Bart Ridgeley Part 4

"Because the American girl is a woman; and, besides, the court must hear and decide, and not ask absurd questions."

"And who is to see you in French millinery, here in the woods?"

"Oh, bless its foolish man's heart, that thinks a woman dresses to please its taste, when it hasn't any! We dress to please ourselves and plague each other--don't you know that? and we ain't pleased with poky home-made things."

"Julia! Mother," appealed the Judge, with uplifted hands, to Mrs.

Markham, "where did this young lady get her notions?"

"From the common source of woman's notions, as you call them, I presume--her feelings and fancies; and she is merely letting you see the workings of a woman's mind. We should all betray our s.e.x a hundred times a day, if our blessed husbands and fathers had the power to understand us, I fear."

"And don't we understand you?"

"Of course you do, as well as you ever will. My dear husband, don't you also understand that if you fully comprehended us, or we you, we should lose interest in each other? that now we may be a perpetual revelation and study to each other, and so never become worn and common?"

"There, Papa Judge, are you satisfied--not with our arguments, but with us?"

"The man who was not would be unreasonable and--"

"Man-like," put in Julia. "Let me sing you my new song."

A piano was a novelty in Northern Ohio. Julia played with a real skill and expression, and her father, though no musician, loved to listen, and more to hear her sing, with her clear, strong, sweet voice, and so she played and sang her song.

When she had finished, "By the way," remarked her father, "I understand that our travelled young townsman, who has just returned from foreign parts, was at the post-office this afternoon, and perhaps you met him."

"Whom do you mean?" asked Julia.

"Your mother's pet, Bart Ridgeley."

"Now, papa, that is hardly kind, after what you said of him the other day. He is not mother's pet at all. She is only kind to him, as to everybody. Indeed, he don't seem to me like anybody's pet, to be patted and kept in-doors when it rains, and eat jellies, and be nice.

I saw him at the store a moment; he was very civil, and merely asked after mamma, and went out."

"Did you ask him to call and see mamma?" asked her father a little gravely.

"Not at all. The truth is, papa, after what you said I could not ask him, and was hardly civil to him."

"Was it unpleasant to be hardly civil to him?"

"No; though I like to be civil to everybody. You know I have seen little of him since I came home, and when I have, he was sometimes silent and distant, and not like what he was before I went away."

"You find him improved in appearance and manners?" persisted the Judge.

"Well, he was always good-looking, and had the way of a gentleman.

Miss Walters seemed quite taken with him, and was surprised that he had grown up here in the woods."

Her father was silent a moment, and the subject was changed. Mrs.

Markham was attentive to what was said of poor Bart, but made no comment at the time.

In their room, that night, in her sweet, serious way, she said to her husband, "Edward, I do not want to say a word in favor of Barton Ridgeley. I do not ask you to change your opinion of him or your course towards him; but I wish to ask if it is necessary to discuss him, especially with Julia?"

"Why?"

"Well, can it be productive of good? If you are mistaken in your estimate of him, you do him injustice, and in any event you will call her attention to him, and she may observe and study him; and almost any young woman who should do that might become interested in him."

"Do you think so? Men don't like him."

"Is that a reason why a woman would not?"

"Have you discovered any reason to think that Julia cares in the least for him?"

"Julia is young, and, like the women of our family, develops in these respects slowly; but, like the rest of us, she will have her own fancies some time, and you know"--with a still softer voice--"that one of them left a beautiful home, and a circle of love and luxury, to follow her heart into the woods."

"Yes, and thank G.o.d that she did! Roses and blessings and grace came with you," said the Judge, with emotion. "But this boy--what is he to us, or what can he ever be? He is so freaky, and unsteady, and pa.s.sionate, and flies off at a word, and goes before he is touched. He will do nothing, and come to nothing."

"What can he do? Would you really have him buy an axe and chop cord-wood, or work as a carpenter, or sell tape behind the counter?

Are there not enough to do all that work as fast as it needs to be done? Is there not a clamorous need of brain-work, and who is there to do it? Who is to govern, and manage, and control twenty years hence?

Look over all the young men whom you know, and who promises to be fit to lead? Think over those you know in Cleveland, or Painesville, or Warren. Is somebody to come from somewhere else? Think of your own plans and expectations. Who can help you? I see possibilities in this wayward, pa.s.sionate, hasty, generous youth. He is a tender and devoted son, and I am glad he came back; and n.o.body knows how he may be pushed against us and others."

