IT was much later than his wonted hour when Easton woke next morning, and found a scrap of paper stuck between the mirror and its frame, on which Gilbert had written: “Off for the trout brooks. See you at dinner.” This gave him a moment’s pause, and then he went on dressing. He had a lover’s single purpose of seeing her he loved, and a lover’s insensibility to questions of ways and means; and after breakfast he walked away toward the farm, thinking what he should say and do when he met Mrs. Farrell.
At Woodward farm there was no organization for the reception of callers upon the guests. There was no bell, and there would have been no one to answer it if there was a bell. But in a house where there was so much leisure and so much curiosity, this was ordinarily a small deprivation. Some of the ladies were always looking out, and if they saw any of their friends coming they ran forth to meet them with a great deal of pleasant twitter, having shouted a voluble welcome to them from the time they came in sight. If it was some one whom the lookers-out recognized as the friend of another lady, they went to alarm her in ample season, and by the time the visitor ascended the piazza steps the lady was atthe door. Besides, some one or other was always sitting about outdoors, and if unknown visitors approached, it was a grateful little excitement to ask them, when they had vainly inspected the door frame for a bell, if one could call her whom they wished to see.
But when Mr. Easton was descried approaching, people were quite undecided what to do, and he was on the piazza before he had himself perceived that he had something to do besides walking up to Mrs. Farrell and telling her that he loved her. It appeared to him impossible that she should not be there to receive him; he had been so rapt in his meditation upon her that he had not believed but he must meet her as soon as he reached the door; and now she was not there! Several heads were decently taken in from the upper windows, and the broad piazza was empty but for the two young ladies whom he had walked home with yesterday; they sat half in the sunlight at the corner, and one was looking down upon the work in her hand, and the other looking down upon the book she was reading aloud, and he fancied himself unperceived by them. A mighty disappointment fell upon him; he had stormed the fortress, to find it empty and equipped with Quaker guns. As he stood there helpless, the young girl who was reading discreetly chanced to look round, and to her evident great surprise discovered him. She gave him a friendly little nod, and as he came toward her she rose with a pretty air and offered her hand, and the other did the same. They talked excitedly for a minute ortwo, and then the conversation began to flag, and Easton uneasily shifted his attitude. No doubt they would have liked to keep him with them for a little while, but perhaps they did not know how, or thought they ought to give him a chance to get away if he wanted; or perhaps she who spoke was quite sincere in asking, with a bright smile, “Did you want to see Mrs.”—his heart began to beat in his ears—“Gilbert?”
“Yes,” Said Easton, stupidly.
“I will go and tell her,” said the young girl, laying her book down open, and lightly turning away.
“Thanks— I’m very sorry to trouble you,” said Easton; and neither he nor she with whom he was left contrived to speak one word more while the other was gone. When she came back she said, with some trepidation: “Mrs. Gilbert is very, very sorry. She has one of her bad headaches, and she can’t see any one. She’s so sorry to miss your call.”
“Oh, no matter—no matter,” answered Easton. “I’m sorry she’s not well; please give her my—please say I was sorry. Good morning!” he added, abruptly, and cast a wistful, despairing look at the front of the house, and could not go. “Is—is Mrs. Farrell at home?” he asked, desperately.
The young girl cruelly smiled, and her companion cruelly cast down her eyes, and then they both blushed.
“No,” said the first, “she isn’t at home. She said she was going with Miss Rachel to help pick peas.”
“Oh!” was all that Easton could say; and as he turned away the girls said it was a perfect shame, and they were rude girls, too flat for anything.
Easton forgot them both, and walked back toward his hotel. On the way down the slope from the house he looked in the direction of the vegetable garden, and faltered. Mrs. Farrell’s voice floated over to him in a gay laugh from the ranks of the pea vines, and an insane longing to behold her filled him to the throat. But he could not go and tell her he loved her, there among the pea pods; even he felt that. He twisted his mustache into the corner of his mouth, beat the ground with his stick, and hurried away, hurt, tormented, but not at all daunted or moved from his mind to have speech with her as soon as ever he could.
When she had finished her part of the work, which was to gather peas with fitful intensity and then to talk for long intervals to Rachel’s taciturn perseverance, she emptied her small harvest into the basket that one of the Woodward boys carried, and walked picturesquely back to the house under her broad hat, which dropped its shade just across her lips like a grace veil, and left her dark eyes to glow, starlike, from its depths. In this becoming effect she sat down on the kitchen threshold, with the wide doors open round her, and took some of the peas into her lap and shelled them with a lazy ease, moving her arms from the elbows resting on her knees, and managing chiefly with her flexile wrists, and went on talking with Rachel of a picnic excursion to the mountain which she wished toplan. “We shall not want any one along but the youngest Miss Jewett and Jenny Alden and Ben, and we can have a splendid time. It’s just the right season, now. Come, Mrs. Woodward,” she called into the kitchen, “are you going to let me go?”
“You mostly do what you like, Mrs. Farrell,” answered Mrs. Woodward’s voice, “and the only way I get any obedience out of you is to forbid you to do what you don’t like. Yes, go. All I ask is that you don’t take me.”
“Now, then, Miss Prim,” said Mrs. Farrell to Rachel, “you see you’re commanded to go. What had we better wear?”
“Oh, wear all your worst things,” said Mrs. Woodward.
“Yes, but I’m one of those poor people who can’t afford to have any but best things. I’m going to get you to lend me some of your worst, Mrs. Woodward, and I’m going to borrow Ben’s hat. Will you lend it to me, Ben?” she tenderly asked of the grave young fellow who stood near, and who had to shift himself from one foot to the other and turn his face away before he could assent. She laughed at his trepidation, as if she knew the reason of it. But by the time he could confront Mrs. Farrell again, she apparently did not care for his answer. Her eyes were fixed upon the figure of Gilbert as he came up the road toward the house. He came in sight suddenly, as if he had climbed the wall from one of the birch-bordered meadows. He was better worth looking at than Ben Woodward, being verybrave in his high boots and his straw hat, with his bundled rod and his trout basket, a strong, sinewy shape, and a face very handsome in its fashion. As he drew nearer, he turned aside and slanted his course toward the door where Mrs. Farrell sat. Before he came up to her place Rachel had silently vanished within, and Mrs. Farrell sat there alone.
“Good morning,” he called out, taking off his hat.
“Good morning,” returned Mrs. Farrell, without changing her posture. “Don’t you want to stop and help shell peas?”
Either their acquaintance had prospered rapidly after Easton had left them together the afternoon before, or else this was Mrs. Farrell’s indifference to social preliminaries.
“No, thanks,” said Gilbert, tranquilly, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. “My domestic gifts are small. But I was thinking, as I came along, that I would give you people my trout.”
“Really? How very handsome of you!”
“Yes, there’s nothing mean about me. They sometimes object to cooking them at the hotel, and I don’t quite like to throw them away.”
“Why, this is true charity! If I’m to accept them in the name of the farm, I must see them first.”
