Jerome, in his leather apron, with his grimy hands, and face even, darkened with the tan of the leather, looked half suspiciously and bitterly at this other young man in his fine cloth and linen, with his white hands that had never done a day's labor. “You know what you are about?” he said, almost roughly. “You know what you are, you know what she is, and what we all are. You know you can't separate her from anything.”
“I don't want to,” cried Lawrence, with a great blush of fervor. “I'll be honest with you, Jerome. I didn't know what to do at first. I knew how much I thought of your sister, and I hoped she thought something of me, but I knew how father would feel, and I was dependent on him. I knew there was no sense in my marrying Elmira, or any other girl, against his wishes, and starving her.”
“There are others he would have you marry,” said Jerome, a pallor creeping through the leather grime on his face.
Lawrence colored. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said, simply; “but it's no use. I could never marry any other girl than Elmira, no matter how rich and handsome she was, nor how much she pleased father, even if she cared about me, and she wouldn't.”
“You have been—going a little with some one else, haven't you?” Jerome asked, hoarsely.
Lawrence stared. “What do you mean?”
“I—saw you riding—”
“Oh,” said Lawrence, laughing, “you mean I've been horseback-riding with Lucina Merritt. That was nothing.”
“It wasn't nothing if she thought it was something,” Jerome said, with a flash of white face and black eyes at the other.
Lawrence looked wonderingly at him, laughed first, then responded with some indignation, “Good Lord, Jerome, what are you talking about?”
“What I mean. My sister doesn't marry any man over another woman's heart if I know it.”
“Good Lord!” said Lawrence. “Why, Jerome, do you suppose I'd hurt little Lucina? She doesn't care for me in that way, she never would. And as for me—why, look here, Jerome, I never so much as held her hand. I never looked at her even, in any way—” Lawrence shook his head in emphatic reiteration of denial.
“I might as well tell you that Lucina was the one I meant when I said father would like others better,” continued Lawrence, “but Lucina Merritt would never care anything about me, even if I did about her, and I never could. Handsome as she is, and I do believe she's the greatest beauty in the whole county, she hasn't the taking way with her that Elmira has—you must see that yourself, Jerome.”
Jerome laughed awkwardly. Nobody knew how much joy those words of Lawrence Prescott's gave him, and how hard he tried to check the joy, because it should not matter to him except for Elmira's sake.
“Did you ever see a girl with such sweet ways as your sister?” persisted Lawrence.
“Elmira is a good girl,” Jerome admitted, confusedly. He loved his sister, and would have defended her against depreciation with his life, but he compared inwardly, with scorn, her sweet ways with Lucina's.
“There isn't a girl her equal in this world,” cried her lover, enthusiastically. “Don't you say so, Jerome? You're her brother, you know what she is. Did you ever see anything like that cunning little face she makes, when she looks up at you?”
“Elmira's a good girl,” Jerome repeated.
Lawrence had to be contented with that. He went on, to tell Jerome his plans with regard to the engagement between himself and Elmira. He was clearly much under the wise influence of his mother. “Mother says, on Elmira's account as well as my own, I had better not pay regular attention to her,” he said, ruefully, yet with submission. “She says to go to see her occasionally, in a way that won't make talk, and wait. She's coming to see Elmira herself. I've talked it over with her, and she's agreed to it all, as, of course, she would. Some girls wouldn't, but she—Jerome, I don't believe when we've been married fifty years that your sister will ever have refused to do one single thing I thought best for her.”
Jerome nodded with a puzzled and wistful expression, puzzled because of any man's so exalting his sister when Lucina Merritt was in the world, wistful at the sight of a joy which he must deny himself.
When he went home that night he saw by the way his mother and sister looked up when he entered the room that they were wondering if Lawrence had told him the news, and what he thought of it. Elmira's face was so eager that he did not wait. “Yes, I've seen him,” he said.
Elmira blushed, and quivered, and bent closer over her work.
“What did I tell you?” said his mother, with a kind of tentative triumph.
“You don't know now what Doctor Prescott will say,” said Jerome.
“Lawrence says his mother thinks his father will come round by-and-by, when he gets started in his profession; he always liked Elmira.”
“Well, there's one thing,” said Jerome, “and that is—of course you and Elmira are not under my control, but no sister of mine will ever enter any family where she is not welcome, with my consent.”
“Lawrence says he knows his father will be willing by-and-by,” said Elmira, tremulously.
“You know Doctor Prescott always liked your sister,” said Ann Edwards.
“Well, if he likes her well enough to have her marry his son, it's all right,” said Jerome, and went out to wash his hands and face before supper.
That night Lawrence stole in for a short call. When Elmira came up-stairs after he had gone, Jerome, who had been reading in his room, opened his door and called her in.
“Look here, Elmira,” said he, “I don't want you to think I don't want you to be happy. I do.”
Elmira held out her arms towards him with an involuntary motion. “Oh, Jerome!” she whispered.
The brother and sister had always been chary of caresses, but now Jerome drew Elmira close, pressed her little head against his shoulder, and let her cry there.
“Don't, Elmira,” he said, at length, brokenly, smoothing her hair. “You know brother wants you to be happy. You are the only little sister he's got.”
“Oh, Jerome, I couldn't help it!” sobbed Elmira.
“Of course you couldn't,” said Jerome. “Don't cry—I'll work hard and save, and maybe I can get enough money to give you a house and furniture when you're married, then you won't be quite so beholden.”
“But you'll—get married yourself, Jerome,” whispered Elmira, who had built a romance about her brother and Lucina after the night of the party.
“No, I shall never get married myself,” said Jerome, “all my money is for my sister.” He laughed, but that night after Elmira was fast asleep in her chamber across the way, he lay awake tasting to the fullest his own cup of bitterness from its contrast with another's sweet.
The longing to see Lucina, to have only the sight of her dear beautiful face to comfort him, grew as the weeks went on, but he would not yield to it. He had, however, to reckon against odds which he had not anticipated, and they were the innocent schemes of Lucina herself. She had hoped at first that his call was only deferred, that he would come to see her of his own accord, but she soon decided that he would not, and that all the advances must be from herself, since she was undoubtedly at fault. She had fully resolved to make amends for any rudeness and lack of cordiality of which she might have been guilty, at the first opportunity she should have. She planned to speak to him going home from meeting, or on some week day on the village street—she had her little speech all ready, but the chance to deliver it did not come.
But when she went to meeting Sunday after Sunday, dressed in her prettiest, looking like something between a rose and an angel, and no Jerome was there for her soft backward glances, and when she never met him when she was alone on the village street, she grew impatient.
About this time Lucina's father bought her a beautiful little white horse, like the milk-white palfrey of a princess in a fairy tale, and she rode every day over the county. Usually Squire Eben accompanied her on a tall sorrel which had been in his possession for years, but still retained much youthful fire. The sorrel advanced with long lopes and fretted at being reined to suit the pace of the little white horse, and Squire Eben had disliked riding from his youth, unless at a hard gallop with gun on saddle, towards a distant lair of game. Both he and the tall sorrel rebelled as to their nerves and muscles at this ladylike canter over smooth roads, but the Squire would neither permit his tender Lucina to ride fast, lest she get thrown and hurt, or to ride alone.
