"Well, then, I"m sorry I found him out. Yes! If I hadn"t, I might have married him, and perhaps if I had died soon I might never have found him out. He could have been good to me a year or two, and then, if I died, I should have been safe. Yes, I wish he could have deceived me till after we were married. Then I _couldn"t_ have borne to give him up, may be."
"You _would_ have given him up, even then. And that"s the only thing that reconciles me to it now. I"m sorry for you, my girl; but you"d have made me sorrier then. Sooner or later he"d have broken your heart."
"He"s broken it now," said the girl, calmly.
"Oh, no, he hasn"t," replied her father, with a false cheerfulness that did not deceive her. "You"re young and you"ll get over it. I mean to take you away from here for a while. I mean to take you up to Boston, and on to New York. I shouldn"t care if we went as far as Washington. I guess, when you"ve seen a little more of the world, you won"t think Bartley Hubbard"s the only one in it."
She looked at him so intently that he thought she must be pleased at his proposal. "Do you think I could get him back?" she asked.
Her father lost his patience; it was a relief to be angry. "No, I don"t think so. I know you couldn"t. And you ought to be ashamed of mentioning such a thing!"
"Oh, ashamed! No, I"ve got past that. I have no shame any more where he"s concerned. Oh, I"d give the world if I could call him back,--if I could only undo what I did! I was wild; I wasn"t reasonable; I wouldn"t listen to him. I drove him away without giving him a chance to say a word! Of course, he must hate me now. What makes you think he wouldn"t come back?" she asked.
"I know he wouldn"t," answered her father, with a sort of groan. "He"s going to leave Equity for one thing, and--"
"Going to leave Equity," she repeated, absently Then he felt her tremble.
"How do you know he"s going?" She turned upon her father, and fixed him sternly with her eyes.
"Do you suppose he would stay, after what"s happened, any longer than he could help?"
"How do you know he"s going?" she repeated.
"He told me."
She stood up. "He told you? When?"
"To-night."
"Why, where--where did you see him?" she whispered.
"In the office."
"Since--since--I came? Bartley been here! And you didn"t tell me,--you didn"t let me know?" They looked at each other in silence. At last, "When is he going?" she asked.
"To-morrow morning."
She sat down in the chair which her mother had left, and clutched the back of another, on which her fingers opened and closed convulsively, while she caught her breath in irregular gasps. She broke into a low moaning, at last, the expression of abject defeat in the struggle she had waged with herself. Her father watched her with dumb compa.s.sion. "Better go to bed, Marcia," he said, with the same dry calm as if he had been sending her away after some pleasant evening which she had suffered to run too far into the night.
"Don"t you think--don"t you think--he"ll have to see you again before he goes?" she made out to ask.
"No; he"s finished up with me," said the old man.
"Well, then," she cried, desperately, "you"ll have to go to him, father, and get him to come! I can"t help it! I can"t give him up! You"ve got to go to him, now, father,--yes, yes, you have! You"ve got to go and tell him. Go and get him to come, for _mercy"s_ sake! Tell him that I"m sorry,--that I beg his pardon,--that I didn"t think--I didn"t understand,--that I knew he didn"t do anything wrong--" She rose, and, placing her hand on her father"s shoulder, accented each entreaty with a little push.
He looked up into her face with a haggard smile of sympathy. "You"re crazy, Marcia," he said, gently.
"Don"t laugh!" she cried. "I"m not crazy now. But I was, then,--yes, stark, staring crazy. Look here, father! I want to tell you,--I want to explain to you!" She dropped upon his knee again, and tremblingly pa.s.sed her arm round his neck. "You see, I had just told him the day before that I shouldn"t care for anything that happened before we were engaged, and then at the very first thing I went and threw him off! And I had no right to do it. He knows that, and that"s what makes him so hard towards me. But if you go and tell him that I see now I was all wrong, and that I beg his pardon, and then ask him to give me _one_ more trial, just one _more_--You can do as much as that for me, can"t you?"
