Only an Incident Part 8

"It's altogether a matter of will," she a.s.serted. "People needn't be ill if they are only resolved not to be so."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Lane, who had chanced to overhear; and there was a trifle more tenderness than usual in her manner when she went up later to put the mid-day cup of beef-tea into her sister's thin hands, and stood looking compa.s.sionately down at her. "Nothing is easier than to insist that a thing is so and so, just because there's no way to prove that it isn't so."

"How you do always talk in proverbs, Sister Sophy!" said Miss Lydia, admiringly. "I only wish Solomon could have heard you. I do believe he would have put some of them in."

"He would have been far too busy taking down Mrs. Upjohn's fine speeches to mind _me_," grunted Mrs. Lane. "And I never did think much of Solomon, anyway. He was too much of a Mormon with his hundred wives and that. Want any thing else, Lyddy?"

"No, thank you. The house is very nice and still this morning. There's a picnic up at the Dexter's farm, isn't there? I suppose they've all gone to it."

"Of course. Who ever heard of a picnic unless Phebe went along to do all the fussing and mussing that everybody else shirks? Don't tell _me_ there's any fun in a picnic,--going off in the woods like that, to do for yourself what you'd sell the clothes off your back to have somebody else do for you at home, and eating all kinds of heathenish messes with your fingers because you've forgotten the forks. But what people like let them have. They'll get experience out of it if nothing better. And of course Phebe had to go."

True enough, Phebe was as essential to any picnic as the feast, though much less obtrusively so, and Gerald watched her friend's quiet helpfulness with lazy interest. She herself was stretched at ease on the clean, fresh gra.s.s under some glorious old trees. The place chosen was a lovely spot at the head of the lake; the drive there had been long and hot, and now she lay enjoying to the full the refreshment of the shadow and the breeze, and the perfection both of the view and of her immediate surroundings. Bell Masters sat near her, having discovered that she was generally surest of Mr. De Forest's company when in Gerald's neighborhood. Nor had she been mistaken this time. He had openly abandoned the greedy band of berry-pickers, and the artistic knot of sketchers, and the noisy body of pleasure-seekers, who were paddling frivolously around the sh.o.r.es of the lake and screaming with causeless laughter, as soon as he found that Gerald did not intend attaching herself to any of them but had struck out the new and independent line of doing absolutely nothing at all. Halloway had been helping industriously with the fire, but he came toward the group under the trees when his services seemed no longer required.

"You look most invitingly comfortable," he said, fanning himself with his hat. "We must try to coax Miss Phebe here for a rest."

"Pray don't," said De Forest, lifting a lazy hand with an air of finding even that motion too great an effort. "At least not till the coffee is well under way. I tasted a cup of her make yesterday. Don't call her off.

We are all benefiting in a manner by her absence."

"I can make good coffee too, when I choose," said Bell, biting at the rim of her straw hat.

De Forest contemplated her with new interest. "Ah, can you. 'Tis a gift of the G.o.ds given to few. And when do you choose, may I ask? Apparently not to-day."

"'Tisn't my picnic."

"Oh! Is it Miss Lane's?"

"One would say it was, from the way she slaves for it," remarked Gerald.

"Why don't you help too?" asked De Forest, breaking off blades of gra.s.s and flinging them out singly upon the air.

"For Miss Masters' excellent reason: it is not my picnic."

"You contribute your valuable aid solely to your own undertakings then?"

"Why am I called upon to contribute it to any other?"

"'Tis a problem for philosophers. But for argument's sake, let us say for the good of humanity at large, and of the Dexters in particular."

"I am not bound to the Dexters by any obligation that I can see to help them carry out their entertainment. If they are not equal to it, they should not give it."

"Nothing Quixotic about you, is there?" said De Forest, looking at her quizzically.

"Nothing whatever," replied Gerald, easily. "Why should there be? Let every one look out for himself."

"And if some can't?"

"That is no business of mine. It's simply my business to make sure that I can look after myself."

"What an outrageously frank exposure of a universally concealed sentiment! Mr. Halloway is scandalized. He is thinking how he can fit a scorching text to it to wither you with next Sunday."

"No; here is a sermon ready made on the spot," said Denham, as Phebe came slowly toward them. "Miss Lane in herself is a sufficient ill.u.s.tration of the opposite doctrine."

"Prove it," answered Gerald, shrugging her shoulders. "Prove that Phebe, who toils for everybody, is any happier than I, who only follow my inclination."

"You certainly look vastly the more comfortable at present," said De Forest, looking from Gerald's cool cheeks and unruffled muslin flounces to Phebe's flushed face and tumbled cambric. "You are a practical embodiment of the beauty and expediency of selfishness."

"What are you talking about?" asked Phebe, coming up and leaning wearily against a tree.

"About you and Miss Vernor," explained Bell. "Which of you is happier?

_I_ should say Miss Vernor decidedly."

A loving look came into Phebe's eyes, as she glanced down at Gerald.

"Miss Vernor, _of course_", she said, with a very tender inflection of voice. "Being what she is, how can she help being the happier?"

"Virtue advocating vice," said De Forest. "Mr. Halloway, your sermon is a dead failure,--as a sermon."

"By no means," answered Denham, smiling. "I don't expect to convert you in a single lesson. Will you not sit down with us, Miss Phebe? You look tired."

"Not just yet, thank you."

"And why not?" asked Gerald.

"I want to see a little after Miss Delano first. She's off there all alone hunting for ferns."

"Well," persisted Gerald, "what of it? Are you fonder of her society than ours, that you must run after her?"

"I am not fonder of any one's society than of yours, Gerald."

"But are you fond of that tiresome creature at all? Confess it; doesn't she bore you to death with her interminable gra.s.shopper chatter?"

Phebe glanced at Halloway, and laughed a little as she moved away.

"Oh, I am learning by degrees not to be bored by people,--not even by Miss Delano."

"Now, will any one explain why she should wish to teach herself _not_ to know a bore from a Christian?" exclaimed Gerald, impatiently. "It is quite beyond me."

"But do you really never talk to anybody unless you want to, Miss Vernor?" asked Bell, disagreeably conscious that Gerald had not voluntarily addressed her once that morning.

"Never," replied Gerald, staring out at the lake.

"Don't you ever do any thing you don't want to, because you ought to?"

"I don't always see the ought. For instance, why should I put myself out to entertain Miss Delano as Phebe does?"

"I don't know," muttered Bell. "I wouldn't, I am sure. She is mortally dull."

"One might imagine reasons for the self-sacrifice, I suppose," said De Forest, making a languid s.n.a.t.c.h at a b.u.t.terfly fluttering near. "The possibility, we will say, that it might please the gentle old babbler to come under the condescension of your notice. How would that do for a motive?"

"Why should I want to please her?" insisted Gerald, removing a hideous beetle from her dress with all possible care lest she should hurt it. "I don't want to. I don't care for her, nor she for me. Why should I put myself out for her? What claim has she on me that I should displease myself to please her?"