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diff --git a/58325-0.txt b/58325-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..21a8d3b --- /dev/null +++ b/58325-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21148 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58325 *** + + + + + + + + + ++-------------------------------------------------+ +|Transcriber's note: | +| | +|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | +| | ++-------------------------------------------------+ + + + + +BOOKS BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT + +PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + ++THE DAWN OF A TOMORROW.+ Illustrated. + 12mo _net_ $1.00 + ++IN CONNECTION WITH THE DE WILLOUGHBY +CLAIM.+ 12mo _net_ 1.35 + ++HIS GRACE OF OSMONDE.+ 12mo _net_ 1.35 + ++A LADY OF QUALITY.+ 12mo _net_ 1.35 + ++THAT LASS O' LOWRIE'S.+ 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++HAWORTH'S.+ Illustrated. 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++THROUGH ONE ADMINISTRATION.+ 12mo _net_ 1.35 + ++LOUISIANA.+ Illustrated. 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++A FAIR BARBARIAN.+ 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++SURLY TIM, and Other Stories.+ 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++VAGABONDIA.+ 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++EARLIER STORIES; First Series.+ 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++EARLIER STORIES; Second Series.+ 12mo _net_ 1.25 + ++THE PRETTY SISTER OF JOSÉ.+ Illustrated. + 12mo _net_ 1.00 + + * * * * * + ++LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.+ Illustrated. 12mo _net_ 1.20 + ++SARA CREWE, LITTLE SAINT ELIZABETH, and + Other Stories.+ Illustrated. 12 mo _net_ 1.20 + ++GIOVANNI AND THE OTHER.+ Illustrated. + 12mo _net_ 1.20 + ++PICCINO, and Other Child Stories.+ Illustrated. + 12mo _net_ 1.20 + ++TWO LITTLE PILGRIMS' PROGRESS. A Story of + the City Beautiful.+ Illustrated. 12mo _net_ 1.20 + + * * * * * + ++LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.+ Illustrated in Color. + 8vo _net_ 2.00 + ++A LITTLE PRINCESS.+ Illustrated in Color. 8vo _net_ 2.00 + ++THE ONE I KNEW THE BEST OF ALL.+ Illustrated. + 12mo _net_ 1.25 + + + + +THROUGH ONE ADMINISTRATION + +BY + +FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT + +_author of "That Lass o' Lowrie's," "Haworth's," "Louisiana," "A Fair +Barbarian," etc., etc._ + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1916 + + +COPYRIGHT, 1881 and 1883, +BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. + +_All rights reserved._ + +[Illustration: Logo] + + + + +THROUGH ONE ADMINISTRATION. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +Eight years before the Administration rendered important by the series +of events and incidents which form the present story, there had come to +Washington, on a farewell visit to a distant relative with whom he was +rather a favorite, a young officer who was on the point of leaving the +civilized world for a far-away Western military station. The name of the +young officer was Philip Tredennis. His relative and entertainer was a +certain well-known entomologist, whom it will be safe to call Professor +Herrick. At the Smithsonian and in all scientific circles, Professor +Herrick's name was a familiar one. He was considered an enviable as well +as an able man. He had established himself in Washington because he +found men there whose tastes and pursuits were congenial with his own, +and because the softness of the climate suited him; he was rich enough +to be free from all anxiety and to enjoy the delightful liberty of +pursuing his scientific labors because they were his pleasure, and not +because he was dependent upon their results. He had a quiet and charming +home, an excellent matter-of-fact wife, and one daughter, who was being +educated in a northern city, and who was said to be as bright and +attractive as one could wish a young creature to be. + +Of this daughter Tredennis had known very little, except that she +enjoyed an existence and came home at long intervals for the holidays, +when it did not happen that she was sent to the sea or the mountains +with her mother instead. + +The professor himself seemed to know but little of her. He was a quiet +and intensely studious person, taking small interest in the ordinary +world and appearing always slightly surprised when his wife spoke to +him; still, his manner toward her was as gentle and painstaking as if +she had been the rarest possible beetle, and the only one of her species +to be found in any known collection, though perhaps the interest she +awakened in him was not so great as it might have been under such +exceptionally favorable circumstances. She was not a brilliant or +far-seeing woman, and her opinions of entomology and, indeed, of science +in general, were vague, and obscured by objections to small boxes, glass +cases, long pins, and chloroform, and specimens of all orders. + +So, observing this, Tredennis felt it not at all unnatural that he +should not hear much of his daughter from the professor. Why his +relative liked him the young man was not at all sure, though at times he +had felt the only solution of the mystery to be that he liked him +because his tendency was toward silence and books and research of all +kinds. He thought he was certain that the professor did like him. He had +invited him to visit him in Washington, and had taken him to the +Smithsonian, and rambled from room to room with him, bestowing upon him +tomes of information in the simplest and most natural manner; filled +with the quietest interest himself and entirely prepared to find his +feeling shared by his charge. He had given into his hands the most +treasured volumes in his library, and had even seemed pleased to have +him seated near him when he sat at work. At all events, it was an +established fact that a friendly feeling existed between them, and that +if it had been his habit to refer to his daughter, he would have spoken +of her to Tredennis. But Tredennis heard nothing of her until he had +been some days in Washington, and then it was Mrs. Herrick who spoke of +her. + +"Nathan," she said one evening at dinner, "Bertha will be home on +Tuesday." + +The professor laid his spoon down as if he had rather unexpectedly +discovered that he had had enough soup. + +"Bertha," he said. "Indeed! Next Tuesday. Well, of course, we must be +ready for her. Do you want any money, my dear? But, of course, you will +want money when she comes, if she has finished school, as I think you +said she had." + +"I shall want money to pay her bills," answered Mrs. Herrick. "She will +bring them with her. Her aunt has had her things made in New York." + +"Yes," said the professor, "I dare say they will be more satisfactory. +What kind of things, for instance, Catherine?" + +"Dresses," replied Mrs. Herrick, "and things of that sort. You know she +is to come out this season." + +"To come out," remarked the professor, carefully giving the matter his +undivided attention. "I hope she will enjoy it. What sort of a ceremony +is it? And after a young person has 'come out' does she ever go in, and +is there any particular pageant attached to such a--a contingency?" + +"When she comes out," answered Mrs. Herrick, taking a purely practical +view of the affair, "she begins to go to parties, to balls, and +receptions, and lunches; which she does not do when she is going to +schools. It isn't considered proper, and it wouldn't give her any time +for her studies. Bertha hasn't been allowed to go out at all. Her aunt +Maria has been very particular about it, and she will enjoy things all +the more because they are quite new to her. I dare say she will be very +gay this winter. Washington is a very good place for a girl to come out +in." + +After dinner, when they retired to the library together, it occurred to +Tredennis that the professor was bestowing some thought upon his +paternal position, and his first observation proved that this was the +case. + +"It is a most wonderful thing that a few brief years should make such +changes," he said. "It seems impossible that so short a time should +change a small and exceedingly red infant into a young person returned +from school in the most complete condition, and ready to 'come out.' She +was not interesting as an infant. I tried to find her so, but failed, +though it was insisted that she was an unusually intelligent baby, and I +have not seen much of her of late years. When she was growing it was +thought that the climate of Washington was not good for her. I am really +a little curious about her. My views of girls are extremely undefined. I +have always been a bookworm. I have not known girls. They have not come +within my radius. I remember one I once knew years ago, but that is all. +It was when I was a younger man. I think she was a year or so older than +Bertha. She was very interesting--as a study. She used to bewilder me." + +He walked over to the table, and began to turn over some papers. + +"She had gray eyes," he said, in a rather lower voice,--"gray eyes." + +He was so quiet for some time that Tredennis thought he had forgotten +what he had been talking about; but, after a pause of at least three +minutes, he spoke again. + +"I would not be at all sorry," he said, "if Bertha was a little like +her. I suppose," he added,--referring seriously to Tredennis,--"I +suppose they are all more or less alike." + +"I think"--faltered Tredennis, "perhaps so." + +He did not feel himself an authority. The professor stood still a +moment, regarding the fire abstractly. + +"_She_ had gray eyes," he said again,--"gray eyes!" and immediately +afterward returned to his table, seated himself, and fell to work. + +The next week Bertha arrived, and to her distant relative her arrival +was a revelation. She descended upon the quiet household--with her +trunks, her delight in their contents, her anticipation of her first +season, her fresh and rather surprised exultation in her own small +powers and charms, which were just revealing themselves to her--like a +young whirlwind. Her mother awakened to a most maternal interest in the +gayeties into which she was to be drawn; the very servants were absorbed +in the all-pervading excitement, which at length penetrated to the +professor's study itself, and aroused him from his entomological +reveries. + +After she had been in the house a week, he began to examine the girl +through his spectacles with great care and deliberation, and, having +cheerfully submitted to this inspection through several meals, one day +at dinner its object expressed herself with charming directness +concerning it. + +"I do hope you'll like me, papa," she said, "when you have classified +me." + +"Classified you!" said the professor, in some bewilderment. + +"Yes," answered Bertha. "You know I always feel as if you might turn me +over gently with your finger at any moment, and watch me carefully while +I struggled until you knew all about me, and then chloroform me and +stick a pin through me with a label on it. I shouldn't like the +chloroform and the pin, but I should take an interest in the label. +Couldn't I have the label without the pin, papa?" + +"I don't know," said the professor, examining her more carefully than +ever. "I am afraid not." + +After that it became his custom to encourage her to reveal herself in +conversation, which it was very easy to do, as she was a recklessly +candid young person, given to the most delightfully illogical +partisanship, an endless variety of romantic fancies, and a vivid +representation of all facts in which she felt interest. It must be +confessed that, for the sake of hearing her talk, the professor +somewhat neglected, for the time being, both _Coleoptera_ and +_Lepidoptera_, and, drifting into the sitting-room upon many sunny +mornings, allowed himself to be surrounded by innocent frivolities in +the way of personal adornments. And it must also be added that he fell +into the habit of talking of the girl to Tredennis, as they sat together +by the study fire at night. + +"She is an attractive girl," he said once, seriously. "I find myself +quite absorbed in her at times. She is chaotic, illogical, +unpractical--oftener than not she does not know anything of what she is +talking about, but her very absurdities have a kind of cleverness in +them. And wit--there is wit in her nonsense, though she is scarcely +conscious of it. I cannot help thinking of her future, and what its +needs will develop in her. It all depends upon the needs. You never know +what will be developed, but you know it depends upon the needs." + +"I--hope there will be no painful needs," said Tredennis, looking at the +fire. "She is very happy. I never saw any one so happy." + +"Yes, she's very happy," admitted the professor. "At present she is not +much more than a joyous, perfectly healthy young animal. She sings and +laughs because she can't help it, and she adorns herself from instinct. +She'll be different in a year or two. She'll be less happy, but more +interesting." + +"More interesting!" said Tredennis, in a low voice. + +"Yes, more interesting," answered the professor, looking at the fire +himself, with an air of abstractedly following a train of thought. "She +will have made discoveries about herself. It is a pity she can't make +them without being less happy--but then, none of us are happy." He +paused, rubbed his forehead a second, and then turned suddenly on +Tredennis. + +"Are _you_ happy?" he demanded. + +Tredennis started and hesitated. + +"Y-yes--n-no," he answered, unsteadily. He would have said yes +unreservedly a short time ago; but within the last few days he had been +less sure of himself, and now, being confronted with the question +unexpectedly, he found that he must answer with a reservation--though he +could not at all have given a reason for the feeling that he must do so. + +"Perhaps it is not my way to look at life brightly," he added. + +"It is her way," said the professor. "She believes in everything in a +persistent, childish fashion that is touching to older persons like +myself. If you contest her points of belief with her she is simply +obstinate. You can't move her." + +"Why should any one try?" said Tredennis, warmly. + +"There is no need to try," responded the professor. "She will find out +for herself." + +"Why should she?" said Tredennis, warmer still. "I hope she won't." + +The professor took off his spectacles and began to polish them carefully +with a corner of his large white handkerchief. + +"She is going to be a clever woman," he said. "For her sake I am sorry +to see it. She is going to be the kind of clever woman who has nine +chances out of ten of being a desperate pain to herself while she is a +pleasure to her friends. She hasn't the nature to find safety in +cleverness. She has a conscience and emotions, and they will go against +her." + +"Against her?" cried Tredennis. + +"She will make mistakes and suffer for them--instead of letting others +suffer. She won't be a saint, but she might be a martyr. It always +struck me that it took faults and follies to make a martyr." + +He bent forward and poked the fire as carefully as he had rubbed his +spectacles; then he turned to Tredennis again--slowly this time, instead +of suddenly. + +"You resent it all, I suppose," he said. "Of course you do. It makes you +angry, I've no doubt. It would have made me angry, I dare say, at your +age, to hear an elderly scientist dissect a pretty young creature and +take the bloom off her life for her. It's natural." + +"I don't like to think of her as--as being anything but happy--and--and +good," said Tredennis, with some secret resentment. + +"She'll not be bad," said the professor, critically. "It isn't in her. +She might be happy, perhaps--if one thing happened to her." + +"What one thing?" asked Tredennis. + +"_If_ she married a fine fellow, whom she was deeply and passionately in +love with--which happens to very few women." + +In the shadow of his corner Tredennis felt the hot blood mount steadily +to his forehead, and was glad of the dim light, for the professor was +still regarding him fixedly, though as if in abstraction. + +"She will be--likely to marry the man she loves, sir," he said, in a +voice neither clear nor steady. + +"Yes," said the professor; "unless she makes the mistake of merely +marrying the man who loves _her_. She will meet him often enough. And, +if he chances some day to be a fascinating fellow, her fate will be +sealed. That goes along with the rest of her strengths and weaknesses." + +And he gave the fire a vigorous poke, which cast a glow of light upon +them both; then, leaving his chair, he stood for a moment polishing his +glasses,--staring absently at Tredennis before he put them on,--and +wandered back to his table and his specimens. + +Tredennis' own acquaintance with his young relative was not a very +intimate one. Too many interests presented themselves on every side to +allow of her devoting herself specially to any one, and her father's +favorite scarcely took the form of an interest. She had not the leisure +to discover that he was fully worth the discovering. She regarded him +simply as a large and rather serious young man, who, without seeming +stupid, listened rather than talked; and yet was not actually a +brilliant listener, since he only listened with an air of observing +quietly, and keeping the result of his observations to himself. + +"I dare say it will suit him to be out among the Indians," she said to +her mother upon one occasion. "And I should think it would suit the +Indians. He won't find them frivolous and given up to vanity. I believe +he thinks I am frivolous. It struck me that he did the other day, when I +was talking about that new dress being made. Do you think I talk about +my clothes too much, mamma? Well, at all events," with much frankness, +"I don't talk about them half as much as I think about them. I am always +thinking about them just now. It seems as if I should die if they +weren't becoming after they were made. But don't you suppose it's +natural, mamma, and that I shall get over it in time?" + +She was brushing out her hair before the glass, and turned round, brush +in hand, with an expression of rather alarmed interest, and repeated the +question. + +"Don't you think I shall get over it?" she said. "It seems just now as +if everything had _begun_ all at once, and anything might happen, and I +had rather lost my breath a little in the rush of it. And I _do_ so want +to have a good time, and I care about everything connected with +it,--clothes, and people, and parties, and everything,--but I _don't_ +want to be any more frivolous than I need be,--I mean I don't want to be +a stupid." + +She gave the pretty red-brown mane embowering her a little shake back, +and fixed her large, clear eyes on her mother's. + +"I suppose all girls are frivolous just at first," she said. "Don't +you?" + +"I don't call it frivolous," said her mother, who was a simple, +excellent creature, not troubled with intellectual pangs, and who, while +she admired her, frequently found her daughter as far beyond her mild, +limited comprehension as her husband was, and she was not at all +disposed to complain thereat, either. + +The one fact she was best able to grasp at this moment was that the girl +looked her best, and that the circumstance might be utilized as a hint +for the future. + +"That way of wearing your hair is very becoming to you, Bertha," she +said. "I wish there was some way of managing it so as to get the same +effect." + +"But I can't wear it down after I'm 'out,'" said Bertha, reflectively. +"I've got beyond that--as I suppose I shall get beyond the frivolity." + +And she turned to the glass and looked at herself quite simply, and with +a soft little air of seriousness which was very bewitching. + +She regarded herself in this manner for several seconds, and then began +slowly to dress her hair, plaiting it into soft thick plaits, which she +fastened closely and simply at the nape of her pretty neck. + +"I believe I'll try not to be _quite_ so frivolous," she said. + +Perhaps she was making an effort at the accomplishment of this desirable +end when she came down to dinner, an hour or so later. Tredennis thought +he had never seen her so lovely. + +He was standing alone in the fire-light, looking doubtfully at something +he held in his hand, and she entered so quietly that he started on +becoming conscious of her presence. She wore a dress he had not seen +before,--a pale gray, soft in material and very simply made, with a +little lace kerchief knotted at her throat. + +She came forward, and laid her hand on the back of a chair. + +"Papa has not come in--?" she began, then stopped suddenly, with a +quick, graceful little turn of her head. + +"Oh, where is the heliotrope?" she exclaimed. + +For the room was full of the subtle fragrance of it. + +He made a rather headlong step forward. + +"It is here," he said. "I have been out, and I saw a lot of it in a +florist's window. I don't know whether it's a flower to wear--and that +sort of thing--but I always liked the odor of it. So I brought this +home." + +And he held it out to her. + +She took it and buried her face in it delightedly. It was a sumptuous +handful, and had been cut with unsparing lavishness. He had, in fact, +stood by and seen it done. + +"Ah, I like it so!" she cried. "I do like it--it's lovely." + +Then she lifted her face, hesitating a second as a new thought occurred +to her. She looked up at him with pretty uncertainty, the color rising +in her cheeks simply because she was uncertain. + +"They--I don't know"--she said. "You didn't--they are not for"-- + +"For you," Tredennis ended for her, hurriedly. "Yes. I don't know why, +but I thought of you when I saw them. It's an idea, I suppose. They are +for you, if you'll have them." + +"Ah!" she said, "it was so kind of you! I'm so glad to have them. I have +always liked them." + +She almost hid her bright face in them again, while he stood and watched +her, wondering why he felt suddenly tremulous and unreasonably happy. + +At last she looked up at him again. + +"I wish this was my 'coming-out' night," she said. "I would wear these. +You have given me my first bouquet. I am glad of that." + +"If I am here on the night of your first party," he answered, "I will +give you another, if you will let me." + +"If you are here?" she said "Are you going away?" + +And there was an innocent, unconsciously expressed touch of +disappointment in her tone, which was a sharp pleasure to him, though he +was in too chaotic a mental condition to call it either pleasure or +pain. + +"I may be ordered away at any moment," he said. + +He could never exactly remember afterward how it came about, that in a +few moments more he was sitting in the professor's arm-chair, and she +had taken a seat on a hassock near him, with some of his heliotrope in +the knot of her hair, some fastened against her pale gray dress, and +some loosely clasped in the hand which rested on her lap. He did not +know how it happened, but she was there, and the scent of the heliotrope +floated about her in the warmth of the fire, and she was talking in the +bright, fanciful way which entertained the professor, and he knew that +this brief moment he came for the first time within the charmed circle +of her girlish life and pleasures, and, though he was conscious that his +nearness moved her no more than the professor's would have done, he was +content. + +There was a softness in her manner which was new to him, and which had +the effect of giving him courage. It was a result partly of the pleasure +he had given her and partly of the good resolution she had made, of +which he knew nothing. He only saw the result, and enjoyed it. She even +showed a pretty interest in his future. + +"She is what the Italians call _simpatica_," had been one of her +father's observations concerning her, and Tredennis thought of it as he +listened and watched her. + +It was her gift to say well all she had to say. Her simplest speech +produced its little effect, because all her heart was with her hearer. +Just now she thought only of Tredennis, and that she wished to show her +interest in him. + +So she sat with her flowers upon her knee and talked, and it was an +enchanted hour for Tredennis, who felt like a creature slowly awakening +to the light of day. + +"I suppose we may not see you again for several years," she said. "I do +not like to think of that, and I am sure papa won't, but"--and she +turned, smiling into his eyes, her chin resting in the hollow of her +palm, her elbow on her knee--"when we _do_ see you, of course you will +be a most distinguished person, entirely covered with stars and ribbons +and--scalps!" + +"And you," he said; "I wonder what will have happened to you?" + +"Oh, a great many things, of course," she answered; "but only the +unimportant things that happen to all girls--though they will be +important enough to me. I dare say I shall have had a lovely time, and +have been very happy." + +And she turned her little smile upon the fire and brooded for a few +seconds--still in her pretty attitude. + +It was such a pretty attitude and her look was so sweet that both +together wrought upon Tredennis strongly, and he felt himself awakening +a little more. + +"I wish," he said, breaking the brief silence in a low voice,--"I wish +that _I_ could insure the--happiness for you." + +She turned, with a slight start, and some vague trouble in her face. + +"Oh!" she said, "don't you think I shall be sure to be happy? There +seems to be no reason why I should not. Oh, I hope I shall be happy; +I--I don't know what I should do if I wasn't happy! I can't imagine it." + +"Everybody is not happy," he said, his voice almost tremulous. + +"But," she faltered, "but I--I have always been happy"--She stopped, her +eyes appealing to him piteously. "I suppose, after all, that is a poor +reason," she added; "but it almost seems like one." + +"I wish it were one!" he said. "Don't look like that. It--it hurts me. +If any sacrifice of mine--any suffering"-- + +She stirred a little, moved in some vague way by the intensity of his +tone, and as she did so the odor of the heliotrope floated toward him. + +"Bertha!"--he said, "Bertha"-- + +He did not know what he would have said--and the words were never +spoken--for at that moment the enchanted hour was ended. It was the +professor himself who broke in upon it--the professor who opened the +door and entered, hungry and absent-minded, the fire-light striking upon +his spectacles and seeming to enlarge them tremendously as he turned his +head from side to side, inhaling the air of the room with evident +delight. + +"Flowers, eh?" he said. "What kind of flowers? The air seems full of +them." + +Bertha rose and went to him, Tredennis watching her girlish pale-gray +figure, as it moved across the room, with a pained and bewildered sense +of having lost something which he might never regain. + +"They are heliotropes," she said; "Philip brought them to me. It is my +first bouquet, so I shall keep it until I am an old woman." + + +A week later, Tredennis left Washington. It so chanced that he took his +departure on the night rendered eventful by the first party. In the +excitement attendant upon the preparations for this festivity, and for +his own journey, he saw even less of Bertha than usual. When she +appeared at the table she was in such bright, high spirits that the +professor found her--for some private reason of his own--more absorbing +than ever. His spectacles followed her with an air of deep interest, he +professed an untrained anxiety concerning the dress she was to wear, +appearing to regard it as a scientific object worthy of attention. + +"She's very happy!" he would say to Tredennis again and again. "She's +very happy!" And having said it he invariably rubbed his forehead +abstractedly and pushed his spectacles a trifle awry, without appearing +conscious of it. + +When the carriage Tredennis had ordered came to the door, at ten +o'clock, the coupé which was to convey Bertha to the scene of her first +triumphs had just driven up. + +A few seconds later Bertha turned from her mirror and took up her +bouquet of white rose-buds and heliotrope, as a servant knocked at the +door. + +"The carriage is here, miss," he said; "and Mr. Tredennis is going away, +and says would you come and let him say good-by." + +In a few seconds more, Tredennis, who was standing in the hall, looked +up from the carpet and saw her coming down the staircase with a little +run, her white dress a cloud about her, her eyes shining like stars, the +rose and heliotrope bouquet he had sent her in her hand. + +"Thank you for it," she said, as soon as she reached him. "I shall keep +this, too; and see what I have done." And she pushed a leaf aside and +showed him a faded sprig of heliotrope hidden among the fresh flowers. +"I thought I would like to have a little piece of it among the rest," +she said. And she gave him her hand, with a smile both soft and bright. + +"And you really kept it?" he said. + +"Oh, yes," she answered, simply. "You know I am going to keep it as long +as I live. I wish we could keep you. I wish you were going with us." + +"I am going in a different direction," he said; "and"--suddenly, "I have +not a minute to spare. Good-by." + +A little shadow fell on the brightness of her face. + +"I wish there was no such word as 'good-by,'" she said. + +There was a silence of a few seconds, in which her hand lay in his, and +their eyes rested on each other. Then Mrs. Herrick and the professor +appeared. + +"I believe," said Tredennis, "if you are going now, I will let you set +out on your journey first. I should like to see--the last of you." + +"But it isn't the last of me," said Bertha, "it is the first of me--the +very first. And my heart is beating quite fast." + +And she put her hand to the side of her slender white bodice, laughing a +gay, sweet laugh, with a thrill of excitement in it. And then they went +out to the carriage, and when Mrs. Herrick had been assisted in, Bertha +stood for a moment on the pavement,--a bright, pure white figure, her +flowers in her hand, the hall light shining upon her. + +"Papa!" she called to the professor, who stood on the threshold, "I +never asked you if you liked it--the dress, you know." + +"Yes, child," said the professor. "Yes, child, I like--I like it." + +And his voice shook a little, and he said nothing more. And then Bertha +got into the carriage and it drove away into the darkness. And almost +immediately after Tredennis found himself in his carriage, which drove +away into the darkness, too--only, as he laid his head against the +cushions and closed his eyes, he saw, just as he had seen a moment +before, a bright, pure white figure standing upon the pavement, the +night behind it, the great bouquet of white roses in its hand, and the +light from the house streaming upon the radiant girl's face. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +The eight years that followed were full of events for Tredennis. After +the first two his name began to be well known in military circles as +that of a man bold, cool, and remarkable for a just clear-sightedness +which set him somewhat apart from most men of his class and age. +Stationed as he was in the midst of a hostile Indian country, full of +perilous adventure, a twofold career opened itself before him. His +nerve, courage, and physical endurance rendered him invaluable in time +of danger, while his tendency to constant study of the problems +surrounding him gave him in time of peace the distinction of being a +thinking man, whose logically deduced and clearly stated opinions were +continually of use to those whose positions were more responsible than +his own. He never fell into the ordinary idle routine of a frontier camp +life. In his plain, soldierly quarters he worked hard, lived simply, and +read much. During the first year he was rather desolate and unhappy. The +weeks he had spent with the Herricks had been by no means the best +preparation for his frontier experience, since they had revealed to him +the possibilities of existence such as he had given no thought to +before. His youth had been rather rigorous and lonely, and his +misfortune of reserve had prevented his forming any intimate +friendships. His boyhood had been spent at boarding-school, his early +manhood at West Point, and after that his life had settled itself into +the usual wandering, homeless groove which must be the lot of an +unmarried military man. The warm atmosphere of a long-established home, +its agreeably unobtrusive routine which made the changes of morning, +noon, and night all something pleasant to anticipate; the presence of +the women who could not be separated in one's mind from the household +itself,--all these things were a sort of revelation to him. He had +enjoyed them, and would have felt some slight sadness in leaving them, +even if he had not left something else also. It was a mere shadow he had +left, but it was a shadow whose memory haunted him through many a long +and lonely hour, and was all the more a trouble through its very +vagueness. He was not the man likely to become the victim of a hopeless +passion in three weeks. His was a nature to awaken slowly, but to awaken +to such strength of feeling and to such power to suffer, at last, as +would leave no alternative between happiness and stolidly borne despair. +If fate decreed that the despair and not the happiness was to be his +portion, it would be borne silently and with stern patience, but it +would be despair nevertheless. As it was, he had been gradually aroused +to a vague tenderness of feeling for the brightness and sweetness which +had been before him day after day. Sometimes, during this first year of +his loneliness, he wondered why he had not gone farther and reached the +point of giving some expression to what he had felt; but he never did so +without being convinced by his after reflections that such an effort +would only have told against him. + +"It wasn't the time," he said aloud to himself, as he sat in his lonely +room one night. "It wasn't the time." + +He had been thinking of how she looked as she came to him that night, in +her simple pale-gray dress, with the little lace kerchief tied round her +throat. That, and his memory of the bright figure at the carriage-door, +were pictures which had a habit of starting up before him now and again, +though chiefly at such times as he was alone and rather feeling his +isolation. + +He remembered his own feeling at her girlish pleasure in his gift, the +tone of her voice, her attitude as she sat afterward on the low seat +near him, her chin resting in her hollowed palm, her smiling eyes +uplifted to his. Her pretty, unstudied attitudes had often struck him, +and this one lingered in his fancy as somehow belonging naturally to a +man's dreams of a fireside. + +"If the room and fireside were your own," he said, abstractedly, "you'd +like"-- + +He stopped, and, rising to his feet, suddenly began to pace the room. + +"But it wasn't the time," he said. "She would not have understood--I +scarcely understood myself--and if we should ever meet again, in all +probability the time will have gone by." + +After such thoughts he always betook himself to his books again with +quite a fierce vigor, and in the rebound accomplished a great deal. + +He gave a great deal of studious attention to the Indian question, and, +in his determination to achieve practical knowledge, undertook more than +one dangerous adventure. With those among the tribes whom it was +possible to approach openly he made friends, studying their languages +and establishing a reputation among them for honor and good faith, which +was a useful element in matters of negotiation and treaty. + +So it came about that his name was frequently mentioned in "the +Department," and drifted into the newspapers, his opinions being quoted +as opinions carrying weight, and, in an indirect way, the Herricks heard +of him oftener than he heard of them, since there had been no regular +exchange of letters between them, the professor being the poorest of +correspondents. Occasionally, when he fell upon a newspaper paragraph +commenting upon Tredennis' work and explaining some of his theories, he +was roused to writing him a letter of approval or argument, and at the +close of such epistles he usually mentioned his daughter in a fashion +peculiarly his own. + +"Bertha is happier than ever," he said, the first winter. "Bertha is +well, and is said to dance, in the most astonishingly attractive manner, +an astonishing number of times every evening. This I gather not only +from her mother, but from certain elaborately ornamented cards they call +programmes, which I sometimes find and study in private,"--this came the +second winter. The third he said: "It dawns upon Bertha that she is +certainly cleverer than the majority of her acquaintance. This at once +charms and surprises her. She is careful not to obtrude the fact upon +public notice, but it has been observed; and I find she has quite a +little reputation 'in society' as an unusually bright and ready young +creature, with a habit of being delightfully equal to any occasion. I +gradually discover her to be full of subtleties, of which she is +entirely unconscious." + +Tredennis read this a number of times, and found food for reflection in +it. He thought it over frequently during the winter, and out of his +pondering upon it grew a plan which began to unfold itself in his mind, +rather vaguely at first, but afterward more definitely. This plan was +his intention to obtain leave of absence, and, having obtained it, to +make his way at once to Washington. + +He had thought at first of applying for it in the spring, but fate was +against him. Difficulties which broke out between the settlers and +certain hostile tribes called him into active service, and it was not +until the severities of the next winter aided in quelling the +disturbance by driving the Indians into shelter that he found himself +free again. + +It was late on New Year's Eve that he went to his quarters to write his +application for furlough. He had been hard at work all day, and came in +cold and tired, and pleased to find the room made cheerful by a great +fire of logs, whose leaping flames brightened and warmed every corner. +The mail had come in during his absence, and two or three letters lay +upon the table with the eastern papers, but he pushed them aside without +opening them. + +"I will look at them afterward," he said. "This shall be done +first--before the clock strikes twelve. When the New Year comes in"-- + +He paused, pen in hand, accidentally catching a glimpse of his face in +the by no means flattering shaving-glass which hung on the wall +opposite. He saw himself brown with exposure, bearing marks of thought +and responsibility his age did not warrant, and wearing even at this +moment the rather stern and rigid expression which he had always felt +vaguely to be his misfortune. Recognizing it, his face relaxed into a +half-smile. + +"What a severe-looking fellow!" he said. "_That_ must be improved upon. +No one could stand that. It is against a man at the outset." + +And the smile remained upon his face for at least ten seconds--at all +events until he had drawn his paper before him and begun to write. His +task was soon completed. The letter written, he folded it, placed it in +its envelope and directed it, looking as immovable as ever, and yet +conscious of being inwardly more moved than he had ever been before. + +"Perhaps," he said, half-aloud, "_this_ is the time, and it is well I +waited." + +And then he turned to the letters and papers awaiting him. + +The papers he merely glanced over and laid aside; the letters he opened +and read. There were four of them, three of them business epistles, soon +disposed of; the sight of the handwriting upon the fourth made his heart +bound suddenly,--it was the clear, space-saving calligraphy of Professor +Herrick, who labelled his envelopes as economically as if they had been +entomological specimens. + +"It's curious that it should have come now," Tredennis said, as he tore +it open. + +It was a characteristic letter, written, it appeared, with the object of +convincing Tredennis that he had been guilty of a slight error in one of +his statements concerning the sign-language of a certain tribe. It +devoted five pages of closely-written paper to proofs and researches +into the subject, and scientific reasons for the truth of all assertions +made. It was clear, and by no means uninteresting. The professor never +was uninteresting, and he was generally correct. Tredennis read his +arguments carefully and with respect, even with an occasional thrill, as +he remembered how his communications usually terminated. + +But this was an exception to the general rule. At the bottom of the +fifth page he signed himself, "Your sincere friend, Nathan Herrick." And +he had said nothing about Bertha. + +"Not a word," said Tredennis. "He never did so before. What does it +mean? Not a word!" + +And he had scarcely finished speaking before he saw that on the back of +the last page a postscript was written,--a brief one, three words, +without comment, these: "Bertha is married." + +For a few moments Tredennis sat still and stared at them. The glass +across the room reflected very little change in his face. The immovable +look became a trifle more immovable, if anything. There was scarcely the +stirring of a muscle. + +At length he moved slowly, folding the letter carefully and returning it +to its envelope in exactly the folds it had lain in when he took it out. +After that he rose and began to pace the floor with a slow and heavy +tread. Once he stopped and spoke, looking down at the boards beneath his +feet. + +"Bertha is married," he said, in a low, hard voice. And the clock +beginning to strike at the moment, he listened until it ended its stroke +of twelve, and then spoke again. + +"The New Year," he said; "and Bertha is married." + +And he walked to the table where his letter of application lay, and, +taking it up, tore it in two and tossed it into the fire. + +Four years elapsed before he saw Washington, and in the four years he +worked harder than before, added to his reputation year by year, and led +the unsettled and wandering existence which his profession entailed. At +rare intervals he heard from the professor, and once or twice, in the +course of his wanderings, he met with Washingtonians who knew the family +and gave him news of them. He heard of the death of Mrs. Herrick and +something of Bertha's life from the professor, and, on one occasion, +while in Chicago, he encountered at the house of an acquaintance a +pretty and charming woman who had lived in Washington before her +marriage, and, in the course of conversation, the fact that she had +known the Herricks revealed itself. She appeared not only to have known +but to have liked them, and really brightened and warmed when they were +mentioned. + +"I was very fond of Bertha," she said, "and we knew each other as well +as girls can know each other in the rush of a Washington winter. I was +one of her bridesmaids when she was married. Did you know her well?" + +And she regarded him with an additional touch of interest in her very +lovely eyes. + +"Not very well," Tredennis answered. "We are distantly related to each +other, and I spent several weeks in her father's house just after her +return from school; but I did not know her so well as I knew the +professor." + +"And you did not meet Mr. Amory?" + +"There was no Mr. Amory then," was Tredennis's reply. + +"Of course not," said Mrs. Sylvestre. "I might have known that if I had +thought for a moment. He only appeared upon the scene the winter before +they were married. She met him at a ball at the Mexican minister's, and +his fate was sealed." + +Tredennis was silent a moment. Then he asked a question. + +"Did you know him well?" he said. + +She reflected an instant, and then replied, smiling: + +"He was too much in love for one's acquaintance with him to progress to +any great extent. His condition was something like David Copperfield's +when he said that he was 'saturated with Dora.' He was saturated with +Bertha." + +"They must be very happy," remarked Tredennis, and he did not know that +he spoke in a hard and unresponsive tone, and that his face was more +stern than was at all necessary. + +"Naturally," responded Mrs. Sylvestre, calmly. "They have money, their +children are charming, and their social position is unassailable. Bertha +is very clever, and Mr. Amory admires her and is very indulgent. But he +could scarcely help that. She is that kind of person." + +"She?" repeated Tredennis. + +Mrs. Sylvestre smiled again. + +"Bertha," she replied. "People are always indulgent with her. She is one +of those fortunate persons who are born without any tendency to demand, +and who consequently have everything given to them without the trouble +of having a struggle. She has a pretty, soft sort of way, and people +stand aside before it. Before I knew her well I used to think it was +simply cleverness." + +"Wasn't it?" said Tredennis. + +"Not quite. It escapes that by being constitutional amiability and +grace; but if it wasn't constitutional amiability and grace it would be +cleverness, and you would resent it. As it is, you like her for it. She +is pretty and charming, and has her little world at her feet, and yet +her manner is such that you find yourself wondering if she even suspects +it." + +"Does she?" asked Tredennis. + +Mrs. Sylvestre turned her attention to the other side of the room. + +"There is Mr. Sylvestre," she said, serenely. "He is coming to us. You +must know each other." + +And then Mr. Sylvestre sauntered up. He was a very handsome man, with a +rather languid air, which remotely suggested that if he took off his +manners and folded them away he would reveal the unadorned fact that he +was bored. But even he bestirred himself a little when Tredennis' +relationship to the Herricks was mentioned. + +"What!" he said. "You are Mrs. Amory's cousin?" + +"Only third or fourth," responded Tredennis. + +"By Jove! You're in luck!" his new acquaintance returned. "Third or +fourth is near enough. I wouldn't object to sixth, myself. Do you see +her often?" + +"I have not seen her for seven years." + +Mr. Sylvestre bestowed a critical glance upon him. + +"What's the matter with you?" he inquired, languidly. "There's something +radically wrong about a man who neglects his opportunities in that way." +He paused and smiled, showing his white teeth through his mustache. "Oh, +she's a clever little dev"--He pulled himself up with remarkable +adroitness. "She's very clever," he said. "She's delightfully clever." + +"She must be," commented Tredennis, unenthusiastically. "I never hear +her mentioned without its being added that she is very clever." + +"You would be likely to find the thing out for yourself when you met +her--even if you hadn't heard it," said Mr. Sylvestre. + +When Tredennis returned to his room that night he sat down to read, +deliberately choosing a complicated work which demanded the undivided +attention of the peruser. He sat before it for half an hour, with bent +brow and unyielding demeanor; but at the end of that time he pushed it +aside, left his seat, and began to pace the floor, and so walked with a +gloomy face until it was long past midnight when he put out the light +and went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +Two years later he found himself, one evening in March, driving along +Pennsylvania avenue in a musty hack, which might have been the very one +which had borne him to the depot the night he had seen the last of +Bertha and her white roses. But the streets were gayer now than they had +been then. He had arrived only a day or so after the occurrence of an +event of no less national importance than the inauguration of a newly +elected President, and there still remained traces of the festivities +attendant upon this ceremony, in the shape of unremoved decorations +fluttering from windows, draping doors, and swaying in lines across the +streets. Groups of people, wearing a rather fatigued air of having +remained after the feast for the purpose of more extended sight-seeing, +gave the sidewalks a well-filled look, and here and there among them was +to be seen a belated uniform which had figured effectively in the +procession to the Capitol two days before. + +Having taken note of these things, Tredennis leaned back upon his musty +cushions with a half sigh of weariness. + +"I come in with the Administration," he said. "I wonder if I shall go +out with it, and what will have happened in the interval." + +He was thinking of his past and what it had paid him. He had set out in +his early manhood with the fixed intention of making for himself a place +in the world in which he might feel a reasonable amount of pride. He had +attained every object he had aimed at, with the knowledge that he had +given for every such object its due value in labor, persistent effort, +and steadiness of purpose. No man of his age stood higher in his +profession than he did--very few as high. He had earned distinction, +honor, and not a little applause. He had found himself "a lion" on more +than one occasion, and though he had not particularly enjoyed the +experience, had not undervalued it as an experience. The world had used +him well, and if he had been given to forming intimacies he might have +had many friends. His natural tendency to silence and reserve had worked +against him in this, but as it was, he had no enemies and many +well-wishers. It was not his habit to bemoan even in secret his rather +isolated life; there were times when he told himself that no other would +suit him so well, but there were also times when he recognized that it +_was_ isolated, and the recognition was one which at such moments he +roused all the force of his nature to shut out of his mind as soon as +possible. He had, perhaps, never fully known the influence his one vague +dream had had upon his life. When it ended he made a steady effort to +adjust himself to the new condition of existing without it, and had +learned much of the strength of its power over him by the strength of +the endeavor it had cost him. His inward thought was, that if there had +been a little more to remember the memory might have been less sad. As +it was, the forgetting was a slow, vague pain, which he felt +indefinitely long after he thought that it had died away. He put the old +drifting fancies out of his mind, and, having no leaning toward +self-indulgence, believed at last that they were done with because they +returned but seldom; but he never heard of Bertha, either through the +professor or through others, without being conscious for days afterward +of an unrest he called by no name. + +He rested under the influence of this feeling as he was driven through +the lighted streets toward his hotel, and his recollection of his last +drive through these same streets made it stronger. + +"Eight years," he said. "She has been to many parties since then. Let us +hope she has enjoyed them all." + +He made his first visit to the professor the same evening, after he had +established himself in his room and dined. The professor was always at +home in the evening, and, irregular as their correspondence had been, +Tredennis felt that he was sure of a welcome from him. + +He was not mistaken in this. He found his welcome. + +The professor was seated in his dressing-gown, before his study-table, +as if he had not stirred during the eight years. He had even the +appearance of being upon the point of empaling the same corpulent beetle +upon the same attenuated pin, and of engaging in the occupation with the +same scientific interest Tredennis remembered so well. + +On hearing his visitor's name announced, he started slightly, laid his +beetle aside with care, and, rising from his seat, came forward with +warm pleasure in his face. + +"What!" he exclaimed. "What!--_you_, Tredennis! Well, well! I'm very +glad, my dear fellow! I'm very glad." + +He shook his hand affectionately, at the same time holding him by the +shoulder, as if to make more sure of him. + +"I am very glad myself," said Tredennis. "It is a great pleasure to see +you again." + +"And it took you eight years to get round to us," said the professor, +looking at him thoughtfully, and turning him round a trifle more to the +light. "Eight years! That's a slice out of a man's life, too." + +"But you are no older, professor," said Tredennis. "I am older, but not +you." + +The professor nodded acquiescence. + +"Yes, yes, I know all about that," he said. "You're an old fellow, now; +I was an old fellow myself forty years ago. There, sit down, and tell me +all about it. That is the chair you sat in when you were here last. You +sat in it the night--the night we talked about Bertha." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +"How is Bertha?" Tredennis asked. + +The professor sat down in his chair and took up the poker quite +carefully. + +"She is at a party to-night," he said, poking the fire, "though it is +late in the season for parties. She generally is at a party--oftener +than not she is at two or three parties." + +"Then she must be well," suggested Tredennis. + +"Oh, she is well," the professor answered. "And she gets a good deal out +of life. She will always get a good deal out of it--in one way or +another." + +"That is a good thing," remarked Tredennis. + +"Very," responded the professor, "if it's all in the one way and not in +the other." + +He changed the subject almost immediately, and began to discuss +Tredennis' own affairs. His kindly interest in his career touched the +younger man's heart. It seemed that he had taken an interest in him from +the first, and, silent as he had been, had never lost sight of him. + +"It used to strike me that you would be likely to make something of your +life," he said, in his quiet, half-abstracted way. "You looked like it. +I used to say to myself that if you were my son I should look forward to +being proud of you. I--I wish you _had_ been my son, my boy." + +"If I had been," answered Tredennis, earnestly, "I should have felt it a +reason for aiming high." + +The professor smiled faintly. + +"Well," he said, "you aimed high without that incentive. And the best of +it is that you have not failed. You are a strong fellow. I +like--a--strong--fellow," he added, slowly. + +He spoke of Bertha occasionally again in the course of their after +conversation, but not as it had been his habit to speak of her in her +girlhood. His references to her were mostly statements of facts +connected with her children, her mode of life, or her household. She +lived near him, her home was an attractive one, and her children were +handsome, healthy, and bright. + +"Amory is a bright fellow, and a handsome fellow," he said. "He is not +very robust, but he is an attractive creature--sensitive, poetic +temperament, fanciful. He is fanciful about Bertha, and given to +admiring her." + +When he went away, at the end of the evening, Tredennis carried with him +the old vague sense of discomfort. The professor had been interesting +and conversational, and had given him the warmest of welcomes, but he +had missed something from their talk which he had expected to find. He +was not aware of how he had counted upon it until he missed it, and the +sense of loss which he experienced was a trouble to him. + +He had certainly not been conscious of holding Bertha foremost in his +mind when he had turned his steps toward her father's house. He had +thought of how his old friend would look, of what he would say, and had +wondered if he should find him changed. He had not asked himself if he +should see Bertha or hear of her, and yet what he had missed in her +father's friendly talk had been the old kindly, interested discussion of +her, and once out in the night air and the deserted streets he knew that +he was sadder for his visit than he had fancied he should be. The +bright, happy, girlish figure seemed to have passed out of the +professor's life also--out of the home it had adorned--even out of the +world itself. His night's sleep was not a very peaceful one, but the +next morning when he rose, the light of day and the stir of life around +him seemed to have dispelled the reality of his last night's fancies. +His mind had resolved itself into a condition with which he was +familiar, and he was aroused to interest and pleasure in his +surroundings. His memory was once more the ghost of a memory which he +had long accustomed himself to living without. During the morning his +time was fully occupied by his preparations for his new duties, but in +the afternoon he was at liberty, and remembering a message he was +commissioned to deliver to the sister of a brother officer, he found his +way to the lady's house. + +It was a house in a fashionable street, and its mistress was a +fashionable little person, who appeared delighted to see him, and to +treat him with great cordiality. + +"I am so glad you were so good as to call to-day," she said. "Mr. +Gardner heard that you had arrived, but did not know where you were, or +he would have seen you this morning. What a pity that you were not in +time for the inauguration! The ball was more than usually successful. I +do hope you will let us see you to-night." + +"To-night?" repeated Tredennis. + +"Yes. We want you so much," she continued. "We give a little +party,--only a little one,--and we shall be so glad. There will be +several people here who will be delighted to meet you,--the gentleman +who is spoken of as likely to be the new Secretary of the Interior, for +instance. He will be charmed. Mr. Gardner has told me what interesting +things you have been doing, and what adventures you have had. I shall +feel quite sure that my party will be a success, if you will consent to +be my lion." + +"I am afraid my consenting wouldn't establish the fact," said Tredennis. +"You would want a mane, and a roar, and claws. But you are very kind to +ask me to your party." + +The end of the matter was that, after some exchange of civilities, he +gave a half-promise to appear, mentally reserving the privilege of +sending "regrets" if he did not feel equal to the effort when night +arrived. He was not fond of parties. And so, having delivered the +message with which he had been commissioned, he made his adieus and +retired. + +When night came he was rather surprised to find lurking in his mind some +slight inclination to abide by his promise. Accordingly, after having +taken a deliberate, late dinner, read the papers, and written a letter +or so, he dressed himself and issued forth. + +On arriving at his destination he found the "little party" a large one. +The street was crowded with carriages, the house was brilliantly +lighted, an awning extended from the door to the edge of the pavement, +and each carriage, depositing its brilliant burden within the protection +of the striped tunnel, drove rapidly away to give place to another. + +Obeying the injunctions of the servant at the door Tredennis mounted to +the second story and divested himself of his overcoat, with the +assistance of a smart mulatto, who took it in charge. The room in which +he found himself was rather inconveniently crowded with men,--young, +middle-aged, elderly, some of them wearing a depressed air of wishing +themselves at home, some bearing themselves stolidly, and others either +quietly resigned or appearing to enjoy themselves greatly. It was not +always the younger ones who formed this last class Tredennis observed. +In one corner a brisk gentleman, with well-brushed, gray beard, laughed +delightedly over a story just related to him with much sprightliness by +a companion a decade older than himself, while near them an unsmiling +youth of twenty regarded their ecstasies without the movement of a +muscle. + +Tredennis' attention was attracted for a moment toward two men who stood +near him, evidently awaiting the appearance of some one at the door of +the ladies cloak-room, which they could see from where they stood. + +One of them leaned in a nicely managed labor-saving attitude against the +door-post. He was a rather tall, blonde young man, with a face eminently +calculated to express either a great deal or absolutely nothing at all, +as he chose to permit it, and his unobtrusive evening dress had an air +of very agreeable fitness and neatness, and quite distinguished itself +by seeming to belong to him. It was his laugh which called Tredennis' +attention to him. He laughed in response to some remark of his +companion's,--a non-committal but naturally sounding baritone laugh, +which was not without its attractiveness. + +"Yes, I was there," he said. + +"And sang?" + +"No, thank you." + +"And she was there, of course?" + +"She?" repeated his friend, his countenance at this moment expressing +nothing whatever, and doing it very well. + +"Oh, Mrs. Amory," responded the other, who was young enough and in +sufficiently high spirits to be led into forgetting to combine good +taste with his hilarity. + +"You might say Mrs. Amory,--if you don't object," replied his companion, +quietly. "It would be more civil." + +Then Tredennis passed out and heard no more. + +He made his way down the stairs, which were crowded with guests going +down and coming up, and presented himself at the door of the first of +the double parlors, where he saw his hostess standing with her husband. +Here he was received with the greatest warmth, Mrs. Gardner brightening +visibly when she caught sight of him. + +"Now," she said, "this is really good of you. I was almost afraid to let +you go away this afternoon. Mr. Gardner, Colonel Tredennis is really +here," she added, with frank cordiality. + +After that Tredennis found himself swallowed, as in a maelstrom. He was +introduced right and left, hearing a name here and seeing a face there, +and always conscious of attaching the wrong names to the faces as he +struggled to retain some impression of both in his memory. Mrs. Gardner +bore him onward, filled with the most amiable and hospitable delight in +the sensation he awakened as she led him toward the prominent official +in prospective before referred to, who leaned against a mantel-piece and +beguiled his time by making himself quite agreeable to a very pretty +young _débutante_ who was recounting her experience at the inaugural +ball. Here Tredennis was allowed to free himself from the maelstrom and +let it whirl past him, as he stood a little aside and conversed with his +new acquaintance, who showed deep interest in and much appreciation of +all he had to say, and evidently would have been glad to prolong the +interview beyond the moment, when some polite exigency called him away +in the midst of an animated discussion of the rights of Indian agents +and settlers. + +When he had gone Tredennis still remained standing where he had left +him, enjoying his temporary seclusion and the opportunity of looking on +with the cool speculation of an outsider. + +He had been looking on thus for some moments,--at the passing to and +fro, at the well-bred elbowing through the crush, at the groups +gathering themselves here and there to exchange greetings and then +breaking apart and drifting away,--when he suddenly became aware of a +faint fragrance in the atmosphere about him which impressed itself upon +him with a curious insistence. On his first vague recognition of its +presence he could not have told what it was, or why it roused in him +something nearer pain than pleasure. It awakened in him a queer sense of +impatience with the glare of light, the confusion of movement and +voices, and the gay measure of the music in the next room. And almost +the instant he felt this impatience a flash of recognition broke upon +him, and he knew what the perfume was, and that it seemed out of place +in the glare and confusion simply because his one distinct memory of it +associated itself only with the night when he had sat in the fire-light +with Bertha, and she had held the heliotrope in her hand. With this +memory in his mind, and with a half smile at his own momentary +resentment of the conditions surrounding him, he turned toward the spot +near from which he fancied the odor of the flowers came, thinking that +it had floated from some floral decoration of the deep window. And so, +turning, he saw--surrounded by what seemed to be the gayest group in the +room--Bertha herself! + +She was exquisitely dressed, and stood in the prettiest possible pose, +supporting herself lightly against the side of the window; she had a +bouquet in her hand and a brilliant smile on her lips, and Tredennis +knew in an instant that she had seen and recognized him. + +She did not move; she simply retained her pretty pose, smiling and +waiting for him to come to her, and, though she said nothing to her +companions, something in her smile evidently revealed the situation to +them, for, almost immediately, the circle divided itself, and room was +made for him to advance within it. + +Often afterward Tredennis tried to remember how he moved toward her, and +what he said when he found himself quite near her, holding the gloved +hand she gave him so lightly; but his recollections were always of the +vaguest. There scarcely seemed to have been any first words--he was at +her side, she gave him her hand, and then, in the most natural manner, +the group about her seemed to melt away, and they were left together, +and he, glancing half unconsciously down at her bouquet, saw that it was +made of heliotrope and Maréchal Niel roses. + +She was so greatly and yet so little changed that he felt, as he looked +at her, like a man in a dream. He tried to analyze the change and could +not, and the effort to do so was a pain to him. The color in her cheeks +was less bright than he remembered it, but her eyes were brighter; he +thought also that they looked larger, and soon recognized that this was +not only because her face was less girlishly full, but arose from a +certain alertness of expression which had established itself in them. +And yet, despite their clear brightness, when she lifted them to his +own, his sense of loss was for the instant terrible. Her slight, rounded +figure was even prettier than ever,--more erect, better borne, and with +a delicate consciousness and utilizing of its own graces,--but it was +less easy to connect it mentally with the little gray gown and lace +kerchief than he could ever have believed possible. + +Her very smile and voice had changed. The smile was sometimes a very +brilliant one and sometimes soft and slow, as if a hidden meaning lay +behind it; the voice was low-pitched, charmingly modulated, and +expressed far more than the words it gave to a listener, but Tredennis +knew that he must learn to know them both, and that to do so would take +time and effort. + +He never felt this so strongly as when she sat down on the cushioned +window-seat, and made a little gesture toward the place at her side. + +"Sit down," she said, with the soft smile this time,--a smile at once +sweet and careless. "Sit down, and tell me if you are glad to be +stationed in Washington; and let me tell _you_ that papa is delighted at +the prospect of your being near him again." + +"Thank you," answered Tredennis; "and as to the being here, I think I +like the idea of the change well enough." + +"You will find it a great change, I dare say," she went on; "though, of +course, you have not devoted yourself to the Indians entirely during +your absence. But Washington is unlike any other American city. I think +it is unlike any other city in the universe. It is an absorbingly +interesting place when you get used to it." + +"You are fortunate in finding it so," said Tredennis. + +"I?" she said, lightly. "Oh! I do not think I could resign myself to +living anywhere else; though, when you reflect, of course you know that +is a national quality. All good Americans adore the city they confer +distinction on by living in, and asperse the characters of all other +places. Englishmen believe in London, and Frenchmen in Paris; but in +America, a New Yorker vaunts himself upon New York, a Bostonian glories +in Boston, and a Washingtonian delights in the capital of his country; +and so on, until you reach New Orleans." + +"That is true enough," said Tredennis, "though I had not thought of it +before." + +"Oh, it is true," she answered, with an airy laugh. Then she added, with +a change of tone, "You have been away for a long time." + +"Eight years," he replied. + +He thought she gave a slight start, but immediately she turned upon him +with one of the brilliant smiles. + +"We have had time to grow since then," she said,--"not older, of course, +but infinitely wiser--and better." + +He did not find it easy to comprehend very clearly either her smile or +her manner. He felt that there might be something hidden behind both, +though certainly nothing could have been brighter or more inconsequent +than her tone. He did not smile, but regarded her for a moment with a +look of steady interest, of which he was scarcely conscious. She bore it +for an instant, and then turned her eyes carelessly aside, with a laugh. + +"I do not think you are changed at all," she said. + +"Why?" he asked, still watching her, and trying to adjust himself to her +words. + +"You looked at me then," she said, "just as you used to when you were +with us before, and I said something frivolous. I am afraid I was often +frivolous in those days. I confess I suspected myself of it, and one day +I even made a resolution"-- + +She did start then--as if some memory had suddenly returned to her. She +lifted her bouquet to her face and let it slowly drop upon her knee +again as she turned and looked at him. + +"I remember now," she said, "that I made that resolution the day you +brought me the heliotrope." And now it seemed for the instant to be her +turn to regard him with interest. + +"I don't know what the resolution was," he said, rather grimly, "but I +hope it was a good one. Did you keep it?" + +"No," she answered, undisturbedly; "but I kept the heliotrope. You know +I said I would. It is laid away in one of my bureau drawers." + +"And the first party?" he asked. "Was it a success?" + +"Oh, yes," she replied, "it was a great success. I am happy to say that +all my parties are successes, inasmuch as I enjoy them." + +"Is this a success?" he inquired. She raised her bouquet to her face +again and glanced over it at the crowded room. + +"It is an immense success," she said. "Such things always are--in +Washington. Do you see that little woman on the sofa? Notice what bright +eyes she has, and how quickly they move from one person to another--like +a bird's. She is 'our Washington correspondent' for half-a-dozen Western +papers, and 'does the social column' in one of our principal dailies, +and to-morrow you will read in it that 'one of the most brilliant +receptions of the season was held last night at the charming home of +Mrs. Winter Gardner, on K street.' You will also learn that 'Mrs. +Richard Amory was lovely in white brocade and pearls,' and that +'noticeable among even the stateliest masculine forms was the imposing +figure of Colonel Tredennis, the hero of Indian adventure and'"-- + +She had been speaking in the quietest possible manner, looking at the +scene before her and not at him; but here she stopped and bent toward +him a little. + +"Have you," she said, softly, "such a thing as a scalp about you?" + +He was by no means prepared for the inquiry, but he sustained himself +under it in his usual immovable manner. He put his hand up to his breast +and then dropped it. + +"I am afraid not," he said. "Not in this suit. I forgot, in dressing, +that I might need them. But I might go back to the hotel," he added, +suggestively. + +"Oh, no, thanks," she said, returning to her former position. "I was +only thinking how pleased she would be if you could show her a little +one, and tell her the history of it. It would be so useful to her." + +"I am very sorry," said Tredennis. + +"You would be more sorry," she went on, "if you knew what an industrious +little person she is, and with what difficulty she earns her ten dollars +a column. She goes to receptions, and literary and art clubs, and to the +White House, and the Capitol, and knows everybody and just what +adjectives they like, and how many; and is never ill-natured at all, +though it really seems to me that such an existence offers a premium to +spitefulness. I am convinced that it would make me spiteful. But she +never loses control over her temper--or her adjectives. If I weighed two +hundred pounds, for instance, she would refer to my avoirdupois as +'matronly _embonpoint_;' and if I were a skeleton, she would say I had a +'slight and reed-like figure,' which is rather clever, you know, as well +as being Christian charity." + +"And she will inform the world to-morrow that your dress," glancing down +at it, "was white"-- + +"And that my hair was brown, as usual," she ended for him. "And that I +carried a bouquet of heliotrope and roses." + +"I hope you like it," he said. + +"Oh, very much indeed, thank you," was her response. "And if I did not, +somebody else would, or it is plain that she would not get her ten +dollars a column. It has struck me that she doesn't do it for amusement, +or with the deliberate intention of annoying people. For my part, I +admire and envy her. There is no collection so valuable as a collection +of adjectives. Everything depends on adjectives. You can begin a +friendship or end it with one--or an enmity, either." + +"Will you tell me," said Tredennis, "what adjective you would apply to +the blonde young man on the other side of the room, who has just picked +up a lady's handkerchief?" + +She looked across the room at the person indicated, and did not reply at +once. There was a faintly reflective smile in her eyes, though it could +scarcely be said to touch her lips. The man was the one who had +attracted Tredennis' attention at the door of the cloak-room, and since +coming down-stairs he had regarded him with some interest upon each +occasion when he had caught sight of him as he moved from room to room, +evidently at once paying unobtrusive but unswerving attention to the +social exigencies of his position, and finding a decent amount of quiet +entertainment in the results of his efforts. + +"I wish you would tell me," said Bertha, after her little pause, "what +adjective _you_ would apply to him." + +"I am afraid," said Tredennis, "that our acquaintance is too limited at +present to allow of my grasping the subject. As I don't chance to know +him at all"-- + +Bertha interposed, still watching the object of discussion with the +faintly reflective smile. + +"I have known him for six years," she said, "and I have not found his +adjective yet. He is a cousin of Mr. Amory's. Suppose," she said, +turning with perfect seriousness and making a slight movement as if she +would rise,--"suppose we go and ask Miss Jessup?" + +Tredennis offered her his arm. + +"Let us hope that Miss Jessup can tell us," he said. + +His imperturbable readiness seemed to please her. Her little laugh had a +genuine sound in it. She sat down again. + +"I am afraid she could not," she said. "See! he is coming to speak to +me, and we might ask him." + +But she did not ask him when he presented himself before her, as he did +almost immediately. He had come to remind her that dancing was going on +in one of the rooms, and that she had promised him the waltz the +musicians had just struck into with a flourish. + +"Perhaps you will remember that you said the third waltz," he said, "and +this is the third waltz." + +Bertha rose. + +"I remember," she said, "and I think I am ready for it; but before you +take me away you must know Colonel Tredennis. Of course you do know +Colonel Tredennis, but you must know him better. Colonel Tredennis, this +is Mr. Arbuthnot." + +The pair bowed, as civility demanded. Of the two, it must be confessed +that Tredennis' recognition of the ceremony was the less cordial. Just +for the moment he was conscious of feeling secretly repelled by the +young man's well-carried, conventional figure and calm, blond +countenance,--the figure seemed so correct a copy of a score of others, +the blond countenance expressed so little beyond a carefully trained +tendency to good manners, entirely unbiassed by any human emotion. + +"By the time our waltz is finished," said Bertha, as she took his arm, +"I hope that Mr. Amory will be here. He promised me that he would come +in toward the end of the evening. He will be very glad to find you +here." + +And then, with a little bow to Tredennis, she went away. + +She did not speak to her companion until they reached the room where the +dancers were congregated. Then, as they took their place among the +waltzers, she broke the silence. + +"If I don't dance well," she said, "take into consideration the fact +that I have just been conversing with a man I knew eight years ago." + +"You will be sure to dance well," said Arbuthnot, as they began. "But I +don't mind acknowledging an objection to persons I knew eight years ago. +I never could find any sufficient reason for their turning up. And, as +to your friend, it strikes me it shows a great lack of taste in the +Indians to have consented to part with him. It appeared to me that he +possessed a manner calculated to endear him to aboriginal society beyond +measure." + +Bertha laughed,--a laugh whose faintness might have arisen from her +rapid motion. + +"He's rather rigorous-looking," she said; "but he always was. Still, I +remember I was beginning to like him quite well when he went West. Papa +is very fond of him. He turns out to be a persistent, heroic kind of +being--with a purpose in life, and the rest of it." + +"His size is heroic enough," said Arbuthnot. "He would look better on a +pedestal in a public square than in a parlor." + +Bertha made no reply, but, after having made the round of the room +twice, she stopped. + +"I am not dancing well," she said. "I do not think I am in a dancing +mood. I will sit down." + +Arbuthnot glanced at her, and then looked away. + +"Do you want to be quiet?" he asked. + +"I want to be quieter than this," she answered; "for a few minutes. I +believe I am tired." + +"You have been going out too much," he said, as he led her into a small +side-room which had been given up to a large, ornate punch-bowl, to do +reverence to which occasional devotees wandered in and out. + +"I have been going out a great deal," she answered. + +She leaned back in the luxurious little chair he had given her, and +looked across the hall into the room where the waltz was at its height, +and, having looked, she laughed. + +"Do you see that girl in the white dress, which doesn't fit," she +said,--"the plump girl who bags at the waist and is oblivious to it--and +everything else but her waltz and her partner?" + +"Yes," he responded; "but I hope you are not laughing at her,--there is +no need of it. She's having a fascinating time." + +"Yes," she returned. "She is having a lively time; but I am not laughing +at her, but at what she reminds me of. Do you know, I was just that age +when Colonel Tredennis saw me last. I was not that size or that shape, +and my dresses used to fit--but I was just that age, and just as +oblivious, and danced with just that spirit of enjoyment." + +"You dance with just as much enjoyment now," said Arbuthnot, "and you +are quite as oblivious at times, though it may suit your fancy just at +the present moment to regard yourself as a shattered wreck confronted +with the ruins of your lost youth and innocence. I revel in that kind of +thing myself at intervals, but it does not last." + +"No," she said, opening her fan with a smile, and looking down at the +Cupids and butterflies adorning it, "of course it won't last, and I must +confess that I am not ordinarily given to it--but that man! Do you know, +it was a curious sort of sensation that came over me when I first saw +him. I was standing near a window, talking to half-a-dozen people, and +really enjoying myself very much,--you know I nearly always enjoy +myself,--and suddenly something seemed to make me look up--and there he +stood!" + +"It would not be a bad idea for him to conceal his pedestal about him +and mount it when it became necessary for him to remain stationary," +said Arbuthnot, flippantly, and yet with a momentary gravity in his eyes +somewhat at variance with his speech. + +She went on as if he had not spoken. + +"It was certainly a curious feeling," she continued. "Everything came to +me in a flash. I suppose I am rather a light and frivolous person, not +sufficiently given to reflecting on the passage of time, and suddenly +there he stood, and I remembered that eight years had gone by, and that +everything was changed." + +"A great many things can happen in eight years," commented Arbuthnot. + +"A great many things have happened to _me_," she said. "_Everything_ has +happened to me!" + +"No," said Arbuthnot, in a low, rather reflective tone, and looking as +he spoke not at her, but at the girl whose white dress did not fit, and +who at that moment whirled rather breathlessly by the door. "No--not +everything." + +"I have grown from a child to a woman," she said. "I have married, I +have arrived at maternal dignity. I don't see that there is anything +else that could happen--at least, anything comfortable." + +"No," he admitted. "I don't think there is anything comfortable." + +"Well, it is very certain I don't want to try anything uncomfortable," +she said. "'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.' Montesquieu +says that, and it always struck me as meaning something." + +"I hope it does not mean that you consider your annals tiresome," said +Arbuthnot. "How that girl does dance! This is the fifth time she has +passed the door." + +"I hope her partner likes it as much as she does," remarked Bertha. "And +as to the annals, I have not found them tiresome at all, thank you. As +we happen to have come to retrospect, I think I may say that I have +rather enjoyed myself, on the whole. I have had no tremendous emotions." + +"On which you may congratulate yourself," Arbuthnot put in. + +"I do," she responded. "I know I should not have liked them. I have left +such things to--you, for instance." + +She said this with a little air of civil mocking which was by no means +unbecoming, and to which her companion was well used. + +"Thank you," he replied, amiably. "You showed consideration, of +course--but that's your way." + +"I may not have lived exactly the kind of life I used to think I should +live--when I was a school-girl," she went on, smiling; "but who +does?--and who would want to when she attained years of discretion? And +I may not be exactly the kind of person I--meant to be; but I think I +may congratulate you on that--and Richard. You would never have been the +radiant creatures you are if I had ripened to that state of perfection. +You could not have borne up under it." + +She rose from her seat and took his arm. + +"No," she said, "I am not the kind of person I meant to be, and Colonel +Tredennis has reminded me of the fact and elevated my spirits. Let us go +and find him, and invite him to dinner to-morrow. He deserves it." + +As they passed the door of the dancing-room she paused a moment to look +in, and as she did so caught sight of the girl in the white dress once +more. + +"She is not tired yet," she said, "but her partner is--and so am I. If +Richard has come, I think I shall go home." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +Tredennis dined with them the next day, and many days afterward. On +meeting him Richard Amory had taken one of his rather numerous +enthusiastic fancies to him, and in pursuit and indulgence of this fancy +could not see enough of him. These fanciful friendships were the +delights of his life, and he never denied himself one, though +occasionally they wore themselves out in time to give place to others. + +Tredennis found him as the professor had described him, "a bright +fellow, and a handsome fellow." He had thought that when he came forward +to introduce himself, as he had done at the Gardners' reception, he had +never seen a brighter or more attractive human being. He had a dark, +delicate, eager face, soft, waving hair, tossed lightly back from a +forehead whose beauty was almost feminine; a slight, lithe figure, and +an air of youth and alertness which would have been attraction enough in +itself. He was interested in everything: each subject touched upon +seeming to awaken him to enthusiasm,--the Indians, the settlers, the +agencies, the fort life,--equally interested in each, and equally ready +to confront, in the most delightfully sanguine mood, the problems each +suggested. + +"It is worth a great deal to have an opportunity to judge of these +things from the inside," he said. "There are a thousand questions I want +to ask; but we shall see you often, of course. We must see you often. It +will be the greatest pleasure to us." + +His first entrance into their house, the following evening, was +something which always set itself apart in Tredennis' memory. + +A gay burst of laughter greeted him as the parlor door was thrown +open,--laughter so gay that the first announcement of his name was +drowned by it, and, as he paused for a moment, he had the opportunity to +take in fully the picture before him. The room was a pretty and +luxurious one, its prettiness and luxury wearing the air of being the +result of natural growth, and suggesting no oppressiveness of +upholstery. Its comforts were evidently the outcome of the fancies and +desires of those who lounged, or read, or talked in it, and its +knick-knacks and follies were all indicative of some charming whim +carried out with a delightful freedom from reason, which was their own +excuse. + +In the open fireplace a bright wood-fire burned, and upon the white +wolf-skin before it Richard Amory lay at unconventional full length, +with his hands clasped lightly under his head, evidently enjoying to the +utmost the ease of his position, the glow of the fire, and the jest of +the moment, while near him, in an easy-chair, sat Arbuthnot. Both of +them looked at Bertha, who stood with one hand resting on the low +mantel. + +"I have been waiting for a long time," Tredennis heard her say, and +then, as the servant announced his name again, she stopped speaking, and +came forward to meet him, while Richard sprang lightly to his feet. + +"I will tell you at the outset," she said, "that it is not one of the +time-honored customs of Washington for people to receive their guests +with this ingenuous and untrammelled freedom, but"-- + +"But she has been telling us a story," put in Richard, shaking hands +with him; "and she told it so well that we forgot the time. And she must +tell it again." + +"It is not worth telling again," she said, as they returned to the fire; +"and, besides, I told it to you in the strictest confidence. And if that +is not reason enough, I don't mind confessing that it is a story which +doesn't exhibit me in an amiable light. It shows a temper and +viciousness that you count among your home comforts, and don't feel it +decent to display for the benefit of any one but your immediate +relatives." + +Tredennis looked down at her curiously. His first glance at her had +shown him that to-night she was even farther removed from his past than +she had seemed before. Her rich dress showed flashes of bright color, +her eyes were alight with some touch of excitement, and her little +wrists were covered with pretty barbarities of bangles and charms which +jingled as she moved. + +"I should like to hear the story," he said. + +"It is a very good story," commented Arbuthnot, laughing; "I think I +would tell it over again." + +"Oh, yes," said Richard; "Colonel Tredennis must hear it." + +Bertha looked across at Tredennis, and as she did so he saw in her eyes +what he had seen the night before and had not understood, but which +dawned upon him now,--a slight smiling defiance of his thoughts, +whatsoever they might be. + +"You won't like it," she said; "but you shall hear it, if you wish. It +is about a great lady"-- + +"That will add to the interest," said Tredennis. "You have great ladies +in Washington?" + +"It is infinitely to our credit that they are only occasional +incidents," she answered, "and that they don't often last long. When one +considers the number of quiet, domesticated women who find themselves +launched suddenly, by some wave of chance, into the whirl of public +life, one naturally wonders that we are not afflicted with some very +great ladies indeed; but it must be confessed we have far less to +complain of in that respect than might be expected." + +"But this particular great lady?" said Tredennis. + +"Is one of the occasional incidents. Some one said that our society was +led by bewildered Europeans and astonished Americans,--Americans +astonished to find themselves suddenly bearing the responsibility of the +highest positions, and Europeans bewildered by being called upon to +adjust themselves to startling novelties in manners and customs. This +great lady is one of the astonished Americans, and, privately, she is +very much astonished, indeed." + +Arbuthnot laughed. + +"You will observe," he commented, "that Mrs. Amory's remarks are +entirely unbiassed by any feminine prejudices." + +"You will observe," said Bertha, "that Mr. Arbuthnot's remarks are +entirely unbiassed by any prejudice in favor of my reliability of +statement. But," she added, with a delusive air of amiable candor, "I am +sure you cannot deny that I was very civil to her." + +"I have not a doubt of it," responded Arbuthnot. "And I don't mind +adding that I should like to have been there to see." + +"Colonel Tredennis shall judge," she said, "whether it would have been +really worth while. I will make the story brief. Last season the great +lady gave me cause to remember her. We had not met, and, to please a +friend, I called upon her. We found her in her drawing-room, engaged in +entertaining two new newly arrived _attachés_. They seemed to interest +her. I regret to say that we did not. She did not hear our names when +the servant announced them, and the insignificance of our general +bearing was against us. I think it must have been that, for we were +comparatively well dressed--at least, Miss Jessup's description of our +costumes in the 'Wabash Times' gave that impression the following week. +Perhaps we looked timid and unaccustomed to 'the luxurious trophies from +many climes' (Miss Jessup again) surrounding us. The ingenuous modesty +of extreme youth which you may have observed"-- + +"Repeatedly," replied Arbuthnot. + +"Thank you. But I suppose it told against me on this occasion. Our +respectable attire and air of general worthiness availed nothing. The +great lady rose, stared at us, gave us her finger-ends, called us by +names which did not belong to us, and sat down again, turning her back +upon us with much frankness, and resuming her conversation with the +_attachés_, not interrupting it to address six words to us during the +three minutes we remained. That is the first half of the story." + +"It promises well for the second half," said Tredennis. + +"The second is _my_ half," said Bertha. "Later, she discovered our real +names, and the fact that--shall I say that Miss Jessup knew them, and +thought them worthy of mention in the 'Wabash Times'? That would, +perhaps, be a good way of putting it. Then she called, but did not see +me, as I was out. We did not meet again until this afternoon. I was +making the Cabinet calls, and had the pleasure of encountering her at +the house of the Secretary of War. Perhaps Miss Jessup had sent her a +copy of the 'Wabash Times' yesterday, with the society column marked--I +don't know. But she was pleased to approach me. I received her advances +with the mild consideration of one who sees a mistake made, but is +prevented by an amiable delicacy from correcting it, and observing this, +she was led into the indiscretion of saying, with graceful leniency, +that she feared I did not know her. I think it is really there that my +half begins. I smiled with flattering incredulity, and said, 'That would +be very strange in a Washingtonian.' + +"'When you called'--she began. + +"I looked at her with a blush, as of slight embarrassment, which seemed +to disturb her. + +"'You have not forgotten that you called?' she remarked, chillingly. + +"'It would have been impossible for me to forget anything so agreeable,' +I said, as though in delicately eager apology. 'I am most unlucky. It +was some more fortunate person.' + +"'But,' she said, 'I returned the visit.' + +"'I received your card,' I replied, smiling ingenuously into her eyes, +'and it reminded me of my delinquency. Of course I knew it was a +mistake.' + +"And after I had smiled into her eyes for a second or so longer, she +began to understand, and I think by this time it is quite clear to her." + +"There must be a moral to that," commented Tredennis. + +"There is," she responded, with serene readiness. "A useful one. It is +this: It is always safe--in Washington--to be civil to the respectably +clad. If the exigencies of public position demand that you receive, not +the people you wish to see, or the people who wish to see you, but the +respectably clad, it is well to deal in glittering generalities of good +manners, and even--if you choose to go so far--good feeling. There are +numbers of socially besieged women in Washington who actually put the +good feeling first; but the Government cannot insist on that, you know, +so it remains a matter of taste." + +"If you could draw the line"--began Richard. + +"There is no line," said Bertha, "so you can't draw it. And it was not +myself I avenged this afternoon, but--the respectably clad." + +"And before she became an astonished American," put in Arbuthnot, "this +mistaken person was possibly"-- + +Bertha interposed, with a pretty gesture which set all the bangles +jingling. + +"Ah," she said, "but we have so little to do with that, that I have not +even the pleasure of using it in my arguments against her. The only +thing to be reasonably required of her now is that she should be +sufficiently well-mannered during her career. She might assume her +deportment with her position, and dispose of it at a sacrifice +afterward. Imagine what a field in the way of advertisement, for +instance: 'For sale. A neatly fitting suit of good manners. Used through +one Administration. Somewhat worn through active service, but still +equal to much wear and tear.'" + +That which struck Tredennis more forcibly than all else was her habit +of treating everything lightly, and he observed that it was a habit +Arbuthnot shared with her. The intimacy existing between the two seemed +an unusual one, and appeared to have established itself through slow and +gradual growth. It had no ephemeral air, and bore somehow the impress of +their having shared their experiences in common for some time. Beneath +the very derision which marked their treatment of each other was a +suggestion of unmistakable good fellowship and quick appreciation of +each other's moods. When Bertha made a fanciful speech, Arbuthnot's +laugh rang out even before Richard's, which certainly was ready enough +in response; and when Arbuthnot vouchsafed a semi-serious remark, Bertha +gave him an undivided attention which expressed her belief that what he +said would be worth listening to. Amory's province it seemed to be to +delight in both of them,--to admire their readiness, to applaud their +jests, and to encourage them to display their powers. That he admired +Arbuthnot immensely was no less evident than that no gift or grace of +Bertha's was lost upon him. + +His light-hearted, inconsequent enjoyment of the pleasure of the moment +impressed Tredennis singularly. He was so ready to be moved by any +passing zephyr of sentiment or emotion, and so entirely and +sweet-temperedly free from any fatiguing effect when the breeze had once +swept over him. + +"All that I have to complain of in you two people," he said, gayly, in +the course of the evening, "is that you have no sentiment--none +whatever." + +"We are full of it," said Arbuthnot, "both of us,--but we conceal it, +and we feel that it makes us interesting. Nothing is more interesting +than repressed emotion. The appearance of sardonic coldness and stoicism +which has deceived you is but a hollow mockery; beneath it I secrete a +maelstrom of impassioned feeling and a mausoleum of blighted hopes." + +"There is a fashion in emotions as in everything else," said Bertha. +"And sentiment is 'out.' So is stateliness. Who would submit to +stateliness in these days? It was the highest aim of our +great-grandmothers to be stately; but stateliness went out with ruffles +and the minuet, and a certain kind of Roman nose you find in all +portraits taken in the reigns of the Georges. Now we are sprightly. It +is imperative that we should be sprightly. I hope you are prepared to be +sprightly, Colonel Tredennis." + +He was very conscious of not looking so. In fact, the idea was growing +upon him that upon the whole his grave face and large figure were rather +out of place among all this airy _badinage_. His predominant feeling was +that his unfortunate tendency to seriousness and silence was not a +Washingtonian quality, and augured poorly for his future. Here were +people who could treat lightly, not only their subjects, but themselves +and each other. The fire-lit room, with its trifles and knick-knacks and +oddities; the graceful, easy figure of Richard Amory lounging idly in +his chair; Bertha, with her bright dress and fantastic little ornaments +flashing and jingling; Arbuthnot smiling faintly, and touching his +mustache with a long, fair hand,--each and all suggested to him in some +whimsical, vague fashion that he was too large and not pliable enough +for his surroundings, and that if he moved he might upset something, or +tread upon some sparkling, not too substantial theory. + +"I am afraid I am not as well prepared as I might be," he answered. "Do +you always find it easy?" + +"I!" she returned. "Oh, perfectly! it is only Mr. Arbuthnot who finds it +difficult--being a prey to his feelings. In his moments of deep mental +anguish the sprightliness which society demands of him is a thing from +which his soul recoils." + +Shortly after dinner Arbuthnot went away. He had a final call to make +upon some friends who were going away, after having taken an active +part in the inaugural ceremonies and ball. It appeared that they had +come from the West, with the laudable intention of making the most of +these festivities, and that he had felt it his duty to do his utmost for +their entertainment. + +"I hope they enjoyed themselves," said Bertha, as he stood making his +adieus. + +"Well," was his reply, "it strikes me they did. I took them to the +Treasury, and the Patent Office, and the Army and Navy Department, and +up into the dome of the Capitol, and into the Senate and the House, and +they heard the inaugural address, and danced at the ball, and saw the +ex-President and bought photographs of the new one, and tired themselves +out, and are going home a party of total wrecks, but without a thing on +their consciences; so I think they must have enjoyed themselves. I hope +so. I didn't. I don't grudge them anything; but it is the ninetieth time +I have been through the Treasury, and the twentieth time I have climbed +to the dome, and the exercise has lost its freshness." + +After he had left the room he returned, drawing from the pocket of his +rather dandyfied light overcoat three small packages, which he laid on a +side-table. + +"This is for Janey, and this for Jack, and this for Marjorie," he said. +"I told them they would find them there in the morning." + +"Thank you," answered Bertha, as if the proceeding was one to which she +was well accustomed. + +When he was fairly gone Richard Amory broke into a half laugh. + +"What a queer fellow he is!" he said. + +Bertha returned to her place by the fire, taking from the mantel a +little screen of peacock feathers and shading her face with it. + +"Do you know," she said, "that he rarely leaves the house without one of +us making that remark, and yet it always has an illusive air of being +entirely new." + +"Well," remarked Richard, "he is a queer fellow, and there's no denying +it. Imagine a fellow like that coolly rambling about with neat packages +of bonbons in his fastidious overcoat pocket, to be bestowed on children +without any particular claim on him. Why does he do it?" + +"It doesn't exactly arise from enthusiasm awakened by their infant +charms," said Bertha, "and he never professed that it did." + +"But he must care for them a little," returned Richard. + +"The fact is that you don't know what he cares for," said Bertha, "and +it is rather one of his fascinations. I suppose that is really what we +mean by saying he is a queer fellow." + +"At all events," said Richard, amiably, "he is a nice fellow, and one +can manage to subsist on that. All I complain of is that he hasn't any +object. A man ought to have an object--two or three, if he likes." + +"He doesn't like," said Bertha, "for he certainly hasn't an +object--though, after all, that belongs to his mode of life." + +"I should like," said Tredennis, "to know something of the mode of life +of a man who hasn't an object." + +"You will gain a good deal of information on the subject if you remain +long in Washington," answered Bertha. "We generally have either too many +objects or none at all. If it is not your object to get into the White +House, or the Cabinet, or somewhere else, it is probably your fate to be +installed in a 'department;' and, as you cannot hope to retain your +position through any particular circumspectness or fitness for it, you +have not any object left you." + +"The fact is," said Richard, "it would have been a great deal better for +Larry if he had stayed where he was and fought it out." + +"The fact is," said Bertha, "it would be a great deal better for nine +out of ten of the rest if they stayed where they were. And when Larry +came he did not come under specially exhilarating circumstances, and +just then I suppose it seemed to him that the rest of his life was not +worth much to him." + +"It has struck me," said Richard, reflectively, "that he had a blow of +some sort about that time,--something apart from the loss of his +fortune. I am not sure but that I once heard some wandering rumor of +there being a young woman somewhere"-- + +"Oh!" said Bertha, in a low, rather hurried voice, "he had a blow. There +is no mistake about that,--he had a blow, and there was a good deal in +him that did not survive it." + +"And yet he doesn't strike you as being that sort of fellow," said +Richard, still in reflection. "You wouldn't think of him as being a +fellow with a grief." + +Bertha broke into delighted laughter. + +"A grief!" she exclaimed. "That is very good. I wish he had heard it. A +grief! I wonder what he would do with it in his moments of +recreation,--at receptions, for instance, and _musicales_, and germans. +He might conceal it in his opera hat, but I am afraid it would be in the +way. Poor Larry! Griefs are as much out of fashion as stateliness, and +he not only couldn't indulge in one if he would, but he wouldn't if he +could." + +"Well, how would you put it," said Richard, "if you did not call it a +grief?" + +Bertha laughed again. + +"If I put it at all," she answered, "I would say that he had once been +very uncomfortable, but had discreetly devoted himself to getting over +it, and had succeeded decently well; and last, but not least, I would +add that it would be decidedly difficult to make him uncomfortable +again." + +Tredennis found it impossible to avoid watching her with grave interest +each time she spoke or moved. He was watching her now with a sort of +aside sensibility to her bright drapery, her flashing, tinkling wrists, +and her screen of peacock feathers. + +"She is very light," he was saying inwardly. + +She turned to him with a smile. + +"Would he strike _you_ as 'a fellow with a grief'?" she inquired. + +"No," he answered; "I cannot say he would." + +"No," she said, "that is certain enough. If you went away and never saw +him again, you would remember just this of him--if you remembered him at +all: that his clothes fitted him well, that he had an agreeable laugh, +that he had a civil air of giving you his attention when you spoke, +and--nothing else." + +"And that is not all there is of him?" Tredennis asked. + +She looked down at her feather screen, still smiling slightly. + +"No," she answered, rather slowly, "not quite all; but even I don't +quite know how much more there is, and Richard, who has known him at +intervals all his life, lapses into speaking of him as 'a fellow with a +grief.'" + +Richard rose from his chair. + +"Oh," he said, with much cheerfulness, "there is no denying that you two +are the outgrowth of an effete civilization. You are always arriving at +logical deductions concerning each other, and you have a tendency to the +derision of all the softer emotions. You are a couple of world-worn +creatures, and it is left to me to represent the youth and ardor of the +family." + +"That is true," said Bertha, in her soft, mocking voice. "We are +battered and worldly wise--and we have no object." + +"But I have," said Richard, "and if Colonel Tredennis will come upstairs +with me, I will show him what a few of them are, if he takes an interest +in such things." + +"What," said Bertha,--"the laboratory, or the library, or"-- + +"All of them," he answered, "including the new collection." And he +turned upon Tredennis the brightest imaginable smile. + +Tredennis left his chair in response to it. + +"I am interested in all collections, more or less," he said. + +"So am I," said Bertha--"more or less." And they went out of the room +with this little gibe in their ears. + +Before the conclusion of his visit to the domains upstairs Tredennis had +learned a great deal of Richard Amory. He had found that he had a taste +for mechanics, a taste for science, a taste for literature. He had a +geological cabinet, an entomological collection, a collection of coins, +of old books, of old engravings, all in different stages of +incompleteness. He had, even, in his small workroom, the unfinished +models of an invention or two, each of which he was ready to explain +with an enthusiasm which flamed up as the demands of the moment +required, in the most delightful and inspiring manner. + +"I shall finish them all, one of these days," he said, blithely. "I am +always interested in one or the other, and they give me an object. And, +as I said downstairs, what a man wants is an object. That is what Larry +stands in need of. Give him an object, and he would not indulge in that +cold-blooded introspection and retrospection. Bertha has told him so +herself." + +"They are very good friends," said Tredennis. + +"Oh, yes! They are fond of each other, in their way. It is their way to +jeer a good deal, but they would stand by each other, I fancy, if the +time came when it was needful." + +He referred, in the course of the conversation, to his profession, and +his reference to it caused Tredennis to class it in his mind, in some +way or other, with the unfinished models and incomplete collections. + +"I can't say I like the law," he said, "but it was a sort of final +resource. I tried medicine for a while,--took a course of lectures; but +it didn't suit me. And then two or three other things turned up, but I +didn't seem to suit them. And so it ended in my choosing law, or letting +it choose me. I don't know that I am exactly a success at it. It's well +we don't depend on it. Bertha"--He broke off rather suddenly, and began +again at once. "I have plans which, if they are as successful as they +promise to be, will change the aspect of affairs." And he laughed +exultantly. + +On their way downstairs they came upon an open door, which had been +closed as they went up. It opened into a large, cheerful room, with gay +pictures on the walls, and a high brass fender guarding the glowing +fire, before which a figure sat in a low rocking-chair, holding a child +in its arms. + +"That is the nursery," said Richard. "Bertha, what is the matter with +Janey?" + +It was Bertha who sat in the rocking-chair, and as she turned her face +quietly toward them Tredennis felt himself betrayed into a slight start. +Neither her eyes nor her color were as bright as they had been +downstairs. She had taken off her ornaments, and they lay in a small +glittering heap upon the stand at her side. The child's head rested upon +her breast, and her bare arm and hand held its body in an easy position +with a light, close, accustomed touch. She spoke in a soft, lowered +voice. + +"Janey is nervous to-night," she answered. "She cannot go to sleep, and +I am trying to quiet her. Will you excuse me if I do not come down? She +really needs me." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +When Tredennis found himself standing out in the street, half an hour +later, it was this picture which remained in his mind, and no other. If +an effort had been required to retain the impression upon his mental +retina he would have made the effort with the deliberate intention of +excluding all else; but no effort was needed. + +"I suppose it is sentiment," he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth, +and looking up at the starlit sky. "I have no doubt it is sentiment. A +man who has lived mooning alone as long as I have, drifts in that +direction naturally, I suppose. And I am a rigid, old-fashioned fellow. +I don't fit in with the rest of it. But, with her child in her arms and +her gewgaws laid on the table, I seemed to see something I knew. I'll +think of that, and not of the other." + +It was just at this moment that he caught sight of a figure approaching +him from a distance of a few yards. It was the figure of a man, wrapped +in a cloak, and walking with bent head at a leisurely pace, which argued +that he was deep in meditation. As it drew nearer Tredennis recognized +something familiar in its outlines, and before it had taken half-a-dozen +steps forward the head was raised suddenly, almost as if attracted by +something in his gaze, and he recognized the professor, who, seeing him, +came toward him at once, and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. + +"You are coming away from the house, are you?" he said. "I might have +known I should have the chance of meeting you when I came out to take my +ramble before going to bed. I do it every night. I find I sleep better +for it. Perhaps Bertha told you." + +"No," answered Tredennis; "I had not been told of it." + +The professor gave him a little impetus forward with the hand he still +kept on his shoulder. + +"Walk on with me," he said. "What I like is the deserted look of things, +and the silence. There is nothing more silent and deserted than such a +street as this at night. There is a quiet and emptiness about it which +impress themselves on you more than the stillness of a desert. Perhaps +it is the sleep around you in the houses,--the people who have lost +their hold on the world and life for the time being. They are far enough +away by this time, most of them, and we are no more certain where they +are than we shall be after they have lain down for the last time. How +did you find Bertha?" + +His voice changed as he asked the question, dropping its key somewhat; +and, quiet though its tone was, Tredennis thought he recognized a faint +suggestion of consciousness in it. + +"She looked very well," he answered; "and was very bright." + +"She is generally that," said the professor. "Who was there?" + +"A Mr. Arbuthnot." + +"Arbuthnot! Yes; to be sure. He generally is there. He is a relative of +Richard's. They are fond of him. I was to have been there myself, but I +had a previous engagement. And I suppose they made light of each other, +as usual?" + +"You mean"--began Tredennis. + +"Arbuthnot and Bertha. They always do it, and Richard looks on and +enjoys it. He is a queer fellow." + +"Mr. Amory?" Tredennis questioned, uncertainly. + +"No, no; Arbuthnot. He is a queer fellow, Arbuthnot." + +Tredennis laughed. + +"That is what they said in the house," he responded. + +"Well, it's true," said the professor, reflectively, "and there is no +denying it." + +"They said that, too," said Tredennis. "And Mrs. Amory added that it was +a habit they had." + +"I don't know," said the professor, still keeping his hand on Tredennis' +shoulder, and seeming to study the pavement as he walked,--"I don't know +what the man has done with his past, and I don't know what he is going +to do with his future. I don't think he knows about the future himself." + +"It struck me," said Tredennis,--"I don't know why,--that he did not +care." + +"That's it," said the professor. "He doesn't care." + +They walked a few steps in silence, and then he went on: + +"He never will care," he said, "unless something happens to rouse him." + +"I am obliged to confess," said Tredennis, "that I am afraid I am +prepared to underrate him. And it seemed to me that there wasn't much in +him to rouse." + +"Oh, you'll underrate him," returned the professor, "at first. And you +may never get over it; but there are also ten chances to one that you +do. I did." + +"You began by underrating him?" + +"I don't overrate him now," said the professor. "I don't know that I am +particularly fond of him, though there have been moments--just +moments--when I have been threatened with it. But I have come to the +conclusion that there is something in him to rouse, and that it wouldn't +be the wisest thing in the world to rouse it." + +"Do you mean," said Tredennis, slowly, "that it would take a woman to +rouse it?" + +"Yes," answered the professor, just as slowly, "it would take a woman. +And there are circumstances under which it would be better for the woman +if she let what she might rouse lie and sleep." + +"For instance?" said Tredennis, with a fierce leap of every pulse in his +body. + +"If," said the professor, deliberately,--"if she were not free to give +what his feeling for her demanded." + +He paused to turn Tredennis round. + +"Confound him!" he said, with a curiously irritable seriousness. "If he +once reached a white heat,--that fellow with his objectless follies, and +his dress-coat, and his white necktie, and his opera hat under his +arm,--if he once forgot them and himself, it would be her fate to +remember him as long as her life should last." + +"_Her_ fate?" said Tredennis. + +"I said it would have to be a woman," said the professor. "I should not +like it to be a woman I felt an interest in. We have reached the end of +the block. Let us walk back again." + +When he spoke again it was of Richard Armory, not of Arbuthnot. + +"You went upstairs into the Museum, as Bertha calls it?" he said. + +"Yes," answered Tredennis; "and into the workroom." + +"And saw the models, and the collections, and the books?" + +"Yes." + +"He has a good many enthusiasms, Richard," said the professor. "They +might form a collection of themselves. He won't tire of life easily. He +is a fine contrast to--the other." + +They were nearing the house again by this time, and he glanced up at its +front. + +"There is a light in the nursery window," he said. "It must be one of +Janey's restless nights." + +"Yes," said Tredennis. "Mrs. Amory was with her when we came downstairs, +and she told us that the child was nervous and needed her." + +"She has wonderful patience with them," said the professor, "and a sort +of genius for understanding their vague young needs and desires. She +never does them an injustice for want of thought, and never fails them. +I have seen her spend half an hour half-kneeling, half-sitting on the +nursery floor, by one of them, with her arm round it, questioning it, +and helping it to tell its own story, in a way that was very motherly. +There is a great deal of the maternal instinct in her." + +Tredennis made no reply, but there rose before his mental vision the +picture before the nursery fire, and he saw again the soft, close clasp +of the fair hand and arm. + +"It's curious how seldom we speak of paternal instinct," the professor +went on. "It is always maternal instinct. Well, it is a great thing. And +it is a great safeguard where--where life is not satisfactory. And as +one grows older one sees a good deal of that. It is pitiful sometimes, +when one finds it, as one so often does, in young things who haven't got +over their desperate mental insistence on their right to be happy." + +He checked himself with a faint laugh. + +"I'm prosing, my boy," he said. "I always do it when I take my saunter +at night. It is a sort of safeguard against doing it in the day. And I +find I am specially given to it when I talk of Bertha. It is the +paternal instinct, if there is such a thing. You remember how we talked +of her when she came home from school. Do you find her much changed?" + +"She has changed from a girl--a child, almost--to a woman," said +Tredennis. + +"Yes," said the professor, "from a child to a woman. And yet, when you +look back upon it, eight years is a very short time. Sometimes it seems +only yesterday that she startled me at the dinner-table by saying that +she expected me to classify and label her." + +"There have been times," said Tredennis, "when it seemed only yesterday +to me; but to-night it is something far away." + +The professor looked up at him quickly. + +"Is it?" he said. "Well, well," rather vaguely, "it is a habit they have +fallen into, that of making light of things. It is a kind of fashion +nowadays. She did not treat things lightly then, did she? How she +believed all that she believed--how frankly she impugned your veracity +in argument, without being at all conscious of the incivility! How +bright her eyes and lips were when she asked me if she could not have +the label without the pin! I wish"-- + +He stopped suddenly once more. + +"We have reached the end of the block again, my boy," he said, "and I +have walked long enough, and talked long enough. We must say good-night +to each other." + +They were standing beneath a street-lamp, and having looked up at +Tredennis to say this, he drew back a pace to look again, in whimsically +gentle admiration of his stalwart proportions. + +"What a soldierly fellow you are!" he said; "and how you stand out among +the rest of us!" And then, with an odd change of manner, he drew nearer, +and laid his hand on his shoulder once more. "I'll say again," he said, +"what I have said before. I wish you had been a son of mine, my boy." + +And, as he said it, there fell upon the quiet of the street the sound of +approaching footsteps ringing on the pavement, and, turning +instinctively toward them, each saw an easily recognized masculine +figure, which, reaching the house in which the Amorys lived, paused for +a moment beneath the lighted window, and flung forth to the night, +airily, and by no means unmusically, a few bars of one of the popular +airs from a gay French opera, and then, crossing the street, applied a +latch-key to the door of the opposite house, and, entering, closed it. + +"The fellow has a pleasant voice," said the professor. "It is a voice +you like to hear. And that is one of his whims." + +"I thought I recognized the figure," said Tredennis. "It is"-- + +"Arbuthnot," said the professor. "Arbuthnot." + +And then they parted. