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To the Bigge House? The gates of Paradise were about to open for Mell. Rejoice with her, all ye who read. How will you feel when the doors of your big house are about to unclose themselves before your long-aspiring and wistful gaze, disclosing within the risen Star of Conquest, the bright realization of many golden visions and many rose-colored dreams?
This Bigge House, of so much local fame and importance, was, in fact, a spacious mansion of no small pretention, and having been originally built for a man named Bigge, in spite of all that the present owners could do in the way of writing and calling it Rutland Manse, it remained, year after year, the Bigge House. Pleasantly situated, well-constructed, and well-kept, the house itself was surrounded by extensive and beautiful grounds, a grove, a grass plot, a flower garden embellished with trellises, terraces, fountains, rare shrubbery, and an artificial pond to row pretty little boats on, and secondly, to propagate fish. The family were of an old stock, but a newly rich—a class who like much to enjoy their money, and better still, to show it.
On this cloudless summer morn, perfect as weather goes, so perfect that one might look upon it as a Providential complicity in the booming of the Grange picnic, a gracious provision of nature to suit one special occasion, the approaches to the Bigge House presented a stirring scene. Carriages, buggies, and wagons, vehicles of every description, and vehicles nondescript, lined the roadways in every direction. Servants were rushing hither and thither, fresh arrivals coming every few moments to swell the throng, voices calling to each other in joyous recognition, fair hands wavingau revoirs, as they dashed by, without stopping, on their way to the scene of the day’s festivities. A pleasurable sense of expectation brightened every face, a buoyant sense of exhilaration quickened every heart, and high above the heads of all, a brilliant sun, regnant on a field of blue, lighted up the long sloping hills and broad green valleys. Mell looked about her wonderingly. Who were all these people, and how many of them would she know before the day was done?
Miss Josey had left her holding the reins while she ran in for a cargo of bundles. It was not at all necessary, except in Miss Josey’s imagination. Her well-groomed little nag was alive, it is true, but some live things creep, and Aristophanes—called Top,—was one of them. He never thought of starting anywhere as long as he could stand still. In this respect, he differed from his mistress, who never stayed anywhere, as long as she could find enough news to keep going.
“Hold him tight, Mell,” had been Miss Josey’s injunction when she left Mell alone with Top.
At another time this arrangement would have greatly disappointed Mell. Her whole being had clamored to get inside the Bigge House, and, behold! here she sat along with Top outside the sacred precincts. But, somehow, her heart beat so high with rainbow-tinted fancies, she was altogether unconscious of anything amiss in the situation. If not within the very courts of the wonderful palace, the very penetralia of the Penates, she was very near the goal; nearer than she had ever been before. She could almost look in—she could almost see the shining garments and gloriously bright faces of the beings she envied, the beings who lived that life so far above her own. She had come thus far; she waited at the gate, and some day the great doors would be flung wide open for her; she would cross the threshold. But not alone. One would bear her company who was ever an honored269guest there, and in many another home of wealth and fashion and influence.
These thoughts transferred their suppressed rapture into the expression of her face—into cheeks dazzling for joy—into eyes swimming in lustre—into a mouth wreathed into curves of exquisite transport. She was beautiful.
A number of young gallants came crowding about the gate. They stood in the plentitude of checked tweeds and light flannel, with the latest sheen on a boot, and the latest paragon of a hat—mighty swells, conscious of their own superiority, eying this deuced pretty girl, and wondering who she was.
“You ought to know, Rube,” said one.
“But, I don’t!” said Rube. “I will know before I’m much older though, you can depend upon me for that! She’s with Miss Josey.”
Mell did not notice them beyond a casual glance. They had about them, incontestably, an enormous lot of style, but compared to Jerome, they were flat,—awfully flat. She caught a glimpse of him now, this swellest swell of the period, coming down the marble steps of the mansion.
Some one is with him—a lady. Yes, just as she thought, Clara Rutland. Here they come. She, so—so—almost ugly, and he, so—so—so Jerome-like. That’s the only way to express it. Jerome is more than simply handsome, more than merely graceful, more than a man among men—he’s a non-such, in a nut-shell!
But here he is, almost in speaking distance, and every step bringing him nearer. Isn’t he going to be surprised? Isn’t he going to be delighted? Isn’t he going to shake her hand and smile that impenetrable smile, and—?
How is this? Jerome has come and gone. He did not look at her—he did not once raise his eyes in passing.
Just ahead of this poky little vehicle, where Mell awaited the return of Miss Josey, stood a lordly equipage, all silver plate and shine, with a well-dressed groom standing in front of the champing, restive, mettlesome animal, as eager to be off and gone somewhere as the most restless of human hearts in a human bosom.
Into this nobby turnout Jerome assisted Miss Rutland, and then springing in himself, grasped the reins from the groom’s hands. For one awful moment (to Mell) the horse stood straight upon his hind legs, and then, obeying Jerome’s voice, who said in the quietest of tones, ‘Go on, Rhesus,’ gave one wild plunge and dashed ahead, leaving Mell with a stifled feeling, as if she was buried alive under twenty feet of volcanic ashes.
