After a moment"s silence, Hunt asked her how she liked his goatee. It was a new way of cutting his whiskers, and young ladies were generally close observers and therefore good judges of such matters. Annie, finding it impossible to keep up even the pretense of talking any longer, sat helplessly staring at the floor, and waiting in nerveless despair for what he would say next, fairly hating Lou because she did not go.
"What"s come over you, Annie?" asked Hunt briskly. "Are you talked out so soon? I suppose she is holding back to give you a chance to make my acquaintance, Miss Roberts, or do let me call you Lou. You must improve your opportunity, for she will want to know your opinion of me. May I hope it will prove not wholly unfavorable?" This last was with a killing smile.
"I had no idea it was so late. We must be going," said Miss Roberts, rising. She had been lingering, in the hope that something would happen to leave a more pleasant impression of Hunt"s appearance, but seeing that matters were drifting from bad to worse, she hastened to break off the painful scene. Annie rose silently without saying a word, and avoided Lou"s eyes as she kissed her good-by.
"Must you go?" Hunt said. "I "m sure you would not be in such haste if you knew how rarely it is that my engagements leave me free to devote an evening to the ladies. You might call on Annie a dozen times and not meet me."
As soon as the callers had gone, Hunt picked up the evening paper and sat down to glance it over, remarking lightly as he did so:--
"Rather nice girl, your friend, though she does n"t seem very talkative."
Annie made no reply, and he looked up.
"What on earth are you staring at me in such an extraordinary manner for?"
Was he then absolutely unconscious of the figure he had made of himself?
"You are not vexed because I went out and left you in the early part of the evening?" he said anxiously.
"Oh, no, indeed," she wearily replied.
She sat there with trembling lip and a red spot in each cheek, looking at him as he read the paper unconcernedly, till she could bear it no longer, and then silently rose and glided out of the room. Hunt heard her running upstairs as fast as she could, and closing and locking her chamber door.
Next day he did not see her till evening, when she was exceedingly cold and distant, and evidently very much depressed. After bombarding her with grieved and reproachful glances for some time, he came over to her side, they two having been left alone, and said, with affectionate raillery:--
"I "d no idea you were so susceptible to the green-eyed monster."
She looked at him, astonished quite out of her reserve.
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Oh, you need n"t pretend to misunderstand," he replied, with a knowing nod. "Don"t you suppose I saw how vexed you were last night when your dear friend Miss Roberts was trying to flirt with me? But you need n"t have minded so much. She is n"t my style at all."
There was something so perfectly maddening in this cool a.s.sumption that her bitter chagrin on his account was a fond jealousy, that she fairly choked with exasperation, and shook herself away from his caress as if a snake had stung her. Her thin nostrils vibrated, her red lips trembled with scorn, and her black eyes flashed ominously. He had only seen them lighten with love before, and it was a very odd sensation to see them for the first time blazing with anger, and that against himself.
Affecting an offended tone, he said:--
"This is really too absurd, Annie," and left the room as if in a pet, just in time to escape the outburst he knew was coming. She sat in the parlor with firm-set lips till quite a late hour that evening, hoping that he would come down and give her a chance to set him right with an indignant explanation. So humiliating to her did his misunderstanding seem, that it was intolerable he should retain it a moment longer, and she felt almost desperate enough to go and knock at his door and correct it. Far too clever a strategist to risk an encounter that evening, he sat in his room comfortably smoking and attending to arrears of correspondence, aware that he was supposed by her to be sulking desperately all the while. He knew that her feeling was anger and not grief, and while, had it been the latter, he would have been thoroughly uncomfortable from sympathy, he only chuckled as he figured to himself her indignation. At that very moment, she was undoubtedly clenching her pretty little fists, and breathing fast with impotent wrath, in the room below. Ah, well, let her heart lie in a pickle of good strong disgust overnight, and it would strike in a good deal more effectually than if she were allowed to clear her mind by an indignant explanation on the spot.
The following day he bore himself toward her with the slightly distant air of one who considers himself aggrieved, and attempted no approaches.