Lawrence Prescott never asked her to ride with him in those days. Lucina in her blue habit, with a long blue plume wound round her hat and floating behind in the golden blowing of her curls, on her pretty white horse, and the great booted Squire on his sorrel, to her side, reined back with an ugly strain on the bits, were a frequent spectacle for admiration on the county roads. No other girl in Upham rode.
It was one day when she was out riding with her father that Lucina made her opportunity to speak with Jerome. Now she had her horse, Jerome was finding it harder to avoid the sight of her. The night before, returning from Dale by moonlight, he had heard the quick tramp of horses' feet behind him, and had had a glimpse of Lucina and her father when they passed. Lucina turned in her saddle, and her moon-white face looked over her shoulder at Jerome. She nodded; Jerome made a stiff inclination, holding himself erect under his load of shoes. Lucina was too shy to ask her father to stop that she might speak to Jerome. However, before they reached home she said to her father, in a sweet little contained voice, “Does he go to Dale every night, father?”
“Who?” said the Squire.
“Jerome Edwards.”
“No, I guess not every day; not more than once in three days, when the shoes are finished. He told me so, if I remember rightly.”
“It is a long walk,” said Lucina.
“It won't hurt a young fellow like him,” the Squire said, laughing; but he gave a curious look at his daughter. “What set you thinking about that, Pretty?” he asked.
“We passed him back there, didn't we, father?”
“Sure enough, guess we did,” said the Squire, and they trotted on over the moonlit road.
“Looks just like the back of that dapple-gray I had when you were a little girl, Pretty,” said the Squire, pointing with his whip at the net-work of lights and shadows.
He never thought of any significance in the fact that for the two following days Lucina preferred riding in the morning in another direction, and on the third day preferred riding after sundown on the road to Dale. He also thought nothing of it that they passed Jerome Edwards again, and that shortly afterwards Lucina professed herself tired of riding so fast, though it had not been fast for him, and reined her little white horse into a walk. The sorrel plunged and jerked his head obstinately when the Squire tried to reduce his pace also.
“Please ride on, father,” said Lucina; her voice sounded like a little silver flute through the Squire's bass whoas.
“And leave you? I guess not. Whoa, Dick; whoa, can't ye!”
“Please, father, Dick frightens me when he does so.”
“Can't you ride a little faster, Pretty? Whoa, I tell ye!”
“In just a minute, father, I'll catch up with you. Oh, father, please! Suppose Dick should frighten Fanny, and make her run, I could never hold her. Please, father!”
The Squire had small choice, for the sorrel gave a fierce plunge ahead and almost bolted. “Follow as fast as you can, Pretty!” he shouted back.
There was a curve in the road just ahead, the Squire was out of sight around it in a flash. Lucina reined her horse in, and waited as motionless as a little equestrian statue. She did not look around for a moment or two—she hoped Jerome would overtake her without that. A strange terror was over her, but he did not.
Finally she looked. He was coming very slowly; he scarcely seemed to move, and was yet quite a distance behind. “I can't wait,” Lucina thought, piteously. She turned her horse and rode back to him. He stopped when she came alongside. “Good-evening,” said she, tremulously.
“Good-evening,” said Jerome. He made such an effort to speak that his voice sounded like a harsh trumpet.
Lucina forgot her pretty little speech. “I wanted to say that I was sorry if I offended you,” she said, faintly.
Jerome had no idea what she meant; he could, indeed, scarcely take in, until later, thinking of them, the sense of her words. He tried to speak, but made only an inarticulate jumble of sounds.
“I hope you will pardon me,” said Lucina.
Jerome fairly gasped. He bowed again, stiffly.
Lucina said no more. She rode on to join her father. That night, after she had gone to bed, she cried a long while. She reflected how she had never even referred to the matter in question, in her suit for pardon.
Chapter XXVII
Lucina in those days was occupied with some pieces of embroidery in gay wools on cloth. There were varied designs of little dogs with bead eyes, baskets of flowers, wreaths, and birds on sprays. She had an ambition to embroider a whole set of parlor-chairs, as some young ladies in her school had done, and there was in her mind a dim and scarcely admitted fancy that these same chairs might add state to some future condition of hers.
Lucina had always innocently taken it for granted that she should some day be married and have a house of her own, and very near her father's. When she had begun the embroidery she had furnished a shadowy little parlor of a shadowy house with the fine chairs, and admitted at the parlor door a dim and stately presence, so shadowy to her timid maiden fancy that there was scarcely a suggestion of substance.
Now, however, the shadow seemed to deepen and clear in outline. Lucina fell to wondering if Jerome Edwards thought embroidered chairs pretty or silly. Often she would pause in her counting and setting even cross-barred stitches, lean her soft cheek on her slender white hand, and sit so a long while, with her fair curls drooping over her gentle, brooding face. Her mother often noticed her sitting so, and thought, partly from quick maternal intuition, partly from knowledge gained from her own experience, that if it were possible, she should judge her to have had her heart turned to some maiden fancy. But she knew that Lucina had cared for none of her lovers away from home, and at home there were none feasible, unless, perhaps, Lawrence Prescott. Lawrence had not been to see her lately; could it be possible the child was hurt by it? Abigail sounded cautiously the depths of her daughter's heart, and found to her satisfaction no image of Lawrence Prescott therein.
“Lawrence is a good boy,” said Lucina; “it is a pity he is no taller, and looks so like his father; but he is very good. I do think, though, he might go to ride with me sometimes and save father from going. I would rather have father, but I know he does not like to ride. Lawrence had been planning to go to ride with me all through the summer. It was strange he stopped—was it not, mother?”
“Perhaps he is busy. I saw him driving with his father the other day,” said Abigail.
“Well, perhaps he is,” assented Lucina, easily. Then she asked advice as to this or that shade in the ears of the little poodle-dog which she was embroidering.
“Lucina is as transparent as glass,” her mother thought. “She could never speak of Lawrence Prescott in that way if she were in love with him, and there is no one else in town.”
Abigail Merritt, acute and tender mother as she was, settled into the belief that her daughter was merely given to those sweetly melancholy and wondering reveries natural to a maiden soul upon the threshold of discovery of life. “I used to do just so, busy as I always was, before Eben came,” she thought, with a little pang of impatient shame for herself and her daughter that they must yield to such necessities of their natures. Abigail Merritt had never been a rebel, indeed, but there had been unruly possibilities within her. She remembered well what she had told her mother when her vague dreams had ended and Eben Merritt had come a-wooing. “I like him, and I suppose, because I like him I've got to marry him, but it makes me mad, mother.”
Looking now at this daughter of hers, with her exceeding beauty and delicacy, which a touch would seem to profane and soil as much as that of a flower or butterfly, she had an impulse to hide her away and cover her always from the sight and handling of all except maternal love. She took much comfort in the surety that there was as yet no definite lover in Lucina's horizon. She did not reflect that no human soul is too transparent to be clouded to the vision of others, and its own, by the sacred intimacy with its own desires. Her daughter, looking up at her with limpid blue eyes, replying to her interrogation with sweet readiness, like a bird that would pipe to a call, was as darkly unknown to her as one beyond the grave. She could not even spell out clearly her hieroglyphics of life with the key in her own nature.
