At Fault Part 7

"Well, that's new to me," was his only comment.

"Do you believe in spirits, Gregoire? I don't--in day time."

"Neva mine 'bout spirits," he answered, taking her arm and leading her off, "let's git away f'om yere."

They soon found a smooth and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk, and Gregoire lay p.r.o.ne upon the ground with--his head in Melicent's lap.

When Melicent first met Gregoire, his peculiarities of speech, so unfamiliar to her, seemed to remove him at once from the possibility of her consideration. She was not then awake to certain fine psychological differences distinguis.h.i.+ng man from man; precluding the possibility of naming and cla.s.sifying him in the moral as one might in the animal kingdom. But short-comings of language, which finally seemed not to detract from a definite inheritance of good breeding, touched his personality as a physical deformation might, adding to it certainly no charm, yet from its pathological aspect not without a species of fascination, for a certain order of misregulated mind.

She bore with him, and then she liked him. Finally, whilst indulging in a little introspection; making a diagnosis of various symptoms, indicative by no means of a deep-seated malady, she decided that she was in love with Gregoire. But the admission embraced the understanding with herself, that nothing could come of it. She accepted it as a phase of that relentless fate which in pessimistic moments she was inclined to believe pursued her.

It could not be thought of, that she should marry a man whose eccentricity of speech would certainly not adapt itself to the requirements of polite society.

He had kissed her one day. Whatever there was about the kiss--possibly an over exuberance--it was not to her liking, and she forbade that he ever repeat it, under pain of losing her affection. Indeed, on the few occasions when Melicent had been engaged, kissing had been excluded as superfluous to the relations.h.i.+p, except in the case of the young lieutenant out at Fort Leavenworth who read Tennyson to her, as an angel might be supposed to read, and who in moments of rapturous self-forgetfulness, was permitted to kiss her under the ear: a proceeding not positively distasteful to Melicent, except in so much as it tickled her.

Gregoire's hair was soft, not so dark as her own, and possessed an inclination to curl about her slender fingers.

"Gregoire," she said, "you told me once that the Santien boys were a hard lot; what did you mean by that?"

"Oh no," he answered, laughing good-humoredly up into her eyes, "you did'n year me right. W'at I said was that we had a hard name in the country. I don' see w'y eitha, excep' we all'ays done putty much like we wanted. But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois, they ain't no temptations o' no kine."

"There's little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations to withstand," delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone of a pretty sage, giving utterance to an inspired truth.

Melicent felt that she did not fully know Gregoire; that he had always been more or less under restraint with her, and she was troubled by something other than curiosity to get at the truth concerning him. One day when she was arranging a vase of flowers at a table on the back porch, Aunt Belindy, who was scouring knives at the same table, had followed Gregoire with her glance, when he walked away after exchanging a few words with Melicent.

"G.o.d! but dats a diffunt man sence you come heah."

"Different?" questioned the girl eagerly, and casting a quick sideward look at Aunt Belindy.

"Lord yas honey, 'f you warn't heah dat same Mista Gregor 'd be in Centaville ev'y Sunday, a raisin' Cain. Humph--I knows 'im."

Melicent would not permit herself to ask more, but picked up her vase of flowers and walked with it into the house; her comprehension of Gregoire in no wise advanced by the newly acquired knowledge that he was liable to "raise Cain" during her absence--a proceeding which she could not too hastily condemn, considering her imperfect apprehension of what it might imply.

Meanwhile she would not allow her doubts to interfere with the kindness which she lavished on him, seeing that he loved her to desperation. Was he not at this very moment looking up into her eyes, and talking of his misery and her cruelty? turning his face downward in her lap--as she knew to cry--for had she not already seen him lie on the ground in an agony of tears, when she had told him he should never kiss her again?

And so they lingered in the woods, these two curious lovers, till the shadows grew so deep about old McFarlane's grave that they pa.s.sed it by with hurried step and averted glance.

IX

Face to Face.

After a day of close and intense September heat, it had rained during the night. And now the morning had followed chill and crisp, yet with possibilities of a genial suns.h.i.+ne breaking through the mist that had risen at dawn from the great sluggish river and spread itself through the mazes of the city.

The change was one to send invigorating thrills through the blood, and to quicken the step; to make one like the push and jostle of the mult.i.tude that thronged the streets; to make one in love with intoxicating life, and impatient with the grudging dispensation that had given to mankind no wings wherewith to fly.

But with no reacting warmth in his heart, the change had only made Hosmer s.h.i.+ver and draw his coat closer about his chest, as he pushed his way through the hurrying crowd.

The St. Louis Exposition was in progress with all its many allurements that had been heralded for months through the journals of the State.

Hence, the unusual press of people on the streets this bright September morning. Home people, whose air of owners.h.i.+p to the surroundings cla.s.sified them at once, moving un.o.bservantly about their affairs. Women and children from the near and rich country towns, in for the Exposition and their fall shopping; wearing gowns of ultra fas.h.i.+onable tendencies; leaving in their toilets nothing to expediency; taking no chances of so much as a ribbon or a loop set in disaccordance with the book.

There were whole families from across the bridge, hurrying towards the Exposition. Fathers and mothers, babies and grandmothers, with baskets of lunch and bundles of provisional necessities, in for the day.

Nothing would escape their observation nor elude their criticism, from the creations in color lining the walls of the art gallery, to the most intricate mechanism of inventive genius in the bas.e.m.e.nt. All would pa.s.s inspection, with drawing of comparison between the present, the past year and the "year before," likely in a nasal drawl with the R's brought sharply out, leaving no doubt as to their utterance.

