"Of course. Why, poor mother would be crushed!" Then with a change of
tone, "Here she comes this minute, Clover Bryant!"
"And my eyes are so red!"
"Better not come out here, mother dear," cried Mildred, rising
precipitately and advancing to meet her. "The--the clothes are so damp,
you'll--you'll take cold; and the sun is so hot, you'll be--be"--
The mother, with her delicate face smiling beneath the prematurely white
hair, placed her arm around the tall girl as she met her, and together
they advanced, Mildred most reluctantly, to where Clover sat smiling and
striving to look indifferent.
"Have you come out to hear the jays scold?" asked the latter. "There is
one up there now. Let me hang the hammock for you." She sprang to her
feet.
Mrs. Bryant, without relinquishing her hold on Mildred, put the other
arm around her eldest daughter.
Clover flushed violently. There was a look in her mother's loving eyes,
the hint of a smile on her lips, which the girl recognized. It was a
certain exalted expression of the dear lined face which her children had
seen before, and it always meant rising to an emergency. The girl's
heart contracted painfully.
The wet clothing on the lines flapped spasmodically behind the trio.
Unsteady board fences enclosed the narrow heated area. The
poverty-stricken tree stretched its gaunt, ill-clothed arms aloft, and
the blue-jay's harsh, jeering note added one more petty discomfort to
the surroundings.
"My dear little girls," said the gentle voice with unusual tenderness.
The sisters only regarded their mother in an apprehensive silence.
"I went to your room for something, Clover, and I found my letter from
Uncle Adolph. I have just been reading it. Don't regret it. I had to
know."
*CHAPTER III.*
*A MORNING DRIVE.*
In a city like Chicago, where events occur with phenomenal rapidity, two
or three years make great changes in a neighborhood. Hyde Park, which
long hung back like a rebellious child loath to yield its independence,
had at last placed its reluctant hand in that of the mother city; but
with the suburb's growing population there had already come a new state
of affairs. It was no longer the case that everybody in Hyde Park knew
everybody else. Those families who made homes there when but two trains
ran daily to and from town, felt, on the rare and rarer occasions of
meeting one another in a stranger crowd, the drawing of a tie tender as
that of kinship.
Mrs. Bryant belonged to this pioneer set, and so did Mr. Van Tassel. To
those residents who had danced with them "long before the fire" at the
parties in the old Hyde Park hotel, this was reason sufficient why the
wealthy widower should manifest a continued interest in the friend of
his young manhood and her fatherless children. Those long-finished
polkas in the long-destroyed hostelry on the lake shore, where scattered
neighbors once met with the unconventional jollity of family reunion,
had left behind them a green memory in some hearts.
Florence Badger had been a fair little bud at those gatherings, and of
course Richard Van Tassel, her gay young partner, was not likely to
forget either her or his chum, Lewis Bryant, whom she afterward married.
The children of the two families had gone to school together and carried
the intimacy on to the next generation; and when Mr. Van Tassel's wife
and daughter had been taken from him, more potent to comfort than any
other soul had been the gentle invalid, the friend of his youth, whose
lines for many years had fallen in hard places.
So, small wonder that the fine house on the lake shore and the shabby
home on the back street had kept up an interchange of civilities. These
had been chiefly carried on by the young people until Jack had gone to
college. After that it was to the Bryants that Richard Van Tassel liked
best to carry his boy's letters, and talk over his haps and mishaps,
secure of sympathy.
Of late he had not been blind to the fact that the shabby home was
growing shabbier, but it was not an easy matter to bestow gifts here.
This very spring he had remarked that Clover's eyes looked too large,
and that they rested with greater anxiety on her feeble mother. He had
even hinted to Mrs. Bryant a trip up into Wisconsin or across the lake;
but she had parried the potential offer with gentle firmness.
Many a drive around the parks and boulevards did the invalid take with
her daughters in the glistening Van Tassel equipage, greatly to the
wonder of certain Hyde Parkers whose experience did not date back to
"before the fire."
The owner of the horses was away, that they knew. Jack Van Tassel
graduated from Harvard this June, and his father had gone East for the
great occasion. Now it was early August, and he had not returned. "It
was so lovely of him," many said, "to give poor people like the Bryants
the use of his carriage while he was away. A real charity. Not many men
would be so thoughtful."
These neighbors wondered if the freedom of the fine equipage extended to
the freedom of the house; but this they could not discover, for the
Bryants were not talkers unless surrounded by old friends. Hard
experience had taught even the young people reserve. Nevertheless it
might have been a gratification to these curious ones to know that the
Bryants had never taken liberties at the Van Tassel mansion. It had
even been interdicted always to the girls by their careful mother to
accept a general invitation to sit on the piazzas and rest, when they
came home from the sailing expeditions their souls loved.
