CHAPTER IX

She waited to announce her decision till Asaph should call again. Then till Asaph should call again. Then she told him what she had decided, but not why. He suspected every other reason except the truth. He was always a quick, hard fighter, and now Deborah had to endure what Josie had endured all her life. He denounced her, threatened her, cajoled her, pleaded with her, but Josie's ghost chaperoned the two, forbade the banns, seemed to whisper, "His bad temper was what ruined my beauty."

The next day in the store Asaph looked wretched. Deborah grew the more desirable for her denial. He had thought that he had but to ask her; and now she refused his beseeching. He paused before her counter and begged her to reconsider.

He called at her home every evening. He went to her mother and implored her aid. The poor old soul could hardly believe her ears when she heard that Deborah was not only desired, but difficult. She promised Asaph that Deborah would yield, and he went away happy.

There was a weird conflict in the forsaken house that night. The old pictures nearly fell off the walls at the sight of the stupefied mother trying to compel that lifelong virgin to the altar. Mrs. Larrabee pointed out that there would never be another chance. The A.G.&St.P.Ry. was in the receiver's hands. They would starve if Deborah lost her job.

Deborah's only answer was that she would go to Crawford's. Her mother could not shake her decision, and hobbled off to bed in senile dismay. She had always been asking what the world was coming to, and now it was there. Deborah's heart was a whirlpool of indecision. Asaph's gloom appalled her, his evident need of her was his one unanswerable argument. He had given her her start in life. How could she desert his store, how could she refuse him his prayer? But how could she take Josie's place, kidnap Josie's children? Why was such a puzzle forced upon her, where every decision was cruel to some one, treacherous to something?

The turmoil made such a din in her soul that she could hardly transact the business at her counter. As she stood one morning asking a startled shopper if a bolt of maroon taffeta matched a clipping of magenta satin, she saw Newton Meldrum enter the store. As he went by to the office he saw her, lifted his hat, held it in air while he gazed, then went on.

It occurred to Deborah that he could help her. She could lay the case before him, and he would give her an impartial decision. She waited for him, and when he left the office she beckoned to him and asked him shyly if he would take supper with her and her mother.

"You bet I will!" he said, and stared at her so curiously that she flashed red.

Through the supper, too, he stared at her so hard that she buttered her thumb instead of her salt-rising biscuit. Afterward she led him to the parlor and closed the door on her mother. This was in itself an epoch-making deed. Then she said to Newt: "Better light the longest cigar you have, for I have a long story to tell you. Got a match?"

He had, but he said he hadn't. She fetched one, and was so confused that she lighted it for him. Her hand trembled till he had to steady it with his own big fingers, and he stared at her instead of at the match, whose flickering rays lighted her face eerily.

When she had him settled in a chair-the best patent rocker it was-she told him her story. There is no surer test of character than the problem a mind extracts from a difficulty. As Meldrum watched this simple, starved soul stating its bewilderment he saw that her one concern was what she should do to be truest to other souls. There was no question of her own advantage.

He studied her earnestly, and his eyes were veiled with a kind of smoke of their own behind the scarf of tobacco-fumes. When she had finished she raised her eyes to his in meek appeal and murmured, "And now what ought I to do?"

He gazed at her a long while before he answered, "Do you want to go to Crawford's?"

"Well, I'd get more money and I'd get to see New York, but I don't like to leave Asaph. He says he needs me."

"Do you-do you want to marry Asaph?"

"Oh no! I-I like him awfully much, but I-I'm kind of afraid of him, too. But he says he needs me; and Josie's children need me, he says."

"But do you-l-love Asaph?"

"Oh no! not the kind of love, that is, that you read about. No, I'm kind of afraid of him. But I'm not expecting the kind of love you read about. I'm wondering what I ought to do?"

"And you want me to decide?"

"If you only would."

"Why do you leave it to me, of all people?"

"Because you're such a fine man; you know so much. I have more-more respect for you than for anybody else I know."

"You have!"

"Oh yes! Oh yes, indeed!"

"And you'll do what I tell you to?"

"Ye-yes, I will."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Give me your hand on it."

He rose and stood before her and put forth that great palm of his, and she set her slim white fingers in it. And then there must have been an earthquake or something, for suddenly she was swept to her feet and she was enveloped in his big arms and crushed against him, and his big mouth was pressed so fiercely to hers that she could not breathe.

She was so frightened that her heart seemed to break. And then she knew nothing till she found herself in the patent rocker, with him kneeling at her side, pleading with her to forgive him for the brute he was.

She was very weak and very much afraid of him and entirely bewildered. She wanted to run away, but he would not let her rise. The only thing that eased her was his saying over and over again, "You are the most beautiful thing in this world."

She had to laugh at that, and she heard herself saying, "Why, Newt Meldrum, one of us must be crazy!"

"I am-crazy with love of you."

"But to call me beautiful-poor old Debby!"

"You are beautiful; you're the handsomest woman I know."

"Me-with my white hair!"

"White roses. I don't know what's happened to you. You're not the woman I talked to at Asaph's, at all. You're like a girl-with silver hair-only you've got a woman's big heart, and you haven't the selfishness of the young, but that kind of wonderful sadness that sweetens a soul more than anything else."

Meldrum was as much amazed as Deborah was at hearing such rhapsodies from his matter-of-fact soul.

Her comment was prosaic enough. She fell back and sighed. "Well, I guess both of us must be crazy."

"I guess we are." He laughed boyishly. "We'd better get married and keep the insanity in one family."

"Get married!" she echoed, still befuddled. "And after you telling me what you did!"

"Yes, but I didn't know the Lord was at work on a masterpiece like you-girl, woman, grandmother, child, beauty, brains-all in one."

Deborah was as exhausted by the shock as if she had been stunned by lightning. She was tired out with the first kiss an impassioned man had ever pressed upon her lips, the first bone-threatening hug an ursine lover had ever inflicted upon her wicker ribs.

She was more afraid of Newt Meldrum than she had been of Asaph. But when she told him she would think it over he declined to wait. He laughed at her pleas. She had promised to abide by his decision, and he had decided that she should go neither to Asaph's nor to Crawford's, but to New York-not as any old buyer, either, except of things for her own beautiful body and some hats for that fleecy white hair of hers. And she should live in New York, take her mother there if she wanted, and close up this house after they had been married in it.

She had been shaking her head to all these things and dismissing them gently as the ravings of a delirious boy. But now she said: "Oh, I could never be married in this town."

"And why not?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just couldn't."

She was still afraid that people would laugh at her, but more afraid that they would think she was trying to flaunt her triumph over them-the triumph of marrying the great Newton Meldrum. She could bear the laughter; she was used to the town's ridicule. But she could not endure to be triumphing over anybody.

Meldrum did not fret over her motives; he simply nodded.

"All right; then we'll be married in New York. How soon can you start?"

She stared at him, this amazing man. "How soon? Why, I haven't said I'd marry you yet! I'll have to think it over."

He laughed and crushed her in his arms and would not let her breathe till she breathed "Yes." He was the most amazing man. But, then, men were all so amazing when you got to know them. They must have all gone crazy at once, though.

THE END