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +To Tredennis the next three months were full of event. It was mostly +quiet event, and yet, as day followed day, he was conscious that, in +each twenty-four hours, he lived through some new mental experience +which left its mark upon him. The first two weeks seemed to make his old +regular, routine-governed life a thing of the far past, from which he +was entirely separated by a gulf which it would be impossible to +recross. He awakened to a recognition of this at the end of the second +week, and told himself that the feeling was due to the complete novelty +of his surroundings and their natural influences upon him. He found +himself placed among people whose lives, ambitions, and interests were +all new to him, and of a kind with which he had never before been thrown +into close contact for a length of time sufficient to allow of analysis. +In his first visit to Washington he had regarded its peculiarities +merely as an amateur and a visitor; now he saw and studied them from a +different stand-point. The public buildings were no longer mere edifices +in his eyes, but developed into tremendous communities, regulated by a +tremendous system for which there could be no medium or indefinite +standing, but which must either be a tremendous credit or a tremendous +discredit to itself and the power it represented. The human side of the +place grew and impressed itself upon him. He began to feel the full +significance of the stream of humanity which ebbed and flowed to and +from these buildings at stated hours in the day. After a few afternoon +walks on the Avenue he could recognize many a face that passed him, and +comprehend something of what it typified. He could single out the young +woman who supported her family upon her salary, and the young woman who +bought her ribbons with it; the widow whose pay fed half-a-dozen +children, and the husband whose earnings were appropriated by a wife of +fashionable aspirations; the man of broken career, whose wasted +ambitions and frustrated purposes were buried in the monotonous routine +of a Government clerkship, and who asked and hoped for no greater boon +than to be permitted to hold his place through as much of the future as +remained to him. It was an orderly and respectably dressed crowd, as a +rule; but there was many a sad face to be seen in it, and many an +anxious and disappointed one. It never failed to interest Tredennis, and +he took his afternoon walk so often at the same hour that the passers-by +began to know his tall, soldierly figure and sunbrowned face, and rather +expected to encounter them; and when the newspapers had referred to him +on a dozen occasions or so, there were not a few who recognized him, and +pointed him out to each other as something of a celebrity and a hero, +and so worth seeing. + +This general knowledge which people seemed to have of one another was +one thing which struck him as peculiarly local. It was the rule, and not +the exception, that in walking out he met persons he knew or knew of, +and he found it at no time difficult to discover the names and positions +of those who attracted his attention. Almost all noticeable and numerous +unnoticeable persons were to be distinguished in some way from their +fellows. The dark, sinewy man he observed standing on the steps of a +certain family hotel was a noted New England senator; his companion was +the head of an important department; the man who stood near was the +private secretary of the President, or the editor of one of the dailies, +or a man with a much-discussed claim against the Government; the +handsome woman whose carriage drew up before a fashionable millinery +establishment was the wife of a foreign diplomat, or of a well-known +politician, or of a member of the Cabinet; the woman who crossed her +path as she got out was a celebrated female suffragist, or female +physician, or lawyer, or perhaps that much-talked-of will-o'-the-wisp, a +female lobbyist; and eight persons out of every ten passing them knew +their names and not a little of their private history. So much was +crowded within a comparatively limited radius that it was not easy for +any person or thing worthy of note to be lost or hidden from the public +eye. + +By the most natural gradations Tredennis found the whole tenor of his +existence changed in this atmosphere. His fixed habits of life gave way +before the influences surrounding him. + +One of the most subtle of these influences was that of his intimacy with +the members of the Amory household, which grew as he had not at all +anticipated that it would. He had thought of the acquaintance in the +first place as one not likely to ripen into anything beyond its rather +conventional significance. Perhaps, on the whole, he had been content to +let it rest as it was, feeling only half-consciously that he should be +in a quieter frame of mind and less liable to vague pangs and +disappointments. + +"It is all different," he had said to himself. "And it is all over. It +is better that it should remain as it is." + +But after his first visit Richard did not choose to lose sight of him. +It was his fancy to seek him out and make much of and take possession of +him, with an amiability and frank persistence in the chase which were at +once complimentary and engaging. + +"Look here!" he would say, having followed him up to reproach him. "You +don't suppose we intend to be treated in this manner? We won't hear of +it. We want you. Your stalwart solidity is what we have been needing to +give us weight and balance. Only yesterday Bertha was holding you up to +Arbuthnot as a model of steadfastness of purpose. We thought we were +going to see you every other day, at least, and you have not been near +us for a week. Bertha wonders what we have been guilty of." + +And then he would be carried up to luncheon or dinner, or to spend the +evening; and each visit resulted in another and another, until it +gradually became the most natural thing in the world that he should drop +in at odd hours, because it seemed that he was always expected, and he +appeared to have a place among them. + +"Do you know what we shall do with you if you remain here a year?" +Bertha had said to him at the outset. "We shall domesticate you. We not +only domesticated Mr. Arbuthnot, but we appropriated him. We feel that +we have invested largely in him, and that he ought to respect our rights +and pay interest. Sometimes I wonder how he likes it, and just now it +occurs to me to wonder how you would like it." + +"The question is," Tredennis answered, "how _you_ would like it." + +He was always conscious of a silent distaste for being compared to Mr. +Arbuthnot, and he was also always conscious of the youthful weakness of +the feeling. + +"It is the kind of thing which belongs to a younger man," he used to say +to himself. "It is arrant folly; and yet I am not fond of the fellow." + +But, as Bertha had predicted, he became in a manner domesticated in the +household. Perhaps the truth was that his natural tendency was toward +the comfort and easy communion of home-life. He was a little surprised +to find himself develop a strong fancy for children. He had never been +averse to them, but he had known nothing of them, and had never +suspected himself of any definite disposition to fondness for them. +After he had watched Bertha's during a few visits he began to like them, +and to be oddly interested in their sayings and doings. He discovered +Jack to be a decidedly sturdy and masculine little fellow, with rather +more than his share of physical strength and beauty; and, making +amicable advances toward him, was met half-way with a fearless readiness +which was very attractive. Then he made friends with Janey, and found +himself still more interested. Her childish femininity was even better +worth studying than Jack's miniature manhood. She was a small, gentle +creature, with clinging hands and much faith, but also with a delightful +sense of infantile dignity, and the friendship which established itself +between them was a very absorbing sentiment. It was not long before it +became an understood thing among the juvenile portion of the +establishment that Tredennis was to be counted among the spoils. His +incoming was greeted with rapture, his outgoing was regarded as a +species of calamity only to be borne because it was unavoidable. He +could tell stories of Indians and bears, and on more than one occasion +was decoyed into the nursery, and found to be not entirely without +resources in the matter of building forts with blocks, and defending +them against aboriginal warriors with tin soldiers. His own sense of +enjoyment of the discovery of these accomplishments in himself filled +him with a whimsical pleasure. He began to carry toys in his pockets, +and became a connoisseur of such dainties as were considered harmless to +the juvenile constitution; and after having been reproved by Janey, on +two or three occasions, for the severity of his air, he began also to +have a care that the expression of his countenance should be less +serious and more likely to win the approval of innocent small creatures, +who considered gravity uncalled for and mysterious. At first he had +seemed to learn but little of Bertha herself, notwithstanding that a day +seldom passed without their meeting, and there were times when he +fancied he had determined that there was but little to learn. The +gayeties of the season over, she announced her intention of resting; and +her manner of accomplishing this end was to inaugurate a series of small +festivities, with a result of occupying each day until midnight. She +gave small, informal dinners, suppers, and teas to the favored few who +would be most likely to enjoy and find them exhilarating, and, when she +did not give a dinner or tea, her evenings were bestowed upon Arbuthnot +and half a dozen of the inner circle, whose habit it was to drop in and +talk politics, literature, or entertaining nonsense. + +At such times it was not at all unusual for the professor to ramble in +at about nine o'clock, and profess to partake of the cup of tea Bertha +offered him, and which he invariably left more than half full upon the +small table by his chair. His old tender interest in her had not +lessened in degree, Tredennis noticed, after seeing them together on two +or three occasions, but it had altered in kind. Sometimes the look of +curious speculation returned to his eyes, but oftener they expressed a +patient, kindly watchfulness. It was not long before Tredennis began to +observe that this quietly watchful look generally showed itself when +Arbuthnot was present. The first time that he felt the full force of the +truth of this was one evening when there had been only two or three +callers, who had remained but a short time, going away early, and +leaving no one in the parlors but himself, the professor, and Arbuthnot. + +Arbuthnot had come in later than usual, and had appeared to be in an +unusual mood. He was pale when he entered, and had no jesting speech to +make. He took his seat by Bertha, and replied to her remarks with but +little of his customary animation, now and then lapsing into silence as +if he had forgotten his surroundings. Bertha seemed inclined to let his +humor pass without notice, as if it was not exactly a new experience; +but Richard commented upon it. + +"Something has gone wrong," he said. "What is it, Larry?" + +"Nothing has gone wrong," Arbuthnot answered, with a short, cheerless +laugh. "I have seen a ghost, that is all." + +"A ghost!" said Bertha, in a low voice, and then sat silent, guarding +her face from the fire with her favorite peacock-feather screen. + +The professor began to stir his tea round and round, which exercise was +his customary assistance to reflection or debate. He glanced at the +peacock-feather screen, and then at Arbuthnot. + +"A ghost is always an interesting scientific conundrum," he observed. +"What form did it take?" + +Arbuthnot laughed his short, cheerless laugh again. + +"It took the form of a sanguine young man from the West," he said, "who +has just come into a twelve-hundred-dollar clerkship, and feels that +unending vistas of fortune lie before him. He was in such good spirits +about it that I rather lost my hold on myself, and said things I might +as well have left unsaid." + +"What did you say?" Richard asked. + +"I told him that if he had money enough left to buy a return ticket home +he had better buy one; and that, if he had not, I would lend it to him. +I told him that at his age it wasn't a bad idea for a man to devote his +time to establishing himself in some career he could depend on; and +that, in default of having the energy to do that, he might reflect on +the alternative of blowing his brains out as a preparation for a +peaceful old age. And I told him that I had seen young fellows like +himself before, and that the end had been for them what it would be for +him." + +"Well?" said Richard, as he had stopped. + +"It wasn't any use," he answered. "I knew it would not be when I began. +I simply made a spectacle of myself in a quiet way to no purpose, and as +a result I am uncomfortable. It was all nonsense, but he reminded me"-- + +"Of what?" said Richard, since he had paused again. + +A peculiar expression crossed his face. Tredennis saw him glance at the +peacock-feather screen, and as quickly glance away. + +"Of--a young fellow of his age I--used to know," he answered. + +"What was _his_ story?" inquired Richard, with his usual desire for +information. "Where is he now?" + +"Dead," said Arbuthnot; and, singularly enough, he half laughed again as +he tossed his cigar into the grate and went to the piano. + +He began to sing in a rather low voice, and while he sang the rest +listened. When he referred to his musical efforts it was his habit to +treat them as but trivial performances; but he allowed them to lose none +of their effectiveness through lack of care and culture. He knew wherein +his power lay, and used it well. To-night, for some reason, this power +was at its strongest, and, as he sang song after song, even Tredennis +was compelled to acknowledge that, if it was his object to produce an +emotional effect, he was in a fair way to succeed. + +Richard threw himself upon a sofa and gave himself up to him with +characteristic readiness to be moved, the professor stirred his tea +slowly and mechanically, and Bertha sat still in the shadow of her +screen. But it was she who moved first. In the midst of one of the songs +she left her seat, slowly crossed the room to the piano, and stood near +it, leaning against the dark wall, her slight white figure thrown into +strong relief, her hands--one of them still holding the peacock-feather +screen--fallen at her sides, her eyes resting on Arbuthnot's averted +face. It seemed to Tredennis that she had moved in obedience to some +impulse of whose power she was scarcely conscious. He saw that she also +was pale, and looked worn with fatigue, and he was filled, as he had +been more than once before, with secret resentment of the fact that no +one but himself appeared to notice that she had changed even within the +last month. + +Arbuthnot continued playing. It was evident that she had not intended to +distract his attention when she approached him, and he did not look at +or speak to her. As she stood listening, it seemed as if she had +forgotten everything but the influence his voice exerted over her for +the time being, and that she allowed it to carry her whither it would. +Something in the soft, absorbed expression of her face reminded +Tredennis vaguely of the look she had worn when she turned to brood over +his words on the night when he had felt nearest to her. He was thinking +this when a movement from the professor attracted his attention,--a +jingling of the teaspoon, a little crash, an exclamation of dismay and +confusion, and the little stand had mysteriously been overturned, and +the professor was ruefully bending down to pick up the fragments of his +small cup and saucer. + +"My dear child!" he said to Bertha, who had started forward to his +rescue, "what a stupid old Vandal I am, and what an insecure little +table to betray me with--and in the midst of Schubert's 'Serenade,' too, +which Mr. Arbuthnot was giving us in his most effective manner! Suppose +you take me up into the nursery, as an example to the children, while +you dry my coat." + +He went out of the room with her, his hand upon her shoulder, and +Arbuthnot left the piano, and returned to the fire. The spell had been +broken with the cup and saucer, and the "Serenade" remained unfinished. +He produced a fresh cigar,--which luxury was one of many accorded him in +the household,--lighted it, and, rather to Tredennis' surprise, resumed +his conversation as if there had been no pause in it. + +"The fellow will be an annoyance to me every day of his life," he said, +faint lines showing themselves upon his forehead in spite of the +half-smile which was meant to deprive them of their significance. "I +know that, confound him! He is in my room, and I shall have the benefit +of every change in him, and it will be a grind--there's no denying that +it will be a grind." + +"I should like to know," said Tredennis, "what the changes will be." + +"The changes will depend upon the kind of fellow he chances to be," said +Arbuthnot. "There are two varieties. If there is a good deal in him he +will begin by being hopeful and working hard. He will think that he may +make himself of value in his position and create a sort of career for +himself. He will do more than is required of him, and neglect nothing. +He will keep his eyes open and make friends of the men about him. He +will do that for a few months, and then, suddenly, and for no fault +whatever, one of these friends will be dropped out. Knowing the man to +be as faithful as himself, it will be a shock to him, and he will get +anxious, and worry over it. He will see him stranded without resources, +struggling to regain his place or get another, treated with amiable +tolerance when he is not buffeted, snubbed, and put off. He will see him +hanging about day after day, growing shabbier, more careworn, more +desperate, until he disappears and is heard of no more, and everybody is +rather relieved than not. He may have been a family man, with a wife and +half-a-dozen children all living decently on his salary. Somebody else +wanted his place and got it, not because of superior fitness for it, but +because the opposing influence was stronger than his. The new man will +go through the same experience when his turn comes--that is all. Well, +my friend will see this and be anxious, and ask questions and find out +that his chances are just the same--no more and no less. He will try not +to believe it, being young enough to be betrayed into the folly, and he +will work harder than ever, and get over his blow a little until he sees +the same thing happen again and again. Then he will begin to lose some +of his good spirits; he will be a trifle irritable at times, and lines +will show themselves on his face, and he won't be so young. When he +writes to the girl he is in love with,--I saw a letter addressed to some +young woman out West, lying on his desk to-day,--she will notice a +change in him, and the change will reveal itself more in each letter; +but he will hang on and grind away, and each election will be a +nightmare to him. But he will grind away. And, then, at last"-- + +He stopped and made a light, rather graceful gesture with his fingers. + +"What then?" demanded Tredennis, with manifest impatience. + +"There will be a new administration, and, if he struggles through, it +will be worse for him than if he were dropped, as in that case he throws +away another four years of his life and all the chances for a future +they might hold if he were free to avail himself of them." + +Tredennis stood up, looking very large under the influence of the +feeling which disturbed him. Arbuthnot himself was not entirely +unimpressed by his quick movement and the energy it expressed. + +"You treat the matter coolly," he exclaimed, as he rose. + +Arbuthnot turned his attention to his cigar. + +"Yes," he replied. "I treat it coolly. If I treated it warmly or hotly +the effect produced would be about the same. My influence upon civil +service is just what it might be expected to be, and no more. Its weight +is easily carried." + +"I beg your pardon," said Tredennis, feeling the justice and adroitness +of the speech. + +"Not at all," Arbuthnot answered. "It is not necessary. It makes you +lose your hold on yourself to be brought face to face with the thing. It +is quite natural. It has had the same effect on me, and I am a +cold-blooded fellow, and a frivolous fellow into the bargain." + +"I have never thought of the matter before," said Tredennis, +disturbedly. "I feel as if my indifference is something to be ashamed +of." + +"If you give your attention as a duty to such subjects," was +Arbuthnot's response, "you will be kept actively employed. If you take +my advice, you will let them alone." + +"The trouble is," said Tredennis, "that every one seems to let them +alone." + +Richard regarded him, from his place on the sofa-cushions, delightedly. + +"Here's an example for you, Larry," he said. "Profit by him. Everything +is an object to him,--everything is worth while. He is an example to us +all. Let us all profit by him." + +"Oh, he began right," laughed Arbuthnot. + +"He began where you began," returned Richard. + +"I?" was the airy answer; "I never began at all. That is my little +difficulty. I am the other one. I told you there was another one. I +represent him." + +Tredennis regarded him steadily. For the first time in the course of +their acquaintance he began to suspect him. His manner was too light +altogether, and the odd shade which had fallen upon his eyes before +during the evening showed itself again. + +"Let us hear about the other one," he said. + +"He is easily disposed of," was the answer. "There was nothing of him at +the outset. He came to his place without an object. He liked the idea of +living in Washington, and of spending his salary. We will say he was a +rather well-looking young fellow, and could dance and sing a little, and +talk decently well. He had no responsibilities, and never thought of the +future. His salary clothed him, and allowed him little luxuries and +ordinary pleasures. He spent it when he had it, and made debt when it +was gone. Being presentable, he was invited out, and made himself useful +and entertaining in a small way. When he thought of the possibilities of +his career being brought suddenly to a close, he was uncomfortable, so +he preferred not to think of it. It is not a pleasant thing to reflect +that a man has about ten years in which to begin life, and that after +that he is ending it; but it is true. What he does from twenty to thirty +he will be likely to find he must abide by from thirty to seventy, if he +lives that long. This man, like the better one, has thrown away the +years in which he might have been preparing himself to end decently. +When they are gone he has nothing to show for them, and less than +nothing. He is the feather upon the current, and when all is over for +him he is whirled out of sight and forgotten with the rest. And, +perhaps, if he had felt there was anything to be gained by his being a +steady, respectable fellow, he might have settled down into one." + +He got up suddenly, with a gesture as if he would shake himself free of +his mood. + +"Here," he said, "I'm going! It is quite time. It's all nonsense talking +it over. It is the old story. I have made myself uncomfortable for +nothing. Confound you, Dick, why did you let me begin? Say good-night to +the professor and Mrs. Amory for me." + +"Come back!" called Richard. "Bertha will want to hear the rest of the +'Serenade' when she comes down." + +"The 'Serenade'!" he said, derisively. "No, thank you. You have had +enough of me, and I have had too much of myself." + +He passed into the hall just as the professor descended from the nursery +and through the open door. Tredennis heard what they said to each other. + +"You did not finish the 'Serenade,'" said the professor. + +"No," was the reply; "and I am afraid you were resigned to it, +Professor." + +"You were singing it very well, and with great effect," the professor +responded, amicably. + +"You are very kind to say so," Arbuthnot answered. "Good-night, sir." + +"Good-night," replied the professor, as he entered the parlor. + +As he did so Tredennis heard the sound of feet upon the stairs, and +caught a glimpse of Bertha's white figure as she came down. + +"You are not going?" he heard her say. + +"Yes." + +She had reached the last step by this time, and stood with her hand +resting upon the balustrade, and she was paler than she had been before. + +"I--" she began--"I wanted to talk to you. What is it, Larry?" + +Tredennis had never heard her call him by his first name before; and he +felt, with a keenness which startled him, the soft naturalness with +which it fell from her lips. + +Arbuthnot's voice itself had altered when he answered her. + +"It is nothing," he said, "but that I am not exactly in a presentable +humor, and I want to go and conceal myself. It is the best thing I can +do. Good-night." + +He held out his hand, touched hers lightly, and then turned away, and +the door opened and closed after him, and Bertha came into the parlor, +moving slowly, as if she felt tired. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +When Tredennis rose to take his leave, the professor rose also. + +"I will go with you," he said. "And if you will, you shall give me a few +minutes of your time before going home. I have some new books to show +you." + +They went out together; but, until they reached the other house and +entered the library, very little was said. The catastrophe of the broken +teacup, or something of greater moment, seemed to occupy the professor's +thoughts. By the time they took their accustomed chairs he appeared to +have forgotten the new books. His thoughtful face wore so sadly +perplexed a look that he even seemed older than usual. + +Tredennis awaited his first words in silence. His quiet fondness for him +had become a very warm and tender feeling during the past months. It had +been his pleasure to try to be of use to him. He had studied his needs, +and endeavored to supply them; he had managed to share hours with him +which might otherwise have been lonely; he had brought to him the stir +of the outside working world when he seemed to require its stimulant; he +had placed his own vigor and endurance at his disposal without seeming +to do so, and his efforts at making his rather lonely life a brighter +and more attractive thing had not been in vain. It was to him the +professor turned in his moments of fatigue and necessity, and it was to +him he turned now. + +"I am going to do a curious thing," he said.--"I am going to do a +curious thing; but I think it is the best thing and the simplest." + +"The simplest thing is always the best," said Tredennis, more because +there was a pause than because he felt an answer was needed. + +"Yes, yes," said the professor, seriously. "I think so. And it is easier +to be simple with you, my boy, than with another man. It is your way to +be direct and serious. You always had the habit. It never was your way +to trifle. It is rather the fashion to trifle nowadays, you know, but +you,--I have always liked it in you that you were not a trifler." + +"No," answered Tredennis; "I have not trifled much. It may have been +against me. Sometimes I have thought it was. I cannot count it among my +merits, at any rate. I am a grim fellow by nature." + +"No," said the professor. "Not a grim fellow. A silent fellow, and +rather unyielding with yourself, but"-- + +He stopped, and looked up at him with a simple affection which made the +young man's heart beat as a woman's glance might have done. + +"I think you know I love you," he said. "I have begun to depend on you +and count you among my luxuries. I am an old man, and my luxuries are +worth a great deal to me. No kindly, thoughtful act of yours has been +unregarded, and I have liked your fancy for me almost as a girl likes +the attentions of her first lover. Sometimes it has pleased me to be +half sentimental over them, and half sentimental over you." + +Tredennis flushed with pleasure and warm feeling. He rose impulsively +and crossed the hearth. + +"I never say things well," he said, "but I should like to try to put +into words something of what I feel. You once said you wished I was your +son, and I have been glad to remember it. I have no ties. Let your wish +be a sort of tie between us. It is a tie I should be proud of, and glad +to honor and make an object in my life. Give me what affection you can. +I wish for it and need it. If I had been your son you would have counted +on me; give me the pleasure and comfort of knowing you count on me now. +It has somehow seemed my lot to have no place in the lives of others. +Give me this, if I am worth it. I shall be better for it, and happier." + +The professor gave him a quiet, half-wistful glance. + +"I gave it to you long ago," he said, at length. "The wish has been a +tie between us from the first." + +And he said it even with a touch of solemnity. + +"If it had not been," he added, afterward, "I should not have come to +you with my trouble to-night,--feeling so sure that you would understand +it." + +He made a gesture with his hand. + +"Go and walk up and down the room there, as I am used to seeing you," he +said. "And I will tell you about it." + +Tredennis did as he bade him,--went to the other side of the room and +began his measured march. + +"We talked of Bertha in this very room years ago," he began. "It seems +to be our lot to talk of Bertha. I am going to speak of her again." + +Tredennis continued his measured tramp without speaking. + +The professor rested his forehead upon his hand and sat so, looking +downward. He went on in a quiet voice, and with a quiet, absorbed +manner,--the manner of a man who, having the habit of close and careful +study, was giving his whole attention simply and carefully to his +subject. + +"I shall have to go back to that night and repeat something I said +then," he went on. "It was that her only hope for happiness would lie in +her marriage with a man she loved deeply." + +"I remember it," Tredennis answered. + +"And I added that the chances were that, instead, she would marry the +man who loved her." + +"I remember that too." + +The professor sighed heavily and wearily. + +"The chances were too many," he said. "She married the man who loved +her." + +Tredennis had marched one length of the room before he continued:-- + +"He did love her," the professor said, after his pause, +"tempestuously--overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly is a good word to use. He +overwhelmed her in the end. At first she liked him; but when the nature +of his feeling for her began to express itself, it is my impression that +she felt a secret fear of and dislike to it. She tried to avoid him, but +he absolutely refused to allow it. He followed her, and was +picturesquely wretched before her eyes. There is no denying he was +picturesque. That was his strong point. He was picturesque and +pathetic--and poetic. She was only a girl, and she was tremendously at a +disadvantage before him. When she treated him badly he bore it with +tender patience, and he devoted himself to her with a faithfulness which +might have touched a heart harder and more experienced than hers was, +poor child! Of course his picturesque unhappiness and his poetic +magnanimity told; I knew they would, and they did. Reaction set in, and +she began to feel the fascination of making him happy." + +He stopped, and suddenly lifted his head. + +"My boy," he said, "one of the most damnable things in life is a +fascination like that in the mind of a generous, ignorant creature!" + +He dropped his head again. + +"That is strong language," he said, "and I don't often use strong +language. I--don't consider it gentlemanly, but I felt strongly at the +moment, and the word is expressive. Well, the time came when, in a +moment when her mood being softer and more sympathetic than usual, and +she herself, as a consequence, at a greater disadvantage than ever,--she +committed herself; and then it was all over. The trouble is, that the +experience of a woman of forty is what a girl needs when she chooses her +husband at twenty, and, as the two things are incompatible, the chances +are always against her. Bertha had the faults and follies that I told +you go to make a martyr. When she had made her mistake, she was strong +and weak enough to abide by it. It is mostly imagination in matters of +this kind; it was imagination in hers. She was young enough to believe +in everything. She believed that if she broke her engagement she would +break Amory's heart and ruin his life for him. There was no danger of +either catastrophe, but they were realities to her, and they terrified +her. Then she had never been touched by any deeper feeling than the +anxious tenderness he awakened in her. She had not been given to +sentiments, and, I am afraid, had regarded them rather contemptuously in +others. She had no conception of a feeling stronger than herself, and +held curiously obstinate and lofty views of the conduct of women who did +not hold their emotions neatly in check. Her girlish bigotry was +touching to me sometimes, because it was so thorough, and revealed such +ignorance. I wish--I wish I could hear something of it now!" + +Tredennis had reached the end of the room. He turned sharply, but +recovered himself and said nothing. + +"Lately," the professor added slowly, "she has been more silent on such +subjects than she used to be." + +He lifted his head from his hand and looked at Tredennis again. + +"Philip," he said, "I--I wish to heaven chance had sent you to us that +year." + +Tredennis stopped in his walk, a dark and rigid figure in the shadow. + +"Had sent me?" he said, in a strained voice. "Me! What--could _I_ have +done?" + +"I--I don't know," answered the professor; "but I solemnly believe, my +boy, that _if_ you had come, you would have averted an evil." + +"Then," said Tredennis, "I wish to God I had!" + +"I say it," said the professor, "with all the more certainty, +remembering, as I do, one day when she wished for you herself." + +"She!" said Tredennis. "Bertha? Bertha?" + +"Yes, Bertha herself. It was a few weeks before her marriage, and she +had not been exactly herself for a week or more. One evening I came into +the parlor and found the room full of the odor of flowers. Amory had +been with her and had left her a bouquet of heliotrope. She had some on +her knee as she sat on a low seat before the fire. When I seated myself +near her, she looked up at me suddenly and said, in a rather unsteady +voice, 'Papa, I have been thinking about Philip Tredennis. I have not +thought of him for a long time. I should like to see him. I--wish he +could come back.' She half laughed at herself as she said it, but her +laugh was nervous, and when I said to her, 'Why? Were _you_ great +friends? I did not know that,' she tried to laugh again, and answered, +'Yes--no--not exactly. But it seems to me that he was a strong sort of +person, and sensible, and--and you might rely on his decisions. It is +only a fancy, I suppose--but it just came into my mind that I should +like to see him again.' There is no doubt, in my mind, that she felt a +need of your obstinate strength, which she did not comprehend wholly +herself. I wish you had come--I wish from my soul you had!" + +"I might have come if I had known," said Tredennis, in a low tone. +"There was nothing--_nothing_ to have stood in my way." And he turned +and began his walk again. + +The professor sighed, as he had sighed before--heavily and drearily. + +"But you did not," he said. "And she married Amory." + +"I should like to know," asked Tredennis, "if you think she is unhappy +now. Do not tell me if you do not wish." + +The professor's reply was very simple and direct. + +"She has never been given to taking sentimental views of herself," he +said, "and she is self-controlled and fond of her children, but she has +never been happy for an hour since her marriage. I think the first year +was very bitter to her. Amory has always been very fond of her; he is +fond of her now, but her illusions concerning his passion for her soon +died. She found out in two months that he would not have perished if she +had discarded him. She had been his one object at first, but she was +only one of a dozen others after they were married. He was amiable and +delightful, but he was not always considerate. The picturesqueness of +his attitude toward her was lost. He did not require her care and +sympathy, and the sacrifices she made for him were very simple and +natural matters in his eyes. + +"In the beginning she was, perhaps, bewildered and desperate; but, girl +as she was, she was too proud and just not to see that her youth and +ignorance had led her into a folly, and that the result was its natural +punishment. Once she said to me, 'The worse punishments in life are the +punishments for ignorance--the worst, the worst!' And I knew what she +meant, though she said no more. When her first child was born, she went +down to the door of death, and her physicians said there seemed to be a +lack of effort. And yet, I tell you she might have been the happiest +young mother in the world. When she has been near happiness at all it +has been in her quiet moments with her children. If it had not been for +her children she might have been a harder and more heartless creature +than she can ever be now. If she had been something less and slighter +than fate made her she might have been either a dull nurse and +housekeeper or a vapid woman of society; in either case she would have +been happier than she is to-day. What a long story it is, and I did not +think it would be so long when I began." + +"I want to hear it all," broke in Tredennis,--"every word. I have not +understood the changes I saw in her I want to understand." + +"That brings me to the point of it all," was the reply. "If she had been +a laborer's wife she might have been too hard-worked to be restless; +but she has had leisure, and social duties, and she has set herself +deliberately the desperate task of making them her pleasures. She has +found an exhilaration in them which has given her no time for regrets. +She is a woman, young, attractive, and spirited. She was too full of +spirit to permit herself to be subdued by her disappointment. As she +cannot retrieve her mistake, she will make the best of it. She has +reasoned herself into a belief that she is satisfied with what fortune +has given her, and so long as that belief remains unshaken, she will be +as happy as nine women out of ten are. Women are not happy, as a rule, +Philip; they are not happy. I have learned that." + +"But so long as her belief remains unshaken"--said Tredennis. + +The professor interrupted him, gravely, sadly. + +"That is the point," he said. "My fear is that it is shaken now." + +Tredennis stopped in the middle of the room--stood quite still. + +"She has had friends and admirers," said the professor, "scores of them. +Perhaps all the more because she has cared less for them than they for +her. She has a pretty trick of making the best of people, and it wins +the public heart. She has friends, acquaintances, and even harmless +devotees; but among them all there is only one man who gauges her, and +that man is the one who very naturally presents himself to your mind as +a fair dandy, with a ready tongue and good manners." + +"Arbuthnot!" exclaimed Tredennis. "Arbuthnot!" + +The professor smiled faintly. + +"What," he said, "you recognize him at once! Well, my one vanity is my +pride in my private knowledge of the thought of others. I am very proud +of it, in a senile way. I have been studying and classifying all my +life, and now I sit and look on, and treat human beings as I have +treated insects. If it had not been so, I should not have known so much +of Bertha. Yes, Arbuthnot. Among all the men she knows and has +known--diplomates, literati, politicians, honest men--I have found only +one to disturb me, and that one Laurence Arbuthnot." + +Tredennis stood still, looking down at the floor, with folded arms. + +"I"--he began, "I have thought"-- + +The professor started. + +"What!" he exclaimed. "_You_ have thought? If you have thought--it must +be plainer than I feared." + +"No," said Tredennis, hurriedly. "Do not let that trouble you. What I +have thought is so trivial and vague that it should not weigh at all. It +has only been because I remembered her girlhood, and--and I thought her +changed--and did not understand." + +"Ah!" said the professor, letting his face fall upon both his hands. +"That is not _his_ trouble; _he_ understands, and that is his strength. +He has had his evil hour, that composed, well-dressed fellow, and he did +not come out of it without scars. He covers them well, with his light +overcoat and the rose in his buttonhole, but they are there, and they +have made him wise. He has been silent, but he has looked on too,--as I +have,--and he has seen what others were blind to. She has never +suspected him, but his knowledge has given him power. When her _mauvais +quart d'heure_ has come upon her he has known what to say and what to +avoid saying, and while she has not comprehended his motives she has +been grateful to him. She has liked his songs and his readiness, and his +unsentimental air, and she has unconsciously learned to rely on him. Her +first sincere liking for him arose from her discovery of his +inconsistent and incongruous knack with the children. She had thought of +him as a rather clever, selfish, well-mannered creature, and once in a +juvenile crisis he surprised her by developing natural gifts--somewhat +cold-blooded, but still amazingly effective. The children began to be +fond of him, and his path was smoothed. She began to be fond of him +herself, genuinely and simply, and if it had ended there she would have +been safer than before. But it did not end there, I suppose. The cup and +saucer were not broken too soon this evening,--they were not broken soon +enough." + +"It was not an accident?" exclaimed Tredennis. + +"No, it was not an accident. I have heard his 'Serenade' before. There +is the danger. He means no harm; but his 'Serenade' and the moments when +what is past gets the better of him, and the little touches of passion +his overcoat won't always cover, and the bits of sincerity he struggles +against and she ponders over, are good for neither him nor her. I have +heard his 'Serenade' before; but to-night, when she got up and followed +him as if he had called her, and--and she had only half heard his voice +and yet must obey it; and when she stood there against the wall, with +her pale face, and her soft eyes fixed on him, it was time for some +common thing to happen to bring her back to life,--and the cup and +saucer were offered as the sacrifice." + +He said it whimsically, and yet sadly. + +"Poor child!" he added. "Poor child! I dare say it was hard enough." + +He paused a moment, and then rose, went to Tredennis's side, and laid +his hand on his shoulder. + +"There," he said,--"there is the confession, and I can make my appeal to +you with fewer words." + +"Your appeal?" Tredennis repeated. + +"I can ask you for your help." + +"If there is any help I can give which is worth the asking and giving," +said Tredennis, slowly, "you know it will be yours." + +"Yes, I know it will be mine, and so I ask it easily. And what I ask is +this. Let us walk slowly while we talk, and I will keep my hand on your +shoulder,--I like to feel your support. What I would say is this: if +you had been my son, you would have watched over her and stood between +her and any pain which could threaten her. You know that what I fear for +her now is only the desperate, hopeless misery such an experience as +this would be sure to bring her if it were allowed to ripen; for her +there is nothing else to fear. No, I know I need not have said that to +you." + +"No," answered Tredennis, "there was no need to say it." + +"She does not know herself. I know her, and know what such an experience +holds for her. Better that her life should be barren to the end than +that she should bear what she must bear if her heart is once awakened." + +"Better!" said Tredennis. + +He felt the tremulous hand weigh heavily upon him. + +"I am an old man," he was answered. "I have lived my life nearly to its +close, and I say a _thousand_ times better! I married a woman I did not +love, and I loved a woman I could not marry." + +"And you wished to ask me," said Tredennis, breaking the short silence +which followed. + +"I ask you to defend her against this pain. If I were a younger and +stronger man, I might do for her what I ask of you; but I cannot often +be with her. You are with her day after day. She likes you." + +"I have fancied," Tredennis said, "that she did _not_ like me." + +"It is only fancy. She sees in you the strength she vaguely longed for +when she was at the turning-point of her life. Let her feel that it is +always near her, and that she may rely upon it now. You are fond of her +children,--talk to her of them. When you see her inclined to be silent +and unlike herself, bring them to her mind; when that fellow is there, +manage that she shall think of them. Her tenderness for them is your +stronghold and mine. To-night, why did I take her to the nursery? +Because they lay asleep there, and when she saw them she stopped to +cover them more warmly, and touch them with her hand, and bend to kiss +them, and forgot her 'Serenade.' She loves them better than she loves +anything else on earth,--better than she could love anything else, +perhaps. That's her woman's way. God made it so. That is the one help +and safeguard He gave to women out of the whole bitter universe. Bring +her back to her children at her saddest and weariest, and when the fight +is hardest, and they will beat the rest back. It is Nature. You will do +what I ask, I know. + +"I shall be more at ease," he said next, "that I have asked this of you. +When you are with her I shall feel that she is safe. I trust her in your +hands." + +"I will try to be worthy of the trust." + +"It is rather a strange one to repose in a man of your age, but I give +it to you with the rest,--it goes with the tie you wished for. It is a +relief to me to share it with a strong fellow who can bear it well." + +They talked a little longer, walking across the floor two or three times +together, and then Tredennis went away. He was in a strange frame of +mind. It was almost as if he had received a blow which had partially +stunned him. When he reached the street he stood for a moment looking up +at the starlit sky. + +"A strong fellow," he said. "_Am_ I such a strong fellow? And _I_ am to +stand between you and your lover,--_I_? That is a strange thing, +Bertha--a strange thing." + +And, rousing himself suddenly, he strode down the street, and the +professor, who had gone to his room, heard his military tread ringing +steady and measured upon the pavement and felt a vague comfort in the +sound. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +During the next few weeks Bertha did not appear as well as usual. The +changes Tredennis had seen in her became more marked. She lost color and +roundness, and now and then was forced to show signs of fatigue which +were not habitual with her. She made no alteration in her mode of life, +however. When Tredennis called in the evening the parlor was always +full, and she was always vivaciously occupied with her guests. Chief +among her attractions was counted her pet pretence of being interested +in politics. It was not a very serious pretence, but, being managed +deftly and with a sense of its dramatic value, animated many an hour +which might otherwise have been dull, in view of the social material +which occasionally fell into her hands. + +"What should I do," Tredennis heard her say once, "if I knew nothing of +politics? There are times when they are my only salvation. What should I +have done last night with the new member from Arkansas if I had not +remembered that he was interested in the passage of the Currency Bill? +He is an excellent, solid, sensible creature; we are frivolous, aimless +beings compared with him. It is such men as he who do everything worth +doing and being done, but he is purely a politician, and he has spent +his life in a small provincial town, where he has been a most important +person, and he cares as much for the doings of society and discussions +of new novels and pictures as I do for the linseed-oil market--if there +is a linseed-oil market. When I began to ask him modest questions about +his bill, his face brightened at once, and he became a self-respecting +and well-informed person,--at ease with himself and with me, and quite +forgot his coat and his large boots, which had been slowly and +painfully dawning upon him a few moments before when he contrasted them +with Mr. Arbuthnot's silk attire. My very mistakes were a pleasure to +him, as they gave him an opportunity to say several things very well +worth remembering. He could not have told whether I was well or ill +dressed, but he detected my flimsiness in argument in a moment, and gave +me more information in half an hour than you scoffers could have given +me in a week, and"--with much modesty of demeanor--"he mentioned to +Senator Vaughan, in the course of the evening, that I was a most +intelligent woman." + +Arbuthnot and Richard burst into the laughter which was always her +applause upon such occasions. + +"You!" commented Arbuthnot. "You are Herodias' daughter, dancing for the +head of John the Baptist. You are always dancing in a quiet and +effective way for somebody's head. Whose would you like next? How does +mine strike you?" + +"Thank you," said Bertha. "Would you really give it to me if I danced +for you in my ablest manner; and how do you think it would look on a +charger?" + +There was more than one hard-worked politician who, after a day of +exciting debate or wearisome battling with windmills, found relief and +entertainment in the pretty parlors. Some of those who came had known +Bertha in her girlhood and were friends of her father, and with these it +was the fashion to encourage her to political argument, and affect the +deepest confidence in her statements, with a view to drawing forth all +her resources. These resources were varied and numerous, and marked by a +charming feminine daring and superiority to ordinary logic which were +the delights of the senatorial mind. + +"Why should I endeavor to convince you by being logical?" she said. "You +have logic--at least we hope so--all day, and sometimes all night, in +the Senate and the House, and even then you are not convinced of +things. It is not logic which governs you, but a majority. And that is +what one should aspire to, after all,--not to be in the right, but to be +in the majority. And I am sure one's arguments are much more +untrammelled and brilliant for being illogical. And if I convince you +without logic, I win a victory worth having. It is like the triumph of +an ugly woman who is called a beauty. If I am pretty and you say so, it +is simply as if you said, 'white is white, blackness is dark'; but if I +am not pretty, and am ingenious enough to persuade you that I am--there +is a triumph to be proud of!" + +It was nonsense, but it was often sparkling nonsense, whose very +lightness was its charm, and the rooms were rarely ever so gay and full +of laughter as when there was among the guests a sprinkling of men no +longer young, who had come there to forget that they were jaded, or +secretly anxious, or bitterly disappointed. + +"It pleases me to dance before some of them," Bertha said to Arbuthnot. +"I like to think I make them forget things for a little while. If I can +do nothing greater and wiser, let me employ my one small accomplishment +to the best advantage, and do my harmless best to be both graceful and +agile. No one can persuade me that it can be a pleasant thing to engage +in a hand-to-hand conflict from three to eight months in the year, and +to sit day after day placidly endeavoring to confront men who differ +with you on every point, and who count the fact among their virtues, and +glory in it, and watch you and listen to you, with the single object of +seizing an opportunity to prove in public that you are an imbecile or a +falsifier, or a happy combination of both. When I reflect upon my own +feelings," she added, with delightful _naïveté_, "when people are stupid +and ill-mannered enough to differ with me, I am filled with the deepest +sympathy for the entire political body. There is nothing so perfectly +exasperating as to know people are differing with you, and I know there +is nothing so wearing to the mind." + +An exciting debate in the Senate was occupying public attention at this +time, and to her other duties and entertainments she added that of +following it in its course. She spent an hour or so at the Capitol every +day, read the newspapers, and collected evidence and information with an +unflagging industry which would have been worthy of admiration if it had +been inspired by any serious intention. But she made no pretence of +seriousness of intention. She returned home from such visits with +derisive little arguments jotted down in her note-book and little +sketches of senatorial profiles adorning its pages, and entertained a +select audience with them in the evening,--an audience which not +infrequently included the political dignitaries themselves. Her manner +would have been a mystery to Tredennis if he had not remembered the +professor's words of warning, and even with their memory in his mind he +was often at a loss. There was a restless eagerness to be amused in all +she did, and he felt that, after all, she was privately less successful +in her efforts than she seemed. He was, at least, relieved to find that +he had but little to do in the role assigned him. When Arbuthnot +appeared again, he had entirely recovered his equilibrium, and was +unemotional, self-possessed, occasionally flippant, plainly cherishing, +at no time, any intention of regarding himself seriously. He did not +sing his "Serenade" again, and, when he sang at all, committed himself +to no outreaching warmth of feeling. He rarely spoke to Bertha alone, +and the old tendency to airy derision of each other's weaknesses +reasserted itself. Only once Tredennis heard him address her with any +degree of seriousness, and this was in reference to her visits to the +Senate. There had been an all-night session, and it had been her whim to +take part in it to the extent of sitting up until after midnight, and +she had returned home more tired than she was willing to confess. +Arbuthnot--who, with Richard, Tredennis, and a newspaper friend, had +been her companions in the dissipation--remonstrated with her after the +little supper they had on their arrival at the house. + +Bertha had left the table, and was half reclining against a pile of +cushions on the sofa, and Arbuthnot followed her, and spoke in a +somewhat lowered voice. + +"You are making a mistake in doing such things," he said. "Why will you +keep it up? It's all nonsense. You don't care for it really. It is only +one of your caprices. You have not a particle of serious interest in +it." + +"I have as much serious interest in it as I have in anything else," she +answered. "More, indeed. Do you suppose I was not interested when +Senator Ayres got up to-night to be immeasurably superior by the hour? +It elevated my mental plane, and gave me food for reflection. It filled +me with a burning desire to be immeasurably superior, too. Is he always +immeasurably superior? Could he keep it up, do you suppose, in the bosom +of his family,--when he is putting salt on his eggs at breakfast, for +instance, and thinks no one is looking? When he tries on a new hat, does +he do it with a lofty air of scorn, and does he fall asleep and have the +nightmare with coldly contemptuous condescension? I don't mind +mentioning to you that it is one of my favorite moods to be immeasurably +superior. It is such a good way when you cannot get what you want; it +disposes of your antagonists so simply and makes you feel so deserving; +but I never could keep it up,--but that may be owing to weakness of +character, and the fact that I am only an unworthy imitator and lack the +vigor to convince myself of my own genuineness. Oh! I assure you, I was +very much interested indeed." + +"Well," said Arbuthnot, "I might have expected you would say something +of this kind. It is your little way of evading matters. You have a knack +at it." + +Bertha looked down at the footstool on which her small shoe rested, and +then up at him with a quiet face. + +"Yes, it is my little way," she answered. "I suppose I might count it +among my few small accomplishments. But don't you think it is as good a +way as any,--particularly if it is the only way you have?" + +"It is as good a way as any," replied Arbuthnot, with the calmness of a +sensible person addressing an attractive but obstinate child. "But you +know it will not prevent my saying again what I said at first. You are +very foolish to tire yourself out for nothing, and you will regret it +when it is too late." + +"Yes," answered Bertha, "if I regret it I shall naturally regret it when +it is too late. Did you ever hear of any one's regretting a thing too +early, or just in time? That is what regret means--that one is too +late." + +Arbuthnot sat down near her. + +"If you want to talk in that style," he remarked, in the most impartial +manner, "I am entirely in the mood to listen, now I have expressed my +opinion. It isn't worth much as _my_ opinion, but it is worth something +as the truth, and I am not afraid you will forget it, but, in the +meantime, until Mrs. Dacre is in the mood to be escorted home, you can +pander to my lower nature by showing me the sketches you made of Senator +Ayres and the Speaker, and the gentleman from Iowa who was afraid to +fall asleep." + +The next morning, calling with a newspaper she had wanted, Tredennis, +being handed into the room in which Bertha usually spent her mornings at +home, found her lying upon a sofa, and, as she did not hear him enter, +he had the opportunity to stand for a few seconds and look at her. + +While he did so she opened her eyes languidly and saw him, and the +thought which held his mind for the moment sprang to his lips and +uttered itself. + +"I do not think you know," he said, "how pale you are." + +"I do not want to know," she answered, with a rather tired little +smile, "if it is unbecoming, and I am sure it is. But I will ask you to +excuse my getting up." + +He entirely passed over the first part of her reply, as she had noticed +he had a habit of passing in silence many of her speeches, though she +had not been able to decide why he did so. + +"You said," he went on, "that when the season was over you intended to +rest. Have you been doing it lately?" + +"Yes," she answered, with entirely unembarrassed readiness. "I have been +very quiet indeed." + +At this he was silent for a moment again, and during the pause she lay +and looked at him with an expression of curious interest--trying to make +up her mind whether he did not reply because he felt himself not +sufficiently ready of speech to meet her upon her own ground, or whether +his silence was a negative sign of disapprobation. + +"I am never tired when anything is going on," she said, at last. + +"That is the worst of it," he replied. + +"Oh, no--the best of it," she said, and then she looked away from him +across the room, and added, in a tone altogether different, "One does +not want too much time on one's hands." + +Once or twice before he had seen this slight, unconscious change fall +upon her, and, without comprehending, had been sharply moved by it, but +she always recovered herself quickly, and she did so now. + +"I tried it once," she said, "and it did not agree with me, and since +then I have occupied myself. As Richard says, 'one must have an object,' +and mine is to occupy myself." + +"You accomplish your end, at least," he remarked. + +"Yes," she answered. "I congratulate myself upon that. Upon the whole I +do not know any one who is more fortunate than I am. No other life would +suit me half so well as the one I lead. I am fond of gayety, and +change, and freedom, and I have all three. Richard is amiable, the +children are like him, and there is nothing to interfere with my having +my own way, and amusing myself as I please. I should be thoroughly +unhappy if I could not have my own way; to have it invariably is one of +my laudable ambitions, and as I always get it you see I have reason for +being charmed with my lot." + +"You are very fortunate," he said. + +"I am more than fortunate," she answered. Then she broke into a little +laugh. "It is rather odd," she said, "that just before you came in I was +lying thinking of the time you were in Washington before, and there came +back to me something I said to you the night you gave me the +heliotrope." + +"Was it," said Tredennis, "what you said to me about being happy?" + +"What!" she said. "You remember it? I scarcely thought that you would +remember it." + +"Yes," said Tredennis, "I remember it." + +"I could not bear the thought of not being happy," she went on. "It had +never occurred to me that such a thing was a possibility until you said +something which suggested it to me. I recollect how it startled me. It +was such a new idea." + +She stopped and lay for a moment silent. + +"And this morning?" suggested Tredennis. + +"This morning," she answered, rather slowly, though smiling as she +spoke, "this morning, as I said, I decided that I had been very +fortunate." + +"Then," he said, "you _have_ been happy." + +"If I had not been," she answered, "it would have been very curious. I +have never been interfered with in the least." + +"That is happiness, indeed," said Tredennis. + +Just now he was reflecting upon the fact that all their conversations +took the same turn and ended in the same way. It mattered little how +they began; in all cases she showed the same aptitude for making her +subject an entirely inconsequent source of amusement. Experience was +teaching him that he need expect nothing else. And, even as he was +thinking this, he heard her laugh faintly again. + +"Shall I tell you what I see in your face," she said,--"what I see +oftener than anything else?" + +"I should be glad to know," he replied. + +"I see that you are thinking that I am very much changed, and that it is +not for the better." + +He paused a moment before he answered her, and when he did so he spoke +with his eyes fixed on the floor, and slowly: + +"You are not the Bertha I used to know," he said. "But that I should +have allowed myself to expect it shows simply that I am a dull, +unprogressive fellow." + +"It shows that you are very amiable and sanguine," she said. "I should +have been even more fortunate than it has been my fate to be if I had +not changed in ten years. Think of the good fortune of having stood +still so long,--of having grown no older, no wiser. No," in a lower +voice, "I am not the Bertha you used to know." + +But the next instant, almost as soon as she had uttered the words, she +lifted her eyes with the daring little smile in them. + +"But I am very well preserved," she said. "I am really very well +preserved. I am scarcely wrinkled at all, and I manage to conceal the +ravages of time. And, considering my years, I am quite active. I danced +every dance at the Ashworths' ball, with the kindly assistance of Mr. +Arbuthnot and his friends. There were _débutantes_ in the room who did +not dance half as often. The young are not what they were in my +generation,--though probably the expiring energies of advanced age are +flaming in the socket and"-- + +She stopped suddenly, letting her hands drop at her sides. "No," she +said again, "I--I am not the Bertha you used to know--and this morning I +am--tired enough to be obliged to admit it." + +Tredennis took a quick step toward her; the hot blood showed itself +under his dark skin. What he had repressed in the last months got the +better of him so far that he had no time to reflect that his stern, +almost denunciatory, air could scarcely be ranked among ordinary +conventionalities, and that an ordinarily conventional expression of +interest might have been more reasonably expected from him than a +display of emotion, denunciatory or otherwise. + +"Can you expect anything else?" he said. "Is your life a natural one? Is +it a natural and healthy thing that every hour of it should contain its +own excitement, and that you should not know what simple, normal rest +means? Who could be blind to the change which has taken place in you +during the last few weeks? Last night you were so tired and unstrung +that your hand trembled when you lifted your glass to your lips. +Arbuthnot told you then it was a mistake; I tell you now that it is +worse,--it is madness and crime." + +He had not thought of what effect he would produce,--his words were his +indignant masculine protest against her pallor and weakness, and the +pain he had borne in silence for so long. It seemed, however, that he +had startled her singularly. She rose from her reclining posture slowly +and sat upright, and her hands trembled more than they had done the +night before. + +"Why," she faltered, "why are you so angry?" + +"That," he returned bitterly, "means that I have no right to be angry, +of course! Well, I am willing to admit it,--I have no right. I am taking +a liberty. I don't even suggest that you are making a mistake,--as Mr. +Arbuthnot did; I am rough with you, and say something worse." + +"Yes," she admitted, "you are very rough with me." And she sat a few +moments, looking down at the floor, her little hands trembling on her +lap. But presently she moved again. She pushed one of the cushions up in +the sofa-arm and laid her cheek against it, with a half-sigh of +weariness relieved and a half-smile. + +"Go on!" she said. "After all,--since I have reflected,--I think I don't +dislike it. New things always please me,--for a little while,--and this +is new. No one ever spoke to me so before. I wonder whether it was +because I did not really deserve it or because people were afraid?" + +Tredennis stopped in the walk he had begun and wheeled sharply about, +fronting her with his disproportionately stern gaze. + +"Do you want to know why _I_ do it?" he demanded. "I think--since I have +reflected--that it is for the sake of--of the other Bertha." + +There was a slight pause. + +"Of the other Bertha," she said after it, in a low, unsteady tone. "Of +the Bertha who thought it an impossibility that she should be anything +but happy." + +He had not been prepared for her replies before, but he was startled by +what she did now. She left her seat with a sudden, almost impassioned, +action; the cushion fell upon the floor. She put her hand upon the +mantel, as if to support herself. + +"Why did you say that?" she exclaimed. "I do not like it! I do not like +to be reminded that it is so long since--since I was worth liking. I +suppose that is what it means. Why should you seem to accuse me when you +say you speak for the sake of the other Bertha? Am I so bad? You have +lived a quiet life because you liked it best; I did not chance to like +it best, and so I have been gay. I go out a great deal and am fond of +the world, but do I neglect my children and treat my husband badly? +Richard is very happy, and Jack and Janey and Meg enjoy themselves and +are very fond of me. If I was careless of them, and ill-tempered to +Richard, and made my home unhappy, you might accuse me. It is the most +mysterious thing to me, but I always feel as if I was defending myself +against you, even when you only look at me and do not speak at all. +It--it is a curious position! I do not understand it, and I do not like +it!" + +Her sudden change of mood was a revelation to Tredennis. He began to +realize what he had dimly felt from the first, that her mental attitude +toward him was one of half-conscious defiance of his very thought of +her. He had not known why he had felt at times that his mere presence +prompted her to present her worldly, mocking little philosophies in +their most incontrovertible and daring form, and that it was her whim to +make the worst of herself and her theories for his benefit. He accused +himself angrily in secret of overestimating his importance in her eyes, +and had reiterated impatiently that there was no reason why she should +be at all specially aware of his existence when he was near her, and it +had been one of his grievances against himself that, in spite of this, +every time they met he had felt the same thing, and had resented and +been puzzled by it. + +But he had never before seen her look as she looked now. One of his +private sources of wonder had been the perfect self-control which +restrained her from exhibiting anything approaching a shadow of real +feeling upon any subject. He had seen her under circumstances which +would have betrayed nine women out of ten into some slight display of +irritation, and she had always maintained the airy serenity of demeanor +which deprived all persons and incidents of any weight whatever when +they assumed the form of obstacles, and her practicable little smile and +calm impartiality of manner had never failed her. He had heard her +confess that it was her chief weakness to pride herself upon her quiet +adroitness in avoiding all things unpleasant or emotional, and upon her +faithfulness to her resolve not to permit herself to be disturbed. + +"I have seen people who enjoyed their emotions," she had said, "but I +never enjoyed mine, even when I was very young. I definitely disliked +them. I am too self-conscious to give myself up to them simply. If I had +one, I should think about it and analyze it and its effects upon me. I +should be saying all the time, 'Now I am hot--now I am cold'; and when +it was over I should be tired, not only of the feeling itself, but of +taking my own temperature." + +And now she stood before him for the instant a new creature,--weaker and +stronger than he had dreamed it possible she could be,--her eyes bright +with some strange feeling, a spot of color burning on each pale cheek. +He was so bewildered and impressed that he was slow to speak, and, when +he began, felt himself at so severe a disadvantage that his +consciousness of it gave his voice a rigid sound. + +"I do not think," he began, "that I know what to say"-- + +Bertha stopped him. + +"There is no need that you should say anything," she interrupted. "You +cannot say anything which will disapprove of me more than your +expression does. And it is not you who should defend yourself, but I. +But you were always severe. I remember I felt that when I was only a +child, and knew that you saw all that was frivolous in me. I was +frivolous then as I am now. I suppose I have a light nature,--but I do +not like to be reminded of it. After all, no one is harmed but myself, +and it would be charity in you to let me go my flippant way and not +despise me too much." + +"Bertha," he answered, "it is not for me to say that I do not despise +you." + +He stood with his arms folded and looked down at her steadily. It was +very easy for her to place him at a disadvantage. He knew nothing of +feminine ways and means, and his very masculine strength and largeness +were against him. If she gave him a wound he could not strike back, or +would not; and in her last speech she had given him more wounds than +one, and they were rankling in his great breast fiercely. And yet +despite this it was not she who came off entirely victor. After meeting +his gaze with undeniable steadiness for a few seconds, she turned away. + +"I told you," she remarked with a persistence which was its own +betrayer, "that--it was not necessary for you to say anything." The next +moment an impatient laugh broke from her. She held up her unsteady hand +that he might see it. + +"Look!" she said. "Why should I quarrel with you when you are right, +after all? It is certainly time that I should rest when I am so absurdly +unstrung as this. And my very mood itself is a proof that something +should be done with me. For a minute or so I have actually been out of +temper, or something humiliatingly like it. And I pride myself upon my +temper, you know, and upon the fact that I never lose it,--or have not +any to lose. I must be worn out when a few perfectly truthful speeches +will make me bad-tempered. Not that I object to it on moral grounds, but +it wounds my vanity to lose control of myself. And now I have reached my +vanity I am quite safe. I will leave for Fortress Monroe to-morrow." + +"It would be better if you went to a quieter place," he said. + +"Thank you," she answered. "I think it will be quiet enough,--if I take +the children, and avoid the ball-room, and am very decorous." + +There seemed but little more for him to say. She changed the subject by +taking from the table the paper he had brought her, and beginning to +discuss its contents. + +"Richard asked me to read the editorial and the letter from the +Washington correspondent," she said. "He is more interested in the +matter than I ever knew him to be in anything of the kind before. He is +actually making it one of his objects, and flatters me by wanting to +know my opinions and wishing me to share his enthusiasm." She sat down +to the table, with the paper open before her and her hands lying clasped +upon it. + +"Have you read it?" she asked. "Is it very clever? Can I understand it? +Richard is so amiably sure I can." + +"It is well done," replied Tredennis, "and you will certainly understand +it." + +"I am glad of that," she said, and sat still a moment, with eyes +lowered. Then she spoke, rather suddenly. "Richard is very good to me," +she said. "I ought to be very grateful to him. It is just like him to +feel that what I think of such things is worth hearing. That is his +affectionate, generous way. Of what value could my shallow little +fancies be?--and yet I think he really believes they should carry +weight. It is the most delightful flattery in the world." + +"It is your good fortune," said Tredennis, "to be able to say things +well and with effect." + +"What!" she said, with a half-smile, "are you going to flatter me, too?" + +"No," he answered, grimly, "I am not going to flatter you." + +"You would find it a very good way," she answered. "We should get along +much better, I assure you. Perhaps that is really what I have been +resenting so long--that you show no facility for making amiable +speeches." + +"I am afraid my facility lies in the opposite direction," he returned. + +"I have recovered my equilibrium sufficiently not to admit that," she +said. + +When he went away, as he did shortly after, she followed him to the door +of the room. + +"Was I very bad-tempered?" she said, softly. "If I was, suppose you +forgive me before you go away--for the sake of the other Bertha." + +He took the hand she offered him, and looked down at it as it lay upon +his big brown palm. It was feverish and still a little unsteady, though +her manner was calm enough. + +"There is nothing to forgive," he answered. "If there was--this +Bertha"--He checked himself, and ended abruptly. "I don't share your +gift," he said. "I said my say as bluntly and offensively as possible, I +suppose, and you had a right to be angry. It was all the worse done +because I was in earnest." + +"So was I--for a moment," she said; "that was the trouble." + +And that was the end of it, though even when he dropped her hand and +turned away, he was aware of her slender figure standing in the +door-way, and of a faint, inexplicable shadow in the eyes that followed +him. + +He went back to his quarters bitterly out of humor with himself. + +"A nice fellow I am to talk to women!" he said. "I have not lived the +life to fit me for it. Military command makes a man authoritative. What +right had I to seem to assume control over her? She's not used to that +kind of thing, even from those who might be supposed to have the right +to do it. Some one ought to have the right--though that has gone out of +fashion, too, I suppose." Something like a groan burst from him as he +laid his forehead upon his hands, resting his elbows on the table before +him. "If a man loved her well enough," he said, "he might do it and +never hurt her; but if she loved him perhaps there would be no need of +it." + +He had passed through many such brief spasms of resentful misery of +late, and he was beginning to acknowledge to himself that each one was +stronger than the last. He had contended his ground with steady +persistence and with stubborn condemnation of his own weakness, but he +had lost it, inch by inch, until there were times when he felt his +foothold more insecure than he could have believed possible a year ago. + +"Why should I think of myself as a man who has lost something?" he was +wont to say to himself, bitterly and impatiently. "I had won nothing, +and might never have won it. I had what would have been opportunity +enough for a quicker temperament. It is nothing but sentiment." + +And, even as he said it, there would come back to him some tone of +Bertha's voice, some pretty natural turn of her head or figure as she +sat or stood in the parlor with her small court around her; and, slight +as the memory might be, the sudden leap of his pulses had more power +than his argument. + +It was these trifles and their habit of haunting him which were harder +to combat than all the rest. His life had been so little affected by +femininity that hers had a peculiarly persistent influence upon him. He +noted in her things he might have seen in scores of other women, but +half fancied belonged specially to herself. The sweep and fall of her +dress, the perfume she used, the soft ruffles of lace she was given to +wearing,--each of her little whims of adornment had its distinct effect, +and seemed, in some mysterious way, to have been made her own, and to be +shared with no other being. Other women wore flowers; but what flowers +had ever haunted him as he had been haunted by the knot of heliotrope +and violets he had seen her tuck carelessly into the belt of her dress +one day? He had remembered them with a start again and again, and each +time they had bloomed and breathed their soft scent afresh. + +"It is all sentiment," he persisted. "There would be nothing new in it +to--to that fellow Arbuthnot, for instance; but it is new to me, and I +can't get rid of it, somehow." + +He had heard in his past stories of men who cherished as treasures for a +lifetime a ribbon or a flower, and had passed them by in undisturbed +composure as incidents belonging only to the realms of wild romance; +but he had never in the course of his existence felt anything so keen as +the inconsequent thrill which was the result of his drawing suddenly +from his pocket one night, on his return to his quarters after a romp +with the children, a small, soft, long-wristed glove which it had been +Master Jack's pleasure to hide there. + +He had carried it sternly back the next morning and returned it to +Bertha, but the act cost him an effort; it had been like a living +presence in his room the night before, and he had slept less well +because of it. + +He had used his very susceptibility to these influences as an argument +against his feeling. + +"There is nothing substantial in it," he had said,--"nothing but what a +man should find it easy to live down. It is the folly of a boy, +intoxicated by the color of a girl's cheek and the curl of her hair. An +old fellow, who any day may find a sprinkling of gray in his scalp-lock, +should know better than to ponder over a pretty gown and--a bunch of +flowers; and yet how one remembers them!" + +And to-day it was the little things, as usual, almost as much as the +great ones. The memory of the small, bright room, with its air of +belonging to Bertha, and being furnished by Bertha, and strewed with +appendages of Bertha; the slight figure, in its white morning dress, +lying upon the sofa or standing between the folding-doors; the soft, +full knot of her hair as he saw it when she turned her head proudly away +from him,--what trifles they were! And yet if the room had been another, +and the pretty dress not white, and the soft hair coiled differently, +everything might have had another effect, and he might have been in +another mood,--or so he fancied. + +But he gave himself little leisure for the indulgence of his fancies, +and he made his usual effort to crush them down and undervalue them. His +groan was followed by a bitter laugh. + +"It is the old story," he said. "I please myself by fancying that what +would please me would make her happier. Arbuthnot would know better. +Control would not suit her, even the gentlest. She has had her own way +too long. She is a small, slight creature, but it has been her lot to +rule all her life, in a small, slight creature's way. It is the natural +sentimentality of an obstinate, big-boned fellow to fancy she would +thrive under it. She would know better herself. She would laugh the +thought to scorn, and be wise in doing it." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +As he was saying it Bertha had gone back to her sofa, and sat there with +the faint, troubled smile still on her face. + +"He was angry," she said, "and so was I. It made him look very large; +but I was not at all afraid of him,--no, positively, I was not afraid of +him, and I am glad of that. It is bad enough to remember that I was +emotional, and said things I did not mean to say. It is not like me to +say things I don't mean to say. I must be more tired out than I knew. +Ah, there is no denying that he was in the right! I will go away and +stay some time. It will be better in every way." + +For some minutes she sat motionless, her hands clasped lightly upon her +knee, her eyes fixed on a patch of sunlight on the carpet. She did not +move, indeed, until she heard the sound of her husband's foot upon the +steps and his latch-key in the door. He entered the room immediately +afterward, looking rather warm and a trifle exhilarated, and all the +handsomer in consequence. + +"Ah, Bertha, you are here!" he said. "I am glad you are not out! How +warm it is! Fancy having such weather early in May! And three days ago +we had fires. What a climate! There is something appropriate in it. It +is purely Washingtonian, and as uncertain as--as senators. There's a +scientific problem for the Signal Service Bureau to settle,--Does the +unreliability of the climate affect the senatorial mind, or does the +unreliability of the senatorial mind affect the climate?" + +"It sounds like a conundrum," said Bertha, "and the Signal Service +Bureau would give it up. You have been walking too fast, you foolish +boy, and have overheated yourself. Come and lie down on the sofa and +rest." + +She picked up the cushion, which had fallen, and put it in place for +him. There was always a pretty touch of maternal care for him in her +manner. He accepted her invitation with delighted readiness, and, when +he had thrown himself at luxurious full length upon the sofa, she took a +seat upon its edge near him, having first brought from the mantel a +large Japanese fan, with which she stirred the air gently. + +"Why were you glad that I had not gone out?" she said. "Did you want +me?" + +"Oh!" he answered, "I always want you. You are the kind of little person +one naturally wants,--and it is a sort of relief to find you on the +spot. How nice this Grand Pasha business is,--lying on cushions and +being fanned,--and how pretty and cool you look in your white frills! +White is very becoming to you, Bertha." + +Bertha glanced down at the frills. + +"Is it?" she said. "Yes, I think it is, and this is a pretty gown. +Richard!" + +"Well?" + +"You said it was a sort of relief to find me on the spot. Did you say it +because I am not always here when you want me? Do you think I go out too +much? Does it ever seem to you that I neglect you a little, and am not +quite as domesticated as I should be? Should you be--happier--if I lived +a quieter life and cared less for society?" + +There was a touch of unusual earnestness in her voice, and her eyes were +almost childishly eager as she turned them upon him. + +"Happier!" he exclaimed, gayly. "My dear child! I could not easily be +happier than I am. How could I accuse you of neglecting me? You satisfy +me exactly in everything. Whose home is more charming, and whose +children are better cared for than mine? It is not necessary for you to +cook my dinner, but you are the most delightful sauce to it in the +world when you sit at the head of the table. What more could a man +want?" + +"I--I don't know," she said, slowly, "but I could not bear to think that +I was not what I should be in my own home. It has always seemed to me +that there could be no bad taste and bad breeding so inexcusable as the +bad taste and bad breeding of a woman who is disagreeable and negligent +in her own house. One has no need to put it on moral grounds even--the +bad taste of it is enough. I don't think I could ever be disagreeable, +or that you could think me so; but it struck me"-- + +"Don't let it strike you again," he interrupted, amiably. "It has struck +me that there were never two people so well suited to each other as our +married life has proved us to be. I don't mind admitting now that once +or twice during the first year I thought that you were a little restless +or unhappy, but it was when you were not well, and it was quite natural, +and it all passed away, and I don't think it would occur to any one in +these days to ask whether you are happy or not." + +Bertha was playing with his watch-chain, and she separated one charm +upon it from another carefully as she answered him in a soft, natural +voice: + +"There is a legend, you know," she said, "that the first year of one's +marriage is always uncomfortable." + +"Oh, mine was not uncomfortable," he returned,--"it was delightful, as +all the other years have been; but--just occasionally, you know--there +was a--well, a vague something--which never troubles me now." + +"I must have behaved badly in some way," said Bertha, smiling, "or it +would not have troubled you then." + +And she stooped and kissed him on the forehead. + +"I have a horrible conviction," she said after it, "that I was a vixen. +Was I a vixen? Perhaps I was a vixen, and never suspected it, and no +one suspected it but you. Poor boy! Why didn't you return me to papa +with thanks? Well, as you have kept me so long, you must make the best +of me. And it is very nice and polite in you to pretend that I am +satisfactory, and don't make you wretched and your hearth a wilderness +by being a hollow worldling." + +"You are exactly what I want," he responded. "I am a hollow worldling +myself. If I were a bricklayer, my idea of domestic bliss might be to +spend my evenings at home and watch you mending stockings or knitting, +or doing something of that sort; but even then I am afraid I should tire +of it, and secretly long for something more frivolous." + +"For something as frivolous as I am?" she said, with a nervous little +laugh. "Quite as frivolous, Richard--really? But I know you will say so. +You are always good to me and spoil me." + +"No, I am not," he answered. "It is simply true that you always please +me. It is true I am a rather easy-natured fellow, but I know plenty of +good-natured fellows whose wives are terribly unsatisfactory. You are +clever and pretty, and don't make mistakes, and you are never exacting, +nor really out of humor, and it is impossible for me to tire of you"-- + +"Really?" she said, quickly, "is that last true?" + +"Entirely true." + +"Well," she commented, the color rising in her cheek, "that is a good +deal for one's husband to say! That is a triumph. It amounts to a +certificate of character." + +"Well," he admitted, after a second's reflection, "upon the whole it is! +I know more husbands than one; but no matter. I was going to add that +long ago--before I met you, you know--my vague visions of matrimonial +venture were always clouded by a secret conviction that when I had +really passed the Rubicon, and had time for reflection, things might +begin to assume a rather serious aspect." + +"And I," said Bertha, a little thoughtfully, "have never assumed a +serious aspect." + +"Never," he replied, exultingly. "You have been a perfect success. There +is but one Bertha"-- + +"And her husband is her prophet!" she added. "You are very good to me, +Richard, and it is entirety useless for you to deny it, because I shall +insist upon it with--with wild horses, if necessary; which figure of +speech I hope strikes you as being strong enough." + +She was herself again--neither eager nor in earnest, ready to amuse him +and to be amused, waving her fan for his benefit, touching up his +cushions to make him more comfortable, and seeming to enjoy her seat on +the edge of his sofa very much indeed. + +"Do you know," she said, at length, "what I have thought of doing? I +have thought quite seriously of going in a day or so to Fortress Monroe +with the children." + +She felt that he started slightly, and wondered why. + +"Are you surprised?" she asked. "Would you rather I would not go?" + +"No," he answered, "if you think it would be better for you. You are +tired, and the weather is very warm. But--have you set any particular +day?" + +"No," she said, "I should not do that without speaking to you first." + +"Well," he returned, "then suppose you do not go this week. I have +half-invited Senator Planefield, and Macpherson and Ashley to dinner for +Thursday." + +"Is it because you want them to talk about the bill?" she said. "How +interested you are in it, Richard! Why is it? Railroads never struck me +as being particularly fascinating material. It seems to me that amateur +enthusiasm would be more readily awakened by something more romantic and +a little intangible,--a tremendous claim, for instance, which would make +some poor, struggling creatures fabulously rich. I am always interested +in claims; the wilder they are, the better and it invariably delights +me when the people get them 'through' to the utter consternation of the +Government. It has faintly dawned upon me, on two or three such +occasions, that I have no political morality, and I am afraid it is a +feminine failing. It is not a masculine one, of course; so it must be +feminine. I wish you had chosen a claim, Richard, instead of a railroad. +I am sure it would have been far more absorbing." + +"The railroad is quite absorbing enough," he answered, "and there is +money enough involved in it. Just think of those Westoria lands, and +what they will be worth if the road is carried through them,--and as to +romance, what could be more romantic than the story attached to them?" + +"But I don't know the story," said Bertha. "What is it?" + +"It is a very effective story," he replied, "and it was the story which +first called my attention to the subject. There was a poor, visionary +fellow whose name was Westor, to whom a large tract of this land came +suddenly as an inheritance from a distant relative. He was not practical +enough to make much use of it, and he lived in the house upon it in a +desolate, shiftless way for several years, when he had the ill-fortune +to discover coal on the place. I say it was ill-fortune, because the +discovery drove him wild. He worked, and starved, and planned, and +scraped together all the money he could to buy more land, keeping his +secret closely for some time. When he could do no more he came to +Washington, and began to work for a railroad which would make his wealth +available. His energy was a kind of frenzy, they say. He neither ate, +slept, nor rested, and really managed to get the matter into active +movement. He managed to awaken a kind of enthusiasm, and, for a short +time, was a good deal talked of and noticed. He was a big, raw-boned +young Westerner, and created a sensation by his very uncouthness in its +connection with the wildly fabulous stories told about his wealth. He +had among his acquaintances a man of immense influence, and at this +man's house he met the inevitable young woman. She amused herself, and +he fell madly in love, and became more frenzied than ever. It was said +that she intended to marry him if he was successful, and that she made +his poor, helpless life such an anguish to him that he lost his balance +entirely. There came a time when he was entirely penniless, and his +prospects were so unpromising, and his despair so great, that he went to +his boarding-house one day with the intention of killing himself, and +just as he finished loading his pistol a letter was handed in to him, +and when he opened it he found it contained the information that another +distant relative, affected by the rumors concerning him, had left him +twenty thousand dollars. He laid his pistol in a drawer, and left the +house to begin again. He had an interview with his lady-love, and one +with his man of influence, and at the end of a few weeks had bought more +land, and parted in some mysterious way with the rest of his money, and +was on the very eve of success. Poor fellow!" + +"Poor fellow!" said Bertha. "Oh! don't say that any thing went wrong!" + +"It would not be half so dramatic a story if everything had gone right," +said Richard, with fine artistic appreciation. "You could never guess +what happened. Everything he did seemed to work to a miracle; every +train was laid and every match applied. On the day that was to decide +his fate he did not go near the Capitol, but wandered out and took his +place on one of the seats in the park which faced the house at which the +young woman was visiting, and sat there, a lank, unshorn, haggard +figure, either staring at her window or leaning forward with his head +upon his hands. People actually heard of his being there and went to +look at him, and came away without having dared to address him. The +young woman looked out from behind her blind and was furious, and even +sent word to him to go away. But he would not go, and only glared at +this man who was sent to him with the message. He sat there until night, +and then staggered across and rang at the bell, and inquired for the man +of influence, and was told--what do you suppose he was told?" + +"Oh!" cried Bertha, desperately. "I don't know." + +"He was told that he was occupied." + +"Occupied!" echoed Bertha. + +Richard clasped his hands comfortably and gracefully behind his head. + +"That's the climax of the story," he said. "He was occupied--in being +married to the young woman, of whom he had been greatly enamored for +some time, and who had discreetly decided to marry him because he had +proved to her that the other man's bill could not possibly pass. It +could not pass because he had the energy and influence to prevent its +doing so, and he prevented its passing because he knew he would lose the +young woman otherwise. At least that is the story, and I like the +version." + +"I don't like it!" said Bertha. "It makes me feel desperate." + +"What it made the poor fellow feel," Richard went on, "nobody ever found +out, as he said nothing at all about it. On hearing the truth he sat +down on the steps for a few minutes, and then got up and went away. He +went to his boarding-house and had an interview with his landlady, who +was a kind-hearted creature, and when she saw him began to cry because +his bill had not passed. But when she spoke of it she found he knew +nothing of it; he had never asked about it, and he said to her, 'Oh! +that doesn't matter,--it isn't of any consequence particularly; I'm only +troubled about _your_ bill. I haven't money enough to pay it. I've only +enough to take me home, and you'll have to let me give you the things I +have in my room for pay. I only want one thing out of there,--if you'll +let me go and get it I won't take anything else.' So she let him go, and +stood outside his door and cried, while he went in and took something +out of a drawer." + +"Richard!" cried Bertha. + +"Yes," said Richard. "He actually found a use for it, after all--but not +in Washington. He went as far as he could by rail, and then he tramped +the rest of the way to Westoria; they say it must have taken him several +days, and that his shoes were worn to shreds, and his feet cut and +bruised by the walk. When he reached the house, it had been shut up so +long that the honeysuckle which climbed about it had grown across the +door, and he could not have got in without breaking or pushing it aside. +People fancied that at first he thought of going in, but that when he +saw the vine it stopped him,--slight barrier as it was. They thought he +had intended to go in because he had evidently gone to the door, and +before he turned away had broken off a spray of the flowers which was +just beginning to bloom; he held it crushed in his hand when they found +him, two or three days later. He had carried it back to the edge of the +porch, and had sat down--and finished everything--with the only thing he +had brought back from Washington--the pistol. How does that strike you +as the romance of a railroad?" + +Bertha clenched her hand, and struck her knee a fierce little blow. + +"Richard," she said, "if that had happened in my day I should have +turned lobbyist, and every thought, and power, and gift I had would have +been brought to bear to secure the passage of that bill." + +Richard laughed,--a pleased but slightly nervous laugh. + +"Suppose you bring them to bear now," he suggested. + +"There would not be any reason for my doing it now," she answered; "but +I shall certainly be interested." + +Richard laughed again. + +"By Jove!" he said, "the poor devils who own it would think there was +reason enough!" + +"Who owns it?" + +"Several people, who speculated in it because the railroad was talked of +again, and on a more substantial footing. It fell to Westor's only +living relation, who was an ignorant old woman, and sold it without +having any idea of its real value. Her impression was that, if she kept +it, it would bring her ill-luck. There is no denying that it looks just +now like a magnificent speculation." + +"And that poor fellow," said Bertha,--"that _poor_ fellow"-- + +"That poor fellow?" Richard interposed. "Yes--but his little drama is +over, you know, and perhaps there are others going on quite as +interesting, if we only knew them. It is very like you, Bertha--and it +is very adorable," touching her shoulder caressingly with his hand, "to +lose sight entirely of the speculation, and care only for the poor +fellow. You insist upon having your little drama under all +circumstances." + +"Yes," she admitted. "I confess that I like my little drama, and I have +not a doubt that--as I said before--I could not have lived in the midst +of that without turning lobbyist--which is certainly not my vocation." + +"Not your vocation?" said Richard. "You would make the most successful +little lobbyist in the world!" + +Bertha turned upon him an incredulous and rather bewildered smile. + +"I!" she exclaimed. "I?" + +"Yes, you!" + +"Well," she replied, after a second's pause given to inspection of him, +"_this_ is open derision!" + +"It is perfectly true," was his response; "and it is true for good +reasons. Your strength would lie in the very fact that you would be +entirely unlike your co-laborers in the field. You have a finished +little air of ingenuousness which would be your fortune." + +She shook her head with a pretty gesture. + +"No," she said. "I am very clever, and of course you cannot help +observing it, but I am not clever enough for that." + +He gave her a glance at once curious and admiring. + +"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "it is my belief you are clever enough for +anything." + +"Richard," she said, "shall I tell you a secret?" + +"Yes." + +"And you will bury it in the innermost recesses of your soul, and +_never_ divulge it?" + +"Certainly." + +"And brace yourself for a shock when I reveal it to you?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, here it is! My cleverness is like what you--and two or three +other most charming people--are good enough to call my prettiness. It is +a delusion and a snare!" + +"Come!" he said. "You are attempting to deceive me." + +"No," she answered. "I am attempting to undeceive you. I am not really +pretty or clever at all, and it has been the object of my life to +prevent its being detected." + +She opened her eyes in the most charmingly ingenuous manner and nodded +her head. + +"I discovered it myself," she said, "long ago,--comparatively early in +life,--and resolved to conceal it. And nothing but the confidence I +repose in you would have induced me to mention it." + +"Well," he replied, "you have concealed it pretty well under the +circumstances." + +"Ah!" she said, "but you don't know what a burden it is to carry about, +and what subterfuges I have to resort to when I seem on the very verge +of being found out. There is Larry, for instance,--I am almost sure that +Larry suspects me, especially when I am tired, or chance to wear an +unbecoming gown. You know how particular I am about my gowns? Well, +that is my secret. I haven't an attraction, really, but my gowns and my +spirits and my speciousness. The solitary thing I do feel I have reason +to pride myself on is that I am bold enough to adapt my gowns in such a +way as to persuade you that I am physically responsible for the color +and shape of them. You fancy you are pleased with me when you are simply +pleased with some color of which I exist on the reflection or glow. In +nine cases out of ten it is merely a matter of pale blue or pink, and +silk or crèpe or cashmere; and in the tenth it is nothing but spirits +and speciousness." + +"Oh," he said, "there is no denying that you would make a wonderful +lobbyist." + +"Well," she answered, rising and going to the table to lay her fan down, +"when you invest largely in Westoria lands and require my services in +that capacity, I will try to distinguish myself. I think I should like +to begin with the Westoria lands if I begin at all. But in the meantime +I must go upstairs and talk to the seamstress about Janey's new white +dresses. You are cool enough now to enjoy your lunch when the bell rings +and you shall have some iced tea if you would like it." + +"I would like it very well, and, by the by, did Tredennis bring the +'Clarion,' as he said he would?" + +"Yes, it is here," and she handed it to him from the table. "You can +read it while I am upstairs." + +"Have you read it?" he said, opening it and turning to the editorial. + +"Not yet. I shall read it this afternoon." + +"Yes, do. The facts are put very forcibly. And--you will decide not to +go to Fortress Monroe just yet?" + +She hesitated a moment, but he did not observe it. + +"I must be here when your friends dine with you, of course," she said. +"And a week or even a little more does not make so much difference, +after all. It may be quite cool again to-morrow." + +And she went out of the room and left him to his paper. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +It was two weeks after this that Arbuthnot, sauntering down the avenue +in a leisurely manner, on his way from his office, and having a fancy to +stroll through Lafayette Park, which was looking its best in its spring +bravery and bloom, on entering the iron gate-way found his attention +attracted by the large figure of Colonel Tredennis, who was approaching +him from the opposite direction, walking slowly and appearing deeply +abstracted. It cannot be said that Mr. Arbuthnot felt any special +delight in the prospective encounter. He had not felt that he had +advanced greatly in Colonel Tredennis' good opinion, and had, it must be +confessed, resigned himself to that unfortunate condition of affairs +without making any particular effort to remedy it,--his private +impression being that the result would scarcely be likely to pay for the +exertion, taking into consideration the fact that he was +constitutionally averse to exertion. + +"Why," he had said to Bertha, "should I waste my vital energies in +endeavoring to persuade a man that I am what he wants, when perhaps I am +not? There are scores of people who will naturally please him better +than I do, and there are people enough who please me better than he +does. Let him take his choice,--and it is easy enough to see that I am +not his choice." + +"What is he thinking of now, I wonder?" he said, a vague plan for +turning into another walk flitting through his mind. "Are his friends, +the Piutes, on the war-path and actively engaged in dissecting agents, +or is he simply out of humor? He is not thinking of where he is going. +He will walk over that nursemaid and obliterate the twins--yes, I +thought so." + +The colonel had verified his prophecy, and, aroused from his reverie by +the devastation he had caused, he came to a stand-still with a perplexed +and distressed countenance. + +"I beg your pardon," Arbuthnot heard him say, in his great, deep voice. +"I hope I did not hurt you. I had forgotten where I was." And he stooped +and set the nearest twin on its feet on the grass and then did the same +thing for the other, upon which both stood and stared at him, and, not +being hurt at all, having merely rolled over on the sod, were in +sufficiently good spirits to regard with interest the fact that he was +fumbling in his coat-pocket for something. + +The article in question was a package of bonbons, which he produced and +gave to the nearest toddler. + +"Here!" he said. "I bought these for another little girl, but I can get +some more. They are all right," he added, turning to the mulatto girl, +whose admiration of his martial bearing revealed itself in a most +lenient grin,--"they won't hurt them. They can eat them all without +being harmed." + +And then he turned away, and in doing so caught sight of Arbuthnot, and, +somewhat to the surprise of the latter, advanced toward him at once with +the evident intention of joining him. + +"It is rather a curious thing that I should meet you here," he said. "I +was thinking of you when I met with the catastrophe you saw just now. Do +you often go home this way?" + +"Not very often," Arbuthnot replied. "Sometimes, when things look as +they do now," with a gesture indicating the brilliant verdure. + +"Everything looks very fresh and luxuriant," said Tredennis. "The season +is unusually far advanced, I suppose. It is sometimes a great deal too +warm to be pleasant." + +"It will be decidedly warmer every day," said Arbuthnot. "We shall have +a trying summer. The President is going out to the Soldiers' Home next +week--which is earlier than usual. There are only two or three of the +senators' families left in the city. The exodus began weeks ago." + +"Such weather as we have had the last few days," said the colonel, with +his slight frown, "must be very exhausting to those who are not strong, +and who have gone through a gay winter." + +"The best thing such people can do," responded Arbuthnot, dryly, "is to +make their way to the mountains or the sea as soon as possible. Most of +them do." + +Tredennis' reply was characteristically abrupt. + +"Mrs. Amory does not," he said. + +"No," answered Arbuthnot, and he looked at the end of his cigar as if he +saw nothing else. + +"Why doesn't she?" demanded Tredennis. + +"She ought to," said Arbuthnot, with calm adroitness. + +"Ought to!" Tredennis repeated. "She should have gone months ago. +She--she is actually ill. Why in heaven's name does she stay? She told +me two weeks since that she was going to Fortress Monroe, or some such +place." + +"She had better go to a New England farm-house, and wear a muslin gown +and swing in a hammock," said Arbuthnot. + +"You see that as well, do you?" said the colonel. "Why don't you tell +her so?" and having said it, seemed to pull himself up suddenly, as if +he felt he had been unconsciously impetuous. + +Arbuthnot laughed. + +His smile had died completely away, however, when he gave his side +glance at his companion's face a moment later. + +"She was quite serious in her intention of going away two weeks ago," he +said. "She told me so; nothing but Richard's dinner-party prevented her +departure in the first place." + +He spoke in an entirely non-committal tone, but there was a touch of +interest in his quiet glance at Tredennis. + +"You dined there with Planefield and the rest, didn't you?" he added. + +"Yes." + +"I didn't. Richard was kind enough to invite me, but I should only have +been in the way." He paused an instant, and then added, without any +change of tone or manner, "I know nothing of the Westoria lands." + +"Was it necessary that you should?" said Tredennis. "I did not." + +"Oh," Arbuthnot answered, "I knew they would discuss them, and the bill, +as it pleases Amory to be interested in them just now." + +"I remember that the matter was referred to several times," said +Tredennis; "even Mrs. Amory seemed to know a good deal of it." + +"A good deal!" said Arbuthnot. "In favor of the bill?" + +"Yes," Tredennis answered. "She had been reading up, it appeared. She +said some very good things about it--in a laughing way. Why does she +waste her time and strength on such folly?" he added, hotly. "Why--why +is she allowed to do it?" + +"The New England farm would be better for her just now," said +Arbuthnot--again adroitly. + +"Why should Amory waste his time upon it?" the colonel went on; "though +that is his affair, of course, and not mine!" + +They had reached the gate by this time, but they did not pass through +it. Finding themselves near it, they turned--as if by mutual consent, +and yet without speaking of doing so--into the walk nearest them. + +It was after taking a few steps in silence down this path, that Colonel +Tredennis spoke again, abruptly: + +"When I was thinking of you just before we met," he said, "I was +thinking of you in connection with--with the Amorys." + +He knew the statement had a blunt enough sound, and his recognition of +it irritated him, but he was beginning to be accustomed to his own +bluntness of statement, and, at any rate, this led him to the point he +meant to reach. + +Arbuthnot's reply was characteristic. It was not blunt at all, and had +an air of simple directness, which was the result not only of a most +creditable tact and far-sightedness, but of more private good feeling +and sincerity than he was usually credited with. + +"I am always glad to be thought of in connection with the Amorys," he +said. "And I am glad that it is perfectly natural that I should be +connected with them in the minds of their friends. There has been a very +close connection between us for several years, and I hope they have +found as much pleasure in it as I have." + +Tredennis recognized the tact even if he was not aware of the good +feeling and far-sightedness. The obstacles had been removed from his +path, and the conversation had received an air of unconstrained +naturalness, which would make it easier for him to go on. + +"Then," he said, "there will be no need to explain what I mean by saying +that I was thinking specially of your interest in Mrs. Amory +herself--and your influence over her." + +"I wish my influence over her was as strong as my interest in her," was +his companion's reply. "My interest in her is a sincere enough feeling, +and a deep one. There is every reason why it should be." + +"I,"--began the colonel,--"I"--And then he stopped. + +"Your interest in her," Arbuthnot went on, seeming to enjoy his cigar +very much, "is even a more natural feeling than mine--though I scarcely +think it can be stronger. It is not a matter of relationship so +much,--as a rule, relationship does not amount to a great deal,--but the +fact that you knew her as a girl, and feel toward the professor as you +do, must give her a distinct place in your mind." + +"It is a feeling," said Tredennis, "which disturbs me when I see that +she is in actual danger through her own want of care for herself. Are +women always so reckless? Is it a Washington fashion? Why should she +forget that her children need her care, if she does not choose to think +of herself? Is that a Washington fashion, too?" + +"You were thinking," said Arbuthnot, "and flattering me in doing it, +that what I might say to her on the necessity of leaving the city might +have some little effect?" + +"Yes," Tredennis answered. "And if not upon herself, upon Amory. He is +always ready to listen to you." + +Arbuthnot was silent for some moments. He was following a certain train +of thought closely and rapidly, but his expression did not betray him at +all. + +"She would have gone two weeks ago," he said quietly next, "if it had +not been for Richard's engagements with Planefield and the rest. He has +had them at his house two or three times since then, and they have made +little parties to Mount Vernon and Arlington and Great Falls. Planefield +is a lady's man, and he finds Mrs. Amory very charming." + +"What!" exclaimed Tredennis, with intolerant haughtiness,--"that coarse +fellow?" + +"He isn't a nice fellow," said Arbuthnot, "but he won't show his worst +side to her--any more than he can help. He is a very powerful fellow, +they say." + +Here he stopped. They had reached their gate-way again. + +"I'll do what I can," he said. "It won't be much, perhaps; but I will do +what I can. I fully appreciate the confidence you showed in speaking to +me." + +"I fully appreciate the manner in which you listened to what I had to +say," said Tredennis. + +And, somewhat to Arbuthnot's surprise, he held out his hand to him. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +Instead of making his way home at once Arbuthnot turned up the side of +the street on which the Amorys' house stood. As he reached the house the +door was opened, and a man came out and walked down the steps. He was a +man with a large frame, a darkly florid complexion, and heavily handsome +features. As he passed Arbuthnot he gave him a glance and a rather +grudging bow, which expressed candidly exactly the amount of pleasure he +derived from encountering him. + +Bertha was in the parlor alone. When Arbuthnot entered he found her +standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the roses on her +gayly painted fan, and evidently not seeing them. + +"Well," he began, by way of greeting, "I hope you have been enjoying +yourself--with your senators." + +She looked up, and made a quick, eager little movement toward him, as if +she was more glad to see him than usual. + +"Ah!" she exclaimed. "I believe I was wishing you would come." + +"Thank you," he said; "but the compliment would be greater if you were +sure of it." + +"I think I am sure of it, now you are here," she answered, "though I +don't know at all why I wanted you--unless it was to tell you that I +have not been enjoying myself in the least--with my senators." + +"I am delighted to hear it," he replied. "Nothing could please me +better. They are always too numerous, and lately one is continually +meeting them on the steps and being scowled at." + +She shut her fan quickly, with a slight frown. + +"Why scowled at?" she said. "That would be absurd enough." + +"Absurd or not," he laughed, "it is true." + +But, notwithstanding his laugh, there was no change in her face he did +not see. + +They had seated themselves by this time, and Bertha was looking at her +fan again, and opening and shutting it slowly. + +"They are not my senators," she said. "They are Richard's, and--I am +getting a little tired of them, though I should not like to tell him so. +When it is warm, as it is to-day, I am very tired of them." + +"I should not think it at all improbable," remarked Arbuthnot, dryly. +"It has struck me that it would be necessary for the mercury to be +several degrees below zero before you would find the one who went out +just now, for instance, especially exhilarating." + +"He is not exhilarating at all," she said. "Richard likes him," she +added, a moment afterward. "I don't know exactly why, but he really +seems to admire him. They are quite intimate. I think the acquaintance +began through some law business he gave him in connection with the +Westoria lands. I have tried to like him on Richard's account. You must +remember," she said, with a smile, "I first tried to like you on +Richard's account." + +"I hope you succeeded better than you will with Planefield," he said. + +"I might succeed with him if I persevered long enough," she answered. +"The difficulty lies in the perseverance. Richard says I would make a +good lobbyist, but I am sure I should not. I could not be persistently +amiable and entertaining to people who tired me." + +"Don't deplore your deficiencies until it becomes necessary for you to +enter the profession," said Arbuthnot. "I don't like to hear you speak +of it," he added, with a touch of sharpness. + +"I don't deplore them," said Bertha. "And it is only one of my little +jokes. But, if the fortunes of the Westoria lands depended on me, I am +afraid they would be a dismal failure." + +"As they don't depend on you," he remarked, "doesn't it occur to you +that you might as well leave them to Senator Planefield? I must confess +it has presented itself to me in that light." + +"It is rather odd," she said, in a tone of reflection, "that though I +have nothing whatever to do with them, they actually seem to have +detained me in town for the last two weeks." + +"It is quite time you went away," said Arbuthnot. + +"I know that," she answered. "And I feel it more every day." + +She raised her eyes suddenly to his. + +"Laurence," she said, "I am not well. Don't tell Richard, but I think I +am not well at all. I--I am restless and nervous--and--and morbid. I am +actually morbid. Things trouble me which never troubled me before. +Sometimes I lose all respect for myself. You know I always was rather +proud of my self-control. I am not quite as proud of it as I used to be. +About two weeks ago I--I positively lost my temper." + +He did not laugh, as she had been half-afraid he would. His manner was +rather quiet; on the contrary--it was as if what she said struck him as +being worth listening to with some degree of serious attention, though +his reply was not exactly serious. + +"I hope you had sufficient reason," he said. + +"No," she answered. "I had no reason at all, which makes it all the more +humiliating. I think I have been rather irritable for a month or two. I +have allowed myself to--to be disturbed by things which were really of +no consequence, and I have taken offence at things and--and--resented +trifles, and it was the merest trifle which made me lose my temper--yes, +actually lose my temper, and say what I did not intend to say, in the +most open and abject manner. What could be more abject than to say +things you did not intend to say? You know I never was given to that +kind of thing." + +"No," he responded, "it cannot be said that you were." + +"It was so--so revolting to me after it was over," she went on, "that it +seemed to make me more weak-minded than ever. When you once give way to +your emotions it is all going down-hill--you do it again and again. I +never did it before, but I have been on the verge of doing it two or +three times since." + +"Don't go any farther than the verge," he said. + +"I don't intend to," she answered. "I don't like even the verge. I +resent it with all my strength. I should like to invent some kind of +horrible torture to pay myself for--for what I did." + +He was watching her very closely, but she was not aware of it. She had +arrested his attention completely enough by this time, and the fact made +itself evident in his intent and rather startled expression. + +"I hope it was nothing very serious," he said. + +"It was serious enough for me," she replied. "Nobody else was hurt, but +it was serious enough for me--the mere knowing that for a few minutes I +had lost my hold on myself. I didn't like it--I didn't like it!" + +There was an intensity in her manner, in her voice, in her face, in her +very figure itself, which was curiously disproportionate to her words. +She leaned forward a little, and laid her small, clenched hand upon her +knee. + +"In all my life," she said, slowly,--"in all my life, I have never had a +feeling which was as strong as myself. I have been that fortunate. I +have been angry, but never so angry that I could not seem perfectly +still and calm; I have been happy, but never so happy that I could not +have hidden it if I chose; I have been unhappy--for a moment or so--but +never so unhappy that I had the horrible anguish of being found out. I +am not capable of strong, real emotions, I am too shallow and--and +light. I have been light all my life, and I _will_ be light until the +end. + +"Only the children could make me suffer, really," she said after +it,--"only the children, and all women are like that. Through Janey, or +Jack, or Meg, my heart could be torn in two, if they were in pain, or +badly treated, or taken from me,--that is nothing but common nature; but +nothing else could hurt me so that I should cry out--nothing and +nobody--not even Richard!" + +She stopped herself, and opened her fan again. + +"There!" she exclaimed. "Why did I say so much then, and say it so +vehemently, as if it was of consequence? Nothing is of +consequence--nothing, nothing!" And she laughed, and rose and began to +take up and set down again some trifles on the mantel. + +Arbuthnot still watched her. + +"No," he said, "you are quite right; nothing is of consequence really, +and the sooner one learns that, the better for one's peace of mind. The +worst pain you could have to bear could not last you more than a few +score years, and you would get used to it in that time; the greatest +happiness you could yearn for would not last any longer, and you would +get tired of it in time, too." + +"Tired of it!" she echoed. "One could tire of anything in threescore +years and ten. How tired one must be of one's self before it is +over--how tired! how tired!" and she threw up her hands in a sudden, +desperate gesture. + +"No," he answered, in a tone whose level coolness was a forcible +contrast to her own. "Not necessarily, if one doesn't expect too much. +If we take things for what they are worth, and don't let ourselves be +deceived by them, there is plenty of rational entertainment to be had by +the way. We mayn't like it quite as well as what we set out with +expecting, but we can manage to subsist upon it. I hope I am logical. I +know I am not eloquent." He said it bitterly. + +"No," she returned, without looking at him, "you are not eloquent, +perhaps, but you are speaking the truth--and I like to hear it. I want +to hear it. It is good for me. It is always good for people to hear the +truth; the bare, unvarnished, unadorned truth. Go on." + +"If I go on," he said, still bitterly, "I shall begin to drag myself in, +and I don't care to do it. It is natural that I should feel the +temptation. I never knew the man yet who could talk in this strain and +not drag himself in." + +"Drag yourself in as much as you like," she said, even fiercely, "and be +an example to me." + +"I should be example enough if I said all I could," he replied. "Am _I_ +a happy man?" + +She turned, and for a moment they looked into each other's eyes; his +were stern, hard, and miserable. + +"No," she cried out, "you are not. No one is happy in the world!" And +she dropped her face upon her hands as she leaned upon the mantel. + +"I might have been happier if I had begun right, I suppose," he said. + +"Begun!" she repeated. "Does any one ever begin right? One ought to +begin at the end and go backward, and then one might make something of +it all." + +"I didn't make much of it," he said. "I was not as wise as you. I began +with emotions, and follies, and fires,--and the rest of it, and the +enjoyment I derived from them was scarcely what I anticipated it would +be. The emotions didn't last, and the follies didn't pay, and the fires +burnt out--and that was the worst of all. And they always do--and that +is worse still. It is in the nature of things. Look at that grate," +pointing to it. "It looked different a week ago, when we had a rainy +night and sat around it. We could have burned ourselves at it then if we +had been feeble-minded enough to try it; we couldn't do it now; and yet +a few days ago it was hot enough. The fire has burned out, and even the +ashes are gone." + +She stooped down, picked up her fan, and reseated herself upon the +sofa. She did not look quite like herself,--her face was very pale but +for the two red spots Tredennis had seen on her cheeks when her display +of feeling had startled him; but all at once a change had taken place in +her manner. There was a sort of deadly stillness in it. + +"We are a long way from my temper," she said,--"a long way." + +"Yes," he replied, "about as far as we could get in the space of time +allowed us; and we have been a trifle emotional." + +"And it was my fault," she continued. "Isn't it time I went somewhere +cool and bracing? I think you must admit it is." + +"Yes," he said, "it is time. Take my advice, and go." + +"I'll go," she said, steadily, "the day after to-morrow. And I'll not go +to Fortress Monroe. I'll go into the mountains of Virginia,--to a +farm-house I know of, where one has forests, and silence, and +nature--and nothing else. I'll take the children, and live out-of-doors +with them, and read to them, and talk to them, and sew for them when I +want anything to do. I always was happy and natural when I was sewing +and doing things for them. I like it. Living in that simple, natural +way, and having the children with me, will rest and cure me if anything +will on earth; the children always--the children"-- + +She stopped and sat perfectly still; her voice had broken, and she had +turned her face a little away. + +Arbuthnot got up. He stood a moment, as he always did before going, but +he did not look directly at her, though he did not seem to avoid her in +his glance. + +"It is the best thing you can do," he said,--"the very best thing. You +will be thoroughly rested when you come home, and that is what you need. +I will go now; I hear Richard, and I want to speak to him alone." + +And by the time the door opened and Richard stood on the threshold, he +had reached him and turned him around, throwing his arm boyishly over +his shoulder. + +"You are just in time," he said. "Take me into the museum, or the +library. I want to have a confidential chat with you." + +And they went out together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +The following day Richard presented himself to Tredennis in the morning, +looking a little disturbed, and scarcely in such excellent spirits as +usual. + +"Bertha and the children are going away to-morrow," he said. "And if you +have no other engagement you are to come and dine with us this evening +and say good-by." + +"I have no other engagement," Tredennis answered. "I shall be glad to +come. They are really going to Fortress Monroe to-morrow?" + +Richard threw himself into a chair with a rather discontented air. "They +are not going to Fortress Monroe at all," he said. "They are going to +bury themselves in the mountains of Virginia. It is a queer fancy of +Bertha's. I think she is making a mistake. She won't like it, really, +when she tries it." + +"If she needs rest," said Tredennis, "certainly the mountains of +Virginia"-- + +"The mountains of Virginia," interrupted Richard, "were not made for +Bertha. She will tire of them in a week. I wish she would not go!" he +said, with the faintest possible touch of petulance. + +"You will miss her very much, of course," said Tredennis. + +"Oh, yes, I shall miss her. I always miss her--and I shall miss her +specially just now." + +"Just now?" said Tredennis. + +"Oh," said Richard, straightening himself somewhat and clearing his +slightly knitted brow, "I was only thinking of two or three plans which +had half-formed themselves in my mind. I was looking at it from a +selfish point of view, which I had no right to do. I suppose things +might wait--until she comes back." + +"Are you going with her?" said Tredennis. + +"I!" exclaimed Richard. "No, I could not do that. My business would not +allow of it. I have more than usual on hand just now. I shall run down +to see them once a week, if possible. I must confess," with a laugh, +"that I could not make up my mind to three months of it. Bertha knows +that." + +Taking all things into consideration, he bore the prospect of his +approaching loneliness very well. He soon began to speak of other +matters, and before he took his departure had quite recovered his usual +gayety. As he talked Tredennis regarded him with some curiosity. + +"He has a fortunate temperament," he was thinking. "He would have been +happy if she had remained, but he is not unhappy because she goes. There +are men who would take it less lightly--though, after all, he is the one +to be envied." + +Tredennis did not feel that he himself was greatly to be envied. He had +said that she ought to go, and had been anxious and unhappy because she +had not gone; but now that she was going he was scarcely happier. There +were things he should miss every day. As he remembered them, he knew he +had not allowed himself to admit what their value had been to him. The +very fact that they had not been better friends made it harder. From the +first he had been aware that a barrier stood between them, and in the +interview which had revealed to him something of its nature he had +received some sharp wounds. + +"There was truth in what she said," he had often pondered since, "though +she put it in a woman's way. I have resented what she has said and done, +often enough, and have contrasted it bitterly with what I +remembered--God knows why! I had no right to do it, and it was all +folly; but I did it, and made myself wretched through it--and she saw +the folly, and not the wretchedness." + +But now that her presence would no longer color and animate the familiar +rooms he realized what their emptiness would be. He could not endure the +thought of what it would be to go into them for the first time and sit +alone with Richard,--no bright figure moving before them, or sitting in +its chair by the table, or the window, or the hearth. The absence of the +very things which had angered and disturbed him would leave a blank. It +would actually be a wretchedness to see no longer that she often chose +to be flippant, and mocked for mere mocking's sake. + +"What!" he said, savagely, "am I beginning to care for her very faults? +Then it is best that she should go." + +But his savageness was not against Bertha, but against himself and his +weakness. + +When he arrived at the house in the evening he found Bertha in the +parlor, with Jack and Janey, who were to be allowed to share the +farewell dinner. + +As she advanced to meet him with a child on either side, he was struck +by certain changes which he observed in her dress and manner. She wore a +dark, simple gown, her hair was dressed a trifle more closely and +plainly than usual, and there was no color about her. When she gave him +her hand, and stood with the other resting on Jack's shoulder, her eyes +uplifted to his own, he was bewildered by a feeling that he was suddenly +brought face to face with a creature quite strange to him. He could not +have said that she was actually cold and reserved, but there was that in +the quiet of her manner which suggested both reserve and coldness. + +"I have allowed the children to stay downstairs," she said, "and they +are to dine with us if they will be good. They wished very much to see +as much of you as possible--as it will be some time before they +return--and I think they will be quiet." + +"If you will seat one on each side of me," said Tredennis, "I will keep +them quiet." + +"You are very kind," she answered, "but I should scarcely like to do +that." + +And then she returned to her seat by the window, and he sat opposite her +on the end of a sofa, with Janey leaning against his knee. + +"You are not going to Fortress Monroe?" he said. + +"No," she replied; "I am going to the Virginia mountains." + +"I should think that would be better," he said, putting an arm around +Janey. + +"I thought so," she answered, "upon reflection. I am not as strong as I +should be, and I think I dislike ill-health even more than most people +do." + +She held Jack's hand, and spoke in a quiet tone of common things,--of +her plans for the summer, of the children, of Richard; and Tredennis +listened like a man in a dream, missing the color and vivacity from her +manner as he had known he should miss her presence from the rooms when +she was gone. + +"Tell Uncle Philip something of what we are going to do," she said to +Jack. "Tell him about the hammocks, and the spades we are to dig with, +and the books. We are to live out of doors and enjoy ourselves +immensely," she added, with a faint smile. + +"Mamma is going to play with us every day," said Jack, triumphantly. +"And we are going to lie in our hammocks while she reads to us and tells +us stories." + +"And there will be no parties and no company," added Janey. "Only we are +to be the company." + +"And Jack is to take care of me," said Bertha, "because I am growing +old, and he is so big." + +Jack regarded her dubiously. + +"You haven't any wrinkles," he said. + +"Yes, I have, Jack," she answered; "but they don't show." And a little +laugh broke from her, and she let her cheek rest against his dark +love-locks for a moment in a light caress. + +Glancing up at the colonel's face at this juncture, Janey found cause in +it for serious dissatisfaction. She raised her hand, and drew a small +forefinger across his forehead. + +"Uncle Philip," she said, "you are bad again. The black marks have come +back, and you are quite ugly; and you promised you would try not to let +them come any more." + +"I beg your pardon, Janey," he answered, and then turned to Bertha. "She +does not like my black face," he said, "and no wonder. I am rather an +unfortunate fellow to have my faults branded upon me so plainly that +even a child can see them." + +There was a touch of bitterness in the words, and in his manner of +uttering them. Bertha answered him in a soft, level voice. + +"You are severe upon yourself," she said. "It is much safer to be severe +upon other people." + +It was rather cruel, but she did not object to being cruel. There come +to most women moments when to be cruel is their only refuge against +themselves and others; and such a moment had come to her. + +In looking back upon the evening, when it was over, the feeling that it +had been unreal was stronger in Tredennis's mind than any other. It was +all unreal from beginning to end,--the half-hour before dinner, when +Arbuthnot and Richard and the professor came in, and Bertha stood near +her father's chair and talked to him, and Tredennis, holding Janey on +his knee and trying to answer her remarks lucidly, was aware only of the +presence of the dark, slender figure near him, and the strange quiet of +the low voice; the dinner itself, during which Richard was in the most +attractive mood, and the professor was rather silent, and Arbuthnot's +vivacity was a little fitful at first and afterward seemed to recover +itself and rise to the occasion; while Bertha, with Jack on one hand +and Janey on the other, cared for their wants and answered Richard's +sallies, and aided him in them, and yet was not herself at all, but a +new being. + +"And you think," said the professor, later in the evening, when they had +returned to the parlors,--"you think that you will like the quiet of the +mountains?" + +"I think it will be good for me," she answered, "and the children will +like it." + +"She will not like it at all," said Richard. "She will abhor it in ten +days, and she will rush off to Fortress Monroe, and dance every night to +make up for her temporary mental aberration." + +"No, she will not," said Arbuthnot. "She has made preparations to enjoy +her seclusion in its dramatic aspects. She is going to retire from the +world in the character of a graceful anchorite, and she has already +begun to dress the part. She is going to be simple and serious, and a +trifle severe; and it even now expresses itself in the lines and color +of her gown." + +She turned toward him, with the sudden gleam of some new expression in +her eyes. + +"How well you understand me!" she said. "No one else would have +understood me so well. I never can deceive you, at least. Yes, you are +quite right. I am going to enjoy the thing dramatically. I don't want to +go, but as I feel it discreet I intend to amuse myself, and make the +best of it. I am going to play at being maternal and amiable, and even +domesticated. I have a costume for it, as I have one for bathing and +dining and making calls. This," she said, touching her dress, "is part +of it. Upstairs I have a little mob-cap and an apron, and a work-basket +to carry on my arm. They are not unbecoming, either. Shall I run up into +the nursery and put them on, and show them to you? Then you can be sure +that I comprehend the part." + +"Have you a mob-cap and an apron?" asked Richard. "Have you, really?" + +"Yes, really," she answered. "Don't you remember that I told you that +it was my dresses that were of consequence, and not myself? Shall I go +and put them on?" + +Her tone was soft no longer; it was a little hard, and so was the look +which half hid itself behind the brightness of the eyes she turned +toward him. + +"Yes," he answered. "Put them on, and let us see them." + +She turned round and went out of the room, and Arbuthnot followed her +with a rather anxious glance. The professor stirred his tea as usual, +and Tredennis turned his attention to Janey, while Richard laughed. + +"I have no doubt she has all three," he said. "And they will be well +worth seeing." + +They were worth seeing. In a few minutes she returned,--the little +work-basket on her arm, the mob-cap upon her head, the apron around her +waist, and a plain square of white muslin crossed upon her bosom. She +stopped in the door-way, and made a courtesy. + +"There ought to be a curtain, and somebody ought to ring it up," she +said. "Enter the domestic virtues." + +And she came and stood before them, her eyes shining still, and her head +erect, but--perhaps through the rather severe black and white of her +costume--seeming to have a shade less color than before. + +"I did not make them for this occasion," she said. "They have appeared +before. You don't remember them, Richard, but I had them when Jack was a +baby--and a novelty. I tried being maternal then." + +"Why, yes," said Richard, "to be sure I remember them,--and very +becoming they were, too." + +"Oh, yes," she answered. "I knew they were becoming!" + +She turned and fronted Tredennis. + +"I hope they are becoming now," she said, and made her little courtesy +again. + +"They are very becoming," he answered, looking at her steadily. "I like +them better than--the silks and brocades." + +"Thank you," she said. "I thought you would--or I would not have put +them on. Jack and Janey, come and stand on each side of me while I sit +down. I have always congratulated myself that you were becoming. This is +what we shall be constrained to do when we are in Virginia, only we +shall not have the incentive of being looked at." + +"We will make up a party," said Richard, "and come down once a week to +look at you. Planefield would enjoy it, I am sure." + +"Thank you," said Bertha. "And I will always bring out the work-basket, +with a lace-collar for Meg in it. Lace-collars are more becoming than +small aprons or stocking-mending. Do you remember the little shirt Mrs. +Rawdon Crawley was making for her boy, and which was always produced +when she was in virtuous company? Poor Rawdon was quite a big boy, and +very much too large for it, by the time it was finished. I wonder if Meg +will be grown up before she gets her collar." + +She produced a needle, threaded it, and took a few stitches, bending her +head over her task with a serious air. + +"Does it look as if I had done it before?" she said. "I hope it does. I +really have, you know. Once I sewed on a button for Richard." + +But she did not sew many minutes. Soon she laid her work down in the +basket. + +"There!" she said, "that is enough! I have made my impression, and that +is all I care for--or I _should_ have made my impression if you had been +strangers. If you had not known me you would have had time to say to one +another: 'What a simple, affectionate little creature she must be! After +all, there is nothing which becomes a woman so well as to sit at her +work in that quiet, natural way, with her children about her!' Come, +Jack and Janey, it is time for you to say good-night, and let me make a +pretty exit with you, in my mob-cap and apron." + +She took them away, and remained upstairs with them until they were in +bed. When she came back she did not bring the work-basket, but she had +not taken off the cap and handkerchief. She held an open letter in her +hand, and went to Richard and sat down by him. Her manner had changed +again entirely. It was as if she had left upstairs something more than +the work-basket. + +"Richard," she said, "I did not tell you I had had a letter from Agnes +Sylvestre." + +"From Agnes Sylvestre!" he exclaimed. "Why, no, you didn't! But it is +good news. Laurence, you must remember Agnes Sylvestre!" + +"Perfectly," was the answer. "She was not the kind of person you +forget." + +"She was a beautiful creature," said Richard, "and I always regretted +that we lost sight of her as we did after her marriage. Where is she +now, Bertha?" + +"When she wrote she was at Castellamare. She went abroad, you know, +immediately after her husband's death." + +"He was not the nicest fellow in the world,--that Sylvestre," said +Richard. "He was not the man for a woman like that to marry. I wonder if +she did not find out that she had made a mistake?" + +"If she did," said Bertha, "she bore it very well, and it has been all +over for more than two years." + +She turned suddenly to Tredennis. + +"Did not you once tell me"--she began. + +"Yes," he replied. "I met her in Chicago, and Mr. Sylvestre was with +her." + +"It must have been two or three weeks before his death," said Bertha. +"He died quite suddenly, and they were in Chicago at the time. Do you +remember how she looked, and if you liked her?