"Does one? Now I can"t conceive jumping into a tank of water to escape you, if you had been after me!"
"Please stop laughing at me and help me to get home."
"I"m not laughing at you. I"m--I may pretend to be laughing, but inside, I a.s.sure you, I "m tremendously worried lest this running away indicates a state of mind--"
"Please take me home!"
"Come, then." He led the way, by back staircases, to a quiet side entrance, and so quickly across the street, and into her own house.
Then he went back to the others, to evade their questioning so cleverly that n.o.body but Jane"s mother suspected that anything out of the ordinary had happened. In a very short time indeed Jane drifted inconspicuously in upon the company again, and when inquiries from the younger members of the party as to the change in her costume fell thick and fast upon her, Murray protected her with the nonchalant explanation:
"Don"t bother her. She"s very kindly trying to shield me for being the cause of a little accident that happened to the other dress. It was confoundedly awkward of me, but she cheers me by declaring that she can easily repair damages!"
It was Murray who took Jane home again by and by, and who lingered on the porch, after the others had gone in, to tell her how his father had received the good news.
"I "m so glad!" Jane"s hands were clasped tight together. "I knew it would be just as you tell me. Are n"t you wonderfully happy?"
"Wonderfully. Happier than ever in my life--except for just one thing."
"Nothing serious?"
"Well--I certainly hope not. What bothers me is that--you seem, somehow--not exactly afraid of me, but--different. I don"t know how to express it--but I----" He stopped, his tone growing anxious. "You know, I could n"t bear that," he added. "Unless I thought it meant---- See here, Jane--are we just as good friends as ever?"
"Why, of course we are!" She said it shyly. She was very glad it was so dark on the little porch.
"Friends for always?"
"I don"t change, I think," she answered, with a proud little lift of the head.
"Don"t you? Well, as I don"t either, that ought to satisfy me. Yet it does n"t quite, after all. It"s odd, but I believe just being good friends who don"t change is n"t enough. Oh, don"t go! You"re not angry? Yes, I know it"s late, but I "ve hardly seen you yet. You will go?--But you "ll let me come over early to-morrow--after more than a year away? Well, then, to-morrow I "ll have to teach you not to be afraid of me. On my honour I "m not carrying a "gun!" Wait a minute--just a minute! ... _How did I ever stay away from you so long?_ ... --Good night, little Jane--good night!"
CHAPTER XI
IN THE GARDEN
Winter--long and cold; spring--late and slow; then, all at once, in June, radiant summer and the little garden round the corner in Gay Street was a place of richly bursting bloom--a riot of colours against the leafy green background of its vine-hung walls.
Toward the end of June a week of almost tropical heat had made the evenings outdoors, on the little porch, and in the garden itself, events to be looked forward to throughout the day, Joseph Bell, Peter, Ross, and Rufus, thought of them many times during the hottest day of all--midsummer, the twenty-first of the month--and came home at night to find the table laid for a cool-looking supper out under the shadow of the maple, and Mrs. Bell, Jane, and Nancy, in thin summer frocks, putting the finishing touches to the attractive meal about to be served there.
Up in a window of the house next door, behind closed blinds, an elderly neighbour had watched Jane wreathing a big gla.s.s bowl full of strawberries with a crisp little green vine spray.
"The Bells certainly are the queerest people anybody ever lived neighbour to," she said over her shoulder to her sister, a withered little spinster, who, in this hot, small upstairs room, was sewing at another window, which did not look out upon the garden, and therefore could have its blinds open. "Anybody "d think life was just one picnic to them. Think of lugging all those dishes outdoors this hot night, and then lugging "em all in again--and they all dressed out in flowered muslins!"
The sister came to the window and peered somewhat wistfully out through the closed blinds. "It does look sort of pleasant out there," she said.
"And we certainly can"t say they "re not good neighbours. Mrs. Bell sent over a whole tin of those light rolls of hers this morning. They "ll come in handy for supper."
