"Better have some ice-cream," the old lady wheedled; "such hot blood needs cooling."
"Oh, Mrs. Todd, _she_ is so cool, I don"t need ice-cream,"
the young fellow mourned in her motherly ear.
"Get out with ye! Ain"t you got eyes? She"s waitin" to eat you up,--and starvin" for ye!" And David hurried after Elizabeth, who had reached the toll-gate and was waiting, if not to eat him, at any rate for his company.
"She"s a dear old soul!" he said joyfully.
"I believe you gave her a kiss," Elizabeth declared.
"I gave her a hug. She said things I liked!"
Elizabeth, guessing what the things might have been, swerved away from the subject, and murmured how pretty the country looked.
There had been a snow-storm the night before, and the fields were glistening, unbroken sheets of white; the road David chose was followed by a brook, that ran chuckling between the agate strips of ice along its banks; here and there a dipping branch had been caught and was held in a tinkling crystal prison, and here and there the ice conquered the current, and the water could be heard gurgling and complaining under its snowy covering. David thought that all the world was beautiful,--now that Mrs. Todd had bidden him use his eyes!
"Remember when we used to sled down this hill, Elizabeth?"
She turned her cool, glowing face toward him and nodded. "Indeed I do! And you used to haul my sled up to the top again."
"I don"t think I have forgotten anything we did."
Instantly she veered away from personalities. "Isn"t it a pity Blair dislikes Mercer so much? Nannie is dreadfully lonely without him."
"She has you; I don"t see how she can be lonely."
"Oh, I don"t count for anything compared to Blair." Her breath carried quickly. The starry light was in her eyes, but he did not see it. He was not daring to look at her.
"You count for everything to me," he said, in a constrained voice.
She was silent.
"Elizabeth...do you think you could--care? a little?"
She looked away from him without a word. David trembled; "It"s all up--" he said to himself; and even as he said it, a small, cold hand was stretched out to him,--a hand that trembled:
"David, I am not good enough. Truly, I"m not."
The very shock of having his doubts and fears crumble so suddenly, made him stand stock-still; he turned very white.
"What!" he said, in a low voice, "You--_care_? Oh no, you don"t! You can"t. I can"t believe it."
Upon which Elizabeth was instantly joyous again. "Well, I won"t, if you don"t want me to," she said gaily, and walked on, leaving him standing, amazed, in the snow. Then she looked back at him over her shoulder. At that arch and lovely look he bounded to her, stammering something, he did not know what himself; but she laughed, glowing and scolding, swerving over to the other side of the path. "David! We are on a public road. Stop! Please!"
"To think of your caring," he said, almost in a whisper. His face, with its flash of ecstasy, was like wine to her; all her soul spoke fearlessly in her eyes: "Care? Why, David, I was only so awfully afraid you weren"t going to ask me!"
His lip trembled. He was quite speechless. But Elizabeth was bubbling over with joy; then suddenly, her exhilaration flagged.
"What will your mother say? She doesn"t like me."
"Elizabeth! she loves you! How could she help it? How could anybody help it?"
"It"s my temper," she said, sighing; "my wicked temper. Of course I never mean anything I say, and I can"t imagine why people mind; but they do. Last week I made Cherry-pie cry. Of course she oughtn"t to have been hurt;--she knows me. You see I am really a devil, David, to make dear, old Cherry-pie unhappy! But I don"t believe I will ever lose my temper again as long as I live. I am going to be good, like your mother." The tears stood in her eyes.
"Mrs. Richie is so simply perfect I am sort of afraid of her. I wish she had ever been wicked, like me. David, what shall we do if she won"t consent?"
"She"ll consent all right," he said, chuckling; and added with the sweet and trusting egotism of youth: "the only thing in the world Materna wants, you know, is my happiness. But do you suppose it would make any difference if she didn"t consent? You are for me," he said with an abrupt solemnity that was almost harsh. "Nothing in the world can take you from me."
And she whispered, "Nothing."
Then David, like every lover who has ever loved, cast his challenge into the grinning face of Fate: "This is forever, Elizabeth."
"Forever, David."
On their way home, as they pa.s.sed the toll-house, he left her and ran up the path to tap on the window; when Mrs. Todd beamed at him through the geraniums, "_I"ve got her!_" he cried. And the gay old voice called back, "Glory be!"
On the bridge in the gathering dusk they stood for some time without speaking, looking down at the river. Once or twice a pa.s.ser-by glanced at the two figures leaning there on the hand- rail, and wondered at the foolishness of people who would stand in the cold and look at a river full of ice; but David and Elizabeth did not see the pa.s.sing world. The hurrying water ran in a turbulent, foam-streaked flood; great sheets of ice, rocking and grinding against one another, made a continuous soft crash of sound. Sometimes one of them would strike the wooden casing of a pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake of ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long white spit that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The river was yellow with mud torn up by a freshet back among the hills, but the last rays of the sun,--a disk of copper sinking into the brown haze behind the hills,--caught on the broken edges of the icy snow, and made a sudden white glitter almost from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.
"Elizabeth," David said, "I want to tell you something. I stood right here, and looked at a raft coming down the river, the evening that Blair told me that you and he--"
"Don"t!" she said, shivering.
"I won"t," he told her tenderly; "you were only a child; it didn"t mean anything. Don"t you suppose I understand? But I wanted you to know that it was then, nearly eight years ago, when I was just a boy, that I realized that _I_--" he paused.
She looked at him silently; her lip quivered and she nodded.
"And I have never changed since," he said. "I stood just here, leaning on this railing, and I was so wretched!" he laughed under his breath; "I didn"t know what was the matter with me! I was only a cub, you know. But"--he spoke very softly--"all of a sudden I knew. Elizabeth, a woman on the raft looked up at me.
There was a little baby... . Dear, it was then that I knew I loved you."
At those elemental words her heart came up into her throat. She could not speak, but suddenly she stooped and kissed the battered hand-rail where he said his hands had rested.
David, horrified, glancing right and left in the dusk and seeing no one, put a swift arm about her in which to whisper a single word. Then, very softly, he kissed her cheek. For a moment she seemed to ebb away from him; then, abruptly, like, the soft surge of a returning wave, she sank against his breast and her lips demanded his... .
That night David told his mother. He had been profoundly shaken by Elizabeth"s lovely unexpected motion there in the twilight on the bridge; it was a motion so divinely unconscious of the outside world, that he was moved to the point of finding no words to say how moved he was. But she had felt him tremble from head to foot when her lips burned against his,--so she needed no words. His silence still lasted when, after an hour next door with her, he came home and sat down on the sofa beside his mother. He nuzzled his blond head against hers for a moment; then slipped an arm round her waist.
"It"s all right, Materna," he said, with a sort of gasp.
"What is, dear?"
"Oh, mother, the idea of asking! The only thing in the world."
"You mean--you and Elizabeth?"
"Yes," he said.
She was silent for a moment; when she spoke her voice broke a little. "When was it, dear?"
"This afternoon," he said. And once started, he overflowed: "I can"t get my breath yet, though I"ve known it since a quarter past four!"
Mrs. Richie laughed, and then sighed. "David, of course I"m happy, if you are; but--I hope she"s good enough for you, dear."
She felt him stiffen against her shoulder.
"Good enough? for _me!_ Materna, she is perfect! Don"t you suppose I know? I"ve know her nearly all my life, and I can say she is perfect. She is as perfect as you are; she said you were perfect this afternoon. Yes; I never supposed I could say that any woman was as good, and lovely, and pure, as you--"