--but of course you liked +her." + +"I saw her only for a short time," he answered. "We talked principally +of you. She was very handsome, and had a sweet voice and large, calm +eyes." + +Bertha was silent a moment. + +"Yes," she said next, "she has beautiful eyes. They are large and clear, +like a child's, but they are not childish eyes. She sees a great deal +with them. I think there was never anything more effective than a way +she has of looking at you quietly and directly for a few seconds, +without saying anything at all." + +"You wonder what she is thinking of," said Arbuthnot. "And you hope she +is thinking of yourself, and are inclined to believe she is, when there +are ten chances to one that she is not at all." + +"But she generally is," said Bertha. "The trouble is that perhaps she is +not thinking exactly what you would like best, though she will never +tell you so, and you would not discover it from her manner. She had an +adorable manner; it is soft and well-bred, but she never wastes +herself." + +"I remember," said Tredennis, "that I thought her very attractive." + +Bertha turned more directly toward him. + +"She is exactly what you would like," she said,--"exactly. When I said +just now that her way of looking at people was effective, I used the +worst possible word, and did her an injustice. She is never +effective--in that way. To be effective, it seems to me, you must apply +yourself. Agnes Sylvestre never applies herself. Trifles do not amuse +her as they amuse me. I entertain myself with my whims and with all +sorts of people; she has no whims, and cares only for the people she is +fond of. If she were here to-night she would look calmly at my mob-cap +and apron, and wonder what I meant by them, and what mental process I +had gone through to reach the point of finding it worth while to wear +them." + +"Oh," said Arbuthnot, "I should not think she was slow at following +mental processes." + +"No," answered Bertha, "I did not mean that. She would reason clearly +enough, after she had looked at me a few moments and asked herself the +question. But in talking of her I am forgetting to tell you that she is +coming home, and will spend next winter in Washington." + +"Congratulate yourself, Laurence," said Richard. "We may all +congratulate ourselves. It will be something more to live for." + +"As to congratulating myself," said Arbuthnot, "I should have no +objection to devoting the remainder of the evening to it, but I am +afraid"-- + +"Of what?" demanded Bertha. + +"Oh," he answered, "she will see through _me_ with her calm eyes; and, +as you say, she never wastes herself." + +"No," said Bertha, "she never wastes herself. And, after all, it is +Colonel Tredennis who has most reason to congratulate himself. He has +not thrown away his time. I am obliged to admit that she once said to me +of you, 'Why does he throw away his time? Does he never think at all?' +Yes, it is Colonel Tredennis who must be congratulated." + +It was chiefly of Agnes Sylvestre they talked during the rest of the +evening. + +"She is a person who says very little of herself," was Bertha's comment, +"but there is a great deal to say of her." + +And so there seemed to be. There were anecdotes to be related of her, +the charm of her beauty and manner was to be analyzed, and all of her +attributes were found worth touching upon. + +It was Tredennis who took his departure first. When he rose to go, +Bertha, who was talking to Arbuthnot, did not at first observe his +movement, and when he approached her she turned with an involuntary +start. + +"You--are going now?" she said. + +"Yes," he answered. "I wish you a pleasant summer and all the rest you +require." + +She stood up and gave him her hand. + +"Thank you," she replied. "I shall be sure to have the rest." + +It scarcely seemed more than the ordinary conventional parting for the +night; to Tredennis it seemed something less. There were only a few +words more, and he dropped her hand and went out of the room. + +He had certainly felt that this was the last, and only a powerful effort +of will held in check a feeling whose strength he would have been loath +to acknowledge. + +"Such things are always a wrench," he said, mentally. "I never bore them +well." + +And he had barely said it when he heard Bertha cross the parlor quickly +and pass through the door. He had bent to take up a paper he had left on +the hat-stand, and when he turned she was close to him. + +Something in her look was so unusual that he recognized it with an +inward start. Her eyes were a little dilated, and her breath came with +soft quickness, as if she had moved rapidly and impulsively. She put out +both her hands with a simple, sudden gesture, and with an action as +simple and unpremeditated he took them and held them in his own. + +"I came," she said, "to say good-by again. All at once I seemed to--to +realize that it would be months before I--we saw you again. And so many +things happen, and--" She stopped a second, but went on after it. "When +I come back," she said, "I shall be well and strong, and like a new +person. Say good-by to this person;" and a smile came and went as she +said it. + +"A moment ago," he answered, "I was telling myself that good-byes were +hard upon me." + +"They--they are not easy," she said. + +This, at least, was not easy for him. Her hands were trembling in his +clasp. The thought came to him that perhaps some agitation she wished to +hide had driven her from the room within, and she had come to him for +momentary refuge because he was near. She looked up at him for a second +with a touch of desperation in her eyes, and then he saw her get over +it, and she spoke. + +"Jack and Janey will miss you very much," she said. "You have been very +kind to them. I think--it is your way to be good to every one." + +"My opportunities of being good have been limited," he said. "If--if one +should present itself,"--and he held her hands a little closer,--"you +won't let me miss my chance, will you? There is no reason for my saying +so much, of course, but--but you will try to remember that I am here and +always ready to come when I am called." + +"Yes," she said, "I think you would come if I called you. And I thank +you very much. And good-by--good-by." + +And she drew her hands away and stood with them hanging clasped before +her, as if she meant to steady them, and so she stood until he was gone. + +He was breathing quickly himself when he reached the street. + +"Yes," he said, "the professor was right. It is Arbuthnot--it is +Arbuthnot." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +When he passed the house the next day they were gone. The nursery +windows were thrown open, and he fancied that the place wore a deserted +look. The very streets seemed empty, and the glare of sunshine, whose +heat increased with every hour, added to the air of desolateness he +imagined. + +"It _is_ imagination," he said. "And the feeling will die away all the +more quickly because I recognize the unreality of it. By to-morrow or +the day after I shall have got over it." + +And yet a week later, when he dropped in upon the professor, one sultry +evening, to spend an hour with him, his old friend found cause for +anxious inspection of him. + +"What," he said, "the hot weather begins to tell on you already! You are +not acclimatized yet,--that's it. You must spare yourself as much as +possible. It doesn't promise well that you look fagged so soon. I should +say you had not slept well." + +"I don't sleep well," Tredennis answered. + +"You are working too hard," said the professor; "that is it, perhaps." + +"I am not working hard enough," replied Tredennis, with a slight +knitting of the brows. "I wish I had more to do. Leisure does not agree +with me." + +"One must occupy one's self!" said the professor. He spoke +half-absently, and yet with a touch of significance in his tone +which--combined with the fact that he had heard the words before--caused +Tredennis to glance at him quickly. + +He smiled slightly, in answer to the glance. + +"Bertha?" he said. "Oh, yes, I am quoting Bertha. Your manner is not as +light as hers, but it reminded me of her in some way; perhaps because I +had a letter from her to-day, and she was in my thoughts." + +"I hope she is well," said Tredennis, "and does not find her farm-house +too dull." + +"She does not complain of it," the professor answered. "And she says +nothing of her own health, but tells me she is a little anxious about +Janey, who does not seem quite herself." + +Tredennis looked out into the darkening street. They were sitting by the +opened window. + +"She was not well when she went away," he said, a trifle abstractedly. + +"Janey?" asked the professor, as if the idea was new to him; "I did not +know that." + +Tredennis roused himself. + +"I--was thinking of Bertha," he said. + +"Oh, of Bertha," said the professor, and then he lapsed into a reverie +himself for a few moments; and seemed to watch the trees on the street +without seeing them. + +"No, she was not well," he said, at length; "but I think she will be +better when she comes back." + +"The rest and quiet"--began Tredennis. + +"I think she had determined to be better," said the professor. + +"Determined?" repeated Tredennis. + +"She has a strong will," returned the professor, "though it is a thing +she is never suspected of. She does not suspect herself of it, and yet +she has relied upon its strength from the first, and is relying upon it +now. I am convinced that she went away with the determination to conquer +a restlessness whose significance she is just awakening to. And she +deliberately chose nature and the society of her children as the best +means of cure." + +"Do you think," asked Tredennis, in a low voice, "that she will get over +it?" + +The professor turned to look at him. + +"I don't know," he answered, with a slight tone of surprise. "Why did +you fancy I would?" + +"You seem to understand her," said Tredennis. + +The professor sighed. + +"I have studied her so long," he replied, "that I imagine I know what +she is _doing_, but you can't safely go beyond that with women; you +can't say what they are _going_ to do,--with any degree of certainty. +They are absorbingly interesting as a study, but they are not to be +relied on. And they rarely compliment your intelligence by doing what +you expect of them. _She_ has not done what I expected. She has lived +longer than I thought she would without finding herself out. A year ago +she believed that she had proved to herself that such an emotion as--as +this was impossible to her. It was a very innocent belief, and she was +entirely sincere in it, and congratulated herself upon it." He turned to +Tredennis again with a sudden movement and a curious look of pain in his +face. "I am afraid it's a great mistake," he said. + +"What?" Tredennis asked. + +"This--this feeling," he said, in a tremulous and troubled voice. "I +don't mean in her alone, but in any one, everywhere. I am not sure that +it ever brings happiness really in the end. I am afraid there always +_is_ an end. If there wasn't, it might be different; but I am afraid +there is. There are those of us who try to believe there is none, +but--but I am afraid those are happiest who lose all but their ideal. +There are many who lose even that, and Fate has done her worst by them." +He checked himself, and sank back in his chair. + +"Ah!" he said, smiling half sadly. "I am an old man--an old man,--and it +is an old man's fancy, that the best thing in life is death. And Fate +did not do her worst by me; she left me my ideal. She had gray eyes," he +added, "and a bright face, like Bertha's. Perhaps, after all, if I had +won what I wanted, I should not feel so old to-night, and so tired. Her +face was very bright." + +He had not been wholly well for some days, and to-night seemed fatigued +by the heat and languor in the air, but he was somewhat more hopeful +when he spoke of Bertha than he had been. + +"I have confidence in the strength of her will," he said, "and I like +her pride and courage. She does not give away to her emotions; she +resents them fiercely, and refuses to acknowledge their powers over her. +She insists to herself that her restlessness is nervousness, and her +sadness morbid." + +"She said as much to me," said Tredennis. + +"Did she?" exclaimed the professor. "That is a good sign; it shows that +she has confidence in you, and that it is a feeling strong enough to +induce her to use you as a defence against her own weakness. She would +never have spoken if she had not believed that you were a sort of +stronghold. It is the old feeling of her girlhood ruling her again. +Thank Heaven for that!" + +There was a ring at the front-door bell as he spoke, and a moment or so +later it was answered by a servant; buoyant feet were heard in the hall, +and paused a second on the threshold. + +"Are you here, Professor?" some one inquired. "And may I come in?" + +Professor Herrick turned his head. + +"Come in, Richard," he said; "come in, by all means." And Amory entered +and advanced toward them. + +The slight depression of manner Tredennis had fancied he had seen in him +on the last two occasions of their meeting had disappeared altogether. +He seemed even in gayer spirits than usual. + +"I have come to tell you," he said to the professor, "that I am going +away for a short time. It is a matter of business connected with the +Westoria lands. I may be away a week or two." + +"Isn't it rather a long journey?" asked the professor. + +"Oh, yes," he replied, with no air of being daunted by the +prospect,--"and a tiresome one, but it is important that I should make +it, and I shall not be alone." + +"Who is to be your companion?" + +"Planefield--and he's rather an entertaining fellow, in his +way--Planefield. Oh, it won't be so bad, on the whole." + +"It is Planefield who is interested in the lands, if I remember +rightly," suggested the professor. + +"Oh, Planefield?" Richard replied, carelessly. "Well, more or less. He +is given to interesting himself in things, and, by Jove!" he added with +a laugh, "this promises to be a good thing to be interested in. I +shouldn't mind if I"-- + +"My dear Richard," interposed the professor, "allow me to advise you not +to do so. You'll really find it best. Such things rarely end well." + +Richard laughed again. + +"My dear Professor," he answered, with much good-humor, "you may rely +upon me. I haven't any money of my own." + +"And if you had money?" said the professor. + +"I think I should risk it. I really do. Though why I should say risk, I +hardly know. There is scarcely enough risk to make it exciting." + +He was very sanguine, and once or twice became quite brilliant on the +subject. The great railroad, which was to give the lands an enormous +value, was almost an established fact; everything was being laid in +train: a man influenced here, a touch given there, a vigorous move made +in this direction, an interest awakened in that, and the thing was done. + +"There isn't a doubt of the termination," he said, "not a doubt. It's a +brilliant sort of thing that is its own impetus, one might say, and the +right men are at work for it, and the right wom--" + +"Were you going to say women?" asked Tredennis, when he pulled himself +up somewhat abruptly. + +"Well, yes," Richard said, blithely. "After all, why not? I must confess +to finding the fact lend color and vivacity to the thing. And the +delightful cleverness the clever ones show is a marvellous power for or +against a thing, though I think the feminine tendency is to work for a +thing, not against it." + +"I should like to know," said Tredennis, "how they begin it." + +For a moment he thought he did not know why he asked the question; but +the self-delusion did not last long. He felt an instant later that he +did know, and wished that he did not. + +"In nine cases out of ten," Richard replied, giving himself up at once +to an enjoyable analysis of the subject,--"in nine cases out of ten it +is my impression they begin with almost entire lack of serious +intention, and rarely, if ever, even in the end, admit to themselves +that they have done what they are accused of. Given a clever and pretty +woman whose husband or other male relative needs her assistance: why +should she be less clever and pretty in the society of one political +dignitary than in that of another, whose admiration of her charms may +not be of such importance? I suppose that is the beginning, and then +come the sense of power and the fascination of excitement. What woman +does not like both? What woman is better and more charming than Bertha, +and Bertha does not hesitate to admit, in her own delightful way, that +there must have been a fascination in the lives of those historical +charmers before whom prime ministers trembled, and who could make and +unmake a cabinet with a smile." + +"What," was the thought that leaped into Tredennis' mind, "do we begin +to compare Bertha with a king's favorite!" But he did not say it +aloud--it was not for him to defend her against her husband's lightness; +and were they not her own words, after all? And so he could only sit +silent in the shadow of his darkening corner and knit his heavy brows +with hot resentment in his heart, while Richard went on: + +"There are some few who make a profession of it," he said; "but they do +not carry the most power. The woman who is ambitious for her husband, or +eager for her son, or who wishes to escape from herself and find refuge +in some absorbing excitement, necessarily is more powerful than the more +sordid element. If I were going in for that kind of thing," he went on, +settling himself in his favorite graceful, lounging posture, and +throwing his arm lightly behind his head,--"if I were going in for it, +and might make a deliberate choice, I think I should choose a woman who +had something to forget,--a woman who had reached an emotional +crisis--who was young, and yet who could not take refuge in girlish +forgetfulness, and who, in spite of her youth, had lived beyond trusting +in the future--a woman who represented beauty, and wit, and despair (the +despair would be the strongest lever of all). There isn't a doubt of it +that such a woman, taken at such a turning-point in her existence, could +move--the world, if you like--the world itself;" and he arranged himself +a trifle more comfortably, and half-laughed again. + +"But," suggested the professor, "you are not going in for that sort of +thing, my dear Richard." + +"Oh, no, no!" answered Richard; "but _if_ I were, I must confess it +would have a fascination for me which would not permit of my regarding +it in cold blood. I am like Bertha, you know--I like my little drama." + +"And, speaking of Bertha," said the professor, "if anything should +happen while you are away"-- + +"Now, really," said Richard, "that shows what a careless fellow I am! Do +you know, it never once occurred to me that anything could happen. We +have such an admirable record to look back upon, Bertha and I, though I +think I usually refer the fact to Bertha's tact and executive ability; +nothing ever has happened, and I feel that we have established a +precedent. But, if anything should happen, you had better telegraph to +Merritsville. In any ordinary event, however, I feel quite safe in +leaving Bertha in your hands and Tredennis's," he said, smiling at the +large shadow in the corner. "One is always sure, in the midst of the +ruling frivolity, that Tredennis is to be relied on." + +He went away soon after, and Tredennis, bidding the professor +good-night, left the house with him. + +As they passed down the steps Richard put his arm through his +companion's with caressing friendliness. + +"It wouldn't do you any harm to take a run up into Virginia yourself, +once in a while," he said. "You have been losing ground since the heat +set in, and we can't submit to that. We need your muscular development +in its highest form, as an example to our modern deterioration. Kill two +birds with one stone when you have a day's leisure,--go and see Bertha +and the children, and lay in a new supply of that delightful robustness +we envy and admire." + +"I should be glad to see Bertha," said Tredennis. + +"She would be glad to see you," Richard answered. "And, while I am away, +it will be a relief to me to feel that she has you to call upon in case +of need. The professor--dear old fellow--is not as strong as he was. And +you--as I said before--one naturally takes the liberty of relying upon +your silent substantiality." + +"Thank you," said Tredennis. "If it is a matter of avoirdupois"---- + +Richard turned quickly to look at him. + +"Ah, no," he said, "not that; though, being human, we respect the +avoirdupois. It's something else, you know. Upon my word, I can't +exactly say what, but something which makes a man feel instinctively +that he can shift his responsibilities upon you and they will be in good +hands. Perhaps it is not an enviable quality in one's self, after all. +Here am I, you see, shifting Bertha and the children off on your +shoulders. + +"If I can be of any use to Bertha and the children why not?" said +Tredennis, tersely. + +"Oh, but one might also say 'Why?'" returned Richard. "We haven't any +claim on you, really, and yet we do it, or, rather, _I_ do it, which +speaks all the more strongly for your generosity and trustworthiness." + +"And you will be away"--Tredennis began. + +"Two or three weeks. It might be more, but I think not. We separate +here, I think, as I am going to drop in on Planefield. Good-night, and +thanks." + +"Good-night," responded Tredennis, and they shook hands and parted. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + +During the hot days and nights of the next few weeks Tredennis found +life rather a dreary affair. Gradually the familiar faces he met on the +avenue became fewer and fewer; the houses he knew one after another +assumed their air of summer desertion, offering as their only evidences +of life an occasional colored servant sunning him or herself on the +steps; the crowds of nursery-maids, with their charges, thinned out in +the parks, and the freshness of the leaves was lost under a coating of +dust, while the countenances of those for whom there was no prospect of +relief expressed either a languid sense of injury or the patience of +despair. + +"But, after all," Tredennis said, on two or three occasions, as he sat +in one of the parks in the evening,--"after all, I suppose most of them +have--an object," adding the last two words with a faint smile. + +He was obliged to confess to himself that of late he found that the work +which he had regarded as his object had ceased to satisfy him. He gave +his attention to it with stern persistence, and refused to spare himself +when he found his attention wandering; he even undertook additional +labor, writing in his moments of leisure several notable articles upon +various important questions of the day, and yet he had time left to hang +heavily on his hands and fill him with weariness; and at last there came +an evening when, after sitting in one of the parks until the lamps were +lighted, he rose suddenly from his seat, and spoke as if to the silence +and shadow about him. + +"Why should I try to hide the truth from myself?" he said. "It is too +late for that. I may as well face it like a man, and bear it like one. +Many a brave fellow has carried a bullet in his body down to his grave, +and seldom winced. This is something like that, I suppose, only that +pain"--And he drew a sharp, hard breath, and walked away down the +deserted path without ending the sentence. + +He made a struggle after this to resist one poor temptation which beset +him daily,--the temptation to pass through the street in which stood the +familiar house, with its drawn blinds and closed doors. Sometimes, when +he rose in the morning, he was so filled with an unreasoning yearning +for a sight of its blankness that he was overwhelmed by it, and went out +before he breakfasted. + +"It is weakness and self-indulgence," he would say; "but it is a very +little thing, and it can hurt no one--it is only a little thing, after +all." And he found a piteous pleasure--at which at first he tried to +smile, but at which before long he ceased even to try to smile--in the +slow walk down the street, on which he could see this window or that, +and remember some day when he had caught a glimpse of Bertha through it, +or some night he had spent in the room within when she had been gayer +than usual, or quieter,--when she had given him some new wound, perhaps, +or when she had half-healed an old one in some mood of relenting he had +not understood. + +"There is no reason why I should understand any woman," was his simple +thought. "And why should I understand her, unless she chose to let me? +She is like no other woman." + +He was quite sure of this. In his thoughts of her he found every word +and act of hers worth remembering and even repeating mentally again and +again for the sake of the magnetic grace which belonged only to herself, +and it never once occurred to him that his own deep sympathy and tender +fancy might brighten all she did. + +"When she speaks," he thought, "how the dullest of them stir and listen! +When she moves across a room, how natural it is to turn and look at her, +and be interested in what she is going to do! What life I have seen her +put in some poor, awkward wretch by only seating herself near him and +speaking to him of some common thing! One does not know what her gift +is, and whether it is well for her or ill that it was given her, but one +sees it in the simplest thing she does." + +It was hard to avoid giving himself up to such thoughts as these, and +when he most needed refuge from them he always sought it in the society +of the professor; so there were few evenings when he did not spend an +hour or so with him, and their friendship grew and waxed strong until +there could scarcely have been a closer bond between them. + +About two weeks after Richard Amory's departure, making his call later +than usual one evening, he met, coming down the steps, Mr. Arbuthnot, +who stopped, with his usual civility, to shake hands with him. + +"It is some weeks since we have crossed each other's paths, colonel," he +said, scrutinizing him rather closely: "and, in the meantime, I am +afraid you have not been well." + +"Amory called my attention to the fact a short time ago," responded +Tredennis, "and so did the professor. So, perhaps, there is some truth +in it. I hadn't noticed it myself." + +"You will presently, I assure you," said Arbuthnot, still regarding him +with an air of interest. "Perhaps Washington doesn't agree with you. I +have heard of people who couldn't stand it. They usually called it +malaria, but I think there was generally something"--He checked himself +somewhat abruptly, which was a rather unusual demonstration on his part, +as it was his habit to weigh his speech with laudable care and +deliberation. "You are going to see the professor?" he inquired. + +"Yes," answered Tredennis. + +The idea was presenting itself to his mind that there was a suggestion +of something unusual in the questioner's manner; that it was not so +entirely serene as was customary; that there was even a hint of some +inward excitement strong enough to be repressed only by an effort. And +the consciousness of this impressed itself upon him even while a flow of +light talk went on, and Arbuthnot smiled at him from his upper step. + +"I have been to see the professor, too," he was saying, "and I felt it +was something of an audacity. His invitations to me have always been of +the most general nature; but I thought I would take the liberty of +pretending that I fancied he regarded them seriously. He was very good +to me, and exhibited wonderful presence of mind in not revealing that he +was surprised to see me. I tried not to stay long enough to tire him, +and he was sufficiently amiable to ask me to come again. He evidently +appreciated the desolation of my circumstances." + +"You are finding it dull?" said Tredennis. + +"Dull!" repeated Arbuthnot. "Yes; I think you might call it dull. The +people who kindly condescend to notice me in the winter have gone away, +and my dress-coat is packed in camphor. I have ceased to be useful; and, +even if Fate had permitted me to be ornamental, where should I air my +charms? There seems really no reason why I should exist, until next +winter, when I may be useful again, and receive in return my modicum of +entertainment. To be merely a superior young man in a department is not +remunerative in summer, as one ceases to glean the results of one's +superiority. At present I might as well be inferior, and neither dance, +nor talk, nor sing, and be utterly incapacitated by nature for either +carrying wraps or picking up handkerchiefs; and you cannot disport +yourself at the watering-places of the rich and great on a salary of a +hundred dollars a month; and you could only get your sordid 'month's +leave,' if such a thing were possible." + +"I--have been dull myself," said Tredennis, hesitantly. + +"If it should ever occur to you to drop in and see a fellow-sufferer," +said Arbuthnot, "it would relieve the monotony of _my_ lot, at least, +and might awaken in me some generous emotions." + +Tredennis looked up at him. + +"It never has occurred to you so far, I see," was Arbuthnot's light +reply to the look; "but, if it should, don't resist the impulse. I can +assure you it is a laudable one. And my humble apartment has the +advantage of comparative coolness." + +When Tredennis entered the library he found the professor sitting in his +usual summer seat, near the window. A newspaper lay open on his knee, +but he was not reading it; he seemed, indeed, to have fallen into a +reverie of a rather puzzling kind. + +"Did you meet any one as you came in?" he asked of Tredennis, as soon as +they had exchanged greetings. + +"I met Mr. Arbuthnot," Tredennis answered, "and stopped a few moments on +the steps to talk to him." + +"He has been entertaining me for the last hour," said the professor, +taking off his glasses and beginning to polish them. "Now, will you tell +me," he asked, with his quiet air of reflective inquiry into an +interesting subject,--"will you tell me why he comes to entertain _me_?" + +"He gave me the impression," answered Tredennis, "that his object in +coming was that you might entertain him, and he added that you were very +good to him, and he appeared to have enjoyed his call very much." + +"That is his way," responded the professor, impartially. "And a most +agreeable way it is. To be born with such a way as a natural heritage is +to be a social millionnaire. And the worst of it is, that it may be a +gift entirely apart from all morals and substantial virtues. Bertha has +it. I don't know where she got it. Not from me, and not from her poor +mother. I say it _may be_ apart from all morals and substantial virtues. +I don't say it always is. I haven't at all made up my mind what +attributes go along with it in Arbuthnot's case. I should like to +decide. But it would be an agreeable way in a criminal of the deepest +dye. It is certainly agreeable that he should in some subtle manner be +able to place me in the picturesque attitude of a dignified and +entertaining host. I didn't entertain him at all," he added, simply. "I +sat and listened to him." + +"He is frequently well worth listening to," commented Tredennis. + +"He was well worth listening to this evening," said the professor. "And +yet he was light enough. He had two or three English periodicals under +his arm,--one of them was 'Punch,'--and--and I found myself laughing +quite heartily over it. And then there was something about a new comic +opera, and he seemed to know the libretto by heart, and ran over an air +or so on the piano. And he had been reading a new book, and was rather +clever about it--in his way, of course, but still it was cleverness. And +then he went to the piano again and sang a captivating little love-song +very well, and, after it, got up and said good-night--and on the whole I +regretted it. I liked his pictures, I liked his opera, I liked his talk +of the book, and I liked his little love-song. And how should he know +that an old dry-bones would like a tender little ballad and be touched +by it, and pleased because his sentiment was discovered and pandered to? +Oh, it is the old story. It's his way--it's the way." + +"I am beginning to think," said Tredennis, slowly, "that 'his way' might +be called sympathy and good feeling and fine tact, if one wanted to be +specially fair to him." + +The professor looked up rather quickly. + +"I thought you did not like him," he said. + +Tredennis paused a moment, looking down at the carpet as if +deliberating. + +"I don't think I do," he said at length; "but it's no fault of his--the +fault lies in me. I haven't the way, and I am at a disadvantage with +him. He is never at a loss, and I am; he is ready-witted and +self-possessed; I am slow and rigid, and I suppose it is human that I +should try to imagine at times that I am at a disadvantage only because +my virtues are more solid than his. They are not more solid; they are +only more clumsy and less available." + +"You don't spare yourself," said the professor. + +"Why should I spare myself?" said Tredennis, knitting his brows. "After +all, _he_ never spares himself. He knows better. He would be just to me. +Why should I let him place me at a disadvantage again by being unjust to +him? And why should we insist that the only good qualities are those +which are unornamental? It is a popular fallacy. We like to believe it. +It is very easy to suspect a man of being shallow because we are sure we +are deep and he is unlike us. This Arbuthnot"-- + +"'This Arbuthnot,'" interposed the professor, with a smile. "It is +curious enough to hear you entering upon a defence of 'this Arbuthnot.' +You don't like him, Philip. You don't like him." + +"I don't like myself," said Tredennis, "when I am compared with him; and +I don't like the tendency I discover in myself, the tendency to +disparage him. I should like to be fair to him, and I find it +difficult." + +"Upon my word," said the professor, "it is rather fine in you to make +the effort, but"--giving him one of the old admiring looks--"you are +always rather fine, Philip." + +"It would be finer, sir," said Tredennis, coloring, "if it were not an +effort." + +"No," said the professor, quietly, "it would not be half so fine." And +he put out his hand and let it rest upon the arm of the chair in which +Tredennis sat, and so it rested as long as their talk went on. + +In the meantime Arbuthnot walked rather slowly down the street, quite +conscious of finding it necessary to make something of an effort to +compose himself. It was his recognition of this necessity which had +caused him to change his first intention of returning to his bachelor +apartment after having made his call upon Professor Herrick. And he felt +the necessity all the more strongly after his brief encounter with +Colonel Tredennis. + +"I will go into the park and think it over," he said to himself. "I'll +give myself time." + +He turned into Lafayette Park, found a quiet seat, and took out a very +excellent cigar. He was not entirely surprised to see that, as he held +the match to it, his hand was not as steady as usual. Tredennis had +thought him a little pale. + +The subject of his reflections, as he smoked his cigar, was a +comparatively trivial incident; taken by itself, but he had not taken it +by itself, because in a flash it had connected itself with a score of +others, which at the times of their occurring had borne no significance +whatever to him. + +His visit to the professor had not been made without reasons; but they +had been such reasons as, simply stated to the majority of his ordinary +acquaintance, would have been received with open amazement or polite +discredit, and this principally because they were such very simple +reasons indeed. If such persons had been told that, finding himself +without any vestige of entertainment, he had wandered in upon the +professor as a last resource, or that he had wished to ask of him some +trivial favor, or that he had made his call without any reason whatever, +they would have felt such a state of affairs probable enough; but being +informed that while sitting in the easiest of chairs, in the coolest +possible _negligée_, reading an agreeable piece of light literature, and +smoking a cigar before his open window, he had caught sight of the +professor at _his_ window, sitting with his head resting on his hand, +and being struck vaguely by some air of desolateness and lassitude in +the solitary old figure, had calmly laid aside book and cigar, had put +himself into conventional attire, and had walked across the street with +no other intention than that of making the best of gifts of +entertainment it was certainly not his habit to overvalue,--those to +whom the explanation had been made would have taken the liberty of +feeling it somewhat insufficient, and would, in nine cases out of ten, +privately have provided themselves with a more complicated one, +cautiously insuring themselves against imposture by rejecting at the +outset the simple and unvarnished truth. + +Upon the whole, the visit had been a success. On entering, it is true, +he found himself called upon to admire the rapidity with which the +professor recovered from his surprise at seeing him; but, as he had not +been deluded by any hope that his first appearance would awaken +unmistakable delight, he managed to make the best of the situation. His +opening remarks upon the subject of the weather were not altogether +infelicitous, and then he produced his late number of "Punch," and the +professor laughed, and, the ice being broken, conversation flourished, +and there was no further difficulty. He discovered, somewhat to his +surprise, that he was in better conversational trim than usual. + +"It is a delusive condition to be in," he explained to the professor; +"but experience has taught me not to be taken in by it and expect future +development. It won't continue, as you no doubt suspect. It is the +result of entire social stagnation for several weeks. I am merely +letting off all my fireworks at once, inspired to the improvidence by +your presence. I am a poor creature, as you know; but even a poor +creature is likely to suffer from an idea a day. The mental +accumulations of this summer, carefully economized, will support me in +penury during the entire ensuing season. I only conjure you not to +betray me when you hear me repeat the same things by instalments at Mrs. +Amory's evenings." + +And, saying it, he saw the professor's face change in some subtle way as +he looked at him. What there was in this look and change to make him +conscious of an inward start he could not have told. It was the merest +lifting of the lids, combined with an almost imperceptible movement of +the muscles about the mouth; and yet he found it difficult to avoid +pausing for a moment. But he accomplished the feat, and felt he had +reason to be rather proud of it. "Though what there is to startle him in +my mention of Mrs. Amory's evenings," he reflected, "it would require an +intellect to explain." + +Being somewhat given to finding entertainment in quiet speculation upon +passing events, he would doubtless have given some attention to the +incident, even if it had remained a solitary unexplained and mystifying +trifle. But it was not left to stand alone in his mind. + +It was not fifteen minutes before, in drawing his handkerchief from his +breast-pocket, he accidentally drew forth with it a letter, which fell +upon the newspaper lying upon the professor's lap, and for a moment +rested there with the address upward. + +And the instant he glanced from the pretty feminine envelope to the +professor's face Arbuthnot recognized the fact that something altogether +unexpected had occurred again. + +As he had looked from the envelope to the professor, so the professor +looked from the envelope to him. Then he picked the letter up and +returned it. + +"It is a letter," Arbuthnot began,--"a letter"--and paused +ignominiously. + +"Yes," said the professor, as if he had lost something of his own gentle +self-possession. "I see it is a letter." + +It was not a happy remark, nor did Arbuthnot feel his own next effort a +particularly successful one. + +"It is a letter from Mrs. Amory," he said. "She is kind enough to write +to me occasionally." + +"Yes," responded the professor. "I saw that it was from Bertha. Her hand +is easily recognized." + +"It is an unusual hand," said Arbuthnot. "And her letters are very like +herself. When it occurs to her to remember me--which doesn't happen as +frequently as I could wish--I consider myself fortunate. She writes as +she talks, and very few people do that." + +He ended with a greater degree of composure than he had begun with, but +to his surprise he felt that his pulses had quickened, and that there +had risen to his face a touch of warmth suggestive of some increase of +color, and he did not enjoy the sensation. He began to open the letter. + +"Shall I"--he said, and then suddenly stopped. + +He knew why he had stopped, but the professor did not, and to make the +pause and return the letter to its envelope and its place in his pocket +without an explanation required something like hardihood. + +"She is well, and seems to be taking advantage of the opportunity to +rest," he said, and picked up his "Punch" again, returning to his +half-finished comment upon its cartoon as if no interruption had taken +place. + +As he sat on his seat in the park, apparently given up to undivided +enjoyment of his cigar, his mind was filled with a tumult of thought. He +had not been under the influence of such mental excitement for years. +Suddenly he found himself confronting a revelation perfectly astounding +to him. + +"And so _I_ am the man!" he said, at last. "_I_ am the man!" + +He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at the end of it with an +air of deliberate reflection, as is the masculine habit. + +"It doesn't say much for me," he added, "that I never once suspected +it--not once." + +Then he replaced his cigar, with something like a sigh. + +"We are a blind lot," he said. + +He did not feel the situation a pleasant one; there were circumstances +under which he would have resented it with a vigor and happy ingenuity +of resource which would have stood him in good stead; but there was no +resentment in his present mood. From the moment the truth had dawned +upon him, he had treated it without even the most indirect reference to +his own very natural feelings, and there had been more sacrifice of +himself and his own peculiarities in his action when he had returned the +letter to his pocket than even he himself realized. + +"It was not the letter to show him," was his thought. "She does not know +how much she tells me. He would have understood it as I do." + +He went over a good deal of ground mentally as he sat in the deepening +dusk, and he thought clearly and dispassionately, as was his habit when +he allowed himself to think at all. By the time he had arrived at his +conclusions it was quite dark. Then he threw the end of his last cigar +away and arose, and there was no denying that he was pale still, and +wore a curiously intense expression. + +"If there is one thing neither man nor devil can put a stop to," he +said, "it is an experience such as that. It will go on to one of two +ends,--it will kill her, or she will kill it. The wider of the mark they +shoot, the easier for her; and as for me," he added, with a rather faint +and dreary smile, "perhaps it suits me well enough to be merely an +alleviating circumstance. It's all I'm good for. Let them think as they +please." + +And he brushed an atom of cigar-ash from his sleeve with his rather too +finely feminine hand, and walked away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +He paid the professor another visit a few days later, and afterwards +another, and another. + +"What," said the professor, at the end of his second visit, "is it ten +o'clock? I assure you it is usually much later than this when it strikes +ten." + +"Thank you," said Arbuthnot. "I never heard that civility accomplished +so dexterously before. It is perfectly easy to explain the preternatural +adroitness of speech on which Mrs. Amory prides herself. But don't be +too kind to me, professor, and weaken my resolution not to present +myself unless I have just appropriated an idea from somewhere. If I +should appear some day _au naturel_, not having taken the precaution to +attire myself in the mature reflections of my acquaintance, I shouldn't +pay you for the wear and tear of seeing me, I'll confess beforehand." + +"I once told you," said the professor to Tredennis, after the fourth +visit, "that I was not fond of him, but there had been times when I had +been threatened with it. This is one of the times. Ah!" with a sigh of +fatigue, "I understand the attraction--I understand it." + +The following week Tredennis arrived at the house one evening to find it +in some confusion. The _coupé_ of a prominent medical man stood before +the pavement, and the servant who opened the door looked agitated. + +"The professor, sir," he said, "has had a fall. We hope he aint much +hurt, and Mr. Arbuthnot and the doctor are with him." + +"Ask if I may go upstairs," said Tredennis; and, as he asked it, +Arbuthnot appeared on the landing above, and, seeing who was below, came +down at once. + +"There is no real cause for alarm," he said, "though he has had a +shock. He had been out, and the heat must have been too much for him. As +he was coming up the steps he felt giddy and lost his footing, and fell. +Doctor Malcolm is with him, and says he needs nothing but entire quiet. +I am glad you have come. Did you receive my message?" + +"No," answered Tredennis. "I have not been to my room." + +"Come into the library," said Arbuthnot. "I have something to say to +you." + +He led the way into the room, and Tredennis followed him, wondering. +When they got inside Arbuthnot turned and closed the door. + +"I suppose," he said, "you know no more certainly than I do where Mr. +Amory is to be found." And as he spoke he took a telegram from his +pocket. + +"What is the matter?" demanded Tredennis. "What has"-- + +"This came almost immediately after the professor's accident," said +Arbuthnot. "It is from Mrs. Amory, asking him to come to her. Janey is +very ill." + +"What!" exclaimed Tredennis. "And she alone, and probably without any +physician she relies on!" + +"Some one must go to her," said Arbuthnot, "and the professor must know +nothing of it. If we knew of any woman friend of hers we might appeal to +her; but everybody is out of town." + +He paused a second, his eyes fixed on Tredennis's changing face. + +"If you will remain with the professor," he said, "I will go myself, and +take Doctor Wentworth with me." + +"You!" said Tredennis. + +"I shall be better than nothing," replied Arbuthnot, quietly. "I can do +what I am told to do, and she mustn't be left alone. If her mother had +been alive, she would have gone; if her father had been well, he would +have gone; if her husband had been here"-- + +"But he is not here," said Tredennis, with a bitterness not strictly +just. "Heaven only knows where he is." + +"It would be rather hazardous to trust to a telegram reaching him at +Merrittsville," said Arbuthnot. "We are not going to leave her alone +even until we have tried Merrittsville. What must be done must be done +now. I will go and see Doctor Wentworth at once, and we can leave in an +hour if I find him. You can tell the professor I was called away." + +He made a step toward the door, and as he did so Tredennis turned +suddenly. + +"Wait a moment," he said. + +Arbuthnot came back. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +There was a curious pause, which, though it lasted scarcely longer than +a second, was still a pause. + +"If _I_ go," said Tredennis, "it will be easier to explain my absence to +the professor." And then there was a pause again, and each man looked at +the other, and each was a trifle pale. + +It was Arbuthnot who spoke first. + +"I think," he said, without moving a muscle, "that you had better let me +go." + +"Why?" said Tredennis, and the unnatural quality of his voice startled +himself. + +"Because," said Arbuthnot, as calmly as before, "you will be conferring +a favor on me, if you do. I want an excuse for getting out of town, +and--I want an opportunity to be of some slight service to Mrs. Amory." + +Before the dignity of the stalwart figure towering above his slighter +proportions he knew he appeared to no advantage as he said the words; +but to have made the best of himself he must have relinquished his point +at the outset, and this he had no intention of doing, though he was not +enjoying himself. A certain cold-blooded pertinacity which he had +acquired after many battles with himself was very useful to him at the +moment. + +"The worst thing that could happen to her just now," he had said to +himself, ten minutes before, "would be that he should go to her in her +trouble." And upon this conviction he took his stand. + +In placing himself in the breach he knew that he had no means of defence +whatever; that any reasons for his course he might offer must appear, by +their flimsiness, to betray in him entire inadequacy to the situation in +which he seemed to stand, and that he must present himself in the +character of a victim to his own bold but shallow devices, and simply +brazen the matter out; and when one reflects upon human weakness it is +certainly not to his discredit that he had calmly resigned himself to +this before entering the room. There was no triviality in Tredennis's +mood, and he made no pretence of any. The half darkness of the room, +which had been shaded from the sun during the day, added to the +significance of every line in his face. As he stood, with folded arms, +the shadows seemed to make him look larger, to mark his pallor, and +deepen the intensity of his expression. + +"Give me a better reason," he said. + +Arbuthnot paused. What he saw in the man moved him strongly. In the +light of that past of his, which was a mystery to his friends, he often +saw with terrible clearness much he was not suspected of seeing at all, +and here he recognized what awakened in him both pity and respect. + +"I have no better one," he answered. "I tell you I miss the exhilaration +of Mrs. Amory's society and want to see her, and hope she will not be +sorry to see me." And, having said it, he paused again before making his +_coup d'état_. Then he spoke deliberately, looking Tredennis in the +eyes. "That you should think anything detrimental to Mrs. Amory, even in +the most shadowy way, is out of the question," he said. "Think of me +what you please." + +"I shall think nothing that is detrimental to any man who is her +friend," said Tredennis, and there was passion in the words, though he +had tried to repress it. + +"Her friendship would be a good defence for a man against any wrong that +was in him," said Arbuthnot, and this time the sudden stir of feeling in +him was not altogether concealed. "Let me have my way," he ended. "It +will do no harm." + +"It will do no good," said Tredennis. + +"No," answered Arbuthnot, recovering his impervious air, "it will do no +good, but one has to be sanguine to expect good. Perhaps I need pity," +he added. "Suppose you are generous and show it me." + +He could not help seeing the dramatic side of the situation, and with +half-conscious irony abandoning himself to it. All at once he seemed to +have deserted the well-regulated and decently arranged commonplaces of +his ordinary life, and to be taking part in a theatrical performance of +rather fine and subtle quality, and he waited with intense interest to +see what Tredennis would do. + +What he did was characteristic of him. He had unconsciously taken two or +three hurried steps across the room, and he turned and stood still. + +"It is I who must go," he said. + +"You are sure of that?" said Arbuthnot. + +"We have never found it easy to understand each other," Tredennis +answered, "though perhaps you have understood me better than I have +understood you. You are quicker and more subtle than I am. I only seem +able to see one thing at a time, and do one thing. I only see one thing +now. It is better that I should go." + +"You mean," said Arbuthnot, "better for me?" + +Tredennis looked down at the floor. + +"Yes," he answered. + +A second or so of silence followed, in which Arbuthnot simply stood and +looked at him. The utter uselessness of the effort he had made was borne +in upon him in a manner which overpowered him. + +"Then," he remarked at length, "if you are considering me, there seems +nothing more to be said. Will you go and tell the professor that you are +called away, or shall I?" + +"I will go myself," replied Tredennis. + +He turned to leave the room, and Arbuthnot walked slowly toward the +window. The next moment Tredennis turned from the door and followed him. + +"If I have ever done you injustice," he said, "the time is past for it, +and I ask your pardon." + +"Perhaps it is not justice I need," said Arbuthnot, "but mercy--and I +don't think you have ever been unjust to me. It wouldn't have been +easy." + +"In my place," said Tredennis, with a visible effort, "you would find it +easier than I do to say what you wished. I"-- + +"You mean that you pity me," Arbuthnot interposed. "As I said before, +perhaps I need pity. Sometimes I think I do;" and the slight touch of +dreariness in his tone echoed in Tredennis's ear long after he had left +him and gone on his way. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + +It was ten o'clock and bright moonlight when Tredennis reached his +destination, the train having brought him to a way-side station two +miles distant, where he had hired a horse, and struck out into the +county road. In those good old days when the dwelling of every Virginia +gentleman was his "mansion," the substantial pile of red brick before +whose gate-way he dismounted had been a mansion too, and had not been +disposed to trifle with its title, but had insisted upon it with a +dignified squareness which scorned all architectural devices to attract +attention. Its first owner had chosen its site with a view to the young +"shade-trees" upon it, and while he had lived upon his property had been +almost as proud of his trees as of his "mansion"; and when, long +afterward, changes had taken place, and the objects of his pride fell +into degenerate hands, as the glories of the mansion faded, its old +friends, the trees, grew and flourished, and seemed to close kindly in +about it, as if to soften and shadow its decay. + +On each side of the drive which led down to the gateway grew an +irregular line of these trees, here and there shading the way from side +to side, and again leaving a space for the moonlight to stream upon. As +he tied his horse Tredennis glanced up this drive-way toward the house. + +"There is a light burning in one of the rooms," he said. "It must be +there that"--He broke off in the midst of a sentence, his attention +suddenly attracted by a figure which flitted across one of the patches +of moonlight. + +He knew it at once, though he had had no thought of seeing it before +entering the house. It was Bertha, in a white dress, and with two large +dogs following her, leaping and panting, when she spoke in a hushed +voice, as if to quiet them. + +She came down toward the gate with a light, hurried tread, and, when she +was within a few feet of it, spoke. + +"Doctor," she said, "oh, how glad I am--how glad!" and, as she said it, +came out into the broad moonlight again, and found herself face to face +with Tredennis. + +She fell back from him as if a blow had been struck her,--fell back +trembling, and as white as the moonlight itself. + +"What!" she cried, "is it _you_--_you_?" + +He looked at her, bewildered by the shock his presence seemed to her. + +"I did not think I should frighten you," he said. "I came to-night +because the professor was not well enough to make the journey. Doctor +Wentworth will be here in the morning. He would have come with me, but +he had an important case to attend." + +"I did not think _you_ would come," she said, breathlessly, and put out +her hand, groping for the support of the swinging gate, which she caught +and held. + +"There was no one else," he answered. + +He felt as if he were part of some strange dream. The stillness, the +moonlight, the heavy shadows of the great trees, all added to the +unreality of the moment; but most unreal of all was Bertha herself, +clinging with one trembling hand to the gate, and looking up at him with +dilated eyes. + +"I did not think _you_ would come," she said again, "and it startled +me--and"--She paused with a poor little effort at a smile, which the +next instant died away. "Don't--don't look at me!" she said, and, +turning away from him, laid her face on the hand clinging to the gate. + +He looked down at her slight white figure and bent head, and a great +tremor passed over him. The next instant she felt him standing close at +her side. + +"You must not--do that," he said, and put out his hand and touched her +shoulder. + +His voice was almost a whisper; he was scarcely conscious of what his +words were; he had scarcely any consciousness of his touch. The feeling +which swept over him needed no sense of touch or sound; the one thing +which overpowered him was his sudden sense of a nearness to her which +was not physical nearness at all. + +"Perhaps I was wrong to come," he went on; "but I could not leave you +alone--I could not leave you alone. I knew that you were suffering, and +I could not bear that." + +She did not speak or lift her head. + +"Has it been desolate?" he asked. + +"Yes," she answered, in a hushed voice. + +"I was afraid so," he said. "You have been alone so long--I thought of +it almost every hour of the day; you are not used to being alone. +Perhaps it was a mistake. Why do you tremble so?" + +"I don't know," she answered. + +"My poor child!" he said. "My poor child!" And then there was a pause +which seemed to hold a lifetime of utter silence. + +It was Bertha who ended it. She stirred a little, and then lifted her +face. She looked as he remembered her looking when he had first known +her, only that she was paler, and there was a wearied softness in her +eyes. She made no attempt at hiding the traces of tears in them, and she +spoke as simply as a child. + +"I thought it was the doctor, when I heard the horse's feet," she said; +"and I was afraid the dogs would bark and waken Janey. She has just +fallen asleep, and she has slept so little. She has been very ill." + +"_You_ have not slept," he said. + +"No," she replied. "This is the first time I have left her." + +He took her hand and drew it gently through his arm. + +"I will take you up to the house," he said, "so that you can hear every +sound; but you must stay outside for a little while. The fresh air will +do you good, and we can walk up and down while I tell you the reason the +professor did not come." + +All the ordinary conventional barriers had fallen away from between +them. He did not know why or how, and he did not ask. Suddenly he found +himself once again side by side with the Bertha he had fancied lost +forever. All that had bewildered him was gone. The brilliant little +figure, with its tinkling ornaments, the unemotional little smile, the +light laugh, were only parts of a feverish dream. It was Bertha whose +hand rested on his arm--whose fair, young face was pale with watching +over her child--whose soft voice was tremulous and tender with innocent, +natural tears. She spoke very little. When they had walked to and fro +before the house for a short time, she said: + +"Let us go and sit down on the steps of the porch," and they went and +sat there together,--he upon a lower step, and she a few steps above, +her hands clasped on her knee, her face turned half away from him. She +rarely looked at him, he noticed, even when he spoke to her or she spoke +to him; her eyes rested oftener than not upon some far-away point under +the trees. + +"You are no better than you were when you went away," he said, looking +at her cheek where the moonlight whitened it. + +"No," she answered. + +"I did not think to find you looking like this," he said. + +"Perhaps," she said, still with her eyes fixed on the far-away shadows, +"perhaps I have not had time enough. You must give me time." + +"You have had two months," he returned. + +"Two months," she said, "is not so long as it seems." And between the +words there came a curious little catch of the breath. + +"It has seemed long to you?" he asked. + +"Yes." + +She turned her face slowly and looked at him. + +"Has it seemed long to you?" she said. + +"Yes," he replied, "long and dreary." + +She swayed a little toward him with a sort of unconscious movement; her +eyes were fixed upon his face with a wistful questioning; he had seen +her look at her children so. + +"Was it very hot?" she said. "Were you tired? Why did you not go away?" + +"I did not want to go away," he answered. + +"But you ought to have gone away," she said. "You were not used to the +heat, and--Let the light fall on your face so that I can see it!" + +He came a little nearer to her, and as she looked at him the wistfulness +in her eyes changed to something else. + +"Oh," she cried, "it has done you harm. Your face is quite changed. Why +didn't I see it before? What have you been doing?" + +"Nothing," he answered. + +He did not stir, or want to stir, but sat almost breathlessly still, +watching her, the sudden soft anxiousness in her eyes setting every +pulse in his body throbbing. + +"Oh," she said, "you are ill--you are ill! How could you be so careless? +Why did not papa"-- + +She faltered--her voice fell and broke. She even drew back a little, +though her eyes still rested upon his. + +"You were angry with me when you thought I did not take care of myself," +she said; "and you have been as bad as I was, and worse. You had not so +many temptations. And she turned away, and he found himself looking only +at her cheek again, and the soft side-curve of her mouth. + +"There is less reason why I should take care of myself," he said. + +"You mean"--she asked, without moving--"that there are fewer people who +would miss you?" + +"I do not know of any one who would miss me." + +Her hands stirred slightly, as they lay in her lap. + +"That is underrating your friends," she said, slowly. "But"--altering +her tone--"it is true, I have the children and Richard." + +"Where is Richard?" he asked. + +"I don't know." + +"When you heard from him last," he began. + +"He is a bad correspondent," she said. + +"He always finds so much to fill his time when he is away. There is an +understanding between us that he shall write very few letters. I am +responsible for it myself, because I know it spoils everything for him +when he has an unwritten letter on his conscience. I haven't heard from +him first yet since he went West." + +She arose from her seat on the step. + +"I will go in now," she said. "I must speak to Mrs. Lucas about giving +you a room, and then I will go to Janey. She is sleeping very well." + +He arose, too, and stood below her, looking up. + +"You must promise not to think of me," he said. "I did not come here to +be considered. Do you think an old soldier, who has slept under the open +sky many a night, cannot provide for himself?" + +"Have you slept so often?" she asked, the very triviality of the +question giving it a strange sweetness to his ears. + +"Yes," he answered. "And often with no surety of wakening with my scalp +on." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, and made an involuntary movement toward him. + +He barely restrained his impulse to put out his hands, but hers fell at +her sides the next instant. + +"I am a great coward," she said. "It fills me with terror to hear of +things like that. Is it at all likely that you will be ordered back?" + +"I don't know," he replied, his uplifted eyes devouring all the +sweetness of her face. "Would that"-- + +The very madness of the question forming itself on his lips was his own +check. + +"I don't want to think of it," he said. Then he added, "As I stand here +I look up at you. I never looked up at you before." + +"Nor I down at you," she returned. "You are always so high above me. It +seems strange to look down at you." + +It was all so simple and inconsequent, but every word seemed full of the +mystery and emotion of the hour. When he tried afterward to recall what +they had said he was bewildered by the slightness of what had been +uttered, even though the thrill of it had not yet passed away. + +He went up the steps and stood beside her. + +"Yes," he said, speaking as gently as he might have spoken to a child. +"You make me feel what a heavy-limbed, clumsy fellow I am. All women +make me feel it, but you more than all the rest. You look almost like a +child." + +"But I am not very little," she said; "it is only because I am standing +near you." + +"I always think of you as a small creature," he said. "I used to think, +long ago, that some one should care for you." + +"You were very good, long ago," she answered softly. "And you are very +good now to have come to try to help me. Will you come in?" + +"No," he said, "not now. It might only excite the child to-night if she +saw me, and so long as she is quiet I will not run the risk of +disturbing her. I will tell you what I am going to do. I am not going to +leave you alone. I shall walk up and down beneath your window, and if +you need me you will know I am there, and you have only to speak in your +lowest voice. If she should be worse, my horse is at the gate, and I +can go for the doctor at once." + +She looked up at him with a kind of wonder. + +"Do you mean that you intend to stand sentinel all night?" she said. + +"I have stood sentinel before," was his reply. "I came to stand +sentinel. All that I can do is to be ready if I am wanted." + +"But I cannot let you stay up all night," she began. + +"You said it had been desolate," he answered. "Won't it be less desolate +to know that--that some one is near you?" + +"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" she said. "But"-- + +"Go upstairs," he said, "and promise me that, if she still sleeps, you +will lie down and let your nurse watch her." + +The gentle authority of his manner seemed to impress her curiously. She +hesitated as if she scarcely understood it. + +"I--don't--know," she faltered. + +"You will be better for it to-morrow," he persisted, "and so will she." + +"I never did such a thing before," she said, slowly. + +"I shall be beneath the open window," he said, "and I have the ears of +an Indian. I shall know if she stirs." + +She drew a soft, troubled breath. + +"Well," she said, "I will--go." + +And, without another word, she turned away. He stood and watched her as +she moved slowly across the wide porch. At the door she stopped and +turned toward him. + +"But," she said, faint lines showing themselves on her forehead, "I +shall be remembering that you--are not asleep." + +"You must not remember me at all," he answered. + +And then he stood still and watched her again until she had entered the +house and noiselessly ascended the staircase, which was a few yards from +the open door, and then, when he could see her white figure in the +darkness no more, he went out to his place beneath the window, and +strode silently to and fro, keeping watch and listening until after the +moon had gone down and the birds were beginning to stir in the trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + +At six o'clock in the morning Bertha came down the stairs again. Her +simple white gown was a fresh one, and there was a tinge of color in her +cheeks. + +"She slept nearly all night," she said to Tredennis, when he joined her, +"and so did I. I am sure she is better." Then she put out her hand for +him to take. "It is all because you are here," she said. "When I wakened +for a moment, once or twice, and heard your footsteps, it seemed to give +me courage and make everything quieter. Are you very tired?" + +"No," he answered, "I am not tired at all." + +"I am afraid you would not tell me if you were," she said. "You must +come with me now and let me give you some breakfast." + +She led him into a room at the side of the hall. When the house had been +a "mansion" it had been considered a very imposing apartment, and, with +the assistance of a few Washingtonian luxuries, which she had +dexterously grafted upon its bareness, it was by no means unpicturesque +even now. + +"I think I should know that you had lived here," he said, as he glanced +around. + +"Have I made it so personal?" she replied. "I did not mean to do that. +It was so bare at first, and, as I had nothing to do, it amused me to +arrange it. Richard sent me the rugs, and odds and ends, and I found the +spindle-legged furniture in the neighborhood. I am afraid it won't be +safe for you to sit down too suddenly in the chairs, or to lean heavily +on the table. I think you had better choose that leathern arm-chair and +abide by it. It is quite substantial." + +He took the seat, and gave himself up to the pleasure of watching her +as she moved to and fro between the table and an antique sideboard, from +whose recesses she produced some pretty cups and saucers. + +"What are you going to do?" he asked. + +"I am going to set the table for your breakfast," she said, "because +Maria is busy with the children, and the other nurse is with Janey, and +the woman of the house is making your coffee and rolls." + +"You are going to set the table!" he exclaimed. + +"It doesn't require preternatural intelligence," she answered. "It is +rather a simple thing, on the whole." + +It seemed a very simple thing as she did it, and a very pretty thing. As +he leaned against the leathern back of his chair, beginning vaguely to +realize by a dawning sense of weariness that he had been up all night, +he felt that he had not awakened from his dream yet, or that the visions +of the past months were too far away and too unreal to move him. + +The early morning sunlight made its way through the vines embowering the +window, and cast lace-like shadows of their swaying leaves upon the +floor, and upon Bertha's dress when she passed near. The softness of the +light mellowed everything, and intensified the touches of color in the +fans and ornaments on the walls and mantel, and in the bits of drapery +thrown here and there as if by accident; and in the midst of this color +and mellowed light Bertha moved before him, a slender, quiet figure, +making the picture complete. + +It was her quietness which impressed itself upon him more than all else. +After the first moments, when she had uttered her cry on seeing him, and +had given way in her momentary agitation, he had noticed that a curious +change fell upon her. When she lifted her face from the gate all emotion +seemed to have died out of it; her voice was quiet. One of the things he +remembered of their talk was that they had both spoken in voices so low +as to be scarcely above a whisper. + +When the breakfast was brought in she took a seat at the table to pour +out his coffee and attend to his wants. She ate very little herself, but +he rarely looked up without finding her eyes resting upon him with +wistful interest. + +"At least," she said once, "I must see that you have a good breakfast. +The kindest thing you can do this morning is to be hungry. Please be +hungry if you can." + +The consciousness that she was caring for him was a wonderful and +touching thing to him. The little housewifely acts with which most men +are familiar were bewilderingly new to him. He had never been on +sufficiently intimate social terms with women to receive many of these +pretty services at their hands. His unsophisticated reverence for +everything feminine had worked against him, with the reserve which was +one of its results. It had been his habit to feel that there was no +reason why he should be singled out for the bestowal of favors, and he +had perhaps ignored many through the sheer ignorance of simple and +somewhat exaggerated humility. + +To find himself sitting at the table alone with Bertha, in her new +mood,--Bertha quiet and beautiful,--was a moving experience to him. It +was as if they two must have sat there every day for years, and had the +prospect of sitting so together indefinitely. It was the very simplicity +and naturalness of it all which stirred him most. Her old vivid gayety +was missing; she did not laugh once, but her smile was very sweet. They +talked principally of the children, and of the common things about them, +but there was never a word which did not seem a thing to be cherished +and remembered. After a while the children were brought down, and she +took Meg upon her knee, and Jack leaned against her while she told +Tredennis what they had been doing, and the sun creeping through the +vines touched her hair and the child's and made a picture of them. When +she went upstairs she took Meg with her, holding her little hand and +talking to her in pretty maternal fashion; and, after the two had +vanished, Tredennis found it necessary to pull himself together with a +strong effort, that he might prove himself equal to the conversational +demands made upon him by Master Jack, who had remained behind. + +"I will go and see Janey again," she had said. "And then, perhaps, you +will pay her a visit." + +When he went up, a quarter of an hour later, he found his small favorite +touchingly glad to see him. The fever from which she had been suffering +for several days had left her languid and perishable-looking, but she +roused wonderfully at the sight of him, and when he seated himself at +her bedside regarded him with adoring admiration, finally expressing her +innocent conviction that he had grown very much since their last +meeting. + +"But it doesn't matter," she hastened to assure him, "because I don't +mind it, and mamma doesn't, either." + +When, in the course of the morning, Doctor Wentworth arrived, he +discovered him still sitting by the bedside, only Janey had crept close +to him and fallen asleep, clasping both her small hands about his large +one, and laying her face upon his palm. + +"What!" said the doctor. "Can you do that sort of thing?" + +"I don't know," answered Tredennis, slowly. "I never did it before." + +He looked down at the small, frail creature, and the color showed itself +under his bronzed skin. + +"I think she's rather fond of me--or something," he added with +_naïveté_, "and I like it." + +"She likes it, that's evident," said the doctor. + +He turned away to have an interview with Bertha, whom he took to the +window at the opposite end of the room, and after it was over they came +back together. + +"She is not so ill as she was yesterday," he said; "and she was not so +ill then as you thought her." He turned and looked at Bertha herself. +"She doesn't need as much care now as you do," he said, "that's my +impression. What have you been doing with yourself?" + +"Taking care of her," she answered, "since she began to complain of not +feeling well." + +He was a bluff, kindly fellow, with a bluff, kindly way, and he shook a +big forefinger at her. + +"You have been carrying her up and down in your arms," he said. "Don't +deny it." + +"No," she answered, "I won't deny it." + +"Of course," he said. "I know you--carrying her up and down in your +arms, and singing to her and telling her stories, and holding her on +your knee when you weren't doing anything worse. You'd do it if she were +three times the size." + +She blushed guiltily, and looked at Janey. + +"Good Heaven!" he said. "You women will drive me mad! Don't let me hear +any more about fashionable mothers who kill their children! I find my +difficulty in fashionable children who kill their mothers, and in little +simpletons who break down under the sheer weight of their maternal +nonsense. Who was it who nearly died of the measles?" + +"But--but," she faltered, deprecatingly, "I don't think I ever had the +measles." + +"They weren't your measles," he said, with amiable sternness. "They were +Jack's, and Janey's, and Meg's, and so much the worse." + +"But," she interposed, with a very pretty eagerness, "they got through +them beautifully, and there wasn't a cold among them." + +"There wouldn't have been a cold among them if you'd let a couple of +sensible nurses take care of them. Do you suppose I'm not equal to +bringing three children through the measles? It's all nonsense, and +sentiment, and self-indulgence. You like to do it, and you do it, and, +as a natural consequence, you die of somebody else's measles--or come as +near it as possible." + +She blushed as guiltily as before, and looked at Janey again. + +"I think she is very much better," she said. + +"Yes," he answered, "she is better, and I want to see you better. Who is +going to help you to take care of her?" + +"I came to try to do that," said Tredennis. + +Bertha turned to look at him. + +"You?" she exclaimed. "Oh, no! You are very good; but now the worst is +over, I couldn't"-- + +"Should I be in the way?" he asked. + +She drew back a little. For a moment she had changed again, and returned +to the ordinary conventional atmosphere. + +"No," she said, "you know that you would not be in the way, but I should +scarcely be likely to encroach upon your time in such a manner." + +The doctor laughed. + +"He is exactly what you need," he said. "And he would be of more use to +you than a dozen nurses. He won't stand any of your maternal weakness, +and he will see that my orders are carried out. He'll domineer over you, +and you'll be afraid of him. You had better let him stay. But you must +settle it between you after I am gone." + +Bertha went downstairs with him to receive a few final directions, and +when she returned Tredennis had gently released himself from Janey, and +had gone to the window, where he stood evidently awaiting her. + +"Do you know," he said, with his disproportionately stern air, when she +joined him,--"do you know why I came here?" + +"You came," she answered, "because I alarmed you unnecessarily, and it +seemed that some one must come, and you were kind enough to assume the +responsibility." + +"I came because there was no one else," he began. + +She stopped him with a question she had not asked before, and he felt +that she asked it inadvertently. + +"Where was Laurence Arbuthnot?" she said. + +"That is true," he replied, grimly. "Laurence Arbuthnot would have been +better." + +"No," she said, "he would not have been better." + +She looked up at him with a curious mixture of questioning and defiance +in her eyes. + +"I don't know why it is that I always manage to make you angry," she +said; "I must be very stupid. I always know you will be angry before you +have done with me. When we were downstairs"-- + +"When we were downstairs," he put in, hotly, "we were two honest human +beings, without any barriers of conventional pretence between us, and +you allowed me to think you meant to take what I had to offer, and then, +suddenly, all is changed, and the barrier is between us again, because +you choose to place it there, and profess that you must regard me, in +your pretty, civil way, as a creature to be considered and treated with +form and ceremony." + +"Thank you for calling it a pretty way," she said. + +And yet there was a tone in her low voice which softened his wrath +somehow,--a rather helpless tone, which suggested that she had said the +words only because she had no other resource, and still must utter her +faint protest. + +"It is for _me_," he went on, "to come to you with a civil pretence +instead of an honest intention? I am not sufficiently used to +conventionalities to make myself bearable. I am always blundering and +stumbling. No one can feel that more bitterly than I do; but you have no +right to ignore my claim to do what I can when I might be of use. I +might be of use, because the child is fond of me, and in my awkward +fashion I can quiet and amuse her as you say no one but yourself can." + +"Will you tell me?" she asked, frigidly, "what right I have to permit +you to make of yourself a--a nursemaid to my child?" + +"Call it what you like," he answered. "Speak of it as you like. What +right does it need? I came because"-- + +His recollection of her desolateness checked him. It was not for him to +remind her again by his recklessness of speech that her husband had not +felt it necessary to provide against contingencies. But she filled up +the sentence. + +"Yes, you are right," she said. "As you said before, there was no one +else--no one." + +"It chanced to be so," he said; "and why should I not be allowed to fill +up the breach for the time being?" + +"Because it is almost absurd," she said, inconsequently. "Don't you see +that?" + +"No," he answered, obstinately. + +Their eyes met, and rested upon each other. + +"You don't care?" she said. + +"No." + +"I knew you wouldn't," she said. "You never care for anything. That is +what I like in you--and dread." + +"Dread?" he said; and in the instant he saw that she had changed again. +Her cheeks had flushed, and there was upon her lips a smile, +half-bitter, half-sweet. + +"I knew you would not go," she said, "as well as I knew that it was only +civil in me to suggest that you should. You are generous enough to care +for me in a way I am not quite used to--and you always have your own +way. Have it now; have it as long as you are here. Until you go away I +shall do everything you tell me to do, and never once oppose you again; +and--perhaps I shall enjoy the novelty." + +There was a chair near her, and she put her hand against it as if to +steady herself, and the color in her face died out as quickly as it had +risen. + +"I did not want you to go," she said. + +"You did not want me to go?" + +"No," she answered, in a manner more baffling than all the rest. "More +than anything in the world I wanted you to stay. There, Janey is +awakening!" + +And she went to the bed and kneeled down beside it, and drew the child +into her arms against her bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + +From that day until they separated there was no change in her. It was +scarcely two weeks before their paths diverged again; but, in looking +back upon it afterward, it always seemed to Tredennis that some vaguely +extending length of time must have elapsed between the night when he +dismounted at the gate in the moonlight, and the morning when he turned +to look his last at Bertha, standing in the sun. Each morning when she +gave him his breakfast in the old-fashioned room, and he watched her as +she moved about, or poured out his coffee, or talked to Meg or Jack, who +breakfasted with them; each afternoon when Janey was brought down to lie +on the sofa, and she sat beside her singing pretty, foolish songs to +her, and telling her stories; each evening when the child fell asleep in +her arms, as she sang; each brief hour, later on, when the air had +cooled, and she went out to sit on the porch, or walk under the +trees,--seemed an experience of indefinite length, not to be marked by +hours, nor by sunrise and sunset, but by emotions. Her gentle interest +in his comfort continued just what it had been the first day he had been +so moved by it, and his care for her she accepted with a gratitude which +might have been sweet to any man. Having long since established his rank +in Janey's affections it was easy for him to make himself useful, in his +masculine fashion. During her convalescence his strong arms became the +child's favorite resting-place; when she was tired of her couch he could +carry her up and down the room without wearying; she liked his long, +steady strides, and the sound of his deep voice, and his unconscious air +of command disposed of many a difficulty. When Bertha herself was the +nurse he watched her faithfully, and when he saw in her any signs of +fatigue he took her place at once, and from the first she made no +protest against his quietly persistent determination to lighten her +burdens. Perhaps, through the fact that they were so lightened, or +through her relief from her previous anxiety, she seemed to grow +stronger as the child did. Her color became brighter and steadier, and +her look of lassitude and weariness left her. One morning, having been +beguiled out of doors by Jack and Meg, Tredennis heard her laugh in a +tone that made him rise from his chair by Janey, and go to the open +window. + +He reached it just in time to see her run like a deer across the +sun-dappled grass, after a bright ball Meg had thrown to her, with an +infantile aimlessness which precluded all possibility of its being +caught. She made a graceful dart at it, picked it up, and came back +under the trees, tossing it in the air, and catching it again with a +deft turn of hand and wrist. She was flushed with the exercise, and, for +the moment, almost radiant; she held her dress closely about her figure, +her face was upturned and her eyes were uplifted, and she was as +unconscious as Meg herself. + +When she saw him she threw the ball to the children, and came forward to +the window. + +"Does Janey want me?" she asked. + +"No. She is asleep." + +"Do you want me?" + +"I want to see you go on with your game." + +"It is not my game," she answered, smiling. "It is Jack's and Meg's. +Suppose you come and join them. It will fill them with rapture, and I +shall like to look on." + +When he came out she sat down under a tree leaning against the trunk, +and watched him, her eyes following the swift flight of the ball high +into the blue above them, as he flung it upward among the delighted +clamor of the children. He had always excelled in sports and feats of +strength, and in this simple feat of throwing the ball his physical +force and grace displayed themselves to decided advantage. The ball went +up, as an arrow flies from the bow, hurtling through the air, until it +was little more than a black speck to the eye. When it came back to +earth he picked it up and threw it again, and each time it seemed to +reach a greater height than the last. + +"That is very fine," she said. "I like to see you do it." + +"Why?" he asked, pausing. + +"I like the force you put into it," she answered. "It scarcely seems +like play." + +"I did not know that," he said; "but I am afraid I am always in earnest. +That is my misfortune." + +"It is a great misfortune," she said. "Don't be in earnest," with a +gesture as if she would sweep the suggestion away with her hand. "Go on +with your game. Let us be like children, and play. Our holiday will be +over soon enough, and we shall have to return to Washington and effete +civilization." + +"Is it a holiday?" he asked her. + +"Yes," she answered. "Now that Janey is getting better I am deliberately +taking a holiday. Nothing rests me so much as forgetting things." + +"Are you forgetting things?" he asked. + +"Yes," she replied, looking away; "everything." + +Then the children demanded his attention, and he returned to his +ball-throwing. + +If she was taking a holiday with deliberate intention she did it well. +In a few days Janey was well enough to be carried out and laid on one of +the two hammocks swung beneath the trees, and then far the greater part +of the day was spent in the open air. To Tredennis it seemed that Bertha +made the most of every hour, whether she swung in her hammock with her +face upturned to the trees, or sat reading, or talking as she worked +with the decorous little basket, at which she had jeered, upon her knee. + +He was often reminded in these days of what the professor had said of +her tenderness for her children. It revealed itself in a hundred +trifling ways, in her touch, in her voice, in her almost unconscious +habit of caring for them, and, more than all, in a certain pretty, +inconvenient fashion they had of getting close to her, and clinging +about her, at all sorts of inopportune moments. Once when she had run to +comfort Meg who had fallen down, and had come back to the hammock, +carrying her in her arms, he was betrayed into speaking. + +"I did not think,"--he began, and then he checked himself guiltily. + +"You did not think?" she repeated. + +He began to recognize his indiscretion. + +"I beg your pardon," he said, "I was going to make a blunder." + +She sat down in the hammock, with the child in her arms. + +"You were going to say that you did not think I cared so much for my +children," she said, gently. "Do you suppose I did not know that? Well, +perhaps it was not a blunder. Perhaps it is only one of my pretences." + +"Don't speak like that," he implored. + +The next instant he saw that tears had risen in her eyes. + +"No," she said. "I will not. Why should I? It is not true. I love them +very much. However bad you are, I think you must love your children. Of +course, my saying that I loved them might go for nothing; but don't you +see," she went on with a pathetic thrill in her voice, "that they love +_me_? They would not love me, if I did not care for them." + +"I know that," he returned remorsefully. "It was only one of my +blunders, as I said. But you have so bewildered me sometimes. When I +first returned I could not understand you. It was as if I found myself +face to face with a creature I had never seen before." + +"You did," she said. "That was it. Perhaps I never was the creature you +fancied me." + +"Don't say that," he replied. "Since I have been here I have seen you as +I used to dream of you, when I sat by the fire in my quarters in the +long winter nights." + +"Did you ever think of me like that?" she said slowly, and with surprise +in her face. + +He had not thought of what he was revealing, and he did not think of it +now. + +"I never forgot you," he said. "Never." + +"It seems very strange--to hear that now," she said. "I never dreamed of +your thinking of me--afterwards. You seemed to take so little notice of +me." + +"It is my good fortune," he said, with a touch of bitterness, "that I +never _seem_ to take notice of anything." + +"I suppose," she went on, "that you remembered me because you were +lonely at first, and there was no one else to think of." + +"Perhaps that was it," he answered. + +"After all," she said, "it was natural--only I never thought"-- + +"It was as natural that you should forget as that I should remember," he +said. + +Her face had been slightly averted, and she turned it toward him. + +"But I did not forget," she said. + +"You did not?" + +"No. At first, it is true, I scarcely seemed to have time for anything, +but to be happy and enjoy the days, as they went by. Oh! what bright +days they were, and how far away they seem! Perhaps, if I had known that +they would come to an end really, I might have tried to make them pass +more slowly." + +"They went slowly for me," he said. "I was glad when they were over." + +"Were you so very lonely!" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"Would it have pleased you, if I had written to you when papa did?" + +"Did you ever think of doing it?" he asked. + +The expression dawning in her eyes was a curious one--there was a +suggestion of dread in it. + +"Once," she replied. "I began a letter to you. It was on a dull day, +when I was restless and unhappy for the first time in my life; and +suddenly I thought of you, and I felt as if I should like to speak to +you again,--and I began the letter." + +"But you did not finish it." + +"No. I only wrote a few lines, and then stopped. I said to myself that +it was not likely that you had remembered me in the way I had remembered +you, so I laid my letter aside. I saw it only a few days ago among some +old papers in my trunk." + +"You have it yet?" + +"I did not know that I had it, until I saw it the other day. It seems +strange that it should have lain hidden all these years, and then have +come to light. I laid it away thinking I might find courage to finish it +sometime. There are only a few lines, but they prove that my memory was +not so bad as you thought." + +He had been lying on the grass a few feet away from her. As she talked +he had looked not at her, but at the bits of blue sky showing through +the interlacing greenness of the trees above him. Now he suddenly half +rose and leaned upon his elbow. + +"Will you give it to me?" he said. + +"Do you want it? It is only a yellow scrap of paper." + +"I think it belongs to me," he said. "I have a right to it." + +She got up without a word and went toward the house, leading Meg by the +hand. Tredennis watched her retreating figure in silence until she went +in at the door. His face set, and his lips pressed together, then he +flung himself backward and lay at full length again, seeing only the +bright green of the leaves and the bits of intense blue between. It was +well that he was alone. His sense of impotent anguish was more than he +had strength to bear, and it wrung a cry from him. + +"My God!" he said; "my God!" He was still lying so when Bertha returned. +She had not been away many minutes, and she came back alone with the +unfinished letter in her hand. + +He took it from her without comment, and looked at it. The faint odor of +heliotrope he knew so well floated up to him as he bent over the paper. +As she had said, there were only a few lines, and she had evidently been +dissatisfied with them, and irresolute about them, for several words +were erased as if with girlish impatience. At the head of the page was +written first: _Dear Philip_, and then _Dear Captain Tredennis_, and +there were two or three different opening sentences. As he read each one +through the erasures, he thought he understood the innocent, unconscious +appeal in it, and he seemed to see the girl-face bending above it, +changing from eagerness to uncertainty, and from uncertainty to the +timidity which had made her despair. + +"I wish you had finished it," he said. + +"I wish I had," she answered, and then she added vaguely, "if it would +have pleased you." + +He folded it, and put it in his breast-pocket and laid down once more, +and it was not referred to again. + +It seemed to Tredennis, at least, that there never before had been such +a day as the one which followed. After a night of rain the intense heat +subsided, leaving freshness of verdure, skies of the deepest, clearest +blue, and a balmy, luxurious sweetness in the air, deliciously pungent +with the odors of cedar and pine. + +When he came down in the morning, and entered the breakfast room, he +found it empty. The sunlight streamed through the lattice-work of vines, +and the cloth was laid, with the pretty blue cups and saucers in +waiting; but Bertha was not there, and, fancying she had risen later +than usual, he went out into the open air. + +The next morning he was to return to Washington. There was no absolute +need of his remaining longer. The child had so far recovered that, at +the doctor's suggestion, in a few days she was to be removed to the +sea-side. Nevertheless, it had cost him a struggle to arrive at his +decision, and it had required resolution to announce it to Bertha. It +would have been far easier to let the days slip by as they would, and +when he told her of his intended departure, and she received the news +with little more than a few words of regret at it, and gratitude for the +services he had rendered, he felt it rather hard to bear. + +"If it had been Arbuthnot," he thought, "she would not have borne it so +calmly." And then he reproached himself bitterly for his inconsistency. + +"Did I come here to make her regret me, when I left her?" he said. "What +a fool a man can make of himself, if he gives way to his folly!" + +As he descended the steps of the porch he saw her, and he had scarcely +caught sight of her before she turned and came toward him. He recognized +at once that she had made a change in her dress; that it was no longer +such as she had worn while in attendance upon Janey, and that it had a +delicate holiday air about it, notwithstanding its simplicity. + +"Was there ever such a day before?" she said, as she came to him. + +"I thought not, as I looked out of my window," he replied. + +"It is your last," she said, "and I should like you to remember it as +being pleasanter than all the rest; though," she added, thoughtfully, +"the rest have been pleasant." + +Then she looked up at him, with a smile. + +"Do you see my gala attire?" she said. "It was Janey who suggested it. +She thinks I have not been doing myself justice since you have been +here." + +"That," he said, regarding her seriously, "is a very beautiful gown, +but"--with an entirely respectful sense of inadequacy of +expression--"you always wear beautiful gowns, I believe." + +"Did Mr. Arbuthnot tell you so?" she said, "or was it Miss Jessup?" + + +They breakfasted together in the sunny room, and after breakfast they +rambled out together. It was she who led, and he who followed, with a +curious, dreamy pleasure in all he did, and in every beauty around him, +even in the unreal passiveness of his very mood itself. He had never +been so keenly conscious of things before; everything impressed itself +upon him,--the blue of the sky, the indolent sway of the leaves, the +warmth of the air, and the sweet odors in it, the broken song of the +birds, the very sound of Bertha's light tread as they walked. + +"I am going to give the day to you," she had said. "And you shall see +the children's favorite camping-ground on the hill. Before Janey was ill +we used to go there almost every day." + +Behind the house was a wood-covered hill, and half-way up was the +favored spot. It was a sort of bower formed by the clambering of a great +vine from one tree to another, making a canopy, under which, through a +break in the trees, could be seen the most perfect view of the country +below, and the bend of the river. The ground was carpeted with moss, and +there was a moss-covered rock to lean against, which was still +ornamented with the acorn cups and saucers with which the children had +entertained their family of dolls on their last visit. + +"See," said Bertha, taking one of them up when she sat down. "When we +were here last we had a tea-party, and it was poor Janey's headache +which brought it to a close. At the height of the festivities she laid +down her best doll, and came to me to cry, and we were obliged to carry +her home." + +"Poor child!" said Tredennis. He saw only her face upturned under the +shadow of the white hat,--a pretty hat, with small, soft, downy plumes +upon it, and a general air of belonging to the great world. + +"Sit down," said Bertha, "or you may lie down, if you like, and look at +the river, and not speak to me at all." He lay down, stretching his +great length upon the soft moss, and clasping his hands beneath his +head. Bertha clasped her hands about her knee and leaned slightly +forward, looking at the view as if she had never seen it before. + +"Is this a dream?" Tredennis said, languidly, at last. "I think it must +be." + +"Yes," she answered, "that is why the air is so warm and fragrant, and +the sky so blue, and the scent of the pines so delicious. It is all +different when one is awake. That is why I am making the most of every +second, and am determined to enjoy it to the very utmost." + +"That is what I am doing," he said. + +"It is not a good plan, as a rule," she began, and then checked herself. +"No," she said, "I won't say that. It is a worldly and Washingtonian +sentiment. I will save it until next winter." + +"Don't save it at all," he said; "it is an unnatural sentiment. It isn't +true, and you do not really believe it." + +"It is safer," she said. + +He lay still a moment, looking down the hillside through the trees at +the broad sweep of the river bend and the purple hills beyond. + +"Bertha," he said, at last, "sometimes I hate the man who has taught you +all this." + +She plucked at the red-tipped moss at her side for a second or so before +she replied; she showed no surprise or hurry when she spoke. + +"Laurence Arbuthnot!" she said. "Sometimes I hate him, too; but it is +only for a moment,--when he tells me the simple, deadly truth, and I +know it is the truth, and wish I did not." + +She threw the little handful of moss down the hill as if she threw +something away with it. + +"But this is not being happy," she said. "Let us be happy. I _will_ be +happy. Janey is better, and all my anxiety is over, and it is such a +lovely day, and I have put on my favorite gown to celebrate it in. Look +at the color of the hills over there--listen to those doves in the +pines. How warm and soft the wind is, and how the scent of my carnations +fills the air! Ah, what a bright world it is, after all!" + +She broke into singing softly, and half under breath, a snatch of a gay +little song. Tredennis had never heard her sing it before, and thought +it wonderfully sweet. But she sang no more than a line or two, and then +turned to him, with a smile in her eyes. + +"Now," she said, "it is your turn. Talk to me. Tell me about your life +in the West; tell me all you did the first year, and begin--begin just +where you left me the night you bade me good-by at the carriage-door." + +"I am afraid it would not be a very interesting story," he said. + +"It would interest me," she answered. "There are camp-fires in it, and +scalps, and Indians, and probably war-paths." And her voice falling a +little, "I want to discover why it was that you always seemed to be so +much alone, and sat and thought in that dreary way by the fire in your +quarters. It seems to me that you have been a great deal alone." + +"I have been a great deal alone," he said; "that is true." + +"It must have been so even when you were a child," she went on. "I heard +you tell Janey once that when you were her age you belonged to no one. I +don't like to think of that. It touches the maternal side of me. It +makes me think of Jack. Suppose Jack belonged to no one; and you were +not so old as Jack. I wonder if you were at all like him, and how you +looked. I wish there was a picture of you I could see." + +He had never regarded himself as an object likely to interest in any +degree, and had lost many of the consolations and excitements of the +more personal kind thereby; and to find that she had even given a +sympathetic thought to the far-away childhood whose desolateness he +himself had never quite analyzed, at once touched and bewildered him. + +"I have not been without friends," he said, "but I am sure no one ever +gave much special thought to me. Perhaps it is because men are scarcely +likely to give such thoughts to men, and I have not known women. My +parents died before I was a year old, and I don't think any one was ever +particularly fond of me. People did not dislike me, but they passed me +over. I never wondered at it, but I saw it. I knew there was something a +little wrong with me; but I could not understand what it was. I know +now: I was silent, and could not express what I thought and felt." + +"Oh!" she cried; "and was there no one to help you?" + +There was no thought of him as a full-grown person in the exclamation; +it was a womanish outcry for the child, whose desolate childhood seemed +for the moment to be an existence which had never ended. + +"I know about children," she said, "and what suffering there is for them +if they are left alone. They can say so little, and we can say so much. +Haven't I seen them try to explain things when they were at a +disadvantage and overpowered by the sheer strength of some full-grown +creature? Haven't I seen them make their impotent little struggle for +words and fail, and look up with their helpless eyes and see the +uselessness of it, and break down into their poor little shrieks of +wrath and grief? The happiest of them go through it sometimes, and those +who are left alone--Why didn't some woman see and understand?--some +woman ought to have seen and cared for you." + +Tredennis found himself absorbed in contemplation of her. He was not +sure that there were not tears in her eyes, and yet he could hardly +believe it possible. + +"That is all true," he said; "you understand it better than I did. I +understood the feeling no better than I understood the reason for it." + +"I understand it because I have children," she answered. "And because I +have watched them and loved them, and would give my heart's blood for +them. To have children makes one like a tiger, at times. The passion one +can feel through the wrongs of a child is something _awful_. One can +feel it for any child--for all children. But for one's own"-- + +She ended with a sharply drawn breath. The sudden uncontrollable +fierceness, which seemed to have made her in a second,--in her soft +white gown and lace, and her pretty hat, with its air of good +society,--a small, wild creature, whom no law of man could touch, +affected him like an electric shock; perhaps the thrill it gave him +revealed itself in his look, and she saw it, for she seemed to become +conscious of herself and her mood, with a start. She made a quick, +uneasy movement and effort to recover herself. + +"I beg your pardon," she said, with a half laugh. "But I couldn't help +it. It was"--and she paused a second for reflection,--"it was the +primeval savage in me." And she turned and clasped her hands about her +knee again, resuming her attitude of attention, even while the folds of +lace on her bosom were still stirred by her quick breathing. + +But, though she might resume her attitude, it was not so easy to resume +the calmness of her mood. Having been stirred once, it was less +difficult to be stirred again. When he began, at last, to tell the story +of his life on the frontier, if his vanity had been concerned he would +have felt that she made a good listener. But his vanity had nothing to +do with his obedience to her wish. He made as plain a story as his +material would allow, and also made persistent, though scarcely +successful, efforts to avoid figuring as a hero. He was, indeed, rather +abashed to find, on recurring to facts, that he had done so much to +bring himself to the front. He even found himself at last taking refuge +in the subterfuge of speaking of himself in the third person as "one of +the party," when recounting a specially thrilling adventure in which he +discovered that he had unblushingly distinguished himself. It was an +exciting story of the capture of some white women by the Indians at a +critical juncture, when but few men could be spared from the fort, and +the fact that the deadly determination of "one of the party" that no +harm should befall them was not once referred to in words, and only +expressed itself in daring and endurance, for which every one but +himself was supposed to be responsible, did not detract from its force. +This "one of the party," who seemed to have sworn a silent oath that he +would neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest until he had accomplished his end +of rescuing the captives, and who had been upon the track almost as soon +as the news had reached the fort, and who had followed it night and day, +with his hastily gathered and altogether insufficient little band, and +at last had overtaken the captors, and through sheer courage and +desperate valor had overpowered them, and brought back their prisoners +unharmed,--this "one of the party," silent, and would-be insignificant, +was, in spite of himself, a figure to stir the blood. + +"It was _you_ who did that?" she said, when he had finished. + +"I was only one of the company," he answered, abashed, "and obeyed +orders. Of course a man obeys orders." + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + +When he took her hand to assist her to rise he felt it tremble in his +own. + +"It was not a pleasant story," he said. "I ought not to have told it to +you." + +They scarcely spoke at all as they descended. He did not understand his +own unreasoning happiness. What reason was there for it, after all? If +he had argued the matter, he was in the mood to have said that what he +gained in the strange sweetness of the flying moments could only hurt +himself, and was enough in itself to repay him for any sense of pain and +loss which might follow. But he did not argue at all. In Laurence +Arbuthnot's place he would scarcely have given himself the latitude he +was giving himself now. + +"It is safe enough for _me_," was the sharp-edged thought which had cut +through all others once or twice. "It is safe enough for _me_ to be as +happy as I may." + +But he forgot this as they went down the hill, side by side. For the +time being he only felt, and each glance he turned upon Bertha's +downcast face gave him cause to realize, what intensity his feelings had +reached, and wakened him to that sudden starting of pulse and heart +which is almost a pain. When they reached the house Bertha went in +search of Janey. She remained with her for about half an hour, and then +came out to the hammock with her work-basket. The carnations at her +waist were crushed a little, and something of the first freshness of her +holiday air was gone. She held a letter in her hand, which she had +evidently been reading. She had not returned it to its envelope, and it +was still half open. + +"It is from Richard," she said, after she had taken her seat in the +hammock. "It was brought in from the post-office at Lowville about an +hour ago." + +"From Richard?" he said. "He is coming home, I suppose." + +"No," she answered, looking down at the closely written sheets,--"he is +not coming yet. He was wise enough not to take a serious view of Janey's +case. He is very encouraging, and expresses his usual confidence in my +management." + +There was nothing like bitterness in her voice, and it struck him that +he had never seen so little expression of any kind in her face. She +opened the letter and looked over the first page of it. + +"He has a great many interesting things to say," she went on; "and he is +very enthusiastic." + +"About what?" Tredennis asked. She looked up. + +"About the Westoria lands," she answered. "He finds all sorts of +complications of good fortune connected with them. I don't understand +them all, by any means. I am not good at business. But it seems as +though the persons who own the Westoria lands will be able to command +the resources of the entire surrounding country,--if the railroad is +carried through; of course it all depends upon the railroad." + +"And the railroad," suggested Tredennis, "depends upon"-- + +"I don't know," she replied. "On several people, I suppose. I wish it +depended on me." + +"Why?" said Tredennis. + +She smiled slightly and rather languidly. + +"I should like to feel that anything so important depended on me," she +said. "I should like the sense of power. I am very fond of power." + +"I once heard it said that you had a great deal of it," Tredennis said; +"far more than most women." + +She smiled again, a trifle less languidly. + +"That is Laurence Arbuthnot," she observed. "I always recognize his +remarks when I hear them. He did not mean a compliment exactly, either, +though it sounds rather like one. He has a theory that I affect people +strongly, and he chooses to call that power. But it is too trivial. It +is only a matter of pleasing or displeasing, and I am obliged to exert +myself. It does not enable me to bestow things, and be a potentate. I +think that to be a potentate might console one for a great many +things,--and for the lack of a great many. If you can't take, it must +distract your attention to be able to give." + +"I do not like to hear you speak as if the chief thing to be desired was +the ability to distract one's self," Tredennis said. + +She paused a second. + +"Then," she said, "I will not speak so now. To-day I will do nothing you +do not like." Then she added, "As it is your last day, I wish to +retrieve myself." + +"What have you to retrieve?" he asked. + +"Myself," she answered, "as I said." + +She spread the letter upon her lap, and gave her attention to it. + +"Isn't it rather like Richard," she said, "that, when he begins to +write, he invariably writes a letter like that? Theoretically he detests +correspondence, but when he once begins, his letter always interests +him, and even awakens him to a kind of enthusiasm, so that instead of +being brief he tells one everything. He has written twelve pages here, +and it is all delightful." + +"That is a wonderful thing to do," remarked Tredennis; "but it does not +surprise me in Richard." + +"No," she replied, "Richard can always interest himself; or, rather, he +does not interest _himself_,--it is that he is interested without making +an effort; that is his strong point." + +She replaced the letter in the envelope and laid it in the basket, from +which she took a strip of lace-work, beginning to employ herself with it +in a manner more suggestive of graceful leisure than of industrious +intention. It seemed to accentuate the fact that they had nothing to do +but let the day drift by in luxurious idleness. + +But Tredennis could not help seeing that for a while the tone of her +mood, so to speak, was lowered. And yet, curiously enough, nothing of +his own dreamy exaltation died away. The subtle shadow which seemed to +have touched her, for a moment, only intensified his feeling of +tenderness. In fact there were few things which would not have so +intensified it; his mental condition was one which must advance by +steady, silent steps of development to its climax. He was not by nature +a reckless man, but he was by no means unconscious that there was +something very like recklessness in his humor this last day. + +As for the day itself, it also advanced by steady steps to its climax, +unfolding its beauties like a perfect flower. The fresh, rain-washed +morning drifted into a warm, languorous noon, followed by an afternoon +so long and golden that it seemed to hold within itself the flower and +sun, shade and perfume, of a whole summer. Tredennis had never known so +long an afternoon, he thought, and yet it was only lengthened by the +strange delight each hour brought with it, and was all too short when it +was over. It seemed full of minute details, which presented themselves +to his mind at the time as discoveries. Bertha worked upon her lace, and +he watched her, waiting for the moment when she would look up at him, +and then look down again with a quick or slow droop of the lids, which +impressed itself upon him as a charm in itself. There was a little ring +she wore which made itself a memory to him,--a simple turquoise, which +set upon the whiteness of her hand like a blue flower. He saw, with a +new sense of recognition, every fold and line of her thin, white +drapery, the slight, girlish roundness of her figure, the dashes of +brightness in the color of her hair, the smallness of the gold thimble +on her finger, her grace when she rose or sat down, or rested a little +against the red cushions in her hammock, touching the ground now and +then with her slender slipper and swaying lightly to and fro. + +"Do you know," he said to her once, as he watched her do this, "do you +know,"--with absorbed hesitation,--"that I feel as if--as if I had never +really seen you until to-day--until this afternoon. You seem somehow to +look different." + +"I am not sure," she answered, "that I have ever seen you before; but it +is not because you look different." + +"Why is it?" he asked, quite ready to relinquish any idea of his own in +the pursuit of one of hers. + +She looked down a moment. + +"To-day," she said, "I don't think you have anything against me." + +"You think," he returned, "that I have usually something against you?