The Lilac Girl Part 19

"I don't believe he's that bad," responded Eve. "I wish you'd tell me what you think of him, Doctor."

"Mr. Herrick? Well, aside from his intemperance--"

"No, I'm in earnest, please. Afterwards I'll tell you why I ask--perhaps."

"I think him a very nice young man, Miss Eve, don't you?"

"Ye-es."

"I wouldn't call him strictly handsome; he doesn't remind me of the copper-engraved pictures of Lord Byron, who, when I was a lad, was considered the standard of masculine beauty, but he looks like a man, which is something that Byron didn't, to my thinking."

"But do you--do you think he's sincere?"

"Lord, bless me, yes! I'd stake my word on his being that if nothing else."

"Even if he is a mining man?" asked Eve, with a smile.

"H'm, well, I guess there are honest mining men as well as honest lawyers."

"Yes, I think he's honest," said Eve, thoughtfully, "but as to sincerity--"

"Aren't they the same?"

"Perhaps they are," answered Eve, doubtfully. She was silent for a moment, possibly considering the question. Then she looked across at the Doctor with a little flush in her cheeks. "You see," she said, "he--he's asked me to marry him."

The Doctor rolled his cane under his palms and nodded his head slowly several times. Eve waited. At last--

"You don't seem much surprised," she said, questioningly.

"Surprised? No. I'd have been surprised if he hadn't asked you to marry him, my dear. It's what I'd have done in his place."

"And I'd have accepted you," said Eve with a little laugh.

"And him?" asked the Doctor.

Eve was silent, looking across the garden. Finally she shrugged her slim shoulders and sighed.

"I don't know," she said, frankly.

"Well," began the Doctor, slowly and judicially. Then he stopped, wondering what he had started to say.

"Why should I?" challenged Eve, a trifle querulously.

"You shouldn't, unless you feel that you want to."

"But I don't know whether I want to--or don't want to."

The Doctor studied her face a moment, until her eyes dropped and the flush deepened in her cheeks. Unseen of her, he smiled.

"Take plenty of time to find out," said the Doctor, softly and kindly.

"Don't marry him until you are sure that you can't be happy without him, my dear. Don't try it as an experiment. That's what makes unhappy marriages; at least, that's one thing. There are others too numerous to mention. There's just one reason why a man and a woman should join themselves together in matrimony, and that is love, the love that the poets sing and the rest of us poke fun at, the love that is the nearest thing to Heaven we find on earth." The Doctor sat silent a moment, looking past the girl's grave face into the green blur of the garden.

Then he stirred, sighed, and looked at his watch. "Well, well, I must be on my way," he said briskly. "I'm a vastly busy old man."

"But, Doctor, you haven't helped me a bit to decide," she said, aggrievedly.

"I can't, my dear. No one can. And, what's more, you don't want me to."

"Why, Doctor, I"--she began. Then she dropped her eyes and a little smile trembled at her lips. "How do you know?" she asked.

"I know a few things yet, Miss Eve," he chuckled, picking up his old black leather bag.

"Just a moment, please," begged Eve. "Did he ever tell you that he wanted me to take some of Cousin Edward's money?"

"M'm, yes, he did tell me that," responded the Doctor cautiously. "But that's nothing against him."

"N-no, I know it isn't. And he said--says he will have his way."

The Doctor settled his hat and gripped his stick.

"Then I guess he will. He looks that kind of a man."

"He never will," said Eve, firmly, "never!"

"Unless," chuckled the Doctor, "you marry him." He waved his cane and strode away toward the gate. "How about that?" he called back over the hedge.

Eve made no answer. She was thinking very busily. "Unless I marry him!"

she repeated, somewhat blankly, staring at the turquoise ring which she was slipping around and around on her finger. The moments pa.s.sed. A frown crept into her forehead and grew there, dark and threatening, under the warm shadow of her hair. "And so that's it," she thought bitterly and angrily. "That's what it means. That's why he's acted so strangely since--since he asked me to marry him. It's just a trick to get his own way. He'd marry me as a sop to his conscience. It's just the money, after all. Oh, I wish--I wish Cousin Edward had never had any money!"

She sat there a long time, while the shadows shortened and the birds grew silent, one by one, and the noonday hush fell over the old garden; sat there until Miss Mullett came to the kitchen door and summoned her to luncheon.

XV.

Wade rolled a vest into a tight wad and tucked it into a corner of the till. Then he glanced around the sitting-room, saw nothing else to pack, and softly dropped the lid. That done he sat down on it and relighted his pipe.

It was two days since Eve and the Doctor had talked under the cedars, one day since Wade had received her note. He had not seen her since. She hadn't asked him not to, but Wade had stereotyped ideas as to the proper conduct of a rejected suitor, and he intended to live up to them. Of course he would call in the morning and say good bye.

He felt no resentment against Eve, although her note would have supplied sufficient excuse. He didn't quite know what he did feel. He had striven the evening before to diagnose his condition, with the result that he had decided that his heart was not broken, although there was a peculiar dull aching sensation there that he fancied was destined to grow worse before it got better. So far, what seemed to trouble him most was leaving the cottage and Eden Village. He had grown very fond of both. Already they seemed far more like home to him than Craig's Camp or any place he had known. There had been nothing in that brief, unsatisfactory note intimating that he was expected to leave Eden Village, but he was quite sure that his departure would be the best thing for all concerned. The Doctor, to whom he had confided his plan, had thought differently, and had begged him to wait and see if things didn't change. The Doctor was a mighty good sort, but--well, he hadn't read Eve's note!

He wasn't leaving Eden Village for good and all. There was comfort in that thought. Some day, probably next summer, he would come back. By that time he would have gotten over it in all probability. Until such time Mr. Zenas Prout and Zephania, in fact the whole Prout family, there to take care of the cottage. Zephania was to sweep it once a month from top to bottom. Wade smiled. He hadn't suggested such care as that, but Zephania had insisted. Zephania, he reflected with a feeling of grat.i.tude, had been rather cut up about his departure.

Of course it was n.o.body's fault but his own. He had deliberately fallen in love, scorning consequences. Now he was staring at the consequences and didn't like their looks. Thank Heaven, he was a worker, and there was plenty of work to do. Whitehead and the others out there would be surprised to see him coming into camp again so soon. Well, that was nothing. Perhaps, too, it was just as well he was going back early.

There was the new shaft-house to get up, and the sooner that was ready the sooner they could work the new lead. He raised his head, conscious of a disturbing factor, and then arose and closed the door into the hall. Closing the door m.u.f.fled the strains that floated down from upstairs, where Zephania, oppressed, but defiant of sorrow, was singing:

"'My days are gliding swiftly by, And I, a pilgrim stranger, Would not detain them as they fly!

Those hours of toil and danger.'"