A few days later Bernard came, and she saw Nicholas less often. Her affection for her brother, belonging, as it did, to the dominant family feeling which possessed her soul, was filled with an almost maternal solicitude. He absorbed her with a spasmodic, half selfish, wholly insistent appeal. She received his confidences, wrote his letters, and tied his cravats. Upon his last visit home he had spent the greater part of his time in Kingsborough; now he rode in seldom, and invariably returned in a moody and depressed condition.
"You"re worth the whole bunch of them," he had said to her of other girls, "you dear old Eugie."
And she had warmed and laid a faithful hand on his arm. It was characteristic of her that no call for affection went disregarded--that the sensitive fibres of her nature quivered beneath any caressing hand.
"Do you really like me best?" she asked.
"Don"t I?" He laughed his impulsive, boyish laugh--"I"ll prove it by letting you go in for the mail this afternoon. I detest Kingsborough!"
"Oh! No, no, I love it, but I suppose it is dull for you."
She ordered the carriage and went upstairs to put on her hat. When she came down Bernard was not in sight, and she drove off, wondering why he or any one else should detest Kingsborough.
She performed her mission at the post-office, and was mentally weighing the probabilities of Nicholas having finished work for the day, when, in pa.s.sing along the main street, she saw him come to the door of his office with a round, rosy girl, whom she recognised as Bessie Pollard.
She had intended to take him out with her, but as she caught sight of his visitor she gave them both a condescending nod and ordered Sampson to drive on. She felt vaguely offended and sharply irritated with herself for permitting it. Her annoyance was not allayed by the fact that Amos Burr stopped her in the road to inform her that his wife was fattening a brood of turkeys which she would like to deliver into the hands of Miss Chris. As he stood before her, hairy, ominous, uncouth, she realised for the first time the full horror of the fact that he was father to the man she loved. Hitherto she had but dimly grasped the idea. Nicholas had been a.s.sociated in her thoughts with the judge and her earlier school days; and she had conceived of his poverty and his people only in the heroic measures that related to his emanc.i.p.ation from them. Now she felt that had she, in the beginning, seen him side by side with his father, she could not have loved him. She flinched from Amos Burr"s s.h.a.ggy exterior and drew back haughtily.
"I have nothing to do with the housekeeping," she said. "You may ask Aunt Chris."
He spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the dust and fingered the torn brim of his hat.
"I wish you"d jest speak to Miss Chris about "em," he returned, "an"
send me word by Nick." He gave an awkward lurch on his feet.
The colour flamed in Eugenia"s face.
"Aunt Chris will send for the turkeys," she said hurriedly. "Drive on, Sampson."
She sat splendidly erect, but the autumn landscape was blurred by a sudden gush of tears.
An hour later she remembered that she had promised to let Nicholas join her in the pasture, and she left the house with the grievance still at her heart.
When she saw him it broke out abruptly.
"I am surprised that you keep up with such people," she said.
He looked at her blankly.
"If you mean Bessie Pollard," he rejoined, "she was in trouble and came to me for advice. I couldn"t help her, but I could at least be civil.
She was kind to me when I was in her father"s store."
"I do not care to be reminded that you were ever in such a position."
He flinched, but answered quietly:
"I am afraid you will have to face it," he said. "If you become my wife, you will, unfortunately, have to face a good deal that you might escape by marrying in your own cla.s.s--I am not in your cla.s.s, you know," he slowly added.
She was conscious of a cloudy irritation which was alien to her usually beaming moods. The figure of Amos Burr loomed large before her, and she hated herself for the discovery that she was tracing his sinister likeness in his son. No, it was only the hair--that was all, but she loathed the obvious colour.
Her lip trembled and she set her teeth into it.
"You might at least allow me to forget it," she retorted.
"Why should you wish to forget it? I think I shall be proud of it when I have risen far enough above it to claim you. It is no small thing to be a self-made man."
She resented the a.s.surance of his tone.
"It is strange that you do not consider my view of it."
"Your view--what is it?"
"That I do not wish the man I love to--to speak to that Pollard girl,"
she gasped.
"Since you wish it, I will avoid her in future. She is nothing to me; but I can"t refuse to speak to her. You are unreasonable."
She was regarding the hovering shade of Amos Burr.
"If you think me unreasonable," she returned, "we may as well--"
He reached her side by a single step and flung his arm about her. Then he looked into her face and laughed softly.
"May as well what--dearest?" he asked.
She shook an obstinate head.
"You don"t love me," was her inevitable feminine challenge.
He laughed again. "Do I love you?" he demanded as he looked at her.
She did not answer, but the shade of Amos Burr melted afar.
Nicholas bent over her with abrupt intensity and kissed her lips until his kisses hurt her.
"Do I love you--now?" he asked.
"Yes--yes--yes." She freed herself with a laugh that dispelled the lingering cloud. "You may convince me next time without violence," she affirmed radiantly.
As he watched her his large nostrils twitched whimsically. "You were saying that we might as well--"
"Go home to supper," she finished triumphantly. "The sun has set."
When she left him a little later at the end of the avenue she flew joyously up the narrow walk. She was softly humming to herself, and as she stepped upon the porch the song ran lightly into words.
"I love Love, though he has wings, And like light can flee--"
she sang, and paused within the shadow of the porch to glance through the long window that led into the sitting-room. The heavy curtains obstructed her gaze, and she had put up her hand to push them aside, when her father"s voice reached her, and at his words her outstretched arm fell slowly to her side.