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"Will you tell me what you think it is?" + +"I do not need to tell you," she said. "You know so well--and it would +rather hurt me to put it into words." + +"Hurt you?" he repeated. + +"I should be harder than I am," she returned, "if it had not hurt me to +know it myself--though I would not tell you that at any other time than +now. I dare say I shall repent it to-morrow," she said. + +"No," he answered, "you won't repent it. Don't repent it." + +He felt the vehemence of his speech too late to check it. When he ended +she was silent, and it was as if suddenly a light veil had fallen upon +her face, and he felt that, too, and tried to be calmer. + +"No," he repeated, "you must not repent. It is I who must repent that I +have given you even a little pain. It is hard on me to know that I have +done that." + +The afternoon stretched its golden length to a sunset which cast deep, +velvet shadows upon the grass and filled the air with an enchanted +mellow radiance. Everything took a tinge of gold,--the green of the +pines and the broad-leaved chestnut trees, the gray and brown of their +trunks, the red of the old house, the honeysuckle and Virginia creeper +clambering about it, the birds flying homeward to their nests. When the +rich clearness and depth of color reached its greatest beauty Bertha +folded her strip of lace and laid it in the little basket. + +"We ought simply to sit and watch this," she said. "I don't think we +ought even to speak. It will be all over in a few minutes, and we shall +never see it again." + +"No," said Tredennis, with a sad prescience; "nor anything at all like +it." + +"Ah!" was Bertha's rejoinder, "to _me_ it has always seemed that it is +not the best of such hours that one _does_ see others like them. I have +seen the sun set like this before." + +"_I_ have not," he said. + +As he stood silent in the stillness and glow a faint, rather bitter, +smile touched his lips and faded out. He found himself, he fancied, face +to face with Laurence Arbuthnot again. He was sharing the sunset with +him; there were ten chances against one that he had shared the day with +him also. + +Bertha sat in the deepening enchanted light with a soft, dreamy look. He +thought it meant that she remembered something; but he felt that the +memory was one to which she yielded herself without reluctance, or that +she was happy in it. At last she lifted her eyes to his, and their +expression was very sweet in its entire gentleness and submission to the +spell of the moment. + +"See!" she said, "the sun has slipped behind the pines already. We have +only a few seconds left." + +And then, even as they looked at the great fire, made brighter by the +dark branches through which they saw it, it sank a little lower, and a +little lower, and with an expiring flame was gone. + +Bertha drew a quick breath, there was a second or so of silence, and +then she stirred. + +"It is over," she said; "and it has been like watching some one die, +only sadder." + +She took up the little work-basket and rose from her seat. + +"It seems a pity to speak of mundane things," she said; "but I think we +must go in to tea." + + +When the children were taken upstairs for the night Bertha went with +them. It had been her habit to do this during their sojourn in the +country, and naturally Janey had been her special care of late. + +"I cannot often do such things when I am in Washington," she had +explained once to Tredennis. "And I really like it as much as they do. +It is part of the holiday." + +As he sat on the porch in the starlight Tredennis could hear her voice +mingling with the children's. The windows were wide open; she was moving +from one room to the other, and two or three times she laughed in answer +to some childish speech. + +It was one of these laughs which, at last, caused Tredennis to leave his +seat and go to the place under the trees where the hammocks were swung, +and which was far more the place of general rendezvous than the parlor +windows. From this point he could see the corner of the brightly lighted +room, near the window where it was Bertha's custom to sit in her low +chair, and rock Janey to sleep when she was restless. + +She was doing it to-night. He could see the child's head lying on her +bosom, and her own bent so that her cheek rested against the bright +hair. In a few moments all was quiet, and she began to sing, and as she +sang, swaying to and fro, Tredennis looked and listened without +stirring. + +But, though it was gay no longer, he liked to hear her song, and to his +mind the moments in which he stood in the odorous dark, looking upward +at the picture framed by the vine-hung window, were among the tenderest +of the day. It was his fate to be full of a homely sentiment, which +found its pleasure in unsophisticated primary virtues and affections. +Any deep passion he might be moved by would necessarily have its +foundation in such elements. He was slow at the subtle analysis whose +final result is frequently to rob such simplicities of their value. His +tendency was to reverence for age, tenderness to womanhood and +childhood, faithfulness to all things. There was something boyish and +quixotic in his readiness to kindle in defence of any womanly weakness +or pain. Nothing he had ever said, or done, had so keenly touched and +delighted Professor Herrick as his fiery denunciation, one night, of a +man who was the hero of a scandalous story. There had been no +qualifications of his sweeping assertion that in such cases it must be +the man who had earned the right to bear the blame. + +"It is _always_ the man who is in the wrong," he had cried, flushing +fiercely, "coward and devil--it is in the nature of things that he +should be. Let him stand at the front and take what follows, if he has +ever been a man for an hour!" And the professor had flushed also,--the +fainter flush of age,--and had given some silent moments to reflection +afterwards, as he sat gazing at the fire. + +It was these primitive beliefs and sentiments which stirred within him +now. He would not have lost one low note of the little song for the +world, and he had left his seat only that he might see what he saw +now,--her arm about her child, her cheek pressed against its hair. + +It was not long before her little burden fell asleep he saw, but she did +not rise as soon as this happened. She sat longer, and her song went on, +finally dying away into brooding silence, which reigned for some time +before she moved. + +At length she lifted her face gently. She looked down at the child a +few seconds, and slowly changed the position in which she lay, with an +indescribably tender and cautious movement. Then she rose, and after +standing an instant, holding her in her folding arms, crossed the room +and passed out of sight. + +Tredennis turned and began mechanically to arrange the cushions in the +hammock. He felt sure she would come to-night and talk to him, for a +little while at least. + +It was not very long before he recognized her white figure in the +door-way, and went toward it. + +"They are all asleep," she said, in a voice whose hushed tone seemed to +belong half to the slumber she had left and half to the stillness of the +hour. + +"Will you come out to the hammock," he said, "or will you sit here?" + +She came forward and descended the steps. + +"I will sit in the hammock," she replied. "I like the trees above me." + +They went down the path together, and reaching the hammock she took her +usual seat among its cushions, and he his upon a rough rustic bench near +her. + +"I was thinking before you came," he said, "of what you said this +afternoon of my having something against you. I won't deny that there +has been something in my thoughts of you that often has been miserable, +and you were right in saying it was not in them to-day. It has not been +in them for several days. What I was thinking just now was that it could +never be in them again." + +She did not stir. + +"Don't you see," he went on, "I can't go back. If there had been nothing +but to-day, I could not go back--beyond to-day. It would always be a +factor in my arguments about you. I should always say to myself when +things seemed to go wrong: 'There was no mistake about that day,--she +was real then,' and I should trust you against everything. To-day--and +in the other days too--I have seen you as you are, and because of that +I should trust you in spite of everything." + +"Oh!" she cried. "Don't trust me too much!" There was anguish in the +sound, and he recognized it. + +"I can't trust you too much," he answered, with obstinacy. "No honest +human being can trust another honest human being too much." + +"Am I an honest human being?" she said. + +"I shall believe you one until the end," he returned. + +"That is saying a great deal," was her reply. + +"Listen," he said. "You know I am not like Arbuthnot and the rest. If I +were to try to be like them I should only fail. But, though you never +told me that I could be of any use to you, and you never will, I shall +know if the time should come--and I shall wait for it. Have we not all +of us something that belongs to ourselves, and not to the world,--it may +be a pleasure or a pain, it does not matter which?" + +"No," she put in, "it does not matter which." + +"It does not matter to those on the outside," he went on; "it only +matters to us, and I think we all have it to bear. Even I"-- + +"What," she said, "you, too?" + +"Yes," he answered, "I, too; but it does not matter, if no one is hurt +but ourselves." + +"There are so many things that 'do not matter,'" she said. "To say that, +only means that there is no help." + +"That is true," was his reply, "and I did not intend to speak of myself, +but of you." + +"No," she said, "don't speak of me,--don't speak of me!" + +"Why not?" he asked. + +"Because I tell you that you are trusting me too much." + +"Go on," he said. + +She had covered her face with her hands, and held them so for a little +while, then she let them fall slowly to her lap. + +"If I tell you the truth," she said, "it will not be my fault if you +still trust me too much. I don't want it to be my fault. The worst of me +is, that I am neither bad nor good, and that I cannot live without +excitement. I am always changing and trying experiments. When one +experiment fails, I try another. They all fail after a while, or I get +tired of them." + +"Poor child!" he said. + +She stirred slightly; one of the flowers fell from her belt upon her +lap, and she let it lie there. + +"It does not matter," she answered. "All that matters is, that you +should know the truth about me,--that I am not to be depended upon, and +that, above all, you need not be surprised at any change you see in me." + +"When we meet again in Washington?" he suggested. + +She hesitated a moment and then made her response. + +"When we meet again in Washington, or at any time." + +"Are you warning me?" he inquired. + +"Yes," was her reply, and he recognized that in spite of her effort it +was faintly given. "I am warning you." + +He looked down at the grass and then at her. The determined squareness +of chin, which was one of the chief characteristics of his face, struck +her as being more marked than she had ever seen it. + +"It is unnecessary," he said. "I won't profit by it." + +He rose abruptly from his seat, and there was meaning in the movement, +and in his eyes looking down upon her deep and dark in the faint light. + +"You cannot change _me_," he said. "And you would have to change me +before your warning would carry weight. Change yourself as you like--try +as many experiments as you like--you cannot change the last ten days." + +Even as the words were uttered, the day was ended for them as they had +never once thought of its ending. There fell upon the quiet the sound of +horses' feet approaching at a rapid pace and coming to a stop before +the gate. The dogs came bounding and baying from the house, and above +their deep-mouthed barking a voice made itself heard, calling to some +one to come out,--a voice they both knew. + +Tredennis turned toward it with a sharp movement. + +"Do you hear that?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes," said Bertha; and suddenly her manner was calm almost to +coldness,--"it is Laurence Arbuthnot, and papa is with him. Let us go +and meet them." + +And in a few seconds they were at the gate, and the professor was +explaining their unexpected appearance. + +"It is all Mr. Arbuthnot's fault, my dear," he said; "he knew that I +wished to see you, and, having an idea that I was not strong enough to +make the journey alone, he suddenly affected to have business in this +vicinity. It was entirely untrue, and I was not in the least deceived; +but I humored him, as I begin to find it best to do, and allowed him to +bring me to you." + +Arbuthnot had dismounted, and was fastening his horse to the gate, and +he replied by one of the gayest and most discriminatingly pitched of the +invaluable laughs. + +"It is no use," he said; "the professor does not believe in me. He +refuses to recognize in me anything but hollow mockery." + +Bertha went to him. There was something hurried in her movement; it was +as if she was strangely, almost feverishly, glad to see him. She went to +his horse's head and laid her hand on the creature's neck. + +"That takes me back to Washington," she said: "to Washington. It was +like you to come, and I am glad, but--you should have come a little +sooner." + +And, as she stood there, faintly smiling up at him, her hand was +trembling like a leaf. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + +It was New-Year's day, and His Excellency the President had had several +months in which to endeavor to adjust himself to the exigencies of his +position; though whether he had accomplished this with a result of +entire satisfaction to himself and all parties concerned and +unconcerned, had, perhaps unfortunately, not been a matter of record. +According to a time-honored custom, he had been placed at the slight +disadvantage of being called upon to receive, from time to time, the +opinions of the nation concerning himself without the opportunity of +expressing, with any degree of publicity, his own opinions regarding the +nation; no bold spirit having as yet suggested that such a line of +procedure might at least be embellished with the advantage of entire +novelty, apart from the possibility of its calling forth such +originality and force of statement as would present to the national mind +questions never before discussed, and perhaps not wholly unimportant. +All had, however, been done which could be done by a nation justly +distinguished for its patriotic consideration for, and courtesy toward, +the fortunate persons elevated to the position of representing its +dignity at home and abroad. Nothing which could add to that dignity had +been neglected; no effort which could place it in its proper light, and +remove all difficulty from the pathway of the figure endeavoring +creditably to support it, had been spared. The character of the +successful candidate for presidential office having been, during the +campaign, effectually disposed of,--his morals having been impugned, his +honor rent to tatters, his intellectual capacity pronounced far below +the lowest average,--united good feeling was the result, and there +seemed little more to attain. His past had been exhausted. Every event +of his political career and domestic life had been held up to public +derision, laudation, and criticism. It had been successfully proved that +his education had been entirely neglected, and that his advantages had +been marvellous; that he had read Greek at the tender age of four years, +and that he had not learned to read at all until he attained his +majority; that his wife had taught him his letters, and that he had +taught his wife to spell; that he was a liar, a forger, and a thief; +that he was a model of virtue, probity, and honor,--each and all of +which incontrovertible facts had been public property and a source of +national pride and delight. + +After the election, however, the fact that he had had a past at all had +ceased to be of any moment whatever. A future--of four years--lay before +him, and must be utilized; after that, the Deluge. The opposing party +sneered, vilified, and vaunted themselves in the truth of their +predictions concerning his incapacity; the non-opposing party advised, +lauded, cautioned, mildly discouraged, and in a most human revulsion of +feeling showed their unprejudiced frankness by openly condemning on +frequent occasions. The head of the nation having appointed an official +from among his immediate supporters, there arose a clamor of adverse +criticism upon a course which lowered the gifts of his sacred office to +the grade of mere payment for value received. Having made a choice from +without the circle, he called down upon himself frantic accusations of +ingratitude to those to whom he owed all. There lay before him the +agreeable alternatives of being a renegade or a monument of bribery and +corruption, and if occasionally these alternatives lost for a moment +their attractiveness, and the head of the nation gave way to a sense of +perplexity, and was guilty of forming in secret a vague wish that the +head of the nation was on some other individual's shoulders, or even +went to the length of wishing that the head upon his own shoulders was +his own property, and not a football for the vivacious strength of the +nation to expend itself upon,--if this occurred, though it is by no +means likely, it certainly revealed a weakness of character and +inadequacy to the situation which the nation could not have failed to +condemn. The very reasonable prophecy,--made by the party whose +candidate had not been elected,--that the government must inevitably go +to destruction and the country to perdition, had, through some singular +oversight on the part of the powers threatened, not been fulfilled. +After waiting in breathless suspense for the occurrence of these +catastrophes, and finding that they had apparently been postponed until +the next election, the government had drawn a sigh of relief, and the +country had gained courage to bestir itself cheerfully, with a view to +such perquisites as might be obtained by active effort and a strong +sense of general personal worthiness and fitness for any position. + +There had descended upon the newly elected ruler an avalanche of seekers +for office, a respectable number of whom laid in his hands the future +salvation of their souls and bodies, and generously left to him the +result. He found himself suddenly established as the guardian of the +widow, the orphan, and the friendless, and required to repair fortunes +or provide them, as the case might be, at a moment's notice; his +sympathies were appealed to, his interests, his generosity, as an +altogether omnipotent power in whose hands all things lay, and whose +word was naturally law upon all occasions, great or small; and any +failure on his part to respond to the entirely reasonable requests +preferred was very properly laid to a tendency to abandoned scheming or +to the heartless indifference of the great, which decision disposed of +all difficulties in the argument, apart from such trivial ones as were +left to the portion of the delinquent and were not referred to. Being +called upon in his selection of his cabinet to display the judgment of +Solomon, the diplomacy of Talleyrand, and the daring of Napoleon, and +above all to combine like powers in each official chosen, he might have +faltered but for the assistance proffered him from all sides. This, and +the fact that there was no lack of the qualifications required, +supported him. Each day some monument of said qualifications, and others +too numerous to mention, was presented to his notice. To propitiate the +South it was suggested that he should appoint A----; to secure the +North, B----; to control the East, C----; to sweep the West, D----; and +to unite the country, E----. Circumstances having finally led him to +decide upon G----, the government appeared to be in jeopardy again; +but--possibly through having made use of its numerous opportunities of +indulging in acrobatic efforts in the direction of losing its balance +and regaining it again in an almost incredible manner--it recovered from +the shock, and even retained its equilibrium, upon finding itself in the +end saddled with a cabinet whose selection was universally acknowledged +to be a failure when it was not denounced as a crime. + +On this particular New Year's day there were few traces on the social +surface of the disasters which so short a time before had threatened to +engulf all. Washington wore an aspect even gayer than usual. The +presidential reception began the day in its most imposing manner. Lines +of carriages thronged the drive before the White House, and the +diplomatists, statesmen, officials, and glittering beings in naval and +military uniform, who descended from them, were possibly cheered and +encouraged by the comments of the lookers-on, who knew them and their +glories and their shortcomings by heart. The comments were not specially +loud, however. That which in an English crowd takes the form of amiable +or unamiable clamor, in an American gathering of a like order resolves +itself into a serene readiness of remark, which exalts or disposes of a +dignity with equal impartiality, and an ingenuous fearlessness of any +consequence whatever, which would seem to argue that all men are born +free and some equal, though the last depends entirely upon +circumstances. Each vehicle, having drawn up, deposited upon the stone +steps of the broad portico a more or less picturesque or interesting +personage. Now it was the starred and ribboned representative of some +European court; again, a calm-visaged Japanese or Chinese official, in +all the splendor of flowing robes and brilliant color; and, again, a man +in citizen's clothes, whose unimposing figure represented such political +eminence as to create more stir among the lookers-on than all the rest. +Among equipages, there drove up at length a rather elegant little +_coupé_, from which, when its door was opened, there sprang lightly to +the stone steps the graceful figure of a young man, followed by an elder +one. The young fellow, who was talking with much animation, turned an +exhilaratingly bright face upon the crowd about him. + +"On the whole, I rather like it," he said. + +"Oh!" responded his companion, "as to that, you like everything. I never +saw such a fellow." + +The younger man laughed quite joyously. + +"There is a great deal of truth in that," he said, "and I don't suppose +you will deny that it is an advantage." + +"An advantage!" repeated the other. "By Jupiter, I should think it was +an advantage! Now, how long do you think this fellow will keep us +waiting when we want him?" + +"Oh!" was the answer; "he is Mrs. Amory's coachman, you know, and there +isn't a doubt that he has had excellent training. She isn't fond of +waiting." + +"No," said the other, with a peculiar smile. "I should fancy she wasn't. +Well, I guess we'll go in." + +They turned to do so, and found themselves near a tall man in uniform, +who almost immediately turned also, and revealed the soldierly visage of +Colonel Tredennis. + +He made a quick movement forward, which seemed to express some surprise. + +"What, Amory!" he exclaimed. "You here, too? I was not at all sure that +you had returned." + +"I am scarcely sure myself yet," answered Richard, as he shook hands. +"It only happened last night; but Bertha has been home a week. Is it +possible you haven't seen her?" + +"I have not seen anybody lately," said Tredennis, "and I did not know +that she had returned until I read her name in the list of those who +would receive." + +"Oh, of course she will receive," said Richard. "And Planefield and +I--you have met Senator Planefield?" + +"How do you do?" said Senator Planefield, without any special +manifestation of delight. + +Tredennis bowed, and Richard went on airily, as they made their way in: + +"Planefield and I have been sent out to do duty, and our list extends +from Capitol Hill to Georgetown Heights." + +"And he," said Senator Planefield, "professes to enjoy the prospect." + +"Why not?" said Richard. "It is a bright, bracing day, and there is +something exhilarating in driving from house to house, to find one's +self greeted at each by a roomful of charming women,--most of them +pretty, some of them brilliant, all of them well dressed and in holiday +spirits. It is delightful." + +"Do _you_ find it delightful?" inquired Planefield, turning with some +abruptness to Tredennis. + +"I am obliged to own that I don't shine in society," answered Tredennis. + +He knew there was nothing to resent in the question, but he was +conscious of resenting something in the man himself. His big, +prosperous-looking body and darkly florid face, with its heavy, handsome +outlines, and keen, bold eyes, had impressed him unpleasantly from the +first, and on each occasion of their meeting the impression seemed to +deepen. + +"Well, Amory shines," was his response, "and so does Mrs. Amory. We are +to drop in and see her shine, as often as we happen to be in the +neighborhood through the day." + +They had reached the threshold of the reception-room by this time, and +Richard, catching the last words, turned and spoke. + +"Of course you will be there yourself in the course of the day," he +said. "We shall possibly meet you--and, by-the-by, you will see Mrs. +Sylvestre. She arrived two days ago." + +When they came out again Richard was in more buoyant spirits than +before. The lighted rooms, the brilliant dresses, the many faces he knew +or did not know, the very crush itself, had acted upon him like a fine +wind. He issued forth into the light of day again, girded and eager for +his day's work. + +"There is nothing like Washington," he announced, "and especially +nothing like Washington at the beginning of the season. Just at the +outset, when one is meeting people for the first time since their +return, they actually have the air of being glad to see one, and a man +has a delightful evanescent sense of being somehow positively popular." + +"Does it make _you_ feel popular?" demanded Planefield of Tredennis, in +his unceremonious fashion. + +Tredennis presented to him an entirely immovable front. + +"How do _you_ find it?" he inquired. + +The man laughed. + +"Not as Amory does," he answered. + +When the _coupé_ appeared and he took his place at Richard's side, he +bent forward to bestow on Tredennis, as they drove away, a glance +expressive of but little favor. + +"I don't like that fellow," he said. "Confound him!" + +Richard settled himself in his corner of the carriage, folding his +fur-trimmed coat about him quite luxuriously. + +"Oh, no. Not confound him," he replied. "He is a delightful fellow--in +his way." + +"Confound his way, then," responded Planefield. "There's too much of +it." + +Richard leaned slightly forward to look at the tall, motionless figure +himself, and the faintest possible change passed over his face as he did +so. + +"He is not exactly a malleable sort of fellow," he remarked, "and I +suppose there might arise occasions when he would be a little in the +way; but there is no denying that he is picturesque." + +"Oh!" exclaimed his companion, with more fervor than grace. "The devil +take his picturesqueness!" + +In the meantime Colonel Tredennis awaited the arrival of his own +carriage, which had fallen back in the line. The surging of the crowd +about him, the shouts of the policemen as they called up the vehicles, +the rolling of vehicles and opening and shutting of doors, united +themselves in an uproar which seemed to afford him a kind of seclusion. +The subject of his thoughts as he stood in the midst of the throng was +not a new one; it was one from whose presence he had ceased to expect to +free himself; but as the information in the morning paper had +accelerated the pulse of emotion in him, so his brief interview with +Richard Amory had quickened it again. Since the day when he had left her +in Virginia, five months before, he had not seen Bertha at all, and had +only heard from her directly once. She had been at Long Branch, +Saratoga, Newport, and afterward visiting friends in the northern +cities. After his return from the West, Richard had frequently been with +her, and their letters to the professor had informed him that they were +well and were involved in a round of gayeties. + +How the time had passed for Tredennis he could not himself have told. +When he had returned to Washington he had lived and moved as a man in a +dream. The familiar streets and buildings wore an unfamiliar look. It +was a relief to find the places more deserted than before; his chief +desire was to be, if possible, entirely alone. In the first vivid +freshness of his impressions it seemed incredible that the days he had +been living through had come to an end, and that absolutely nothing +remained but the strange memory of them. At times it appeared that +something must happen,--some impossible thing which would give reality +to the past and motive to the future. If in any of his nightly walks +before the closed and silent house he had suddenly seen that the +shutters were opened and lights were shining within; if Bertha herself +had, without warning, stood at the window and smiled upon him, he would +have felt it at first only natural, even though he knew she was hundreds +of miles away. + +This for a few weeks, and then his exaltation died a gradual death for +want of sustenance, and there remained only the long, sultry days to be +lived through and their work to be done. They were lived through, and +their work was not neglected; but there was no one of them which dragged +its slow length by without leaving marks upon him which neither time nor +change could erase in any future that might come. + +"Five months," he said, as he waited with the clamor about him, "is +longer than it seems--it is longer." + +And Miss Jessup, passing him at the moment and looking up, found herself +so utterly at a loss for an adjective adequate to the description of his +expression, that her own bright and alert little countenance fell, and +existence temporarily palled upon her. + +It was late in the day when he reached the Amorys. When he drove up +several carriages stood before the door, one of them Bertha's own, from +which Richard and Planefield had just descended. Two or three men were +going into the house, and one or two were leaving it. Through the open +door were to be seen the lighted hall, and glimpses of bright rooms +beyond, from which came the sound of voices, laughter, and the clink of +glass. + +Richard entered the house with Tredennis, and flung off his rather +sumptuous outer garment with a laugh of relief. + +"We have made fifty calls so far," he said, "and have enjoyed them +enormously. What have you accomplished?" + +"Not fifty, by any means," Tredennis answered, and then the man-servant +took his coat, and they went into the parlors. + +They seemed to be full of men,--young men, middle-aged men, old men; +even a half-grown boy or two had timorously presented themselves, with +large hopes of finding dazzling entertainment in the convivialities of +the day. The shutters were closed and the rooms brilliantly alight; +there were flowers in every available corner, and three or four +charmingly dressed women, each forming a bright central figure in a +group of black coats, gave themselves to their task of entertainment +with delightful animation. + +For a moment Tredennis stood still. He did not see Bertha at once, +though he fancied he heard her voice in the room adjoining, where, +through the half-drawn _portières_, were to be seen men standing, with +coffee-cups, wine-glasses, or little plates in their hands, about a +table bright with flowers, fruits, and all the usual glittering +appurtenances. The next instant, amid a fresh burst of laughter, which +she seemed to leave behind her, she appeared upon the threshold. + +As she paused a second between the heavy curtains Tredennis thought +suddenly of a brilliant tropical bird he had once seen somewhere, and +the fancy had scarcely formed itself in his mind before she recognized +him and came forward. + +He had never seen her so brilliantly dressed before. The wonderful +combination of rich and soft reds in her costume, the flash of the +little jewelled bands clasped close about her bare throat and arms, +their pendants trembling and glowing in the light, the color on her +cheeks, the look in her eyes, had a curiously bewildering effect upon +him. When she gave him her hand he scarcely knew what to do with it, and +could only wait for her to speak. And she spoke as if they had parted +only an hour ago. + +"At last," she said. "And it was very nice in you to leave me until the +last, because now I know you will not feel obliged to go away so soon." +And she withdrew her hand and opened her fan, and stood smiling up at +him over its plumy border. "You see," she said, "that we have returned +to our native atmosphere and may begin to breathe freely. Now we are +real creatures again." + +"Are we?" he answered. "Is that it?" and he glanced over the crowd, and +then came back to her and looked her over from the glittering buckle on +her slipper to the scintillating arrow in her hair. "I suppose we have," +he added. "I begin to realize it." + +"If you need anything to assist you to realize it," she said, "cast your +eye upon Mr. Arbuthnot, and I think you will find him sufficient; for +me, everything crystallized itself and all my doubts disappeared the +moment I saw his opera hat, and heard his first remark about the +weather. It is a very fine day," she added, with a serene air of +originality, "a little cold, but fine and clear. Delightful weather for +those of you who are making calls. It has often struck me that it must +be unpleasant to undertake so much when the weather is against you. It +is colder to-day than it was yesterday, but it will be likely to be +warmer to-morrow. It is to be hoped that we shall have an agreeable +winter." + +"You might," he said, looking at her over the top of her fan, "induce +them to mention it in the churches." + +"That," she answered, "is the inspiration of true genius, and it shall +be attended to at once, or--here is Senator Planefield; perhaps he +might accomplish something by means of a bill?" + +The senator joined them in his usual manner, which was not always an +engaging manner, and was at times a little suggestive of a disposition +to appropriate the community, and was also a somewhat loud-voiced +manner, and florid in its decorative style. It was, on the whole, less +engaging than usual upon the present occasion. The fact that he was for +some reason not entirely at ease expressed itself in his appearing to be +very wonderfully at ease; indeed, metaphorically speaking, he appeared +to have his hands in his pockets. + +"A bill!" he said. "You have the floor, and I stand ready to second any +motion you choose to make. I think we might put it through together. +What can we do for you?" + +"We want an appropriation," Bertha answered,--"an appropriation of fine +weather, which will enable Colonel Tredennis to be as giddy a butterfly +of fashion as his natural inclination would lead him to desire to be." + +Planefield glanced at Tredennis with a suggestion of grudging the +momentary attention. + +"Is _he_ a butterfly of fashion?" he asked. + +"What!" exclaimed Bertha,--"is it possible that you have not detected +it? It is the fatal flaw upon his almost perfect character. Can it be +that you have been taking him seriously, and mistakenly imagining that +it was Mr. Arbuthnot who was frivolous?" + +"Arbuthnot," repeated the senator. "Which is Arbuthnot? How is a man to +tell one from the other? There are too many of them!" + +"What an agreeable way of saying that Colonel Tredennis is a host in +himself!" said Bertha. "But I have certainly not found that there were +too many of him, and I assure you that you would know Mr. Arbuthnot from +the other after you had exchanged remarks with him. He has just been +beguiled into the next room by Mrs. Sylvestre, who is going to give him +some coffee." + +"Mrs. Sylvestre," said Tredennis. "Richard told me she was with you, +and I was wondering why I did not see her." + +"You did not see her," said Bertha, "because I wished her to dawn upon +you slowly, and, having that end in view, I arranged that Mr. Arbuthnot +should occupy her attention when I saw you enter." + +"He couldn't stand it all at once, could he?" remarked Planefield, whose +manner of giving _her_ his attention was certainly not grudging. He kept +his eyes fixed on her face, and apparently found entertainment in her +most trivial speech. + +"It was not that, exactly," she answered. Then she spoke to Tredennis. + +"She is ten times as beautiful as she was," she said, "and it would not +be possible to calculate how many times more charming." + +"That was not necessary," responded Tredennis. + +He could not remove his own eyes from her face, even while he was +resenting the fact that Planefield looked at her; he himself watched her +every movement and change of expression. + +"It was entirely unnecessary," she returned; "but it is the truth." + +"You are trying to prejudice him against her," said Planefield. + +"She is my ideal of all that a beautiful woman ought to be," she +replied, "and I should like to form myself upon her." + +"Oh, we don't want any of that," put in Planefield. "You are good enough +for us." + +She turned her attention to him. Her eyes met his with the most +ingenuous candor, and yet the little smile in them was too steady not to +carry suggestion with it. + +"Quite?" she said. + +"Yes, quite," he answered, not so entirely at ease as before. + +Her little smile did not waver in the least. + +"Do you know," she said, "it seems almost incredible, but I will try to +believe it. Now," she said to Tredennis, "if Senator Planefield will +excuse me for a moment, I will take you into the other room. You shall +speak to Mrs. Sylvestre. He has already seen her. Will you come?" + +"I shall be very glad," he answered. He followed as she led him to the +adjoining room. On its threshold she paused an instant. + +"Exactly as I expected," she said. "She is listening to Mr. Arbuthnot." + +Mr. Arbuthnot was standing at the end of the low mantel. He held a cup +of coffee in his hand, but had apparently forgotten it in giving his +attention to his very charming companion. This companion was, of course, +Mrs. Sylvestre herself. Tredennis recognized her clear, faintly tinted +face and light, willowy figure at once. She wore a dress of black lace, +with purple passion-flowers, and she was looking at Arbuthnot with +reflective eyes, almost the color of the flowers. She did not seem to be +talking herself, but she was listening beautifully, with a graceful, +receptive attention. Arbuthnot evidently felt it, and was improving his +shining hour with a sense of enjoyment tempered by no lack of ability to +avail himself of its fleeting pleasure. + +It is possible, however, that his rapture at seeing Tredennis may have +been tempered by the natural weakness of man, but he bore himself with +his usual unperturbed equanimity. + +"There," he remarked to Mrs. Sylvestre, "is the most objectionable +creature in Washington." + +"Objectionable!" Mrs. Sylvestre repeated. "Bertha is bringing him here." + +"Yes," responded Arbuthnot, "that is the objection to him, and it leaves +him without a redeeming quality." + +Mrs. Sylvestre gave him a charmingly interested glance, and the next +instant made a slight movement forward. + +"Ah!" she exclaimed, "it is Colonel Tredennis!" and she held out her +hand with the most graceful gesture of welcome imaginable. + +"It is very good of you to remember me," Tredennis said. + +"It was not difficult," she answered, with a smile. And they fell, in +the most natural manner, a step apart from the others, and she stood and +looked at him as he spoke just as she had looked at Arbuthnot a moment +before. Arbuthnot began to give mild attention to his coffee. + +"It is quite cold," he said to Bertha. "Will you give me another cup?" + +"Yes," she answered, and took it from his hand to carry it to the table. +He followed her, and stood at her side as she poured the fresh cup out. + +"It is my impression," he said, with serene illiberality, "that she did +not remember him at all." + +"Yes, she did," Bertha replied. "She remembers everybody. That is one of +her gifts. She has a great many gifts." + +"I did not place implicit confidence in her intimation that she +remembered me," he proceeded, still serenely. "I liked the statement, +and saw the good taste of it, and the excellent reasons for its being +true; but I managed to restrain the naïve impulses of a trusting nature. +And it doesn't strike me as being so entirely plausible that she should +have remembered Tredennis." + +He paused suddenly and looked at Bertha's hand, in which she held the +sugar-tongs and a lump of sugar. + +"Will you have one lump, or two?" she asked. + +Then he looked from her hand to her face. Her hand was trembling and her +face was entirely without color. The look of strained steadiness in her +uplifted eyes was a shock to him. It seemed to him that any one who +chanced to glance at her must see it. + +"You have been standing too long," he said. "You have tired yourself out +again." + +He took the cup of coffee from her. + +"It is too late for you to expect many calls now," he said, "and if any +one comes you can easily be found in the conservatory. I am going to +take you there, and let you sit down for a few seconds, at least." + +He gave her his arm and carried the cup of coffee with him. + +"You will have to drink this yourself," he said. "Have you eaten +anything to-day?" + +"No," she replied. + +"I thought not. And then you are surprised to find your hand trembling. +Don't you see what nonsense it is?" + +"Yes." + +He stepped with her into the tiny conservatory at the end of the room, +and gave her a seat behind a substantial palm on a red stand. His eyes +never left her face, though he went on talking in the most +matter-of-fact tone. + +"Drink that coffee," he said, "and then I will bring you a glass of wine +and a sandwich." + +She put out her hand as if to take the cup, but it fell, shaking, upon +her lap. + +"I can't," she said. + +"You must," he replied. + +The inflexibility of his manner affected her, as he had known it would. +When he sat down in the low seat at her side, and held out the cup, she +took it. + +"Go and get the wine," she said, without looking at him. + +He went at once, neither speaking nor glancing back at her. He was glad +of the opportunity of turning his face away from her, since he felt +that, in spite of his determination, it was losing something of its +expressionless calm. + +When he entered the room Mrs. Sylvestre still stood where he had left +her. It was she who was speaking now, and Tredennis, who was listening, +looking down upon her with an expression of much interest. + +When he had procured a glass of wine and a sandwich Arbuthnot went to +her. + +"I have secreted Mrs. Amory in the conservatory," he said, "with a view +of inducing her to take something in the form of sustenance. I can +produce her at a moment's notice if she is needed." + +"That was consideration," she replied. + +"It was humanity," he answered, and went away. + +Bertha had finished the coffee when he returned to her. The blanched +look had left her, and her voice, when she spoke, sounded more natural +and steady. + +"It did me good," she said, and this time she looked at him, and there +was something in her uplifted eyes which touched him. + +"I knew it would," he answered. + +"You always know," she said. "There is no one who knows so well what is +good for me"; and she said it with great gentleness. + +He took refuge from himself, as he sometimes found it discreet to do, in +his usual airy lightness. + +"I am all soul myself," he remarked, "as you may have observed, and I +understand the temptation to scorn earthly food and endeavor to subsist +wholly upon the plaudits of the multitude. You will, perhaps, permit me +to remark that though the new gown"--with an approving glance at it--"is +an immense and unqualified success, I doubt its power to sustain nature +during the six or eight hours of a New Year's reception." + +Bertha glanced down at it herself. + +"Do you think it is pretty?" she asked. + +"I shouldn't call it pretty," he replied. "I should call it something +more impressive." + +She still looked at it. + +"It is a flaring thing," she said. + +"No, it isn't," he returned, promptly. "Not in the least. You might call +it brilliant--if you insist on an adjective. It is a brilliant thing, +and it is not like you in the least." + +She turned toward him. + +"No," she said, "it isn't like me in the least." + +"It looks," remarked Arbuthnot, giving it some lightly critical +attention, "as if you had taken a new departure." + +"That is it exactly," she returned. "You always say the right thing. I +have taken a new departure." + +"Might I ask in what direction?" he inquired. + +"Yes," she responded. "I will tell you, as a fair warning. I am going to +be a dazzling and worldly creature." + +"You are?" he said. "Now that is entirely sensible, though I should +scarcely call it a new departure. You know you tried it last winter, +with the most satisfying results. When Lent came on you had lost several +pounds in weight and all your color; you had refined existence until +neither rest nor food appeared necessary to you, and the future was +naturally full of promise. Be gay, by all means; you'll find it pay, I +assure you. Go to a lunch-party at one, and a reception at four, a +dinner in the evening, and drop in at a German or so on your way home, +taking precautions at the same time against neglecting your calling-list +in the intervals these slight recreations allow you. Oh, I should +certainly advise you to be gay." + +"Laurence," she said, "do you think if one should do that _every_ day, +_every_ day, and give one's self _no_ rest, that after a while it would +_kill_ one?" + +He regarded her fixedly for an instant. + +"Do you want to die?" he asked, at last. + +She sat perfectly still, and something terribly like, and yet terribly +unlike, a smile crept slowly into her eyes as they met his. Then she +replied, without flinching in the least, or moving her gaze: + +"No." + +He held up a long, slender forefinger, and shook it at her, slowly, in +his favorite gesture of warning. + +"No," he said, "you don't; but, even if you fancied you did, don't +flatter yourself that it would happen. Shall I tell you what would +occur? You would simply break down. You would lose your self-control and +do things you did not wish to do; you would find it a physical +impossibility to be equal to the occasion, and you would end by being +pale and haggard--haggard, and discovering that your gowns were not +becoming to you. How does the thing strike you?" + +"It is very brutal," she said, with a little shudder; "but it is true." + +"When you make ten remarks that are true," he returned, "nine of them +are brutal. That is the charm of life." + +"I don't think," she said, with inconsequent resentment, "that you very +much mind being brutal to me." + +"A few minutes ago you said I knew what was good for you," he responded. + +"You do," she said, "that is it, and it is only like me that I should +hate you because you do. You must think," with a pathetic tone of appeal +for herself in her voice, "that I do not mind being brutal to you; but I +don't want to be. I don't want to do any of the things I am doing now." + +She picked up the bouquet of Jacqueminot roses she had been carrying and +had laid down near her. + +"Don't talk about me," she said. "Let us talk about something +else,--these, for instance. Do you know where they came from?" + +"I could scarcely guess." + +"Senator Planefield sent them to me." + +He regarded them in silence. + +"They match the dress," she said, "and they belong to it." + +"Yes," he answered, "they match the dress." + +Then he was silent again. + +"Well," she said, restlessly, "why don't you say something to me?" + +"There isn't anything to say," he replied. + +"You are thinking that I am very bad?" she said. + +"You are trying to persuade yourself that you are very bad, and are +finding a fictitious excitement in it; but it is all a mistake. It won't +prove the consolation you expect it to," he answered. "Suppose you give +it up before it gives rise to complications." + +"We are talking of Bertha Amory again," she said. "Let us talk about +Agnes Sylvestre. Don't you find her very beautiful?" + +"Yes," he replied. + +"Why don't you say more than 'yes'?" she asked. "You mean more." + +"I couldn't mean more," he answered. "I should think it was enough to +mean that much; there are even circumstances under which it might be too +much." + +"She is lovelier than she used to be," said Bertha, reflectively; "and +more fascinating." + +"Yes to that also," he responded. + +"Any one might love her," she went on, in the same tone. "_Any_ one." + +"I should think so," he replied, quietly. + +"I do not see how it would be possible," she added, "for any one--who +was thrown with her--to resist her--unless it was some one like you." + +She turned a faint smile upon him. + +"I am glad," she said, "that _you_ are not susceptible." + +"So am I," he said, with some dryness. + +"If you were susceptible you would go too," she ended. "And I don't want +_every_ one to leave me." + +"Every one?" he repeated. + +She rose as if to go, giving a light touch to the folds of her dress, +and still smiling a little. + +"Colonel Tredennis has fallen a victim," she said, "in the most natural +and proper manner. I knew he would, and he has distinguished himself by +at once carrying out my plans for him. Now we must go back to the +parlors. I have rested long enough." + +They returned just in time to meet a fresh party of callers, and +Arbuthnot was of necessity thrown for the time being upon his own +resources. These did not fail him. He found entertainment in his +surroundings until a certain opportunity he had rather desired presented +itself to him. He observed that Mrs. Sylvestre was once more near him, +and that the men occupying her attention were on the point of taking +their leave. By the time they had done so he had dexterously brought to +a close his conversation with his male companion, and had unobtrusively +forwarded himself, in an entirely incidental manner, as an aspirant for +her notice. + +She received him with a quiet suggestion of pleasure in her smile. + +"Have you enjoyed the day?" he asked. + +"Yes," she replied. "I am almost sorry that it is so nearly over. It has +been very agreeable." + +Then he found her eyes resting upon him in the quiet and rather +incomprehensible way which Bertha had counted among her chiefest charms. + +"Have you enjoyed it?" she inquired. + +"If I had not," he said, "I should feel rather like a defeated +candidate. One may always enjoy things if one applies one's self." + +She seemed to reflect upon him an instant again. + +"You see a great deal of Bertha?" she said. + +"Yes, a great deal. Would you mind telling me why you ask?" + +"Because that remark was so entirely like her," she replied. + +"Well," he returned, "there is no denying that I have formed myself upon +her, and though the fact reveals me in all my shallow imitative +weakness, I can offer the apology that the means justifies the end. Upon +the whole, I am glad to be detected, as it points to a measure of +success in the attempt." + +"But," she went on, "she tells me that she has formed herself upon you." + +"Ah!" he said; "she meant you to repeat it to me, her design being to +betray me into a display of intoxicated vanity." + +"She is very fond of you," she remarked. + +"I am very fond of her," he answered, quickly--and then relapsing into +his usual manner--"though that is not a qualification sufficiently rare +to distinguish me." + +"No," she said, "it is not." + +Then she gave Bertha one of the glances. + +"It was very thoughtful in you to take her into the conservatory," she +said. "I was startled to see how pale she looked as you left the room." + +"She is not strong," he said, "and she insists on ignoring the fact." + +"Do you know," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "that was what struck me when we met +for the first time in the autumn--that she was not strong. She used to +be strong." + +"If she would accept the fact she would get over it," he said; "but she +won't." + +"I met her first at Newport," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "just after Janey's +illness. For a day or so I felt that I did not know her at all; but in +course of time I got over the feeling; or she changed--I scarcely know +which. I suppose the strain during the little girl's illness had been +very severe?" + +"There is no doubt of that," said Arbuthnot; "and her anxiety had been +much exaggerated." + +"I shall see a great deal of her this winter," she returned, "and +perhaps I may persuade her to take care of herself." + +He spoke with a touch of eager seriousness in his manner. + +"I wish you would," he said. "It is what she needs, that some woman +should call her attention to the mistake she is making." + +"I will try to do it," she responded, gently. "I am fond of her too." + +"And you intend remaining in Washington?" he asked. + +"Yes. I have had no plans for three years. When first it dawned on me +that it would interest me to make plans again, I thought of Washington. +I have found a house in Lafayette Square, and I think I shall be +established in it, with the assistance of my aunt, who is to live with +me, in about three weeks." + +"That sounds very agreeable," he remarked. + +"I shall hope to make it sufficiently so," she said. "Will you come +sometimes to see if my efforts are successful?" + +"If you knew how unworthy I am," he responded, "even my abject gratitude +for your kindness would not repay you for it." + +"Are you so very unworthy?" she was beginning, when her eyes appeared to +be caught by some object at the other side of the room. + +It was not a particularly interesting object. It was merely the figure +of an unprepossessing boy, whose provincial homeliness was rendered +doubly impressive by his frightful embarrassment. He had arrived a few +moments before, with two more finished youths, whose mother Bertha knew, +and, having been basely deserted by them at the outset, had stranded +upon the treacherous shores of inexperience as soon as he had shaken +hands. + +Mrs. Sylvestre's beautiful eyes dwelt upon him a moment with sympathy +and interest. + +"Will you excuse me," she said to Arbuthnot, "if I go and talk to that +boy? Bertha is too busy to attend to him, and he seems to know no one." + +Arbuthnot gave the boy a glance. He would not have regretted any +comparatively harmless incident which would have removed him, but his +own very naturally ignoble desire not to appear to a disadvantage +restrained the impulse prompting a derisive remark. And while he +objected to the boy in his most pronounced manner, he did not object in +the least to what he was clever enough to see in his companion's words +and the ready sympathy they expressed. Indeed, there was a side of him +which derived definite pleasure from it. + +"I will excuse you," he answered; "but I need you more than the boy +does, and I cannot help believing that I am more worthy of you; though, +of course, I only use the word in its relative sense. As I remarked +before, I am unworthy, but as compared to the boy--He is a frightful +boy," he added, seeming to take him in more fully; "but I dare say his +crimes are unpremeditated. Let me go with you and find out if I know his +mother. I frequently know their mothers." + +"If you do know his mother, I am sure it will be a great relief to him, +and it will assist me," said Mrs. Sylvestre. + +They crossed the room together, and, seeing them approach, the boy +blushed vermilion and moved uneasily from one foot to the other. +Gradually, however, his aspect changed a little. Here were rather +attractive worldlings whose bearing expressed no consciousness whatever +of his crime of boyhood. He met Mrs. Sylvestre's eyes and blushed less; +he glanced furtively at Arbuthnot, and suddenly forgot his hands and +became almost unconscious of his legs. + +"I have been asking Mrs. Sylvestre," said Arbuthnot, with civil +mendacity, "if you did not come with the Bartletts. I thought I saw you +come in together." + +"Yes," responded the boy. "I am a cousin of theirs." + +"Then I have heard them speak of you," Arbuthnot returned. "And I think +I had the pleasure of meeting your sister several times last +winter,--Miss Hemmingway?" + +"Yes," said the boy; "she was here on a visit." + +In two minutes he found himself conversing almost fluently, and it was +Arbuthnot who was his inspiration equally with Mrs. Sylvestre. He was a +modest and inoffensive youth, and overestimated the brilliance of the +scenes surrounding him, and the gifts and charms of his new-found +friends, with all the ardor of his tender years. To him, Arbuthnot's +pale, well-bred face and simple, immaculate attire represented luxury, +fashion, and the whirling vortex of society. The kindly imagination of +simplicity bestowed upon him an unlimited income and an exalted position +in the diplomatic _corps_, at least; his ease of manner and readiness of +speech seeming gifts only possible of attainment through familiarity +with foreign courts and effete civilizations. When he was asked how he +liked Washington, if he intended to spend the season with his relations, +if he had made many calls, and if the day did not seem to be an +unusually gay one, he accomplished the feat of answering each question, +even adding an original remark or so of his own. The conversation seemed +to assume a tone of almost feverish brilliancy in view of the social +atmosphere surrounding these queries. When he was led into the adjoining +room to partake of refreshments he ate his lobster-salad with an honest +young appetite, much aided by the fact that Mrs. Sylvestre gave him his +coffee, and, taking a cup herself, sat down by him on a sofa. As he +watched her, Arbuthnot was thinking her manner very soft and pretty, +and, inspired by it, his own became all that could be desired in the way +of dexterity and tact. As he exercised himself in his entertainment, his +first objections to the boy gradually vanished; he plied him with +refreshments, and encouraged him to renewed conversational effort, +deriving finally some satisfaction from finding himself able to bring to +bear upon him with successful results his neatly arranged and classified +social gifts. When the young Bartletts--who had been enjoying themselves +immensely in the next room--suddenly remembered their charge, and came +in search of him, their frank countenances expressed some surprise at +the position they found him occupying. He was relating with some spirit +the story of a boat-race, and Mrs. Sylvestre, who sat at his side, was +listening with the most perfect air of attention and pleasure, while +Arbuthnot stood near, apparently bent upon losing nothing of the +history. He ended the story with some natural precipitation and rose to +go, a trifle of his embarrassment returning as he found himself once +more, as it were, exposed to the glare of day. He was not quite sure +what conventionality demanded of him in the way of adieus; but when Mrs. +Sylvestre relieved him by extending her hand, nature got the better of +him, and he seized it with ardor. + +"I've had a splendid time," he said, blushing. "This is the nicest +reception I've been to yet. The house is so pretty and--and everything. +I was thinking I shouldn't go anywhere else; but I believe I shall now." + +When he shook hands with Arbuthnot he regarded him with admiration and +awe. + +"I'm much obliged to you," he said, his vague sense of indebtedness +taking form. "If you ever come to Whippleville I'm sure my father would +like to--to see you." + +And he retired with his young relatives, blushing still, and +occasionally treading on their feet, but his modesty, notwithstanding, +bearing with him an inoffensive air of self-respect, which would be more +than likely to last him through the day, and perhaps a little beyond it. + +Mrs. Sylvestre's eyes met Arbuthnot's when he was gone. + +"You were _very_ kind to him," she said. + +"I am obliged to confess," he replied, "that it was nothing but the low +promptings of vanity which inspired me. It dawned upon me that he was +impressed by my superior ease and elegance, and I seized the opportunity +of exhibiting them." + +"You knew just what to say to him," she added. + +"That," he replied, "was entirely owing to the fact that I was a boy +myself in the early part of the last century." + +"He was an appreciative boy," she said, "and a grateful one; but I am +sure I could not have made him comfortable if you had not been so kind." + +And she once again bestowed upon him the subtle flattery of appearing to +lose herself an instant in reflection upon him. + +There were no more callers after this. Later on an unconventional little +dinner was served, during which Mrs. Sylvestre was placed between +Arbuthnot and Tredennis, Planefield loomed up massive and florid at +Bertha's side, and Richard devoted himself with delightful ardor to +discussing French politics with the young woman who fell to his share. + +This young woman, whose attire was perfect and whose manner was +admirable, and who was furthermore endowed with a piquant, irregular +face and a captivating voice, had attracted Tredennis's attention early +in the evening. She had been talking to Richard when he had seen her +first, and she had been talking to Richard at intervals ever since, and +evidently talking very well. + +"I don't know your friend," he said to Bertha, after dinner, "and I did +not hear her name when I was presented." + +"Then you have hitherto lived in vain," said Bertha, glancing at her. +"That is what Richard would tell you. Her name is Helen Varien." + +"It is a very pretty name," remarked Tredennis. + +"Ah!" said Bertha. "You certainly might trust her not to have an ugly +one. She has attained that state of finish in the matter of her +appendages which insures her being invariably to be relied on. I think +she must even have invented her relatives--or have ordered them, giving +_carte blanche_." + +She watched her a moment with a smile of interest. + +"Do you see how her sleeves fit?" she asked. "It was her sleeves which +first attracted my attention. I saw them at a luncheon in New York, and +they gave me new theories of life. When a woman can accomplish sleeves +like those, society need ask nothing further of her." + +Tredennis glanced down at her own. + +"Have you accomplished"--he suggested. + +"In moments of rashness and folly," she answered, "I have occasionally +been betrayed into being proud of my sleeves; but now I realize that the +feeling was simply impious." + +He waited with grim patience until she had finished, and then turned his +back upon Miss Varien's sleeves. + +"Will you tell me about Janey?" he said. + +"When last I saw her, which was this morning," she replied, "she was as +well as usual, and so were the others. Now I have no doubt they are all +in bed." + +"May I come and see them to-morrow, or the day after?" + +"Yes," she answered. "And at anytime. I hope you will come often. Mrs. +Sylvestre will be with me until her house is ready for her, and, as I +said before, I wish you to know her well." + +"I shall feel it a great privilege," he responded. + +She leaned back a little in her chair, and regarded her with an +expression of interest even greater than she had been aroused to by the +contemplation of Miss Varien's sleeves. + +"Have you found out yet," she inquired, "what her greatest charm is?" + +"Is it by any chance a matter of sleeves?" he asked; and he made the +suggestion stolidly. + +"No," she answered, "it is not sleeves. One's difficulty is to decide +_what_ it is. A week ago I thought it was her voice. Yesterday I was +sure it was her eyelashes and the soft shadow they make about her eyes. +About an hour ago I was convinced it was her smile, and now I think it +must be her power of fixing her attention upon you. See how it flatters +Mr. Arbuthnot, and how, though he is conscious of his weakness, he +succumbs to it. It will be very pleasant occupation during the winter to +watch his struggles." + +"Will he struggle?" said Tredennis, still immovably. "I don't think I +would in his place." + +"Oh, no," she answered. "You mustn't struggle." + +"I will not," he returned. + +She went on with a smile, as if he had spoken in the most responsive +manner possible. + +"Mr. Arbuthnot's struggles will not be of the usual order," she +remarked. "He will not be struggling with his emotions, but with his +vanity. He knows that she will not fall in love with him, and he has no +intention of falling in love with her. He knows better--and he does not +like affairs. But he will find that she is able to do things which will +flatter him, and that it will require all his self-control to refrain +from displaying his masculine delight in himself and the good-fortune +which he has the secret anguish of knowing does not depend upon his +merits. And his struggles at a decently composed demeanor, entirely +untinged by weak demonstrations of pleasure or consciousness of himself, +will be a very edifying spectacle." + +She turned her glance from Arbuthnot and Mrs. Sylvestre, whom she had +been watching as she spoke, and looked up at Tredennis. She did so +because he had made a rather sudden movement, and placed himself +immediately before her. + +"Bertha," he said, "I am going away." + +Her Jacqueminot roses had been lying upon her lap. She picked them up +before she answered him. + +"You have made too many calls," she said. "You are tired." + +"I have not made too many calls," he replied; "but I am tired. I am +tired of this." + +"I was afraid you were," she said, and kept her eyes fixed upon the +roses. + +"You were very fair to me," he said, "and you gave me warning. I told +you I should not profit by it, and I did not. I don't know what I +expected when I came here to-day, but it was not exactly this. You are +too agile for me; I cannot keep up with you." + +"You are not modern," she said. "You must learn to adjust yourself +rapidly to changes of mental attitude." + +"No, I am not modern," he returned; "and I am always behindhand. I do +not enjoy myself when you tell me it is a fine day, and that it was +colder yesterday, and will be warmer to-morrow; and I am at a loss when +you analyze Mr. Arbuthnot's struggles with his vanity." + +"I am not serious enough," she interrupted. "You would prefer that I +should be more serious." + +"It would avail me but little to tell you what I should prefer," he +said, obstinately. "I will tell you a simple thing before I go,--all +this counts for nothing." + +She moved slightly. + +"All this," she repeated, "counts for nothing." + +"For nothing," he repeated. "You cannot change me. I told you that. You +may give me some sharp wounds,--I know you won't spare those,--and +because I am only a man I shall show that I smart under them; but they +will not move me otherwise. Be as frivolous as you like, mock at +everything human if you choose; but don't expect me to believe you." + +She put the flowers to her face and held them there a second. + +"The one thing I should warn you against," she said, "would be against +believing me. I don't make the mistake of believing myself." + +She put the flowers down. + +"You think I am trying to deceive you," she said. "There would have to +be a reason for my doing it. What should you think would be the reason?" + +"So help me God!" he answered, "I don't know." + +"Neither do I," she said. + +Then she glanced about her over the room,--at Planefield, rather +restively professing to occupy himself with a pretty girl; at Miss +Varien, turned a trifle sidewise in her large chair so that her +beautiful sleeve was displayed to the most perfect advantage, and her +vivacious face was a little uplifted as she spoke to Richard, who leaned +on the high back of her seat; at Arbuthnot, talking to Agnes Sylvestre, +and plainly at no loss of words; at the lights and flowers and +ornamented tables seen through the _portières_,--and then she spoke +again. + +"I tell you," she said, "it is _this_ that is real--_this_. The other +was only a kind of dream." + +She made a sudden movement and sat upright on her chair, as if she meant +to shake herself free from something. + +"There was no other," she said. "It wasn't even a dream. There never was +anything but this." + +She left her chair and stood up before him, smiling. + +"The sky was not blue," she said, "nor the hills purple; there were no +chestnut trees, and no carnations. Let us go and sit with the rest, and +listen to Mr. Arbuthnot and admire Miss Varien's sleeves." + +But he stood perfectly still. + +"I told you I was going away," he said, "and I am going. To-morrow I +shall come and see the children--unless you tell me that you do not wish +to see me again." + +"I shall not tell you that," she returned, "because it would be at once +uncivil and untrue." + +"Then I shall come," he said. + +"That will be kind of you," she responded, and gave him her hand, and +after he had made his bow over it, and his adieus to the rest of the +company, he left them. + +Bertha crossed the room and stood near the fire, putting one foot on the +fender, and shivering a little. + +"Are you cold?" asked Miss Varien. + +"Yes--no," she answered. "If I did not know better, I should think I +was." + +"Allow me," said Miss Varien, "to make the cheerful suggestion that that +sounds quite like malaria." + +"Thank you," said Bertha; "that seems plausible, and I don't rebel +against it. It has an air of dealing with glittering generalities, and +yet it seems to decide matters for one. We will call it malaria." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + +The room which Mrs. Sylvestre occupied in her friend's house was a very +pretty one. It had been one of Mrs. Amory's caprices at the time she had +fitted it up, and she had amused herself with it for two or three +months, arranging it at her leisure, reflecting upon it, and making +additions to its charms every day as soon as they suggested themselves +to her. + +"It is to be a purely feminine apartment," she had said to Richard and +Arbuthnot. "And I have a sentiment about it. When it is complete you +shall go and stand outside the door and look in, but nothing would +induce me to allow you to cross the threshold." + +When this moment had arrived, and they had been admitted to the private +view from the corridor, they had evidently been somewhat impressed. + +"It is very pretty," Mr. Arbuthnot had remarked, with amiable tolerance; +"but I don't approve of it. Its object is plainly to pamper and foster +those tendencies of the feminine temperament which are most prominent +and least desirable. Nothing could be more apparent than its intention +to pander to a taste for luxury and self-indulgence, combined in the +most shameless manner with vanity and lightness of mind. It will be +becoming to the frivolous creatures, and will exalt and inflate them to +that extent that they will spend the greater portion of their time in +it, utterly ignoring the superior opportunities for cultivating and +improving their minds they might enjoy downstairs on occasions when +Richard remains at home, and my own multifarious duties permit me to +drop in. It strikes me as offering a premium to feminine depravity and +crime." + +"That expresses it exactly," agreed Richard. + +Arbuthnot turned him round. + +"Will you," he said, "kindly give your attention to the length and +position of that mirror, and the peculiar advantages to be derived from +the fact that the light falls upon it from that particular point, and +that its effects are softened by the lace draperies and suggestions of +pink and blue? The pink and blue idea is merely of a piece with all the +rest, and is prompted by the artfulness of the serpent. If it had been +all pink the blondes would have suffered, and if it had been all blue +the brunettes would have felt that they were not at their best; this +ineffably wily combination, however, truckles to either, and intimates +that each combines the attractions of both. Take me away, Richard; it is +not for the ingenuous and serious mind to view such spectacles as these. +Take me away,--first, however, making a mental inventory of the entirely +debasing sofas and chairs and the flagrant and openly sentimental nature +of the pictures, all depicting or insinuating the drivelling imbecility +and slavery of man,--'The Huguenot Lovers,' you observe, 'The Black +Brunswicker,' and others of like nature." + +Mrs. Sylvestre had thought the room very pretty indeed when she had +first taken possession of it, and its prettiness and comfort impressed +her anew when, the excitement of the New Year's day at last at an end, +she retired to it for the night. + +When she found herself within the closed doors she did not go to bed at +once. Too many impressions had been crowded into the last ten hours to +have left her in an entirely reposeful condition of mind and body, and, +though of too calm a temperament for actual excitement, she was still +not inclined to sleep. + +So, having partly undressed and thrown on a loose wrap, she turned down +the light and went to the fire. It was an open wood-fire, and burned +cheerily behind a brass fender; a large rug of white fur was spread upon +the hearth before it; a low, broad sofa, luxurious with cushions, was +drawn up at one side of it, and upon the rug, at the other, stood a +deep easy-chair. It was this chair she took, and, having taken it, she +glanced up at an oval mirror which was among the ornaments on the +opposite wall. In it she saw reflected that portion of the room which +seemed to have arranged itself about her own graceful figure,--the faint +pinks and blues, the flowered drapery, the puffed and padded furniture, +and the hundred and one entirely feminine devices of ornamentation; and +she was faintly aware that an expression less thoughtful than the one +she wore would have been more in keeping with her surroundings. + +"I look too serious to harmonize," she said. "If Bertha were here she +would detect the incongruity and deplore it." + +But she was in a thoughtful mood, which was not an uncommon experience +with her, and the faint smile the words gave rise to died away as she +turned to the fire again. What she thought of as she sat and looked into +it, it would have been difficult to tell; but there was evidence that +she was mentally well occupied in the fact that she sat entirely still +and gazed at its flickering flame for nearly half an hour. She would not +have moved then, perhaps, if she had not been roused from her reverie by +a sound at the door,--a low knock, and a voice speaking to her. + +"Agnes!" it said. "Agnes!" + +She knew it at once as Bertha's, and rose to reply to the summons almost +as if she had expected or even waited for it. When she unlocked the +door, and opened it, Bertha was standing on the threshold. She had +partly undressed, too. She had laid aside the red dress, and put on a +long white _negligée_, bordered with white fur; there was no color about +her, and it made her look cold. Perhaps she was cold, for Agnes thought +she seemed to shiver a little. + +"May I come in?" she asked. "I know it is very inconsiderate, but I had +a sort of conviction that you would not be asleep." + +"I was not thinking of going to sleep yet," said Agnes. "I am glad you +have come." + +Bertha entered, and, the door being closed, crossed the room to the +fire. She did not take a chair, but sat down upon the hearth-rug. + +"This is very feminine," she said, "and we ought to be in bed; but the +day would not be complete without it." + +Then she turned toward Agnes. + +"You must have a great deal to think of to-night," she said. + +Agnes Sylvestre looked at the fire. + +"Yes," she answered, "I have a great deal to think of." + +"Are they things you like to think of?" + +"Some of them--not all." + +"It must be a curious experience," said Bertha, "to find yourself here +again after so many years--with all your life changed for you." + +Mrs. Sylvestre did not reply. + +"You have not been here," Bertha continued, "since you went away on your +wedding journey. You were nineteen or twenty then,--only a girl." + +"I was young," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "but I was rather mature for my +years. I did not feel as if I was exactly a girl." + +Then she added, in a lower voice: + +"I had experienced something which had ripened me." + +"You mean," said Bertha, "that you knew what love was." + +She had not intended to say the words, and their abrupt directness +grated upon her as she spoke; but she could not have avoided uttering +them. + +Mrs. Sylvestre paused a moment. + +"The experience I passed through," she said, "did not belong to my age. +It was not a girl's feelings. I think it came too soon." + +"You had two alternatives to choose from," said Bertha,--"that it +should come too soon or too late." + +Mrs. Sylvestre paused again. + +"You do not think," she said, "that it ever comes to any one at the +right time?" + +Bertha had been sitting with her hands folded about her knee. She +unclasped and clasped them with a sharply vehement movement. + +"It is a false thing from beginning to end," she said. "I do not believe +in it." + +"Ah," said Mrs. Sylvestre, softly, "I believe it. I wish I did not." + +"What is there to be gained by it?" said Bertha; "a feeling that is not +to be reasoned about or controlled; a miserable, feverish emotion you +cannot understand, and can only resent and struggle against blindly. +When you let it conquer you, how can you respect yourself or the object +of it? What do women love men for? Who knows? It is like madness! All +you can say is, 'I love him. He is life or death to me.' It is so +unreasoning--so unreasoning." + +She stopped suddenly, as if all at once she became conscious that her +companion was looking at herself instead of at the fire. + +"You love a man generally," said Mrs. Sylvestre, in her tenderly +modulated voice,--"at least I have thought so,--because he is the one +human creature who is capable of causing you the greatest amount of +suffering. I don't know of any other reason, and I have thought of it a +great deal." + +"It is a good reason," said Bertha,--"a good reason." + +Then she laughed. + +"This is just a little tragic, isn't it?" she said. "What a delightfully +emotional condition we must be in to have reached tragedy in less than +five minutes, and entirely without intention! I did not come to be +tragic; I came to be analytical. I want you to tell me carefully how we +strike you." + +"We?" said Mrs. Sylvestre. + +Bertha touched herself on the breast. + +"We," she said,--"I, Richard, Laurence Arbuthnot, Colonel Tredennis, +Senator Planefield, the two hundred men callers,--Washington, in short. +How does Washington strike you, now that you have come to it again?" + +"Won't you give me two weeks to reflect upon it?" said Agnes. + +"No. I want impressions, not reflections. Is it all very much changed?" + +"I am very much changed," was the reply. + +"And we?" said Bertha. "Suppose--suppose you begin with Laurence +Arbuthnot." + +"I do not think I could. He is not one of the persons I have +remembered." + +"Agnes," said Bertha, "only wait with patience for one of those +occasions when you feel it necessary to efface him, and then tell him +that, in exactly that tone of voice, and he will in that instant +secretly atone for the crimes of a lifetime. He won't wince, and he will +probably reply in the most brilliant and impersonal manner; but, +figuratively speaking, you will have reduced him to powder and cast him +to the breeze." + +"We shall not be sufficiently intimate to render such a thing possible," +said Mrs. Sylvestre. "One must be intimate with a man to be angry enough +with him to wish to avenge one's self." + +Bertha smiled. + +"You don't like him," she said. "Poor Larry!" + +"On the contrary," was her friend's reply. "But it would not occur to me +to 'begin with him,' as you suggested just now." + +"With whom, then," said Bertha, "would you begin." + +Her guest gave a moment to reflection, during which Bertha regarded her +intently. + +"If I were going to begin at all," she said, rather slowly, "I think it +would be with Colonel Tredennis." + +There was a moment of silence, and then Bertha spoke, in a somewhat +cold and rigid voice, + +"What do you like about him?" she asked. + +"I think I like everything." + +"If you were any one else," said Bertha, "I should say that you simply +like his size. I think that is generally it. Women invariably fall +victims to men who are big and a little lumbering. They like to persuade +themselves that they are overawed and subjected. I never understood it +myself. Big men never pleased me very much--they are so apt to tread on +you." + +"I like his eyes," said Agnes, apparently reflecting aloud; "they are +very kind. And I like his voice"-- + +"It is rather too deep," remarked Bertha, "and sometimes I am a little +afraid it will degenerate into a growl, though I have never heard it do +so yet." + +Mrs. Sylvestre went on: + +"When he bends his head a little and looks down at you as you talk," she +said, "he is very nice. He is really thinking of you and regarding you +seriously. I do not think he is given to trifling." + +"No," returned Bertha; "I do not think he is given to anything special +but being massive. That is what you are thinking,--that he is massive." + +"There is no denying," said her friend, "that that is one of the things +I like." + +"Ah!" said Bertha, "you find the rest of us very flippant and trivial. +_That_ is how we strike you!" + +A fatigued little sigh escaped her lips. + +"After all," she said, "it is true. And we have obliged ourselves to be +trivial for so long that we are incapable of seriousness. +Sometimes--generally toward Lent, after I have been out a great deal--I +wonder if the other would not be interesting for a change; but, at the +same time, I know I could not be serious if I tried." + +"Your seriousness will be deeper," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "when you +accomplish it without trying." + +She was serious herself as she spoke, but her seriousness was extremely +gentle. She looked at Bertha even tenderly, and her clear eyes were very +expressive. + +"We are both changed since we met here last," she said, with simple +directness, "and it is only natural that what we have lived through +should have affected us differently. We are of very different +temperaments. You were always more vivid and intense than I, and +suffering--if you had suffered"-- + +Her soft voice faltered a little, and she paused. Bertha turned and +looked her unflinchingly in the face. + +"I--have not suffered," she said. + +Agnes spoke as simply as before. + +"I have," she said. + +Bertha turned sharply away. + +"I was afraid so," was her response. + +"If we are to be as near to each other as I hope," Agnes continued, "it +would be useless for me to try to conceal from you the one thing which +has made me what I am. The effort to hide it would always stand between +us and our confidence in each other. It is much simpler to let you know +the truth." + +She put her hands up to her face an instant, and Bertha broke the +silence with a curiously incisive question. + +"Was he very cruel to you?" + +Agnes withdrew her hands, and if her shadow of a smile had not been so +infinitely sad, it would have been bitter. + +"He could not help it," she said; "and when I was calm enough to reason +I knew he was not to blame for my imagination. It was all over in a few +months, and he would have been quite content to bear what followed +philosophically. When the worst came to the worst, he told me that he +had known it could not last, because such things never did; but that he +had also known that, even after the inevitable termination, I should +always please him and display good taste. He had lived through so much, +and I had known so little. I only spoke openly to him once,--one awful +day, and after that I scarcely know what happened to me for months. I +asked him to let me go away alone, and I went to the sea-side. Since +then the sound of the sea has been a terror to me, and yet there are +times when I long to hear it. I used to tell myself that, on one of +those days when I sat on the sand and looked at the sea, I died, and +that I have never really lived since. Something happened to me--I don't +know what. It was one brilliant morning, when the sun beat on the blue +water and the white sand, and everything was a dazzling glare. I sat on +the beach for hours without moving, and when I got up and walked away I +remember hearing myself saying, 'I have left you behind,--I have left +you behind,--I shall never see you again.' I was ill for several days +afterward, and when I recovered I seemed to have become a new creature. +When my husband came I was able to meet him so calmly that I think it +was even a kind of shock to him." + +"And that was the end?" said Bertha. + +"Yes, that was the end--for me." + +"And for him?" + +"Once or twice afterward it interested him to try experiments with me, +and when they failed he was not pleased." + +"Were you never afraid," said Bertha, "that they would not fail?" + +"No. There is nothing so final as the ending of such a feeling. There is +nothing to come after it, because it has taken everything with +it,--passion, bitterness, sorrow,--even regret. I never wished that it +might return after the day I spoke of. I have thought if, by stretching +forth my hand, I could have brought it all back just as it was at first, +I should not have wished to do it. It had been too much." + +"It is a false thing," said Bertha,--"a false thing, and there must +always be some such end to it." + +Agnes Sylvestre was silent again, and because of her silence Bertha +repeated her words with feverish eagerness. + +"It must always end so," she said. + +"_You_ know that--you _must_ know it." + +"I am only one person," was the characteristic answer. "And I do not +know. I do not want to know. I only want quiet now. I have learned +enough." + +"Agnes," said Bertha, "that is very pathetic." + +"Yes," Agnes answered. "I know it is pathetic, when I allow myself to +think of it." And for the first time her voice broke a little, and was +all the sweeter for the break in it. But it was over in a moment, and +she spoke as she had spoken before. + +"But I did not mean to be pathetic," she said. "I only wanted to tell +you the entire truth, so that there should be nothing between us, and +nothing to avoid. There can be nothing now. You know of me all that is +past, and you can guess what is to come." + +"No, I cannot do that," said Bertha. + +Agnes smiled. + +"It is very easy," she responded. "I shall have a pretty house, and I +shall amuse myself by buying new or old things for it, and by moving the +furniture. I shall give so much thought to it that after a while it will +be quite celebrated, in a small way, and Miss Jessup will refer to it as +'unique.' Mrs. Merriam will be with me, and I shall have my reception +day, and perhaps my 'evening,' and I shall see as many of the charming +people who come to Washington as is possible. You will be very good to +me, and come to see me often, and--so I hope will Mr. Arbuthnot, and +Colonel Tredennis"-- + +"Agnes," interposed Bertha, with an oddly hard manner, "if they do, one +or both of them will fall in love with you." + +"If it is either," responded Mrs. Sylvestre, serenely, "I hope it will +be Mr. Arbuthnot, as he would have less difficulty in recovering." + +"You think," said Bertha, "that nothing could ever touch you +again,--nothing?" + +"Think!" was the response; "my safety lies in the fact that I do not +think of it at all. If I were twenty I might do so, and everything would +be different. Life is very short. It is not long enough to run risks in. +I shall not trifle with what is left to me." + +"Oh," cried Bertha, "how calm you are--how calm you are!" + +"Yes," she answered, "I am calm now." + +But she put her hands up to her face again for an instant, and her +eyelashes were wet when she withdrew them. + +"It was a horribly dangerous thing," she said, brokenly. "There were so +many temptations; the temptation to find excitement in avenging myself +on others was strongest of all. I suppose it is the natural savage +impulse. There were times when I longed to be cruel. And then I began to +think--and there seemed so much suffering in life--and everything seemed +so pitiful. And I could not bear the thought of it." And she ended with +the sob of a child. + +"It is very womanish to cry," she whispered, "and I did not mean to do +it, but--you look at me so." And she laid her cheek against the +cushioned back of her chair, and, for a little while, was more pathetic +in her silence than she could have been in any words she might have +uttered. It was true that Bertha had looked at her. There were no tears +in her own eyes. Her feeling was one of obstinate resistance to all +emotion in herself; but she did not resent her friend's; on the +contrary, she felt a strange enjoyment of it. + +"Don't stop crying because I am here," she said. "I like to see you do +it." + +Mrs. Sylvestre recovered herself at once. She sat up, smiling a little. +There were no disfiguring traces of her emotion on her fair face. + +"Thank you," she answered; "but I do not like it myself so much, and I +have not done it before for a long time." + +It was, perhaps, because Mr. Arbuthnot presented himself as an entirely +safe topic, with no tendency whatever to develop the sensibilities, that +she chose him as the subject of her next remarks. + +"I do not see much change in your friend," she observed. + +"If you mean Laurence," Bertha replied, "I dare say not. He does not +allow things to happen to him. He knows better." + +"And he has done nothing whatever during the last seven years?" + +"He has been to a great many parties," said Bertha, "and he has read a +book or so, and sung several songs." + +"I hope he has sung them well," was her friend's comment. + +"It always depends upon his mood," Bertha returned; "but there have been +times when he has sung them very well indeed." + +"It can scarcely have been a great tax to have done it occasionally," +said Mrs. Sylvestre; "but I should always be rather inclined to think it +was the result of chance, and not effort. Still"--with a sudden +conscientious scruple brought about by her recollection of the fact that +these marks of disapproval had not expressed themselves in her manner +earlier in the day--"still he is very agreeable, one cannot deny that." + +"It is always safe not to attempt to deny it, even if you feel +inclined," was Bertha's comment, "because, if you do, he will inevitably +prove to you that you were in the wrong before he has done with you." + +"He did one thing I rather liked," her companion proceeded. "He was very +nice--in that peculiar, impartial way of his--to a boy"-- + +"The boy who came with the Bartletts?" Bertha interposed. "I saw him, +and was positively unhappy about him, because I could not attend to +him. Did he take him in hand?" she asked, brightening visibly. "I knew +he would, if he noticed him particularly. It was just like him to do +it." + +"I saw him first," Mrs. Sylvestre explained; "but I am afraid I should +not have been equal to the occasion if Mr. Arbuthnot had not assisted +me. It certainly surprised me that he should do it. He knew the +Bartletts, and had met the boy's sister, and in the most wonderful, yet +the most uneffusive and natural, way he utilized his material until the +boy felt himself quite at home, and not out of place at all. One of the +nicest things was the way in which he talked about Whippleville,--the +boy came from Whippleville. He seemed to give it a kind of interest and +importance, and even picturesqueness. He did not pretend to have been +there; but he knew something of the country, which is pretty, and he was +very clever in saying neither too much nor too little. Of course that +was nice." + +"Colonel Tredennis could not have done it," said Bertha. + +Agnes paused. She felt there was something of truth in the statement, +but she was reluctant to admit it. + +"Why not?" she inquired. + +"By reason of the very thing which is his attraction for you,--because +he is too massive to be adroit." + +Agnes was silent. + +"Was it not Colonel Tredennis who went to Virginia when your little girl +was ill?" she asked, in a few moments. + +"Yes," was Bertha's response. "He came because Richard was away and papa +was ill." + +"It was Janey who told me of it," said Agnes, quietly. "And she made a +very pretty story of it, in her childish way. She said that he carried +her up and down the room when she was tired, and that when her head +ached he helped her not to cry. He must be very gentle. I like to think +of it. It is very picturesque; the idea of that great soldierly fellow +nursing a frail little creature, and making her pain easier to bear. Do +you know, I find myself imagining that I know how he looked." + +Bertha sat perfectly still. She, too, knew how he had looked. But there +was no reason, she told herself, for the sudden horrible revulsion of +feeling which rushed upon her with the remembrance. A little while +before, when Agnes had told her story, there had been a reason why she +should be threatened by her emotions; but now it was different,--now +that there was, so to speak, no pathos in the air; now that they were +merely talking of commonplace, unemotional things. But she remembered so +well; if she could have forced herself to forget for one instant she +might have overcome the passion of unreasoning anguish which seized her; +but it was no use, and as she made the effort Agnes sat and watched her, +a strange questioning dawning slowly in her eyes. + +"He looked--very large"-- + +She stopped short, and her hands clutched each other hard and close. A +wild thought of getting up and leaving the room came to her, and then +she knew it was too late. + +A light flickered up from the wood-fire and fell upon her face as she +slowly turned it to Agnes. + +For an instant Agnes simply looked at her, then she uttered a +terror-stricken exclamation. + +"Bertha!" she cried. + +"Well," said Bertha; "well!" But at her next breath she began to +tremble, and left her place on the hearth and stood up, trembling still. +"I am tired out," she said. "I must go away. I ought not to have come +here." + +But Agnes rose and went to her, laying her hand on her arm. She had +grown pale herself, and there was a thrill of almost passionate feeling +in her words when she spoke. + +"No," she said. "You were right to come. _This_ is the place for you." + +She drew her down upon the sofa and held both her hands. + +"Do you think I would let you go now," she said, "until you had told me +everything? Do you think I did not know there was something you were +struggling with? When I told you of my own unhappiness, it was because I +hoped it would help you to speak. If you had not known that I had +suffered you could not have told me. You _must_ tell me now. What +barrier could there be between us,--two women who have--who have been +hurt, and who should know how to be true to each other?" + +Bertha slipped from her grasp and fell upon her knees by the sofa, +covering her face. + +"Agnes," she panted, "I never thought of this--I don't know how it has +come about. I never meant to speak. Almost the worst of it all is that +my power over myself is gone, and that it has even come to this,--that I +am speaking when I meant to be silent. Don't look at me! I don't know +what it all means! All my life has been so different--it is so unlike +me--that I say to myself it cannot be true. Perhaps it is not. I have +never believed in such things. I don't think I believe now; I don't know +what it means, I say, or whether it will last, and if it is not only a +sort of illness that I shall get better of. I am trying with all my +strength to believe that, and to get better; but while it lasts"-- + +"Go on," said Agnes, in a hushed voice. + +Bertha threw out her hands and wrung them, the pretty baubles she had +not removed when she undressed jingling on her wrists. + +"It is worse for me than for any one else," she cried. "Worse, worse! It +is not fair. I was not prepared for it. I was so sure it was not true; I +can't understand it. But, whether it is true or not, while it lasts, +Agnes, while it lasts"--And she hid her face again and the bangles and +serpents of silver and gold jingled more merrily than ever. + +"You think," said Agnes, "that you will get over it?" + +"Get over it!" she cried. "How often do you suppose I have said to +myself that I _must_ get over it? How many thousand times? I _must_ get +over it. Is it a thing to trifle with and be sentimental over? It is a +degradation. I don't spare myself. No one could say to me more than I +say to myself. I cannot spare it, and I must get over it; but I don't--I +don't--I don't. And sometimes the horrible thought comes to me that it +is a thing you can't get over, and it drives me mad, but--but"-- + +"But what?" said Agnes. + +Her hands dropped away from her face. + +"If I tell you this," she said, breathlessly, "you will despise me. I +think I am going to tell it to you that you _may_ despise me. The +torture of it will be a sort of penance. When the thought comes to me +that I _may_ get over it, that it will go out of my life in time, and be +lost forever, then I know that, compared to that, all the rest is +nothing--nothing; and that I could bear it for an eternity, the anguish +and the shame and the bitterness, if only it might not be taken away." + +"Oh!" cried Agnes, "I can believe it! I can believe it!" + +"You can believe it?" said Bertha, fiercely. "You? Yes. But I--I +cannot!" + +For some minutes after this Agnes did not speak. She sat still and +looked down at Bertha's cowering figure. There came back to her, with +terrible distinctness, times when she herself must have looked so,--only +she had always been alone,--and there mingled with the deep feeling of +the moment a far-away pity for her own helpless youth and despair. + +"Will you tell me," she said, at last, "how it began?" + +She was struck, when Bertha lifted her face from its cushions, by the +change which had come upon her. All traces of intense and passionate +feeling were gone; it was as if her weeping had swept them away, and +left only a weariness, which made her look pathetically young and +helpless. As she watched her Agnes wondered if she had ever looked up at +Tredennis with such eyes. + +"I think," she said, "that it was long before I knew. If I had not been +so young and so thoughtless I think I should have known that I began to +care for him before he went away the first time. But I was very young, +and he was so quiet. There was one day, when he brought me some +heliotrope, when I wondered why I liked the quiet things he said; and +after he went away I used to wonder, in a sort of fitful way, what he +was doing. And the first time I found myself face to face with a trouble +I thought of him, and wished for him, without knowing why. I even began +a letter to him; but I was too timid to send it." + +"Oh, if you had sent it!" Agnes exclaimed, involuntarily. + +"Yes--if I had sent it! But I did not. Perhaps it would not have made +much difference if I had, only when I told him of it"-- + +"You told him of it?" said Agnes. + +"Yes--in Virginia. All the wrong I have done, all the indulgence I have +allowed myself, is the wrong I did and the indulgence I allowed myself +in Virginia. There were days in Virginia when I suppose I was bad +enough"-- + +"Tell me that afterward," said Agnes. "I want to know how you reached +it." + +"I reached it," answered Bertha, "in this way: the thing that was my +first trouble grew until it was too strong for me--or I was too weak for +it. It was my own fault. Perhaps I ought to have known, but I did not. I +don't think that I have let any one but myself suffer for my mistake. I +couldn't do that. When I found out what a mistake it was, I told myself +that it was mine, and that I must abide by it. And in time I thought I +had grown quite hard, and I amused myself, and said that nothing +mattered; and I did not believe in emotion, and thought I enjoyed living +on the surface. I disliked to hear stories of any strong feeling. I +tried to avoid reading them, and I was always glad when I heard clever +worldly speeches made. I liked Laurence first, because he said such +clever, cold-blooded things. He was at his worst when I first knew him. +He had lost all his money, and some one had been false to him, and he +believed nothing." + +"I did not know," said Agnes, "that _he_ had a story." And then she +added, a trifle hurriedly, "But it does not matter." + +"It mattered to him," said Bertha. "And we all have a story--even poor +Larry--and even I--even I!" + +Then she went on again. + +"There was one thing," she said, "that I told myself oftener than +anything else, and that was that I was not unhappy. I was always saying +that and giving myself reasons. When my dresses were becoming, and I +went out a great deal, and people seemed to admire me, I used to say, +'How few women are as happy! How many things I have to make me happy!' +and when a horrible moment of leisure came, and I could not bear it, I +would say, 'How tired I must be to feel as I do; and what nonsense it +is!' The one thing Richard has liked most in me has been that I have not +given way to my moods, and have always reasoned about them. Ah! Agnes, +if I had been happier I might have given way to them just a little +sometimes, and have been less tired. If I were to die now I know what +they would remember of me: that I laughed a great deal, and made the +house gay." + +She went on without tears. + +"I think," she said, "that I never felt so sure of myself as I did last +winter,--so sure that I had lived past things and was quite safe. It was +a very gay season, and there were several people here who amused me and +made things seem brilliant and enjoyable. When I was not going out the +parlors were always crowded with clever men and women; and when I did go +out I danced and talked and interested myself more than I had ever +seemed to do before. I shall never forget the inauguration ball. +Laurence and Richard were both with me, and I danced every dance, and +had the most brilliant night. I don't think one expects to be actually +brilliant at an inauguration ball, but that night I think we were, and +when we were going away we turned to look back, and Laurence said, 'What +a night it has been! We couldn't possibly have had such a night if we +had tried. I wonder if we shall ever have such a night again'; and I +said, 'Scores of them, I haven't a doubt'; but that was the last night +of all." + +"The last night of all?" repeated Agnes. + +"There have been no more nights at all like it, and no more days. The +next night but one the Winter Gardners gave a party, and I was there. +Laurence brought me some roses and heliotrope, and I carried them; and I +remember how the scent of the heliotrope reminded me of the night I sat +and talked to Philip Tredennis by the fire. It came back all the more +strongly because I had heard from papa of his return. I was not glad +that he had come to Washington, and I did not care to see him. He seemed +to belong to a time I wanted to forget. I did not know he was to be at +the Gardners' until he came in, and I looked up and saw him at the door. +You know how he looks when he comes into a room,--so tall, and strong, +and different from all the rest. Does he look different from all the +rest, Agnes--or is it only that I think so?" + +"He is different," said Agnes. "Even I could see that." + +"Oh!" said Bertha, despairingly, "I don't know what it is that makes it +so; but sometimes I have thought that, perhaps, when first men were on +earth they were like that,--strong and earnest, and simple and +brave,--never trifling with themselves or others, and always ready to be +tender with those who suffer or are weak. If you only knew the stories +we have heard of his courage and determination and endurance! I do not +think he ever remembers them himself; but how can the rest of us forget! + +"The first thought I had when I saw him was that it was odd that the +mere sight of him should startle me so. And then I watched him pass +through the crowds, and tried to make a paltry satirical comment to +myself upon his size and his grave face. And then, against my will, I +began to wonder what he would do when he saw me, and if he would see +what had happened to me since he had given me the flowers for my first +party; and I wished he had stayed away--and I began to feel tired--and +just then he turned and saw me." + +She paused and sank into a wearied sitting posture, resting her cheek +against the sofa cushion. + +"It seems so long ago--so long ago," she said; "and yet it is not one +short year since." + +She went on almost monotonously. + +"He saw the change in me,--I knew that,--though he did not know what it +meant. I suppose he thought the bad side of me had developed instead of +the good, because the bad had predominated in the first place." + +"He never thought that," Agnes interposed. "Never!" + +"Don't you think so?" said Bertha. "Well, it was not my fault if he +didn't. I don't know whether it was natural or not that I should always +make the worst of myself before him; but I always did. I did not want +him to come to the house; but Richard brought him again and again, until +he had been so often that there must have been some serious reasons if +he had stayed away. And then--and then"-- + +"What then?" said Agnes. + +She made a gesture of passionate impatience. + +"Oh, I don't know," she said, "I don't know! I began to be restless and +unhappy. I did not care for going out, and I dared not stay at home. +When I was alone I used to sit and think of that first winter, and +compare myself with the Bertha who lived then as if she had been another +creature,--some one I had been fond of, and who had died in some sad, +unexpected way while she was very young. I used to be angry because I +found myself so easily moved,--things touched me which had never touched +me before; and one day, as I was singing a little German song of +farewell,--that poor little, piteous '_Auf Wiedersehn_' we all +know,--suddenly my voice broke, and I gave a helpless sob, and the tears +streamed down my cheeks. It filled me with terror. I have never been a +crying woman, and I have rather disliked people who cried. When I cried +I knew that some terrible change had come upon me, and I hated myself +for it. I told myself I was ill, and I said I would go away; but Richard +wished me to remain. And every day it was worse and worse. And when I +was angry with myself I revenged myself on the person I should have +spared. When I said things of myself which were false he had a way of +looking at me as if he was simply waiting to hear what I would say next, +and I never knew whether he believed me or not, and I resented that more +than all the rest." + +She broke off for an instant, and then began again hurriedly. + +"Why should I make such a long story of it?" she said. "I could not tell +it all, nor the half of it, if I talked until to-morrow. If I had been +given to sentiments and emotions I could not have deceived myself so +long as I did, that is all. I have known women who have had experiences +and sentiments all their lives, one after another. I used to know +girls, when I was a girl, who were always passing through some +sentimental adventure; but I was not like that, and I never understood +them. But I think it is better to be so than to live unmoved so long +that you feel you are quite safe, and then to waken up to face the +feeling of a lifetime all at once. It is better to take it by +instalments. If I had been more experienced I should have been safer. +But I deceived myself, and called what I suffered by every name but the +right one. I said it was resentment and wounded vanity and weakness; but +it was not--it was not. There was one person who knew it was not, though +he let me call it what I pleased"-- + +"He?" said Agnes. + +"It was Laurence Arbuthnot who knew. He had been wretched himself once, +and while he laughed at me and talked nonsense, he cared enough for me +to watch me and understand." + +"It would never have occurred to me," remarked Agnes, "to say he did not +care for you. I think he cares for you very much." + +"Yes, he cares for me," said Bertha, "and I can see now that he was +kinder to me than I knew. He stood between me and many a miserable +moment, and warded off things I could not have warded off myself. I +think he hoped at first that I would get over it. It was he who helped +me to make up my mind to go away. It seemed the best thing, but it would +have been better if I had not gone." + +"Better?" Agnes repeated. + +"There was a Fate in it," she said. "Everything was against me. When I +said good-by to--to the person I wished to escape from--though I did not +admit to myself then that it was from him I wished to escape--when I +said good-by, I thought it was almost the same thing as saying good-by +forever. I had always told myself that I was too superficial to be +troubled by anything long, and that I could always forget anything I +was determined to put behind me. I had done it before, and I fancied I +could do it then, and that when I came back in the winter I should have +got over my moods, and be stronger physically, and not be emotional any +more. I meant to take the children and give them every hour of my days, +and live out-of-doors in a simple, natural way, until I was well. I +always called it getting well. But when he came to say good-by--it was +very hard. It was so hard that I was terrified again. He spent the +evening with us, and the hours slipped away--slipped away, and every +time the clock struck my heart beat so fast that, at last, instead of +beating, it seemed only to tremble and make me weak. And at last he got +up to go; and I could not believe that it was true, that he was really +going, until he went out of the door. And then so much seemed to go with +him, and we had only said a few commonplace words--and it was the +last--last time. And it all rushed upon me, and my heart leaped in my +side, and--and I went to him. There was no other way. And, O Agnes"-- + +"I know--I know!" said Agnes, brokenly. "But--try not to do that! It is +the worst thing you can do--to cry so." + +"He did not know why I came," Bertha said. "I don't know what he +thought. I don't know what I said. He looked pale and startled at first, +and then he took my hand in both his and spoke to me. I have seen him +hold Janey's hand so--as if he could not be gentle enough. And he said +it was always hard to say good-by, and would I remember--and his voice +was quite unsteady--would I remember that if I should ever need any help +he was ready to be called. I had treated him badly and coldly that very +evening, but it was as if he forgot it. And I forgot, too, and for just +one little moment we were near each other, and there was nothing in our +hearts but sadness and kindness, as if we had been friends who had the +right to be sad at parting. And we said good-by again--and he went +away. + +"I fought very hard in those next two months, and I was very determined. +I never allowed myself time to think in the daytime. I played with the +children and read to them and walked with them, and when night came I +used to be tired out; but I did not sleep. I laid awake trying to force +my thoughts back, and when morning broke it seemed as if all my strength +was spent. And I did not get well. And, when it all seemed at the worst, +suddenly Janey was taken ill, and I thought she would die, and I was all +alone, and I sent for papa"-- + +She broke off with the ghost of a bitter little laugh. + +"I have heard a great deal said about fate," she went on. "Perhaps it +was fate; I don't know. I don't care now--it doesn't matter. That very +day papa was ill himself, and Philip Tredennis came to me--Philip +Tredennis!" + +"Oh!" cried Agnes, "it was very cruel!" + +"Was it cruel?" said Bertha. "It was something. Perhaps it would do to +call it cruel. I had been up with Janey for two or three nights. She had +suffered a great deal for a little creature, and I was worn out with +seeing her pain and not being able to help it. I was expecting the +doctor from Washington, and when she fell asleep at last I went to the +window to listen, so that I might go down and keep the dogs quiet if he +came. It was one of those still, white moonlight nights--the most +beautiful night. After a while I fancied I heard the far-away hoof-beat +of a horse on the road, and I ran down. The dogs knew me, and seemed to +understand I wished them to be quiet when I spoke to them. As the noise +came nearer I went down to the gate. I was trembling with eagerness and +anxiety, and I spoke before I reached it. I was sure it was Doctor +Malcolm; but it was some one larger and taller, and the figure came out +into the moonlight, and I was looking up at Philip Tredennis!" + +Agnes laid her hand on her arm. + +"Wait a moment before you go on," she said. "Give yourself time." + +"No," said Bertha, hurrying, "I will go on to the end. Agnes, I have +never lied to myself since that minute--never once. Where would have +been the use? I thought he was forty miles away, and there he stood, and +the terror, and joy, and anguish of seeing him swept everything else +away, and I broke down. I don't know what he felt and thought. There was +one strange moment when he stood quite close to me and touched my +shoulder with his strong, kind hand. He seemed overwhelmed by what I +did, and his voice was only a whisper. There seemed no one in all the +world but ourselves, and when I lifted my face from the gate I knew what +all I had suffered meant. As he talked to me afterward I was saying over +to myself, as if it was a lesson I was learning, 'You are mad with joy +just because this man is near you. All your pain has gone away. +Everything is as it was before, but you don't care--you don't care.' I +said that because I wished to make it sound as wicked as I could. But it +was of no use. I have even thought since then that if he had been a bad +man, thinking of himself, I might have been saved that night by finding +it out. But he was not thinking of himself--only of me. He came, not for +his own sake, but for mine and Janey's. He came to help us and stand by +us and care for us; to do any common, simple service for us, as well as +any great one. We were not to think of him; he was to think of us. And +he sent me away upstairs to sleep, and walked outside below the window +all night. And I slept like a child. I should not have slept if it had +been any one else, but it seemed as if he had brought strength and +quietness with him, and I need not stay awake, because everything was so +safe. That has been his power over me from the first--that he rested +me. Sometimes I have been so tired of the feverish, restless way we have +of continually amusing ourselves, as if we dare not stop, and of +reasoning and wondering and arguing to no end. We are all introspection +and retrospection, and we call it being analytical and clever. If it is +being clever, then we are too clever. One gets so tired of it; one +wishes one could stop thinking and know less--or more. He was not like +that, and he rested me. That was it. He made life seem more simple. + +"Well, he rested me then, and, though I made one effort to send him +away, I knew he would not go, and I did not try very hard. I did not +want him to go. So when he refused to be sent away, an obstinate feeling +came over me, and I said to myself that I would not do or say one unkind +thing to him while he was there. I would be as gentle and natural with +him as if--as if he had been some slight, paltry creature who was +nothing, and less than nothing, to me. I should have been amiable enough +to such a man if I had been indebted to him for such service." + +"Ah!" sighed Agnes, "but it could not end there!" + +"End!" said Bertha. "There is no end, there never will be! Do you think +I do not see the bitter truth? One may call it what one likes, and make +it as pathetic and as tragic and hopeless as words can paint it, but it +is only the old, miserable, undignified story of a woman who is married, +and who cares for a man who is not her husband. Nothing can be worse +than that. It is a curious thing, isn't it, that somehow one always +feels as if the woman must be bad?" + +Agnes Sylvestre laid a hand on her again without speaking. + +"I suppose I was bad in those days," Bertha continued. "I did not feel +as if I was--though I dare say that only makes it worse. I deliberately +let myself be happy. I let him be kind to me. I tried to amuse and +please him. Janey got well, and the days were beautiful. I did all he +wished me to do, and he was as good to me as he was to Janey. When you +spoke of his being so gentle it brought everything back to me in a +rush,--his voice, and his look, and his touch. There are so many people +who, when they touch you, seem to take something from you; he always +seemed to give you something,--protection, and sympathy, and generous +help. He had none of the gallant tricks of other men, and he was often a +little shy and restrained, but the night he held my hand in both his, +and the moment he touched my shoulder, when I broke down so at the gate, +I could not forget if I tried." + +"But, perhaps," said Agnes, sadly, "you had better try." + +Bertha looked up at her. + +"When I have tried for a whole year," she said, "I will tell you what +success I have had." + +"Oh!" Agnes cried, desperately, "it will take more than a year." + +"I have thought it might," said Bertha; "perhaps it may take even two." + +The fire gave a fitful leap of flame, and she turned to look at it. + +"The fire is going out," she said, "and I have almost finished. Do you +care to hear the rest? You have been very patient to listen so long." + +"Go on," Agnes said. + +"Well, much as I indulged myself then I knew where I must stop, and I +never really forgot that I was going to stop at a certain point. I said +that I would be happy just so long as he was there, and that when we +parted that would be the end of it. I even laid out my plans, and the +night before he was to go away--in the evening, after the long, +beautiful day was over--I said things to him which I meant should make +him distrust me. The shallowest man on earth will hate you if you make +him think you are shallow, and capable of trifling as he does himself. +The less a man intends to remember you the more he intends you shall +remember him. It will be his religious belief that women should be +true,--some one should be true, you know, and it is easier to let it be +the woman. What I tried to suggest that night was that my treatment of +him had only been a caprice,--that what he had seen of me in Washington +had been the real side of my life, and that he would see it again and +need not be surprised." + +"O Bertha!" her friend cried. "O Bertha!" + +And she threw both arms about her with an intensely feminine swiftness +and expressiveness. + +"Yes," said Bertha, "it was not easy. I never tried anything quite so +difficult before, and perhaps I did not do it well, for--he would not +believe me." + +There was quite a long pause, in which she leaned against Agnes, +breathing quickly. + +"I think that is really the end," she said at last. "It seems rather +abrupt, but there is very little more. He is a great deal stronger than +I am, and he is too true himself to believe lies at the first telling. +One must tell them to him obstinately and often. I shall have to be +persistent and consistent too." + +"What do you mean?" exclaimed Agnes. "What are you thinking of doing?" + +"There will be a great deal to be done," she answered,--"a great deal. +There is only one thing which will make him throw me aside"-- + +"Throw you aside--you?" + +"Yes. I have always been very proud,--it was the worst of my faults that +I was so deadly proud,--but I want him to throw me aside--me! Surely one +could not care for a man when he was tired and did not want one any +more. That _must_ end it. And there is something else. I don't know--I +am not sure--I could not trust myself--but there have been times when I +thought that he was beginning to care too--whether he knew it or not. I +don't judge him by the other men I have known, but sometimes there was +such a look in his eyes that it made me tremble with fear and joy. And +he shall not spoil his life for me. It would be a poor thing that he +should give all he might give--to Bertha Amory. He had better give it +to--to you, Agnes," she said, with a little tightening grasp. + +"I do not want it," said Agnes, calmly. "I have done with such things, +and he is not the man to change." + +"He must," said Bertha, "in time--if I am very unflinching and clever. +They always said I was clever, you know, and that I had wonderful +control over myself. But I shall have to be very clever. The only thing +which will make him throw me aside is the firm belief that I am worth +nothing,--the belief that I am false, and shallow, and selfish, and as +wicked as such a slight creature can be. Let me hide the little that is +good in me, and show him always, day by day, what is bad. There is +enough of that, and in the end he must get tired of me, and show me that +he has done with me forever." + +"You cannot do it," said Agnes, breathlessly. + +"I cannot do it for long, I know that; but I can do it for a while, and +then I will make Richard let me go away--to Europe. I have asked him +before, but he seemed so anxious to keep me--I cannot tell why--and I +have never opposed or disobeyed him. I try to be a good wife in such +things as that. I ought to be a good wife in something. Just now he has +some reason for wishing me to remain here. He does not always tell me +his reasons. But perhaps in the spring he will not object to my going, +and one can always spend a year or so abroad; and when he joins us, as +he will afterward, he will be sure to be fascinated, and in the end we +might stay away for years, and if we ever come back all will be over, +and--and I shall be forgotten." + +She withdrew herself from her friend's arms, and rose to her feet. + +"I shall be forgotten--forgotten!" she said. "Oh! how can I be! How can +such pain pass away and end in nothing! Just while everything is at the +worst, it is not easy to remember that one only counts for one, after +all, and that a life is such a little thing. It seems so much to one's +self. And yet what does it matter that Bertha Amory's life went all +wrong, and was only a bubble that was tossed away and broken? There are +such millions and millions of people that it means nothing, only to +Bertha Amory, and it cannot mean anything to her very long. Only just +while it lasts--and before one gets used to--to the torture of it"-- + +She turned away and crossed the room to the window, drawing aside the +curtain. + +"There is a little streak of light in the East," she said. "It is the +day, and you have not slept at all." + +Agnes went to her, and they stood and looked at it together,--a faint, +thin line of gray tinged with palest yellow. + +"To-morrow has come," said Bertha. "And we must begin the New Year +properly. I must make up my visiting-book and arrange my lists. +Don't--don't call any one, Agnes--it is only--faintness." And with the +little protesting smile on her lips she sank to the floor. + +Agnes knelt down at her side, and began to loosen her wrapper at the +throat and chafe her hands. + +"Yes, it is only faintness," she said, in a low voice; "but if it were +something more you would be saved a great deal." