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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Virginia Cousin & Bar Harbor Tales, by
-Mrs Burton Harrison
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: A Virginia Cousin & Bar Harbor Tales
-
-Author: Mrs Burton Harrison
-
-Release Date: December 10, 2012 [EBook #41591]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA COUSIN, BAR HARBOR TALES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
-
-  On page 16, "bran-new" may be a typo for "brand-new".
-
-
-
-
-  [Illustration: Constance Cary Harrison]
-
-
-
-
-     A Virginia Cousin
-     & Bar Harbor
-     Tales
-
-     _By_
-     Mrs Burton Harrison
-
-     M D CCC XCV
-
-     Lamson Wolffe and Co.
-     Boston and New York
-
-     Copyright, 1895,
-     By Lamson, Wolffe, & Co
-
-     All rights reserved
-
-
-
-
-Note by the Author
-
-
-The little story "A Virginia Cousin," here put into print for the
-first time, is in some sort a tribute offered by a long-exiled child
-of the South to her native soil. It is also a transcript of certain
-phases of that life in the metropolis which has been pooh-poohed by
-some critics as trivially undeserving of a chronicler, but fortunate
-hitherto in finding a few readers willing to concede as much humanity
-to the "heroine in satin" as to the "confidante in linen."
-
-Of the other contents of this volume, "Out of Season" made its first
-appearance some time ago in _Two Tales_, and "On Frenchman's Bay" was
-published in _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_.
-
-     C. C. H.
-
-     NEW YORK,
-     _November, 1895_
-
-
-
-
-A Virginia Cousin
-
-
-Chapter I
-
-Mr. Theodore Vance Townsend awoke to the light of a spring morning in
-New York, feeling at odds with the world. The cause for this state of
-variance with existing circumstances was not at sight apparent. He was
-young, good-looking, well-born, well-mannered, and, to support these
-claims to favorable consideration, had come into the fortunes of a
-father and two maiden aunts,--a piece of luck that had, however, not
-secured for him the unqualified approbation of his fellow-citizens.
-
-Joined to the fact that, upon first leaving college, some years
-before, he had led a few _cotillons_ at New York balls, his wealth and
-leisure had brought upon Townsend the reproach of the metropolitan
-press to the extent that nothing short of his committing suicide would
-have induced it to look upon anything he did as in earnest.
-
-With an inherited love of letters, he had dabbled in literature so far
-as to write and publish a book of verse, of fair merit, which,
-however, had been received with tumultuous rhapsodies of satire by the
-professional critics. The style and title of "Laureate of the 400,"
-applied in this connection, had indeed clung to him and made life
-hateful in his sight. To escape it and the other rubs of unoccupied
-solvency, he had made many journeys into foreign countries, had gone
-around the globe, and, in due course, had always come to the surface
-in New York again, with a sort of doglike attachment to the place of
-his birth that would not wear away.
-
-Of the society he was familiar with, Vance was profoundly weary. Of
-domestic ties, he had only a sister, married to a rich banker, and in
-possession of a fine new house, whose tapestries and electric lighting
-occupied all her thoughts and conversation that could be spared for
-things indoors. Away from home, Mrs. Clifton was continually on the
-wing, attending to the demands of philanthropy or charity, and to
-cultivation of the brain in classes of women of incomes equal to her
-own. Whenever her brother dined with her, she entertained him with a
-voluble flow of conversation about these women and their affairs,
-never failing, however, to exhibit her true sisterly feeling by
-telling Vance that she could not see why in the world he did not marry
-Kitty Ainger and settle down.
-
-By dint of much iteration, this suggestion of Kitty Ainger as a wife
-had come to take languid possession of the young man's brain. Besides,
-he liked Miss Ainger as well as admired her, and was perhaps more
-content in her company than in that of anybody else he knew.
-
-On the spring morning in question, he had awaked in a flood of
-sunshine and fresh air that poured through the open windows of his
-room. His cold bath, his simple breakfast, his ride in the Park,
-brought his sensations of physical well-being to a point that almost
-excited his spirits to strike a balance of youthful cheerfulness. He
-forgot his oppressive belongings, the obloquy they had conferred upon
-him in the minds of men who make public opinion about others as
-citizens, his unreasonable stagnation of ambition.
-
-As he cantered along the equestrian byways of the Park, and felt,
-without noting, the stir of new life in nature, he grew light of heart
-and buoyant. And as this condition increased, his thoughts
-crystallized around the image of Katherine Ainger. She, too, loved her
-morning ride; no doubt he should meet her presently. He had not seen
-her since Thursday of last week, when he had taken her in to dinner at
-Mrs. Cartwright's; and he had a vague idea she had resented him a
-little on that occasion. Her talk had been a trifle baffling, her eyes
-evasive. But she had worn a stunning gown, and was by all odds the
-best-looking woman of the lot. How well she sat at table, by the way!
-What an admirable figure for a man who would be forced to entertain,
-to place at the head of his board in perpetuity!
-
-Their families, too, had always known each other. And she was so
-uncommonly level-headed and sensible! Agreeable, too; no whims, no
-fancies. He had never heard of her being ill for a day. As to temper
-and disposition, they matched all the rest. She had never flirted;
-and, marrying at twenty-six a husband of twenty-nine, she would give
-him no possible anxiety on that score.
-
-Yes, his sister was right; everybody was right. Miss Ainger was the
-mate designed for him by heaven; and he had been a fool to dawdle so
-long in making up his mind to accept the fact.
-
-As the sunshine warmed him, and his horse forged along with a
-beautiful even stride beneath him, Vance worked up to a degree of
-enthusiasm he had not felt since he played on a winning football
-eleven in a college game. That very day he would seek her and ask her
-to be his wife. They would be married as soon as she was willing, and
-would go away in the yacht somewhere and learn to love each other. He
-would have an aim, a home, a stake in the community. At thirty years
-of age, he should be found no longer in dalliance with time to make it
-pass away.
-
-Vance, enamored of these visions, finished the circuit of the Park
-without seeing the central object of them, with whom he had resolved
-to make an appointment to receive him at home that afternoon. He rode
-back to the stable where he kept his horse, left it there, and,
-getting into an elevated car, went down-town to visit his lawyer,
-going with that gentleman afterwards into the stately halls of the
-Lawyers' Club for luncheon.
-
-At a table near him, Vance saw, sitting alone, a man named Crawford,
-whom he had met casually and knew for a hardworking and ambitious
-junior member of the New York bar. They exchanged nods, and Vance
-fancied that Crawford looked at him with a scrutiny more close than
-the occasion warranted.
-
-"You know Crawford, then?" said Mr. Gleason, an old friend of Vance's
-father. "He began work with our firm, but had an offer for a
-partnership in a year or two, and left us. He's a tremendous fellow to
-grind, but is beginning to reap the benefit of it in making a name for
-himself. If that fellow had a little capital, there is nothing he
-could not do, in this community. He has never been abroad, has had no
-pleasures of society, leads a scrupulously regular life, drinks no
-liquors or wines of any kind, and is in bed by twelve o'clock every
-night of his life. His only indulgence is to buy books, with which his
-lodgings overflow. We have always supposed him to be a woman-hater,
-until latterly, when straws seem to show that the wind blows for him
-from a point of sentiment. He was in the Adirondacks last summer, in
-camp with a friend, and I've an idea he met his fate then. After all,
-Vance, my dear boy, marriage is the goal man runs for, be he what he
-may. It will develop John Crawford, just as it would develop you, in
-the right direction; and I heartily wish you would tell me when you
-intend to succumb to the universal fate, and fall in love."
-
-"I heartily wish I could," said Vance, with a tinge of the mockery he
-had that morning put aside.
-
-At that moment, Crawford, who had finished his luncheon, passed their
-table, hat in hand, bowing and smiling as he did so. A waiter,
-jostling by, made him loosen his hold of the hat, a rather shabby
-light-brown Derby, that rolled under Vance Townsend's feet. It was
-lifted by Vance and restored to its owner before the waiter could
-reach the spot; and again Vance thought he detected a look of
-significance, incomprehensible to him, in the frank eyes Crawford
-turned upon him as he expressed his thanks.
-
-"It would have been a benefit to Crawford's friends to have
-accidentally put your foot through that hat," said Mr. Gleason,
-laughing. "He is accused by them of having worn it ever since he was
-admitted to the bar. But then, who thinks of clothes, with a real man
-inside of them? And no doubt the girl they say he is going to marry
-will right these trifling matters in short order."
-
-"I like Crawford; I must see more of him," replied Vance. "He strikes
-me as the fellow to pass a pleasant evening with. I wonder if he would
-come to dine with me."
-
-"If you bait your invitation with an offer to show your first
-editions, no doubt of it," said Mr. Gleason. "But to go back to our
-conversation, Vance. When are we to--"
-
-"I decline to answer," interrupted the young man, smiling,
-nevertheless, in such a way that Mr. Gleason built up a whole
-structure of probabilities upon that single smile.
-
-Yes, Vance decided, everything conspired to urge him toward his
-intended venture that afternoon. When, about four o'clock, he turned
-his steps in the direction of Miss Ainger's home, he had reached a
-pitch of very respectably loverlike anxiety. He even fancied the day
-had been unusually long. He caught himself speculating as to where she
-would be sitting in the drawing-room, how she would look when he laid
-his future in her hands.
-
-At that moment, he allowed himself to remember a series of occasions
-during the years of their friendship, upon any one of which he
-believed he might have spoken as he now meant to speak, and that she
-would have answered as he now expected her to answer. Ah! what had he
-not lost? In her gentle, equable companionship, he would have been a
-better, a higher, a less discontented fellow. All the virtues,
-charms, desirable qualities, of this fine and high-bred young woman,
-who had been more patient, more forgiving, than he deserved, were
-concentrated into one small space of thought, like the Lord's Prayer
-engraved upon a tiny coin. But even as his foot touched the lowest
-step of her father's portal, he experienced a shock of doubt of
-himself and of his own stability. He tarried; he turned away, and
-strolled, whither he knew not.
-
-In the adjoining street lived Mrs. Myrtle, an aunt of his, to whom, it
-must be said, Vance rarely paid the deference considered by that
-excellent lady her just due. She inhabited the brown-stone dwelling in
-which, as a bride, she had gone to housekeeping when New York society
-was still within limits of visitors on foot. Not that that made any
-difference to Mrs. Myrtle, who had always kept her carriage, and had,
-about twenty years back, been cited as a leader of the metropolitan
-_beau monde_.
-
-In those days, whether on wheels or a-foot, everybody went to Mrs.
-Myrtle's Thursdays. Her spacious drawing-rooms, papered in crimson
-flock paper, with their massive doors and mouldings and mirror-frames
-and curtain-tops of ebonized wood with gold scroll decorations, their
-furniture in the same wood, with red satin damask coverings, had, in
-their time, contained the elect of good society. The pictures upon
-Mrs. Myrtle's walls, and the statuary scattered on pedestals about the
-rooms, were then quoted by the newspapers, and by those so favored as
-to see them, as a rare display of the highest art, accumulated by an
-American householder. One of the earliest affronts of many
-unintentionally put upon his aunt by Vance had been his contemptuous
-shrug of the shoulders when called upon by her, shortly after his
-return from his first winter spent in Italy, to view her "statuary."
-
-Since then, Mrs. Myrtle had, little by little, come to a perception of
-the fact that her "art collection" was not, any more than its
-mistress, an object of the first importance to New York. But Vance had
-been always associated in her mind with the incipient stages of
-enlightenment, and she loved him accordingly. Her love for Vance's
-sister, Mrs. Clifton, who refused to pay her tribute, and belonged to
-the new "smart set," was even less.
-
-Upon Mrs. Myrtle, Vance now resolved to pay a long-deferred duty-call.
-Admitted by an old negro butler, he was left alone in the large
-darkling drawing-room, in the shade of the crimson curtains, amid the
-ghostly ranks of the statues, to ruminate until Mrs. Myrtle should
-make her appearance. Little thought did he bestow upon the duration of
-this ordeal. He was well occupied, and, for once in his life, heartily
-ashamed,----first, of his indecision upon the Ainger door-steps, and,
-secondly, of the fact that he had put in here to gain courage to
-return there.
-
-Mrs. Myrtle's heavy tread upon her own parquet floor aroused him from
-meditation. His aunt was a massive lady, who wore black velvet, with a
-neck-ruff of old point-lace; who, never pretty, and no longer pleasant
-to look upon, yet carried herself with a certain ease born of
-assurance in her own place in life, and cultivated by many years of
-receiving visitors. Her small white hand, twinkling with diamonds,
-was extended to him with something of the grand air he remembered his
-mother, who was the beauty of her family, to have possessed; and then
-Mrs. Myrtle, seating herself, fixed an unsmiling gaze upon her nephew.
-
-"I--ah--thought I would look in and see how you are getting on," he
-said, with an attempt at jocularity.
-
-"But it is not Thursday," she answered, cold as before. "I make it a
-point to see no one except on Thursday, or after five. And it is not
-yet after five."
-
-Townsend, who could not dispute this fact, was at a loss how to go on.
-But Mrs. Myrtle, having put things upon the right footing, launched at
-once into an exposition of her grievances against him, his sister, and
-the ruling society of latter-day New York.
-
-"I am sure if any one had told your mother and me, when we first came
-out, what people were to push _us_ against the wall, and to have all
-New York racing and tearing after their invitations, we should never
-have believed it. It's enough to make your poor mother come back from
-the dead, to revise Anita Clifton's visiting-list. And I suppose the
-next thing to hear of will be your marriage into one of these bran-new
-families. I must say, Theodore, although it is seldom my opinion is
-listened to, I _was_ pleased when I heard, the other day, that you
-were reported engaged to Katherine Ainger. The Aingers are of our own
-sort; and her fortune, although it is not so important to you, will be
-handsome. She is one of the few girls who go much into the world who
-still remember to come to see me; and she has been lunching here
-to-day."
-
-"Really?" said Vance, turning over his hat in what he felt to be a
-most perfunctory way.
-
-"Yes; if you or Anita Clifton had been here in the last two months,
-you might have found out that I have had a young lady--a Southern
-cousin--stopping in the house."
-
-"A cousin of mine?" queried the young man, indifferently.
-
-"My first cousin's daughter, Evelyn Carlyle. You know there was a
-break between the families about the beginning of the war, and, for
-one reason or another, we have hardly met since. When I went to the
-Hot Springs for my rheumatism last year,--you and Anita Clifton
-doubtless are not aware that I have been a great sufferer from
-rheumatism,--I stopped a night or two at Colonel Carlyle's house in
-Virginia, and took rather a fancy to this girl. I found out that she
-has a voice, and desired to cultivate it in New York, and so invited
-her to come on after Christmas and stay in my house."
-
-Vance was conscious of a slight feeling of somnolence. Really, he
-could not be expected to care for the Virginian cousin's voice. And
-Aunt Myrtle had such a soporific way of drawling out her sentences! He
-wished she would return to the subject of her luncheon-guest, and
-then, perhaps, he might manage to keep awake.
-
-"So you invited Miss Ainger to-day, to keep the young lady company?"
-he ventured to observe.
-
-"If you will give me time to explain, I will tell you that Katherine
-Ainger and she have struck up the greatest friendship this winter,
-and have been together part of every day. I wish, Vance, that you
-could bring yourself to extend some attention to your mother's first
-cousin's child. From Anita Clifton I expect nothing--absolutely
-nothing. Not belonging to the 'smart set,' whatever that may be, I
-make no demands upon Anita Clifton. But you, Vance, have not yet shown
-that you are absolutely heartless. When Eve goes home, as she soon
-will, it would be gratifying to have her able to say you had
-recognized her existence."
-
-"I will leave a card for the young lady in the hall," he said,
-awkwardly; "and perhaps she would allow me to order some flowers for
-her. Just now, Aunt Myrtle, I have an engagement, and I must really be
-going on."
-
-He had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Myrtle was about shaping a last
-arrow to aim at him, when the door opened, and a girl came into the
-room.
-
-"Oh! Cousin Augusta," she said, in the most outspoken manner, a
-slight Southern accent marking some of the syllables enunciated in a
-remarkably sweet voice, "I have been taking your Dandie Dinmont for a
-walk, and he has been such a good, obedient dear, you must give him
-two lumps of sugar when he comes to tea at five o'clock."
-
-As Mrs. Myrtle performed the ceremony of introduction between them,
-Vance became conscious that he was in the presence of one of the most
-radiantly pretty young persons who had ever crossed the line of his
-languid vision. Equipped in a tailor-made frock of gray serge, a black
-hat with many rampant plumes upon her red-brown hair, a boa of black
-ostrich feathers curling around her pearly throat and caressing the
-rosiest of cheeks, his Cousin Eve surveyed him with as much
-indifference as if he had been the veriest casual met in a crowd in
-Fifth Avenue. Two fingers of a tiny gloved hand were bestowed on him
-in recognition of their relationship, after which she resumed her
-interrupted talk about the dog.
-
-"You understand that Mr. Townsend is a relative, my dear?" asked Mrs.
-Myrtle, in her rocking-horse manner. "You have heard me speak of him?"
-
-"Yes; oh, yes, certainly," Eve said, with preoccupation. "But to us
-Virginians a cousin means either very much--or very, very little."
-
-"The presumption, then, is against me?" he asked, determined not to be
-subdued.
-
-"Is it? I had not thought," she answered, hardly looking in his
-direction. Vance took the hint and his departure. When again out of
-doors, he straightened himself, and walked with a firmer, more
-determined tread, conscious of a little tingling in his veins on the
-whole not disagreeable. In this mood, he reached the corner of the
-street in which dwelt Miss Ainger, and was very near indeed to passing
-it, but, recovering himself with a start, turned westward from the
-Avenue, and again sought the house from which he had gone irresolute a
-little while before.
-
-The door was opened for him by a servant, who did not know "for sure,"
-but "rather thought" Miss Ainger was in the drawing-room. While
-following the man across a wide hall, Vance espied, lying upon a
-chair, a man's hat--not the conventional high black hat of the
-afternoon caller, but a rusty brown "pot" hat, of an unobtrusive
-pattern.
-
-"Humph! the piano-tuner, no doubt," he said to himself, and
-simultaneously recalled the fact that he had seen the object in
-question, or its twin brother, that same day. Before the footman could
-put his hand upon the knob of the drawing-room door, it opened, and
-the owner of the hat came out. It was indeed Crawford, dressed in
-morning tweeds, as Vance had seen him at luncheon in the Lawyers'
-Club, his plain, strong face illuminated with an expression Vance knew
-nothing akin to, and therefore did not interpret.
-
-But Vance did know Miss Ainger for an independent in her set, a girl
-who struck out for herself to find clever and companionable people
-with whom to fraternize; and he was accordingly not surprised to meet
-Crawford here as a visitor. As once before that day, the two men
-exchanged silent nods, and parted. Vance found Miss Ainger caressing
-with dainty fingertips a large bunch of fresh violets that lay in her
-lap and filled the room with fragrance.
-
-Kitty Ainger, a daughter of New York, calm, reserved, temperamentally
-serious, fond of argument upon high themes, cultivated in minor points
-to a fastidious degree, handsome in a sculptural way, had always
-seemed to him lacking in the one grace of womanly tenderness he
-vaguely felt to be of vast moment in a young man's choice for a wife.
-
-To-day, as she greeted him, her manner was gentle and gracious to
-perfection. Perhaps it so appeared in contrast to that of the fair
-Phyllida who had flouted him in his Aunt Myrtle's drawing-room;
-perhaps Kitty was really glad of this first occasion in many days when
-they were alone together, undisturbed.
-
-The thought caused a wave of excitement to rise in the suitor's veins.
-He wondered how he could have held back, an hour before, when upon the
-threshold of such an opportunity. But then, had he made appearance, no
-doubt there would have been other visitors,--Crawford, for instance,
-whom Miss Ainger was plainly taking by the hand, to lead into society,
-as clever girls will do when they find an unknown clever man;
-Crawford, who did not know enough of conventionality to put on a black
-coat when he called on a girl in the afternoon; Crawford, poor and
-plain, a man's man, whom the Ainger family no doubt regarded as one of
-Kitty's freaks. Yes, Crawford would have been a decided interruption
-to this _tete-a-tete_.
-
-Now, there was an open sea before Vance, and he had only to launch the
-boat, so long delayed, a craft he at last candidly believed to be
-freighted with the best hopes of his life. They talked for awhile upon
-impersonal subjects--Kitty exerting herself, he could see, to be
-agreeable and sympathetic with her visitor. In the progress of this
-conversation, he took note with satisfaction of the artistic elegance
-of her dress (of the exact color of the Peach Blow Vase, he said to
-himself, searching for a simile in tint), with sleeves of sheenful
-velvet, and a silken train that lay upon the rug. Her long, white
-fingers, playing with the violets, wore no rings. Her slim figure,
-her braids of pale brown hair, her calm, gray eyes, attracted him as
-never before, with their girlish and yet womanly composure.
-
-"Why have you never told me," he said abruptly, "of your friendship
-with that little witch of a Virginia cousin of mine who has been
-staying with Mrs. Myrtle this winter?"
-
-"If you wish me to tell you the truth, it was because she asked me
-never to do so," replied Kitty, coloring a little. "You have met her?"
-she added eagerly.
-
-"Yes, to-day; a little while ago, when I called upon my aunt. But how
-could she know of me? What reason was there for her to avoid me?"
-
-"Evelyn is an impulsive creature," was the answer; and now the blood
-rushed into Kitty's cheek, and she was silent.
-
-"Impulsive, yes; but how could she resent a man she had never seen;
-who had not had the smallest opportunity to prove whether or not he
-was obnoxious to her? That is quite too ridiculous, I think. You, who
-have so much sense, character, judgment, why could not you exercise
-your influence over this very provincial little person, and teach her
-that a prejudice is, of all things, petty?"
-
-"She is not a provincial little person," said Kitty, with spirit. "And
-she does not merit that patronizing tone of yours."
-
-"If _you_ take her under your wing, she is perfection," he answered
-lightly, as if the subject were no longer of value for discussion.
-"But before we begin to differ about her, only tell me if it is my
-Aunt Myrtle's objection to me as a type that my truculent Cousin Eve
-has inherited?"
-
-"I hardly think so. Please ask me no questions," the girl said,
-uncomfortable with blushing.