The house was fascinatingly near the water, and the level lawns about it
cool with a fine mossy greenness. The hammocks and rocking chairs on
the spacious piazzas gave alluring invitations to recline and study the
ever-changing coloring of the illimitable fresh-water sea; and the
elm-trees--not even on the boulevards were there such respectable
elm-trees as had here been coaxed to endure the harshness of bleak
lake-winds.
This being the case, it was hard, Clover and Mildred used to think, and
their little sister thought so still, that unless Jack happened to be on
hand to give them a specific invitation, they must pass this unused
luxury by, and trudge around the corner up the sunny main street, and so
on to the sandy roughness of the unpaved avenue they called home. Still
they never thought of rebelling. The rule was as fixed as those of the
Medes and Persians, and it must be a right one because mother made it.
On the very day that Clover, hard pressed by thoughts that ran in a
discouraging circle, disfigured her pretty hands by doing the family
washing, Mr. Van Tassel returned to Chicago.
On the following morning the sun was reflected brightly from the wheels
of his buggy as he drove a pair of well-groomed horses to the Bryant
house. Elsie Bryant, a girl of fourteen, saw him as he drew up before
the wooden walk. With a little exclamation of delight she ran down the
flight of steps to greet him.
Mr. Van Tassel gathered the reins into one hand and reached the other
down to the child.
"How are you all, Elsie? Mother about the same? Oh, I'm sorry for the
headache. Is Clover at home? Will you tell her I have a business
errand to do this morning, and very much want her company on my drive?
Tell her she must indulge me. I can't let her off. I'll come in later
to see Mrs. Bryant."
"Lucky Clover," thought Elsie as she ran obediently up the steps. "I
just wish he had asked me."
And lucky Clover thought herself when she received the message. She was
so tired of her own depressing thoughts! The fresh air and the sight of
the kind familiar face would do her good.
When Mr. Van Tassel saw her run down the steps in her blue gown a few
minutes later, he descended from the buggy with middle-aged
deliberation.
"Welcome back," said Clover, trying to speak cheerily. It seemed to her
that misfortune must have set an ugly visible mark upon her.
"Thank you for that. Thank you for coming," said Mr. Van Tassel,
looking at her as their hands met as though he saw nothing unlovely. He
assisted her into the buggy, and following, started the horses.
"Did Jack come with you?"
"No. I thought that I might find him here. He expected to arrive about
now."
"Proud, happy Jack, I suppose," said the girl smiling.
"Rather a homesick Jack I fear he will be for a little while, unless he
has recovered already. You know the young man has a way of recovering
from depression."
"Jack and depression! What an impossible connection of ideas," laughed
Clover. It seemed wonderful to herself that she could laugh. It was so
long since she had. Three days is an interminable term of misery when
one is twenty. They were bowling swiftly along Drexel Boulevard, beside
the rich foliage and flower-beds of the landscape gardener; the air was
clear and cool, and driving was quite a different thing when Mr. Van
Tassel held the reins in this light vehicle, from the same exercise by
favor of his solemn coachman, in the heavy and gorgeous carriage driven
at a rate suited to Mrs. Bryant's sensitive condition.
Up Oakwood to Michigan Boulevard they sped, and soon the buggy stopped
before one of the splendid stone mansions on that avenue.
"I shall be but one minute," said Mr. Van Tassel as he dismounted, and
he kept his word. When Clover saw the brevity of the message given to
the servant who answered his ring at the door, a faint wonder passed
through her mind that Mr. Van Tassel had thought fit to bring it in
person.
She was not inclined to quarrel with the fact, however, and when her
escort returned and the heads of the spirited horses were turned back to
the south, she inhaled a long breath of satisfaction.
"You have not found pleasanter weather than this where you have been, I
am sure," she said.
"No," he answered, "nor pleasanter circumstances. I have thought of you
a good many times though, Clover, and wished you might be with me."
He turned and looked into her eyes as he spoke, the innocent blue eyes
that returned his gaze fully. Her pretty lips parted in her interest.
"That was very good of you," she said sincerely. "I would like to go to
every interesting place, so I am sure I should have echoed your wish.
Where was it? At the seashore?"
"A part of the time,--yes."
"I wonder if I shall ever go East," exclaimed the girl with a sigh.
