The Courting of Lady Jane | Page 5

under her gentle influence the cloud faded from his horizon; he forgot the doubt of an hour ago. At her suggestion he dined there, and found himself, as always when with his hostess, at his best. He felt that there was no hypocrisy in her interest in his ideas, and the ease with which he expressed them astonished him even while he delighted in it. Why could he not talk so with Jane? It occurred to him suddenly that it was because Jane herself talked rarely. She was, like him, a listener, for the most part. His mind, unusually alert and sensitive to-night, looked ahead to the happy winter evenings he had grown to count on so, and when, with an effort, he detached this third figure from the group to be so closely allied after Christmas-tide--the date fixed for the wedding--he perceived that there was a great gap in the picture, that the warmth and sparkle had suddenly gone. All the tenderness in the world could not disguise that flash of foresight.
He grew quiet, lost in revery. She, following his mood, spoke less and less; and when Jane returned, late at night, escorted by a tall, bronzed young ranchman, she found them sitting in silence in a half-light, staring into the late September fire on the hearth.
In the month that followed an imperceptible change crept over the three. The older woman was much alone--variable as an April day, now merry and caressing, now sombre and withdrawn. The girl clung to her mother more closely, sat for long minutes holding her hand, threw strange glances at her betrothed that would have startled him, so different were they from her old, steady regard, had not his now troubled sense of some impalpable mist that wrapped them all grown stronger every day. He avoided sitting alone with her, wondering sometimes at the ease with which such t��te-��-t��tes were dispensed with. Then, struck with apprehension at his seeming neglect, he spent his ingenuity in delicate attentions toward her, courtly thoughtfulness of her tastes, beautiful gifts that provoked from her, in turn, all the little intimacies and tender friendliness of their earlier intercourse.
At one of these tiny crises of mutual restoration, she, sitting alone with him in the drawing-room, suddenly raised her eyes and looked steadily at him.
"You care for me, then, very much?" she said earnestly. "You--you would miss--if things were different? You really count on--on--our marriage? Are you happy?"
A great remorse rose in him. Poor child--poor, young, unknowing creature, that, after all, was only twenty-two! She felt it, then, the strange mist that seemed to muffle his words and actions, to hold him back. And she had given him so much!
He took her hands and drew her to him.
"My dear, dear child," he said gently, "forgive a selfish middle-aged bachelor if he cannot come up to the precious ideals of the sweetest girlhood in the world! I am no more worthy of you, Lady dear, than I have ever been, but I have never felt more tender toward you, more sensible of all you are giving me. I cannot pretend to the wild love of the poets you read so much; that time, if it ever was, is past for me. I am a plain, unromantic person, who takes and leaves a great deal for granted--I thought you knew that. But you must never doubt--" He paused a moment, and for the first time she interrupted him nervously.
"I never will--Clarence," she said almost solemnly; and it struck him for the first time that she had never called him by his name before. He leaned over her, and as in one of her rare concessions she lifted her face up to him, he bent lower than her forehead; what compelled him to kiss her soft cheek rather than her lips he did not know.
Unexpected business summoned him to New York for a fortnight the next day, and the great city drew him irresistibly into its noisy maelstrom. The current of his thoughts changed absolutely. Old friends and new took up his leisure. His affairs, as they grew more pressing, woke in him a keen delight in the struggle with his opponents; as he shook hands triumphantly with his lawyer after a well-earned victory he felt years younger. He decided that he had moped too long in the country: "We must move into town this season," he said to himself.
He fairly ran up the cottage steps in the gathering dusk. He longed to see them, full of plans for the winter. Hannah met him at the door: the ladies had gone to a dance at the Morrises'; there had been an invitation for him, so he would not intrude if he followed.
Hastily changing his clothes, he walked up the street. Lights and music poured