-
-"As you like. It is veiled in mystery," he said, rather piqued. "At
-least, you won't mind informing me if she got any of her ideas of me
-from you. No, that is hardly fair. I will alter it. Did you and she
-ever speak of me together?"
-
-"What if I tell you yes, and that, every time we met?" exclaimed Miss
-Ainger, plucking up courage when thus driven into a corner.
-
-To her surprise and dismay, Vance took this admission quite otherwise
-than she had meant it. In Eve's attitude toward him, he thought he
-read a girlish jealousy of the object preoccupying the affections of
-her friend.
-
-"I see. I understand," he said, with a gleam in his eyes she had not
-seen there in all of their acquaintance. Until now, the hearth-rug had
-been between them. With an animation quite foreign to him, he crossed
-it, and leaned down to take her hands. At once, Kitty, withdrawing
-from his grasp, rose to her feet and faced him.
-
-"I think there is some great mistake," she said, very quietly. As
-Vance gazed at her, he became aware that he had until now never seen
-the true Kitty Ainger, and that her face was beautiful.
-
-"You repulse me? You have never cared for me?" he said, fiercely.
-
-A wave of color came upon her cheeks, and her eyes dropped before his
-to the violets in her hand.
-
-"I must tell you," she said, after a pause, during which both thought
-of many things stretching back through many years, "that I have just
-promised to marry Mr. Crawford."
-
-
-Chapter II
-
-The day of Miss Ainger's marriage with Crawford, which took place in
-New York, a month later than the events heretofore recorded, found
-Vance Townsend on horseback in Virginia, following, with no especial
-purpose, a highway that crosses the Blue Ridge Mountains to descend
-sharply into the valley of the Shenandoah.
-
-Before leaving home, he had acquitted himself of conventional duty to
-the bride by ordering to be sent to her the finest antique vase of his
-collection,--a gem of carved metal that Cellini might have
-signed,--filled with boughs of white lilac, his card and best wishes
-accompanying it. Then, with a heart overburdened, as he fancied, with
-regretful self-reproach, he had turned his back upon the chief
-might-have-been of his experience.
-
-Katherine, who had, in fact, passed many days in her paternal mansion
-unsought by him, was now invested with a veil of tender sentiment. In
-his waistcoat pocket he carried an unfinished poem, addressed to
-her,--or to an idealized version of Miss Ainger,--which, at intervals
-on his journey, he would take out and polish and shape with assiduity,
-forgetting sometimes to sigh over it in his zeal for metrical
-construction.
-
-The morning of the day that was to see the prize he had lost become
-definitely another's beheld Vance bargaining with a farmer--a former
-cavalryman in the Confederate service--to ride one of the two horses
-he had shipped by train from New York, and serve as guide in the
-war-harried region through which he desired to pass.
-
-The process was a simple one, the sum negligently offered for his
-services for a day sufficing to cover the expenses of ex-corporal
-Claggett for a fortnight, and leave a margin to fill his pipe with.
-Therefore, the rusty squire in attendance (to whom the treat of
-bestriding a steed like this would have been requital all-sufficient),
-the riders left the village that had sheltered Townsend for the
-night, and at once set out to ascend a long and toilsome hill, giving
-views on every side of an enchanting prospect.
-
-"I don't mean to appear boastful, suh," observed Mr. Claggett,
-modestly, "an' I ain't travelled much myself out o' this State, but
-I've heerd people say this 'ere view beats creation."
-
-"It is very fine, certainly, Claggett," replied Vance, halting to look
-back at the wide expanse of hill and valley mantled with springing
-green, the far-off, grassy heights serving as pasture for sheep and
-cows, and scattered with limestone boulders, against which redbud and
-dogwood in blossom made brilliant patches; with mountains beyond,
-above, everywhere, and all of that exquisite, velvet-textured shade of
-blue, so soft and melting it seems to invite caress.
-
-"By Jove! It is well named the Blue Ridge," Vance went on,
-approvingly.
-
-"Jest there, Mr. Townsend, in that very spot where the old red cow's
-a-munchin' in the grass, was where Pelham stood when his artillery let
-fly at them plucky Yankee cavalry that was behind the stone wall
-firin' like fury at our Confeds."
-
-"And who was Pelham?" asked the visitor, with interest.
-
-"Never heard o' Pelham? Well, I wouldn't 'a' thought it," was the
-compassionate answer. "Why, suh, he was a boy,--major of
-artillery--nuthin' but a boy,--an' they killed him early in the war.
-But he'd the skill an' the sense of an old general; an' there wornt no
-risk to himself he'd stop at in a fight. He'd just _swipe_ vict'ry,
-every time, suh, Pelham would; an' he was the pride an' idol of our
-army. Thar! them johnny-jump-ups are growin' where his gun stood, an'
-he rammin' charges into it with his own hand, when he sent that
-murderin' volley that made batterin'-rams out o' the stones o' the
-wall here, an' druv the poor Yankees behind it into Kingdom Come.
-Things look different to me, suh, now. I was a youngster, then, run
-mad to git into any kind o' fightin'; but I've got sons o' my own now,
-an' I can't somehow see the pints in all that killin' we did in our
-war, like I used to. But I can't think o' fellers like Pelham without
-wantin' to be in it again, suh.
-
-"Why, at Snicker's Gap (heard o' Snicker's Gap, Mr. Townsend?) that
-lad, who was commandin' Stuart's horse-artillery, charged on a
-squadron of cavalry that had been botherin' him with its
-sharp-shooters, and, with a gun that they'd dragged by hand through
-the undergrowth, fired a double charge of canister into their
-reserves. Then, suh, he charged agin,--a reg'lar thunderbolt that
-sally was,--picked up sev'ral prisoners an' horses, an', limberin' up
-his gun like wild-fire, hurried back to his first position, his men
-shoutin' for him all the while."
-
-"Those were stirring days for you, Claggett," said Townsend, whose
-blood began to answer to the man's enthusiasm.
-
-"Yes, Mr. Townsend, they were so; but you mustn't let me impose on you
-with my war stories. My present wife, suh,--a young lady I courted in
-King William, about the age of my oldest daughter,--she won't have me
-open my mouth 'bout war stories at our house. Says I tire everybody
-out with my old chestnuts, suh; an' perhaps I do. The ladies like to
-do a good deal of the talkin' themselves, I've noticed, Mr. Townsend."
-
-With a subdued sigh, Claggett subsided into silence, but not for long.
-The names of Stuart and Mosby and their officers were ever upon his
-lips, interspersed with anecdote and gossip concerning the country
-people whose dwellings were only occasionally seen from the road. Here
-and there, in the distance, chimneys behind clumps of trees were
-pointed out as belonging to old inhabitants who had held on to their
-homes through storm and stress of ill-fortune since the war.
-
-"Since you are from the Nawth, I would like to tell you, suh, that
-nobody who is anybody among our gentry ever lived in a village. They
-lived to themselves, suh, an' the further away from each other the
-better. If you had the time, suh, an' were acquainted with the
-families, I could show you some places that would surprise you. An'
-the ladies an' gentlemen, Mr. Townsend, of our best old stock are as
-fine people as any on God's earth, I reckon. Pity you ain't
-acquainted, as I said. It would give me pleasure to take you inside
-some of the gates of our foremost residents."
-
-Vance noted with amusement that Claggett did not assume to be on a
-social plane with the people he extolled, but had accepted the
-tradition of their superiority as part of the Virginian creed.
-Laughing, he joined in the honest fellow's regret at his ineligibility
-to take rank as a guest in the neighborhood.
-
-"Though it seems to me, Claggett, now that I think of it, I have a
-kinsman somewhere hereabout. Do you know anything of a family of
-Carlyles--Colonel Carlyle, I believe they call him?"
-
-Claggett's manner underwent instant transformation.
-
-"Colonel Guy Carlyle, of the Hall, suh?" he exclaimed, eagerly.
-"That's in the next county, a matter of twenty or thirty miles from
-here. I had the luck to serve under the Colonel, Mr. Townsend, and
-he'd know me if you spoke my name. You'll be goin' that way, suh?
-We'll strike north from Glenwood, and get there by supper-time."
-
-"Hold on, Claggett, you'll be pouring out my coffee and asking me to
-take more of the Colonel's waffles, presently. Colonel Carlyle married
-my mother's cousin, but I fancy would not recognize my name as quickly
-as yours. I have certainly no grounds for venturing to offer myself as
-an inmate of his house."
-
-"Beg your pardon, suh, but the Colonel'd never get over a relation
-ridin' so near the Hall an' not stoppin' there to sleep," persisted
-Claggett. "It's a thing nobody ever heard of, down this way."
-
-"I shall have to brave tradition, then," answered Vance,
-indifferently.
-
-"It's a fine old place, suh. House built by the Hessian prisoners in
-the Revolution, and splendid furniture. They do say there's one mirror
-in the big saloon that covers fourteen foot of wall, Mr. Townsend.
-Yanks bivouacked in that room, too, but didn't so much as crack it.
-An' chandeliers, all over danglers like earrings, suh. For all they
-ain't got such a sight o' money as they had, Miss Eve, she's got a
-real knack at fixin' up, an' she's travelled Nawth, an' got all the
-new ideas. You must 'a' met Miss Eve when she was Nawth, Mr. Townsend.
-Why, suh, she's the beauty o' three counties; nobody could pass _her_
-in a crowd, or out of it."
-
-"I _have_ met Miss Carlyle, Claggett," Vance said, growing
-uncomfortable at the recollection. "But only once, and for a moment.
-As you say, she is a beautiful young woman."
-
-"Then you _will_ stop at the Hall, suh?" pleaded his guide.
-
-"No," said Vance, briefly. "We will go on to Glenwood, and sleep there
-at the inn. To-morrow, you shall show me as much of the country as I
-have enjoyed to-day, but I am here for travelling, and not to
-cultivate acquaintance, understand."
-
-"Up yonder, on the hill-top, suh," observed Mr. Claggett, ignoring
-rebuke, "when we git through this little village we're comin' to (I
-was in a red-hot skirmish once, right in the middle of the street,
-ahead, suh), is a tree we call the Big Poplar. It marks the junction
-of three counties, an' 'twas there George Washin'ton slept, when he
-was on his surveyin' tour as a boy, suh--you've heard of General
-Washin'ton up your way, Mr. Townsend?"
-
-"Yes, confound you," said Vance, laughing at his sly look.
-
-"General Lee halted at that point to look at the country round, on his
-way to Gettysburg. A great friend of Colonel Carlyle was the General,
-suh; you'll see a fine picture of the General in the dinin'-room at
-the Hall. Colonel Carlyle lost two brothers followin' Lee into battle,
-suh, but we call that an honor down here. They do say little Miss Eve
-keeps the old swords and soldier caps of them two uncles in a sort o'
-altar in her chamber, suh. Heard the news that Miss Eve's engaged to
-her cousin, Mr. Ralph Corbin, in Wash'n't'n, suh? It's all over the
-country, I reckon. He's a young archytec', an' doin' well; but down
-here nobody knows if a young lady's engaged for sure, till the day's
-set for the weddin'."
-
-At this point Vance interrupted his garrulous guide to suggest that
-they should seek refreshment for man and beast in the hamlet close at
-hand; and the diversion this created turned Claggett from the
-apparently inexhaustible subject of the Carlyles.
-
-They rode onward, the genial sun, as it mounted higher in the heaven,
-serving to irradiate, not overheat, the beautiful earth.
-
-From this point the road went creeping up, by gentle degrees, to the
-summit of the mountain, beyond which Shenandoah cleft their way in
-twain. Traversing Ashby's Gap, the efflorescence of the woods, the
-music of many waters, the balm of purest air, confirmed Vance's
-satisfaction in his choice of an expedition. Descending the steep
-grade to the river, they crossed the classic stream upon the most
-primitive of flat ferry-boats, and on the further side passed almost
-at once into a rich, agricultural country, upon a well-kept turnpike,
-where the horses trotted rapidly ahead.
-
-Claggett, strange to say, did not resume allusions to the Carlyle
-family; but upon reaching a certain cross-road, he ventured an
-appealing glance at his employer.
-
-"Turn to the right here, to get a short cut to Carlyle Hall, suh."
-
-"Where does the left road take us?" asked Vance, shortly.
-
-"You _kin_ git to Glenwood that way, Mr. Townsend. But it's a
-roundabout way, an' a new road, an' a pretty bad one, an' it's just in
-the opposite direction from Colonel--"
-
-Vance answered him by riding to the left.
-
-A new road, with a vengeance, and one apparently bottomless, the
-horses at every step plunging deeper into clinging, red-clay mud; but
-the obstinacy of Vance kept him riding silently ahead, and the
-trooper, with a quizzical look upon his weather-beaten face, followed.
-Miles, traversed in this fashion, brought them into the vicinity of a
-small gathering of houses, at sight of which Vance spoke for the first
-time in an hour.
-
-"Claggett."
-
-"Yes, suh?" This, deferentially.
-
-"If I ever go back of my own free will over that infernal piece of
-road"--he paused for a sufficiently strong expression.
-
-"Yes, suh?" said Claggett, expectantly.
-
-"You may write me down an ass."
-
-"Yes, _suh_," Claggett exclaimed, with what Vance thought a trifle too
-much alacrity. "Better let me go befo' you for a little piece, Mr.
-Townsend," added the countryman. "Just where the road slopes down to
-the crick, here, it's sorter treacherous, if you don't know the best
-bit."
-
-Vance, choosing to be deaf, kept in front. He traversed the creek in
-safety; but, in ascending the other side, his horse plunged knee-deep
-into a quagmire,--throwing his rider, who arose none the worse except
-for a plaster of red mud,--and emerged evidently lamed.
-
-"He's all right, suh, excep' for a little strain," said the
-ex-trooper, after his experienced eye and hand had passed over
-Merrylad's injuries.
-
-"We will go at once to the hotel in the village, and get quarters for
-the night," said Vance, ruefully. "I've a change of clothes in that
-bag you carry, so I don't mind for myself. But I wouldn't have
-Merrylad the worse for this for anything."
-
-"The trouble is, Mr. Townsend," answered Claggett, "that you may get
-quarters fit for a horse here, but you won't be stoppin' yourself,
-I'll tell you."
-
-"Nonsense! Come along! You lead Merrylad; I'm glad to stretch my legs
-by a walk," and the young man started off at a good pace, plashing
-ever through liquid mire, that overflowed street and so-called
-sidewalk.
-
-There was no sign of an inn of any kind. A few dilapidated houses of
-the poorest straggled on either side the street, at the end of which
-they came upon a country store and post-office combined. Three or four
-mud-splashed horses hitched to a rock; as many mud-splashed loungers
-upon tilted chairs on the platform before the door. That was all.
-
-"Better take 'em on to old Josey's, Charley," called out a friendly
-voice to Claggett.
-
-"Yes, old Josey will do the correct thing by them," remarked a
-full-bearded, sunburned gentleman, who, seated astride of a mule, now
-came "clopping" toward them through the mud, from the opposite
-direction.
-
-"I am really afraid, Mr. Townsend," Claggett said, persuasively, "that
-we shall be forced to go on a mile or so further, to old Josey's."
-
-"And who in the thunder _is_ old Josey?" exclaimed Vance, testily.
-
-"Never heard o' him up Nawth, suh?" answered the trooper, with a
-twinkle in his eye. "He's the big person o' this part,--an old
-bachelor,--Mr. Joseph Lloyd, who runs the best farms and raises the
-best stock in the neighborhood. The truth is, not many visitors come
-here, unless they are booked for Mr. Lloyd's."
-
-"What claim have I on him, unless I can pay my night's lodging and
-yours? I will leave you and the lame horse here, and make my way back
-to-night to Glenwood."
-
-"To get to Glenwood, you'd have to pass over right smart of that mire
-we came through," said Claggett, pensively.
-
-"Then, in Heaven's name, let us go to Josey's," said Vance, laughing,
-in spite of his bad humor.
-
-They bade farewell to the village, and went off as they had come,
-Vance choosing to walk, the trooper leading the lame horse.
-
-And now, in defiance of his plight, his melancholy appearance, the
-accident to his favorite, Vance yielded himself to the spell of a
-region that became at every moment, as he advanced, more wildly
-beautiful. The sun, about to set, sent a flood of radiance over hills
-high and low, over a broken rolling country dominated by the massive
-shaft of Massanutton Mountain, rising like a tower above his lesser
-brethren. That the "mile or two further on" stretched into four or
-five, the young man cared not a jot. His lungs filling with crisp,
-invigorating air, he strode forward, and was almost sorry when the
-dormer-windows of an old house shrouded by locust-trees in bloom
-appeared upon a plateau across intervening fields.
-
-"Now for my best cheek!" he said to himself. "What _am_ I to say to
-old Josephus? Ask for lodging, like the tramp I look? Hang it! I
-believe I'll sleep under the nearest haystack, rather!"
-
-While thus absorbed, Mr. Theodore Vance Townsend, the fine flower of
-various clubs, did not perceive that he was an object of varying
-interest and solicitude to three persons looking over the fence of a
-pasture near-by, where cattle were enclosed.
-
-Two elderly gentlemen surveyed him closely. A girl, who had tossed a
-glance at him over her shoulder, seemed to find more attraction in the
-Alderney heifer, whose saucy rough tongue was at that moment stretched
-out to lick salt from a velvet palm, than in the mud-stained wayfarer.
-
-"That's no common tramp," said one of the gentlemen to the other. "If
-you will stay here with my Lady-love, I'll just go and investigate his
-case."
-
-Vance Townsend had, perhaps, like other mortals, known his "bad
-moments" in life. But he felt that there had been few like this, when
-the old gentleman, issuing through a gate opening from the pasture,
-came to him with a quick, decided step.
-
-The younger man took off his hat. The older did likewise. And then
-Vance, between a laugh and a groan, told his story, confirmed by the
-apparition at that moment, in the distance, of the horses and
-Claggett, who was himself afoot.
-
-"Say no more, my dear fellow, say not another word," interrupted the
-astonished old gentleman. "My name is Lloyd, and I'm the owner of that
-house behind the locusts, where I'm delighted to take you in, and
-Charley Claggett, too. We'll find out what's the matter with your
-horse, quick enough. Welcome to Wheatlands, sir, and just come along
-with me."
-
-Before Vance fairly knew how, he found himself in a "prophet's
-chamber," looking upon a sloping roof, where a martin was nesting
-within reach of his hand. Tapping the panes of the upper sash of his
-window, a branch tasselled with sweet-smelling blossoms swayed in the
-breeze. Outside, he had a wide and glorious view of field and
-mountains. Inside, he possessed a clean, if homely, bedroom, at the
-door of which a soft-voiced negro woman was already knocking, to ask
-for his bespattered garments.
-
-Vance was delighted. When he furthermore found left at his portal a
-tub with a large bucket of ice-cold water from the spring, together
-with his bag, he began to think that Virginia hospitality was not to
-be relegated among things traditional.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The soft Virginia dusk was closing upon the scene, when our young man,
-leaving his room, went down-stairs, through a hall hung with trophies
-and implements of sport, and out of an open door upon the "front
-porch," to look at the evening star hanging above the mountain crest.
-In this occupation he found another person indulging likewise, and in
-the clear gloom discovered the face and figure of a young and
-singularly graceful girl, who without hesitation accosted him.
-
-"Mr. Lloyd has told us of your mishap," she said, courteously. "He is
-congratulating himself that it happened near enough to let him help
-you out of it. I hope the horse will fare as well as the master."
-
-"Merrylad will be all right, thank you, so Claggett has been up to
-tell me. It appears that Mr. Lloyd, in addition to his other
-attractions, is a famous amateur vet."
-
-"You will find he has all the virtues," she said, laughing. At that
-moment, a lamp, lighted by the servant in the hall, sent a stream of
-illumination upon them. To Townsend's utter surprise, he saw the face
-of his cousin, Evelyn Carlyle.
-
-"You!" he heard her say, in a not too well pleased tone; and "You?" he
-repeated, with what he felt to be not a distinguished success.
-
-"How extraordinary that it should turn out to be you!" she began
-again, first of the two to recover her composure. "Did you think--were
-you, that is, on your way to visit _us_?"
-
-"Nothing was further from my thoughts," he answered, bluntly. "I, on
-the contrary, believed myself to be going in the opposite direction
-from where you live."
-
-"Of course," she said, somewhat piqued. "It is impossible you should
-have known that papa and I came yesterday on a visit to dear old
-Cousin Josephus. I beg your pardon if I was very rude."
-
-"It is certainly not a welcome that seems inspired by what I have been
-led to think is Virginia cordiality," he answered, coolly.
-
-"But I have asked your pardon, and that's not the way to answer me.
-You might grant it, never so stiffly; and after that, we, being thrown
-together this way through no fault of either of us, might agree to be
-decently civil before papa, who can have no idea how I feel toward--I
-mean what my reasons are for feeling--well, never mind what I mean,"
-she ended, vexed at his immobility.
-
-"I quite join with you in thinking it would be very silly to take any
-one else into this armed neutrality of ours. I shall at the earliest
-moment, to-morrow, relieve you of my presence. Suppose, until then,
-you try to treat me as you would another unoffending man under my
-circumstances."
-
-"Yes. You are right. It would be better, and it would not worry papa
-and Cousin Josephus," she said, reflectively. "Well, then, if you were
-another man, I should begin by asking you what brought you to
-Virginia. No; that would not be at all polite, would it? I think I
-shall just say nothing at all."
-
-"Not till you let me assure you that I came because a fellow I know
-told me he had made a driving tour in this part, last year, with his
-wife, and had found it rather nice--and another reason was, that I
-wanted to get away from myself."
-
-"You are very flattering to our State," she said, bridling her head
-after a fashion he found both comical and sweet. She was silent a
-little while, then resumed, more gently:
-
-"I was thinking of what you last said, and maybe I have done you an
-injustice. Maybe you are to be pitied more than blamed."
-
-"Do you mean because I spoiled a good suit of clothes and hurt my
-horse's leg?"
-
-"No; not that. You are clearly not in need of sympathy. There! They
-are going to ring the supper-bell, and you must go and be introduced
-to my father, as his cousin. He is the dearest daddy in the world, and
-will be sure to try to make you come to visit us at the Hall."
-
-"Am I to understand this is a hint not to accept?"
-
-"I _could_ stay on here, you know," she said, in a businesslike way.