Gilbert took off his basket and laid it at her feet; she opened it and cried out, “What beauties! Like flowers! But”—she gave ever so little a pretty grimace—“not exactly the same perfume!”
“No,” said he, “they can’t very well help that. But they improve with frying.”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Farrell. “Well, we’ll take them. And you must get Mrs. Gilbert to ask you to supper.Ican’t do it.”
“No,” answered Gilbert, “my generosity shall be unblemished. I never eat the trout I’ve taken, any more. Easton’s religion has had that much effect upon me.”
“Easton’s religion?”
“Yes; he thinks it’s atrocious to kill anything for the pleasure of it.”
“How very droll! And you’re able to behave so nobly with your fish because you couldn’t get them cooked, and wouldn’t eat them if you could!” Gilbert had been standing beside the pile of maple firewood which flanked the kitchen door and sent up a pleasant odor in the sun; Mrs. Farrell said, “Sit down,” and he sat down on a broad block used for splitting kindling. “I wonder what Mr. Easton would have had to say to some of the apostles on the subject of fishing.”
“That’s what I asked him once; but he says they didn’t fish for fun.”
“He distinguishes! Well, but what about the clergymen who make it their diversion, and then boast about their prowess in books?”
“Ask Easton for his opinion. I can assure you it’s worth hearing—if you like contempt red hot.”
“I don’t believe I do! I’d rather ask you. Is that his whole creed, anti-trouting?”
“No; hardly. He has a kindness for most of the human race as well as the lower animals. The only creature he really hates is the horse,” said Gilbert,with a laugh as of recollected mirth; and in fact Easton had been known in his army days for his antipathy to his chargers. He always got full service out of them by sheer force of will; but he never liked them, and never professed to understand them; the horse, he contended, was unfitted for a gentleman’s society by the blackguard company he habitually kept. “But I don’t think he’d do even a horse a wanton injury,” concluded Gilbert.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Farrell. “And the rest of his opinions?”
“Why, there are very few things that Easton hadn’t an opinion upon. It’s rather odd, don’t you think, to find a man in our age and country really caring enough for matters in general to make up his mind about them?”
“Very,” said Mrs. Farrell, twisting her slim shape round to take a handful of peas out of the basket behind her and putting them into her lap. “Go on.”
“That was all I had to say,” returned Gilbert, with a mocking light in his eyes.
“Oh, how can you be so cruel?—when I had just got ready to listen! Do go on!”
“Why, I was thinking—” began Gilbert.
“Yes, yes!” eagerly prompted Mrs. Farrell, “thinking (really thinking! Of course you can’t have been doing it long!)—thinking—”
“That it was a very inconvenient practice to inquire into the right and wrong of many things,” proceeded Gilbert, in solid indifference to her light impertinences; whereupon she seemed to suffersome evanescent confusion. “It gives you no sort of moral leeway. Suppose you want to do something—anything—out of the ordinary line of things that you do or don’t do; well, if you haven’t considered too impertinently of right and wrong in general, you do it without once thinking whether you ought or oughtn’t, and there you are on the safe side, anyway.”
“Oh, what a beautiful philosophy!” moaned Mrs. Farrell, clasping her hands together without moving her elbows from their careless pose. She rested her cheek a moment on her folded hands; then she asked with a voice full of mock emotion, “Do you think it would do for Woman, Mr. Gilbert? It seems just made for her!”
“I hadn’t thought about Woman,” said Gilbert; “that’s a matter still to be considered. You must give me time.”
“Oh yes, we will be patient—patient!” and Mrs. Farrell began to shell the peas with an air of tragical endurance. “Take any length of time you wish. But in the meanwhile, can’t you state the Eastonian principle more fully?”
“Only by saying that it’s the opposite of the system you admire and covet. Easton isn’t a man to formulate his ideas very freely. You’re astounded every now and then by some extraordinary piece of apparently quite uncalled-for uprightness, and then you find that he had long contemplated some such exigency, and had his conscience in perfect training.”
“How very droll!” said Mrs. Farrell. Then shesaid, looking at him through her eyelashes, “It’s quite touching to see such attached friends.”
Gilbert stirred uneasily on his block, and answered, “It’s a great honor to form part of a spectacle affecting to you, Mrs. Farrell—if you mean Easton and me.”
“Yes, I do. Don’t scoff at my weak impressibility. You must see that it’s a thing calculated to rouse a woman’s curiosity. You seem so very different!”
“Men and women are very different, in some respects,” calmly responded Gilbert, “but there have been quite strong attachments between them.”
“True,” rejoined Mrs. Farrell with burlesque thoughtfulness. “But in this case they’re both men.”
“Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head.
“You praise me more than I deserve. I didn’t take all your meaning. One of you is so mightily, so heroically manly, that the other necessarily womanizes in comparison. Isn’t that it? But which is which?”
“Modesty forbids me to claim either transcendent distinction.”
“Oh, I know! Mr. Easton is your ideal man. But I should wantmyideal man todosomething in the world, to devote himself to some one great object. That’s what I should do, if I were a man.”
“Of course. How do you know Easton doesn’t?”
“I merely have his word for it.”
Gilbert looked surprised and perplexed. Atlength he said, rather dryly: “I congratulate you on getting Easton to talk about himself. Not many people have succeeded.”
“Oh, is he so reticent?” asked Mrs. Farrell. “I didn’t find him so. He was quite free in mentioning his little pursuits, as he called it.”
“His book!” cried Gilbert. “Did he talk to you aboutthat, already?”
“Why, it seems that you don’t know your friend very well, after all!” mocked Mrs. Farrell with a laugh of triumph. “Why shouldn’t he talk to me about his book? He knew I would be interested in the subject; any woman would.”
“Upon my word, I don’t see what should particularly interest you in a history of heroism.”
Mrs. Farrell celebrated her fresh advantage with another laugh. “Why not?” she asked, taking some of the peas up in her hand and letting them drop through her fingers. “We’re all heroes till we’ve been tried, and I haven’t been tried. He’s going to put me into it. Do tell me his plan in writing it,” she entreated.
“Look here, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bending forward and looking keenly at her, “do you mean to tell me that Easton has actually been talking to you about his book, which I now perceive I mentioned first?”
“Look here, Mr. Gilbert,” said she, with an audaciously charming caricature of his attitude and manner, “do you mean to tell me that you doubt my word?”
“Well,” said Gilbert, with a laugh, “I own myself beaten. Did you ever hear of Miss Lillian— I forget her name—the St. Louis lawyeress? Why don’t you study our profession? At a cross-examination no witness could resist you, if I may judge from my own experience in helplessly blabbing what you never would have known otherwise. Come, Mrs. Farrell, you have triumphed so magnificently that you can afford to be frank; own, now, that all you know of Easton’s book is what I’ve told.”
He rose and stood looking down admiringly upon her uplifted face.
