_ CHAPTER XX. A GIRL'S HEART
He walked his horse when he reached the farther shore. He was wondering just what he was to say to Dennis Kavanagh. They had not parted in a manner that invited further intimacy. From twin windows of the house on the hill lights glowed redly, as though they were Dennis Kavanagh's baleful little eyes. Fear was not the cause of the young man's hesitation. But he dreaded another scene in the presence of the girl. Kavanagh and his grandfather had brutally violated an innocent friendship. They had put into insulting words what neither he nor Clare had dreamed of--he hastily assured himself that they were not lovers. More than ever before he now felt infinite tenderness toward her--compassion, sympathy--an overpowering impulse to seek her. He had much to tell her. He could not think of any one in all the world who would listen as she would listen. The red eyes glowering out of the summer gloom did not daunt him; they suggested tyranny and insulting suspicion, and he pitied her the more. He rode on past the tall cross of the church-yard. A voice out of the silence startled him. A white figure stood in the shadow of the church porch.
"Come here, Big Boy," she said. "I'm not a ghost. I'm only Clare. I've been waiting for you."
He left his horse, and hurried to her.
"Waiting for me? I did not write. Have you second sight, little Clare?"
"No, only first news. This isn't one of the big cities where the crowds rush by and do not notice each other. It's only a lonesome little place, Harlan, and gossip travels fast. I heard you were home five minutes after the stage was in. So I came here and waited."
He took both her hands between his broad palms, caressing them.
"And you knew I'd hurry to come across the long bridge? That makes me happy, Clare, for you must have been thinking about me."
"I haven't many things to do these days except think," she returned, wistfully. "You'll understand why I came down here. I'm not trying to hide away from my father, and I know you are not afraid of him. But lectures on the subject of not doing the things you don't have any idea of doing are not to my taste, and I know they don't suit you. So we'll sit here in peace and quietness, and you shall tell me all about it."
He turned his back on the two red eyes of the Kavanagh house, and sat down on the step below her, and began his story, eagerly, volubly.
Once in a while he looked up at her, and she gave wise little nods to show she understood. In relating the early episodes of his journey, he ventured to leave out details. But she insisted that he give them.
"I want to know about the world--how they all look, and how they speak, and what they do. I've been lonely all these weeks. I've been wondering all the time what you were doing. Now I want it to seem that you've come to take me with you, back through it all. I want it to seem just as though I were travelling along with you--that will make me forget how lonely I've been, waiting here on the edge of the big woods."
And he humored her whim, for he had always understood her child's ways. The woods had trained him to note the details of all he saw; his experiences had been fresh and stirring, and he told his story with zest.
Then he came to his mention of Madeleine Presson. "Her father is the State chairman--the man you saw at 'The Barracks.' I was at their house a few times. Her mother--"
"But about her! You are skipping again, Big Boy."
"There is not much about her," he said, stammering a bit. "I saw her here and there, and talked with her, that's all."
"But I'm seeing with your eyes and hearing with your ears as I go along with you," she insisted. "I want to know how other girls are in the world outside. I have been waiting to have some one tell me. You saw her, you heard her. Begin, Harlan: her looks, her clothes, her manners, what she said, what she talks about. I have only you to ask."
His self-consciousness left him after he began. He drew his word-picture as best he could.
"That makes her beautiful," she said, when he paused, searching his mind for some word of description. "I think I can see her with your eyes, Big Boy. Tell me what she knows; and how does she talk?"
In the dusk he could not see the expression on her face. He knew that she listened intently, leaning above him. He was not conscious that he praised Madeleine Presson's gifts of mind or person. But as he had found her, so he portrayed her to the isolated girl of the north country, describing her attainments, her culture, her breadth of view, her grasp of the questions of the day, her ability to understand the big matters in which men were interested.
She made no comment as he talked. She did not interrupt him when he had finished with Madeleine Presson and went on to relate how he had been forced into the forefront of the State's political situation.
"So, then, you have become a great man," she faltered. "I remember. I was selfish. I did not want you to go away."
"No, I am not a great man, little Clare," he protested, laughingly. "I'm only a little chap that a great man is using. And you were not selfish. It was you that first put the thought into my mind that I ought to use my opportunities. That night at the end of the bridge, you know! I was sullen and obstinate. But you talked to me like a wise little woman. All the time I was with my grandfather later that evening, trying to be angry with him, I kept remembering your advice."
