But there was no doubt in Lois"s mind now. "Indeed, Mr. Forsythe," she said, "indeed, I am so sorry, but I don"t--I can"t!"
A sullen look clouded his handsome face. "I cannot believe it," he said, at length. "You have known that I loved you all summer; you cannot be so cruel as to trifle with me now. You will not treat me so. Oh, I love you!" There was almost a wail in his voice, and he threw himself down in a chair and covered, his face with his hands.
Lois did not speak. Her lip curled a little, but it was partly with contempt for herself and her past uncertainty. "I am so sorry, so grieved," she began. But he scarcely heard her, or at least he did not grasp the significance of her words.
He began to plead and protest. "We will be so happy if you will only care for me. Just think how different your life will be; you shall have everything in this world you want, Lois."
She could not check his torrent of words, and when at last he stopped he had almost convinced himself that she loved him.
But she shook her head. "I cannot tell you how distressed I am, but I do not love you."
He was silent, as though trying to understand.
"Won"t you try and forget it? Won"t you forgive me, and let us be friends?" she said.
"You really mean it? You really mean to make me wretched? Forget it? I wish to Heaven I could!"
Lois did not speak. There seemed to be nothing to say.
"You have let me think you cared," he went on, "and I have built on it; I have staked all my happiness on it; I am a ruined man if you don"t love me. And you coolly tell me you do not care for me! Can"t you try to? I"ll make you so happy, if you will only make me happy, Lois."
"Please--please," she protested, "do not say anything more; it never can be,--indeed, it cannot!"
d.i.c.k"s voice had been tender a moment before, but it was hard now.
"Well," he said, "you have amused yourself all summer, I suppose. You made me think you loved me, and everybody else thought so, too."
The hint of blame kept Lois from feeling the sting of conscience. She flung her head back, and looked at him with a flash of indignation in her eyes. "Do you think it"s manly to blame me? You had better blame yourself that you couldn"t win my love!"
"Do you expect a man to choose his words when you give him his death-blow?" he said; and then, "Oh, Miss Lois, if I wait, can"t you learn to care for me? I"ll wait,--a year, if you say there"s any hope.
Or do you love anybody else? Is that the reason?"
"That has nothing to do with it," Lois cried, hotly, "but I don"t."
"Then," said d.i.c.k eagerly, "you must love me, only you don"t recognize it, not having been in love before. Of course it"s different with a girl who doesn"t know what love is. Oh, say you do!"
Lois, with quick compunction for her anger, was gentle enough now. "I cannot say so. I wish you would forget me, and forgive me if you can. I"m sorry to have grieved you,--truly I am."
There was silence for a few minutes, only broken by a yawn from Max and the snapping of the fire.
"I tell you I cannot forget," the young man said, at last. "You have ruined my life for me. Do you think I"ll be apt to forget the woman that"s done that? I"ll love you always, but life is practically over for me. Remember that, the next time you amuse yourself, Miss Howe!" Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and left her.
Lois drew a long breath as she heard him slam the front door behind him, and then she sat down on the rug again. She was too angry to cry, though her hands shook with nervousness. But under all her excitement was the sting of mortification and remorse.
Max, with that strange understanding which animals sometimes show, suddenly turned and licked her face, and then looked at her, all his love speaking in his soft brown eyes.
"Oh, Max, dear," Lois cried, flinging her arms around him, and resting her cheek on his shining head, "what a comfort you are! How much nicer dogs are than men!"
CHAPTER X.
Dr. Howe, with no thought of Mr. Forsythe"s unceremonious call at the rectory, had gone home with Mr. Denner. "One needs a walk," he said, "after one of Miss Deborah"s dinners. Bless my soul, what a housekeeper that woman is!"
"Just so," said Mr. Denner, hurrying along at his side,--"just so. Ah--it has often occurred to me."
And when the rector had left him at his white gateway between the Lombardy poplars, Mr. Denner went into his library, and after stumbling about to light his lamp, and stirring his fire to have a semblance, at least, of cheer, he sat down and meditated further on this subject of Miss Deborah"s housekeeping.
It was a dreary room, with lofty ceilings and few and narrow windows. The house was much lower than the street, and had that piercing chill of dampness which belongs to houses in a hollow, and the little gentleman drew so close to the smouldering fire that his feet were inside the fender.
He leaned forward, and resting his elbows on his knees, propped his chin on his hands, and stared at the smoke curling heavily up into the cavernous chimney, where the soot hung long and black. It was very lonely. Willie Denner, of course, had long ago gone to bed, and unless the lawyer chose to go into the kitchen for company, where Mary was reading her one work of fiction. "The Accounts of the Death Beds of Eminent Saints," he had no one to speak to. Many a time before had he sat thus, pondering on the solitude of his life, and contrasting his house with other Ashurst homes. He glanced about his cold bare room, and thought of the parlor of the Misses Woodhouse. How pleasant it was, how bright, and full of pretty feminine devices! whereas his library--Mary had been a hard mistress. One by one the domestic decorations of the late lady of the house had disappeared. She could not "have things round a-trapin" dust," Mary said, and her word was law.
