From Jest to Earnest Part 62

Even De Forrest looked at the student approvingly, especially as he had been to a city tailor and was clothed in taste and harmony with his manly proportions. No amount of grace and virtue could find recognition in De Forrest's eyes, unless dressed in the latest mode.

Mr. Dimmerly, from behind his newspaper, stared for a long time at Lottie and his nephew, and then snarled abruptly: "It's getting deuced cold. The brook will stop running down hill to-night, I'm a-thinking,--freeze up"; and he stirred the fire as if he had a spite against it.

Lottie's head bent lower. She was beginning to understand her crotchety uncle. She, too, thought that it was getting very "cold."

After a while Hemstead quietly left them, went to his room, and did not appear again till they were all at supper. He then, with a simple, yet quiet, high-bred ease,--the bearing of a natural gentleman,--gave sketches of what he had seen in New York, and the latest literary gossip. His manner towards Lottie was, as nearly as possible, the same as towards Bel and his cousin. He so completely ignored all that had happened--all that had pa.s.sed between them--that Lottie almost feared to give him the note she had written. She could not rally, but grew more and more depressed and silent, a fact which De Forrest and her aunt marked uneasily.

After supper he remarked that he would go over and say good-by to Mr. and Miss Martell and Harcourt.

With what a foreboding chill Lottie heard that word "good-by"!

Would he, indeed, go away without giving her a chance to say one word of explanation? She could endure it no longer. In accordance with her impulsive nature, she went straight to him, and said in a low tone, "Mr. Hemstead, will you please read that?"

He trembled, but took the note, and said, after a moment, "Certainly,"

and was gone.

An hour pa.s.sed, and another; still he did not return. Lottie's head bent lower and lower over her work. Mr. Dimmerly never played a more wretched game of whist. At last he quite startled them all by throwing down the cards and saying, in the most snappish of tones, "I wish the blockhead would come home."

"Why, brother, what is the matter?" asked Mrs. Marchmont, in a tone of surprise.

"I want to lock up," said the old gentleman, in some confusion.

"It's not late, yet."

"Well, it ought to be. I never knew such an eternally long evening.

The clocks are all wrong, and everything is wrong."

"There, there, you have had bad luck over your whist."

Lottie, however, knew what was the matter, and she gave him a shy, grateful look. But the old man was still more incensed when he saw that there were tears in her eyes, and he shuffled away, muttering something that sounded a little profane.

Lottie, soon after, left the room also, but as she was pa.s.sing through the hall she met Hemstead, who had come in at a side door.

He took her hand in both of his, and said, gently, "I do forgive you, fully and completely, and I have your forgiveness to ask for my hasty judgment."

"And will you be my friend again?" she asked, timidly, and in a way that taxed his resolution sorely.

"You have no truer friend," he said, after a moment.

"I think it was a little cruel, in so true a friend, to leave me all this desperately long evening."

"You are mistaken," he said, abruptly, and pa.s.sed hastily up to his room. She did not see him again that night.

What could he mean? Had he recognized her love, and, not being able to return it fully, did he thus avoid her and hasten through his visit? The bare thought crimsoned her cheek. But she felt that this could not be true. She knew he had loved her, and he could not have changed so soon. It was more probable that he believed her to be totally unfit to share in his sacred work,--that he feared she would be a hindrance,--and, therefore, he was shunning, and seeking to escape from one who might dim the l.u.s.tre of his spiritual life and work. In some respects she had grown very humble of late, and feared that he might be correct, and that she was indeed utterly unfit to share in his high calling.

"But if he only knew how hard I would try!" she said, with a touch of pathos in her tone which would have settled matters if he had heard it.

That he was sacrificing himself rather than ask her to share in his life's privation, did not occur to her.

Restless and unhappy, she wandered into the dining-room, where she found Mr. Dimmerly standing on the hearth-rug, and staring at the fire in a fit of the deepest abstraction. Lottie was so depressed as to feel that even a little comfort from him would be welcome; so she stole to his side and took his arm. He stroked her head with a gentleness quite unusual with him. Finally he said, in a voice that he meant to be very harsh and matter of fact, "Hasn't that nephew of mine got home yet? I feel as if I could break his head."

"And I feel," said Lottie, hiding her face on his shoulder, "as if he would break my heart, and you are the only one in the house who understands me or cares."

"Well, well," said the old gentleman, after a little, "others have been meddling; I think I will meddle a little."

Lottie started up in a way that surprised him, and with eyes flas.h.i.+ng through her tears said, "Not a word to him, as you value my love."

"Hold on," said the little man, half breathlessly. "What's the matter? You go off like a keg of powder."

"I wouldn't sue for the hand of a king," said Lottie, heroically.

"Bless you, child, he isn't a king. He's only Frank Hemstead, my nephew,--bound to be a forlorn home missionary, he says."

"Well, then," she said, drawing a long breath, "if he can't see for himself, let him marry a pious Western giantess, who will go with him for the sake of the cause instead of himself."

"In the mean time," suggested Mr. Dimmerly, "we will go back to New York and have a good time as before."

This speech brought to the warm-hearted girl another revulsion of feeling, and, again hiding her face on her uncle's shoulder, she sobbed, "I would rather be his slave on a desert island than marry the richest man in New York."

"And my wise and prudent sister thought it could be 'stopped,'"

chuckled Mr. Dimmerly.

"But remember, uncle, not a word of this to him, or I will refuse him though my heart break a thousand times. If he does not love me well enough to ask me of his own accord, or if he does not think I am fit to go with him, I would rather die than thrust myself upon him."

"Bless me, what a queer compound a woman is! It won't do for you to go West. You will set the prairies on fire. There, there, now don't be afraid. If you think I can say anything to my nephew--the thick-headed blunderbuss--which will prevent his getting down on his knees to ask for what he'll never deserve, you don't know the Dimmerly blood. Trust to the wisdom of my gray hairs and go to bed."

"But, uncle, I would rather you wouldn't say anything at all,"

persisted Lottie.

"Well, I won't, about you," said her uncle, in a.s.sumed irritability.

"I can get the big ostrich to pull his head out of the sand and speak for himself, I suppose. He's my nephew, and I'm going to have a talk with him before he leaves for the West. So be off; I'm getting cross."

But Lottie gave him a kiss that stirred even his withered old heart.

"O, good gracious!" he groaned after she was gone, "why was I ever 'stopped'?"

The next morning Hemstead appeared at breakfast as calm, pale, and resolute as ever. His manner seemed to say plainly to Lottie, "Our old folly is at an end. I have remembered the nature of my calling, and I know only too well that you are unfitted to share in it."

She was all the more desponding as she remembered how conscientious he was.

"If he thinks it's wrong, there's no hope," she thought, drearily.

After breakfast Mr. Dimmerly said, "Nephew, I wish you would do a little writing for me; my hand isn't as steady as it was"; and he took the student off to his private study.

After the writing was finished, Mr. Dimmerly gave a few awkward preliminary ahems, and then said, "So you go West next Monday?"

"Yes. I wish to get off on the first train."

"You seem very anxious to get away."

"I am sorry, now, I ever came," the young man said, in tones of the deepest sadness.