A DISAGREEABLE sensation was caused throughout the entire Pratt family when Mary William announced her intention of "keeping school." Old Lady Pratt, who knew the history of the family ever since she came into it, some sixty years before, could testify that no daughter of that highly respectable house had ever "worked for a living." An unprejudiced observer might have thought that Old Lady Pratt herself had worked for a living, and worked harder than any school-teacher, all through the childhood of her six boys and girls. But that, of course, was a different matter, as anybody must understand. A woman toiling early and late for husband and children was but fulfilling the chief end and aim of her being, but a woman who set out to wrest a living from the world, when she "need want for nothing at home," was clearly flying in the face of Providence.
"Well, Mary," she said to her grand-daughter, "you must not expect me to countenance any such step."
"Why not, Grandma?"
"Why not? Because I don't approve of young women gettin' dissatisfied with the sphere to which they've been called. That's why not."
"But I haven't been called to any sphere. Now that Bessie and Willie are almost as grown up as I am, mother doesn't need me any more, and I don't see why I'm not entitled to a change if I want one."
"If you want a change," said Grandma, promptly; "you'd much better get married."
"Now, Grandma! You know well enough that I never had an offer. If I had, you'd have heard of it fast enough."
"And you don't deserve to have one," cried the old lady, with asperity, "if you go and spile everything by turning schoolmarm."
This was a sore subject with Old Lady Pratt. She, who was the sworn foe to single blessedness, had constantly to hear that her own granddaughters had "never had an offer." It was not that they were less sought than other girls of their age, but early marriages had almost gone out of fashion since Grandma's day, and many a handsome girl might get to be well on in the twenties before a serious suitor made his appearance.
Mary William—so called to distinguish her from her Uncle Anson's daughter, who went by the name of Mary Anson—Mary William was at this time twenty-one years of age. Her father, the hero of the family, had been killed at the first battle of Bull Run, six years previous. He had left his affairs, what there was of them, in such perfect order that his widow knew precisely what she had to depend upon—a fact on which all the Pratts laid great emphasis. But to know one's financial status, if that status chance to be extremely low, is scarcely compensation for hardships and privations, and Mrs. William Pratt used fervently to wish that there had been just sufficient inaccuracy in her husband's accounts to leave a margin of possibility that a windfall might yet occur.
Mrs. William Pratt was not a woman of much energy or resource. She had a few fixed ideas, one of them being that she could not consent to "come down in the world." Coming down in the world meant to her comprehension renting or selling the commodious, well-built house in which her husband had installed her during the days of their prosperity, and moving into smaller quarters. Her house was Edna Pratt's special pride. It was large and rambling, with a front hall which did not confine itself to the manifest mission of furnishing a landing-place from the stairs, but spread itself out into an octagonal space, wherein pillars stood supporting arches; a dim ancestral-looking hall, which could not fail to impress astranger. But as strangers rarely visited Mrs. William Pratt, and as nearly all the frequenters of the house distinctly remembered its erection a dozen or more years previous, the hall did not make quite the baronial impression which might have been expected. Mary William, especially when performing the arduous duties of maid-of-all-work minus the wages, used to murmur within herself against the hall, and against all the spacious rooms, which seemed to have taken their cue from it. For she reflected that every superfluous square yard of floor meant just so much more carpet to sweep; that every inch of wood-work offered just so much more ofa resting-place for dust. Mary William was of the opinion that her youth had been deliberately sacrificed to the house, and pre-eminently to the pillared hall, and she secretly rebelled against it with all her might and main. Not work for her living, indeed? How many a time had the one "girl" of the establishment been dismissed on some slight pretext! How many a time had her "place" remained vacant, and while Mrs. William Pratt sat in the parlor or lingered among the baronial pillars, complaining to visitors of the inferiority and scarcity of servants, the unfortunate Mary William had stood scorching her face over the kitchen stove, or cleaning the set of elaborate repoussé silver, which lent such an air of distinction to their sideboard.
