Garde opened the door and ran out, glad, oh so glad it was cold!
CHAPTER XXI.
RANDOLPH’S COURTSHIP.
Garde fled home as if some unthinkable fate were in pursuit. She was haunted by the look she had seen in the eyes of that girl-mother, back in the hut. She could hear the young thing still begging her not to rob her of the man who had taken her all and given her an ineradicable shame in exchange.
Yet beneath every other emotion, Garde felt a sense of exultation. The estimate of her instinct was confirmed—Randolph was perfidy itself. Not a soul among the Puritans, she believed, could do aught but support her against this man. And if only she could wrench herself free, how gladly would she welcome the penance of waiting years for Adam, in payment for her act, which she felt was disloyalty, in consenting to the provisional betrothal into which she had been forced!
Her grandfather now would have to be the first to protect her from the dread fate which had come so near, she thought. To confuse politics and the personal affairs of her narrow life is the privilege of the sex to which Garde belonged. She planned, as she darted through the wind-swept streets. She would tell it all to Grandfather Donner, and then he should save her the ordeal of meeting Edward Randolph in any manner whatsoever. She gave no thought to the charter, nor to what the man with the power he wielded would do in revenge to their liberties, now that he would find himself baffled, at the end of his term of waiting.
She yearned for Adam. She could tell him, now, what she had been driven to do, whereas before this she had always wished him to come, yet had shrunk from the thought of confessing what she had permitted to be done. Yes, she could lay it all bare before him now, and fairly scourge herself with her own reproaches, joyously. What an exquisite pleasure it would be to ask his forgiveness thus, and not at first receive it, and then at last be taken home to his arms and his love! For her thoughts, her heart-beats, her soul’s longings had all been constant to him, and to him alone. She would like to tell him all this. And she would let him kiss her, now. For through what hours had she wished, when she had thought they might never meet in that way again, that his kiss had been placed upon her lips that day of their parting. She almost frightened herself with the thought of how that one kiss on her fingers might have been his only kiss. But the next moment she tingled with ecstasy, to think she was free and that some day he would come back, and then she would know how to love him and to cherish him as never before she could have known.
Thus glowing one moment, with love’s own reveries, and chilling the next, with sudden reminders of what had just been and what might still be, she reached her grandfather’s house, where she had been staying with the old man for the past year, with only rare visits to the Soams. She went in by the kitchen door. This apartment being dark, she passed through to the dining-room, which was lighted but unoccupied, hence she continued on to the parlor, where she fancied she heard voices. Entering here, she could have fallen to the floor in sheer astonishment and fright.
She found herself confronting her grandfather and Edward Randolph himself.
“Ah, here she is, you see,” said David Donner, rubbing his hands together, delightedly. “I thought she couldn’t be far away. My child, Mr. Randolph has come to have a little chat. Natural enough, I should think.” He chuckled with pleasure, adding: “Dear me, I mustn’t forget to cover my rose, on a night like this.” With fatuous smiles, that ill suited his grim old visage, he quitted the room, in a sprightly, playful manner, and left Garde facing Randolph, alone.