Chapter 8

“I fancied it made a difference for me when I was in college, and that the yardstick came between me and society. I was an ass for thinking anything about it. Though I didn’t really care, much. I never liked society, and I did like boats and horses. I thought of a profession, once. But it wouldn’t work. I’ve been round the world twice, and I’ve done nothing but enjoy myself since I left college,—or try to. When I first saw you I was hesitating about letting my father make me of use. He wants me to become one of the most respectable members of society, he wants me to be a cotton-spinner. You know there’s nothing so irreproachable as cotton, for a business?”

“No. I don’t know about those things.”

“Well, there isn’t. When I was abroad, buying and selling, I made a little discovery: I found that there were goods we could make and sell in the European market cheaper than the English, and that gave my father the notion of buying a mill to make them. I’m boring you!”

“No.”

“Well, he bought it; and he wants me to take charge of it.”

“And shall you?”

“Do you think I’m fit for it?”

“I? How should I know?”

“You don’t know cotton; but you know me a little. Do I strike you as fit for anything?” She made no reply to this, and he laughed. “I assure you I felt small enough when I heard what you had done, and thought—what I had done. It gave me a start; and I wrote my father that night that I would go in for it.”

“I once thought of going to a factory town,” she answered, without wilful evasion, “to begin my practice there among the operatives’ children. I should have done it if it had not been for coming here with Mrs. Maynard. It would have been better.”

“Come to my factory town, Miss Breen! There ought to be fevers there in the autumn, with all the low lands that I’m allowed to flood Mrs. Maynard told me about your plan.”

“Pray, what else did Mrs. Maynard tell you about me?”

“About your taking up a profession, in the way you did, when you needn’t, and when you didn’t particularly like it.”

“Oh!” she said. Then she added, “And because I wasn’t obliged to it, and didn’t like it, you tolerated me?”

“Tolerated?” he echoed.

This vexed her. “Yes, tolerate! Everybody, interested or not, has to make up his mind whether to tolerate me as soon as he hears what I am. What excuse did you make for me?”

“I didn’t make any,” said Libby.

“But you had your misgiving, your surprise.”

“I thought if you could stand it, other people might. I thought it was your affair.”

“Just as if I had been a young man?”

“No! That wasn’t possible.”

She was silent. Then, “The conversation has got back into the old quarter,” she said. “You are talking about me again. Have you heard from your friends since they went away?”

“What friends?”

“Those you were camping with.”

“No.”

“What did _they_ say when they heard that you had found a young doctress at Jocelyn’s? How did you break the fact to them? What jokes did they make? You needn’t be afraid to tell me!” she cried. “Give me Mr. Johnson’s comments.”

He looked at her in surprise that incensed her still more, and rendered her incapable of regarding the pain with which he answered her. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I have done something to offend you.”

“Oh no! What could you have done?”

“Then you really mean to ask me whether I would let any one make a joke of you in my presence?”

“Yes; why not?”

“Because it was impossible,” he answered.

“Why was it impossible?” she pursued.

“Because—I love you.”

She had been looking him defiantly in the eyes, and she could not withdraw her gaze. For the endless moment that ensued, her breath was taken away. Then she asked in a low, steady voice, “Did you mean to say that?”

“No.”

“I believe you, and I forgive you. No, no!” she cried, at a demonstration of protest from him, “don’t speak again!”

He obeyed, instantly, implicitly. With the tiller in his hand he looked past her and guided the boat’s course. It became intolerable.

“Have I ever done anything that gave you the right to—to—say that?” she asked, without the self-command which she might have wished to show.

“No,” he said, “you were only the most beautiful”—

“I am not beautiful! And if I were”—

“It wasn’t to be helped! I saw from the first how good and noble you were, and”—

“This is absurd!” she exclaimed. “I am neither good nor noble; and if I were”—

“It wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever you are, you are the one woman in the world to me; and you always will be.”

“Mr. Libby!”

“Oh, I must speak now! You were always thinking, because you had studied a man’s profession, that no one would think of you as a woman, as if that could make any difference to a man that had the soul of a man in him!”