The day after Lucina had met Jerome on the Dale road, and had failed to set the matter right, she took her embroidery-work over to her Aunt Camilla's. She had resolved upon a plan which was to her quite desperate, involving, as it did, some duplicity of manœuvre which shocked her.
The afternoon was a warm one, and she easily induced, as she had hoped, her Aunt Camilla to sit in the summer-house in the garden. Everything was very little changed from that old summer afternoon of years ago. If Miss Camilla had altered, it had been with such a fine conservation of general effect, in spite of varying detail, that the alteration was scarcely visible. She wore the same softly spreading lilac gown, she wrote on her portfolio with the same gold pencil presumably the same thoughts. If her softly drooping curls were faded and cast lighter shadows over thinner cheeks, one could more easily attribute the dimness and thinness to the lack of one's own memory than to change in her.
The garden was the same, sweetening with the ardor of pinks and mignonette, the tasted breaths of thyme and lavender, like under-thoughts of reason, and the pungent evidence of box.
Lucina looked out of the green gloom of the summer-house at the same old carnival of flowers, swarming as lightly as if untethered by stems, upon wings of pink and white and purpling blue, blazing out to sight as with a very rustle of color from the hearts of green bushes and the sides of tall green-sheathed stalks, in spikes and plumes, and soft rosettes of silken bloom. Even the yellow cats of Miss Camilla's famous breed, inheriting the love of their ancestors for following the steps of their mistress, came presently between the box rows with the soft, sly glide of the jungle, and established themselves for a siesta on the arbor bench.
Lucina was glad that it was all so like what it had been, even to the yellow cats, seeming scarcely more than a second rendering of a tune, and it made it possible for her to open truthfully and easily upon her plan. She herself, whose mind was so changed from its old childish habit of simple outlook and waiting into personal effort for its own ends, and whose body was so advanced in growth of grace, was perhaps the most altered of all. However, there was much of the child left in her.
“Aunt Camilla,” said she, in almost the same tone of timid deprecation which the little Lucina of years before might have used.
Camilla looked up, with gentle inquiry, from her portfolio.
“I have been thinking,” said Lucina, bending low over her embroidery that her aunt might not see the pink confusion of her face, which she could not, after all, control, “how I came here and spent the afternoon, once, years ago; do you remember?”
“You came here often—did you not, dear?”
“Yes,” said Lucina, “but that once in particular, Aunt Camilla?”
“I fear I do not remember, dear,” said Camilla, whose past had been for years a peaceful monotone as to her own emotions, and had so established a similar monotone of memory.
“Don't you remember, Aunt Camilla? I came first with a stent to knit on a garter, and we sat out here. Then the yellow cats came, and father had been fishing, and he brought some speckled trout, and—then—the Edwards boy—”
“Oh, the little boy I had to weed my garden! A good little boy,” Camilla said.
Lucina winced a little. She did not quite like Jerome to be spoken of in that mildly reminiscent way. “He's grown up now, you know, Aunt Camilla,” said she.
“Yes, my dear, and he is as good a young man as he was a boy, I hear.”
“Father speaks very highly of him,” said Lucina, with a soft tremor and mounting of color, to which her aunt responded sensitively.
People said that Camilla Merritt had never had a lover, but the same wind can strike the same face of the heart.
“I have heard him very highly spoken of,” she agreed; and there was a betraying quiver in her voice also.
“We had plum-cake, and tea in the pink cups—don't you remember, Aunt Camilla?”
“So many times we had them—did we not, dear?”
“Yes, but that one time?”
“I fear that I cannot distinguish that time from the others, dear.”
There was a pause. Lucina took a few more stitches on her embroidery. Miss Camilla poised her gold pencil reflectively over her portfolio. “Aunt Camilla,” said Lucina then.
“Well, dear?”
“I have been thinking how pleasant it would be to have another little tea-party, here in the arbor; would you have any objections?”
“My dear Lucina!” cried Miss Camilla, and looked at her niece with gentle delight at the suggestion.
The early situation was not reversed, for Lucina still admired and revered her aunt as the realization of her farthest ideal of ladyhood, but Miss Camilla fully reciprocated. The pride in her heart for her beautiful niece was stronger than any which she had ever felt for herself. She pictured Lucina instead of herself to her fancy; she seemed to almost see Lucina's face instead of her own in her looking-glass. When it came to giving Lucina a pleasure, she gave twofold.
“Thank you, Aunt Camilla,” said Lucina, delightedly, and yet with a little confusion. She felt very guilty—still, how could she tell her aunt all her reasons for wishing the party?
“Shall we have your father and mother, or only young people, dear?” asked Miss Camilla.
“Only young people, I think, aunt. Mother comes any time, and as for father, he would rather go fishing.”
“You would like the Edwards boy, since he came so long ago?”
“Yes, I think so, aunt.”
“He is poor, and works hard, and has not been in fine company much, I presume, but that is nothing against him. He will enjoy it all the more, if he is not too shy. You do not think he is too shy to enjoy it, dear?”
“I should never have known from his manners at my party that he had not been in fine company all his life. He is not like the other young men in Upham,” protested Lucina, with a quick rise of spirit.
“Well, I used to hear your grandfather say that there are those who can suit their steps to any gait,” her aunt said. “I understand that he is a very good young man. We will have him and—”
“I think his sister,” said Lucina; “she is such a pretty girl—the prettiest girl in the village, and it will please her so to be asked.”
“The Edwards boy and his sister, and who else?”
“No one else, I think, Aunt Camilla, except Lawrence Prescott. There will not be room for more in the arbor.”
Lucina did not blush when she said Lawrence Prescott, but her aunt did. She had often romanced about the two. “Well, dear,” she said, “when shall we have the tea-party?”
“Day after to-morrow, please, Aunt Camilla.”
“That will give 'Liza time to make cake,” said Camilla. “I will send the invitations to-morrow, dear.”
“'Liza will be too busy cake-making to run on errands,” said Lucina, though her heart smote her, for this was where the true gist of her duplicity came in; “write them now, Aunt Camilla, and give them to me. I will see that they are delivered.”
The afternoon of the next day Lucina, being out riding, passed Doctor Prescott's house, and called to Jake Noyes in the yard to take Miss Camilla's little gilt-edged, lavender-scented note of invitation. “Please give this to Mr. Lawrence,” said she, prettily, and rode on. The other notes were in her pocket, but she had not delivered them when she returned home at sunset.
“I am going to run over to Elmira Edwards and carry them,” she told her mother after supper, and pleaded that she would like the air when Mrs. Merritt suggested that Hannah be sent.
Thus it happened that Jerome Edwards, coming home about nine o'clock that night, noticed, the moment he opened the outer door, the breath of roses and lavender, and a subtle thrill of excitement and almost fear passed over him. “Who is it?” he thought. He listened, and heard voices in the parlor. He wanted to pass the door, but he could not. He opened it and peered in, white-faced and wide-eyes, and there was Lucina with his mother and sister.
