Part 18

Mr. Terhune shook his gray head.

“Too bad!” he said. “Well, I’m not surprised.”

And then and there, over the breakfast table, floated the word from which poor Mildred had run away--that word bitter as death, which she could not tolerate the thought of hearing. It passed between Mr. and Mrs. Terhune, it went out to the servants in the kitchen, it found its way into many other houses--the word “jilted.”

The Terhunes were very fond of Mildred, and were really perturbed by her disappearance. They knew she had no money and no friends elsewhere. They consoled themselves, however, by their knowledge of her remarkable dignity, self-possession, and determination. A girl like Mildred, they said, would be sure to get on, wherever she went.

“And, in a way, it was the best thing she could have done,” Mrs. Terhune said, after a week or so. “There’s so much spiteful gossip about the affair. Poor Mildred!”

Even Mrs. Terhune’s genuine affection was tinged by a faint hue of complacency.

“Of course I knew how it would be,” she remarked. “I knew Will was absolutely worthless. Poor Mildred!”

Now, in order to comprehend the case of Mildred Henaberry, one thing must be admitted. She had a thousand good qualities, the best manners in the world, and a rare type of beauty, but she was not lovable. You were obliged to respect and to admire her, and sometimes you resented the obligation.

As a result, the gossip about her had a decidedly malicious flavor. Any number of people were delighted at being able to laugh at perfection brought low. All the malice was toward Mildred--none for Will. Perhaps, if she had stayed for pity, she would have been pitied, but in running away she forfeited all claim to generosity.

So that when Robert Dacier arrived, a few months later, he heard Mildred spoken of as a jilted spinster, who had vanished in order to hide her hideous disappointment. He heard that she had been a school-teacher, that she had been “dignified” and “fastidious.” This conveyed to his mind the picture of a severe and unpleasant female of forty who had got what she deserved.

Not that Dacier gave much time to thinking about Mildred, for he was not at all a thoughtful young man. He was a cheerful, careless, good-looking fellow, who was a nephew of Mrs. Terhune. That lady refused to admit that of all her nephews and nieces he was her favorite, because she prided herself upon being a just and sensible woman, far too reasonable to be beguiled by the lad’s curly head and debonair good humor.

Not that he didn’t have solid and excellent qualities. He was doing very well as an architect, and was making a creditable income. Certainly he spent it all, but he spent it in a nice, gentlemanly way.

He earned less in a year than his uncle spent in a month; yet when the fellow came on a visit to the Terhunes, there was not a trace of poor relation about him. He had excellent cigars to offer to his uncle, and he showed his aunt all sorts of little attentions that touched and delighted her beyond measure. She had never had children of her own, and I don’t believe she had ever felt much happier than she felt when making a round of calls with that engaging and delightful nephew, showing him off with naïve complacency, and fairly basking in his affection.

Naturally she talked to him about Mildred Henaberry, because the affair had upset and troubled her. He listened good-humoredly, not in the least interested; but he was destined to be plunged into that affair, head over heels, and it was Mrs. Terhune who was to push him into it.

It happened simply enough.

“I heard about a new tea room up near Beacon,” he said to his aunt one afternoon. “Let’s run up there, Aunt Kate!”

“You don’t want to go with your old aunt,” said she, beaming with delight. “At your age, you want the society of young people.”

He answered exactly as she wanted him to answer. She dressed herself in her best and most imposing style, and off they went.

It was the most perfect sort of August day--bland, fair, not too hot, not dusty. Mrs. Terhune leaned back, greatly enjoying it all--the light air blowing against her face, the pleasant scents of the countryside, and, above all, the festive feeling caused by the presence of the holiday-making nephew.

Being only twenty-five to her fifty, Dacier was perhaps not quite so contented. He would have liked to drive, but it made his aunt nervous, so he had foregone that pleasure--although, to tell the truth, it made _him_ nervous to sit back and go creeping along at such a calm, moderate pace. However, he enjoyed life so much that he was indulgent toward other people, and wished to make them happy as well; so on they went, conversing affectionately.

