Cecily Foster came down the sloping, fir-fringed road from the village at a leisurely1 pace. Usually she walked with a long, determined2 stride, but to-day the drowsy3, mellowing4 influence of the Autumn afternoon was strong upon her and filled her with placid5 content. Without being actively6 conscious of it, she was satisfied with the existing circumstances of her life. It was half over now. The half of it yet to be lived stretched before her, tranquil7, pleasant and uneventful, like the afternoon, filled with unhurried duties and calmly interesting days, Cecily liked the prospect8.
When she came to her own lane she paused, folding her hands on the top of the whitewashed9 gate, while she basked10 for a moment in the warmth that seemed cupped in the little grassy11 hollow hedged about with young fir-trees.
Before her lay sere12, brooding fields sloping down to a sandy shore, where long foamy13 ripples14 were lapping with a murmur15 that threaded the hushed air like a faint minor16 melody.
On the crest17 of the little hill to her right was her home—hers and Lucy Ellen's. The house was an old-fashioned, weather-gray one, low in the eaves, with gables and porches overgrown with vines that had turned to wine-reds and rich bronzes in the October frosts. On three sides it was closed in by tall old spruces, their outer sides bared and grim from long wrestling with the Atlantic winds, but their inner green and feathery. On the fourth side a trim white paling shut in the flower garden before the front door. Cecily could see the beds of purple and scarlet18 asters, making rich whorls of color under the parlor19 and sitting-room20 windows. Lucy Ellen's bed was gayer and larger than Cecily's. Lucy Ellen had always had better luck with flowers.
She could see old Boxer21 asleep on the front porch step and Lucy Ellen's white cat stretched out on the parlor window-sill. There was no other sign of life about the place. Cecily drew a long, leisurely breath of satisfaction.
"After tea I'll dig up those dahlia roots," she said aloud. "They'd ought to be up. My, how blue and soft that sea is! I never saw such a lovely day. I've been gone longer than I expected. I wonder if Lucy Ellen's been lonesome?"
When Cecily looked back from the misty22 ocean to the house, she was surprised to see a man coming with a jaunty23 step down the lane under the gnarled spruces. She looked at him perplexedly. He must be a stranger, for she was sure no man in Oriental walked like that.
The stranger came on with an airy briskness25 utterly26 foreign to Orientalites. Cecily opened the gate and went through. They met under the amber-tinted sugar maple27 in the heart of the hollow. As he passed, the man lifted his hat and bowed with an ingratiating smile.
He was about forty-five, well, although somewhat loudly dressed, and with an air of self-satisfied prosperity pervading28 his whole personality. He had a heavy gold watch chain and a large seal ring on the hand that lifted his hat. He was bald, with a high, Shaksperian forehead and a halo of sandy curls. His face was ruddy and weak, but good-natured: his eyes were large and blue, and he had a little straw-colored moustache, with a juvenile29 twist and curl in it.
Cecily did not recognize him, yet there was something vaguely30 familiar about him. She walked rapidly up to the house. In the sitting-room she found Lucy Ellen peering out between the muslin window curtains. When the latter turned there was an air of repressed excitement about her.
"Who was that man, Lucy Ellen?" Cecily asked.
To Cecily's amazement31, Lucy Ellen blushed—a warm, Spring-like flood of color that rolled over her delicate little face like a miracle of rejuvenescence.
"Didn't you know him? That was Cromwell Biron," she simpered. Although Lucy Ellen was forty and, in most respects, sensible, she could not help simpering upon occasion.
"Cromwell Biron," repeated Cecily, in an emotionless voice. She took off her bonnet32 mechanically, brushed the dust from its ribbons and bows and went to put it carefully away in its white box in the spare bedroom. She felt as if she had had a severe shock, and she dared not ask anything more just then. Lucy Ellen's blush had frightened her. It seemed to open up dizzying possibilities of change.
"But she promised—she promised," said Cecily fiercely, under her breath.
