"You have a right," she said, "and _I_ shouldn't have spoken as I did.

You were fair, and I wasn't, as usual. I'll tell you. And will you promise me just to--to give this little slip of paper to your father--and never refer to the matter again, or let him?"

"I promise."

"Well, then," she went on hurriedly, "about a month ago I bought the mortgage on this farm. It seemed to me the only thing that stood in the way of your prosperity now--it hung around your father's neck like a millstone--just the thought that he couldn't feel that this wonderful old place was wholly his, the last years of his life, and that he couldn't leave it intact for you and Thomas and your children after you when he died. So I made up my mind it should be destroyed to-day, as my real Christmas present to you all. The transfer papers were all properly made out and recorded--this little memorandum will show you when and where. But Hiram Hutt's t.i.tle to the property, and mine--and all the correspondence about them--are in that fireplace. That burden was too heavy for your father to carry--thank G.o.d, I've been the one to help lift it!"

In the moment of electrified silence that followed, Sylvia misinterpreted Austin's silence, just as he had failed to understand her tears. She came nearer to him, holding out her hands.

"Please don't be angry," she whispered; "I'll never give any of you anything again, if you don't want me to. I know you don't want--and you don't need--charity; but you did need and want--some one to help just a little--when things had been going badly with you for so long that it seemed as if they never could go right again. You'd lost your grip because there didn't seem to be anything to hang on to! It's meant new courage and hope and _life_ to me to be able to stay here--I'd lost my grip, too. I don't think I could have held on much longer--to my _reason_ even--if I hadn't had this respite. If I can accept all that from you, can't you accept the clear t.i.tle to a few acres from me? Austin--don't stand there looking at me like that--tell me I haven't presumed too far."

"What made you think I was angry?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Do men dare to be angry with angels sent from Heaven?" He took the little slip of paper which she still held in her extended hand. "I thought you had done something like this--that was why you made me burn the papers myself--in the name of my father--and of my children--G.o.d bless you." Without taking his eyes off her face, he drew a tiny box from his pocket.

"Sylvia--would you take a present from _me_?"

"Why, yes. What--"

"It isn't really a present at all, of course, for it was bought with your money, and perhaps you won't like it, for I've noticed you never wear any jewelry. But I couldn't bear to come home without a single thing for you--and this represents--what you've been to me."

As he spoke, he slipped into her hand a delicate chain of gold, on which hung a tiny star; she turned it over two or three times without speaking, and her eyes filled with tears again. Then she said:

"It _is_ a present, for this means you travelled third-cla.s.s, and stayed at cheap hotels, and went without your lunches--or you couldn't have bought it. You had only enough money for the trip we originally planned, without those six weeks in Italy. I'll wear _this_ piece of jewelry--and it will represent what _you've_ been to _me_, in my mind. Will you put it on yourself?"

She held it towards him, bending forward, her head down. It seemed to Austin that her loveliness was like the fragrance of a flower.

Involuntarily, the hands which clasped the little chain around her white throat, touching the warm, soft skin, fell to her shoulders, and drew her closer.

The swift and terrible change that went over Sylvia's face sent a thrust of horror through him. She shut her eyes, and shrank away, trembling all over, her face grown ashy white. Instantly he realized that the gesture must have replied to her some ghastly experience in the past; that perhaps she had more than once been tricked into an embrace by a gift; that a man's love had meant but one thing to her, and that she now thought herself face to face with that thing again, from one whom she had helped and trusted. For an instant the grief with which this realization filled him, the fresh compa.s.sion for all she had suffered, the renewed love for all her goodness, were too much for him. He tried to speak, to take away his hands, to leave her. He seemed to be powerless. Then, blessedly, the realization of what he should do came to him.

"Open your eyes, Sylvia," he commanded.

Too startled to disobey, she did so. He looked into them for a full minute, smiling, and shook his head.

