V.

In a fortnight that reflection was framed with a promise. Justine had

put her hand in his. The threads by which he succeeded in binding her to

him are needless to describe. He understood that prime secret in the art

of coercing affection which consists in making one's self desired. He

was never inopportune. Moreover, he saw that Justine, accustomed to the

devotion of other men, accepted such devotion as a matter of course; in

consequence he took another tack, and bullied her--a treatment which was

new to her, and, being new, attractive. He found fault with her openly,

criticised the manner in which she sat her horse, contradicted her

whenever the opportunity came, and jeered--civilly, it is true, but the

jeer was there and all the sharper because it was blunted--at any

enthusiasm she chanced to express. And then, when she expected it

least, he would be enthusiastic himself, and enthusiastic over nothing

at all--some mythical deed canned in history, the beauty of a child, or

the flush of the arbutus which they gathered on their rides. To others

whom he encountered in her presence he showed himself so

self-abnegatory, so readily pleased, sweet-tempered, and indulgent, so

studious even of their susceptibilities and appreciative of what they

liked and what they did not, that in comparing his manner to her and his

manner to them the girl grew vexed, and one evening she told him so.

They happened to be sitting alone in a corner of the verandah. From

within came the rhythm of a waltz; some dance was in progress,

affectioned by the few; Mrs. Metuchen was discussing family trees with a

party of Philadelphians; the air was sweet with the scent of pines and

of jasmines; just above and beyond, a star was circumflexed by the moon.

"I am sorry if I have offended," he made answer to her complaint. "Do

you mind if I smoke?" Without waiting for her consent he drew out a

cigarette and lighted it. "I have not intended to," he added. "To-morrow

I will go."

"But why? You like it here. You told me so to-day."

With a fillip of forefinger and thumb Roland tossed the cigarette out

into the road. "Because I admire you," he answered curtly.

"I am glad of that."

The reproof, if reproof there were, was not in her speech, but in her

voice. She spoke as one does whose due is conceded only after an effort.

And for a while both were mute.

"Come, children, it is time to go to bed." Mrs. Metuchen in her

fantastic fashion was hailing them from the door. Already the waltz had

ceased, and as Mrs. Metuchen spoke, Justine rose from her seat.

"Good-night, Don Quichotte," the old lady added; and as the girl

approached she continued in an audible undertone, "I call him Don

Quichotte because he looks like the Chevalier Bayard."

"Good-night, Mrs. Metuchen, and the pleasantest of dreams." But the

matron, with a wave of her glove, had disappeared, and Justine returned.

"At least you will not go until the afternoon?"

"Since you wish it, I will not."

She had stretched out her hand, but Roland, affecting not to notice it,

raised his hat and turned away. Presently, and although, in spite of

many a vice, he was little given to drink, he found himself at the bar

superintending the blending of gin, of lemon-peel, and of soda; and as

he swallowed it and put the goblet down he seemed so satisfied that the

barkeeper, with the affectionate familiarity of his class, nodded and

smiled.

"It takes a Remsen Cooler to do the trick, don't it?" he said.

And Roland, assenting remotely, left the bar and sought his room.

The next morning, as through different groups he sought for matron and

for maid, he had a crop under his arm and in his hand a paper.

"I have been settling my bill," he announced.

"But are you going?" exclaimed Mrs. Metuchen.

"I can hardly take up a permanent residence here, can I?" he replied.

"Oh, Justine," the old lady cried, and clutched the girl by the arm,

"persuade him not to." And fixing him with her glittering eyes, she

added, "If you go, sir, you leave an Aiken void."

The jest passed him unnoticed. He felt that something had been said

which called for applause, for Mrs. Metuchen was laughing immoderately.

But his eyes were in Justine's as were hers in his.

"You will ride, will you not? I see you have your habit on." And with

that, Justine assenting, he led her down the steps and aided her to the

saddle.

There are numberless tentative things in life, and among them an amble

through green, deserted lanes, where only birds and flowers are, has

witcheries of its own. However perturbed the spirit may have been, there

is that in the glow of the morning and the gait of a horse that can make

it wholly serene. The traveller from Sicily will, if you let him, tell

of hours so fair that even the bandits are coerced. Man cannot always be

centred in self; and when to the influence of nature is added the

companionship of one whose presence allures, the charm is complete. And

Roland, to whom such things hitherto had been as accessories, this

morning felt their spell. The roomy squalor of the village had been

passed long since. They had entered a road where the trees arched and

nearly hid the sky, but through the branches an eager sunlight found its

way. Now and then in a clearing they would happen on some shabby, silent

house, the garden gay with the tender pink of blossoming peach; and at

times, from behind a log or straight from the earth, a diminutive negro

would start like a kobold in a dream and offer, in an abashed, uncertain

way, a bunch of white violets in exchange for coin. And once an old man,

trudging along, saluted them with a fine parabola of hat and hand; and

once they encountered a slatternly negress, very fat and pompous, seated

behind a donkey she could have carried in her arms. But practically the

road was deserted, fragrant, and still.

