"Oh, I don"t know," she continued, with a careless movement of her head, and speaking in the high, indifferent tone that a woman adopts when she wishes to be exasperating; "you needn"t get mad. Lots of Eastern people feel that way. They come out here and see us constantly, and make friends with us, and then go back and laugh at us, and tell their friends what barbarians we are. It"s customary, and nothing to be ashamed of."
"Do you suppose that I am that sort of an Eastern person?" asked Faraday, quietly.
"I don"t know," she said, doubtfully. "I didn"t think you were at first, but now----"
"But now you do. Why?"
"Because you don"t come here any more," she said, with a little air of triumph. "You"re tired of us. The novelty is over and so are the visits."
Faraday arose, too bitterly annoyed for speech. Genevieve, rising too, and touching her skirts with arranging hand, continued, apparently unconscious of the storm she was rousing:
"And yet it seems odd that you should find such a difference. Lord Hastings, now, who"s English, and much more conventional, thinks the people here just as refined and particular as any other Americans."
"It"s evident," said Faraday, in a voice roughened with anger, "that Lord Hastings"s appreciation of the refinement of the Americans is only equaled by your admiration for the talents of the English."
"I do like them," said Genevieve, dubiously, shaking her head, as if she was admitting a not entirely creditable taste, and looking away from him.
There was a moment"s silence. Faraday fastened his eyes upon her in a look of pa.s.sionate confession that in its powerful pleading drew her own back to his.
"You"re as honest as you are cruel," he said, almost in a whisper.
She made no reply, but turned her head sharply away, as if in sudden embarra.s.sment. Then, in answer to his conventionally murmured good-byes, she looked back, and he saw her face radiant, alight, with the most beautiful smile trembling on the lips. The splendor of this look seemed to him a mute expression of her happiness--of love reciprocated, ambition realized--and in it he read his own doom. He turned blindly round to pick up his hat; the door behind him was opened, and there, handsome, debonair, fresh as a May morning, stood Lord Hastings, hat in hand.
"I hope you"re not vexed, Miss. Ryan," said this young man, "but I"m very much afraid I"m just a bit late."
After this Faraday thought it quite unnecessary to visit Barney Ryan"s "palatial mansion" for some time. Genevieve"s engagement would soon be announced, and then he would have to go and offer his congratulations.
As to whether he would dance at her wedding with a light heart--that was another matter. He a.s.sured himself that she was making a splendid and eminently suitable marriage. With her beauty and money and true simple heart she would deck the fine position which the Englishman could give her. He wished her every happiness, but that he should stand by and watch the progress of the courtship seemed to him an unnecessary twisting of the knife in the wound. Even the endurance of New England human nature has its limits, and Faraday could stand no more. So he refused an invitation to a tea from Mrs. Ryan, and one to a dinner and another to a small musical from Miss. Ryan, and alone in his Pine Street lodgings, for the first time in his life, read the "social columns" with a throbbing heart.
One Sat.u.r.day afternoon, two weeks from the day that he had last seen Genevieve, he sat in his room trying to read. He had left the office early, and though it was still some hours before dark, a heavy unremitting rain had enveloped the afternoon in a premature twilight.
The perpetual run of water from a break in the gutter near his window sounded drearily through the depressing history of the woes and disappointments of David Grieve. The gloom of the book and the afternoon was settling upon Faraday with the creeping stealthiness of a chill, when a knock sounded upon his door, and one of the servants without acquainted him with the surprising piece of intelligence that a lady was waiting to see him in the sitting-room below.
As he entered the room, dim with the heavy somberness of the leaden atmosphere, he saw his visitor standing looking out of the window--a tall, broad-shouldered, small-waisted striking figure, with a neat black turban crowning her closely braided hair. At his step she turned, and revealed the gravely handsome face of Genevieve Ryan. He made no attempt to take her hand, but murmured a regulation sentence of greeting; then, looking into her eyes, saw for the first time that handsome face marked with strong emotion. Miss. Ryan was shaken from her phlegmatic calm; her hand trembled on the back of the chair before her; the little knot of violets in her dress vibrated to the beating of her heart.
