The Lilac Girl

Chapter XII.

There was a bench outside the kitchen door at The Cedars, a slant-legged, unpainted bench which at one time had been used to hold milk-cans. Wade settled himself on this in company with several dozen glasses of currant jelly. From his position he could look in at the kitchen door upon Eve and Miss Mullett, who, draped from chin to toes in blue-checked aprons, were busy over the summer preserving. A sweet, spicy fragrance was wafted out to him from the bubbling kettles, and now and then Eve, bearing a long agate-ware spoon and adorned on one cheek with a brilliant streak of currant juice, came to the threshold and smiled down upon him in a preoccupied manner, glancing at the jelly tumblers anxiously.

"If you spill them," she said, "Carrie will never forgive you, Mr. Herrick."

"Nonsense," declared Miss Mullett from the kitchen. "I'd just send you for more, Mr. Herrick, and make you help me put them up."

"I think I'd like that," answered Wade.

"It must be rather good fun messing about with sugar and currants and things."

"Messing about!" exclaimed Eve, indignantly. "It's quite evident that you've never done any of it!"

"Well, I stewed some dried apricots once," said Wade, "and they weren't half bad. I suppose you're going to be busy all the morning, aren't you?" he asked, forlornly.

"I'm afraid so."

"Indeed you're not," said Miss Mullett, decisively. "You're going to stop as soon as we get this kettleful off. I can do the rest much better without you, dear."

"Did you ever hear such ingratitude?" laughed Eve. "Here I've been hard at work since goodness only knows what hour of the morning, and now I'm informed that my services are valueless! I shall stay and help just to spite you, Carrie."

"I wanted you to take a walk," said Wade, boldly. "It's a great morning, too fine to be spent indoors."

"Is it?" Eve looked up at the fleecy sky critically. "Don't you think it looks like rain?"

"Not a bit," he answered, stoutly. "We're in for a long drought. Zephania told me so not half an hour ago."

"Is Zephania a weather prophet?"

"She's everything. She knows so much that she makes me ashamed of myself. And she never makes a mistake about the weather."

Wade waited anxiously.

"We-ll," said Eve, finally, "if you're sure it isn't going to rain, and Carrie really doesn't want me--"

"I do not," said Miss Mullett, crisply. "A walk will do you good. She stayed up until all hours last night, Mr. Herrick, writing. I wish you'd say something to her; she pays no attention to me."

Wade flushed. Eve turned and shot an indignant glance at Miss Mullett, but that lady was busy over the kettle with her back toward them.

"I'm afraid she would pay less heed to me than to you," answered Wade with a short laugh. "But if you'll persuade her to walk, I'll lecture her as much as you wish."

"If I'm to be lectured," replied Eve, "I shan't go."

"Well, of course, if you put it that way," hedged Wade.

"Go along, dear," said Miss Mullett. "You need fresh air. But do keep out of the sun if it gets hot."

"I wonder," observed Wade, with a smile, "what you folks up here would do down in New Mexico, where the temperature gets up to a hundred and twenty in the shade."

"I'd do as the Irishman suggested," answered Eve, pertly, "and keep out of the shade. If you'll wait right where you are and not move for ten minutes I'll go and get ready."

"I won't ruffle a feather," Wade assured her. "But you'd better come before dinner time or I may get hungry and eat all the jelly."

Twenty minutes later she was back, a cool vision of white linen and lace. She wore no hat, but had brought a sunshade. Pursued by Miss Mullett's admonitions to keep out of the sun as much as possible, they went down the garden and through the gate, and turned countryward under the green gloom of the elms. Alexander the Great, laboring perhaps under the delusion that he was a dog instead of a cat, followed them decorously for some distance, and then, being prevailed on to desist, climbed a fence-post and blinked gravely after them.

"It really is nice to-day," said Eve. "When the breeze comes from the direction of the coast it cools things off deliciously. I suppose it's only imagination, but sometimes I think I can smell the salt--or taste it. That's scarcely possible, though, for we're a good twenty miles inland."

