CHAPTER XXV.IN THE SUMMER.
Maude spent her summer vacation at Uncle Phil’s, where she was received with every demonstration of joy by each one of the family, Uncle Phil dragging her off at once to see the “suller hole” of his chapel, or “synagogue,” as he called it, which was not progressing very fast; “such hard work to get the men, and when they do come, they won’t work more than half the time, and want such all-fired big wages, it is enough to break a feller; but then I’m in for it, and it’s got to go,” he said to Maude, who expressed so much delight, and called him a darling man so many times, and showed her trim, pretty ancles and dainty white tucks and ruffles with suchabandon, as she stepped over the stones and sticks of timber, that Uncle Phil felt “curis again at the pit of his stomach,” and did not care how much his synagogue cost, if Maude was only pleased.
Maude did not talk to Edna quite so much as usual at first; she was studying her closely, and trying to recall what she had heard Georgie say of Mrs. Charlie Churchill’s looks. Then she began to lay little traps for her, and Edna fell into some of them, and then fell out again so adroitly, that Maude was kept in a constant fever of excitement, until one day, early in August, when, in walking by herself up the road which led to the hotel on the mountain, she met Jack Heyford, who had arrived the night before, and was on his way, he said, to call on her.
“I was up here a few years ago,” he explained, as they walked back together, “and I retained so pleasant a remembrance of the mountain scenery that I wanted to see it again; so, as I could have a vacation of two weeks, I came first toOakwood, but it was lonely there with Georgie gone; she’s off to Saratoga, you know, and hearing you were here, I concluded to come too. You are stopping at a farm-house. I have an indistinct recollection of Mr. Overton; a queer old fellow, isn’t he?”
He talked very fast, and Maude did not hear more than half he said, for her tumultuous thoughts. If Louise Overton were really Edna Churchill, then Jack Heyford would recognize her, for he had been with her at the time of the accident, and had seen her frequently in Chicago.
“Yes, I have her now,” Maude thought, as she said to Jack. “Mr. Overton has a niece living with him, Miss Louise Overton, a pretty little creature, whom you are sure to fall in love with. I hardly think she could have been here when you were at Rocky Point before.”
“No, I think not. I have no recollection of seeing a person of that name. Pretty, is she?” Jack answered as indifferently as if he really had no idea of meeting any young lady at the farm-house, except Maude herself, and that his sole object that morning, was to call upon the girl chatting so gayly at his side, and telling him how pretty and charming and sweet Miss Overton was, and how he was certain to lose his heart at once.
“Suppose I have lost it already,” Jack said, glancing at Maude, whose cheeks flushed a little, and who tossed her head airily and made him some saucy reply.
Of all the young men she had known, Maude liked Jack Heyford the best. She had thought him a little awkward and rusty when she first saw him at Oakwood, but had recognized through all the genuine worth and goodness of the man, and felt that he was true as steel. He was greatly improved since that time, and Maude was not unconscious of the attention she was attracting as she sauntered slowly on with the handsome stranger at her side. Edna saw them coming.
Indeed, she had watched all the morning for Jack, for she knew he was to have reached the Mountain House the night before, and that he would call onMiss Somertonthat morning, and be introduced to her; and her conscience smote her for the part she was acting.
“If Uncle Phil was not so foolish about it, I should tell Maude at once,” she thought, as after Maude’s departure for a walk she made her toilet, in expectation of Jack Heyford’s call.
She had schooled herself so well that when at last Jack came and was presented to her, she received him without the least sign that this was not their first meeting; and Maude, who watched them curiously, felt chagrined and disappointed that neither manifested the slightest token of recognition, but met as entire strangers.
“It’s funny, when I am so sure,” she thought; and for several days she lived in a constant fever of excitement and perplexity.
