[VIII.]
A BUD AND A BLOSSOM.
Farnham was sitting the next evening in his library, when Budsey entered and said Mr. Ferguson desired to see him. The gaunt Scotchman came in and said with feverish haste: "The cereus grandiflorus will be goin' to bloom the night. The buds are tremblin' and laborin' now." Farnham put on his hat and went to the conservatory, which was separated from the house by the entire extent of the garden. Arriving there, the gardener took him hurriedly to an inner room, dimly lighted,—a small square piece between the ferns and the grapes,—where the regal flower had a wall to itself. Two or three garden chairs were disposed about the room. Ferguson mounted on one of them, and turned up the gas so that its full light shone upon the plant. The bud was a very large one, perfect and symmetrical; the strong sheath, of a rich and even brown, as yet showed only a few fissures of its surface, but even now a faint odor stole from the travailing sphere, as from a cracked box of alabaster filled with perfume.
The face of the canny Fergus was lighted up with an eager joy. He had watched the growth and progress of this plant from its infancy. He had leaned above its cradle and taken pride in its size and beauty. He had trained it over the wall—from which he had banished every rival—in large and graceful curves, reaching from the door of the fernery to the door of the grapery, till it looked, in the usual half light of the dim chamber, like a well-regulated serpent maturing its designs upon the neighboring paradise; and now the time was come when he was to see the fruit of his patience and his care.
"Heaven be thankit," he murmured devoutly, "that I was to the fore when it came."
"I thank you, Fergus, for calling me," said Farnham, smiling. "I know it must have cost you an effort to divide such a sight with any one."
"It's your siller bought it," the Scotchman answered sturdily; "but there's nobody knows it, or cares for it, as I do,—and that's the truth."
His glance was fixed upon the bud, which seemed to throb and stir as he spoke. The soft explosive force within was at work so strongly that the eye could watch its operation. The fissures of the sheath widened visibly and turned white as the two men looked at them.
"It is a shame to watch this beautiful thing happening for only us," Farnham said to the gardener. "Go and tell Mrs. Belding, with my compliments, and ask her and Miss Belding to come down." But observing his crestfallen expression, he took compassion on him and said: "No, you had better remain, for fear something should happen in your absence. I will go for the ladies."
"I hope ye'll not miss it," said Fergus, but his eyes and his heart were fixed upon the bud, which was slowly gaping apart, showing a faint tinge of gold in its heart.
Farnham walked rapidly up the garden, and found the Beldings at the door, starting for evening service with their prayer-books in their hands.
"Do you wish to see the prettiest thing you ever saw in your lives? of course I except your mirrors when in action," he began, without salutation. "If so, come this moment to my conservatory. My night-blooming cereus has her coming-out party tonight."
They both exclaimed with delight, and were walking with him toward the garden. Suddenly, Mrs. Belding stopped and said:
"Alice, run and get your sketch-book and pencil. It will be lovely to draw the flower."
"Why, mamma! we shall not have time for a sketch."
"There, there! do as I tell you, and do not waste time in disputing."
The young girl hesitated a moment, and then, with instinctive obedience, went off to fetch the drawing materials, while her mother said to Farnham:
"Madame de Veaudrey says Alice is very clever with her pencil; but she is so modest I shall have to be severe with her to make her do anything. She takes after me. I was very clever in my lessons, but never would admit it."
Alice came down the steps. Farnham, seeing her encumbered by her books, took them from her, and they went down the walks to the conservatory. They found Ferguson sitting, with the same rapt observation, before his tropical darling. As the ladies entered, he rose to give them seats, and then retired to the most distant corner of the room, where he spent the rest of the evening entirely unaware of any one's presence, and given up to the delight of his eyes. The bud was so far opened that the creamy white of the petals could be seen within the riven sheath, whose strong dark color exquisitely relieved the pallid beauty it had guarded so long. The silky stamens were still curled about the central style, but the splendor of color which was coming was already suggested, and a breath of intoxicating fragrance stole from the heart of the immaculate flower.
They spoke to each other in low tones, as if impressed with a sort of awe at the beautiful and mysterious development of fragrant and lovely life going forward under their sight. The dark eyes of Alice Belding were full of that vivid happiness which strange and charming things bring to intelligent girlhood. She was looking with all her soul, and her breath was quick and high, and her soft red lips were parted and tremulous. Farnham looked from her to the flower, and back again, gazing on both with equal safety, for the one was as unconscious of his admiring glances as the other.
Suddenly, the sound of bells floated in from the neighboring street, and both of the ladies started. "No, don't you go," said Mrs. Belding to her daughter. "I must, because I have to see my 'Rescue the Perishing.' But you can just as well stay here and make your sketch. Mr. Farnham can take care of you, and I will be back in an hour."
"But, mamma!" cried Miss Alice, too much scandalized to speak another word.
"I won't have you lose this chance," her mother continued. "I am sure Mr. Farnham will not object to taking care of you a little while; and if he hasn't the time, Fergus will bring you home—hm, Fergus?"
"Ay, madam, with right guid will," the gardener said, his hard face softening into a smile.
"There, sit down in that chair and begin your sketch. It is lovely just as it is." She waited until Alice, whose confusion had turned her face crimson, had taken her seat, opened her sketch-book, and taken her pencils in her trembling hands, and then the brisk and hearty woman drew her shawl about her and bustled to the door.
"I will walk to the church door with you," said Farnham, to the infinite relief of Alice, who regained her composure at the instant, and began with interest to sketch the flower. She thought, while her busy fingers were at work, that she had perhaps been too prudish in objecting to her mother's plan. "He evidently thinks nothing of it, and why should I?"
By the time Farnham returned, the cereus had attained its full glory of bloom. Its vast petals were thrown back to their fullest extent, and shone with a luminous beauty in which its very perfume seemed visible; the countless recurved stamens shot forth with the vigorous impulse and vitality of sun rays; from the glowing centre to the dark fringe with which the shattered sheath still accented its radiant outline it blazed forth, fully revealed; and its sweet breath seemed the voice of a pride and consciousness of beauty like that of the goddess on Mount Ida, calmly triumphant in the certainty of perfect loveliness.
Alice had grown interested in her task, and looked up for only an instant with her frank, clear eyes as Farnham entered. "Now, where shall I sit?" he asked. "Here, behind your right elbow, where I can look over your shoulder and observe the work as it goes on?"
"By no means. My hand would lose all its little cunning in that case."
"Then I will sit in front of you and study the artistic emotions in your face."
"That would be still worse, for you would hide my subject. I am sure you are very well as you are," she added, as he seated himself in a chair beside her, a little way off.
"Yes, that is very well. I have the flower three-quarters and you in profile. I will study the one for a panel and the other for a medal."
Miss Alice laughed gently. She laughed often from sheer good humor, answering the intention of what was said to her better than by words.
"Can you sketch and talk too?" asked Farnham.
"I can sketch and listen," she said. "You will talk and keep me amused."
"Amusement with malice aforethought! The order affects my spirits like a Dead March. How do the young men amuse young ladies nowadays? Do they begin by saying, 'Have you been very gay lately?'"
