“I do not intend to marry either. I am never going to be married at all,” said Lucina, with a seeming irrelevance which caused Camilla to make mild eyes of surprise and wonder sadly, after her niece had gone home, if it were possible that the dear child had, thus early, been crossed in love.
Lucina, ever since Jerome's confession of love, had experienced a curious revulsion from her maiden dreams. She had such instinctive docility of character that she was at times amenable to influences entirely beyond her own knowledge. Not understanding in the least Jerome's attitude of renunciation, she accepted it for herself also. She no longer builded bridal air-castles. She still embroidered her chair-covers, thinking that they would look very pretty in the north parlor, and some of the old chairs could be moved to the garret to make room for them. She gazed at her aunt Camilla with a peaceful eye of prophecy. Just so would she herself look years hence. Her hair would part sparsely to the wind, like hers, and show here and there silver instead of golden lustres. There would be a soft rosetted cap of lace to hide the thinnest places, and her cheeks, like her aunt's, would crumple and wrinkle as softly as old rose leaves, and, like her aunt, in this guise she would walk her path of life alone.
Lucina seemed to see, as through a long, converging tunnel of years, her solitary self, miniatured clearly in the distance, gliding on, like Camilla, with that sweet calm of motion of one who has left the glow of joy behind, but feels her path trend on peace.
“I dare say it may be just as well not to marry, after all,” reasoned Lucina, “a great many people are not married. Aunt Camilla seems very happy, happier than many married women whom I have seen. She has nothing to disturb her. I shall be happy in the way she is. When I am such an old maid that my father and mother will have died, because they were too old to live longer, I will leave this house, because I could not bear to stay here with them away, and go to Aunt Camilla's. She will be dead, too, by that time, and her house will be mine. Then I, in my cap and spectacles, will sit afternoons in the summer-house, and—perhaps—he—he will be older than I then, and white-haired, and maybe stooping and walking with a cane—perhaps—he will come often, and sit with me there, and we will remember everything together.”
In all her forecasts for a single life, Lucina could not quite eliminate her lover, though she could her husband. She and Jerome were always to be friends, of course, and he was to come and see her. Lucina, when once Jerome had begun to visit her, never contemplated the possibility of his ever ceasing to do so. He did not come regularly—the wisdom of that was tacitly understood between them; since there was to be no marriage, there could necessarily be no courtship. There was never any sitting up together in the north parlor, after the fashion of village lovers. Jerome merely spent an hour or two in the sitting-room with the Squire and his wife and Lucina. Sometimes he and the Squire talked politics and town affairs while Lucina and her mother sewed. Sometimes the four played whist, or bezique, for in those days Jerome was learning to take a hand at cards, but he had always Mrs. Merritt for his partner, and the Squire Lucina. Indeed, Lucina would have considered herself highly false and treacherous had she manifested an inclination to be the partner of any other than her father. Sometimes the Squire sat smoking and dozing, and sometimes he was away, and in those cases Mrs. Merritt sewed, and Jerome and Lucina played checkers.
It tried Jerome sorely to capture Lucina's men and bar her out from the king-row, and she sometimes chid him for careless playing.
Sometimes, after Jerome was gone and Lucina in bed, Abigail Merritt, who had always a kind but furtively keen eye upon the two young people, talked a little anxiously to the Squire. “I know that he does not come regularly and he sees us all, but—I don't know that it is wise for us to let them be thrown so much together,” she would say, with a nervous frown on her little dark face.
The Squire's forehead wrinkled with laughter, but he was finishing his pipe before going to bed, and would not remove it. He rolled humorously inquiring eyes through the cloud of smoke, and his wife answered as if to a spoken question. “I know Jerome Edwards doesn't seem like other young men, but he is a young man, after all, and, if we shouldn't say it, I am afraid somebody will get hurt. We both know what Lucina is—”
“You don't mean to say you're afraid Lucina will get hurt,” spluttered the Squire, quickly.
“It isn't likely that a girl like Lucina could get hurt herself,” cried Abigail, with a fine blush of pride.