Will N. Harben - Westerfelt

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"I shall be glad to go," she answered. "Any one else going?"

"No; that is, not that I know of."

She leaned over to give Worthy the money, and waited for the change
without glancing again at Westerfelt.

She took her parcel and started to leave. "Then I shall come about two
o'clock?" he said, going with her to the door.

She nodded. "Very well; I'll be ready," and he stood aside for her to
pass.

She walked briskly back to the hotel and into the kitchen, where her
mother was at work.

"Did you get it?" Mrs. Floyd asked.

"Yes, and there's the change." Harriet put down the package and
dropped some pieces of silver into a goblet on the table.

"What's the matter?" Mrs. Floyd was kneading dough in a great wooden
tray, and she looked at Harriet over her shoulder.

"Nothing."

"I know there _is_." Mrs. Floyd turned and began rubbing the dough
from her fingers as a woman puts on a kid glove.

"Mr. Westerfelt has asked me to drive with him after dinner," said the
girl. "That's all."

"Harriet!" Mrs. Floyd's eyes sparkled with excitement as she sprinkled
some flour over her dough and began to roll the mass back and forth.
"I reckon you will acknowledge _now_ that I know something about young
men. If you had refused to go with Bascom Bates yesterday, Mr.
Westerfelt would have had no respect for you; as it is, he couldn't
wait twenty-four hours to see you. For all you do, don't let him see
too plain that you care for him. Mind what I say!"

Westerfelt was impatient for two o'clock to arrive. It was one when he
left Bradley's after dinner. He went to the stable and ordered Jake to
get out his horse and buggy. He would call for her at once; he could
not wait any longer. He felt a sort of sinking sensation at his heart
as Jake gave him the whip and reins, and he was actually trembling when
he stopped at the hotel. Harriet came out on the veranda above and
told him she would be down at once. She did not keep him waiting long,
and when she came down, prettily flushed and neatly attired, his heart
bounded and his pulse quickened. Had she been a queen he could not
have felt more respect for her than he did as he stood shielding her
skirt from the wheels and helped her get seated. He was just about to
get in himself when an old man came down the sidewalk from Worthy's
store, headed for the buggy. It was old John Wambush with a basket of
eggs on his arm.

"Howdy' do," he said, nodding to them both. "Miss Harriet, is yore ma
needin' any more eggs now? I diskivered another nest this mornin', an'
'lowed she mought be able to use 'em. She's about the only one in the
place 'at ever has cash to pay fer produce."

"I don't know, Mr. Wambush," Harriet replied, politely. "She is in the
house; you might go in and see her."

The old man shifted his basket to his other arm and hesitated.
Westerfelt got into the buggy and took up the reins.

"I reckon, Miss Harriet, you hain't heerd frum Toot sence I seed you?"

"No, Mr. Wambush." Westerfelt was not looking at her as she spoke, and
the saddest part of it lay in the fact that he was trying to save her
from what he imagined must be a very embarrassing situation. "No, he
has not written me."

"Well"--the old man turned--"as fur as I'm concerned, I'm not one bit
afeerd that he'll not be able to take keer o' hisse'f, but his mammy is
pestered mighty nigh to death about 'im."

Just then Mrs. Floyd came out on the porch and threw a kiss at Harriet.
The act and its accompanying smile reminded Westerfelt of the deception
the old lady had played on Bates, and that added weight to the vague
convictions once more alive in his brain. Mrs. Floyd's smile implied a
certain confidence in his credulity and pliability that was galling to
his proud spirit.

His horse was mettlesome, and Westerfelt drove rapidly over a good road
which ran along the foot of the mountain. The day was fine, the
scenery glorious, but he was oblivious of their charm. His agony had
never been so great. He kept his eyes on his horse; his face was set,
his glance hard. Once he turned upon her, maddened by the sweet,
half-confiding ring in her voice when she asked him why he was so
quiet, but the memory of his promise never to reproach her again
stopped him. With that came a sudden reckless determination to rid
himself of the whole thing by going away, at least temporarily, and
then he remembered that he really had some business affairs to attend
to in Atlanta.

"I am going away awhile, Miss Harriet," he told her.

"You are, really?"

"Yes; I'm needed down in Atlanta for a while. I reckon I'll get back
in a few weeks."

He saw her face change, but he did not read it correctly. At that
moment he could not have persuaded himself that she cared very much one
way or the other. Surely a girl who had, scarcely six weeks before,
sobbed in old Wambush's arms about her love for his son could not feel
anything deeply pertaining to another man whom she had known such a
short time.

