THERE was a mountain party that afternoon, organized by Mr. Dibble. Vane supposed that Miss Thomas would be of the number, and himself stayed away, not caring to meet her. But when he came back, after a long walk, she was sitting on the piazza with Mrs. Haviland. Vane passed by, raising his hat. She looked at him almost wistfully, not blushing this time, but very pale. When he came down from his room, before tea, he went up and spoke to her.
“You have not gone to the picnic, Miss Thomas!”
She looked up for a moment at him earnestly; then, dropping her eyes, spoke gravely and rather coldly.
“I do not go on mountain parties, Mr. Vane.”
“At Cinerea Lake?”
“At Cinerea Lake or elsewhere.”
“Really, I had flattered myself that I had been enjoying your own diversions.”
Miss Thomas made no answer whatever to this. Then, after some minutes—“Why did you not answer my letter?”
“I did not know it required an answer.”
“I value your friendship very highly. It made me very unhappy.”
“Apparently you were successful in concealing your unhappiness from your friend Miss Gibbs. I did not know it was my friendship you cared for.”
“I am in the habit of concealing most things from Miss Gibbs. Have I ever given you reason to suppose I cared for anything else than your friendship?”
“You have lost little of your old skill,” said Vane, grimly. “I cannot conceive, clever as you still are, that you should have been, for a year, so slow of comprehension. You would rather I should think you a flirt than maladroit.”
“You think me so?” Miss Thomas spoke as if she were going to cry. Vane looked at her.
“I beg your pardon,” said he, simply, and walked away. Miss Thomas went on with her sewing, bending her head over the work. Truly, thought Vane, it was not a very manly thing in him taunting her that he had failed to make her love him. But had he honestly tried? he questioned himself, as he walked up and down the piazza that evening. Had he not rather put the thing on a basis of flirtation from the beginning?
Bah! he was going back to his old innocence. He had definitely given her to understand that he had loved her, and she had forced him to the utmost boundary of the explicit, and in his foolish magnanimity had made a fool of him. He had failed to make her love him; no one could make her love until she chose, for worldly reasons of her own, to try. He stopped his walk when next he passed by the place where she was sitting. “You do not seem to have your old attention,” he said, brutally. He had a way of saying petty things when with her, and was conscious of it.
“Why do you think I care for attention?” said she, simply.
“You cared for mine——”
“You admit it?”
——“Like that of any masculine unit.”
“I used to respect you, Mr. Vane. Pray do not console me for the loss of your friendship by showing me how worthless it is.”
“You seem to have made that friendship of mine for you a matter of common knowledge among the people in this place.”
“I have never spoken of you to any one since you left, last June.”
There was a ring of truth in her words, but Vane thought of Miss Gibbs and her trivial talk. He sat down in the chair in front of her.
There was nothing said between them for a long time.
“You told me then that you had forgiven me. I thought it was so noble in you! for I had acted very wrongly.” Miss Thomas was rocking nervously in her chair; she had a handkerchief in her hand; occasionally in the dark, she touched it to her eyes. Vane took hold of the end of the handkerchief, as it drooped from her hand. “I told you then that I would forgive you—and it was true,” he said.
“Then give me your friendship back. I am so lonely—without it,” she added in low tones. Vane still held the handkerchief, and moved it slowly with the rocking, alternately drawing it forward and letting it back; a subtle feminine influence seemed to be in the soft cambric, and thrilled warm in his hand.
Vane felt very kindly toward her as he went to sleep that night. After all, she was true, or meant to be, at least. It was not her fault, but his, that she had not cared to be his wife. And it seemed to him that he cared more for his opinion of her than for hers of him. He valued his faith in her more than his hope of winning her.
Again, he doubted if he was in love with her; he doubted if he ever had been; but he still felt for her a sort of tender pity. Poor, lonely, little maiden; with all her beauty she was but a child as yet; and he had expected from her the knowledge and discretion of a woman of the world. Yes, surely, she was different from the other girls in this place. He was glad that his momentary love had calmed and sweetened into friendship.