Again Miss Alice laughed. "She is an easy-laughing girl," thought Farnham. "I like easy-laughing girls. When she laughs, she always blushes a very little. It is worth while talking nonsense to see a girl laugh so pleasantly and blush so prettily."
It is not worth while, however, to repeat all the nonsense Farnham uttered in the next hour. He got very much interested in it himself, and was so eager sometimes to be amusing that he grew earnest, and the gentle laugh would cease and the pretty lips would come gravely together. Whenever he saw this he would fall back upon his trifling again. He had the soldier's fault of point-blank compliment, but with it an open sincerity of manner which relieved his flattery of any offensiveness. He had practised it in several capitals with some success. A dozen times this evening, a neat compliment came to his lips and stopped there. He could hardly understand his own reserve before this laughing young lady. Why should he not say something pretty about her hair and eyes, about her graceful attitude, about the nimble play of her white fingers over the paper? He had uttered frank flatteries to peeresses without rebuke. But he held his hand before this school-girl, with the open dark-brown eyes and a club of yellow hair at the back of her neck. He could not help feeling that, if he talked to her with any forcing of the personal accent, she would stop laughing and the clear eyes would be troubled. He desired anything rather than that, and so the conversation went rattling on as free from personalities as the talk of two light-hearted and clever schoolboys.
At one moment he was describing a bill of fare in a Colorado hotel.
"With nice bread, though, one can always get on," she said.
"True," Farnham answered; "but this bread was of a ghostly pallor and flatness, as if it had been baked by moonlight on a grave-stone."
"The Indian women cook well, do they not?" she asked.
"Some are not so bad as others. One young chief boasted to me of his wife's culinary accomplishments. He had been bragging all the morning about his own exploits, of the men he had killed and the horses he had stolen, and then to establish his standing clearly in my mind, he added: 'My squaw same white squaw—savey pie.'"
"Even there, then, the trail of the pie-crust is over them all."
"No! only over the aristocracy."
"I should like so much to see that wonderful country."
"It is worth seeing," he said, with a curious sinking of the heart, "if you are not under orders."
He could not help thinking what a pleasant thing a journey through that Brobdingnaggian fairy-land would be with company like the young girl before him. Nature would be twice as lovely reflected from those brown eyes. The absurdities and annoyances of travel would be made delightful by that frank, clear laugh. The thought of his poor Nellie flitted by him an instant, too gentle and feeble for reproach. Another stronger thought had occupied his mind.
"You ought to see it. Your mother will need rest before long from her Rescue-the-Perishings, and you are overworking yourself dreadfully over that sketch-book. There is a touch of malaria about the fountain in Bluff Park. Colorado will do you both no end of good. I feel as if I needed it myself. I haven't energy enough to read Mr. Martin's 'Life of the Prince Consort.' I shall speak to Mrs. Belding as soon as she returns."
"Do, by all means. I should like to go, but mamma would not spend three nights in a sleeping-car to see the Delectable Mountains themselves."
He rose and walked about the room, looking at the flower and the young artist from different points of view, and seeing new beauties in each continually. There were long lapses of conversation, in which Alice worked assiduously and Farnham lounged about the conservatory, always returning with a quick word and a keen look at the face of the girl. At last he said to himself: "Look here! She is not a baby. She is nearly twenty years old. I have been wondering why her face was so steady and wise." The thought that she was not a child tilled his heart with pleasure and his face with light. But his volubility seemed to die suddenly away. He sat for a good while in silence, and started a little as she looked up and said:
"Now, if you will be very gentle, you can see my sketch and tell me what to do next."
It was a pretty and unpretentious picture that she had made. The flower was faithfully though stiffly given, and nothing especially remarkable had been attempted or achieved. Farnham looked at the sketch with eyes in which there was no criticism. He gave Alice a word or two of heartier praise for her work than she knew she deserved. It was rather more than she expected, and she was not altogether pleased to be so highly commended, though she could hardly have said why. Perhaps it was because it made her think less of his critical faculty. This was not agreeable, for her admiration of him from her childhood had been one of the greatest pleasures of her life. She had regarded him as children regard a brilliant and handsome young uncle. She did not expect from him either gallantry or equality of treatment.
"There! Do not say too much about it—you will make me ashamed of it. What does it lack?"
"Nothing, except something on the right to balance the other side. You might sketch in roughly a half-opened flower on the vine about there," indicating the place.
She took her pencils and began obediently to do what he had suggested. He leaned over her shoulder, so near her she could feel his breath on the light curls that played about her ear. She wished he would move. She grew nervous, and at last said:
"I am tired. You put in that flower."
He took the book and pencils from her, as she rose from her chair and gave him her place, and with a few strong and rapid strokes finished the sketch.
"After all," she said to herself, with hearty appreciation, "men do have the advantage of girls. He bothered me dreadfully, and I did not bother him in the least. And yet I stood as near to him as he did to me."
Mrs. Belding came in a moment later. She was in high spirits. They had had a good meeting—had converted a Jew, she thought. She admired the sketch very much; hoped Alice had been no trouble to Farnham. He walked home with the ladies, and afterward smoked a cigar with great deliberation under the limes.
Mrs. Belding asked Alice how they had got on.
"He did not eat you, you see. You must get out of your ideas of men, especially men of Arthur Farnham's age. He never thinks of you. He is old enough to be your father."
Alice kissed her mother and went to her own room, calculating on the way the difference between her age and Captain Farnham's.
[IX.]
A DRAMA WITH TWO SPECTATORS.
The words of Bott lingered obstinately in Maud Matchin's mind. She gave herself no rest from dwelling on them. Her imagination was full, day after day, of glowing pictures of herself and Farnham in tête-á-tête; she would seek in a thousand ways to tell her love—but she could never quite arrange her avowal in a satisfactory manner. Long before she came to the decisive words which were to kindle his heart to flame in the imaginary dialogue, he would himself take fire by spontaneous combustion, and, falling on his knees, would offer his hand, his heart, and his fortune to her in words taken from "The Earl's Daughter" or the "Heir of Ashby."
"Oh, pshaw! that's the way it ought to be," she would say to herself. "But if he won't—I wonder whether I ever could have the brass to do it? I don't know why I shouldn't. We are both human. Bott wouldn't have said that if there was nothing in it, and he's a mighty smart man."
The night usually gave her courage. Gazing into her glass, she saw enough to inspire her with an idea of her own invincibility; and after she had grown warm in bed she would doze away, resolving with a stout heart that she would try her fate in the morning. But when day came, the enterprise no longer seemed so simple. Her scanty wardrobe struck her with cowardice as she surveyed it. The broad daylight made everything in the house seem poor and shabby. When she went down-stairs, her heart sank within her as she entered the kitchen to help her mother, and when she sat with the family at the breakfast-table, she had no faith left in her dreams of the rosy midnight. This alternation of feeling bred in her, in the course of a few days, a sort of fever, which lent a singular beauty to her face, and a petulant tang to her speech. She rose one morning, after a sleepless night, in a state of anger and excitement in which she had little difficulty in charging upon Farnham all responsibility for her trouble of mind.
