CHAPTER IX.
[JOE PROPOSES].
Betsey was one of the last to come out of church on a Sunday morning now. She hung behind while her aunt lingered to exchange the news with her neighbours. Since the day when she had hastened to give the Misses Stanley "a bit of her mind," relative to Muriel's parentage and rearing, a something more than coldness had sprung up. Miss Matilda's words on that occasion had been few, but scorching, and the look of withering disgust, which accompanied them, had been more than even her obtuse conceit and forwardness could bear up against. She had not dared to face the ladies since, and, they being in the heart of the group of lingerers, Betsey felt constrained to remain outside the circle, a sort of martyr to the truth, ruminatmg in silence on the consequences of proclaiming it, at least when the proclamation is ill-timed or ill-natured.
The circle melted away in time, beginning with Muriel and Gerald Herkimer--who, in his bankruptcy and the absence of his family, partook of many dinners and a great deal of delightful sympathy at the ladies' residence--and ending with Penelope and Matilda, the latter of whom, though she exhibited fitful outbursts of vivacity, appeared depressed, and far from in good form. It was observed by those who saw them drive from the church door that, instead of taking the reins herself, she let the servant drive, quite contrary to her usual custom; but then Mr. Considine had been in the habit of returning with the ladies from church, and his presence at Matilda's elbow may have been necessary to give her confidence.
Betsey reached the open air at last, feeling unusually meek and chastened under the lack of notice she had been experiencing; and in the revulsion of feeling which ensued when Mr. Joe Webb stepped forward, and, after ceremoniously inquiring for her health, asked if she would not favour him with her company for a buggy-ride down the road, while her dinner was "dishing up" at home, it is not remarkable if she "enthused a little," to cull a flower of speech from the English column of the Journal de St. Euphrase.
"Oh! Thank you, Squire! that will be nice"--I fear bully was the word she used, this sweet Western flower, but it means much the same thing, only a little more so.
"Then come along! In with you! And we'll be stepping," which was perhaps a more free-and-easy mode of address than Mr. Joe's wont, for he prided himself on his fine manners with the ladies; but he was trying to get up his courage by a little premature audacity for what was to follow.
Proposing matrimony in cold blood--did you ever try it, my reader?--is a serious matter, or so Joe Webb thought. His mind had been made up on the point, the night before; in the morning he saw no reason to change it, but he observed that the sky looked heavy. If it had drawn to rain he would not have been sorry, for he could, without loss of self-respect, have remained at home, and postponed his undertaking. The weather kept up however, and he went to church; but very few, I fear, were the prayers he joined in.
What he was intending to do would keep continually rising before his mind; not as it had done overnight in the comfortable after-phases, when My Lord Benedict should have entered on his domestic felicity, with slippers toasting inside the fender against his return from the field, pipes filled, and tobacco fetched, without his needing to leave the lounge where he reposed, but in the onerous stage of how to do it. What should he say? and how would she take it? Should he take her hand before beginning? It would be establishing a sort of hold upon her attention. But if she objected to that by an unauthorized individual?--yet the very objection would give the opening to explain, which he desired. Only--how about getting hold of the hand? It might be holding up her parasol. To snatch at it would bring down the article with a flap, which would frighten the horse! Weil, he did not mind that. He could quiet him well enough with a cut of the whip. But how about the lady? How to quiet her? The whip would not do there, yet a while; though later, he had been credibly informed that Blackstone authorizes such doings on the part of husbands, provided the stick be no thicker than their thumbs. But the lady might refuse to be reassured; she might insist on being let down, or worse, she might actually say. No. No! The word whistled through his mind like a gust of icy wind, it was so new and so unexpected an idea. He must feel tremulous, no doubt, till he should be answered "yes," but he could not bring himself to contemplate the opposite. It would be so utter a quencher to--well, if not to love for her, which was an eventuality he could contemplate with some tranquillity, at least to his self-love, which was too near his heart to be thought of without dismay. He would be, like a railway guard standing on the roof of a carriage, and sweeping through space at forty miles an hour, when unexpectedly there comes a bridge which he has not looked for, or bowed his head to in time, it catches him between the eyes with a blow irresistible and swift, which snuffs him out of existence, and casts him away, and leaves him a lifeless wreck upon the track.