III

“Mercy!” suddenly cried Mrs. Terhune. “Can it be? Johnson, please stop the car!”

This Johnson did, and Mrs. Terhune pointed to a field to the right of the road, across which a white figure was sauntering.

“Robert,” she said to her nephew, “I’m sure that’s Mildred. I should know that figure and that walk anywhere. Oh, dear, she’s going through the fence! I can’t lose her. Do run after her and bring her back--that’s a dear boy!”

So off went young Dacier across the sunny field, bareheaded, and, his aunt thought, marvelously fleet and graceful.

The figure in white had gone through a gap in the fence, and had turned up a shady little road, but Dacier took a short cut, leaped over the fence, and stood before her, flushed and very hot. He had forgotten the jilted spinster’s surname, if he had ever heard it; but he felt quite certain that this was not she--not this serene and lovely young creature.

“Excuse me,” said he, “but I thought you were Mildred.”

She was startled.

“That is my name,” she said; “but--”

“But I’m afraid you’re not the right one--not Mrs. Terhune’s Mildred.”

“Oh, Mrs. Terhune!” cried the girl, very much distressed. “Did she send you?”

“Yes,” he replied, rather absent-mindedly, because he was trying to reconcile his imaginary portrait of the jilted spinster with the reality before him. He was impressed, deeply impressed, by this dignified and serious girl, because he was not very dignified or serious himself, but careless and light-hearted and sometimes a little impertinent. “Then,” he added politely, “if you are the right one, won’t you come and speak to Mrs. Terhune? She’s waiting in the car. She’s very anxious to see you.”

Mildred turned. Mrs. Terhune had now got out of the car, and was standing beside it. At that distance she seemed a small and shapeless creature, with veil and scarf fluttering, and her hand waving in earnest welcome.

“Oh, the dear thing!” said Mildred.

Her tone was so odd that Dacier looked quickly at her, and saw her gray eyes filled with tears. Why tears at the sight of Aunt Kate?

“I’m sorry,” she went on. “I can’t see her just now. If you’ll please tell her”--Mildred turned away her face--“please tell her I’ll write. Please tell her I’m just as fond of her. Thank you! Good-by!”

After a few steps she stopped again, because Dacier was still beside her.

“Thank you!” she repeated significantly, with meaning.

“You’re welcome,” he said courteously. “Very pretty country about here, isn’t it?”

“You mustn’t keep Mrs. Terhune waiting,” was her reply.

“Well, you see, I hate to go back and disappoint her. She wanted so much to see you. She’s always talking about you.”

He positively jumped at the look he got from Mildred.

“Is she?” the girl asked, with a cold, unpleasant smile.

“Yes,” he said. “She--”

“Then please tell her that Will--Mr. Mallet--is coming back very soon. I’ll let her know, of course, when the wedding is definitely arranged. Just now I’m very busy with my preparations.”

Dacier was not lacking in wit. He didn’t believe a word of this, but he was so sorry for the girl, he so much admired her fine pride, that he answered in the most convincing way. He remembered everything he had ever heard about Mallet, and he spoke of him seriously, with interest. He asked about the florist project, and talked to Mildred as to a girl authentically and eternally engaged. It was the nature of the fellow to make himself agreeable. He did it without effort, and almost without motive--although he was by no means unsusceptible to Mildred’s grave beauty.

She was disarmed. She scarcely noticed that he went on walking beside her to the very gate of her little garden, so absorbed was she in her talk about Will. Dacier still didn’t believe her, but he was not at all amused. He thought it very pitiful that she should bring out this phantom lover, should lean upon this straw man, when she herself was so strong, so splendidly alive.

“Mercy!” she suddenly exclaimed. “What will Mrs. Terhune think? Please hurry back to her! And you’ll tell her--about Will, won’t you?”