"I won't stand it any longer," she said aloud in her chamber. "I shall go to him this day and have it out. I shall ask him what he means by treating me so."
She sat down by her bureau and began to crimp her hair with grim resolution. Her mother came and knocked at her door. "I'm not coming to breakfast, I've got a headache," she said, and added to herself, "I sha'n't go down and get the smell of bacon on me this morning."
She continued her work of personal adornment for two hours, going several times over her whole modest arsenal of finery before she was ready for the fray. She then went down in her street costume, and made a hasty meal of bread and butter, standing by the pantry. Her mother came in and found her there.
"Why, Mattie, how's your head?"
"I'm going to take a walk and see what that will do."
As she walked rapidly out of Dean Street, the great clock of the cathedral was striking the hour of nine.
"Goodness!" she exclaimed, "that's too early to call on a gentleman. What shall I do?"
She concluded to spend the time of waiting in the library, and walked rapidly in that direction, the fresh air flushing her cheeks, and blowing the frizzed hair prettily about her temples. She went straight to the reference rooms, and sat down to read a magazine. The girl who had prompted her to apply for a place was there on duty. She gave a little cry of delight when she saw Maud, and said:
"I was just crazy to see you. I have got a great secret for you. I'm engaged!"
The girls kissed each other with giggles and little screams, and the young woman told who he was—in the lightning-rod business in Kalamazoo, and doing very well; they were to be married almost immediately.
"You never saw such a fellow, he just won't wait;" and consequently her place in the library would be vacant. "Now, you must have it, Maud! I haven't told a soul. Even the Doctor don't know it yet."
Maud left the library and walked up the avenue with an easier mind. She had an excuse for her visit now, and need not broach, unless she liked, the tremendous subject that made her turn hot and cold to think of. She went rustling up the wide thoroughfare at a quick pace; but before arriving at Farnham's, moved by a momentary whim, she turned down a side street leading to Bishop's Lane. She said to herself, "I will go in by that little gate once, if I never do again." As she drew near, she thought, "I hope Sam isn't there."
Sam was there, just finishing his work upon the greenhouse. Farnham was there also; he had come down to inspect the job, and he and Sleeny were chatting near the gate as Maud opened it and came in. Farnham stepped forward to meet her. The unexpected rencounter made her shy, and she neither spoke to Sam nor looked toward him, which filled him with a dull jealousy.
"Could I have a few moments' conversation with you, sir?" she asked, with stiff formality.
"Certainly," said Farnham, smiling. "Shall we go into the house?"
"Thank you, sir," she rejoined, severely decorous. They walked up the garden-path together, and Sam looked after them with an unquiet heart.
She was walking beside Farnham with a stately step, in spite of the scabbard-like narrowness of the dress she wore. She was nearly as tall as he, and as graceful as a young pine blown to and fro by soft winds. The carpenter, with his heart heavy with love and longing, felt a bitter sense that she was too fine for him. They passed into the house, and he turned to his work with a sigh, often dropping his busy hands and looking toward the house with a dumb questioning in his eyes. After a half hour which seemed endless to him, they reappeared and walked slowly down the lawn. There was trouble and agitation in the girl's face, and Farnham was serious also. As they came by the rose-house, Maud paused and looked up with a sorrowful smile and a question. Farnham nodded, and they walked to the open door of the long, low building. He led the way in, and Maud, looking hastily around, closed the door behind them.
"He's goin' to give her some more of them roses," said Sam, explaining the matter to himself. But he worked for some time with his blond beard on his shoulder in his impatience to see them come out. At last, he could resist no longer. He knew a point where he could look through the glass and see whatever was taking place among the roses. He walked swiftly across the turf to that point. He looked in and saw Maud, whose back was turned toward him, talking as if she were pleading for her life, while Farnham listened with a clouded brow. Sleeny stood staring with stupid wonder while Maud laid her hand upon Farnham's shoulder. At that moment he heard footsteps on the gravel walk at some distance from him, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Belding approaching. Confused at his attitude of espionage, he walked away from his post, and, as he passed her, Mrs. Belding asked him if he knew where Mr. Farnham was.
"Yes," he answered, "he's in there. Walk right in;" and in the midst of his trouble of spirit he could hardly help chuckling at his own cleverness as he walked, in his amazement, back to the conservatory.
While she was in the house, Maud had confined herself to the subject of the vacancy in the library. She rushed at it, as a hunter at a hedge, to get away from the other matter which had tormented her for a week. When she found herself alone with Farnham she saw that it would be "horrid" to say what she had so long been rehearsing. "Now I can get that place, if you will help me. No earthly soul knows anything about it, and Minnie said she would give me a good chance before she let it out."
Farnham tried to show her the difficulties in the way. He was led by her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence. Whenever he paused, she would insist with a woman's disconcerting directness:
"But they don't know anything about it this time—they can't combine on anybody. You can certainly get one of them."
Farnham still argued against her sanguine hopes, till he at last affected her own spirits, and she grew silent and despondent. As she rose to go, he also took his hat to return to the garden, where he had left Sleeny, and they walked over the lawn together. As they approached the rose-house, she thought of her former visit and asked to repeat it. The warm breath of the flowers saluted her as she crossed the threshold, bringing so vivid a reminiscence of the enchantment of that other day, that there came with it a sudden and poignant desire to try there, in that bewitched atmosphere, the desperate experiment which would decide her fate. There was no longer any struggle in her mind. She could not, for her life, have kept silent now. She walked slowly beside him to the place where the pots of roses stood ranged on their frames, filling the air with dense fragrance. Her hands were icy cold and quick flushes passed through her, while her face reddened and paled like a horizon smitten by heat-lightning in a sultry night of summer. She looked at the moist brick pavement at her feet, her eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, and the long lashes nearly touched her cheeks.
"What sort will you have?" said Farnham, reaching for the gardener's shears.
"Never mind the roses," she said, in a dry voice which she hardly recognized as her own. "I have something to say to you."
He turned and looked at her with surprise. She raised her eyes to his with a great effort, and then, blushing fiery red, she said, in a clear, low voice, "I love you."
Like many another daughter and son of Eve, she was startled at the effect of these momentous words upon herself. Of all forms of speech these three words are the most powerful, the most wonderworking upon the being who utters them. It was the first time they had ever passed her lips, and they exalted and inebriated her. She was suddenly set free from the bashful constraint which had held her, and with a leaping pulse and free tongue she poured out her heart to the astonished and scandalized young man.
"Yes, I love you. You think it's horrid that I should say so, don't you? But I don't care, I love you. I loved you the first time I saw you, though you made me so angry about my glasses. But you were my master, and I knew it, and I never put them on again. And I thought of you day and night, and I longed for the day to come when I might see you once more, and I was glad when I did not get that place, so that I could come again and see you and talk with you. I can tell you over again every word you ever said to me. You were not like other men. You are the first real man I ever knew. I was silly and wild when I wanted to be your secretary. Of course, that wouldn't do. If I am not to be your wife, I must never see you again; you know that, don't you?" and, carried away by her own reckless words, she laid her hand on his shoulder. His frown of amazement and displeasure shook her composure somewhat. She turned pale and trembled, her eyes fell, and it seemed for an instant as if she would sink to the floor at his feet. He put his arm around her, to keep her from falling and pressed her closely to him. She threw her head back upon his shoulder and lifted her face to him. He looked down on her, and the frown passed from his brow as he surveyed her flushed cheeks, her red full lips parted in breathless eagerness; her dark eyes were wide open, the iris flecked with golden sparks and the white as clear and blue-tinged as in the eyes of a vigorous infant; her head lay on his shoulder in perfect content, and she put up her mouth to him as simply and as sure of a response as a pretty child. He was entirely aware of the ridiculousness of his position, but he stooped and kissed her.
