Part 13 (1/2)
”Thank you. Austin--you and Sally will have to help me shop when I get to New York--Heaven knows what I can wear to travel down in.”
Austin stopped raking, and flung himself down on the gra.s.s beside her.
”Sylvia,” he said quickly, ”I'm awfully sorry, but I can't go.”
”Can't go! Why not?” she exclaimed, with so much disappointment in her voice that he was amazed.
”Father's a selectman now, you know, and away all day just at this time on town business. There's too much farmwork for Thomas and Peter to manage alone. I didn't foresee this, of course, when I accepted your uncle's invitation. I can't tell you how much it means to me to give it up, but you must see that I've got to.”
”Yes, I see,” she said gravely, and sat silently for some minutes, fingering the frill on her sleeve. Then she went on: ”Uncle Mat wants me to stay a month or six weeks with him, and I think I ought to, after.
deserting him for so long. When I come back, my own little house will be ready for me, and it will be warm enough for me to move in there, so I think these last few days will be 'good-bye.' Your family has let me stay a year--the happiest year of all my life--and I know your mother loves me--almost as much as I love her--and hates to have me go. But all families are better off by themselves, and in one way I think I've stayed too long already.”
”You mean Thomas?”
She nodded, her eyes full of tears. ”I ought to have gone before it happened,” she said penitently; ”any woman with a grain of sense can usually see that--that sort of thing coming, and ward it off beforehand.
But I didn't think he was quite so serious, or expect it quite so soon.”
”The young donkey! To annoy you so!”
”_Annoy_ me! Surely you don't think _Thomas_ was thinking of the money?”
”Good Lord, no, it never entered his head! Neither did it enter his head what an unpardonable piece of presumption it was on his part to ask you to marry him. A great, ignorant, overgrown, farmer boy!”
”You are mistaken,” said Sylvia quietly; ”I do not love Thomas, but if I did, the answer would have had to be 'no' just the same. The presumption would be all on my part, if I allowed any clean, wholesome, honest boy, in a moment of pa.s.sion, to throw away his life on a woman like me. Thomas must marry a girl, as fresh as he is himself--not a woman with a past like mine behind her.”
For nearly a year Austin had exercised a good deal of self-control for a man little trained in that valuable quality. At Sylvia's speech it gave way suddenly, and without warning. Entirely forgetting his resolution never to touch her, he leaned forward, seizing her arm, and speaking vehemently.
”I wish you would get rid of your false, gloomy thoughts about yourself as easily as you have got rid of your false, gloomy clothing,” he said, pa.s.sionately. ”The mother and husband who made your life what it was are both where they can never hurt you again. Your character they never did touch, except in the most superficial way. When you told me your story, that night in the woods, you tried to make me think that you did voluntarily--what you did. You lied to me. I thought so then. I know it now. You were flattered and bullied, cajoled and coerced--a girl scarcely older than my sister Edith, whom we consider a child, whose father is distressed to even think of her as marriageable. It is time to stop feeling repentance for sins you never committed, and to look at yourself sanely and happily--if you must be introspective at all. No braver, lovelier, purer woman ever lived, or one more obviously intended to be a wife and mother. The sooner you become both, the better.”
There was a moment of tense silence. Sylvia made no effort to draw away from him; at last she asked, in a voice which was almost pleading in its quality:
”Is that what you think of me?”
Austin dropped his hand. ”Good G.o.d, Sylvia!” he said hoa.r.s.ely; ”don't you know by this time what I think of you?”
”Then you mean--that you want me to marry you?”
”No, no, no!” he cried. ”Why are you so bound to misunderstand and misjudge me? I beg you not to ride by yourself, and you tell me I am 'dictating.' I go for months without hearing from you for fear of annoying you, and you accuse me of 'indifference.' I bring you a gift as a va.s.sal might have done to his liege lady--and you shrink away from me in terror. I try to show you what manner of woman you really are, and you believe that I am displaying the same presumption which I have just condemned in my own brother. Are you so warped and embittered by one experience--a horrible one, but, thank Heaven, quickly and safely over with!--that you cannot believe me when I tell you that the best part of a decent man's love is not pa.s.sion, but reverence? His greatest desire, not possession, but protection? His ultimate aim, not gratification, but sacrifice?”
He bent over her. She was sitting quite motionless, her head bowed, her face hidden in her hands; she was trembling from head to foot. He put his arm around her.
”Don't!” he said, his voice breaking; ”don't, Sylvia. I've been rough and violent--lost my grip on myself--but it's all over now--I give you my word of honor that it is. Please lift your head up, and tell me that you forgive me!” He waited until it seemed as if his very reason would leave him if she did not answer him; then at last she dropped her hands, and raised her head. The moon shone full on her upturned face, and the look that Austin saw there was not one of forgiveness, but of something so much greater that he caught his breath before she moved or spoke to him.
”Are you blind?” she whispered. ”Can't you see how I have felt--since Christmas night, even if you couldn't long before that? Don't you know why I just couldn't go away? But I thought you didn't care for me--that you couldn't possibly have kept away from me so long if you did--that you thought I wasn't good enough--Oh, my dear, my dear--” She laid both hands on his shoulders.
The next instant she was in his arms, his lips against hers, all the sorrow and bitterness of their lives lost forever in the glory of their first kiss.
CHAPTER XII