A CUT DIRECT AND A REJECTED ADDRESS

The revelation that Steve made to Jacquelin in their law-office the night the bill was filed, seemed suddenly to have opened life again to Jacquelin. Looking back over the past, he could now see how foolish he had been. Incidents which he had construed one way now, in the light of Steve’s disclosure, took on a new complexion. He appeared to have sprung suddenly into a new and rarer atmosphere. Hope was easily worth everything else in Pandora’s box. When he began to visit at Dr. Cary’s again, it must be said, that he could discern no change in Blair. Easy and charming as she always was to others, to him she was as constrained as formerly. She treated him with the same coldness that she had always shown him since that fatal evening when he had taken her to task about Middleton, and then had alleged that it was on Steve’s account. However, he was not to be cast down now. With the key which Steve had given him he could afford to wait and was willing to serve for his mistake, and he set down her treatment of him simply to a woman’s caprice. He would bide his time until the occasion came and then he would win her. According to Steve, she had no idea that he was still in love with her, and according to the same expert authority, this was what she waited for. He had first to prove his love, and then he should find that he had hers. So through the long summer months he served faithfully. Each time that he saw Blair he found himself more deeply in love than before; and each time he feared more to tell her of it, lest Steve’s diagnosis should possibly prove wrong. He knew that the next time he opened the subject it must be final. He even stood seeing McRaffle visiting Dr. Cary’s, though he fumed and smouldered internally over a man like McRaffle being in Blair’s presence, however smooth he was. Steve declared that McRaffle was in love with Miss Welch, but Jacquelin knew better. Steve was such a jealous creature that he thought everyone was in love with Miss Welch—even that Wash Still was, whom Miss Welch would not so much as look at. No, McRaffle was in love with Blair. Jacquelin knew it—just as he knew that Middleton was. She could not bear McRaffle, of course; but the thought of Middleton often crossed Jacquelin’s mind, and discomposed him. He had heard of the honors Middleton had won in the Northwest and of his retirement from the service. Blair had told him of it with undue enthusiasm. Confound him! When that Indian bullet hit him most men would have died. Then as his thought ran this way Jacquelin would haul himself up short, with a feeling of hot shame that such an ignoble idea could even enter his mind, and next time he saw Blair would speak of Middleton with unmeasured admiration.

At length he could wait no longer. He would tell her how he had always loved her. Steve was his confidant, as he was Steve’s, and Steve agreed that this was the thing to do.

Alas! for masculine wisdom! The way of a serpent on a rock is not harder than that of a maid with a man. An opportunity presented itself one afternoon in which everything appeared so propitious that Jacquelin felt as though the time were made for his occasion. He and Blair had been to ride. The summer woods had been heavenly in their peacefulness and charm. Blair had insensibly fallen into a softer mood than she usually showed him, and, as they had talked of old times, she had seemed sweeter to him than ever before. He had spoken to her of Rupert, and of his anxiety about the boy; of his association with McRaffle, and of the influence McRaffle seemed to have obtained over him; and Blair had responded with a warmth which had set his heart to bounding. Mr. McRaffle was a dangerous, bad man, she declared, and she was doing all she could to counteract his evil influence over Rupert. Her sweetness to Jacquelin was such that he had hardly been able to restrain himself from opening his heart to her then and there, and asking her to let the past be bygones and accept his love. But he had waited until they should reach home, and now they were at the door. She invited him to stay to tea. Her voice thrilled him. Jacquelin suddenly began to speak to her of what was in his heart. She dropped her eyes and he was conscious that she was trembling. In his constraint he referred to the past, and faltered something about Steve having set him right. She looked up quickly. He did not heed it, but went on and said all he had so often rehearsed, with a good deal more than he had planned to say. Perhaps he gathered confidence as he went on—perhaps he showed it a little too much; for he became conscious somehow that she was not as responsive as she had been just before.

When he was quite through, he waited. She also waited a moment, and then began.

She did not care for him, except as a relative, and she never expected to marry at all. She was not looking at him, and was evidently speaking under strong feeling.

