Miss Gibbie Gault Part 10

"What a silly boy!" She laughed, but she did not look at him. They had turned the corner and were now at the end of the asylum yard, enclosed by its high wooden fence, and as they started to go down the street which would lead into the road to Tree Hill she laid her hand again on his arm.

"Wait a minute." Her foot was against a certain paling, and with her heel she made a hole in the ground. "Do you remember this?"

"Of course I do." Sudden color filled his face. "You used to put your apple there. Every time I came for it my heart nearly jumped in the hole you hid it in, I was so afraid I'd be seen and would have to stop coming. I never ate one of those apples. I couldn't."

"I don't see why you didn't. They were awfully nice apples. I loved them."

"I know you did." He looked straight ahead. "That's why I couldn't eat yours. It used to make me so fighting furious to think--to think things were like they were that every night I'd throw rocks at the brick wall in front of the house for half an hour before I went home.

Did you know the first time I ever saw you you were hanging over that wall? It was on a Sunday afternoon and I asked the boy with me what was your name. From that Sunday to the week you went away I never missed going to Sunday-school. Mother couldn't understand it. She didn't know you were compelled to be there. That's the one bit of system I approved of in your inst.i.tution.

"I don't remember whether it was on the next Sunday after I saw you looking over the wall that I made up my mind I was going to marry you, or the Sunday after, but it was one or the other. That was over ten years ago, and--"

"We ought to be home this minute." She started down the half-dark street. "I'm not going to listen to things like that. Besides, it's after supper-time and Hedwig will be tired of waiting. You walk so slow, John!"

"All right." He joined her and together they turned into the Calverton road, up which at the top of the hill was the home now her own. "If you don't want to hear me I'll wait until later." He smiled in the half-knowing face. "You are tired, aren't you, of my asking when you are going to marry me? I'm perfectly willing to stop, but not until you tell me."

"Do you think I'd marry anybody for years and /years/ and YEARS?" She rolled the "years" out with increasing emphasis on each.

"I have just begun to really live here--to start some things; to get used to having a home of my own; to knowing all the people. And then"

--she looked in his face, indignant protest in her eyes--"there's Miss Gibbie. Do you think I would go away and leave her like this?"

"It is asking a good deal, I know." Out of his voice had dropped all lightness and in it were quiet purpose and gravity. "And in asking it I may seem selfish, yet I do ask it. For ten years I have had but one thought, one hope, one dream, if you will. It took me through college that I might please you; made me settle down to work at once when through with study; made me hold all my property interests here because I know you loved the place. But not until two years ago did I ask you to marry me."

"What did you ask me for then?" she interrupted, pulling a branch of a mock-orange bush on the side of the road and stripping it of its leaves. "We are such good friends, John, you and I. We have always been, and I don't want you to marry anybody--not even me." She turned to him, but she did not hear his quick, indrawing breath. "I need you too much, John. You always know the things I don't, and you unravel all the knots and straighten all the twisted strings when I get mixed up, but if we got married it wouldn't be the same at all."

"Why wouldn't it?"

"It wouldn't." She shook her head. "I'd be thinking just about you, and that--"

"Wouldn't be bad for me." His steady eyes looked into her unawakened ones. "I should ask nothing more of life."

"But life would ask something more of me. Don't you see it would be just selfishness. Mary mightn't mind"--her forehead puckered--"Mary always was self-indulgent, and if Martha didn't watch her--" She threw the stripped twig away impetuously. "I am not going to get married, I'm not. I don't see why men always tag love in. Just as soon as I get to be real friends with a man and like him just--just as he is, he turns round and spoils it! Why can't they let love alone?"

"Love will not let them alone, I imagine." He looked down on her, frowning slightly, in his eyes sudden pain as of fear for her.

"You are such a child, Mary. Many things you can be serious about.

Love alone you treat lightly. I don't understand you."

"And I don't understand love--the kind you mean. And if it is going to make me as cross and huffy and injured as it seems to do some people I don't want to know. I thought love was the happiest thing in life."

"It is. Or the unhappiest."

She turned. The note in his voice was new. Bitterness did not belong to John.

"Are you going to do like that, too, and--be like the rest? Why can't we keep on in the old way, John, and be as we've been so long? We were happy and--"

"Because I can't go on in the old way and be happy. I want you with me. I need you. And you--you need me, Mary. You are so alone here, except for Miss Gibbie, and you know so little of--of so many things in life. When are you going to be my wife?"

