“To marry or not to marry, at the discretion of the winner. I think that’s fair, don’t you? I shouldn’t like to propose anything serious — the head of Roger Brinsley in a charger, for instance.”
Fanny laughed again.
“Yes, it’s all very well!” she protested. “But of course the one who loses will be in earnest, and the one who wins will not.”
“He may be, by that time,” suggested Lawrence.
“Don’t say ‘he,’ so confidently — I mean to win. Besides, are we starting fair? Of course I don’t care an atom for you, but don’t you care for me — just a little?”
“I!” exclaimed Lawrence. “What an idea!” He laughed quite as naturally as Fanny herself. “Do you think that a man in love would propose such a game as we are talking about?” he asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know what to think,” answered the young girl. “Perhaps I shall know in a day or two.”
She looked down, quite grave again, and pulled a bit of fern from the bank, and crushed it in her hand, and then smelled it.
“Don’t you like sweet fern?” she asked, holding it out to him. “I love it!”
“That’s why you crush it, I suppose,” said Lawrence.
“It doesn’t smell sweet unless you do. Oh — I see! You were beginning to play the game. Very well. Why should we lose time about it? But I wish it were a little better defined. What is it we’re going to do? Won’t you explain? I’m so stupid about these things. Are we going to flirt for a bet?”
“What a speech!”
“Because it’s a plain one? Is that why you object to it? After all, that’s what we said.”
“We only said we’d play,” answered Lawrence. “Whichever ends by caring must agree to marry the winner, if required. But I’m afraid the time is too short,” he added, more gravely. “I’ve only a week more.”
“Only a week!” exclaimed Fanny, in a tone of disappointment. “Why, I thought there was ever so much more. That isn’t nearly time enough.”
“We must play faster — and hope for ‘situations,’ as they call them on the stage.”
“Oh — the situation is bad enough, as it is,” answered the young girl, with a change of manner that surprised her companion. “If you only knew!”
“Was that what you were going to tell me about?” asked Lawrence, quickly, and with renewed interest. “I thought you were making game of me.”
“That’s the trouble! You’ll never believe that I’m in earnest, now. That’s the worst of practical jokes. Come along! We must be going home. The sun’s behind the hill and ever so low, I’m sure. We shan’t get home before dusk. How sweet that fern smells! Give it back to me, won’t you?”
They rose and began to walk homeward in the warm shadow of the woods. As before, Fanny went first along the narrow path, and Lawrence, following close behind her, and watching the supple grace of her as she moved, breathed in also the intoxicating perfume of the aromatic sweet fern which she still carried in her hand.
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE FOLLOWING afternoon Fanny Trehearne announced her intention of riding with Mr. Brinsley.
“I’d take you, too,” she said to Lawrence, with a singularly cold stare. “Only as you can’t ride much, you wouldn’t enjoy it, you know.”
“Certainly not,” answered Lawrence, returning her glance with all coolness. “I shouldn’t enjoy it at all.”
“You might take my cousins out in the boat, instead.”
“Are they tired of life?” enquired the young man, smiling. “No. I want to make a sketch in the woods. I’ll go out by myself, thank you.”
“Do you mean to sketch the place where we stopped yesterday?”
“Oh no — I’m going in quite another direction. I can’t exactly explain where it is, because I’ve such a bad memory for names of roads, and all that. But I can find it.”
Miss Cordelia Miner looked up from the magazine she was reading.
“You’re not going to ride alone with Mr. Brinsley, are you?” she asked suddenly.
“Why not?” asked Fanny. “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. It’s safer than riding alone, isn’t it?”
“I confess, I don’t like the idea,” said Miss Cordelia. “It looks as though there were something.”
“Something of what kind?” Fanny watched Lawrence’s face.
“Something — well — not really an engagement — but—”
“Well — why shouldn’t I be engaged to Mr. Brinsley, if I like?” enquired the young girl, arching her brows.