"New York, Boston, Philadelphia, I should like them to be something
beside names to me,--but what an idea!" She broke off with a short
laugh. Her thoughts had indeed, like unruly steeds, kicked over the
traces by which they had been harnessed to carry her by a safe road out
of a perplexing labyrinth.
"Not an absurd idea at all," said her companion quietly.
"Our lake looks very like the ocean, I suppose," she continued, after an
involuntary sigh.
"Not very much. I don't say it is not as beautiful," replied Mr. Van
Tassel loyally, "but the electric blues and translucent greens of Lake
Michigan have little in common with the deep, strong indigo, or
bottle-green, of old Ocean. There is as much variance in their
complexions as in their voices; as much difference between the sweep of
the fresh-water surf and the boom of the ocean's tide, as between the
tones of a tenor and a bass voice."
"But, Mr. Van Tassel, think of the lake storms!" returned Clover, her
Chicago spirit piqued. "I've stood on the lake shore many a time when I
could lean my full weight against the wind and be supported; and how
does the boom of the breakers, hammering the piers on those nights,
sound at your house?"
Mr. Van Tassel smiled. "Well," he answered, "we will say like a _tenore
robusto_ in full force. But there again comes in the difference in
disposition. When Lake Michigan becomes angry, it flies into a white
rage in a few minutes, and as soon as the spell is over calms down into
comparative placidity; while the ocean, slow to wrath, relaxes but
gradually, storming on with splendid fury under a dazzling sun."
"A difference greatly in favor of the lake, I should say," returned
Clover.
"Ah, but think of the terrors of Michigan's caprices. Smiling, even
seeming to dream in a happy reverie one minute, rocking its little
sailboats softly on its breast like a gentle mother, all at once with
appalling suddenness it flies into a passion, and while the fit is on
works havoc that inflicts long years of misery, though the very next
hour may find it dimpling again in gay carelessness of calamity. Not so
with the ocean. The sailor relies on its steady winds, and the honest
signs it hangs in the heavens for all to read, giving fair warning of
approaching danger."
"Why, Mr. Van Tassel! As if you didn't know that our sky hangs out
signs too, only, as Jack says, one must be brought up right on the lake
to understand them. I had no idea you were such a poet, and so
disloyal."
As the girl made her warm protest, her companion threw back his head and
gave the hearty laugh that his friends liked to hear.
They had sped down Grand Boulevard, through Washington Park, and now
entered the Midway Plaisance.
What that name suggested to Chicagoans up to a short time ago was the
loneliest, most rural drive of their park system. It even wound through
the woods at one point, making the refreshing variety of a curve in the
city of straight lines.
On this morning of the summer of '89, when Mr. Van Tassel's horses
turned into the broad avenue, their hoofs rang out in unbroken
stillness. Not another vehicle or human being was in sight. Birds glided
noiselessly among the trees that lined each side of the driveway.
Grassy fields stretched away in level, tranquil monotony in all
directions. It was the Midway Plaisance: but with no dull rhythmic beat
of drum to be the first greeting of each new arrival, no shadowing forth
of the scenes in the near future, when this unknown plot of ground
should become the rendezvous and rallying place of the civilized,
half-civilized, and savage nations of the earth.
It was the Midway Plaisance. What's in a name? The words now signify
to millions a babel of tongues, a baffling concatenation of noises and
odors, a dizzying throng of sensations and emotions, a wondrous
collection of novel sights. Yet, a little while ago it was the Midway
Plaisance, and Richard Van Tassel chose to drive through it with this
young girl because he wished for solitude, and he could find no more
secluded and unfrequented spot.
"You must be introduced to the charms of the sea before you decide on
the question of my loyalty," he said.
"That will never be, I fear," she answered soberly.
"Never is a long time. Hope for the best," said her companion cheerily.
"I do try to, but I haven't Jack's cork-like disposition." A sadness
had crept into the girl's tone in spite of herself.
"She is thinking of Mrs. Breckinridge's invitation," decided Van Tassel.
"Your day will come. Every man and woman has his opportunity," he
suggested.
"I hope you are right," answered Clover rather dispiritedly.
Her companion looked around at her tenderly, but her large eyes were
gazing between the horses' heads. "My poor little girl," he said, and
at his tone Clover glanced at him in surprise. "Is the mother not so
well?" he asked. "Something depresses you."
"I do not think she is worse," answered the girl slowly, but her eyes
moistened, and she looked away.
"I understand. It is hard for you to be the head of the family. You
will grow old before your time."
Clover became afraid that she should cry. She looked resolutely at the
antics of a gopher on the fence.
"I have been growing young ever since we started," she answered lightly
at last. "I did feel haggard with age early this morning."
