Chapter XI: A Wilful Man Must Have His Way

Though there was no likelihood of another letter from Julia for a week at least, Forbes showed an abnormal interest in the contents of the mail bag, and Agatha guessed he was expecting to hear from Warren. She, too, found herself anxiously anticipating the arrival of the letter addressed in the vigorous hand which in some obscure way was so suggestive of the man's personality. When it came four days after that unique dialogue under the elm tree, and the duty of reading it devolved upon herself, Agatha's heart beat suffocatingly.

But as it proved, all her thrills were anticipatory. The letter itself contained nothing she did not already know, and that little was told tersely and obscurely, evidently with the intention of preventing Miss Kent, the probable reader, from learning that her counsel had been ignored. With businesslike brevity Warren stated that he attended to the matter they had discussed the previous week. He, Forbes, was correct in his conjecture as to the identity of the party who had done him the service he had spoken of, but said party had turned his proposition down flat. "And now that our consciences are clear," Warren wrote, "the only thing left is to drop the whole matter. Hope the unpleasant effect of your treatments has worn off and that your eyes are feeling better.

"R.W."

It was plain from the expression of Forbes' face that he shared Agatha's uncomplimentary opinion of the communication in question. The remainder of the day he was frowningly contemplative, resisting all efforts to draw him into conversation. For the first time Agatha saw in his face lines suggesting a determination akin to stubbornness.

By morning his manner showed the relief of having reached a decision. Agatha was not unprepared to have him say at the conclusion of the morning meal, "Miss Kent, when you have a little time I would like to have a talk with you."

"I can come now."

"There's no hurry--no especial hurry, that is. Any time this forenoon."

But Agatha's curiosity was awakened. She conducted him out upon the porch, ensconced him in a comfortable chair, and seated herself beside him. As a preliminary, he took her hand and kissed it.

"I must begin with a confession, my dear lady. I have been keeping a secret from you, in fact more than one."

"Dear me! And I thought you had accepted me as mother confessor."

"So I have. I decided not to tell you for fear of worrying you. But the truth is that I came near walking over the cliff one afternoon, when I was out with Howard, and ending my troubles by breaking my neck."

Agatha succeeded in expressing a sufficient degree of shocked horror in her exclamation.

Forbes patted her hand reassuringly. "But I didn't, you see. My life was saved in a conventionally romantic way. A beautiful girl flung herself into my arms, and when she could get her breath, gave me a terrific scolding."

"Oh!" Agatha looked at him with unfeigned interest. "How did you know she was beautiful? Did Howard tell you?"

"No, Warren."

"Oh!" She seemed a little disappointed. "But he wasn't there, was he?"

"No, but he'd told me about her. And I think I should have known anyway."

"How?" Again he noted the animation in her tone.

"I'm not quite sure. Perhaps a blind man develops a sort of sixth sense. Anyway, as I stood there with my arms about her--it was necessary in the circumstances, and you needn't look shocked as I suspect you're doing--I had as vivid an impression of youth and beauty as if I'd seen her."

"More so, probably," amended Agatha joyously.

"No, not if Warren's right. He says she's something extraordinary. Can't you guess who it was?"

"I believe that Mr. Warren"--Agatha seemed to be searching her memory for details--"talked rather extravagantly about Hephzibah."

"Yes, Hephzibah was the girl. And that puts quite a new light on Warren's plan for educating her, don't you see?"

"No, I don't." Agatha's brevity implied distaste for the subject.

"Well, I do. A man's chance interest in a pretty girl may be perfectly innocent and unobjectionable, but you can't compare it with what one feels for the woman who has saved one's life."

"I told you that she wanted to be left alone. I told you that it would be kinder."

"Wait, please." Under the deference of his manner, she perceived a resolution that was adamant. "I've told you only one of the secrets that I have kept from you. Here's the other. When I was in town I saw Warren and we laid plans for taking Hephzibah's case in hand, regular uplift proposition, don't you know. Warren was to see her and arrange matters. We had everything settled. We had a governess selected and had decided on a little sea-side place for them to stay until she was presentable. Warren was going to ask a girl he knows to buy her a suitable outfit."

"I don't wonder you've been blue," Agatha said in tones of soft reproach. "Planning all this out and not a word to me."

To her surprise he blushed high. "No," he said after a moment, "I've been down in the depths, God knows, but not for that reason. I thought--well, you seemed to feel so strongly on the subject of not interfering with Hephzibah, that I didn't want to bother you."

