A Woman of Genius. Mary Hunter Austin

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СКАЧАТЬ saw you turn down that Garrett fellow this morning. Served him right … that and the way you behaved Thursday … just as if you did not find him worth rowing about. A lot of girls make a fuss, and it's only to draw a fellow on; and now you're going to church with me the same as usual; that'll show 'em what I think of it." Now, I had clean forgotten that Tommy might come that evening. I was whelmed with the certainty that Helmeth Garrett had gone back to the farm after all without seeing me; and the moment Tommy came through the gate I had one of those rifts of lucidity in which I saw him whole and limited, pasted flat against the background of Taylorville without any perspective of imagination, and was taken mightily with the wish to explain to him where he stood, once for all, outside and disconnected with anything that was vital and important to me. But quite unexpectedly, before I could frame a beginning, he had presented himself to me in a new light. He was cover, something to get behind in order to exercise myself more freely in the things he couldn't understand.

      Something more was bound to come out of my relation to Helmeth Garrett; the incident couldn't go on hanging in the air that way; and in the meantime here was an opportunity to put it out of public attention by going out with Tommy. It did hang in the air, however, for three days, during which I pulsed and sickened with expectancy; by Thursday it had reached a point where I knew that if Helmeth Garrett didn't come and kiss me again I shouldn't be able to bear it. It was soon after sundown that I felt him coming.

      I took a great many turns in the garden, which, carrying me occasionally out of reach of the click of the gate latch, afforded me the relief of thinking that he might have arrived in the interval when I was out of hearing. His approaching tread was within me. When it was just seven my mother came out and called:

      "Olivia, I promised Mrs. Endsleigh a starter of yeast; I have just remembered. Could you take it to her?"

      The Endsleigh backyard was separated from ours by a vacant lot, the houses fronting on parallel streets; there was no sound at the gate and mother had the bowl in a white napkin held out to me, with a long message about where the sewing circle was to meet next Thursday.

      "If any body comes," – for the life of me I couldn't have kept that back, – "you can tell them I'll be back in a minute," I cautioned her.

      "Are you expecting anybody?"

      "Only Tommy," I prevaricated, instantly and unaccountably. I saw my mother look at me rather oddly over the tops of the glasses she had lately assumed. On the Endsleigh's back porch I found Belle in evening dress gathering ivy berries for her hair.

      "Oh," she said, to my plain appearance, "aren't you going?"

      "Going where?"

      "Oh, if you don't know … to Flora's." Belle was embarrassed.

      "I hadn't heard of it."

      "It's just a few friends," Belle wavered between sympathy and superiority. "Flora is so particular…"

      "I couldn't have gone anyway," I interpolated, "I have an engagement." I had to find Mrs. Endsleigh after that and deliver my errand.

      When I reached home mother was sitting placidly just outside the circle of the lamp, knitting. She only looked up as I entered and I had to drag it out of her at last.

      "Has anybody been here?"

      "Nobody that you would care to see."

      "But who?"

      "That fast-looking young man who tried to speak to you on Sunday. I'm glad you have a proper feeling about such things. Mr. Garrett's nephew, didn't you say? I told him you were engaged."

      "Oh, mother!" I was out in panting haste. At the gate I ran square into Tommy Bettersworth.

      "Did you see anybody?"

      "Nobody. I came through by Davis's. I was coming in," he suggested, as I stood peering into the dark.

      "I thought you'd be going to Flora's." A wild hope flashed in me that maybe he was going and I should be rid of him.

      "Oh, I don't care much for that crowd. I told her I had an engagement with you." So he had known I was not to be invited. I resented the liberty of his defence. "Let's go down to Niles's and have some ice cream," Tommy propitiated.

      "It's too cold for ice cream." I led the way back to the house. I was satisfied there was no one in the street. When we stepped into the fan of light from the lit window, Tommy saw my face.

      "Oh, I say, Ollie, you mustn't take it like that. Beastly cats girls are! Flora's just jealous because she thought she was invited to the picnic for that Garrett chap, and you got him; she wants to have a chance at him herself to-night." There was a green-painted garden seat on the porch between the front windows. I sat down in it.

      "It's not Flora I'm crying about … it is being so misunderstood." I was thinking that Helmeth Garrett would suppose I had stayed away from Flora's on his account; she would never dare to say she had not invited me. Tommy's arm came comfortingly along the back of the bench.

      "It's just because they do understand that they are mad; they know a fellow would give his eyes to kiss you. Infernal cad! to snatch it like that; and I've never even asked you for one." His voice was very close to my ear. "I tell you, Olivia, I've thought of something. If you were to be engaged to me … you know I've always wanted … then nobody would have a right to say anything. They'd see that you just left it to me."

      "Oh," I blurted, "it's not so bad as that!"

      "You think about it," he urged. "I don't want to bother you, but if you need it, why here I am." It was because I was thinking of him so little that I hadn't noticed where Tommy's arm had got by this time. That unfulfilled kiss had seemed somehow to leave me unimaginably exposed, assailed. I was needing desperately then to be kissed again, to find myself revalued.

      "It's awfully good of you, Tommy…"

      I do not know how it was that neither of us heard Forester come up from the gate; all at once there was his foot on the step; as he came into the porch a soft sound drew him, he stared blankly on us for a moment and then laughed shortly.

      "Oh! it's you this time, Bettersworth. I thought it might be that Garrett chap."

      That was unkind of Forester, but there were extenuations. I found afterward that Belle had teased Flora to ask him and he had refused, thinking it unbrotherly when I was not to be invited, and he and Belle had quarrelled.

      "I don't know as it matters to you" – Tommy was valiant – "whom she kisses, if I don't mind it."

      "You? What have you got to do with it?"

      "Well, a lot. I'm engaged to her."

      BOOK II

      CHAPTER I

      The first notion of an obligation I had in writing this part of my story, was that if it is to be serviceable, no lingering sentiment should render it less than literal, and none of that egotism turned inside out which makes a kind sanctity of the personal experience, prevent me from offering it whole. And the next was that the only way in which it could be made to appear in its complete pitiableness, would be to write it from the point of view of Tommy Bettersworth. For after all, I have emerged – retarded, crippled in my affectional capacities, bodily the worse, but still with wings to spread and some disposition toward flying. And when I think of the dreams Tommy had, how he must have figured in them to himself, large between СКАЧАТЬ