“No, no!” she protested. “I didn’t think that. I always expected to be considered as a woman.”

“But not as a woman to fall in love with. I understood. And that somehow made you all the dearer to me. If you had been a girl like other girls, I shouldn’t have cared for you.”

“Oh!”

“I didn’t mean to speak to you to-day. But sometime I did mean to speak; because, whatever I was, I loved you; and I thought you didn’t dislike me.”

“I did like you,” she murmured, “very much. And I respected you. But you can’t say that I ever gave you any hope in this—this—way.” She almost asked him if she had.

“No,—not purposely. And if you did, it’s over now. You have rejected me. I understand that. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. And I can hold my tongue.” He did not turn, but looked steadily past her at the boat’s head.

An emotion stirred in her breast which took the form of a reproach. “Was it fair, then, to say this when neither of us could escape afterwards?”

“I didn’t mean to speak,” he said, without looking up, “and I never meant to place you where you couldn’t escape.”

It was true that she had proposed to go with him in the boat, and that she had chosen to come back with him, when he had offered to have her driven home from Leyden. “No, you are not to blame,” she said, at last. “I asked to some with you. Shall I tell you why?” Her voice began to break. In her pity for him and her shame for herself the tears started to her eyes. She did not press her question, but, “Thank you for reminding me that I invited myself to go with you,” she said, with feeble bitterness.

He looked up at her in silent wonder, and she broke into a sob. He said gently, “I don’t suppose you expect me to deny that. You don’t think me such a poor dog as that.”

“Why, of course not,” she answered, with quivering lips, while she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

“I was only too glad to have you come. I always meant to tell you—what I have told; but not when I should seem to trap you into listening.”

“No,” she murmured, “I can believe that of you. I do believe it. I take back what I said. Don’t let us speak of it any more now,” she continued, struggling for her lost composure, with what success appeared in the fresh outburst with which she recognized his forbearance to hint at any painfulness to himself in the situation.

“I don’t mind it so much on my account, but oh! how _could_ you for your own sake? _Do_ let us get home as fast as we can!”

“I am doing everything I can to release you,” he said. “If you will sit here,” he added, indicating the place beside him in the stern, “you won’t have to change so much when I want to tack.”

She took the other seat, and for the first time she noticed that the wind had grown very light. She watched him with a piteous impatience while he shifted the sail from side to side, keeping the sheet in his hand for convenience in the frequent changes. He scanned the sky, and turned every current of the ebbing tide to account. It was useless; the boat crept, and presently it scarcely moved.

“The wind is down,” he said, making the sheet fast, and relaxing his hold on the tiller.

“And—And the tide is going out!” she exclaimed.

“The tide is going out,” he admitted.

“If we should get caught on these flats,” she began, with rising indignation.

“We should have to stay till the tide turned.”

She looked wildly about for aid. If there were a row-boat anywhere within hail, she could be taken to Jocelyn’s in that. But they were quite alone on those lifeless waters.

Libby got out a pair of heavy oars from the bottom of the boat, and, setting the rowlocks on either side, tugged silently at them.

The futile effort suggested an idea to her which doubtless she would not have expressed if she had not been lacking, as she once said, in a sense of humor.

“Why don’t you whistle for a wind?”

He stared at her in sad astonishment to make sure that she was in earnest, and then, “Whistle!” he echoed forlornly, and broke into a joyless laugh.

“You knew the chances of delay that I took in asking to come with you,” she cried, “and you should have warned me. It was ungenerous—it was ungentlemanly!”

“It was whatever you like. I must be to blame. I suppose I was too glad to have you come. If I thought anything, I thought you must have some particular errand at Leyden. You seemed anxious to go, even if it stormed.”

“If it had stormed,” she retorted, “I should not have cared! I _hoped_ it would storm. Then at least I should have run the same danger,—I hoped it would be dangerous.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said.

“I forced that wretched creature to go with you that day when you said it was going to be rough; and I shall have her blood upon my hands if she dies.”

