in a day or two dr. paul’s holiday was over, but before he left nan overheard a conversation between him, her aunt and her mother. she had not meant to listen, but it seemed forced upon her, for she was in her own tent dressing and the three were sitting on the porch of mrs. corner’s cabin just next. the others were off on the lake and nan had remained behind to attend to some little matters.
“marc will come to pay his respects before he leaves,” she heard dr. paul say. “he has a very friendly feeling for you all, but of course these are his special chums and they are bound to absorb him. i think he will be over to-morrow as they all go off the next day.” so soon! so soon! the end was nearing, nan realized.
“i must confess to being disappointed in mr. wells,” said miss helen. “i fancy he is a less serious young man than we imagined, a butterfly sort of person who likes to be amused, enjoys new sensations, is rather vain, something[306] of a poseur, and who is rather selfish and worldly.”
“he has that side to his nature, i admit,” agreed dr. paul, “though at times he is serious and one would think he had high standards. when i first knew him in munich he seemed as much in earnest as any one i ever knew.”
“then he is blown about by circumstances,” mrs. corner remarked; “the kind of person who is what influence makes him, not a very strong character.”
“he is immensely popular, though, warm-hearted and generous with his friends, and has a way with him, a way of adapting himself to the company he is in, and that is a great gift, it seems to me.”
“it is if one is sincerely interested in the things he appears to be,” rejoined miss helen, “but a person can make a great pretense of being this or that, a bohemian to-day, a religious to-morrow, a lover of high things at one time, hand in hand with frivolity at another. is he like that?”
“i am not quite sure. he is an interesting study, but he is young and one cannot tell how he may develop. i think often that the desire to try a variety of experiences will often make very young persons appear all things to all men, when really it is only a sort of eager[307] curiosity which moves them. they are sincerely interested in any novelty which comes their way, and there is really no pretense about it. in this case i think only time will prove the real character. i am afraid this marriage he is contemplating will not be for the development of his best.”
then he was going to marry. nan’s heart stood still. she dropped the comb she was passing through her long hair, and buried her face in her hands for a moment.
she heard the doctor’s voice again. “he says he must thank you all for a very pleasant experience. he thinks jack is such an original, and is greatly pleased with his study of her which he thinks is one of the best things he has done. he hopes to exhibit it with your permission. as for the sketch he made of nan he keeps it for what it is, a mere sketch. he has enjoyed nan, too, but in a different way.”
“in what way?” there was a little sharp ring in mrs. corner’s voice.
“well, he says she is so responsive. he has liked to watch her thrill and glow under his music. he has liked to play upon her emotions, to see her eyes burn like stars, and a dawning light of woman’s perception come into her face. she is an interesting study, he says. he never met so young a girl who promised so[308] much and he hopes he will see how she matures. he has played upon her emotions as he does upon his violin to see what tones he can bring forth, and”—the doctor paused, “i resented it.”
“you told him so? i wouldn’t have done that, paul.” mrs. corner it was who said this.
“oh, i simply told him he had no business to build up fanciful dream castles for nan’s imagination to dwell in, that she has too much imagination as it is, and as a physician i forbade any more such nonsense, that he had no right to amuse himself with her temperamental growth.”
“and what did he say?”
“oh, he laughed and promised not to ‘steep her soul in the magic of music any more’ as he put it, and that he wouldn’t ‘tear the pretty flower of her heart to pieces simply to classify it.’ you know the way he talks.”
“in a way that is very fetching to a romantic young woman,” sighed miss helen. “and is that the reason why he hasn’t been coming so often?”
“it is one reason, though i fancy his fiancée doesn’t allow him to stray very far from her side.”
“he is really in love with her, then.”
“yes, or thinks he is, which amounts to the[309] same thing. he has been devoted to her for some time.”
“well, i think we must give him credit for listening to your warning,” mrs. corner remarked. “not every young man would have.”
