CHAPTER X.
drop-cap
Afterthe eating and drinking, the elders gathered for a sociable chat. It was as good as old-fashioned country visiting. Modern calls seem to have carried away the charm of social intercourse. After you have staid five minutes you begin to think you must go. You cannot stop to tell this or that bit of pleasantness, or get near to each other. But there was no hurry here. Phases of religious experiences were compared in a homely way, mixed up with the turning of a gown, or buying of a new carpet. With others grace and gardening went hand in hand. Such magnificent clove pinks, great double luscious blossoms!—blue salvias that were quite a rarity—ivies, geraniums—sick neighbors who enjoyed them—odd enough snatches where one couldn’t understand.
Well, is it not the true living after all? Is religion the sacred Sunday thing that must be laid by and not profaned by common every-day uses? Did anyone ever hear of it wearing out? When these people had exchanged thoughts on trials and mercies, faith that could see, and weak faith that stumbled, compared and comforted each other, who shall say it was not as good as a sermon? Why should we not help to lift each other up in our common needs?—Great things come to very few, only.
I lingered for quite a while, resting myself and answering questions about mamma, baby and Mr. Duncan. It was so dreamily pleasant. The sun high over head had found our little nook and was making it all alight with quivering golden rays. Hill seemed to lapse into hill, tree interlaced with tree, nook, corner and ravine added their suggestive tender gloom. People came and went, groups of children rushed in and devoured plates of fragments. They played various games, and at last settled to a tremendous circle of Copenhagen.
“Where is your sister?” asked Winthrop, “I have been hunting everywhere for her. Will you not take a walk with me?”
We had not gone very far before the bell rang.
“The children are to sing their carols now.”
“I suppose you have heard them fifty times?”
“Fifty-one will not surfeit me. Besides, I must look after my class.”
“O, bother! Look after me a little while. I am going back to the city on Saturday, and I shall not see you for ever so long. I actually envy that dolt of a Duncan who is sick at your house. I never met two girls that I liked so well. I don’t see how there is any goodness left for the parish.”
He uttered all this in a rather cross, aggrieved tone which made it sound so comically I could not forbear laughing.
“O, you don’t know—I wonder if I might trust you with—a—secret?”
He flushed to the roots of his hair. An uncomfortable chill went over me.
“There are your Aunts!” I said, glad to be relieved from the sudden embarrassment.
The carriage came up through the opening. Miss Lucy dressed in white and looking very sweet. Papa went to speak to them.
The children were gathering from “near andfrom far.” We teachers “counted noses,” begged the groups not to disperse, ran hither and thither, and at last settled to the business before us. I was so glad that Miss Churchill and Miss Lucy had reached us in time for the singing. What if dresses were a little limp and stained and soiled, hats awry and curls blown in tangles, there were hosts of happy faces and lightsome, ringing voices.
Papa generally wrote a childish hymn for special occasions and mamma arranged the music. They sang that, then several Easter Carols.
Miss Lucy beckoned me toward her.
“How delightful it is!” she exclaimed. “And you’ve had a good time all day long. I wish I was a little girl! Oh, they are not going to stop? Please ask them to sing again. Would Christmas carols be out of place?”
I mentioned it to papa who smiled in his sweet fashion and acquiesced. We had the “Kings of Orient,” “Wonderful Night,” and “Ring out merry bells for Christmas.” How sweet those young voices sounded on the summer air! I was really proud of the children.
“Now,” began papa after the last echoes haddropped from the tree-tops, “we must form a line for our homeward march. We have had a pleasant day and enjoyed ourselves to the uttermost. Let us thank God for this great blessing.”
They stood reverently until he dismissed them with the benediction.
The wagons and carriages began to come in and were filled. Some chose to walk home and let others ride. Mr. Trafford started to form the ranks again. Fan came up and we paused to say a few words to the Churchills, then to Mrs. Ryder who declared that everything had been just delightful, and that she felt ten years younger. Dick was very grave, I remarked, and scarcely spoke.
The very last of the line was Fan and Mr. Ogden. I gave them a quick glance but was hurried on by the throng behind me, and occupied with answering the childrens’ questions. Yet I wondered a little what she had been about since dinner.
We heard it all afterward, but it is fresher just as it happened to her. She and Jennie Ryder, and Annie and Chris Fellows went first to gather ferns and mosses. Of course some ofthe young men followed in their wake. When their basket had been filled they strolled off two and two, presently losing sight of each other. The day gave its touch of grace and romance to their lives. We all guessed that Mr. Hunter cared for Annie Fellows, and were not much surprised when we heard a little later, that they had “made up their minds” during the ramble.
Fan and Dick strolled onward as well. Dick was unusually silent.
“Shall we go back?” Fan asked softly by and by.
“Go back!” and Dick looked surprised. “Not unless you are tired of me.”
