Part 31 (1/2)
”Yes, Papa.”
A silence fell between them after this. At length Winifred rose and turned down the lights. Then she drew a low stool to the side of her father's chair, and sitting down by his knee began to rub her hand gently up and down over the broadcloth.
”Papa,” she said after a while, ”I haven't been very nice to you; have I?”
”Nonsense, child,--what put such an idea into your head? As if I had had any happiness in all these years since--since your mother died--except through my children!”
”Oh, yes, I know you have found your happiness in taking care of us, but I have found my happiness in being taken care of; and I have enjoyed having my own way and doing the things I liked, and now I would give--oh, so much!--if I had been different.”
”What does this mean?” exclaimed Professor Anstice, anxiously fumbling about Winifred's wrist in the vain effort to find her pulse. ”Are you ill? You have not had a hemorrhage or anything, have you?”
”Don't worry about me, dear! I shall live to plague you for many a year yet. I'm as well as can be, except for the mind ache.” Here she gave a nervous little laugh. The Professor looked down at her, sitting there on the stool, her head drooping to the side as he remembered to have seen it years ago when she was a little chidden child. The waving hair hid her face from his sight,--all but the delicate oval of the cheek and the curve of the full, rounded chin.
”Winifred,” he said gently, ”I think you have something to tell me.”
”Yes, I have, only I don't know how to begin.”
”Is it, perhaps, about Mr. Flint?”
”Yes, about Mr. Flint,” Winifred admitted.
”He has been asking you to marry him?”
”Yes, asking me to marry him,” Winifred repeated, still like a child reciting her catechism.
”And you promised.”
”No, I did not,” Winifred answered with sudden energy; ”I told him I never could, would, or should marry him,--that I would go on being friends with him as long as he liked, but on condition that he gave up the other idea entirely.”
Professor Anstice reached out his thin white scholarly fingers and stroked the rebellious waves of his daughter's hair.
”Winifred,” he said, ”you are always acting on impulse. You never take time to consider anything, but jump and plunge like a broncho. Now let us talk this matter over calmly: I am afraid you have made a mistake--a serious mistake, my dear, though it may not be too late to remedy it.”
”There is nothing to remedy,” said Winifred, with a tremulous attempt at cheerfulness; ”he asked me and I said 'No,' and he said he should never ask me again, and I said I hoped he wouldn't, or something like that, and so the matter ended; and I am always going to live with you and be good to you,--and you won't be sorry for that, will you?”
”I should be very sorry if it came about so. Listen, Winifred. Because you see me a delver in dusty old books, you think perhaps that I don't know what love is; but I tell you as I grow older it comes to fill a larger and larger part of the horizon, to seem perhaps the only reality. I don't mean just the love of a man for a woman, but the great throbbing bond of human affection and sympathy; and of all the kinds of affection, there is none that has the strength and toughness that belong to the love of husband and wife. I wish you to marry, Winifred,--I have always wished it,--only let it be to a true man, my dear,--let it be to a true man!”
”Father, he _is_ a true man,” said Winifred, speaking low and with a timidity wholly new to her.
”I think so,--I earnestly believe it. He seems to me to have more ability, more strength, and more tenderness than he has shown yet.
Some wrong ideas have twisted themselves persistently among the very fibres of his life and warped it; but it is not yet too late to tear them away.”
”Some one else may do it,” said Winifred, in exaggerated discouragement, ”I let the opportunity slip by. He will never ask me again, and as for me--do you think I will ever go to any man with the offer of my love? Not if my heart broke for him!”
”He said he would never ask you again?”
”Yes, Papa; he said it twice.”
”Well, if he said it twice fifty times, it was a lie, or would have been if he had not believed it himself at the time. Never fear but you will have a chance to tell him that you have changed your mind, and without any wound to your pride either.”