The newly married couple walking serenely through the crowd, young, smiling, up-country, hand-in-hand; well pleased with themselves, with their new attire and newer jewelry, would likely have answered Hosmer's "beg pardon" with amiability if he had knocked them down. But he had only thrust them rather violently to one side in his eagerness to board the cable car that was das.h.i.+ng by, with no seeming willingness to stay its mad flight. He still possessed the agility in his unpracticed limbs to swing himself on the grip, where he took a front seat, well b.u.t.toned up as to top-coat, and glad of the bodily rest that his half hour's ride would bring him.

The locality in which he descended presented some noticeable changes since he had last been there. Formerly, it had been rather a quiet street, with a leisurely horse car depositing its pa.s.sengers two blocks away to the north from it; awaking somewhat of afternoons when hordes of children held possession. But now the cable had come to disturb its long repose, adding in the office, nothing to its attractiveness.

There was the drug store still at the corner, with the same proprietor, tilted back in his chair as of old, and as of old reading his newspaper with only the change which a newly acquired pair of spectacles gave to his appearance. The "drug store boy" had unfolded into manhood, plainly indicated by the mustache that in adding adornment and dignity to his person, had lifted him above the menial office of window was.h.i.+ng. A task relegated to a mustacheless urchin with a leaning towards the surrept.i.tious abstraction of caramels and chewing gum in the intervals of such manual engagements as did not require the co-operation of a strategic mind.

Where formerly had been the vacant lot "across the street," the Sunday afternoon elysium of the youthful base ball fiend from Biddle Street, now stood a row of brand new pressed-brick "flats." Marvelous must have been the architectural ingenuity which had contrived to unite so many dwellings into so small a s.p.a.ce. Before each spread a length of closely clipped gra.s.s plot, and every miniature front door wore its fantastic window furnis.h.i.+ng; each set of decorations having seemingly fired the next with efforts of surpa.s.sing elaboration.

The house at which Hosmer rang--a plain two-storied red brick, standing close to the street--was very old-fas.h.i.+oned in face of its modern opposite neighbors, and the recently metamorphosed dwelling next door, that with added porches and appendages to tax man's faculty of conjecture, was no longer recognizable for what it had been. Even the bell which he pulled was old-fas.h.i.+oned and its tingle might be heard throughout the house long after the servant had opened the door, if she were only reasonably alert to the summons. Its reverberations were but dying away when Hosmer asked if Mrs. Larimore were in. Mrs.

Larimore was in; an admission which seemed to hold in reserve a defiant "And what if she is, sir."

Hosmer was relieved to find the little parlor into which he was ushered, with its adjoining dining-room, much changed. The carpets which he and f.a.n.n.y had gone out together to buy during the early days of their housekeeping, were replaced by rugs that lay upon the bare, well polished floors. The wall paper was different; so were the hangings. The furniture had been newly re-covered. Only the small household G.o.ds were as of old: things--trifles--that had never much occupied or impressed him, and that now, amid their altered surroundings stirred no sentiment in him of either pleased or sad remembrance.

It had not been his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her a clue for the reason of it.

There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if's and and's, but stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger, true--but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.

And what had Homeyer said of it? He had railed of course as usual, at the submission of a human destiny to the exacting and ignorant rule of what he termed moral conventionalities. He had startled and angered Hosmer with his denunciation of Therese's sophistical guidance.

Rather--he proposed--let Hosmer and Therese marry, and if f.a.n.n.y were to be redeemed--though he pooh-poohed the notion as untenable with certain views of what he called the rights to existence: the existence of wrongs--sorrows--diseases--death--let them all go to make up the conglomerate whole--and let the individual man hold on to his personality. But if she must be redeemed--granting this point to their littleness, let the redemption come by different ways than those of sacrifice: let it be an outcome from the capability of their united happiness.

Hosmer did not listen to his friend Homeyer. Love was his G.o.d now, and Therese was Love's prophet.

So he was sitting in this little parlor waiting for f.a.n.n.y to come.

She came after an interval that had been given over to the indulgence of a little feminine nervousness. Through the open doors Hosmer could hear her coming down the back stairs; could hear that she halted mid-way. Then she pa.s.sed through the dining-room, and he arose and went to meet her, holding out his hand, which she was not at once ready to accept, being fl.u.s.tered and unprepared for his manner in whichever way it might direct itself.

They sat opposite each other and remained for a while silent; he with astonishment at sight of the "merry blue eyes" faded and sunken into deep, dark round sockets; at the net-work of little lines all traced about the mouth and eyes, and spreading over the once rounded cheeks that were now hollow and evidently pale or sallow, beneath a layer of rouge that had been laid on with an unsparing hand. Yet was she still pretty, or pleasing, especially to a strong nature that would find an appeal in the pathetic weakness of her face. There was no guessing at what her figure might be, it was disguised under a very fas.h.i.+onable dress, and a worsted shawl covered her shoulders, which occasionally quivered as with an inward chill. She spoke first, twisting the end of this shawl.

"What did you come for, David? why did you come now?" with peevish resistance to the disturbance of his coming.

"I know I have come without warrant," he said, answering her implication. "I have been led to see--no matter how--that I made mistakes in the past, and what I want to do now is to right them, if you will let me."

This was very unexpected to her, and it startled her, but neither with pleasure nor pain; only with an uneasiness which showed itself in her face.

"Have you been ill?" he asked suddenly as the details of change in her appearance commenced to unfold themselves to him.

"Oh no, not since last winter, when I had pneumonia so bad. They thought I was going to die. Dr. Franklin said I would 'a died if Belle Worthington hadn't 'a took such good care of me. But I don't see what you mean coming now. It'll be the same thing over again: I don't see what's the use, David."

"We won't talk about the use, f.a.n.n.y. I want to take care of you for the rest of your life--or mine--as I promised to do ten years ago; and I want you to let me do it."