“oh, he is a gentleman, and if he is thoughtless, it may be attributed to the youth of him. i’ve no fault to find with marc as a friend, and wouldn’t discuss him with any less interested than yourselves, but i wanted you to know some of these things i have been telling you. i thought it was only due to you and to him, too. where is nan, mrs. corner?”
“i think she has gone off with some of the others for a walk, though i am not sure. i heard ran ask her if she didn’t want to go,” the reply came.
“i think i’ll go meet them,” the doctor decided. nan heard his footsteps on the plank walk which had been laid from her mother’s cabin to the larger one, and then in a few minutes she heard her mother say:
“nan is not like herself this summer. she is moody, sometimes wildly gay, sometimes so pensive and sad it makes me afraid she is in trouble. she has always confided in me or in you, helen, but this summer she seems almost to avoid us, and she goes off by herself a great[310] deal. the girls have noticed it and it has hurt them a little.”
“oh, dear, oh, dear!” nan in her tent gave voice to a sigh.
“have you ever thought”—miss helen hesitated, “that she had taken a fancy to marcus wells?”
“why, no.” mrs. corner’s voice showed surprise.
“i have thought so.” miss helen was the speaker. “you have just heard what paul said. he is no unobservant person, and is not a suspicious one, yet i think he suspects that nan has been touched by a romantic fancy, and he wanted to let us understand something of what we might look for, as well as to give us a clear knowledge of how matters were with marc wells.”
“oh, helen, the poor little girl!”
“my dear mary, nan is eighteen or nearly so. she is an intensely romantic, imaginative girl, and you may well believe she has her day-dreams as all girls of her age have.”
“oh, but she would have come to me.”
“did you go to your mother or any one else, at her age, with all your dreams?”
“oh, helen, why, i suppose not. how careless i have been. i should never have allowed her to go off that way to listen to him playing[311] the violin. i ought to have known better, but she seemed such a child and it gave her so much pleasure. what folly in me not to realize that he was just the kind of person to attract a girl like nan, a young, good-looking artist, musical, and with poetical fancies. i can see just how it happened, now it is too late.”
“not too late; we can scarcely say that of a girl’s first little whimsy.”
“i suppose i have been blinded by other thoughts for nan. one is prone to believe in what one most desires.”
nan did not understand this speech. next she heard her aunt helen say, “heretofore i have no doubt she has had visions of some hero of an unreal world, some creature of imagination, some sir galahad, and has woven her fancies about him. that is what all girls do, and then comes the next step when they fix their thoughts upon some human being who is probably not in the least like their ideal, but whom imagination clothes in all the attractive qualities. this being may have shown himself to possess one such quality and that is enough for a vivid fancy like nan’s. she invests him with all the rest.”
mrs. corner spoke next. “yes, i remember now that my first hero was gilliatt in victor hugo’s ‘toilers of the sea,’ and, strange to[312] say, by some peculiar method of sequence i can’t account for, my next was the young assistant at our church. i used to wrap myself in a big shawl on cold days, and sit at our attic window to see him go by, and if he passed me on the street, that was a red-letter day.”
“and yet no one knew of this.”
“not a soul. half the pleasure was in the mysterious secrecy.”
“just what i said. my first craze was for the organist. i recall that he had hyacinthine curls and wore a cloak. i used to steal into church when he was practicing and sit there lost in a rhapsody, then i would slip out when he had stopped playing, and would wait at the gate to see him come from the church. i thought him the most wonderful being in the world. i couldn’t have been more than sixteen.”
there was a little duet of laughter.
“before that,” miss helen continued, “i was in love with my sunday-school teacher. she was a heavenly goddess to me, and i envied the very glove she wore because it touched her hand.”
“and i felt the same way about one of the older girls at school.” mrs. corner gave her experience. “what dainties i saved for her. what gifts i hoarded to bestow upon her, and[313] how unhappy i was when she wouldn’t let me walk home with her. her name, if i remember correctly, was samantha farley, and she had red curly hair.”
another little tinkle of laughter came to nan’s ears.