Her work seemed all done; but her satisfaction lasted only a second. Her face broke into happy smiles.
"You do love me, do you not?" she asked.
"I certainly do not," he answered; and at that instant the door opened and Mrs. Belding saw this pretty group of apparent lovers on a rich background of Jacqueminot roses.
Startled more at the words of Farnham than at the entry of Mrs. Belding, Maud had started up, like Vivien, "stiff as a viper frozen." Her first thought was whether she had crushed her hat on his shoulder, and her hands flew instinctively to her head-gear. She then walked tempestuously past the astonished lady out into the garden and brushed roughly by Sleeny, who tried to detain her.
"Hold your tongue, Sam! I hate you and all men"; and with this general denunciation, she passed out of the place, flaming with rage and shame.
Mrs. Belding stood for a moment speechless, and then resorted to the use of that hard-worked and useful monosyllable,
"Well!" with a sharp, falling inflection.
"Well!" returned Farnham, with an easy, rising accent; and then both of them relieved the strained situation with a laugh.
"Come, now," said the good-natured woman, "I am a sort of guardian of yours. Give an account of yourself."
"That is easily given," said Farnham. "A young woman, whose name I hardly know, came to me in the garden this morning to ask for help to get some lady-like work to do. After discussing that subject threadbare, she came in here for a rose, and, apropos of nothing, made me a declaration and a proposal of honorable wedlock, dans toutes les formes."
"The forms were evident as I entered," said Mrs. Belding, dryly.
"I could not let her drop on the damp floor," said Farnham, who was astonished to find himself positively blushing under the amused scrutiny of his mother-confessor. "Consider, if you please, my dear madam, that this is the first offer I have ever received, and I was naturally somewhat awkward about declining it. We shall learn better manners as we go along."
"You did decline, then?" said Mrs. Belding, easily persuaded of the substantial truth of the story, and naturally inclined, as is the way of woman, to the man's side. Then, laughing at Arthur's discomfiture, she added, "I was about to congratulate you."
"I deserve only your commiseration."
"I must look about and dispose of you in some way. You are evidently too rich and too fascinating. But I came over to-day to ask you what I ought to do about my Lake View farm. I have two offers for it; if I had but one, I would take either—well, you know what I mean;" and the conversation became practical. After that matter was disposed of, she said, with a keen side-glance at Farnham, "That was a very pretty girl. I hope you will not be exposed to such another attack; I might not be so near the next time."
"That danger, thanks to you, is over; Mademoiselle will never return," he answered, with an air of conviction.
Mrs. Belding went home with no impression left of the scene she had witnessed but one of amusement. She thought of it only as "a good joke on Arthur Farnham." She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on her hat and hurried off to tell it. But she was a woman who lived very much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling. She was several times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance. So she restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment of it irritated her.
They were sitting on the wide porch which ran around two sides of the house just as twilight was falling. The air was full of drowsy calls and twitters from the grass and the trees. The two ladies had been sitting ever since dinner, enjoying the warm air of the early summer, talking very little, and dropping often into long and contented silences. Mrs. Belding had condescended to grenadine in consideration of the weather, and so looked less funereal than usual. Alice was dressed in a soft and vapory fabric of creamy bunting, in the midst of which her long figure lay reclined in an easy chair of Japanese bamboo; she might have posed for a statue of graceful and luxurious repose. There was light enough from the rising moon and the risen stars to show the clear beauty of her face and the yellow lustre of her hair; and her mother cast upon her from time to time a glance of pride and fondness, as if she were a recovered treasure to which the attraction of novelty had just been added anew.
"They say she looks as I did at her age," thought the candid lady; "but they must flatter me. My nose was never so straight as that: her nose is Belding all over. I wonder whom she will care about here? Mr. Furrey is a nice young man, but she is hardly polite to him. There he is now."
The young man came briskly up the walk, and ran up the steps so quickly that he tripped on the last one and dropped his hat. He cleverly recovered it, however, and made very elaborate bows to both the ladies, hoping that he found them quite well. Mrs. Belding bustled about to give him a chair, at which Alice knitted her pretty brows a little. She had scarcely moved her eyelashes to greet her visitor; but when Mrs. Belding placed a light chair near her daughter and invited Mr. Furrey to take it, the young lady rose from her reclining attitude and sat bolt upright with a look of freezing dignity. The youth was not at all abashed, but took his seat, with his hat held lightly by the brim in both hands. He was elegantly dressed, in as faithful and reverent an imitation as home talent could produce of the costume of the gentlemen who that year were driving coaches in New York. His collar was as stiff as tin; he had a white scarf, with an elaborate pin constructed of whips and spurs and horseshoes. He wore dog-skin gloves, very tight and red. His hair was parted in the middle with rigorous impartiality and shed rather rank fragrance on the night. He began conversation with an easy air, in which there was something of pleasurable excitement mixed.
"I come to receive your congratulations, ladies!"
"What, you are engaged?" said Mrs. Belding, and even the placid face of Miss Alice brightened with a look of pleased inquiry.
"Oh, dear, no; how could you think so?" he protested, with an arch look at Alice which turned her to marble again. "I mean I have this day been appointed assistant cashier of our bank!" Napoleon, informing Madame de Beauharnais [* - Perhaps Josephine told Napoleon herself, but I think she was clever enough to let him imagine he owed the appointment to his merits.] that he was to command the army of Italy, probably made less ado about it.
Mrs. Belding made haste to murmur her congratulations. "Very gratifying, I am sure,—at your age;" to which Alice responded like a chorus, but without any initiative warmth, "Very gratifying, I am sure."
Furrey went on at some length to detail all the circumstances of the event: how Mr. Lathers, the president of the bank, had sent for him, and how he complimented him; how he had asked him where he learned to write such a good hand; and how he had replied that it came sort of natural to him to write well, that he could make the American eagle with pen and ink before he was fifteen, all but the tail-feathers, and how he discovered a year later that the tail-feathers had to be made by holding the pen between the first and second fingers; with much more to the like innocent purpose, to which Mrs. Belding listened with nods and murmurs of approval. This was all the amiable young man needed to encourage him to indefinite prattle. He told them all about the men in the bank, their habits and their loves and their personal relations to him, and how he seemed somehow to be a general favorite among them all. Miss Alice sat very still and straight in her chair, with an occasional smile when the laughter of Mr. Furrey seemed to require it, but with her eyes turned to the moonlit night in vagrant reverie, and her mind in those distant and sacred regions where we cannot follow the minds of pure and happy girls.
