Chapter X: The Picking Up of Some Silver Threads

“Mabin!”

“Oh!”

A single syllable hardly conveys the amount of alarm, of horror, of paralyzing fright which Mabin puts into the exclamation.

And yet the occasion was an ordinary one enough. It had simply happened that she had taken her work to the old seat at the edge of the plantation, where the primitive picnics used to take place in the old days, and that Rudolph had come up softly over the fields without her hearing his footsteps on the yielding grass.

“I frightened you?”

“N--no, not exactly, but you made me drop my needle. I thought you were at Portsmouth!”

“So I was. But that isn’t five thousand miles off. I came back this morning.”

Mabin said nothing. She had not seen him for a fortnight,--not, in fact, since the morning when he had met her on the seashore, and when he had applauded her resolution of sleeping in the room in which Mrs. Dale had had her bad dream. He had been called away suddenly on the following day, and had therefore heard nothing of Mabin’s adventure.

“Haven’t you got any news for me? I had rather expected a budget.”

Now Mabin had a budget for him, and had been looking forward most anxiously for his return, that she might confide in him some of the suspicions, the surmises, which filled her brain by day, and even kept her awake at night. But as usual with events long looked forward to, this return of Rudolph’s had not taken place as she expected, and she found herself in a state of unreadiness to meet him.

In the first place, she felt so ridiculously excited, so absurdly glad, that all the things she had been storing up in her mind to tell him dwindled into sudden insignificance. What did they matter, what did anything matter just now, except that Rudolph had come back, and that she must try not to let him guess how glad she was?

“Yes,” she said deliberately, after a short pause, looking across the clover field to the sea, and carefully choosing another needle, “I have plenty to tell you. I had it all ready, but--but you came up so suddenly that you have scattered all the threads of the story, and now I don’t remember where to begin.”

“I’m so awfully sorry. First you say I make you lose your needle, and then I scatter your threads. I’m afraid you think me in the way.”

No answer.

“Must I go?”

Rudolph got up and drew back a step, standing in the long, rank grass which bordered the clover field in the shade of the trees of the plantation.

“If I say yes, I suppose you will say I’m being rude again!” said Mabin, as she threw up at him, from under her big shady hat, a shy glance so full of attraction in its unconscious coquetry that Rudolph also forgot the budget, and thought he had never seen any girl look half so pretty as she did.

“I should say,” said he, bending his head as he spoke, and looking with great apparent interest at the work in her hands, “that you were unkind.”

There was another pause. Never before, even in the days of her wooden shyness, had Mabin found speech with him so difficult. A lump seemed to rise in her throat whenever she had a remark ready, and for fear of betraying the fact she remained silent altogether.

It was odd, too, that Rudolph, who had always been so fluent of speech himself, and had made her seem so dull, had now become infected with her own stupid reticence.

“You are a long time finding one,” said he at last.

“Yes. I--I seem to have lost all the fine ones,” replied Mabin, bending her head still lower than before over her needle case.

“Let me help you. Give me the work first, so that I can judge what size you want.”

“How can you tell--a man?” asked Mabin with indignation.

And in her contempt she looked up at him again.

“Oh-ho, madam! Don’t you know that we sailors can use a needle as well as any woman. Here let me show you.”

This was an admirable opportunity for seating himself on the bench beside her; and Rudolph, who had felt a strange hesitation about doing so before, now took the plunge, and placed himself on the end of the wooden seat.

“What is this? An antimacassar?”

“No. A cooking apron.”

“How interesting! Ladies ought not to make such things. They should do things that want lots of bundles of silks of all sorts of colors. This isn’t sufficiently decorative.”

“You mean fancy-work!” exclaimed Mabin with an expression of horror. “I hate fancy-work!”

“Girls who do fancy-work can always give a fellow things they have made themselves to remember them by. I have a heap of tobacco pouches, all very pretty and too good to use. Now you couldn’t give a fellow a cooking apron, to remember you by, could you?”

“I shouldn’t want anybody to remember me--with a lot of other girls!” retorted Mabin fiercely.

And then she felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and she thrust the needle-case quickly into his hands.

“Find one now, find one!” cried she imperiously, “and let me see what you can do. I believe you are only boasting when you say you can sew.”

Rudolph took the apron from her, and the needle-case, found a needle of the size he wanted in half the time she had spent in searching for one, and took up her hem where she had left off, working with fine, even stitches which called forth her unwilling admiration.

“Why,” she cried, in great surprise, “you do it beautifully! It’s better than mine!”

“Of course it is,” remarked Rudolph calmly. “Whatever the superior sex does bears, of course, the mark of superiority. The only thing that women can do really well is to receive prettily the attentions of the sex, it is useless for them to try to emulate. You used to do it very well once. I am hoping you haven’t lost the knack.”

“You haven’t lost your old knack of conceit, I see.”

“Oh, no. I have just the same opinion of myself and just the same opinion of you as when you used to send me wading into the pools between the rocks to get little crabs for you, and into the hedges for bird’s eggs, one from each nest, don’t you remember? And when you used to make me so proud by saying I found them quicker than anybody else. And then--do you remember what you used to do then?”

