When Miss Castle told her that Mr. Crawford was a guest at the club, Miss Garcide wept over her for an hour.
“I feel like weeping, too,” said Miss Castle, tremulously— “but not over myself.”
“Dot over hib?” inquired Miss Garcide.
“Yes, over him. He ought to marry a girl who could fall in love with him.”
Meanwhile Crawford was dining every evening with her at the great club table, telling her of the day’s sport, and how a black bear had come splashing across the shallows within a few rods of where he stood fishing, and how the deer had increased, and were even nibbling the succulent green stalks in the kitchen garden after nightfall.
During the day she found herself looking forward to his return and his jolly, spirited stories, always gay and humorous, and never tiresome, technical, nor conceited, although for three years he had held the club cup for the best fish taken on Sagamore water.
She took sun-baths in her hammock; she read novels; she spent hours in reverie, blue eyes skyward, arms under her head, swayed in her hammock by the delicious winds of a perfect June.
All her composure and common-sense had returned. She began to experience a certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford — a feeling almost maternal.
“He’s so amusingly shy about speaking,” she told Miss Garcide; “I suppose he’s anxious and bashful. I think I’ll tell him that it is all arranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don’t see why I don’t; I’m not a bit embarrassed.”
But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle had not taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover.
“Oh, this is simply dreadful,” she argued with herself. “Besides, I want to know how soon the man expects to marry me. I’ve a few things to purchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together in a day, he’s a — a man!”
That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide as scrupulously as she kept all her promises.
She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear and overcome it.
“I’m going to walk down to the little foot-bridge,” she said, steadily, examining the coffee in her tiny cup; “and if you will stroll down with your pipe, I … I will tell you something.”
“That will be very jolly,” he said. “There’s a full moon; I mean to have a try at a thumping big fish in the pool above.”
She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door.
Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank.
This is what he wrote:
“James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N.Y.:
“I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return?
“James H. Crawford.”
The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking and thinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that he should miss very, very soon.
Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the little foot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn.
A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face. She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodland rivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon, and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wings of moths.
“Surely,” she said, aloud— “surely there is something in the world besides men. I love this — all of it! I do indeed. I could find happiness here; I do not think I was made for men.”
For a long while she stood, bending down towards the water, her whole body saturated with the perfume from the fringed milkweed. Then she raised her delicate nose a trifle, sniffing at the air, which suddenly became faintly spiced with tobacco smoke.
Where did the smoke come from? She turned instinctively. On a rock up-stream stood young Crawford, smoking peacefully, and casting a white fly into the dusky water. Swish! the silk line whistled out into the dusk.
After a few moments’ casting, she saw him step ashore and saunter towards the bridge, where she was standing; then his step jarred the structure and he came up, cap in one hand, rod in the other.
“I thought perhaps you might like to try a cast,” he said, pleasantly. “There’s a good-sized fish in the pool above; I raised him twice. He’ll scale close to five pounds, I fancy.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Castle; “that is very generous of you, because you are deliberately sacrificing the club loving-cup if I catch that fish.”
He said, laughing: “I’ve held the cup before. Try it, Miss Castle; that is a five-pound fish, and the record this spring is four and a half.”
She took the rod; he went first and she held out her hand so that he could steady her across the stones and out into the dusk.
“My skirts are soaked with the dew, anyway,” she said. “I don’t mind a wetting.”
He unslung his landing-net and waited ready; she sent the line whirling into the darkness.
“To the right,” he said.
For ten minutes she stood there casting in silence. Once a splash in the shadows set his nerves quivering, but it was only a muskrat.
“By-the-way,” she said, quietly, over her shoulder, “I know why you and I have met here.”
And as Crawford said nothing she reeled in her line, and held out her hand to him as a signal that she wished to come ashore.
He aided her, taking the rod and guiding her carefully across the dusky stepping-stones to the bank.
She shook out her damp skirts, then raised her face, which had grown a trifle pale.
“I will marry you, Mr. Crawford,” she said, bravely,— “and I hope you will make me love you. Mr. Garcide wishes it.… I understand … that you wish it. You must not feel embarrassed, … nor let me feel embarrassed. Come and talk it over. Shall we?”