“No,” she answered, “I shall not dothat, Colonel—I beg your pardon; I meanMajor—Gilbert. Mr. Easton’s the colonel,” she added, parenthetically. “Whatwasthe reason,” she continued with well-studied innocence, “that he came out a colonel and you came out only a major, when you had so much the advantage of him at first?”
Gilbert’s face had hardened in the lines of a smile, and it kept the shape of a smile while all mirth died out of it, and he stared into the eyes of Mrs. Farrell, from which a sudden panic looked.
“Oh, dear me!” she said, naturally. “Don’t—don’t mind. I didn’t mean to do anything. What have I done? Oh, I wish—don’t answer, please!” she implored.
But Gilbert gravely responded, “Because he was a better soldier. I am sorry if I alarm you by the statement of the fact. Did you experience any fright when Mr. Easton told you?”
“Oh, he never told me that he was braver thanyou. I don’t think he meant to talk of the matter at all.”
“I can believe that,” replied Gilbert; “neither do I.”
Mrs. Farrell made no comment, but, taking a fresh handful of the peas, shelled them, with such downcast eyes that it was impossible to say whether she was looking at Gilbert through her lashes or not. Nor could one tell with just what feeling the corners of her mouth trembled, but his sternness seemed to have frightened and silenced her. Gilbert breathed quickly as he regarded her, but after waiting awhile, irresolute, he gave a short, sardonic laugh and rose. “Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” returned Mrs. Farrell, woundedly, and meekly added, “Thank you for the fish,” to which he bowed his reply and then walked round the house.
He knocked at Mrs. Gilbert’s door, and received from her own lips the same answer which had already turned Easton away, and so went quickly down the road in the direction of the hotel. In the meantime Easton had not been able to turn his steps far from the farm; whichever way he went they tended indirectly thither, and at last he started boldly back. At the moment he mounted the front piazza steps Mrs. Farrell, having finished or relinquished her domestic task, came round the gallery from the side of the house and met him.
“Good morning, Mr. Easton,” she said, pensively. “Did you want to see Mrs. Gilbert? I believe she has a very bad headache to-day.”
“No, I didn’t want to see Mrs. Gilbert. I came to see you.”
“Oh! Then will you sit down here?” she asked, and took her place where the two young girls, who were now away in the fields, had been sitting.
“I came here some time ago,” said Easton, “and, not finding you, I tried to find that place where we got the ferns yesterday.”
Mrs. Farrell’s broad hat-brim thrust uncomfortably against the house where she sat on the settle beside the wall, and she took her hat off; a mass of her dark hair tumbled in a rich disorder on her back. She laid her hat in her lap and waited.
“I went there,” pursued Easton, “because I had a stupid hope that the place might inspire me with some faint shadow of reason, of excuse, for—”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Farrell, interpreting his hesitation with candid reproachfulness; “it was not fair, and, considering all things, Mr. Easton, I don’t think it was quite kind.”
“Kind? Kind!” cried Easton, with an inexpressible pang. Then after a moment’s thought he added: “No, it was not kind; it was base, tyrannical, brutal! It was worthy of a savage!”
Mrs. Farrell turned her face slightly away, and if she had been acting wounded innocence she could hardly have known it.
“There was no excuse for such a thing but the one thing in the world which it is least like. That is its excuse to me; it seems an insolent affront to suppose that it can atone for it to you.”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Farrell, demurely, “thatwomen’s actions are often misconstrued. Indeed, I ought to know it from bitter experience in my own case. I ought to remember that men seem eveneagerto misinterpret any confidence put in them; but yesterday—I—I couldn’t!”
There was a sort of passionate reproach, a tacit confession that she had singularly trusted him to her hurt, in the close of this speech, which went to Easton’s heart. “No, there is nothing for me to say in extenuation. Even if I tell you—”
“‘Sh!” cried Mrs. Farrell, putting her hand down at her side and electrically touching that wrist of his next to her; “I thought somebody was coming. Yes, I know. Even if you tell me that you meant no harm—and I don’t believe you did—still, don’t you know— Oh!” she broke off, “why is it that there isn’t some common ground for men and women to meet on, and be helpful to each other? Must they always be either lovers or enemies? Yes, enemies; it’s really a state of almost warfare; there can’t be any kindness, any freedom, any sincerity. And yet there are times in every woman’s life when she does long so for the intelligence as well as the sympathy of some good man; and she can’t have it unless she’s married or engaged. She often wants to see how some action of her own looks through a man’s eyes, and the wisest woman can’t tell her! Every new disappointment that she meets with is harder to bear. I didn’t mind your kissing my hand; that’s nothing; it might even be something that a woman would be proud of; but by the way you did it you shocked and frightenedme; I saw that you had misunderstood me, and I—I was afraid you didn’t—respect me.”
Mrs. Farrell’s grieving mood was so admirably represented in the outline of her cheek, the downward curve of the corner of her mouth, the low sweep of her long eyelash, and at the same time it was so discreetlyfelt, so far from overcharged or exaggerated, that even an indifferent spectator must have been affected with reverent sympathy. Easton’s heart was wrung with unspeakable tenderness and regret and shame. He could not break the silence that followed her words for some moments. At last he said, “I see how it must have appeared to you; but it was not so. I have as little hope as I deserve to have when I say—”
“There! Don’t speak of it any more,” Mrs. Farrell interrupted, with signs of returning cheerfulness, but with beams not too speedily tricked. “Let’s not think of it. I know there must have been something to blame in me. I have a way,” she continued regretfully, “which I’m sure no one feels the disadvantage of more than I do—a sort of perverse impulse; I don’t know what else to call it—that leads me to try people’s patience, and see how far I can go with them; and I’m afraid I must have abused your good-nature yesterday in speaking as I did of your friend.”
“You said nothing against him that I remember.”
“I ought to be very grateful, then. I thought I was wrong in asking you about your military rank and his, when I saw that you were avoiding the subject. I couldn’t help it, and yet I meant no harm.”
“I know you meant none. I won’t deny that I was trying to avoid the subject. It was placing me in the ugly light of seeming to boast at the expense of my friend.”
“Yes, yes; I knew that; and I suppose it was just that which made me keep on; I liked to see your modesty put to the blush. It was wrong; but you don’t think I had any very bad motive in it?”
“No, none!” said Easton, quickly.
“I am so glad. I know Mr. Gilbert isn’t so generous!” Easton looked at her inquiringly, and “Oh, Mr. Easton,” she broke out, “what have I been doing? It must really look very black to you. Mr. Gilbert has just been here, and I have been talking tohimabout it—I don’t knowwhyI did; and he went away very angry. It seems just as if I had been trying to make a quarrel between you!” She hid her face in her hands, while Easton remained gravely silent. “Why don’t you speak to me?” she implored him, without taking away her hands. “It will kill me if you don’t. Say something, anything; blame me, scold me! You know you think I’ve behaved very wickedly. You do!”