“Why, Fanny! I’m surprised!” And, indeed, Miss Miner seemed so, for she almost sprang out of her chair.
“I don’t know why you need be horrified, though,” returned Fanny, calmly. “Should you be shocked if any one said that you were engaged to Mr. Brinsley? What’s the matter with him, anyway?” she demanded, dropping into her favourite slang. “You’d be proud to be engaged to him — so would Elizabeth — so would Augusta! Then why shouldn’t I be proud if I can get him? I’m sure, he’s awfully good-looking, and he rides — like an angel.”
“An angel jockey,” suggested Lawrence, without a smile.
“Not at all!” exclaimed Fanny. “He rides like a gentleman and not in the least like a jockey.”
Miss Cordelia had risen from her chair, and turned her back on the young people.
“You’ve no right to say such things to me, Fanny,” she said, going slowly towards the window. Her voice shook.
The young girl saw that she was deeply hurt, and followed her quickly.
“I didn t mean to be horrid!” said Fanny, penitently. “I was only laughing, you know, and of course I shall take Stebbins. And I’ m not engaged to Mr. Brinsley at all.”
“Why didn’t you say so at once?” asked Cordelia, half choking, and turning away her face.
Fanny, unseen by her cousin, glanced at Lawrence, and then at the door, and the young man departed immediately, leaving the two cousins to make peace.
He did not remain long in the house. Thrusting a sketch-book and a pencil into his pocket, with his pipe and pouch, he went out without seeing Fanny again, taking her at her word with regard to her plans for the afternoon. An hour later, he was seated under a tree high upon the side of the hill and almost out of sight of the Otter Cliff road. There was nothing particular in the way of a view from that point, but there were endless trees, and Lawrence amused himself in making a rough study of a mixed group of white pines, firs, and hackmatacks.
He did not draw very carefully, nor even industriously, and more than once he stopped working altogether for a quarter of an hour at a time. His principal object in coming had been to get out of the way just a little more promptly and completely than Fanny could have expected. His thoughts were much more concerned with her than with what he was doing.
Naturally enough, he was trying to understand the real bent of the girl’s feelings. Setting aside the absurd chaff which had formed a good deal of the conversation on the previous afternoon, he tried to extract from it enough of truth to guide him, aiding himself by recalling little circumstances as well as words, for the one had often belied the other.
He saw clearly that Fanny Trehearne might have said to him, ‘I like you, but I do not love you — win me if you can!’ But it was like her to propose to ‘flirt for a bet’ — being at heart perhaps less of a flirt than she laughingly admitted herself to be. But that was not the point which chiefly interested him. What he wished to know was, just how far that undefined liking for him extended. To speak in the common phrase, he did not ‘know where he was’ with her, and it seemed that he had no means of finding out. On the other hand, he knew very well indeed that he himself was badly in love. The symptoms were not to be mistaken, nor had he been in love so often already as to make him sceptical as to what he felt. He was more distrustful of the result than of the impulse.
In his opinion Fanny was much too frank to be a flirt. Her directness was one of her principal charms, though
he could not help suspecting that it must be one of her chief weapons. A little hesitation is often less deceptive than clear-eyed, outspoken truth. But Lawrence was no more able than most men of his age — or, indeed, of any age — to follow out a continuous train of thought where a woman was concerned. It is more often the woman’s personality that concerns us, unreasoning men, than the probable direction of her own reasoning about us. We do not make love to an argument, so to speak, nor to a set of ideas, nor to a preconceived opinion of our merits or demerits. We make love to our own idea of what the woman is — and the depth of our disillusionment is the measure of our sincerity, when love is gasping between the death-blow and the death.