Mrs. Edwards and Elmira looked nervously flushed and elated; there were bright spots on their cheeks, their eyes shone. On the table were Miss Camilla's little gilt-edged missives. Lucina was somewhat pale, and her face had been furtively watchful and listening. When Jerome opened the door, her look changed to one of relief, which had yet a certain terror and confusion in it. She rose at once, bowed gracefully, until the hem of her muslin skirt swept the floor, and bade Jerome good-evening. As for Jerome, he stood still, looking at her.
“Why, J'rome, don't you see who 'tis?” cried his mother, in her sharp, excited voice, yet with an encouraging smile—the smile of a mother who would put a child upon its best behavior for the sake of her own pride.
Jerome murmured, “Good-evening.” He made a desperate grasp at his self-possession, but scarcely succeeded.
Lucina pulled a little fleecy white wrap over her head, and immediately took leave. Jerome stood aside to let her pass. Elmira followed her to the outer door, and his mother called him in a sharp whisper, “J'rome, come here.”
When he had reached his mother's side she pinched his arm hard. “Go home with her,” she whispered.
Jerome stared at her.
“Do ye hear what I say? Go home with her.”
“I can't,” he almost groaned then.
“Can't? Ain't you ashamed of yourself? What ails ye? Lettin' of a lady like her go home all alone this dark night.”
Elmira ran back into the parlor. “Oh, Jerome, you ought to go with her, you ought to!” she cried, softly. “It's real dark. She felt it, I know. She looked real sober. Run after her, quick, Jerome.”
“When she came to invite you to a party, too!” said Mrs. Edwards, but Jerome did not hear that, he was out of the house and hurrying up the road after Lucina.
She had not gone far. Jerome did not know what to say when he overtook her, so he said nothing—he merely walked along by her side. A great anger at himself, that he had almost let this tender and beautiful creature go out alone in the night and the dark, was over him, but he knew not what to say for excuse.
He wondered, pitifully, if she were so indignant that she did not like him to walk home with her now. But in a moment Lucina spoke, and her voice, though a little tremulous, was full of the utmost sweetness of kindness.
“I fear you are too tired to walk home with me,” she said, “and I am not afraid to go by myself.”
“No, it is too dark for you to go alone; I am not tired,” replied Jerome, quickly, and almost roughly, to hide the tumult of his heart.
But Lucina did not understand that. “I am not afraid,” she repeated, in a little, grieved, and anxious way; “please leave me at the turn of the road, I am truly not afraid.”
“No, it is too dark for you to go alone,” said Jerome, hoarsely, again. It came to him that he should offer her his arm, but he dared not trust his voice for that. He reached down, caught her hand, and thrust it through his arm, thinking, with a thrill of terror as he did so, that she would draw it away, but she did not.
She leaned so slightly on his arm that it seemed more the inclination of spirit than matter, but still she accepted his support and walked along easily at his side. So far from her resenting his summary taking of her hand, she was grateful, with the humble gratitude of the primeval woman for the kindness of a master whom she has made wroth.
Lucina had attributed Jerome's stiffness at sight of her, and his delay in accompanying her home, to her unkind treatment of him. Now he showed signs of forgiveness, her courage returned. When they had passed the turn of the road, and were on the main street, she spoke quite sweetly and calmly.
“There is something I have been wanting to say to you,” said she. “I tried to say it the other night when I was riding and met you, but I did not succeed very well. What I wanted to say was—I fear that when you suggested coming to see me, the Sunday night after my party, I did not seem cordial enough, and make you understand that I should be very happy to see you, and that was why you did not come.”
“O—h!” said Jerome, with a long-drawn breath of wonder and despair. He had been thinking that he had offended her beyond forgiveness and of his own choice, and she, with her sweet humility, was twice suing him for pardon.
“I am very sorry,” Lucina said, softly.
“That was not the reason why I did not,” Jerome gasped.
“Then you were not hurt?”
“No; I—thought you spoke as if you would like to have me come—”
“Perhaps you were ill,” Lucina said, hesitatingly.
“No, I was not. I did not—”
“Oh, it was not because you did not want to come!” Lucina cried out, quickly, and yet with exceeding gentleness and sad wonder, that he should force such a suspicion upon her.
“No, it was not. I—wanted to come more than—I wanted to come, but—I did not think it—best.” Jerome said the last so defiantly that poor Lucina started.
“But it was because of nothing I had said, and it was not because you did not want to?” she said, piteously.
“No,” said Jerome. Then he said, again, as if he found strength in the repetition. “I did not think it best.”
“I thought you were coming that night,” Lucina said, with scarcely the faintest touch of reproach but with more of wonder. Why should he not have thought it best?
“I am sorry,” said Jerome. “I wanted to tell you, but I had no reason but that to give, and I—thought you might not understand.”
Lucina made no reply. The path narrowed just there and gave her an excuse for quitting Jerome's arm. She did so with a gentle murmur of explanation, for she could do nothing abruptly, then went on before him swiftly. Her white shawl hung from her head to her waist in sharp slants. She moved through the dusk with the evanescent flit of a white moth.
“Of course,” stammered Jerome, painfully and boyishly, “I—knew—you would not care if—I did not come. It was not as if—I had thought you—would.”
Lucina said nothing to that either. Jerome thought miserably that she did not hear, or, hearing, agreed with what he said.
Soon, however, Lucina spoke, without turning her head. “I can understand,” said she, with the gentlest and yet the most complete dignity, for she spoke from her goodness of heart, “that a person has often to do what he thinks best, and not explain it to any other person, because it is between him and his own conscience. I am quite sure that you had some very good reason for not coming to see me that Sunday night, and you need not tell me what it was. I am very glad that you did not, as I feared, stay away because I had not treated you with courtesy. Now, we will say no more about it.” With that, the path being a little wider, she came to his side again, and looked up in his face with the most innocent friendliness and forgiveness in hers.
Jerome could have gone down at her feet and worshipped her.
“What a beautiful night it is!” said Lucina, tilting her face up towards the stars.
“Beautiful!” said Jerome, looking at her, breathlessly.
“I never saw the stars so thick,” said she, musingly. “Everybody has his own star, you know. I wonder which my star is, and yours. Did you ever think of it?”
“I guess my star isn't there,” said Jerome.
“Why, yes,” cried Lucina, earnestly, “it must be!”
“No, it isn't there,” repeated Jerome, with a soft emphasis on the last word.
Lucina looked up at him, then her eyes fell before his. She laughed confusedly. “Did you know what I came to your house to-night for?” said she, trying to speak unconsciously.
“To see Elmira?”
“No, to give both of you an invitation to tea at Aunt Camilla's to-morrow afternoon at five o'clock.”
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Jerome, “but—”
“You cannot come?”
“No, I am afraid not.”
“The tea is to be in the arbor in the garden, the way it was that other time, when we were both children; there is to be plum-cake and the best pink cups. Nobody is asked but you and your sister and Lawrence Prescott,” said Lucina, but with no insistence in her voice. Her gentle pride was up.
“I am very much obliged, but I am afraid I can't come,” Jerome said, pleadingly.
Lucina did not say another word.
