The Best Man (13 page)

Celia was already on the ground, looking off toward the little village wistfully. Just how it was to make her lot any brighter to get out of the train and run away to a strange little village she did not quite explain to herself, but it seemed to be a relief to her pent-up feelings. She was half afraid that George might raise some new objection when he returned.

Gordon swung himself down on the cinder path, scanning the track either way. The conductor and brakemen were not in sight. Far in the distance a black speck was rushing down upon them. Gordon could hear the vibration of the rail of the second track, upon which he placed his foot as he helped Celia across. In a moment more the train would pass. It was important that they should be down the embankment, out of sight. Would the delicate girl not be afraid of the steep incline?

She hesitated for just an instant at the top, for it was very steep. Then, looking up at him, she saw that he expected her to go down with him. She gave a little frightened gasp, set her lips, and started.

He held her as well as he could with two suitcases and an umbrella clutched in his other hand, and finally, as the grade grew steeper, he let go the baggage altogether, and it slid briskly down by itself, while he devoted himself to steadying the girl’s now inevitable and swift descent.

It certainly was not an ideal way of travelling, this new style of “gravity” road, but it landed them without delay, though much shaken and scratched, and divested of every vestige of dignity. It was impossible not to laugh, and Celia’s voice rang out merrily, showing that she had not always wept and looked sorrowful.

“Are you much hurt?” asked Gordon anxiously, holding her hands and looking down at her tenderly.

Before she could reply, the express train roared above them, drowning their voices and laughter; and when it was past they saw their own train take up its interrupted way grumblingly, and rapidly move off. If the passengers on those two trains had not been deeply wrapped in slumber, they might have been surprised to see two fashionably attired young persons, with hats awry and clasped hands, laughing in a country road at five o’clock if a May morning. But only one was awake, and by the time the two in the road below remembered to look up and take notice, the trains were rapidly disappearing.

The girl had been deeply impressed with Gordon’s solicitude for her. It was so out of keeping with his letters. He had never seemed to care whether she suffered or not. In all the arrangements, he had said what he wanted, indeed what he would have, with an implied threat in the framing of his sentence in case she dared demur. Never had there been the least expression of desire for her happiness. Therefore it was something of a surprise to find him so gentle and thoughtful of her. Perhaps, after all, he would not prove so terrible to live with as she had feared. And yet – how could anyone who wrote those letters have any alleviating qualities? It could not be. She must harden herself against him. Still, if he would be outwardly decent to her, it would make her lot easier, of course.

But her course of mental reasoning was broken in upon by his stout denunications of himself.

“I ought not to have allowed you to slide down there,” he declared. “It was terrible, after what you went through last night. I didn’t realize how steep and rough it was. Indeed I didn’t. I don’t see how you ever can forgive me.”

“Why, I’m not hurt,” she said gently, astonished at his solicitation. There was a strange lump in her throat brought by his kindness, which threatened tears. Just why should kindness from an unexpected quarter bring tears?

“I’m only a little shaken up” she went on as she saw a real anxiety in his brown eyes, “and I don’t mind it in the least. I think it was rather fun, don’t you?”

A faint glimmer of a smile wavered over the corners of her mouth, and Gordon experienced a sudden desire to take her in his arms and kiss her. It was a strange new feeling. He had never had any such thought about Julia Bentley.

“Why, I – why, yes I guess so, if you’re sure you’re not hurt.”

“Not a bit,” she said, and then, for some unexplained reason, they both began to laugh. After that they felt better.

“If your shoes are as full of these miserable cinders as mine are, they need emptying,” declared Gordon, shaking first one well-shod foot and then the other, and looking ruefully at the little velvet boots of the lady.

“Suppose you sit down” – he looked about for a seat, but the dewy grass was the only resting place visible. He pitched upon the suit-cases and improvised a chair. “Now, sit down and let me take them off for you.”

He knelt in the road at her feet as she obeyed, protesting that she could do it for herself. But he overruled her, and began clumsily to unbutton the tiny buttons, holding the timid little foot firmly, almost reverently, against his knee.

