Barbara dreamily said yes, and they began where they had left off.

Three hours later, on the contrary, they left off where they had begun.

LVII.

GO ON, SAYS BARBARA

Miss Garnet said she ought to rejoin her friends, and John started with her.

On their way the dyspeptic stopped them affectionately to offer Barbara a banana, and ask if she and the gentleman were not cousins. Miss Garnet said no, and John enjoyed that way she had of smiling sweetly with her eyes alone. But she smiled just as prettily with her lips also when the woman asked him if he was perfectly sure he hadn't relations in Arkansas named Pumpkinseed--he had such a strong Pumpkinseed look. The questioner tried to urge the banana upon him, a.s.suring him that it was the last of three, which, she said, she wouldn't have bought if she hadn't been so lonesome.

Barbara sat down with her, to John's disgust, a feeling which was not diminished when he pa.s.sed on to her Northern friends, and Mr. Fair tried very gently to draw him out on the Negro question! When he saw Mrs. Fair glancing about for the porter he sprang to find and send him, but lingered, himself, long among the mirrors to wash and brush up and adjust his necktie.

The cars stopping, he went to the front platform, where the dyspeptic, who was leaving the train, turned to thank him "for all his kindness"

with such genuine grat.i.tude that in the haste he quite lost his tongue, and for his only response pushed her anxiously off the steps. He still knew enough, however, to reflect that this probably left Miss Garnet alone, and promptly going in he found her--sitting with the Fairs.

Because she was perishing to have Mr. March again begin where he had left off, she conversed with the Fairs longer than ever and created half a dozen delays out of pure nothings. So that when she and John were once more alone together he talked hither and yon for a short while before he asked her where the poems were.

Nevertheless she was extremely pleasant. Their fellow-pa.s.senger just gone, she said, had praised him without stint, and had quoted him as having said to her, "It isn't always right to do what we have the right to do."

"O pshaw!" warmly exclaimed John, started as if she had touched an inflamed nerve, and reddened, remembering how well Miss Garnet might know what that nerve was, and why it was so sore.

"I wish I knew how to be sen-ten-tious," said Barbara, obliviously.

"It was she led up to it." He laughed. "She said it better, herself, afterward!"

"How did she say it?"

"She? O she said--she said her pastor said it--that nothing's quite right until it's n.o.ble."

"Well, don't you believe that principle?"

"I don't know! That's what I've asked myself twenty times to-day."

"Why to-day?" asked Miss Garnet, with eyes downcast, as though she could give the right answer herself.

"O"--he smiled--"something set me to thinking about it. But, now, Miss Garnet, is it true? Isn't it sometimes allowable, and sometimes even necessary--absolutely, morally necessary--for a fellow to do what may look anything but n.o.ble?"

He got no reply.

"O of course I know it's the spirit of an act that counts, and not its look; but--here now, for example,"--John dropped his voice confidentially--"is a fellow in love with a young lady, and----Do I speak loud enough?"

"Yes, go on."

He did so for some time. By and by:

"Ah! yes, Mr. March, but remember you're only supposing a case."

"O, but I'm not only supposing it; it's actual fact. I knew it. And, as I say, whatever that feeling for her was, it became the ruling pa.s.sion of his life. When circ.u.mstances--a change of conditions--of relations--made it simply wrong for him to cherish it any more it wasn't one-fourth or one-tenth so much the unrighteousness as the ign.o.bility of the thing that tortured him and tortured him, until one day what does he up and do but turn over a new leaf. Do I speak too low?"

"No, go on, Mr. March."

"Well, for about twenty-four hours he thought he had done something n.o.ble. Then he found that was just what it wasn't. It never is; else turning over new leaves would be easy! He didn't get his new leaf turned over. He tried; he tried his best."

"That's all G.o.d asks," murmured Barbara.

"What?"

"Nothing. Please don't stop. How'd it turn out?"

"O bad! He put himself out of sight and reach and went on trying, till one day--one night--without intention or expectation, he found her when, by the baseness--no, I won't say that, but--yes, I will!--by the baseness of another, she was all at once the fit object of all the pity and the sort of love that belongs with pity, which any heart can give."

"And he gave them!"

"Yes, he gave _them_. But the old feeling--whatever it was----" John hesitated.

"Go on. Please don't stop."

"The--the old feeling--went out--right there--like a candle in the wind.

No, not that way, quite, but like a lamp drinking the last of its oil.

Where he lodged that night----"

"Yes----"

"--He heard a clock strike every hour; and at the break of day that--feeling--whatever it was--with the only real good excuse to live it ever had--was dead."

"And that wasn't true love? Don't you believe it was?"

"Do you, Miss Barbara Garnet? Could true love lie down and give up the ghost at such a time and on such a pretext as that? Could it? Could it?"

"I think--O--I think it--you'll forgive me if----"

"Forgive! Why, how can you offend _me_? You don't imagine----"

"O no! I forgot. Well I think the love was true in degree; not the very truest. It was only _first_ love; but it was the first love of a true heart."

"To be followed by a later and truer love, you think?"

"You shouldn't--O I don't know, Mr. March. What do you think?"

"Never! That's what I think. He may find refuge in friendship. I believe such a soul best fitted for that deep, pure friendship so much talked of and so rarely realized between man and woman. Such a heart naturally seeks it. Not with a mere hunger for comfort----"

"O no."

"--But because it has that to give which it cannot offer in love, yet which is good only when given; worthless to one, priceless to two.