She might have added, and at every hour of the night; for her novel
problems would not let her sleep.
"I hope you mean to tell me your troubles always," said Mr. Van Tassel.
"That is very good of you," returned the girl, turning her head and
giving her companion a faint April smile, "and very tempting too. Even
though I am nearly certain that you cannot help me, I am weak enough to
wish to talk to you of what I must repress at home."
"I am glad to hear that," returned the other gravely, "gladder than I
can express."
So Clover told him of her uncle's debt to Mr. Bryant, of the small
allowance he had consequently made her mother, and of the fact of its
cessation; and while she still talked, their swift horses left the
Midway Plaisance and entered Jackson Park, quiet and refreshing at this
hour of the morning. The broad green field in its centre was studded
with haystacks whose perfume filled the air. Robins, thrushes, and
catbirds lurked in the quiet groves, and swans sailed majestically on
the lakelets where soon the Eskimo canoes would be equally at home.
Adjoining the field of new-mown hay, ducks paddled along the still green
banks of another sheet of water, as contentedly as later in the same
spot their brothers would swim in the shadow of the white columns of a
treasure-house of painting and sculpture.
Mr. Van Tassel drove his horses through the site of future State
buildings, down past the pavilion which afterward the people of Iowa
beautified with their ingenious decorations. Here, close to its gray
stones, he drew rein, and watched with his companion the gentle waves
break upon the sea wall.
Clover's recital had drawn to a close, and now that it was over she
became for the first time embarrassed in the silence that followed, and
doubtful of her own wisdom in having accepted the relief of speech. Her
companion was her mother's best and oldest friend. He had urged her to
confide in him. His present silence was doubtless owing to a deep
consideration as to how he might be helpful to her; but he was a rich
man. Clover had not thought of that till now. Her only hope, so far as
her vague thoughts were formulated, had been that he might communicate
with Uncle Adolph more effectively than she herself. Her cheeks grew
slowly, richly crimson. He turned, and she dreaded what he might be
going to say. When her timid eyes found his kind gaze, he extended his
hand to her.
"Do you trust me entirely, Clover?" he asked.
She was mystified, but as he evidently wished for her hand she placed it
in his.
"Yes, I--I"--she began incoherently, possessed by the suspicion that she
had been indelicate, and torn between the keen feeling of her mother's
needs and her repugnance to receiving a gift she might seem to have
requested.
"Don't be afraid, dear," he continued very kindly and quietly. "If we
are both honest, we shall not hurt each other. You have been frank.
Now it is my turn."
*CHAPTER IV.*
*CLOVER'S ANNOUNCEMENT.*
The next day Jack Van Tassel came home. The first warning the Bryants
had of his arrival was in hearing the familiar whistle of a scrap from
Carmen, which was Jack's particular call.
Only Clover and her mother were at home, Mildred having chaperoned the
younger children to a lawn party in the neighborhood.
"It is Jack!" cried Clover before the footstep had reached the steps.
She looked hopefully at her mother, who returned the significant gaze.
"He wouldn't whistle," continued the girl with soft eagerness, "if he
weren't--if he weren't the same old Jack."
"I hardly feel equal to seeing him to-day," said Mrs. Bryant
tremulously.
"You shall not, dear," was the hurried response, as Clover ran
downstairs from her mother's room where they had been sitting. She
threw open the house door.
"Clover herself," exclaimed the visitor, laughing with pleasure, and
wringing her offered hand with painful cordiality.
"I'm glad you've come at last," she answered; "and you don't look
sorry."
"Not a bit of it," was the breezy answer. "Where are Mrs. Bryant and
Mildred, and the small fry? I want to see everybody."
"The girls and Frank will be inconsolable to miss your first call, but
they've gone to a children's party; and mother, I am sorry to say, isn't
able to see any one to-day." While the girl spoke, her eyes alternately
met Jack's with a sort of wistful gladness, and then fell away. Her
face expressed the relief she felt to be thus standing and talking in
friendly, easy fashion with her old schoolmate.
"But come in and sit down," she added. "You did not come home at
Christmas, so we have a whole year's talking to do."
"Let us talk in the boat, Clover. Sorry Mrs. Bryant isn't well. I'll
call again when she can see me. It is just right for a sail. Don't you
want to come?"
"Yes, indeed," returned the girl heartily. "I have had only one sail
this summer. Let me go and get my hat, and say good-by to mother."
She ran upstairs and presently returned. Not a trace of yesterday's
care appeared in her countenance as the two started out gayly on the
road they had often traveled together.
