II
When Jonas Lane knocked for the fourth time upon Martha Waring’s door his expectancy was a quaint blend of eagerness and humour.
“Seems like things look more spruce than they did last time,” he thought, eyeing the polished knocker, the panels of the door, the slightly inclined planks of the veranda, and the flagstones of the path running back to the kitchen. “That there hemlock’s grown a pile, too. They planted that ’twixt last time and the time before, in place of the old pine that was struck by lightnin’. Marthy never kept me so long though,” he murmured impatiently.
Then the edge of the door began receding, very gently; and when it reached a point which might afford the possibility of ingress or egress to a pet animal a lady’s head approached the aperture. It was Miss Waring, come to parley through the postern.
“Why, Jonas, is that you?” she exclaimed, a faint glow suddenly brightening her countenance.
“Same old penny!” rejoined that worthy, putting forth his hand.
At the sight of this friendly member Miss Waring enlarged the aperture over which she stood guard and drew her visitor in. Not only was it the proper and Christian thing to do, but she had a disturbing intuition of neighbourly eyes. Closing the door as gently as she had opened it, she led the way into the parlour, raised the shades, and took a seat opposite her suitor.
It must be confessed that while Miss Waring had received no immediate warning of this visit—Jonas being, as Miss Cockerill had intimated to Mrs. Webster, no great hand at writing—she had nevertheless been led by experience to entertain a premonition of Jonas’ arrival not long after any change in her own family circle. And on this occasion she was more uncertain of herself than she had ever been. For the last ditch was lost; and now the invader threatened her very person she knew not whether to surrender or to withstand till the last drop of blood. She wished that she had had more time to think.
It was evident that Jonas, too, as he sat twirling his hat and gazing from his hostess to her furniture, felt a little less than his customary assurance.
It was the woman, however, who relieved the situation by uttering:
“I hope you’re feeling well, Jonas. You’re looking just the same as ever.”
“Thank you, Marthy,” rejoined her interlocutor. “You’re lookin’ just about the same, too; but I hope you’re feelin’ different.” And before Miss Waring could recover from this bold attack, Jonas went on: “You know I ain’t no hand at beatin’ about the bush, Marthy. I might as well tell you here and now what I’ve come for. I guess you know well enough, though, without my tellin’. You’ve had chance aplenty to learn what it means when I come here. But this time I ain’t going away without ye. Be I now, Marthy?”
He rose from his place on the sofa and approached her. But then he stopped, acutely embarrassed. His blind desire for vicinity had no definite intent, and he did not know just what to do. As for Martha, she stretched out her palms like a barrier before her, and gasped:
“O, Jonas! Don’t say such things!”
Unexpected as it was, that gave him definiteness. Sitting down beside the lady of his heart Jonas laid a gnarled finger on her knee.
“I know it’s kind of unfair to come on ye sudden like, Martha, just after you’ve lost your mother.
“But if anybody kin comfort ye, I’m the man to do it. I just couldn’t wait a minute longer. I’ve waited purty long, Marthy.”
Martha brushed away the audacious finger, and covered her face with her hands like a nymph at bay.
“O, don’t, Jonas!” she moaned.
Her gentle faun made no further attempt at violence, but looked at her in amazement.
“Marthy!” he groaned: “What do you mean?”
There was that in his voice which at last compelled Martha to reply, haltingly:
“I mean—Jonas—that I—just can’t—go back with you!”
Jonas at first could not speak. Then he said gravely:
“You’re only jokin’ and beatin’ about the bush, Marthy. It’s the way women folks have. But what’s the use of doin’ it with me? You can’t mean it. Didn’t ye always tell me that you liked me real well, and that when there was nothin’ to keep ye you’d come?”
Martha so far recovered her composure as to let her hands resume their customary position in her lap; but her cheeks and her voice betrayed the moral stress under which she laboured.
“I know I did, Jonas,” she said. “And I meant it. But somehow it seems different, now the time has come. I do like you real well, and I always did. But it seems like I couldn’t leave this old house where I was born and where all my people died, and go off among strangers. I just can’t, Jonas!”
With which deliverance she raised a neatly folded handkerchief to her eyes, and held it there. Poor Jonas looked on with the double helplessness of a man before a woman’s tears, and of a lover in the face of his mistress’s perversities. Of what all this could mean he had not the slightest idea. But he felt ill-used, although a great deference put him in a mood of concession.