"This is not a very conventional thing to do," she said, with her usual ignoring of all preamble, "but I can"t help that. I had something to talk to you about, Mr. Faraday, and as you would not come to see me, I had to come to see you."
"What is it that you wanted to see me about?" asked Faraday, standing motionless, and feeling in the sense of oppression and embarra.s.sment that seemed to weigh upon them both the premonition of an approaching crisis.
She made no answer for a moment, but stood looking down, as if in an effort to choose her words or collect her thoughts, the violets in her dress rising and falling with her quickened breathing.
"It"s rather hard to know how to say--anything," she said at length.
"If I can do anything for you," said the young man, "you know it would always be a happiness to me to serve you."
"Oh, it"s not a message or a favor," she said, hastily. "I only wanted to say something"--she paused in great embarra.s.sment--"but it"s even more queer more unusual, than my coming here."
Faraday made no response, and for a s.p.a.ce both were silent. Then she said, speaking with a peculiar low distinctness:
"The last time I saw you I seemed very disagreeable. I wanted to make sure of something. I wanted to make sure that you were fond of me--to surprise it out of you. Well--I did it. You are fond of me. I made you show it to me." She raised her eyes, brilliant and dark, and looked into his. "If you were to swear to me now that I was wrong I would know you were not telling the truth," she said, with proud defiance. "You love me."
"Yes," said Faraday, slowly, "I do. What then?"
"What then?" she repeated. "Why do you go away--go away from me?"
"Because," he answered, "I am too much of a man to live within sight of the woman I love and can never hope for."
"Can never hope for?" she exclaimed, aghast. "Are you--are you married?"
The sudden horror on her face was a strange thing for Faraday to see.
"No," he said, "I am not married."
"Then, did she tell you that you never could hope for her?" said Miss.
Genevieve Ryan, in a tremulous voice.
"No. It was not necessary. I knew myself."
"You did yourself a wrong, and her too," she broke out, pa.s.sionately.
"You should have told her, and given her a chance to say--to say what she has a right to say, without making her come to you, with her love in her hand, to offer it to you as if she was afraid you were going to throw it back in her face. It"s bad enough being a woman anyway, but to have the feelings of a woman, and then have to say a thing like this--it"s--it"s--ghastly."
"Genevieve!" breathed Faraday.
"Why don"t you understand?" she continued, desperately. "You won"t see it. You make me come here and tell it to you this way. I may be badly mannered and unconventional, but I have feelings and pride like other women. But what else could I do?"
Her voice suddenly broke into soft appeal, and she held out her hands toward him with a gesture as spontaneous in its pleading tenderness as though made by a child. Faraday was human. He dashed away the chair that stood between them and clasped the trembling hands in his.
"Why is it," she asked, looking into his face with shining troubled eyes--"why is it you acted this way? Was it Lord Hastings? I refused him two weeks ago. I thought I"d marry him once, but that was before I knew you. Then I waited for you, and you didn"t come, and I wrote to you, and you wouldn"t come. And so I had to come and tell you myself, and it"s been something dreadful."
Faraday made no response, but feeling the smooth hands curled warm inside his, he stood listening to those soft accents that issued with the sweetness that love alone lends to women"s voices from lips he had thought as far beyond his reach as the key of the rainbow.
"Do you think it was awful for me to do it?" she queried, in whispering anxiety.
He shook his head.
"Well," she said, laughing a little and turning her head half away, as her former embarra.s.sment began to rea.s.sert itself over her subsiding nervousness, "I"ve often wished I was a man, but if it"s always as awful as that to propose to a person, I"m quite content to be a woman."
GIDEON"S KNOCK
BY
MARY HALLECK FOOTE
Written for THE SPINNERS" BOOK OF FICTION
_All Rights Reserved_