IV.
He was growing more and more in love with this self-contained, charming, young New Englander. It had come to a time when he felt that he must speak. They had been at No. 41 now these four weeks, aunt and niece, and yet they had managed to preserve their distance. He was no nearer than the day they arrived.
He reflected that the pleasant little daily comedy which had amused him so entirely would have to be given up the instant he made known to her his state of feeling. But at the same time he felt he could act out the equivocation no longer. He must, as a gentleman, make a clean breast of his deception. Archibald had seen a great deal of women, and he believed that he understood them pretty well. He believed he understood Miss Price well enough to reckon upon the flattery of her sudden fascination that first day, for him, as the cause of his deceit. He planned to boldly tell her this, one day, while they were waiting for Miss Perkins to revolve around the “Belt Line.” But Elvira turned the conversation against his will. She seemed to have remarkable intuitions, this strange creature! Perhaps she had an intuition then. At any rate, she announced their determination to return to East Village the following Saturday.
“Father writes that his ague is no better—that I must come home,” she said. “There are, besides, the preserves——”
Archibald expressed no surprise. “If you go,” he said, “I think I’ll take a run up there also. I have the greatest curiosity about East Village.”
“There is nothing—it is dreadfully—I wouldn’t have you visit East Village for all the world!”
“Why?”
“Because—” she replied, sedately.
Recognizing this as a sufficient reply, Archibald took a seat on the sofa near her. She was in one of her pretty, soft, white muslins, tied, this evening, with ribbons of the very latest shade of fashionable apple-green. He had noticed the steady growth of fashion in the girl’s appearance, but he was not quite prepared for the dozen silver bangles, which jingled as she raised her hand to her hair. She had a pretty arm and hand, and were it not for the bangles, which somehow altered the current of his thought, he had nerved himself up to the point of taking, or trying to take, her hand in his, and telling her in a manly way his story. The bangles, however, don’t you know, diverted him. He could not be serious. He laughed. It was as if he had happened upon a wood nymph in seven-button kid gloves! She misinterpreted his laughter, believing that he intended to ridicule the pastoral delights of East Village.
“I’m not ashamed of Vermont,” she said, drawing away a little. “I can’t bear to have it laughed at. You would laugh at East Village, Mr. Archibald—you laugh at everything. You are not sincere. You have too much of the city in you—too much of its glitter and—” She caught his eyes directed laughingly upon her bangles, and blushed guiltily.
“Time works its changes, don’t you know,” he said. “Even you, Miss Elvira, are a little affected.”
“I hate myself for it,” she said; “I do find myself growing to like things I never cared for before. I think of what I have on from morning to night,” she confessed, guiltily, with an imploring glance at her landlord.
“Can the dead dulness of midsummer in the city have wrought so wondrous a change?” he laughed. “How very gay, really, you will be next winter.”
“Seriously,” said Elvira, “I look forward to a visit to East Village as a complete change and rest. When I think of the white, dead walls of our meetinghouse, I am glad; when I think of the lack of color in everybody up there, it makes me glad; when I think of the plainness of everything, the simpleness, the truth of everything, I’m glad to go back. But don’t you—don’t come up to Vermont, Mr. Archibald. Really, please, don’t.”
Again Archibald felt impelled to seize her white, pretty hand, and tell his story. He had never come to so intimate a point before. What chance had he ever to come so near again? All that his mother and sisters could write would have no effect upon him now. All that his friends at the club would say, all that his Aunt Newbold would say—his Aunt Newbold was the formidable dragon of his family—nothing, he felt sure, would alter his mind. He had deliberated a month, he would deliberate no more. Besides, she was going away; perhaps if he did not speak his opportunity would never again occur. He paled a little as he was about to open his lips.
Bother!
The chalk-faced maid entered with a card on a silver tray.