Jacquelin’s hopes were all dashed to the ground. His throat felt parched, and when he tried to speak again his lips did not frame his words easily.

“May I ask if you care for anyone else?” he demanded, in a constrained voice.

“She did not know that he had any right to ask her such a question. She had already told him that she never expected to marry anyone.” She had grown more formal.

Jacquelin was sure now that she cared for Middleton, and she had simply misled Steve.

“What did you tell Steve?” he asked.

She faced him, her figure quite straight and strong, her flashing eyes fastened searchingly on his face.

“So that’s the reason you have come! Steve told you to come, and you have come to say what he told you to say. Well, go back to him and tell him I say he was mistaken.” Her lip curled as she turned on her heel.

“No—no—Blair—wait one moment!” But she had walked slowly into the house, and Jacquelin saw her climb the stair.

A moment later he mounted his horse, and came slowly away down the road he knew so well, the road to Vain regret, beyond which, somewhere, lies Despair.

He knew now it was Middleton who had barred his way, and that to keep her secret, Blair had misled Steve. He might have forgiven her all else, but he could not forgive that.

When Jacquelin announced the result of his proposal to Steve, that wise counsellor laughed at him. He could make it up in ten minutes, he declared, and he rode up to see Blair next day. His interview lasted somewhat longer than he had expected, and most of the time he had been defending himself against Blair’s scathing attack. When he left, it was with a feeling that he had done both Blair and Jacquelin an injury, and when he saw Jacquelin, he summed up his position briefly: “Well, Jack, I give it up. I thought I knew something of men and women; but I give up women.”

After his interview with Major Welch, Captain Allen had appeared to be in better spirits than he had been in for some time. Even the letter he received from that gentleman did not wholly dash his hopes, and though they occasionally sank, they as often rallied again. We know from the greatest of novelists that when a man is cudgelling his brains for other rhymes to “sorrow” besides “borrow” and “to-morrow,” he is nearer light than he thinks. Steve found this safety-scape.

Jacquelin did not write poetry or even “poems” on the subject of his disappointment; but his cheek-bones began to show more, and his chin began to take on a firmer set.

But Captain Allen was soon plunged as deep in the abyss as Jacquelin.

He was sitting in his office looking out of the window one afternoon, a habit that had grown on him of late, when a pair of riders, a lady and her escort, rode up the street, in plain view of where he sat. At sight of the trim figure sitting her horse so jauntily, Steve’s heart gave a bound and a light came into his eyes. The next instant a cloud followed as he recognized Miss Welch’s companion as Dr. Washington Still. Rumor had reported that Dr. Still was with her a good deal of late. Miss Thomasia and Blair had met them one evening visiting a poor woman together. McRaffle had taken the trouble to state that he had frequently met them.

Steve could not believe that such a girl as Ruth Welch could be accepting the addresses of such a man as young Dr. Still. She could not know him. He followed the girl, with his eyes, as long as she was in view. For some moments afterward he sat with a dogged resolution on his face; but it gradually faded away, and he rose and went out, passing down to the street. He had not seen Ruth Welch face to face since the filing of Jacquelin’s suit. But she had never been absent from his thoughts for a moment. He had heard that both she and Mrs. Welch had a great deal of feeling about the suit, and that both had spoken bitterly of him; but Major Welch had received him civilly, even though he had denied his request to be allowed to offer himself as Ruth’s suitor.

With a combination of emotions, rather than with any single idea in his mind, Steve strode into the village and up the street. He wanted to get away, and he wanted to be near her and have a look in her face; but he had no definite intention of letting her see him, none, at least, of meeting her. But as he turned a corner into a shady street they were coming back and Steve saw that even at a distance Ruth Welch knew him. He could not turn back; so kept on, and as they passed him he raised his hat. Miss Welch’s escort, with a supercilious look on his face, raised his hat; but the girl looked Steve full in the eyes and cut him dead. The blood sprang into Steve’s face. For any sign she gave, except a sudden whitening, and a contraction of the mouth, she might never have seen him before in all her life. The next second Steve heard her voice starting apparently a very animated conversation with her escort, and heard him reply:

“Hurrah! for you, that will settle him;” and break into a loud laugh.