"I'm not so sure," he answered. "Lots of times I've thought I could smell the ocean here. Does it take very long to get to Portsmouth or the beach? Couldn't we go some day, you and Miss Mullett and the Doctor and I?"

"That would be jolly," said Eve. "We must talk it over with them. I'm afraid, though, the Doctor couldn't go. There's always some one sick hereabouts."

"Oh, he could leave enough of his nasty medicine one day to last through the next. He's one of the nicest old chaps I ever met, Miss Walton. He's awfully fond of you, isn't he?"

"I think he is," she answered, "and I'm awfully fond of him, I don't know whether I ought to tell this, but I have a suspicion that he used to be very fond of my mother before she was married. He's told me so many little things about her, and he always speaks of her in such a quiet, dear sort of way. I wonder--I wonder if he ever asked her to marry him."

"Somehow I don't believe he ever did," said Wade, thoughtfully. "I could imagine him being sort of shy if he were in love. Perhaps, while he was working his courage up to the sticking point, your father stepped in and carried off the prize. That happens sometimes, you know."

"I suppose it does," laughed Eve. "Or perhaps he was so busy quoting bits of poetry to her that he never had time!"

"That's so." Wade smiled. "There's one thing certain, and that is, if she did refuse him, he had a quotation quite ready for the occasion."

"''Tis better to have loved and lost' and so on?"

"Something of the sort," answered Wade. "I wonder, though, if that is true, Miss Walton?"

"What?" asked Eve.

"That it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

"I'm sure I don't know. Probably not. Perhaps, like a great many of the Doctor's quotations, it's more poetical than truthful."

"I think it must be," mused Wade. "It doesn't sound logical to me. To say that, when you've seen a thing you want and can't have it, you're better off than before you wanted it, doesn't sound like sense."

"Have you ever wanted much you didn't get?" asked Eve.

Wade thought a minute.

"Come to think of it, Miss Walton, I don't believe I have. I can't think of anything just now. Perhaps that's why I'd hate all the more to be deprived of what I want now," he said, seriously. She shot a glance at him from under the edge of the sunshade.

"You talk as though some one was trying to cheat you out of something you'd set your heart on," she said lightly.

"That isn't far wrong," he answered. "I have set my heart on something and it doesn't look now as though I'd ever get it."

"Oh, I hope you will," said Eve, sincerely.

"Your saying that makes it look farther off than ever," responded Wade, with a wry smile.

"My saying that? But why?" she asked in surprise.

"Because," he answered, after a moment's silence, "if you knew what it is I want, I don't think you'd want me to have it, and that you don't know proves that I'm a long way off from it."

"It sounds like a riddle," said Eve, perplexedly. "Please, Mr. Herrick, what is the answer?"

Wade clenched his hands in his pockets and looked very straight ahead up the road.

"You," he said.

"Me?" The sunshade was raised for an instant. "Oh!" The sunshade dropped. They walked on in silence for a few paces. Then said Wade, with a stolen glance at the white silken barrier:

"I hope I haven't offended you, Miss Walton. I had no more intention of saying anything like that when we started out than--than the man in the moon. But it's true, and you might as well know it now as any other time. You're what I want, more than I've ever wanted anything before or ever shall again, and you're what I'm very much afraid I won't get. I'm not quite an idiot, after all. I know mighty well that--that I'm not the sort of fellow you'd fall in love with, barring a miracle. But maybe I'm trusting to the miracle. Anyhow, I'm cheeky enough to hope that--that you may get to like me enough to marry me some day. Do you think you ever could?"

"But--oh, I don't know what to say," cried Eve, softly. "I haven't thought--!"

"Of course not," interrupted Wade, cheerfully. "Why should you? All I ask is that you think about it now--or some time when you--when you're not busy, you know. I guess I could say a whole lot about how much I love you, but you're not ready to hear that yet and I won't. If you'll just understand that you're the one girl in the whole darn--in the whole world for me, Miss Walton, we'll let it go at that for the present. You think about it. I'm not much on style and looks, and I don't know much outside of mining, but I pick up things pretty quickly and I could learn. I don't say anything about money, except that if you cared for me I'd be thankful I had plenty of it, so that I could give you most anything you wanted. You--you don't mind thinking it over, do you?"