But Mary William was a young person of much determination and rather unusual intelligence, and while her hands grew rough and her temper just a little sharpened in the drudgery of her daily life, she saw to it that no rust should gather upon her excellent mental faculties. She had graduated from the high-school at the head of her class, and after her education was thus "completed," she managed with the aid of the public library, to do a good deal of solid reading and some studying. Mary William was not intended for a bookworm, but she turned to books as being the most congenial and the least exacting society within her reach. She was not able to dress well and tastefully. She was not able to entertain her friends at home, being far too poor for such luxuries. Neither was she the girl to enjoy playing a subordinate part in life, and she felt keenly the social disabilities which her poverty imposed upon her. She had never been of a complaining disposition, and no one suspected her of any discontent with her lot. But in her own mind she had long contemplated a declaration of independence, to be made when she should come of age. This was to occur in July, but she had no intention of hurrying matters. When she came down to breakfast, however, on the very morning of her twenty-first birthday, she suddenly found it impossible to refrain from making known her plans.
"Teach school!" cried her mother, in a tone of ineffectual protest.
"Be a schoolmarm!" cried Bessie; while Willie, who was still subject to the redoubtable race of schoolmarms, gazed upon her with a mixture of awe and incredulity.
"I never heard of such a ridiculous idea," said Mrs. William Pratt.
"I don't see anything ridiculous about it," Mary retorted, giving vent to her feelings with unprecedented freedom. "I've been scrimping and pinching and slaving all my life, and now I want to try how it feels to have a few dollars of my own."
"A few dollars of your own!" cried her mother. "Why, Mary, what an ungrateful girl you are! Doesn't your Aunt Harriet give you twenty-five dollars every single birthday?"
"Yes, Aunt Harriet is very kind; but twenty-five dollars isn't what you would call an ample income."
"But you have more than that to spend, and your living not costing you a cent either!"
"No; neither does her living cost Bridget a cent"; and then Mary William stopped, and did not pursue the comparison, an act of forbearance which should be recorded to her credit.
After breakfast sixteen-year-old Bessie came up to her with wondering eyes, and said, "Mary, do you suppose you'll get rich teaching school?"
"Not very rich, puss."
"I wish there were some way of getting rich, don't you?"
"Indeed I do, Bessie."
"What would you do, Mary, if you were rich?"
"I should sail for Europe next week; and I should send Willie to college when it came time."
"And me?"
"You?" said Mary, looking thoughtfully at her pretty little sister. "I would give you every single thing you wanted."
This feeling for Bessie, that she was a creature born to have every wish gratified, was common to all who knew the child. Mary had no fear that in the event of her leaving home she should shift the burden of household drudgery on to her younger sister's shoulders. Even Mrs. William Pratt would not have made Bessie work.
Now Mrs. William Pratt, though a weak woman, and both vain and selfish, was much respected in her husband's family. All were grateful to her for having kept up appearances on so small an income, and the fact that this had been done at her daughter Mary's expense was not wholly understood, even by her sharp-eyed mother-in-law. Hence, when she raised a cry of indignation at Mary's revolutionary behavior, she was sustained by a full chorus of disapproval from the whole clan.
Nevertheless Mary carried her point. Her venture was successful beyond her hopes. She had not led her class in the high school for nothing. No sooner had she made known her intentions than she was offered the position of assistant in the grammar-school of her own district, with the munificent salary of $350.
Singularly enough, her actual engagement as a teacher wrought an entire change in the feelings of the family. It was like the first plunge into cold water. The family pride had shrunk from it, but a reaction set in almost immediately, and that same family pride experienced a glow of gratification that one of their number should be so capable and so well thought of. Small as was the sum which Mary was to receive for her services, it was relatively large—large measured by her previous limitations. Her more prosperous relatives had become so accustomed to the extremely small income which the William Pratts had to live upon that they had come to regard it as quite in the natural order of things, and to bear it with philosophical indifference. Now, however, that Mary had taken matters into her own hands, and was prepared to mould her own fortunes, they rejoiced with her as loudly as though they had hitherto realized her deprivations.
