Stories by American Authors Volume VII Part 9

"You're long in coming to show it," she complained. "You've been very unkind."

"I used to come quick enough and often enough," he rejoined in the subdued tone.

"Yes, and then you stayed away of a sudden, and when I asked you the reason, you laughed at me and deserted me altogether, when you knew I looked to you for advice and a.s.sistance, and had most need of them."

Her reproach stung him. The charge of unfaithfulness to a friend was one he took keenly. There was a mingled sternness and entreaty in his voice when he replied:

"Won't you let that go now? This is no time for bandying reproaches. I think I was your faithful friend for a long while. If I failed in my duty to you, I am sure I did not know it. And if I changed, it was because I thought I had been mistaken and had been going for years with my eyes shut. I thought I had been a fool and it was time----but that's of no account now. I am your friend still; let me prove it."

But she persisted in her high, child-like complaint.

"Was it my fault, then, you had not seen me, truly? I never tried to deceive you. I always put confidence in you and talked frankly to you, as I never did to any one else. And you know I've had a hard time. I was never meant for the tiresome, lonely life I've had. I never wanted to be a pattern and model of usefulness and self-forgetfulness, but they would have me so, and I couldn't go out in the streets and tell them I was not. I've had to play the part till I'm tired. I've had to walk demurely, and talk and smile to people I despised, and do all sorts of miserable things. But I never pretended to you. You knew I was not satisfied or happy. I used to tell you all my troubles and ask your advice about everything. And you know you said harsh things to me sometimes. You knew me better than any one else, and I did not think you would ever treat me so. Did you think only of what was due to yourself, and that our long friends.h.i.+p and the reliance you had encouraged me to place in you gave me no claim upon you?"

Her words hurt and agitated him greatly. Was she right? and had he been doubly blind? In this grieved, reproachful, petulant humor, she seemed a different being from the Cora Brainard he had had in his thought these last months; she was the little girl that the big boy, Lawrence Enfield, had protected and drawn on his sled, the maiden he had cherished in his heart for many a day; and he had been purer and braver for the thought of her. Did he owe her nothing for that? He was very sensitive to people's claims upon him. His heart bled and was afraid for her. He could not see her way. He knew she had had a hard time,--harder than people dreamed. They thought her long service and support of her invalid father were made easy by a love of duty and by exceptional ability. Enfield knew that, though she had rare tact and succeeded admirably, all sordid care and labor were extremely repugnant to her. She had said she never had anything she liked; he would have expressed it, that she never liked anything she had. He thought that a very melancholy case. That she liked the society of spirited young men, he had learned to his sorrow more than once or twice; or, at least, that they were very apt to like her; but they were all sent (or went) about their business one after another.

Enfield had a friend named Loramer, who had been one of the spirited fellows at one time, and the episode had been a severe strain upon their friends.h.i.+p. It was a summer vacation of Loramer's, when he made Miss Brainard's acquaintance, and he had found her bright, piquant face, and light, laughing chatter very appetizing. He met her upon riding and sailing parties, sat and walked and drove with her. Enfield avoided them both awhile, then spoke offensively to Loramer, and got scornful laughter in reply. They did not meet again for some time.

One evening Loramer brought Cora home from a drive. He lifted her out, and they stood talking there together under the trees. He made an appointment to go rowing with her the next day, and they parted, with some show of reluctance on his part, and low laughter on hers.

He scratched a match and lighted a cigar, as he drove down the street.

As he pa.s.sed through the town, he saw some one going before him on the foot-path. He let his horse walk, and watched the man till he turned a corner. He turned the horse after him, overtook him, and stopped opposite and said:

"Enfield, come and ride."

He stood by a tree a minute or two, looking, then came and got in.

They rode along, each in his corner.

"Have a cigar?" said Loramer.

"No," answered Enfield.

Loramer took his own from his mouth and flung it away. He struck the horse with the whip, Enfield put his hand on the reins, and said, steadily:

"Don't do that, the mare's willing enough; she's tired."

Loramer pulled her up, and let her walk a mile or more, up among the hills; then he turned her and rattled back toward the village, and stopped before his own lodging. He asked Enfield to hold the horse and went in. In a little while he came out and put a valise in the wagon.