"You did not understand, dear lady," he said. And dropping on his knees before her, he took her hands, laid them against his cheek for a minute, touched them with his lips, and left her.

CHAPTER IX

Uncle Mat made a determined effort to persuade Sylvia to return to New York with him; and though he was not successful, he was not altogether discouraged by her reply.

"I _have_ been thinking of it," she said, "but I promised Mrs. Gray I'd stay here through the winter, and she'd be hurt and disappointed now if I didn't; besides, I don't feel quite ready for New York myself yet. I realize that I've remained--nearly long enough--and as soon as the warm weather comes, I'm going to have my own little house remodelled and put in order, and move there for the summer. It'll be such fun--just like doll's housekeeping! Then in the fall--I wont promise--but perhaps if you still want me, I'll come to you, at least until I decide what to do next."

"Come now for a visit, if you won't for the rest of the winter."

"Not yet; by spring I'm afraid I'll have to have some new clothes--I've had nothing since I came here except a fur coat, which arrived by parcel post! Sally wants to go away in the Easter vacation, and if you can squeeze us both into your little guest-room, perhaps we'll come together then."

"You're determined to have some sort of a bodyguard in the shape of your new friends to protect you from your old ones?"

"Not quite that. I'll come alone if you prefer it," said Sylvia quickly.

"No, no, my dear; I should be glad to have Sally. How about Austin, too?

He could sleep on the living-room sofa, you know, and that would make four of us to go about together, which is always a pleasant number.

Thomas would be home at that time, and Austin could probably leave more easily than at any other."

"Ask him by all means. I think he would be glad to go."

Austin was accordingly invited, and accepted with enthusiasm. Uncle Mat found him in the barn, where he was separating cream with the new electric separator, but he nodded, with a smile which showed all his white teeth, as his voice could not be heard above the noise of the machine.

"Indeed, I will," he said heartily, when the current was switched off again. "How unfortunate that Easter comes so late this year--but that will give us all the longer to look forward to it in! I hate to have you go back, Mr. Stevens, but I suppose the inevitable call of the siren city is too much for your easily tempted nature!"

Mr. Stevens laughed, and a.s.sented. "How that boy has changed!" he said to himself as he walked back to the house. "He fairly radiates enthusiasm and wholesomeness. Well, I'm sorry for him. I wish Sylvia would leave now instead of in the spring, in spite of her promises and scruples and what-not. And I wish, darn it all, that she were as easy to read as he is."

Austin's existence, just at that time, seemed even more rose-colored than Uncle Mat could suspect. The day after Christmas he pondered for a long time on the events of the night before, and gave some very anxious thought to his future line of conduct. At first he decided that it would be best to avoid Sylvia altogether, and thus show her that she had nothing to dread from him, for her sudden fear had been very hard to bear; but before night another and wiser course presented itself to him--the idea of going on exactly as if nothing had happened that was in the least extraordinary, and prove to her that he was to be trusted.

Accordingly, a.s.suming a calmness which he was very far from feeling, he stopped at her door again before going upstairs, saying cheerfully:

"Tell me to go away if you want to; if not, I've come for my first French lesson."

Sylvia looked up with a smile from the book she was reading. "Entrez, monsieur," she said gayly; "avez-vous apporte votre livre, votre cahier, et votre plume? Comment va l'oncle de votre ami? Le chat de votre mere, est-il noir?"

Austin burst out laughing at her mimicry of the typical conversation in a beginner's grammar, and she joined him. The critical moment had pa.s.sed.

He saw that he was welcome, that he had risen and not fallen in her regard, though he was far from guessing how much, and opening his book, drew another chair near the fire and sat down beside her.

"You must have some romances as well as this dry stuff," she said, when he had pegged away at Chardenal for over an hour. "We'll read Dumas together, beginning with the Valois romances, and going straight along in the proper order. You'll learn a lot of history, as well as considerable French. Some of it is rather indiscreet but--"

"Which of us do you think it is most likely to shock?" he asked, with such an expression of mock-alarm that they both burst out laughing again; and when they had sobered down, "Now may we have some Browning, please?"

