The door of Miss Finch's room was ajar. Miss Finch sat at the table with a sheet of paper spread out before her and a pen in hand. The seriousness of her expression suggested that she was on the point of making her last will and testament.
"Fritz," exclaimed Agatha, appearing in the doorway, "I have a message for you to give Hephzibah Diggs."
Miss Finch looked at her wildly.
"Will you please say that Mr. Forbes would like to see her some time to-day. Say it's very important."
As Miss Finch continued to stare, Agatha showed signs of impatience. "Well, why don't you begin?"
"Begin what, Agatha?"
"Why, say what I've just told you, that Mr. Forbes wants to see me this afternoon."
Miss Finch groaned and shook her head. "Oh, Agatha, it seems so wicked."
"Wicked! If that's not unreasonable. Here I am taking all the pains to come up-stairs to you, to have you give me the message so I won't need to stretch the truth the least little bit, and then you talk as if I were an ordinary prevaricator, without a conscience."
Miss Finch quailed before Agatha's simulated indignation. "Oh, if you look at it that way," she replied feebly and made an effort to recall the message. "Hephzibah, Mr. Forbes wants to see you to-day."
"Tell me it's very important," prompted Agatha.
"It's very important," Miss Finch repeated, and looked on the point of bursting into tears.
"I'll be there at three o'clock," replied Agatha in the person of Hephzibah. Then her gaze fell on the letters lying open on the table and she temporarily forgot her own perplexities in the perennial feminine interest in a love-affair.
"Oh, Fritz," she exclaimed, coming closer."You're writing the letter, aren't you? Which one is it to be?"
Miss Finch looked at the blank sheet before her with an expression equally blank.
"Agatha," she hesitated, "it almost seems to me—at least don't you think Mr. Doolittle is rather the best-looking?"
Agatha pondered the question with the seriousness its importance deserved.
"I rather think he is, Fritz. The deacon is much too fat. My ideal of manly beauty isn't broad enough to include a fat man. It's surprising how some people thrive on bereavement."
Miss Finch fidgeted with her pen. "But perhaps the deacon is a little more careful about his appearance."
Again Agatha acquiesced. "Mr. Doolittle is far from particular. I've seen him in the village with only one suspender, and the usefulness of that dependent on one anemic-looking safety-pin. I've honestly trembled for fear of what might happen. The deacon's away in the lead in the matter of clothes."
Again Miss Finch looked nervously at the paper before her and then surprised Agatha by laying down her pen.
"I rather thought I'd write them to-day," she said. "It's been—well, not long, but quite a time since their letters came, and I thought—"
She fell into an indeterminate silence, and Agatha finished the sentence for her. "Of course they're getting impatient. It's cruel to keep them on the rack this way. Why don't you put them out of their misery, Fritz?"
"Why, I don't want to hurry, Agatha. I must wait to be sure. There's some nice things about each one and some that aren't so nice. I'll have to think it over a while yet."
Agatha was watching the little woman keenly. "Fritz," she asked with unusual, gentle gravity, "are you sure you want either of them? Don't you think you'd be happier just to stay on with me?"
Miss Finch regarded her interrogator with evident amazement. "Why, Agatha, I might never have another chance."
This was too true to question. Agatha remained silent.
"I sometimes can't help wishing," Miss Finch owned plaintively, "that there hadn't been two. That's what makes it so puzzling—having to choose. And there seems so much to be said on both sides.But to refuse them both—why, Agatha, it would be flying in the face of Providence."
Agatha said no more. Leaving Miss Finch to her dreams, she went up to the garret to find an appropriate costume for Hephzibah in her forthcoming momentous interview. She felt she could act her rôle with more spirit if dressed appropriately to the part. Agatha did not underestimate the difficulty of her proposed masquerade. It was an easy matter to evolve a personality sufficiently consistent to deceive Warren, for Warren had never met the dignified and elderly spinster, Miss Agatha Kent. Forbes, on the contrary, had spent hours in that lady's company nearly every day through the summer, and knew every inflection of her voice. The forthcoming interview with Forbes presented any number of terrifying possibilities.
She had a word with him at a suitable interval after their late conversation. "She's coming."
"Good!" he cried triumphantly. "Did Howard go?"
"No. Miss Finch was going to see her, anyway. She'll be here at three."
"Good!" said Forbes again. He turned to her with that mingled gentleness and resolution which somehow revealed him in a new light.
"Now, my dear friend, I'm going to ask a favor of you. Promise me you won't misunderstand."
"I'll try not," she said faintly, and her heart misgave her.
"Promise me that you'll leave us to ourselves when we have our little talk. I know your interest in Hephzibah's future—"
In her relief Agatha became jocular. "No, you don't know. You can't. Her welfare means as much to me as my own."
"I'm not doubting that. Please don't misunderstand me. But sometimes I think these sensitive natures can open up better to a stranger than to a friend. And the fact that I'm blind may be a help to her."
"Yes," agreed Agatha with unmistakable sincerity, "I'm pretty sure it will be."
"There's something mysterious about that girl," Forbes continued. "The way she refuses to listen to propositions that are all clearly for her good, puzzles me. I'm convinced that if I can have her to myself an hour or so, I'll get at the root of the trouble. Anyway it's worth trying."
Relieved from the terrifying certainty that he was about to ask her to chaperon them during the interview, Agatha had almost ceased to dread the prospective ordeal. But prudence suggested the advisability of seeming a little hurt. "I shouldn't have interfered in any way," she assured him plaintively. "Since you've set your heart on talking to Hephzibah, I should have sat quietly in the background and not said a word."
"Better not," Forbes interposed hastily. "Let me have my way this time. And when we talk it over afterward, I'll tell you every word that was said as nearly as I can remember."
CHAPTER XII
HEPHZIBAH TURNS THE TABLES
Hephzibah Diggswas prompt. As the grandfather's clock in the hall struck three, Agatha advanced to the French window opening on the porch, and said in her natural voice, "She's here, Mr. Forbes."
Forbes smiled approval. "Send her around, please, Miss Kent." His manner suggested that the difficulties in the way of his philanthropic plan were now a thing of the past.
The clumping footsteps that presently announced the approach of his visitor took him back a trifle. There was no particular reason why Hephzibah should not be an ordinary clumsy country girl, in heavy shoes that clattered noisily as she moved, but somehow he had not expected it. He rose and stood awaiting her.
The voice was more unexpected than her heavy tread. It made him wince. He remembered that Warren likened it to the melodious notes of a guineafowl and he appreciated the aptness of the comparison. There was no reason why Hephzibah Diggs should not talk through her nose, and in a harsh, strident, generally unpleasant tone. But the fact that she did so, though he had been abundantly forewarned, took him by surprise.
"Miss Kent says you've got something to say to me."
Thus Hephzibah announced her presence. And Forbes, hastily summoning a smile, and resolutely excluding his pain from his voice, extended a cordial hand.