He did hurry back, leaping over the fence again and running across the field.

“But where’s Mildred?” asked his aunt, terribly disappointed.

“She was too busy to come,” he said, with a smile. “She’s too busy waiting for Mallet.”

“Oh, dear, how very foolish! She’s a splendid girl, but she _is_ so obstinate. I can’t bear to lose her again!”

“Don’t worry,” said her nephew cheerfully. “We’ll arrange all that, Aunt Kate. I’m rather obstinate myself.”

IV

Mildred lived in the most wonderful little cottage, so tiny, so neat, like the cottage of the three bears, or the abode of the dwarfs. The old woman who came to keep it so bright and spotless was exactly like a witch, too, and Mildred herself might well have been an enchanted princess--except that she worked rather hard, and kept accounts. A small sign in the window read, “Miss Mildred Henaberry--piano lessons,” and all through the day confirmation of this floated out across the garden and into the road--stumbling scales, painful excursions in Czemy, and then the masterly touch of the teacher herself, showing what might be done.

Her pupils liked her, because she was patient, polite, and always clear and definite. She liked them because they were young, and because they had such stubby little fingers, such earnest scowls, and such jolly laughs.

On this morning of pelting summer rain she had escorted one of them to the front door--a rosy, moonfaced little girl in spectacles--and was opening a minute umbrella that would shelter the little cropped head, when she saw, coming down the lane, the young man who had been Mrs. Terhune’s emissary. He saw Mildred, raised his hat, and came splashing on through the mud, with his coat collar turned up and his cap pulled down. He entered the gate and reached the veranda steps just as the little girl was coming down.

He smiled down at the child; and, if you will believe it, this youthful creature, not more than ten years old, hesitated, and then came up the steps after him.

“What is it, dear?” asked Mildred.

“If he’s going away soon,” said the little girl, “shan’t I wait and let him go under my umbrella?”

Dacier kissed her.

“I’m very much obliged,” he told her; “but I’ve come for a music lesson, so you’d better not wait.”

They were both silent while the child went down the path.

“Really,” said Mildred, “I am--”

“Of course it’s a subterfuge,” said he; “but even at that, why shouldn’t I have a music lesson? It would be such a good way for us to get acquainted.”

“I see no reason for our becoming acquainted,” said Mildred.

Dacier looked into the distance.

“Even that little girl,” he said, “could read my face and see the sort of fellow I am--honest as daylight, kind, simple--”

Not for the world would Mildred smile.

“I take only children as pupils,” she remarked.

“The sign doesn’t say so,” Dacier pointed out. “I noticed that sign when I was here before. Legally, I’m not so sure that you’d be allowed to discriminate against any person of good character who--”

“Did Mrs. Terhune send you?”

“No. She didn’t need to.”

“Then I’m sorry, but I’m very busy.”

“Miss Henaberry,” said Dacier firmly, “if I’m personally repulsive to you, of course I’ll go at once; but otherwise, why can’t I talk to you for a few minutes? I’m Mrs. Terhune’s nephew, Robert Dacier. I didn’t bring a certificate in my pocket, but I hope you’ll believe me without that.”

Now Dacier was not personally repulsive to Mildred--not in the least. She considered him somewhat presumptuous and overconfident, yet there was about him something that pleased her, something gallant and high-spirited and endearing.

“And he’s Mrs. Terhune’s nephew,” she thought. “I _ought_ to be nice to him.”

To tell you the truth, no matter whose nephew he had happened to be, I don’t believe that Mildred could have helped being nice to him. Very few people could. She let him into her neat little sitting room, and she felt concerned, as any properly constituted woman would have felt, because he was dripping wet. She made him a cup of tea, and, having an hour to wait for the next pupil, sat down to talk to him. Dacier was good at talking.