Jerome glanced down at her, and her fair face, between the folds of her white shawl, had a look which smote his heart, so full it was of maiden dignity and yet of the surprise of pain.
A new consideration came to Jerome. “Why should I stay away from her, refuse all her little invitations, and treat her so?” he thought. “What if I do get to wanting her more, and get hurt, if it pleases her? There is no danger for her; she does not care about me, and will not. The suffering will all be on my side. I guess I can bear it; if it pleases her to have me come I will do it. I have been thinking only of myself, and what is a hurt to myself in comparison with a little pleasure for her? She has asked me to this tea-party, and here I am hurting her by refusing, because I am so afraid of getting hurt myself!”
Suddenly Jerome looked at Lucina, with a patient and tender smile that her father might have worn for her. “I shall be very happy to come,” said he.
“Not unless you can make it perfectly convenient,” Lucina replied, with cold sweetness; “I would rather not urge you.”
“It will be perfectly convenient,” said Jerome. “I thought at first I ought not to go, that was all.”
“Of course, Aunt Camilla and I will be very happy to have you come, if you can,” said Lucina. Still, she was not appeased. Jerome's hesitating acceptance of this last invitation had hurt her more than all that had gone before. She began to wish, with a great pang of shame, that she had not gone to his house that night, had not tried to see him, had not proposed this miserable party. Perhaps he did mean to slight her, after all, though nobody ever had before, and how she had followed him up!
She walked on very fast; they were nearly home. When they reached her gate, she said good-night, quickly, and would have gone in without another word, but Jerome stopped her. He had begun to understand her understanding of it all, and had taken a sudden resolution. “Better anything than she should think herself shamed and slighted,” he told himself.
“Will you wait just a minute?” he said; “I've got something I want to say.”
Lucina waited, her face averted.
“I've made up my mind to tell you why I thought I ought not to come, that Sunday night,” said Jerome; “I didn't think of telling you, but I can see now that you may think I meant to slight you, if I don't. I did not think at first that you could dream I could slight anybody like you, and not want to go to see you, but I begin to see that you don't just know how every one looks at you.”
“I thought I ought not to come, because all of a sudden I found out that I was—what they call in love with you.”
Lucina stood perfectly still, her face turned away.
“I hope you are not offended,” said Jerome; “I knew, of course, that there is no question of—your liking me. I would not want you to. I am not telling you for that, but only that you may not feel hurt because I slighted your invitation the other night, and because I thought at first I could not accept this. But I was foolish about it, I guess. If you would like to have me come, that is enough.”
“You have not known me long enough to like me,” said Lucina, in a very small, sweet voice, still keeping her face averted.
“I guess time don't count much in anything like this,” said Jerome.
“Well,” said Lucina, with a soft, long breath, “I cannot see why your liking me should hinder you from coming.”
“I guess you're right; it shouldn't if you want me to come.”
“Why did you ever think it should?” Lucina flashed her blue eyes around at him a second, then looked away again.
“I was afraid if—I saw you too often I should want to marry you so much that I would want nothing else, not even to help other people,” said Jerome.
“Why need you think about marrying? Can't you come to see me like a friend? Can't we be happy so?” asked Lucina, with a kind of wistful petulance.
“I needn't think about it, and we can—”
“I don't want to think about marrying yet,” said Lucina; “I don't know as I shall ever marry. I don't see why you should think so much about that.”
“I don't,” said Jerome; “I shall never marry.”
“You will, some time,” Lucina said, softly.
“No; I never shall.”
Lucina turned. “I must go in,” said she.
Her hand and Jerome's found each other, with seemingly no volition of their own. “I am glad you didn't come because you didn't like me,” Lucina said, softly; “and we can be friends and no need of thinking of that other.”
“Yes,” Jerome said, all of a tremble under her touch; “and—you won't feel offended because I told you?”
“No, only I can't see why you stayed away for that.”
Chapter XXVIII
The next afternoon Jerome went to Miss Camilla's tea-party. Sitting in the arbor, whose interior was all tremulous and vibrant with green lights and shadows, as with a shifting water-play, sipping tea from delicate china, eating custards and the delectable plum-cake, he tasted again one of the few sweet savors of his childhood.
Jerome, in the arbor with three happy young people, taking for the first time since his childhood a holiday on a work-day, seemed to comprehend the first notes of that great harmony of life which proves by the laws of sequence the last. The premonition of some final blessedness, to survive all renunciation and sacrifice, was upon him. He felt raised above the earth with happiness. Jerome seemed like another person to his companions. The wine of youth and certainty of joy stirred all the light within him to brilliancy. He had naturally a quicker, readier tongue than Lawrence Prescott, now he gave it rein.
He could command himself, when he chose and did not consider that it savored of affectation, to a grace of courtesy beyond all provincial tradition. In his manners he was not one whit behind even Lawrence Prescott, with his college and city training, and in face and form and bearing he was much his superior. Lawrence regarded him with growing respect and admiration, Elmira with wonder.
As for Miss Camilla, she felt as if tripping over her own inaccuracy of recollection of him. “I never saw such a change in any one, my dear,” she told Lucina the next day. “I could scarcely believe he was the little boy who used to weed my garden, and with so few advantages as he has had it is really remarkable.”
“Father says so, too,” remarked Lucina, looking steadily at her embroidery.
Miss Camilla gazed at her reflectively. She had a mild but active imagination, which had never been dispelled by experience, for romance and hearts transfixed with darts of love. “I hope he will never be so unfortunate as to place his affections where they cannot be reciprocated, since he is in such poor circumstances that he cannot marry,” she sighed, so gently that one could scarcely suspect her of any hidden meaning.
“I do not think,” said Lucina, still with steadfast eyes upon her embroidery, “that a woman should consider poverty if she loves.” Then her cheeks glowed crimson through her drooping curls, and Miss Camilla also blushed; still she attributed her niece's tender agitation to her avowal of general principles. She did not once consider any danger to Lucina from Jerome; but she had seen, on the day before, the young man's eyes linger upon the girl's lovely face, and had immediately, with the craft of a female, however gentle, for such matters, reached half-pleasant, half-melancholy conclusions.
It was gratifying and entirely fitting that her beautiful Lucina should have a heart-broken lover at her feet; still, it was sad, very sad, for the poor lover. “When the affections are enlisted, one should not hesitate to share poverty as well as wealth,” she admitted, with a little conscious tremor of delicacy at such pronounced views.
“I do not think Jerome himself wants to be married,” said Lucina, quickly.
Miss Camilla sighed. She remembered again the young man's fervent eyes. “I hope he does not, my dear,” she said.
“I do not intend to marry either. I am never going to be married at all,” said Lucina, with a seeming irrelevance which caused Camilla to make mild eyes of surprise and wonder sadly, after her niece had gone home, if it were possible that the dear child had, thus early, been crossed in love.