Old Lady Pratt alone withheld her approval. The fact of Mary's having a little more money seemed to her to be of small consequence in comparison with the girl's "prospects." She was made of sterner stuff than her descendants; she knew deprivation and hard work by heart, and she was not in the least afraid of them for herself or for anybody else. Even when Mrs. William Pratt told her that Mary had offered to pay three dollars a week for the "girl's" wages, Old Lady Pratt remained obdurate.
"Nonsense, Edna!" she said, sharply. "It wouldn't hurt you a mite to do your own work. You'd a sight better do it than to have Mary turn out an old maid. There's Eliza Pelham, now. She acted jest so when she was Mary's age, and she'll teach school to the end of the chapter. She got so set in her waysand so high-flyin' in her notions that the Gov'nor himself wouldn't have suited her. You mark my words, Mary'll be an old maid, jest like Eliza. You see 'f she ain't."
And if Mary herself had been asked, she would have been the first to admit the reasonableness of her grandmother's predictions. She had never been so happy in her life as she was the day on which she stepped upon the platform at school and assumed the responsibilities of "schoolmarm." Mary William loved to teach, and she loved also to rule—an art which she understood to perfection. There were some pretty black sheep among her flock, but before she had had them a month they had learned a lesson in wholesome discipline which seemed to them much more incontrovertible than anything Murray had to say against alliances between plural subjects and singular verbs, or any of Greenleaf's arithmetical theories. The new teacher's success made so strong an impression upon the school committee that by Christmas-time Miss Pratt's name was mentioned in connection with a $500 vacancy to occur the coming year in the high-school. Meanwhile Mary revelled in her independence; and if she thought of matrimony in connection with herself, it was as a state of bondage to be avoided at any cost.
One pleasant day in April the young teacher had just dismissed a class in compound fractions, and sat looking down upon the motley collection of boys and girls arranged with geometrical symmetry over the large room. She was aware of a spirit of restlessness among them. There were more boys than usual engaged in the time-honored custom of twisting their legs in intricate patterns about the legs of their chairs, more girls gazing dreamily at the budding tree-tops just visible through the high windows. Mary knew by her own uneven pulse that the seeds were sprouting in the ground outside, and that the spring trouble was stirring in the veins of all that youthful concourse. Mary William was in some respects wise beyond her years, and she did not reprove the vagaries of boyish legs and girlish eyes. Butshe kept a careful watch upon them during the study hour which preceded the long noon recess.
Just before twelve o'clock she was surprised by the entrance of two well-dressed ladies who did not look quite like products of Dunbridge soil. As she went forward to meet them they called her by name, the more stately of the two introducing herself as Mrs. Beardsley, of Stanton. Mary William, though somewhat mystified, bade her guests welcome with a very good grace, saying that she was on the point of dismissing the school.
The dispersion of the fifty or more boys and girls was a matter of some ceremony—a ceremony regulated by a succession of strokes on the teacher's bell, and usually very strictly observed. At a certain critical point in the proceedings to-day, of all days of the year, the boys broke loose, and made a stampede for the door, the girls remaining in the aisles, with their arms crossed behind them—models of propriety before company. Mary William's face flushed brightly, and she struck the shrill bell three times in rapid succession. Instantly the rabble of unruly boys stood transfixed. Two or three of them who had already escaped into the sunshine came sneaking back at the peremptory summons, while Mary William's voice, with a bell-like ring in it, said: "Boys, return to your seats!"
When all the boys' seats were filled with more or less contrite occupants, the order of exercises was resumed on the part of the girls, who filed quietly out of the room. Then Mary turned to her guests in a disengaged manner, with the assurance that she was quite at their service. A momentous conversation ensued.
Mrs. Beardsley stated that she was the Mrs. Beardsley whose school for young ladies had so long maintained its reputation as the leading school for young ladies in the state. Miss Pratt had doubtless heard of Mrs. Beardsley's school for young ladies. Miss Pratt was very sorry, but she was totally ignorant of any young ladies' school whatever outside her own town.
