The Happy Average. Brand Whitlock

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      “You’ll need it,” she said.

      “No, I’ll be warm rowing.”

      She shook her head, and smiled. They drifted on. Still came the distant strumming of the guitar and the tinkle of the mandolin. Marley thought of the young people dancing, and then, noting Lavinia’s silence, he asked, out of the doubt that was his one remaining annoyance:

      “Wouldn’t you rather be back there dancing?”

      “No, no!” she answered softly.

      “I’m ashamed of myself.”

      “Why?” She started a little.

      “Because I can’t dance!” There was guilt in his tone.

      “You mustn’t feel that way about it,” Lavinia said. “It’s nothing.”

      “Isn’t it?”

      “No. It’s easy to learn.”

      “I never could learn.”

      Lavinia was still, and Marley thought she assented to this. But in another moment she spoke again.

      “I—” she began, and then she hesitated.

      Marley stopped rowing and rested on his oars. The water lapped the bows of the boat as it slackened its speed.

      “I could teach you,” Lavinia went on.

      “Could you?” Marley leaned forward eagerly.

      “I’d like to.” She was trailing one white hand in the water.

      “Will you?”

      “Yes,” she said. “We can do it over at Mayme’s—any time. She’ll play for us.”

      Marley felt a great gratitude, and he wondered how he could pour it forth upon her.

      “You are too good to me,” he exclaimed.

      Then, suddenly, a change came over the dark surface of the waters. A mellow quality touched them; they seemed to tremble ecstatically, then they broke into sparkling ripples; the air quivered with a luminous beauty and a light flooded the little valley. Marley and Lavinia turned instinctively and looked up, and there, over the tops of the trees, black a moment before, now rounded domes of silver, rose the moon. They gazed at it a long time. Finally Marley turned and looked at Lavinia. Her white dress had become a drapery, her arms gleamed, her eyes were lustrous in the transfiguration of the moonlight. He could see that her lips were slightly parted, and her fingertips, dipped in the cool water over the gunwale of the boat, trailed behind them a long narrow thread of silver. They looked into each other’s eyes, and neither spoke. They drifted on. At last, Marley said:

      “Lavinia!”

      She stirred.

      “Do you know—” he began, and then he stopped. “Don’t you know,” he went on, “can’t you see, that I love you?”

      He rested his arms on the oars, and leaned over toward her.

      “I’ve loved you ever since that first night—do you remember? I know—I know I’m not good enough, but can’t you—can’t I—love you?”

      He saw her eyelids fall, and as she turned and looked over the side of the boat, she put forth her hand, and he took it.

      They were awakened from the dream by a call, and after what seemed to Marley a long time, he finally remembered the voice as Lawrence’s.

      “We must go back,” he said reluctantly. “How long have we been gone?”

      “I don’t know,” said Lavinia. He heard her sigh.

      Marley pulled the boat in the direction whence came the hallooing voice; he had quite lost all notion of their whereabouts. But presently they saw the lights of the pavilion, and then the dark figures of the men, and the white figures of the girls on shore.

      As they pulled up and Marley sprang out of the boat to the landing stage, Lawrence said:

      “Well, where have you babes been?”

      Marley helped Lavinia out of the boat.

      “We’ve been rowing,” he said.

      “We thought you’d been drowned,” said Lawrence.

      Marley and Lavinia drove home together in silence. In the light of the moon, the road was silver, and the fields with their shocks of wheat were gold.

      CHAPTER V

      THE SERENADE

      “I don’t know what ails Lavinia,” said Mrs. Blair to her husband as he sat on the veranda after dinner the next day. The judge laid his paper in his lap, and looked up at his wife over his glasses.

      “Isn’t she well?” he asked.

      “M—yes,” replied Mrs. Blair, prolonging the word in her lack of conviction, “I guess so.”

      “Don’t you know?” the judge demanded in some impatience with her uncertainty.

      “She says she feels all right.”

      “Well, then, what makes you think she isn’t?”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Blair, “she seems so quiet, that’s all.”

      “Lavinia is not a girl given to excitement or demonstration,” said the judge, lapsing easily into the manner of speech he had cultivated on the bench.

      “No, that’s so,” assented Mrs. Blair. “But she’s always cheerful and bright.”

      “Is she gloomy?”

      “No, I wouldn’t exactly call it that, but she seems preoccupied—rather wistful I should say, yes—wistful.” She seemed pleased to have found the right word.

      “Oh, she’s all right. That picnic last night may have fatigued her. I presume there was dancing.”

      “Yes.”

      “I don’t know that we should let her go out that way.” The judge took off his glasses and twirled them by their black cord while he gazed across the street, apparently at some dogs that were tumbling each other about in the Chenowiths’ yard. The judge had a subconscious anxiety that they would get into Mrs. Chenowith’s flower beds.

      “You and I used to go to them; they never hurt us,” argued Mrs. Blair.

      “No, I suppose not. But then—that was different.”

      Mrs. Blair laughed lightly, and the laugh served to dissipate their cares. She went to the edge of the veranda and pulled a few leaves from the climbing rose-vine that grew there, and the judge put on his glasses and spread out his paper.

      “I’ll take her out for a drive this afternoon,” said Mrs. Blair, turning to go indoors.

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