John March, Southerner Part 58

"I've offended her! There was no mistaking that last look. This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't let her hand linger in mine. Oh, I wish to heaven girls were not so senselessly innocent and sisterly! Great Caesar!

I'd give five hundred dollars not to have drooled that drivel about being her brother! George! She ought to know that only a fool or a scamp could make such an absurd proposal. I wonder if she still wants to lend me her money! I'd rather face a whole bank directorate with an overdrawn account than those Fairs this evening. I know exactly how they'll look.

For it will be just like her to tell Mrs. Fair, who'll tell her husband, and they'll bury the thing right there with me under it, and 'Miss Garnet' will excuse herself on the plea of fatigue, and the conversation will drag, and I'll wish I had cut my throat in Pulaski City, and"--a steeple clock tolled the hour----"Oh, can it be that that's only six!"

At tea he missed them. Returning to his room, he had hardly got his hands under his head again, trying not to think of his financial embarra.s.sments because it was Sunday, when a new idea brought him to his feet. Church! Evening service! Would she go? He had not asked her when she had intimated that the Fairs would not. In his selfish enjoyment of her society he had quite forgotten to care for her soul! He ought to go himself. And all the more ought she, for he was numbered among the saved now, and she was not. She _must_ go. But how could she unless he should take her? His Christian duty was clear. He would write an offer of his services, and by her answer he would know how he stood in her regard.

Her reply was prompt, affirmative, confined to the subject. And yet, in some inexplicable way it conveyed the impression that she had never suspected him of the faintest intention to carry her hand to his lips.

The sermon was only so-so, but they enjoyed the singing; particularly their own. Both sang from one book, with much reserve, yet with such sweetly persuasive voices that those about them first listened and then added their own very best. The second tune was "Geer," and, with John's tenor going up every time Barbara's soprano came down, and _vice versa_, it was as lovely see-sawing as ever thrilled the heart of youth with pure and undefiled religion. They sang the last hymn to "Dennis." It was,

"Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love!"

and they gratefully accepted the support of four good, st.u.r.dy, ba.s.s voices behind them. But it was the words themselves, of the fourth and fifth stanzas, that inspired their richest yet softest tones, while the four ba.s.ses behind them rather grew louder:

"When we asunder part It gives us inward pain, But we shall still be joined in heart And hope to meet again.

"This glorious hope revives Our courage by the way, While each in expectation lives And longs to see the day."

On the sidewalk the four ba.s.ses again raised their four silk hats and vanished. They were the commercial travelers.

As the two worshippers returned toward their hotel, Barbara spoke glowingly of Mr. and Mrs. Fair; their perfect union; their beautiful companionship. John, in turn, ventured to tell of the unbounded esteem with which he had ever looked upon Barbara's mother. They dwelt, in tones of indulgent amus.e.m.e.nt, on the day, the hour, the scene, of John's first coming to the college, specially memorable to him as the occasion of his first real meeting of the Rose of Rosemont. Barbara said the day would always be bright to her as the one on which she first came into personal contact with Judge March. John spoke ardently of his father.

"And, by the bye, that day was the first on which I ever truly saw you."

"Or Johanna!" said Barbara. "Johanna's keeping Fannie Ravenel's new house. She's to stay with her till I get back." But John spoke again of Barbara's mother, asking permission to do so.

"Yes, certainly," murmured his companion. "In general I don't revere sacred things as I should," she continued, with her arm in her escort's, and "Blest be the tie"--still dragging in their adagio footsteps; "but my mother has all my life been so sacred to me--not that she was of the sort that they call otherworldly--I don't care for otherworldliness nearly as much as I should----"

"Don't you?" regretfully asked John; "that's one of my faults too."

"No; but I've always revered mom-a so deeply that except once or twice to Fannie, when Fannie spoke first, I've never talked about her." Yet Barbara went on telling of her mother from a full heart, her ears ravished by the music of John's interjected approvals. They talked again of his father also, and found sweet resemblances between the two dear ones. Only as they re-entered the hotel were both at once for a moment silent. Half way up the stairs, among the foliage plants of a landing ablaze with gas, they halted, while John, beginning,

"Two hearts that love the same fair things"--

recited one of his mother's shorter poems.

