"This is the very thing you"re lookin" for," she observed, in the tone of one who is conscious of being an authority in that sphere to which G.o.d has called her, "the latest style in Applegate."
Picking up the envelope he held it doubtfully toward the light in the doorway.
"Are you sure it isn"t a little--a little loud?" he inquired wistfully.
"Loud? Dear me, to think of you callin" a dove an" a blue ribbon bow loud! Ain"t that jest like a man? They can"t be expected to have taste in sech matters. No, it ain"t loud!" she replied with more direct condescension. "It"s the latest thing from Applegate--the girls are all crazy about it--jest the little artistic trifle that catches a woman"s eye."
In the end, under the sting of her rebuke, though but half convinced, he concluded the purchase and went out, bearing the box of ornamented paper under his arm. An hour later, after the letter was written, misgivings besieged him anew, and he stood holding the envelope at arm"s length, while he frowned dubiously at the emblematic dove on the flap.
"It doesn"t look just right to me," he said under his breath, "but Mrs.
Bottom ought to know, and I reckon she does."
The letter went, and the next afternoon he followed it in person to Jordan"s Journey. Gay was coming down the walk when he reached the lawn, and after a moment"s hesitation they stopped to exchange a few remarks about the weather.
"There"s something I want to explain to you, Revercomb," said Jonathan, wheeling back abruptly after they had parted. "Molly has become a member of our household, you see; so my relation to her is really that of a cousin. She"s a staunch little soul--I"ve a tremendous admiration for her--but there has never been the slightest sentiment between us, you understand."
"Yes, I understand," replied Abel, and fell silent.
There was a certain magnanimity, he recognized, in Gay"s effort to put things right even while he must have preferred in his heart to have them remain in the wrong. As Molly"s cousin it was hardly probable that he should care to hasten her marriage to a country miller.
"Well, I wanted you to know, that was all," said Gay in a friendly tone.
"You"ll find Molly in the side-garden, so I wouldn"t trouble to knock if I were you."
He went on, swinging with an easy stride between the hedges of box, while Abel, pa.s.sing the right wing in obedience to the directions, found Molly walking up and down in a small gra.s.sy path, which was sprinkled with snowdrops. The "side-garden" was a ruined, over-grown square, planted in miniature box, which the elder Gay had laid out after one of his visits to Italy. Now, with its dwindling maze and its unpruned rose-bushes, it resembled a picture which has been blotted out until the original intention of the artist is no longer discernible. Yet the place was exquisite still. Spring had pa.s.sed over it with her magical touch, and she had decorated the spot she could no longer restore. The scent of box filled the air, and little new green leaves had put out on the dusky windings of the maze.
As Abel approached, Molly was moving slowly away from him, her long black skirt, which had been made to fit Mrs. Gay, trailing over the snowdrops in the path. When she turned at the end of the walk, there was the faintest hesitancy in her manner before she came forward with a smile and an outstretched hand. In some subtle way she had changed--he felt it before she reached him--before she uttered a word. He had never seen her in a long dress until to-day; and in putting on Mrs. Gay"s gown she seemed to have clothed herself in that lady"s appealing and pensive manner. The black skirt, flowing between them on the gra.s.s, divided them more completely than the memory of their quarrel. He was chilled because it made her appear reserved and distant; she was embarra.s.sed because she had not yet learned to walk in a train, and while it pleased and flattered her with a sense of dignity, it also caused her to feel awkward and unnatural in her movements, as if she were not "playing up"
successfully to the part that had been a.s.signed her. She had learned a good deal in three days, and she was still a little confused by the endeavour to understand all of her lessons. Sincere as her sorrow was for Reuben, her youth and a certain quickness of observation had kept her mindful of every change through which she had pa.s.sed, of every detail which distinguished life at the "big house" from life in the overseer"s cottage. She had learned, for instance, the necessity, in such circ.u.mstances, of eating as if it were an utterly indifferent matter, and yet of coming to one"s meals dressed as elaborately as if one were on one"s way to church. Kesiah had taught her much; but from Gay, with his abundant kindliness, his self-possession, his good clothes, she had learned incomparably more. Kesiah had shown her the external differences in "things," while Gay had opened her eyes to the external differences that might count in men. Until she knew Gay she had believed that the cultivation of one"s appearance was a matter that concerned women alone. Now, when moved by some unfortunate impulse of respect for her mourning, Abel showed himself before her in his Sunday clothes, she was conscious of a shock which she would never have felt in the old days in the overseer"s cottage. In his working dress, with his fine throat bared by his blue shirt, there was a splendid vitality about her lover beside which Jonathan appeared flabby and over-weighted with flesh. But dressed in imitation of the work of Gay"s London tailor, the miller lost the distinction which nature had given him without acquiring the one conferred by society.
