Wheat and Huckleberries; Or, Dr. Northmore's Daughters

by Charlotte M. Vaile

“Nonsense!” said Morton Elwell; and he said it with a sharpness that for an instant made Kate almost afraid of him.

There was silence for a minute as they moved down the path. Then, with the sharpness gone out of his voice and the bitterness overflowing it again, he said: “I don’t wonder at it. He’s rich and agreeable,—you wrote that yourself, Kate. He’s all that’s delightful and cultivated,—she says so in the letter. He has everything and—and time to be with her,” he added, with a groan. “She can’t help caring for him. I know it as if I were there to see.”

They had reached the great horse-chestnut tree by the gate, and the moonlight came down through the half-leafless branches on the girl’s face lifted to his. “Oh, it won’t be the way you think, Mort,” she whispered passionately. “Esther can’t care for Mr. Hadley. I’m sure, I’m sure she can’t!”

“Why can’t she?” he asked, and his face looked pale and stern.

She caught her breath with a sob. “Because—oh, Mort—because you’re so much nicer!” she said, with an utter abandon. And then her head dropped, and a splash of tears fell on his coat-sleeve.

He stooped suddenly and kissed her; then, without even a good night, strode off down the road.

It lay before him straight and empty in the moonlight; and he followed it past the turn that led to his uncle’s house, on and on, taking no note of distance. This fear which had come to him so suddenly—it seemed already not a possibility but a certainty, and it stalked at his side, keeping even step with his. He had no vanity to whisper that there were other attractions besides those which fortune had bestowed so lavishly on Mr. Philip Hadley. He had been too busy all his life, and such gifts as he had were too inherently part of his nature for him to turn an observant eye upon them and mark their value. He seemed to himself a homely, humdrum fellow beside this other who had stepped so lightly into Esther Northmore’s life. There was envy enough in his heart, Heaven knew; but it somehow withheld the thought that wealth was accidental, culture acquired,—poor things at best beside that inner something which makes the man. They were good gifts. He hoped to prove it for himself by and by, and that other something—How if Mr. Philip Hadley were rich in that, too?

But was it fair, was it fair that he, to whom only a summer pleasuring had brought acquaintance with Esther Northmore, should steal her away from one who had loved her so long? His heart ran swiftly over the past, and a lump rose in his throat as memory brought back those early days. She was five years old, he seven, when he came to his uncle’s house, a lonesome, homesick boy. He remembered how she came across the fields with her mother, on that first afternoon, in her little red shoes and white apron, a dainty figure, with gentle ways and soft, loving eyes. He remembered how she had slid her hand into his and whispered she was sorry his mother was dead. And then they had played together, he drawing her about in his little cart; and before he knew it the long day was ending and a sense of being at home had stolen into his heart. That was the beginning, and what friends they had been through the childish years that followed! He remembered how he bought her a carnelian ring once at the county fair. The ring had broken next day, and she had wept scalding tears. Alas, there was no dime left to buy another, but he had promised that she should have a gold one sometime, with a shining stone at the top, and she had been comforted with this, and promised to wait.

Ah, one could not bear such memories as this. He thrust it down and swallowed fiercely at the lump in his throat, which seemed his heart itself swollen to bursting. But other pictures came: the growing girl, so willing to take his help, so quick to give her own, so proud of all his successes. They had gone through the district school side by side, he only a class ahead, though older, for his chance to begin had come later than hers. How many times he had worked her problems for her, how often he had gone over his boyish debates and speeches with her for listener, on the way to school, or in her father’s orchard when his chores were done, sure that he had made his pleading well when the tears sprang into her eyes, and the quick responsive color flushed and paled in her cheeks! What would any work he could do, or any triumph he could ever win, be worth to him if she had ceased to care?

There had been a difference in her,—he had marked it uneasily, slow as he was in the steadfast loyalty of his own thoughts to guess at change in hers,—but he had said to himself it was because they had been apart too much, she at boarding school, he at college. It would all be as it had been when they could see each other again in the old way. That they belonged to each other was a thing he had held so simply and of course that the fear of losing her had never till now really entered his heart.