CHAPTER IX.LAWRENCE AT BEECHWOOD.
“Come, Milly,—do hurry!” said Lilian to Mildred on the afternoon of the day when Lawrence was expected. “It seems as though you never would get all that hair braided. Thirty strands, as I live, and here I am wanting you to fix my curls, you do it so much better than I can.”
“Plenty of time,” returned Mildred; “Lawrence won’t be here this hour.”
“But I’m going to the depot,” returned Lilian; “and I saw Finn go out to harness just now. Oh, I am so anxious to see him! Why, Millie, you don’t know a thing about it, for you never loved anybody like Lawrence Thornton.”
“How do you know?” asked Mildred; and catching instantly at the possibility implied, Lilian exclaimed:
“Doyou, as true as you live, love somebody?”
“Yes, a great many somebodies,” was the answer, while Lilian persisted:
“Yes, yes; but I mean someman,—somebody like Lawrence Thornton. Tell me!” and the little beauty began to pout quite becomingly at Mildred’s want of confidence in her.
“Yes, Lily,” said Mildred at last, “I do love somebody quite as well as you love Lawrence Thornton, but it is useless to ask his name, as I shall not tell.”
Lilian saw she was in earnest, and she forebore to question her, though she did so wish she knew; and dipping her brush in the marble basin, and letting the water drip all over the light carpet, she stood puzzling her weak brain to think “who it was Mildred Howell loved.”
The beautiful braid of thirty strands was finished at last, and then Mildred declared herself ready to attend to Lilian, who rattled on about Lawrence, saying, “she did not ask Mildred to go with her to the station because she always liked to be alone with him. That will do!” she cried, just as the last curl was brushed; and, leaving Mildred to pick up the numerous articles of feminine wear, which in dressing she had left just where she stepped out of them, she tripped gracefully down the walk, and, entering the carriage, was driven to the depot.
“Two lovers, a body’d suppose by their actions,” said a plain, out-spoken farmer, who chanced to be at the station and witnessed the meeting; while Finn, who had been promoted to the office of coachman, rolled his eyes knowingly as he held the door for them to enter.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come!” said Lilian, leaning back upon the cushions, and throwing aside her hat the better to display her curls, which Mildred had arranged with a great deal of taste. “I’ve been moped almost to death.”
“Why, I thought you said in your letter you were having a most delightful time!”
And Lawrence looked smilingly down upon the little lady, who replied:
“Did she?—did I?Well, then, I guess I am; but it’s a heap nicer, now you’ve come. Mildred seems to me a little bit sober. Lawrence,” and Lilian spoke in a whisper, for they were now ascending a hill, and she did not care to have Finn hear,—“Lawrence, I know something about Mildred, but you mustn’t never tell,—will you? She’s in love with aman! She told me so confidentially this morning, but wouldn’t tell me his name. Why, how your face flushes up? It is awful hot,—ain’t it?” and Lilian began to fan herself with her leghorn hat, while Lawrence, leaning from the window, and watching the wheels grinding into the gravelly sand, indulged himself in thoughts not wholly complimentary either to Lilian or themanwhom Mildred Howell loved.
“What business had Lilian to betray Mildred’s confidence, even to him? Had she no delicate sense of honor? Or what business had Mildred to be in love?” and, by the time the carriage turned into the avenue, Lawrence was about as uncomfortable in his mind as he well could be.
“There’s Mildred! Isn’t she beautiful with those white flowers in her hair?” cried Lilian; and, looking up, Lawrence saw Mildred standing near a maple a little way in advance.
With that restlessness natural to people waiting the arrival of guests, she had left the Judge and Oliver, who were sitting in the parlor, and walked slowly down the avenue until she saw the carriage coming, when she stopped beneath the tree.
“Get in here, Milly,—get in,” said Lilian; and, hastily alighting, Lawrence offered her his hand, feeling strongly tempted to press the warm fingers, which he fancied trembled slightly in his own.
“She has been walking fast,” he thought, and he was about to say so, when Lilian startled them with the exclamation:
“Why don’t you kiss her, Lawrence, just as you do me?”
Lawrence thought of the man, and rather coolly replied:
“I never kissed Miss Howell in my life,—neither would she care to have me.”
“Perhaps not,” returned Lilian, while Mildred’s cheeks flushed crimson,—“perhaps not, for she is a bit of a prude, I think; and then, too, I heard her say she didn’t like you as well as she did Clubs.”
“Oh, Lilian, when did I say so?” and Mildred’s eyes for an instant flashed with anger.
