Part 2 (1/2)
”Oh, father'll console himself very well with prayers; and anyway he'll thank G.o.d for sending me to perdition, because if G.o.d does it, it must be all right.”
”Don't, Tom! You know how he suffers at the way you go on. It must be terrible to have an only son, and to see him flinging his life away.”
”It isn't my fault that I'm his son, is it?” he demanded. ”I've been dragged into this infernal life without being asked whether I wanted to come or not; and now I'm here, I can't have what I want, and I'm promised eternal d.a.m.nation hereafter. Well, then, I'll show G.o.d or the Devil, or whoever bosses things, that I can't be bullied into a molly-coddle!”
The sound of wheels interrupted us, and we instinctively began to walk onward in the most commonplace fas.h.i.+on. A farmer's wagon came along, and by the time it had pa.s.sed we had come to the head of the Rim Road, in full sight of the houses. Tom waited until I turned to the right, toward home, and then he said,--
”I'm going the other way. It's no use, Ruth, to talk to me; but I'm obliged to you for caring.”
I cannot see that I did any good, and very likely I have simply made him more on his guard to avoid giving me a chance; but then, even if I had all the chance in the world, what could I say to him? And yet, Tom is so n.o.ble a fellow underneath it all. He is honest and kind, and strong in his way; only between his father's meekness and his mother's sharpness--for she is sharp--he has somehow come to grief. They have tried to make him religious so that he would be good; and he is of the sort that must be good or he will not be religious. He cannot be pressed into a mould of orthodoxy, and so in the end--But it cannot be the end.
Tom must somehow come out of it.
January 13. When George came in to-night I was struck at once with the look of pleasant excitement in his face.
”What pleases you?” I asked him.
”Pleases me?” he echoed, evidently surprised. ”Isn't it a pleasure to see you?”
”But that's not the whole of it,” I said. ”You've something pleasant to tell me. Oh, I can read you like a book, my dear; so it is quite idle trying to keep a secret from me.”
He seemed confused, and I was puzzled to know what was the matter.
”You are too wise entirely,” was his reply. ”I really hadn't anything to tell.”
”Then something good has happened,” I persisted; ”or you have heard good news.”
”What a fanciful girl you are, Ruth,” George returned. ”Nothing has happened.”
He walked away from me, and went to the fire. He was strangely embarra.s.sed, and I could only wonder what I had said to confuse him. I reflected that perhaps he was planning some sort of a surprise, and felt I ought not to pry into his thoughts in this fas.h.i.+on whatever the matter was that interested him. I sat down on the other side of the hearth, and took up some sewing.
”George,” I asked, entirely at random, ”didn't you say that the Miss West you met at Franklin is a cousin of the Watsons?”
I flushed as soon as I had spoken, for I thought how it betrayed me that in my desire to hit on a new subject I had found the thought of her so near the surface of my mind. I had not consciously been thinking of her at all, and certainly I did not connect her with George's strangeness of manner. There was something almost weird, it seems to me now, in my putting such a question just then. Perhaps it was telepathy, for she must have been vividly in his thoughts at that moment. He started, flushed as I have never seen him, and turned quickly toward me.
”What makes you think that it was Miss West?”
”Think what was Miss West?” I cried.
I was completely astonished; then I saw how it was.
”Never mind, George,” I went on, laughing and putting out my hand to him. ”I didn't mean to read your thoughts, and I didn't realize that I was doing it.”
”But what made you”--
”I'm sure I don't know,” I broke in; and I managed to laugh again. ”Only I see now that you know something pleasant about Miss West, and you may as well tell it.”
He looked doubtful a minute, studying my face. The hesitation he had in speaking hurt me.