CHAPTER XIVREX AND COLIN
To say that he was a good deal upset would not fully describe Rex’s condition when he reached home and, declining lunch on the plea of a headache, went to his room. His head was aching with that wavy, trembling feeling, hard to combat, and every nerve was quivering with excitement.
“Let me rest a bit and get cool and I shall be able to think clearly, and know it was only a hallucination of my disordered brain,” he thought, as he dashed the cold water over his face and head till his hair was dripping wet. “It was exactly that way with poor Nannie,” he continued, as he tried to dry his hair and face. “She was thinking so much of Sandy and so afraid she should see him that she thought she did, while I—well, I wasn’t thinking of Irene, but of the ridiculous thing I was doing to please a girl and what Tom would say if he knew it. I was not expecting to see her, but I did; or something very like half of her, even the little fancy comb stuck on one side of her hair was plain. I could not be mistaken.”
How did it happen and was it an hallucination, or was it a device of the devil? he asked himself, half wishing it were the latter, for then he would not feel obliged to follow his suggestion. Then he called himself a brute for thinking for a moment of the devil in connection with Irene, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. “It rhymes, don’t it?” he said, with a laugh, repeating Irene and seen and wondering if he were not getting a little off in his head. How he wished Tom was there to help him. “I’d make a clean breast of the whole business from the will to the well. I wish I had done it before,” he said; but Tom was sweating in his office in Newton over a letter of eight pages to Rena, and Rex was alone to pull through as he could. Throwing himself at last upon the couch he fell asleep and when he awoke the pain in his head was better, but he did not feel greatly rested, his sleep had been so disturbed with visions of the well and the broken glass, and Nannie lying dead upon the pines and a regal-looking woman sitting near her, smiling, gracious and dignified as she always was. He looked at his watch and saw it was half-past five, and knowing dinner would be served in half an hour, and that Mr. McPherson was nearly as punctual as Mrs. Parks, he hurried his toilet and was in the dining-room before Colin, who, when he came, askedwhere he was all the morning that he did not come in till after lunch and then did not care for any.
“With a girl, I suppose,” and he laughed meaningly, while Rex felt suddenly a desire to tell the whole story and see what his host thought of it.
“Yes, I was with a girl,” he said, and Colin continued, “Miss Burdick, Miss Irene?”
“Yes, with Miss Irene, in the pine-grove.”
“What were you doing in the pines?”
“I looked in the well and broke the mirror,” Rex answered, with a fearlessness which astonished himself.
“Looked in the well! You! Such an idiot! I am surprised that you should go into that tomfoolery,” Mr. McPherson exclaimed, and Rex replied:
“No more surprised than I was when I found myself fairly at it. Had I been told a week ago that I could have done it I should have said: ‘Is thy servant a dog?’ but I did it.”
“Of course you saw nothing but yourself. You couldn’t,” Colin said, and after hesitating a moment Rex answered, “Yes, I did, I saw half of Miss Burdick’s face and one of her eyes as plainly as I see you.”
“Great guns!” and Colin sprang up and began to walk the floor. “You certainly are mad as a March hare and ought to have a doctor. Saw MissBurdick! The thing is impossible. Look here, nobody ever saw anything except in fancy. Nannie—rest her soul—was thinking of Sandy and afraid she should see him. You were thinking of Miss Burdick and afraid you shouldn’t see her, and—”
“No, I wasn’t,” Rex interrupted. “I didn’t want to see her, did not expect to, but I did. I was doing it to please her. She was there and kept me from falling into the well. Of course I know it was an optical illusion, if there is such a thing, but I saw her, and that, with the heat, has rather upset me.”
To this Colin made no reply. He had resumed his seat and after a moment said, “I believe the theory is that you are to marry the person whose face you see?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Then you will marry Miss Burdick, of course.”
“Perhaps so.”
“Why perhaps? Haven’t you said anything to her about a marriage?”
“No.”
“Nor about the will?”
“No.”
“Not a word?”
“No.”
“Rex, you are crazy.”
“I think so at times.”
“Don’t you like Miss Burdick?”
