shortly.
“What do you mean by getting away from my dead-and-alive surroundings?” she inquired.
“It means that after that ceremony to-morrow, which will make you feel neither maid, wife, nor widow, I want to take you away from here. You would like to travel?”
“To travel—to see new places, new people? I, who have not even been allowed to go to Boston?” and she stretched out the flowing white sleeves of her gown, like wings. “What a question to ask me!”
“You could not travel,” he said, gloomily. “There were reasons.”
“I won’t believe there were reasons till I know them,” she said, obstinately. “You have kept me shut up here. You—not poor papa and mamma—until I am so tired of everything, so sick of the same old roads, the same old people, the same girls and boys, even the same sticks and stones. I began to think I was never to leave it. I was to stay here till I died, died, died.”
“Well, now is your chance.”
“I don’t wish any chance this way. I wish to go alone.”
He released the branch and threw himself down again on the seat. “You are going with me.”
“Am I going to England?”
“Yes.”
“Am I going on the Merrimac? Am I really to have a voyage?”
“Yes and yes. Do you think I would let you sail under any other man’s orders?”
She made no reply for a time, and seemed to be fully occupied in following the windings of the serpent-like Rubicon.
“You need not pose as my wife—that is, you need not occupy yourself with me. Every man in command of a ship is accustomed to have solitary young persons travelling in his charge. I shall not impose my society upon you—not unless you request it,” he added, slowly.
She had traced the Rubicon until it blended with the horizon, and now she looked into his resolved face. “What do you propose to do with me when we reach England?”
“I propose to follow your wishes to the last degree,” he said, with weary gallantry. “If you wish to stay in England I will find some suitable place for you; if you wish to come back with me—” a short satisfied laugh finished the sentence.
“You think I will come back with you,” she said, uneasily.
“I know you will,” he replied, with a conceit so marked that her quick temper was aroused in a flash. “I shall not go one step with you,” she cried, petulantly.
“Why not?” he asked, coolly.
“Because you will make me—make me—” She choked and stammered, and could not proceed.
“Make you what?” he said, gravely. “I shall not force you to be my wife, if that is what you mean. I hope—I want you to consent to live with me sometime; but I give you my word that, if you do not come willingly, you come not at all.”
“It isn’t that,” she cried, trying to stamp her foot, but only agitating it violently in the unresisting air. “I know I will give in, I know I will go, I know you will make me mind you—you will make me glad to do it. Oh, I am so angry!”
She was indeed angry, and the pink fingers were now raging among the willow leaves, and stripping them from their twigs. “And you don’t love me,” she went on, furiously, “you only love having your own detestable way.”
“So you think I don’t love you,” he said, meditatively.
“Of course you don’t. You never blush when you see me, you never stammer when you talk. You take everything for granted. Other men don’t act like that.”
“What do I want to blush for? I have done nothing to be ashamed of,” he said, doggedly, “and why should I stammer? I have got a straight tongue in my head, and how do you know what other men do?”
“Don’t I read books—don’t I see them? There’s one boy in Rubicon Meadows turns perfectly purple when he sees me. I don’t like having known you ever since I was a baby. I wish you would go away and let me alone,” and she sulkily executed a movement on the branch by which her back was turned on him.
“All right; I have dangled about you long enough. Now I will give place to the Rubicon Meadows boys. You have played fast and loose with me about our engagement, and I don’t believe you ever intend to marry me. If you don’t call me back before I get to that second row of gooseberry-bushes you will never see me again.”
“You don’t mean ‘never,’ ” said the girl, hotly, over her shoulder; “you’re tired and cross, and you’ve lost your last remnant of temper. You’re in a pretty state of mind to come proposing to a girl.”
“Good-bye, Nina,” he continued, calmly. “Tell your next admirer that I said you were a nice little girl, but you have a d—a dragon of a temper.”
“Good-bye, monster,” she called after him, as he took up his hat and strode away. “You’re a nice man, but you’re getting stout and middle-aged, and you’re a great deal older than I am, and the bald spot in the middle of your head is increasing, and I just hate you—I hate you.”
Wincing under the dainty brutality of her personal allusions, the man clapped his hat on his head and quickened his steps. His gravity of manner was all gone. No one in the world had power to stir him as this slip of a girl had.
She watched him going, dashing the tears from her eyes as she watched. He had passed the rose-bush, the ugly rose-bush that never bore anything but worm-eaten roses. She wished that a tempest would come and tear it from its roots. He had stumbled over the big mossy stone by the well, the miserable stone on which every one tripped. She wished he would fall down and break a limb. He had passed the first row of gooseberry-bushes. Why did they not stretch out their thorny arms and tear his clothes?
Now he had reached the second row of gooseberries. “Pirate!” she shrieked, wrathfully, after him.
He would not reply to her. He was fumbling with the fastening of the gate—the old-fashioned fastening that her father was always forgetting to have mended. She hoped that he might be detained there an hour. No, a gate would not stop him. He had placed a hand on it, and had vaulted over. Now he had disappeared.
She would run to the gate to see the last of him, and she slipped down the tree-trunk like a lithe little cat. “That stupid fastening!” and she furiously rattled the gate. Then she climbed over. She would follow him just for fun—not with the idea of appeasing him.
For some seconds she trotted silently after him down the dusty road. Then she called gently, “Esteban!”
He did not turn. He had said the second row of gooseberry-bushes, and now he was crossing the Rubicon. And he always kept his word.
“Esteban,” she called, wildly, “come back! You have dropped your pocketbook.”
Again he did not look around, but she saw his hand go up to his side. He must have heard her.
She