"There come the men." Mrs. Hunter brought her gaze to bear upon the four who had stolen up to the gate, and who, as she spoke, burst out suddenly with a crisp clapping of hands which brought the three in the "flowered-muslins" to the right-about. If Mrs. Hunter and Miss Maria, watching those four advance, could have heard what they were saying as they caught sight of the flower-decked table, they might have had a new light shed upon the question whether the trouble of bringing forth all those dishes from the house had been worth while.
The neighbours saw the merry little meal eaten, and saw all hands clear it away at the end, making short work of the many dishes. But afterward twilight fell, and little could be discerned except the gleam of the light dresses and the presence near of dark forms lying on the gra.s.s.
It was after the midsummer moon was lighting the garden into a small fairy-land that Peter, springing up, exclaimed, "There"s Olive and Murray!" and ran to greet them.
There was a third person with them, and a moment later the others heard Peter exclaim, in a tone of surprise:
"Well, well, well! You don"t mean to say this is----Why, how are you?
How are you? I "m tremendously glad to see you!"
"Thank you! I "m a good deal gladder to be home than anybody possibly can be to have me." And Jane, recognising first the peculiar quality of the voice, cried out:
"Why, it"s Forrest!" and led the others, as a general uprising took place.
"Yes, it"s Forrest," said the voice, and in the bright moonlight Jane looked up into the face whose outlines in these two years of absence had grown dim in her memory. It was the same face, but she thought it looked older and thinner, and she realised then and there that Forrest was not the same careless boy who had gone so lightly away to lead a soldier"s life.
When the greetings were over and the company had settled down again on the turf under the maple, Jane found Forrest next to herself, and had her first little insight into his thoughts.
"I feel like a stranger from a foreign country, I a.s.sure you," he was saying to her, presently, as the talk and laughter of the others made a bit of confidence possible. "And the strangest thing of all to me is the sight of my brother grinding away down there in the office, looking like the healthiest fellow in town. I can"t understand it; it took me off my feet!"
"We have grown so used to the change," said Jane, smiling to herself, in the dim light, "that we don"t think about it any more."
"You see," Forrest pursued, "I came home on the quiet--just wanting to see, you know, how they would take it. I thought if they really still cared, I should know it by the look on their faces----"
"Oh, how could you think----" Jane began, eagerly.
But he interrupted. "A fellow thinks a good many things when he "s on the other side of the world, and I--well, I got to wanting to know some things so badly, I was n"t sorry when I had my fever. Yes--you did n"t know that, did you? Oh, I had it all right! And I wasn"t sorry when they sent me home with a lot of other convalescents. So I made for the office the minute I had seen my mother and the girls, for they told me that Murray was down there for good--a thing I had n"t known. Maybe they thought I "d be jealous--and maybe I was--in a way, though I don"t want the job any more than I ever did.
"Father gave me a good warm greeting--I "ll say that. And Murray--well, when he got up and came toward me with his hand out, looking like the strongest kind of a young business man, I felt as if--But I can"t tell you about that now."
There was a general movement of the younger people of the party, in response to a request from Ross, who was entertaining them with some new tricks, at which he was an adept. During the confusion Murray came and flung himself upon the gra.s.s beside Jane.
"Take me into the conference, will you?" he said. "I"m envious of anybody my brother talks to, I "m so glad to get him back."
Under cover of the subdued light, Jane found her hand, which had been resting on the cool gra.s.s where she sat, taken into a warm, significant grasp, as familiar now as it was dear. She gave back a little answering pressure, without turning her head toward Murray, at whose close presence she had grown instantly happier.
"Take you in?" Forrest answered slowly. "Well, if you--and all the others--will only take me in, and never turn me out--or let me turn myself out again--I "ll be--satisfied."
With one hand holding tight the small one buried in the gra.s.s, Murray"s other hand went out toward the fist clenched on Forrest"s knee. "Old fellow," he said, warmly, "if you "ll just stay where you can get over often into this garden in Gay Street, you "ll find it will do as much toward making life worth living as it has done for every other one of the Townsend family."
"I believe you," answered Forrest, and gave the brotherly hand an answering grip.
BOOK II WORTHINGTON SQUARE