After he had gone, she was not sorry that he had said he would come again. The smoke of his cigarette lingered in the room, and was not disagreeable. The sound of his voice lingered, too, and perhaps the memory of his audacious, blue-eyed, sunburned face. It was as if a fresh breeze had blown through her neat, lonely little house.

Come again he did, the very next evening, and he made of it the single happy, jolly evening in a long succession of solitary ones. They sat out on the veranda, with the moon shining; and if he had not the respectful humility she had found in other young men, he was none the less interesting for that.

He had no poems to read, as Will Mallet had had. Indeed, he knew little about poetry, or music, or any of the arts; but he said he would like to learn, if she would teach him. When he was going, he asked what time he should come the next day.

“I don’t think you had better come to-morrow,” she said, a little regretfully.

He pointed out that his holiday wouldn’t last forever, and that it did him good to come and hear her talk. He gave other unreasonable reasons, and he did come the next day, and the day after, as well.

Before a week had passed, Mildred saw that this must be stopped. It made her angry--so very angry that she nearly wept over it alone at night.

“I suppose he thinks, and Mrs. Terhune thinks, that he’s doing a kindness to a poor, forlorn, jilted old maid,” she thought. “He’s entirely too sure of himself. He takes it for granted that I’m glad to see him all the time. He thinks--”

Her ideas of what he thought distressed her beyond measure. That evening, when he appeared again, he found her very cool and aloof--even on the moonlit veranda, and even while he made his best efforts to amuse her.

“Mr. Dacier,” she said suddenly, “I’m very sorry, but I think you’d better not come any more.”

His voice, when he answered had a curious gentleness.

“Why?” he asked.

She was silent for a few moments.

“Because--I’m afraid Mr. Mallet wouldn’t like it,” she said at length. “While he’s away--”

Dacier got down from the railing and began to walk up and down.

“You know, I’m engaged to him,” she added.

“Yes, I know,” said Dacier; “but--”

Mildred felt her face grow hot in the darkness.

“I suppose you’ve heard all sorts of malicious gossip!” she said vehemently.

“Yes--I did hear--something,” he answered slowly.

“You thought he wasn’t coming back?”

Dacier had taken his hat. He paused at the top of the steps, and looked at her.

“I can’t imagine any man not coming back--to you!” he said.

V

As he was coming down the lane the next morning, he met the rosy, moonfaced little girl in spectacles, and they stopped for a chat. She told him all about her kitten at home, and talked of other interesting topics. They shook hands at parting.

“Oh, my goodness, Mr. Dacier!” she called, as he was moving off. “I’ve forgotten Miss Henaberry’s letter. I stop in at the post office for her, you know, to ask if there are any letters, only there never are; but there was one to-day.”

“I’ll take it,” said Dacier, not sorry for this pretext.

He was at a loss how to proceed. He couldn’t hurt the obstinate, proud creature by so much as hinting that he knew Mallet would never come back. He had decided to entreat her to give up this elusive lover; and he understood Mildred well enough to know that she would make it hard for him.

Not that Dacier shirked things that were hard. Whatever his faults, he was not lacking in courage and persistence. It was the pretense, the cruel comedy which her rebellious haughtiness made necessary, that he dreaded. He wanted to be utterly candid and truthful with her, because it was his nature to be so, and because he loved her.

He was notably less cheerful than usual as he entered her cottage.

“Here’s a letter,” he said casually.

When he saw her face, however, he was no longer casual. She had grown very pale. She looked at the letter with the oddest expression.

“Oh!” she said, with a gasp.

“What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously. “Please tell me, Mildred!”

She recovered herself, and even managed a constrained smile.

“It’s from Will,” she said. “Excuse me, please, while I read it.”

In great agitation, Dacier walked up and down the room.

