ESTHER’S hours of sleep that night were few indeed. She was happy one moment and miserable the next. Bob loved her—he told her so. And she loved him, she was sure of it now. But did they love each other enough? Were they sufficiently certain of that love to go on to face its inevitable consequences, regardless of what those consequences must mean to themselves and to others? For if they were not, both of them, absolutely sure, those consequences were too tremendous to be faced. Her uncle had permitted friendship between Elisha Cook’s grandson and herself—the fact of his doing so was still an unexplainable mystery to her—but she was certain that he would never consent to their marriage. And Bob’s grandfather would be equally resolute in his opposition. It was one thing to say, as Bob had said, that the family feud had no part in their lives. It had. She loved her uncle dearly and she knew that he idolized her. She owed him a debt of gratitude beyond the limits of measure. Only one reason could ever be strong enough to warrant her risking the end of their affectionate association and the repudiation of that debt. If she were certain that she loved Bob Griffin—really loved him and would always love him—then nothing else mattered. Except, of course, the same certainty of his enduring love for her. But were they certain? They had known each other such a short time.
And there were other considerations. Her future with her beloved music, the career she had dreamed. She had no money of her own. Bob had some, but not a great deal. He was almost as dependent upon his grandfather as she was upon Foster Townsend. Might not his chances for fame and success as an artist be wrecked if he married her? She must think of that, too. There was so much to think of. She thought and thought, but morning brought no definite conclusion except one, which was that she must continue to think and, meanwhile, there must be no plighted troth, no engagement, no definite promise of any kind between them. She would tell Bob that when they next met. If he really loved her he would understand and be willing to wait, as she would wait, and see.
She came downstairs early and found that her uncle was an even earlier riser. He had gone out to the stable, so Nabby said, but would, of course, come in to breakfast when called. And he had already told Mrs. Gifford of Esther’s coming trip abroad. Nabby was excited and even more voluble than usual.
“I suspicioned there was somethin’ up,” she declared. “He’s been nervous and uneasy for over a fortni’t. And cranky—my soul! He was like a dog with one flea, you never could tell the place he’d snap at next. Varunas noticed it too, of course, and he was consider’ble worried about it. Honest, I cal’late Varunas was beginnin’ to be afraid that your uncle was losin’ his mind or somethin’. ‘He’s touched in the head, I do believe,’ he said. ‘If he ain’t why does he allow that grandson of ’Lisha Cook’s to come here so twice a week reg’lar? A Cook don’t belong in this house and you know it, Nabby. What is he let come here for?’
“Well, I didn’t know why, of course, but I never see Foster Townsend yet when he didn’t have a reason for doin’ things and I spoke right up and said so. ‘When Cap’n Foster gets ready to put that Griffin boy out he’ll do it,’ I told him. ‘You say yourself the cap’n don’t act natural these days. Well, maybe there’s the reason. Probably he don’t really like that young feller’s ringin’ our front doorbell any better than you do, and he’s just waitin’ for a good excuse to tell him so.’ That’s what I said, but I wan’t so terrible satisfied with what I said and Varunas he was less satisfied than I was.
“‘Hugh!’ says he, disgusted. ‘When I see Foster Townsend waitin’ for an excuse to do what he wants to, then I won’t guess he’s gone crazy, I’ll know it. When he sets out to tell the President of the United States, or the minister, or Judas Iscariot, or anybody else, to go to Tophet he tells ’em so and then thinks up the excuse afterwards. You bet he ain’t actin’ natural! Nabby Gifford, if Foster Townsend don’t need a doctor, or a keeper or somethin’, then I do. This kind of goin’s on is too much for me!’”
Having contributed this conversational gem from the Gifford family treasury, Nabby paused. Possibly she expected Esther to offer some explanation of the Griffin visits. If so she was disappointed, for Esther said nothing. Nabby picked up a fork from the breakfast table and then put it down again.
