A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties Part 21

Mrs. Bays, taking the package from Rita's hand, opened it; and there, nestling in a bed of blue velvet, was a tiny watch, rich with jewels, and far more beautiful than the one Dic had brought from New York.

Encircling the watch were many folds of a ma.s.sive gold chain. Mrs. Bays held the watch up to the light of the firelight, and Dic, with an aching sensation in the region of his heart, saw its richness at a glance. He knew at once that the giver must be a man of wealth; and when Mrs. Bays delightedly threw the gold chain over Rita's head, and placed the watch in her unresisting hand, he remarked that he must be going. Poor, terrified Rita did not hear Dic's words. Receiving no reply, he took his hat from the floor where he had dropped it on entering the room several centuries before, opened the door, and walked out.

All that I have narrated as taking place after Williams entered upon the scene occurred within the s.p.a.ce of two or three minutes, and Rita first learned that Dic was going when she heard the door close.

"Dic!" she cried, and started to follow him, but her mother caught her wrist and said sternly:--

"Stay here, Rita. Don't go to the door."

"But, mother--"

"Stay here, I command you," and Rita did not go to the door. Dic met Mr.

Bays at the gate, paused for a word of greeting, and plunged into the snow-covered forest, while the words "during the last four months" rang in his ears with a din that was almost maddening.

"She might have told me," he muttered, speaking as if to the storm.

"While I have been thinking of her every moment, she has been listening to him. But her letters were full of love. She surely loved me when I met her two hours ago. No woman could feign love so perfectly. She must love me. I can't believe otherwise. I will see her again to-night and she will explain all, I am sure. There is no deceit in her." His returning confidence eased, though it did not cure, his pain. It subst.i.tuted another after a little time--suspense. It was not in his nature to brook suspense, and he determined again and again to see Rita that evening.

But his suspense was ended without seeing Rita. When he reached home he found Sukey, blushing and dimpling, before the fire, talking to his mother.

"Been over to see Rita?" she asked, parting her moist, red lips in a smile, showing a gleam of her little, white teeth, and dimpling exquisitely.

"Yes," answered Dic, laconically.

"Thought maybe you would stay for supper," she continued.

"No," replied Dic.

"Perhaps the other fellow was there," remarked Sukey, shrugging her plump shoulders and laughing softly. Dic did not reply, but drew a chair to the hearth.

"Guess they're to be married soon," volunteered Sukey. "He has been coming Sat.u.r.days and staying over Sunday ever since you left. Guess he waited for you to get out of the way. I think he's so handsome. Met him one Sunday afternoon at the step-off. I went over to see Rita, and her mother said she had gone to take a walk with Mr. Williams in that direction after dinner. I knew they would be at the step-off; it's such a lonely place. He lives in Boston, and they say he's enormously rich."

During the long pause that followed Dic found himself entirely relieved of suspense. There was certainty to his heart's content. He did not show his pain; and much to her joy Sukey concluded that Dic did not care anything about the relations between Williams and Rita.

"Rita showed me the ring he gave her," continued Sukey. Dic winced, but controlled himself. It was his ring that Sukey had seen on Rita's finger, but Dic did not know that.

"Some folks envy her," observed the dimpler, staring in revery at the fire. "She'll have a fine house, servants, and carriages"--Dic remembered having used those fatal words himself--"and will live in Boston; but for myself--well, I never intend to marry, but if I do I'll take one of the boys around here, or I'll die single. The boys here are plenty good enough for me."

The big, blue eyes, covered by downcast lashes, were carefully examining a pair of plump, little, brown hands resting in her lap, but after a pause she flashed a hurried glance upon Dic, which he did not see.

When a woman cruelly wounds a man as Rita had wounded Dic, the first remedy that suggests itself to the normal masculine mind is another woman, and the remedy is usually effective. There may not be as good fish in the sea as the one he wants, but good fish there are, in great numbers. Balm of Gilead doubtless has curative qualities; but for a sore, jealous, aching, masculine heart I would every time recommend the fish of the sea.

