Mrs. Farrell had only hastened a natural result from Easton’s passion for her, which now declared itself without any of the conventional reserves. It was the degree of passion which is called a perfect infatuation by the tranquil spectator, but which probably appears a reasonable enough condition both to the subject and the object of it. In fact, there is no just cause why every woman should not reduce some man to it; it is a hardship that she cannot; in a better state of things no doubt she could.
Easton found in Mrs. Farrell’s presence a relief from thoughts that troubled him when away from her; when he beheld her, or heard her speak, his bliss was so great that his heart could not harbor self-reproach; but at other times it upbraided him that he was making Gilbert wait for the explanation that was his instant due. His love had revealed to him a whole new world of rights and duties which seemed at war with those of the world he had always lived in before. This new passion claimed reverence for an ideal as exacting as that of the old friendship; and perfect loyalty to both seemed beyond him.
Gilbert neither shunned nor sought him; and it was Easton’s constraint under his friend’s patience that made their being together intolerable. When they met they never spoke of Mrs. Farrell, or indeed of anything but passing trifles; and Easton avoided his friend as much as he could until the inspired moment should come to do him justice; the moment which seemed to retreat farther and farther from him the more he tasted the supreme bliss which life now held to his lip. Their affairs had come to this pass when, on Friday, Gilbert abruptly announced that he had arranged with one of the men at the hotel to spend a few days in camp on the northern side of the mountain, where the brooks were less accessible and less fished than those of West Pekin. He made no pretense of asking Easton to go with him; and he parted from him with a nod when his wagon with the camping outfit in it drove up to the door. They had often parted as carelessly, but with a difference. Easton watched the wagon out of sight, and then started toward Woodward farm with a sigh of sad relief.
He was seen coming every morning by the ladies on watch, who had made so careful a study of his face that they knew by its changes from desperate courage and endurance to all-forgetting ecstasy the very moment when he caught sight of Mrs. Farrell; and they could not help rejoicing in the perfect abandon of his loverhood. It was indeed a devotion not less than heroic, which none but a primitive soul, nurtured in high and pure ideals, could have been capable of; it was so unlike the languid dangling which they had been used to call attentions, that they could not help regarding it with a tender admiration; they were all half in love with a man who could be so wholly in love, and they began to respect the woman who could inspire such a passion. They even liked the unsparing directness with which he made it appear that he came to see Mrs. Farrell and no one else; that he cared to speak to no other, to look at none but her; they sweetly bore, they even approved, the almost savage frankness with which he went away when she was absent. He made no pretenses of any sort; he did not bring a book as excuse for coming to see her; he had no scruple about asking her before half a piazza full of people to walk or drive with him; when he sat down beside her, in whatever presence, he always seemed to be alone with her.
She would perhaps have been satisfied with a less perfect surrender; it looked sometimes as if his worship alarmed and puzzled her; but for the most she received it in good part; and if she ever found it necessary to administer a snub, he took it with heroic patience; it plainly hurt him to his heart’s core, but plainly it did not daunt him; the next day he wooed as ardently, and he never dreamed of resenting it.
They walked a good deal, the following week, to the wood where they had sat on the first Sunday among the ferns, and there he read to her, or talked to her in the freedom of a heart never opened to a woman before. Love baptizes us with a new youth whenever it comes; the talk of all lovers is like the babble of childhood, and a heavenly simpleness inspires it. This is so, whatever the number of the passion; it is true in even greater degree if first love comes when the lover is well toward his thirties. Easton was one of the most single-hearted of men, but pride had kept him one of the most reserved. Now love came, and, taking away his pride toward her he loved, seemed to leave him no reserve. He told her what his life had been, what his theories of life were; his likes, his dislikes; things that had happened to him as a boy at school; about his uncle who had brought him up and left him his money; that he looked like this uncle; he even told of curious dreams that he had dreamt. A load lay on his heart all the time: it was the thought of Gilbert, whom alone he would not speak of, though the talk seemed to be always drifting toward him.
They were sitting in the old place on the Saturday afternoon of the week after Gilbert’s departure. Gilbert was staying longer than his sister-in-law had expected, and there had begun to be a vague wonder, not yet deepened to anxiety, at his prolonged absence, which Easton inwardly shared. He began to speak now, with the intention of talking of Gilbert, as if it would be some sort of reparation to praise him to Mrs. Farrell.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “being surprised that afternoon when I told you what an idler in the world I was?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Farrell, “we were both rather foolish that afternoon,” and she looked at him demurely from under her fallen lashes.
Easton laughed a flattered lover’s laugh. “But you have forgiven me.”