"I'm very glad to meet you, Miss Hephzibah. Won't you sit down? I think there's a chair near."
"I'll wait on myself, don't you bother none." A grating noise indicated that a chair was being dragged across the floor of the porch into convenient nearness to his own. A plumping sound gave evidence that Hephzibah had seated herself.
The picture in the rustic chair deserved a more appreciative audience than a blind man. Hephzibah wore a costume best described as a medley, since garments originally the property of Miss Finch and Howard, as well as her own, contributed to the startling effect. A pair of Howard's outgrown shoesaccounted for her clumsy tread. She wore a little bonnet which Miss Finch had discarded after some dozen years of service, and which seemed genuinely scandalized at finding itself atop Agatha's brazenly assertive mass of hair. A very short calico skirt, also the property of Miss Finch, and a sky-blue silk waist, evidently designed for festive wear, completed the grotesque costume. Just why it should have given Agatha confidence in playing her rôle, she knew as little as any one.
Forbes commented pleasantly on the weather as some such preliminary skirmishing seemed necessary before coming to the point. He had resolved on establishing a friendly understanding between Hephzibah and himself, before making the offer which, he realized, might readily arouse the suspicion of a girl who knew by bitter experience that men are not always to be trusted. He was inclined to suspect Warren of lacking tact, startling her by his failure to employfinesse. He did not take himself into his own confidence fully enough to admit that he was also sparring for time in the effort to recover his poise. It was singular that he had received so different an impression of Hephzibah in the brief, bewildering interview which had openedby his clasping her in his arms, and ended by her refusal to tell her name. He had to remind himself that on the springy turf her clumsy tread would be soundless, and that the gasping whisper in which she spoke gave him no clue as to the quality of her voice. Still, if Warren's letter had not expressly assured him that Hephzibah was his mysterious rescuer, he would have felt sure that he had been mistaken.
Hephzibah was in full accord with his favorable opinion of the weather. She expressed her agreement so heartily that he winced again, and conquered an impulse to tell her that it was unnecessary to speak so loud.
"I suppose," he began, deciding that after all it would be better to waive further introductory remarks, "that you must have wondered why I wanted to see you."
"I didn't bother about that none," replied Hephzibah. "I've had a lot to do with sick folks, and I know they're likely to take 'most any sort of notion into their heads."
Forbes reddened smartly. He felt as if he had been slapped. Clearly tact was not in Hephzibah's line.
"I've heard a good deal about you, first and last," he assured her pleasantly. "And of course my interest in you was increased by what happened near Indian Rock the other afternoon. I'm not going to talk about that for I know you would rather I wouldn't."
"Oh, don't mind me," Hephzibah returned comfortably. "You can say anything you like. You can't make me mad."
Forbes hesitated. There is no doubt that on the moment he acquitted Miss Kent of a certain charge to which she had been given no chance to plead guilty. He realized that women sometimes understood one another better than a mere man might hope to do. But he had put his hand to the plow with the intention of proving Warren's unfitness in matters requiring diplomacy, and he had no intention of turning back.
Deliberately and with carefully chosen words, Forbes explained to Hephzibah the plan he had evolved for her regeneration. He went more into detail than Warren had done. He traced her future years from the present modest start, up to the time when she should bear the stamp of culture, and be able to hold her own in the best society. The picture that he drew seemed to him an attractive one. He showed himself not altogether lacking in a knowledge of the opposite sex, by the emphasis he placed upon the friend of Warren's to whom had been assigned the responsibility of selecting a suitable wardrobe for Hephzibah.
He did not pause till he was pleasantly confident that he had done the subject justice. He turned his sightless eyes upon her expectantly. Hephzibah said nothing. There was a chilling quality in her protracted silence.
"Well?" questioned Forbes, and though he had been so favorably impressed by his putting of the case, he spoke a little anxiously. "What do you think of it all?"
Hephzibah laughed unmusically.
"Well, I let you go on, just so's to get it off your chest. There ain't nothing to it, not so far as I can see. The clothes would be nice enough, but if I had to study all the time and have some dame bossing me my days off and all, I'd pay for 'em dear."
"But wouldn't you like to be educated?"
"Laws, no. I never hankered to be a school-teacher. I'd rather cook any day in the week."
By this time Forbes was convinced that Miss Kentwas right. Something was lacking in Hephzibah. He realized that he himself had been influenced more than he knew by Warren's extravagance, and Warren, it was apparent, had been swept off his feet by the girl's fresh beauty. Just how to explain the impression he himself had formed of her that day when she swung her lithe body between him and mortal peril, Forbes did not know. She had said little, and that with difficulty, because of her breathless condition, and yet the impression he had formed of her was infinitely removed from the truth. He felt now that he had made a mistake, and that Hephzibah was not of the fiber to take on polish readily. He would show his gratitude in some more appropriate way than by attempting her education. But since he had blundered into this rather absurd situation, there was nothing left but to go through with it.
"You do not have to use your education in teaching school, unless you wish to," he explained patiently. "But it will fit you for a better social position." He realized that this was over her head and kindly simplified it. "I mean that the more you learn, the nicer friends you will have and the more things you will find to interest you."
"I know enough now," Hephzibah insisted calmly, "for anybody that ain't a teacher. When I went to district school I learned to read and write and figure, and I 'most always stood up till near the last when we had spelling matches. Oh, I've got an education all right."
"Possibly, my child, it would be better to rely on the judgment of some one else." His manner was patiently paternal.
Hephzibah Diggs shuffled her feet noisily. "I guess I know enough to 'tend to my own affairs," she said, her tone truculent.
"I'm not so sure about that, Hephzibah. I think you would do much better to take advice."
"How'd you like it yourself if folks you didn't know came butting in, telling you how to manage your business?"
"If it was meant kindly, I should be grateful."
"Oh, very well." He could hear that she was breathing hard. "Then I'll tell you that for a sensible man you're making as big a botch of your affairs as anybody I ever knew of."
Forbes was unfeignedly astonished. "Why, Hephzibah, you don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I, though. I know about that girl of yours, and what a fool she's making of you."
Forbes caught his breath. Then he realized that it was beneath his dignity to be angry. "I think it is hardly necessary," he said stiffly, "to discuss that subject, Hephzibah."
"Oh, no! you can stick your finger into my pie all you want to. You can tell me I ought to go to some place I never heard of, with somebody I never knew, and do everything I hate for years and years, but when I say one thing about your girl, it's hardly necessary to discuss that subject."
The last words were given with what he realized was an excellent imitation of his own air of dignified aloofness. This amused him and had the additional effect of mollifying his irritation. "But I am interfering in your affairs, because I have your interests at heart," he said very kindly.
"Same here. I hate like the mischief to see a nice gentleman made a fool of by a vain, silly girl with about as much brains as a cockroach, and as much heart as a pancake."
This description of Julia, though he would have indignantly denied that it had the remotest resemblance to truth, roused him to the realization thatthis uncouth young woman knew more of his personal affairs than she had any right to know.
