Statira and 'Manda Grier had given up their plan of getting places in a summer hotel when Lemuel absolutely refused to take part in it, and were working through the summer in the box-factory. Lemuel came less regularly to see them now, for his Sunday nights had to be at Mr. Corey's disposition; but Statira was always happy in his coming, and made him more excuses than he had thought of, if he had let a longer interval than usual pass. He could not help feeling the loveliness of her patience, the sweetness of her constancy; but he disliked 'Manda Grier more and more, and she grew stiffer and sharper with him. Sometimes the aimlessness of his relation to Statira hung round him like a cloud, which he could not see beyond. When he was with her he contented himself with the pleasure he felt in her devotion, and the tenderness this awakened in his own heart; but when he was away from her there was a strange disgust and bitterness in these.
Sometimes, when Statira and 'Manda Grier took a Saturday afternoon off, he went with them into the country on one of the horse-car lines, or else to some matinee at a garden-theatre in the suburbs. Statira liked the theatre better than anything else; and she used to meet other girls whom she knew there, and had a gay time. She introduced Lemuel to them, and after a few moments of high civility and distance they treated him familiarly, as Statira's beau. Their talk, after that he was now used to, was flat and foolish, and their pert ease incensed him. He came away bruised and burning, and feeling himself unfit to breathe the refined and gentle air to which he returned in Mr. Corey's presence. Then he would vow in his heart never to expose himself to such things again; but he could not tell Statira that he despised the friends she was happy with; he could only go with a reluctance it was not easy to hide, and atone by greater tenderness for a manner that wounded her. One day toward the end of August, when they were together at a suburban theatre, Statira wandered off to a pond there was in the grounds with some other girls, who had asked him to go and row them, and had called him a bear for refusing, and told him to look out for Barnum. They left him sitting alone with 'Manda Grier, at a table where they had all been having ice-cream at his expense; and though it was no longer any pleasure to be with her, it was better than to be with them, for she was not a fool, at any rate. Statira turned round at a little distance to mock them with a gesture and a laugh, and the laugh ended in a cough, long and shattering, so that one of her companions had to stop with her, and put her arm round her till she could recover herself and go on.
It sent a cold thrill through Lemuel, and then he turned angry. “What is it Statira does to keep taking more cold?”
“Oh, I guess 'tain't 'nymorecold,” said 'Manda Grier.
“What do you mean?”
“I guess 'f you cared a great deal you'd noticed that cough 'f hers before now. 'Tain't done it any too much good workin' in that arsenic paper all summer long.”
'Manda Grier talked with her face turned away from him.
It provoked him more and more. “Idocare,” he retorted, eager to quarrel, “and you know it. Who got her into the box-factory, I should like to know?”
“Idid!” said 'Manda Grier, turning sharply on him, “and youkepther there; and between us we've killed her.”
“How have I kept her there, I should like to know?”
“'F you'd done's she wanted you should, she might 'a' been at some pleasant place in the country—the mount'ns, or somewhere 't she'd been ov'r her cough by this time. But no! You was too nasty proud for that, Lemuel Barker!”
A heavy load of guilt dropped upon Lemuel's heart, but he flung it off, and he retorted furiously,
“You ought to have been ashamed of yourself to ever want her to take a servant's place.”
“Oh, a servant's place! If she'd been ashamed of a servant when you came meechin' round her, where'd you been, I sh'd like to know? And now I wish she had; 'n' if she wa'n't such a little fool, 'n' all wrapped in you, the way 't she is, I could wish 't she'd never set eyes on you again, servant or no servant. But I presume it's too late now, and I presume she's got to go on suff'rin' for you and wonderin' what she's done to offend you when you don't come, and what she's done when you do, with your stuck-up, masterful airs, and your double-faced ways. But don't you try to pretend to me, Lemuel Barker, 't you care the least mite for her any more, 'f you ever did, because it won't go down! 'N' if S'tira wa'n't such a perfect little blind fool, she could see 't you didn't care for her any more than the ground 't you walk on, 'n' 't you'd be glad enough if she was under it, if you couldn't be rid of her any other way!” 'Manda Grier pulled her handkerchief out and began to cry into it.