"Oh, you poor, crazy girl!" groaned her father. "Don"t you see that the trouble is in what the fellow _is_, and not in any particular thing that he"s done? He"s a scamp, through and through; and he"s all the more a scamp when he doesn"t know it. He hasn"t got the first idea of anything but selfishness."
"No, no! Now, I"ll tell you,--now, I"ll prove it to you. That very Sunday when we were out riding together; and we met her and her mother, and their sleigh upset, and he had to lift her back; and it made me wild to see him, and I wouldn"t hardly touch him or speak to him afterwards, he didn"t say one angry word to me. He just pulled me up to him, and wouldn"t let me be mad; and he said that night he didn"t mind it a bit because it showed how much I liked him. Now, doesn"t that prove he"s good,--a good deal better than I am, and that he"ll forgive me, if you"ll go and ask him? I know he isn"t in bed yet; he always sits up late,--he told me so; and you"ll find him there in his room. Go straight to his room, father; don"t let anybody see you down in the office; I couldn"t bear it; and slip out with him as quietly as you can. But, oh, do hurry now! Don"t lose another minute!"
The wild joy sprang into her face, as her father rose; a joy that it was terrible to him to see die out of it as he spoke: "I tell you it"s no use, Marcia! He wouldn"t come if I went to him--"
"Oh, yes,--yes, he would! I know he would! If--"
"He wouldn"t! You"re mistaken! I should have to get down in the dust for nothing. He"s a bad fellow, I tell you; and you"ve got to give him up."
"You hate me!" cried the girl. The old man walked to and fro, clutching his hands. Their lives had always been in such intimate sympathy, his life had so long had her happiness for its sole pleasure, that the pang in her heart racked his with as sharp an agony. "Well, I shall die; and then I hope you will be satisfied."
"Marcia, Marcia!" pleaded her father. "You don"t know what you"re saying."
"You"re letting him go away from me,--you"re letting me lose him,--you"re killing me!"
"He wouldn"t come, my girl. It would be perfectly useless to go to him.
You _must_--you _must_ try to control yourself, Marcia. There"s no other way,--there"s no other hope. You"re disgraceful. You ought to be ashamed.
You ought to have some pride about you. I don"t know what"s come over you since you"ve been with that fellow. You seem to be out of your senses. But try,--try, my girl, to get over it. If you"ll fight it, you"ll conquer yet.
You"ve got a spirit for anything. And I"ll help you, Marcia. I"ll take you anywhere. I"ll do anything for you--"
"You wouldn"t go to him, and ask him to come here, if it would save his life!"
"No," said the old man, with a desperate quiet, "I wouldn"t."
She stood looking at him, and then she sank suddenly and straight down, as if she were sinking through the floor. When he lifted her, he saw that she was in a dead faint, and while the swoon lasted would be out of her misery.
The sight of this had wrung him so that he had a kind of relief in looking at her lifeless face; and he was slow in laying her down again, like one that fears to wake a sleeping child. Then he went to the foot of the stairs, and softly called to his wife: "Miranda! Miranda!"
IX.
Kinney came into town the next morning bright and early, as he phrased it; but he did not stop at the hotel for Bartley till nine o"clock. "Thought I"d give you time for breakfast," he exclaimed, "and so I didn"t hurry up any about gettin" in my supplies."
It was a beautiful morning, so blindingly sunny that Bartley winked as they drove up through the glistening street, and was glad to dip into the gloom of the first woods; it was not cold; the snow felt the warmth, and packed moistly under their runners. The air was perfectly still; at a distance on the mountain-sides it sparkled as if full of diamond dust. Far overhead some crows called.
"The sun"s getting high," said Bartley, with the light sigh of one to whom the thought of spring brings no hope.
"Well, I shouldn"t begin to plough for corn just yet," replied Kinney.