"I really--do--not--know!" With each word was a nod. "I am too busy to get married. I don't want a husband yet. He'd be so in the way."

She looked at him, eyebrows slightly raised. "I don't think that expression on your face suits you. And if I've got to look at it all through supper it won't make things taste very nice. That is one of the troubles about getting married. The foot of the table could be so unpleasant!"

With a half frown, half sigh, he turned his head away. "I wonder if you will ever grow up? And I wonder, also, if in all your thought for others you will ever think of me?"

He stood aside that she might pa.s.s between the vine-covered pillars marking the entrance to Tree Hill, and looking ahead saw Hedwig standing in the porch.

"There is you friend faithful," he said, and his face cleared.

Chapter X

THE FORGOTTEN ENGAGEMENT

Then minutes later they were at the table and again alone. Hedwig had left them, and John, leaning forward, held out his gla.s.s.

"More tea and less ice, please," he said, nodding between the candles and over the bowl of lilacs to the girl at the head of the table. "I don't see why women put so much ice in these queer-shaped gla.s.ses, anyhow. All ice and no tea makes--"

The gla.s.s he had handed her came down with a crash, and Mary Cary's hands were beaten together in sudden excited dismay.

"Oh, my goodness! Guess what we've done--/guess/ what we've done!" she repeated over and over, and now it was her elbows with which the table was thumped. "It is your fault, John! You know I haven't a bit of memory about some things, and you ought to have reminded me! I told you not to let me forget! You know I told you!"

"In the name of thunderation!" John Maxwell put down his fork and pushed back his chair. "Is it hydrophobia or hysterics or brain trouble or--For the love of mercy--"

"What time is it? Do you suppose we have time to go now, or is it too late? Why /did/ you let me forget?" And now, standing up, Mary Cary looked despairingly first at John and then at the clock, at sight of which she sank back limply in her chair.

"Would you mind telling me what crime we've committed?" John got up and filled his gla.s.s with tea.

"It's worse than a crime. It's a discourtesy. Anybody might forgive any sort of sin, but n.o.body forgives rudeness. The council meeting will be nothing to this."

"But what have we done?" John, still standing, put one, two, three lumps of sugar in his tea. "I thought you were having a fit, and convulsions were going to follow. You scared me silly. What's the fuss about?"

She leaned forward dejectedly, elbows on the table, then put her hand over the sugar-bowl. "You can't have four lumps! You know sweet things don't suit you. We were to take tea with Mrs. Deford to-night. You knew we were, and you didn't remind me. Sit down.

You haven't a bit of manners."

"Good heavens! Is that what you've been making all this row about?

I thought something was the matter." He put down the sugar-tongs, went back to his seat, and took out his watch. "Quarter-past eight.

What time were we to be there?"

"Seven o'clock. Everybody has supper at seven o'clock in Yorkburg."

"Too late now." He put his watch back and helped himself to another piece of fried chicken. "Terrible in you to forget such a thing as that! Terrible! But I'm much obliged to you for doing it. I was so afraid you'd remember, I--"

Her hands dropped on the table and she half rose. "Didn't you forget, too? John Maxwell, do you mean--"

"I do. These certainly are good rolls." He broke one open and let the steam escape. "Mrs. McDougal and I have much the same opinion of Mrs. Deford, and what's the use of taking tea with people you don't like? No, I didn't forget, and if you'd remembered and made me go, I'd gone. As you didn't, I took the part of wisdom and opened not my mouth. Your lack of memory is excuse enough for both.

Can I have some more tea? These gla.s.ses are frauds. I'm not going to have gla.s.ses this shape when I get married."

"Indeed you are! I like this shape. I mean when I get married I'm always going to use this kind." She put the gla.s.s down. "I'm not going to give you another drop. You didn't forget and you didn't remind me. Don't you know what it is going to mean? To-morrow everybody in town will be told of my rude behavior--and the asylum will be blamed for it. Everything I do wrong socially is attributed to my childhood's lack of opportunities for knowing enough, and everything I do wrong in every other way is due to my later opportunities for knowing too much. Mrs. Deford doesn't like me, anyhow, doesn't approve of me, and this will end us."

"That won't be bad for you. Do you like Mrs. Deford?"