Lemuel was powerfully shaken by this attack; he did feel responsible for Statira's staying in town all summer; but the spectacle of 'Manda Grier publicly crying at his side in a place like that helped to counteract the effect of her words. “'Sh! Don't cry!” he began, looking fearfully round him. “Everybody 'll see you!”
“I don't care! Let them!” sobbed the girl. “If they knowed what I know, and could see younotcryin', I guess they'd think you looked worse than I do!”
“You don't understand—I can explain—”
“No, you can't explain, Mr. Barker!” said 'Manda Grier, whipping down her handkerchief, and fiercely confronting him across the table. “You can't explain anything so 's to blind me any longer! I was a big fool to ever suppose you had any heart in you; but when you came round at first, and was so meek you couldn't say your soul was your own, and was so glad if S'tira spoke to you, or looked at you, that you was ready to go crazy, Ididsuppose there was somelittlesomething to you! And yes, I helped you on all I could, and helped you to fool that poor thing that you ain't worthy to kiss the ground she walks on, Lord forgive meforit! But it's all changed now! You seem to think it's the greatest favour if you come round once a fortnight, and set and let her talk to you, and show you how she dotes upon you, the poor little silly coot! And if you ever speak a word, it's like the Lord unto Moses, it's so grand! But I understand! You've got other friends now!You after that art-student? Oh, you can blush and try to turn it off! I've seen you blush before, and I know you! And I know you're in love with that girl, and you're just waitin' to break off with S'tira; but you hain't got the spirit to up and do it like a man! You want to let it lag along, andlagalong, and see 'f something won't happen to get you out of it!You waitin' for her to die? Well, you won't have to wait long! But if I was a man, I'd spoil your beauty for you first.”
The torrent of her words rolled him on, bruising and tearing his soul, which their truth pierced like jagged points. From time to time he opened his lips to protest or deny, but no words came, and in his silence a fury of scorn for the poor, faithful, scolding thing, so just, so wildly unjust, gathered head in him.
“Be still!” he ground between his teeth. “Be still, you—” He stopped for the word, and that saved him from the outrage he had meant to pay her back with. He rose from the table. “You can tell Statira what you've said to me. I'm going home.”
He rushed away; the anger was like strong drink in his brain; he was like one drunk all the way back to the city in the car.
He could not go to Mr. Corey's at once; he felt as if physically besmeared with shame; he could not go to his boarding-house; it would have been as if he had shown himself there in a coat of tar and feathers. Those insolent, true, degrading words hissed in his ears, and stung him incessantly. They accused, they condemned with pitiless iteration; and yet there were instants when he knew himself guiltless of all the wrong of which in another sense he knew himself guilty. In his room he renewed the battle within himself that he had fought so long in his wanderings up and down the street, and he conquered himself at last into the theory that Statira had authorised or permitted 'Manda Grier to talk to him in that way. This simplified the whole affair; it offered him the release which he now knew he had longed for. As he stretched himself in the sheets at daybreak, he told himself that he need never see either of them again. He was free.
Lemuel went through the next day in that licence of revolt which every human soul has experienced in some measure at some time. We look back at it afterwards, and see it a hideous bondage. But for the moment Lemuel rejoiced in it; and he abandoned himself boldly to thoughts that had hitherto been a furtive and trembling rapture.
In the afternoon, when he was most at leisure, he walked down to the Public Garden, and found a seat on a bench near the fountain where the Venus had shocked his inexperience the first time he saw her; he remembered that simple boy with a smile of pity, and then went back into his cloud of reverie. There, safely hid from trouble and wrong, he told his ideal how dear she was to him, and how she had shaped and governed his life, and made it better and nobler from the first moment they had met. The fumes of the romances which he had read mixed with the love-born delirium in his brain; he was no longer low, but a hero of lofty line, kept from his rightful place by machinations that had failed at last, and now he was leading her, his bride, into the ancient halls which were to be their home, and the source of beneficence and hope to all the poor and humbly-born around them. His eyes were so full of this fantastic vision, the soul of his youth dwelt so deeply within this dream-built tabernacle, that it was with a shock of anguish he saw coming up the walk towards him the young girl herself. His airy structure fell in ruins around him; he was again common and immeasurably beneath her; she was again in her own world, where, if she thought of him at all, it must be as a squalid vagabond and the accomplice of a thief. If he could have escaped, he would, but he could not move; he sat still and waited with fallen eyes for her to pass him.