"Hephzibah," he said sternly, "I don't understand where you could have secured information about any friends of mine. Surely Miss Kent—"
For all her faults, Hephzibah was capable of magnanimity. On one critical occasion Miss Kent had sacrificed Hephzibah's reputation to save herself, and Hephzibah was under no obligation to spare hers. Yet without hesitation she threw herself into the breach. "I listened," she explained quickly.
"You mean when Miss Kent was reading me my letters?" His flushed face told that he was not disposed to belittle her eavesdropping.
"Yes, and when you talked things over. I heard enough to know that you'd better use the brains the Lord gave you to manage your own affairs. Why don't you put it up to that girl of yours that she can take you or leave you?"
"Really, Hephzibah—"
"Oh, it's all right for you to come along and pry into my business, and tell me whatI'mto do. But when I turn the tables you squirm. Funny what a difference it makes whose foot the shoe's on."
Forbes subsided. Under his feeling of bewilderment was a vague suspicion that perhaps there was something in Hephzibah's point of view.
"In the first place," continued this intrepid young woman, "she showed she was no good when she throwed you down like she did. She was going to marry you, wasn't she? And if she cared enough about you for that, it was up to her to stand by you when trouble came. Pretty kind of wife she'd have made if she turned her back the minute hard luck struck you."
Forbes remembered vaguely that Miss Kent had once said something similar. He wondered that two human beings so unlike should have the same view-point.
"You got off easy," Hephzibah continued. "You might have married her. When she showed herself up for what she was, you'd ought to have got down on your marrow-bones and thanked the Lord. But look at you! Instead, you keep on telling her how much you love her and that a yellow streak don't matter—in a woman."
Forbes suddenly realized that he could endure no more. He could not listen longer to these preposterous statements. But underneath his panic of anger, something whispered that he shrank from listening longer to Hephzibah's frantic speech, not because she was uttering slanders against Julia, but because what she said was true.
He struck the arm of his chair with his clenched fist. "Stop!" he said in a voice unlike his own. "I won't listen."
"All right," said Hephzibah Diggs. "But what's sauce for the goose—"
She stopped, starting to her feet. The blow from Forbes' fist had loosened the arm of the chair in which he sat. It had bounced out of place and then slipped back again, catching his finger as it returned to base. It was his sudden startling pallor that checked Hephzibah's fluency.
"Can you help me a little—Hephzibah?" Forbes' voice was faint, his lips blue. "My hand—seems caught."
Hephzibah's clattering haste was too late to save him from ignominious faintness. He had not been well since his trip to the city, and the shock of the pain was too much for his nerves. She caught the arm of the chair and wrenched it savagely away, just as his head fell over against her shoulder. She released the imprisoned hand, and slipping her arm about him kept his limp body from sliding to thefloor. Upon his white face, she saw, conscience-stricken, there seemed to rest an expression of piteous bewilderment.
Forbes reviving found himself indoors. He was stretched on the couch in the living-room. The odor of camphor was much in evidence and his hair felt damp, as if he had been taking a dip in the surf. Some one was chafing his hand. "Hephzibah," he said faintly.
The voice of Miss Kent answered him, speaking in a muffled fashion, as if she had a cold in her head.
"She's gone. That horrible girl is gone. She shall never come near you again."
Even after his late experience the adjective seemed to indicate prejudice. But he did not press the point, as there was another matter he wished cleared up.
"Did I frighten you terribly?"
"Yes—I was frightened." Her voice shook as if she wanted to cry again. "You're not so strong as I thought. I shall have to take better care of you. I blame myself—terribly."
This was unreasonable, but he did not stop to argue the case. "Was that why you kissed me?" he asked. "I didn't seem to come to all at once; consciousness came in waves and receded, you know, and once I felt sure some one kissed my cheek, and a big tear splashed down—"
Miss Kent spoke hastily. "Oh, that was only part of your dreaming. Fainting people often have such fancies."
"Very likely," Forbes agreed. "You see, I don't know much about fainting. It never happened to me but once before." He turned his head on his damp pillow and lapsed into silence. It was the part of discretion, perhaps, to leave Miss Kent under the impression that the kiss was an illusion, due to his semi-conscious state, but he knew better. It was as real as music, or flame, or electricity. It had certain characteristics of all three.
It must have been Hephzibah.
CHAPTER XIII
CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER
Murray Prendergasthad proposed. The summer sport had become dead earnest. Julia wrote Forbes the full details, explaining that the young man was awaiting her answer, and that she had asked two weeks in which to come to a decision. Apparently Julia, like Miss Finch, felt that to refuse Prendergast would be flying in the face of Providence, even though accepting him seemed a harsh necessity.
"'It's not what you and I dreamed of in the dear old days,'" wrote Julia. "'Oh, Burton, how far away those happy times seem when we sat hand in hand and planned our future. How merciless life is, Burton! Is there some dark fate in whose hands we are only puppets?'"
Agatha broke off in her reading to lift a scarlet face. "Must I go on with this?"
"Do you mean that you're tired?" Forbes' voice was self-controlled but in his pale cheeks a pulse beat like a trip hammer. Even his tears would not have hurt her like that palpitating spot over which his will was powerless.
"Yes, Iamtired. I'm terribly tired of the people who talk about fate when it's all their own cowardice, and pity themselves for losing what they deliberately threw away."
"It's a matter of view-point," said Forbes tonelessly. "If that's all, I'm afraid I must ask you to go on. I—I could hardly have Howard read it." All at once his white cheek showed a stain of red, as if the mere thought that any eyes but his own should see that letter was humiliating beyond endurance.
Julia's letter was as long as usual and decidedly more sentimental. She surrendered herself with abandon to the luxury of heart-break. She recalled a number of tender episodes, and wondered pathetically why fate could not have spared lovers so fond. To Agatha, Julia's melancholy was a theatrical make-believe on the face of it, as much a pose as her pretense of affection. Agatha did her best to spoil the effect of the letter by reading rapidly, and in amonotonous sing-song, but she could not keep her eyes from the face of the man before her, and she saw that every tender memory the missive evoked found response in his tortured heart.
She wound up breathless and hot and trembling uncontrollably. Forbes thanked her with a formal courtesy that added to her pain, for it seemed to set her at a distance. She wanted to put her arms about him, and cry over him, and tell him that the hurt would not last. Then she remembered with bitterness that she was a withered old woman in whose heart the fires of love had burned to ashes, long, long before, if indeed they had ever been kindled.
"I'd like a sheet of paper, please," Forbes said with the same laborious politeness. "I'll scrawl a line myself."
"What are you going to tell her?"
His air of surprise at the question indicated that there was but one answer. "What is there to say, except to wish her all happiness?"
"You're not going to blame her, then?"
"God forbid." He took the sheet she gave him, wrote upon it rapidly and folding it across, handed it back to her. "I'll have to ask you to direct the envelope for me," he said, still heart-breakingly patient. "I can write well enough for Julia's eyes, but not for Uncle Sam's."