“Well, anyhow,” she continued, “be that as it will or must, as the sayin’ is, your uncle has acted queer for quite a spell and ’twan’t until this very mornin’ that he give me the least hint of why he was doin’ it. When he told me no longer than twenty minutes ago, that he had been layin’ his plans for you to go over to live along with them—er—heathen in foreign lands—when he told me you was goin’ and he was goin’ to stay here to home alone—I got my answer, or part of it anyhow. The poor soul is about crazy with lonesomeness at the very idea. That’s what ails him. Are you really truly goin’ to go, Esther?”
Esther nodded. “Uncle says I must,” she replied. “He wants me to go on with my singing and my music and he can’t go himself—at present.”
She went on to tell of the proposed trip, of Mrs. Carter, and the details as she had been told them by Townsend.
“Goodness knows I don’t want to leave him,” she said, “but he insists that I must. He has arranged for everything. I tried to say No, but he won’t listen. He will have his own way, as he always does, I suppose. I know how lonesome he will be. I shall be almost as lonely without him,” she added.
Nabby seemed to be thinking. There was an odd expression upon her face.
“You don’t suppose—” she began, and stopped in the middle of the sentence.
“I don’t suppose what?” Esther asked.
“Oh, nothin’! It’s silly, I guess. I just wondered—it come across my mind—if it might be he was sendin’ you off so’s to get you away from—well, from this Bob Griffin.... Humph! No, ’tain’t likely he’d do that, because—”
Esther broke in. Her face was flushed and her tone indignantly resentful.
“The idea!” she cried. “What do you mean by saying such a thing, Nabby Gifford? How ridiculous! What has Bob Griffin got to do with my going abroad? Uncle and I had planned to go together; we have talked about it ever so many times. What on earth are you talking about?”
Mrs. Gifford hastily protested that she had not meant anything.
“’Twas just a foolish notion, I know,” she admitted. “Don’t know why I said it, I don’t. Of course if Cap’n Foster wanted to get clear of that Cook boy he’d have told him his room was a whole lot better’n his company. He don’t have to let him come here.”
“Oh, stop! Why shouldn’t he come here? He hasn’t anything to do with the old lawsuit. Yes, and so far as that goes, Uncle Foster asked him to call.”
Nabby stared. For an instant her mouth, which had opened to speak, closed and remained so. Varunas had vowed, during one of their domestic conferences, that he would give something for a tintype of her in that condition. “Only ’twould be so mirac’lous nobody’d believe ’twas you,” he had added.
The miraculous condition lasted but the fraction of a second. The mouth opened again.
“What!” gasped Nabby. “Do you mean to tell me that Cap’n Foster asked that Griffin one to come to this house—really asked him?”
Esther hesitated. She had spoken too hastily. And what she had said was not the exact truth. Her uncle had not invited Bob to call; he had merely prophesied that he would call. But at all events he had not forbidden him to do so.
“Oh, never mind!” she said, turning impatiently away. “What difference does it make?... Here is Uncle now, thank goodness!”
He came into the dining room, smilingly bade her good-morning, and they sat down to breakfast. She was apprehensive. They had agreed that neither should keep a secret from the other, but, in spite of this agreement, she was certain that this secret—hers and Bob’s—must be kept, at least until she was sure what her final answer to Bob should be. When her mind was fully made up, either one way or the other, she would tell him, but meanwhile it was far better for all concerned to say nothing. So she tried her best to appear at ease and, while pouring the coffee, commented upon the weather and similar safe and everyday topics. His replies were equally casual. Nevertheless she was still fearful. It seemed to her that those sharp eyes of his must see through her pretense.
Apparently they did not. He spoke of the Paris trip, of course. She was to sail in a few weeks. He had written another letter to Mrs. Carter and bade the latter make preparations to leave as soon as possible. “Not that I’m in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added, with a rueful smile. “I guess you know it isn’t that. But I am something like Sarah Bigsby, after she lost her husband. She told Colton, the minister, that she didn’t know but she wished Isaac had died sooner, because if he had she would have had more time to get used to missing him in.”
It was not until they were about to rise from the table that he mentioned the subject she most dreaded.