-
-"You are perfectly exasperating," he exclaimed, and then the summons
-came to go into the house. Just before they crossed the threshold, she
-appeared to have undergone another change of mind. Turning back
-swiftly, in a voice of exceeding sweetness she breathed into his ear
-these words:
-
-"Please, I am sorry. I ought not to keep forgetting, ought I, that you
-are a stranger within our gates, and a cousin, really?"
-
-"Is she a coquette?" Vance began to ask himself, but was interrupted
-by a _sortie_ of his host in search of him.
-
-
-Chapter III
-
-Vance Townsend had reckoned without his host when he made the
-declaration that he would relieve Miss Carlyle of his presence the
-following day. The kind owner of Wheatlands, indulgent to every man
-and beast upon his premises, had yet a way of holding on to and
-controlling guests that none might resist.
-
-Vance, however, did not try very hard to resist the invitation to stay
-at least until "Thursday, when the Carlyles would be running away
-home." An evening spent with the kind, simple, yet cultivated people
-who formed the little _coterie_ at Wheatlands (there was among them a
-widowed cousin with her unruly boy, and a cousin who had been
-unfortunate in his investments) had, somehow, quite upset our hero's
-notions upon many points.
-
-Claggett, dismissed with a _douceur_, the liberality of which consoled
-that worthy countryman for an early reunion with the lady who would
-not allow him to tell stories of the war, took an affectionate leave
-of his employer. In his manner Vance detected more satisfaction in the
-vindication of Virginia customs than regret at the severance of their
-relation. The little triumph Claggett might readily have derived from
-the incident of the wayfarer's meeting, in spite of himself, with his
-relations was heroically suppressed. And before Townsend had turned
-upon his pillow the morning after his arrival, a telegram had gone to
-the town where his luggage had been left, ordering it to be sent by
-train that day.
-
-Vance had been told that breakfast would be at nine; and, awakened at
-half-past seven by a bird on the bough in his window, he abandoned
-himself to a lazy review of his impressions of the family. Of his
-Cousin Eve he had seen little more than what has already been told.
-After filling her place at a bounteous supper-table, where the talk
-was chiefly absorbed by the three gentlemen, she had vanished, in
-company with the widowed cousin, and was invisible thereafter--the men
-sitting together till midnight in the large, raftered hall, with a
-fire in its wide chimney, that served the old bachelor for a general
-living-room.
-
-Vance could not remember to have seen a face of finer lines, a manner
-of finer courtesy, than that of his seventy-year-old host, who, in
-spite of the rust of desuetude in worldly ways, carried his inbred
-gentility where all who approached him might profit by it.
-
-That he was a politician went without saying; and, indeed, the talk
-once directed in the channel of national government had kept there
-until they separated. On a claw-footed table holding a lamp beside Mr.
-Lloyd's easy chair, covered with frayed haircloth, Vance saw lying a
-crisp new Review of English publication, and all about were piled
-newspapers and magazines, while shelves displayed row upon row of the
-antique, tawny volumes that had made up the complete library of a
-country gentleman in the days of old Josephus's grandfather.
-
-Around the hearth, coming and going with every opening of many doors,
-gathered dogs of fine and varied breeds. One old patriarch of a St.
-Bernard, who attached himself particularly to the stranger, had
-remained close to Vance's feet, and gravely escorted him to bed.
-
-In his kinsman, Guy Carlyle, a handsome man of fifty odd years, who in
-a military youth had been noted for deeds of daring that rang through
-the army of Northern Virginia, but had long since resigned himself to
-the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, Vance saw the origin of Eve's
-rare beauty. He also became aware that, of a large family of sons and
-daughters born to the now widowed Colonel, Eve was the sole survivor;
-and it did not need the expression that irradiated her father's face
-when her name was touched upon to show in what estimation she was held
-by him.
-
-The tinge of melancholy in Mr. Carlyle's manner had, however, no
-effect like repression of the cordial friendliness he extended to the
-newcomer. Vance had gone to rest with a feeling that he had conferred
-a genuine favor upon his two elders by according to them, as he had,
-his company.
-
-Spite of these conditions of good-fellowship, he awoke next morning
-conscious that there was one under the roof with him who had the power
-(and no desire to withhold it) to make him far from comfortable; to
-puzzle him, to banter him, to pull him up with a jerk at the moment he
-might feel that he was getting reasonably ahead with her; to punish
-him, it would appear, for some offence he could not own to having
-committed.
-
-It was very clear that Eve thought him a poor fellow, mentally and
-morally; that, apart from her specific grudge against him, of nature
-unknown, she was not in the least inclined to pay tribute to his
-position, fashion, culture, wealth,--the appendages of Vance
-Townsend's personality people around him had always been disposed to
-make so much of. In the firmament of American society, he took himself
-to be a planet of first importance. In other lands, he had enjoyed
-more than a reasonable share of social success. Why should he here,
-for the first time in his life, feel like a man coming in fancy
-costume to a dinner where all the other guests wore plain clothes?
-
-It must be the doing of that girl. She it was who, with a few words, a
-cool glance or two that appeared to read his soul, had brought him
-into this strait; and Vance was still young enough to feel himself
-flame with resentment of her. Then fell upon his mental ear the soft
-cadence of her voice, asking his pardon for having possibly misjudged
-him, and his anger passed.
-
-As from Eve he went on to think of Kitty Ainger, now Mrs. Crawford,
-Vance was surprised at the freedom from soreness the reflection left
-upon his mind. Mrs. Crawford, he even reflected, was really an
-admirable woman--just the wife, as everybody had said, for a rising
-fellow like Crawford, who would surely reach the top! She had shown
-her good sense in taking him. Was it possible Vance had ever thought
-anything else?
-
-On a table near the bed lay the contents of a pocket emptied
-overnight--among them a folded paper, inscribed with the latest and
-most satisfactory draft of his verses to Kitty. This he now seized,
-and, upon re-reading it, a flush that was not of tender consciousness
-overspread his face. Regardless of the loss to the world of poetry,
-ignoring the recurrent efforts that Calliope had witnessed, he
-deliberately tore it up, and went to the open window prepared to
-scatter the tiny remnants upon a matin breeze.
-
-A view of wide green plains, with here and there a clump of noble
-trees, of soaring blue hills beyond them, all shining in the morning
-sun, met his eye; and almost directly beneath his window were a couple
-of horses, of which one was bestridden by old Josephus, in a nankeen
-coat and venerable Panama hat; the other, little more than a colt, was
-held by a negro and saddled for a woman's use.
-
-"Lady-love! Lady-love, I say!" called out the old gentleman, in a
-voice of Stentor.
-
-"Coming, coming, come!" gaily answered somebody; and in a moment
-Vance's Cousin Eve appeared.
-
-Springing lightly upon the segment of an enormous tree that served as
-horse-block, she dropped into her saddle, and devoted herself to
-subduing the juvenile remonstrance of her steed.
-
-With the fragments of his effusion to Kitty Ainger still in hand,
-Vance felt a curious sensation, as though the old world had suddenly
-become young and beautiful and tuneful; and then, from his ambush, he
-heard Josephus say:
-
-"I'd half a mind to rouse up our visitor, and take him with us to see
-the sheep in Six-Acre Lot. The ride before breakfast would have given
-him a good idea of the way my land lies."
-
-"O Cousin Josey, I am so thankful you did _not_!" answered Eve, with
-sincerity unmistakable.
-
-"Tut, tut, my dear child," began Mr. Lloyd, rebukingly; but Eve, who
-just then succeeded in starting her colt in the right direction, was
-off and away, sending back a trill of laughter to her ancient
-cavalier, who made good speed to follow her.
-
-The new conviction of his folly in having agreed to remain under the
-same shelter with Miss Carlyle did not prevent Mr. Townsend from
-making his appearance with an excellent appetite at the
-breakfast-table, whither he was duly escorted by Bravo, the old dog he
-had found outside his bedroom door waiting to take him in charge.
-
-With Bravo and another dog or two at heel, Vance had walked off his
-pique over dew-washed slopes of short, rich grass to a summit near the
-house, to be joined on the return by Colonel Carlyle, who had strolled
-out to meet him.
-
-Breakfasts at Wheatlands were justly considered the _chefs d'oeuvre_
-of old Josey's cook. Vance, helping himself to quickly succeeding
-dainties seen for the first time, cast a mental glance backward to the
-egg and a cup of tea that formed his accustomed meal at home. Half-way
-in the repast, Eve, who had been changing her habit to a pretty cotton
-gown, slipped into place between her father and the widow, who was
-pouring out the coffee.
-
-"What! What!" said Cousin Josey, detecting her absence from a seat at
-his side, that would have brought her face to face with Townsend. "My
-Lady-love desert me like that? Come back, little runaway, and see
-your Cousin Vance taste his first mouthful of a Wheatlands ham!"
-
-Thus adjured, Eve could but take the seat indicated; and Vance, who
-had determined to be no longer oppressed by so small and pink a
-person, bestowed on her an openly admiring glance that angered her
-anew.
-
-"We must leave you to Eve's mercies this morning, Mr. Townsend,"
-observed their host, at the conclusion of the repast. "Carlyle and I
-have promised to ride over to the County Court to hear a case tried,
-and to call on the Judge, who is an old college chum of the Colonel's.
-We shall be home to dinner at two, and you young people must entertain
-each other until then."
-
-"Could you not manage not to show so plainly what you feel?" asked
-Vance in his cousin's little ear, as they left the table. "Pray
-believe that I am not a party to the infliction put upon you."
-
-They had strolled bareheaded out under the trees shading the lawn
-about the house.
-
-"Shall we never have done quarrelling?" said Eve, wearily. "Just as I
-think I begin to feel kindly toward you, something happens, and I
-break down again."
-
-"Were we not moderately successful last night, when I assumed to be
-somebody else?" he asked.
-
-"Yes; that is better. I will treat you as I would any other man
-stopping here--any one not of your exalted class, I mean."
-
-"That was a quite unnecessary taunt. But I will allow it to pass if
-you agree for to-day--until the gentlemen return--to treat me as you
-would Mr. Ralph Corbin, for example."
-
-"What do you mean?" she asked, quickly. "Ralph is the dearest, most
-obliging cousin I have, and I impose upon him dreadfully. If he were
-here, I should begin by sending him indoors to fetch my hat and
-parasol from the hall rack, and a new magazine I left in the
-window-seat, and tell him to call the dogs to come with us--What!
-_you_ can't intend to condescend to wait upon a mere girl, a country
-cousin?"
-
-He was off and back again with the articles demanded, showing no
-enmity in the smile offered with them to her acceptance. But he did
-not at once surrender the periodical, or until he had satisfied
-himself of the contents of the page held open by a marker of beaten
-silver.
-
-"You don't mind my looking at what you read?" he asked.
-
-"If you like. It is some verses--_not_ what _you_ would care for, in
-the least, but they have given me great pleasure."
-
-A glance showed him that his suspicion was correct. The stanzas in
-question had been written by him some months before, and sent,
-unsigned, to the editor.
-
-"Will you tell me what you fancy in these?" he said, with fine
-indifference of manner.
-
-"Why does one like a flower, or worship a star? They suit me, I
-suppose, and I am learning them by heart."
-
-His own heart throbbed with a schoolboy's glee and pride. But he said
-nothing, and walked beside her light figure, in the round of garden
-and orchard, bringing up in the stable-yard. Here, a space paved with
-grass-grown cobblestones was bounded on three sides by frame
-structures, now, in their decay, as gray and as fragile-looking as
-hornets' nests.
-
-"And the little house built of limestone, with one window, was put up
-in Colonial days, for refuge in case of an Indian raid. Mr. Lloyd will
-tell you one of his best stories, about an adventure of his ancestor
-in there, when three white men successfully resisted a band of
-red-skins. Perhaps our aboriginal anecdotes would bore you, however.
-If so, give us only a little hint, and we desist. Now, shan't we go in
-and see your horses?"
-
-She lifted the latch; Vance followed her, past stalls where the
-occupants gave her immediate recognition, to those in which his own
-pair were comfortably ensconced. Merrylad, ungallant fellow, would
-have none of the young lady, but at the touch and voice of his master,
-turned his beautiful head sidewise to lay it upon Vance's shoulder
-with affection.
-
-"I am, at last, an illustration of the legend, 'Some one to love me,'"
-he said, laughing. "So you thought I had forsaken you, old man? Not I,
-my beauty. Gently, gently, you are too demonstrative."
-
-"I can't imagine life without horses and dogs; can you?" she said,
-with the quickly growing comradeship of a child. "There; I was
-determined that Merrylad should let me stroke his neck!"
-
-From the stables, whose inmates seemed to have put them upon a better
-footing, they passed again under the pink-blossomed arcades of an
-apple-orchard, to pause beside a curious indentation, like a dimple,
-in the turf.
-
-"Just here," began Evelyn,--"but I shall not tell you, unless you
-promise to be properly impressed,--a sad fate overcame a dishonest
-negro servant of Mr. Lloyd's ancestor. He--the servant, I mean--was a
-fellow much given to acrobatic feats, and was accustomed to divert his
-master's guests by tumbling and turning cart-wheels. One day, he
-robbed old Mr. Lloyd's money-chest, and filling his pockets, went out
-in the orchard, and testified his glee by standing on his head."
-
-"What happened? Evidently something of a supernatural nature."
-
-"The earth opened, and out came a great hairy red hand," said Eve, "(I
-am telling it to you as my nurse told it to me) and 'cotched him by
-de hayde, and drawed him down.'"
-
-"What evidence do they offer of this event?"
-
-"That is the thrilling part. About fifty years ago, when the present
-owner was just of age, some men at work in this place dug up a
-treasure of golden 'cob-coins,' clipped here and there to regulate
-their value, as the custom was in olden days. And there, wedged in the
-earth where the gold lay scattered, was the skeleton of a man standing
-upon his head!"
-
-"Proof positive," said Vance, laughing.
-
-"I thought I should convince you. As an actual fact, the coins brought
-six hundred dollars at the Philadelphia mint, and the money was
-distributed among the finders."
-
-"Imagine how many darkeys have stolen out here, since, to work at
-night with pick and shovel! I suppose that accounts for the depression
-of the sod."
-
-"I myself found a George II. coin in the garden yesterday. See! If I
-were to give it to you, do you think it would bind you to continue to
-be 'some one else,' during the rest of your stay with us?"
-
-He took the bit of copper she held out, wondering, as he had done the
-night before, whether this kindly mood meant coquetry, then deciding
-it was but the frolic spirit of a wholesome and untrammelled youth not
-to be restrained. Whatever it meant, he would profit by it. A creature
-so bright, so impulsive as this, his new-found cousin, was not within
-his ken, even if the occasional prick of her wit did keep him in an
-attitude of self-defence.
-
-"Her cheeks are true apple-blossoms," he found himself murmuring,
-irrelevantly, as he pursued her through the tunnel of orchard boughs.
-"But her lips--what? Ah! bard beloved, I thank you--'Her mouth a
-crimson flower.' That's it. 'Her mouth a crimson flower.'"
-
-"What are you talking about, back there?" exclaimed his guide, turning
-sharply to call him to account.
-
-"Did I speak aloud? I was--ah--only wondering where we are going to
-bring up?"
-
-"Do I tire you? Perhaps you are not used to walking. Never mind; we
-shall soon reach the graveyard, and then you can sit upon the stone
-wall and rest."
-
-"I think I can last to the graveyard," meekly said the young man,
-whose tramps in the Alps and Dolomites and Rockies had included of
-"broken records" not a few.
-
-"Now, you are laughing at me," she said, suspiciously. "But you know I
-have never heard of you except as a lounger in clubs and a leader of
-_cotillons_."
-
-Vance thought it useless to protest.
-
-They now reached an enclosure under a grove of maples, where,
-motioning him to sit upon a low wall tapestried with moss and fern and
-creepers, she perched upon the gnarled root of a tree, and, opening
-her book, prepared to become absorbed in it.
-
-"Suppose you read aloud to me," he suggested, with cunning
-aforethought.
-
-"This?" she said, doubtfully, surveying his verses. "Oh, no; I think
-not. You would hardly care for _this_. It is something quite out of
-your line, don't you see? The writer gives expression to a perfectly
-straightforward, yet eloquent, expression of a true man's true
-feeling, about a thing of every day. It is not only that the words are
-lovely and the sentiment is noble, but the measure ripples like a
-stream--Why, what is the matter with you? One would think you know the
-author."
-
-"I am afraid, upon reflection, that I _do not_ know the author," he
-said, drawing back into his shell.
-
-"If you did, I should get you to thank him for me for this," she
-resumed. "They say authors are always disappointing to meet, after one
-has idealized them through their writings. But _he_ would not be. No;
-I would trust him, through everything, to be a noble gentleman. Of
-course he is unworldly. I believe he lives in a remote Territory, and
-despises petty conventionalities of society, especially those in New
-York. And I think he never even heard of that dreadful 400 of yours."
-
-Vance, smiling at her girlish nonsense, felt himself, nevertheless,
-lapped in the Elysium of her speech.
-
-Then her mood changed to pathos, as she told him the story of "Cousin
-Josey's" single episode of love, ending in the mound beside them,
-where slept the old man's bride-betrothed of seventeen,--a ward of his
-mother,--who had died of a tragic accident, forty years agone.
-
-"And every day, since, he has come here. See, there are fresh
-wood-violets upon her breast. And the dear old man has never thought
-of such a thing as giving her a successor. Now, let us go. There are
-lambs to show you, and a lot of other things."
-
-The passing cloud was gone from her April face. She was again radiant,
-and in some bedazzlement of mind he arose and followed her.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Townsend's acquaintance with his Virginia cousins had, as might have
-been expected, prolonged itself into a visit to Carlyle Hall; and he
-was on the eve of departure, after a stay of two weeks in that
-delightful refuge, before he realized how much his fancy had begun to
-twine around the place and its inmates.
-
-Sentiment for the young creature who was its ruling spirit he did not
-admit, other than the natural tribute of his age and sex to hers. Nor
-did he give her credit for more than temporary feeling on any point
-disconnected with her strong local attachments. Her father, her home,
-and those she grandiosely called her "people"--meaning, he supposed,
-the individuals indebted to Providence for having been born within the
-limits of her State--were the objects of Eve's warm affection.
-
-Vance felt sure her courteous thought of him was the result of only
-transmitted consideration for a guest. So soon as he should quit the
-pleasant precincts of the Hall, he feared he must put aside his claim
-to even this consideration. This condition of affairs worried our
-young man more than he cared to admit to himself. To no one else would
-he have confessed that the fortnight had been spent by him in a daily
-effort to impress upon her a personality widely different from her
-conception of it. Now, at the end of his enterprise, he was conscious
-that he had not advanced in the endeavor; and this last evening in her
-company was correspondingly depressing to his _amour propre_.
-
-They were sitting together in a window-seat of the drawing-room,
-looking into an old-world garden with box walks, a sun-dial, and a
-blaze of tulips piercing the brown mold. From the western sky, facing
-them, the red light was vanishing, and in the large, dim room a couple
-of lamps made islands of radiance in a sea of shadows. In the library,
-adjoining, sat the Colonel, reading, his strong, handsome head seen in
-profile from where they were.
-
-Sounds of evening in the country, the sweet whistle of a negro in the
-distance, alone broke the spell of silence brooding over the old
-house. Vance hesitated to further disturb it, the more so that Evelyn
-had been in a mood of unusual graciousness. Nor did he, in truth, feel
-prepared to broach the discussion of certain things he had put off
-until now.
-
-"To-morrow," he said at last, with a genuine sigh, "I shall be on my
-way northward, and this beautiful, restful life will be among my
-has-beens."
-
-"Too restful, I'm afraid," she cried, in her brusque, schoolgirl
-fashion. "Your Aunt Myrtle always speaks of Virginia as nothing but a
-'cure,' which she is clearly glad to have accomplished and lived
-down."
-
-"It has been a cure for me in another sense. I wonder if you know what
-you have done for me?"
-
-"I?"
-
-"Yes. Don't fence with me now. For once, believe in your cousin, who
-is, after this, going to leave you for a long time in peace. Tell me;
-when I shall have gone, and that big, comfortable 'spare room' is put
-in order again for the next guest, shall you sometimes think of the
-subject of your missionary labors in the past two weeks?"
-
-"But I have never undertaken to reform you," she said, in a vexed
-tone. "It is absurd for you to think I imagined myself capable of
-that. The best I could hope for was that your visit should pass
-without our coming to open conflict. Papa could tell you I promised
-him to try that this should be so."
-
-"Then I am indebted to your father for the modicum of personal
-consideration you have vouchsafed me?"
-
-"And Cousin Josey--yes," she answered, with startling candor. "At the
-same time, I must say, I like you now better than I believed I ever
-could. It makes me wish with all my heart I could trust you."
-
-Vance felt a sting that was not all resentment, or all pain. The
-expression of her eyes, so fearless, so intense, waked in him a
-feeling that, in the moment they had reached, he desired nothing so
-much in all the world as to win this "mere girl's" approval. The color
-deepened in his face, as he said:
-
-"And yet you have given the author of those verses, who happens to be
-myself, credit for something in which you could place faith?"
-
-"You--_you_?" she exclaimed, starting violently. "Ah no! Don't destroy
-my ideals."
-
-"This may be wholesome, but it is certainly not pleasant," he said,
-praying Heaven for patience.
-
-There was nothing of her customary light spirit of bravado in the
-manner in which, after a pause, she next spoke to him.
-
-"I hardly know how--for the sake of others, I mean, not on my own
-account--to ask if it is possible you have not, in connection with me,
-given a thought to one who was my daily, intimate companion all of
-last winter."
-
-"That!" he interrupted, with a dry laugh. Why not arraign her for the
-wreck of me?"
-
-"You understand me, I see," she said, with meaning. "Let me say this,
-then: that I hold a trifler with women's hearts to be the most
-despicable of characters. A man who is too indolent or too infirm of
-purpose to deny himself the pleasure he gets from watching his
-progress in a girl's affections is an offender the law mayn't reach,
-but he deserves it should. That he makes his victim old before her
-time, in his gradual, refined disappointment of her hopes, may not
-count for much, in your estimation. But--but--oh! I could not have
-believed it of the person who wrote those verses!"
-
-There were tears in her honest eyes, a tremor in her young voice. Save
-for these, Vance, who had walked away from her a dozen steps, would
-have continued to put distance between himself and this "angel at the
-gate."
