V
He sat at the open window of his room that night, oppressed by guilt and dread.
“I shouldn’t have kissed her,” he said to himself. “Now she’ll think I’m in love with her.”
He knew well enough that he was not. He disliked her—almost loathed her; she was so soft and clinging, so irresistible and so inferior. He didn’t want to see her again.
He hadn’t yet been able to devise a suitable attitude when he met her the next morning. Seeing her so perfectly unmoved helped him, and they sat down to breakfast in friendly accord.
“It’s another hot day,” she said. “Mommer thought maybe you’d enjoy a picnic.”
“A picnic—just you and me?” he asked suspiciously.
She nodded, and waited for his reply, watching his face with candid eyes. He grew red and hot.
“Very nice idea,” he said loftily.
He was racking his brains for some means of avoiding the excursion.
“Not if I know it!” he said to himself. “She won’t get me alone again!”
But his reflection in a distant mirror caught his eye. What? Here he was, six feet tall, dressed in absolutely the latest fashion, a thorough man of the world, and yet uneasy in the presence of this sixteen-year-old country girl! “Dumpy,” he called her—stolid, ignorant, rustic, in a cheap cotton frock.
His good humor came back. He smiled down upon her kindly, all alarm gone. Let her make love to him if she liked—there was no harm in it.
They started directly after breakfast, walked mile after mile through the fields in the full glare of the hot August sun, up stony hills, through bramble-lined woodland paths, until Tommy, carrying the big lunch basket and a walking stick, and wearing a rather heavy Norfolk jacket—the only correct thing for picnics—was dazed and tired. Not Esther, though; she was as fresh and cheerful as ever.
In the course of time they reached the place predestined by her for lunching—a little clearing on the slope of the pine-covered mountain, a sort of sunny nest in the forest, where a brook ran by, rapid and cool.
When he had at last satisfied his appetite—a strangely hearty and indiscriminate one for such a man of the world—Tommy lay back against a sun-warmed stone, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the bright sky. It was nice to have Esther there, he admitted to himself. It was nice to see her, contented and blessedly quiet, sitting beside him.
He turned his head to see her better. What a round, pretty, white throat she had! And her lashes were almost dark against her cheeks. He was annoyed by a sudden great longing to kiss her again. He tried to put[Pg 35] the thought out of his mind—tried desperately; but in some inexplicable way, even as she sat there with her eyes closed and her little face so tranquil, she conveyed the fact to him that she was waiting to be kissed.
He did it, with a violence surprising to them both. She struggled half-heartedly, then settled down, close to his side, with his arm about her, and said no more. He kissed her again and again, stroked her hair, looked at her in delight. Dear, gentle, ardent little soul! Truly it was an afternoon on Olympus!
Tommy was done for now. She had awakened his innocent, primitive manhood, had aroused in him a feeling which he was too immature to appraise. He believed that he was, that he must be, in love with her. How otherwise explain his joy in kissing her, his immeasurable admiration for her charms?
“By Jove!” he said to himself. “I’m in love!”
He said it with amazement, with pride, with profound distress, because his passion tormented him. He was ashamed of it. He knew very well that it was not spontaneous; Esther had forced its growth. He had not wooed and won her; he had been captured in a most obvious way. He was a slave, and he knew and resented it.
Not that Esther was at all a difficult lady to serve. She had no whims, no caprices. She was neither jealous nor exacting. Indeed, she required nothing at all of Tommy. She let him alone. She was very affectionate, whenever he was; but if he were moody or anxious, she was peacefully silent.
There was always an air of content about her. She might have been the personified ideal of the man of forty—the woman who is always responsive, and yet who exacts nothing. Very, very different from the ideal of generous eighteen!
Precious little joy did poor Tommy find in this his first love. He was perplexed and confused; he couldn’t imagine any sort of end to it. He couldn’t contemplate marrying Esther, and the idea of any other sort of arrangement never occurred to him. In his eyes she was simply a respectable young girl, under her father’s roof, not good enough, or not suitable, to be the wife of a man of the world, but far too good to be thought of in any improper way.
He didn’t even know what he wanted—whether he wanted to leave her, or whether he couldn’t live without her. He was weary beyond measure, those hot and sleepless August nights.