"Let's go back," he proposed, suddenly, and almost brutally. "I reckon
we've gone far enough. Night comes on mighty quick here in the valley."

She raised her eyes to his in a half-frightened glance, and said:

"Yes; let's go back."

He turned his horse, and for fifteen minutes they drove along in
silence. There was now absolutely no pity in his heart. The vast
black problem of his own tortured love seemed to be soaking into him
from the very air about him.

He broke the silence.

"So you refused Bates?"

She looked at him again. "How did you know that?"

He laughed bitterly.

"He told me so; he's another fool."

"Mr. Westerfelt!"

"I beg your pardon," he amended, quickly; "but any man is a fool to be
simply crazy about a woman, and he is."

He saw her raise her little shapely hand to her twitching mouth and
experienced one instant's throbbing desire to catch it and hold it and
beg her to have mercy on him and help him throw off the hellish despair
that rested on him. It was a significant fact that she said nothing to
protract the conversation on the line of Bates's proposal. To her the
proposal and rejection of a king by her would have found no place in
her thoughts, facing the incomprehensible mood of the man she loved.
It was growing dark when they reached the hotel. As he aided her to
alight he gave her his hand. "It's good-bye for a while, anyway," he
said.

She started; her hand was heavy and cold. She caught her breath.
"When are you going, Mr. Westerfelt?"

"In the morning after breakfast, by the hack to Darley."

That was all. She lowered her head and passed into the house. In the
hall she met her mother.

"Great goodness, dear!" exclaimed the old woman; "what on earth did you
run away from him so sudden for?"

Harriet pushed past her into the parlor and stood fumbling with the
buttons of her cloak.

"Answer me, daughter," pursued Mrs. Floyd; "what did--"

"Oh, God! don't bother me, mother," cried Harriet.

Mrs. Floyd held her breath as she drew her daughter down on a sofa and
stared into her face.

"What's the matter, daughter? _Do_ tell me."

"He's going away," said Harriet. "Oh, mother, I don't know what ails
him! I never saw anybody act as he did. He had little to say, and
when he spoke it looked as if he was mad with me. Oh, mother,
sometimes I think he loves me, and then again--"

"He _does_ love you," declared Mrs. Floyd. "I hid behind the curtains
in the parlor and watched him on the sly while he was waiting for you
to come down. I never saw a man show love plainer; he kept looking up
at your window, and his face fairly shone when you come out. You can't
fool me. He's in love, but he's trying to overcome it for--for some
reason or other. High-spirited men do that way, sometimes. Men don't
like to give up their liberty and settle down. But he'll come to time,
you see if he don't."

Harriet stood up and started to the door. "Where are you going?" asked
her mother.

"Up-stairs," sighed Harriet. "Mother, can you do without my help at
supper? I want to lie down and be alone."

"Of course; I won't need you; everything is attended to, and Hettie
come while you was away. She fairly danced when she heard you had gone
to drive with Mr. Westerfelt. She hopes you will speak to him about
Toot. She's heard from him. He wants to come back home and marry her,
if Mr. Westerfelt can be persuaded to withdraw the charges. Do you
think he would, daughter?"

"Oh, I don't know, mother!" Harriet slowly ascended the stairs to her
room, and Mrs. Floyd sat down in the darkening parlor to devise some
scheme; she finally concluded that Harriet was too much in love to
manage her own affairs, and that she would take them in hand.

"He loves her, that's certain," she mused, "and he is a man who can be
managed if he is worked just right." She had evidently arrived at an
idea as to what should be done in the emergency, for she put on her
cloak and hat and went up to Harriet's room. The girl sat near the
bed, her head bent over to a pillow.

"Daughter," Mrs. Floyd said, laying her hand on Harriet's head, "you
stay here, and don't come down-stairs to-night for all you do. I'm not
going to have people see you looking like that. It will set 'em to
talking, after you've been to ride with Mr. Westerfelt. Stay here;
I'll have Hettie fetch you something to eat."

Harriet did not look up or reply, and Mrs. Floyd descended to the
street.

Chapter XXIII

Westerfelt was in the yard back of the stable. He had just started
home when he saw a muffled figure enter the front door, and heard Mrs.
Floyd asking Washburn if he were in.

"Here I am," he called out; and he approached her as she waited at the
door.

"I want to see you a minute, Mr. Westerfelt," she said. "Can you walk
back a piece with me?"

