Chapter X: A Confession

Because of her absorption in Miss Finch's engrossing problem, Agatha gave the travelers of the household less of her attention on their return that afternoon than those rather spoiled individuals had reason to expect. Not till the following morning when she read Forbes a letter from Julia, even more egotistic than the average communication of that self-centered young woman, did Agatha realize that something was amiss with her boarder. He seemed tired and low-spirited, disinclined to conversation, in decided contrast to Howard, who was bubbling over with items of interest relating to their brief trip. Clearly the jaunt had been too much for the convalescent's strength.

A little conscience-stricken that she had not earlier made the discovery, Agatha set herself resolutely to the task of reviving Forbes' drooping spirits, though with less than her usual success. And when late in the afternoon she suggested a walk, pleading that her knees were growing stiff from lack of exercise, he turned the tables on her unexpectedly by insisting that she go for a stroll with Howard as an escort, leaving him at home. And as her protest stirred him to a most uncharacteristic irritation, she yielded the point without further argument.

"Of course, if you really want to get rid of us, we'll go. Only I hate to leave you alone."

"I'm better company for myself than for others, dear lady. I'd rather be alone for a little. I'll try to sleep and perhaps I'll wake in a better humor."

Her only thought an impatient haste to have the ordeal over, Agatha started out, Howard in attendance. But her dejection yielded by degrees to the magic of the summer afternoon. It vanished completely when she challenged her brother to a race across a green stretch of pasture. They reached their goal laughing and breathless, Agatha in the lead, and climbing the low stone wall they dropped panting in the shade of a guardian elm. Agatha snuggled back against the huge trunk, tucking her feet under her, while Howard sprawled happily at her side, laying his head in her lap. Agatha's contented sigh as she ran her fingers through his hair, told of relaxed nerves.

"What a pity Mr. Forbes wouldn't come! It's so restful here. What did he do yesterday to tire him so?"

"He didn't do much of anything. Saw the doctor and Mr. Warren and then--"

"Warren? Did he see him?"

"Sure. Telephoned the first thing when we got to the city and Mr. Warren came up to the hotel for lunch. They let me go out and look around for a couple of hours while they talked. Say, Aggie, I wish you knew Mr. Warren. He's a dandy."

Agatha's expressive face betrayed no especial impatience to meet the object of Howard's eulogy. Indeed a grim tightening of her lips indicated that on this theme her brother and herself were far from agreement. But before the boy had time to be impressed by her lack of responsiveness, his attention was distracted by a cough from the direction of the road, eminently a stagey cough, due not to a tickling in the throat, but to some one's desire to announce his presence. Howard turned sharply, then sprang to his feet with a shout of mingled pleasure and astonishment.

"Why, hello, Mr. Warren! Did you come out to find us? It's the funniest thing but I was talking about you this very minute."

Warren, immaculate in a gray business suit and spotless panama, gave no indication of sharing the boy's pleasure in the unexpected encounter. He looked at him with disconcerting steadiness, and Howard, turning to his sister, saw her unconcealed consternation and realized that the game was up. He had momentarily forgotten the necessity of explaining Aggie. Mr. Warren would have to know the truth and undoubtedly would take it on himself to acquaint Mr. Forbes with the surprising state of affairs. Yet after all, Mr. Warren was a good sport. Perhaps if the thing were put up to him--

Warren's peremptory speech broke in on the boy's confused thoughts. "Chase along, Howard. I don't want you at present."

"What do you want me to do, Mr. Warren?"

"I don't care what you do as long as you don't stay here."

"I--but I--" Without understanding his sense of discomfiture, Howard blushed an angry scarlet, and faced the intruder with instinctive defiance. Then Agatha spoke wearily.

"It's all right, Howard. Run along, please."

She was not easily daunted, but something in Warren's manner was accountable for a singular chill at her heart that was like fear. She had forgotten how big the man was, and his nose was so unexpectedly long and his chin so heavy, and his eyes bored into her like augers and were of a steely gray besides, which made the figure more impressive. He seemed quite another person from the silly young man who had talked nonsense in the kitchen that Sunday morning and ended by kissing her cheek.

She heard Howard stumble away, muttering angrily to himself. Very deliberately Warren moved toward her. She forced herself to lift her eyes. He was looking down at her with the air of one who has the whip-hand and knows it. For some undefined reason she felt herself at a tremendous disadvantage.

"Look here," said Warren with the same hardness in his voice she had noticed when he spoke to Howard, "this won't do, you know."

Agatha remembered that she was Hephzibah Diggs just in time to drawl the inquiry through her nose. "What won't do?"