"It"s curious," he went on, "to see how anxious we are to have a thing over, it don"t much matter what it is, whether it"s summer or winter. I suppose we"d feel different if we wa"n"t sure there was going to be another of "em. I guess that"s one reason why the Lord concluded not to keep us clearly posted on the question of another life. If it wa"n"t for the uncertainty of the thing, there are a lot of fellows like you that wouldn"t stand it here a minute. Why, if we had a dead sure thing of over-the-river,--good climate, plenty to eat and wear, and not much to do,--I don"t believe any of us would keep Darling Minnie waiting,--well, a _great_ while. But you see, the thing"s all on paper, and that makes us cautious, and willing to hang on here awhile longer. Looks splendid on the map: streets regularly laid out; public squares; band-stands; churches; solid blocks of houses, with all the modern improvements; but you can"t tell whether there"s any town there till you"re on the ground; and then, if you don"t like it, there"s no way of gettin" back to the States." He turned round upon Bartley and opened his mouth wide, to imply that this was pleasantry.
"Do you throw your philosophy in, all under the same price, Kinney?" asked the young fellow.
"Well, yes; I never charge anything over," said Kinney. "You see, I have a good deal of time to think when I"m around by myself all day, and the philosophy don"t cost me anything, and the fellows like it. Roughing it the way they do, they can stand "most anything. Hey?" He now not only opened his mouth upon Bartley, but thrust him in the side with his elbow, and then laughed noisily.
Kinney was the cook. He had been over pretty nearly the whole uninhabitable globe, starting as a gaunt and awkward boy from the Maine woods, and keeping until he came back to them in late middle-life the same gross and ridiculous optimism. He had been at sea, and shipwrecked on several islands in the Pacific; he had pa.s.sed a rainy season at Panama, and a yellow-fever season at Vera Cruz, and had been carried far into the interior of Peru by a tidal wave during an earthquake season; he was in the Border Ruffian War of Kansas, and he clung to California till prosperity deserted her after the completion of the Pacific road. Wherever he went, he carried or found adversity; but, with a heart fed on the metaphysics of Horace Greeley, and buoyed up by a few wildly interpreted maxims of Emerson, he had always believed in other men, and their fitness for the terrestrial millennium, which was never more than ten days or ten miles off. It is not necessary to say that he had continued as poor as he began, and that he was never able to contribute to those railroads, mills, elevators, towns, and cities which were sure to be built, sir, sure to be built, wherever he went. When he came home at last to the woods, some hundreds of miles north of Equity, he found that some one had realized his early dream of a summer hotel on the sh.o.r.e of the beautiful lake there; and he unenviously settled down to admire the landlord"s thrift, and to act as guide and cook for parties of young ladies and gentlemen who started from the hotel to camp in the woods.
This brought him into the society of cultivated people, for which he had a real pa.s.sion. He had always had a few thoughts rattling round in his skull, and he liked to make sure of them in talk with those who had enjoyed greater advantages than himself. He never begrudged them their luck; he simply and sweetly admired them; he made studies of their several characters, and was never tired of a.n.a.lyzing them to their advantage to the next summer"s parties. Late in the fall, he went in, as it is called, with a camp of loggers, among whom he rarely failed to find some remarkable men.
But he confessed that he did not enjoy the steady three or four months in the winter woods with no coming out at all till spring; and he had been glad of this chance in a logging camp near Equity, in which he had been offered the cook"s place by the owner who had tested his fare in the Northern woods the summer before. Its proximity to the village allowed him to loaf in upon civilization at least once a week, and he spent the greater part of his time at the Free Press office on publication day. He had always sought the society of newspaper men, and, wherever he could, he had given them his. He was not long in discovering that Bartley was smart as a steel trap; and by an early and natural transition from calling the young lady compositors by their pet names, and patting them on their shoulders, he had arrived at a like affectionate intimacy with Bartley.