"You got my letter, Molly?" he asked--and the question was unfortunate, for it reminded her not only of the letter, but of Gay"s innocent jest about the dove on the envelope. She had been ashamed at the instant, and she was ashamed now when she remembered it, for there is nothing so contagious as an active regard for the petty social values of life. In three days she had not only begun to lose her own crudeness--she had attained to a certain small criticism of the crudeness of Abel. Already the difference between the two men was irritating her, yet she was still unconscious as to the the exact particular in which this difference lay.
Her vision had perceived the broad distinction of cla.s.s, though it was untrained as yet to detect minute variations of manner. She knew instinctively that Gay looked a man of the world and Abel a rustic, but this did not shake in the least the knowledge that it was Abel, not Gay, whom she loved.
"Yes, I got your letter," she answered, and then she added very softly: "Abel, I"ve always known I was not good enough for you."
Her tone, not her words, checked his advance, and he stood staring at her in perplexity. It was this expression of dumb questioning which had so often reminded her of the look in the eyes of Reuben"s hound, and as she met it now, she flinched a little from the thought of the pain she was inflicting.
"I"m not good and faithful, Abel; I"m not patient, I"m not thrifty, I"m not anything your wife ought to be."
"You"re all I"m wanting, anyway, Molly," he replied quietly, but without moving toward her.
"I feel--I am quite sure we could not be happy together," she went on, hurriedly, as if in fear that he might interrupt her before she had finished.
"Do you mean that you want to be free?" he asked after a minute.
"I don"t know, but I don"t want to marry anybody. All the feeling I had went out of me when grandfather died--I"ve been benumbed ever since--and I don"t want to feel ever again, that"s the worst of it."
"Is this because of the quarrel?"
"Oh, know--you know, I was always like this. I"m a thing of freedom--I can"t be caged, and so we"d go on quarrelling and kissing, kissing and quarrelling, until I went out of my mind. You"d want to make me over and I"d want to make you over, like two foolish children fighting at play."
It was true what she had said, and he realized it, even though he protested against it. She was a thing of freedom as much as one of the swallows that flashed by in the sunlight.
"And you don"t want to marry me? You want to be free--to be rich?"
"It isn"t the money--but I don"t want to marry."
"Have you ever loved me, I wonder?" he asked a little bitterly.
For an instant she hesitated, trying in some fierce self-reproach to be honest. "I thought so once, and I suppose I"ll think so again,"
she answered. "The truth is I"ve loved you some days, and some days I haven"t. I"ve never believed much in it, you know--I wasn"t that kind of woman. It always meant so much less to me than to others."
It was true again, he admitted it. She had never been--and he had always known it--"that kind of woman." She had safely mocked at s.e.x only because she had never felt its significance. From the depths of his misery, he told himself, while he faced her, that she would be perfect if she were only a little different--if she were only "that kind of woman." She possessed a thousand virtues, he was aware; she was generous, honourable according to her lights, loyal, brave, charitable, and unselfish. But it is the woman of a single virtue, not a thousand, that a man exalts.
"Yes, I suppose it always meant less to you than to others," he repeated dully.