But what did it mean—his passing her without a sign of recognition? Jerome might be of a truant disposition, of unstable fancy, and superior in his own strength to most ordinary rules, but he couldn’t help knowing her face to face. There was a bare possibility that he had not really seen her; his sight, come to think of it, was none of the best, or, at least, he habitually wore an interesting littlepince-nezdangling from his button-hole, and sometimes, though not often, stuck it across the bridge of his well-shaped nose with telling effect.
With such arguments, and much wanting to be convinced, Mell recovered her equipoise to some extent, managing to hear about half Miss Josey was saying, and to answer only once or twice very wildly at random. Arrived at their destination, she assisted her patroness in receiving and arranging the baskets; this important contingent of the day’s proceedings being satisfactorily disposed of, they followed the example of the crowd at large270and strolled about in search of some amusement. A more delightful location for a day’s outing it would be hard to find, the world over. On three sides of the principal grove, stretched an immense plateau, smooth as a flower-garden, and level as a plumb line, and on the fourth side a sudden, bold declivity, just as if a giant hand had pulled the clustering hills apart and left them wide asunder, laying bare the heart of a magnificent ravine. In this wild gorge were stupendous cliffs and brinks, shady shelves o’erhanging secluded and romantic nooks, enormous rocks holding plentiful treasures in moss and lichen, singularly constructed mounds, probably the remaining deposit of a prehistoric race, wild flowers in variety, wild scenery in perfection, and a beautiful stream of running water, wherein disported finny tribes in abundance. Nothing in the highest art of gardenesque could produce such results as this. A mere ramble amid such scenes of diverse picturesqueness—nature’s wear and tear in moods of passion—amounts to a study of geological architecture under favoring conditions.
Mell loved nature, but not as she loved Jerome. Her brains were crammed with wild speculations in regard to him, which accounts for the fact that she had no mind on that eventful day to invest in all those wonderful manifestations of nature’s power and nature’s mystery.
During their circuitous meanderings, two young men joined Miss Josey and were duly presented to herprotégé. They were fine young fellows, and very pleasant, too, but Mell continued sopreoccupiedin the vain racking of her brain, trying to imagine what had become of Jerome and Clara Rutland, that she did not catch their names, and replied to their efforts at conversation with monosyllabic remarks. One of them, a merry-tempered, straightforward, stalwart young chap, armed with rod and bait, asked her, with a flattering degree of warmth, if she wouldn’t go with them a-fishing; but reflecting if she did so, she would in all likelihood be out of the way of seeing Jerome for hours to come, Mell declined without circumlocution, glad to get rid of him on the pretext of having promised to assist Miss Josey in her onerous duties, as commissary of subsistence. Discouraged, the young fisherman bowed and left.
“Such a pretty girl,” he remarked to his companion. “It’s a pity she doesn’t know what to say!”
Think of Mell Creecy not knowing what to say! The girl who was always saying things nobody else had ever thought of saying. Such is the pretty pass to which an unhappy love may bring the brightest girl! And, after all, she saw absolutely nothing of Jerome until all those wagon upon wagon loads of baskets had been ransacked, and their tempting contents emptied out upon the festive board, giving forth grateful suggestions of the coming mid-day meal.
While squeezing lemons, flushed and more than ever anxious, deft of hand, but uneasy in mind, the buggy containing Jerome and Miss Rutland dashed into the grove.
“We’ve been all the way to Pudney,” called out the young lady, holding up to view some tied-up boxes, “and here are the prizes.”
“All right,” responded Miss Josey, “but do let us have the ice. The prizes are of no consequence to a famishing people, but the dinner is, and we are about ready.”
“She’s powerfully interested in the prizes,” commented a girl at Mell’s elbow, “but she has a good right to be.”
“Why?” inquired Mell.
“Because she is going to be crowned queen of love and beauty.”
“How do you know?”
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“I’ve put things together, and that’s the way they sum up to me. That young man with her can beat all of our boys, and he’s going to crown her.”
“Is he?” ejaculated Mell.
Let him dare to do it! Before Jerome Devonhough should place a victor’s crown on Clara Rutland’s head, she would—well, what would she do? “Anything!” muttered Mell, between her teeth.
Poor Mell! She had been to such an expensive school and learned so many things, and not one of them was of the slightest use to her in this sore strait. Could there not be established a new school for girls, differing materially from the old; founded upon a more adaptable basis, taught after a hitherto unknown method, and including prominently in its curriculum of studies, that branch of knowledge whose acquisition enables a woman to bear long, to suffer in silence, and in weakness to be strong? These are the practical issues in a woman’s daily life, and although in such a school she might not get her money’s worth in German gutturals and French verbs, she would, at least, have indulged in a less reckless expenditure of time in obtaining useless knowledge.
But let us not blame the schools over much, and without a just discrimination. Not all the fault lies at their door. Something there is amiss among the girls themselves. It may be, that they love and hate, and talk too much, even in one language.