"Now, you would hardly understand, if I did not tell you," said Mr. Furrey, "how it is that I have gained the confidence——"
At this moment Alice, who had been glancing over Mr. Furrey's shoulder for a moment with a look of interest in her eyes, which he thought was the legitimate result of his entertaining story, cried:
"Why, there comes Mr. Farnham, mamma."
"So it is," said her mother. "I suppose he wants to see me. Don't move, Mr. Furrey. Mr. Farnham and I will go into the house."
"By no means," said that gentleman, who by this time had mounted the steps. "I was sitting all alone on my porch and saw by the moon that yours was inhabited; and so I came over to improve my mind and manners in your society."
"I will get a chair for you," said Mrs. Belding.
"No, thank you; this balustrade will bear my weight, and my ashes will drop harmless on the flower-bed, if you will let me finish my cigar." And he seated himself between the chair of Furrey and the willow fabric in which Alice had resumed her place. This addition to the company was not at all to the taste of the assistant cashier, who soon took his leave, shaking hands with the ladies, with his best bow.
"After all, I do prefer a chair," said Farnham, getting down from his balustrade, and throwing away his cigar.
He sat with his back to the moonlight. On his left was Alice, who, as soon as Furrey took his departure, settled back in her willow chair in her former attitude of graceful ease. On the right was Mrs. Belding, in her thin, cool dress of gauzy black. Farnham looked from one to the other as they talked, and that curious exercise, so common to young men in such circumstances, went through his mind. He tried to fancy how Mrs. Belding looked at nineteen, and how Miss Belding would look at fifty, and the thought gave him singular pleasure. His eyes rested with satisfaction on the kindly and handsome face of the widow, her fine shoulders and arms, and comfortable form, and then, turning to the pure and exquisite features of the tall girl, who was smiling so freshly and honestly on him, his mind leaped forward through corning years, and he said to himself: "What a wealth of the woman there is there—for somebody." An aggressive feeling of disapproval of young Furrey took possession of him, and he said, sharply:
"What a very agreeable young man Mr. Furrey is?"
Mrs. Belding assented, and Miss Alice laughed heartily, and his mind was set at rest for the moment.
They passed a long time together. At first Mrs. Belding and Arthur "made the expenses" of the conversation; but she soon dropped away, and Alice, under the influence of the night and the moonlight and Farnham's frank and gentle provocation, soon found herself talking with as much freedom and energy as if it were a girls' breakfast. With far more, indeed,—for nature takes care of such matters, and no girl can talk to another as she can to a man, under favoring stars. The conversation finally took a personal turn, and Alice, to her own amazement, began to talk of her life at school, and with sweet and loving earnestness sang the praises of Madame de Veaudrey.
"I wish you could know her," she said to Farnham, with a sudden impulse of sympathy. He was listening to her intently, and enjoying her eager, ingenuous speech as much as her superb beauty, as the moon shone full on her young face, so vital and so pure at once, and played, as if glad of the privilege, about the curved lips, the flashing teeth, the soft eyes under their long lashes, and the hair over the white forehead, gleaming as crisply brilliant as fine-spun wire of gold.
"By her fruits I know her, and I admire her very much," he said, and was sorry for it the moment afterward, for it checked the course of the young girl's enthusiasm and brought a slight blush to her cheek.
"I ought to have known better," he said to himself with real penitence, "than to utter a stupid commonplace to such a girl when she was talking so earnestly." And he tried to make amends, and succeeded in winning back her attention and her slow unconscious smiles by talking to her of things a thousand miles away. The moon was silvering the tops of the linden-trees at the gates before they thought of the flight of time, and they had quite forgotten the presence of Mrs. Belding when her audible repose broke in upon their talk. They looked at each other, and burst into a frank laugh, full of confidence and comradeship, which the good lady heard in her dreams and waked, saying, "What are you laughing at? I did not catch that last witticism."
The young people rose from their chairs. "I can't repeat my own mots," said Arthur: "Miss Belding will tell you."
"Indeed I shall not," replied Alice. "It was not one of his best, mamma."
She gave him her hand as he said "Good-night," and it lay in his firm grasp a moment without reserve or tremor.
"You are a queer girl, Alice," said Mrs. Belding, as they walked into the drawing-room through the open window. "You put on your stiffest company manners for Mr. Furrey, and you seem entirely at ease with Mr. Farnham, who is much older and cleverer, and is noted for his sarcastic criticisms."
"I do not know why it is, mamma, but I do feel very much at home with Mr. Farnham, and I do not want Mr. Furrey to feel at home with me."
Upon this, Mrs. Belding laughed aloud. Alice turned in surprise, and her mother said, "It is too good to keep. I must tell you. It is such a joke on Arthur;" and, sitting in a low arm-chair, while Alice stood before her leaning upon the back of another, she told the whole story of the scene of the morning in the rose-house. She gave it in the fullest detail, interrupting herself here and there for soft cachinnations, unmindful of the stern, unsmiling silence with which her daughter listened.
She finished, with a loud nourish of merriment, and then asked: "Did you ever hear anything so funny in your life?"
The young lady was turning white and red in an ominous manner, and was biting her nether lip. Her answer to her mother's question was swift and brief:
"I never heard anything so horrid," and she moved majestically away without another word.
Mrs. Belding sat for a moment abashed. "There!" she said to herself, "I knew very well I ought not to tell her. But it was too good to keep, and I had nobody else to tell." She went to bed, feeling rather ill-used. As she passed her daughter's door, she said, "Good-night, Alice!" and a voice riot quite so sweet as usual replied, "Good-night, mamma," but the door was not opened.
Alice turned down her light and sat upon a cushioned seat in the embrasure of her open window. She looked up at the stars, which swam and glittered in her angry eyes. With trembling lips and clinched hands she communed with herself. "Why, why, why did mamma tell me that horrid story? To think there should be such women in the world! To take such a liberty with him, of all men! She could not have done it without some encouragement—and he could not have encouraged her. He is not that kind of a vulgar flirt at all. But what do I know about men? They may all be—but I did not think—what business have I thinking about it? I had better go to bed. I have spent all the evening talking to a man who—Oh! I wish mamma had not told me that wretched story. I shall never speak to him again. It is a pity, too, for we are such near neighbors, and he is so nice, if he were not—But I don't care how nice he is, she has spoiled him. I wonder who she was. Pretty, was she? I don't believe a word of it—some bold-faced, brazen creature. Oh! I shall hate myself if I cry;" but that was past praying for, and she closed her lattice and went to bed for fear the stars should witness her unwelcome tears.
[X.]
A WORD OUT OF SEASON.
Arthur Farnham awoke the next day with a flight of sweet hopes and fancies singing in his heart and brain. He felt cheerfully and kindly toward the whole human race. As he walked down into the city to transact some business he had there with his lawyer, he went out of his way to speak to little children. He gave all his acquaintances a heartier "Good-morning" than usual. He even whistled at passing dogs. The twitter of the sparrows in the trees, their fierce contentions on the grass, amused him. He leaned over the railing of the fountain in the square with the idlers, and took a deep interest in the turtles, who were baking their frescoed backs in the warm sun, as they floated about on pine boards, amid the bubbles of the clear water.