In the evening, which was her first opportunity, she came to him and said in a tone in which, by this time, weariness and disgust had taken the place of indignation:--
"You were absurdly mistaken in thinking that Miss Roberts was trying to flirt."
"Bless your dear, jealous heart!" interrupted Hunt laughingly, with an air of patronizing affection. "I"d no idea you minded it so much. There, there! Let"s not allude to this matter again. No, no! not another word!"
he gayly insisted, putting his hand over her mouth as she was about to make another effort to be heard.
He was determined not to hear anything, and she had to leave it so.
It was with surprise that she observed how indifferently she finally acquiesced in being so cruelly misunderstood by him. In the deadened state of her feelings, she was not then able to appreciate the entire change in the nature of her sentiments which that indifference showed.
Love, though rooted in the past, depends upon the surrounding atmosphere for the breath of continued life, and he had surrounded her with the stifling vapors of disgust until her love had succ.u.mbed and withered.
She found that his exhibitions of conceit and insipidity did not affect her in the same way as before. Her sensations were no longer sharp and poignant, but chiefly a dull shame and sense of disgrace that she had loved him. She met his attentions with a coldly pa.s.sive manner, which gave him the liveliest satisfaction. The cure was succeeding past all expectation; but he had about time for one more stroke, which would make a sure thing of it. He prepared the way by dropping hints that he had been writing some verses of late; and finally, with the evident idea that she would be flattered, gave out that his favorite theme was her own charms, and that she might, perhaps, before long receive some tributes from his muse. Her protests he laughed away as the affectations of modesty.
Now Hunt had never actually written a line of verse in his life, and had no intention of beginning. He was simply preparing a grand move. From the poet"s corner of rural newspapers, and from comic collections, he clipped several specimens of the crudest sort of sentimental trash in rhyme. These he took to the local newspaper, and arranged for their insertion at double advertising rates. A few days later, he bustled into the parlor, smirking in his most odious manner, and, coming up to Annie, thrust an open newspaper before her, marked in one corner to call attention to several stanzas
"Written for the "Express." To A--E G----D."
With sinking of heart she took the paper, after ineffectually trying to refuse it, and Hunt sat down before her with a supremely complacent expression, to await her verdict. With a faint hope that the verses might prove tolerable, she glanced down the lines. It is enough to say that they were the very worst which Hunt, after great industry, had been able to find; and there he was waiting, just the other side the paper, in a glow of expectant vanity, to receive her acknowledgments.
"Well, what do you think of it? You need n"t try to hide your blushes.
You deserve every word of it, you know, Miss Modesty," he said gayly.
"It"s very nice," replied Annie, making a desperate effort.
"I thought you "d like it," he said, with self-satisfied a.s.surance.
"It"s queer that a fellow can"t lay on the praise too thick to please a woman. By the way, I sent around a copy to Miss Roberts, signed with my initials. I thought you "d like to have her see it."
This last remark he called out after her as she was leaving the room, and he was not mistaken in fancying that it would complete her demoralization. During the next week or two he several times brought her copies of the local paper containing equally execrable effusions, till finally she mustered courage to tell him that she would rather he would not publish any more verses about her. He seemed rather hurt at this, but respected her feelings, and after that she used to find, hid in her books and music, ma.n.u.script sonnets which he had laboriously copied out of his comic collections. It was considerable trouble, but on the whole he was inclined to think it paid, and it did, especially when he culminated by fitting music to several of the most mawkish effusions, and insisting on her playing and singing them to him. As the poor girl, who felt that out of common politeness she could not refuse, toiled wearily through this martyrdom, writhing with secret disgust at every line, Hunt, lolling in an easy-chair behind her, was generally indulging in a series of horrible grimaces and convulsions of silent laughter, which sometimes left tears in his eyes,--to convince Annie, when she turned around to him, that his sentiment was at least genuine if vulgar.
Had she happened on one of these occasions to turn a moment before she did, the resulting tableau would have been worth seeing.