And now, as they rode on, interchanging only haphazard remarks, Roland

swung himself from his horse, and, plucking a spray of arbutus, handed

it to the girl.

"Take it," he said; "it is all I have."

His horse had wandered on a step and was nibbing at the grass, and, as

he stood looking up at her, for the first time it occurred to him that

she was fair. However a girl may seem in a ball-room, if she ever looks

well she looks best in the saddle; and Justine, in spite of his

criticism, did not sit her horse badly. Her gray habit, the high white

collar and open vest, brought out the snuff-color of her eyes and hair.

Her cheeks, too, this morning must have recovered some of the flush they

had lost, or else the sun had been using its palette, for in them was

the hue of the flower he had gathered and held.

She took it and inserted the stem in the lapel of her coat.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"What would you think of me if I remained?"

"What would I? I would think--"

As she hesitated she turned. He could see now it was not the sun alone

that had been at work upon her face.

"Let _me_ tell. You would think that a man with two arms for sole income

has no right to linger in the neighborhood of a girl such as you. That

is what you would think, what anyone would think; and while I care

little enough about the existence which I lead in the minds of other

people, yet I do care for your esteem. If I stay, I lose it. I should

lose, too, my own; let me keep them both and go."

"I do not yet see why?"

"You don't!" The answer was so abrupt in tone that you would have said

he was irritated at her remark, judging it unnecessary and ill-timed.

"You don't!" he repeated. "Go back a bit, and perhaps you will remember

that after I saw you at your house I did not come back again."

"I do indeed remember."

"The next day I saw you in the Park; I was careful not to return."

"But what have I done? You said last night--"

"Why do you question? You know it is because I love you."

"Then you shall not go."

"I must."

"You shall _not_, I say."

"And I shall take with me the knowledge that the one woman I have loved

is the one woman I have been forced to leave."

"Roland Mistrial, how can you bear the name you do and yet be so unjust?

If you leave me now it is because you care more for yourself than you

ever could for me. It is not on my account you go: it is because you

fear the world. There were heroes once that faced it."

"Yes, and there were Circes then, as now."

As he made that trite reply his face relaxed, and into it came an

expression of such abandonment that the girl could see the day was won.

"Tell me--you will not go?"

Roland caught her hand in his, and, drawing back the gauntlet of kid, he

kissed her on the wrist. "I will never leave you now," he answered;

"Only promise you will not regret."

"Regret!" She smiled at the speech--or was it a smile? Her lips had

moved, but it was as though they had done so in answer to some prompting

of her soul. "Regret! Do you remember you asked me what I would think if

you remained? Well, I thought, if you did, there were dreams which do

come true."

At this avowal she was so radiant yet so troubled that Roland detained

her hand. "She really loves," he mused; "and so do I." And it may be,

the forest aiding, that, in the answering pressure which he gave, such

heart as he had went out and mingled with her own.

"Between us now," he murmured, "it is for all of time."

"Roland, how I waited for you!"

Again her lips moved and she seemed to smile, but now her eyes were no

longer in his, they were fixed on some vista visible only to herself.

She looked rapt, but she looked startled as well. When a girl first

stands face to face with love it allures and it frightens too.

Roland dropped her hand; he caught his horse and mounted it. In a moment

he was at her side again.

"Justine!"

And the girl turning to him let her fresh lips meet and rest upon his

own. Slowly he disengaged the arm with which he had steadied himself on

her waist.

"If I lose you now--" he began.

"There can be no question of losing," she interrupted. "Have we not come

into our own?"

"But others may dispute our right. There is your cousin, to whom I

thought you were engaged; and there is your father."

"Oh, as for Guy--" and she made a gesture. "Father, it is true, may

object; but let him. I am satisfied; in the end he will be satisfied

also. Why, only the other day I wrote him you were here."

"H'm!" At the intelligence he wheeled abruptly.

Already Justine had turned, and lowering her crop she gave her horse a

little tap. The beast was willing enough; in a moment the two were on a

run, and as Roland's horse, a broncho, by-the-way, one of those eager

animals that decline to remain behind, rushed forward and took the lead,

"Remember!" she cried, "you are not to leave me now."

