had they lived in the age of stone that meeting might have proved far more interesting for purposes of description. as it was, both being fairly conventional characters of the twentieth century, the affair was disappointingly commonplace.
“how do you do, miss hoyt?” he asked, smiling calmly and reaching a hand across the counter. and,——
cicely hoyt
“why, mr. parmley!” she replied, laying her own hand for an instant in his.
a close observer, and both you and i, patient reader, pride ourselves upon being such, would have noticed, perhaps, that in spite of the commonplace words and the unembarrassed[200] manners, the man’s cheeks held an unaccustomed tinge of color and the girl’s face was more than ordinarily pale. and could we have enjoyed a physician’s privilege of examining the heart-action at that moment we would have straightened ourselves up with very knowing smiles.
“i’ve come,” he said, as the soft hand drew itself away from his, “to return a book. is this the right place?”
“yes,” she replied brightly.
“thank you. i don’t know very much about libraries; i always avoid them as much as possible as being rather too exciting.” he took a small book from the pocket of his coat and laid it on the counter. “i’m afraid there’s a good deal to pay on it. it’s been out quite a while.”
a tinge of color came into her[201] cheeks as she took the volume. it was a copy of “love sonnets from the portuguese.”
“oh, i’ll let you off,” she answered gayly. “we sometimes remit the fines when the excuse is good.”
“thank you. my excuse is excellent. i only yesterday discovered the identity of the loaner.”
“only yesterday?” she asked carelessly, but with quickening heart.
“to be exact, at about eight o’clock last evening.” he dropped his voice and leaned a little further across the barrier. “you see, miss hoyt, you fooled me very nicely.”
“excuse me, mr. parmley, you fooled yourself. i told you—at least, i never said i was laura devereux.”
“no, you didn’t, but—i wonder why i was so certain you were! if i hadn’t been——”
[202]
“i beg your pardon, miss hoyt, but will you please let me have swinburne’s poems?”
it was the solitary reader. the girl disappeared into the stack room, leaving the two men to a furtive and, on one part at least, amused examination of each other. the pale youth, however, showed no amusement; rather his look expressed suspicion and resentment. ethan, unable longer to encounter that baleful glare without smiling, turned his head. then the librarian came with the desired book.
“thank you, miss hoyt!” said the reader. with a final glance of dawning enmity at ethan he returned to his solitude. ethan looked inquiringly at cicely.
“he’s perfectly awful!” she replied despairingly. “he stays here hours and hours at a time. i don’t[203] believe he ever eats anything. and he calls for books incessantly, from plutarch’s lives to—to swinburne! i think he is trying to read right through the catalogue. and a while ago he came for—what do you think?—the anatomy of melancholy!”
ethan smiled gently.
“i wouldn’t be too hard on him,” he said. “the poor devil is head-over-heels in love with you.”
the phrase brought recollections—and a blush.
“nonsense! he’s just a boy!” she answered.
“boys sometimes feel pretty deeply—for the while,” he replied. “and judging from his present line of reading, i’d say that the while hasn’t passed yet.”
“it’s so silly and tiresome!” she said. “he gets terribly on my[204] nerves. he—he sighs—in the most heartbreaking way!” she laughed a little nervously. then a moment of silence followed.
“clytie,” he began,—“i am going to call you that to-day, for i haven’t got used to thinking of you as cicely yet—do you know why i came?”
“to return the book,” she answered smilingly.
“no, not altogether. i came to ask you something.”
“i ought to feel flattered, oughtn’t i? it’s quite a ways here from providence, isn’t it?”
“supposing we don’t pretend,” he answered gravely. “we’ve gone too far to make that possible, don’t you think? and i’ve had a beast of a summer,” he added inconsequently. “i thought—do you know what i thought, dear?”
[205]
“how should i?” she asked weakly.
“i thought you were laura devereux, and that day when you didn’t come i went for you and saw you and vincent on the porch. and afterwards he told me he was engaged to miss devereux, and—don’t you see what it meant to me? and yesterday i found out, quite by accident, and—” he reached across and seized her hand with a little laugh of sheer happiness—“i haven’t slept a wink since! i—i thought i’d never get here; the roads were quagmires!”
“oh, why did you come?” she asked miserably.
“why? good heaven, don’t you know, girl?” he leaned across and she felt his lips on the hand still clasped in his.
“yes, yes, i know,” she cried.[206] “but—you mustn’t love me! you won’t when i’ve told you!”
“try me!” he said softly.
“i’m going to. but—i can’t if you have my hand.”
“if i let it go may i have it again?” he asked playfully.
“you won’t want it,” was the grim answer. “when you know what i am really, you—won’t want—ever to see me—again.”
“that’s nonsense,” he answered stoutly. but a qualm of uneasiness oppressed him.
she moved away from the counter until she was out of reach of his impatient hands.
cicely
“i meant you to fall in love with me,” she said evenly, looking at him with wide eyes and white face. “i meant you to propose to me. i wanted to—to marry you.”