Moreover, what is called nowadays analysis of human nature, belongs in reality to transcendental thought. ‘Transcendent’ is defined as designating that which lies beyond the bounds of all possible experience. So far as we know, it is beyond those bounds to enter into the intelligence of our neighbour, subjectively, to identify ourselves with him and to see and understand the world with his eyes and mind. It follows that we are never sure of what we are doing when we attempt to set down exactly another man’s train of thought, and it follows also that few are willing to recognize the result as at all resembling the process of which they are conscious within themselves. On certain bases, all men can appeal subjectively to all men, and all women to all women. But, as between the sexes, all observation is objective and tentative, whether it be that of the author, condemned to analyze a woman’s character, or that of the man in love and attempting to understand the woman he loves.
And further, if we could see as — it is pretended by some that we can see on paper — precisely what is taking place in the intelligence of those we meet in the world, our friends would be as unrecognizable to us as a dissected man is unrecognizable for a human being except in the eyes of a doctor. The soul, laid bare, dissected, and turned inside out, with real success, would not be recognized by its dearest friend, were it ever so truthful a soul. We are all fundamentally and totally incapable of expressing exactly what we feel, and as we have no means of conveying truth without some sort of expression, we are helpless and are all more or less hopelessly misunderstood — a fact to which, if we please, we may ascribe that variety which is proverbially said to be the charm of life. Doubtless, this is a literary heresy; but it is a human truth a little above literature.
Lawrence had never attempted to write a book, but as he sat on the slope above the Otter Cliff road, drawing trees, it did not occur to him to draw a picture of what he thought about the inside of each tree, instead of a representation of what he saw. But he made the usual fruitless attempt to understand the woman he loved, and to reason about her, and failed to do either, which is also usual. The conclusion he reached was that he loved her, of which he had been aware before he had set himself to think it out.
What he saw was a strong girl’s face with cool, inscrutable grey eyes that never took fire and gleamed, nor ever turned dull and vacant. Their unchanging steadiness contradicted the wayward speech, the sudden capricious confidence, even the gay laugh, sometimes. Lawrence had a lively impression that whatever Fanny said or did, she never meant but one thing, whatever that might be. And with this impression he was obliged to content himself.
From the place where he sat, he had a glimpse between the trees of the road below. On the side towards him there was a little open bit of meadow, where the gorge widened, and a low fence with a little ditch separated it from the highway. On the hillside, above this stretch of grass, the trees grew here and there, wide apart at first, and then by degrees more close together. He himself was seated just within the thick wood, at the edge of the first underbrush.
Now and then, people passed along the road: a light buckboard drawn by a pair of bays and containing a smart-looking couple, with no groom behind; a farmer’s wagon, long, hooded, and dusty, dragged at a disjointed trot by a broken-down grey horse; a solitary rider, whose varnished shoes reflected the sunlight even to where Lawrence was sitting; a couple of pedestrians; a lad driving a cow; and then another buckboard; and so on.
Lawrence was thinking of shutting up his book and climbing higher up the steep side of New port Mountain — as the hill is called — in search of another study, when, glancing down through the trees, he saw three riders coming slowly along the road — two in front, and one at some distance behind — a lady and gentleman and then a groom. His eyes were good, and he would have known Fanny Trehearne’s figure and bearing even at a greater distance. She sat so straight — hands down, elbows in, head high, square in her saddle yet flexible, and all moving with every movement of her Kentucky thoroughbred. They came nearer, and Lawrence saw them distinctly now. Brinsley was beside her. Lawrence laughed to himself at the idea that the man could ever have been in the Marines. He sat the horse he rode much more like a Mexican or an Indian than like a sailor or a marine. Even at that distance Lawrence could not help admiring his really magnificent figure, for Brinsley’s perfections were showy and massed well afar off.
The riders reached the point where the little meadow spread out on their left, and to Lawrence’s surprise, they halted and seemed to be consulting about something. They had turned towards him, and as they talked, he could see that Fanny looked across the meadow and up at the woods where he was sitting. It was of course utterly impossible that she should have known where he was, and it was almost incredible that she should see him, seated low upon the ground
On the Mountain.
in the deep shade, when she was only visible to him between the stems of the trees. Nevertheless, not caring to be discovered, he crouched down amongst the ferns and grasses, still keeping his eye on the couple in the road far below.