"And now you do? Is that why you're telling me about it?"

"I'm telling you because I want your help." He set his jaw grimly as he faced her. "I left Warren to engineer the thing and he's bungled it."

"It wasn't his fault." Agatha evinced a commendable eagerness not to be unjust to the absent. "When Hephzibah has made up her mind, trying to change it is like going against a stone wall."

"Possibly. But I shan't feel satisfied till I've tried my persuasive powers on her." Forbes sat waiting for some comment from Agatha, and when none was offered, explained firmly, "I want an interview with her."

Still Agatha did not speak. She was beginning to feel an aversion to Hephzibah Diggs which amounted to positive hatred. That talk with Warren had been trying enough, with his repeated references to some scandalous episode in her past. But for reasons perfectly clear to Agatha herself, the interview with Forbes promised to be vastly worse.

"Well?" Forbes was puzzled by her silence. "Had she better come here? Or shall I have Howard take me to her home?"

"Oh, no." The dismay in Agatha's voice negatived the last suggestion conclusively. Forbes found her tremors a trifle irritating. He had to remind himself that she was an old lady, and that for many years her will had been supreme in her little circle. He found her hand and patted it affectionately. He was beginning to think that these sentimental attentions counted more with elderly women than with younger ones.

"Well, then, we'll have her here. Will you send her word, some time to-day?"

"I'm not sure she'll come."

"Then I'll go to her." His obstinacy showed in his voice. "I tell you I'm going to talk to that girl. She's got a chance at last. She's young and it's inconceivable that she should turn down such an offer if she really understood it."

"That's the sort of girl she is. Worthless, trifling."

Forbes withdrew his hand from hers. To her amazement Agatha saw she had really offended him. And now to her dislike of Hephzibah was added a preposterous jealousy. She, Agatha Kent, had devoted herself to Forbes all summer only to have him act like a spoiled child when she ventured a criticism of a girl he had met only on one occasion, a girl with a past, at that. What was Hephzibah to him or he to Hephzibah, that for her sake he was ready to affront his father's old friend and his own?

"I shan't need Howard this morning," remarked Forbes pleasantly but with a relentless holding to his purpose which forced her to realize the hopelessness of altering his intention. "So if you please, ask him to take the message. The girl may be all that you say, and my interest and effort may all be wasted, but I prefer to see for myself."

"Very well," said Agatha swallowing. She perceived that he considered her a narrow-minded old person, who thought it impossible for a woman to return to the paths of rectitude, after once stepping aside. He would not take her word for Hephzibah. He was determined to interview her for himself. Agatha looked at him with narrowing eyes. Very well! Let him take the consequences.

"I'll see that Hephzibah gets the message," she said with dignity. "I can't answer for results."

"Of course not." Now that he had gained his point, his manner was thoroughly friendly. "I'll take the entire responsibility for the outcome."

Agatha realized that she was dismissed. She went up-stairs feeling out of sorts with Forbes and positively murderous where Hephzibah was concerned. She even played with the thought of having that obtrusive young woman smitten with mortal illness, too sick for the interview Forbes insisted on, and in a few days reaching the end of her brief and troubled life. She dismissed the thought when she realized that Forbes was capable of summoning a physician from the city to attend the patient.

The door of Miss Finch's room was ajar. Miss Finch sat at the table with a sheet of paper spread out before her and a pen in hand. The seriousness of her expression suggested that she was on the point of making her last will and testament.

"Fritz," exclaimed Agatha, appearing in the doorway, "I have a message for you to give Hephzibah Diggs."

Miss Finch looked at her wildly.

"Will you please say that Mr. Forbes would like to see her some time to-day. Say it's very important."

As Miss Finch continued to stare, Agatha showed signs of impatience. "Well, why don't you begin?"

"Begin what, Agatha?"

"Why, say what I've just told you, that Mr. Forbes wants to see me this afternoon."

Miss Finch groaned and shook her head. "Oh, Agatha, it seems so wicked."

"Wicked! If that's not unreasonable. Here I am taking all the pains to come up-stairs to you, to have you give me the message so I won't need to stretch the truth the least little bit, and then you talk as if I were an ordinary prevaricator, without a conscience."

Miss Finch quailed before Agatha's simulated indignation. "Oh, if you look at it that way," she replied feebly and made an effort to recall the message. "Hephzibah, Mr. Forbes wants to see you to-day."

"Tell me it's very important," prompted Agatha.

"It's very important," Miss Finch repeated, and looked on the point of bursting into tears.