Mary had the discrimination to perceive that Mts. Beardsley was a thorough woman of the world, and that she thought extremely well of herself. Nevertheless, she listened with entire self-possession to the revelations which followed.
Mrs. Beardsley was in search of a teacher to fill the place in the coming year of a valued assistant about to retire. She had heard Miss Pratt well spoken of by her cousin, the Rev. Mr. Ingraham, of Dunbridge, and she had come, with her sister, Miss Ingraham, to interview Miss Pratt. Miss Pratt signified her willingness to be interviewed, asking permission at the same time to dismiss the culprits, whose durance she considered to have been sufficiently long. This time the dispersion was performed with a precision which an army sergeant might have envied. As the door closed behind the last round jacket, Mrs. Beardsley resumed the thread of her discourse:
"My requirements, Miss Pratt, are somewhat severe. My school has a reputation to sustain, which necessitates rather exceptional qualifications in my assistants. The sort of discipline, for instance, which you have just carried out so successfully with those rough boys, would be entirely out of place in a school whose members are young ladies from the first families in the state. 'Tact and worldly wisdom are essential in the government of such a body. Having no doubt of your acquirements as a mere teacher of the branches desired—namely, Latin and mathematics—I am disposed to dwell more especially upon my exactions of a social nature. A teacher in my school must have the good-breeding and the equanimity of alady, and, pardon my suggestion, she must dress in perfect taste."
Mary flushed slightly, being conscious of the ugliness of her gown, which had descended to her from a cousin whose means exceeded her discretion in matters of taste.
Mrs. Beardsley, having paused a moment, that the full weight of her words might take effect, asked, "Do you feel, Miss Pratt, that you are fitted in every particular to fill such a position?"
The flush on Mary's face had subsided, and to her own surprise she did not flinch. She raised her clear hazel eyes to those of her catechist, and with a direct gaze, in which there was unmistakable power, she said, quietly, "Yes, Mrs. Beardsley, I do."
Mrs. Beardsley returned the girl's look with an accession of interest. The "woman of the world" was not a creature of impulse, but she was a student of character, and, without a moment's hesitation, she said, "I engage you."
"Thank you," said the new assistant, as though the conversation were ended.
Mrs. Beardsley and Miss Ingraham exchanged glances, and waited for Mary's next remark; but it was not forthcoming. Mary seemed for the moment to have forgotten herself. She was looking about the homely room where she had served her short apprenticeship, lost in wonder over her sudden good fortune. Mary William was deeply impressed by Mrs. Beardsley's personality. She had always wanted to have a taste of the "great world." She loved the amenities of life, she loved the power which social training gives, and to her unsophisticated mind it seemed as though a school presided over by Mrs. Beardsley—a school where were gathered the daughters of the "first families in the state"—must offer an opening through which she might get at least a peep into that same great world.
Finding her future assistant disinclined to take the initiative, Mrs. Beardsley said, "You have asked me nothing about terms, Miss Pratt."
"Oh yes! Terms!" answered Mary William, recalled to practical affairs, in which she felt no sentimental lack of interest.
"That is, of course, in a certain sense, my affair," Mrs. Beardsley resumed; "but I should be curious to know your ideas on the subject."
Mary looked at her shrewdly. "I suppose the salary would be proportionate to the requirements," she said.
"A very reasonable supposition," Mrs. Beardsley admitted. "Then we will come to the point. As only a small number of my pupils live in my family, I shall not require your services there. You will, therefore, be at some expense for your living, and I had thought of offering you"—she paused a moment to notice whether the girl looked eager, but Mary William gave no sign—"twelve hundred and fifty dollars. Should you think that a fair compensation?"
Mary's eyes sparkled. Touched by the generosity of such an offer to a mere grammar-school teacher, she cried, impulsively, "I ought to bea better teacher than I am, to be worth all that to you."
Mrs. Beardsley was gratified, but she only said, "If you are not worth that, you are worth nothing to me."
Mrs. Beardsley had gone out in search of a "treasure," and she had found one. As for Mary William, she had set forth on an errand almost as humble as Saul's, and, like him, she suddenly found herself endowed—to her own thinking—with a kingdom.