Altogether Joe had not a happy or an edifying service of it that day in church. A man's own fancies can fret and worry him worse than the words of others, they hit all the raw places so much more surely. He hastened from the sacred fane with the very earliest to go, and stood and watched and waited till Betsey should appear among the other dispersing worshippers, she was long of appearing, and by-and-by he began to think, with a very distinct sense of relief, that she was not there and he must defer the task he had set himself to another day, when, behold! the very last to come out, she appeared; and, seizing himself by the collar, as it were, he marched himself into her presence, and solicited the honour of a drive. Betsey was gracious and compliant, and did not take long to mount into the buggy; he sprang in after, and away they went.
The pace was good; Joe kept fast cattle, and knew how to drive them; but the conversation flagged. How can a man with a purpose--so deadly to himself, at least--be at his ease, and alive to the trifles which lead up to untrammelled talk? How can he be otherwise than distraught? There is a purpose at his breast hanging heavy as lead, and he feels, poor creature, as though cold water were running down his neck. "Had it been a dance," he thought, "to which he was leading the girl out, it would have been different." The music and the rhythm and the motion of a waltz bring on a gentle enthusiasm, and the sense of support and protection conduce to the tenderness which a man should feel at such a moment; but this was only a buggy-ride; the two were perched up together behind a horse in heat and dust, and for the life of him he could not make up his mind what he ought to say. He had heard of fellows proposing in a buggy, but now when he tried it, it was not the place it was cracked up to be; and he sat in perturbed silence.
Betsey was at her ease, however; she suspected nothing, and she was elated at being borne off in a cloud of dust before the eyes of the women who had slighted and ignored her five minutes before. Some people it seemed--men people, too--thought her worthy of notice. She felt exultant, and she prattled. She wriggled, too, just a very little, which is scarcely dignified, perhaps, but comes natural to some people in moments of exuberance. She talked of the weather till some other subject should arise, like the rest of us who are born to speak English, but he answered nothing; and then she asked him if a shower would not do good to his turnips.
He answered "yes," to that, which is not an easy rejoinder to build the next observation upon; but then he was busy with his horse at the moment, for he hit him a cross cut with the whip, and twitched his nose and eyebrows impatiently. And then there was a lull, and silence disturbed only by the steady pounding of the horse's feet, and the rasping of a wheel against an occasional stone.
"We were so sorry to hear," Betsey said at last, after the silence had lasted some time, and was beginning to grow oppressive; "so very sorry to hear that you have lost money by those Herkimers. Do you remember, I told you the very last time we met what I thought of them, and that it was not much? But that warning came too late to benefit you, I suppose. Is it not absurd the way that young Gerald goes fooling around Muriel up the way? It is just what might be expected from a girl like her, who don't belong to anybody, for all her airs; but I confess I am sorry to see his infatuation, though perhaps it only serves the Herkimers right--the stuck-up lot. I always saw through them--insincere, and all show; though of course I would not have said it, on account of their relationship to Aunt Judy; but now, really, it seems downright wrong to hold one's tongue, and looks like countenancing their on-goins," and Betsey stopped to take breath.
Joe availed himself of the stoppage to take up his parable. "Yes, Miss Betsey," he said, "it is quite true. I have lost the savings of ten years, and all the ready money my father left. Quite true."
"Ah!" sighed Betsey very softly.
"But I'm to the fore still; and you just wait and see if I don't make some more--and more than I have been euchred out of."
"I like to hear a man speak like that! It sounds so strong and capable."