Sukey, upon Mrs. Bright's invitation, remained for supper, and Dic, of course, was compelled to take her home. Upon arrival at the Yates mansion, Sukey invited Dic to enter. Dic declined. She drew off her mittens and took his hand.

"Why," she said, "your hands are like ice; you must come in and warm them. Please do," so Dic hitched his horse under a straw-covered shed and went in with the remedy. One might have travelled far and wide before finding a more pleasant remedy than Sukey; but Dic's ailments were beyond cure, and Sukey's smiles might as well have been wasted upon her brother snowman in the adjacent field.

Soon after Dic's arrival, all the family, save Sukey, adjourned to the kitchen, leaving the girl and her "company" to themselves, after the dangerous manner of the times.

If any member of the family should remain in the room where the young lady of the house was entertaining a friend, the visitor would consider himself _persona non grata_, and would come never again. Of course the Bays family had never retired before Dic; but he had always visited Tom, not Rita.

The most unendurable part of Williams's visits to Rita was the fact that they were made to her, and that she was compelled to sit alone with him through the long evenings, talking as best she could to one man and longing for another. When that state of affairs exists, and the woman happens to be a wife, the time soon comes when she sighs for the pleasures of purgatory; yet we all know some poor woman who meets the wrong man every day and gives him herself and her life because G.o.d, in His inscrutable wisdom, has permitted a terrible mistake. To this bondage would Rita's mother sell her.

Dic did not remain long with the tempting little remedy. While his hand was on the latch she detained him with many questions, and danced about him in pretty impatience.

"Why do you go?" she asked poutingly.

"You said Bob Kaster was coming," replied Dic.

"Oh, well, you stay and I'll send him about his business quickly enough," she returned.

"Would you, Sukey?" asked Dic, laughing.

"Indeed, I will," she responded, "or any one else, if you will stay."

She took his hand again, and, leaning against him, smiled pleadingly into his face. Her smiles were as sweet and enticing as she or any other girl could make. There were no redder lips, no whiter teeth, nor prettier dimples than Sukey's on all Blue River or any other river, and there could be no prettier, more tempting picture than this pouting little nymph who was pleading with our Joseph not to run away. But Dic, not caring to remain, hurriedly closed the door and went out into the comforting storm. After he had gone Sukey went to the ciphering log and sat gazing meditatively into the fire. Vexation and disappointment alternately held possession of her soul; but Dic was more attractive to her because he was unattainable, and she imagined herself greatly injured and deeply in love. She may have imagined the truth; but Sukey, though small in herself, had a large, comprehensive heart wherein several admirers might be accommodated without overtaxing its capacity, and soon she was comforting herself with Bob Kaster.

There was little rest for Dic that night. Had he been able to penetrate darkness and log walls, and could he have seen Rita sobbing with her face buried in her pillow, he might have slept soundly. But darkness and log walls are not to be penetrated by ordinary eyes.

Riding home from Sukey's, Dic thought he had learned to hate Rita. He swore mighty oaths that he would never look upon her face again. But when he had rested a little time in bed he recalled her fair face, her gentleness, her honesty, and her thousand perfections. He remembered the small hand he had held so tenderly a few hours since. Its magnetic touch, soft as the hand of a d.u.c.h.ess, still tingled through his nerves.

With these memories came an anguish that beat down his pride, and, like Rita, he clasped his hands over his head, turned his face to his pillow, and alas! that I should say it of a strong man, wept bitter, scalding tears.

Do the real griefs of life come with age? If Dic should live till his years outnumbered those of Methuselah, no pain could ever come to him worthy of mention compared to this. It awakened him to the quality and quant.i.ty of his love. It seemed that he had loved her ever since she lisped his name and clung to his finger in tottering babyhood. He looked back over the years and failed to see one moment in all the myriads of moments when he did not believe himself first in her heart as she had always been first in his; and now, after he had waited patiently, and after she, out of her own full heart, had confessed her woman's love, after she had given him herself in abject, sweet surrender, and had taken him for her own, the thought of her perfidy was torture to him.

