The Miller Of Old Church Part 7

A less daring adventurer than Molly would have hesitated at his tone and grown cautious, but a certain blithe indifference to the consequences of her actions was a part of her lawless inheritance from the Gays.

"I think him very good-looking, don't you?" she inquired sweetly.

"Good-looking? I should think not--a fat fop like that."

"Is he fat? I didn't notice it--but, of course, I didn't mean that he was good-looking in your way, Abel."

The small flowerlike shadows trembled across her face, and beneath her feet the waves churned a creamy foam that danced under her like light.

His eyes warmed to her, yet he held back, gripped by a pa.s.sion of jealousy. For the first time he felt that he was brought face to face with a rival who might prove to have the advantage.

"I am coming over!" called Molly suddenly, and a minute later she stood in the square suns.h.i.+ne that entered the mill door.

Had he preserved then his manner of distant courtesy, it is probable that she would have melted, for it was not in her temperament to draw back while her prey showed an inclination for flight. But it was his nature to warm too readily and to cool too late, a habit of const.i.tution which causes, usually, a tragedy in matters of s.e.x.

"You oughtn't to treat me so, Molly!" he exclaimed reproachfully, and made a step toward her.

"I couldn't help forgetting, could I? It was your place to remind me."

Thrust, to his surprise, upon the defensive he reached for her hand, which was withdrawn after it had lain an instant in his.

"Well, it was my fault, then," he said with a generosity that did him small service. "The next time I'll remind you every minute."

She smiled radiantly as he looked at her, and he felt that her indiscretions, her lack of constancy, her unkindness even, were but the sportive and innocent freaks of a child. In his rustic sincerity he was forever at the point of condemning her and forever relenting before the appealing sweetness of her look. He told himself twenty times a day that she flirted outrageously with him, though he still refused to admit that in her heart she was to blame for her flirting. A broad and charitable distinction divided always the thing that she was from the thing that she did. It was as if his love discerned in her a quality of soul of which she was still unconscious.

"Molly," he burst out almost fiercely, "will you marry me?"

The smile was still in her eyes, but a slight frown contracted her forehead.

"I've told you a hundred times that I shall never marry anybody," she answered, "but that if I ever did---"

"Then you'd marry me."

"Well, if I were obliged to marry _somebody_, I'd rather marry you than anybody else."

"So you do like me a little?"

"Yes, I suppose I like you a little--but all men are the same--mother used always to tell me so."

Poor distraught Janet Merryweather! There were times when he was seized with a fierce impatience of her, for it seemed to him that her ghost stood, like the angel with the drawn sword, before the closed gates of his paradise. He remembered her as a pa.s.sionate frail creature, with accusing eyes that had never lost the expression with which they had met and pa.s.sed through some hour of despair and disillusionment.

"But how could she judge, Molly? How could she judge?" he pleaded "She was ill, she wasn't herself, you must know it. All men are not alike.

Didn't I fight her battles more than once, when you were a child?"

"I know, I know," she answered gratefully, "and I love you for it.

That's why I don't mind telling you what I've never told a single one of the others. I haven't any heart, Abel, that's the truth. It's all play to me, and I like the game sometimes and sometimes I hate it. Yet, whether I like it or hate it, I always go on because I can't help it.

Your mother once said I had a devil that drives me on and perhaps she was right--it may be that devil that drives me on and won't let me stop even when I'm tired, and it all bores me. The rector thinks that I'll marry him and turn pious and take to Dorcas societies, and Jim Halloween thinks I'll marry him and grow thrifty and take to turkey raising--and you believe in the bottom of your heart that in the end I'll fall into your arms and find happiness with your mother. But you're wrong--all--all--and I shan't do any of the things you expect of me. I am going to stay here as long as grandfather lives, so I can take care of him, and then I'll run off somewhere to the city and trim hats for a living. When I was at school in Applegate I trimmed hats for all of the pupils."

"Oh, Molly, Molly, I'll not give you up! Some day you'll see things differently."

"Never--never. Now, I've warned you and it isn't my fault if you keep on after this."

"But you do like me a little, haven't you said so?"

Her frown deepened.

"Yes, I do like you--a little."

"Then I'll keep on hoping, anyhow."

Her smile came back, but this time it had grown mocking.

"No, you mustn't hope," she answered, "at least," she corrected provokingly, "you mustn't hope--too hard."

"I'll hope as hard as the devil, darling--and, Molly, if you marry me, you know, you won't have to live with my mother."

"I like that, even though I'm not going to marry you."

"Come here," he drew her toward the door, "and I'll show you where our house will stand. Do you see that green rise of ground over the meadow?"

"Yes, I see it," her tone was gentler.

"I've chosen that site for a home," he went on, "and I'm saving a good strip of pine--you can see it over there against the horizon. I've half a mind to take down my axe and cut down the biggest of the trees this afternoon!"

If his ardour touched her there was no sign of it in the movement with which she withdrew herself from his grasp.

"You'd better finish your grinding. There isn't the least bit of a hurry," she returned with a smile.

"If you'll go with me, Molly, you may take your choice and I'll cut the tree down for you."

"But I can't, Abel, because I've promised Mr. Mullen to visit his mother."

The glow faded from his eyes and a look like that of an animal under the lash took its place.

"Come with me, not with him, Molly, you owe me that much," he entreated.

"But he's such a good man, and he preaches such beautiful sermons."

"He does--I know he does, but I love you a thousand times better."

"Oh, he loves me because I am pretty and hard to win--just as you do,"

she retorted. "If I lost my hair or my teeth how many of you, do you think, would care for me to-morrow?"

"I should--before G.o.d I'd love you just as I do now," he answered with pa.s.sion.

A half mocking, half tender sound broke from her lips.

"Then why don't you--every one of you, fall head over ears in love with Judy Hatch?" she inquired.

"I don't because I loved you first, and I can't change, however badly you treat me. I'm sometimes tempted to think, Molly, that mother is right, and you are possessed of a devil."