The Eye of Dread. Erskine Payne
one. “I’m not going to use a crutch all my lifetime; don’t you think it. I’m very well off without, and almost myself again. I don’t need to lean on you–but I will–just for fun.” He put his arm about her and drew her to him.
“Stop, Peter Junior. Don’t you see you’re getting flour all over your clothes?”
“I like flour on my clothes. It will do for stiffening.” He raised her hand and kissed her wrist where there was no flour.
“You’re not leaning on me. You’re just acting silly, and you can hardly walk, you’re so tired! Coming all this way without your crutch. I think you’re foolish.”
“If you say anything more about that crutch, I’ll throw away my cane too.” He dropped down on the piazza and drew her to the step beside him.
“I must finish kneading the bread; I can’t sit here. You rest in the rocker awhile before you go up to the studio. Father’s up there. He came home late last night after we were all in bed.” She returned to her work, and after a moment called to him through the open window. “There’s going to be a nutting party to-morrow, and we want you to go. We’re going out to Carter’s grove; we’ve got permission. Every one’s going.”
Peter Junior rubbed the moisture from his hair and shook his head. He must get nearer her, but it was always the same thing; just a happy game, with no touch of sentiment–no more, he thought gloomily, than if she were his sister.
“What are you all going there for?”
“Why, nuts, goosey; didn’t I say we were going nutting?”
“I don’t happen to want nuts.” No, he wanted her to urge and coax him to go for her sake, but what could he say?
He left his seat, took the side path around to the kitchen door, and drew up a chair to the end of the table where she deftly manipulated the sweet-smelling dough, patting it, and pulling it, and turning it about until she was ready to put the shapely balls in the pans, holding them in her two firm little hands with a slight rolling motion as she slipped each loaf in its place. It had never occurred to Peter Junior that bread making was such an interesting process.
“Why do you fuss with it so? Why don’t you just dump it in the pan any old way? That’s the way I’d do.” But he loved to watch her pink-tipped fingers carefully shaping the loaves, nevertheless.
“Oh–because.”
“Good reason.”
“Well–the more you work it the better it is, just like everything else; and then–if you don’t make good-looking loaves, you’ll never have a handsome husband. Mother says so.” She tossed a stray lock from her eyes, and opening the oven door thrust in her arm. “My, but it’s hot! Why do you sit here in the heat? It’s a lot nicer on the porch in the rocker. Mother’s gone to town–and–”
“I’d rather sit here with you–thank you.” He spoke stiffly and waited. What could he say; what could he do next? She left him a moment and quickly returned with a cup of butter.
“You know–I’d stop and go out in the cool with you, Peter, but I must work this dough I have left into raised biscuit; and then I have to make a cake for to-morrow–and cookies–there’s something to do in this house, I tell you! How about to-morrow?”
“I don’t believe I’d better go. All the rest of the world will be there, and–”
“Only our little crowd. When I said everybody, you didn’t think I meant everybody in the whole world, did you? You know us all.”
“Do you want me to go? There’ll be enough others–”
She tossed her head and gave him a sidelong glance. “I always ask people to go when I don’t want them to.”
He rose at that and stood close to her side, and, stooping, looked in her eyes; and for the first time the color flamed up in her face because of him. “I say–do you want me to go?”
“No, I don’t.”
But the red he had brought into her cheeks intoxicated him with delight. Now he knew a thing to do. He seized her wrists and turned her away from the table and continued to look into her eyes. She twisted about, looking away from him, but the burning blush made even the little ear she turned toward him pink, and he loved it. His discretion was all gone. He loved her, and he would tell her now–now! She must hear it, and slipping his arm around her, he drew her away and out to the seat under the old silver-leaf poplar tree.
“You’re acting silly, Peter Junior,–and my bread will all spoil and get too light,–and my hands are all covered with flour, and–”
“And you’ll sit right here while I talk to you a bit, if the bread spoils and gets too light and everything burns to a cinder.” She started to run away from him, and his peremptory tone changed to pleading. “Please, Betty, dear! just hear me this far. I’m going away, Betty, and I love you. No, sit close and be my sweetheart. Dear, it isn’t the old thing. It’s love, and it’s what I want you to feel for me. I woke up yesterday, and found I loved you.” He held her closer and lifted her face to his. “You must wake up, too, Betty; we can’t play always. Say you’ll love me and be my wife–some day–won’t you, Betty?”
She drooped in his arms, hanging her head and looking down on her floury hands.
“Say it, Betty dear, won’t you?”
Her lip quivered. “I don’t want to be anybody’s wife–and, anyway–I liked you better the other way.”
“Why, Betty? Tell me why.”
“Because–lots of reasons. I must help mother–and I’m only seventeen, and–”
“Most eighteen, I know, because–”
“Well, anyway, mother says no girl of hers shall marry before she’s of age, and she says that means twenty-one, and–”
“That’s all right. I can wait. Kiss me, Betty.” But she was silent, with face turned from him. Again he lifted her face to his. “I say, kiss me, Betty. Just one? That was a stingy little kiss. You know I’m going away, and that is why I spoke to you now. I didn’t dare go without telling you this first. You’re so sweet, Betty, some one might find you out and love you–just as I have–only not so deeply in love with you–no one could–but some one might come and win you away from me, and so I must make sure that you will marry me when you are of age and I come back for you. Promise me.”
“Where?–why–Peter Junior! Where are you going?” Betty removed his arm from around her waist and slipped to her own end of the seat. There, with hands folded decorously in her lap, with heightened color and serious eyes, she looked shyly up at him. He had never seen her shy before. Always she had been merry and teasing, and his heart was proud that he had wrought such a miracle in her.
“I am going to Paris. I mean to be an artist.” He leaned toward her and would have taken her in his arms again, but she put his hands away.
“Will your father let you do that?” Her eyes widened with surprise, and the surprise nettled him.
“I don’t know. He’s thinking about it. Anyway, a man must decide for himself what his career will be, and if he won’t let me, I’ll earn the money and go without his letting me.”
“Wouldn’t that be the best way, anyway?”
“What do you mean? To go without his consent?”
“Of course not–goosey.” She laughed and was herself again, but he liked her better the other way. “To earn the money and then go. It–it–would be more–more as if you were in earnest.”
“My soul! Do you think I’m not in earnest? Do you think I’m not in love with you?”
Instantly she was serious and shy again. His heart leaped. He loved to feel his power over her thus. Still she tantalized him. “I’m not meaning about loving me. That’s not the question. I mean it would look more as if you were in earnest about becoming an artist.”
“No.