"I loved your mother very dearly," he said gravely. "I had loved her from a child. But no woman will ever understand the power that beauty has upon a man. You see we're built that way. It's Nature's lure. Later on, of course, I might have forgotten; but then it was too late. Can you forgive me?"
"But you still love her," reasoned Ann through her tears, "or you wouldn't want him to come here."
"She had such a hard time of it," pleaded Abner. "It made things easier to her, my giving her my word that I would always look after the boy. You'll help me?"
"I'll try," said Ann. But there was not much promise in the tone.
Nor did Matthew Pole himself, when he arrived, do much to help matters. He was so hopelessly English. At least, that was the way Ann put it. He was shy and sensitive. It is a trying combination.
It made him appear stupid and conceited. A lonely childhood had rendered him unsociable, unadaptable. A dreamy, imaginative temperament imposed upon him long moods of silence: a liking for long solitary walks. For the first time Ann and Mrs. Travers were in agreement.
"A sulky young dog," commented Mrs. Travers. "If I were your uncle I'd look out for a job for him in San Francisco."
"You see," said Ann in excuse for him, "it's such a foggy country, England. It makes them like that."
"It's a pity they can't get out of it," said Mrs. Travers.
Also, sixteen is an awkward age for a boy. Virtues, still in the chrysalis state, are struggling to escape from their parent vices.
Pride, an excellent quality making for courage and patience, still appears in the swathings of arrogance. Sincerity still expresses itself in the language of rudeness. Kindness itself is apt to be mistaken for amazing impertinence and love of interference.
It was kindness--a genuine desire to be useful, that prompted him to point out to Ann her undoubted faults and failings, nerved him to the task of bringing her up in the way she should go. Mrs. Travers had long since washed her hands of the entire business. Uncle Ab, as Matthew also called him, had proved himself a weakling.
Providence, so it seemed to Matthew, must have been waiting impatiently for his advent. Ann at first thought it was some new school of humour. When she found he was serious she set herself to cure him. But she never did. He was too conscientious for that.
The instincts of the guide, philosopher, and friend to humanity in general were already too strong in him. There were times when Abner almost wished that Matthew Pole senior had lived a little longer.
But he did not lose hope. At the back of his mind was the fancy that these two children of his loves would come together. Nothing is quite so sentimental as a healthy old bachelor. He pictured them making unity from his confusions; in imagination heard the patter on the stairs of tiny feet. To all intents and purposes he would be a grandfather. Priding himself on his cunning, he kept his dream to himself, as he thought, but under-estimated Ann's smartness.
For days together she would follow Matthew with her eyes, watching him from behind her long lashes, listening in silence to everything he said, vainly seeking to find points in him. He was unaware of her generous intentions. He had a vague feeling he was being criticised. He resented it even in those days.
"I do try," said Ann suddenly one evening apropos of nothing at all.
"No one will ever know how hard I try not to dislike him."
Abner looked up.
"Sometimes," continued Ann, "I tell myself I have almost succeeded.
And then he will go and do something that will bring it all on again."
"What does he do?" asked Abner.
"Oh, I can't tell you," confessed Ann. "If I told you it would sound as if it was my fault. It's all so silly. And then he thinks such a lot of himself. If one only knew why! He can't tell you himself when you ask him."
"You have asked him?" queried Abner.
"I wanted to know," explained Ann. "I thought there might be something in him that I could like."
"Why do you want to like him?" asked Abner, wondering how much she had guessed.
"I know," wailed Ann. "You are hoping that when I am grown up I shall marry him. And I don't want to. It's so ungrateful of me."
"Well, you're not grown up yet," Abner consoled her. "And so long as you are feeling like that about it, I'm not likely to want you to marry him."
"It would make you so happy," sobbed Ann.
"Yes, but we've got to think of the boy, don't forget that," laughed Abner. "Perhaps he might object."
"He would. I know he would," cried Ann with conviction. "He's no better than I am."
"Have you been asking him to?" demanded Abner, springing up from his chair.
"Not to marry me," explained Ann. "But I told him he must be an unnatural little beast not to try to like me when he knew how you loved me."
"Helpful way of putting it," growled Abner. "And what did he say to that?"
"Admitted it," flashed Ann indignantly. "Said he had tried."
Abner succeeded in persuading her that the path of dignity and virtue lay in her dismissing the whole subject from her mind.