At sight of him she hesitated and wavered; then she came towards him, and at a second impulse held out her hand, smiling with a radiant pleasure.
“I didn't know it was you at first,” she said. “It seems so strange to see any one that I know!”
“I didn't expect to see you, either,” he stammered out, getting somehow upon his feet, and taking her hand, while his face burned, and he could not keep his eyes on hers; “I—didn't know you were here.”
“I've only been here a few days. I'm drawing at the Museum. I've just got back. Have you been here all summer?”
“Yes—all summer. I hope you've been well—I suppose you've been away—”
“Yes, I've just got back,” she repeated.
“Oh yes! I meant that!”
She smiled at his confusion, as kindly as the ideal of his day-dream. “I've been spending the summer with Madeline, and I've spent most of it out-of-doors, sketching. Have you been well?”
“Yes—not very; oh yes, I'm well—” She had begun to move forward with the last question, and he found himself walking with her. “Did she—has Miss Swan come back with you?” he asked, looking her in the eyes with more question than he had put into his words.
“No, I don't think she'll come back this winter,” said the girl. “You know,” she went on, colouring a little, “that she's married now?”
“No,” said Lemuel.
“Yes. To Mr. Berry. And I have a letter from him for you.”
“Was he there with you, this summer?” asked Lemuel, ignoring alike Berry's marriage and the letter from him.
“Oh yes; of course! And I liked him better than I used to. He is very good, and if Madeline didn't have to go so far West to live! He will know how to appreciate her, and there are not many who can do that! Her father thinks he has a great deal of ability. Yes, if Madelinehadto get married!”
She talked as if convincing and consoling herself, and there was an accent of loneliness in it all that pierced Lemuel's preoccupation; he had hardly noted how almost pathetically glad she was to see him. “You'll miss her here,” he ventured.
“Oh, I don't dare to think of it,” cried the girl. “I don't know what I shall do! When I first saw you, just now, it brought up Madeline and last winter so that it seemed too much to bear!”
They had walked out of the garden across Charles Street, and were climbing the slope of Beacon Street Mall, in the Common. “I suppose,” she continued, “the only way will be to work harder, and try to forget it. They wanted me to go out and stay with them; but of course I couldn't. I shall work, and I shall read. I shall not find another Madeline Swan! You must have been reading a great deal this summer, Mr. Barker,” she said, in turning upon him from her bereavement. “Have you seen any of the old boarders? Or Mrs. Harmon? I shall never have another winter like that at the poor old St. Albans!”
Lemuel made what answer he could. There was happiness enough in merely being with her to have counterbalanced all the pain he was suffering; and when she made him partner of her interests and associations, and appealed to their common memories in confidence of his sympathy, his heavy heart stirred with strange joy. He had supposed that Berry must have warned her against him; but she was treating him as if he had not. Perhaps he had not, and perhaps he had done so, and this was her way of showing that she did not believe it. He tried to think so; he knew it was a subterfuge, but he lingered in it with a fleeting, fearful pleasure. They had crossed from the Common and were walking up under the lindens of Chestnut Street, and from time to time they stopped, in the earnestness of their parley, and stood talking, and then loitered on again in the summer security from oversight which they were too rapt to recognise. They reached the top of the hill, and came to a door where she stopped. He fell back a pace. “Good-bye—” It was eternal loss, but it was escape.
She smiled in timorous hesitation. “Won't you come in? And I will get Mr. Berry's letter.”
She opened the door with a latch-key, and he followed her within; a servant-girl came half-way up the basement stairs to see who it was, and then went down. She left him in the dim parlour a moment, while she went to get the letter. When she returned, “I have a little room for my work at the top of the house,” she said, “but it will never be like the St. Albans. There's no one else here yet, and it's pretty lonesome—without Madeline.”
She sank into a chair, but he remained standing, and seemed not to heed her when she asked him to sit down. He put Berry's letter into his pocket without looking at it, and she rose again.