“Yes, I like her.”
“Don’t you love her?”
“I don’t believe I do, as people call love,” Rex said, getting up from the table and going into the parlor, followed by Colin, who exclaimed, “By the great horn spoon, Rex, what do you mean philandering with that girl all this time? What the deuce is the matter? What fault have you to find with her?”
“Not the slightest. She is perfect every way, except a little too tall for a woman,” Rex said. “But I am not a marrying man. Never thought of it till I saw that will, which I wish had never been made. I am very happy as I am and do not care to change. Tell me, you have never married, would you have been happier with a Mrs. McPherson and a colony of little McPhersons upsetting you generally?”
“Yes, by George! as many times happier as there were Mrs. McPhersons and little McPhersons. I wish I had a hundred of ’em,” and Colin struck his hand hard upon his knee, while Rex laughed at his excitement. “Have you a hankering notion after the other one, who is most like Nannie? I believe my soul you have,” was Colin’s next question, and Rex replied, “It would do me no good if I had; she belongs to Tom, but I think I fancy little women the most.”
“Confound your little woman,” Colin exclaimed, growing more and more excited. “Not that this Rena isn’t a pretty little filly, such as men like Giles like to cuddle in their arms. I wouldn’t mind kissing her myself, but I tell you, boy, she has not the backbone her cousin has. You wouldn’t amount to shucks with her. She’d just be a plaything and that’s all, while the other will make a man of you and keep you pulled together. She has a head on her. And such a head! and such hair! Never saw so much hair in my life on anybody.”
Rex could have told him something about that hair and the loss of a part of it, which had so greatly improved Irene’s appearance. He had noticed the improvement when he saw her that morning, but had said nothing, feeling that she would not like the subject referred to. Of course he could not speak of it to Colin, who went on. “Don’t you think something is due the girl? Here you’ve been playing up to her for weeks and given her reason to think you meant something, and you hang off because she is too tall! Great Scott! I’m ashamed of you! Too tall! Great Moses!”
Colin was growing quite heated and Rex took his castigation very meekly and only said, “What do you advise me to do? What shall I say to her?You know I have no fund of small talk, to say nothing of making love.”
“Say to her? Heaven and earth! I could find enough to say, old as I am. I never tried it, but common sense tells me what I should do in your case. Plunge in. Tell her you are a coward and a fool not to have spoken before. She probably has thought that forty times. Tell her you are ready to fulfil your part of the business if she is. Snug up to her, take her hand, and squeeze it a little. She will let you—ask her if her pulse beats in unison with yours! Go to-morrow, and have it out!”
Rex laughed till the tears ran, at Colin’s directions with regard to his lovemaking.
“I wish you had to do it,” he said, “but as it seems to devolve on me, I’ll go to-morrow and as a preliminary ask her what she thinks of the will, instead of how her pulse beats.”
“Hang your preliminary,” Colin growled, “Ask her to be your wife! That will look as if you wanted her, even if there were no will.”
Rex was not quite certain whether he wanted her or not, but Colin’s attitude helped to reassure him and he said again. “I’ll settle it to-morrow one way or the other.”
“There’s only one way to settle it. Ask her out and out and don’t hint that she’s too tall! My soul!As if there could be too much of a woman like that!” Colin rejoined, as he lighted his pipe and went out upon the piazza to smoke, leaving Rex alone.
The pain in his head which had left him for a time had come back again and he could not think of anything very clearly except that he must propose to Irene the next day. Even that did not seem to impress him very strongly. Nothing impressed him very much, and after he went to his room he sat a long time by his window, scarcely knowing of what he was thinking, except that he was hot and cold by turns, with a buzzing in his head, and he was going to propose to Irene on the morrow.
“Squeeze her hand and ask how her pulse was beating,” Colin had suggested. But Rex didn’t believe he should do that, and he didn’t believe he should do anything, if it were not for that face in the mirror, which kept haunting him with its one eye, which followed him persistently and made him so uncomfortable and nervous.
Even after he was in bed and the light out he saw it looking at him, and the last thing he remembered he was covering his face with the sheet to shut it from his sight.