Hyde Park still bore traces of being a country village. The young
people walked through fields of sweet clover and goldenrod, where now
massive hotels and blocks of granite and glass uprear. Chatting and
laughing, they hastened on toward the boat-house.
"It is pleasant to be back, I declare," said Jack heartily, looking with
affection over the billowy water, striped with greens and blues, which
had been his boyhood's playground. "Father says old friends are best,
and I believe he is right."
"Is he coming with us, this afternoon?" asked Clover half shyly.
"Why no," replied her companion, looking at her with undisguised
astonishment. "You don't mean to say father has developed a taste for
sailing while I have been off at the seat of learning?"
"He always liked it very well, didn't he?"
"Why, I believe he always preferred driving. I told Michael to put the
Flirt in the water. Yes, there she is. Now for an old timer, Clover;
the wind is superb."
The girl followed the speaker out upon the pier, and, resting her hand
lightly in the one he offered, stepped into the boat. Jack followed,
and they moved slowly along the little harbor and out through the narrow
opening between pier and breakwater, which has ushered so many boating
parties into the joys of a brisk voyage, and will do so no more forever.
Jack set the sail, and they began to move swiftly southward. The breeze
was strong, and had already raised waves over which the boat sprang,
striking a billow before she cut it, with a splash which echoed in the
heart with a thousand invigorating memories. It was going to be what
Mildred called a "jouncy" sail, and Clover, leaning back amid the boat's
cushions, would have been supremely content could her mind have been set
at rest upon one point.
Jack, unconscious of her reservation, bared his head and, holding the
tiller with one hand, waved the other toward his companion. "Now I am
at home," he declared.
Clover smiled and nodded in silence. She regarded him with less
complacence than she had felt half an hour before. It was passing
strange to feel a little shy and uncomfortable as she looked at
Jack,--not to be able to chaff him concerning the little mustache that
was a new acquisition, and which scarcely shaded his mouth.
The Flirt's white wings bore them past the dark pines on the shore, past
the sea-wall of the pleasant park, and the canal which fed its little
lakelets. Then on, past sandy beach and wild wood where the children
picked flowers in early summer, past sloughs where adventurous boys
skated in winter,--a deserted, unpromising, monotonously level bit of
country, surely, to be chosen as a cynosure for the eyes of all nations;
to be destined to become "the dazzling focus of a world's activity."
Clover, as she gazed, saw only her old playground. No vision came to her
of a white city, lovely and unsubstantial as though fashioned from the
clouds of heaven, and holy because the offering of the best of men's
hearts and brains. No such foreshadowing came to blot out and lift her
above her personal hopes and fears. She was recalled from absently
viewing the landscape by Jack's cheery voice.
"Shall we put about?" he asked.
"Yes, we might as well," she replied, and as she lowered her head the
boom swung over.
"I hope you won't get wet," he continued apologetically, for the spray
was flying high and higher. "This wind is growing to be too much of a
good thing. You must excuse my preoccupation, but I'm trying not to let
you be drenched."
"Oh, never mind me," replied Clover. "You know you always said I was
almost as good as a boy. I'm not going to lose my reputation on account
of a few pints of water, I assure you."
"If I had only put in a reef," said Jack regretfully, "and you had your
waterproof."
But the lake was growing boisterous and the facts remained that they had
neither reef nor waterproof.
"I suppose we shall have to go in, but this is fine, Clover."
"Indeed it is; and does it really bring you to the conclusion that there
is no place like home? I am interested, for you see I don't know any
place but home."
"Is that a fact?" Van Tassel glanced at his companion with a
recollection of what his father had told him of her relinquished
European trip.
"Yes, I am narrow to the last degree. I have never been out of my
native State."
Jack eyed the girl with admiring compassion.
"You've never even seen a hill, Clover."
"Never,--excepting the one in Lincoln Park."
Jack laughed. "Which was carted there in wagons," he added.
"The things I've never done, and never seen, would fill a large volume,"
went on the girl, her soft hair, golden in the sunlight, blowing into a
halo around her forehead, as she leaned on her elbow among the cushions;
"but then I'm not sure I shouldn't be as homesick, if I went away, as
May Frisbie was last summer. Do you remember, while she was in
Switzerland, she wrote home: 'For real scenery give me Illinois!' Ah,
here is some Lake Michigan!" for a dancing noisy wave had leaped above
the gunwale, a few spoonfuls vaulting saucily into the girl's lap.
"Pardon me, Clover. It is too bad; but we will be inside in a minute.
Sorry we had to be cut short in our career."
