A little hysterical laugh broke from her, and she made a hopeless gesture of reproof."Your manners are really elementary," she remarked, adding immediately: "I assure you he isn't in the least a dummy--he is considered a most delightful talker."He swept the jest impatiently aside.
"Why do you do it?" he demanded.
"Do what?"
"You know what I mean.Why do you marry him?"Again she bit back a laugh.It was all very primitive, very savage, she told herself; it was, above all, different from any of the life that she had known, and yet, in a mysterious way, it was familiar, as if the unrestrained emotion in his voice stirred some racial memory within her brain.
"Why do I marry him?" She drew a step away, looking at sky and field."Why do I marry him?" She hesitated slightly, "Oh, for many reasons, and all good ones--but most of all because I love him.""You do not love him."
"I beg your pardon, but I do."
For the first time in her life, as her eyes swept over the landscape, she was conscious of a peculiar charm in the wildness of the country, in the absence of all civilising influences--in the open sky, the red road, the luxuriant tobacco, the coarse sprays of yarrow blooming against the fence; in the homely tasks, drawing one close to the soil, and the harvesting of the ripened crops, the milking of the mild-eyed cows, and in the long still days, followed by the long still nights.
Their eyes met, and for a time both were silent.She felt again the old vague trouble at his presence, the appeal of the rustic tradition, the rustic temperament; of all the multiplied inheritances of the centuries, which her education had not utterly extinguished.
"Well, I hope you'll live to regret it," he said suddenly, with bitter passion.
The words startled her, and she caught her breath with a tremor.
"What an awful wish!" she exclaimed lightly.
"It's an honest one."
"I'm not sure I shouldn't prefer a little polite lying.""You won't get it from me.I hope you'll live to regret it.Why shouldn't I?""Oh, you might at least be decently human.If you hadn't been so brave yesterday, I might almost think you a savage to-day.""I didn't do that on purpose, I told you," he returned angrily.
"You can't make me believe that--it's no use trying.""I shan't try--though it's the gospel truth--and you'll find it out some day.""When?"
"Oh, when the time comes, that's all."
"You speak in riddles," she said, "and I always hated guessing."Then she held out her hand with a pleasant, conventional smile.
"I am grateful to you in spite of everything," she said; "and now good-by."His arms hung at his side."No, I won't shake hands," he answered."What's the use?""As you please--only, it's the usual thing at parting.""All the same, I won't do it," he said stubbornly."My hands are not clean." He held them out, soiled with earth and the stains from the tobacco.
For an instant her eyes dwelt upon him very kindly.
"Oh, I shan't mind the traces of honest toil," she said; but as he still hung back, she gave a friendly nod and went quickly homeward along the road.As her figure vanished among the trees, a great bitterness oppressed him, and, picking up his knife, he went back doggedly to his work.
In the kitchen, when he returned to dinner some hours later, he found Cynthia squinting heavily over the torn coat.
"I must say you ruined this yesterday," she remarked, looking up from her needle, "and if you'd listened to me you could have stopped those horses just as well in your old jean clothes.I had a feeling that something was going to happen, when I saw you with this on.""I don't doubt it," he responded, woefully eyeing the garment spread on her knees, "and I may as well admit right now that Imade a mess of the whole thing.To think of my wasting the only decent suit I had on a Fletcher--after saving up a year to buy it, too."Cynthia twitched the coat inside out and placed a square patch over the ragged edges of the rent."I suppose I ought to be thankful you saved the boy's life," she observed, "but I can't say that I feel particularly jubilant when I look at these armholes.Of course, when I first heard of it the coat seemed a mere trifle, but when I come to the mending I begin to wish you'd been heroic in your everyday clothes.There'll have to be a patch right here, but I don't reckon it will show much.Do you mind?""I'd rather wear a mustard plaster than a patch any time," he replied gravely; "but as long as there's no help for it, lay them on--don't slight the job a bit because of my feelings.I can stand pretty well having my jean clothes darned and mended, but Ido object to dressing up on Sundays in a bedquilt.""Well, you'll have to, that's all," was Cynthia's reassuring rejoinder."It's the price you pay for being a hero when you can't afford it."CHAPTER VI.Shows Fletcher in a New Light Responding to a much-distracted telegram from Fletcher, Carraway arrived at the Hall early on the morning of Maria's marriage, to arrange for the transfer to the girl of her smaller share in her grandfather's wealth.In the reaction following the hysterical excitement over the accident, Fletcher had grown doubly solicitous about the future of the boy--feeling, apparently, that the value of his heir was increased by his having so nearly lost him.When Carraway found him he was bustling noisily about the sick-room, walking on tiptoe with a tramp that shook the floor, while Will lay gazing wearily at the sunlight which filtered through the bright green shutters.Somewhere in the house a canary was trilling joyously, and the cheerful sound lent a pleasant animation to the otherwise depressing atmosphere.On his way upstairs Carraway had met Maria running from the boy's room, with her hair loose upon her shoulders, and she had stopped long enough to show a smiling face on the subject of her marriage.