“No, I don’t think so,” replied Easton, seriously. He looked at her hopeless face, from which she had now withdrawn her hands, and he seemed to be losing his fast hold upon things, upon truth and right and wrong. Two days ago he had not seen this face or known that it was in the world; now it was so heavenly dear to him that it seemed to describe all knowledge and being. It was not a question whether she had a right to violate the secrecy to which Gilbert’s silence and his own had consigned the fact she had so recklessly played with; rightly or wrongly she had done this, and he had now to ask himself whether he could forgive her error to her penitence. Yet he did not ask himself that; she had done it; and he loved her; and there was an end. How could he believe ill of her? What oblique motive could he attribute to her that his heart’s tenderness would suffer?
“Ah,” she broke out again, “you can never forgive me—and I can never forgive myself. Why did you come here to make me so unhappy!”
“Don’t—don’t say that!” the young man implored. “There is no harm done. I was to blame for ever talking with you about the matter. How could I expect you to treat it with seriousness or secrecy? You couldn’t know that it had ever been a sore affair with us. Don’t be troubled. Gilbert’s friendship isn’t built upon such a slight basis that it can’t bear—” A stifling recollection of the delicacy, passing the love of women, with which they had always treated each other smote upon him: what could Gilbert think ofhisdelicacy now? “I can make it all right with him,” he continued, as soon as he could get breath.
“Withhim?” murmured Mrs. Farrell. “Thenyouforgive me?”
“I had nothing to forgive,” said Easton, with all his love in his face; so that she looked away and blushed. “Don’t think of it any more; it’s nothing.”
“How generous you are! Oh, women couldn’t be like that! How shall I thank you? I’ll never forgive myself in the world—that’s how,” she said, a faint smile dawning on her contrite face.
“That would be a poor way. I want you to be friends with those I—like.”
“Do you mean Mr. Gilbert?”
“No, I don’t mean Gilbert.”
Mrs. Farrell cast down her eyes. Then she bravely lifted them. “I will do whatever you say,” she breathed, and a radiant light came from her face as she rose and stood fronting him. “After what I’ve done you have a right tocommandme. But now you must let me go. I have some things to do. You’ve made mesohappy.”
“And you me!” he said, and he took her hand, which he dropped after a moment, and walked away, giddy with his insensate joy. All his soul was flattered by the far-hinting sweetness with which she had used him, and he was contented in every pulse. When he despaired he had felt that he must tell her he loved her, and let any effect follow that would, but now he was patient with the hope which he hoped she had given him; for his confidence did not go beyond this. He loved too much to believe himself loved or to perceive that he was encouraged. To the supreme modesty of his passion her kindness was but leave to live; and he was abjectly grateful for it. He lifted his thoughts to her with worshiping reverence; it was heaven to dwell in the beauty of her looks, her attitudes, her movements; the sense of her self-reproachful meekness possessed him with the tenderest rapture. How could he expose this to the harsh misconception of his friend? How could he explain her blamelessness as he felt it? He knew the sort of sarcastic quiet that Gilbert would keep when he should set about making him understand that he, Easton, was alone guilty in any wrong done him; that he, Easton, had given her the clue which she had afterward followed up, from an ignorant caprice, in her talk with Gilbert; that she had bitterly upbraided herself for her error, and had dreaded its effects with a terror that he had hardly known how to appease. When he thought of Gilbert’s incredulity, his heart beat fiercely; and he felt that he could not suffer it. Yet the thing could not go without some effort on his part to assure his friend that he had not been disloyal, and how to give him this assurance he did not see. No, he could not speak of it; and yet he must. A veritable groan burst from his lips as he mounted a little hillock in the road and took off his hat to wipe away the drops of sweat from his forehead. Whither had all his bliss vanished? A thrush sat in the elm tree over him and sang long and sweet, and his heart ached in time with the pulses of that happy music. A little way off, under the shadow of this tree, Gilbert lay upon the grass, with his face up to the sky; and it was to Easton, when directly he caught sight of him, as if he had laid him there dead. He fearfully made a little noise, and Gilbert opened his eyes, and, looking at him, sat up. “I was waiting for you,” he said, gravely and not unkindly. “I supposed you had gone over to the farm, for I did not find you at the hotel. Easton,” he continued, “I saw Mrs. Farrell a little while ago. Perhaps you’ve just come from seeing her?”
“Yes,” answered Easton.
“Perhaps you don’t know what we talked of?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I suppose it was her use of what you told her that annoyed me; but I can’t understand how you came to mention the matter to her at all; much less to go into particulars, as you seem to have done.”
Easton colored, but did not speak.
“Have you anything to say to me, Easton? I can’t bear to have the slightest thing between us.”
“Not—not now.”
They were both silent; and Easton doggedly cast down his eyes.
“Very well, Easton,” said Gilbert, rising and going toward him, “if you intend to say something by and by, and can justify yourself to yourself in making me wait, it’s all right; I can wait.”
He held out his hand, and Easton yearned to grasp it as it was offered, but his cold clasp relaxed upon it, and the severed friends trudged silently on through the dust toward the hotel.
THAT evening Gilbert found his sister-in-law well of her headache, and disposed to celebrate the charm of a headache that always went off with the going down of the sun. He responded at random, and then she began to talk to him of Easton, and he listened with a restlessness which she could not help noticing. “You don’t seem to care to sing the praises of your idol, this evening,” she said.
“One can’t always be singing the praises of one’s idols,” he answered, “if you like to call them so. One wants a little variety. You know how the Neapolitans give themselves up to comfortable cursing in the case of saints who don’t indicate the winning lottery numbers.”
“I don’t exactly see the application, William, but I’m always ready to curse anybody; and we will devote Mr. Easton to a little malediction. Have you had a tiff?”
“I thought you were going to curse, and you commence questioning.”
“That’s true; my curiosityisuppermost. Do tell me about it. I suppose Mrs. Farrell is somehow at the bottom of it. I wouldn’t have such a friendship as yours and Easton’s on any account. Ithas cost too much. I wonder you haven’t assassinated each other long ago.”
“I’m glad your headache’s gone,” said Gilbert.
“Yes, that’s gone—thanks to the sunset or the headache pill. But I’m getting what no pill has yet been patented for; I mean a heartache, and for you, my poor boy. Oh, you open book! Don’t you suppose I can read where that woman has written Finis in her high-shouldered English hand against the chapter of your friendship with Easton?”
“You are taking it seriously, Susan.”
“Well, well. See if I’m not right. I thought you told me your friend was afraid of ladies. Mrs. Farrell seems to have persuaded him that they’re not so dangerous. He’s been here all afternoon. Oh, one can know such a thing as that even with the headache in a darkened room. No, not the whole afternoon; they were gone a long while on a walk. He follows her all about with his eyes when she won’t let him follow on foot; he’s making a perfect trophy of himself. That’s the report.”
“Very likely,” said Gilbert. “Easton never does things by halves.”
“He’d better, then—some things.”
“Why, I don’t know. Why shouldn’t he marry her if he wants?”
