It was quite warm; she had been walking a little faster than her usual deliberate gait, and checked herself, halting in the warm breath of the syringas. Here she heard her name called in a voice that she recognized, but in tones so faint and subdued that it seemed to her part of her thoughts. She turned quickly and beheld Chris Calton a few feet from her, panting, partly from running and partly from some nervous embarrassment. His handsome but weak mouth was expanded in an apologetic smile; his blue eyes shone with a kind of youthful appeal so inconsistent with his long brown mustache and broad shoulders that she was divided between a laugh and serious concern.
"I saw you--go into the wood--but I lost you," he said, breathing quickly, "and then when I did see you again--you were walking so fast I had to run after you. I wanted--to speak--to you--if you'll let me. I won't detain you--I can walk your way."Miss Trotter was a little softened, but not so much as to help him out with his explanation. She drew her neat skirts aside, and made way for him on the path beside her.
"You see," he went on nervously, taking long strides to her shorter ones, and occasionally changing sides in his embarrassment, "my brother Jim has been talking to you about my engagement to Frida, and trying to put you against her and me. He said as much to me, and added you half promised to help him! But I didn't believe him--Miss Trotter!--I know you wouldn't do it--you haven't got it in your heart to hurt a poor girl! He says he has every confidence in you--that you're worth a dozen such girls as she is, and that I'm a big fool or I'd see it. I don't say you're not all he says, Miss Trotter; but I'm not such a fool as he thinks, for I know your GOODNESS too. I know how you tended me when I was ill, and how you sent Frida to comfort me. You know, too,--for you're a woman yourself,--that all you could say, or anybody could, wouldn't separate two people who loved each other."Miss Trotter for the first time felt embarrassed, and this made her a little angry. "I don't think I gave your brother any right to speak for me or of me in this matter," she said icily; "and if you are quite satisfied, as you say you are, of your own affection and Frida's, I do not see why you should care for anybody'sinterference.""Now you are angry with me," he said in a doleful voice which at any other time would have excited her mirth; "and I've just done it. Oh, Miss Trotter, don't! Please forgive me! I didn't mean to say your talk was no good. I didn't mean to say you couldn't help us. Please don't be mad at me!"He reached out his hand, grasped her slim fingers in his own, and pressed them, holding them and even arresting her passage. The act was without familiarity or boldness, and she felt that to snatch her hand away would be an imputation of that meaning, instead of the boyish impulse that prompted it. She gently withdrew her hand as if to continue her walk, and said, with a smile:--"Then you confess you need help--in what way?""With her!"
Miss Trotter stared. "With HER!" she repeated. This was a new idea. Was it possible that this common, ignorant girl was playing and trifling with her golden opportunity? "Then you are not quite sure of her?" she said a little coldly.
"She's so high spirited, you know," he said humbly, "and so attractive, and if she thought my friends objected and were saying unkind things of her,--well!"--he threw out his hands with a suggestion of hopeless despair--"there's no knowing what she might do."Miss Trotter's obvious thought was that Frida knew on which side her bread was buttered; but remembering that the proprietor was a widower, it occurred to her that the young woman might also have it buttered on both sides. Her momentary fancy of uniting two lovers somehow weakened at this suggestion, and there was a hardening of her face as she said, "Well, if YOU can't trust her, perhaps your brother may be right.""I don't say that, Miss Trotter," said Chris pleadingly, yet with a slight wincing at her words; "YOU could convince her, if you would only try. Only let her see that she has some other friends beside myself. Look! Miss Trotter, I'll leave it all to you--there! If you will only help me, I will promise not to see her--not to go near her again--until you have talked with her. There! Even my brother would not object to that. And if he has every confidence in you, I'm showing you I've more--don't you see? Come, now, promise--won't you, dear Miss Trotter?" He again took her hand, and this time pressed a kiss upon her slim fingers. And this time she did not withdraw them. Indeed, it seemed to her, in the quick recurrence of her previous sympathy, as if a hand had been put into her loveless past, grasping and seeking hers in its loneliness.
None of her school friends had ever appealed to her like this simple, weak, and loving young man. Perhaps it was because they were of her own sex, and she distrusted them.
Nevertheless, this momentary weakness did not disturb her good common sense. She looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then said, with a faint smile, "Perhaps she does not trust YOU. Perhaps you cannot trust yourself."He felt himself reddening with a strange embarrassment. It was not so much the question that disturbed him as the eyes of Miss Trotter; eyes that he had never before noticed as being so beautiful in their color, clearness, and half tender insight. He dropped her hand with a new-found timidity, and yet with a feeling that he would like to hold it longer.
