His Sombre Rivals Part 8

"How different he is from his friend! I suppose that is the reason that they are such friends--they are so unlike. The idea of Warren playing with that quiet, steady hand and composed face under like circ.u.mstances! And yet, why is he so pale?"

Mrs. Mayburn understood this pallor too well, and she felt that the ordeal had lasted long enough. She, too, had acted her part admirably, but now she pleaded fatigue, saying that she had not been very well for the last day or two. She was inscrutable to Grace, and caused no misgivings. It is easier for a woman than for a man to hide emotions from a woman, and Mrs. Mayburn's gray eyes and strong features rarely revealed anything that she meant to conceal. The major acquiesced good-naturedly, saying, "You are quite right to stop, Mrs. Mayburn, and I surely have no cause to complain. We have had more play in two hours than most people have in two weeks. I congratulate you, Mr. Graham; you are becoming a foeman worthy of any man's steel."

Graham rose with the relief which a man would feel on leaving the rack, and said, smilingly, "Your enthusiasm is contagious. Any man would soon be on his mettle who played often with you."

"Is enthusiasm one of your traits?" Grace asked, with an arch smile over her shoulder, as she went to ring the bell.

"What! Have you not remarked it?"

"Grace has been too preoccupied to remark anything--sly puss!" said the major, laughing heartily. "My dear Mrs. Mayburn, I shall ask for your congratulations tonight. I know we shall have yours, Mr. Graham, for Grace has informed me that Hilland is your best and nearest friend.

This little girl of mine has been playing blind-man's-buff with her old father. She thought she had the handkerchief tight over my eyes, but I always keep One corner raised a little. Well, Mr. Graham, this dashing friend of yours, who thinks he can carry all the world by storm, asked me last summer if he could lay siege to Grace. I felt like wringing his neck for his audacity and selfishness. The idea of any one taking Grace from me!"

"And no one shall, papa," said Grace, hiding her blushing face behind his white shock of hair. "But I scarcely think these details will interest--"

"What!" cried the bluff, frank old soldier--"not interest Mrs. Mayburn, the best and kindest of neighbors? not interest Hilland's alter ego?"

"I a.s.sure you," said Graham, laughing, "that I am deeply interested; and I promise you, Miss Grace, that I shall give Hilland a severer curtain lecture than he will ever receive from you, because he has left me in the dark so long."

"Stop pinching my arm," cried the major, who was in one of his jovial moods, and often immensely enjoyed teasing his daughter. "You may well hide behind me. Mrs. Mayburn, I'm going to expose a rank case of filial deception that was not in the least successful. This 'I came, I saw, I conquered' friend of yours, Mr. Graham, soon discovered that he was dealing with a race that was not in the habit of surrendering. But your friend, like Wellington, never knew when he was beaten. He wouldn't retreat an inch, but drawing his lines as close as he dared, sat down to a regular siege."

Graham again laughed outright, and with a comical glance at the young girl, asked, "Are you sure, sir, that Miss St. John was aware of these siege operations?"

"Indeed she was. Your friend raised his flag at once, and nailed it to the staff. And this little minx thought that she could deceive an old soldier like myself by playing the role of disinterested friend to a lonely young man condemned to the miseries of a mining town. I was often tempted to ask her why she did not extend her sympathy to scores of young fellows in the service who are in danger of being scalped every day. But the joke of it was that I knew she was undermined and must surrender long before Hilland did."

"Now, papa, it's too bad of you to expose me in this style. I appeal to Mrs. Mayburn if I did not keep my flag flying so defiantly to the last that even she did not suspect me."

"Yes," said the old lady, dryly; "I can testify to that."

"Which is only another proof of my penetration," chuckled the major.

"Well, well, it is so seldom I can get ahead of Grace in anything that I like to make the most of my rare good fortune; and it seems, Mr.

Graham, as if you and your aunt had already become a part of our present and prospective home circle. I have seen a letter in which Warren speaks of you in a way that reminds me of a friend who was shot almost at my side in a fight with the Indians. That was nearly half a century ago, and yet no one has taken his place. With men, friendships mean something, and last."

"Come, come," cried Mrs. Mayburn, bristling up, "neither Grace nor I will permit such an implied slur upon our s.e.x."

"My friendship for Hilland will last," said Graham, with quiet emphasis. "Most young men are drawn together by a mutual liking--by something congenial in their natures. I owe him a debt of grat.i.tude that can never be repaid, He found me a lonely, neglected boy, who had scarcely ever known kindness, much less affection, and his ardent, generous nature became an antidote to my gloomy tendencies. From the first he has been a constant and faithful friend. He has not one unworthy trait. But there is nothing negative about him, for he abounds in the best and most manly qualities; and I think," he concluded, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if he were making an inward vow, "that I shall prove worthy of his trust and regard."

Grace looked at him earnestly and gratefully, and the thought again a.s.serted itself that she had not yet gauged his character or his feeling toward herself. To her surprise she also noted that Mrs.

Mayburn's eyes were filled with tears, but the old lady was equal to the occasion, and misled her by saying, "I feel condemned, Alford, that you should have been so lonely and neglected in early life, but I know it was so."

"Oh, well, aunt, you know I was not an interesting boy, and had I been imposed upon you in my hobbledehoy period, our present relations might never have existed. I must ask your congratulations also," he continued, turning toward the major and his daughter. "My aunt and I have in a sense adopted each other. I came hither to pay her a formal call, and have made another very dear friend."

"Have you made only one friend since you became our neighbor?" asked Grace, with an accent of reproach in her voice.

"I would very gladly claim you and your father as such," he replied, smilingly.