"You mustn't be putting ideas into the kid's head. He's a nice kid. Forbes is tremendously interested in him and so is Miss Kent. On Miss Kent's account if there were no other reason, you ought to let the boy alone."

She glared at him, fury growing with understanding. Her baleful gaze fought its way to him through tears of pure rage.

Her unexpected emotion softened him perceptibly. He laid aside his air of judicial sternness as easily as he would have removed his coat.

"Come now," he said, seating himself beside her. "We mustn't quarrel. And I dare say you meant no particular harm. Only keep in mind that it's hands off where the boy is concerned."

"Have you got anything to say to me?"

"You bet I have. I've come clear from town to say it, Hephzibah. By the way, isn't there something I could call you for short?"

"Yes, Miss Diggs."

He eyed her approvingly. A tear had splashed upon her burning cheek, and was making its leisurely way toward her chin, but tears with Agatha seldom gave the impression of feminine softness. Warren had the usual masculine horror of weepy women. It was a relief to perceive that for all her tears, Agatha's mood was murderous.

"No indeed, we mustn't quarrel," he repeated. "Because I've come on purpose to see you, and do you a good turn. I'm interested in you, and want to help you."

"I don't want none of your help."

"That's because you don't understand, little girl. This world is a pretty big place and so far you've seen only a measly little corner."

"It suits me." He saw an added enmity in her eyes, over this aspersion on her native village, and smiled tolerantly.

"I wouldn't waste any loyalty on this burg if I were in your place. I asked half a dozen people where I could find you and every one pretended he'd never heard of you."

Agatha's look showed her taken aback and Warren was not slow to follow up his advantage.

"Of course I knew they were lying. Even in this unobservant community, my dear Hephzibah, you could hardly escape notice any more than on Broadway. I assume these young men were protecting their reputations by denying the pleasure of your acquaintance."

"Oh," murmured Agatha, "I never thought I could hate anybody the way I hate you."

"You shouldn't feel that way, my child. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. I'm perfectly ready to let bygones be bygones and give you a hand up. I only mentioned this to show the narrowness of these little country places. They never forget, Hephzibah, and believe me, they never forgive."

The fire of her wrath had dried her tears. Her eyes bright with hate, she met his gaze in silence.

"There's something about you, Hephzibah," continued Warren, a slight uneasiness of manner showing that his _sang froid_ was not quite proof against her silent hostility, "something which makes me certain that it would pay to educate you. You could learn, I'm positive of it. And you'll take on polish. You say you're satisfied with things as they are. That only shows your ignorance, my dear child. Instead of being a poor little drudge, slighted and snubbed by a lot of country jays, you could make a place for yourself in the big world. I can't tell you now just what will open up for you, but at the least it would be like fairyland compared with what you have to expect here."

Her anger seemed to have moderated to tranquil contempt. She sat aloof and disdainful, waiting for him to finish and take his departure.

"I own you don't know me well enough to feel sure of my motives in making this offer," Warren went on almost humbly. "But you can ask Miss Kent about the blind man who's boarding with her this summer, and see what sort of reputation she gives him. And he's in this thing with me. In fact it was at his suggestion that I came down here to-day."

At last he had succeeded in interesting her. Although she did not speak she turned with a quickness that had the effect of an interruption, and the recent disdainful calm of her expression was replaced by a rather wistful look.

"Yes, Forbes is in for this, tooth and nail." Warren was pleased at the altered demeanor of his audience. "When I first suggested it to him, he talked it over with Miss Kent, and the old lady discouraged him. I imagine she's a good sort but about as broad as a knitting needle. She insisted that it was better for you to be let alone, and she talked old Forbes over, and I thought the whole thing was settled. But after you saved Forbes' life--"

"Why," cried Agatha. "How--how--." Her usually ready tongue failed her, and in her blushing confusion Warren thought her adorable.

"I suppose you wonder how he knew you were his rescuer," Warren continued, enjoying to the full the pleasing effect of his revelation. "It came to him by a sort of intuition. He quizzed the kid, but Howard wouldn't tell. It simply goes to show how strait-laced the old lady is. She'd forbidden him even to talk about you. But something you said or did fitted in with what I had told Forbes about you, and he decided that he couldn't rest easy under such an obligation."

"It's only a guess." Agatha had found her voice. "You don't know anything about it."

"It was a safe bet, even before I told you and watched your face. Now it's a dead certainty. Listen! Forbes came to see me yesterday and we cocked up this scheme. See how it strikes you."