He drew the velvet shoe softly off, and, turning it upside down, shook out the intruding cinders, put a clumsy finger in to make sure they were all gone; then, shyly, tenderly, passed his hand over the sole of the fine silk-stockinged foot that rested so lightly on his knee, to make sure no cinders clung to it. The sight and touch of that little foot stirred him deeply. He had never before been called upon to render service so intimate to any woman, and he did it now with half-averted gaze and the utmost respect in his manner. As he did it he tried to speak about the morning, the departing train, the annoying cinders, anything to make their unusual position seem natural and unstrained. He felt deeply embarrassed, the more so because of his own double part in this queer masquerade.

Celia sat watching him, strangely stirred. Her wonder over his kindness grew with each moment, and her prejudices almost dissolved. She could not understand it. There must be something more he wanted of her, for George Hayne had never been kind in the past unless he wanting something of her. She dreaded lest she should soon find it out. Yet he did not look like a man who was deceiving her. She drew a deep sigh. If only it were true, and he were good at and kind, and had never written those awful letters! How good and dear it would be to be tenderly cared for this way! Her lips drooped at the corners; then Gordon looked up in great distress.

“You are tired!” he declared, pausing in his attempt to fasten the little pearl buttons. “I have been cruel to let you get off the train!”

“Indeed I’m not,” said the girl, brightening with sudden effort. At least, she would not spoil the kindness while it lasted. It was surely better than what she had feared.

“You never can button those shoes with your fingers,” she laughed, as he redoubled his efforts to capture a tiny disc of pearl and set it into its small velvet socket. “Here! I have a button-hook in my hand-bag. Try this.”

She produced a small silver instrument from a gold-link bag on her arm and handed it to him. He took it helplessly, trying first one end and then the other, and succeeding with neither.

“Here, let me show you,” she laughed, pulling off one glove. Her white fingers grasped the silver button-hook, and flashed in and out of the velvet holes, knitting the little shoe to the foot in no time. He watched the process in humble wonder, and she would not have been a human girl not to have been flattered with his interest and admiration. For the minute she forgot who and what he was, and let her laugh ring out merrily; and so with shy audacity he assayed to take off the other shoe.

They really felt quite well acquainted and as if they were going on a day’s picnic, when they finally gathered up their belongings and started down the road. Gordon summoned all his ready wit and intellect to brighten the walk for her, though he found himself again and again on the brink of referring to his Washington life, or some other personal matter that would have brought a wondering question to her lips. He had decided that he must not tell her who he was until he could put her in an independent position, where she could get away from him at once if she chose. He was bound to look after her until he could place her in good hands, or at least where she could look after herself, and it was better to carry it out leaving her to think what she pleased until he could tell her everything. If all went well, they might be able to catch a Pittsburgh train that night and be in Washington the next day. Then, his message delivered, he would tell her the whole story. Until then he must hold his peace.

They went gaily down the road, the girl’s pale cheeks beginning to flush with the morning and the exercise. She was not naturally delicate, and her faint the night before had been the result of a series of heavy strains on a heart burdened with terrible fear. The morning and his kindness had made her forget for the time that she was supposed to be walking into a world of dread and sacrifice.

The year’s at the spring,

The day’s at the morn

Quoted Gordon gaily,

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearled –

He waved an umbrella off to where a hill flashed back a thousand lights from its jeweled grass-blades thickly set.

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn

went on Celia suddenly catching his spirit, and pointing to a lark that darted up into the blue with a trill of the morning in his throat.

Gordon turned appreciative eyes upon her. It was good to her take up his favorite poet in that tone of voice – a tone that showed she too knew and loved Browning.

God’s in his heaven,

All’s right with the world

Finished Gordon in a quieter voice, looking straight into her eyes. “That seems very true, to-day, doesn’t it?”

The blue eyes wavered with a hint of shadow in them as they looked back into the brown ones.

