Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/498

456 around her, and ran swiftly out into the night. She hurried stealthily through the garden. The lilies were gone, but there was still a strong breath of sweetness, a bouquet, as it were, of mignonette and verbena and sweet thyme and other fragrant blossoms, and the hollyhocks still bloomed. She went very carefully when she reached the last enclosure of box; she peeped through the tall file of hollyhocks, and there was Hyacinthus on the porch and there was a woman beside him. In fact, the woman was sitting in the old chair and Hyacinthus was at her feet, on the step, with his head in her lap. The moon shone on them; they looked as if they were carved with marble.

Sarah never knew how she got home, but she was back there in her little room and nobody knew that she had been in the Ware garden except herself. The next morning she had a talk with her mother. "Mother," said she, "if Mr. John Mangam wants to marry me why doesn't he say so?" She was fairly brutal in her manner of putting the question. She did not change color in the least. She was very pale that morning, and she stood more like her mother and her great-grandmother than herself.

Mrs. Lynn looked at her, and she was almost shocked. "Why, Sarah Lynn!" she gasped.

"I mean just what I say," said Sarah, firmly. "I want to know. John Mangam has been coming here steadily for nearly two years, and he never even says a word, much less asks me to marry him. Does he expect me to do it?"

"I suppose he thinks you might at least meet him half-way," said her mother, confusedly.

That afternoon she went over to Mrs. Wilford Biggs's, and the next night, it being John Mangam's night to call, Mrs. Biggs waylaid him as he was just about to cross the street to the Lynn house.

After a short conversation Mrs. Biggs and her brother crossed the street together, and it was not long before Mrs. Lynn asked Mrs. Biggs and the old grandmother, who had also come over, to go in the house and see her new black silk dress. Then it was that John Mangam mumbled something inarticulate, which Sarah translated into an offer of marriage. "Very well, I will marry you if you want me to, Mr. Mangam," she said. "I don't love you at all, but if you don't mind about that—"

John Mangam said nothing at all.

"If you don't mind that, I will marry you," said Sarah, and nobody would have known her voice. It was a voice to be ashamed of, full of despair and shame and pride, so wronged and mangled that her very spirit seemed violated.

John Mangam said nothing then. She and the man sat there quite still, when Hyacinthus came stepping over the hedge.

Sarah found a voice when she saw him. She turned to him. "Good evening, Mr. Ware," she said, clearly. "I would like to announce my engagement to Mr. Mangam."

Hyacinthus stood staring at her. Sarah repeated her announcement. Then Hyacinthus Ware disregarded John Mangam as much as if he had been a post of the white fence that enclosed the Lynn yard. "What does it mean?" he cried. "Sarah, what does it mean?"

"You have no right to ask," said she, also disregarding John Mangam, who sat perfectly still in his chair.

"No right to ask after—Sarah, what do you mean? Why have I no right to ask, after what we told each other?—and I intended to see your mother to-night. I only waited because—"

"Because you had a guest in the house," said Sarah, in a cold, low voice. Then John Mangam looked up with some show of animation. He had heard the gossip.

Hyacinthus looked at her a moment, speechless, then he left her without another word and went home across the hedge.

It was soon told in Adams that Sarah Lynn and John Mangam were to be married. Everybody agreed that it was a good match and that Sarah was a lucky girl. She went on with her wedding preparations. John Mangam came as usual and sat silently. Sometimes when Sarah looked at him and reflected that she would have to pass her life with this automaton a sort of madness seized her.

Hyacinthus she almost never saw. Once in a great while she met him on the street, and he bowed, raising his hat