“Is it possible,” cried Libby, pulling in his useless oars, and leaning forward upon them, “that she has gone on letting you think I believed there was going to be a storm? She knew perfectly well that I didn’t mind what Adams said; he was always croaking.” She sat looking at him in a daze, but she could not speak, and he continued. “I see: it happened by one chance in a million to turn out as he said; and she has been making you pay for it. Why, I suppose,” he added, with a melancholy smile of intelligence, “she’s had so much satisfaction in holding you responsible for what’s happened, that she’s almost glad of it!”

“She has tortured me!” cried the girl. “But you—you, when you saw that I didn’t believe there was going to be any storm, why did you—why didn’t—you”—

“I didn’t believe it either! It was Mrs. Maynard that proposed the sail, but when I saw that you didn’t like it I was glad of any excuse for putting it off. I couldn’t help wanting to please you, and I couldn’t see why you urged us afterwards; but I supposed you had some reason.”

She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to clear away the confusion in which all this involved her. “But why—why did _you_ let me go on thinking myself to blame”—

“How could I know what you were thinking? Heaven knows I didn’t dream of such a thing! Though I remember, now, your saying”—

“Oh, I see!” she cried. “You are a _man!_ But I can’t forgive it,—no, I can’t forgive it! You wished to deceive her if you didn’t wish to deceive me. How can you excuse yourself for repeating what you didn’t believe?”

“I was willing she should think Adams was right.”

“And that was deceit. What can you say to it?”

“There is only one thing I could say,” he murmured, looking hopelessly into her eyes, “and that’s of no use.”

She turned her head away. Her tragedy had fallen to nothing; or rather it had never been. All her remorse, all her suffering, was mere farce now; but his guilt in the matter was the greater. A fierce resentment burned in her heart; she longed to make him feel something of the anguish she had needlessly undergone.

He sat watching her averted face. “Miss Breen,” he said huskily, “will you let me speak to you?”

“Oh, you have me in your power,” she answered cruelly. “Say what you like.”

He did not speak, nor make any motion to do so.

A foolish, idle curiosity to know what, after all that had happened, he could possibly have to say, stirred within her, but she disdainfully stifled it. They were both so still that a company of seals found it safe to put their heads above water, and approach near enough to examine her with their round soft eyes. She turned from the silly things in contempt that they should even have interested her. She felt that from time to time her companion lifted an anxious glance to the dull heavens. At last the limp sail faintly stirred; it flapped; it filled shallowly; the boat moved. The sail seemed to have had a prescience of the wind before it passed over the smooth water like a shadow.

When a woman says she never will forgive a man, she always has a condition of forgiveness in her heart. Now that the wind had risen again, “I have no right to forbid you to speak,” she said, as if no silence had elapsed, and she turned round and quietly confronted him; she no longer felt so impatient to escape.

He did not meet her eye at once, and he seemed in no haste to avail himself of the leave granted him. A heavy sadness blotted the gayety of a face whose sunny sympathy had been her only cheer for many days. She fancied a bewilderment in its hopelessness which smote her with still sharper pathos. “Of course,” she said, “I appreciate your wish to do what I wanted, about Mrs. Maynard. I remember my telling you that she oughtn’t to go out, that day. But that was not the way to do it”—

“There was no other,” he said.

“No,” she assented, upon reflection. “Then it oughtn’t to have been done.”

He showed no sign of intending to continue, and after a moment of restlessness, she began again.

“If I have been rude or hasty in refusing to hear you, Mr. Libby, I am very wrong. I must hear anything you have to say.”

“Oh, not unless you wish.”

“I wish whatever you wish.”

“I’m not sure that I wish that now. I have thought it over; I should only distress you for nothing. You are letting me say why sentence shouldn’t be passed upon me. Sentence is going to be passed any way. I should only repeat what I have said. You would pity me, but you couldn’t help me. And that would give you pain for nothing. No, it would be useless.”

“It _would_ be useless to talk to me about—loving.” She took the word on her lips with a certain effect of adopting it for convenience’ sake in her vocabulary. “All that was ended for me long ago,—ten years ago. And my whole life since then has been shaped to do without it. I will tell you my story if you like. Perhaps it’s your due. I wish to be just. You may have a right to know.”