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + +"_On dit_ that the charming Mrs. Sylvestre, so well known and so greatly +admired in society circles as Miss Agnes Wentworth, has, after several +years of absence, much deplored by her numberless friends, returned to +make her home in Washington, having taken a house on Lafayette Square. +The three years of Mrs. Sylvestre's widowhood have been spent abroad, +chiefly in Italy,--the land of love and beauty,--where Tasso sang and +Raphael dreamed of the Immortals." + +Thus, the society column of a daily paper, and a week later Mrs. Merriam +arrived, and the house on Lafayette Square was taken possession of. + +It was one of the older houses,--a large and substantial one, whose +rather rigorous exterior still held forth promises of possibilities in +the way of interior development. Arbuthnot heard Bertha mention one day +that one of Mrs. Sylvestre's chief reasons for selecting it was that it +"looked quiet," and he reflected upon this afterward as being rather +unusual as the reason of a young and beautiful woman. + +"Though, after all, she 'looks quiet' herself," was his mental comment. +"If I felt called upon to remark upon her at all, I should certainly say +that she was a perfectly composed person. Perhaps that is the groove she +chooses to live in, or it may be simply her nature. I shouldn't mind +knowing which." + +He was rather desirous of seeing what she would make of the place +inside, but the desire was by no means strong enough to lead him to make +his first call upon her an hour earlier than he might have been expected +according to the strictest canons of good taste. + +On her part Mrs. Sylvestre found great pleasure in the days spent in +establishing herself. For years her life had been an unsettled one, and +the prospect of arranging a home according to her own tastes--and +especially a home in Washington--was very agreeable to her. Her fortune +was large, her time was her own, and as in the course of her rambling +she had collected innumerable charming and interesting odds and ends, +there was no reason why her house should not be a delightful one. + +For several days she was quite busy and greatly interested. She found +her pictures, plaques, and hangings even more absorbing than she had +imagined they would be. She spent her mornings in arranging and +rearranging cabinets, walls, and mantels, and moved about her rooms +wearing a faint smile of pleasure on her lips, and a faint tinge of +color on her cheeks. + +"Really," she said to Bertha, who dropped in to see her one morning, and +found her standing in the middle of the room reflecting upon a pretty +old blue cup and saucer, "I am quite happy in a quiet way. I seem to be +shut in from the world and life, and all busy things, and to find +interest enough in the color of a bit of china, or the folds of a +_portière_. It seems almost exciting to put a thing on a shelf, and then +take it down and put it somewhere else." + +When Arbuthnot passed the house he saw that rich Eastern-looking stuffs +curtained the windows, and great Indian jars stood on the steps and +balconies, as if ready for plants. In exhausting the resources of the +universe Mr. Sylvestre had given some attention to India, and, being a +man of caprices, had not returned from his explorings empty-handed. A +carriage stood before the house, and the door being open, revealed +glimpses of pictures and hangings in the hall, which were pleasantly +suggestive. + +"She will make it attractive," Arbuthnot said to himself. "That goes +without saying. And she will be rather perilously so herself." + +His first call upon her was always a very distinct memory to him. It +was made on a rather chill and unpleasant evening, and, being admitted +by a servant into the hall he had before caught a glimpse of, its +picturesque comfort and warmth impressed themselves upon him in the +strongest possible contrast to the raw dampness and darkness of the +night. Through half-drawn _portières_ he had a flitting glance at two or +three rooms and a passing impression of some bright or deep point of +color on drapery, bric-à-brac, or pictures, and then he was ushered into +the room in which Mrs. Sylvestre sat herself. She had been sitting +before the fire with a book upon her lap, and she rose to meet him, +still holding the volume in her hand. She was dressed in violet and wore +a large cluster of violets loosely at her waist. She looked very +slender, and tall, and fair, and the rich, darkly glowing colors of the +furniture and hangings formed themselves into a background for her, as +if the accomplishment of that end had been the sole design of their +existence. Arbuthnot even wondered if it was possible that she would +ever again look so well as she did just at the instant she rose and +moved forward, though he recognized the folly of the thought before ten +minutes had passed. + +She looked quite as well when she reseated herself, and even better when +she became interested in the conversation which followed. It was a +conversation which dealt principally with the changes which had taken +place in Washington during her absence from it. She found a great many. + +"It strikes me as a little singular that you do not resent them more," +said Arbuthnot. + +"Most of them are changes for the better," she answered. + +"Ah!" he returned; "but that would not make any difference to the +ordinary mind--unless it awakened additional resentment. There is a +sense of personal injury in recognizing that improvements have been made +entirely without our assistance." + +"I do not feel it," was her reply, "or it is lost in my pleasure in +being at home again." + +"She has always thought of it as 'home' then," was Arbuthnot's mental +comment. "That is an inadvertent speech which tells a story." + +His impressions of the late Mr. Sylvestre were not agreeable ones. He +had heard him discussed frequently by men who had known him, and the +stories told of him were not pleasant. After fifteen minutes in the +crucible of impartial public opinion, his manifold brilliant gifts and +undeniable graces and attainments had a habit of disappearing in vapor, +and leaving behind them a residuum of cold-blooded selfishness and fine +disregard of all human feelings in others, not easily disposed of. +Arbuthnot had also noticed that there was but one opinion expressed on +the subject of his marriage. + +"He married a lovely girl twelve or fifteen years younger than himself," +he had heard a man say once. "I should like to see what he has made of +her." + +"You would!" ejaculated an older man. "I shouldn't! Heaven forbid!" + +It added greatly to Arbuthnot's interest in her that she bore no outward +signs of any conflict she might have passed through. Whatever it had +been, she had borne it with courage, and kept her secret her own. The +quiet of her manner was not suggestive either of sadness or +self-repression, and she made no apparent effort to evade mention of her +married life, though, as she spoke of herself but seldom, it seemed +entirely natural that she should refer rarely to the years she had +passed away from Washington. + +When, a little later, Mrs. Merriam came in, she proved to be as +satisfactory as all other appurtenances to the household. She was a +picturesque, elderly woman, with a small, elegant figure, an acute +little countenance, and large, dark eyes, which sparkled in the most +amazing manner at times. She was an old Washingtonian herself, had +lived through several administrations, and had made the most of her +experience. She seemed to have personally known the notabilities of half +a century, and her reminiscences gave Arbuthnot a feeling of being +surpassingly youthful and modern. She had been living abroad for the +last seven years, and, finding herself at home once more, seemed to +settle down with a sense of relief. + +"It is a bad habit to get into--this of living abroad," she said. "It is +a habit, and it grows on one. I went away intending to remain a year, +and I should probably have ended my existence in Europe if Mrs. +Sylvestre had not brought me home. I was always a little homesick, too, +and continually felt the need of a new administration; but I lacked the +resolution it required to leave behind me the things I had become +accustomed to." + +When he went away Arbuthnot discovered that it was with her he had +talked more than with Mrs. Sylvestre, and yet, while he had been in the +room, it had not occurred to him that Mrs. Sylvestre was silent. Her +silence was not unresponsiveness. When he looked back upon it he found +that there was even something delicately inspiring in it. "It is that +expression of gentle attentiveness in her eyes," he said. "It makes your +most trivial remark of consequence, and convinces you that, if she +spoke, she would be sure to say what it would please you most to hear. +It is a great charm." + +For a few moments before returning to his rooms he dropped in upon the +Amory household. + +There was no one in the parlor when he entered but Colonel Tredennis, +who stood with his back to the fire, apparently plunged deep in thought, +his glance fixed upon the rug at his feet. He was in evening dress, and +held a pair of white gloves in his hand, but he did not wear a festive +countenance. Arbuthnot thought that he looked jaded and worn. Certainly +there were deep lines left on his forehead, even when he glanced up and +straightened it. + +"I am waiting for Mrs. Amory," he said. "Amory is out of town, and, as +we were both going to the reception at the Secretary of State's, I am to +accompany her. I think she will be down directly. Yes, there she is." + +They saw her through the _portières_ descending the staircase as he +spoke. She was gleaming in creamy satin and lace, and carried a wrap +over her arm. She came into the room with a soft rustle of trailing +draperies, and Tredennis stirred slightly, and then stood still. + +"Did I keep you waiting very long?" she said. "I hope not," and then +turned to Arbuthnot, as she buttoned her long glove deliberately. + +"Richard has gone to Baltimore with a theatre party," she explained. +"Miss Varien went and half-a-dozen others. I did not care to go; and +Richard persuaded Colonel Tredennis to assume his responsibilities for +the evening and take me to the Secretary of State's. The President is to +be there, and as I have not yet told him that I approve of his Cabinet +and don't object to his message, I feel I ought not to keep him in +suspense any longer." + +"Your approval will naturally remove a load of anxiety from his mind," +said Arbuthnot. "Can I be of any assistance to you in buttoning that +glove?" + +She hesitated a second and then extended her wrist. To Arbuthnot, who +had occasionally performed the service for her before, there was +something novel both in the hesitation and the delicate suggestion of +coquettish surrender in her gesture. It had been the chief of her charms +for him that her coquetries were of the finer and more reserved sort, +and that they had never expended themselves upon him. This was something +so new that his momentary bewilderment did not add to his dexterity, and +the glove-buttoning was of longer duration than it would otherwise have +been. + +While it was being accomplished Colonel Tredennis looked on in silence. +He had never buttoned a woman's glove in his life. It seemed to him that +it was scarcely the thing for a man who was neither husband, brother, +nor lover to do. If there was any deep feeling in his heart, how could +this careless, conventional fellow stand there and hold her little wrist +and meet her lifted eyes without betraying himself? His reasoning was +not very logical in its nature: it was the reasoning of pain and hot +anger, and other uneasy and masterful emotions, which so got the better +of him that he turned suddenly away that he might not see, scarcely +knowing what he did. It was an abrupt movement and attracted Arbuthnot's +attention, as also did something else,--a movement of Bertha's,--an +unsteadiness of the gloved hand which, however, was speedily controlled +or ended. He glanced at her, but only to find her smiling, though her +breath came a little quickly, and her eyes looked exceedingly bright. + +"I am afraid you find it rather troublesome," she said. + +"Extremely," he replied; "but I look upon it in the light of moral +training, and, sustained by a sense of duty, will endeavor to +persevere." + +He felt the absurdity and triviality of the words all the more, perhaps, +because as he uttered them he caught a glimpse of Tredennis' +half-averted face. There was that in its jaded look which formed too +sharp a contrast to inconsequent jesting. + +"It is not getting easier for him," was his thought. "It won't until it +has driven him harder even than it does now." + +Perhaps there was something in his own humor which made him a trifle +more susceptible to outward influences than usual. As has been already +intimated, he had his moods, and he had felt one of them creeping upon +him like a shadow during his brief walk through the dark streets. + +"I hear the carriage at the door," he said, when he had buttoned the +glove. "Don't let me detain you, I am on my way home." + +"You have been?"--questioned Bertha, suddenly awakening to a new +interest on her own part. + +"I called upon Mrs. Sylvestre," he answered. + +And then he assisted her to put on her wrap and they all went out to the +carriage together. When she was seated and the door closed, Bertha +leaned forward and spoke through the open window. + +"Don't you think the house very pretty?" she inquired. + +"Very," was his brief reply, and though she seemed to expect him to add +more, he did not do so, and the carriage drove away and left him +standing upon the sidewalk. + +"Ah!" said Bertha, leaning back, with a faint smile, "he will go again +and again, and yet again." + +"Will he?" said the colonel. "Let us hope he will enjoy it." But the +truth was that the subject did not awaken in him any absorbing interest. + +"Oh! he will enjoy it," she responded. + +"And Mrs. Sylvestre?" suggested Tredennis. + +"He will never be sure what she thinks of him, or what she wishes him to +think of her, though she will have no caprices, and will always treat +him beautifully, and the uncertainty will make him enjoy himself more +than ever." + +"Such a state of bliss," said the colonel, "is indeed greatly to be +envied." + +He was always conscious of a rather dreary sense of bewilderment when he +heard himself giving voice in his deep tones to such small change as the +above remark. Under such circumstances there was suggested to him the +idea that for the moment he had changed places with some more luckily +facile creature and represented him but awkwardly. And yet, of late, he +had found himself gradually bereft of all other conversational resource. +Since the New Year's day, when Bertha had called his attention to the +weather, he had seen in her no vestige of what had so moved him in the +brief summer holiday in which she had seemed to forget to arm herself +against him. + +It appeared that his place was fixed for him, and that nothing remained +but to occupy it with as good a grace as possible. But he knew he had +not borne it well at the outset. It was but nature that he should have +borne it ill, and have made some effort at least to understand the +meaning of the change in her. + +"All this goes for nothing," he had said to her; but it had not gone for +nothing, after all. A man who loves a woman with the whole force of his +being, whether it is happily or unhappily, is not a well-regulated +creature wholly under his own control. His imagination will play him +bitter tricks and taunt him many an hour, both in the bright day and in +the dead watches of the night, when he wakens to face his misery alone. +He will see things as they are not, and be haunted by phantoms whose +vague outlines torture him, while he knows their unreality. + +"It is not true," he will say. "It cannot be--and yet if it should +be--though it is not." + +A word, a smile, the simplest glance or tone, will distort themselves +until their very slightness seems the most damning proof. But that he +saw his own folly and danger, there were times on those first days when +Tredennis might have been betrayed by his fierce sense of injury into +mistakes which it would have been impossible for him to retrieve by any +after effort. But even in the moments of his greatest weakness he +refused to trifle with himself. On the night of the New Year's day when +Bertha and Agnes had sat together, he had kept a vigil too. The occupant +of the room below his had heard him walking to and fro, and had laid his +restlessness to a great number of New Year's calls instead of to a +guilty conscience. But the colonel had been less lenient with himself, +and had fought a desperate battle in the silent hours. + +"What rights have I," he had said, in anguish and humiliation,--"what +rights have I at the best? If her heart was as tender toward me as it +seems hard, that would be worse than all. It would seem then that I must +tear myself from her for her sake as well as for my own. As it is I can +at least be near her, and torture myself and let her torture me, and +perhaps some day do her some poor kindness of which she knows nothing. +Only I must face the truth that I have no claim upon her--none. If she +chooses to change her mood, why should I expect or demand an +explanation? The wife of one man, the--the beloved of another--O Bertha! +Bertha!" And he buried his face in his hands and sat so in the darkness, +and in the midst of his misery he seemed to hear again the snatch of +song she had sung as she sat on the hill-side, with her face half +upturned to the blue sky. + +The memory of that day, and of some of those which had gone before it, +cost him more than all else. It came back to him suddenly when he had +reduced himself to a dead level of feeling; once or twice, when he was +with Bertha herself, it returned to him with such freshness and vivid +truth, that it seemed for a moment that a single word would sweep every +barrier away, and they would stand face to face, speaking the simple +truth, whatever it might be. + +"Why not?" he thought. "Why not, after all, if she is unhappy and needs +a friend, why should it not be the man who would bear either death or +life for her?" But he said nothing of this when he spoke to her. After +their first two or three interviews he said less than ever. Each of +those interviews was like the first. She talked to him as she talked to +Arbuthnot, to Planefield, to the _attachés_ of the legations, to the +clever newspaper man from New York or Boston, who was brought in by a +friend on one of her evenings, because he wished to see if the +paragraphists had overrated her attractions. She paid him graceful +conventional attentions; she met him with a smile when he entered; if +he was grave, she hoped he was not unwell or out of spirits; she made +fine, feathery, jesting little speeches, as if she expected them to +amuse him; she gave him his share of her presence, of her conversation, +of her laugh, and went her way to some one else to whom she gave the +same things. + +"And why should I complain?" he said. + +But he did complain, or some feverish, bitter ache in his soul +complained for him, and wrought him all sorts of evil, and wore him out, +and deepened the lines on his face, and made him feel old and hopeless. +He was very kind to Janey in those days and spent a great deal of time +with her. It was Janey who was his favorite, though he was immensely +liberal to Jack, and bestowed upon Meg, who was too young for him, +elaborate and expensive toys, which she reduced to fragments and +dissected and analyzed with her brother's assistance. He used to go to +see Janey in the nursery and take her out to walk and drive, and at such +times felt rather glad that she was not like her mother. She bore no +likeness to Bertha, and was indeed thought to resemble the professor, +who was given to wondering at her as he had long ago wondered at her +mother. The colonel fancied that it rested him to ramble about in +company with this small creature. They went to the parks, hand in hand, +so often that the nurse-maids who took their charges there began to know +them quite well, the popular theory among them being that the colonel +was an interesting widower, and the little one his motherless child. The +winter was a specially mild one, even for Washington, and it was +generally pleasant out of doors, and frequently Janey's escort sat on +one of the green benches and read his paper while she disported herself +on the grass near him, or found entertainment in propelling her family +of dolls up and down the walk in their carriage. They had long and +interesting conversations together, and once or twice even went to the +Capitol itself, and visited the House and the Senate, deriving much +pleasure and benefit from looking down upon the rulers of their country +"rising to points of order" in their customary awe-inspiring way. On one +of these occasions, possibly overpowered by the majesty of the scene, +Janey fell asleep, and an hour later, as Bertha stepped from her +carriage, with cards and calling-list in hand, she encountered a large, +well-known figure, bearing in its arms, with the most astonishing +accustomed gentleness and care, a supine little form, whose head +confidingly reposed on the broadest of shoulders. + +"She went to sleep," said the colonel, with quite a paternal demeanor. + +He thought at first that Bertha was going to kiss the child. She made a +step forward, an eager tenderness kindling in her eyes, then checked +herself and laughed, half shrugging her shoulders. + +"May I ask if you carried her the entire length of the avenue in the +face of the multitude?" she said. "You were very good, and displayed +most delightful moral courage if you did; but it must not occur again. +She must not go out without a nurse, if she is so much trouble." + +"She is no trouble," he answered, "and it was not necessary to carry her +the length of the avenue." + +Bertha went into the house before him. + +"I will ring for a nurse," she said at the parlor door. "She will be +attended to--and you are extremely amiable. I have been calling all the +afternoon and have just dropped in for Richard, who is going with me to +the Drummonds' _musicale_." + +But Tredennis did not wait for the nurse. He knew the way to the nursery +well enough, and bore off his little burden to her own domains _sans +cérémonie_, while Bertha stood and watched him from below. + +If she had been gay the winter before, she was gayer still now. She had +her afternoon for reception and her evening at home, and gave, also, a +series of more elaborate and formal entertainments. At these +festivities the political element was represented quite brilliantly. She +professed to have begun at last to regard politics seriously, and, +though this statement was not received with the most entire confidence, +the most liberal encouragement was bestowed upon her. Richard, +especially, seemed to find entertainment in her whim. He even admitted +that he himself took an interest in the affairs of the nation this +winter. He had been awakened to it by his intimacy with Planefield, +which increased as the business connected with the Westoria lands grew +upon him. There was a great deal of this business to be transacted, it +appeared, though his references to the particular form of his share of +it were never very definite, being marked chiefly by a brilliant +vagueness which, Bertha was wont to observe, added interest to the +subject. + +"I should not understand if you explained it, of course," she said. +"And, as I don't understand, I can give play to a naturally vivid +imagination. All sorts of events may depend upon you. Perhaps it is even +necessary of you to 'lobby,' and you are engaged in all sorts of +machinations. How do people 'lobby,' Richard, and is there an opening in +the profession for a young person of undeniable gifts and charms?" + +In these days Planefield presented himself more frequently than ever. +People began to expect to see his large, florid figure at the "evenings" +and dinner-parties, and gradually he and his friends formed an element +in them. It was a new element, and not altogether the most delightful +one. Some of the friends were not remarkable for polish of manner and +familiarity with the _convenances_, and one or two of them, after they +began to feel at ease, talked a good deal in rather pronounced tones, +and occasionally enjoyed themselves with a freedom from the shackles of +ceremony which seemed rather to belong to some atmosphere other than +that of the pretty, bright parlors. But it would not have been easy to +determine what Bertha thought of the matter. She accepted Richard's +first rather apologetic mention of it gracefully enough, and, after a +few evenings, he no longer apologized. + +"They may be a trifle uncouth," he had said; "but some of them are +tremendous fellows when you understand them,--shrewd, far-seeing +politicians, who may astonish the world any day by some sudden, +brilliant move. Such men nearly always work their way from the ranks, +and have had no time to study the graces; but they are very interesting, +and will appreciate the attention you show them. There is that man +Bowman, for instance,--began life as a boy in a blacksmith's shop, and +has been in Congress for years. They would send him to the Senate if +they could spare him. He is a positive mine of political information, +and knows the Westoria business from beginning to end." + +"They all seem to know more or less of it," said Bertha. "That is our +atmosphere now. I am gradually assimilating information myself." + +But Tredennis did not reconcile himself to the invasion. He looked on in +restless resentment. What right had such men to be near her, was his +bitter thought. Being a man himself, he knew more of some of them than +he could remember without anger or distaste. He could not regard them +impartially as mere forces, forgetting all else. When he saw Planefield +at her side, bold, fulsome, bent on absorbing her attention and +frequently succeeding through sheer thick-skinned pertinacity, he was +filled with wrathful repulsion. This man at least he knew had no right +to claim consideration from her, and yet somehow he seemed to have +established himself in an intimacy which appeared gradually to become a +part of her every-day life. This evening, on entering the house, he had +met him leaving it, and when he went into the parlor he had seen upon +Bertha's little work-table the customary sumptuous offering of +Jacqueminot roses. She carried the flowers in her hand now--their heavy +perfume filled the carriage. + +"There is no use in asking why she does it," he was thinking. "I have +given up expecting to understand her. I suppose she has a reason. I +won't believe it is as poor a one as common vanity or coquetry. Such +things are beneath her." + +He understood himself as little as he understood her. There were times +when he wondered how long his unhappiness would last, and if it would +not die a natural death. No man's affection and tenderness could feed +upon nothing and survive, he told himself again and again. And what was +there to sustain his? This was not the woman he had dreamed of,--from +her it should be easy enough for him to shake himself free. What to him +were her cleverness, her bright eyes, her power over herself and others, +the subtle charms and graces which were shared by all who came near her? +They were only the gift of a finer order of coquette, who was a greater +success than the rest because nature had been lavish with her. It was +not these things which could have changed and colored all life for him. +If all his thoughts of her had been mere fancies it would be only +natural that he should outlive his experience, and in time look back +upon it as simply an episode which might have formed a part of the +existence of any man. There had been nights when he had left the house, +thinking it would be far better for him never to return if he could +remain away without awakening comment; but, once in the quiet of his +room, there always came back to him memories and fancies he could not +rid himself of, and which made the scenes he had left behind unreal. He +used to think it must be this which kept his tenderness from dying a +lingering death. When he was alone it seemed as if he found himself face +to face again with the old, innocent ideal that followed him with +tender, appealing eyes and would not leave him. He began to have an odd +fancy about the feeling. It was as if, when he left the silent room, he +left in it the truth and reality of his dream and found them there when +he returned. + +"Why do you look at me so?" Bertha said to him one night, turning +suddenly aside from the group she had been the central figure of. "You +look at me as if--as if I were a ghost, and you were ready to see me +vanish into thin air." + +He made a slight movement as if rousing himself. + +"That is it," he answered. "I am waiting to see you vanish." + +"But you will not see it," she said. "You will be disappointed. I am +real--real! A ghost could not laugh as I do--and enjoy itself. Its laugh +would have a hollow sound. I assure you I am very real indeed." + +But he did not answer her, and, after looking at him with a faint smile +for a second or so, she turned to her group again. To-night, as they +drove to their destination, once or twice, in passing a street-lamp, the +light, flashing into the carriage, showed him that Bertha leaned back in +her corner with closed eyes, her flowers lying untouched on her lap. He +thought she seemed languid and pale, though she had not appeared so +before they left the house. And this touched him, as such things always +did. There was no moment, however deep and fierce his bewildered sense +of injury might have been before it, when a shade of pallor on her +cheek, or of sadness in her eyes, a look or tone of weariness, would not +undo everything, and stir all his great heart with sympathy and the +tender longing to be kind to her. The signs of sadness or pain in any +human creature would have moved him, but such signs in her overwhelmed +him and swept away every other feeling but this yearning desire to +shield and care for her. He looked at her now with anxious eyes and bent +forward to draw up her wrap which had slipped from her shoulders. + +"Are you warm enough, Bertha?" he said, with awkward gentleness. "It is +a raw night. You should have had more--more shawls--or whatever they +are." + +She opened her eyes with a smile. + +"More shawls!" she said. "We don't wear shawls now when we go to +receptions. They are not becoming enough, even when they are very grand +indeed. This is not a shawl,--it is a _sortie du bal_, and a very pretty +one; but I think I am warm enough, thank you, and it was very good in +you to ask." And though he had not known that his own voice was gentle, +he recognized that hers was. + +"Somebody ought to ask," he answered. And just then they turned the +corner into a street already crowded with carriages, and their own drew +up before the lighted front of a large house. Tredennis got out and gave +Bertha his hand. As she emerged from the shadow of the carriage, the +light fell upon her again, and he was impressed even more forcibly than +before with her pallor. + +"You would have been a great deal better at home," he said, impetuously. +"Why did you come here?" + +She paused a second, and it seemed to him as if she suddenly gave up +some tense hold she had previously kept upon her external self. There +was only the pathetic little ghost of a smile in her lifted eyes. + +"Yes, I should be better at home," she said, almost in a whisper. "I +would rather be asleep with--with the children." + +"Then why in Heaven's name do you go?" he protested. "Bertha, let me +take you home and leave you to rest. It must be so--I"-- + +But the conventionalities did not permit that he should give way to the +fine masculine impulse which might have prompted him in the heat of his +emotions to return her to the carriage by the sheer strength of his +unaided arm, and he recognized his own tone of command, and checked +himself with a rueful sense of helplessness. + +"There is the carriage of the French minister," said Bertha, "and madame +wonders who detains her. But--if I were a regiment of soldiers, I am +sure I should obey you when you spoke to me in such a tone as that." + +And as if by magic she was herself again, and, taking her roses from +him, went up the carpeted steps lightly, and with a gay rustle of +trailing silk and lace. + +The large rooms inside were crowded with a distinguished company, made +up of the material which forms the foundation of every select +Washingtonian assemblage. There were the politicians, military and naval +men, _attachés_ of legations, foreign ministers and members of the +Cabinet, with their wives and daughters, or other female relatives. A +distinguished scientist loomed up in one corner, looking +disproportionately modest; a well-known newspaper man chatted in +another. The Chinese minister, accompanied by his interpreter, received +with a slightly wearied air of quiet patience the conversational +attentions proffered him. The wife of the Secretary of State stood near +the door with her daughter, receiving her guests as they entered. She +was a kindly and graceful woman, whose good breeding and self-poise had +tided her safely over the occasionally somewhat ruffled social waters of +two administrations. She had received a hundred or so of callers each +Wednesday,--the majority of them strangers, and in the moments of her +greatest fatigue and lassitude had endeavored to remember that each one +of them was a human being, endowed with human vanity and sensitiveness; +she had not flinched before the innocent presumption of guileless +ignorance; she had done her best by timorousness and simplicity; she had +endeavored to remember hundreds of totally uninteresting people, and if +she had forgotten one of them who modestly expected a place in her +memory had made an effort to repair the injury with aptness and grace. +She had given up pleasures she enjoyed and repose she needed, and had +managed to glean entertainment and interesting experience by the way, +and in course of time, having occupied for years one of the highest +social positions in the land, and done some of the most difficult and +laborious work, would retire simply and gracefully, more regretted than +regretting, and would look back upon her experience more as an episode +in her husband's career than her own. + +She was one of the few women who produced in Professor Herrick neither +mild perturbation nor mental bewilderment. He had been a friend of her +husband's in his youth, and during their residence in Washington it had +been his habit to desert his books and entomological specimens once or +twice in the season for the purpose of appearing in their parlors. There +was a legend that he had once presented himself with a large and +valuable beetle pinned to the lapel of his coat, he having +absentmindedly placed it in that conspicuous position in mistake for the +flower Bertha had suggested he should decorate himself with. + +He was among the guests to-night, her hostess told Bertha, as she shook +hands with her. + +"We were very much pleased to see him, though we do not think he looks +very well," she said. "I think you will find him talking to Professor +Borrowdale, who has just returned from Central America." + +She gave Bertha a kind glance of scrutiny. + +"Are _you_ looking very well?" she said. "I am afraid you are not. That +is not a good way to begin a season." + +"I am afraid," said Bertha, laughing, "that I have not chosen my dress +well. Colonel Tredennis told me, a few moments ago, that I ought to be +at home." + +They passed on shortly afterward, and, on the way to the other room, +Bertha was unusually silent. Tredennis wondered what she was thinking +of, until she suddenly looked up at him and spoke. + +"Am I so very haggard?" she said. + +"I should not call it haggard," he answered. "You don't look very well." + +She gave her cheek a little rub with her gloved hand. + +"No; you should not call it haggard," she said, "that is true. It is bad +enough not to look well. One should always have a little rouge in one's +pocket. But you will see that the excitement will do me good." + +"Will it, Bertha?" said the colonel. + +But, whether the effect it produced upon her was a good or bad one, it +was certainly strong enough. The room was full of people she knew or +wished to know. She was stopped at every step by those who spoke to her, +exchanging gay speeches with her, paying her compliments, giving her +greeting. Dazzling young dandies forgot their indifference to the +adulation of the multitude, in their eagerness to make their bows and +their _bon mots_ before her; their elders and superiors were as little +backward as themselves, and in a short time she had gathered quite a +little court about her, in which there was laughter and badinage, and an +exhilarating exchange of gayeties. The celebrated scientist joined the +circle, the newspaper man made his way into it, and a stately, +gray-haired member of the Supreme Bench relaxed his grave face in it, +and made more clever and gallant speeches than all his younger rivals +put together; it was even remarked that the Oriental visage of the +Chinese ambassador himself exhibited an expression of more than slight +curiosity and interest. He addressed a few words to his interpreter as +he passed. But somehow Colonel Tredennis found himself on the outer edge +of the enchanted ground. It was his own fault, perhaps. Yes, it was his +own fault, without a doubt. Such changes were too rapid for him, as he +himself had said before. He did not understand them; they bewildered and +wounded him, and gave him a sense of insecurity, seeming to leave him +nothing to rely on. Was it possible that sadness or fatigue which could +be so soon set aside and lost sight of could be very real? And if these +things which had so touched his heart were unreal and caprices of the +moment, what was there left which might not be unreal too? Could she +look pale, and make her voice and her little hand tremulous at will when +she chose to produce an effect, and why should it please her to produce +effects upon him? She had never cared for him, or shown kindness or +friendly feeling for him, but in those few brief days in Virginia. Was +she so flippant, such a coquette and trifler that, when there was no one +else to play her pretty tricks upon, she must try them on him and work +upon his sympathies in default of being able to teach him the flatteries +and follies of men who loved her less? He had heard of women who were so +insatiable in their desire for sensation that they would stoop to such +things, but he did not believe he had ever met one. Perhaps he had met +several, and had been too ingenuous and generous to understand their +wiles and arts. At any rate, they had always been myths to him, and it +seemed to him that he himself, as well as all existence, must have +changed when he could even wonder if such a thing might be true of +Bertha. But nothing could be more certain than that there were no longer +any traces of her weariness about her. A brilliant color glowed in her +cheeks, her eyes were as bright as diamonds, there was something,--some +vividness about her before which every other woman in the room paled a +little, though there were two or three great beauties present, and she +had never taken the attitude of a beauty at all. The colonel began to +see, at last, that there was a shade of something else, too, in her +manner, from which it had always before been free. In the midst of all +her frivolities she had never been reckless, and there had never been +any possibility that the looker-on could bear away with him any memory +which had not the charm of fineness about it. But to-night, as one man +hung over her chair, and others stood around and about it, one holding +her fan, another wearing in his coat a rose which had fallen from her +bouquet, all sharing her smiles and vying in their efforts to win them, +Tredennis turned away more than once with a heavy heart. + +"I would go home if I could leave her," he said. "I don't want to see +this. I don't know what it means. This is no place for me." + +But he could not leave her, and so lingered about and looked on, and +when he was spoken to answered briefly and abstractedly, scarcely +knowing what he said. There was no need that he should have felt himself +desolate, since there were numbers of pretty and charming women in the +rooms who would have been pleased to talk to him, and who, indeed, +showed something of this kindly inclination when they found themselves +near him; his big, soldierly figure, his fine sun-browned face, his +grave manner, and the stories they heard of him, made him an object of +deep interest to women, though he had never recognized the fact. They +talked of him and wondered about him, and made up suitable little +romances which accounted for his silence and rather stern air of +sadness. The favorite theory was that he had been badly treated in his +early youth by some soulless young person totally unworthy of the +feeling he had lavished upon her, and there were two or three young +persons--perhaps even a larger number--who, secretly conscious of their +own worthiness of any depth of affection, would not have been loath to +bind up his wounds and pour oil upon them and frankincense and myrrh, if +such applications would have proved effectual. There were among these +some very beautiful and attractive young creatures indeed, and as their +parents usually shared their interest in the colonel, he was invited to +kettledrums and _musicales_, and theatre parties and dinners, and always +welcomed warmly when he was encountered anywhere. But though he received +these attentions with the simple courtesy and modest appreciation of all +kindness which were second nature with him, and though he paid his party +calls with the most unflinching, conventional promptness, and endeavored +to return the hospitalities in masculine fashion by impartially sending +bouquets to mammas and daughters alike, it frequently happened that +various reasons prevented his appearing at the parties; or if he +appeared he disappeared quite early; and, indeed, if he had been any +other man he would have found it difficult to make his peace with the +young lady who discovered that the previous engagement which had kept +him away from her kettledrum had been a promise made to little Janey +Amory that he would take her to see Tom Thumb. + +"It is very kind in you to give us any of your time at all," Bertha had +said to him once, "when you are in such demand. Richard tells me your +table is strewn with invitations, and there is not a belle of his +acquaintance who is so besieged with attentions. Mr. Arbuthnot is filled +with envy. He has half-a-dozen new songs which he plays without music, +and he has learned all the new dances, and yet is not invited half so +much." + +"It is my conversational powers they want," was the colonel's sardonic +reply. + +"That goes without saying," responded Bertha. "And if you would only +condescend to waltz, poor Laurence's days of usefulness would be over. +Won't you be persuaded to let me give you a lesson?" + +And she came toward him with mocking in her eyes and her hands extended. + +But the colonel blushed up to the roots of his hair and did not take +them. + +"I should tread on your slippers, and knock off the buckles, and grind +them into powder," he said. "I should tear your gown and lacerate your +feelings, and you could not go to the German to-night. I am afraid I am +not the size for waltzing." + +"You are the size for anything and everything," said Bertha, with an +exaggerated little obeisance. "It is we who are so small that we appear +insignificant by contrast." + +This, indeed, was the general opinion, that his stalwart proportions +were greatly to his advantage, and only to be admired. Among those who +admired them most were graceful young waltzers, who would have given up +that delightful and exhilarating exercise on any occasion, if Colonel +Tredennis would have sat out with them in some quiet corner, where the +eyes of a censorious world might be escaped. Several such were present +to-night, and cast slightly wistful glances at him as they passed to and +fro, or deftly managed to arrange little opportunities for conversations +which, however, did not flourish and grow strong even when the +opportunities were made. It was not entertainment of this sort--innocent +and agreeable as it might be--that Colonel Tredennis wanted. It would be +difficult to say exactly what he _wanted_, indeed, or what satisfaction +he obtained from standing gnawing his great mustache among Mrs. Amory's +more versatile and socially gifted adorers. + +He did not want to be a witness of her coquetries--they were coquetries, +though to the sophisticated they might appear only delightful ones, and +a very proper exercise of feminine fascination upon their natural prey; +but to this masculine prude, who unhappily loved her and had no honest +rights in her, and whose very affection was an emotion against which his +honor must struggle, it was a humiliation that others should look on and +see that she could so amuse herself. + +So he stood on the outer edge of the little circle, and was so standing +when he first caught sight of the professor at the opposite end of the +room. He left his place then and went over to him. The sight of the +refined, gentle, old face brought to him something bordering on a sense +of relief. It removed a little of his totally unreasonable feeling of +friendlessness and isolation. + +"I have been watching you across the room," the professor said, kindly. +"I wondered what you were thinking about? You looked fierce, my boy, and +melancholy. I think there were two or three young ladies who thought you +very picturesque as you stared at the floor and pulled your mustache, +but it seemed to me that your air was hardly gay enough for a brilliant +occasion." + +"I was thinking I was out of place and wishing I was at home," replied +the colonel, with a short laugh, unconsciously pulling his mustache +again. "And I dare say I was wishing I had Mrs. Amory's versatility of +gifts and humor. I thought she was tired and unwell when I helped her +out of the carriage; but it seems that I was mistaken, or that the +atmosphere of the great world has a most inspiring effect." + +The professor turned his spectacles upon the corner Tredennis had just +left. + +"Ah!" he remarked quietly; "it is Bertha, is it? I fancied it might be, +though it was not easy to see her face, on account of the breadth of +Commander Barnacles' back. And it was you who came with her?" + +"Yes," said Tredennis. + +"I rather expected to see Mr. Arbuthnot," said the professor. "I think +Richard gave me the impression that I should." + +"We saw Mr. Arbuthnot just before we left the house," returned the +colonel. "He had been calling upon Mrs. Sylvestre." + +"Upon Mrs. Sylvestre!" echoed the professor, and then he added, rather +softly, "Ah, she is another." + +"Another!" Tredennis repeated. + +"I only mean," said the professor, "that I am at my old tricks again. I +am wondering what will happen now to that beautiful, graceful young +woman." + +He turned his glance a little suddenly upon Tredennis' face. + +"Have you been to see her?" he inquired. + +"Not yet." + +"Why not yet?" + +"Perhaps because she is too beautiful and graceful," Tredennis answered. +"I don't know of any other reason. I have not sufficient courage." + +"Mr. Arbuthnot has sufficient courage," said the professor. "And some of +those gentlemen across the room would not shrink from the ordeal. They +will all go to see her,--Commander Barnacles included,--and she will be +kind to them every one. She would be kind to me if I went to see +her--and some day I think I shall." + +He glanced across at Bertha. She was talking to Commander Barnacles, who +was exhibiting as much chivalric vivacity as his breadth would allow. +The rest of her circle were listening and laughing, people outside it +were looking at her with interest and curiosity. + +"She is very gay to-night," the professor added. "And I dare say Mrs. +Sylvestre could give us a better reason for her gayety than we can see +on the surface." + +"Is there always a reason?" said the colonel. For the moment he was +pleasing himself with the fancy that he was hardening his heart. + +But just at this moment a slight stir at one of the entrances attracted +universal attention. The President had come in, and was being welcomed +by his host and hostess. He presented to the inspection of those to whom +he was not already a familiar object, the unimposing figure of a man +past middle life, his hair grizzled, his face lined, his expression a +somewhat fatigued one. + +"Yes, he looks tired," said Bertha to the newspaper man who stood near +her, "though it is rather unreasonable in him. He has nothing to do but +satisfy the demands of two political parties who hate each other, and to +retrieve the blunders made during a few score years by his predecessors, +and he has four years to do it in--and every one will give him advice. I +wonder how he likes it, and if he realizes what has happened to him. If +he were a king and had a crown to look at and try on in his moments of +uncertainty, or if he were obliged to attire himself in velvet and +ermine occasionally, he might persuade himself that he was real; but how +can he do so when he never wears anything but an ordinary coat, and +cannot cut people's heads off, or bowstring them, and hasn't a dungeon +about him? Perhaps he feels as if he is imposing on us and is secretly a +little ashamed of himself. I wonder if he is not haunted by a +disagreeable ghost who persists in reminding him of the day when he will +only be an abject ex-President and we shall pity where we don't condemn +him; and he will be dragged to the Capitol in the triumphal car of the +new one and know that he has awakened from his dream; or, perhaps, he +will call it a nightmare and be glad it is over." + +"That is Planefield who came in with him," said her companion. "He would +not object to suffer from a nightmare of the same description." + +"Would he be willing to dine off the indigestibles most likely to +produce it?" said Bertha. "You have indigestibles on your political +_menu_, I suppose. I have heard so, and that they are not always easy to +swallow because the cooks at the Capitol differ so about the flavoring." + +"Planefield would not differ," was the answer. "And he would dine off +them, and breakfast and sup off them, and get up in the night to enjoy +them, if he could only bring about the nightmare." + +"Is there any possibility that he will accomplish it?" Bertha inquired. +"If there is, I must be very kind to him when he comes to speak to me. I +feel a sort of eagerness to catch his eye and nod and beck and bestow +wreathed smiles upon him already; but don't let my modest thrift waste +itself upon a mere phantasy if the prospect is that the indigestibles +will simply disagree with him and will _not_ produce the nightmare." And +the colonel, who was just approaching with the professor, heard her and +was not more greatly elated than before. + +It was not very long, of course, before there was an addition to the +group. Senator Planefield found his way to it--to the very centre of it, +indeed,--and so long as it remained a group formed a permanent feature +in its attractions. When he presented himself Bertha gave him her hand +with a most bewitching little smile, whose suggestion of archness was +somehow made to include the gentleman with whom she had previously been +talking. Her manner was so gracious and inspiring that Planefield was +intoxicated by it and wondered what it meant. He was obliged to confess +to himself that there were many occasions when she was not so gracious, +and if he had been easily rebuffed, the wounds his flourishing and +robust vanity received might have led him to retire from the field. +Frequently, when he was most filled with admiration of her cleverness +and spirit, he was conscious of an uneasy sense of distrust, not only of +her, but of himself. There was one special, innocent, and direct gaze of +which her limpid eyes were capable, which sometimes made him turn hot +and cold with uncertainty, and there was also a peculiarly soft and +quiet tone in her voice which invariably filled him with perturbation. + +"She's such a confounded cool little devil," he had said, gracefully, to +a friend on one occasion when he was in a bad humor. "She's afraid of +nothing, and she's got such a hold on herself that she can say anything +she likes, with a voice as soft as silk, and look you straight in the +eyes like a baby while she does so; and when you say the words over to +yourself you can't find a thing to complain of, while you know they +drove home like knives when she said them herself. She looks like a +school-girl half the time; but she's made up of steel and iron, and--the +devil knows what." + +She did not look like a school-girl this evening,--she was far too +brilliant and self-possessed and entertaining; but he had nothing to +complain of and plenty to congratulate himself upon. She allowed him to +take the chair near her which its occupant reluctantly vacated for him; +she placed no obstacles in the way of his conversational desires, and +she received all his jokes with the most exhilarating laughter. Perhaps +it was because of all this that he thought he had never seen her so +pretty, so well dressed, and so inspiring. When he told her so, in a +clumsy whisper, a sudden red flushed her cheek, her eyes fell, and she +did not reply, as he had feared she would, with a keen little two-edged +jest far more discouraging than any displeasure at his boldness would +have been. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses, and +found it necessary to remain silent a few seconds to give himself time +to recover his equilibrium. It was he who was with her when Tredennis +saw her presentation to the President, who, it was said, had observed +her previously and was pleased, after the interview was over, to comment +admiringly upon her and ask various questions concerning her. It +doubtless befell His Excellency to be called upon to be gracious and +ready of speech when confronted with objects less inspiring than this +young person, and it might have been something of this sort which caused +him to wear a more relaxed countenance and smile more frequently than +before when conversing with her, and also to appear to be in no degree +eager to allow her to make her bow and withdraw. + +It was just after she had been permitted to make this obeisance and +retire that Colonel Tredennis, standing near a group of three persons, +heard her name mentioned and had his ears quickened by the sound. + +The speakers were a man and two women. + +"Her name," he heard a feminine voice say, "is Amory. She is a little +married woman who flirts." + +"Oh!" exclaimed the man, "that is Mrs. Amory, is it--the little Mrs. +Amory? And--yes--that is Planefield with her now. He generally is with +her, isn't he?" + +"At present," was the answer. "Yes." + +The colonel felt his blood warming. He began to think he recognized the +voice of the first speaker, and when he turned found he was not +mistaken. It belonged to the "great lady" who had figured prominently in +the cheery little encounter whose story had been related with such +vivacity the first evening he had dined with the Amorys. She had, +perhaps, not enjoyed this encounter as impartially as had her opponent, +and had probably not forgotten it so soon. She wore the countenance of a +woman with an excellent memory, and not totally devoid of feminine +prejudice. Perhaps she had been carrying her polished little stone in +her pocket, and turning it occasionally ever since the memorable +occasion when justice had been meted out to her not so largely tempered +with mercy as the faultless in character might have desired. + +"The matter gives rise to all the more comment," she remarked, "because +it is something no one would have expected. Her family is entirely +respectable. She was a Miss Herrick, and though she has always been a +gay little person, she has been quite cleverly prudent. Her +acquaintances are only just beginning to realize the state of affairs, +and there is a great division of opinion, of course. The Westoria lands +have dazzled the husband, it is supposed, as he is a person given to +projects, and he has dazzled her--and the admirer is to be made use of." + +The man--a quiet, elderly man, with an astutely humorous +countenance--glanced after Bertha as she disappeared into the +supper-room. She held her roses to her face, and her eyes smiled over +them as Planefield bent to speak to her. + +"It is a tremendous affair,--that Westoria business," he said. "And it +is evident she has dazzled the admirers. There is a good deal of life +and color, and--audacity about her, isn't there?" + +"There is plenty of audacity," responded his companion with calmness. "I +think that would be universally admitted, though it is occasionally +referred to as wit and self-possession." + +"But she has been very much liked," timorously suggested the third +member of the group, who was younger and much less imposing. "And--and I +feel sure I have heard women admire her as often as men." + +"A great deal may be accomplished by cleverness and prudence of that +particular kind," was the answer. "And, as I said, she has been both +prudent and clever." + +"It isn't pleasant to think about," remarked the man. "She will lose her +friends and--and all the rest of it, and may gain nothing in the end. +But I suppose there is a good deal of that sort of thing going on here. +We outsiders hear it said so, and are given to believing the statement." + +"It does not usually occur in the class to which this case belongs," was +the response. "The female lobbyist is generally not so--not so"-- + +"Not so picturesque as she is painted," ended her companion with a +laugh. "Well, I consider myself all the more fortunate in having seen +this one who is picturesque, and has quite a charming natural color of +her own." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + +They moved away and went to the supper-room themselves, leaving +Tredennis to his reflections. What these were he scarcely knew himself +for a few seconds. The murmur of voices and passing to and fro confused +him. For half an hour of quiet in some friendly corner, where none could +see his face, he felt that he would have given a year or so of his +life--perhaps a greater number of years than a happier man would have +been willing to part with. It was of Bertha these people had been +speaking--of Bertha, and it was Bertha he could see through the open +doors of the supper-room, eating ices, listening to compliment and +laughter and jest! It was Planefield who was holding her flowers, and +the man who had just picked up her fan was one of his friends; in two or +three others near her, Tredennis recognized his associates: it seemed as +if the ground had been ceded to them by those who had at first formed +her little court. + +Tredennis was seized with a wild desire to make his way into their +midst, take her hand in his arm, and compel her to come away--to leave +them all, to let him take her home--to safety and honor and her +children. He was so filled with the absurd impulse that he took half a +step forward, stopping and smiling bitterly, when he realized what he +was prompted to do. + +"How she would like it," he thought, "and like me for doing it; and what +a paragraph it would make for the society column!" + +Incidents which had occurred within the last few weeks came back to him +with a significance they had never before borne. Speeches and moods of +Richard's, things he had done, occasional unconscious displays of +eagerness to please Planefield and cultivate him, his manner toward +Bertha, and certain touches of uneasiness when she was not at her best. + +From the first the colonel had not felt himself as entirely prepossessed +by this amiable and charming young man as he desired to be, and he had +been compelled to admit that he was not always pleased by his gay +good-humor, evanescent enthusiasms, and by his happy, irresponsible +fashion of looking at life. When he had at last made this confession to +himself he had not shrunk from giving himself an explanation of the +matter, from which a nature more sparing of itself would have flinched. +He had said that his prejudice was one to blush at and conquer by +persistent effort, and he had done his sternly honest best to subdue it. +But he had not succeeded as he had hoped he should. When he fancied he +was making progress and learning to be fair, some trifle continually +occurred which made itself an obstacle in his path. He saw things he did +not wish to see, and heard things he did not wish to hear,--little +things which made him doubt and ponder, and which somehow he could not +shake off, even when he tried to forget them and persuade himself that, +after all, they were of slight significance. And as he had seen more of +the gay good-humor and readiness to be moved, his first shadowy feeling +had assumed more definite form. He had found himself confronted by a +distrust which grew upon him; he had met the young man's smiling eyes +with a sense of being repelled by their very candor and brightness; he +had learned that they were not so candid as they seemed, and that his +boyish frankness was not always to be relied upon. He had discovered +that he was ready to make a promise and forget it; that his +impressionable mind could shift itself and change its color, and that +somehow its quickness of action had a fashion of invariably tending +toward the accomplishment of some personal end,--a mere vagary or +graceful whim, perhaps, but always a fancy pertaining to the indulgence +of self. Tredennis had heard him lie,--not wickedly or awkwardly, so +far; but with grace and freedom from embarrassment. It was his +accidental detection of one of the most trivial and ready of these +falsehoods which had first roused him to distrust. He remembered now, as +by a flash, that it had been a lie about Planefield, and that it had +been told to Bertha. He had wondered at the time what its object could +be; now he thought he saw, and in a measure comprehended, the +short-sighted folly which had caused the weak, easily swayed nature to +drift into such danger. + +"He does not realize what he is doing," was his thought. "He would lie +to me if I accused him of it." + +Of these two things he was convinced: that the first step had been +merely one of many whims, whatever the results following might be, and +that no statement or promise Amory might make could be relied on. There +was no knowing what he had done or what he would do. As he had found +entertainment in the contents of the "museum," so it was as probable he +had, at the outset, amused himself with his fancies concerning the +Westoria lands, which had, at last, so far fascinated and dazed him as +to lead him into the committal of follies he had not paused to excuse +even to himself. He had not thought it necessary to excuse them. Why +should he not take the legal business in hand, and since there was no +reason against that, why should he not also interest himself in the +investigations and be on intimate terms with the men who were a part of +the brilliant project? Why should not his wife entertain them, as she +entertained the rest of her friends and acquaintances? Tredennis felt +that he had learned enough of the man's mental habits to follow him +pretty closely in his reasoning--when he reasoned. While he had looked +on silently, the colonel had learned a great deal and grown worldly-wise +and quicker of perception than he could have believed possible in times +gone by. He was only half conscious that this was because he had now an +object in view which he had not had before; that he was alert and +watchful because there was some one he wished to shield; that he was no +longer indifferent to the world and its ways,--no longer given to +underrating its strength and weaknesses, its faults and follies, because +he wished to be able to defend himself against them, if such a thing +should become necessary. He had gained wisdom enough to appreciate the +full significance of the low-voiced, apparently carelessly uttered words +he had just heard; and to feel his own almost entire helplessness in the +matter. To appeal to Amory would be useless; to go to the professor +impossible; how could he carry to him such a story, unless it assumed +proportions such as to make the step a last terrible resource? He had +been looking older and acknowledging himself frailer during the last +year; certainly he was neither mentally nor physically in the condition +to meet such a blow, if it was possible to spare it to him. + +Tredennis looked across the room at Bertha again. It seemed that there +was only one very simple thing he could do now. + +"She will probably be angry and think I have come to interfere, if I go +to her," he said; "but I will go nevertheless. At least, I am not one of +them,--every one knows that,--and perhaps it will occur to her to go +home." + +There was resolution on his face when he approached her. He wore the +look which never failed to move her more strongly than any other thing +on earth had ever done before, and whose power over her cost her all the +resistance of which she was capable. It had sometimes made her wonder +if, after all, it was true that women liked to be subdued--to be ruled a +little--if their rulers were gentle as well as strong. She had heard it +said so, and had often laughed at the sentiment of the popular fallacy. +She used to smile at it when it presented itself to her even in this +manner; but there had been occasions--times perhaps when she was very +tired--when she had known that she would have been glad to give way +before this look, to obey it, to feel the relief of deciding for herself +no more. + +Such a feeling rose within her now. She looked neither tired nor worn; +but a certain deadly sense of fatigue, which was becoming a physical +habit with her, had been growing upon her all the evening. The color on +her cheeks was feverish, her limbs ached, her eyes were bright with her +desperate eagerness to sustain herself. Once or twice, when she had +laughed or spoken, she had been conscious of such an unnatural tone in +her voice that her heart had trembled with fear lest others should have +heard it too. It seemed impossible to her that they should not, and that +these men who listened and applauded her should not see that often she +scarcely heard them, and that she dare not stop for fear of forgetting +them altogether and breaking down in some dreadful way, which would show +that all her spirit and gayety was a lie, and only a lie poorly acted, +after all. + +She thought she knew what Tredennis had come to her for. She had not +lost sight of him at any time. She had known where he stood or sat, and +whom he spoke to, and had known that he had seen her also. She had met +his eyes now and then, and smiled and looked away again, beginning to +talk to her admirers with more spirit than ever each time. What else was +there to do but go on as she had begun? She knew only too well what +reason there was in herself that she should not falter. If it had been +strong yesterday, it was ten times stronger to-day, and would be +stronger to-morrow and for many a bitter day to come. But when he came +to her she only smiled up at him, as she would have smiled at +Planefield, or the gallant and spacious Barnacles, or any other of the +men she knew. + +"I hope you have had a pleasant evening," she said. "You enjoy things of +this sort so much, however, that you are always safe. I saw you talking +in the most vivacious manner to that pretty Miss Stapleton,--the one +with the eyelashes,--or rather you were listening vivaciously. You are +such a good listener." + +"That's an accomplishment, isn't it?" said Planefield, with his easy +air. + +"It is a gift of the gods," she answered. "And it was bestowed on +Colonel Tredennis." + +"There _are_ talkers, you know," suggested the Senator, "who would make +a good listener of a man without the assistance of the gods." + +"Do you mean the Miss Stapleton with the eyelashes?" inquired Bertha, +blandly. + +"Oh, come now," was the response. "I think you know I don't mean the +Miss Stapleton with the eyelashes. If I did, it would be more economical +to make the remark to her." + +"Ah!" said Bertha, blandly again. "You mean me? I hoped so. Thank you +very much. And I am glad you said it before Colonel Tredennis, because +it may increase his confidence in me, which is not great. I am always +glad when any one pays me a compliment in his presence." + +"Does he never pay you compliments himself?" asked Planefield. + +Bertha gave Tredennis a bright, full glance. + +"Did you ever pay me a compliment?" she said. "Will you ever pay me a +compliment--if I should chance to deserve one?" + +"Yes," he answered, his face unsmiling, his voice inflexible. "May I +begin now? You always deserve them. My only reason for failing to pay +them is because I am not equal to inventing such as would be worthy of +you. Your eyes are like stars--your dress is the prettiest in the +room--every man present is your slave and every woman pales before +you--the President is going home now only because you have ceased to +smile upon him." + +The color on Bertha's cheek faded a little, but her smile did not. She +checked him with a gesture. + +"Thank you," she said, "that will do! You are even better than Senator +Planefield. My eyes are like stars--my dress is perfection! I myself am +as brilliant as--as the chandelier! Really, there seems nothing left for +me to do but to follow the President, who, as you said, has been good +enough to take his leave and give us permission to retire." And she rose +from her chair. + +She made her adieus to Planefield, who bestowed upon Tredennis a +sidelong scowl, thinking that it was he who was taking her away. It +consoled him but little that she gave him her hand--in a most gracious +farewell. He had been enjoying himself as he did not often enjoy +himself, and the sight of the colonel's unresponsive countenance filled +him with silent rage. It happened that it was not the first time, or +even the second, that this gentleman had presented himself +inopportunely. + +"The devil take his grim airs!" was his cordial mental exclamation. +"What does he mean by them, and what is he always turning up for when no +one wants to see him?" + +Something of this amiable sentiment was in his expression, but the +colonel did not seem to see it; his countenance was as unmoved as ever +when he led his charge away, her little hand resting on his arm. In +truth, he was thinking of other things. Suddenly he had made up his mind +that there was one effort he could make: that, if he could conquer +himself and his own natural feeling of reluctance, he might speak to +Bertha herself in such words as she would be willing to listen to and +reflect upon. It seemed impossible to tell her all, but surely he might +frame such an appeal as would have some small weight with her. It was +not an easy thing to do. He must present himself to her in the _rôle_ of +an individual who, having no right to interfere with her actions, still +took upon himself to do so; who spoke when it would have seemed better +taste to be silent; who delivered homilies with the manner of one who +thought himself faultless, and so privileged to preach and advise. + +"But what of that?" he said, checking himself impatiently in the midst +of these thoughts. "I am always thinking of myself, and of how I shall +appear in her eyes! Am I a boy lover trying to please her, or a man who +would spare and shield her? Let her think poorly of me if she chooses, +if she will only listen and realize her danger when her anger is over." + +The standard for his own conduct which he had set up was not low, it +will be observed. All that he demanded of himself was utter freedom from +all human weakness, and even liability to temptation; an unselfishness +without blemish, a self-control without flaw; that he should bear his +own generous anguish without the movement of a muscle; that he should +wholly ignore the throbbing of his own wounds, remembering only the task +he had set himself; that his watchfulness over himself should never +falter, and his courage never be shaken. It was, perhaps, indicative of +a certain degree of noble simplicity that he demanded this of himself, +which he would have asked of no other human creature, and that at no +time did the thought cross his mind that the thing he demanded was +impossible of attainment. When he failed, as he knew he often did; when +he found it difficult to efface himself utterly from his own thoughts +and was guilty of the weakness of allowing himself to become a factor in +them; when his unhappiness was stronger than himself; when he was +stirred to resentment, or conscious of weariness, and the longing to +utter some word which would betray him and ask for pity,--he never +failed to condemn himself in bitterness of spirit as ignoble and +unworthy. + +"Let her be angry with me if she chooses," he thought now. "It is for me +to say my say, and leave the rest to her--and I will try to say it +kindly." + +He would set aside the bitter feeling and resentment of her trifling +which had beset him more than once during the evening; he would forget +them, as it was but right and just that they should be forgotten. When +he spoke, as they went up the staircase together, his tone was so kind +that Bertha glanced up at him, and saw that his face had changed, and, +though still grave, was kind, too. When she joined him after leaving the +cloak-room, he spoke to her of her wrap again, and asked her to draw it +more closely about her; when he helped her into the carriage, there was +that in his light touch which brought back to her with more than its +usual strength the familiar sense of quiet protection and support. + +"It would be easier," she thought, "if he would be angry. Why is he not +angry? He was an hour ago--and surely I have done enough." + +But he showed no signs of disapproval,--he was determined that he would +not do that,--though their drive was rather a silent one again. And yet, +by the time they reached home, Bertha was in some indefinite way +prepared for the question he put to her as he assisted her to alight. + +"May I come in for a little while?" he asked. "I know it is late, +but--there is something I must say to you." + +"Something you must say to me?" she repeated. "I am sure it must be +something interesting and something I should like to hear. Come in, by +all means." + +So they entered the house together, and went into the parlor. They found +a fire burning there, and Bertha's chair drawn up before it. She +loosened her wrap rather deliberately and threw it off, and then sat +down as deliberately, arranging her footstool and draperies until she +had attained the desired amount of languid comfort in her position. +Tredennis did not speak until she was settled. He leaned against the +mantel, his eyes bent on the fire. + +Being fairly arranged, Bertha held out her hand. + +"Will you give me that feather screen, if you please?" she said,--"the +one made of peacock feathers. When one attains years of discretion, one +has some care for one's complexion. Did it ever occur to you how +serious such matters are, and that the difference between being eighteen +and eighty is almost wholly a matter of complexion? If one could remain +pink and smooth, one might possibly overcome the rest, and there would +be no such thing as growing old. It is not a single plank which is +between ourselves and eternity, but a--Would the figure of speech appear +appropriate if one said 'a single cuticle'? I am afraid not." + +He took the screen from its place and regarded it a little absently. + +"You had this in your hand the first night I came here," he said, "when +you told the story of your great lady." + +She took it from him. + +"That was a pretty little story," she said. "It was a dear little story. +My great lady was present to-night. We passed and repassed each other, +and gazed placidly at each other's eyebrows. We were vaguely haunted by +a faint fancy that we might have met before; but the faculties become +dimmed with advancing years, and we could not remember where or how it +happened. One often feels that one has met people, you know." + +She balanced her gleaming screen gracefully, looking at him from under +its shadow. + +"And it is not only on account of my complexion that I want my peacock +feathers," she continued, dropping her great lady by the way as if she +had not picked her up in the interim. "I want them to conceal my +emotions if your revelations surprise me. Have you never seen me use +them when receiving the compliments of Senator Planefield and his +friends? A little turn to the right or the left--the least graceful +little turn--and I can look as I please, and they will see nothing and +only hear my voice, which, I trust, is always sufficiently under +control." + +She wondered if it was sufficiently under control now. She was not sure, +and because she was not sure she made the most reckless speeches she +could think of. There was a story she had heard of a diplomatist, who +once so entirely bewildered his fellow-diplomats that they found it +impossible to cope with him; they were invariably outwitted by him: the +greatest subtlety, the most wondrous _coup d'état_, he baffled alike; +mystery surrounded him; his every act was enshrouded in it; with such +diplomatic methods it was madness to combat. When his brilliant and +marvellous career was at an end his secret was discovered; on every +occasion he had told the simple, exact truth. As she leaned back in her +chair and played with her screen Bertha thought of this story. She had +applied it to herself before this. The one thing which would be +incredible to him at this moment, the one thing it would appear more +than incredible that she should tell him, would be the truth--if he +realized what that truth was. Any other story, however wild, might have +its air or suggestion of plausibility; but that, being what it was, she +should have the nerve, the daring, the iron strength of self-control, +which it would require to make a fearless jest of the simple, terrible +truth, it would seem to him the folly of a madman to believe, she knew. +To look him in the eye with a smile, and tell him that she feared his +glance and dreaded his words, would place the statement without the pale +of probability. She had told him things as true before, and he had not +once thought of believing them. "It is never difficult to persuade him +_not_ to believe me," she thought. There was no one of her many moods of +which she felt such terror, in her more natural moments, as of the one +which held possession of her now; and yet there was none she felt to be +so safe, which roused her to such mental exhilaration while its hour +lasted, or resulted in such reaction when it had passed. "I am never +afraid then," she said to Agnes once. "There is nothing I could not +bear. It seems as if I were made of steel, and had never been soft or +timid in my life. Everything is gone but my power over myself, +and--yes, it intoxicates me. Until it is over I am not really hurt, I +think. There was something I read once about a man who was broken on the +wheel, and while it was being done he laughed, and shrieked, and sang. I +think all women are like that sometimes: while they are being broken +they laugh, and shriek, and sing; but afterward--afterward"-- + +So now she spoke the simple truth. + +"I shall have you at a disadvantage, you may observe," she said. "I +shall see your face, and you will not see mine--unless I wish you to do +so. A little turn of my wrist, and you have only my voice to rely upon. +Do you wish to speak to me before Richard comes in? If so, I am afraid +you must waste no time, as his train is due at twelve. You were going to +say"-- + +"I am afraid it is something you will not like to hear," he answered, +"though I did not contradict you when you suggested that it was." + +"You were outside then," she replied, "and I might not have let you come +in." + +"No," he said, "you might not." + +He looked at the feather screen which she had inclined a trifle. + +"Your screen reminded me of your great lady, Bertha," he said, "because +I saw her to-night, and--and heard her--and she was speaking of you." + +"Of me!" she replied. "That was kind indeed." + +"No," he returned, "it was not. She was neither generous nor lenient; +she did not even speak the truth; and yet, as I heard her, I was obliged +to confess that, to those who did not know you and only saw you as you +were to-night, what she said might not appear so false." + +Bertha turned her screen aside and looked at him composedly. + +"She was speaking of Senator Planefield," she remarked, "and Judge +Ballard, and Commander Barnacles. She reprehended my frivolity and +deplored the tendency of the age." + +"She was speaking of Senator Planefield," he answered. + +She moved the screen a little. + +"Has Senator Planefield been neglecting her?" she said. "I hope not." + +"Lay your screen aside, Bertha," he commanded, hotly. "You don't need +it. What I have to say will not disturb you, as I feared it would--no, I +should say as I hoped it would. It is only this: that these people were +speaking lightly of you--that they connected your name with Planefield's +as--as no honest man is willing that the name of his wife should be +connected with that of another man. That was all; and I, who am always +interfering with your pleasures, could not bear it, and so have made the +blunder of interfering again." + +There were many things she had borne, of which she had said nothing to +Agnes Sylvestre in telling her story,--things she had forced herself to +ignore or pass by; but just now some sudden, passionate realization of +them was too much for her, and she answered him in words she felt it was +madness to utter even as they leaped to her lips. + +"Richard has not been unwilling," she said. "Richard has not resented +it!" + +"If he had been in my place," he began, feeling ill at ease--"if he +understood"-- + +She dropped her screen upon her lap and looked at him with steady eyes. + +"No," she interposed, "that is a mistake. He would not have looked upon +the matter as you do. It is only a trifle, after all. You are +overestimating its importance." + +"Am I?" he said. "Do you regard it in that light?" + +"Yes," she replied, "you are too fastidious. Is the spiteful comment of +an ill-natured, unattractive woman, upon a woman who chances to be more +fortunate than herself, of such weight that it is likely to influence +people greatly? Women are always saying such things of one another when +they are angry. I cannot say them of our friend, it is true, +because--because she is so fortunate as to be placed by nature beyond +reproach. If I had her charms, and her manner, and her years, I should, +perhaps, be beyond reproach too." + +She wondered if he would deign to answer her at all. It seemed as if the +execrable bad taste of her words must overwhelm him. If he had turned +his back upon her and left the room, she would have felt no surprise. To +have seen him do so would have been almost a relief. But, for him, he +merely stood perfectly still and watched her. + +"Go on," he said, at length. + +She faintly smiled. + +"Do you want me to say more?" she asked. "Is not that enough? My great +lady was angry, and was stupid enough to proclaim the fact." She made a +quick turn toward him. "To whom was she speaking?" she demanded. "To a +man or a woman?" + +"To a man," he answered. + +She sank back into her chair and smiled again. + +"Ah," she said, "then it is of less consequence even than I imagined. It +is pleasant to reflect that it was a man. One is not afraid of men." + +She lifted the screen from her lap, and for a moment he could not see +her face. + +"Now he will go," she was saying to herself breathlessly behind it. "Now +he must go. He will go now--and he will not come back." + +But he did not go. It was the irony of fate that he should spare her +nothing. In the few moments of silence which followed he had a great +struggle with himself. It was such a struggle that, when it was at an +end, he was pale and looked subdued. There was a chair near her. He went +to it and sat down at her side. + +"Bertha," he said, "there has been one thing in the midst of all--all +this, to which you have been true. You have loved your children when it +has seemed that nothing else would touch you. I say 'seemed,' because I +swear to you I am unmoved in my disbelief in what you persist in holding +before me--for what reason you know best. You love your children; you +don't lie to me about that--you don't lie to yourself about it. Perhaps +it is only nature, as you said once, and not tenderness; I don't know. I +don't understand you; but give yourself a few moments to think of them +now." + +He saw the hand holding the screen tremble; he could not see her face. + +"What--must I think of them?" + +He looked down at the floor, knitting his brows and dragging at his +great mustache. + +"I overestimate the importance of things," he said. "I don't seem to +know much about the standards society sets up for itself; but it does +not seem a trifle to me that their mother should be spoken of lightly. +There was a girl I knew once--long ago"--He stopped and looked up at her +with sudden, sad candor. "It is you I am thinking of, Bertha," he said; +"you, as I remember you first when you came home from school. I was +thinking of your mother and your dependence upon her, and the tenderness +there was between you." + +"And you were thinking," she added, "that Janey's mother would not be so +good and worthy of trust. That is true." + +"I have no answer to make to that, Bertha," he said. "None." + +She laid the screen upon her lap once more. + +"But it _is_ true," she said; "it is _true_. Why do you refuse to +believe it? Are you so good that you cannot? Yes, you are! As for +me--what did I tell you? I am neither good nor bad, and I want +excitement. Nine people out of ten are so, and I am no worse than the +rest of the nine. One must be amused. If I were religious, I should have +Dorcas societies and missions. As I am not, I have"--she paused one +second, no more--"I have Senator Planefield." + +She could bear the inaction of sitting still no longer. She got up. + +"You have an ideal for everything," she said, "for men, women, and +children,--especially for women, I think. You are always telling +yourself that they are good, and pure, and loving, and faithful; that +they adore their children, and are true to their friends. It is very +pretty, but it is not always the fact. You try to believe it is true of +me; but it is not. I am not your ideal woman. I have told you so. Have +you not found out yet that Bertha Amory is not what you were so sure +Bertha Herrick would be?" + +"Yes," he answered. "You--you have convinced me of that." + +"It was inevitable," she continued. "I was very young then. I knew +nothing of the world or of its distractions and temptations. A thousand +things have happened to change me. And, after all, what right had you to +expect so much of me? I was neither one thing nor the other, even then; +I was only ignorant. You could not expect me to be ignorant always." + +"Bertha," he demanded, "what are you trying to prove to me?" + +"Only a little thing," she answered; "that I need my amusements, and +cannot live without them." + +He rose from his seat also. + +"That you cannot live without Senator Planefield?" he said. + +"Go and tell him so," was her reply. "It would please him, and perhaps +this evening he would be inclined to place some confidence in the +statement." + +She turned and walked to the end of the room; then she came back and +stood quite still before him. + +"I am going to tell you something I would rather keep to myself," she +said. "It may save us both trouble if I don't spare myself as my vanity +prompts me to do. I said I was no worse than the other nine; but I +am--a little. I am not very fond of anything or any one. Not so fond +even of--Richard and the children, as I seem. I know that, though they +do not. If they were not attractive and amiable, or if they interfered +with my pleasures, my affection would not stand many shocks. In a +certain way I am emotional enough always to appear better than I am. +Things touch me for a moment. I was touched a little just now when you +spoke of remembering my being a girl. I was moved when Janey was ill and +you were so good to me. I almost persuaded myself that I was good too, +and faithful and affectionate, and yet at the same time I knew it was +only a fancy, and I should get over it. It is easy for me to laugh and +cry when I choose. There are tears in my eyes now, but--they don't +deceive me." + +"They look like real tears, Bertha," he said. "They would have deceived +me--if you had not given me warning." + +"They always _look_ real," she answered. "And is not there a sort of +merit in my not allowing you to believe in them? Call it a merit, won't +you?" + +His face became like a mask. For several seconds he did not speak. The +habit he had of taking refuge in utter silence was the strongest weapon +he could use against her. He did not know its strength; he only knew +that it was the signal of his own desperate helplessness; but it left +her without defence or resource. + +"Won't you?" she said, feeling that she must say something. + +He hesitated before replying. + +"No," he answered, stonily, after the pause. "I won't call it a merit. I +wish you would leave me--something." + +That was very hard. + +"It is true," she returned, "that I do not--leave you very much." + +The words cost her such an effort that there were breaks between them. + +"No," he said, "not much." + +There was something almost dogged in his manner. He could not bear a +great deal more, and his consciousness of this truth forced him to brace +himself to outward hardness. + +"I don't ask very much," he said. "I only ask you to spare yourself and +your children. I only ask you to keep out of danger. It is yourself I +ask you to think of, not me. Treat me as you like, but don't--don't be +cruel to yourself. I am afraid it does not do for a woman--even a woman +as cool as you are--to trifle with herself and her name. I have heard it +said so, and I could not remain silent after hearing what I did +to-night." + +He turned as if to move away. + +"You are going?" she said. + +"Yes," he replied. "It is very late, and it would be useless to say any +more." + +"You have not shaken hands with me," she said when he was half way to +the door. The words forced themselves from her. Her power of endurance +failed her at the last moment, as it had done before and would do again. + +He came back to her. + +"You will never hold out your hand to me when I shall not be ready to +take it, Bertha," he said. "You know that." + +She did not speak. + +"You are chilled," he said. "Your hand is quite cold." + +"Yes," she replied. "I shall lie down on the sofa by the fire a little +while before going upstairs." + +Without saying anything he left her, drew the sofa nearer to the hearth +and arranged the cushions. + +"I would advise you not to fall asleep," he said when this was done. + +"I shall not fall asleep," she answered. She went to the sofa and sat +down on it. + +"Good-night," she said. + +And he answered her "Good-night," and went out of the room. + +She sat still a few seconds after he was gone, and then lay down. Her +eyes wandered over the room. She saw the ornaments, the pictures on the +wall, the design of the rug, every minute object, with a clearness which +seemed to magnify its importance and significance. There was a little +Cloissoné jar whose pattern she never seemed to have seen before; she +was looking at it when at last she spoke. + +"It is very hard to live," she said. "I wish it was not--so hard. I wish +there was some way of helping one's self, but there is not. One can only +go on--and on--and there is always something worse coming." + +She put her hand upon her breast. Something rose beneath it which gave +her suffocating pain. She staggered to her feet, pressing one hand on +the other to crush this pain down. No woman who has suffered such a +moment but has done the same thing, and done it in vain. She fell, +half-kneeling, half-sitting, upon the rug, her body against her chair, +her arms flung out. + +"Why do you struggle with me?" she cried, between her sobs. "Why do you +look at me so? You--hurt me! I love you! Oh! let me go--let me go! Don't +you know--I can't bear it!" + +In the street she heard the carriages rolling homeward from some gay +gathering. One of them stopped a few doors away, and the people got out +of it laughing and talking. + +"Don't laugh!" she said, shuddering. "No one--should laugh! I laugh! O +God! O God!" + + +In half an hour Richard came in. He had taken Miss Varien home, and +remained to talk with her a short time. As he entered the house Bertha +was going up the staircase, her gleaming dress trailing behind her, her +feather-trimmed wrap over her arm. She turned and smiled down at him. + +"Your charms will desert you if you keep such hours as these," she said. +"How did you enjoy yourself, or, rather, how did you enjoy Miss Varien, +and how many dazzling remarks did she make?" + +"More than I could count," he said, laughing. "Wait a moment for me--I +am coming up." And he ran up the steps lightly and joined her, slipping +his arm about her waist. + +"You look tired," he said, "but your charms never desert you. Was that +the shudder of guilt? Whose peace of mind have you been destroying?" + +"Colonel Tredennis'," she answered. + +"Then it was not the shudder of guilt," he returned, laughing again. +And, as she leaned gently against him, he bent and kissed her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + +It was generally conceded that nothing could be more agreeable than Mrs. +Sylvestre's position and surroundings. Those of her acquaintance who had +known her before her marriage, seeking her out, pronounced her more full +of charm than ever; those who saw her for the first time could scarcely +express with too much warmth their pleasure in her grace, gentleness, +and beauty. Her house was only less admired than herself, and Mrs. +Merriam, promptly gathering a coterie of old friends about her, +established herself most enviably at once. It became known to the world, +through the medium of the social columns of the dailies, that Mrs. +Sylvestre was at home on Tuesday afternoons, and that she also received +her friends each Wednesday evening. On these occasions her parlors were +always well filled, and with society so agreeable that it was not long +before they were counted among the most attractive social features of +the week. Professor Herrick himself appeared on several Wednesdays, and +it was gradually remarked that Colonel Tredennis presented himself upon +the scene more frequently than their own previous knowledge of his +habits would have led the observers to expect. On seeing Mrs. Sylvestre +in the midst of her guests and admirers, Miss Jessup was reminded of +Madame Récamier and the _salons_ of Paris, and wrote almost an entire +letter on the subject, which was printed by the "Wabash Times," under +the heading of "A Recent Récamier," and described Mrs. Sylvestre's +violet eyes, soft voice, and willowy figure, with nothing short of +enthusiasm. + +Under these honors Mrs. Sylvestre bore herself very calmly. If she had a +fault, an impetuous acquaintance once remarked, it was that she was too +calm. She found her life even more interesting than she had hoped it +would be; there was pleasure in the renewal of old friendships and +habits and the formation of new ones, and in time it became less +difficult to hold regrets and memories in check with a steady hand. She +neither gave herself to retrospection nor to feverish gayety; she felt +she had outlived her need of the latter and her inclination for the +former. Without filling her life with excitement, she enjoyed the +recreations of each day as they came, and felt no resulting fatigue. +When Professor Herrick came to spend an evening hour with her and sat by +the fire gently admiring her as he was led on to talk, and also gently +admiring Mrs. Merriam, who was in a bright, shrewd humor, she herself +was filled with pleasure in them both. She liked their ripeness of +thought and their impartial judgment of the life whose prejudices they +had outlived. And as genuinely as she liked this she enjoyed Colonel +Tredennis, who now and then came too. In the first place he came because +he was asked, but afterwards because, at the end of his first visit, he +left the house with a sense of being in some vague way the better for +it. Agnes' manner toward him had been very kind. She had shown an +interest in himself and his pursuits, which had somehow beguiled him out +of his usual reticence and brought the best of his gifts to the surface, +though nothing could have been more unstrained and quiet than the tone +of their conversation. He was at no disadvantage when they talked +together; he could keep pace with her and understand her gentle +thoughts; she did not bewilder him or place him on the defensive. Once, +as he looked at her sweet, reposeful face, he remembered what Bertha had +said of his ideal woman and the thought rose in his mind that this was +she--fair, feminine, full of all tender sympathy and kindly thought; not +ignorant of the world nor bitter against it, only bearing no stain of it +upon her. "All women should be so," he thought, sadly. And Agnes saw +the shadow fall upon his face, and wondered what he was thinking of. + +She began to speak to him of Bertha soon afterward, and, perhaps, if the +whole truth were told, it was while she so spoke that he felt her grace +and sweetness most movingly. The figure her words brought before him was +the innocent one he loved, the one he only saw in memory and dreams, and +whose eyes followed him with an appeal which was sad truth itself. At +first Agnes spoke of the time when they had been girls together, making +their _entrée_ into society, with others as young and untried as +themselves--Bertha the happiest and brightest of them all. + +"She was always a success," she said. "She had that quality. One don't +know how to analyze it. People remembered her and were attracted, and +she never made them angry or envious. Men who had been in love with her +remained her friends. It was because she was so true to them. She was +always a true friend." + +She remembered so many incidents of those early days, and in her +relation of them Bertha appeared again and again the same graceful, +touching young presence, always generous and impetuous, ready of wit, +bright of spirit, and tender of heart. + +"We all loved her," said Agnes. "She was worth loving; and she is not +changed." + +"Not changed," said Tredennis, involuntarily. + +"Did you think her so?" she asked, gently. + +"Sometimes," he answered, looking down. "I am not sure that I know her +very well." + +But he knew that he took comfort with him when he went away, and that he +was full of heartfelt gratitude to the woman who had defended him +against himself. When he sat among his books that night his mind was +calmer than it had been for many a day, and he felt his loneliness less. +What wonder that he went to the house again and again, and oftener to +spend a quiet hour than when others were there! When his burdens +weighed most heavily upon him, and his skies looked darkest, Agnes +Sylvestre rarely failed to give him help. When he noted her +thoughtfulness for others, he did not know what method there was in her +thoughtfulness for himself, and with what skilful tact and delicate care +she chose the words in which she spoke to him of Bertha; he only felt +that, after she had talked to him, the shadow which was his companion +was less a shadow, and more a fair truth to be believed in and to draw +faith and courage from. + +The professor, who met him once or twice during his informal calls, +spoke of the fact to Arbuthnot with evident pleasure. + +"He was at his best," he said, "and I have noticed that it is always so +when he is there. The truth is, it would be impossible to resist the +influence of that beautiful young woman." + +His acquaintance with Mr. Arbuthnot had taken upon itself something of +the character of an intimacy. They saw each other almost daily. The +professor had indeed made many discoveries concerning the younger man, +but none which caused him to like him less. He had got over his first +inclination towards surprise at finding they had many things in common, +having early composed himself to meet with calmness any source of +momentary wonder which might present itself, deciding, at length, that +he, himself, was either younger or his new acquaintance older than he +had imagined, without making the matter an affair of years. The two fell +into a comfortable habit of discussing the problems of the day, and, +though their methods were entirely different, and Arbuthnot was, at the +outset, much given to a light treatment of argument, they always +understood each other in the end, and were drawn a trifle nearer by the +debate. It was actually discovered that Laurence had gone so far as to +initiate the unwary professor into the evil practice of smoking, having +gradually seduced him by the insidious temptings of the most delicate +cigars. The discussions, it was observed, were always more enjoyable +when, the professor, having his easy-chair placed in exactly the right +position with regard to light and fire, found himself, with his cigar in +hand, carefully smoking it, and making the most of its aroma. His +tranquil enjoyment of and respect for the rite were agreeable things to +see. + +"It soothes me," he would say to Arbuthnot. "It even inspires and +elevates me. I feel as if I had discovered a new sense. I am really +quite grateful." + +It was Arbuthnot who generally arranged his easy-chair, showing a +remarkable instinct in the matter of knowing exactly what was necessary +to comfort. Among his discoveries concerning him the professor counted +this one, that he had in such things the silent quickness of perception +and deft-handedness of a woman, and perhaps it had at first surprised +him more than all else. + +It may have been for some private reason of his own that the professor +occasionally gave to the conversation a lighter tone, even giving a +friendly and discursive attention to social topics, and showing an +interest in the doings of pleasure-lovers and the butterfly of fashion. +At such times Arbuthnot noticed that, beginning with a reception at the +British Embassy, they not unfrequently ended with Bertha; or, opening +with the last dinner at the White House, closed with Richard and the +weekly "evenings" adorned by the presence of Senator Planefield and his +colleague. So it was perfectly natural that they should not neglect Mrs. +Sylvestre, to whom the professor had taken a great fancy, and whose +progress he watched with much interest. He frequently spoke of her to +Arbuthnot, dwelling upon the charm which made her what she was, and +analyzing it and its influence upon others. It appeared to have +specially impressed itself upon him on the occasion of his seeing +Tredennis, and having said that it would be impossible to resist this +"beautiful young woman,"--as he had fallen into the unconscious habit +of calling her,--he went on to discourse further. + +"She is too tranquil to make any apparent effort," he said. "And yet the +coldest and most reserved person must be warmed and moved by her. You +have seen that, though you are neither the most reserved nor the +coldest." + +Arbuthnot was smoking the most perfectly flavored of cigars, and giving +a good deal of delicate attention to it. At this he took it from his +mouth, looked at the end, and removed the ash with a touch of his +finger, in doing which he naturally kept his eyes upon the cigar, and +not upon the professor. + +"Yes," he said, "I have recognized it, of course." + +"You see her rather often, I think?" said the professor. + +"I am happy to be permitted that privilege," was the answer; "though I +am aware I am indebted for it far more to Mrs. Amory than to my own +fascinations, numberless and powerful though they may be." + +"It is a privilege," said the professor; "but it is more of one to +Philip than to you--even more of one than he knows. He needs what such a +woman might give him." + +"Does he?" said Arbuthnot. "Might I ask what that is?" + +And he was angry with himself because he did not say it with more ease +and less of a sense of unreasonable irritation. The professor seemed to +forget his cigar, he held it in the hand which rested on his chair-arm, +and neglected it while he gave himself up to thought. + +"He has changed very much during the past year," he said. "In the few +last months I have noticed it specially. I miss something from his +manner, and he looks fagged and worn. It has struck me that he rather +needs an interest, and feels his loneliness without being conscious that +he does so. After all, it is only natural. A man who leads an isolated +life inevitably reaches a period when his isolation wearies him, and he +broods over it a little." + +"And you think," said Arbuthnot, "that Mrs. Sylvestre might supply the +interest?" + +"Don't you think so yourself?" suggested the professor, mildly. + +"Oh," said Laurence, "_I_ think the man would be hard to please who did +not find she could supply him with anything and everything." + +And he laughed and made a few rings of smoke, watching them float upward +toward the ceiling. + +"He would have a great deal to bring her," said the professor, speaking +for the moment rather as if to himself than to any audience. "And she +would have a great deal in return for what she could bestow. He has +always been what he is to-day, and only such a man is worthy of her. No +man who has trifled with himself and his past could offer what is due to +her." + +"That is true," said Laurence. + +He made more rings of smoke and blew them away. + +"As for Tredennis," he said, with a deliberateness he felt necessary to +his outward composure, "his advantage is that he does not exactly belong +to the nineteenth century. He has no place in parlors; when he enters +one, without the least pretension or consciousness of himself, he towers +over the rest of us with a gigantic modesty it is useless to endeavor to +bear up against. He ought to wear a red cross, and carry a battle-axe, +and go on a crusade, or right the wrongs of the weak by unhorsing the +oppressor in single combat. He might found a Round Table. His crush hat +should be a helmet, and he should appear in armor." + +The professor smiled. + +"That is a very nice figure," he said, "though you don't treat it +respectfully. It pleases my fancy." + +Arbuthnot laughed again, not the gayest laugh possible. + +"It is he who is a nice figure," he returned. "And, though he little +suspects it, he is the one most admired of women. He could win anything +he wanted and would deserve all he won. Oh, I'm respectful enough. I'm +obliged to be. There's the rub!" + +"Is it a rub?" asked the professor, a little disturbed by an illogical +fancy which at the moment presented itself without a shadow of warning. + +"_You_ don't want the kind of thing he might care for." + +This time Laurence's laugh had recovered its usual delightful tone. He +got up and went to the mantel for a match to light a new cigar. + +"I!" he said. "I want nothing but the assurance that I shall be +permitted to retain my position in the Treasury until I don't need it. +It is a modest ambition, isn't it? And yet I am afraid it will be +thwarted. And then--in the next administration, perhaps--I shall be +seedy and out at elbows, and Mrs. Amory won't like to invite me to her +Thursday evenings, because she will know it will make me uncomfortable, +and then--then I shall disappear." + +"Something has disturbed you," commented the professor, rather +seriously. "You are talking nonsense." + +And as he said it the thought occurred to him that he had heard more of +that kind of nonsense than usual of late, and that the fact was likely +to be of some significance. "It is the old story," he thought, "and it +is beginning to wear upon him until he does not control himself quite so +completely as he did at first. That is natural too. Perhaps Bertha +herself has been a little cruel to him, in her woman's way. She has not +been bearing it so well either." + +"My dear professor," said Laurence, "everything is relative, and what +you call nonsense I regard as my most successful conversational efforts. +_I_ could not wield Excalibur. Don't expect it of me, I beg you." + +If he had made an effort to evade any further discussion of Mrs. +Sylvestre and the possibilities of her future, he had not failed in it. +They talked of her no more, in fact, they talked very little at all. A +shade had fallen upon the professor's face and did not pass away. He +lighted his cigar again, but scarcely seemed to enjoy finishing it. If +Arbuthnot had been in as alert a mental condition as usual, his +attention would have been attracted by the anxious thoughtfulness of his +old friend's manner; but he himself was preoccupied and rather glad of +the opportunity to be silent. When the cigars were finished, and he was +on the point of taking his departure, the professor seemed to rouse +himself as if from a reverie. + +"That modest ambition of yours"--he began slowly. + +"Thank you for thinking of it," said Arbuthnot, as he paused. + +"It interests me," replied the professor. "You are continually finding +something to interest me. There is no reason why it should be thwarted, +you know." + +"I wish I did," returned Laurence. "But I don't, you see. They are shaky +pieces of architecture, those government buildings. The +foundation-stones are changed too often to insure a sense of security to +the occupants. No; my trouble is that I don't know." + +"You have a great many friends," said the professor. + +"I have a sufficient number of invitations to make myself generally +useful," said Laurence, "and of course they imply an appreciation of my +social gifts which gratifies me; but a great deal depends on a man's +wardrobe. I might as well be without talents as minus a dress-coat. It +interests me sometimes to recognize a brother in the 'song and dance +artist' who is open to engagements. I, my dear professor, am the 'song +and dance artist.' When I am agile and in good voice I am recalled; but +they would not want me if I were hoarse and out of spirits, and had no +spangles." + +"You might get something better than you have," said the professor, +reflectively. "You ought to get something." + +"To whom shall I apply?" said Laurence. "Do you think the President +would receive me to-morrow? Perhaps he has already mentioned his +anxiety to see me." Then, his manner changing, he added, with some +hurry, "You are very good, but I think it is of no use. The mistake was +in letting myself drift as I did. It would not have happened if--if I +hadn't been a fool. It was my own fault. Thank you! Don't think of me. +It wouldn't pay me to do it myself, and you may be sure it would not pay +you." + +And he shook the professor's hand and left him. + +He was not in the best of humor when he reached the street, and was +obliged to acknowledge that of late the experience had not been as rare +a one as discretion should have made it. His equable enjoyment of his +irresponsible existence had not held its own entirely this winter. It +had been disturbed by irrational moods and touches of irritability. He +had broken, in spite of himself, the strict rules he had laid down +against introspection and retrospection; he had found himself deviating +in the direction of shadowy regrets and discontents; and this in the +face of the fact that no previous season had presented to him greater +opportunities for enjoyment than this one. Certainly he counted as the +most enviable of his privileges those bestowed upon him by the inmates +of the new establishment in Lafayette Place. His intimacy with the +Amorys had placed him upon a more familiar footing than he could have +hoped to attain under ordinary circumstances, and, this much gained, his +social gifts and appreciation of the favor showed him did the rest. + +"Your Mr. Arbuthnot," remarked Mrs. Merriam, after having conversed with +him once or twice, "or, I suppose, I ought rather to say little Mrs. +Amory's Mr. Arbuthnot, is a wonderfully suitable person." + +"Suitable?" repeated Agnes. "For what?" + +"For anything--for everything. He would never be out of place, and his +civility is absolute genius." + +Mrs. Sylvestre's smile was for her relative's originality of statement, +and apparently bore not the slightest reference to Mr. Arbuthnot +himself. + +"People are never entirely impersonal," Mrs. Merriam went on. "But an +appearance of being so may be cultivated, as this gentleman has +cultivated his, until it is almost perfection. He never projects himself +into the future. When he picks up your handkerchief he does not appear +to be thinking how you will estimate his civility; he simply restores +you an article you would miss. He does nothing with an air, and he never +forgets things. Perhaps the best part of his secret is that he never +forgets himself." + +"I am afraid he must find that rather tiresome," Agnes remarked. + +"My dear," said Mrs. Merriam, "no one could forget herself less often +than you do. That is the secret of your repose of manner. Privately you +are always on guard, and your unconsciousness of the fact arises from +the innocence of youth. You are younger than you think." + +"Ah!" said Mrs. Sylvestre, rising and crossing the room to move a yellow +vase on the top of a cabinet, "don't make me begin life over again." + +"You have reached the second stage of existence," said the older woman, +her bright eyes sparkling. "There are three: the first, when one +believes everything is white; the second, when one is sure everything is +black; the third, when one knows that the majority of things are simply +gray." + +"If I were called upon to find a color for your favorite," said Agnes, +bestowing a soft, abstracted smile on the yellow vase, "I think I should +choose gray. He is certainly neutral." + +"He is a very good color," replied Mrs. Merriam; "the best of colors. He +matches everything,--one's tempers, one's moods, one's circumstances. He +is a very excellent color indeed." + +"Yes," said Agnes, quietly. + +And she carried her vase to another part of the room, and set it on a +little ebony stand. + +It had become an understood thing, indeed, that her relative found +Laurence Arbuthnot entertaining, and was disposed to be very gracious +toward him. On his part he found her the cleverest and most piquant of +elderly personages. When he entered the room where she sat it was her +habit to make a place for him at her own side, and to enjoy a little +agreeable gossip with him before letting him go. After they had had a +few such conversations together Arbuthnot began to discover that his +replies to her references to himself and his past had not been so +entirely marked by reticence as he had imagined when he had made them. +His friend had a talent for putting the most adroit leading questions, +which did not betray their significance upon the surface; and once or +twice, after answering such a one, he had seen a look in her sparkling +old eyes which led him to ponder over his own words as well as hers. +Still, she was always astute and vivacious, and endowed him for the time +being with a delightful sense of being at his best, for which he was +experienced enough to be grateful. He had also sufficient experience to +render him alive to the fact that he preferred to be at his best when it +was his good fortune to adorn this particular drawing-room with his +presence. He knew, before long, that when he had made a speech upon +which he privately prided himself, after the manner of weak humanity, he +found it agreeable to be flattered by the consciousness that Mrs. +Sylvestre's passion-flower-colored eyes were resting upon him with that +delicious suggestion of reflection. He was not rendered happier by the +knowledge of this susceptibility, but he was obliged to admit its +existence in himself. Few men of his years were as little prone to such +natural weaknesses, and he had not attained his somewhat abnormal state +of composure without paying its price. Perhaps the capital had been too +large. + +"If one has less, one is apt to be more economical," Bertha had heard +him remark, "and, at least, retain a small annuity to exist upon in +one's maturer years. I did not retain such an annuity." + +Certainly there was one period of his life upon which he never looked +back without a shudder; and this being the case, he had taught himself, +as time passed, not to look back upon it at all. He had also taught +himself not to look forward, finding the one almost as bad as the other. +As Bertha had said, he was not fond of affairs, and even his enemies +were obliged to admit that he was ordinarily too discreet or too cold to +engage in the most trivial of such agreeable entanglements. + +"If I pick up a red-hot coal," he said, "I shall burn my fingers, even +if I throw it away quickly. Why should a man expose himself to the +chance of being obliged to bear a blister about with him for a day or +so? If I may be permitted, I prefer to stand before the fire and enjoy +an agreeable warmth without personal interference with the blaze." + +Nothing could have been farther from his intentions than interference +with the blaze, where Mrs. Sylvestre was concerned; though he had +congratulated himself upon the glow her grace and beauty diffused, +certainly no folly could have been nearer akin to madness than such +folly, if he had been sufficiently unsophisticated to indulge in it. And +he was not unsophisticated; few were less so. His perfect and just +appreciation of his position bounded him on every side, and it would +have been impossible for him to lose sight of it. He had never blamed +any one but himself for the fact that he had accomplished nothing +particular in life, and had no prospect of accomplishing anything. It +had been his own fault, he had always said; if he had been a better and +stronger fellow he would not have been beaten down by one blow, however +sharp and heavy. He had given up because he chose to give up and let +himself drift. His life since then had been agreeable enough; he had had +his moments of action and reaction; he had laughed one day and felt a +little glum the next, and had let one mood pay for the next, and +trained himself to expect nothing better. He had not had any inclination +for marriage, and had indeed frequently imagined that he had a strong +disinclination for it; his position in the Amory household had given him +an abiding-place, which was like having a home without bearing the +responsibility of such an incumbrance. + +"I regard myself," Bertha sometimes said to him, "as having been a +positive boon to you. If I had not been so good to you there would have +been moments when you would have almost wished you were married; and if +you had had such moments the day of your security would have been at an +end." + +"Perfectly true," he invariably responded, "and I am grateful +accordingly." + +He began to think of this refuge of his, after he had walked a few +minutes. He became conscious that, the longer he was alone with himself, +the less agreeable he found the situation. There was a sentence of the +professor's which repeated itself again and again, and made him feel +restive; somehow he could not rid himself of the memory of it. + +"No man who had trifled with himself and his past could offer what is +due to her." It was a simple enough truth, and he found nothing in it to +complain of; but it was not an exhilarating thing to dwell upon and be +haunted by. + +He stopped suddenly in the street and threw his cigar away. A half-laugh +broke from him. + +"I am resenting it," he said. "It is making me as uncomfortable as if I +was a human being, instead of a mechanical invention in the employ of +the government. My works are getting out of order. I will go and see +Mrs. Amory; she will give me something to think of. She always does." + +A few minutes later he entered the familiar parlor. The first object +which met his eye was the figure of Bertha, and, as he had anticipated +would be the case, she gave him something to think of. But it was not +exactly the kind of thing he had hoped for, though it was something, it +is true, which he had found himself confronted with once or twice +before. It was something in herself, which on his first sight of her +presented itself to him so forcibly that it gave him something very near +a shock. + +He had evidently broken in upon some moment of absorbed thought. She was +standing near the mantel, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes +seeming fixed on space. The strangeness of her attitude struck him +first, and then the unusualness of her dress, whose straight, long lines +of unadorned black revealed, as he had never seen it revealed before, +the change which had taken place in her. + +She dropped her hands when she saw him, but did not move toward him. + +"Did you meet Richard?" she said. + +"No," he replied. "Did he want to see me?" + +"He said something of the kind, though I am not quite sure what it was." + +Their eyes rested on each other as he approached her. In the questioning +of hers there was a touch of defiance, but he knew its meaning too well +to be daunted by it. + +"I would not advise you to wear that dress again," he said. + +"Why not?" she asked. + +"Go to the mirror and look at yourself," he said. + +She turned, walked across the room with a slow, careless step, as if the +effort was scarcely worth while. There was an antique mirror on the +wall, and she stopped before it and looked herself over. + +"It isn't wise, is it?" she said. "It makes me look like a ghost. No, it +doesn't _make_ me look like one; it simply shows me as I am. It couldn't +be said of me just now that I am at my best, could it?" + +Then she turned around. + +"I don't seem to care!" she said. "_Don't_ I care! That would be a bad +sign in _me_, wouldn't it?" + +"I should consider it one," he answered. "It is only in novels that +people can afford not to care. You cannot afford it. Don't wear a dress +again which calls attention to the fact that you are so ill and worn as +to seem only a shadow of yourself. It _isn't_ wise." + +"Why should one object to being ill?" she said. "It is not such a bad +idea to be something of an invalid, after all; it insures one a great +many privileges. It is not demanded of invalids that they shall always +be brilliant. They are permitted to be pale, and silent, and heavy-eyed, +and lapses are not treasured up against them." She paused an instant. +"When one is ill," she said, "nothing one does or leaves undone is of +any special significance. It is like having a holiday." + +"Do you want to take such a holiday?" he asked. "Do you need it?" + +She stood quite still a moment, and he knew she did it because she +wished to steady her voice. + +"Sometimes," she said at last, "I think I do." + +Since he had first known her there had been many times when she had +touched him without being in the least conscious that she did so. He had +often found her laughter as pathetic as other people's tears, even while +he had joined in it himself. Perhaps there was something in his own mood +which made her seem in those few words more touching than she had ever +been before. + +"Suppose you begin to take it now," he said, "while I am with you." + +She paused a few seconds again before answering. Then she looked up. + +"When people ask you how I am," she said, "you might tell them that I am +not very well, that I have not been well for some time, and that I am +not getting better." + +"Are you getting--worse?" he asked. + +Her reply--if reply it was--was a singular one. She pushed the sleeve +of her black dress a little way from her wrist, and stood looking down +at it without speaking. There were no bangles on the wrist this morning, +and without these adornments its slenderness seemed startling. The +small, delicate bones marked themselves, and every blue vein was +traceable. + +Neither of them spoke, and in a moment she drew the sleeve down again, +and went back to her place by the fire. To tell the truth, Arbuthnot +could not have spoken at first. It was she who at length broke the +silence, turning to look at him as he sat in the seat he had taken, his +head supported by his hand. + +"Will you tell me," she said, "what has hurt _you_?" + +"Why should you ask that?" he said. + +"I should be very blind and careless of you if I had not seen that +something had happened to you," she answered. "You are always caring for +me, and--understanding me. It is only natural that I should have learned +to understand you a little. This has not been a good winter for you. +What is it, Larry?" + +"I wish it was something interesting," he answered; "but it is not. It +is the old story. I am out of humor. I'm dissatisfied. I have been +guilty of the folly of not enjoying myself on one or two occasions, and +the consciousness of it irritates me." + +"It is always indiscreet not to enjoy one's self," she said. + +And then there was silence for a moment, while she looked at him again. + +Suddenly she broke into a laugh,--a laugh almost hard in its tone. He +glanced up to see what it meant. + +"Do you want to know what makes me laugh?" she said. "I am thinking how +like all this is the old-fashioned tragedy, where all the _dramatis +personæ_ are disposed of in the last act. We go over one by one, don't +we? Soon there will be no one left to tell the tale. Even Colonel +Tredennis and Richard show signs of their approaching doom. And +you--some one has shown you your dagger, I think, and you know you +cannot escape it." + +"I am the ghost," he answered; "the ghost who was disposed of before the +tragedy began, and whose business it is to haunt the earth, and remind +the rest of you that once I had blood in my veins too." + +He broke off suddenly and left his seat. The expression of his face had +altogether changed. + +"We always talk in this strain," he exclaimed. "We are always jeering! +Is there anything on earth, any suffering or human feeling, we could +treat seriously? If there is, for God's sake let us speak of it just for +one hour." + +She fixed her eyes on him, and there was a sad little smile in their +depths. + +"Yes, you have seen your dagger," she said. "You have seen it. Poor +Larry! Poor Larry!" + +She turned away and sat down, clasping her hands on her knee, and he saw +that suddenly her lashes were wet, and thought that it was very like her +that, though she had no tears for herself, she had them for him. + +"Don't be afraid that I will ask you any questions," she said. "I won't. +You never asked me any. Perhaps words would not do you any good." + +"Nothing would do me any good just now," he answered. "Let it go at +that. It mayn't be as bad as it seems just for the moment--such things +seldom are. If it gets really worse, I suppose I shall find myself +coming to you some day to make my plaint; but it's very good in you to +look at me like that. And I was a fool to fancy I wanted to be serious. +I don't, on the whole." + +"No, you were not a fool," she said. "There is no reason why _you_ +should not be what you want. Laurence," with something like sudden +determination in her tone, "there is something I want to say to you." + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"I have got into a bad habit lately," she said,--"a bad habit of +thinking. When I lie awake at night"-- + +"Do you lie awake at night?" he interrupted. + +She turned her face a little away, as if she did not wish to meet his +inquiring gaze. + +"Yes," she answered, after a pause. "I suppose it is because of +this--habit. I can't help it; but it doesn't matter." + +"Oh," he exclaimed, "it does matter! You can't stand it." + +"Is there anything people 'cannot stand'?" she said. "If there is, I +should like to try it." + +"You may well look as you do," he said. + +"Yes, I may well," she answered. "And it is the result of the evil +practice of thinking. When once you begin, it is not easy to stop. And I +think you have begun." + +"I shall endeavor to get over it," he replied. + +"No," she said, "don't!" + +She rose from her seat and stood up before him, trembling, and with two +large tears falling upon her cheeks. + +"Larry," she said, "that is what I wanted to say--that is what I have +been thinking of. I shall not say it well, because we have laughed at +each other so long that it is not easy to speak of anything seriously; +but I must try. See! I am tired of laughing. I have come to the time +when there seems to be nothing left but tears--and there is no help; but +you are different, and if you are tired too, and if there is anything +you want, even if you could not be sure of having it, it would be better +to be trying to earn it, and to be worthy of it." + +He rested his forehead on his hands, and kept his eyes fixed on the +carpet. + +"That is a very exalted way of looking at things," he said, in a low +voice. "I am afraid I am not equal to it." + +"In the long nights, when I have lain awake and thought so," she went +on, "I have seemed to find out that--there were things worth altering +all one's life for. I did not want to believe in them at first, but now +it is different with me. I could not say so to any one but you--and +perhaps not to you to-morrow or the day after--and you will hear me +laugh and jeer many a time again. That is my fate; but it need not be +yours. Your life is your own. If mine were my own--oh, if mine were my +own!" She checked the passionate exclamation with an effort. "When one's +life belongs to one's self," she added, "one can do almost anything with +it!" + +"I have not found it so," he replied. + +"You have never tried it," she said. "One does not think of these things +until the day comes when there is a reason--a reason for everything--for +pain and gladness, for hope and despair, for the longing to be better +and the struggle against being worse. Oh, how can one give up when there +is such a reason, and one's life is in one's own hands! I am saying it +very badly, Larry, I know that. Agnes Sylvestre could say it better, +though she could not mean it more." + +"She would not take the trouble to say it at all," he said. + +Bertha drew back a pace with an involuntary movement. The repressed ring +of bitterness in the words had said a great deal. + +"Is it--?" she exclaimed, involuntarily, as she had moved, and then +stopped. "I said I would not ask questions," she added, and clasped her +hands behind her back, standing quite still, in an attitude curiously +expressive of agitation and suspense. + +"What!" he said; "have I told you? I was afraid I should. Yes, it is +Mrs. Sylvestre who has disturbed me; it is Mrs. Sylvestre who has +stirred the calm of ages." + +She was silent a second, and when she spoke her eyes looked very large +and bright. + +"I suppose," she said, slowly, "that it is very womanish in me,--that I +almost wish it had been some one else." + +"Why?" he asked. + +"You _all_ have been moved by Mrs. Sylvestre," she replied, more slowly +than before,--"_all_ of you." + +"How many of us are there?" he inquired. + +"Colonel Tredennis has been moved, too," she said. "Not long before you +came in he paid me a brief visit. He does not come often now, and his +visits are usually for Janey, and not for me. I displeased him the night +he went with me to the reception of the Secretary of State, and he has +not been able to resign himself to seeing me often; but this evening he +came in, and we talked of Mrs. Sylvestre. He had been calling upon her, +and her perfections were fresh in his memory. He finds her beautiful and +generous and sincere; she is not frivolous or capricious. I think that +was what I gathered from the few remarks he made. I asked him questions; +you see, I wanted to know. And she has this advantage,--she has all the +virtues which the rest of us have not." + +"You are very hard on Tredennis sometimes," he said, answering in this +vague way the look on her face which he knew needed answer. + +"Sometimes," she said; "sometimes he is hard on me." + +"He has not been easy on _me_ to-day," he returned. + +"Poor Larry!" she said again. "Poor Larry!" + +He smiled a little. + +"You see what chance I should be likely to have against such a rival," +he said. "I wonder if it ought to be a consolation to me to reflect that +my position is such that it cannot be affected by rivals. If I had the +field to myself I should stand exactly where I do at this moment. It +saves me from the risk of suffering, don't you see? I know my place too +well to allow myself to reach that point. I am uncomfortable only +because circumstances have placed it before me in a strong light, and I +don't like to look at it." + +"What is your place?" she asked. + +"It is in the Treasury," he replied. "The salary is not large. I am +slightly in debt--to my tailor and hosier, who are, however, patient, +because they think I am to be relied on through this administration." + +"I wish I knew what to say to you!" she exclaimed. "I wish I knew!" + +"I wish you did," he answered. "You have said all you could. I wish I +believed what you say. It would be more dignified than to be simply out +of humor with one's self, and resentful." + +"Larry," she said, gently, "I believe you are something more." + +"No! no! Nothing more!" he exclaimed. "Nothing more, for Heaven's sake!" +And he made a quick gesture, as if he was intolerant of the thought, and +would like to move it away. So they said no more on this subject, and +began soon after to talk about Richard. + +"What did you mean," Arbuthnot asked, "by saying that Richard showed +signs of his approaching doom? Isn't he in good spirits?" + +"It seems incredible," she answered, "that Richard should not be in good +spirits; but it has actually seemed to me lately that he was not. The +Westoria lands appear to have worried him." + +"The Westoria lands," he repeated, slowly. + +"He has interested himself in them too much," she said. "Things don't go +as easily as he imagined they would, and it annoys him. To-day"-- + +"What happened to-day?" Laurence asked, as she stopped. + +"It was not very much," she said; "but it was unlike him. He was a +little angry." + +"With whom?" + +"With me, I think. Lately I have thought I would like to go abroad, and +I have spoken of it to him once or twice, and he has rather put it off; +and to-day I wanted to speak of it again, and it seemed the wrong time, +somehow, and he was a trifle irritable about it. He has not always been +quite himself this winter, but he has never been irritable with me. That +isn't like him, you know." + +"No, it isn't like him," was Laurence's comment. + +Afterward, when he was going away, he asked her a question: + +"Do you wish very much to go abroad?" he said. + +"Yes," she answered. + +"You think the change would do you good?" + +"Change often does one good," she replied. "I should like to try it." + +"I should like to try it myself," he said. "Go, if you can, though no +one will miss you more than I shall." + +And, having said it, he took his departure. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + + +But Bertha did not go abroad, and the season reached its height and its +wane, and, though Miss Jessup began to refer occasionally to the +much-to-be regretted delicacy of the charming Mrs. Amory's health, there +seemed but little alteration in her mode of life. + +"I will confide to you," she said to Colonel Tredennis, "that I have set +up this effective little air of extreme delicacy as I might set up a +carriage,--if I needed one. It is one of my luxuries. Do you remember +Lord Farintosh's tooth, which always ached when he was invited out to +dinner and did not want to go,--the tooth which Ethel Newcome said +nothing would induce him to part with? My indisposition is like that. I +refuse to become convalescent. Don't prescribe for me, I beg of you." + +It was true, as she had said, that the colonel presented himself at the +house less often than had been his wont, and that his visits were more +frequently for Janey than for herself. "You will never hold out your +hand to me when I shall not be ready to take it," he had said; but she +did not hold out her hand, and there was nothing that he could do, and +if he went to her he must find himself confronted with things he could +not bear to see, and so he told himself that, until he was needed, it +was best that he should stay away, or go only now and then. + +But he always knew what she was doing. The morning papers told him that +she was involved in the old, unceasing round of excitement,--announcing +that she was among the afternoon callers; that she received at home; +that she dined, lunched, danced, appeared at charitable entertainments, +and was seen at the theatre. It became his habit to turn unconsciously +to the society column before he read anything else, though he certainly +found himself none the happier for its perusal. + +But, though he saw Bertha less frequently, he did not forget Richard. At +this time he managed to see him rather often, and took some pains to +renew the bloom of their first acquaintance, which had, perhaps, shown +itself a little on the wane, as Richard's friendships usually did in +course of time. And, perhaps, this waning having set in, Richard was not +at first invariably so enthusiastically glad to see the large military +figure present itself in his office. He had reasons of his own for not +always feeling entirely at ease before his whilom favorite. As he had +remarked to Planefield, Philip Tredennis was not a malleable fellow. He +had unflinching habits of truth, and remorseless ideas of what a man's +integrity should be, and would not be likely to look with lenient or +half-seeing eyes upon any palterings with falsehood and dishonor, +however colored or disguised. And he did not always appear at the most +convenient moment; there were occasions, indeed, when his unexpected +entrance had put an end to business conferences of a very interesting +and slightly exciting nature. These conferences had, it is true, some +connection with the matter of the Westoria lands, and the colonel had +lately developed an interest in the project in question which he had not +shown at the outset. He had even begun to ask questions about it, and +shown a desire to inform himself as to the methods most likely to be +employed in manipulating the great scheme. He amassed, in one way and +another, a large capital of information concerning subsidies and land +grants, and exhibited remarkable intelligence in his mental investment +of it. Indeed, there were times when he awakened in Richard a rather +uneasy sense of admiration by the clearness of his insight and the +practical readiness of his views. + +"He has always been given to digging into things," Amory said to +Planefield, after one of their interviews. "That is his habit of mind, +and he has a steady business capacity you don't expect to find." + +"What is he digging into this thing for?" Planefield asked. "He will be +digging up something, one of these days, that we are not particularly +anxious to have dug up. I am not overfond of the fellow myself. I never +was." + +Richard laughed a trifle uneasily. + +"Oh, he's well enough," he said; "though I'll admit he has been a little +in the way once or twice." + +It is quite possible that the colonel himself had not been entirely +unaware of this latter fact, though he had exhibited no signs of his +knowledge, either in his countenance or bearing; indeed, it would be +difficult, for one so easily swayed by every passing interest as Richard +Amory was, to have long resisted his manly courtesy and good nature. Men +always found him an agreeable companion, and he made the most of his +powers on the occasions which threw him, or in which he threw himself, +in Amory's way. Even Planefield admitted reluctantly, once or twice, +that the fellow had plenty in him. It was not long before Richard +succumbed to his personal influence with pleasurable indolence. It would +have cost him too much effort to combat against it; and, besides this, +it was rather agreeable to count among one's friends and supporters a +man strong enough to depend on and desirable enough to be proud of. +There had been times during the last few months when there would have +been a sense of relief in the feeling that there was within reach a +stronger nature than his own,--one on whose strength he knew he could +rely. As their intimacy appeared to establish itself, if he did not +openly confide in Tredennis, he more than once approached the borders of +a confidence in his moments of depression. That he had such moments had +become plain. He did not even look so bright as he had looked; +something of his care-free, joyous air had deserted him, and now and +then there were to be seen faint lines on his forehead. + +"There is a great deal of responsibility to be borne in a matter like +this," he said to Tredennis, "and it wears on a man." To which he added, +a few seconds later, with a delightfully unconscious mixture of +petulance and protest: "Confound it! why can't things as well turn out +right as wrong?" + +"Have things been turning out wrong?" the colonel ventured. + +Richard put his elbows on the table before him, and rested his forehead +on his hands a second. + +"Well, yes," he admitted; "several things, and just at the wrong time, +too. There seems a kind of fate in it,--as if when one thing began the +rest must follow." + +The colonel began to bite one end of his long mustache reflectively as +he looked at the young man's knitted brow. + +"There is one thing you must understand at the outset," he said, at +length. "When I can be made useful--supposing such a thing were +possible--I am here." + +Richard glanced up at him quickly. He looked a little haggard for the +moment. + +"What a steady, reliable fellow you are!" he said. "Yes, I should be +sure of you if--if the worst came to the worst." + +The colonel bit the ends of his mustache all the way home, and more than +one passer-by on the avenue was aroused to wonder what the subject of +his reflections might be, he strode along with so absorbed an air, and +frowned so fiercely. + +"I should like to know what the worst is," he was saying to himself. "I +should like to know what that means." + +It was perhaps his desire to know what it meant which led him to +cultivate Richard more faithfully still, to join him on the street, to +make agreeable bachelor dinners for him, to carry him off to the +theatres, and, in a quiet way, to learn something of what he was doing +each day. It was, in fact, a delicate diplomatic position the colonel +occupied in these days, and it cannot be said that he greatly enjoyed it +or liked himself in it. He was too honest by nature to find pleasure in +diplomacy, and what he did for another he would never have done for +himself. For the sake of the woman who rewarded his generosity and care +with frivolous coldness and slight, he had undertaken a task whose +weight lay heavily upon him. Since his first suspicions of her danger +had been aroused he had been upon the alert continually, and had seen +many things to which the more indifferent or less practical were blind. +As Richard had casually remarked, he was possessed of a strong business +sense and faculty of which he was not usually suspected, and he had seen +signs in the air which he felt boded no good for Richard Amory or those +who relied on his discretion in business affairs. That the professor had +innocently relied upon it when he gave his daughter into his hands he +had finally learned; that Bertha never gave other than a transient +thought--more than half a jest--to money matters he knew. Her good +fortune it had been to be trammelled neither by the weight of money nor +the want of it,--a truly enviable condition, which had, not unnaturally, +engendered in her a confidence at once unquestioning and somewhat +perilous. Tredennis had recalled more than once of late a little scene +he had taken part in on one occasion of her signing a legal document +Richard had brought to her. + +"Shall I sign it here?" she had said, with exaggerated seriousness, "or +shall I sign it there? What would happen to me if I wrote on the wrong +line? Could not Laurence sign it for me in his government hand, and give +it an air of distinction? Suppose my hand trembled and I made a blot? I +am not obliged to read it, am I?" + +"I think I should insist that she read it," the colonel had said to +Richard, with some abruptness. + +Bertha had looked up and smiled. + +"_Shall_ you insist that I read it?" she said; "I know what it says. It +says 'whereas' and 'moreover' and 'in accordance' with 'said agreement' +and 'in consideration of.' Those are the prevailing sentiments, and I am +either the 'party of the first part' or the 'party of the second part'; +and if it was written in Sanskrit, it would be far clearer to my +benighted mind than it is in its present lucid form. But I will read it +if you prefer it, even though delirium should supervene." + +It was never pleasant to Colonel Tredennis to remember this trivial +episode, and the memory of it became a special burden to him as time +progressed and he saw more of Amory's methods and tendencies. But it was +scarcely for him to go to her, and tell her that her husband was not as +practical a business man as he should be; that he was visionary and too +easily allured by glitter and speciousness. He could not warn her +against him and reveal to her the faults and follies she seemed not to +have discovered. But he could revive something of Richard's first fancy +for him, and make himself in a measure necessary to him, and perhaps +gain an influence over him which might be used to good purpose. +Possibly, despite his modesty, he had a half-conscious knowledge of the +power of his own strong will and nature over weaker ones, and was +resolved that this weak one should be moved by them, if the thing were +possible. + +Nor was this all. There were other duties he undertook, for reasons best +known to himself. He became less of a recluse socially, and presented +himself more frequently in the fashionable world. He was no fonder of +gayety than he had been before, but he faced it with patience and +courage. He went to great parties, and made himself generally useful. He +talked to matrons who showed a fancy for his company, and was the best +and most respectful of listeners; he was courteous and attentive to both +chaperones and their charges, and by quietly persistent good conduct +won additional laurels upon each occasion of his social appearance. +Those who had been wont to stand somewhat in awe of him, finding nothing +to fear on more intimate acquaintance, added themselves to the list of +his admirers. Before the season was over he had made many a stanch +friend among matronly leaders of fashion, whose word was law. If such a +thing could be spoken of a person of habits so grave, it might have been +said that he danced attendance upon these ladies, but, though such a +phrase would seem unfitting, it may certainly be remarked that he walked +attendance on them, and sought their favor and did their bidding with a +silent faithfulness wonderful to behold. He accepted their invitations +and attended their receptions; he escorted them to their carriages, +found their wraps, and carried their light burdens with an imperturbable +demeanor. + +"What!" said Bertha, one night, when she had seen him in attendance on +the wife of the Secretary of State, whose liking for him was at once +strong and warm; "what! is it Colonel Tredennis who curries the favor of +the rich and great? It has seemed so lately. Is there any little thing +in foreign missions you desire, or do you think of an +Assistant-Secretaryship?" + +"There is some dissatisfaction expressed with regard to the Minister to +the Court of St. James," was his reply. "It is possible that he will be +recalled. In that case may I hope to command your influence?" + +But, many a time as he carried his shawls, or made his grave bow over +the hand of a stately dowager, a half-sad smile crossed his face as he +thought of the true reason for his efforts, and realized with a generous +pang the depth of his unselfish perfidy. They were all kind to him, and +he was grateful for their favors; but he would rather have been in his +room at work, or trying to read, or marching up and down, thinking, in +his solitude. Janey entertained him with far more success than the +prettiest _débutante_ of the season could hope to attain, though there +was no _débutante_ among them who did not think well of him and admire +him not a little. But the reason which brought him upon this brightly +lighted stage of action? Well, there was only one reason for everything +now, he knew full well; for his being sadder than usual, or a shade less +heavy of heart; for his wearing a darker face or a brighter one; for his +interest in society, or his lack of interest in it; for his listening +anxiously and being upon the alert. The reason was Bertha. When he heard +her name mentioned he waited in silent anxiety for what followed; when +he did not hear it he felt ill at ease, lest it had been avoided from +some special cause. + +"What she will not do for herself," he said, "I must try to do for her. +If I make friends and win their good opinions I may use their influence +in the future, if the worst should come to the worst, and she should +need to be upheld. It is women who sustain women or condemn them. God +forbid that she should ever lack their protection!" + +And so he worked to earn the power to call upon this protection, if it +should be required, and performed his part with such steadfastness of +purpose that he made a place for himself such as few men are fortunate +enough to make. + +There was one friendship he made in these days, which he felt would not +be likely to fade out or diminish in value. It was a friendship for a +woman almost old enough to have been his mother,--a woman who had seen +the world and knew it well, and yet had not lost her faith or charitable +kindness of heart. It was the lady whom Bertha had seen him attending +when she had asked him what object he had in view,--the wife of the +Secretary of State, whose first friendly feeling for him had become a +most sincere and earnest regard, for which he was profoundly grateful. + +"A man to whom such a woman is kind must be grateful," he had said, in +speaking of her to Agnes Sylvestre. "A woman who is good and generous, +who is keen, yet merciful, whose judgment is ripe, and whose heart is +warm, who has the discernment of maturity and the gentleness of +youth,--it is an honor to know her and be favored by her. One is better +every time one is thrown with her, and leaves her presence with a +stronger belief in all good things." + +It had, perhaps, been this lady's affection for Professor Herrick which +had, at the outset, directed her attention to his favorite; but, an +acquaintance once established, there had been no need of any other +impetus than she received from her own feminine kindliness, quickness of +perception, and sympathy. The interest he awakened in most feminine +minds he had at once awakened in her own. + +"He looks," she said to herself, "as if he had a story, and hardly knew +the depth of its meaning himself." + +But, though she was dexterous enough at drawing deductions, and heard +much of the small talk of society, she heard no story. He was at once +soldier and scholar; he was kind, brave, and generous; men spoke well of +him, and women liked him; his past and present entitled him to respect +and admiration; but there was no story mentioned in any discussion of +him. He seemed to have lived a life singularly uneventful, so far as +emotional experiences were concerned. + +"Nevertheless," she used to say, when she gave a few moments to +sympathetic musing upon him, "nevertheless"-- + +She observed his good behavior, notwithstanding he did not enjoy himself +greatly in society. He was attentive to his duties without being +absorbed in them, and, when temporarily unoccupied, wore a rather weary +and abstracted look. + +"It is something like the look," she once remarked inwardly, +"_something_ like the look I have seen in the eyes of that bright and +baffling little Mrs. Amory, who seems at times to be obliged to recall +herself from somewhere." + +She had not been the leader of this world of hers without seeing many +things and learning many lessons; and, as she had stood giving her +greeting to the passing multitude week after week, she had gained a +wonderful amount of experience and knowledge of her kind. She had seen +so many weary faces, so many eager ones, so many stamped with care and +disappointment; bright eyes had passed before her which one season had +saddened; she had heard gay voices change and soft ones grow hard; she +had read of ambitions frustrated and hopes denied, and once or twice had +seen with a pang that somewhere a heart had been broken. + +Naturally, in thus looking on, she had given some attention to Bertha +Amory, and had not been blind to the subtle changes through which she +had passed. She thought she could date the period of these changes. She +remembered the reception at which she had first noted that the girlish +face had begun to assume a maturer look, and the girlish vivacity had +altered its tones. This had happened the year after the marriage, and +then Jack had been born, and when society saw the young mother again the +change in her seemed almost startling. She looked worn and pale, and +showed but little interest in the whirl about her. It was as if suddenly +fatigue had overtaken her, and she had neither the energy nor the desire +to rally from it. But, before the end of the season she had altered +again, and had a touch of too brilliant color, and was gayer than ever. + +"Rather persistently gay," said the older woman. "That is it, I think." + +Lately there had been a greater change still and a more baffling one, +and there had appeared upon the scene an element so new and strange as +to set all ordinary conjecture at naught. The first breath of rumor +which had wafted the story of Planefield's infatuation and the Westoria +schemes had been met with generous displeasure and disbelief; but, as +time went on, it had begun to be more difficult to make an effort +against discussion which grew with each day and gathered material as it +passed from one to another. The most trivial circumstance assumed the +proportions of proof when viewed in the light of the general too +vivacious interest. When Senator Planefield entered a room people +instantly cast about in search of Mrs. Amory, and reposed entire +confidence in the immediately popular theory that, but for the presence +of the one, the absence of the other would have been a foregone +conclusion. If they met each other with any degree of vivacity the fact +was commented upon in significant asides; if Bertha's manner was cold or +quiet it was supposed to form a portion of her deep-laid plan for the +entire subjugation of her victim. It had, indeed, come to this at last, +and Tredennis' friend looked on and listened bewildered to find herself +shaken in her first disbelief by an aspect of affairs too serious to be +regarded with indifference. By the time the season drew toward its close +the rumor, which had at first been accepted only by rumor-lovers and +epicures in scandal, had found its way into places where opinion had +weight, and decision was a more serious matter. In one or two quiet +establishments there was private debating of various rather troublesome +questions, in which debates Mrs. Amory's name was frequently mentioned. +Affairs as unfortunate as the one under discussion had been known to +occur before, and it was not impossible that they might occur again; it +was impossible to be blind to them; it was impossible to ignore or treat +them lightly, and certainly something was due to society from those who +held its reins in their hands for the time being. + +"It is too great leniency which makes such things possible," some one +remarked. "To a woman with a hitherto unspotted reputation and in an +entirely respectable position they should be impossible." + +It was on the very evening that this remark was made that Bertha +expressed a rather curious opinion to Laurence Arbuthnot. + +"It is dawning upon me," she said, "that I am not quite so popular as I +used to be, and I am wondering why." + +"What suggested the idea?" Laurence inquired. + +"I scarcely know," she replied, a little languidly, "and I don't care so +much as I ought. People don't talk to me in so animated a manner as they +used to--or I fancy they don't. I am not very animated myself, perhaps. +There is a great deal in that. I know I am deteriorating +conversationally. What I say hasn't the right ring exactly, and I +suppose people detect the false note, and don't like it. I don't wonder +at it. Oh, there is no denying that I am not so much overpraised and +noticed as I used to be!" + +And then she sat silent for some time and appeared to be reflecting, and +Laurence watched her with a dawning sense of anxiety he would have been +reluctant to admit the existence of even to himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + + +A few days after this she told Richard that she wished to begin to make +her arrangements for going away for the summer. + +"What, so early!" he exclaimed, with an air of some slight discontent. +"It has been quite cool so far." + +"I remained too late last year," she answered; "and I want to make up +for lost time." + +They were at dinner, and he turned his wineglass about restlessly on the +table-cloth. + +"Are you getting tired of Washington?" he asked. "You seem to be." + +"I am a little tired of everything just now," she said; "even"--with a +ghost of a laugh--"of the Westoria lands and Senator Planefield." + +He turned his wineglass about again. + +"Oh," he said, his voice going beyond the borders of petulance, "it is +plain enough to see that you have taken an unreasonable dislike to +Planefield!" + +"He is too large and florid, and absorbs too much of one's attention," +she replied, coldly. + +"He does not always seem to absorb a great deal of yours," Richard +responded, knitting his delicate dark brows. "You treated him cavalierly +enough last night, when he brought you the roses." + +"I am tired of his roses!" she exclaimed, with sudden passion. "They are +too big, and red, and heavy. They cost too much money. They fill all the +air about me. They weight me down, and I never seem to be rid of them. I +won't have any more! Let him give them to some one else!" And she threw +her bunch of grapes on her plate, and dropped her forehead on her hands +with a childish gesture of fatigue and despair. + +Richard knit his brows again. He regarded her with a feeling very +nearly approaching nervous dread. This would not do, it was plain. + +"What is the matter with you?" he said. "What has happened? It isn't +like _you_ to be unreasonable, Bertha." + +She made an effort to recover herself, and partly succeeded. She lifted +her face and spoke quite gently and deprecatingly. + +"No," she said. "I don't think it is; so you will be all the readier to +overlook it, and allow it to me as a luxury. The fact is, Richard, I am +not growing any stronger, and"-- + +"Do you know," he interrupted, "I don't understand that. You used to be +strong enough." + +"One has to be very strong to be strong _enough_," she replied, "and I +seem to have fallen a little short of the mark." + +"But it has been going on rather a long time, hasn't it?" he inquired. +"Didn't it begin last winter?" + +"Yes," she answered, in a low voice, "it _began_ then." + +"Well, you see, that is rather long for a thing of that sort to go on +without any special reason." + +"It has seemed so to me," she responded, without any change of tone. + +"Haven't you a pretty good appetite?" he inquired. + +She raised her eyes suddenly, and then dropped them again. He had not +observed what a dozen other people had seen. + +"No," she answered. + +"Don't you sleep well?" + +"No." + +"Are you thinner? Well, yes," giving her a glance of inspection. "You +are thinner. Oh! come, now, this won't do at all!" + +"I am willing to offer any form of apology you like," she said. + +"You must get well," he answered; "that is all." And he rose from his +seat, went to the mantel for a cigarette, and returned to her side, +patting her shoulder encouragingly. "You would not be tired of +Planefield if you were well. You would like him well enough." + +The change which settled on her face was one which had crossed it many a +time without his taking note of it. Possibly the edge of +susceptibilities so fine and keen as his is more easily dulled than that +of sensitiveness less exquisite. She arose herself. + +"That offers me an inducement to recover," she said. "I will begin +immediately--to-day--this moment. Let me light your cigarette for you." + +After it was done they sauntered into the library together and stood for +a moment looking out of the window. + +"Do you know," she said at length, laying her hand on his sleeve, "I +think even you are not quite yourself. Are you an invalid, too?" + +"I," he said. "Why do you think so?" + +"For a very good reason," she answered. "For the best of reasons. Two or +three times lately you have been a trifle out of humor. Are you aware of +it? Such, you see, is the disadvantage of being habitually amiable. The +slightest variation of your usually angelic demeanor lays you open to +the suspicion of bodily ailment. Just now, for instance, at table, when +I spoke to you about going away, you were a little--not to put too fine +a point upon it--cross." + +"Was I?" + +Her touch upon his sleeve was very soft and kind, and her face had a +gentle, playful appeal on it. + +"You really were," she returned. "Just a little--and so was I. It was +more a matter of voice and manner, of course; but we didn't appear to +our greatest advantage, I am afraid. And we have never done things like +that, you know, and it would be rather bad to begin now, wouldn't it?" + +"It certainly would," he replied. "And it is very nice in you to care +about it." + +"It would not be nice in me not to care," she said. "Just for a moment, +you know, it actually sounded quite--quite married. It seemed as if we +were on the verge of agreeing to differ about--Senator Planefield." + +"We won't do it again," he said. "We will agree to make the best of +him." + +She hesitated a second. + +"I will try not to make the worst," she returned. "There is always a +best, I suppose. And so long as you are here to take care of me, I need +not--need not be uncomfortable." + +"About what?" he asked. + +She hesitated again, and a shade of new color touched her cheek. + +"I don't think I am over-fastidious," she said, "but he has a way I +don't like. He is too fulsome. He admires me too much. He pays me too +many compliments. I wish he would not do it." + +"Oh! come, now," he said, gayly, "that _is_ prejudice! It is worse than +all the rest. I never heard you complain of your admirers before, or of +their compliments." + +She hesitated a moment again. It was not the first time she had +encountered this light and graceful obstinacy, and found it more +difficult to cope with than words apparently more serious. + +"I have never had an admirer of exactly that quality before," she said. + +"Oh," he said, airily, "don't argue from the ground that it is a bad +quality!" + +"Has it never struck you," she suggested, "that there is something of +the same quality, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, in all the +persons who are connected with the Westoria lands? I have felt once or +twice lately, when I have looked around the parlors, as if I must have +suddenly emigrated, the atmosphere was so different. They have actually +rather crowded out the rest--those men." + +It was his turn to pause now, and he did so, looking out of the window, +evidently ill at ease, and hesitant for the moment. + +"My dear child," he said, at length, "there may be truth in what you +say; but--I may as well be frank with you--the thing is necessary." + +"Richard," she said, quickly, prompted to the question by a sudden, +vague thought, "what have _you_ to do with the Westoria lands? Why do +you care so much about them?" + +"I have everything to do with them--and nothing," he answered. "The +legal business connected with them, and likely to result from the +success of the scheme, will be the making of me, that is all. I haven't +been an immense success so far, you know, and it will make me an immense +success and a man of property. Upon my word, a nice little lobbyist +_you_ are, to look frightened at the mere shadow of a plot!" + +"I am not a lobbyist," she exclaimed. "I never wanted to be one. That +was only a part of the nonsense I have talked all my life. I have talked +too much nonsense. I wish--I wish I had been different!" + +"Don't allow your repentance to be too deep," he remarked, dryly. "You +won't be able to get over it." + +"It's too late for repentance; but I shall not be guilty of that +particular kind of folly again. It was folly--and it was bad taste"-- + +"As I had not observed it, you might have been content to let it rest," +he interrupted. + +She checked herself in the reply she was about to make, clasping her +hands helplessly. + +"O Richard!" she said; "we are beginning again!" + +"So we are," he responded, coolly; "we seem to have a tendency in that +direction." + +"And it always happens," she said, "when I speak of Senator Planefield, +or of going away." + +"You have fallen into the habit of wanting to go away lately," he +answered. "You wanted to go to Europe"-- + +"I want to go still," she interposed, "very much." + +"And I wish you to remain here," he returned, petulantly. "What's the +use of a man's having a wife at the other side of the globe?" + +She withdrew a pace and leaned against the side of the window, letting +her eyes rest upon him with a little, bitter smile. For the moment she +had less care of herself and of him than she had ever had before. + +"Ah!" she said, "then you keep me here because you love me?" + +"Bertha!" he exclaimed. + +Even his equable triviality found a disturbing element in the situation. + +"Richard," she said, "go and finish your cigarette out of doors. It will +be better for both of us. This has gone far enough." + +"It has gone too far," he answered, nervously. "It is deucedly +uncomfortable, and it isn't our way to be uncomfortable. Can't we make +it smooth again? Of course we can. It would not be like you to be +implacable. I am afraid I was a trifle irritable. The fact is, I have +had a great deal of business anxiety lately,--one or two investments +have turned out poorly,--and it has weighed on my mind. If the money +were mine, you know; but it is yours"-- + +"I have never wished you to feel the difference," she said. + +"No," he replied. "Nothing could have been nicer than your way about it. +You might have made me very uncomfortable, if you had been a hard, +business-like creature; but, instead of that, you have been charming." + +"I am glad of that," she said, and she smiled gently as he put his arm +about her, and kissed her cheek. + +"You have a right to your caprices," he said. "Go to your summer haunts +of vice and fashion, if you wish to, and I will follow you as soon as I +can; but we won't say any more about Europe, just at present, will we? +Perhaps next year." + +And he kissed her again. + +"Perhaps next year or the year after," she repeated, with a queer little +smile. "And--and we will take Senator Planefield with us." + +"No," he answered, "we will leave him at home to invest the millions +derived from the Westoria lands." + +And he went out with a laugh on his lips. + + +A week later Colonel Tredennis heard from Richard that Bertha and the +children were going away. + +"When?" asked the colonel. "That seems rather sudden. I saw Janey two +days ago, and did not understand that the time was set for their +departure." + +"It is rather sudden," said Richard. "The fact is, they leave Washington +this morning. I should be with them now if it were not for a business +engagement." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + + +The next few weeks were not agreeable ones to Richard Amory. There was +too much feverish anxiety and uncertainty in them. He had not yet +acquired the coolness and hardihood of experience, and he felt their +lack in himself. He had a great deal at stake, more than at the outset +it had seemed possible he could have under any circumstances. He began +to realize, with no little discomfort, that he had run heavier risks +than he had intended to allow himself to be led into running. When they +rose before him in their full magnitude, as they did occasionally when +affairs assumed an unencouraging aspect, he wished his enthusiasm had +been less great. It could not be said that he had reached remorse for, +or actual repentance of, his indiscretions; he had simply reached a +point when discouragement led him to feel that he might be called upon +to repent by misfortune. Up to this time it had been his habit to drive +up to the Capitol in his _coupé_, to appear in the galleries, to saunter +through the lobby, and to flit in and out of committee-rooms with +something of the air of an amateur rather enjoying himself; he had made +himself popular; his gayety, his magnetic manner, his readiness to be +all things to all men had smoothed his pathway for him, while his +unprofessional air had given him an appearance of harmlessness. + +"He's a first-rate kind of fellow to have on the ground when a thing of +this sort is going on," one of the smaller satellites once remarked. +"Nobody's afraid of being seen with him. There's an immense deal in +that. There are fellows who come here who can half ruin a man with +position by recognizing him on the street. Regular old hands they are, +working around here for years, making an honest living out of their +native land. Every one knows them and what they are up to. Now, this one +is different, and that wife of his"-- + +"What has she been doing?" flung in Planefield, who was present. "What +has she got to do with it?" + +He said it with savage uneasiness. He was full of restive jealousy and +distrust in these days. + +"I was only going to say that she is known in society," he remarked, +"and she is the kind the most particular of those fellows don't object +to calling on." + +But, as matters took form and a more critical point was neared; as the +newspapers began to express themselves on the subject of the Westoria +lands scheme, and prophesy its failure or success; as it became the +subject of editorials applauding the public-spiritedness of those most +prominent in it, or of paragraphs denouncing the corrupt and +self-seeking tendency of the times; as the mental temperature of certain +individuals became a matter of vital importance, and the degree of +cordiality of a greeting an affair of elation or despair,--Richard felt +that his air of being an amateur was becoming a thing of the past. He +was too anxious to keep it up well; he did not sleep at night, and began +to look fagged, and it required an effort to appear at ease. + +"Confound it!" he said to Planefield, "how can one be at ease with a man +when his yes or no may be success or destruction to you? It makes him of +too much consequence. A fellow finds himself trying to please, and it +spoils his manner. I never knew what it was to feel a human being of any +particular consequence before." + +"You have been lucky," commented Planefield, not too tolerantly. + +"I have been lucky," Richard answered; "but I'm not lucky now, and I +shall be deucedly unlucky if that bill doesn't pass. The fact is, there +are times when I half wish I hadn't meddled with it." + +"The mistake _you_ made," said Planefield, with stolid ill-humor, "was +in letting Mrs. Amory go away. Now is the time you need her most. +There's no denying that there are some things women can do better than +men; and when a man has a wife as clever as yours, and as much of a +social success, he's blundering when he doesn't call on her for +assistance. One or two of her little dinners would be the very things +just now for the final smoothing down of one or two rough ones who +haven't opinions unless you provide them with them. She'd provide them +with them fast enough. They'd only have one opinion when she'd done with +them, if she was in one of the moods I've seen her in sometimes. Look +how she carried Bowman and Pell off their feet the night she gave them +the description of that row in the House. And Hargis, of North Carolina, +swears by her; he's a simple, domesticated fellow, and was homesick the +night I brought him here, and she found it out,--Heaven knows how,--and +talked to him about his wife and children until he said he felt as if +he'd seen them. He told me so with tears in his eyes. It is that kind of +thing we want now." + +"Well," said Richard, nervously, "it isn't at our disposal. I don't mind +telling you that she was rather out of humor with the aspect of affairs +before she went away, and I had one interview with her which showed me +it would be the safest plan to let her go." + +"Out of humor!" said Planefield. "She has been a good deal out of humor +lately, it seems to me. Not that it's any business of mine; but it's +rather a pity, considering circumstances." + +Richard colored, walked a few steps, put his hands in his pockets, and +took them out again. Among the chief sources of anxious trouble to him +had been that of late he had found his companion rather difficult to get +along with. He had been irritable, and even a trifle overbearing, and +had at times exhibited an indifference to results truly embarrassing to +contemplate, in view of the crisis at hand. When he intrenched himself +behind a certain heavy stubbornness, in which he was specially strong, +Richard felt himself helpless. The big body, the florid face, the +doggedly unresponsive eye, were too much to combat against. When he was +ill-humored Richard knew that he endeavored to conciliate him; but when +this mood held possession he could only feel alarm and ask himself if it +could be possible that, after all, the man might be brutal and false +enough to fail him. There were times when he sat and looked at him +unwillingly, fascinated by the likeness he found in him to the man who +had sent poor Westor to his doom. Naturally, the old story had been +revived of late, and he heard new versions of it and more minute +descriptions of the chief actors, and it was not difficult for an +overwrought imagination to discover in the two men some similarity of +personal characteristics. Just at this moment there rose within him a +memory of a point of resemblance between the pair which would have been +extremely embarrassing to him if he had permitted it to assume the +disagreeable form of an actual fact. It was the resemblance between the +influences which had moved them. In both cases it had been a woman,--in +this case it was his own wife, and if he had not been too greatly +harassed he would have appreciated the indelicacy of the situation. He +was not an unrefined person in theory, and his sensitiveness would have +caused him to revolt at the grossness of such a position if he had not +had so much at stake and been so overborne by his associates. His +mistakes and vices were always the result of circumstance and +enthusiasm, and he hurried past them with averted eyes, and refused to +concede to them any substantiality. There is nothing more certain than +that he had never allowed himself to believe that he had found Bertha of +practical use in rendering Planefield docile and attracting less +important luminaries. Bertha had been very charming and amiable, that +was all; she was always so; it was her habit to please people,--her +nature, in fact,--and she had only done what she always did. As a mental +statement of the case, nothing could be more simple than this, and he +was moved to private disgust by his companion's aggressive clumsiness, +which seemed to complicate matters and confront him with more crude +suggestions. + +"I am afraid she would not enjoy your way of putting it," he said. + +Planefield shut his teeth on his cigar and looked out of the window. +That was his sole response, and was a form of bullying he enjoyed. + +"We must remember that--that she does not realize everything," continued +Richard, uneasily; "and she has not regarded the matter from any serious +stand-point. It is my impression," he added, with a sudden sense of +growing irritation, "that she wouldn't have anything to do with it if +she thought it was a matter of gain or loss!" + +Planefield made no movement. He was convinced that this was a lie, and +his look out of the window was his reply to it. + +Richard put his hands into his pockets again and turned about, irritated +and helpless. + +"You must have seen yourself how unpractical she is," he exclaimed. "She +is a mere child in business matters. Any one could deceive her." + +He stopped and flushed without any apparent reason. He found himself +looking out of the window too, with a feeling of most unpleasant +confusion. He was obliged to shake it off before he spoke again, and +when he did so it was with an air of beginning with a fresh subject. + +"After all," he said, "everything does not depend upon influence of that +sort. There are other things to be considered. Have you seen Blundel?" + +"You can't expect a man like Blundel," said Planefield, "to be easy to +manage. Blundel is the possessor of a moral character, and when a man +has capital like that--and Blundel's sharpness into the bargain--he is +not going to trifle with it. He's going to hang on to it until it +reaches its highest market value, and then decide which way he will +invest it." + +Richard dropped into a seat by the table. He felt his forehead growing +damp. + +"But if we are not sure of Blundel?" he exclaimed. + +"Well, we are not sure of Blundel," was the answer. "What we have to +hope is that he isn't sure of himself. The one thing you can't be sure +of is a moral character. Impeccability is rare, and it is never easy for +an outsider to hit on its exact value. It varies, and you have to run +risks with it. Blundel's is expensive." + +"There has been a great deal of money used," hesitated Richard; "a great +deal." + +Planefield resorted to the window again. It had not been his money that +had been used. He had sufficient intellect to reap advantages where they +were to be reaped, and to avoid indiscreet adventures. + +"You had better go and see Blundel yourself," he said, after a pause. "I +have had a talk with him, and made as alluring a statement of the case +as I could, with the proper degree of caution, and he has had time to +put the matter in the scales with his impeccability and see which weighs +the heavier, and if they can't be made to balance. He will try to +balance them, but if he can't--You must settle what is to be done +between you. I have done my best." + +"By Jove!" exclaimed Richard, virtuously, "what corruption!" + +It was an ingenuous ejaculation, but he was not collected enough to +appreciate the native candor of it himself at the moment. He felt that +he was being hardly treated, and that the most sacred trusts of a great +nation were in hands likely to betray them at far too high a figure. The +remark amounted to an outburst of patriotism. + +"Have they _all_ their price?" he cried. + +Planefield turned his head slowly and glanced at him over his shoulder. + +"No," he said; "if they had, you'd find it easier. There's your +difficulty. If they were all to be bought, or none of them were to be +sold, you'd see your way." + +It did not seem to Richard that his way was very clear at the present +moment. At every step of late he had found new obstacles in his path and +new burdens on his shoulders. People had so many interests and so many +limitations, and the limitations were always related to the interests. +He began to resolve that it was a very sordid and business-like world in +which human lot was cast, and to realize that the tendency of humanity +was to coarse prejudice in favor of itself. + +"Then I had better see Blundel at once," he said, with feverish +impatience. + +"You haven't any time to lose," was Planefield's cool response. "And you +will need all the wit you can carry with you. You are not going to offer +_him_ inducements, you know; you are only going to prove to him that his +chance to do something for his country lies before him in the direction +of the Westoria lands. After that"-- + +"After that," repeated Richard, anxiously. + +"Do what you think safest and most practicable." + +As the well-appointed equipage drew up under the archway before the +lower entrance to the north wing of the Capitol, a group of men who +stood near the door-way regarded it with interest. They did so because +three of them were strangers and sight-seers, and the fourth, who was a +well-seasoned Washingtonian, had called their attention to it. + +"There," he said, with an experienced air, "there is one of them this +moment. It is beginning to be regarded as a fact that he is mixed up +with one of the biggest jobs the country has ever known. He is up to his +ears in this Westoria business, it's believed, though he professes to be +nothing more than a sort of interested looker-on and a friend of the +prime movers. He's a gentleman, you see, with a position in society, and +a pretty wife, who is a favorite, and the pretty wife entertains his +friends; and when a man is in an uncertain frame of mind the husband +invites him to dinner, and the pretty wife interests herself in +him,--she knows how to do it, they say,--and he goes away a wiser and a +better man, and more likely to see his way to making himself agreeable. +Nothing professional about it, don't you see? All quite proper and +natural. No lobbying about that, you know; but it helps a bill through +wonderfully. I tell you there's no knowing what goes on in these tip-top +parlors about here." + +He said it with modest pride and exultation, and his companions were +delighted. They represented the average American, with all his ingenuous +eagerness for the dramatic exposure of crime in his fellow-man. They had +existed joyously for years in the belief that Washington was the seat of +corruption, bribery, and fraud; that it was populated chiefly with +brilliant female lobbyists and depraved officials, who carried their +privileges to market and bartered and sold them with a guileless candor, +whose temerity was only to be equalled by its brazen cheerfulness of +spirit. They were, probably, not in the least aware of their mental +attitude toward their nation's government; but they revelled in it none +the less, and would have felt a keen pang of disappointment if they had +been suddenly confronted with the fact that there was actually an +element of most unpicturesque honesty in the House and a flavor of +shameless impeccability in the Senate. They had heard delightful stories +of "jobs" and "schemes," and had hoped to hear more. When they had been +taken to the visitors' gallery, they had exhibited an earnest anxiety to +be shown the members connected with the last investigation, and had +received with private rapture all anecdotes connected with the ruling +political scandal. They decided that the country was in a bad way, and +felt a glow of honest pride in its standing up at all in its present +condition of rottenness. Their ardor had been a little dampened by an +incautious statement made by their friend and guide, to the effect that +the subject of the investigation seemed likely to clear himself of the +charges made against him, and the appearance of Richard Amory, with his +personal attractions, his neat equipage, and his air of belonging to the +great world, was something of a boon to them. They wished his wife had +been with him; they had only seen one female lobbyist as yet, and she +had been merely a cheap, flashy woman, with thin, rouged cheeks and +sharp, eager eyes. + +"Looks rather anxious, doesn't he?" one asked the other, as Amory went +by. He certainly looked anxious as he passed them; but once inside the +building he made an effort to assume something of his usual air of gay +good cheer. It would not do to present himself with other than a +fearless front. So he walked with a firm and buoyant tread through the +great vaulted corridors and up the marble stairways, exchanging a +salutation with one passer-by and a word of greeting with another. + +He found Senator Blundel in his committee-room, sitting at the +green-covered table, looking over some papers. He was a short, stout +man, with a blunt-featured face, grayish hair, which had a tendency to +stand on end, and small, shrewd eyes. When he had been in the House, his +rising to his feet had generally been the signal for his fellow-members +to bestir themselves and turn to listen, as it was his habit to display +a sharp humor, of a rough-and-ready sort. Richard had always felt this +humor coarse, and, having but little confidence in Blundel's possessing +any other qualification for his position, regarded it as rather trying +that circumstances should have combined to render his sentiments of such +importance in the present crisis. Looking at the thick-set figure and +ordinary face he felt that Planefield had been right, and that Bertha +might have done much with him, principally because he presented himself +as one of the obstacles whose opinions should be formed for them all +the more on account of their obstinacy when once biassed in a wrong +direction. + +But there was no suggestion of these convictions in his manner when he +spoke. It was very graceful and ready, and his strong points of +good-breeding and mental agility stood him in good stead. The man before +him, whose early social advantages had not been great, was not too dull +to feel the influence of the first quality, and find himself placed at a +secretly acknowledged disadvantage by it. After he had heard his name +his small, sharp eyes fixed themselves on his visitor's handsome +countenance, with an expression not easy to read. + +"It is not necessary for me to make a new statement of our case," said +Richard, easily. "I won't fatigue you and occupy your time by repeating +what you have already heard stated in the clearest possible manner by +Senator Planefield." + +Blundel thrust his hands into his pockets and nodded. + +"Yes," he responded. "I saw Planefield, and he said a good deal about +it." + +"Which, of course, you have reflected upon?" said Richard. + +"Well, yes. I've thought it over--along with other things." + +"I trust favorably," Richard suggested. + +Blundel stretched his legs a little and pushed his hands further down +into his pockets. + +"Now, what would you call favorably?" he inquired. + +"Oh," replied Richard, with a self-possessed promptness, "favorably to +the connecting branch." + +It was rather a fine stroke, this airy candor, but he had studied it +beforehand thoroughly and calculated its effect. It surprised Blundel +into looking up at him quickly. + +"You would, eh?" he said; "let us hear why." + +"Because," Richard stated, "that would make it favorable to us." + +Blundel was beguiled into a somewhat uneasy laugh. + +"Well," he remarked, "you're frank enough." + +Richard fixed upon him an open, appreciative glance. + +"And why not?" he answered. "There is our strong point,--that we can +afford to be frank. We have nothing to conceal. We have something to +gain, of course--who has not?--but it is to be gained legitimately--so +there is no necessity for our concealing that. The case is simplicity +itself. Here are the two railroads. See,"--and he laid two strips of +paper side by side upon the table. "A connecting branch is needed. If it +runs through this way," making a line with his finger, "it makes certain +valuable lands immeasurably more valuable. There is no practical +objection to its taking this direction instead of that,--in either case +it runs through the government reservations,--the road will be built; +somebody's property will be benefited,--why not that of my clients?" + +Blundel looked at the strips of paper, and his little eyes twinkled +mysteriously. + +"By George!" he said, "that isn't the way such things are generally put. +What you ought to do is to prove that nobody is to be benefited, and +that you are working for the good of the government." + +Richard laughed. + +"Oh," he said, "I am an amateur, and I should be of no use whatever to +my clients if they had anything to hide or any special reason to fear +failure. We have opposition to contend with, of course. The southern +line is naturally against us, as it wants the connecting branch to run +in the opposite direction; but, if it has no stronger claim than we +have, the struggle is equal. They are open to the objection of being +benefited by the subsidies, too. It is scarcely ground enough for +refusing your vote, that some one will be benefited by it. The people is +the government in America, and the government the people, and the +interest of both are too indissolubly connected to admit of being +easily separated on public measures. As I said, I am an amateur, but I +am a man of the world. My basis is a natural, human one. I desire to +attain an object, and, though the government will be benefited, I am +obliged so confess I am arguing for my object more than for the +government." + +This was said with more delightful, airy frankness than ever. But +concealed beneath this genial openness was a desperate anxiety to +discover what his companion was thinking of, and if the effect of his +stroke was what he had hoped it would be. He knew that frankness so +complete was a novelty, and he trusted that his bearing had placed him +out of the list of ordinary applicants for favor. His private +conviction, to which he did not choose to allow himself to refer +mentally with any degree of openness, was that, if the man was honest, +honesty so bold and simple must disarm him; and, if he was not, +ingenuousness so reckless must offer him inducements. But it was not +easy to arrive at once at any decision as to the tenor of Blundel's +thoughts. He had listened, and it being his habit to see the humor of +things, he had grinned a little at the humor he saw in this situation, +which was perhaps not a bad omen, though he showed no disposition to +commit himself on the spot. + +"Makes a good story," he said; "pretty big scheme, isn't it?" + +"Not a small one," answered Richard, freely. "That is one of its +merits." + +"The subsidies won't have to be small ones," said Blundel. "That isn't +one of its merits. Now, let us hear your inducements." + +Richard checked himself on the very verge of a start, realizing +instantaneously the folly of his first flashing thought. + +"The inducements you can offer to the government," added Blundel. "You +haven't gone into a thing of this sort without feeling you have some on +hand." + +Of course there were inducements, and Richard had them at his fingers' +ends, and was very fluent and eloquent in his statement of them. In +fact, when once fairly launched upon the subject, he was somewhat +surprised to find how many powerful reasons there were for its being to +the interest of the nation that the land grants should be made to the +road which ran through the Westoria lands and opened up their resources. +His argument became so brilliant, as he proceeded, that he was moved by +their sincerity himself, and gained impetus through his confidence in +them. He really felt that he was swayed by a generous desire to benefit +his country, and enjoyed his conviction of his own honesty with a +refinement which, for the moment, lost sight of all less agreeable +features of the proceeding. All his fine points came out under the glow +of his enthusiasm,--his grace of speech and manner; his picturesque +habit of thought, which gave color and vividness to all he said,--his +personal attractiveness itself. + +Blundel bestirred himself to sit up and look at him with renewed +interest. He liked a good talker; he was a good talker himself. His mind +was of a practical business stamp, and he was good at a knock-down blow +in argument, or at a joke or jibe which felled a man like a meat-axe; +but he had nothing like this, and he felt something like envy of all +this swiftness and readiness and polish. + +When he finished, Richard felt that he must have impressed him; that it +was impossible that it should be otherwise, even though there were no +special external signs of Blundel being greatly affected. He had thrust +his hands into his pockets as before, and his hair stood on end as +obstinately. + +"Well," he said, succinctly, "it _is_ a good story, and it's a big +scheme." + +"And you?"--said Richard. "We are sure of your"-- + +Blundel took a hand out of his pocket and ran it over his upright hair, +as if in a futile attempt at sweeping it down. + +"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll see you day after +to-morrow." + +"But"--exclaimed Richard, secretly aghast. + +Blundel ran over his hair again and returned his hand to his pocket. + +"Oh, yes," he answered. "I know all about that. You don't want to lose +time, and you want to feel sure; but, you see, I want to feel sure, too. +As I said, it's a big business; it's too big a business to assume the +responsibility of all at once. _I'm_ not going to run any risks. I don't +say you want me to run any; but, you know, you are an amateur, and there +may be risks you don't realize. I'll see you again." + +In his character of amateur it was impossible for Richard to be +importunate, but his temptations to commit the indiscretion were strong. +A hundred things might happen in the course of two days; delay was more +dangerous than anything else. The worst of it all was that he had really +gained no reliable knowledge of the man himself and how it would be best +to approach him. He had seen him throughout the interview just as he had +seen him before it. Whether or not his sharpness was cunning and his +bluntness a defence he had not been able to decide. + +"At any rate, he is cautious," he thought. "_How_ cautious it is for us +to find out." + +When he left him Richard was in a fever of disappointment and +perplexity, which, to his ease and pleasure-loving nature, was torment. + +"Confound it all!" he said. "Confound the thing from beginning to end! +It will have to pay well to pay for this." + +He had other work before him, other efforts to make, and after he had +made them he returned to his carriage fatigued and overwrought. He had +walked through the great corridors, from wing to wing, in pursuit of +men who seemed to elude him like will-o'-the-wisps; he had been driven +to standing among motley groups, who sent in cards which did not always +intercede for them; he had had interviews with men who were outwardly +suave and pliable, with men who were ill-mannered and impatient, with +men who were obstinate and distrustful, and with men who were too much +occupied with their own affairs to be other than openly indifferent; if +he had met with a shade of encouragement at one point, he had found it +amply balanced by discouragement at the next; he had seen himself +regarded as an applicant for favor, and a person to be disposed of as +speedily as possible, and, when his work was at an end, his physical +condition was one of exhaustion, and his mental attitude marked chiefly +by disgust and weariness of spirit. + +This being the state of affairs he made a call upon Miss Varien, who +always exhilarated and entertained him. + +He found her in her bower, and was received with the unvarying tact +which characterized her manner upon all occasions. He poured forth his +woes, as far as they could be told, and was very picturesque about them +as he reclined in the easiest of easy-chairs. + +"It is my opinion that nothing can be done without money," he said, +"which is disgraceful!" + +"It is, indeed," acknowledged Miss Varien, with a gleam of beautiful +little teeth. + +She had lived in Washington with her exceptional father and entirely +satisfactory mother from her earliest infancy, and had gained from +observation--at which she was brilliant, as at all else--a fund of +valuable information. She had seen many things, and had not seen them in +vain. It may be even suspected that Richard, in his character of +amateur, was aware of this. There was a suggestion of watchfulness in +his glance at her. + +"Things ought to be better or worse to simplify the system," she said. + +"That is in effect what I heard said this morning," answered Richard. + +"I am sorry it is not entirely new," she returned. "Was it suggested, +also, that since we cannot have incorruptibility we might alter our +moral standards and remove corruption by making all transactions mere +matters of business? If there was no longer any penalty attached to the +sale and barter of public privileges, such sale and barter would cease +to be dishonor and crime. We should be better if we were infinitely +worse. The theory may appear bold at first blush,--no, not at first +blush, for blushes are to be done away with,--at first sight, I will say +in preference; it may appear bold, but after much reflection I have +decided that it is the only practicable one." + +"It is undoubtedly brilliant," replied Richard; "but, as you say, it +would simplify matters wonderfully. I should not be at such a loss to +know what Senator Blundel will do, for instance, and my appetite for +luncheon would be better." + +"It might possibly be worse," suggested Miss Varien. + +Richard glanced at her quickly. + +"That is a remark which evidently has a foundation," he said. "I wish +you would tell me what prompted it." + +"I am not sure it was very discreet," was the reply. "My personal +knowledge of Senator Blundel prompted it." + +"You know him very well," said Richard, with some eagerness. + +"I should not venture to say I knew any one very well," she said, in the +captivating voice which gave to all her words such value and +suggestiveness. "I know him as I know many other men like him. I was +born a politician, and existence without my politics would be an arid +desert to me. I have talked to him and read his speeches, and followed +him in his career for some time. I have even asked questions about him, +and, consequently, I know something of his methods. I _think_--you see, +I only say I think--I know what he will do." + +"In Heaven's name, what is it?" demanded Richard. + +She unfurled her fan and smiled over it with the delightful gleam of +little white teeth. + +"He will take his time," she answered. "He is slow, and prides himself +on being sure. Your bill will not be acted upon; it will be set aside to +lie over until the next session of Congress." + +Richard felt as if he changed color, but he bore himself with outward +discretion. + +"You have some ulterior motive," he said. "Having invited me to remain +to luncheon, you seek to render me incapable of doing myself justice. +You saw in my eye the wolfish hunger which is the result of interviews +with the savage senator and the pitiless member of Congress. Now I see +the value of your theory. If it were in practice, I could win Blundel +over with gold. What is your opinion of his conscience as it stands?" + +It was said with admirable lightness and answered in a like strain, but +he had never been more anxiously on the alert than he was as he watched +Miss Varien's vivacious and subtly expressive face. + +"I have not reached it yet," she said. "And consciences are of such +different make and material; I have not decided whether his is made of +interest or honesty. He is a mixture of shrewdness and crudeness which +is very baffling; just when you are arguing from the shrewdness the +crudeness displays itself, and _vice versá_. But, as I said, I _think_ +your bill will not be acted upon." + +And then they went into luncheon, and, as he ate his lobster-salad and +made himself agreeable beyond measure, Richard wondered, with an inward +tremor, if she could be right. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +Mrs. Sylvestre did not leave town early. The weather was reasonably +cool, the house on Lafayette Square was comfortable, and Washington in +spring is at its loveliest. She liked the lull after the season, and +enjoyed it to its utmost, wisely refusing all invitations to fitful +after-Lent gayeties. She held no more receptions, but saw her more +intimate acquaintances in the evening, when they made their informal +calls. With each week that passed, her home gave her greater pleasure +and grew prettier. + +"I never lose interest in it," she said to Arbuthnot. "It is a continued +delight to me. I find that I think of it a great deal, and am fond of it +almost as if it was a friend I had found. I think I must have been +intended for a housewife." + +Mrs. Merriam's liking for Laurence Arbuthnot having increased as their +acquaintance progressed, his intimacy in the household became more and +more an established fact. + +"One should always number among one's acquaintance," the clever dowager +remarked, "an agreeable, well-bred, and reliable man-friend,--a man one +can ask to do things, if unforeseen occasions arise. He must be +agreeable, since one must be intimate with him, and for the same reason +he must be well-bred. Notwithstanding our large circle, we are a rather +lonely pair, my dear." + +Gradually Mrs. Sylvestre herself had found a slight change taking place +in her manner toward Arbuthnot. She became conscious of liking him +better, and of giving him more mental attention, as she saw him more +familiarly. The idea dawned by slow degrees upon her that the +triviality of which she accused him was of an unusual order; that it was +accompanied by qualities and peculiarities which did not seem to belong +to it. She had discovered that he could deny himself pleasures he +desired; that he was secretly thoughtful for others; that he was--also +secretly--determined, and that he had his serious moments, however +persistently he endeavored to conceal them. Perhaps the professor had +given her more information concerning him than she could have gained by +observation in any comparatively short space of time. "This frivolous +fellow," he said to her one night, laying an affectionate hand on +Arbuthnot's arm, as they were on the point of leaving the house +together, after having spent the evening there,--"this frivolous fellow +is the friend of my old age. I wonder why." + +"So do I," said Arbuthnot. "I assure you that you could not find a +reason, professor." + +"There is a kind of reason," returned the professor, "though it is +scarcely worthy of the name. This frivolous fellow is not such a trifler +as he seems, and it interests me to see his seriousness continually +getting the better of him when he fancies he has got it under and +trodden it under his feet." + +Arbuthnot laughed again,--the full, careless laugh which was so +excellent an answer to everything. + +"He maligns me, this dissector of the emotions," he said. "He desires +artfully to give you the impression that I am not serious by nature. I +am, in fact, seriousness itself. It is the wicked world which gets the +better of me." + +Which statement Mrs. Sylvestre might have chosen to place some reliance +in as being a plausible one, if she had not seen the professor at other +times, when he spoke of this friendship of his. It was certainly a warm +one, and then, feeling that there must be reason for it, she began to +see these reasons for herself, and appreciate something of their +significance and value. + +The change which finally revealed itself in her manner was so subtle in +its character that Arbuthnot himself could not be sure when he had first +felt it; sometimes he fancied it had been at one time, and again at +another, and even now it was not easy for him to explain to himself why +he knew that they were better friends. + +But there was an incident in their acquaintance which he always +remembered as a landmark. + +This incident occurred at the close of the season. One bright moonlight +night, having a fancy for making a call upon Bertha, who was not well +enough to go out for several days, Mrs. Sylvestre made the visit on +foot, accompanied by her maid. The night was so pleasant that they were +walking rather slowly under the trees near Lafayette Park, when their +attention was attracted by the sound of suppressed sobbing, which came +from one of two figures standing in the shadow, near the railings, a few +yards ahead of them. The figures were those of a man and a young woman, +and the instant she saw the man, who was well dressed, Agnes Sylvestre +felt her heart leap in her side, for she recognized Laurence Arbuthnot. +He stood quite near the woman, and seemed trying to console or control +her, while she--less a woman than a girl, and revealing in her childish +face and figure all that is most pathetic in youth and +helplessness--wept and wrung her hands. + +"You must be quiet and have more confidence in"--Agnes heard Arbuthnot +say; and then, prompted by some desperate desire to hear no more, and to +avoid being seen, she spoke to her maid. + +"Marie," she said, "we will cross the street." + +But when they had crossed the street some chill in the night air seemed +to have struck her, and she began to shiver so that Marie looked at her +in some affright. + +"Madame is cold," she said. "Is it possible that madame has a chill?" + +"I am afraid so," her mistress replied, turning about hurriedly. "I +will not make the visit. I will return home." + +A few minutes later, Mrs. Merriam, who had settled her small figure +comfortably in a large arm-chair by the fire, and prepared to spend the +rest of the evening with a new book, looked up from its first chapter in +amazement, as her niece entered the room. + +"Agnes!" she exclaimed. "What has happened! Are you ill? Why, child! you +are as white as a lily." + +It was true that Mrs. Sylvestre's fair face had lost all trace of its +always delicate color, and that her hands trembled as she drew off her +gloves. + +"I began--suddenly--to feel so cold," she said, "that I thought it +better to come back." + +Mrs. Merriam rose anxiously. + +"I hope it is not malaria, after all," she said. "I shall begin to think +the place is as bad as Rome. You must have some hot wine." + +"Send it upstairs, if you please," said Agnes. "I am going to my room; +there is a large fire there." + +And she went out as suddenly as she had appeared. + +"I really believe she does not wish me to follow her," said Mrs. Merriam +to herself. + +"_Is_ this malaria?" And having pondered upon this question, while she +gave orders that the wine should be heated, she returned to her book +after doing it, with the decision, "No, it is not." + +Agnes drank very little of the wine when it was brought. She sat by the +fire in her room and did not regain her color. The cold which had struck +her had struck very deep; she felt as if she could not soon get warm +again. Her eyes had a stern look as they rested on the fire; her +delicate mouth was set into a curve of hopeless, bitter scorn; the quiet +which settled upon her was even a little terrible, in some mysterious +way. She heard a ring at the door-bell, but did not move, though she +knew a caller was allowed to go to Mrs. Merriam. She was not in a mood +to see callers; she could see nobody; she wished to be left alone; but, +in about half an hour, a servant came into her room. + +"Mr. Arbuthnot is downstairs, and Mrs. Merriam wishes to know if Mrs. +Sylvestre is better." + +Mrs. Sylvestre hesitated a second before she replied. + +"Say to Mrs. Merriam that I am better, and will join her." + +She was as white as ever when she rose, even a shade whiter, and she +felt like marble, though she no longer trembled. + +"I will go down," she said, mechanically. "Yes, I will go down." + +What she meant to say or do when she entered the room below perhaps she +had not clearly decided herself. As she came in, and Arbuthnot rose to +receive her, he felt a startled thrill of apprehension and surprise. + +"I am afraid you are not really better," he said. "Perhaps I should not +have asked to be allowed to see you." + +He had suddenly an absurd feeling that there was such distance between +them--that something inexplicable had set them so far apart--that it +might almost be necessary to raise his voice to make her hear him. + +"Thank you," she replied. "I was not really ill," and passed the chair +he offered her, as if not seeing it, taking another one which placed the +table between them. + +Arbuthnot gave her a steady glance and sat down himself. Resolving in a +moment's time that something incomprehensible had happened, he gathered +himself together with another resolve, which did equal credit to his +intelligence and presence of mind. This resolution was that he would not +permit himself to be overborne by the mystery until he understood what +it was, and that he would understand what it was before he left the +house, if such a thing were possible. He had the coolness and courage to +refuse to be misunderstood. + +"I should not have hoped to see you," he said, in a quiet, level tone, +still watching her, "but Mrs. Merriam was so kind as to think you would +be interested in something I came to tell her." + +"Of course she will be interested," said Mrs. Merriam. "Such a story +would interest any woman. Tell it to her at once." + +"I wish you would do it for me," said Arbuthnot, with a rather reluctant +accession of gravity. "It is really out of my line. You will make it +touching--women see things so differently. I'll confess to you that I +only see the miserable, sordid, forlorn side of it, and don't know what +to do with the pathos. When that poor, little wretch cried at me and +wrung her hands I had not the remotest idea what I ought to say to stop +her--and Heaven knows I wanted her to stop. I could only make the +mistaken remark that she must have confidence in me, and I would do my +best for the childish, irresponsible pair of them, though why they +should have confidence in me I can only say 'Heaven knows,' again." + +After she had seated herself Agnes had lightly rested her head upon her +hand, as if to shade her eyes somewhat. When Arbuthnot began to speak +she had stirred, dropping her hand a moment later and leaning forward; +at this juncture she rose from her chair, and came forward with a swift, +unconscious-looking movement. She stood up before Arbuthnot, and spoke +to him. + +"I wish to hear the story very much," she said, with a thrill of appeal +in her sweet voice. "I wish you to tell it to me. You will tell it +as--as we should hear it." + +Nothing but a prolonged and severe course of training could have enabled +Arbuthnot to preserve at this moment his outward composure. Indeed, he +was by no means sure that it was preserved intact; he was afraid that +his blond countenance flushed a little, and that his eyes were not +entirely steady. He felt it necessary to assume a lightness of demeanor +entirely out of keeping with his mental condition. + +"I appreciate your confidence in me," he answered, "all the more +because I feel my entire inadequacy to the situation. The person who +could tell it as you ought to hear it is the young woman who waylaid me +with tears near Lafayette Park about half an hour ago. She is a very +young woman, in fact, an infant, who is legally united in marriage to +another infant, who has been in the employ of the government, in the +building I adorn with my presence. Why they felt it incumbent upon +themselves to marry on an income of seventy-five dollars a month they do +not explain in any manner at all satisfactory to the worldly mind. They +did so, however, and lived together for several months in what is +described as a state of bliss. They had two small rooms, and the female +infant wore calico gowns, and did her own ridiculous, sordid, inferior +housework, and rejoiced in the society of the male infant when a +grateful nation released him from his daily labors." + +Agnes quietly slipped into the chair he had first placed for her. She +did it with a gentle, yielding movement, to which he was so little blind +that he paused a second and looked at the fire, and made a point of +resuming his story with a lighter air than before. + +"They could not have been either happy or content under such absurd +circumstances," he said; "but they thought they were. I used to see the +male infant beaming over his labors in a manner to infuriate you. His +wife used to come down to bear him from the office to the two rooms in a +sort of triumphal procession. She had round eyes and dimples in her +cheeks, and a little, round head with curls. Her husband, whose tastes +were simple, regarded her as a beauty, and was given to confiding his +opinion of her to his fellow-clerks. There was no objection to him but +his youth and innocence. I am told he worked with undue enthusiasm in +the hope of keeping his position, or even getting a better one, and had +guileless, frenzied dreams of being able, in the course of the ensuing +century, to purchase a small house 'on time.' I don't ask you to +believe me when I tell you that the pair actually had such a house in +their imbecile young minds, and had saved out of their starvation income +a few dollars toward making their first payment on it. I didn't believe +the man who told me, and I assure you he is a far more reliable fellow +than I am." + +He paused a second more. Was it possible that he found himself obliged +to do so? + +"They said," he added, "they said they 'wanted a home.'" + +He heard a soft, little sound at his side,--a soft, emotional little +sound. It came from Mrs. Sylvestre. She sat with her slender hands +clasped upon her knee, and, as the little sound broke from her lips, she +clasped them more closely. + +"Ah!" she said. "Ah! poor children!" + +Arbuthnot went on. + +"Ought I to blush to admit that I watched these two young candidates for +Saint Elizabeth, and the poorhouse, with interest? They assisted me to +beguile away some weary hours in speculation. I wondered when they would +begin to be tired of each other; when they would find out their mistake, +and loathe the paltriness of their surroundings; when the female infant +would discover that her dimples might have been better invested, and +that calico gowns were unworthy of her charms? I _do_ blush to confess +that I scraped an acquaintance with the male infant, with a view to +drawing forth his views on matrimony and life as a whole. He had been +wont to smoke inferior cigarettes in the days of his gay and +untrammelled bachelorhood, but had given up the luxurious habit on +engaging himself to the object of his affections. He remarked to me that +'a man ought to have principle enough to deny himself things when he had +something to deny himself for, and when a man had a wife and a home he +_had_ something to deny himself for, and if he was a man he'd do it.' +He was very ingenuous, and very fond of enlarging confidingly upon +domestic topics and virtues and joys, and being encouraged could be +relied upon so to enlarge--always innocently and with inoffensive, +youthful enthusiasm--until deftly headed off by the soulless worldling. +I gave him cigars, and an order of attention, which seemed to please +him. He remarked to his fellow-clerks that I was a man who had +'principles' and 'feelings,' consequently I felt grateful to him. He had +great confidence in 'principles.' The bold thought had presented itself +to him that if we were more governed by 'principles,' as a nation, we +should thrive better, and there would be less difficulty in steering the +ship of state; but he advanced the opinion hesitantly as fearing +injustice to his country in the suggestion." + +"You are making him very attractive," said Mrs. Merriam. "There is +something touching about it all." + +"He was attractive to me," returned Laurence, "and he was touching at +times. He was crude, and by no means brilliant, but there wasn't an evil +spot in him; and his beliefs were of a strength and magnitude to bring a +blush to the cheek of the most hardened. He recalled the dreams of +youth, and even in his most unintelligently ardent moments appealed to +one. Taking all these things into consideration, you will probably see +that it was likely to be something of a blow to him to find himself +suddenly thrown out upon the world without any resource whatever." + +"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Sylvestre, earnestly. "Surely you are not going to +tell us"-- + +"That he has lost his office," said Laurence. "Yes. Thrown out. +Reason--place wanted for some one else. I shouldn't call it a good +reason myself. I find others who would not call it a good reason; but +what are you going to do?" + +"What did he do?" asked Agnes. + +"He came into my room one day," answered Laurence, "just as I was +leaving it. He was white and his lips trembled in a boyish way that +struck me at the moment as being rather awful. He looked as if he had +been knocked down. He said to me, 'Mr. Arbuthnot, I've lost my place,' +and then, after staring at me a few seconds, he added, 'Mr. Arbuthnot, +what would you do?'" + +"It is very cruel," said Agnes. "It is very hard." + +"It is as cruel as Death!" said Arbuthnot. "It is as hard as Life! That +such a thing is possible--that the bread and home and hopes of any +honest, human creature should be used as the small change of power above +him, and trafficked with to sustain that power and fix it in its place +to make the most of itself and its greed, is the burning shame and +burden which is slung around our necks, and will keep us from standing +with heads erect until we are lightened of it." + +He discovered that he was in earnest, and recklessly allowed himself to +continue in earnest until he had said his say. He knew the +self-indulgence was indiscreet, and felt the indiscretion all the more +when he ended and found himself confronted by Mrs. Sylvestre's eyes. +They were fixed upon him, and wore an expression he had never had the +pleasure of seeing in them before. It was an expression full of charming +emotion, and the color was coming and going in her cheek. + +"Go on," she said, rather tremulously, "if you please." + +"I did not go on," he replied. "I regret to say I couldn't. I was unable +to tell him what I should do." + +"But you tried to comfort him?" said Agnes. "I am sure you did what you +could." + +"It was very little," said Laurence. "I let him talk, and led him on a +little to--well, to talking about his wife. It seemed the only thing at +the moment. I found it possible to recall to his mind one or two things +he had told me of her,--probably doing it in a most inefficient +manner,--but he appeared to appreciate the effort. The idea presented +itself to me that it would be well to brace him up and give him a less +deathly look before he went home to her, as she was not very well, and a +childish creature at best. I probably encouraged him unduly; but I had +an absurd sense of being somehow responsible for the preservation of the +two rooms and the peace of mind of the female infant, and the truth is, +I have felt it ever since, and so has she." + +He was extremely conscious of Mrs. Sylvestre's soft and earnest eyes. + +"That was the reason she called to see me to-night, and, finding I had +just left the house, followed me. Tom is ill,--his name is Tom Bosworth. +It is nearly two months since he lost his place, and he has walked +himself to a shadow in making efforts to gain another. He has written +letters and presented letters; he has stood outside doors until he was +faint with hunger; he has interviewed members of Congress, senators, +heads of departments, officials great and small. He has hoped and longed +and waited, and taken buffetings meekly. He is not a strong fellow, and +it has broken him up. He has had several chills, and is thin and nervous +and excitable. Kitty--his wife's name is Kitty--is pale and thin too. +She has lost her dimples, and her eyes look like a sad little owl's, and +always have tears in them, which she manages to keep from falling so +long as Tom is within sight. To-night she wanted to ask me if I knew any +ladies who would give her sewing. She thinks she might sew until Tom +gets a place again." + +"I will give her sewing," exclaimed Agnes. "I can do something for them +if they will let me. Oh, I am very glad that I can!" + +"I felt sure you would be," said Arbuthnot. "I thought of you at once, +and wished you could see her as I saw her." + +She answered him a little hurriedly, and he wondered why her voice +faltered. + +"I will see her to-morrow," she said, "if you will give me the +address." + +"I have naturally wondered if it was possible that anything could be +done for the husband," he said. "If you could use your influence in any +way,--you see how inevitably we come to that; it always becomes a +question of influence; our very charities are of the nature of schemes; +it is in the air we breathe." + +"I will do what I can," she replied. "I will do anything--anything you +think would be best." + +Mrs. Merriam checked herself on the very verge of looking up, but though +by an effort she confined herself to apparently giving all her attention +to her knitting-needles for a few moments, she lost the effect of +neither words nor voice. "No," she made mental comment, "it was _not_ +malaria." + +Arbuthnot had never passed such an evening in the house as this one +proved to be, and he had spent many agreeable evenings there. To-night +there was a difference. Some barrier had melted or suddenly broken down. +Mrs. Sylvestre was more beautiful than he had ever seen her. It thrilled +his very soul to hear her speak to him and to look at her. While still +entirely ignorant of the cause of her displeasure against him he knew +that it was removed; that in some mysterious way she had recognized the +injustice of it, and was impelled by a sweet, generous penitence to +endeavor to make atonement. There was something almost like the humility +of appeal in her voice and eyes. She did not leave him to Mrs. Merriam, +but talked to him herself. When he went away, after he had left her at +the parlor door, she lingered a moment upon the threshold, then crossed +it, and followed him into the hall. They had been speaking of the +Bosworths, and he fancied she was going to ask some last question. But +she did not; she simply paused a short distance from where he stood and +looked at him. He had often observed it in her, that she possessed the +inestimable gift of being able to stand still and remain silent with +perfect grace, in such a manner that speech and movement seemed +unnecessary; but he felt that she had something to say now and scarcely +knew how best to say it, and it occurred to him that he might, perhaps, +help her. + +"You are very much better than you were when I came in," he said. + +She put out her hand with a gentle, almost grateful gesture. + +"Yes, I am much better," she said. "I was not well--or happy. I thought +that I had met with a misfortune; but it was a mistake." + +"I am glad it was a mistake," he answered. "I hope such things will +always prove so." + +And, a quick flush rising to his face, he bent and touched with his lips +the slim, white fingers lying upon his palm. + +The flush had not died away when he found himself in the street; he felt +its glow with a sense of anger and impatience. + +"I might have known better than to do such a thing," he said. "I _did_ +know better. I am a fool yet, it seems--a fool!" + +But, notwithstanding this, the evening was a landmark. From that time +forward Mrs. Merriam looked upon the intimacy with renewed interest. She +found Agnes very attractive in the new attitude she assumed toward their +acquaintance. She indulged no longer in her old habit of depreciating +him delicately when she spoke of him, which was rarely; her tone +suggested to her relative that she was desirous of atoning to herself +for her past coldness and injustice. There was a delicious hint of this +in her manner toward him, quiet as it was; once or twice Mrs. Merriam +had seen her defer to him, and display a disposition to adapt herself to +his opinions, which caused a smile to flicker across her discreet +countenance. Their mutual interest in their _protégées_ was a tie +between them, and developed a degree of intimacy which had never before +existed. The day after hearing their story Agnes had paid the young +people a visit. The two rooms in the third story of a boarding-house +presented their modest household goods to her very touchingly. The very +bridal newness of the cheap furniture struck her as being pathetic, and +the unsophisticated adornments in the form of chromos and bright +tidies--the last, Kitty's own handiwork--expressed to her mind their +innocent sentiment. Kitty looked new herself, as she sat sewing, in a +little rocking-chair, drawn near to the sofa on which Tom lay, flushed +and bright-eyed after his chill; but there were premonitory signs of +wear on her pretty, childish face. She rose, evidently terribly nervous +and very much frightened at the prospect of receiving her visitor, when +Mrs. Sylvestre entered, and, though reassured somewhat by the mention of +Arbuthnot's name, glanced timorously at Tom in appeal for assistance +from him. Tom gave it. His ingenuous mind knew very little fear. He +tried to stagger to his feet, smiling, but was so dizzy that he made an +ignominious failure, and sat down again at Agnes' earnest request. + +"Thank you," he said. "I will, if you don't mind. It's one of my bad +days, and the fever makes my head go round. Don't look so down-hearted, +Kitty. Mrs. Sylvestre knows chills don't count for much. You see," he +said to Agnes, with an effort at buoyancy of manner, "they knock a man +over a little, and it frightens her." + +Agnes took a seat beside the little rocking-chair, and there was +something in the very gentleness of her movements which somewhat calmed +Kitty's tremor. + +"It is very natural that she should feel anxious, even when there is +only slight cause," Mrs. Sylvestre said, in her low, sweet voice. "Of +course, the cause is slight in your case. It is only necessary that you +should be a little careful." + +"That's all," responded Tom. "A man with a wife and home can't be too +careful. He's got others to think of besides himself." + +But, notwithstanding his cheerfulness and his bright eyes, he was +plainly weaker than he realized, and was rather glad to lie down again, +though he did it apologetically. + +"Mr. Arbuthnot came in this morning and told us you were coming," he +said. "You know him pretty well, I suppose." + +"I see him rather frequently," answered Agnes; "but perhaps I do not +know him very well." + +"Ah!" said Tom. "You've got to know him very well to find out what sort +of fellow he is; you've got to know him as _I_ know him--as _we_ know +him. Eh! Kitty?" + +"Yes," responded Kitty, a little startled by finding herself referred +to; "only you know him best, Tom. You see, you're a man"-- + +"Yes," said Tom, with innocent complacency, "of course it's easier for +men to understand each other. You see"--to Agnes, though with a fond +glance at Kitty--"Kitty was a little afraid of him. She's shy, and +hasn't seen much of the world, and he's such a swell, in a quiet way, +and when she used to come to the office for me, and caught a glimpse of +him, she thought he was always making fun of everything." + +"I thought he _looked_ as if he was," put in Kitty. "And his voice +sounded that way when he spoke to you, Tom. I even used to think, +sometimes, that he was laughing a little at _you_--and I didn't like +it." + +"Bless you!" responded Tom, "he wasn't thinking of such a thing. He's +got too much principle to make friends with a fellow, and then laugh at +him. What I've always liked in him was his principle." + +"I think there are a great many things to like in him," said Mrs. +Sylvestre. + +"There's everything to like in him," said Tom, "though, you see, I +didn't find that out at first. The truth is, I thought he was rather +too much of a swell for his means. I've told him so since we've been +more intimate, and he said that I was not mistaken; that he was too much +of a swell for his means, but that was the fault of his means, and the +government ought to attend to it as a sacred duty. You see the trouble +is he hasn't a family. And what a fellow he would be to take care of a +woman! I told him that, too, once, and he threw back his head and +laughed; but he didn't laugh long. It seemed to me that it set him off +thinking, he was so still after it." + +"He'd be very good to his wife," said Kitty, timidly. "He's very kind to +me." + +"Yes," Tom went on, rejoicing in himself, "he sees things that men don't +see, generally. Think of his noticing that you weren't wrapped up enough +that cold day we met him, and going into his place to get a shawl from +his landlady, and making me put it on!" + +"And don't you remember," said Kitty, "the day he made me so ashamed, +because he said my basket was too heavy, and would carry it all the way +home for me?" + +Tom laughed triumphantly. + +"He would have carried a stove-pipe just the same way," he said, "and +have looked just as cool about it. You'd no need to be ashamed; _he_ +wasn't. And it's not only that: see how he asks me about you, and cheers +me up, and helps me along by talking to me about you when I'm knocked +over, and says that you mustn't be troubled, and I must bear up, because +I've got you to take care of, and that when two people are as fond of +each other as we are, they've got something to hold on to that will help +them to let the world go by and endure anything that don't part them." + +"He said that to me, too, Tom," said Kitty, the ready tears starting to +her eyes. "He said it last night when I met him on the street and +couldn't help crying because you were ill. He said I must bear up for +you--and he was so nice that I forgot to be afraid of him at all. When +I began to cry it frightened me, because I thought he wouldn't like it, +and that made it so much worse that I couldn't stop, and he just put my +hand on his arm and took me into Lafayette Park, where there was a seat +in a dark corner under the trees. And he made me sit down and said, +'Don't be afraid to cry. It will do you good, and you had better do it +before me than before Tom. Cry as much as you like. I will walk away a +few steps until you are better.' And he did, and I cried until I was +quiet, and then he came back to me and told me about Mrs. Sylvestre." + +"He's got feelings," said Tom, a trifle brokenly,--"he's got feelings +and--and principles. It makes a man think better of the world, even when +he's discouraged, and it's dealt hard with him." + +Mrs. Sylvestre looked out of the nearest window, there was a very +feminine tremor in her throat, and something seemed to be melting before +her eyes; she was full of the pain of regret and repentance; there rose +in her mind a picture of herself as she had sat before the fire in her +silent room; she could not endure the memory of her own bitter contempt +and scorn; she wished she might do something to make up for that half +hour; she wished that it were possible that she might drive down to the +Treasury and present herself at a certain door, and appeal for pardon +with downcast eyes and broken voice. She was glad to remember the light +touch upon her hand, even though it had been so very light, and he had +left her after it so hurriedly. + +"I am glad he spoke to you of me," she said. "I--I am grateful to him. I +think I can help you. I hope you will let me. I know a great many +people, and I might ask for their influence. I will do +anything--anything Mr. Arbuthnot thinks best." + +Tom gave her a warmly grateful glance, his susceptible heart greatly +moved by the sweetness and tremor of her voice. She was just the woman, +it seemed to him, to be the friend of such a man as his hero; only a +woman as beautiful, as sympathetic, and having that delicate, +undefinable air of belonging to the great enchanted world, in which he +confidingly believed Arbuthnot figured with unrivalled effect, could be +worthy of him. It was characteristic of his simple nature that he should +admire immensely his friend's social popularity and acquirements, and +dwell upon their unbounded splendor with affectionate reverence. + +"He's a society fellow," he had said to Kitty, in his first description +of him. "A regular society fellow! Always dressed just so, you +know--sort of quiet style, but exactly up to the mark. He knows +everybody and gets invited everywhere, though he makes believe he only +gets taken in because he can dance and wait in the supper-room. He's out +somewhere every night, bless you, and spends half his salary on kid +gloves and flowers. He says people ought to supply them to fellows like +him, as they supply gloves and hat-bands at English funerals. He doesn't +save anything; you know, he can't, and he knows it's a mistake, but you +see when a fellow is what he is, it's not easy to break off with +everything. These society people want such fellows, and they _will_ have +them." + +It had been this liberal description of his exalted position and elegant +habits which had caused Kitty to stand greatly in awe of him, at the +outset, and to feel that her bearing would never stand the test of +criticism by so proficient an expert, and she had trembled before him +accordingly and felt herself unworthy of his condescending notice, until +having, on one or two occasions, seen something in his manner which did +not exactly coincide with her conception of him as a luxurious and +haughty worldling, she had gained a little courage. She had been greatly +alarmed at the sight of Mrs. Sylvestre, feeling vaguely that she, also, +was a part of these mysterious splendors; but after she heard the soft +break in the tone in which she said, with such gentle simplicity, "I +will do anything--anything--Mr. Arbuthnot thinks best," she felt +timorous no more, and allowed herself to be led into telling her little +story, with a girlish pathos which would have melted Agnes Sylvestre's +heart, if it had not been melted already. It might, perhaps, better have +been called Tom's story than her own, as it was all about Tom,--Tom's +struggles, Tom's disappointments, Tom's hopes, which all seemed +prostrated; the little house Tom had been thinking of buying and making +nice for her; the member of Congress who had snubbed Tom; the senator +who had been rough with him; the cold he had taken; the chills and +fevers which had resulted; the pain in his side. "We have used all our +money," she ended, with a touching little catch of her breath,--"if it +had not been for Mr. Arbuthnot--Mr. Arbuthnot"-- + +"Yes," said Tom, wofully, "he'll have to go without a pair or so of +gloves this month and smoke fewer cigars; and I couldn't have believed +that there was a man living I could have borne to take money from, but, +somehow, he made it seem almost as if he owed it to me." + +When Mrs. Sylvestre went away she left hope and comfort behind her. +Kitty followed her into the passage with new light in her eyes. + +"If I have the sewing," she said, clasping her hands, "it will be _such_ +a load off Tom's mind to know that we have a little money, that he will +get better. And he knows I like sewing; so, perhaps, he will not mind it +so much. I am so thankful to you! If Tom will only get well," she +exclaimed, in a broken whisper,--"if Tom will only get well!" And, +suddenly, in response to some look on Agnes' face, and a quick, +caressing gesture, she leaned forward, and was folded in her arms. + +It is very natural to most women to resort to the simple feminine device +of tears, but it was not often Mrs. Sylvestre so indulged herself, and +there were tears in her eyes and in her voice, too, as she held the +gentle, childish creature to her breast. She had felt a great deal +during the last twenty-four hours, and the momentary display of emotion +was a relief to her. "He will get better," she said, with almost +maternal tenderness, "and you must help him by taking care of yourself, +and giving him no cause for anxiety. You must let me help to take care +of you. We will do all we can,"--and there was something akin to fresh +relief to her in the mere use of the little word "we." + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + +Mrs. Merriam saw faint traces of tears in Mrs. Sylvestre's eyes when she +returned from her call on the Bosworths, and speculated, with some +wonder, as to what her exact mental condition was, but asked very few +questions, feeling that, upon the whole, she would prefer to hear the +version of the story given to Mr. Arbuthnot when he called. He did so +the following evening, and, having seen the Bosworths in the interval, +had comments of his own to make. + +"It was very good in you to call so soon," he said to Agnes. + +"I wished very much to call," she replied. "I could not have waited +longer." + +"You left a transcendent impression," said Arbuthnot. "Tom was very +enthusiastic, and Kitty feels that all their troubles are things of the +past." + +"They talked to me a great deal of you," said Agnes. "I felt after +hearing them that I had not known you very well--and wished that I had +known you better." + +She said it with a sweet gravity which he found strangely disturbing; +but his reply did not commit him to any special feeling. + +"They will prove fatal to me, I see," he said. "Don't allow them to +prejudice you against me in that manner." + +"I wish," she said, "that my friends might be prejudiced against me in +the same way." + +Then he revealed a touch of earnestness in spite of himself. They had +both been standing upon the hearth, and he took a step toward her. + +"For pity's sake," he said, "don't overrate me! Women are always too +generous. Don't you see, you will find me out, and then it will be +worse for me than before." + +She stood in one of her perfect, motionless attitudes, and looked down +at the rug. + +"I wish to find you out," she said, slowly. "I have done you injustice." + +And then she turned away and walked across the room to a table where +there were some books, and when she returned she brought one of them +with her and began to speak of it. He always felt afterward that the +memory of this "injustice," as she called it, was constantly before her, +and he would have been more than human if he had not frequently wondered +what it was. He could not help feeling that it had taken a definite +form, and that she had been betrayed into it on the evening he had first +spoken to her of the Bosworths, and that somehow his story had saved him +in her eyes. But he naturally forbore to ask questions or even touch +upon the subject, and thanked the gods for the good which befell him as +a result of the evil he had escaped. And yet, as the time passed by, and +he went oftener to the house, and found keener pleasure in each visit, +he had his seasons of fearing that it was not all going to be gain for +him; when he faced the truth, indeed, he knew that it was not all gain, +and yet he was not stoic enough to turn his back and fly. + +"It will cost!" he said to himself. "It will cost! But"-- + +And then he would set his lips together and be silent for an hour or so, +and those of his acquaintance who demanded constant vivacity from him +began to wonder among themselves if he was quite the fellow he had been. +If the friendship was pleasant during the season, it was pleasanter when +the gayeties ceased and the spring set in, with warmer air and sunshine, +and leaves and blossoms in the parks. There was a softness in the +atmosphere not conducive to sternness of purpose and self-denial. As he +walked to and from his office he found his thoughts wandering in paths +he felt were dangerous, and once, unexpectedly meeting Mrs. Sylvestre +when so indulging himself, he started and gained such sudden color that +she flushed also, and, having stopped to speak to him, forgot what she +had intended to say, and was a little angry, both with herself and him, +when a confusing pause followed their greeting. + +Their interest in the Bosworths was a tie between them which gave them +much in common. Agnes went to see them often, and took charge of Kitty, +watching over and caring for her in a tender, half-maternal fashion. +Arbuthnot took private pleasure in contemplating. He liked to hear Kitty +talk about her, and, indeed, had on more than one occasion led her with +some dexterity into doing so. It was through Kitty, at last, that his +mystery was solved for him. + +This happened in the spring. There had been several warm days, one so +unusually warm, at last, that in the evening Mrs. Sylvestre accepted his +invitation to spend an hour or so on the river with him. On their way +there they stopped to leave a basket of fruit for Tom, whose condition +was far from being what they had hoped for, and while making their call +Kitty made a remark which caused Arbuthnot's pulse to accelerate its +pace somewhat. + +"When you saw me crying on the street that night," she began, addressing +Agnes. Arbuthnot turned upon her quickly. + +"What night?" he asked. + +"The night you took me into Lafayette Square," said Kitty; "Mrs. +Sylvestre saw me, though I did not know it until yesterday. She was +going to call on Mrs. Amory, and"-- + +Arbuthnot looked at Agnes; he could not have forborne, whatever the look +had cost him. The color came into her cheek and died out. + +"Did you?" he demanded. + +"Yes," she answered, and rose and walked to the window, and stood there +perfectly still. + +Arbuthnot did not hear the remainder of Kitty's remarks. He replied to +them blindly, and as soon as possible left his chair and went to the +window himself. + +"If you are ready, perhaps we had better go," he said. + +They went out of the room and down the stairs in silence. He wanted to +give himself time to collect his thoughts, and get the upper hand of a +frantic feeling of passionate anger which had taken possession of him. +If he had spoken he might have said something savage, which he would +have repented afterward in sackcloth and ashes. His sense of the +injustice he had suffered, however momentary, at the hands of this woman +whose opinion he cared for, was natural, masculine, and fierce. He saw +everything in a flash, and for a moment or so forgot all else in his +bitterness of spirit. But his usual coolness came to the rescue when +this moment was past, and he began to treat himself scornfully, as was +his custom. There was no reason why she should not think ill of him, +circumstances evidently having been against him, he said to himself; she +knew nothing specially good of him; she had all grounds for regarding +him as a creature with neither soul nor purpose nor particularly fixed +principles, and with no other object in life than the gratification of +his fancies; why should she believe in him against a rather black array +in the form of facts? It was not agreeable, but why blame her? He would +not blame her or indulge in any such personal folly. Then he glanced at +her and saw that the color had not come back to her face. When he roused +himself to utter a civil, commonplace remark or so, there was the sound +of fatigue in her voice when she answered him, and it was very low. She +did not seem inclined to talk, and he had the consideration to leave her +to herself as much as possible until they reached the boat-house. He +arranged her cushions and wraps in the boat with care and dexterity, +and, when he took the oars, felt that he had himself pretty well in +hand. The river was very quiet, and the last glow of sunset red was +slowly changing to twilight purple on the water; a sickle-shaped moon +hung in the sky, and somewhere farther up the shore a night bird was +uttering brief, plaintive cries. Agnes sat at the end of the boat, with +her face a little turned away, as if she were listening to the sound. +Arbuthnot wondered if she was, and thought again that she looked tired +and a little pathetic. If he had known all her thoughts he would have +felt the pathos in her eyes a thousand times more keenly. + +She had a white hyacinth in her hand, whose odor seemed to reach him +more powerfully at each stroke of the oars, and at last she turned and +spoke, looking down at the flower. + +"The saddest things that are left to one of a bitter experience," she +said, in a low voice, "are the knowledge and distrust that come of it." + +"They are very natural results," he replied, briefly. + +"Oh, they are very hard!" she exclaimed. "They are very hard. They leave +a stain on all one's life, and--and it can never be wiped away. +Sometimes I think it is impossible to be generous--to be kind--to trust +at all"-- + +Her voice broke; she put her hands up before her face, and he saw her +tremble. + +"One may have been innocent," she said, "and have believed--and thought +no evil--but after one has been so stained"-- + +He stopped rowing. + +"There is no stain," he said. "Don't call it one." + +"It must be one," she said, "when one sees evil, and is suspicious, and +on the alert to discover wrong. But it brings suffering, as if it were a +punishment. I have suffered." + +He paused a second and answered, looking backward over his shoulder. + +"So did I--for a moment," he said. "But it is over now. Don't think of +me." + +"I must think of you," she said. "How could I help it?" + +She turned a little more toward him and leaned forward, the most +exquisite appeal in her delicate face, the most exquisite pathos in her +unsteady voice. + +"If I ask you to forgive me," she said, "you will only say that I was +forgiven before I asked. I know that. I wish I could say something else. +I wish--I wish I knew what to do." + +He looked up the river and down, and then suddenly at her. The set, +miserable expression of his face startled her, and caused her to make an +involuntary movement. + +"Don't do anything--don't say anything!" he said. "I can bear it +better." + +And he bent himself to his oars and rowed furiously. + +She drew back, and turned her face aside. Abrupt as the words were, +there was no rebuff in them; but there was something else which silenced +her effectually. She was glad of the faint light, and her heart +quickened, which last demonstration did not please her. She had been +calm too long to enjoy any new feeling of excitement; she had liked the +calmness, and had desired beyond all things that it should remain +undisturbed. + +"There is one prayer I pray every morning," she had once said to Bertha, +earnestly. "It is that the day may bring nothing to change the tone of +my life." + +She had felt a little ripple in the current ever since the eventful +night, and had regretted it sorely, and now, just for the moment, it was +something stronger. So she was very still as she sat with averted face, +and the hour spent upon the water was a singularly silent one. + +When they returned home they found Colonel Tredennis with Mrs. Merriam, +but just on the point of leaving her. + +"I am going to see Amory," he said. "I have heard some news he will +consider bad. The Westoria affair has been laid aside, and will not be +acted upon this session, if at all. It is said that Blundel heard +something he did not like, and interfered." + +"And you think Mr. Amory will be very much disappointed?" said Agnes. + +"I am afraid so," answered Tredennis. + +"And yet," said Agnes, "it isn't easy to see why it should be of so much +importance to him." + +"He has become interested in it," said Mrs. Merriam. "That is the +expression, isn't it? It is my opinion that it would be better for him +if he were less so. I have seen that kind of thing before. It is like +being bitten by a tarantula." + +She was not favorably inclined toward Richard. His sparkling moods did +not exhilarate her, and she had her private theories concerning his +character. Tredennis she was very fond of; few of his moods escaped her +bright eyes; few of the changes in him were lost upon her. When he went +away this evening she spoke of him to Agnes and Arbuthnot. + +"If that splendid fellow does not improve," she said, "he will begin to +grow old in his prime. He is lean and gaunt; his eyes are dreary; he is +beginning to have lines on his forehead and about his mouth. He is +enduring something. I should be glad to be told what it is." + +"Whatever he endured," said Agnes, "he would not tell people. But I +think 'enduring' is a very good word." + +"How long have you known him?" Mrs. Merriam asked of Arbuthnot. + +"Since the evening after his arrival in Washington on his return from +the West," was the reply. + +"Was he like this then?" rather sharply. + +Arbuthnot reflected. + +"I met him at a reception," he said, "and he was not Washingtonian in +his manner. My impression was that he would not enjoy our society, and +that he would finally despise us; but he looked less fagged then than he +does now. Perhaps he begins to long for his daily Pi-ute. There _are_ +chasms which an effete civilization does not fill." + +"You guess more than you choose to tell," was Mrs. Merriam's inward +thought. Aloud she said: + +"He is the finest human being it has been my pleasure to meet. He is the +natural man. If I were a girl again I think I should make a hero of him, +and be unhappy for his sake." + +"It would be easy to make a hero of him," said Agnes. + +"Very!" responded Arbuthnot. "Unavoidable, in fact." And he laid upon +the table the bit of hyacinth he had picked up in the boat and brought +home with him. "If I carry it away," was his private thought, "I shall +fall into the habit of sitting and weakening my mind over it. It is weak +enough already." But he knew, at the same time, that Colonel Tredennis +had done something toward assisting him to form the resolution. "A +trivial masculine vanity," he thought, "not unfrequently strengthens +one's position." + +In the meantime Tredennis went to Amory. He found him in the room which +was, in its every part, so strong a reminder of Bertha. It wore a +desolate look, and Amory had evidently been walking up and down it, +pushing chairs and footstools aside carelessly, when he found them in +his way. He had thrown himself, at last, into Bertha's own special +easy-chair, and leaned back in it, with his hands thrown out over its +padded arms. He had plainly not slept well the night before, and his +dress had a careless and dishevelled look, very marked in its contrast +with the customary artistic finish of his attire. + +He sprang up when he saw Tredennis, and began to speak at once. + +"I say!" he exclaimed, "this is terrible!" + +"You have been disappointed," said Tredennis. + +"I have been rui"--he checked himself; "disappointed isn't the word," +he ended. "The whole thing has been laid aside--_laid aside_--think of +it! as if it were a mere nothing; an application for a two-penny +half-penny pension! Great God! what do the fellows think they are +dealing with?" + +"Who do you think is to blame?" said the colonel, stolidly. + +"Blundel, by Jove!--Blundel, that fool and clown!" and he flung himself +about the room, mumbling his rage and irritation. + +"It is not the first time such a thing has happened," said Tredennis, +"and it won't be the last. If you continue to interest yourself in such +matters you will find that out, as others have done before you. Take my +advice, and give it up from this hour." + +Amory wheeled round upon him. + +"Give it up!" he cried, "I can't give it up, man! It is only laid aside +for the time being. Heaven and earth shall be moved next year--Heaven +and earth! The thing won't fail--it _can't_ fail--a thing like that; a +thing I have risked my very soul on!" + +He dashed his hand through his tumbled hair and threw himself into the +chair again, quite out of breath. + +"Ah, confound it!" he exclaimed, "I am too excitable! I am losing my +hold on myself." + +Tredennis rose from his seat, feeling some movement necessary. He stood +and looked down at the floor. As he gazed up at him Amory entered a +fretful mental protest against his size and his air of being able to +control himself. He was plainly deep in thought even when he spoke, for +his eyes did not leave the floor. + +"I suppose," he said, "this is really no business of mine. I wish it +was." + +"What do you mean?" said Amory. + +Tredennis looked up. + +"If it were my business I would know more about it," he said.--"I would +know what _you_ mean, and how deep you have gone into this--this +accursed scheme." + +The last two words had a sudden ring of intensity in their sound, which +affected Amory tremendously. He sprang up again and began to pace the +floor. + +"Nothing ever promised so well," he said, "and it will turn out all +right in the end--it must! It is the delay that drives one wild. It will +be all right next season--when Bertha is here." + +"What has she to do with it?" demanded Tredennis. + +"Nothing very much," said Amory, restively; "but she is effective." + +"Do you mean that you are going to set her to lobbying?" + +"Why should you call it that? I am not going to set her at anything. She +has a good effect, that is all. Planefield swears that if she had stayed +at home and taken Blundel in hand he would not have failed us." + +Tredennis looked at him stupefied. He could get no grasp upon him. He +wondered if a heavy mental blow would affect him. He tried it in +despair. + +"Do you know," he said, slowly, "what people are beginning to say about +Planefield?" + +"They are always saying something of Planefield. He is the kind of man +who is always spoken of." + +"Then," said Tredennis, "there is all the more reason why his name +should not be connected with that of an innocent woman." + +"What woman has been mentioned in connection with him?" + +"It has been said more than once that he is in love with--your wife, and +that his infatuation is used to advance your interests." + +Richard stopped on his walk. + +"Then it is a confoundedly stupid business," he said, angrily. "If she +hears it she will never speak to him again. Perhaps she has heard it; +perhaps that was why she insisted on going away. I thought there was +something wrong at the time." + +"May I ask," said Tredennis, "how it strikes _you_?" + +"Me!" exclaimed Richard. "As the most awkward piece of business in the +world, and as likely to do me more harm than anything else could." + +He made a graceful, rapid gesture of impatience. + +"Everything goes against me!" he said. "She never liked him from the +first, and if she has heard this she will never be civil to him again, +or to any of the rest of them. And, of course, she is an influence, in a +measure; what clever woman is not? And why should she not use her +influence in one way as well as another? If she were a clergyman's wife +she would work hard enough to gain favors. It is only a trifle that she +should make an effort to be agreeable to men who will be pleased by her +civility. She would do it if there were nothing to be gained. Where are +you going? What is the matter?" for Tredennis had walked to the table +and taken his hat. + +"I am going into the air," he answered; "I am afraid I cannot be of any +use to you to-night. My mind is not very clear just now. I must have +time to think." + +"You look pale," said Amory, staring at him. "You look ghastly. You have +not been up to the mark for months. I have seen that. Washington does +not agree with you." + +"That is it," was Tredennis' response. "Washington does not agree with +me." + +And he carried his hat and his pale and haggard countenance out into the +night, and left Richard gazing after him, feverish, fretted, thwarted in +his desire to pour forth his grievances and defend himself, and also +filled with baffled amazement at his sudden departure. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + + +Mrs. Amory did not receive on New Year's day. The season had well set in +before she arrived in Washington. One morning in January Mrs. Sylvestre, +sitting alone, reading, caught sight of the little _coupé_ as it drew up +before the carriage-step, and, laying aside her book, reached the parlor +door in time to meet Bertha as she entered it. She took both her hands +and drew her toward the fire, still holding them. + +"Why did I not know you had returned?" she said. "When did you arrive?" + +"Last night," Bertha answered. "You see I come to you early." + +It was a cold day and she was muffled in velvet and furs. She sat down, +loosened her wrap and let it slip backward, and as its sumptuous fulness +left her figure it revealed it slender to fragility, and showed that the +outline of her cheek had lost all its roundness. She smiled faintly, +meeting Agnes' anxious eyes. + +"Don't look at me," she said. "I am not pretty. I have been ill. You +heard I was not well in Newport? It was a sort of low fever, and I am +not entirely well yet. Malaria, you know, is always troublesome. But you +are very well?" + +"Yes, I am well," Agnes replied. + +"And you begin to like Washington again?" + +"I began last winter." + +"How did you enjoy the spring? You were here until the end of June." + +"It was lovely." + +"And now you are here once more, and how pretty everything about you +is!" Bertha said, glancing around the room. "And you are ready to be +happy all winter until June again. Do you know, you look happy. Not +excitably happy, but gently, calmly happy, as if the present were enough +for you." + +"It is," said Agnes, "I don't think I want any future." + +"It would be as well to abolish it if one could," Bertha answered; "but +it comes--_it comes_!" + +She sat and looked at the fire a few seconds under the soft shadow of +her lashes, and then spoke again. + +"As for me," she said, "I am going to give dinner-parties to Senator +Planefield's friends." + +"Bertha!" exclaimed Agnes. + +"Yes," said Bertha, nodding gently. "It appears somehow that Richard +belongs to Senator Planefield, and, as I belong to Richard, why, you +see"-- + +She ended with a dramatic little gesture, and looked at Agnes once more. + +"It took me some time to understand it," she said. "I am not quite sure +that I understand it quite thoroughly even now. It is a little puzzling, +or, perhaps, I am dull of comprehension. At all events, Richard has +talked to me a great deal. It is plainly my duty to be agreeable and +hospitable to the people he wishes to please and bring in contact with +each other." + +"And those people?" asked Agnes. + +"They are political men: they are members of committees, members of the +House, members of the Senate; and their only claim to existence in our +eyes is that they are either in favor of or opposed to a certain bill +not indirectly connected with the welfare of the owners of Westoria +lands." + +"Bertha," said Agnes, quickly, "you are not yourself." + +"Thank you," was the response, "that is always satisfactory, but the +compliment would be more definite if you told me who I happened to be. +But I can tell you that I am that glittering being, the female lobbyist. +I used to wonder last winter if I was not on the verge of it; but now I +know. I wonder if they all begin as innocently as I did, and find the +descent--isn't it a descent?--as easy and natural. I feel queer, but +not exactly disreputable. It is merely a matter of being a dutiful wife +and smiling upon one set of men instead of another. Still, I am slightly +uncertain as to just how disreputable I am. I was beginning to be quite +reconciled to my atmosphere until I saw Colonel Tredennis, and I confess +he unsettled my mind and embarrassed me a little in my decision." + +"You have seen him already?" + +"Accidentally, yes. He did not know I had returned, and came to see +Richard. He is quite intimate with Richard now. He entered the parlor +and found me there. I do not think he was glad to see me. I left him +very soon." + +She drew off her glove, and smoothed it out upon her knee, with a thin +and fragile little hand upon which the rings hung loosely. Agnes bent +forward and involuntarily laid her own hand upon it. + +"Dear," she said. + +Bertha hurriedly lifted her eyes. + +"What I wish to say," she said, "was that the week after next we give a +little dinner to Senator Blundel, and I wanted to be sure I might count +on you. If you are there--and Colonel Tredennis--you will give it an +unprofessional aspect, which is what we want. But perhaps you will +refuse to come?" + +"Bertha," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "I will be with you at any time--at all +times--you wish for or need me." + +"Yes," said Bertha, reflecting upon her a moment, "I think you would." + +She got up and kissed her lightly and without effusion, and then Agnes +rose, too, and they stood together. + +"You were always good," Bertha said. "I think life has made you better +instead of worse. It is not so always. Things are so +different--everything seems to depend upon circumstances. What is good +in me would be far enough from your standards to be called wickedness." + +She paused abruptly, and Agnes felt that she did so to place a check +upon herself; she had seen her do it before. When she spoke again it was +in an entirely different tone, and the remaining half-hour of her visit +was spent in the discussion of every-day subjects. Agnes listened, and +replied to her with a sense of actual anguish. She could have borne +better to have seen her less self-controlled; or she fancied so, at +least. The summer had made an alteration in her, which it was almost +impossible to describe. Every moment revealed some new, sad change in +her, and yet she sat and talked commonplaces, and was bright, and witty, +and epigrammatic until the last. + +"When we get our bill through," she said, with a little smile, just +before her departure, "I am to go abroad for a year,--for two, for +three, if I wish. I think that is the bribe which has been offered me. +One must always be bribed, you know." + +As she stood at the window watching the carriage drive away, Agnes was +conscious of a depression which was very hard to bear. The brightness of +her own atmosphere seemed to have become heavy,--the sun hid itself +behind the drifting, wintry clouds,--she glanced around her room with a +sense of dreariness. Something carried her back to the memories which +were the one burden of her present life. + +"Such grief cannot enter a room and not leave its shadow behind it," she +said. And she put her hand against the window-side, and leaned her brow +upon it sadly. It was curious, she thought, the moment after, that the +mere sight of a familiar figure should bring such a sense of comfort +with it as did the sight of the one she saw approaching. It was that of +Laurence Arbuthnot, who came with a business communication for Mrs. +Merriam, having been enabled, by chance, to leave his work for an hour. +He held a roll of music in one hand and a bunch of violets in the other, +and when he entered the room was accompanied by the fresh fragrance of +the latter offering. + +Agnes made a swift involuntary movement toward him. + +"Ah!" she said, "I could scarcely believe that it was you." + +He detected the emotion in her manner and tone at once. + +"Something has disturbed you," he said. "What is it?" + +"I have seen Bertha," she answered, and the words had a sound of appeal +in them, which she herself no more realized or understood than she +comprehended the impulse which impelled her to speak. + +"She has been here! She looks so ill--so worn. Everything is so sad! +I"-- + +She stopped and stood looking at him. + +"Must I go away?" he said, quietly. "Perhaps you would prefer to be +alone. I understand what you mean, I think." + +"Oh, no!" she said, impulsively, putting out her hand. "Don't go. I am +unhappy. It was--it was a relief to see you." + +And when she sank on the sofa, he took a seat near her and laid the +violets on her lap, and there was a faint flush on his face. + + +The little dinner, which was the first occasion of Senator Blundel's +introduction to the Amory establishment, was a decided success. + +"We will make it a success," Bertha had said. "It _must_ be one." And +there was a ring in her voice which was a great relief to her husband. + +"It will be one," he said. "There is no fear of _your_ failing when you +begin in this way." And his spirits rose to such an extent that he +became genial and fascinating once more, and almost forgot his late +trials and uncertainties. He had always felt great confidence in Bertha. + +On the afternoon of the eventful day Bertha did not go out. She spent +the hours between luncheon and the time for dressing with her children. +Once, as he passed the open door of the nursery, Richard saw her sitting +upon the carpet, building a house of cards, while Jack, and Janey, and +Meg sat about her enchanted. A braid of her hair had become loosened and +hung over her shoulder; her cheeks were flushed by the fire; she looked +almost like a child herself, with her air of serious absorbed interest +in the frail structure growing beneath her hands. + +"Won't that tire you?" Richard asked. + +She glanced up with a smile. + +"No," she said, "it will rest me." + +He heard her singing to them afterward, and later, when she went to her +dressing-room, he heard the pretty lullaby die away gradually as she +moved through the corridor. + +When she appeared again she was dressed for dinner, and came in +buttoning her glove, and at the sight of her he uttered an exclamation +of pleasure. + +"What a perfect dress!" he said. "What is the idea? There must be one." + +She paused and turned slowly round so that he might obtain the full +effect. + +"You should detect it," she replied. "It is meant to convey one." + +"It has a kind of dove-like look," he said. + +She faced him again. + +"That is it," she said, serenely. "In the true artist spirit, I have +attired myself with a view to expressing the perfect candor and +simplicity of my nature. Should you find it possible to fear or suspect +me of ulterior motives--if you were a senator, for instance?" + +"Ah, come now!" said Richard, not quite so easily, "that is nonsense! +You have no ulterior motives." + +She opened her plumy, dove-colored fan and came nearer him. + +"There is nothing meretricious about me," she said. + +"I am softly clad in dove color; a few clusters of pansies adorn me; I +am covered from throat to wrists; I have not a jewel about me. Could the +effect be better?" + +"No, it could not," he replied, but suddenly he felt a trifle +uncomfortable again, and wondered what was hidden behind the inscrutable +little gaze she afterwards fixed upon the fire. + +But when Blundel appeared, which he did rather early, he felt relieved +again. Nothing could have been prettier than her greeting of him, or +more perfect in its attainment of the object of setting him at his ease. +It must be confessed that he was not entirely at his ease when he +entered, his experience not having been of a nature to develop in him +any latent love for general society. He had fought too hard a fight to +leave him much time to know women well, and his superficial knowledge of +them made him a trifle awkward, as it occasionally renders other men +astonishingly bold. In a party of men all his gifts displayed +themselves; in the presence of women he was afraid that less substantial +fellows had the advantage of him,--men who could not tell half so good a +story or make half so exhilarating a joke. As to this special dinner he +had not been particularly anxious to count himself among the guests, and +was not very certain as to how Planefield had beguiled him into +accepting the invitation. + +But ten minutes after he had entered the room he began to feel +mollified. Outside the night was wet and unpleasant, and not calculated +to improve a man's temper; the parlors glowing with fire-light and +twinkling wax candles were a vivid and agreeable contrast to the sloppy +rawness. The slender, dove-colored figure, with its soft, trailing +draperies, assumed more definitely pleasant proportions, and in his +vague, inexperienced, middle-aged fashion he felt the effect of it. She +had a nice way, this little woman, he decided; no nonsense or airs and +graces about her: an easy manner, a gay little laugh. He did not +remember exactly afterward what it was she said which first wakened him +up, but he found himself laughing and greatly amused, and when he made a +witticism he felt he had reason to be proud of, the gay little peal of +laughter which broke forth in response had the most amazingly +exhilarating effect upon him, and set him upon his feet for the evening. +Women seldom got all the flavor of his jokes. He had an idea that some +of them were a little afraid of them and of him, too. The genuine mirth +in Bertha's unstudied laughter was like wine to him, and was better than +the guffaws of a dozen men, because it had a finer and a novel flavor. +After the joke and the laugh the ice was melted, and he knew that he was +in the humor to distinguish himself. + +Planefield discovered this the moment he saw him, and glanced at +Richard, who was brilliant with good spirits. + +"She's begun well," he said, when he had an opportunity to speak to him. +"I never saw him in a better humor. She's pleased him somehow. Women +don't touch him usually." + +"She will end better," said Richard. "He pleases her." + +He did not displease her, at all events. She saw the force and humor of +his stalwart jokes, and was impressed by the shrewd, business-like +good-nature which betrayed nothing. When he began to enjoy himself she +liked the genuineness of his enjoyment all the more because it was a +personal matter with him, and he seemed to revel in it. + +"He enjoys _himself_," was her mental comment, "really _himself_, not +exactly the rest of us, except as we stimulate him, and make him say +good things." + +Among the chief of her gifts had always been counted the power of +stimulating people, and making them say their best things, and she made +the most of this power now. She listened with her brightest look, she +uttered her little exclamations of pleasure and interest at exactly the +right moment, and the gay ring of her spontaneous sounding laugh was +perfection. Miss Varien, who was one of her guests, sat and regarded her +with untempered admiration. + +"Your wife," she said to Amory, in an undertone, "is simply +incomparable. It is not necessary to tell you that, of course; but it +strikes me with fresh force this evening. She really seems to enjoy +things. That air of gay, candid delight is irresistible. It makes her +seem to that man like a charming little girl--a harmless, bright, +sympathetic little girl. How he likes her!" + +When she went in to dinner with him, and he sat by her side, he liked +her still more. He had never been in better spirits in his life; he had +never said so many things worth remembering; he had never heard such +sparkling and vivacious talk as went on round this particular table. It +never paused or lagged. There was Amory, all alight and stirred by every +conversational ripple which passed him; there was Miss Varien, +scintillating and casting off showers of sparks in the prettiest and +most careless fashion; there was Laurence Arbuthnot, doing his share +without any apparent effort, and appreciating his neighbors to the full; +there was Mrs. Sylvestre, her beautiful eyes making speech almost +superfluous, and Mrs. Merriam, occasionally casting into the pool some +neatly weighted pebble, which sent its circles to the shore; and in the +midst of the coruscations Blundel found himself, somehow, doing quite +his portion of the illumination. Really these people and their +dinner-party pleased him wonderfully well, and he was far from sorry +that he had come, and far from sure that he should not come again if he +were asked. He was shrewd enough, too, to see how much the success of +everything depended upon his own little companion at the head of the +table, and, respecting success beyond all things, after the manner of +his kind, he liked her all the better for it. There was something about +her which, as Miss Varien had said, made him feel that she was like a +bright, sympathetic little girl, and engendered a feeling of fatherly +patronage which was entirely comfortable. But, though she rather led +others to talk than talked herself, he noticed that she said a sharp +thing now and then; and he liked that, too, and was greatly amused by +it. He liked women to be sharp, if they were not keen enough to +interfere with masculine prerogatives. There was only one person in the +company he did not find exhilarating, and that was a large, brown-faced +fellow, who sat next to Mrs. Merriam, and said less than might have been +expected of him, though, when he spoke, his remarks were well enough in +their way. Blundel mentioned him afterward to Bertha when they returned +to the parlor. + +"That colonel, who is he?" he asked her. "I didn't catch his name +exactly. Handsome fellow; but he'd be handsomer if"-- + +"It is the part of wisdom to stop you," said Bertha, "and tell you that +he is a sort of cousin of mine, and his perfections are such as I regard +with awe. His name is Colonel Tredennis, and you have read of him in the +newspapers." + +"What!" he exclaimed, turning his sharp little eyes upon +Tredennis,--"the Indian man? I'm glad you told me that. I want to talk +to him." And, an opportunity being given him, he proceeded to do so with +much animation, ruffling his stiff hair up at intervals in his interest, +his little eyes twinkling like those of some alert animal. + +He left the house late and in the best of humors. He had forgotten for +the time being all questions of bills and subsidies. Nothing had +occurred to remind him of such subjects. Their very existence seemed a +trifle problematical, or, rather, perhaps it seemed desirable that it +should be so. + +"I feel," he said to Planefield, as he was shrugging himself into his +overcoat, "as if I had rather missed it by not coming here before." + +"You were asked," answered Planefield. + +"So I was," he replied, attacking the top button of the overcoat. "Well, +the next time I am asked I suppose I shall come." + +Then he gave his attention to the rest of the buttons. + +"A man in public life ought to see all sides of his public," he said, +having disposed of the last one. "Said some good things, didn't they? +The little woman isn't without a mind of her own, either. When is it she +receives?" + +"Thursdays," said Planefield. + +"Ah, Thursdays." + +And they went out in company. + +Her guests having all departed, Bertha remained for a few minutes in the +parlor. Arbuthnot and Tredennis went out last, and as the door closed +upon them she looked at Richard. + +"Well?" she said. + +"Well!" exclaimed Richard. "It could not have been better!" + +"Couldn't it?" she said, looking down a little meditatively. + +"No," he responded, with excellent good cheer, "and you see how simple +it was, and--and how unnecessary it is to exaggerate it and call it by +unpleasant names. What we want is merely to come in contact with these +people, and show them how perfectly harmless we are, and that when the +time comes they may favor us without injury to themselves or any one +else. That's it in a nutshell." + +"We always say 'us,' don't we?" said Bertha,--"as if we were +part-proprietors of the Westoria lands ourselves. It is a little +confusing, don't you think so?" + +She paused and looked up with one of her sudden smiles. + +"Still I don't feel exactly sure that I have been--but no, I am not to +call it lobbying, am I? What must I call it? It really ought to have a +name." + +"Don't call it anything," said Richard, faintly conscious of his +dubiousness again. + +"Why, what a good idea!" she answered. "What a good way of getting round +a difficulty--not to give it a name! It almost obliterates it, doesn't +it? It is an actual inspiration. We won't call it anything. There is so +much in a name--too much, on the whole, really. But--without giving it a +name--I have behaved pretty well and advanced our--your--whose +interests?" + +"Everybody's," he replied, with an effort at lightness. "Mine +particularly. I own that my view of the matter is a purely selfish one. +There is a career before me, you know, if all goes well." + +He detected at once the expression of gentleness which softened her eyes +as she watched him. + +"You always wanted a career, didn't you?" she said. + +"It isn't pleasant," he said, "for a man to know that he is not a +success." + +"If I can give you your career," she said, "you shall have it, Richard. +It is a simpler thing than I thought, after all." And she went upstairs +to her room, stopping on the way to spend a few minutes in the nursery. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + + +The professor sat in his favorite chair by his library fire, an open +volume on his knee, and his after-dinner glass of wine, still +unfinished, on the table near him. He had dined a couple of hours ago +with Mr. Arbuthnot, who had entertained him very agreeably and had not +long since left him to present himself upon some social scene. + +It was of his departed guest that he was thinking as he pondered, and of +certain plans he had on hand for his ultimate welfare, and his thoughts +so deeply occupied him that he did not hear the sound of the door-bell, +which rang as he sat, nor notice any other sound until the door of the +room opened and some one entered. He raised his head and looked around +then, uttering a slight ejaculation of surprise. + +"Why, Bertha!" he said. "My dear! This is unexpected." + +He paused and gave her one of his gently curious looks. She had thrown +her cloak off as she came near him, and something in her appearance +attracted his attention. + +"My dear," he said, slowly, "you look to-night as you did years ago. I +am reminded of the time when Philip first came to us. I wonder why?" + +There was a low seat near his side, and she came and took it. + +"It is the dress," she said. "I was looking over some things I had laid +aside, and found it. I put it on for old acquaintance' sake. I have +never worn it since then. Perhaps I hoped it would make me feel like a +girl again." + +Her tone was very quiet, her whole manner was quiet; the dress was +simplicity itself. A little lace kerchief was knotted about her throat. + +"That is a very feminine idea," remarked the professor, seeming to give +it careful attention. "Peculiarly feminine, I should say. And--does it, +my dear?" + +"Not quite," she answered. "A little. When I first put it on and stood +before the glass I forgot a good many things for a few moments, and +then, suddenly, I heard the children's voices in the nursery, and +Richard came in, and Bertha Herrick was gone. You know I was Bertha +Herrick when I wore this--Bertha Herrick, thinking of her first party." + +"Yes, my dear," he responded, "I--I remember." + +There were a few moments of silence, in which he looked abstractedly +thoughtful, but presently he bestirred himself. + +"By the by," he said, "that reminds me. Didn't I understand that there +was a great party somewhere to-night? Mr. Arbuthnot left me to go to it, +I think. I thought there was a reason for my surprise at seeing you. +That was it. Surely you should have been at the great party instead of +here." + +"Well," she replied, "I suppose I should, but for some curious accident +or other--I don't know what the accident is or how it happened--I should +have had an invitation--of course if it had chanced to reach me; but +something has occurred to prevent it doing so, I suppose. Such things +happen, you know. To all intents and purposes I have not been invited, +so I could not go. And I am very glad. I would rather be here." + +"I would rather have you here," he returned, "if such seclusion pleases +you. But I can hardly imagine, my dear, how the party"-- + +She put her hand on his caressingly. + +"It cannot be an entire success," she said. "It won't, in my absence; +but misfortunes befall even the magnificent and prosperous, and the +party must console itself. I like to be here--I like very much to be +here." + +He glanced at her gray dress again. + +"Bertha Herrick would have preferred the party," he remarked. + +"Bertha Amory is wiser," she said. "We will be quiet together--and +happy." + +They were very quiet. The thought occurred to the professor several +times during the evening. She kept her seat near him, and talked to him, +speaking, he noticed, principally of her children and of the past; the +time she had spent at home before her marriage seemed to be present in +her mind. + +"I wonder," she said once, thoughtfully, "what sort of girl I was? I can +only remember that I was such a happy girl! Do _you_ remember that I was +a specially self-indulgent or frivolous one? But I am afraid you would +not tell me, if you did." + +"My dear," he said, in response, "you were a natural, simple, joyous +creature, and a great pleasure to us." + +She gave his hand a little pressure. + +"_I_ can remember that you were always good to me," she said. "I used to +think you were a little curious about me, and wondered what I would do +in the future. Now it is my turn to wonder if I am at all what you +thought I would be?" + +He did not reply at once, and then spoke slowly. + +"There seemed so many possibilities," he said. "Yes; I thought it +possible that you might be--what you are." + +It was as he said this that there returned to his mind the thought which +had occupied it before her entrance. He had been thinking then of +something he wished to tell her, before she heard it from other +quarters, and which he felt he could tell her at no more fitting time +than when they were alone. It was something relating to Laurence +Arbuthnot, and, curiously enough, she paved the way for it by mentioning +him herself. + +"Did you say Laurence was here to-night?" she asked. + +"Yes," he replied, "he was so good as to dine with me." + +"He would say that you were so good as to invite him," she said. "He is +very fond of coming here." + +"I should miss him very much," he returned, "if he should go away." + +She looked up quickly, attracted by his manner. + +"But there is no likelihood of his going away," she said. + +"I think," he answered, "that there may be, and I wished to speak to you +about it." + +He refrained from looking at her; he even delicately withdrew his hand, +so that if hers should lose its steadiness he might be unconscious of +it. + +"Go away!" she exclaimed,--"from Washington? Laurence! Why should you +think so? I cannot imagine such a thing." + +"He does not imagine it himself yet," he replied. "_I_ am going to +suggest it to him." + +Her hand was still upon his knee, and he felt her start. + +"You are!" she said; "why and how? Do you think he will go? I do not +believe he will." + +"I am not sure that he will," he answered, "but I hope so; and what I +mean is that I think it may be possible to send him abroad." + +She withdrew her hand from his knee. + +"He won't go," she said; "I am sure of it." + +He went on to explain himself, still not looking at her. + +"He is wasting his abilities," he said; "he is wasting his youth; the +position he is in is absurdly insignificant; it occurred to me that if I +used, with right effect, the little influence I possess, there might +finally be obtained for him some position abroad, which would be at +least something better, and might possibly open a way for him in the +future. I spoke to the Secretary of State about it, and he was very +kind, and appeared interested. It seems very possible, even probable, +that my hopes will be realized." + +For a few seconds she sat still; then she said, abstractedly: + +"It would be very strange to be obliged to live our lives without +Laurence; they would not be the same lives at all. Still, I suppose it +would be best for him; but it would be hard to live without Laurence. I +don't like to think of it." + +In spite of his intention not to do so, he found himself turning to look +at her. There had been surprise in her voice, and now there was sadness, +but there was no agitation, no uncontrollable emotion. + +"Can it be," he thought, "that she is getting over it? What does it +mean?" + +She turned and met his eyes. + +"But, whether it is for the best or not," she said, "I don't believe he +will go." + +"My dear," he said, "you speak as if there was a reason." + +"I think there is a reason," she answered, "and it is a strong one." + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"There is some one he is beginning to be fond of," she replied; "_that_ +is the reason." + +He kept his eyes fixed upon her. + +"Some one he is _beginning_ to be fond of?" he repeated. + +"I don't know how it will end," she said. "I am sometimes afraid it can +only end sadly, but there is some one he would find it hard to leave, I +am sure." + +The professor gradually rose in his chair until he was sitting upright. + +"I wish," he said, "that you would tell me who it is." + +"I do not think he would mind your knowing," she answered. "It seems +strange you have not seen. It is Agnes Sylvestre." + +The professor sank back in his chair, and looked at the bed of coals in +the grate. + +"Agnes _Sylvestre_!" he exclaimed; "_Agnes_ Sylvestre!" + +"Yes," she said; "and in one sense it is very hard on him that it should +be Agnes Sylvestre. After all these years, when he has steadily kept +himself free from all love affairs, and been so sure that nothing could +tempt him, it cannot be easy for him to know that he loves some one who +has everything he has not--all the things he feels he never will have. +He is very proud and very unrelenting in his statement of his own +circumstances, and he won't try to glaze them over when he compares them +with hers. He is too poor, she is too rich--even if she loved him." + +"Even!" said the professor. "Is it your opinion that she does not?" + +"I do not know," she answered. "It has seemed to me more probable +that--that she liked Colonel Tredennis." + +"I thought so," said the professor. "I must confess that I thought so; +though, perhaps, that may have been because my feeling for him is so +strong, and I have seen that he"-- + +"That he was fond of her?" Bertha put in as he paused to reflect. + +"I thought so," he said again. "I thought I was sure of it. He sees her +often; he thinks of her frequently, it is plain; he speaks of her to me; +he sees every charm and grace in her. I have never heard him speak of +any other woman so." + +"It would be a very suitable marriage," said Bertha; "I have felt that +from the first. There is no one more beautiful than Agnes--no one +sweeter--no one more fit"-- + +She pushed her seat back from the hearth and rose from it. + +"The fire is too warm," she said. "I have been sitting before it too +long." + +There was some ice-water upon a side table and she went to it and +poured out a glass, and drank it slowly. Then she took a seat by the +centre-table and spoke again, as she idly turned over the leaves of a +magazine without looking at it. + +"When first Agnes came here," she said, "I thought of it. I remember +that when I presented Philip to her I watched to see if she impressed +him as she does most people." + +"She did," said the professor. "I remember his speaking of it afterward, +and saying what a charm hers was, and that her beauty must touch a man's +best nature." + +"That was very good," said Bertha, faintly smiling. "And it was very +like him. And since then," she added, "you say he has spoken of her +often in the same way and as he speaks of no one else?" + +"Again and again," answered the professor. "The truth is, my dear, I am +fond of speaking of her myself, and have occasionally led him in that +direction. I have wished for him what you have wished." + +"And we have both of us," she said, half sadly, "been unkind to poor +Laurence." + +She closed the magazine. + +"Perhaps he will go, after all," she said. "He may see that it is best. +He may be glad to go before the year is ended." + +She left her book and her chair. + +"I think I must go now," she said, "I am a little tired." + +He thought that she looked so, and the shadow which for a moment had +half lifted itself fell again. + +"No," he thought, "she has not outlived it, and this is more bitter for +her than the rest. It is only natural that it should be more bitter." + +When he got up to bid her good-night she put a hand upon either of his +shoulders and kissed him. + +"I am glad I was not invited to the grand party, dear," she said, "I +have liked this better. It has been far better for me." + +There were only a few yards of space between her father's house and her +own, and in a few seconds she had ascended the steps and entered the +door. As she did so she heard Richard in the parlor, speaking rapidly +and vehemently, and, entering, found that he was talking to Colonel +Tredennis. The colonel was standing at one end of the room, as if he had +turned around with an abrupt movement; Richard was lying full length +upon a sofa, looking uneasy and excited, his cushions tumbled about him. +They ceased speaking the moment they saw her, and there was an odd +pause, noticing which she came forward and spoke with an effort at +appearing at ease. + +"Do you know that this seems like contention?" she said. "Are you +quarrelling with Richard, Colonel Tredennis, or is he quarrelling with +you? And why are you not at the reception?" + +"We are quarrelling with each other violently," said Richard, with a +half laugh. "You arrived barely in time to prevent our coming to blows. +And why are you not at the reception?" + +Bertha turned to Tredennis, who for a moment seemed to have been struck +dumb by the sight of her. The memories the slender gray figure had +brought to the professor rushed back upon him with a force that +staggered him. It was as if the ghost of something dead had suddenly +appeared before him and he was compelled to hold himself as if he did +not see it. The little gray gown, the carelessly knotted kerchief,--it +seemed so terrible to see them and to be forced to realize through them +how changed she was. He had never seen her look so ill and fragile as +she did when she turned to him and spoke in her quiet, unemotional +voice. + +"This is the result of political machination," she said. "He has +forgotten that we were not invited. Being absorbed in affairs of state +he no longer keeps an account of the doings of the giddy throng." + +Then he recovered himself. + +"You were not invited," he said. "Isn't there some mistake about that? I +thought"-- + +"Your impression naturally was that we were the foundation-stone of all +social occasions," she responded; "but this time they have dispensed +with us. We were not invited." + +"Say that you did not receive your invitation," put in Richard, +restlessly. "The other way of stating it is nonsense." + +She paused an instant, as if his manner suggested a new thought to her. + +"I wonder," she said, slowly, "if there _could_ be a reason; but no, I +think that is impossible. It must have been an accident. But you," she +added to Tredennis, "have not told me why you are not with the rest of +the world." + +"I came away early," he answered. "I was there for an hour." + +He was glad that she did not sit down; he wished that she would go away; +it would be better if she would go away and leave them to themselves +again. + +"It was very gay, I suppose," she said. "And you saw Agnes?" + +"I have just left her," he replied. + +"You ought to have stayed," she said, turning away with a smile. "It +would have been better than quarrelling with Richard." + +And she went out of the room and left them together, as he had told +himself it would be best she should. + +He did not look at her as she ascended the staircase; he stood with his +back to the open door, and did not speak until he heard her go into the +room above them. Then he addressed Richard. + +"Do you understand me now?" he said, sternly. "This is the beginning!" + +"The beginning!" exclaimed Richard, with a half frantic gesture. "If +this is the beginning--and things go wrong--imagine what the end will +be!" + +The room Bertha had entered was the nursery. In the room opening out of +it Jack and Janey slept in their small beds. Upon the hearth-rug lay a +broken toy. She bent to pick it up, and afterward stood a moment holding +it in her hand without seeing it; she still held it as she sank into a +chair which was near her. + +"I will stay here a while," she said. "This is the best place for me." + +For a few minutes she sat quite still; something like a stupor had +settled upon her; she was thinking in a blind, disconnected way of Agnes +Sylvestre. Everything would be right at last. Agnes would be happy. This +was what she had wished--what she had intended from the first--when she +had brought them together. It was she who had brought them together. And +this was the plan she had had in her mind when she had done it; and she +had known what it would cost her even then. And then there came back to +her the memory of the moment when she had turned away from them to pour +out Laurence's coffee with hands she could not hold still, and whose +tremor he saw and understood. Poor Laurence! he must suffer too! Poor +Laurence! + +She looked down suddenly at the broken toy in her hand. + +"I will stay here more," she said. "It is better here. There is nothing +else! And if I were a good woman I should want nothing else. If I had +only not spoken to Agnes,--that was the mistake; if she will only forget +it! _Some_ one should be happy--_some_ one! It will be Agnes." + +She got up and went into the children's room, and knelt down by Janey's +bed, laying the toy on the coverlet. She put her arms around the child +and spoke her name. + +"Janey!" she said. "Janey!" + +The child stirred, opened her eyes, and put an arm sleepily about her +neck. + +"I said my prayers," she murmured. "God bless mamma and papa--and +everybody! God bless Uncle Philip!" + +Bertha laid her face near her upon the pillow. + +"Yes," she said, brokenly. "You belong to me and I belong to you. I will +stay here, Janey--with you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + + +Sometimes during the winter, when she glanced around her parlor on the +evenings of her receptions Bertha felt as if she was in a waking +dream,--so many people of whom she seemed to know nothing were gathered +about her; she saw strange faces on every side; a new element had +appeared, which was gradually crowding out the old, and she herself felt +that she was almost a stranger in it. Day by day, and by almost +imperceptible degrees at first, various mysterious duties had devolved +upon her. She had found herself calling at one house because the head of +it was a member of a committee, at another because its mistress was a +person whose influence over her husband it would be well to consider; +she had issued an invitation here because the recipients must be +pleased, another there because somebody was to be biassed in the right +direction. The persons thus to be pleased and biassed were by no means +invariably interesting. There was a stalwart Westerner or so, who made +themselves almost too readily at home; an occasional rigid New +Englander, who suspected a lack of purpose in the atmosphere; and a +stray Southerner, who exhibited a tendency towards a large and rather +exhaustive gallantry. As a rule, too, Bertha was obliged to admit that +she found the men more easily entertained than the women, who were most +of them new to their surroundings, and privately determined to do +themselves credit and not be imposed upon by appearances; and when this +was not the case were either timorously overpowered by a sense of their +inadequacy to the situation, or calmly intrenched behind a shield of +impassive composure, more discouraging than all else. It was not always +easy to enliven such material: to be always ready with the right thing +to say and do; to understand, as by inspiration, the intricacies of +every occasion and the requirements of every mental condition, and while +Bertha spared no effort, and used her every gift to the best of her +ability, the result, even when comparatively successful, was rather +productive of exhaustion, mental and physical. + +"They don't care about me," she said to Arbuthnot one night, with a +rueful laugh, as she looked around her. "And I am always afraid of their +privately suspecting that I don't care about them. Sometimes when I look +at them I cannot help being overpowered by a sense of there being a kind +of ludicrousness in it all. Do you know, nearly every one of them has a +reason for being here, and it is never by any chance connected with my +reason for inviting them. I could give you some of the reasons. Shall I? +Some of them are feminine reasons, and some of them are masculine. That +woman at the end of the sofa--the thin, eager-looking one--comes because +she wishes to accustom herself to society. Her husband is a 'rising +man,' and she is in love with him, and has a hungry desire to keep pace +with him. The woman she is talking to has a husband who wants something +Senator Planefield may be induced to give him--and Senator Planefield is +on his native heath here; that showy little Southern widow has a large +claim against the government, and comes because she sees people she +thinks it best to know. She is wanted because she has a favorite cousin +who is given patriotically to opposing all measures not designed to +benefit the South. It is rather fantastic when you reflect upon it, +isn't it?" + +"You know what I think about it without asking," answered Arbuthnot. + +"Yes, you have told me," was her response; "but it will be all over +before long, and then--Ah! there is Senator Blundel! Do you know, it is +always a relief to me when he comes;" and she went toward him with a +brighter look than Arbuthnot had seen her wear at any time during the +entire evening. + +It had taken her some time herself to decide why it was that she liked +Blundel and felt at ease with him; in fact, up to the present period she +had scarcely done more than decide that she did like him. She had not +found his manner become more polished as their acquaintance progressed; +he was neither gallant nor accomplished; he was always rather full of +himself, in a genuine, masculine way. He was blunt, and by no means +tactful; but she had never objected to him from the first, and after a +while she had become conscious of feeling relief, as she had put it to +Arbuthnot, when his strong, rather aggressive, personality presented +itself upon the scene. He was not difficult to entertain, at least. +Finding in her the best of listeners he entertained himself by talking +to her, and by making sharp jokes, at which they both laughed with equal +appreciation. He knew what to talk about too, and what subjects to joke +on; and, however apparently communicative his mood might be, his +opinions were always kept thriftily in hand. + +"He seems to talk a good deal," Richard said, testily; "but, after all, +you don't find out much of what he really thinks." + +Bertha had discovered this early in their acquaintance. If the object in +making the house attractive to him was that he might be led to commit +himself in any way during his visits, that object was scarcely attained. +When at last it appeared feasible to discuss the Westoria lands project +in his presence, he showed no unwillingness to listen or to ask +questions; but, the discussion being at an end, if notes had been +compared no one could have said that he had taken either side of the +question. + +"He's balancing things," Planefield said. "I told you he would do it. +You may trust him not to speak until he has made up his mind which side +of the scale the weight is on." + +When these discussions were being carried on Bertha had a fancy that he +was more interested than he appeared outwardly. Several times she had +observed that he asked her questions afterward which proved that no word +had dropped on his ear unheeded, and that he had, for some reason best +known to himself, reflected upon all he had heard. But their +acquaintance had a side entirely untouched by worldly machinations, and +it was this aspect of it which Bertha liked. There was something homely +and genuine about it. He paid her no compliments; he even occasionally +found fault with her habits, and what he regarded as the unnecessary +conventionality of some of her surroundings; but his good-natured +egotism never offended her. A widower without family, and immersed in +political business, he knew little of the comforts of home life. He +lived in two or three rooms, full of papers, books, and pigeon-holes, +and took his meals at a hotel. He found this convenient, if not +luxurious, and more than convenience it had never yet occurred to him to +expect or demand. But he was not too dull to appreciate the good which +fell in his way; and after spending an hour with the Amorys on two or +three occasions, when he had left the scene of his political labors +fagged and out of humor, he began to find pleasure and relief in his +unceremonious visits, and looked forward to them. There came an evening +when Bertha, in looking over some music, came upon a primitive ballad, +which proved to be among the recollections of his youth, and she aroused +him to enthusiasm by singing it. His musical taste was not remarkable +for its cultivation; he was strongly in favor of pronounced melody, and +was disposed to regard a song as incomplete without a chorus; but he +enjoyed himself when his prejudices were pandered to, and Bertha rather +respected his courageous, if benighted, frankness, and his obstinate +faith in his obsolete favorites. So she sang "Ben Bolt" to him, and "The +Harp that once through Tara's Halls," and others far less classical and +more florid, and while she sang he sat ungracefully, but comfortably, +by the fire, his eyes twinkling less watchfully, the rugged lines of his +blunt-featured face almost settling into repose, and sometimes when she +ended he roused himself with something like a sigh. + +"Do you like it?" she would say. "Does it make you forget 'the gentleman +from Indiana' and the 'senator from Connecticut'?" + +"I don't want to forget them," he would reply with dogged good-humor. +"They are not the kind of fellows it is safe to forget, but it makes my +recollections of them more agreeable." + +But after a while there were times when he was not in the best of +humors, and when Bertha had a fancy that he was not entirely at ease or +pleased with herself. At such times his visits were brief and +unsatisfactory, and she frequently discovered that he regarded her with +a restless and perturbed expression, as if he was not quite certain of +his own opinions of her. + +"He looks at me," she said to Richard, "as if he had moments of +suspecting me of something." + +"Nonsense!" said Richard. "What could he suspect you of?" + +"Of nothing," she answered. "I think that was what we agreed to call +it." + +But she never failed to shrink when the twinkling eyes rested upon her +with the disturbed questioning in their glance, and the consciousness of +this shrinking was very bitter to her in secret. + +When her guest approached her on the evening before referred to, she +detected at once that he was not in a condition of mind altogether +unruffled. The glances he cast on those about him were not encouraging, +and the few nods of recognition he bestowed were far from cordial; his +hair stood on end a trifle more aggressively than usual, and his short, +stout body expressed a degree of general dissatisfaction which it was +next to impossible to ignore. + +Bertha did not attempt to ignore it. + +"I will tell you something before you speak to me," she said. "Something +has put you out of humor." + +He gave her a sharp glance, and then looked away over the heads of the +crowd. + +"There is always enough to put a man out of humor," he said. "What a lot +of people you have here to-night! What do they come for?" + +"I have just been telling Mr. Arbuthnot some of the reasons," she +answered. "They are very few of them good ones. You came hoping to +recover your spirits." + +"I came to look at you," he said. + +He was frequently blunt, but there was a bluntness about this speech +which surprised her. She answered him with a laugh, however. + +"I am always worth looking at," she said. "And now you have seen me"-- + +He was looking at her by this time, and even more sharply than before. +It seemed as if he was bent upon reading in her face the answer to the +question he had asked of it before, but he evidently did not find it. + +"There's something wrong with you," he said. "I don't know what it is. I +don't know what to make of you." + +"If you could make anything of me but Bertha Amory," she replied, "you +might do a service to society; but that is out of the question, and as +to there being something wrong with me, there is something wrong with +all of us. There is something wrong with Mr. Arbuthnot, he is not +enjoying himself; there is something wrong with Senator Planefield, who +has been gloomy all the evening." + +"Planefield," he said. "Ah! yes, there he is! Here pretty often, isn't +he?" + +"He is a great friend of Richard's," she replied, with discretion. + +"So I have heard," he returned. And then he gave his attention to +Planefield for a few minutes, as if he found him also an object of deep +interest. After this inspection he turned to Bertha again. + +"Well," he said, "I suppose you enjoy all this, or you wouldn't do it?" + +"You are not enjoying it," she replied. "It does not exhilarate you as I +hoped it would." + +"I am out of humor," was his answer. "I told you so. I have just heard +something I don't like. I dropped in here to stay five minutes, and take +a look at you and see if"-- + +He checked himself and rubbed his upright hair impatiently, almost +angrily. + +"I am not sure that you mightn't be enjoying yourself better," he said, +"and I should like to know something more of you than I do." + +"If any information I can give you"--she began. + +"Come," he said, with a sudden effort at better humor, "that is the way +you talk to Planefield. We are too good friends for that." + +His shrewd eyes fixed themselves on her as if asking the unanswered +question again. + +"Come!" he said. "I'm a blunt, old-fashioned fogy, but we are good, +honest friends,--and always have been." + +She glanced across the room at Richard, who was talking to a stubborn +opposer of the great measure, and making himself delightful beyond +description. She wished for the moment that he was not quite so +picturesque and animated; then she gathered herself together. + +"I think we have been," she said. "I hope you will believe so." + +"Well," he answered, "I shouldn't like to believe anything else." + +She thought that perhaps he had said more than he originally intended; +he changed the subject abruptly, made a few comments upon people near +them, asked a few questions, and finally went away, having scarcely +spoken to any one but herself. + +"Why did he not remain longer?" Richard asked afterward, when the +guests were gone and they were talking the evening over. + +"He was not in the mood to meet people," Bertha replied. "He said he had +heard something he did not like, and it had put him out of humor. I +think it was something about me." + +"About you!" Richard exclaimed. "Why, in Heaven's name, about you?" + +"His manner made me think so," she answered, coldly. "And it would not +be at all unnatural. I think we may begin to expect such things." + +"Upon my word," said Richard, starting up, "I think that is going rather +far. Don't you see"--with righteous indignation--"what an imputation you +are casting on me? Do you suppose I would allow you to do anything +that--that"-- + +She raised her eyes and met his with an unwavering glance. + +"Certainly not," she said, quickly. And his sentence remained +unfinished, not because he felt that his point had been admitted, but +because, for some mysterious reason, it suddenly became impossible for +him to say more. + +More than some of late, when he had launched into one of his spasmodic +defences of himself, he had found himself checked by this intangible +power in her uplifted eyes, and he certainly did not feel his grievances +the less for the experiences. + +Until during the last few months he had always counted it as one of his +wife's chief charms that there was nothing complicated about her, that +her methods were as simple and direct as a child's. It had never seemed +necessary to explain her. But he had not found this so of late. He had +even begun to feel that, though there was no outward breach in the tenor +of their lives, an almost impalpable barrier had risen between them. He +expressed no wish she did not endeavor to gratify her manner toward +himself, with the exception of the fleeting moments when he had felt the +check, was entirely unchanged; the spirit of her gayety ruled the house, +as it had always done; and yet he was not always sure of the exact +significance of her jests and laughter. The jests were clever, the laugh +had a light ring; but there was a difference which puzzled him, and +which, because he recognized in it some vague connection with himself, +he tried in his moments of leisure to explain. He had even spoken of it +to Colonel Tredennis on occasions when his mood was confidential. + +"She used to be as frank as a child," he said, "and have the lightest +way in the world; and I liked it. I am a rather feather-headed fellow +myself, perhaps, and it suited me. But it is all gone now. When she +laughs I don't feel sure of her, and when she is silent I begin to +wonder what she is thinking of." + +The thing she thought, the words she said to herself oftenest were: "It +will not last very long." She said them over to herself at moments she +could not have sustained herself under but for the consolation she found +in them. Beyond this time, when what she faced from day to day would be +over, she had not yet looked. + +"It is a curious thing," she said to Arbuthnot, "but I seem to have +ceased even to think of the future. I wonder sometimes if very old +people do not feel so--as if there was nothing more to happen." + +There was another person who found the events of the present sufficient +to exclude for the time being almost all thought of the future. This +person was Colonel Tredennis, who had found his responsibilities +increase upon him also,--not the least of these responsibilities being, +it must be confessed, that intimacy with Mr. Richard Amory of which +Bertha had spoken. + +"He is very intimate with Richard," she had said, and she had every +reason for making the comment. + +At first it had been the colonel who had made the advances, for reasons +of his own, but later it had not been necessary for him to make +advances. Having found relief in making his first reluctant +half-confidences, Richard had gradually fallen into making others. When +he had been overpowered by secret anxiety and nervous distrust of +everything, finding himself alone with the colonel, and admiring and +respecting above all things the self-control he saw in him,--a +self-control which meant safety and silence under all temptations to +betray the faintest shadow of a trust reposed in him,--it had been +impossible for him to resist the impulse to speak of the trials which +beset him; and, having once spoken of them, it was again impossible not +to go a little farther, and say more than he had at first intended. So +he had gone on from one step to another until there had come a day when +the colonel himself had checked him for an instant, feeling it only the +part of honor in the man who was the cooler of the two, and who had +nothing to risk or repent. + +"Wait a moment," he said. "Remember that, though I have not asked +questions so far, I am ready to hear anything you choose to say, but +don't tell me what you might wish you had kept back to-morrow." + +"The devil take it all," cried Richard, dashing his fist on the table. +"I must tell some one, or I shall go mad." But the misery which impelled +him notwithstanding, he always told his story in his own way, and gave +it a complexion more delicate than a less graceful historian might have +been generous enough to bestow. He had been too sanguine and +enthusiastic; he had made mistakes; he had been led by the duplicity of +a wily world into follies; he had been unfortunate; those more +experienced than himself had betrayed the confidence it had been only +natural he should repose in them. And throughout the labyrinth of the +relation he wound his way,--a graceful, agile, supple figure, lightly +avoiding an obstacle here, dexterously overstepping a barrier there, and +untouched by any shadow but that of misfortune. + +At first he spoke chiefly of the complications which bore heavily upon +him; and these complications, arising entirely from the actions of +others, committed him to so little that the colonel listened with +apprehension more grave than the open confession of greater blunders +would have awakened in him. "He would tell more," he thought, "if there +were less to tell." + +The grim fancy came to him sometimes as he listened, that it was as if +he watched a man circling about the edge of a volcano, drawing nearer +and nearer, until at last, in spite of himself, and impelled by some +dread necessity, he must plunge headlong in. And so Richard circled +about his crater: sometimes drawn nearer by the emotion and excitement +of the moment, sometimes withdrawing a trifle through a caution as +momentary, but in each of his circlings revealing a little more of the +truth. The revelations were principally connected with the Westoria +lands scheme, and were such in many instances as the colonel was not +wholly unprepared to hear. He had not looked on during the last year for +nothing, and often, when Richard had been in gay good spirits, and had +imagined himself telling nothing, his silent companion had heard his +pleasantries with forebodings which he could not control. He was not +deceived by any appearance of entire frankness, and knew that he had not +been told all until one dark and stormy night, as he sat in his room, +Richard was announced, and came in pallid, haggard, beaten by the rain, +and at the lowest ebb of depression. He had had a hard and bitter day of +it, and it had followed several others quite as hard and bitter; he had +been fagging about the Capitol, going the old rounds, using the old +arguments, trying new ones, overcoming one obstacle only to find himself +confronted with another, feeling that he was losing ground where it was +a matter of life and death that he should gain it; spirits and courage +deserting him just when he needed them most; and all this being over, he +dropped into his office to find awaiting him there letters containing +news which gave the final blow. + +He sat down by the table and began his outpourings, graceful, +attractive, injured. The colonel thought him so, as he watched him and +listened, recognizing meanwhile the incompleteness of his recital, and +making up his mind that the time had come when it was safer that the +whole truth should be told. In the hours in which he had pondered upon +the subject he gradually decided that such an occasion would arrive; and +here it was. + +So at a certain fitting juncture, just as Richard was lightly skirting a +delicate point, Tredennis leaned forward and laid his open hand on the +table with a curious simplicity of gesture. + +"I think," he said, "you had better tell me the whole story. You have +never done it yet. What do you say?" + +The boarder on the floor below, who had heard him walking to and fro on +the first New Year's night he had spent in Washington, and on many a +night since, heard his firm, regular tread again during the half hour in +which Richard told, in fitful outbursts, what he had not found himself +equal to telling before. It was not easy to tell it in a very clear and +connected manner; it was necessary to interlard it with many +explanations and extenuations, and even when these were supplied there +was a baldness about the facts, as they gradually grouped themselves +together, which it was not agreeable to contemplate; and Richard felt +this himself gallingly. + +"I know how it appears to you," he said; "I know how it sounds! That is +the maddening side of it,--it looks so much worse than it really is! +There is not a man living who would accuse me of intentional wrong. +Confound it! I seem to have been forced into doing the very things it +was least natural to me to do! Bertha herself would say it,--she would +understand it. She is always just and generous!" + +"Yes," said the colonel; "I should say she had been generous." + +"You mean that I have betrayed her generosity!" cried Richard. "That, +of course! I expected it." + +"You will find," said the colonel, "that others will say the same +thing." + +He had heard even more than his worst misgivings had suggested to him, +and the shock of it had destroyed something of his self-control. For the +time being he was in no lenient mood. + +"I know what people will say!" Richard exclaimed. "Do you suppose I have +not thought of it a thousand times? I know what I should say if I did +not know the circumstances. It is the circumstances that make the +difference." + +"The fact that they are your circumstances, and not another man's," +began Tredennis; but there he checked himself. "I beg your pardon," he +said, coldly. "I have no right to meet your confidence with blame. It +will do no good. If I can give you no help, I might better be silent. +There were circumstances which appeared extenuating to you, I suppose." + +He was angered by his own anger, as he had often been before. He told +himself that he was making the matter a personal cause, as usual; but +how could he hear that her very generosity and simplicity had been used +against her by the man who should have guarded her interests as his +first duty, without burning with sharp and fierce indignation. + +"If I understand you," he said, "your only hope of recovering what you +have lost lies in the success of the Westoria scheme?" + +"Yes," answered Amory, with his forehead on his hands, "that is the +diabolical truth!" + +"And you have lost?" + +"Once I was driven into saying to you that if the thing should fail it +would mean ruin to me. That was the truth, too." + +The colonel stood still. + +"Ruin to you!" he said. "Ruin to your wife--ruin to your +children--serious loss to the old man who"-- + +"Who trusted me!" Richard finished, gnawing his white lips. "I see it in +exactly the same light myself, and it does not make it easier to bear. +That is the way a thing looks when it fails. Suppose it had succeeded. +It may succeed yet. They trusted me, and, I tell you, I trusted myself." + +It was easy to see just what despair would seize him if the worst came +to the worst, and how powerless he would be in its clutches. He was like +a reed beaten by the wind, even now. A sudden paroxysm of fear fell upon +him. + +"Great God!" he cried. "It can't fail! What could I say to them--how +could I explain it?" + +A thousand wild thoughts surged through Tredennis' brain as he heard +him. The old sense of helplessness was strong upon him. To his upright +strength there seemed no way of judging fairly of, or dealing +practically with, such dishonor and weakness. What standard could be +applied to a man who lied agreeably in his very thoughts of himself and +his actions? He had scarcely made a statement during the last hour which +had not contained some airy falsehood. Of whom was it he thought in his +momentary anguish? Not of Bertha--not of her children--not of the gentle +old scholar, who had always been lenient with his faults. It was of +himself he was thinking--of Richard Amory, robbed of his refined +picturesqueness by mere circumstance and placed by bad luck at a baleful +disadvantage! + +For a few minutes there was a silence. Richard sat with his brow upon +his hands, his elbows on the table before him. Tredennis paced to and +fro, looking downward. At length Richard raised his head. He did so +because Tredennis had stopped his walk. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +Tredennis walked over to him and sat down. He was pale, and wore a set +and rigid look, the chief characteristic of which was that it expressed +absolutely nothing. His voice was just as hard and expressed as little +when he spoke. + +"I have a proposition to make to you," he said, "and I will preface it +by the statement that, as a business man, I am perfectly well aware that +it is almost madness to make it. I say 'almost.' Let it rest there. I +will assume the risks you have run in the Westoria scheme. Invest the +money you have charge of in something safer. You say there are chances +of success. I will take those chances." + +"_What!_" cried Richard. "_What!_" + +He sat upright, staring. He did not believe the evidence of his senses; +but Tredennis went on, without the quiver of a muscle, speaking +steadily, almost monotonously. + +"I have money," he said. "More than you know, perhaps. I have had +recently a legacy which would of itself make me a comparatively rich +man. That I was not dependent upon my pay you knew before. I have no +family. I shall not marry. I am fond of your children, of Janey +particularly. I should have provided for her future in any case. You +have made a bad investment in these lands; transfer them to me and +invest in something safer." + +"And if the bill fails to pass!" exclaimed Richard. + +"If it fails to pass I shall have the land on my hands; if it passes I +shall have made something by a venture, and Janey will be the richer; +but, as it stands, the venture had better be mine than yours. You have +lost enough." + +Richard gave his hair an excited toss backward, and stared at him as he +had done before; a slight, cold moisture broke out on his forehead. + +"You mean"--he began, breathlessly. + +"Do you remember," said Tredennis, "what I told you of the comments +people were beginning to make? They have assumed the form I told you +they would. It is best for--for your children that they should be put +an end to. If I assume these risks there will be no farther need for you +to use--to exert yourself." He began to look white about the mouth, and +through his iron stolidity there was something revealed before which +Richard felt himself quail. "The night that Blundel came in to your +wife's reception, and remained so short a time, he had heard a remark +upon the influence she was exerting over him, and it had had a bad +effect. The remark was made publicly at one of the hotels." He turned a +little whiter, and the something all the strength in him had held down +at the outset leaped to the surface. "I have no wife to--to use," he +said; "if I had, by Heavens, I would have spared her!" + +He had held himself in hand and been silent a long time, but he could +not do it now. + +"She is the mother of your children," he cried, clenching his great +hand. "And women are beginning to avoid her, and men to bandy her name +to and fro. You have deceived her; you have thrown away her fortune; you +have used her as an instrument in your schemes. _I_, who am only an +outsider, with no right to defend her--_I_ defend her for her father's +sake, for her child's, for her own! You are on the verge of ruin and +disgrace. I offer you the chance to retrieve yourself--to retrieve her! +Take it, if you are a man!" + +Richard had fallen back in his chair breathless and ashen. In all his +imaginings of what the future might hold he had never thought of such a +possibility as this,--that it should be this man who would turn upon him +and place an interpretation so fiercely unsparing upon what he had done! +Under all his admiration and respect for the colonel there had been +hidden, it must be admitted, an almost unconscious touch of contempt for +him, as a rather heavy and unsophisticated personage, scarcely versatile +or agile enough, and formed in a mould somewhat obsolete and +quixotic,--a safe person to confide in, and one to invite confidence +passively by his belief in what was presented to him; a man to make a +good listener and to encourage one to believe in one's own statements, +certainly not a man to embarrass and discourage a historian by asking +difficult questions or translating too literally what was said. He had +not asked questions until to-night, and his face had said very little +for him on any occasion. Among other things Richard had secretly--though +leniently--felt him to be a trifle stolid, and had amiably forgiven him +for it. It was this very thing which made the sudden change appear so +keen an injustice and injury; it amounted to a breach of confidence, +that _he_ should have formed a deliberate and obstinate opinion of his +own, entirely unbiassed by the presentation of the case offered to him. +He had spoken more than once, it was true, in a manner which had +suggested prejudice; but it had been the prejudice of the primeval mind, +unable to adjust itself to modern conditions and easily disregarded by +more experienced. But now!--he was stolid no longer. His first words had +startled Richard beyond expression. His face said more for him than his +words; it burned white with the fire it had hidden so long; his great +frame quivered with the passion of the moment; when he had clenched his +hand it had been in the vain effort to hold it still; and yet the man +who saw it recognized in it only the wrath and scorn which had reference +to himself. Perhaps it was best that it should have been so,--best that +his triviality was so complete that he could see nothing which was not +in some way connected with his own personality. + +"Tredennis," he gasped out, "you are terribly harsh! I did not think +you"-- + +"Even if I could lie and palter to you," said Tredennis, his clenched +hand still on the table, "this is not the time for it. I have tried +before to make you face the truth, but you have refused to do it. +Perhaps you had made yourself believe what you told me,--that no harm +was meant or done. _I_ know what harm has been done. I have heard the +talk of the hotel corridors and clubs!" His hand clenched itself harder +and he drew in a sharp breath. + +"It is time that you should give this thing up," he continued, with +deadly determination. "And I am willing to shoulder it. Who else would +do the same thing?" + +"No one else," said Richard, bitterly. "And it is not for my sake you do +it either; it is for the sake of some of your ideal fancies that are too +fine for us worldlings to understand, I swear!" And he felt it specially +hard that it was so. + +"Yes," replied the colonel, "I suppose you might call it that. It is not +for your sake, as you say. It has been one of my fancies that a man +might even deny himself for the sake of an--an idea, and I am not +denying myself. I am only giving to your child, in one way, what I meant +to give to her in another. She would be willing to share it with her +mother, I think." + +And then, somehow, Richard began to feel that this offer was a demand, +and that, even if his sanguine mood should come upon him again, he would +not find it exactly easy to avoid it. It seemed actually as if there was +something in this man--some principle of strength, of feeling, of +conviction--which almost constituted a right by which he might contend +for what he asked; and before it, in his temporary abasement and anguish +of mind, Richard Amory faltered. He said a great deal, it is true, and +argued his case as he had argued it before, being betrayed in the course +of the argument by the exigencies of the case to add facts as well as +fancies. He endeavored to adorn his position as much as possible, and, +naturally, his failure was not entire. There were hopes of the passage +of the bill, sometimes strong hopes, it seemed; if the money he had +invested had been his own; if it had not been for the failure of his +speculations in other quarters; if so much had not depended upon failure +and success,--he would have run all risks willingly. There were, +indeed, moments when it almost appeared that his companion was on the +point of making a capital investment, and being much favored thereby. + +"It is really not half so bad as it seems," he said, gaining +cheerfulness as he talked. "But, after such a day as I have had, a man +loses courage and cannot look at things collectedly. I have been up and +down in the scale a score of times in the last eight hours. That is +where the wear and tear comes in. A great deal depends on Blundel; and I +had a talk with him which carried us farther than we have ever been +before." + +"Farther," said Tredennis. "In what direction?" + +Richard flushed slightly. + +"I think I sounded him pretty well," he said. "There is no use mincing +matters; it has to be done. We have never been able to get at his views +of things exactly, and I won't say he went very far this afternoon; but +I was in a desperate mood, and--well, I think I reached bottom. He half +promised to call at the house this evening. I dare say he is with Bertha +now." + +Something in his flush, which had a slightly excited and triumphant air, +something in his look and tone, caused Tredennis to start in his chair. + +"What is he there for?" he said. "What do you mean?" + +Richard thrust his hands in his pockets. For a moment he seemed to have +lost all his grace and refinement of charm,--for the moment he was a +distinctly coarse and undraped human being. + +"He has gone to make an evening call," he said. "And if she manages him +as well as she has managed him before,--as well as she can manage any +man she chooses to take in hand, and yet not give him more than a smile +or so,--your investment, if you make it, may not turn out such a bad +one." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + + +Bertha had spent the greater part of the day with her children, as she +had spent part of many days lately. She had gone up to the nursery after +breakfast to see Jack and Janey at their lessons, and had remained with +them and given herself up to their entertainment. She was not well; the +weather was bad; she might give herself a holiday, and she would spend +it in her own way, in the one refuge which never failed her. + +"It is always quiet here," she said to herself. "If I could give up all +the rest--all of it--and spend all my days here, and think of nothing +else, I might be better. There are women who live so. I think they must +be better in every way than I am--and happier. I am sure I should have +been happier if I had begun so long ago." + +And as she sat, with Janey at her side, in the large chair which held +them both, her arm thrown round the child's waist, there came to her a +vague thought of what the unknown future might form itself into when she +"began again." It would be beginning again when the sea was between the +new life and the old; everything would be left behind--but the children. +She would live as she had lived in Virginia, always with the +children--always with the children. "It is the only safe thing," she +thought, clasping Janey closer. "Nothing else is safe for a woman who is +unhappy. If one is happy one may be gay, and look on at the world with +the rest; but there are some who must not look on--who dare not." + +"Mamma," said Janey, "you are holding me a little too close, and your +face looks--it looks--as if you were thinking." + +Bertha laughed to reassure her. They were used to this gay, soft laugh +of hers, as the rest of the world was. If she was silent, if the room +was not bright with the merriment she had always filled it with, they +felt themselves a trifle injured, and demanded their natural rights with +juvenile imperiousness. "Mamma always laughs," Jack had once announced +to a roomful of company. "She plays new games with us and laughs, and we +laugh too. Maria and Susan are not funny. Mamma is funny, and like a +little girl grown up. We always have fun when she comes into the +nursery." "It is something the same way in the parlor," Planefield had +said, showing his teeth amiably, and Bertha, who was standing near +Colonel Tredennis, had laughed in a manner to support her reputation, +but had said nothing. So she laughed now, not very vivaciously, perhaps. +"That was very improper, Janey," she said, "to look as if I was +thinking. It is bad enough to be thinking. It must not occur again." + +"But if you were thinking of a story to tell us," suggested Jack, +graciously, "it wouldn't matter, you see. You might go on thinking." + +"But the story was not a new one," she answered. "It was sad. I did not +like it myself." + +"We should like it," said Janey. + +"If it's a story," remarked Jack, twisting the string round his top, +"it's all right. There was a story Uncle Philip told us." + +"Suppose you tell it to me," said Bertha. + +"It was about a knight," said Janey, "who went to a great battle. It was +very sorrowful. He was strong, and happy, and bold, and the king gave +him a sword and armor that glittered and was beautiful. And his hair +waved in the breeze. And he was young and brave. And his horse arched +its neck. And the knight longed to go and fight in the battle, and was +glad and not afraid; and the people looked on and praised him, because +they thought he would fight so well. But just as the battle began, +before he had even drawn his sword, a stray shot came, and he fell. And +while the battle went on he lay there dying, with his hand on his +breast. And at night, when the battle was over, and the stars came out, +he lay and looked up at them, and at the dark-blue sky, and wondered why +he had been given his sword and armor, and why he had been allowed to +feel so strong, and glad, and eager,--only for that. But he did not +know. There was no one to tell him. And he died. And the stars shone +down on his bright armor and his dead face." + +"I didn't like it myself," commented Jack. "It wasn't much of a story. I +told him so." + +"He was sorry he told it," said Janey, "because I cried. I don't think +he meant to tell such a sad story." + +"He wasn't funny, that day," observed Jack. "Sometimes he isn't funny at +all, and he sits and thinks about things; and then, if we make him tell +us a story, he doesn't tell a good one. He used to be nicer than he is +now." + +"I love him," said Janey, faithfully; "I think he is nice all the time." + +"It wasn't much of a story, that is true," said Bertha. "There was not +enough of it." + +"He died too soon," said Jack. + +"Yes," said Bertha; "he died too soon, that was it,--too soon." And the +laugh she ended with had a sound which made her shudder. + +She got up from her rocking-chair quickly. + +"We won't tell stories," she said. "We will play. We will play ball and +blind-man's bluff--and run about and get warm. That will be better." + +And she took out her handkerchief and tied it over her eyes with +unsteady hands, laughing again,--laughing while the children laughed, +too. + +They played until the room rang with their merriment. They had not been +so gay together for many a day, and when the game was at an end they +tried another and another, until they were tired and ready for their +nursery dinner. Bertha did not leave them even then. She did not expect +Richard home until their own dinner-hour in the evening, so she sat at +the children's table and helped them herself, in the nurse's place; and +they were in high spirits, and loquacious and confidential. + +When the meal was over they sat by the nursery fire, and Meg fell asleep +in her mother's arms; and after she had laid her on her bed Bertha came +back to Jack and Janey, and read and talked to them until dusk began to +close in about them. It was as they sat so together that a sealed +package was brought to her by a servant, who said it had been left at +the door by a messenger. It contained two letters,--one addressed to +Senator Blundel, and one to herself,--and both were in Richard's hand. + +"I suppose something has detained him, and I am not to wait dinner," she +thought, as she opened the envelope bearing her own name. + +The same thing had occurred once or twice before, so it made but little +impression upon her. There were the usual perfectly natural excuses. He +had been very hard at work and would be obliged to remain out until some +time past their dinner-hour. He had an engagement at one of the hotels, +and could dine there; he was not quite sure that he should be home until +late. Then he added, just before closing: + +"Blundel said something about calling this evening. He had been having a +hard day of it and said he wanted a change. I had a very satisfactory +talk with him, and I think he begins to see the rights of our case. +Entertain him as charmingly as possible, and if he is not too tired, and +is in a good humor, hand him the enclosed letter. It contains testimony +which ought to be a strong argument, and I think it will be." + +Bertha looked at the letter. It was not at all imposing, and seemed to +contain nothing more than a slip of paper. She put it down on the mantel +and sighed faintly. + +"If he knew what a service he would do me by seeing the rights of the +case," she said to herself, "I think he would listen to their arguments. +I think he likes me well enough to do it. I believe he would enjoy being +kind to me. If this should be the end of it all, it would be worth the +trouble of being amusing and amiable one evening." + +But she did not look forward with any great pleasure to the prospect of +what was before her. Perhaps her day in the nursery had been a little +too much for her; she was tired, and would have been glad to be left +alone. But this was not to be. She must attire herself, in all her +bravery, and sing, and laugh, and be gay a little longer. How often had +she done the same thing before? How often would she do it again? + +"There are some people who are born to play comedy," she said afterward, +as she stood before her mirror, dressing. "They can do nothing else. I +am one of them. Very little is expected of me, only that I shall always +laugh and make jokes. If I were to try tragedy, that would be a better +jest than all the rest. If I were to be serious, what a joke that would +be!" + +She thought, as she had done a thousand times, of a portrait of herself +which had been painted three years before. It had been her Christmas +gift to Richard, and had been considered a great success. It was a +wonderfully spirited likeness, and the artist had been fortunate in +catching her brightest look. + +"It is the expression that is so marvellous," Richard had often said. +"When I look at it I always expect to hear you laugh." + +"Are they never tired of it?" she said; "never tired of hearing me +laugh? If I were to stop some day and say, 'See, I am tired of it +myself. I have tears as well as the rest of you. Let me'"--She checked +herself; her hands had begun to tremble--her voice; she knew too well +what was coming upon her. She looked at herself in the glass. + +"I must dress myself carefully," she said, "if I am to look vivacious. +One's attire is called upon to do a great deal for one when one has a +face like that." + +Outwardly her attire had done a great deal for her when, after she had +dined alone, she sat awaiting her guest. The fire burned brightly; the +old songs lay upon the piano; a low stand, with a pretty coffee service +upon it, was drawn near her; a gay little work-basket, containing some +trifle of graceful work, was on her knee. Outside, the night was +decidedly unpleasant. "So unpleasant," she said to herself, "that it +will surprise me if he comes." But though by eight o'clock the rain was +coming down steadily, at half-past eight she heard the familiar heavy +tread upon the door-step, and her visitor presented himself. + +What sort of humor he was in when he made his entry Bertha felt that it +was not easy to decide; but it struck her that it was not a usual humor, +and that the fatigues of the day had left their mark upon him. He looked +by no means fresh, and by the time he had seated himself felt that +something had disturbed him, and that it was true that he needed +distraction. + +It had always been very simple distraction she offered him; he had never +demanded subtleties from her or any very great intellectual effort; his +ideas upon the subject of the feminine mind were, perhaps, not so +advanced as they might have been, and belonged rather to the days and +surroundings of his excellent, hard-worked mother and practical, +unimaginative sisters than to a more brilliant world. Given a +comfortable seat in the pretty room, the society of this pretty and +smiling little person, who poured out his coffee for him, enjoyed his +jokes, and prattled gayly of things pleasant and amusing, he was +perfectly satisfied. What he felt the need of was rest and light +recreation, cheerfulness, and appreciation, a sense of relief from the +turmoil and complications of the struggling, manoeuvring, overreaching, +ambitious world he lived in. + +Knowing this, Bertha had given him what he enjoyed, and she offered him +no other entertainment this evening. She gave him his cup of coffee, and +talked to him as he drank it, telling him an amusing story or so of the +children or of people he knew. + +"I have been in the nursery all day," she said. "I have been playing +blind-man's buff and telling stories. You have never been in the +nursery, have you? You are not like Colonel Tredennis, who thinks the +society there is better than that we have in the parlor." + +"Perhaps he's not so far wrong," said her guest, bluntly, "though I have +never been in the nursery myself. I have a nursery of my own up at the +Capitol, and I don't always find it easy to manage." + +"The children fight, I have heard," said Bertha, "and sometimes call +each other names; and it is even reported that they snatch at each +other's toys and break those they cannot appropriate. I am afraid the +discipline is not good!" + +"It isn't," he answered, "or there isn't enough of it." + +He set his coffee-cup down and watched her as she leaned back in her +chair and occupied herself with the contents of her work-basket. + +"Do you go into the nursery often," he asked, "or is it out of the +fashion?" + +"It is out of the fashion," she answered, "but"--She stopped and let her +work rest on her knee as she held it. "Will you tell me why you ask me +that?" she said, and her face changed as she spoke. + +"I asked you because I didn't know," he answered. "It seemed to me you +couldn't have much time for things of that sort. You generally seem to +be pretty busy with one thing and another. I don't know much about +fashionable life and fashionable women. The women I knew when I was a +boy--my own mother and her sisters--spent the most of their time with +their children; and it wasn't such a bad way either. They were pretty +good women." + +"Perhaps it was the best way," said Bertha, "and I dare say they were +better for it. I dare say we compare very unfavorably with them." + +"You don't compare at all," he returned. "I should not compare you. I +don't know how it would work with you. They got old pretty soon, and +lost their good looks; but they were safe, kind-hearted creatures, who +tried to do their duty and make the best of things. I don't say they +were altogether right in their views of life; they were narrow, I +suppose, and ran into extremes, but they had ways a man likes to think +of, and did very little mischief." + +"I could scarcely estimate the amount of mischief I do," said Bertha, +applying herself to her work cheerfully; "but I do not think my children +are neglected. Colonel Tredennis would probably give a certificate to +that effect. They are clothed quite warmly, and are occasionally allowed +a meal, and I make a practice of recognizing them when I meet them on +the street." + +She was wondering if it would not be better to reserve the letter until +some more auspicious occasion. It struck her that in the course of his +day's fatigues he had encountered some problem of which he found it +difficult to rid himself. There were signs of it in his manner. He wore +a perturbed, preoccupied expression, and looked graver than she had ever +seen him. He sat with his hands in his pockets, his hair on end, his +bluff countenance a rather deeper color than usual, and his eyes resting +upon her. + +"This isn't an easy world," he said, "and I suppose it is no easier for +women than for men. I shouldn't like to be a woman myself, and have to +follow my leader, and live in one groove from beginning to end. It is +natural that some should feel the temptation to try to get out of it, +and use their power as men use theirs; but it does not pay--it can't. +Women were meant to be good--to be good and honest and true, and--and +innocent." + +It was an amazingly ingenuous creed, and he presented it with a rough +simplicity and awkwardness which might have been laughable but for their +heavy sincerity. Bertha felt this seriousness instantaneously, and, +looking up, saw in his sharp little eyes a suggestion of feeling which +startled her. + +"Wondering what I'm thinking of?" he said. "Well, I am thinking of you. +I've thought of you pretty often lately, and to-night I've a reason for +having you in my mind." + +"What is the reason?" she asked, more startled than before. + +He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets; there was no mistaking the +evidences of strong emotion in his face. + +"I am a friend of yours," he said. "You know that; you've known it some +time. My opinion of you is that you are a good little woman,--the right +sort of a little woman,--and I have a great deal of confidence in you." + +"I hope so," said Bertha. + +She felt that as he gained warmth and color she lost them; she thought +of the letter which lay on the mantel-piece within a few feet of him, +and wished that it was not so near. There had been evil spoken of her, +and he had heard it. She realized that, and knew that she was upon her +defence, even while she had no knowledge of what she was to defend +herself against. + +"I hope so," she said again, tremulously. "I hope so, indeed;" and her +eyes met his with a helplessness more touching than any appeal she could +have made. + +It so moved him that he could remain quiet no longer, but sprang to his +feet and drew his hand from his pocket and rubbed it excitedly over his +upright hair. + +"Damn it!" he broke forth, "let them say what they will,--let what will +happen, I'll believe in you! Don't look at me like that; you are a good +little woman, but you are in the wrong place. There are lies and +intrigues going on about you, and you are too--too bright and pretty to +be judged fairly by outsiders. You don't know what you are mixed up in; +how should you! Who is to tell you? These fellows who dangle about and +make fine speeches are too smooth-tongued, even when they know enough. +I'll tell you. I never paid you compliments or made love to you, did I? +I'm no good at that; but I'll tell you the truth, and give you a bit of +good advice. People are beginning to talk, you see, and tell lies. They +have brought their lies to me; I don't believe them, but others will. +There are men and women who come to your house who will do you no good, +and are more than likely to do you harm. They are a lot of intriguers +and lobbyists. You don't want that set here. You want honest friends, +and an innocent, respectable home for your children, and a name they +won't be ashamed of. Send the whole set packing, and cut yourself loose +from them." + +Bertha stood up also. She had forgotten the little work-basket, and +still held it in her hands, suspended before her. + +"Will you tell me," she said, "what the lies were,--the lies you heard?" + +Perhaps she thought, with a hopeless pang, they were not lies at all; +perhaps he had only heard what was the truth, that she had been told to +try to please him, that his good-will might be gained to serve an end. +Looked at from Richard's stand-point that had been a very innocent +thing; looked at from his stand-point it might seem just what it had +seemed to herself, even in the reckless, desperate moment when she had +given way. + +He paused a moment, barely a moment, and then answered her. + +"Yes," he said, "I will tell you if you want to know. There has been a +big scheme on hand for some time,--there are men who must be influenced; +I am one of them, and people say that the greater part of the work is +carried on in your parlors here, and that you were set on me because you +were a clever little manoeuvrer, and knew your business better than I +should be likely to suspect. That is what they say, and that is what I +must believe, because"-- + +He stopped short. He had drawn nearer the mantel-piece, and as he spoke +some object lying upon it caught his eye. It was the letter directed to +himself, lying with the address upward, and he took it in his hand. + +"What is this?" he demanded. "Who left it here?" + +Bertha stood perfectly motionless. Richard's words came back to her: +"Give it to him if he is in a good humor. It contains arguments which I +think will convince him." Then she looked at Blundel's face. If there +could be any moment more unfit than another for the presentation of +arguments it was this particular one. And never before had she liked him +so well or valued his good opinion so highly as she did now, when he +turned his common, angry, honest face upon her. + +"What is it?" he said again. "Tell me." + +She thought of Richard once more, and then of the children sleeping +upstairs, and of the quiet, innocent day she had spent with them. They +did not know that she was an intriguing woman, whom people talked of; +she had never realized it herself to the full until this moment. They +had delicately forborne giving any name to the thing she had done; but +this man, who judged matters in a straightforward fashion, would find a +name for it. But there was only one answer for her to make. + +"It is a letter I was to give you," she said. + +"And it is from your husband?" + +"I have not read it," she replied. + +He stopped short a moment and looked at her--with a sudden suggestion of +doubt and bewilderment that was as bad as a blow. + +"Look here!" he said. "You were going to give it to me,--you intended to +do it." + +"Yes." + +He gave her another look,--amazement, anger, disbelief, struggling with +each other in it,--and then thrust his obstinate fists into his pockets +again and planted himself before her like a rock. + +"By the Lord!" he said. "I won't believe it!" + +The hard common-sense which had been his stronghold and the stand-by of +his constituents for many a year came to his rescue. He might not know +much of women; but he had seen intrigue, and trickery, and detected +guilt, and it struck him if these things were here, they were before him +in a new form. + +"Now," he said, "tell me who gave it to you." + +"You will know that," she answered, "when you read it." + +"Tell me," he demanded, "if you know what is in it." + +"I know something," she replied, "of what is in it." + +"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I'd give a great deal to know how much." + +Only Richard could have told him how much or how little, and he was not +there. + +"Come," he said, as she made no reply, "they might easily deceive you. +Tell me what you know, and I will believe you,--and there are very few +women in your place I would say as much to." + +"I do not think," she answered, "that they have deceived me." + +"Then," he returned, his face hardening, "_you_ have deceived _me_!" + +"Yes," she answered, turning white, "I suppose I have." + +There was a moment of dead silence, in which his shrewd eyes did their +work as well as they had done it at any time during his fifty years of +life. Then he spoke to her again. + +"They wanted me here because they wanted to make use of me," he said. +"You knew that." + +"They did not put it in that way," she answered. "I dare say you know +that." + +"You were to befool me as far as you could, and make the place agreeable +to me,--you knew that?" + +She turned paler. + +"I--I have liked you very sincerely!" she broke forth, piteously. "I +have liked you! Out of all the rest, that one thing was true! Don't--ah, +don't think it was not." + +His expression for a moment was a curiously undecided one; he was +obliged to rally himself with a sharp rub at his hair. + +"I'll tell you what I think of that when you have answered me another +question," he said. "There is a person who has done a great deal of work +in this matter, and has been very anxious about it, probably because he +has invested in it more money than he can spare,--buying lands and doing +one thing and another. That person is your husband, Mr. Richard Amory. +Tell me if you knew that." + +The blood rushed to her face and then left it again. + +"Richard!" she exclaimed. "Richard!" and she caught at the mantel and +held to it. + +His eyes did not leave her for an instant. He nodded his head with a +significance whose meaning was best known to himself. + +"Sit down," he said. "I see you did not know that." + +She did as he told her. It was as if such a flash of light had struck +across her mental vision as half blinded her. + +"Not Richard!" she cried out; and even as she said it a thousand proofs +rushed back upon her and spoke the whole shameful truth for themselves. + +Blundel came nearer to her, his homely, angry face, in spite of its +anger, expressing honest good feeling as strongly as any much handsomer +one might have done. + +"I knew there had been deep work somewhere," he said. "I saw it from the +first. As for you, you have been treated pretty badly. I supposed they +persuaded you that you might as well amuse one man as another,--and I +was the man. I dare say there is more behind than I can see. You had +nothing to gain as far as you knew, that's plain enough to me." + +"No," she exclaimed, "it was not I who was to gain. They did not think +of--of me!" + +"No," he went on, "they lost sight of you rather often when they had a +use for you. It's apt to be the way. It's time some one should think of +you, and I mean to do it. I am not going to say anything more against +those who--made the mistake" (with a resentful shuffle of his shoulders +as he put it thus mildly), "than I can help, but I am going to tell you +the truth. I have heard ugly stories for some time, and I've had my +suspicions of the truth of them; but I meant to wait for proof, and it +was given me this afternoon. More was said to me than it was safe to say +to an honest man, and I let the person who talked go as far as he would, +and he was too desperate to be cautious. I knew a bold move was to be +made, and I guessed it would be made to-night." + +He took the envelope from his pocket where he had tucked it unopened. +His face grew redder and hotter. + +"If it were not for you," he said; "if I didn't have faith in your being +the honest little woman I took you for; if I didn't believe you spoke +the truth when you said you liked me as honestly as I liked you,--though +the Lord knows there is no proof except that I do believe you in spite +of everything,--I'd have the thing spread the length and breadth of the +land by to-morrow morning, and there would be such an uproar as the +country has not seen for a year or so." + +"Wait!" said Bertha, half-starting from her seat. "I did not understand +before. This is too much shame. I thought it was--only a letter. I did +not know"-- + +He went to the fire. + +"I believe that, too," he said, grimly; "but it is not a little thing +I'm doing. I'm denying myself a great deal. I'd give five years of my +life"--He straightened out his short, stout arm and closed hand with a +robust gesture, and then checked himself. "You don't know what is in +it. I don't know. I have not looked at it. There it goes." And he tossed +it into the fire. + +"The biggest fool of all," he said, "is the fool who takes every man for +a knave. Do they think a country like this has been run for a century by +liars and thieves? There have been liars and thieves enough, but not +enough to bring it to a stand-still, and that seems to argue that there +has been an honest man or so to keep a hand on their throats. When there +are none left--well, it won't be as safe to belong to the nation as it +is to-day, in spite of all that's bad in it." + +The envelope had flamed up, and then died down into tindery blackness. +He pointed to it. + +"You can say it is there," he said, "and that I didn't open it, and they +may thank you for it. Now I am going." + +Bertha rose. She put her hand on the mantel again. + +"If I do not thank you as I ought," she said, brokenly, "you must +forgive me. I see all that you have spared me, but--I have had a heavy +blow." He paused to look at her, rubbing his upright hair for the last +time, his little eyes twinkling with a suspicious brightness, which had +its softness too. He came back and took her hand, and held it in an +awkward, kindly clasp. + +"You are a good little woman," he said. "I'll say it to you again. You +were not cut out to be made anything else of. You won't be anything +else. You are young to be disappointed and unhappy. I know all that, and +there doesn't seem much to say. Advice wouldn't amount to much, and I +don't know that there is any to give." + +They moved slowly toward the door together. When they stood upon the +threshold he dropped her hand as awkwardly as he had taken it, and made +a gesture toward the stairway, the suspicious brightness of his eyes +more manifest than ever. + +"Your children are up there asleep," he said, unsteadily. "Go to them." + +And turning away, shrugged himself into his overcoat at the hat-stand, +opened the door for himself, and went out of the house without another +word. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + + +The last words of his half-reluctant, half-exultant confession had +scarcely left Richard Amory's lips when Tredennis rose from his chair. + +"If you can," he said, "tell me the literal truth. Blundel is at your +house with your wife. There is something she is to do. What is it?" + +"She is to hand him an envelope containing a slip of paper," said +Richard, doggedly. "That is what she is to do." + +Tredennis crossed the room, and took his hat from its place. + +"Will you come with me," he said, "or shall I go alone?" + +"Where?" asked Richard. + +Tredennis glanced at his watch. + +"He would not call until late, perhaps," he said, "and she would not +give it to him at once. It is ten now. We may reach there in time to +spare her that, at least." + +Richard bit his lip. + +"There seems to be a good deal of talk of sparing her," he said. "Nobody +spares me. Every folly I have been guilty of is exaggerated into a +crime. Do you suppose that fellow isn't used to that sort of thing? Do +you suppose I should have run the risk if he had not shown his hand this +afternoon? She knows nothing of what she is to give him. There is no +harm done to her." + +"How is he to know she is not in the plot?" said Tredennis. "How is he +to guess that she is not--what she has been made to seem to be? What +insult is he not at liberty to offer her if he chooses?" + +"She will take care of herself," said Richard. "Let her alone for +that." + +"By Heaven!" said Tredennis. "She has been let alone long enough. Has +she ever been anything else but alone? Has there been one human creature +among all she knew to help or defend or guide her? Who has given her a +thought so long as she amused them and laughed with the rest? Who"-- + +Richard got up, a dawning curiosity in his face. + +"What is the matter with _you_?" he said. "Have you been"-- + +The words died away. The colonel's gleaming eye stopped him. + +"We will go at once, if you please," said Tredennis, and strode out of +the room before him. + +When they reached the house Bertha was still standing where her guest +had left her a few moments before, and but one glance at her face was +needed to show both of them that something unusual had occurred. + +"You have had Blundel here?" Richard asked, with an attempt at his usual +manner, which ill-covered his excitement. "We thought we saw him +crossing the street." + +"Yes," she answered. "He has just left me." + +She turned suddenly and walked back to the hearth. + +"He left a message for you," she said. "That is it,"--and she pointed to +the last bit of tinder flickering on the coals. + +"The--letter!" exclaimed Richard. + +"Yes," she answered. "Do you want Colonel Tredennis to hear about the +letter, Richard, or does he know already?" + +"He knows everything," answered Richard, "as every one else will +to-morrow or the day after." + +For a moment his despair made him so reckless that he did not make an +effort at defence. He flung himself into a chair and gave up to the +misery of the hour. + +"You knew," said Bertha, looking toward Tredennis, "and did not tell +me. Yes, I forgot,"--with a bitter little smile,--"there was something +you warned me of once and I would not listen, and perhaps you thought I +would not listen now. If you know, will you tell me what was in the +letter? I do not know yet, and I want to hear it put into words. It was +money--or an offer of money? Tell me, if you please." + +"It was money," said Richard, defiantly. "And there are others who have +taken the same thing peacefully enough." + +"And I was to give it to him because--because he was a little more +difficult, and seemed to be my friend. Do all female lobbyists do such +things, Richard, or was I honored with a special service?" + +"It is not the first time it has been done," he answered, "and it won't +be the last." + +"It is the first time I have done it," she returned, "and it will be the +last. The--risk is too great." + +Her voice shook a little, but it was perfectly cold; and, though her +eyes were dilated, such fire as might have been in them was quenched by +some light to which it would have been hard to give a name. + +"I do not mean the risk to myself," she said to Richard. "That I do not +count. I meant risk to you. When he burned the letter he said, 'Tell +them I did it for your sake, and that it is safer for them that I did +it.'" + +"What else did he say?" asked Richard, desperately. "He has evidently +changed his mind since this afternoon." + +"He told me you had a reason for your interest in the scheme, which was +not the one you gave me. He told me you had invested largely in it, and +could not afford to lose." + +Richard started up, and turned helplessly toward Tredennis. He had not +expected this, just yet at least. + +"I--I"--he faltered. + +The colonel spoke without lifting his eyes from the floor. + +"Will you let me explain that?" he asked. "I think it would be better." + +There was a moment's silence, in which Bertha looked from one to the +other. + +"You?" she said. + +Richard's lids fell. He took a paper-knife from the table he leaned +against, and began to play with it nervously. He had become a haggard, +coarsened, weakened copy of himself; his hair hung in damp elf-locks +over his forehead; his lips were pale and dry; he bit them to moisten +them. + +"The money," said Tredennis, "was mine. It was a foolish investment, +perhaps; but the money--was mine." + +"Yours!" said Bertha. "You invested in the Westoria lands!" + +She put her hand in its old place on the mantel, and a strange laugh +fell from her lips. + +"Then I have been lobbying for you, too," she said. "I--wish I had been +more successful." + +Richard put his hand up, and pushed back the damp, falling locks of hair +from his forehead restlessly. + +"_I_ made the investment," he said, "and I am the person to blame, as +usual; but you would have believed in it yourself." + +"Yes," she answered; "I should have believed in it, I dare say. It has +been easy to make me believe, but I think I should also have believed in +a few other things,--in the possibility of their being honor and good +faith"-- + +She paused an instant, and then began again. + +"You told me once that you had never regarded me seriously. I think that +has been the difficulty--and perhaps it was my fault. It will not be +necessary to use me any more, and I dare say you will let me go away for +a while after a week or so. I think it would be better." + +She left her place to cross the room to the door. On her way there she +paused before Colonel Tredennis. + +"I beg your pardon," she said, and went on. + +At the door she stopped again one moment, fronting them both, her head +held erect, her eyes large and bright. + +"When Senator Blundel left me," she said, "he told me to go to my +children. If you will excuse me, I will go." + +And she made a stately little bow, and left them. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + + +The great social event of the following week was to be the ball given +yearly for the benefit of a certain popular and fashionable charity. +There was no charity so fashionable, and consequently no ball so well +attended; everybody was more or less interested; everybody of importance +appeared at it, showing themselves for a few moments at least. Even Mrs. +Merriam, who counted among the privileges earned by a long and +unswervingly faithful social career, the one of immunity from all +ordinary society duties, found herself drawn into the maelstrom, and +enrolled on the list of patronesses. + +"You may do all the work, my dear," she said to Mrs. Sylvestre, "and I +will appropriate the credit." + +But she was not so entirely idle as she professed to be, and indeed +spent several mornings briskly driving from place to place in her +comfortable carriage, and distinguished herself by exhibiting an +executive ability, a promptness and decision in difficulty, which were +regarded with secret awe and admiration by her younger and less +experienced colleagues. She had been out doing such work on the +afternoon of the day before the ball, and returned home at her usual +hour; but not in her usual equable frame of mind. This was evident when +she entered the room where Mrs. Sylvestre sat talking to Colonel +Tredennis, who had called. There were indeed such signs of mental +disturbance in her manner that Mrs. Sylvestre, rising to greet her, +observed them at once. + +"I am afraid you have had an exciting morning," she said, "and have done +too much work." + +"My dear," was the reply, "nothing could be more true than that I have +had an exciting morning." + +"I am sorry for that," said Agnes. + +"I am sorry for it," said Mrs. Merriam; "more sorry than I can say." +Then turning to Tredennis, "I am glad to find you here. I have been +hearing some most extraordinary stories; perhaps you can tell me what +they mean." + +"Whom do they concern?" asked Agnes. "We are entertained by many +stories." + +"They will disturb you as much as they have disturbed me," Mrs. Merriam +answered. "They have disturbed me very much. They concern our little +friend, Mrs. Amory." + +"Bertha!" exclaimed Agnes. + +Her tender heart beat quickly, and a faint flush showed itself on her +cheek; she looked up at Colonel Tredennis with quick, questioning eyes. +Perhaps she was not as unprepared for the statement as she might have +been. She had seen much during the last few weeks which had startled and +alarmed her. Mrs. Merriam looked at Tredennis also. + +"You may be able to guess something of what the rumors form themselves +upon," she said. "Heaven knows there has been enough foundation for +anything in that miserable Westoria land scheme." + +"You have heard something of it this morning?" said Tredennis. + +"I have heard nothing else," was the answer. "The Westoria land scheme +has come to an untimely end, with a flavor of scandal about it, which +may yet terminate in an investigation. The whole city is full of it, and +stories of Mrs. Amory and her husband are the entertainment offered you +on all sides. I say 'Mrs. Amory and her husband,' because it is Mrs. +Amory who is the favorite topic. She has been making the most desperate +efforts to influence people; her parlors have been filled with +politicians and lobbyists all the season; the husband was deeply +involved in the matter; bribes have been offered and taken; there are +endless anecdotes of Senator Planefield and his infatuation, and the +way in which it has been used. She would have accomplished wonders if it +had not been for Senator Blundel, who suspected her and led her into +betraying herself. It is Senator Blundel who is credited with having +been the means of exploding the whole affair. He has been privately +investigating the matter for months, and had an interview with Mrs. +Amory the other night, in which he accused her of the most terrible +things, and threatened her with exposure. That is the way the stories +run." + +"Oh, this is very cruel," said Agnes. "We must do something. We must +try; we cannot let such things be said without making an effort against +them." + +"Whatever is done must be done at once," replied Mrs. Merriam. "The +conclusion of the matter is that there seems actually to be a sort of +cabal formed against her." + +"You mean"--began Agnes, anxiously. + +"I mean," said Mrs. Merriam, "that my impression is that if she appears +at the ball there are those who will be so rude to her that she will be +unable to remain." + +"Aunt Mildred!" exclaimed Agnes, in deep agitation. "Surely such a thing +is impossible." + +"It is not only not impossible," returned Mrs. Merriam, "but it is +extremely probable. I heard remarks which assured me of that." + +"She must not go!" said Agnes. "We must manage to keep her at home. +Colonel Tredennis"-- + +"The remedy must go deeper than that," he answered. "The fact that she +did not appear would only postpone the end. The slights she avoided one +night would be stored up for the future, we may be sure." + +He endeavored to speak calmly, but it was not easy, and he knew too well +that such a change had come upon his face as the two women could not but +see. Though he had feared this climax so long, though he had even seen +day by day the signs of its approach, it fell upon him as a blow at +last, and seemed even worse than in his most anxious hour he had thought +it might be. + +"She has friends," he said; "her friends have friends. I think there are +those--besides ourselves--who will defend her." + +"They must be strong," remarked Mrs. Merriam. + +"There are some of them," he answered, "who are strong. I think I know a +lady whose opinion will not go for nothing, who is generous enough to +use her influence in the right direction." + +"And that direction?" said Mrs. Merriam. + +"If the opposing party finds itself met by a party more powerful than +itself," he said, "its tone will change; and as for the story of Senator +Blundel I think I can arrange that he will attend to that himself." + +"Mere denial would not go very far, I am afraid," said Mrs. Merriam. "He +cannot deny it to two or three score of people." + +"He can deny it to the entire community," he answered, "by showing that +their intimacy remains unbroken." + +"Ah!" cried Agnes, "if he would only go to the ball, and let people see +him talking to her as he used to; but I am sure he never went to a ball +in his life!" + +"My dear," said Mrs. Merriam, "that is really a very clever idea, if he +could be induced to go." + +"He is an honest man," said Tredennis, flushing. "And he is her friend. +I believe that sincerely; and I believe he would prove it by going +anywhere to serve her." + +"If that is true," said Mrs. Merriam, "a great deal will be +accomplished, though it is a little difficult to figure to one's self +how he would enjoy a ball." + +"I think we shall have the pleasure of seeing," replied the colonel. "I +myself"--He paused a moment, and then added: "I chance to have a rather +intimate acquaintance with him; he has interested himself in some work +of mine lately, and has shown himself very friendly to me. It would +perhaps be easier for me to speak to him than for any other friend of +Mrs. Amory." + +"I think you would do it better than any other friend," Mrs. Merriam +said, with a kindly look at him. + +The truth was that, since his first introduction to Colonel Tredennis, +Blundel had taken care that the acquaintance should not drop. He had +found the modest warrior at once useful and entertaining. He had been +able to gather from him information which it was his interest to count +among his stores, and, having obtained it, was not ungrateful, and, +indeed, was led by his appreciation of certain good qualities he +recognized in him into something bordering on an attachment for his new +friend. + +"I like that fellow," he used to say, energetically. + +And realizing something of this friendliness, and more of the honor and +worth of his acquaintance, the colonel felt that he might hope to reach +his heart by telling his story simply and with dignity, leaving the rest +to him. As for the lady of whom he had spoken, he had but little doubt +that that kind and generous heart might be reached; he had seen +evidences of its truth and charity too often to distrust them. It was, +of course, the wife of the Secretary of State he was thinking of,--that +good and graceful gentlewoman, whose just and clear judgment he knew he +could rely upon, and whose friendship would grant him any favor. + +"She is very generous and sympathetic," he said, "and I have heard her +speak most kindly of Mrs. Amory. Her action in the matter must have +weight, and I have confidence that she will show her feeling in a manner +which will make a deep impression. She has always been fond of Professor +Herrick." + +"That is as clever an idea as the other," said Mrs. Merriam. "She has +drawn her lines so delicately heretofore that she has an influence even +greater than was wielded by most of those who have occupied her +position. And she is a decided and dignified person, capable of social +subtleties." + +"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Sylvestre, "it seems very hard that it should be +Bertha who should need such defence." + +"It is miserable," said Mrs. Merriam, impatiently. "It is disgraceful +when one considers who is the person to blame. It is very delicate of us +not to use names, I suppose; but there has been enough delicacy--and +indelicacy--and I should like to use them as freely as other people do. +I think you remember that I have not been very fond of Mr. Richard +Amory." + +When Colonel Tredennis left them he turned his steps at once toward the +house of the woman who was his friend, and upon whose assistance so much +depended. To gain her sympathy seemed the first thing to be done, and +one thought repeated itself again and again in his mind, "How shall I +say it best?" + +But fortune favored him, and helped him to speak as he had not +anticipated that it would. + +The lady sat alone in her favorite chair in her favorite room, when he +was ushered into her presence, as he had frequently happened to be +before somewhere about the same hour. A book lay open upon her lap, but +she was not reading it, and, he fancied, had not been doing so for some +time. He also fancied that when she saw him her greeting glance had a +shade of relief in it, and her first words seemed to certify that he was +not mistaken. + +"I am more than usually glad to see you," she said. "I think that if you +had not appeared so opportunely I should have decided in about half an +hour that I must send for you." + +"I am very fortunate to have come," he answered, and he held her kind +hand a moment, and there came into his face a look so anxious that, +being in the habit of observing him, she saw it. + +"Are you very well?" she asked, gently. "I am afraid not. You are +rather pale. Sit down by my chair and let me look at you." + +"Am I pale?" said the colonel. "You are very good to notice it, though I +am not ill. I am only--only"-- + +She looked at him with grave interest. + +"Have you," she said,--"have you heard ill news of some friend? Is that +it? I am afraid it is!" + +"Yes," he answered, "that is it; and I am afraid you have heard of it, +too." + +"I am afraid I have," she returned. "Such things travel quickly. I have +heard something which has distressed me very much. It is something I +have heard faint rumors of before, but now it has taken on a definite +form. This morning I was out, and this afternoon I have had some callers +who were not averse to speaking plainly. I have heard a great many +things said which have given me pain, and which embarrass me seriously. +That was the reason I was wishing to see you. I felt that you would at +least tell me a story without prejudice. There is a great deal of +prejudice shown, of course. We need expect nothing else. I am sure +Professor Herrick can know nothing of this. Will you tell me what you +yourself know?" + +"That is what I came to do," said the colonel, still paler, perhaps. +"There is a great deal to tell--more than the world will ever know. It +is only to such as you that it could be told." + +There was more emotion in his voice and face than he had meant to +reveal; perhaps something in the kind anxiousness of his companion's +eyes moved him; he found that he could not sit still and speak as if his +interest was only the common one of an outsider, so he rose and stood +before her. + +"I cannot even tell you how it is that I know what I do to be true," he +said. "I have only my word, but I _know_ you will believe me." + +"You may be sure of that," she answered. + +"I _am_ sure of it," he returned, "or I should not be here, for I have +no other proof to offer. I came to make an appeal to you in behalf of a +person who has been wronged." + +"In behalf of Mrs. Amory?" she said. + +"Yes," he replied, "though she does not know I am here, and will never +know it. It scarcely seems my business, perhaps; she should have others +to defend her; but there are no others who, having the interest of +relationship, might not be accused of self-interest too. There is a +slight tie of kinship between us, but it is only a slight one, and we +have not always been very good friends, perhaps, though it must have +been my own fault. I think I never pleased her very well, even when I +saw her oftenest. She was used to brighter companionship. But her father +liked me; we were friends, warm and close. I have felt almost as if I +was his son, and have tried to spare him the knowledge of what would +have hurt him. During the last few weeks I think he has had suspicions +which have disturbed him, but they have not been suspicions of trouble +to his child." + +"I felt sure of that," the lady remarked. + +"_She_ has no suspicions of the true aspect of affairs," he continued, +"though she has lately gained knowledge of the wrong done her. It has +been a great wrong. She has not been spared. Her inexperience made her a +child in the hands of those who used her as their tool. She understands +now that it is too late--and it is very bitter to her." + +"You knew her when she was a girl," his companion said, with her kind +eyes on his sad, stern face. + +"Yes," he answered, "when she was a girl and happy, and with all of life +before her, and--she did not fear it." + +"I knew her, too," she replied. "She has greatly changed since then." + +"I saw that when I returned here," he said. And he turned his head aside +and began to take up and set down a trifle on the mantel. "At first I +did not understand it," he added. "Now I do. She has not changed without +reason. If she has seemed light, there are women, I suppose, who hide +many a pain in that way. She has loved her children, and made them +happy--I know that, at least--and--and she has been a kind wife and an +innocent woman. It is her friends who must defend her." + +"She needs their defence," said his hearer. "I felt that when I was out +this morning, and when my callers were with me, an hour ago." She held +out her hand with sympathetic frankness. "I am her friend," she said, +"and her father's--and yours. I think you have some plan; there is +something you wish me to do. Tell me what it is." + +"Yes," he answered, "there is something I wish you to do. No one else +can do it so well. There are people who intend to testify to their +belief in the stories they have heard by offering her open slights. It +is likely that the attempt will be made to-morrow night at the ball. If +you testify to your disbelief and disapproval by giving her your +protection, the popular theory will be shaken, and there will be a +reaction in her favor." + +"It is not to be denied," she said, "that it is only women who can aid +her. It is women who say these things, as a rule, and who can unsay +them. The actions of men in such matters are of less weight than they +should be, though it is true there is one man who might do her a +service"-- + +"You are thinking of Senator Blundel," he said. "I--we have thought of +that. We think--hope that he will come to the ball." + +"If he does, and shows himself friendly toward her," she returned, +"nothing more can be said which could be of much importance. He is the +hero of the story, as I dare say you have heard. If he remains her +friend, that proves that he did not accuse her of plotting against him, +and that he has no cause for offence. If the story of the grand scene +between them is untrue, the foundation-stone is taken away, and, having +the countenance of a few people who show their confidence with tact and +discretion, she is safe. I will go to the ball, my friend, and I will +use what influence I possess to insure that she is not badly treated." + +"I knew you would be kind to her," Tredennis said, with kindling eyes. +"I have seen you kind before to those who needed kindness, even to those +who did not deserve it--and she does!" + +"Yes, yes, I am sure she does!" she answered. "Poor child! Poor child!" + +And she gave him her hand again, and, as he wrung it in his, her eyes +were fuller of sympathy than ever. + + +He reached Senator Blundel's rooms an hour later, and found him in the +midst of his papers and pigeon-holes,--letters and pamphlets to right of +him, to left of him, before and behind him. + +"Well," he said, by way of greeting, "our Westoria friends are out of +humor this morning." + +"So I have heard," Tredennis answered. + +"And they may well be--they may well be," he said, nodding sharply. "And +there are some fine stories told, of course." + +"I have come to tell you one myself, sir," said Tredennis. + +"What!" cried Blundel, turning on his chair,--"you have a story?" + +"Yes," returned the colonel, "not a pleasant one, and as it concerns you +I will waste as few words as possible." + +He wasted no words at all. The story was a brief one, but as forcible as +simple words could make it. There was no effort to give it +effectiveness, and yet there were touches here and there which appealed +to the man who heard it as he had been rarely appealed to before. They +brought before him things which had found a lodging in corners of his +practical political mind, and had haunted him rather pathetically since +the night he had shrugged himself into his overcoat, and left the +slight, desolate-looking figure behind him. He had enjoyed his +friendship too much not to regret it now that he felt it was a thing of +the past; he had felt the loss more than once of the new element it had +introduced into his life, and had cast about in his mind in vain for a +place where he could spend a spare hour or so as pleasantly as he had +often spent such hours in a bright parlor he knew of. Before Tredennis +had half finished his relation he was moving restlessly in his chair, +and uttering occasional gruff ejaculations, and when it came to an end +he sprang up, looking not a trifle heated. + +"That's it, is it?" he exclaimed. "They have been inventing something +new about her, have they, and dragged me into it into the bargain? And +they are making up plots against her,--poor little woman!