Regularly each day Jack came to the cottage, and stayed so long that Becky suspected him to be “Miss Maude’s beau;” while Ruth Gardner, who was there frequently to help make up the game of croquet, interpreted his manner differently, and guessed that while he jested with and teased Miss Somerton, his preference was for Edna, who was evidently bent upon not encouraging him in the least, or giving him a chance to speak.
But Jack had his chance at last, on a morning when Maude and Ruth, with Maria Belknap and the Unitarian minister, were playing croquet upon the lawn behind the farm-house, and Edna was sitting alone on the stoop of the front door. Uncle Phil was gone, and as Aunt Becky was busy with her dinner in the kitchen, there was nothing in the way, and Jack told his story in that frank, outspoken way which characterized all he did. It was not like Charlie’swooing; it lacked the impetuous, boyish fire which refused to be denied, and yet Edna knew that the love offered to her now was worth far more than Charlie’s love had been; that with Jack Heyford she should rest secure, knowing that no shadow of wrong had ever soiled his garments. And for a moment she hesitated, and thought of Annie, whom she loved, and looked up into the honest eyes regarding her so eagerly, and coming gradually to have a sorry, anxious expression as she did not answer.
“Won’t you speak to me, Edna?” he said. “Won’t you answer me?”
“Oh, Mr. Heyford,” she cried at last. “I am so sorry you have told me this, for I don’t believe I can say yes, at least not now. Give me till to-morrow, and then if I find that I can be to you what your wife ought to be, I will.”
Jack did not press her further, and when the croquet party came round from the lawn, they found Edna sitting there alone, and Mr. Heyford gone back to the Mountain House.
That night, when Uncle Phil came from the post-office, he brought a letter from Aunt Jerry, enclosing one from Roy, who had written from a little inn among the Scottish hills. It was only a pleasant, friendly letter, telling of his journeyings and his mother’s health, which did not seem to improve; but it sealed Jack Heyford’s fate.
Edna had no thought of ever marrying Roy, but she could not marry Jack, and she sat down to tell him so on paper, feeling that she could do it in this way with less of pain and embarrassment to them both. And as she wrote, Roy’s letter lay open beside her, and Maude came bounding up the stairs and stood at her side, almost before she knew that she was coming. With a quick motion she put Roy’s letter away, but not until Maude’s eyes had glanced at and recognized the handwriting.
“Eureka,” she whispered softly; and then, to Edna’s utter astonishment, Maude knelt down beside her, and putting her arms around her neck, said to her: “Dotty, don’t be angry, will you? I always find out things, and you are Edna Churchill.”
Edna felt as if she was suffocating. Her throat closed spasmodically, so that she could not speak, and for an instant she sat motionless, staring at Maude, who, frightened at the expression of her face, kissed her lips, and forehead, and cheek, and said:
“Don’t take it so hard. Nobody shall know your secret from me; nobody, I assure you. I have guessed it ever so long. It was thejetwhich brought it to me. Roy spoke of his sister once last winter, and said he had sent her some ornaments of jet, and then it flashed over me that my little Dotty was the girl in whom I had been so interested ever since I first heard of her. Speak to me, Dot. You are not offended?”
“No,” Edna gasped at last. “Only it came so sudden. I am glad you know. I wanted you to know it, it seemed so like a miserable lie I was living all the time.”
And then the two girls talked a long, long time, of Edna’s early life, of Charlie, and of Roy, whose letter Edna showed to Maude, and of whom she never tired of hearing. Thus it came about that Edna’s note to Jack was not finished, and Edna gave him his answer verbally the next morning, when, punctual to the appointed time, he came and walked with her alone down to the clump of chestnut trees, which grew near the roadside. Something in Edna’s face, when he first saw it that morning, prepared him in part, but the blow cut deep and hurt him cruelly. Still without love, Jack did not want any woman for his wife, and when Edna said, “I respect and like you more than any man I know, but cannot find in my heart the love you ought to have in return forwhat you give,” he did not urge her, but took both her hands in his, and kissing them reverently, said:
“You have dealt fairly with me, Edna, and I thank you for it, and will be your friend just as I always have been. Let there be no difference between us, and in proof thereof, kiss me once. I will never ask it again.”