“so, you see,” miss helen took up the conversation again, “our dear little nan’s is no unusual case. she will recover and, i hope, will marry some good man when she is old enough.”
“as i did,” said mrs. comer.
nan shook her head. they did not take her seriously. they did not know that this was the love of her life, that it would be impossible for her to change. she waited for the next words which came from her aunt. “and yet, no doubt the dear thing imagines her affections are securely placed, the poor darling.”
“i wish we had looked ahead a little; we might have prevented this.” it was mrs. comer who spoke.
“how could we? it would have seemed unreasonable to say to the young man, ‘we can’t have you coming here because we are afraid one of our girls will fall in love with you.’ suppose, too, he had been honestly attracted to her, what then?”
[314]“oh, we couldn’t have permitted anything so serious as that. he is not the kind of man for nan.” mrs. corner was confident.
“there’s no one good enough for nan, if it comes to that,” was the reply.
“well, helen, we must not worry. i hope there is no great harm done. she will probably never see our artist again. if he is to marry she is not likely to, and thus an end to that. ah, my dear, i wish i could keep them all children. i begin to tremble for my darling girls as i see them facing womanhood.” mrs. corner gave the final word.
then nan heard the chairs moved back and there was nothing more heard. her brain was in a whirl. the mists of imagination were beginning to part to show realities. she wondered if her aunt helen still thought of the organist, and if that was the reason she had never married, but no, she remembered a little photograph of a young man in confederate gray, which she had once come across in looking through a box of old letters her mother had, and she had asked, “who is this, mother?” “the young man who would have been your aunt helen’s husband, if he had lived,” her mother had told her. “he was killed at gettysburg.” nan had thought at the time this was probably why her aunt’s hair had[315] turned gray so early. “no wonder,” she sighed as she fastened her belt around her slender waist.
she slipped out at the back of the tent and walked slowly through the woods, turning over in her mind the conversation she had just listened to. “if a man were married of course it would be a dreadful thing for a girl to continue to think of him.” she mustn’t do that, and why should she—if he didn’t care for her? he was not lohengrin, nor she elsa. he was not siegfried nor she brunhilde; that was all as unreal as the characters themselves. plain matter-of-fact truth was that marcus wells had been entertained in playing with her as two children play. it had meant nothing whatever to him but pastime. he was in love with another girl and they were to be married. she quite understood his fanciful way of speaking of his analysis of her; “he wouldn’t tear the pretty flower of her heart to pieces just to classify it”; so she was nothing more than a specimen to be stuck through with a pin and pinned to the wall of his experience. she gave a little gasp. she could not, and would not meet him again.
dr. paul made his farewells that evening to a very quiet, thoughtful nan. “i shall see you at christmas, i hope,” he said. “you expect[316] to be at home for the holidays, your mother says.”
“yes, we shall go to aunt sarah,” she answered without enthusiasm.
“don’t work too hard, little girl,” he said pressing her hand. “i’m glad you are to be among friends.” and that was the last of dr. paul for some months.
nan kept out of the way all the next day, not even appearing at dinner. she took some lunch in her pocket and spent the morning in her woodland haunt. in the afternoon she went with ran for a horseback ride, and she left the supper table before the others. as she passed her mother she leaned over and whispered, “don’t worry, dearest. i’m not going far, and please don’t let them look me up. i’ll tell you why some time.”
her mother understood, and when a little later marc wells appeared, nan was not to be found.
“i believe she is mourning after dr. paul,” declared jo, “for we have scarcely seen her all day.”