He seemed so down-hearted that Fan had not the courage to confess even in her laughing way.
“I am afraid you have not enjoyed yourself very well. But you have given a great pleasure to Mrs. Ryder—and Jennie could not have come without her. She has to stay at home so much.”
“She is a splendid girl,” said Dick.
“Indeed she is. Dick, I have a bright idea! Why couldn’t we when the evenings are a little cooler, get up a surprise party for her? It would be jolly.”
“Yes.”
“But you do not seem very much interested.”
“Iaminterested in anything you like. Only I was thinking;” and he paused to study her face.
“How queer you are!” with an embarrassed laugh.
“Am I? And you don’t like queerness—you don’t like me?”
Fan began to pull a fern leaf to pieces. It was an odd personal question, but it could not mean anything. Still her heart beat strangely, and her breath seemed to tangle as it came up.
“You know I like you of course,” in a sharp, saucy way, flinging out her curls. “And you are good and pleasant and clever. Don’t I ask favors first of you?”
“You never ask—for yourself.”
“Why, yes, it is because it pleases me.”
“I wish I could do something for you, alone.”
He snapped off a dry twig and began to break it into bits. Then he kicked a stone out of the path, keeping his face away from her.
She experienced a peculiar embarrassment. Where was the happy medium between warmth and coolness? She liked the brotherly friendshipthey had fallen into. Was it friendship really?
“If I did want anything,—I should not hesitate—to come to you.”
Then they walked on in uncomfortable silence. It was very awkward. In the new light coming to Fan, she felt therewassomething unsaid. Was it best to get over it as rapidly as possible, leave it behind?
“I think we must return. Papa may want me.”
He turned reluctantly. She quickened her pace at first.
“Don’t hurry. The day will come to an end soon enough. I should like it to last a week, at least.”
“What an odd idea. We only want pleasant days to last.”
“Isn’t this pleasant to you?”
“Why—yes. All my days are pleasant for that matter. But I thought it was beginning to bore you.”
He did not answer for quite a while, then he seemed to go far away from the subject.
“It’s been nice for you at the Churchills.”
“Well—yes. Though I don’t want you to think I was pleased with the notice because they are rich.”
“I know that does not make any difference with you.”
“But then for that matter your father is rich, too. And there are only two children.”
“Yet I wish the home—was like yours.”
“With seven girls? You would have no comfort of your life if you were the only boy among them,” and Fan laughed merrily.
“I would not mind trying it. Or at least—”
“Be warned in time,” and Fan shook her fore-finger threateningly.
“I can’t,” he exclaimed, with a sudden vehemence in his tone. “Only—I’d be contented with one. Fanny, couldn’t you?—I mean—I love you!”
It was all out then! Fan stood still and white while he was scarlet and trembling. Both were surprised with a deep solemn awe, as if amazed to have reached such a point.
“I didn’t mean to tell you so soon. I had hardly put it into shape myself. But when I saw that Winthrop Ogden hanging round after you, I knew it all then just like a flash. And why shouldn’t it be? They have enough at home without you. And it would be so sweet! I should think of nothing but your happiness. Idreamed it all out on the porch last night, sitting alone with father.”
His eyes and voice were alike imploring, and he had spoken so rapidly that it carried her right along. Now she put up her hand with a gesture of pain.
“Oh, Dick, dear Dick, I am so sorry! I never thought of this!”
“Well!” with a kind of manly assurance, “think of it now. I will be patient. We can ask your mother and see what she says.”
“Dick, I had better tell you just the truth. I am sorry there is any need to say it. I like you very much in the pleasant, sisterly fashion that has grown up between us. I do not believe it can ever be any different. So it is best not to hope, not to plan—”
“Oh, Fanny, I cannot help it. How could I stop all at once?”
She was touched to the heart. What should she do? The tears came into her eyes.
“I must have acted very wrongly to make you care so much for me in this way. I can never, never forgive myself.”
He could not bear to hear the woman he loved blamed, and the tears conquered him.
“It is nothing you have done, don’t think that,” he said earnestly. “You can’t help being sweet and pretty, any more than that bird up there can help singing. And you can’t help being just what I want. You have treated me the same as you have others, that is, I mean you never tried in any way to make me love you. It just came. And if you will only try—”
“If I did try, Dick, I should be ashamed to confess that I could not love so good, and tender, and true a man as you are. Then, perhaps I might marry you, not loving you the best, which would be very, very wicked, and ruin your happiness. Oh, Dick, forgive me and let me be your sister or your friend, or else let me go quite away. I am so sorry.”
They walked on until the sound of voices reached them. “Please leave me here,” she entreated falteringly.
“I’m a great blundering chap, I know. I might have said it all better—”
“It isn’t the saying, it is the thing itself.—O, Dick, don’t you see that if I had loved you, one word would have been enough. I should be too honest to tease or make excuses.”