“No, I haven’t. But—perhaps I ought to say that Mrs. Maynard told me something.”

“Well, I am glad of that, though she had no right to do it. Then you can understand.”

“Oh, yes, I can understand. I don’t pretend that I had any _reason_ in it.”

He forbore again to urge any plea for himself, and once more she was obliged to interfere in his behalf. “Mr. Libby, I have never confessed that I once wronged you in a way that I’m very sorry for.”

“About Mrs. Maynard? Yes, I know. I won’t try to whitewash myself; but it didn’t occur to me how it would look. I wanted to talk with her about you.”

“You ought to have considered her, though,” she said gently.

“She ought to have considered herself,” he retorted, with his unfailing bitterness for Mrs. Maynard. “But it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. I’m sufficiently punished; for I know that it injured me with you.”

“It did at first. But now I can see that I was wrong. I wished to tell you that. It isn’t creditable to me that I thought you intended to flirt with her. If I had been better myself”—

“You!” He could not say more.

That utter faith in her was very charming. It softened her more and more; it made her wish to reason with him, and try gently to show him how impossible his hope was. “And you know,” she said, recurring to something that had gone before, “that even if I had cared for you in the way you wish, it couldn’t be. You wouldn’t want to have people laughing and saying I had been a doctress.”

“I shouldn’t have minded. I know how much people’s talk is worth.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know you would be generous and brave about that—about anything. But what—what if I couldn’t give up my career—my hopes of being useful in the way I have planned? You wouldn’t have liked me to go on practising medicine?”

“I thought of that,” he answered simply. “I didn’t see how it could be done. But if you saw any way, I was willing—No, that was my great trouble! I knew that it was selfish in me, and very conceited, to suppose you would give up your whole life for me; and whenever I thought of that, I determined not to ask you. But I tried not to think of that.”

“Well, don’t you see? But if I could have answered you as you wish, it wouldn’t have been anything to give up everything for you. A woman isn’t something else first, and a woman afterwards. I understand how unselfishly you meant, and indeed, indeed, I thank you. But don’t let’s talk of it any more. It couldn’t have been, and there is nothing but misery in thinking of it. Come,” she said, with a struggle for cheerfulness, “let us forget it. Let it be just as if you hadn’t spoken to me; I know you didn’t intend to do it; and let us go on as if nothing had happened.”

“Oh, we can’t go on,” he answered. “I shall get away, as soon as Maynard comes, and rid you of the sight of me.”

“Are you going away?” she softly asked. “Why need you? I know that people always seem to think they can’t be friends after—such a thing as this. But why shouldn’t we? I respect you, and I like you very much. You have shown me more regard and more kindness than any other friend”—

“But I wasn’t your friend,” he interrupted. “I loved you.”

“Well,” she sighed, in gentle perplexity, “then you can’t be my friend?”

“Never. But I shall always love you. If it would do any good, I would stay, as you ask it. I shouldn’t mind myself. But I should be a nuisance to you.”

“No, no!” she exclaimed. “I will take the risk of that. I need your advice, your—sympathy, your—You won’t trouble me, indeed you won’t. Perhaps you have mistaken your—feeling about me. It’s such a very little time since we met,” she pleaded.

“That makes no difference,—the time. And I’m not mistaken.”

“Well, stay at least till Mrs. Maynard is well, and we can all go away together. Promise me that!” She instinctively put out her hand toward him in entreaty. He took it, and pressing it to his lips covered it with kisses.

“Oh!” she grieved in reproachful surprise.

“There!” he cried. “You see that I must go!”

“Yes,” she sighed in assent, “you must go.”

They did not look at each other again, but remained in a lamentable silence while the boat pushed swiftly before the freshening breeze; and when they reached the place where the dory lay, he dropped the sail and threw out the anchor without a word.

He was haggard to the glance she stole at him, when they had taken their places in the dory, and he confronted her, pulling hard at the oars. He did not lift his eyes to hers, but from time to time he looked over his shoulder at the boat’s prow, and he rowed from one point to another for a good landing. A dreamy pity for him filled her; through the memories of her own suffering, she divined the soreness of his heart.