"Never mind, we've sailed while we sailed,--not dawdled along."
"And you will come with me again soon, I hope."
White-crested billows pursued them to the narrow opening in the
breakwater, as, wind-buffeted, the little craft entered the harbor.
When they landed, Jack left the boat-house janitor to take down his
sails, Clover put on her hat, and they walked up to the road together.
"All this time and not a word of congratulation," began Jack gayly, as
they started toward home.
Clover met his eyes with a quick, glad turn of her head, relieved from
the suspicion that had been filling her with apprehension; and
impulsively she put out her hand.
Her companion clasped it. "Well, better late than never," he said.
"I am so glad!" she returned, low and excitedly, "I was afraid you
didn't know it,--that perhaps your father hadn't told you of our
engagement."
"What! You engaged, Clover?" returned Jack in great astonishment,
pausing in his walk. "Why, of course I didn't know it." He shook her
passive hand again, and started on. "I haven't had a chance for any
talk with father yet, for when I dropped in at the office, this morning,
he had some old duffer with him. I only meant just now to fish for
congratulations for myself, that my grind is over. I've been receiving
a lot of them lately, you know. Excuse the egotism. Now I understand
why you have seemed to have something on your mind this afternoon. I do
congratulate him most heartily, whoever he is. He's a happy man. Do I
know him?"
Jack saw his companion turn pale to her lips, as he asked the question,
and her eyes amazed him by their piteous wistfulness as she raised them
to his.
"I have made a great--a great mistake to speak," she returned faintly,
"but I thought from what you said--and I hoped so you would not object!
He is," eagerly, "oh, he is happy, Jack. It is your father."
The young man stared blankly into the white face, then his own turned
red. Through all the tan of seashore sun she could see the color rise,
and as the affectionate interest that had shone from his expressive eyes
gave place to a violent revulsion of feeling, it seemed to her that a
physical coldness crept around her heart.
"This is news to me," he said in a voice she did not know. "I--I
wouldn't have believed it of you, Clover."
The girl winced. The contempt of her old playfellow was the severest
blow she had ever had to bear. She walked fast under the stress of
feeling, and her companion kept pace with her.
"This is why she refused the Breckinridge invitation," thought Van
Tassel hotly. "My poor, generous, blind father."
They kept silence for half a block, then Clover spoke again, recovered
calmness in her pale face.
"Your father said that if we were honest with each other, we should not
do wrong," she said clearly, "and we have been very honest. He loves
me. He wants to take all my cares upon himself. Nearly all our means
of subsistence has recently been taken from us, and I was bewildered and
helpless when Mr. Van Tassel came to me with his love and generosity."
"An irresistible temptation, no doubt," replied Jack dryly.
"It _was_ a great temptation. I have the future of three children in my
care, with all my inexperience; but the keenest pang in my helplessness
was mother's condition."
"You are honest; if you were equally so with my father, I do not wonder
it occurred to his great heart to do as he has done."
The hot blood flew to Clover's cheeks. "You are wrong to insult me,"
she said, controlling herself with heroic effort, for her hurt youth
longed to seek relief in flight instead of waiting to parley. "You will
soon know that Mr. Van Tassel loves me; and--and"--suddenly turning
suppliant, "when he told me so, and represented all that he could do for
me if I would consent to marry him, why should I have refused? I did
not know it would make you so angry, Jack, and," with eager explanation,
"I do not care for anybody."
Her companion gave a short laugh. "A nice lookout for my father," he
said curtly.
"You will not understand--you will not approve!" she said passionately,
in a low voice that began to tremble. They were nearing her home now.
"It is hard for you; perhaps it is wrong to you. So far as my own
happiness goes, I could give it all up for your sake, for your rights
are to be considered. Ah, there is mother in the window. She sees you,
Jack!"
The white head behind the window-pane inclined, and Van Tassel
mechanically lifted his hat.
"Do you see the peaceful look in her face?" went on the girl's unsteady
voice. "She has only looked like that since yesterday. No," with new
strength, and no supplication in her manner as she unconsciously drew
herself up, "I will not waver. Say what you please to me. Think what
you will of me; I can have but one thought, I must have but one, and
that is--mother!"
Van Tassel lifted his hat once more, as to a stranger.
"Not one friendly word?" she asked desperately, her breath coming fast.
"What do you want?" asked the other. "That I should wish you
prosperity?"
"You surely do not wish me ill, Jack?"
"You have just declared your intention not to consider me. What can my
wishes be to you? My only course is to efface myself," and without
another word of farewell Van Tassel bowed, and, turning on his heel,
hurried away up the street.
