A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties Part 9

"I wonder?" mused Dic.

"Poor, dear old Billy Little," mused Rita. "But you will not go to New York?" continued Miss Persistency.

Dic had resolved, upon hearing Rita's first pet.i.tion concerning the New York trip, that he would be adamant. His resolution to go was built upon the rock of expediency. It was best for him, best for Rita, that he should go, and he had no respect for a poor, weak man who would permit a woman to coax him from a clearly proper course. She should never coax him out of doing that which was best for them both.

"We'll discuss it at another time," he answered evasively, as he tried to turn her face up toward him. But her face would not be turned, and while she hid it on his breast she pushed his away, and said:--

"No, we'll discuss it now. You must promise me that you will not go. If you do not, I shall not like you, and you shall not--" She did not finish the sentence, and Dic asked gently:--

"I shall not--what, Rita?"

"Anything," came the enlightening response from the face hidden on his breast. "Besides, you will break my heart, and if you go, I'll know you don't care for me. I'll know you have been deceiving me." Then the face came up, and the great brown eyes looked pleadingly into his. "Dic, I've leaned on you so long--ever since I was a child--that I have no strength of my own; but now that I have given myself up to you, I--I cannot stand alone, even for a day. If you go away from me now, it will break my heart. I tell you it will."

Dic felt her tears upon his hand, and soon he heard soft sobs and felt their gentle convulsions within her breast. Of course the result was inevitable; the combatants were so unevenly matched. Woman's tears are the most potent resolvent know to chemistry. They will dissolve rocks of resolution, and Dic's resolutions, while big with intent, were small in flintiness, though he had thought well of them at the time they were formed. He could not endure the pain inflicted by Rita's tears. He had not learned how easy and useful tears are to women. They burned him.

"Please, Rita, please don't cry," he pleaded.

The tears, while they came readily and without pain, were honest; at any rate, the girl being so young, they were not deliberately intended to be useful. They were a part of her instinct of self-preservation.

"Don't cry, please, Rita. Your tears hurt me."

"Then promise me you won't go to New York." I fear there is no getting away entirely from the theory of utility. With evident intent to crowd the battle upon a wavering foe, the tears came fast and furious.

"Promise me," sobbed Rita; and I know you will love Dic better when I tell you that he promised. Then the girl's face came up, and, I grieve to say, the tears, having served their purpose, ceased at once.

Next morning Dic went to see Billy Little and told him he had come to have a talk. Billy locked the store door and the friends repaired to the river. There they found a shady resting-place, and Billy, lighting his pipe, said:--

"Blaze away."

"I know you will despise me," the young man began.

"No, I won't," interrupted Billy. "You are human. I don't look for unmixed good. If I did, I should not find it except once in a while in a woman. What have you been doing? Go on." Billy leaned forward on his elbows, placed the points of his fingers together, and, while waiting for Dic to begin, hummed his favorite stanza concerning the braes of Maxwelton.

"Well," responded Dic, "I've concluded not to go to New York."

Billy's face turned a shade paler as he took his pipe from his lips and looked sadly at Dic. After a moment of scrutiny he said:--

"I had hoped to get you off before it happened. It's _all_ off now. You might as well throw Blackstone into Blue."

"What do you mean?" queried Dic. "Before what happened?"

"Before Rita happened," responded Billy.

"Rita?" cried Dic in astonishment. "How did you know?"

"How do I know that spring follows winter?" asked Billy. "I had hoped that winter would hold a little longer, and that I might get you off to New York before spring's arrival."

"Billy Little, you are talking in riddles," said Dic, pretending not to understand. "Drop your metaphor and tell me what you mean."

"You know well enough what I mean, but I'll tell you. I hoped that you would go to New York before Rita came to you. There would have been oceans of time after your return. She is very young, not much over sixteen."

"But you see, Billy Little, it was this way."

"Oh, I know all about how it was. She cried and said you didn't care for her, that you were breaking her heart, and wouldn't let you kiss her till you gave her your promise. Oh, bless your soul, I know exactly how it came about. Maxwelton's braes are um, um, um, um, yes, yes."

"Have you seen Rita?" asked Dic, who could not believe that she would tell even Billy of the scene on the log.

"Of course I have not seen her. How could I? It all happened last night after the social, and it is now only seven A.M."

"Billy Little, I believe you are a mind reader," said Dic, musingly.

"No, I'm not," replied Billy, with asperity. "Let's go back to the store. You've told me all I want to know; but I don't blame you much after all. You couldn't help it. No man could. But you'll die plowing corn. Perhaps you'll be happier in a corn field than in a broader one.

Doubtless the best thing one can do is to drift. With all due reverence, I am almost ready to believe that Providence made a mistake when it permitted our race to progress beyond the pastoral age. Stick to your ploughing, Dic. It's good, wholesome exercise, and Rita will furnish everything else needful to your happiness."

They walked silently back to the store. Dic, uninvited, entered and sat down on a box. Billy distributed the morning mail and hummed Maxwelton Braes. Then he arranged goods on the counter. Dic followed the little old fellow with his eyes, but neither spoke. The younger man was waiting for his friend to speak, and the friend was silent because he did not feel like talking. He loved Dic and Rita with pa.s.sionate tenderness. He had almost brought them up from infancy, and all that was best in them bore the stamp of his personality. Between him and Dic there was a feeling near akin to that of father and son, but unfortunately Rita was not a boy. Still more unfortunately the last year had added to her already great beauty a magnetism that was almost mesmeric in its effect.

