"Oh, I shall be right back," said Moses, "I have a little business to settle with Captain Kittridge."
But Moses, however, did stay at tea with Mrs. Kittridge, who looked graciously at him through the bows of her black horn spectacles, having heard her liege lord observe that Moses was a smart chap, and had done pretty well in a money way.
How came he to stay? Sally told him every other minute to go; and then when he had got fairly out of the door, called him back to tell him that there was something she had heard about him. And Moses of course came back; wanted to know what it was; and couldn"t be told, it was a secret; and then he would be ordered off, and reminded that he promised to go straight home; and then when he got a little farther off she called after him a second time, to tell him that he would be very much surprised if he knew how she found it out, etc., etc.,--till at last tea being ready, there was no reason why he shouldn"t have a cup. And so it was sober moonrise before Moses found himself going home.
"Hang that girl!" he said to himself; "don"t she know what she"s about, though?"
There our hero was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was about,--had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him come back.
"Now, confound it all," said Moses, "I care more for our little Mara than a dozen of her; and what have I been fooling all this time for?--now Mara will think I don"t love her."
And, in fact, our young gentleman rather set his heart on the sensation he was going to make when he got home. It is flattering, after all, to feel one"s power over a susceptible nature; and Moses, remembering how entirely and devotedly Mara had loved him all through childhood, never doubted but he was the sole possessor of uncounted treasure in her heart, which he could develop at his leisure and use as he pleased. He did not calculate for one force which had grown up in the meanwhile between them,--and that was the power of womanhood. He did not know the intensity of that kind of pride, which is the very life of the female nature, and which is most vivid and vigorous in the most timid and retiring.
Our little Mara was tender, self-devoting, humble, and religious, but she was woman after all to the tips of her fingers,--quick to feel slights, and determined with the intensest determination, that no man should wrest from her one of those few humble rights and privileges, which Nature allows to woman. Something swelled and trembled in her when she felt the confident pressure of that bold arm around her waist,--like the instinct of a wild bird to fly. Something in the deep, manly voice, the determined, self-confident air, aroused a vague feeling of defiance and resistance in her which she could scarcely explain to herself. Was he to a.s.sume a right to her in this way without even asking? When he did not come to tea nor long after, and Mrs. Pennel and her grandfather wondered, she laughed, and said gayly,--
"Oh, he knows he"ll have time enough to see me. Sally seems more like a stranger."
But when Moses came home after moonrise, determined to go and console Mara for his absence, he was surprised to hear the sound of a rapid and pleasant conversation, in which a masculine and feminine voice were intermingled in a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara sitting knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young man seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung on the ground, while he was looking up into her face, as young men often do into pretty faces seen by moonlight. Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of Boston to Mr. Moses Pennel.
Moses measured the young man with his eye as if he could have shot him with a good will. And his temper was not at all bettered as he observed that he had the easy air of a man of fashion and culture, and learned by a few moments of the succeeding conversation, that the acquaintance had commenced during Mara"s winter visit to Boston.
"I was staying a day or two at Mr. Sewell"s," he said, carelessly, "and the night was so fine I couldn"t resist the temptation to row over."
It was now Moses"s turn to listen to a conversation in which he could bear little part, it being about persons and places and things unfamiliar to him; and though he could give no earthly reason why the conversation was not the most proper in the world,--yet he found that it made him angry.
In the pauses, Mara inquired, prettily, how he found the Kittridges, and reproved him playfully for staying, in despite of his promise to come home. Moses answered with an effort to appear easy and playful, that there was no reason, it appeared, to hurry on her account, since she had been so pleasantly engaged.
"That is true," said Mara, quietly; "but then grandpapa and grandmamma expected you, and they have gone to bed, as you know they always do after tea."
"They"ll keep till morning, I suppose," said Moses, rather gruffly.
"Oh yes; but then as you had been gone two or three months, naturally they wanted to see a little of you at first."
The stranger now joined in the conversation, and began talking with Moses about his experiences in foreign parts, in a manner which showed a man of sense and breeding. Moses had a jealous fear of people of breeding,--an apprehension lest they should look down on one whose life had been laid out of the course of their conventional ideas; and therefore, though he had sufficient ability and vigor of mind to acquit himself to advantage in this conversation, it gave him all the while a secret uneasiness. After a few moments, he rose up moodily, and saying that he was very much fatigued, he went into the house to retire.
Mr. Adams rose to go also, and Moses might have felt in a more Christian frame of mind, had he listened to the last words of the conversation between him and Mara.
"Do you remain long in Harpswell?" she asked.
"That depends on circ.u.mstances," he replied. "If I do, may I be permitted to visit you?"
