REFRESHMENTS had been served, the last ear of com husked and thrown
into the bam, and they had all risen to depart, when Hillhouse hurried
down the path from the cottage. He was panting audibly, and had
evidently been walking fast. He shook hands perfunctorily with Pole and
his wife, and then turned to Cynthia.
“I'm just from your house,” he said, “and I promised your mother to come
over after you. I was afraid I'd be late. The distance round by the road
is longer than I thought.”
“I'm afraid you _are_ too late,” said Floyd, with a polite smile. “I was
lucky enough to find the first red ear of corn, and the reward was
that I might take home any one I asked. I assure you I'll see that Miss
Cynthia is well taken care of.”
“Oh! I--I see.” The preacher seemed stunned by the disappointment. “I
didn't know; I thought--”
“Yes, Floyd has won fast enough,” said Pole. “An' he's acted the part
of the gentleman all through.” Pole explained what Floyd had done in
excusing Miss Cynthia from the principal forfeit he had won.
But Hillhouse seemed unable to reply. The young people were moving
towards the cottage, and he fell behind Floyd and his partner, walking
along with the others and saying nothing.
It was a lonely, shaded road which Floyd and his companion traversed to
reach her home.
“My luck turned just in the nick of time,” he said, exultantly. “I went
there, Cynthia, especially to talk with you, and I was mad enough to
fight when I saw how Pole had arranged everything. Then, by good-fortune
and cheating, I found that red ear; and, well, here we are. You have no
idea how pretty you look, with your hair--”
“Stop, don't begin that!” Cynthia suddenly commanded, and she turned her
eyes upon him steadily.
“Stop? Why do you say that?”
“Because you talk that way to all the girls, and I don't want to hear
it.”
Floyd laughed. “I declare you are a strange little creature. You simply
won't let me be nice to you.”
“Well, I'm sure I don't like you when you speak that way,” the girl
said, seriously. “It sounds insincere--it makes me doubt you more than
anything else.”
“Then some things about me _don't_ make you doubt me,” he said, with
tentative eagerness.
She was silent for a moment, then she nodded her head. “I'll admit that
some things I hear of you make me rather admire you, in a way.”
“Please tell me what they are,” he said, with a laugh.
“I've heard, for one thing, of your being very good and kind to poor
people--people who Mr. Mayhew would have turned out of their homes for
debt if you hadn't interfered.”
“Oh, that was only business, Cynthia,” Floyd laughed. “I simply can see
farther than the old man can--that's all. He thought those customers
never would be able to pay, but I knew they would some day, and,
moreover, that they would come up with the back interest.”
“I don't believe it,” the girl said, firmly. “Those things make me
rather like you, while the others make--they make me--doubt.”
“Doubt? Oh, you odd little woman!” They had reached a spring which
flowed from a great bed of rocks in the side of a rugged hill. He
pointed to a flat stone quite near it. “Do you remember, Cynthia, the
first time I ever had a talk with you? It was while we were seated on
this very rock.”
She recalled it, but only nodded her head.
“It was a year ago,” he pursued. “You had on a pink dress and wore your
hair like a little girl in a plait down your back. Cynthia, you were
the prettiest creature I had ever seen. I could hardly talk to you for
wondering over your dazzling beauty. You are even more beautiful now;
you have ripened; you are the most graceful woman I ever saw, and your
mouth!--Cynthia, I'll swear you have the most maddening mouth God ever
made out of flesh, blood and--soul!” He caught her hand impulsively and
sat down on the stone, drawing her steadily towards him.
She hesitated, looking back towards Baker's cottage.
“Sit down, little girl,” he entreated, “I'm tired. I've worked hard all
day at the store, and that corn-shucking wasn't the best thing to taper
off on.” She hesitated an instant longer, and then allowed him to draw
her down beside him. “There, now,” he said. “That is more like it.” He
still held her hand; it lay warm, pulsating and helpless in his strong,
feverish grasp.
“Do you know why I did not kiss you back there?” he asked, suddenly.
“I don't know why you didn't, but it was good of you,” she answered.
“No, it wasn't,” he laughed. “I won't take credit for what I don't
deserve. I simply put it off, Cynthia--put it off. I knew we would be
alone on our way home, and that you would not refuse me.”
“But I shall!” she said, with a start. “I'm not going to let you kiss me
here in--in this way.”
“Then you'll not pay the forfeit you owe,” he said, fondling her hand.
“I've always considered you fair in everything, and, Cynthia, you don't
know how much I want to kiss you. No, you won't refuse me--you can't.”