She started from her reverie as the bottom of the dory struck the sand. The shoal water stretched twenty feet beyond. He pulled in the oars and rose desperately. “It’s of no use: I shall have to carry you ashore.”

She sat staring up into his face, and longing to ask him something, to accuse him of having done this purposely. But she had erred in so many doubts, her suspicions of him had all recoiled so pitilessly upon her, that she had no longer the courage to question or reproach him. “Oh, no, thank you,” she said weakly. “I won’t trouble you. I—I will wait till the tide is out.”

“The tide’s out now,” he answered with coldness, “and you can’t wade.”

She rose desperately. “Why, of course!” she cried in self-contempt, glancing at the water, into which he promptly stepped to his boot-tops. “A woman mustn’t get her feet wet.”

VIII.

Grace went to her own room to lay aside her shawl and hat, before going to Mrs. Maynard, and found her mother sewing there.

“Why, who is with Mrs. Maynard?” she asked.

“Miss Gleason is reading to her,” said Mrs. Breen. “If she had any sort of active treatment, she could get well at once. I couldn’t take the responsibility of doing anything for her, and it was such a worry to stay and see everything going wrong, that when Miss Gleason came in I was glad to get away. Miss Gleason seems to believe in your Dr. Mulbridge.”

“_My_ Dr. Mulbridge!” echoed Grace.

“She talked of him as if he were yours. I don’t know what you’ve been saying to her about him; but you had better be careful. The woman is a fool.” She now looked up at her daughter for the first time. “Why, what is the matter with you what kept you so long? You look perfectly wild.”

“I feel wild,” said Grace calmly. “The wind went down.”

“Was that all? I don’t see why that should make you feel wild,” said her mother, dropping her spectacles to her sewing again.

“It wasn’t all,” answered the girl, sinking provisionally upon the side of a chair, with her shawl still on her arm, and her hat in her hand. “Mother, have you noticed anything peculiar about Mr. Libby?”

“He’s the only person who seems to be of the slightest use about here; I’ve noticed _that_,” said Mrs. Breen. “He’s always going and coming for you and Mrs. Maynard. Where is that worthless husband of hers? Hasn’t he had time to come from Cheyenne yet?”

“He’s on the way. He was out at his ranch when Mr. Libby telegraphed first, and had to be sent for. We found a despatch from him at Leyden, saying he had started,” Grace explained.

“What business had he to be so far away at all?” demanded her mother. It was plain that Mrs. Breen was in her most censorious temper, which had probably acquired a sharper edge towards Maynard from her reconciliation with his wife.

Grace seized her chance to meet the worst. “Do you think that I have done anything to encourage Mr. Libby?” she asked, looking bravely at her mother.

“Encourage him to do what?” asked Mrs. Breen, without lifting her eyes from her work.

“Encouraged him to—think I cared for him; to—to be in love with me.”

Mrs. Breen lifted her head now, and pushed her spectacles up on her forehead, while she regarded her daughter in silence. “Has he been making love to you?”

“Yes.”

Her mother pushed her spectacles down again; and, turning the seam which she had been sewing, flattened it with her thumb-nail. She made this action expressive of having foreseen such a result, and of having struggled against it, neglected and alone. “Very well, then. I hope you accepted him?” she asked quietly.

“Mother!”

“Why not? You must like him,” she continued in the same tone. “You have been with him every moment the last week that you haven’t been with Mrs. Maynard. At least _I’ve_ seen nothing of you, except when you came to tell me you were going to walk or to drive with him. You seem to have asked him to take you most of the time.”

“How can you say such a thing, mother?” cried the girl.

“Didn’t you ask him to let you go with him this afternoon? You told me you did.”

“Yes, I did. I did it for a purpose.”

“Ah! for a purpose,” said Mrs. Breen, taking a survey of the new seam, which she pulled from her knee, where one end of it was pinned, towards her chin. She left the word to her daughter, who was obliged to take it.

“I asked him to let me go with him because Louise had tortured me about making her go out in his boat, till I couldn’t bear it any longer. It seemed to me that if I took the same risk myself, it would be something; and I hoped there would be a storm.”