“You needn’t be so mad,” laughed Lilian. “You did say so, that first night I came here. Don’t you remember that I surprised you telling Oliver how Uncle Thornton kept you looking over those old stones for fear you’d talk with Lawrence, and how you hated them all?”
“Lilian,” said Lawrence, sternly, “no true woman would ever wantonly divulge the secrets of another, particularly if that other be her chosen friend.”
“S’pected they’d end in a row when I seen ’em so lovin’,” muttered Finn; and, hurrying up his horses, he drew up at the gate just as Lilian began to pout, Mildred to cry, and Lawrence to wish he had stayed at home.
“Tears, Gipsy? Yes, tears as true as I live,” said the Judge, who had come down to meet them, and with his broad hand he wiped away the drops resting on Mildred’s long eyelashes.
“Nothing but perspiration,” she answered, laughingly, while the Judge rejoined:
“Hanged if I ever saw sweat look like that!”
Telling him “he hadn’t seen everything yet,” she forced her old sunny smile to her face and ran up the walk, followed by Lawrence and Lilian, who ere they reached the portico were on the best of terms, Lilian having called him a “great hateful,” while he in return had playfully pulled one of her long curls. The cloud, however, did not so soon pass from Mildred’s heart, for she knew Lawrence Thornton had received a wrong impression,and, what was worse than all, there was no means of rectifying it.
“What is it, Gipsy? What ails you?” asked the Judge, noticing her abstraction. “I thought you’d be in the seventh heaven when you got Lawrence Thornton here, and now he’s come you are bluer than a whetstone.”
Suddenly remembering that she must give some directions for supper, Mildred ran off to the kitchen, where she found Finn edifying his sister Lucy with an account of the meeting between Lawrence and Lilian.
“She stood there all ready,” said he, “and the minute the cars stopped he made a dive and hugged her,—so,” and Finn’s long arms wound themselves round the shoulders of his portly mother, who repaid him with a cuff such as she had been wont to give him in his babyhood.
“Miss Lily didn’t do that way, I tell you,” said Finn, rubbing his ear; “she liked it, and stood as still. But who do you s’pect Miss Milly’s in love with? Miss Lily told Mr. Thornton how she ’fessed to her this morning that she loved aman.”
“In course she’d love a man,” put in Rachel. “She’d look well lovin’ a gal, wouldn’t she?”
“There ain’t no bad taste about that, nuther, let me tell you, old woman,” and Finn’s brawny feet began to cut his favorite pigeon wing as he thought of a certain yellow girl in the village. “I axes yer pardon, MissMilly!” he exclaimed, suddenly bringing his pigeon wing to a close as he caught sight of Mildred, who had overheard every word he said.
With a heart full almost to bursting she hastily issued her orders, and then ran up to her room, and, throwing herself upon the bed, did just what any girl would have done,—cried with all her might.
“To think Lily should have told him that!” she exclaimed, passionately. “I wish he had not come here.”
“You don’t wish so any more than I,” chimed in a voice, which sounded much like that of Lilian Veille.
She knew that Mildred was offended, and, seeing her go up the stairs, she had followed her, to make peace, if possible, for Lilian, while occasionally transgressing, was constantly asking forgiveness.
“I’m always doing something silly,” she said; “and then you did tell Clubs you didn’t like Lawrence.”
“It is not that,” sobbed Mildred. “Finn says you told him I loved somebody.”
“The hateful nigger!” exclaimed Lilian. “What business had he to listen and then to blab? If there’s anything I hate it’s a tattler!”
“Then why don’t you quit it yourself?” asked Mildred, jerking away from the hand which was trying to smooth the braid of thirty strands.
“What an awful temper you have got, Milly!” said Lilian, seating herself very composedly by the window, andlooking out upon the lawn. “I should suppose you’d try to control it this hot day. I’m almost melted now.”
And thus showing how little she really cared for her foolish thoughtlessness, Lilian fanned herself complacently, wondering why Mildred should feel so badly if Lawrence did know.
“Gipsy,” called the Judge from the lower hall, “supper is on the table. Come down.”
In the present condition of her face Mildred would not for the world show herself to Lawrence Thornton, and she said to Lilian:
“You make some excuse for me, won’t you?”
“I’ll tell them you’re mad,” returned Lilian, and she did, adding by way of explanation: “Milly told me this morning that she was in love, I told Lawrence, Finn overheard me, and like a meddlesome fellow as he is, repeated it to Mildred, who is as spunky about it as you please.”
“Mildred in love!” repeated the Judge. “Who in thunder is she in love with?”
