"I've made up my mind to tell you why I thought I ought not to come, that Sunday night," said Jerome; "I didn't think of telling you, but I can see now that you may think I meant to slight you, if I don't. I did not think at first that you could dream I _could_ slight anybody like you, and not want to go to see you, but I begin to see that you don't just know how every one looks at you."

"I thought I ought not to come, because all of a sudden I found out that I was--what they call in love with you."

Lucina stood perfectly still, her face turned away.

"I hope you are not offended," said Jerome; "I knew, of course, that there is no question of--your liking me. I would not want you to. I am not telling you for that, but only that you may not feel hurt because I slighted your invitation the other night, and because I thought at first I could not accept this. But I was foolish about it, I guess. If you would like to have me come, that is enough."

"You have not known me long enough to like me," said Lucina, in a very small, sweet voice, still keeping her face averted.

"I guess time don't count much in anything like this," said Jerome.

"Well," said Lucina, with a soft, long breath, "I cannot see why your liking me should hinder you from coming."

"I guess you're right; it shouldn't if you want me to come."

"Why did you ever think it should?" Lucina flashed her blue eyes around at him a second, then looked away again.

"I was afraid if--I saw you too often I should want to marry you so much that I would want nothing else, not even to help other people,"

said Jerome.

"Why need you think about marrying? Can't you come to see me like a friend? Can't we be happy so?" asked Lucina, with a kind of wistful petulance.

"I needn't think about it, and we can--"

"I don't want to think about marrying yet," said Lucina; "I don't know as I shall ever marry. I don't see why you should think so much about that."

"I don't," said Jerome; "I shall never marry."

"You will, some time," Lucina said, softly.

"No; I never shall."

Lucina turned. "I must go in," said she.

Her hand and Jerome's found each other, with seemingly no volition of their own. "I am glad you didn't come because you didn't like me,"

Lucina said, softly; "and we can be friends and no need of thinking of that other."

"Yes," Jerome said, all of a tremble under her touch; "and--you won't feel offended because I told you?"

"No, only I can't see why you stayed away for that."

Chapter XXVIII

The next afternoon Jerome went to Miss Camilla's tea-party. Sitting in the arbor, whose interior was all tremulous and vibrant with green lights and shadows, as with a shifting water-play, sipping tea from delicate china, eating custards and the delectable plum-cake, he tasted again one of the few sweet savors of his childhood.

Jerome, in the arbor with three happy young people, taking for the first time since his childhood a holiday on a work-day, seemed to comprehend the first notes of that great harmony of life which proves by the laws of sequence the last. The premonition of some final blessedness, to survive all renunciation and sacrifice, was upon him.

He felt raised above the earth with happiness. Jerome seemed like another person to his companions. The wine of youth and certainty of joy stirred all the light within him to brilliancy. He had naturally a quicker, readier tongue than Lawrence Prescott, now he gave it rein.

He could command himself, when he chose and did not consider that it savored of affectation, to a grace of courtesy beyond all provincial tradition. In his manners he was not one whit behind even Lawrence Prescott, with his college and city training, and in face and form and bearing he was much his superior. Lawrence regarded him with growing respect and admiration, Elmira with wonder.

As for Miss Camilla, she felt as if tripping over her own inaccuracy of recollection of him. "I never saw such a change in any one, my dear," she told Lucina the next day. "I could scarcely believe he was the little boy who used to weed my garden, and with so few advantages as he has had it is really remarkable."

"Father says so, too," remarked Lucina, looking steadily at her embroidery.

Miss Camilla gazed at her reflectively. She had a mild but active imagination, which had never been dispelled by experience, for romance and hearts transfixed with darts of love. "I hope he will never be so unfortunate as to place his affections where they cannot be reciprocated, since he is in such poor circ.u.mstances that he cannot marry," she sighed, so gently that one could scarcely suspect her of any hidden meaning.

"I do not think," said Lucina, still with steadfast eyes upon her embroidery, "that a woman should consider poverty if she loves."

Then her cheeks glowed crimson through her drooping curls, and Miss Camilla also blushed; still she attributed her niece's tender agitation to her avowal of general principles. She did not once consider any danger to Lucina from Jerome; but she had seen, on the day before, the young man's eyes linger upon the girl's lovely face, and had immediately, with the craft of a female, however gentle, for such matters, reached half-pleasant, half-melancholy conclusions.

It was gratifying and entirely fitting that her beautiful Lucina should have a heart-broken lover at her feet; still, it was sad, very sad, for the poor lover. "When the affections are enlisted, one should not hesitate to share poverty as well as wealth," she admitted, with a little conscious tremor of delicacy at such p.r.o.nounced views.

"I do not think Jerome himself wants to be married," said Lucina, quickly.