Then came again like a soothing balm the young memory of their last meeting. He recalled and weighed every word, act, and look. Surely, he thought, no woman could feign the love she had shown for him. She had not even tried to show her love. It had been irrepressible. Why should she wish to feign a love she did not feel? There was nothing she could gain by deceit. But upon the heels of this slight hope came that incontestable fact,--Williams. Dic could see her sitting with the stranger as she had sat with himself at the step-off. Williams had been coming for four months. She might be in his arms at that moment--the hour was still early--before the old familiar fireplace, while the family were in the kitchen. He could not endure the picture he had conjured, so he rose from his bed, dressed, stole softly from the house, and walked through the winter storm down the river to Bays's. Feeling like a thief, he crept to the window. The night being cold, the fire had not been banked, but threw its glow out into the room; and Dic's heart leaped for joy when he saw the room was empty. At that same moment Rita was in her own room, not twenty feet away from him, sobbing on her pillow and wishing she were dead.

Dic's discovery of the empty room had no real significance, but it seemed a good omen, and he went home and slept.

Rita did not sleep. She knew the first step had been taken to separate her from Dic. She feared the separation was really effected. She had offended this manly, patient lover so frequently that surely, she thought, he would not forgive her this last and greatest insult. She upbraided herself for having, through stupidity and cowardice, allowed him to leave her. He had belonged to her for years; and the sweet thought that she belonged to him, and that it was her G.o.d-given privilege to give herself to him and to no other, pressed upon her heart, and she cried out in the darkness: "I will not give him up! I will not! If he will forgive me, I will fall upon my knees and beg him to try me once again."

Christmas was a long, wretched day for Dic. What it was to Rita you may easily surmise. Early after supper Dic walked over to see Sukey, and his coming filled that young lady's ardent little soul with delight. His reasons for going would be hard to define. Perhaps his chief motive was the hope of running away from himself, and the possibility of hearing another budget of unwelcome news concerning Rita and Williams. He dreaded to hear it; but he longed to know all there was to be known, and he felt sure Sukey had exhaustive knowledge on the subject, and would be ready to impart it upon invitation.

He had been sitting with Sukey half an hour when Tom Bays walked in.

Thomas, of course, could not remain when he found the field occupied; and much to Dic's regret and Sukey's delight he took his departure, after a visit of ten minutes. Dic urged him to remain, saying that he was going soon, and Sukey added, "Yes, won't you stay?" But she was far from enthusiastic, and Thomas went home with disappointment in his heart and profanity on his lips.

When Tom entered the room where Rita was doing her best to entertain Williams, she said, "I thought you were going to see Sukey?"

"Dic's there," answered Tom, and Rita's white face grew whiter.

Tom started toward the back door on his way to the kitchen, where his father and mother were sitting, and Rita said, pleadingly:--

"Don't go, Tom; stay here with us. Please do." She forgot Williams and continued: "Please, brother. I don't ask much of you. This is a little thing to do for me. Please stay here," but brother laughed and went to the kitchen without so much as answering her.

When the door closed on Tom, Rita stood for a moment in front of the fireplace, and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep.

Williams approached her, overflowing with consolation, and placed his hand caressingly upon her arm. She sprang from him as if she had been stung, and cried out:--

"Don't put your hand on me! Don't touch me!" She stepped backward toward the door leading upstairs to her room.

"Why, Rita," said Williams, "I did not intend anything wrong. I would not offend you for all the world. You are nervous, Rita, and--and--"

"Don't call me Rita," she interrupted, sobbing. "I hate--I hate--" she was going to say "I hate you," but said,--"the name."

He still approached her, though she had been retreating backward step by step. He had no thought of touching her; but as he came toward her, she lost self-control and almost screamed:--