Leaning heavily on his stick, the young man walked slowly down the garden path, and stood by the garden gate, looking across the way.
Annie Lizzie! Annie Lizzie marry Mr. Homer! the thought was monstrous. Annie Lizzie, only seventeen, a little soft, sweet rose, his own little sweetheart. Good heavens! could such a thing exist even as a dream in any human brain?
Then other thoughts came; ugly thoughts, which forced their way to the front in spite of him. Mr. Homer was rich now, rich and kind and generous. Women liked money, people said: Annie Lizzie had been bitter poor all her life, had never had a penny to call her own; might she be tempted? And, if she were, had he the right to stand in her way? Was he sure, sure, that her love for him, the love that he had taken for granted as he took the sunlight, would stand the test?
Faster and uglier came the hateful thoughts; he could almost see them as visible forms, with wicked, sneering faces. Was this why she had been so attentive to Mr. Homer of late, running in and out of the house on this or that pretended errand, coaxing Direxia to let her help with the work, begging a flower from the garden, a root from the vegetable border? He had never doubted that it was on his own account she came. Was she false and shallow, as well as sweet and soft and and—
Tommy Candy never knew how long he stood there at the garden gate, watching the house across the way, where a slender shape flitted to and fro in the lamplight. But by and by he struck his stick into the gravel and came back with a white set face, and stood before Mr. Homer, who was rocking happily in his chair and repeating the "Ode to a Nightingale."
"Mr. Homer," he said, and at the sound of his voice the little gentleman stopped rocking and looked up in alarm: "when it comes to things like this, it's man to man, I expect. If Annie Lizzie wants to marry you, I won't stand in her way. I'll take myself and my stick off out o' sight somewheres, where she'll never hear of neither one of us again. But if—"
He stopped short; for Mr. Homer had risen to his feet in great agitation, and was waving his hands and blinking painfully through the dusk.
"My dear young friend!" he cried. "My dear but mistaken young friend, you distress me infinitely. You do not think—it cannot be possible that you think that this poor child has—has formed any such—such monstrous conception? If I thought so, I should resign my being,—a—cease upon the midnight, not without pain, but unspeakably the reverse. It is a most extraordinary thing that twice within a single summer I should have been exposed, sir, to a misapprehension of this amazing, this—a—portentous, this—a—unspeakably inauspicious description. I am not a marrying man, Thomas. Though regarding the Sex with the deepest veneration, sir, I have for many years regarded it across a gulf, if I may so express myself; a chasm, sir; a—a—maelstrom of separation, to speak strongly. Your suggestion fills me with pain; with—anguish; with—a—gorgons and chimera dire—meaning no disparagement to the young person in question. I had thought, Thomas,—I had conceived,—I had formed the apprehension, sir, that she was attached to you, and that you admitted the soft impeachment; that your heart responded to the—a—soft flutings of the tender passion. I thought to see you wedded, and sharing my home, being as son and daughter to me. I—I—I—"
Mr. Homer's voice faltered. But Tommy Candy caught the distressedly waving hands in his.
"Mr. Homer," he cried, with a broken laugh, "don't, sir! don't take on! I'm a fool, that's all, the biggest fool the world holds this minute. I've loved Annie Lizzie ever since I was ten years old, and I believe she has me."