All summer long Mary spent much of her time in fashioning tasteful garments, wherein to meet one, at least, of Mrs. Beardsley's requirements, and her needle went in and out as gayly as though set to music.
Her friends told her of proposed journeyings or weeks to be spent at the seaside, but she envied none of them. What were a few weeks of pleasuring compared to the gift of liberty to live your own life in your own way? As she tried on one completed garment after another, examining the effect critically in the glass, she thought of Mrs. Beardsley and of that formidable band of school-girls, and she took heart of hope.
One day she stood before her mirror, arrayed in a claret-colored cashmere, which was to be her "Sunday gown" in the coming winter. There was a trimming of velvet ribbon which was highly effective, and the broad tatting collar was very becoming to the round white throat within it. Mary studied the dress with some satisfaction, and then she inadvertently looked up at her reflected face. For the first time in her life she was struck with her own good looks, and her eyes danced with pleasure. Mrs. Beardsley would be more likely to approve her, the school-girls would perhaps like her, if she looked like that. She smiled at herself, and the pretty teeth thus revealed added greatly to the favorable impression.
"How absurd I am!" she said to herself, and she laughed aloud. She had never seen her laughing face before. It had been a prematurely serious countenance which she had associated with herself. "Oh, isn't it delicious to be alive?" she exclaimed, confidingly, to her own image.
If vanity is pleasure in one's own good points, Mary William was rapidly developing her share of it. But the beauty and originality of her vanity consisted in the turn it took. It looked only to pleasing a middle-aged woman and a school full of young girls, and, as such well-regulated vanity deserved, it was crowned with success.
The first week in September—for schools began earlier in Mary William's day than in ours—Mrs. Beardsley's "treasure" arrived upon the scene, and took all hearts by storm. It would be difficult to say whether the exhilaration of her spirits made the new teacher charming, or whether her almost instant popularity was the secret of that same exhilaration. Such things go hand in hand. Certain it is that Mary William lived in a round of pleasures far more stimulating, and far more satisfying too, than the pleasures usually thus designated. She loved her work so thoroughly that its very difficulties but lent it zest. She liked the girls, and she regarded Mrs. Beardsley with the enthusiastic devotion felt by a subaltern for his superior officer.
And so the first school term went by only too swiftly, and the long Christmas vacation came as an unwelcome interruption. How much more unwelcome would it have been had Mary William known what it held in store for her! Nothing could have been more unlooked for, nothing could have been to Mary more unwished for, than the events which followed upon the arrival from his Western ranch of the minister's son, Fred Ingraham. When Mary returned home for the holidays, he had been in Dunbridge scarcely a week, and had not yet ceased to be the sensation of the hour.
Fred Ingraham came into her life with all the freshness and insistency of a prairie breeze, which goes sweeping across level leagues unhindered by any obstacle, unabashed by any contrary currents. This minister's son, with his high-bred features and his air of conscious power, belonged to the finest type of ranchman. In him many of the best qualities springing from the old civilization existed side by side with the spirit and vigor which animate the pioneer. There was not lacking a touch of the absolute monarch, such as your genuine ranchman was five-and-twenty years ago. Being, then, a young man of ready decision and of hitherto unalterable determination, no sooner did he behold the little girl whom he had patronized in big-boy fashion a few years previous, transformed into a surprising likeness to his secretly-cherished ideal of a woman, than he fell precipitately in love with her. There was no time to be lost in preliminaries, and Fred pressed his suit with the courage and persistency which might have been expected of an absolute monarch—to say nothing of a Yankee boy accustomed to deal with rough cowboys and pitching bronchos.
Mary was at first thrown off her guard by the very suddenness of the assault. She had been predisposed in his favor by all she knew of the daring and independence of his course in breaking loose from family traditions and choosing his own rough path in life. She looked upon him as a kindred spirit, and they had many a long talk and more than one walk together in the sparkling Christmas weather before she took the alarm.