-
-As it was, he controlled himself sufficiently to return and say, in a
-hard, strained voice:
-
-"I shall not attempt to change your estimate of me. But I am glad you
-have given me an opportunity to tell you that on the day I saw you
-first, I went directly from my aunt's house to ask Katherine Ainger to
-be my wife. Some day, when you are older, and know more of the world,
-and take broader views of poor humanity, all these things may seem to
-you different. Then you may, perhaps, admit that, with all my faults,
-I could never be such a cad as you have pictured. In the little time
-that we are together now, please, let us say no more about it."
-
-He walked away, joining the Colonel, to engage that unsuspecting
-gentleman in an exhaustive discussion of politics.
-
-Eve sat for awhile in her dusky corner, absorbed in thought. She had
-decided to say a few words to him, before he should go, that might
-contribute to her relief rather than his. But Vance gave her no
-opportunity to speak any words to him, except those of conventional
-farewell. Betimes, next morning, he took leave of his cousins; and the
-Virginia episode was over.
-
-After he had left, Eve locked herself in her room, and gave way to a
-burst of tears.
-
-
-Chapter IV
-
-In a railway carriage that had long before left Genoa with the
-ultimate intention of getting into Rome, a girl sat, tranced in
-satisfaction, looking from the window, throughout an afternoon of
-spring. To speed thus leisurely between succeeding pictures of a
-scenery and life she seemed to recognize from some prior state of
-existence--although now, in fact, seen for the first time--was a joy
-sufficient to annihilate fatigue.
-
-The milk-white oxen ploughing the red fields; the peasant women at
-work amid young vines; the sheets of wild flowers; the pink and white
-and blue-washed villas, with their terraces and palms and flower-pots;
-the hedges of roses, and groves of olive and eucalyptus; above all,
-the classic names of stations, albeit placarded in a commonplace
-way,--made Miss Evelyn Carlyle, lately a passenger of a steamer
-arriving at Genoa from America, turn and twist from side to side of
-the carriage, and flush and thrill with satisfaction, after a fashion
-causing her father, who accompanied her, to rejoice that they occupied
-their apartment undisturbed.
-
-As evening closed upon the scene, she at last consented to throw her
-head back upon the cushion of the seat, and admit she was a prey to
-the mortal consideration of exceeding hunger. Since leaving Genoa, a
-roll and some cakes of chocolate, only, had supplied the luncheon for
-a journey of ten hours. Therefore, when the train, stopping after dark
-at a little buffet, was promptly forsaken by its passengers, Eve and
-her father joined the eager throng craving refreshment at the hands of
-a perspiring landlord and his inefficient aids.
-
-"If I could only make these fellows understand, perhaps they would
-stop to listen," said Colonel Carlyle, growing wroth at the
-struggling, vociferating, jostling crowd massed in a small room,
-snatching for food like hungry dogs.
-
-"Allow me to--By Jove, it's the Colonel!" said a voice behind him,
-whose possessor was trying to pass on.
-
-"Ralph Corbin! Where did you drop from?" and, "Ralph, this is too
-delightful" were the greetings received by the young man thus
-unexpectedly encountered.
-
-"I am on my way from Nice to Rome to meet--er--some friends who are
-expected there for the Silver Wedding festivities," said he, with
-becoming blushes.
-
-"I know," exclaimed Evelyn, gleefully. "I was sure they had something
-to do with it."
-
-"But it's uncertain whether they have returned from Greece yet; and
-it's awfully jolly to meet you, anyway, Eve, and the Colonel. Here,
-let's get some food, and I'll go in your carriage for the rest of the
-way, of course. I'd not an idea you were coming out this year."
-
-"Nor we, until a fortnight since," said Eve.
-
-Ralph capturing a supply of bread, and fruit, and roast chicken, they
-made off with their booty to the train, and the evening passed in
-merry chat and explanation of their plans. Evelyn, however, by no
-means lost the consciousness of her advance for the first time upon
-Rome; and when, after crossing the Tiber at midnight, and catching
-glimpses, on either side the railway, of ruins that heralded their
-vicinity to the goal of her hopes, she was keyed to high excitement.
-
-Ralph laughed at her disappointment as the train ran slowly into a
-large, modern station lighted by electricity, and decorated with
-hangings of gold and crimson, a crimson carpet spread across the
-platform to one of the doors of exit. When they enquired of the
-_facchino_ who took their bags in charge, what great arrival was
-expected, the man answered with an indifference worthy of democratic
-New York: "It is for the Silver Wedding of their Majesties, Signor;
-but there are so many Kings and Emperors and Princes in Rome now, we
-have ceased to take account of them."
-
-"We have struck Rome at a crowded season," said Ralph, "and I don't
-know that you are going to like it overmuch. I say, Eve, if Somebody
-doesn't come for another week or so, what a heaven-send you and your
-father will be to me for company!"
-
-"That is the most cold-blooded way of making use of us to kill time
-with," said Eve; but she bestowed on him a well-pleased smile. To her,
-Ralph had been ever a chum,--a dear, good fellow, who was the best of
-company. His unexpected appearance here promised to add tenfold to her
-pleasure, while his hopes in the affair hinted at between them had
-been, for some time, familiar to her in detail.
-
-"And all this while I have never told you," he went on, in his boyish
-manner, "that at Nice I fell in with that swell New York cousin of
-yours, Vance Townsend. Not half a bad chap, if he is rather
-close-mouthed. Shouldn't wonder if he's in Rome, now, like everybody
-else in this part of the world."
-
-"Townsend?" said the Colonel, with animation. "Glad to hear there's a
-chance of seeing him. Just a year--isn't it, Eve?--since he visited us
-at the Hall. Well, there's no doubt we are in luck, if we meet Vance
-as well as you, Ralph."
-
-"The funny part of it is," whispered the joyous Ralph to Evelyn, "some
-of the people we both knew in Nice put it into Townsend's head I was
-coming here to meet my _fiancee_. And you know, Eve, I am not engaged
-to her yet; her mother put us on probation for six months. The six
-months are out next week, though, and I don't think it would hurt
-Maud's mamma to hurry herself a little bit to get here, do you? How
-you will admire Maud's style, Evie! Her hair is dark as--" etc., etc.,
-until Evelyn cut it short by jumping into the carriage drawn up in
-waiting for them.
-
-Just now, she was not as well prepared to listen as usual. Certain
-feelings she had believed extinct proved themselves to have been
-merely dormant. Even the spectacle of Rome _en fete_, by night, its
-bands and fountains playing, its streets still filled with lively
-promenaders, did not wholly distract her from this sudden tumult of an
-emotion she was not prepared to define.
-
-Constantly, during the crowded days that followed, while they drove
-hither and thither, attracted but provoked by the jumbling of ancient
-and modern in these haunts of history, she tried to persuade herself
-she was not ever on the alert to see somebody who did not appear. For,
-from among the many acquaintances and a few friends encountered in the
-streets of the sociable little city, Vance was persistently missing.
-
-Ralph, however, whose sweetheart also kept her distance, proved his
-philosophy by devoting his days to the Carlyles; and thus, under a sky
-blue as the fabled Elysian fields of Virgil, the festal week went on.
-Wherever their Majesties of Italy and Germany passed in public, they
-were greeted by thoroughfares black with people, windows and balconies
-blazing with flags and draperies, the clash of bands and the clank of
-soldiery.
-
-The coachman engaged for the service of our friends would contrive,
-wherever bound, to take on the way some passing show of sovereigns;
-and, upon a certain fair day, for no reason avowed, he drove them into
-the tangle of vehicles and people always seen surrounding the doors of
-the Quirinal Palace whenever there was a chance to catch glimpses of
-royalties upon the move. There ensconced, the saucy, bright-eyed
-fellow stood up, pretended his inability to get out of the snarl,
-gesticulated, talked to his friends and threatened his enemies in the
-crowd, while visibly rejoicing in the opportunity to see all likely to
-occur in that coveted quarter.
-
-"Look here, cabby, if you don't move out of this to the Baths of
-Caracalla in just two minutes and a half," began Ralph, at last, in
-emphatic English; but he had no reason to go on, as the driver, seeing
-the young man's face, gathered up the reins, and extricated himself
-with much dexterity from the crowd.
-
-Neither of his passengers noticed that a gentleman, in a carriage just
-then crossing theirs, looked at them, leaned forward, gave orders to
-his coachman, and at once proceeded to follow on their tracks.
-
-In the glorious ruin of the greatest of temples to athletic exercise,
-Evelyn drew a deep breath of delight. Nothing in Rome, not even the
-Colosseum, had so impressed her with the grandeur of bygone
-achievement in architecture as this wondrous pile, with its vast
-spaces, the gray walls breached by Time, out of which maidenhair grew
-and crows were flying--"crying to heaven for rain," as the guide
-poetically explained; the stately columns of red porphyry grouped
-around the beautiful mosaic floors; the lace-like traceries of carven
-stone; the niches and pedestals from which marvels of old sculpture
-had been removed; over all, the air that is gold and balm combined!
-
-Evelyn leaned against a column abstractedly, while Ralph and her
-father walked about, discussing with their guide facts and statistics
-of the Thermae. They had indeed strolled quite out of her sight, when
-a shadow on the pavement beside her caused her to look up. If an
-answer to thought be no surprise, then was not Evelyn surprised; for
-the person confronting her was Vance Townsend.
-
-"I have known that you were in Rome ever since the night you arrived,"
-he said, without preamble other than coldly offering her his hand. "I
-happened to be at the station to meet an English friend, when you
-came out; and I saw you get into your carriage and drive away."
-
-"Then you can hardly claim to have earned a welcome from us, now," she
-began to say, lightly, but found it impossible to go on, checked by
-the look upon his face.
-
-"I make no pretences," he said, bitterly. "If you care to know that I
-have either kept you in view every day since, or else have gone for
-long rides into the country, where I saw nobody, it is quite true. I
-have done everything foolish, everything foreign to my principles and
-habits, to satisfy, or to get away from, the feeling the sight of you
-aroused in me. I wonder what you'd think, if I told you I've been
-wandering about pretty much ever since I parted with you, a year ago,
-trying to get you out of my head. Many's the letter I've written to
-you and destroyed. Twice I set out to see you, and once I got back
-into the neighborhood of your home. When I saw you in the crowd at the
-station here, I actually thought I was possessed--" He checked
-himself. "I beg your pardon. I have no right to say these things to
-you, I know."
-
-"You? You?" she could only repeat, bewildered by the meaning in his
-tone and the expression of his eyes. "Is it possible that you--"
-
-"That I fell in love with you that time when you were holding me to
-account for a thousand transgressions, committed or not committed?
-Yes, it is quite possible. That need not prevent our remaining good
-friends, need it? I hope I've too much common sense to ask you to
-indulge in a discussion of these points, now; during the past week,
-I've been engaged continually, and I trust with some success, in
-disposing of the last remnant of hope I may have cherished that some
-day things might work around to give me at least a chance."
-
-"You make me very unhappy," she exclaimed.
-
-"That is far from my wish," he said, more gently. "Just at present you
-ought to be walking on roses. There! Your father and Corbin are coming
-back this way. I want to ask you to help me to excuse myself in your
-good father's sight, if I seem unsociable."
-
-"One word," she said, the blood flaming into her cheeks. "It is due
-you to know that long ago, soon after you left us, I received a letter
-from Katherine Crawford,--a letter that made me understand many things
-I had judged harshly in your conduct."
-
-"Mrs. Crawford has been always kind to me," he answered. "And no one
-rejoices more than I in her present happiness."
-
-"Yes, she is happy,--perfectly so,--and her life is full of the duties
-that best suit her. She says it was all planned out for her by
-Providence, and kept in reserve until she was fit for it."
-
-"So runs the world away!" he exclaimed, with a whimsical gesture.
-
-After that, the others came, and there was much talk of the subjects
-naturally presenting themselves. When they moved out of the enclosure
-to go to the carriage, Vance walked with the Colonel, following Evelyn
-and Ralph.
-
-"You will dine with us at our hotel this evening?" said the older man,
-at parting.
-
-"I am sorry that I am engaged," Vance answered, with appropriate
-courtesy, "and that to-morrow I am off for Sicily. Sometime, later on
-in your wanderings, I shall hope to run upon you again. This is the
-worst of pleasant meetings in travel, is it not?"
-
-When they were seated in the victoria, he shook Evelyn's hand last.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The day was finally at hand that was to bring Ralph's sweetheart--with
-her incidental father, mother, two younger sisters, and a
-governess--to the quarters engaged for them at Rome. In the young
-man's enthusiasm, he did not forget to wonder what cloud had passed
-over his Cousin Evelyn's enjoyment of the place, the sights, the
-season. He even consulted the Colonel as to whether Eve might not be
-unduly affected by the crowded condition of the town, and proposed for
-them to change to a quieter spot. And Eve's father, who had had his
-own anxieties on this point, prevailed upon her to give up the
-engagements she had made with apparent zest, and resort to Naples and
-Sorrento.
-
-To Naples, accordingly, they went, the faithful Ralph accompanying
-them, at the cost of a night-journey on his return to Rome for the day
-that was to see his happiness in flower. He drove with them to their
-hotel, through the interminable streets, lined with palaces and
-thronged with paupers, and saw them ensconced in pleasant quarters
-facing Vesuvius, whose feather of smoke pointed to good weather. They
-dined together in a vast _salle-a-manger_, where, in a gallery, was
-conducted during their repast a noisy and mirth-provoking concert of
-fiddlers, mandolins, and guitars,--the performers singing, shouting,
-dancing, as they played. There was an hour before his train left, in
-which, while the Colonel smoked upon the balcony of their
-sitting-room, Eve walked out upon one of the quays with her cousin;
-and this hour Ralph determined to improve.
-
-In the last day or two, trifles had shown this astute young man that
-the depression of his cousin (for whom he cherished no grudge
-because, a year or two before, he had been wild to call her wife, and
-she would not hear of it) had been coincident with the meeting in Rome
-with Townsend. That very morning, he had found at his bankers', had
-read and put into his pocket, a letter written by Vance on arriving at
-Taormina, which had thrown upon the subject a new and surprising
-light. Just how to convey his discoveries to Evelyn, the most proud
-and sensitive of creatures about her sacred feelings, he had not yet
-decided.
-
-They talked of the bay, of the mountains, of Vesuvius. Calmed and
-enchanted by the hour and scene, Eve wore her gentlest aspect, and
-Ralph felt emboldened to begin.
-
-"This is as it should be," he said, with an air of generalizing. "You
-will go to Sorrento and Amalfi and Capri, and your roses will come
-back. I shall not forget you, Evie dear, because I am getting what I
-most want in life. You have always been to me a thing apart, and I've
-told Maud so, over and over again. By and by, I shall bring her to the
-Hall, and let her see you at your best, as its mistress. For you are
-not quite the same over here, Evie, as in Virginia air."
-
-"Perhaps I am growing old," she said, smiling. "But never mind me. We
-shall miss you, Ralph, and it will require the greatest heroism to do
-without you. After this journey, nobody need tell me that 'three is
-trumpery.' We know better, do we not?"
-
-"Why not send for your other cousin to take my place?" said Ralph,
-seeing his opportunity. "He is at Taormina, and would come,
-undoubtedly. I had a letter from him this morning, by the way. The
-most characteristic letter,--just like the man."
-
-No answer. Ralph felt as he were treading a bridge of glass.
-
-"To explain it, I should have to go back to the evening of that
-meeting in the Baths of Caracalla. He came to me at the hotel, and
-after a friendly chat, just as he was leaving, took occasion to say
-some uncommonly nice things about my relations with (as I thought)
-_Maud_; so I thanked him, and gushed a little about her, maybe,--in
-my circumstances, a fellow's excusable,--and off he went, I never
-suspecting that he all the time thought I was going to marry _you_."
-
-Here Ralph was rewarded by a genuine start and a blush, but still Eve
-did not speak.
-
-"A day later," Ralph went on, determined now to do or die, "something
-I recalled of our conversation made me realize the mistake he was
-under, and I wrote him a letter explaining it. Such a time as I had to
-find his whereabouts! His banker had no instructions to forward
-anything, and I won't tell you all the ups and downs of trying to get
-at him. Finally, in despair, I sent the letter, on the chance, to
-Taormina, and from there he answered me."
-
-At this point, in revenge for her indifference, the diplomatist
-remained, in his turn, silent, until Eve, who could bear it no longer,
-turned upon him her beautiful young face, glowing in the evening light
-with an eager joy. "And--and?" she exclaimed, impetuously.
-
-"He is a good sort--Townsend," went on Ralph, reflectively. "I've an
-idea, Evie, that if you and he could have managed to hit it off, you
-would have suited each other capitally. He would be the kind likely to
-settle down into a country gentleman, too; and you would never be
-happy in town. He has brains and a heart, in addition to his good
-looks and manners, and a restrained force of character that would be
-an excellent balance for this little impulsive lady, whose only fault
-is that she jumps at conclusions instead of working to them."
-
-"You are perfectly right about that, Ralph," she said, laughing away a
-strong desire to cry. "I am learning wisdom, however, with rapidly
-advancing years. And you do only justice to my Cousin Vance, in your
-estimate of him. No doubt," here she swallowed a nervous catch in her
-voice, "if he told the truth in his letter, he congratulated you upon
-being allied to some one other than the young person who made his
-visit to Virginia last year a very hard test of patience, to say no
-more."
-
-She stopped, and tried to turn away her head. But Ralph, looking her
-gently in the face, read there what gave him courage to launch the
-last arrow in his quiver.
-
-"Whatever he said, I saw through it, Evie dear. And I--I could not
-wait to write an answer. I telegraphed my advice to come to Naples as
-fast as steam can carry him."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Shortly after her conversation upon the quay with Ralph (who,
-returning to Rome, had been duly translated into anticipated bliss),
-Eve and her father took advantage of a perfect Sunday for the
-excursion up Mount Vesuvius.
-
-In a landau with two horses,--a third to be annexed on the
-ascent,--they traversed the long street formed by the villages of San
-Giovanni, La Barra, Portici, and Resina, stretching from the parent
-city--a street suggesting in the matter of population a series of
-scattered ant-hills. Such a merry, dirty, shameless horde of all ages,
-who, abandoning the dens they called homes, had issued forth under the
-sun blazing even at that early hour of morning in his vault of blue,
-to bivouac in the open highway, was never seen! Marketing,
-chaffering, vending, gossiping, cooking, eating, drinking, performing
-the rites of religion and of the toilet, the hum of their voices was
-like the note of some giant insect. It was when a stranger's carriage
-came in sight that the air became suddenly vocal with shrill cries for
-alms; vehicles and horses were surrounded, escorted by noisy beggars,
-whose half-naked children offered flowers, or turned somersaults
-perilously near the wheels.
-
-Resina passed, they could breathe more freely. The street turmoil was
-succeeded by the peace of a country road mounting between lava walls,
-over which glimpses of sea, of deep-red clover in fields, of vineyard
-or lemon grove, were finally succeeded by glorious, unobstructed views
-of the mountains, bay, and city. In the region of recent overflows,
-they saw the most curious spectacle, to the newcomer, of fertile
-garden-strips of green, where clung tiny houses, pink or whitewashed,
-daring the mute monster overhead, while close beside them the
-mountain-side was streaked with ominous stains marking the spots
-where other homes had defied him just one day too long.
-
-Higher still, in the track of the overflow of 1872, they experienced
-the striking effect of entering into a valley of desolation between
-walls of living green. Here, the lava in settling had wreathed itself
-into the forms of dragons couchant, of huge serpents, and other
-monstrous shapes that lay entwined as if asleep. Up above, arose the
-main cone of the crater, smooth as a heap of gun-powder, vast,
-majestic, cloud-circled; taking upon itself in the intense light a
-blooming purple tint; the smoke issuing from its summit now soon
-melting into space, now showing dense and threatening.
-
-Evelyn, in whom the novelty as well as beauty of the scene had aroused
-fresh spirit, looked more like her old self than her fond father had
-seen her for many a long day. But it is fortunately not given to
-parents, however solicitous, to see all the workings of young minds;
-and the good gentleman would have been indeed surprised had he divined
-the mainspring of her animation. While he was indulging in a few mild
-objections to the length and slowness of the drive, the rapacity of
-wayside beggars, the heat of the sun, etc., such as naturally occur to
-the traveller unsupported by sentimental hopes, to our young lady the
-condition of motion was a necessity, and the act of getting upward a
-relief.
-
-For the plain truth was that, since the last talk with Ralph, Evelyn
-had given rein to a thousand emotions repressed, during the months
-gone by, with stern self-chiding.
-
-Until now, recalling the year before when Vance had left her to an
-unavailing sense of regret for her harsh judgment of him, she had
-hardly realized what their intercourse together had meant to her. But
-the period of his visit was, in fact, succeeded by one in which her
-salt of life had lost its savor; and Evelyn, to her dismay, found that
-her affections had gone from her keeping to this man's, acknowledged
-to have been the suitor of her friend.
-
-That Katherine had refused Vance, and straightway married another
-lover, made very little difference to one of Eve's rigid creed in
-these matters. To her, love declared was love unchangeable; with air
-her heart she pitied Vance for his disappointment, and blamed herself
-for having repeatedly wounded him without reason. By means of this
-mode of argument, she had naturally succeeded in raising Townsend to
-the pedestal of a martyred hero, which, it may be conceived by those
-of colder judgment, did not lessen his importance in the girl's
-imagination.
-
-As the months had gone on, and she had had nothing from him save
-packages of books and prints sent according to promise, as to a polite
-entertainer who is thus agreeably disposed of by the beneficiary of
-hospitality extended, her feelings had taken on the complexion of
-hopeless regret for an irrevocable past. What Eve had henceforth to
-do, according to her own strict ordinance, was to live down the
-impulse that made her give her heart unasked. The stress of these
-emotions had, in spite of her brave efforts, so worked upon her health
-that the Colonel, as fond of home as a limpet of his rock, determined
-to try for her the change of air and experience, resulting as we have
-seen.
-
-And now, on this dazzling day, a "bridal of earth and sky" in one of
-the loveliest spots upon earth, she kept saying to herself, "By
-to-morrow--to-morrow, at latest--he will be with me! And then--and
-then--and _then_--!"
-
-The carriage halted at a little wayside booth for the sale of wines
-and fruit. A dark-skinned woman, bearing a tray of glasses, with
-flasks of the delusive _Lachrymae Christi_ (made from the grapes
-ripened upon these slopes) came forward to greet them. On Evelyn's
-side, a hawker, with shells and strings of coral, and coins alleged to
-have been found imbedded in the lava near at hand, importuned her.