“I don’t believeshewants. He can’t take her fancy long, though very likely now she thinks he can. That was very pretty of you to give her your trout, this morning,” said Mrs. Gilbert, with a sharp look at her brother-in-law. “She had themfor supper, and ate a great many—for your sake, I suppose. It’s you that she wants, William!”
“Does she?” asked Gilbert, with a bitterish accent. “She has an odd way of going about to get me.”
“What has she done?” demanded Mrs. Gilbert, making an instant rush for the breach. Gilbert covered it with a quizzical smile. “Oh!” she continued, plainly enjoying her own discomfiture, “when will men learn that the boomerang is the natural weapon of woman? We’re all cross-eyed when it comes to love-glances; you can’t tell where we’re looking. You think she’s aiming at Easton! Poor fellow!”
“If I stay here talking,” said Gilbert, rising, “I shall bring on your headache again. Good night.”
“Oh, William,” Mrs. Gilbert appealed, “something sad has happened between you and Easton; and I’m very, very sorry.Iliked him, too; and I’m grieved to have your old friendship touched. But I knowyouare not to blame—and don’t you be! I shall hate him if he breaks with you. Good night, my dear. Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”
“I won’t,” said Gilbert, kissing his hand to her at the door.
She could not help laughing, but when he was gone she turned to the glass with an anxious air, and after a while began to let down the loose, hastily ordered folds of her hair. She stood there a long time, thoughtfully brushing it out, taking hold of it near her head with the left hand, and bending sidewise as she smoothed it down. In the light ofthe kerosene lamps which she had set on either side of the mirror, her reflected face looked up from the lucid depths with an invalid’s wanness, which the whimsicality of her mouth and eyes made the more pathetic. Suddenly she glanced round at the door with an unchanging face, and said, “Come in,” in answer to a light rap; and Rachel Woodward entered with a shy, cold hesitation.
“Oh!—Why, Miss Rachel! Do come in!” repeated Mrs. Gilbert, contriving in the last words to subdue the surprise of her first tones. “You won’t mind my brushing my hair? There’s so very little of it! Sit down.”
She went on to give the last touches, with friendly looks at the girl in the glass, and with various little arts of inattention trying to make it easy for her visitor to disembarrass herself. Then she sat down in her rocking-chair, facing Rachel, who had received her kindliness not unkindly, but now came promptly to her business.
“I oughtn’t to disturb you to-night, Mrs. Gilbert,” she said, “and I should have come Saturday night, but I knew you had company; and last night was Sabbath. I wanted to thank you for buying that picture of mine. I never thought of anyone’s buying it; and I’m afraid you gave more than you ought. I couldn’t bear you should do that. I’ve been talking about it with mother, and she thinks I ought to offer you part of the money back.”
Mrs. Gilbert listened without interruption of any sort, and the girl, doubtless knowing better how todeal with this impassiveness than with that second-growth impulse which in city New-Englanders has sprung up on surfaces shorn so bare by Puritanism, went on tranquilly.
“We think it is like this: it isn’t probable, even if this picture is worth all of what you paid, that I can do any more as good, and if you’ve bought it to encourage me, I might disappoint you in the end. Besides, we should not be willing to be beholden to anybody.”
Having said her say, Rachel waited for Mrs. Gilbert’s response, who answered, quietly, “I know that you and your mother are perfectly sincere, and I am glad you came to say this to me. How much should you think I ought to take back?”
Rachel thought a moment and said, soberly, “The paper cost twenty-five cents; then I used some of a preparation of Mrs. Farrell’s to keep the charcoal from rubbing, but that didn’t come to anything. If my picture took the first premium at the county fair—we did think some of sending it there at first—it would be three dollars, but we should have had to pay seventy-five cents for entering it. If you reallywantthe picture, Mrs. Gilbert, and are not buying it for any other reason, you can have it for two and a quarter.”
“Very well,” said Mrs. Gilbert, gravely, “have you brought me the change? Then please hand it to me, as I’m an old lady and very much settled in my rocking-chair.” The girl obeyed, and approached her with some bank-notes in her hand. The elder woman leaned forward and caught herby either wrist, and held her, while she exclaimed, “Rachel, you’re the manliest girl, and your mother’s the manliest woman, I know of—and I can’t say anything better! But don’t think you can take advantage of my sex, for all that. You shall not give me back a mill—if there is such a thing outside of the arithmetic. Two dollars and a quarter! Upon my word I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at you! I didn’t know there was so much uncorruption left in the world. What do you suppose Mrs. Stevenson will be asking by and by for her cat-tails, when she’s learned to paint them for door-panels? Why—no, I won’t blot your innocence with a knowledge of that swindling. Your Blossom is worth all I paid for her. Don’t be afraid that I bought her to encourage you. No, my dear, that isn’t my line. I’m the great Americandiscourager. I suppose Mrs. Farrell has been babbling to you about the admiration your picture excited. She’s a foolish woman. Itwasadmired, and I think you might be a painter. But, oh, dear me! why should anyone encourage you on that account? Talent is a trouble and a vexation even to men, who are strong enough to fight against it; but for women it’s nothing but misery. The only hope for you that I can see is that you’ve got something of a man’s honesty and modesty to help you through. Draw up your chair and sit down by me, Rachel. I want to talk to you, I want to catechise you. Oh, you needn’t be afraid of me! I’m not going to do you any favor; and you shall keep me at a proper distance in everything you say!”
She smiled quizzically at the girl’s constraint, and added, “But I’m older than you, and I’ve seen more of the world, and maybe I’ll be able to tell you some things it would be useful for you to know. You shall pay me what you think is right, if I do. Why don’t you want to be beholden to anyone? Why shouldn’t I give you more for your picture than it’s worth, if I like?”
“I don’t know,” answered Rachel, shyly puzzled. “It’s a kind of feeling. The laborer is worthy of his hire; but he isn’t if he takes any more.”
“Good! first-rate! And you shouldn’t think it pleasant to have things given to you?”
“Oh no!” cried the girl quickly, with a kind of shiver; “we had enough of that when father was preaching, and we used to have to take everything we ate or wore as a sort of gracious gift. We children didn’t feel it as my mother did, of course. When we came here—” but at this word she stopped and set her lips firmly.
“Go on,” said Mrs. Gilbert. “When you came here your mother said you should starve and go in rags before you took a shred or a morsel from anybody.”
“How did you know?” inquired Rachel, lifting her eyes in a calm, grave surprise.
“I knew it because I respect your mother. When I order a great ideal picture of America from you, you shall paint me your mother’s portrait. Only in these days they’ll say it isn’t in the least like America. No matter: it’s like what she has been and hasn’t forgotten how to be again.”
“Yes,” said Rachel, simply, “we all tell mother there’s not many like her nowadays, and folks won’t understand her way with them, and will lay it to pride.”
“Oh, let them lay it to what they like!” cried Mrs. Gilbert, with enthusiasm. “If she can keep the black burden of gratitude off your souls, it’s no matter. It hardens the heart worse than prosperity.”
