"Mr. Langbourne, Mr. d.i.c.kery." The young man silently shook hands with Langbourne, whom he took into the joke of Miss Bingham with another smile; and she went on: "Say, John, I wish you"d tell Jenny I don"t see why we shouldn"t go this afternoon, after all."
"All right," said the young man.
"I suppose you"re coming too?" she suggested.
"Hadn"t heard of it," he returned.
"Well, you have now. You"ve got to be ready at two o"clock."
"That so?" the young fellow inquired. Then he walked away among the logs, as casually as he had arrived, and Miss Bingham rose and shook some bits of bark from her skirt.
"Mr. d.i.c.kery is owner of the mills," she explained, and she explored Langbourne"s face for an intelligence which she did not seem to find there. He thought, indifferently enough, that this young man had heard the two girls speak of him, and had satisfied a natural curiosity in coming to look him over; it did not occur to him that he had any especial relation to Miss Bingham.
She walked up into the village with Langbourne, and he did not know whether he was to accompany her home or not. But she gave him no sign of dismissal till she put her hand upon her gate to pull it open without asking him to come in. Then he said, "I will send Miss Simpson"s letters to her at once."
"Oh, any time will do, Mr. Langbourne," she returned sweetly. Then, as if it had just occurred to her, she added, "We"re going after May-flowers this afternoon. Wouldn"t you like to come too?"
"I don"t know," he began, "whether I shall have the time--"
"Why, you"re not going away to-day!"
"I expected--I--But if you don"t think I shall be intruding--"
"Why, _I_ should be delighted to have you. Mr. d.i.c.kery"s going, and Jenny d.i.c.kery, and Barbara. I don"t _believe_ it will rain."
"Then, if I may," said Langbourne.
"Why, certainly, Mr. Langbourne!" she cried, and he started away. But he had gone only a few rods when he wheeled about and hurried back. The girl was going up the walk to the house, looking over her shoulder after him; at his hurried return she stopped and came down to the gate again.
"Miss Bingham, I think--I think I had better not go."
"Why, just as you feel about it, Mr. Langbourne," she a.s.sented.
"I will bring the letters this evening, if you will let me--if Miss Simpson--if you will be at home."
"We shall be very happy to see you, Mr. Langbourne," said the girl formally, and then he went back to his hotel.
XI.
Langbourne could not have told just why he had withdrawn his acceptance of Miss Bingham"s invitation. If at the moment it was the effect of a quite reasonless panic, he decided later that it was because he wished to think. It could not be said, however, that he did think, unless thinking consists of a series of dramatic representations which the mind makes to itself from a given impulse, and which it is quite powerless to end. All the afternoon, which Langbourne spent in his room, his mind was the theatre of scenes with Miss Simpson, in which he perpetually evolved the motives governing him from the beginning, and triumphed out of his difficulties and embarra.s.sments. Her voice, as it acquiesced in all, no longer related itself to that imaginary personality which had inhabited his fancy. That was gone irrevocably; and the voice belonged to the likeness of Barbara, and no other; from her similitude, little, quaint, with her hair of cloudy red and her large, dim-sighted eyes, it played upon the spiritual sense within him with the coaxing, drolling, mocking charm which he had felt from the first. It blessed him with intelligent and joyous forgiveness. But as he stood at her gate that evening this unmerited felicity fell from him. He now really heard her voice, through the open doorway, but perhaps because it was mixed with other voices--the treble of Miss Bingham, and the ba.s.s of a man who must be the Mr. d.i.c.kery he had seen at the saw mills--he turned and hurried back to his hotel, where he wrote a short letter saying that he had decided to take the express for New York that night. With an instinctive recognition of her authority in the affair, or with a cowardly shrinking from direct dealing with Barbara, he wrote to Juliet Bingham, and he addressed to her the packet of letters which he sent for Barbara.
Superficially, he had done what he had no choice but to do. He had been asked to return her letters, and he had returned them, and brought the affair to an end.
In his long ride to the city he a.s.sured himself in vain that he was doing right if he was not sure of his feelings towards the girl. It was quite because he was not sure of his feeling that he could not be sure he was not acting falsely and cruelly.
The fear grew upon him through the summer, which he spent in the heat and stress of the town. In his work he could forget a little the despair in which he lived; but in a double consciousness like that of the hypochondriac, the girl whom it seemed to him he had deserted was visibly and audibly present with him. Her voice was always in his inner ear, and it visualized her looks and movements to his inner eye.
Now he saw and understood at last that what his heart had more than once misgiven him might be the truth, and that though she had sent back his letters, and asked her own in return, it was not necessarily her wish that he should obey her request. It might very well have been an experiment of his feeling towards her, a mute quest of the impression she had made upon him, a test of his will and purpose, an overture to a clearer and truer understanding between them. This misgiving became a conviction from which he could not escape.
He believed too late that he had made a mistake, that he had thrown away the supreme chance of his life. But was it too late? When he could bear it no longer, he began to deny that it was too late. He denied it even to the pathetic presence which haunted him, and in which the magic of her voice itself was merged at last, so that he saw her more than he heard her. He overbore her weak will with his stronger will, and set himself strenuously to protest to her real presence what he now always said to her phantom. When his partner came back from his vacation, Langbourne told him that he was going to take a day or two off.