There was a rustic seat on the river-bank; she sat down in one corner.
His face was in shadow; he had dropped his rod and landing-net abruptly. And now he took an uncertain step towards her and sat down at her side.
“I want you to make me love you,” she said, frankly; “I hope you will; I shall do all I can to help you. But — unless I do — will you remember that? — I do not love you.” As he was silent, she went on: “Take me as a comrade; I will go where you wish. I am really a good comrade; I can do what men do. You shall see! It will be pleasant, I think.”
After a little while he spoke in a low voice which was not perfectly steady: “Miss Castle, I am going to tell you something which you must know. I do not believe that Mr. Garcide has authorized me to offer myself to you.”
“He told me that he desired it,” she said. “That is why he brought us together. And he also said,” she added, hastily, “that you were somewhat bashful. So I thought it best to make it easy for us both. I hope I have.”
Crawford sat motionless for a long while. At last he passed his hands over his eyes, leaning forward and looking into her face.
“I’ve simply got to be honest with you,” he said; “I know there is a mistake.”
“No, there is no mistake,” she said, bending her head and looking him in the eyes— “unless you have made the mistake — unless,” she said, quickly— “you do not want me.”
“Want you!” he stammered, catching fire of a sudden— “want you, you beautiful child! I love you if ever man loved on earth! Want you?” His hand fell heavily on hers, and closed. For an instant their palms lay close together; her heart almost stopped; then a swift flame flew to her face and she struggled to withdraw her fingers twisted in his.
“You must not do that,” she said, breathlessly. “I do not love you — I warned you!”
He said: “You must love me! Can’t you understand? You made me love you — you made me! Listen to me — it is all a mistake — but it is too late now. I did not dare even think of you — I have simply got to tell you the truth — I
did not dare think of you — I must say it — and I can’t understand how I could ever have seen you and not loved you. But when you spoke — when I touched you—”
“Please, please,” she said, faintly, “let me go! It is not a mistake; I — I am glad that you love me; I will try to love you. I want to — I believe I can—”
“You must!”
“Yes, … I will.… Please let me go!”
Breathless and crimson, she fell back into her corner, staring at him. He dropped his arm on the back of the rustic seat.
Presently he laughed uncertainly, and struck his forehead with his open hand.
“It’s a mistake,” he said; “and if it is a mistake, Heaven help the other man!”
She watched him with curious dismay. Never could she have believed that the touch of a man’s hand could thrill her; never had she imagined that the words of a man could set her heart leaping to meet his stammered vows. A new shame set her very limbs quaking as she strove to rise. The distress in her eyes, the new fear, the pitiful shyness, called to him for mercy.
For a miracle he understood the mute appeal, and he took her hand in his quietly and bade her good-night, saying he would stay and smoke awhile.
“Good-night,” she said; “I am really tired. I would rather you stayed here. Do you mind?”
“No,” he said.
“Then I shall go back alone.”
He watched her across the lawn. When she had gone half-way, she looked back and saw him standing there in the moonlight.
And that night, as her little silver hand-glass reflected her brilliant cheeks, she veiled her face in her bright hair and knelt down by her bedside.
But all she could say was, “I love him — truly I love him!” which was one kind of prayer, after all.
IV
A deep, sweet happiness awoke her ere the earliest robin chirped. Never since the first pink light touched Eden had such a rosy day dawned for any maid on earth.
She awoke in love; her enchanted eyes unclosed on a world she had never known.
Unashamed, she held out her arms to the waking world and spoke her lover’s name aloud. Then the young blood leaped in her, and her eyes were like stars after a rain.
Oh, she must hasten now, for there was so little time to live in the world, and every second counted. Healthy of body, wholesome of soul, innocent and ardent in her new-born happiness, she could scarcely endure the rush of golden moments lost in an impetuous bath, in twisting up her bright hair, in the quick knotting of a ribbon, the click of a buckle on knee and shoe.
Then, as she slipped down the stairs into the darkened hall, trepidation seized her, for she heard his step.