So Sylvia reached for a volume from her shelf, and began to read aloud, while Austin smoked; she read extremely well, and she loved it. She went from "The Last d.u.c.h.ess" to "The Statue and the Bust," from "Fra Filippo Lippi" to "Andrea del Sarto." And Austin sat before the fire, smoking and listening, until the little clock again roused them to consciousness by striking twelve.

"This will never do!" he exclaimed, jumping up. "I must have regular hours, like any schoolboy. What do you say to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, from seven-thirty to ten? The other nights I'll bend my energies to preparing my lessons."

"A capital idea. Good-night, Austin."

"Good-night, Sylvia."

There were, however, no more French lessons that week. The next evening twenty young people went off together in sleighs, got their supper at White Water, danced there until midnight, and did not reach home until three in the morning. The following night there was a "show" in Wallacetown, and although they had all declared at their respective breakfast-tables--for breakfast is served anywhere from five-thirty to six-thirty in Hamstead, Vermont--that nothing would keep them out of bed after supper _that_ night, off they all went again. A "ball" followed the "show," and the memory of the first sleigh-ride proved so agreeable that another was undertaken. And finally, on New Year's Eve the Grays themselves gave a party, opening wide the doors of the fine old house for the first time in many years. Sylvia played for the others to dance on this occasion, as she had done at Christmas, but in the rest of the merry-making she naturally could take no part. Austin, however, proved the most enthusiastic reveller of all, put through his work like chain lightning, and was out and off before the plodding Thomas had fairly begun. Manlike, it did not occur to him to give up any of these festivities because Sylvia could not join in them. For years he had hungered and thirsted, as most boys do, for "a good time"--and done so in vain. For years his work had seemed so endless and yet so futile--for what was it all leading to?--that it had been heartlessly and hopelessly done, and when it was finished, it had left him so weary that he had no spirit for anything else much of the time. Now the old order had, indeed, changed, yielding place to new. Good looks, good health, and a good mind he had always possessed, but they had availed him little, as they have many another person, until good courage and high ideals had been added to them. He scarcely saw Sylvia for several days, and did not even realize it, they seemed so full and so delightful; then coming out of the house early one afternoon intending to go to the barn to do some little odd jobs of cleaning up, he met her, coming towards him on snowshoes, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes sparkling. She waved her hand and hurried towards him.

"Oh, _Austin_! Are you awfully busy?"

"No, not at all. Why?"

"I've just been over to my house, for the first time--you know in the fall, I couldn't walk, and then I lost the key, and--well, one thing after another has kept me away--lately the deep snow. But these last few days I got to thinking about it--you've all been gone so much I've been alone, you see--so I decided to try getting there on snowshoes--just think of having a house that's so quiet that there isn't even a _road_ to it any more! It was quite a tramp, but I made it and went in, and, oh!

it's so _wonderful_--so exactly like what I hoped it was going to be--that I hurried back to see if you wouldn't come and see it too, and let me tell you everything I'm planning to do to it?"

She stopped, entirely out of breath. In a flash, Austin realized, first, that she had been lonely and neglected in the midst of the good times that all the others had been having; realized, too, that he had never before seen her so full of vitality and enthusiasm; and then, that, without being even conscious of it, she had come instinctively to him to share her new-found joy, while he had almost forgotten her in his. He was not sufficiently versed in the study of human nature to know that it has always been thus with men and women, since Eve tried to share her apple with Adam and only got blamed for her pains. Austin blamed himself, bitterly and resentfully, and decided afresh that he was the most utterly ungrateful and unworthy of men. His reflections made him slow in answering.

"Don't you _want_ to come?"

"Of course I want to come! I was just thinking--wait a second, I'll get my snowshoes."