As he passed by the library building, Dr. Buchlieber was standing in the door. "Good luck," he said; "I was just wishing to see you. One of our young women resigned this morning, and I think there may be a chance for our handsome friend. The meeting, you remember, is this afternoon."
Farnham hardly recalled the name of the young lady in whose success he had been so interested, although recent intimate occurrences might have been expected to fix it somewhat permanently in his remembrance. But all female images except one had become rather vague in his memory. He assented, however, to what the doctor proposed, and going away congratulated himself on the possibility of doing Maud a service and ridding himself of the faintest tinge of remorse. He was not fatuous or conceited. He did not for a moment imagine that the girl was in love with him. He attributed her demonstration in the rose-house to her "congenital bad breeding," and thought it only one degree worse than other match-making manoeuvres of which he had been the object in the different worlds he had frequented. He gave himself no serious thought about it, and yet he was glad to find an apparent opportunity to be of use to her. She was poor and pretty. He had taken an interest in her welfare. It had not turned out very well. She had flung herself into his arms and been heartily kissed. He could not help feeling there was a balance against him.
As he turned the corner of the street which led to the attorney's office where he was going, he saw a man standing by the wall with his hat off, bowing to him. He returned the unusual salutation and passed on; it was some moments before he remembered that it was one of his colleagues on the Library Board. He regretted not having stopped and made the effort to engage his vote for Maud; but, on second thought, he reflected that it would be as well to rely upon the surprise of the three to prevent a combination at the meeting. When he reached the entrance of the building where his lawyer's offices were, he turned, with a sense of being pursued by a shuffling footstep which had hastened its speed the last few paces, and saw his colleague coming up the steps after him with a perspiring but resolute face.
"Hold on, Cap," he said, coming into the shade of the passage. "I was thinkin' o' comin' to see you, when I sighted you comin' round the corner."
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Pennybaker," said Arthur, taking the clumsy hand which was held out to him.
"Gettin' pretty hot, ain't it?" said Pennybaker, wiping his brow with his forefinger and dexterously sprinkling the floor with the proceeds of the action.
"No danger of frost, I think," Arthur assented, admiring the dexterity of Pennybaker, but congratulating himself that the shake-hands was disposed of.
"You bet your life. We're going to have it just sizzling from now on."
"Were you wishing to see me about anything in particular?" asked Farnham, who saw no other way of putting an end to a meteorological discussion which did not interest him.
"Well, yes," answered Pennybaker, getting around beside Farnham, and gazing at the wall opposite. "I heerd this mornin' that Minnie Bell was goin' to get married. My daughter is doing some sewing for her, and it slipped out that way. She was trying to keep it secret. Some girls is mighty funny that way. They will do anything to get engaged, and then they will lie like Sam Hill to make believe they ain't. Well, that makes a vacancy." He did not turn his head, but he cast a quick glance sideways at Farnham, who made no answer, and Pennybaker resumed: "So I thought I would come to you, honor bright, and see if we couldn't agree what to do. That's me. I'm open and square like a bottle of bitters."
Farnham gave no indication of his surprise at this burst of candor, but asked:
"What do you propose?"
"That's it," said Pennybaker, promptly. "I don't propose nothing—I expose. You hear me—I expose." He said this with great mystery, one eye being shut fast and the other only half open. He perceived that he had puzzled Farnham, and enjoyed it for a moment by repeating his mot with a chuckle that did not move a muscle of his face. "I'll tell you the whole thing. There's no use, between gentlemen, of playing the thing too fine." He took his knife from one pocket and from another a twist of tobacco, and, cutting off a mouthful, began his story:
"You see, me and Bud Merritt and Joe Dorman have most generally agreed on paternage, and that was all right. You are well fixed. You don't want the bother of them little giblets of paternage. We've 'tended to 'em for what there was in 'em and for the good of the party. Now Bud he wants to be auditor, and he's got Joe to go in with him, because, if he gits there, Joe's brother-in-law, Tim Dolan, will be his debbity. Bud is weak in the Third Ward, and he knows it, and he knows that Jake Runckel can swing that ward like a dead cat; and so they have fixed it all up to give the next vacancy to Jake for his sister. She's been turned out of the school for some skylarking, and weighs pretty heavy on Jake's hands. Very well. That's the game, and I'm a-kickin'! Do you hear me? I'm a-kickin'!"
Pennybaker pushed up his hat and looked Farnham fairly in the face. The assertion of his independence seemed to give him great gratification. He said once more, slowly closing one eye and settling back in his former attitude against the wall, while he aimed a deluge of tobacco-juice at the base of the wall before him: "I'm a-kickin' like a Texas steer."
He waited a moment to allow these impressive words to have their full effect, while Farnham preserved a serious and attentive face.
"Well, this bein' the case," continued Pennybaker, "I comes to you, as one gentleman to another, and I asks whether we can't agree against this selfish and corrupt game of Merritt and Dorman. For, you see, I don't get a smell out of what they're doin'. I'm out in the cold if their slate goes through."
"I don't see that I can be of any service to you, Mr. Pennybaker. If I have any influence in the matter, it shall be given to Miss Matchin, whom I proposed once before."
"Exactly! Now you're talkin'. Miss Matchin shall have it, on one little proviso that won't hurt you nor me nor nobody. Say the word, and it's a whack."
And he lifted up his hand to strike the bargain.
"What is it?" asked Farnham, in a tone which was severe and contemptuous, in spite of him.
"Namely, just this," answered Pennybaker, "You ain't on the make; you're fixed. You don't care about these d—— little things except to help a friend once 'n awhile," he said, in a large and generous way. "But I ain't that kind yet. I've got to look out for myself—pretty lively, too. Now, I'll tell you what's my racket. You let me perpose Miss Matchin's name and then go and tell her father that I put it through, and it'll be done slick as a whistle. That's all solid, ain't it?"
Farnham's brow clouded. He did not answer at once. Pennybaker repeated his question a little anxiously:
"That's all solid, ain't it?"
"You will excuse me, Mr. Pennybaker, if I do not quite understand your racket, as you call it. I do not see how you make anything out of this. Matchin is a poor man. You surely do not intend——"
"To strike Saul for a divvy? Nothing of the sort," said Pennybaker, without the least offence. "The whole thing lies just here. Among gentlemen there's no use being shy about it. My brother wants to be assessor in Saul Matchin's ward. Saul's got a lot of influence among the boys in the planing-mills, and I want his help. You see?"
Farnham thought he saw, and, after assenting to Pennybaker's eager demand, "That's all solid?" he walked away, too much relieved by the thought that Maud was provided for to question too closely the morality of the proceeding which the sordid rascal had exposed to him.
In the afternoon, at the meeting of the board, the programme agreed upon was strictly carried out.
Pennybaker proposed Miss Matchin's name as soon as the vacancy was announced, to the amazement of his late confederates. They moved a postponement, but to no purpose; Maud was elected; and the angry politicians had no better revenge than to say spitefully to Pennybaker on the stairs, as they went away, "How much did the Captain give you for that sell-out?"—a jeer which he met by a smile of conscious rectitude and a request to be informed the next time they organized a freeze-out against him. It must be said, however, that he lost no time in going to Matchin, informing him that he had succeeded in carrying Maud in by unheard-of exertions, and demanding and receiving on the spot five per cent of her year's salary, which he called "the usual commission."
