The Lady of the Aroostook Part 36

"I don't know what he's coming for," said Lydia dishonestly.

"But if he's coming for what you hope?"

"I don't hope for anything."

"But you did. Don't be severe. You're terrible when you're severe."

"I will be just."

"Oh, no, you mustn't, my dear. It won't do at all to be _just_ with men, poor fellows. Kiss me, Lydia!" She pulled her down, and kissed her. When the girl had got as far as the door, "Lydia, Lydia!" she called after her. Lydia turned. "Do you realize what dress you've got on?" Lydia looked down at her robe; it was the blue flannel yachting-suit of the Aroostook, which she had put on for convenience in taking care of her aunt. "Isn't it too ridiculous?" Mrs. Erwin meant to praise the coincidence, not to blame the dress. Lydia smiled faintly for answer, and the next moment she stood at the parlor door.

Staniford, at her entrance, turned from looking out of the window and saw her as in his dream, with her hand behind her, pushing the door to; but the face with which she looked at him was not like the dead, sad face of his dream. It was thrillingly alive, and all pa.s.sions were blent in it,--love, doubt, reproach, indignation; the tears stood in her eyes, but a fire burnt through the tears. With his first headlong impulse to console, explain, deplore, came a thought that struck him silent at sight of her. He remembered, as he had not till then remembered, in all his wild longing and fearing, that there had not yet been anything explicit between them; that there was no engagement; and that he had upon the face of things, at least, no right to offer her more than some formal expression of regret for not having been able to keep his promise to come sooner. While this stupefying thought gradually filled his whole sense to the exclusion of all else, he stood looking at her with a dumb and helpless appeal, utterly stunned and wretched. He felt the life die out of his face and leave it blank, and when at last she spoke, he knew that it was in pity of him, or contempt of him. "Mrs. Erwin is not well," she said, "and she wished me--"

But he broke in upon her: "Oh, don't talk to me of Mrs. Erwin! It was you I wanted to see. Are _you_ well? Are you alive? Do you--" He stopped as precipitately as he began; and after another hopeless pause, he went on piteously: "I don't know where to begin. I ought to have been here five days ago. I don't know what you think of me, or whether you have thought of me at all; and before I can ask I must tell you why I wanted to come then, and why I come now, and why I think I must have come back from the dead to see you. You are all the world to me, and have been ever since I saw you. It seems a ridiculously unnecessary thing to say, I have been looking and acting and living it so long; but I say it, because I choose to have you know it, whether you ever cared for me or not. I thought I was coming here to explain why I had not come sooner, but I needn't do that unless--unless--" He looked at her where she still stood aloof, and he added: "Oh, answer me something, for pity's sake!

Don't send me away without a word. There have been times when you wouldn't have done that!"

"Oh, I _did_ care for you!" she broke out. "You know I did--"

He was instantly across the room, beside her. "Yes, yes, I know it!" But she shrank away.

"You tried to make me believe you cared for me, by everything you could do. And I did believe you then; and yes, I believed you afterwards, when I didn't know what to believe. You were the one true thing in the world to me. But it seems that you didn't believe it yourself."

"That I didn't believe it myself? That I--I don't know what you mean."

"You took a week to think it over! I have had a week, too, and I have thought it over, too. You have come too late."

"Too late? You don't, you can't, mean--Listen to me, Lydia; I want to tell you--"

"No, there is nothing you can tell me that would change me. I know it, I understand it all."

"But you don't understand what kept me."

"I don't wish to know what made you break your word. I don't care to know. I couldn't go back and feel as I did to you. Oh, that's gone! It isn't that you did not come--that you made me wait and suffer; but you knew how it would be with me after I got here, and all the things I should find out, and how I should feel! And you stayed away! I don't know whether I can forgive you, even; oh, I'm afraid I don't; but I can never care for you again. Nothing but a case of life and death--"

"It was a case of life and death!"

Lydia stopped in her reproaches, and looked at him with wistful doubt, changing to a tender fear.

"Oh, have you been hurt? Have you been sick?" she pleaded, in a breaking voice, and made some unconscious movement toward him. He put out his hand, and would have caught one of hers, but she clasped them in each other.

"No, not I,--Dunham--"

"Oh!" said Lydia, as if this were not at all enough.

"He fell and struck his head, the night you left. I thought he would die." Staniford reported his own diagnosis, not the doctor's; but he was perhaps in the right to do this. "I had made him go down to the wharf with me; I wanted to see you again, before you started, and I thought we might find you on the boat." He could see her face relenting; her hands released each other. "He was delirious till yesterday. I couldn't leave him."

"Oh, why didn't you write to me?" She ignored Dunham as completely as if he had never lived. "You knew that I--" Her voice died away, and her breast rose.

"I did write--"

"But how,--I never got it."

"No,--it was not posted, through a cruel blunder. And then I thought--I got to thinking that you didn't care--"

"Oh," said the girl. "Could you doubt me?"

"You doubted me," said Staniford, seizing his advantage. "I brought the letter with me to prove _my_ truth." She did not look at him, but she took the letter, and ran it greedily into her pocket. "It's well I did so, since you don't believe my word."

"Oh, yes,--yes, I know it," she said; "I never doubted it!" Staniford stood bemazed, though he knew enough to take the hands she yielded him; but she suddenly caught them away again, and set them against his breast. "I was very wrong to suspect you ever; I'm sorry I did; but there's something else. I don't know how to say what I want to say. But it must be said."

"Is it something disagreeable?" asked Staniford, lightly.

"It's right," answered Lydia, unsmilingly.

"Oh, well, don't say it!" he pleaded; "or don't say it now,--not till you've forgiven me for the anxiety I've caused you; not till you've praised me for trying to do what I thought the right thing. You can't imagine how hard it was for one who hasn't the habit!"

"I do praise you for it. There's nothing to forgive _you_; but I can't let you care for me unless I know--unless"--She stopped, and then, "Mr.

Staniford," she began firmly, "since I came here, I've been learning things that I didn't know before. They have changed the whole world to me, and it can never be the same again."

"I'm sorry for that; but if they haven't changed you, the world may go."

"No, not if we're to live in it," answered the girl, with the soberer wisdom women keep at such times. "It will have to be known how we met.

What will people say? They will laugh."

"I don't think they will in my presence," said Staniford, with swelling nostrils. "They may use their pleasure elsewhere."

"And I shouldn't care for their laughing, either," said Lydia. "But oh, why did you come?"

"Why did I come?"

"Was it because you felt bound by anything that's happened, and you wouldn't let me bear the laugh alone? I'm not afraid for myself. I shall never blame you. You can go perfectly free."

"But I don't want to go free!"

Lydia looked at him with piercing earnestness. "Do you think I'm proud?"

she asked.

"Yes, I think you are," said Staniford, vaguely.

"It isn't for myself that I should be proud with other people. But I would rather die than bring ridicule upon one I--upon you."

"I can believe that," said Staniford, devoutly, and patiently reverencing the delay of her scruples.

"And if--and--" Her lips trembled, but she steadied her trembling voice.

"If they laughed at you, and thought of me in a slighting way because--"

Staniford gave a sort of roar of grief and pain to know how her heart must have been wrung before she could come to this. "You were all so good that you didn't let me think there was anything strange about it--"

"Oh, good heavens! We only did what it was our precious and sacred privilege to do! We were all of one mind about it from the first.