“I want to see your niece,” he said—“your niece—your niece Emmy: I want to see Emmy,” without eliciting any further reply than, “My master’s out, Mr. Walter, and I’m a little ’ard of ’earing, sir.”
He raised his voice so that she must have heard him, and surely, surely, in the condition in which things were, ought to have answered him! But perhaps she was anxious to keep up appearances still. He said, in his loudest voice, “I am leaving home; I must see her;” but even this produced no response: and at last he was obliged to go away, feeling as if all the machinery of life had come to a stand-still, and that nothing remained for him to do. He had abandoned one existence, but the other did not take him up. He roamed about, for he scarcely knew how long, till the wintery sun was high in the sky, then came back, and, in the audacity of despair—for so he felt it—knocked again, this time softly, disguising his impatience, at the cottage door. He had acted wisely, it appeared, for she herself opened to him this time, receding from the door with a startled cry when she saw who it was. But this time he would not be put off. He followed her into the little room in front, which was a kind of parlor, adorned by the taste of Martha and her mother, cold, with its little fire-place decked out in cut paper, and the blind drawn down to protect it from the sun. He caught sight of a box, which seemed to be half packed, and which she closed hastily and pushed away.
She turned upon him when he had followed inside this room, with an angry aspect that made poor Walter tremble. “Why do you hunt me down like this?” she cried; “couldn’t you see I didn’t want you when you came this morning pushing your way into the house? Though it’s a cottage, still it’s my castle if I want to be private here!”
“Emmy!” cried the youth, with the keenest pang of misery in his voice.
“Why do you call out my name like that? You objected to what I told you last night. Go away now. I don’t want to have anything to say to a man that objects to my plans as if I didn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong!”
“I object to nothing,” said the boy. “You sent me away from you, you gave me no time to think. And now my father knows everything, and I have left home; I shall never go back any more.”
“Left home! And how does your father know everything? And what is there to know?”
“Nothing!” cried Walter—“nothing, except that I am yours, heart and soul—except that I desire nothing, think of nothing, but you. And they had never heard of you before!”
She closed the door and pushed a chair toward him. “How did they know about me?—what do they know now? Was it you that told them? And what do they think?” she cried, with a slight breathlessness that told of excitement.
Poor Walter was glad to sit down, he was faint and weary; that rush out-of-doors into the frosty air without any breakfast, which had affected the imaginations of his family so much, had told on him. He felt that there was no strength in him, and that he was glad to rest.