From Jest to Earnest Part 25

Gayety vanished from the face as light from a clouded landscape, and with an expression that was even scowling and sullen she sat brooding before the fire, heeding Bel's complaining words no more than she would the patter of rain against the window.

Then Bel changed the tune; retaining the same minor key, however.

"I suppose now that you will give up your shameful plot against Mr. Hemstead, as a matter of course."

"I don't know what I'll do," snapped Lottie.

"Don't know what you'll do! Why, he about the same as saved our lives this evening."

"He saved his own at the same time."

"Well," said Bel, exasperatingly, "I wish Mr. Hemstead and all who heard the fine speeches about your 'kind, generous heart' could hear you now."

"I wish they could," said Lottie, recklessly. "They couldn't have a worse opinion of me than I have of myself."

"But what do you intend to do about Mr. Hemstead."

"I don't intend to do anything about him. I half wish I had never seen him."

"That you can trifle with him after what has happened to-night is something that I did not think, even of you, Lottie Marsden."

"I haven't said I was going to 'trifle with him.' He's a man you can't trifle with. The best thing I can do is to let him alone."

"That is just what I think."

"Very well then, go to sleep and be quiet."

"How long are you going to sit 'mooning' there?"

"Till morning, if I wish. Don't bother me."

"After coming so near having your neck broken, you ought to be in a better frame of mind."

"So had you. Neither breaking my neck nor coming near it will convert me."

"Well, I hope you will get through your moods and tenses to-day.

You have had more than I ever remember within so short a time."

With this comforting statement Bel left her friend to herself, who sat staring into the fire in the most discontented manner.

"'Capable of the n.o.blest things,' indeed," she thought. "I would like to know who is capable of meaner things. And now what do you intend to do, Lottie Marsden? Going on with your foolish, childish jest, after the fun has all faded out of it? If you do, you will make a fool of yourself instead of him. He is not the man you thought he was, at all. He is your superior in every respect, save merely in the ease which comes from living in public instead of seclusion, and in all his diffidence there has been nothing so rude and ill-bred as Julian's treatment of Mrs. Dlimm. Julian indeed! He's but a well-dressed little manikin beside this large-minded man"; and she scowled more darkly than ever at the fire.

"But what shall I do? I can't be such a Christian as Bel is. I would rather not be one at all. What's more, I cannot bring my mind to decide to be such a Christian as Mr. Hemstead is. I should have to change completely, and give up my old self-pleasing and wayward life, and that seems like giving up life itself. Religion is a bitter medicine that I must take some time or other. But the idea of sobering down at my time of life!"

"But you may not live to see age, Think what a risk you ran to-night,"

urged conscience.

"Well, I must take my chances. A plague on that Hemstead! I can't be with him ten minutes but he makes me uncomfortable in doing wrong. All was going smoothly till he came, and life was one long frolic. Now he has got my conscience all stirred up so that between them both I shall have little comfort. I won't go with him to Mrs.

Dlimm's to-morrow. He will talk religion to me all the time, and I, like a big baby, shall cry, and he will think I am on the eve of conversion, and perhaps will offer to take me out among the border ruffians as an inducement. If I want to live my old life, and have a good time, the less I see of Frank Hemstead the better, for, somehow or other, when I am with him I can't help seeing that he is right, and feeling mean in my wrong. I will just carry out my old resolution, and act as badly as I can. He will then see what I am, and let me alone."

Having formed this resolution, Lottie slept as sweetly as innocence itself.

To Hemstead, with his quiet and regular habits, the day had been long and exciting, and he was exceedingly weary; and yet thoughts of the brilliant and beautiful girl, who bewildered and fascinated him, awaking his sympathy at the same time, kept him sleepless till late. Every scene in which they had been together was lived over in all its minutiae, and his conclusions were favorable. As he had said to her, she seemed "capable of the n.o.blest things."

"She never has had a chance," he thought. "She never has given truth a fair hearing, probably having had slight opportunity to do so.

From the little I have seen and heard, it seems to me that the rich and fas.h.i.+onable are as neglected--indeed it would appear more difficult to bring before them the simple and searching gospel of Christ, than before the very poor."

Hemstead determined that he would be faithful, and would bring the truth to her attention in every possible way, feeling that if during this holiday visit he could win such a trophy for the cause to which he had devoted himself, it would be an event that would shed a cheering light down to the very end of his life.

It was a rather significant fact, which did not occur to him, however, that his zeal and interest were almost entirely concentrated on Lottie. His cousin Addie, and indeed all the others, seemed equally in need.

