Part 21 (1/2)

Mrs. Bays, taking the package from Rita's hand, opened it; and there, nestling in a bed of blue velvet, was a tiny watch, rich with jewels, and far more beautiful than the one Dic had brought from New York.

Encircling the watch were many folds of a ma.s.sive gold chain. Mrs. Bays held the watch up to the light of the firelight, and Dic, with an aching sensation in the region of his heart, saw its richness at a glance. He knew at once that the giver must be a man of wealth; and when Mrs. Bays delightedly threw the gold chain over Rita's head, and placed the watch in her unresisting hand, he remarked that he must be going. Poor, terrified Rita did not hear Dic's words. Receiving no reply, he took his hat from the floor where he had dropped it on entering the room several centuries before, opened the door, and walked out.

All that I have narrated as taking place after Williams entered upon the scene occurred within the s.p.a.ce of two or three minutes, and Rita first learned that Dic was going when she heard the door close.

”Dic!” she cried, and started to follow him, but her mother caught her wrist and said sternly:--

”Stay here, Rita. Don't go to the door.”

”But, mother--”

”Stay here, I command you,” and Rita did not go to the door. Dic met Mr.

Bays at the gate, paused for a word of greeting, and plunged into the snow-covered forest, while the words ”during the last four months” rang in his ears with a din that was almost maddening.

”She might have told me,” he muttered, speaking as if to the storm.

”While I have been thinking of her every moment, she has been listening to him. But her letters were full of love. She surely loved me when I met her two hours ago. No woman could feign love so perfectly. She must love me. I can't believe otherwise. I will see her again to-night and she will explain all, I am sure. There is no deceit in her.” His returning confidence eased, though it did not cure, his pain. It subst.i.tuted another after a little time--suspense. It was not in his nature to brook suspense, and he determined again and again to see Rita that evening.

But his suspense was ended without seeing Rita. When he reached home he found Sukey, blus.h.i.+ng and dimpling, before the fire, talking to his mother.

”Been over to see Rita?” she asked, parting her moist, red lips in a smile, showing a gleam of her little, white teeth, and dimpling exquisitely.

”Yes,” answered Dic, laconically.

”Thought maybe you would stay for supper,” she continued.

”No,” replied Dic.

”Perhaps the other fellow was there,” remarked Sukey, shrugging her plump shoulders and laughing softly. Dic did not reply, but drew a chair to the hearth.

”Guess they're to be married soon,” volunteered Sukey. ”He has been coming Sat.u.r.days and staying over Sunday ever since you left. Guess he waited for you to get out of the way. I think he's so handsome. Met him one Sunday afternoon at the step-off. I went over to see Rita, and her mother said she had gone to take a walk with Mr. Williams in that direction after dinner. I knew they would be at the step-off; it's such a lonely place. He lives in Boston, and they say he's enormously rich.”

During the long pause that followed Dic found himself entirely relieved of suspense. There was certainty to his heart's content. He did not show his pain; and much to her joy Sukey concluded that Dic did not care anything about the relations between Williams and Rita.

”Rita showed me the ring he gave her,” continued Sukey. Dic winced, but controlled himself. It was his ring that Sukey had seen on Rita's finger, but Dic did not know that.

”Some folks envy her,” observed the dimpler, staring in revery at the fire. ”She'll have a fine house, servants, and carriages”--Dic remembered having used those fatal words himself--”and will live in Boston; but for myself--well, I never intend to marry, but if I do I'll take one of the boys around here, or I'll die single. The boys here are plenty good enough for me.”

The big, blue eyes, covered by downcast lashes, were carefully examining a pair of plump, little, brown hands resting in her lap, but after a pause she flashed a hurried glance upon Dic, which he did not see.

When a woman cruelly wounds a man as Rita had wounded Dic, the first remedy that suggests itself to the normal masculine mind is another woman, and the remedy is usually effective. There may not be as good fish in the sea as the one he wants, but good fish there are, in great numbers. Balm of Gilead doubtless has curative qualities; but for a sore, jealous, aching, masculine heart I would every time recommend the fish of the sea.

Sukey, upon Mrs. Bright's invitation, remained for supper, and Dic, of course, was compelled to take her home. Upon arrival at the Yates mansion, Sukey invited Dic to enter. Dic declined. She drew off her mittens and took his hand.

”Why,” she said, ”your hands are like ice; you must come in and warm them. Please do,” so Dic hitched his horse under a straw-covered shed and went in with the remedy. One might have travelled far and wide before finding a more pleasant remedy than Sukey; but Dic's ailments were beyond cure, and Sukey's smiles might as well have been wasted upon her brother snowman in the adjacent field.

Soon after Dic's arrival, all the family, save Sukey, adjourned to the kitchen, leaving the girl and her ”company” to themselves, after the dangerous manner of the times.

If any member of the family should remain in the room where the young lady of the house was entertaining a friend, the visitor would consider himself _persona non grata_, and would come never again. Of course the Bays family had never retired before Dic; but he had always visited Tom, not Rita.

The most unendurable part of Williams's visits to Rita was the fact that they were made to her, and that she was compelled to sit alone with him through the long evenings, talking as best she could to one man and longing for another. When that state of affairs exists, and the woman happens to be a wife, the time soon comes when she sighs for the pleasures of purgatory; yet we all know some poor woman who meets the wrong man every day and gives him herself and her life because G.o.d, in His inscrutable wisdom, has permitted a terrible mistake. To this bondage would Rita's mother sell her.

Dic did not remain long with the tempting little remedy. While his hand was on the latch she detained him with many questions, and danced about him in pretty impatience.