-But, rejecting the others, she beckoned to a pretty, bare-legged boy
-carrying oranges garnished in their own glossy, dark-green leaves; and
-so busy was she in selecting the best of his refreshing fruit, she
-hardly observed that another claimant for her attention had appeared
-close beside the wheel.
-
-"Please go away, my good man," she said at last, laughingly, without
-giving him a glance. "Indeed, I want nothing you can supply."
-
-"That is a harsh assertion," Vance said, in a low tone meant for her
-ear, and then proceeded to greet both his cousins outspokenly.
-
-He had reached Naples early that morning; had ascertained at their
-hotel that they were engaged to start for Vesuvius at a given hour;
-fearing collision with a party of strangers, had set out alone to walk
-up the mountain and take his chance of intercepting them; and had
-waited here for the purpose.
-
-"After you had been journeying all night?" said the Colonel, with
-unfeigned surprise. "Why, my dear fellow, in your place I should
-have--"
-
-Just then he intercepted, passing between Evelyn and Vance, a look
-that startled him. That his sentence remained unfinished nobody
-observed. The Colonel drew back into his corner, as if he had been
-shot.
-
-If she had divined her father's feeling, Eve could not have pitied
-any one who was gaining Vance. And Vance, at that moment, believed all
-the world to be as happy as himself!
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-To a love-affair so obvious, the ending naturally to be expected is of
-the old-fashioned and inevitable sort. In the beautiful Indian summer
-of the following autumn in Virginia, these two people were duly
-married at the Hall. From far and wide came relatives to wish them
-joy; it was like the gathering of a Scotch clan at the summons of the
-pipes. Prominent among the revellers at the dance following the
-nuptial ceremony was Cousin Josey, who, in a pair of antiquated
-leather pumps with buckles, led down the middle of a reel with his
-cherished "Lady-love." To please the old boy, Evelyn had worn the
-little string of pearls bought by him, years before, for a bride who
-was never to be. And so everybody was content, and one of the cousins
-said it was "exactly like a weddin' befo' the wah."
-
-
-
-
-Out of Season
-
-
-Chapter I
-
-"No; no house-parties till the middle of July. Dear knows, what with a
-string of big dinners, my two little dances, and those tiresome
-Thursdays in January and February when everybody came, I have done all
-that could be expected by society from paupers like ourselves," said
-Mrs. Henry Gervase, settling herself in a wicker chair, on the veranda
-of her country home, and looking approvingly at her water-view.
-
-"Paupers!" said a lady from a neighboring cottage, who had dropped in
-to call. Mrs. Gervase's friends rarely liked to commit themselves to
-positive comment upon her statements until certain which way the cat
-was meant to jump. Mrs. Luther Prettyman, the wife of the dry-goods
-magnate, whose good fortune it was to own the land adjoining the
-Gervase property at Sheepshead Point,--a recently famous resort for
-summer visitors on our far eastern coast,--now contented herself with
-a little deprecatory giggle that might mean anything, and waited for
-Mrs. Gervase to go on.
-
-"Oh, well! everything is comparative; and on the scale by which people
-measure things in New York, to-day, we are simply grovelling in
-poverty. John,"--to her gardener,--"you have got that row of myosotis
-entirely out of line; and, remember, nothing but salvia behind the
-heliotropes. I like a blaze of scarlet and purple against a blue
-sea-line like this. Heavens! what a perfect afternoon! The atmosphere
-has been clarified, and those birches in the ravine 'twinkle with a
-million lights.' My dear woman, I make no apologies. Any one who wants
-me at this season of the year must take me as I am. After eight months
-of bricks and mortar, dirty streets, and stupid drives in the Park, I
-am fairly maudlin over Nature when I get her back in June.
-
-"I went to a concert where Paderewski played a night or two before he
-left America; and I give you my word that while the music was going on
-I put up my fan and plainly heard the babble of this little brook of
-mine, and the lap of the waves over the rocks at high tide, with, now
-and then, the notes of the song-sparrow that comes back every year and
-perches on my Norway pine. Somebody said of me afterwards, at supper,
-that I had been having a little nap. They may say anything of me, I
-believe, and some idiot will be found to credit it. But please don't
-accept the newspaper report that I am to have Mr. and Mrs. This, or
-Mr. That and Mrs. T'other, stopping with me at Stoneacres during June.
-I am much too busy with my granger-work, and my husband too
-industrious doing nothing, to play host and hostess now."
-
-"I did not know; I only thought--" ventured Mrs. Prettyman. "You see,
-everything is so dull here, socially, till August. And when one has a
-guest coming who is accustomed to a great deal of fashionable
-gaiety,--a young lady, a distinguished belle,--one naturally grasps at
-the idea of such pleasant house-parties as yours are known to be, dear
-Mrs. Gervase."
-
-"We shall be dull as ditch-water," answered relentless Mrs. Gervase,
-turning around to survey the struggle of a fat-breasted robin to
-extract from the turf a worm that continued to emerge in apparently
-unending length. "And if you _will_ have a girl out of season, why,
-put her on bread and milk and beauty-sleep, give her plenty of trashy
-novels and a horse to ride, and she'll do well enough."
-
-"But--perhaps I am wrong--surely Mr. Gervase told Mr. Prettyman, when
-they were smoking on our veranda last Sunday, that you are expecting
-your nephew, Mr. Alan Grove."
-
-"That's just like Mr. Gervase,--a perfect sieve for secrets," quoth
-Mrs. Gervase, contemptuously; "when I particularly requested him to
-mention Alan's visit to nobody. The poor boy is completely used up
-with work, and has engaged to get a paper ready to read before some
-scientific congress next month, and finds himself unable to write a
-line of it in town. Here, I have promised him, he may have absolute
-quiet--not be called on to play civility or squire-of-dames for any
-one; and, I may as well warn you _now_, he's not to be expected to do
-a _hand's turn_ of entertainment for your girl. Besides, I happen to
-know that he can't abide 'society' young women. He is plunged up to
-the neck in electricity, is poor, ambitious, clever, on the way to
-sure success; and I'm going to back him all I can, not put
-stumbling-blocks in his path."
-
-"How plunged up to his neck in electricity?" asked puzzled Mrs.
-Prettyman.
-
-"Electric law, my good soul; did you think it a new kind of capital
-punishment? The lucrative law of the future, I've heard wise men say.
-Simpkins!" hailing, with irresistible command, a butcher's cart that
-seemed possessed of a strong desire to drive away in a hurry from a
-side entrance to the house. "_Simpkins!_ Oh! there you are; I meant to
-leave orders with the cook not to let you get away again to-day
-without a word from me. I noticed, on the book, that you had the
-effrontery to charge sixty cents a pound for spring chickens here in
-June. Now, don't tell me! The way all you natives do; you have a short
-season, and must make the most of it. This is not your season, or my
-season, either. Wait till August before you put on the screws. And
-your sweetbreads, eighty cents a pair, when _you know_ that when Mr.
-Gervase and I first came here to live, you were _throwing sweetbreads
-away_, till we taught you the use of them! Now, mind, I shall get
-tired of sending friends to you to be fleeced in August, if this is
-what you do to me in June."
-
-"I must be running off," said Mrs. Prettyman, arising from her spot of
-shade and luxurious comfort in the deep veranda filled, though not
-encumbered, with picturesque belongings, with stands and pots of
-blooming plants in every nook. "I'll declare, nobody's flowers do as
-well as yours. And the wages we pay our head gardener! It makes me
-really envious."
-
-This, be it known, was a clever stroke on the part of neighbor
-Prettyman. Secretly resentful of the tepid interest in the personality
-of her expected guest,--who, in the eyes of the house of Prettyman,
-was an event,--she yet did not dare attempt to bring the greater lady
-to yield sympathy upon the spot. Mrs. Gervase's weakest side was for
-her flowers. She possessed the magic touch that alone nurtures them to
-perfection, and with it the proud love of a parent for children that
-grow inclined according to her will.
-
-"Hum! We do pretty well, considering this house is built on the ragged
-edge of nothing over the sea, and is swept by all the winds of heaven,
-in turn, and sometimes all together. And, in a climate where one goes
-to bed in the Tropics and wakes up at the North Pole, what would you
-have? John, there, though I'll not set him up by telling him so, has
-learned all I know about flowers, and picks up new ideas every day. By
-August, now, these beds and stands will be worth looking at. What did
-you say is the name of the young person who's coming to stop with you?
-If you've nothing better, suppose you and she and Mr. Prettyman come
-over to dinner Saturday. Alan has promised me not to work at night,
-and by that time my plants will all be in the ground and my mind at
-rest."
-
-"Thank you so much," said the lesser luminary. "It is always a treat
-to dine with you _en famille_; and it is--didn't I mention
-her?--Gladys Eliot who is coming to us to-morrow."
-
-"Gladys Eliot! Why, she's gone with her people to London for two
-months. I saw her name in the _Teutonic's_ list last Thursday. Those
-Eliots would never in the world let slip another chance for her to
-make the great match they've set out to get."
-
-"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Prettyman, with some show of spirit, "Mrs.
-Eliot, who is my old school-friend, wrote me, the day before they
-sailed, that Gladys had taken it into her head to stay behind, and
-begged me to keep her till her aunt can come up from Baltimore in July
-and take the girl in charge."
-
-"Three weeks of Gladys Eliot!" remarked Mrs. Gervase. "My poor woman,
-I pity you. By the end of the month there will be no health in you. A
-professional beauty, who has run the gauntlet of four or five years of
-incessant praises, has been advertised like 'Pear's Soap,' in England
-and America, and has failed to make her _coup_! I remember what Alan
-Grove said about her no longer ago than Christmas of last year: 'I
-haven't the advantage of Miss Eliot's acquaintance, but her and her
-kind I hold in abhorrence,--denationalized Americans; hangers-on of
-older civilizations that make a puppet-show of them; spoiled for home,
-with no rightful place abroad; restless, craving what no
-healthy-minded husband of their own kind can give them.' Bless me--and
-_those two_ are going to _meet here_!"
-
-"I think Mr. Alan Grove need not concern himself," said Mrs.
-Prettyman, driven to bay. "Mrs. Eliot mentioned in her letter that
-Gladys--it is no secret, evidently--is nearly, if not quite, engaged
-to marry some one the family feels is _in all respects_ all they could
-have hoped for her."
-
-"Then it must be either that Colonel Larkyns, the very rude man with
-large feet, who walked all over my velvet gown at the Egertons', last
-winter,--came over with Lord Glenmore, whom the Eliots tried for and
-couldn't get,--or else McLaughlin, the Irishman who made such a lot of
-money in Montana. The two men were running evenly, 'twas said. Let
-me think--didn't I see her at Claremont on McLaughlin's coach, last
-month? Pray, my dear, are we to congratulate you on having Mr.
-McLaughlin, also, as a member of your household, before long?"
-
-"Oh dear, dear!" continued the plain-spoken lady to herself, when poor
-Mrs. Prettyman, fairly routed, had retired without honors from the
-field. "Why is nature so heavenly kind to us in American places of
-resort, and 'only man is vile'? Why does this struggle for place, this
-pride of vogue, these types of our worst social element--I hate that
-word 'social,' it sounds vulgar; but what else expresses this for
-me?--follow one into this earthly Paradise? Here I have got myself
-into a pretty kettle of fish with Alan Grove. He will be bored to
-death and his visit broken up, for we can't rid ourselves of people
-who sit in our pocket, like the Prettymans in summer; and he will be
-running upon this Eliot creature perpetually. If Henry would help me,
-we might--but he is so abominably friendly and cordial with country
-neighbors, there's no hope from him. Besides, if a girl is pretty, it
-makes no earthly difference to my good man whether she is a fiend of
-calculation and cold-heartedness. I declare, I've no patience with
-Henry, anyhow."
-
-So saying, Mrs. Gervase went out to drive with the offender in
-question, behind a pair of sleek cobs, in a little buckboard of tawny
-wood with russet leather cushions and harness,--his latest
-present,--and soon, in cheerful companionship, forgot all sorrows amid
-such views of land and water as Sheepshead Point people think only
-Sheepshead Point can offer.
-
-
-Chapter II
-
-To reach Sheepshead Point, a boat steams daily, and several times a
-day, from a station on the line of a great railway skirting the
-eastern Atlantic coast. Issuing from a drawing-room car there, a young
-woman, dressed in a tight-fitting skirt and jacket of sailor blue,
-with a loose shirt of red silk belted around a taper waist, her small
-head with its sailor-hat half shrouded from view in a blue tissue
-veil, walked lightly ahead of Mr. Alan Grove and, attended by an
-elderly maid, went far forward to stand in the bows of the boat.
-
-Grove, struck by the grace and distinction of her carriage, looked
-again, and then was conscious of an actual fierce jump of the heart.
-
-"Can there be two of them?" he asked of his inner man. "Doctors tell
-you if you keep your body in good order, and your mind healthily at
-work, you will never see a ghost--and yet--that's the double of the
-woman who sailed away from me last Thursday; who's haunted me during
-the six madly misspent weeks since I had the misfortune to be told off
-to take her in to dinner. Oh! no, it isn't. Yes, it is--by Jove, it
-_is_ Gladys Eliot."
-
-He was never so astonished. Believing her to be at that moment on the
-ocean, nearing British shores, Grove was fairly staggered when Miss
-Eliot, turning, espied him and, by a graciously easy nod, summoned him
-to her side. Considering the manner of their parting a few weeks back,
-he wondered at himself for the immediate abjectness of his obedience.
-
-It was a favorite phrase of Gladys Eliot's admirers to describe her as
-having a "Duchess of Leinster head and throat." Nature had certainly
-bestowed upon this daughter of nobody in particular in the Western
-Hemisphere a pose of a proud little head upon broad, sloping
-shoulders, as fine as that much-photographed great lady's. She had, in
-addition, a pair of innocent, Irish-blue eyes and a guileless smile; a
-voice, in speaking, that was sweet and low; and the best or worst
-manners in the world, so critics said, according to the desirableness
-of her interlocutor.
-
-"Mr. Grove! How perfectly extraordinary that you should be here," she
-exclaimed, giving him the tips of her well-gloved fingers, while the
-maid and dressing-bag withdrew discreetly into the background.
-
-"Did you expect me to remain forever on the steps of the Claremont
-tea-house, like a monument of a city father, to adorn the suburbs of
-New York?"
-
-"You are so quick-tempered, so unreasonable! How should I know you
-were going to take such dire offence? But please--I can't quarrel away
-off here, or even justify myself. If you are going to remain furious
-with me, at least gratify my curiosity first, and tell me how you came
-on this boat, and where you are going. Then, if you are so inclined,
-you may retire into your shell and sulk."
-
-A soft light was shining in her eye. Her voice was pleading; her face,
-most beautiful. Grove, promising himself, in street vernacular, to "go
-off and kick himself" directly afterwards, took his place at her
-elbow and gazed down hungrily upon her artless, changeful countenance.
-
-"Rather tell me why you are not about to plant your triumphant banner
-on British shores once more. I read your name in the list of those
-sailing. The newspapers have given all of your summer plans in detail,
-all the country-houses that are to receive you, all the aristocrats
-that are to send invitations to dinner, to meet your ship at
-Queenstown."
-
-She colored slightly. "As usual, you are making fun of me. What would
-be the use, since you won't believe me, of telling you my actual
-reason for backing out of this English visit, and letting my mother
-and sister go without me? No, I shan't flatter you by showing my real
-self."
-
-"I have seen enough of your real self, thank you. I believe I prefer
-the unreal, the imaginary woman I suffered myself to fancy you to be
-for a brief space after our acquaintance began."
-
-"Now you are rude," she began, her voice faltering ever so little, but
-enough to shake his equilibrium. He made a movement towards her; and
-she looked him in the face, trying to keep down the tingle of
-satisfaction in her veins. For Gladys's experience of men had taught
-her to recognize in a certain phase of incivility the existence of
-passion unsubdued. It is only indifference in his sex that can
-maintain an armor of polite self-control towards hers.
-
-Grove caught the transient gleam in her eye, and read it aright.
-Immediately he was on the defensive, and his manner froze.
-
-"I believe you know my aunt, Mrs. Gervase, in town," he said. "I think
-I saw you at one of her dances, in January."
-
-"Mrs. Gervase is the dearest thing," interrupted Miss Eliot, conscious
-of blankness in her tone.
-
-"She may be, but it would be a brave person who would tell her so. She
-is a delightful, but autocratic, personage; and one of the treats of
-the year for me is to get away to her and my uncle for a holiday, when
-they have no one else. This is one of those rare occasions. The
-cottage people who have come down to Sheepshead have a tacit agreement
-to keep to themselves, just now. They are supposed to be getting
-their houses to rights, and making gardens, and what not. Mrs. Gervase
-says they are really wearing out the past season's gloves, and putting
-tonics on their hair, and trying new cures and doses, for which there
-was no time before leaving town. The days will pass in doing as we
-please, and in the evening we shall dine well (for the Gervases have a
-corker of a cook), after which my aunt and uncle and I will take each
-a book and a lamp into some nook of the library, and read till
-bedtime. You can't imagine a life more to my taste."
-
-"Prohibitory to outsiders, at least," said Gladys. "This is, as I
-suppose you mean it to be, awfully alarming to me; for I haven't told
-you that I am for three weeks to be Mrs. Gervase's nearest neighbor. I
-am going to visit an old friend of my mother's,--Mrs. Luther
-Prettyman."
-
-Grove experienced a sensation of dismay. The Prettymans! Chateau
-Calicot, as he had dubbed their new florid "villa," built on the shore
-in objectionable proximity to his uncle's house, some three years
-back! He remembered the vines planted, the shrubs set out, the rattan
-screens hung, the final adjustment of chairs by Mrs. Gervase, in the
-attempt to shut out every glimpse of the Prettyman belongings from
-their place of daily rendezvous on the veranda at Stoneacres; his
-uncle's sly amusement when the cupola of the Prettyman stables, and
-the roof of a detestable little sugar-temple tea-house were projected
-on their line of vision, spite of all. Mrs. Gervase could not forgive
-herself for not having secured that point of land when land was so
-ridiculously cheap. On an average of once a day, she reminded her
-husband that she had begged him to do so, and he had put it off until
-too late.
-
-Mrs. Prettyman, unvisited by Mrs. Gervase for many months after the
-red-brown gables of her costly dwelling rose into prominence at
-Sheepshead Point, had gradually found her way into quasi-intimacy at
-Stoneacres. Mrs. Gervase, protesting that her neighbor was
-commonplace, vacuous, a being from whom one could derive nothing more
-profitable than the address of a place in town to have one's lace
-lampshades made a dollar cheaper than elsewhere, allowed herself, in
-time, to take a mild but perceptible interest in Prettyman affairs.
-Through force of habit, she had grown accustomed to survey the
-Prettyman lodge-gates, in driving, without remarking upon "the
-absurdity of gilded finials to iron railings, at a rough, seaside
-place like this." Nay, the noses of the Gervase cobs were now not
-infrequently turned in through these gilded railings. Mr. and Mrs.
-Gervase dined periodically with the Prettymans. The Prettymans
-repaired more frequently to Stoneacres. Mrs. Prettyman made capital,
-in town, of her friendship with "dear Mrs. Gervase." This, Grove, like
-the rest of the world, had come gradually to know and accept. But it
-grated on him to hear that the woman who, so far, had furnished his
-life its chief feminine influence should be associated in this way
-with the mistress of Chateau Calicot. It belittled his one
-passion--now put away as dead, but still his own. This, indeed, set
-the crowning touch upon his misfortune of meeting her again.
-
-
-Chapter III
-
-"My dear boy, you might have knocked me down with a feather," said
-Mrs. Gervase, upon capturing her nephew at the wharf and driving away
-with him. "Tell me at once what you mean by knowing Gladys Eliot, and
-arriving with her in that intimate sort of way, just as I had, with
-infinite trouble, succeeded in bluffing the Prettymans with a mere
-dinner on Saturday! Now you will be _having_ to call. _You_, of all
-people, hitting it off with Gladys Eliot!"
-
-"Give yourself no concern," put in Mr. Gervase, who was driving,
-looking back over his shoulder with a beaming smile; "I offer to throw
-myself into the breach. A woman as beautiful, as tall, as placid, as
-Miss Eliot commands the best homage of my heart. I forewarn you that I
-am going desperately into this affair. Such luck never came my way
-before."
-
-"Stop at the confectioner's for the macaroons, Henry," said his wife,
-ignoring transports. "Alan, you are looking wretched. When I think of
-those ruddy, brown cheeks, and the look of vigor you brought out of
-your college athletics a few years back, I'm inclined to renounce mind
-and go in for muscle exclusively. Oh, that wretched grind of life in
-New York that crushes the youth and spirit out of you poor boys that
-have to toil for a living! Surely, it isn't _only_ law that's worked
-such havoc in those pale, thin cheeks--"
-
-"My dear Agatha, your sympathy would put a well man in his bed," said
-Mr. Gervase, whose keen eyes took in more of the actual situation than
-did his wife's.
-
-"Oh well!--stop here, please; no, I won't get down, Jonas sees me; he
-will be out directly, with the parcel--you must see, Henry, that Alan
-has changed, even since--"
-
-"Alan, let me tell you of a bill our friend Jonas, here, who is a bit
-of a horse-jockey, as well as local confectioner and pastry-cook,
-sent in recently to your aunt. He had been selling her a mate to her
-chestnut, and the account ran this way:
-
-     "'MRS. H. GERVASE TO I. JONAS, DR.
-     1 lb. lady-fingers           $  0.30
-     One horse                     250.00
-     1/2 lb. cream peppermints         0.20
-                                   ------
-                           Total, $250.50'"
-
-Grove was glad to cover his various discomforts with a laugh. But he
-did not find it easy to elude the vigilance of Mrs. Gervase, who bided
-her time until an opportunity presented itself for an uninterrupted
-talk with him.
-
-"Stretch yourself out on that bamboo couch, and let me put the pillows
-in," she said, when they two adjourned to the veranda, in the twilight
-after dinner. "It is such fun to have a boy to cosset once more, with
-my own lads at college, and three weeks to wait before I can get Tom
-and Louis back from New London after the boat-race."