It must be confessed that some sinners are much more interesting than others, and Hemstead had never met one half so interesting as Lottie.

And yet his interest in her was natural. He had not reached that lofty plane from which he could look down with equal sympathy for all. Do any reach it, in this world?

Lottie had seemed kind to him when others had been cold and slightly scornful. He had come to see clearly that she was not a Christian, and that she was not by any means faultless through the graces of nature. But she had given ample proof that she had a heart which could be touched, and a mind capable of appreciating and being roused by the truth. That her kindness to him was only hollow acting he never dreamed, and it was well for her that he did not suspect her falseness, for with all her beauty he would have revolted from her at once. He could forgive anything sooner than the meanness of deception. If he discovered the practical joke, it would be a sorry jest for Lottie, for she would have lost a friend who appeared able to help her; and he, in his honest indignation, would have given her a portrait of herself that would have humiliated her proud spirit in a way that could never be forgotten.

But with the unquenchable hope of youth in his heart, and his boundless faith in G.o.d, he expected that, at no distant day, Lottie's remarkable beauty would be the index of a truer spiritual loveliness.

But, as is often the case, the morning dispelled the dreams of the night, to a degree that quite perplexed and disheartened him.

Lottie's greeting in the breakfast-room was not very cordial, and she seemed to treat him with cool indifference throughout the whole meal. There was nothing that the others would note, but something that he missed himself. Occasionally, she would make a remark that would cause him to turn toward her with a look of pained surprise, which both vexed and amused her; but he gave no expression to his feelings, save that he became grave and silent.

After breakfast Lottie said nothing to him about their visit to Mrs. Dlimn, from which he expected so much. Having waited some time in the parlor, he approached her timidly as she was pa.s.sing through the hall, and said, "When would you like to start upon our proposed visit?"

"O, I forgot to say to you, Mr. Hemstead," she replied rather carelessly, "that I've changed my mind. It's a very long drive, and, after all, Mrs. Dlimm is such an utter Stranger to me that I scarcely care to go."

But, under her indifferent seeming, she was watching keenly to see how he would take this rebuff. He flushed deeply, but to her surprise only bowed acquiescence, and turned to the parlor. She expected that he would remonstrate, and endeavor to persuade her to carry out her agreement. She was accustomed to pleading and coaxing on the part of young men, to whom, however, she granted her favors according to her moods and wishes. While she saw that he was deeply hurt and disappointed, his slightly cold and silent brow was a different expression of his feeling from what she desired.

She wanted to take the ride, and might have been persuaded into going, in spite of her purpose to keep aloof, and she was vexed with him that he did not urge her as De Forrest would have done.

Therefore the spoiled and capricious beauty went up to her room more "out of sorts" than ever, and sulkily resolved that she would not appear till dinner.

In the mean time Hemstead went to his aunt and informed her that he would take the morning train for New York, and would not return till the following evening.

"Very well, Frank," she replied; "act your pleasure. Come and go as you like."

The good lady was entertaining her nephew more from a sense of duty than anything else. From their difference in tastes he added little to her enjoyment, and was sometimes a source of discomfort; and so would not be missed.

Lottie had a desperately long and dismal time of it. Either the book she tried to read was stupid, or there was something wrong with her. At last she impatiently sent it flying across the room, and went to the window. The beautiful winter morning exasperated her still more.

"Suppose he had talked religion to me," she thought, "he at least makes it interesting, and anything would have been better than moping here. What a fool I was, not to go! What a fool I am, anyway! He is the only one I ever did act towards as a woman might and ought,--even in jest. He is the only one that ever made me wish I were a true woman, instead of a vain flirt; and the best thing my wisdom could devise, after I found out his beneficent power, was to give him a slap in the face, and shut myself up with a stupid novel. 'Capable of n.o.ble things!' I imagine he has changed his mind this morning.

"Well, what if he has? A plague upon him! I wish he had never come, or I had stayed in New York. I foresee that I am going to have an awfully stupid time here in the country."

Thus she irritably chafed through the long hours. She would not go downstairs as she wished to, because she had resolved that she would not. But she half purposed to try and bring about the visit to Mrs. Dlimm in the afternoon, if possible, and would now go willingly, if asked.

At the first welcome sound of the dinner-bell she sped downstairs, and glanced into the parlor, hoping that he might be there, and that in some way she might still bring about the ride. But she found only De Forrest yawning over a newspaper, and had to endure his sentimental reproaches that she had absented herself so long from him.

"Come to dinner," was her only and rather prosaic response.