The old major arose with an alacrity quite surprising in view of his lameness, and pouring out two gla.s.ses of the wine that Jinny had brought in answer to Grace's touch of the bell, he gave one of the gla.s.ses to Graham, and with the other in his left hand, he said, "And here I pledge you the word of a soldier that I acknowledge the claim in full, not only for Hilland's sake, but your own. You have generously sought to beguile the tedium of a crotchety and irritable old man; but such as he is he gives you his hand as a true, stanch friend; and Grace knows this means a great deal with me."

"Yes, indeed," she cried. "I declare, papa, you almost make me jealous.

You treated Warren as if you were the Great Mogul, and he but a presuming subject. Mr. Graham, if so many new friends are not an embarra.s.sment of riches, will you give me a little niche among them?"

"I cannot give you that which is yours already," he replied; "nor have I a little niche for you. You have become identified with Hilland, you know, and therefore require a large s.p.a.ce."

"Now, see here, my good friends, you are making too free with my own peculiar property. You are already rich in each other, not counting Mr.

Hilland, who, according to Alford, seems to embody all human excellence. I have only this philosophical nephew, and even with him shall find a rival in every book he can lay hands upon. I shall therefore carry him off at once, especially as he is to be absent several days."

The major protested against his absence, and was cordiality itself in his parting words.

Grace followed them out on the moonlit piazza. "Mr. Graham," she said, hesitatingly, "you will not be absent very long, I trust."

"Oh, no," he replied, lightly; "only two or three weeks. In addition to my affairs in the city, I have some business in Vermont, and while there shall follow down some well-remembered trout-streams."

She turned slightly away, and buried her face in a spray of roses from the bush that festooned the porch. He saw that a tinge of color was in her cheeks, as she said in a low tone, "You should not be absent long; I think your friend will soon visit us, and you should be here to welcome him," and she glanced hastily toward him. Was it the moonlight that made him look so very pale? His eyes held hers. Mrs. Mayburn had walked slowly on, and seemingly he had forgotten her. The young girl's eyes soon fell before his fixed gaze, and her face grew troubled. He started, and said lightly, "I beg your pardon, Miss Grace, but you have no idea what a picture you make with the aid of those roses. The human face in clear moonlight reveals character, it is said, and I again congratulate my friend without a shadow of doubt. Unversed as I am in such matters, I am quite satisfied that Hilland will need no other welcome than yours, and that he will be wholly content with it for some time to come. Moreover, when I find myself among the trout, there's no telling when I shall get out of the woods."

"Is fishing, then, one of your ruling pa.s.sions?" the young girl asked, with an attempt to resume her old piquant style of talk with him.

"Yes," he replied, laughing, so that his aunt might hear him; "but when one's pa.s.sions are of so mild a type one may be excused for having a half-dozen. Good-by!"

She stepped forward and held out her hand. "You have promised to be my friend," she said, gently.

His hand trembled in her grasp as he said quietly and firmly, "I will keep my promise."

She looked after him wistfully, as she thought, "I'm not sure about him. I hope it's only a pa.s.sing disappointment, for we should not like to think that our happiness had brought him wretchedness."

CHAPTER XII

FLIGHT TO NATURE

Graham found his aunt waiting for him on the rustic seat beneath the apple-tree. Here, a few hours before, his heart elate with hope, he had hastened forward to meet Grace St. John. Ages seemed to have pa.s.sed since that moment of bitter disappointment, teaching him how relative a thing is time.

The old lady joined him without a word, and they pa.s.sed on silently to the house. As they entered, she said, trying to infuse into the commonplace words something of her sympathy and affection, "Now we will have a cosey little supper."

Graham placed his hand upon her arm, and detained her, as he replied, "No, aunt; please get nothing for me. I must hide myself for a few hours from even your kind eyes. Do not think me weak or unmanly. I shall soon get the reins well in hand, and shall then be quiet enough."

"I think your self-control has been admirable this evening."

"It was the self-control of sheer, desperate force, and only partial at that. I know I must have been almost ghostly in my pallor. I have felt pale--as if I were bleeding to death. I did not mean to take her hand in parting, for I could not trust myself; but she held it out so kindly that I had to give mine, which, in spite of my whole will power, trembled. I troubled and perplexed her. I have infused an element of sorrow and bitterness into her happy love; for in the degree in which it gives her joy she will fear that it brings the heartache to me, and she is too good and kind not to care. I must go away and not return until my face is bronzed and my nerves are steel. Oh, aunt! you cannot understand me; I scarcely understand myself. It seems as if all the love that I might have given to many in the past, had my life been like that of others, had been acc.u.mulating for this hopeless, useless waste--this worse than waste, since it only wounds and pains its object."

"And do I count for so little, Alford?"

"You count for more now than all others save one; and if you knew how contrary this utter unreserve is to my nature and habit, you would understand how perfect is my confidence in you and how deep is my affection. But I am learning with a sort of dull, dreary astonishment that there are heights and depths of experience of which I once had not the faintest conception. This is a kind of battle that one must fight out alone. I must go away and accustom myself to a new condition of life. But do not worry about me. I shall come back a vertebrate;" and he tried to summon a rea.s.suring smile, as he kissed her in parting.

That night Graham faced his trouble, and decided upon his future course.

After an early breakfast the next morning, the young man bade his aunt good-by. With moist eyes, she said, "Alford, I am losing you, just as I find how much you are and can be to me."

"No, aunty dear; my course will prove best for us both," he replied, gently. "You would not be happy if you saw me growing more sad and despairing every day through inaction, and--and--well, I could never become strong and calm with that cottage there just beyond the trees.

You have not lost me, for I shall try to prove a good correspondent."