The Inn at the Red Oak Part 6

Suddenly he reached out and seized her hands. "Don't you realize it?--I love you, Nance; I've always loved you!" He drew her close to him. She did not resist nor did she yield, but still with her eyes she questioned him. "Kiss me, Nancy," he whispered. She let him press his lips to hers but without responding to the pressure, as though she still were wondering of the meaning of this sudden unforeseen pa.s.sion. But at last, caught up in its intensity, she gave him back his kisses. He took her face then between his hands and looked into it with a gaze that in itself was a caress. "Oh my sweetheart!" he said softly.

Slowly she disengaged herself. "Tom, Tom," she said, "this is foolishness. We musn't do this."

"Why not?" demanded Pembroke. "I tell you I love you!"

"No--not that way, not that way. I didn't mean that. Why, you foolish boy, haven't we kissed each other hundreds of times before?"

"No, Nancy, not like that--not like this," he added, as again he put his arm around her and drew her face to his. And again she yielded. "Say it--say it, Nance--you love me."

She drew back from him. "I think I must, Tom. I don't think I could let you kiss me that way if I didn't. But now come ... Tom ... dear Tom ...

do come ... don't kiss me again."

"But say it," he insisted, "say you love me."

"Please help me over the stile."

He gave her his hand and she sprang lightly to the top of the steps. In a second he was by her side, both of them balancing somewhat uncertainly on the top of the stone wall. "I won't let you down till you say it."

"Please--".

"No--you love me?"

"Yes--there--I love you--now--".

"No, kiss me again."

"Tom--no." But the negative was weak and Pembroke took it so.

"Now," he said, as they began to cross the meadow, "we must tell Mrs.

Frost and Dan."

"Tell them what?"

"Why, that we are in love with each other, and that you are going to marry me. What else?"

"No, no," exclaimed Nancy, "You must say nothing. I am not in love. I don't mean to marry you."

"But why not? You are. You do."

"Are--do--?"

"In love--you do mean to marry me."

"No--Tom, listen--you know your father and mother would hate it. You have at least two years before you can practice. We couldn't marry--we can't marry. Oh, there are things I must do, before I can think of that."

"Not marry me? Good Lord, what does it mean when people are in love with each other, what does it mean when a girl kisses a fellow like that?"

"I don't know! what it means--madness, I guess. Do you think I could marry as I am, not knowing who I am?"

"Oh, what do I care who your parents were! We'll find out. I swear we will. Good Lord, I love you, Nancy; I love you!"

"Please, please don't make me talk about it now."

"But soon--?"

"Yes, soon--only promise you'll say nothing to Dan or to Mother till we have talked again. I must think; it is all so queer and unexpected; I never dreamed that you cared for me except as a little girl."

"I didn't know I did. But come to think of it, Nance, it has been you as much as Dan that has brought me to the Inn at the Red Oak. Why it was you I wanted to walk and talk and play with."

"Please,--dear Tom--G--ive me time to think what it all means. Now be careful, there's the farmer. You have a lot to do, and we have been lingering too long. Mother wants us to go back by the dunes and enquire for old Mrs. Meath; so we must hurry."

The sun had set before they started on the homeward journey in one of the squire's sleighs. As they turned the bend at the beach and started across the dune road close to the sea, a great yellow moon rose over Strathsey Neck.

Tom had been so preoccupied with his own emotions and the unexpected and absorbing relation in which he found himself with Nancy, that he had altogether forgotten why he had asked her to go off with him that afternoon. As they skimmed along over the snow-packed road across the sands, Tom spied another sleigh on the Port road, the occupants of which he recognized as Jesse and the Marquis. Suddenly the memory of the night before flashed over him. He pointed with his whip in their direction.

"There's the old Marquis coming back from Monday Port," he said.

Nancy looked without comment, but Tom thought the colour deepened in her cheeks.

"See here, Nance," he exclaimed impulsively; "has the Marquis anything to do with the mood you were in this afternoon? Has he said anything to make you discontented?"

He was sure that now she paled.

"What makes you ask?"

"Oh--a number of things. I've seen you with him more or less; felt he had some influence over you."--Tom was blundering now and knew it.--

She looked at him coldly. "I have been with the Marquis very little save when others have been about. He has no influence over me. I don't care to discuss such queer ideas."

"Oh, all right ... I dare say I'm mistaken ... I only thought..."

He hesitated... "If you care for me, I don't mind what you think of the Marquis."

"Remember, Tom--you promised to say nothing until I gave you leave.

You're not fair..."

"But you do love me?"

Nancy was silent.

"There is nothing between you and the old Frenchman--no mystery?"

There was no reply. Nancy sat with compressed lips and drawn brows, gazing fixedly at the distant House on the Dunes at the end of their road. For a long while they drove on in silence.

At the House on the Dunes they chatted for a while with old Mrs. Meath, who lived there alone with a maid-of-all-work. She was a source of much anxiety to Mrs. Frost, who sent several times each week to learn if all was going well. But Mrs. Meath was a Quaker and apparently never gave a thought to loneliness or fear.

"They will never guess," she said to Nancy and Tom as they sat in the tiled kitchen talking with her, "what I am going to do."

"Not going to leave the House on the Dunes, Mrs. Meath?"