Agatha did not reply. The breeze, always fresh upon the porch, had parted the folded sheet, and her reluctant gaze caught the signature, "Always yours, B.F." She turned away her eyes and caught her breath. "Always yours." That was the cruelty of it. Julia would marry Murray Prendergast and yet keep her hold on the heart of the man she had abandoned in his need. Her selfishness could not alter his loyalty. If the letter just read did not reveal her to him in her incomparable egotism, nothing ever would.
Agatha's heart bled for him in his white resignation. If he had done anything but sit there like a man under sentence of death, she would have felt equal to the occasion. But this white suffering terrified her. She dared not trust herself to look at him, for her eyes ran over at the sight of his drawn face. She stared out over the serene landscape as she said unsteadily, "Did you ask her to wait?"
"Wait? Why wait?"
"For you to get well, of course. If she's so fond of you, she ought to be able to wait a year or two until you've recovered your sight."
He shrugged his shoulders without replying, but the gesture revealed more than hopelessness, something alarmingly akin to indifference. And though Agatha knew that in the nature of the case, this mood could not last, it added fuel to her hatred of the shallow, selfish woman who was responsible. In her serener moments Agatha comforted herself by the reflection that however unhappy Forbes might be without Julia, he was bound to be more unhappy with her. But in the present crisis that consolation failed her. She was swayed by the desire to give him, at all costs, the thing he wanted.
Her plan was formed in an instant. Agatha was aware that with many women as with all men, undisputed possession tends to indifference. Forbes' one chance with Julia, she implicitly believed, was to awaken in the mind of that complacent young woman a doubt as to whether her unfortunate lover was in reality hers always, as he declared himself. Forbes, who scorned to ask even for a few months' delay, could not be expected to lend himself to the scheme unfolding in Agatha's fancy. Some friend must do for him what he would not stoop to do for himself.
As Agatha walked to the writing-desk, holdingthe folded sheet pinched shut with thumb and finger, for fear of again reading the assurance of Forbes' unalterable devotion, there was something oddly gallant in her bearing. Her keen common sense was temporarily quiescent. Her heart had things all its own way. Since the prospect of losing Julia irrevocably had graven that terrible look upon Forbes' face, she must find some way of making Julia hesitate to engage herself to Prendergast There was but one chance, as far as Agatha could see. She resolved to take it.
No one could consider it singular, Agatha decided, as she seated herself, if an amiable old lady should send a note of congratulation to the girl to whom she had penned so many communications. Agatha almost snatched the stationery from the drawer. She had a most unnatural fear of losing her courage by delay. At the moment she lacked neither courage nor inspiration.
"My Dear Miss Studley:"I'm sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your grandmother."
"My Dear Miss Studley:
"I'm sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your grandmother."
Agatha paused, bit her pen and frowned. "I am, of course," she told herself, with that odd impression of dual identity, which at times made it difficult for her to remember whether she was nineteen or sixty-seven. "But it isn't worth while to make her feel so youthful." She reached for a fresh sheet of paper and made a new start.
"My Dear Miss Studley:"I am sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your mother, who has come to feel right well acquainted with you through Mr. Forbes, and through reading your letters aloud to him. I want to be one of the first to congratulate you, and to wish you all the happiness you deserve."
"My Dear Miss Studley:
"I am sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your mother, who has come to feel right well acquainted with you through Mr. Forbes, and through reading your letters aloud to him. I want to be one of the first to congratulate you, and to wish you all the happiness you deserve."
Her pen poised in air, Agatha combated the temptation to underline the last two words. "It's exactly what Idowish her," she mused. "All the happiness she deserves, not a bit more nor a bit less. Poor wretch, it's an inhuman sort of wish but I can't help it, and I'm afraid she won't realize that I'm consigning her to Purgatory."
The pen resumed its hurried scratching. It was not necessary for Agatha to wait for inspiration. Words came in a flood.
"Some people might blame you for your engagement, so soon after breaking with Mr. Forbes, but I assure you I do not feel that way. I am unmarriedmyself, and I know that when a woman loses one chance, she may never get another. Mr. Forbes might die or change his mind. I think you are very sensible to make sure of Mr. Prendergast while he is in the mood. Whatever ill-natured people may say about you, I for one will always take this view."
"Some people might blame you for your engagement, so soon after breaking with Mr. Forbes, but I assure you I do not feel that way. I am unmarriedmyself, and I know that when a woman loses one chance, she may never get another. Mr. Forbes might die or change his mind. I think you are very sensible to make sure of Mr. Prendergast while he is in the mood. Whatever ill-natured people may say about you, I for one will always take this view."
Agatha drew a long breath of pure satisfaction. She had undertaken the letter with the sole thought of rushing to Forbes' assistance in his extremity. But virtue was proving its own reward. She was enjoying herself immensely. Her sense of satisfaction made her reckless. When again the pen began moving down the sheet, it wrote more than Agatha had originally intended.
"I suppose you sometimes feel a little anxious about Mr. Forbes and his future. It is hard for us women to get rid of a feeling of responsibility for the men who love us. And I am glad I can set your natural misgivings at rest. It would not be a great surprise to me if you should hear of another engagement in the near future. Yet Mr. Forbes is a very honorable gentleman, I need not assure you, and as long as you were unmarried, or at least not engaged, he would not have permitted himself to become entangled with any other woman. But this summer he has spent a great deal of time with a girl who lives in the neighborhood. She is considered extremely pretty and though that does not mean anything to him at present, it is evident that he findsher company most enjoyable. Indeed I believe he is more interested in her than he himself realizes, while the fact that she has devoted practically her entire summer to him, seems to indicate that it would not be difficult to bring her to think of him as something more than a friend. And I've noticed that she seems quite responsive when he pats her hand or holds it, as he has a way of doing. I suppose he feels that an invalid has a right to some little privileges. On one occasion he did so far forget himself as to take her in his arms, but the circumstances were quite unusual, and I saw to it that the indiscretion was never repeated. I always manage to be around when the young people are together, for, as our beloved Longfellow expresses it, 'Man is fire and woman is tow.'"I'm afraid I am a poor one to talk about discretion when I am writing you all this. I'm sure if Mr. Forbes knew he would be very much put out with me, and so I am going to ask you not to speak of this if you should happen to write again. Very likely Mr. Prendergast will not approve of your corresponding with an old flame, and who can blame him, for as Will Carlton says so ably, 'She that is false to one can be the same with two,' or words to that effect. I'm afraid my memory is not what it once was."Excuse this garrulous letter. How I have run on about Mr. Forbes instead of merely carrying out my first intention, and wishing you the future you so richly deserve."Very truly yours,"Agatha Kent."
