A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 31

"You are perfectly welcome," he said, annoyed; "it is a pleasure to be able to do anything for children."

And as he mounted he said to Miss Elliott, "I've fixed it, I think."

"Fixed her hip?"

"No; arranged for her to go to New York. They do that sort of thing there. I see no reason why the child should not walk."

"Oh, do you think so?" she exclaimed, softly. "You make me very happy, Mr. Burleson."

He looked her full in the face for just the s.p.a.ce of a second.

"And you make me happy," he said.

She laughed, apparently serene and self-possessed, and turned up the hill, he following a fraction of a length behind.

In gra.s.sy hollows late dandelions starred the green with gold, the red alder's scarlet berries flamed along the road-side thickets; beyond, against the sky, acres of dead mullein stalks stood guard above the hollow scrub.

"Do you know," she said, over her shoulder, "that there is a rose in bloom in our garden?"

"Is there?" he asked, without surprise.

"Doesn't it astonish you?" she demanded. "Roses don't bloom up here in October."

"Oh yes, they do," he muttered.

At the gate they dismounted, he silent, preoccupied, she uneasily alert and outwardly very friendly.

"How warm it is!" she said; "it will be like a night in June with the moon up--and that rose in the garden.... You say that you are coming this evening?"

"Of course. It is your last evening."

"Our last evening," she repeated, thoughtfully.... "You said ..."

"I said that I was going South, too. I am not sure that I am going."

"I am sorry," she observed, coolly. And after a moment she handed him the bridle of her mare, saying, "You will see that she is forwarded when your friend asks for her?"

"Yes."

She looked at the mare, then walked up slowly and put her arms around the creature's silky neck. "Good-bye," she said, and kissed her. Turning half defiantly on Burleson, she smiled, touching her wet lashes with her gloved wrist.

"The Arab lady and the faithful gee-gee," she said. "I know The Witch doesn't care, but I can't help loving her.... Are you properly impressed with my grief?"

There was that in Burleson's eyes that sobered her; she instinctively laid her hand on the gate, looking at him with a face which had suddenly grown colorless and expressionless.

"Miss Elliott," he said, "will you marry me?"

The tingling silence lengthened, broken at intervals by the dull stamping of the horses.

After a moment she moved leisurely past him, bending her head as she entered the yard, and closing the gate slowly behind her. Then she halted, one gloved hand resting on the closed gate, and looked at him again.

There is an awkwardness in men that women like; there is a _gaucherie_ that women detest. She gazed silently at this man, considering him with a serenity that stunned him speechless.

Yet all the while her brain was one vast confusion, and the tumult of her own heart held her dumb. Even the man himself appeared as a blurred vision; echoes of lost voices dinned in her ears--the voices of children--of a child whom she had known when she wore muslin frocks to her knees--a boy who might once have been this man before her--this tall, sunburned young man, awkward, insistent, artless--oh, entirely without art in a wooing which alternately exasperated and thrilled her.

And now his awkwardness had shattered the magic of the dream and left her staring at reality--without warning, without the courtesy of a "_garde a vous!_"

And his answer? He was waiting for his answer. But men are not G.o.ds to demand!--not highwaymen to bar the way with a "Stand and deliver!" And an answer is a precious thing--a gem of untold value. It was hers to give, hers to withhold, hers to defend.

"You will call on us to say good-bye this evening?" she asked, steadying her voice.

A deep color stung his face; he bowed, standing stiff and silent until she had pa.s.sed through the open door of the veranda. Then, half blind with his misery, he mounted, wheeled, and galloped away, The Witch clattering stolidly at his stirrup.

Already the primrose light lay over hill and valley; already the delicate purple net of night had snared forest and marsh; and the wild ducks were stringing across the lakes, and the herons had gone to the forest, and plover answered plover from swamp to swamp, plaintive, querulous, in endless reiteration--"Lost! lost! she's lost--she's lost--she's lost!"

But it was the first time in his life that he had so interpreted the wild crying of the killdeer plover.

There was a gown that had been packed at the bottom of a trunk; it was a fluffy, rather shapeless mound of filmy stuff to look at as it lay on the bed. As it hung upon the perfect figure of a girl of twenty it was, in the words of the maid, "a dhream an' a blessed vision, glory be!" It ought to have been; it was brand-new.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THERE WAS THAT IN BURLESON'S EYES THAT SOBERED HER"]

At dinner, her father coming in on crutches, stared at his daughter--stared as though the apparition of his dead wife had risen to guide him to his chair; and his daughter laughed across the little table--she scarcely knew why--laughed at his surprise, at his little tribute to her beauty--laughed with the quick tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in her eyes.

Then, after a silence, and thinking of her mother, she spoke of Burleson; and after a while of the coming journey, and their new luck which had come up with the new moon in September--a luck which had brought a purchaser for the mare, another for the land--all of it, swamp, timber, barrens--every rod, house, barn, garden, and stock.

Again leaning her bare elbows on the cloth, she asked her father who the man could be that desired such property. But her father shook his head, repeating the name, which was, I believe, Smith. And that, including the check, was all they had ever learned of this investor who had wanted what they did not want, in the nick of time.

"If he thinks there is gas or oil here he is to be pitied," said her father. "I wrote him and warned him."

"I think he replied that he knew his own business," said the girl.

"I hope he does; the price is excessive--out of all reason. I trust he knows of something in the land that may justify his investment."

After a moment she said, "Do you really think we may be able to buy a little place in Florida--a few orange-trees and a house?"

His dreamy eyes smiled across at her.

"Thank G.o.d!" she thought, answering his smile.

There was no dampness in the air; she aided him to the garden, where he resumed his crutches and hobbled as far as the wonderful bush that bore a single belated rose.

"In the South," he said, under his breath, "there is no lack of these.... I think--I think all will be well in the South."

He tired easily, and she helped him back to his study, where young Burleson presently found them, strolling in with his hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket.

His exchange of greetings with Miss Elliott was quietly formal; with her father almost tender. It was one of the things she cared most for in him; and she walked to the veranda, leaving the two men alone--the man and the shadow of a man.