*CHAPTER V.*
*MISS BERRY'S VISITORS.*
Miss Lovina Berry stood on the stone doorstep of her square, white house
early one evening soon after the scene narrated in the last chapter.
The elm growing in her yard would have put to shame those so carefully
tended in front of the Van Tassel mansion a thousand miles away, and
more of the noble trees stood outside the white picket fence and shaded
the country road.
The flowers in her carefully weeded garden were homely and wholesome,
like her own placid face, as she stood, elbows in her hands, regarding
the neighbor who was in the act of departing from her hospitable roof.
"You're sure 't won't inconvenience you a mite, Loviny?" asked the
latter, folding a brown paper parcel beneath her shawl as her anxious
upturned face met Miss Berry's benevolent gaze. "You won't need the
pattern this week?"
"No, I sha'n't need it this week," answered Lovina pleasantly; then, as
the other started off contentedly toward the little white gate, she
added in an equable, unvexed undertone: "but if I want it any time
within two months I shall have to come after it, that I know. There
ain't anybody slacker 'n you be, Ann Getchell, from one end o' Pearfield
to the other." Miss Berry continued to watch contemplatively the woman
whom she had characterized with such passionless severity, and suddenly
she saw her stoop.
"Your posies do smell so good, Loviny," Miss Getchell called back. "I
s'pose you don't care if I take some old man?"
Miss Berry smiled, and stepping deliberately off the stone advanced
toward her guest. "Take any old man you can get, Ann. I wouldn't lay a
straw in your way."
"That's an old joke, Loviny," returned the other with a sniff, breaking
a piece of the feathery stuff with its pungent sweet odor, while her
hostess with generous hand gathered the best the garden afforded, and
tying the nosegay with a bit of striped grass, bestowed it upon the
visitor, who buried her nose in its depths.
"You're just as much of an old maid as I be, you know," added Miss
Getchell with an upward look.
"Just exactly, Ann. I don't know but more; more set in that direction,
as it were."
Miss Lovina's lips twitched a little as she rested her arms on the gate
after her guest had gone out, but all her neighbors had reason to know
that the milk of human kindness became cream in her case, and Ann
Getchell had too often benefited by its richness to feel less than
content now. Indeed, as she turned a curve in the country road and
hugged closer her brown paper parcel, she soliloquized with much
satisfaction:--
"I wasn't sure she'd let me have it. Loviny always does set so much
store by what Mis' Page sends her, and that dollman has got a style to
it that I hain't seen anywhere else. I can get it out o' my old gray
poplin, I'm next to certain. Them spots don't show hardly at all on the
other side--Why, Mr. Gorham!" The spinster started back with a short,
shrill screech. "What a turn you did give me! Why," clutching the left
side of her dress waist, "I'm all of a tremble. You riz up so
unexpected from behind that rock that I--law! I can't hardly stand up."
The young man who had thus rudely interrupted an absorbing sunset dream
looked upon the ostentatiously perturbed speaker with some trouble in
his absent gaze.
"Pardon me, Miss Getchell. The evening is so beautiful, I had thrown
myself down in the grass there to listen to the thrushes, and that
moment happened to decide I must be moving. I did not hear your soft
tread approaching."
Over Miss Ann's agitated countenance there stole a gratified expression.
This reference to her soft tread had a pleasing sound. It was
characteristic of this young man to appear to compliment when no
proceeding was further from his thoughts. More worldly-wise and
charming women than Miss Getchell had been similarly misled by him.
Nature in mischievous mood had added to his muscular physique the
features of a hero of romance, and launched him, a practical joke, upon
society.
The little woman tilted her thin head to one side with an arch air, and
lifted her sharp-nosed face toward his pensive eyes.
"Ain't it a coincidence I should 'a' met up with you just now? I've got
a pattern under my arm this minute that your sister'n law sent Loviny
Berry. I didn't know as you was in town."
Her companion was anxious to pass on; but sense of duty forbade. He had
startled Miss Ann. It would be uncivil to leave her abruptly.
"I have but just arrived. I've come down for a flying visit to Miss
Berry."
"Jus' so. I've jus' come from there, as I said. You hain't been down in
years, have you?"
"It is a long time for me to stay away from Pearfield. Good"--
"Loviny didn't say a word about expectin' you," said Miss Ann curiously.
"Do you still like lawyerin'?"
"Yes, I like it. Good evening, Miss Getchell." He lifted his hat; then
as though compunction prompted the act, he advanced a step and shook
Miss Ann's limp hand. He was recalling that she had been kind to him in
a past when the quality of apples was not material, and the fruit on her
gnarly little trees had seemed desirable.