"Do you think you could like the man himself. Miss Betsey? Mind you, it ain't all talking with me! It's going to be real, hard, downright doing--livin' off what my own farm raises, and wearin' homespun off the backs of my own sheep, like a habitant; freezing on to every copper cent I can scrape, and laying it all by. It will be a hard and a dull life for the first year or two; but it's a good farm, and well-stocked, and in three or four years' time, when I have bought a new reaper, and a few such tricks, and brought in another hundred acres of useless bush, with my own hard work and the hired boys, I believe things will be on the road to grow better than ever; for, though maybe you would not think it, I have thrown away a deal of money on nonsense in my time. But that's over now. What do you think of it yourself. Miss Betsey?"
Betsey turned and looked at him with opening eyes, and met a steadfast gaze more bewildering still, which made her drop them again, and look away. "Think? I think it sounds brave in you to speak like that. A man should never lose heart!"
"But it's yourself, I mean. Would you like it yourself?"
"If I were a man, that's how I'd like to be. I'd love to play the man so."
"But it ain't the man you'd be expected to play. Miss Betsey. It would be the wife."
Betsey coloured and looked a little hurt. "It's too serious a subject to play with, Mr. Webb."
"But it ain't play. It's good, downright, honest earnest I mean."
"I don't understand you."
"Could you bring yourself to marry a fellow who has lost his money, and is hard up?"
"I don't know, Mr. Webb," she laughed uncomfortably, and a little inclined to take offence at such a catechism being pressed on her, while she sat helpless in the hurrying "trap." "It would depend altogether on who the 'fellow' was."
"It's me! Miss Betsey. Will you take me? I'm no great match for any girl now, I know that; but will you take me?"
"I don't like foolin' on such subjects, Mr. Webb; and it wasn't gentleman-like of you to bring me away in your buggy to talk like this." Her face was scarlet, as she said it, and looked in his; but there was no bantering smile there,--and a catch came in her throat, which sent the blood throbbing down to her finger-tips, as the idea crossed her mind that the man was in earnest. In that case, however, he would speak again, so she said no more.
"But this ain't foolin'. Miss Betsey, and I don't know what right you have to accuse me of sich. Did any one ever know me, man or boy, to tell a lie? I ask you plainly, Betsey Bunce, will you marry me?"
"Oh, laws! Joe Webb--I never--let me out here! I never--oh! you've took me all of a heap. Stop the buggy."
Joe drew rein, and stopped the equipage in the middle of the road, just where the shadow of a tall poplar by the wayside would shelter them from the sun; and there he sat, looking hot about the temples, and trying to settle his eyes on the tips of his horse's ears, because these could not return the look, while he dared not turn elsewhere for fear a mocking glance should meet him and complete his discomfiture, as he sat there awaiting his answer, feeling like a fool who has surrendered his shoulders to the smiters--a trapped animal awaiting the arrival of the hunters--the man who has put it in a girl's power to say she refused him. It was a moment of dread and suspense for Joe.
Betsey fanned herself vehemently--what a privilege a fan must be, sometimes. Since their stoppage she had become less eager to alight. She made no move, sat perfectly still, and let the perturbation of her spirits expend itself in fanning. She was coming to herself again. And, oh! so pleasantly. "What a puss she had been! And that--most wonderful of all--without suspecting it herself. And there he was on his knees before her! or what was just the same thing, perched at her elbow in infinite discomfort, looking all the colours of the rainbow in his misery." "And should she have him? that was the point. If she had snared him without knowing it, might there not be others sighing in secret?" She glanced at him over her fan--that precious fan!--glanced over it as the timid fawn does over a park paling, and then is off to hide its head in a bush when the keeper comes in sight. "And how handsome he was! and how foolish he looked, poor fellow, getting himself into a state about poor she! It was delightful. And he so broad-shouldered and manly! She could not find it in her heart to cause him pain--especially when he had made herself so--happy. And those old maids she had parted from at church, how she pitied them! How she should continue to pity them all the rest of her life--her married life!" She peeped over the fan again, and there was poor Joe fidgeting worse than ever--for all the world, like a bull at a bull-baiting--tied to the stake, unable to get away, amid fears and fancies at his own absurd position, like the yelping curs, which plague the noble brute. Then she glanced along the road. A cloud of dust was approaching, a waggon within it, for already she could hear the rattle of wheels and the clank of harness. Already Joe was rousing himself and gathering up his reins for a start. Time was up. If she let this opportunity pass, and allowed matters to fall back into everyday life, how would she ever bring them up again to this point? It was provoking, the dalliance was so pleasant, but she could not risk a slip; so, shutting her eyes, and shutting up her fan, she took the leap--and just in time, for the buggy was already in motion.
