Baird managed to say, casually, "Very well—just tell her, when she comes back, that I called."
"Yes, suh."
Baird rode down the Westmore Road even more slowly than he had come up. His first feeling was a hot sense of rebuff—until he began to ask himself why Judith had run away from him?... But she had not run away from him; she had not gone until that evening?... There had been the afternoon during which she might reasonably expect him to come—and the morning that might have brought her a letter from him.
It came over Baird then, with a warm flush, a shock of surprise at himself, that he had been a pretty sort of lover! He had ridden away after that kiss of love she had given him, when even a stupid man would have found an excuse for staying; he had written no impassioned note that Sam must deliver at daybreak; he had dallied through the afternoon, and had ridden composedly up to Westmore with the whole future mapped out in his mind ... Good lord!... And he was a passionate man, too—ordinarily!
Baird was so intensely surprised at himself that, for a time, he could consider nothing but his own conduct. He had never been more in earnest in his life, never more decided upon a course of action. Why, he had settled everything, even to the details of a trip abroad with Judith and the sort of house he would have money enough to run when they came back, and yet he had left undone the first and most natural things a man would do!
Baird was emotionally headlong, he knew that well, easily aroused and always hot in pursuit. What in heaven's name had been the matter with him these last twenty-four hours? His own case bewildered him more than anything he had ever come across. He set his brain to work upon himself, and finally evolved an explanation, which, as is usual when a man seeks to elucidate his own emotional shortcomings, threw the onus upon the woman: Judith's premature offering of herself had made him too sure of her. She had deliberately attracted him, and that was all right, that was what men and women were placed in the world for, to be mutually attracted and to come together. And his pursuit of her was all right, too, particularly right because it had never entered his head to trifle with her—he had respected and admired her too much for that. It was a tribute to the sort of hold she had laid upon him during those weeks of pursuit, that the instant he knew she loved him he had considered marriage and had decided upon it as completely as he had ever decided upon any important thing. The thoughts he had of Judith had been, throughout, the decentest and the honestest thoughts he had ever had.
Then he went on to own to himself that a certain eagerness had departed from him after that kiss of hers. In that one respect it had been a little like some other experiences, when he had pursued determinedly, captured rather easily, then had lost zest.... But he had wanted to marry Judith—that was the unexplainable thing.... Was it simply that, on the whole, she had been such a new experience that he had quite naturally considered marriage, which, Lord knows, was a new and strange enough thing for him to consider?
At this point, Baird asked himself point-blank, "Do you love Judith, or don't you?" And he answered himself honestly, for he felt somewhat desperately in need of honesty. "Yes, I love her, or I wouldn't be thinking of marrying her—I've never wanted to marry any other woman I've known."
Baird considered for a longer space, and then summed up thus: "From the very first Judith appealed to the best in me—she's appealed more to the mental than the physical side of me. That's why, instead of plunging along in a fever these last twenty-four hours, I've been planning for a contented future. And if respect and admiration and the certainty that a woman will make you a splendid, wife, plus a reasonable degree of passion, aren't good reasons for thinking of marriage, then I've learned nothing from watching men who have been infatuated with their wives in much the same fashion that a man is infatuated with his mistress; the result is usually ructions. I love Judith in sensible marrying fashion, but I confess I ought to feel more joyous over it."
Unless a man is permeated by the golden thing of which, as yet, Baird had little conception, he is apt to settle his own case first and the woman's last. He turned finally to a consideration of Judith. Baird was not any more conceited than the average man, but the certainty that Judith loved him about as completely as a woman could love a man was his unalterable conviction. He might live to be eighty, live to doubt most things, but of that he was certain. And it had not been a sudden thing with her; it was a culmination, a steady growing up to an involuntary offering. She desired him and wished to marry him, and not after the deliberate fashion in which he had been considering their union. Judith loved him intensely, and had sought to attract him as many honest women before her had sought to capture the men they wished to marry. She had waited through the day, then had gone because she must do something to save her pride. She knew that, if the spark was in him at all, he would follow.