--as if she +hadn't been treated badly enough. A lot of gossips, I'll wager!" + +"Some of them are good enough," said the colonel. "They only mean to +signify their disapproval of what they would have the right to condemn +if it were a truth instead of a lie." + +"Well, they shall not do it at my expense, that's all," was the answer. +"It is a lie from beginning to end, and I will do something toward +proving it to them. I don't disapprove of her,--they shall see that. +She's a genuine good little thing. She's a lady. Any fool can see that. +She won _me_ over, by George! when everything was against her. And she +accused nobody when she might have said some pretty hard true things, +and nine women out of ten would have raised the very deuce. She's got +courage, and--yes, and dignity, and a spirit of her own that has helped +her to bear many a bitter thing without losing her hold on herself, I'd +be willing to swear. Look here," he added, turning suddenly and facing +Tredennis, "how much do you know of her troubles? Something, I know, or +you wouldn't be here." + +"Yes," answered the colonel, "I know something." + +"Well," he continued, in an outburst of feeling, "I don't ask how much. +It's enough, I dare say, to make it safe for me to speak my mind,--I +mean safe for her, not for myself. There's a fellow within a hundred +miles of here I should like to thrash within an inch of his life; and an +elegant, charming, amiable fellow he is too, who, possibly, persuaded +himself that he was doing her very little injury." + +"The injury has been done nevertheless," said Tredennis, gravely. "And +it is her friends who must right it." + +"I'm willing to do my share," said Blundel. "And let that fellow keep +out of my way. As to this ball--I never went to a ball in my life, but I +will appear at this one, and show my colors. Wait a minute!" As if an +idea had suddenly struck him. "Go to the ball?--I'll _take her_ there +myself." + +The spirit of combat was aroused within him; the idea presented itself +to him with such force that he quite enjoyed it. Here, arraigned on one +side, were these society scandal-mongers and fine ladies; here, on the +other, was himself, Samuel Blundel, rough and blunt, but determined +enough to scatter them and their lies to the four winds. He rather +revelled in the thought of the struggle, if struggle there was to be. He +had taken active part in many a row in the House in which the odds had +been against him, and where his obstinate strength had outlived the +subtle readiness of a dozen apparently better equipped men. And his +heart was in this deed of valor too; it glowed within him as he thought +how much really depended upon him. Now, this pretty, bright creature +must turn to him for protection and support. He almost felt as if he +held her gloved hand resting upon his burly arm already with a clinging +touch. + +"I'll take her myself," he repeated. "I'll go and see her myself, and +explain the necessity of it--if she does not know all." + +"She does not know all yet," said Tredennis, "and I think she was +scarcely inclined to go to the ball; but I am sure it will be better +that she should go." + +"She will go," said Blundel, abruptly. "I'll make her. She knows _me_. +She will go if I tell her she must. That is what comes of being an old +fellow, you see, and not a lady's man." + +He had not any doubt of his success with her, and, to tell the truth, +neither had Colonel Tredennis. He saw that his blunt honesty and +unceremonious, half-paternal domineering would prove to her that he was +in the right, even if she were at first reluctant; and this being +settled, and the matter left in Blundel's hands, the colonel went away. +Only before going he said a few words, rather awkwardly. + +"There would be nothing to be gained by mentioning my name," he said. +"It is mere accident that--that I chance to know what I have spoken of. +She does not know that I know it. I should prefer that she should not." + +"What!" said Blundel,--"she is not to know how you have been standing by +her?" + +"She knows that I would stand by her if she needed me. She does not need +me; she needs you. I have nothing to do with the matter. I don't wish to +be mentioned." + +When he was gone Blundel rubbed his hair backward and then forward by +way of variety. + +"Queer fellow!" he said, meditatively. "Not quite sure I've exactly got +at him yet. Brave as a lion and shy as a boy. Absolutely afraid of +women." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + + +In less than an hour his card was brought to Bertha as she sat with her +children. She read it with a beating heart, and, having done so, put +down Meg and her picture-book. + +"I will go down at once," she said to the servant. + +In two minutes she was standing in the middle of the parlor, and her +guest was holding her hand in his, and looking at her earnestly and +curiously. + +"You didn't expect to see me here, did you?" he said. + +"No," she answered; "but you are kind to come." + +"I didn't expect to be here myself," he said. "Where is your husband? +Somebody told me he had gone away." + +"He is in New York," she replied. + +He gave her one of his sharp glances and drew her toward a chair. + +"Sit down by me," he said. "You are in no condition to be kept standing. +I want to talk to you. You mustn't look like that," he said. "It won't +do. You are worn out, but you mustn't give up. I have come to order you +to do something." + +"I will do anything you tell me," she answered. + +"You will? Well, that's good! I thought you would, too. I want you to +take me to this ball that is to be given to-morrow night." + +She started in amazement. + +"To the ball!" she exclaimed. + +"Surprises you, doesn't it? I supposed it would; it surprises me a +little, but I want to go nevertheless, and I have a reason." + +"I am sure it is a good one," she said. + +"It is," he answered. "None but the best would take me there. I never +went to a ball in my life. _You_ are the reason. I am going to take care +of _you_." + +A faint, sad smile touched her lips. + +"Some one has said something more against me," she said, "and you want +to defend me. Don't take the trouble. It is not worth while." + +"The place is full of lies about you," he answered, suddenly and +fiercely. "And I _am_ going to defend you. No one else can. They are +lies that concern me as well as you." + +"Will you tell me what they are?" she asked. + +He saw there was no room for hesitation, and told her what the facts +were. As he spoke he felt that they did not improve in the relation, and +he saw the blood rise to her cheeks, and a light grow in her eyes. When +he had finished the light was a brilliant spark of fire. + +"It is a charming story," she said. + +"_We_ will show them what sort of a story it is," he answered, +"to-morrow night!" + +"You are very good to me," she said. + +Suddenly she put her hand to her side. + +"Ah!" she exclaimed, "it seems very strange that they should be saying +these things of Bertha Amory." + +She looked at him with a hopeless appeal in her eyes. + +"Do they all believe them?" she said. "Ah, how can they? They know I was +not--like that! I have not done anything! I have been unhappy, but--but +I"-- + +She stopped a moment--or was stopped by her breaking voice. + +"This has been too much for you," he said. "You are ill, child!" + +"I have been ill for some time," she answered. "And the last few days +have been very hard." + +She made an effort to recover herself. + +"I will go to the ball," she said, "if you think it best." + +"It _is_ best," he replied. "And you need not be afraid"-- + +"I am not afraid," she interposed, quickly, and the spark of fire showed +itself in her eyes again. "I might allow myself to be beaten, if it were +not for my children; but, as it is, you will see that I will not be +beaten. I will be well for to-morrow night at least. I will not look +like a victim. They will see that I am not afraid." + +"It is they who will be beaten," said Blundel, "if anything depends on +me! Confound it! I shall _like_ to do it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + + +He went home quite eager for the fray, and his eagerness was not allowed +to flag. The favorite story came to his ears again and again. Men met +him in the streets, and stopped to speak of it; others dropped into his +rooms to hear the truth from himself, when he went to his hotel to dine; +talkers standing in groups in the lobbies turned to look at him, and +when he had passed them returned to their conversation with renewed +interest. To the first man who referred to the matter he listened until +he had said his say. Then he answered him. + +"You want to hear the truth about that," he said, "don't you?" + +"That, of course," was the reply. + +"And you want to be able to _tell_ the truth about it when you are asked +questions?" + +"Most certainly." + +"Well, then, the truth is that there isn't a word of truth in it from +beginning to end; and if you want to _tell_ the truth, say it's a lie, +and add that I said so, and I am prepared to say so to every man who +wants to interview me; and, what is more, every man who tells another +that it is a lie does me a favor that gives him a claim on me." + +He repeated the same thing in effect each time an opportunity presented +itself, and as these opportunities were frequent and each time he gained +something of heat and lost something of temper and patience, he was +somewhat tired and by no means in the best of humors when he sat down to +his dinner, in the big, glaring, crowded hotel dining-room, amid the +rattle of knives, forks, and crockery, the rushing to and fro of excited +waiters, and the incoming and outgoing of hungry people. His calmness +was not added to by observing that the diners at the tables near him +discovered him as with one accord almost as soon as he entered, and cast +glances of interest at him between the courses. + +"Perfectly dreadful scene, they say," he heard one lady remark, with an +unconscious candor born of her confidence that the clatter of dishes +would drown all sound. "Went down on her knees to him and wrung her +hands, imploring him to have mercy on her. Husband disappeared next day. +Quite society people too. She has been a great deal admired." + +What further particulars the speaker might have entered into there is no +knowing, as she was a communicative person and plainly enjoyed her +subject; but just at this juncture the lady to whom she was confiding +her knowledge of the topics of the hour uttered an uneasy exclamation. + +"Gracious! Maria!" she said. "He has heard you! I am sure he has! He has +turned quite red--redder than he was--and he is looking at us! O Maria!" +in accents sepulchral with fright, "he is getting up! He is coming to +speak to us! O--Mari!"-- + +He was upon them at that very moment. He was accustomed to public +speaking, and his experience led him to the point at once. He held his +newspaper half folded in his hand, and, as had been said, he was a +trifle redder than usual; but his manner was too direct to be entirely +devoid of dignity. + +"I beg your pardon," he said, "but my name is Blundel." + +The most hopelessly terrified of the ladies found herself saying that he +"was very kind," and the one who had told the story gasped faintly, but +with an evident desire to propitiate, that she "had heard so." + +"I take the liberty of mentioning it," he added, "because I have been +sitting quite near to you and chanced to overhear what you were saying, +and as you are evidently laboring under an impression I am interested +in correcting, I felt obliged to intrude on you with a view to +correcting it. I have been denying that story all day. It isn't true. +Not a word of it. I never said an unkind word to the lady you mention, +and I never had an unkind thought of her. No one has any right to speak +ill of her. I am her friend. You will excuse my interrupting you. Here +is my card." And he laid the card on the table, made a bow not so +remarkable for grace, perhaps, as for perfect respectfulness, and +marched back to his table. + +There were few people in the room who did not turn to look at him as he +sat down again, and nine out of ten began to indulge in highly colored +speculations as to why he had addressed the women and who they were. +There had never been a more popular scandal than the Westoria land +scheme; the magnitude of it, the element of romance connecting itself +with it, the social position of the principal schemers, all endeared it +to the public heart. Blundel himself had become a hero, and had the +rumors regarding his irreproachable and dramatic conduct only been rife +at a time of election they would have assured him an overwhelming +majority. Perhaps as he approached the strangers' table there had been a +fond, flickering hope cherished that these two apparently harmless women +were lobbyists themselves, and that their disguise was to be rent from +them, and their iniquities to be proclaimed upon the spot. But the brief +episode ended with apparent tameness, and the general temperature was +much lowered, the two ladies sinking greatly in public opinion, and the +interest in Blundel himself flagging a little. There was one person, +however, who did not lose interest in him. This was a little, eager, +birdlike woman who sat at some distance from him, at a small table, +alone. She had seen his every movement since his entrance, and her +bright, dark eyes followed him with an almost wistful interest. It was +Miss Jessup; and Miss Jessup was full to the brim, and pressed down and +running over, with anecdotes of the great scandal, and her delicate +little frame almost trembled with anxious excitement as she gazed upon +him and thought of what might be done in an interview. + +He had nearly finished his dinner before he caught sight of her, but as +he was taking his coffee he glanced down the room, saw and recognized +her. + +"The very woman!" he exclaimed, under his breath. "Why didn't I think of +that before?" And in five minutes Miss Jessup's heart was thrilled +within her, for he had approached her, greeted her, and taken the seat +she offered him. + +"I have come," he said, "to ask a favor of you." + +"Of me!" said Miss Jessup. "That does not sound exactly natural. I have +generally asked favors of you. I have just been looking at you and +making up my mind to ask one." + +"Wanted to interview me," he asked,--"didn't you?" + +She nodded her head, and her bright eyes brightened. + +"Well," sturdily, "I _want_ you to interview me. Go ahead and do it." + +"You _want_ to be interviewed!" she exclaimed, positively radiant with +innocent joy. "No! Really?" + +"I am here for that purpose," he answered. + +She left her seat instantly. + +"Come into the parlor," she said. "It is quiet there at this time. We +can sit where we shall not be disturbed at all." + +They went into the parlor and found at the far end of it the quiet +corner they needed, and two chairs. Miss Jessup took one and Blundel the +other, which enabled him to present his broad back to all who entered. +Almost before he was seated Miss Jessup had produced her neat note-book +and a pencil. + +"Now," she said, "I am ready for anything; but I must say I don't see +how I am favoring _you_." + +"You are going to favor me by saving me the trouble of contradicting a +certain story every half-hour," he said. + +"Ah!" ejaculated Miss Jessup, her countenance falling a little; "it is +not true?" + +"Not a word of it." + +Humane little creature as she was, as she glanced down at her note-book, +Miss Jessup felt that some one had been a trifle defrauded. + +"And there was no scene?" + +"No." + +"And you did not threaten to expose her?" + +"No." + +"And you wish me to tell people that?" + +"Yes, as pointedly as possible, in as few words as possible, and without +mentioning names if possible." + +"Oh, it would not be necessary to mention names; everybody would +understand the slightest reference." + +"Well, when you have done that," said Blundel, "you have granted me my +favor." + +"And you want it to be brief?" said Miss Jessup. + +"See here," said Blundel; "you are a woman. I want you to speak the +truth for another woman as plainly, and--as delicately as a woman can. A +man would say too much or too little; that is why I come to you." + +She touched her book with her pencil, and evidently warmed at once. + +"I always liked her," she said, with genuine good feeling, "and I could +not help hoping that the story was not true, after all. As it was public +property, it was my business to find out all about it if I could; but I +couldn't help being sorry. I believe I _can_ say the right thing, and I +will do my best. At any rate, it will be altogether different from the +other versions." + +"There won't be any other versions if I can prevent it," returned +Blundel. "I shall have some interviews with newspaper men to-night, +which will accomplish that end, I hope." + +"Ah!" exclaimed Miss Jessup, "then mine will be the only statement." + +"I hope so," he answered. "It will be if I have any influence." + +"Oh, then," she said, "you have done me a favor, after all." + +"It won't balance the favor you will have done me," he replied, "if you +do your best in this matter. You see, I know what your best is, and I +depend on it." + +"Well," she said, "it is very kind of you to say so, and I will try to +prove myself worth depending on, but"--And she scribbled a little in her +note-book. "I don't mind telling you that the reason that is strongest +in my mind is quite an unprofessional one. It is the one you spoke of +just now. It is because I am a woman, too." + +"Then she is safe," he returned. "Nothing could make her safer. And I am +grateful to you beforehand, and I hope you will let me say so." + +And they shook hands and parted the best of friends, notwithstanding +that the interview had dwindled down into proportions quite likely to be +regarded by the public as entirely insignificant. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + + +It had certainly been expected by the public that the morning papers +would contain some interesting reading matter, and in some respects +these expectations were realized. The ignominious failure of the +Westoria land scheme was discussed with freedom and vigor, light being +cast upon it from all sides, but upon the subject which had promised +most there was a marked silence. Only in one paper there appeared a +paragraph--scarcely more--written with much clearness and with a +combined reserve and directness which could not fail to carry weight. It +was very well done, and said so much in little, and with such +unmistakable faith in its own statements and such suggestions of a +foundation for that faith, that it was something of a shock to those who +had delighted in the most elaborate ornamentation of the original story. +In effect it was a denial not only of the ornamentation, but of the +story itself, and left the liberal commentator not a fact to stand upon, +so that he became temporarily the prey of discouragement and spiritual +gloom, which was not a little added to by the events of the day. + +There was, however, no sense of discouragement in the mind of Senator +Blundel as he attired himself for the fray when night arrived. His mood +was a fine combination of aggressiveness, generous kindliness, hot +temper, and chivalric good feeling. He thought all day of the prospect +before him, and in the afternoon went to the length of calling at a +florist's and ordering a bouquet to be sent to Mrs. Amory, choosing it +himself and feeling some pride in the good taste of his selection. He +was so eager, indeed, that the day seemed quite long to him, and he +dressed so early after dinner that he had two or three hours to wait +before his carriage arrived. + +But it did arrive at last, and he went down to it, drawing on with some +difficulty an exceedingly tight pair of gloves, the obduracy of whose +objections to being buttoned gave him something to combat with and +suited his frame of mind to a nicety. + +He was not called upon to wait very long after his entrance into the +parlor. A few moments after his arrival Bertha came down. She was +superbly dressed in white; she carried his roses and violets, and there +burned upon her cheeks a color at once so delicate and brilliant that he +was surprised by it. He had, indeed, rather expected to see her paler. + +"Upon my soul," he said, "you don't look much frightened!" + +"I am not frightened at all," she answered. + +"That is a good thing," he returned. "We shall get on all the better for +it. I never saw you with a brighter color." + +She touched her cheek with her gloved finger. + +"It is not rouge," she said. "I have been thinking of other parties I +have attended--and of how these ladies will look at me to-night--and of +what they possibly said of me yesterday--and it has been good for me." + +"It was not so good for them, however," he suggested, regarding her with +new interest. Her spirit pleased him; he liked it that she was not ready +to allow herself to be beaten down, that she held her head erect and +confronted her enemies with resolute eyes; he had a suspicion that there +were women enough who would have been timorous and pathetic. + +"I could not hurt them," she replied. "It would matter very little what +I thought or said of them; it is only they who can harm me." + +"They shall none of them harm you," he said, stoutly. "I will see to +that; but I'm glad you are looking your best." + +But she could not help seeing that he was a trifle anxious about her. +His concern manifested itself in occasional touches of half-paternal +kindliness which were not lost upon her. He assisted her to put on her +wrap, asked her if it was warm enough, ordered her to draw it closely +about her, and tucked her under his arm as he led her out to the +carriage with an air of determined protection not to be mistaken. + +Perhaps his own views as to what form of oppression and opposition they +were to encounter were rather vague. He was sufficiently accustomed to +the opposition of men, but not to that of women; but, whatever aspect it +assumed upon this occasion, he was valiantly determined not to be moved +by it. + +"I can't dance with you," he said, "that's true--I wish I could; but I +will see that you have plenty of partners." + +"I don't think the difficulty will be in the partners," Bertha replied, +with a faint smile. "The men will not be unkind to me, you will see." + +"They won't believe it, eh?" said Blundel. Her eyes met his, and the +faint smile had a touch of bitterness. + +"Some of them will not believe it," she answered; "and some will not +care." + +There was not the slightest shade of any distrust of herself or her +surroundings, either in her face or manner, when, on reaching their +destination, she made her way into the cloak-room. The place was already +crowded--so crowded that a new-comer was scarcely noticeable. But, +though she seemed to see nothing glancing to neither right nor left, and +occupying herself with the removal of her wraps, and with a few calm +last touches bestowed upon her toilet before a mirror, scarcely a trifle +escaped her. She heard greetings, laughter, gay comments on the +brilliancy and promise of the ball; she knew where stood a woman who +would be likely to appear as an enemy, where stood another who might be +neutral, and another who it was even possible might be a friend. But she +meant to run no risks, and her long training in self-control stood her +in good stead; there was neither consciousness nor too much +unconsciousness in her face; when the woman whom she had fancied might +lean toward friendliness saw and bowed to her, she returned the greeting +with her pretty, inscrutable smile, the entire composure of which so +impressed the matron who was disposed to neutrality that she bowed also, +and so did some one near her. But there were others who did not bow, and +there were those who, discovering the familiar, graceful figure, drew +together in groups, and made an amiable comment or so. But she did not +seem to see them. When, taking up her flowers and her white +ostrich-feather fan, she passed down the little lane, they expressed +their disapproval by making way for her as she turned toward the door. +She was looking at two ladies who were entering, and, general attention +being directed toward them, they were discovered to be Mrs. Sylvestre +and Mrs. Merriam. + +"Now," it was asked, "what will _they_ do?" + +What they did was very simple in itself, but very remarkable in the eyes +of the lookers-on. They paused and spoke to the delinquent in quite +their usual manner. + +"We would ask you to wait for us," Mrs. Merriam was heard to say, +finally, "but there are so many people here to be attended to, and we +saw Senator Blundel waiting for you at the door. May I tell you how +pretty your dress is, and how brilliant you are looking?" + +"Senator Blundel!" was repeated by the nearest groups. "It could not be +Senator Blundel who is with her." + +But those who were near enough to the door were subjected to the mental +shock of seeing that it was Senator Blundel himself. He appeared in +festal array, rubicund, and obstinately elate, and, stepping forward, +took his charge's hand, and drew it within his portly arm. + +"What!" he said, "you are not pale yet--and yet there were plenty of +them in there. What did they do?" + +"Three of them were good enough to bow to me," she answered, "and the +rest drew away and discussed me in undertones. The general impression +was, I think, that I was impudent. I did not feel impudent, and I don't +think I looked so." + +"Poor little woman!" he said. "Poor little woman!" + +"No! no!" she exclaimed, looking straight before her, with dangerously +bright eyes; "don't say that to me. Don't pity me, please--just yet--it +isn't good for me. I need--I need"-- + +There was a second or so of dead silence. She did not tell him what she +needed. + +When they entered the ball-room a waltz was being played, and the floor +was thronged with dancers; the ladies who formed the committee of +reception stood near the door; a party of guests had just received the +usual greetings and retired. The commandress-in-chief turned to meet the +new-comers. She was a stately and severe dowager, with no intention of +flinching from her duty; but her sudden recognition of the approaching +senatorial figure was productive of a bewilderment almost too great for +her experience to cope with. She looked, caught her breath, lost it and +her composure at one and the same time, cast a despairing glance at her +aides, and fell a victim to circumstances. Here was the subject under +ban calmly making the most graceful and self-possessed obeisance before +her, and her escort was the man of whom it had been said that a few days +ago he had exposed her infamous plotting. This was more than even the +most experienced matron could be prepared for. It must be admitted that +her presence of mind deserted her, and that her greetings were not +marked by the ready tact which usually characterized them. + +"My first ball, madam," remarked the senator, scenting difficulty in the +breeze, and confronting it boldly. "But for my friend, Mrs. Amory, I am +afraid I should not be here. I begin to feel indebted to her already." + +"It promises very well," said Bertha. "I never saw the room gayer. How +pretty the decorations are!" + +They passed on to make room for others, leaving the estimable ladies +behind them pale with excitement, and more demoralized than they would +have been willing to admit. + +"What does it mean?" they asked one another. "They appear to be the best +of friends! What are we to understand?" + +There was one kindly matron at the end of the line who looked after the +pair with an expression of sympathy which was rather at variance with +the severity of the rôle she had been called upon to enact. + +"It appears," she said, "as if the whole story might be a fabrication, +and the senator determined to prove it so. I hope with all my heart he +will." + +By the time they reached their seats the news of their arrival had made +the circle of the room. Bertha herself, while she had listened with a +smile to her escort's remarks, had seen amazement and recognition flash +out upon a score of faces; but she had preserved her smile intact, and +still wore it when she took her chair. She spoke to Blundel, waving her +fan with a soft, even motion. + +"We have run the gauntlet," she said, "and we have chosen a good +position. Almost everybody in the room has seen us; almost every one in +the room is looking at us." + +"Let them look!" he answered. "I have no objection to it." + +"Ah, they will look!" she returned. "And we came to be--to be looked at. +And it is very good of you to have no objections. Do I seem perfectly +at ease? I hope so--though I am entirely well aware that at least a +hundred people are discussing me. Is the expression of my eyes +good--careless enough?" + +"Yes, child, yes," he answered, a little uneasily. There was an +undertone in her voice which troubled him, much as he admired her spirit +and self-control. + +"Thank you," she said. "Here is a bold man coming to ask me to dance. I +told you the men would not be afraid of me. I think, if you approve of +it, I will dance with him." + +"Go and dance," he answered. + +When her partner bore her away he took charge of her flowers and wrap in +the most valiant manner, and carried them with him when he went to pay +his respects to the matrons of his acquaintance who sat against the wall +discussing with each other the most exciting topic of the hour, and who, +when he addressed them, questioned him as closely as good-breeding would +permit, upon all subjects likely to cast light upon this topic. + +"Never was at a ball in my life before," he admitted. "Asked Mrs. Amory +to bring me. Wanted to see how I should like it." + +"With Mrs. Amory?" remarked matron No. 1. "She is dancing, I believe." + +"Yes," he said, good-naturedly. "She will be dancing all night, I +suppose, and I shall be carrying her flowers; but I don't mind it--in +fact, I rather like it. I dare say there are two or three young fellows +who would be glad enough to be in my place." + +"I have no doubt," was the reply. "She has been very popular--and very +gay." + +"She is very popular with me," said the senator, "though I am an old +fogy, and don't count. We are great friends, and I am very proud to be +her escort to-night. I feel I am making my _début_ under favorable +circumstances." + +There could be no doubt of his sentiments after that. He was her +friend. He admired her. He even made a point of saying so. What became +of the story of the scandal? It seemed to have ended in nothing and +worse than nothing; there was something a little ridiculous about such a +tame termination to such an excitement. One or two of the ladies who had +found it most absorbing looked aimlessly into space, and an embarrassed +silence fell upon them. + +Bertha ended her dance and returned to her seat. Her color was even +brighter than before, and her smile was more brilliant. For a few +moments a little group surrounded her, and her programme was half full. +Blundel came back to his post like a sentinel. If she had been looked at +before, she was regarded now with a double eagerness. Those who were not +dancing watched her every movement; even those who danced asked each +other questions. The group about her chair was added to and became +gayer, but there were no women numbered in the circle. The general +wonder was as to what would be done in the end. So far, round dances +only had been danced. The next dance was a quadrille. The music struck +up, and the dancers began to take their places. As they did so a party +entered the room and made its way toward the end where the group stood +about the chair. Bertha did not see it; she was just rising to take her +station in the set nearest to her. The matron of the party, who was a +figure so familiar in social circles as to be recognized at once by all +who saw her, was accompanied by her daughter and an escort. It was the +wife of the Secretary of State, and her cavalier was Colonel Tredennis. + +"There is Mrs. Amory," she said to him as they approached. "She is +taking her place in the quadrille. One moment, if you please." + +Experience had taught her all that might be feared, and a quick eye +showed her that something was wrong. Bertha advanced to her place, +laughing a little at some jest of her partner's. She had not seen who +the dancers were. The jest and the laugh ended, and she looked up at +her _vis-à-vis_. The lady at his side was not smiling; she was gazing +steadily at Bertha herself. It seemed as if she had been waiting to +catch her eye. It was the "great lady," and, having carried the +figurative pebble until this fitting moment, she threw it. She spoke two +or three words to her partner, took his arm, turned her back, and walked +away. + +Bertha turned rather pale. She felt the blood ebb out of her face. There +was no mistaking the significance of the action, and it had not escaped +an eye. This was more than she had thought of. She made a movement, with +what intention she herself was too much shaken to know, and, in making +it, her eyes fell upon a face whose expression brought to her an actual +shock of relief. It was the face of the kind and generous gentlewoman +who had just entered, and who, at this moment, spoke to her daughter. + +"My dear," she said, "I think you promised Colonel Tredennis the first +quadrille. Go and take that vacant place, and when you speak to Mrs. +Amory ask her to come and talk to me a little as soon as the dance is +over." + +There was a tone of gentle decision in her voice and a light in her eye +which were not lost upon the bystanders. She gave Bertha a bow and +smile, and sat down. The most fastidious woman in Washington--the woman +who drew her lines so delicately that she had even been called almost +too rigorous; the woman whose well-known good taste and good feeling had +given her a power mere social position was powerless to bestow--had +taken the subject of the hour's scandal under her protection, and +plainly believed nothing to her discredit. + +In five minutes the whole room was aware of it. She had greeted Mrs. +Amory cordially, she had openly checkmated an antagonist, she had sent +her own daughter to fill the place left vacant in the dance. + +"She would not have done that if she had not had the best of reasons," +it was said. + +"And Senator Blundel would scarcely be here if the story had been true." + +"He has told several of his friends that he is here to prove that it is +_not_ true!" + +"He denied it again and again yesterday." + +"It was denied in one of the morning papers, and they say he kept it out +of the rest because he was determined she should not be more publicly +discussed." + +"She is not one of the women who have been in the habit of giving rise +to discussion." + +"She is a pretty, feminine-looking little creature." + +"Poor girl! It must have been bitter enough for her." + +"Rather fine of old Blundel to stand by her in this way." + +"He would not do it if there was not something rather fine in her. He is +not a ladies' man, old Sam Blundel. Look at him! How he looms up behind +his bouquet!" + +The tide of public opinion had taken a turn. Before the dance had ended +two or three practical matrons, who were intimately known to Colonel +Tredennis' friendly supporter, had made their way to her and asked her +opinion and intentions frankly, and had received information calculated +to set every doubt at rest. + +"It is scarcely necessary for me to speak of my opinion of the matter," +the lady said, "when we have the evidence of Senator Blundel's presence +here with Mrs. Amory to-night. I should feel myself unpardonably in the +wrong if I did not take the most open measures in the defence of the +daughter of my old friend, who has been treated most unjustly. And I +cannot help hoping that she will have other defenders than myself." + +Several of the matrons so addressed were seated within speaking range +when Bertha came to her friend at the close of the dance, and she +recognized at once on approaching them that she need fear them no +longer. But she could not say much in response to their greetings; she +answered them briefly, bowed slightly, and sat down in the chair near +the woman who had protected her. She could even say but little to her; +the color had died out of her face at last; the strain she had borne so +long had reached its highest tension to-night, and the shock of the +moment, received through an envious woman's trivial spite, slight as it +might have been in itself, represented too much to her. As he had passed +her in the dance and touched her hand, Tredennis had felt it as cold as +ice, and the look of her quiet, white face had been almost more than he +could bear to see. + +"Bertha," he had said to her once, "for God's sake, take courage!" + +But she had not answered him. A few months ago she would have given him +a light, flippant reply, if her very soul had been wrung within her, but +now she was past that. + +As she sat, afterwards, by the wife of the Secretary of State, her hand +shook as she held her fan. + +"You were very kind to me just now," she said, in a low voice. "I cannot +express my thanks as I wish." + +"My dear," was the reply, "do not speak of it. I came to take care of +you. I think you will have no more trouble. But I am afraid this has +been too much for you. You are shivering a little." + +"I am cold," Bertha answered. "I--feel as if--something strange had +happened to me. It was not so before. I seem--to have lost courage." + +"But you must not lose courage yet," she said, with a manner at once +soft and firm. "A great many people are looking at you. They will be +very curious to know how you feel. It is best that you should not let +them see." + +She spoke rather rapidly, but in a low voice. No one near could hear. +She was smiling, as if the subject of the conversation was the least +important in the world. + +"Listen to me," she said, in the same manner, "and try to look as if we +were speaking of ordinary topics. I dare say you feel as if you would +prefer to go away, but I think you must remain. Everybody here must +understand that you have friends who entirely disbelieve all that has +been said against you, and also that they wish to make their confidence +in you public. I should advise you to appear to enjoy yourself +moderately well. I think I wish you to dance several times again. I +think there will be no difficulty in arranging the next square dance. +When the presidential party arrives, the President will, I have no +doubt, be pleased to talk to you a little. It would be republican to say +that it is absurd to consider that such a thing can be of consequence; +but there are people with whom it will have weight. As soon as possible, +I shall send you down to the supper-room with Senator Blundel. A glass +of wine will do you good. Here is Senator Blundel now. Do you think you +can talk to him in your usual manner?" + +"I will try," said Bertha. "And, if I do not, I think he will +understand." + +He did understand. The little incident had been no more lost upon him +than upon others. He was glowing with repressed wrath, and sympathy, and +the desire to do something which should express his feeling. He saw at +once the change which had come upon her, and realized to the full all +that it denoted. When he bore her off to the supper-room he fairly +bristled with defiance of the lookers-on who made way for them. + +"Confound the woman!" he said. "If it had only been a man!" + +He found her the most desirable corner in the supper-room, and devoted +himself to her service with an assiduity which touched her to the heart. + +"You have lost your color," he said. "That won't do. We must bring it +back." + +"I am afraid it will not come back," she answered. + +And it did not, even though the tide had turned, and that it had done so +became more manifest every moment. They were joined shortly by Colonel +Tredennis and his party, and by Mrs. Merriam and hers. It was plain that +Mrs. Amory was to be alone no more; people who had been unconscious of +her existence in the ball-room suddenly recognized it as she sat +surrounded by her friends; the revulsion of feeling which had taken +place in her favor expressed itself in a hundred trifles. But her color +was gone, and returned no more, though she bore herself with outward +calmness. It was Colonel Tredennis who was her first partner when they +returned to the ball-room. He had taken a seat near her at the +supper-table, and spoken a few words to her. + +"Will you give me a place on your card, Bertha?" he had said, and she +had handed it to him in silence. + +He was not fond of dancing, and they had rarely danced together, but he +wished to be near her until she had had time to recover herself. Better +he than another man who might not understand so well; he knew how to be +silent, at least. + +So they went through their dance together, exchanging but few words, and +interested spectators looked on, and one or two remarked to each other +that, upon the whole, it appeared that Mrs. Amory was rather well +supported, and that there had evidently been a mistake somewhere. + +And then the colonel took her back to her seat, and there were new +partners; and between the dances one matron after another found the way +to her, and, influenced by the general revulsion of feeling, exhibited a +cordiality and interest in marked contrast with the general bearing at +the outset of the evening. Perhaps there were those who were rather glad +to be relieved of the responsibility laid upon them. When the +presidential party arrived it was observed that the President himself +was very cordial when he joined the group at the end of the room, the +centre figure of which was the wife of his friend and favorite cabinet +officer. It was evident that he, at least, had not been affected by the +gossip of the hour. His greeting of Mrs. Amory was marked in its +kindness, and before he went away it was whispered about that he also +had felt an interest in the matter when it had reached his ears, and was +not sorry to have an opportunity of indirectly expressing his opinion. + +The great lady took her departure in bitterness of spirit; the dances +went on, Bertha went through one after another, and between her waltzes +held her small court, and was glanced at askance no more. Any slight +opposition which might have remained would have been overpowered by the +mere force of changed circumstances. Before the evening was at an end it +had become plain that the attempt to repress and overwhelm little Mrs. +Amory had been a complete failure, and had left her better defended than +it had found her. + +"But she has lost something," Senator Blundel said to himself, as he +watched her dancing. "Confound it!--_I_ can see it--she is not what she +was three months ago; she is not what she was when she came into the +room." + +Tredennis also recognized the change which had come upon her, and before +long knew also that she had seen his recognition of it, and that she +made no effort to conceal it from him. He felt that he could almost have +better borne to see her old, careless gayety, which he had been wont to +resent in secret bitterness of heart. + +Once, when they chanced to stand alone together for a moment, she spoke +to him quickly. + +"Is it late?" she asked. "We seem to have been here so long! I have +danced so much. Will it not soon be time to go home?" + +"Do you want to go home?" he asked. + +"Yes," she answered, almost breathlessly; "the music seems so loud it +bewilders me a little. How gay it is! How the people dance! The sound +and motion make me blind and dizzy. Philip!" + +The tone in which she uttered his name was so low and tense that he was +startled by it. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"If there are many more dances, I am afraid--I cannot go through them--I +think--I am breaking down, and I must not--I must not! Tell me what to +do!" + +He made a movement so that he stood directly before her and shielded her +from the observation of those near them. He realized the danger of the +moment. + +"Look up at me!" he said. "Try to fix your eyes on me steadily. This +feeling will pass away directly. You will go soon and you must not break +down. Do not let yourself be afraid that you will." + +She obeyed him like a child, trying to look at him steadily. + +"Tell me one more dance will be enough," she said, "and say you will +dance it with me if you can." + +"I will," he answered, "and you need not speak a word." + + +When the senator found himself alone in the carriage with her his sense +of the triumph achieved found its expression in words. + +"Well," he said, "I think we have put an end to _that_ story." + +"Yes," Bertha answered, "they will not say anything more about me. You +have saved me from that." + +She leaned forward and looked out of the window. Carriages blocked the +street, and were driving up and driving away; policemen were opening and +shutting doors and calling names loudly; a few street-Arabs stood on the +pavement and looked with envious eyes at the bright dresses and +luxurious wraps of the party passing under the awning; the glare of +gas-light fell upon a pretty face upturned to its companions, and a +girl's laugh rang out on the night air. Bertha turned away. She looked +at Senator Blundel. Her own face had no color. + +"I think," she said,--"I think I have been to my last ball." + +"No--no," he answered. "That's nonsense. You will dance at many a one." + +"I think," she said,--"I think this is the last." + +Senator Blundel did not accompany her into the house when they reached +it. He left her at the door, almost wringing her small cold hand in his +stout warm one. + +"Come!" he said. "You are tired now, and no wonder, but to-morrow you +will be better. You want sleep and you must have it. Go in, child, and +go to bed. Good-night. God bless you! You will--be better to-morrow." + +She went through the hall slowly, intending to go to her room, but when +she reached the parlor she saw that it was lighted. She had given orders +that the servants should not sit up for her, and the house was silent +with the stillness of sleep. She turned at the parlor door and looked +in. A fire still burned in the grate, her own chair was drawn up before +it, and in the chair sat a figure, the sight of which caused her to +start forward with an exclamation,--a tall, slender, old figure, his +gray head bowed upon his hand. + +"Papa!" she cried. "Can it be you, papa? What has happened?" + +He rose rather slowly, and looked at her; it was evident that he had +been plunged in deep thought; his eyes were heavy, and he looked aged +and worn. He put out his hand, took hers, and drew her to him. + +"My dear," he said. "My dear child!" + +She stood quite still for a moment, looking up at him. + +"You have come to tell me something," she said, at length, in a low, +almost monotonous voice. "And it is something about Richard. It is +something--something wretched." + +A slight flush mounted to his cheek,--a flush of shame. + +"Yes," he answered, "it is something wretched." + +She began to shake like a leaf, but it was not from fear. + +"Then do not be afraid," she said; "there is no need! Richard--has not +spared me!" + +It was the first time through all she had borne and hidden, through all +the years holding, for her, suffering and bitterness and disenchantment +which had blighted all her youth,--it was the first time she had +permitted her husband's name to escape her lips when she could not +compel herself to utter it gently, and that, at last, he himself had +forced such speech from her was the bitterest indignity of all. + +And if she felt this, the professor felt it keenly, too. He had marked +her silence and self-control at many a time when he had felt that the +fire that burned in her must make her speak; but she had never spoken, +and the dignity of her reserve had touched him often. + +"What is it that Richard has done now, papa?" she said. + +He put a tremulous hand into his pocket, and drew forth a letter. + +"Richard," he said,--"Richard has gone abroad." + +She had felt that she was to receive some blow, but she had scarcely +been prepared for this. She repeated his words in bewilderment. + +"Richard has gone abroad!" + +The professor put his hand on her shoulder. + +"Sit down, my dear," he said. "You must sit down." + +There was a chair near her; it stood by the table on which the professor +had been wont to take his cup of tea; she turned and sat down in this +chair, and resting her elbows on the table, dropped her forehead upon +her hands. The professor drew near to her side; his gentle, refined old +face flushed and paled alternately; his hands were tremulous; he spoke +in a low, agitated voice. + +"My dear," he said, "I find it very hard to tell you all--all I have +discovered. It is very bitter to stand here upon your husband's hearth, +and tell you--my child and his wife--that the shadow of dishonor and +disgrace rests upon him. He has not been truthful; we have--been +deceived." + +She did not utter a word. + +"For some time I have been anxious," he went on; "but I blame myself +that I was not anxious sooner. I am not a business man; I have not been +practical in my methods of dealing with him; the fault was in a great +measure mine. His nature was not a strong one,--it was almost impossible +for him to resist temptation; I knew that, and should have remembered +it. I have been very blind. I did not realize what was going on before +my eyes. I thought his interest in the Westoria scheme was only one of +his many whims. I was greatly to blame." + +"No," said Bertha; "it was not you who were to blame. I was more blind +than you--I knew him better than--than any one else." + +"A short time ago," said the professor, "I received a letter from an old +friend who knows a great deal of my business affairs. He is a business +man, and I have been glad to entrust him with the management of various +investments. In this manner he knew something of the investment of the +money which was yours. He knew more of Richard's methods than Richard +was aware of. He had heard rumors of the Westoria land scheme, and had +accidentally, in the transaction of his business, made some discoveries. +He asked me if I knew the extent to which your fortune had been +speculated with. Knowing a few facts, he was able to guess at others"-- + +Bertha lifted her face from her hands. + +"My money!" she exclaimed. "My fortune!" + +"He had speculated with it at various times, sometimes gaining, +sometimes losing; the Westoria affair seems to have dazzled him--and he +invested largely"-- + +Bertha rose from her chair. + +"It was Philip Tredennis' money he invested," she said. "Philip +Tredennis"-- + +"It was not Philip's money," the professor answered; "that I have +discovered. But it was Philip's generosity which would have made it +appear so. In this letter--written just before he sailed--Richard has +admitted the truth to me--finding what proof I had against him." + +Bertha lifted her hands and let them fall at her sides. + +"Papa," she said, "I do not understand this--I do not understand. Philip +Tredennis! He gave money to Richard! Richard accepted money from him--to +shield himself, to--This is too much for me!" + +"Philip had intended the money for Janey," said the professor, "and when +he understood how Richard had involved himself, and how his difficulties +would affect you and your future, he made a most remarkable offer: he +offered to assume the responsibility of Richard's losses. He did not +intend that you should know what he had done. Such a thing would only +have been possible for Philip Tredennis, and it was because I knew him +so well, that, when I heard that it was his money that had been risked +in the Westoria lands, I felt that something was wrong. He was very +reticent, and that added to my suspicions. Then I made the discoveries +through my friend, and my accusations of Richard forced him to admit the +truth." + +"The truth!" said Bertha,--"that _I_ was to live upon Philip Tredennis' +money; that, having been ruined by my husband, I was to be supported by +Philip Tredennis' bounty!" + +"Richard was in despair," said the professor, "and in his extremity he +forgot"-- + +"He forgot _me_!" said Bertha. "Yes, he forgot--a great many things." + +"It has seemed always to be Philip who has remembered," said the +professor, sadly. "Philip has been generous and thoughtful for us from +first to last." + +Bertha's hand closed itself. + +"Yes," she cried; "always Philip--always Philip!" + +"What could have been finer and more delicate than his care and planning +for you in this trouble of the last few days, to which I have been so +blind!" said the professor. + +"_His_ care and planning!" echoed Bertha, turning slowly toward him. +"His! Did you not hear that Senator Blundel"-- + +"It was he who went to Senator Blundel," the professor answered. "It was +he who spoke to the wife of the Secretary of State. I learned it from +Mrs. Merriam. Out of all the pain we have borne, or may have to bear, +the memory of Philip's faithful affection for us"-- + +He did not finish his sentence. Bertha stopped him. Her clenched hand +had risen to her side, and was pressed against it. + +"It was Philip who came to me in my trouble in Virginia," she said. "It +was Philip who saw my danger and warned me of it when I would not hear +him; but I could not know that I owed him such a debt as this!" + +"We should never have known it from him," the professor replied. "He +would have kept silent to the end." + +Bertha looked at the clock upon the mantel. + +"It is too late to send for him now," she said; "it is too late, and a +whole night must pass before"-- + +"Before you say to him--what?" asked the professor. + +"Before I tell him that Richard made a mistake," she answered, with +white and trembling lips; "that he must take his money back--that I will +not have it." + +She caught her father's arm and clung to it, looking into his troubled +face. + +"Papa," she said, "will you take me home again? I think you must, if +you will. There seems to be no place for me. If you will let me stay +with you until I have time to think." + +The professor laid his hand upon hers and held it closely. + +"My dear," he said, "my home is yours. It has never seemed so much mine +since you left it; but this may not be so bad as you think. I do not +know how much we may rely upon Richard's hopes,--they are not always to +be relied upon,--but it appears that he has hopes of retrieving some of +his losses through a certain speculation he seems to have regarded as a +failure, but which suddenly promises to prove a success." + +"I have never thought of being poor," said Bertha; "I do not think I +should know how to be poor. But, somehow, it is not the money I am +thinking of; that will come later, I suppose. I scarcely seem to realize +yet"-- + +Her voice and her hand shook, and she clung to him more closely. + +"Everything has gone wrong," she said, wildly; "everything must be +altered. No one is left to care for me but you. No one must do it but +you. Now that Richard has gone, it is not Philip who must be kind to +me--not Philip--Philip last of all!" + +"Not Philip?" he echoed. "_Not_ Philip?" + +And, as he said it, they both heard feet ascending the steps at the +front door. + +"My child," said the professor, "that is Philip now. He spoke of calling +in on me on his way home. Perhaps he has been anxious at finding me out +so late. I do not understand you--but must I go and send him away?" + +"No," she answered, shuddering a little, as if with cold, "it is for me +to send him away. But I must tell him first about the money. I am glad +he has come. I am glad another night will not pass without his knowing. +I think I want to speak to him alone--if you will send him here, and +wait for a little while in the library." + +She did not see her father's face as he went away from her; he did not +see hers; she turned and stood upon the hearth with her back toward the +door. + +She stood so when, a few minutes afterward, Philip Tredennis came in; +she stood so until he was within a few feet of her. Then she moved a +little and looked up. + +What she saw in him arrested for the moment her power to speak, and for +that moment both were silent. Often as she had recognized the change +which had taken place in him, often as the realization of it had wrung +her heart, and wrung it all the more that she had understood so little, +she had never before seen it as she saw it then. All the weariness, the +anxious pain, the hopeless sadness of his past, seemed to have come to +the surface; he could endure no more; he had borne the strain too long, +and he knew too well that the end had come. No need for words to tell +him that he must lose even the poor and bitter comfort he had clung to; +he had made up his mind to that when he had defended her against the man +who himself should have been her defence. + +So he stood silent and his deep eyes looked out from his strong, worn, +haggard face, holding no reproach, full only of pity for her. + +There was enough to pity in her. If she saw anguish in his eyes, what he +saw in hers as she uplifted them he could scarcely have expressed in any +words he knew; surely there were no words into which he could have put +the pang their look gave him, telling him as it did that she had reached +the point where she could stand on guard no more. + +"Richard," she said at length, "has gone away." + +"That I knew," he answered. + +"When?" she asked. + +"I had a letter from him this morning," he said. + +"You did not wish to tell me?" she returned. + +"I thought," he began, "that perhaps"--and stopped. + +"You thought that he would write to me too," she said. "He--did not." + +He did not speak, and she went on. + +"When I returned to-night," she said, "papa was waiting for me. He had +received a letter, too, and it told him--something he suspected +before--something I had not suspected--something I could not know"-- + +Her voice broke, and when she began again there was a ring of desperate +appeal to it. + +"When I was a girl," she said, "when you knew me long ago, what was +there of good in me that you should have remembered it through all that +you have known of me since then?--there must have been +something--something good or touching--something more than the goodness +in yourself--that made you pitiful of me, and generous to me, and +anxious for my sake. Tell me what it was." + +"It was," he said, and his own voice was low and broken too, and his +deep and sad eyes wore a look she had never seen before,--the look that, +in the eyes of a woman, would have spoken of welling tears,--"it +was--yourself." + +"Myself!" she cried. "Oh, if it was myself, and there were goodness and +truth, and what was worth remembering in me, why did it not save me from +what I have been--and from what I am to-day? I do not think I meant to +live my life so badly then; I was only careless and happy in a girlish +way. I had so much faith and hope, and believed so much in all good +things; and yet my life has all been wrong, and I seem to believe no +more, and everything is lost to me; and since the days when I looked +forward there is a gulf that I can never, never pass again." + +She came nearer to him, and a sob broke from her. + +"What am I to say to you," she said, "now that I know all that you have +done for me while I--while I--Why should you have cared to protect me? +I was not kind to you--I was not careful of your feelings"-- + +"No," he answered. "You--were not." + +"I used to think that you despised me," she went on, "once I told you +so. I even tried to give you the reason. I showed my worst self to you; +I was unjust and bitter; I hurt you many a time." + +He seemed to labor for his words, and yet he labored rather to control +and check than to utter them. + +"I am going away," he said. "When I made the arrangement with Richard, +of which you know, I meant to go away. I gathered, from what your father +said, that you mean to render useless my poor effort to be of use to +you." + +"I cannot "--she began, but she could go no farther. + +"When I leave you--as I must," he said, "let me at least carry away with +me the memory that you were generous to me at the last." + +"At the last," she repeated after him, "the last!" + +She uttered a strange, little inarticulate cry. He saw her lift up one +of her arms, look blindly at the bracelet on her wrist, drop it at her +side, and then stand looking up at him. + +There was a moment of dead silence. + +"Janey shall take the money," she said; "I cannot." + +What the change was that he saw come over her white face and swaying +figure he only felt, as he might have felt a blow in the dark from an +unknown hand. What the great shock was that came upon him he only felt +in the same way. + +She sank upon the sofa, clinging to the cushion with one shaking hand. +Suddenly she broke into helpless sobbing, like a child's, tears +streaming down her cheeks as she lifted her face in appeal. + +"You have been good to me," she said. "You have been kind. Be good to +me--be kind to me--once more. You must go away--and I cannot take from +you what you want to give me; but I am not so bad as I have seemed--or +so hard! What you have wished me to be I will try to be! I will live for +my children. I will be--as good--as I can. I will do anything you tell +me to do--before you leave me! I will live all my life afterward--as +Bertha Herrick might have lived it! Only do not ask me to take the +money!" + +For a few seconds all the room was still. When he answered her she could +barely hear his voice. + +"I will ask of you nothing," he said. + +He lifted her hand and bowed his head over it. Then he laid it back upon +the cushion. It lay there as if it had been carved from stone. + +"Good-by," he said. "Good-by." + +He saw her lips part, but no sound came from them. + +So he went away. He scarcely felt the floor beneath his feet. He saw +nothing of the room about him. It seemed as if there was an endless +journey between himself and the door through which he was to pass. The +extremity of his mortal agony was like drunkenness. + +When he was gone, she fell with a shudder, and lay still with her cheek +against the crimson cushion. + + +The professor was sitting at her bedside when she opened her eyes again. +Her first recognition was of his figure, sitting, the head bowed upon +the hand, as she had seen it when she came first into the house. + +"Papa," she said, "you are with me?" + +"Yes, my dear," he answered. + +"And--there is no one else?" + +"No, my dear." + +She put out her hand and laid it upon his arm. He thought, with a bitter +pang, that she did it as she had often done it in her girlhood, and +that, in spite of the change in her, she wore a look which seemed to +belong to those days too. + +"You will stay with me," she said. "I have come back to you." + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + + +Miss Jessup was very eloquent in the paragraph which she devoted to the +announcement of the departure of Colonel Tredennis, "the well-known hero +of the plains, whose fine, bronzed face and soldierly figure have become +so familiar to us during the past three seasons." She could scarcely +express the regret felt by the many friends he had made, on losing him, +and, indeed, there ran throughout the flowers of speech a suggestion of +kindly, admiring sympathy and womanly good-feeling which quite went to +the colonel's heart, and made him wonder at his own good fortune when he +read the paragraph in question. He was far away from Washington when the +paper reached him. He had become tired of life at the Capital, it was +said, and had been glad to exchange with a man who found its gayeties +better suited to him. + +"It is true," he said to himself when he heard of this report, "that +they were not suited to me, nor I to them." + +How he lived through the weeks, performing the ordinary routine of his +duty, and bearing with him hour by hour, night and day, the load of +grief and well-nigh intolerable anguish which he knew was never to be +lighter, he did not know. The days came and went. It was morning, noon, +or night, and he did not feel the hours either long or short. There were +nights when, his work being done, he returned to his quarters and +staggered to his seat, falling upon it blind and sick with the heavy +horror of the day. + +"This," he would say, again and again, "_this_ is unnatural. To bear +such torture and live through it seems scarcely human." + +Sometimes he was so wrought upon by it physically that he thought he +should not live through it; but he bore so much that at last he gained a +hopeless faith in his own endurance. He was not alone. It was as he had +told her it would be. From the hour that he looked his last upon her, it +seemed that her face had never faded from before his aching eyes. He had +all the past to live over again, all its bitter mysteries to read in a +new light and to learn to understand. + +There was time enough now for him to think it all over slowly, to recall +to his mind every look and change and tone; her caprices, her coldness, +the wounds she had given him, he bore them all again, and each time he +came back with a pang more terrible to that last moment--to that last +look, to her last, broken words. + +"O God!" he cried, "does _she_ bear this too?" + +He knew nothing of her save what he gained at rare intervals from Miss +Jessup's society column, which he read deliberately from beginning to +end as each paper reached him. The friends of Mrs. Amory, Miss Jessup's +first statement announced, would regret to learn that the health of that +charming young wife and mother was so far from being what was to be +desired, that it necessitated a temporary absence from those social +circles of which she was so bright and graceful an ornament. For a while +her name was missing from the lists of those who appeared at the various +entertainments, and then he began occasionally to see it again, and +found a little sad comfort in the thought that she must be stronger. His +kind, brown face changed greatly in these days; it grew lean and haggard +and hopeless, and here and there a gray thread showed itself in his +close, soldier-cropped hair. He planned out heavy work for himself, and +kept close in his quarters, and those of his friends who had known him +before his stay in Washington began to ask each other what had so broken +Philip Tredennis. + +The first time that Mrs. Amory appeared in society, after her +indisposition, was at the house of her friend, Mrs. Sylvestre. During +her temporary seclusion she had seen Mrs. Sylvestre frequently. There +had been few days when Agnes had not spent some hours with her. When she +had been denied to every one else Agnes was admitted. + +"It is only fatigue, this," Bertha had said; "but other people tire me +so! You never tire me." + +She was not confined to her bed. She had changed her room, taking +possession of the pretty pink and blue chamber, and lay upon the sofa +through the days, sometimes looking at the fire, often with her eyes +closed. + +The two conversed but little; frequently there was silence between them +for some time; but Agnes knew that she was doing as Bertha wished when +she came and sat with her. + +At the end of a week Mrs. Sylvestre came in one morning and found Bertha +dressed and sitting in a chair. + +"I am going downstairs," she said. + +"Do you think you are strong enough?" Agnes asked. She did not look so. + +"I must begin to try to do something," was the indirect reply. "One must +always begin. I want to lie still and not speak or move; but I must not +do that. I will go downstairs, and I think I should like to see +Laurence." + +As she went down the staircase she moved very slowly, and Agnes saw that +she clung to the balustrade for support. When she reached the parlor +door she paused for a moment, then crossed the threshold a little +hurriedly, and went to the sofa and sat down. She was tremulous, and +tears had risen to her eyes from very weakness. + +"I thought I was stronger," she said. But she said nothing more until, a +few moments later, she began to speak of Tom and Kitty, in whom she had +been much interested. It had been at her suggestion that, after divers +fruitless efforts, the struggle to obtain Tom a "place" had been +abandoned, and finally there had been procured for him a position, +likely to prove permanent, in a house of business, where principles +might be of value. Tom's lungs were still a trifle delicate, but he was +rapturously happy in the small home, to purchase which Mrs. Sylvestre +had advanced the means, and his simple bliss was greatly added to by the +advent of Kitty's baby. + +So they talked of Tom and Kitty and the baby, and of Arbuthnot, and his +friendship for them, and the oddities of it, and his way of making his +efforts and kindness seem more than half a jest. + +"No one can be kinder than Laurence," Bertha said. "No one could be a +truer friend." + +"I think so now," Agnes answered, quietly. + +"He is not so light, after all," said Bertha. "Perhaps few of us are +quite as light as we seem." + +"I did him injustice at first," Agnes replied. "I understand him better +now." + +"If he should go away you would miss him a little," said Bertha. "He is +a person one misses when he is absent." + +"Does he"--Agnes began. "I have not heard him speak of going away." + +"There is just a likelihood of it," Bertha returned. "Papa has been +making an effort for him with the Secretary of State. He might be sent +abroad." + +"I have not heard him refer to the possibility," said Agnes. Her manner +was still quiet, but she had made a slight involuntary movement, which +closed the book she held. + +"I do not think papa has spoken to him for some time," Bertha replied. +"And when he first referred to his plan Laurence thought it out of the +question, and did not appear to regard it seriously." + +For a few moments Mrs. Sylvestre did not speak. Then she said: + +"Certainly it would be much better for him than to remain here." + +"If he should go," said Bertha, "no one will miss him as I shall. We +used to be so gay together, and now"-- + +She did not end her sentence, and for a while neither of them spoke +again, and she lay quite still. Agnes remained to dine with her, and in +the evening Arbuthnot came in. + +When he entered the bright, familiar room he found himself glancing +round it, trying to understand exactly what mysterious change had come +upon it. There was no change in its belongings,--the touches of color, +the scattered trifles, the pictures and draperies wore their old-time +look of having been arranged by one deft hand; but it did not seem to be +the room he had known so long,--the room he had been so fond of, and had +counted the prettiest and most inspiring place he knew. + +Bertha had not left the sofa; she was talking to Agnes, who stood near +her. She had a brilliant flush on her cheeks, her eyes were bright when +she raised them to greet him, and her hand, as he took it, was hot and +tremulous. + +"Naturally," she said, "you will begin to vaunt yourself. You told me I +should break down if I did not take care of myself, and I have broken +down--a little. I am reduced to lying on sofas. Don't you know how I +always derided women who lie on sofas? This is retribution; but don't +meet it with too haughty and vainglorious a spirit; before Lent I shall +be as gay as ever." + +"I don't doubt it," he answered. "But in the meantime allow me to +congratulate you on the fact that the sofa is not entirely unbecoming." + +"Thank you," she said. "Will you sit down now and tell me--tell me what +people are saying?" + +"Of"--he began. + +She smiled. + +"Of me," she answered. "They were saying a great deal of me a week ago; +tell me what they say now. You must hear in going your giddy rounds." + +"_You_ are very well treated," he replied. "There is a certain great +lady who is most uncomfortably commented upon. I can scarcely imagine +that she enjoys it." + +Her smile ended in a fatigued sigh. + +"The tide turned very quickly," she said. "It is well for me that it +did. I should not have had much mercy if I had stood alone. Ah! it was a +good thing for me that you were all so brave. You might have deserted +me, too--it would have been very simple--and then--then the gates of +paradise would have been shut against me." + +"That figure of speech meaning--?" suggested Arbuthnot. + +"That I should have been invited to no more dinner-parties and +receptions; that nobody would have come up to my Thursday Evenings; that +Miss Jessup would never again have mentioned me in the _Wabash +Gazette_." + +"That would have been very bitter," he answered. + +"Yes," she returned, "it would have been bitter, indeed." + +"Do you know," he said next, "that I have come to-night partly for the +reason that I have something to tell you?" + +"I rather suspected it," she replied, "though I could scarcely explain +why." + +"Am I to hear it, too?" inquired Agnes. + +"If you are kind enough to be interested," he answered. "It will seem a +slight enough affair to the world at large, but it seems rather +tremendous to me. I feel a trifle overpowered and nervous. Through the +kind efforts of Professor Herrick I have been honored with the offer of +a place abroad." + +Bertha held out her hand. + +"Minister to the Court of St. James!" she said. "How they will +congratulate themselves in London!" + +"They would," he replied, "if an ill-adjusted and singularly +unappreciative government had not particularized a modest corner of +Germany as standing in greater need of my special abilities." But he +took her offered hand. + +When he glanced at Mrs. Sylvestre--truth to say he had taken some +precautions against seeing her at all as he made his announcement--he +found her bestowing upon him one of the calmest of her soft, reflective +looks. + +"I used to like some of those quiet places in Germany," she said; "but +you will find it a change from Washington." + +"I think," he answered, "that I should like a change from Washington;" +and as soon as he had spoken he detected the touch of acrid feeling in +his words. + +"I should fancy myself," she said, her soft look entirely undisturbed, +"that it might be agreeable after one had been here some time." + +He had always admired beyond expression that touch of half-forgetful, +pensive calmness in her voice and eyes, but he did not enjoy it just +now. + +"It is a matter of temperament, I suppose," was his thought; "but, after +all, we have been friends." + +Neither could it be said that he enjoyed the pretty and picturesque +stories of German life she told afterward. They were told so well that +they brought very near the life he might expect to lead, and he was not +exactly in the mood to care to stand face to face with it. But he +controlled himself sufficiently to make an excellent audience, and never +had been outwardly in better spirits than he was after the stories were +told. He was cool and vivacious; he told a story or two himself; he was +in good voice when he went to the piano and sang. They were all laughing +when Agnes left the room to put on her wraps to return home. + +When she was gone the laugh died down with odd suddenness. + +"Larry," said Bertha, "do you really want to go?" + +"No," he answered, turning sharply, "I don't want to go. I loathe and +abhor the thought of it." + +"You want," she said, "to stay here?" + +"Yes, I do," was his reply, "and that decides me." + +"To go?" she asked, watching his pale, disturbed face. + +"Yes, to go! There is nothing to stay here for. I need the change. I +have been here long enough--too long!" + +"Yes," she returned, "I think you have been here too long. You had +better go away--if you think there is nothing to stay for." + +"When a man has nothing to offer"--he broke off and flushed up hotly. +"If I had a shadow of a right to a reason for staying," he exclaimed, +"do you suppose I should not hold on to it, and fight for it, and demand +what belonged to me? There might be a struggle--there would be; but no +other man should have one jot or tittle that persistence and effort +might win in time for me! A man who gives up is a fool! I have nothing +to give up. I haven't even the right to surrender! I hadn't the right to +enter the field and take my wounds like a man! It is pleasant to reflect +that it is my own--fault. I trifled with my life; now I want it, and I +can't get it back." + +"Ah!" she said, "that is an old story!" + +And then Agnes returned, and he took her home. + +On their way there they talked principally of Tom and Kitty. + +"They will miss you greatly," Agnes said. + +"They will be very kind to do it," was his reply. + +"We shall all miss you," she added. + +"That will be kinder still," he answered. "Might I be permitted to quote +the ancient anecdote of the colored warrior, who, on running away in +battle, was reproached and told that a single life counted as nothing on +such great occasions, and that if he had fallen he would not have been +missed,--his reply to this heroic statement of the case being, that he +should have been likely to miss himself. I shall miss myself, and +already a gentle melancholy begins to steal over me. I am not the +gleesome creature I was before good luck befell me." + +But, despite this lightness of tone, their walk was not a very cheerful +one; indeed, after this speech they were rather quiet, and they parted +with few words at the door, Arbuthnot declining to go into the house. + +When Agnes entered alone Mrs. Merriam looked up from her novel in some +surprise. + +"I thought I heard Mr. Arbuthnot," she said. + +"He left me at the door," Mrs. Sylvestre answered. + +"What!" said Mrs. Merriam, "without coming to say good-night to me! I +wanted to tell him what a dissipated evening I have been spending with +my new book." + +"He has been telling us good news," said Agnes, standing before the fire +and loosening her furs. "He has been offered a consulship." + +Mrs. Merriam closed her book and laid it on the table. + +"Will he accept it?" she asked. + +"He could scarcely refuse it," Agnes replied. "It is a decided advance; +he likes the life abroad, and it might even lead to something better in +the future; at least one rather fancies such things are an opening." + +"It is true," reflected Mrs. Merriam, "that he seems to have no +particular ties to hold him in one place rather than another." + +"None," said Agnes. "I don't know whether that is his fortune or his +misfortune." + +"His fortune," said Mrs. Merriam. "He is of the nature to know how to +value them. Perhaps, after all, he may form them if he goes abroad. It +is not too late." + +"Perhaps so," said Agnes. "That would be another reason why it would be +better for him to go." + +"Still," remarked Mrs. Merriam, "for my own part, I don't call it good +news that he is going." + +"I meant," said Agnes, "good news for him." + +"It is bad news for us," Mrs. Merriam replied. "He will leave a gap. I +have grown inconveniently fond of him myself." + +But Agnes made no response, and soon afterward went to her room in +silence. She was rather silent the next day when she made her visit to +Bertha. Mrs. Merriam observed that she was rather silent at home; but, +having seen her retire within herself before, she was too just to assign +a definite reason for her quiet mood. Still she watched her with great +interest, which had a fashion of deepening when Laurence Arbuthnot +appeared upon the scene. But there was no change in her manner toward +Arbuthnot. She was glad to see him; she was interested in his plans. Her +gentle pleasure in his society seemed neither greater nor less than +usual; her gentle regret at his approaching absence from their circle +said absolutely nothing. In the gayeties of the closing season they saw +even more of each other than usual. + +"It will be generous of you to allow me a few additional privileges," +Arbuthnot said; "an extra dance or so, for instance, on occasion; a few +more calls that I am entitled to. Will you kindly, if you please, regard +me in the light of a condemned criminal, and be lenient with me in my +last moments?" + +She did not refuse to be lenient with him. Much as he had been in the +habit of enjoying the evenings spent in her parlor, he had never spent +evenings such as fell to him in these last days. Somehow it happened +that he found her alone more frequently. Mrs. Merriam had letters to +write, or was otherwise occupied; so it chanced that he saw her as it +had not been his fortune to see her very often. + +But it was decided that he was to spend no more winters in Washington, +for some time, at least; and, though he spent his evenings thus +agreeably, he was making daily preparation for his departure, and it +cannot be said that he enjoyed the task. There had been a time, it is +true, when he would have greeted with pleasure the prospect of the +change before him; but that time was past. + +"I am having my bad quarter of an hour," he said, "and it serves me +right." + +But as the days slipped by he found it even a worse quarter of an hour +than he had fancied it would be. It cost him an effort to bear himself +as it was only discretion that he should. His one resource lay in +allowing himself no leisure. When he was not otherwise occupied, he +spent his time with his friends. He was oftenest with the professor and +Bertha. He had some quiet hours in the professor's study, and in the +parlor, where Bertha sat or lay upon the sofa before the fire. She did +not allow herself to lie upon the sofa often, and refused to be regarded +as an invalid; but Arbuthnot never found himself alone with her without +an overpowering realization of the change which had taken place in her. +But she rarely spoke of herself. + +"There is nothing more," she said, once, "to say about _me_." + +She was willing enough to speak of him, however, and of his future, and +her gentleness often moved him deeply. + +"We have been such good friends," she would say,--"such good friends. It +is not often that a man is as true a friend to a woman as you have been +to me. I wish--oh, I wish you might be happy!" + +"It is too late," he would reply, "but I shall not waste time in +complaining. I will even try not to waste it in regretting." + +But he knew that he did waste it so, and that each passing day left a +sharper pang behind it, and marked a greater struggle. + +"There is a great deal of trouble in this world," the professor said to +him, simply, after watching him a few minutes one day. "I should like to +know what _you_ are carrying with you to Germany." + +"I am carrying nothing," Arbuthnot answered. "That is my share." + +They were smoking their cigars together, and through the blue haze +floating about him the professor looked out with a sad face. + +"Do you," he said,--"do you leave anything behind you?" + +"Everything," said Arbuthnot. The professor made a disturbed movement. + +"Perhaps," he said, "this was a mistake. Perhaps it would be better if +you remained. It is not yet too late"-- + +"Yes, it is," Arbuthnot interposed, with a faint laugh. "And nothing +would induce me to remain." + +It was on the occasion of a reception given by Mrs. Sylvestre that he +was to make his last appearance in the social world before his +departure. He had laid his plans in such a manner that, having made his +adieus at the end of the evening, half an hour after retiring from the +parlors he would be speeding away from Washington on his way to New +York. + +"It will be a good exit," he said. "And the eye of the unfeeling world +being upon me, I shall be obliged to conceal my emotions, and you will +be spared the spectacle of my anguish." + +There were no particular traces of anguish upon his countenance when he +presented himself, the evening in question having arrived. He appeared, +in fact, to be in reasonably good spirits. Nothing could have been more +perfect than the evening was from first to last: the picturesque and +charming home was at its best; Mrs. Sylvestre the most lovely central +figure in its picturesqueness; Mrs. Merriam even more gracious and +amusing than usual. The gay world was represented by its gayest and +brightest; the majority of those who had appeared on the night of the +ball appeared again. Rather late in the evening Blundel came in, fresh +from an exciting debate in the Senate, and somewhat flushed and elated +by it. He made his way almost immediately to Bertha. Those who stood +about her made way for him as he came. She was not sitting alone +to-night; there seemed no likelihood of her being called upon to sit +alone again. She had not only regained her old place, but something +more. The professor had accompanied her, and at no time was far away +from her. He hovered gently about in her neighborhood, and rarely lost +sight of her. He had never left her for any great length of time since +the night Tredennis had gone away. He had asked her no questions, but +they had grown very near to each other, and any mystery he might feel +that he confronted only made him more tender of her. + +When Senator Blundel found himself standing before her he gave her a +sharp glance of scrutiny. + +"Well," he said, "you are rested and better, and all the rest of it. +Your pink gown is very nice, and it gives you a color and brightens you +up." + +"I chose the shade carefully," she answered, smiling. "If it had been +deeper it might have taken some color away from me. I am glad you like +it." + +"But you are well?" he said, a little persistently. He was not so sure +of her, after all. He was shrewd enough to wish she had not found it +necessary to choose her shade with such discretion. + +She smiled up at him again. + +"Yes, I am well," she said. "And I am very glad to see you again." + +But for several seconds he did not answer her; standing, he looked at +her in silence as she remembered his doing in the days when she had felt +as if he was asking himself and her a question. But she knew it was not +the same question he was asking himself now, but another one, and after +he had asked it he did not seem to discover the answer to it, and looked +baffled and uncertain, and even disturbed and anxious. And yet her +pretty smile did not change in the least at any moment while he regarded +her. It only deserted her entirely once during the evening. This was +when she said her last words to Arbuthnot. He had spent the previous +evening with her in her own parlor. Now, before she went away,--which +she did rather early,--they had a few minutes together in the deserted +music-room, where he took her while supper was in progress. + +Neither of them had any smiles when they went in together and took their +seats in a far corner. + +Bertha caught no reflected color from her carefully chosen pink. +Suddenly she looked cold and worn. + +"Laurence!" she said, "in a few hours"--and stopped. + +He ended for her. + +"In a few hours I shall be on my way to New York." + +She looked down at her flowers and then up at him. + +"Oh!" she said, "a great deal will go with you. There is no one now who +could take from me what you will. But that is not what I wanted to say +to you. Will you let me say to you what I have been thinking of for +several days, and wanting to say?" + +"You may say anything," he answered. + +"Perhaps," she went on, hurriedly, "it will not make any difference when +it is said; I don't know." She put out her hand and touched his arm with +it; her eyes looked large and bright in their earnest appeal. + +"Don't be angry with me, Larry," she said; "we have been such good +friends,--the best, _best_ friends. I am going home soon. I shall not +stay until the evening is over. You must, I think, until every one is +gone away. You might--you might have a few last words to say to Agnes." + +"There is nothing," he replied, "that I could say to her." + +"There might be," she said tremulously, "there might be--a few last +words Agnes might wish to say to you." + +He put his head down upon his hand and answered in a low tone: + +"It is impossible that there should be." + +"Larry," she said, "only you can find out whether that is true or not, +and--don't go away before you are quite sure. Oh! do you remember what I +told you once?--there is only one thing in all the world when all the +rest are tried and done with. So many miss it, and then everything is +wrong. Don't be too proud, Larry; don't reason too much. If people are +true to each other, and content, what does the rest matter? I want to +know that some one is happy like that. I wish it might be you. If I have +said too much, forgive me; but you may be angry with me. I will let +you--if you will not run the risk of throwing anything away." + +There was a silence. + +"Promise me," she said, "promise me." + +"I cannot promise you," he answered. + +He left his seat. + +"I will tell you," he said. "I am driven to-night--driven! I never +thought it could be so, but it is--even though I fancied I had taught +myself better. I am bearing a good deal. I don't know how far I may +trust myself. I have not an idea about it. It is scarcely safe for me to +go near her. I have not been near her often to-night. I am _driven_. I +don't know that I shall get out of the house safely. I don't know how +far I can go, if I _do_ get out of it, without coming back and making +some kind of an outcry to her. One can't bear everything indefinitely. +It seems to me now that the only decent end to this would be for me to +go as quickly as possible, and not look back; but there never was a more +impotent creature than I know I am to-night. The sight of her is too +much for me. She looks like a tall, white flower. She is a little pale +to-night--and the look in her eyes--I wish she were pale for sorrow--for +me. I wish she was suffering; but she is not." + +"She could not tell you if she were," said Bertha. + +"That is very true," he answered. + +"Don't go away," she said, "until you have said good-by to her alone." + +"Don't you see," he replied, desperately, "that I am in the condition +to be unable to go until I am actually forced? Oh," he added, bitterly, +"rest assured I shall hang about long enough!" But when he returned to +the supper-room, and gave his attention to his usual duties, he was +entirely himself again, so far as his outward bearing went. He bore +about ices and salads, and endeared himself beyond measure to dowagers, +with appetites, who lay in wait. He received their expressions of grief +at his approaching departure with decorum not too grave and sufficiently +grateful. He made himself as useful and agreeable as usual. + +"He is always ready and amiable, that Mr. Arbuthnot," remarked a +well-seasoned, elderly matron, who recognized useful material when she +saw it. + +And Agnes, who had chanced to see him just as his civilities won him +this encomium, reflected upon him for a moment with a soft gaze, and +then turned away with a secret thought her face did not betray. + +At last the rooms began to thin out. One party after another took its +departure, disappearing up the stairs and reappearing afterward, +descending and passing through the hall to the carriages, which rolled +up, one after another, as they were called. Agnes stood near the +door-way with Mrs. Merriam, speaking the last words to her guests as +they left her. She was still a little pale, but the fatigues of the +evening might easily have left her more so. Arbuthnot found himself +lingering with an agonizing sense of disgust at his folly. Several times +he thought he would go with the rest, and then discovered that the step +would cost him a struggle to which he was not equal. Agnes did not look +at him; Mrs. Merriam did. + +"You must not leave us just yet," she said. "We want your last moments. +It would be absurd to bid you good-night as if we were to see you +to-morrow. Talk to me until Agnes has done with these people." + +He could have embraced her. He was perfectly aware that, mentally, he +had lost all his dignity, but he could do nothing more than recognize +the fact with unsparing clearness, and gird at himself for his weakness. + +"If I were a boy of sixteen," he said inwardly, "I should comport myself +in something the same manner. I could grovel at this kind old creature's +feet because she has taken a little notice of me." + +But at length the last guest had departed, the last carriage had been +called and had rolled away. Agnes turned from the door-way and walked +slowly to the fireplace. + +"How empty the rooms look!" she said. + +"You should have a glass of wine," Mrs. Merriam suggested. "You are +certainly more tired than you should be. You are not as strong as I was +at your age." + +Arbuthnot went for the glass of wine into the adjoining room. He was +glad to absent himself for a moment. + +"In ten minutes I shall be out of the house," he said; "perhaps in +five." + +When he returned to the parlor Mrs. Merriam had disappeared. Agnes stood +upon the hearth, looking down. She lifted her eyes with a gentle smile. + +"Aunt Mildred is going to ask you to execute a little commission for +her," she said. "She will be down soon, I think." + +For the moment he was sufficiently abandoned and ungrateful to have lost +all interest in Mrs. Merriam. It seemed incredible that he had only ten +minutes before him and yet could retain composure enough to reply with +perfect steadiness. + +"Perhaps," he thought, desperately, "I am not going to do it so +villanously, after all." + +He kept his eyes fixed very steadily upon her. The soft calm of her +manner seemed to give him a sort of strength. Nothing could have been +sweeter or more unmoved than her voice. + +"I was a little afraid you would go away early," she said, "and that we +could not bid you good-by quietly." + +"Don't bid me good-by too quietly," he answered. "You will excuse _my_ +emotion, I am sure?" + +"You have been in Washington," she said, "long enough to feel sorry to +leave it." + +He glanced at the clock. + +"I have spent ten years here," he said; "one grows fond of a place, +naturally." + +"Yes," she replied. + +Then she added: + +"Your steamer sails"-- + +"On Wednesday," was his answer. + +It was true that he was driven. He was so hard driven at this moment +that he glanced furtively at the mirror, half fearing to find his face +ashen. + +"My train leaves in an hour," he said; "I will bid you"-- + +He held out his hand without ending his sentence. She gave him her +slender, cold fingers passively. + +"Good-by!" she said. + +Mrs. Merriam was not mentioned. She was forgotten. Arbuthnot had not +thought once of the possibility of her return. + +He dropped Agnes' hand, and simply turned round and went out of the +room. + +His ten minutes were over; it was all over. This was his thought as he +went up the staircase. He went into the deserted upper room where he had +left his overcoat. It was quite empty, the servant in charge having +congratulated himself that his duties for the night were over, and +joined his fellows downstairs. One overcoat, he had probably fancied, +might take care of itself, especially an overcoat sufficiently familiar +with the establishment to outstay all the rest. The garment in question +hung over the back of a chair. Arbuthnot took it up and put it on with +unnecessary haste; then he took his hat; then he stopped. He sank into +the chair and dropped his brow upon his hand; he was actually +breathless. He passed through a desperate moment as he sat there; when +it was over he rose, deliberately freed himself from his coat again, and +went downstairs. When he reëntered the parlor Agnes rose hurriedly from +the sofa, leaving her handkerchief on the side-cushion, on which there +was a little indented spot. She made a rapid step toward him, her head +held erect, her eyes at once telling their own story, and commanding him +to disbelieve it; her face so inexpressibly sweet in its sadness that +his heart leaped in his side. + +"You have left something?" she said. + +"Yes," he answered, "I left--you." + +She sat down upon the sofa without a word. He saw the large tears well +up into her eyes, and they helped him to go on as nothing else would +have done. + +"I couldn't go away," he said. "There was no use trying. I could not +leave you in that cold way, as if our parting were only an ordinary, +conventional one. There is nothing conventional about my side of it. I +am helpless with misery. I have lost my last shred of self-respect. I +had to come back and ask you to be a little kinder to me. I don't think +you know how cold you were. It was like death to drop your hand and turn +away like that. Such a thing must be unendurable to a man who loves a +woman." + +He came nearer. + +"Beggars should be humble," he said. "I am humble enough. I only ask you +to say good-by a little more kindly." + +Her eyes were full and more beautiful than ever. She put out her hand +and touched the sofa at her side. + +"Will you sit here?" she said. + +"What!" he cried,--"I?" + +"Yes," she answered, scarcely above her breath, "no one else." He took +the place and her slender hand. + +"I have no right to this," he said. "No one knows that so well as I. I +am doing a terrible, daring thing." + +"It is a daring thing for us both," she said. "I have always been +afraid; but it cost me too much when you went out of the door." + +"Did it?" he said, and folded her hand close against his breast. "Oh!" +he whispered, "I will be very tender to you." + +She lifted her soft eyes. + +"I think," she said, "that is what I need." + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + + +The next six months Laurence Arbuthnot spent in his quiet corner of +Germany, devoting all his leisure moments to the study of certain legal +terms to which he had given some attention at a previous time, when, +partly as a whim, partly as the result of a spasm of prudence, he had +woven himself a strand of thread to cling to in the vague future by +taking a course of law. His plan now was to strengthen this thread until +it might be depended upon, and he spared no determined and persistent +effort which might assist him to the attainment of this object. + +"I find myself an astonishingly resolute person," he wrote to Agnes. "I +am also industrious. Resolution and industry never before struck me as +being qualities I might lay claim to with any degree of justice. Dr. +Watts himself, with his entirely objectionable bee, could not 'improve +each shining hour' with more vigor than I do, but--I have an object, and +the hours are shining. Once there seemed no reason for them. It is not +so now. I will confess that I used to hate these things. Do you repose +sufficient confidence in me yet to believe me when I tell you that I +actually feel a dawning interest in Blackstone, and do not shudder at +the thought of the lectures I shall attend in Paris? Perhaps I do not +reflect upon them with due deliberation and coolness--I cannot help +remembering that you will be with me." + +When he resigned his position and went to Paris she was with him. He had +made a brief visit to Washington and taken her away, leaving Mrs. +Merriam to adorn the house in Lafayette Square, and keep its hearth warm +until such time as they should return. + +It was when they were in Paris that they had the pleasure of meeting +Mr. Richard Amory, who was very well known and exceedingly popular in +the American colony. He was in the most delightful, buoyant spirits; he +had been very fortunate; a certain investment of his had just turned out +very well, and brought him large returns. He was quite willing to talk +about it and himself, and was enraptured at seeing his friends. The news +of their marriage delighted him; he was enchanting in his warm interest +in their happiness. He seemed, however, to have only pleasantly vague +views on the subject of the time of his probable return to America. + +"There is no actual necessity for it," he said, "and I find the life +here delightful. Bertha and the children will probably join me in the +spring, and we may ramble about for a year or so." And he evidently felt +he had no reason to doubt the truth of this latter statement. Bertha had +been present at her friend's marriage. She had been with her almost +constantly during the last days preceding it. She found great pleasure +in Agnes' happiness. There had been no change in her own mode of life. +Janey and Jack went out with her often, and when she was at home spent +the greater part of the time with her. She helped them with their +lessons, played with them, and made a hundred plans for them. They found +her more entertaining than ever. Others found her no less entertaining. +The old bright circle closed about her as before, and was even added to. +Mr. Amory had been called abroad by business, and might return at any +moment. The professor was rarely absent from his daughter's parlors when +she had her guests about her. The people who had been interested in the +Westoria scheme disappeared or became interested in something else. +Senator Planefield had made one call after Richard's departure, and then +had called no more. Bertha had seen him alone for a short time, and +before he took his leave, looking a trifle more florid than usual, he +had thrown into the grate a bouquet of hothouse roses. + +"Damn all this!" he cried, savagely. "What a failure it has been!" + +"Yes," said Bertha; "it has been a great failure." + +Senator Blundel did not disappear. He began to like the house again, and +to miss his occasional evening there if anything deprived him of it. He +used to come and talk politics with the professor, and hear Bertha sing +his favorite ballads of sentiment. During the excitement preceding the +presidential election the professor found him absorbingly interesting. +The contest was a close and heated one, and the usual national disasters +were prophesied as the inevitable results of the final election of +either candidate. Bertha read her way industriously through the +campaign, and joined in their arguments with a spirit which gave Blundel +keen delight. She read a great deal to her father, and made herself his +companion, finding that she was able to help him with his work. + +"I find great comfort in you, my child," he said gently to her once, +when she had been reading. + +"Do you, dearest?" she answered, and she went to him, and, standing near +him, touched his gray hair with her cheek. "I find great comfort in +you," she said, in a low voice. "We seem to belong to each other as +if--a little as if we had been left together on a desert island." + +When she went away for the summer with her children the professor went +with her. He had never wondered at and pondered over her as he did in +these days. Her incomings and outgoings were as they had always been. +She shared the summer gayeties and went her way with her world, but it +was but a short time before the kind old eyes looking on detected in her +the lack of all that had made her what she had been in the past. They +returned to Washington the day after the election of the new President. +Their first evening at home was spent in reading the newspapers and +discussing the termination of the campaign. + +When Bertha rose to go to her room she stood a moment looking at the +fire, and there was something in her face which attracted the +professor's attention. + +"My dear," he said, "tell me what you are thinking of." + +She lifted her eyes and made an effort to smile, but the smile died out +and left her face blank and cold. + +"I am thinking of the last inaugural ball," she said, "and of Larry--and +Richard--and of how I danced and laughed--and laughed--and that I shall +never laugh so again." + +"Bertha," he said, "my child!" + +"No," she said, "never, never,--and I did not mean to speak of it--only +just for a moment it all came back;" and she went quickly away without +finishing. + + +After the election there came the usual temporary lull, and the country +settled itself down to the peaceful avocation of reading stories of the +new President's childhood, and accounts of his daily receptions of +interested friends and advisers. The only reports of excitement came +from the Indian country, where little disturbances were occurring which +caused anxiety among agents and frontiersmen. Certain tribes were +dissatisfied with the arrangements made for them by the government, +quarrels had taken place, and it had become necessary to keep a strict +watch upon the movements of turbulent tribes. This state of affairs +continued throughout the winter; the threatened outbreak was an +inestimable boon to the newspapers, but, in spite of the continued +threatenings, the winter was tided over without any actual +catastrophies. + +"But we shall have it," Colonel Tredennis said to his fellow-officers; +"I think we cannot escape it." + +He had been anxious for some time, and his anxiety increased as the +weeks went by. It was two days before the inaugural ceremonies that the +blow fell. The colonel had gone to his quarters rather early. A batch of +newspapers had come in with the eastern mail, and he intended to spend +his evening in reading them. Among these there were Washington papers, +which contained descriptions of the preparations made for the +ceremonies,--of the triumphal arches and processions, of the stands +erected on the avenue, of the seats before the public buildings, of the +arrangements for the ball. He remembered the belated flags and pennants +of four years before, the strollers in the streets, his own feelings as +he had driven past the decorations, and at last his words: + +"I came in with the Administration; I wonder if I shall go out with it, +and what will have happened between now and then." + +He laid his paper down with a heavy sigh, even though he had caught a +glimpse of Miss Jessup's letter on the first sheet. He could not read +any more; he had had enough. The bitter loneliness of the moment +overpowered him, and he bowed his face upon his arms, leaning upon the +pile of papers and letters on the table. He had made, even mentally, no +complaint in the last month. His hair had grown grizzled and his youth +had left him; only happiness could have brought it back, and happiness +was not for him. Every hour of his life was filled with yearning sadness +for the suffering another than himself might be bearing; sometimes it +became intolerable anguish; it was so to-night. + +"I have no part to play," he thought; "every one is used to my grim +face; but she--poor child!--poor child!--they will not let her rest. She +has worn her smile too well." + +Once, during the first winter of his stay in Washington, he had found +among a number of others a little picture of herself, and had asked her +for it. It was a poor little thing, evidently lightly valued; but he had +often recalled her look and words as she gave it to him. + +"Nobody ever wanted it before," she had said. "They say it is too sad +to be like me. I do not mind that so much, I think. I had rather a fancy +for it. Yes, you may have it, if you wish. I have been gay so long--let +me be sad for a little while, if it is only in a picture." + +He had carried it with him ever since. He had no other relic of her. He +took it from his breast-pocket now, and looked at it with aching eyes. + +"So long!" he said. "So long!" And then again, "Poor child! poor child!" + +The next instant he sprang to his feet. There was a sound of hurried +feet, a loud knocking at his door, which was thrown open violently. One +of his fellow-officers stood before him, pale with excitement. + +"Tredennis," he said, "the Indians have attacked the next settlement. +The devils have gone mad. You are wanted"-- + +Tredennis did not speak. He gave one glance round the room, with its +blazing fire and lonely, soldierly look; then he put the little picture +into his pocket and went out into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + + +In all her honest, hard-worked little life Miss Jessup had never done +more honest, hard work than she was called upon to do on the day of the +inauguration. She had written into the small hours the night before; she +had described bunting and arches, evergreens and grand stands, the +visiting regiments, club uniforms, bands, banners, torch-lights and +speeches, and on the eventful day she was up with the dawn, arranging in +the most practicable manner her plans for the day. With letters +containing a full and dramatic description of the ceremonies to be +written to four western papers, and with extra work upon the Washington +weekly and daily, there was no time to be lost. Miss Jessup lost none. +Each hour of the day was portioned off--each minute, almost. Now she was +to take a glance at the procession from the steps of the Treasury; now +she was to spend a few moments in a balcony overlooking another point; +she was to see the oath administered, hear the President's address and +form an estimate of his appreciation of the solemnity of the moment; she +was to take his temperature during the afternoon, and be ready to greet +him at the ball, and describe dresses, uniforms, decorations, flags, and +evergreens again. Even as she took her hasty breakfast she was jotting +down appropriate items, and had already begun an article, opening with +the sentence, "Rarely has Washington witnessed a more brilliant +spectacle," etc. + +It could scarcely be said that she missed anything when she went her +rounds later. No familiar face escaped her; she recognized people at +windows, in carriages, on platforms. Among others she caught a glimpse +of Mrs. Amory, who drove by on her way to the Capitol with her father +and Jack and Janey. + +"She looks a little tired about the eyes," thought Miss Jessup. "She has +looked a little that way all the season, though she keeps going steadily +enough. They work as hard as the rest of us, in their way, these society +women. She will be at the ball to-night, I dare say." + +Bertha herself had wondered if she would find herself there. Even as she +drove past Miss Jessup, she was thinking that it seemed almost +impossible; but she had thought things impossible often during the +winter which had gone by, and had found them come to pass and leave her +almost as before. Gradually, however, people had begun to miss something +in her. There was no denying, they said, that she had lost some of her +vivacity and spirit; some tone had gone from her voice; something of +color from her manner. Perhaps she would get over it. Amory had not +behaved well in the Westoria land affair, and she naturally felt his +absence and the shadow under which he rested. + +"Very gradually," she said to the professor once, "I think I am retiring +from the world. I never was really very clever or pretty. I don't hide +it so well as I used to, and people are finding me out. Often I am a +little dull, and it is not likely they will forgive me that." + +But she was not dull at home, or the professor never thought so. She was +not dull now, as she pointed out objects of interest to Jack and Janey. + +"I wish Uncle Philip were here!" cried Jack. "He would have his sword on +and be in uniform, and he would look taller than all the rest,--taller +than the President." + +The day was very brilliant to the children; they were as indefatigable +as Miss Jessup, and missed as little as if they had been in search of +items. The blare of brazen instruments, the tramp of soldiers, the +rattle of arms, the rushing crowds, the noise and color and excitement, +filled them with rapture. When they finally reached home they were worn +out with their delights. Bertha was not less fatigued; but, after the +nursery was quiet and the children were asleep, she came down to dine +with the professor. + +"And we will go to the ball for an hour," she said. "We cannot submit to +having it described to us for the next two weeks by people who were +there." + +The truth was that she could not sit at home and listen to the carriages +rolling by, and watch the dragging hours with such memories as must fill +them. + +So at half-past ten she stood in her room, putting the last touches to +her toilet, and shortly afterward she was driving with the professor +toward the scene of the night's gayeties. She had seen the same scene on +each like occasion since her eighteenth year. There was nothing new +about it to-night; there was some change in dances and music, but the +same types of people crowded against each other, looking on at the +dancing, pointing out the President, asking the old questions, and +making the old comments; young people whirled together in the centre of +the ballroom, and older ones watched them, with some slight wonder at +the interest they evinced in the exercise. Bertha danced only a few +quadrilles. As she went through them she felt again what she had felt on +each such occasion since the night of the ball of the last year,--the +music seemed too loud, the people too vivacious, the gayety about her +too tumultuous; though, judged by ordinary standards, there could have +been no complaint against it. + +But, notwithstanding this feeling, she lingered longer than she had +intended, trying to hide from herself her dread of returning home. No +one but herself knew--even the professor did not suspect--how empty the +house seemed to her, and how its loneliness grew and grew until +sometimes it overpowered her and became a sort of deadly presence. +Richard's empty rooms were a terror to her; she never passed their +closed doors without a shock. + +At half-past twelve, however, she decided to go home. She had just ended +a dance with a young _attaché_ of one of the legations; he was a +brilliantly hued and graceful young butterfly, and danced and talked +well. There had been a time when she had liked to hear his sharp, +slightly satirical nonsense, and had enjoyed a dance with him. She had +listened to-night, and had used her pretty smile at opportune moments; +but she was glad to sit down again. + +"Now," she said to him, "will you be so good as to find my father for +me, and tell him I will go home?" + +"I will, if I must," he answered. "But otherwise"-- + +"You will if you are amiable," she said. "I blush to own that I am +tired. I have assisted in the inaugural ceremonies without flinching +from their first step until their last, and I begin to feel that His +Excellency is safe and I may retire." + +He found her a quiet corner and went to do her bidding. She was partly +shielded by some tall plants, and was glad of the retreat they afforded +her. She sat and let her eyes rest upon the moving crowd promenading the +room between the dances; the music had ceased, and she could catch +snatches of conversation as people passed her. Among the rest were a +pretty, sparkling-eyed girl and a young army officer who attracted her. +She watched them on their way round the circle twice, and they were just +nearing her for the second time when her attention was drawn from them +by the sound of voices near her. + +"Indian outbreak," she heard. "Tredennis! News just came in." + +She rose from her seat. The speakers were on the other side of the +plants. One of them was little Miss Jessup, the other a stranger, and +Miss Jessup was pale with agitation and professional interest, and her +note-book trembled in her little, bird-like hand. + +"Colonel Tredennis!" she said. "Oh! I knew him. I liked him--every one +did--every one! What are the particulars? Are they really authenticated? +Oh, what a terrible thing!" + +"We know very few particulars," was the answer; "but those we know are +only too well authenticated. We shall hear more later. The Indians +attacked a small settlement, and a party went from the fort to the +rescue. Colonel Tredennis commanded it. The Indians were apparently +beaten off, but returned. A little child had been left in the house, +through some misunderstanding, and Tredennis heard it crying as the +Indians made their second attack, and went after it. He was shot as he +brought it out in his arms." + +Little Miss Jessup burst into tears and dropped her note-book. + +"Oh!" she cried. "He was a good, brave man! He was a good man!" + +The band struck up a waltz. The promenading stopped; a score or two of +couples took their place upon the floor, and began to whirl swiftly past +the spot where Bertha stood; the music seemed to grow faster and faster, +and louder, and still more loud. + +Bertha stood still. + +She had not moved when the professor came to her. He himself wore a sad, +grief-stricken face; he had heard the news too; it had not taken it long +to travel around the room. + +"Take me home," she said to him. "Philip is dead! Philip has been +killed!" + +He took her away as quickly as he could through the whirling crowd of +dancers, past the people who crowded, and laughed, and listened to the +music of the band. + +"Keep close to me!" she said. "Do not let them see my face!" + +When they were shut up in the carriage together she sat shuddering for a +moment, he shuddering, also, at the sight of the face he had hidden; +then she trembled into his arms, clung to his shoulder, cowered down and +hid herself upon his knee, slipped down kneeling upon the floor of the +carriage, and clung to him with both her arms. + +"I never told you that I was a wicked woman," she said. "I will tell you +now; always--always I have tried to hide that it was Philip--Philip!"-- + +"Poor child!" he said. "Poor, unhappy--most unhappy child!" All the +strength of her body seemed to have gone into the wild clasp of her +slender arms. + +"I have suffered," she said. "I have been broken; I have been crushed. I +knew that I should never see him again, but he was alive. Do you think +that I shall some day have been punished enough?" + +He clasped her close to his breast, and laid his gray head upon her +brown one, shedding bitter tears. + +"We do not know that this is punishment," he said. + +"No," she answered. "We do not know. Take me home to my little children. +Let me stay with them. I will try to be a good mother--I will try"-- + +She lay in his arms until the carriage stopped. Then they got out and +went into the house. When they closed the door behind them, and stood in +the hall together, the deadly silence smote them both. They did not +speak to each other. The professor supported her with his arm as they +went slowly up the stairs. He had extinguished the light below before +they came up. All the house seemed dark but for a glow of fire-light +coming through an open door on the first landing. It was the door Philip +Tredennis had seen open the first night when he had looked in and had +seen Bertha sitting in her nursery-chair with her child on her breast. + +There they both stopped. Before the professor's eyes there rose, with +strange and terrible clearness, the vision of a girl's bright face +looking backward at him from the night, the light streaming upon it as +it smiled above a cluster of white roses. And it was this that remained +before him when, a moment afterward, Bertha went into the room and +closed the door. + + +THE END. + + + + +THE NOVELS AND STORIES OF + +Frances Hodgson Burnett + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS + + + "_We have no hesitation in saying that there is no living writer + (man or woman) who has Mrs. Burnett's dramatic power in telling a + story_."--N. Y. HERALD. + + +In Connection with + +The De Willoughby Claim + +_12mo. $1.35 net._ + +Mrs. Burnett's new novel is a literary event of the highest importance. +From first to last one reads on with breathless interest of the winning +of the great claim which was to reinstate good-natured "Big Tom" De +Willoughby in his birthright. Interwoven with it is the story of a woman +deceived by the man of whom the world would have least expected it, his +identity being effectually concealed till the terrible revelation of the +dramatic final chapters. The fate of the heartless fanatic who stood +nearest the loving couple, brutal in his loyalty to his idea of the +right, has a dramatic significance which is intensified in the light of +his past conduct. + +As if to compensate, however, for the mother's grief, her child survives +her; and in this beautiful child-life Mrs. Burnett has added another +charming portrait to her gallery of juvenile characters. How Tom De +Willoughby's life was saved from blackness and desolation and made to +overflow with happiness--this the reader will learn for himself. + +The tragedy of the story, intensified by the contrast of the fanatical +New England temper with Southern chivalry and kindness, is not its only +side. The love between a beautiful, romantic child and a strong man who +is her protector fills the book with a sweetness that matches its +dramatic fire. + + + + +NOVELS BY MRS. BURNETT + + +The Dawn of a Tomorrow + +Illustrated in Color by F. C. YOHN. 12mo, $1.00 _net_. + + + "An uncommonly vivid story."--_Boston Advertiser._ + + "A touching little tale that carries a sublime truth."--_Detroit + Free Press._ + + +His Grace of Osmonde + +Being the Portions of that Nobleman's Life omitted in the Relation of +his Lady's Story, presented to the World of Fashion under the Title of +"A Lady of Quality." 12mo, $1.35 _net_. + + + "We have no doubt that it will be read with the same eager interest + and grateful approval that rewarded 'A Lady of Quality.'"--_New + York Sun._ + + +A Lady of Quality + +Being a most curious, hitherto unknown history, related to Mr. Isaac +Bickerstaff, but not presented to the World of Fashion through the pages +of _The Tattler_, and now for the first time written down by FRANCES +HODGSON BURNETT. 12mo, $1.35 _net_. + + + "The plot is excellent, and an unflagging interest is maintained + from the first page to the very last."--_The Critic._ + + +The One I Knew the Best of All + +A Memory of the Mind of a Child. 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Perfect art was necessary to its effective + telling."--_Boston Advertiser._ + + +NOVELS BY MRS. BURNETT + + +That Lass o' Lowrie's + +12mo, $1.25 _net_. + + + "We know of no more powerful work from a woman's hand in the + English language, not even excepting the best of George + Eliot's."--_Boston Transcript._ + + +Haworth's + +Illustrated. 12mo, $1.25 _net_. + + + "A product of genius of a very high order."--_New York + Evening Post._ + + "One of the few great American novels."--_Hartford Courant._ + + +Through One Administration + +12mo, $1.35 _net_. + + + "As a study of Washington life, dealing largely with what might be + called social politics, it is certainly a success. As a society + novel it is indeed quite perfect."--_The Critic._ + + +Louisiana + +12mo, $1.25 _net_. + + + "A delightful little story, original and piquant in design, and + carried out with great artistic skill."--_Boston Saturday Evening + Gazette._ + + +A Fair Barbarian + +Cloth, $1.25 _net_. + + + "If a more amusing or clever novelette than 'A Fair Barbarian' has + ever been given to the American public, we fail to recall + it."--_Pittsburgh Telegraph._ + + +Surly Tim, and Other Stories + +12mo, $1.25 _net_. + + + "Uncommonly vigorous and truthful stories of human + nature."--_Chicago Tribune._ + + +Vagabondia: A Love Story + +12mo, cloth, $1.25 _net_. + + + "One of the sweetest love stories ever written."--_Brooklyn Eagle._ + + "A charming love story in Mrs. Burnett's brightest and most winning + style."--_New York Herald._ + + +Earlier Stories + +_First Series_--Comprising Theo, Miss Crespigny, and Lindsay's Luck. + +_Second Series_--Comprising Pretty Polly Pemberton, and Kathleen. + +Each, 12mo, $1.25 _net_. + + + "Each of these narratives has a distinct spirit. They are told not + only with true art but with deep pathos."--_Boston Post._ + + +JUVENILES BY MRS. BURNETT + + +A Little Princess + +Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe, now told for the First Time. +Illustrated in Color. 8vo, $2.00 _net_. + + + "So here is the whole story of Sara Crewe better than it was at + first, because there is more of it, with a dozen beautiful colored + pictures."--_The Outlook._ + + +Two Little Pilgrims' Progress + +A Story of the City Beautiful. With many illustrations by R. B. BIRCH, +12mo, $1.20 _net_. + + + "The day we first read it will stand ever after among the + red-letter days of life. It is a story to be marked with a white + stone, a strong, sweet, true book, touching the high-water mark of + excellence."--MRS. MARGARET E. SANGSTER. + + +Little Lord Fauntleroy + +Beautifully illustrated by R. B. BIRCH. 12mo, $1.20 _net_. + + + "In 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' we gain another charming child to add + to our gallery of juvenile heroes and heroines; one who teaches a + great lesson with such truth and sweetness that we part from him + with real regret."--LOUISA M. ALCOTT. + + +Sara Crewe and Little Saint Elizabeth + +and Other Stories. Richly and fully illustrated by R. B. BIRCH. 12mo, +$1.20 _net_. + + + "In creating her little gentlewoman, 'Sara Crewe,' so fresh, so + simple, so natural, so genuine, and so indomitable, Mrs. Burnett + has added another child to English fiction."--R. H. STODDARD. + + "'Little Saint Elizabeth' is one of the most winning and pathetic + of Mrs. Burnett's child heroines. The fairy tales which follow her + history, retold from a lost fairy book, are quite charming."--_The + Athenæum._ + + +Giovanni and the Other + +Children who have made Stories. With 9 full-page illustrations by R. B. +BIRCH. 12mo, $1.20 _net_. + + + "Stories beautiful in tone, and style, and color."--KATE + DOUGLAS WIGGIN. + + +Piccino + +And Other Child Stories. Fully illustrated by R. B. BIRCH. 12mo, $1.20 +_net_. + + + "The history of Piccino's 'two days' is as delicate as one of the + anemones that spring in the rock walls facing Piccino's + Mediterranean.... The other stories in the book have the charm of + their predecessor in material and manner."--MRS. BURTON HARRISON. + + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +597-599 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Through One Administration, by +Frances Hodgson Burnett + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58325 *** |