Rachel looked sober at the expression of these cynical ideas, and edged ever so little away from Mrs. Gilbert, who burst into a laugh. “Don’t mind my harum-scarum paradoxes, Rachel! I’ve had a great many kind things said and done to me, and there are several of my benefactors whom I don’t hate at all. But how is it,” she asked, being perhaps unable to deny herself the pleasure of looking further into this sincere nature, even if she used an unfair pressure in her questions—“how is it that you have let Mrs. Farrell give you lessons in drawing for nothing?”
Rachel colored and was silent some moments before she answered with dignity, “We can take it off her board, when we find out what it ought to be. I don’t know as they could rightly be called lessons. I never copied anything of hers.”
“I can very well imagine it,” said Mrs. Gilbert, dryly. “Do you admire her pictures?”
Rachel paused again before answering. “No, I can’t say I do. But she has told me a great many useful things, and she has corrected what I was doing. I wish you hadn’t asked me that, Mrs. Gilbert; I don’t think—”
“It was quite generous? No, it wasn’t; but I couldn’t help it. I’ve never seen any of Mrs. Farrell’s work, and if she’s been of use to you, I never want to. Don’t be troubled. You haven’t been disloyal to your friend. Dear me, you should hear howItalk aboutmyfriends! Don’t go yet, my dear,” coaxed Mrs. Gilbert, “it’ll be a real charity to stay with me a little while, to-night. I’m fretted. Do you like to draw? Did you enjoy doing Blossom’s portrait?”
“I hardly know about enjoying it. I didn’t think of my own feelings. But—yes, I was glad when I seemed to be getting it right.”
“I don’t quite know what to think of you,” said Mrs. Gilbert, gravely, and the calm-faced young girl returned her absent look with one that claimed a mutual uncertainty. Mrs. Gilbert resumed suddenly with, “Rachel! has anybody ever been so silly as to talk to you aboutgenius?”
Rachel smiled a little, and said evasively that she did not mind such talk.
“That’s right!” said Mrs. Gilbert. “Don’t get that into your head; it’s worse poison than gratitude. I’m always twaddling about it; it’s my besetting sin; but I hope I see the folly and wickedness of it. If you are going to be an artist, think of pictures as hard work; don’t get to supposing that all your little efforts are inspirations. God has got something else to do. Don’t be alarmed at my way of putting things; it doesn’tsoundlike religion, but itis. If he’s given you a decided talent in this way—and it’s altogether too soon yet for you to becertain—it’s probably because he finds you able to ‘endure hardness,’ as Paul says, to work and to be consoled and occupied by working. After all, my dear, it’s like every other thing here below; it’s only a kind of toy; and you mustn’t let it be your whole life; don’t be selfishly devoted to it. Sometimes it seems to me that the Lord must smile to see how seriously and rapaciously we take things. I can look back and see how balls and parties were once my toys, and my engagement was only a precious plaything! When I got married, what a toy that was! A new husband—just think of it! What an amusement for a young girl! And my first house, how I played with it, and petted it, and made it pretty, and adored it! When my health gave way, it all changed, but I had my toys still. I have had doctors of every age and sex for dolls. I’ve played with every school of medicine; just now I’ve a headache pill that I idolize; not that it keeps me from having the headache. The main thing, as I said, is not to be selfish with your toys. I would share my pills with my worst enemy.”
Mrs. Gilbert seemed to enjoy the gravity with which the girl listened, and to be as well satisfied as if she had taken her lightness lightly. Rachel answered what had been said, so far as it related to herself, by saying that she had scarcely thought of painting as a profession, and that she did not see how she could afford to study it. But she presumed that if it were meant she should, a way would be found for her to help herself.
“But have you no ambition to distinguish yourself?” asked Mrs. Gilbert, in some surprise at her coldness.
“I do not know as I have,” answered the girl. “If I was sure I could make a living by painting, I should like it better than anything else; but unless I took portraits, I don’t suppose I could make it pay, and I don’t think I could paint likenesses of people.”
“Well, I’m glad you have been thinking it over so soberly, for your own sake, Rachel. I suppose you didn’t get these ideas from Mrs. Farrell?” asked Mrs. Gilbert.
“Oh no! she’s very hopeful, and thinks I should succeed at once.”
“Humph!” commented Mrs. Gilbert. “When is your school out?”
“It ended on Friday.”
“Oh, indeed! And are you going to help your mother, now?”
“Yes. She’s not so well as common, this summer, and we can’t get hired help—any that’s worth having.”
“Shall you wait on table?” asked Mrs. Gilbert, with a keen look.
“No—not just at first,” said Rachel, with a little hesitation. Mrs. Gilbert lifted her eyebrows, and the girl blushed and added, “I wanted to, but mother thought it wasn’t best till the boarders had forgotten about—about the—the picture.”
“Your mother is right. They’ll forget it sooner than you think,” answered Mrs. Gilbert, looking to see if this arrow hit. But it seemed to fall bluntedfrom Rachel’s armor; she rose and said she must bid Mrs. Gilbert good night. Mrs. Gilbert followed her to the door. “Don’t think, my dear,” she said, “that I meant to wound your feelings by saying that they’d soon forget your picture. Perhaps it’s true. But I wanted merely to see if you’d any false pride about you. I know how to strike it, for I’m full of it myself. Good night, Rachel; I wish you’d come again. Do let me be of use to you, if I can; and tell your mother that I couldn’t consent to give less than I did for Blossom. I bought it at the lowest price conscience would let me. You don’t blame me for having my way about it, do you?” Rachel dropped her eyes as Mrs. Gilbert took her passive hand.
She turned, as Rachel closed the door, to her bureau, near which the girl had paused; some loose bills lay on it; a five, a two, three quarters. Mrs. Gilbert’s talk had ended as it began, and she had paid two dollars and a quarter for Rachel’s picture, after all, as Rachel had steadfastly meant from the first. She gave a sharp “Ah!” and flung the money on the bureau again in disgust. “The girl’s granite!”
AT the best, love is fatal to friendship; the most that friendship can do is to listen to love’s talk of itself and be the confident of its rapturous joys, its transports of despair. The lover fancies himself all the fonder of his friend because of his passion for his mistress, but in reality he has no longer any need of the old comrade. They cannot talk sanely and frankly together any more; there is something now that they cannot share; even if the lover desired to maintain the old affectionate relation, the mistress could not suffer it. The specter of friendship is sometimes invited to haunt the home of the lovers after marriage; but when their happiness has been flaunted in its face, when it has been shown the new house, the new china, the new carpets, the new garden, it is tacitly exorcised, and is not always called back again except to be shown the new baby. The young spouses are ever so willing to have the poor ghost remain; the wife learns whether it takes two or three lumps of sugar in its tea; the husband bids it smoke anywhere it likes, and the wife smiles a menacing acquiescence; but all the same they turn it out-of-doors. They praise it when it is gone, and they feel so much more comfortable to be alone.