He stooped down to her, and she gave the boon he asked, and said to him, in a choking voice:
“God bless you, Mr. Heyford, and you may one day find a wife tenfold more worthy of you than I can ever be.” They walked slowly back to the house, and found Maude waiting for them, with her mallet in hand, and Uncle Phil in close custody, with a most lugubrious expression on his face. Maude, who was nearly croquet mad, had waylaid the old man, and captured him, and coaxed a mallet into his hand, and was leading him in triumph to the playground, when Jack and Edna came up, and she insisted upon their joining her.
“A four-handed game was so much nicer,” she said; “and Mr. Heyford and Uncle Phil were so fairly matched,” and she looked so jaunty in her short, coquettish dress, and pleaded so skilfully, that Jack took the offered mallet, and, sad as was his heart just then, he found a space in which to think how pretty Miss Somerton was, and how gracefully she managed her mallet, and how small and well-shaped was the little foot she poised so skilfully upon the balls when bent upon croqueting.
Maude Somerton was very beautiful, and there was a power in her sunny blue eyes, and a fascination in her coaxing, winning ways, which few men could resist. Even sturdy Uncle Phil felt their influence, and under the witching spell of her beauty did things for which, when he was alone, he called himself “a silly old fool, to be so carried away with a girl’s pranks.”
Maude sported the first short dress which had appeared in Rocky Point, and she looked so odd, and pretty withal, in her girlish costume of white, trimmed with a pale buff, and she wore such stylish gaiters, and showed them so much with their silken tassels, that Uncle Phil confessed again to a “curis feeling in his stomach,” and was not sure whether it was quite the thing for an old chap like him to let his eyes rest often on those little feet, and that trim, lithe form, which flitted so airily around the wickets, and made such havoc with the enemy’s balls. It surely was not well for a young man likeJackto look at her often, he decided, especially when arrayed in that short gown, which made her look so like a little girl, and showed her feet so plainly.
They had a merry game, and Jack was interested in spite of himself, and accepted Uncle Phil’s invitation to stay to dinner, and felt a queer little throb in his veins when Maude, acknowledging Edna and himself victors, insisted upon crowning them as such, and wove a wreath of myrtle for Edna’s hair, while for him she gathered a bouquet, and fastened it in his button-hole.
She had said to Edna, “I shall tell Mr. Heyford that I know your secret. I must talk to somebody about it.” And seizing the opportunity when Edna was in the house consulting with Becky about the dessert, she told him what she had discovered, and waxed so enthusiastic over “little Dot,” and arranged the bouquet in his button-hole a little more to her liking, and stood, with her glowing face and fragrant breath, so near to him, and did it all so innocently, that Jack began to wonder he had never before observed “how very beautiful Miss Somerton was, and what pleasant ways she had,” and when he went back to the Mountain House at night, his heart, though very sore and sad, was not utterly crushed and desolate.
He played croquet the next day and the next, sometimeswith Edna for his partner, but oftener with Maude, who, being the champion player, undertook to teach him and correct some of his faults. He must notpoke, nor stand behind, nor strike too hard, nor go after other balls when he could as well make his wicket first. And Jack tried to learn, and do his teacher justice, and became at last almost as interested in the game as Maude herself, whom he sometimes beat. And when at the end of his two weeks’ vacation he went back to his business in New York, he seemed much like himself, and Edna felt that he was bearing his disappointment bravely, and that in time life would be to him just what it had been before he thought of her.
Maude’s departure followed close upon Jack’s, and as she bade Edna good-by, she said, “I shall never rest, Dotty, till I see you at Leighton, where you belong. But I want you to go there first as Louise Overton. Take my word for it, you will succeed better so, withla mère, and possibly withle frèretoo. When they come home I am going to manage for you. See now if I don’t Adieu.”