And this doubt raised, the bright eyes were dimmed with tears in a moment.
Meadows gasped out, “Why not? why not?” but soon after, muttering some excuse about his horse, he went out with a promise to return immediately.
He was no sooner alone than he gave way to a burst of rage and bitterness.
“So, she only sent for me here to make me tell her about that infernal country where her George is. I'll ride home this instant—this very instant—without bidding them good-by.”
Cooler thoughts came. He mused deeply a few minutes, and then, clinching his teeth, returned slowly to the little parlor: he sat down and took his line with a brisk and cheerful air.
“You were asking me some questions about Australia. I can tell you all about that country, for I have a relation there who writes to me. And I have read all the books about it, too, as it happens.”
Susan brightened up.
Meadows, by a great histrionic effort, brightened up, too, and poured out a flood of really interesting facts and anecdotes about this marvelous land.
Then, in the middle of a narrative, which enchained both his hearers, he suddenly looked at his watch, and putting on a fictitious look of dismay and annoyance, started up with many excuses and went home—not, however, till Susan had made him promise to come again next market-day.
As he rode home in the moonlight Susan's face seemed still before him. The bright look of interest she had given him, the grateful smiles with which she had thanked him for his narration—all this had been so sweet at the moment, so bitter upon the least reflection. His mind was in a whirl. At last he grasped at one idea, and held it as with a vise.
“I shall be always welcome to her if I can bring myself to talk about that detestable country. Well, I will grind my tongue down to it. She shall not be able to do without my chat; that shall be the beginning; the middle shall be different; the end shall be just the opposite. The sea is between him and her. I am here with opportunity, resolution and money. I will have her!”
The next morning his mother said to him:
“John, do you think to go to-day?”
“Where, mother?”
“The journey you spoke of.”
“What journey?”
“Among the mines.”
“Not I.”
“You have changed your mind, then?”
“What, didn't you see I was joking?”
“No!” (very dryly.)
Soon after this little dialogue Dame Meadows proposed to end her visit and return home. Her son yielded a cheerful assent. She went gravely and quietly back to her little cottage.
Meadows had determined to make himself necessary to Susan Merton. He brought a woman's cunning to bear against a woman's; for the artifice to which his strong will bent his supple talent is one that many women have had the tact and temporary self-denial to carry out, but not one man in a hundred.
Men try to beat an absent rival by sneering at him, etc. By which means the asses make their absent foe present to her mind and enlist the whole woman in his defense.
But Meadows was no ordinary man. Susan had given his quick intelligence a glimpse of a way to please her. He looked at the end, and crushed his will down to the thorny means.
Twice a week he called on the Mertons, and much of his talk was Australia. Susan was grateful. To hear of the place where George would soon be was the nearest approach she could make to hearing of George.
As for Meadows, he gained a great point, but he went through tortures on the way. He could not hide from himself why he was so welcome; and many a time as he rode home from the Mertons he resolved never to return there, but he took no more oaths; it had cost him so much to keep the last; and that befell which might have been expected, after a while, the pleasure of being near the woman he loved, of being distinguished by her and greeted with pleasure however slight, grew into a habit and a need.
Achilles was a man of steel, but he had a vulnerable part; and iron natures like John Meadows have often one spot in their souls where they are far tenderer than the universal dove-eyed, and weaker than the omnipotent. He never spoke a word of love to Susan, he knew it would spoil all; and she, occupied with another's image, and looking upon herself as confessedly belonging to another, never suspected the deep passion that filled this man's heart. But if an observer of nature had accompanied John Meadows on market-day he might have seen—diagnostics.
All the morning his eye was cold and quick; his mouth, when silent, close, firm, and unreadable; his voice clear, decided, and occasionally loud. But when he got to old Merton's fireside he mellowed and softened like the sun toward evening. There his forehead unknit itself; his voice, pitched in quite a different key from his key of business, turned also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly won the hearer by its deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety; and his eye turned deeper in color, and, losing its keenness and restlessness, dwelt calmly and pensively for minutes at a time upon some little household object close to Susan; seldom, unless quite unobserved, upon Susan herself.
But the surrounding rustics suspected nothing, so calm and deep ran Meadows.
“Dear heart,” said Susan to her father, “who would have thought Mr. Meadows would come a mile out of his way twice a week to talk to me about Geo—about the country where my heart is—and the folk say he thinks of nothing but money and won't move a step without making it.”
“The folk are envious of him, girl—that is all. John Meadows is too clever for fools, and too industrious for the lazy ones; he is a good friend of mine, Susan; if I wanted to borrow a thousand pounds I have only to draw on Meadows; he has told me so half a dozen times.”
“We don't want his money, father,” replied Susan, “nor anybody's; but I think a great deal of his kindness, and George shall thank him when he comes home—if ever he comes home to Susan again.” These last words brought many tears with them, which the old farmer pretended not to notice, for he was getting tired of his daughter's tears. They were always flowing now at the least word, “and she used to be so good-humored and cheerful-like.”
Poor Susan! she was very unhappy. If any one had said to her, “to-morrow you die,” she would have smiled on her own account, and only sighed at the pain the news would cause poor George. Her George was gone, her mother had been dead this two years. Her life, which had been full of innocent pleasures, was now utterly tasteless, except in its hours of bitterness when sorrow overcame her like a flood. She had a pretty flower-garden in which she used to work. When George was at home what pleasure it had been to plant them with her lover's help, to watch them expand, to water them in the summer evening, to smell their gratitude for the artificial shower after a sultry day, and then to have George in, and set him admiring them with such threadbare enthusiasm, simply because they were hers, not in the least because they were Nature's.
I will go back, like the epic writers, and sketch one of their little garden scenes.
One evening, after watering them all, she sat down on a seat at the bottom of the garden, and casting her eyes over her whole domain, said, “Well, now, I do admire flowers; don't you, George?”
“That I do,” replied George, taking another seat, and coolly turning his back on the parterre, and gazing mildly into Susan's eyes.
“Why, he is not even looking at them!” cried Susan, and she clapped her hands and laughed gleefully.
“Oh, yes, he is; leastways he is looking at one of them, and the brightest of the lot to my fancy.”
Susan colored with pleasure. In the country compliments don't drip constantly on beauty even from the lips of love. Then, suppressing her satisfaction, she said, “You will look for a flower in return for that, young