"I lied to you!" she cried, so passionately that he leaped to his feet and stared down on her. "I said it. I remember. But I lied. I was punishing myself because I had been selfish about you. But I didn't believe what I was saying--not deep in my heart. I wanted you to say you wouldn't go--but I didn't want you to look back ever and blame me for my selfishness. You see now how wicked and wrong and weak I am. I didn't want the world to take you away from--from us up here: from the woods and the plain folks. You'll hate me now. But I have to be truthful with you!" Her voice broke.
"The world has not won me away from my friends, dear. You must know me too well for that suspicion to shame me."
She crouched on the step before him. Her hands, fingers interlaced, gripped each other hard to quiet their trembling. In her girlish frailness, as she bent above her clasped hands, huddled there in the black shadow of the porch, she seemed pitifully little and helpless and forsaken. The woe in her tones thrilled him. She was trying hard to control her voice.
"You see, Harlan, I can look ahead and understand how it will be. A woman does understand such things. That's the awful thing about being a woman--and looking ahead and knowing how it must be before it ever happens!"
"Before what happens, Clare? I'm trying hard to understand you."
He leaned forward, and could see her eyes. He had seen that look in the eyes of a stricken doe.
"The world is all outside of this place, Harlan. You know we have always spoken of all other places than this as 'outside.' You have stepped through the great door. Now you see. You can't help seeing. It's all outspread before you. No one can blame you for not looking back here into the shadows. The great light is all ahead. I am--I ought not to speak about myself. I have no right to. But you'll forgive me. I didn't have any one to tell me! I didn't have any mother to advise me. I have played through all the long days, I don't know anything. Other girls--"
"Clare! God save you, little Clare--don't--don't!" he pleaded.
"You have been away only a few days, and yet you have found out the difference. You told me about her. She is beautiful, and she is wise. She has not wasted the long days. She can help you with knowledge. She can--"
He put out his arms and tried to take her, cursing himself for his thoughtless cruelty. Infinite pity and something else--fervent, hungry desire to clasp her overmastered all the prudence of the past. But she eluded him. She sprang away. She retreated to the upper step of the church porch, and he paused, gazing up at her.
"Oh, Blessed Virgin, put your fingers on my lips!" she gasped. "Why did I say it?"
"Listen to me, Clare," he urged, holding his arms to her. "I know now that I've been waiting for you. I thought it was friendship, but now I--"
She cried out so loudly, so bitterly, that he stopped.
"If you say it--if you say it now, Harlan, it will shame me so that I can never lift my eyes to yours again. I realize what I have said. It is I that have put the thoughts into your mind--almost the words in your mouth. Don't speak to me now. Oh, you can see how little I know--what a fool I am, forward, shameless, ignorant about all that a girl should know! Do not come near me--not now!" He had started to come up the steps--he was crying out to her. "Oh, Harlan, don't you understand? Don't you see that I can't listen to you now? I have driven you to say something to save my pride. I say I
have! You are good and honest, and you pity me--and my folly needs your pity. But if you should tell me now that you love me, I'd die of shame--I'd distrust that love! I couldn't help it--and I've brought it all on myself. Oh, my God, why have I grown up a fool--why have I wasted the long days?"
She ran down past him. He did not try to stay her. He understood women not at all. He obeyed her cry to be silent--to keep away from her.
She turned to him when she reached the ground.
"I haven't even known enough to understand how it stands between us. Between us!" There was a wail in her voice. She sobbed the rest rather than spoke it: "That river out there is between us! I don't even belong to your country!"
She pointed at the great cross of the church-yard. It stood outlined in the starlight.
"Religion stands between us! My father and your grandfather are between us!"
She came back two steps, her face tear-wet, her features quivering with grief.
"But there's something else between us, Harlan, blacker and deeper than all the rest. Don't try to cross it to come to me. You will sink in it. Fools for wives have spoiled too many men in this world. I understand now! Your grandfather knew." She raised her eyes, and crossed herself reverently. "Mother Mary, help me in this, my temptation!"
She turned, and ran away, sobbing.
Harlan hurried a few steps after her, crying appeals. But he did not persist. Her passionate protests had come from her heart, he knew. He did not dare to force himself on her when she was in that mood.