His left arm was behind her, and it encircled her waist. She made an
effort to draw herself erect, but he drew her closer to him. Her head
sank upon his shoulder and lay there while he pressed his lips to hers.
Then she sat up, and firmly pushed his arm down from her waist.
“I'm sorry I let you do it,” she said, under her breath.
“But why, darling?”
“Because I've said a thousand times that I would not, but I have--I
_have_, and I shall hate myself always.”
“When you have made me the happiest fellow in the state?” Floyd said,
passionately. “Don't go,” he urged, for she had risen and drawn her
hand from his and turned towards her home. He rose and stood beside her,
suiting his step to hers.
“Do you remember the night we sat and talked in the grape-arbor behind
your house?” he asked. “Well, you never knew it, but I've been there
three nights within the last month, hoping that I'd get to see you by
some chance or other. I always work late on my accounts, and when I am
through, and the weather is fine, I walk to your house, climb over
the fence, slip through the orchard, and sit in that arbor, trying to
imagine you are there with me. I often see a light in your room, and the
last time I became so desperate that I actually whistled for you. This
way--” He put his thumb and little finger between his lips and made an
imitation of a whippoorwill's call. “You see, no one could tell that
from the real thing. If you ever hear that sound again in the direction
of the grape-arbor you'll know I need you, little girl, and you must not
disappoint me.”
“I'd never respond to it,” Cynthia said, firmly. “The idea of such a
thing!”
“But you know I can't go to your house often with your mother opposing
my visits as she does, and when I'm there she never leaves us alone. No,
I must have you to myself once in a while, little woman, and you must
help me. Remember, if I call you, I'll want you badly.” He whistled
again, and the echo came back on the still air from a nearby hill-side.
They were passing a log-cabin which stood a few yards from the
road-side.
“Budd Crow moved there to-day,” Cynthia said, as if desirous of changing
the subject. “He rented twenty acres from my father. The 'White Caps'
whipped him a week ago, for being lazy and not working for his family.
His wife came over and told me all about it. She said it really had
brought him to his senses, but that it had broken her heart. She cried
while she was talking to me. Why does God afflict some women with men of
that kind, and make others the wives of governors and presidents?”
“Ah, there you are beyond my philosophic depth, Cynthia. You mustn't
bother your pretty head about those things. I sometimes rail against
my fate for giving me the ambition of a king while I do not even know
who--but I think you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I think I do,” said the girl, sympathetically, “and some day I
believe all that will be cleared up. Some coarse natures wouldn't care
a straw about it, but you _do_ care, and it is the things we want and
can't get that count.”
“It is strange,” he said, thoughtfully, “but of late I always think of
my mother as having been young and beautiful. I think of her, too, as a
well-bred, educated woman with well-to-do relatives. I think all those
things without any proof even as to what her maiden name was or where
she came from. Are you still unhappy at home, Cynthia?”
“Nearly all the time,” the girl sighed. “As she grows older my mother
gets more fault-finding and suspicious than ever. Then she has set her
mind on my marrying Mr. Hillhouse. They seem to be working together to
that end, and it is very tiresome to me.”
“Well, I'm glad you don't love him,” Floyd said. “I don't think he could
make any one of your nature happy.”
The girl stared into his eyes. They had reached the gate of the
farm-house and he opened it for her. “Now, good-night,” he said,
pressing her hand. “Remember, if you ever hear a lonely whippoorwill
calling, that he is longing for companionship.”
She leaned over the gate, drawing it towards her till the iron latch
clicked in its catch. With a shudder she recalled the hot kiss he had
pressed upon her lips, and wondered what he might later think about it.
“I'll never meet you there at night,” she said, firmly. “My mother
doesn't treat me right, but I shall not act that way when she is asleep.
You may come to see me here now and then, but it will go no further than
that.”
“Well, I shall sit alone in the arbor,” he returned with a low laugh,
“and I hope your hard heart will keep you awake. I wouldn't treat a
hound-dog that way, little girl.”
“Well, I shall treat a strong man that way,” she said, and she went into
the house.
She opened the front-door, which was never locked, and went into her
room on the right of the little hall. The night was very still, and down
the road she heard Floyd's whippoorwill call growing fainter and fainter
as he strode away. She found a match and lighted the lamp on her
bureau and looked at her reflection in the little oval-shaped mirror.
Remembering his embrace, she shuddered and wiped her lips with her hand.
