She gazed at him, her dark eyes brimming with eager questions.
“I was wondering if we couldn’t—it’s pleasant out in the yard—”
“If you’ll excuse me for just a moment, Miss Dodge,” Wesley Elliot’s tone was blandly courteous—“I’ll try and find you a chair. They appear to be scarce articles; I believe the ladies removed most of them to the rear of the house. Pardon me—”
He set down his plate of ice cream on the top shelf of Mrs. Solomon Black’s what-not, thereby deranging a careful group of sea-shells and daguerreotypes, and walked quickly away.
Fanny’s face flushed to a painful crimson; then as suddenly paled. She was a proud girl, accustomed to love and admiration since early childhood, when she had queened it over her playmates because her yellow curls were longer than theirs, her cheeks pinker, her eyes brighter and her slim, strong body taller. Fanny had never been compelled to stoop from her graceful height to secure masculine attention. It had been hers by a sort of divine right. She had not been at all surprised when the handsome young minister had looked at her twice, thrice, to every other girl’s once, nor when he had singled her out from the others in the various social events of the country side.
Fanny had long ago resolved, in the secret of her own heart, that she would never, never become the hard-worked wife of a plodding farmer. Somewhere in the world—riding toward her on the steed of his passionate desire—was the fairy prince; her prince, coming to lift her out from the sordid commonplace of life in Brookville. Almost from the very first she had recognized Wesley Elliot as her deliverer.
Once he had said to her: “I have a strange feeling that I have known you always.” She had cherished the saying in her heart, hoping—believing that it might, in some vague, mysterious way, be true. And not at all aware that this pretty sentiment is as old as the race and the merest banality on the masculine tongue, signifying: “At this moment I am drawn to you, as to no other woman; but an hour hence it may be otherwise.” ... How else may man, as yet imperfectly monogamous, find the mate for whom he is ever ardently questing? In this woman he finds the trick of a lifted lash, or a shadowy dimple in the melting rose of her cheek. In another, the stately curve of neck and shoulder and the somber fire of dark eyes draws his roving gaze; in a third, there is a soft, adorable prettiness, like that of a baby. He has always known them—all. And thus it is, that love comes and goes unbidden, like the wind which blows where it listeth; and woman, hearing the sound thereof, cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth.
In this particular instance Wesley Elliot had not chosen to examine the secret movements of his own mind. Baldly speaking, he had cherished a fleeting fancy for Fanny Dodge, a sort of love in idleness, which comes to a man like the delicate, floating seeds of the parasite orchid, capable indeed of exquisite blossoming; but deadly to the tree upon which it fastens. He had resolved to free himself. It was a sensible resolve. He was glad he had made up his mind to it before it was too late. Upon the possible discomfiture of Fanny Dodge he bestowed but a single thought: She would get over it. “It” meaning a quite pardonable fancy—he refused to give it a more specific name—for himself. To the unvoiced opinions of Mrs. Solomon Black, Mrs. Deacon Whittle, Ellen Dix, Mrs. Abby Daggett and all the other women of his parish he was wholly indifferent. Men, he was glad to remember, never bothered their heads about another man’s love affairs....
The chairs from the sitting room had been removed to the yard, where they were grouped about small tables adequately illuminated by the moon and numerous Japanese lanterns. Every second chair appeared to be filled by a giggling, pink-cheeked girl; the others being suitably occupied by youths of the opposite sex—all pleasantly occupied. The minister conscientiously searched for the chair he had promised to fetch to Fanny Dodge; but it never once occurred to him to bring Fanny out to the cool loveliness of mingled moon and lantern-light. There was no unoccupied chair, as he quickly discovered; but he came presently upon Lydia Orr, apparently doing nothing at all. She was standing near Mrs. Black’s boundary picket fence, shielded from the observation of the joyous groups about the little tables by the down-dropping branches of an apple-tree.
“I was looking for you!” said Wesley Elliot.