But the broncho was self-willed, and this injunction Roland found or

pretended it difficult to obey; and together, through the green lane and

out of it, by long, dismal fields of rice, into the roomy squalor of the

village and on to the hotel, they flew as though some fate pursued.

Justine never forgot that ride, nor did Roland either.

At the verandah steps Mrs. Metuchen was in waiting. "I have a telegram

from your father," she called to Justine. "He wishes you to return

to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" the girl exclaimed.

"Thorold has learned I am here, and has told," her lover reflected. And

swinging from his saddle he aided the girl to alight.

"To-morrow," Mrs. Metuchen with large assumption of resignation replied;

"and we may be thankful he did not say to-day."

And as Roland listened to the varying interpretations of the summons

which, during the absence of her charge, Mrs. Metuchen's riotous

imagination had found time to conceive, "Thorold has told," he repeated

to himself, "but he has told too late."

After a morning such as that, an afternoon on a piazza is apt to drag.

Of this Roland was conscious. Moreover, he had become aware that his

opportunities were now narrowly limited; and presently, as Mrs.

Metuchen's imaginings subsided and ceased, he asked the girl whether,

when dinner was over, she would care to take a drive.

Protest who may, at heart every woman is a match-maker; and Mrs.

Metuchen was not an exception. In addition to this, she liked

family-trees, she was in cordial sympathy with good-breeding, and

Roland, who possessed both, had, through attentions which women of her

age appreciate most, succeeded in detaining her regard. In conversation,

whenever Justine happened to be mentioned, she had a habit of extolling

that young woman--not beyond her deserts, it is true, but with the

attitude of one aware that the girl had done something which she ought

to be ashamed of, yet to which no one was permitted to allude. This

attitude was due to the fact that she suspected her, and suspected that

everyone else suspected her, of an attachment for her cousin Guy. Now

Guy Thorold had never appealed to Mrs. Metuchen. He was not prompt with

a chair; when she unrolled her little spangle of resonant names he

displayed no eagerness in face or look. Such things affect a woman. They

ruffle her flounces and belittle her in her own esteem. As a

consequence, she disliked Guy Thorold; from the heights of that dislike

she was even wont to describe him as Poke--a word she could not have

defined had she tried, but which suggested to her all the attributes of

that which is stupid and under-bred. Roland, on the other hand, seemed

to her the embodiment of just those things which Thorold lacked, and in

the hope that he might cut the cousin out she extolled him to her charge

in indirect and subtle ways. You young men who read this page mind you

of this: if you would succeed in love or war, be considerate of women

who are no longer young. They ask but an attention, a moment of your

bountiful days, some little act of deference, and in exchange they sound

your praises more deftly than ever trumpeter or beat of drums could do.

But because Mrs. Metuchen had an axe of her own to grind was not to her

mind a reason why she should countenance a disregard of the Satanic

pomps of that which the Western press terms Etiquette. And so it

happened that, when Roland asked Justine whether she would care to

drive, before the girl could answer, the matron stuck her oar in:

"Surely, Mr. Mistrial, you cannot think Miss Dunellen could go with you

alone. Not that _I_ see any impropriety in her doing so, but there is

the world."

The world at that moment consisted of a handful of sturdy consumptives

impatiently waiting the opening of the dining-room doors. And as Roland

considered that world, he mentally explored the stable.

"Of course not," he answered; "if Miss Dunellen cares to go, I will have

a dogcart and a groom."

With that sacrifice to conventionality Mrs. Metuchen was content. For

Justine to ride unchaperoned was one thing, but driving was another

matter. And later on, in the cool of the afternoon, as Roland bowled the

girl over the yielding sand, straight to the sunset beyond, he began

again on the duo which they had already rehearsed, and when Justine

called his attention to the groom, he laughed a little, and well he

might. "Don't mind him," he murmured; "he is deaf."

In earlier conversations he had rarely spoken of himself, and, when he

had, it had been in that remote fashion which leaves the personal

pronoun at the door. There is nothing better qualified to weary the

indifferent than the speech in which the I jumps out; and knowing this,

he knew too that that very self-effacement before one whose interest is

aroused excites that interest to still higher degrees. The _Moi seul est

haissable_ is an old maxim, one that we apprehend more or less to our

cost no doubt, and after many a sin of egotism; but when it is learned

by rote, few others serve us in better stead. In Roland's relations

with Justine thus far it had served him well. It had filled her mind

with questions which she did not feel she had the right to ask, and in

so filling it had occupied her thoughts with him. It was through arts of

this kind that Machiavelli earned his fame.

