Charlotte looked at her a little, and then kissed her.
"I hope you will be better when we come back."
"My dear sister, I am very well!" said Gertrude.
Charlotte went down the large brick walk to the garden gate; her companion strolled slowly toward the house.
At the gate Charlotte met a young man, who was coming in--a tall, fair young man, wearing a high hat and a pair of thread gloves.
He was handsome, but rather too stout. He had a pleasant smile.
"Oh, Mr. Brand!" exclaimed the young lady.
"I came to see whether your sister was not going to church," said the young man.
"She says she is not going; but I am very glad you have come.
I think if you were to talk to her a little".... And Charlotte lowered her voice. "It seems as if she were restless."
Mr. Brand smiled down on the young lady from his great height.
"I shall be very glad to talk to her. For that I should be willing to absent myself from almost any occasion of worship, however attractive."
"Well, I suppose you know," said Charlotte, softly, as if positive acceptance of this proposition might be dangerous.
"But I am afraid I shall be late."
"I hope you will have a pleasant sermon," said the young man.
"Oh, Mr. Gilman is always pleasant," Charlotte answered.
And she went on her way.
Mr. Brand went into the garden, where Gertrude, hearing the gate close behind him, turned and looked at him. For a moment she watched him coming; then she turned away. But almost immediately she corrected this movement, and stood still, facing him. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead as he approached. Then he put on his hat again and held out his hand.
His hat being removed, you would have perceived that his forehead was very large and smooth, and his hair abundant but rather colorless.
His nose was too large, and his mouth and eyes were too small; but for all this he was, as I have said, a young man of striking appearance.
The expression of his little clean-colored blue eyes was irresistibly gentle and serious; he looked, as the phrase is, as good as gold.
The young girl, standing in the garden path, glanced, as he came up, at his thread gloves.
"I hoped you were going to church," he said. "I wanted to walk with you."
"I am very much obliged to you," Gertrude answered.
"I am not going to church."
She had shaken hands with him; he held her hand a moment.
"Have you any special reason for not going?"
"Yes, Mr. Brand," said the young girl.
"May I ask what it is?"
She looked at him smiling; and in her smile, as I have intimated, there was a certain dullness. But mingled with this dullness was something sweet and suggestive.
"Because the sky is so blue!" she said.
He looked at the sky, which was magnificent, and then said, smiling too, "I have heard of young ladies staying at home for bad weather, but never for good. Your sister,whom I met at the gate, tells me you are depressed," he added.
"Depressed? I am never depressed."
"Oh, surely, sometimes," replied Mr. Brand, as if he thought this a regrettable account of one's self.
"I am never depressed," Gertrude repeated. "But I am sometimes wicked.
When I am wicked I am in high spirits. I was wicked just now to my sister."
"What did you do to her?"
"I said things that puzzled her--on purpose."
"Why did you do that, Miss Gertrude?" asked the young man.
She began to smile again. "Because the sky is so blue!"
"You say things that puzzle me," Mr. Brand declared.
"I always know when I do it," proceeded Gertrude. "But people puzzle me more, I think. And they don't seem to know!"
"This is very interesting," Mr. Brand observed, smiling.
"You told me to tell you about my--my struggles," the young girl went on.
"Let us talk about them. I have so many things to say."
Gertrude turned away a moment; and then, turning back, "You had better go to church," she said.
"You know," the young man urged, "that I have always one thing to say."
Gertrude looked at him a moment. "Please don't say it now!"
"We are all alone," he continued, taking off his hat;
"all alone in this beautiful Sunday stillness."
Gertrude looked around her, at the breaking buds, the shining distance, the blue sky to which she had referred as a pretext for her irregularities.
"That 's the reason," she said, "why I don't want you to speak.
Do me a favor; go to church."
"May I speak when I come back?" asked Mr. Brand.
"If you are still disposed," she answered.
"I don't know whether you are wicked," he said, "but you are certainly puzzling."
She had turned away; she raised her hands to her ears.
He looked at her a moment, and then he slowly walked to church.
She wandered for a while about the garden, vaguely and without purpose.
The church-bell had stopped ringing; the stillness was complete.
This young lady relished highly, on occasions, the sense of being alone--the absence of the whole family and the emptiness of the house.
To-day, apparently, the servants had also gone to church; there was never a figure at the open windows; behind the house there was no stout negress in a red turban, lowering the bucket into the great shingle-hooded well. And the front door of the big, unguarded home stood open, with the trustfulness of the golden age; or what is more to the purpose, with that of New England's silvery prime.
Gertrude slowly passed through it, and went from one of the empty rooms to the other--large, clear-colored rooms, with white wainscots, ornamented with thin-legged mahogany furniture, and, on the walls, with old-fashioned engravings, chiefly of scriptural subjects, hung very high. This agreeable sense of solitude, of having the house to herself, of which I have spoken, always excited Gertrude's imagination; she could not have told you why, and neither can her humble historian.
It always seemed to her that she must do something particular--that she must honor the occasion; and while she roamed about, wondering what she could do, the occasion usually came to an end.
To-day she wondered more than ever. At last she took down a book; there was no library in the house, but there were books in all the rooms.