Laura was silent. Then at length:
"I don"t know," she answered.
"Why, of course you love him, Laura," insisted Mrs. Cressler. "You wouldn"t have promised him if you hadn"t. Of course you love him, don"t you?"
"Yes, I--I suppose I must love him, or--as you say--I wouldn"t have promised to marry him. He does everything, every little thing I say. He just seems to think of nothing else but to please me from morning until night. And when I finally said I would marry him, why, Mrs. Cressler, he choked all up, and the tears ran down his face, and all he could say was, "May G.o.d bless you! May G.o.d bless you!" over and over again, and his hand shook so that--Oh, well," she broke off abruptly. Then added, "Somehow it makes tears come to my eyes to think of it."
"But, Laura," urged Mrs. Cressler, "you love Curtis, don"t you?
You--you"re such a strange girl sometimes. Dear child, talk to me as though I were your mother. There"s no one in the world loves you more than I do. You love Curtis, don"t you?"
Laura hesitated a long moment.
"Yes," she said, slowly at length. "I think I love him very much--sometimes. And then sometimes I think I don"t. I can"t tell.
There are days when I"m sure of it, and there are others when I wonder if I want to be married, after all. I thought when love came it was to be--oh, uplifting, something glorious like Juliet"s love or Marguerite"s. Something that would--" Suddenly she struck her hand to her breast, her fingers shut tight, closing to a fist. "Oh, something that would shake me all to pieces. I thought that was the only kind of love there was."
"Oh, that"s what you read about in trashy novels," Mrs. Cressler a.s.sured her, "or the kind you see at the matinees. I wouldn"t let that bother me, Laura. There"s no doubt that "_J._" loves you."
Laura brightened a little. "Oh, no," she answered, "there"s no doubt about that. It"s splendid, that part of it. He seems to think there"s nothing in the world too good for me. Just imagine, only yesterday I was saying something about my gloves, I really forget what--something about how hard it was for me to get the kind of gloves I liked. Would you believe it, he got me to give him my measure, and when I saw him in the evening he told me he had cabled to Brussels to some famous glovemaker and had ordered I don"t know how many pairs."
"Just like him, just like him!" cried Mrs. Cressler. "I know you will be happy, Laura, dear. You can"t help but be with a man who loves you as "J." does."
"I think I shall be happy," answered Laura, suddenly grave. "Oh, Mrs.
Cressler, I want to be. I hope that I won"t come to myself some day, after it is too late, and find that it was all a mistake." Her voice shook a little. "You don"t know how nervous I am these days. One minute I am one kind of girl, and the next another kind. I"m so nervous and--oh, I don"t know. Oh, I guess it will be all right." She wiped her eyes, and laughed a note. "I don"t see why I should cry about it," she murmured.
"Well, Laura," answered Mrs. Cressler, "if you don"t love Curtis, don"t marry him. That"s very simple."
"It"s like this, Mrs. Cressler," Laura explained. "I suppose I am very uncharitable and unchristian, but I like the people that like me, and I hate those that don"t like me. I can"t help it. I know it"s wrong, but that"s the way I am. And I love to be loved. The man that would love me the most would make me love him. And when Mr. Jadwin seems to care so much, and do so much, and--you know how I mean; it does make a difference of course. I suppose I care as much for Mr. Jadwin as I ever will care for any man. I suppose I must be cold and unemotional."
Mrs. Cressler could not restrain a movement of surprise.
"You unemotional? Why, I thought you just said, Laura, that you had imagined love would be like Juliet and like that girl in "Faust"--that it was going to shake you all to pieces."
"Did I say that? Well, I told you I was one girl one minute and another another. I don"t know myself these days. Oh, hark," she said, abruptly, as the cadence of hoofs began to make itself audible from the end of the side street. "That"s the team now. I could recognise those horses"
trot as far as I could hear it. Let"s go out. I know he would like to have me there when he drives up. And you know"--she put her hand on Mrs. Cressler"s arm as the two moved towards the front door--"this is all absolutely a secret as yet."
"Why, of course, Laura dear. But tell me just one thing more," Mrs.
Cressler asked, in a whisper, "are you going to have a church wedding?"
"Hey, Carrie," called Mr. Cressler from the stoop, "here"s J."
Laura shook her head.
"No, I want it to be very quiet--at our house. We"ll go to Geneva Lake for the summer. That"s why, you see, I couldn"t promise to go to Oconomowoc with you."
They came out upon the front steps, Mrs. Cressler"s arm around Laura"s waist. It was dark by now, and the air was perceptibly warmer.