“Humph!” he observed, folding his napkin. “Well, young Griffin was as surprised when you told him the news as we thought he would be, eh?”
Esther was thankful that her own napkin required folding. She could look at that and not at him.
“Yes, Uncle Foster,” she answered. “He was very much surprised.”
“I’ll bet! And glad to have you go, of course?”
She pretended not to notice the irony in the question.
“Why, he was glad I was to have such a wonderful trip and the opportunity to keep on with my music,” she replied.
“Um-hum. I’m sure of that. Coming around Friday night, as usual, is he?”
“I—I don’t know.... Why, yes, I do know, too. He said he should come, so I suppose he will.”
The statement seemed, for some reason, to irritate him. He thrust the folded napkin into the ornate and massive silver ring—it had been a birthday gift from his wife—and rose to his feet.
“Humph!” he growled. “I’ll bet! If he ’tends church as regular as he does here he’ll stand a better chance for heaven than any of his crew I ever heard of.... There, there!” he added, his ill-humor vanishing as quickly as it came. “Don’t mind my crankiness. I am liable to be that way for a while. Every time I think of sitting down to breakfast here without you I want to bite somebody. For the first few mornings after you leave I guess likely ’twill be better to have Nabby wait on table, instead of the other girl. Nabby would be moderately safe. I don’t imagine I should bite her; she’s too old and stringy to tempt my appetite.”
He mentioned Bob’s name but once more that morning. Then he asked a question he had asked before.
“Has he told his grandfather yet about how sociable and friendly he has got to be with us?” he inquired. “No?... Humph! Saving the news for the old man’s birthday, maybe, the way you and he saved up that picture for mine. Well, many happy returns, Elisha. Ho, ho!”
Esther made no comment. The speech, however, strengthened her conviction concerning her uncle’s real feeling toward Bob. If he knew—or when he knew.... She shuddered at the thought and endeavored to put it from her mind. Meanwhile she tried her best to show by every word and act her devotion and love for Foster Townsend. She and her uncle were closer during this period than ever before. Later she was to be very thankful that this was so.
Bob came on Friday evening at the usual hour, and, also as usual, soon after his arrival Townsend went to his own room. His keen dislike for any member of what he contemptuously called the “Cook tribe” was now, in Griffin’s case, augmented by a bitter jealousy. Yet he could not bring himself to remain there and stand guard upon them. He had told Esther he trusted her. Well, he would carry the trust to the limit, and, thank heaven, that limit was close at hand. Foster Townsend prided himself upon never having, in trade or politics or horse racing, played the sneak. He would beat his competitor by what he considered fair means—that is, by craft or shrewdness or even force—but not by sneaking or spying. To remain in that room during Bob Griffin’s visits seemed to him just that, and he would not stoop to it.
Esther, for her part, was always conscious of the trust which her uncle placed in her. It was noble of him, she thought. And this particular evening, as he left the room and she turned to face her lover, the consciousness strengthened her determination to say what must be said. That it would be hard to say she knew. But when they were alone and Bob came toward her, his hands outstretched and his face alight, it was harder than she had dreamed.
He would have taken her in his arms, but she avoided the embrace.
“No, Bob, no!” she protested. “You mustn’t. Please don’t!”
He persisted, of course, but she was firm.
“You mustn’t,” she repeated. “It isn’t right.”
He laughed. “Right!” he exclaimed. “Why, of course, it is right. I have been waiting for it—forever, it seems to me. Nothing else is right. Come, Esther!”
Still she avoided him. “No, Bob,” she insisted, “it isn’t right. It is wrong—now, at least. Oh, don’t make it so hard for me! Sit down, please. I have so much to say to you.”
He hesitated. Then, with a shrug and a smile, he threw himself into the easy-chair.
“Well,” he observed, still smiling. “I don’t know what this is all about, but here I am. I am going to listen because you ask me to, but nothing you may say will make the slightest difference between you and me. I tell you that in the beginning.”
“Oh, yes, it will! It must.”