"I suppose you sometimes feel a little anxious about Mr. Forbes and his future. It is hard for us women to get rid of a feeling of responsibility for the men who love us. And I am glad I can set your natural misgivings at rest. It would not be a great surprise to me if you should hear of another engagement in the near future. Yet Mr. Forbes is a very honorable gentleman, I need not assure you, and as long as you were unmarried, or at least not engaged, he would not have permitted himself to become entangled with any other woman. But this summer he has spent a great deal of time with a girl who lives in the neighborhood. She is considered extremely pretty and though that does not mean anything to him at present, it is evident that he findsher company most enjoyable. Indeed I believe he is more interested in her than he himself realizes, while the fact that she has devoted practically her entire summer to him, seems to indicate that it would not be difficult to bring her to think of him as something more than a friend. And I've noticed that she seems quite responsive when he pats her hand or holds it, as he has a way of doing. I suppose he feels that an invalid has a right to some little privileges. On one occasion he did so far forget himself as to take her in his arms, but the circumstances were quite unusual, and I saw to it that the indiscretion was never repeated. I always manage to be around when the young people are together, for, as our beloved Longfellow expresses it, 'Man is fire and woman is tow.'
"I'm afraid I am a poor one to talk about discretion when I am writing you all this. I'm sure if Mr. Forbes knew he would be very much put out with me, and so I am going to ask you not to speak of this if you should happen to write again. Very likely Mr. Prendergast will not approve of your corresponding with an old flame, and who can blame him, for as Will Carlton says so ably, 'She that is false to one can be the same with two,' or words to that effect. I'm afraid my memory is not what it once was.
"Excuse this garrulous letter. How I have run on about Mr. Forbes instead of merely carrying out my first intention, and wishing you the future you so richly deserve.
"Very truly yours,"Agatha Kent."
Agatha re-read the closely written sheets with growing delectation. In every respect they measured up to her anticipations. She had expressed her sentiments toward Julia with a plainness she would hardly have believed possible in a letter superficially observing the amenities of civilized life. She had planted some barbed suggestions where she flattered herself they would render the reader most uncomfortable. But that was not all. It is a thoroughly human weakness to wish to eat one's cake and have it too, and Agatha suspected Julia of having more than her share of this familiar characteristic. Julia, so Agatha argued, saw herself the irreproachable wife of a wealthy man, enjoying all the dignities incident to the Prendergast social sphere, and at the same time the object of another man's hopeless adoration. The doubt Agatha's letter suggested, that she could continue without a rival to rule in Forbes' affections, was, in Agatha's opinion, Forbes' one chance to keep her from the decisive step.
Agatha enclosed Forbes' brief communication with her own lengthy one and despatched it by Howard before qualms could assail her as to the advisability of dropping this particular bomb intothe enemy's camp. She knew vaguely that a host of suggestions stood marshaled at the back of her brain, ready to demonstrate conclusively her lack of wisdom. If Julia did not choose to consider the letter confidential, trouble would ensue. The fact that Agatha saw all Forbes' letters, and that he knew only what she chose to tell him, gave her but slight advantage, since she confessed to scruples in the matter of other people's letters. And if it had the result she believed possible, and Julia refused to engage herself to Prendergast till Forbes' recovery was certain or proved impossible, Agatha could not congratulate herself on having assured her friend's happiness.
"I'm afraid I'm a good deal like a mother who gives the baby the scissors to play with because he cries for them. Only with a baby you can distract its attention, and make it think that something else is just as good, and with Burton Forbes that wouldn't work."
And then having satisfied herself by peering through the window that Forbes' face still wore the dazed look of a creature incomprehensibly wounded, Agatha threw herself upon the couch and sought the relief of tears. She wept as she did everything else.Hot tears rained down upon the pillow. Sobs shook her. Every now and then mirth got the upper hand and she laughed hysterically, interrupting, though briefly, the Niobe-like activities.
The storm was over as suddenly as it had begun. Agatha rose and regarded her swollen features in the mirror with much disfavor.
"I suppose it's no use to put powder on my nose. It would only look like a strawberry sprinkled with sugar. And anyway, Mr. Forbes can't see what a fright I am."
As if that thought had a miraculously sustaining power, Agatha drew a long breath and passed into the kitchen to help Phemie with the dinner.
CHAPTER XIV
CONFIDENCES
Agathahad reached the conclusion that Julia was more venal than vain. A full week she had awaited a sign that her ruse had succeeded. For seven creeping days, dry-lipped and with unsteady pulses, she had scanned the mail for a letter directed in Julia's familiar, hateful hand, and in the beginning she could not have told whether there was more of hope or of apprehension in her expectancy.
But now she knew by the way her heart was singing. Her insane attempt to give Forbes the thing he wanted, whatever the consequences, had gloriously failed. She had played a friend's part, if a fool's part, and had not been punished by success. Naturally Forbes' numerous letters had never made the slightest reference to an attractive young girl, who was devoting her summer to rendering his exile tolerable, and such an omission would have awakened doubt in the least suspicious nature. To Agatha, Julia's continued silence, in the face of such facts, was convincing proof that she had thrown up her hand and was out of the game.
Agatha had fought Forbes' depression stubbornly while the week was young, and then as hope strengthened, with an audacious, irresistible gaiety that occasionally swept him off his feet. Never had it seemed so difficult to simulate age. A score of times a day she found it necessary to strangle a peal of girlish laughter, or tone it down to the subdued quaver appropriate to her years. It was incredibly irksome to subject her buoyant feet to the yoke of decorum. Never had she so courted exposure as now when the lightening of her heart impelled her to all sorts of foolish youthful pranks. Miss Finch watched her in dumb fascinated terror. And Forbes despite his abysmal gloom, found himself responding with astonishing frequency to her whirlwind spirits.
She woke early the morning of the eighth day and lay musing, too pleasurably excited to fall asleep again. Julia was out of the way. She had engaged herself deliberately to another man, and now it was not Julia but a radiant memory against which she must pit her wit and beauty. Had Agatha been oldershe might have questioned whether this were an occasion for self-congratulation, since the unfading, perfect dream has an undeniable advantage over fading and faulty beauty. But thanks to her inexperience, the removal of Julia from her path left her with a reckless confidence in her star. There was a tangled web to be unraveled, to be sure, before matters were established on a satisfactory footing, but her blithe hopefulness hurdled these grim preliminaries, and busied itself with a future all rose-color.
A sound in the next room roused Agatha from her sanguine self-communion, the plaintive little whine of Miss Finch's creaking rocking chair. Agatha sprang out of bed, and carried her watch to the window. The faint light showed the hour hand still plodding on toward four o'clock, no hour surely for Zaida Finch to be indulging her propensity for rocking chairs.
A white-clad figure, censoriously erect, appeared in Miss Finch's doorway. Miss Finch gasped, jumped, and made a rush for her bed, as if with the hope of persuading her youthful visitor that the sound of footsteps had roused her from peaceful slumbers. Then realizing the futility of evasion,she stopped short, and stood with hanging head, her air of confusion together with her diminutive figure, giving her the appearance of a naughty child.