She must have thought he was going, and she said with a smile of gentle trust, “It's been like having last winter back again to see you. We thought you must have gone home right after the fire; we didn't see anything of you again. We went ourselves in about a week.”
Then she did not know, and he must tell her himself.
“Did Mr. Berry say anything about me—at the fire—that last day?” he began bluntly.
“No!” she said, looking at him with surprise; there was a new sound in his voice. “He had no need to say anything! I wanted to tell you—to write and tell you—how much I honoured you for it—how ashamed I was for misunderstanding you just before, when—”
He knew that she meant when they all pitied him for a coward.
Her voice trembled; he could tell that the tears were in her eyes. He tried to put the sweetness of her praise from him. “Oh, it wasn't that that I meant,” he groaned; and he wrenched the words out. “That fellow, who said he was a friend of mine, and got into the house that way, was a thief; and Mr. Berry caught him robbing his room the day of the fire, and treated me as if I knew it and was helping him on—”
“Oh!” cried the girl. “How cruel! How could he do that?”
Lemuel could not suffer himself to take refuge in her generous faith now.
“When I first came to Boston, I had my money stolen, and there were two days when I had nothing to eat; and then I was arrested by mistake for stealing a girl's satchel; and when I was acquitted, I slept the next night in the tramp's lodging-house, and that fellow was there, and when he came to the St. Albans I was ashamed to tell where I had known him, and so I let him pass himself off for my friend.”
He kept his eyes fixed on hers, but he could not see them change from their pity of him, or light up with a sense of any squalor in his history.
“And I used to think thatmylife had been hard!” she cried. “Oh, how much you have been through!”
“And after that,” he pursued, “Mr. Sewell got me a place, a sort of servant's place, and when I lost that I came to be the man-of-all work at the St. Albans.”
In her eyes the pity was changing to admiration; his confession which he had meant to be so abject had kindled her fancy like a boastful tale.
“How little we know about people and what they have suffered! But I thank you for telling me this—oh yes!—and I shall always think of myself with contempt. How easy and pleasant my life has been! And you—”
She stopped, and he stood helpless against her misconception. He told her about the poverty he had left at home, and the wretched circumstance of his life, but she could not see it as anything but honourable to his present endeavour. She listened with breathless interest to it all, and, “Well,” she sighed at last, “it will always be something for you to look back to, and be proud of. And that girl—did she never say or do anything to show that she was sorry for that cruel mistake? Did you ever see her afterwards?”
“Yes,” said Lemuel, sick at heart, and feeling how much more triumphantly he could have borne ignominy and rejection than this sweet sympathy.
She seemed to think he would say something more, but he turned away from her, and after a little silence of expectance she let him go, with promises to come again, which she seemed to win from him for his own sake.
In the street he took out Berry's letter and read it.
“DEAR OLD MAN,—I've been trying to get off a letter to you almost any time the last three months; but I've been round so much, and upside down so much since I saw you—out to W. T. and on my head in Western Mass.—that I've not been able to fetch it. I don't know as I could fetch it now, if it wasn't for the prospective Mrs. A. W. B., Jr., standing over me with a revolver, and waiting to see me do it. I've just been telling her about that little interview of ours with Williams, that day, and she thinks I ought to be man enough to write and say that I guess I was all wrong about you; I had a sneaking idea of the kind from the start almost, but if a fellow's proud at all, he's proud of his mistakes, and he hates to give them up. I'm pretty badly balled up now, and I can't seem to get the right words about remorse, and so forth; but you know how it is yourself. I am sorry, there's no two ways about that; but I've kept my suspicions as well as my regrets to myself, and now I do the best thing I can by way of reparation. I send this letter by Miss Carver. She hasn't read it, and she don't know what it's all about; but I guess you'd better tell her. Don't spare, yours truly, A. W. BERRY, JR.”
The letter did not soften Lemuel at all towards Berry, and he was bitterly proud that he had spoken without this bidding, though he had seemed to speak to no end that he had expected. After a while he lost himself in his day-dreams again, and in the fantastic future which he built up this became a great source of comfort to him and to his ideal. Now he parted with her in sublime renunciation, and now he triumphed over all the obstacles between them; but whatever turn he willed his fortunes to take, she still praised him, and he prided himself that he had shown himself at his worst to her of his own free impulse. Sewell praised him for it in his reverie; Mr. Corey and Mr. Bellingham both made him delicate compliments upon his noble behaviour, which he feigned had somehow become known to them.