He had often talked to her of ranch life—so new and interesting a theme in those early days, before the cowboy had been tamed into print. He told her of the life of adventure and hardship which he had known, of his vast herds of cattle, and his wide domains. It seemed to her as though this dominion over men and over beasts had conferred upon him a certain patent of nobility, and she listened with kindling attention to all he had to say. But if he seemed to her to be something of a hero, it was the hero of a realm as remote from her as were the lands of the Orient or the ages of the past. And because of the remoteness and foreignness of her interest hitherto, because of her perfect sense of aloofness from it all, she had listened without suspicion or constraint.
They were walking home together from the skating pond one afternoon, their two pairs of skates rattling gayly together in her companion's hand, making a pleasant metallic accompaniment to his narration.
Suddenly he interrupted himself to say: "Mary, you would like ranch life immensely. I am sure of it. Don't you think you would?"
His words were harmless enough, but the sudden pleading urgency of his manner, and something new and intensely personal in his tone, startled her, and she instantly bristled.
"Oh, yes!" she said. "I've no doubt I should like it if I were a man. But it must be a hideous life for a woman."
Fred bore the rebuff manfully, though it felt as grating and as blinding as a sudden prairie sandstorm. He turned and looked at her as she walked erect and strong by his side. A more defiant-looking young person he had never seen, nor a more altogether desirable one. Good heavens! the very curve of her chin was worth dying for, and Fred drew a deep breath and swore within himself that she should yet be vanquished.
The rest of that day Mary tried vainly to believe that her panic had been foolish and uncalled for. But she knew better. She feared that it was unmaidenly and conceited; that she was deserving of all the worst epithets usually applied to a forward girl; but she knew as positively as though Fred had told her so in plain English that this remarkably strong-willed young man was planning to overturn her whole scheme of life, to wrest from her her precious independence, to make her life subordinate to his. She would not allow herself to think in terms less harsh of his designs, and she put herself on the defensive in a manner so transparent that it would have been amusing to any one less immediately interested in her state of mind than Fred.
He meanwhile did his best to retrieve that first blunder by the exercise of an almost superhuman discretion. He saw his opportunity slipping away with the fleeting vacation days; he knew that in a cruelly short time Mary would be once more intrenched in her beloved work under the protection of that much-respected dragon Mrs. Beardsley. But he also knew that her mind, if not her heart, was set against his suit, and he did not dare defy her openly. They met less frequently now, Mary having developed a talent for eluding him which was most baffling. She seemed to feel a new interest in all the other young men and maidens of her acquaintance, and she distributed her favors with an irritating impartiality. So persistent was she in this course that a man less accustomed to having his way, or with less confidence in the righteousness of his cause, might well have been discouraged. But Fred Ingraham had that deeply rooted faith in his own instincts which a life spent on very close terms with nature, even in her rougher moods, tends to develop. He felt that it was not "in the nature of things"—a favorite expression of his—that such an absolute, such an unquenchable, such an altogether reasonable love as his for Mary should waken no response. He used to watch her as she moved about in company, bestowing her frank smile and quick sympathy upon indifferent people, and in his inmost heart he said:
"She is mine! I am the only person on earth who knows it, but she belongs to me, and there is no escape for her."
All through those tedious days of wasted opportunity he never for a moment questioned his inalienable right in the woman of his choice.
Mary meanwhile did not consciously yield an inch. Any intruding thoughts of this lover, whose very existence was so importunate, she drowned in plans which had a peculiar meaning and fascination for her.
"Summer after next," she would say to herself, "I shall go abroad"; and she marshalled all the wonders and delights of Europe to the support of her resolution.
A needless help had she felt as certain of herself as she thought she did. Surely Mary William was the last girl to marry any man out of tenderness for his feelings. She was not weakly soft-hearted. Other feelings than his must have been involved before her position could be thus endangered. The story of Mary William's reasonings and self-communings during that memorable holiday season would read like a psychological treatise.
The last night of the old year—which was also the last night of her visit at home—was to be celebrated with a "social gathering" at the Rev. Mr. Ingraham's house. Mary was arrayed for the occasion in her claret-colored cashmere, intending to accompany her family to the very stronghold of the enemy, when a sudden misgiving seized her, and she decided not to go.