While Cecily was changing her dress, Lucy Ellen was getting the tea ready in the little kitchen. Now and then she broke out into singing, but always checked herself guiltily. Cecily heard her and set her firm mouth a little firmer.
"If a man had jilted me twenty years ago, I wouldn't be so overwhelmingly glad to see him when he came back—especially if he had got fat and bald-headed," she added, her face involuntarily twitching33 into a smile. Cecily, in spite of her serious expression and intense way of looking at life, had an irrepressible sense of humor.
Tea that evening was not the pleasant meal it usually was. The two women were wont34 to talk animatedly35 to each other, and Cecily had many things to tell Lucy Ellen. She did not tell them. Neither did Lucy Ellen ask any questions, her ill-concealed excitement hanging around her like a festal garment.
Cecily's heart was on fire with alarm and jealousy36. She smiled a little cruelly as she buttered and ate her toast.
"And so that was Cromwell Biron," she said with studied carelessness. "I thought there was something familiar about him. When did he come home?"
"He got to Oriental yesterday," fluttered back Lucy Ellen. "He's going to be home for two months. We—we had such an interesting talk this afternoon. He—he's as full of jokes as ever. I wished you'd been here."
This was a fib. Cecily knew it.
"I don't, then," she said contemptuously. "You know I never had much use for Cromwell Biron. I think he had a face of his own to come down here to see you uninvited, after the way he treated you."
"He's changed terrible in his looks," went on Cecily relentlessly38. "How bald he's got—and fat! To think of the spruce Cromwell Biron got to be bald and fat! To be sure, he still has the same sheepish expression. Will you pass me the currant jell, Lucy Ellen?"
"I don't think he's so very fat," she said resentfully, when Cecily had left the table. "And I don't care if he is."
Twenty years before this, Biron had jilted Lucy Ellen Foster. She was the prettiest girl in Oriental then, but the new school teacher over at the Crossways was prettier, with a dash of piquancy39, which Lucy Ellen lacked, into the bargain. Cromwell and the school teacher had run away and been married, and Lucy Ellen was left to pick up the tattered40 shreds41 of her poor romance as best she could.
She never had another lover. She told herself that she would always be faithful to the one love of her life. This sounded romantic, and she found a certain comfort in it.
She had been brought up by her uncle and aunt. When they died she and her cousin, Cecily Foster, found themselves, except for each other, alone in the world.
Cecily loved Lucy Ellen as a sister. But she believed that Lucy Ellen would yet marry, and her heart sank at the prospect of being left without a soul to love and care for.
It was Lucy Ellen that had first proposed their mutual42 promise, but Cecily had grasped at it eagerly. The two women, verging43 on decisive old maidenhood44, solemnly promised each other that they would never marry, and would always live together. From that time Cecily's mind had been at ease. In her eyes a promise was a sacred thing.
The next evening at prayer-meeting Cromwell Biron received quite an ovation45 from old friends and neighbors. Cromwell had been a favorite in his boyhood. He had now the additional glamour46 of novelty and reputed wealth.
He was beaming and expansive. He went into the choir47 to help sing. Lucy Ellen sat beside him, and they sang from the same book. Two red spots burned on her thin cheeks, and she had a cluster of lavender chrysanthemums48 pinned on her jacket. She looked almost girlish, and Cromwell Biron gazed at her with sidelong admiration50, while Cecily watched them both fiercely from her pew. She knew that Cromwell Biron had come home, wooing his old love.
"But he sha'n't get her," Cecily whispered into her hymnbook. Somehow it was a comfort to articulate the words, "She promised."
On the church steps Cromwell offered his arm to Lucy Ellen with a flourish. She took it shyly, and they started down the road in the crisp Autumn moonlight. For the first time in ten years Cecily walked home from prayer-meeting alone. She went up-stairs and flung herself on her bed, reckless for once, of her second best hat and gown.