Lucina, ever since Jerome's confession of love, had experienced a curious revulsion from her maiden dreams. She had such instinctive docility of character that she was at times amenable to influences entirely beyond her own knowledge. Not understanding in the least Jerome's attitude of renunciation, she accepted it for herself also. She no longer builded bridal air-castles. She still embroidered her chair-covers, thinking that they would look very pretty in the north parlor, and some of the old chairs could be moved to the garret to make room for them. She gazed at her aunt Camilla with a peaceful eye of prophecy. Just so would she herself look years hence. Her hair would part sparsely to the wind, like hers, and show here and there silver instead of golden lustres. There would be a soft rosetted cap of lace to hide the thinnest places, and her cheeks, like her aunt's, would crumple and wrinkle as softly as old rose leaves, and, like her aunt, in this guise she would walk her path of life alone.
Lucina seemed to see, as through a long, converging tunnel of years, her solitary self, miniatured clearly in the distance, gliding on, like Camilla, with that sweet calm of motion of one who has left the glow of joy behind, but feels her path trend on peace.
“I dare say it may be just as well not to marry, after all,” reasoned Lucina, “a great many people are not married. Aunt Camilla seems very happy, happier than many married women whom I have seen. She has nothing to disturb her. I shall be happy in the way she is. When I am such an old maid that my father and mother will have died, because they were too old to live longer, I will leave this house, because I could not bear to stay here with them away, and go to Aunt Camilla's. She will be dead, too, by that time, and her house will be mine. Then I, in my cap and spectacles, will sit afternoons in the summer-house, and—perhaps—he—he will be older than I then, and white-haired, and maybe stooping and walking with a cane—perhaps—he will come often, and sit with me there, and we will remember everything together.”
In all her forecasts for a single life, Lucina could not quite eliminate her lover, though she could her husband. She and Jerome were always to be friends, of course, and he was to come and see her. Lucina, when once Jerome had begun to visit her, never contemplated the possibility of his ever ceasing to do so. He did not come regularly—the wisdom of that was tacitly understood between them; since there was to be no marriage, there could necessarily be no courtship. There was never any sitting up together in the north parlor, after the fashion of village lovers. Jerome merely spent an hour or two in the sitting-room with the Squire and his wife and Lucina. Sometimes he and the Squire talked politics and town affairs while Lucina and her mother sewed. Sometimes the four played whist, or bezique, for in those days Jerome was learning to take a hand at cards, but he had always Mrs. Merritt for his partner, and the Squire Lucina. Indeed, Lucina would have considered herself highly false and treacherous had she manifested an inclination to be the partner of any other than her father. Sometimes the Squire sat smoking and dozing, and sometimes he was away, and in those cases Mrs. Merritt sewed, and Jerome and Lucina played checkers.
It tried Jerome sorely to capture Lucina's men and bar her out from the king-row, and she sometimes chid him for careless playing.
Sometimes, after Jerome was gone and Lucina in bed, Abigail Merritt, who had always a kind but furtively keen eye upon the two young people, talked a little anxiously to the Squire. “I know that he does not come regularly and he sees us all, but—I don't know that it is wise for us to let them be thrown so much together,” she would say, with a nervous frown on her little dark face.
The Squire's forehead wrinkled with laughter, but he was finishing his pipe before going to bed, and would not remove it. He rolled humorously inquiring eyes through the cloud of smoke, and his wife answered as if to a spoken question. “I know Jerome Edwards doesn't seem like other young men, but he is a young man, after all, and, if we shouldn't say it, I am afraid somebody will get hurt. We both know what Lucina is—”
“You don't mean to say you're afraid Lucina will get hurt,” spluttered the Squire, quickly.
“It isn't likely that a girl like Lucina could get hurt herself,” cried Abigail, with a fine blush of pride.
“I suppose you're right,” assented the Squire, with a chuckle. “I suppose there's not a young fool in the country but would think himself lucky for a chance to tie the jade's shoestring. I guess there'll be no hanging back of dancers whenever she takes a notion to pipe, eh?”
“She has not taken a notion to pipe, and I doubt if she will at present,” said Abigail, with a little bridle of feminine delicacy, “and—he is a good young man, though, of course, it would scarcely be advisable if she did fancy him, but she does not. Lucina has never concealed anything from me since she was born, and I know—”
“Then it's the boy you're worrying about?”
Abigail nodded. “He's a good young man, and he has had a hard struggle. I don't want his peace of mind disturbed through any means of ours,” said she.
The Squire got up, shook the ashes out of his pipe, and laid it with tender care on the shelf. Then he put his great hands one upon each of his wife's little shoulders, and looked down at her. Abigail Merritt had a habit of mind which corresponded to that of her body. She could twist and turn, with the fine adroitness of a fox, round sudden, sharp corners of difficulty, when her husband might go far on the wrong road through drowsy inertia of motion; but, after all, he had sometimes a clearer view than she of ultimate ends, past the petty wayside advantages of these skilful doublings and turnings.
She could deal with details with little taper-finger touches of nicety, but she could not judge as well as he of generalities and the final scope of combinations. It was doubtful if Abigail ever fairly appreciated her own punch.
“Abigail,” said the Squire, looking down at her, his great bearded face all slyly quirked with humor—“Abigail, look here. There are a good many things that you and I can do, and a few that we can't do. I can fish and shoot and ride with any man in the county, and bluster folks into doing what I want them to mostly, if I keep my temper; and as for you—you know what you can do in the way of fine stitching, and punch-making, and house-keeping, and you and I together have got the best, and the handsomest, and the most blessed”—the Squire's voice broke—“daughter in the county, by the Lord Harry we have. I can shoot any man who looks askance at her, I can lie down in the mud for her to walk over to keep her little shoes dry, and you can fix her pretty gowns and keep her curls smooth, and watch her lest she breathe too fast or too slow of a night, but there we've got to stop. You can't make the posies in your garden any color you have a mind, my girl, and I can't change the spots on the trout I land. We can't, either of us, make a sunset, or a rainbow, or stop a thunder-storm, or raise an east wind. There are things we run up blind against, and I reckon this is one of 'em. It's got to come out the way it will, and you and I can't hinder it, Abigail.”
“We can hinder that poor boy from having his heart broken.”
The Squire whistled. “Lock the stable-door after the colt is stolen, eh?”
“Eben Merritt, what do you mean?”
“I mean that the boy comes here now an then, not courting the girl, as I take it, at all, and shows so far no signs of anything amiss, and had, in my opinion, best be let alone. Lord, when I was his age, if a girl like Lucina had been in the question, and anybody had tried to rein me up short, I'd have kicked over the breeches entirely. I'd have either got her or blown my brains out. That boy can take care of himself, anyhow. He'll stop coming here of his own accord, if he thinks he'd better.”
Abigail sniffed scornfully with her thin nostrils.
“Wait and see,” said the Squire.
“I shall wait a long time before I see,” she said, but she was mistaken. The very next week Jerome did not come, then a month went by and he had not appeared once at the Squire's house.
Chapter XXIX
One Sunday afternoon, during the latter part of July, Lucina Merritt strolled down the road to her aunt Camilla's. The day was very warm—droning huskily with insects, and stirring lazily with limp leaves.
There had been no rain for a long time, and the road smoked high with white dust at every foot-fall. Lucina raised her green and white muslin skirts above her embroidered petticoat, and set her little feet as lightly as a bird's. She carried a ruffled green silk parasol to shield herself from the sun, though her hat had a wide brim and flapped low over her eyes.