“Break them on the way home, I suppose,” said she, trying to look as if she had forgotten.

“Come, don’t you really remember any better than that?”

He had finished his needleful of thread, and handed her back the apron. So that he was at leisure to watch her face as she folded the big piece of holland, and collected the odds and ends of her work-bag. And it was quite clear to him that her memory was as true as his.

“Don’t you remember that you always gave me a kiss when I found a robin’s nest?”

“No, indeed, I don’t.”

But she did. Eyes, cheeks, and mouth all betrayed the scandalizing recollection.

“And used to promise to marry me when you grew up? Now, do you mean to say you’ve forgotten that?”

Evidently loss of memory was no protection with this person. Mabin blushed, and tried another sort of answer.

“Yes, I remember. What funny things children say!”

“Was it--funny?”

“Why, yes, I can’t help laughing at the idea now!”

And Mabin began to laugh hysterically, unnaturally, but withal so prettily, with so much of maidenly confusion and subdued happiness mingling with her amusement, that Rudolph threw his arm round her in the midst of her mirth, and cut it short by snatching a kiss.

“Oh!”

The monosyllable was meant to express astonishment and indignation, but it was a poor little protest after all, and one of which Rudolph did not feel bound to take much notice.

“Are you angry?” said he, not withdrawing his arm. “Are you very angry, Mabin? Don’t you think you will ever be able to forgive me?”

“I am angry, certainly,” answered she, trying to release herself. “I hope you are going to apologize for--for forgetting that I am not nine now.”

“How old are you, Mabin?”

“Nineteen.”

“Quite old enough to take up the promises you made ten years ago. Quite old enough to marry me.”

“Rudolph! What nonsense!”

“Oh, is it nonsense? If you think I’m going to allow my feelings to be trifled with by a chit of a girl who used to go halves with me in bull’s eyes, you’re very much mistaken! Now then, are you willing to ratify your promise, or am I to bring an action for breach?”

But Mabin, trembling with excitement and happiness so great as to be bewildering, felt dimly that there was too much levity about this abrupt settlement of the affairs of two lifetimes. This sudden proposal did not accord with her serious disposition, with her sense of the fitness of things. She looked at him with eyes pathetically full of something like terror.

“Rudolph!” she whispered, in a voice which was unsteady with strong emotion, “how can you talk like this? How can you? Don’t you know that _it hurts_?”

“Hurts, little one? What do you mean by that?”

His tone was tender enough to satisfy the most exacting damsel, but Mabin was struck with fresh terror on remarking that instead of releasing her he tightened the grasp in which he held her.

“Why, I mean--I mean--that you are in play, that, it is amusement, fun, to you; while to me--”

And then she saw in his eyes something new, something of the earnestness, the seriousness which she had longed for, but which she had not before detected in the light-hearted sailor.

“While to you--? Why, little one, do you think it is anything to you, this promise that I am to have you to guard and to keep near my heart for our lives, more than it is to me? Do you think one must meet one’s happiness with a sour face, Mabin, and ask a girl to love you from the other side of a stone wall? Oh, my little sweetheart, with the shy eyes and the proud heart, you have a great deal to learn; and the very first thing is to trust me, and not to think my love of no account because I can woo you with a light heart.”

Every word seemed to echo in the young girl’s heart. She was taken off her feet, lifted high into an enchanted region where words were music, and a touch of the fingers ecstasy, and she hardly dared to speak, to move, to draw breath lest the spell should be broken, and she should wake up to commonplace life again. She listened, hardly speaking, to her lover as he told her how she had always remained in his mind as the childish figure that foreshadowed his womanly ideal; how her cold reserve had piqued him, made him study her the more; and finally how quickly these feelings had given place to warmer ones when he and she became friends once more.

They did not know how the time went. The sun rose high, the shadows shifted gradually, the dew dried on the long grass. At last a bell, ringing loudly in the garden behind the plantation, startled Mabin, and made her spring up.

“That’s for luncheon, it must be for luncheon!” she cried in blushing confusion. “I’d forgotten--forgotten everything!”

Rudolph laughed gently, and picked up her bag and her work.

“I won’t come in,” said he. “But I’ll go through the plantation with you to carry these.”

Across Mabin’s face there came a cloud.

“You must see Mrs. Dale,” she said. “She will want to see you, and yet----”

“And yet what?”

“I’m jealous.”

“Are you? For shame, for shame! Can’t you trust me?”

“I will say yes, of course, but----”

“But you mean no. Well, I can promise not to break your heart.”

And he laughed at her and teased her, and told her that Mrs. Dale was too well off to trouble her head about a poor lieutenant.

But Mabin was only half comforted; she remembered how well they had got on together on that memorable evening when a misunderstanding had caused her to sulk, and she was too diffident to believe that her own charms could compete with brilliant Mrs. Dale’s.