Lucy Ellen did not venture to ask Cromwell in. She was too much in awe51 of Cecily for that. But she loitered with him at the gate until the grandfather's clock in the hall struck eleven. Then Cromwell went away, whistling gaily52, with Lucy Ellen's chrysanthemum49 in his buttonhole, and Lucy Ellen went in and cried half the night. But Cecily did not cry. She lay savagely53 awake until morning.
"Cromwell Biron is courting you again," she said bluntly to Lucy Ellen at the breakfast table.
"Oh, nonsense, Cecily," she protested with a simper.
"It isn't nonsense," said Cecily calmly. "He is. There is no fool like an old fool, and Cromwell Biron never had much sense. The presumption55 of him!"
Lucy Ellen's hands trembled as she put her teacup down.
"He's not so very old," she said faintly, "and everybody but you likes him—and he's well-to-do. I don't see that there's any presumption."
"Maybe not—if you look at it so. You're very forgiving, Lucy Ellen. You've forgotten how he treated you once."
"Anyway," said Cecily coldly, "you shouldn't encourage his attentions, Lucy Ellen; you know you couldn't marry him even if he asked you. You promised."
All the fitful color went out of Lucy Ellen's face. Under Cecily's pitiless eyes she wilted57 and drooped58.
"I know," she said deprecatingly, "I haven't forgotten. You are talking nonsense, Cecily. I like to see Cromwell, and he likes to see me because I'm almost the only one of his old set that is left. He feels lonesome in Oriental now."
Lucy Ellen lifted her fawn-colored little head more erectly59 at the last of her protest. She had saved her self-respect.
In the month that followed Cromwell Biron pressed his suit persistently60, unintimidated by Cecily's antagonism61. October drifted into November and the chill, drear days came. To Cecily the whole outer world seemed the dismal62 reflex of her pain-bitten heart. Yet she constantly laughed at herself, too, and her laughter was real if bitter.
One evening she came home late from a neighbor's. Cromwell Biron passed her in the hollow under the bare boughs63 of the maple that were outlined against the silvery moonlit sky.
When Cecily went into the house, Lucy Ellen opened the parlor door. She was very pale, but her eyes burned in her face and her hands were clasped before her.
"I wish you'd come in here for a few minutes, Cecily," she said feverishly64.
Cecily followed silently into the room.
"Cecily," she said faintly, "Cromwell was here to-night. He asked me to marry him. I told him to come to-morrow night for his answer."
She paused and looked imploringly65 at Cecily. Cecily did not speak. She stood tall and unrelenting by the table. The rigidity66 of her face and figure smote67 Lucy Ellen like a blow. She threw out her bleached68 little hands and spoke69 with a sudden passion utterly foreign to her.
"Cecily, I want to marry him. I—I—love him. I always have. I never thought of this when I promised. Oh, Cecily, you'll let me off my promise, won't you?"
"No," said Cecily. It was all she said. Lucy Ellen's hands fell to her sides, and the light went out of her face.
"You won't?" she said hopelessly.
Cecily went out. At the door she turned.
"When John Edwards asked me to marry him six years ago, I said no for your sake. To my mind a promise is a promise. But you were always weak and romantic, Lucy Ellen."
Lucy Ellen made no response. She stood limply on the hearth-rug like a faded blossom bitten by frost.
After Cromwell Biron had gone away the next evening, with all his brisk jauntiness71 shorn from him for the time, Lucy Ellen went up to Cecily's room. She stood for a moment in the narrow doorway72, with the lamplight striking upward with a gruesome effect on her wan70 face.
"I've sent him away," she said lifelessly. "I've kept my promise, Cecily."
There was silence for a moment. Cecily did not know what to say. Suddenly Lucy Ellen burst out bitterly.
"I wish I was dead!"
Then she turned swiftly and ran across the hall to her own room. Cecily gave a little moan of pain. This was her reward for all the love she had lavished73 on Lucy Ellen.
