On the Church Steps | Page 7

my darling. A soft little coil of
rose-colored Berlin wool, with its ivory needle sheathed among the
stitches, lay in a tiny basket. I lifted it up: the basket was made of
scented grass, and there was a delicious sweet and pure fragrance about
the knitting-work. I took possession of it and thrust it into my
breast-pocket. A magazine she had been reading, with the palest slip of
a paper-knife--a bit of delicate Swiss wood--in it, next came in my way.
I tried to settle down and read where she had left off, but the words
danced before my eyes, and a strange tune was repeating in my ears,
"Good-night, Charlie--good-night and good-bye!"
One mad impulse seized me to go out under her window and call to her,
asking her to come down. But Lenox nights were very still, and the
near neighbors on either side doubtless wide awake to all that was
going on around the Sloman cottage.
So I sat still like an idiot, and counted the clock-strokes, and nervously

calculated the possibility of her reappearance, until I heard, at last,
footsteps coming along the hall in rapid tread. I darted up: "Oh, Bessie,
I knew you would come back!" as through the open door walked
in--Mary, Mrs. Sloman's maid!
She started at seeing me: "Excuse me, sir. The parlor was so--I thought
there was no one here."
"What is it, Mary?" I asked with assumed indifference. "Do you want
Miss Bessie? She went up stairs a few moments ago."
"No, sir. I thought--that is--" glancing down in awkward confusion at
the key she held in her hand. She was retiring again softly when I saw
in the key the reason of her discomposure.
"Did you come in to lock up, Mary?" I asked with a laugh.
"Yes, sir. But it is of no consequence. I thought you had gone, sir."
"Time I was, I suppose. Well, Mary, you shall lock me out, and then
carry this note to Miss Bessie. It is so late that I will not wait for her.
Perhaps she is busy with Mrs. Sloman."
Something in Mary's face made me suspect that she knew Mrs. Sloman
to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and waited
respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling Bessie's
writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card. Dear child!
there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I raised the dainty lid.
"Bessie," I wrote, "I have waited until Mary has come in with her keys,
and I suppose I must go. My train starts at nine to-morrow morning, but
you will be ready--will you not?--at six to take a morning walk with me.
I will be here at that hour. You don't know how disturbed and anxious I
shall be till then."
CHAPTER IV.
Morning came--or rather the long night came to an end at last--and at

twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the Sloman cottage. It
was so late in September that the morning was a little hazy and
uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft--a perfect reflex, I
thought, of Bessie last night--an electric softness under a brooding
cloud.
The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell: no,
it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely not
make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would wait in
the porch--she would certainly come down soon.
So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered leaves
about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half an
hour passed.
"I will give her a gentle reminder;" so I gathered a spray from the
honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling leaves, and aimed it
right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted and it fell into the room,
but instead of the answering face that I looked to see, all was still again.
"It's very strange," thought I. "Bessie's pique is not apt to last so long.
She must indeed be angry."
And I went over each detail of our last night's talk, from her first burst
of "Take me with you!" to my boggling answers, my fears, so stupidly
expressed, that it would be anything but a picturesque bridal-trip, and
the necessity that there was for rapid traveling and much musty, old
research.
"What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She is myself: why
shouldn't I, then, be selfish? When I do what of all things I want to,
why can't I take it for granted that she will be happy too?" And a hot
flush of shame went over me to think that I had been about to propose
to her, to