“dr. paul?” mr. wells knitted his brows. “well, please make my adieux.” he left a small sketch for mrs. corner, delighted jack with a photograph of the picture for which she had posed, and when nan entered her tent at[317] bedtime, she saw a tiny note pinned to her cushion and a package by the side of it. the note read:
“farewell, brunhilde! you are cruel to hide away in this manner. loge guards you well, for you are not to be found. i hope you will not forget to send me word when you get to new york. you must remember that you have an engagement to come to one of our studio teas. i enclose my card so you cannot make the excuse of not knowing the address. i hope you will like the little sketch and the reminder of
siegfried.”
nan opened the package to see a small water-color study of place o’ pines, the name written underneath, and a photograph of marcus wells in his siegfried dress. the little log cabin in the green-wood, with a shimmer of lake just beyond, made a pretty sketch. the photograph was posed with the horn uplifted after the manner of one of knote which nan had shown the artist.
she laid the gifts away, a sharp pang at heart, and went to bed, but not to sleep. the lights were all out and the camp very still when suddenly she heard the joyous notes of the siegfried call, the “son of the woods.” had she been asleep and dreaming? no, there it was again, nearer. she sprang up, slipped[318] on her wrapper, and drew on her shoes, then she stole out into the starlit night and through the wooded ways to the border of the lake. a canoe with a light at its prow was gliding over the water. there was a soft plash of the paddles and presently again the sound of the horn. then nan distinguished a figure standing up with horn at lips. it was so quiet she could hear the voices of those in the boat.
“you oughtn’t to do that, marc,” she made out a man’s voice. “you will wake up all those little schoolgirls at camp.”
“it would take more than my tooting to disturb their innocent slumbers, the little dears,” the answer came.
nan watched the boat disappearing into the dimness of the night, but heard the dipping of paddles and the tinkle of laughter after the canoe was lost to view. so did her hero pass out of her sight as dramatically as he had entered, and so was nan’s first romance ended.
she stole back to her tent, chilled by the cool night air, and crept shiveringly under the covers. once in a while a tear would steal from under her closed lids to fall upon her pillow as she lay with hands tightly locked over her throbbing heart. who drives a sun chariot falls far, and nan was bruised and hurt after her wild plunge from heaven to earth.
[319]she was pale and wide-eyed the next morning when she took her note and gifts to show her mother. “my blessed lamb,” murmured mrs. corner folding her arms around the girl.
nan dropped her head on her mother’s shoulder. “i heard all you and aunt helen and dr. paul were saying out there on the porch the other day,” she confessed. “i was in the tent dressing, and i could not come out, and i heard. i wanted to tell you before, but i couldn’t.”
“dearest daughter, i understand.”
“i know you do, but oh, mother, it hurts, oh, it hurts.”
“my precious child, i know, i know.” her mother held her close, her cheek against the girl’s bowed head.
nan was very still for a few minutes, then she said hesitatingly, “did you feel so when you woke up from your dream about the young clergyman? what woke you, mother?”
she did not see the smile which came over her mother’s face at the recollection of her disillusionment. “i saw him eating roast goose and onions, with the perspiration standing out upon his forehead. it was at a church supper, and i heard him say, ‘if the quail which fed the children of israel were anything like this roast goose i don’t wonder they sighed for the flesh-pots[320] of egypt.’ i watched him consume two mighty plates of the supper, smack his greasy lips, and pick his teeth with such an expression of carnal delight as completely disenchanted me, and i realized that the saintly priest in white robes was not the every-day man eating a good dinner.”
nan lifted her head and the two smiled at one another. “but had you really cared?” she asked.
“i thought so, but it was an imaginary caring. i was in love with an idea not a person. i never loved but one, nan.” her voice was very solemn and tender.
“and that was—father?”
“yes.”
they drew closer together and neither spoke for a few moments.
“mother dear,” nan asked presently, “how old were you when you saw the young curate eat roast goose?”
“about your age, dearie.”
“and how long after that did you meet father?”
“i had known him long before, but i didn’t recognize my ideal lover in john corner. that came later. remember, nan dear, ‘when half-gods go, the gods arrive.’”
here some one came to the cabin door. her[321] mother went to open and then stepped out on the porch. nan picked up her picture and the note; the former she would put away with the buttercup case; the latter she tore into small bits and threw these on the open fire before which she was standing; then she watched with a grave face till the last fragment smouldered into white ashes.
[322]