XII.
He arrived at Upper Ashton Falls long enough before the early autumnal dusk to note that the crimson buds of the maples were now their crimson leaves, but he kept as close to the past as he could by not going to find Barbara before the hour of the evening when he had turned from her gate without daring to see her. It was a soft October evening now, as it was a soft May evening then; and there was a mystical hint of unity in the like feel of the dull, mild air. Again voices were coming out of the open doors and windows of the house, and they were the same voices that he had last heard there.
He knocked, and after a moment of startled hush within Juliet Bingham came to the door. "Why, Mr. Langbourne!" she screamed.
"I--I should like to come in, if you will let me," he gasped out.
"Why, certainly, Mr. Langbourne," she returned.
He had not dwelt so long and so intently on the meeting at hand without considering how he should account for his coming, and he had formulated a confession of his motives. But he had never meant to make it to Juliet Bingham, and he now found himself unable to allege a word in explanation of his presence. He followed her into the parlor. Barbara silently gave him her hand and then remained pa.s.sive in the background, where d.i.c.kery held aloof, smiling in what seemed his perpetual enjoyment of the Juliet Bingham joke. She at once put herself in authority over the situation; she made Langbourne let her have his hat; she seated him when and where she chose; she removed and put back the lampshades; she pulled up and pulled down the window-blinds; she shut the outer door because of the night air, and opened it because of the unseasonable warmth within. She excused Mrs. Simpson"s absence on account of a headache, and asked him if he would not have a fan; when he refused it she made him take it, and while he sat helplessly dangling it from his hand, she asked him about the summer he had had, and whether he had pa.s.sed it in New York. She was very intelligent about the heat in New York, and tactful in keeping the one-sided talk from falling. Barbara said nothing after a few faint attempts to take part in it, and Langbourne made briefer and briefer answers. His reticence seemed only to heighten Juliet Bingham"s satisfaction, and she said, with a final supremacy, that she had been intending to go out with Mr. d.i.c.kery to a business meeting of the book-club, but they would be back before Langbourne could get away; she made him promise to wait for them. He did not know if Barbara looked any protest,--at least she spoke none,--and Juliet went out with d.i.c.kery.
She turned at the door to bid Barbara say, if any one called, that she was at the book-club meeting. Then she disappeared, but reappeared and called, "See here, a minute, Bab!" and at the outer threshold she detained Barbara in vivid whisper, ending aloud, "Now you be sure to do both, Bab! Aunt Elmira will tell you where the things are." Again she vanished, and was gone long enough to have reached the gate and come back from it. She was renewing all her whispered and out-spoken charges when d.i.c.kery showed himself at her side, put his hand under her elbow, and wheeled her about, and while she called gayly over her shoulder to the others, "Did you ever?" walked her definitively out of the house.
Langbourne did not suffer the silence which followed her going to possess him. What he had to do he must do quickly, and he said, "Miss Simpson, may I ask you one question?"
"Why, if you won"t expect me to answer it," she suggested quaintly.
"You must do as you please about that. It has to come before I try to excuse myself for being here; it"s the only excuse I can offer. It"s this: Did you send Miss Bingham to get back your letters from me last spring?"
"Why, of course!"
"I mean, was it your idea?"
"We thought it would be better."
The evasion satisfied Langbourne, but he asked, "Had I given you some cause to distrust me at that time?"
"Oh, no," she protested. "We got to talking it over, and--and we thought we had better."
"Because I had come here without being asked?"
"No, no; it wasn"t that," the girl protested.
"I know I oughtn"t to have come. I know I oughtn"t to have written to you in the beginning, but you had let me write, and I thought you would let me come. I tried always to be sincere with you; to make you feel that you could trust me. I believe that I am an honest man; I thought I was a better man for having known you through your letters. I couldn"t tell you how much they had been to me. You seemed to think, because I lived in a large place, that I had a great many friends; but I have very few; I might say I hadn"t any--such as I thought I had when I was writing to you. Most of the men I know belong to some sort of clubs; but I don"t. I went to New York when I was feeling alone in the world,--it was from something that had happened to me partly through my own fault,--and I"ve never got over being alone there. I"ve never gone into society; I don"t know what society is, and I suppose that"s why I am acting differently from a society man now. The only change I ever had from business was reading at night: I"ve got a pretty good library.
After I began to get your letters, I went out more--to the theatre, and lectures, and concerts, and all sorts of things--so that I could have something interesting to write about; I thought you"d get tired of always hearing about me. And your letters filled up my life, so that I didn"t seem alone any more. I read them all hundreds of times; I should have said that I knew them by heart, if they had not been as fresh at last as they were at first. I seemed to hear you talking in them." He stopped as if withholding himself from what he had nearly said without intending, and resumed: "It"s some comfort to know that you didn"t want them back because you doubted me, or my good faith."
"Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Langbourne," said Barbara compa.s.sionately.
"Then why did you?"
"I don"t know. We--"
"No; _not_ "we." _You!_"
She did not answer for so long that he believed she resented his speaking so peremptorily and was not going to answer him at all. At last she said, "I thought you would rather give them back." She turned and looked at him, with the eyes which he knew saw his face dimly, but saw his thought clearly.