"No," she answered, indignantly, "not for a single second;" which was a wide a.s.sertion.
"Not," he prompted her, somewhat bitterly, "when the MacDowlas gives dinner-parties, and you find yourself a prominent feature, "young person," as you are? Not when you wear the white merino, and "heavy swells" admire you openly?"
"No," shaking her head in stout denial of the imputation. "Never.
I think about you from morning until night; and the fact is," in a charming burst of candor, "I actually wake in the night and think about you. There! are you satisfied now?"
It would have been impossible to remain altogether unconsoled and unmoved under such circ.u.mstances, but he could not help trying her again.
"Dolly," he said, "does Gowan never make you forget me?"
Then she saw what he meant, and flushed up to her forehead, drawing her hand away and speaking hotly.
"Oh!" she said, "it is _that_, is it?"
"Yes," he answered her, "it is that."
Then they stopped in their walk, and each looked at the other,--Griffith at Dolly, with a pale face and much of desperate, pa.s.sionate appeal in his eyes; Dolly at Griffith, with her small head thrown back in sudden defiance.
"I am making you angry and rousing you, Dolly," he said; "but I cannot help it. There is scarcely a week pa.s.ses in which I do not hear that he--that fellow--has managed to see you in one way or another. He can always see you," savagely. "_I_ don"t see you once a month."
"Ah!" said Dolly, with cruel deliberation, "_this_ is what Aimee meant when she told me to be careful, and think twice before I did things. I see now."
I have never yet painted Dolly Crewe as being a young person of angelic temperament. I have owned that she flirted and had a temper in spite of her Vagabondian good spirits, good-nature, and popularity; so my readers will not be surprised at her resenting rather sharply what she considered as being her lover"s lack of faith.
"I think," she proceeded, opening her eyes wide and addressing him with her grandest air,--"I think I will walk the rest of my way alone, if you please."
It was very absurd and very tragical in a small way, of course, and a.s.suredly she ought to have known better, and perhaps she did know better, but just now she was very fierce and very sharply disappointed.
She positively turned away as if to leave him, but he caught hold of her arm and held her.
"Dolly," he cried, huskily, "you are not going away in that fas.h.i.+on. We never parted so in our lives."
She half relented,--not quite, but nearly, so very nearly that she did not try very hard to get away. It was Griffith, after all, who was trying her patience--if Gowan or any other man on earth had dared to imply a doubt in her, she would have routed him magnificently--in two minutes; but Griffith--ah, well, Griffith was different.
"Whose fault is it?" she asked, breaking down ignominiously. "Who is to blame? I never ask you if other people make you forget me. I wanted to--to see you so much that I--I ran madly after you for a quarter of a mile, at the risk of being looked upon as a lunatic by any one who might have chanced to see me. But you don"t care for that. I had better have bowed to you and pa.s.sed on if we had met. Let me go!"
"No," said Griffith, "you shall not go. G.o.d knows if I could keep you, you should never leave my arms again."
"You would tire of me in a week, if I belonged to you in real earnest,"
she said, not trying to get away at all now, however.
"Tire of you!" he exclaimed, in a shaken voice. "Of _you!_" And all at once he drew her round so that the light of the nearest lamp could fall on her face. "Look here!" he whispered, sharply; "Dolly, I swear to you, that if there lives a man on earth base and heartless enough to rob me of you, I will kill him as sure as I breathe the breath of life!"
She had seen him impa.s.sioned enough often before, but she had never seen him in as wild a mood as he was when he uttered these words. She was so frightened that she broke into a little cry, and put her hand up to his lips.
"Griffith!" she said, "Grif!--dear old fellow. You don"t know what you are saying. Oh! don"t--don"t!"
Her horror brought him to his senses again; but he had terrified her so that she was trembling all over, and clung to him nervously when he tried to console her.
"It is n"t like _you_ to speak in such a way," she faltered, in the midst of her tears. "Oh, how dreadfully wrong things must be getting, to make you so cruel!"
It took so long a time to rea.s.sure and restore her to her calmness, that he repented his rashness a dozen times. But he managed to comfort her at length, though to the last she was tearful and dejected, and her voice was broken with soft, sorrowful little catch-ings of the breath.
"Don"t let us talk about Ralph Gowan," she pleaded, when he had persuaded her to walk on with him again. "Let us talk about ourselves,--we are always safe when we talk about ourselves," with an innocent, mournful smile.