Her mother had remonstrated with her for going out in the heat, since she had not looked quite well of late. “You will make your head ache,” said she.
“It is so cool in Aunt Camilla's north room,” pleaded Lucina, and had her way.
She walked slowly, as her mother had enjoined, but it was like walking between a double fire of arrows from the blazing white sky and earth; when she came in sight of her aunt Camilla's house her head was dizzy and her veins were throbbing.
Lucina had not been happy during the last few weeks, and sometimes, in such cases, physical discomfort acts like a tonic poison. For the latter part of the way she thought of nothing but reaching the shelter of Camilla's north room; her mind regarding all else was at rest.
Miss Camilla's house was closed as tightly as a convent; not a breath of out-door air would she have admitted after the early mornings of those hot days. Lucina entered into night and coolness in comparison with the glare of day outside. When she had her hat removed, and sat in the green gloom of the north parlor, sipping a glass of water which Liza had drawn from the lowest depths of the well, then flavored with currant-jelly and loaf-sugar, she felt almost at peace with her own worries.
Her aunt Camilla, clad in dimly flowing old muslin, sat near the chimney-place, swaying a feather fan. She had her Bible on her knees, but she had not been reading; the light was too dim for her eyes. The fireplace was filled with the feathery green of asparagus, which also waved lightly over the gilded looking-glass, and was reflected airily therein. Asparagus plumes waved over all the old pictures also. The whole room from this delicate garnishing, the faded green tone of the furniture covers and carpet, from the wall-paper in obscure arabesques of green and satiny white, appeared full of woodland shadows. Miss Camilla, swaying her feather fan, served to set these shadows slowly eddying with a motion of repose. She had dozed in her chair, and her mind had lapsed into peaceful dreams before her niece arrived. Now she sat beaming gently at her. “Do you feel refreshed, dear?” she asked, when Lucina had finished her tumbler of currant-jelly water.
“Yes, thank you, Aunt Camilla.”
“I fear you were not strong enough to venture out in such heat, glad as I am to see you, dear. Had you not better let 'Liza bring you a pillow, and then you can lie down on the sofa and perhaps have a little nap?”
“No, thank you, Aunt Camilla, I am not sleepy. I am quite well. I am going to sit by the window and read.”
With that Lucina rose, got a book bound in red and gold from the stately mahogany table, and seated herself by the one window whose shutters were not tightly closed. It was a north window, and only one leaf of the upper half of the shutter was open. The aperture disclosed, instead of burning sky, a thick screen of horse-chestnut boughs. The great fan-like leaves almost touched the window-glass, and tinted all the dim parallelogram of light.
Even Lucina's golden head and fair face acquired somewhat of this prevailing tone of green, being transposed into another key of color. All her golden lights, and her roses, were lost in a delicate green pallor, which might have beseemed a sea-nymph. Her aunt, sitting aloof in that same green shaft of day filtered through horse-chestnut leaves, and also changed thereby, kept glancing at her uneasily. She knew that her brother and his wife had been anxious lately about Lucina. She ventured a few more gently solicitous remarks, which Lucina met sweetly, still with a little impatience of weariness, scarcely lifting her face from her book; then she ventured no more.
“The child does not like to have us so anxious over her,” she thought, with that unfailing courtesy and consideration which would spare others though she torment herself thereby. She longed exceedingly to offer Lucina a wineglass of a home-brewed cordial, compounded from the rich juice of the blackberry, the finest of French brandy, and sundry spices, which was her panacea, but she abstained, lest it disturb her. Miss Camilla set a greater value upon peace of mind than upon aught else.
Lucina bent her face over her book, and turned the leaves quickly, as if she were reading with absorption. Presently Miss Camilla thought she looked better. The soft lapping as of waves, of the Sabbath calm, began again to oversteal her body and spirit. Visions of her peaceful past seemed to confuse themselves with the present. “You—must stay to tea, and—not—go home until—after sunset, when it is cooler,” she murmured, drowsily, and with a dim conviction that this was a Sabbath of long ago, that Lucina was a little girl in a short frock and pantalettes; then in a few minutes her head drooped limply towards her shoulder, and all her thoughts relaxed into soft slumberous breaths.
When her aunt fell asleep, Lucina looked up, with that quick, startled sense of loneliness which sometimes, in such case, comes to a sensitive consciousness. “Aunt Camilla is asleep,” she thought; she turned to her book again. It was a copy of Mrs. Hemans's poems. Somehow the vivid sentiment of the lines failed to please her, though she, like her young lady friends, had heretofore loved them well. Lucina read the first stanza of “The warrior bowed his crested head” with no thrill of her maiden breast; then she turned to “The Bride of the Greek Isles,” and that was no better.
She arose, tiptoed softly over to the table, and examined the other books thereon. There were volumes of the early English poets, an album, and A Souvenir of Friendship, in red and gold, like the Hemans. She opened the souvenir, and looked idly at the small, exquisitely fine steel engravings, the alliterative verses, the tales of sentiment beginning with long preambles couched in choicest English. She shut the book with a little weary sigh, and looked irresolutely at her sleeping aunt, then at the chair by the north window.
Lucina felt none of the languor which is sometimes caused by extreme heat. Instead, there was a fierce electric tension through all her nerves. She was weary almost to death, the cool of this dark room was unutterably grateful to her, yet she could not remain quiet. She had left her parasol and hat on the hall-table. She stole out softly, with scarcely the faintest rustle of skirts, tied on her hat, took her parasol, and went through the house to the back-garden door.
Looking back, she saw the old servant-woman's broadly interrogatory face in a vine-wreathed kitchen-window. “I am going out in the garden a little while, 'Liza,” said Lucina.
The garden was down-crushed, its extreme of sweetness pressed out beneath the torrid sunbeams as under flaming hoofs. Lucina passed between the wilting ranks and flattened beds of flowers, and the breath of them in her face was like the rankest sweetness of love, when its delicacy, even for itself, is all gone. The pungent odor of box was like a shameless call from the street. Lucina went into the summer-house and sat down. It was stifling, and the desperate sweetnesses of the garden seemed to have collected there, as in a nest.
Lucina, after a minute, sprang up, her face was a deep pink, she had a gentle distracted frown on her sweet forehead, her lips were pouting; she did not look in the least like the Lucina of the early spring.
She went out of the summer-house, and down the garden paths, and then over a stone wall, into the rear field, which bounded it. This field had been mowed not long before, and the stubble was pink and gold in the afternoon light.
The field was broad, and skirted on the west by a thick wood. Lucina, holding her green parasol, crossed the field to the wood. The stubble was hot to her feet, white butterflies flew in her face, rusty-winged things hurled themselves in her path, like shrill completions from some mill of insect life.
All along the wood there was a border of shadow. Lucina kept close to the trees, and so down the field. A faint, cool dampness stole out from the depths of the wood and tempered the heat for the width of its shade. Lucina put down her parasol; she was walking quite steadily, as if with a purpose.
The wood extended the length of many fields, running parallel with the main village street, behind the houses. Lucina, passing the Prescott house from the rear, instead of the front, seeing the unpainted walls and roof-slopes of barn and wood-sheds, and the garden, had a curious sense of retroversion in material things which suited well her mind. She felt that day as if she were turned backward to her own self.
