“I can’t go to the farmhouse,” said Easton, with languid impatience, “and run the chances of making a scene; I couldn’t stand that, you know.”
“No; you couldn’t stand that,” assented Gilbert, gloomily. “But it would be much the same thing at the hotel, with more women to assist. Faint?” he asked, looking anxiously at Easton’s face.
“A little. You’d better wet my head,” answered Easton, taking off the handkerchief that bound up his face. Gilbert did so, and then left the dripping handkerchief on Easton’s head. “Thanks. That’s good. We’ll stay here awhile. It’s the best place, after all. It’s cool as any,” he said, looking refreshed.
Gilbert watched his face anxiously; but he was at his wits’ end, and they both sat silent. He looked at his watch; it was two o’clock. He grimly waited half an hour, exchanging a word with Easton now and then, and freshening the handkerchief at the pool from time to time. The opening of the glen darkened, and the steady glare on the meadow beyond ceased. Gilbert walked down to the edge of the pasture and looked out. A heavy cloud hid the sun. “Look here, Easton, this won’t do,” he said when he came back. “It’s going to rain, and you’ve got to get under shelter, somehow. We must run the gantlet to the back of the farmhouse, and try to find some conveyance to the hotel. Do you think you could manage to walk with my help across the meadow? The sun’s behind a cloud, now, and I don’t think it would hurt you.”
“Oh yes,” said Easton, “I can walk very well. Just give me your arm, a little way.”
They set out and toiled slowly up the long meadow slope, slanting their course in the direction of the orchard behind the house. Easton hung more heavily on his friend’s arm as they drew nearer. “Do you suppose we’ve been seen?” he panted, as they stepped through a gap in the orchard wall.
“No; there isn’t a woman on watch; not a solitary soul. They’re everyone asleep—confound ’em,” said Gilbert, in the fervent irrelevancy of his gratitude. “Now you sit here, Easton, and I’ll run up to the kitchen door and tell one of the boys to get out his team, and we’ll have you out of harm’s way in half a minute.”
Easton sank upon a stone, and Gilbert ran toward the house under cover of the orchard trees. He was not out of sight when Easton heard women’s voices behind a cluster of blackberry brambles near the wall on the left; then, without being able to stir, he heard the sweep of dresses over the grass toward him; he knew that in the next instant he was to be discovered; he rose with a desperate effort and confronted Mrs. Farrell and the two young girls, Miss Alden and Miss Jewett, who were lamenting the heat and wondering how soon it would rain.
He felt rather than heard them stop, and he made some weak paces toward them, essaying a ghastly smile as he lifted his eyes to Mrs. Farrell’s face. Then he saw her blanch at his pallor, and saw her see the cut on his temple. “I’ve had a fall, and a little scratch. It’s nothing. Don’t mind it. Gilbert—”
A killing chagrin, such as only a man can feel who finds himself unmanned in the presence of her he loves, was his last sensation as he sank in the grass before her. The young girls fled backward, but she rushed toward him with a wild cry, “Oh, he’s dead!” and in another moment the people came running out of the house and thronged round them with question, and injurious good will, and offers to have him taken to their rooms. Gilbert came with them and flung up his fists in despair. Mrs. Farrell had Easton’s head upon her knee, and was sprinkling his face from one of many proffered flagons of cologne. “No, he shall not go to your room,” she vehemently retorted upon the last hospitable zealot; “he shall go to mine; he is mine!” she said. “Here, Rachel, Ben, Mrs. Woodward—will you help me?”