At the usual hour he was at Mr. Corey's house, where he arrived footsore, and empty from supperless wanderings, but not hungry and not weary. The serving-man at the door met him with the message that Mr. Corey had gone to dine at his club, and would not be at home till late. He gave Lemuel a letter, which had all the greater effect from being presented to him on the little silver tray employed to bring up the cards and notes of the visitors and correspondents of the family. The envelope was stamped in that ephemeral taste which configured the stationery of a few years ago, with the lines of alligator leather, and it exhaled a perfume so characteristic that it seemed to breathe Statira visibly before him. He knew this far better than the poor, scrawly, uncultivated handwriting which he had seen so little. He took the letter, and turning from the door read it by the light of the next street lamp.
“DEAR LEMUEL—Manda Grier has told me what she said to you and Ime about crazy about it dear Lem I want you should come and see mee O Lem you dont Suppose i could of let Manda Grier talk to you that way if I had of none it but of course you dident only do Say so I give her a real good goen over and she says shes sory she done it i dont want any body should care for mee without itse there free will but I shall alwayes care for you if you dont care for me dont come but if you do Care I want you should come as soon as ever you can I can explane everything Manda Grier dident mean anything but for the best but sometimes she dont know what she is sayin O Lem you mussent be mad But if you are and you dont want to come ennymore dont come But O i hope you wouldent let such a thing set you againste mee recollect that I never done or Said anything to set you against me,
A cruel disgust mingled with the remorse that this letter brought him. Its illiteracy made him ashamed, and the helpless fondness it expressed was like a millstone hanged about his neck. He felt the deadly burden of it drag him down.
A passer-by on the other side of the street coughed slightly in the night air, and a thought flashed through Lemuel, from which he cowered, as if he had found himself lifting his hand against another's life.
His impulse was to turn and run, but there was no escape on any side. It seemed to him that he was like that prisoner he had read of, who saw the walls of his cell slowly closing together upon him, and drawing nearer and nearer till they should crush him between them. The inexperience of youth denies it perspective; in that season of fleeting and unsubstantial joys, of feverish hopes, despair wholly darkens a world which after years find full of chances and expedients.
If Mr. Sewell had been in town there might have been some hope through him; or if Mr. Evans were there; or even if Berry were at hand, it would be some one to advise with, to open his heart to in his extremity. He walked down into Bolingbroke Street, knowing well that Mr. Sewell was not at home, but pretending to himself, after the fashion of the young, that if he should see a light in his house it would be a sign that all should come out right with him, and if not, it would come out wrong. He would not let himself lift his eyes to the house front till he arrived before it. When he looked his heart stood still; a light streamed bright and strong from the drawing-room window.
He hurried across the street, and rang; and after some delay, in which the person coming to the door took time to light the gas in the hall, Mr. Sewell himself opened to him. They stood confronted in mutual amazement, and then Sewell said, with a cordiality which he did not keep free from reluctance, “Oh—Mr. Barker! Come in! Come in!” But after they had shaken hands, and Lemuel had come in, he stood there in the hall with him, and did not offer to take him up to his study. “I'm so glad to have this glimpse of you! How in the world did you happen to come?”
“I was passing and saw the light,” said Lemuel.
Sewell laughed. “To be sure! We never have any idea how far our little candle throws its beams! I'm just here for the night, on my way from the mountains to the sea; I'm to be the 'supply' in a friend's pulpit at New Bedford; and I'm here quite alone in the house, scrambling a sermon together. But I'msoglad to see you! You're well, I hope? You're looking a little thin, but that's no harm. Do you enjoy your life with Mr. Corey? I was sure you would! When you come to know him, you will find him one of the best of men—kindly, thoughtful, and sympathetic. I've felt very comfortable about your being with him whenever I've thought of you, and you may be sure that I've thought of you often. What about our friends of the St. Albans? Do you see Mrs. Harmon? You knew the Evanses had gone to Europe.”
“Yes; I got a letter from him yesterday.”