Hunt had determined to both crown and crucially test the triumph of Potts"s cure in Annie"s case by formally offering himself to her. He calculated of course that she was now certain to reject him, and that was a satisfaction which he thought he fairly owed her. She would feel better for it, he argued, and be more absolutely sure not to regard herself as in any sense jilted, and that would make his conscience clearer. Yes, she should certainly have his scalp to hang at her girdle, for he believed, as many do, that next to having a man"s heart a woman enjoys having his scalp, while many prefer it. Six weeks ago he would have been horrified at the audacity of the idea. His utmost ambition then was to break a little the force of her disappointment at his departure. But the unexpected fortune that had attended his efforts had advanced his standard of success, until nothing would now satisfy him but to pop the question and be refused.
And still, as the day approached which he had set for the desperate venture, he began to get very nervous. He thought he had a sure thing if ever a fellow had, but women were so cursedly unaccountable. Supposing she should take it into her head to accept him! No logic could take account of a woman"s whimsies. Then what a pretty fix he would have got himself into, just by a foolhardy freak! But there was a strain of Norse blood in Hunt, and in spite of occasional touches of ague, the risk of the scheme had in itself a certain fascination for him. And yet he could n"t help wishing he had carried out a dozen desperate devices for disgusting her with him, which at the time had seemed to him too gross to be safe from suspicion.
The trouble was that since he loved her no more he had lost the insight which love only gives into the feelings of another. Then her every touch and look and word was eloquent to his senses as to the precise state of her feeling toward him, but now he was dull and insensitive to such direct intuition. He could not longer feel, but could only argue as to how she might be minded toward him, and this it was which caused him so much trepidation, in spite of so many reasons why he should be confident of the result. Argument as to another"s feelings is such a wretched subst.i.tute for the intuition of sympathy.
Finally, on the evening before the day on which he was to offer himself, the last of his stay at the Giffords", he got into such a panic that, determined to clinch the a.s.surance of his safety, he asked her to play a game of cards, and then managed that she should see him cheat two or three times. The recollection of the cold disgust on her face as he bade her good-evening was so rea.s.suring that he went to bed and slept like a child, in the implicit confidence that four horses could n"t drag that girl into an engagement with him the next day.
It was not till the latter part of the afternoon that he could catch her alone long enough to transact his little business with her.
Antic.i.p.ating, or at least apprehending his design, she took the greatest pains to avoid meeting him, or to have her mother with her when she did.
She would have given almost anything to escape his offer. Of course she could reject it, but fastidious persons do not like to have unpleasant objects put on their plates, even if they have not necessarily to eat them. But her special reason was that the scene would freshly bring up and emphasize the whole wretched history of her former infatuation and its miserable ending,--an experience every thought of which was full of shame and strong desire for the cleansing of forgetfulness. He finally cornered her in the parlor alone. As she saw him approaching and realized that there was no escape, she turned and faced him with her small figure drawn to its full height, compressed lips, pale face, and eyes that plainly said, "Now have it over with as soon as possible." One hand resting on the table was clenched over a book. The other, hanging by her side, tightly grasped a handkerchief.
"Do you know I "ve been trying to get a chance to speak with you alone all day?" he said.
"Have you?" she replied in a perfectly inexpressive tone.
"Can"t you guess what I wanted to say?"
"I "m not good at conundrums."
"I see you will not help me," he went on, and then added quickly, "it"s a short story; will you be my wife?"
As he said the words, he felt as the lion-tamer does when he puts his head in the lion"s jaws. He expects to take it out again, but if the lion should take a notion--His suspense was, however, of the shortest possible duration, for instantly, like a reviving sprinkle on a fainting face, the words fell on his ear:--
"I thank you for the honor, but I "m sure we are not suited."
Annie had conned her answer on many a sleepless pillow, and had it by heart. It came so glibly, although in such a constrained and agitated voice, that he instantly knew it must have been long cut and dried.
It was now only left for him to do a decent amount of urging, and then acquiesce with dignified melancholy and go off laughing in his sleeve.
What is he thinking of to stand there gazing at her downcast face as if he were daft?