Saul announced the appointment that evening at supper. Maud flushed crimson, and the tears started to her eyes. She was about to declare she would not have it, when her father's next words put a different face on the matter. "And it's no thanks to Cap'n Farnham, neither. He tried it oncet, and couldn't make the riffle. But me and Joel Pennybaker got together and done it. And now I hope, Mattie, you'll behave yourself and save money. It's like a fortun' comin' to you, if you're smart."
Maud found no reply ready. She could not wholly believe her father's story. She still fancied the appointment came from Farnham, and there was a certain bitterness in it; but, on the whole, she received it not without a secret complacency. Mrs. Matchin's pleasure was checked by her daughter's morose confusion. Sam made no pretence of being pleased, but sat, unmoved by Matchin's speech, in scowling silence, and soon went out without a word of comment. The scene he had witnessed in the rose-house had poisoned his mind; yet, whenever he looked at Maud, or tried to speak to her, he was met with an air of such fierce and beautiful defiance, that his eyes fell and his voice stuck in his throat. So the piece of good fortune, so anxiously awaited in the household, brought little delight when it came. Maud reported for duty next day, and soon learned the routine of her work; but she grew more and more silent at home, and Saul's hope of a wedding in the family died away.
Arthur Farnham walked away from the meeting with the feeling of a school-boy who has finished a difficult task and who thinks he deserves some compensating pleasure. The day had been fine and warm, but the breeze of the late afternoon was already blowing in from the lake, lending freshness and life to the air. The sky was filled with soft gray clouds, which sailed along at a leisurely rate, evidently on very good terms with the breeze. As Farnham walked up the avenue, he cast about in his mind for the sort of dissipation with which he would reward himself for the day's work and he decided for a ride.
But as he was drawing on his boots, it occurred to him, for the first time in his life, that it was a churlish and unneighborly proceeding for him to go riding alone day after day, and that he would be doing no more than his duty to offer his escort to Miss Belding. He said Miss Belding to his own thought—making it as formal and respectful as possible. So, sending an order to his groom to keep his horse at the stable for a moment, he walked over the lawn to the Belding cottage and asked for the ladies.
"I believe they are upstairs, sir. Walk into the drawing-room, and I will see," said the neat housemaid, smiling at Farnham, as indeed was the general custom of women. He took his seat in the cool and darkened room facing the door-way, which commanded a view of the stairs. He sat in a large willow chair very much at his ease, looking about the pretty salon, enjoying its pictures and ornaments and the fragrance of the roses in the vases, as if he had a personal interest in them. The maid came back and said the ladies would be down in a moment.
She had announced Farnham to Mrs. Belding, who had replied, "Tell him, in a moment." She was in the summer afternoon condition which the ladies call "dressing-sack," and after an inspection at the glass, which seemed unsatisfactory, she walked across the hall to her daughter's room. She found Alice standing by the window, looking out upon the lake.
"There, I am glad you are all dressed. Arthur Farnham has called, and you must go down and excuse me. I said I would come, but it will take me so long to dress, he will get tired of waiting. You run down and see him. I suppose there is nothing particular."
"Oh, mamma," said Alice, "I don't want to see him, and especially not alone."
Mrs. Belding made large eyes in her surprise. "Why, Alice, what has got into you?"
Alice blushed and cast down her eyes. "Mamma," she said, in a low voice, "do not ask me to go down. You know what you told me last night."
"There, that will do," said the mother, with a tone of authority. "Perhaps I was foolish to tell you that silly little story, but I am the judge of who shall visit this house. You are too young to decide these questions for me, and I insist that what I told you shall make no difference in your treatment of Mr. Farnham. You think too much of your own part in the matter. He has come to see me, and not you, and I wish you to go down and make my excuses for keeping him waiting. Will you go?"
"Yes, I will go," said the young girl. The blush had left her cheek and she had become a trifle pale. She had not raised her eyes from the floor during her mother's little speech; and when it was over and her mother had gone back to her room, Alice cast one glance at her mirror, and with a firm face walked down the stairs to the drawing-room. Farnham heard the rustle of her dress with a beating of the heart which filled him with a delicious surprise. "I am not past it, then," was the thought that came instantly to his mind, and in that one second was a singular joy. When she came in sight on the stairs, it was like a sudden enchantment to him. Her beautiful head, crowned with its masses of hair drawn back into a simple Greek knot; her tall, strong figure, draped in some light and clinging stuff which imposed no check on her natural grace and dignity, formed a charming picture as she came down the long stairs; and Farnham's eyes fastened eagerly upon her white hand as it glided along the dark walnut baluster. His heart went out to meet her. He confessed to himself, with a lover's instantaneous conviction, that there was nothing in the world so utterly desirable as that tall and fair-haired girl slowly descending the stairs. In the midst of his tumultuous feeling a trivial thought occurred to him: "I am shot through the heart by the blind archer," he said to himself; and he no longer laughed at the old-fashioned symbol of the sudden and fatal power of love.
But with all this tumult of joy in the senses waking up to their allegiance, there came a certain reserve. The goddess-like creature who had so suddenly become the mistress of his soul was a very serious personage to confront in her new majesty. He did not follow the impulse of his heart and rush forward as she entered the room. He merely rose and bowed. She made the faintest possible salutation, and, without taking a seat, conveyed her mother's excuses in a tone of such studied coldness that it amused Farnham, who took it as a school-girl's assumption of a grand and ceremonious manner suitable to a tête-á-tête with man.
"Thank you," he said, "but I did not come especially to see your mother. My object was rather to see you." She did not smile or reply, and he went on, with a slight sensation of chill coming upon him from this stony dignity, which, the more he observed it, seemed less and less amusing and not at all artificial. "I came to ask if you would not like to go to ride this afternoon. It is just gray enough for comfort."
"I thank you very much for being so kind as to think of me," she replied, "but it will not be convenient for me to go."
"Perhaps the morning will suit better. I will come to-morrow at any hour you say."
"I shall not be able to go to-morrow either, I think."
Even while exchanging these few words, Alice felt herself growing slightly embarrassed, and it filled her with dismay. "I am a poor creature," she thought, "if I cannot get this self-satisfied gentleman out of the house without breaking down. I can't stand here forever though," and so she took a seat, and as Arthur resumed his willow chair with an air of content, she could not but feel that as yet the skirmish was not in her favor. She called her angry spirit to her aid, and nerved herself to say something which would promptly close the interview.
His next words gave her the opportunity.
"But you surely do not intend to give up riding altogether?"
"Certainly not. I hope to ride a good deal. Andrews will go with me."
"Ah! Your objection to me as a groom is entirely personal, then."
"Now for it!" she thought to herself, and she said firmly, "Yes."
But the effort was too great, and after the word was launched her mouth broke up into a nervous smile, for which she despised herself, but which she could not control for her life.