“But you promised, Marthy,” he said gently. “And how can you live here all by yourself? Who will look out for you?”
“I know I promised, Jonas,” tearfully murmured Miss Waring; “and I just hate to go back on my word. But it comes over me now that I oughtn’t to have promised—that I never could have done it. You needn’t bother about my living alone, though, I’ve always looked out for people, instead of their looking out for me. I shouldn’t know what to do in a strange house, with everything done for me.”
For a moment Jonas looked lost. But then he burst out:
“Why, bless your heart, Marthy, that’s easy enough to fix! You needn’t go away and have people look out for you at all. You can stay right on here, and I’ll come and live with you, instead of taking you away, and then you’ll still have somebody to look out for!”
At this sudden change of front Miss Waring lowered her flag of truce and looked at the enemy askance.
“What is it, Marthy?” inquired that gentleman anxiously. “Won’t that suit ye?”
Evidently Martha had never entertained such a possibility. And of this she presently gave verbal assurance, in a tone of the most doubting.
“I never thought of that, Jonas,” she said slowly. “It would seem so odd to live here and have a stranger in the house.”
“A stranger, Marthy!” expostulated Jonas piteously. “I, a stranger! And whose fault is it if I’m a stranger to you? But never mind about that,” he added hastily. “Just give me a chance, and we’ll get acquainted fast enough! Won’t ye, Marthy—dear?” He uttered the last word timidly and drew nearer his love.
This lady felt her heart as water within her. Indeed, a little of it exuded from her eyes, to the further confusion and agony of Jonas Lane.
“What is the matter, Marthy?” he cried. “For mercy’s sake tell me! Heaven knows I don’t want to make you feel bad! I only want to make you happy and to be happy with you—as I’ve looked forward to for twenty years.”
“I know it, Jonas,” conceded the lady of his dreams. “And I hate to be like this. But—it would be so odd—so odd! And if you came here I s’pose we’d have to be—married——”
As she paused, plucking at a fold of her skirt, the wondering Jonas broke in:
“I rather guess we’d have to, Marthy.”
“O Jonas! Don’t!” supplicated Miss Waring with an agonised blush. “I just meant—that I could never go through it—and live.”
“How do you mean, Marthy?” inquired Jonas, utterly dazed.
“Why, I mean,” explained Miss Waring hesitantly, “that there’d have to be a dress. And I never could go down to the store and ask to see white satin, and buy ever and ever so many yards of it, and take it to Hannah Lee, and tell her to make me up a—a wedding gown. I never could in the world. Everybody would know, and talk, and I couldn’t stand it.”
“I s’pose they’d have to know,” said Jonas apologetically. “There’s too much of me to be hid. Is that all?”
“No,” pursued Martha, relentlessly implanting another dart in her lover’s bosom. “There’d have to be a wedding. And I’ll do a good deal for you, Jonas, but I’ll never stand up with you before the minister and have everybody whispering about Martha Waring and her old beau Jonas Lane, and how they’ve got married at last, and it’s a pity they didn’t do it afore.”
“It is a pity, Marthy,” admitted the doleful Jonas, “but——”
“That isn’t the worst, though,” continued Martha, to whom the whole grim scene unfolded itself in its entirety. “The worst would be the rice. They’d throw it at us when we went away, and the people on the cars would see, and it would stick in our clothes, and roll out wherever we went, and everybody would know, and laugh. O Jonas, I can’t! I’m sorry, but I just can’t!”
To poor Jonas world within world of undreamt feminine perversity had of a sudden been revealed. He felt as one bound by cobwebs. But, after staring for some moments in silence at his liege lady, he addressed her again the word.
“Marthy Warin’,” he asked solemnly, “would you marry me if you could do it without rice, and without a weddin’ dress, and without anybody’s knowin’?”
She regarded him with doubt.
“Seems like it wouldn’t be really getting married,” she objected incautiously.
The face of Jonas darkened with despair. After this, what was there to hope? Martha, however, returned shamefacedly to her guns.
“I would though, Jonas, if I could.”
“Honour bright, Marthy? Will ye promise?” demanded that gentleman, visibly expanding.
“Why, yes, Jonas, if there was a way,” breathed the hunted victim.
“All right,” exclaimed the victor cheerfully, rising forthwith. “We’ll elope then! And now you’ve promised, I’m going off to see about it.”
With which he departed, before the agitated Miss Waring had time to protest against the base advantage which had been taken of her defenceless condition.