[207]
he reached impetuously toward her with a smothered word of endearment, but she held up a hand.
“wait! you don’t understand! i—i didn’t care for you. i was tired of being poor and—and of this!” she swept her glance about the bare and silent library. “we used to have money,” she went on, speaking rapidly. “we lived in ohio then, when father was alive. then i came east to college. i met laura there. we were friends almost at once, although she was in the class ahead of me. i never finished, for my father died and left us almost without a cent. i left college and laura’s father secured me work here. i studied hard and last year they made me librarian. then mother came east to live here with me. laura was always kind. when my vacation came i went to visit her there[208] at the larches. then you—i met you.”
she paused and dropped her gaze.
“yes,” he said softly. “and then?”
“you said you had some property and you—you seemed nice and kind. i was so weary of it all. i wanted—oh, you know? i wanted to have money, enough to live decently somewhere else than here in this tomb they call a town. i didn’t care. i set out to make you—like me. i went back there to the pool each day for just that, until——”
lily pond
“well? until?” he urged, smiling across at her.
“that is all,” she answered.
“and it was all absolutely mercenary? you never cared for me?”
“i’ve told you,” she answered.
“and—that last day, dear? it was[209] the same? you didn’t care then either?”
“oh, what does it matter what happened afterwards?” she cried agitatedly. “it was what i had done, don’t you see? it was the meanness, the—the shamefulness of it!”
“well, but this ‘afterward’? what of that?”
“nothing,” she answered firmly.
silence fell for a moment. they looked across at each other steadily, she meeting his smile defiantly. then the color crept up from throat to cheeks and her eyes dropped.
“dear,” he said gently, “i don’t care what happened before that ‘afterward.’ i loved you from the first moment, but i’m not going to resent it if it took you longer to discover my irresistible charms. why, hang it all, i’m proud you should have[210] thought me worth marrying even for my money! but ‘afterward,’ dear? when i kissed you? you can’t make me believe there was no love then, cicely. and it is still ‘afterward,’ and it always will be! dear, arcadia is waiting for you. the lotus pool is lonely without you. and so am i, cicely, cicely dear!”
ethan and cicely
“oh, i knew you would try to forgive me,” she cried miserably. “that is why i—didn’t want you to come. because after awhile you would remember and——”
“cicely!”
“and you’d hate me!”
“cicely! look at me, dear! i want you to——”
soft footfalls reached them. the pale youth was approaching, his arms laden with books. ethan bit his lip and fell silent.
[211]
“i beg your pardon, miss hoyt, but would you mind giving me——”
ethan stepped toward him.
“here,” he said hurriedly, “here’s just what you’re after. it’s no trouble at all.” he forced the “love sonnets from the portuguese,” into the youth’s hands and turned him gently but firmly away from the counter. the youth looked from the book to ethan.
“how—how did you know?” he stammered resentfully.
“never mind how, my boy. you’ve got it. run along.”
after a moment of indecision, of many silent looks of inquiry and dark suspicion, the youth trod softly away again. ethan looked at cicely and they smiled together. then she sank into her chair at the desk and laughed helplessly, and cried a little, too. and[212] ethan said no word until she had pressed the handkerchief to her eyes and turned toward him again. then,
“will you come back to your lotus pool, o clytie?” he asked softly.
“wouldn’t it be rather cold and damp this weather?” she asked with a little trembling laugh.
“i am going to have it steam-heated,” he answered gravely. “i was there yesterday, clytie, and it looked very forlorn without you, dear.”
“you were there?” she asked wonderingly.
“yes. i forgot to tell you, didn’t i? the larches is mine, dear, and the lotus pool shall be yours for life, if you’ll let me come sometimes and sit beside you under the trees on the bank. will you?”
she dropped her eyes.
[213]
“will you?” he repeated.
“will you?” he repeated.
she moved nearer, with lowered head, and laid her hands palms up on the oaken counter. he took them and drew her toward him. she raised a rosy face toward him, the violet eyes darting fearfully toward the reading room. ethan paused and looked thoughtful.
“in nice libraries,” he said, “they have what they call the open stacks. is it so here?”
she shook her head.
“but—there might be exceptions?”
“there might,” she answered softly.
“and do you think the librarian would permit me to be an exception?”
she nodded, blushing and provoking.
he turned, walked to the end of the counter and pushed aside the swinging[214] gate. at the door of the stack room he paused.
“i would like,” he said, “to find that book of mythology wherein are related the loves of clytie and vertumnus. could you show me where to find it?”
she darted a glance toward the entrance to the reading room. then she followed him.
“i believe,” she murmured, as her hand stole into his, “i believe it is in the farthest corner.”
their footfalls died away down the concrete aisle. from the reading room came the sound of a softly turned leaf. then the library was very silent.