-
-"You have such an inspired faculty for making men comfortable," Grove
-remarked, from the depths of his _bien-etre_.
-
-"Custom, I suppose. An only daughter, with a father and three brothers
-to wait upon till I married, and a husband and two sons to impose on
-me since. I should not know how to handle girls. I like them, of
-course,--find them all very well in their way,--but they bother me.
-Perhaps it is that there are no old-fashioned girls any more--no young
-ones, certainly. They come into the world like Minerva from Jove's
-brain. They are so learned, or clever, or worldly-wise, read
-everything, see everything, hear everything discussed, have no
-illusions--but, there, I can't explain my preference. Men are
-captious, obstinate, whimsical, by turns; disappoint one continually
-in little things--but in the main they are so broad and big; scatter
-nonsense into thin air; are so loyal and unswerving to their beliefs;
-know where they stand, and, having made up their minds to action, do
-not change."
-
-"In short," remarked Grove, "you are like the little servant-maid in
-Cranford, when they told her to hand the potatoes to the ladies first.
-'I'll do as you bid me, ma'am, but I like the lads best.' My dearest
-auntie, there must be guardian angels specially appointed to look
-after our sex, and you are one of them. This is the age and America is
-the field for the unchecked efflorescence of young womankind. But when
-the conversation takes on this complexion, I feel it to be unfair not
-to allow the defendant the assistance of counsel; though, even if
-Uncle Henry were here, I am sure we should both be demolished
-speedily."
-
-"Never mind Henry," said that gentleman's representative. "He has got
-a new letter from a man in London whom he keeps for the purpose of
-making him miserable with catalogues of sales of books and papers he
-can't afford to buy. But he potters over them, and marks the lists,
-and writes back to the man in London, and, as you know, we do manage
-to become possessed of much more dear antiquity than the house will
-hold or our income warrant. This time, he is buried alive for an hour
-to come, for it is about a sale of Sir Philip Francis's letters and
-manuscripts at Sotheby's very soon."
-
-"I don't believe the real 'Junius' announcing himself would get me out
-of this bamboo chair and away from this deepening of eventide upon the
-sea and islands, the afterglow of sunset melting into moonlight, the
-soft caressing of the salt air blending with those hidden heliotropes
-of yours! Now, dear lady, let's go back to the concrete. I knew, the
-moment your eagle eye fell on me this afternoon, you would find out
-all that in me is. For so many years I've been telling you my scrapes,
-I may as well out with the latest and biggest of them. Two months ago,
-I took Gladys Eliot in to dinner at the Sargents'. I kept it from you
-in town, for which you'll say I am properly punished. I fell in love
-with her, like a schoolboy with green apples, heeding not the danger
-of unwholesomeness. After that, I met her when and wherever I could
-push my way to her. I thought of her, sleeping and waking; received
-from her looks and tones and words that would, as the lady novelists
-are so fond of saying, 'tempt an anchorite;' _believed_ in her!"
-
-"My poor child, how wretched!" said Mrs. Gervase, promptly.
-
-"So it proved. Last but not least of the comedy,--I skip the
-details,--I was deluded into buttoning myself up in a fluffy,
-long-tailed, iron-gray coat that I got in London last spring and had
-not had time to wear, put on a bunch of white carnations, and drove
-out to one of those inane Claremont teas in my friend Pierre Sargent's
-trap, because, forsooth, _she_ asked me. For an hour I suffered
-martyrdom in that little greenhouse sort of a veranda, with people
-herded together gossiping, and not setting their feet upon the lawn
-over the river that they came out to see. Women talked drivel to me,
-waiters slopped tea over me, and we walked on slices of buttered
-bread. Then _she_ came--on the box-seat of that brute McLaughlin's
-drag, having eyes for him only, so that every one talked of it!"
-
-"I remember--and I could not imagine what brought you there. Yes, I
-sat down on a little cake and completely ruined my new porcelain-blue
-_crepon_--those waiters were very careless. Jolly faded it trying to
-take out the spot, and Mathilde had the greatest trouble to match the
-stuff. Alan, that man McLaughlin ought to be drummed out of polite
-society. The girl who would receive his attentions, let herself be
-talked of as likely to be his wife, cannot at heart be nice. When your
-dear mother and I were girls, we would not have _looked_ at a big,
-vulgar creature like that, simply because he drove four-in-hand and
-was known to be rich. He would never have been asked to your
-grandfather's table. The materialism of this age takes, to me, no form
-more objectionable than the frank acceptance of such as he by women,
-old and young."
-
-"Exactly," said Grove, grimly. "And when I met her at his side, she
-turned away from him one moment with a banal jest for me, and then
-quickly recaptured him, as if fearful he would escape. That, even my
-infatuation would not suffer. I turned on my heel, and, until I met
-her by chance on the boat to-day, have never seen her since."
-
-"What can have been her reason for not going abroad?" said Mrs.
-Gervase, eagerly--a trifle suspiciously.
-
-Grove was silent. In his ear sounded a dulcet voice, murmuring as the
-boat neared shore: "Perhaps, when you have consented to feel better
-friends with me, you will come and let me tell you _why I stayed_."
-
-"You know, of course, that everybody says she is engaged? Her mother
-has hinted it to Mrs. Prettyman. If it be to this McLaughlin, then God
-knows you are well rid of her. If that be a blind, Alan dear,--you
-know it was always my way with you boys to scold about little things
-and let great ones pass,--I shan't add a word to your self-reproach;
-but I'll warn you--oh! I won't have the sin on my soul of letting you
-go unwarned. That woman, no matter whether she thinks she loves you or
-not, would make your misery. The parents of to-day don't trouble
-themselves to train up wives for the rank and file of our honest
-gentlemen. They create fine ladies, and look about for some one to
-take the expense of them off their hands. It is common talk that the
-Eliots have been strained to their utmost means to carry their girls
-from place to place, with the expectation of making rich marriages.
-The beauty and success of this one has apparently blinded those poor
-people to the consequences of their folly. The girl has been brought
-up to fancy herself of superior clay,--her habits are luxurious, her
-wants extravagant.
-
-"More than all, for five years she has been fed on the flatteries of
-society. Personal praise is indispensable to her. She has lived and
-consorted with the most lavish entertainers of the most reckless
-society in our republic. Even supposing that you won her beauty and
-graces for your own, what on earth could you expect to offer her in
-exchange for what she would give up? My poor, dear lad, I'm talking
-platitudes, you think; but you and Tom and Louis shall not be allowed
-to wreck your futures upon such as Gladys Eliot, while I have breath
-to speak. I'm afraid I think all marriages a mistake for young men. I
-know they are, as we measure and value things, in what we call
-'fashionable life.' Go out of it, by all means, if you can. To take
-_her_ out of it you would find to be quite another matter. And now,
-after this long homily, I've one question to put. Answer it, if you
-like--if you think I've the right to ask it. After seeing her again
-to-day, do you feel there is danger in her proximity?"
-
-"You have certainly torn sentiment to shreds," said Alan, getting up
-from amid his cushions and beginning to stride up and down the long
-veranda. Mrs. Gervase watched him without further speech. That he did
-not again allude to the subject sent her to bed with keen anxiety and
-a renewed regret that Mr. Gervase had not taken her advice about
-buying that point of land before it fell into the hands of the
-Prettymans.
-
-For the two or three days following his arrival at Stoneacres, Grove
-made no attempt to see his neighbor's guest. Once, indeed, they
-encountered her on horseback, while driving together in a family party
-in the buckboard, behind the cobs. Mr. Gervase, who, in his later
-enthusiasm about the Junius correspondence, had forgotten his
-charmer, asked who was that stunning, pretty girl, and, on being
-rallied by his wife, declared his poor sight was at fault, and that he
-meant to call on the Prettymans that very day; but Saturday brought
-with it the appointed dinner, without other overture from Stoneacres
-than cards left by Mrs. Gervase when the ladies were from home.
-
-Grove was hardly surprised when, on descending to the drawing-room in
-evening clothes, he found only that very colorless pair of Prettymans.
-Miss Eliot, it was alleged, was suffering from too long a ride in the
-hot sun of the afternoon to make the effort to come out. He saw in the
-countenance of his aunt a look of relief, which she at once proceeded
-to mask by unusual suavity to mankind in general, her flattered guests
-in particular.
-
-"The worst is over; I am safe," Grove decided. "But I like her all the
-better for that womanly holding back. Now, to live down my folly as
-best I can."
-
-He threw himself into hard work, and the days passed healthily. Mrs.
-Gervase had begun to relax her vigilance, to breathe almost free of
-care, when, upon one of his morning rides, ahead of him in a forest
-glade, he espied Gladys Eliot, in the saddle, attended by one of the
-Prettyman boys, a youngster of thirteen, mounted on a polo pony in
-process of "showing off" his and his master's accomplishments.
-
-At the sound behind them, both Gladys and the boy turned to look; and
-Grove saw that he could not retreat without a decided lack of dignity.
-He therefore rode by them, receiving from Miss Eliot a faint and
-chilly nod; from the boy,--an acquaintance of last year,--a more
-cordial salutation.
-
-"I say, Mr. Grove, _can't_ Punch take that fallen tree?" cried out the
-lad, in shrill treble. "_She_ says it's dangerous, because the bank is
-caved. Hold on one minute, and I'll show you he can clear it, bank and
-all."
-
-Punch, proving nothing loth, jumped the obstacles in question
-gallantly, but on the far side slipped on something, and spilled his
-rider among a bed of tall bracken, in which the boy lay, lost to
-sight. Both Grove and Gladys were in a minute at his side, shocked at
-finding him white and senseless.
-
-"It was not the fall," she said, rapidly. "He has heart-trouble, and
-his mother is always anxious about a sudden shock for him. He will
-outgrow it probably, the doctors say. Here, you hold him in your arms,
-while I get water from that brook. I know what to do, and he will soon
-come to himself."
-
-Grove found himself silently obeying her behests. He was struck by her
-prompt presence of mind, her deftness, and good sense. "What an
-admirable trained nurse is lost to the world in her!" he thought, and,
-when all was done, and the boy gave token of returning life, sat
-still, content to crush down moss and ferns, awkwardly holding his
-burden, while Gladys knelt so close that her breath in speaking fanned
-his cheek.
-
-"It wasn't Punch's fault. I've got a big bee buzzing in my head," were
-the welcome words they at last heard from the sufferer.
-
-"Yes, I know, Jim dear, but don't talk now till the big bee flies
-away," and the boy, closing his eyes, appeared to sleep.
-
-"Lay his head on my lap, and then, if you don't mind riding back and
-ordering some sort of a trap, without letting his mother know--"
-
-"I can't leave you here. It is too far from home, and the country
-hereabouts is quite bare of dwellings. Nor would I like you to ride so
-far alone. There; let him sleep, and we will watch him till he wakes.
-No doctor could have treated him more cleverly than you."
-
-"It's the result of a 'First Aid to the Injured' class I went to once,
-perhaps. But I always had a knack with ill people," she said, dropping
-the deep fringes of her eyes upon damask cheeks.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-That evening, Grove could do no less than call to inquire after Master
-Jim, who, not much the worse for his attack, kept his adoring mother
-in durance at his bedside, while Grove sat watching the opal flushes
-die out of a western sky, in company with Gladys. Quite another
-Gladys was this, in all save beauty and her dulcet voice, from his
-enslaver of town life.
-
-And now, to Mrs. Gervase's ill-concealed dismay, visits, meetings,
-rides, boating, began and continued daily. Grove was teaching Miss
-Eliot chess, he said, and the other things were what they call upon
-the stage "incidental divertisements."
-
-A fortnight of glorious weather had passed thus, when, on the eve of
-Grove's return to town and work, he asked Gladys to go out in a boat
-with him to watch the sunset on the water.
-
-"Now you have told me there is no reason I may not speak, I can wait
-no longer for an answer," he said, as, resting on his oars, he scanned
-her face eagerly. "When a man tears his heart out and throws it at a
-woman's feet, surely he offers something. But that, you know, is my
-all. If you can consent to share the kind of life mine has got to be
-for the next five or six years, I think I see daylight beyond. By that
-time, your first youth will be gone, you will be forgotten by the
-people who court you now, you will be a nobody in their esteem. To me,
-you will always be the one woman of the world. You will have the full
-love of my heart; and you shall see what that means, when a true man
-pours it upon you unrestrained. I don't pretend to be worth it, Heaven
-knows. But I do say you have never before been loved by a man like me,
-and you know it and feel it thoroughly. It's for you to take or leave
-me, accepting consequences."
-
-"What a stand-and-deliver kind of love-making," Gladys tried to say;
-but she was deeply stirred. Remaining silent, her eyes filled with
-tears; her head drooped towards her breast.
-
-"Gladys!" cried he, exultingly.
-
-"Don't you see, now, the real reason why I could not go abroad?" she
-said, smiling on him brightly, and lifting, at the same moment, her
-ungloved left hand to put back a loose lock of hair that the wind had
-blown across her cheek. Grove, gazing at her with his whole soul in
-his eyes, became aware of a ring upon the fourth finger,--a ring of
-such conspicuous brilliancy and choice gems as to convey but one
-meaning,--and his expression changed.
-
-"Oh! I hate it! I shall give it back!" she exclaimed, a burning blush
-settling upon her face. "I did not mean--it was an accident. I hate
-it, I tell you! Why do you look at me like that?"
-
-She tore the ring from her hand, and impetuously put it out of sight.
-Presently, as Grove, in mechanical fashion, resumed his rowing without
-a word, she cried out, passionately:
-
-"Why do you not ask me to explain all the--circumstances of my life
-since I saw you last? Why can't you understand that a girl situated as
-I am has temptations that at times seem to her irresistible? Need I
-mortify myself by telling you that I am _driven_--driven till I feel
-as if I would do anything to get rest from eternal lectures about what
-a rich marriage has got to do for me--and for others? Yes, you are
-right in saying that a man like you never before asked me to marry
-him. Because I feel that--because--because--Oh! you are cruel not to
-speak--to help me! How can I put into words that I am willing to give
-up all--"
-
-It was impossible, facing the rigid coldness of his face, to go on.
-She sat in wretched silence till they reached shore, and he gave her
-his chilly hand to help her upon the float. Then the touch of her
-fingers sent a tremor of relenting into his veins.
-
-"Oh, if I could! If I could! But he too--that other one--believed.
-Tell me; he does not still believe in you?"
-
-"I hate him," she said, doggedly. She shivered a little, as the
-quickened breeze of evening struck her thinly-clad form.
-
-Grove, clasping her hand, gazed into her eyes with a desperate resolve
-to read her heart.
-
-"Let me go--it is no use," she said, turning away from him.
-
-And, with a sigh deep as Fate, he loosened his hold of her--forever.
-
-
-
-
-On Frenchman's Bay
-
-Chapter I
-
-From Maxwell Pollock, Esq., No. -- Fifth Avenue, New York, to Stephen
-Cranbrooke, Esq., ---- Club, New York.
-
-     "May 30, 189-.
-
-     "My dear Cranbrooke:
-
-     "You will wonder why I follow up our conversation of last
-     evening with a letter; why, instead of speaking, I should
-     write what is left to be said between us two.
-
-     "But after a sleepless night, of which my little wife
-     suspects nothing, I am impelled to confide in you--my oldest
-     friend, _her_ friend, although you and she have not yet grown
-     to the comprehension of each other I hoped for when she
-     married me three years ago--a secret that has begun to weigh
-     heavy upon my soul.
-
-     "I do not need to remind you that, since our college days,
-     you have known me subject to fits of moodiness and depression
-     upon which you have often rallied me. How many times you
-     have said that a fellow to whom Fate had given health,
-     strength, opportunity, and fortune--and recently the treasure
-     of a lovely and loving wife--has no business to admit the
-     word 'depression' into his vocabulary!
-
-     "This is true. I acknowledge it, as I have a thousand times
-     before. I am a fool, a coward, to shrink from what is before
-     me. But I was still more of a fool and a coward when I
-     married her. For her sake, the prospect of my death before
-     this summer wanes impels me to own to you my certainty that
-     my end is close at hand.
-
-     "In every generation of our family since the old fellow who
-     came over from England and founded us on Massachusetts soil,
-     the oldest son has been snatched out of life upon the
-     threshold of his thirtieth year. I carried into college with
-     me an indelible impression of the sudden and distressing
-     death of my father, at that period of his prosperous career,
-     and of the wild cry of my widowed mother when she clasped me
-     to her breast, and prayed Heaven might avert the doom from
-     me.
-
-     "Everything that philosophy, science, common sense, could
-     bring to the task of arguing me out of a belief in the
-     transmission of this sentence of a higher power to me, has
-     been tried. I have studied, travelled, lived, enjoyed myself
-     in a rational way; have loved and won the one woman upon
-     earth for me, have revelled in her wifely tenderness.
-
-     "I have tried to do my duty as a man and a citizen. In all
-     other respects, I believe myself to be entirely rational,
-     cool-headed, unemotional; but I have never been able to down
-     that spectre. He is present at every feast; and, although in
-     perfectly good health, I resolved yesterday to put the
-     question to a practical test. I called at the office of an
-     eminent specialist, whom I had never met, although doubtless
-     he knew my name, as I knew his.
-
-     "Joining the throng of waiting folk in Dr. ----'s outer
-     office, I turned over the leaves of the last number of
-     _Punch_, with what grim enjoyment of its _menu_ of jocularity
-     you may conceive. When my turn came, I asked for a complete
-     physical examination. But the doctor got no farther than my
-     heart before I was conscious of awakening interest on his
-     part. When the whole business was over, he told me frankly
-     that in what he was pleased to call 'a magnificent physique,'
-     there was but one blemish,--a spot upon the ripe side of a
-     peach,--a certain condition of the heart that 'might or might
-     not' give serious trouble in the future.
-
-     "'Might or might not'! How I envied the smooth-spoken man of
-     science his ability to say these words so glibly! While I
-     took his medical advice,--that, between us, was not worth a
-     straw, and he knew it, and I knew it,--I was thinking of
-     Ethel. I saw her face when she should know the worst; and I
-     became, immediately, an abject, cringing, timorous thing,
-     that crept out of the doctor's office into the spring
-     sunshine, wondering why the world was all a-cold.
-
-     "Here's where the lash hits me: I should never have married
-     Ethel; I should, knowing my doom, have married no one but
-     some commonplace, platitudinous creature, whom the fortune I
-     shall leave behind me would have consoled. But Ethel!
-     high-strung, ardent, simple-hearted, worshipping me far
-     beyond my deserts! Why did I condemn her, poor girl, to what
-     is so soon to come?
-
-     "On the fifteenth day of the coming August, I shall have
-     reached thirty years. Before that day, the blow will fall
-     upon her, and it is my fault. You know, Cranbrooke, that I do
-     not fear death. What manly soul fears death? It is only to
-     the very young, or to the very weak of spirit, the King
-     appears in all his terrors. Having expected him so long and
-     so confidently, I hope I may meet him with a courageous
-     front. But Ethel! Ethel!
-
-     "She will be quite alone with me this summer. Her mother and
-     sisters have just sailed for the other side, and I confess I
-     am selfish enough to crave her to myself in the last hours.
-     But some one she must have to look after her, and whom can I
-     trust like you? I want you to promise to come to us to spend
-     your August holiday; to be there, in fact, when--
-
-     "In the meantime, there must be no suggestion of what I
-     expect. She, least of all, must suspect it. I should like to
-     go out to the unknown with her light-hearted, girlish laugh
-     ringing in my ears.
-
-     "When we meet, as usual, you will oblige me by saying nothing
-     of this letter or its contents. By complying with this
-     request, you will add one more--a final one, dear old man--to
-     the long list of kindnesses for which I am your debtor; and,
-     believe me, dear Cranbrooke,
-
-     "Yours, always faithfully,
-
-     "MAXWELL POLLOCK."
-
-
-"Good heaven!" exclaimed Stephen Cranbrooke, dropping the sheet as if
-it burnt him, and sitting upright and aghast. "So _this_ is the cranny
-in Pollock's brain where I have never before been able to penetrate."
-
-Later that day, Mr. Cranbrooke received another epistle, prefaced by
-the house address of the Maxwell Pollocks.
-
-     "Dear Mr. Cranbrooke," this letter ran, "Max tells me he has
-     extended to you an invitation to share our solitude _a deux_
-     in your August holiday. I need hardly say that I endorse
-     this heartily; and I hope you will not regret to learn that,
-     instead of going, as usual, to our great, big, isolated
-     country-place in New Hampshire, I have persuaded Max to take
-     a cottage on the shore of Frenchman's Bay, near Bar
-     Harbor,--but not too near that gay resort,--where he can have
-     his sailboat and canoe, and a steam-launch for me to get
-     about in. They say the sunsets over the water there are
-     adorable, and Max has an artist's soul, as you know, and will
-     delight in the picturesque beauty of it all.
-
-     "I want to tell you, confidentially, that I have fancied a
-     change of air and scene might do him good this year. He is
-     certainly not ill; but is, as certainly, not quite himself. I
-     suppose you will think I am a little goose for saying so; but
-     I believe if anything went wrong with Max, I could never
-     stand up against it. And there is no other man in the world,
-     than you, whom I would ask to help me to find out what it
-     really is that worries him,--whether ill-fortune, or
-     what,--certainly not ill-health, for he is a model of
-     splendid vigor, as everybody knows, my beautiful husband!"
-
-"This is what she calls pleasant reading for me," said plain, spare
-Stephen Cranbrooke, with a whimsical twist of his expressive mouth.
-
-     "At any rate," he read, resuming, "you and I will devote
-     ourselves to making it nice for him up there. No man, however
-     he loves his wife, can afford to do altogether without men's
-     society; and it is so hard for me to get Max to go into
-     general company, or to cultivate intimacy with any man but
-     you!
-
-     "There is a bachelor's wing to the cottage we have taken,
-     with a path leading direct to the wharf where the boats are
-     moored; and this you can occupy by yourself, having breakfast
-     alone, as Max and I are erratic in that respect. We shall
-     have a buckboard for the ponies, and our saddle-horses, with
-     a horse for you to ride; and we shall pledge each other not
-     to accept a single invitation to anybody's house, unless it
-     please us to go there.
-
-     "Not less than a month will we take from you, and I wish it
-     might be longer. Perhaps you may like to know there is no
-     other man Max would ask, and I should want, to be 'one of us'
-     under such circumstances.