"I'll be there at three o'clock," replied Agatha in the person of Hephzibah. Then her gaze fell on the letters lying open on the table and she temporarily forgot her own perplexities in the perennial feminine interest in a love-affair.

"Oh, Fritz," she exclaimed, coming closer. "You're writing the letter, aren't you? Which one is it to be?"

Miss Finch looked at the blank sheet before her with an expression equally blank.

"Agatha," she hesitated, "it almost seems to me--at least don't you think Mr. Doolittle is rather the best-looking?"

Agatha pondered the question with the seriousness its importance deserved.

"I rather think he is, Fritz. The deacon is much too fat. My ideal of manly beauty isn't broad enough to include a fat man. It's surprising how some people thrive on bereavement."

Miss Finch fidgeted with her pen. "But perhaps the deacon is a little more careful about his appearance."

Again Agatha acquiesced. "Mr. Doolittle is far from particular. I've seen him in the village with only one suspender, and the usefulness of that dependent on one anemic-looking safety-pin. I've honestly trembled for fear of what might happen. The deacon's away in the lead in the matter of clothes."

Again Miss Finch looked nervously at the paper before her and then surprised Agatha by laying down her pen.

"I rather thought I'd write them to-day," she said. "It's been--well, not long, but quite a time since their letters came, and I thought--"

She fell into an indeterminate silence, and Agatha finished the sentence for her. "Of course they're getting impatient. It's cruel to keep them on the rack this way. Why don't you put them out of their misery, Fritz?"

"Why, I don't want to hurry, Agatha. I must wait to be sure. There's some nice things about each one and some that aren't so nice. I'll have to think it over a while yet."

Agatha was watching the little woman keenly. "Fritz," she asked with unusual, gentle gravity, "are you sure you want either of them? Don't you think you'd be happier just to stay on with me?"

Miss Finch regarded her interrogator with evident amazement. "Why, Agatha, I might never have another chance."

This was too true to question. Agatha remained silent.

"I sometimes can't help wishing," Miss Finch owned plaintively, "that there hadn't been two. That's what makes it so puzzling--having to choose. And there seems so much to be said on both sides. But to refuse them both--why, Agatha, it would be flying in the face of Providence."

Agatha said no more. Leaving Miss Finch to her dreams, she went up to the garret to find an appropriate costume for Hephzibah in her forthcoming momentous interview. She felt she could act her rôle with more spirit if dressed appropriately to the part. Agatha did not underestimate the difficulty of her proposed masquerade. It was an easy matter to evolve a personality sufficiently consistent to deceive Warren, for Warren had never met the dignified and elderly spinster, Miss Agatha Kent. Forbes, on the contrary, had spent hours in that lady's company nearly every day through the summer, and knew every inflection of her voice. The forthcoming interview with Forbes presented any number of terrifying possibilities.

She had a word with him at a suitable interval after their late conversation. "She's coming."

"Good!" he cried triumphantly. "Did Howard go?"

"No. Miss Finch was going to see her, anyway. She'll be here at three."

"Good!" said Forbes again. He turned to her with that mingled gentleness and resolution which somehow revealed him in a new light.

"Now, my dear friend, I'm going to ask a favor of you. Promise me you won't misunderstand."

"I'll try not," she said faintly, and her heart misgave her.

"Promise me that you'll leave us to ourselves when we have our little talk. I know your interest in Hephzibah's future--"

In her relief Agatha became jocular. "No, you don't know. You can't. Her welfare means as much to me as my own."

"I'm not doubting that. Please don't misunderstand me. But sometimes I think these sensitive natures can open up better to a stranger than to a friend. And the fact that I'm blind may be a help to her."

"Yes," agreed Agatha with unmistakable sincerity, "I'm pretty sure it will be."

"There's something mysterious about that girl," Forbes continued. "The way she refuses to listen to propositions that are all clearly for her good, puzzles me. I'm convinced that if I can have her to myself an hour or so, I'll get at the root of the trouble. Anyway it's worth trying."

Relieved from the terrifying certainty that he was about to ask her to chaperon them during the interview, Agatha had almost ceased to dread the prospective ordeal. But prudence suggested the advisability of seeming a little hurt. "I shouldn't have interfered in any way," she assured him plaintively. "Since you've set your heart on talking to Hephzibah, I should have sat quietly in the background and not said a word."

"Better not," Forbes interposed hastily. "Let me have my way this time. And when we talk it over afterward, I'll tell you every word that was said as nearly as I can remember."