"Anyway, it is all over," she said, looking dourly74 into the moonlit boughs of the firs; "Lucy Ellen'll get over it. When Cromwell is gone she'll forget all about him. I'm not going to fret75. She promised, and she wanted the promise first."
During the next fortnight tragedy held grim sway in the little weather-gray house among the firs—a tragedy tempered with grim comedy for Cecily, who, amid all her agony, could not help being amused at Lucy Ellen's romantic way of sorrowing.
Lucy Ellen did her mornings' work listlessly and drooped through the afternoons. Cecily would have felt it as a relief if Lucy Ellen had upbraided76 her, but after her outburst on the night she sent Cromwell away, Lucy Ellen never uttered a word of reproach or complaint.
One evening Cecily made a neighborly call in the village. Cromwell Biron happened to be there and gallantly77 insisted upon seeing her home.
She understood from Cromwell's unaltered manner that Lucy Ellen had not told him why she had refused him. She felt a sudden admiration for her cousin.
When they reached the house Cromwell halted suddenly in the banner of light that streamed from the sitting-room window. They saw Lucy Ellen sitting alone before the fire, her arms folded on the table, and her head bowed on them. Her white cat sat unnoticed at the table beside her. Cecily gave a gasp78 of surrender.
"You'd better come in," she said, harshly. "Lucy Ellen looks lonesome."
Cromwell muttered sheepishly, "I'm afraid I wouldn't be company for her. Lucy Ellen doesn't like me much—"
"Oh, doesn't she!" said Cecily, bitterly. "She likes you better than she likes me for all I've—but it's no matter. It's been all my fault—she'll explain. Tell her I said she could. Come in, I say."
She caught the still reluctant Cromwell by the arm and fairly dragged him over the geranium beds and through the front door. She opened the sitting-room door and pushed him in. Lucy Ellen rose in amazement. Over Cromwell's bald head loomed79 Cecily's dark face, tragic80 and determined.
"Here's your beau, Lucy Ellen," she said, "and I give you back your promise."
She shut the door upon the sudden illumination of Lucy Ellen's face and went up-stairs with the tears rolling down her cheeks.
"It's my turn to wish I was dead," she muttered. Then she laughed hysterically81.
"That goose of a Cromwell! How queer he did look standing82 there, frightened to death of Lucy Ellen. Poor little Lucy Ellen! Well, I hope he'll be good to her."
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1
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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mellowing
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| 软化，醇化 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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basked
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的过去式和过去分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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sere
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| adj.干枯的；n.演替系列 | |
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foamy
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| adj.全是泡沫的，泡沫的，起泡沫的 | |
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ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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boxer
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| n.制箱者，拳击手 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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jaunty
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| adj．愉快的，满足的；adv.心满意足地，洋洋得意地；n.心满意足；洋洋得意 | |
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pestering
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| 使烦恼，纠缠( pester的现在分词 ) | |
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briskness
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| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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pervading
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的现在分词 ) | |
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juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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animatedly
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| adv.栩栩如生地，活跃地 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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relentlessly
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| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
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piquancy
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| n.辛辣，辣味，痛快 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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verging
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| 接近，逼近（verge的现在分词形式） | |
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maidenhood
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| n. 处女性, 处女时代 | |
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ovation
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| n.欢呼，热烈欢迎，热烈鼓掌 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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chrysanthemums
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| n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 ) | |
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chrysanthemum
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| n.菊，菊花 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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56
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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57
wilted
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| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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erectly
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| adv.直立地，垂直地 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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imploringly
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| adv. 恳求地, 哀求地 | |
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rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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69
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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wan
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71
jauntiness
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| n.心满意足；洋洋得意；高兴；活泼 | |
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72
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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73
lavished
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
dourly
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75
fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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76
upbraided
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| v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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77
gallantly
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| adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地 | |
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78
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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79
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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80
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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81
hysterically
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| ad. 歇斯底里地 | |
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82
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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