In a girl of Mell’s temperament, love would not have been love, lacking jealousy, and its twin-feeling, revenge. More’s the pity, Mell!
That picnic dinner was splendid. Everybody enjoyed it but Mell, and it was not the young fisherman’s fault that she did not. Although he was in attendance upon another young lady, who seemed to know what to say, and said it incessantly, he kept an eye on Mell, and proffered her every tempting dish he could lay his hands upon. To no purpose; for Mell could not eat. She tried, and the very first mouthful paralyzed her ability to swallow. It was altogether as much as she could do to keep from sobbing aloud in the faces of all theseomnivorous, happy people. What made it all the worse, at breakfast time she had been happier than they—too happy, in fact, to eat, and now, here at dinner, she was too miserable.
And there sat the author of all her misery, not twelve feet distant, perfectly oblivious to her proximity, nay, her very existence. Not by any chance did he ever look toward her, or show any consciousness of her presence. So devoted and so marked were his attentions to that uninteresting and anything but attractive Clara Rutland, that Mell heard it commented upon on all sides. These two, so sufficient unto themselves, were among the first to leave the festal board and wander off in sylvan haunts. Anon, all appetites were satisfied, and amid the buzzing of tongues and boisterous flashes of merriment, the multitude again dispersed. Unobserved and in a very unenviable frame of mind, the unhappy Mell stole away to herself. The paramount desire of her wounded spirit was to get beyond the ken of human eye. In a hidden recess screened by an overhanging rock, she sat down, the prey of such discordant and chaotic thoughts as wear away, in time, the bulwarks of reason. It was yesterday, no, the day before, no, longer, that he had called upon God to witness that she alone was dear to him, she only precious in his sight, and now, how stands the case? Ah, dear God, you heard him say it! Oh, All-seeing Eye, you have looked upon him this day, and will not a lightning blast from an indignant Heaven palsy the false tongue, whose words have no more meaning than loose rubble!
Into the heaviness of these thoughts, growing heavier with access of bitterness272as the moments sped, there came the ringing tones of a voice—a voice well known to Mell.
Shaking off her lethargy and looking out from her hiding place, she beheld the object of all these harrowing reflections, grasping Miss Rutland’s two hands in his own, as they together, and laughingly, descended a precipitous declivity. Once down, they proceeded with access of laughter, to push their way through a tangle of brushwood. To get out of this into the beaten path, they must necessarily advance in the direction of her place of concealment, and, devoured with jealousy, inflamed with distrust, tortured with the cruel madness of love, Mell determined to satisfy herself on the spot, as to whether Jerome’s avoidance was premeditated or unintentional. Just as the couple emerged from their nether difficulties, and stood on clear ground and firm footing, Mell suddenly stepped forth upon the same path, confronting them face to face. Miss Rutland did not speak. Mell knew she would not, although they had attended the same boarding school for years, lived in the same house, and graduated in the same class, where Miss Rutland, unlike herself, achieved no distinction of self-merit; being content to be accounted distinguished through the sepulchre of a dead father.
Mell did not expect recognition from her in such a place at such a time; for the neighboring rocks were alive with the best families in the county, and Clara was one of those feeble brained persons, who have minds suited to all purposes, save use and knowledge of that kind which may be put on and off as a movable garment. Such creatures, tossed about helplessly on the billows of circumstance, keep one finger on the public pulse, and know you, or know you not, according to its beat. For all this, Mell cared nothing in that supreme moment. One swift glance at Clara, and after that every faculty of her mind and body was centered on Jerome. He was evidently surprised at being nearly run over by this blustering and blowsy young lady, but beyond that—nothing. He looked her full in the face, the unknowing look of a total stranger. The result of this look was to Mell calamitous. A waving blankness came before her sight, her knees trembled, her strength seemed poured out like water, and staggering to a tree, she caught hold of it for support.
“Cut—cut, dead!”
This, after all that had passed between them, was simply brutal. But the despised and slighted country girl was only momentarily stunned, not crushed. Out of the throes of her wounded pride and injured affection, there burst forth the devouring flames of a fiery and passionate nature, incapable of any luke-warmness in emotion. Her eyes dilated, her fingers twitched, her face set like a flint, her lip curled in scorn, and she shook her clenched fist at Jerome’s retreating figure.
“Contemptible coward! Miserable trickster! What have I ever done, that you should refuse to speak to me in the presence of Clara Rutland?”
Her bosom heaved; she sobbed aloud, and shook her fist again.
“I’ll make you sorry for this! I’ll get even with you, yet!” Words, whose fierce earnestness embodied a prophesy, and were followed by a prayer:
“Oh, God, only give me the power to make him feel it, and I ask no more! I care not what then befalls me!”
This paroxysm of passion swept over her as a besom of destruction, leaving her quenched as tow, white, unnerved, quite pitiful and hushed. She sank to the ground and into a state of semi-unconsciousness.
Some one coming near, some one lifting her into a sitting posture, some273one pouring cold water upon her head, and holding something to her nose aroused her.