He sat down again on the church steps. He remained there in deep thought until the red eyes in Dennis Kavanagh's house blinked out. He did not find it easy to understand himself, exactly. His feelings had been played upon too powerfully to permit calm consideration. He felt confident in his affection for her. But her youth and the obstacles he understood so well put marriage so out of immediate consideration that he merely grieved rather than made definite plans for their future. With moist eyes he looked up at the dark house on the hill and pledged loyalty to the child-woman, knowing that he loved her. But that the love was the love that mates man and woman for the struggles, the prizes, the woes, and the contentment of life he was not sure--for he still looked on Clare Kavanagh as more child than woman.
Marriage seemed yet a long way ahead of him. He rode slowly back to "The Barracks." His problem seemed to be riding double with him. The problem, one might say, was in the form of a maid on a pillion. But he did not look behind to see whether the maid bore the features of Clare Kavanagh or Madeleine Presson. At that moment he was sure that only Clare's image rode with him. But in thinking of her he understood his limitations. For, woodsman and unversed in the ways of women, he had not arrived at that point in life where he could analyze even a boy's love, much less a man's passion.
The next morning he left Fort Canibas with big Ben Kyle, to make a tour of the Thornton camps. It was a trip that took in the cruising of a township for standing timber on short rations and in the height of the blackfly season, an experience not conducive to reflections on love and matrimony.
But when he returned to Fort Canibas, on the eve of his departure to take up his duties as General Waymouth's chief of staff, he saddled his horse and rode across the long bridge.
This time there was no white figure on the church porch and no wistful voice to call after him. He kept on up the hill. He was not thinking about what Dennis Kavanagh might say to him. He had resolved to ask Clare manfully if she would continue to trust him for a while until both could be certain that their boy and girl love signified to them the love that life needed for its bounty and its blessing. That seemed the honest way. It seemed the only way, as matters lay between them and their families.
Dennis Kavanagh was seated on his veranda, smoking his short pipe and inhaling the freshness of the shower-cooled summer air along with the aroma of his tobacco.
"I would like to see your daughter, Mr. Kavanagh," announced the young man, boldly. "And I have not come sneaking by the back way. It will be a good while before I can see her again."
"That it will," responded Mr. Kavanagh, dryly, "and it will be a good long while before ye'll see her now--that may be mixed, but I reckon ye'll get the drift of it!"
"It will be better for all our interests if I have a few words with her," persisted the young man, trying to keep his temper.
"Will ye talk to her through the air or over the telephone?" inquired the father, sarcastically. "She is not here, she is not near here, and if ye wait for her to come back ye'll best arrange to have your meals brought."
He did not pause for Harlan to ask any more questions. He came down from the porch on his stubby legs and handed up an envelope. The flap of the envelope had been opened.
"She left this," he said; "and having opened it and seen that it held nothing but what ye might profitably know, Thornton's grandson, I here give it into your hand, and ye needn't thank me."
Harlan, wondering, apprehensive, fearing something untoward, took out the single sheet of paper. He read:
"BIG BOY,--Go on and let the world make you a great man. I'm groping. Perhaps I'll see my way some day and can follow. But just as there's a cure for ignorance, so there's a cure for hearts, maybe. Your friend, CLARE."
Harlan looked over the edge of the paper into the twinkling little eyes of the father. Mr. Kavanagh seemed to be getting much satisfaction from the expression on his victim's face.
"Can't you tell me what this means, Mr. Kavanagh? I beg of you humbly, and in all sincerity."
"The Kavanaghs are never backward in politeness, Mr. Harlan Thornton. It means that my girl is done playing child and riding cock-horse. She's off to learn to be the finest and knowingest lady in all the land--she's off because she wanted to go, and she's got all of Dennis Kavanagh's fat wallet behind her!" He slapped his breast-pocket.
"Off where?"
"Where they know things and teach things better than they do over in your Yankeeland of airs and frills. And now good-day to ye!"
He climbed the porch steps, and relighted his pipe, gazing with much relish past the flame of the match, studying Harlan's dismay.
The young man suddenly came to himself, struck his horse, and galloped wildly away.
The next morning he departed to offer political hand and sword in the cause of General Waymouth. _