"If my little sister had lived," he said, crouching nearer the fire, and watching a spark catch in the soot and spread over the chimney-back like a little marching regiment, that wheeled and maneuvered, and then suddenly vanished, "it would have been different. She would have made things brighter. Perhaps she would have painted, like Miss Ruth; and I have no doubt she would have been an excellent housekeeper. We should have just lived quietly here, she and I, and I need never have thought"--Mr. Denner flushed faintly in the firelight--"of marriage."
Mr. Denner"s mind had often traveled as far as this; he had even gone to the point of saying to himself that he wished one of the Misses Woodhouse would regard him with sentiments of affection, and he and Willie, free from Mary, could have a home of their own, instead of forlornly envying the rector and Henry Dale.
But Mr. Denner had never said which Miss Woodhouse; he had always thought of them, as he would have expressed it, "collectively," nor could he have told which one he most admired,--he called it by no warmer name, even to himself.
But as he sat here alone, and remembered the pleasant evening he had had, and watched his fire smoulder and die, and heard the soft sigh of the rising wind, he reached a tremendous conclusion. He would make up his mind. He would decide which of the Misses Woodhouse possessed his deeper regard. "Yes," he said, as he lifted first one foot and then the other over the fender, and, pulling his little coat-tails forward under his arms, stood with his back to the fireplace,--"yes, I will make up my mind; I will make it up to-morrow. I cannot go on in this uncertain way.
I cannot allow myself to think of Miss Ruth, and how she would paint her pictures, and play my accompaniments, and then find my mind on Miss Deborah"s dinners. It is impracticable; it is almost improper. To-morrow I will decide."
To have reached this conclusion was to have accomplished a great deal.
Mr. Denner went to bed much cheered; but he dreamed of walking about Miss Ruth"s studio, and admiring her pictures, when, to his dismay, he found Mary had followed him, and was saying she couldn"t bear things all of a clutter.
The next morning he ate his breakfast in solemn haste; it was to be an important day for him. He watched Mary as she walked about, handing him dishes with a sternness which had always awed him into eating anything she placed before him, and wondered what she would think when she heard--He trembled a little at the thought of breaking it to her; and then he remembered Miss Ruth"s kind heart, and he had a vision of a pension for Mary, which was checked instantly by the recollection of Miss Deborah"s prudent economy.
"Ah, well," he thought, "I shall know to-night. Economy is a good thing,--Miss Ruth herself would not deny that."
He went out to his office, and weighed and balanced his inclinations until dinner-time, and again in the afternoon, but with no result. Night found him hopelessly confused, with the added grievance that he had not kept his word to himself.
This went on for more than a week; by and by the uncertainty began to wear greatly upon him.
"Dear me!" he sighed one morning, as he sat in his office, his little gaitered feet upon the rusty top of his air-tight stove, and his brierwood pipe at his lips--it had gone out, leaving a bowl of cheerless white ashes,--"dear me! I no sooner decide that it had better be Miss Deborah--for how satisfying my linen would be if she had an eye on the laundry, and I know she would not have bubble-and-squeak for dinner as often as Mary does--than Miss Ruth comes into my mind. What taste she has, and what an ear! No one notices the points in my singing as she does; and how she did turn that carpet in Gifford"s room; dear me!"
He sat clutching his extinguished pipe for many minutes, when suddenly a gleam came into his face, and the anxious look began to disappear.
He rose, and laid his pipe upon the mantelpiece, first carefully knocking the ashes into the wood-box which stood beside the stove. Then, standing with his left foot wrapped about his right ankle and his face full of suppressed eagerness, he felt in each pocket of his waistcoat, and produced first a knife, then a tape measure, a pincushion, a bunch of keys, and last a large, worn copper cent. It was smooth with age, but its almost obliterated date still showed that it had been struck the year of Mr. Denner"s birth.
Next, he spread his pocket handkerchief smoothly upon the floor, and then, a little stiffly, knelt upon it. He rubbed the cent upon the cuff of his coat to make it shine, and held it up a moment in the stream of wintry sunshine that poured through the office window and lay in a golden square on the bare floor.
"Heads," said Mr. Denner,--"heads shall be Miss Deborah; tails, Miss Ruth. Oh, dear me! I wonder which?"
As he said this, he pitched the coin with a tremulous hand, and then leaned forward, breathlessly watching it fall, waver from side to side, and roll slowly under the bookcase. Too much excited to rise from his knees, he crept towards it, and, pressing his cheek against the dusty floor, he peered under the unwieldy piece of furniture, to catch a glimpse of his penny and learn his fate.
At such a critical moment it was not surprising that he did not, hear Willie Denner come into the office. The little boy stood still, surprised at his uncle"s att.i.tude. "Have you lost something, sir?" he said, but without waiting for an answer, he fell on his knees and looked also.