“That’s right,” said the young fisherman, “open your eyes—open them wide! It’s nobody but me. I wouldn’t tell another soul, for I know you wouldn’t want the mischief of a fuss made over it. But how did you come to pitch over?”
“I did not come to pitch over,” said Mell, bewildered, “did I?”
“Of course you did! I had been looking for you for ever so long, and standing on top there, I happened to look down, and saw you lying here. And you never will know how scared I was, for, at first, I thought you were dead. Gad, didn’t I make tracks, though, after I got started! But, drink a little more of this, and now, don’t you feel set up again?”
“Considerably so,” said Mell, trying, too, to look set up. He was so kind, and she, poor, bruised thing, so grateful. This little word, kind, so often upon the lip—upon yours and mine, and the lips of our friends, as we encounter them socially on our pilgrimage day by day, is only at certain epochs in our own lives fully understood, and deservedly cherished deep down in the heart. And yet, so few of us can be great, and so many of us could be kind if we would, and oftener than we are.
“I know just why you toppled,” proceeded Mell’s kind rescuer.
“But I didn’t topple!” again protested Mell.
“Did you fall down on purpose?”
“No. I did not fall at all, as far as I know.”
“Exactly! those are the worst kind—the falls you can’t tell anything about.”
So they are. Her’s had not been far in space—she remembered it all now, with an acute pang—but, oh, so far in spirit!
“You could walk now a little, couldn’t you?”
“I think I could,” said Mell.
She got upon her feet with his assistance.
“You are shaky, yet.”
“A little shaky,” Mell admitted.
“Then take my arm.”
She took it, as a wise being takes the inevitable all through life, submissively, and without saying much about it.
They walked slowly, and the young follower of dear old Ike watched his companion’s every step, with a solicitude bordering on the fatherly.
“What do you suppose I am going to do with you, now?”
She could not imagine.
“Give you something to eat—not that only, make you eat it! I gave you enough at dinner time, if you had only eaten it, but you left all my goody-goodies untasted.”
“And you unthanked,” added Mell, with a ghost of her old smile, and asoupçonof her old sprightliness.
“No matter about that! Only, I was worried that you could not eat, and I know the reason why.”
Did he? Did he know it? The girl at his side dreaded to hear his next words.
“Miss Josey had been working you to death all the morning. I saw you how you stayed around and looked after everything, while Miss Josey sat on one side with her hands folded. She’s good at that! She never does anything herself but reap all the glory of other people’s successes. The very worst of these picnics is, that a few do all of the work, and the many all the enjoying. Now, you—youhaven’t had much of a time, have you?”
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She had not, but no girl in her right mind is going to confess, out and out, that she hasn’t had a good time, even in the Inferno.
“Rather slow, perhaps,” answered Mell, putting it as mildly on a strained case, as the case would bear, “but there’s nobody to blame for it, but myself. If I wasn’t such a fool in some respects, I might have had a—a perfectly gorgeous time.Youwould have given me all the good time a girl need to look for.”
“But you wouldn’t let me!”
“Well, you see,” explained Mell, warming with her subject, “I had promised Miss Josey—”
“Never promise her anything again!”
“I don’t think I will! But, as I was saying, I promised her to come and take Miss Rutland’s place—to come for that very purpose, and when I make a promise, however hard, I’m going to keep it.”
“Bravo for you! Not every girl does that.”
“Every high-principled girl does.” Her tones were severely uncompromising.
“Ought to, you mean,” rejoined her companion, with an incredulous laugh.
“No—does!”
Light words, lightly spoken, lightly gone! Alas! How these bubbles of talk, subtle as air, come back home after a time, to twit us with scorn, to taunt us with falsity, to impute wrong unto us, to arraign, to accuse, to denounce, to condemn out of our own lips.
“Here we are,” said Mell’s companion, still laughing at the idea of a young woman thinking it necessary to hold tight to her word. “Here we are. Now sit right down here and rest your head comfortably against this tree. I’ll be back in a twinkling.”
So he was, with a plate in his hand filled with edibles, and a bottle of sparkling wine.
“Eat,” commanded this eminently practical young man; “eat and drink. That’s all you need now to fetch you round completely.”
This settled the question, and settled it most judiciously and satisfactorily. The solid food proved a balm of comfort to that desolate goneness within her, which Mell had wrongly ascribed as due entirely to the volcanic derangement of her heart; and the strong wine sped through her veins a draught of health, a cordial to the mind, a rosy elixir of life.
Mell began to take some interest in her companion and her present surroundings. She recognized in them a certain claim to her consideration, and a certain charm. This young stranger was a gentleman in looks and bearing; he had some manliness in his nature, nevertheless, (Mell felt down on gentlemen) and a heart as brimming full of charity as St. Vincent de Paul, himself. He was not ashamed among all his fine friends, to speak to a simple country girl, who, destitute of fortune, had nothing to commend her butinnatemodesty and God-given beauty. So far from being ashamed, he was ministering to her wants as no one had ever ministered to them before—as kindly and courteously as if she were in every respect his equal in social standing. Jerome would not speak to her, and this gentleman, in her weakness, held the cup to her lips, and put the food into her mouth with his own hands.