Steve did not return to his office that evening. He spent the night wandering about in blind and hopeless gloom. But had Mr. Allen known what occurred during the remainder of that ride he might have found in it some consolation.

Miss Ruth had hardly gotten out of hearing of Captain Allen, and her escort had scarcely had time to turn over in his mind his enjoyment of his rival’s discomfiture and his own triumph, when the young lady inexplicably changed and turned on him so viciously and with so biting a sarcasm that he was almost dumfounded. The occasion for her change was so slight that Wash Still was completely mystified. It was only some slighting little speech he made about the man she had just cut dead.

“Why don’t you say that to Captain Allen?” she asked, with a sudden flush on her face and a flash in her eyes. “You, at least, have not the excuse of not speaking to him.”

Women have this in common with the Deity, that their ways are past finding out. The young doctor was completely mystified; but he could not comprehend how Miss Welch could have cut Captain Allen without it, in some way, redounding to his own advantage, and, notwithstanding her fierceness and coldness toward him, he believed it was a favorable time for him.

The ride home through the woods in the soft summer afternoon presented an opportunity he had been seeking for some time, and the attitude Ruth had shown toward his rival appeared to him to indicate that everything was propitious. Even her attack he construed as only a flash of feminine caprice. After her little explosion, Miss Welch had lapsed into silence, and rode with her eyes on her horse’s mane and her lips firmly closed. The young man took it for remorse for her conduct, and drawing up to her side, began to talk of himself and of his affairs. Ruth listened in silence—so silently, indeed, that she scarcely seemed to be listening at all—and the young doctor was moved to enlarge somewhat eloquently on his prospects as the owner of both Birdwood and Red Rock, the handsomest places in the County. Presently, however, he changed, and as they reached a shady place in the road, began to address her. He stated that he thought she had given him reason to hope he might be successful. The change in Ruth was electric. She gave suddenly a vehement gesture of wild dissent:

“Oh! No! no! Don’t!” she cried, and drew her horse to a stand, turning in the road and facing the young man. “No! no! You have misunderstood me! How could you think so? I have never done it! I never dreamed of it! It is impossible!” The deep color sprang to her face, but the next moment she controlled herself by a strong effort, and faced the young man again. “Dr. Still,” she said, calmly and with deep earnestness, “I am sure that, wittingly, I never gave you the least warrant to think—to suppose that I could—that you might say to me what you have said. My conscience tells me this; but if I have ever done or said anything that appeared to you to be a ground to build a hope on, I am deeply sorry, and humbly beg your pardon. I beg you to believe me, I never intended it. I do not wish to appear hard or—cruel, but I must tell you now that there is not the slightest hope for you, and never will be. I do not love you, I never could love, and I will never marry, you, never.” She could not have spoken more strongly.

The young man’s face, which had begun by being pale, had now turned crimson, and he broke out, almost violently—reiterating that she had given him ground to think himself favored. He cited the rides she had taken with him. Ruth’s eyes opened wide and her form straightened:

“I do not wish to discuss this further. I have told you the simple truth. I should prefer that you go on ahead of me—I prefer to ride home alone.”

“Why did you cut Steve Allen this evening?” Dr. Still persisted, angrily.

Ruth’s face hardened.

“Certainly not on your account,” she said, coldly, “or for any reason that you will understand. Go; I will ride home alone.”

“I used to think you were in love with him, and so did everybody else,” persisted he; “but it can’t be him. Is it that young jackanapes, Rupert Gray? He’s in love with you, but I didn’t suppose you to be in love with a boy like that.”

Ruth’s face flamed with indignation.

“By what right do you question me as to such things? Go, I will ride home alone.” She drew her horse back and away from him. The young man hesitated for a moment, but Ruth was inexorable.