Mrs. Farrell had only hastened a natural result from Easton’s passion for her, which now declared itself without any of the conventional reserves. It was the degree of passion which is called a perfect infatuation by the tranquil spectator, but which probably appears a reasonable enough condition both to the subject and the object of it. In fact, there is no just cause why every woman should not reduce some man to it; it is a hardship that she cannot; in a better state of things no doubt she could.
Easton found in Mrs. Farrell’s presence a relief from thoughts that troubled him when away from her; when he beheld her, or heard her speak, his bliss was so great that his heart could not harbor self-reproach; but at other times it upbraided him that he was making Gilbert wait for the explanation that was his instant due. His love had revealed to him a whole new world of rights and duties which seemed at war with those of the world he had always lived in before. This new passion claimed reverence for an ideal as exacting as that of the old friendship; and perfect loyalty to both seemed beyond him.
Gilbert neither shunned nor sought him; and it was Easton’s constraint under his friend’s patience that made their being together intolerable. When they met they never spoke of Mrs. Farrell, or indeed of anything but passing trifles; and Easton avoided his friend as much as he could until the inspired moment should come to do him justice; the moment which seemed to retreat farther andfarther from him the more he tasted the supreme bliss which life now held to his lip. Their affairs had come to this pass when, on Friday, Gilbert abruptly announced that he had arranged with one of the men at the hotel to spend a few days in camp on the northern side of the mountain, where the brooks were less accessible and less fished than those of West Pekin. He made no pretense of asking Easton to go with him; and he parted from him with a nod when his wagon with the camping outfit in it drove up to the door. They had often parted as carelessly, but with a difference. Easton watched the wagon out of sight, and then started toward Woodward farm with a sigh of sad relief.
He was seen coming every morning by the ladies on watch, who had made so careful a study of his face that they knew by its changes from desperate courage and endurance to all-forgetting ecstasy the very moment when he caught sight of Mrs. Farrell; and they could not help rejoicing in the perfect abandon of his loverhood. It was indeed a devotion not less than heroic, which none but a primitive soul, nurtured in high and pure ideals, could have been capable of; it was so unlike the languid dangling which they had been used to call attentions, that they could not help regarding it with a tender admiration; they were all half in love with a man who could be so wholly in love, and they began to respect the woman who could inspire such a passion. They even liked the unsparing directness with which he made it appear that he came to see Mrs. Farrell and no one else; that he cared to speak tono other, to look at none but her; they sweetly bore, they even approved, the almost savage frankness with which he went away when she was absent. He made no pretenses of any sort; he did not bring a book as excuse for coming to see her; he had no scruple about asking her before half a piazza full of people to walk or drive with him; when he sat down beside her, in whatever presence, he always seemed to be alone with her.
She would perhaps have been satisfied with a less perfect surrender; it looked sometimes as if his worship alarmed and puzzled her; but for the most she received it in good part; and if she ever found it necessary to administer a snub, he took it with heroic patience; it plainly hurt him to his heart’s core, but plainly it did not daunt him; the next day he wooed as ardently, and he never dreamed of resenting it.
They walked a good deal, the following week, to the wood where they had sat on the first Sunday among the ferns, and there he read to her, or talked to her in the freedom of a heart never opened to a woman before. Love baptizes us with a new youth whenever it comes; the talk of all lovers is like the babble of childhood, and a heavenly simpleness inspires it. This is so, whatever the number of the passion; it is true in even greater degree if first love comes when the lover is well toward his thirties. Easton was one of the most single-hearted of men, but pride had kept him one of the most reserved. Now love came, and, taking away his pride toward her he loved, seemed to leave him no reserve. He told her what his life had been, what his theories of life were; his likes, his dislikes; things that had happened to him as a boy at school; about his uncle who had brought him up and left him his money; that he looked like this uncle; he even told of curious dreams that he had dreamt. A load lay on his heart all the time: it was the thought of Gilbert, whom alone he would not speak of, though the talk seemed to be always drifting toward him.
They were sitting in the old place on the Saturday afternoon of the week after Gilbert’s departure. Gilbert was staying longer than his sister-in-law had expected, and there had begun to be a vague wonder, not yet deepened to anxiety, at his prolonged absence, which Easton inwardly shared. He began to speak now, with the intention of talking of Gilbert, as if it would be some sort of reparation to praise him to Mrs. Farrell.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “being surprised that afternoon when I told you what an idler in the world I was?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Farrell, “we were both rather foolish that afternoon,” and she looked at him demurely from under her fallen lashes.
Easton laughed a flattered lover’s laugh. “But you have forgiven me.”
“And you me. So sweet to be forgiven!”
They both laughed, and she went on. “How funny it seems, after such a very unpromising start, that you should be sitting here with me again, and really quite tolerating me.”
“Yes,” he said in a hoarse undertone, “verydroll”; but he was thinking in a rapturous absence how far her word was from painting his attitude toward her. In the same sense one might tolerate the hope of heaven. Mrs. Farrell laughed again, and he smiled his happiness.
“You seem to like being laughed at better than you did at first, Mr. Easton,” she said, gravely. “Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know; perhaps it’s practice. It would be a pity if we learned nothing from experience.”
“Very true, very true indeed. I’ve no doubt you could learn a great many useful things. For instance, now you like being laughed at before your face, perhaps you will come to like being laughed at behind your back.”
“I think that would be more difficult.”
“Well, let us try: I laughed at you to the Woodwards that morning when you mended our broken holdback with your handkerchief. It seemed such a wanton waste of handkerchief; and you did it with the air of laying down your life, of shedding your last drop of blood, for our sakes. It was too ridiculous! There; how do you like that?”
“I don’t mind it—much.”
“Well, you’re really getting on. Shall I tell you now how I made fun of you to Mr. Gilbert?”
The name gave Easton a shock. Gilbert had gone wholly out of his mind; but that was not the worst. He grew pale, and remained silently frowning.
“Oh dear! now I’ve done it again,” cried Mrs.Farrell. “I wonder which cord of your high-strung friendship I’ve snapped this time. I wish you’d never brought it near a plain, every-day person like me. I can weep for my crime, if that will do any good.” She drew out a handkerchief, and began to make a conspicuous pretense of drying her tears. Then she dropped it, and as Easton made a movement to restore it to her he suddenly arrested himself.
“Why, this is my handkerchief,” he said.
“Excuse me, Mr. Easton,” retorted Mrs. Farrell with exaggerated hauteur, “the handkerchief is mine. Will you give it back, or shall I scream for help? This wood is inhabited, and a lady doesn’t cry out in vain. Come, sir; my property!”
She reached forward for it, and Easton withheld it. “How came it yours?” he asked.
“Ben Woodward found it on the buggy harness two weeks ago, and brought it to me. I washed it and ironed it nicely with my own hands. ‘That handkerchief did an Egyptian to my mother give. She was a charmer, and could almost read the thoughts of people. There’s magic in the web of it. A sibyl, that had numbered in the world the sun to course two hundred compasses, in her prophetic fury sewed the work.’”Mrs. Farrell declaimed the words with fire, and at the last caught quickly at the handkerchief, which Easton still held beyond her reach. Then she made a fascinating pretense of taking up a point of her overskirt in her left hand to wipe her eyes with it as with an apron.