"Fritz," began Agatha impressively, "why on earth aren't you asleep?" As she came closer her judicial air changed to consternation. Miss Finch's pale little eyes showed red even in the dim light. Her small nose was redder still. Her thin cheeks were wet with tears.
"Fritz, dear," cried the girl, her voice vibrant with tenderness, "are you sick? Does your head ache? Get into bed and let me make you comfortable. Why didn't you call me? I've been awake an age."
This affectionate concern was too much for Miss Finch's self-control. As she climbed into bed, she gave way to loud sobs. Agatha hung over her, distressed and vaguely self-reproachful, because she had not discovered earlier the urgent need of her presence.
"Don't cry, Fritzie! Shall I get you the hot water bottle, or is it the camphor that you need? Where does it hurt?" She patted the little sob-shaken figure with a motherly hand. Even when not impersonating her great-aunt, Agatha frequently felt years older than Zaida Finch.
It took a minute to elicit an answer. It came finally in a little sniffly whisper.
"My head's all right, Agatha."
"Probably that short-cake disagreed with you. I wondered at the time, if two helps weren't too many, with the whipped cream."
"My stomach's all right, too," declared Miss Finch, a trifle pettishly.
"Then where's the pain?"
Miss Finch deliberated. Her tears gushed afresh. "I—guess it's in my heart. I'm worried, Agatha."
Agatha sat down on the side of the bed, and sighed remorsefully.
"I know it's been a hard summer for you, Fritz. All this deception is very trying for one of your candid temperament. I should mind it frightfully myself if it wasn't for the fun of the thing. But I adored amateur theatricals when I was in boarding-school, and this is exactly the same, except that you have to make up your part as you go along. I knew that you'd been worrying, but I didn't dream how dreadfully you'd taken it to heart."
Miss Finch opened one swollen eye. She looked rather taken aback.
"I don't deny all this deception has worried me,Agatha. But just now—I was thinking of something else. I'm worried about my own affairs."
For a moment Agatha was nonplused. Miss Finch was one of the people who seem to be without personal "affairs." She had no relatives to die, no money to lose, no friends to disappoint her, no prospects to be overcast. She was painfully immune against loss, by comprehensive lack. Then on Agatha's incredulity flashed the recollection of Deacon Wiggins and James Doolittle. In her absorption with her own concerns she had forgotten that Miss Finch stood at a cross-roads, doubtful which turning to take. "Oh, Fritzie," she cried self-reproachfully, "I hope nothing's gone wrong with your love-affairs."
Miss Finch's grief lost something of its poignancy. Agatha's exclamation seemed to establish her status. It was something to know love's pangs, even though ignorant of its joys. Her husky voice was controlled as she replied, "The trouble is that they haven't gone at all, right or wrong."
"Oh!" Agatha became meditative and Miss Finch's confidences trickled on plaintively, like a sad-hearted brook.
"I got another letter from Deacon Wiggins yesterday. He said he guessed his first must have gone astray since he hadn't heard from me. He went over about the same ground as he did in the first letter and he put in a lot of Scripture. It gives one a feeling that a man can be depended on, when he's got so much of the Bible at his tongue's end."
"Well?" Agatha interrupted hopefully.
"Then I met Mr. Doolittle on the road this afternoon and he looked at me real reproachful, and said he was coming to see me in a day or two. I thought he seemed," faltered Miss Finch in conscience-stricken accents, "kind of thin and pale."
Agatha suppressed a smile. "You're keeping them dangling a rather long time, Fritz. I never suspected you before of being a flirt." Then as Miss Finch groaned aloud, the girl repented of her little witticism and hastened to ask, "Aren't you any nearer to making up your mind?"
"The trouble is, Agatha," sighed Miss Finch, "that there's so many good reasons on both sides, for and against. I've thought and thought till it's seemed as if my head was spinning 'round on my shoulders. You see there was a cousin of my mother's who was a second wife. She married a man named Flagg, and I've heard her tell Ma thatshe got so sick of hearing about the way the first Mrs. Flagg did things, that if she'd risen up out of her grave, she'd have given her back her husband as quick as she'd have turned her hand over. She said he was always talking about his first wife's mince meat and her mustard pickles and how saving she was, till it seemed as if there wasn't any use in her trying to do things right."
"Well?" Agatha prompted, more to afford Miss Finch the relief of unburdening her mind than because she failed to see the application of the tragedy of the second Mrs. Flagg.
"Deacon Wiggins has been married three times. It's likely that some one of those three women could do pretty near everything better than I can," explained Miss Finch, with characteristic humility. "If it was hard for Cousin Caroline Flagg to have one wife held up to her for an example day and night, I don't know how I'm going to stand three of them."
Agatha patted the limp hand clutching the damp pocket handkerchief. "I'm sureIshould find three predecessors a drawback. That's where Mr. Doolittle has the advantage."
"Yes, he seems to have, Agatha. But there's nodenying that a man who's lived fifty years without being married to anybody gets dreadfully set in his ways. My father's sister married a man when he was along about fifty, and she was twenty years younger. He was a nice man, but stubborn. For one thing he always kept a pair of extra boots standing under the bed, with the toes sticking out, so he could change quick if he came in. Aunt Hannah was one of the nervous kind and she had looked under the bed for a burglar all her life. When she'd come into the room and see the toes of those boots, it always gave her a turn, and she'd feel sure she'd found him at last. Anybody'd have supposed she'd get used to it after a time, but she never did. She tried her hardest to get him to keep his boots in the closet, and she'd make shoe-bags for him, all bound around with tape and real pretty-looking, but it wasn't any use. He said he'd always kept his boots under the bed, and he'd feel lost if they was anywhere else. Seems as if when a man lives single long enough, he gets to think there ain't but one way of doing things and that's his."
"Deacon Wiggins should be adaptable, then," hazarded Agatha. "He's accommodated himself to the ways of three women."
"There's another thing," Miss Finch continued, ignoring Agatha's tentative encouragement. "And that's the first wife's relations. I remember Cousin Caroline used to say she didn't mind his folks dropping in, and of course she didn't mind her folks, but when his first wife's folks came to Sunday dinner, or to spend the day, she was on pins and needles. And she said if ever the bread wasn't as light as usual, or the roast got overdone, it would be when some of the first Mrs. Flagg's relations stopped for a meal. She'd been a member of the Methodist church from the time she was thirteen, Cousin Caroline had, and she was president of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society, but I've heard her say with my own ears that she'd rather see the devil coming up the walk any day, than one of the Sawyer tribe—the first Mrs. Flagg was a Sawyer. And she had one set of wife's relations to worry her. I—I—if I took Deacon Wiggins, I'd have three."
"If you married James Doolittle," contributed Agatha cheeringly, "you wouldn't be troubled in that way."