“If you please—go!” she said, coldly, pointing down the road.

“Well, I will go,” he burst out, angrily. “But Rupert Gray and the whole set of ’em had better look out for me,” and with a growl of rage, he struck his horse and galloped away.

Miss Welch rode on alone, her heart moved by conflicting emotions—indignation, apprehension—and yet others, deeper than these. What right had this man to treat her so? She flushed again with indignation as she thought of his insolence. It seemed to her almost an insult to have been addressed by him. She went over in her mind her conduct toward him. There never was one thing of which he could have a right to complain. Of this she was sure. It could not be otherwise, for she had never for a moment been free from a consciousness of antipathy to him. Then she went over her present situation, the situation of her father and mother, now so lonely and cut off from everyone. The cool, still woods, the deserted road, the far-reaching silence, were such as to inspire loneliness and sadness, and Ruth was on the verge of tears when the gallop of a horse came to her from ahead. She wondered if it could be Wash Still returning, and a momentary wave of apprehension swept over her. The next instant Rupert Gray cantered in sight. Ruth’s first thought was one of relief, the next was that she ought to be cool to him. But as the boy galloped up to her, his young face glowing with pleasure, and reined in his horse, all her intended formality disappeared, and she returned his greeting cordially.

“Well, I am in luck,” he exclaimed. “Mayn’t I ride home with you?” He had assumed her consent, and turned his horse without waiting for it.

“I am afraid you may be going somewhere and I may detain you.”

“No, indeed; I am my own master,” he said, with a toss of his head. “Besides, I don’t like you to be riding so late all by yourself.”

The imitation of Steve Allen’s protecting manner was so unmistakable that Ruth could not help smiling.

“Oh! I’m not afraid. No one would interfere with me.”

“They’d better not! If they did, they’d soon hear from me,” declared the boy, warmly, with that mannish toss of the head which boys have. “I’d soon show ’em who Rupert Gray is. Oh! I say! I met Washy Still up the road yonder, a little way back, looking as sour as vinegar, and you ought to have seen the way I cut him. I passed him just like this” (giving an imitation of his stare), “and you just ought to have seen the way he looked. He looked as if he’d have liked to shoot me.” He burst into a clear, merry laugh.

The boy’s description of himself was so exactly like the way Ruth had treated Steve, that she could not forbear smiling. The smile died away, however, and an expression of seriousness took its place.

“Rupert, I don’t think it well to make enemies of people——”

“Who? Of Washy Still? Pshaw! He knows I hate him—and he hates me. I don’t care. I want him to hate me. I’ll make him hate me worse before I’m done.” It was the braggadocio of a boy.

Ruth thought of the gleam of hate that had come into the man’s eyes. “He might do you an injury.”

“Who? Washy Still? Let him try it. I’m a better man than he is, any day. But he’d never try it. He’s afraid to look me in the eyes. You don’t like him, do you?” he asked with sudden earnestness.

“No, but I think you underestimate him.”

“Pshaw! He can’t hurt you—not unless you took his physic—no other way. I asked if you liked him, because—because some people thought you did, and I said you didn’t—I knew you didn’t. I say, I want to ask you something. I wish you wouldn’t let him come to see you.”

“Why?”

“Why, because he is not a man you ought to associate with—he is not a gentleman. He’s a sneak, and his father’s a thief. He stole our place—just stole it—besides everything else he’s stolen.”

“Why, you say we—my father had something to do with that,” said Ruth, quietly.

“What! You! Your father?—I said he stole!” He reined up his horse, in his amazement.

“In your suit or bill, or whatever you call it.” Ruth felt that it was cruel in her to strike him such a blow, yet she enjoyed it.

“I never did—we never did—you are mistaken,” stammered the boy. “Why, I wouldn’t have done it for the whole of Red Rock—no more would Steve. Let me explain. I know all about it.”