“He didn't pick up so fast as they hoped, and he concluded to try the voyage. I hear very good accounts of him. He said he was going to write you. Well! And Mr. Corey is well?” He smiled more beamingly upon Lemuel, who felt that he wished him to go, and stood haplessly trying to get away.
In the midst of his own uneasiness Sewell noted Lemuel's. “Is there anything—something—you wished to speak with me about?”
“No. No, not anything in particular. I just saw the light, and—”
Sewell took his hand and wrung it with affection.
“It was so good of you to run in and see me. Don't fancy it's been any disturbance. I'd got into rather a dim place in my work, but since I've been standing here with you—ha, ha, ha! those things do happen so curiously!—the whole thing has become perfectly luminous. I'm delighted you're getting on so nicely. Give my love to Mr. Corey. I shall see you soon again. We shall all be back in a little over a fortnight. Glad of this moment with you, if it's only a moment! Good-bye!”
He wrung Lemuel's hand again, this time in perfect sincerity, and eagerly shut him out into the night.
The dim place had not become so luminous to him as it had to the minister. A darkness, which the obscurity of the night faintly typified, closed round him, pierced by one ray only, and from this he tried to turn his face. It was the gleam that lights up every labyrinth where our feet wander and stumble, but it is not always easy to know it from those false lights of feeble-hearted pity, of mock-sacrifice, of sick conscience, which dance before us to betray to worse misery yet.
Some sense of this, broken and faltering, reached Lemuel where he stood, and tried to deal faithfully with his problem. In that one steadfast ray he saw that whatever he did he must not do it for himself; but what his duty was he could not make out. He knew now, if he had not known before, that whatever his feeling for Statira was, he had not released himself from her, and it seemed to him that he could not release himself by any concern for his own advantage. That notion with which he had so long played, her insufficiency for his life now and for the needs of his mind hereafter, revealed itself in its real cruelty. The things that Mr. Sewell had said, that his mother had said, that Berry had said, in what seemed a fatal succession, and all to the same effect, against throwing himself away upon some one inadequate to him at his best, fell to the ground like withered leaves, and the fire of that steadfast ray consumed them.
But whom to turn to for counsel now? The one friend in whom he had trusted, to whom he had just gone, ready to fling down his whole heart before him, had failed him, failed him unwittingly, unwillingly, as he had failed him once before, but this time in infinitely greater stress. He did not blame him now, fiercely, proudly, as he had once blamed him, but again he wandered up and down the city streets, famished and outcast through his defection.
It was late when he went home, but Mr. Corey had not yet returned, and he had time to sit down and write the letter which he had decided to send to Statira, instead of going to see her. It was not easy to write, but after many attempts he wrote it.
Dear Statira,—You must not be troubled, at what Amanda said to me. I assure you that, although I was angry at first, I am entirely willing to overlook it at your request. She probably spoke hastily, and I am now convinced that she spoke without your authority. You must not think that I am provoked at you.
“I received your letter this evening; and I will come to see you very soon. Lemuel Barker.”
The letter was colder than he meant to make it, but he felt that he must above all be honest, and he did not see how he could honestly make it less cold. When it came to Statira's hands she read it silently to herself, over and over again, while her tears dripped upon it.
'Manda Grier was by, and she watched her till she could bear the sight no longer. She snatched the letter from the girl's hands and ran it through, and then she flung it on the ground. “Nasty, cold-hearted, stuck-up, shameless thing!”
“Oh, don't, 'Manda; don't, 'Manda!” sobbed Statira, and she plunged her face into the pillows of the bed, where she sat.
“Shameless, cold-hearted, stuck-up, nasty thing!” said 'Manda Grier, varying her denunciation in the repetition, and apparently getting fresh satisfaction out of it in that way. “Don't? St'ira Dudley, if you was a woman—if you washalfa woman—you'd never speak to that little corpse-on-ice again.”
“O 'Manda, don't call him names-! I can't bear to have you!”
“Names? If you was anybody at all, you wouldn't look at him! You wouldn'tthinkof him!”
“O 'Manda, 'Manda! You know I can't let you talk so,” moaned Statira.