In a different form Lawrence had asked himself that same question many a time within the last hour; but not caring to hear the subject discussed, he adroitly turned the conversation to other topics, and Mildred soon heard them talking pleasantly together, while Lilian’s merry laughter told that her mind at least was quite at ease. Lilian could not be unhappy long, and was now quite delightedto find herself the sole object of attraction to three of the male species.
Supper being over, she led the way to the back piazza, where, sitting close to Lawrence, she rattled on in her simple, childish way, never dreaming how, while seeming to listen, each of her auditors was thinking of Mildred and wishing she was there.
For a time Oliver lingered, hoping Mildred would join them again, but as she did not, he at last took his leave. From her window Mildred saw him going down the Cold Spring path, and with a restless desire to know if he thought she had acted very foolishly, she stole out of the back way, and, taking a circuitous route to avoid observation, reached the gable-roof and knocked at the door of Oliver’s room just after he had entered it.
“May I come in?” she said.
“Certainly,” he answered. “You are always welcome here.”
And he pushed toward her the stool on which she sat, but pushed it too far from himself to suit Mildred’s ideas.
She could not remember that she was no longer the little girl who used to lavish so many sisterly caresses upon the boy Oliver; neither did she reflect that she was now a young lady of seventeen, and he a man of twenty-one, possessing a man’s heart, even though the casket which enshrined that heart was blighted and deformed.
“I want to put my head in your lap just as I used to do,” she said; and, drawing the stool closer to him, she rested her burning cheek upon his knee, and then waited for him to speak.
“You have been crying, Milly,” he said at last, and she replied:
“Yes, I’ve had an awful day. Lilian led me into confessing that I loved somebody, never dreaming that she would tell it to Lawrence; but she did, and she told him, too, that I said I hated all the Thorntons. Oh, Oliver, what must he think of me?”
“For loving somebody or hating the Thorntons, which?” Oliver asked, and Mildred replied:
“Both are bad enough, but I can’t bear to have him think I hate him, for I don’t. I,—oh, Oliver, can’t you guess? don’t you know?—though why should you when you have loved only me?”
“Only you, Milly,—only you,” said Oliver, while there came a mist before his eyes as he thought of the hopeless anguish the loving her had brought him.
But not for the world would he suffer her to know of the love which had become a part of his very life, and he was glad that it was growing dark, so she could not see the whiteness of his face, nor the effort that it cost him to say in his usually quiet tone:
“Milly, do you love Lawrence Thornton?”
He knew she did, but he would rather she should tellhim so, for he fancied that might help kill the pain which was gnawing at his heart.
“I have never kept anything from you, Oliver,” she said; “and, if you are willing to be troubled, I want to tell you all about it. Shall I?”
“Yes, tell me,” he replied; and, nestling so close to him that she might have heard the beating of his heart, Mildred told him of her love, which was so hopeless because of Lilian Veille.
“I shall never be married,” she said; “and when we are old we will live together, you and I, and I shall forget that I ever loved anybody better than you; for I do,—forgive me, Oliver,” and her little, soft, warm hand crept after the cold, clammy one, which moved farther away as hers approached, and at last hid itself behind the chair, while Mildred continued: “I do love him the best, though he has never been to me what you have. But I can’t help it. You are my brother, you know, and it’s all so different. I don’t suppose you can understand it, but try to imagine that you are not lame, nor small, but tall and straight, and manly as Lawrence Thornton, and that you loved somebody,—me, perhaps.”
“Yes, you—say you, Milly,” and the poor, deformed Oliver felt a thrill of joy as he thought of himself “tall, and straight, and handsome, and loving Mildred Howell.”
“And suppose I did not love you in return,” said Mildred,“wouldn’t your heart ache as it never has ached yet?”
Oliver could have told her of a heartache such as she had never known, but he dared not, and he was about framing some word of comfort, when Judge Howell’s voice was heard below, asking if his runaway were there.
“Oh, it’s too bad!” said Mildred. “I wanted to have such a nice long talk, and have not said a word I came to say; but it can’t be helped.”
And kissing the lips which inwardly kissed her back a thousand times, though outwardly they did not move, she hurried down the stairs, where the Judge was waiting for her.
“I thought I should find you here,” he said, adding that it was not polite in her to flare up at nothing, and run off from her guests.
Mildred made no reply, and knowing from past experience that it was not always safe to reprove her, the Judge walked on in silence until they reached the house, where Lilian greeted Mildred as if nothing had occurred, while Lawrence made himself so agreeable, that when at last they separated for the night the shadow was entirely gone from Mildred’s face, and nearly so from her heart.