“Almost – perhaps,” she faltered wistfully.

The young man wished he dared go behind that “almost – perhaps” and find out what she meant, but concluded it were better to bring back the smile and help her to forget for a little while at least.

Down by the brook they paused to rest, under a weeping willow; whose green-tinged plumes were dabbling in the brook. Gordon arranged the suitcases for her to sit upon, then climbed down to the brookside and gathered a great bunch of forget-me-nots, blue as her eyes, and brought them to her.

She looked at them in wonder, to think they grew out here, wild, untended. She had never seen them before, except in pots in the florist’s windows. She touched them delicately with the tips of her fingers, as if they were too ethereal for earth; then fastened them in the breast of her gown.

“They exactly match your eyes!” he exclaimed involuntarily, and then wished he had not spoken, for she flushed and paled under his glance, until he felt he had been unduly bold. He wondered why he had said that. He never had been in the habit of saying pretty things to girls, but this girl somehow called it from him. It was genuine. He sat a moment abashed, not knowing what to say next, as if he were a shy boy, and she did not help him, for her eyelashes drooped in the moment not to be able to carry off the situation. He was not sure if she were displeased or not.

Her heart had thrilled strangely as he spoke, and she was vexed with herself that it should be so. A man who had bullied and threatened her for three terrible months and forced her to marry him had no right to thrill of her heart nor a look from her eyes, be he ever so kind for the moment. He certainly was nice and pleasant when he chose to be; she must watch herself, for never, never, must she yield weakly to his smooth overtures. Well did she know him. He had some reason for all this pleasantness. It would surely be revealed soon.

She stiffened he lips and tried to look away from him to the purple-green hills; but the echo of his words came upon her again, and again her heart thrilled at them. What if – oh what if he were all right, and she might accept the admiration in his voice? And yet how could that be possible? The sweet color came into her cheeks again, and the tears flow quickly to her eyes, till they looked all sky and dew, and she dared not turn back to him.

The silence remained unbroken, until a lark in the willow copse behind them burst into a song and broke the spell that was upon them.

“Are you offended at what I said?” he asked earnestly. “I am sorry if you did not like it. The words said themselves without my stopping to think whether you might not like it. Will you forgive me?”

“Oh,” she said, lifting her forget-me-not eyes to his, “I am not offended. There is nothing to forgive. It was – beautiful!”

Then his eyes spoke the compliment over again, and the thrill started anew in her heart, till her cheeks grew quite rosy, and she buried her face in the coolness of the tiny flowers to hide her confusion.

“It was very true,” he said in a low, lover-like voice that sounded like a caress.

“Oughtn’t we to hurry on to catch our train?” said Celia, suddenly springing to her feet. “I’m quite rested now.” She felt if she stayed there another moment she would yield to the spell he had cast upon her.

With a dull thud of consciousness the man got himself to his feet and reminded himself that this was another man’s promised wife to whom he had been letting his soul go out.

“Don’t let anything hinder you! Don’t let anything hinder you!” suddenly babbled out of the little brook, and he gathered up his suit-cases and started on.

“I am going to carry my suit-case,” declared a very decided voice behind him, and a small hand seized hold of its handle.

“I beg your pardon, you are not!” declared Gordon in a much more determined voice.

“But they are too heavy for you – both of them – and the umbrella too,” she protested. “Give me the umbrella then.”

But he would not give her even the umbrella, rejoicing in his strength to shield her and bear her burdens. As she walked beside him, she remembered vividly a morning when George Hayne had made her carry two heavy baskets, that his hands might be free to shoot birds. Could this be the same George Hayne?

Altogether, it was a happy walk, and far shorter than either had expected it to be, though Gordon worried not a little about his frail companion before they came to the outskirts of the village, and kept begging her to sit down and rest again, but she would not. She was quite eager and excited about the strange village to which they were coming. Its outlying farm-houses were all so clean and white, with green blinds folded placidly over their front windows and only their back doors astir. The cows all looked peaceful, and the dogs all seemed friendly.