Ruth looked acquiescent, and as they walked their horses along under the trees the boy tried to explain the matter. He was not very lucid, for he was often confused; but he made clear the desire they had had to keep Major Welch out of the matter, and the sincerity of their motive in giving him the notice before he should buy, and the anxiety they had had and the care they had taken to make it clear in their suit that no charge of personal knowledge by him was intended. He also informed Ruth of Steve’s action in the matter, and of the episode in the office that night when the bill was signed, or, at least, of as much of it as he had heard.

“But why did he do that?” asked Ruth.

“Don’t you know?”

“N—o.” Very doubtfully and shyly.

“Steve’s in love with you!”

“What? Oh, no! You are mistaken.” Ruth was conscious that her reply was silly and weak, and that she was blushing violently.

“Yes, he is—dead in love. Why, everybody knows it—at least Jack does, and Blair does, and I do. And I am, too,” he added, warmly. The boy’s ingenuous declaration steadied Ruth and soothed her. She looked at him with a pleased and gratified light on her face.

“I am—I am dead in love with you, too. I think you are the prettiest and sweetest and kindest young lady in the whole world—just as nice as Blair, every bit; and I just wish I was older—I just wish you could marry me.” He was blushing and turning white by turns, and the expression on his young face was so ingenuous and sweet and modest, and the light in his eyes so adoring, that the girl’s heart went out to him. She drew her horse over to his side, and put her hand softly on his arm.

“Rupert, you are a dear, sweet boy, and, at least, you will let me be your best friend, and you will be mine,” she said, sweetly.

“Yes, I will, and I think you are just as good as you can be, and I’ll be just like your own brother, if you will let me.”

“Indeed, I will, and we will always be sister and brother to each other.”

“Thank you,” he said, simply. A moment later he said, reining in his horse, “I say, if you think that suit means anything against your father, I’ll have it stopped.”

“No, no, Rupert; I am satisfied,” Ruth protested, with a smile.

“Because I can do it; Jack and Steve would do anything for me, and I would do anything for you. It was mainly on my account, anyhow, that they brought it, I believe,” he added. “They said I was a minor; but, you know, I’ll soon be of age—I’m seventeen now. I don’t know why boys have to be boys, anyhow! I don’t see why they can’t be men at once.”

“I think I know,” Ruth smiled, gazing at him pleasantly.

“And, I say, I want to tell you one thing about Steve. He isn’t what people take him to be. You know?—Just clever and dashing and wild and reckless. He’s the best and kindest fellow in the world. You ask Aunt Thomasia and Blair and Aunt Peggy and Uncle Waverley and old Mrs. Turley, and all the poor people about the County. And he’s as brave as Julius CÆsar. I want to tell you that of him, and you know I wouldn’t tell you if ’twa’n’t so.”

“I know,” said Ruth, looking at him more pleasantly than ever.

They were at the gate now, and Ruth invited him in; but Rupert said he had an engagement.

“There is one thing I want to ask you to do,” said Ruth, rather doubtfully.

“What is it?” he asked, brightening; and then, as she hesitated: “ Anything! I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you, Miss Ruth; indeed, I will.”

“No; it is not for me, but for yourself,” said Ruth, who was thinking of a report that Rupert had been associating lately with some very wild young men, and she had it in her mind to ask him not to do so any more. “But, no; I’ll ask you next time I see you, maybe,” she added, after a pause.

“All right; I promise you I’ll do it.”

He said good-by, and galloped away through the dusk.

Ruth stood for some time looking after him, and then turned and entered the house, and went softly to her room.

Ruth did not think it necessary to tell her mother or father of the incidents of her ride, except that Rupert had ridden home with her. She shrank instinctively from speaking even to her mother of what had occurred on the ride. She felt a certain humiliation in the fact that Dr. Still had ventured to address her. Her only consolation was that she knew she had never given him any right to speak so to her. She had never gone anywhere with him except from a sense of duty, and had never been anything but coldly polite to him. She was relieved to hear a few days later that Dr. Still had left the County, and, rumor said, had gone to the city to practise his profession. Anyhow, he was gone, and Ruth felt much relieved, and buried her uncomfortable secret in her own bosom.