“I’ll pray for him this very night,” thought Mell, and moistened the thought with a grateful tear.
But, long before the edibles were consumed, every vestige of a tear had disappeared from Mell’s eyes, and she was talking back to this pattern of275a gentleman, as few girls of her age knew so well how to do. The blood rushed back to her pallid cheeks, witchery to her tongue, magic to her glance.
“Don’t be offended,” she remarked to him, with enchanting candor, after they had become the best of friends; “but I did not hear your name this morning, and I have not the slightest idea who you are.”
“Have you the slightest desire to know?”
“Indeed I have! You can’t imagine—the very greatest desire!”
“Then let me refresh your memory somewhat. Do you recall a pug-nosed, freckle-faced, bull-headed youngster, who used to pommel Jim Green into blue jelly, every time he wanted to lift you over the swollen creek or carry your school-bag, or—”
“I do; I remember him well. But you—you are not Rube Rutland?”
“Then I wish you’d tell me who I am! I’ve been thinking I was Rube Rutland for a good many years now—for I am older than I look.”
“And to think I did not know you!” exclaimed Mell.
“And to think I did not knowyou!” exclaimed Rube. “That’s what gets me! I was asking everybody and in all directions who that stunning girl was, with—”
“Well,” inquired Mell, laughing, “withwhat?I’d like to know what is stunning about me.”
“With the sweetest face I ever looked into.”
This reply caused Mell’s eyes, intently fixed upon the speaker, to drop with rare grace to meet the maiden’s blush upon her cheek. A perfectly natural action, it was for that reason and others, a very effective one.
“When I found out who you were,” pursued Rube, studying the face he had praised, seeing it glorified by his praises, “I fairly froze to Miss Josey, wanting so much to renew our acquaintance, and when you had no word of welcome for an old friend, and gave me the cold shoulder with such a vengeance, I was cut all to pieces over it. Fact! I couldn’t enjoy fishing, and I feel bad yet!”
“You might have known I did not recognize you,” said Mell, lifting her eyes. “I cannot tell you how glad I am, Mr. Rutland.”
“Mr. Rutland!It used to Rube.”
“And shall be Rube again, if you so desire! Rube, I am just delighted that you’ve come back home!”
So far, she had dallied innocently enough with her old playfellow; neither seeking to please nor deceive, spreading no nets of enchantment, nicely baited, to entrap the fancy of this agreeable young man (rich too), who was as frank in nature and as transparent in purpose, as physically muscular and daring.
At three o’clock, Miss Josey came to sound the horn for the races, and the crowd came surging back. Old and young, big and little, the cream of the county and its yeomanry, a congregation of the mass, a segregation of the cliques, mounting high into the hundreds. The order of the Grange was then at the zenith of its fame and power.
The crowd, as we have said, came surging back. The best of the fun was yet to come. Mell roused herself and looked about her. Here were other girls with sweet faces, and many of them, as she was aware, possessed276of those heavier charms of worldly substance which oftentimes outweigh the sweetest of faces. None of them must lure him from her. He should stick to her, now, come what would. The careless beauty, the ingenuous and undesigning woman, is immediately transformed into a greedy monopolist, a wily fox, a cunning serpent, a contriving, intriguing, manœuvring strategist, bent upon mischief, who will play a deep game and stoop to the tricks of the trade, and shift, and dodge, and shuffle, and aim to bring down, by fair means or foul, the noble quarry.
Eye, lip, tongue, mind, heart, soul, the graces of youth, the allurements of beauty, the treasures of a cultivated mind, and all those sweet mysteries of sense which float in the atmosphere between a young man and the maiden of his fancy, were put in motion to bear upon Rube’s case.
He did not move; no wonder; gorged on sweets, Rube had neither power nor inclination to be gone.
After a little, a group of young men stationed themselves at a given point, not far from where this couple sat. They had been into an adjacent farm-house and changed their clothes, and now appeared in knee pants, red stockings, and white jackets, a striking and interesting accessory to an already animated and glowing landscape. In this group of picturesque figures Jerome was conspicuous. Jerome looked well in anything, and generally well to everybody.
Not so, to-day.
To one pair of eyes, not distant, he now loomed up blacker in broad daylight than the blackest Mephistopheles in a howling Walpurgis night.
He saw Rube beside her, and she noted his start of surprise.
“Have a care!” cogitated Mell. “There may be surprises in store for you—greater than this and not so easily brooked.”
She turned her back upon him and gave her whole attention again to Rube. The first duty of a woman is to respect herself, the second duty of a woman is to enforce the respect of others. Some of these days Jerome Devonhough would be only too glad if she would deign to permit him to speak to her.
“Aren’t you going to take part?” she asked her companion.
“No; I’m not in trim, and it’s no use trying to beat Devonhough.”
“Youcould beat him,” said she. She spoke with confidence and seductively.