The fields were divided from one another by stone walls. Lucina crossed these, and kept on until she reached a field some distance beyond Doctor Prescott's house. Then she left the shadow of the wood, and crossed the field to the main road. In crossing this she kept close to the wall, slinking along rapidly, for she felt guilty; this field was all waving with brown heads of millet which should not have been trampled.
She got to the road and nobody had seen her. She crossed it, entered a rutty cart-path, and was in the Edwards' woodland.
For the first time in her life, Lucina Merritt was doing something which she acknowledged to herself to be distinctly unmaidenly. She had come to this wood because she had heard Jerome say that he often strolled here of a Sunday afternoon. Her previous little schemes for meeting him had been innocent to her own understanding, but now she had tasted the fruit of knowledge of her own heart.
She felt fairly sick with shame at what she was doing, she blushed to her own thoughts, but she had a helpless impulse as before, some goading spur in her own nature which she could not withstand.
She hurried softly down the cart-path between the trees, then suddenly stood still, for under a great pine-tree on the right lay Jerome. His hat was off, one arm was thrown over his head, his face was flushed with heat and slumber. Lucina, her body bent aloof with an indescribable poise of delicacy and the impulse of flight, yet looked at her sleeping lover until her whole heart seemed to feed itself through her eyes.
Lucina had not seen him for more than six weeks, except by sly glimpses at meeting and on the road. She thought, pitifully, that he had grown thin; she noticed what a sad droop his mouth had at the corners. She pitied, loved, and feared him, with all the trifold power of her feminine heart.
As she looked at him, her remembrance of old days so deepened and intensified that they seemed to close upon the present and the future. Love, even when it has apparently no past, is at once a memory and a revelation. Lucina saw the little lover of her innocent childish dreams asleep there, she saw the poor boy who had gone hungry and barefoot, she saw the young man familiar in the strangeness of the future. And, more than that, Lucina, who had hitherto shown fully to her awakening heart only her thought of Jerome, having never dared to look at him and love him at the same time, now gazed boldly at him asleep, and a sense of a great mystery came over her. In Jerome she seemed to see herself also, the unity of the man and woman in love dawned upon her maiden imagination. She felt as if Jerome's hands were her hands, his breath hers. “I never knew he looked like me before,” she thought with awe.
Then suddenly Jerome, with no stir of awaking, opened his eyes and looked at her. Often, on arousing from a deep sleep, one has a sense of calm and wonderless observation as of a new birth. Jerome looked for a moment at Lucina with no surprise. In a new world all things may be, and impossibilities become commonplaces.
Then he sprang up, and went close to her. “Is it you?” he said, in a sobbing voice.
Lucina looked at him piteously. She wanted to run away, but her limbs trembled, her little hands twitched in the folds of her muslin skirt. Jerome saw her trembling, and a soft pink suffusing her fair face, even her sweet throat and her arms, under her thin sleeves. He knew, with a sudden leap of tenderness, which would have its way in spite of himself, why she was there. She had wanted to see him so, the dear child, the fair, wonderful lady, that she had come through the heat of this burning afternoon, stealing away alone from all her friends, and even from her own decorous self, for his sake. He pointed to the clear space under the pine where he had been lying. “Shall we sit down there—a minute?” he stammered.
“I—think I—had better go,” said Lucina, faintly, with the quick impulse of maidenhood to flee from that which it has sought.
“Only a few minutes—I have something to tell you.”
They sat down, Lucina with her back against the pine-tree, Jerome at her side. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead it widened into a vacuous smile. He looked at Lucina and she at him, then he came closer to her and took her in his arms.
Neither of them spoke. Lucina hid her face on his breast, and he held her so, looking out over her fair head at the wood. His mouth was shut hard, his eyes were full of fierce intent of combat, as if he expected some enemy forth from the trees to tear his love from him. For the first time in his life he realized the full might of his own natural self. He felt as if he could trample upon the needs of the whole world, and the light of his own soul; to gain this first sweet of existence, whose fragrance was in his face.
The strongest realization of his nature hitherto, that of the outreaching wants of others, weakened. He was filled with the insensate greed of creation for himself. He held Lucina closer, and bent his head down over hers. Then she turned her face a little, and their lips met.
Lucina had never since her childhood kissed any man but her father, and as for Jerome, he had held such things with a shame of scorn. This meant much to both of them, and the shock of such deep meaning caused them to start apart, as if with fear of each other. Lucina raised her head, and even pushed Jerome away, gently, and he loosened his hold and stood up before her, all pale and trembling.
“You must forgive me—I—forgot myself,” he said, with quick gasps for breath, “I won't—sit—down there again.” Then he went on, speaking fast: “I have been—wanting to tell you, but there was no chance. I could not come to see you any longer. I could not. I thought a man could go to see a woman when he was in love with her, and could bear it when the love was all on his side, and there was no—chance of marriage. I thought I could bear it if it pleased you, but—I didn't know it would be like this. I was never in love, and I did not know. I could think of nothing but wanting you. It was spoiling me for everything else, and there are other things in the world besides this. If I came much longer I should not be fit to come. I could not come any longer.” Jerome looked down at Lucina, with an air of stern, yet wistful, argument. She sat before him with downcast, pale, and sober face, then she rose, and all her girlish irresolution and shame dropped from her, and left for a moment the woman in her unveiled.
“I love you as much as you love me,” she said, simply.
Jerome looked at her. “You—don't mean—that?”
“Yes, I suppose I did when you told me first, but I did not know it then. Now I know it. I have been very unhappy because I feared you might be staying away because you thought I did not love you, but I dared not try to see you as I did before, because I had found myself out. To-day I could not help it, whatever you might think of me, or whatever I might think of myself. I could not bear to worry any longer, lest you might be unhappy because you thought I did not love you. I do, and you need not stay away any more for that.”
“Lucina—you don't mean—”
“Do you think I would have let you—do as you did a minute ago, if I had not?” said she, and a blush spread over her face and neck.
“I—thought—it was all—me—that—you—did not—”
“No, I let you,” whispered Lucina.
“Oh, you don't mean that you—like me this same way that I do you—enough to marry me! You don't mean that?”
“Yes, I do,” replied Lucina; she looked up at him with a curious solemn steadfastness. She was not blushing any more.
“I—never thought of this,” Jerome said, drawing a long, sobbing breath. He stood looking at her, his face all white and working. “Lucina,” he began, then paused, for he could not speak. He walked a little way down the path, then came back. “Lucina,” he said, brokenly, “as God is my witness—I never thought of this—I never—thought that you—could— Oh, look at yourself, and look at me! You know that I could not have thought—oh, look at yourself, there was never anybody like you! I did not think that you could—care for or—be hurt by—me.”
“I have never seen anybody like you, not even father,” Lucina said. She looked at him with the shrinking yet loving faithfulness of a child before emotion which it cannot comprehend. She could not understand why, if Jerome loved her and she him, there was anything to be distressed about. She could not imagine why he was so pale and agitated, why he did not take her in his arms and kiss her again, why they could not both be happy at once.