“Yes, I suppose it is so,” in a slow, patheticway that made Fan think she was a miserable wretch. “And you can’t help it, I know. I’ll try to—leave matters as they were, to be a—brother.”
He swallowed over a great lump in his throat, and turned away without another word. When she found herself quite alone she threw her trembling figure on the mossy tree-roots and sobbed bitterly. The glad unconsciousness of girlhood was over.
“If he were not so good,” she thought, “or so rich, or so kind! If Icouldfind some fault. And that makes it appear all the worse in me. Oh, papa, dear, what have I done? Why does every one want to—?”
And then she knew it was the old, old story, that had began way back in Eden-days. People alwaysdid, and always would, and sometimes there was a hitch and a snarl, and the thread broke.
She heard the bell calling the children together, so she rose, and went to the tiny brook to bathe her face. But she felt so shame-faced and cowardly that she did not dare join them until the singing was done. Then Dick would be putting Mrs. Ryder in his wagon, and allthe others bustling about. No one would take much notice of her.
“O, here you are, run-away!” said a bright, rather imperious voice. “Your sister has been worried to death about you. I thought I should have to begin and search the mountains. Come along. I shall not give you another chance to go astray.”
With that Winthrop Ogden took possession of her. The carriages began to move on. The line was forming, and Mr. Endicott walked down its length.
“I have Miss Fannie here, safe;” Mr. Ogden said, with a confident nod.
Fan was so glad to escape observation that she uttered not a word.
“My Uncle and Aunts are here waiting to speak to you.”
She suffered herself to be led thither, listened to the chat and answered again without understanding a word.
They fell in the rear of the procession. Indeed she hardly noticed how they lagged behind, until the tramp of the feet had quite a distant sound.
“Where were you all the afternoon?” Mr.Ogden asked. “Your sister and I started once to find you.”
“Did you?” absently.
“Yes. We did not know but the bears might have come out and eaten you up.”
“Hardly.”
“You were not alone?”
“No. We went for ferns. Jennie Ryder and the rest.”
“Miss Ryder has been back this hour. She and her mother went away with the very first—with Mr. Fairlie.”
“Oh,” indifferently.
“Well, what were you doing?”
“I won’t be questioned, there!”
“You are sure you were not in mischief?”
No answer to this, and a long silence.
“Well, Miss Obstinacy,” he began at length, “I really am afraid something has occurred to ruffle your temper.”
“I do not know as you are compelled to suffer from it!” she returned, positively provoked.
“Ah, but I couldn’t leave you here in a howling wilderness, with the others miles ahead.”
“You exaggerate. Suppose we walk on and overtake them?”
“Wearewalking on.”
She was in no mood for badinage. Indeed, her heart smote her bitterly for the pain she had unwittingly caused. She was upbraiding herself and trying to think where the first false step had begun.
“Are you tired?” he asked presently in a gentler tone.
“Not much. But a day like this always finds one rather stupid at its close.”
“Were your mental exertions in the woods very severe? Did you stop to analyze and classify the ferns?”
“No.”
“You must have found some delightful employment.”
No answer again.
“Do you know that I am going back to the city on Saturday?”
“Are you?—indeed!”
“I dare say you will not miss me.”
“I do not know why I should, specially.”
“That is unfriendly.”
“Is it? Well,” rousing herself a trifle, “I suppose wedomiss any one with whom we have had a bright, pleasant time. And yourAunt Lucy will be very sorry to have you go.”
“And yet, she will have you.”
“I am only one of the incidentals, Mr. Ogden. People who don’t belong truly, step into each others’ lives and when the time comes, step out again. But one born in the household is different.”
“They all like you—so much. I am almost jealous of uncle Churchill’s regard.”
“O, you need not be.”
“He is old-fashioned and strict in some of his notions, but he has a splendid heart.”
“I believe that.”
“O, Miss Endicott, please look back at this sunset! It is still more glorious than the one we saw the evening of our ride! Do you know, I hate to return. Everything is so lovely here.”
Some of the wide fields lay in the shade, some in the bronze light of the dying sun. All the tree-tops were burnished, and now it was so still that not a leaf stirred. A distant Whip-poor-will began his melancholy lay.
“Oh, we must hurry on;” said Fanny recollecting herself. “The others have passed the curve of the road and are out of sight.”
They quickened their pace a trifle. Presently he inquired—
“What is to be done to-morrow?”
“Why—nothing.”
“No tea parties nor croquet?”
“I believe not. We shall all be tired. I have had two or three weeks of dissipation and think it high time to rest up a little.”
“Suppose you take a drive with me? That will not be tiresome. About four in the afternoon, say.”
Fan started again.
“I think I would rather not;” she replied, curtly.
“Why?”
“For various reasons that I cannot enumerate.”
