Under the Country Sky Part 22

"He has just gone to bed. He would be very happy if you would go in and speak to him," said Georgiana.

Mr. Jefferson ran upstairs with his bag, and made a brief call upon Mr.

Warne. Then he came down, to find Georgiana standing with her arms about a white pillar, her face looking off toward the garden. The lamplight from the central hall, whose rear door opened upon the porch, gleamed rosily out upon her.

Mr. Jefferson came out and stood beside her. "I came back," he said, "just to offer you my friends.h.i.+p in any time of need. I couldn't go away without doing that; I couldn't be content merely to write it back to you. I have lived here in your home with your father and yourself until it has come to seem almost as if I belonged here. But my work calls me; I must go back to it. The book must wait, to be finished in spare moments as other books have been finished. I thought I could give myself this year away from my profession to accomplish this task and perhaps to lay in fresh stores of energy. But I find I can't be easy in mind to do this longer. So I am going back."

After an instant Georgiana answered, without turning her eyes away from the garden: "You are a very fortunate person."

"To have work that calls so loudly? I am sure of that. And it is work which absorbs me to the full. But I shall always have time to give to you or to your father, if in any way I can ever be of service to you. I have no family to call upon me for any attention whatever; I have no near relative except the married sister who lives abroad, as I have told you. By the way, Allison has bidden me more than once to thank you for her for taking such good care of me. You know her by her picture, if you have noticed it--the one on my bureau."

Georgiana nodded. She did not trust her lips, which were suddenly trembling, to tell him that though he had often spoken of this sister he had never mentioned the fact that the photograph on his bureau was hers.

But--what did it matter now? It was far better that she had not known, that she had had this restraint upon her imagination to keep her from ever letting herself go. It was far better---- But he was speaking; she must listen.

"While I have been in this house I have felt," he was saying, "as if I had a real home. It is hard to give that up. a.s.sociation with your father has become much to me. I can't tell you what he has given me out of his stores of wisdom and experience. And you--have been very good to me; I shall not forget it."

"I have done nothing," murmured Georgiana with dry lips, "except feed you and dust your room. You might have had such service anywhere."

"Might I? I doubt it. And there is something else. If I may I should like to tell you how I have admired you for your steady facing of each day's routine. There is no heroism in the world, Miss Georgiana, equal to that, to my thinking."

She shook her head. "I'm not heroic; please don't tell me I am."

"But you are, and I must tell you so. Why not? I have seen more than you may have realized. My whole life's training has been in the line of observation of other human beings. And you must know that no one could be with you and not understand that the fires of longing to live and live strongly and vitally burn in you with more than ordinary fierceness. Yet you subdue them every day for the sake of the one who needs you. That is real heroism, and the sight of it has touched me very much."

Suddenly she found herself struggling to keep back the choking in her throat. How well he had understood her--and what unsuspected depths of tenderness there were in his rich and quiet voice. She could not speak for a little, and he stood beside her in a comprehending silence.

"I can't go away," he said presently, "without telling you that your happiness has come to seem very important to me. I have--necessarily--a fairly wide knowledge of men, their characters, their motives, their ideals--or their lack of them. Miss Georgiana, when you come to choose--will you let me say it?--don't be misled by superficial attributes, even the most attractive. Don't let the desire to have your horizon apparently expanded, to go far and see much and live intensely, overbalance your appreciation of fine and lasting qualities in one who could give you little excitement but much that is real and worth having.

It may be very daring in me to say this to you, but I find myself impelled to it. I want you to live, and live gloriously, and find employment for every one of your splendid energies, and there is only one being in the world who can help you do that--the man whom you can respect as well as love, and love as well as respect. Will you promise me to choose him and n.o.body else?"

She turned suddenly and fiercely upon him. "How can you think I----" She stopped short, her eyes blazing in the darkness.

"I can foresee," said he, very gently, "an hour for you when you will be tempted out of your senses to do the thing which promises change, any change. You are starving for it; you are desperate with longing for it----"

"Mr. Jefferson----"

"Miles Channing came into town when I did: his car raced my train for the last two miles. He has gone to the hotel. Doubtless you will see him within the hour. Miss Georgiana, I can't let you marry him without telling you that if you do you will be an unhappy woman for the rest of your life."

She was speechless for a moment with surprise. She forgot her encounter with the speaker in her astonishment at his news. Channing had come back, then, even as he had vowed, long before the rest of the party. The knowledge that he was close at hand again, bringing back with him such a wild will to accomplish that of which he had been thwarted that he had not been able to brook delay upon the other side of the water, was knowledge of the sort which stopped the breath.

"Will you forgive me?" said Mr. Jefferson's low voice in her ear.

"But--but I--don't understand," she stammered--and now at last she showed him her unhappy eyes.