“You are awfully complimentary, I declare! Do you wish me to run, Melville?”
“I do. Yes, Rube, I wish it particularly. Why should this stranger carry off the palm over our own boys?”
“For the best of reasons. He deserves to carry it off. Devonhough can out-run, out-leap, out-ride, out-do anything in the county.”
“Exceptyou,” again insinuated Mell.
“Say! what makes you believe so strong in me?”
“Nothing makes me, but—I cannot help it!”
At this point, dear reader, if you are a man, and happily neither blind, nor deaf, nor over eighty years of age, take Rube’s seat for a moment, at Mell’s feet. Let her tell you in the sweetest tones, that she cannot help believing in you strong—let her bend upon you a glance sweeter than the tones, stronger than the words, and then say, honestly, don’t you feel, as Rube did at this juncture, mighty queer?
Under the spell, her victim stirred—he lifted himself slowly toward her, inquiring in a low voice, but with intense energy:
“Melville, are you fooling me?”
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“Fooling you!” she ejaculated, in soft reproach. “Would I fool you, Rube? Is that your opinion ofme? You think, then—but tell me, Rube, why do you think so?—that those early days are less dear to me than to you—their memory less sweet?”
“I have thought so,” murmured he in great agitation, “because I have not dared to think otherwise—until now.”
And into his great soul there entered, then and there, the ineffable beatitude of the true believer.
Oh, wicked, wicked Mell! One little hour ago, and you had forgotten his very existence! Is the Recording Angel, who stands above your head up there, off duty, that you should dare to do it? Or, will it help your case in the day of reckoning, that deception foul as this, has been raised by clever women into the dignity of a fine art, and goes on among them all the while, as inexpugnable as an Act of Congress?
“Melville, I will run this race—run it to please you.”
“I knew you would! And believe me, Rube, nothing could please me more.”
“Suppose I should win,” said Rube, “what then?”
“You will be the hero of the day, and—” Mell halted very prettily, but finally brought it out in sweet confusion, “and maybeIwould wear a crown.”
“By my troth, you shall! But what of me? I take no stock in crowns like that. If I should win, Mell, may I name my own reward?”
“You may.”
“It will be a big one.”
“The man who runs and wins generally gets a big one.”
“But understand my meaning, Mell, understand it perfectly. I do not want the shadow of a doubt to rest upon this matter. Who shall decide when lovers disagree?”
He had been toying with a twig broken from a flowering bay; it was stripped of foliage, save a few green leaves at the end, and with this he lightly touched the dimpled hand reposing upon her lap.
“Thatis what I would ask. Will you give it to me, Mell, if I win the race?”
Mell trembled violently, but she said “yes.”
That was natural enough. When a woman says yes, it is time to tremble. Even Rube knew that.
“You mean it?It isa solemn promise! One of those promises you always keep!”
Again Mell trembled violently—worse than before, and again said “yes.”
That barely audible yes, had scarcely died upon her white lips when Rube sprang to his feet, and casting off his fawn colored flannel jacket and light waist-coat, tossed them in a careless heap upon the ground at her feet. Divested of those outer garments, the symmetrical curves of his young manhood, and the irregular curves of his honest face showed up to great advantage in white linen and a necktie—the latter a verychicarticle of its kind, consisting of blazoned monstrosities of art, in bright vermillion on a background of white—blood on snow.
“You must excuse my shirt-sleeves,” said Rube, during the process of disrobing. “I have no costume, so must do the best I can under the circumstances.”
He next made off with his suspenders, and began tugging at his shirt in an alarming fashion.
278
“What are you going to do?” interrogated Mell, with a horrified expression. “You are not going to—”
“No,” said Rube, laughing, and coloring too. “I’m not going to take it off. I’m only going to—” tugging all the while—“make myself into a sailor boy, or flowing Turk, or a loose Brave, or a something or other, to keep pace with those brocaded Templars, Hospitallers, and Knights of the Golden Fleece over there. Come, now, can’t you fix a fellow up?”
“Fix a fellow up?” echoed Mell, helplessly. She never had ‘fixed a fellow up,’ and she knew less about it than the sacred writings of Zoroaster.
“Yes,” said Rube. “Give me those ribbons you’ve got on—fix me up, put your colors on me, don’t you see?”
Mell did see at last, and greatly relieved, proceeded to do his bidding. The sash from her own supple waist was deftly transferred to his, and a knot of ribbons at her throat, after many trials, was finally disposed of to their mutual liking.
“Now, don’t I look as well as any of ’em?” inquired the improvised knight, quite carried away with the fixing-up process.
“As well, and better,” she assured him.
“Well, then,” he held out his hand to her, “let us seal the compact. If I win, Melville——”
“Yes,” said Mell, hurriedly.
“But if I fail.”
“Youcannotfail, not if you love me!” She spoke impatiently, and with flashing eyes. “A one-legged man could not, if he loved me! Love finds a way, and love which cannot find a way is not love.”
“Enough,” said Rube, below his breath. “You will know whether I love you or not.”