Miss Camilla sighed. She remembered again the young man's fervent eyes. "I hope he does not, my dear," she said.

"_I_ do not intend to marry either. I am never going to be married at all," said Lucina, with a seeming irrelevance which caused Camilla to make mild eyes of surprise and wonder sadly, after her niece had gone home, if it were possible that the dear child had, thus early, been crossed in love.

Lucina, ever since Jerome's confession of love, had experienced a curious revulsion from her maiden dreams. She had such instinctive docility of character that she was at times amenable to influences entirely beyond her own knowledge. Not understanding in the least Jerome's att.i.tude of renunciation, she accepted it for herself also.

She no longer builded bridal air-castles. She still embroidered her chair-covers, thinking that they would look very pretty in the north parlor, and some of the old chairs could be moved to the garret to make room for them. She gazed at her aunt Camilla with a peaceful eye of prophecy. Just so would she herself look years hence. Her hair would part spa.r.s.ely to the wind, like hers, and show here and there silver instead of golden l.u.s.tres. There would be a soft rosetted cap of lace to hide the thinnest places, and her cheeks, like her aunt's, would crumple and wrinkle as softly as old rose leaves, and, like her aunt, in this guise she would walk her path of life alone.

Lucina seemed to see, as through a long, converging tunnel of years, her solitary self, miniatured clearly in the distance, gliding on, like Camilla, with that sweet calm of motion of one who has left the glow of joy behind, but feels her path trend on peace.

"I dare say it may be just as well not to marry, after all," reasoned Lucina, "a great many people are not married. Aunt Camilla seems very happy, happier than many married women whom I have seen. She has nothing to disturb her. I shall be happy in the way she is. When I am such an old maid that my father and mother will have died, because they were too old to live longer, I will leave this house, because I could not bear to stay here with them away, and go to Aunt Camilla's.

She will be dead, too, by that time, and her house will be mine. Then I, in my cap and spectacles, will sit afternoons in the summer-house, and--perhaps--he--he will be older than I then, and white-haired, and maybe stooping and walking with a cane--perhaps--he will come often, and sit with me there, and we will remember everything together."

In all her forecasts for a single life, Lucina could not quite eliminate her lover, though she could her husband. She and Jerome were always to be friends, of course, and he was to come and see her.

Lucina, when once Jerome had begun to visit her, never contemplated the possibility of his ever ceasing to do so. He did not come regularly--the wisdom of that was tacitly understood between them; since there was to be no marriage, there could necessarily be no courtship. There was never any sitting up together in the north parlor, after the fashion of village lovers. Jerome merely spent an hour or two in the sitting-room with the Squire and his wife and Lucina. Sometimes he and the Squire talked politics and town affairs while Lucina and her mother sewed. Sometimes the four played whist, or bezique, for in those days Jerome was learning to take a hand at cards, but he had always Mrs. Merritt for his partner, and the Squire Lucina. Indeed, Lucina would have considered herself highly false and treacherous had she manifested an inclination to be the partner of any other than her father. Sometimes the Squire sat smoking and dozing, and sometimes he was away, and in those cases Mrs. Merritt sewed, and Jerome and Lucina played checkers.

It tried Jerome sorely to capture Lucina's men and bar her out from the king-row, and she sometimes chid him for careless playing.

Sometimes, after Jerome was gone and Lucina in bed, Abigail Merritt, who had always a kind but furtively keen eye upon the two young people, talked a little anxiously to the Squire. "I know that he does not come regularly and he sees us all, but--I don't know that it is wise for us to let them be thrown so much together," she would say, with a nervous frown on her little dark face.

The Squire's forehead wrinkled with laughter, but he was finishing his pipe before going to bed, and would not remove it. He rolled humorously inquiring eyes through the cloud of smoke, and his wife answered as if to a spoken question. "I know Jerome Edwards doesn't seem like other young men, but he is a young man, after all, and, if we shouldn't say it, I am afraid somebody will get hurt. We both know what Lucina is--"

"You don't mean to say you're afraid Lucina will get hurt,"

spluttered the Squire, quickly.

"It isn't likely that a girl like Lucina could get hurt herself,"

cried Abigail, with a fine blush of pride.

"I suppose you're right," a.s.sented the Squire, with a chuckle. "I suppose there's not a young fool in the country but would think himself lucky for a chance to tie the jade's shoestring. I guess there'll be no hanging back of dancers whenever she takes a notion to pipe, eh?"

"She has not taken a notion to pipe, and I doubt if she will at present," said Abigail, with a little bridle of feminine delicacy, "and--he is a good young man, though, of course, it would scarcely be advisable if she did fancy him, but she does not. Lucina has never concealed anything from me since she was born, and I know--"