As soon as they came out of the plantation, and within sight of the house, they saw across the lawn the young housemaid, Annie, shading her eyes with her hand, as if watching for some one. Mabin, thinking the girl was looking out for her, sprang away from Rudolph, calling out a last “Good-by” as she hurried over the lawn.

“Tell Mrs. Dale that I am coming to call upon her this afternoon, to ask her to give me some tea. And please remind her that she promised me peaches next time I came,” called out Rudolph after her as she ran.

Mabin merely waved her hand to imply that she heard, and ran on toward the house. Annie, instead of retreating into the hall at the approach of the young lady, stepped out into the garden. And when Rudolph, after skirting the plantation, reached the gravelled space on his way to the gate, he found the young housemaid holding it open for him. He saw, before he came up, by the girl’s look and manner that she had something to say to him.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said in a low voice, as soon as he was near enough to hear, “but I hope you won’t mind me taking the liberty of speaking to you.”

The girl was a bright-looking young person, with intelligent eyes and an open, pleasant face.

“Well, what is the portentous secret?” asked Rudolph, smiling, much amused by her assumed airs of mystery and importance.

“Well, sir, it is a secret,” she retorted, rather nettled by his amusement. “It’s a warning I have to give you, sir.”

“A warning! Come, this begins to be interesting.”

“It isn’t a joke at all, sir,” said the housemaid, half offended, yet with increasing earnestness. “I saw you coming over the field this morning, sir, when I was out speaking to the gardener about the salad. And I thought you was most likely coming here, sir, and I’ve been on the lookout for you ever since.”

“Much obliged to you, I’m sure. But have you been told to warn me off the premises?”

The girl drew herself up.

“Well, I can tell you, sir, that you’d better not come about the place more than you can help, for if you do there’s some one that will find it out and maybe do you a mischief. Hoping you’ll excuse the liberty, sir; but I know something nobody else does, and I shouldn’t like you to come to any harm, sir.”

And leaving Rudolph in a state of mingled incredulity, amusement, and surprise, the girl shut the gate, through which he had by this time passed, ran back quickly and disappeared through the back door into the house.

It was with a shock that Mabin remembered, when she met Mrs. Dale, that in the excitement of her own happiness she had neglected to tell Rudolph the story of her midnight adventure. This remembrance filled the girl with compunction. She reproached herself with thinking of no one but herself, and was as miserable over her omission as she had been happy while with her lover. As it was in the dining-room that she met Mrs. Dale, the presence of the parlormaid prevented her from confiding to her friend’s ear the events of the morning. She said with a hot blush that she had met Rudolph and gave his message; but although Mrs. Dale received the intelligence with an arch smile she did not guess how extremely interesting the interview had proved.

And as after luncheon Mrs. Dale sent her into Seagate for peaches, while she wrote some letters, Mabin kept the secret of her engagement, saving it up until Rudolph should himself break the news.

The young girl felt an odd shyness about confessing her happiness. She was quite glad of the excuse circumstances afforded of keeping it all to herself for a few hours longer. It was a joy so far above all other joys that it seemed to her its bloom would not bear the rough touch of arch words and looks which would certainly follow the announcement of it.

Hugging her happiness to her heart, she went quickly to Seagate and back, not heeding the scorching heat of the sun, or the glare of the chalky roads, or the dust made by the vehicles which passed her on the way. And when she reached “The Towers” again, finding that Mrs. Dale had not yet come downstairs, she put on her hat and went back to the seat where Rudolph had sat with her that morning, to live over again the golden time they had spent there together.

But she could not free her mind from the self-reproach she felt at having forgotten, in the pleasure of the meeting with Rudolph, the affairs of her friend. There was just this excuse for her, that it was now a whole fortnight since the strange night adventure had happened, and during all that time nothing had occurred at “The Towers” to recall the visit of the intruder whom Mabin had chased out of the house. After that strange confidence of Mrs. Dale’s, following the incident of the picture, no word more had been exchanged by the two ladies on the subject. It was this new but unavoidable reserve between them which had made Mabin so shy of mentioning her new happiness. If Mrs. Dale had, as she averred, never been in love herself, what sympathy could she be expected to have for Mabin?

With these thoughts in her mind Mabin had at last got up from the seat, and sauntered along the narrow path through the plantation in the direction of her father’s house. Crossing the lane which separated the grounds of the two houses, she found herself, without thinking how she came there, on the path which ran along outside the wall at the bottom of her father’s garden.

She had gone about ten yards when she heard a slight noise on the inner side of the wall. She stopped. There flashed quickly into her mind the old forgotten question: Was her father’s tenant the man who had got into “The Towers” at night a fortnight ago?

Coming noiselessly close to the wall, she reached the top of it by a sudden spring, and saw, between the bushes of the border, the bent figure of a gentleman, sauntering along slowly with the aid of a stick.

The cry she uttered made him look up.

And the face she saw was the face of the picture in the shut-up room, the face of the man she had pursued through the house, whose thin, worn features she had seen a fortnight ago in the pale light of the morning.