first short dress which had appeared in Rocky Point,
and she looked so odd, and pretty withal, in her girlish costume of
white, trimmed with a pale buff, and she wore such stylish gaiters, and
showed them so much with their silken tassels, that Uncle Phil confessed
again to a “curis feeling in his stomach,” and was not sure whether it
was quite the thing for an old chap like him to let his eyes rest often
on those little feet, and that trim, lithe form, which flitted so airily
around the wickets, and made such havoc with the enemy’s balls. It
surely was not well for a young man like _Jack_ to look at her often, he
decided, especially when arrayed in that short gown, which made her look
so like a little girl, and showed her feet so plainly.
They had a merry game, and Jack was interested in spite of himself, and
accepted Uncle Phil’s invitation to stay to dinner, and felt a queer
little throb in his veins when Maude, acknowledging Edna and himself
victors, insisted upon crowning them as such, and wove a wreath of
myrtle for Edna’s hair, while for him she gathered a bouquet, and
fastened it in his button-hole.
She had said to Edna, “I shall tell Mr. Heyford that I know your secret.
I must talk to somebody about it.” And seizing the opportunity when Edna
was in the house consulting with Becky about the dessert, she told him
what she had discovered, and waxed so enthusiastic over “little Dot,”
and arranged the bouquet in his button-hole a little more to her liking,
and stood, with her glowing face and fragrant breath, so near to him,
and did it all so innocently, that Jack began to wonder he had never
before observed “how very beautiful Miss Somerton was, and what pleasant
ways she had,” and when he went back to the Mountain House at night, his
heart, though very sore and sad, was not utterly crushed and desolate.
He played croquet the next day and the next, sometimes with Edna for his
partner, but oftener with Maude, who, being the champion player,
undertook to teach him and correct some of his faults. He must not
_poke_, nor stand behind, nor strike too hard, nor go after other balls
when he could as well make his wicket first. And Jack tried to learn,
and do his teacher justice, and became at last almost as interested in
the game as Maude herself, whom he sometimes beat. And when at the end
of his two weeks’ vacation he went back to his business in New York, he
seemed much like himself, and Edna felt that he was bearing his
disappointment bravely, and that in time life would be to him just what
it had been before he thought of her.
Maude’s departure followed close upon Jack’s, and as she bade Edna
good-by, she said, “I shall never rest, Dotty, till I see you at
Leighton, where you belong. But I want you to go there first as Louise
Overton. Take my word for it, you will succeed better so, with _la
mère_, and possibly with _le frère_ too. When they come home I am going
to manage for you. See now if I don’t Adieu.”