“Talk? I could talk myheadoff! 'You must not think I was provoked with you,'” she mimicked Lemuel's dignity of diction in mincing falsetto. “'I will come to see you very soon.' Miserable, worthless, conceited whipper-snapper!”
“O 'Manda, you'll break my heart if you go on so!”
“Well, then, give him up! He's goin' to give you up.”
“Oh, he ain't; you know he ain't! He's just busy, and I know he'll come. I'll bet you he'll be here to-morrow. It'll kill me to give him up.”
She had lifted herself from the pillow, and she began to cough.
“He'll kill you anyway,” cried 'Manda Grier, in a passion of pity and remorse. She ran across the room to get the medicine which Statira had to take in these paroxysms. “There, there! Take it! I sha'n't say anything more about him.”
“And do you take it all back?” gasped Statira, holding the proffered spoon away.
“Yes, yes! But do take your med'cine, St'ira, 'f you don't want to die where you set.”
“And do you think he'll come?”
“Yes, he'll come.”
“Do you say it just to get me to take the medicine?”
“No, I really do believe he'll come.”
“O 'Manda, 'Manda!” Statira took her medicine, and then wildly flung her arms round 'Manda Grier's neck, and began to sob and to cry there. “Oh, how hard I am with you, Manda! I should think if I was as hard with everybody else, they'd perfectly hate me.”
“You hard!”
“Yes, and that's why he hate me. He does hate me. You said he did.”
“No, St'ira, I didn't. You never was hard to anybody, and the meanest old iceberg in creation couldn't hate you.”
“Then you think he does care for me?”
“Yes.”
“And you know he'll come soon?”
“Yes.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
“O'Manda, O'Manda!”
Lemuel had promised himself that if he could gain a little time he should be able better to decide what it was right for him to do. His heart lifted as he dropped the letter into the box, and he went through the chapters which Mr. Corey asked him to read, after he came in, with an ease incredible to himself. In the morning he woke with a mind that was almost cheerful. He had been honest in writing that letter, and so far he had done right; he should keep his word about going soon to see Statira, and that would be honest too. He did not look beyond this decision, and he felt, as we all do, more or less vaguely when we have resolved to do right, that he had the merit of a good action.
Statira showed herself so glad to see him that he could not do less than seem to share her joy in their making-up, as she called it, though he insisted that there had been no quarrel between them; and now there began for him a strange double life, the fact of which each reader must reject or accept according to the witness of his own knowledge.
He renewed as far as he could the old warmth of his feeling for Statira, and in his compunction experienced a tenderness for her that he had not known before, the strange tenderness that some spirits feel for those they injure. He went oftener than ever to see her, he was very good to her, and cheered her with his interest in all her little interests; he petted her and comforted her; but he escaped from her as soon as he could, and when he shut her door behind him he shut her within it. He made haste to forget her, and to lose himself in thoughts that were never wholly absent even in her presence. Sometimes he went directly from her to Jessie, whose innocent Bohemianism kept later hours, and who was always glad to see him whenever he came. She welcomed him with talk that they thought related wholly to the books they had been reading, and to the things of deep psychological import which they suggested. He seldom came to her without the excuse of a book to be lent or borrowed; and he never quitted her without feeling inspired with the wish to know more, and to be more; he seemed to be lifted to purer and clearer regions of thought. She received him in the parlour, but their evenings commonly ended in her little studio, whither some errand took them, or some intrusion of the other boarders banished them. There he read to her poems or long chapters out of the essayists or romancers; or else they sat and talked about the strange things they had noticed in themselves that were like the things they found in their books. Once when they had talked a long while in this strain, he told how when he first saw her he thought she was very proud and cold.
She laughed gaily. “And I used to be afraid of you,” she said. “You used to be always reading there in your little office. Do you think I'm very proud now?”
“Are you very much afraid of me now?” he retorted.
They laughed together.
“Isn't it strange,” she said, “how little we really know about people in the world?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I wonder if it will ever be different. I've been wrong about nearly every one I've met since I came to Boston.”
“And I have too!” she cried, with that delight in the coincidence of experience which the young feel so keenly.