"You may say I have a headache, if you like," she told her mother.
"But, Mary, it will never do to leave you alone in the house. You know Bridget is going out, and we've let the furnace fire go down, and you'll take cold."
"I can light a fire in the hall grate," said Mary. "That will make the house warmer when you come in. Besides, I shall go to bed early."
When the house was quite empty, Mary moved a small table up before the fire, placed a lighted lamp upon it, and armed with an old guide-book of Switzerland, which she had borrowed of one of her cousins, sat down to a cozy evening. Strange to say, the book did not seem interesting, the shadows among the pillars in the dimly-lighted hall disturbed her, and, worst of all, she found herself thinking of Fred. She probably should not see him again for a long time; there would be no more need of evasions, no more reasonings with herself. She had a feeling that she had passed through a time of probation, and a certain lassitude crept over her which was soothing, after the perplexities and self-discipline of the past ten days. She let her thoughts take their own turn, knowing well where they would tend. It was such a pity about Fred; he was so much nicer than any one else. Yes, she could afford to say it, now that it was all over—she liked him "best of anybody."
"Oh, dear," she said, half aloud, with a hard, hungry feeling at her heart, "I wish there wasn't any such thing as marrying!"
She watched the blue flames dancing on top of the bed of coals, and the little rows of sparks running along the soot at the back of the chimney—"folks going to meeting," she had been taught to call them. Somehow the suggestion of a string of people all bound for the same place made her feel cross.
"Everybody's always doing just the same thing as everybody else. It is so tiresome! If nobody else had ever got married, Fred would never have thought of anything so foolish"; and then she laughed at her own childishness. She would have liked to cry just as well as to laugh, but she usually drew the line at tears.
It must have been about nine o'clock when there was a sharp ring at the door-bell. Mary shuddered. Was it some midnight marauder? Alas! her forebodings were worse than that. Thieves and murderers she might perhaps know how to deal with, but there was an enemy more to be dreaded than they. The bell rang a second time, reverberating loudly through the empty house, before she answered it. Her worst fears were realized.
"Why, Fred, is that you?" she said, holding the door half open in a gingerly manner. "Did mother want anything?"
"No. It's I that want something. Aren't you going to invite me in?"
"Oh, yes! Come in. I was so surprised! How could you leave your party?"
"That was easy enough. I just walked out of the room. How pleasant it looks here! This is the hall you dislike so much. Pity you should! It makes an uncommonly good setting. And the fire is so pretty! I don't wonder you liked it better than a crowd of people. We burn wood at the ranch—great logs four feet long. They make a blaze to warm the very cockles of your heart. May I get a chair?"
Mary had never known him to be so voluble, but she was not in the least reassured by his flow of words.
"What are you reading?" he asked, as he sat down on the other side of the fireplace.
Her fingers still clasped the red book, though she had not opened it for an hour past. At mention of it, she recovered herself.
"It is Murray's guide-book of Switzerland. Have I never told you that I am going abroad summer after next?"
"Really? How enterprising you are!"
"Oh, it can be easily managed. You know I have quite a princely income."
"Mary," he cried, abruptly, "give up your income, give up Europe, give up all those plans. Come with me! Not now—of course you couldn't—but next summer."
She shut her lips firmly together, and stared at the fire.
"See!" he went on. "I put it in the baldest words. I concede everything from the very beginning. I know you would be giving up everything you care for; I know I am asking a perfectly tremendous sacrifice."
"Would you make such a sacrifice for me?" she asked, in a hard, dry tone. "I love my way of life just as well as you do yours. Would you give up your ranch and come and teach school with me?"
"That's not a fair question, Mary. You might as well ask if I would wear girl's clothes to please you. You wouldn't respect me if I did."
"I don't agree with you at all," she said, sharply and argumentatively. It did not sound like her pleasantly-modulated voice. "I don't see that the sacrifice would be any greater for you than for me. My work and my ambitions are just as necessary to me as yours are to you. And you would never think of sacrificing yours for my sake."