"No, I wouldn't. But I'm not sure that too little company wouldn't be worse than too much. Mr. Doolittle ain't ever been what you'd call a social man,and except for that sister of his who lives out west, he hasn't any folks to speak of. And as long as I haven't any, I don't see how between us we could scare up enough mourners for a respectable funeral."
"Oh, come, Fritz, you're talking of weddings, not funerals. It certainly is a pity that these lovers of yours have their advantages—or disadvantages—so evenly balanced. It's like a see-saw, first one's down and then the other, and that makes it hard to come to a decision."
Miss Finch took the banter seriously. "Yes, Agatha, it seems a wicked thing, but I almost wish I'd find out something dreadful about one or the other, like drinking or Sabbath-breaking, and then I'd know what to do. But this weighing things and trying to make up my mind is just wearing me out. Agatha, it ain't what I expected. I supposed it would be an awful pleasant feeling to know that two men wanted you, but the way it's turned out, I don't believe I ever was so worried in my life."
"Perhaps proposals are like wisdom teeth, Fritz, and the slower they are coming, the more trouble they make. But don't forget that you aren't under any obligations to take either of these men. We were getting along fine before they thought ofwanting to marry you, and if you say no to both of them, you and I will keep Old Maids' Hall and be happy ever after."
"I don't believe you're likely to remain single," objected Miss Finch with perfect simplicity. "It's a pity that nice Mr. Warren never came again. You could have had that man if you'd tried. Look at the chocolates he sent you, after only seeing you once, and that in your kitchen clothes."
"If my name must be either Kent or Warren, I'll stay an old maid to the end of my days."
"I don't see why you don't like the name Warren, Agatha, and I think Mrs. Ridgeley Warren sounds awfully nice. But you're the one to be pleased. It's a pity Mr. Forbes is so afflicted. If it wasn't for that he'd make a grand husband."
"Mr. Forbes' worst affliction at present," pronounced Agatha tartly, "is being very much in love with an absolutely heartless and generally despicable young woman named Julia."
"My gracious," lamented Miss Finch. "Nice prospect for him, ain't it?"
"Not so bad as you'd think. She's going to marry another man."
"Oh!" Miss Finch's limp hand came suddenlyto life, found Agatha's fingers and squeezed them. "Maybe he'll get over it," she hinted.
"Maybe." Something in Agatha's tone suggested she was smiling.
"And then if he'd get his eyesight back, the way he expects to—"
"Then he'd have to be introduced to me all over again. You know he thinks I'm a kittenish old lady of seventy."
"If he doesn't like you better when he finds you're not quite twenty, he's different from most men, that's all." There was a new authority in Miss Finch's pronouncement. She spoke as one who knew the sex, to whom its little idiosyncrasies were an open book. And hardly less significant than the change in herself was the fact that Agatha accepted her altered attitude without surprise.
At the same time the girl's impulsive kiss on her old friend's tear-stained cheek was irrelevantly tender. "I must go back to bed," said Agatha. "It'll soon be time to get up. And don't worry over those adorers of yours. It'll do them good to be kept waiting. Men—most men—need to have the conceit taken out of them."
Though she paused in the doorway to charge MissFinch to go to sleep immediately, she did not act on her own counsel. Instead she ensconsed herself on the broad sill of the east window and swinging her dangling bare feet, watched the face of the sky slowly brighten, flushing pink at last, like the cheek of a girl. Overhead little rosy clouds floated, like cherubs, listening to the chorus of bird song which grew in volume moment by moment.
Another day was beginning, a good day, Agatha was ready to believe. For though between herself and her heart's desire a tortuous deception lay, to be explained and forgiven, the prospect no longer seemed hopeless. It was an eminently satisfactory world, Agatha decided, with Julia out of the running.
CHAPTER XV
UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH
Thekind-hearted Miss Kent had decreed a holiday for Howard. With characteristic thoughtfulness she had volunteered to take Forbes off his hands, and suggested they fill in the time by a long walk with a picnic lunch in some shady place, dinner to be postponed until a convenient hour after their return. Howard showed hilarious approval of the plan, and Forbes aroused himself from his melancholy abstraction sufficiently to agree, whereupon Agatha fell to making sandwiches, giving directions to Phemie as she worked.
Nature in the raw did not appeal to Miss Finch. She hated long walks. She hated sitting on the grass; while sandwiches, without an accompanying cup of tea, were as ashes to her taste. The others accepted her excuses with fortitude, and left her at home to see that Phemie did not set the house afire, and to grope wearily toward a solution of her vexingproblem. Howard, having stuffed his pockets with a generous proportion of the sandwiches, shouldered his fishing rod and departed to make the most of his holiday. And while the fragrant freshness of the night still lingered in the air, Forbes and Agatha set out in the direction of the woods.
The serene confidence of her morning vigil still enfolded Agatha. She walked as if keeping time to music, inaudible to all ears but her own. Forbes had insisted on carrying the basket of lunch which also contained a book or two, in case their mood should take a literary turn. Agatha kept fast hold of his arm, the better to steer his steps, and he thought there was a hint of friendliness in the firm clasp. The lonely and unhappy man felt a disproportionate sense of gratitude.
They walked and rested, strolled on and rested again. Neither was inclined to talk. Forbes had plenty to occupy his thoughts, and Agatha, too, was reflective. She realized that the time was at hand when she must confess to Forbes the deception she had practised on him, or else allow him to go out of her life altogether. Neither alternative was agreeable, but the latter was unthinkable.
A scheme occurred to her so in harmony with her native audacity that she dallied with it lovingly,before reluctantly renouncing it as impracticable. She could tell Forbes that she expected a visit from her grand-niece, Agatha Kent, and prejudice him in favor of the newcomer by assuring him of the extraordinary likeness existing between the twentieth-century Agatha and her girlhood self. After the new Agatha's arrival, she could leave him more and more to the society of the younger woman, withdrawing by degrees into the background until her sudden demise would hardly shock him, though he would naturally feel more or less responsible for consoling her namesake and heir. Agatha's final rejection of the plan was due less to doubt of her ability to act the dual rôle, or to manage the embarrassing details of her own interment, than to the realization that if her intimacy with Forbes was to continue, it must be established on a foundation of absolute truth. This deception on which she had entered so light-heartedly, had its sole excuse in the impermanence of their relationship. Before their friendship could become real there must be perfect understanding between them.
They ate their sandwiches shortly after noon, washing them down with deliciously cool water from a convenient spring. The day had grown warm andvery still. "It feels as if a thunder-storm might be brewing," Forbes remarked, breaking one of the periods of friendly silence.
"I think not," Agatha answered in a dreamy voice. "Don't you love this stillness here in the shade? It's perfect, perfect!"
"'A book of verses underneath the bough,A loaf of bread, a jug of wine—and thou,'"
quoted Forbes inevitably. He was laughing but the lines stirred her, and to disguise the fact she spoke nonchalantly.
"Thereisa book of poems in the basket, but I don't care for reading to-day, do you? It's one of the times when you feel everything that has ever been written and more too. You simply want to sit and think how wonderful it is to be alive."