And so they talked about themselves. He would have talked of anything on earth to please her then. Talking of themselves, of course, implied talking nonsense,--affectionate, sympathetic nonsense, but still nonsense; and so, for a while, they strolled on together, and were as tenderly foolish and disconnected as two people could possibly be.
But, in spite of her resolution to avoid the subject, Dolly could not help drifting back to Ralph Gowan. "Griffith," she said, plaintively, "you are very jealous of him."
"I know that," he answered.
"But don"t you _know_," in desperate appeal, "that there is n"t the slightest need for you to be jealous of anybody?"
"I know," he returned, dejectedly, "that I am a very wretched fellow sometimes."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Dolly.
"I know," he went on, "that seven years is a long probation, and that the prospect of another seven, or another two, for the matter of that, would drive me mad. I know I am growing envious and distrustful; I know that there are times when I hate that fellow so savagely that I am ashamed of myself. Dolly, what has he ever done that he should saunter on the sunny side, clad in purple and fine linen all his life? The money he throws away in a year would furnish the house at Putney."
"Oh, dear!" burst forth Dolly. "You _are_ going wrong. It is all because I am not there to take care of you, too. Those are not the sentiments of Vagabondia, Grif."
"No," dryly; "they are of the earth, earthy."
Dolly shook her head dolefully.
"Yes," she acquiesced; "and they are a bit shabby, too. You are going down, Grif. You never used to be shabby. None of us were ever exactly that, though we used to grumble sometimes. We used to grumble, not because other people had things, but because we had n"t them."
"I am getting hardened, I suppose," bitterly. "And it is hardly to be wondered at."
"Hardened!" She stopped him that moment, and stood before him, holding his arm and looking up at him. "Hardened!" she repeated. "Grif, if you say that again, I will never forgive you. What is the good of our love for each other if it won"t keep our hearts soft? When we get hardened we shall love each other no longer. What have we told each other all these years? Have n"t we said that so long as we had one another we could bear anything, and not envy other people? It was n"t all talk and sentiment, was it? It was n"t on _my_ part, Grif. I meant it then, and I mean it now, though I know there are many good, kind-hearted people in the world who would not understand it, and would say I was talking unpractical rubbish, if they heard me. Hardened! Grif, while you have me, and I have you, and there is nothing on our two consciences? Why, it sounds,"--with another most dubious shake of her small head,--"it sounds as if you would n"t care about the house at Putney!"
He was conquered, of course; before she had spoken a dozen words he had been conquered; but this figure of his not caring for the house at Putney broke him utterly. He did not look very hardened when he answered her.
"Dolly," he said, "you are an angel! I have told you so before, and it may be a proof of the barrenness of my resources to tell you so again, but it is true. G.o.d forgive me, my precious! I should like to see the man whose heart could harden while such a woman loved him."
It was a pretty sight to see her put her hands on his shoulders, and stand on tiptoe to kiss him, in her honest, earnest way, without waiting for him to ask her.
"Ah!" she said, "I knew it wasn"t true," and then, still letting her hands rest on his shoulders, she burst forth in her tender, impulsive way again. "Grif," she said, "I don"t think I am very wise, and I know I am not very thoughtful. I do things often that it would be better to leave undone,--I am fond of making the Philistines admire me, and I sometimes tease you; but, dear old fellow, right deep down at the bottom of my heart," faltering slightly, "I do--_do_ want to be a good woman; and there is never a night pa.s.ses--though I never told you so before--that I do not pray to G.o.d to let me help you and let you help me to be tender and faithful and true."
It was the old story,--love was king. Wisdom to the winds! Practicality to the corners of the earth! Prudence, power, and grandeur, hide your diminished heads! Here were two people who cared nothing for you, and who flung you aside without a fear as they stood together under the trees in the raw evening air,--one a penniless little hired entertainer of elderly ladies, the other an equally impecunious bondsman in a dingy office.
They were quite happy,--even happy when time warned them that they must bid each other goodnight. They walked together to the gates of Barbazon Lodge, and parted in a state of bliss.
"Good-night," said Dolly. "Be good,--as somebody wise once said,--"Be good, and you will be happy.""
"Good-night," answered Griffith; "but might n"t he have put it the other way, Dolly, "Be happy, and you will be good--because you can"t help it"?"
He had his hand on _her_ shoulder, this time, and as she laughed she put her face down so that her soft, warm cheek nestled against it.
"But he didn"t put it that way," she objected. "And we must take wisdom as it comes. There! I must go now," rather in a hurry. "Some one is coming--see!"