"Yes," he replied. "I'm going up to Bradley's to supper."

Outside it was dark; only the lights from the fire in the store and the
big lamp on a post in front of the hotel pierced the gloom. A few
yards from the stable she turned and faced him.

"Do you intend to kill my child?" she asked, harshly.

"What do you mean?" he answered.

"I mean that you will literally kill her--that's exactly what I mean.
You've treated her worse than a brute. What did you do to her this
evening? Tell me; I want to know. I have never seen her act so
before."

He stopped, leaned against a fence, and stared at her.

"I've done nothing; I--"

"I know better. She fell in a dead faint as soon as she got to her
room. I undressed her an' put 'er to bed; but something is wrong. She
is out of her head, but she keeps moaning about you, and saying you are
going away. Are you?"

"I thought of it, but I won't. I'll stay if--if you think I ought.
I'll do anything, Mrs. Floyd--anything you wish."

"Well, don't go off. She'll not live a week if you do. Spare her--she
is all I have left on earth. Think, think how she has suffered. She
has not been well since the night she fainted in the blacksmith's shop
an' lay so long on the cold ground--that was all for your sake, too."

"I know that, Mrs. Floyd," he said. "I'll stay. Tell her that--tell
her I'm coming to see her. Can I see her to-night?"

The old woman hesitated.

"No, she's--she's in bed; but I'll tell her what you said, though. It
will do her good. I'm glad I came to see you. I knew you loved her;
you couldn't help it. She has been so good to you, and no woman ever
loved a man more. When you are married you will both be happy. You'll
wonder then how you could be so silly."

"I know I have been a fool." He took her hand and pressed it, almost
affectionately. "Take care of her, Mrs. Floyd; don't let her be sick."

She turned to leave him. "She'll be well in the morning, I hope; don't
worry. She will get all right when she's had a rest and a night's
sleep. Now, let me walk on alone; the people talk so much in this
place."

He stopped behind a clump of sycamore bushes and watched her disappear
in the gloom. He saw her when she went through the light at the store,
and again as she passed under the lamp at the hotel. He followed
slowly. He passed the hotel and looked into the wide hall, but saw no
one.

A lane led from the street to an open lot behind the hotel. He
remembered that Harriet's room looked out that way, and, hardly knowing
why he did so, he walked down the lane till he could see her window.
There was a light in the room. For several minutes he stood gazing at
the window, feeling his feet sink into the marshy soil. He wondered
how he could pass the long hours of the night without speaking to her.
He had just resolved that he would go to the hotel and implore Mrs.
Floyd to let him see Harriet if only for a moment, when he noticed a
shadow on the wall of the room. It looked like some one sitting at a
table. He decided that it must be Mrs. Floyd watching by Harriet's
bed, and in imagination he saw the girl lying there white and
unconscious. Suddenly, however, the shadow disappeared. The figure
rose into the light and crossed the room. It was Harriet. She wore
the same gown she had worn an hour before. She stood for a moment in
the light, as if placing something on the mantel-piece, and then
resumed her seat at the table. The shadow was on the wall again. He
looked at it steadily for twenty minutes. His feet had sunk deeper
into the loam and felt wet and cold. Slowly he trudged back through
the lane. Mrs. Floyd had lied to him. The girl was not ill. At the
street corner he stopped. For an instant he was tempted to go to the
hotel and ask Mrs. Floyd if he could see Harriet for a moment, that he
might catch her in another lie, and then and there face her in it, but
he felt too sick at heart. Harriet had not swooned. Mrs. Floyd had
not undressed her and put her to bed. She had made up the story to
excite his sympathy and gain a point. He groaned as he started on
towards Bradley's. Mrs. Floyd had tried to get Bates to marry the
girl, and now was attempting the same thing with him. And why?

At the gate of Bradley's house he stopped. Through the window he saw
Luke and his wife at supper. They had not waited for him. He would
not go in. He could not eat or talk to them. He wanted to be alone to
decide what course to pursue. He crossed the road and plunged into the
densest part of a pine forest. He came to a heap of pine-needles that
the wind had massed together, and sank down on it, hugged his knees to
his breast, and groaned. He wanted to tell his whole story to some
one--any one who would listen and advise him. He could not decide for
himself--his power of reasoning was gone. Suddenly he rose to his feet
and started up the mountain. Taking a short cut, he reached the
Hawkbill road, and, with rapid, swinging strides, began to climb the
mountain.

As he got higher among the craggy peaks, that rose sombre and majestic
in the moonlight, the air grew more rarified and his breath came short.