Farnham was so pleased with the smile that he cared nothing for the word, and so he continued in a tone of anxious and coaxing good-nature, every word increasing her trouble:
"You are wrong as you can be. I am a much better groom than Andrews. He has rather more style, I admit, on account of his Scotch accent and his rheumatism. But I might acquire these. I will be very attentive and respectful. I will ride at a proper distance behind you, if you will occasionally throw a word and a smile over your shoulder at me."
As he spoke, a quick vision flashed upon him of the loveliness of the head and shoulder, and the coil of fair hair which he should have before him if he rode after her, and the illumination of the smile and the word which would occasionally be thrown back to him from these perfect lips and teeth and eyes. His voice trembled with love and eagerness as he pleaded for the privilege of taking her servant's place. Alice no longer dared to interrupt him, and hardly ventured to lift her eyes from the floor. She had come down with the firm purpose of saying something to him which would put an end to all intimacy, and here, before she had been five minutes in his presence, he was talking to her in a way that delighted her ears and her heart. He went rattling on as if fearful that a pause might bring a change of mood. As she rarely looked up, he could feast his eyes upon her face, where now the color was coming and going, and on her shapely hands, which were clasped in her lap. He talked of Colorado as if it were settled that they were to go there together, and they must certainly have some preliminary training in rough riding; and then, merely to make conversation, he spoke of other places that should only be visited on horseback, always claiming in all of them his post of groom. Alice felt her trouble and confusion of spirit passing away as the light stream of talk rippled on. She took little part in it at first, but from monosyllables of assent she passed on to a word of reply from time to time; and before she knew how it happened she was engaged in a frank and hearty interchange of thoughts and fancies, which brought her best faculties into play and made her content with herself, in spite of the occasional intrusion of the idea that she had not been true to herself in letting her just anger die so quickly away.
If Farnham could have seen into the proud and honest heart of the young girl he was talking to, he would have rested on the field he had won, and not tempted a further adventure. Her anger against him had been dissipated by the very effort she had made to give it effect, and she had fallen insensibly into the old relation of good neighborhood and unreserved admiration with which she had always regarded him. She had silenced her scruples by the thought that in talking pleasantly with him she was obeying her mother, and that after all it was not her business to judge him. If he could have known his own best interest, he would have left her then, when her voice and her smile had become gay and unembarrassed according to their wont, with her conscience at ease about his faults, and her mind filled with a pleasant memory of his visit.
But such wisdom was beyond his reach. He had felt suddenly, and once for all, in the last hour, the power and visible presence of his love. He had never in his life been so moved by any passion as he was by the joy that stirred his heart when he heard the rustle of her dress in the hall and saw her white hand resting lightly on the dark wood of the stairs. As she walked into the parlor, from her face and her hair, from every movement of her limbs, from every flutter of her soft and gauzy garments, there came to him an assertion of her power over him that filled him with a delicious awe. She represented to him, as he had never felt it before, the embodied mystery and majesty of womanhood. During all the long conversation that had followed, he had been conscious of a sort of dual operation of his mind, like that familiar to the eaters of hashish. With one part of him he had been carrying on a light and shallow conversation, as an excuse to remain in her presence and to keep his eyes upon her, and with all the more active energies of his being he had been giving himself up to an act of passionate adoration of her. The thoughts that uttered themselves to him, as he chatted about all sorts of indifferent things, were something like these: How can it have ever happened that such beauty, such dignity, such physical perfection could come together in one person, and the best and sweetest heart have met them there? If she knew her value, her pride would ruin her. In her there is everything, and everything else beside: Galatea, the statue, with a Christian soul. She is the best that could fall to any man, but better for me than for any one else. Anybody who sees her must love her, but I was made for nothing else but to love her. This is what mythologies meant. She is Venus: she loves laughter, and her teeth and lips are divine. She is Diana: she makes the night beautiful; she has the eye and the arm of an athlete goddess. But she is a woman: she is Mrs. Belding's daughter Alice. Thank heaven, she lives here. I can call and see her. To-morrow, I shall ride with her. She will love and marry some day like other women. Who is the man who shall ever kiss her between those straight brows? And fancies more audacious and extravagant fed the fever of his heart as he talked deliberate small talk, still holding his hat and whip in his hand.
He knew it was time he should go, but could not leave the joy of his eyes and ears. At last his thoughts, like a vase too full, ran over into speech. It was without premeditation, almost without conscious intention. The under-tone simply became dominant and overwhelmed the frivolous surface talk. She had been talking of her mother's plans of summer travel, and he suddenly interrupted her by saying in the most natural tone in the world: "I must see your mother before she decides. I hope you will make no plans without me. I shall go where you go. I shall never be away from you again, if I can help it. No, no, do not frown about it. I must tell you. I love you; my whole life is yours."
She felt terribly shocked and alarmed, not so much at his words as at her own agitation. She feared for a moment she could not rise from her seat, but she did so with an effort. He rose and approached her, evidently held in check by her inflexible face; for the crisis had brought a momentary self-control with it, and she looked formidable with her knit brows and closed lips.
"Do not go," he pleaded. "Do not think I have been wanting in respect and consideration. I could not help saying what I did. I cannot live without you any more than I can without light and sunshine. I ought to have waited and not startled you. But I have only begun to live since I loved you, and I feel I must not waste time."
She was deeply disturbed at these wild and whirling words, but still bore herself bravely. She felt her heart touched by the vibration of his ardent speech, but her maiden instinct of self defence enabled her to stand on her guard. Though beaten by the storm of his devotion, she said to herself that she could get away if she could keep from crying or sobbing, and one thought which came to her with the swiftness of lightning gave her strength to resist. It was this: "If I cry, he will take me in his arms, and we shall repeat the tableau mamma saw in the rose-house."
Strong in that stimulating thought, she said: "I am too sorry to hear you say these things. You know how much we have always thought of you. If you forget all this, and never repeat it, we may still be friends. But if you renew this subject, I will never speak to you again alone, as long as I live."
He began to protest; but she insisted, with the calm cruelty of a woman who sees her advantage over the man she loves. "If you say another word, it is the end of our acquaintance, and perhaps it is best that it should end. We can hardly be again as we were."
Farnham was speechless, like one waked in the cold air out of a tropical dream. He had been carried on for the last hour in a whirlwind of emotion, and now he had met an obstacle against which it seemed that nothing could be done. If he had planned his avowal, he might have been prepared for rejection; but he had been hurried into it with no thought of what the result would be, and he was equally unprovided for either issue. In face of the unwavering voice and bearing of Alice, who seemed ten times more beautiful than ever as she stood before him as steady and unresponsive as a young Fate, his hot speech seemed suddenly smitten powerless. He only said:
"It shall be as you wish. If I ever offend you again, I will take my punishment upon myself and get out of your way."
She did not dare to say another word, for fear it would be too kind. She gave him her hand; it was soft and warm as he pressed it; and if he had only known how much softer and warmer her heart was, he would have covered her hand with a thousand kisses. But he bowed and took his leave, and she stood by the lattice and saw him go away, with eyes full of tears and a breast filled with the tenderest ruth and pity—for him and for herself.