Vane himself asked her to walk with him the next evening, and they went at sunset through the grave mountain gorges. They were both very quiet; the man had almost nothing to say. They knew one another too well for ordinary conversation.
“Why are you so silent?” said she. “You never used to be so.”
“Am I silent? I do not know why. I suppose I make up for having nothing to say when I am with you by thinking of you so much when I am away. There is so much to be thought, and so little to be said.”
“I am glad that you still think of me.”
Vane looked at her dense black hair, and the soft shine of moisture in her upturned eyes. “The thoughts that I cannot say are so much stronger than the things I can, that they overpower the others, and I can say nothing,” he said.
“Do you know, I often have imaginary conversations with you?”
“Tell me some of them.”
“I cannot. I should say too much if I said anything.”
“Remember our compact, to be only friends,” said Vane, gravely. “Do not speak as if you were more than a friend, or I shall think you less.”
“I do remember our compact. That is why I do not say them.”
The words sounded strangely, but Vane knew she was sincere when she uttered them. When she pressed his hand that night at parting, she still managed to let Vane know that he was to put no false interpretation on her friendliness. She was a woman, and she did not know herself, he thought; but she was not a girl, and she knew him.
A day or two after this they were drifting under the moonlight on the lake. Her beauty had never seemed so marvellous to Vane as on that evening; the soft darkness of her hair, and shadowed light of her blue eyes, like the light of the night sky with the moon at the zenith. Her head was drooping slightly, and one round white arm, bared to the elbow, was trailing with a tender ripple in the water.
“Are you never going to marry, friend of mine?” said Vane, dropping his oars to look at her.
“Yes,” said she, “I shall marry when one man asks me.”
“Who is he?”
“I have never met him,” she muttered, dreamily. “I have never met but one man like him.”
Vane took his oar again. “She meant me to think she meant me,” he thought, and rowed vigorously. She seemed unconscious of the change of motion, and her hand, still trailing in the water, wet her white sleeve. Vane stopped rowing and seated himself beside her. “You are wetting your arm,” said he, lifting her hand from the water. She shall love me, he thought to himself, as he looked at her. A moment later he had taken her hand in his, and pushing the sleeve back from the arm kissed it passionately. The woman made no sign for a moment or two; then, as the man still held her hand, she came to herself with a little shudder. “O don’t, Mr. Vane, pray don’t—oh, I ought not to have let you do it—oh, pray go back——.” Vane left her hand and looked at her steadfastly. “Oh, I ought not to have spoken so,” she went on, with a little moan, “but I pitied you so——. O Mr. Vane, I was so sorry for you, that I forgot; and you were looking at me, and you seemed to care so much——”
“You told me of imaginary conversations you sometimes had with me,” said Vane. “Cannot you tell me what they were?”
“Oh, I ought not to tell you,” said she, breathlessly. “Can we not go home? Will you not row me back?”
Vane slowly resumed his seat. “We each now owe the other forgiveness,” said he. “If you would try to love me, I think I would wait.” The girl in front of him shuddered again, and bent her head away, till he saw where her hair was pencilled into the ivory neck; then she spoke, slowly and simply. “I have sometimes fancied that I could learn to care for you, Mr. Vane—not now, not now—after a great many years, perhaps.”
Vane was silent for some minutes. Then, as they neared the shore, he spoke in a clear undertone. “Will you promise to tell me, if you ever care for any one else—if I wait, Miss Thomas?”
She bowed her head still lower, and Vane took her hand again and held it for a moment. He left in it the old lace handkerchief, still burned at the edges. “When you send it back to me, I shall know what it means,” he said, and kissed it. “But while you still keep it, I shall hope.”
“Oh, I am wrong in saying this,” she sighed. “I may never care for you. And yet in certain ways I care for you so much. It seems sometimes to me that I have no heart. I don’t think I am worthy of you.” She took the handkerchief and put it in her pocket.