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 tried again. “Esteban, I wish to tell you something—something important.”
He would not turn. He did not turn until he heard a heavy splash in the river.
“That tiresome girl,”—and, choking an exclamation, he strode back to the bridge. She had jumped into the river to annoy him. No, she had not gone herself, she had sent the big black dog who was swimming composedly about. The fool—he would do anything she told him. She was in hiding herself—he could see her brown head under one of the seats of the bridge.
The tired man flung himself down on the opposite seat, and fixed his eyes on the head. How brown, nay, how yellow it looked. He got up and peered down at it. It was not his little sweetheart curled up there. He was gazing at a bunch of yellow flowers.
He turned hastily to the river. There was her cap floating on the water. He became sick and faint. There had been only one splash, yet where was she? Every tender memory of his life, every ambition for the future, clustered around that brown head. He would go and get her. He would search in the grass of the river bank, he would—his head fell on his arm, and a strange, delicious forgetfulness crept over him. He was going to faint for the first time in his life. He struggled against it, first violently, then feebly, then his head fell on his breast and he knew no more.
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOLMA’AM AND WIFE, BUT NEVER A MOTHER.
While the sailor and the young girl were having their conversation in the garden, two people who were intensely interested in their movements were taking their breakfast in one of the back rooms of the plain, old-fashioned house.
One of them was a fat, testy man, with large and prominent watery gray eyes, who was irritably chipping the top from an egg, and varying this occupation by casting frequent and semi-displeased glances through the open window. Mr. Israel Danvers was master of this house, owner of the principal store in the village across the meadows, and husband of the woman with the large, cool, comfortable face, who sat opposite him pouring his coffee.
“I wonder what that Fordyce is up to now?” he muttered, with a whole volley of glances outside.
“I don’t know,” responded Mrs. Danvers, tranquilly, “but I imagine it’s something important. Otherwise he’d wait for lamplight.”
“What do you mean by important?”
“I mean marriage.”
Mr.