He had got the habit, with his growing ease in her presence, of walking up and down the room, while she sat, with her arms lifted and clasped above her head, forgetful of everything but the things they were saying, and followed him with her eyes. As he turned about in his walk, he saw how pretty she was, with her slender form cased in the black silk she wore, and thrown into full relief by the lifted arms; he saw the little hands knit above her head, and white as flowers on her dark hair. Her eyes were very bright, and her soft lips, small and fine, were red.
He faltered, and lost the thread of his speech. “I forgot what I was going to say!”
She took down her hands to clasp them over her laughing face a moment. “And I don't remember what you were saying!” They both laughed a long time at this; it seemed incomparably droll, and they became better comrades.
They spent the rest of the evening in laughing and joking.
“I didn't know you were so fond of laughing,” he said, when he went away.
“And I always supposed you were very solemn,” she replied.
This again seemed the drollest thing in the world. “Well, I always was,” he said.
“And I don't know when I've laughed so much before!” She stood at the head of the stairs, and held her lamp up for him to find his way down.
Again looking back, he saw her in the undefended grace that had bewildered him before.
When he came next they met very seriously, but before the evening was past they were laughing together; and so it happened now whenever he came. They both said how strange it was that laughing with any one seemed to make you feel so much better acquainted. She told of a girl at school that she had always disliked till one day something made them laugh, and after that they became the greatest friends.
He tried to think of some experience to match this, but he could not; he asked her if she did not think that you always felt a little gloomy after you had been laughing a great deal. She said yes; after that first night when they laughed so, she felt so depressed that she was sure she was going to have bad news from Madeline. Then she said she had received a letter from Madeline that morning, and she and Mr. Berry had both wished her to give him their regards if she ever saw him. This, when she had said it, seemed a very good joke too; and they laughed at it a little consciously, till he boldly bade her tell them he came so very seldom that she did not know when she could deliver their message.
She answered that she was afraid Madeline would not believe that; and then it came out that he had never replied to Berry's letter.
She said, “Oh! Is that the way you treat your correspondents?” and he was ashamed to confess that he had not forgiven Berry.
“I will write to him to-night, if you say so,” he answered hardily.
“Oh, you must do what you think best,” she said, lightly refusing the responsibility.
“Whatever you say will be best,” he said, with a sudden, passionate fervour that surprised himself.
She tried to escape from it. “Am I so infallible as that?”
“You are for me!” he retorted.
A silence followed, which she endeavoured to break, but she sat still across the little table from him where the shaded lamp spread its glow, leaving the rest of the room, with its red curtains and its sketches pinned about, in a warm, luxurious shadow. Her eyes fell, and she did not speak.
“It must sound very strange to you, I know,” he went on; “and it's strange to me, too; but it seems to me that there isn't anything I've done without my thinking whether you would like me to do it.”
She rose involuntarily. “You make me ashamed to think that you're so much mistaken about me! I know how we all influence each other—I know I always try to be what I think people expect me to be—I can't be myself—I know what you mean; but you—you must be yourself, and not let—” She stopped in her wandering speech, in strange agitation, and he rose too.
“I hope you're not offended with me!”
“Offended? Why? Why do you—go so soon?”
“I thought you were going,” he answered stupidly.
“Why, I'm athome!”
They looked at each other, and then they broke into a happy laugh.
“Sit down again! I don't know what I got up for. It must have been to make some tea. Did you know Madeline had bequeathed me her tea-kettle—the one we had at the St. Albans?” She bustled about, and lit the spirit-lamp under the kettle.
“Blow out that match!” he cried. “You'll set your dress on fire!” He caught her hand, which she was holding with the lighted match in it at her side, after the manner of women with lighted matches, and blew it out himself.
“Oh, thank you!” she said indifferently. “Can you take it without milk?”
“Yes, I like it so.”
She got out two of the cups he remembered, and he said, “How much like last winter that seems!”
And “Yes, doesn't it?” she sighed.
The lamp purred and fretted under the kettle, and in the silence in which they waited, the elm tree that rose from the pavement outside seemed to look in consciously upon them.
When the kettle began to sing, she poured out the two cups of tea, and in handing him his their fingers touched, and she gave a little outcry. “Oh! Madeline's precious cup! I thought it was going to drop!”
The soft night-wind blew in through the elm leaves, and their rustling seemed the expression of a profound repose, an endless content.