"I'm not so sure that there is anything under heaven that I wouldn't do for you, Mary," he cried, impetuously. "But that is something you would never ask. You wouldn't be yourself if you did. Men sacrifice their lives for women, not their careers. It would not be in the nature of things for you to ask of me what I am asking of you."
He paused a moment, and then he was sorry he had done so. Her face was set and repellant. But she spoke before he could stop her.
"No, Fred, I can't do it," she said; "and please don't talk to meany more. Didn't mother say I had a headache?"
"As though I believed that! I don't believe you ever had a headache in your life. And supposing you have? What is a headache, I should like to know, compared to a heartache? If I can bear to hear you say no in that horrid cold voice, you can bear to hear me talk as long as ever I choose. Mary, you shall hear me, and I am going to tell you something that will make you think you hate me. You know that I love you with all my heart and soul. But it seems foolish to talk about that. Of course I love you. Who could help it? Cousin Letitia adores you, though she may not tell you so. Everybody adores you, simply because you are the most perfectly adorable woman that ever lived. But, Mary," and his voice sank to a lower key—"Mary, there is one thing you don't know, and that I am going to tell you—you love me."
"How dare you say such a thing to me, Fred Ingraham?" cried Mary, springing to her feet, white with anger, her eyes flashing, her breath coming fast.
"I suppose it does sound like a brutal thing to say," he admitted, "here in the house, where everything is conventional."
He was also standing now, leaning back in the shadow against the chimney, watching Mary's face with the uncertain firelight on it. The lamp was behind her. She had not got her breath sufficiently to speak again. The red book had dropped to the floor, and her hands were clinched. As he looked at her a sudden pity came over him. His voice was tender, as though he feared to hurt her more.
"I had meant to walk home with you from our house, and tell you then, Mary. There is lovely starlight outside, and out under the stars one doesn't mind the truth. We have wonderful starlight on the ranch, Mary. The air is so clear out there that you almost feel the stars throb. When I have been keeping watch the night after a round-up, riding round and round the great black mass of sleeping cattle on the wide black plains, it has seemed to me as though there were nothing real and lasting in all the universe but just those stars. Now there will be one thing as real and lasting as they, and that is my love for you. And, Mary, you may deny it; you may fight it down and try to kill it, but I tell you solemnly, you will never look at the stars again as long as you live without knowing that you love me."
She had clasped her hands now, and held them tight together, but she would not lift her eyes from the fire. It seemed like a disembodied voice that she was listening to, and there was a strange compelling power in it that frightened her. She made a movement as though she would protest, but he interrupted her.
"Don't, Mary. Don't say it again. Wait till you can say yes. Wait, just as you are, and think. I know you will say yes if you wait a little. You are too true not to see the truth."
Then she lifted her face in the firelight. "Fred Ingraham," she cried, in a despairing tone, "I believe I do hate you—you are—so—cruel."
Fred looked at the tragic face, and an exultant light came into his own.
"It's a kind of hate I'm not afraid of, Mary," he said, and he held out his arms.
The shadows among the baronial pillars seemed to be swaying and wavering before her eyes, and her own step faltered. But she went to him, because she could not help it. He kissed her, rather cautiously, and she made no resistance. A strange, delicious, poignant happiness overwhelmed her.
That night Mary cried herself to sleep for the first time since she was a little child. But in that beneficent storm of grief her last tottering defences were swept away. When, but a few hours later, the time of parting came, her valiant lover knew that her surrender was complete.
Mrs. Beardsley generously forgave her young cousin for robbing her of her "treasure," though, as her short period of possession went by, she learned still better to measure her impending loss. She permitted herself but one form of revenge, which, however, she always clung to. As often as she had occasion to write to him in after years, she never failed to address him as her "dear bandit."
As for Old Lady Pratt, though Mary had gone contrary to all her prognostications, she was too much relieved to resent being put in the wrong. Her unfailing comment when the event was discussed in the family was: "Mary William's got more sense, arter all, than I giv' her credit for."