Their hands were still clasped together in bond, until, perceiving they had become a subject of curiosity to those about them, Rube at length allowed Mell to withdraw hers, whereupon he turned off with a light laugh; that proficuous little laugh, which amid life’s thick-coming anxieties, great and small, serves so many turns, and turns so many ways, and covers up within us so much that is no laughing matter.
Rube laughed and mingled with the crowd.
“Come out of that!” shouted an urchin. It was the signal for a regular broadside of raillery and chaff from the pestiferous small boy, a many-tongued volume out of print, and circulating in open space at the rate of a thousand editions to the minute.
Nothing abashed, amid groans and jeers, and gibes, and hoots, Rube took his place with the others, the only make-shift knight among them.
“For pity’s sake, look at Rube,” exclaimed Miss Rutland, “actually in his shirt sleeves? Rube, don’t! You are not in costume, and you spoil the artistic effect.”
“Look sharp,” came Rube’s laughing reply, “or I’ll spoil the artistic result, also.”
“Don’t get excited over the prospect,” commented Jerome, nodding his head reassuringly at Miss Rutland, “there’s not the remotest cause for alarm.”
Miss Rutland sat on a tub turned bottom side up, which had served its purposes in lemonade. Jerome took his ease on a wagon-body, also turned bottom side up, which had served its purposes as a table. Such are the phases of a picnic—and one picnic has more phases than all of Jupiter’s moons.
“The tortoise,” pursued Jerome, now turning his attention more particularly279to Rube, “is a remarkable animal, but like thee, oh friend of my soul, ‘thou drone, thou snail, thou slug,’ not much on a run. How much is it I can beat thee, Rube, every time and without trying—three lengths?”
“Just you keep quiet,” retorted Rube. “The man so sure, let him look to himself; the man who blows, let him beware! In all our trials at speed there never was before anything to win, and I’m a fellow who can’t run to beat where there’s nothing to win.”
“A tremendous issue is involved on the present occasion,” announced Jerome in withering scorn. “A lot of paper flowers strung on a piece of wire to stick on a girl’s head, and when it’s all over and done, I don’t know who feels most idiotic orrepentant, the girl who wears ’em or the fellow who won ’em. I’ve been there! I know. I hope a more enduring crown than this perishable travesty will fall to my lot!”
“So do I!” prayed Rube aloud, and with devoutness.
“Oh, Rutland, Rutland!” exclaimed his friend, going off into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. “There isn’t anything in this wide world half so deliciously transparent as your intentions, unless—unless,” subjoined Jerome, as soon as he could again command his voice, “unless it be Miss Josey’sjuvenility.”
“Hush laughing,” said Rube, drawing near and speaking low. “See here, Devonhough, you don’t care the snap of your finger about this affair; you’ve said as much; so hold back, dear old fellow, won’t you? Give me a chance!”
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Jerome, again going off. “‘Dear old fellow.’ That’s rich! Very dear old fellow, never so dear before!”
“Oh, go along with you,” responded Rube crossly. “Go to the devil until you can stop laughing!”
He was about to turn off in high dudgeon, when Jerome with an effort pulled himself together and soberly considered the subject. “Hold on, then! I’d like to oblige you Rutland, of course I would, but there’s Clara! She expects me to—”
“Hang Clara!” said Rube, with the natural unfraternalness of a brother.
“That’s what I propose to do,” answered Jerome. “Hang her with a wreath!”
“Don’t!” again pleaded Rube. “Not this time. If you just won’t, I’ll—”
“Rub-a-dub-dub!” beat the drum.
“Into place!” shouted a stentorian voice.
“Ready?”
“One—two—Boom!”
They were off in fine style, Jerome quickly showing the lead, and Rube gaining gradually upon him towards the middle of the course. To one spectator it was more interesting than the sword-dance, more exciting than a steeple-chase. But the eager spectators at the starting place could see very little beyond a certain point, owing to the crowd of boys and men which lined the sides of the track and closed up as the runners passed. They could hear vociferous yelling and screaming, sometimes the outcry, “Devonhough ahead!” and then, again, “Hurrah for Rutland!” and, at the last, a tremendous whooping and cheering and clapping of hands, in which no name was at first distinguishable. Then, amid the unbounded enthusiasm of the multitude, the victor was lifted above the heads of the crowd and brought back in triumph.
Mell had scarcely moved from the spot where Rube left her. She had280had some time for reflection, and had profited by it, to such an extent, that she now felt quite miserable. That was the way with Mell, and continues to be the way with Mell’s kind. They make a practice of hitching together the cart of Unthought and the sure-footed beast Think-twice; the cart in front, the horse in the rear; and if, under such circumstances the poor brute, nine times out of ten, lands his living freight into very hot water, too hot for their tender feelings, who is to blame for it?
Some very strange thoughts coursed through the girl’s mind. Now, suppose it was Rube seated up there on the heads of an idolizing populace, and it became incumbent upon her to fulfill that promise so rashly and foolishly given, could she do it? No! No! She would rather live a thousand years and scratch an old maid’s head every hour in all those years, than marry Rube Rutland!
