Part 71 (1/2)
She left the window with silent speed, saying, in her heart, ”You needn't! You shan't!”
As March with clouded brow was lifting his hand toward a tortuous bra.s.s knocker the door opened and Barbara, carrying a book and pencil in one hand, while the other held down her hat-brim, tripped across the doorstep.
The cloud vanished. ”Miss Barb--good-morning!”
”O!--Mr.--March.” Her manner so lacked both surprise and pleasure that he colored. He had counted on a sweet Southern handshake, but she kept hold of the hat-brim, let her dry smile of inquiry fade into a formal deference, and took comfort in his disconcertion.
”I was just coming,” he said, ”I--thought you'd let me come back just to say good-by--but I see you're on your way to a recitation--I--”
Her smile was cruel. ”Why, my recitations are not so serious as that,”
she drawled. ”Just to say good-by ought not to con-sti-tute any se-ri-ous de-ten-tion.”
John's heart sank like a stone. Scarcely could he believe his senses.
Yet this was she; that new queen of his ambitions whose heavenly friends.h.i.+p had lifted first love--boy love--from its grave and clad it in the s.h.i.+ning white of humility and abnegation to wors.h.i.+p her sweet dignity, purity, and tenderness, asking for nothing, not even for hope, in return. This was she who at every new encounter had opened to him a higher revelation of woman's worth and loveliness than the world had ever shown him; she to whom he had been writing letters half last night and all this morning, tearing each to bits before he had finished it because he could see no life ahead which an unselfish love could ask her to live, and as he rent the result of each fresh effort hearing the voice of his father saying to him as in childhood days, ”I'd be proud faw you to have the kitt'n, son, but, you know, she wouldn't suit yo'
dear motheh's high-strung natu'e. You couldn't ever be happy with anything that was a constant tawment to her, could you?”
These thoughts filled but a moment, and before the lovely presence confronting him could fully note the depth of his quick distress a wave of self-condemnation brought what seemed to him the answer of the riddle: that this was _rightly_ she, the same angelic incarnation of wisdom and rect.i.tude, as of gentleness and beauty, to whom in yesterday's sunset hour of surprise and ecstatic yearning he had implied things so contrary to their ”perfect understanding,” and who now, not for herself selfishly, but in the name and defence of all blameless womanhood, was punis.h.i.+ng him for his wild presumption. O but if she would only accuse him--here--this instant, so that contrition might try its value! But under the shade of her hat her eyes merely waited with a beautiful sort of patient urgency for his parting word. The moment's silence seemed an hour, but no word did he find. One after another almost came, but failed, and at last, just as he took in his breath to say he knew not what--anything so it were something--he saw her smile melt with sudden kindness, while her lips parted for speech, and to his immeasurable confusion and terror heard himself ask her with cheerful cordiality, ”Won't you walk in?”
It would have been hard to tell which of the two turned the redder.
”Why, Mr. March, you in-ti-ma-ted that you had no ti-i-ime!”
They stood still. ”Time and bad news are about the only things I have got, Miss Barb. Wrapped up in your father's interests as you are, I reckon I ought to show you this.” He handed her the telegram doubled small. ”Let me hold your book.”
Barbara unfolded and read the despatch. It was from Springfield, repeated at New York, and notified Mr. John March that owing to a failure of Gamble to come to terms with certain much larger railroad owners for the reception of his road into their ”system,” intelligence of which had just reached them, it would be ”useless for him,” March, ”to come up,” as there was ”nothing more to say or hear.” She read it twice. Her notions of its consequences were dim, but she saw it was a door politely closed in his face; and yet she lingered over it. There was a bliss in these business confidences, which each one thought was her or his own exclusive and unsuspected theft, and which was all the sweeter for the confidences' practical worthlessness. As she looked up she uttered a troubled ”O!” to find him smiling unconsciously into her book where she had written, ”I stole this book from Barbara Garnet.” It seemed as if fate were always showing her very worst sides to him at the very worst times! She took the volume with hurried thanks and returned the telegram.
”It would have been better on every account if you hadn't come up at all, wouldn't it?” she asked, bent on self-cruelty; but he accepted the cruelty as meant for him.
”Yes,” he meekly replied. ”I--I reckon it would.” Then more bravely: ”I've got to give up here and try the West. Your father's advised it strongly these last three weeks.”
”Has he?” she pensively asked. Here was a new vexation. Obviously March, in writing him, had mentioned the rapid and happy growth of their acquaintance!
”Yes,” he replied, betraying fresh pain under an effort to speak lightly. ”It may be a right smart while before I see you again, Miss Barb. I take the first express to Chicago, and next month I sail for Europe to----”
”Why, Mr. March!” said Barbara with a nervous laugh.
”Yes,” responded John once more, thinking that if she was going to treat the thing as a joke he had better do the same, ”immigrants for Widewood have got to be got, and they're not to be got on this side the big water.”
”Why, Mr. March!”--her laugh grew--”How long shall you stay?”
”Stay! Gracious knows! I must just stay till I get them!--as your father says.”
”Why, Mr. March! When did--” the questioner's eyes dropped sedately to the ground--”when did you decide to go? Since--since--yesterday?”
”Yes, it was!” The answer came as though it were a whole heart-load.
The maiden's color rose, but she lifted her quiet, characteristic gaze to his and said, ”You're glad you're going, are you not?”