"What I have to do with it? How can I fail to have something to do with it? When I let you sail in the same party with this young man without warning you, it was because I had no possible notion that he was to be along. When I learned that he had gone and that he had followed you back, I knew that he was in earnest--at least in his pursuit of you. I had thought there was no actual danger for you on account of your friend--your real friend--the young man whom you had known and trusted so long and with such reason. But now, with him away and you alone here and lonely and full of the hunger for life--yes, I know I am speaking plainly, but I feel that I must put you on your guard. And I want you to feel that though I shall be gone to-morrow night I am here to-night, and if you have any need for me--for an elder brother----"

"Oh, how can you think----"

"I do think--and I know--and I fear for you. Not because I do not believe in you, but because I know the manner of man who will approach you. You have never known his sort. Let me be a brother to you--just for to-night, if only in your thought. It may help to steady you."

There was silence between them for a little. Then steps upon the front porch, quick, ringing steps, as of one who comes with eagerness.

Georgiana felt her hand taken for an instant and pressed warmly between two firm hands. Then her companion left her....

Three hours afterward Georgiana flung herself, breathing fast, upon her knees beside her open window and lifted her face toward the sky. She would have fled to her garden for this vigil she must keep, but the extraordinary truth was that she did not dare be alone there. Her hands gripped the sill, her eyes stared without seeing at the vaulted depths above her. After a long time--hours--she rose and went to her door, opened it without making a sound, and, listening till she had made sure that the house was as silent as all houses should be at two in the morning, she stole slowly along the upper hall. Presently she stood outside the closed door of the guest who was sleeping under the roof for the last time. With a fast-beating heart she noiselessly laid her hand upon the panel of that door.

"You did steady me," she whispered. "I couldn't have done it if you hadn't warned me--fortified me. Oh, what shall I do without you?"

Inside suddenly a footstep sounded, the footstep of a shod foot.

Instantly the girl was off down the hall like a frightened deer. In her own room she stood with her hand upon her breast. "Up--at this hour!"

her startled consciousness was repeating. "Why? There was no light in his room. Couldn't he sleep either? Why? Is _that_ what it means to him to be a brother?"

In the morning Mr. Jefferson took his leave. His parting with Mr. Warne was like that between father and son. When he came to Georgiana he looked straight down into her eyes.

"Remember," he said, "that what I have told you of my wish to be of any possible use to you and your father holds good, even though I should be at the other side of the world. I shall write now and then to ask about you both. I can't tell you how I hope for your happiness--Georgiana."

When he had gone she went to her room and dropped upon her knees beside her bed, her arms outflung upon the old blue and white counterpane.

"O G.o.d," she whispered pa.s.sionately, "how could You show it to me if I couldn't have it? How _could_ You?"

CHAPTER XIX

REVELATIONS

Summer had gone at last, its fierce heat giving way to the cool, fresh days of an early autumn. August, September, October--the months had dragged interminably by, and now it was November, bleak and chill, with gray skies and penetrating winds and sudden deluges of rain. Georgiana, sweeping sodden leaves from a wet porch after an all-night storm, looked up to see the village telegraph messenger approaching. With her one dearest safe upon a couch within, and Stuart long since at home again, she could not fear bad news. She thought of Jeannette, who was always, in the absence of a telephone in the old manse, telegraphing her invitations and demands.

She tore open the dispatch with a hope that it was from Jeannette, for she had sadly missed her letters. Jeannette, indeed, it was who had inspired the message, but its sender was her sister. Rosalie Crofton wired that Jeannette had been taken suddenly and violently ill while on a visit in New York and was to be operated upon at once; that she had begged Georgiana to come and to bring James Stuart with her; that Rosalie herself was dreadfully frightened and prayed Georgiana not to lose a train nor to fail to bring Stuart.

Action was never slow with the receiver of this message; it had never been quicker than now. With one brief explanation to her father, she was off to find Stuart. Just at the dripping hedge she met him, his face tense with the shock it was plain he had received. At sight of her he drew a yellow paper from his pocket.

"You've heard?" he cried.

"Yes; this very minute."

"There's only an hour to catch the ten-ten. You'll go?"

"Of course. I was coming to tell you. I'll be ready."

She turned again and ran back. There was much to do in the allotted hour, but with the help of Mrs. Perkins she accomplished it. When she and Stuart were in the train, sitting side by side in the ordinary coach of the traveler who must conserve his resources, as Georgiana had decreed, Stuart spoke the first word of comment upon the situation.

"Of course, there was nothing to do but go," he said, "after that telegram."

"Of course not," agreed Georgiana simply.

"She was perfectly well--last week," said Stuart.

"Was she? You know I haven't seen her since they came back."