"It wasn"t my fault--why do you blame me?" she responded quickly. "Men hold a woman to blame when she doesn"t love, however ill they may use her as soon as she does it. Oh, I know you"re not that sort--you needn"t explain it. You are different, and this is why I am half loving you even now. Last night when I awoke and heard a mockingbird in the cedars, I told myself that I could never be happy away from you. But when the light came, I wanted to see the world, and I forgot you. I"m only twenty-one. I"m too young to tie myself down forever."
"My mother married when she was sixteen," he replied, partly because he could think of nothing else to say at the moment, partly because he honestly entertained the masculine conviction that the precedent in some way const.i.tuted an argument.
"And a sensible marriage it was!" retorted Molly with scorn. "She"s had a hard enough lot and you know it." In her earnestness she had almost a.s.sumed the position of Sarah"s champion.
"Yes, I reckon it is," he returned, wounded to the quick. "I"ve no right to ask you to exchange what they offer you for a life like my mother"s."
Fulness of emotion lent dignity to his words, but if he had shown indifference instead of tenderness, it would probably have served him better. She was so sure of Abel--so ready to accept as a matter of course the fact that she could rely on him.
"So you want it to be all over between us?" he asked.
"I don"t want to be tied--I don"t think I ought to be." Her tone was firm, but she plucked nervously at a bit of c.r.a.pe on the sleeve of Mrs.
Gay"s gown.
"Perhaps you"re right," he replied quietly. He had spoken in a stiff and constrained manner, with little show of his suffering, yet all the while he felt that a band of iron was fastened across his brain, and the physical effect of this pressure was almost unendurable. He wanted to ease his swollen heart by some pa.s.sionate outburst, but an obstinate instinct, which was beyond his control, prevented his making a ridiculous display of his emotion. The desire to curse aloud, to hurl defiant things at a personal deity, was battling within him, but instead of yielding to it he merely repeated:
"I reckon you"re right--it wouldn"t be fair to you in the end."
"I hope you haven"t any hard feeling toward me," she said presently, sweetly commonplace.
"Oh no, I haven"t any hard feeling. Good-bye, Molly."
"Good-bye, Abel."
Turning away from her, he walked rapidly back along the short gra.s.sy path over the snowdrops. As she watched him, a lump rose in her throat, and she asked herself what would happen if she were to call after him, and when he looked round, run straight into his arms? She wanted to run into his arms, but her knowledge of herself told her that once there she would not want to stay. The sense of bondage would follow--on his part the man"s effort to dominate; on hers the woman"s struggle for the integrity of personality. As long as he did not possess her she knew that emotion would remain paramount over judgment--that the longing to win her would triumph over the desire to improve what he had won. But once surrendered, the very strength and singleness of his love would bring her to cage. The swallow flights and the freedom of the sky would be over, and she would either beat her wings hopelessly against the bars, or learn to eat from his hand, to sing presently at his whistle.
Had pa.s.sion urged her, this hesitancy would have been impossible. Then she would either have seen none of these things, or, having seen them, she would have dared greatly. She was too cool, too clear-sighted, perhaps, for a heroine of romance. The single virtue that has fed vampire-like on the blood of the others, the abject att.i.tude of the heart, the moral chicanery of s.e.x--she would have none of these things.
"I am very fond of him, but I want to live--to live," she said, raising her arms with a free movement to the sky, while she looked after his figure. "Poor Abel," she added after a moment, "he will never get over it."
Then, while the sigh of compa.s.sion was still on her lips, she was arrested by a scene which occurred in the sunny meadow. From the brook a woman"s form had risen like a startled rabbit at Abel"s approach, wavering against the background of willows, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. The next instant, as though in obedience to some mental change, it came quickly forward and faced the miller with an upward movement of the hands to shelter a weeping face.
"I believe--I really believe it is Judy Hatch," said Molly to herself, and there was a faint displeasure in her voice. "I wonder what she is doing in the willows?"