“But it won’t. When you told me you loved me—”
“But I didn’t! I didn’t!”
“Yes, you did. At any rate, you couldn’t say you didn’t love me and that amounted to the same thing.... Oh, my dear, what is the use of pretending? You know we love each other. Nothing else matters but that.”
“Yes, something else does matter. It must matter. Oh, Bob, please be reasonable and help me, instead of making it harder. Even if I do care—even if we both care—”
“And we do ... now, don’t we?”
“Oh, please! Don’t you see? There is so much to be thought of. I have been thinking every minute since—since you went away. Bob, haven’t you thought at all?”
He shook his head. “I have been thinking of just one thing,” he declared. “The essential thing. That is enough for me.”
“It isn’t enough. It can’t be. How can we be so selfish? When I think of Uncle Foster and of your grandfather and what this would mean to them, and to me, if they knew it—”
“Esther!”
“Bob—do think a little! If you and I were to—to—well, to tell them we were engaged, that we dreamed of such a thing, they would—I don’t know what they might do. They hate each other. Uncle loves me dearly, but he never, never would be reconciled to my marrying you. He would turn me out of his house, I know, and—”
Bob interrupted. “Esther, dear!” he protested. “What are you talking about? People don’t turn their relations out of doors into the snow nowadays, except on the stage. Captain Townsend would be mad at first, perhaps; although if he does worship you, as you say, I can’t think he would be mad long. Naturally, if he loved you, he would want you to do what would make you happiest. But, mad or not, he wouldn’t turn you out. That is foolish.”
“No, it isn’t. And I am sure your grandfather would have nothing more to do with you. They aren’t like other people. This lawsuit has—well, it has made them almost crazy—in that way.”
Her earnestness had its effect. Bob’s lip tightened. “Well, then,” he said, grudgingly, “suppose they did—turn us out, as you say? Probably they wouldn’t, but if they did—what of it? We would have each other. I have a little money and I could earn more. Look here, Esther; if you care as much for me as I do for you you won’t mind being poor. That won’t count at all. We’ll be together and—well, give me the chance and I swear you shan’t be poor long.... Of course, if you don’t care for me as much as that—if what you think about is money, why—”
“Bob! Bob, how can you! If money were all—yes, and if I, myself, were all, I should— No, I don’t even know that. I must be very, very certain before I even consider what I might do.”
“Certain! Certain of what? Do you mean that you don’t know whether you love me or not?... Esther!”
He was very appealing as he leaned forward in the chair, his eyes fixed upon hers. But she fought against the appeal as she had determined to fight.
“Why—why, yes, Bob,” she said, “perhaps I mean just that. I like you very much. Perhaps I may even—”
“Esther, dearest—”
“No. There must not be any ‘perhaps.’ There can’t be if you and I are to give up everything—and everybody—and think only of ourselves. And then—if I were absolutely sure I loved you enough to do that—I should—yes, then more than ever, I should have to think of you. If I came to be the cause of spoiling your life, your success with your painting and all that, I should never forgive myself.”
“Nonsense! You spoil my life! You! Why, you will be the one who will make me sure to succeed. With you to work for, and to help me, I can do anything. Just give me the chance to prove it.... But there! I guess I see how it is. You don’t love me, after all.”
“You mustn’t say that. Bob, you said just now that if Uncle Foster really cared for me he would want to do what would make me happiest. If you really care, as you say you do, you, too, will want me to be happy. How can I be, knowing that what I am doing is sure to make my uncle and your grandfather miserable, and might, unless we were both very sure, make you and me miserable later on? I can’t. You mustn’t ask me to.”
He leaned back in the chair. For a moment he looked at her. Then he rose to his feet.
“Yes,” he said, gloomily. “I see. You have thought it over, haven’t you?... Well, all right. If the idea of marrying me makes you miserable I should be the last to coax you into doing it. You are right there, I guess.... Well, good-by.”
She, too, rose.
“No,” she said, hurriedly. “No, Bob, it isn’t good-by. That is, unless you want it to be.”
