He looked up at last, and drew her arm through his. They were near the house now. “I am going to make a clean breast of it, Annie,” he said. “If I have not finished when we get to the bars, shall we turn back? I want you to hear it all.”
“It is pretty late, Seth,” she said, but neither in tone, nor in the manner in which she allowed her arm to be taken, was there the kind of refusal which dismays.
There was no need now to seek words. They came fast, keeping pace with the surge of his thoughts.
“Annie,” he began, “I have been as near the gates of hell to-night as it is given to a man to go, and bring back his soul. I have fancied all this while that I was strong because I was successful; that I was courageous because I happened to be clever. I found myself put to the test to-night, and I was weak as water. I am afraid of myself. More, I have been making a fool of myself. I know now the measure of my weakness. I have the brains, perhaps, but I have no balance-wheel. I fly off; I do insensate things; I throw myself away. I need a strong, sweet, wise nature to lean upon, to draw inspiration from. Oh if you could realize the peace, the happiness your simple presence brought me this evening! I haven’t said it yet, Annie, but you have guessed it—I want to pledge myself to you, to swear that you are to be my wife.”
The girl had drawn her arm from his before the last sentence was finished, and stood facing him. They were within call of the house, but she did not offer to renew the walk. She answered him with no trace of excitement, looking him candidly in the face:
“I am not sure just how to answer you, Seth. Hardly any girl would know, I think, how to treat such a declaration as that. Wait a moment—let me finish! In the first place, I am in doubt whether I ought to treat it seriously at all. You are disturbed, excited, to-night; when we first met you looked and acted like a madman. And then again—understand, I am trying to talk to you as a friend of all your life, instead of a mere girl acquaintance—I would not marry any man who I did not firmly believe loved me. You have not even pretended that you love me. You have simply complimented me on my disposition, and pledged yourself to a partnership in which I was to be a balance-wheel.”
“You are laughing at me!”
“No, Seth, my dear cousin, not at all. I am only showing you the exact situation. You are too excited, or too unpractical, to see it for yourself. You talk now about being at the gates of hell and expressions like that—wild words which signify only that you have had trouble during the evening. I fancy that all men are apt to exaggerate such things—I know you are. Why, do you even know what trouble is? Have I had no trouble? Have I not lived a whole life of trial here with a bed-ridden invalid? And there are other things that—that I might speak of, if I chose to complain. For instance”—her face brightened as she spoke, now, and a suggestion of archness twinkled in her eyes—“was it not a terrible thing that I should have waded into the water, that day of the fishing party, and got you out all by myself, and then heard the credit coolly given to another—person, who never got so much as the soles of her shoes wet?”
Annie had begun seriously enough, but the softness of her real mood toward her cousin, together with the woman’s natural desire to have justice done her in affairs of the heart, had led her into a halfplayful revelation of pique. Seth would have answered here, but she held up her hand, and went on: “Wait till I am through. You didn’t know the truth in that matter of the log-jam. I understand that. There are a good many other things the truth of which you don’t know. You don’t, for instance, know the real facts about your own mind. You have had trouble to-night—for all your talk about making a clean breast of it you haven’t told me yet what it was—and your imagination makes a mountain out of what was probably a molehill, and you straightway rush off bareheaded to wander about like a ghost, and frighten people out of their wits; and then, happening to meet a girl who, by the deceptive light of the moon, looks as if she had some sense about her, you take without consideration the most important step a man can take in his whole life. Isn’t that a fair statement of the case? And, thinking it all over, don’t you agree with me that you would better tie my handkerchief about your head and go home and go to bed?”
Seth laughed—a reluctant, in-spite-of-himself laugh. “You always would make fun of me when I tried to be serious. But if I ever was serious in my life, it is now. Listen to me, Annie! It is not my fault if I see you now, truly as you are, for the first time. I have been a fool. I know it I said so at the start. But a man is the creature of circumstances, you know. Things have happened tonight which have opened my eyes. I realize now that you have been closest to my heart all the while, that I have loved you all——”