The team was swinging down the street close at hand, the hoof beats exactly timed, as if there were but one instead of two horses.
"Well, what"s the record to-night J.?" cried Cressler, as Jadwin brought the bays to a stand at the horse block. Jadwin did not respond until he had pa.s.sed the reins to the coachman, and taking the stop watch from the latter"s hand, he drew on his cigar, and held the glowing tip to the dial.
"Eleven minutes and a quarter," he announced, "and we had to wait for the bridge at that."
He came up the steps, fanning himself with his slouch hat, and dropped into the chair that Landry had brought for him.
"Upon my word," he exclaimed, gingerly drawing off his driving gloves, "I"ve no feeling in my fingers at all. Those fellows will pull my hands clean off some day."
But he was hardly settled in his place before he proposed to send the coachman home, and to take Laura for a drive towards Lincoln Park, and even a little way into the park itself. He promised to have her back within an hour.
"I haven"t any hat," objected Laura. "I should love to go, but I ran over here to-night without any hat."
"Well, I wouldn"t let that stand in my way, Laura," protested Mrs.
Cressler. "It will be simply heavenly in the Park on such a night as this."
In the end Laura borrowed Page"s hat, and Jadwin took her away. In the light of the street lamps Mrs. Cressler and the others watched them drive off, sitting side by side behind the fine horses. Jadwin, broad-shouldered, a fresh cigar in his teeth, each rein in a double turn about his large, hard hands; Laura, slim, erect, pale, her black, thick hair throwing a tragic shadow low upon her forehead.
"A fine-looking couple," commented Mr. Cressler as they disappeared.
The hoof beats died away, the team vanished. Landry Court, who stood behind the others, watching, turned to Mrs. Cressler. She thought she detected a little unsteadiness in his voice, but he repeated bravely:
"Yes, yes, that"s right. They are a fine, a--a fine-looking couple together, aren"t they? A fine-looking couple, to say the least."
A week went by, then two, soon May had pa.s.sed. On the fifteenth of that month Laura"s engagement to Curtis Jadwin was formally announced. The day of the wedding was set for the first week in June.
During this time Laura was never more changeable, more puzzling. Her vivacity seemed suddenly to have been trebled, but it was invaded frequently by strange reactions and perversities that drove her friends and family to distraction.
About a week after her talk with Mrs. Cressler, Laura broke the news to Page. It was a Monday morning. She had spent the time since breakfast in putting her bureau drawers to rights, scattering sachet powders in them, then leaving them open so as to perfume the room. At last she came into the front "upstairs sitting-room," a heap of gloves, stockings, collarettes--the odds and ends of a wildly disordered wardrobe--in her lap. She tumbled all these upon the hearth rug, and sat down upon the floor to sort them carefully. At her little desk near by, Page, in a blue and white shirt waist and golf skirt, her slim little ankles demurely crossed, a cone of foolscap over her forearm to guard against ink spots, was writing in her journal. This was an interminable affair, voluminous, complex, that the young girl had kept ever since she was fifteen. She wrote in it--she hardly knew what--the small doings of the previous day, her comings and goings, accounts of dances, estimates of new acquaintances. But besides this she filled page after page with "impressions," "outpourings," queer little speculations about her soul, quotations from poets, solemn criticisms of new novels, or as often as not mere purposeless meanderings of words, exclamatory, rhapsodic--involved lucubrations quite meaningless and futile, but which at times she re-read with vague thrills of emotion and mystery.
On this occasion Page wrote rapidly and steadily for a few moments after Laura"s entrance into the room. Then she paused, her eyes growing wide and thoughtful. She wrote another line and paused again. Seated on the floor, her hands full of gloves, Laura was murmuring to herself.
"Those are good ... and those, and the black suedes make eight.... And if I could only find the mate to this white one.... Ah, here it is.
That makes nine, nine pair."
She put the gloves aside, and turning to the stockings drew one of the silk ones over her arm, and spread out her fingers in the foot.
"Oh, dear," she whispered, "there"s a thread started, and now it will simply run the whole length...."
Page"s scratching paused again.
"Laura," she asked dreamily, "Laura, how do you spell "abysmal"?"
"With a y, honey," answered Laura, careful not to smile.
"Oh, Laura," asked Page, "do you ever get very, very sad without knowing why?"
"No, indeed," answered her sister, as she peeled the stocking from her arm. "When I"m sad I know just the reason, you may be sure."
Page sighed again.