"I came to see whether your sister was not going to church," said the young man.
"She says she is not going; but I am very glad you have come. I think if you were to talk to her a little".... And Charlotte lowered her voice.
"It seems as if she were restless."
Mr. Brand smiled down on the young lady from his great height. "I shall be very glad to talk to her. For that I should be willing to absent myself from almost any occasion of worship, however attractive."
"Well, I suppose you know," said Charlotte, softly, as if positive acceptance of this proposition might be dangerous. "But I am afraid I shall be late."
"I hope you will have a pleasant sermon," said the young man.
"Oh, Mr. Gilman is always pleasant," Charlotte answered. And she went on her way.
Mr. Brand went into the garden, where Gertrude, hearing the gate close behind him, turned and looked at him. For a moment she watched him coming; then she turned away. But almost immediately she corrected this movement, and stood still, facing him. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead as he approached. Then he put on his hat again and held out his hand. His hat being removed, you would have perceived that his forehead was very large and smooth, and his hair abundant but rather colorless.
His nose was too large, and his mouth and eyes were too small; but for all this he was, as I have said, a young man of striking appearance. The expression of his little clean-colored blue eyes was irresistibly gentle and serious; he looked, as the phrase is, as good as gold. The young girl, standing in the garden path, glanced, as he came up, at his thread gloves.
"I hoped you were going to church," he said. "I wanted to walk with you."
"I am very much obliged to you," Gertrude answered. "I am not going to church."
She had shaken hands with him; he held her hand a moment. "Have you any special reason for not going?"
"Yes, Mr. Brand," said the young girl.
"May I ask what it is?"
She looked at him smiling; and in her smile, as I have intimated, there was a certain dullness. But mingled with this dullness was something sweet and suggestive. "Because the sky is so blue!" she said.
He looked at the sky, which was magnificent, and then said, smiling too, "I have heard of young ladies staying at home for bad weather, but never for good. Your sister, whom I met at the gate, tells me you are depressed," he added.
"Depressed? I am never depressed."
"Oh, surely, sometimes," replied Mr. Brand, as if he thought this a regrettable account of one"s self.
"I am never depressed," Gertrude repeated. "But I am sometimes wicked.
When I am wicked I am in high spirits. I was wicked just now to my sister."
"What did you do to her?"
"I said things that puzzled her--on purpose."
"Why did you do that, Miss Gertrude?" asked the young man.
She began to smile again. "Because the sky is so blue!"
"You say things that puzzle me," Mr. Brand declared.
"I always know when I do it," proceeded Gertrude. "But people puzzle me more, I think. And they don"t seem to know!"
"This is very interesting," Mr. Brand observed, smiling.
"You told me to tell you about my--my struggles," the young girl went on.
"Let us talk about them. I have so many things to say."
Gertrude turned away a moment; and then, turning back, "You had better go to church," she said.
"You know," the young man urged, "that I have always one thing to say."
Gertrude looked at him a moment. "Please don"t say it now!"
"We are all alone," he continued, taking off his hat; "all alone in this beautiful Sunday stillness."
Gertrude looked around her, at the breaking buds, the shining distance, the blue sky to which she had referred as a pretext for her irregularities. "That "s the reason," she said, "why I don"t want you to speak. Do me a favor; go to church."
"May I speak when I come back?" asked Mr. Brand.
"If you are still disposed," she answered.
"I don"t know whether you are wicked," he said, "but you are certainly puzzling."
She had turned away; she raised her hands to her ears. He looked at her a moment, and then he slowly walked to church.
She wandered for a while about the garden, vaguely and without purpose.
The church-bell had stopped ringing; the stillness was complete. This young lady relished highly, on occasions, the sense of being alone--the absence of the whole family and the emptiness of the house. To-day, apparently, the servants had also gone to church; there was never a figure at the open windows; behind the house there was no stout negress in a red turban, lowering the bucket into the great shingle-hooded well. And the front door of the big, unguarded home stood open, with the trustfulness of the golden age; or what is more to the purpose, with that of New England"s silvery prime. Gertrude slowly pa.s.sed through it, and went from one of the empty rooms to the other--large, clear-colored rooms, with white wainscots, ornamented with thin-legged mahogany furniture, and, on the walls, with old-fashioned engravings, chiefly of scriptural subjects, hung very high. This agreeable sense of solitude, of having the house to herself, of which I have spoken, always excited Gertrude"s imagination; she could not have told you why, and neither can her humble historian. It always seemed to her that she must do something particular--that she must honor the occasion; and while she roamed about, wondering what she could do, the occasion usually came to an end.
To-day she wondered more than ever. At last she took down a book; there was no library in the house, but there were books in all the rooms. None of them were forbidden books, and Gertrude had not stopped at home for the sake of a chance to climb to the inaccessible shelves. She possessed herself of a very obvious volume--one of the series of the Arabian Nights--and she brought it out into the portico and sat down with it in her lap. There, for a quarter of an hour, she read the history of the loves of the Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura. At last, looking up, she beheld, as it seemed to her, the Prince Camaralzaman standing before her. A beautiful young man was making her a very low bow--a magnificent bow, such as she had never seen before. He appeared to have dropped from the clouds; he was wonderfully handsome; he smiled--smiled as if he were smiling on purpose. Extreme surprise, for a moment, kept Gertrude sitting still; then she rose, without even keeping her finger in her book. The young man, with his hat in his hand, still looked at her, smiling and smiling. It was very strange.
"Will you kindly tell me," said the mysterious visitor, at last, "whether I have the honor of speaking to Miss Went-worth?"
"My name is Gertrude Wentworth," murmured the young woman.
"Then--then--I have the honor--the pleasure--of being your cousin."
The young man had so much the character of an apparition that this announcement seemed to complete his unreality. "What cousin? Who are you?" said Gertrude.
He stepped back a few paces and looked up at the house; then glanced round him at the garden and the distant view. After this he burst out laughing. "I see it must seem to you very strange," he said. There was, after all, something substantial in his laughter. Gertrude looked at him from head to foot. Yes, he was remarkably handsome; but his smile was almost a grimace. "It is very still," he went on, coming nearer again.
And as she only looked at him, for reply, he added, "Are you all alone?"
"Every one has gone to church," said Gertrude.
"I was afraid of that!" the young man exclaimed. "But I hope you are not afraid of me."
"You ought to tell me who you are," Gertrude answered.
"I am afraid of you!" said the young man. "I had a different plan. I expected the servant would take in my card, and that you would put your heads together, before admitting me, and make out my ident.i.ty."
Gertrude had been wondering with a quick intensity which brought its result; and the result seemed an answer--a wondrous, delightful answer--to her vague wish that something would befall her. "I know--I know," she said. "You come from Europe."
"We came two days ago. You have heard of us, then--you believe in us?"