The Kentons Part 22

Ellen said, "I think I understand," with a temptation to smile at the ruefulness of his appeal.

Breckon laughed for her. "That's the mischief and the absurdity of it.

But it isn't so bad as it seems. They're really most of them hard-headed people; and those that are not couldn't make a fool of a man that nature hadn't begun with. Still, I'm not very well satisfied with my work among them--that is, I'm not satisfied with myself." He was talking soberly enough, and he did not find that she was listening too seriously. "I'm going away to see whether I shall come back." He looked at her to make sure that she had taken his meaning, and seemed satisfied that she had.

"I'm not sure that I'm fit for any sort of ministry, and I may find the winter in England trying to find out. I was at school in England, you know."

Ellen confessed that she had not known that.

"Yes; I suppose that's what made me seem 'so Englishy' the first day to Miss Lottie, as she called it. But I'm straight enough American as far as parentage goes. Do you think you will be in England-later?"

"I don't know. If poppa gets too homesick we will go back in the fall."

"Miss Kenton," said the young man, abruptly, "will you let me tell you how much I admire and revere your father?"

Tears came into her eyes and her throat swelled. "But you don't know,"

she begun; and then she stopped.

"I have been wanting to submit something to his judgment; but I've been afraid. I might seem to be fis.h.i.+ng for his favor."

"Poppa wouldn't think anything that was unjust," said Ellen, gravely.

"Ah," Breckon laughed, "I suspect that I should rather have him unjust.

I wish you'd tell me what he would think."

"But I don't know what it is," she protested, with a reflected smile.

"I was in hopes Miss Rasmith might have told you. Well, it is simply this, and you will see that I'm not quite the universal favorite she's been making you fancy me. There is a rift in my lute, a schism in my little society, which is so little that I could not have supposed there was enough of it to break in two. There are some who think their lecturer--for that's what I amount to--ought to be an older, if not a graver man. They are in the minority, but they're in the right, I'm afraid; and that's why I happen to be here telling you all this. It's a question of whether I ought to go back to New York or stay in London, where there's been a faint call for me." He saw the girl listening devoutly, with that flattered look which a serious girl cannot keep out of her face when a man confides a serious matter to her. "I might safely promise to be older, but could I keep my word if I promised to be graver? That's the point. If I were a Calvinist I might hold fast by faith, and fight it out with that; or if I were a Catholic I could cast myself upon the strength of the Church, and triumph in spite of temperament. Then it wouldn't matter whether I was grave or gay; it might be even better if I were gay. But," he went on, in terms which, doubtless, were not then for the first time formulated in his mind, "being merely the leader of a sort of forlorn hope in the Divine Goodness, perhaps I have no right to be so cheerful."

The note of a sad irony in his words appealed to such indignation for him in Ellen as she never felt for herself. But she only said, "I don't believe Poppa could take that in the wrong way if you told him."

Breckon stared. "Yes your father! What would he say?"

"I can't tell you. But I'm sure he would know what you meant."

"And you," he pursued, "what should YOU say?"

"I? I never thought about such a thing. You mustn't ask me, if you're serious; and if you're not--"

"But I am; I am deeply serious. I would like, to know how the case strikes you. I shall be so grateful if you will tell me."

"I'm sorry I can't, Mr. Breckon. Why don't you ask poppa?"

"No, I see now I sha'n't be able. I feel too much, after telling you, as if I had been posing. The reality has gone out of it all. And I'm ashamed."

"You mustn't be," she said, quietly; and she added, "I suppose it would be like a kind of defeat if you didn't go back?"

"I shouldn't care for the appearance of defeat," he said, courageously.

"The great question is, whether somebody else wouldn't be of more use in my place."

"n.o.body could be," said she, in a sort of impa.s.sioned absence, and then coming to herself, "I mean, they wouldn't think so, I don't believe."

"Then you advise--"

"No, no! I can't; I don't. I'm not fit to have an opinion about such a thing; it would be crazy. But poppa--"

They were at the door of the gangway, and she slipped within and left him. His nerves tingled, and there was a glow in his breast. It was sweet to have surprised that praise from her, though he could not have said why he should value the praise or a girl of her open ignorance and inexperience in everything that would have qualified her to judge him.

But he found himself valuing it supremely, and wonderingly wis.h.i.+ng to be worthy of it.

XVII.

Ellen discovered her father with a book in a distant corner of the dining-saloon, which he preferred to the deck or the library for his reading, in such intervals as the stewards, laying and cleaning the tables, left him unmolested in it. She advanced precipitately upon him, and stood before him in an excitement which, though he lifted his dazed eyes to it from his page, he was not entirely aware of till afterwards.

Then he realized that her cheeks were full of color, and her eyes of light, and that she panted as if she had been running when she spoke.

"Poppa," she said, "there is something that Mr. Breckon wants to speak to you--to ask you about. He has asked me, but I want you to see him, for I think he had better tell you himself."

While he still stared at her she was as suddenly gone as she had come, and he remained with his book, which the meaning had as suddenly left.

There was no meaning in her words, except as he put it into them, and after he had got it in he struggled with it in a sort of perfunctory incredulity. It was not impossible; it chiefly seemed so because it seemed too good to be true; and the more he pondered it the more possible, if not probable, it became. He could not be safe with it till he had submitted it to his wife; and he went to her while he was sure of repeating Ellen's words without varying from them a syllable.

To his astonishment, Mrs. Kenton was instantly convinced. "Why, of course," she said, "it can't possibly mean anything else. Why should it be so very surprising? The time hasn't been very long, but they've been together almost every moment; and he was taken with her from the very beginning--I could see that. Put on your other coat," she said, as she dusted the collar of the coat the judge was wearing. "He'll be looking you up, at once. I can't say that it's unexpected," and she claimed a prescience in the matter which all her words had hitherto denied.

Kenton did not notice her inconsistency. "If it were not so exactly what I wished," he said, "I don't know that I should be surprised at it myself. Sarah, if I had been trying to imagine any one for Ellen, I couldn't have dreamed of a person better suited to her than this young man. He's everything that I could wish him to be. I've seen the pleasure and comfort she took in his way from the first moment. He seemed to make her forget--Do you suppose she has forgotten that miserable wretch Do you think--"

"If she hadn't, could she be letting him come to speak to you? I don't believe she ever really cared for Bittridge--or not after he began flirting with Mrs. Uphill." She had no shrinking from the names which Kenton avoided with disgust. "The only question for you is to consider what you shall say to Mr. Breckon."

"Say to him? Why, of course, if Ellen has made up her mind, there's only one thing I can say."

"Indeed there is! He ought to know all about that disgusting Bittridge business, and you have got to tell him."

"Sarah, I couldn't. It is too humiliating. How would it do to refer him to--You could manage that part so much better. I don't see how I could keep it from seeming an indelicate betrayal of the poor child--"

"Perhaps she's told him herself," Mrs. Kenton provisionally suggested.

The judge eagerly caught at the notion. "Do you think so? It would be like her! Ellen would wish him to know everything."

He stopped, and his wife could see that he was trembling with excitement. "We must find out. I will speak to Ellen--"

"And--you don't think I'd better have the talk with him first?"

"Certainly not!"

"Why, Rufus! You were not going to look him up?"

"No," he hesitated; but she could see that some such thing had been on his mind.

"Surely," she said, "you must be crazy!" But she had not the heart to blight his joy with sarcasm, and perhaps no sarcasm would have blighted it.