"By jove, it's you that's wonderful," Forbes exclaimed. "That sensitiveness wears off with most people long before they're my age, to say nothing of yours. But you feel the thrill of life and the mystery and the adventure, as if you were a girl."
"Yes," Agatha acquiesced, "I do."
"I'd have known it without your telling me. It's been a continual marvel all through our acquaintance, that ardent freshness of yours. It's confirmed my faith in immortality."
Agatha had no answer ready. He groped for her hand and took possession of it with becoming masterfulness.
"I've got something to say to you, something very important. I've meant to say it for an age, but I've been too much of a coward to risk a no."
Agatha was obliged to remind herself that she was almost seventy years of age. Otherwise she might have suspected she was listening to a proposal.
"Before I can explain my plan, I want to ask you something. Aren't you ever lonely here in winter?"
The question was less formidable than she had anticipated. Her quick assent showed relief.
"And aren't you going to miss me a little when I go back to the city?"
"Of course I shall," she said faintly, and instinctively tried to withdraw her hand. He tightened his hold, laughing.
"Please don't take it away. It does me good, and I'm sure it can't do you any harm. Now you've given me just the encouragement I needed. If you're lonely here, and if you're going to miss me, why shouldn't you and I set up housekeeping together?"
"I—I don't understand." Again Agatha steadied herself with the recollection of her three-score years and seven.
"I'm afraid you've spoiled me," Forbes continued with sudden seriousness. "I've grown shamefully dependent on you. It isn't altogether or chiefly that you've looked after my physical comfort so wonderfully, though, of course, that counts. But you've been so interested in all that concerns me, so sympathetic, such a good pal—" He broke off, apparently at a loss for words. "You're as bracing as an October breeze," he said. "God knows what I should have done without you, this damnable summer."
The thought crossed her mind that this was her opportunity. Now that they were alone, now that he had acknowledged his indebtedness, she could safely throw herself upon his mercy. Her lips parted for her confession, and an overmastering cowardly fear paralyzed the organs of speech. Suppose he refused to forgive her. Then he would go away and she would never see him again. She must make herself still more indispensable. She must foster that feeling of dependence before she risked self-accusation.
"Of course I must be in town next winter," Forbeswent on. "Why shouldn't I take a furnished apartment and have you as a sort of mother confessor? We can get some good servants so you will be relieved of all responsibility as far as the establishment is concerned, and your sole duty will be to keep me content with life. How does that appeal to you?"
Agatha heard herself faltering something about Miss Finch.
"Oh, we'll find a place for Miss Finch," Forbes said tolerantly. "I took it for granted Miss Finch would come along, just as I assumed that your shadow would accompany you."
"It may be that Zaida will be married by fall," exclaimed Agatha, seizing the opportunity to postpone the necessity of answering him. She would not have risked the story on Warren, but she trusted Forbes to understand that even while her voice broke with uncontrollable laughter, she was not holding her old friend up to ridicule. As she described Miss Finch's singular quandary, Forbes joined in her laughter, more spontaneously than for many weeks, though he made no effort to conceal his amazement.
"Miss Finch! I begin to feel that I haven't done justice to the lady's charms. She has impressed meas colorless, not faded, you know, but colorless from the start."
"It's well we don't all see alike," Agatha said demurely, though a little startled by his perspicacity.
His next remark took her by surprise. "It's a thousand pities you never married."
Her impertinent retort that there was still time for that, was checked before it left her lips, and replaced by the less hazardous rejoinder, "In that case, probably I shouldn't be sitting here with you."
"True. But my good luck has meant loss to so many. You would have been an incomparable mother. It's a shame you didn't have a dozen children. Do you know I've never in my life felt such a sense of being mothered as I have since I came to Oak Knoll. My own mother was an invalid when I first remember her."
A little confused, but gallantly striving to live up to her maternal rôle, Agatha patted his arm with her disengaged hand. He showed his filial appreciation by kissing the other.
"It wasn't my father's fault, anyway, that you didn't fulfil your destiny. He took me into his confidence the last few months of his life, not in any formal way, you understand, just a word droppedhere and there. He was the tenderest of husbands to my mother, but at the last of his life, his thoughts were all with his first love." He turned toward her with a gesture plainly interrogative. "He must have been rather an attractive young fellow."
"He was." Agatha spoke with conviction.
"And still you turned him down. I suppose it would be presumptuous to hazard a guess that there was another man."
"Yes, I think it would be rather presumptuous," Agatha said breathlessly. "Anyway, it's foolish, dragging up old love-affairs. 'Let the dead past bury its dead,' you know, though you modern young folks don't hold Longfellow in such esteem as my generation did."
"I was only thinking that if there was a man who might have married you and didn't, he's probably putting in his time in the next world cursing his luck. But you're not going to be as hard on the son as you were on the father, are you?"
"I—I—do you mean—"
"You're not going to blast all my hopes by saying no. How am I going to get along without you; tell me that?"
"You must give me a little time to think," Agatha protested faintly. She had vowed that morning toavoid all references in the future to her advanced age, but the habit of acting a part was too strong to be overcome by a single resolution. She heard herself continuing mechanically, "Old people don't like to be hurried into important decisions. Leaving the home of so many years and going away with a young man may seem a very little thing to you, but to me it's a real adventure."
"Take all the time you want for reflection," he conceded generously. "Only understand, you must end by saying yes!"
"You might change your mind and not want me," Agatha said. The playfulness oozed out of her tone as she voiced her haunting dread. "You might find out something about me, some trait you had never suspected. I might be any number of awful things—deceitful, for instance." Again the impulse to confession took her by the throat. Again she fought it off almost with terror. It was too soon. She was not ready. She did not know what to say, and moreover the moment was too sweet to spoil.
Forbes laughed tolerantly. "Oh, I'll take the risk. Shall we shake hands on the bargain?"
He was amused by the fervor of her refusal, but his instinct warned him he was carrying his teasing too far. He had a strong conviction that she wouldend by accepting his proposition, but nothing would be gained by hurrying her to a decision. Though in most things she was strangely younger than her years, her age manifested itself in her reluctance to change the established order. He congratulated himself on broaching the subject early enough to give her time for accustoming herself to the idea.
A comfortable silence fell between them. Forbes stretched himself on the pine needles, and presently dropped off to sleep. He had held to her hand throughout their talk with seeming playfulness, though perhaps underneath was the instinct of the blind man to establish a link between himself and his kind, to touch what he can not see. In his sleep he moved nearer the imprisoned hand, and lay with his cheek touching it. And though her arm grew very tired from staying in one position so long, passing through the various stages from prickles to excruciating pain, and finally to a numbness which made her wonder if she could ever use it again, Agatha did not move. Indeed as she sat listening to his quiet breathing, feeling through the torture of her cramped muscles the touch of his cheek against her hand, her only quarrel with the hour was that it could not last.