"Well," said the Judge, after a thoughtful pause, "what can I do? What would you have me do--change myself, or try to change him?"

"I don't know," thoughtfully: "I think there is nothing you can do now. I would wish you to cultivate a manner towards him that would leave it in your power to serve him or make him useful, if occasion presents. He needs a better education, and perhaps a profession. He should study law. He has a capacity to become a very superior public speaker--one of the first. I don't think there is much danger of his forming bad habits or a.s.sociations. He avoids and shuns everything of that kind. You know he deeded his share of his father's land to his brother, to provide a home for his mother, and I presume will remain, both from choice and necessity, with her for the present."

The Judge mused over her words. He did not tell her of having met and left Barton the other side of the Chagrin; nor did he disclose fully the dislike he felt for him, or the fears he may have entertained at the idea of any intimacy between him and Julia. His wife mused also in her woman's way. She, too, would have hesitated to have Barton restored to the old relations of his boyhood. While she knew of much to admire and hope for in him, she knew also that there was much to cause anxiety, if not apprehension. In thinking further, she was inclined to call upon his mother, whom she much esteemed for her strong and decisive traits of character, soft and womanly though she was. Cares and anxieties had kept her from a.s.sociation with her neighbors, among whom, as she knew, she seldom appeared, except on occasions of sickness or suffering, or when some event seemed to demand the presence of a deciding woman's mind and will. She remembered one or two such times in their earlier forest life, when Mrs. Ridgeley had quietly a.s.sumed her natural place for a day, to go back to her round of widowed love, care and toil. She would make occasion to see her, and perhaps find some indirect way to be useful to both mother and son.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT HE THOUGHT OF THINGS.

How grateful to the sensitive heart of the young man would have been the knowledge that he was an object of thoughtful interest to Julia's mother, who, next to his own, had his reverence and regard! He knew he was generally disliked; his intuitions a.s.sured him of this, and in his young arrogance he had not cared. Indeed, he had come to feel a morbid pleasure in avoiding and being avoided; but now, as he sat in the little silent room in the late night, he felt his isolation. He had been appalled at a discovery--or rather a revelation--made that afternoon. He knew that he loved Julia, and that this love would be the one pa.s.sion of manhood, as it had been of his boyhood. He had given himself up to it as to a delicious onflowing stream, drifting him through enchanted lands, and had not thought or cared whither it might bear, or on what desolate sh.o.r.e it might finally strand him.

Now he felt its full strength and power, and he knew, too, that it was a force to be controlled, when perhaps that had become impossible. He had never asked himself if a return of his pa.s.sion were even possible, until now, when his whole fervid nature had gone out in a great hungry longing for her love and sympathy. She had never stood so lovely and so inaccessible as he had seen her that day. How deeply through and through came the first greeting of her eyes! It was an electric flash never received before, and which as suddenly disappeared. How cool and indifferent was her manner and look as he approached, and stood near her! No inquiry, save that mocking one! Not a word; not a thought of where he had been, or why he had returned, or what he would do; the shortest answer as to his inquiry about her mother; no intimation that he might even call at the house. Thus he went over with it all--over and over again. What did he care? But he did, and could not deceive himself. He did care, and must not; and then he went back over all their intercourse since her return home, two or three months before he left, and it was all alike on her part--a cool, indifferent avoidance of him.

Oh, she was so glorious--so beautiful! The whole world lay in the span of her slender waist--a world not for him. Was it something to be adventured for, fought for, found anywhere? something that he could climb up to and take? something to plunge down to in fathomless ocean and carry back? No, it was her woman's heart. Like her father, she disliked him; and if, like her father, she would openly let him see and hear it--but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? And she avoided him now!

He returned to his algebraic problem, with a desperate plunge at its solution. The unknown quant.i.ty remained unknown; and, a moment later, he was gratified to see how he had finally caught and expressed, with his pencil, a look of Julia, that had always eluded him before. But was he to be overcome by a girl? Was life and its ambitions to be crushed out and brought to nought by one small hand? He would see. It would be inexpressible luxury to tell her once--but just once--all his pa.s.sion and worship, and then, of course, remain silent forever, and go out of her presence. He wished her to know it all, so that, as she would hear and know of him in the coming years, she would know that he was worthy, not of her love, but worthy to love her, whatever that may mean, or whatever of comfort it might bring to either. What precious logic the heart of a young man in his twenty-second year is capable of!

CHAPTER VII.

LOGIC OF THE G.o.dS.