"What time does the night train pa.s.s?"

"12.05."

He drove to the station, gave Enfield the reins, and put the valise on the platform, then stood on the step of the wagon.

"Drive the horse to Mitchel's for me and tell him to send me his bill."

He lingered a moment, then offered his hand.

"Good-night, Lawrence!"

"Good-night!" and they held each other's hands firmly but gravely.

"Will you take a cigar now, Lawrence?"

"Yes!"

Loramer thrust his cigar-case into his hand, wheeled round and marched into the waiting-room, holding the valise with a strong grasp, and putting his head a little on one side.

That affair was a part of the long, slow process of Enfield's alienation from Cora, but only one of many steps. He was tenacious and slow to change, and she held him by cords of memory and dependence as well as affection. But by degrees he came to see clearly that he had been wilfully blind, that he had always known but would not regard that she was not at all the girl he had enshrined. The end was but a trifle--the proverbial last straw. And though he laughed when she took him to task and felt a barbarous enjoyment in their reversed relations, and in her show of something like consternation, he more than once afterward felt the yearning of the converted heathen toward his broken G.o.ds.

Loramer and Enfield spent a week together on Cape Cod the same summer and took refuge from a storm in one of the huts provided for s.h.i.+p-wrecked people. Listening to the deafening roar of the wind and the surf, they spoke of Cora Brainard. Loramer congratulated Lawrence upon his freedom. And he went on:

"I don't know what there is in the little minx. All the old ladies in Elmtree think her a kind of saint, but she didn't strike me in that light. She came near making a ---- fool of me, but I can't remember anything she said, only how she laughed and her eyes sparkled."

"I can't laugh at her," Enfield answered. "She hasn't made herself and she hasn't had a good time. She doesn't know anything and doesn't care for anything. She has a wonderful tact, an eye for color, and an instinct for the current fas.h.i.+on in what goes for literature and art.

But she has no appreciation of anything permanent and no lasting enjoyment of anything. I think that is terrible. I can't think of anything much more pitiable."

Enfield lounged against the wall; Loramer watched him awhile, listening to the storm booming without, as he lay stretched on the straw. Then he went on:

"Do you think she's a good girl, Lawrence? It wouldn't be quite safe for her to run on with some fellows as she did with me."

He caught Enfield's eye.

"No, it wasn't quite safe for her to run on so with me. She's either very innocent, or very artful, or very reckless, I don't know which.

If she is good, she's very, very good."

He laughed, but Lawrence smoked soberly and silent.

"Young Harlow, the ensign, was her last capture, wasn't he?"

Enfield nodded, gravely.

"They say he was over his head, and would have given up the navy and flouted his people and everything, if she would have taken him, but she wouldn't let him sacrifice himself. That was a strange affair of theirs--being lost on a sleigh-ride and snowed up two days across the mountain. I never could understand it; both of them knew the country, and none of the rest of the party found much trouble."

"I don't know," Enfield answered, slowly. "I wasn't taking as much interest in her movements just then as I had been. I cut adrift about the time she took Harlow in tow; I suppose she thought I was jealous, and perhaps I was. I don't know how they managed it, but he left very suddenly, and she was sick about that time."

All these things, and many more, surged through Enfield's mind now, as he stood before her and was swayed by her unrestrained upbraiding. She said that he had stood in her way, that she had put her trust in him and given him such a near place that others had been kept from her. He found that hard to swallow. He turned from her and threw himself into an arm-chair, with his face away from her, and chewed the bitter accusation.

Finally she came slowly and stood beside him a minute or two, then said sadly, laying her hand on his arm:

"Forgive me, Lawrence, if I have said too much; I am in trouble; you will help me, will you not?"

"Yes, I will do anything I can for you," he answered. "Have you made any plans?"

She shook her head slowly.

"No; I don't know what I am to do. I can't live alone, and there's no one here I can live with. They don't know me and yet think they do, and they expect me to be always playing the character they have invented for me. I'm tired to death, and I want you to tell me what to do."