she answered. "I shouldn"t be surprised to wake up any morning and find that I had dreamed it."
"It makes me want to curse those that put your mind out of joint when you were little and innocent."
"I don"t believe I was ever little and innocent--I was born out of bitterness."
"Then I"ll cure you, darling. I"ll love you so hard that you"ll forget all the terrible things you knew as a child."
She shook her head, gaily and yet with a touch of scorn for his a.s.surance. "You may try with all your strength, but when a sapling has been bent crooked you can"t pull it straight."
"But you aren"t crooked, Molly," he answered, kissing her throat above her open blouse.
She glowed at his kiss, and for one instant, it seemed to them that their spirits touched as closely as their bodies, while the longing and the rapture of spring drew them together.
"You"re mine now, Molly--I"ve got you close," he said as he held her.
At his words the rosy waves upon which they had floated broke suddenly on the earth, and turning slowly they walked hand in hand out of the field into the turnpike. A strange shyness had fallen over them, for when Molly tried to meet his eyes, she found that her lashes trembled and fell;--yet this shyness was as delicious as the ecstasy from which it had come.
But Nature seldom suffers such high moments to pa.s.s before they have been paid for in physical values. As the lovers pa.s.sed into the turnpike, there came the sound of a horse at a trot, and a minute later Jonathan Gay rode toward them, leaning slightly over the neck of his bay. Seeing them, he lifted his hat and brought down his horse to a walk, as if prompted by a sudden desire to look closer in Molly"s face.
Her rapture evidently became her, for after his first casual glance, he turned again quickly and smiled into her eyes. Her look met his with the frankness of a child"s and taken unawares--pleased, too, that he should so openly admire her--she smiled back again with the glow of her secret happiness enriching her beauty.
In a moment Gay had pa.s.sed on, and turning to Abel, she saw that a frown darkened his features.
"He had no right to look at you like that, and you oughtn"t to have smiled back, Molly," he said sternly.
Her nature leaped instantly to arms. "I suppose I"ve a right to my smiles," she retorted defiantly.
"No you haven"t--not now. An engaged woman ought to be proper and sober--anybody will tell you so--ask Mr. Mullen. A girl may flirt a little and n.o.body thinks any harm of it, but it"s different afterwards, and you know it."
"I know nothing of the kind, and I refuse to be preached to. I might as well marry Mr. Mullen."
The taunt, though it was uttered half in jest, appeared to torment him beyond endurance.
"How can you talk to me like this, after what you said five minutes ago?" he demanded.
His tone approached, unfortunately, the ministerial, and as he spoke, her anger flamed over her as hotly as her happiness had done a few minutes earlier.
"That was five minutes ago," she retorted with pa.s.sion.
Stopping in the road, he caught her arms and held them to her sides, while the thunder cloud blackened his forehead. Two playthings of Nature, swept alternately by the calm and the storm of elemental forces, they faced each other in the midst of mating birds and insects that were as free as they.
"Do you mean that you"ve changed, and in five minutes?" he asked.
"I"ve always told you I could change in three," she retorted.
"I don"t believe it--you are behaving foolishly."
"And you are wise, I suppose--preaching and prating to me as if you stood in the pulpit. When you were begging me so humbly for a kind word, I might have known that as soon as you got the kind word, you"d begin to want to manage me body and soul--that"s a man all over."
"I merely said that an engaged woman ought not to smile too free at other men--and that you ought not to even more than others, because there is something so inviting about you. Mr. Mullen would say the same thing from the pulpit--and what one man can say in the pulpit, I reckon, another may repeat in the road."
"No, he mayn"t--not if he wants to marry me."
"If I promise not to say a word more about it, will you get over your temper?"
"If you keep your promise, but how am I to know that you won"t burst out again the next time I look at a man?"
"Only try to look at them a little differently, Molly, not quite so wide-eyed and red-lipped--but primmer and with lowered lashes, just a bit contemptuous, as if your were thinking "you might as well be a stick or a stone for all the thought I am giving you."" The mental picture appeared to afford him satisfaction, for he resumed after a moment.
"I believe if you"d practise it a while before the gla.s.s you could do it--you are so clever."
"Why on earth should I make myself ugly just to please you?"
"It wouldn"t be making yourself ugly--I can"t endure an ugly woman. All I want you to be is sober."
"Then what made you fall in love with me? It certainly was not for soberness."
He shook his head hopelessly, puzzled for the first time by the too obvious contradiction between the ideal and the actual--between the phantom of a man"s imagination and the woman who enthralls his heart.
"To save my life I couldn"t tell you why I did," he replied. "It does seem, a bit foolish to fall in love with a woman as she is and then try to make her over into something different."
"Judy Hatch was the person G.o.d intended for you, I"m sure of it."
"Well, I"m not, and if I were I"d go ahead and defeat his intentions as I"m doubtless doing this minute. Let"s make up now, so you"d as well stop talking silliness."
"It"s you that talks silliness, not I--as if I were going through life lowering my lashes and looking contemptuous! But you"re your mother all over again. I"ve heard her say a dozen times that a girl who is born homely ought to get down on her knees and thank the Lord for protecting her from temptation."
"You never heard me say it, did you?"
"No, but I shall yet if I live long enough--and all because of your ridiculous jealousy."
The humour of this struck him, and he remarked rather grimly:
"Good G.o.d, Molly, what a vixen you are!" Then he broke into a laugh, and catching her to him, stopped her mouth with kisses.
"Well, we"re in it," he said, "and we can"t get out, so there"s no use fighting about it."
CHAPTER XVII
THE SHADE OF MR. JONATHAN
Old Reuben, seated in his chair on the porch, watched Molly come up the flagged walk over the bright green edgings of moss. Her eyes, which were like wells of happiness, smiled at him beneath the blossoming apple boughs. Already she had forgotten the quarrel and remembered only the bliss of the reconciliation.
"I"ve had visitors while you were out, honey," said the old man as she bent to kiss him. "Mr. Chamberlayne and Mr. Jonathan came up and sat a bit with me."
"Was it on business, grandfather?"