"Why, Mr. March!" His hearer's whisper only emphasized her sincere enthusiasm. "Did your mother--why, that's per-fect-ly beau-ti-ful!"

They parted, but soon met again in one of the parlors. Mrs. Fair came, too, but could not linger, having left Mr. Fair upstairs asleep on a lounge. She bade Barbara stay and hear all the ma.n.u.script poems Mr.

March could be persuaded to read, and only regretted that her duty upstairs prevented her remaining herself. "Good-by," she said to John.

"Now, whenever you come to Boston, remember, you're to come directly to us."

John responded gratefully, and Barbara, as the two sat down upon a very small divan with the batch of ma.n.u.script between them, told him, in a melodious undertone, that she feared she couldn't stay long.

"What's that?" she asked, as he took up the first leaf to put it by.

"This? Oh, this is the poem I tried to recite to you on the stairs."

"Read it again," she said, not in her usual monotone, but with a soft eagerness of voice and eye quite new to him, and extremely stimulating.

He felt an added exaltation when, at the close of the middle stanza, he saw her hands knit into each other and a gentle rapture shining through her drooping lashes; and at the end, when she sighed her admiration in only one or two half-formed words, twinkled her feet and bit her lip, his exaltation rose almost to inebriety. He could have sat there and read to her all night.

Yet that was the only poem she heard. The t.i.tle of the next one, John said as he lifted it, was, "If I should love again;" but Barbara asked a dreamy question of a very general character; he replied, then asked one in turn; they discussed--she introducing the topic--the religious duty and practicability of making all one's life and each and every part of it good poetry, and the inner and outer conditions essential thereunto; and when two strange ladies came in and promptly went out again John glanced at the mantel-clock, exclaimed his surprise at the hour, and gathering up the ma.n.u.script, rose to say his parting word.

"Good-by." His hand-grasp was fervent.

"Good-by," replied the maiden.

"Miss Barb"--he kept her hand--"I want a word, and, honestly--I--don't know what it is! Doesn't good-by seem to you mighty weak, by itself?"

"Why, that depends. It's got plenty of po-ten-ti-al-i-ty if you give it its old sig-nif-i-ca-tion."

"Well, I do--every bit of it! Do you, Miss Barb--to me?"

She gave such answer with her steady eyes that her questioner's mind would have lost its balance had she not smiled so lightly.

"Still," he responded, "good-by is such unclaimed property that I want another word to sort o' fence it in, you know."

The maiden only looked more amused than before.

"I don't want it to mean too much, you understand," explained he. The hand in his grew heavier, but his grasp tightened on it. "Yet don't you think these last three days' companionship deserves a word of its own?

Miss Barb, you've been--and in my memory you will be henceforth--a crystalline delight! The word's not mine, it's from one of my mother's sweetest things. Can't I say good-by, thou 'crystalline delight'?"

"Why, Mr. March," said Barbara, softly pulling at her hand. "I don't particularly like the implication that I'm per-fect-ly trans-par-ent."

"Now, Miss Barb! as if I--oh pshaw! Good-by." He lifted her hand. She made it very light. He held it well up, looking down on it fondly.

"This," he said, "is the little friend that wanted to help me out of trouble. Good-by, little friend; I"--his lips approached it--"I love you."

It flashed from his hand like a bird from the nest. "No-o!" moaned its owner.

"Oh, Miss Gar--Miss Barb!" groaned John, "you've utterly misunderstood."

"No"--Barbara had not yet blushed, but now she crimsoned--"I've not misunderstood you. I simply don't like that way of saying----"

"I didn't mean----"

"I know it, Mr. March. I know perfectly well you don't expect ever to mean anything to anybody any more; you consider it a sheer im-pos-si-bil-i-ty. That's the keystone of our friendship."

John hemmed. "I wouldn't say impossibility; I'd say impracticability.

It's an impracticability, Miss Barb, that's all. Why, every time I think of my dear sweet little mother----"

"Oh, Mr March, that's right! She _must_ have your whole thought and care!"

"She shall have it, Miss Barb, at every cost! as completely as I know your father has and ought to have yours!" He took her hand. "Good-by!

The understanding's perfect now, isn't it?"

"I think so--I hope so--yes, sir."

"Say, 'Yes, John.'"

"Oh, Mr. March, I can't say that."