Wired Love - Ella Cheever Thayer (read any book txt) 📗

do hope they will not stroll this way. They are around altogether too much. I never can have a quiet talk with you!"

"I declare, I believe in addition to your being unsentimental, and all that, you are becoming a confirmed grumbler!" exclaimed Cyn, as she caught one of the boughs of the tree overhead and turned a merrily-protesting face towards him.

Jo looked at her, and a queer expression came over his face.

"Am I?" he said, slowly. "Well—would you like to see me sentimental?
Would you like to see me make a fool of myself?"

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure!" cried Cyn.

"Then," exclaimed Jo, planting himself directly in front of her, "here goes! now I am going to astonish you very much, Cyn!"

"Very well! I am all impatience! Go on!"

"But it is no joke!" he replied, in protest to her laughing face. "If I am to make a fool of myself I am going to do it in dead earnest!"

"That is the way, of course," responded Cyn, but beginning to look a little surprised.

For Jo seemed very much excited, and his manner indicated anything but a jest. Extraordinary creature, that Jo! His next proceeding was even more strange; that was to ask the apparently irrelevant question,

"Do you remember what we were all saying a short time ago, about Fate?"

"Certainly; but are you going to favor me with a dissertation on Fate, instead of making a fool of yourself?"

"No!" was the solemn reply, "have a little patience, Cyn. The fact is, you are my Fate—there is no mistake about it!—and must be either cruel or kind, and there's no alternative!"

Cyn's surprise increased visibly.

"I am sure, I do not understand you at all! how queer you are to-day,
Jo!"

"Of course I am queer! when a man throws his theories and hobbies to the winds, and confesses himself conquered, he is apt to be queer, is he not? Can you not understand, that I, Jo Norton, who have always scoffed at sentiment, and proudly declared myself incapable of being the victim of love, am ready—yes, and longing!—to make as big a fool of myself as the veriest spooniest youth in existence, and all for love of you, Cyn?"

To this exceedingly novel declaration of love, Cyn responded by releasing the bough she held, and staring at him with distended eyes and a perfectly blank face; for once in her life, speechless.

"I told you I was going to astonish you," said Jo, quaintly, in answer to her prolonged stare, "and I do not wonder that you cannot believe I really love you! I did not myself, for a long time, and I would not after I knew it! But it is a fact. No joke—no mistake, but a sober, serious fact! I love you, love you, love you!"

Jo's voice grew very fervent, as he uttered these last words, and was in such striking contrast to his ordinary manner, that Cyn could but see that this was indeed, "no joke."

"You—you love—and love me!" she gasped.

"Yes, I could not help it! I have only known it within a few days, but I think I have loved you ever since we first met, only those confounded theories of mine blinded me."

"Well—but what are you going to do about it?" questioned Cyn, unable yet to recover from her bewilderment.

Jo looked at her, wistfully.

"I know I am homely, Cyn, and I am poor; I have nothing to offer you but an honest, loving and true heart. I suppose a man who is in love is naturally unreasonable—I never was in love before, you know—but an extravagant hope will whisper to me, that even this little might not be unappreciated by you."

And as he spoke, Jo's face was so transfigured that it could no longer be called plain. Cyn gazed at him in wonder, and recovering partly from her first surprise, an unusual seriousness came over her own handsome face, as she answered earnestly,

"It is not unappreciated! oh, no, Jo! Nothing to offer me but an honest, loving and true heart, you say? why, that is everything!"

"Then will you accept it? May I try and win your love?" he asked eagerly, advancing close to her. "I will work very hard to make myself worthy of it, and to win a name you need not be ashamed to bear. I lay myself, my life at your feet, Cyn."

"And this is unsentimental Jo!" Cyn exclaimed involuntarily.

"This is unsentimental Jo," he answered, in all humility. "Do with him what you will; he is all yours."

Into Cyn's expressive eyes came some deeply-stirred emotion.

"I am so sorry;" she said, sadly, "so very, very sorry! what shall I say? what shall I do? I like you so much as a friend! But what you ask, Jo, could never be!"

The sun sank behind the distant hills, and a shadow, such as had fallen over the woods behind them, settled on Jo's face.

"The idea is new to you. At least, think it over. Do not leave me without a little hope," he entreated.

"Jo, I wish—yes! I do wish that I could love you as you deserve to be loved," said Cyn, earnestly. "But it cannot be! it never could be! Do not deceive yourself with false hopes. Friends always, Jo, but lovers never!"

"Ah!" exclaimed Jo, bitterly, unable to restrain his jealousy, "it is
Clem who stands between us!"

"Clem who stands between us!" echoed Cyn, astounded for the second time that day.

"There—now I have lowered myself in your estimation; I am but a blundering fool, Cyn. You see I am selfish in my love; and I have not yet become sentimental enough to be willing to see another fellow win what is all the world to me!"

Cyn's face grew red as was the sky when the sun had gone down.

"Do you mean to insinuate that I am in love with Clem?" she asked, angrily.

"I would not insinuate it for all the world, if you are not," was Jo's eager reply; "I am not experienced in love matters, but I am quite sure he loves you—and he is very handsome," he added ruefully.