She said it very softly. What she said Joe could not hear for the noise of the wheels, very likely she did not know precisely herself what it was; but they both took it to mean consent, and Joe, so soon as that lumbering waggon was fairly past, stooped down and sealed it on her lips, as in duty bound.
Then there was a silence of some duration, though both were too busy with their own thoughts to notice it; till at length Joe remembered that the purpose of their expedition was fulfilled, and asked his companion if she did not think they had better return. Betsey was ready to think whatever her Joe thought, leaning up with an undesirable closeness that warm day, and softly fanning their joint countenances with a fond and lingering motion of her fan. In time she heaved a sigh, deep and full of overflowing enjoyment, and then she spoke.
"Do you know, Joe dear, you have given me a great surprise to-day?"
Joe's tight-strained feelings had run themselves down now. He felt--"tired in his inside," I fear, would have been his inelegant expression, and longed for a glass of beer. He felt incapable of conversation, and even a little grumpy, perhaps. Such strange and inconsistent creatures are the men.
Betsey's over-wroughtness was quite of another kind. Her nervous excitement, once fairly past the turn of the tide, was inclined, as Hamlet would have had his solid flesh incline, to "melt and dissolve itself into a dew"--of verbiage and watery talk. It was of a soliloquizing tendency, too, which, though prone to questionings, passed on from one to the next, indifferent to non-reply.
"This has been all a great surprise; I never thought that you really cared for me. Was it not strange?" and she looked up in his face grown stolid, and beginning to show unmistakable signs of crossness, and fanned him fondly, smiling into dimples, like the rapturous maidens in "Patience," when they enthral their poet with garlands.
"I thought it would have been the pretty Miss Savergne, you were so attentive to----"
"She would not marry a poor man, and a poor man, could not afford to marry her," and then Joe stopped. He would have liked to kick himself for an unmannerly brute; for alas! the soft impeachment was all too true. He coughed and spluttered. Fortunately, Betsey was too full of her own pleasant reflections to heed anything, but he felt he must get away and calm down, or something worse might escape him which would not pass unnoticed, so he pulled up by the road-side just on the outskirts of the village.
"Would you mind if I set you down here, Betsey? It is getting late. The calves should have been watered an hour ago, and Baptiste and Laurent are both away."
"To be sure, Joe! A farmer's wife must take an interest in the calves, and I mean to do my duty," and she sprang gaily out, and stood looking after the man and outfit as they trotted off, with a sense of proprietorship which was new and very pleasant.
The rector and his wife delayed their dinner half-an-hour, and then sat down, wondering what had become of Betsey. They had nearly finished when she whirled in, a tumultuous arrangement of white muslin and enthusiasm.
"Oh, auntie! Oh, Uncle Dionysius!" She involved first one and then the other in her manifold frills and puffings by way of embrace. "Congratulate me!--do!--Just think!"
"Sit down, Betsey, and calm yourself," remonstrated the rector, "and then, perhaps, it may be possible to think. Meanwhile you take our breath away. Have you had your dinner?"
"Well, no. But I don't care--or rather, I dare say I will take just a morsel. What have you been having? Chickens? Well, I will take just a bone, and a good plateful of salad, and the rest of that melon. That's all I want. Such news! Only guess! But you would never think. Fact is, the squire--Squire Webb--has--what do you think?"
"Why!" cried Aunt Judy, "I saw you go for a drive with him?--Oh!--Indeed."