There had also been a ripening in the sweet tenderness of her gentle manner, and if you will remember the bachelor heart of which I have spoken, you will understand that poor Billy Little couldn't help it at all, at all. G.o.d knows he would have helped it. The fault lay in the girl's winsomeness; and if Billy's desire to send Dic off to New York was not an unmixed motive, you must not blame Billy too severely.

Neither must you laugh at him; for he had the heart of a boy, and the most boyish act in the world is to fall in love. Billy had never misunderstood Rita's tenderness and love for him. There was no designing coquetry in the girl. She had always since babyhood loved him, perhaps better even than she loved her parents, and she delighted to show him her affection. Billy had never been deceived by her preference, and of course was careful that she should not observe the real quality of his own regard for her. But the girl's love, such as she gave, was sweet to him--oh, so sweet, this love of this perfect girl--and he, even he, old and gray though he was, could not help longing for that which he knew was as far beyond his reach as the bending rainbow is beyond the hand of a longing child. He was more than fifty in years, but his heart was young, and we, of course, all agree that he was very foolish indeed--which truth he knew quite as well as we.

So this disclosure of Dic's was a shock to Billy, although it was the thing of all others he most desired should come to pa.s.s.

"Are you angry, Billy Little?" asked Dic, feeling somewhat inclined to laugh, though standing slightly in fear of his little friend.

"Certainly not," returned Billy. "Why should I be angry? It's no affair of mine."

"No affair of yours, Billy Little?" asked Dic, with a touch of distress in his voice, though he knew that it was an affair very dear to Billy's heart. "Do you really mean it?"

"No, of course I don't mean it," returned Billy; "but I wish you wouldn't bother me. Don't you see I'm at work?"

Billy's conduct puzzled Dic, as well it might, and the young man turned his face toward the door, determined to wait till an explanation should come unsought.

Billy's bachelor apartment--or apartments, as he called his single room--was back of the store. There were his bed,--a huge, mahogany four-poster,--his library, his bath-tub, a half-dozen good pictures in oil and copper-plate, a pair of old fencing foils,--relics of his university days,--a piano, and a score of pipes. Under the bed was a flat leather trunk, and on the floor a rich, though worn, velvet carpet.

Three or four miniatures on ivory rested on the rude mantel-shelf, and in the middle of the room stood a mahogany table covered with _Blackwood's Magazines_, pamphlets, letters, and books. In the midst of this confusion on the table stood a pair of magnificent gold candlesticks, each holding a half-burned candle, and over all was a mantle of dust that would have driven a woman mad. Certainly the contents of Billy's "apartments" was an incongruous collection to find in a log-cabin of the wilderness.

At the end of half an hour Billy called to Dic, saying:--

"I wish you would watch the store for me. I'm going to my apartments for a bit. If Mrs. Hawkins comes in, give her this bottle of calomel and this bundle of goods. The calomel is a fippenny bit; the goods is four s.h.i.+llin', but I don't suppose she'll want to pay for them. Don't take c.o.o.nskins. I won't have c.o.o.nskins. If I can't sell my goods for cash, I'll keep 'em. b.u.t.ter and eggs will answer once in a while, if the customer is poor and has no money, but I draw the line on c.o.o.nskins. The Hawkinses always have c.o.o.nskins. I believe they breed c.o.o.ns, but they can't trade their odoriferous pelts to me. If she has them, tell her to take them to Hackett's. He'll trade for fis.h.i.+ng worms, if she has any, and then perhaps get more than his shoddy goods are worth. Well, here's the calomel and the goods. Get the cash or charge them. There's a letter in the C box for Seal Coble. Give it to Mrs. Hawkins, and tell her to hand it to Seal as she drives past his house. Tell her to read it to the old man. He doesn't know _a_ from _x_. I doubt if Mrs. Hawkins does. But you can tell her to read it--it will flatter her. I'll return when I'm ready. Meantime, I don't want to be disturbed by any one. Understand?"

"Yes," answered Dic, and the worthy merchant disappeared, locking the door behind him.

Billy sat down in the arm-chair, leaned his head backward, and looked at the ceiling for a few minutes; then, resting his elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands. There he sat without moving for an hour.

At the end of that time he arose, drew the trunk from under the bed, unlocked it, and raised the lid. A woman's scarf, several bundles of letters, two teakwood boxes, ten or twelve inches square and three or four inches deep, beautifully mounted in gold, and a dozen books neatly wrapped in tissue paper, made up the contents. These articles seemed to tell of a woman back somewhere in Billy's life; and if they spoke the truth, there must have been grief along with her for Billy. For although he was created capable of great joy, by the same token he could also suffer the deepest grief.

Out of the trunk came one of the gold-mounted boxes, and out of the box came a package of letters neatly tied with a faded ribbon. Billy lifted the package to his face and inhaled the faint odor of lavender given forth; then he--yes, even he, Billy Little, quaint old cynic, pressed the dainty bundle to his lips and breathed a sigh of mingled sorrow and relief.

"Ah, I knew they would help me," he said. "They always do. Whatever my troubles, they always help me."

He opened the package, and, after carefully reading the letters, bound them again with the ribbon, and took from the box a small ivory jewel case, an inch cube in size. From the ivory box he took a heavy plain gold ring and went over to the chair, where he sat in bachelor meditation, though far from fancy free.