"Good evenin'," she answered. "Come and see me if you're stayin' long
enough."
"Thank you. I return to Boston almost immediately."
The young man pursued his way, relieved to be free again to give all his
attention to the soft summer sky where the light was fading; to the
bird-notes which were becoming disconnected and dreamy; to the scents
which rose gratefully from willows, and the thorny luxuriance of vines
that rioted over the stone wall at the roadside.
Miss Berry was still lingering at her gate when he approached the house.
She dropped her hands from her elbows and grasped the pickets of the
fence at sight of the face under the lifted hat.
"Why, Mr. Gorham!" she exclaimed, and opened the gate, her countenance
alight with pleased surprise. "I was just thinkin' about you this
minute, as I was standin' here."
"Naturally. I was a coming event, and I cast my shadow before."
The visitor shook the plump offered hand with no abstraction now in his
eyes, and his teeth gleamed beneath his mustache. "I've no doubt I can
tell what you were thinking about, too."
"Like enough. I s'pose lawyers know everything. Come into the house,"
said Miss Lovina hospitably.
"Not yet. It is far too pleasant here. Where is that old settee that
used to be under the oriole elm? Why, there it is, of course, only
pushed to the other side," and the speaker started for the desired
haven.
"Come back, come back, Gorham Page. Don't you wade through the wet
grass!" exclaimed Miss Berry imperatively.
Her visitor turned around, laughing. "That sounds natural, Aunt Love,"
he said.
"Well, perhaps it does," replied the other in half-laughing apology;
"but haven't you learned good sense yet? The dew's a-fallin', and that
grass ought to been mowed last week."
"Do you remember when I used to mow it for you?"
"I remember when you used to promise to," rejoined Miss Berry, the
corners of her mouth still twitching. "Look here. I ain't goin' under
that elm to set with my feet in the water."
"All right," replied Page, succumbing with a sigh, and casting a glance
toward the graceful branches of the tallest elm, behind which the new
moon glimmered in a primrose sky. "What an evening!" he ejaculated.
"'M; dewy though," returned Miss Berry.
"I do like those old trees," said her guest slowly, continuing to gaze.
"So do the mosquitoes," replied Miss Berry inflexibly. "Come up on to
the stoop."
Page, with a smile of amusement, followed his hostess to the piazza,
where she ensconced him in one rocking chair, and herself in another.
"Do the orioles still hold possession of that elm?"
"Yes."
"I'm glad of that. The rest of the world may change, and must; but I'm
jealous of a hair's breadth of change in Pearfield."
"Well, I don't know. The hang-birds squabble a good deal," remarked
Miss Lovina impartially.
Her guest laughed again. The fact being that very few things in life
moved him to laughter, he was enjoying himself hugely.
"You are too practical; too unsentimental, Aunt Love," he asserted
argumentatively.
"Too unsentimental, hey?" responded Miss Berry, folding her hands over
the white apron that protected her striped gingham gown. "That's pretty
good from you. What does it mean? Have you repented o' your singular
ways, and been fallin' in love?"
"Oh, yes," responded the other, more seriously; then added simply, as
though stating an undeniable fact, "I am always falling in love."
"Then why don't you get married?" asked Miss Lovina bluntly. "I haven't
heard a thing about you in so long, I didn't know but what you was
married, only I hadn't received any cake. I didn't believe you'd forget
me."
"No," said Page. "If I could be as loyal to any girl as I am to you,
Aunt Love, I should certainly ask her if she would have me."
"But if you fall in love?" asked Miss Berry, perplexed.
"The trouble is I don't stay in love," explained Page with simple
sincerity. "I can't help forgetting about the young lady in a little
while. It really makes me blue sometimes. Now this summer at Bar
Harbor I met a girl who was remarkably pleasant. Pretty, clever, a good
talker. Her tastes and mine coincided. My mind was full of her when I
left the place."
"Have you heard from her since?" asked Miss Berry with interest. This
certainly sounded encouraging.
"Oh yes. I have sent her candy and flowers and books from time to
time," responded Page, beginning to look serious and abstracted.
"Then you write to each other?"
"Yes, oh yes, we do--yes. Come to think of it, though," Page gave a
short uncomfortable laugh, "I believe I never answered her last letter.
I've forgotten. I must look it up when I get back to town, if I can
remember it. Aunt Love," brightening, "are those scalloped cookies
still in the tin box?"
"Child! You haven't had any supper!" Miss Berry sprang to her feet with
astonishing celerity, her plumpness considered.