It made her sick to think about it; every nerve in her body recoiled; every good instinct within her lifted up a dissentient voice.
“Can’t you see who it is?” She inquired hoarsely of her nearest neighbor, a much be-banged girl, who peered above the crowd from the top of a dry-goods box, with the cute expression of a fluffy-faced puppy, “Can’t you see?”
“Not distinctly yet, but I think it is that young stranger, Rube Rutland’s friend; I’m pretty sure it is.”
“Thank God!” muttered Mell. She was ambitious, but she was not yet the hardened thing that ambition makes.
“My goodness!” suddenly exclaimed the girl on the box. “It isn’t that strange young man! It is Rube Rutland! I can see him distinctly now. Oh, how glad I am! It is Rube Rutland, boys.” “Rutland forever!” shouted back the boys.
In all that big crowd there was but one heart not glad. Rube was in the house of his friends, the other a stranger. County pride, State pride, local prejudice, all sided with Rube. Jerome was an alien. He had come there to beat “our boys,” and one of our boys had beaten him. Huzza! Huzza! Shout the victory!
They did shout it with a noise whose loudness was enough to bring down the roof of heaven. Never had there been such a victory at a Grange picnic before.
Deafened by the noise Mell slunk back into the wood. All color forsook her face once more. She had played for high stakes, this ambitious girl; she had won her game, and in the winning cursed her own folly and realized with a pang of unspeakable bitterness, that a victory for which one pays too dear a price is the worst kind of defeat.
Released from the well-meant persecutions of his many admirers, Rube asked for his coat and things, and a fan, and was next subjected to a statement from the master of ceremonies.
“With this wreath,” explained that individual, “you may crown the lady of your choice, crown her queen of Love and Beauty, and it will be her prerogative to award the other prizes won on this occasion. Who is the fortunate lady?”
Every woman in hearing distance held her breath, every man opened wide his ears.
“Miss Mellville Creecy.”
“Whom did he say?” queried Miss Josey, tremendously excited and not quite certain she had heard aright. Miss Josey was nibbling at a peach; she nibbled no more. Though blessed with an excellent appetite, Miss281Josey in her hungriest moment was more eager to hear something new than eat something nice.
“Did you say Mell, Rube?”
“I did,” said Rube.
It struck the crowd speechless. What? Rube Rutland, the son of an ex-Governor, an ex-Judge, an ex-Senator, dead now, but dead with all his titles on him; Rube Rutland, the greatest catch in the State, going to crown Mellville Creecy, daughter of that old ignoramus who made “fritters” of the King’s English, and dug potatoes, and hoed corn, and ploughed in the fields with his own hands? The thing was preposterous! It was a thing, too, to be resented by his friends and equals.
Miss Rutland drew her brother aside.
“Rube, you cannot mean it! You surely have some sense! A little, if not much! You can’t crown that obscure girl with the cream of the county, your own personal friends, all around you.”
“Can’t I?” said Rube. “I can andwill!The cream of the county may go to—anywhere.” Rube closed up blandly: “I will not limit them in their choice of locations. That would be not only ungenerous but ungentlemanly.”
“Rube,” persisted Miss Rutland, “do listen to reason. What will mother say? What will everybody say?”
“Say what they darned please!”
Rube was first of all a freeborn American—secondly, an aristocrat.
“What’s the use of being somebody if you’ve got to knuckle down to what people say?”
“But you are not obliged to crown anybody,” insinuated Clara. “Rather than crown this low-born girl, make some one your proxy. Jerome would—”
“Oh, I have no doubt, with pleasure! You are a deep one, Clara, but you’ll wear no crown this day. Might as well give it up.”
So she perceived, and turned off in a rage, first informing him that he always had been, and always would be an unconscionable ass.
“You have fully decided, then?” questioned the master of ceremonies. “I have,” Rube told him, beginning to get put out. Pretty Mell might well have been a scare-crow, such consternation had she created amongst them all. “I decided some time ago. Will it be necessary for me to mount a tree-top and blow a clarion blast before I can make you all understand that I am going to crown Mellville Creecy, and nobody else?”
“Certainly not, certainly not,” hastily replied the master of ceremonies. He too was disappointed; he had a sister. Was there ever a man in power who didn’t have a sister?—who didn’t have a good many, all wanting crowns?
“Will you make a speech?”
“Nary speech,” declared Rube, laughing. “I’m not so swift in my tongue as my legs! See here, Cap’n, there’s no occasion for an unnecessary amount of tomfoolery about this thing. Some gentleman bring Miss Creecy forward. I’ll put this gewgaw on her in a jiffy, and that’ll be the end of it!”
Rube smiled softly to himself. That was very far from being the end of it.
“Mell! Mell!” screamed Miss Josie, running up to herprotegé, the bearer of astonishing news, “you don’t know what’s going to happen! You’d never guess it! Rube is going to crown you, my pretty darling! You are to be queen of Love and Beauty.”