He could see the few lights of the village scattered here and there in
the dark valley, and hear the clangor of the cast-iron bell at the
little church. It was prayer-meeting night.

After a while he left the main road, and without any reason at all for
so doing, he plunged into the tangle of laurel, rhododendron bushes,
vines, and briers. The soles of his shoes had become slick on the
pine-needles and heather, and he slipped and fell several times, but he
rose and struggled on. Then he saw the bare brown cliff of a great
canyon over the tops of the trees, and suddenly realizing the distance
he had come he turned and walked homeward.

He found the Bradley house wrapped in darkness. He could hear Luke
snoring out to the gate. He went round the house to the back door. It
was unlocked, and he slipped in and gained his own room. Without
undressing he threw himself on the bed and tried to sleep, but the
attempt was vain. He lay awake all night, and when dawn broke he had
not yet decided whether he was going away or not. He really believed
he was losing his mind, but he did not care. He rose and sat at his
window. The sky along the eastern horizon was turning pale, and the
chickens were crowing and flapping their wings. He heard Bradley
lustily clearing his throat as he got out of bed. Later he heard him
in the kitchen making a fire. Westerfelt knew he would go out to the
barn-yard to feed and water his cattle and horses, and he wanted to
avoid him and his cheery morning greeting. Buttoning his coat round
his neck, he tip-toed from his room across the passage and went down
the street to the stable.

One of the big sliding-doors had been pushed aside, and in the back
yard he saw Jake washing a buggy, and heard Washburn in one of the rear
stalls, rattling his currycomb and brush together as he groomed a
horse. He went into the office. The outer door was closed, and it
would have been dark there, but for Washburn's lighted lantern which
hung on a peg over the desk. He sat down at the desk and tried anew to
think. Presently he decided that he would go to Atlanta, and that he
would write a note to Mrs. Floyd, telling her of his change of plans.
He took up a sheet of paper and began the note, but was interrupted by
Washburn's step outside. He crumpled the paper in his hand, quickly
thrust it into his pocket, and pretended to be looking over the pages
of the ledger which lay open on the desk.

"Hello!" Washburn stood in the doorway. "I didn't know you wus heer.
Anything gone wrong?"

"No; why?"

"It's a little early fer you, that's all." Washburn dropped his brush
and currycomb under the desk, and, full of concern, stood looking down
at him.

"Thought I'd come down before breakfast" said Westerfelt. "How was
business yesterday?"

"Good; nearly everything out, and it wus most all cash--very little
booked."

"Wash?"

"Yes, sir."

"How much did I agree to pay you by the month?"

"Thirty dollars." Washburn glanced at the open ledger. "Have I made
any mistake?"

"No, but--but I've been making you do all the work. It isn't fair.
Credit yourself with forty dollars a month from the start and keep it
up."

Washburn flushed. "I'm mighty much obliged, Mr. Westerfelt. I wusn't
complainin' as it wus."

"I know it, but you are a good fellow; I'm going to trust the whole
business to you. Your judgment's as good as mine; do the best you can.
I'm going down to Atlanta for a few days--I don't know for how long,
but I will write you from there."

"I'll do the best I can, Mr. Westerfelt, you kin be shore of that."

Chapter XXIV

After breakfast, at Bradley's, Westerfelt went into his room and
hastily packed his valise and told Alf to take it to the stable and put
it into the hack going that morning to the station. Mrs. Bradley came
to him in the entry.

"John Westerfelt, what's got into you?" she asked, looking at him with
concern. "Shorely you are not goin' off."

"To Atlanta for a few days on business, that's all," he said; "I'll
write back from there."

She looked at him curiously, as if not quite satisfied with his
explanation. "Well, hurry back," she said. "Me 'n' Luke'll miss you
mightily."

"Tell Luke good-bye for me," he called back from the gate, and she
nodded to him from the hall, but he could not hear what she said. As
he approached the stable, he saw the hack waiting for him at the door.
Budd Ridly sat on the driver's seat.

"Time we wus off," he remarked to Westerfelt. "It takes peert drivin'
to catch the two-forty, south-bound."

"That's a fact," said Washburn, coming from the stable, "but I'll bet
you'll have to wait a few minutes, anyway." He was looking back in the
direction from whence Westerfelt had come. "I saw Miss Harriet come
out o' the hotel jest after you passed; it looks to me like she's
trying to overtake you."

Westerfelt turned and saw Harriet about a hundred yards away. "Maybe
she is," he said. "I'll go meet her."