“I am glad you have more than one, for that might be rather hard upon me. Well, can I come over to tea then? that is if you are not to have other company.”
“I dare say they will all be glad to entertain you.”
“I don’t wish any one but justyou. I shall have to take the others part of the time. But on my last day I deserve some indulgence.”
“I may not feel indulgent;” she answered carelessly.
“Miss Fanny—and I have so many things to ask!”
“Don’t ask them;” she said recklessly. Was she walking into another fire?
“I must ask one.”
She expressed no curiosity or anxiety, but her heart beat so loudly it seemed as if he must hear it. Dick Fairlie’s love-making had been honest and true, but this young man?—So she walked on more rapidly.
“Yes; one question. How else should I know? And it is too great a risk to leave you here with no word—”
“Mr. Ogden, I think you have lost your senses;” she interrupted sharply.
“I thought so myself to-day. When you went off with that Fairlie! I know he was with you this afternoon, and I resolved then to have my say. I do not mean to lose through being a laggard. My darling, can you—do you—?”
Fan turned and faced him. She was cool and angry.
“Mr. Ogden,” she said decisively, “that is enough! It may be your habit to make love to city girls on a fortnight’s acquaintance, but it is not mine to receive it. I have been friendly because I thought you a gentleman!”
“Fanny! Miss Endicott,” and he confrontedher in so authoritative a fashion, that she felt his strength at once. “You mistake me altogether. I amnotin the habit of trifling. If I speak soon it is because I must leave you, and I know another loves you. You have only to say that you prefer him, and I will be silent.”
He waited several minutes for her to answer, but how could she? It was a cruel strait. Her cheeks were crimson with shame.
“Then I think I have a right to be heard.”
She summoned all her reckless bravery.
“Mr. Ogden,” she began in an ironical tone; “how long do you suppose youcouldremember? It would be the wildest of folly to listen to you.”
“You doubt me altogether! What shall I do to convince you? Let me have that withered rose at your throat. I gave it to you this morning and it will be precious to me. How long a probation will you set me—a year? Well, when you receive this rose back some day you will know that I am of the same mind.”
He took it and dropped it into his pocket memorandum. Then they walked on in silence.
On the way the children were dispersed nearest their homes. By the Church, Fanny and Mr.Ogden came up with the last. She did not dare leave him or she would have joined her father. A kind of fascination kept her under his influence.
They paused at the gate. The others had entered.
“Do you want me to come to-morrow?” His tone was almost peremptory.
“I—no—” Hers sounded as if tears were not far off, and the long lashes shaded her eyes, but still he read the face, and read in it, furthermore, something she did not know was there.
“Very well. If you love me, as I hope you will some day, I can wait. You will learn how truly every word was meant. I think then you will be noble enough to admit it. Good by, little darling.”
He gave her one kiss and was gone. She flew up the path and into the wide hall, pale as a ghost.
We were all there, mamma with baby in her arms, tiny Tim hanging to her skirt, Lily and Daisy talking like two chatter-boxes. There was a promiscuous heap of hats and baskets on the floor.
“Children!” exclaimed papa, “don’t set yourmother crazy! Take some of these articles to the kitchen. There, I nearly stepped into some one’s hat. Rose my dear—”
Fan entered at this moment. Papa stood first, so she put her arm around his neck and gave a little sob.
“My dear girl, you are tired to death! How pale you look. Mamma would a cup of tea do her any good? And isn’t our supper ready?”
I hung up the hats, and sent Daisy off with a cargo of baskets.
“No, I don’t want a mouthful,” Fan said. “It was a splendid day, but I am tired to the uttermost and would like to drop into bed without a word. Or if I was Edith and mamma could cuddle me in her arms. Oh dear!”
I think that mamma guessed something was amiss. She gave baby to me and went straight to Fan.
“Oh, mamma, darling, what would the world be without you? I feel as if I had been lost somewhere and just come to light. Do I really belong to you?”
With that she gave a little hysterical laugh which ended with passionate crying.
“I am a baby, there! I am ashamed of myself.Let me run and put away my toggery, and maybe I shall come to my senses.”
The children were washed and brushed. Stuart had just come in, and we sat down to the table. Fanny entered presently, but she neither ate nor drank, and seemed to be quite unlike herself.
Indeed, I do not think she came to her senses until she and mamma had a good long talk, she lying in her fresh, cool bed. The friendly dusk hid her scarlet cheeks, but it could not keep her voice steady. All the naughtiness was confessed except the little that could not be told until long afterward, when events justified it.
“My dear girl, I am extremely sorry, and yet I do not know how you could have avoided the trouble. You did quite right if you could not love Mr. Fairlie, and Mr. Ogden’s haste was ungenerous and inexcusable. I am glad you had the good sense to see this. And now go to sleep my darling. If we have any better thoughts to-morrow we will comfort one another with them.”
So she kissed her and left her alone.