He had her attention now, close and serious, with no suggestion of disdain. Painstakingly he explained the plan. They had selected a woman both knew to act as Hephzibah's tutor. They would send her to some quiet place where there would be little to distract the girl's thoughts from her work. Her tutor, an impoverished gentlewoman, would undertake the cultivation of manners befitting the best society, and would mold her literary taste by reading to her from the English classics, in addition to her regular instruction.

"I don't say it will be so very much fun for six months," Warren owned frankly. "But we both think it would be a good idea for you to work for all you are worth at the start, and make all the progress possible. And when once you--well, when the rough edges are smoothed off a little, you can come to town and mix in a little fun with the day's work. What do you think of the idea?"

Agatha's answer was a shake of her head.

"Too strenuous a program, is it?" Warren looked disappointed at her lack of ambition. "Well, it isn't necessary to travel at such a pace. Both Forbes and I felt it would be more encouraging to you in the long run, if your advancement was so rapid that you couldn't help realizing it."

"Yes, that would be better if--but it won't work. Thank you. It's kind of you, but I--I can't go away."

"Away? Do you mean away from this hole in the woods?"

Agatha nodded with no attempt to defend her native place against his sneers.

"This home of yours, where a nice kid like Howard is forbidden to speak of you, and where older men look scared when your name is mentioned and say they never heard of you?"

"You said all that before." Agatha had turned rather white. "And it won't do any good to say it again."

Warren studied her averted face, a pensive face at that moment. He had a confused certainty that he had been too hard on her. He had only spoken the truth and for her good, but he had overdone it. He had been brutal.

"Hephzibah," he said suddenly, a new gentleness in his voice, "I know what's the matter with you. You're in love."

There was something so virginal in her protesting recoil that he had to stop a moment for breath. Yet a quality in the movement gave him an odd conviction of her innate fineness, in spite of that chapter in her past he found it hard to forget.

"There's no other explanation, Hephzibah." He tried to speak lightly without any great degree of success. "When a girl of your sort sticks to a place of this sort, like a barnacle to a ship's bottom, it's as sure as shooting that there's a man in the case. Come, Hephzibah, own up."

She lifted her chin in a regal way she had--an incongruous motion in a country girl who "worked out"--and looked at him squarely. With a little thrill he saw that her eyes had filled again. And though she did not speak, those brimming eyes seemed a brave, frank avowal that his surmise had hit the mark.

"Well, Hephzibah, I'm glad you aren't going to need our help--Forbes' and mine--in order to be happy. I hope your young man knows he's lucky." He was astonished at the keenness of the pang which marked this formal renunciation. "When is it to be, Hephzibah?"

"Why, it's not--you don't understand--I'm not going to be married."

Warren sat up straight. "The devil, you're not," he said, his voice harshly cynical.

The girl rose and stamped her foot on the grass. The soft turf swallowed the sound, but the passionate gesture was not less impressive because noiseless. "You hush!" she said. "Don't you dare to think things like that about him. He's perfect. He never harmed anybody, never! And for you to dare to blacken him with your beastly thoughts just because I've been fool enough to care."

Swayed by unprecedented emotion, Warren rose to his feet. In her earlier anger the girl had been merely a lovely virago. Now, in her furious defense of the man he had apparently misjudged, she was superb. Warren felt himself swept from his moorings.

"Very well, Hephzibah. I'll take your word for it that he's all right."

"He doesn't know. He doesn't even dream. There's--He loves some one else."

"Don't, Hephzibah. Poor little girl! What a damned muddle life is." He was fumbling for his card.

"Can you write, dear?"

"After a fashion." All in a minute she was another woman, with radiant mischief peering out of her eyes.

"Here's my address on this card. If you should change your mind, write me. I hope and believe you will. Just because one man is blind, it doesn't follow that there's nothing else in life."

She gave a slight start, looking at him obliquely, the mischief quite gone from her eyes. But she accepted his card, and then of her own accord gave him her hand. "You have been good to take so much trouble," she said. "Thank you." The two had changed markedly since the dialogue under the elm tree began. The girl's hostility had vanished as completely as the man's condescension.

On his way back to the city that night, Warren evolved the theory that Hephzibah was originally of gentle blood. That accounted for the quality of her beauty, for something in her manner suggesting one accustomed to homage rather than to service. Warren was inclined to believe it also explained a singular fact which impressed him more as he thought over the events of the afternoon than it had at the time. There could be no question but that in moments of extreme excitement, a certain uncouthness disappeared from her speech and manner, and she lapsed, so to speak, into the idioms of her presumably cultured forebears. In Warren's opinion this cast a most interesting side-light on the subject of heredity.