She paused when she saw him approaching, and he noticed that she looked
greatly troubled and was quite pale.

"I must see you, Mr. Westerfelt," she said, a catch in her voice. "I
came right at once so you wouldn't get left. Oh, Mr. Westerfelt,
mother has just told me what she said to you last night. I don't know
what she did it for--I reckon she thought she was acting right--but I
cannot help her in deception of any kind. I was not sick last night."

"I knew you were not," he said, and then he could think of nothing else
to say.

"But mother said she told you I was, and that she left the impression
on your mind that it was because you were going off. That is not true,
Mr. Westerfelt. I cannot presume to dictate to you about what you
ought to do. Besides, it really seems a sensible thing for you to go.
She said you promised not to leave, but I can't have it that way."

Something in the very firmness of her renunciation of him added weights
to his sinking spirits.

"You think it would be best for me to go?" he managed to articulate.
"Oh, do you, Harriet?"

"Yes, I do," she said, emphatically, after a little pause in which she
looked down at the ground. "I am only a girl, a poor weak girl, and
then--" raising her fine eyes steadily to his face--"I have _my_ pride,
too, you see, and it has never been so wounded before. If--if I had
not loved you as I have this would have been over between us long ago.
And then I excused you because you were sick and unjustly persecuted,
but you are well now, Mr. Westerfelt--well enough to know what's right
and just to a defenceless girl."

There was now not a trace of color in his face, and he felt as if he
were turning to stone. He found himself absolutely unable to meet her
words with any of his own, but he had never been so completely her
slave.

"You must answer me one question plainly," she continued, "and I want
the truth. Will you, Mr. Westerfelt?"

"If I can I will, Harriet."

"On your honor?"

"Yes, on my honor."

"Were you not leaving simply to--to get away from the--(oh, I don't
know how to say it)--the--because you did not want to be near me?"

He shrank back; how was he to reply to such a pointed question?

"On your word of honor, Mr. Westerfelt!"

There was nothing for him to do but answer in the affirmative, but it
fired him with a desire to justify himself. "But it was not because I
don't love you, Harriet. On the other hand, it was because I do--so
much that the whole thing is simply driving me crazy. As God is my
judge, I worship you--I love you as no man ever loved a woman before.
But when I remember--"

"I know what you are going to say," her lip curling in scorn, "and I
want to help you forget my misfortune. Perhaps you will when I tell
you that my feeling for you is dying a natural death, and it is dying
because I no longer respect you as I did."

"Oh, God! don't--_don't_ say that, Harriet!"

"But I'm only telling you the truth. I would not marry you--not if you
were the only man on earth--not if you were worth your weight in
gold--not if you got down on your knees and asked me a thousand times."

"You would not, Harriet?"

"Why should I? A girl wants a husband she can lean on and go to in
every trouble she has. You wouldn't fill the bill, Mr. Westerfelt.
Good gracious, no!"

She turned back towards the hotel, and like a man with his intelligence
shaken from him by a superior force, he tried to keep at her side. In
silence they reached the steps of the hotel.

"You'll miss that hack if you don't hurry," she said. "Besides, you've
acted as if this was a pest-house ever since mother and I nursed you
here and I made such a fool of myself."

"Harriet, if you do not consent to be my wife I don't know what I shall
do. I want you--I want you. I love you, I can't do without you.
That's God's truth. If I hesitated it was only because I was driven
crazy with--"

"It's a great pity about your love," she sneered; her eyes flashed, and
she snapped her fingers in his face, her breast rising and falling in
agitation. "Sweethearts may be hard to find, and husbands, too, but I
wouldn't marry you--you who have no more gentlemanly instincts than to
blame a girl for what happened when she was a helpless little baby."

"What--what do you mean by that, Harriet?" he questioned, his eyes
opening wide. "I have never--"

"You told me--or, at least, you showed it mighty plain--" she broke in,
"that it was because I was a foundling and never knew who my real
parents were that you have such a contempt for me."

"Harriet, as God is my judge, I don't know what you're talking about.
You have never mentioned such a thing to me before."

"Oh yes, I did," she was studying his startled face curiously, "or
rather you told me you knew about it--that you had heard of it."

"But I had never heard of it--I never dreamed of it till this minute.
Besides that would not make a particle of difference to me. It would
only make me love you more--it _does_ make me love you more."

Her face clouded over with perplexity. Somebody was coining down the
sidewalk, and she led him into the parlor.

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