"No," said Eve, a little unsteadily, "but--oh, I do wish you wouldn't talk as you do! You make me feel so little and worthless, and I don't like to feel that way."

"But how?" cried Wade, in distress. "I don't mean to!"

"I know you don't. That's just it. But you do. When you talk so meanly of yourself, I mean. Just as though any girl wouldn't feel proud at having--at hearing--oh, you must know what I mean!" And Eve turned a flushed, beseeching face toward him.

"Not quite, I'm afraid," Wade answered. "Anyhow, I don't want you to feel proud, Miss Walton. If any one should feel proud, it's I, to think you've let me say this to you and haven't sent me off about my business."

"Oh, please!" begged Eve, with a little vexed laugh.

"What?" he asked, perplexedly.

"Don't talk of yourself as though you were--were just nothing, and of me as though I were a princess. It's absurd! I'm only a very ordinary sort of person with ordinary faults--perhaps more than my share of them."

"You're the finest woman I ever saw, and the loveliest," replied Wade stoutly. "And if you're not for me no other woman is."

The sunshade intervened again and they walked on for some little distance in silence. Then Wade began slowly, choosing his words: "Maybe I've talked in a way to give you a wrong impression. You mustn't think that there's any--false modesty about me. I reckon I have rather too good an opinion of myself, if anything. I wouldn't want you to be disappointed in me--afterwards, you know. I reckon I've got an average amount of sense and ability. I've been pretty successful for a man of twenty-eight, and it hasn't been all luck, not by a whole lot! Maybe most folks would say I was conceited, had a swelled head. It's only when it comes to--to asking you to marry me that I get kind of down on myself. I know I'm not good enough, Miss Walton, and I own up to it. The only comforting thought is that there aren't many men who are. I'm saying this because I don't want to fool you into thinking me any more modest and humble than I am. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand," replied Eve, from under the sunshade.

"And you won't forget your promise?"

"You mean--"

"To think it over."

"No, I won't forget. But please don't hope too much, Mr. Herrick, for I can't promise anything, really! It isn't that I don't like you, for I do, but"--her voice trailed off into silence.

"I hardly dared hope for that much," said Wade, gratefully. "Of course it isn't enough, but it's something to start on."

"But liking isn't love," objected Eve, gravely.

"I know. And there was never love without liking. You don't mind if I get what comfort I can out of that, do you?"

"N-no, I suppose not," answered Eve, slowly.

"It doesn't bind you to anything, you see. Shall we turn back now? The breeze seems to have left us."

Presently he said: "There's something I want very much to ask you, but I don't know whether I have any right to."

"If there's anything I can answer, I will," said Eve.

"Then I'll ask it, and you can do as you please about answering. It's just this. Is there anyone who has--a prior claim? I mean is there any one you must consider in this, Miss Walton. Please don't say a word unless you want to."

Eve made no reply for a moment. Then, "I think I'm glad you did ask that, Mr. Herrick," she said, "for it gives me a chance to explain why I haven't answered you this morning, instead of putting it off. I am not bound in any way by any promise of mine, and yet--there is some one who--I hardly know how to put it, Mr. Herrick."

"Don't try if it is too hard. I think I understand."

"I don't believe you do, though. I'm not quite sure--it's only this; that I want to feel quite free before--I answer you. I may have to keep you waiting for awhile, perhaps a few days. May I? You won't mind?"

"I can wait for a year as long as waiting means hope," replied Wade, gravely.

"But maybe--it doesn't."

"But it does. If there was no hope, absolutely none, you'd have told me so ten minutes ago, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so. I don't know. I mean"--she stopped and faced him, half laughing, half serious. "Oh, I don't know what I mean; you've got me all mixed up! Please, let's not talk any more about it now. Let's--let's go home!"

"Very well," said Wade, cheerfully. "I hope I haven't walked you too far."