"What a dreadful combination of circumstances!" cried Cyn, distractedly.
"But, pshaw! It's impossible!"

"Impossible? No, indeed! Why, it was by being so jealous of him that I first awoke to the fact that I was in love with you myself. Besides, every one has noticed his fondness for you."

"They have?" vehemently, and smiting the rock where she sat with her hand, as she spoke. "But this is truly awful!"

"Then you do not care for him?" questioned Jo, joyfully.

"Care for him?" repeated Cyn, irritably. "Of course I care for him! Is it not my pet scheme that he should marry Nattie? Certainly it is, and has been from the first! And now, if he has gone and fallen in love with me, a nice predicament we will all be in. But you must be mistaken! I cannot believe him capable of such a thing! The only reason I have to fear it is that I would not have credited it of you yesterday!"

"But you see I do love you. You believe I do, do you not, Cyn?" asked
Jo, too eager to press his own suit to give much thought to Nattie and
Clem. "Why will you not try and love me, as you do not love Clem? Am I
so homely as to be repulsive to you?"

"Homely? Nonsense!" replied Cyn, momentarily putting aside her newest anxiety for the previous one, "now I come to think of it, I had rather marry you than any man I know!"

"Would you? Would you really?" seizing her hand hopefully. "Then why will you not?"

Cyn allowed her hand to remain in his as she said slowly and impressively,

"I cannot marry. That is entirely out of the question for me. Of my life, love can form no part!"

"But I thought you believed in love?" said Jo, looking perplexed, but clinging to her hand as a sort of anchor.

"I do. I believe it is the best happiness of life. But it cannot be for me. Why, I will tell you. I owe this much in return for what you have given me; what I prize even though I am compelled to refuse it. What stands between us is the memory of a love—gone forever."

"What!" exclaimed Jo, astounded in his turn. "You do not mean to say that you—that you—you, the gayest of the gay—that you—" Jo stopped, unable to proceed.

"You hardly expected to find me in the role of the victim of a broken heart, did you?" questioned Cyn, with a half-sad, half-humorous smile. "I admit I do not exactly answer to the average description, and my heart is not broken—there is only a blank in it—something dead that can never live again. Once I loved a man with all my heart"—Jo sighed—"with all the illusion of youth, and he loved me. The difference between his love and mine was, that mine was forever, and his was for a day."

"Impossible!" interrupted Jo. "No man who once loved you could ever change."

"He happened to be one of the kind who could. I never really knew the cause—it might have been another woman. You know there always is another woman."

"Or another man," added Jo gloomily.

"Yes," assented Cyn, and continued. "He was one of the kind, I think now, who are incapable of appreciating a woman's love, and consequently unworthy of it. But unfortunately, I did not know this, and wasted mine on him. So he and love, went out of my life forever. But," with a proud raising of her head, "I would not be weak enough to allow all my life to be ruined because one part of it was wrecked; with so much gone, there still remained something, and of that I made the most. This is why my art is everything to me, and why I cannot marry you."

"But it seems to me unreasonable, that because you loved one man who was unworthy, you should refuse the love of another who would try very hard to make you forget that first sad experience," argued Jo. "Give me what you have left, Cyn! If it be but dead ashes, I will thank God for the gift, and perhaps, at some future day, in response to my devotion, even from those ashes shall arise another love, so strong, so intense, that, in comparison, the old shall be but as some half-forgotten trouble of childhood, whose remembrance cannot awaken even a passing pain."

The fervor of an honest affection made Jo truly eloquent, and his true blue eyes met the dark ones of Cyn, glowing with earnestness and love, and for a moment she looked at him and hesitated. Then she arose, saying resolutely,

"No! Jo! no! Do not tempt me! The experiment would be too dangerous! To give you a warmed-over affection in return for your whole heart, would only be misery for us both—more misery than I am bringing to you now. I respect and esteem you, as I said before—we will be friends—comrades—always—no more!"

As she spoke, she extended her hand to him, in farewell to all his hopes.

And so understanding he clasped it, a sadness on his face she had never seen there before.

"As you will, Cyn," he replied, brokenly, "but I shall love you—forever!"

As he spoke, from below came the cry,

"Cyn Jo! where are you? we are going!"

"Coming!" Cyn's clear voice answered back.

"One moment," Jo said, detaining her, "may I—may I kiss you once, Cyn?
Once, and for the last time?"

There were tears in Cyn's eyes. She bent her handsome head, their lips met, then, without a word, they went on together to join those who awaited them.

And it was thus Fate decreed for these two.

Love brings the most intense sorrows, the keenest joys of life. But there must always be some lives, into which comes only the sadness, and none of the bliss, of loving.

CHAPTER XVI. O. K.

Leaving Clem, on their arrival at the hotel, to bear the burden of the green stuff they had brought from the woods, Cyn, with a trace of melancholy on her sunny face, followed Nattie to her room. For Cyn's joyous picnic, with its gay beginning, had ended sadly enough for her.

"I want to ask you something," Cyn said, with frank directness, as she carefully