"A weak and a spiteful moment," I kindly added. "Now if he hastens the news to England, and the Percifers hear of it in New York, how pleasant for Kitty to have all her friends hear that he is married and she is not!"
"Great Heavens!" said the young fellow, "if she would let me hasten the news—that she is married to me!"
"Why don't you appeal to her pride and her spirit now while they are in the dust? Why do you bother with sentiment now?"
I liked him so much at that moment that I would have had him have Kitty, no matter what way he got her.
"Yes," he said; "why not take advantage of her, as everybody else has done?"
"Some people's scrupulousness comes rather late," I said.
"To those who don't understand," he had the brazenness to say. "What is done is done. It's a rough beginning—awfully rough on her. The end must atone somehow. If I don't win her I shall be punished enough; but if I do, it will be because she loves me. And pray God"—He stopped, with that look. It is a number of years since a young man has looked at me in that way, but a woman does not forget.
It was rather difficult telling to Kitty the story of her old lover's marriage, as I took it on myself to do. Not that she winced perceptibly; but I fear she has taken the thing home, and is dwelling on it—certain features of it—in a way that can do no good. From a word she lets slip now and then, I gather that she is brooding over that fancy of hers that Cecil Harshaw offered himself by way of reparation, as she was falling between two stools,—her own home and her lover's,—to save her from the ground. As since that rainy night in the wagon she has never distinctly referred to this theory of his conduct, I have no excuse for bringing it up, even to attack it. In fact, I dare not; she is in too complicated a mood. And, after all, why should I want her to marry either of them? Why should the "hungry generations" tread her down? She is nice enough to stay as she is.
Another thing happened on our way here which may perversely have helped to confirm her in this pretty notion of Harshaw's disinterestedness.
At a place by the river where the current is bad (there are many such places, and, in fact, the whole of the Snake River is a perfect hoodoo) Harshaw stopped one day to drink. The wagon had struck a streak of heavy sand, and we were all walking. We stood and watched him, because he drank with such deep enjoyment, stooping bareheaded on his hands and knees, and putting his hot face to the water. Suddenly he made a clutch at his breast pocket: his Norfolk jacket was unbuttoned. He had lost something, and the river had got it. He ran along the bank, trying to recover it with a stick, and, not succeeding, he plopped in just as he was, with his boots on. We saw him drop into deep water and swim for it, a little black object, which he caught, and held in his teeth. Then he turned his face to the shore; and precious near he came to never reaching it! We women had been looking on, smiling, like idiot dolls, till we saw Tom racing down the bank, throwing off his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried to follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less realized it—his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch; the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot where the beast of a current that had him swooped inshore.