“Did she write it herself?” he thought. “It can’t be from him! Good Lord, if he did come back, she’d marry him, whatever he was, just out of sheer pig-headedness! Nothing would count with her, in comparison with her infernal pride. All she wants is to show people--who don’t care a straw--that she hasn’t been jilted. She deserves to be jilted! She’s heartless! She’s inhuman! She doesn’t care--”

When she reëntered the room, every trace of anger and resentment left him. In her face, still pale, but very composed now, he saw plain and clear, her secret anguish and her terrible stubbornness. She was going to send him away, at any cost to herself or to him. She was going to drive away love and keep cold pride alone in her heart.

“Will’s coming back,” she said quietly.

Dacier looked at her. He thought that he had never seen so lovely a face as this, with her dark, straight brows, her steady eyes, her mutinous and defiant mouth. Even folly was dignified there.

“Are you glad, Mildred?” he asked.

What humiliation and loneliness and bitter disillusionment had never been able to do, his question accomplished. Tears filled her eyes. She struggled with them, and with rising sobs.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I’m very glad!”

VI

Will Mallet had an unhappy, furtive conscience trapped inside him. The words of other people, even things that he read, would stir up the poor creature and send it rushing about in its cage, terribly alarmed. It made Will so uncomfortable that he would do anything to quiet it. Sometimes he fed it with lies, sometimes he reasoned with it, and sometimes he plunged into rash action.

He had told his conscience that it was for Mildred’s sake alone that he left her. When he had “got on his feet,” he would come back and claim her, and she would praise his nobility and self-sacrifice. In the meantime he wouldn’t be obliged to work so very hard and be so very earnest--two things which disagreed with him.

Unfortunately, however, he could not “get on his feet.” On the contrary, it might be said that he fell down pretty heavily. Of course, he was proud of the fact that his poems were not “popular,” but he would not have objected to their being a little more profitable. Bitterly he said that a man must live, and he got a job as proof reader in a publishing house. No use! When certain phrases of an author distressed him, he would make changes. When he had been forbidden to do that, he wanted to point out such passages and argue about them.

After this, a cousin got him an amorphous job in an office, but the light hurt his eyes. Then, on the strength of his good appearance and his learning, he secured a position as rewrite man on a newspaper. Well, newspaper offices are easy to get into and still easier to get out of. Again a cousin helped him, and again he failed. It was summer now, and he began to think with longing of the country.

“The only thing left,” he reflected, “is to go back and try that florist business seriously. I’ll write to Mildred first, of course. She’ll understand. She’s very loyal. Moreover, she’s not the sort of girl most men take to. She’s--well, she’s too fine. She’ll help me to get the thing started, and then we’ll be married.”

So he had written, and very promptly he received an answer. He sat on the edge of the bed in his furnished room and read it again, while his conscience flew wildly about inside him.

DEAR WILL:

You need not have doubted that I should wait for you. You told me you would come back, and I believed you, of course. To me, loyalty is the most beautiful thing in the world.

I have been able to save a little money in the past year, by giving music lessons, and I have rented a dear little cottage here and filled it with what was left of mother’s furniture. I am really doing very well, so that even if the florist shop isn’t enormously profitable at the start, we shall be able to manage nicely.

So far the letter was delightful and comforting; but it went on:

But, Will, you know how thirsty a small town is for gossip, and it has really been more unpleasant than I care to tell you. We had better be married quietly as soon as you come. I’ll arrange everything, if you will let me know when to expect you.

This terrified him. Of course, he loved Mildred, and admired her.

“But I’m not worthy of her!” he cried. “I never can be!” And he might truthfully have added: “I never want to be!”

Impossible to say what his conscience would have driven him to, if the landlady had not come up just then and spoken very disagreeably about his rent; so he saw that it was right for him to be a florist. He sent a telegram to announce his arrival three days later.

VII

Mrs. Terhune wept.

“It’s a tragedy,” she said. “A wonderful girl like Mildred, and that wretched Will Mallet!”

“It’s certainly a pity,” said her husband; “but I suppose she knows what she’s doing.”