But at present circumstances had changed. She had placed her hand in

his; she had avowed her love. The I could now appear; its welcome was

assured. And as they drove along the sand-hills she told him of herself,

and drew out confidences in exchange. And such confidences! Had the

groom not been deaf they might have given him food for thought. But they

must have satisfied Justine, for when they reached the hotel again her

eyes were so full of meaning that, had Mrs. Metuchen met her in a pantry

instead of on the verandah, she could have seen unspectacled that the

girl was fairly intoxicated--drunk with that headiest cup of love which

is brewed not by the contact of two epiderms, but through communion of

spirit and unison of heart.

That evening, when supper was done, Mrs. Metuchen, to whom any breath of

night was synonymous with miasmas and microbes, settled herself in the

parlor, and in the company of her friends from School Lane discussed

that inexhaustible topic--Who Was and Who Was Not.

But the verandah, deserted at this hour by the consumptives, had

attractions for Justine, for Roland as well; and presently, in a corner

of it that leaned to the south, both were seated, and, at the moment,

both were dumb. On the horizon, vague now and undiscerned, the

peach-blossoms and ochres of sunset had long since disappeared; but from

above rained down the light and messages of other worlds; the sky was

populous with stars that seemed larger and nearer than they do in the

north; Venus in particular shone like a neighborly sun that had strayed

afar, and in pursuit of her was a moon, a new one, so slender and

yellow you would have said, a feather that a breath might blow away. In

the air were the same inviting odors, the scent of heliotrope and of

violets, the invocations of the woodlands, the whispers of the pines.

The musicians had been hushed, or else dismissed, for no sound came from

them that night.

Roland had not sought the feverish night to squander it in

contemplation. His hand moved and caught Justine's. It resisted a

little, then lay docile in his own. For she was new to love. Like every

other girl that has passed into the twenties, she had a romance in her

life, two perhaps, but romances immaterial as children's dreams, and

from which she had awaked surprised, noting the rhythm yet seeking the

reason in vain. They had passed from her as fancies do; and, just as she

was settling down into leisurely acceptance of her cousin, Roland had

appeared, and when she saw him a bird within her burst into song, and

she knew that all her life she had awaited his approach. To her he was

the fabulous prince that arouses the sleeper to the truth, to the

meaning, of love. He had brought with him new currents, wider vistas,

and horizons solid and real. He differed so from other men that her mind

was pleasured with the thought he had descended from a larger sphere.

She idealized him as girls untrained in life will do. He was the lover

unawaited yet not wholly undivined, tender-hearted, impeccable,

magnificent, incapable of wrong--the lover of whom she may never have

dreamed, yet who at last had come. And into his keeping she gave her

heart, and was glad, regretting only it was not more to give. She had no

fears; her confidence was assured as Might, and had you or I or any

other logician passed that way and demonstrated as clearly as _a_ = _a_

that she was imbecile in her love, she would not have thanked either of

us for our pains. When a woman loves--and whatever the cynic may

affirm, civilization has made her monandrous--she differs from man in

this: she gives either the first-fruits of her affection, or else the

semblance of an after-growth. There are men, there are husbands and

lovers even, who will accept that after-growth and regard it as the

verdure of an enduring spring. But who, save a lover, is ever as stupid

as a husband? Man, on the other hand, is constant never. Civilization

has not improved him in the least. And when on his honor he swears he

has never loved before, his honor goes unscathed, for he may never yet

have loved a woman as he loves the one to whom he swears.

With Justine this was the primal verdure. Had she not met Roland

Mistrial, she might, and in all probability would, have exhibited

constancy in affection, but love would have been uncomprehended still.

As it was, she had come into her own; she was confident in it and

secure; and now, though by nature she was rebellious enough, as he

caught her hand her being went out to him, and as it went it thrilled.

"I love you," he said; and his voice was so flexible that it would have

been difficult to deny that he really did. "I will love you always, my

whole life through."

The words caressed her so well she could have pointed to the sky and

repeated with Dona Sol:

"Regarde: plus de feux, plus de bruit. Tout se tait.

La lune tout a l'heure a l'horizon montait:

Tandis que tu parlais, sa lumiere qui tremble

Et ta voix, toutes deux m'allaient au coeur ensemble:

Je me sentais joyeuse et calme, o mon amant!

Et j'aurais bien voulu mourir en ce moment."

But at once some premonition seemed to visit her. "Roland," she

murmured, "what if we leave our happiness here?"

And Roland, bending toward her, whispered sagely: "We shall know then

where to find it."