-
-     "Always cordially yours,
-
-     "ETHEL POLLOCK."
-
-"I asked her for bread, and she gave me a stone," he quoted, with a
-return of the whimsical expression. "Well! neither he nor she has ever
-suspected my infatuation. I am glad she wrote as she did, though, for
-it makes the watch I mean to set over Max easier. After looking at his
-case in every aspect, I am convinced there is a remedy, if I can only
-find it."
-
-A knock, just then, at the door of Mr. Cranbrooke's comfortable
-bachelor sitting-room was followed by the appearance inside of it of a
-man, at sight of whom Cranbrooke's careworn and puzzled countenance
-brightened perceptibly.
-
-"Ha! Shepard!" he said, rising to bestow on the newcomer a hearty grip
-of the hand. "Did you divine how much I wanted to talk to a fellow who
-has pursued exactly your line of study, and one, too, who, more than
-any other I happen to be acquainted with, knows just how far mind may
-be made to influence matter in preventing catastrophe, when--but,
-there, what am I to do? It's another man's affair,--a confidence that
-must be held inviolable."
-
-"Give me the case hypothetically," said Shepard, dropping, according
-to custom, into a leathern chair out at elbows but full of comfort to
-the spine of reclining man, while accepting one of Cranbrooke's galaxy
-of famously tinted pipes.
-
-"I think I will try to do so," rejoined his friend, "since upon it
-hangs the weal or woe of two people, in their way more interesting to
-me than any others in the world."
-
-"I am all ears," said Dr. Shepard, fixing upon Cranbrooke the full
-gaze of a pair of deep-set orbs that had done their full share of
-looking intelligently into the mystery of cerebral vagaries.
-Cranbrooke, as well as he could, told the gist of Pollock's letter,
-expressing his opinion that to a man of the writer's temperament the
-conviction of approaching death was as good as an actual
-death-warrant.
-
-Shepard, who asked nothing better than an intelligent listener when
-launched upon his favorite theories, kept the floor for fifteen
-minutes in a brilliant offhand discourse full of technicalities
-intermingled with sallies of strong original thought, to which
-Cranbrooke listened, as men in such a case are wont to do, in
-fascinated silence.
-
-"But this is generalizing," the doctor interrupted himself at last.
-"What you want is a special discussion of your friend's condition. Of
-course, not knowing his physical state, I can't pretend to say how
-long it is likely to be before that heart-trouble will pull him up
-short. But the merest tyro knows that men under sentence from
-heart-disease have lived their full span. It is the obsession of his
-mind, the invasion of his nerves by that long-brooding idea, that
-bothers me. I am inclined to think the odds are he will go mad if he
-doesn't die."
-
-"Good God, Shepard!" came from his friend's pale lips.
-
-"Isn't that what _you_ were worrying about when I came in? Yes--you
-needn't answer. You think so, too; and we are not posing as wise men
-when we arrive at that simple conclusion."
-
-"What on earth are we to do for him?"
-
-"I don't know, unless it be to distract his mind by some utterly
-unlooked-for concatenation of circumstances. Get his wife to make love
-to another man, for instance."
-
-"Shepard, you forget; these are my nearest friends."
-
-"And you forget I am a sceptic about a love between the sexes that
-cannot be alienated," answered the little doctor, coolly.
-
-Cranbrooke had indeed, for a moment, lost sight of his confidant's
-dark page of life--forgotten the experience that, years ago, had
-broken up the doctor's home, and made of him a scoffer against the
-faith of woman. He was silent, and Shepard went on with no evidence of
-emotion.
-
-"When that happened to _me_, it was a dynamite explosion that
-effectually broke up the previous courses of thought within me; and,
-naturally, the idea occurs to me as a specific for the case of your
-melancholy friend. Seriously, Cranbrooke, you could do worse than
-attack him from some unexpected quarter, in some point where he is
-acutely sensitive--play upon him, excite him, distract him, and so
-carry him past the date he fears."
-
-"How could I?" asked Cranbrooke of himself.
-
-There was another knock; and, upon Cranbrooke's hearty bidding to come
-in, there entered no less a person than the subject of their
-conversation.
-
-Even the astute Shepard finished his pipe and took his leave without
-suspecting that the manly, healthy, clear-eyed, and animated Maxwell
-Pollock had anything in common with the possessed hero of Cranbrooke's
-story. Cranbrooke, who had dreaded a reopening of the subject of
-Pollock's letter, was infinitely relieved to find it left untouched.
-
-The visit, lasting till past midnight, was one of a long series dating
-back to the time when they were undergraduates at the university.
-There had never been a break in their friendship. The society of
-Cranbrooke, after that of his own wife, was to Pollock ever the most
-refreshing, the most inspiring to high and manly thought. They talked,
-now, upon topics grave and gay, without hinting at the shadow
-overlying all. Pollock was at his best; and his friend's heart went
-out to him anew in a wave of that sturdy affection "passing the love
-of woman"--rare, perhaps, in our material money-getting community,
-but, happily, still existing among true men.
-
-When the visitor arose to take leave, he said in simple fashion: "Then
-I may count on you, Cranbrooke, to stand by us this summer?"
-
-"Count on me in all things," Cranbrooke answered; and the two shook
-hands, and Pollock went his way cheerily, as usual.
-
-"Is this a dream?" Cranbrooke asked himself, when left alone. "Can it
-be possible that sane, splendid fellow is a victim of pitiful
-hallucination, or that he is really to be cut off in the golden summer
-of his days. No, it can't be; it must not be. He must be, as Shepard
-says, 'pulled up short' by main force. At any cost, I must save him.
-But how? _Anyhow!_ Max must be made to forget himself--even if I am
-the sacrifice! By George! this _is_ a plight I'm in! And Ethel, who
-adores the ground he walks upon! I shall probably end by losing both
-of them, worse luck!"
-
-The morning had struggled through Cranbrooke's window-blinds before he
-stirred from his fit of musing and went into his bedroom for a few
-hours of troubled sleep.
-
-
-Chapter II
-
-Mr. and Mrs. Pollock took possession of their summer abiding-place on
-a glorious day of refulgent June, such as, in the dazzling atmosphere
-of Mount Desert Island, makes every more southerly resort on our
-Atlantic coast seem dull by comparison. To greet them, they found a
-world of fresh-washed young birches sparkling in the sun; of
-spice-distilling evergreens, cropping up between gray rocks; of
-staring white marguerites, and huge, yellow, satin buttercups, ablow
-in all the clearings; of crisp, young ferns and blue iris, unfolding
-amid the greenery of the wilder bits of island; haunts that were soon,
-in turn, to be blushing pink with a miracle of brier-roses.
-
-And what a charmed existence followed! In the morning, they awoke to
-see the water, beneath their windows, sparkle red in the track of the
-rising sun; the islets blue-black in the intense glow. All day they
-lived abroad in the virgin woods, or on the bay in their canoe. And,
-after sunsets of radiant beauty, they would fall asleep, lulled by the
-lapping of little waves upon the rock girdle that bound their lawn. It
-was all lovely, invigorating, healthful. Of the cottagers who composed
-the summer settlement, only those had arrived there who, like the
-Pollocks, wanted chiefly to be to themselves.
-
-In these early days of the season, Max and Ethel liked to explore on
-horseback the bosky roads that thread the island, startling the mother
-partridge, crested and crafty, from her nest, or sending her, in
-affected woe, in a direction to lead one away from where her brood was
-left; lending themselves to the pretty comedy with smiles of sympathy.
-Or else, they would rifle the ferny combs of dew-laden blossoms, all
-the while hearkening to the spring chatter of birds that did their
-best to give utterance to what wind-voice and leaf-tone failed to
-convey to human comprehension. Then, emerging from green arcades, our
-equestrians would find themselves, now, in some rocky haunt of
-primeval solitude facing lonely hilltops and isolated tarns; now,
-gazing upon a stretch of laughing sea framed by a cleft in the
-highlands.
-
-Another day, they would climb on foot to some higher mountain top, and
-there, whipped by tonic breezes, stand looking down upon the wooded
-waves of lesser summits, inland; and, seaward, to the broad Atlantic,
-with the ships; and, along the coast, to the hundreds of fiords, with
-their burden of swirling waters!
-
-Coming home from these morning expeditions with spirit refreshed and
-appetite sharpened, it was their custom to repair, after luncheon, to
-the water, and by the aid of sails, steam, or their own oars or
-paddles, cut the sapphire bay with tracks of argent brightness, or
-linger for many a happy hour in the green shadow of the sylvan shore.
-
-The month of July was upon the wane before husband and wife seemingly
-aroused to the recollection that their idyl was about to be
-interrupted by the invasion of a third person. Ethel, indeed, had
-pondered regretfully upon the coming of Cranbrooke for some days
-before she spoke of it to her husband; while Max!--
-
-The real purpose of Cranbrooke's visit, dismissed from Pollock's mind
-with extraordinary success during the earlier weeks of their stay upon
-the island, had by now assumed, in spite of him, the suggestion of a
-death-watch set upon a prisoner. He strove not to think of it. He
-refrained from speaking of it. So delicious had been to him the draft
-of Ethel's society, uninterrupted by outsiders, in this Eden of the
-eastern sea; so perfect their harmony of thought and speech; so
-charming her beauty, heightened by salt air and outdoor exercise and
-early hours, Max wondered if the experience had been sent to him as an
-especial allowance of mercy to the condemned. To the very day of
-Cranbrooke's arrival, even after a trap had been sent to the evening
-boat to fetch him, the husband and wife refrained from discussing the
-expected event.
-
-It was the hour before sunset, following a showery afternoon; and,
-standing together upon their lawn to look at the western sky, Max
-proposed to her to go out with him for awhile in the canoe. They ran
-like children, hand in hand, to the wharf, where, lifting the frail
-birch-bark craft from its nest, he set it lightly afloat. Ethel,
-stepping expertly into her place, was followed by Max, who, in his
-loose cheviot shirt, barearmed and bareheaded, flashing his red-dyed
-paddle in the clear water, seemed to her the embodiment of manly grace
-and strength.
-
-They steered out into the bay; and, as they paused to look back upon
-the shore, the glory of the scene grew to be unspeakable. Behind the
-village, over which the electric globes had not yet begun to gleam,
-towered Newport, a rampart of glowing bronze, arched by a rainbow
-printed upon a brooding cloud. Elsewhere, the multicolored sky flamed
-with changing hues, reflected in a sea of glass. And out of this sea
-arose wooded islands; and, far on the opposite shore of the mainland,
-the triple hills had put on a vestment of deepest royal purple.
-
-"I like to look away from the splendor, to the side that is in
-shadow," said Ethel. "See, along that eastern coast, how the
-reflected sunlight is flashed from the windows on that height, and the
-blue columns of hearth smoke arise from the chimneys! Doesn't it make
-you somehow rejoice that, when the color fades, as it soon must, we
-shall still have our home and the lights we make for ourselves to go
-back to?"
-
-There was a long silence.
-
-"What has set you to moralizing, dear?" he asked, trying to conceal
-that he had winced at her innocent question.
-
-"Oh! nothing. Only, when one is supremely happy, as I am now, one is
-afraid to believe it will endure. How mild the air is to-night! Look
-over yonder, Max; the jewelled necklace of Sorrento's lights has begun
-to palpitate. Let us paddle around that fishing-schooner before we
-turn."
-
-"Ethel, you are crying."
-
-"Am I? Then it is for pure delight. I think, Max, we had never so fine
-an inspiration as that of coming to Mount Desert. My idea of the place
-has always been of a lot of rantipole gaieties, and people crowded in
-hotels. While this--it is a little like Norway, and a great deal like
-Southern Italy. Besides, when before have we been so completely to
-ourselves as in that gray stone lodge by the waterside, with its hood
-of green ivy, and the green hill rising behind it? Let us come every
-year; better still, let us build ourselves a summer home upon these
-shores."
-
-"Should you like me to buy the cottage we now have, so that you can
-keep it to come to when you like?"
-
-"When _you_ like, you mean. Max, it can't be you have caught cold in
-this soft air, but your voice sounds a little hoarse. Well! I suppose
-we must go in, for Mr. Cranbrooke will be arriving very soon."
-
-Ethel's sigh found an echo in one from her husband, at which the
-April-natured young woman laughed.
-
-"There, it's out! We don't want even Cranbrooke, do we? To think the
-poor, dear man's coming should have been oppressing both of us, and
-neither would be first to acknowledge it! After all, Max darling, it
-is your fault. It was you who proposed Cranbrooke. I knew, all along,
-that I'd be better satisfied with you alone. Now, we must just take
-the consequence of your overhasty hospitality, and make him as happy
-as we are--if we can."
-
-"If we can!" said Max; and she saw an almost pathetic expression drift
-across his face--an expression that bewildered her.
-
-"Why do you look so rueful over him?"
-
-"I am thinking, perhaps, how hard it will be for him to look at
-happiness through another man's eyes."
-
-"Nonsense! Mr. Cranbrooke is quite satisfied with his own lot. He is
-one of those self-contained men who could never really love, I think,"
-said Mrs. Pollock, conclusively.
-
-"He has in some way failed to show you his best side. He has the
-biggest, tenderest heart! I wish there was a woman fit for him,
-somewhere. But Stephen will never marry, now, I fear. She who gets him
-will be lucky--he is a very tower of strength to those who lean on
-him."
-
-"As far as strength goes, Max, you could pick him up with your right
-hand. It may be silly, but I do love your size and vigor; when I see
-you in a crowd of average men, I exult in you. Imagine any woman who
-could get _you_ wanting a thin, sallow person like Cranbrooke!"
-
-"He can be fascinating, when he chooses," said Max.
-
-"The best thing about Cranbrooke, Max, is that he loves you," answered
-his wife, wilfully.
-
-"Then I want you, henceforth, to try to like him better, dear; to like
-him for himself. He is coming in answer to my urgent request; and I
-feel certain the more you know of him, the more you will trust in him.
-At any rate, give him as much of your dear self as I can spare, and
-you will be sure of pleasing me."
-
-"Max, now I believe it is you who are crying because you are too
-happy. I never heard such a solemn cadence in your voice. I don't want
-a minute of this lovely time to be sad. When we were in town, I
-fancied you were down--about something; now, you are yourself again;
-let me be happy without alloy. I am determined to be the _cigale_ of
-the French fable, and dance and sing away the summer. Between us, we
-may even succeed in making that sober Cranbrooke a reflection of us
-both. There, now, the light has faded; quicken your speed; we must go
-ashore and meet him. See, the moon has risen--O Max darling, to please
-me, paddle in that silver path!"
-
-This was the Ethel her husband liked best to see,--a child in her
-quick variations of emotion, a woman in steadfast tenderness.
-Conquering his own strongly excited feeling, he smiled on her
-indulgently; and when, their landing reached, Cranbrooke's tall form
-was descried coming down the bridge to receive them, he was able to
-greet his friend with an unshadowed face.
-
-The three went in to dinner, which Ethel, taking advantage of the
-soft, dry air, had ordered to be served in a _loggia_ opening upon the
-water. The butler, a sympathetic Swede, had decked their little round
-table with wild roses in shades of shell-pink, deepening to crimson.
-The candles, burning under pale-green shades, were scarcely stirred by
-the faint breeze. Hard, indeed, to believe that, upon occasion, that
-couchant monster, the bay, could break up into huge waves, ramping
-shoreward, leaping over the rock wall, upon the lawn, up to the
-_loggia_ floor, and there beat for admission to the house, upon
-storm-shutters hastily erected to meet its onslaught!
-
-To-night, a swinging lantern of wrought iron sent down through its
-panels of opal glass a gentle illumination upon three well-pleased
-faces gathered around the dainty little feast. Ethel, who, in the days
-of gipsying, would allow no toilets of ceremony, retained her
-sailor-hat, with the boat-gown of white serge, in which her infantile
-beauty showed to its best advantage. Cranbrooke was dazzled by the new
-bloom upon her face, the new light in her eye.
-
-Pollock, too, tall, broad-shouldered, blonde, clean-shaven save for a
-mustache, his costume of white flannel enhancing duly the transparent
-healthiness of his complexion, looked wonderfully well--so Cranbrooke
-thought and said.
-
-"Does he not?" cried Ethel, exultingly. "I knew you would think so.
-Max has been reconstructed since we have lived outdoors in this
-wonderful air. Just wait, Mr. Cranbrooke, till we have done with you,
-and you, too, will be blossoming like the rose."
-
-"I, that was a desert, you would say," returned Cranbrooke, smiling.
-Involuntarily it occurred to him to contrast his own outer man with
-that of his host. Somehow or other, the fond, satisfied look Ethel
-bestowed upon her lord aroused anew in their friend an old, teasing
-spirit of envy of nature's bounty to another, denied to him.
-
-As the moon transmuted to silver the stretch of water east of them,
-and the three sat over the table, with its _carafes_ and decanters and
-egg-shell coffee-cups, till the flame of a cigar-lighter died utterly
-in its silver beak, their talk touching all subjects pleasantly,
-Cranbrooke persuaded himself he had indeed been dreaming a bad dream.
-The journey thither, of which every mile had been like the link of a
-chain, was, for him, after all, a mere essay at pleasure-seeking. He
-had come on to spend a jolly holiday with a couple of the nicest
-people in the world--nothing more! His fancies, his plans, his
-devices, conceived in sore distress of spirit, were relegated to the
-world of shadows, whence they had been summoned.
-
-When Ethel left the two men for the night, and the butler came out to
-collect his various belongings, Pollock rose and bade Cranbrooke
-accompany him to see the mountains from the other side of the house.
-Here, turning their backs on the enchantment of the water view, they
-looked up at an amphitheatre of hills, dominated in turn by rocky
-summits gleaming in the moon. But for the lap of the water upon the
-coast, the stir of a fresh wind arising to whisper to the leaves of a
-clump of birches, Mother Earth around them was keeping silent vigil.
-
-"What a perfect midsummer night!" said Cranbrooke, drawing a deep
-breath of enjoyment. "After the heat and dust of that three hundred
-miles of railway journey from Boston, this _is_ a reward!"
-
-"We chose better than we knew the scene of my euthanasia," answered
-Pollock, without a tremor in his voice.
-
-A thrill ran through Cranbrooke's veins. He could have sworn the air
-had suddenly become chill, as if an iceberg had floated into the bay.
-He tried to respond, and found himself babbling words of weak
-conventionality; and all the while the soul of the strong man within
-him was saying: "It must not be. It shall not be. If I live, I shall
-rescue you from this ghastly phantom."
-
-"Don't think it necessary to give words to what you feel for me," said
-Pollock, smiling slightly. "You are not making a brilliant success of
-it, old man, and you'd better stop. And don't suppose I mean to
-continue to entertain my guest by lugubrious discussions of my
-approaching _finale_. Only, it is necessary that you should know
-several things, since the event may take us unawares. I have made you
-my executor, and Ethel gets all there is; that's the long and short of
-my will, properly signed, attested, and deposited with my lawyer
-before I left town. Ethel's mother and sisters will be returning to
-Newport in a fortnight, and they will, no doubt, come to the poor
-child when she needs them. There _must_ be some compensation for a
-decree of this kind, and I have it in the absolute bliss I have
-enjoyed since we came here. That child-wife of mine is the most
-enchanting creature in the world. If I were not steeped in
-selfishness, I could wish she loved me a little less. But all emotions
-pass, and even Ethel's tears will dry."
-
-"Good Heaven, Max, you are talking like a machine! One would think
-this affair of yours certain. Who are you, to dare to penetrate the
-mystery of the decrees of your Maker--"
-
-"None of that, if you please, Cranbrooke," interrupted Pollock; "I
-have fought every inch of the way along there, by myself, and have
-been conquered by my conviction. Did I tell you that my father, before
-me, struggled with similar remonstrances from _his_ friends? The
-parsons even brought bell and book to exorcise his tormentor--and all
-in vain. He was snuffed out in full health, as I shall be, and why
-should I whine at following him? Come, my dear fellow, I am keeping
-you out of a capital bed, from sleep you must require. There's but one
-matter in which you can serve me,--take Ethel into your care. Win her
-fullest confidence; let her know that when I am not there, _you will
-be_."
-
-Cranbrooke went to his room, but not to rest. When his friends next
-saw him, he was returning from a solitary cruise about the bay in a
-catboat Pollock kept at anchor near their wharf.
-
-"Why, Mr. Cranbrooke!" cried Ethel, lightly. "The boatman says you
-have been out ever since daybreak. But that we espied the boat tacking
-about beyond that far rock, I should have been for sending in search
-of you."
-
-"Cranbrooke is an accomplished sailor," said Max. "But just now,
-breakfast's the thing for him, Ethel. See that he is well fed, while I
-stroll out to the stable and look after the horses."
-
-As he crossed the greensward, Ethel's gaze followed him, till he
-disappeared behind a clump of trees. Then she turned to her guest.
-
-"Let me serve you with all there is, until they bring you something
-hot," she said, with her usual half-flippant consideration of him. "Do
-you know you look very seedy? I have, for my part, no patience with
-these early morning exploits."
-
-"If you could have seen the world awakening as I saw it, this morning,
-you would condone my offence," he answered, a curious expression Ethel
-thought she had detected in his eyes leaving them unclouded, as he
-spoke.
-
-
-Chapter III
-
-No one who knew Stephen Cranbrooke well could say he did anything by
-halves. In the days that followed his arrival at Mount Desert, Max
-Pollock saw that his friend was lending every effort to the task of
-establishing friendly relations with his wife. From her first
-half-petulant, half-cordial manner with him,--the manner of a woman
-who tries to please her husband by recognition of the claim of his
-nearest male intimate,--Ethel had passed to the degree of manifestly
-welcoming Cranbrooke's presence, both when with her husband and
-without him.
-
-As Max saw this growing friendship, he strove to increase it by
-absenting himself from Ethel, instead of, as heretofore, spending
-every hour he could wring from the society of other folk, in the light
-of her smiles. His one wish that Ethel might be insensibly led to
-find another than himself companionable; that she might be, though
-never so little, weaned from her absolute dependence upon him for
-daily happiness, before the blow fell that was to plunge her in
-darkest night, kept him content in these acts of self-sacrifice.