“What will you give me in exchange for it?”
“Nothing,” she said, coldly. “Why should I wish to buy your handkerchief of you? I have enough of my own;” and while Easton looked in unguarded embarrassment at her face, to see if she were really offended or not, she caught the handkerchief from him and ran it swiftly into that fold of her dress where her pocket lurked. “Now!” she said, and looked at him with beautiful mocking.
He gave a laugh of confusion and pleasure, and, “Oh, you carry it off very well,” said Mrs. Farrell.
“Where did you study Shakespeare?” he asked.
“At school, where he wasn’t in the course. Look here, Mr. Easton: I think you ought to be punished, instead of rewarded, for your attempt on my handkerchief. But I am so forgiving that I can’t be harsh with the basest offenders. So I am really going to let you have something in exchange for this handkerchief, and I hope you’ll read it often and often.” She drew her hand from her pocket and offered him a little book. “Don’t you remember the book you picked up for me in the meadow? Here it is. You won’t find my name in it?” She put up her hand to waive his thanks, and added, hastily: “Spare your gratitude. I want to get rid of the book. It’s a constant reproach to me, and a constant reminder of my very bold behavior that day. But I couldn’t help it. Oh, Mr. Easton! YouknowI left that book there so that I could come back and get a better look at you two, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“And could you really pardon such a shameless trick?”
“I rather liked to have you look at me.”
“Don’t prevaricate! Do you approve of such actions?”
“You did it.”
“Oh, but that’s personal. Why, you’re actually shuffling! Now, tell me whether you don’t think it was very unladylike and unbecoming.”
“I saw no harm in it.”
“Well, youarelarge-minded. If I had been in your place I should certainly have suspected some ulterior motive.”
“Like what?”
“Like what? Why, like my wanting you to see me!”
Easton merely laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. Her daring was delicious; he wanted her to talk on so forever. But she sat looking at him a full minute before she spoke.
“Well,” she said at last, “I don’t know what to make of such mercifulness. I’m not used to it. I think I might have been different if I hadn’t always been so sharply judged. What I do isn’t so very bad, that I can see, but people seem to think it is awful. The only people I’ve ever seen who could make any allowance for me are the Woodwards. I suppose it must seem very odd to you, my being with them so much, and so little with the other boarders. But you go where you find sympathy. It seems to me I’ve always been alone,” she said with passionate self-pity that dimmed her eyes.She dried them with Easton’s handkerchief, and turned her face away.
He could not have spoken now without pouring out his whole heart, and to speak of love to her in this mood would be like seizing an advantage which his fantastic notions of justice forbade him to take.
“You don’t know what good people they are,” she resumed, with her face still averted. “When I was sick with a fever here, two summers ago, they cared for me as if I were their own child. And there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them—anything! I was very sick indeed,” she went on, turning her eyes upon him now, and speaking very solemnly, “and I suppose that I could not have lived without their nursing. It was in their busiest time, and they sent people away so that they could have a chance to care for me. Mr. Easton,” she cried, as if fired with a generous inspiration, “you must get better acquainted with Rachel Woodward. She and you are just of a piece. She’s quite as large-minded as you are, and as unsuspicious and—good. Yes, I know you’re good; you needn’t try to deceive me. I’m not. I’m full of vanity and vexation of spirit. I don’t know what I want; I’m restless, and perturbated, and horrid. But there’s nothing of that kind about Rachel Woodward; she’s a born saint, and goes round accepting self-sacrifice as if it were her birthright. For all she’s got such a genius for drawing, I suppose she’d settle down into a common country drudge without a murmur, if she found it in the line of duty. Duty! what is duty? It’s the greatest imposition of the age,Ithink.” Mrs.Farrell had now quite emerged from her clouds, and was able to share Easton’s joy in her nonsense. “I know Mr. Gilbert didn’t think so kindly of my coming back after that book,” she said, as if this were the natural sequence of what had gone before, and had been in her mind all the time.
Easton’s embarrassment appeared in his face, but he said nothing.
“Oh well, never mind,” said Mrs. Farrell, rising, “he’s welcome to hate me if he likes; and I suppose he’ll end by making you hate me, too. I’m sure it’s very good of you to respite me so long.” She gave the faintest sigh, and began to arrange her dress for walking away, looking first over one shoulder, and then over the other, at her skirt behind.
Neither of them said anything, as they quitted the place where they had been sitting, by a path that led homeward through a rocky dell, farther around than that they usually came and went by. In this dell there was a shade of maples thicker than elsewhere in the woods, and the heavy granite bowlders started from the soil in fantastic and threatening shapes, very different from the sterile repose that they kept in the neighboring fields and woods. Something of the old, elemental strife lingered there yet; the aspect of the place was wild, almost fierce; the trout-brook, that stole so still through the flat meadows on either side of the dell, quarreled along its rocky course in this narrow solitude, and filled it with a harsh din of waters. But the soil in the crevices and little spaces between the granite masses was richer than anywhere else on the farm.Earlier in the season, wherever the sun could look through the maple boughs it saw a host of wild flowers, and in its turn the shade detained the spring, and there were still violets here in July, and the shy water plants unfolded their bloom at every point along the margin of the fretted brook where they could find foothold. No maples yielded a more bounteous sweet than these in the shrewish April weather, when the Woodward boys came and tapped their gnarled trunks; and in the lower end of the valley stood the sugar house, with its rusty iron pans and kettles, and its half-ruinous brick oven and chimney, where they boiled the sap. Because the brook perhaps ran cooler here than in the meadows, the cattle from the neighboring pastures came to drink at the pool which its waters gathered into at one place, just before it took the final fray with the rocks and broke out into the open sunlight beyond, where it lulled itself among the grassy levels. An oriole had made its nest in the boughs that overhung this pool; and higher up in the same tree lived a family of red squirrels, some member of which was pretty sure to challenge every passer. In the bushes that thickened about the meadow-border in sight of the farmhouse lived thrushes and catbirds; and in the very heart of the dell, a rain crow often voiced his lugubrious foreboding.
Mrs. Farrell entered by the vagrant path that the cattle’s hoofs had made, and midway of the hollow she paused and, resting her arm on a tall bowlder, looked round the place with a certain joyin her face, as of kindred wildness. Her rich eyes glowed, her bosom rose, and her breaths were full and deep. If she could indeed have been some wild, sylvan thing, with no amenability to our criterions, one could not have asked more of her than to be as she was; but behind her came a man who loved her as a woman, and whose heart was building from its hopes of her that image of possession and of home which love bids the most hapless passion cherish. When he came up with her he looked into her face and said, as if no silence had followed her last speech, his thoughts had been so voluble to him, “Why do you talk to me about hating you?”