“He'll despise me,” she muttered. “He'll think I am weak, like those
other girls, but I am not. I _am not_. I'll show him that he can't, and
yet”--her head sank to her hands, which were folded on the top of the
bureau--“I couldn't help it. My God! I couldn't help it. I must have
actually wanted him to--no, I didn't. I didn't; he held me. I had no
idea his arm was behind me till he--”
There was a soft step in the hall. The door of her room creaked like the
low scream of a cat. A gaunt figure in white stood on the threshold. It
was Mrs. Porter in her night-dress, her feet bare, her iron-gray hair
hanging loose upon her shoulders.
“I couldn't go to sleep, Cynthia,” she said, “till I knew you were safe
at home.”
“Well, I'm here all right, mother, so go back to bed and don't catch
your death of cold.”
The old woman moved across the room to Cynthia's bed and sat down on it.
“I heard you coming down the road and went to the front window. I had
sent Brother Hillhouse for you, but it was Nelson Floyd who brought you
home. Didn't Brother Hillhouse get there before you left?”
“Yes, but I had already promised Mr. Floyd.” The old woman met her
daughter's glance steadily. “I suppose all I'll do or say won't do a bit
o' good. Cynthia, you know what I'm afraid of.”
The girl stood straight, her face set and firm, her great, dreamy eyes
flashing.
“Yes, and that's the insult of it. Mother, you almost make me think you
are judging my nature by your own, when you were at my age. I tell you
you will drive me too far. A girl at a certain time of her life wants
a mother's love and sympathy; she doesn't want threats, fears, and
disgraceful suspicions.”
Mrs. Porter covered her face with her bony hands and groaned aloud.
“You are confessing,” she said, “that you are tied an' bound to him by
the heart and that there isn't anything left for you but the crumbs he
lets fall from his profligate table. You confess that you are lyin' at
his feet, greedily lappin' up what he deigns to drop to you and the rest
of those--”
“Stop!” Cynthia sprang to her mother and laid her small hand heavily on
the thin shoulder. “Stop, you know you are telling a deliberate--” She
paused, turned, and went slowly back to the bureau. “God forgive me! God
help me remember my duty to her as my mother. She's old; she's out of
her head.”
“There, you said something then!” The old woman had drawn herself erect
and sat staring at her daughter, her hands on her sharp knees. “That
reminds me of something else. You know my sister Martha got to worryin'
when she was along about my age over her law-suit matters, and kept it
up till her brain gave way. Folks always said she and I were alike. Dr.
Strong has told me time after time to guard against worry or I'd go out
and kill myself as she did. I haven't mentioned this before, but I do
now. I can't keep down my fears and suspicions, while the very air is
full of that man's conduct. He's a devil, I tell you--a devil in human
shape. Your pretty face has caught his fancy, and your holding him off,
so far, has made him determined to crush you like a plucked flower. Why
don't he go to the Duncans and the Prices and lay his plans? Because
those men shoot at the drop of a hat. He knows your pa is not of that
stamp and that you haven't any men kin to defend our family honor. He
hasn't any of his own; nobody knows who or what he is. My opinion is
that he's a nobody and knows it, and out of pure spite is trying to pull
everybody else down to his level.”
“Mother--” Cynthia's tone had softened. Her face was filling with sudden
pity for the quivering creature on the bed. “Mother, will you not have
faith in me? If I promise you honestly to take care of myself, and make
him understand what and who I am, won't that satisfy you? Even men with
bad reputations have a good side to their natures, and they often reach
a point at which they reform. A man like that interests a woman. I don't
dispute that, but there are strong women and weak women. Mother, I'm not
a weak woman; as God is my judge, I'm able to take care of myself. It
pains me to say this, for you ought to know it; you ought to _feel_ it.
You ought to see it in my eye and hear it in my voice. Now go to bed,
and sleep. I'm really afraid you may lose your mind since you told me
about Aunt Martha.”
The face of the old woman changed. It lighted up with sudden hope.
“Somehow, I believe what you say,” she said, with a faint smile.
“Anyway, I'll try not to worry any more.” She rose and went to the door.
“Yes, I'll try not to worry any more,” she repeated. “It may all come
out right.”
When she found herself alone Cynthia turned and looked at her reflection
in the glass.
“He didn't once tell me plainly that he loved me,” she said. “He has
never used that word. He has never said that he meant or wanted to
mar--” She broke off, staring into the depths of her own great, troubled
eyes--“and yet I let him hold me in his arms and kiss me--_me!_” A hot
flush filled her neck and face and spread to the roots of her hair. Then
suddenly she blew out the light and crept to her bed.