He came swinging along the hallway; she stood still, trembling. He came up quickly and took her hands; she did not move; his arm encircled her waist; he lifted her head; it lay back on his shoulder, and her eyes met his.
“All day together,” he was saying; and her soul leaped to meet his words, but she could not speak.
He held her at arms’-length, laughing, a little troubled.
“Mystery of mysteries,” he said, under his breath; “there is some blessed Heaven-directed mistake in this. Is there, sweetheart?”
“No,” she said.
“And if there was?”
“Can you ask?”
“Then come to breakfast, heart of my heart! — the moments are flying very swiftly, and there is only this day left — until to-morrow. Listen! I hear the steward moving like a gray rat in the pantry. Can we endure a steward in Eden?”
“Only during breakfast,” she said, laughing. “I smell the wheaten flapjacks, and, oh, I am famished!”
There have been other breakfasts — Barmecide breakfasts compared with their first crust broken in love.
But they ate — oh, indeed, they ate everything before them, from flapjacks to the piles of little, crisp trout. And they might have called for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing, presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford’s heart stopped, and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake.
She, too, suddenly apprehensive, sat rigid, the smile dying out in her eyes; and when he finally took the envelope and tore it open, she shivered.
“Crawford, Sagamore Club:
“Ophir has consolidated with Steel Plank. You take charge of London office. Make arrangements to catch steamer leaving a week from to-morrow. Garcide and I will be at Sagamore to-night. James J. Crawford.”
He sat staring at the telegram; she, vaguely apprehensive for the safety of this new happiness of hers, clasped her hands tightly in her lap and waited.
“Any answer, sir?” asked the steward.
Crawford took the offered telegram blank and mechanically wrote:
“Instructions received. Will expect you and Garcide to-night.
James Crawford.”
She sat, twisting her fingers on her knees, watching him in growing apprehension. The steward took the telegram.
Crawford looked at her with a ghastly smile.
They rose together, instinctively, and walked to the porch.
“Oh yes,” he said, under his breath, “such happiness was too perfect. Magic is magic — it never lasts.”
“What is it?” she asked, faintly.
He picked up his cap, which was lying on a chair.
“Let’s get away, somewhere,” he said. “Do you mind coming with me — alone?”
“No,” she said.
There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle and setting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river, side by side.
Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, they embarked on Sagamore Water.
The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade, the spray floated shoreward.
V
Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water stretched away into the forest’s sombre depths, barred here and there by dusty sunbeams.
Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft swept the yellow gravel.
Knee to knee, vis-à-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation.
“I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow,” she said, looking at him.
The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she would not permit him to touch her.
“See to what you have brought me!” she said. “I’m utterly unable to live without you. And now what are you going to do with me?”
Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid it against his face.
“There is a way,” he said.
“A way?”
“Shall I lead? Would you follow?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, amused.
“There is a way,” he repeated. “That thread of a brook leads to it.”
He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream, scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its mounds of moss.
He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoe swung westward.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.
“If we turned back now,” she said, “it would be sunset before we reached the club.”
“What do we care?” he laughed. “Look!”
Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the sinking sun.
Blue woods belted the distance; a
ll in front of them was deep, moist meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the stream wound in pools of gold.
The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole in drops of fire.
There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered on something that might have been a long reed quivering.
“An old friend fishing yonder,” he said, quietly; “I knew he would be there.” He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. “That is the parson of Foxville,” he said. “We will need him before we go to London.”
She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaning flashed out like a sunbeam.
“Do — do you wish — that — now?” she faltered.
He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.
“No, no!” — she whispered, with bent head— “I cannot; don’t take me so — so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it.”
He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.
“Oh, we are quite mad,” she said, unsteadily.
“I am glad we are,” he said.
The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh in flickering flight.
The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into his pool and swing shoreward.
The parson of Foxville was a very old man — almost too old to fish for trout.
Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.
Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered at her with his aged eyes, saying, “You are quite mad, my child, and very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be much safer if you were married.”
Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.
A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths — that was her fate — with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1125