-
-But, as was inevitable, his manner toward them both underwent a
-trifling change. His old buoyancy of affection was succeeded by a
-quiet, at times wistful, recognition of the fact that his friend and
-his wife had now found another interest besides himself. But he was
-proud to see Cranbrooke had justified his boast that he "could be
-fascinating when he chose;" and he was glad to think Cranbrooke at
-last realized the charm Ethel, apparently a mere bright bubble upon
-the tide of society, had to a man of intellect and heart. "It was as I
-said," the poor fellow repeated to himself, trying to find comfort in
-the realization of his prescience; and when Ethel, alone with him,
-would break into paeans of his friend, and wonder how she could have
-been so blind to the "real man" before, Max answered her loyally that
-his highest wish for both of them was at last gratified.
-
-Then the day came when there was question of a companion for Ethel in
-a sailing-party to which she had accepted an invitation--and for Max
-was destined an emotion something like distaste.
-
-They were sitting over the breakfast table,--a meal no longer
-exclusive to wife and husband, as had been agreed, but shared by
-Cranbrooke with due regularity,--when Ethel broached the subject.
-
-"You know, Max, I was foolish enough to promise that irresistible Mrs.
-Clayton--when she would not take no for an answer, yesterday,--that
-_some_ of us would join her water party to-day. It is to be an idle
-cruise, with no especial aim--luncheon on board their schooner-yacht;
-the sort of thing I knew would bore you to extinction--being huddled
-up with the same people half the day."
-
-"It is the opening wedge--if you go to this, you will be booked for
-others, that's all," said Max, preparing to say, in a martyrized way,
-that he would accompany her, if she liked.
-
-"Oh, I knew you would feel that; and so I told her she must really
-excuse my husband, but that I had no doubt Mr. Cranbrooke would accept
-with pleasure. You see, Mr. Cranbrooke, what polite inaccuracies you
-are pledged by friendship to sustain."
-
-"I _will_ go with pleasure," Stephen said, with what Max thought
-almost unnecessary readiness.
-
-"Bravo!" cried Ethel. "This is the hero's spirit. And so, Max dear,
-you will have a long day to yourself while I am experimenting in
-fashionable pleasuring, and Mr. Cranbrooke is representing you in
-keeping an eye on me."
-
-"You will, of course, be at home to dinner?" said her husband.
-
-"Surely. Unless breezes betray us, and we are driven to support
-exhausted nature upon hardtack and champagne; for, of course, all of
-the Claytons' luncheon will be eaten up, and there are no stores
-aboard a craft like that. Will you order the buckboard for ten, dear?
-We rendezvous at the boat-wharf. And, as there is no telling when we
-shall be in, don't trouble to send to meet me. Mr. Cranbrooke and I
-will pick up a trap to return in."
-
-Max saw them off in the buckboard; and, as Ethel turned at some little
-distance and looked back at him, where he still stood on the gravel
-before their vine-wreathed portal, waving her hand with a charming
-grace, then settling again to a _tete-a-tete_ with Cranbrooke, he felt
-vaguely resentful at being left behind.
-
-The clear, dazzling atmosphere, the sense of youthful vitality in his
-being, made him repel the idea of exclusion from any function of the
-animated world. He almost thought Ethel should have given him a chance
-to say whether or no he would accompany her. Was it not, upon her
-part, even a little bit--a _very_ little bit, lacking in proper wifely
-feeling, to be so prompt in dispensing with his society, to accept
-that of others for a whole, long, bright summer's day of pleasuring?
-
-This suggestion he put away from him as quickly as it came. He was
-like a spoiled child, he said to himself, who does not expect to be
-taken at his word. Ethel well knew his dislike of gossiping groups of
-idle people; equally well she remembered, no doubt, his frequent
-requests that she would mingle more with the world, take more pleasure
-on her own account. And Cranbrooke,--dear old Cranbrooke,--of course
-he was ready to punish himself by going off on such a party, when it
-was an opportunity to serve his friend!
-
-So Max put his discontent away, and, mounting his horse, went off
-alone for a ride half around the island, lunching at Northeast Harbor,
-and returning, through devious ways, by nightfall.
-
-Restored to healthy enjoyment of all things by his day in the saddle,
-he turned into the avenue leading to their house, buoyed up by the
-sweet hope of Ethel returned--Ethel on the watch for him. Already, he
-saw in fancy the gleam of her jaunty white yachting-costume between
-the tubs of flowering hydrangeas ranged on either side the walk before
-their door. The lamps inside--the "home lights," of which she had once
-fondly spoken to him--were already lighted. She would, perhaps, be
-worrying at his delay. He quickened his speed, and rode down the
-avenue to the house at a brisk trot. The groom, who, from the stable,
-had heard the horse's feet, started up out of the shrubbery to meet
-him. But there was no other indication of a watch upon the movements
-of the master of the house.
-
-"Mrs. Pollock has not returned, then?" he asked, conscious of
-blankness in his tone.
-
-"No, sir; not yet. Our orders were, not to send for her, sir, as there
-was no knowing when the party would get in."
-
-"Yes, the breeze has pretty much died out since sunset," said Pollock,
-endeavoring to mask his disappointment by commonplace.
-
-He went indoors; and the house, carefully arranged though it was, with
-flowers and furniture disposed by expert hands to greet the returning
-of the master, seemed to him dull and chill. He ordered a cup of tea
-for himself, and, bending down, put a match to the little fire of
-birch-wood always kept laid upon the hearth of their picturesque hall
-sitting-room.
-
-In a moment, the curling wreathes of pale azure that arose upon the
-pyre of silvery-barked logs was succeeded by a generous flame. The
-peculiarly sweet flavor of the burning birch was distilled upon the
-air. Sipping the cup of tea, as he stood in his riding-clothes before
-the fire, Max felt a consoling warmth invade his members and expand
-his heart.
-
-"They will be in directly," he said; "and, by George, I shall be as
-ready for my dinner as they for theirs."
-
-In one corner of the hall stood a tall, slender-necked vase, where he
-had that morning watched Ethel arranging a sheaf of goldenrod with
-brown-seeded marsh-grasses,--a combination her touch had made
-individual and artistic to a striking degree. He recalled how, as she
-had finished it, she looked around, calling him and Stephen from their
-newspapers to admire her handiwork. He, the husband, had admired it
-lazily from his divan of cushions in the corner. Cranbrooke had gone
-over to stand beside his hostess, and thence they had passed, still in
-close conversation, out to the grassy terrace above the sea.
-
-Now, why should this recollection awaken in Max Pollock a new sense
-of the feeling he had been doing his best to dispose of all day? He
-could not say; but there it was, to prick him with its invisible
-sting. Then, too, the dinner-hour was past, and he was hungry.
-
-He went out upon the veranda at the rear, and surveyed the expanse of
-water. Far off, between the electric ball that hung over the wharf of
-the village, and the point of Bar Island, opposite, he saw a bridge of
-lights from yachts of all sorts, with which the harbor was now full.
-He fancied a little moving star of light, that seemed to creep beneath
-the large ones, might be the Claytons' boat on her return, and, after
-another interval of watching, called up a wharf authority by
-telephone, and asked if the _Lorelei_ was in.
-
-"Not yet, sir," was the reply. "Probably caught out when the wind
-fell. Will let you know the minute they are in sight." With which
-assurance Mr. Pollock was finally driven by the pangs of natural
-appetite to sit down alone to a cheerless meal.
-
-There was a message by telephone, as he finished his repast. The
-_Lorelei_ was in, and Mrs. Pollock desired to speak with her husband.
-
-"We're all right," Ethel's voice said, "and I hope you haven't been
-worried. They _insist_ on our going to dinner at a restaurant, and, of
-course, you understand, I can't spoil the fun by refusing. _Couldn't_
-you come down and meet us?"
-
-His first impulse was to say yes; but a second thought withheld him.
-He gave her a pleasant answer, however, bidding her enjoy herself
-without thought of him, and adding: "Cranbrooke will look out for you
-and bring you home."
-
-It was quite ten o'clock when they arrived at the cottage, Ethel in
-high spirits, flushed with the excitement of a merry day, full of
-chatter over people and things Max had no interest in, appealing to
-Cranbrooke to enjoy her retrospects with her. She was "awfully sorry"
-about having kept Max from his dinner; "awfully sorry" not to have
-come home at once, but there was no getting out of the impromptu
-dinner; and, of course, they had to wait for it; and she was the
-first, after dinner, to make the move to go; Mr. Cranbrooke would
-certify to that.
-
-"I don't need any certification, dear," said Max, gently; but he did
-not smile. Cranbrooke, who sat with him after sleepy Ethel had retired
-from the scene, felt his heart wrung at thought of certain things that
-never entered into Ethel's little head. But he made no effort to
-dispel the cloud that had settled over his friend's face.
-
-By and by, Cranbrooke, too, said good-night, and went off into his
-wing, and Max was left alone with his cigar.
-
-The day on the water had verified Max's prediction that it would prove
-"an opening wedge." Ethel, caught in the tide of the season's
-gaieties, found herself impelled from one entertainment to the other;
-their cottage was invaded by callers, their little informal dinners
-were transformed into banquets of ceremony, as choice and more lively
-than those of their conventional life in town. The only persons really
-satisfied by the change of habits in the house were the servants,
-who, like all artists, require a public to set the seal upon their
-worth.
-
-Max, bewildered, found himself sometimes accompanying his wife to her
-parties; oftener--struck with the ghastly inappropriateness of his
-presence in such haunts--stopping at home and deputing to Cranbrooke
-the escort of his wife. To his surprise, he perceived that Cranbrooke
-was not only ready, but eager, on all occasions, to carry Ethel away
-from him. But then, of course, this was precisely what he had wished.
-
-And Ethel, who lost no opportunity to tell Max how "good," how
-"lovely," Cranbrooke had been to her, was she not carrying out to the
-letter her husband's wishes? He observed, moreover, that Ethel was
-even more impressed than he had expected her to be with that quality
-of "fascination." Cranbrooke's mind was like a beautiful new country
-into which she was making excursions, she said once; and Max, after a
-moment's hesitation, agreed with her very warmly.
-
-At last, Maxwell Pollock awoke one morning, with a start of
-disagreeable consciousness, to the fact that this was the eve of his
-thirtieth birthday. Occupied as he had been with various thoughts that
-had to do with his transient relations to this sublunary sphere, he
-had actually allowed himself to lose sight of the swift approach of
-his day of doom. Now, he arose, took his bath, dressed, and without
-arousing his wife, who, in the room adjoining, slept profoundly after
-a gay dance overnight, went alone to the waterside, with the intention
-of going out in his canoe.
-
-Early as he was, Cranbrooke was before him, carrying the canoe upon
-his head, moving after the fashion of some queer shelled-creature down
-to the float.
-
-Max realized, with a sense of keen self-rebuke, that the spectacle of
-his friend was repellant to him, and the prospect of a talk alone with
-Stephen on this occasion, the last thing he would have chosen.
-
-And--evidently a part of the latter-day revolution of
-affairs--Cranbrooke seemed to have forgotten that this day meant more
-than another to Pollock. He greeted him cheerily, in commonplace
-terms, commented on their identity of fancy in the matter of a paddle
-at sunrise, and offered to relinquish the craft in favor of its owner.
-
-"Of course not. Get in, will you," said Max, throwing off his coat;
-and, taking one of the paddles, while Cranbrooke plied the other,
-their swift, even strokes soon carried them far over toward the
-illuminated east.
-
-When well out upon the bay, they paused to watch the red coming of the
-sun. Beautiful with matin freshness was the sleeping world around
-them; and, inspired by the scene, Max, who was kneeling in the bow,
-turned to exclaim to Cranbrooke, with his old, hearty voice, upon the
-reward coming to early risers in such surroundings.
-
-"Jove, a man feels born again when he breathes air like this!"
-
-Cranbrooke started. It was almost beyond hope that Max should use such
-a phrase, in such accents, at such a juncture. Immediately, however,
-the exhilaration died out of Pollock's manner; and, again turning away
-his face, he showed that his thoughts had reverted to the old sore
-spot. He did not see the expression of almost womanly yearning in
-Cranbrooke's face when the certainty of this was fixed upon his
-anxious mind.
-
-The two men talked little, and of casual things only, while abroad. As
-they returned to the house, Cranbrooke made a movement as if to speak
-out something burning upon his tongue, and then, repressing it, walked
-with hasty strides to his own apartment.
-
-The day passed as had done those immediately preceding it. Calls, a
-party of guests at luncheon, a drive, absorbed Ethel's hours from her
-husband. When she reached home, at tea-time, he had come in from
-riding, and was standing alone in the hall, awaiting her.
-
-"How nice to find you here alone!" she cried, going up to kiss him,
-and then taking her place behind the tea-tray. "Do sit down, and let
-us imagine we are back in those dear old days before we were
-overpowered by outsiders. Never mind! The rush will soon be over; we
-shall be to ourselves again, you and I and--how stupid I am!" she
-added, coloring. "You and I, I mean, for he must go back to town."
-
-"You mean Cranbrooke?" he said, as she thought, absent-mindedly, but
-in reality with something like a cold hand upon his heart, that for a
-moment gave him a sense of physical apprehension. Had _it_ come, he
-wondered?
-
-But no, this was not physical; this was a shock of purely emotional
-displeasure. Could he believe his ears, that Ethel, his wife, had
-indeed blended another than himself with her dream of returning
-solitude?
-
-"Yes, it will be all over soon," he said, mechanically. "Had you a
-pleasant drive? And did you enjoy the box-seat with Egmont?"
-
-"Oh! Egmont, fortunately, can drive--if he _can't_ talk," she
-answered, lightly. "I suppose I am fastidious, or else spoiled for the
-conversation of ordinary men, after what I have had recently from
-Cranbrooke. By the way, Max dear, are you relentless against going
-with us to-night, to the _fete_ at the canoe club? You needn't go
-inside the club-house, you know. It will be lovely to look at, from
-the water."
-
-"With _us_? Then Cranbrooke has already promised?"
-
-"Yes, of course; he could not leave me in the lurch, could he, when my
-husband is such an obstinate recluse?"
-
-"And how do you intend to get there?"
-
-"By water, stupid, of course; how else? I will be satisfied with the
-rowboat, if you won't trust me in the canoe; but Mr. Cranbrooke is
-such an expert with the paddle, I shouldn't think you would object to
-letting me go with him. It will be perfectly smooth water, and the air
-is so mild. Do say I may go in the canoe, dear; it's twice the fun."
-
-"I think you know that, unless I take you, it is my wish you go
-nowhere at night in a canoe," he answered, coldly.
-
-Ethel was more hurt at his tone than disappointed by his refusal. She
-could not think what had come over her husband, of late, so often had
-this constrained manner presented itself to her advance. She set it
-down to her unwonted indulgence in society, and promised herself,
-with a sigh of relinquishment, that, after this summer, she would go
-back to her life lived for Max alone.
-
-Then, Cranbrooke coming in with two or three visitors, who lingered
-till almost dinner-time and were persuaded easily to stop for dinner,
-there was no chance to indulge in meditations, penitential or
-otherwise. When her guests took their departure, it was in the little
-steam-launch, she and Cranbrooke accompanying the party, and all bound
-for the _fete_, to be given on a wooded island in the bay. As they
-were leaving the house, something impelled her to run back and, in the
-semi-darkness of the veranda, seek her husband's side.
-
-"Max darling, kiss me good-by. Or, if you want me, let me stay with
-you."
-
-"No, no; I want you to enjoy every moment while you can," he said,
-withdrawing from her gaze to the shadow of a vine-wreathed column.
-
-"Max, your voice is strange. And once, at dinner, I saw you looking at
-me, and there was something in your eyes that frightened me. If you
-hadn't smiled, and lifted your glass to pledge me, I should not have
-known what to think."
-
-"Ethel! Wife! Do you love me?" he said, catching her to his heart.
-
-"Max! Why, Max! You foolish boy, we shall be seen."
-
-"Tell me, and kiss me once more, my own, my own!"
-
-"They are all aboard except you, Mrs. Pollock," a voice said; and,
-from the dew of the lawn, Cranbrooke stepped upon the veranda.
-
-Max started violently, and let his wife go from his embrace.
-
-"You see how rude you are making me toward our guests," said Ethel.
-"You have my wrap, Mr. Cranbrooke? Good-night, Max; and to-morrow I'll
-tell you all about it. Better change your mind and come after us,
-though."
-
-"Max need not trouble to do so," put in Cranbrooke, in a muffled
-voice. "As usual, I will fill his place."
-
-Max thought he almost hurried her away. They went down the slope of
-the lawn together; and, at the steep descent leading to the bridge,
-he saw Ethel stumble, and Cranbrooke throw his arm around her to
-steady her.
-
-And now, a passion took possession of Maxwell Pollock's being that
-impelled him to the impetuous action of following them to the wharf,
-and gesticulating madly after the swift little steamer that bore them
-away from him.
-
-"He dared take her, did he, when she would have stayed at a word from
-me? I see all, now. Specious, false, damnably false, he has snared her
-fancy in his net. But she loves me, I'll swear she loves me, and I'll
-snatch her from him, if it is with the last effort of my strength. Is
-there time? Well, what is to come, let it come! While there's life in
-me, she is mine."
-
-A moment, and he was afloat in the canoe, no sign of weakness in his
-powerful stroke with the paddle, no thought in his brain but the one
-intense determination of the male creature to wrest his beloved from
-the hands of his rival.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Every one conceded this to be quite the prettiest and most taking
-event of the season. The rustic club-house, its peaked gable and
-veranda defined with strings of colored lanterns, sent forth the music
-of a band, while to its portal trooped maidens and cavaliers, landing
-at the wharf from every variety of craft. The woods behind were linked
-with chains of light, the shore below lit with bonfires, and more
-evanescent eruptions of many-hued fireworks. Rockets hissed through
-the air, and broke in a rain of violet, green, and crimson meteors,
-till the zenith was a tangled mesh made by the trails of them;
-fire-balloons arose and were lost among the stars; little fire-boats,
-launched from vessels stocked for the purpose, bore their blazing
-cargoes out upon the tide; other unnamed monsters were let loose to
-carry apparent destruction zigzag through the waves. Every attendant
-yacht, sloop, launch, rowboat, or canoe, with which the water about
-the island was covered, carried quaint decoration in the guise of
-Chinese lanterns. Some of the smaller boats were arched with these;
-others tossed bouquets of fiery bubbles into the air. Creeping about
-at a snail's pace among the crowded boats, invisible canoes carried
-silent passengers; an occasional "oh!" of exclamation at the beauty of
-the scene, the only contribution people felt inclined to make to
-conversation. It was a pageant of bedazzlement, as if witches, gnomes,
-spirits of earth, air, and the underworld, had mingled their resources
-to enchant the eyes of mortals. And over all, sailed the lady-moon
-serenely, forgotten, but sure that her time would come again.
-
-Max found his launch without difficulty, on the outer circle of the
-amphitheatre of light. As he had divined, it was empty, save for the
-two boatmen.
-
-"The ladies went ashore, sir," one of his men said, in answer to his
-inquiry. "All but Mrs. Pollock, sir."
-
-"Mrs. Pollock? Where is she, then?" he asked, briefly.
-
-"She took our rowboat, sir, and went off on the water with one of the
-gentlemen. Mr. Cranbrooke, I think it was; and they ordered us to wait
-just here. No good going ashore, sir, if you want to see. It's better
-from this point, even, than nearer in."
-
-"Very well," said the master, and at once his canoe moved off to be
-lost in the crowd.
-
-He had sought for them in vain, peering into all the small boats
-whenever the flash-light of the rockets, or the catharine-wheels on
-the coast, lit the scene. Many a tender interlude was thus revealed;
-but of the two people he now longed with the fever of madness to
-discover, he saw nothing.
-
-At last, in a burst from a candle rocket, there was a glimpse of
-Ethel's red boat-cloak, her bare, golden head rising above it. She was
-sitting in the stern of the rowboat, Cranbrooke beside her, their bow
-above water, their oars negligently trailing. Ethel's eyes were fixed
-upon the glittering panorama; but Cranbrooke's eyes were riveted on
-her.
-
-With an oath, Max drove his paddle fiercely into the sea. The canoe
-sped forward like an arrow. Blind with anger, he did not observe that
-he was directly in the track of a little steamer laden with new
-arrivals, turning in toward the wharf.
-
-A new day dawned before the doctors, who had been all night battling
-for Maxwell Pollock's life, left him restored to consciousness, and
-reasonably secure of carrying no lasting ill effect from the blow on
-his head received by collision with the steamer.
-
-Carried under with his canoe, he had arisen to full view in the glare
-from a "set piece" of fireworks on the shore, beside the boat
-containing Cranbrooke and his wife. It was Cranbrooke, not Ethel, who
-identified the white face coming to the surface within reach of his
-hand, then sinking again out of sight. It was Cranbrooke, also, who
-sprang to Pollock's rescue, and, floating with his inert body, was
-dragged with him aboard the launch.
-
-As the rosy light of the east came to play upon Pollock's features, he
-opened his eyes for the first time with a look of intelligence. At his
-bedside, Ethel was kneeling, her whole loving soul in her gaze.
-
-"Is this--I thought it was heaven," he said, feeling for her hand.
-
-"It is heaven for me, now that I have you back, my own darling," she
-answered, through happy tears.
-
-"Have I been here long?"
-
-"A few hours since the accident. The doctors say you will be none the
-worse for it. And, Max dear, only think! This is your birthday! Your
-thirtieth birthday! Many, many, _many_ happy returns!" and she
-punctuated her wish with warm kisses.
-
-At that juncture, Cranbrooke came into the room and stood at the side
-of the bed opposite Ethel, who had no eyes for him, but kept on gazing
-at her recovered treasure as if she could never have enough.
-
-Max, though aware of Stephen's presence, made no movement of
-recognition, till Ethel spoke in playful chiding.
-
-"Darling! Where are your manners? Aren't you going to speak to our
-friend, and thank him for saving you--saving you for _me_, thank God!"
-
-She buried her face in the bed-clothes, overcome with the
-recollection; but even with the exquisite tenderness of her accents
-thrilling in his ear, Max remained obstinately dumb to Stephen
-Cranbrooke.
-
-"Forgive him; he is not himself!" pleaded Ethel, as she saw Cranbrooke
-about to go dejectedly out of the room.
-
-"Some day he will understand me," answered Stephen, with a gallant
-effort at self-control. Then, withdrawing, he murmured to himself:
-"But he will never know that, in playing with his edged tools, it is I
-who have got the death-blow."
-
-
-
-
-
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