"As a friend--yes," said Mara; "I shall always be happy to see you."
"No more?"
"No more," replied Mara.
"I had hoped," he said, "that you would reconsider."
"It is impossible," said she; and soft voices can p.r.o.nounce that word, _impossible_, in a very fateful and decisive manner.
"Well, G.o.d bless you, then, Miss Lincoln," he said, and was gone.
Mara stood in the doorway and saw him loosen his boat from its moorings and float off in the moonlight, with a long train of silver sparkles behind.
A moment after Moses was looking gloomily over her shoulder.
"Who is that puppy?" he said.
"He is not a puppy, but a very fine young man," said Mara.
"Well, that very fine young man, then?"
"I thought I told you. He is a Mr. Adams of Boston, and a distant connection of the Sewells. I met him when I was visiting at Judge Sewell"s in Boston."
"You seemed to be having a very pleasant time together?"
"We were," said Mara, quietly.
"It"s a pity I came home as I did. I"m sorry I interrupted you," said Moses, with a sarcastic laugh.
"You didn"t interrupt us; he had been here almost two hours."
Now Mara saw plainly enough that Moses was displeased and hurt, and had it been in the days of her fourteenth summer, she would have thrown her arms around his neck, and said, "Moses, I don"t care a fig for that man, and I love you better than all the world." But this the young lady of eighteen would not do; so she wished him good-night very prettily, and pretended not to see anything about it.
Mara was as near being a saint as human dust ever is; but--she was a woman saint; and therefore may be excused for a little gentle vindictiveness. She was, in a merciful way, rather glad that Moses had gone to bed dissatisfied, and rather glad that he did not know what she might have told him--quite resolved that he should not know at present.
Was he to know that she liked n.o.body so much as him? Not he, unless he loved her more than all the world, and said so first. Mara was resolved upon that. He might go where he liked--flirt with whom he liked--come back as late as he pleased; never would she, by word or look, give him reason to think she cared.
CHAPTER XXIV
DESIRES AND DREAMS
Moses pa.s.sed rather a restless and uneasy night on his return to the home-roof which had sheltered his childhood. All his life past, and all his life expected, seemed to boil and seethe and ferment in his thoughts, and to go round and round in never-ceasing circles before him.
Moses was _par excellence_ proud, ambitious, and willful. These words, generally supposed to describe positive vices of the mind, in fact are only the overaction of certain very valuable portions of our nature, since one can conceive all three to raise a man immensely in the scale of moral being, simply by being applied to right objects. He who is too proud even to admit a mean thought--who is ambitious only of ideal excellence--who has an inflexible will only in the pursuit of truth and righteousness--may be a saint and a hero.
But Moses was neither a saint nor a hero, but an undeveloped chaotic young man, whose pride made him sensitive and restless; whose ambition was fixed on wealth and worldly success; whose willfulness was for the most part a blind determination to compa.s.s his own points, with the leave of Providence or without. There was no G.o.d in his estimate of life--and a sort of secret unsuspected determination at the bottom of his heart that there should be none. He feared religion, from a suspicion which he entertained that it might hamper some of his future schemes. He did not wish to put himself under its rules, lest he might find them in some future time inconveniently strict.
With such determinations and feelings, the Bible--necessarily an excessively uninteresting book to him--he never read, and satisfied himself with determining in a general way that it was not worth reading, and, as was the custom with many young men in America at that period, announced himself as a skeptic, and seemed to value himself not a little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is n.o.bler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and n.o.ble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their unbelief as a misfortune.
Not that Moses was, after all, without "the angel in him." He had a good deal of the susceptibility to poetic feeling, the power of vague and dreamy aspiration, the longing after the good and beautiful, which is G.o.d"s witness in the soul. A n.o.ble sentiment in poetry, a fine scene in nature, had power to bring tears in his great dark eyes, and he had, under the influence of such things, brief inspired moments in which he vaguely longed to do, or be, something grand or n.o.ble. But this, however, was something apart from the real purpose of his life,--a sort of voice crying in the wilderness,--to which he gave little heed.
Practically, he was determined with all his might, to have a good time in this life, whatever another might be,--if there were one; and that he would do it by the strength of his right arm. Wealth he saw to be the lamp of Aladdin, which commanded all other things. And the pursuit of wealth was therefore the first step in his programme.
As for plans of the heart and domestic life, Moses was one of that very common cla.s.s who had more desire to be loved than power of loving. His cravings and dreams were not for somebody to be devoted to, but for somebody who should be devoted to him. And, like most people who possess this characteristic, he mistook it for an affectionate disposition.