"H-haven"t took--Moses, have you?"
She was trembling, and yet she could almost have smiled at this well-remembered trick of pertinacity.
"No," she said, and immediately hated herself for answering him.
"H-haven"t took that Worthington cuss?"
He was jealous!
"I didn"t come to discuss Mr. Worthington," she replied.
"Folks say it"s only a matter of time," said he. "Made up your mind to take him, Cynthy? M-made up your mind?"
"You"ve no right to talk to me in this way," she said, and added, the words seeming to slip of themselves from her lips, "Why do you do it?"
"Because I"m--interested," he said.
"You haven"t shown it," she flashed back, forgetting the place, and the storm, and her errand even, forgetting that Jake Wheeler, or any one in Coniston, might come and surprise her there.
He took a step toward her, and she retreated. The light struck her face, and he bent over her as though searching it for a sign. The cape on her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed.
""Twahn"t charity, Cynthy--was it? "Twahn"t charity?"
"It was you who called it such," she answered, in a low voice.
A sleet-charged gust hurled itself against the door, and the lantern flickered.
"Wahn"t it charity."
"It was friendship, Jethro. You ought to have known that, and you should not have brought back the book."
"Friendship," he repeated, "y-you said friendship?"
"Yes."
"M-meant friendship?"
"Yes," said Cynthia, but more faintly, and yet with a certain delicious fright as she glanced at him shyly. Surely there had never been a stranger man! Now he was apparently in a revery.
"G-guess it"s because I"m not good enough to be anything more," he remarked suddenly. "Is that it?"
"You have not tried even to be a friend," she said.
"H-how about Worthington?" he persisted. "Just friends with him?"
"I won"t talk about Mr. Worthington," cried Cynthia, desperately, and retreated toward the lantern again.
"J-just friends with Worthington?"
"Why?" she asked, her words barely heard above the gust, "why do you want to know?"
He came after her. It was as if she had summoned some unseen, uncontrollable power, only to be appalled by it, and the mountain-storm without seemed the symbol of it. His very voice seemed to partake of its strength.
"Cynthy," he said, "if you"d took him, I"d have killed him. Cynthy, I love you--I want you to be my woman--"
"Your woman!"
He caught her, struggling wildly, terror-stricken, in his arms, beat down her hands, flung back her hood, and kissed her forehead--her hair, blown by the wind--her lips. In that moment she felt the mystery of heaven and h.e.l.l, of all kinds of power. In that moment she was like a seed flying in the storm above the mountain spruces whither, she knew not, cared not. There was one thought that drifted across the chaos like a blue light of the spirit: Could she control the storm? Could she say whither the winds might blow, where the seed might be planted? Then she found herself listening, struggling no longer, for he held her powerless. Strangest of all, most hopeful of all, his own mind was working, though his soul rocked with pa.s.sion.
"Cynthy--ever since we stopped that day on the road in Northcutt"s woods, I"ve thought of nothin" but to marry you--m-marry you. Then you give me that book--I hain"t had much education, but it come across me if you was to help me that way--And when I seed you with Worthington, I could have killed him easy as breakin" bark."
"Hush, Jethro."
She struggled free and leaped away from him, panting, while he tore open his coat and drew forth something which gleamed in the lantern"s rays--a silver locket. Cynthia scarcely saw it. Her blood was throbbing in her temples, she could not reason, but she knew that the appeal for the sake of which she had stooped must be delivered now.
"Jethro," she said, "do you know why I came here--why I came to you?"
"No," he said. "No. W--wanted me, didn"t you? Wanted me--I wanted you, Cynthy."
"I would never have come to you for that," she cried, "never!"
"L-love me, Cynthy--love me, don"t you?"
How could he ask, seeing that she had been in his arms, and had not fled? And yet she must go through with what she had come to do, at any cost.
"Jethro, I have come to speak to you about the town meeting tomorrow."
He halted as though he had been struck, his hand tightening over the locket.
"T-town meetin"?"
"Yes. All this new organization is your doing," she cried. "Do you think that I am foolish enough to believe that Fletcher Bartlett or Sam Price planned this thing? No, Jethro. I know who has done it, and I could have told them if they had asked me."
He looked at her, and the light of a new admiration was in his eye.
"Knowed it--did you?"
"Yes," she answered, a little defiantly, "I did."
"H-how"d you know it--how"d you know it, Cynthy?" How did she know it, indeed?
"I guessed it," said Cynthia, desperately, "knowing you, I guessed it."
"A-always thought you was smart, Cynthy."
"Tell me, did you do this thing?"
"Th-thought you knowed it--th-thought you knowed."