Presently he saw Fanny turn her horse’s head, walk her to the other side of the road, and turn again, facing the meadow. She looked up and down the road once, saw that no one was coming, and put her mare at the fence. It was a low one, and the ditch on the outer side was neither broad nor deep. The thoroughbred cleared it with a contemptuously insignificant effort, and cantered a few strides forward into the grass, shaking her bony head almost between her knees as Fanny brought her to a stand and turned again. Brinsley followed her on the big Hungarian horse he rode, — Mr. Trehearne’s horse, — jumping the fence and ditch, and taking them again almost immediately, to wait for Fanny on the other side in the road. She followed again, and pulled up by his side. But they did not ride on at once. They seemed to be discussing some point connected with the place, for they pointed here and there with their hands as they spoke. Fanny reined in her mare and backed a little, as though she were going to jump again. The animal seemed nervous, stamping and pawing, and laying back her small ears.
A hundred yards or more in the direction from which they had come the road made a short bend round the foot of the spur of the hill, known as Pickett’s. Just as Fanny put the mare at the fence a third time, a coach and four turned the corner of the road at a smart pace, leaders cantering and wheelers at a long trot.
Seeing three horses apparently halting in the way, some one in the coach sent a terrific and discordant blast from a post-horn ringing along the road as a warning. At that moment Fanny’s mare was rising at the bars. She cleared them as easily as ever, but on reaching the ground instantly bolted across the grass, head down, ears back, heels flying. It all happened in a moment. The two men, Brinsley and groom, knew too much to scare the thoroughbred by a pursuit, and confident in Fanny’s good riding, sat motionless on their horses in the road, after drawing away enough to let the coach pass.
Meadow on Otter Cliff Road.
The idiot with the horn continued to blow fiercely, and the big vehicle came swinging along at a great rate, with clattering of hoofs, for the road was hard and dry-baked after a recent rain — and with jingling of harness and sound of voices. The mare grew more and more frightened, and tore up the hillside like a flash, directly away from the noise. The young girl was a first-rate rider and knew the fearful d
anger, if she should be carried at such a pace amongst the trees. But her strength, great as it was, for a woman, was not able to produce the slightest impression upon the terrified creature she rode.
Lawrence knew nothing of riding, but the imminent peril of the woman he loved was clear to him in a moment. He had a horrible vision of the wild-eyed mare tearing straight towards him through the trees — wide apart at first, and then dangerously near together.
On they came, the thoroughbred swerving violently at one stem after another — the young girl’s strong figure swaying to her balance at each headlong movement. He could see her set face, pale under the tan, and he could see the desperate exertion of her strength. He sprang forward and ran down between the trees at the top of his speed.
CHAPTER X.
THERE IS NOTHING equal to the absolute fearlessness of a naturally brave man who has no experience of the risk he runs and is bent on saving the life of the woman he loves. Louis Lawrence remembered afterwards what he had done and how he had done it, but he was unconscious of what he was doing at the time.
He rushed down the hill between the closer trees, and with utter recklessness sprang at the bridle as the infuriated mare dashed past him. Grasping snaffle and curb — tight drawn as they were — in both hands, he threw all his light weight upon them and allowed himself to be dragged along the ground between the trees at the imminent risk of his life — a risk so terrible that Fanny Trehearne turned paler for him than for her own danger. In half a dozen more strides they might both have been killed. But the mare stopped, quivering, tried to rear, but could not lift Lawrence far from the ground nor shake off his desperate hold, plunged once and again, and then stood quite still, trembling violently. Lawrence scrambled to his feet, still holding the bridle, and promptly placed himself in front of the mare.
For one breathless instant, Lawrence looked into Fanny’s face, and neither spoke nor moved. Both were still very pale. Then the young girl slipped off, the reins in her hand.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 708