“What is it, then?”
“It is just—just wait. Wait and see. We needn’t—no, we mustn’t—consider ourselves engaged. We mustn’t even talk about that yet awhile between ourselves. If you are willing for us to go on as friends, good friends, and wait until—until we both know the right thing to do, then—well, I should like that very much indeed. That would make me happy.”
He turned and caught her hand.
“Esther,” he pleaded, earnestly, “before I answer that will you answer one question of mine, just one? You say you aren’t sure you love me?”
“I said I was not sure I loved you enough to warrant the sacrifice both of us would have to make.”
“I see. Well, just one more. Are you sure you don’t love me at all?”
“No, Bob.”
“You just want us to keep on being friends and wait until you are sure?”
“Until I am sure one way or the other. Yes.”
“All right. I will wait until we are both a hundred years old and have our wedding in the home for aged couples, if that’s necessary. The waiting will end in just one way, because that is the way it has got to end. You are worth waiting for, and I’ll be game. It’s a bargain.... And now what?”
“Why, now sit down and we’ll talk about other things, just as we always have.”
Which was easy to say, but hard to do. They tried to confine the conversation to the safe channels of everyday travel, but those channels were tremendously dull and uninteresting. Esther told the little more she had learned of her uncle’s plan for her European trip and Bob listened absently. It seemed to her—and in spite of her good resolutions she felt a pang of disappointment—that he was surprisingly resigned to the parting and long separation. Instead of groaning when she told him she might remain abroad for even two years instead of one, he smiled and agreed that one year’s study was not sufficient to complete her musical education. It was not until he had risen to go that he gave the reason for his complacency.
“I haven’t told you that you weren’t the only one who had a plan, have I?” he asked, with a twinkle. “I should have told it at first if you hadn’t washed everything else out of my head with that bucket of cold water about not being sure that you cared a continental for me. I’ve had a surprise up my sleeve for you all the evening. I am going to Paris, myself.”
She gasped. “Bob Griffin!” she cried. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t have you climbing up to be a prima donna while I stay here and keep on daubing at two-for-a-cent pictures. No, I’ll be studying to be a Rembrandt. And in the same city. I sail for Paris about as soon as you do. If I dared it would be on the same ship.... Hold on! Let me tell you about it.”
It was the idea he had already mentioned, that which had come to him just before their parting on Tuesday evening. The money he had inherited was sufficient to pay his expenses. He had always intended using it for some such purpose.
“Of course,” he added, with a rather rueful grin, “there was a time, a little while ago, when I began to hope I—well, you and I—might use some of that money in other ways; but when you said you were going abroad, to leave me biting my brush ends on this side of the pond, I saw a new light. I told grandfather and, of course, there was a rumpus. He gave in, finally, as he usually does, because he is a good old sport and also, I guess, because he saw fighting was no use in this case. I am going, and going pretty soon. I’ll be in Paris when you are and as long as you are; be there waiting for you to make up your mind concerning that matter we mustn’t talk about. We’ll be there together, and waiting together.... Now what do you think of that?”
She did not know what to think, still less what to say. And she could not trust herself to say much of anything at the moment. She was conscious of a thrill, a dangerous thrill, of delight. They were not to be separated, after all. He was to be near her during her exile, she would see him often, perhaps almost as often as now. Why—
And, as they stood there in the doorway of the hall, the clock in that hall chimed eleven.
“Well, what do you think?” he repeated. She shook her head.
“I can’t think at all—now,” she confessed. “I— Well, you have taken my breath away. Are you sure— But I mustn’t talk about it to-night. It is eleven o’clock and you must go. The next time I see you you will tell me all about it, of course.”
“Of course. And that will be Tuesday evening, or sooner. But tell me this: Aren’t you glad?”
“Of course I am glad. You know I am.... Good-night.”
He lingered for an instant. This was not the sort of “good-night” he had counted upon when he came. But it was a part of the bargain. He had sworn to be “game.”
“Good-night, Esther,” he said, and walked down the path.